Table of Contents - Presented as far as possible in Original Publication Date Order THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY ATTEMPT AT SELF-CRITICISM PREFACE TO RICHARD WAGNER THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY PHILOSOPHY DURING THE TRAGIC AGE OF THE GREEKS ON TRUTH AND LIES IN A NON MORAL SENSE HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY - INAUGURAL ADDRESS DELIVERED AT BALE UNIVERSITY ON MUSIC AND WORDS UNTIMELY MEDITATIONS/THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION DAVID STRAUSS, THE CONFESSOR AND THE WRITER. RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY FOR LIFE SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN, A BOOK FOR FREE SPIRITS INTRODUCTION. PREFACE. FIRST DIVISION. FIRST AND LAST THINGS. SECOND DIVISION. THE HISTORY OF THE MORAL SENTIMENTS. THIRD DIVISION. THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. FOURTH DIVISION. CONCERNING THE SOUL OF ARTISTS AND AUTHORS. FIFTH DIVISION. THE SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. SIXTH DIVISION. MAN IN SOCIETY. SEVENTH DIVISION. WIFE AND CHILD. EIGHTH DIVISION. A GLANCE AT THE STATE. NINTH DIVISION. MAN ALONE BY HIMSELF. HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN FIRST SEQUEL: MIXED OPINIONS AND MAXIMS HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN SECOND SEQUEL: THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW THE DAWN OF DAY PREFACE BOOK I BOOK II BOOK III BOOK IV BOOK V THE GAY SCIENCE (THE JOYFUL WISDOM) BOOK ONE BOOK TWO BOOK THREE BOOK FOUR BOOK FIVE THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA - A BOOK FOR ALL AND NONE
INTRODUCTION BY MRS FORSTER-NIETZSCH - HOW ZARATHUSTRA CAME INTO BEING. FIRST PART. ZARATHUSTRA’S DISCOURSES. ZARATHUSTRA’S PROLOGUE. I. THE THREE METAMORPHOSES. II. THE ACADEMIC CHAIRS OF VIRTUE. III. BACKWORLDSMEN. IV. THE DESPISERS OF THE BODY. V. JOYS AND PASSIONS. VI. THE PALE CRIMINAL. VII. READING AND WRITING. VIII. THE TREE ON THE HILL. X. WAR AND WARRIORS. XI. THE NEW IDOL. XII. THE FLIES IN THE MARKET-PLACE. XIII. CHASTITY. XIV. THE FRIEND. XV. THE THOUSAND AND ONE GOALS. XVI. NEIGHBOUR-LOVE. XVII. THE WAY OF THE CREATING ONE. XVIII. OLD AND YOUNG WOMEN. XIX. THE BITE OF THE ADDER. XX. CHILD AND MARRIAGE. XXI. VOLUNTARY DEATH. XXII. THE BESTOWING VIRTUE. SECOND PART XXIII. THE CHILD WITH THE MIRROR. XXIV. IN THE HAPPY ISLES. XXV. THE PITIFUL. XXVI. THE PRIESTS. XXVII. THE VIRTUOUS. XXVIII. THE RBLE. XXIX. THE TARANTULAS. XXX. THE FAMOUS WISE ONES. XXXI. THE NIGHT-SONG. XXXII. THE DANCE-SONG. XXXIII. THE GRAVE-SONG. XXXIV. SELF-SURPASSING. XXXV. THE SUBLIME ONES. XXXVI. THE LAND OF CULTURE. XXXVII. IMMACULATE PERCEPTION. XXXVIII. SCHOLARS. XXXIX. POETS. XL. GREAT EVENTS. XLI. THE SOOTHSAYER. XLII. REDEMPTION.
XLIII. MANLY PRUDENCE. XLIV. THE STILLEST HOUR. THIRD PART. XLV. THE WANDERER. XLVI. THE VISION AND THE ENIGMA. XLVII. INVOLUNTARY BLISS. XLVIII. BEFORE SUNRISE. XLIX. THE BEDWARFING VIRTUE. L. ON THE OLIVE-MOUNT. LI. ON PASSING-BY. LII. THE APOSTATES. LIII. THE RETURN HOME. LIV. THE THREE EVIL THINGS. LIX. THE SECOND DANCE-SONG. LX. THE SEVEN SEALS. FOURTH AND LAST PART. LXI. THE HONEY SACRIFICE. LXII. THE CRY OF DISTRESS. LXIII. TALK WITH THE KINGS. LXIV. THE LEECH. LXV. THE MAGICIAN. LXVI. OUT OF SERVICE. LXVII. THE UGLIEST MAN. LXVIII. THE VOLUNTARY BEGGAR. LXIX. THE SHADOW. LXX. NOONTIDE. LXXI. THE GREETING. LXXII. THE SUPPER. LXXIII. THE HIGHER MAN. LXXIV. THE SONG OF MELANCHOLY. LXXV. SCIENCE. LXXVI. AMONG DAUGHTERS OF THE DESERT. LXXVII. THE AWAKENING. LXXVIII. THE ASS-FESTIVAL. LXXIX. THE DRUNKEN SONG. LXXX. THE SIGN. NOTES ON “ THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA” BY ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI. (A.) Nietzsche and Morality. (B.) The Master- and Slave-Morality Compared. (C.) Nietzsche and Evolution. (D.) Nietzsche and Sociology. PART I. THE PROLOGUE. THE DISCOURSES. Chapter I. The Three Metamorphoses. Chapter II. The Academic Chairs of Virtue.
Chapter IV. The Despisers of the Body. Chapter IX. The Preachers of Death. Chapter XV. The Thousand and One Goals. Chapter XVIII. Old and Young Women. Chapter XXI. Voluntary Death. Chapter XXII. The Bestowing Virtue. PART II. Chapter XXIII. The Child with the Mirror. Chapter XXIV. In the Happy Isles. Chapter XXIX. The Tarantulas. Chapter XXX. The Famous Wise Ones. Chapter XXXIII. The Grave-Song. Chapter XXXIV. Self-Surpassing. Chapter XXXV. The Sublime Ones. Chapter XXXVI. The Land of Culture. Chapter XXXVII. Immaculate Perception. Chapter XXXVIII. Scholars. Chapter XXXIX. Poets. Chapter XL. Great Events. Chapter XLI. The Soothsayer. Chapter XLII. Redemption. Chapter XLIII. Manly Prudence. Chapter XLIV. The Stillest Hour. PART III. Chapter XLVI. The Vision and the Enigma. Chapter XLVII. Involuntary Bliss. Chapter XLVIII. Before Sunrise. Chapter XLIX. The Bedwarfing Virtue. Chapter LI. On Passing-by. Chapter LII. The Apostates. Chapter LIII. The Return Home. Chapter LIV. The Three Evil Things. Chapter LV. The Spirit of Gravity. Chapter LVI. Old and New Tables. Par. 2. Chapter LVII. The Convalescent. Chapter LX. The Seven Seals. PART IV. Chapter LXI. The Honey Sacrifice. Chapter LXII. The Cry of Distress. Chapter LXIII. Talk with the Kings. Chapter LXIV. The Leech. Chapter LXV. The Magician. Chapter LXVI. Out of Service. Chapter LXVII. The Ugliest Man. Chapter LXVIII. The Voluntary Beggar.
Chapter LXIX. The Shadow. Chapter LXX. Noontide. Chapter LXXI. The Greeting. Chapter LXXII. The Supper. Chapter LXXIII. The Higher Man. Par. 1. Chapter LXXIV. The Song of Melancholy. Chapter LXXV. Science. Chapter LXXVI. Among the Daughters of the Desert. Chapter LXXVII. The Awakening. Chapter LXXVIII. The Ass-Festival. Chapter LXXIX. The Drunken Song. Chapter LXXX. The Sign. BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL PREFACE CHAPTER I. PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS CHAPTER II. THE FREE SPIRIT CHAPTER III. THE RELIGIOUS MOOD CHAPTER IV. APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES CHAPTER V. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS CHAPTER VI. WE SCHOLARS CHAPTER VII. OUR VIRTUES CHAPTER VIII. PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES CHAPTER IX. WHAT IS NOBLE? FROM THE HEIGHTS (POEM BY NIETZSCHE) THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS PREFACE ESSAY 1 ESSAY 2 ESSAY 3 THE CASE OF WAGNER - CONTRA-WAGNER - SELECTED APHORISMS TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS THE ANTICHRIST INTRODUCTION PREFACE THE ANTICHRIST ECCE HOMO PREFACE PART 1 WHY I AM SO WISE PART 2 - WHY I AM SO CLEVER PART 3 - WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS PART 4 - “ THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY” PART 5 - “ THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON” PART 6 - “ HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN”
PART 7 - “ THE DAWN OF DAY” Thoughts about Morality as a Prejudice PART 8 - “ THE GAY SCIENCE” La Gaya Scienza PART 9 - “ THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA” A Book for All and None ” PART 10 - “ BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL” The Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future” PART 11 - “ THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS” PART 12 - “ THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS” How to Philosophise with the Hammer PART 13 - “ THE CASE OF WAGNER” A Musician’s Problem” PART 14 - WHY I AM A DESTINY THE GREEK STATE (POSTHUMOUS) THE GREEK WOMAN (POSTHUMOUS) HOMER’S COMPETITION NIETZSCHE ON THALES NIETZSCHE ON PARMENIDES THE WILL TO POWER (POSTHUMOUS) PREFACE BOOK ONE- EUROPEAN NIHILISM BOOK II - CRITIQUE OF HIGHEST VALUES HITHERTO BOOK THREE - PRINCIPLES OF A NEW EVALUATION BOOK IV - DISCIPLINE AND BREEDING WE PHILOLOGISTS (POSTHUMOUS) TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION WE PHILOLOGISTS PLANS AND THOUGHTS RELATING TO A WORK ON PHILOLOGY THE PREFERENCE FOR ANTIQUITY THE FINAL DRAFT OF THE FIRST CHAPTER. THE DEATH OF THE OLD CULTURE. NOTES: POEMS BY NIETZSCHE ON THE FUTURE OF OUR EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS PREFACE. INTRODUCTION. FIRST LECTURE. SECOND LECTURE. THIRD LECTURE. FOURTH LECTURE. FIFTH LECTURE. SELECTED LETTERS PREFACE NOTES ON NIETZSCHE’S CORRESPONDENTS THE YOUNG NIETZSCHE PART I CHILDHOOD CHAPTER I OUR ANCESTORS CHAPTER II EARLIEST CHILDHOOD CHAPTER III TOWN AND SCHOOL LIFE CHAPTER IV HOME AND EDUCATION
CHAPTER V OUR GAMES AND TASTES CHAPTER VI DEPARTURE AND LEAVETAKING PART II SCHOOLDAYS AND BOYHOOD CHAPTER VII PFORTA CHAPTER VIII CHANGES CHAPTER IX LAST YEARS AT SCHOOL PART III STUDENT LIFE, 1864-1869 CHAPTER X BONN CHAPTER XI LEIPZIG CHAPTER XII A YEAR’S SOLDIERING CHAPTER XIII INFLUENCES CHAPTER XIV THE CALLING PART IV THE UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR 1869-1876 CHAPTER XV BALE CHAPTER XVII OFFICIAL DUTIES AND THE WAR CHAPTER XVIII THE GENESIS OF ” THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY ” CHAPTER XIX THE FIRST BOOK CHAPTER XX FRIEND AND FOE CHAPTER XXI EDUCATION AND CULTURE CHAPTER XXII “ THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON” CHAPTER XXIII SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR CHAPTER XXIV MISCELLANEOUS EVENTS CHAPTER XXV RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH CHAPTER XXVI ” DEE RING DES NIBELUNGEN.”
NIETZSCHE ULTIMATE COLLECTION Editor Darryl Marks
NIETZSCHE COMPLETE WORKS ULTIMATE COLLECTION: 20+ WORKS, INCLUDING 2 BIOGRAPHIES Original Publications Dates, Translations: The Birth Of Tragedy, Tr. By W. A. Haussmann. 1909 On Truth And Lies In A Non Moral Sense & Other Essays, Tr. By Maximillian A. Mugge. 1911. On The Future Of Our Educational Institutions; Homer And Classical Philology; Tr. By J. M. Kennedy. 1909. Untimely Meditations/Thoughts Out Of Season, Tr. By A. M. Ludovici And Adrian Collins. 1910, 1909. Human, All-Too-Human, Tr. By Helen Zimmern And Paul V. Cohn. 1900-1911. The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner; Selected Aphorisms; Tr. By A. M. Ludovici. We Philologists, Tr. By J. M. Kennedy. 1911. The Dawn Of Day, Tr. By J. M. Kennedy. 1911. The Gay Science (The Joyful Wisdom), Tr. By Thomas Common 1910. Thus Spake Zarathustra, Tr. By Thomas Common. 1909 Notes By A.M. Ludovici 1910 Beyond Good And Evil, Tr. By Helen Zimmern. 1909. The Genealogy Of Morals, Tr. By H. B. Samuel. 1910. The Will To Power, Tr. By A. M. Ludovici. 1910. The Twilight Of Idols, Tr. By A. M. Ludovici. 1911. Ecce Homo And Poems, Tr. By A. M. Ludovici. 1911. The Young Nietzsche, Written by Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche; Tr. By A.M. Ludovici, 1912. Selected Letters, Tr. By A.M. Ludovici. 1921 On Truth And Lie In A Non Moral Sense, Tr. By A.M. Ludovici 1909 The Antichrist, Tr. By H.L.Mencken 1918 Original Nietzsche Publications Dates: The Birth Of Tragedy 1872 On Truth And Lies In A Non Moral Sense 1873 Untimely Meditations/Thoughts Out Of Season 1876 Human, All-Too-Human, 1878 (Additions In 1879, 1880) The Dawn 1881 The Gay Science (The Joyful Wisdom) 1882 Thus Spake Zarathustra 1883-1885 Beyond Good And Evil 1886 On The Genealogy Of Morals 1887 The Case Of Wagner 1888 The Twilight Of Idols 1888 Nietzsche Contra Wagner; Selected Aphorisms 1888 The Antichrist 1888 Ecce Homo 1888 The Greek State 1871
The Will To Power 1889
First Everlasting Flames Publishing edition of ‘NIETZSCHE ULTIMATE COLLECTION’ published 2010
Copyright (c) 2010 by Darryl Alan Marks and Infinite Eternity Entertainment LLC All Rights Reserved.
Published by Everlasting Flames Publishing, An imprint of Infinite Eternity Entertainment LLC 10685-B Hazelhurst Dr. #9479 Houston, TX 77043 USA www.everlasting-flames-publishing.com
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY Translated by W.A Haussmann ATTEMPT AT SELF-CRITICISM (1886) 1 Whatever may be at the bottom of this questionable book, it must have been an exceptionally significant and fascinating question, and deeply personal at that: the time in which it was written, in spite of which it was written, bears witness to that—the exciting time of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. As the thunder of the Battle of W�rth was rolling over Europe, the muser and riddle-friend who was to be the father of this book sat somewhere in an alpine nook, very bemused and beriddled, hence very concerned and yet unconcerned, and wrote down his thoughts about the Greeks—the core of the strange and almost inaccessible book to which this belated preface (or postscript) shall now be added. A few weeks later—and he himself was to be found under the walls of Metz, still wedded to the question marks that he had placed after the alleged “ cheerfulness” of the Greeks and of Greek art. Eventually, in that month of profoundest suspense when the peace treaty was being debated at Versailles, he, too, made peace with himself and, slowly convalescing from an illness contracted at the front, completed the final draft of The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music.—Out of music? Music and tragedy? Greeks and the music of tragedy? Greeks and the art form of pessimism? The best turned out, most beautiful, most envied type of humanity to date, those most apt to seduce us to life, the Greeks—how now? They of all people should of needed tragedy? Even more—art? For what—Greek art? You will guess where the big question mark concerning the value of existence has thus been raised. Is pessimism necessarily a sign of decline, decay, degeneration, weary and weak instincts—as it once was in India and now is, to all appearances, among us, “ modern” men and Europeans? Is there pessimism of strength? An intellectual predilection for the hard, gruesome, evil, problematic aspect of existence, prompted by well-being, by overflowing health, by the fullness of existence? Is it perhaps possible to suffer precisely from overfullness? The sharp-eyed courage that tempts and attempts, that craves the frightful as the enemy, the worthy enemy, against whom one can test one’s strength? From whom one can learn what it means “ to be frightened”? What is the significance of the tragic myth among the Greeks of the best, the strongest, the most courageous period? And the tremendous phenomenon of the Dionysian—and, born from it, tragedy—what might they signify?— And again: that of which tragedy died, the Socratism of morality, the dialectics, frugality, and cheerfulness of the theoretical man—how now? Might not this very Socratism be a sign of decline, of weariness, of infection, of the anarchical dissolution of the instincts? And the “ Greek cheerfulness” of the later Greeks—merely the afterglow of the sunset? The Epicureans resolve against pessimism—a mere precaution of the afflicted? And science itself, our science—indeed, what is the significance of all science, viewed as a symptom of life? For what—worse yet, whence—all science? How now? Is the resolve to be so scientific about
everything perhaps a kind of fear of, an escape from, pessimism? A subtle last resort against—truth? And, morally speaking, a sort of cowardice and falseness? Amorally speaking, a ruse? O Socrates, Socrates, was that perhaps your secret? O enigmatic ironist, was that perhaps your—irony? 2 What I then got hold of, something frightful and dangerous, a problem with horns but not necessarily a bull, in any case a new problem—today I should say that it was the problem of science itself, science considered for the first time as problematic, as questionable. But the book in which my youthful courage and suspicion found an outlet—what an impossible book had to result from a task so uncongenial to youth! Constructed from a lot of immature, overgreen personal experiences, all of them close to the limits of communication, presented in the context of art—for the problem of science cannot be recognized in the context of science—a book perhaps for artists who also have an analytic and retrospective penchant (in other words, an exceptional type of artist for whom one might have to look far and wide and really would not care to look); a book full of psychological innovations and artists’ secrets, with an artists’ metaphysics in the background; a youthful work full of the intrepid mood of youth, the moodiness of youth, independent, defiantly self-reliant even where it seems to bow before an authority and personal reverence; in sum, a first book, also in every bad sense of that label. In spite of the problem which seems congenial to old age, the book is marked by every defect of youth, with its “ length in excess: and its “ storm and stress.” On the other hand, considering its success (especially with the great artist to whom it addressed itself as in a dialogue, Richard Wagner), it is a proven book, I mean one that in any case satisfied “ the best minds of the time.” In view of that, it really ought to be treated with some consideration and taciturnity. Still, I do not want to suppress entirely how disagreeable it now seems to me, how strange it appears now, after sixteen years—before a much older, a hundred times more demanding, but by no means colder eye which has not become a stranger to the task which this audacious book dared to tackle for the first time: to look at science in the perspective of the artist, but at art in that of life. 3 To say it once more: today I find it an impossible book: I consider it badly written, ponderous, embarrassing, image-mad and image-confused, sentimental, in places saccharine to the point of effeminacy, uneven in tempo, without the will to logical cleanliness, very convinced and therefore disdainful of proof, mistrustful even of the propriety of proof, a book for initiates, “ music” for those dedicated to music, those who are closely related to begin with on the basis of common and rare aesthetic experiences, “ music” meant as a sign of recognition for close relatives in arbitus [In the arts.]—an arrogant and rhapsodic book that ought to exclude right from the beginning the profanum vulgus [The profane crowd.] of “ the educated” even more than “ the mass” or “ folk.” Still, the effect of the book proved and proves that it had a knack for seeking our fellow-rhapsodizers and for luring them on to new secret paths and dancing places. What found expression here was anyway—this was admitted with as much curiosity as antipathy—a strange voice, the disciple of a still “ unknown God,” one who concealed himself for the time being under the scholar’s hood, under the gravity and dialectical ill-humor of the German, even under the bad manners of the Wagnerian. Here was a spirit with strange, still nameless needs, a memory bursting with questions, experiences, concealed things after which the name of Dionysus was added as one more question mark. What spoke here—as was admitted, not without suspicion—was something like a mystical, almost maenadic soul that stammered with difficulty, a feat of the will, as in a strange tongue, almost undecided whether it should communicate or conceal itself. It should have sung, this “ new soul”—and not spoken! What I had to say then—too bad that I did not dare say it as a poet: perhaps I had the ability. Or at least as a philologist: after all, even today practically everything in this field remains to be discovered and dug up by philologists! Above all, the problem that there is a problem here—and that the Greeks, as long as we lack an answer to the question “ what is Dionysian?” remain as totally uncomprehended and unimaginable as ever. 4 Indeed, what is Dionysian?— This book contains an answer: one “ who knows” is talking, the initiate and disciple of his god. Now I should perhaps speak more cautiously and less eloquently about such a difficult psychological question as that concerning the origin of tragedy among the Greeks. The question of the Greek’s relation to pain, his degree of sensitivity, is basic: did this relation remain constant? Or did it change radically? The question is whether his ever stronger craving for beauty, for festivals, pleasures, new cults was rooted in some deficiency, privation, melancholy, pain? Supposing that this were true—and Pericles (or Thucydides) suggests as much in the great funeral oration—how should we then have to explain the origin of the opposite craving, which developed earlier in time, the craving for the ugly; the good, severe will of the older Greeks to pessimism, to the tragic myth, to the image of everything underlying existence that is frightful, evil, a riddle, destructive, fatal? What, then, would be the origin of tragedy? Perhaps joy, strength, overflowing health, overgreat fullness? And what, then, is the significance, physiologically speaking, of that madness out of which tragic and comic art developed—the Dionysian madness? How now? Is madness perhaps not necessarily the symptom of degeneration, decline, and the final stage of culture? Are there perhaps—a question for psychiatrists—neuroses of health? of the youth and youthfulness of a people? Where does that synthesis of god and billy goat in the satyr point? What experience of himself, what urge compelled the Greek to conceive the Dionysian enthusiast and primeval man as a satyr? And regarding the origin of the tragic chorus: did those centuries when the Greek body flourished and the Greek soul foamed over with health perhaps know endemic ecstasies? Visions and hallucinations shared by entire communities or assemblies at a cult? How now? Should the Greeks, precisely in the abundance of their youth, have had the will to the tragic and have been pessimists? Should it have been madness, to use one of Plato’s phrases, that brought the greatest blessings upon Greece? On the other hand, conversely, could it be that the Greeks became more and more optimistic, superficial, and histrionic precisely in the period of dissolution and weakness—more and more ardent for logic and logicizing the world and thus more “ cheerful” and “ scientific”? How now? Could it be possible that, in spite of all “ modern ideas” and the prejudices of a democratic taste, the triumph of optimism, the gradual prevalence of rationality, practical and theoretical utilitarianism, no less than democracy itself which
developed at the same time, might all have been symptoms of a decline of strength, of impending old age, and of physiological weariness? These, and not pessimism? Was Epicure an optimist—precisely because he was afflicted? It is apparent that it was a whole cluster of grave questions with which this book burdened itself. Let us add the gravest question of all. What, seen in the perspective of life, is the significance of morality? 5 Already in the preface addressed to Richard Wagner, art, and not morality, is presented as the truly metaphysical activity of man. In the book itself the suggestive sentence is repeated several times, that the existence of the world is justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon. Indeed, the whole book knows only an artistic meaning and crypto-meaning behind all events—a “ god,” if you please, but certainly only an entirely reckless and amoral artist-god who wants to experience, whether he is building or destroying, in the good and in the bad, his own joy and glory—one who, creating worlds, frees himself from the distress of fullness and overfullness and from the affliction of the contradictions compressed in his soul. The world—at every moment the attained salvation of God, as the eternally changing, eternally new vision of the most deeply afflicted, discordant, and contradictory being who can find salvation only in appearance: you can call this whole artists’ metaphysics arbitrary, idle, fantastic; what matters is that it betrays a spirit who will one day fight at any risk whatever the moral interpretation and significance of existence. Here, perhaps for the first time, a pessimism “ beyond good and evil” is suggested. Here that “ perversity of mind” gains speech and formulation against which Schopenhauer never wearied of hurling in advance his most irate curses and thunderbolts: a philosophy that dares to move, to demote, morality into the realm of appearance—and not merely among “ appearances” or phenomena (in the sense assigned to these words by Idealistic philosophers), but among “ deceptions,” as semblance, delusion, error, interpretation, contrivance, art. Perhaps the depth of this antimoral propensity is best inferred from the careful and hostile silence with which Christianity is treated throughout the whole book—Christianity as the most prodigal elaboration of the moral theme to which humanity has ever been subjected. In truth, nothing could be more opposed to the purely aesthetic interpretation and justification of the world which are taught in this book than the Christian teaching, which is, and wants to be, only moral and which relegates art, every art, to the realm of lies; with its absolute standards, beginning with the truthfulness of God, it negates, judges, and damns art. Behind this mode of thought and valuation, which must be hostile to art if it is at all genuine, I never failed to sense a hostility to life—a furious, vengeful antipathy to life itself: for all of life is based on semblance, art, deception, points of view, and the necessity of perspectives and error. Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life’s nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in “ another: or “ better” life. Hatred of “ the world,” condemnations of the passions, fear of beauty and sensuality, a beyond invented the better to slander this life, at bottom a craving for the nothing, for the end, for respite, for “ the sabbath of sabbaths”—all this always struck me, no less than the unconditional will of Christianity to recognize only moral values, as the most dangerous and uncanny form of all possible forms of a “ will to decline”—at the very least a sign of abysmal sickness, weariness, discouragement, exhaustion, and the impoverishment of life. For, confronted with morality (especially Christian, or unconditional, morality), life must continually and inevitably be in the wrong, because life is something essentially amoral—and eventually, crushed by the weight of contempt and the eternal No, life must then be felt to be unworthy of desire and altogether worthless. Morality itself—how now? might not morality be “ a will to negate life,” a secret instinct of annihilation, a principle of decay, diminution, and slander—the beginning of the end? Hence, the danger of dangers? It was against morality that my instinct turned with this questionable book, long ago; it was an instinct that aligned itself with life and that discovered for itself a fundamentally opposite doctrine and valuation of life—purely artistic and anti-Christian. What to call it? As a philologist and man of words I baptized it, not without taking some liberty—for who could claim to know the rightful name of the Antichrist?—in the name of a Greek god: I called it Dionysian. 6 It is clear what task I first dared to touch with this book? How I regret now that in those days I still lacked the courage (or immodesty?) to permit myself in every way an individual language of my own for such individual views and hazards—and that instead I tried laboriously to express by means of Schopenhauerian and Kantian formulas strange and new valuations which were basically at odds with Kant’s and Schopenhauer’s spirit and taste! What, after all, did Schopenhauer think of tragedy? “ That which bestows on everything tragic its peculiar elevating force”—he says in The World as Will and Representation, volume II, p. 495—“ is the discovery that the world, that life, can never give real satisfaction and hence is not worthy of our affection: this constitutes the tragic spirit—it leads to resignation.” How differently Dionysus spoke to me! How far removed I was from all this resignationism!— But there is something far worse in this book, something I now regret still more than that I obscured and spoiled Dionysian premonitions with Schopenhauerian formulations: namely, that I spoiled the grandiose Greek problem, as it had arisen before my eyes, by introducing the most modern problems! That I appended hopes where there was no ground for hope, where everything pointed all too plainly to an end! That on the basis of the latest German music I began to rave about “ the German spirit” as if that were in the process even then of discovering and finding itself again—at a time when the German spirit which not long before had still had the will to dominate Europe and the strength to lead Europe, was just making its testament and abdicating forever, making its transition, under the pompous pretense of founding a Reich, to a leveling mediocrity, democracy, and “ modern ideas”! Indeed, meanwhile I have learned to consider this “ German spirit” with a sufficient lack of hope or mercy; also, contemporary German music, which is romanticism through and through and most un-Greek of all possible art forms—moreover, a first-rate poison for the nerves, doubly dangerous among a people who love drink and who honor lack of clarity as a
virtue, for it has the double quality of a narcotic that both intoxicates and spreads a fog. To be sure, apart from all the hasty hopes and faulty applications to the present with which I spoiled my first book, there still remains the great Dionysian question mark I raised —regarding music as well: what would a music have to like that would no longer be of romantic origin, like German music—but Dionysian? 7 But, my dear sir, what in the world is romantic if your book isn’t? Can deep hatred against “ the Now,” against “ reality” and “ modern ideas” be pushed further than you pushed it in your artists’ metaphysics? believing sooner in the Nothing, sooner in the devil than in “ the Now”? Is it not a deep bass of wrath and the lust for destruction that we hear humming underneath all of your contrapuntal art and seduction of the ear, a furious resolve against everything that is “ now,” a will that is not too far removed from practical nihilism and seems to say: “ sooner let nothing be true than that you should be right, than that your truth should be prove right!” Listen yourself, my dear pessimist and art-deifier, but with open ears, to a single passage chosen from your book—to the not ineloquent dragon-slayer passage which may have an insidious pied-piper sound for young ears and hearts. How now? Isn’t this the typical creed of the romantic of 1830, masked by the pessimism of 1850? Even the usual romantic finale is sounded—break, breakdown, return and collapse before an old faith, before the old God. How now? Is your pessimists’ book not itself a piece of anti-Hellenism and romanticism? Is it not itself something “ equally intoxicating and befogging,” in any case a narcotic, even a piece of music, German music? But listen: “ Let us imagine a coming generation with such intrepidity of vision, with such a heroic penchant for the tremendous; let us imagine the bold stride of these dragon-slayers, the proud audacity with which they turn their back on all the weakling’s doctrines of optimism in order to ‘live resolutely’ in wholeness and fullness: would it not be necessary for the tragic man of such a culture, in view of his self-education for seriousness and terror, to desire a new art, the art of metaphysical comfort, and to exclaim with Faust: Should not my longing overleap the distance And draw the fairest form into existence?” [Quoted from Section 18] “ Would it not be necessary?”—No, thrice no! O you young romantics: it would not be necessary! But it is highly probable that it will end that way—namely, “ comforted,” as it is written, in spite of all self-education for seriousness and terror, “ comforted metaphysically”—in sum, as romantics end, as Christians. No! You ought to learn the art of this-worldly comfort first; you ought to learn to laugh, my young friends, if you are hell-bent on remaining pessimists. Then perhaps, as laughers, you may some day dispatch all metaphysical comforts to the devil—metaphysics in front. Or, to say in the language of that Dionysian monster who bears the name of Zarathustra: “ Raise up your hearts, my brothers, high, higher! And don’t forget your legs! Raise up your legs too, good dancers; and still better: stand on your heads! “ This crown of the laugher, this rose-wreath crown: I crown myself with this crown; I myself pronounced holy my laughter. I did not find anyone else today strong enough for that. “ Zarathustra, the dancer; Zarathustra, the light one who beckons with his wings, preparing for a flight, beckoning to all birds, ready and heady, blissfully lightheaded; “ Zarathustra, the soothsayer; Zarathustra, the sooth-laugher; not impatient; not unconditional; one who loves leaps and side-leaps: I crown myself with this crown. “ This crown of the laugher, this rose-wreath crown: to you, my brothers, I throw this crown. Laughter I have pronounced holy: you higher men, learn—to laugh!” Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part IV. [“ On the Higher Man,” 17-20, in part.] Sils-Maria, Upper Engadine, August 1886 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE PREFACE TO RICHARD WAGNER (1871) To keep at a distance all the possible scruples, excitements, and misunderstandings that the thoughts united in this essay will occasion, in view of the peculiar character of our aesthetic public, and to be able to write these introductory remarks, too, with the same contemplative delight whose reflection—the distillation of good and elevating hours—is evident on every page, I picture the moment when you, my highly respected friend, will receive this essay. Perhaps after an evening walk in the winter snow, you will behold Prometheus unbound on the title page, read my name, and be convinced at once that, whatever this essay should contain, the author certainly has something serious and urgent to say; also that, as he hatched these ideas, he was communicating with you as if you were present, and hence could write down only what was in keeping with that presence. You will recall that it was during the same period when your splendid Festschrift on Beethoven came into being, amid the terrors and sublimities of the war that had just broken out, that I collected myself for these reflections. Yet anyone would be mistaken if he associated my reflections with the contrast between patriotic excitement and aesthetic enthusiasm, of courageous seriousness and a cheerful game: if he really read this essay, it would dawn on him, to his surprise, what a seriously German problem is faced here and placed right in the center of German hopes, as a vortex and turning point. But perhaps such readers will find it offensive that an aesthetic problem should be taken so seriously—assuming they are
unable to consider art more than a pleasant sideline, a readily dispensable tinkling of bells that accompanies the “ seriousness of life,” just as if nobody knew what was involved in such a contrast with the “ seriousness of life.” Let such “ serious” readers learn something from the fact that I am convinced that art represents the highest task and the truly metaphysical activity of this life, in the sense of that man to whom, as my sublime predecessor on this path, I wish to dedicate this essay. Basel, end of the year 1871 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY 1 Much will have been gained for aesthetics once we have succeeded in apprehending directly—rather than merely ascertaining—that art owes its continuous evolution to the Apollinian- Dionysian duality, even as the propagation of the species depends on the duality of the sexes, their constant conflicts and periodic acts of reconciliation. I have borrowed my adjectives from the Greeks, who developed their mystical doctrines of art through plausible embodiments, not through purely conceptual means. It is by those two art sponsoring deities, Apollo and Dionysus, that we are made to recognize the tremendous split, as regards both origins and objectives, between the plastic, Apollinian arts and the nonvisual art of music inspired by Dionysus. The two creative tendencies developed alongside one another, usually in fierce opposition, each by its taunts forcing the other to more energetic production, both perpetuating in a discordant concord that agon which the term art but feebly denominates: until at last, by the thaumaturgy of an Hellenic act of will, the pair accepted the yoke of marriage and, in this condition, begot Attic tragedy, which exhibits the salient features of both parents. To reach a closer understanding of both these tendencies, let us begin by viewing them as the separate art realms of dream and intoxication, two physiological phenomena standing toward one another in much the same relationship as the Apollinian and Dionysian. It was in a dream, according to Lucretius, that the marvelous gods and goddesses first presented themselves to the minds of men. That great sculptor, Phidias, beheld in a dream the entrancing bodies of more than human beings, and likewise, if anyone had asked the Greek poets about the mystery of poetic creation, they too would have referred him to dreams and instructed him much as Hans Sachs instructs us in Die Meistersinger: The poet’s task is this, my friend, to read his dreams and comprehend. The truest human fancy seems to be revealed to us in dreams: all poems and versification are but true dreams’ interpretation. The fair illusion of the dream sphere, in the production of which every man proves himself an accomplished artist, is a precondition not only of all plastic art, but even, as we shall see presently, of a wide range of poetry. Here we enjoy an immediate apprehension of form, all shapes speak to us directly, nothing seems indifferent or redundant. Despite the high intensity with which these dream realities exist for us, we still have a residual sensation that they are illusions; at least such has been my experience— and the frequency, not to say normality, of the experience is borne out in many passages of the poets. Men of philosophical disposition are known for their constant premonition that our everyday reality, too, is an illusion, hiding another, totally different kind of reality. It was Schopenhauer who considered the ability to view at certain times all men and things as mere phantoms or dream images to be the true mark of philosophic talent. The person who is responsive to the stimuli of art behaves toward the reality of dream much the way the philosopher behaves toward the reality of existence: he observes exactly and enjoys his observations, for it is by these images that he interprets life, by these processes that he rehearses it. Nor is it by pleasant images only that such plausible connections are made: the whole divine comedy of life, including its somber aspects, its sudden balkings, impish accidents, anxious expectations, moves past him, not quite like a shadow play—for it is he himself, after all, who lives and suffers through these scenes—yet never without giving a fleeting sense of illusion; and I imagine that many persons have reassured themselves amidst the perils of dream by calling out, “ It is a dream! I want it to go on.” I have even heard of people spinning out the causality of one and the same dream over three or more successive nights. All these facts clearly bear witness that our innermost being, the common substratum of humanity, experiences dreams with deep delight and a sense of real necessity. This deep and happy sense of the necessity of dream experiences was expressed by the Greeks in the image of Apollo. Apollo is at once the god of all plastic powers and the soothsaying god. He who is etymologically the “ lucent” one, the god of light, reigns also over the fair illusion of our inner world of fantasy. The perfection of these conditions in contrast to our imperfectly understood waking reality, as well as our profound awareness of nature’s healing powers during the interval of sleep and dream, furnishes a symbolic analogue to the soothsaying faculty and quite generally to the arts, which make life possible and worth living. But the image of Apollo must incorporate that thin line which the dream image may not cross, under penalty of becoming pathological, of imposing itself on us as crass reality: a discreet limitation, a freedom from all extravagant urges, the sapient tranquillity of the plastic god. His eye must be sunlike, in keeping with his origin. Even at those moments when he is angry and illtempered there lies upon him the consecration of fair illusion. In an eccentric way one might say of Apollo what Schopenhauer says, in the first part of The World as Will and Idea, of man caught in the veil of Maya: “ Even as on an immense, raging sea, assailed by huge wave crests, a man sits in a little rowboat trusting his frail craft, so, amidst the furious torments of this world, the individual sits tranquilly, supported by the principium individuationis and relying on it.” One might say that the unshakable confidence in that principle has received its most magnificent expression in Apollo, and that Apollo himself may be regarded as the marvelous divine image of the principium individuationis, whose looks and
gestures radiate the full delight, wisdom, and beauty of “ illusion.” In the same context Schopenhauer has described for us the tremendous awe which seizes man when he suddenly begins to doubt the cognitive modes of experience, in other words, when in a given instance the law of causation seems to suspend itself. If we add to this awe the glorious transport which arises in man, even from the very depths of nature, at the shattering of the principium individuationis, then we are in a position to apprehend the essence of Dionysian rapture, whose closest analogy is furnished by physical intoxication. Dionysian stirrings arise either through the influence of those narcotic potions of which all primitive races speak in their hymns, or through the powerful approach of spring, which penetrates with joy the whole frame of nature. So stirred, the individual forgets himself completely. It is the same Dionysian power which in medieval Germany drove ever increasing crowds of people singing and dancing from place to place; we recognize in these St. John’s and St. Vitus’ dancers the Bacchic choruses of the Greeks, who had their precursors in Asia Minor and as far back as Babylon and the orgiastic Sacaea. There are people who, either from lack of experience or out of sheer stupidity, turn away from such phenomena, and, strong in the sense of their own sanity, label them either mockingly or pityingly “ endemic diseases.” These benighted souls have no idea how cadaverous and ghostly their “ sanity” appears as the intense throng of Dionysian revelers sweeps past them. Not only does the bond between man and man come to be forged once more by the magic of the Dionysian rite, but nature itself, long alienated or subjugated, rises again to celebrate the reconciliation with her prodigal son, man. The earth offers its gifts voluntarily, and the savage beasts of mountain and desert approach in peace. The chariot of Dionysus is bedecked with flowers and garlands; panthers and tigers stride beneath his yoke. If one were to convert Beethoven’s “ Paean to Joy” into a painting, and refuse to curb the imagination when that multitude prostrates itself reverently in the dust, one might form some apprehension of Dionysian ritual. Now the slave emerges as a freeman; all the rigid, hostile walls which either necessity or despotism has erected between men are shattered. Now that the gospel of universal harmony is sounded, each individual becomes not only reconciled to his fellow but actually at one with him—as though the veil of Maya had been torn apart and there remained only shreds floating before the vision of mystical Oneness. Man now expresses himself through song and dance as the member of a higher community; he has forgotten how to walk, how to speak, and is on the brink of taking wing as he dances. Each of his gestures betokens enchantment; through him sounds a supernatural power, the same power which makes the animals speak and the earth render up milk and honey. He feels himself to be godlike and strides with the same elation and ecstasy as the gods he has seen in his dreams. No longer the artist, he has himself become a work of art: the productive power of the whole universe is now manifest in his transport, to the glorious satisfaction of the primordial One. The finest clay, the most precious marble—man—is here kneaded and hewn, and the chisel blows of the Dionysian world artist are accompanied by the cry of the Eleusinian mystagogues: “ Do you fall on your knees, multitudes, do you divine your creator?” 2 So far we have examined the Apollinian and Dionysian states as the product of formative forces arising directly from nature without the mediation of the human artist. At this stage artistic urges are satisfied directly, on the one hand through the imagery of dreams, whose perfection is quite independent of the intellectual rank, the artistic development of the individual; on the other hand, through an ecstatic reality which once again takes no account of the individual and may even destroy him, or else redeem him through a mystical experience of the collective. In relation to these immediate creative conditions of nature every artist must appear as “ imitator,” either as the Apollinian dream artist or the Dionysian ecstatic artist, or, finally (as in Greek tragedy, for example) as dream and ecstatic artist in one. We might picture to ourselves how the last of these, in a state of Dionysian intoxication and mystical self-abrogation, wandering apart from the reveling throng, sinks upon the ground, and how there is then revealed to him his own condition—complete oneness with the essence of the universe—in a dream similitude. Having set down these general premises and distinctions, we now turn to the Greeks in order to realize to what degree the formative forces of nature were developed in them. Such an inquiry will enable us to assess properly the relation of the Greek artist to his prototypes or, to use Aristotle’s expression, his “ imitation of nature.” Of the dreams the Greeks dreamed it is not possible to speak with any certainty, despite the extant dream literature and the large number of dream anecdotes. But considering the incredible accuracy of their eyes, their keen and unabashed delight in colors, one can hardly be wrong in assuming that their dreams too showed a strict consequence of lines and contours, hues and groupings, a progression of scenes similar to their best bas reliefs. The perfection of these dream scenes might almost tempt us to consider the dreaming Greek as a Homer and Homer as a dreaming Greek; which would be as though the modern man were to compare himself in his dreaming to Shakespeare. Yet there is another point about which we do not have to conjecture at all: I mean the profound gap separating the Dionysian Greeks from the Dionysian barbarians. Throughout the range of ancient civilization (leaving the newer civilizations out of account for the moment) we find evidence of Dionysian celebrations which stand to the Greek type in much the same relation as the bearded satyr, whose name and attributes are derived from the goat, stands to the god Dionysus. The central concern of such celebrations was, almost universally, a complete sexual promiscuity overriding every form of established tribal law; all the savage urges of the mind were unleashed on those occasions until they reached that paroxysm of lust and cruelty which has always struck me as the “ witches’ cauldron” par excellence. It would appear that the Greeks were for a while quite immune from these feverish excesses which must have reached them by every known land or sea route. What kept Greece safe was the proud, imposing image of Apollo, who in holding up the head of the Gorgon to those brutal and grotesque Dionysian forces subdued them. Doric art has immortalized Apollo’s majestic rejection of all license. But resistance became difficult, even impossible, as soon as similar urges began to break forth from the deep substratum of Hellenism itself. Soon the function of the Delphic god developed into something quite different and much more
limited: all he could hope to accomplish now was to wrest the destructive weapon, by a timely gesture of pacification, from his opponent’s hand. That act of pacification represents the most important event in the history of Greek ritual; every department of life now shows symptoms of a revolutionary change. The two great antagonists have been reconciled. Each feels obliged henceforth to keep to his bounds, each will honor the other by the bestowal of periodic gifts, while the cleavage remains fundamentally the same. And yet, if we examine what happened to the Dionysian powers under the pressure of that treaty we notice a great difference: in the place of the Babylonian Sacaea, with their throwback of men to the condition of apes and tigers, we now see entirely new rites celebrated: rites of universal redemption, of glorious transfiguration. Only now has it become possible to speak of nature’s celebrating an aesthetic triumph; only now has the abrogation of the principium individuationis become an aesthetic event. That terrible witches’ brew concocted of lust and cruelty has lost all power under the new conditions. Yet the peculiar blending of emotions in the heart of the Dionysian reveler—his ambiguity if you will—seems still to hark back (as the medicinal drug harks back to the deadly poison) to the days when the infliction of pain was experienced as joy while a sense of supreme triumph elicited cries of anguish from the heart. For now in every exuberant joy there is heard an undertone of terror, or else a wistful lament over an irrecoverable loss. It is as though in these Greek festivals a sentimental trait of nature were coming to the fore, as though nature were bemoaning the fact of her fragmentation, her decomposition into separate individuals. The chants and gestures of these revelers, so ambiguous in their motivation, represented an absolute novum in the world of the Homeric Greeks; their Dionysian music, in especial, spread abroad terror and a deep shudder. It is true: music had long been familiar to the Greeks as an Apollinian art, as a regular beat like that of waves lapping the shore, a plastic rhythm expressly developed for the portrayal of Apollinian conditions. Apollo’s music was a Doric architecture of sound—of barely hinted sounds such as are proper to the cithara. Those very elements which characterize Dionysian music and, after it, music quite generally: the heart shaking power of tone, the uniform stream of melody, the incomparable resources of harmony—all those elements had been carefully kept at a distance as being inconsonant with the Apollinian norm. In the Dionysian dithyramb man is incited to strain his symbolic faculties to the utmost; something quite unheard of is now clamoring to be heard: the desire to tear asunder the veil of Maya, to sink back into the original oneness of nature; the desire to express the very essence of nature symbolically. Thus an entirely new set of symbols springs into being. First, all the symbols pertaining to physical features: mouth, face, the spoken word, the dance movement which coordinates the limbs and bends them to its rhythm. Then suddenly all the rest of the symbolic forces—music and rhythm as such, dynamics, harmony— assert themselves with great energy. In order to comprehend this total emancipation of all the symbolic powers one must have reached the same measure of inner freedom those powers themselves were making manifest; which is to say that the votary of Dionysus could not be understood except by his own kind. It is not difficult to imagine the awed surprise with which the Apollinian Greek must have looked on him. And that surprise would be further increased as the latter realized, with a shudder, that all this was not so alien to him after all, that his Apollinian consciousness was but a thin veil hiding from him the whole Dionysian realm. 3 In order to comprehend this we must take down the elaborate edifice of Apollinian culture stone by stone until we discover its foundations. At first the eye is struck by the marvelous shapes of the Olympian gods who stand upon its pediments, and whose exploits, in shining bas-relief, adorn its friezes. The fact that among them we find Apollo as one god among many, making no claim to a privileged position, should not mislead us. The same drive that found its most complete representation in Apollo generated the whole Olympian world, and in this sense we may consider Apollo the father of that world. But what was the radical need out of which that illustrious society of Olympian beings sprang? Whoever approaches the Olympians with a different religion in his heart, seeking moral elevation, sanctity, spirituality, loving kindness, will presently be forced to turn away from them in ill-humored disappointment. Nothing in these deities reminds us of asceticism, high intellect, or duty: we are confronted by luxuriant, triumphant existence, which deifies the good and the bad indifferently. And the beholder may find himself dismayed in the presence of such overflowing life and ask himself what potion these heady people must have drunk in order to behold, in whatever direction they looked, Helen laughing back at them, the beguiling image of their own existence. But we shall call out to this beholder, who has already turned his back: Don’t go! Listen first to what the Greeks themselves have to say of this life, which spreads itself before you with such puzzling serenity. An old legend has it that King Midas hunted a long time in the woods for the wise Silenus, companion of Dionysus, without being able to catch him. When he had finally caught him the king asked him what he considered man’s greatest good. The daemon remained sullen and uncommunicative until finally, forced by the king, he broke into a shrill laugh and spoke: “ Ephemeral wretch, begotten by accident and toil, why do you force me to tell you what it would be your greatest boon not to hear? What would be best for you is quite beyond your reach: not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best is to die soon.” What is the relation of the Olympian gods to this popular wisdom? It is that of the entranced vision of the martyr to his torment. Now the Olympian magic mountain opens itself before us, showing us its very roots. The Greeks were keenly aware of the terrors and horrors of existence; in order to be able to live at all they had to place before them the shining fantasy of the Olympians. Their tremendous distrust of the titanic forces of nature: Moira, mercilessly enthroned beyond the knowable world; the vulture which fed upon the great philanthropist Prometheus; the terrible lot drawn by wise Oedipus; the curse on the house of Atreus which brought Orestes to the murder of his mother: that whole Panic philosophy, in short, with its mythic examples, by which the gloomy Etruscans perished, the Greeks conquered—or at least hid from view —again and again by means of this artificial Olympus. In order to live at all the Greeks had to construct these deities. The Apollinian need for beauty had to develop the Olympian hierarchy of joy by slow degrees from the original titanic hierarchy of terror, as roses are seen to break from a thorny thicket. How else could life have been borne by a race so hypersensitive, so emotionally intense, so equipped for suffering? The same drive which called art into being as a completion and consummation of existence, and as a guarantee of further existence, gave rise also to that Olympian realm which acted as a transfiguring mirror to the Hellenic will. The gods justified human life by living it themselves—the only
satisfactory theodicy ever invented. To exist in the clear sunlight of such deities was now felt to be the highest good, and the only real grief suffered by Homeric man was inspired by the thought of leaving that sunlight, especially when the departure seemed imminent. Now it became possible to stand the wisdom of Silenus on its head and proclaim that it was the worst evil for man to die soon, and second worst for him to die at all. Such laments as arise now arise over short-lived Achilles, over the generations ephemeral as leaves, the decline of the heroic age. It is not unbecoming to even the greatest hero to yearn for an afterlife, though it be as a day laborer. So impetuously, during the Apollinian phase, does man’s will desire to remain on earth, so identified does he become with existence, that even his lament turns to a song of praise. It should have become apparent by now that the harmony with nature which we late comers regard with such nostalgia, and for which Schiller has coined the cant term na�ve, is by no means a simple and inevitable condition to be found at the gateway to every culture, a kind of paradise. Such a belief could have been endorsed only by a period for which Rousseau’s Emile was an artist and Homer just such an artist nurtured in the bosom of nature. Whenever we encounter “ na�vete” in art, we are face to face with the ripest fruit of Apollinian culture—which must always triumph first over titans, kill monsters, and overcome the somber contemplation of actuality, the intense susceptibility to suffering, by means of illusions strenuously and zestfully entertained. But how rare are the instances of true na�vete, of that complete identification with the beauty of appearance! It is this achievement which makes Homer so magnificent—Homer, who, as a single individual, stood to Apollinian popular culture in the same relation as the individual dream artist to the oneiric capacity of a race and of nature generally. The na�vete of Homer must be viewed as a complete victory of Apollinian illusion. Nature often uses illusions of this sort in order to accomplish its secret purposes. The true goal is covered over by a phantasm. We stretch out our hands to the latter, while nature, aided by our deception, attains the former. In the case of the Greeks it was the will wishing to behold itself in the work of art, in the transcendence of genius; but in order so to behold itself its creatures had first to view themselves as glorious, to transpose themselves to a higher sphere, without having that sphere of pure contemplation either challenge them or upbraid them with insufficiency. It was in that sphere of beauty that the Greeks saw the Olympians as their mirror images; it was by means of that aesthetic mirror that the Greek will opposed suffering and the somber wisdom of suffering which always accompanies artistic talent. As a monument to its victory stands Homer, the na�ve artist. 4 We can learn something about that na�ve artist through the analogy of dream. We can imagine the dreamer as he calls out to himself, still caught in the illusion of his dream and without disturbing it, “ This is a dream, and I want to go on dreaming,” and we can infer, on the one hand, that he takes deep delight in the contemplation of his dream, and, on the other, that he must have forgotten the day, with its horrible importunity, so to enjoy his dream. Apollo, the interpreter of dreams, will furnish the clue to what is happening here. Although of the two halves of life—the waking and the dreaming—the former is generally considered not only the more important but the only one which is truly lived, I would, at the risk of sounding paradoxical, propose the opposite view. The more I have come to realize in nature those omnipotent formative tendencies and, with them, an intense longing for illusion, the more I feel inclined to the hypothesis that the original Oneness, the ground of Being, ever suffering and contradictory, time and again has need of rapt vision and delightful illusion to redeem itself. Since we ourselves are the very stuff of such illusions, we must view ourselves as the truly non-existent, that is to say, as a perpetual unfolding in time, space, and causality—what we label “ empiric reality.” But if, for the moment, we abstract from our own reality, viewing our empiric existence, as well as the existence of the world at large, as the idea of the original Oneness, produced anew each instant, then our dreams will appear to us as illusions of illusions, hence as a still higher form of satisfaction of the original desire for illusion. It is for this reason that the very core of nature takes such a deep delight in the naive artist and the naive work of art, which likewise is merely the illusion of an illusion. Raphael, himself one of those immortal “ naive” artists, in a symbolic canvas has illustrated that reduction of illusion to further illusion which is the original act of the naive artist and at the same time of all Apollinian culture. In the lower half of his “ Transfiguration,” through the figures of the possessed boy, the despairing bearers, the helpless, terrified disciples, we see a reflection of original pain, the sole ground of being: “ illusion” here is a reflection of eternal contradiction, begetter of all things. From this illusion there rises, like the fragrance of ambrosia, a new illusory world, invisible to those enmeshed in the first: a radiant vision of pure delight, a rapt seeing through wide open eyes. Here we have, in a great symbol of art, both the fair world of Apollo and its substratum, the terrible wisdom of Silenus, and we can comprehend intuitively how they mutually require one another. But Apollo appears to us once again as the apotheosis of the principium individuationis, in whom the eternal goal of the original Oneness, namely its redemption through illusion, accomplishes itself. With august gesture the god shows us how there is need for a whole world of torment in order for the individual to produce the redemptive vision and to sit quietly in his rocking rowboat in mid sea, absorbed in contemplation. If this apotheosis of individuation is to be read in normative terms, we may infer that there is one norm only: the individual—or, more precisely, the observance of the limits of the individual: sophrosune. As a moral deity Apollo demands self-control from his people and, in order to observe such self-control, a knowledge of self. And so we find that the aesthetic necessity of beauty is accompanied by the imperatives, “ Know thyself,” and “ Nothing too much.” Conversely, excess and hubris come to be regarded as the hostile spirits of the non-Apollinian sphere, hence as properties of the pre-Apollinian era—the age of Titans —and the extra-Apollinian world, that is to say the world of the barbarians. It was because of his Titanic love of man that Prometheus had to be devoured by vultures; it was because of his extravagant wisdom which succeeded in solving the riddle of the Sphinx that Oedipus had to be cast into a whirlpool of crime: in this fashion does the Delphic god interpret the Greek past. The effects of the Dionysian spirit struck the Apollinian Greeks as titanic and barbaric; yet they could not disguise from themselves the fact that they were essentially akin to chose deposed Titans and heroes. They felt more than that: their whole existence, with its temperate beauty, rested upon a base of suffering and knowledge which had been hidden from them until the reinstatement of Dionysus uncovered it once more. And lo and behold! Apollo found it impossible to live without Dionysus. The elements of titanism and barbarism fumed
out to be quite as fundamental as the Apollinian element. And now let us imagine how the ecstatic sounds of the Dionysian rites penetrated ever more enticingly into that artificially restrained and discreet world of illusion, how this clamor expressed the whole outrageous gamut of nature—delight, grief, knowledge—even to the most piercing cry; and then let us imagine how the Apollinian artist with his thin, monotonous harp music must have sounded beside the demoniac chant of the multitude! The muses presiding over the illusory arts paled before an art which enthusiastically told the truth, and the wisdom of Silenus cried “ Woe!” against the serene Olympians. The individual, with his limits and moderations, forgot himself in the Dionysian vortex and became oblivious to the laws of Apollo. Indiscreet extravagance revealed itself as truth, and contradiction, a delight born of pain, spoke out of the bosom of nature. Wherever the Dionysian voice was heard, the Apollinian norm seemed suspended or destroyed. Yet it is equally true that, in those places where the first assault was withstood, the prestige and majesty of the Delphic god appeared more rigid and threatening than before. The only way I am able to view Doric art and the Doric state is as a perpetual military encampment of the Apollinian forces. An art so defiantly austere, so ringed about with fortifications—an education so military and exacting—a polity so ruthlessly cruel—could endure only in a continual state of resistance against the titanic and barbaric menace of Dionysus. Up to this point I have developed at some length a theme which was sounded at the beginning of this essay: how the Dionysian and Apollinian elements, in a continuous chain of creations, each enhancing the other, dominated the Hellenic mind; how from the Iron Age, with its battles of Titans and its austere popular philosophy, there developed under the aegis of Apollo the Homeric world of beauty; how this “ naive” splendor was then absorbed once more by the Dionysian torrent, and how, face to face with this new power, the Apollinian code rigidified into the majesty of Doric art and contemplation. If the earlier phase of Greek history may justly be broken down into four major artistic epochs dramatizing the battle between the two hostile principles, then we must inquire further (lest Doric art appear to us as the acme and final goal of all these striving tendencies) what was the true end toward which that evolution moved. And our eyes will come to rest on the sublime and much lauded achievement of the dramatic dithyramb and Attic tragedy, as the common goal of both urges; whose mysterious marriage, after long discord, ennobled itself with such a child, at once Antigone and Cassandra. 5 We are now approaching the central concern of our inquiry, which has as its aim an understanding of the Dionysian-Apollinian spirit, or at least an intuitive comprehension of the mystery which made this conjunction possible. Our first question must be: where in the Greek world is the new seed first to be found which was later to develop into tragedy and the dramatic dithyramb? Greek antiquity gives us a pictorial clue when it represents in statues, on cameos, etc., Homer and Archilochus side by side as ancestors and torchbearers of Greek poetry, in the certainty that only these two are to be regarded as truly original minds, from whom a stream of fire flowed onto the entire later Greek world. Homer, the hoary dreamer, caught in utter abstraction, prototype of the Apollinian naive artist, stares in amazement at the passionate head of Archilochus, soldierly servant of the Muses, knocked about by fortune. All that more recent aesthetics has been able to add by way of interpretation is that here the “ objective” artist is confronted by the first “ subjective” artist. We find this interpretation of little use, since to us the subjective artist is simply the bad artist, and since we demand above all, in every genre and range of art, a triumph over subjectivity, deliverance from the self, the silencing of every personal will and desire; since, in fact, we cannot imagine the smallest genuine art work lacking objectivity and disinterested contemplation. For this reason our aesthetic must first solve the following problem: how is the lyrical poet at all possible as artist—he who, according to the experience of all times, always says “ I” and recites to us the entire chromatic scale of his passions and appetites? It is this Archilochus who most disturbs us, placed there beside Homer, with the stridor of his hate and mockery, the drunken outbursts of his desire. Isn’t he—the first artist to be called subjective—for that reason the veritable non-artist? How, then, are we to explain the reverence in which he was held as a poet, the honor done him by the Delphic oracle, that seat of “ objective” art, in a number of very curious sayings? Schiller has thrown some light on his own manner of composition by a psychological observation which seems inexplicable to himself without, however, giving him pause. Schiller confessed that, prior to composing, he experienced not a logically connected series of images but rather a musical mood. “ With me emotion is at the beginning without dear and definite ideas; those ideas do not arise until later on. A certain musical disposition of mind comes first, and after follows the poetical idea.” If we enlarge on this, taking into account the most important phenomenon of ancient poetry, by which I mean that union— nay identity—everywhere considered natural, between musician and poet (alongside which our modern poetry appears as the statue of a god without a head), then we may, on the basis of the aesthetics adumbrated earlier, explain the lyrical poet in the following manner. He is, first and foremost, a Dionysian artist, become wholly identified with the original Oneness, its pain and contradiction, and producing a replica of that Oneness as music, if music may legitimately be seen as a repetition of the world; however, this music becomes visible to him again, as in a dream similitude, through the Apollinian dream influence. That reflection, without image or idea, of original pain in music, with its redemption through illusion, now produces a second reflection as a single simile or example. The artist had abrogated his subjectivity earlier, during the Dionysian phase: the image which now reveals to him his oneness with the heart of the world is a dream scene showing forth vividly, together with original pain, the original delight of illusion. The “ I” thus sounds out of the depth of being; what recent writers on aesthetics speak of as “ subjectivity” is a mere figment. When Archilochus, the first lyric poet of the Greeks, hurls both his frantic love and his contempt at the daughters of Lycambes, it is not his own passion that we see dancing before us in an orgiastic frenzy: we see Dionysus and the maenads, we see the drunken reveler Archilochus, sunk down in sleep—as Euripides describes him for us in the Bacchae, asleep on a high mountain meadow, in the midday sun—and now Apollo approaches him and touches him with his laurel. The sleeper’s enchantment through Dionysian music now begins to emit sparks of imagery, poems which, at their point of highest evolution, will bear the name of tragedies and dramatic dithyrambs. The sculptor, as well as his brother, the epic poet, is committed to the pure contemplation of images. The Dionysian musician, himself imageless, is nothing but original pain and reverberation of the image. Out of this mystical process of un-selving, the poet’s spirit feels a whole world of images and similitudes arise, which are quite different in hue,
causality, and pace from the images of the sculptor or narrative poet. While the last lives in those images, and only in them, with joyful complacence, and never tires of scanning them down to the most minute features, while even the image of angry Achilles is no more for him than an image whose irate countenance he enjoys with a dreamer’s delight in appearance—so that this mirror of appearance protects him from complete fusion with his characters—the lyrical poet, on the other hand, himself becomes his images, his images are objectified versions of himself. Being the active center of that world he may boldly speak in the first person, only his “ I” is not that of the actual waking man, but the “ I” dwelling, truly and eternally, in the ground of being. It is through the reflections of that “ I” that the lyric poet beholds the ground of being. Let us imagine, next, how he views himself too among these reflections—as non-genius, that is, as his own subject matter, the whole teeming crowd of his passions and intentions directed toward a definite goal; and when it now appears as though the poet and the nonpoet joined to him were one, and as though the former were using the pronoun “ I,” we are able to see through this appearance, which has deceived those who have attached the label “ subjective” to the lyrical poet. The man Archilochus, with his passionate loves and hates, is really only a vision of genius, a genius who is no longer merely Archilochus but the genius of the universe, expressing its pain through the similitude of Archilochus the man. Archilochus, on the other hand, the subjectively willing and desiring human being, can never be a poet. Nor is it at all necessary for the poet to see only the phenomenon of the man Archilochus before him as a reflection of Eternal Being: the world of tragedy shows us to what extent the vision of the poet can remove itself from the urgent, immediate phenomenon. Schopenhauer, who was fully aware of the difficulties the lyrical poet creates for the speculative aesthetician, thought that he had found a solution, which, however, I cannot endorse. It is true that he alone possessed the means, in his profound philosophy of music, for solving this problem; and I think I have honored his achievement in these pages, I hope in his own spirit. Yet in the first part of The World as Will and Idea he characterizes the essence of song as follows: “ The consciousness of the singer is filled with the subject of will, which is to say with his own willing. That willing may either be a released, satisfied willing (joy), or, as happens more commonly, an inhibited willing (sadness). In either case there is affect here: passion, violent commotion. At the same time, however, the singer is moved by the contemplation of nature surrounding him to experience himself as the subject of pure, unwilling ideation, and the unshakable tranquillity of that ideation becomes contrasted with the urgency of his willing, its limits, and its lacks. It is the experience of this contrast, or tug of war, which he expresses in his song. While we find ourselves in the lyrical condition, pure ideation approaches us, as it were, to deliver us from the urgencies of willing; we obey, yet obey for moments only. Again and again our willing, our memory of personal objectives, distracts us from tranquil contemplation, while, conversely, the next scene of beauty we behold will yield us up once more to pure ideation. For this reason we find in song and in the lyrical mood a curious mixture of willing (our personal interest in purposes) and pure contemplation (whose subject matter is furnished by our surroundings); relations are sought and imagined between these two sets of experiences. Subjective mood —the affection of the will—communicates its color to the purely viewed surroundings, and vice versa. All authentic song reflects a state of mind mixed and divided in this manner.” Who can fail to perceive in this description that lyric poetry is presented as an art never completely realized, indeed a hybrid whose essence is made to consist in an uneasy mixture of will and contemplation, i.e., the aesthetic and the non-aesthetic conditions. We, on our part, maintain that the distinction between subjective and objective, which even Schopenhauer still uses as a sort of measuring stick to distinguish the arts, has no value whatever in aesthetics; the reason being that the subject—the striving individual bent on furthering his egoistic purposes—can be thought of only as an enemy to art, never as its source. But to the extent that the subject is an artist he is already delivered from individual will and has become a medium through which the True Subject celebrates His redemption in illusion. For better or worse, one thing should be quite obvious to all of us: the entire comedy of art is not played for our own sakes—for our betterment or education, say—nor can we consider ourselves the true originators of that art realm; while on the other hand we have every right to view ourselves as aesthetic projections of the veritable creator and derive such dignity as we possess from our status as art works. Only as an aesthetic product can the world be justified to all eternity—although our consciousness of our own significance does scarcely exceed the consciousness a painted soldier might have of the battle in which he takes part. Thus our whole knowledge of art is at bottom illusory, seeing that as mere knowers we can never be fused with that essential spirit, at the same time creator and spectator, who has prepared the comedy of art for his own edification. Only as the genius in the act of creation merges with the primal architect of the cosmos can he truly know something of the eternal essence of art. For in that condition he resembles the uncanny fairy tale image which is able to see itself by turning its eyes. He is at once subject and object, poet, actor, and audience. 6 Scholarship has discovered in respect of Archilochus that he introduced folk song into literature, and that it was this feat which earned him the unique distinction of being placed beside Homer. Yet what does folk song represent in contrast to epic poetry, which is wholly Apollinian? Surely the classical instance of a union between Apollinian and Dionysian intentions. Its tremendous distribution, as well as its constant proliferation wherever we look, attests the strength of that dual generative motive in nature: a motive which leaves its traces in folk song much the way the orgiastic movements of a nation leave their traces in music. Nor should it be difficult to show by historical evidence that every period which abounded in folk songs has, by the same token, been deeply stirred by Dionysian currents. Those currents have long been considered the necessary substratum, or precondition, of folk poetry. But first of all we must regard folk song as a musical mirror of the cosmos, as primordial melody casting about for an analogue and finding that analogue eventually in poetry. Since melody precedes all else, it may have to undergo any number of objectifications, such as a variety of texts presents. But it is always, according to the naive estimation of the populace, much superior in importance to those texts. Melody gives birth to poetry again and again: this is implied by the atrophic form of folk song. for a long time I wondered at this phenomenon, until finally the following explanation offered itself. If we examine any collection of folk poetry—for example, Des Knaben Wunderhorn—in this light, we shall find
countless examples of melody generating whole series of images, and those images, in their varicolored hues, abrupt transitions, and headlong forward rush, stand in the most marked contrast to the equable movement, the calm illusion, of epic verse. Viewed from the standpoint of the epic the uneven and irregular imagery of folk song becomes quite objectionable. Such must have been the feeling which the solemn rhapsodists of the Apollinian rites, during the age of Terpander, entertained with regard to popular lyric effusions. In folk poetry we find, moreover, the most intense effort of language to imitate the condition of music. For this reason Archilochus may be claimed to have ushered in an entirely new world of poetry, profoundly at variance with the Homeric; and by this distinction we have hinted at the only possible relation between poetry and music, word and sound. Word, image, and idea, in undergoing the power of music, now seek for a kind of expression that would parallel it. In this sense we may distinguish two main currents in the history of Greek verse, according as language is used to imitate the world of appearance or that of music. To understand more profoundly the significance of this distinction, let the reader ponder the utter dissimilarity of verbal color, syntax and phraseology in the works of Homer and Pindar. He then cannot fail to conjecture that in the interval there must have sounded the orgiastic flute notes of Olympus, which, as late as Aristotle’s time, in the midst of an infinitely more complex music, still rouses men to wild enthusiasm, and which at their inception must have challenged all contemporaries to imitate them by every available poetic resource. I wish to instance in this connection a well-known phenomenon of our own era which our modish aestheticians consider most exceptionable. We have noticed again and again how a Beethoven symphony compels the individual hearers to use pictorial speech— though it must be granted that a collocation of these various descriptive sequences might appear rather checkered, fantastic, even contradictory. Small wonder, then, that our critics have exercised their feeble wit on these musical images, or else passed over the phenomenon—surely one worthy of further investigation—in complete silence. Even in cases where the composer himself has employed pictorial tags in talking about his work— calling one symphony “ Pastoral,” one movement “ Brook Scene” and another “ Jolly Concourse of Peasants”—these tropes are properly reducible to purely musical elements rather than standing for actual objects expressed through music. It is true that such musical representations can neither instruct us much concerning the Dionysian content of music nor yet lay claim to any distinctive value as images. But once we study this discharge of music through images in a youthful milieu, among a people whose linguistic creativity is unimpaired, we can form some idea of how atrophic folk song must have arisen and how a nation’s entire store of verbal resources might be mobilized by means of that novel principle, imitation of the language of music. If we are right in viewing lyric poetry as an efflorescence of music in images and ideas, then our next question will be, “ How does music manifest itself in that mirror of images and ideas?” It manifests itself as will, using the term in Schopenhauer’s sense, that is to say as the opposite of the aesthetic, contemplative, unwilling disposition. At this point it becomes necessary to discriminate very clearly between essence and appearance—for it is obviously impossible for music to represent the essential nature of the will; if it did, we would have to banish it from the realm of art altogether, seeing that the will is the non-aesthetic element par excellence. Rather we should say that music appears as the will. In order to express that appearance through images the lyrical poet must employ the whole register of emotions, from the whisper of love to the roar of frenzy; moved by the urge to talk of music in Apollinian similitudes, he must first comprehend the whole range of nature, including himself, as the eternal source of volition, desire, appetite. But to the extent that he interprets music through images he is dwelling on the still sea of Apollinian contemplation, no matter how turbulently all that he beholds through the musical medium may surge about him. And when he looks at himself through that medium he will discover his own image in a state of turmoil: his own willing and desiring, his groans and jubilations, will all appear to him as a similitude by which music is interpreted. Such is the phenomenon of the lyric poet. Being an Apollinian genius, he interprets music through the image of the will, while he is himself turned into the pure, unshadowed eye of the sun, utterly detached from the will and its greed. Throughout this inquiry I have maintained the position that lyric poetry is dependent on the spirit of music to the same degree that music itself, in its absolute sovereignty, is independent of either image or concept, though it may tolerate both. The poet cannot tell us anything that was not already contained, with a most universal validity, in such music as prompted him to his figurative discourse. The cosmic symbolism of music resists any adequate treatment by language, for the simple reason that music, in referring to primordial contradiction and pain, symbolizes a sphere which is both earlier than appearance and beyond it. Once we set it over against music, all appearance becomes a mere analogy. So it happens that language, the organ and symbol of appearance, can never succeed in bringing the innermost core of music to the surface. Whenever it engages in the imitation of music, language remains in purely superficial contact with it, and no amount of poetic eloquence will carry us a step closer to the essential secret of that art. 7 At this point we need to call upon every aesthetic principle so far discussed, in order to find our way through the labyrinthine origins of Greek tragedy. I believe I am saying nothing extravagant when I claim that the problem of these origins has never even been posed, much less solved, no matter how often the elusive rags of ancient tradition have been speculatively sewn together and ripped apart That tradition tells us in no uncertain terms that tragedy arose out of the tragic chorus and was, to begin with, nothing but chorus. We are thus bound to scan the chorus closely as the archetypal drama, disregarding the current explanations of it as the idealized spectator, or as representing the populace over against the noble realm of the set. The latter interpretation, which sounds so grandly edifying to certain politicians (as though the democratic Athenians had represented in the popular chorus the invariable moral law, always right in face of the passionate misdeeds and extravagances of kings) may have been suggested by a phrase in Aristotle, but this lofty notion can have had no influence whatever on the original formation of tragedy, whose purely religious origins would exclude not only the opposition between the people and their rulers but any kind of political or social context. Likewise we would consider it blasphemous, in the light of the classical form of the chorus as we know it from Aeschylus and Sophocles, to speak of a “ foreshadowing’ of constitutional democracy, though others have not stuck at such blasphemy. No ancient polity ever embodied constitutional democracy, and one dares to hope that ancient tragedy did not even foreshadow it.
Much more famous than this political explanation of the chorus is the notion of A. W. Schlegel, who advises us to regard the chorus as the quintessence of the audience, as the “ ideal spectator.” If we hold this view against the historical tradition according to which tragedy was, in the beginning, nothing but chorus, it turns out to be a crude, unscholarly, though dazzling hypothesis—dazzling because of the effective formulation, the typically German bias for anything called “ ideal,” and our momentary wonder at the notion. For we are indeed amazed when we compare our familiar theater audience with the tragic chorus and ask ourselves whether the former could conceivably be construed into something analogous to the latter. We tacitly deny the possibility, and then are brought to wonder both at the boldness of Schlegel’s assertion and at what must have been the totally different complexion of the Greek audience. We had supposed all along that the spectator, whoever he might be, would always have to remain conscious of the fact that he had before him a work of art, not empiric reality, whereas the tragic chorus of the Greeks is constrained to view the characters enacted on the stage as veritably existing. The chorus of the Oceanides think that they behold the actual Titan Prometheus, and believe themselves every bit as real as the god. Are we seriously to assume that the highest and purest type of spectator is he who, like the Oceanides, regards the god as physically present and real? That it is characteristic of the ideal spectator to rush on stage and deliver the god from his fetters? We had put our faith in an artistic audience, believing that the more intelligent the individual spectator was, the more capable he was of viewing the work of art as art; and now Schlegel’s theory suggests to us that the perfect spectator viewed the world of the stage not at all as art but as reality. “ Oh these Greeks!” we moan. “ They upset our entire aesthetic!” But once we have grown accustomed to it, we repeat Schlegel’s pronouncement whenever the question of the chorus comes up. The emphatic tradition I spoke of militates against Schlegel: chorus as such, without stage—the primitive form of tragedy—is incompatible with that chorus of ideal spectators. What sort of artistic genre would it be that derived from the idea of the spectator and crystallized itself in the mode of the “ pure” spectator? A spectator with out drama is an absurdity. We suspect that the birth of tragedy can be explained neither by any reverence for the moral intelligence of the multitude nor by the notion of a spectator without drama, and, altogether, we consider the problem much too complex to be touched by such facile interpretations. An infinitely more valuable insight into the significance of the chorus was furnished by Schiller in the famous preface to his Bride of Messina, where the chorus is seen as a living wall which tragedy draws about itself in order to achieve insulation from the actual world, to preserve its ideal ground and its poetic freedom. Schiller used this view as his main weapon against commonplace naturalism, against the illusionistic demand made upon dramatic poetry. While the day of the stage was conceded to be artificial, the architecture of the set symbolic, the metrical discourse stylized, a larger misconception still prevailed. Schiller was not content to have what constitutes the very essence of poetry merely tolerated as poetic license. He insisted that the introduction of the chorus was the decisive step by which any naturalism in art was openly challenged. This way of looking at art seems to me the one which our present age, thinking itself so superior, has labeled pseudo idealism. But I very much fear that we, with our idolatry of verisimilitude, have arrived at the opposite pole of all idealism, the realm of the waxworks. This too betrays a kind of art, as do certain popular novels of today. All I ask is that we not be importuned by the pretense that such art has left Goethe’s and Schiller’s “ pseudo-idealism” behind. It is certainly true, as Schiller saw, that the Greek chorus of satyrs, the chorus of primitive tragedy, moved on ideal ground, a ground raised high above the common path of mortals. The Greek has built for his chow he scaffolding of a fictive chthonic realm and placed thereon fictive nature spirits. Tragedy developed on this foundation, and so has been exempt since its beginning from the embarrassing task of copying actuality. All the same, the world of tragedy is by no means a world arbitrarily projected between heaven and earth; rather it is a world having the same reality and credibility as Olympus possessed for the devout Greek. The satyr, as the Dionysian chorist, dwells in a reality sanctioned by myth and ritual. That tragedy should begin with him, that the Dionysian wisdom of tragedy should speak through him, is as puzzling a phenomenon as, more generally, the origin of tragedy from the chorus. Perhaps we can gain a starting point for this inquiry by claiming that the satyr, that fictive nature sprite, stands to cultured man in the same relation as Dionysian music does to civilization. Richard Wagner has said of the latter that it is absorbed by music as lamplight by daylight. In the same manner, I believe, the cultured Greek felt himself absorbed into the satyr chorus, and in the next development of Greek tragedy state and society, in fact all that separated man from man, gave way before an overwhelming sense of unity which led back into the heart of nature. The metaphysical solace (with which, I wish to say at once, all true tragedy sends us away) that, despite every phenomenal change life is at bottom indestructibly joyful and powerful, was expressed most concretely in the chorus of satyrs, nature beings who dwell behind all civilization and preserve their identity through every change of generations and historical movement. With this chorus the profound Greek, so uniquely susceptible to the subtlest and deepest suffering, who had penetrated the destructive agencies of both nature and history, solaced himself. Though he had been in danger of craving a Buddhistic denial of the will, he was saved by art, and through art life reclaimed him. While the transport of the Dionysian state, with its suspension of all the ordinary barriers of existence, lasts, it carries with it a Lethean element in which everything that has been experienced by the individual is drowned. This chasm of oblivion separates the quotidian reality from the Dionysian. But as soon as that quotidian reality enters consciousness once more it is viewed with loathing, and the consequence is an ascetic, abulic state of mind. In this sense Dionysian man might be said to resemble Hamlet: both have looked deeply into the true nature of things, they have gained knowledge and are now loath to act. They realize that no action of theirs can work any change in the eternal condition of things, and they regard the imputation as ludicrous or debasing that they should set right the time which is out of joint. Knowledge kills action, for in order to act we require the veil of illusion; such is Hamlet’s doctrine, not to be confounded with the cheap wisdom of Jack the Dreamer, who through too much reflection, as it were a surplus of possibilities, never arrives at action. What, both in the case of Hamlet and of Dionysian man, overbalances any motive leading to action, is not reflection but knowledge, the apprehension of truth and its terror. Now no comfort any longer avails, desire reaches beyond the transcendental world, beyond the gods themselves, and existence, together with its glittering reflection in the gods and an
immortal Beyond, is denied. The truth once seen, man is aware everywhere of the ghastly absurdity of existence, comprehends the symbolism of Ophelia’s fate and the wisdom of the wood sprite Silenus: nausea invades him. Then, in this supreme jeopardy of the will, art, that sorceress expert in healing, approaches him; only she can turn his fits of nausea into imaginations with which it is possible to live. These are on the one hand the spirit of the sublime, which subjugates terror by means of art; on the other hand the comic spirit, which releases us, through art, from the tedium of absurdity. The satyr chorus of the dithyramb was the salvation of Greek art; the threatening paroxysms I have mentioned were contained by the intermediary of those Dionysian attendants. 8 The satyr and the idyllic shepherd of later times have both been products of a desire for naturalness and simplicity. But how firmly the Greek shaped his wood sprite, and how self-consciously and mawkishly the modern dallies with his tender, fluting shepherd! For the Greek the satyr expressed nature in a rude, uncultivated state: he did not, for that reason, confound him with the monkey. Quite the contrary, the satyr was man’s true prototype, an expression of his highest and strongest aspirations. He was an enthusiastic reveler, filled with transport by the approach of the god; a compassionate companion re enacting the sufferings of the god; a prophet of wisdom born out of nature’s womb; a symbol of the sexual omnipotence of nature, which the Greek was accustomed to view with reverent wonder. The satyr was sublime and divine—so he must have looked to the traumatically wounded vision of Dionysian man. Our tricked out, contrived shepherd would have offended him, but his eyes rested with sublime satisfaction on the open, undistorted limnings of nature. Here archetypal man was cleansed of the illusion of culture, and what revealed itself was authentic man, the bearded satyr jubilantly greeting his god. Before him cultured man dwindled to a false cartoon. Schiller is also correct as regards these beginnings of the tragic art: the chorus is a living wall against the onset of reality because it depicts reality more truthfully and more completely than does civilized man, who ordinarily considers himself the only reality. Poetry does not lie outside the world as a fantastic impossibility begotten of the poet’s brain; it seeks to be the exact opposite, an unvarnished expression of truth, and for this reason must cast away the trumpery garments worn by the supposed reality of civilized man. The contrast between this truth of nature and the pretentious lie of civilization is quite similar to that between the eternal core of things and the entire phenomenal world. Even as tragedy, with its metaphysical solace, points to the eternity of true being surviving every phenomenal change, so does the symbolism of the satyr chorus express analogically the primordial relation between the thing in itself and appearance. The idyllic shepherd of modern man is but a replica of the sum of cultural illusions which he mistakes for nature. The Dionysian Greek, desiring truth and nature at their highest power, sees himself metamorphosed into the satyr. Such are the dispositions and insights of the reveling throng of Dionysus; and the power of these dispositions and insights transforms them in their own eyes, until they behold themselves restored to the condition of genii, of satyrs. Later the tragic chorus came to be an aesthetic imitation of that natural phenomenon; which then necessitated a distinction between Dionysian spectators and votaries actually spellbound by the god. What must be kept in mind in all these investigations is that the audience of Attic tragedy discovered itself in the chorus of the orchestra. Audience and chorus were never fundamentally set over against each other: all was one grand chorus of dancing, singing satyrs, and of those who let themselves be represented by them. This granted, Schlegel’s dictum assumes a profounder meaning. The chorus is the “ ideal spectator” inasmuch as it is the only seer—seer of the visionary world of the proscenium. An audience of spectators, such as we know it, was unknown to the Greeks. Given the terraced structure of the Greek theater, rising in concentric arcs, each spectator could quite literally survey the entire cultural world about him and imagine himself, in the fullness of seeing, as a chorist. Thus we are enabled to view the chorus of primitive proto-tragedy as the projected image of Dionysian man. The clearest illustration of this phenomenon is the experience of the actor, who, if he is truly gifted, has before his eyes the vivid image of the role he is to play. The satyr chorus is, above all, a vision of the Dionysian multitude, just as the world of the stage is a vision of that satyr chorus—a vision so powerful that it blurs the actors’ sense of the “ reality” of cultured spectators ranged row on row about him. The structure of the Greek theater reminds us of a lonely mountain valley: the architecture of the stage resembles a luminous cloud configuration which the Bacchae behold as they swarm down from the mountaintops; a marvelous frame in the center of which Dionysus manifests himself to them. Our scholarly ideas of elementary artistic process are likely to be offended by the primitive events which I have adduced here to explain the tragic chorus. And yet nothing can be more evident than the fact that the poet is poet only insofar as he sees himself surrounded by living acting shapes into whose innermost being he penetrates. It is our peculiar modem weakness to see all primitive aesthetic phenomena in too complicated and abstract a way. Metaphor, for the authentic poet, is not a figure of rhetoric a representative image standing concretely before him in lieu of a concept. A character, to him, is not an assemblage of individual traits laboriously pieced together, but a personage beheld as insistently living before his eyes, differing from the image of the painter only in its capacity to continue living and acting. What is it that makes Homer so much more vivid and concrete in his description than any other poet? His lively eye, with which he discerns so much more. We all talk about poetry so abstractly because we all tend to be indifferent poets. At bottom the aesthetic phenomenon is quite simple: all one needs in order to be a poet is the ability to have a lively action going on before one continually, to live surrounded by hosts of spirits. To be a dramatist all one needs is the urge to transform oneself and speak out of strange bodies and souls. Dionysian excitation is capable of communicating to a whole multitude this artistic power to feel itself surrounded by, and one with, a host of spirits. What happens in the dramatic chorus is the primary dramatic phenomenon: projecting oneself outside oneself and then acting as though one had really entered another body, another character. This constitutes the first step in the evolution of drama. This art is no longer that of the rhapsodist, who does not merge with his images but, like the painter, contemplates them as something outside himself; what we have here is the individual effacing himself through entering a strange being. It should be made clear that this phenomenon is not singular but
epidemic: a whole crowd becomes rapt in this manner. It is for this reason that the dithyramb differs essentially from any other kind of chorus. The virgins who, carrying laurel branches and singing a processional chant, move solemnly toward the temple of Apollo, retain their identities and their civic names. The dithyrambic chorus on the other hand is a chorus of the transformed, who have forgotten their civic past and social rank, who have become timeless servants of their god and live outside all social spheres. While all the other types of Greek choric verse are simply the highest intensification of the Apollinian musician, in the dithyramb we see a community of unconscious actors all of whom see one another as enchanted. Enchantment is the precondition of all dramatic art. In this enchantment the Dionysian reveler sees himself as satyr, and as satyr, in turn, he sees the god. In his transformation he sees a new vision, which is the Apollinian completion of his state. And by the same token this new vision completes the dramatic act. Thus we have come to interpret Greek tragedy as a Dionysian chorus which again and again discharges itself in Apollinian images. Those choric portions with which the tragedy is interlaced constitute, as it were, the matrix of the dialogue, that is to say, of the entire stage-world of the actual drama. This substratum of tragedy irradiates, in several consecutive discharges, the vision of the drama—a vision on the one hand completely of the nature of Apollinian dream-illusion and therefore epic, but on the other hand, as the objectification of a Dionysian condition, tending toward the shattering of the individual and his fusion with the original Oneness. Tragedy is an Apollinian embodiment of Dionysian insights and powers, and for that reason separated by a tremendous gulf from the epic. On this view the chorus of Greek tragedy, symbol of an entire multitude agitated by Dionysus, can be fully explained. Whereas we who are accustomed to the role of the chorus in modem theater, especially opera, find it hard to conceive how the chorus of the Greeks should have been older, more central than the dramatic action proper (although we have clear testimony to this effect) and whereas we have never been quite able to reconcile with this position of importance the fact that the chorus was composed of such lowly beings as— originally—goatlike satyrs; and whereas, further, the orchestra in front of the stage has always seemed a riddle to us—we now realize that the stage with its action was originally conceived as pure vision and that the only reality was the chorus, who created that vision out of itself and proclaimed it through the medium of dance, music, and spoken word. Since, in this vision, the chorus beholds its lord and master Dionysus, it remains forever an attending chorus, it sees how the god suffers and transforms himself, and it has, for that reason, no need to act. But, notwithstanding its subordination to the god, the chorus remains the highest expression of nature, and, like nature, utters in its enthusiasm oracular words of wisdom. Being compassionate as well as wise, it proclaims a truth that issues from the heart of the world. Thus we see how that fantastic and at first sight embarrassing figure arises, the wise and enthusiastic satyr who is at the same time the “ simpleton” as opposed to the god. The satyr is a replica of nature in its strongest tendencies and at the same time, a herald of its wisdom and art. He combines in his person the roles of musician, poet, dancer and visionary. It is in keeping both with this insight and with general tradition that in the earliest tragedy Dionysus was not actually present but merely imagined. Original tragedy is only chorus and not drama at all. Later an attempt was made to demonstrate the god as real and to bring the visionary figure, together with the transfiguring frame, vividly before the eyes of every spectator. This marks the beginning of drama in the strict sense of the word. It then became the task of the dithyrambic chorus so to excite the mood of the listeners that when the tragic hero appeared they would behold not the awkwardly masked man but a figure born of their own rapt vision. If we imagine Admetus brooding on the memory of his recently departed wife, consuming himself in a spiritual contemplation of her form, and how a figure of similar shape and gait is led toward him in deep disguise; if we then imagine his tremor of excitement, his impetuous comparisons, his instinctive conviction—then we have an analogue for the excitement of the spectator beholding the god, with whose sufferings he has already identified himself, stride onto the stage. Instinctively he would project the shape of the god that was magically present to his mind onto that masked figure of a man, dissolving the latter’s reality into a ghostly unreality. This is the Apollinian dream state, in which the daylight world is veiled and a new world—clearer, more comprehensible, more affecting than the first, and at the same time more shadowy—falls upon the eye in ever changing shapes. Thus we may recognize a drastic stylistic opposition: language, color, pace, dynamics of speech are polarized into the Dionysian poetry of the chorus, on the one hand, and the Apollinian dream world of the scene on the other. The result is two completely separate spheres of expression. The Apollinian embodiments in which Dionysus assumes objective shape are very different from the continual interplay of shifting forces in the music of the chorus, from those powers deeply felt by the enthusiast, but which he is incapable of condensing into a clear image. The adept no longer obscurely senses the approach of the god: the god now speaks to him from the proscenium with the clarity and firmness of epic, as an epic hero, almost in the language of Homer. 9 Everything that rises to the surface in the Apollinian portion of Greek tragedy (in the dialogue) looks simple, transparent, beautiful. In this sense the dialogue is a mirror of the Greek mind, whose nature manifests itself in dance, since in dance the maximum power is only potentially present, betraying itself in the suppleness and opulence of movement. The language of the Sophoclean heroes surprises us by its Apollinian determinacy and lucidity. It seems to us that we can fathom their innermost being, and we are somewhat surprised that we had such a short way to go. However, once we abstract from the character of the hero as it rises to the surface and becomes visible (a character at bottom no more than a luminous shape projected onto a dark wall, that is to say, appearance through and through) and instead penetrate into the myth which is projected in these luminous reflections, we suddenly come up against a phenomenon which is the exact opposite of a familiar optical one. After an energetic attempt to focus on the sun we have, by way of remedy almost, dark spots before our eyes when we turn away. Conversely, the luminous images of the Sophoclean heroes—those Apollinian masks—are the necessary productions of a deep look into the horror of nature; luminous spots, as it were, designed to cure an eye hurt by the ghastly night. Only in this way can we form an adequate notion of the seriousness of Greek “ serenity”; whereas we find that serenity generally misinterpreted nowadays as a condition of undisturbed complacence.
Sophocles conceived doomed Oedipus the greatest sufferer of the Greek stage, as a pattern of nobility, destined to error and misery despite his wisdom, yet exercising a beneficent influence upon his environment in virtue of his boundless grief. The profound poet tells us that a man who is truly noble is incapable of sin; though every law, every natural order, indeed the entire canon of ethics, perish by his actions, those very actions will create a circle of higher consequences able to found a new world on the ruins of the old. This is the poet’s message, insofar as he is at the same time a religious thinker. In his capacity as poet he presents us in the beginning with a complicated legal knot in the slow unraveling of which the judge brings about his own destruction. The typically Greek delight in this dialectical solution is so great that it imparts an element of triumphant serenity to the work, and thus removes the sting lurking in the ghastly premises of the plot. In Oedipus at Colonus we meet this same serenity, but utterly transfigured. In contrast to the aged hero, stricken with excess of grief and passively undergoing his many misfortunes, we have here a transcendent serenity issuing from above and hinting that by his passive endurance the hero may yet gain a consummate energy of action. This activity (so different from his earlier conscious striving, which had resulted in pure passivity) will extend far beyond the limited experience of his own life. Thus the legal knot of the Oedipus fable, which had seemed to mortal eyes incapable of being disentangled, is slowly loosened. And we experience the most profound human joy as we witness this divine counterpart of dialectics. If this explanation has done the poet justice, it may yet be asked whether it has exhausted the implications of the myth; and now we see that the poet’s entire conception was nothing more nor less than the luminous afterimage which kind nature provides our eyes after a look into the abyss. Oedipus, his father’s murderer, his mother’s lover, solver of the Sphinx’s riddle! What is the meaning of this triple fate? An ancient popular belief, especially strong in Persia, holds that a wise magus must be incestuously begotten. If we examine Oedipus, the solver of riddles and liberator of his mother, in the light of this Parsee belief, we may conclude that wherever soothsaying and magical powers have broken the spell of present and future, the rigid law of individuation, the magic circle of nature, extreme unnaturalness— in this case incest—is the necessary antecedent; for how should man force nature to yield up her secrets but by successfully resisting her, that is to say, by unnatural acts? This is the recognition I find expressed in the terrible triad of Oedipean fates: the same man who solved the riddle of nature (the ambiguous Sphinx) must also, as murderer of his father and husband of his mother, break the consecrated tables of the natural order. It is as though the myth whispered to us that wisdom, and especially Dionysian wisdom, is an unnatural crime, and that whoever, in pride of knowledge, hurls nature into the abyss of destruction, must himself experience nature’s disintegration. “ The edge of wisdom is turned against the wise man; wisdom is a crime committed on nature”: such are the terrible words addressed to us by myth. Yet the Greek poet, like a sunbeam, touches the terrible and austere Memnon’s Column of myth, which proceeds to give forth Sophoclean melodies. Now I wish to contrast to the glory of passivity the glory of action, as it irradiates the Prometheus of Aeschylus. Young Goethe has revealed to us, in the bold words his Prometheus addresses to Zeus, what the thinker Aeschylus meant to say, but what, as poet, he merely gave us to divine in symbol: Here l sit, forming men in my own image, a race to be like me, to suffer, to weep, to delight and to rejoice, and to defy you, as I do. Man, raised to titanic proportions, conquers his own civilization and compels the gods to join forces with him, since by his autonomous wisdom he commands both their existence and the limitations of their sway. What appears most wonderful, however, in the Prometheus poem—ostensibly a hymn in praise of impiety—is its profound Aeschylean longing for justice. The immense suffering of the bold individual, on the one hand, and on the other the extreme jeopardy of the gods, prefiguring a “ twilight of the gods”—the two together pointing to a reconciliation, a merger of their universes of suffering—all this reminds one vividly of the central tenet of Aeschylean speculation in which Moira, as eternal justice, is seen enthroned above men and gods alike. In considering the extraordinary boldness with which Aeschylus places the Olympian world on his scales of justice, we must remember that the profound Greek had an absolutely stable basis of metaphysical thought in his mystery cults and that he was free to discharge all his skeptical velleities on the Olympians. The Greek artist, especially, experienced in—respect of these divinities an obscure sense of mutual dependency, a feeling which has been perfectly symbolized in the Prometheus of Aeschylus. The titanic artist was strong in his defiant belief that he could create men and, at the least, destroy Olympian gods; this he was able to do by virtue of his superior wisdom, which, to be sure, he must atone for by eternal suffering. The glorious power to do, which is possessed by great genius, and for which even eternal suffering is not too high a price to pay—the artist’s austere pride—is of the very essence of Aeschylean poetry, while Sophocles in his Oedipus intones a paean to the saint. But even Aeschylus’ interpretation of the myth fails to exhaust its extraordinary depth of terror. Once again, we may see the artist’s buoyancy and creative joy as a luminous cloud shape reflected upon the dark surface of a lake of sorrow. The legend of Prometheus is indigenous to the entire community of Aryan races and attests to their prevailing talent for profound and tragic vision. In fact, it is not improbable that this myth has the same characteristic importance for the Aryan mind as the myth of the Fall has for the Semitic, and that the two myths are related as brother and sister. The presupposition of the Prometheus myth is primitive man’s belief in the supreme value of fire as the true palladium of every rising civilization. But for man to dispose of fire freely, and not receive it as a gift from heaven in the kindling thunderbolt and the warming sunlight, seemed a crime to thoughtful primitive man, a despoiling of divine nature. Thus this original philosophical problem poses at once an insoluble conflict between men and the gods, which lies like a huge boulder at the gateway to every culture. Man’s
highest good must be bought with a crime and paid for by the flood of grief and suffering which the offended divinities visit upon the human race in its noble ambition. An austere notion, this, which by the dignity it confers on crime presents a strange contrast to the Semitic myth of the Fall—a myth that exhibits curiosity, deception, suggestibility, concupiscence, in short a whole series of principally feminine frailties, as the root of all evil. What distinguishes the Aryan conception is an exalted notion of active sin as the properly Promethean virtue; this notion provides us with the ethical substratum of pessimistic tragedy, which comes to be seen as a justification of human ills, that is to say of human guilt as well as the suffering purchased by that guilt. The tragedy at the heart of things, which the thoughtful Aryan is not disposed to quibble away, the contrariety at the center of the universe, is seen by him as an interpenetration of several worlds, as for instance a divine and a human, each individually in the right but each, as it encroaches upon the other, having to suffer for its individuality. The individual, in the course of his heroic striving towards universality, de-individuation, comes up against that primordial contradiction and learns both to sin and to suffer. The Aryan nations assign to crime the male, the Semites to sin the female gender; and it is quite consistent with these notions that the original act of hubris should be attributed to a man, original sin to a woman. For the rest, perhaps not too much should be made of this distinction, cf. the chorus of wizards in Goethe’s Faust: If that is so, we do not mind it: With a thousand steps the women find it; But though they rush, we do not care: With one big jump the men get there. [Goethe’s Faust, lines 3982-85.] Once we have comprehended the substance of the Prometheus myth—the imperative necessity of hubris for the titanic individual—we must realize the non-Apollinian character of this pessimistic idea. It is Apollo who tranquilizes the individual by drawing boundary lines, and who, by enjoining again and again the practice of self-knowledge, reminds him of the holy, universal norms. But lest the Apollinian tendency freeze all form into Egyptian rigidity, and in attempting to prescribe its orbit to each particular wave inhibit the movement of the lake, the Dionysian flood tide periodically destroys all the little circles in which the Apollinian will would confine Hellenism. The swiftly rising Dionysian tide then shoulders all the small individual wave crests, even as Prometheus’ brother, the Titan Atlas, shouldered the world. This titanic urge to be the Atlas of all individuals, to bear them on broad shoulders ever farther and higher, is the common bond between the Promethean and the Dionysian forces. In this respect the Aeschylean Prometheus appears as a Dionysian mask, while in his deep hunger for justice Aeschylus reveals his paternal descent from Apollo, god of individuation and just boundaries. We may express the Janus face, at once Dionysian and Apollinian, of the Aeschylean Prometheus in the following formula: “ All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both.” That is your world! A world indeed!— [Goethe’s Faust, line 409.] 10 It is an unimpeachable tradition that in its earliest form Greek tragedy records only the sufferings of Dionysus, and that he was the only actor. But it may be claimed with equal justice that, up to Euripides, Dionysus remains the sole dramatic protagonist and that all the famous characters of the Greek stage, Prometheus, Oedipus, etc., are only masks of that original hero. The fact that a god hides behind all these masks accounts for the much-admired “ ideal” character of those celebrated figures. Someone, I can’t recall who, has claimed that all individuals, as individuals, are comic, and therefore untragic; which seems to suggest that the Greeks did not tolerate individuals at all on the tragic stage. And in fact they must have felt this way. The Platonic distinction between the idea and the eidolon [“ idol”] is deemed rooted in the Greek temperament If we wished to use Plato’s terminology we might speak of the tragic characters of the Greek stage somewhat as follows: the one true Dionysus appears in a multiplicity of characters, in the mask of warrior hero, and enmeshed in the web of individual will. The god ascends the stage in the likeness of a striving and suffering individual. That he can appear at all with this clarity and precision is due to dream interpreter Apollo, who projects before the chorus its Dionysian condition in this analogical figure. Yet in truth that hero is the suffering Dionysus of the mysteries. He of whom the wonderful myth relates that as a child he was dismembered by Titans now experiences in his own person the pains of individuation, and in this condition is worshipped as Zagreus. We have here an indication that dismemberment—the truly Dionysian suffering—was like a separation into air, water, earth, and fire, and that individuation should be regarded as the source of all suffering, and rejected. The smile of this Dionysus has given birth to the Olympian gods, his tears have given birth to men. In his existence as a dismembered god, Dionysus shows the double nature of a cruel, savage daemon and a mild, gentle ruler. Every hope of the Eleusinian initiates pointed to a rebirth of Dionysus, which we can now interpret as meaning the end of individuation; the thundering paean of the adepts addressed itself to the coming of the third Dionysus. This hope alone sheds a beam of joy on a ravaged and fragmented world—as is shown by the myth of sorrowing Demeter, who rejoiced only when she was told that she might once again bear Dionysus. In these notions we already find all the components of a profound and mystic philosophy and, by the same token, of the mystery doctrine of tragedy; a recognition that whatever exists is of a piece, and that individuation is the root of all evil; a conception of art as the sanguine hope that the spell of individuation may yet be broken. as an augury of eventual reintegration. I have said earlier that the Homeric epic was the poetic expression of Olympian culture, its victory song over the terrors of the battle with the Titans. Now, under the overmastering influence of tragic poetry, the Homeric myths were once more transformed and by this metempsychosis proved that in the interim Olympian culture too had been superseded by an even deeper philosophy. The contumacious Titan, Prometheus, now announced to his Olympian tormentor that unless the latter promptly joined forces with him, his reign would be in supreme danger. In the work of Aeschylus we recognize the alliance of the Titan with a frightened Zeus in terror of his end. Thus we find the earlier age of Titans brought back from Tartarus and restored to the light of day. A philosophy of wild, naked nature looks with the bold countenance of truth upon the flitting myths of the
Homeric world: they pale and tremble before the lightning eye of this goddess, until the mighty fist of the Dionysian artist forces them into the service of a new divinity. The Dionysian truth appropriates the entire realm of myth as symbolic language for its own insights, which it expresses partly in the public rite of tragedy and partly in the secret celebrations of dramatic mysteries, but always under the old mythic veil. What was the power that rescued Prometheus from his vultures and transformed myth into a vehicle of Dionysian wisdom? It was the Heraclean power of music, which reached its highest form in tragedy and endowed myth with a new and profound significance. Such, as we have said earlier, is the mighty prerogative of music. For it is the lot of every myth to creep gradually into the narrows of supposititious historical fact and to be treated by some later time as a unique event of history. And the Greeks at that time were already well on their way to reinterpreting their childhood dream, cleverly and arbitrarily, into pragmatic childhood history. It is the sure sign of the death of a religion when its mythic presuppositions become systematized, under the severe, rational eyes of an orthodox dogmatism, into a ready sum of historical events, and when people begin timidly defending the veracity of myth but at the same time resist its natural continuance—when the feeling for myth withers and its place is taken by a religion claiming historical foundations. This decaying myth was now seized by the newborn genius of Dionysian music, in whose hands it fiowered once more, with new colors and a fragrance that aroused a wistful longing for a metaphysical world. After this last florescence myth declined, its leaves withered, and before long all the ironic Lucians of antiquity caught at the faded blossoms whirled away by the wind. It was through tragedy that myth achieved its profoundest content, its most expressive form; it arose once again like a wounded warrior, its eyes alight with unspent power and the calm wisdom of the dying. What were you thinking of, overweening Euripides, when you hoped to press myth, then in its last agony, into your service? It died under your violent hands; but you could easily put in its place an imitation that, like Heracles’ monkey, would trick itself out in the master’s robes. And even as myth, music too died under your hands; though you plundered greedily all the gardens of music, you could achieve no more than a counterfeit. And because you had deserted Dionysus. vou were in turn deserted by Apollo. Though you hunted all the passions up from their couch and conjured them into your circle, though you pointed and burnished a sophistic dialectic for the speeches of your heroes, they have only counterfeit passions and speak counterfeit speeches. 11 Greek tragedy perished in a manner quite different from the older sister arts: it died by suicide, in consequence of an insoluble confiict, while the others died serene and natural deaths at advanced ages. If it is the sign of a happy natural condition to die painlessly, leaving behind a fair progeny, then the decease of those older genres exhibits such a condition; they sank slowly, and their children, fairer than they, stood before their dying eyes, lifting up their heads in eagerness. The death of Greek tragedy, on the other hand, created a tremendous vacuum that was felt far and wide. As the Greek sailors in the time of Tiberius heard from a lonely island the agonizing cry “ Great Pan is dead!” so could be heard ringing now through the entire Greek world these painful cries: “ Tragedy is dead! And poetry has perished with it! Away with you, puny, spiritless imitators! Away with you to Hades, where you may eat your fill of the crumbs thrown you by former masters!” When after all a new genre sprang into being which honored tragedy as its parent, the child was seen with dismay to bear indeed the features of its mother, but of its mother during her long death struggle. The death struggle of tragedy had been fought by Euripides, while the later art is known as the New Attic comedy. Tragedy lived on there in a degenerate form, a monument to its painful and laborious death. In this context we can understand the passionate fondness of the writers of the new comedy for Euripides. Now the wish of Philemon—who was willing to be hanged for the pleasure of visiting Euripides in Hades, providing he could be sure that the dead man was still in possession of his senses—no longer seems strange to us. If one were to attempt to say briefly and merely by way of suggestion what Menander and Philemon had in common with Euripides, and what they found so exemplary and exciting in him, one might say that Euripides succeeded in transporting the spectator onto the stage. Once we realize out of what substance the Promethean dramatists before Euripides had formed their heroes and how far it had been from their thoughts to bring onto the stage a true replica of actuality, we shall see clearly how utterly different were Euripides’ intentions. Through him the common man found his way from the auditorium onto the stage. That mirror, which previously had shown only the great and bold features, now took on the kind of accuracy that reflects also the paltry traits of nature. Odysseus, the typical Greek of older art, declined under the hands of the new poets to the character of Graeculus, who henceforth held the center of the stage as the good humored, cunning slave. The merit which Euripides, in Aristophanes’ Frogs, attributes to himself, of having by his nostrum rid tragic art of its pompous embonpoint, is apparent in every one of his tragic heroes. Now every spectator could behold his exact counterpart on the Euripidean stage and was delighted to find him so eloquent. But that was not the only pleasure. People themselves learned to speak from Euripides—don’t we hear him boast, in his contest with Aeschylus, that through him the populace had learned to observe, make transactions and form conclusions according to all the rules of art, with the utmost cleverness? It was through this revolution in public discourse that the new comedy became possible. From now on the stock phrases to represent everyday affairs were ready to hand. While hitherto the character of dramatic speech had been determined by the demigod in tragedy and the drunken satyr in comedy, that bourgeois mediocrity in which Euripides placed all his political hopes now came to the fore. And so the Aristophanic Euripides could pride himself on having portrayed life “ as it really is” and shown men how to attack it: if now all members of the populace were able to philosophize, plead their cases in court and make their business deals with incredible shrewdness, the merit was really his, the result of that wisdom he had inculcated in them. The new comedy could now address itself to a prepared, enlightened crowd, for whom Euripides had served as choirmaster—only in this case it was the chorus of spectators who had to be trained. As soon as this chorus had acquired a competence in the Euripidean key, the new comedy—that chesslike species of play—with its constant triumphs of cleverness and cunning, arose. Meanwhile choirmaster Euripides was the object of fulsome praise; in fact, people would have killed themselves in order to learn more from him had they not
known that the tragic poets were quite as dead as tragedy itself. With tragedy the Greeks had given up the belief in immortality: not only the belief in an ideal past, but also the belief in an ideal future. The words of the famous epitaph “ Inconstant and frivolous in old age” apply equally well to the last phase of Hellenism. Its supreme deities are wit, whim, caprice, the pleasure of the moment. The fifth estate, that of the slaves, comes into its own, at least in point of attitude, and if it is possible at all now to speak of Greek serenity, then it must refer to the serenity of the slave, who has no difficult responsibilities, no high aims, and to whom nothing, past or future, is of greater value than the present. It was this semblance of Greek serenity that so outraged the profound and powerful minds of the first four centuries after Christ. This womanish escape from all seriousness and awe, this smug embracing of easy pleasure, seemed to them not only contemptible but the truly antiChristian frame of mind. It was they who handed on to later generations a picture of Greek antiquity painted entirely in the pale rose hues of serenity—as though there had never been a sixth century with its birth of tragedy, its Mysteries, its Pythagoras and Heracleitus, indeed as though the art works of the great period did not exist at all. And yet none of the latter could, of course, have sprung from the soil of such a trivial ignoble cheer, pointing as they do to an entirely different philosophy as their raison d’etre. When I said earlier that Euripides had brought the spectator on the stage in order to enable him to judge the play, I may have created the impression that the older drama had all along stood in a false relation to the spectator; and one might then be tempted to praise Euripides’ radical tendency to establish a proper relationship between art work and audience as an advance upon Sophocles. But, after all, audience is but a word, not a constant unchanging value. Why should an author feel obliged to accommodate himself to a power whose strength is merely in numbers? If he considers himself superior in his talent and intentions to every single spectator, why should he show respect for the collective expression of all those mediocre capacities rather than for the few members of the audience who seem relatively the most gifted? The truth of the matter is that no Greek artist ever treated his audience with greater audacity and self sulliciency than Euripides; who at a time when the multitude lay prostrate before him disavowed in noble defiance and publicly his own tendencies— those very tendencies by which he had previously conquered the masses. Had this genius had the slightest reverence for that band of Bedlamites called the public, he would have been struck down long before the mid point of his career by the bludgeon blows of his unsuccess. We come to realize now that our statement, “ Euripides brought the spectator on the stage”—implying that the spectator would be able henceforth to exercise competent judgment —was merely provisional and that we must look for a sounder explanation of his intentions. It is also generally recognized that Aeschylus and Sophocles enjoyed all through their lives and longer the full benefit of popular favor, and that for this reason it would be absurd to speak in either case of a disproportion between art work and public reception. What was it, then, that drove the highly talented and incessantly creative Euripides from a path bathed in the light of those twin luminaries—his great predecessors—and of popular acclaim as well? What peculiar consideration for the spectator made him defy that very same spectator? How did it happen that his great respect for his audience made him treat that audience with utter disrespect? Euripides—and this may be the solution of our riddle— considered himself quite superior to the crowd as a whole; not, however, to two of his spectators. He would translate the crowd onto the stage but insist, all the same, on revering the two members as the sole judges of his art; on following all their directions and admonitions, and on instilling in the very hearts of his dramatic characters those emotions, passions and recognitions which had heretofore seconded the stage action, like an invisible chorus, from the serried ranks of the amphitheater. It was in deference to these judges that he gave his new characters a new voice, too, and a new music. Their votes, and no others, determined for him the worth of his efforts. And whenever the public rejected his labors it was their encouragement, their faith in his final triumph, which sustained him. One of the two spectators I just spoke of was Euripides himself—the thinker Euripides, not the poet. Of him it may be said that the extraordinary richness of his critical gift had helped to produce, as in the case of Lessing, an authentic creative offshoot. Endowed with such talent, such remarkable intellectual lucidity and versatility, Euripides watched the performances of his predecessors’ plays and tried to rediscover in them those fine lineaments which age, as happens in the case of old paintings, had darkened and almost obliterated. And now something occurred which cannot surprise those among us who are familiar with the deeper secrets of Aeschylean tragedy. Euripides perceived in every line, in every trait, something quite incommensurable: a certain deceptive clarity and, together with it, a mysterious depth, an infinite background. The clearest figure trailed after it a comet’s tail which seemed to point to something uncertain, something that could not be wholly elucidated. A similar twilight seemed to invest the very structure of drama, especially the function of the chorus. Then again, how ambiguous did the solutions of all moral problems seem! how problematical the way in which the myths were treated! how irregular the distribution of fortune and misfortune! There was also much in the language of older tragedy that he took exception to, or to say the least, found puzzling: why all this pomp in the representation of simple relationships? why all those tropes and hyperboles, where the characters themselves were simple and straightforward? Euripides sat in the theater pondering, a troubled spectator. In the end he had to admit to himself that he did not understand his great predecessors. But since he looked upon reason as the fountainhead of all doing and enjoying, he had to find out whether anybody shared these notions of his, or whether he was alone in facing up to such incommensurable features. But the multitude, including some of the best individuals, gave him only a smile of distrust; none of them would tell him why, notwithstanding his misgivings and reservations, the great masters were right nonetheless. In this tormented state of mind, Euripides discovered his second spectator—one who did not understand tragedy and for that reason spumed it. Allied with him he could risk coming out of his isolation to fight that tremendous battle against the works of Aeschylus and Sophocles; not by means of polemics, but as a tragic poet determined to make his notion of tragedy prevail over the traditional notions. 12 Before giving a name to that other spectator, let us stop a moment and call to mind what we have said earlier of the incommensurable and discrepant elements in Aeschylean tragedy. Let us recollect how strangely we were affected by the chorus and by the tragic hero of a kind of tragedy which refused to conform to either our habits or our tradition—until,
that is, we discovered that the discrepancy was closely bound up with the very origin and essence of Greek tragedy, as the expression of two interacting artistic impulses, the Apollinian and the Dionysian. Euripides’ basic intention now becomes as clear as day to us: it is to eliminate from tragedy the primitive and pervasive Dionysian element, and to rebuild the drama on a foundation of non-Dionysian art, custom and philosophy. Euripides himself, towards the end of his life, propounded the question of the value and sign)ficance of this tendency to his contemporaries in a myth. Has the Dionysian spirit any right at all to exist? Should it not, rather, be brutally uprooted from the Hellenic soil? Yes, it should, the poet tells us, if only it were possible, but the god Dionysus is too powerful: even the most intelligent opponent, like Pentheus in the Bacchae, is unexpectedly enchanted by him, and in his enchantment runs headlong to destruction. The opinion of the two old men in the play—Cadmus and Tiresias—seems to echo the opinion of the aged poet himself: that the cleverest individual cannot by his reasoning overturn an ancient popular tradition like the worship of Dionysus, and that it is the proper part of diplomacy in the face of miraculous powers to make at least a prudent show of sympathy; that it is even possible that the god may still take exception to such tepid interest and—as happened in the case of Cadmus—turn the diplomat into a dragon. We are told this by a poet who all his life had resisted Dionysus heroically, only to end his career with a glorification of his opponent and with suicide—like a man who throws himself from a tower in order to put an end to the unbearable sensation of vertigo. The Bacchae acknowledges the failure of Euripides’ dramatic intentions when, in fact, these had already succeeded: Dionysus had already been driven from the tragic stage by a daemonic power speaking through Euripides. For in a certain sense Euripides was but a mask, while the divinity which spoke through him was neither Dionysus nor Apollo but a brand new daemon called Socrates. Thenceforward the real antagonism was to be between Dionysian spirit and the Socratic, and tragedy was to perish in the conflict. Try as he may to comfort us with his recantation, Euripides fails. The marvelous temple lies in ruins; of what avail is the destroyer’s lament that it was the most beautiful of all temples? And though, by way of punishment, Euripides has been turned into a dragon by all later critics, who can really regard this as adequate compensation? Let us now look more closely at the Socratic tendency by means of which Euripides fought and conquered Aeschylean tragedy. What, under the most auspicious conditions, could Euripides have hoped to effect in founding his tragedy on purely un-Dionysian elements? Once it was no longer begotten by music, in the mysterious Dionysian twilight, what form could drama conceivably take? Only that of the dramatized epic, an Apollinian form which precluded tragic effect. It is not a question here of the events represented. I submit that it would have been impossible for Goethe, in the fifth act of his projected Nausic�a, to render tragic the suicide of that idyllic being: the power of the epic Apollinian spirit is such that it transfigures the most horrible deeds before our eyes by the charm of illusion, and redemption through illusion. The poet who writes dramatized narrative can no more become one with his images than can the epic rhapsodist. He too represents serene, wide eyed contemplation gazing upon its images. The actor in such dramatized epic remains essentially a rhapsodist; the consecration of dream lies upon all his actions and prevents him from ever becoming in the full sense an actor. But what relationship can be said to obtain between such an ideal Apollinian drama and the plays of Euripides? The same as obtains between the early solemn rhapsodist and that more recent variety described in Plato’s Ion: “ When I say something sad my eyes fill with tears; if, however, what I say is terrible and ghastly, then my hair stands on end and my heart beats loudly.” Here there is no longer any trace of epic self forgetfulness, of the true rhapsodist’s cool detachment, who at the highest pitch of action, and especially then, becomes wholly illusion and delight in illusion. Euripides is the actor of the beating heart, with hair standing on end. He lays his dramatic plan as Socratic thinker and carries it out as passionate actor. So it happens that the Euripidean drama is at the same time cool and fiery, able alike to freeze and consume us. It cannot possibly achieve the Apollinian effects of the epic, while on the other hand it has severed all connection with the Dionysian mode; so that in order to have any impact at all it must seek out novel stimulants which are to be found neither in the Apollinian nor in the Dionysian realm. Those stimulants are, on the one hand, cold paradoxical ideas put in the place of Apollinian contemplation, and on the other fiery emotions put in the place of Dionysian transports. These last are splendidly realistic counterfeits, but neither ideas nor affects are infused with the spirit of true art. Having now recognized that Euripides failed in founding the drama solely on Apollinian elements and that, instead, his anti Dionysian tendency led him towards inartistic naturalism, we are ready to deal with the phenomenon of aesthetic Socratism. Its supreme law may be stated as follows: “ Whatever is to be beautiful must also be sensible” —a parallel to the Socratic notion that knowledge alone makes men virtuous. Armed with this canon, Euripides examined every aspect of drama—diction, character, dramatic structure, choral music—and made them fit his specifications. What in Euripidean, as compared with Sophoclean tragedy, has been so frequently censured as poetic lack and retrogression is actually the straight result of the poet’s incisive critical gifts, his audacious personality. The Euripidean prologue may seen to illustrate the efficacy of that rationalistic method. Nothing could be more at odds with our dramaturgic notions than the prologue in the drama of Euripides. To have a character appear at the beginning of the play, tell us who he is, what preceded the action, what has happened so far, even what is about to happen in the course of the play—a modern writer for the theater would reject all this as a wanton and unpardonable dismissal of the element of suspense. Now that everyone knows what is going to happen, who will wait to see it happen? Especially since, in this case, the relation is by no means that of a prophetic dream to a later event. But Euripides reasoned quite otherwise. According to him, the effect of tragedy never resided in epic suspense, in a teasing uncertainty as to what was going to happen next. It resided, rather, in those great scenes of lyrical rhetoric in which the passion and dialectic of the protagonist reached heights of eloquence. Everything portended pathos, not action. Whatever did not portend pathos was seen as objectionable. The greatest obstacle to the spectator’s most intimate participation in those scenes would be any missing link in the antecedent action: so long as the spectator had to conjecture what this or that figure represented, from whence arose this or that conflict of inclinations and intentions, he could not fully participate in the doings and sufferings of the protagonists, feel with them and fear with them. The tragedy of Aeschylus and Sophocles had used the subtlest devices to furnish the spectator in the early scenes, and as if by chance, with al} the necessary information. They had shown an admirable skill in disguising the necessary structural features and making them seem accidental. All the same, Euripides thought he noticed chat during those early scenes the spectators were in a
peculiar state of unrest—so concerned with figuring out the antecedents of the story chat the beauty and pathos of the exposition were lost on them. For this reason he introduced a prologue even before the exposition, and put it into the mouth of a speaker who would command absolute trust. Very often it was a god who had to guarantee to the public the course of the tragedy and so remove any possible doubt as to the reality of the mydh; exactly as Descartes could only demonstrate the reality of the empirical world by appealing to God’s veracity, his inability to tell a lie. At the end of his drama Euripides required the same divine truthfulness to act as security, so to speak, for the future of his protagonists. This was the function of the ill-famed deus ex machina. Between the preview of the prologue and the preview of the epilogue stretched the dramatic lyric present, the drama proper. As a poet, then, Euripides was principally concerned with rendering his conscious perceptions, and it is this which gives him his position of importance in the history of Greek drama. With regard to his poetic procedure, which was both critical and creative, he must often have felt that he was applying to drama the opening words of Anaxagoras’ treatise: “ In the beginning all things were mixed together; then reason came and introduced order.” And even as Anaxagoras, with his concept of reason, seems like the first sober philosopher in a company of drunkards, so Euripides may have appeared to himself as the first rational maker of tragedy. Everything was mixed together in a chaotic stew so long as reason, the sole principle of universal order, remained excluded from the creative act. Being of this opinion, Euripides had necessarily to reject his less rational peers. Euripides would never have endorsed Sophocles’ statement about Aeschylus—that this poet was doing the right thing, but unconsciously; instead he would have claimed that since Aeschylus created unconsciously he couldn’t help doing the wrong cling. Even the divine Plato speaks of the creative power of the poet for the most part ironically and as being on a level with the gifts of the soothsayer and interpreter of dreams, since according to the traditional conception the poet is unable to write until reason and conscious control have deserted him. Euripides set out, as Plato was to do, to show the world the opposite of the “ irrational” poet; his aesthetic axiom, “ whatever is to be beautiful must be conscious” is strictly parallel to the Socratic “ whatever is to be good must be conscious.” We can hardly go wrong then in calling Euripides the poet of aesthetic Socratism. But Socrates was precisely that second spectator, incapable of understanding the older tragedy and therefore scorning it, and it was in his company that Euripides dared to usher in a new era of poetic activity. If the old tragedy was wrecked’ aesthetic Socratism is to blame, and to the extent that the target of the innovators was the Dionysian principle of the older art we may call Socrates the god’s chief opponent, the new Orpheus who, though destined to be torn to pieces by the maenads of Athenian judgment, succeeded in putting the overmastering god to flight. The latter, as before, when he fled from Lycurgus, king of the Edoni, took refuge in the depths of the sea; that is to say, in the flood of a mystery cult that was soon to encompass the world. 13 The fact that the aims of Socrates and Euripides were closely allied did not escape the attention of their contemporaries. We have an eloquent illustration of this in the rumotr, current at the time in Athens, that Socrates was helping Euripides with his writing. The two names were bracketed by the partisans of the “ good old days’? whenever it was a question of castigating the upstart demagogues of the present. It was they who were blamed for the disappearance of the Marathonian soundness of body and mind in favor of a dubious enlightenment tending toward a progressive atrophy of the traditional virtues. In the comedy of Aristophanes both men are treated in this vein—half indignant, half contemptuous—to the dismay of the rising generation, who, while they were willing enough to sacrifice Euripides, could not forgive the picture of Socrates as the arch Sophist. Their only recourse was to pillory Aristophanes in his turn as a dissolute, Lying Alcibiades of poetry. I won’t pause here to defend the pro found instincts of Aristophanes against such attacks but shall proceed to demonstrate the close affinity between Socrates and Euripides, as their contemporaries saw them. It is certainly significant in this connection that Socrates, being a sworn enemy of the tragic art, is said never to have attended the theater except when a new play of Euripides was mounted. The most famous instance of the conjunction of the two names, however, is found in the Delphic oracle which pronounced Socrates the wisest of men yet allowed that Euripides merited the second place. The third place went to Sophocles, who had boasted that, in contrast to Aeschylus, he not only did the right thing but knew why he did it. Evidently it was the transparency of their knowledge that earned for these three men the reputation of true wisdom in their day. It was Socrates who expressed most clearly this radically new prestige of knowledge and conscious intelligence when he claimed to be the only one who acknowledged to himself that he knew nothing. He roamed all over Athens, visiting the most distinguished statesmen, orators, poets and artists, and found everywhere merely the presumption of knowledge. He was amazed to discover that all these celebrities lacked true and certain knowledge of their callings and pursued those callings by sheer instinct. The expression “ sheer instinct” seems to focus perfectly the Socratic attitude. From this point of view Socrates was forced to condemn both the prevailing art and the prevailing ethics. Wherever his penetrating gaze fell he saw nothing but lack of understanding, fictions rampant, and so was led to deduce a state of affairs wholly discreditable and perverse. Socrates believed it was his mission to correct the situation: a solitary man, arrogantly superior and herald of a radically dissimilar culture, art, and ethics, he stepped into a world whose least hem we should have counted it an honor to have touched. This is the reason why the figure of Socrates disturbs us so profoundly whenever we approach it, and why we are tempted again and again to plumb the meaning and intentions of the most problematical character among the ancients. Who was this man who dared, singlehanded, to challenge the entire world of Hellenism—embodied in Homer, Pindar, and Aeschylus, in Phidias, Pericles, Pythia, and Dionysus—which commands our highest reverence? Who was this daemon daring to pour out the magic philter in the dust? this demigod to whom the noblest spirits of mankind must call out: Alas! You have shattered The beautiful world With brazen fist;
It falls, it is scattered. [Goethe’s Faust, lines 1607-11.] We are offered a key to the mind of Socrates in that remarkable phenomenon known as his daimonion. In certain critical situations, when even his massive intellect faltered, he was able to regain his balance through the agency of a divine voice, which he heard only at such moments. The voice always spoke to dissuade. The instinctual wisdom of this anomalous character manifests itself from time to time as a purely inhibitory agent, ready to defy his rational judgment. Whereas in all truly productive men instinct is the strong, affirmative force and reason the dissuader and critic, in the case of Socrates the roles are reversed: instinct is the critic, consciousness the creator. Truly a monstrosity! Because of this lack of every mystical talent Socrates emerges as the perfect pattern of the non-mystic, in whom the logical side has become, through superfetation, as overdeveloped as has the instinctual side in the mystic. Yet it was entirely impossible for Socrates’ logical impetus to turn against itself. In its unrestrained onrush it exhibited an elemental power such as is commonly found only in men of violent instincts, where we view it with awed surprise. Whoever in reading Plato has experienced the divine directness and sureness of Socrates’ whole way of proceeding must have a sense of the gigantic driving wheel of logical Socratism, turning, as it were, behind Socrates, which we see through Socrates as through a shadow. That he himself was by no means unaware of this relationship appears from the grave dignity with which he stressed, even at the end and before his judges, his divine mission. It is as impossible to controvert him in this as it is to approve of his corrosive influence upon instinctual life. In this dilemma his accusers, when he was brought before the Athenian forum, could think of one appropriate form of punishment only, namely exile: to turn this wholly unclassifiable, mysterious phenomenon out of the state would have given posterity no cause to charge the Athenians with a disgraceful act. When finally death, not banishment, was pronounced against him, it seems to have been Socrates himself who, with complete lucidity of mind and in the absence of every natural fear of death, insisted on it. He went to his death with the same calm Plato describes when he has him leave the symposium in the early dawn, the last reveler, to begin a new day; while behind him on the benches and on the floor his sleepy companions go on dreaming of Socrates, the true lover. Socrates in his death became the idol of the young Athenian elite. The typical Hellenic youth, Plato, prostrated himself before that image with all the fervent devotion of his enthusiastic mind. 14 Let us now imagine Socrates’ great Cyclops’ eye—that eye which never glowed with the artist’s divine frenzy—turned upon tragedy. Bearing in mind that he was unable to look with any pleasure into the Dionysian abysses, what could Socrates see in that tragic art which to Plato seemed noble and meritorious? Something quite abstruse and irrational, full of causes without effects and effects seemingly without causes, the whole texture so checkered that it must be repugnant to a sober disposition, while it might act as dangerous tinder to a sensitive and impressionable mind. We are told that the only genre of poetry Socrates really appreciated was the Aesopian fable. This he did with the same smiling complaisance with which honest Gellert sings the praise of poetry in his fable of the bee and the hen: Poems are useful: they can tell The truth by means of parable To those who are not very bright. The fact is that for Socrates tragic art failed even to “ convey the truth,” although it did address itself to those who were “ a bit backward,” which is to say to non-philosophers: a double reason for leaving it alone. Like Plato, he reckoned it among the beguiling arts which represent the agreeable, not the useful, and in consequence exhorted his followers to abstain from such unphilosophical stimulants. His success was such that the young tragic poet Plato burned all his writings in order to qualify as a student of Socrates. And while strong native genius might now and again manage to withstand the Socratic injunction, the power of the latter was still great enough to force poetry into entirely new channels. A good example of this is Plato himself. Although he did not lag behind the naive cynicism of his master in the condemnation of tragedy and of art in general, nevertheless his creative gifts forced him to develop an art form deeply akin to the existing forms which he had repudiated. The main objection raised by Plato to the older art (that it was the imitation of an imitation and hence belonged to an even lower order of empiric reality) must not, at all costs, apply to the new genre; and so we see Plato intent on moving beyond reality and on rendering the idea which underlies it. By a detour Plato the thinker reached the very spot where Plato the poet had all along been at home, and from which Sophocles, and with him the whole poetic tradition of the past, protested such a charge. Tragedy had assimilated to itself all the older poetic genres. In a somewhat eccentric sense the same thing can be claimed for the Platonic dialogue, which was a mixture of all the available styles and forms and hovered between narrative, Iyric, drama, between prose and poetry, once again breaking through the old law of stylistic unity. The Cynic philosophers went even farther in that direction, seeking, by their utterly promiscuous style and constant alternation between verse and prose, to project their image of the “ raving Socrates” in literature, as they sought to enact it in life. The Platonic dialogue was the lifeboat in which the shipwrecked older poetry saved itself, together with its numerous offspring. Crowded together in a narrow space, and timidly obeying their helmsman Socrates, they moved forward into a new era which never tired of looking at this fantastic spectacle. Plato has furnished for all posterity the pattern of a new art form, the novel, viewed as the Aesopian fable raised to its highest power; a form in which poetry played the same subordinate role with regard to dialectic philosophy as that same philosophy was to play for many centuries with regard to theology. This, then, was the new status of poetry, and it was Plato who, under the pressure of daemonic Socrates, had brought it about. It is at this point that philosophical ideas begin to entwine themselves about art, forcing the latter to cling closely to the trunk of dialectic. The Apollinian tendency now appears disguised as logical schematism, just as we found in the case of Euripides a corresponding translation of the Dionysian affect into a naturalistic one. Socrates, the dialectical hero of the
Platonic drama, shows a close affinity to the Euripidean hero, who is compelled to justify his actions by proof and counterproof, and for that reason is often in danger of forfeiting our tragic compassion. For who among us can close his eyes to the optimistic element in the nature of dialectics, which sees a triumph in every syllogism and can breathe only in an atmosphere of cool, conscious clarity? Once that optimistic element had entered tragedy, it overgrew its Dionysian regions and brought about their annihilation and, finally, the leap into genteel domestic drama Consider the consequences of the Socratic maxims: virtue is knowledge; all sins arise from ignorance; only the virtuous are happy”—these three basic formulations of optimism spell the death of tragedy. The virtuous hero must henceforth be a dialectician; virtue and knowledge, belief and ethics, be necessarily and demonstrably connected; Aeschylus’ transcendental concept of justice be reduced to the brash and shallow principle of poetic justice with its regular deus ex machina. What is the view taken of the chorus in this new Socratic optimistic stage world, and of the entire musical and Dionysian foundation of tragedy? They are seen as accidental features, as reminders of the origin of tragedy, which can well be dispensed with—while we have in fact come to understand that the chorus is the cause of tragedy and the tragic spirit. Already in Sophocles we find some embarrassment with regard to the chorus, which suggests that the Dionysian floor of tragedy is beginning to give way. Sophocles no longer dares to give the chorus the major role in the tragedy but treats it as almost on the same footing as the actors, as though it had been raised from the orchestra onto the scene. By so doing he necessarily destroyed its meaning, despite Aristotle’s endorsement of this conception of the chorus. This shift in attitude, which Sophocles displayed not only in practice but also, we are told, in theory, was the first step toward the total disintegration of the chorus: a process whose rapid phases we can follow in Euripides, Agathon, and the New Comedy. Optimistic dialectics took up the whip of its syllogisms and drove music out of tragedy. It entirely destroyed the meaning of tragedy—which can be interpreted only as a concrete manifestation of Dionysian conditions, music made visible, an ecstatic dream world. Since we have discovered an anti-Dionysian tendency antedating Socrates, its most brilliant exponent, we must now ask, “ Toward what does a figure like Socrates point?” Faced with the evidence of the Platonic dialogues, we are certainly not entitled to see in Socrates merely an agent of disintegration. While it is clear that the immediate result of the Socratic strategy was the destruction of Dionysian drama, we are forced, nevertheless, by the profundity of the Socratic experience to ask ourselves whether, in fact, art and Socratism are diametrically opposed to one another, whether there is really anything inherently impossible in the idea of a Socratic artist? It appears that this despotic logician had from time to time a sense of void, loss, unfulfilled duty with regard to art. In prison he told his friends how, on several occasions, a voice had spoken to him in a dream, saying “ Practice music, Socrates!” Almost to the end he remained confident that his philosophy represented the highest art of the muses, and would not fully believe that a divinity meant to remind him of “ common, popular music.” Yet in order to unburden his conscience he finally agreed, in prison, to undertake that music which hitherto he had held in low esteem. In this frame of mind he composed a poem on Apollo and rendered several Aesopian fables in verse. What prompted him to these exercises was something very similar to that warning voice of his daimonion: an Apollinian perception that, like a barbarian king, he had failed to comprehend the nature of a divine effigy, and was in danger of offending his own god through ignorance. These words heard by Socrates in his dream are the only indication that he ever experienced any uneasiness about the limits of his logical universe. He may have asked himself: “ Have I been too ready to view what was unintelligible to me as being devoid of meaning? Perhaps there is a realm of wisdom, after all, from which the logician is excluded? Perhaps art must be seen as the necessary complement of rational discourse?” 15 In the spirit of these last suggestive questions it must now be said how the influence of Socrates, down to the present moment and even into all future time, has spread over posterity like a shadow that keeps growing in the evening sun, and how it again and again prompts a regeneration of art—of art in the metaphysical, broadest and profoundest sense— and how its own infinity also guarantees the infinity of art. Before this could be recognized, before the innermost dependence of every art on the Greeks, from Homer to Socrates, was demonstrated conclusively, we had to feel about these Greeks as the Athenians felt about Socrates. Nearly every age and stage of culture has at some time or other sought with profound irritation to free itself from the Greeks, because in their presence everything one has achieved oneself, though apparently quite original and sincerely admired, suddenly seemed to lose life and color and shriveled into a poor copy, even a caricature. And so time after time cordial anger erupts against this presumptuous little people that made bold for all time to designate everything not native as “ barbaric.” Who are they, one asks, who, though they display only an ephemeral historical splendor, ridiculously restricted institutions, dubious excellence in their mores, and are marked by ugly vices, yet lay claim to that dignity and pre-eminence among peoples which characterize genius among the masses? Unfortunately, no one was lucky enough to find the cup of hemlock with which one could simply dispose of such a character; for all the poison that envy, calumny, and rancor created did not suffice to destroy that self-sufficient splendor. And so one feels ashamed and afraid in the presence of the Greeks, unless one prizes truth above all things and dares acknowledge even this truth: that the Greeks, as charioteers, hold in their hands the reins of our own and every other culture, but that almost always chariot and horses are of inferior quality and not up to the glory of their leaders, who consider it sport to run such a team into an abyss which they themselves clear with the leap of Achilles. In order to vindicate the dignity of such a leader’s position for Socrates, too, it is enough to recognize in him a type of existence unheard of before him: the type of he theoretical man whose significance and aim it is our next task to try to understand. Like the artist, the theoretical man finds an infinite delight in whatever exists, and this satisfaction protects him against the practical ethics of pessimism with its Lyncaeus eyes that shine only in the dark. Whenever the truth is uncovered, the artist will always cling with rapt gaze to what still remains covering even after such uncovering; but the theoretical man enjoys and finds satisfaction in the discarded covering and finds the highest object of his pleasure in the process of an ever happy uncovering that succeeds through his own efforts.
There would be no science if it were concerned only with that one nude goddess and with nothing else. For in that case her devotees would have to feel like men who wanted to dig a hole straight through the earth, assuming that each of them realized that even if he tried his utmost, his whole life long, he would only be able to dig a very small portion of this enormous depth, and even that would be filled in again before his own eyes by the labors of the next in line, so a third person would seem to do well if he picked a new spot for his drilling efforts. Now suppose someone proved convincingly that the goal of the antipodes cannot be reached in this direct manner: who would still wish to go on working in these old depths, unless he had learned meanwhile to be satisfied with finding precious stones or discovering laws of nature? Therefore Lessing, the most honest theoretical man, dared to announce that he cared more for the search after truth than for truth itself—and thus revealed the fundamental secret of science, to the astonishment, and indeed the anger, of the scientific community. [“ If God had locked up all truth in his right hand, and in his left the unique, ever-live striving for truth, albeit with the addition that I should always and eternally err, and he said to me, ‘Choose!’—I should humbly clasp his left hand, saying: ‘Father, give! Pure truth is after all for thee alone!’”—Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-81), Eine Duplik, 1778.] Beside this isolated insight, born of an excess of honesty if not of exuberance, there is, to be sure, a profound illusion that first saw the light of the world in the person of Socrates: the unshakable faith that thought, using the thread of logic, can penetrate the deepest abysses of being, and that thought is capable not only of knowing being but even of correcting it. This sublime metaphysical illusion accompanies science as an instinct and leads science again and again to its limits at which it must turn into art—which is really the aim of this mechanism. With the torch of this thought in our hands, let us now look at Socrates: he appears to us as the first who could not only live, guided by the instinct of science, but also—and this is far more—die that way. Hence the image of the dying Socrates, as the human being whom knowledge and reasons have liberated from the fear of death, is the emblem that, above the entrance gate of science, reminds all of its mission—namely, to make existence appear comprehensible and thus justified; and if reasons do not suffice, myth had to come to their aid in the end—myth which I have just called the necessary consequence, indeed the purpose, of science. Once we see clearly how after Socrates, the mystagogue of science, one philosophical school succeeds another, wave upon wave; how the hunger for knowledge reached a neversuspected universality in the widest domain of the educated world, became the real task for every person of higher gifts, and led science onto the high seas from which it has never again been driven altogether; how this universality first spread a common net of thought over the whole globe, actually holding out the prospect of the lawfulness of an entire solar system; once we see all this clearly, along with the amazingly high pyramid of knowledge in our own time—we cannot fail to see in Socrates the one turning point and vortex of socalled world history. For if we imagine that the whole incalculable sum of energy used up for this world tendency had been used not in the service of knowledge but for the practical, i.e., egoistic aims of individuals and peoples, then we realize that in that case universal wars of annihilation and continual migrations of peoples would probably have weakened the instinctive lust for life to such an extent that suicide would have become a general custom and individuals might have experienced the final remnant of a sense of duty when, like the inhabitants of the Fiji islands, they had strangled their parents and friends—a practical pessimism that might even have generated a gruesome ethic of genocide [V�lkermord.] motivated by pity, and which incidentally is, and was, present in the world wherever art did not appear in some form—especially as religion and science—as a remedy and a preventive for this breath of pestilence. By contrast with this practical pessimism, Socrates is the prototype of the theoretical optimist who, with his faith that the nature of things can be fathomed, ascribes to knowledge and insight the power of a panacea, while understanding error as the evil par excellence. To fathom the depths and to separate true knowledge from appearance and error, seemed to Socratic man the noblest, even the only truly human vocation. And since Socrates, this mechanism of concepts, judgments, and inferences has been esteemed as the highest occupation and the most admirable gift of nature, above all other capacities. Even the most sublime ethical deeds, the stirrings of pity, self-sacrifice, heroism, and that calm sea of the soul, so difficult to attain, which the Apollinian Greek called sophrosune, were derived from the dialectic knowledge by Socrates and his like-minded successors, down to the present, and accordingly designated as teachable. Anyone who has ever experienced the pleasure of Socratic insight and felt how, spreading in ever-widening circles, it seeks to embrace the whole world of appearances, will never again find any stimulus toward existence more violent than the craving to complete this conquest and to weave the net impenetrably tight. To one who feels that way, the Platonic Socrates will appear as the teacher of an altogether new form of “ Greek cheerfulness” and blissful affirmation of existence that seeks to discharge itself in actions—most often in maieutic and educational influences on noble youths, with a view to eventually producing a genius. But science, spurred by its powerful illusion, speeds irresistibly towards its limits where its optimism, concealed in the essence of logic, suffers shipwreck. For the periphery of the circle of science has an infinite number of points; and while there is no telling how this circle could ever be surveyed completely, noble and gifted men nevertheless reach, e’er half their time and inevitably, such boundary points on the periphery from which one gazes into what defies illumination. When they see to their horror how logic coils up at these boundaries and finally bites its own tail—suddenly the new form of insight breaks through, tragic insight which, merely to be endured, needs art as a protection and remedy. Our eyes strengthened and refreshed by our contemplation of the Greeks, let us look at the highest spheres of the world around us; then we shall see how the hunger for insatiable and optimistic knowledge that in Socrates appears exemplary has turned into tragic resignation and destitute need for art—while, to be sure, the same hunger on its lower levels can express itself in hostility to art and must particularly detest Dionysian-tragic art, as was illustrated earlier with the fight of Socratism against Aeschylean tragedy. Here we knock, deeply moved, at the gates of present and future: will this “ turning” lead to ever-new configurations of genius and especially of the Socrates who practices music? Will the net of art, even if it is called religion or science, that is spread over existence be woven even more tightly and delicately, or is it destined to be torn to shreds in the restless,
barbarous, chaotic whirl that now calls itself “ the present”? Concerned but not disconsolate, we stand aside a little while, contemplative men to whom it has been granted to be witnesses of these tremendous struggles and transitions. Alas, it is the magic of these struggles that those who behold them must also take part and fight. 16 By this elaborate historical example we have sought to make clear how just as tragedy perishes with the evanescence of the spirit of music, it is only from this spirit that it can be reborn. Lest this assertion seem too strange, it may be well to disclose the origin of this insight by considering the analogous phenomena of our own time; we must enter into the midst of those struggles, which, as I have just said, are being waged in the highest spheres of our contemporary world between insatiable optimistic knowledge and the tragic need of art. In my examination I shall leave out of account all those other antagonistic tendencies which at all times oppose art, especially tragedy, and which now are again extending their triumphant sway to such an extent that of the theatrical arts only the farce and the ballet, for example, put forth their blossoms, which perhaps not everyone cares to smell, in rather rich luxuriance. I will speak only of the noblest opposition to the tragic world-conception—and by this I mean science, which is at bottom optimistic, with its ancestor Socrates at its head. A little later on I shall also name those forces which seem to me to guarantee a rebirth of tragedy—and perhaps other blessed hopes for the German genius! Before we plunge into the midst of these struggles, let us array ourselves in the armor of the insights we have acquired. In contrast to all those who are intent on deriving the arts from one exclusive principle, as the necessary vital source of every work of art, I shall keep my eyes fixed on the two artistic deities of the Greeks, Apollo and Dionysus, and recognize in them the living and conspicuous representatives of two worlds of art differing in their intrinsic essence and in their highest aims. I see Apollo as the transfiguring genius of the principium individuationis through which alone the redemption in illusion is truly to be obtained; while by the mystical triumphant cry of Dionysus the spell of individuation is broken, and the way lies open to the Mothers of Being, to the innermost heart of things. This extraordinary contrast, which stretches like a yawning gulf between plastic art as the Apollinian, and music as the Dionysian art, has revealed itself to only one of the great thinkers, to such an extent that, even without this clue to the symbolism of the Hellenic divinities, he concedes to music a character and an origin different from all the other arts, because, unlike them, it is not a copy of the phenomenon, but an immediate copy of the will itself, and therefore complements everything physical in the world and every phenomenon by representing what is metaphysical, the thing in itself. (Schopenhauer, Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, I, p. 310.) To this most important insight of aesthetics (with which, in the most serious sense, aesthetics properly begins), Richard Wagner, by way of confirmation of its eternal truth, affixed his seal, when he asserted in his Beethoven that music must be evaluated according to aesthetic principles quite different form those which apply to all plastic arts, and not, in general, according to the category of beauty; although an erroneous aesthetics, inspired by a mistaken and degenerate art, has, by virtue of the concept of beauty obtaining in the plastic domain, accustomed itself to demand of music an effect similar to that produced by works of plastic art, namely, the arousing of delight in beautiful forms. Having recognized this extraordinary contrast, I felt a strong need to approach the essence of Greek tragedy and, with it, the profoundest revelation of the Hellenic genius; for I at last thought that I possessed a charm to enable me—far beyond the phraseology of our usual aesthetics—to represent vividly to my mind the fundamental problem of tragedy; whereby I was granted such a surprising and unusual insight into the Hellenic character that it necessarily seemed to me as if our classical-Hellenic science that bears itself so proudly had thus far contrived to subsist mainly on shadow plays and externals. Perhaps we may touch on this fundamental problem by asking: what aesthetic effect results when the essentially separate art-forces, the Apollinian and the Dionysian, enter into simultaneous activity? Or more briefly: how is music related to image and concept? Schopenhauer, whom Richard Wagner, with special reference to this point, praises for an unsurpassable clearness and clarity of exposition, expresses himself most thoroughly on the subject in the following passage which I shall cite here at full length (Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, I, p. 309): “ according to all this, we may regard the phenomenal world, or nature, and music as two different expressions of the same thing, which is therefore itself the only medium of their analogy, so that a knowledge of it is demanded in order to understand that analogy. Music, therefore, if regarded as an expression of the world, is in the highest degree a universal language, which is related indeed to the universality of concepts, much as they are related to the particular things. Its, universality, however, is by no means that empty universality of abstraction, but of quite a different kind, and is united with thorough and distinct definiteness. In this respect it resembles geometrical figures and numbers, which are the universal forms of all possible objects of experience and applicable to them all a priori, and yet are not abstract but perceptible and thoroughly determinate. All possible efforts, excitements, and manifestations of will, all that goes on in the heart of man and that reason includes in the wide, negative concept of feeling, may be expressed by the infinite number of possible melodies, but always in the universal, in the mere form, without the material, always according to the thing-in-itself, not the phenomenon, the inmost soul, as it were, of the phenomenon without the body. This deep relation which music has to the true nature of all things also explains the fact that suitable music played to any scene, action, event, or surrounding seems to disclose to us its utmost secret meaning, and appears as the most accurate and distinct commentary upon it. This is so truly the case that whoever gives himself up entirely to the impression of a symphony, seems to see all the possible events of life and the world take place in himself; yet if he reflects, he can find no likeness between the music and the things that passed before his mind. For, as we have said, music is distinguished from all the other arts by the fact that it is not a copy of the phenomenon, or, more accurately, of the adequate objectivity of the will, but an immediate copy of the will itself, and therefore complements everything physical in the world and every phenomenon by representing what is metaphysical, the thing in itself. We might, therefore, just as well call the world embodied music as embodied will; and this is the reason why music makes every painting, and indeed every scene of real life and of the world, at once appear with higher significance, certainly all the more, in proportion as its melody is
analogous to the inner spirit of the given phenomenon. Therefore we are able to set a poem to music as a song, or a visible representation as a pantomime, or both as an opera. Such particular pictures of human life, set to the universal language of music, are never bound to it or correspond to it with a stringent necessity; but they stand to it only in the relation of an example chosen at will to a general concept. In the determinateness of the real, they represent that which music expresses in the universality of mere form. For melodies are to a certain extent, like general concepts, an abstraction from the actual. This actual world, then, the world of particular things, affords the object of perception, the special and individual, the particular case, both to the universality of the concepts and to the universality of the melodies. But these two universalities are in a certain respect opposed to each other; for the concepts contain particulars only as the first forms abstracted from perception, as it were, the separated shell of things; thus they are, strictly speaking, abstracta: music, on the other hand, gives the inmost kernel which precedes all forms, or the heart of things. This relation may be very well expressed in the language of the schoolmen, by saying, the concepts are the universalia post rem, but music gives the univesralia ante rem, and the real world the universalia in re. But that in general a relation is possible between a composition and a visible representation rests, as we have said, upon the fact that both are simply different expressions of the same inner being of the world. When now, in the particular case, such a relation is actually given, that is to say, when the composer has been able to express in the universal language of music the stirrings of will which constitute the heart of an event, then the melody of the song, the music of the opera, is expressive. But the analogy discovered by the composer between the two must have proceeded from the direct knowledge of the nature of the world unknown to his reason, and must not be an imitation produced with conscious intention by means of concepts, otherwise the music does not express the inner nature, the will itself, but merely gives an inadequate imitation of its phenomenon. All truly imitative music does this.” According to the doctrine of Schopenhauer, therefore, we understand music as the immediate language of the will, and we feel our fancy stimulated to give form to this invisible and yet so actively stirred spirit-world which speaks to us, and we feel prompted to embody it in an analogous example. On the other hand, image and concept, under the influence of a truly corresponding music, acquires a higher significance. Dionysian art therefore is wont to exercise two kinds of influences on the Apollinian art faculty: music incites to the symbolic intuition of Dionysian universality, and music allows the symbolic image to emerge in its highest significance. From these facts, intelligible in themselves and not inaccessible to a more penetrating examination, I infer the capacity of music to give birth to myth (the most significant example), and particularly the tragic myth: the myth which expresses Dionysian knowledge in symbols. In the phenomenon of the lyrist, I have shown how music strives to express its nature in Apollinian images. If now we reflect that music at its highest stage must seek to attain also to its highest objectification in images, we must deem it possible that it also knows how to find the symbolic expression for its unique Dionysian wisdom; and where shall we seek for this expression if not in tragedy and, in general, in the conception of the tragic? From the nature of art as it is usually conceived according to the single category of appearance and beauty, the tragic cannot honestly be deduced at all; it is only through the spirit of music that we can understand the joy involved in the annihilation of the individual. For it is only in particular examples of such annihilation that we are clearly the eternal phenomenon of Dionysian art, which gives expression to the will in its omnipotence, as it were, behind the principium individuationis, the eternal life beyond all phenomena, and despite all annihilation. The metaphysical joy in the tragic is a translation of the instinctive unconscious Dionysian wisdom into the language of images: the hero, the highest manifestation of the will, is negated for our pleasure, because he is only phenomenon, and because the eternal life of the will is not affected by his annihilation. “ We believe in eternal life,” exclaims tragedy; while music is the immediate idea of this life. Plastic art has an altogether different aim: here Apollo overcomes the suffering of the individual by the radiant glorification of the eternity of the phenomenon: here beauty triumphs over the suffering inherent in life; pain is obliterated by lies from the features of nature. In Dionysian art and its tragic symbolism the same nature cries to us with its true, undissembled voice: “ Be as I am! Amid the ceaseless flux of phenomena I am the eternally creative primordial mother, eternally impelling to existence, eternally finding satisfaction in this change of phenomena!” 17 Dionysian art, too, wishes to convince us of the eternal joy of existence: only we are to seek this joy not in phenomena, but behind them. We are to recognize that all that comes into being must be ready for a sorrowful end; we are forced to look into the terrors of the individual existence—yet we are not to become rigid with fear: a metaphysical comfort tears us momentarily from the bustle of the changing figures. We are really for a brief moment primordial being itself, feeling its raging desire for existence and joy in existence; the struggle, the pain, the destruction of phenomena, now appear necessary to us, in view of the excess of countless forms of existence which force and push one another into life, in view of the exuberant fertility of the universal will. We are pierced by the maddening stings of these pains just when we have become, as it were, one with the infinite primordial joy in existence, and when we anticipate, in Dionysian ecstasy, the indestructibility and eternity of this joy. In spite of fear and pity, we are the happy living beings, not as individuals, but as the one living being, with whose creative joy we are united. The history of the rise of Greek tragedy now tells us with luminous precision how the tragic art of the Greeks was really born of the spirit of music. With this conception we believe we have done justice for the first time to the primitive and astonishing significance of the chorus. At the same time, however, we must admit that the meaning of tragic myth set forth above never became clear in transparent concepts to the Greek poets, not to speak of the Greek philosophers: their heroes speak, as it were, more superficially than they act; the myth does not at all obtain adequate objectification in the spoken word. The structure of the scenes and the visual images reveal a deeper wisdom than the poet himself can put into words and concepts: the same is also observable in Shakespeare, whose Hamlet, for instance, similarly, talks more superficially than he acts, so that the previously mentioned lesson of Hamlet is to be deduced, not from his words, but from a profound contemplation and survey of the whole. With respect to Greek tragedy, which of course presents itself to us only as word-drama, I have even intimated that the lack of congruity between myth and expression might
easily lead us to regard it as shallower and less significant than it really is, and accordingly to attribute to it a more superficial effect than it must have had according to the testimony of the ancients: for how easily one forgets that what the word-poet did not succeed in doing, namely, attain the highest spiritualization and ideality of the myth, he might very well succeed in doing every moment as creative musician! To be sure, we are almost forced to construct for ourselves by scholarly research the superior power of the musical effect in order to experience something of the incomparable comfort which must have been characteristic of true tragedy. Even this musical superiority, however, would only have been felt by us had we been Greeks; for in the entire development of Greek music—as compared with the infinitely richer music known and familiar to us—we imagine we hear only the youthful song of the musical genius modestly intoned. The Greeks, as the Egyptian priests say, are eternal children, and in tragic art too they are only children who do not know what a sublime plaything originated in their hands and—was quickly demolished. The striving of the spirit of music toward visual and mythical objectification, which increases from the beginnings of lyric poetry up to Attic tragedy, suddenly breaks off after attaining a luxuriant development, and disappears, as it were, from the surface of Hellenic art; while the Dionysian world view born of this striving lives on in the mysteries and, in its strangest metamorphoses and debasements, does not cease to attract serious natures. Will it not some day rise once again out of its mystic depths as art? Here we are detained by the question, whether the power, by virtue of whose opening influence tragedy perished, has for all time sufficient strength to prevent the artistic reawakening of tragedy and the tragic world view. If ancient tragedy was diverted from its course by the dialectical desire for knowledge and the optimism of science, this fact might lead us to believe that there is an eternal conflict between the theoretic and the tragic world view; and only after the spirit of science has been pursued to its limits, and its claim to universal validity destroyed by the evidence of these limits may we hope for a rebirth of tragedy—a form of culture for which we should have to use the symbol of the music-practicing Socrates in the sense spoken of above [See Section 15]. In this contrast, I understand by the spirit of science the faith that first came to light in the person of Socrates—the faith in the explicability of nature and in knowledge as a panacea. He who recalls the immediate consequences of this restlessly progressing spirit of science will realize at once that myth was annihilated by it, and that, because of this annihilation, poetry was driven like a homeless being from her natural ideal soil. If we have been right in assigning to music the power of again giving birth to myth, we may similarly expect to find the spirit of science on the path where it inimically opposes this mythopoeic power of music. This takes place in the development of the New Attic Dithyramb, the music of which no longer expressed the inner essence, the will itself, but only rendered the phenomenon inadequately, in an imitation by means of concepts. From this intrinsically degenerate music the genuinely musical natures turned away with the same repugnance that they felt for the art-destroying tendency of Socrates. The unerring instinct of Aristophanes was surely right when it included Socrates himself, the tragedy of Euripides, and the music of the New Dithyrambic poets in the same feeling of hatred, recognizing in all three phenomena the signs of a degenerate culture. In this New Dithyramb, music is outrageously manipulated so as to be the imitative counterfeit of a phenomenon, for instance, of a battle or a storm at sea; and thus, of course, it has been utterly robbed of its mythopoeic power. For if it seeks to arouse pleasure only by impelling us to seek external analogies between a vital or natural process and certain rhythmical figures and characteristic sounds of music; if our understanding is to content itself with the perception of these analogies; we are reduced to a frame of mind which makes impossible any reception of the mythical; for the myth wants to be experienced vividly as a unique example of a universality and truth that gaze into the infinite. The truly Dionysian music presents itself as such a general mirror of the universal will: the vivid event refracted in this mirror expands at once for our consciousness to the copy of an external truth. Conversely, such a vivid event is at once divested of every mythical character by the tone-painting of the New Dithyramb; music now becomes a wretched cop of the phenomenon, and therefore infinitely poorer than the phenomenon itself. And through this poverty it still further reduces the phenomenon for our consciousness, so that now, for example, a musically imitated battle of this sort exhausts itself in marches, signal sounds, etc., and our imagination is arrested precisely by these superficialities. Tone-painting is thus in every respect the opposite of true music with its mythopoeic power: through it the phenomenon, poor in itself, is made still poorer, while through Dionysian music the individual phenomenon is enriched and expanded into an image of the world. It was a great triumph for the un-Dionysian spirit when, by the development of the New Dithyramb, it had estranged music from itself and reduced it to be the slave of phenomena. Euripides, who, though in a higher sense, must be considered a thoroughly unmusical nature, is for this very reason a passionate adherent of the New Dithyrambic Music, and with the liberality of a robber makes use of all its effective tricks and mannerisms. In another direction also we see at work the power of this un-Dionysian myth-opposing spirit, when we turn our attention to the prevalence of character representation and psychological refinement in tragedy from Sophocles onward. The character must no longer be expanded into an eternal type, but, on the contrary, must develop individually through artistic subordinate traits and shadings, through the nicest precision of all lines, in such a manner that the spectator is in general no longer conscious of the myth, but of the vigorous truth to nature and the artist’s imitative power. Here also we observe the victory of the phenomenon over the universal, and the delight in a unique, almost anatomical preparation; we are already in the atmosphere of a theoretical world, where scientific knowledge is valued more highly than the artistic reflection of a universal law. The movement in the direction of character delineation proceeds rapidly: while Sophocles still portrays complete characters and employs myth for their refined development, Euripides already draws only prominent individual traits of character, which can express themselves in violent bursts of passion. In the New Attic Comedy, however, there are only masks with one expression: frivolous old men, duped panders, and cunning slaves, recurring incessantly. Where now is the mythopoeic spirit of music? What still remains of music is either excitatory or reminiscent music, that is, either a stimulant for dull and faded nerves, or tone-painting. As regards the former, it hardly matters about the text set to it: as soon as his heroes and choruses begin to sing, everything becomes pretty slovenly in Euripides; to what pass must things have come with his impertinent successors?
The new un-Dionysian spirit, however, reveals itself more plainly in the denouements of the new dramas. In the Old Tragedy one could sense at the end that metaphysical comfort without which the delight in tragedy cannot be explained at all. The reconciling tones from another world sound purest, perhaps, in the Oedipus at Colonus. Now that the genius of music has fled from tragedy, tragedy, strictly speaking, is dead: for from what source shall we now draw this metaphysical comfort? The new spirit, therefore, sought for an earthly resolution of the tragic dissonance. The hero, after being sufficiently tortured by fate, earned a well-deserved reward through a splendid marriage or tokens of divine favor. The hero had turned gladiator on whom, after he had been nicely beaten and covered with wounds, freedom was occasionally bestowed. The deus ex machina took the place of metaphysical comfort. I will not say that the tragic world view was everywhere completely destroyed by this intruding un-Dionysian spirit: we only know that it had to flee from art into the underworld as it were, in the degenerate form of a secret cult. Over the widest extent of the Hellenic character, however, there raged the consuming blast of this spirit, which manifests itself in the form of “ Greek cheerfulness,” which we have already spoken of as a senile, unproductive love of existence. This cheerfulness stands opposed to the splendid “ na�vete” of the earlier Greeks, which, according to the characterization given above, must be conceived as the blossom of the Apollinian culture springing from a dark abyss, as the victory which the Hellenic will, through its mirroring of beauty, obtains over suffering and the wisdom of suffering. The noblest manifestation of that other form of “ Greek cheerfulness,” the Alexandrian, is the cheerfulness of the theoretical man. It exhibits the same characteristic symptoms that I have just deduced from the spirit of the un-Dionysian: it combats Dionysian wisdom and art, it seeks to dissolve myth, it substitutes for a metaphysical comfort an earthly consonance, in fact, a deus ex machina of its own, the god of machines and crucibles, that is, the powers of the spirits of nature recognized and employed in the service of a higher egoism; it believes that it can correct the world by knowledge, guiding life by science, and actually confine the individual within a limited sphere of solvable problems, from which he can cheerfully say to life: “ I desire you; you are worth knowing.” 18 It is an eternal phenomenon: the insatiable will always find a way to detain its creatures in life and compel them to live on, by means of an illusion spread over things. One is chained by the Socratic love of knowledge and the delusion of being able thereby to heal the eternal wound of existence; another is ensnared by art’s seductive veil of beauty fluttering before his eyes; still another by the metaphysical comfort that beneath the whirl of phenomena eternal life flows on indestructibly—to say nothing of the more vulgar and almost more powerful illusions which the will always has at hand. These three stages of illusion are actually designed only for the more nobly formed natures, who actually feel profoundly the weight and burden of existence, and must be deluded by exquisite stimulants into forgetfulness of their displeasure. All that we call culture is made up of these stimulants; and, according to the proportion of the ingredients, we have either a dominantly Socratic or artistic or tragic culture; or, if historical exemplifications are permitted, there is either an Alexandrian or a Hellenic or a Buddhistic culture. Our whole modern world is entangled in the net of Alexandrian culture. It proposes as its ideal the theoretical man equipped with the greatest forces of knowledge, and laboring in the service of science, whose archetype and progenitor is Socrates. All our educational methods originally have this ideal in view: every other form of existence must struggle on laboriously beside it, as something tolerated, but not intended. In an almost alarming manner the culture man was for a long time found only in the form of the scholar: even our poetical arts have been forced to evolve from scholarly imitations, and in the main effect, that of rhyme, we still recognize the origin of our poetic form from artificial experiments with a nonindigenous, really scholarly language. How unintelligible must Faust, the modern cultured man, who is in himself intelligible, have appeared to a true Greek—Faust, storming unsatisfied through all the faculties, devoted to magic and the devil from a desire for knowledge; Faust, whom we have but to place beside Socrates for the purpose of comparison, in order to see that modern man is beginning to divine the limits of this Socratic love of knowledge and yearns for a coast in the wide waste of the ocean of knowledge. When Goethe on one occasion said to Eckermann with reference to Napoleon: “ Yes, my good friend, there is also a productiveness of deeds,” he reminded us in a charmingly na�ve manner that the nontheorist is something incredible and astounding to modern man; so that we again have need of the wisdom of Goethe to discover that such a surprising form of existence is not only comprehensible, but even pardonable. Now we must not hide from ourselves what is concealed in the womb of this Socratic culture: optimism, with its delusion of limitless power. We must not be alarmed if the fruits of this optimism ripen—if society, leavened to the very lowest strata by this kind of culture, gradually begins to tremble with wanton agitations and desires, if the belief in the earthly happiness of all, if the belief in the possibility of such a general intellectual culture changes into the threatening demand for such an Alexandrian earthly happiness, into the conjuring up of a Euripidean deus ex machina. Let us mark this well: the Alexandrian culture, to be able to exist permanently, requires a slave class, but with its optimistic view of life it denies the necessity of such a class, and consequently, when its beautifully seductive and tranquilizing utterances about the “ dignity of man” and the “ dignity of labor” are no longer effective, it gradually drifts toward a dreadful destruction. There is nothing more terrible than a class of barbaric slaves who have learned to regard their existence as an injustice, and now prepare to avenge, not only themselves, but all generations. In the face of such threatening storms, who dares to appeal with any confidence to our pale and exhausted religions, the very foundations of which have degenerated into scholarly religions? Myth, the necessary prerequisite of any religion, is already paralyzed everywhere, and even in this domain the optimistic spirit, which we have just designated as the germ of destruction in our society, has attained the mastery. While the disaster gradually slumbering in the womb of theoretical culture gradually begins to frighten modern man, and he anxiously ransacks the stores of his experience for
means to avert the danger, though he has no great faith in these means; while he, therefore, begins to divine the consequences of his situation—great men, universally gifted, have contrived, with an incredible amount of thought, to make use of the paraphernalia of science itself, to point out the limits and the relativity of knowledge generally, and thus to deny decisively the claim of science to universal validity and universal aims. And their demonstration diagnosed for the first time the illusory notion which pretends to be able to fathom the innermost essence of things with the aid of causality. The extraordinary courage and wisdom of Kant and Schopenhauer have succeeded in gaining the most difficult victory, the victory over the optimism concealed in the essence of logic—an optimism that is the basis of our culture. While this optimism, resting on apparently unobjectionable aeternae veritates [Eternal verities.], had believed that all the riddles of the universe could be known and fathomed, and had treated space, time, and causality as entirely unconditional laws of the most universal validity, Kant showed that these really served only to elevate the mere phenomenon, the work of maya, to the position of the sole and highest reality, as if it were the innermost and true essence of things, thus making impossible any knowledge of this essence or, in Schopenhauer’s words, lulling the dreamer still more soundly asleep. With this insight a culture is inaugurated that I venture to call a tragic culture. Its most important characteristic is that wisdom takes the place of science as the highest end— wisdom that, uninfluenced by the seductive distractions of the sciences, turns with unmoved eyes to a comprehensive view of the world, and seeks to grasp, with sympathetic feelings of love, the eternal suffering as its own. Let us imagine a coming generation with such intrepidity of vision, with such a heroic penchant for the tremendous; let us imagine the bold stride of these dragon-slayers, the proud audacity with which they turn their back on all the weaklings’ doctrines of optimism in order to “ live resolutely” in wholeness and fullness: would it not be necessary for the tragic man of such a culture, in view of his self-education for seriousness and terror, to desire a new art, the art of metaphysical comfort, to desire tragedy as his own proper Helen, and to exclaim with Faust: Should not my longing overleap the distance And draw the fairest form into existence? [From Goethe’s Faust, lines 7438 ff.] But now that the Socratic culture can only hold the scepter of its infallibility with trembling hands; now that it has been shaken from two directions—once by the fear of its own consequences which it at length begins to surmise, and again because it no longer has its na�ve confidence in the eternal validity of its foundation—it is a sad spectacle to see how the dance of its thought rushes longingly toward ever-new forms, to embrace them, and then, shuddering, lets them go suddenly as Mephistopheles does the seductive Lamiae [Faust, lines 7766 ff.]. It is certainly the sign of the “ breach” of which everyone speaks as the fundamental malady of modern culture, that the theoretical man, alarmed and dissatisfied at his own consequences, no longer dares entrust himself to the terrible icy current of existence: he runs timidly up and down the bank. So thoroughly has he been pampered by his optimistic views that he no longer wants to have anything whole, with all of nature’s cruelty attaching to it.. Besides, he feels that a culture based on the principles of science must be destroyed when it begins to grow illogical, that is, to retreat before its own consequences. Our art reveals this universal distress: in vain does one depend imitatively on all the great productive periods and natures; in vain does one accumulate the entire “ world-literature” around modern man for his comfort; in vain does one place oneself in the midst of the art styles and artists of all ages, so that one may give names to them as Adam did to the beasts: one still remains externally hungry, the “ critic” without joy and energy, the Alexandrian man, who is at bottom a librarian and corrector of proofs, and wretchedly goes blind from the dust of books and from printers’ errors. 19 We cannot indicate the innermost modern content of this Socratic culture more distinctly than by calling it the culture of the opera: for it is in this department that this culture has expressed its aims and perceptions with special na�vete, which is surprising when we compare the genesis of the opera and the facts of operatic development with the eternal truths of the Apollinian and Dionysian. I recall first of all the origin of the stilo rappresentativo [Representational style.] and the recitative. Is it credible that this thoroughly externalized operatic music, incapable of devotion, could be received and cherished with enthusiastic favor, as a rebirth, as it were, of all true music, by the very age in which had appeared the ineffably sublime and sacred music of Palestrina? And who, on the other hand, would think of making only the diversion-craving luxuriousness of those Florentine circles and the vanity of their dramatic singers responsible for the love of the opera which spread with such rapidity? That in the same age, even among the same people, this passion for a halfmusical mode of speech should awaken alongside of the vaulted structure of Palestrina harmonics which all medieval Christendom had been building up, I can explain to myself only by a cooperating, extra-artistic tendency in the essence of the recitative. The listener who insists on distinctly hearing the words under the music has his desire fulfilled by the singer in that the latter speaks rather than sings, intensifying the pathetic expression of the words by means of this half-song. By this intensification of the pathos he facilitates the understanding of the words and overcomes the remaining half of the music. The specific danger now threatening him is that in some unguarded moment he may stress the music unduly, which would immediately entail the destruction of the pathos of the speech and the distinctness of the words; while, on the other hand, he feels himself continually impelled to musical discharge and a virtuoso exhibition of his vocal talent. Here the “ poet” comes to his aid, who knows how to provide him with abundant opportunities for lyrical interjections, repetitions of words and sentences, etc.—at which places the singer, now in the purely musical element, can rest himself without paying any attention to the words. This alternation of emotionally impressive speech which, however, is only half sung, with interjections which are wholly sung, an alternation characteristic of the stilo rappresentativo, this rapidly changing endeavor to affect now the concepts and imagination of the hearer, now his musical sense, is something so utterly unnatural and likewise so intrinsically contradictory both to the Apollinian and Dionysian artistic impulses, that one has to
infer an origin of the recitative lying outside all artistic instincts. According to this description, the recitative must be defined as a mixture of epic and lyric delivery, not by any means as an intrinsically stable mixture, a state not to be attained in the case of such totally disparate elements, but as an entirely superficial mosaic conglutination, such as is totally unprecedented in the domain of nature and experience. But this was not the opinion of the inventors of the recitative: they themselves, together with their age, believed rather that the mystery of antique music has been solved by this stilo rappresentativo, in which, so they thought, was to be found the only explanation of the enormous influence of an Orpheus, an Amphion, and even of Greek tragedy. The new style was looked upon as the reawakening of the most effective music, ancient Greek music: indeed, in accordance with the universal and popular conception of the Homeric as the primitive world, they could abandon themselves to the dream of having descended once more into the paradisiacal beginnings of mankind, where music also must have had that unsurpassed purity, power, and innocence of which the poets, in their pastoral plays, could give such touching accounts. Here we can see into the innermost development of this thoroughly modern variety of art, the opera: art here responds to a powerful need, but it is a nonaesthetic need: the yearning for the idyllic, the faith in the primordial existence of the artistic and good man. The recitative was regarded as the rediscovered language of this primitive man; opera as the rediscovered country of this idyllically or heroically good creature, who simultaneously with every action follows a natural artistic impulse, who accomplishes his speech with a little singing, in order that he may immediately break forth into full song at the slightest emotional excitement. It is now a matter of indifference to us that the humanists of the time combated the old ecclesiastical conception of man as inherently corrupt and lost, with this newly created picture of the paradisiacal artist: so that opera is to be understood as the opposition dogma of the good man, but may also, at the same time, provide a consolation for that pessimism which, owing to the frightful uncertainty of all conditions of life, attracted precisely the serious-minded men of the time. For us, it is enough to have perceived that the essential charm, and therefore the genesis, of this new art form lies in the gratification of an altogether nonaesthetic need, in the optimistic glorification of man as such, in the conception of the primitive man as the man naturally good and artistic—a principle of the opera that has gradually changed into a threatening and terrible demand which, in face of contemporary socialist movements, we can no longer ignore. The “ good primitive man” wants his rights: what paradisiacal prospects! Besides this I place another equally obvious confirmation of my view that opera is based on the same principles as our Alexandrian culture. Opera is the birth of the theoretical man, the critical layman, not of the artist: one of the most surprising facts in the history of all the arts. It was the demand of thoroughly unmusical hearers that before everything else the words must be understood, so that according to them a rebirth of music is to be expected only when some mode of singing has been discovered in which text-word lords it over counterpoint like master over servant. For the words, it is argued, are a much nobler than the accompanying harmonic system as the soul is nobler than the body. It was in accordance with the laically unmusical crudeness of these views that the combination of music, image, and words was effected in the beginnings of the opera. In the spirit of this aesthetic the first experiments were made in the leading amateur circles of Florence by the poets and singers patronized there. The man incapable of art creates for himself a kind of art precisely because he is the inartistic man as such. Because he does not sense the Dionysian depth of music, he changes his musical taste into an appreciation of the understandable word-and-tone-rhetoric of the passions in the stilo rappresentativo, and into the voluptuousness of the arts of song. Because he is unable to behold a vision, he forces the machinist and the decorative artist into his service. Because he cannot comprehend the true nature of the artist, he conjures up the “ artistic primitive man” to suit his taste, that is, the man who sings and recites verses under the influence of passion. He dreams himself back into a time when passion sufficed to generate songs and poems; as if emotion had ever been able to create anything artistic. The premise of the opera is a false belief concerning the artistic process: the idyllic belief that every sentient man is an artist. This belief would make opera the expression of the taste of the laity in art, dictating their laws with the cheerful optimism of the theoretical man. Should we desire to combine the two conceptions that have just been shown to have influenced the origin of opera, it would merely remain for us to speak of an idyllic tendency of the opera. In this connection we need only avail ourselves of the expressions and explanation of Schiller. Nature and the ideal, he says, are either objects of grief, when the former is represented as lost, the latter unattained; or both are objects of joy, in that they are represented as real. The first case furnishes the elegy in its narrower signification, the second the idyll in its widest sense. Here we must at once call attention to the common characteristic of these two conceptions in the genesis of opera, namely, that in them the ideal is not felt as unattained or nature as lost. This sentiment supposes that there was a primitive age of man when he lay close to the heart of nature, and, owing to this naturalness, had at once attained the ideal of mankind in a paradisiacal goodness and artistry. From this perfect primitive man all of us were supposed to be descended. We were even supposed to be faithful copies of him; only we had to cast off a few things in order to recognize ourselves once more as this primitive man, on the strength of a voluntary renunciation of a superficial learnedness, of superabundant culture. It was to such a concord of nature and the ideal, to an idyllic reality, that the cultured Renaissance man let himself be led back by his operatic imitation of Greek tragedy. He mad use of this tragedy as Dante made use of Vergil, in order to be conducted to the gates of paradise; while from this point he continued unassisted and passed over from an imitation of the highest Greek art-form to a “ restoration of all things,” to an imitation of man’s original art-world. What a cheerful confidence there is about these daring endeavors, in the very heart of theoretical culture!—solely to be explained by the comforting belief, that “ man-in-himself” is the eternally virtuous hero of the opera, the eternally piping or singing shepherd, who must always in the end rediscover himself as such, should he ever at any time really lost himself; to be considered solely as the fruit of that optimism, which here rises like a sweetishly seductive column of vapor from the depth of the Socratic world view. Therefore, the features of the opera do not by any means exhibit the elegiac sorrow of an eternal loss, but rather the cheerfulness of eternal rediscovery, the comfortable delight in an
idyllic reality which one can at least always imagine as real. But in this process one may some day grasp the fact that this supposed reality is nothing but a fantastically silly dawdling, at which everyone who could judge it by the terrible seriousness of true nature, and compare it with actual primitive scenes of the beginnings of mankind, would be impelled to call out, nauseated: Away with the phantom! Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to imagine that it is possible merely by a vigorous shout to frighten away such a playful thing as the opera, as if it were a specter. He who would destroy the opera must take up the struggle against Alexandrian cheerfulness, which expresses itself so na�vely in opera concerning its favorite idea. Indeed, opera is its specific form of art. But what may art itself expect form the operation of an art form whose beginnings lie entirely outside of the aesthetic province and which has stolen over from a half-moral sphere into the artistic domain, deceiving us only occasionally about its hybrid origin? By what sap is this parasitic opera nourished, if not by that of true art? Must we not suppose that the highest, and, indeed, the truly serious task of art—to save the eye from gazing into the horrors of night and to deliver the suspect by the healing balm of illusion from the spasms of the agitations of the will—must degenerate under the influence of its idyllic seductions and Alexandrian flatteries to become an empty and merely distracting diversion? What will become of the eternal truths of the Dionysian and Apollinian when the styles are mixed in this fashion, as I have shown to be the essence of the stilo rappresentativo? A style in which music is regarded as the servant, the text as the master, where music is compared with the body, the text with the soul? where at best the highest aim will be directed toward a paraphrastic tone-painting, just as formerly in the New Attic Dithyramb? where music is completely alienated from its true dignity as the Dionysian mirror of the world, so that the only thing left to it, as the slave of phenomena, is to imitate the formal character of phenomena, and to arouse a superficial pleasure in the play of lines and proportions. Closely observed, this fatal influence of the opera on music is seen to coincide exactly with the universal development of modern music; the optimism lurking in the genesis of the opera and in the character of the culture thereby represented, has, with alarming rapidity, succeeded in divesting music of its Dionysian-cosmic mission and impressing on it a playfully formal and pleasurable character: a change comparable to the metamorphosis of the Aeschylean man into the cheerful Alexandrian. If, however, in the exemplification here indicated, we have rightly associated the disappearance of the Dionysian spirit with a most striking, but hitherto unexplained, transformation and degeneration of the Hellenic man—what hopes must revive in us when the most certain auspices guarantee the reverse process, the gradual awakening of the Dionysian spirit in our modern world! It is impossible that the divine strength of Herakles should languish forever in ample bondage to Omphale [A queen of Lydia by whom Herakles claimed to have been detained for a year of bondage.]. Out of the Dionysian root of the German spirit a power has arisen which, having nothing in common with the primitive conditions of Socratic culture, can neither be explained nor excused by it, but which is rather felt by this culture as something terribly inexplicable and overwhelmingly hostile—German music as we must understand it, particularly in its vast solar orbit from Bach to Beethoven, from Beethoven to Wagner. Even under the most favorable circumstances what can the knowledge-craving Socratism of our days do with this demon rising from unfathomable depths? Neither by means of the flourishes and arabesques of operatic melody, nor with the aid of the arithmetical counting board of fugue and contrapuntal dialectic is the formula to be found by whose thrice-powerful light one might subdue this demon and compel it to speak. What a spectacle, when our latter-day aestheticians, with a net of “ beauty” peculiar to themselves, pursue and clutch at the genius of music whirling before display activities which are not to be judged by the standard of eternal beauty any more than by the standard of the sublime. Let us but observe these patrons of music at close range, as they really are, indefatigably crying: “ Beauty! beauty!” Do they really bear the stamp of nature’s darling children who are fostered and nourished at the breast of the beautiful, or are they not rather seeking a mendacious cloak for their own coarseness, an aesthetical pretext for their insensitive sobriety; here I am thinking of Otto Jahn, for example [Professor of classical philology at Bonn.]. But let the liar and the hypocrite beware of German music: for amid all our culture it is really the only genuine, pure, and purifying fire-spirit from which and toward which, as in the teaching of the great Heraclitus of Ephesus, all things move in a double orbit: all that we now call culture, education, civilization, must some day appear before the unerring judge, Dionysus. Let us recollect further that Kant and Schopenhauer made it possible for the spirit of German philosophy, streaming from similar sources, to destroy scientific Socratism’s complacent delight in existence by establishing its boundaries; how through this delimitation was introduced an infinitely profounder and more serious view of ethical problems and of art, which we may designate as Dionysian wisdom comprised in concepts. To what then does the mystery of this oneness of German music and philosophy point if not to a new form of existence, concerning whose character we can only inform ourselves by surmise from Hellenic analogies? For to us who stand on the boundary line between two different forms of existence, the Hellenic prototype retains this immeasurable value, that all these transitions and struggles are imprinted upon it in a classically instructive form; except that we, as it were, pass through the chief epochs of the Hellenic genius, analogically in reverse order, and seem now, for instance, to be passing backward from the Alexandrian age to the period of tragedy. At the same time we have the feeling that the birth of a tragic age simply means a return to itself of the German spirit, a blessed self-rediscovery after powerful intrusive influences had for a long time compelled it, living as it did in a helpless and unchaste barbarism, to servitude under their form. Now at last, upon returning to the primitive source of its being, it may venture to stride along boldly and freely before the eyes of all nations without being attached to the lead strings of a Romanic civilization; if only it can learn constantly from one people—the Greeks, from whom to be able to learn at all itself is a high honor and a rare distinction. And when were we in greater need of these highest of all teachers than at present, when we are experiencing a rebirth of tragedy and are in danger alike of not knowing whence it comes and of being unable to make clear to ourselves whither it tends? 20 Some day, before an impartial judge, it may be decided in what time and in what men the German spirit has s far striven most resolutely to learn from the Greeks; and if we
confidently assume that this unique praise must be accorded to the noblest intellectual efforts of Goethe, Schiller, and Winckelmann, we should certainly have to add that since their time and the more immediate consequences of their efforts, the endeavor to attain to culture and to the Greeks on the same path has grown incomprehensibly feebler and feebler. That we may not despair utterly of the German spirit, must we not conclude that, in some essential manner, even these champions did not penetrate into the core of the Hellenic nature, to establish a permanent alliance between German and Greek culture? So an unconscious recognition of this shortcoming may have prompted the disheartening doubt, even in very serious people, whether after such predecessors they could possibly advance further on this path of culture or could reach the goal at all. Accordingly, we see that opinions concerning the value if the Greeks for education have been degenerating in the most alarming manner since that time. Expressions of compassionate condescension may be heard in the most varied camps of the spirit—and of lack of spirit. Elsewhere, ineffectual rhetoric plays with the phrases “ Greek harmony,” “ Greek beauty,” “ Greek cheerfulness.” And those very circles whose dignified task it might be to draw indefatigably from the Greek reservoir for the good of German culture, the teachers of the higher educational institutions, have learned best to come to terms with the Greeks easily and in good time, often by skeptically abandoning the Hellenic ideal and completely perverting the true purpose of antiquarian studies. Whoever in these circles has not completely exhausted himself in his endeavor to be a dependable corrector of old texts or a linguistic microscopist who apes natural history is probably trying to assimilate Greek antiquity “ historically,” along with other antiquities, at any rate according to the method and with the supercilious airs of our present cultured historiography. The cultural power of our higher educational institutions has perhaps never been lower or feebler than at present. The “ journalist,” the paper slave of the day, triumphs over the professor in all matters pertaining to culture; and nothing remains to the latter but the metamorphosis, often experienced by now, of fluttering also like a cheerful cultured butterfly, with the “ light elegance” peculiar to this sphere, employing the journalist’s style. In what painful confusion must the cultured class of such a period gaze at the phenomenon which perhaps is to be comprehended analogically only by means of the profoundest principle of the hitherto unintelligible Hellenic genius—the phenomenon of the reawakening of the Dionysian spirit and the rebirth of tragedy? There has never been another period in the history of art in which so-called culture and true art have been so estranged and opposed as we may observe them to be at present. We can understand why so feeble a culture hates true art; it fears destruction from its hands. But has not an entire cultural form, namely, the Socratic-Alexandrian, exhausted itself after culminating in such a daintily tapering point as our present culture? If heroes like Goethe and Schiller could not succeed in breaking open the enchanted gate which leads into the Hellenic magic mountain; if with their most dauntless striving they could not go beyond the longing gaze which Goethe’s Iphigenia casts from barbaric Tauris to her home across the ocean, what could the epigones of such heroes hope for—unless, amid the mystic tones of reawakened tragic music, the gate should open for them suddenly of its own accord, from an entirely different side, quite overlooked in all previous cultural endeavors. Let no one try to blight our faith in a yet-impending rebirth of Hellenic antiquity; for this alone gives us hope for a renovation and purification of the German spirit through the fire magic of music. What else could we name that might awaken any comforting expectations for the future in the midst of the desolation and exhaustion of contemporary culture? In vain we look for a single vigorously developed root, for a spot of fertile and healthy soil: everywhere there is dust and sand; everything has become rigid and languishes. One who is disconsolate and lonely could not choose a better symbol than the knight with death and devil, as D�rer has drawn him for us, the armored knight with the iron, hard look, who knows how to pursue his terrible path, undeterred by his gruesome companions, and yet without hope, alone with his horse and dog. Our Schopenhauer was such a D�rer knight; he lacked all hope, but he desired truth. He has no peers. But how suddenly the desert of our exhausted culture, just described in such gloomy terms, is changed when it is touched by the Dionysian magic! A tempest seizes everything that has outlived itself, everything that is decayed, broken, and withered, and, whirling, shrouds it in a cloud of red dust to carry it into the air like a vulture. Confused, our eyes look after what has disappeared; for what they see has been raised as from a depression into golden light, so full and green, so amply alive, immeasurable and full of yearning. Tragedy is seated amid this excess of life, suffering, and pleasure, in sublime ecstasy, listening to a distant melancholy song that tells of the mothers of being whose names are: Delusion, Will, Woe. Yes, my friends, believe with me in Dionysian life and the rebirth of tragedy. The age of the Socratic man is over; put on wreaths of ivy, put the thyrsus into your hand, and do not be surprised when tigers and panther lie down, fawning, at your feet. Only dare to be tragic men; for you are to be redeemed. You shall accompany the Dionysian pageant from India to Greece. Prepare yourselves for hard strife, but believe in the miracles of your god. 21 Returning from these hortatory tones to the mood befitting contemplation, I repeat that we can learn only from the Greeks what such an almost miraculously sudden awakening of tragedy means for the innermost life ground of a people. It is the people of the tragic mysteries that fights the battles against the Persians; and the people that fought these wars in turn needs tragedy as a necessary potion to recover. Who would have supposed that precisely this people, after it had been deeply agitated through several generations by the strongest spasms of the Dionysian demon, should still have been capable of such a uniformly vigorous effusion of the simplest political feeling, the most natural patriotic instincts, and original manly desire to fight? After all, one feels in every case in which Dionysian excitement gains any significant extent how the Dionysian liberation from the fetters of the individual finds expression first of all in a diminution of, in indifference to, indeed, in hostility to, the political instincts. Just as certainly, Apollo who forms states is also the genius of the principium individuationis, and state and patriotism cannot live without an affirmation of the individual personality. But from orgies a people can take one path only, the path to Indian Buddhism, and in order that this may be endurable at all with its yearning for the nothing, it requires these rare ecstatic states with their elevation above space, time, and the
individual. These states in turn demand a philosophy that teaches men how to overcome by the force of an idea the indescribable displeasure of the states that lie between. Where the political drives are taken to be absolutely valid, it is just as necessary that a people should go to the path toward the most extreme secularization whose most magnificent but also most terrifying expression may be found in the Roman imperium. Placed between India and Rome, and pushed toward a seductive choice, the Greeks succeeded in inventing a third form, in classical purity—to be sure, one they did not long use themselves, but one that precisely for that reason gained immortality. For that the favorites of the gods die early, is true in all things; but it is just as certain that they then live eternally with the gods. After all, one should not demand of what is noblest of all that it should have the durable toughness of leather. That staunch perseverance which characterized, for example, the national instincts of the Romans, probably does not belong among the necessary predicates of perfection. But let us ask by means of what remedy it was possible for the Greeks during their great period, in spite of the extraordinary strength of their Dionysian and political instincts, not to exhaust themselves either in ecstatic brooding or in a consuming chase after worldly power and worldly honor, but rather to attain that splendid mixture which resembles a noble wine in making one feel fiery and contemplative at the same time. Here we must think clearly of the tremendous power that stimulated, purified, and discharged the whole life of the people: tragedy. We cannot begin to sense its highest value until it confronts us, as it did the Greeks, as the quintessence of all prophylactic powers of healing, as the mediator that worked among the strongest and in themselves most fatal qualities of the people. Tragedy absorbs the highest ecstasies of music, so that it truly brings music, both among the Greeks and among us, to its perfection; but then it places the tragic myth and the tragic hero next to it, and he, like a powerful Titan, takes the whole Dionysian world upon his back and thus relieves us of this burden. On the other hand, by means of the same tragic myth, in the person of the tragic hero; it knows how to redeem us from the greedy thirst for this existence, and with an admonishing gesture it reminds us of another existence and a higher pleasure for which the struggling hero prepares himself by means of his destruction, not by means of his triumphs. Between the universal validity of its music and the listener, receptive in his Dionysian state, tragedy places a sublime parable, the myth, and deceives the listener into feeling that the music is merely the highest means to bring life into the vivid world of myth. Relying on this noble deception, it may now move its limbs in dithyrambic dances and yield unhesitatingly to an ecstatic feeling of freedom in which it could not dare to wallow as pure music without this deception. The myth protects us against the music, while on the other hand it alone gives music the highest freedom. In return, music imparts to the tragic myth an intense and convincing metaphysical significance that word an image without this singular help could never have attained. And above all, it is through music that the tragic spectator is overcome by an assured premonition of a highest pleasure attained through destruction and negation, so he feels as if the innermost abyss of things spoke to him perceptibly. If these last sentences have perhaps managed to give only a preliminary expression to these difficult ideas and are immediately intelligible only to few, I nevertheless may not desist at this point from trying to stimulate my friends to further efforts and must ask them to use a single example of our common experience in order to prepare themselves for a general insight. In giving this example, I must not appeal to those who use the images of what happens on the stage, the words and emotions of the acting persons, in order to approach with their help the musical feeling; for these people do not speak music as their mother tongue and, in spite of this help, never get beyond the entrance halls of musical perception, without ever being able to as much as touch the inner sanctum. Some of them, like Gervinus [G. G. Gervinus, author of Shakespeare, and Shakespeare Commentaries], do not even reach the entrance halls. I must appeal only to those who, immediately related to music, have in it, as it were, their motherly womb, and are related to things almost exclusively through unconscious musical relations. To these genuine musicians I direct the question whether they can imagine a human being who would be able to perceive the third act of Tristan and Isolde, without any aid of word and image, purely as a tremendous symphonic movement, without expiring in a spasmodic unharnessing of all the wings of the soul? Suppose a human being has thus put his ear, as it were, to the heart chamber of the world will and felt the roaring desire for existence pouring from there into all the veins of the world, as a thundering current or as the gentlest brook, dissolving into a mist—how could he fail to break suddenly? How could he endure to perceive the echo of innumerable shouts of pleasure and woe in the “ wide space of the world night,” enclosed in the wretched glass capsule of the human individual, without inexorably fleeing toward his primordial home, as he hears this shepherd’s dance of metaphysics? But if such a work could nevertheless be perceived as a whole, without denial of individual existence; if such a creation could be created without smashing its creator—whence do we take the solution of such a contradiction? Here the tragic myth and the tragic hero intervene between our highest musical emotion and this music—at bottom only as symbols of the most universal facts, of which only music can speak so directly. But if our feelings were those of entirely Dionysian beings, myth as a symbol would remain totally ineffective and unnoticed, and would never for a moment keep us from listening to the re-echo of the universalia ante rem [The universals before the thing.]. Yet here the Apollinian power erupts to restore the almost shattered individual with the healing balm of blissful illusion: suddenly we imagine we see only Tristan, motionless, asking himself dully: “ The old tune, why does it wake me?” And what once seemed to us like a hollow sigh from the core of being now merely wants to tell us how “ desolate and empty the sea.” And where, breathless, we once thought we were being extinguished in a convulsive distention of all feelings, and little remained to tie us to our present existence, we now hear and see only the hero wounded to death, yet not dying, with his despairing cry: “ Longing! Longing! In death still longing! for very longing not dying!” And where, formerly after such an excess and superabundance of consuming agonies, the jubilation of the horn cut through our hearts almost like the ultimate agony, the rejoicing Kurwenal now stands between us and this “ jubilation in itself,” his face turned toward the ship which carries Isolde. However powerfully pity affects us, it nevertheless saves us in a way from the primordial suffering of the world, just as the symbolic image of the myth saves
us from the immediate perception of the highest world-idea, just as thought and word save us from the uninhibited effusion of the unconscious will. The glorious Apollinian illusion makes it appear as if even the tone world confronted us as a sculpted world, as if the fate of Tristan and Isolde had been formed and molded in it, too, as in an exceedingly tender and expressive material. Thus the Apollinian tears us out of the Dionysian universality and lets us find delight in individuals; it attaches our pity to them, and by means of them it satisfies our sense of beauty which longs for great and sublime forms; it presents images of life to us, and incites us to comprehend in thought the core of life they contain. With the immense impact of the image, the concept, the ethical teaching, and the sympathetic emotion, the Apollinian tears man from his orgiastic self-annihilation and blinds him to the universality of the Dionysian process, deluding him into the belief that he is seeing a single image of the world (Tristan and Isolde, for instance), and that, through music, he is merely supposed to see it still better and more profoundly. What can the healing magic of Apollo not accomplish when it can even create the illusion that the Dionysian is really in the service of the Apollinian and capable of enhancing its effects—as if music were essentially the art of presenting an Apollinian content? By means of the pre-established harmony between perfect drama and its music, the drama attains a superlative vividness unattainable in mere spoken drama. In the independently moving lines of the melody all the living figures of the scene simplify themselves before us to the distinctness of curved lines, and the harmonies of these lines sympathize in a most delicate manner with the events on the stage. These harmonies make the relations of things immediately perceptible to us in a sensuous, by no means abstract manner, and thus we perceive that it is only in these relations that the essence of a character and of a melodic line is revealed clearly. And while music thus compels us to see more and more profoundly than usual, and we see the action on the stage as a delicate web, the world of the stage is expanded infinitely and illuminated for our spiritualized eye. How could a word-poet furnish anything analogous, when he strives to attain this internal expansion and illumination of the visible stage-world by means of a much more imperfect mechanism, indirectly, proceeding from word and concept? Although musical tragedy also avails itself of the word, it can at the same time place beside it the basis and origin of the word, making the development of the word clear to us, from the inside. Concerning the process just described, however, we may still say with equal assurance that it is merely a glorious appearance, namely, the aforementioned Apollinian illusion whose influence aims to deliver us from the Dionysian flood and excess. For, at bottom, the relation of music to drama is precisely the reverse: music is the real idea of the world, drama is but the reflection of this idea, a single silhouette of it. The identity between the melody and the living figure, between the harmony and the character relations of that figure, is true in a sense opposite to what one would suppose on the contemplation of musical tragedy. Even if we agitate and enliven the figure in the most visible manner, and illuminate it from within, it still remains merely a phenomenon from which no bridge leads us to true reality, into the heart of the world. But music speaks out of this heart; and though countless phenomena of the kind were to accompany this music, they could never exhaust its essence, but would always be nothing more than its externalized copies. As for the intricate relationship of music and drama, nothing can be explained, while everything may be confused, by the popular and thoroughly false contrast of soul and body; but the unphilosophical crudeness of this contrast seems to have become—who knows for what reasons—a readily accepted article of faith among our aestheticians, while they have learned nothing of the contrast of the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself—or, for equally unknown reasons, have not cared to learn anything about it. Should our analysis have established that the Apollinian element in tragedy has by means of its illusion gained a complete victory over the primordial Dionysian element of music, making music subservient to its aims, namely, to make the drama as vivid as possible—it would certainly be necessary to add a very important qualification: at the most essential point this Apollinian illusion is broken and annihilated. The drama that, with the aid of music, unfolds itself before us with such inwardly illumined distinctness in all its movements and figures, as if we saw the texture coming into being on the loom as the shuttle flies to and fro—attains as a whole an effect that transcends all Apollinian artistic effects. In the total effect of tragedy, the Dionysian predominates once again. Tragedy closes with a sound which could never come from the realm of Apollinian art. And thus the Apollinian illusion reveals itself as what it really is—the veiling during the performance of the tragedy of the real Dionysian effect; but the latter is so powerful that it ends by forcing the Apollinian drama itself into a sphere where it begins to speak with Dionysian wisdom and even denies itself and its Apollinian visibility. Thus the intricate relation of the Apollinian and the Dionysian in tragedy may really be symbolized by a fraternal union of the two deities: Dionysus speaks the language of Apollo; and Apollo, finally the language of Dionysus and so the highest goal of tragedy and of all art is attained. 22 Let the attentive friend imagine the effect of a true musical tragedy purely and simply, as he knows it from experience. I think I have so portrayed the phenomenon of this effect in both its phases that he can now interpret his own experiences. For he will recollect how with regard to the myth which passed in front of him, he felt himself exalted to a kind of omniscience, as if his visual faculty were no longer merely a surface faculty but capable of penetrating into the interior, and as if he now saw before him, with the aid of music, the waves of the will, the conflict of motives, and the swelling flood of the passions, sensually visible, as it were, like a multitude of vividly moving lines and figures; and he felt he could dip into the most delicate secrets of unconscious emotions. While he thus becomes conscious of the highest exaltation of his instincts for clarity and transfiguration, he nevertheless feels just as definitely that this long series of Apollinian artistic effects still does not generate that blessed continuance in will-less contemplation which the plastic artist and the epic poet, that is to say, the strictly Apollinian artists, evoke in him with their artistic productions: to wit, the justification of the world of the individuatio attained by this contemplation—which is the climax and essence of Apollinian art. He beholds the transfigured world of the stage and nevertheless denies it. He sees the tragic hero before him in epic clearness and beauty, and nevertheless rejoices in his annihilation. He comprehends the action deep down, and yet likes to flee into the incomprehensible. He feels the actions of the
hero to be justified, and is nevertheless still more elated when these actions annihilate their agent. He shudders at the sufferings which will befall the hero, and yet anticipates in them a higher, much more overpowering joy. He sees more extensively and profoundly than ever, and yet wishes he were blind. How must we derive this curious internal bifurcation, this blunting of the Apollinian point, if not from the Dionysian magic that, though apparently exciting the Apollinian emotions to their highest pitch, still retains the power to force into its service his excess of Apollinian force? The tragic myth is to be understood only as a symbolization of Dionysian wisdom through Apollinian artifices. The myth leads the world of phenomena to its limits where it denies itself and seeks to flee back again into the womb of the true and only reality, where it then seems to commence its metaphysical swansong, like Isolde: In the rapture ocean’s billowing roll, in the fragrance waves’ ringing sound, in the world breath’s wafting whole— to drown, to sink— unconscious—highest joy! Thus we use the experiences of the truly aesthetic listener to bring to mind the tragic artist himself as he creates his figures like a fecund divinity of individuation (so his work can hardly be understood as an “ imitation of nature”) and as his vast Dionysian impulse then devours his entire world of phenomena, in order to let us sense beyond it, and through its destruction, the highest artistic primal joy, in the bosom of the primordially One. Of course our aestheticians have nothing to say about this return to the primordial home, or the fraternal union of the two art-deities, nor of the excitement of the hearer which is Apollinian as well as Dionysian; but they never tire of characterizing the struggle of the hero with fate, the triumph of the moral world order, or the purgation of the emotions through tragedy, as the essence of the tragic. And their indefatigability makes me think that perhaps they are not aesthetically sensitive at all, but react merely as moral beings when listening to a tragedy. Never since Aristotle has an explanation of the tragic effect been offered from which aesthetic states or an aesthetic activity of the listener could be inferred. Now the serious events are supposed to prompt pity and fear to discharge themselves in a way that relieves us; now we are supposed to feel elevated and inspired by the triumph of good and noble principles, at the sacrifice of the hero in the interest of a moral vision of the universe. I am sure that for countless men precisely this, and only this, is the effect of tragedy, but it plainly follows that all these men, together with their interpreting aestheticians, have had no experience of tragedy as a supreme art. The pathological discharge, the catharsis of Aristotle, of which philologists are not sure whether it should be included among medical or moral phenomena, recalls a remarkable notion of Goethe’s. “ Without a lively pathological interest,” he says, “ I, too, have never yet succeeded in elaborating a tragic situation of any kind, and hence I have rather avoided than sought it. Can it perhaps have been yet another merit of the ancients that the deepest pathos was with them merely aesthetic play, while with us the truth of nature must cooperate in order to produce such a work?” We can now answer this profound final question in the affirmative after our glorious experiences, having found to our astonishment that the deepest pathos can indeed be merely aesthetic play in the case of musical tragedy. Therefore we are justified in believing that now for the first time the primal phenomenon of the tragic can be described with some degree of success. Anyone who still persists in talking only of those vicarious effects proceeding from extra-aesthetic spheres, and who does not feel that he is above the pathological-moral process, should despair of his aesthetic nature: should we recommend to him as an innocent equivalent the interpretation of Shakespeare after the manner of Gervinus and the diligent search for poetic justice? Thus the aesthetic listener is also reborn with the rebirth of tragedy. In his place in the theater, a curious quid pro quo used to sit with half moral and half scholarly pretensions— the “ critic.” Everything in his sphere so far has been artificial and merely whitewashed with an appearance of life. The performing artist was really at a loss how to deal with a listener who comported himself so critically; so he, as well as the dramatist or operatic composer who inspired him, searched anxiously for the last remains of life in a being so pretentiously barren and incapable of enjoyment. So far, however, such “ critics” have constituted the audience: the student, the schoolboy, even the innocuous female had been unwittingly prepared by education and newspapers for this kind of perception of works of art. Confronted with such a public, the nobler natures among the artists counted upon exciting their moralreligious emotions, and the appeal to the moral world-order intervened vicariously where some powerful artistic magic ought to enrapture the genuine listener. Or some more imposing, or at all events exciting, trend of the contemporary political and social world was so vividly presented by the dramatist that the listener could forget his critical exhaustion and abandon himself to emotions similar to those felt in patriotic or warlike moments, or before the tribune of parliament, or at the condemnation of crime and vice—an alienation from the true aims of art that sometimes had to result in an outright cult of tendentiousness. The attempt, for example, to use the theater as an institution for the moral education of the people, still taken seriously in Schiller’s time, is already reckoned among the incredible antiques of a dated type of education. While the critic got the upper hand in the theater and concert hall, the journalist in the schools, and the press in society, art degenerated into a particularly lowly topic of conversation, and aesthetic criticism was used as a means of uniting a vain, distracted, selfish, and moreover piteously unoriginal sociability whose character is suggested by Schopenhauer’s parable of the porcupines. As a result, art has never
been so much talked about and so little esteemed. But is it still possible to have intercourse with a person capable of conversing about Beethoven or Shakespeare? Let each answer this question according to his own feelings: he will at any rate show by his answer his conception of “ culture,” provided he at least tries to answer the question, and has not already become dumbfounded with astonishment. On the other hand, many a being more nobly and delicately endowed by nature, though he may have gradually become a critical barbarian in the manner described, might have something to say about the unexpected as well as totally unintelligible effect that a successful performance of Lohengrin, for example, had on him—except that perhaps there was no helpful interpreting hand to guide him; so the incomprehensibly different and altogether incomparable sensation that thrilled him remained isolated and, like a mysterious star, became extinct after a short period of brilliance. But it was then that he had an inkling of what an aesthetic listener is. 23 Whoever wishes to test rigorously to what extent he himself is related to the true aesthetic listener or belongs to the community of the Socratic-critical persons needs only to examine sincerely the feeling with which he accepts miracles represented on the stage: whether he feels his historical sense, which insists on strict psychological causality, insulted by them, whether he makes a benevolent concession and admits the miracle as a phenomenon intelligible to childhood but alien to him, or whether he experiences anything else. For in this way he will be able to determine to what extent he is capable of understanding myth as a concentrated image of the world that, as a condensation of phenomena, cannot dispense with miracles. It is probable, however, that almost everyone, upon close examination, finds that the critical-historical spirit of our culture has so affected him that he can only make the former existence of myth credible to himself by means of scholarship, through intermediary abstractions. But without myth every culture loses the healthy natural power of its creativity: only a horizon defined by myths completes and unifies a whole cultural movement. Myth alone saves all the powers of the imagination and of the Apollinian dream from their aimless wanderings. The images of the myth have to be the unnoticed omnipresent demonic guardians, under whose care the young soul grows to maturity and whose signs help the man to interpret his life and struggles. Even the state knows no more powerful unwritten laws than the mythical foundation that guarantees its connection with religion and its growth from mythical notions. By way of comparison let us now picture the abstract man, untutored by myth; abstract education; abstract morality; abstract law; abstract state; let us imagine the lawless roving of the artistic imagination, unchecked by any native myth; let us think of a culture that has no fixed and sacred primordial site but is doomed to exhaust all possibilities and to nourish itself wretchedly on all other cultures—there we have the present age, the result of that Socratism which is bent on the destruction of myth. And now the mythless man stands eternally hungry, surrounded by all past ages, and digs and grubs for roots, even if he has to dig for them among the remotest antiquities. The tremendous historical need of our unsatisfied modern culture, the assembling around one of countless other cultures, the consuming desire for knowledge—what does all this point to, if not to the loss of myth, the loss of the mythical home, the mythical maternal womb? Let us ask ourselves whether the feverish and uncanny excitement of this culture is anything but the greedy seizing and snatching at food of a hungry man—and who would care to contribute anything to a culture that cannot be satisfied no matter how much it devours, and at whose contact the most vigorous and wholesome nourishment is changed into “ history and criticism”? We should also have to regard our German character with sorrowful despair, if it had already become inextricably entangled in, or even identical with, its culture, as we may observe to our horror in the case of civilized France. What for a long time was the great advantage of France and the cause of her vast superiority, namely, this very identity of people and culture, might compel us in view of this sight to congratulate ourselves that this so questionable culture of ours has as yet nothing in common with the noble core of our people’s character? On the contrary, all our hopes stretch out longingly toward the perception that beneath this restlessly palpitating cultural life and convulsion there is concealed a glorious, intrinsically healthy, primordial power that, to be sure, stirs vigorously only at intervals in stupendous moments, and then continues to dream of a future awakening. It is from this abyss that the German Reformation came forth; and in its chorales the future tune of German music resounded for the first time. So deep, courageous, and spiritual, so exuberantly good and tender did this chorale of Luther sound—as the first Dionysian luring call breaking forth from dense thickets at the approach of spring. And in competing echoes the solemnly exuberant procession of Dionysian revelers responded, to whom we are indebted for German music—and to whom we shall be indebted for the rebirth of German myth. I know that I must now lead the sympathizing and attentive friend to an elevated position of lonely contemplation, where he will have but a few companions, and I call out encouragingly to him that we must hold fast to our luminous guides, the Greeks. To purify our aesthetic insight, we have previously borrowed from them the two divine figures who rule over separate realms of art, and concerning whose mutual contact and enhancement we have acquired some notion through Greek tragedy. It had to appear to us that the demise of Greek tragedy was brought about through a remarkable and forcible dissociation of these two primordial artistic drives. To this process there corresponded a degeneration and transformation of the character of the Greek people, which calls for serious reflection on how necessary and close the fundamental connections are between art and the people, myth and custom, tragedy and the state. This demise of tragedy was at the same time the demise of myth. Until then the Greeks had felt involuntarily impelled to relate all their experiences immediately to their myths, indeed to understand them only in this relation. Thus even the immediate present had to appear to them right away sub specie aeterni [Under the aspect of the eternal.] and in a certain sense as timeless. But the state no less than art dipped into this current of the timeless to find rest in it from the burden and the greed of the moment. And any people—just as, incidentally, also any individual—is worth only as much as it is able to press upon its experiences the stamp of the eternal; for thus it is, as it were, desecularized and shows its unconscious inward convictions of the relativity of time and of the true, that is metaphysical, significance of life. The opposite of this happens when a people begins to comprehend itself historically and
to smash the mythical works that surround it. At that point we generally find a decisive secularization, a break with the unconscious metaphysics of its previous existence, together with all its ethical consequences. Greek art and pre-eminently Greek tragedy delayed above all the destruction of myth. One had to destroy tragedy, too, in order to be able to live away from the soil of home, uninhibited, in the wilderness of thought, custom, and deed. Even now this metaphysical drive still tries to create for itself a certainly attenuated form of transfiguration, in the Socratism of science that strives for life; but on the lower steps, this same drive led only to a feverish search that gradually lost itself in a pandemonium of myths and superstitions that were collected from all over and piled up in confusion: nevertheless the Greek sat among them with an unstilled heart until he learned to mask this fever with Greek cheerfulness and Greek frivolity, becoming a Graeculus [A contemptuous term for a Greek.], or he numbed his mind completely in some dark Oriental superstition. Since the reawakening of Alexandrian-Roman antiquity in the fifteenth century we have approximated this state in the most evident manner, after a long interlude that is difficult to describe. On the heights we encounter the same overabundant lust for knowledge, the same unsatisfied delight in discovery, the same tremendous secularization, and beside it a homeless roving, a greedy crowding around foreign tables, a frivolous deification of the present, or a dully dazed retreat—everything sub specie saeculi [Under the aspect of the times, or the spirit of the age.], of the “ present age.” And these same symptoms allow us to infer the same lack at the heart of this culture, the destruction of myth. It scarcely seems possible to be continuously successful at transplanting a foreign myth without irreparably damaging the tree by this transplantation. In one case it may perhaps be strong and healthy enlugh to eliminate this foreign element in a terrible fight; usually, however, it must consume itself, sick and withered or in diseased superfoetation. We think so highly of the pure and vigorous core of the German character that we dare to expect of it above all others this elimination of the forcibly implanted foreign elements, and consider it possible that the German spirit will return to itself. Some may suppose that this spirit must begin its fight with the elimination of everything Romanic. If so they may recognize an external preparation and encouragement in the victorious fortitude and bloody glory of the last war; but one must still seek the inner necessity in the ambition to be always worthy of the sublime champions on this way, Luther as well as our great artists and poets. But let him never believe that he could fight similar fights without the gods of his house, or his mythical home, without “ bringing back” all German things! And if the German should hesitantly look around for a leader who might bring him back again into his long lost home whose ways and paths he scarcely knows anymore, let him merely listen to the ecstatically luring call of the Dionysian bird that hovers above him and wants to point the way for him. 24 Among the peculiar art effects of musical tragedy we had to emphasize an Apollinian illusion by means of which we were supposed to be saved from the immediate unity with Dionysian music, while our musical excitement could discharge itself in an Apollinian field and in relation to a visible intermediary world that had been interposed. At the same time we thought that we had observed how precisely through this discharge the intermediary world of the action on the stage, and the drama in general, had been made visible and intelligible form the inside to a degree that in all other Apollinian art remains unattained. Where the Apollinian receives wings from the spirit of music and soars, we thus found the highest intensification of its powers, and in this fraternal union of Apollo and Dionysus we had to recognize the apex of the Apollinian as well as the Dionysian aims of art. To be sure, the Apollinian projection that is thus illuminated from inside by music does not achieve the peculiar effect of the weaker degrees of Apollinian art. What the epic or the animated stone can do, compelling the contemplative eye to find calm delight in the world of individuation, that could not be attained here, in spite of a higher animation and clarity. We looked at the drama and with penetrating eye reached its inner world of motives—and yet we felt as if only a parable passed us by, whose most profound meaning we almost thought we could guess and that we wished to draw away like a curtain in order to behold the primordial image behind it. The brightest clarity of the image did not suffice us, for this seemed to wish just as much to reveal something as to conceal something. Its revelation, being like a parable, seemed to summon us to teat the veil and to uncover the mysterious background; but at the same time this all-illuminated total visibility cast a spell over the eyes and prevented them from penetrating deeper. Those who have never had the experience of having to see at the same time that they also longed to transcend all seeing will scarcely be able to imagine how definitely and clearly these two processes coexist and are felt at the same time, as one contemplates the tragic myth. But all truly aesthetic spectators will confirm that among the peculiar effects of tragedy this coexistence is the most remarkable. Now transfer this phenomenon of the aesthetic spectator into an analogous process in the tragic artist, and you will have understood the genesis of the tragic myth. With the Apollinian art sphere he shares the complete pleasure in mere appearance and in seeing, yet at the same time he negates this pleasure and finds a still higher satisfaction in the destruction of the visible world of mere appearance. The content of the tragic myth is , first of all, an epic event and the glorification of the fighting hero. But what is the origin of this enigmatic trait that the suffering and the fate of the hero, the most painful triumphs, the most agonizing oppositions of motives, in short, the exemplification of this wisdom of Silenus, or, to put it aesthetically, that which is ugly and disharmonic, is represented ever anew in such countless forms and with such a distinct preference—and precisely in the most fruitful and youthful period of a people? Surely a higher pleasure must be perceived in all this. That life really so tragic would least of all explain the origin of an art form—assuming that art is not merely imitation of the reality of nature but rather a metaphysical supplement of the reality of nature, placed beside it for its overcoming. The tragic myth too, insofar as it belongs to art at all, participates fully in this metaphysical intention of art to transfigure. But what does it transfigure when it presents the world of appearance in the image of the suffering hero? Least of all the “ reality” of this world of appearance, for it says to us: “ Look there! Look closely! This is your life, this is the hand on the clock of your existence.” And the myth should show us this life in order to thus transfigure it? But if not, in what then lies the aesthetic pleasure with which we let these images, too, pass before us? I
asked about the aesthetic pleasure, though I know full well that many of these images also produce at times a moral delight, for example, under the form of pity or moral triumph. But those who would derive the effect of the tragic solely from these moral sources—which, to be sure, has been the custom in aesthetics all too long—should least of all believe that they have thus accomplished something for art, which above all must demand purity in its sphere. If you would explain the tragic myth, the first requirement is to seek the pleasure that is peculiar to it in the purely aesthetic sphere, without transgressing into the region of pity, fear, or the morally sublime. How can the ugly and the disharmonic, the content of the tragic myth, stimulate aesthetic pleasure? Here it becomes necessary to take a bold running start and leap into a metaphysics of art, by repeating the sentence written above [Section 5], that existence and thee world seem justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon. In this sense, it is precisely the tragic myth that has to convince us that even the ugly and disharmonic are part of an artistic game that the will in the eternal amplitude of its pleasure plays with itself. But this primordial phenomenon of Dionysian art is difficult to grasp, and there is only one direct way to make it intelligible and grasp it immediately: through the wonderful significance of musical dissonance. Quite generally, only music, placed beside the world, can give us an idea of what is meant by the justification of the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. The joy aroused by the tragic myth has the same origin as the joyous sensation of dissonance in music. The Dionysian, with its primordial joy experienced even in pain, is the common source of music and tragic myth. Is it not possible that by calling to our aid the musical relation of dissonance we may meanwhile have made the difficult problem of the tragic effect much easier? For we now understand what it means to wish to see tragedy and at the same time to long to get beyond all seeing: referring to the artistically employed dissonances, we should have to characterize the corresponding state by saying that we desire to hear and at the same time long to get beyond all hearing. The striving for the infinite, the wing-beat of longing that accompanies the highest delight in clearly perceived reality, reminds us that in both states we must recognize a Dionysian phenomenon: again and again it reveals to us the playful construction and destruction of the individual world as the overflow of a primordial delight. Thus the dark Heraclitus compares the world-building force to a playing child that places stones here and there and builds sand hills only to overthrow them again. In order, then, to form a true estimate of the Dionysian capacity of a people, we must not only think of their music, but also just as necessarily of their tragic myth, as the second witness of this capacity. Considering this extremely close relationship between music and myth, one must suppose that a degeneration and depravation of the one will involve a deterioration of the other, if the weakening of the myth really expresses a weakening of the Dionysian capacity. Concerning both, however, a glance at the development of the German character should not leave us in any doubt. In the opera, just as in the abstract character of our mythless existence, in an art degenerated to mere entertainment as will as in a life guided by concepts, the inartistic as well as life-consuming nature of Socratic optimism had revealed itself to us. Yet we were comforted by indications that nevertheless in some inaccessible abyss the German spirit still rests and dreams, undestroyed, in glorious health, profundity and Dionysian strength, like a knight sunk in slumber; and from this abyss the Dionysian song rises to our ears to let us know that this German knight is still dreaming his primordial Dionysian myth in blissfully serious visions. Let no one believe that the German spirit has forever lost its mythical home when it can sill understand so plainly the voices of the birds that tell of that home. Some day it will find itself awake in all the morning freshness following a tremendous sleep: then it will slay dragons, destroy vicious dwarfs, wake Br�nhilde—and even Wotan’s spear will not be able to stop this course! My friends, you who believe in Dionysian music, you also know what tragedy means to us. There we have tragic myth reborn from music—and in this myth we can hope for everything and forget what is most painful. What is most painful for all of us, however, is—the prolonged degradation in which the German genius has lived, estranged from house and home, in the service of vicious dwarfs. You understand my words—as you will also, in conclusion, understand my hopes. 25 Music and tragic myth are equally expressions of the Dionysian capacity of a people, and they are inseparable. Both derive from a sphere of art that lies beyond the Apollinian; both transfigure a region in whose joyous chords dissonance as well as the terrible image of the world fade away charmingly; both play with the sting of displeasure, trusting in their exceedingly powerful magic arts; and by means of this play both justify the existence of even the “ worst world.” Thus the Dionysian is seen to be, compared to the Apollinian, the eternal and original artistic power that first calls the whole world of phenomena into existence—and it is only in the midst of this world that a new transfiguring illusion becomes necessary in order to keep the animated world of individuation alive. If we could imagine dissonance become man—and what else is man?—this dissonance, to be able to live, would need a splendid illusion that would cover dissonance with a veil of beauty. This is the true artistic aim of Apollo in whose name we comprehend all those countless illusions of the beauty of mere appearance that at every moment make life worth living at all and prompt the desire to live on in order to experience the next moment. Of this foundation of all existence—the Dionysian basic ground of the world—not one whit more may enter the consciousness of the human individual than can be overcome again by this Apollinian power of transfiguration. Thus these two art drives must unfold their powers in a strict proportion, according to the law of eternal justice. Where the Dionysian powers rise up as impetuously as we experience them now, Apollo, too, must already have descended among us, wrapped in a cloud; and the next generation will probably behold his most ample beautiful effects. That this effect should be necessary, everybody should be able to feel most assuredly by means of intuition, provided he has ever felt, if only in a dream, that he was carried back into an ancient Greek existence. Walking under lofty Ionic colonnades, looking up toward a horizon that was cut off by pure and noble lines, finding reflections of his transfigured shape in the shining marble at his side, and all around him solemnly striding or delicately moving human beings, speaking with harmonious voices and in a rhythmic language of
gestures—in view of this continual influx of beauty, would he not have to exclaim, raising his hand to Apollo: “ Blessed people of Hellas! How great must Dionysus be among you if the god of Delos considers such magic necessary to heal your dithyrambic madness!” To a man in such a mood, however, an old Athenian, looking up at him with the sublime eyes of Aeschylus, might reply: “ But say this, too, curious stranger: how much did this people have to suffer to be able to become so beautiful! But now follow me to witness a tragedy, and sacrifice with me in the temple of both deities!”
PHILOSOPHY DURING THE TRAGIC AGE OF THE GREEKS Translated by M Mugge (circa 1874) IF we know the aims of humans who are strangers to us, it is sufficient for us to approve of or condemn them as wholes. Those who stand nearer to us we judge according to the means by which they further their aims; we often disapprove of their aims, but love them for the sake of their means and the style of their volition. Now philosophical systems are absolutely true only to their founders, to all later philosophers they are usually one big mistake, and to feebler minds a sum of mistakes and truths; at any rate if regarded as highest aim they are an error, and in so far reprehensible. Therefore many disapprove of all philosophers, because their aims are not ours; they are those whom I called ” strangers to us.” Whoever on the contrary finds any pleasure at all in great humans finds pleasure also in such systems, be they ever so erroneous, for they all have in them one point which is irrefutable, a personal touch, and color; one can use them in order to form a picture of the philosopher, just as from a plant growing in a certain place one can form conclusions as to the soil. That mode of life, of viewing human affairs at any rate, has existed once and is therefore possible; the “ system” is the growth in this soil or at least a part of this system….I narrate the history of those philosophers simplified: I shall bring into relief only that point in every system which is a little bit of personality, and belongs to that which is irrefutable, and indiscussable, which history has to preserve: it is a first attempt to regain and recreate those natures by comparison, and to let the polyphony of Greek nature at least resound once again: the task is, to bring to light that which we must always love and revere and of which no later knowledge can rob us: the great human. LATER (Towards the end of 1879) THIS attempt to relate the history of the earlier Greek philosophers distinguishes itself from similar attempts by its brevity. This has been accomplished by mentioning but a small number of the doctrines of every philosopher, ie., by incompleteness. Those doctrines, however, have been selected in which the personal element of the philosopher re echoes most strongly; whereas a complete enumeration of all possible propositions handed down to us — as is the custom in text books-merely brings about one thing, the absolute silencing of the personal element. It is through this that those records become so tedious; for in systems which have been refuted it is only this personal element that can still interest us, for this alone is eternally irrefutable. It is possible to shape the picture of a person out of three anecdotes. I endeavor to bring into relief three anecdotes out of every system and abandon the remainder. There are opponents of philosophy, and one does well to listen to them; especially if they dissuade the distempered heads of Germans from metaphysics and on the other hand preach to them purification through Physis, as Goethe did,or healing through Music, as Wagner. The physicians of the people condemn philosophy; one, therefore, who wants to justify it, must show to what purpose healthy nations use and have used philosophy. If one can show that, perhaps even the sick people will benefit by learning why philosophy is harmful just to them. There are indeed good instances of a health which can exist without any philosophy or with quite a moderate, almost a toying use of it; thus the Romans at their best period lived without philosophy. But where is to be found the instance of a nation becoming diseased whom philosophy had restored to health ? Whenever philosophy showed itself helping, saving, prophylactic, it was with healthy people; it made sick people still more ill. If ever a nation was disintegrated and but loosely connected with the individuals, never has philosophy bound these individuals closer to the whole. If ever an individual was willing to stand aside and plant around oneself the hedge of self sufficiency, philosophy was always ready to isolate one still more and to destroy one through isolation. She is dangerous where she is not in her full right, and it is only the health of a nation but not that of every nation which gives her this right. Let us now look around for the highest authority as to what constitutes the health of a nation. The Greeks, as the truly healthy nation, have justified philosophy once for all by having philosophised; and that indeed more than all other nations. They could not even stop at the right time, for still in their withered age they comported themselves as heated votaries of philosophy, although they understood by it only the pious sophistries and the sacrosanct hairsplittings of Christian dogmatics. They themselves have much lessened their merit for barbarian posterity by not being able to stop at the right time, because that posterity in its uninstructed and impetuous youth necessarily became entangled in those artfully woven nets and ropes. On the contrary, the Greek knew how to begin at the right time, and this lesson, when one ought to begin philosophising,they teach more distinctly than any other nation. For it should not be begun when trouble comes as perhaps some presume who derive philosophy from moroseness; no, but in good fortune, in mature adulthood, out of the midst of the fervent serenity of a brave and victorious individual’s estate. The fact that the Greeks philosophised at that time throws light on the nature of philosophy and her task as well as on the nature of the Greeks themselves. Had they at that time been such common sense and precocious experts and gayards as the learned Philistine of our days perhaps imagines, or had
their life been only a state of voluptuous soaring, chiming, breathing and feeling, as the unlearned visionary is pleased to assume, then the spring of philosophy would not have come to light among them. At the best there would have come forth a brook soon trickling away in the sand or evaporating into fogs, but never that broad river flowing forth with the proud beat of its waves, the river which we know as Greek Philosophy. True, it has been eagerly pointed out how much the Greeks could find and learn abroad,in the Orient, and how many different things they may easily have brought from there. Of course an odd spectacle resulted, when certain scholars brought together the alleged masters from the Orient and the possible disciples from Greece, and exhibited Zarathustra near Heraclitus, the Hindoos near the Eleatics, the Egyptians near Empedocles, or even Anaxagoras among the Jews and Pythagoras among the Chinese. In detail little has been determined; but we should in no way object to the general idea, if people did not burden us with the conclusion that therefore Philosophy had only been imported into Greece and was not indigenous to the soil, yea, that she, as something foreign, had possibly ruined rather than improved the Greek. Nothing is more foolish than to swear by the fact that the Greeks had an autochthonous culture; no, they rather absorbed all the culture flourishing among other nations, and they advanced so far, just because they understood how to hurl the spear further from the very spot where another nation had let it rest. They were admirable in the art of learning productively, and so, like them, we ought to learn from our neighbors, with a view to Life not to pedantic knowledge, using everything learnt as a foothold whence to leap high and still higher than our neighbor. The questions as to the beginning of philosophy are quite negligible, for everywhere in the beginning there is the crude, the unformed, the empty and the ugly; and in all things only the higher stages come into consideration. He who in the place of Greek philosophy prefers to concern himself with that of Egypt and Persia, because the latter are perhaps more “ original” and certainly older, proceeds just as ill advisedly as those who cannot be at ease before they have traced back the Greek mythology, so grand and profound, to such physical trivialities as sun, lightning, weather and fog, as its prime origins, and who fondly imagine they have rediscovered for instance in the restricted worship of the one celestial vault among the other Indo Germans a purer form of religion than the polytheistic worship of the Greek had been. The road towards the beginning always leads into barbarism, and he who is concerned with the Greeks ought always to keep in mind the fact that the unsubdued thirst for knowledge in itself always barbarises just as much as the hatred of knowledge, and that the Greeks have subdued their inherently insatiable thirst for knowledge by their regard for Life, by an ideal need of Life,-since they wished to live immediately that which they learnt. The Greeks also philosophised as people of culture and with the aims of culture,and therefore saved themselves the trouble of inventing once again the elements of philosophy and knowledge out of some autochthonous conceit, and with a will they at once set themselves to fill out, enhance, raise and purify these elements they had taken over in such a way, that only now in a higher sense and in a purer sphere they became inventors. For they discovered the typical philosopher’s genius, and the inventions of all posterity have added nothing essential. Every nation is put to shame if one points out such a wonderfully idealised company of philosophers as that of the early Greek masters, Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Democritus and Socrates. All those men are integral, entire and self contained, and hewn out of one stone. Severe necessity exists between their thinking and their character. They are not bound by any convention, because at that time no professional class of philosophers and scholars existed. They all stand before us in magnificent solitude as the only ones who then devoted their life exclusively to knowledge. They all possess the virtuous energy of the Ancients, whereby they excel all the later philosophers in finding their own form and in perfecting it by metamorphosis in its most minute details and general aspect. For they were met by no helpful and facilitating fashion. Thus together they form what Schopenhauer, in opposition to the Republic of Scholars, has called a Republic of Geniuses; one giant calls to another across the arid intervals of ages, and, undisturbed by a wanton noisy race of dwarfs, creeping about beneath them, the sublime intercourse of spirits continues. Of this sublime intercourse of spirits I have resolved to relate those items which our modern hardness of hearing might perhaps hear and understand; that means certainly the least of all. It seems to me that those old sages from Thales to Socrates have discussed in that intercourse, although in its most general aspect, everything that constitutes for our contemplation the peculiarly Hellenic. In their intercourse, as already in their personalities, they express distinctly the great features of Greek genius of which the whole of Greek history is a shadowy impression, a hazy copy, which consequently speaks less clearly. If we could rightly interpret the total life of the Greek nation, we should ever find reflected only that picture which in her highest geniuses shines with more resplendent colors. Even the first experience of philosophy on Greek soil, the sanction of the Seven Sages is a distinct and unforgettable line in the picture of the Hellenic. Other nations have their Saints, the Greeks have Sages. Rightly it has been said that a nation is characterised not only by her great citizens but rather by the manner in which she recognises and honors them. In other ages the philosopher is an accidental solitary wanderer in the most hostile environment, either slinking through or pushing through with clenched fists. With the Greek however the philosopher is not accidental; when in the Sixth and Fifth centuries amidst the most frightful dangers and seductions of secularisation the philosopher appears and as it were steps forth from the cave of Trophonios into the very midst of luxuriance, the discoverers’ happiness, the wealth and the sensuousness of the Greek colonies, then we divine that they come as noble warners for the same purpose for which in those centuries Tragedy was born and which the Orphic mysteries in their grotesque hieroglyphics give us to understand. The opinion of those philosophers on Life and Existence altogether means so much more than a modern opinion because they had before themselves Life in a luxuriant perfection, and because with them, unlike us, the sense of the thinker was not muddled by the disunion engendered by the wish for freedom, beauty, fullness of life and the love for truth that only asks: What is the good of Life at all ~ The mission which the philosopher has to discharge within a real Culture, fashioned in a homogeneous style, cannot be clearly conjectured out of our circumstances and experiences for the simple reason that we have no such culture. No, it is only a Culture like the Greek which can answer the question as to that task of the philosopher, only such a Culture can, as I said before, justify philosophy at all; because such a Culture alone knows and can demonstrate why and how the philosopher is not an accidental, chance wanderer driven now hither, now thither. There is a steely necessity which fetters the philosopher to a true Culture: but what if this Culture does not exist. Then philosophers are an incalculable and therefore terror inspiring comets, whereas in the favorable case, they
shine as the central star in the solar system of culture. It is for this reason that the Greeks justify the philosopher, because with them they are no comets.2 After such contemplations it will be accepted without offense if I speak of the pre Platonic philosophers as of a homogeneous company, and devote this paper to them exclusively. Something quite new begins with Plato; or it might be said with equal justice that in comparison with that Republic of Geniuses from Thales to Socrates, the philosophers since Plato lack something essential. Whoever wants to express himself unfavorably about those older masters may call them one sided, and their Epigones, with Plato as head, many sided. Yet it would be more just and unbiased to conceive of the latter as philosophic hybrid characters, of the former as the pure types. Plato himself is the first magnificent hybrid character, and as such finds expression as well in his philosophy as in his personality. In his ideology are united Socratic, Pythagorean, and Heraclitean elements, and for this reason it is no typically pure phenomenon. As person, too, Plato mingles the features of the royally secluded, all-sufficing Heraclitus, of the melancholy compassionate and legislatory Pythagoras and of the psycho-expert dialectician Socrates. All later philosophers are such hybrid�characters; wherever something one sided does come into prominence with them as in the case of the Cynics, it is not type but caricature. Much more important however is the fact that they are founders of sects and that the sects founded by them are all institutions in direct opposition to the Hellenic culture and the unity of its style prevailing up to that time. In their way they seek a redemption, but only for the individuals or at the best for groups of friends and disciples closely connected with them. The activity of the older philosophers tends, although they were unconscious of it, towards a cure and purification on a large scale; the mighty course of Greek culture is not to be stopped; awful dangers are to be removed out of the way of its current; the philosopher protects and defends his native country. Now, since Plato, he is in exile and conspires against his fatherland. It is a real misfortune that so very little of those older philosophic masters has come down to us and that all complete works of theirs are withheld from us. Involuntarily,on account of that loss,we measure them according to wrong standards and allow ourselves to be influenced unfavorably towards them by the mere accidental fact that Plato and Aristotle never lacked appreciators and copyists. Some people presuppose a special providence for books, a fatum libellorum; such a providence however would at any rate be a very malicious one if it deemed it wise to withhold from us the works of Heraclitus, Empedocles’ wonderful poem, and the writings of Democritus, whom the ancients put on a par with Plato, whom he even excels as far as ingenuity goes, and as a substitute put into our hand Stoics, Epicureans and Cicero. Probably the most sublime part of Greek thought and its expression in words is lost to us; a fate which will not surprise the man who remembers the misfortunes of Scotus Erigena or of Pascal, and who considers that even in this enlightened century the first edition of Schopenhauer’s The World As Will And Representation became waste paper. If somebody will presuppose a special fatalistic power with respect to such things he may do so and say with Goethe: ” Let no one complain about and grumble at things vile and mean, they are the real rulers,-however much this be gainsaid!” In particular they are more powerful than the power of truth, Mankind very rarely produces a good book in which with daring freedom is intonated the battle song of truth, the song of philosophic heroism; and yet whether it is to live a century longer or to crumble and moulder into dust and ashes, depends on the most miserable accidents, on the sudden mental eclipse of people’s heads, on superstitious convulsions and antipathies, finally on fingers not too fond of writing or even on eroding bookworms and rainy weather. But we will not lament but rather take the advice of the reproving and consolatory words which Hamann addresses to scholars who lament over lost works. “ Would not the artist who succeeded in throwing a lentil through the eye of a needle have sufficient, with a bushel of lentils, to practice his acquired skill? One would like to put this question to all scholars who do not know how to use the works of the Ancients any better than that man used his lentils.” It might be added in our case that not one more word, anecdote, or date needed to be transmitted to us than has been transmitted, indeed that even much less might have been preserved for us and yet we should have been able to establish the general doctrine that the Greeks justify philosophy. A time which suffers from the so called ” general education” but has no culture and no unity of style in her life hardly knows what to do with philosophy, even if the latter were proclaimed by the very Genius of Truth in the streets and market places. She rather remains at such a time the learned monologue of the solitary rambler, the accidental booty of the individual, the hidden closet�secret or the innocuous chatter between academic senility and childhood. Nobody dare venture to fulfill in oneself the law of philosophy, nobody lives philosophically, with that simple human faith which compelled an Ancient, wherever one was, whatever one did, to deport oneself as a Stoic, when one had once pledged one’s faith to the Stoa. All modern philosophising is limited politically and regulated by the police to learned semblance. Thanks to governments, churches, academies, customs, fashions, and the cowardice of people, it never gets beyond the sigh: ” If only! …” or beyond the knowledge: ” Once upon a time there was …” Philosophy is without rights; therefore modern humans, if they were at all courageous and conscientious, ought to condemn her and perhaps banish her with words similar to those by which Plato banished the tragic poets from his State. Of course there would be left a reply for her, as there remained to those poets against Plato. If one once compelled her to speak out she might say perhaps: “ Miserable Nation! Is it my fault if among you I am on the tramp, like a fortune teller through the land, and must hide and disguise myself, as if I were a great sinner and ye my judges 7 Just look at my sister, Art! It is with her as with me; we have been cast adrift among the Barbarians and no longer know how to save ourselves. Here we are lacking, it is true, every good right; but the judges before whom we find justice judge you also and will tell you: First acquire a culture; then you shall experience what Philosophy can and will do.”Notes : Physis — the ancient Greek’s word for nature; Physis is contrasted to Nomos — law, or human custom. Physis is that which comes-forth by-itself; Nomos is that which comes forth through human making.
ungeb�ndigte Wissenstrieb un = not geb�ndigte = (bring under) control; (Naturkr�fte) Wissenstrieb = the drive for knowledge
ON TRUTH AND LIES IN A NON MORAL SENSE Translated by M Mugge Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of “ world history,” but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die. _One might invent such a fable, and yet he still would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature. There were eternities during which it did not exist. And when it is all over with the human intellect, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no additional mission which would lead it beyond human life. Rather, it is human, and only its possessor and begetter takes it so solemnly-as though the world’s axis turned within it. But if we could communicate with the gnat, we would learn that he likewise flies through the air with the same solemnity, that he feels the flying center of the universe within himself. There is nothing so reprehensible and unimportant in nature that it would not immediately swell up like a balloon at the slightest puff of this power of knowing. And just as every porter wants to have an admirer, so even the proudest of men, the philosopher, supposes that he sees on all sides the eyes of the universe telescopically focused upon his action and thought. It is remarkable that this was brought about by the intellect, which was certainly allotted to these most unfortunate, delicate, and ephemeral beings merely as a device for detaining them a minute within existence.For without this addition they would have every reason to flee this existence as quickly as Lessing’s son. The pride connected with knowing and sensing lies like a blinding fog over the eyes and senses of men, thus deceiving them concerning the value of existence. For this pride contains within itself the most flattering estimation of the value of knowing. Deception is the most general effect of such pride, but even its most particular effects contain within themselves something of the same deceitful character. As a means for the preserving of the individual, the intellect unfolds its principle powers in dissimulation, which is the means by which weaker, less robust individuals preserve themselves-since they have been denied the chance to wage the battle for existence with horns or with the sharp teeth of beasts of prey, This art of dissimulation reaches its peak in man. Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself-in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity-is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them. They are deeply immersed in illusions and in dream images; their eyes merely glide over the surface of things and see “ forms.” Their senses nowhere lead to truth; on the contrary, they are content to receive stimuli and, as it were, to engage in a groping game on the backs of things. Moreover, man permits himself to be deceived in his dreams every night of his life. His moral sentiment does not even make an attempt to prevent this, whereas there are supposed to be men who have stopped snoring through sheer will power. What does man actually know about himself? Is he, indeed, ever able to perceive himself completely, as if laid out in a lighted display case? Does nature not conceal most things from him-even concerning his own body-in order to confine and lock him within a proud, deceptive consciousness, aloof from the coils of the bowels, the rapid flow of the blood stream, and the intricate quivering of the fibers! She threw away the key. And woe to that fatal curiosity which might one day have the power to peer out and down through a crack in the chamber of consciousness and then suspect that man is sustained in the indifference of his ignorance by that which is pitiless, greedy, insatiable, and murderous-as if hanging in dreams on the back of a tiger. Given this situation, where in the world could the drive for truth have come from? Insofar as the individual wants to maintain himself against other individuals, he will under natural circumstances employ the intellect mainly for dissimulation. But at the same time, from boredom and necessity, man wishes to exist socially and with the herd; therefore, he needs to make peace and strives accordingly to banish from his world at least the most flagrant bellum omni contra omnes. This peace treaty brings in its wake something which appears to be the first step toward acquiring that puzzling truth drive: to wit, that which shall count as “ truth” from now on is established. That is to say, a uniformly valid and binding designation is invented for things, and this legislation of language likewise establishes the first laws of truth. For the contrast between truth and lie arises here for the first time. The liar is a person who uses the valid designations, the words, in order to make something which is unreal appear to be real. He says, for example, “ I am rich,” when the proper designation for his condition would be “ poor.” He misuses fixed conventions by means of arbitrary substitutions or even reversals of names. If he does this in a selfish and moreover harmful manner, society will cease to trust him and will thereby exclude him. What men avoid by excluding the liar is not so much being defrauded as it is being harmed by means of fraud. Thus, even at this stage, what they hate is basically not deception itself, but rather the unpleasant, hated consequences of certain sorts of deception. It is in a similarly restricted sense that man now wants nothing but truth: he desires the pleasant, lifepreserving consequences of truth. He is indifferent toward pure knowledge which has no consequences; toward those truths which are possibly harmful and destructive he is even
hostilely inclined. And besides, what about these linguistic conventions themselves? Are they perhaps products of knowledge, that is, of the sense of truth? Are designations congruent with things? Is language the adequate expression of all realities? It is only by means of forgetfulness that man can ever reach the point of fancying himself to possess a “ truth” of the grade just indicated. If he will not be satisfied with truth in the form of tautology, that is to say, if he will not be content with empty husks, then he will always exchange truths for illusions. What is a word? It is the copy in sound of a nerve stimulus. But the further inference from the nerve stimulus to a cause outside of us is already the result of a false and unjustifiable application of the principle of sufficient reason. If truth alone had been the deciding factor in the genesis of language, and if the standpoint of certainty had been decisive for designations, then how could we still dare to say “ the stone is hard,” as if “ hard” were something otherwise familiar to us, and not merely a totally subjective stimulation! We separate things according to gender, designating the tree as masculine and the plant as feminine. What arbitrary assignments! How far this oversteps the canons of certainty! We speak of a “ snake”: this designation touches only upon its ability to twist itself and could therefore also fit a worm. What arbitrary differentiations! What one-sided preferences, first for this, then for that property of a thing! The various languages placed side by side show that with words it is never a question of truth, never a question of adequate expression; otherwise, there would not be so many languages. The “ thing in itself” (which is precisely what the pure truth, apart from any of its consequences, would be) is likewise something quite incomprehensible to the creator of language and something not in the least worth striving for. This creator only designates the relations of things to men, and for expressing these relations he lays hold of the boldest metaphors. To begin with, a nerve stimulus is transferred into an image: first metaphor. The image, in turn, is imitated in a sound: second metaphor. And each time there is a complete overleaping of one sphere, right into the middle of an entirely new and different one. One can imagine a man who is totally deaf and has never had a sensation of sound and music. Perhaps such a person will gaze with astonishment at Chladni’s sound figures; perhaps he will discover their causes in the vibrations of the string and will now swear that he must know what men mean by “ sound.” It is this way with all of us concerning language; we believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things-metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities. In the same way that the sound appears as a sand figure, so the mysterious X of the thing in itself first appears as a nerve stimulus, then as an image, and finally as a sound. Thus the genesis of language does not proceed logically in any case, and all the material within and with which the man of truth, the scientist, and the philosopher later work and build, if not derived from never-never land, is a least not derived from the essence of things. In particular, let us further consider the formation of concepts. Every word instantly becomes a concept precisely insofar as it is not supposed to serve as a reminder of the unique and entirely individual original experience to which it owes its origin; but rather, a word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar caseswhich means, purely and simply, cases which are never equal and thus altogether unequal. Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things. Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept “ leaf” is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects. This awakens the idea that, in addition to the leaves, there exists in nature the “ leaf”: the original model according to which all the leaves were perhaps woven, sketched, measured, colored, curled, and painted-but by incompetent hands, so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct, trustworthy, and faithful likeness of the original model. We call a person “ honest,” and then we ask “ why has he behaved so honestly today?” Our usual answer is, “ on account of his honesty.” Honesty! This in turn means that the leaf is the cause of the leaves. We know nothing whatsoever about an essential quality called “ honesty”; but we do know of countless individualized and consequently unequal actions which we equate by omitting the aspects in which they are unequal and which we now designate as “ honest” actions. Finally we formulate from them a qualities occulta which has the name “ honesty.” We obtain the concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us. For even our contrast between individual and species is something anthropomorphic and does not originate in the essence of things; although we should not presume to claim that this contrast does not correspond to the essence of things: that would of course be a dogmatic assertion and, as such, would be just as indemonstrable as its opposite. What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and; anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusionsthey are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins. We still do not yet know where the drive for truth comes from. For so far we have heard only of the duty which society imposes in order to exist: to be truthful means to employ the usual metaphors. Thus, to express it morally, this is the duty to lie according to a fixed convention, to lie with the herd and in a manner binding upon everyone. Now man of course forgets that this is the way things stand for him. Thus he lies in the manner indicated, unconsciously and in accordance with habits which are centuries’ old; and precisely by means of this unconsciousness and forgetfulness he arrives at his sense of truth. From the sense that one is obliged to designate one thing as “ red,” another as “ cold,” and a third as “ mute,” there arises a moral impulse in regard to truth. The venerability, reliability, and utility of truth is something which a person demonstrates for himself from the contrast with the liar, whom no one trusts and everyone excludes. As a “ rational” being, he now places his behavior under the contol of abstractions. He will no longer tolerate being carried away by sudden impressions, by intuitions. First he universalizes all these impressions into less colorful, cooler concepts, so that he can entrust the guidance of his life and conduct to them. Everything which distinguishes man from the animals depends upon this ability to volatilize perceptual metaphors in a schema, and thus to dissolve an image into a concept.
For something is possible in the realm of these schemata which could never be achieved with the vivid first impressions: the construction of a pyramidal order according to castes and degrees, the creation of a new world of laws, privileges, subordinations, and clearly marked boundaries-a new world, one which now confronts that other vivid world of first impressions as more solid, more universal, better known, and more human than the immediately perceived world, and thus as the regulative and imperative world. Whereas each perceptual metaphor is individual and without equals and is therefore able to elude all classification, the great edifice of concepts displays the rigid regularity of a Roman columbarium and exhales in logic that strength and coolness which is characteristic of mathematics. Anyone who has felt this cool breath [of logic] will hardly believe that even the concept-which is as bony, foursquare, and transposable as a die-is nevertheless merely the residue of a metaphor, and that the illusion which is involved in the artistic transference of a nerve stimulus into images is, if not the mother, then the grandmother of every single concept. But in this conceptual crap game “ truth” means using every die in the designated manner, counting its spots accurately, fashioning the right categories, and never violating the order of caste and class rank. Just as the Romans and Etruscans cut up the heavens with rigid mathematical lines and confined a god within each of the spaces thereby delimited, as within a templum, so every people has a similarly mathematically divided conceptual heaven above themselves and henceforth thinks that truth demands that each conceptual god be sought only within his own sphere. Here one may certainly admire man as a mighty genius of construction, who succeeds in piling an infinitely complicated dome of concepts upon an unstable foundation, and, as it were, on running water. Of course, in order to be supported by such a foundation, his construction must be like one constructed of spiders’ webs: delicate enough to be carried along by the waves, strong enough not to be blown apart by every wind. As a genius of construction man raises himself far above the bee in the following way: whereas the bee builds with wax that he gathers from nature, man builds with the far more delicate conceptual material which he first has to manufacture from himself. In this he is greatly to be admired, but not on account of his drive for truth or for pure knowledge of things. When someone hides something behind a bush and looks for it again in the same place and finds it there as well, there is not much to praise in such seeking and finding. Yet this is how matters stand regarding seeking and finding “ truth” within the realm of reason. If I make up the definition of a mammal, and then, after inspecting a camel, declare “ look, a mammal’ I have indeed brought a truth to light in this way, but it is a truth of limited value. That is to say, it is a thoroughly anthropomorphic truth which contains not a single point which would be “ true in itself” or really and universally valid apart from man. At bottom, what the investigator of such truths is seeking is only the metamorphosis of the world into man. He strives to understand the world as something analogous to man, and at best he achieves by his struggles the feeling of assimilation. Similar to the way in which astrologers considered the stars to be in man’s service and connected with his happiness and sorrow, such an investigator considers the entire universe in connection with man: the entire universe as the infinitely fractured echo of one original sound-man; the entire universe as the infinitely multiplied copy of one original picture-man. His method is to treat man as the measure of all things, but in doing so he again proceeds from the error of believing that he hasthese things [which he intends to measure] immediately before him as mere objects. He forgets that the original perceptual metaphors are metaphors and takes them to be the things themselves. Only by forgetting this primitive world of metaphor can one live with any repose, security, and consistency: only by means of the petrification and coagulation of a mass of images which originally streamed from the primal faculty of human imagination like a fiery liquid, only in the invincible faith that this sun, this window, this table is a truth in itself, in short, only by forgetting that he himself is an artistically creating subject, does man live with any repose, security, and consistency. If but for an instant he could escape from the prison walls of this faith, his”self consciousness” would be immediately destroyed. It is even a difficult thing for him to admit to himself that the insect or the bird perceives an entirely different world from the one that man does, and that the question of which of these perceptions of the world is the more correct one is quite meaningless, for this would have to have been decided previously in accordance with the criterion of the correct perception, which means, in accordance with a criterion which is not available. But in any case it seems to me that “ the correct perception”-which would mean “ the adequate expression of an object in the subject”-is a contradictory impossibility. For between two absolutely different spheres, as between subject and object, there is no causality, no correctness, and no expression; there is, at most, an aesthetic relation: I mean, a suggestive transference, a stammering translation into a completely foreign tongue-for which I there is required, in any case, a freely inventive intermediate sphere and mediating force. “ Appearance” is a word that contains many temptations, which is why I avoid it as much as possible. For it is not true that the essence of things “ appears” in the empirical world. A painter without hands who wished to express in song the picture before his mind would, by means of this substitution of spheres, still reveal more about the essence of things than does the empirical world. Even the relationship of a nerve stimulus to the generated image is not a necessary one. But when the same image has been generated millions of times and has been handed down for many generations and finally appears on the same occasion every time for all mankind, then it acquires at last the same meaning for men it would have if it were the sole necessary image and if the relationship of the original nerve stimulus to the generated image were a strictly causal one. In the same manner, an eternally repeated dream would certainly be felt and judged to be reality. But the hardening and congealing of a metaphor guarantees absolutely nothing concerning its necessity and exclusive justification. Every person who is familiar with such considerations has no doubt felt a deep mistrust of all idealism of this sort: just as often as he has quite early convinced himself of the eternal consistency, omnipresence, and fallibility of the laws of nature. He has concluded that so far as we can penetrate here-from the telescopic heights to the microscopic depthseverything is secure, complete, infinite, regular, and without any gaps. Science will be able to dig successfully in this shaft forever, and the things that are discovered will harmonize with and not contradict each other. How little does this resemble a product of the imagination, for if it were such, there should be some place where the illusion and reality can be divined. Against this, the following must be said: if each us had a different kind of sense perception-if we could only perceive things now as a bird, now as a worm, now as a plant, or if one of us saw a stimulus as red, another as blue, while a third even heard the same stimulus as a sound-then no one would speak of such a regularity of nature, rather, nature would be grasped only as a creation which is subjective in the highest degree. After all, what is a law of nature as such for us? We are not acquainted with it in itself, but only with its
effects, which means in its relation to other laws of nature-which, in turn, are known to us only as sums of relations. Therefore all these relations always refer again to others and are thoroughly incomprehensible to us in their essence. All that we actually know about these laws of nature is what we ourselves bring to them-time and space, and therefore relationships of succession and number. But everything marvelous about the laws of nature, everything that quite astonishes us therein and seems to demand explanation, everything that might lead us to distrust idealism: all this is completely and solely contained within the mathematical strictness and inviolability of our representations of time and space. But we produce these representations in and from ourselves with the same necessity with which the spider spins. If we are forced to comprehend all things only under these forms, then it ceases to be amazing that in all things we actually comprehend nothing but these forms. For they must all bear within themselves the laws of number, and it is precisely number which is most astonishing in things. All that conformity to law, which impresses us so much in the movement of the stars and in chemical processes, coincides at bottom with those properties which we bring to things. Thus it is we who impress ourselves in this way. In conjunction with this, it of course follows that the artistic process of metaphor formation with which every sensation begins in us already presupposes these forms and thus occurs within them. The only way in which the possibility of subsequently constructing a new conceptual edifice from metaphors themselves can be explained is by the firm persistence of these original forms That is to say, this conceptual edifice is an imitation of temporal, spatial, and numerical relationships in the domain of metaphor. We have seen how it is originally language which works on the construction of concepts, a labor taken over in later ages by science. Just as the bee simultaneously constructs cells and fills them with honey, so science works unceasingly on this great columbarium of concepts, the graveyard of perceptions. It is always building new, higher stories and shoring up, cleaning, and renovating the old cells; above all, it takes pains to fill up this monstrously towering framework and to arrange therein the entire empirical world, which is to say, the anthropomorphic world. Whereas the man of action binds his life to reason and its concepts so that he will not be swept away and lost, the scientific investigator builds his hut right next to the tower of science so that he will be able to work on it and to find shelter for himself beneath those bulwarks which presently exist. And he requires shelter, for there are frightful powers which continuously break in upon him, powers which oppose scientific “ truth” with completely different kinds of “ truths” which bear on their shields the most varied sorts of emblems. The drive toward the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive, which one cannot for a single instant dispense with in thought, for one would thereby dispense with man himself. This drive is not truly vanquished and scarcely subdued by the fact that a regular and rigid new world is constructed as its prison from its own ephemeral products, the concepts. It seeks a new realm and another channel for its activity, and it finds this in myth and in art generally. This drive continually confuses the conceptual categories and cells by bringing forward new transferences, metaphors, and metonymies. It continually manifests an ardent desire to refashion the world which presents itself to waking man, so that it will be as colorful, irregular, lacking in results and coherence, charming, and eternally new as the world of dreams. Indeed, it is only by means of the rigid and regular web of concepts that the waking man clearly sees that he is awake; and it is precisely because of this that he sometimes thinks that he must be dreaming when this web of concepts is torn by art. Pascal is right in maintaining that if the same dream came to us every night we would be just as occupied with it as we are with the things that we see every day. “ If a workman were sure to dream for twelve straight hours every night that he was king,” said Pascal, “ I believe that he would be just as happy as a king who dreamt for twelve hours every night that he was a workman. In fact, because of the way that myth takes it for granted that miracles are always happening, the waking life of a mythically inspired people-the ancient Greeks, for instancemore closely resembles a dream than it does the waking world of a scientifically disenchanted thinker. When every tree can suddenly speak as a nymph, when a god in the shape of a bull can drag away maidens, when even the goddess Athena herself is suddenly seen in the company of Peisastratus driving through the market place of Athens with a beautiful team of horses-and this is what the honest Athenian believed- then, as in a dream, anything is possible at each moment, and all of nature swarms around man as if it were nothing but a masquerade of the gods, who were merely amusing themselves by deceiving men in all these shapes. But man has an invincible inclination to allow himself to be deceived D and is, as it were, enchanted with happiness when the rhapsodist tells i him epic fables as if they were true, or when the actor in the theater acts more royally than any real king. So long as it is able to deceive without injuring, that master of deception, the intellect, is free; it is released from its former slavery and celebrates its Saturnalia. It is never more luxuriant, richer, prouder, more clever and more daring. With creative pleasure it throws metaphors into confusion and displaces the boundary stones of abstractions, so that, for example, it designates the stream as “ the moving path which carries man where he would otherwise walk.” The intellect has now thrown the token of bondage from itself. At other times it endeavors, with gloomy officiousness, to show the way and to demonstrate the tools to a poor individual who covets existence; it is like a servant who goes in search of booty and prey for his master. But now it has become the master and it dares to wipe from its face the expression of indigence. In comparison with its previous conduct, everything that it now does bears the mark of dissimulation, just as that previous conduct did of distortion. The free intellect copies human life, but it considers this life to be something good and seems to be quite satisfied with it. That immense framework and planking of concepts to which the needy man clings his whole life long in order to preserve himself is nothing but a scaffolding and toy for the most audacious feats of the liberated intellect. And when it smashes this framework to pieces, throws it into confusion, and puts it back together in an ironic fashion, pairing the most alien things and separating the closest, it is demonstrating that it has no need of these makeshifts of indigence and that it will now be guided by intuitions rather than by concepts. There is no regular path which leads from these intuitions into the land of ghostly schemata, the land of abstractions. There exists no word for these intuitions; when man sees them he grows dumb, or else he speaks only in forbidden metaphors and in unheard-of combinations of concepts. He does this so that by shattering and mocking the old conceptual barriers he may at least correspond creatively to the impression of the powerful present intuition.
There are ages in which the rational man and the intuitive man stand side by side, the one in fear of intuition, the other with scorn for abstraction. The latter is just as irrational as the former is inartistic. They both desire to rule over life: the former, by knowing how to meet his principle needs by means of foresight, prudence, and regularity; the latter, by disregarding these needs and, as an “ overjoyed hero,” counting as real only that life which has been disguised as illusion and beauty. Whenever, as was perhaps the case in ancient Greece, the intuitive man handles his weapons more authoritatively and victoriously than his opponent, then, under favorable circumstances, a culture can take shape and art’s mastery over life can be established. All the manifestations of such a life will be accompanied by this dissimulation, this disavowal of indigence, this glitter of metaphorical intuitions, and, in general, this immediacy of deception: neither the house, nor the gait, nor the clothes, nor the clay jugs give evidence of having been invented because of a pressing need. It seems as if they were all intended to express an exalted happiness, an OIympian cloudlessness, and, as it were, a playing with seriousness. The man who is guided by concepts and abstractions only succeeds by such means in warding off misfortune, without ever gaining any happiness for himself from these abstractions. And while he aims for the greatest possible freedom from pain, the intuitive man, standing in the midst of a culture, already reaps from his intuition a harvest of continually inflowing illumination, cheer, and redemption-in addition to obtaining a defense against misfortune. To be sure, he suffers more intensely, when he suffers; he even suffers more frequently, since he does not understand how to learn from experience and keeps falling over and over again into the same ditch. He is then just as irrational in sorrow as he is in happiness: he cries aloud and will not be consoled. How differently the stoical man who learns from experience and governs himself by concepts is affected by the same misfortunes! This man, who at other times seeks nothing but sincerity, truth, freedom from deception, and protection against ensnaring surprise attacks, now executes a masterpiece of deception: he executes his masterpiece of deception in misfortune, as the other type of man executes his in times of happiness. He wears no quivering and changeable human face, but, as it were, a mask with dignified, symmetrical features. He does not cry; he does not even alter his voice. When a real storm cloud thunders above him, he wraps himself in his cloak, and with slow steps he walks from beneath it.
HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY - INAUGURAL ADDRESS DELIVERED AT BALE UNIVERSITY TRANSLATED BY J.M. Kennedy 28th of May 1869. At the present day no clear and consistent opinion seems to be held regarding Classical Philology. We are conscious of this in the circles of the learned just as much as among the followers of that science itself. The cause of this lies in its many-sided character, in the lack of an abstract unity, and in the inorganic aggregation of heterogeneous scientific activities which are connected with one another only by the name “ Philology.” It must be freely admitted that philology is to some extent borrowed from several other sciences, and is mixed together like a magic potion from the most outlandish liquors, ores, and bones. It may even be added that it likewise conceals within itself an artistic element, one which, on aesthetic and ethical grounds, may be called imperatival—an element that acts in opposition to its purely scientific behaviour. Philology is composed of history just as much as of natural science or aesthetics: history, in so far as it endeavours to comprehend the manifestations of the individualities of peoples in ever new images, and the prevailing law in the disappearance of phenomena; natural science, in so far as it strives to fathom the deepest instinct of man, that of speech; aesthetics, finally, because from various antiquities at our disposal it endeavours to pick out the so-called “ classical” antiquity, with the view and pretension of excavating the ideal world buried under it, and to hold up to the present the mirror of the classical and everlasting standards. That these wholly different scientific and aesthetico-ethical impulses have been associated under a common name, a kind of sham monarchy, is shown especially by the fact that philology at every period from its origin onwards was at the same time pedagogical. From the standpoint of the pedagogue, a choice was offered of those elements which were of the greatest educational value; and thus that science, or at least that scientific aim, which we call philology, gradually developed out of the practical calling originated by the exigencies of that science itself. These philological aims were pursued sometimes with greater ardour and sometimes with less, in accordance with the degree of culture and the development of the taste of a particular period; but, on the other hand, the followers of this science are in the habit of regarding the aims which correspond to their several abilities as the aims of philology; whence it comes about that the estimation of philology in public opinion depends upon the weight of the personalities of the philologists! At the present time—that is to say, in a period which has seen men distinguished in almost every department of philology—a general uncertainty of judgment has increased more and more, and likewise a general relaxation of interest and participation in philological problems. Such an undecided and imperfect state of public opinion is damaging to a science in that its hidden and open enemies can work with much better prospects of success. And philology has a great many such enemies. Where do we not meet with them, these mockers, always ready to aim a blow at the philological “ moles,” the animals that practise dust-eating ex professo, and that grub up and eat for the eleventh time what they have already eaten ten times before. For opponents of this sort, however, philology is merely a useless, harmless, and inoffensive pastime, an object of laughter and not of hate. But, on the other hand, there is a boundless and infuriated hatred of philology wherever an ideal, as such, is feared, where the modern man falls down to worship himself, and where Hellenism is looked upon as a superseded and hence very insignificant point of view. Against these enemies, we philologists must always count upon the assistance of artists and men of artistic minds; for they alone can judge how the sword of barbarism sweeps over the head of every one who loses sight of the unutterable simplicity and noble dignity of the Hellene; and how no progress in commerce or technical industries, however brilliant, no school regulations, no political education of the masses, however widespread and complete, can protect us from the curse of ridiculous and barbaric offences against good taste, or from annihilation by the Gorgon head of the classicist.
Whilst philology as a whole is looked on with jealous eyes by these two classes of opponents, there are numerous and varied hostilities in other directions of philology; philologists themselves are quarrelling with one another; internal dissensions are caused by useless disputes about precedence and mutual jealousies, but especially by the differences —even enmities—comprised in the name of philology, which are not, however, by any means naturally harmonised instincts. Science has this in common with art, that the most ordinary, everyday thing appears to it as something entirely new and attractive, as if metamorphosed by witchcraft and now seen for the first time. Life is worth living, says art, the beautiful temptress; life is worth knowing, says science. With this contrast the so heartrending and dogmatic tradition follows in a theory, and consequently in the practice of classical philology derived from this theory. We may consider antiquity from a scientific point of view; we may try to look at what has happened with the eye of a historian, or to arrange and compare the linguistic forms of ancient masterpieces, to bring them at all events under a morphological law; but we always lose the wonderful creative force, the real fragrance, of the atmosphere of antiquity; we forget that passionate emotion which instinctively drove our meditation and enjoyment back to the Greeks. From this point onwards we must take notice of a clearly determined and very surprising antagonism which philology has great cause to regret. From the circles upon whose help we must place the most implicit reliance—the artistic friends of antiquity, the warm supporters of Hellenic beauty and noble simplicity—we hear harsh voices crying out that it is precisely the philologists themselves who are the real opponents and destroyers of the ideals of antiquity. Schiller upbraided the philologists with having scattered Homer’s laurel crown to the winds. It was none other than Goethe who, in early life a supporter of Wolf’s theories regarding Homer, recanted in the verses— With subtle wit you took away Our former adoration: The Iliad, you may us say, Was mere conglomeration. Think it not crime in any way: Youth’s fervent adoration Leads us to know the verity, And feel the poet’s unity. The reason of this want of piety and reverence must lie deeper; and many are in doubt as to whether philologists are lacking in artistic capacity and impressions, so that they are unable to do justice to the ideal, or whether the spirit of negation has become a destructive and iconoclastic principle of theirs. When, however, even the friends of antiquity, possessed of such doubts and hesitations, point to our present classical philology as something questionable, what influence may we not ascribe to the outbursts of the “ realists” and the claptrap of the heroes of the passing hour? To answer the latter on this occasion, especially when we consider the nature of the present assembly, would be highly injudicious; at any rate, if I do not wish to meet with the fate of that sophist who, when in Sparta, publicly undertook to praise and defend Herakles, when he was interrupted with the query: “ But who then has found fault with him?” I cannot help thinking, however, that some of these scruples are still sounding in the ears of not a few in this gathering; for they may still be frequently heard from the lips of noble and artistically gifted men—as even an upright philologist must feel them, and feel them most painfully, at moments when his spirits are downcast. For the single individual there is no deliverance from the dissensions referred to; but what we contend and inscribe on our banner is the fact that classical philology, as a whole, has nothing whatsoever to do with the quarrels and bickerings of its individual disciples. The entire scientific and artistic movement of this peculiar centaur is bent, though with cyclopic slowness, upon bridging over the gulf between the ideal antiquity—which is perhaps only the magnificent blossoming of the Teutonic longing for the south—and the real antiquity; and thus classical philology pursues only the final end of its own being, which is the fusing together of primarily hostile impulses that have only forcibly been brought together. Let us talk as we will about the unattainability of this goal, and even designate the goal itself as an illogical pretension—the aspiration for it is very real; and I should like to try to make it clear by an example that the most significant steps of classical philology never lead away from the ideal antiquity, but to it; and that, just when people are speaking unwarrantably of the overthrow of sacred shrines, new and more worthy altars are being erected. Let us then examine the so-called Homeric question from this standpoint, a question the most important problem of which Schiller called a scholastic barbarism. The important problem referred to is the question of the personality of Homer. We now meet everywhere with the firm opinion that the question of Homer’s personality is no longer timely, and that it is quite a different thing from the real “ Homeric question.” It may be added that, for a given period—such as our present philological period, for example—the centre of discussion may be removed from the problem of the poet’s personality; for even now a painstaking experiment is being made to reconstruct the Homeric poems without the aid of personality, treating them as the work of several different persons. But if the centre of a scientific question is rightly seen to be where the swelling tide of new views has risen up, i.e. where individual scientific investigation comes into contact with the whole life of science and culture—if any one, in other words, indicates a historico-cultural valuation as the central point of the question, he must also, in the province of Homeric criticism, take his stand upon the question of personality as being the really fruitful oasis in the desert of the whole argument. For in Homer the modern world, I will not say has learnt, but has examined, a great historical point of view; and, even without now putting forward my own opinion as to whether this examination has been or can be happily carried out, it was at all events the first example of the application of that productive point of view. By it scholars learnt to recognise condensed beliefs in the apparently firm, immobile figures of the life of ancient peoples; by it they for the first time perceived the wonderful capability of the soul of a people to represent the conditions of its morals and beliefs in the form of a personality. When historical criticism has confidently seized upon this method of evaporating apparently concrete personalities, it is permissible to point to the first experiment as an important event in the history of sciences, without considering whether it was successful in this instance or not. It is a common occurrence for a series of striking signs and wonderful emotions to precede an epoch-making discovery. Even the experiment I have just referred to has its own attractive history; but it goes back to a surprisingly ancient era. Friedrich August Wolf has exactly indicated the spot where Greek antiquity dropped the question. The zenith of the historico-literary studies of the Greeks, and hence also of their point of greatest importance—the Homeric question—was reached in the age of the Alexandrian grammarians. Up to this time the Homeric question had run through the long chain of a uniform process of development, of which the standpoint of those grammarians seemed to be the last link, the last,
indeed, which was attainable by antiquity. They conceived the Iliad and the Odyssey as the creations of one single Homer; they declared it to be psychologically possible for two such different works to have sprung from the brain of one genius, in contradiction to the Chorizontes, who represented the extreme limit of the scepticism of a few detached individuals of antiquity rather than antiquity itself considered as a whole. To explain the different general impression of the two books on the assumption that one poet composed them both, scholars sought assistance by referring to the seasons of the poet’s life, and compared the poet of the Odyssey to the setting sun. The eyes of those critics were tirelessly on the lookout for discrepancies in the language and thoughts of the two poems; but at this time also a history of the Homeric poem and its tradition was prepared, according to which these discrepancies were not due to Homer, but to those who committed his words to writing and those who sang them. It was believed that Homer’s poem was passed from one generation to another viva voce, and faults were attributed to the improvising and at times forgetful bards. At a certain given date, about the time of Pisistratus, the poems which had been repeated orally were said to have been collected in manuscript form; but the scribes, it is added, allowed themselves to take some liberties with the text by transposing some lines and adding extraneous matter here and there. This entire hypothesis is the most important in the domain of literary studies that antiquity has exhibited; and the acknowledgment of the dissemination of the Homeric poems by word of mouth, as opposed to the habits of a book-learned age, shows in particular a depth of ancient sagacity worthy of our admiration. From those times until the generation that produced Friedrich August Wolf we must take a jump over a long historical vacuum; but in our own age we find the argument left just as it was at the time when the power of controversy departed from antiquity, and it is a matter of indifference to us that Wolf accepted as certain tradition what antiquity itself had set up only as a hypothesis. It may be remarked as most characteristic of this hypothesis that, in the strictest sense, the personality of Homer is treated seriously; that a certain standard of inner harmony is everywhere presupposed in the manifestations of the personality; and that, with these two excellent auxiliary hypotheses, whatever is seen to be below this standard and opposed to this inner harmony is at once swept aside as un-Homeric. But even this distinguishing characteristic, in place of wishing to recognise the supernatural existence of a tangible personality, ascends likewise through all the stages that lead to that zenith, with ever-increasing energy and clearness. Individuality is ever more strongly felt and accentuated; the psychological possibility of a single Homer is ever more forcibly demanded. If we descend backwards from this zenith, step by step, we find a guide to the understanding of the Homeric problem in the person of Aristotle. Homer was for him the flawless and untiring artist who knew his end and the means to attain it; but there is still a trace of infantile criticism to be found in Aristotle—i.e., in the naive concession he made to the public opinion that considered Homer as the author of the original of all comic epics, the Margites. If we go still further backwards from Aristotle, the inability to create a personality is seen to increase; more and more poems are attributed to Homer; and every period lets us see its degree of criticism by how much and what it considers as Homeric. In this backward examination, we instinctively feel that away beyond Herodotus there lies a period in which an immense flood of great epics has been identified with the name of Homer. Let us imagine ourselves as living in the time of Pisistratus: the word “ Homer” then comprehended an abundance of dissimilarities. What was meant by “ Homer” at that time? It is evident that that generation found itself unable to grasp a personality and the limits of its manifestations. Homer had now become of small consequence. And then we meet with the weighty question: What lies before this period? Has Homer’s personality, because it cannot be grasped, gradually faded away into an empty name? Or had all the Homeric poems been gathered together in a body, the nation naively representing itself by the figure of Homer? Was the person created out of a conception, or the conception out of a person? This is the real “ Homeric question,” the central problem of the personality. The difficulty of answering this question, however, is increased when we seek a reply in another direction, from the standpoint of the poems themselves which have come down to us. As it is difficult for us at the present day, and necessitates a serious effort on our part, to understand the law of gravitation clearly—that the earth alters its form of motion when another heavenly body changes its position in space, although no material connection unites one to the other—it likewise costs us some trouble to obtain a clear impression of that wonderful problem which, like a coin long passed from hand to hand, has lost its original and highly conspicuous stamp. Poetical works, which cause the hearts of even the greatest geniuses to fail when they endeavour to vie with them, and in which unsurpassable images are held up for the admiration of posterity—and yet the poet who wrote them with only a hollow, shaky name, whenever we do lay hold on him; nowhere the solid kernel of a powerful personality. “ For who would wage war with the gods: who, even with the one god?” asks Goethe even, who, though a genius, strove in vain to solve that mysterious problem of the Homeric inaccessibility. The conception of popular poetry seemed to lead like a bridge over this problem—a deeper and more original power than that of every single creative individual was said to have become active; the happiest people, in the happiest period of its existence, in the highest activity of fantasy and formative power, was said to have created those immeasurable poems. In this universality there is something almost intoxicating in the thought of a popular poem: we feel, with artistic pleasure, the broad, overpowering liberation of a popular gift, and we delight in this natural phenomenon as we do in an uncontrollable cataract. But as soon as we examine this thought at close quarters, we involuntarily put a poetic mass of people in the place of the poetising soul of the people: a long row of popular poets in whom individuality has no meaning, and in whom the tumultuous movement of a people’s soul, the intuitive strength of a people’s eye, and the unabated profusion of a people’s fantasy, were once powerful: a row of original geniuses, attached to a time, to a poetic genus, to a subjectmatter. Such a conception justly made people suspicious. Could it be possible that that same Nature who so sparingly distributed her rarest and most precious production—genius— should suddenly take the notion of lavishing her gifts in one sole direction? And here the thorny question again made its appearance: Could we not get along with one genius only, and explain the present existence of that unattainable excellence? And now eyes were keenly on the lookout for whatever that excellence and singularity might consist of. Impossible for it to be in the construction of the complete works, said one party, for this is far from faultless; but doubtless to be found in single songs: in the single pieces above all; not in the
whole. A second party, on the other hand, sheltered themselves beneath the authority of Aristotle, who especially admired Homer’s “ divine” nature in the choice of his entire subject, and the manner in which he planned and carried it out. If, however, this construction was not clearly seen, this fault was due to the way the poems were handed down to posterity and not to the poet himself—it was the result of retouchings and interpolations, owing to which the original setting of the work gradually became obscured. The more the first school looked for inequalities, contradictions, perplexities, the more energetically did the other school brush aside what in their opinion obscured the original plan, in order, if possible, that nothing might be left remaining but the actual words of the original epic itself. The second school of thought of course held fast by the conception of an epoch-making genius as the composer of the great works. The first school, on the other hand, wavered between the supposition of one genius plus a number of minor poets, and another hypothesis which assumed only a number of superior and even mediocre individual bards, but also postulated a mysterious discharging, a deep, national, artistic impulse, which shows itself in individual minstrels as an almost indifferent medium. It is to this latter school that we must attribute the representation of the Homeric poems as the expression of that mysterious impulse. All these schools of thought start from the assumption that the problem of the present form of these epics can be solved from the standpoint of an aesthetic judgment—but we must await the decision as to the authorised line of demarcation between the man of genius and the poetical soul of the people. Are there characteristic differences between the utterances of the man of genius and the poetical soul of the people? This whole contrast, however, is unjust and misleading. There is no more dangerous assumption in modern aesthetics than that of popular poetry and individual poetry, or, as it is usually called, artistic poetry. This is the reaction, or, if you will, the superstition, which followed upon the most momentous discovery of historico-philological science, the discovery and appreciation of the soul of the people. For this discovery prepared the way for a coming scientific view of history, which was until then, and in many respects is even now, a mere collection of materials, with the prospect that new materials would continue to be added, and that the huge, overflowing pile would never be systematically arranged. The people now understood for the first time that the long-felt power of greater individualities and wills was larger than the pitifully small will of an individual man;[1] they now saw that everything truly great in the kingdom of the will could not have its deepest root in the inefficacious and ephemeral individual will; and, finally, they now discovered the powerful instincts of the masses, and diagnosed those unconscious impulses to be the foundations and supports of the so-called universal history. But the newly-lighted flame also cast its shadow: and this shadow was none other than that superstition already referred to, which popular poetry set up in opposition to individual poetry, and thus enlarged the comprehension of the people’s soul to that of the people’s mind. By the misapplication of a tempting analogical inference, people had reached the point of applying in the domain of the intellect and artistic ideas that principle of greater individuality which is truly applicable only in the domain of the will. The masses have never experienced more flattering treatment than in thus having the laurel of genius set upon their empty heads. It was imagined that new shells were forming round a small kernel, so to speak, and that those pieces of popular poetry originated like avalanches, in the drift and flow of tradition. They were, however, ready to consider that kernel as being of the smallest possible dimensions, so that they might occasionally get rid of it altogether without losing anything of the mass of the avalanche. According to this view, the text itself and the stories built round it are one and the same thing. [1] Of course Nietzsche saw afterwards that this was not so.—TR. Now, however, such a contrast between popular poetry and individual poetry does not exist at all; on the contrary, all poetry, and of course popular poetry also, requires an intermediary individuality. This much-abused contrast, therefore, is necessary only when the term individual poem is understood to mean a poem which has not grown out of the soil of popular feeling, but which has been composed by a non-popular poet in a non-popular atmosphere—something which has come to maturity in the study of a learned man, for example. With the superstition which presupposes poetising masses is connected another: that popular poetry is limited to one particular period of a people’s history and afterwards dies out —which indeed follows as a consequence of the first superstition I have mentioned. According to this school, in the place of the gradually decaying popular poetry we have artistic poetry, the work of individual minds, not of masses of people. But the same powers which were once active are still so; and the form in which they act has remained exactly the same. The great poet of a literary period is still a popular poet in no narrower sense than the popular poet of an illiterate age. The difference between them is not in the way they originate, but it is their diffusion and propagation, in short, tradition. This tradition is exposed to eternal danger without the help of handwriting, and runs the risk of including in the poems the remains of those individualities through whose oral tradition they were handed down. If we apply all these principles to the Homeric poems, it follows that we gain nothing with our theory of the poetising soul of the people, and that we are always referred back to the poetical individual. We are thus confronted with the task of distinguishing that which can have originated only in a single poetical mind from that which is, so to speak, swept up by the tide of oral tradition, and which is a highly important constituent part of the Homeric poems. Since literary history first ceased to be a mere collection of names, people have attempted to grasp and formulate the individualities of the poets. A certain mechanism forms part of the method: it must be explained—i.e., it must be deduced from principles—why this or that individuality appears in this way and not in that. People now study biographical details, environment, acquaintances, contemporary events, and believe that by mixing all these ingredients together they will be able to manufacture the wished-for individuality. But they forget that the punctum saliens, the indefinable individual characteristics, can never be obtained from a compound of this nature. The less there is known about the life and times of the poet, the less applicable is this mechanism. When, however, we have merely the works and the name of the writer, it is almost impossible to detect the individuality, at all
events, for those who put their faith in the mechanism in question; and particularly when the works are perfect, when they are pieces of popular poetry. For the best way for these mechanicians to grasp individual characteristics is by perceiving deviations from the genius of the people; the aberrations and hidden allusions: and the fewer discrepancies to be found in a poem the fainter will be the traces of the individual poet who composed it. All those deviations, everything dull and below the ordinary standard which scholars think they perceive in the Homeric poems, were attributed to tradition, which thus became the scapegoat. What was left of Homer’s own individual work? Nothing but a series of beautiful and prominent passages chosen in accordance with subjective taste. The sum total of aesthetic singularity which every individual scholar perceived with his own artistic gifts, he now called Homer. This is the central point of the Homeric errors. The name of Homer, from the very beginning, has no connection either with the conception of aesthetic perfection or yet with the Iliad and the Odyssey. Homer as the composer of the Iliad and the Odyssey is not a historical tradition, but an aesthetic judgment. The only path which leads back beyond the time of Pisistratus and helps us to elucidate the meaning of the name Homer, takes its way on the one hand through the reports which have reached us concerning Homer’s birthplace: from which we see that, although his name is always associated with heroic epic poems, he is on the other hand no more referred to as the composer of the Iliad and the Odyssey than as the author of the Thebais or any other cyclical epic. On the other hand, again, an old tradition tells of the contest between Homer and Hesiod, which proves that when these two names were mentioned people instinctively thought of two epic tendencies, the heroic and the didactic; and that the signification of the name “ Homer” was included in the material category and not in the formal. This imaginary contest with Hesiod did not even yet show the faintest presentiment of individuality. From the time of Pisistratus onwards, however, with the surprisingly rapid development of the Greek feeling for beauty, the differences in the aesthetic value of those epics continued to be felt more and more: the Iliad and the Odyssey arose from the depths of the flood and have remained on the surface ever since. With this process of aesthetic separation, the conception of Homer gradually became narrower: the old material meaning of the name “ Homer” as the father of the heroic epic poem, was changed into the aesthetic meaning of Homer, the father of poetry in general, and likewise its original prototype. This transformation was contemporary with the rationalistic criticism which made Homer the magician out to be a possible poet, which vindicated the material and formal traditions of those numerous epics as against the unity of the poet, and gradually removed that heavy load of cyclical epics from Homer’s shoulders. So Homer, the poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey, is an aesthetic judgment. It is, however, by no means affirmed against the poet of these epics that he was merely the imaginary being of an aesthetic impossibility, which can be the opinion of only very few philologists indeed. The majority contend that a single individual was responsible for the general design of a poem such as the Iliad, and further that this individual was Homer. The first part of this contention may be admitted; but, in accordance with what I have said, the latter part must be denied. And I very much doubt whether the majority of those who adopt the first part of the contention have taken the following considerations into account. The design of an epic such as the Iliad is not an entire whole, not an organism; but a number of pieces strung together, a collection of reflections arranged in accordance with aesthetic rules. It is certainly the standard of an artist’s greatness to note what he can take in with a single glance and set out in rhythmical form. The infinite profusion of images and incidents in the Homeric epic must force us to admit that such a wide range of vision is next to impossible. Where, however, a poet is unable to observe artistically with a single glance, he usually piles conception on conception, and endeavours to adjust his characters according to a comprehensive scheme. He will succeed in this all the better the more he is familiar with the fundamental principles of aesthetics: he will even make some believe that he made himself master of the entire subject by a single powerful glance. The Iliad is not a garland, but a bunch of flowers. As many pictures as possible are crowded on one canvas; but the man who placed them there was indifferent as to whether the grouping of the collected pictures was invariably suitable and rhythmically beautiful. He well knew that no one would ever consider the collection as a whole; but would merely look at the individual parts. But that stringing together of some pieces as the manifestations of a grasp of art which was not yet highly developed, still less thoroughly comprehended and generally esteemed, cannot have been the real Homeric deed, the real Homeric epoch-making event. On the contrary, this design is a later product, far later than Homer’s celebrity. Those, therefore, who look for the “ original and perfect design” are looking for a mere phantom; for the dangerous path of oral tradition had reached its end just as the systematic arrangement appeared on the scene; the disfigurements which were caused on the way could not have affected the design, for this did not form part of the material handed down from generation to generation. The relative imperfection of the design must not, however, prevent us from seeing in the designer a different personality from the real poet. It is not only probable that everything which was created in those times with conscious aesthetic insight, was infinitely inferior to the songs that sprang up naturally in the poet’s mind and were written down with instinctive power: we can even take a step further. If we include the so-called cyclic poems in this comparison, there remains for the designer of the Iliad and the Odyssey the indisputable merit of having done something relatively great in this conscious technical composing: a merit which we might have been prepared to recognise from the beginning, and which is in my opinion of the very first order in the domain of instinctive creation. We may even be ready to pronounce this synthetisation of great importance. All those dull passages and discrepancies—deemed of such importance, but really only subjective, which we usually look upon as the petrified remains of the period of tradition—are not these perhaps merely the almost necessary evils which must fall to the lot of the poet of genius who undertakes a composition virtually without a parallel, and, further, one which proves to be of incalculable difficulty? Let it be noted that the insight into the most diverse operations of the instinctive and the conscious changes the position of the Homeric problem; and in my opinion throws light
upon it. We believe in a great poet as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey—but not that Homer was this poet. The decision on this point has already been given. The generation that invented those numerous Homeric fables, that poetised the myth of the contest between Homer and Hesiod, and looked upon all the poems of the epic cycle as Homeric, did not feel an aesthetic but a material singularity when it pronounced the name “ Homer.” This period regards Homer as belonging to the ranks of artists like Orpheus, Eumolpus, Daedalus, and Olympus, the mythical discoverers of a new branch of art, to whom, therefore, all the later fruits which grew from the new branch were thankfully dedicated. And that wonderful genius to whom we owe the Iliad and the Odyssey belongs to this thankful posterity: he, too, sacrificed his name on the altar of the primeval father of the Homeric epic, Homeros. Up to this point, gentlemen, I think I have been able to put before you the fundamental philosophical and aesthetic characteristics of the problem of the personality of Homer, keeping all minor details rigorously at a distance, on the supposition that the primary form of this widespread and honeycombed mountain known as the Homeric question can be most clearly observed by looking down at it from a far-off height. But I have also, I imagine, recalled two facts to those friends of antiquity who take such delight in accusing us philologists of lack of piety for great conceptions and an unproductive zeal for destruction. In the first place, those “ great” conceptions—such, for example, as that of the indivisible and inviolable poetic genius, Homer—were during the pre-Wolfian period only too great, and hence inwardly altogether empty and elusive when we now try to grasp them. If classical philology goes back again to the same conceptions, and once more tries to pour new wine into old bottles, it is only on the surface that the conceptions are the same: everything has really become new; bottle and mind, wine and word. We everywhere find traces of the fact that philology has lived in company with poets, thinkers, and artists for the last hundred years: whence it has now come about that the heap of ashes formerly pointed to as classical philology is now turned into fruitful and even rich soil.[2] [2] Nietzsche perceived later on that this statement was, unfortunately, not justified.—TR. And there is a second fact which I should like to recall to the memory of those friends of antiquity who turn their dissatisfied backs on classical philology. You honour the immortal masterpieces of the Hellenic mind in poetry and sculpture, and think yourselves so much more fortunate than preceding generations, which had to do without them; but you must not forget that this whole fairyland once lay buried under mountains of prejudice, and that the blood and sweat and arduous labour of innumerable followers of our science were all necessary to lift up that world from the chasm into which it had sunk. We grant that philology is not the creator of this world, not the composer of that immortal music; but is it not a merit, and a great merit, to be a mere virtuoso, and let the world for the first time hear that music which lay so long in obscurity, despised and undecipherable? Who was Homer previously to Wolf’s brilliant investigations? A good old man, known at best as a “ natural genius,” at all events the child of a barbaric age, replete with faults against good taste and good morals. Let us hear how a learned man of the first rank writes about Homer even so late as 1783: “ Where does the good man live? Why did he remain so long incognito? Apropos, can’t you get me a silhouette of him?” We demand thanks—not in our own name, for we are but atoms—but in the name of philology itself, which is indeed neither a Muse nor a Grace, but a messenger of the gods: and just as the Muses descended upon the dull and tormented Boeotian peasants, so Philology comes into a world full of gloomy colours and pictures, full of the deepest, most incurable woes; and speaks to men comfortingly of the beautiful and godlike figure of a distant, rosy, and happy fairyland. It is time to close; yet before I do so a few words of a personal character must be added, justified, I hope, by the occasion of this lecture. It is but right that a philologist should describe his end and the means to it in the short formula of a confession of faith; and let this be done in the saying of Seneca which I thus reverse— “ Philosophia facta est quae philologia fuit.” By this I wish to signify that all philological activities should be enclosed and surrounded by a philosophical view of things, in which everything individual and isolated is evaporated as something detestable, and in which great homogeneous views alone remain. Now, therefore, that I have enunciated my philological creed, I trust you will give me cause to hope that I shall no longer be a stranger among you: give me the assurance that in working with you towards this end I am worthily fulfilling the confidence with which the highest authorities of this community have honoured me.
ON MUSIC AND WORDS Translated by M Mugge Brief Notes on Nietzsche’s Lecture on Rhetoric - 1871 Nietzsche’s treatment of language in this lecture depends heavily of his close reading of Gustav Gerber’s Die Sprache als Kunst (1871). This dependence takes the form of extensive paraphrases and even word-for-word use of Gerber’s work. Although Nietzsche refers his students to Gerber, he does so only to point out Gerber’s collection of pleonasms. No where does Nietzsche acknowledge that the position he is advancing is that of Gerber. More of this in class. Nietzsche’s presentation of rhetoric �3 Relationship of the Rhetorical to Language [II,4 416]
Aristotle was the first to distinguish rhetoric from dialectic in terms of their respective goals. Whereas dialectic seeks to demonstrate a truth about the essence of a subject or thing, rhetoric seeks to provoke a definite subjective reaction in its audience. The rhetorician does not reproduce sense data, but rather the copies of sense-data. Our sensation of an external object is excited by a nerve stimulus. This nerve stimulus does not fully and completely assimilate the “ thing” that caused its excitement. The key German term is “ Uebertragung” - literally ‘to carry over.’ What the ‘thing’ is that causes the nerve’s excitement does not ‘carry over’ to our sensation: the transition from ‘thing’ => nerve excitement => sensation necessarily transforms the ‘thing-in-itself’ to a ‘thing-for-us.’ A ‘thing-for-us’ that we then attempt to re-present through a ‘Tonbild’ of the word. Nietzsche drives this point home with typical brilliance: how could we ever assume that our ‘Tonbild’ can accurately and completely re-present the ‘thing’ that initiated the above process of sensing? A Tonblid is of a completely different nature than the ‘thing’ that initiated our chain of sensation-representation. Sick guessing game in which, while blindfolded, my hand is held over a ‘flame’: heat => nerve excites => sensation => verbalization in Tonbild: ‘a flame.’ Result? A ‘flame-in-itself’ becomes a ‘flame-for-me,’ that is, the hot energy of fire is transformed into the frequencies of air being forced through and shaped by my vocal apparatus. Indeed, as the game gets sicker, and my hand is held for even longer over the flame, the Tonbild I vocalize is a scream. Here Nietzsche interjects - bracketing for the moment the problems of transforming external reality into sound waves - and asks how it is possible for “ an act of the soul to be presentable in a Tonbild?” [426]. For there to be a perfect reproduction of the ‘Seelenact’ i.e., the pain I experience, wouldn’t the element in which the soul and voice work have to be the same? Nietzsche writes: “ The things do not enter into consciousness, but rather the way that we stand towards the pithanon (sense data). The full essence of the thing is never grasped. … Instead of the thing sensation perceives only a characteristic” [Ibid.]. This unavoidable superficial myopia of language distinguishes rhetoric from dialectic: “ the language is rhetoric since it seeks only to carry over a doxa, not episteme” [Ibid]. Following Gerber, Nietzsche argues that as long as we communicate in words — and not numbers - everything we do is thus a doxa, and that all language thus carries the figurative malleability of the trope. There is no positivistic ‘protocol language’ that can accurately reproduce reality in the sonority of language. All language is tropological: “ But all words in themselves and from the start are, in terms of their meaning, tropes. Instead of the true process they represent a Tonbild that resonates in time: language never expresses something completely, but rather emphasises but one characteristic that seems to it to stand out….. A one-sided perception steps in for the entire and full perception [Ibid]. Following Gerber, there are three key linguistic terms Nietzsche uses to discuss the tropological essence of language: metonymy, metaphor and synedoche. 1: Metonymy: “ the substitution [Vertauschung] of cause and effect” i.e., “ We say ‘the drink is bitter’ instead of ‘it excites a particular sensation of that kind in us’; ‘the stone is hard,’ as if hard were something other than a judgment on our part” [II, 4 427] What is a word? The expression of a nerve-stimulus in sounds. But to infer a cause outside us from the nerve-stimulus is already the result of a wrong and unjustifiable application of the proposition of causality [TL,4] 2) Metaphor: Nietzsche prefers to use the German ‘Uebertragung’ to literally render Aristotle’s Greek ‘metaphorein.’ This captures the idea that all words in a language can have their ‘meanings’ transferred and exchanged. The assignment of gender is for Nietzsche proof of how language is constructed by “ arbitrary transferences” and thus “ pure metaphor.” “ Metaphor shows itself in the designation of gender: genus in the grammatical sense is a luxury of language and pure metaphor” [II, 4 428]. 3) Synedoche: the replacement of an entire and complete intuition by a partial perception : “ A one-sided perception steps in for the entire and full perception [II, 4, 426]. Following Gerber, Nietzsche’s example is how different - and thus arbitrary - are the various ways languages name the snake. “ On Music and Words” - A fragment from 1871. My Subtitle: “ Or why great music - Dionysian music - makes us forget to listen to the words” -1WHAT we here have asserted of the relationship between language and music must be valid too, for equal reasons, concerning the relationship of Mime to Music. The Mime too, as the intensified symbolism of man’s gestures, is, measured by the eternal significance of music, only a simile, which brings into expression the innermost secret of music but very superficially, namely on the substratum of the passionately moved human body. But if we include language also in the category of bodily symbolism, and compare the drama, according to the canon advanced, with music, then I venture to think, a proposition of Schopenhauer will come into the clearest light, to which reference must be made again later on. ” It might be admissible, although a purely musical mind does not demand it, to join and adapt words or even a clearly represented action to the pure language of tones, although the latter, being self-sufficient, needs no help; so that our perceiving and reflecting intellect, which does not like to be quite idle, may meanwhile have light and analogous occupation also. By this concession to the intellect man’s attention adheres even more closely to music, by this at the same time, too, is placed underneath that which the tones indicate in their general metaphorless language of the heart, a visible picture, as it were a schema, as an example illustrating a general idea … indeed such things will even heighten the effect of music.” (Schopenhauer, Parerga, 11., “ On the Metaphysics of the Beautiful and Aesthetics,” � 224.) If we disregard the naturalistic external motivation according to which our perceiving and reflecting intellect does not like to be quite idle when listening to music, and attention led by the hand of an obvious action follows better-then the drama in relation to music has been characterized by Schopenhauer for the best reasons as a schema, as an example illustrating a general idea: and when he adds “ indeed such things will even heighten the effect of music ” then the enormous universality and originality of vocal music, of the connection of tone with metaphor and idea guarantee the correctness of this utterance. The music
of every people begins in closest connection with lyricism and long before absolute music can be thought of, the music of a people in that connection passes through the most important stages of development. If we understand this primal lyricism of a people, as indeed we must, to be an imitation of the artistic typifying Nature, then as the original prototype of that union of music and lyricism must be regarded : the duality in the essence of language, already typified by Nature. Now, after discussing the relation of music to metaphor we will fathom more deeply this essence of language. In the multiplicity of languages the fact at once manifests itself, that word and thing do not necessarily coincide with one another completely, but that the word is a symbol. But what does the word symbolize ? Most certainly only conceptions, be these now conscious ones or as in the greater number of cases, unconscious; for how should a word-symbol correspond to that innermost nature of which we and the world are images? Only as conceptions we know that kernel, only in its metaphorical expressions are we familiar with it; beyond that point there is nowhere a direct bridge which could lead us to it. The whole life of impulses, too, the play of feelings, sensations, emotions, volitions, is known to us-as I am forced to insert here in opposition to Schopenhauer-after a most rigid self-examination, not according to its essence but merely as conception; and we may well be permitted to say, that even Schopenhauer’s ” Will ” is nothing else but the most general phenomenal form of a Something otherwise absolutely -2indecipherable. If therefore we must acquiesce in the rigid necessity of getting nowhere beyond the conceptions we can nevertheless again distinguish two main species within their realm. The one species manifest themselves to us as pleasure-and-displeasure-sensations and accompany all other conceptions as a never-lacking fundamental basis. This most general manifestation, out of which and by which alone we understand all Becoming and all Willing and for which we will retain the name ” Will,” has now too in language its own symbolic sphere: and in truth this sphere is equally fundamental to the language, as that manifestation is fundamental to all other conceptions. All degrees of pleasure and displeasure — expressions of one primal cause unfathomable to us — symbolize themselves in the tone of the speaker: whereas all the other conceptions are indicated by the gesture-symbolism of the speaker. In so far as that primal cause is the same in all men, the tonal subsoil is also the common one, comprehensible beyond the difference of language. Out of it now develops the more arbitrary gesture-symbolism which is not wholly adequate for its basis : and with which begins the diversity of languages, whose multiplicity we are permitted to considerto use a simile-as a strophic text to that primal melody of the pleasure-and displeasure-language. The whole realm of the consonantal and vocal we believe we may reckon only under gesture-symbolism: consonants and vowels without that fundamental tone which is necessary above all else, are nothing but positions of the organs of speech, in short, gestures-; as soon as we imagine the word proceeding out of the mouth of man, then first of all the root of the word, and the basis of that gesture-symbolism, the tonal subsoil, the echo of the pleasure-and-displeasure-sensations originate. As our whole corporeality stands in relation to that original phenomenon, the ” Will,” so the word built out of its consonants and vowels stands in relation to its tonal basis. This original phenomenon, the ” Will,” with its scale of pleasure-and-displeasure sensations attains in the development of music an ever more adequate symbolic expression: and to this historical process the continuous effort of lyric poetry runs parallel, the effort to transcribe music into metaphors: exactly as this double-phenomenon, according to the just completed disquisition, lies typified in language. He who has followed us into these difficult contemplations readily, attentively, and with some imagination — and with kind indulgence where the expression has been too scanty or too unconditional — will now have the advantage with us, of laying before himself more seriously and answering more deeply than is usually the case some stirring points of controversy of present-day Esthetics and still more of contemporary artists. Let us think now, after all our assumptions, what an undertaking it must be, to set music to a poem; ie., to illustrate a poem by music, in order to help music thereby to obtain a language of ideas. What a perverted world! A task that appears to my mind like that of a son wanting to create his father! Music can create metaphors out of itself, which will always however be but schemata, instances as it were of her intrinsic general contents. But how should the metaphor, the conception, create music out of itself! Much less could the idea, or, as one has said, the ” poetical idea ” do this. As certainly as a bridge leads out of the mysterious castle of the musician into the free land of the metaphors - -and the lyric poet steps across it — as certainly is it impossible to go the contrary way, although some are said to exist who fancy they have done so. One might people the air with the phantasy of a Raphael, one might see St. Cecilia, as he does, listening enraptured to the harmonies of the choirs of angels — no tone issues from this world apparently lost in music: even if we imagined -3that that harmony in reality, as by a miracle, began to sound for us, whither would Cecilia, Paul and Magdalena disappear from us, whither even the singing choir of angels! We should at once cease to be Raphael: and as in that picture the earthly instruments lie shattered on the ground, so our painter’s vision, defeated by the higher, would fade and die away.-How nevertheless could the miracle happen? How should the Apollonian world of the eye quite engrossed in contemplation be able to create out of itself the tone, which on the contrary symbolizes a sphere which is excluded and conquered just by that very Apollonian absorption in Appearance? The delight at Appearance cannot raise out of itself the pleasure at Non-appearance; the delight of perceiving is delight only by the fact that nothing reminds us of a sphere in which individuation is broken and abolished. If we have characterized at all correctly the Apollonian in opposition to the Dionysian, then the thought which attributes to the metaphor, the idea, the appearance, in some way the power of producing out of itself the tone, must appear to us strangely wrong. We will not be referred, in order to be refuted, to the musician who writes music to existing lyric poems; for after all that has been said we shall be compelled to assert that the relationship between the lyric poem and its setting must in any case be a different one from that between a father and his child. Then what exactly?
Here now we may be met on the ground of a favorite aesthetic notion with the proposition, “ It is not the poem which gives birth to the setting but the sentiment created by the poem.” I do not agree with that; the more subtle or powerful stirring-up of that pleasure-and-displeasure-subsoil is in the realm of productive art the element which is inartistic in itself; indeed only its total exclusion makes the complete self-absorption and disinterested perception of the artist possible. Here perhaps one might retaliate that I myself just now predicated about the “ Will,” that in music “ Will” came to an ever more adequate symbolic expression. My answer, condensed into an aesthetic axiom, is this: the Will is the object of music but not the origin of it , that is the Will in its very greatest universality, as the most original manifestation, under which is to be understood all Becoming. That, which we call feeling, is with regard to this Will already permeated and saturated with conscious and unconscious conceptions and is therefore no longer directly the object of music; it is unthinkable then that these feelings should be able to create music out of themselves. Take for instance the feelings of love, fear and hope: music can no longer do anything with them in a direct way, every one of them is already so filled with conceptions. On the contrary these feelings can serve to symbolize music, as the lyric poet does who translates for himself into the simile world of feelings that conceptually and metaphorically unapproachable realm of the Will, the proper content and object of music. The lyric poet resembles all those hearers of music who are conscious of an effect of music on their emotions; the distant and removed power of music appeals, with them, to an intermediate realm which gives to them as it were a foretaste, a symbolic preliminary conception of music proper, it appeals to the intermediate realm of the emotions. One might be permitted to say about them, with respect to the Will, the only object of music, that they bear the same relation to this Will, as the analogous morning-dream according to Schopenhauer’s theory, bears to the dream proper. To all those, however, who are unable to get at music except with their emotions, is to be said, that they will ever remain in the entrance-hall and will never have access to the sanctuary of music: which, as I said, emotion cannot show but only symbolize. -4With regard however to the origin of music, I have already explained that that can never lie in the Will, but must rather rest in the lap of that force, which under the form of the ” Will ” creates out of itself a visionary world: the origin of music lies beyond all individuation, a proposition, which after our discussion on the Dionysian is self-evident. At this point I take the liberty of setting forth again comprehensively side by side those decisive propositions which the antithesis of the Dionysian and Apollonian dealt with has compelled us to enunciate: The “ Will ” as the most original manifestation, is the object of music: in this sense music can be called imitation of Nature, but of Nature in its most general form.— The “ Will” itself and the feelings-manifestations of the Will already permeated with conceptions-are wholly incapable of creating music out of themselves, just as on the other hand it is utterly denied to music to represent feelings, or to have feelings as its object, while Will is its only object.— He who carries away feelings as effects of music has within them as it were a symbolic intermediate realm, which can give him a foretaste of music, but excludes him at the same time from her innermost sanctuaries.— The lyric poet interprets music to himself through the symbolic world of emotions, whereas he himself, in the calm of the Apollonian contemplation, is exempted from those emotions.— When, therefore, the musician writes a setting to a lyric poem he is moved as musician neither through the images nor through the emotional language in the text; but a musical inspiration coming from quite a different sphere chooses for itself that songtext as allegorical expression. There cannot therefore be any question as to a necessary relation between poem and music; for the two worlds brought here into connection are too strange to one another to enter into more than a superficial alliance; the song-text is just a symbol and stands to music in the same relation as the Egyptian hieroglyph of bravery did to the brave warrior himself. During the highest revelations of music we even feel involuntarily the crudeness of every figurative effort and of every emotion dragged in for purposes of analogy; for example, the last quartets of Beethoven quite put to shame all illustration and the entire realm of empiric reality. The symbol, in face of the god really revealing himself, has no longer any meaning; moreover it appears as an offensive superficiality. [………….] Let us now approach, after these preparations, the discussion of the opera, so as to be able to proceed afterwards from the opera to its counterpart in the Greek tragedy. What we had to observe in the last movement of the Ninth, ie., on the highest level of modern music-development, viz., that the word-content goes down unheard in the general sea of sound, is nothing isolated and peculiar, but the general and eternally valid norm in the vocal music of all times, the norm which alone is adequate to the origin of lyric song. The man in a state of Dionysian excitement has a listener just as little as the orgiastic crowd, a listener to whom he might have something to communicate, a listener as the epic narrator and generally speaking the Apollonian artist, to be sure, presupposes. It is rather in the nature of the Dionysian art, that it has no consideration for the listener: the inspired servant of Dionysos is, as I said in a former place, understood only by his cornpeers. , But if we now imagine a listener at those endemic outbursts of Dionysian excitement then we shall have to prophesy for him a fate similar to that -5which Pentheus the discovered eavesdropper suffered, namely, to be torn to pieces by the Maenads. The lyric musician sings “ as the bird sings,” alone, out of innermost compulsion ; when the listener comes to him with a demand he must become dumb. Therefore it would be altogether unnatural to ask from the lyric musician that one should also understand the text-words of his song, unnatural because here a demand is made by the listener, who has no right at all during the lyric outburst to claim anything. Now with the poetry of the great ancient lyric poets in your hand, put the question honestly to yourself whether they can have even thought of making themselves clear to the mass of the people
standing around and listening, clear with their world of metaphors and thoughts; answer this serious question with a look at Pindar and the Aeschylian choir songs. These most daring and obscure intricacie’s of thought, this whirl of metaphors, ever impetuously reproducing itself, this oracular tone of the whole, which we, without the diversion of music and orchestration, so often cannot penetrate even with the closest attention — was this whole world of miracles transparent as glass to the Greek crowd, yea, a metaphorical — conceptual interpretation of music? And with such mysteries of thought as are to be found in Pindar do you think the wonderful poet could have wished to elucidate the music already strikingly distinct? Should we here not be forced to an insight into the very nature of the lyricist — the artistic man, who to himself must interpret music through the symbolism of metaphors and emotions, but who has nothing to communicate to the listener; an artist who, in complete aloofness, even forgets those who stand eagerly listening near him. And as the lyricist his hymns, so the people sing the folk-song, for themselves, out of inmost impulse, unconcerned whether the word is comprehensible to him who does not join in the song. Let us think of our own experiences in the realm of higher art-music: what did we understand of the text of a Mass of Palestrina, of a Cantata of Bach, of an Oratorio of Handel, if we ourselves perhaps did not join in singing? Only for him who joins in singing do lyric poetry and vocal music exist; the listener stands before it as before absolute music. But now the opera begins, according to the clearest testimonies, with the demand of the listener to understand the word. What? The listener demands? The word is to be understood? But to bring music into the service of a series of metaphors and conceptions, to use it as a means to an end, to the strengthening and elucidation of such conceptions and metaphors — such a peculiar presumption as is found in the concept of an “ opera,” reminds me of that ridiculous person who endeavors to lift himself up into the air with his own arms; that which this fool and which the opera according to that idea attempt are absolute impossibilities. That idea of the opera does not demand perhaps an abuse from music but — as I said — an impossibility. Music never can become a means; one may push, screw, torture it; as tone, as roll of the drum, in its crudest and simplest stages, it still defeats poetry and abases the latter to its reflection. The opera as a species of art according to that concept is therefore not only an aberration of music, but an erroneous conception of aesthetics. If I herewith, after all, justify the nature of the opera for Aesthetics, I am of course far from justifying at the same time bad opera music or bad opera-verses. The worst music can still mean, as compared with the best poetry, the Dionysian world-subsoil, and the worst poetry can be mirror, image and reflection of this subsoil, if together with the best music: as certainly, namely, as the single tone against the metaphor is already Dionysian, and the single metaphor together with idea and word against music is already Apollonian. Yea, even bad music together with bad poetry can still inform as to the nature of music and poesy.
UNTIMELY MEDITATIONS/THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON Translated by A Ludovici TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION To the reader who knows Nietzsche, who has studied his Zarathustra and understood it, and who, in addition, has digested the works entitled Beyond Good and Evil, The Genealogy of Morals, The Twilight of the Idols, and The Antichrist,— to such a reader everything in this volume will be perfectly clear and comprehensible. In the attack on Strauss he will immediately detect the germ of the whole of Nietzsche’s subsequent attitude towards too hasty contentment and the foolish beatitude of the “ easily pleased”; in the paper on Wagner he will recognise Nietzsche the indefatigable borer, miner and underminer, seeking to define his ideals, striving after self-knowledge above all, and availing himself of any contemporary approximation to his ideal man, in order to press it forward as the incarnation of his thoughts. Wagner the reformer of mankind! Wagner the dithyrambic dramatist!— The reader who knows Nietzsche will not be misled by these expressions. To the uninitiated reader, however, some words of explanation are due, not only in regard to the two papers before us, but in regard to Nietzsche himself. So much in our time is learnt from hearsay concerning prominent figures in science, art, religion, or philosophy, that it is hardly possible for anybody to-day, however badly informed he may be, to begin the study of any great writer or scientist with a perfectly open mind. It were well, therefore, to begin the study of Nietzsche with some definite idea as to his unaltered purpose, if he ever possessed such a thing; as to his lifelong ideal, if he ever kept one so long; and as to the one direction in which he always travelled, despite apparent deviations and windings. Had he such a purpose, such an ideal, such a direction? We have no wish to open a controversy here, neither do we think that in replying to this question in the affirmative we shall give rise to one; for every careful student of Nietzsche, we know, will uphold us in our view. Nietzsche had one very definite and unaltered purpose, ideal and direction, and this was “ the elevation of the type man.” He tells us in The Will to Power: “ All is truth to me that tends to elevate man!” To this principle he was already pledged as a student at Leipzig; we owe every line that he ever wrote to his devotion to it, and it is the key to all his complexities, blasphemies, prolixities, and terrible earnestness. All was good to Nietzsche that tended to elevate man; all was bad that kept man stationary or sent him backwards. Hence he wrote David Strauss, the Confessor and Writer (1873). The Franco-German War had only just come to an end, and the keynote of this polemical pamphlet is, “ Beware of the intoxication of success.” When the whole of Germany was delirious with joy over her victory, at a time when the unquestioned triumph of her arms tended rather to reflect unearned glory upon every department of her social organisation, it required both courage and discernment to raise the warning voice and to apply the wet blanket. But Nietzsche did both, and with spirit, because his worst fears were aroused. Smug content (erb�rmliches Behagen) was threatening to thwart his one purpose—the elevation of man; smug content personified in the German scholar was giving itself airs of omniscience, omnipotence, and ubiquity, and all the while it was a mere cover for hidden rottenness and jejune pedantry.
Nietzsche’s attack on Hegelian optimism alone (pp. 46, 53-54), in the first paper, fully reveals the fundamental idea underlying this essay; and if the personal attack on Strauss seems sometimes to throw the main theme into the background, we must remember the author’s own attitude towards this aspect of the case. Nietzsche, as a matter of fact, had neither the spite nor the meanness requisite for the purely personal attack. In his Ecce Homo, he tells us most emphatically: “ I have no desire to attack particular persons—I do but use a personality as a magnifying glass; I place it over the subject to which I wish to call attention, merely that the appeal may be stronger.” David Strauss, in a letter to a friend, soon after the publication of the first Thought out of Season, expresses his utter astonishment that a total stranger should have made such a dead set at him. The same problem may possibly face the reader on every page of this fssay: if, however, we realise Nietzsche’s purpose, if we understand his struggle to be one against “ Culture-Philistinism” in general, as a stemming, stultifying and therefore degenerate factor, and regard David Strauss—as the author himself did, that is to say, simply as a glass, focusing the whole light of our understanding upon the main theme— then the Strauss paper is seen to be one of such enormous power, and its aim appears to us so lofty, that, whatever our views may be concerning the nature of the person assailed, we are forced to conclude that, to Nietzsche at least, he was but the incarnation and concrete example of the evil and danger then threatening to overtake his country, which it was the object of this essay to expose. When we read that at the time of Strauss’s death (February 7th, 1874) Nietzsche was greatly tormented by the fear that the old scholar might have been hastened to his end by the use that had been made of his personality in the first Unzeitgem�sse Betrachtung; when we remember that in the midst of this torment he ejaculated, “ I was indeed not made to hate and have enemies!”—we are then in a better position to judge of the motives which, throughout his life, led him to engage such formidable opponents and to undertake such relentless attacks. It was merely his ruling principle that, all is true and good that tends to elevate man; everything is bad and false that keeps man stationary or sends him backwards. Those who may think that his attacks were often unwarrantable and ill-judged will do well, therefore, to bear this in mind, that whatever his value or merits may have been as an iconoclast, at least the aim he had was sufficiently lofty and honourable, and that he never shirked the duties which he rightly or wrongly imagined would help him to Wagner paper (1875-1876) we are faced by a somewhat different problem. Most readers who will have heard of Nietzsche’s subsequent denunciation of Wagner’s music will probably stand aghast before this panegyric of him; those who, like Professor Saintsbury, will fail to discover the internal evidence in this essay which points so infallibly to Nietzsche’s real but still subconscious opinion of his hero, may even be content to regard his later attitude as the result of a complete volte-face, and at any rate a flat contradiction of the one revealed in this paper. Let us, however, examine the internal evidence we speak of, and let us also discuss the purpose and spirit of the essay. We have said that Nietzsche was a man with a very fixed and powerful ideal, and we have heard what this ideal was. Can we picture him, then,—a young and enthusiastic scholar with a cultured love of music, and particularly of Wagner’s music, eagerly scanning all his circle, the whole city and country in which he lived—yea, even the whole continent on which he lived—for something or some one that would set his doubts at rest concerning the feasibility of his ideal? Can we now picture this young man coming face to face with probably one of the greatest geniuses of his age—with a man whose very presence must have been electric, whose every word or movement must have imparted some power to his surroundings—with Richard Wagner? If we can conceive of what the mere attention, even, of a man like Wagner must have meant to Nietzsche in his twenties, if we can form any idea of the intoxicating effect produced upon him when this attention developed into friendship, we almost refuse to believe that Nietzsche could have been critical at all at first. In Wagner, as was but natural, he soon began to see the ideal, or at least the means to the ideal, which was his one obsession. All his hope for the future of Germany and Europe cleaved, as it were, to this highest manifestation of their people’s life, and gradually he began to invest his already great friend with all the extra greatness which he himself drew from the depths of his own soul. The friendship which grew between them was of that rare order in which neither can tell who influences the other more. Wagner would often declare that the beautiful music in the third act of Siegfried was to be ascribed to Nietzsche’s influence over him; he also adopted the young man’s terminology in art matters, and the concepts implied by the words “ Dionysian” and “ Apollonian” were borrowed by him from his friend’s discourses. How much Nietzsche owed to Wagner may perhaps never be definitely known; to those who are sufficiently interested to undertake the investigation of this matter, we would recommend Hans Belart’s book, Nietzsche’s Ethik; in it references will be found which give some clue as to the probable sources from which the necessary information may be derived. In any case, however, the reciprocal effects of their conversations will never be exactly known; and although it would be ridiculous to assume that Nietzsche was essentially the same when he left as when he met him, what the real nature of the change was it is now difficult to say. For some years their friendship continued firm, and grew ever more and more intimate. The Birth Of Tragedy was one of the first public declarations of it, and after its publication many were led to consider that Wagner’s art was a sort of resurrection of the Dionysian Grecian art. Enemies of Nietzsche began to whisper that he was merely Wagner’s “ literary lackey”; many friends frowned upon the promising young philologist, and questioned the exaggerated importance he was beginning to ascribe to the art of music and to art in general, in their influence upon the world; and all the while Nietzsche’s one thought and one aim was to help the cause and further the prospects of the man who he earnestly believed was destined to be the salvation of European culture. Every great ideal coined in his own brain he imagined to be the ideal of his hero; all his sublimest hopes for society were presented gratis, in his writings, to Wagner, as though products of the latter’s own mind; and just as the prophet of old never possessed the requisite assurance to suppose that his noblest ideas were his own, but attributed them to some higher and supernatural power, whom he thereby learnt to worship for its fancied nobility of sentiment, so Nietzsche, still doubting his own powers, created a fetich out of nis most distinguished friend, and was ultimately wounded and well-nigh wrecked with disappointment when he found that the Wagner of the Gotterdammerung and Parsifal was not the Wagner of his own mind.
While writing Ecce Homo, he was so well aware of the extent to which he had gone in idealising his friend, that he even felt able to say: “ Wagner in Bayreuth is a vision of my own future…. Now that I can look back upon this work, I would not like to deny that, at bottom, it speaks only of myself” (p. 74). And on another page of the same book we read: “ … What I heard, as a young man, in Wagnerian music, had absolutely nothing to do with Wagner: when I described Dionysian music, I only described what I had heard, and I thus translated and transfigured all that I bore in my own soul into the spirit of the new art. The strongest proof of this is my essay, Wagner in Bayreuth: in all decidedly psychological passages of this book the reader may simply read my name, or the name ‘Zarathustra,’ wherever the text contains the name ‘Wagner’” (p. 68). As we have already hinted, there are evidences of his having subconsciously discerned the REAL Wagner, even in the heyday of their friendship, behind the ideal he had formed of him; for his eyes were too intelligent to be deceived, even though his understanding refused at first to heed the messages they sent it: both the Birth of Tragedy and Wagner in Bayreuth are with us to prove this, and not merely when we read these works between the lines, but when we take such passages as those found on pp. 115, 149, 150, 151, 156, 158, 159 of this book quite literally. Nietzsche’s infatuation we have explained; the consequent idealisation of the object of his infatuation he himself has confessed; we have also pointed certain passages which we believe show beyond a doubt that almost everything to be found in The Case of Wagner and Nietzsche contra Wagner was already subconscious in our author, long before he had begun to feel even a coolness towards his hero: let those who think our interpretation of the said passages is either strained or unjustified turn to the literature to which we have referred and judge for themselves. It seems to us that those distinguished critics who complain of Nietzsche’s complete volte-face and his uncontrollable recantations and revulsions of feeling have completely overlooked this aspect of the question. It were well for us to bear in mind that we are not altogether free to dispose of Nietzsche’s attitude to Wagner, at any given period in their relationship, with a single sentence of praise or of blame. After all, we are faced by a problem which no objectivity or dispassionate detachment on our parts can solve. Nietzsche endowed both Schopenhauer and Wagner with qualities and aspirations so utterly foreign to them both, that neither of them would have recognised himself in the images he painted of them. His love for them was unusual; perhaps it can only be fully understood emotionally by us: like all men who are capable of very great love, Nietzsche lent the objects of his affection anything they might happen to lack in the way of greatness, and when at last his eyes were opened, genuine pain, not malice, was the motive of even the most bitter of his diatribes. Finally, we should just like to give one more passage from Ecce Homo bearing upon the subject under discussion. It is particularly interesting from an autobiographical standpoint, and will perhaps afford the best possible conclusion to this preface. Nietzsche is writing about Wagner’s music, and he says: “ The world must indeed be empty for him who has never been unhealthy enough for this ‘infernal voluptuousness’; it is allowable and yet almost forbidden to use a mystical expression in this behalf. I suppose I know better than any one the prodigies Wagner was capable of, the fifty worlds of strange raptures to which no one save him could soar; and as I stand to-day—strong enough to convert even the most suspicious and dangerous phenomenon to my own use and be the stronger for it—I declare Wagner to be the great benefactor of my life. Something will always keep our names associated in the minds of men, and that is, that we are two who have suffered more excruciatingly—even at each other’s hands—than most men are able to suffer nowadays. And just as Wagner is merely a misunderstanding among Germans, so am I and ever will be. You lack two centuries of psychological and artistic discipline, my dear countrymen!… But it will be impossible for you ever to recover the time now lost” (p. 43). ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI. DAVID STRAUSS, THE CONFESSOR AND THE WRITER. I. Public opinion in Germany seems strictly to forbid any allusion to the evil and dangeious consequences of a war, more particularly when the war in question has been a victorious one. Those writers, therefore, command a more ready attention who, regarding this public opinion as final, proceed to vie with each other in their jubilant praise of the war, and of the powerful influences it has brought to bear upon morality, culture, and art. Yet it must be confessed that a gieat victory is a great danger. Human nature bears a triumph less easily than a defeat; indeed, it might even be urged that it is simpler to gain a victory of this sort than to turn it to such account that it may not ultimately proxe a seiious rout. But of all evil results due to the last contest with France, the most deplorable, peihaps, is that widespread and even universal error of public opinion and of all who think publicly, that German culture was also victorious in the struggle, and that it should now, therefore, be decked with garlands, as a fit recognition of such extraordinary events and successes. This error is in the highest degree pernicious: not because it is an error,—for there are illusions which are both salutary and blessed,—but because it threatens to convert our victory into a signal defeat. A defeat? —I should say rather, into the uprooting of the “ German Mind” for the benefit of the “ German Empire.” Even supposing that the fight had been between the two cultures, the standard for the value of the victor would still be a very relative one, and, in any case, would certainly not justify such exaggerated triumph or self-glorification. For, in the first place, it would be necessary to ascertain the worth of the conquered culture. This might be very little; in which case, even if the victory had involved the most glorious display of arms, it would still offer no warrant for inordinate rapture. Even so, however, there can be no question, in our case, of the victory of German culture; and for the simple reason, that French culture remains as heretofore, and that we depend upon it as heretofore. It did not even help towards the success of our arms. Severe military discipline, natural bravery and sustaining power, the superior generalship, unity and obedience in the rank and file—in short, factors which have nothing to do with culture, were instrumental in making us conquer an opponent in whom the most essential of these factors were absent. The only wonder is, that precisely what is now called “ culture” in Germany did not prove an obstacle to the military operations which seemed vitally necessary
to a great victory. Perhaps, though, this was only owing to the fact that this “ thing” which dubs itself “ culture” saw its advantage, for once, in keeping in the background. If however, it be permitted to grow and to spread, if it be spoilt by the flattering and nonsensical assurance that it has been victorious,—then, as I have said, it will have the power to extirpate German mind, and, when that is done, who knows whether there will still be anything to be made out of the surviving German body! Provided it were possible to direct that calm and tenacious bravery which the German opposed to the pathetic and spontaneous fury of the Frenchman, against the inward enemy, against the highly suspicious and, at all events, unnative “ cultivation” which, owing to a dangerous misunderstanding, is called “ culture” in Germany, then all hope of a really genuine German “ culture”—the reverse of that “ cultivation”—would not be entirely lost. For the Germans have never known any lack of clear-sighted and heroic leaders, though these, often enough, probably, have lacked Germans. But whether it be possible to turn German bravery into a new direction seems to me to become ever more and more doubtful; for I realise how fully convinced every one is that such a struggle and such bravery are no longer requisite; on the contrary, that most things are regulated as satisactorily as they possibly can be—or, at all events, that everything of moment has long ago been discovered and accomplished: in a word, that the seed of culture is already sown everywhere, and is now either shooting up its fresh green blades, or, here and there, even bursting forth into luxuriant blossom. In this sphere, not only happiness but ecstasy reigns supreme. I am conscious of this ecstasy and happiness, in the ineffable, truculent assurance of German journalists and manufacturers of novels, tragedies, poems, and histories (for it must be clear that these people belong to one category), who seem to have conspired to improve the leisure and ruminative hours—that is to say, “ the intellectual lapses”—of the modern man, by bewildering him with their printed paper. Since the war, all is gladness, dignity, and self-consciousness in this merry throng. After the startling successes of German culture, it regards itself, not only as approved and sanctioned, but almost as sanctified. It therefore speaks with gravity, affects to apostrophise the German People, and issues complete works, after the manner of the classics; nor does it shrink from proclaiming in those journals which are open to it some few of its adherents as new German classical writers and model authors. It might be supposed that the dangers of such an abuse of success would be recognised by the more thoughtful and enlightened among cultivated Germans; or, at least, that these would feel how painful is the comedy that is being enacted around them: for what in truth could more readily inspire pity than the sight of a cripple strutting like a cock before a mirror, and exchanging complacent glances with his reflection! But the “ scholar” caste willingly allow things to remain as they are, and re too much concerned with their own affairs to busy themselves with the care of the German mind. Moreover, the units of this caste are too thoroughly convinced that their own scholarship is the ripest and most perfect fruit of the age—in fact, of all ages —to see any necessity for a care of German culture in general; since, in so far as they and the legion of their brethren are concerned, preoccupations of this order have everywhere been, so to speak, surpassed. The more conscientious observer, more particularly if he be a foreigner, cannot help noticing withal that no great disparity exists between that which the German scholar regards as his culture and that other triumphant culture of the new German classics, save in respect of the quantum of knowledge. Everywhere, where knowledge and not ability, where information and not art, hold the first rank,—everywhere, therefore, where life bears testimony to the kind of culture extant, there is now only one specific German culture—and this is the culture that is supposed to have conquered France? The contention appears to be altogether too preposterous. It was solely to the more extensive knowledge of German officers, to the superior training of their soldiers, and to their more scientific military strategy, that all impartial Judges, and even the French nation, in the end, ascribed the victory. Hence, if it be intended to regard German erudition as a thing apart, in what sense can German culture be said to have conquered? In none whatsoever; for the moral qualities of severe discipline, of more placid obedience, have nothing in common with culture: these were characteristic of the Macedonian army, for instance, despite the fact that the Greek soldiers were infinitely more cultivated. To speak of German scholarship and culture as having conquered, therefore, can only be the outcome of a misapprehension, probably resulting from the circumstance that every precise notion of culture has now vanished from Germany. Culture is, before all things, the unity of artistic style, in every expression of the life of a people. Abundant knowledge and learning, however, are not essential to it, nor are they a sign of its existence; and, at a pinch, they might coexist much more harmoniously with the very opposite of culture—with barbarity: that is to say, with a complete lack of style, or with a riotous jumble of all styles. But it is precisely amid this riotous jumble that the German of to-day subsists; and the serious problem to be solved is: how, with all his learning, he can possibly avoid noticing it; how, into the bargain, he can rejoice with all his heart in his present “ culture”? For everything conduces to open his eyes for him—every glance he casts at his clothes, his room, his house; every walk he takes through the streets of his town; every visit he pays to his art-dealers and to his trader in the articles of fashion. In his social intercourse he ought to realise the origin of his manners and movements; in the heart of our art-institutions, the pleasures of our concerts, theatres, and museums, he ought to become apprised of the super- and juxta-position of all imaginable styles. The German heaps up around him the forms, colours, products, and curiosities of all ages and zones, and thereby succeeds in producing that garish newness, as of a country fair, which his scholars then proceed to contemplate and to define as “ Modernism per se”; and there he remains, squatting peacefully, in the midst of this conflict of styles. But with this kind of culture, which is, at bottom, nothing more nor less than a phlegmatic insensibility to real culture, men cannot vanquish an enemy, least of all an enemy like the French, who, whatever their worth may be, do actually possess a genuine and productive culture, and whom, up to the present, we have systematically copied, though in the majority of cases without skill. Even supposing we had really ceased copying them, it would still not mean that we had overcome them, but merely that we had lifted their yoke from our necks. Not before we have succeeded in forcing an original German culture upon them can there be any question of the triumph of German culture. Meanwhile, let us not forget that in all matters of form we are, and must be, just as dependent upon Paris now as we were before the war; for up to the present there has been no such thing as a original German culture. We all ought to have become aware of this, of our own accord. Besides, one of the few who had he right to speak to Germans in terms of reproach Publicly drew attention to the
fact. “ We Germans are of yesterday,” Goethe once said to Eckermann. “ True, for the last hundred years we have diligently cultivated ourselves, but a few centuries may yet have to run their course before our fellow-countrymen become permeated with sufficient intellectuality and higher culture to have it said of them, it is a long time since they were barbarians.” II. If, however, our public and private life is so manifestly devoid of all signs of a productive and characteristic culture; if, moreover, our great artists, with that earnest vehemence and honesty which is peculiar to greatness admit, and have admitted, this monstrous fact—so very humiliating to a gifted nation; how can it still be possible for contentment to reign to such an astonishing extent among German scholars? And since the last war this complacent spirit has seemed ever more and morerready to break forth into exultant cries and demonstrations of triumph. At all events, the belief seems to be rife that we are in possession of a genuine culture, and the enormous incongruity of this triumphant satisfaction in the face of the inferiority which should be patent to all, seems only to be noticed by the few and the select. For all those who think with the public mind have blindfolded their eyes and closed their ears. The incongruity is not even acknowledged to exist. How is this possible? What power is sufficiently influential to deny this existence? What species of men must have attained to supremacy in Germany that feelings which are so strong and simple should he denied or prevented from obtaining expression? This power, this species of men, I will name—they are the Philistines of Culture. As every one knows, the word “ Philistine” is borrowed from the vernacular of student-life, and, in its widest and most popular sense, it signifies the reverse of a son of the Muses, of an artist, and of the genuine man of culture. The Philistine of culture, however, the study of whose type and the hearing of whose confessions (when he makes them) have now become tiresome duties, distinguishes himself from the general notion of the order “ Philistine” by means of a superstition: he fancies that he is himself a son of the Muses and a man of culture. This incomprehensible error clearly shows that he does not even know the difference between a Philistine and his opposite. We must not be surprised, therefore, if we find him, for the most part, solemnly protesting that he is no Philistine. Owing to this lack of self-knowledge, he is convinced that his “ culture” is the consummate manifestation of real German culture; and, since he everywhere meets with scholars of his own type, since all public institutions, whether schools, universities, or academies, are so organised as to be in complete harmony with his education and needs, wherever he goes he bears with him the triumphant feeling that he is the worthy champion of prevailing German culture, and he frames his pretensions and claims accordingly. If, however, real culture takes unity of style for granted (and even an inferior and degenerate culture cannot be imagined in which a certain coalescence of the profusion of forms has not taken place), it is just possible that the confusion underlying the Culture-Philistine’s error may arise from the fact that, since he comes into contact everywhere with creatures cast in the same mould as himself, he concludes that this uniformity among all “ scholars” must point to a certain uniformity in German education—hence to culture. All round him, he sees only needs and views similar to his own; wherever he goes, he finds himself embraced by a ring of tacit conventions concerning almost everything, but more especially matters of religion and art. This imposing sameness, this tutti unisono which, though it responds to no word of command, is yet ever ready to burst forth, cozens him into the belief that here a culture must be established and flourishing. But Philistinism, despite its systematic organisation and power, does not constitute a culture by virtue of its system alone; it does not even constitute an inferior culture, but invariably the reverse—namely, firmly established barbarity. For the uniformity of character which is so apparent in the German scholars of today is only the result of a conscious or unconscious exclusion and negation of all the artistically productive forms and requirements of a genuine style. The mind of the cultured Philistine must have become sadly unhinged; for precisely what culture repudiates he regards as culture itself; and, since he proceeds logically, he succeeds in creating a connected group of these repudiations—a system of non-culture, to which one might at a pinch grant a certain “ unity of style,” provided of course it were Ot nonsense to attribute style to barbarity. If he have to choose between a stylish act and its opposite, he will invariably adopt the latter, and, since this rule holds good throughout, every one of his acts bears the same negative stamp. Now, it is by means of this stamp that he is able to identify the character of the “ German culture,” which is his own patent; and all things that do not bear it are so many enemies and obstacles drawn up against him. In the presence of these arrayed forces the Culture-Philistine either does no more than ward off the blows, or else he denies, holds his tongue, stops his ears, and refuses to face facts. He is a negative creature—even in his hatred and animosity. Nobody, however, is more disliked by him than the man who regards him as a Philistine, and tells him what he is—namely, the barrier in the way of all powerful men and creators, the labyrinth for all who doubt and go astray, the swamp for all the weak and the weary, the fetters of those who would run towards lofty goals, the poisonous mist that chokes all germinating hopes, the scorching sand to all those German thinkers who seek for, and thirst after, a new life. For the mind of Germany is seeking; and ye hate it because it is seeking, and because it will not accept your word, when ye declare that ye have found what it is seeking. How could it have been possible for a type like that of the Culture-Philistine to develop? and even granting its development, how was it able to rise to the powerful Position of supreme judge concerning all questions of German culture? How could this have been possible, seeing that a whole procession of grand and heroic figures has already filed past us, whose every movement, the expression of whose every feature, whose questioning voice and burning eye betrayed the one fact, that they were seekers, and that they sought that which the Culture-Philistine had long fancied he had found—to wit, a genuine original German culture? Is there a soil—thus they seemed to ask—a soil that is pure enough, unhandselled enough, of sufficient virgin sanctity, to allow the mind of Germany to build its house upon it? Questioning thus, they wandered through the wilderness, and the woods of wretched ages and narrow conditions, and as seekers they disappeared from our vision; one of them, at an advanced age, was even able to say, in the name of all: “ For half a century my life has been hard and bitter enough; I have allowed myself no rest, but have ever striven, sought and done, to the best and to the utmost of my ability.” What does our Culture-Philistinism say of these seekers? It regards them simply as discoverers, and seems to forget that they themselves only claimed to be seekers. We have our culture, say her sons; for have we not our “ classics”? Not only is the foundation there, but the building already stands upon it—we ourselves constitute that building. And, so
saying, the Philistine raises his hand to his brow. But, in order to be able thus to misjudge, and thus to grant left-handed veneration to our classics, people must have ceased to know them. This, generally speaking, is precisely what has happened. For, otherwise, one ought to know that there is only one way of honouring them, and that is to continue seeking with the same spirit and with the same courage, and not to weary of the search. But to foist the doubtful title of “ classics” upon them, and to “ edify” oneself from time to time by reading their works, means to yield to those feeble and selfish emotions which all the paying public may purchase at concert-halls and theatres. Even the raising of monuments to their memory, and the christening of feasts and societies with their names—all these things are but so many ringing cash payments by means of which the Culture-Philistine discharges his indebtedness to them, so that in all other respects he may be rid of them, and, above all, not bound to follow in their wake and prosecute his search further. For henceforth inquiry is to cease: that is the Philistine watchword. This watchword once had some meaning. In Germany, during the first decade of the nineteenth century, for instance, when the heyday and confusion of seeking, experimenting, destroying, promising, surmising, and hoping was sweeping in currents and cross-currents over the land, the thinking middle-classes were right in their concern for their own security. It was then quite right of them to dismiss from their minds with a shrug of their shoulders the omnium gatherum of fantastic and language-maiming philosophies, and of rabid specialpleading historical studies, the carnival of all gods and myths, and the poetical affectations and fooleries which a drunken spirit may be responsible for. In this respect they were quite right; for the Philistine has not even the privilege of licence. With the cunning proper to base natures, however, he availed himself of the opportunity, in order to throw suspicion even upon the seeking spirit, and to invite people to join in the more comfortable pastime of finding. His eye opened to the joy of Philistinism; he saved himself from wild experimenting by clinging to the idyllic, and opposed the restless creative spirit that animates the artist, by means of a certain smug ease—the ease of self-conscious narrowness, tranquillity, and self-sufficiency. His tapering finger pointed, without any affectation of modesty, to all the hidden and intimate incidents of his life, to the many touching and ingenuous joys which sprang into existence in the wretched depths of his uncultivated existence, and which modestly blossomed forth on the bog-land of Philistinism. There were, naturally, a few gifted narrators who, with a nice touch, drew vivid pictures of the happiness, the prosaic simplicity, the bucolic robustness, and all the well-being which floods the quarters of children, scholars, and peasants. With picture-books of this class in their hands, these smug ones now once and for all sought to escape from the yoke of these dubious classics and the command which they contained—to seek further and to find. They only started the notion of an epigone-age in order to secure peace for themselves, and to be able to reject all the efforts of disturbing innovators summarily as the work of epigones. With the view of ensuring their own tranquillity, these smug ones even appropriated history, and sought to transform all sciences that threatened to disturb their wretched ease into branches of history—more particularly philosophy and classical philology. Through historical consciousness, they saved themselves from enthusiasm; for, in opposition to Goethe, it was maintained that history would no longer kindle enthusiasm. No, in their desire to acquire an historical grasp of everything, stultification became the sole aim of these philosophical admirers of “ nil admirari.” While professing to hate every form of fanaticism and intolerance, what they really hated, at bottom, was the dominating genius and the tyranny of the real claims of culture. They therefore concentrated and utilised all their forces in those quarters where a fresh and vigorous movement was to be expected, and then paralysed, stupefied, and tore it to shreds. In this way, a philosophy which veiled the Philistine confessions of its founder beneath neat twists and flourishes of language proceeded further to discover a formula for the canonisation of the commonplace. It expatiated upon the rationalism of all reality, and thus ingratiated itself with the Culture-Philistine, who also loves neat twists and flourishes, and who, above all, considers himself real, and regards his reality as the standard of reason for the world. From this time forward he began to allow every one, and even himself, to reflect, to investigate, to astheticise, and, more particularly, to make poetry, rnusic, and even pictures—not to mention systems philosophy; provided, of course, that everything were done according to the old pattern, and that no assault were made upon the “ reasonable” and the “ real”—that is to say, upon the Philistine. The latter really does not at all mind giving himself up, from time to time, to the delightful and daring transgressions of art or of sceptical historical studies, and he does not underestimate the charm of such recreations and entertainments; but he strictly separates “ the earnestness of life” (under which term he understands his calling, his business, and his wife and child) from such trivialities, and among the latter he includes all things which have any relation to culture. Therefore, woe to the art that takes itself seriously, that has a notion of what it may exact, and that dares to endanger his income, his business, and his habits! Upon such an art he turns his back, as though it were something dissolute; and, affecting the attitude of a. guardian of chastity, he cautions every unprotected virtue on no account to look. Being such an adept at cautioning people, he is always grateful to any artist who heeds him and listens to caution. He then assures his protege that things are to be made more easy for him; that, as a kindred spirit, he will no longer be expected to make sublime masterpieces, but that his work must be one of two kinds—either the imitation of reality to the point of simian mimicry, in idylls or gentle and humorous satires, or the free copying of the best-known and most famous classical works, albeit with shamefast concessions to the taste of the age. For, although he may only be able to appreciate slavish copying or accurate portraiture of the present, still he knows that the latter will but glorify him, and increase the well-being of “ reality”; while the former, far from doing him any harm, rather helps to establish his reputation as a classical judge of taste, and is not otherwise troublesome; for he has, once and for all, come to terms with the classics. Finally, he discovers the general and effective formula “ Health” for his habits, methods of observation, judgments, and the objects of his patronage; while he dismisses the importunate disturber of the peace with the epithets “ hysterical” and “ morbid.” It is thus that David Strauss—a genuine example of the satisfait in regard to our scholastic institutions, and a typical Philistine—it is thus that he speaks of “ the philosophy of Schopenhauer” as being “ thoroughly intellectual, yet often unhealthy and unprofitable.” It is indeed a deplorable fact that intellect should show such a decided preference for the “ unhealthy” and the “ unprofitable”; and even the Philistine, if he be true to himself, will admit that, in regard to the philosophies which men of his stamp produce, he is conscious of a frequent lack of intellectuality, although of course they are always thoroughly healthy and profitable.
Now and again, the Philistines, provided they are by themselves, indulge in a bottle of wine, and then they grow reminiscent, and speak of the great deeds of the war, honestly and ingenuously. On such occasions it often happens that a great deal comes to light which would otherwise have been most stead-fastly concealed, and one of them may even be heard to blurt out the most precious secrets of the whole brotherhood. Indeed, a lapse of this sort occurred but a short while ago, to a well-known aesthete of the Hegelian school of reasoning. It must, however, be admitted that the provocation thereto was of an unusual character. A company of Philistines were feasting together, in celebration of the memory of a genuine anti-Philistine—one who, moreover, had been, in the strictest sense of the words, wrecked by Philistinism. This man was Holderlin, and the afore-mentioned aesthete was therefore justified, under the circumstances, in speaking of the tragic souls who had foundered on “ reality”—reality being understood, here, to mean Philistine reason. But the “ reality” is now different, and it might well be asked whether Holderlin would be able to find his way at all in the present great age. “ I doubt,” says Dr. Vischer, “ whether his delicate soul could have borne all the roughness which is inseparable from war, and whether it had survived the amount of perversity which, since the war, we now see flourishing in every quarter. Perhaps he would have succumbed to despair. His was one of the unarmed souls; he was the Werther of Greece, a hopeless lover; his life was full of softness and yearning, but there was strength and substance in his will, and in his style, greatness, riches and life; here and there it is even reminiscent of AEschylus. His spirit, however, lacked hardness. He lacked the weapon humour; he could not grant that one may be a Philistine and still be no barbarian.” Not the sugary condolence of the post-prandial speaker, but this last sentence concerns us. Yes, it is admitted that one is a Philistine; but, a barbarian?—No, not at any price! Unfortunately, poor Holderlin could not make such flne distinctions. If one reads the reverse of civilisation, or perhaps sea-pirating, or cannibalism, into the word “ barbarian,” then the distinction is justifiable enough. But what the aesthete obviously wishes to prove to us is, that we may be Philistines and at the same time men of culture. Therein lies the humour which poor Holderlin lacked and the need of which ultimately wrecked him.[7]* [Footnote * : Nietzsche’s allusion to Holderlin here is full of tragic significance; for, like Holderlin, he too was ultimately wrecked and driven insane by the Philistinism of his age. —Translator’s note.] On this occasion a second admission was made by the speaker: “ It is not always strength of will, but weakness, which makes us superior to those tragic souls which are so passionately responsive to the attractions of beauty,” or words to this effect. And this was said in the name of the assembled “ We”; that is to say, the “ superiors,” the “ superiors through weakness.” Let us content ourselves with these admissions. We are now in possession of information concerning two matters from one of the initiated: first, that these “ We” stand beyond the passion for beauty; secondly, that their position was reached by means of weakness. In less confidential moments, however, it was just this weakness which masqueraded in the guise of a much more beautiful name: it was the famous “ healthiness” of the Culture-Philistine. In view of this very recent restatement of the case, however, it would be as well not to speak of them any longer as the “ healthy ones,” but as the “ weakly,” or, still better, as the “ feeble.” Oh, if only these feeble ones were not in power! How is it that they concern themselves at all about what we call them! They are the rulers, and he is a poor ruler who cannot endure to be called by a nickname. Yes, if one only have power, one soon learns to poke fun—even at oneself. It cannot matter so very much, therefore, even if one do give oneself away; for what could not the purple mantle of triumph conceal? The strength of the Culture-Philistine steps into the broad light of day when he acknowledges his weakness; and the more he acknowledges it— the more cynically he acknowledges it— the more completely he betrays his consciousness of his own importance and superiority. We are living in a period of cynical Philistine confessions. Just as Friedrich Vischer gave us his in a word, so has David Strauss handed us his in a book; and both that word and that book are cynical. III. Concerning Culture-Philistinism, David Strauss makes a double confession, by word and by deed; that is to say, by the word of the confessor, and the act of the writer. His book entitled The Old Faith and the New is, first in regard to its contents, and secondly in regard to its being a book and a literary production, an uninterrupted confession; while, in the very fact that he allows himself to write confessions at all about his faith, there already lies a confession. Presumably, every one seems to have the right to compile an autobiography after his fortieth year; for the humblest amongst us may have experienced things, and may have seen them at such close quarters, that the recording of them may prove of use and value to the thinker. But to write a confession of one’s faith cannot but be regarded as a thousand times more pretentious, since it takes for granted that the writer attaches worth, not only to the experiences and investigations of his life, but also to his beliefs. Now, what the nice thinker will require to know, above all else, is the kind of faith which happens to be compatible with natures of the Straussian order, and what it is they have “ half dreamily conjured up” (p. 10) concerning matters of which those alone have the right to speak who are acquainted with them at first hand. Whoever would have desired to possess the confessions, say, of a Ranke or a Mommsen? And these men were scholars and historians of a very different stamp from David Strauss. If, however, they had ever ventured to interest us in their faith instead of in their scientific investigations, we should have felt that they were overstepping their limits in a most irritating fashion. Yet Strauss does this when he discusses his faith. Nobody wants to know anything about it, save, perhaps, a few bigoted opponents of the Straussian doctrines, who, suspecting, as they do, a substratum of satanic principles beneath these doctrines, hope that he may compromise his learned utterances by revealing the nature of those principles. These clumsy creatures may, perhaps, have found what they sought in the last book; but we, who had no occasion to suspect a satanic substratum, discovered nothing of the sort, and would have felt rather pleased than not had we been able to discern even a dash of the diabolical in any part of the volume. But surely no evil spirit could speak as Strauss speaks of his new faith. In fact, spirit in general seems to be altogether foreign to the book— more particularly the spirit of genius. Only those whom Strauss designates as his “ We,” speak as he does, and then, when they expatiate upon their faith to us, they bore us even more than when they relate their dreams; be they “ scholars, artists, military men, civil employes, merchants, or landed proprietors; come they in their thousands, and not the worst people in the land either!” If they do not wish to
remain the peaceful ones in town or county, but threaten to wax noisy, then let not the din of their unisono deceive us concerning the poverty and vulgarity of the melody they sing. How can it dispose us more favourably towards a profession of faith to hear that it is approved by a crowd, when it is of such an order that if any individual of that crowd attempted to make it known to us, we should not only fail to hear him out, but should interrupt him with a yawn? If thou sharest such a belief, we should say unto him, in Heaven’s name, keep it to thyself! Maybe, in the past, some few harmless types looked for the thinker in David Strauss; now they have discovered the “ believer” in him, and are disappointed. Had he kept silent, he would have remained, for these, at least, the philosopher; whereas, now, no one regards him as such. He no longer craved the honours of the thinker, however; all he wanted to be was a new believer, and he is proud of his new belief. In making a written declaration of it, he fancied he was writing the catechism of “ modern thought,” and building the “ broad highway of the world’s future.” Indeed, our Philistines have ceased to be faint-hearted and bashful, and have acquired almost cynical assurance. There was a time, long, long ago, when the Philistine was only tolerated as something that did not speak, and about which no one spoke; then a period ensued during which his roughness was smoothed, during which he was found amusing, and people talked about him. Under this treatment he gradually became a prig, rejoiced with all his heart over his rough places and his wrongheaded and candid singularities, and began to talk, on his own account, after the style of Riehl’s music for the home. “ But what do I see? Is it a shadow? Is it reality? How long and broad my poodle grows!” For now he is already rolling like a hippopotamus along “ the broad highway of the world’s future,” and his growling and barking have become transformed into the proud incantations of a religious founder. And is it your own sweet wish, Great Master, to found the religion of the future? “ The times seem to us not yet ripe (p. 7). It does not occur to us to wish to destroy a church.” But why not, Great Master? One but needs the ability. Besides, to speak quite openly in the latter, you yourself are convinced that you Possess this ability. Look at the last page of your book. There you actually state, forsooth, that your new way “ alone is the future highway of the world, which now only requires partial completion, and especially general use, in order also to become easy and pleasant.” Make no further denials, then. The religious founder is unmasked, the convenient and agreeable highway leading to the Straussian Paradise is built. It is only the coach in which you wish to convey us that does not altogether satisfy you, unpretentious man that you are! You tell us in your concluding remarks: “ Nor will I pretend that the coach to which my esteemed readers have been obliged to trust themselves with me fulfils every requirement,… all through one is much jolted” (p. 438). Ah! you are casting about for a compliment, you gallant old religious founder! But let us be straightforward with you. If your reader so regulates the perusal of the 368 pages of your religious catechism as to read only one page a day —that is to say, if he take it in the smallest possible doses-then, perhaps, we should be able to believe that he might suffer some evil effect from the book—if only as the outcome of his vexation when the results he expected fail to make themselves felt. Gulped down more heartily, however, and as much as possible being taken at each draught, according to the prescription to be recommended in the case of all modern books, the drink can work no mischief; and, after taking it, the reader will not necessarily be either out of sorts or out of temper, but rather merry and well-disposed, as though nothing had happened; as though no religion had been assailed, no world’s highway been built, and no profession of faith been made. And I do indeed call this a result! The doctor, the drug, and the disease—everything forgotten! And the joyous laughter! The continual provocation to hilarity! You are to be envied, Sir; for you have founded the most attractive of all religions —one whose followers do honour to its founder by laughing at him. IV. The Philistine as founder of the religion of the future—that is the new belief in its most emphatic form of expression. The Philistine becomes a dreamer—that is the unheard-of occurrence which distinguishes the German nation of to-day. But for the present, in any case, let us maintain an attitude of caution towards this fantastic exaltation. For does not David Strauss himself advise us to exercise such caution, in the following profound passage, the general tone of which leads us to think of the Founder of Christianity rather than of our particular author? (p. 92): “ We know there have been noble enthusiasts—enthusiasts of genius; the influence of an enthusiast can rouse, exalt, and produce prolonged historic effects; but we do not wish to choose him as the guide of our life. He will be sure to mislead us, if we do not subject his influence to the control of reason.” But we know something more: we know that there are enthusiasts who are not intellectual, who do not rouse or exalt, and who, nevertheless, not only expect to be the guides of our lives, but, as such, to exercise a very lasting historical influence into the bargain, and to rule the future;—all the more reason why we should place their influence under the control of reason. Lichtenberg even said: “ There are enthusiasts quite devoid of ability, and these are really dangerous people.” In the first place, as regards the above-mentioned control of reason, we should like to have candid answers to the three following questions: First, how does the new believer picture his heaven? Secondly, how far does the courage lent him by the new faith extend? And, thirdly, how does he write his books? Strauss the Confessor must answer the first and second questions; Strauss the Writer must answer the third. The heaven of the new believer must, perforce, be a heaven upon earth; for the Christian “ prospect of an immortal life in heaven,” together with the other consolations, “ must irretrievably vanish” for him who has but “ one foot” on the Straussian platform. The way in which a religion represents its heaven is significant, and if it be true that Christianity knows no other heavenly occupations than singing and making music, the prospect of the Philistine, � la Strauss, is truly not a very comforting one. In the book of confessions, however, there is a page which treats of Paradise (p. 342). Happiest of Philistines, unroll this parchment scroll before anything else, and the whole of heaven will seem to clamber down to thee! “ We would but indicate how we act, how we have acted these many years. Besides our profession—for we are members of the most various professions, and by no means exclusively consist of scholars or artists, but of military men and civil employes, of merchants and landed proprietors;… and again, as I have said already, there are not a few of us, but many thousands, and not the worst people in the country;—besides our profession, then, I say, we are eagerly accessible to all the higher interests of humanity; we have taken a vivid interest, during late years, and each after his manner has participated in the great national war, and the reconstruction of the German State; and we have been profoundly exalted
by the turn events have taken, as unexpected as glorious, for our much tried nation. To the end of forming just conclusions in these things, we study history, which has now been made easy, even to the unlearned, by a series of attractively and popularly written works; at the same time, we endeavour to enlarge our knowledge of the natural sciences, where also there is no lack of sources of information; and lastly, in the writings of our great poets, in the performances of our great musicians, we find a stimulus for the intellect and heart, for wit and imagination, which leaves nothing to be desired. Thus we live, and hold on our way in joy.” “ Here is our man!” cries the Philistine exultingly, who reads this: “ for this is exactly how we live; it is indeed our daily life.”[8]* And how perfectly he understands the euphemism! When, for example, he refers to the historical studies by means of which we help ourselves in forming just conclusions regarding the political situation, what can he be thinking of, if it be not our newspaper-reading? When he speaks of the active part we take in the reconstruction of the German State, he surely has only our daily visits to the beergarden in his mind; and is not a walk in the Zoological Gardens implied by ‘the sources of information through which we endeavour to enlarge our knowledge of the natural sciences’? Finally, the theatres and concert-halls are referred to as places from which we take home ‘a stimulus for wit and imagination which leaves nothing to be desired.’—With what dignity and wit he describes even the most suspicious of our doings! Here indeed is our man; for his heaven is our heaven!” [Footnote * : This alludes to a German student-song.] Thus cries the Philistine; and if we are not quite so satisfied as he, it is merely owing to the fact that we wanted to know more. Scaliger used to say: “ What does it matter to us whether Montaigne drank red or white wine?” But, in this more important case, how greatly ought we to value definite particulars of this sort! If we could but learn how many pipes the Philistine smokes daily, according to the prescriptions of the new faith, and whether it is the Spener or the National Gazette that appeals to him over his coffee! But our curiosity is not satisfied. With regard to one point only do we receive more exhaustive information, and fortunately this point relates to the heaven in heaven—the private little art-rooms which will be consecrated to the use of great poets and musicians, and to which the Philistine will go to edify himself; in which, moreover, according to his own showing, he will even get “ all his stains removed and wiped away” (p. 433); so that we are led to regard these private little art-rooms as a kind of bath-rooms. “ But this is only effected for some fleeting moments; it happens and counts only in the realms of phantasy; as soon as we return to rude reality, and the cramping confines of actual life, we are again on all sides assailed by the old cares,”—thus our Master sighs. Let us, however, avail ourselves of the fleeting moments during which we remain in those little rooms; there is just sufficient time to get a glimpse of the apotheosis of the Philistine— that is to say, the Philistine whose stains have been removed and wiped away, and who is now an absolutely pure sample of his type. In truth, the opportunity we have here may prove instructive: let no one who happens to have fallen a victim to the confession-book lay it aside before having read the two appendices, “ Of our Great Poets” and “ Of our Great Musicians.” Here the rainbow of the new brotherhood is set, and he who can find no pleasure in it “ for such an one there is no help,” as Strauss says on another occasion; and, as he might well say here, “ he is not yet ripe for our point of view.” For are we not in the heaven of heavens? The enthusiastic explorer undertakes to lead us about, and begs us to excuse him if, in the excess of his joy at all the beauties to be seen, he should by any chance be tempted to talk too much. “ If I should, perhaps, become more garrulous than may seem warranted in this place, let the reader be indulgent to me; for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. Let him only be assured that what he is now about to read does not consist of older materials, which I take the opportunity of inserting here, but that these remarks have been written for their present place and purpose” (pp. 345-46). This confession surprises us somewhat for the moment. What can it matter to us whether or not the little chapters were freshly written? As if it were a matter of writing! Between ourselves, I should have been glad if they had been written a quarter of a century earlier; then, at least, I should have understood why the thoughts seem to be so bleached, and why they are so redolent of resuscitated antiquities. But that a thing should have been written in 1872 and already smell of decay in 1872 strikes me as suspicious. Let us imagine some one’s falling asleep while reading these chapters—what would he most probably dream about? A friend answered this question for me, because he happened to have had the experience himself. He dreamt of a wax-work show. The classical writers stood there, elegantly represented in wax and beads. Their arms and eyes moved, and a screw inside them creaked an accompaniment to their movements. He saw something gruesome among them—a misshapen figure, decked with tapes and jaundiced paper, out of whose mouth a ticket hung, on which “ Lessing” was written. My friend went close up to it and learned the worst: it was the Homeric Chimera; in front it was Strauss, behind it was Gervinus, and in the middle Chimera. The tout-ensemble was Lessing. This discovery caused him to shriek with terror: he waked, and read no more. In sooth, Great Master, why have you written such fusty little chapters? We do, indeed, learn something new from them; for instance, that Gervinus made it known to the world how and why Goethe was no dramatic genius; that, in the second part of Faust, he had only produced a world of phantoms and of symbols; that Wallenstein is a Macbeth as well as a Hamlet; that the Straussian reader extracts the short stories out of the Wanderjahre “ much as naughty children pick the raisins and almonds out of a tough plum-cake”; that no complete effect can be produced on the stage without the forcible element, and that Schiller emerged from Kant as from a cold-water cure. All this is certainly new and striking; but, even so, it does not strike us with wonder, and so sure as it is new, it will never grow old, for it never was young; it was senile at birth. What extraordinary ideas seem to occur to these Blessed Ones, after the New Style, in their aesthetic heaven! And why can they not manage to forget a few of them, more particularly when they are of that unaesthetic, earthly, and ephemeral order to which the scholarly thoughts of Gervinus belong, and when they so obviously bear the stamp of puerility? But it almost seems as though the modest greatness of a Strauss and the vain insignificance of a Gervinus were only too well able to harmonise: then long live all those Blessed Ones! may we, the rejected, also live long, if this unchallenged judge of art continues any longer to teach his borrowed enthusiasm, and the gallop of that hired steed of which the honest Grillparzer speaks with such delightful clearness, until the whole of heaven rings beneath the hoof of that galumphing enthusiasm. Then, at least, things will be livelier and noisier than they are at the present moment, in which the carpet-slippered rapture of our heavenly leader and the lukewarm eloquence of his
lips only succeed in the end in making us sick and tired. I should like to know how a Hallelujah sung by Strauss would sound: I believe one would have to listen very carefully, lest it should seem no more than a courteous apology or a lisped compliment. Apropos of this, I might adduce an instructive and somewhat forbidding example. Strauss strongly resented the action of one of his opponents who happened to refer to his reverence for Lessing. The unfortunate man had misunderstood;—true, Strauss did declare that one must be of a very obtuse mind not to recognise that the simple words of paragraph 86 come from the writer’s heart. Now, I do not question this warmth in the very least; on the contrary, the fact that Strauss fosters these feelings towards Lessing has always excited my suspicion; I find the same warmth for Lessing raised almost to heat in Gervinus—yea, on the whole, no great German writer is so popular among little German writers as Lessing is; but for all that, they deserve no thanks for their predilection; for what is it, in sooth, that they praise in Lessing? At one moment it is his catholicity— the fact that he was critic and poet, archaeologist and philosopher, dramatist and theologian. Anon, “ it is the unity in him of the writer and the man, of the head and the heart.” The last quality, as a rule, is just as characteristic of the great writer as of the little one; as a rule, a narrow head agrees only too fatally with a narrow heart. And as to the catholicity; this is no distinction, more especially when, as in Lessing’s case, it was a dire necessity. What astonishes one in regard to Lessingenthusiasts is rather that they have no conception of the devouring necessity which drove him on through life and to this catholicity; no feeling for the fact that such a man is too prone to consume himself rapidly, like a flame; nor any indignation at the thought that the vulgar narrowness and pusillanimity of his whole environment, especially of his learned contemporaries, so saddened, tormented, and stifled the tender and ardent creature that he was, that the very universality for which he is praised should give rise to feelings of the deepest compassion. “ Have pity on the exceptional man!” Goethe cries to us; “ for it was his lot to live in such a wretched age that his life was one long polemical effort.” How can ye, my worthy Philistines, think of Lessing without shame? He who was ruined precisely on account of your stupidity, while struggling with your ludicrous fetiches and idols, with the defects of your theatres, scholars, and theologists, without once daring to attempt that eternal flight for which he had been born. And what are your feelings when ye think of Winckelman, who, in order to turn his eyes from your grotesque puerilities, went begging to the Jesuits for help, and whose ignominious conversion dishonours not him, but you? Dare ye mention Schiller’s name without blushing? Look at his portrait. See the flashing eyes that glance contemptuously over your heads, the deadly red cheek—do these things mean nothing to you? In him ye had such a magnificent and divine toy that ye shattered it. Suppose, for a moment, it had been possible to deprive this harassed and hunted life of Goethe’s friendship, ye would then have been reponsible for its still earlier end. Ye have had no finger in any one of the life-works of your great geniuses, and yet ye would make a dogma to the effect that no one is to be helped in the future. But for every one of them, ye were “ the resistance of the obtuse world,” which Goethe calls by its name in his epilogue to the Bell; for all of them ye were the grumbling imbeciles, or the envious bigots, or the malicious egoists: in spite of you each of them created his works, against you each directed his attacks, and thanks to you each prematurely sank, while his work was still unfinished, broken and bewildered by the stress of the battle. And now ye presume that ye are going to be permitted, tamquam re bene gesta, to praise such men! and with words which leave no one in any doubt as to whom ye have in your minds when ye utter your encomiums, which therefore “ spring forth with such hearty warmth” that one must be blind not to see to whom ye are really bowing. Even Goethe in his day had to cry: “ Upon my honour, we are in need of a Lessing, and woe unto all vain masters and to the whole aesthetic kingdom of heaven, when the young tiger, whose restless strength will be visible in his every distended muscle and his every glance, shall sally forth to seek his prey!” V. How clever it was of my friend to read no further, once he had been enlightened (thanks to that chimerical vision) concerning the Straussian Lessing and Strauss himself. We, however, read on further, and even craved admission of the Doorkeeper of the New Faith to the sanctum of music. The Master threw the door open for us, accompanied us, and began quoting certain names, until, at last, overcome with mistrust, we stood still and looked at him. Was it possible that we were the victims of the same hallucination as that to which our friend had been subjected in his dream? The musicians to whom Strauss referred seemed to us to be wrongly designated as long as he spoke about them, and we began to think that the talk must certainly be about somebody else, even admitting that it did not relate to incongruous phantoms. When, for instance, he mentioned Haydn with that same warmth which made us so suspicious when he praised Lessing, and when he posed as the epopt and priest of a mysterious Haydn cult; when, in a discussion upon quartette-music, if you please, he even likened Haydn to a “ good unpretending soup” and Beethoven to “ sweetmeats” (p. 432); then, to our minds, one thing, and one thing alone, became certain—namely, that his Sweetmeat-Beethoven is not our Beethoven, and his Soup-Haydn is not our Haydn. The Master was moreover of the opinion that our orchestra is too good to perform Haydn, and that only the most unpretentious amateurs can do justice to that music—a further proof that he was referring to some other artist and some other work, possibly to Riehl’s music for the home. But whoever can this Sweetmeat-Beethoven of Strauss’s be? He is said to have composed nine symphonies, of which the Pastoral is “ the least remarkable”; we are told that “ each time in composing the third, he seemed impelled to exceed his bounds, and depart on an adventurous quest,” from which we might infer that we are here concerned with a sort of double monster, half horse and half cavalier. With regard to a certain Eroica, this Centaur is very hard pressed, because he did not succeed in making it clear “ whether it is a question of a conflict on the open field or in the deep heart of man.” In the Pastoral there is said to be “ a furiously raging storm,” for which it is “ almost too insignificant” to interrupt a dance of country-folk, and which, owing to “ its arbitrary connection with a trivial motive,” as Strauss so adroitly and correctly puts it, renders this symphony “ the least remarkable.” A more drastic expression appears to have occurred to the Master; but he prefers to speak here, as he says, “ with becoming modesty.” But no, for once our Master is wrong; in this case he is really a little too modest. Who, indeed, will enlighten us concerning this Sweetmeat-Beethoven, if not Strauss himself—the only person who seems to know anything about him? But, immediately below, a strong judgment is uttered with becoming non-modesty, and precisely in regard to the Ninth Symphony. It is said, for instance, that this symphony
“ is naturally the favourite of a prevalent taste, which in art, and music especially, mistakes the grotesque for the genial, and the formless for the sublime” (p. 428). It is true that a critic as severe as Gervinus was gave this work a hearty welcome, because it happened to confirm one of his doctrines; but Strauss is “ far from going to these problematic productions” in search of the merits of his Beethoven. “ It is a pity,” cries our Master, with a convulsive sigh, “ that one is compelled, by such reservations, to mar one’s enjoyment of Beethoven, as well as the admiration gladly accorded to him.” For our Master is a favourite of the Graces, and these have informed him that they only accompanied Beethoven part of the way, and that he then lost sight of them. “ This is a defect,” he cries, “ but can you believe that it may also appear as an advantage?” “ He who is painfully and breathlessly rolling the musical idea along will seem to be moving the weightier one, and thus appear to be the stronger” (pp. 423-24). This is a confession, and not necessarily one concerning Beethoven alone, but concerning “ the classical prose-writer” himself. He, the celebrated author, is not abandoned by the Graces. From the play of airy jests—that is to say, Straussian jests— to the heights of solemn earnestness—that is to say, Straussian earnestness—they remain stolidly at his elbow. He, the classical prose-writer, slides his burden along playfully and with a light heart, whereas Beethoven rolls his painfully and breathlessly. He seems merely to dandle his load; this is indeed an advantage. But would anybody believe that it might equally be a sign of something wanting? In any case, only those could believe this who mistake the grotesque for the genial, and the formless for the sublime—is not that so, you dandling favourite of the Graces? We envy no one the edifying moments he may have, either in the stillness of his little private room or in a new heaven specially fitted out for him; but of all possible pleasures of this order, that of Strauss’s is surely one of the most wonderful, for he is even edified by a little holocaust. He calmly throws the sublimest works of the German nation into the flames, in order to cense his idols with their smoke. Suppose, for a moment, that by some accident, the Eroica, the Pastoral, and the Ninth Symphony had fallen into the hands of our priest of the Graces, and that it had been in his power to suppress such problematic productions, in order to keep the image of the Master pure, who doubts but what he would have burned them? And it is precisely in this way that the Strausses of our time demean themselves: they only wish to know so much of an artist as is compatible with the service of their rooms; they know only the extremes— censing or burning. To all this they are heartily welcome; the one surprising feature of the whole case is that public opinion, in matters artistic, should be so feeble, vacillating, and corruptible as contentedly to allow these exhibitions of indigent Philistinism to go by without raising an objection; yea, that it does not even possess sufficient sense of humour to feel tickled at the sight of an unaesthetic little master’s sitting in judgment upon Beethoven. As to Mozart, what Aristotle says of Plato ought really to be applied here: “ Insignificant people ought not to be permitted even to praise him.” In this respect, however, all shame has vanished— from the public as well as from the Master’s mind: he is allowed, not merely to cross himself before the greatest and purest creations of German genius, as though he had perceived something godless and immoral in them, but people actually rejoice over his candid confessions and admission of sins—more particularly as he makes no mention of his own, but only of those which great men are said to have committed. Oh, if only our Master be in the right! his readers sometimes think, when attacked by a paroxysm of doubt; he himself, however, stands there, smiling and convinced, perorating, condemning, blessing, raising his hat to himself, and is at any minute capable of saying what the Duchesse Delaforte said to Madame de Sta�l, to wit: “ My dear, I must confess that I find no one but myself invariably right.” VI. A corpse is a pleasant thought for a worm, and a worm is a dreadful thought for every living creature. Worms fancy their kingdom of heaven in a fat body; professors of philosophy seek theirs in rummaging among Schopenhauer’s entrails, and as long as rodents exist, there will exist a heaven for rodents. In this, we have the answer to our first question: How does the believer in the new faith picture his heaven? The Straussian Philistine harbours in the works of our great poets and musicians like a parasitic worm whose life is destruction, whose admiration is devouring, and whose worship is digesting. Now, however, our second question must be answered: How far does the courage lent to its adherents by this new faith extend? Even this question would already have been answered, if courage and pretentiousness had been one; for then Strauss would not be lacking even in the just and veritable courage of a Mameluke. At all events, the “ becoming modesty” of which Strauss speaks in the above-mentioned passage, where he is referring to Beethoven, can only be a stylistic and not a moral manner of speech. Strauss has his full share of the temerity to which every successful hero assumes the right: all flowers grow only for him—the conqueror; and he praises the sun because it shines in at his window just at the right time. He does not even spare the venerable old universe in his eulogies—as though it were only now and henceforward sufficiently sanctified by praise to revolve around the central monad David Strauss. The universe, he is happy to inform us, is, it is true, a machine with jagged iron wheels, stamping and hammering ponderously, but: “ We do not only find the revolution of pitiless wheels in our world-machine, but also the shedding of soothing oil” (p. 435). The universe, provided it submit to Strauss’s encomiums, is not likely to overflow with gratitude towards this master of weird metaphors, who was unable to discover better similes in its praise. But what is the oil called which trickles down upon the hammers and stampers? And how would it console a workman who chanced to get one of his limbs caught in the mechanism to know that this oil was trickling over him? Passing over this simile as bad, let us turn our attention to another of Strauss’s artifices, whereby he tries to ascertain how he feels disposed towards the universe; this question of Marguerite’s, “ He loves me—loves me not—loves me?” hanging on his lips the while. Now, although Strauss is not telling flower-petals or the buttons on his waistcoat, still what he does is not less harmless, despite the fact that it needs perhaps a little more courage. Strauss wishes to make certain whether his feeling for the “ All” is either paralysed or withered, and he pricks himself; for he knows that one can prick a limb that is either paralysed or withered without causing any pain. As a matter of fact, he does not really prick himself, but selects another more violent method, which he describes thus: “ We open Schopenhauer, who takes every occasion of slapping our idea in the face” (p. 167). Now, as an idea—even that of Strauss’s concerning the universe—has no face, if there be any face in the question at all it must be that of the idealist, and the procedure may be subdivided into the following separate actions:—Strauss, in any case, throws Schopenhauer open, whereupon the latter slaps Strauss in the face. Strauss then reacts religiously; that is to say, he again
begins to belabour Schopenhauer, to abuse him, to speak of absurdities, blasphemies, dissipations, and even to allege that Schopenhauer could not have been in his right senses. Result of the dispute: “ We demand the same piety for our Cosmos that the devout of old demanded for his God”; or, briefly, “ He loves me.” Our favourite of the Graces makes his life a hard one, but he is as brave as a Mameluke, and fears neither the Devil nor Schopenhauer. How much “ soothing oil” must he use if such incidents are of frequent occurrence! On the other hand, we readily understand Strauss’s gratitude to this tickling, pricking, and slapping Schopenhauer; hence we are not so very much surprised when we find him expressing himself in the following kind way about him: “ We need only turn over the leaves of Arthur Schopenhauer’s works (although we shall on many other accounts do well not only to glance over but to study them), etc.” (p. 166). Now, to whom does this captain of Philistines address these words? To him who has clearly never even studied Schopenhauer, the latter might well have retorted, “ This is an author who does not even deserve to be scanned, much less to be studied.” Obviously, he gulped Schopenhauer down “ the wrong way,” and this hoarse coughing is merely his attempt to clear his throat. But, in order to fill the measure of his ingenuous encomiums, Strauss even arrogates to himself the right of commending old Kant: he speaks of the latter’s General History of the Heavens of the Year 1755 as of “ a work which has always appeared to me not less important than his later Critique of Pure Reason. If in the latter we admire the depth of insight, the breadth of observation strikes us in the former. If in the latter we can trace the old man’s anxiety to secure even a limited possession of knowledge—so it be but on a firm basis—in the former we encounter the mature man, full of the daring of the discoverer and conqueror in the realm of thought.” This judgment of Strauss’s concerning Kant did not strike me as being more modest than the one concerning Schopenhauer. In the one case, we have the little captain, who is above all anxious to express even the most insignificant opinion with certainty, and in the other we have the famous prose-writer, who, with all the courage of ignorance, exudes his eulogistic secretions over Kant. It is almost incredible that Strauss availed himself of nothing in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason while compiling his Testament of modern ideas, and that he knew only how to appeal to the coarsest realistic taste must also be numbered among the more striking characteristics of this new gospel, the which professes to be but the result of the laborious and continuous study of history and science, and therefore tacitly repudiates all connection with philosophy. For the Philistine captain and his “ We,” Kantian philosophy does not exist. He does not dream of the fundamental antinomy of idealism and of the highly relative sense of all science and reason. And it is precisely reason that ought to tell him how little it is possible to know of things in themselves. It is true, however, that people of a certain age cannot possibly understand Kant, especially when, in their youth, they understood or fancied they understood that “ gigantic mind,” Hegel, as Strauss did; and had moreover concerned themselves with Schleiermacher, who, according to Strauss, “ was gifted with perhaps too much acumen.” It will sound odd to our author when I tell him that, even now, he stands absolutely dependent upon Hegel and Schleiermacher, and that his teaching of the Cosmos, his way of regarding things sub specie biennii, his salaams to the state of affairs now existing in Germany, and, above all, his shameless Philistine optimism, can only be explained by an appeal to certain impressions of youth, early habits, and disorders; for he who has once sickened on Hegel and Schleiermacher never completely recovers. There is one passage in the confession-book where the incurable optimism referred to above bursts forth with the full joyousness of holiday spirits (pp. 166-67). “ If the universe is a thing which had better not have existed,” says Strauss, “ then surely the speculation of the philosopher, as forming part of this universe, is a speculation which had better not have speculated. The pessimist philosopher fails to perceive that he, above all, declares his own thought, which declares the world to be bad, as bad also; but if the thought which declares the world to be bad is a bad thought, then it follows naturally that the world is good. As a rule, optimism may take things too easily. Schopenhauer’s references to the colossal part which sorrow and evil play in the world are quite in their right place as a counterpoise; but every true philosophy is necessarily optimistic, as otherwise she hews down the branch on which she herself is sitting.” If this refutation of Schopenhauer is not the same as that to which Strauss refers somewhere else as “ the refutation loudly and jubilantly acclaimed in higher spheres,” then I quite fail to understand the dramatic phraseology used by him elsewhere to strike an opponent. Here optimism has for once intentionally simplified her task. But the master-stroke lay in thus pretending that the refutation of Schopenhauer was not such a very difficult task after all, and in playfully wielding the burden in such a manner that the three Graces attendant on the dandling optimist might constantly be delighted by his methods. The whole purpose of the deed was to demonstrate this one truth, that it is quite unnecessary to take a pessimist seriously; the most vapid sophisms become justified, provided they show that, in regard to a philosophy as “ unhealthy and unprofitable” as Schopenhauer’s, not proofs but quips and sallies alone are suitable. While perusing such passages, the reader will grasp the full meaning of Schopenhauer’s solemn utterance to the effect that, where optimism is not merely the idle prattle of those beneath whose flat brows words and only words are stored, it seemed to him not merely an absurd but a vicious attitude of mind, and one full of scornful irony towards the indescribable sufferings of humanity. When a philosopher like Strauss is able to frame it into a system, it becomes more than a vicious attitude of mind—it is then an imbecile gospel of comfort for the “ I” or for the “ We,” and can only provoke indignation. Who could read the following psychological avowal, for instance, without indignation, seeing that it is obviously but an offshoot from this vicious gospel of comfort? —“ Beethoven remarked that he could never have composed a text like Figaro or Don Juan. Life had not been so profuse of its snubs to him that he could treat it so gaily, or deal so lightly with the foibles of men” (p. 430). In order, however, to adduce the most striking instance of this dissolute vulgarity of sentiment, let it suffice, here, to observe that Strauss knows no other means of accounting for the terribly serious negative instinct and the movement of ascetic sanctification which characterised the first century of the Christian era, than by supposing the existence of a previous period of surfeit in the matter of all kinds of sexual indulgence, which of itself brought about a state of revulsion and disgust. “ The Persians call it bidamag buden, The Germans say ‘Katzenjammer.’”[9]* [Footnote * : Remorse for the previous night’s excesses.—Translator’s note.] Strauss quotes this himself, and is not ashamed. As for us, we turn aside for a moment, that we may overcome our loathing.
VII. As a matter of fact, our Philistine captain is brave, even audacious, in words; particularly when he hopes by such bravery to delight his noble colleagues—the “ We,” as he calls them. So the asceticism and self-denial of the ancient anchorite and saint was merely a form of Katzenjammer? Jesus may be described as an enthusiast who nowadays would scarcely have escaped the madhouse, and the story of the Resurrection may be termed a “ world-wide deception.” For once we will allow these views to pass without raising any objection, seeing that they may help us to gauge the amount of courage which our “ classical Philistine” Strauss is capable of. Let us first hear his confession: “ It is certainly an unpleasant and a thankless task to tell the world those truths which it is least desirous of hearing. It prefers, in fact, to manage its affairs on a profuse scale, receiving and spending after the magnificent fashion of the great, as long as there is anything left; should any person, however, add up the various items of its liabilities, and anxiously call its attention to the sum-total, he is certain to be regarded as an importunate meddler. And yet this has always been the bent of my moral and intellectual nature.” A moral and intellectual nature of this sort might possibly be regarded as courageous; but what still remains to be proved is, whether this courage is natural and inborn, or whether it is not rather acquired and artificial. Perhaps Strauss only accustomed himself by degrees to the r�le of an importunate meddler, until he gradually acquired the courage of his calling. Innate cowardice, which is the Philistine’s birthright, would not be incompatible with this mode of development, and it is precisely this cowardice which is perceptible in the want of logic of those sentences of Strauss’s which it needed courage to pronounce. They sound like thunder, but they do not clear the air. No aggressive action is performed: aggressive words alone are used, and these he selects from among the most insulting he can find. He moreover exhausts all his accumulated strength and energy in coarse and noisy expression, and when once his utterances have died away he is more of a coward even than he who has always held his tongue. The very shadow of his deeds—his morality—shows us that he is a word-hero, and that he avoids everything which might induce him to transfer his energies from mere verbosity to really serious things. With admirable frankness, he announces that he is no longer a Christian, but disclaims all idea of wishing to disturb the contentment of any one: he seems to recognise a contradiction in the notion of abolishing one society by instituting another—whereas there is nothing contradictory in it at all. With a certain rude self-satisfaction, he swathes himself in the hirsute garment of our Simian genealogists, and extols Darwin as one of mankind’s greatest benefactors; but our perplexity is great when we find him constructing his ethics quite independently of the question, “ What is our conception of the universe?” In this department he had an opportunity of exhibiting native pluck; for he ought to have turned his back on his “ We,” and have established a moral code for life out of bellum omnium contra omnes and the privileges of the strong. But it is to be feared that such a code could only have emanated from a bold spirit like that of Hobbes’, and must have taken its root in a love of truth quite different from that which was only able to vent itself in explosive outbursts against parsons, miracles, and the “ world-wide humbug” of the Resurrection. For, whereas the Philistine remained on Strauss’s side in regard to these explosive outbursts, he would have been against him had he been confronted with a genuine and seriously constructed ethical system, based upon Darwin’s teaching. Says Strauss: “ I should say that all moral action arises from the individual’s acting in consonance with the idea of kind” (p. 274). Put quite clearly and comprehensively, this means: “ Live as a man, and not as an ape or a seal.” Unfortunately, this imperative is both useless and feeble; for in the class Man what a multitude of different types are included—to mention only the Patagonian and the Master, Strauss; and no one would ever dare to say with any right, “ Live like a Patagonian,” and “ Live like the Master Strauss”! Should any one, however, make it his rule to live like a genius—that is to say, like the ideal type of the genus Man—and should he perchance at the same time be either a Patagonian or Strauss himself, what should we then not have to suffer from the importunities of genius-mad eccentrics (concerning whose mushroom growth in Germany even Lichtenberg had already spoken), who with savage cries would compel us to listen to the confession of their most recent belief! Strauss has not yet learned that no “ idea” can ever make man better or more moral, and that the preaching of a morality is as easy as the establishment of it is difficult. His business ought rather to have been, to take the phenomena of human goodness, such— for instance—as pity, love, and self-abnegation, which are already to hand, and seriously to explain them and show their relation to his Darwinian first principle. But no; he preferred to soar into the imperative, and thus escape the task of explaining. But even in his flight he was irresponsible enough to soar beyond the very first principles of which we speak. “ Ever remember,” says Strauss, “ that thou art human, not merely a natural production; ever remember that all others are human also, and, with all individual differences, the same as thou, having the same needs and claims as thyself: this is the sum and the substance of morality” (p. 277). But where does this imperative hail from? How can it be intuitive in man, seeing that, according to Darwin, man is indeed a creature of nature, and that his ascent to his present stage of development has been conditioned by quite different laws—by the very fact that be was continually forgetting that others were constituted like him and shared the same rights with him; by the very fact that he regarded himself as the stronger, and thus brought about the gradual suppression of weaker types. Though Strauss is bound to admit that no two creatures have ever been quite alike, and that the ascent of man from the lowest species of animals to the exalted height of the Culture—Philistine depended upon the law of individual distinctness, he still sees no difficulty in declaring exactly the reverse in his law: “ Behave thyself as though there were no such things as individual distinctions.” Where is the Strauss-Darwin morality here? Whither, above all, has the courage gone? In the very next paragraph we find further evidence tending to show us the point at which this courage veers round to its opposite; for Strauss continues: “ Ever remember that thou, and all that thou beholdest within and around thee, all that befalls thee and others, is no disjointed fragment, no wild chaos of atoms or casualties, but that, following eternal law, it springs from the one primal source of all life, all reason, and all good: this is the essence of religion” (pp. 277-78). Out of that “ one primal source,” however, all ruin and irrationality, all evil flows as well, and its name, according to Strauss, is Cosmos. Now, how can this Cosmos, with all the contradictions and the self-annihilating characteristics which Strauss gives it, be worthy of religious veneration and be addressed by the name “ God,” as Strauss addresses it?—“ Our God does not, indeed, take us into His arms from the outside (here one expects, as an antithesis, a somewhat miraculous process of
being “ taken into His arms from the inside”), but He unseals the well-springs of consolation within our own bosoms. He shows us that although Chance would be an unreasonable ruler, yet necessity, or the enchainment of causes in the world, is Reason itself.” (A misapprehension of which only the “ We” can fail to perceive the folly; because they were brought up in the Hegelian worship of Reality as the Reasonable—that is to say, in the canonisation of success.) “ He teaches us to perceive that to demand an exception in the accomplishment of a single natural law would be to demand the destruction of the universe” (pp. 435-36). On the contrary, Great Master: an honest natural scientist believes in the unconditional rule of natural laws in the world, without, however, taking up any position in regard to the ethical or intellectual value of these laws. Wherever neutrality is abandoned in this respect, it is owing to an anthropomorphic attitude of mind which allows reason to exceed its proper bounds. But it is just at the point where the natural scientist resigns that Strauss, to put it in his own words, “ reacts religiously,” and leaves the scientific and scholarly standpoint in order to proceed along less honest lines of his own. Without any further warrant, he assumes that all that has happened possesses the highest intellectual value; that it was therefore absolutely reasonably and intentionally so arranged, and that it even contained a revelation of eternal goodness. He therefore has to appeal to a complete cosmodicy, and finds himself at a disadvantage in regard to him who is contented with a theodicy, and who, for instance, regards the whole of man’s existence as a punishment for sin or a process of purification. At this stage, and in this embarrassing position, Strauss even suggests a metaphysical hypothesis—the driest and most palsied ever conceived—and, in reality, but an unconscious parody of one of Lessing’s sayings. We read on page 255: “ And that other saying of Lessing’s— ‘If God, holding truth in His right hand, and in His left only the ever-living desire for it, although on condition of perpetual error, left him the choice of the two, he would, considering that truth belongs to God alone, humbly seize His left hand, and beg its contents for Himself’— this saying of Lessing’s has always been accounted one of the most magnificent which he has left us. It has been found to contain the general expression of his restless love of inquiry and activity. The saying has always made a special impression upon me; because, behind its subjective meaning, I still seemed to hear the faint ring of an objective one of infinite import. For does it not contain the best possible answer to the rude speech of Schopenhauer, respecting the ill-advised God who had nothing better to do than to transform Himself into this miserable world? if, for example, the Creator Himself had shared Lessing’s conviction of the superiority of struggle to tranquil possession?” What!—a God who would choose perpetual error, together with a striving after truth, and who would, perhaps, fall humbly at Strauss’s feet and cry to him,“ Take thou all Truth, it is thine!”? If ever a God and a man were ill-advised, they are this Straussian God, whose hobby is to err and to fail, and this Straussian man, who must atone for this erring and failing. Here, indeed, one hears “ a faint ring of infinite import”; here flows Strauss’s cosmic soothing oil; here one has a notion of the rationale of all becoming and all natural laws. Really? Is not our universe rather the work of an inferior being, as Lichtenberg suggests?—of an inferior being who did not quite understand his business; therefore an experiment, an attempt, upon which work is still proceeding? Strauss himself, then, would be compelled to admit that our universe is by no means the theatre of reason, but of error, and that no conformity to law can contain anything consoling, since all laws have been promulgated by an erratic God who even finds pleasure in blundering. It really is a most amusing spectacle to watch Strauss as a metaphysical architect, building castles in the air. But for whose benefit is this entertainment given? For the smug and noble “ We,” that they may not lose conceit with themselves: they may possibly have taken sudden fright, in the midst of the inflexible and pitiless wheel-works of the world-machine, and are tremulously imploring their leader to come to their aid. That is why Strauss pours forth the “ soothing oil,” that is why he leads forth on a leash a God whose passion it is to err; it is for the same reason, too, that he assumes for once the utterly unsuitable r�le of a metaphysical architect. He does all this, because the noble souls already referred to are frightened, and because he is too. And it is here that we reach the limit of his courage, even in the presence of his “ We.” He does not dare to be honest, and to tell them, for instance: “ I have liberated you from a helping and pitiful God: the Cosmos is no more than an inflexible machine; beware of its wheels, that they do not crush you.” He dare not do this. Consequently, he must enlist the help of a witch, and he turns to metaphysics. To the Philistine, however, even Strauss’s metaphysics is preferable to Christianity’s, and the notion of an erratic God more congenial than that of one who works miracles. For the Philistine himself errs, but has never yet performed a miracle. Hence his hatred of the genius; for the latter is justly famous for the working of miracles. It is therefore highly instructive to ascertain why Strauss, in one passage alone, suddenly takes up the cudgels for genius and the aristocracy of intellect in general. Whatever does he do it for? He does it out of fear— fear of the social democrat. He refers to Bismarck and Moltke, “ whose greatness is the less open to controversy as it manifests itself in the domain of tangible external facts. No help for it, therefore; even the most stiff-necked and obdurate of these fellows must condescend to look up a little, if only to get a sight, be it no farther than the knees, of those august figures” (p.327). Do you, Master Metaphysician, perhaps intend to instruct the social democrats in the art of getting kicks? The willingness to bestow them may be met with everywhere, and you are perfectly justified in promising to those who happen to be kicked a sight of those sublime beings as far as the knee. “ Also in the domain of art and science,” Strauss continues, “ there will never be a dearth of kings whose architectural undertakings will find employment for a multitude of carters.” Granted; but what if the carters should begin building? It does happen at times, Great Master, as you know, and then the kings must grin and bear it. As a matter of fact, this union of impudence and weakness, of daring words and cowardly concessions, this cautious deliberation as to which sentences will or will not impress the Philistine or smooth him down the right way, this lack of character and power masquerading as character and power, this meagre wisdom in the guise of omniscience,—these are the features in this book which I detest. If I could conceive of young men having patience to read it and to value it, I should sorrowfully renounce all hope for their future. And is this confession of wretched, hopeless, and really despicable Philistinism supposed to be the expression of the thousands constituting the “ We” of whom Strauss speaks, and who are to be the fathers of the coming generation? Unto him who would fain help this coming generation to acquire what the present one does not yet possess, namely, a genuine German culture, the prospect is a horrible one. To such a man, the ground seems strewn with ashes, and all stars are obscured; while every withered tree and field laid waste seems to cry to him: Barren! Forsaken! Springtime is no longer possible here! He must feel as young Goethe felt when he first peered into the melancholy atheistic twilight of the Syst�me de la Nature;
to him this book seemed so grey, so Cimmerian and deadly, that he could only endure its presence with difficulty, and shuddered at it as one shudders at a spectre. VIII. We ought now to be sufficiently informed concerning the heaven and the courage of our new believer to be able to turn to the last question: How does he write his books? and of what order are his religious documents? He who can answer this question uprightly and without prejudice will be confronted by yet another serious problem, and that is: How this Straussian pocket-oracle of the German Philistine was able to pass through six editions? And he will grow more than ever suspicious when he hears that it was actually welcomed as a pocket-oracle, not only in scholastic circles, but even in German universities as well. Students are said to have greeted it as a canon for strong intellects, and, from all accounts, the professors raised no objections to this view; while here and there people have declared it to be a religions book for scholars. Strauss himself gave out that he did not intend his profession of faith to be merely a referencebook for learned and cultured people; but here let us abide by the fact that it was first and foremost a work appealing to his colleagues, and was ostensibly a mirror in which they were to see their own way of living faithfully reflected. For therein lay the feat. The Master feigned to have presented us with a new ideal conception of the universe, and now adulation is being paid him out of every mouth; because each is in a position to suppose that he too regards the universe and life in the same way. Thus Strauss has seen fulfilled in each of his readers what he only demanded of the future. In this way, the extraordinary success of his book is partly explained: “ Thus we live and hold on our way in joy,” the scholar cries in his book, and delights to see others rejoicing over the announcement. If the reader happen to think differently from the Master in regard to Darwin or to capital punishment, it is of very little consequence; for he is too conscious throughout of breathing an atmosphere that is familiar to him, and of hearing but the echoes of his own voice and wants. However painfully this unanimity may strike the true friend of German culture, it is his duty to be unrelenting in his explanation of it as a phenomenon, and not to shrink from making this explanation public. We all know the peculiar methods adopted in our own time of cultivating the sciences: we all know them, because they form a part of our lives. And, for this very reason, scarcely anybody seems to ask himself what the result of such a cultivation of the sciences will mean to culture in general, even supposing that everywhere the highest abilities and the most earnest will be available for the promotion of culture. In the heart of the average scientific type (quite irrespective of the examples thereof with which we meet to-day) there lies a pure paradox: he behaves like the veriest idler of independent means, to whom life is not a dreadful and serious business, but a sound piece of property, settled upon him for all eternity; and it seems to him justifiable to spend his whole life in answering questions which, after all is said and done, can only be of interest to that person who believes in eternal life as an absolute certainty. The heir of but a few hours, he sees himself encompassed by yawning abysses, terrible to behold; and every step he takes should recall the questions, Wherefore? Whither? and Whence? to his mind. But his soul rather warms to his work, and, be this the counting of a floweret’s petals or the breaking of stones by the roadside, he spends his whole fund of interest, pleasure, strength, and aspirations upon it. This paradox—the scientific man—has lately dashed ahead at such a frantic speed in Germany, that one would almost think the scientific world were a factory, in which every minute wasted meant a fine. To-day the man of science works as arduously as the fourth or slave caste: his study has ceased to be an occupation, it is a necessity; he looks neither to the right nor to the left, but rushes through all things—even through the serious matters which life bears in its train— with that semi-listlessness and repulsive need of rest so characteristic of the exhausted labourer. This is also his attitude towards culture. He behaves as if life to him were not only otium but sine dignitate: even in his sleep he does not throw off the yoke, but like an emancipated slave still dreams of his misery, his forced haste and his floggings. Our scholars can scarcely be distinguished—and, even then, not to their advantage—from agricultural labourers, who in order to increase a small patrimony, assiduously strive, day and night, to cultivate their fields, drive their ploughs, and urge on their oxen. Now, Pascal suggests that men only endeavour to work hard at their business and sciences with the view of escaping those questions of greatest import which every moment of loneliness or leisure presses upon them—the questions relating to the wherefore, the whence, and the whither of life. Curiously enough, our scholars never think of the most vital question of all—the wherefore of their work, their haste, and their painful ecstasies. Surely their object is not the earning of bread or the acquiring of posts of honour? No, certainly not. But ye take as much pains as the famishing and breadless; and, with that eagerness and lack of discernment which characterises the starving, ye even snatch the dishes from the sideboard of science. If, however, as scientific men, ye proceed with science as the labourers with the tasks which the exigencies of life impose upon them, what will become of a culture which must await the hour of its birth and its salvation in the very midst of all this agitated and breathless running to and fro—this sprawling scientifically? For it no one has time—and yet for what shall science have time if not for culture? Answer us here, then, at least: whence, whither, wherefore all science, if it do not lead to culture? Belike to barbarity? And in this direction we already see the scholar caste ominously advanced, if we are to believe that such superficial books as this one of Strauss’s meet the demand of their present degree of culture. For precisely in him do we find that repulsive need of rest and that incidental semi-listless attention to, and coming to terms with, philosophy, culture, and every serious thing on earth. It will be remembered that, at the meetings held by scholars, as soon as each individual has had his say in his own particular department of knowledge, signs of fatigue, of a desire for distraction at any price, of waning memory, and of incoherent experiences of life, begin to be noticeable. While listening to Strauss discussing any worldly question, be it marriage, the war, or capital punishment, we are startled by his complete lack of anything like first-hand experience, or of any original thought on human nature. All his judgments are so redolent of books, yea even of newspapers. Literary reminiscences do duty for genuine ideas and views, and the assumption of a moderate and grandfatherly tone take the place of wisdom and mature thought. How perfectly in keeping all this is with the fulsome spirit animating the holders of the highest places in German science in large cities! How thoroughly this spirit must appeal to that other! for it is precisely in those quarters that culture is in the saddest plight; it is precisely there that
its fresh growth is made impossible—so boisterous are the preparations made by science, so sheepishly are favourite subjects of knowledge allowed to oust questions of much greater import. What kind of lantern would be needed here, in order to find men capable of a complete surrender to genius, and of an intimate knowledge of its depths—men possessed of sufficient courage and strength to exorcise the demons that have forsaken our age? Viewed from the outside, such quarters certainly do appear to possess the whole pomp of culture; with their imposing apparatus they resemble great arsenals fitted with huge guns and other machinery of war; we see preparations in progress and the most strenuous activity, as though the heavens themselves were to be stormed, and truth were to be drawn out of the deepest of all wells; and yet, in war, the largest machines are the most unwieldy. Genuine culture therefore leaves such places as these religiously alone, for its best instincts warn it that in their midst it has nothing to hope for, and very much to fear. For the only kind of culture with which the inflamed eye and obtuse brain of the scholar working-classes concern themselves is of that Philistine order of which Strauss has announced the gospel. If we consider for a moment the fundamental causes underlying the sympathy which binds the learned working-classes to Culture-Philistinism, we shall discover the road leading to Strauss the Writer, who has been acknowledged classical, and tihence to our last and principal theme. To begin with, that culture has contentment written in its every feature, and will allow of no important changes being introduced into the present state of German education. It is above all convinced of the originality of all German educational institutions, more particularly the public schools and universities; it does not cease recommending these to foreigners, and never doubts that if the Germans have become the most cultivated and discriminating people on earth, it is owing to such institutions. Culture-Philistinism believes in itself, consequently it also believes in the methods and means at its disposal. Secondly, however, it leaves the highest judgment concerning all questions of taste and culture to the scholar, and even regards itself as the ever-increasing compendium of scholarly opinions regarding art, literature, and philosophy. Its first care is to urge the scholar to express his opinions; these it proceeds to mix, dilute, and systematise, and then it administers them to the German people in the form of a bottle of medicine. What conies to life outside this circle is either not heard or attended at all, or if heard, is heeded half-heartedly; until, at last, a voice (it does not matter whose, provided it belong to some one who is strictly typical of the scholar tribe) is heard to issue from the temple in which traditional infallibility of taste is said to reside; and from that time forward public opinion has one conviction more, which it echoes and re-echoes hundreds and hundreds of times. As a matter of fact, though, the aesthetic infallibility of any utterance emanating from the temple is the more doubtful, seeing that the lack of taste, thought, and artistic feeling in any scholar can be taken for granted, unless it has previously been proved that, in his particular case, the reverse is true. And only a few can prove this. For how many who have had a share in the breathless and unending scurry of modern science have preserved that quiet and courageous gaze of the struggling man of culture—if they ever possessed it—that gaze which condemns even the scurry we speak of as a barbarous state of affairs? That is why these few are forced to live in an almost perpetual contradiction. What could they do against the uniform belief of the thousands who have enlisted public opinion in their cause, and who mutually defend each other in this belief? What purpose can it serve when one individual openly declares war against Strauss, seeing that a crowd have decided in his favour, and that the masses led by this crowd have learned to ask six consecutive times for the Master’s Philistine sleeping-mixture? If, without further ado, we here assumed that the Straussian confession-book had triumphed over public opinion and had been acclaimed and welcomed as conqueror, its author might call our attention to the fact that the multitudinous criticisms of his work in the various public organs are not of an altogether unanimous or even favourable character, and that he therefore felt it incumbent upon him to defend himself against some of the more malicious, impudent, and provoking of these newspaper pugilists by means of a postscript. How can there be a public opinion concerning my book, he cries to us, if every journalist is to regard me as an outlaw, and to mishandle me as much as he likes? This contradiction is easily explained, as soon as one considers the two aspects of the Straussian book—the theological and the literary, and it is only the latter that has anything to do with German culture. Thanks to its theological colouring, it stands beyond the pale of our German culture, and provokes the animosity of the various theological groups—yea, even of every individual German, in so far as he is a theological sectarian from birth, and only invents his own peculiar private belief in order to be able to dissent from every other form of belief. But when the question arises of talking about Strauss THE WRITER, pray listen to what the theological sectarians have to say about him. As soon as his literary side comes under notice, all theological objections immediately subside, and the dictum comes plain and clear, as if from the lips of one congregation: In spite of it all, he is still a classical writer! Everybody—even the most bigoted, orthodox Churchman—pays the writer the most gratifying compliments, while there is always a word or two thrown in as a tribute to his almost Lessingesque language, his delicacy of touch, or the beauty and accuracy of his aesthetic views. As a book, therefore, the Straussian performance appears to meet all the demands of an ideal example of its kind. The theological opponents, despite the fact that their voices were the loudest of all, nevertheless constitute but an infinitesimal portion of the great public; and even with regard to them, Strauss still maintains that he is right when he says: “ Compared with my thousands of readers, a few dozen public cavillers form but an insignificant minority, and they can hardly prove that they are their faithful interpreters. It was obviously in the nature of things that opposition should be clamorous and assent tacit.” Thus, apart from the angry bitterness which Strauss’s profession of faith may have provoked here and there, even the most fanatical of his opponents, to whom his voice seems to rise out of an abyss, like the voice of a beast, are agreed as to his merits as a writer; and that is why the treatment which Strauss has received at the hands of the literary lackeys of the theological groups proves nothing against our contention that Culture-Philistinism celebrated its triumph in this book. It must be admitted that the average educated Philistine is a degree less honest than Strauss, or is at least more reserved in his public utterances. But this fact only tends to increase his admiration for honesty in another. At home, or in the company of his equals, he may applaud with wild enthusiasm, but takes care not to put on paper how entirely Strauss’s words are in harmony with his own innermost feelings. For, as we have already maintained, our Culture-Philistine is somewhat of a coward, even in his strongest sympathies; hence Strauss, who can boast of a trifle more courage than he, becomes his leader, notwithstanding the fact that even Straussian pluck has its very definite limits. If he overstepped these limits, as Schopenhauer does in almost every sentence, he
would then forfeit his position at the head of the Philistines, and everybody would flee from him as precipitately as they are now following in his wake. He who would regard this artful if not sagacious moderation and this mediocre valour as an Aristotelian virtue, would certainly be wrong; for the valour in question is not the golden mean between two faults, but between a virtue and a fault—and in this mean, between virtue and fault, all Philistine qualities are to be found. IX. “ In spite of it all, he is still a classical writer.” Well, let us see! Perhaps we may now be allowed to discuss Strauss the stylist and master of language; but in the first place let us inquire whether, as a literary man, he is equal to the task of building his house, and whether he really understands the architecture of a book. From this inquiry we shall be able to conclude whether he is a respectable, thoughtful, and experienced author; and even should we be forced to answer “ No” to these questions, he may still, as a last shift, take refuge in his fame as a classical prose-writer. This last-mentioned talent alone, it is true, would not suffice to class him with the classical authors, but at most with the classical improvisers and virtuosos of style, who, however, in regard to power of expression and the whole planning and framing of the work, reveal the awkward hand and the embarrassed eye of the bungler. We therefore put the question, whether Strauss really possesses the artistic strength necessary for the purpose of presenting us with a thing that is a whole, totum ponere? As a rule, it ought to be possible to tell from the first rough sketch of a work whether the author conceived the thing as a whole, and whether, in view of this original conception, he has discovered the correct way of proceeding with his task and of fixing its proportions. Should this most important Part of the problem be solved, and should the framework of the building have been given its most favourable proportions, even then there remains enough to be done: how many smaller faults have to be corrected, how many gaps require filling in! Here and there a temporary partition or floor was found to answer the requirements; everywhere dust and fragments litter the ground, and no matter where we look, we see the signs of work done and work still to be done. The house, as a whole, is still uninhabitable and gloomy, its walls are bare, and the wind blows in through the open windows. Now, whether this remaining, necessary, and very irksome work has been satisfactorily accomplished by Strauss does not concern us at present; our question is, whether the building itself has been conceived as a whole, and whether its proportions are good? The reverse of this, of course, would be a compilation of fragments—a method generally adopted by scholars. They rely upon it that these fragments are related among themselves, and thus confound the logical and the artistic relation between them. Now, the relation between the four questions which provide the chapter-headings of Strauss’s book cannot be called a logical one. Are we still Christians? Have we still a religion? What is our conception of the universe? What is our rule of life? And it is by no means contended that the relation is illogical simply because the third question has nothing to do with the second, nor the fourth with the third, nor all three with the first. The natural scientist who puts the third question, for instance, shows his unsullied love of truth by the simple fact that he tacitly passes over the second. And with regard to the subject of the fourth chapter—marriage, republicanism, and capital punishment—Strauss himself seems to have been aware that they could only have been muddled and obscured by being associated with the Darwinian theory expounded in the third chapter; for he carefully avoids all reference to this theory when discussing them. But the question, “ Are we still Christians?” destroys the freedom of the philosophical standpoint at one stroke, by lending it an unpleasant theological colouring. Moreover, in this matter, he quite forgot that the majority of men to-day are not Christians at all, but Buddhists. Why should one, without further ceremony, immediately think of Christianity at the sound of the words “ old faith”? Is this a sign that Strauss has never ceased to be a Christian theologian, and that he has therefore never learned to be a philosopher? For we find still greater cause for surprise in the fact that he quite fails to distinguish between belief and knowledge, and continually mentions his “ new belief” and the still newer science in one breath. Or is “ new belief” merely an ironical concession to ordinary parlance? This almost seems to be the case; for here and there he actually allows “ new belief” and “ newer science” to be interchangeable terms, as for instance on page II, where he asks on which side, whether on that of the ancient orthodoxy or of modern science, “ exist more of the obscurities and insufficiencies unavoidable in human speculation.” Moreover, according to the scheme laid down in the Introduction, his desire is to disclose those proofs upon which the modern view of life is based; but he derives all these proofs from science, and in this respect assumes far more the attitude of a scientist than of a believer. At bottom, therefore, the religion is not a new belief, but, being of a piece with modern science, it has nothing to do with religion at all. If Strauss, however, persists in his claims to be religious, the grounds for these claims must be beyond the pale of recent science. Only the smallest portion of the Straussian book—that is to say, but a few isolated pages— refer to what Strauss in all justice might call a belief, namely, that feeling for the “ All” for which he demands the piety that the old believer demanded for his God. On the pages in question, however, he cannot claim to be altogether scientific; but if only he could lay claim to being a little stronger, more natural, more outspoken, more pious, we should be content. Indeed, what perhaps strikes us most forcibly about him is the multitude of artificial procedures of which he avails himself before he ultimately gets the feeling that he still possesses a belief and a religion; he reaches it by means of stings and blows, as we have already seen. How indigently and feebly this emergency-belief presents itself to us! We shiver at the sight of it. Although Strauss, in the plan laid down in his Introduction, promises to compare the two faiths, the old and the new, and to show that the latter will answer the same purpose as the former, even he begins to feel, in the end, that he has promised too much. For the question whether the new belief answers the same purpose as the old, or is better or worse, is disposed of incidentally, so to speak, and with uncomfortable haste, in two or three pages (p. 436 et seq.-), and is actually bolstered up by the following subterfuge: “ He who cannot help himself in this matter is beyond help, is not yet ripe for our standpoint” (p. 436). How differently, and with what intensity of conviction, did the ancient Stoic believe in the All and the rationality of the All! And, viewed in this light, how does Strauss’s claim to originality appear? But, as we have already observed, it would be a matter of indifference to us whether it were new, old, original, or imitated, so that it were only more powerful, more healthy, and more natural. Even Strauss himself leaves this double-distilled emergency-belief
to take care of itself as often as he can do so, in order to protect himself and us from danger, and to present his recently acquired biological knowledge to his “ We” with a clear conscience. The more embarrassed he may happen to be when he speaks of faith, the rounder and fuller his mouth becomes when he quotes the greatest benefactor to modern menDarwin. Then he not only exacts belief for the new Messiah, but also for himself—the new apostle. For instance, while discussing one of the most intricate questions in natural history, he declares with true ancient pride: “ I shall be told that I am here speaking of things about which I understand nothing. Very well; but others will come who will understand them, and who will also have understood me” (p. 241). According to this, it would almost seem as though the famous “ We” were not only in duty bound to believe in the “ All,” but also in the naturalist Strauss; in this case we can only hope that in order to acquire the feeling for this last belief, other processes are requisite than the painful and cruel ones demanded by the first belief. Or is it perhaps sufficient in this case that the subject of belief himself be tormented and stabbed with the view of bringing the believers to that “ religious reaction” which is the distinguishing sign of the “ new faith.” What merit should we then discover in the piety of those whom Strauss calls “ We”? Otherwise, it is almost to be feared that modern men will pass on in pursuit of their business without troubling themselves overmuch concerning the new furniture of faith offered them by the apostle: just as they have done heretofore, without the doctrine of the rationality of the All. The whole of modern biological and historical research has nothing to do with the Straussian belief in the All, and the fact that the modern Philistine does not require the belief is proved by the description of his life given by Strauss in the chapter,“ What is our Rule of Life?” He is therefore quite right in doubting whether the coach to which his esteemed readers have been obliged to trust themselves “ with him, fulfils every requirement.” It certainly does not; for the modern man makes more rapid progress when he does not take his place in the Straussian coach, or rather, he got ahead much more quickly long before the Straussian coach ever existed. Now, if it be true that the famous “ minority” which is “ not to be overlooked,” and of which, and in whose name, Strauss speaks, “ attaches great importance to consistency,” it must be just as dissatisfied with Strauss the Coachbuilder as we are with Strauss the Logician. Let us, however, drop the question of the logician. Perhaps, from the artistic point of view, the book really is an example of a. well-conceived plan, and does, after all, answer to the requirements of the laws of beauty, despite the fact that it fails to meet with the demands of a well-conducted argument. And now, having shown that he is neither a scientist nor a strictly correct and systematic scholar, for the first time we approach the question: Is Strauss a capable writer? Perhaps the task he set himself was not so much to scare people away from the old faith as to captivate them by a picturesque and graceful description of what life would be with the new. If he regarded scholars and educated men as his most probable audience, experience ought certainly to have told him that whereas one can shoot such men down with the heavy guns of scientific proof, but cannot make them surrender, they may be got to capitulate all the more quickly before “ lightly equipped” measures of seduction. “ Lightly equipped,” and “ intentionally so,” thus Strauss himself speaks of his own book. Nor do his public eulogisers refrain from using the same expression in reference to the work, as the following passage, quoted from one of the least remarkable among them, and in which the same expression is merely paraphrased, will go to prove:— “ The discourse flows on with delightful harmony: wherever it directs its criticism against old ideas it wields the art of demonstration, almost playfully; and it is with some spirit that it prepares the new ideas it brings so enticingly, and presents them to the simple as well as to the fastidious taste. The arrangement of such diverse and conflicting material is well thought out for every portion of it required to be touched upon, without being made too prominent; at times the transitions leading from one subject to another are artistically managed, and one hardly knows what to admire most—the skill with which unpleasant questions are shelved, or the discretion with which they are hushed up.” The spirit of such eulogies, as the above clearly shows, is not quite so subtle in regard to judging of what an author is able to do as in regard to what he wishes. What Strauss wishes, however, is best revealed by his own emphatic and not quite harmless commendation of Voltaire’s charms, in whose service he might have learned precisely those “ lightly equipped” arts of which his admirer speaks—granting, of course, that virtue may be acquired and a pedagogue can ever be a dancer. Who could help having a suspicion or two, when reading the following passage, for instance, in which Strauss says of Voltaire, “ As a philosopher [he] is certainly not original, but in the main a mere exponent of English investigations: in this respect, however, he shows himself to be completely master of his subject, which he presents with incomparable skill, in all possible lights and from all possible sides, and is able withal to meet the demands of thoroughness, without, however, being over-severe in his method”? Now, all the negative traits mentioned in this passage might be applied to Strauss. No one would contend, I suppose, that Strauss is original, or that he is over-severe in his method; but the question is whether we can regard him as “ master of his subject,” and grant him “ incomparable skill”? The confession to the effect that the treatise was intentionally “ lightly equipped” leads us to think that it at least aimed at incomparable skill. It was not the dream of our architect to build a temple, nor yet a house, but a sort of summer-pavilion, surrounded by everything that the art of gardening can provide. Yea, it even seems as if that mysterious feeling for the All were only calculated to produce an aesthetic effect, to be, so to speak, a view of an irrational element, such as the sea, looked at from the most charming and rational of terraces. The walk through the first chapters— that is to say, through the theological catacombs with all their gloominess and their involved and baroque embellishments—was also no more than an aesthetic expedient in order to throw into greater relief the purity, clearness, and common sense of the chapter “ What is our Conception of the Universe?” For, immediately after that walk in the gloaming and that peep into the wilderness of Irrationalism, we step into a hall with a skylight to it. Soberly and limpidly it welcomes us: its mural decorations consist of astronomical charts and mathematical figures; it is filled with scientific apparatus, and its cupboards contain skeletons, stuffed apes, and anatomical specimens. But now, really rejoicing for the first time, we direct our steps into the innermost chamber of bliss belonging to our pavilion-dwellers; there we find them with their wives, children, and newspapers, occupied in the commonplace discussion of politics; we listen for a moment to their conversation on marriage, universal
suffrage, capital punishment, and workmen’s strikes, and we can scarcely believe it to be possible that the rosary of public opinions can be told off so quickly. At length an attempt is made to convince us of the classical taste of the inmates. A moment’s halt in the library, and the music-room suffices to show us what we had expected all along, namely, that the best books lay on the shelves, and that the most famous musical compositions were in the music-cabinets. Some one actually played something to us, and even if it were Haydn’s music, Haydn could not be blamed because it sounded like Riehl’s music for the home. Meanwhile the host had found occasion to announce to us his complete agreement with Lessing and Goethe, although with the latter only up to the second part of Faust. At last our pavilion-owner began to praise himself, and assured us that he who could not be happy under his roof was beyond help and could not be ripe for his standpoint, whereupon he offered us his coach, but with the polite reservation that he could not assert that it would fulfil every requirement, and that, owing to the stones on his road having been newly laid down, we were not to mind if we were very much jolted. Our Epicurean garden-god then took leave of us with the incomparable skill which he praised in Voltaire. Who could now persist in doubting the existence of this incomparable skill? The complete master of his subject is revealed; the lightly equipped artist-gardener is exposed, and still we hear the voice of the classical author saying, “ As a writer I shall for once cease to be a Philistine: I will not be one; I refuse to be one! But a Voltaire—the German Voltaire— or at least the French Lessing.” With this we have betrayed a secret. Our Master does not always know which he prefers to be—Voltaire or Lessing; but on no account will he be a Philistine. At a pinch he would not object to being both Lessing and Voltaire—that the word might be fulfilled that is written, “ He had no character, but when he wished to appear as if he had, he assumed one.” X. If we have understood Strauss the Confessor correctly, he must be a genuine Philistine, with a narrow, parched soul and scholarly and common-place needs; albeit no one would be more indignant at the title than David Strauss the Writer. He would be quite happy to be regarded as mischievous, bold, malicious, daring; but his ideal of bliss would consist in finding himself compared with either Lessing or Voltaire—because these men were undoubtedly anything but Philistines. In striving after this state of bliss, he often seems to waver between two alternatives—either to mimic the brave and dialectical petulance of Lessing, or to affect the manner of the faun-like and free-spirited man of antiquity that Voltaire was. When taking up his pen to write, he seems to be continually posing for his portrait; and whereas at times his features are drawn to look like Lessing’s, anon they are made to assume the Voltairean mould. While reading his praise of Voltaire’s manner, we almost seem to see him abjuring the consciences of his contemporaries for not having learned long ago what the modern Voltaire had to offer them. “ Even his excellences are wonderfully uniform,” he says: “ simple naturalness, transparent clearness, vivacious mobility, seductive charm. Warmth and emphasis are also not wanting where they are needed, and Voltaire’s innermost nature always revolted against stiltedness and affectation; while, on the other hand, if at times wantonness or passion descend to an unpleasantly low level, the fault does not rest so much with the stylist as with the man.” According to this, Strauss seems only too well aware of the importance of simplicity in style; it is ever the sign of genius, which alone has the privilege to express itself naturally and guilelessly. When, therefore, an author selects a simple mode of expression, this is no sign whatever of vulgar ambition; for although many are aware of what such an author would fain be taken for, they are yet kind enough to take him precisely for that. The genial writer, however, not only reveals his true nature in the plain and unmistakable form of his utterance, but his super-abundant strength actually dallies with the material he treats, even when it is dangerous and difficult. Nobody treads stiffly along unknown paths, especially when these are broken throughout their course by thousands of crevices and furrows; but the genius speeds nimbly over them, and, leaping with grace and daring, scorns the wistful and timorous step of caution. Even Strauss knows that the problems he prances over are dreadfully serious, and have ever been regarded as such by the philosophers who have grappled with them; yet he calls his book lightly equipped! But of this dreadfulness and of the usual dark nature of our meditations when considering such questions as the worth of existence and the duties of man, we entirely cease to be conscious when the genial Master plays his antics before us, “ lightly equipped, and intentionally so.” Yes, even more lightly equipped than his Rousseau, of whom he tells us it was said that he stripped himself below and adorned himself on top, whereas Goethe did precisely the reverse. Perfectly guileless geniuses do not, it appears, adorn themselves at all; possibly the words “ lightly equipped” may simply be a euphemism for “ naked.” The few who happen to have seen the Goddess of Truth declare that she is naked, and perhaps, in the minds of those who have never seen her, but who implicitly believe those few, nakedness or light equipment is actually a proof, or at least a feature, of truthi Even this vulgar superstition turns to the advantage of the author’s ambition. Some one sees something naked, and he exclaims: “ What if this were the truth!” Whereupon he grows more solemn than is his wont. By this means, however, the author scores a tremendous advantage; for he compels his reader to approach him with greater solemnity than another and perhaps more heavily equipped writer. This is unquestionably the best way to become a classical author; hence Strauss himself is able to tell us: “ I even enjoy the unsought honour of being, in the opinion of many, a classical writer of prose. “ He has therefore achieved his aim. Strauss the Genius goes gadding about the streets in the garb of lightly equipped goddesses as a classic, while Strauss the Philistine, to use an original expression of this genius’s, must, at all costs, be “ declared to be on the decline,” or “ irrevocably dismissed.” But, alas! in spite of all declarations of decline and dismissal, the Philistine still returns, and all too frequently. Those features, contorted to resemble Lessing and Voltaire, must relax from time to time to resume their old and original shape. The mask of genius falls from them too often, and the Master’s expression is never more sour and his movements never stiffer than when he has just attempted to take the leap, or to glance with the fiery eye, of a genius. Precisely owing to the fact that he is too lightly equipped for our zone, he runs the risk of catching cold more often and more severely than another. It may seem a terrible hardship to him that every one should notice this; but if he wishes to be cured, the
following diagnosis of his case ought to be publicly presented to him:— Once upon a time there lived a Strauss, a brave, severe, and stoutly equipped scholar, with whom we sympathised as wholly as with all those in Germany who seek to serve truth with earnestness and energy, and to rule within the limits of their powers. He, however, who is now publicly famous as David Strauss, is another person. The theologians may be to blame for this metamorphosis; but, at any rate, his present toying with the mask of genius inspires us with as much hatred and scorn as his former earnestness commanded respect and sympathy. When, for instance, he tells us, “ it would also argue ingratitude towards my genius if I were not to rejoice that to the faculty of an incisive, analytical criticism was added the innocent pleasure in artistic production,” it may astonish him to hear that, in spite of this selfpraise, there are still men who maintain exactly the reverse, and who say, not only that he has never possessed the gift of artistic production, but that the “ innocent” pleasure he mentions is of all things the least innocent, seeing that it succeeded in gradually undermining and ultimately destroying a nature as strongly and deeply scholarly and critical as Strauss’s—in fact, the real Straussian Genius. In a moment of unlimited frankness, Strauss himself indeed adds: “ Merck was always in my thoughts, calling out, ‘Don’t produce such child’s play again; others can do that too!’” That was the voice of the real Straussian genius, which also asked him what the worth of his newest, innocent, and lightly equipped modern Philistine’s testament was. Others can do that too! And many could do it better. And even they who could have done it best, i.e. those thinkers who are more widely endowed than Strauss, could still only have made nonsense of it. I take it that you are now beginning to understand the value I set on Strauss the Writer. You are beginning to realise that I regard him as a mummer who would parade as an artless genius and classical writer. When Lichtenberg said, “ A simple manner of writing is to be recommended, if only in view of the fact that no honest man trims and twists his expressions,” he was very far from wishing to imply that a simple style is a proof of literary integrity. I, for my part, only wish that Strauss the Writer had been more upright, for then he would have written more becomingly and have been less famous. Or, if he would be a mummer at all costs, how much more would he not have pleased me if he had been a better mummer—one more able to ape the guileless genius and classical author! For it yet remains to be said that Strauss was not only an inferior actor but a very worthless stylist as well. XI. Of course, the blame attaching to Strauss for being a bad writer is greatly mitigated by the fact that it is extremely difficult in Germany to become even a passable or moderately good writer, and that it is more the exception than not, to be a really good one. In this respect the natural soil is wanting, as are also artistic values and the proper method of treating and cultivating oratory. This latter accomplishment, as the various branches of it, i.e. drawing-room, ecclesiastical and Parliamentary parlance, show, has not yet reached the level of a national style; indeed, it has not yet shown even a tendency to attain to a style at all, and all forms of language in Germany do not yet seem to have passed a certain experimental stage. In view of these facts, the writer of to-day, to some extent, lacks an authoritative standard, and he is in some measure excused if, in the matter of language, he attempts to go ahead of his own accord. As to the probable result which the present dilapidated condition of the German language will bring about, Schopenhauer, perhaps, has spoken most forcibly. “ If the existing state of affairs continues,” he says, “ in the year 1900 German classics will cease to be understood, for the simple reason that no other language will be known, save the trumpery jargon of the noble present, the chief characteristic of which is impotence.” And, in truth, if one turn to the latest periodicals, one will find German philologists and grammarians already giving expression to the view that our classics can no longer serve us as examples of style, owing to the fact that they constantly use words, modes of speech, and syntactic arrangements which are fast dropping out of currency. Hence the need of collecting specimens of the finest prose that has been produced by our best modern writers, and of offering them as examples to be followed, after the style of Sander’s pocket dictionary of bad language. In this book, that repulsive monster of style Gutzkow appears as a classic, and, according to its injunctions, we seem to be called upon to accustom ourselves to quite a new and wondrous crowd of classical authors, among which the first, or one of the first, is David Strauss: he whom we cannot describe more aptly than we have already—that is to say, as a worthless stylist. Now, the notion which the Culture-Philistine has of a classic and standard author speaks eloquently for his pseudo-culture—he who only shows his strength by opposing a really artistic and severe style, and who, thanks to the persistence of his opposition, finally arrives at a certain uniformity of expression, which again almost appears to possess unity of genuine style. In view, therefore, of the right which is granted to every one to experiment with the language, how is it possible at all for individual authors to discover a generally agreeable tone? What is so generally interesting in them? In the first place, a negative quality—the total lack of offensiveness: but every really productive thing is offensive. The greater part of a German’s daily reading matter is undoubtedly sought either in the pages of newspapers, periodicals, or reviews. The language of these journals gradually stamps itself on his brain, by means of its steady drip, drip, drip of similar phrases and similar words. And, since he generally devotes to reading those hours of the day during which his exhausted brain is in any case not inclined to offer resistance, his ear for his native tongue so slowly but surely accustoms itself to this everyday German that it ultimately cannot endure its absence without pain. But the manufacturers of these newspapers are, by virtue of their trade, most thoroughly inured to the effluvia of this journalistic jargon; they have literally lost all taste, and their palate is rather gratified than not by the most corrupt and arbitrary innovations. Hence the tutti unisono with which, despite the general lethargy and sickliness, every fresh solecism is greeted; it is with such impudent corruptions of the language that her hirelings are avenged against her for the incredible boredom she imposes ever more and more upon them. I remember having read “ an appeal to the German nation,” by Berthold Auerbach, in which every sentence was un-German, distorted and false, and which, as a whole, resembled a soulless mosaic of words cemented together with international syntax. As to the disgracefully slipshod German with which Edward Devrient solemnised the death of Mendelssohn, I do not even wish to do more than refer to it. A grammatical error—and this is the most extraordinary feature of the case—does not therefore seem an offence in any sense to our Philistine, but a most delightful restorative in the barren wilderness of everyday German. He still, however, considers all really productive things to be offensive. The wholly bombastic, distorted, and threadbare syntax of the modern standard author— yea, even his ludicrous neologisms—are not only tolerated, but placed to his credit as the spicy element in his works. But woe to the stylist with character, who seeks as earnestly
and perseveringly to avoid the trite phrases of everyday parlance, as the “ yester-night monster blooms of modern ink-flingers,” as Schopenhauer says! When platitudes, hackneyed, feeble, and vulgar phrases are the rule, and the bad and the corrupt become refreshing exceptions, then all that is strong, distinguished, and beautiful perforce acquires an evil odour. From which it follows that, in Germany, the well-known experience which befell the normally built traveller in the land of hunchbacks is constantly being repeated. It will be remembered that he was so shamefully insulted there, owing to his quaint figure and lack of dorsal convexity, that a priest at last had to harangue the people on his behalf as follows: “ My brethren, rather pity this poor stranger, and present thank-offerings unto the gods, that ye are blessed with such attractive gibbosities.” If any one attempted to compose a positive grammar out of the international German style of to-day, and wished to trace the unwritten and unspoken laws followed by every one, he would get the most extraordinary notions of style and rhetoric. He would meet with laws which are probably nothing more than reminiscences of bygone schooldays, vestiges of impositions for Latin prose, and results perhaps of choice readings from French novelists, over whose incredible crudeness every decently educated Frenchman would have the right to laugh. But no conscientious native of Germany seems to have given a thought to these extraordinary notions under the yoke of which almost every German lives and writes. As an example of what I say, we may find an injunction to the effect that a metaphor or a simile must be introduced from time to time, and that it must be new; but, since to the mind of the shallow-pated writer newness and modernity are identical, he proceeds forthwith to rack his brain for metaphors in the technical vocabularies of the railway, the telegraph, the steamship, and the Stock Exchange, and is proudly convinced that such metaphors must be new because they are modern. In Strauss’s confession-book we find liberal tribute paid to modern metaphor. He treats us to a simile, covering a page and a half, drawn from modern road-improvement work; a few pages farther back he likens the world to a machine, with its wheels, stampers, hammers, and “ soothing oil” (p. 432); “ A repast that begins with champagne” (p. 384); “ Kant is a cold-water cure” (p. 309); “ The Swiss constitution is to that of England as a watermill is to a steam-engine, as a waltz-tune or a song to a fugue or symphony” (p. 301); “ In every appeal, the sequence of procedure must be observed. Now the mean tribunal between the individual and humanity is the nation” (p. 165); “ If we would know whether there be still any life in an organism which appears dead to us, we are wont to test it by a powerful, even painful stimulus, as for example a stab” (p. 161); “ The religious domain in the human soul resembles the domain of the Red Indian in America” (p. 160); “ Virtuosos in piety, in convents”(p. 107); “ And place the sum-total of the foregoing in round numbers under the account” (p. 205); “ Darwin’s theory resembles a railway track that is just marked out… where the flags are fluttering joyfully in the breeze.” In this really highly modern way, Strauss has met the Philistine injunction to the effect that a new simile must be introduced from time to time. Another rhetorical rule is also very widespread, namely, that didactic passages should be composed in long periods, and should be drawn out into lengthy abstractions, while all persuasive passages should consist of short sentences followed by striking contrasts. On page 154 in Strauss’s book we find a standard example of the didactic and scholarly style—a passage blown out after the genuine Schleiermacher manner, and made to stumble along at a true tortoise pace: “ The reason why, in the earlier stages of religion, there appear many instead of this single Whereon, a plurality of gods instead of the one, is explained in this deduction of religion, from the fact that the various forces of nature, or relations of life, which inspire man with the sentiment of unqualified dependence, still act upon him in the commencement with the full force of their distinctive characteristics; that he has not as yet become conscious how, in regard to his unmitigated dependence upon them, there is no distinction between them, and that therefore the Whereon of this dependence, or the Being to which it conducts in the last instance, can only be one.” On pages 7 and 8 we find an example of the other kind of style, that of the short sentences containing that affected liveliness which so excited certain readers that they cannot mention Strauss any more without coupling his name with Lessing’s. “ I am well aware that what I propose to delineate in the following pages is known to multitudes as well as to myself, to some even much better. A few have already spoken out on the subject. Am I therefore to keep silence? I think not. For do we not all supply each other’s deficiencies? If another is better informed as regards some things, I may perhaps be so as regards others; while yet others are known and viewed by me in a different light. Out with it, then! let my colours be displayed that it may be seen whether they are genuine or not.’” It is true that Strauss’s style generally maintains a happy medium between this sort of merry quick-march and the other funereal and indolent pace; but between two vices one does not invariably find a virtue; more often rather only weakness, helpless paralysis, and impotence. As a matter of fact, I was very disappointed when I glanced through Strauss’s book in search of fine and witty passages; for, not having found anything praiseworthy in the Confessor, I had actually set out with the express purpose of meeting here and there with at least some opportunities of praising Strauss the Writer. I sought and sought, but my purpose remained unfulfilled. Meanwhile, however, another duty seemed to press itself strongly on my mind—that of enumerating the solecisms, the strained metaphors, the obscure abbreviations, the instances of bad taste, and the distortions which I encountered; and these were of such a nature that I dare do no more than select a few examples of them from among a collection which is too bulky to be given in full. By means of these examples I may succeed in showing what it is that inspires, in the hearts of modern Germans, such faith in this great and seductive stylist Strauss: I refer to his eccentricities of expression, which, in the barren waste and dryness of his whole book, jump out at one, not perhaps as pleasant but as painfully stimulating, surprises. When perusing such passages, we are at least assured, to use a Straussian metaphor, that we are not quite dead, but still respond to the test of a stab. For the rest of the book is entirely lacking in offensiveness —that quality which alone, as we have seen, is productive, and which our classical author has himself reckoned among the positive virtues. When the educated masses meet with exaggerated dulness and dryness, when they are in the presence of really vapid commonplaces, they now seem to believe that such things are the signs of health; and in this respect the words of the author of the dialogus de oratoribus are very much to the point: “ illam ipsam quam jactant sanitatem non firmitate sed jejunio consequuntur.” That is why they so unanimously hate every firmitas, because it bears testimony to a kind of health quite different from theirs; hence their one wish to throw suspicion upon all austerity and terseness, upon all fiery and energetic
movement, and upon every full and delicate play of muscles. They have conspired to twist nature and the names of things completely round, and for the future to speak of health only there where we see weakness, and to speak of illness and excitability where for our part we see genuine vigour. From which it follows that David Strauss is to them a classical author. If only this dulness were of a severely logical order! but simplicity and austerity in thought are precisely what these weaklings have lost, and in their hands even our language has become illogically tangled. As a proof of this, let any one try to translate Strauss’s style into Latin: in the case of Kant, be it remembered, this is possible, while with Schopenhauer it even becomes an agreeable exercise. The reason why this test fails with Strauss’s German is not owing to the fact that it is more Teutonic than theirs, but because his is distorted and illogical, whereas theirs is lofty and simple. Moreover, he who knows how the ancients exerted themselves in order to learn to write and speak correctly, and how the moderns omit to do so, must feel, as Schopenhauer says, a positive relief when he can turn from a German book like the one under our notice, to dive into those other works, those ancient works which seem to him still to be written in a new language. “ For in these books,” says Schopenhauer, “ I find a regular and fixed language which, throughout, faithfully follows the laws of grammar and orthography, so that I can give up my thoughts completely to their matter; whereas in German I am constantly being disturbed by the author’s impudence and his continual attempts to establish his own orthographical freaks and absurd ideas— the swaggering foolery of which disgusts me. It is really a painful sight to see a fine old language, possessed of classical literature, being botched by asses and ignoramuses!” Thus Schopenhauer’s holy anger cries out to us, and you cannot say that you have not been warned. He who turns a deaf ear to such warnings, and who absolutely refuses to relinquish his faith in Strauss the classical author, can only be given this last word of advice—to imitate his hero. In any case, try it at your own risk; but you will repent it, not only in your style but in your head, that it may be fulfilled which was spoken by the Indian prophet, saying, “ He who gnaweth a cow’s horn gnaweth in vain and shorteneth his life; for he grindeth away his teeth, yet his belly is empty.” XII. By way of concluding, we shall proceed to give our classical prose-writer the promised examples of his style which we have collected. Schopenhauer would probably have classed the whole lot as “ new documents serving to swell the trumpery jargon of the present day”; for David Strauss may be comforted to hear (if what follows can be regarded as a comfort at all) that everybody now writes as he does; some, of course, worse, and that among the blind the one-eyed is king. Indeed, we allow him too much when we grant him one eye; but we do this willingly, because Strauss does not write so badly as the most infamous of all corrupters of German—the Hegelians and their crippled offspring. Strauss at least wishes to extricate himself from the mire, and he is already partly out of it; still, he is very far from being on dry land, and he still shows signs of having stammered Hegel’s prose in youth. In those days, possibly, something was sprained in him, some muscle must have been overstrained. His ear, perhaps, like that of a boy brought up amid the beating of drums, grew dull, and became incapable of detecting those artistically subtle and yet mighty laws of sound, under the guidance of which every writer is content to remain who has been strictly trained in the study of good models. But in this way, as a stylist, he has lost his most valuable possessions, and stands condemned to remain reclining, his life long, on the dangerous and barren shifting sand of newspaper style—that is, if he do not wish to fall back into the Hegelian mire. Nevertheless, he has succeeded in making himself famous for a couple of hours in our time, and perhaps in another couple of hours people will remember that he was once famous; then, however, night will come, and with her oblivion; and already at this moment, while we are entering his sins against style in the black book, the sable mantle of twilight is falling upon his fame. For he who has sinned against the German language has desecrated the mystery of all our Germanity. Throughout all the confusion and the changes of races and of customs, the German language alone, as though possessed of some supernatural charm, has saved herself; and with her own salvation she has wrought that of the spirit of Germany. She alone holds the warrant for this spirit in future ages, provided she be not destroyed at the sacrilegious hands of the modern world. “ But Di meliora! Avaunt, ye pachyderms, avaunt! This is the German language, by means of which men express themselves, and in which great poets have sung and great thinkers have written. Hands off!” [10]* [Footnote * : Translator’s note.—Nietzsche here proceeds to quote those passages he has culled from The Old and the New Faith with which he undertakes to substantiate all he has said relative to Strauss’s style; as, however, these passages, with his comments upon them, lose most of their point when rendered into English, it was thought best to omit them altogether.] To put it in plain words, what we have seen have been feet of clay, and what appeared to be of the colour of healthy flesh was only applied paint. Of course, Culture-Philistinism in Germany will be very angry when it hears its one living God referred to as a series of painted idols. He, however, who dares to overthrow its idols will not shrink, despite all indignation, from telling it to its face that it has forgotten how to distinguish between the quick and the dead, the genuine and the counterfeit, the original and the imitation, between a God and a host of idols; that it has completely lost the healthy and manly instinct for what is real and right. It alone deserves to be destroyed; and already the manifestations of its power are sinking; already are its purple honours falling from it; but when the purple falls, its royal wearer soon follows. Here I come to the end of my confession of faith. This is the confession of an individual; and what can such an one do against a whole world, even supposing his voice were heard everywhere! In order for the last time to use a precious Straussism, his judgment only possesses “ that amount of subjective truth which is compatible with a complete lack of objective demonstration”—is not that so, my dear friends? Meanwhile, be of good cheer. For the time being let the matter rest at this “ amount which is compatible with a complete lack”! For the time being! That is to say, for as long as that is held to be out of season which in reality is always in season, and is now more than ever pressing; I refer to…speaking the truth.[11]* [Footnote * : Translator’s note.—All quotations from The Old Faith and the New which appear in the above translation have either been taken bodily out of Mathilde Blind’s
translation (Asher and Co., 1873), or are adaptations from that translation.] RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. I. FOR an event to be great, two things must be united—the lofty sentiment of those who accomplish it, and the lofty sentiment of those who witness it. No event is great in itself, even though it be the disappearance of whole constellations, the destruction of several nations, the establishment of vast empires, or the prosecution of wars at the cost of enormous forces: over things of this sort the breath of history blows as if they were flocks of wool. But it often happens, too, that a man of might strikes a blow which falls without effect upon a stubborn stone; a short, sharp report is heard, and all is over. History is able to record little or nothing of such abortive efforts. Hence the anxiety which every one must feel who, observing the approach of an event, wonders whether those about to witness it will be worthy of it. This reciprocity between an act and its reception is always taken into account when anything great or small is to be accomplished; and he who would give anything away must see to it that he find recipients who will do justice to the meaning of his gift. This is why even the work of a great man is not necessarily great when it is short, abortive, or fruitless; for at the moment when he performed it he must have failed to perceive that it was really necessary; he must have been careless in his aim, and he cannot have chosen and fixed upon the time with sufficient caution. Chance thus became his master; for there is a very intimate relation between greatness and the instinct which discerns the proper moment at which to act. We therefore leave it to those who doubt Wagner’s power of discerning the proper time for action, to be concerned and anxious as to whether what is now taking place in Bayreuth is really opportune and necessary. To us who are more confident, it is clear that he believes as strongly in the greatness of his feat as in the greatness of feeling in those who are to witness it. Be their number great or small, therefore, all those who inspire this faith in Wagner should feel extremely honoured; for that it was not inspired by everybody, or by the whole age, or even by the whole German people, as they are now constituted, he himself told us in his dedicatory address of the 22nd of May 1872, and not one amongst us could, with any show of conviction, assure him of the contrary. “ I had only you to turn to,” he said, “ when I sought those who I thought would be in sympathy with my plans,— you who are the most personal friends of my own particular art, my work and activity: only you could I invite to help me in my work, that it might be presented pure and whole to those who manifest a genuine interest in my art, despite the fact that it has hitherto made its appeal to them only in a disfigured and adulterated form.” It is certain that in Bayreuth even the spectator is a spectacle worth seeing. If the spirit of some observant sage were to return, after the absence of a century, and were to compare the most remarkable movements in the present world of culture, he would find much to interest him there. Like one swimming in a lake, who encounters a current of warm water issuing from a hot spring, in Bayreuth he would certainly feel as though he had suddenly plunged into a more temperate element, and would tell himself that this must rise out of a distant and deeper source: the surrounding mass of water, which at all events is more common in origin, does not account for it. In this way, all those who assist at the Bayreuth festival will seem like men out of season; their raison-d’etre and the forces which would seem to account for them are elsewhere, and their home is not in the present age. I realise ever more clearly that the scholar, in so far as he is entirely the man of his own day, can only be accessible to all that Wagner does and thinks by means of parody,—and since everything is parodied nowadays, he will even get the event of Bayreuth reproduced for him, through the very un-magic lanterns of our facetious art-critics. And one ought to be thankful if they stop at parody; for by means of it a spirit of aloofness and animosity finds a vent which might otherwise hit upon a less desirable mode of expression. Now, the observant sage already mentioned could not remain blind to this unusual sharpness and tension of contrasts. They who hold by gradual development as a kind of moral law must be somewhat shocked at the sight of one who, in the course of a single lifetime, succeeds in producing something absolutely new. Being dawdlers themselves, and insisting upon slowness as a principle, they are very naturally vexed by one who strides rapidly ahead, and they wonder how on earth he does it. No omens, no periods of transition, and no concessions preceded the enterprise at Bayreuth; no one except Wagner knew either the goal or the long road that was to lead to it. In the realm of art it signifies, so to speak, the first circumnavigation of the world, and by this voyage not only was there discovered an apparently new art, but Art itself. In view of this, all modern arts, as arts of luxury which have degenerated through having been insulated, have become almost worthless. And the same applies to the nebulous and inconsistent reminiscences of a genuine art, which we as modern Europeans derive from the Greeks; let them rest in peace, unless they are now able to shine of their own accord in the light of a new interpretation. The last hour has come for a good many things; this new art is a clairvoyante that sees ruin approaching—not for art alone. Her warning voice must strike the whole of our prevailing civilisation with terror the instant the laughter which its parodies have provoked subsides. Let it laugh and enjoy itself for yet a while longer! And as for us, the disciples of this revived art, we shall have time and inclination for thoughtfulness, deep thoughtfulness. All the talk and noise about art which has been made by civilisation hitherto must seem like shameless obtrusiveness; everything makes silence a duty with us—the quinquennial silence of the Pythagoreans. Which of us has not soiled his hands and heart in the disgusting idolatry of modern culture? Which of us can exist without the waters of purification? Who does not hear the voice which cries, “ Be silent and cleansed”? Be silent and cleansed! Only the merit of being included among those who give ear to this voice will grant even us the lofty look necessary to view the event at Bayreuth; and only upon this look depends the great future of the event. When on that dismal and cloudy day in May 1872, after the foundation stone had been laid on the height of Bayreuth, amid torrents of rain, and while Wagner was driving back to the town with a small party of us, he was exceptionally silent, and there was that indescribable look in his eyes as of one who has turned his gaze deeply inwards. The day happened to be the first of his sixtieth year, and his whole past now appeared as but a long preparation for this great moment. It is almost a recognised fact that in times of exceptional danger, or at all decisive and culminating points in their lives, men see the remotest and most recent events of their career with singular vividness, and in one rapid inward glance
obtain a sort of panorama of a whole span of years in which every event is faithfully depicted. What, for instance, must Alexander the Great have seen in that instant when he caused Asia and Europe to be drunk out of the same goblet? But what went through Wagner’s mind on that day—how he became what he is, and what he will be—we only can imagine who are nearest to him, and can follow him, up to a certain point, in his self-examination; but through his eyes alone is it possible for us to understand his grand work, and by the help of this understanding vouch for its fruitfulness. II. It were strange if what a man did best and most liked to do could not be traced in the general outline of his life, and in the case of those who are remarkably endowed there is all the more reason for supposing that their life will present not only the counterpart of their character, as in the case of every one else, but that it will present above all the counterpart of their intellect and their most individual tastes. The life of the epic poet will have a dash of the Epos in it—as from all accounts was the case with Goethe, whom the Germans very wrongly regarded only as a lyrist—and the life of the dramatist will probably be dramatic. The dramatic element in Wagner’s development cannot be ignored, from the time when his ruling passion became self-conscious and took possession of his whole being. From that time forward there is an end to all groping, straying, and sprouting of offshoots, and over his most tortuous deviations and excursions, over the often eccentric disposition of his plans, a single law and will are seen to rule, in which we have the explanation of his actions, however strange this explanation may sometimes appear. There was, however, an antedramatic period in Wagner’s life—his childhood and youth— which it is impossible to approach without discovering innumerable problems. At this period there seems to be no promise yet of himself, and what one might now, in a retrospect, regard as a pledge for his future greatness, amounts to no more than a juxtaposition of traits which inspire more dismay than hope; a restless and excitable spirit, nervously eager to undertake a hundred things at the same time, passionately fond of almost morbidly exalted states of mind, and ready at any moment to veer completely round from calm and profound meditation to a state of violence and uproar. In his case there were no hereditary or family influences at work to constrain him to the sedulous study of one particular art. Painting, versifying, acting, and music were just as much within his reach as the learning and the career of a scholar; and the superficial inquirer into this stage of his life might even conclude that he was born to be a dilettante. The small world within the bounds of which he grew up was not of the kind we should choose to be the home of an artist. He ran the constant risk of becoming infected by that dangerously dissipated attitude of mind in which a person will taste of everything, as also by that condition of slackness resulting from the fragmentary knowledge of all things, which is so characteristic of University towns. His feelings were easily roused and but indifferently satisfied; wherever the boy turned he found himself surrounded by a wonderful and would-be learned activity, to which the garish theatres presented a ridiculous contrast, and the entrancing strains of music a perplexing one. Now, to the observer who sees things relatively, it must seem strange that the modern man who happens to be gifted with exceptional talent should as a child and a youth so seldom be blessed with the quality of ingenuousness and of simple individuality, that he is so little able to have these qualities at all. As a matter of fact, men of rare talent, like Goethe and Wagner, much more often attain to ingenuousness in manhood than during the more tender years of childhood and youth. And this is especially so with the artist, who, being born with a more than usual capacity for imitating, succumbs to the morbid multiformity of modern life as to a virulent disease of infancy. As a child he will more closely resemble an old man. The wonderfully accurate and original picture of youth which Wagner gives us in the Siegfried of the Nibelungen Ring could only have been conceived by a man, and by one who had discovered his youthfulness but late in life. Wagner’s maturity, like his adolesence, was also late in making its appearance, and he is thus, in this respect alone, the very reverse of the precocious type. The appearance of his moral and intellectual strength was the prelude to the drama of his soul. And how different it then became! His nature seems to have been simplified at one terrible stroke, and divided against itself into two instincts or spheres. From its innermost depths there gushes forth a passionate will which, like a rapid mountain torrent, endeavours to make its way through all paths, ravines, and crevices, in search of light and power. Only a force completely free and pure was strong enough to guide this will to all that is good and beneficial. Had it been combined with a narrow intelligence, a will with such a tyrannical and boundless desire might have become fatal; in any case, an exit into the open had to be found for it as quickly as possible, whereby it could rush into pure air and sunshine. Lofty aspirations, which continually meet with failure, ultimately turn to evil. The inadequacy of means for obtaining success may, in certain circumstances, be the result of an inexorable fate, and not necessarily of a lack of strength; but he who under such circumstances cannot abandon his aspirations, despite the inadequacy of his means, will only become embittered, and consequently irritable and intolerant. He may possibly seek the cause of his failure in other people; he may even, in a fit of passion, hold the whole world guilty; or he may turn defiantly down secret byways and secluded lanes, or resort to violence. In this way, noble natures, on their road to the most high, may turn savage. Even among those who seek but their own personal moral purity, among monks and anchorites, men are to be found who, undermined and devoured by failure, have become barbarous and hopelessly morbid. There was a spirit full of love and calm belief, full of goodness and infinite tenderness, hostile to all violence and self-deterioration, and abhorring the sight of a soul in bondage. And it was this spirit which manifested itself to Wagner. It hovered over him as a consoling angel, it covered him with its wings, and showed him the true path. At this stage we bring the other side of Wagner’s nature into view: but how shall we describe this other side? The characters an artist creates are not himself, but the succession of these characters, to which it is clear he is greatly attached, must at all events reveal something of his nature. Now try and recall Rienzi, the Flying Dutchman and Senta, Tannhauser and Elizabeth, Lohengrin and Elsa, Tristan and Marke, Hans Sachs, Woden and Brunhilda,—all these characters are correlated by a secret current of ennobling and broadening morality which flows through them and becomes ever purer and clearer as it progresses. And at this point we enter with respectful reserve into the presence of the most hidden development in Wagner’s own soul. In what other artist do we meet with the like of this, in the same proportion? Schiller’s characters, from the Robbers to Wallenstein and Tell, do indeed pursue an ennobling course, and likewise reveal something of their author’s development; but in Wagner
the standard is higher and the distance covered is much greater. In the Nibelungen Ring, for instance, where Brunhilda is awakened by Siegfried, I perceive the most moral music I have ever heard. Here Wagner attains to such a high level of sacred feeling that our mind unconsciously wanders to the glistening ice-and snow-peaks of the Alps, to find a likeness there;— so pure, isolated, inaccessible, chaste, and bathed in love-beams does Nature here display herself, that clouds and tempests—yea, and even the sublime itself—seem to lie beneath her. Now, looking down from this height upon Tannhauser and the Flying Dutchman, we begin to perceive how the man in Wagner was evolved: how restlessly and darkly he began; how tempestuously he strove to gratify his desires, to acquire power and to taste those rapturous delights from which he often fled in disgust; how he wished to throw off a yoke, to forget, to be negative, and to renounce everything. The whole torrent plunged, now into this valley, now into that, and flooded the most secluded chinks and crannies. In the night of these semi-subterranean convulsions a star appeared and glowed high above him with melancholy vehemence; as soon as he recognised it, he named it Fidelity—unselfish fidelity. Why did this star seem to him the brightest and purest of all? What secret meaning had the word “ fidelity” to his whole being? For he has graven its image and problems upon all his thoughts and compositions. His works contain almost a complete series of the rarest and most beautiful examples of fidelity: that of brother to sister, of friend to friend, of servant to master; of Elizabeth to Tannhauser, of Senta to the Dutchman, of Elsa to Lohengrin, of Isolde, Kurvenal, and Marke to Tristan, of Brunhilda to the most secret vows of Woden—and many others. It is Wagner’s most personal and most individual experience, which he reveres like a religious mystery, and which he calls Fidelity; he never wearies of breathing it into hundreds of different characters, and of endowing it with the sublimest that in him lies, so overflowing is his gratitude. It is, in short, the recognition of the fact that the two sides of his nature remained faithful to each other, that out of free and unselfish love, the creative, ingenuous, and brilliant side kept loyally abreast of the dark, the intractable, and the tyrannical side. III. The relation of the two constituent forces to each other, and the yielding of the one to the other, was the great requisite by which alone he could remain wholly and truly himself. At the same time, this was the only thing he could not control, and over which he could only keep a watch, while the temptations to infidelity and its threatening dangers beset him more and more. The uncertainty derived therefrom is an overflowing source of suffering for those in process of development. Each of his instincts made constant efforts to attain to unmeasured heights, and each of the capacities he possessed for enjoying life seemed to long to tear itself away from its companions in order to seek satisfaction alone; the greater their exuberance the more terrific was the tumult, and the more bitter the competition between them. In addition, accident and life fired the desire for power and splendour in him; but he was more often tormented by the cruel necessity of having to live at all, while all around him lay obstacles and snares. How is it possible for any one to remain faithful here, to be completely steadfast? This doubt often depressed him, and he expresses it, as an artist expressed his doubt, in artistic forms. Elizabeth, for instance, can only suffer, pray, and die; she saves the fickle and intemperate man by her loyalty, though not for this life. In the path of every true artist, whose lot is cast in these modern days, despair and danger are strewn. He has many means whereby he can attain to honour and might; peace and plenty persistently offer themselves to him, but only in that form recognised by the modern man, which to the straightforward artist is no better than choke-damp. In this temptation, and in the act of resisting it, lie the dangers that threaten him—dangers arising from his disgust at the means modernity offers him of acquiring pleasure and esteem, and from the indignation provoked by the selfish ease of modern society. Imagine Wagner’s filling an official position, as for instance that of bandmaster at public and court theatres, both of which positions he has held: think how he, a serious artist, must have struggled in order to enforce seriousness in those very places which, to meet the demands of modern conventions, are designed with almost systematic frivolity to appeal only to the frivolous. Think how he must have partially succeeded, though only to fail on the whole. How constantly disgust must have been at his heels despite his repeated attempts to flee it, how he failed to find the haven to which he might have repaired, and how he had ever to return to the Bohemians and outlaws of our society, as one of them. If he himself broke loose from any post or position, he rarely found a better one in its stead, while more than once distress was all that his unrest brought him. Thus Wagner changed his associates, his dwelling-place and country, and when we come to comprehend the nature of the circles into which he gravitated, we can hardly realise how he was able to tolerate them for any length of time. The greater half of his past seems to be shrouded in heavy mist; for a long time he appears to have had no general hopes, but only hopes for the morrow, and thus, although he reposed no faith in the future, he was not driven to despair. He must have felt like a nocturnal traveller, broken with fatigue, exasperated from want of sleep, and tramping wearily along beneath a heavy burden, who, far from fearing the sudden approach of death, rather longs for it as something exquisitely charming. His burden, the road and the night—all would disappear! The thought was a temptation to him. Again and again, buoyed up by his temporary hopes, he plunged anew into the turmoil of life, and left all apparatus behind him. But his method of doing this, his lack of moderation in the doing, betrayed what a feeble hold his hopes had upon him; how they were only stimulants to which he had recourse in an extremity. The conflict between his aspirations and his partial or total inability to realise them, tormented him like a thorn in the flesh. Infuriated by constant privations, his imagination lapsed into the dissipated, whenever the state of want was momentarily relieved. Life grew ever more and more complicated for him; but the means and artifices that he discovered in his art as a dramatist became evermore resourceful and daring. Albeit, these were little more than palpable dramatic makeshifts and expedients, which deceived, and were invented, only for the moment. In a flash such means occurred to his mind and were used up. Examined closely and without prepossession, Wagner’s life, to recall one of Schopenhauer’s expressions, might be said to consist largely of comedy, not to mention burlesque. And what the artist’s feelings must have been, conscious as he was, during whole periods of his life, of this undignified element in it,—he who more than any one else, perhaps, breathed freely only in sublime and more than sublime spheres,— the thinker alone can form any idea. In the midst of this mode of life, a detailed description of which is necessary in order to inspire the amount of pity, awe, and admiration which are its due, he developed a talent for acquiring knowledge, which even in a German—a son of the nation learned above all others—was really extraordinary. And with this talent yet another danger threatened Wagner—a
danger more formidable than that involved in a life which was apparently without either a stay or a rule, borne hither and thither by disturbing illusions. From a novice trying his strength, Wagner became a thorough master of music and of the theatre, as also a prolific inventor in the preliminary technical conditions for the execution of art. No one will any longer deny him the glory of having given us the supreme model for lofty artistic execution on a large scale. But he became more than this, and in order so to develop, he, no less than any one else in like circumstances, had to reach the highest degree of culture by virtue of his studies. And wonderfully he achieved this end! It is delightful to follow his progress. From all sides material seemed to come unto him and into him, and the larger and heavier the resulting structure became, the more rigid was the arch of the ruling and ordering thought supporting it. And yet access to the sciences and arts has seldom been made more difficult for any man than for Wagner; so much so that he had almost to break his own road through to them. The reviver of the simple drama, the discoverer of the position due to art in true human society, the poetic interpreter of bygone views of life, the philosopher, the historian, the aesthete and the critic, the master of languages, the mythologist and the myth poet, who was the first to include all these wonderful and beautiful products of primitive times in a single Ring, upon which he engraved the runic characters of his thoughts— what a wealth of knowledge must Wagner have accumulated and commanded, in order to have become all that! And yet this mass of material was just as powerless to impede the action of his will as a matter of detail—however attractive—was to draw his purpose from its path. For the exceptional character of such conduct to be appreciated fully, it should be compared with that of Goethe,— he who, as a student and as a sage, resembled nothing so much as a huge river-basin, which does not pour all its water into the sea, but spends as much of it on its way there, and at its various twists and turns, as it ultimately disgorges at its mouth. True, a nature like Goethe’s not only has, but also engenders, more pleasure than any other; there is more mildness and noble profligacy in it; whereas the tenor and tempo of Wagner’s power at times provoke both fear and flight. But let him fear who will, we shall only be the more courageous, in that we shall be permitted to come face to face with a hero who, in regard to modern culture, “ has never learned the meaning of fear.” But neither has he learned to look for repose in history and philosophy, nor to derive those subtle influences from their study which tend to paralyse action or to soften a man unduly. Neither the creative nor the militant artist in him was ever diverted from his purpose by learning and culture. The moment his constructive powers direct him, history becomes yielding clay in his hands. His attitude towards it then differs from that of every scholar, and more nearly resembles the relation of the ancient Greek to his myths; that is to say, his subject is something he may fashion, and about which he may write verses. He will naturally do this with love and a certain becoming reverence, but with the sovereign right of the creator notwithstanding. And precisely because history is more supple and more variable than a dream to him, he can invest the most individual case with the characteristics of a whole age, and thus attain to a vividness of narrative of which historians are quite incapable. In what work of art, of any kind, has the body and soul of the Middle Ages ever been so thoroughly depicted as in Lohengrin? And will not the Meistersingers continue to acquaint men, even in the remotest ages to come, with the nature of Germany’s soul? Will they not do more than acquaint men of it? Will they not represent its very ripest fruit—the fruit of that spirit which ever wishes to reform and not to overthrow, and which, despite the broad couch of comfort on which it lies, has not forgotten how to endure the noblest discomfort when a worthy and novel deed has to be accomplished? And it is just to this kind of discomfort that Wagner always felt himself drawn by his study of history and philosophy: in them he not only found arms and coats of mail, but what he felt in their presence above all was the inspiring breath which is wafted from the graves of all great fighters, sufferers, and thinkers. Nothing distinguishes a man more from the general pattern of the age than the use he makes of history and philosophy. According to present views, the former seems to have been allotted the duty of giving modern man breathing-time, in the midst of his panting and strenuous scurry towards his goal, so that he may, for a space, imagine he has slipped his leash. What Montaigne was as an individual amid the turmoil of the Reformation—that is to say, a creature inwardly coming to peace with himself, serenely secluded in himself and taking breath, as his best reader, Shakespeare, understood him, —this is what history is to the modern spirit today. The fact that the Germans, for a whole century, have devoted themselves more particularly to the study of history, only tends to prove that they are the stemming, retarding, and becalming force in the activity of modern society—a circumstance which some, of course, will place to their credit. On the whole, however, it is a dangerous symptom when the mind of a nation turns with preference to the study of the past. It is a sign of flagging strength, of decline and degeneration; it denotes that its people are perilously near to falling victims to the first fever that may happen to be rife —the political fever among others. Now, in the history of modern thought, our scholars are an example of this condition of weakness as opposed to all reformative and revolutionary activity. The mission they have chosen is not of the noblest; they have rather been content to secure smug happiness for their kind, and little more. Every independent and manly step leaves them halting in the background, although it by no means outstrips history. For the latter is possessed of vastly different powers, which only natures like Wagner have any notion of; but it requires to be written in a much more earnest and severe spirit, by much more vigorous students, and with much less optimism than has been the case hitherto. In fact, it requires to be treated quite differently from the way German scholars have treated it until now. In all their works there is a continual desire to embellish, to submit and to be content, while the course of events invariably seems to have their approbation. It is rather the exception for one of them to imply that he is satisfied only because things might have turned out worse; for most of them believe, almost as a matter of course, that everything has been for the best simply because it has only happened once. Were history not always a disguised Christian theodicy, were it written with more justice and fervent feeling, it would be the very last thing on earth to be made to serve the purpose it now serves, namely, that of an opiate against everything subversive and novel. And philosophy is in the same plight: all that the majority demand of it is, that it may teach them to understand approximate facts—very approximate facts—in order that they may then become adapted to them. And even its noblest exponents press its soporific and comforting powers so strongly to the fore, that all lovers of sleep and of loafing must think that their aim and the aim of philosophy are one. For my part, the most important question philosophy has to decide seems to be, how far things have acquired an unalterable stamp and form, and, once this question has been answered, I think it the duty of philosophy unhesitatingly and courageously to proceed with the task of improving that part of the world which has
been recognised as still susceptible to change. But genuine philosophers do, as a matter of fact, teach this doctrine themselves, inasmuch as they work at endeavouring to alter the very changeable views of men, and do not keep their opinions to themselves. Genuine disciples of genuine philosophies also teach this doctrine; for, like Wagner, they understand the art of deriving a more decisive and inflexible will from their master’s teaching, rather than an opiate or a sleeping draught. Wagner is most philosophical where he is most powerfully active and heroic. It was as a philosopher that he went, not only through the fire of various philosophical systems without fear, but also through the vapours of science and scholarship, while remaining ever true to his highest self. And it was this highest self which exacted from his versatile spirit works as complete as his were, which bade him suffer and learn, that he might accomplish such works. IV. The history of the development of culture since the time of the Greeks is short enough, when we take into consideration the actual ground it covers, and ignore the periods during which man stood still, went backwards, hesitated or strayed. The Hellenising of the world—and to make this possible, the Orientalising of Hellenism—that double mission of Alexander the Great, still remains the most important event: the old question whether a foreign civilisation may be transplanted is still the problem that the peoples of modern times are vainly endeavouring to solve. The rhythmic play of those two factors against each other is the force that has determined the course of history heretofore. Thus Christianity appears, for instance, as a product of Oriental antiquity, which was thought out and pursued to its ultimate conclusions by men, with almost intemperate thoroughness. As its influence began to decay, the power of Hellenic culture was revived, and we are now experiencing phenomena so strange that they would hang in the air as unsolved problems, if it were not possible, by spanning an enormous gulf of time, to show their relation to analogous phenomena in Hellenistic culture. Thus, between Kant and the Eleatics, Schopenhauer and Empedocles, AEschylus and Wagner, there is so much relationship, so many things in common, that one is vividly impressed with the very relative nature of all notions of time. It would even seem as if a whole diversity of things were really all of a piece, and that time is only a cloud which makes it hard for our eyes to perceive the oneness of them. In the history of the exact sciences we are perhaps most impressed by the close bond uniting us with the days of Alexander and ancient Greece. The pendulum of history seems merely to have swung back to that point from which it started when it plunged forth into unknown and mysterious distance. The picture represented by our own times is by no means a new one: to the student of history it must always seem as though he were merely in the presence of an old familiar face, the features of which he recognises. In our time the spirit of Greek culture is scattered broadcast. While forces of all kinds are pressing one upon the other, and the fruits of modern art and science are offering themselves as a means of exchange, the pale outline of Hellenism is beginning to dawn faintly in the distance. The earth which, up to the present, has been more than adequately Orientalised, begins to yearn once more for Hellenism. He who wishes to help her in this respect will certainly need to be gifted for speedy action and to have wings on his heels, in order to synthetise the multitudinous and still undiscovered facts of science and the many conflicting divisions of talent so as to reconnoitre and rule the whole enormous field. It is now necessary that a generation of anti-Alexanders should arise, endowed with the supreme strength necessary for gathering up, binding together, and joining the individual threads of the fabric, so as to prevent their being scattered to the four winds. The object is not to cut the Gordian knot of Greek culture after the manner adopted by Alexander, and then to leave its frayed ends fluttering in all directions; it is rather to bind it after it has been loosed. That is our task to-day. In the person of Wagner I recognise one of these anti-Alexanders: he rivets and locks together all that is isolated, weak, or in any way defective; if I may be allowed to use a medical expression, he has an astringent power. And in this respect he is one of the greatest civilising forces of his age. He dominates art, religion, and folklore, yet he is the reverse of a polyhistor or of a mere collecting and classifying spirit; for he constructs with the collected material, and breathes life into it, and is a Simplifier of the Universe. We must not be led away from this idea by comparing the general mission which his genius imposed upon him with the much narrower and more immediate one which we are at present in the habit of associating with the name of Wagner. He is expected to effect a reform in the theatre world; but even supposing he should succeed in doing this, what would then have been done towards the accomplishment of that higher, more distant mission? But even with this lesser theatrical reform, modern man would also be altered and reformed; for everything is so intimately related in this world, that he who removes even so small a thing as a rivet from the framework shatters and destroys the whole edifice. And what we here assert, with perhaps seeming exaggeration, of Wagner’s activity would hold equally good of any other genuine reform. It is quite impossible to reinstate the art of drama in its purest and highest form without effecting changes everywhere in the customs of the people, in the State, in education, and in social intercourse. When love and justice have become powerful in one department of life, namely in art, they must, in accordance with the law of their inner being, spread their influence around them, and can no more return to the stiff stillness of their former pupal condition. In order even to realise how far the attitude of the arts towards life is a sign of their decline, and how far our theatres are a disgrace to those who build and visit them, everything must be learnt over again, and that which is usual and commonplace should be regarded as something unusual and complicated. An extraordinary lack of clear judgment, a badly-concealed lust of pleasure, of entertainment at any cost, learned scruples, assumed airs of importance, and trifling with the seriousness of art on the part of those who represent it; brutality of appetite and money-grubbing on the part of promoters; the empty-mindedness and thoughtlessness of society, which only thinks of the people in so far as these serve or thwart its purpose, and which attends theatres and concerts without giving a thought to its duties,—all these things constitute the stifling and deleterious atmosphere of our modern art conditions: when, however, people like our men of culture have grown accustomed to it, they imagine that it is a condition of their healthy existence, and would immediately feel unwell if, for any reason, they were compelled to dispense with it for a while. In point of fact, there is but one speedy way of convincing oneself of the vulgarity, weirdness, and confusion of our theatrical institutions, and that is to compare them with those which once flourished in ancient Greece. If we knew nothing about the Greeks, it would perhaps be impossible to assail our present conditions at all, and objections made on the large scale conceived for the first time by Wagner would have been regarded as the dreams of people who could only be at home in outlandish places. “ For
men as we now find them,” people would have retorted, “ art of this modern kind answers the purpose and is fitting— and men have never been different.” But they have been very different, and even now there are men who are far from satisfied with the existing state of affairs—the fact of Bayreuth alone demonstrates this point. Here you will find prepared and initiated spectators, and the emotion of men conscious of being at the very zenith of their happiness, who concentrate their whole being on that happiness in order to strengthen themselves for a higher and more far-reaching purpose. Here you will find the most noble self-abnegation on the part of the artist, and the finest of all spectacles —that of a triumphant creator of works which are in themselves an overflowing treasury of artistic triumphs. Does it not seem almost like a fairy tale, to be able to come face to face with such a personality? Must not they who take any part whatsoever, active or passive, in the proceedings at Bayreuth, already feel altered and rejuvenated, and ready to introduce reforms and to effect renovations in other spheres of life? Has not a haven been found for all wanderers on high and desert seas, and has not peace settled over the face of the waters? Must not he who leaves these spheres of ruling profundity and loneliness for the very differently ordered world with its plains and lower levels, cry continually like Isolde: “ Oh, how could I bear it? How can I still bear it?” And should he be unable to endure his joy and his sorrow, or to keep them egotistically to himself, he will avail himself from that time forward of every opportunity of making them known to all. “ Where are they who are suffering under the yoke of modern institutions?” he will inquire. “ Where are my natural allies, with whom I may struggle against the ever waxing and ever more oppressive pretensions of modern erudition? For at present, at least, we have but one enemy—at present!—and it is that band of aesthetes, to whom the word Bayreuth means the completest rout—they have taken no share in the arrangements, they were rather indignant at the whole movement, or else availed themselves effectively of the deaf-ear policy, which has now become the trusty weapon of all very superior opposition. But this proves that their animosity and knavery were ineffectual in destroying Wagner’s spirit or in hindering the accomplishment of his plans; it proves even more, for it betrays their weakness and the fact that all those who are at present in possession of power will not be able to withstand many more attacks. The time is at hand for those who would conquer and triumph; the vastest empires lie at their mercy, a note of interrogation hangs to the name of all present possessors of power, so far as possession may be said to exist in this respect. Thus educational institutions are said to be decaying, and everywhere individuals are to be found who have secretly deserted them. If only it were possible to invite those to open rebellion and public utterances, who even now are thoroughly dissatisfied with the state of affairs in this quarter! If only it were possible to deprive them of their faint heart and lukewarmness! I am convinced that the whole spirit of modern culture would receive its deadliest blow if the tacit support which these natures give it could in any way be cancelled. Among scholars, only those would remain loyal to the old order of things who had been infected with the political mania or who were literary hacks in any form whatever. The repulsive organisation which derives its strength from the violence and injustice upon which it relies—that is to say, from the State and Society—and which sees its advantage in making the latter ever more evil and unscrupulous,—this structure which without such support would be something feeble and effete, only needs to be despised in order to perish. He who is struggling to spread justice and love among mankind must regard this organisation as the least significant of the obstacles in his way; for he will only encounter his real opponents once he has successfully stormed and conquered modern culture, which is nothing more than their outworks. For us, Bayreuth is the consecration of the dawn of the combat. No greater injustice could be done to us than to suppose that we are concerned with art alone, as though it were merely a means of healing or stupefying us, which we make use of in order to rid our consciousness of all the misery that still remains in our midst. In the image of this tragic art work at Bayreuth, we see, rather, the struggle of individuals against everything which seems to oppose them with invincible necessity, with power, law, tradition, conduct, and the whole order of things established. Individuals cannot choose a better life than that of holding themselves ready to sacrifice themselves and to die in their fight for love and justice. The gaze which the mysterious eye of tragedy vouchsafes us neither lulls nor paralyses. Nevertheless, it demands silence of us as long as it keeps us in view; for art does not serve the purposes of war, but is merely with us to improve our hours of respite, before and during the course of the contest,—to improve those few moments when, looking back, yet dreaming of the future, we seem to understand the symbolical, and are carried away into a refreshing reverie when fatigue overtakes us. Day and battle dawn together, the sacred shadows vanish, and Art is once more far away from us; but the comfort she dispenses is with men from the earliest hour of day, and never leaves them. Wherever he turns, the individual realises only too clearly his own shortcomings, his insufficiency and his incompetence; what courage would he have left were he not previously rendered impersonal by this consecration! The greatest of all torments harassing him, the conflicting beliefs and opinions among men, the unreliability of these beliefs and opinions, and the unequal character of men’s abilities—all these things make him hanker after art. We cannot be happy so long as everything about us suffers and causes suffering; we cannot be moral so long as the course of human events is determined by violence, treachery, and injustice; we cannot even be wise, so long as the whole of mankind does not compete for wisdom, and does not lead the individual to the most sober and reasonable form of life and knowledge. How, then, would it be possible to endure this feeling of threefold insufficiency if one were not able to recognise something sublime and valuable in one’s struggles, strivings, and defeats, if one did not learn from tragedy how to delight in the rhythm of the great passions, and in their victim? Art is certainly no teacher or educator of practical conduct: the artist is never in this sense an instructor or adviser; the things after which a tragic hero strives are not necessarily worth striving after. As in a dream so in art, the valuation of things only holds good while we are under its spell. What we, for the time being, regard as so worthy of effort, and what makes us sympathise with the tragic hero when he prefers death to renouncing the object of his desire, this can seldom retain the same value and energy when transferred to everyday life: that is why art is the business of the man who is recreating himself. The strife it reveals to us is a simplification of life’s struggle; its problems are abbreviations of the infinitely complicated phenomena of man’s actions and volitions. But from this very fact—that it is the reflection, so to speak, of a simpler world, a more rapid solution of the riddle of life—art derives its greatness and indispensability. No one who suffers from life can do without this reflection, just as no one can exist without sleep. The more difficult the science of natural laws becomes, the more fervently we yearn for the image of this simplification, if only for an instant; and the greater becomes the tension between each man’s general knowledge of things and his moral and
spiritual faculties. Art is with us to prevent the bow from snapping. The individual must be consecrated to something impersonal—that is the aim of tragedy: he must forget the terrible anxiety which death and time tend to create in him; for at any moment of his life, at any fraction of time in the whole of his span of years, something sacred may cross his path which will amply compensate him for all his struggles and privations. This means having a sense for the tragic. And if all mankind must perish some day—and who could question this! —it has been given its highest aim for the future, namely, to increase and to live in such unity that it may confront its final extermination as a whole, with one spirit-with a common sense of the tragic: in this one aim all the ennobling influences of man lie locked; its complete repudiation by humanity would be the saddest blow which the soul of the philanthropist could receive. That is how I feel in the matter! There is but one hope and guarantee for the future of man, and that is that his sense for the tragic may not die out. If he ever completely lost it, an agonised cry, the like of which has never been heard, would have to be raised all over the world; for there is no more blessed joy than that which consists in knowing what we know—how tragic thought was born again on earth. For this joy is thoroughly impersonal and general: it is the wild rejoicing of humanity, anent the hidden relationship and progress of all that is human. V. Wagner concentrated upon life, past and present, the light of an intelligence strong enough to embrace the most distant regions in its rays. That is why he is a simplifier of the universe; for the simplification of the universe is only possible to him whose eye has been able to master the immensity and wildness of an apparent chaos, and to relate and unite those things which before had lain hopelessly asunder. Wagner did this by discovering a connection between two objects which seemed to exist apart from each other as though in separate spheres—that between music and life, and similarly between music and the drama. Not that he invented or was the first to create this relationship, for they must always have existed and have been noticeable to all; but, as is usually the case with a great problem, it is like a precious stone which thousands stumble over before one finally picks it up. Wagner asked himself the meaning of the fact that an art such as music should have become so very important a feature of the lives of modern men. It is not necessary to think meanly of life in order to suspect a riddle behind this question. On the contrary, when all the great forces of existence are duly considered, and struggling life is regarded as striving mightily after conscious freedom and independence of thought, only then does music seem to be a riddle in this world. Should one not answer: Music could not have been born in our time? What then does its presence amongst us signify? An accident? A single great artist might certainly be an accident, but the appearance of a whole group of them, such as the history of modern music has to show, a group only once before equalled on earth, that is to say in the time of the Greeks,—a circumstance of this sort leads one to think that perhaps necessity rather than accident is at the root of the whole phenomenon. The meaning of this necessity is the riddle which Wagner answers. He was the first to recognise an evil which is as widespread as civilisation itself among men; language is everywhere diseased, and the burden of this terrible disease weighs heavily upon the whole of man’s development. Inasmuch as language has retreated ever more and more from its true province—the expression of strong feelings, which it was once able to convey in all their simplicity—and has always had to strain after the practically impossible achievement of communicating the reverse of feeling, that is to say thought, its strength has become so exhausted by this excessive extension of its duties during the comparatively short period of modern civilisation, that it is no longer able to perform even that function which alone justifies its existence, to wit, the assisting of those who suffer, in communicating with each other concerning the sorrows of existence. Man can no longer make his misery known unto others by means of language; hence he cannot really express himself any longer. And under these conditions, which are only vaguely felt at present, language has gradually become a force in itself which with spectral arms coerces and drives humanity where it least wants to go. As soon as they would fain understand one another and unite for a common cause, the craziness of general concepts, and even of the ring of modern words, lays hold of them. The result of this inability to communicate with one another is that every product of their co-operative action bears the stamp of discord, not only because it fails to meet their real needs, but because of the very emptiness of those all-powerful words and notions already mentioned. To the misery already at hand, man thus adds the curse of convention—that is to say, the agreement between words and actions without an agreement between the feelings. Just as, during the decline of every art, a point is reached when the morbid accumulation of its means and forms attains to such tyrannical proportions that it oppresses the tender souls of artists and converts these into slaves, so now, in the period of the decline of language, men have become the slaves of words. Under this yoke no one is able to show himself as he is, or to express himself artlessly, while only few are able to preserve their individuality in their fight against a culture which thinks to manifest its success, not by the fact that it approaches definite sensations and desires with the view of educating them, but by the fact that it involves the individual in the snare of “ definite notions,” and teaches him to think correctly: as if there were any value in making a correctly thinking and reasoning being out of man, before one has succeeded in making him a creature that feels correctly. If now the strains of our German masters’ music burst upon a mass of mankind sick to this extent, what is really the meaning of these strains? Only correct feeling, the enemy of all convention, of all artificial estrangement and misunderstandings between man and man: this music signifies a return to nature, and at the same time a purification and remodelling of it; for the need of such a return took shape in the souls of the most loving of men, and, through their art, nature transformed into love makes its voice heard. Let us regard this as one of Wagner’s answers to the question, What does music mean in our time? for he has a second. The relation between music and life is not merely that existing between one kind of language and another; it is, besides, the relation between the perfect world of sound and that of sight. Regarded merely as a spectacle, and compared with other and earlier manifestations of human life, the existence of modern man is characterised by indescribable indigence and exhaustion, despite the unspeakable garishness at which only the superficial observer rejoices. If one examines a little more closely the impression which this vehement and kaleidoscopic play of colours makes upon one, does not the whole seem to blaze with the shimmer and sparkle of innumerable little stones borrowed from former civilisations? Is not everything one sees merely a complex of inharmonious bombast, aped gesticulations, arrogant superficiality?—a ragged suit of motley for the naked and the shivering? A seeming dance of joy enjoined upon a sufferer? Airs of overbearing pride
assumed by one who is sick to the backbone? And the whole moving with such rapidity and confusion that it is disguised and masked— sordid impotence, devouring dissension, assiduous ennui, dishonest distress! The appearance of present-day humanity is all appearance, and nothing else: in what he now represents man himself has become obscured and concealed; and the vestiges of the creative faculty in art, which still cling to such countries as France and Italy, are all concentrated upon this one task of concealing. Wherever form is still in demand in society, conversation, literary style, or the relations between governments, men have unconsciously grown to believe that it is adequately met by a kind of agreeable dissimulation, quite the reverse of genuine form conceived as a necessary relation between the proportions of a figure, having no concern whatever with the notions “ agreeable” or “ disagreeable,” simply because it is necessary and not optional. But even where form is not openly exacted by civilised people, there is no greater evidence of this requisite relation of proportions; a striving after the agreeable dissimulation, already referred to, is on the contrary noticeable, though it is never so successful even if it be more eager than in the first instance. How far this dissimulation is agreeable at times, and why it must please everybody to see how modern men at least endeavour to dissemble, every one is in a position to judge, according to, the extent to which he himself may happen to be modern. “ Only galley slaves know each other,” says Tasso, “ and if we mistake others, it is only out of courtesy, and with the hope that they, in their turn, should mistake us.” Now, in this world of forms and intentional misunderstandings, what purpose is served by the appearance of souls overflowing with music? They pursue the course of grand and unrestrained rhythm with noble candour—with a passion more than personal; they glow with the mighty and peaceful fire of music, which wells up to the light of day from their unexhausted depths—and all this to what purpose? By means of these souls music gives expression to the longing that it feels for the company of its natural ally, gymnastics—that is to say, its necessary form in the order of visible phenomena. In its search and craving for this ally, it becomes the arbiter of the whole visible world and the world of mere lying appearance of the present day. This is Wagner’s second answer to the question, What is the meaning of music in our times? “ Help me,” he cries to all who have ears to hear, “ help me to discover that culture of which my music, as the rediscovered language of correct feeling, seems to foretell the existence. Bear in mind that the soul of music now wishes to acquire a body, that, by means of you all, it would find its way to visibleness in movements, deeds, institutions, and customs!” There are some men who understand this summons, and their number will increase; they have also understood, for the first time, what it means to found the State upon music. It is something that the ancient Hellenes not only understood but actually insisted upon; and these enlightened creatures would just as soon have sentenced the modern State to death as modern men now condemn the Church. The road to such a new though not unprecedented goal would lead to this: that we should be compelled to acknowledge where the worst faults of our educational system lie, and why it has failed hitherto to elevate us out of barbarity: in reality, it lacks the stirring and creative soul of music; its requirements and arrangements are moreover the product of a period in which the music, to which We seem to attach so much importance, had not yet been born. Our education is the most antiquated factor of our present conditions, and it is so more precisely in regard to the one new educational force by which it makes men of to-day in advance of those of bygone centuries, or by which it would make them in advance of their remote ancestors, provided only they did not persist so rashly in hurrying forward in meek response to the scourge of the moment. Through not having allowed the soul of music to lodge within them, they have no notion of gymnastics in the Greek and Wagnerian sense; and that is why their creative artists are condemned to despair, as long as they wish to dispense with music as a guide in a new world of visible phenomena. Talent may develop as much as may be desired: it either comes too late or too soon, and at all events out of season; for it is in the main superfluous and abortive, just as even the most perfect and the highest products of earlier times which serve modern artists as models are superfluous and abortive, and add not a stone to the edifice already begun. If their innermost consciousness can perceive no new forms, but only the old ones belonging to the past, they may certainly achieve something for history, but not for life; for they are already dead before having expired. He, however, who feels genuine and fruitful life in him, which at present can only be described by the one term “ Music,” could he allow himself to be deceived for one moment into nursing solid hopes by this something which exhausts all its energy in producing figures, forms, and styles? He stands above all such vanities, and as little expects to meet with artistic wonders outside his ideal world of sound as with great writers bred on our effete and discoloured language. Rather than lend an ear to illusive consolations, he prefers to turn his unsatisfied gaze stoically upon our modern world, and if his heart be not warm enough to feel pity, let it at least feel bitterness and hate! It were better for him to show anger and scorn than to take cover in spurious contentment or steadily to drug himself, as our “ friends of art” are wont to do. But if he can do more than condemn and despise, if he is capable of loving, sympathising, and assisting in the general work of construction, he must still condemn, notwithstanding, in order to prepare the road for his willing soul. In order that music may one day exhort many men to greater piety and make them privy to her highest aims, an end must first be made to the whole of the pleasure-seeking relations which men now enjoy with such a sacred art. Behind all our artistic pastimes— theatres, museums, concerts, and the like—that aforementioned “ friend of art” is to be found, and he it is who must be suppressed: the favour he now finds at the hands of the State must be changed into oppression; public opinion, which lays such particular stress upon the training of this love of art, must be routed by better judgment. Meanwhile we must reckon the declared enemy of art as our best and most useful ally; for the object of his animosity is precisely art as understood by the “ friend of art,”—he knows of no other kind! Let him be allowed to call our “ friend of art” to account for the nonsensical waste of money occasioned by the building of his theatres and public monuments, the engagement of his celebrated singers and actors, and the support of his utterly useless schools of art and picture-galleries—to say nothing of all the energy, time, and money which every family squanders in pretended “ artistic interests.” Neither hunger nor satiety is to be noticed here, but a dead-and-alive game is played—with the semblance of each, a game invented by the idle desire to produce an effect and to deceive others. Or, worse still, art is taken more or less seriously, and then it is itself expected to provoke a kind of hunger and craving, and to fulfil its mission in this artificially induced excitement. It is as if people were afraid of sinking beneath the weight of their loathing and dulness, and invoked every conceivable evil spirit to scare them and drive them about like wild cattle. Men hanker after pain, anger,
hate, the flush of passion, sudden flight, and breathless suspense, and they appeal to the artist as the conjurer of this demoniacal host. In the spiritual economy of our cultured classes art has become a spurious or ignominious and undignified need—a nonentity or a something evil. The superior and more uncommon artist must be in the throes of a bewildering nightmare in order to be blind to all this, and like a ghost, diffidently and in a quavering voice, he goes on repeating beautiful words which he declares descend to him from higher spheres, but whose sound he can hear only very indistinctly. The artist who happens to be moulded according to the modern pattern, however, regards the dreamy gropings and hesitating speech of his nobler colleague with contempt, and leads forth the whole brawling mob of assembled passions on a leash in order to let them loose upon modern men as he may think fit. For these modern creatures wish rather to be hunted down, wounded, and torn to shreds, than to live alone with themselves in solitary calm. Alone with oneself!—this thought terrifies the modern soul; it is his one anxiety, his one ghastly fear. When I watch the throngs that move and linger about the streets of a very populous town, and notice no other expression in their faces than one of hunted stupor, I can never help commenting to myself upon the misery of their condition. For them all, art exists only that they may be still more wretched, torpid, insensible, or even more flurried and covetous. For incorrect feeling governs and drills them unremittingly, and does not even give them time to become aware of their misery. Should they wish to speak, convention whispers their cue to them, and this makes them forget what they originally intended to say; should they desire to understand one another, their comprehension is maimed as though by a spell: they declare that to be their joy which in reality is but their doom, and they proceed to collaborate in wilfully bringing about their own damnation. Thus they have become transformed into perfectly and absolutely different creatures, and reduced to the state of abject slaves of incorrect feeling. VI. I shall only give two instances showing how utterly the sentiment of our time has been perverted, and how completely unconscious the present age is of this perversion. Formerly financiers were looked down upon with honest scorn, even though they were recognised as needful; for it was generally admitted that every society must have its viscera. Now, however, they are the ruling power in the soul of modern humanity, for they constitute the most covetous portion thereof. In former times people were warned especially against taking the day or the moment too seriously: the nil admirari was recommended and the care of things eternal. Now there is but one kind of seriousness left in the modern mind, and it is limited to the news brought by the newspaper and the telegraph. Improve each shining hour, turn it to some account and judge it as quickly as possible!—one would think modern men had but one virtue left—presence of mind. Unfortunately, it much more closely resembles the omnipresence of disgusting and insatiable cupidity, and spying inquisitiveness become universal. For the question is whether mind is present at all to-day;—but we shall leave this problem for future judges to solve; they, at least, are bound to pass modern men through a sieve. But that this age is vulgar, even we can see now, and it is so because it reveres precisely what nobler ages contemned. If, therefore, it loots all the treasures of bygone wit and wisdom, and struts about in this richest of rich garments, it only proves its sinister consciousness of its own vulgarity in so doing; for it does not don this garb for warmth, but merely in order to mystify its surroundings. The desire to dissemble and to conceal himself seems stronger than the need of protection from the cold in modern man. Thus scholars and philosophers of the age do not have recourse to Indian and Greek wisdom in order to become wise and peaceful: the only purpose of their work seems to be to earn them a fictitious reputation for learning in their own time. The naturalists endeavour to classify the animal outbreaks of violence, ruse and revenge, in the present relations between nations and individual men, as immutable laws of nature. Historians are anxiously engaged in proving that every age has its own particular right and special conditions,— with the view of preparing the groundwork of an apology for the day that is to come, when our generation will be called to judgment. The science of government, of race, of commerce, and of jurisprudence, all have that preparatorily apologetic character now; yea, it even seems as though the small amount of intellect which still remains active to-day, and is not used up by the great mechanism of gain and power, has as its sole task the defending—and excusing of the present Against what accusers? one asks, surprised. Against its own bad conscience. And at this point we plainly discern the task assigned to modern art—that of stupefying or intoxicating, of lulling to sleep or bewildering. By hook or by crook to make conscience unconscious! To assist the modern soul over the sensation of guilt, not to lead it back to innocence! And this for the space of moments only! To defend men against themselves, that their inmost heart may be silenced, that they may turn a deaf ear to its voice! The souls of those few who really feel the utter ignominy of this mission and its terrible humiliation of art, must be filled to the brim with sorrow and pity, but also with a new and overpowering yearning. He who would fain emancipate art, and reinstall its sanctity, now desecrated, must first have freed himself from all contact with modern souls; only as an innocent being himself can he hope to discover the innocence of art, for he must be ready to perform the stupendous tasks of self-purification and self-consecration. If he succeeded, if he were ever able to address men from out his enfranchised soul and by means of his emancipated art, he would then find himself exposed to the greatest of dangers and involved in the most appalling of struggles. Man would prefer to tear him and his art to pieces, rather than acknowledge that he must die of shame in presence of them. It is just possible that the emancipation of art is the only ray of hope illuminating the future, an event intended only for a few isolated souls, while the many remain satisfied to gaze into the flickering and smoking flame of their art and can endure to do so. For they do not want to be enlightened, but dazzled. They rather hate light —more particularly when it is thrown on themselves. That is why they evade the new messenger of light; but he follows them—the love which gave him birth compels him to follow them and to reduce them to submission. “ Ye must go through my mysteries,” he cries to them; “ ye need to be purified and shaken by them. Dare to submit to this for your own salvation, and abandon the gloomily lighted corner of life and nature which alone seems familiar to you. I lead you into a kingdom which is also real, and when I lead you out of my cell into your daylight, ye will be able to
judge which life is more real, which, in fact, is day and which night. Nature is much richer, more powerful, more blessed and more terrible below the surface; ye cannot divine this from the way in which ye live. O that ye yourselves could learn to become natural again, and then suffer yourselves to be transformed through nature, and into her, by the charm of my ardour and love!” It is the voice of Wagner’s art which thus appeals to men. And that we, the children of a wretched age, should be the first to hear it, shows how deserving of pity this age must be: it shows, moreover, that real music is of a piece with fate and primitive law; for it is quite impossible to attribute its presence amongst us precisely at the present time to empty and meaningless chance. Had Wagner been an accident, he would certainly have been crushed by the superior strength of the other elements in the midst of which he was placed, out in the coming of Wagner there seems to have been a necessity which both justifies it and makes it glorious. Observed from its earliest beginnings, the development of his art constitutes a most magnificent spectacle, and—even though it was attended with great suffering—reason, law, and intention mark its course throughout. Under the charm of such a spectacle the observer will be led to take pleasure even in this painful development itself, and will regard it as fortunate. He will see how everything necessarily contributes to the welfare and benefit of talent and a nature foreordained, however severe the trials may be through which it may have to pass. He will realise how every danger gives it more heart, and every triumph more prudence; how it partakes of poison and sorrow and thrives upon them. The mockery and perversity of the surrounding world only goad and spur it on the more. Should it happen to go astray, it but returns from its wanderings and exile loaded with the most precious spoil; should it chance to slumber, “ it does but recoup its strength.” It tempers the body itself and makes it tougher; it does not consume life, however long it lives; it rules over man like a pinioned passion, and allows him to fly just in the nick of time, when his foot has grown weary in the sand or has been lacerated by the stones on his way. It can do nought else but impart; every one must share in its work, and it is no stinted giver. When it is repulsed it is but more prodigal in its gifts; ill used by those it favours, it does but reward them with the richest treasures it possesses,—and, according to the oldest and most recent experience, its favoured ones have never been quite worthy of its gifts. That is why the nature foreordained, through which music expresses itself to this world of appearance, is one of the most mysterious things under the sun—an abyss in which strength and goodness lie united, a bridge between self and non-self. Who would undertake to name the object of its existence with any certainty?—even supposing the sort of purpose which it would be likely to have could be divined at all. But a most blessed foreboding leads one to ask whether it is possible for the grandest things to exist for the purpose of the meanest, the greatest talent for the benefit of the smallest, the loftiest virtue and holiness for the sake of the defective and faulty? Should real music make itself heard, because mankind of all creatures least deserves to hear it, though it perhaps need it most? If one ponder over the transcendental and wonderful character of this possibility, and turn from these considerations to look back on life, a light will then be seen to ascend, however dark and misty it may have seemed a moment before. VII. It is quite impossible otherwise: the observer who is confronted with a nature such as Wagner’s must, willy-nilly, turn his eyes from time to time upon himself, upon his insignificance and frailty, and ask himself, What concern is this of thine? Why, pray, art thou there at all? Maybe he will find no answer to these questions, in which case he will remain estranged and confounded, face to face with his own personality. Let it then suffice him that he has experienced this feeling; let the fact that he has felt strange and embarrassed in the presence of his own soul be the answer to his question For it is precisely by virtue of this feeling that he shows the most powerful manifestation of life in Wagner—the very kernel of his strength—that demoniacal magnetism and gift of imparting oneself to others, which is peculiar to his nature, and by which it not only conveys itself to other beings, but also absorbs other beings into itself; thus attaining to its greatness by giving and by taking. As the observer is apparently subject to Wagner’s exuberant and prodigally generous nature, he partakes of its strength, and thereby becomes formidable through him and to him. And every one who critically examines himself knows that a certain mysterious antagonism is necessary to the process of mutual study. Should his art lead us to experience all that falls to the lot of a soul engaged upon a journey, i.e. feeling sympathy with others and sharing their fate, and seeing the world through hundreds of different eyes, we are then able, from such a distance, and under such strange influences, to contemplate him, once we have lived his life. We then feel with the utmost certainty that in Wagner the whole visible world desires to be spiritualised, absorbed, and lost in the world of sounds. In Wagner, too, the world of sounds seeks to manifest itself as a phenomenon for the sight; it seeks, as it were, to incarnate itself. His art always leads him into two distinct directions, from the world of the play of sound to the mysterious and yet related world of visible things, and vice versa. He is continually forced—and the observer with him—to re-translate the visible into spiritual and primeval life, and likewise to perceive the most hidden interstices of the soul as something concrete and to lend it a visible body. This constitutes the nature of the dithyrambic dramatist, if the meaning given to the term includes also the actor, the poet, and the musician; a conception necessarily borrowed from �schylus and the contemporary Greek artists—the only perfect examples of the dithyrambic dramatist before Wagner. If attempts have been made to trace the most wonderful developments to inner obstacles or deficiencies, if, for instance, in Goethe’s case, poetry was merely the refuge of a foiled talent for painting; if one may speak of Schiller’s dramas as of vulgar eloquence directed into uncommon channels; if Wagner himself tries to account for the development of music among the Germans by showing that, inasmuch as they are devoid of the entrancing stimulus of a natural gift for singing, they were compelled to take up instrumental music with the same profound seriousness as that with which their reformers took up Christianity,—if, on the same principle, it were sought to associate Wagner’s development with an inner barrier of the same kind, it would then be necessary to recognise in him a primitive dramatic talent, which had to renounce all possibility of satisfying its needs by the quickest and most methods, and which found its salvation and its means of expression in drawing all arts to it for one great dramatic display. But then one would also have to assume that the most powerful musician, owing to his despair at having to appeal to people who were either only semimusical or not musical at all, violently opened a road for himself to the other arts, in order to acquire that capacity for diversely communicating himself to others, by which he
compelled them to understand him, by which he compelled the masses to understand him. However the development of the born dramatist may be pictured, in his ultimate expression he is a being free from all inner barriers and voids: the real, emancipated artist cannot help himself, he must think in the spirit of all the arts at once, as the mediator and intercessor between apparently separated spheres, the one who reinstalls the unity and wholeness of the artistic faculty, which cannot be divined or reasoned out, but can only be revealed by deeds themselves. But he in whose presence this deed is performed will be overcome by its gruesome and seductive charm: in a flash he will be confronted with a power which cancels both resistance and reason, and makes every detail of life appear irrational and incomprehensible. Carried away from himself, he seems to be suspended in a mysterious fiery element; he ceases to understand himself, the standard of everything has fallen from his hands; everything stereotyped and fixed begins to totter; every object seems to acquire a strange colour and to tell us its tale by means of new symbols;—one would need to be a Plato in order to discover, amid this confusion of delight and fear, how he accomplishes the feat, and to say to the dramatist: “ Should a man come into our midst who possessed sufficient knowledge to simulate or imitate anything, we would honour him as something wonderful and holy; we would even anoint him and adorn his brow with a sacred diadem; but we would urge him to leave our circle for another, notwithstanding.” It may be that a member of the Platonic community would have been able to chasten himself to such conduct: we, however, who live in a very different community, long for, and earnestly desire, the charmer to come to us, although we may fear him already,—and we only desire his presence in order that our society and the mischievous reason and might of which it is the incarnation may be confuted. A state of human civilisation, of human society, morality, order, and general organisation which would be able to dispense with the services of an imitative artist or mimic, is not perhaps so utterly inconceivable; but this Perhaps is probably the most daring that has ever been posited, and is equivalent to the gravest expression of doubt. The only man who ought to be at liberty to speak of such a possibility is he who could beget, and have the presentiment of, the highest phase of all that is to come, and who then, like Faust, would either be obliged to turn blind, or be permitted to become so. For we have no right to this blindness; whereas Plato, after he had cast that one glance into the ideal Hellenic, had the right to be blind to all Hellenism. For this reason, we others are in much greater need of art; because it was in the presence of the realistic that our eyes began to see, and we require the complete dramatist in order that he may relieve us, if only for an hour or so, of the insufferable tension arising from our knowledge of the chasm which lies between our capabilities and the duties we have to perform. With him we ascend to the highest pinnacle of feeling, and only then do we fancy we have returned to nature’s unbounded freedom, to the actual realm of liberty. From this point of vantage we can see ourselves and our fellows emerge as something sublime from an immense mirage, and we see the deep meaning in our struggles, in our victories and defeats; we begin to find pleasure in the rhythm of passion and in its victim in the hero’s every footfall we distinguish the hollow echo of death, and in its proximity we realise the greatest charm of life: thus transformed into tragic men, we return again to life with comfort in our souls. We are conscious of a new feeling of security, as if we had found a road leading out of the greatest dangers, excesses, and ecstasies, back to the limited and the familiar: there where our relations with our fellows seem to partake of a superior benevolence, and are at all events more noble than they were. For here, everything seemingly serious and needful, which appears to lead to a definite goal, resembles only detached fragments when compared with the path we ourselves have trodden, even in our dreams,— detached fragments of that complete and grand experience whereof we cannot even think without a thrill. Yes, we shall even fall into danger and be tempted to take life too easily, simply because in art we were in such deadly earnest concerning it, as Wagner says somewhere anent certain incidents in his own life. For if we who are but the spectators and not the creators of this display of dithyrambic dramatic art, can almost imagine a dream to be more real than the actual experiences of our wakeful hours, how much more keenly must the creator realise this contrast! There he stands amid all the clamorous appeals and importunities of the day, and of the necessities of life; in the midst of Society and State—and as what does he stand there? Maybe he is the only wakeful one, the only being really and truly conscious, among a host of confused and tormented sleepers, among a multitude of deluded and suffering people. He may even feel like a victim of chronic insomnia, and fancy himself obliged to bring his clear, sleepless, and conscious life into touch with somnambulists and ghostly well-intentioned creatures. Thus everything that others regard as commonplace strikes him as weird, and he is tempted to meet the whole phenomenon with haughty mockery. But how peculiarly this feeling is crossed, when another force happens to join his quivering pride, the craving of the heights for the depths, the affectionate yearning for earth, for happiness and for fellowship—then, when he thinks of all he misses as a hermit-creator, he feels as though he ought to descend to the earth like a god, and bear all that is weak, human, and lost, “ in fiery arms up to heaven,” so as to obtain love and no longer worship only, and to be able to lose himself completely in his love. But it is just this contradiction which is the miraculous fact in the soul of the dithyrambic dramatist, and if his nature can be understood at all, surely it must be here. For his creative moments in art occur when the antagonism between his feelings is at its height and when his proud astonishment and wonder at the world combine with the ardent desire to approach that same world as a lover. The glances he then bends towards the earth are always rays of sunlight which “ draw up water,” form mist, and gather storm-clouds. Clear-sighted and prudent, loving and unselfish at the same time, his glance is projected downwards; and all things that are illumined by this double ray of light, nature conjures to discharge their strength, to reveal their most hidden secret, and this through bashfulness. It is more than a mere figure of speech to say that he surprised Nature with that glance, that he caught her naked; that is why she would conceal her shame by seeming precisely the reverse. What has hitherto been invisible, the inner life, seeks its salvation in the region of the visible; what has hitherto been only visible, repairs to the dark ocean of sound: thus Nature, in trying to conceal herself, unveils the character of her contradictions. In a dance, wild, rhythmic and gliding, and with ecstatic movements, the born dramatist makes known something of what is going on within him, of what is taking place in nature: the dithyrambic quality of his movements speaks just as eloquently of quivering comprehension and of powerful penetration as of the approach of love and self-renunciation. Intoxicated speech follows the course of this rhythm; melody resounds coupled with speech, and in its turn melody projects its sparks into the realm of images and ideas. A dream-apparition, like and unlike the image of Nature and her wooer, hovers forward; it condenses into more human shapes; it spreads out in response to its heroically triumphant will, and to a most delicious collapse and cessation of will:—thus tragedy is born; thus life is presented with its
grandest knowledge— that of tragic thought; thus, at last, the greatest charmer and benefactor among mortals—the dithyrambic dramatist—is evolved. VIII. Wagner’s actual life—that is to say, the gradual evolution of the dithyrambic dramatist in him— was at the same time an uninterrupted struggle with himself, a struggle which never ceased until his evolution was complete. His fight with the opposing world was grim and ghastly, only because it was this same world—this alluring enemy—which he heard speaking out of his own heart, and because he nourished a violent demon in his breast—the demon of resistance. When the ruling idea of his life gained ascendancy over his mind— the idea that drama is, of all arts, the one that can exercise the greatest amount of influence over the world—it aroused the most active emotions in his whole being. It gave him no very clear or luminous decision, at first, as to what was to be done and desired in the future; for the idea then appeared merely as a form of temptation—that is to say, as the expression of his gloomy, selfish, and insatiable will, eager for power and glory. Influence—the greatest amount of influence—how? over whom?—these were henceforward the questions and problems which did not cease to engage his head and his heart. He wished to conquer and triumph as no other artist had ever done before, and, if possible, to reach that height of tyrannical omnipotence at one stroke for which all his instincts secretly craved. With a jealous and cautious eye, he took stock of everything successful, and examined with special care all that upon which this influence might be brought to bear. With the magic sight of the dramatist, which scans souls as easily as the most familiar book, he scrutinised the nature of the spectator and the listener, and although he was often perturbed by the discoveries he made, he very quickly found means wherewith he could enthral them. These means were ever within his reach: everything that moved him deeply he desired and could also produce; at every stage in his career he understood just as much of his predecessors as he himself was able to create, and he never doubted that he would be able to do what they had done. In this respect his nature is perhaps more presumptuous even than Goethe’s, despite the fact that the latter said of himself: “ I always thought I had mastered everything; and even had I been crowned king, I should have regarded the honour as thoroughly deserved.” Wagner’s ability. his taste and his aspirations—all of which have ever been as closely related as key to lock—grew and attained to freedom together; but there was a time when it was not so. What did he care about the feeble but noble and egotistically lonely feeling which that friend of art fosters, who, blessed with a literary and aesthetic education, takes his stand far from the common mob! But those violent spiritual tempests which are created by the crowd when under the influence of certain climactic passages of dramatic song, that sudden bewildering ecstasy of the emotions, thoroughly honest and selfless—they were but echoes of his own experiences and sensations, and filled him with glowing hope for the greatest possible power and effect. Thus he recognised grand opera as the means whereby he might express his ruling thoughts; towards it his passions impelled him; his eyes turned in the direction of its home. The larger portion of his life, his most daring wanderings, and his plans, studies, sojourns, and acquaintances are only to be explained by an appeal to these passions and the opposition of the outside world, which the poor, restless, passionately ingenuous German artist had to face. Another artist than he knew better how to become master of this calling, and now that it has gradually become known by means of what ingenious artifices of all kinds Meyerbeer succeeded in preparing and achieving every one of his great successes, and how scrupulously the sequence of “ effects” was taken into account in the opera itself, people will begin to understand how bitterly Wagner was mortified when his eyes were opened to the tricks of the metier which were indispensable to a great public success. I doubt whether there has ever been another great artist in history who began his career with such extraordinary illusions and who so unsuspectingly and sincerely fell in with the most revolting form of artistic trickery. And yet the way in which he proceeded partook of greatness and was therefore extraordinarily fruitful. For when he perceived his error, despair made him understand the meaning of modern success, of the modern public, and the whole prevaricating spirit of modern art. And while becoming the critic of “ effect,” indications of his own purification began to quiver through him. It seems as if from that time forward the spirit of music spoke to him with an unprecedented spiritual charm. As though he had just risen from a long illness and had for the first time gone into the open, he scarcely trusted his hand and his eye, and seemed to grope along his way. Thus it was an almost delightful surprise to him to find that he was still a musician and an artist, and perhaps then only for the first time. Every subsequent stage in Wagner’s development may be distinguished thus, that the two fundamental powers of his nature drew ever more closely together: the aversion of the one to the other lessened, the higher self no longer condescended to serve its more violent and baser brother; it loved him and felt compelled to serve him. The tenderest and purest thing is ultimately—that is to say, at the highest stage of its evolution— always associated with the mightiest; the storming instincts pursue their course as before, but along different roads, in the direction of the higher self; and this in its turn descends to earth and finds its likeness in everything earthly. If it were possible, on this principle, to speak of the final aims and unravelments of that evolution, and to remain intelligible, it might also be possible to discover the graphic terms with which to describe the long interval preceding that last development; but I doubt whether the first achievement is possible at all, and do not therefore attempt the second. The limits of the interval separating the preceding and the subsequent ages will be described historically in two sentences: Wagner was the revolutionist of society; Wagner recognised the only artistic element that ever existed hitherto—the poetry of the people. The ruling idea which in a new form and mightier than it had ever been, obsessed Wagner, after he had overcome his share of despair and repentance, led him to both conclusions. Influence, the greatest possible amount of influence to be exercised by means of the stage! —but over whom? He shuddered when he thought of those whom he had, until then, sought to influence. His experience led him to realise the utterly ignoble position which art and the artist adorn; how a callous and hard-hearted community that calls itself the good, but which is really the evil, reckons art and the artist among its slavish retinue, and keeps them both in order to minister to its need of deception. Modern art is a luxury; he saw this, and understood that it must stand or fall with the luxurious society of which it forms but a part. This society had but one idea, to use its power as hard-heartedly and as craftily as possible in order to render the impotent—the people—ever more and more serviceable, base and unpopular, and to rear the modern workman out of them. It also robbed them of the greatest and purest things which their deepest needs led them to create, and through which they meekly expressed the genuine and unique art within their soul: their
myths, songs, dances, and their discoveries in the department of language, in order to distil therefrom a voluptuous antidote against the fatigue and boredom of its existence— modern art. How this society came into being, how it learned to draw new strength for itself from the seemingly antagonistic spheres of power, and how, for instance, decaying Christianity allowed itself to be used, under the cover of half measures and subterfuges, as a shield against the masses and as a support of this society and its possessions, and finally how science and men of learning pliantly consented to become its drudges—all this Wagner traced through the ages, only to be convulsed with loathing at the end of his researches. Through his compassion for the people, he became a revolutionist. From that time forward he loved them and longed for them, as he longed for his art; for, alas! in them alone, in this fast disappearing, scarcely recognisable body, artificially held aloof, he now saw the only spectators and listeners worthy and fit for the power of his masterpieces, as he pictured them. Thus his thoughts concentrated themselves upon the question, How do the people come into being? How are they resuscitated? He always found but one answer: if a large number of people were afflicted with the sorrow that afflicted him, that number would constitute the people, he said to himself. And where the same sorrow leads to the same impulses and desires, similar satisfaction would necessarily be sought, and the same pleasure found in this satisfaction. If he inquired into what it was that most consoled him and revived his spirits in his sorrow, what it was that succeeded best in counteracting his affliction, it was with joyful certainty that he discovered this force only in music and myth, the latter of which he had already recognised as the people’s creation and their language of distress. It seemed to him that the origin of music must be similar, though perhaps more mysterious. In both of these elements he steeped and healed his soul; they constituted his most urgent need:—in this way he was able to ascertain how like his sorrow was to that of the people, when they came into being, and how they must arise anew if many Wagners are going to appear. What part did myth and music play in modern society, wherever they had not been actually sacrificed to it? They shared very much the same fate, a fact which only tends to prove their close relationship: myth had been sadly debased and usurped by idle tales and stories; completely divested of its earnest and sacred virility, it was transformed into the plaything and pleasing bauble of children and women of the afflicted people. Music had kept itself alive among the poor, the simple, and the isolated; the German musician had not succeeded in adapting himself to the luxurious traffic of the arts; he himself had become a fairy tale full Of monsters and mysteries, full of the most touching omens and auguries—a helpless questioner, something bewitched and in need of rescue. Here the artist distinctly heard the command that concerned him alone—to recast myth and make it virile, to break the spell lying over music and to make music speak: he felt his strength for drama liberated at one stroke, and the foundation of his sway established over the hitherto undiscovered province lying between myth and music. His new masterpiece, which included all the most powerful, effective, and entrancing forces that he knew, he now laid before men with this great and painfully cutting question: “ Where are ye all who suffer and think as I do? Where is that number of souls that I wish to see become a people, that ye may share the same joys and comforts with me? In your joy ye will reveal your misery to me.” These were his questions in Tannhauser and Lohengrin, in these operas he looked about him for his equals —the anchorite yearned for the number. But what were his feelings withal? Nobody answered him. Nobody had understood his question. Not that everybody remained silent: on the contrary, answers were given to thousands of questions which he had never put; people gossipped about the new masterpieces as though they had only been composed for the express purpose of supplying subjects for conversation. The whole mania of aesthetic scribbling and small talk overtook the Germans like a pestilence, and ith that lack of modesty which characterises both German scholars and German journalists, people began measuring, and generally meddling with, these masterpieces, as well as with the person of the artist. Wagner tried to help the comprehension of his question by writing about it; but this only led to fresh confusion and more uproar, —for a musician who writes and thinks was, at that time, a thing unknown. The cry arose: “ He is a theorist who wishes to remould art with his far-fetched notions—stone him!” Wagner was stunned: his question was not understood, his need not felt; his masterpieces seemed a message addressed only to the deaf and blind; his people— an hallucination. He staggered and vacillated. The feasibility of a complete upheaval of all things then suggested itself to him, and he no longer shrank from the thought: possibly, beyond this revolution and dissolution, there might be a chance of a new hope; on the other hand, there might not. But, in any case, would not complete annihilation be better than the wretched existing state of affairs? Not very long afterwards, he was a political exile in dire distress. And then only, with this terrible change in his environment and in his soul, there begins that period of the great man’s life over which as a golden reflection there is stretched the splendour of highest mastery. Now at last the genius of dithyrambic drama doffs its last disguise. He is isolated; the age seems empty to him; he ceases to hope; and his all-embracing glance descend once more into the deep, and finds the bottom, there he sees suffering in the nature of things, and henceforward, having become more impersonal, he accepts his portion of sorrow more calmly. The desire for great power which was but the inheritance of earlier conditions is now directed wholly into the channel of creative art; through his art he now speaks only to himself, and no longer to a public or to a people, and strives to lend this intimate conversation all the distinction and other qualities in keeping with such a mighty dialogue. During the preceding period things had been different with his art; then he had concerned himself, too, albeit with refinement and subtlety, with immediate effects: that artistic production was also meant as a question, and it ought to have called forth an immediate reply. And how often did Wagner not try to make his meaning clearer to those he questioned! In view of their inexperience in having questions put to them, he tried to meet them half way and to conform with older artistic notions and means of expression. When he feared that arguments couched in his own terms would only meet with failure, he had tried to persuade and to put his question in a language half strange to himself though familiar to his listeners. Now there was nothing to induce him to continue this indulgence: all he desired now was to come to terms with himself, to think of the nature of the world in dramatic actions, and to philosophise in music; what desires he still possessed turned in the direction of the latest philosophical views. He who is worthy of knowing what took place in him at that time or what questions were thrashed out in the darkest holy of holies in his soul—and not many are worthy of knowing all this—must hear, observe, and experience Tristan and Isolde, the real opus metaphysicum of all art, a work upon which rests the broken look of a dying man with his insatiable and sweet craving for the secrets of night and death, far away from life which throws a horribly spectral morning light, sharply, upon all that is evil, delusive, and sundering: moreover, a drama austere in the severity of its form,
overpowering in its simple grandeur, and in harmony with the secret of which it treats—lying dead in the midst of life, being one in two. And yet there is something still more wonderful than this work, and that is the artist himself, the man who, shortly after he had accomplished it, was able to create a picture of life so full of clashing colours as the Meistersingers of Nurnberg, and who in both of these compositions seems merely to have refreshed and equipped himself for the task of completing at his ease that gigantic edifice in four parts which he had long ago planned and begun—the ultimate result of all his meditations and poetical flights for over twenty years, his Bayreuth masterpiece, the Ring of the Nibelung! He who marvels at the rapid succession of the two operas, Tristan and the Meistersingers, has failed to understand one important side of the life and nature of all great Germans: he does not know the peculiar soil out of which that essentially German gaiety, which characterised Luther, Beethoven, and Wagner, can grow, the gaiety which other nations quite fail to understand and which even seems to be missing in the Germans of to-day—that clear golden and thoroughly fermented mixture of simplicity, deeply discriminating love, observation, and roguishness which Wagner has dispensed, as the most precious of drinks, to all those who have suffered deeply through life, but who nevertheless return to it with the smile of convalescents. And, as he also turned upon the world the eyes of one reconciled, he was more filled with rage and disgust than with sorrow, and more prone to renounce the love of power than to shrink in awe from it. As he thus silently furthered his greatest work and gradually laid score upon score, something happened which caused him to stop and listen: friends were coming, a kind of subterranean movement of many souls approached with a message for him—it was still far from being the people that constituted this movement and which wished to bear him news, but it may have been the nucleus and first living source of a really human community which would reach perfection in some age still remote. For the present they only brought him the warrant that his great work could be entrusted to the care and charge of faithful men, men who would watch and be worthy to watch over this most magnificent of all legacies to posterity. In the love of friends his outlook began to glow with brighter colours; his noblest care—the care that his work should be accomplished and should find a refuge before the evening of his life—was not his only preoccupation. something occurred which he could only understand as a symbol: it was as much as a new comfort and a new token of happiness to him. A great German war caused him to open his eyes, and he observed that those very Germans whom he considered so thoroughly degenerate and so inferior to the high standard of real Teutonism, of which he had formed an ideal both from self-knowledge and the conscientious study of other great Germans in history; he observed that those very Germans were, in the midst of terrible circumstances, exhibiting two virtues of the highest order—simple bravery and prudence; and with his heart bounding with delight he conceived the hope that he might not be the last German, and that some day a greater power would perhaps stand by his works than that devoted yet meagre one consisting of his little band of friends—a power able to guard it during that long period preceding its future glory, as the masterpiece of this future. Perhaps it was not possible to steel this belief permanently against doubt, more particularly when it sought to rise to hopes of immediate results: suffice it that he derived a tremendous spur from his environment, which constantly reminded him of a lofty duty ever to be fulfilled. His work would not have been complete had he handed it to the world only in the form of silent manuscript. He must make known to the world what it could not guess in regard to his productions, what was his alone to reveal—the new style for the execution and presentation of his works, so that he might set that example which nobody else could set, and thus establish a tradition of style, not on paper, not by means of signs, but through impressions made upon the very souls of men. This duty had become all the more pressing with him, seeing that precisely in regard to the style of their execution his other works had meanwhile succumbed to the most insufferable and absurd of fates: they were famous and admired, yet no one manifested the slightest sign of indignation when they were mishandled. For, strange to say, whereas he renounced ever more and more the hope of success among his contemporaries, owing to his all too thorough knowledge of them, and disclaimed all desire for power, both “ success” and “ power” came to him, or at least everybody told him so. It was in vain that he made repeated attempts to expose, with the utmost clearness, how worthless and humiliating such successes were to him: people were so unused to seeing an artist able to differentiate at all between the effects of his works that even his most solemn protests were never entirely trusted. Once he had perceived the relationship existing between our system of theatres and their success, and the men of his time, his soul ceased to be attracted by the stage at all. He had no further concern with aesthetic ecstasies and the exultation of excited crowds, and he must even have felt angry to see his art being gulped down indiscriminately by the yawning abyss of boredom and the insatiable love of distraction. How flat and pointless every effect proved under these circumstances— more especially as it was much more a case of having to minister to one quite insatiable than of cloying the hunger of a starving man— Wagner began to perceive from the following repeated experience: everybody, even the performers and promoters, regarded his art as nothing more nor less than any other kind of stage-music, and quite in keeping with the repulsive style of traditional opera; thanks to the efforts of cultivated conductors, his works were even cut and hacked about, until, after they had been bereft of all their spirit, they were held to be nearer the professional singer’s plane. But when people tried to follow Wagner’s instructions to the letter, they proceeded so clumsily and timidly that they were not incapable of representing the midnight riot in the second act of the Meistersingers by a group of ballet-dancers. They seemed to do all this, however, in perfectly good faith—without the smallest evil intention. Wagner’s devoted efforts to show, by means of his own example, the correct and complete way of performing his works, and his attempts at training individual singers in the new style, were foiled time after time, owing only to the thoughtlessness and iron tradition that ruled all around him. Moreover, he was always induced to concern himself with that class of theatricals which he most thoroughly loathed. Had not even Goethe, m his time, once grown tired of attending the rehearsals of his Iphigenia? “ I suffer unspeakably,” he explained, “ when I have to tumble about Wlth these spectres, which never seem to act as they should.” Meanwhile Wagner’s “ success” in the kind of drama which he most disliked steadily increased; so much so, indeed, that the largest theatres began to subsist almost entirely upon the receipts which Wagner’s art, in the guise of operas, brought into them. This growing passion on the part of the theatre-going public bewildered even some of Wagner’s friends; but this man who had endured so much, had still to endure the bitterest pain of all—he had to see his friends intoxicated with his “ successes” and “ triumphs” everywhere where his highest ideal was openly belied and shattered. It seemed almost as though a people otherwise earnest and reflecting had decided to maintain an attitude of
systematic levity only towards its most serious artist, and to make him the privileged recipient of all the vulgarity, thoughtlessness, clumsiness, and malice of which the German nature is capable. When, therefore, during the German War, a current of greater magnanimity and freedom seemed to run through every one, Wagner remembered the duty to which he had pledged himself, namely, to rescue his greatest work from those successes and affronts which were so largely due to misunderstandings, and to present it in his most personal rhythm as an example for all times. Thus he conceived the idea of Bayreuth. In the wake of that current of better feeling already referred to, he expected to notice an enhanced sense of duty even among those with whom he wished to entrust his most precious possession. Out of this two-fold duty, that event took shape which, like a glow of strange sunlight, will illumine the few years that lie behind and before us, and was designed to bless that distant and problematic future which to our time and to the men of our time can be little more than a riddle or a horror, but which to the fevv who are allowed to assist in its realisation is a foretaste of coming joy, a foretaste of love in a higher sphere, through which they know themselves to be blessed, blessing and fruitful, far beyond their span of years; and which to Wagner himself is but a cloud of distress, care, meditation, and grief, a fresh passionate outbreak of antagonistic elements, but all bathed in the starlight of selfless fidelity, and changed by this light into indescribable joy. It scarcely need be said that it is the breath of tragedy that fills the lungs of the world. And every one whose innermost soul has a presentiment of this, every one unto whom the yoke of tragic deception concerning the aim of life, the distortion and shattering of intentions, renunciation and purification through love, are not unknown things, must be conscious of a vague reminiscence of Wagner’s own heroic life, in the masterpieces with which the great man now presents us. We shall feel as though Siegfried from some place far away were relating his deeds to us: the most blissful of touching recollections are always draped in the deep mourning of waning summer, when all nature lies still in the sable twilight. IX. All those to whom the thought of Wagner’s development as a man may have caused pain will find it both restful and healing to reflect upon what he was as an artist, and to observe how his ability and daring attained to such a high degree of independence. If art mean only the faculty of communicating to others what one has oneself experienced, and if every work of art confutes itself which does not succeed in making itself understood, then Wagner’s greatness as an artist would certainly lie in the almost demoniacal power of his nature to communicate with others, to express itself in all languages at once, and to make known its most intimate and personal experience with the greatest amount of distinctness possible. His appearance in the history of art resembles nothing so much as a volcanic eruption of the united artistic faculties of Nature herself, after mankind had grown to regard the practice of a special art as a necessary rule. It is therefore a somewhat moot point whether he ought to be classified as a poet, a painter, or a musician, even using each these words in its widest sense, or whether a new word ought not to be invented in order to describe him. Wagner’s poetic ability is shown by his thinking in visible and actual facts, and not in ideas; that is to say, he thinks mythically, as the people have always done. No particular thought lies at the bottom of a myth, as the children of an artificial ulture would have us believe; but it is in itself a thought: it conveys an idea of the world, but through the medium of a chain of events, actions, and pains. The Ring of the Nihelung is a huge system of thought without the usual abstractness of the latter. It were perhaps possible for a philosopher to present us with its exact equivalent in pure thought, and to purge it of all pictures drawn from life, and of all living actions, in which case we should be in possession of the same thing portrayed in two completely different forms—the one for the people, and the other for the very reverse of the people; that is to say, men of theory. But Wagner makes no appeal to this last class, for the man of theory can know as little of poetry or myth as the deaf man can know of music; both of them being conscious only of movements which seem meaningless to them. It is impossible to appreciate either one of these completely different forms from the standpoint of the other: as long as the poet’s spell is upon one, one thinks with him just as though one were merely a feeling, seeing, and hearing creature; the conclusions thus reached are merely the result of the association of the phenomena one sees, and are therefore not logical but actual causalities. If, therefore, the heroes and gods of mythical dramas, as understood by Wagner, were to express themselves plainly in words, there would be a danger (inasmuch as the language of words might tend to awaken the theoretical side in us) of our finding ourselves transported from the world of myth to the world of ideas, and the result would be not only that we should fail to understand with greater ease, but that we should probably not understand at all. Wagner thus forced language back to a more primeval stage in its development a stage at which it was almost free of the abstract element, and was still poetry, imagery, and feeling; the fearlessness with which Wagner undertook this formidable mission shows how imperatively he was led by the spirit of poetry, as one who must follow whithersoever his phantom leader may direct him. Every word in these dramas ought to allow of being sung, and gods and heroes should make them their own—that was the task which Wagner set his literary faculty. Any other person in like circumstances would have given up all hope; for our language seems almost too old and decrepit to allow of one’s exacting what Wagner exacted from it; and yet, when he smote the rock, he brought forth an abundant flow. Precisely owing to the fact that he loved his language and exacted a great deal from it, Wagner suffered more than any other German through its decay and enfeeblement, from its manifold losses and mutilations of form, from its unwieldy particles and clumsy construction, and from its unmusical auxiliary verbs. All these are things which have entered the language through sin and depravity. On the other hand, he was exceedingly proud to record the number of primitive and vigorous factors still extant in the current speech; and in the tonic strength of its roots he recognised quite a wonderful affinity and relation to real music, a quality which distinguished it from the highly volved and artificially rhetorical Latin languages. Wagner’s poetry is eloquent of his affection for the German language, and there is a heartiness and candour in his treatment of it which are scarcely to be met with in any other German writer, save perhaps Goethe. Forcibleness of diction, daring brevity, power and variety in rhythm, a remarkable wealth of strong and striking words, simplicity in construction, an almost unique inventive faculty in regard to fluctuations of feeling and presentiment, and therewithal a perfectly pure and overflowing stream of colloquialisms—these are the qualities that have to be enumerated, and even then the greatest and most wonderful of all is omitted. Whoever reads two such poems as Tristan and the Meistersingers
consecutively will be just as astonished and doubtful in regard to the language as to the music; for he will wonder how it could have been possible for a creative spirit to dominate so perfectly two worlds as different in form, colour, and arrangement, as in soul. This is the most wonderful achievement of Wagner’s talent; for the ability to give every work its own linguistic stamp and to find a fresh body and a new sound for every thought is a task which only the great master can successfully accomplish. Where this rarest of all powers manifests itself, adverse criticism can be but petty and fruitless which confines itself to attacks upon certain excesses and eccentricities in the treatment, or upon the more frequent obscurities of expression and ambiguity of thought. Moreover, what seemed to electrify and scandalise those who were most bitter in their criticism was not so much the language as the spirit of the Wagnerian operas—that is to say, his whole manner of feeling and suffering. It were well to wait until these very critics have acquired another spirit themselves; they will then also speak a different tongue, and, by that time, it seems to me things will go better with the German language than they do at present. In the first place, however, no one who studies Wagner the poet and word-painter should forget that none of his dramas were meant to be read, and that it would therefore be unjust to judge them from the same standpoint as the spoken drama. The latter plays upon the feelings by means of words and ideas, and in this respect it is under the dominion of the laws of rhetoric. But in real life passion is seldom eloquent: in spoken drama it perforce must be, in order to be able to express itself at all. When, however, the language of a people is already in a state of decay and deterioration, the word-dramatist is tempted to impart an undue proportion of new colour and form both to his medium and to his thoughts; he would elevate the language in order to make it a vehicle capable of conveying lofty feelings, and by so doing he runs the risk of becoming abstruse. By means of sublime phrases and conceits he likewise tries to invest passion with some nobility, and thereby runs yet another risk, that of appearing false and artificial. For in real life passions do not speak in sentences, and the poetical element often draws suspicion upon their genuineness when it departs too palpably from reality. Now Wagner, who was the first to detect the essential feeling in spoken drama, presents every dramatic action threefold: in a word, in a gesture, and in a sound. For, as a matter of fact, music succeeds in conveying the deepest emotions of the dramatic performers direct to the spectators, and while these see the evidence of the actors’ states of soul in their bearing and movements, a third though more feeble confirmation of these states, translated into conscious will, quickly follows in the form of the spoken word. All these effects fulfil their purpose simultaneously, without disturbing one another in the least, and urge the spectator to a completely new understanding and sympathy, just as if his senses had suddenly grown more spiritual and his spirit more sensual, and as if everything which seeks an outlet in him, and which makes him thirst for knowledge, were free and joyful in exultant perception. Because every essential factor in a Wagnerian drama is conveyed to the spectator with the utmost clearness, illumined and permeated throughout by music as by an internal flame, their author can dispense with the expedients usually employed by the writer of the spoken play in order to lend light and warmth to the action. The whole of the dramatist’s stock in trade could be more simple, and the architect’s sense of rhythm could once more dare to manifest itself in the general proportions of the edifice; for there was no more need of “ the deliberate confusion and involved variety of tyles, whereby the ordinary playwright strove in the interests of his work to produce that feeling of wonder and thrilling suspense which he ultimately enhanced to one of delighted amazement. The impression of ideal distance and height was no more to be induced by means of tricks and artifices. Language withdrew itself from the length and breadth of rhetoric into the strong confines of the speech of the feelings, and although the actor spoke much less about all he did and felt in the performance, his innermost sentiments, which the ordinary playwright had hitherto ignored for fear of being undramatic, was now able to drive the spectators to passionate sympathy, while the accompanying language of gestures could be restricted to the most delicate modulations. Now, when passions are rendered in song, they require rather more time than when conveyed by speech; music prolongs, so to speak, the duration of the feeling, from which it follows, as a rule, that the actor who is also a singer must overcome the extremely unplastic animation from which spoken drama suffers. He feels himself incited all the more to a certain nobility of bearing, because music envelopes his feelings in a purer atmosphere, and thus brings them closer to beauty. The extraordinary tasks which Wagner set his actors and singers will provoke rivalry between them for ages to come, in the personification of each of his heroes with the greatest possible amount of clearness, perfection, and fidelity, according to that perfect incorporation already typified by the music of drama. Following this leader, the eye of the plastic artist will ultimately behold the marvels of another visible world, which, previous to him, was seen for the first time only by the creator of such works as the Ring of the Nibelung —that creator of highest rank, who, like AEschylus, points the way to a coming art. Must not jealousy awaken the greatest talent, if the plastic artist ever compares the effect of his productions with that of Wagnerian music, in which there is so much pure and sunny happiness that he who hears it feels as though all previous music had been but an alien, faltering, and constrained language; as though in the past it had been but a thing to sport with in the presence of those who were not deserving of serious treatment, or a thing with which to train and instruct those who were not even deserving of play? In the case of this earlier kind of music, the joy we always experience while listening to Wagner’s compositions is ours only for a short space of time, and it would then seem as though it were overtaken by certain rare moments of forgetfulness, during which it appears to be communing with its inner self and directing its eyes upwards, like Raphael’s Cecilia, away from the listeners and from all those who demand distraction, happiness, or instruction from it. In general it may be said of Wagner the Musician, that he endowed everything in nature which hitherto had had no wish to speak with the power of speech: he refuses to admit that anything must be dumb, and, resorting to the dawn, the forest, the mist, the cliffs, the hills, the thrill of night and the moonlight, he observes a desire common to them all—they too wish to sing their own melody. If the philosopher says it is will that struggles for existence in animate and inanimate nature, the musician adds: And this will wherever it manifests itself, yearns for a melodious existence. Before Wagner’s time, music for the most part moved in narrow limits: it concerned itself with the permanent states of man, or with what the Greeks call ethos. And only with Beethoven did it begin to find the language of pathos, of passionate will, and of the dramatic occurrences in the souls of men. Formerly, what people desired was to interpret a mood,
a stolid, merry, reverential, or penitential state of mind, by means of music; the object was, by means of a certain striking uniformity of treatment and the prolonged duration of this uniformity, to compel the listener to grasp the meaning of the music and to impose its mood upon him. To all such interpretations of mood or atmosphere, distinct and particular forms of treatment were necessary: others were established by convention. The question of length was left to the discretion of the musician, whose aim was not only to put the listener into a certain mood, but also to avoid rendering that mood monotonous by unduly protracting it. A further stage was reached when the interpretations of contrasted moods were made to follow one upon the other, and the charm of light and shade was discovered; and yet another step was made when the same piece of music was allowed to contain a contrast of the ethos—for instance, the contest between a male and a female theme. All these, however, are crude and primitive stages in the development of music. The fear of passion suggested the first rule, and the fear of monotony the second; all depth of feeling and any excess thereof were regarded as “ unethical.” Once, however, the art of the ethos had repeatedly been made to ring all the changes on the moods and situations which convention had decreed as suitable, despite the most astounding resourcefulness on the part of its masters, its powers were exhausted. Beethoven was the first to make music speak a new language—till then forbidden—the language of passion; but as his art was based upon the laws and conventions of the ETHOS, and had to attempt to justify itself in regard to them, his artistic development was beset with peculiar difficulties and obscurities. An inner dramatic factor—and every passion pursues a dramatic course—struggled to obtain a new form, but the traditional scheme of “ mood music” stood in its way, and protested—almost after the manner in which morality opposes innovations and immorality. It almost seemed, therefore, as if Beethoven had set himself the contradictory task of expressing pathos in the terms of the ethos. This view does not, however, apply to Beethoven’s latest and greatest works; for he really did succeed in discovering a novel method of expressing the grand and vaulting arch of passion. He merely selected certain portions of its curve; imparted these with the utmost clearness to his listeners, and then left it to them to divine its whole span. Viewed superficially, the new form seemed rather like an aggregation of several musical compositions, of which every one appeared to represent a sustained situation, but was in reality but a momentary stage in the dramatic course of a passion. The listener might think that he was hearing the old “ mood” music over again, except that he failed to grasp the relation of the various parts to one another, and these no longer conformed with the canon of the law. Even among minor musicians, there flourished a certain contempt for the rule which enjoined harmony in the general construction of a composition and the sequence of the parts in their works still remained arbitrary. Then, owing to a misunderstanding, the discovery of the majestic treatment of passion led back to the use of the single movement with an optional setting, and the tension between the parts thus ceased completely. That is why the symphony, as Beethoven understood it, is such a wonderfully obscure production, more especially when, here and there, it makes faltering attempts at rendering Beethoven’s pathos. The means ill befit the intention, and the intention is, on the whole, not sufficiently clear to the listener, because it was never really clear, even in the mind of the composer. But the very injunction that something definite must be imparted, and that this must be done as distinctly as possible, becomes ever more and more essential, the higher, more difficult, and more exacting the class of work happens to be. That is why all Wagner’s efforts were concentrated upon the one object of discovering those means which best served the purpose of distinctness, and to this end it was above all necessary for him to emancipate himself from all the prejudices and claims of the old “ mood” music, and to give his compositions—the musical interpretations of feelings and passion —a perfectly unequivocal mode of expression. If we now turn to what he has achieved, we see that his services to music are practically equal in rank to those which that sculptorinventor rendered to sculpture who introduced “ sculpture in the round.” All previous music seems stiff and uncertain when compared with Wagner’s, just as though it were ashamed and did not wish to be inspected from all sides. With the most consummate skill and precision, Wagner avails himself of every degree and colour in the realm of feeling; without the slightest hesitation or fear of its escaping him, he seizes upon the most delicate, rarest, and mildest emotion, and holds it fast, as though it had hardened at his touch, despite the fact that it may seem like the frailest butterfly to every one else. His music is never vague or dreamy; everything that is allowed to speak through it, whether it be of man or of nature, has a strictly individual passion; storm and fire acquire the ruling power of a personal will in his hands. Over all the clamouring characters and the clash of their passions, over the whole torrent of contrasts, an almighty and symphonic understanding hovers with perfect serenity, and continually produces concord out of war. Taken as a whole, Wagner’s music is a reflex of the world as it was understood by the great Ephesian poet—that is to say, a harmony resulting from strife, as the union of justice and enmity. I admire the ability which could describe the grand line of universal passion out of a confusion of passions which all seem to be striking out in different directions: the fact that this was a possible achievement I find demonstrated in every individual act of a Wagnerian drama, which describes the individual history of various characters side by side with a general history of the whole company. Even at the very beginning we know we are watching a host of cross currents dominated by one great violent stream; and though at first this stream moves unsteadily over hidden reefs, and the torrent seems to be torn asunder as if it were travelling towards different points, gradually we perceive the central and general movement growing stronger and more rapid, the convulsive fury of the contending waters is converted into one broad, steady, and terrible flow in the direction of an unknown goal; and suddenly, at the end, the whole flood in all its breadth plunges into the depths, rejoicing demoniacally over the abyss and all its uproar. Wagner is never more himself than when he is overwhelmed with difficulties and can exercise power on a large scale with all the joy of a lawgiver. To bring restless and contending masses into simple rhythmic movement, and to exercise one will over a bewildering host of claims and desires—these are the tasks for which he feels he was born, and in the performance of which he finds freedom. And he never loses his breath withal, nor does he ever reach his goal panting. He strove just as persistently to impose the severest laws upon himself as to lighten the burden of others in this respect. Life and art weigh heavily upon him when he cannot play wit their most difficult questions. If one considers the relation between the melody of song and that of speech, one will perceive how he sought to adopt as his natural model the pitch, strength, and tempo of the passionate man’s voice in order to transform it into art; and if one further considers the task of introducing this singing passion into the general symphonic order of music, one gets some idea of the stupendous difficulties he had to overcome. In this behalf, his inventiveness in small things as
in great, his omniscience and industry are such, that at the sight of one of Wagner’s scores one is almost led to believe that no real work or effort had ever existed before his time. It seems almost as if he too could have said, in regard to the hardships of art, that the real virtue of the dramatist lies in self-renunciation. But he would probably have added, There is but one kind of hardship— that of the artist who is not yet free: virtue and goodness are trivial accomplishments. Viewing him generally as an artist, and calling to mind a more famous type, we see that Wagner is not at all unlike Demosthenes: in him also we have the terrible earnestness of purpose and that strong prehensile mind which always obtains a complete grasp of a thing; in him, too, we have the hand’s quick clutch and the grip as of iron. Like Demosthenes, he conceals his art or compels one to forget it by the peremptory way he calls attention to the subject he treats; and yet, like his great predecessor, he is the last and greatest of a whole line of artist-minds, and therefore has more to conceal than his forerunners: his art acts like nature, like nature recovered and restored. Unlike all previous musicians, there is nothing bombastic about him; for the former did not mind playing at times with their art, and making an exhibition of their virtuosity. One associates Wagner’s art neither with interest nor with diversion, nor with Wagner himself and art in general. All one is conscious of is of the great necessity of it all. No one will ever be able to appreciate what severity evenness of will, and self-control the artist required during his development, in order, at his zenith, to be able to do the necessary thing joyfully and freely. Let it suffice if we can appreciate how, in some respects, his music, with a certain cruelty towards itself, determines to subserve the course of the drama, which is as unrelenting as fate, whereas in reality his art was ever thirsting for a free ramble in the open and over the wilderness. X. An artist who has this empire over himself subjugates all other artists, even though he may not particularly desire to do so. For him alone there lies no danger or stemming-force in those he has subjugated—his friends and his adherents; whereas the weaker natures who learn to rely on their friends pay for this reliance by forfeiting their independence. It is very wonderful to observe how carefully, throughout his life, Wagner avoided anything in the nature of heading a party, notwithstanding the fact that at the close of every phase in his career a circle of adherents formed, presumably with the view of holding him fast to his latest development He always succeeded, however, in wringing himself free from them, and never allowed himself to be bound; for not only was the ground he covered too vast for one alone to keep abreast of him with any ease, but his way was so exceptionally steep that the most devoted would have lost his breath. At almost every stage in Wagner’s progress his friends would have liked to preach to him, and his enemies would fain have done so too—but for other reasons. Had the purity of his artist’s nature been one degree less decided than it was, he would have attained much earlier than he actually did to the leading position in the artistic and musical world of his time. True, he has reached this now, but in a much higher sense, seeing that every performance to be witnessed in any department of art makes its obeisance, so to speak, before the judgment-stool of his genius and of his artistic temperament. He has overcome the most refractory of his contemporaries; there is not one gifted musician among them but in his innermost heart would willingly listen to him, and find Wagner’s compositions more worth listening to than his own and all other musical productions taken together. Many who wish, by hook or by crook, to make their mark, even wrestle with Wagner’s secret charm, and unconsciously throw in their lot with the older masters, preferring to ascribe their “ independence” to Schubert or Handel rather than to Wagner. But in vain! Thanks to their very efforts in contending against the dictates of their own consciences, they become ever meaner and smaller artists; they ruin their own natures by forcing themselves to tolerate undesirable allies and friends And in spite of all these sacrifices, they still find perhaps in their dreams, that their ear turns attentively to Wagner. These adversaries are to be pitied: they imagine they lose a great deal when they lose themselves, but here they are mistaken. Albeit it is obviously all one to Wagner whether musicians compose in his style, or whether they compose at all, he even does his utmost to dissipate the belief that a school of composers should now necessarily follow in his wake; though, in so far as he exercises a direct influence upon musicians, he does indeed try to instruct them concerning the art of grand execution. In his opinion, the evolution of art seems to have reached that stage when the honest endeavour to become an able and masterly exponent or interpreter is ever so much more worth talking about than the longing to be a creator at all costs. For, at the present stage of art, universal creating has this fatal result, that inasmuch as it encourages a much larger output, it tends to exhaust the means and artifices of genius by everyday use, and thus to reduce the real grandeur of its effect. Even that which is good in art is superfluous and detrimental when it proceeds from the imitation of what is best. Wagnerian ends and means are of one piece: to perceive this, all that is required is honesty in art matters, and it would be dishonest to adopt his means in order to apply them to other and less significant ends. If, therefore, Wagner declines to live on amid a multitude of creative musicians, he is only the more desirous of imposing upon all men of talent the new duty of joining him in seeking the law of style for dramatic performances. He deeply feels the need of establishing a traditional style for his art, by means of which his work may continue to live from one age to another in a pure form, until it reaches that future which its creator ordained for it. Wagner is impelled by an undaunted longing to make known everything relating to that foundation of a style, mentioned above, and, accordingly, everything relating to the continuance of his art. To make his work—as Schopenhauer would say— a sacred depository and the real fruit of his life, as well as the inheritance of mankind, and to store it for the benefit of a posterity better able to appreciate it,—these were the supreme objects of his life, and for these he bore that crown of thorns which, one day, will shoot forth leaves of bay. Like the insect which, in its last form, concentrates all its energies upon the one object of finding a safe depository for its eggs and of ensuring the future welfare of its posthumous brood,—then only to die content, so Wagner strove with equal determination to find a place of security for his works. This subject, which took precedence of all others with him, constantly incited him to new discoveries; and these he sought ever more and more at the spring of his demoniacal gift of communicability, the more distinctly he saw himself in conflict with an age that was both perverse and unwilling to lend him its ear. Gradually however, even this same age began
to mark his indefatigable efforts, to respond to his subtle advances, and to turn its ear to him. Whenever a small or a great opportunity arose, however far away, which suggested to Wagner a means wherewith to explain his thoughts, he availed himself of it: he thought his thoughts anew into every fresh set of circumstances, and would make them speak out of the most paltry bodily form. Whenever a soul only half capable of comprehending him opened itself to him, he never failed to implant his seed in it. He saw hope in things which caused the average dispassionate observer merely to shrug his shoulders; and he erred again and again, only so as to be able to carry his point against that same observer. Just as the sage, in reality, mixes with living men only for the purpose of increasing his store of knowledge, so the artist would almost seem to be unable to associate with his contemporaries at all, unless they be such as can help him towards making his work eternal. He cannot be loved otherwise than with the love of this eternity, and thus he is conscious only of one kind of hatred directed at him, the hatred which would demolish the bridges bearing his art into the future. The pupils Wagner educated for his own purpose, the individual musicians and actors whom he advised and whose ear he corrected and improved, the small and large orchestras he led, the towns which witnessed him earnestly fulfilling the duties of ws calling, the princes and ladies who half boastfully and half lovingly participated in the framing of his plans, the various European countries to which he temporarily belonged as the judge and evil conscience of their arts,—everything gradually became the echo of his thought and of his indefatigable efforts to attain to fruitfulness in the future. Although this echo often sounded so discordant as to confuse him, still the tremendous power of his voice repeatedly crying out into the world must in the end call forth reverberations, and it will soon be impossible to be deaf to him or to misunderstand him. It is this reflected sound which even now causes the art-institutions of modern men to shake: every time the breath of his spirit blew into these coverts, all that was overripe or withered fell to the ground; but the general increase of scepticism in all directions speaks more eloquently than all this trembling. Nobody any longer dares to predict where Wagner’s influence may not unexpectedly break out. He is quite unable to divorce the salvation of art from any other salvation or damnation: wherever modern life conceals a danger, he, with the discriminating eye of mistrust, perceives a danger threatening art. In his imagination he pulls the edifice of modern civilisation to pieces, and allows nothing rotten, no unsound timber-work to escape: if in the process he should happen to encounter weather-tight walls or anything like solid foundations, he immediately casts about for means wherewith he can convert them into bulwarks and shelters for his art. He lives like a fugitive, whose will is not to preserve his own life, but to keep a secret— like an unhappy woman who does not wish to save her own soul, but that of the child lying in her lap: in short, he lives like Sieglinde, “ for the sake of love.” For life must indeed be full of pain and shame to one who can find neither rest nor shelter in this world, and who must nevertheless appeal to it, exact things from it, contemn it, and still be unable to dispense with the thing contemned, —this really constitutes the wretchedness of the artist of the future, who, unlike the philosopher, cannot prosecute his work alone in the seclusion of a study, but who requires human souls as messengers to this future, public institutions as a guarantee of it, and, as it were, bridges between now and hereafter. His art may not, like the philosopher’s, be put aboard the boat of written documents: art needs capable men, not letters and notes, to transmit it. Over whole periods in Wagner’s life rings a murmur of distress—his distress at not being able to meet with these capable interpreters before whom he longed to execute examples of his work, instead of being confined to written symbols; before whom he yearned to practise his art, instead of showing a pallid reflection of it to those who read books, and who, generally speaking, therefore are not artists. In Wagner the man of letters we see the struggle of a brave fighter, whose right hand has, as it were, been lopped off, and who has continued the contest with his left. In his writings he is always the sufferer, because a temporary and insuperable destiny deprives him of his own and the correct way of conveying his thoughts—that is to say, in the form of apocalyptic and triumphant examples. His writings contain nothing canonical or severe: the canons are to be found in his works as a whole. Their literary side represents his attempts to understand the instinct which urged him to create his works and to get a glimpse of himself through them. If he succeeded in transforming his instincts into terms of knowledge, it was always with the hope that the reverse process might take place in the souls of his readers—it was with this intention that he wrote. Should it ultimately be proved that, in so doing, Wagner attempted the impossible, he would still only share the lot of all those who have meditated deeply on art; and even so he would be ahead of most of them in this, namely, that the strongest instinct for all arts harboured in him. I know of no written aesthetics that give more light than those of Wagner; all that can possibly be learnt concerning the origin of a work of art is to be found in them. He is one of the very great, who appeared amongst us a witness, and who is continually improving his testimony and making it ever clearer and freer; even when he stumbles as a scientist, sparks rise from the ground. Such tracts as “ Beethoven,” “ Concerning the Art of Conducting,” “ Concerning Actors and Singers,” “ State and Religion,” silence all contradiction, and, like sacred reliquaries, impose upon all who approach them a calm, earnest, and reverential regard. Others, more particularly the earlier ones, including “ Opera and Drama,” excite and agitate one; their rhythm is so uneven that, as prose they are bewildering. Their dialectics is constantly interrupted, and their course is more retarded than accelerated by outbursts of feeling; a certain reluctance on the part of the writer seems to hang over them like a pall, just as though the artist were somewhat ashamed of speculative discussions. What the reader who is only imperfectly initiated will probably find most oppressive is the general tone of authoritative dignity which is peculiar to Wagner, and which is very difficult to describe: it always strikes me as though Wagner were continually addressing enemies; for the style of all these tracts more resembles that of the spoken than of the written language, hence they will seem much more intelligible if heard read aloud, in the presence of his enemies, with whom he cannot be on familiar terms, and towards whom he must therefore show some reserve and aloofness, The entrancing passion of his feelings, however, constantly pierces this intentional disguise, and then the stilted and heavy periods, swollen with accessary words, vanish, and his pen dashes off sentences, and even whole pages, which belong to the best in German prose. But even admitting that while he wrote such passages he was addressing friends, and that the shadow of his enemies had been removed for a while, all the friends and enemies that Wagner, as a man of letters, has, possess one factor in common, which differentiates them fundamentally from the “ people” for whom he worked as an artist. Owing to the
refining and fruitless nature of their education, they are quite devoid of the essential traits of the national character, and he who would appeal to them must speak in a way which is not of the people—that is to say, after the manner of our best prose-writers and Wagner himself; though that he did violence to himself in writing thus is evident. But the strength of that almost maternal instinct of prudence in him, which is ready to make any sacrifice, rather tends to reinstall him among the scholars and men of learning, to whom as a creator he always longed to bid farewell. He submits to the language of culture and all the laws governing its use, though he was the first to recognise its profound insufficiency as a means of communication. For if there is anything that distinguishes his art from every other art of modern times, it is that it no longer speaks the language of any particular caste, and refuses to admit the distinctions “ literate” and “ illiterate.” It thus stands as a contrast to every culture of the Renaissance, which to this day still bathes us modern men in its light and shade. Inasmuch as Wagner’s art bears us, from time to time, beyond itself, we are enabled to get a general view of its uniform character: we see Goethe and Leopardi as the last great stragglers of the Italian philologist-poets, Faust as the incarnation of a most unpopular problem, in the form of a man of theory thirsting for life; even Goethe’s song is an imitation of the song of the people rather than a standard set before them to which they are expected to attain, and the poet knew very well how truly he spoke when he seriously assured his adherents: “ My compositions cannot become popular; he who hopes and strives to make them so is mistaken.” That an art could arise which would be so clear and warm as to flood the base and the poor in spirit with its light, as well as to melt the haughtiness of the learned—such a phenomenon had to be experienced though it could not be guessed. But even in the mind of him who experiences it to-day it must upset all preconceived notions concerning education and culture; to such an one the veil will seem to have been rent in twain that conceals a future in which no highest good or highest joys exist that are not the common property of all. The odium attaching to the word “ common” will then be abolished. If presentiment venture thus into the remote future, the discerning eye of all will recognise the dreadful social insanity of our present age, and will no longer blind itself to the dangers besetting an art which seems to have roots only in the remote and distant future, and which allows its burgeoning branches to spread before our gaze when it has not yet revealed the ground from which it draws its sap. How can we protect this homeless art through the ages until that remote future is reached? How can we so dam the flood of a revolution seemingly inevitable everywhere, that the blessed prospect and guarantee of a better future—of a freer human life—shall not also be washed away with all that is destined to perish and deserves to perish? He who asks himself this question shares Wagner’s care: he will feel himself impelled with Wagner to seek those established powers that have the goodwill to protect the noblest passions of man during the period of earthquakes and upheavals. In this sense alone Wagner questions the learned through his writings, whether they intend storing his legacy to them —the precious Ring of his art—among their other treasures. And even the wonderful confidence which he reposes in the German mind and the aims of German politics seems to me to arise from the fact that he grants the people of the Reformation that strength, mildness, and bravery which is necessary in order to divert “ the torrent of revolution into the tranquil river-bed of a calmly flowing stream of humanity”: and I could almost believe that this and only this is what he meant to express by means of the symbol of his Imperial march. As a rule, though, the generous impulses of the creative artist and the extent of his philanthropy are too great for his gaze to be confined within the limits of a single nation. His thoughts, like those of every good and great German, are more than German, and the language of his art does not appeal to particular races but to mankind in general. But to the men of the future. This is the belief that is proper to him; this is his torment and his distinction. No artist, of what past soever, has yet received such a remarkable portion of genius; no one, save him, has ever been obliged to mix this bitterest of ingredients with the drink of nectar to which enthusiasm helped him. It is not as one might expect, the misunderstood and mishandled artist, the fugitive of his age, who adopted this faith in self-defence: success or failure at the hands of his contemporaries was unable either to create or to destroy it Whether it glorified or reviled him, he did not belong to this generation: that was the conclusion to which his instincts led him. And the possibility of any generation’s ever belonging to him is something which he who disbelieves in Wagner can never be made to admit. But even this unbeliever may at least ask, what kind of generation it will be in which Wagner will recognise his “ people,” and in which he will see the type of all those who suffer a common distress, and who wish to escape from it by means of an art common to them all. Schiller was certainly more hopeful and sanguine; he did not ask what a future must be like if the instinct of the artist that predicts it prove true; his command to every artist was rather— Soar aloft in daring flight Out of sight of thine own years! In thy mirror, gleaming bright, Glimpse of distant dawn appears. XI. May blessed reason preserve us from ever thinking that mankind will at any time discover a final and ideal order of things, and that happiness will then and ever after beam down upon us uniformly, like the rays of the sun in the tropics. Wagner has nothing to do with such a hope; he is no Utopian. If he was unable to dispense with the belief in a future, it only meant that he observed certain properties in modern men which he did not hold to be essential to their nature, and which did not seem to him to form any necessary part of their constitution; in fact, which were changeable and transient; and that precisely owing to these properties art would find no home among them, and he himself had to be the precursor and prophet of another epoch. No golden age, no cloudless sky will fall to the portion of those future generations, which his instinct led him to expect, and whose approximate characteristics may be gleaned from the cryptic characters of his art, in so far as it is possible to draw conclusions concerning the nature of any pain from the kind of relief it seeks. Nor will superhuman goodness and justice stretch like an everlasting rainbow over this future land. Belike this coming generation will, on the whole, seem more evil than the present one
—for in good as in evil it will be more straightforward. It is even possible, if its soul were ever able to speak out in full and unembarrassed tones, that it might convulse and terrify us, as though the voice of some hitherto concealed and evil spirit had suddenly cried out in our midst. Or how do the following propositions strike our ears?—That passion is better than stocism or hypocrisy; that straightforwardness, even in evil, is better than losing oneself in trying to observe traditional morality; that the free man is just as able to be good as evil, but that the unemancipated man is a disgrace to nature, and has no share in heavenly or earthly bliss; finally, that all who wish to be free must become so through themselves, and that freedom falls to nobody’s lot as a gift from Heaven. However harsh and strange these propositions may sound, they are nevertheless reverberations from that future world, which is verily in need of art, and which expects genuine pleasure from its presence; they are the language of nature—reinstated even in mankind; they stand for what I have already termed correct feeling as opposed to the incorrect feeling that reigns to-day. But real relief or salvation exists only for nature not for that which is contrary to nature or which arises out of incorrect feeling. When all that is unnatural becomes self-conscious, it desires but one thing—nonentity; the natural thing, on the other hand, yearns to be transfigured through love: the former would fain not be, the latter would fain be otherwise. Let him who has understood this recall, in the stillness of his soul, the simple themes of Wagner’s art, in order to be able to ask himself whether it were nature or nature’s opposite which sought by means of them to achieve the aims just described. The desperate vagabond finds deliverance from his distress in the compassionate love of a woman who would rather die than be unfaithful to him: the theme of the Flying Dutchman. The sweet-heart, renouncing all personal happiness, owing to a divine transformation of Love into Charity, becomes a saint, and saves the soul of her loved one: the theme of Tannhauser. The sublimest and highest thing descends a suppliant among men, and will not be questioned whence it came; when, however, the fatal question is put, it sorrowfully returns to its higher life: the theme of Lohengrin. The loving soul of a wife, and the people besides, joyfully welcome the new benevolent genius, although the retainers of tradition and custom reject and revile him: the theme of the Meistersingers. Of two lovers, that do not know they are loved, who believe rather that they are deeply wounded and contemned, each demands of the other that he or she should drink a cup of deadly poison, to all intents and purposes as an expiation of the insult; in reality, however, as the result of an impulse which neither of them understands: through death they wish to escape all possibility of separation or deceit. The supposed approach of death loosens their fettered souls and allows them a short moment of thrilling happiness, just as though they had actually escaped from the present, from illusions and from life: the theme of Tristan and Isolde. In the Ring of the Nibelung the tragic hero is a god whose heart yearns for power, and who, since he travels along all roads in search of it, finally binds himself to too many undertakings, loses his freedom, and is ultimately cursed by the curse inseparable from power. He becomes aware of his loss of freedom owing to the fact that he no longer has the means to take possession of the golden Ring—that symbol of all earthly power, and also of the greatest dangers to himself as long as it lies in the hands of his enemies. The fear of the end and the twilight of all gods overcomes him, as also the despair at being able only to await the end without opposing it. He is in need of the free and fearless man who, without his advice or assistance—even in a struggle against gods—can accomplish single-handed what is denied to the powers of a god. He fails to see him, and just as a new hope finds shape within him, he must obey the conditions to which he is bound: with his own hand he must murder the thing he most loves, and purest pity must be punished by his sorrow. Then he begins to loathe power, which bears evil and bondage in its lap; his will is broken, and he himself begins to hanker for the end that threatens him from afar off. At this juncture something happens which had long been the subject of his most ardent desire: the free and fearless man appears, he rises in opposition to everything accepted and established, his parents atone for having been united by a tie which was antagonistic to the order of nature and usage; they perish, but Siegfried survives. And at the sight of his magnificent development and bloom, the loathing leaves otan’s soul, and he follows the hero’s history with the eye of fatherly love and anxiety. How he forges his sword, kills the dragon, gets possession of the ring, escapes the craftiest ruse, awakens Brunhilda; how the curse abiding in the ring gradually overtakes him; how, faithful in faithfulness, he wounds the thing he most loves, out of love; becomes enveloped in the shadow and cloud of guilt, and, rising out of it more brilliantly than the sun, ultimately goes down, firing the whole heavens with his burning glow and purging the world of the curse,—all this is seen by the god whose sovereign spear was broken in the contest with the freest man, and who lost his power through him, rejoicing greatly over his own defeat: full of sympathy for the triumph and pain of his victor, his eye burning with aching joy looks back upon the last events; he has become free through love, free from himself. And now ask yourselves, ye generation of to-day, Was all this composed for you? Have ye the courage to point up to the stars of the whole of this heavenly dome of beauty and goodness and to say, This is our life, that Wagner has transferred to a place beneath the stars? Where are the men among you who are able to interpret the divine image of Wotan in the light of their own lives, and who can become ever greater while, like him, ye retreat? Who among you would renounce power, knowing and having learned that power is evil? Where are they who like Brunhilda abandon their knowledge to love, and finally rob their lives of the highest wisdom, “ afflicted love, deepest sorrow, opened my eyes”? and where are the free and fearless, developing and blossoming in innocent egoism? and where are the Siegfrieds, among you? He who questions thus and does so in vain, will find himself compelled to look around him for signs of the future; and should his eye, on reaching an unknown distance, espy just that “ people” which his own generation can read out of the signs contained in Wagnerian art, he will then also understand what Wagner will mean to this people—something that he cannot be to all of us, namely, not the prophet of the future, as perhaps he would fain appear to us, but the interpreter and clarifier of the past. THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY FOR LIFE Translated by Adrian Collins
“ I HATE everything that merely instructs me without increasing or directly quickening my activity.” These words of Goethe, like a sincere ceterum censeo may well stand at the head of my thoughts on the worth and the worthlessness of history. I will show in them why instruction that does not “ quicken,” knowledge that slackens the rein of activity, why in fact history, in Goethe’s phrase, must be seriously “ hated,” as a costly and superfluous luxury of the understanding: for we are still in want of the necessaries of life, and the superfluous is an enemy to the necessary. We do need history, but quite differently from the jaded idlers in the garden of knowledge, however grandly they may look down on our rude and unpicturesque requirements. In other words, we need it for life and action, not as a convenient way to avoid life and action, or to excuse a selfish life and a cowardly or base action. We would serve history only so far as it serves life; but to value its study beyond a certain point mutilates and degrades life: and this is a fact that certain marked symptoms of our time make it as necessary as it may be painful to bring to the test of experience. I have tried to describe a feeling that has often troubled me: I revenge myself on it by giving it publicity. This may lead some one to explain to me that he has also had the feeling, but that I do not feel it purely and elementally enough, and cannot express it with the ripe certainty of experience. A few may say so; but most people will tell me that it is a perverted, unnatural, horrible, and altogether unlawful feeling to have, and that I show myself unworthy of the great historical movement which is especially strong among the German people for the last two generations. I am at all costs going to venture on a description of my feelings; which will be decidedly in the interests of propriety, as I shall give plenty of opportunity for paying compliments to such a “ movement.” And I gain an advantage for myself that is more valuable to me than propriety-the attainment of a correct point of view, through my critics, with regard to our age. These thoughts are “ out of season,” because I am trying to represent something of which the age is rightly proud-its historical culture-as a fault and a defect in our time, believing as I do that we are all suffering from a malignant historical fever and should at least recognise the fact. But even if it be a virtue, Goethe may be right in asserting that we cannot help developing our faults at the same time as our virtues; and an excess of virtue can obviously bring a nation to ruin, as well as an excess of vice. In any case I may be allowed my say. But I will first relieve my mind by the confession that the experiences which produced those disturbing feelings were mostly drawn from myself, -and from other sources only for the sake of comparison; and that I have only reached such “ unseasonable” experience, so far as I am the nursling of older ages like the Greek, and less a child of this age. I must admit so much in virtue of my profession as a classical scholar: for I do not know what meaning classical scholarship may have for our time except in its being “ unseasonable,” that is, contrary to our time, and yet with an influence on it for the benefit, it may be hoped, of a future time. CONSIDER the herds that are feeding yonder: they know not the meaning of yesterday or to-day; they graze and ruminate, move or rest, from morning to night, from day to day, taken up with their little loves and hates, at the mercy of the moment, feeling neither melancholy nor satiety. Man cannot see them without regret, for even in the pride of his humanity he looks enviously on the beast’s happiness. He wishes simply to live without satiety or pain, like the beast; yet it is all in vain, for he will not change places with it. He may ask the beast-“ Why do you look at me and not speak to me of your happiness?” The beast wants to answer-“ Because I always forget what I wished to say”: but he forgets this answer too, and is silent; and the man is left to wonder. He wonders also about himself, that he cannot learn to forget, but hangs on the past: however far or fast he run, that chain runs with him. It is matter for wonder: the moment, that is here and gone, that was nothing before and nothing after, returns like a spectre to trouble the quiet of a later moment. A leaf is continually dropping out of the volume of time and fluttering away and suddenly it flutters back into the man’s lap. Then he says, “ I remember … ,” and envies the beast, that forgets at once, and sees every moment really die, sink into night and mist, extinguished for ever. The beast lives unhistorically; for it “ goes into” the present, like a number, without leaving any curious remainder. It cannot dissimulate, it conceals nothing; at every moment it seems what it actually is, and thus can be nothing that is not honest. But man is always resisting the great and continually increasing weight of the past; it presses him down, and bows his shoulders; he travels with a dark invisible burden that he can plausibly disown, and is only too glad to disown in converse with his fellows-in order to excite their envy. And so it hurts him, like the thought of a lost Paradise, to see a herd grazing, or, nearer still, a child, that has nothing yet of the past to disown, and plays in a happy blindness between the walls of the past and the future. And yet its play must be disturbed, and only too soon will it be summoned from its little kingdom of oblivion. Then it learns to understand the words “ once upon a time,” the “ open sesame” that lets in battle, suffering and weariness on mankind, and reminds them what their existence really is, an imperfect tense that never becomes a present. And when death brings at last the desired forgetfulness, it abolishes life and being together, and sets the seal on the knowledge that “ being” is merely a continual “ has been,” a thing that lives by denying and destroying and contradicting itself. If happiness and the chase for new happiness keep alive in any sense the will to live, no philosophy has perhaps more truth than the cynic’s: for the beast’s happiness, like that of the perfect cynic, is the visible proof of the truth of cynicism. The smallest pleasure, if it be only continuous and make one happy, is incomparably a greater happiness than the more intense pleasure that comes as an episode, a wild freak, a mad interval between ennui, desire, and privation. But in the smallest and greatest happiness there is always one thing that makes it happiness: the power of forgetting, or, in more learned phrase, the capacity of feeling “ unhistorically” throughout its duration. One who cannot leave himself behind on the threshold of the moment and forget the past, who cannot stand on a single point, like a goddess of victory, without fear or giddiness, will never know what happiness is; and, worse still, will never do anything to make others happy. The extreme case would be the man without any power to forget, who is condemned to see “ becoming” everywhere. Such a man believes no more in himself or his own existence, he sees everything fly past in an eternal succession, and loses himself in the stream of becoming. At last, like the logical disciple of Heraclitus, he will hardly dare to raise his finger. Forgetfulness is a property of all action; just as not only light but darkness is bound up with the life of every organism. One who wished to feel everything historically, would be like a man forcing himself to refrain from sleep, or a beast who had to live by chewing a continual cud. Thus even a happy life is possible without remembrance, as the beast shows: but life in any true sense is absolutely impossible without forgetfulness. Or, to put my conclusion better, there is a degree of sleeplessness, of rumination, of “ historical sense,” that injures and finally destroys the living thing, be it a man or a people or a system of culture. To fix this degree and the limits to the memory of
the past, if it is not to become the graved igger of the present, we must see clearly how great is the ” plastic power ” of a man or a community or a culture; I mean the power of specifically growing out of one’s self, of making the past and the strange one body with the near and the present, of healing wounds, replacing what is lost, repairing broken moulds. There are men who have this power so slightly that a single sharp experience, a single pain, often a little injustice, will lacerate their souls like the scratch of a poisoned knife. There are others, who are so little injured by the worst misfortunes, and even by their own spiteful actions, as to feel tolerably comfortable, with a fairly quiet conscience, in the midst of them,-or at any rate shortly afterwards. The deeper the roots of a man’s inner nature, the better will he take the past into himself; and the greatest and most powerful nature would be known by the absence of limits for the historical sense to overgrow and work harm. It would assimilate and digest the past, however foreign, and turn it to sap. Such a nature can forget what it cannot subdue; there is no break in the horizon, and nothing to remind it that there are still men, passions, theories and aims on the other side. This is a universal law; a living thing can only be healthy, strong and productive within a certain horizon: if it be incapable of drawing one round itself, or too selfish to lose its own view in another’s, it will come to an untimely end. Cheerfulness, a good conscience, belief in the future, the joyful deed, all depend, in the individual as well as the nation, on there being a line that divides the visible and clear from the vague and shadowy: we must know the right time to forget as well as the right time to remember; and instinctively see when it is necessary to feel historically, and when unhistorically. This is the point that the reader is asked to consider; that the unhistorical and the historical are equally necessary to the health of an individual, a community, and a system of culture. Every one has noticed that a man’s historical knowledge and range of feeling may be very limited, his horizon as narrow as that of an Alpine valley, his judgments incorrect and his experience falsely supposed original, and yet in spite of all the incorrectness and falsity he may stand forth in unconquerable health and vigour, to the joy of all who see him; whereas another man with far more judgment and learning will fail in comparison, because the lines of his horizon are continually changing and shifting, and he cannot shake himself free from the delicate network of his truth and righteousness for a downright act of will or desire. We saw that the beast, absolutely ” unhistorical,” with the narrowest of horizons, has yet a certain happiness, and lives at least without hypocrisy or ennui ; and so we may hold the capacity of feeling (to a certain extent) unhistorically, to be the more important and elemental, as providing the foundation of every sound and real growth, everything that is truly great and human. The unhistorical is like the surrounding atmosphere that can alone create life, and in whose annihilation life itself disappears. It is true that man can only become man by first suppressing this unhistorical element in his thoughts, comparisons, distinctions, and conclusions, letting a clear sudden light break through these misty clouds by his power of turning the past to the uses of the present. But an excess of history makes him flag again, while without the veil of the unhistorical he would never have the courage to begin. What deeds could man ever have done if he had not been enveloped in the dustcloud of the unhistorical? Or, to leave metaphors and take a concrete example, imagine a man swayed and driven by a strong passion, whether for a woman or a theory. His world is quite altered. He is blind to everything behind him, new sounds are muffled and meaningless; though his perceptions were never so intimately felt in all their colour, light and music, and he seems to grasp them with his five senses together. All his judgments of value are changed for the worse; there is much he can no longer value, as he can scarcely feel it: he wonders that he has so long been the sport of strange words and opinions, that his recollections have run round in one unwearying circle and are yet too weak and weary to make a single step away from it. His whole case is most indefensible; it is narrow, ungrateful to the past, blind to danger, deaf to warnings, a small living eddy in a dead sea of night and forgetfulness. And yet this condition, unhistorical and antihistorical throughout, is the cradle not only of unjust action, but of every just and justifiable action in the world. No artist will paint his picture, no general win his victory, no nation gain its freedom, without having striven and yearned for it under those very “ unhistorical” conditions. If the man of action, in Goethe’s phrase, is without conscience, he is also without knowledge: he forgets most things in order to do one, he is unjust to what is behind him, and only recognises one law, the law of that which is to be. So he loves his work infinitely more, than it deserves to be loved; and the best works are produced in such an ecstasy of love that they must always be unworthy of it, however great their worth otherwise. Should any one be able to dissolve the unhistorical atmosphere in which every great event happens, and breathe afterwards, he might be capable of rising to the “ super-historical” standpoint of consciousness, that Niebuhr has described as the possible result of historical research. “ History,” he says, “ is useful for one purpose, if studied in detail: that men may know, as the greatest and best spirits of our generation do not know, the accidental nature of the forms in which they see and insist on others seeing,-insist, I say, because their consciousness of them is exceptionally intense. Any one who has not grasped this idea in its different applications will fall under the spell of a more powerful spirit who reads a deeper emotion into the given form.” Such a standpoint might be called “ super-historical,” as one who took it could feel no impulse from history to any further life or work, for he would have recognised the blindness and injustice in the soul of the doer as a condition of every deed: he would be cured henceforth of taking history too seriously, and have learnt to answer the question how and why life should be lived, for all men and all circumstances, Greeks or Turks, the first century or the nineteenth. Whoever asks his friends whether they would live the last ten or twenty years over again, will easily see which of them is born for the “ super-historical standpoint”: they will all answer no, but will give different reasons for their answer. Some will say they have the consolation that the next twenty will be better: they are the men referred to satirically by David Hume: “ And from the dregs of life hope to receive, What the first sprightly running could not give.” We will call them the “ historical men.” Their vision of the past turns them towards the future, encourages them to persevere with life, and kindles the hope that justice will yet come and happiness is behind the mountain they are climbing. They believe that the meaning of existence will become ever clearer in the course of its evolution, they only look backward at the process to understand the present and stimulate their longing for the future. They do not know how unhistorical their thoughts and actions are in spite of all their history, and how their preoccupation with it is for the sake of life rather than mere science. But that question to which we have heard the first answer, is capable of another; also a “ no,” but on different grounds. It is the “ no” of the “ super-historical” man who sees no salvation in evolution, for whom the world is complete and fulfils its aim in every single
moment. How could the next ten years teach what the past ten were not able to teach? Whether the aim of the teaching be happiness or resignation, virtue or penance, these superhistorical men are not agreed; but as against all merely historical ways of viewing the past, they are unanimous in the theory that the past and the present are one and the same, typically alike in all their diversity, and forming together a picture of eternally present imperishable types of unchangeable value and significance. Just as the hundreds of different languages correspond to the same constant and elemental needs of mankind, and one who understood the needs could learn nothing new from the languages; so the “ super-historical” philosopher sees all the history of nations and individuals from within. He has a divine insight into the original meaning of the hieroglyphs, and comes even to be weary of the letters that are continually unrolled before him. How should the endless rush of events not bring satiety, surfeit, loathing ? So the boldest of us is ready perhaps at last to say from his heart with Giacomo Leopardi: “ Nothing lives that were worth thy pains, and the earth deserves not a sigh. Our being is pain and weariness, and the world is mud-nothing else. Be calm.” But we will leave the super-historical men to their loathings and their wisdom: we wish rather to-day to be joyful in our unwisdom and have a pleasant life as active men who go forward, and respect the course of the world. The value we put on the historical may be merely a Western prejudice: let us at least go forward within this prejudice and not stand still. If we could only learn better to study history as a means to life! We would gladly grant the super-historical people their superior wisdom, so long as we are sure of having more life than they: for in that case our unwisdom would have a greater future before it than their wisdom. To make my opposition between life and wisdom clear, I will take the usual road of the short summary. A historical phenomenon, completely understood and reduced to an item of knowledge, is, in relation to the man who knows it, dead: for he has found out its madness, its injustice, its blind passion, and especially the earthly and darkened horizon that was the source of its power for history. This power has now become, for him who has recognised it, powerless; not yet, perhaps, for him who is alive. History regarded as pure knowledge and allowed to sway the intellect would mean for men the final balancing of the ledger of life. Historical study is only fruitful for the future if it follow a powerful life-giving influence, for example, a new system of culture; only, therefore, if it be guided and dominated by a higher force, and do not itself guide and dominate. History, so far as it serves life, serves an unhistorical power, and thus will never become a pure science like mathematics. The question how far life needs such a service is one of the most serious questions affecting the well-being of a man, a people and a culture. For by excess of history life becomes maimed and degenerate, and is followed by the degeneration of history as well. The fact that life does need the service of history must be as clearly grasped as that an excess of history hurts it; this will be proved later. History is necessary to the living man in three ways: in relation to his action and struggle, his conservatism and reverence, his suffering and his desire for deliverance. These three relations answer to the three kinds of history so far as they can be distinguished -the monumental, the antiquarian, and the critical. History is necessary above all to the man of action and power who fights a great fight and needs examples, teachers and comforters; he cannot find them among his contemporaries. It was necessary in this sense to Schiller; for our time is so evil, Goethe says, that the poet meets no nature that will profit him, among living men. Polybius is thinking of the active man when he calls political history the true preparation for governing a state; it is the great teacher, that shows us how to bear steadfastly the reverses of fortune, by reminding us of what others have suffered. Whoever has learned to recognise this meaning in history must hate to see curious tourists and laborious beetle-hunters climbing up the great pyramids of antiquity. He does not wish to meet the idler who is rushing through the picture-galleries of the past for a new distraction or sensation, where he himself is looking for example and encouragement. To avoid being troubled by the weak and hopeless idlers, and those whose apparent activity is merely neurotic, he looks behind him and stays his course towards the goal in order to breathe. His goal is happiness, not perhaps his own, but often the nation’s, or humanity’s at large: he avoids quietism, and uses history as a weapon against it. For the most part he has no hope of reward except fame, which means the expectation of a niche in the temple of history, where he in his turn may be the consoler and counsellor of posterity. For his orders are that what has once been able to extend the conception “ man” and give it a fairer content, must ever exist for the same office. The great moments in the individual battle form a chain, a high road for humanity through the ages, and the highest points of those vanished moments are yet great and living for men; and this is the fundamental idea of the belief in humanity, that finds a voice in the demand for a ” monumental ” history. But the fiercest battle is fought round the demand for greatness to be eternal. Every other living thing cries no. “ Away with the monuments,” is the watchword. Dull custom fills all the chambers of the world with its meanness, and rises in thick vapour round anything that is great, barring its way to immortality, blinding and stifling it. And the way passes through mortal brains! Through the brains of sick and short-lived beasts that ever rise to the surface to breathe, and painfully keep off annihilation for a little space. For they wish but one thing: to live at any cost. Who would ever dream of any “ monumental history” among them, the hard torch-race that alone gives life to greatness? And yet there are always men awakening, who are strengthened and made happy by gazing on past greatness, as though man’s life were a lordly thing, and the fairest fruit of this bitter tree were the knowledge that there was once a man who walked sternly and proudly through this world, another who had pity and loving-kindness, another who lived in contemplation, but all leaving one truth behind them, that his life is the fairest who thinks least about life. The common man snatches greedily at this little span, with tragic earnestness, but they, on their way to monumental history and immortality, knew how to greet it with Olympic laughter, or at least with a lofty scorn; and they went down to their graves in irony-for what had they to bury? Only what they had always treated as dross, refuse, and vanity, and which now falls into its true home of oblivion, after being so long the sport of their contempt. One thing will live, the sign-manual of their inmost being, the rare flash of light, the deed, the creation; because posterity cannot do without it. In this spiritualised form fame is something more than the sweetest morsel for our egoism, in Schopenhauer’s phrase: it is the belief in the oneness and continuity of the great in every age, and a protest against the change and decay of generations. What is the use to the modern man of this “ monumental ” contemplation of the past, this preoccupation with the rare and classic? It is the knowledge that the great thing existed and was therefore possible, and so may be possible again. He is heartened on his way; for his doubt in weaker moments, whether his desire be not for the impossible, is struck aside. Suppose one believe that no more than a hundred men, brought up in the new spirit, efficient and productive, were needed to give the deathblow to the present fashion of
education in Germany; he will gather strength from the remembrance that the culture of the Renaissance was raised on the shoulders of such another band of a hundred men. And yet if we really wish to learn something from an example, how vague and elusive do we find the comparison! If it is to give us strength, many of the differences must be neglected, the individuality of the past forced into a general formula and all the sharp angles broken off for the sake of correspondence. Ultimately, of course, what was once possible can only become possible a second time on the Pythagorean theory, that when the heavenly bodies are in the same position again, the events on earth are reproduced to the smallest detail; so when the stars have a certain relation, a Stoic and an Epicurean will form a conspiracy to murder Caesar, and a different conjunction will show another Columbus discovering America. Only if the earth always began its drama again after the fifth act, and it were certain that the same interaction of motives, the same deus ex machina the same catastrophe would occur at particular intervals, could the man of action venture to look for the whole archetypic truth in monumental history, to see each fact fully set out in its uniqueness: it would not probably be before the astronomers became astrologers again. Till then monumental history will never be able to have complete truth; it will always bring together things that are incompatible and generalise them into compatibility, will always weaken the differences of motive and occasion. Its object is to depict effects at the expense of the causes-“ monumentally,” that is, as examples for imitation: it turns aside, as far as it may, from reasons, and might be called with far less exaggeration a collection of “ effects in themselves,” than of events that will have an effect on all ages. The events of war or religion cherished in our popular celebrations are such “ effects in themselves”; it is these that will not let ambition sleep, and lie like amulets on the bolder hearts-not the real historical nexus of cause and effect, which, rightly understood, would only prove that nothing quite similar could ever be cast again from the dice-boxes of fate and the future. As long as the soul of history is found in the great impulse that it gives to a powerful spirit, as long as the past is principally used as a model for imitation, it is always in danger of being a little altered and touched up, and brought nearer to fiction. Sometimes there is no possible distinction between a “ monumental” past and a mythical romance, as the same motives for action can be gathered from the one world as the other. If this monumental method of surveying the past dominate the others,-the antiquarian and the critical,-the past itself suffers wrong. Whole tracts of it are forgotten and despised; they flow away like a dark unbroken river, with only a few gaily coloured islands of fact rising above it. There is something beyond nature in the rare figures that become visible, like the golden hips that his disciples attributed to Pythagoras. Monumental history lives by false analogy; it entices the brave to rashness, and the enthusiastic to fanaticism by its tempting comparisons. Imagine this history in the hands -and the head-of a gifted egoist or an inspired scoundrel; kingdoms will be overthrown, princes murdered, war and revolution let loose, and the number of “ effects in themselves”-in other words, effects without sufficient cause-increased. So much for the harm done by monumental history to the powerful men of action, be they good or bad; but what if the weak and the inactive take it as their servant-or their master! Consider the simplest and commonest example, the inartistic or half artistic natures whom a monumental history provides with sword and buckler. They will use the weapons against their hereditary enemies, the great artistic spirits, who alone can learn from that history the one real lesson, how to live, and embody what they have learnt in noble action. Their way is obstructed, their free air darkened by the idolatrous-and conscientious-dance round the half understood monument of a great past. “ See, that is the true and real art,” we seem to hear: “ of what use are these aspiring little people of to-day?” The dancing crowd has apparently the monopoly of “ good taste”: for the creator is always at a disadvantage compared with the mere looker-on, who never put a hand to the work; just as the arm-chair politician has ever had more wisdom and foresight than the actual statesman. But if the custom of democratic suffrage and numerical majorities be transferred to the realm of art, and the artist put on his defence before the court of aesthetic dilettanti, you may take your oath on his condemnation; although, or rather because, his judges had proclaimed solemnly the canon of “ monumental art,” the art that has “ had an effect on all ages,” according to the official definition. In their eyes no need nor inclination nor historical authority is in favour of the art which is not yet “ monumental” because it is contemporary. Their instinct tells them that art can be slain by art: the monumental will never be reproduced, and the weight of its authority is invoked from the past to make it sure. They are connoisseurs of art, primarily because they wish to kill art; they pretend to be physicians, when their real idea is to dabble in poisons. They develop their tastes to a point of perversion, that they may be able to show a reason for continually rejecting all the nourishing artistic fare that is offered them. For they do not want greatness, to arise: their method is to say, “ See, the great thing is already here!” In reality they care as little about the great thing that is already here, as that which is about to arise: their lives are evidence of that. Monumental history is the cloak under which their hatred of present power and greatness masquerades as an extreme admiration of the past: the real meaning of this way of viewing history is disguised as its opposite; whether they wish it or no, they are acting as though their motto were, “ let the dead bury the-living.” Each of “ the three kinds of history will only flourish in one ground and climate: otherwise it grows to a noxious weed. If the man who will produce something great, have need of the past, he makes himself its master by means of monumental history: the man who can rest content with the traditional and venerable, uses the past as an “ antiquarian historian”: and only he whose heart is oppressed by an instant need, and who will cast the burden off at any price, feels the want of “ critical history,” the history that judges and condemns. There is much harm wrought by wrong and thoughtless planting: the critic without the need, the antiquary without piety, the knower of the great deed who cannot be the doer of it, are plants that have grown to weeds, they are torn from their native soil and therefore degenerate. Secondly, history is necessary to the man of conservative and reverent nature, who looks back to the origins of his existence with love and trust; through it, he gives thanks for life. He is careful to preserve what survives from ancient days, and will reproduce the conditions of his own upbringing for those who come after him; thus he does life a service. The possession of his ancestors’ furniture changes its meaning in his soul: for his soul is rather possessed by it. All that is small and limited, mouldy and obsolete, gains a worth and inviolability of its own from the conservative and reverent soul of the antiquary migrating into it, and building a secret nest there. The history of his town becomes the history of himself; he looks on the walls, the turreted gate, the town council, the fair, as an illustrated diary of his youth, and sees himself in it all-his strength, industry, desire, reason, faults
and follies. “ Here one could live,” he says, “ as one can live here now-and will go on living; for we are tough folk, and will not be uprooted in the night.” And so, with his “ we,” he surveys the marvellous individual life of the past and identifies himself with the spirit of the house, the family and the city. He greets the soul of his people from afar as his own, across the dim and troubled centuries: his gifts and his virtues lie in such power of feeling and divination, his scent of a half-vanished trail, his instinctive correctness in reading the scribbled past, and understanding at once its palimpsests-nay, its polypsests. Goethe stood with such thoughts before the monument of Erwin von Steinbach: the storm of his feeling rent the historical cloud-veil that hung between them, and he saw the German work for the first time “ coming from the stern, rough, German soul.” This was the road that the Italians of the Renaissance travelled, the spirit that reawakened the ancient Italic genius in their poets to “ a wondrous echo of the immemorial lyre,” as Jacob Burckhardt says. But the greatest value of this antiquarian spirit of reverence lies in the simple emotions of pleasure and content that it lends to the drab, rough, even painful circumstances of a nation’s or individual’s life: Niebuhr confesses that he could live happily on a moor among free peasants with a history, and would never feel the want of art. How could history serve life better than by anchoring the less gifted races and peoples to the homes and customs of their ancestors, and keeping them from ranging far afield in search of better, to find only struggle and competition? The influence that ties men down to the same companions and circumstances, to the daily round of toil, to their bare mountain-side,-seems to be selfish and unreasonable: but it is a healthy unreason and of profit to the community; as every one knows who has clearly realised the terrible consequences of mere desire for migration and adventure,-perhaps in whole peoples,-or who watches the destiny of a nation that has lost confidence in its earlier days, and is given up to a restless cosmopolitanism and an unceasing desire for novelty. The feeling of the tree that clings to its roots, the happiness of knowing one’s growth to be not merely arbitrary and fortuitous, but the in- heritance, the fruit and blossom of a past, that does not merely justify but crown the present-this is what we nowadays prefer to call the real historical sense. These are not the conditions most favourable to reducing the past to pure science: and we see here too, as we saw in the case of monumental history, that the past itself suffers when history serves life and is directed by its end. To vary the metaphor, the tree feels its roots better than it can see them : the greatness of the feeling is measured by the greatness and strength of the visible branches. The tree may be wrong here; how far more wrong will it be in regard to the whole forest, which it only knows and feels so far as it is hindered or helped by it, and not otherwise! The antiquarian sense of a man, a city or a nation has always a very limited field. Many things are not noticed at all; the others are seen in isolation, as through a microscope. There is no measure: equal importance is given to everything, and therefore too much to anything. For the things of the past are never viewed in their true perspective or receive their just value; but value and perspective change with the individual or the nation that is looking back on its past. There is always the danger here, that everything ancient will be regarded as equally venerable, and, everything without this respect for antiquity, like a new spirit, rejected as an enemy. The Greeks themselves admitted the archaic style of plastic art by the side of the freer and greater style; and later, did not merely tolerate the pointed nose and the cold mouth, but made them even a canon of taste. If the judgment of a people harden in this way, and history’s service to the past life be to undermine a further and higher life; if the historical sense no longer preserve life, but mummify it: then the tree dies, unnaturally, from the top downwards, and at last the roots themselves wither. Antiquarian history degenerates from the moment tha,t it no longer gives a soul and inspiration to the fresh life of the present. The spring of piety is dried up, but the learned habit persists without it and revolves complaisantly round its own centre. The horrid spectacle is seen of the mad collector raking over all the dust-heaps of the past. He breathes a mouldy air; the antiquarian habit may degrade a considerable talent, a real spiritual need in him, to a mere insatiable curiosity for everything old: he often sinks so low as to be satisfied with any food, and greedily devour all the scraps that fall from the bibliographical table. Even if this degeneration do not take place, and the foundation be not withered on which antiquarian history can alone take root with profit to life: yet there are dangers enough, if it become too powerful and invade the territories of the other methods. It only understands how to preserve life, not to create it; and thus always undervalues the present growth, having, unlike monumental history, no certain instinct for it. Thus it hinders the mighty impulse to a new deed and paralyses the doer, who must always, as doer, be grazing some piety or other. The fact that has grown old carries with it a demand for its own immortality. For when one considers the life-history of such an ancient fact, the amount of reverence paid to it for generations-whether it be a custom, a religious creed, or a political principle,-it seems presumptuous, even impious, to replace it by a new fact, and the ancient congregation of pieties by a new piety. Here we see clearly how necessary a third way of looking at the past is to man, beside the other two. This is the “ critical” way; which is also in the service of life. Man must have the strength to break up the past; and apply it too, in order to live. He must bring the past to the bar of judgment, interrogate it remorselessly, and finally condemn It. Every past is worth condemning: this is the rule in mortal affairs, which always contain a large measure of human power and human weakness. It is not justice that sits in judgment here; nor mercy that proclaims the verdict; but only life, the dim, driving force that insatiably desires-itself. Its sentence is always unmerciful, always unjust, as it never flows from a pure fountain of knowledge: though it would generally turn out the same, if Justice herself delivered it. “ For everything that is born is worthy of being destroyed: better were it then that nothing should be born.” It requires great strength to be able to live and forget how far life and injustice are one. Luther himself once said that the world only arose by an oversight of God; if he had ever dreamed of heavy ordnance, he would never have created it. The same life that needs forgetfulness, needs sometimes its destruction; for should the injustice of some- thing ever become obvious-a monopoly, a caste, a dynasty for example-the thing deserves to fall. Its past is critically examined, the knife put to its roots, and all the “ pieties” are grimly trodden under foot. The process is always dangerous, even for life; and the men or the times that serve life in this way, by judging and annihilating the past, are always dangerous to themselves and others. For as we are merely the resultant of previous generations, we are also the resiftfanT of their errors, passions, and crimes: it is impossible to shake off this chain. Though we condemn the errors and think we have escaped them, we cannot escape the fact that we spring from them. At best, it comes to a conflict between our innate, inherited nature and our knowledge, between a stern, new discipline and an ancient tradition; and we plant a new way of life, a new instinct, a second nature, that withers the first. It is an attempt to gain a past a posteriori from which we might spring, as against that from which we do spring; always a dangerous attempt, as it is difficult to find a limit to the denial
of the past, and the second natures are generally weaker than the first. We stop too often at knowing the good without doing it, because we also know the better but cannot do it. Here and there the victory is won, which gives a strange consolation to the fighters, to those who use critical history for the sake of life. The consolation is the knowledge that this “ first nature” was once a second, and that every conquering “ second nature” becomes a first. This is how history can serve life. Every man and nation needs a certain knowledge of the past, whether it be through monumental, antiquarian, or critical history, according to his objects, powers, and necessities. The need is not that of the mere thinkers who only look on at life, or the few who desire knowledge and can only be satisfied with knowledge; but it has always a reference to the end of life, and is under its absolute rule and direction. This is the natural relation of an age, a culture and a people to history; hunger is its source, necessity its norm, the inner plastic power assigns its limits. The knowledge of the past is only desired for the service of the future and the present, not to weaken the present or undermine a living future. All this is as simple as truth itself, and quite convincing to any one who is not in the toils of “ historical deduction.” And now to take a quick glance at our time! We fly back in astonishment. The clearness, naturalness, and purity of the connection between life and history has vanished; and in what a maze of exaggeration and contradiction do we now see the problem! Is the guilt ours who see it, or have life and history really altered their conjunction and an inauspicious star risen between them? Others may prove we have seen falsely; I am merely saying what we believe we see. There is such a star, a bright and lordly star, and the conjunction is really altered-by science, and the demand for history to be a science. Life is no more dominant, and knowledge of the past no longer its thrall: boundary marks are overthrown and everything bursts its limits. The perspective of events is blurred, and the blur extends through their whole immeasurable course. No generation has seen such a panoramic comedy as is shown by the “ science of universal evolution,” history; that shows it with the dangerous audacity of its motto-“ Fiat veritas, pereat vita.” Let me give a picture of the spiritual events in the soul of the modern man. Historical knowledge streams on him from sources that are inexhaustible, strange incoherencies come together, memory opens all its gates and yet is never open wide enough, nature busies herself to receive all the foreign guests, to honour them and put them in their places. But they are at war with each other: violent measures seem necessary, in order to escape destruction one’s self. It becomes second nature to grow gradually accustomed to this irregular and stormy home-life, though this second nature is unquestionably weaker, more restless, more radically unsound than the first. The modern man carries inside him an enormous heap of indigestible knowledge-stones that occasionally rattle together in his body, as the fairy-tale has it. And the rattle reveals the the most striking characteristic of these modern men, the opposition of something inside them to which nothing external corresponds; and the reverse. The ancient nations knew nothing of this. Knowledge, taken in excess without hunger, even contrary to desire, has no more the effect of transforming the external life; and remains hidden in a chaotic inner world that the modern man has a curious pride in calling his “ real personality.” He has the substance, he says, and only wants the form ; but this is quite an unreal opposition in a living thing. Our modern culture is for that reason not a living one, because it cannot be understood without that opposition. In other words, it is not a real culture but a kind of knowledge about culture, a complex of various thoughts and feelings about it, from which no decision as to its direction can come. Its real motive force that issues in visible action is often no more than a mere convention, a wretched imitation, or even a shameless caricature. The man probably feels like the snake that has swallowed a rabbit whole and lies still in the sun, avoiding all movement not absolutely necessary. The “ inner life” is now the only thing that matters to education, and all who see it hope that the education may not fail by being too indigestible. Imagine a Greek meeting it; he would observe that for modern men “ education” and “ historical education” seem to mean the same thing, with the difference that the one phrase is longer. And if he spoke of his own theory, that a man can be very well educated without any history at all, people would shake their heads and think they had not heard aright. The Greeks, the famous people of a past still near to us, had the “ unhistorical sense” strongly developed in the period of their greatest power. If a typical child of his age were transported to that world by some enchantment, he would probably find the Greeks very “ uneducated.” And that discovery would betray the closely guarded secret of modern culture to the laughter of the world. For we moderns have nothing of our own. We only become worth notice by filling ourselves to overflowing with foreign customs, arts, philosophies, religions and sciences: we are wandering encyclopaedias, as an ancient Greek who had strayed into our time would probably call us. But the only value of an encyclopaedia lies in the inside, in the contents, not in what is written outside, in the binding or the wrapper. And so the whole of modern culture is essentially internal; the bookbinder prints something like this on the cover: “ Manual of internal culture for external barbarians.” The opposition of inner and outer makes the outer side still more barbarous, as it would naturally be, when the outward growth of a rude people merely developed its primitive inner needs. For what means has nature of repressing too great a luxuriance from without? Only one,-to be affected by it as little as possible, to set it aside and stamp it out at the first opportunity. And so we have the custom of no longer taking real things seriously, we get the feeble personality on which the real and the permanent make so little impression. Men become at last more careless and accommodating in external matters, and the considerable cleft between substance and form is widened; until they have no longer any feeling for barbarism, if only their memories be kept continually titillated, and there flow a constant stream of new things to be known, that can be neatly packed up in the cupboards of their memory. The culture of a people as against this barbarism, can be, I think, described with justice as the “ unity of artistic style in every outward expression of the people’s life.” This must not be misunderstood, as though it were merely a question of the opposition between barbarism and “ fine style.” The people that can be called cultured, must be in a real sense a living unity, and not be miserably cleft asunder into form and substance. If one wish to promote a people’s culture, let him try to promote this higher unity first, and work for the destruction of the modern educative system for the sake of a true education. Let him dare to consider how the health of a people that has been destroyed by history may be restored, and how it may recover its instincts with its honour. I am only speaking, directly, about the Germans of the present day, who have had to suffer more than other people from the feebleness of personality and the opposition of substance and form. “ Form” generally implies for us some convention, disguise or hypocrisy, and if not hated, is at any rate not loved. We have an extraordinary fear of both the word convention and the thing. This fear drove the German from the French school; for he wished to become more
natural, and therefore more German. But he seems to have come to a false conclusion with his “ therefore.” First he ran away from his school of convention, and went by any road he liked: he has come ultimately to imitate voluntarily in a slovenly fashion, what he imitated painfully and often successfully before. So now the lazy fellow lives under French conventions that are actually incorrect: his manner of walking shows it, his conversation and dress, his general way of life. In the belief that he was returning to Nature, he merely followed caprice and comfort, with the smallest possible amount of self-control. Go through any German town; you will see conventions that are nothing but the negative aspect of the national characteristics of foreign states. Everything is colourless, worn out, shoddy and ill-copied. Every one acts at his own sweet will-which is not a strong or serious will-on laws dictated by the universal rush and the general desire for comfort. A dress that made no head ache in its inventing and wasted no time in the making, borrowed from foreign models and imperfectly copied, is regarded as an important contribution to German fashion. The sense of form is ironically disclaimed by the people-for they have the “ sense of substance”: they are famous for their cult of “ inwardness.” But there is also a famous danger in their “ inwardness”: the internal substance cannot be seen from the outside, and so may one day take the opportunity of vanishing, and no one notice its absence, any more than its presence before. One may think the German people to be very far from this danger: yet the foreigner will have some warrant for his reproach that our inward life is too weak and ill-organised to provide a form and external expression for itself. It may in rare cases show itself finely receptive, earnest and powerful, richer perhaps than the inward life of other peoples: but, taken as a whole, it remains weak, as all its fine threads are not tied together in one strong knot. The visible action is not the self-manifestation of the inward life, but only a weak and crude attempt of a single thread to make a show of representing the whole. And thus the German is not to be judged on any one action, for the individual may be as completely obscure after it as before. He must obviously be measured by his thoughts and feelings, which are now expressed in his books; if only the books did not, more than ever, raise the doubt whether the famous inward life is still really sitting in its inaccessible shrine. It might one day vanish and leave behind it only the external life,-with its vulgar pride and vain servility,-to mark the German. Fearful thought!-as fearful as if the inward life still sat there, painted and rouged and disguised, become a play-actress or something worse; as his theatrical experience seems to have taught the quiet observer Grillparzer, standing aside as he did from the main press. “ We feel by theory,” he says. “ We hardly know any more how our contemporaries give expression to their feelings: we make them use gestures that are impossible nowadays. Shakespeare has spoilt us moderns.” This is a single example, its general application perhaps too hastily assumed. But how terrible it would be were that generalisation justified before our eyes! There would be then a note of despair in the phrase, “ We Germans feel by theory, we are all spoilt by history;”-a phrase that would cut at the roots of any hope for a future national culture. For every hope of that kind grows from the belief in the genuineness and immediacy of German feeling, from the belief in an untarnished inward life. Where is our hope or belief, when its spring is muddied, and the inward quality has learned gestures and dances and the use of cosmetics, has learned to express itself “ with due reflection in abstract terms,” and gradually to lose itself? And how should a great productive spirit exist among a nation that is not sure of its inward unity and is divided into educated men whose inner life has been drawn from the true path of education, and uneducated men whose inner life cannot be approached at all? How should it exist, I say, when the people has lost its own unity of feeling, and knows that the feeling of the part calling itself the educated part and claiming the right of controlling the artistic spirit of the nation, is false and hypocritical ? Here and there the judgment and taste of individuals may be higher and finer than the rest, but that is no compensation: it tortures a man to have to speak only to one section and be no longer in sympathy with his people. He would rather bury his treasure now, in disgust at the vulgar patronage of a class, though his heart be filled with tenderness for all. The instinct of the people can no longer meet him half-way; it is useless for them to stretch their arms out to him in yearning. What remains but to turn his quickened hatred against the ban, strike at the barrier raised by the so-called culture, and condemn as judge what blasted and degraded him as a living man and a source of life? He takes a profound insight into fate in exchange for the godlike desire of creation and help, and ends his days as a lonely philosopher, with the wisdom of disillusion. It is the painfullest comedy: he who sees it will feel a sacred obligation on him, and say to himself,-“ Help must come: the higher unity in the nature and soul of a people must be brought back, the cleft between inner and outer must again disappear under the hammer of necessity.” But to what means can he look? What remains to him now but his knowledge? He hopes to plant the feeling of a need, by speaking from the breadth of that knowledge, giving it freely with both hands. From the strong need the strong action may one day arise. And to leave no doubt of the instance I am taking of the need and the knowledge, my testimony shall stand, that it is German unity in, its highest sense which is the goal of our endeavour, far more than political union: it is the unity of the German spirit and life after the annihilation of the antagonism between form and substance, inward life and convention. 5 An excess of history seems to be an enemy to the life of a time, and dangerous in five ways. Firstly, the contrast of inner and outer is emphasised and personality weakened. Secondly, the time comes to imagine that it possesses the rarest of virtues, justice, to a higher degree than any other time. Thirdly, the instincts of a nation are thwarted, the maturity of the individual arrested no less than that of the whole. Fourthly, we get the belief in the old age of mankind, the belief, at all times harmful, that we are late survivals, mere Epigoni. Lastly, an age reaches a dangerous condition of irony with regard to itself, and the still more dangerous state of cynicism, when a cunning egoistic theory of action is matured that maims and at last destroys the vital strength. To return to the first point: the modern man suffers from a weakened personality. The Roman of the Empire ceased to be a Roman through the contemplation of the world that lay at his feet; he lost himself in the crowd of foreigners that streamed into Rome, and degenerated amid the cosmopolitan carnival of arts, worships and moralities. It is the same with the modern man, who is continually having a world-panorama unrolled before his eyes by his historical artists. He is turned into a restless, dilettante spectator, and arrives at a condition when even great wars and revolutions cannot affect him beyond the moment. The war is hardly at an end and it is already converted into thousands of copies of printed matter, and will be soon served up as the latest means of tickling the jaded palates of the historical gourmets. It seems impossible for a strong full chord to be prolonged, however powerfully the strings are swept: it dies away again the next moment in the soft and strength-less echo of history. In ethical language, one never succeeds in staying on a height; your deeds are sudden crashes, and not a long roll of thunder. One may bring the greatest and most marvellous thing to perfection; it must yet
go down to Orcus unhonoured and unsung. For art flies away when you are roofing your deeds with the historical awning. The man who wishes to understand everything in a moment, when he ought to grasp the unintelligible as the sublime by a long struggle, can be called intelligent only in the sense of Schiller’s epigram on the “ reason of reasonable men.” There is something the child sees that he does not see; something the child hears that he does not hear; and this something is the most important thing of all. Because he does not understand it, his understanding is more childish than the child’s and more simple than simplicity itself; in spite of the many clever wrinkles on his parchment face, and the masterly play of his fingers in unravelling the knots. He has lost or destroyed his instinct ; he can no longer trust the “ divine animal” and let the reins hang loose, when his understanding fails him and his way lies through the desert. His individuality is shaken, and left without any sure belief in itself; it sinks into its own inner being, which only means here the disordered chaos of what it has learned, which will never express itself externally, being mere dogma that cannot turn to life. Looking further, we see how the banishment of instinct by history has turned men to shades and abstractions: no one ventures to show a personality, but masks himself as a man of culture, a savant, poet or politician. If one take hold of these masks, believing he has to do with a serious thing and not a mere puppet-show-for they all have an appearance of seriousness-he will find nothing but rags and coloured streamers in his hands. He must deceive himself no more, but cry aloud, “ Off with your jackets, or be what you seem!” A man of the royal stock of seriousness must no longer be a Don Quixote, for he has better things to do than to tilt at such pretended realities. But he must always keep a sharp look about him, call his “ Halt! who goes there?” to all the shrouded figures, and tear the masks from their faces. And see the result! One might have thought that history encouraged men above all to be honest, even if it were only to be honest fools : this used to be its effect, but is so no longer. Historical education and the uniform frock-coat of the citizen are both dominant at the same time. While there has never been such a full-throated chatter about “ free personality,” personalities can be seen no more (to say nothing of free ones); but merely men in uniform, with their coats anxiously pulled over their ears. Individuality has withdrawn itself to its recesses; it is seen no more from the outside, which makes one doubt if it be possible to have causes without effects. Or will a race of eunuchs prove to be necessary to guard the historical harem of the world? We can understand the reason for their aloofness very well. Does it not seem as if their task were to watch over history to see that nothing comes out except other histories, but no deed that might be historical; to prevent personalities becoming “ free,” that is, sincere towards themselves and others, both in word and deed? Only through this sincerity will the inner need and misery of the modern man be brought to the light, and art and religion come as true helpers in the place of that sad hypocrisy of convention and masquerade, to plant a common culture which will answer to real necessities, and not teach, as the present “ liberal education” teaches, to tell lies about these needs, and thus become a walking lie one’s self. In such an age, that suffers from its “ liberal education,” how unnatural, artificial and unworthy will be the conditions under which the sincerest of all sciences, the holy naked goddess Philosophy, must exist! She remains in such a world of compulsion and outward conformity, the subject of the deep monologue of the lonely wanderer or the chance prey of any hunter, the dark secret of the chamber or the daily talk of the old men and children at the university. No one dare fulfil the law of philosophy in himself; no one lives philosophically, with that single-hearted virile faith that forced one of the olden time to bear himself as a Stoic, wherever he was and whatever he did, if he had once sworn allegiance to the Stoa. All modern philosophising is political or official, bound down to be a mere phantasmagoria of learning by our modern governments, churches, universities, moralities and cowardices: it lives by sighing “ if only …” and by knowing that “ it happened once upon a time… .” Philosophy has no place in historical education, if it will be more than the knowledge that lives indoors, and can have no expression in action. Were the modern man once courageous and determined, and not merely such an indoor being even in his hatreds, he would banish philosophy. At present he is satisfied with modestly covering her nakedness. Yes, men think, write, print, speak and teach philosophically: so much is permitted them. It is only otherwise in action, in “ life.” Only one thing is permitted there, and everything else quite impossible: such are the orders of historical education. “ Are these human beings,” one might ask, “ or only machines for thinking, writing and speaking?” Goethe says of Shakespeare: “ No one has more despised correctness of costume than he: he knows too well the inner costume that all men wear alike. You hear that he describes Romans wonderfully; I do not think so: they are flesh-and-blood Englishmen; but at any rate they are men from top to toe, and the Roman toga sits well on them.” Would it be possible, I wonder, to represent our present literary and national heroes, officials and politicians as Romans? I am sure it would not, as they are no men, but incarnate compendia, abstractions made concrete. If they have a character of their own, it is so deeply sunk that it can never rise to the light of day: if they are men, they are only men to a physiologist. To all others they are something else, not men, not “ beasts or gods,” but historical pictures of the march of civilisation, and nothing but pictures and civilisation, form without any ascertainable substance, bad form unfortunately, and uniform at that. And in this way my thesis is to be understood and considered: “ only strong personalities can endure history, the weak are extinguished by it.” History unsettles the feelings when they are not powerful enough to measure the past by themselves. The man who dare no longer trust himself, but asks history against his will for advice “ how he ought to feel now,” is insensibly turned by his timidity into a play-actor, and plays a part, or generally many parts, very badly therefore and superficially. Gradually all connection ceases between the man and his historical subjects. We see noisy little fellows measuring themselves with the Romans as though they were like them: they burrow in the remains of the Greek poets, as if these were corpora for their dissection-and as vilia as their own well-educated corpora might be. Suppose a man is working at Democritus. The question is always on my tongue, why precisely Democritus? Why not Heraclitus, or Philo, or Bacon, or Descartes? And then, why a philosopher? Why not a poet or orator? And why especially a Greek? Why not an Englishman or a Turk? Is not the past large enough to let you find some place where you may disport yourself without becoming ridiculous? But, as I said, they are a race of eunuchs: and to the eunuch one woman is the same as another, merely a woman, “ woman in herself,” the Ever-unapproachable. And it is indifferent what they study, if history itself always remain beautifully “ objective” to them, as men, in fact, who could never make history themselves. And since the Eternal Feminine could never “ draw you upward, you draw it down to you, and being neuter yourselves, regard history as neuter also. But in order that no one may take my comparison of history and the Eternal Feminine too seriously, I will say at once that I hold it, on the contrary, to be the Eternal Masculine: I only add that for those who are “ historically trained”
throughout, it must be quite indifferent which it is; for they are themselves neither man nor woman, nor even hermaphrodite, but mere neuters, or, in more philosophic language, the Eternal Objective, If the personality be once be emptied of its subjectivity, and come to what men call an “ objective” condition, nothing can have any more effect on it. Something good and true may be done, in action, poetry or music: but the hollow culture of the day will look beyond the work and ask the history of the author. If the author have already created something, our historian will set out clearly the past and the probable future course of his development, he will put him with others and compare them, and separate by analysis the choice of his material and his treatment; he will wisely sum the author up and give him general advice for his future path. The most astonishing works may be created; the swarm of historical neuters will always be in their place, ready to consider the author through their long telescopes. The echo is heard at once: but always in the form of “ criticism,” though the critic never dreamed of the work’s possibility a moment before. It never comes to have an influence, but only a criticism: and the criticism itself has no influence, but only breeds another criticism. And so we come to consider the fact of many critics as a mark of influence, that of few or none as a mark of failure. Actually everything remains in the old condition, even in the presence of such “ influence”: men talk a little while of a new thing, and then of some other new thing, and in the meantime they do what they have always done. The historical training of our critics prevents their having an influence in the true sense, an influence on life and action. They put their blotting paper on the blackest writing, and their thick brushes over the gracefullest designs; these they call “ corrections”;-and that is all. Their critical pens never cease to fly, for they have lost power over them; they are driven by their pens instead of driving them. The weakness of modern personality comes out well in the measureless overflow of criticism, in the want of self-mastery, and in what the Romans called: impotentia]]. 6 But leaving these weaklings, let us turn rather to a point of strength for which the modern man is famous. Let us ask the painful question whether he has the right in virtue of his historical “ objectivity” to call himself strong and just in a higher degree than the man of another age. Is it true that this objectivity has its source in a heightened sense of the need for justice? Or, being really an effect of quite other causes, does it only have the appearance of coming from justice, and really lead to an unhealthy prejudice in favour of the modern man? Socrates thought it near madness to imagine one possessed a virtue without really possessing it. Such imagination has certainly more danger in it than the contrary madness of a positive vice. For of this there is still a cure; but the other makes a man or a time daily worse, and therefore more unjust. No one has a higher claim to our reverence than the man with the feeling and the strength for justice. For the highest and rarest virtues unite and are lost in it, as an unfathomable sea absorbs the streams that flow from every side. The hand of the just man, who is called to sit in judgment, trembles no more when it holds the scales: he piles the weights inexorably against his own side, his eyes are not dimmed as the balance rises and falls, and his voice is neither hard nor broken when he pronounces the sentence. Were he a cold demon of knowledge, he would cast round him the icy atmosphere of an awful, superhuman majesty, that we should fear, not reverence. But he is a man, and has tried to rise from a careless doubt to a strong certainty, from a gentle tolerance to the imperative “ thou must”; from the rare virtue of magnanimity to the rarest, of justice. He has come to be like that demon without being more than a poor mortal at the outset; above all, he has to atone to himself for his humanity and tragically shatter his own nature on the rock of an impossible virtue.-All this places him on a lonely height as the most reverend example of the human race. For truth is his aim, not in the form of cold ineffectual knowledge, but the truth of the judge who punishes according to law; not as the selfish possession of an individual, but the sacred authority that removes the boundary stones from all selfish possessions; truth, in a word, as the tribunal of the world, and not as the chance prey of a single hunter. The search for truth is often thoughtlessly praised: but it only has anything great in it if the seeker have the sincere unconditional will for justice. Its roots are in justice alone: but a whole crowd of different motives may combine in the search for it, that have nothing to do with truth at all; curiosity, for example, or dread of ennui, envy, vanity, or amusement. Thus the world seems to be full of men who “ serve truth”: and yet the virtue of justice is seldom present, more seldom known, and almost always mortally hated. On the other hand a throng of sham virtues has entered in at all times with pomp and honour. Few in truth serve truth, as only few have the pure will for justice; and very few even of these have the strength to be just. The will alone is not enough: the impulse to justice without the power of judgment has been the cause of the greatest suffering to men. And thus the common good could, require nothing better than for the seed of this power to be strewn as widely as possible, that the fanatic may be distinguished from the true judge, and the blind desire from the conscious power. But there are no means of planting a power of judgment: and so when one speaks to men of truth and justice, they will be ever troubled by the doubt whether it be the fanatic or the judge who is speaking to them. And they must be pardoned for always treating the “ servants of truth” with special kindness, who possess neither the will nor the power to judge and have set before them the task of finding “ pure knowledge without reference to consequences,” knowledge, in plain terms, that comes to nothing. There are very many truths which are unimportant; problems that require no struggle to solve, to say nothing of sacrifice. And in this safe realm of indifference a man may very successfully become a “ cold demon of knowledge.” And yet-if we find whole regiments of learned inquirers being turned to such demons in some age specially favourable to them, it is always unfortunately possible that the age is lacking in a great and strong sense of justice, the noblest spring of the so-called impulse to truth. Consider the historical virtuoso of the present time: is he the justest man of his age? True, he has developed in himself such a delicacy and sensitiveness that “ nothing human is alien to him.” Times and persons most widely separated come together in the concords of his lyre. He has become a passive instrument, whose tones find an echo in similar instruments : until the whole atmosphere of a time is filled with such echoes, all buzzing in one soft chord. Yet I think one only hears the overtones of the original historical note : its rough powerful quality can be no longer guessed from these thin and shrill vibrations. The original note sang of action, need, and terror; the overtone lulls us into a soft dilettante sleep. It is as though the heroic symphony had been arranged for two flutes for the use of dreaming opium-smokers. We can now judge how these virtuosi stand towards the claim of the modern man to a higher and purer conception of justice. This virtue has never a pleasing quality; it never charms; it is harsh and strident. Generosity stands very low on the ladder of the virtues in comparison; and generosity is the mark of a few rare historians! Most of them only get as far as tolerance, in other words they leave what cannot be explained away, they correct it and touch it up
condescendingly, on the tacit assumption that the novice will count it as justice if the past be narrated without harshness or open expressions of hatred. But only superior strength can really judge; weakness must tolerate, if it do not pretend to be strength and turn justice to a play- actress. There is still a dreadful class of historians remaining-clever, stern and honest, but narrow-minded: who have the “ good will” to be just with a pathetic belief in their actual judgments, which are all false; for the same reason, almost, as the verdicts of the usual juries are false. How difficult it is to find a real historical talent, if we exclude all the disguised egoists, and the partisans who pretend to take up an impartial attitude for the sake of their own unholy game! And we also exclude the thoughtless folk who write history in the naive faith that justice resides in the popular view of their time, and that to write in the spirit of the time is to be just; a faith that is found in all religions, and which, in religion, serves very well. The measurement of the opinions and deeds of the past by the universal opinions of the present is called “ objectivity” by these simple people: they find the canon of all truth here: their work is to adapt the past to the present triviality. And they call all historical writing “ subjective” that does not regard these popular opinions as canonical. Might not an illusion lurk in the highest interpretation of the word objectivity? We understand by it a certain standpoint in the historian, who sees the procession of motive and consequence too clearly for it to have an effect on his own personality. We think of the aesthetic phenomenon of the detachment from all personal concern with which the painter sees the picture and forgets himself, in a stormy landscape, amid thunder and lightning, or on a rough sea: and we require the same artistic vision and absorption in his object from the historian. But it is only a superstition to say that the picture given to such a man by the object really shows the truth of things. Unless it be that objects are expected in such moments to paint or photograph themselves by their own activity on a purely passive medium! But this would be a myth, and a bad one at that. One forgets that this moment is actually the powerful and spontaneous moment of creation in the artist, of “ composition” in its highest form, of which the result will be an artistically, but not an historically, true picture. To think objectively, in this sense, of history is the work of the dramatist: to think one thing with another, and weave the elements into a single whole; with the presumption that the unity of plan must be put into the objects if it be not already there. So man veils and subdues the past, and expresses his impulse to art-but not his impulse to truth or justice. Objectivity and justice have nothing to do with each other. There could be a kind of historical writing that had no drop of common fact in it and yet could claim to be called in the highest degree objective. Grillparzer goes so far as to say that “ history is nothing but the manner in which the spirit of man apprehends facts that are obscure to him, links things together whose connection heaven only knows, replaces the unintelligible by something intelligible, puts his own ideas of causation into the external world, which can perhaps be explained only from within: and assumes the existence of chance, where thousands of small causes may be really at work. Each man has his own individual needs, and so millions of tendencies are running together, straight or crooked, parallel or across, forward or backward, helping or hindering each other. They have all the appearance of chance, and make it impossible, quite apart from all natural influences, to establish any universal lines on which past events must have run.” But as a result of this so-called “ objective” way of looking at things, such a “ must” ought to be made clear. It is a presumption that takes a curious form if adopted by the historian as a dogma. Schiller is quite clear about its truly subjective nature when he says of the historian, “ one event after the other begins to draw away from blind chance and lawless freedom, and take its place as the member of an harmonious whole-which is of course only apparent in its presentation. But what is one to think of the innocent statement, wavering between tautology and nonsense, of a famous historical virtuoso? “ It seems that all human actions and impulses are subordinate to the process of the material world, that works unnoticed, powerfully and irresistibly.” In such a sentence one no longer finds obscure wisdom in the form of obvious folly; as in the saying of Goethe’s gardener, “ Nature may be forced but not compelled,” or in the notice on the side-show at a fair, in Swift: “ The largest elephant in the world, except himself, to be seen here.” For what opposition is there between human action and the process of the world? It seems to me that such historians cease to be instructive as soon as they begin to generalise; their weakness is shown by their obscurity. In other sciences the generalisations are the most important things, as they contain the laws. But if such generalisations as these are to stand as laws, the historian’s labour is lost; for the residue of truth, after the obscure and insoluble part is removed, is nothing but the commonest knowledge. The smallest range of experience will teach it. But to worry whole peoples for the purpose, and spend many hard years of work on it, is like crowding one scientific experiment on another long after the law can be deduced from the results already obtained: and this absurd excess of experiment has been the bane of all natural science since Zollner. If the value of a drama lay merely in its final scene, the drama itself would be a very long, crooked and laborious road to the goal: and I hope history will not find its whole significance in general propositions, and regard them as its blossom and fruit. On the contrary, its real value lies in inventing ingenious variations on a probably commonplace theme, in raising the popular melody to a universal symbol and showing what a world of depth, power and beauty exists in it. But this requires above all a great artistic faculty, a creative vision from a height, the loving study of the data of experience, the free elaborating of a given type,-objectivity in fact, though this time as a positive quality. Objectivity is so often merely a phrase. Instead of the quiet gaze of the artist that is lit by an inward flame, we have an affectation of tranquillity; just as a cold detachment may mask a lack of moral feeling. In some cases a triviality of thought, the everyday wisdom that is too dull not to seem calm and disinterested, comes to represent the artistic condition in which the subjective side has quite sunk out of sight. Everything is favoured that does not rouse emotion, and the driest phrase is the correct one. They go so far as to accept a man who is not affected at all by some particular moment in the past as the right man to describe it. This is the usual relation of the Greeks and the classical scholars. They have nothing to do with each other-and this is called “ objectivity”! The intentional air of detachment that is assumed for effect, the sober art of the superficial motive-hunter is most exasperating when the highest and rarest things are in question; and it is the vanity of the historian that drives him to this attitude of indifference. He goes to justify the axiom that a man’s vanity corresponds to his lack of wit. No, be honest at any rate! Do not pretend to the artist’s strength, that is the real objectivity; do not try to be just, if you are not born to that dread vocation. As if it were the task of every time to be just to everything before it! Ages and generations have never the right to be the judges of all previous ages and generations: only to the rarest men in them can that difficult mission fall. Who compels you to judge? If it is your wish-you must prove first that you are capable of justice. As judges, you must stand higher than that which is to be judged: as it is, you have only come later.
The guests that come last to the table should rightly take the last places: and will you take the first? Then do some great and mighty deed: the place may be prepared for you then, even though you do come last. You can only explain the past by what is highest in the present. Only by straining the noblest qualities you have to their highest power will you find out what is greatest in the past, most worth knowing and preserving. Like by like! otherwise you will draw the past to your own level. Do not Believe any history that does not spring from the mind of a rare spirit. You will know the quality of the spirit, by its being forced to say something universal, or to repeat something that is known already; the fine historian must have the power of coining the known into a thing never heard before and proclaiming the universal so simply and profoundly that the simple is lost in the profound, and the profound in the simple. No one can be a great historian and artist, and a shallowpate at the same time. But one must not despise the workers who sift and cast together the material because they can never become great historians. They must, still less, be confounded with them, for they are the necessary bricklayers and apprentices in the service of the master: just as the French used to speak, more naively than a German would, of the “ historiens de M. Thiers.” These workmen should gradually become extremely learned, but never, for that reason, turn to be masters. Great learning and great shallowness go together very well under one hat. Thus, history is to be written by the man of experience and character. He who has not lived through something greater and nobler than others, will riot be able to explain anything great and noble in the past. The language of the past is always oracular: you will only understand if as builders of the future who know the present. We can only explain the extraordinarily wide influence of Delphi by the fact that the Delphic priests had an exact knowledge of the past: and, similarly, only he who is building up the future has a right to judge the past. If you set a great aim before your eyes, you control at the same time the itch for analysis that makes the present into a desert for you, and all rest, all peaceful growth and ripening, impossible. Hedge yourselves with a great, all-embracing hope, and strive on. Make of yourselves a mirror where the future may see itself, and forget the superstition that you are Epigoni. You have enough to ponder and find out, in pondering the life of the future: but do not ask history to show you the means and the instrument to it. If you live yourselves back into the history of great men you will find inn it the high command to come to maturity and leave that blighting system of cultivation offered by your time: which sees its own profit in not allowing you to become ripe, that it may use and dominate you while you are yet unripe. And if you want biographies, do not look for those with the legend “ Mr. So-and-so and his times,” but for one whose title-page might be inscribed “ a fighter against his time.” Feast your souls on Plutarch, and dare to believe in yourselves when you believe in his heroes. A hundred such men-educated against the fashion of to-day, made familiar with the heroic, and come to maturity-are enough to give an eternal quietus to the noisy sham education of this time. 7 The unrestrained historical sense, pushed to its logical extreme, uproots the future, because it destroys illusions and robs existing things of the only atmosphere in which they can live. Historical justice, even if practised conscientiously, with a pure heart, is therefore a dreadful virtue, because it always undermines and ruins the living thing: its judgment always means annihilation. If there be no constructive impulse behind the historical one, if the clearance of rubbish be not merely to leave the ground free for the hopeful living future to build its house, if justice alone be supreme, the creative instinct is sapped and discouraged. A religion, for example, that has to be turned into a matter of historical knowledge by the power of pure justice, and to be scientifically studied throughout, is destroyed at the end of it all. For the historical audit brings so much to light which is false and absurd, violent and inhuman, that the condition of pious illusion falls to pieces. And a thing can only live through a pious illusion. For man is creative only through love and in the shadow of love’s illusions, only through the unconditional belief in perfection and righteousness. Everything that forces a man to be no longer unconditioned in his love, cuts at the root of his strength: he must wither, and be dishonoured. Art has the opposite effect to history: and only perhaps if history suffer transformation into a pure work of art, can it preserve instincts or arouse them. Such history would be quite against the analytical and inartistic tendencies of our time, and even be considered false. But the history that merely destroys without any impulse to construct, will in the long-run make its instruments tired of life; for such men destroy illusions, and “ he who destroys illusions in himself and others is punished by the ultimate tyrant, Nature.” For a time a man can take up history like any other study, and it will be perfectly harmless. Recent theology seems to have entered quite innocently into partnership with history, and scarcely sees even now that it has unwittingly bound itself to the Voltairean ecrasez![1] No one need expect from that any new and powerful constructive impulse: they might as well have let the so-called Protestant Union serve as the cradle of a new religion, and the jurist Holtzendorf, the editor of the far more dubiously named Protestant Bible, be its John the Baptist. This state of innocence may be continued for some time by the Hegelian philosophy,-still seething in some of the older heads,-by which men can distinguish the “ idea of Christianity” from its various imperfect “ manifestations”; and persuade themselves that it is the “ self-movement of the Idea” that is ever particularising itself in purer and purer forms, and at last becomes the purest, most transparent, in fact scarcely visible form in the brain of the present theologus liberalis vulgaris. But to listen to this, pure Christianity speaking its mind about the earlier impure Christianity, the uninitiated hearer would often get the impression that the talk was not of Christianity at all but of …-what are we to think? if we find Christianity described by the “ greatest theologian of the century”[2] as the religion that claims to “ find itself in all real religions and some other barely possible religions,” and if the “ true church” is to be a thing “ which may become a liquid mass with no fixed outline, with no fixed place for its different parts, but everything to be peacefully welded together”-what, I ask again, are we to think ? Christianity has been denaturalised by historical treatment-which in its most complete form means “ just” treatment until it has been resolved into pure knowledge and destroyed in the process. This can be studied in everything that has life. For it ceases to have life if it be perfectly dissected, and lives in pain and anguish as soon as the historical dissection begins. There are some who believe in the saving power of German music to revolutionise the German nature. They angrily exclaim against the special injustice done to our culture, when such men as Mozart and Beethoven are beginning to be spattered with the learned mud of the biographers and forced to answer a thousand searching questions on the rack of historical criticism. Is it not premature death, or at least mutilation, for anything whose living influence is not yet exhausted, when men turn their curious eyes to the little minutiae of life and art, and look for problems of knowledge where one ought to learn to live, and forget problems? Set a couple of these modern biographers to consider the origins of Christianity or the Lutheran reformation: their sober, practical investigations would be quite sufficient to make all
spiritual “ action at a distance” impossible: just as the smallest animal can prevent the growth of the mightiest oak by simply eating up the acorn. All living things need an atmosphere, a mysterious mist, around them. If that veil be taken away and a religion, an art, or a genius condemned to revolve like a star without an atmosphere, we must not be surprised if it becomes hard and unfruitful, and soon withers. It is so with all great things “ that never prosper without some illusion,” as Hans Sachs says in the Meistersinger. Every people, every man even, who would become ripe, needs such a veil of illusion, such a protecting cloud. But now men hate to become ripe, for they honour history above life. They cry in triumph that “ science is now beginning to rule life.” Possibly it might; but a life thus ruled Is not of much value. It is not such true life, and promises much less for the future than the life that used to be guided not by science, but by instincts and powerful illusions. But this is not to be the age of ripe, alert and harmonious personalities, but of work that may be of most use to the commonwealth. Men are to be fashioned to the needs of the time, that they may soon take their place in the machine. They must work in the factory of the “ common good” before they are ripe, or rather to prevent them becoming ripe ; for this would be a luxury that would draw away a deal of power from the “ labour market.” Some birds are blinded that they may sing better; I do not think men sing to-day better than their grandfathers, though I am sure they are blinded early. But light, too clear, too sudden and dazzling, is the infamous means used to blind them. The young man is kicked through all the centuries: boys who know nothing of war, diplomacy, or commerce are considered fit to be introduced to political history. We moderns also run through art galleries and hear concerts in the same way as the young man runs through history. We can feel that one thing, sounds differently from another, and pronounce on the different “ effects.” And the power of gradually losing all feelings of strangeness or astonishment, and finally being pleased at anything, is called the historical sense, or historical culture. The crowd of influences streaming on the young soul is so great, the clods of barbarism and violence flung at him so strange and overwhelming, that an assumed stupidity is his only refuge. Where there is a subtler and stronger self -consciousness we find another emotion too-disgust. The young man has become homeless: he doubts all ideas, all moralities. He knows “ it was different in every age, and what you are does not matter.” In a heavy apathy he lets opinion on opinion pass by him, and understands the meaning of Holderlin’s words when he read the work of Diogenes Laertius on the lives and doctrines of the Greek philosophers: “ I have seen here too what has often occurred to me, that the change and waste in men’s thoughts and systems is far more tragic than the fates that overtake what men are accustomed to call the only realities.” No, such study of history bewilders and overwhelms, It is not necessary for youth, as the ancients show, but even in the highest degree dangerous, as the moderns show. Consider the historical student, the heir of ennui, that appears even in his boyhood. He has the “ methods” for original work, the “ correct ideas” and the airs of the master at his fingers’ ends. A little isolated period of the past is marked out for sacrifice. He cleverly applies his method, and produces something, or rather, in prouder phrase, “ creates” something. He becomes a “ servant of truth” and a ruler in the great domain of history. If he was what they call ripe as a boy, he is now over-ripe. You only need shake him and wisdom will rattle down into your lap; but the wisdom is rotten, and every apple has its worm. Believe me, if men work in the factory of science and have to make themselves useful before they are really ripe, science is ruined as much as the slaves who have been employed too soon. I am sorry to use the common jargon about slave-owners and taskmasters in respect of such conditions, that might be thought free from any economic taint: but the words “ factory, labour-market, auction-sale, practical use,” and all the auxiliaries of egoism, come involuntarily to the lips in describing the younger generation of savants. Successful mediocrity tends to become still more mediocre, science still more ” useful.” Our modern savants are only wise on one subject, in all the rest they are, to say the least, different from those of the old stamp. In spite of that they demand honour and profit for themselves, as if the state and public opinion were bound to take the new coinage for the same value as the old. The carters have made a trade-compact among themselves, and settled that genius is superfluous, for every carrier is being re-stamped as one. And probably a later age will see that their edifices are only carted together and not built. To those who have ever on their lips the modern cry of battle and sacrifice-“ Division of labour! fall into line!” we may say roundly: “ If you try to further the progress of science as quickly as possible, you will end by destroying it as quickly as possible; just as the hen is worn out which you force to lay too many eggs.” The progress of science has been amazingly rapid in the last decade; but consider the savants, those exhausted hens. They are certainly not “ harmonious” natures: they can merely cackle more than before, because they lay eggs oftener: but the eggs are always smaller, though their books are bigger. The natural result of it all is the favourite “ popularising” of science (or rather its feminising and infantising), the villainous habit of cutting the cloth of science to fit the figure of the “ general public.” Goethe saw the abuse in this, and demanded that science should only influence the outer world by way of a nobler ideal of action. The older generation of savants had good reason for thinking this abuse an oppressive burden: the modern savants have an equally good reason for welcoming it, because, leaving their little corner of knowledge out of account, they are part of the “ general public” themselves, and its needs are theirs. They only require to take themselves less seriously to be able to open their little kingdom successfully to popular curiosity. This easy-going behaviour is called “ the modest condescension of the savant to the people”; whereas in reality he has only “ descended” to himself, so far as he is not a savant but a plebeian. Rise to the conception of a people, you learned men; you can never have one noble or high enough. If you thought much of the people, you would have compassion towards them, and shrink from offering your historical aquafortis as a refreshing drink. But you really think very little of them, for you dare not take any reasonable pains for their future; and you act like practical pessimists, men who feel the coming catastrophe and become indifferent and careless of their own and others’ existence. “ If only the earth last for us: and if it do not last, it is no matter.” Thus they come to live an ironical existence. 8 It may seem a paradox, though it is none, that I should attribute a kind of “ ironical self-consciousness” to an age that is generally so honestly, and clamorously, vain of its historical training; and should see a suspicion hovering near it that there is really nothing to be proud of, and a fear lest the time for rejoicing at historical knowledge may soon have gone by. Goethe has shown a similar riddle in man’s nature, in his remarkable study of Newton: he finds a “ troubled feeling of his own error” at the base-or rather on the height-of his being, just as if he was conscious at times of having a deeper insight into things, that vanished the moment after. This gave him a certain ironical view of his own nature. And one finds that the greater and more developed “ historical men” are conscious of all the superstition and absurdity in the belief that a people’s education need be so extremely historical as
it is; the mightiest nations, mightiest in action and influence, have lived otherwise, and their youth has been trained otherwise. The knowledge gives a sceptical turn to their minds. “ The absurdity and superstition,” these sceptics say, “ suit men like ourselves, who come as the latest withered shoots of a gladder and mightier stock, and fulfil Hesiod’s prophecy, that men will one day be born gray-headed, and that Zeus will destroy that generation as soon as the sign be visible.” Historical culture is really a kind of inherited grayness, and those who have borne its mark from childhood must believe instinctively in the old age of mankind. To old age belongs the old man’s business of looking back and casting up his accounts, of seeking consolation in the memories of the past,-in historical culture. But the human race is tough and persistent, and will not admit that the lapse of a thousand years, or a hundred thousand, entitles any one to sum up its progress from the past to the future; that is, it will not be observed as a whole at all by that infinitesimal atom, the individual man. What is there in a couple of thousand years-the period of thirty-four consecutive human lives of sixty years each to make us speak of youth at the beginning, and “ the old age of mankind” at the end of them? Does not this paralysing belief in a fast-fading humanity cover the misunderstanding of a theological idea, inherited from the Middle Ages, that the end of the world is approaching and we are waiting anxiously for the judgment? Does not the increasing demand for historical judgment give us that idea in a new dress? as if our time were the latest possible time, and commanded to hold that universal judgment of the past, which the Christian never expected from a man, but from “ the Son of Man.” The memento mori, spoken to humanity as well as the individual, was a sting that never ceased to pain, the crown of mediaeval knowledge and consciousness. The opposite message of a later time, memento vivere[3], is spoken rather timidly, without the full power of the lungs; and there is something almost dishonest about it. For mankind still keeps to its memento mori, and shows it by the universal need for history; science may flap its wings as it will, it has never been able to gain the free air. A deep feeling of hopelessness has remained, and taken the historical colouring that has now darkened and depressed all higher education. A religion that, of all the hours of man’s life, thinks the last the most important, that has prophesied the end of earthly life and condemned all creatures to live in the fifth act of a tragedy, may call forth the subtlest and noblest powers of man, but it is an enemy to all new planting, to all bold attempts or free aspirations. It opposes all flight into the unknown, because it has no life or hope there itself. It only lets the new bud press forth on sufferance, to blight it in its own good time: “ it might lead life astray and give it a false value.” What the Florentines did under the influence of Savonarola’s exhortations, when they made the famous holocaust of pictures, manuscripts, masks and mirrors, Christianity would like to do with every culture that allured to further effort and bore that memento vivere on its standard. And if it cannot take the direct way-the way of main force-it gains its end all the same by allying itself with historical culture, though generally without its connivance; and speaking through its mouth, turns away every fresh birth with a shrug of its shoulders, and makes us feel all the more that we are late-comers and Epigoni, that we are, in a word, born with gray hair. The deep and serious contemplation of the unworthiness of all past action, of the world ripe for judgment, has been whittled down to the sceptical consciousness that it is anyhow a good thing to know all that has happened, as it is too late to do anything better. The historical sense makes its servants passive and retrospective. Only in moments of forgetfulness, when that sense is dormant, does the man who is sick of the historical fever ever act; though he only analyses his deed again after it is over (which prevents it from having any further consequences), and finally puts it on the dissecting table for the purposes of history. In this sense we are still living in the Middle Ages, and history is still a disguised theology; just as the reverence with which the unlearned layman looks on the learned class is inherited through the clergy. What men gave formerly to the Church they give now, though in smaller measure, to science. But the fact of giving at all is the work of the Church, not of the modern spirit, which among its other good qualities has something of the miser in it, and is a bad hand at the excellent virtue of liberality. These words may not be very acceptable, any more than my derivation of the excess of history from the mediaeval memento mori and the hopelessness that Christianity bears in its heart towards all future ages of earthly existence. But you should always try to replace my hesitating explanations by a better one. For the origin of historical culture, and of its absolutely radical antagonism to the spirit of a new time and a “ modern consciousness” must itself be known by a historical process. History must solve the problem of history, science must turn its sting against itself. This threefold “ must” is the imperative of the “ new spirit,” if it is really to contain something new, powerful, vital and original. Or is it true that we Germans-to leave the Romance nations out of account must always be mere “ followers” in all the higher reaches of culture, because that is all we can be? The words of Wilhelm Wackernagel are well worth pondering: “ We Germans are a nation of ‘followers’ and with all our higher science and even our faith, are merely the successors of the ancient world. Even those who are opposed to it are continually breathing the immortal spirit of classical culture with that of Christianity: and if any one could separate these two elements from the living air surrounding the soul of man, there would not be much remaining for a spiritual life to exist on.” Even if we would rest content with our vocation to follow antiquity, even if we decided to take it in an earnest and strenuous spirit and to show our high prerogative in our earnestness,-we should yet be compelled to ask whether it were our eternal destiny to be pupils of a fading antiquity. We might be allowed at some time to put our aim higher and further above us. And after congratulating ourselves on having brought that secondary spirit of Alexandrian culture in us to such marvellous productiveness-through our “ universal history”-we might go on to place before us, as our noblest prize, the still higher task of striving beyond and above this Alexandrian world; and bravely find our prototypes in the ancient Greek world, where all was great, natural and human. But it is just there that we find the reality of a true unhistorical culture-and in spite of that, or perhaps because of it, an unspeakably rich and vital culture. Were we Germans nothing but followers, we could not be anything greater or prouder than the lineal inheritors and followers of such a culture. This however must be added. The thought of being Epigoni, that is often a torture, can yet create a spring of hope for the future, to the individual as well as the people: so far, that is, as we can regard ourselves as the heirs and followers of the marvellous classical power, and see therein both our honour and our spur. But not as the late and bitter fruit of a powerful stock, giving that stock a further spell of cold life, as antiquaries and gravediggers. Such late-comers live truly an ironical existence. Annihilation follows their halting walk on tiptoe through life. They shudder before it in the midst of their rejoicing over the past. They are living memories, and their own memories have no meaning; for there are none to inherit them. And thus they are wrapped in the melancholy thought that their life is an injustice, which no future life can set right again. Suppose that these antiquaries, these late arrivals,
were to change their painful ironic modesty for a certain shamelessness. Suppose we heard them saying, aloud, “ The race is at its zenith, for it has manifested itself consciously for the first time.” We should have a comedy, in which the dark meaning of a certain very celebrated philosophy would unroll itself for the benefit of German culture. I believe there has been no dangerous turning-point in the progress of German culture in this century that has not been made more dangerous by the enormous and still living influence of this Hegelian philosophy. The belief that one is a late-comer in the world is, anyhow, harmful and degrading: but it must appear frightful and devastating when it raises our late-comer to godhead, by a neat turn of the wheel, as the true meaning and object of all past creation, and his conscious misery is set up as the perfection of the world’s history. Such a point of view has accustomed the Germans to talk of a “ world-process,” and justify their own time as its necessary result. And it has put history in the place of the other spiritual powers, art and religion, as the one sovereign; inasmuch as it is the “ Idea realising itself,” the “ Dialectic of the spirit of the nations,” and the “ tribunal of the world.” History understood in this Hegelian way has been contemptuously called God’s sojourn upon earth,-though the God was first created by the history. He, at any rate, became transparent and intelligible inside Hegelian skulls, and has risen through all the dialectically possible steps in his being up to the manifestation of the Self: so that for Hegel the highest and final stage of the worldprocess came together in his own Berlin existence. He ought to have said that everything after him was merely to be regarded as the musical coda of the great historical rondo,-or rather, as simply superfluous. He has not said it; and thus he has implanted in a generation leavened throughout by him the worship of the “ power of history,” that practically turns every moment into a sheer gaping at success, into an idolatry of the actual: for which we have now discovered the characteristic phrase “ to adapt ourselves to circumstances.” But the man who has once learnt to crook the knee and bow the head before the power of history, nods “ yes” at last, like a Chinese doll, to every power, whether it be a government or a public opinion or a numerical majority; and his limbs move correctly as the power pulls the string. If each success have come by a “ rational necessity” and every event show the victory of logic or the “ Idea”, then-down on your knees quickly, and let every step in the ladder of success have its reverence! There are no more living mythologies, you say”? Religions are at their last gasp? Look at the religion of the power of history, and the priests of the mythology of Ideas, with their scarred knees! Do not all the virtues follow in the train of the new faith? And shall we not call it unselfishness, when the historical man lets himself be turned into an “ objective” mirror of all that is? Is it not magnanimity to renounce all power in heaven and earth in order to adore the mere fact of power? Is it not justice, always to hold the balance of forces in your hands and observe which is the stronger and heavier? And what a school of politeness is such a contemplation of the past! To take everything objectively, to be angry at nothing, to love nothing, to understand everythingmakes one gentle and pliable. Even if a man brought up in this school will show himself openly offended, one is just as pleased, knowing it is only meant in the artistic sense of ira et studium though it is really sine ira et studio.[4] What old-fashioned thoughts I have on such a combination of virtue and mythology! But they must out, however one may laugh at them. I would even say that history always teaches-“ it was once,” and morality-“ it ought not to be, or have been.” So history becomes a compendium of actual immorality. But how wrong would one be to regard history as the judge of this actual immorality! Morality is offended by the fact that a Raphael had to die at thirty-six; such a being ought not to die. If you came to the help of history, as the apologists of the actual, you would say: “ he had spoken everything that was in him to speak, a longer life would only have enabled him to create a similar beauty, and not a new beauty,” and so on. Thus you become an advocatus diaboli[5] by setting up the success, the fact, as your idol: whereas the fact is always dull, at all times more like a calf than a god. Your apologies for history are helped by ignorance: for it is only because you do not know what a natura naturans like Raphael is, that you are not on fire when you think it existed once and can never exist again. Some one has lately tried to tell us that Goethe had out-lived himself with his eighty-two years: and yet I would gladly take two of Goethe’s “ outlived” years in exchange for whole cartloads of fresh modern lifetimes, to have another set of such conversations as those with Eckermann, and be preserved from all the “ modern” talk of these esquires of the moment. How few living men have a right to live, as against those mighty dead! That the many live and those few live no longer, is simply a brutal truth, that is, a piece of unalterable folly, a blank wall of “ it was once so” against the moral judgment “ it ought not to have been.” Yes, against the moral judgment! For you may speak of what virtue you will, of justice, courage, magnanimity, of wisdom and human compassion,-you will find the virtuous man will always rise against the blind force of facts, the tyranny of the actual, and submit himself to laws that are not the fickle laws of history. He ever swims against the waves of history, either by fighting his passions, as the nearest brute facts of his existence, or by training himself to honesty amid the glittering nets spun round him by falsehood. Were history nothing more than the “ all-embracing system of passion and error”, man would have to read it as Goethe wished Werther to be read;-just as if it called to him, “ Be a man and follow me not!” But fortunately history also keeps alive for us the memory of the great “ fighters against history,” that is, against the blind power of the actual; it puts itself in the pillory just by glorifying the true historical nature in men who troubled themselves very little about the “ thus it is,” in order that they might follow a “ thus it must be” with greater joy and greater pride. Not to drag their generation to the grave, but to found a new one-that is the motive that ever drives them onward; and even if they are born late, there is a way of living by which they can forget it-and future generations will know them only as the first-comers. 9 Is perhaps our time such a “ first-comer”? Its historical sense is so strong, and has such universal and boundless expression, that future times will commend it, if only for this, as a first-comer-if there be any future time, in the sense of future culture. But here comes a grave doubt. Close to the modern man’s pride there stands his irony about himself, his consciousness that he must live in a historical, or twilit, atmosphere, the fear that he can retain none of his youthful hopes and powers. Here and there one goes further into cynicism, and justifies the course of history, nay, the whole evolution of the world, as simply leading up to the modern man, according to the cynical canon:-“ what you see now had to come, man had to be thus and not otherwise, no one can stand against this necessity.” He who cannot rest in, a state of irony flies for refuge to the cynicism. The last decade makes him a present of one of its most beautiful inventions, a full and well-rounded phrase for this cynicism: he calls his way of living thoughtlessly and after the fashion of his time, “ the full surrender of his personality to the world-process.” The personality and the world-process! The world- process and the personality of the earthworm! If only one did not eternally hear
the word “ world, world, world,” that hyperbole of all hyperboles; when we should only speak, in a decent manner, of “ man, man, man”! Heirs of the Greeks and Romans, of Christianity? All that seems nothing to the cynics. But “ heirs of the world-process”; the final target of the world-process; the meaning and solution of all riddles of the universe, the ripest fruit on the tree of knowledge!-that is what I call a right noble thought: by this token are the firstlings of every time to be known, although they may have arrived last. The historical imagination has never flown so far, even in a dream; for now the history of man is merely the continuation of that of animals and plants: the universal historian finds traces of himself even in the utter depths of the sea, in the living slime. He stands astounded in face of the enormous way that man has run, and his gaze quivers before the mightier wonder, the modern man who can see all this way! He stands proudly on the pyramid of the world-process: and while he lays the final stone of his knowledge, he seems to cry aloud to listening Nature: “ We are at the top, we are the top, we are the completion of Nature!” O thou too proud European of the nineteenth century, art thou not mad? Thy knowledge does not complete Nature, it only kills thine own nature! Measure the height of what thou knowest by the depths of thy power to do. Thou climbest the sunbeams of knowledge up towards heaven-but also down to Chaos. Thy manner of going is fatal to thee; the ground slips from under thy feet into the unknown; thy life has no other stay, but only spider’s webs that every new stroke of thy knowledge tears asunder.-But not another serious word about this, for there is a lighter side to it all. The moralist, the artist, the saint and the statesman, may well be troubled, when they see that all foundations are breaking up in mad unconscious ruin, and resolving themselves into the ever flowing stream of becoming; that all creation is being tirelessly spun into webs of history by the modern man, the great spider in the mesh of the world-net. We ourselves may be glad for once in a way that we see it all in the shining magic mirror of a philosophical parodist, in whose brain the time has come to an ironical consciousness of itself, to a point even of wickedness, in Goethe’s phrase. Hegel once said, “ when the spirit makes a fresh start, we philosophers are at hand.” Our time did make a fresh start-into irony, and lo! Edward von Hartmann was at hand, with his famous Philosophy of the Unconscious-or, more plainly, his philosophy of unconscious irony. We have seldom read a more jovial production, a greater philosophical joke than Hartmann’s book. Any one whom it does not fully enlighten about “ becoming,” who is not swept and garnished throughout by it, is ready to become a monument of the past himself. The beginning and end of the world-process, from the first throb of consciousness to its final leap into nothingness, with the task of our generation settled for it;-all drawn from that clever fount of inspiration, the Unconscious, and glittering in Apocalyptic light, imitating an honest seriousness to the life, as if it were a serious philosophy and not a huge joke,-such a system shows its creator to be one of the first philosophical parodists of all time. Let us then sacrifice on his altar, and offer the inventor of a true universal medicine a lock of hair, in Schleiermacher’s phrase. For what medicine would be more salutary to combat the excess of historical culture than Hartmann’s parody of the world’s history? If we wished to express in the fewest words what Hartmann really has to tell us from his mephitic tripod of unconscious irony, it would be something like this: our time could only remain as it is, if men should become thoroughly sick of this existence. And I fervently believe he is right. The frightful petrifaction of the time, the restless rattle of the ghostly bones, held naively up to us by David Strauss as the most beautiful fact of all-is justified by Hartmann not only from the past, ex causis efficientibus, but also from the future, ex causa finali. The rogue let light stream over our time from the last day, and saw that it was very good,-for him, that is, who wishes to feel the indigestibility of life at its full strength, and for whom the last day cannot come quickly enough. True, Hartmann calls the old age of life that mankind is approaching the “ old age of man”: but that is the blessed state, according to him, where there is only a successful mediocrity; where art is the “ evening’s amusement of the Berlin financier,” and “ the time has no more need for geniuses, either because it would be casting pearls before swine, or because the time has advanced beyond the stage where the geniuses are found, to one more important,” to that stage of social evolution, in fact, in which every worker “ leads a comfortable existence, with hours of work that leave him sufficient leisure to cultivate his intellect.” Rogue of rogues, you say well what is the aspiration of present-day mankind : but you know too what a spectre of disgust will arise at the end of this old age of mankind, as the result of the intellectual culture of stolid mediocrity. It is very pitiful to see, but it will be still more pitiful yet. “ Antichrist is visibly extending his arms: “ yet it must be so, for after all we are on the right road-of disgust at all existence. “ Forward then, boldly, with the world-process, as workers in the vineyard of the Lord, for it is the process alone that can lead to redemption!” The vineyard of the Lord! The process! To redemption! Who does not see and hear in this how historical culture, that only knows the word “ becoming,” parodies itself on purpose and says the most irresponsible things about itself through its grotesque mask? For what does the rogue mean by this cry to the workers in the vineyard? By what “ work” are they to strive boldly forward? Or, to ask another question:-what further has the historically educated fanatic of the world-process to do, swimming and drowning as he is in the sea of becoming, that he may at last gather in that vintage of disgust, the precious grape of the vineyard? He has nothing to do but to live on as he has lived, love what he has loved, hate what he has hated, and read the newspapers he has always read. The only sin is for him to live otherwise than he has lived. We are told how he has lived, with monumental clearness, by that famous page with its large typed sentences, on which the whole rabble of our modern cultured folk have thrown themselves in blind ecstasy, because they believe they read their own justification there, haloed with an Apocalyptic light. For the unconscious parodist has demanded of every one of them, “ the full surrender of his personality to the world-process, for the sake of his end, the redemption of the world”: or still more clearly,-“ the assertion of the will to live is proclaimed to be the first step on the right road: for it is only in the full surrender to life and its sorrow, and not in the cowardice of personal renunciation and retreat, that anything can be done for the world-process… . The striving for the denial of the individual will is as foolish as it is useless, more foolish even than suicide… The thoughtful reader will understand without further explanation how a practical philosophy can be erected on these principles, and that such a philosophy cannot endure any disunion, but only the fullest reconciliation with life.” The thoughtful reader will understand! Then one really could misunderstand Hartmann ! And what a splendid joke it is, that he should be misunderstood! Why should the Germans of to-day be particularly subtle? A valiant Englishman looks in vain for “ delicacy of perception” and dares to say that “ in the German mind there does seem to be something splay, something blunt-edged, un-handy and infelicitous.” Could the great German parodist contradict this? According to him, we are approaching “ that ideal condition in which the human race makes its history with full consciousness”: but we are
obviously far from the perhaps more ideal condition, in which mankind can read Hartmann’s book with full consciousness. If we once reach it, the word “ world-process” will never pass any man’s lips again without a smile. For he will remember the time when people listened to the mock gospel of Hartmann, sucked it in, attacked it, reverenced it, extended it and canonised it with all the honesty of that “ German mind,” with “ the uncanny seriousness of an owl,” as Goethe has it. But the world must go forward, the ideal condition cannot be won by dreaming, it must be fought and wrestled for, and the way to redemption lies only through joyousness, the way to redemption from that dull, owlish seriousness. The time will come when we shall wisely keep away from all constructions of the world-process, or even of the history of man; a time when we shall no more look at masses but at individuals, who form a sort of bridge over the wan stream of becoming. They may not perhaps continue a process, but they live out of time, as contemporaries: and thanks to history that permits such a company, they live as the Republic of geniuses of which Schopenhauer speaks. One giant calls to the other across the waste spaces of time, and the high spirit-talk goes on, undisturbed by the wanton noisy dwarfs who creep among them. The task of history is to be the mediator between these, and even to give the motive and power to produce the great man. The aim of mankind can lie ultimately only in its highest examples. Our low comedian has his word on this too with his wonderful dialectic, which is just as genuine as its admirers are admirable. “ The idea of evolution cannot stand with our giving the world-process an endless duration in the past, for thus every conceivable evolution must have taken place, which is not the case (O rogue!); and so we cannot allow the process an endless duration in the future. Both would raise the conception of evolution to a mere ideal (And again rogue!), and would make the world-process like the sieve of the Danaides. The complete victory of the logical over the illogical (O thou complete rogue!) must coincide with the last day, the end in time of the world-process.” No, thou clear, scornful spirit, so long as the illogical rules as it does to-day,-so long, for example, as the world-process can be spoken of as thou speakest of it, amid such deep-throated assent,-the last day is yet far off. For it is still too joyful on this earth, many an illusion still blooms here-like the illusion of thy contemporaries about thee. We are not yet ripe to be hurled into thy nothingness: for we believe that we shall have a still more splendid time, when men once begin to understand thee, thou misunderstood, unconscious one! But if, in spite of that, disgust shall come throned in power, as thou hast prophesied to thy readers if thy portrayal of the present and the future shall prove to be right,-and no one has despised them with such loathing as thou,-I am ready then to cry with the majority in the form prescribed by thee, that next Saturday evening, punctually at twelve o’clock, thy world shall fall to pieces. And our decree shall conclude thus-from tomorrow time shall not exist, and the Times shall no more be published. Perhaps it will be in vain, and our decree of no avail: at any rate we have still time for a fine experiment. Take a balance and put Hartmann’s “ Unconscious” in one of the scales, and his “ World-process” in the other. There are some who believe they weigh equally; for in each scale there is an evil word-and a good joke. When they are once understood, no one will take Hartmann’s words on the world-process as anything but a joke. It is, as a fact, high time to move forward with the whole battalion of satire and malice against the excesses of the “ historical sense,” the wanton love of the world-process at the expense of life and existence, the blind confusion of all perspective. And it will be to the credit of the philosopher of the Unconscious that he has been the first to see the humour of the world-process, and to succeed in making others see it still more strongly by the extraordinary seriousness of his presentation. The existence of the “ world” and “ humanity” need not trouble us for some time, except to provide us with a good joke: for the presumption of the small earthworm is the most uproariously comic thing on the face of the earth. Ask thyself to what end thou art here, as an individual; and if no one can tell thee, try then to justify the meaning of thy existence a posteriori, by putting before thyself a high and noble end. Perish on that rock! I know no better aim for life than to be broken on something great and impossible, anima magn� prodigus[6]. But if we have the doctrines of the finality of “ becoming,” of the flux of all ideas, types, and species, of the lack of all radical difference between man and beast (a true but fatal idea as I think),-if we have these thrust on the people in the usual mad way for another generation, no one need be surprised if that people drown on its little miserable shoals of egoism, and petrify in its self-seeking. At first it will fall asunder and cease to be a people. In its place perhaps individualist systems, secret societies for the extermination of non-members, and similar utilitarian creations, will appear on the theater of the future. Are we to continue to work for these creations and write history from the standpoint of the masses; to look for laws in it, to be deduced from the needs of the masses, the laws of motion of the lowest loam and clay strata of society? The masses seem to be worth notice in three aspects only: first as the copies of great men, printed on bad paper from worn-out plates, next as a contrast to the great men, and lastly as their tools: for the rest, let the devil and statistics fly away with them! How could statistics prove that there are laws in history? Laws? Yes, they may prove how common and abominably uniform the masses are: and should we call the effects of leaden folly, imitation, love and hunger-laws? We may admit it: but we are sure of this too-that so far as there are laws in history, the laws are of no value and the history of no value either. And least valuable of all is that kind of history which takes the great popular movements as the most important events of the past, and regards the great men only as their clearest expression, the visible bubbles on the stream. Thus the masses have to produce the great man, chaos to bring forth order; and finally all the hymns are naturally sung to the teeming chaos. Everything is called “ great” that has moved the masses for some long time, and becomes, as they say, a “ historical power.” But is not this really an intentional confusion of quantity and quality? When the brutish mob have found some idea, a religious idea for example, which satisfies them, when they have defended it through thick and thin for centuries; then, and then only, will they discover its inventor to have been a great man. Thehighest and noblest does not affect the masses at all. The historical consequences of Christianity, its “ historical power,” toughness and persistence prove nothing, fortunately, as to its founder’s greatness. They would have been a witness against him. For be- tween him and the historical success of Christianity lies a dark heavy weight of passion and error, lust of power and honour, and the crushing force of the Roman Empire. From this, Christianity had its earthly taste, and its earthly foundations too, that made its continuance in this world possible. Greatness should not depend on success. Demosthenes is great without it. The purest and noblest adherents of Christianity have always doubted and hindered, rather than helped, its effect in the world, its so-called “ historical power”; for they were accustomed to stand outside the “ world,” and cared little for the “ process of the Christian Idea.” Hence they have generally remained unknown to history, and their very names are lost. In Christian terms, the devil is the prince of the world, and the lord of progress and consequence: he is the power behind all
“ historical power,” and so will it remain, however ill it may sound today in ears that are accustomed to canonise such power and consequence. The world has become skilled at giving new names to things and even baptizing the devil. It is truly an hour of great danger. Men seem to be near the discovery that the egoism of individuals, groups or masses has been at all times the lever of the “ historical movements”: and yet they are in no way disturbed by the discovery, but proclaim that “ egoism shall be our god.” With this new faith in their hearts, they begin quite intentionally to build future history on egoism: though it must be a clever egoism, one that allows of some limitation, that it may stand firmer; one that studies history for the purpose of recognising the foolish kind of egoism. Their study has taught them that the state has a special mission in all future egoistic systems: it will be the patron of all the clever egoisms, to protect them with all the power of its military and police against the dangerous outbreaks of the other kind. There is the same idea in introducing history-natural as well as human history-among the labouring classes, whose folly makes them dangerous. For men know well that a grain of historical culture is able to break down the rough, blind instincts and desires, or to turn them to the service of a clever egoism. In fact they are beginning to think, with Edward von Hartmann, of “ fixing themselves with an eye to the future in their earthly home, and making themselves comfortable there.” Hartmann calls this life the “ manhood of humanity” with an ironical reference to what is now called “ manhood”;-as if only our sober models of selfishness were embraced by it ; just as he prophesies an age of graybeards following on this stage,-obviously another ironical glance at our ancient time-servers. For he speaks of the ripe discretion with which “ they view all the stormy passions of their past life and understand the vanity of the ends they seem to have striven for.” No, a manhood of crafty and historically cultured egoism corresponds to an old age that hangs to life with no dignity but a horrible tenacity, where the “ last scene of all That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”[7] Whether the dangers of our life and culture come from these dreary, toothless old men, or from the so-called “ men” of Hartmann, we have the right to defend our youth with tooth and claw against both of them, and never tire of saving the future from these false prophets. But in this battle we shall discover an unpleasant truth-that men intentionally help, and encourage, and use, the worst aberrations of the historical sense from which the present time suffers. They use it, however, against youth, in order to transform it into that ripe “ egoism of manhood” they so long for: they use it to overcome the natural reluctance of the young by its magical splendour, which unmans while it enlightens them. Yes, we know only too well the kind of ascendency history can gain; how it can uproot the strongest instincts of youth, passion, courage, unselfishness and love; can cool its feeling for justice, can crush or repress its desire for a slow ripening by the contrary desire to be soon productive, ready and useful; and cast a sick doubt over all honesty and downrightness of feeling. It can even cozen youth of its fairest privilege, the power of planting a great thought with the fullest confidence, and letting it grow of itself to a still greater thought. An excess of history can do all that, as we have seen, by no longer allowing a man to feel and act unhistorically: for history is continually shifting his horizon and removing the atmosphere surrounding him. From an infinite horizon he withdraws into himself, back into the small egoistic circle, where he must become dry and withered: he may possibly attain to cleverness, but never to wisdom. He lets himself be talked over, is always calculating and parleying with facts. He is never enthusiastic, but blinks his eyes, and understands how to look for his own profit or his party’s in the profit or loss of somebody else. He unlearns all his useless modesty, and turns little by little into the “ man” or the “ graybeard” of Hartmann. And that is what they want him to be: that is the meaning of the present cynical demand for the “ full surrender of the personality to the world-process”-for the sake of his end, the redemption of the world, as the rogue E. von Hartmann tells us. Though redemption can scarcely be the conscious aim of these people: the world were better redeemed by being redeemed from these “ men” and “ graybeards.” For then would come the reign of youth. 10 And in this kingdom of youth I can cry Land! Land! Enough, and more than enough, of the wild voyage over dark strange seas, of eternal search and eternal disappointment! The coast is at last in sight. Whatever it be, we must land there, and the worst haven is better than tossing again in the hopeless waves of an infinite scepticism. Let us hold fast by the land: we shall find the good harbours later and make the voyage easier for those who come after us. The voyage was dangerous and exciting. How far are we even now from that quiet state of contemplation with which we first saw our ship launched! In tracking out the dangers of history, we have found ourselves especially exposed to them. We carry on us the marks of that sorrow which an excess of history brings in its train to the men of the modern time. And this present treatise, as I will not attempt to deny, shows the modern note of a weak personality in the intemperateness of its criticism, the unripeness of its humanity, in the too frequent transitions from irony to cynicism, from arrogance to scepticism. And yet I trust in the inspiring power that directs my vessel instead of genius; I trust in youth, that has brought me on the right road in forcing from me a protest against the modern historical education, and a demand that the man must learn to live, above all, and only use history in the service of the life that he has learned to live. He must be young to understand this protest; and considering the premature grayness of our present youth, he can scarcely be young enough if he would understand its reason as well. An example will help me. In Germany, not more than a century ago, a natural instinct for what is called “ poetry” was awakened in some young men. Are we to think that the generations who had lived before that time had not spoken of the art, however really strange and unnatural it may have been to them? We know the contrary; that they had thought, written, and quarrelled about it with all their might in “ words, words, words.” Giving life to such words did not prove the death of the word-makers; in a certain sense they are living still. For if, as Gibbon says, nothing but time-though a long time-is needed for a world to perish, so nothing but time-though still more time-is needed for a false idea to be destroyed in Germany, the “ Land of Little-bylittle.” In any event, there are perhaps a hundred men more now than there were a century ago who know what poetry is: perhaps in another century there will be a hundred more who have learned in the meantime what culture is, and that the Germans have had as yet no culture, however proudly they may talk about it. The general satisfaction of the Germans at their culture will seem as foolish and incredible to such men as the once lauded classicism of Gottsched, or the reputation of Ramler as the German Pindar, seemed to us. They will perhaps think this “ culture” to be merely a kind of knowledge about culture, and a false and superficial knowledge at that. False and superficial, because the Germans endured the contradiction between life and knowledge, and did not see what was characteristic in the culture of really educated peoples, that it can only rise and bloom from life. But by the
Germans it is worn like a paper flower, or spread over like the icing on a cake; and so must remain a useless lie for ever. The education of youth in Germany starts from this false and unfruitful idea of culture. Its aim, when faced squarely, is not to form the liberally educated man, but the professor, the man of science, who wants to be able to make use of his science as soon as possible, and stands on one side in order to see life clearly. The result, even from a ruthlessly practical point of view, is the historically and aesthetically trained Philistine, the babbler of old saws and new wisdom on Church, State and Art, the sensorium that receives a thousand impressions, the insatiable belly that yet knows not what true hunger and thirst is. An education with such an aim and result is against nature. But only he who is not quite drowned in it can feel that; only youth can feel it, because it still has the instinct of nature, that is the first to be broken by that education. But he who will break through that education in his turn, must come to the help of youth when called upon; must let the clear light of understanding shine on its unconscious striving, and bring it to a full, vocal consciousness, How is he to attain such a strange end? Principally by destroying the superstition that this kind of education is necessary. People think nothing but this troublesome reality of ours is possible. Look through the literature of higher education in school and college for the last ten years, and you will be astonished-and pained-to find how much alike all the proposals of reform have been; in spite of all the hesitations and violent controversies surrounding them. You will see how blindly they have all adopted the old idea of the “ educated man” (in our sense) being the necessary and reasonable basis of the system. The monotonous canon runs thus: the young man must begin with a knowledge of culture, not even with a knowledge of life, still less with life and the living of it. This knowledge of culture is forced into the young mind in the form of historical knowledge; which means that his head is filled with an enormous mass of ideas, taken second-hand from past times and peoples, not from immediate contact with life. He desires to experience something for himself, and feel a close-knit, living system of experiences growing within himself. But his desire is drowned and dizzied in the sea of shams, as if it were possible to sum up in a few years the highest and notablest experiences of ancient times, and the greatest times too. It is the same mad method that carries our young artists off to picture-galleries, instead of the studio of a master, and above all the one studio of the only master, Nature. As if one could discover by a hasty rush through history the ideas and technique of past times, and their individual outlook on life! For life itself is a kind of handicraft that must be learned thoroughly and industriously, and diligently practised, if we are not to have mere botchers and babblers as the issue of it all! Plato thought it necessary for the first generation of his new society (in the perfect state) to be brought up with the help of a “ mighty lie.” The children were to be taught to believe that they had all lain dreaming for a long time under the earth, where they had been moulded and formed by the master-hand of Nature. It was impossible to go against the past, and work against the work of gods! And so it had to be an unbreakable law of nature, that he who is born to be a philosopher has gold in his body, the fighter has only silver, and the workman iron and bronze. As it is not possible to blend these metals, according to Plato, so there could never be any confusion between the classes: the belief in the �terna veritas of this arrangement was the basis of the new education and the new state. So the modern German believes also in the �terna veritas of his education, of his kind of culture: and yet this belief will fail-as the Platonic state would have failed-if the mighty German lie be ever opposed by the truth, that the German has no culture because he cannot build one on the basis of his education. He wishes for the flower without the root or the stalk; and so he wishes in vain. That is the simple truth, a rude and unpleasant truth, but yet a mighty one. But our first generation must be brought up in this “ mighty truth,” and must suffer from it too; for it must educate itself through it, even against its own nature, to attain a new nature and manner of life, which shall yet proceed from the old. So it might say to itself, in the old Spanish phrase, “ Defienda me Dios de my,” God keep me from myself, from the character, that is, which has been put into me. It must taste that truth drop by drop, like a bitter, powerful medicine. And every man in this generation must subdue himself to pass the judgment on his own nature, which he might pass more easily on his whole time:-“ We are without instruction, nay, we are too corrupt to live, to see and hear truly and simply, to understand what is near and natural to us. We have not yet laid even the foundations of culture, for we are not ourselves convinced that we have a sincere life in us.” We crumble and fall asunder, our whole being is divided, half mechanically, into an inner and outer side; we are sown with ideas as with dragon’s teeth, and bring forth a new dragon -brood of them; we suffer from the malady of words, and have no trust in any feeling that is not stamped with its special word. And being such a dead fabric of words and ideas, that yet has an uncanny movement in it, I have still perhaps the right to say cogito ergo sum, though not vivo ergo cogito. I am permitted the empty esse, not the full green vivere. A primary feeling tells me that I am a thinking being but not a living one, that I am no “ animal,” but at most a “ cogital.” “ Give me life, and I will soon make you a culture out of it”-will be the cry of every man in this new generation, and they will all know each other by this cry. But who will give them this life? No god and no man will give it-only their own youth. Set this free, and you will set life free as well. For it only lay concealed, in a prison; it is not yet withered or dead-ask your own selves! But it is sick, this life that is set free, and must be healed. It suffers from many diseases, and not only from the memory of its chains. It suffers from the malady which I have spoken of, the malady of history. Excess of history has attacked the plastic power of life, that no more understands how to use the past as a means of strength and nourishment. It is a fearful disease, and yet, if youth had not a natural gift for clear vision, no one would see that it is a disease, and that a paradise of health has been lost. But the same youth, with that same natural instinct of health, has guessed how the paradise can be regained. It knows the magic herbs and simples for the malady of history, and the excess of it. And what are they called? It is no marvel that they bear the names of poisons: the antidotes to history are the “ unhistorical ” and the “ superhistorical.” With these names we return to the beginning of our inquiry and draw near to its final close. By the word “ unhistorical” I mean the power, the art of forgetting, and of drawing a limited horizon round one’s self. I call the power “ super-historical” which turns the eyes from the process of becoming to that which gives existence an eternal and stable character, to art and religion. Science-for it is science that makes us speak of “ poisons”-sees in these powers contrary powers: for it considers only that view of things to be true and right, and therefore scientific, which regards something as finished and historical, not as continuing and eternal. Thus it lives in a deep antagonism towards the powers that make for eternity-art and religion,-for it hates the forgetfulness that is the death of knowledge, and tries to remove all limitation of horizon and cast men into an infinite boundless sea, whose waves are bright with the clear knowledge-of becoming! If they could only live therein! Just as towns are shaken by an avalanche and become desolate, and man builds his house there
in fear and for a season only; so life is broken in sunder and becomes weak and spiritless, if the avalanche of ideas started by science take from man the foundation of his rest and security, the belief in what is stable and eternal. Must life dominate knowledge, or knowledge life? Which of the two is the higher, and decisive power? There is no room for doubt: life is the higher, and the dominating power, for the knowledge that annihilated life would be itself annihilated too. Knowledge presupposes life, and has the same interest in maintaining it that every creature has in its own preservation. Science needs very careful watching: there is a hygiene of life near the volumes of science, and one of its sentences runs thus:-The unhistorical and the super-historical are the natural antidotes against the overpowering of life by history; they are the cures for the historical disease. We who are sick of the disease may suffer a little from the antidote. But this is no proof that the treatment we have chosen is wrong.. And here I see the mission of the youth that forms the first generation of fighters and dragon- slayers: it will bring a more beautiful and blessed humanity and culture, but will have itself no more than a glimpse of the promised land of happiness and wondrous beauty. This youth will suffer both from the malady and its antidotes: and yet it believes in strength and health and boasts a nature closer to the great Nature than its forebears, the cultured men and graybeards of the present. But its mission is to shake to their foundations the present conceptions of “ health” and “ culture,” and erect hatred and scorn in the place of this rococo mass of ideas. And the clearest sign of its own strength and health is just the fact that it can use no idea, no party-cry from the present-day mint of words and ideas to symbolise its own existence: but only claims conviction from the power in it that acts and fights, breaks up and destroys; and from an ever heightened feeling of life when the hour strikes. You may deny this youth any culture-but how would youth count that a reproach? You may speak of its rawness and intemperateness-but it is not yet old and wise enough to be acquiescent. It need not pretend to a ready-made culture at all; but enjoys all the rights and the consolations-of youth, especially the right of brave unthinking honesty and the consolation of an inspiring hope. I know that such hopeful beings understand all these truisms from within, and can translate them into a doctrine for their own use, through their personal experience. To the others there will appear, in the meantime, nothing but a row of covered dishes, that may perhaps seem empty: until they see one day with astonished eyes that the dishes are full, and that all ideas and impulses and passions are massed together in these truisms that cannot lie covered for long. I leave those doubting ones to time, that brings all things to light; and turn at last to that great company of hope, to tell them the way and the course of their salvation, their rescue from the disease of history, and their own history as well, in a parable; whereby they may again become healthy enough to study history anew, and under the guidance of life make use of the past in that threefold waymonumental, antiquarian, or critical. At first they will be more ignorant than the “ educated men” of the present: for they will have unlearnt much and have lost any desire even to discover what those educated men especially wish to know : in fact, their chief mark from the educated point of view will be just their want of science; their indifference and inaccessibility to all the good and famous things. But at the end of the cure, they are men again and have ceased to be mere shadows of humanity. That is something; there is yet hope, and do not ye who hope laugh in your hearts? How can we reach that end? you will ask. The Delphian god cries his oracle to you at the beginning of your wanderings, “ Know thyself.” It is a hard saying: for that god “ tells nothing and conceals nothing but merely points the way,” as Heraclitus said. But whither does he point? In certain epochs the Greeks were in a similar danger of being overwhelmed by what was past and foreign, and perishing on the rock of “ history.” They never lived proud and untouched. Their “ culture” was for a long time a chaos of foreign forms and ideas,-Semitic, Babylonian, Lydian and Egyptian,-and their religion a battle of all the gods of the East; just as German culture and religion is at present a death-struggle of all foreign nations and bygone times. And yet, Hellenic culture was no mere mechanical unity, thanks to that Delphic oracle. The Greeks gradually learned to organise the chaos, by taking Apollo’s advice and thinking back to themselves, to their own true necessities, and letting all the sham necessities go. Thus they again came into possession of themselves, and did not remain long the Epigoni of the whole East, burdened with their inheritance. After that hard fight, they increased and enriched the treasure they had inherited by their obedience to the oracle, and they became the ancestors and models for all the cultured nations of the future. This is a parable for each one of us: he must organise the chaos in himself by “ thinking himself back” to his true needs. He will want all his honesty, all the sturdiness and sincerity in his character to help him to revolt against second- hand thought, second-hand learning, second-hand action. And he will begin then to understand that culture can be something more than a “ decoration of life”-a concealment and disfiguring of it, in other words; for all adornment hides what is adorned. And thus the Greek idea, as against the Roman, will be discovered to him, the idea of culture as a new and finer nature, without distinction of inner and outer, without convention or disguise, as a unity of thought and will, life and appearance. He will learn too, from his own experience, that it was by a greater force of moral character that the Greeks were victorious, and that everything which makes for sincerity is a further step towards true culture, however this sincerity may harm the ideals of education that are reverenced at the time, or even have power to shatter a whole system of merely decorative culture. SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR Translated by Adrian Collins 1 WHEN the traveller, who had seen many countries and nations and continents, was asked what common attribute he had found everywhere existing among men, he answered, “ They have a tendency to sloth.” Many may think that the fuller truth would have been, “ They are all timid.” They hide themselves behind “ manners” and “ opinions.” At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvellously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time. He knows this, but hides it like an evil conscience;-and why? From fear of his neighbour, who looks for the latest conventionalities in him, and is wrapped up in them himself. But what is it that forces the man to fear his neighbour, to think and act with his herd, and not seek his own joy? Shyness perhaps, in a few rare cases, but in the majority it is idleness, the “ taking things easily,” in a word the “ tendency to sloth,” of which the traveller spoke. He was right; men are more slothful than timid, and their greatest fear is of the burdens that an uncompromising honesty and nakedness of speech and action would lay on them. It is only the artists who hate this lazy wandering in
borrowed manners and ill-fitting opinions, and discover the secret of the evil conscience, the truth that each human being is a unique marvel. They show us, how in every little movement of his muscles the man is an individual self, and further-as an analytical deduction from his individuality-a beautiful and interesting object, a new and incredible phenomenon (as is every work of nature), that can never become tedious. If the great thinker despise mankind, it is for their laziness; they seem mere indifferent bits of pottery, not worth any commerce or improvement. The man who will not belong to the general mass, has only to stop “ taking himself easily”; to follow his conscience, which cries out to him, “ Be thyself! all that thou doest and thinkest and desirest, is not thyself!” Every youthful soul hears this cry day and night, and quivers to hear it: for she divines the sum of happiness that has been from eternity destined for her, if she think of her true deliverance; and towards this happiness she can in no wise be helped, so long as she lies in the chains of Opinion and of Fear. And how comfortless and unmeaning may life become without this deliverance! There is no more desolate or Ishmaelitish creature in nature than the man who has broken away from his true genius, and does nothing but peer aimlessly about him. There is no reason to attack such a man at all, for he is a mere husk without a kernel, a painted cloth, tattered and sagging, a scarecrow ghost, that can rouse no fear, and certainly no pity. And though one be right in saying of a sluggard that he is “ killing time” yet in respect of an age that rests its salvation on public opinion,-that is, on private laziness,-one must be quite determined that such a time shall be “ killed,” once and for all: I mean that it shall be blotted from life’s true History of Liberty. Later generations will be greatly disgusted, when they come to treat the movements of a period in which no living men ruled, but shadow-men on the screen of public opinion; and to some far posterity our age may well be the darkest chapter of history, the most unknown because the least human. I have walked through the new streets of our cities, and thought how of all the dreadful houses that these gentlemen with their public opinion have built for themselves, not a stone will remain in a hundred years, and that the opinions of these busy masons may well have fallen with them. But how full of hope should they all be who feel that they are no citizens of this age! If they were, they would have to help on the work of “ killing their time,” and of perishing with it,-when they wish rather to quicken the time to life, and in that life themselves to live. But even if the future leave us nothing to hope for, the wonderful fact of our existing at this present moment of time gives us the greatest encouragement to live after our own rule and measure; so inexplicable is it, that we should be living just to-day, though there have been an infinity of time wherein we might have arisen; that we own nothing but a span’s length of it, this “ to-day” and must show in it wherefore and whereunto we have arisen. We have to answer for our existence to ourselves; and will therefore be our own true pilots, and not admit that our being resembles a blind fortuity. One must take a rather impudent and reckless way with the riddle; especially as the key is apt to be lost, however things turn out. Why cling to your bit of earth, or your little business, or listen to what your neighbour says? It is so provincial to bind oneself to views which are no longer binding a couple of hundred miles away. East and West are signs that somebody chalks up in front of us to fool such cowards as we are. “ I will make the attempt to gain freedom,” says the youthful soul; and will be hindered, just because two nations happen to hate each other and go to war, or because there is a sea between two parts of the earth, or a religion is taught in the vicinity, which did not exist two thousand years ago. “ And this is not-thyself,” the soul says. “ No one can build thee the bridge, over which thou must cross the river of life, save thyself alone. There are paths and bridges and demi-gods without number, that will gladly carry thee over, but only at the price of thine own self: thy self wouldst thou have to give in pawn, and then lose it. There is in the world one road whereon none may go, except thou: ask not whither it lead, but go forward. Who was it that spake that true word-‘A man has never risen higher than when he knoweth not whither his road may yet lead him’?” But how can we “ find ourselves” again, and how can man “ know himself”? He is a thing obscure and veiled: if the hare have seven skins, man can cast from him seventy times seven, and yet will not be able to say “ Here art thou in very truth; this is outer shell no more.” Also this digging into one’s self, this straight, violent descent into the pit of one’s being, is a troublesome and dangerous business to start. A man may easily take such hurt, that no physician can heal him. And again, what were the use, since everything bears witness to our essence,-our friendships and enmities, our looks and greetings, our memories and forgetfulnesses, our books and our writing! This is the most effective way: to let the youthful soul look back on life with the question, “ What hast thou up to now truly loved, what has drawn thy soul upward, mastered it and blessed it too?” Set up these things that thou hast honoured before thee, and, maybe, they will show thee, in their being and their order, a law which is the fundamental law of thine own self. Compare these objects, consider how one completes and broadens and transcends and explains another, how they form a ladder on which thou hast all the time been climbing to thy self: for thy true being lies not deeply hidden in thee, but an infinite height above thee, or at least above that which thou dost commonly take to be thyself. The true educators and moulders reveal to thee the real groundwork and import of thy being, something that in itself cannot be moulded or educated, but is anyhow difficult of approach, bound and crippled: thy educators can be nothing but thy deliverers. And that is the secret of all culture: it does not give artificial limbs, wax noses, or spectacles for the eyes-a thing that could buy such gifts is but the base coin of education. But it is rather a liberation, a removal of all the weeds and rubbish and vermin that attack the delicate shoots, the streaming forth of light and warmth, the tender dropping of the night rain; it is the following and the adoring of Nature when she is pitifully-minded as a mother;-her completion, when it bends before her fierce and ruthless blasts and turns them to good, and draws a veil over all expression of her tragic unreason-for she is a step-mother too, sometimes. There are other means of “ finding ourselves,” of coming to ourselves out of the confusion wherein we all wander as in a dreary cloud; but I know none better than to think on our educators. So I will to-day take as my theme the hard teacher Arthur Schopenhauer, and speak of others later. 2 In order to describe properly what an event my first look into Schopenhauer’s writings was for me, I must dwell for a minute on an idea, that recurred more constantly in my youth, and touched me more nearly, than any other. I wandered then as I pleased in a world of wishes, and thought that destiny would relieve me of the dreadful and wearisome duty of educating myself: some philosopher would come at the right moment to do it for me,-some true philosopher, who could be obeyed without further question, as he would be trusted more than one’s self. Then I said within me: “ What would be the principles, on which he might teach thee? “ And I pondered in my mind what he would say to the two maxims of education that hold the field in our time. The first demands that the teacher should find out at once the strong point in his pupil, and then direct all his skill and will, all the moisture
and all the sunshine, to bring the fruit of that single virtue to maturity. The second requires him to raise to a higher power all the qualities that already exist, cherish them and bring them into a harmonious relation. But, we may ask, should one who has a decided talent for working in gold be made for that reason to learn music? And can we admit that Benvenuto Cellini’s father was right in continually forcing him back to the “ dear little horn”-the “ cursed piping,” as his son called it? We cannot think so in the case of such a strong and clearly marked talent as his, and it may well be that this maxim of harmonious development applies only to weaker natures, in which there is a whole swarm of desires and inclinations, though they may not amount to very much, singly or together. On the other hand, where do we find such a blending of harmonious voices-nay, the soul of harmony itself-as we see in natures like Cellini’s, where everything-knowledge, desire, love and hate-tends towards a single point, the root of all, and a harmonious system, the resultant of the various forces, is built up through the irresistible domination of this vital centre? And so perhaps the two maxims are not contrary at all: the one merely saying that man must have a centre, the other, a circumference as well. The philosophic teacher of my dream would not only discover the central force, but would know how to prevent its being destructive of the other powers: his task, I thought, would be the welding of the whole man into a solar system with life and movement, and the discovery of its paraphysical laws. In the meantime I could not find my philosopher, however I tried; I saw how badly we moderns compare with the Greeks and Romans, even in the serious study of educational problems. You can go through all Germany, and especially all the universities, with this need in your heart, and will not find what you seek; many humbler wishes than that are still unfulfilled there. For example, if a German seriously wish to make himself an orator, or to enter a “ school for authors,” he will find neither master nor school: no one yet seems to have thought that speaking and writing are arts which cannot be learnt without the most careful method and untiring application. But, to their shame, nothing shows more clearly the insolent selfsatisfaction of our people than the lack of demand for educators; it comes partly from meanness, partly from want of thought. Anything will do as a so-called “ family tutor,” even among our most eminent and cultured people: and what a menagerie of crazy heads and mouldy devices mostly go to make up the belauded Gymnasium! And consider what we are satisfied with in our finishing schools,-our universities. Look at our professors and their institutions! And compare the difficulty of the task of educating a man to be a man! Above all, the wonderful way in which the German savants fall to their dish of knowledge, shows that they are thinking more of Science than mankind; and they are trained to lead a forlorn hope in her service, in order to encourage ever new generations to the same sacrifice. If their traffic with knowledge be not limited and controlled by any more general principles of education, but allowed to run on indefinitely,-“ the more the better,”-it is as harmful to learning as the economic theory of laisser faire to common morality. No one recognises now that the education of the professors is an exceedingly difficult problem, if their humanity is not to be sacrificed or shrivelled up:-this difficulty can be actually seen in countless examples of natures warped and twisted by their reckless and premature devotion to science. There is a still more important testimony to the complete absence of higher education, pointing to a greater and more universal danger. It is clear at once why an orator or writer cannot now be educated,-because there are no teachers; and why a savant must be a distorted and perverted thing,-because he will have been trained by the inhuman abstraction, science. This being so, let a man ask himself: “ Where are now the types of moral excellence and fame for all our generation-learned and unlearned, high and low-the visible abstract of constructive ethics for this age? Where has vanished all the reflection on moral questions that has occupied every great developed society at all epochs?” There is no fame for that now, and there are none to reflect: we are really drawing on the inherited moral capital which our predecessors accumulated for us, and which we do not know how to increase, but only to squander. Such things are either not mentioned in our society, or, if at all, with a naive want of personal experience that makes one disgusted. It comes to this, that our schools and professors simply turn aside from any moral instruction or content themselves with formulae; virtue is a word and nothing more, on both sides, an old-fashioned word that they laugh at-and it is worse when they do not laugh, for then they are hypocrites. An explanation of this faint-heartedness and ebbing of all moral strength would be difficult and complex: but whoever is considering the influence of Christianity in its hour of victory on the morality of the mediaeval world, must not forget that it reacts also in its defeat, which is apparently its position to-day. By its lofty ideal, Christianity has outbidden the ancient Systems of Ethics and their invariable naturalism, with which men came to feel a dull disgust: and afterwards when they did reach the knowledge of what was better and higher, they found they had no longer the power, for all their desire, to return to its embodiment in the antique virtues. And so the life of the modern man is passed in see-sawing between Christianity and Paganism, between a furtive or hypocritical approach to Christian morality, and an equally shy and spiritless dallying with the antique: and he does not thrive under it. His inherited fear of naturalism, and its more recent attraction for him, his desire to come to rest somewhere, while in the impotence of his intellect he swings backwards and forwards between the “ good” and the “ better” course-all this argues an instability in the modern mind that condemns it to be without joy or fruit. Never were moral teachers more necessary and never were they more unlikely to be found: physicians are most in danger themselves in times when they are most needed and many men are sick. For where are our modern physicians who are strong and sure-footed enough to hold up another or lead him by the hand? There lies a certain heavy gloom on the best men of our time, an eternal loathing for the battle that is fought in their hearts between honesty and lies, a wavering of trust in themselves, which makes them quite incapable of showing to others the way they must go. So I was right in speaking of my “ wandering in a world of wishes” when I dreamt of finding a true philosopher who could lift me from the slough of insufficiency, and teach me again simply and honestly-to be in my thoughts and life, in the deepest sense of the word, “ out of season”; simply and honestly for men have now become such complicated machines that they must be dishonest, if they speak at all, or wish to act on their words. With such needs and desires within me did I come to know Schopenhauer. I belong to those readers of Schopenhauer who know perfectly well, after they have turned the first page, that they will read all the others, and listen to every word that he has spoken. My trust in him sprang to life at once, and has been the same for nine years. I understood him as though he had written for me (this is the most intelligible, though a rather foolish and conceited way of expressing it). Hence I never found a paradox in him, though occasionally some small errors: for paradoxes are only assertions that carry no conviction, because the author has made them himself without any conviction, wishing to appear brilliant, or to mislead, or, above all, to pose. Schopenhauer never poses: he writes for himself, and no one likes to be deceived-least of all
a philosopher who has set this up as his law: “ deceive nobody, not even thyself,” neither with the “ white lies” of all social intercourse, which writers almost unconsciously imitate, still less with the more conscious deceits of the platform, and the artificial methods of rhetoric. Schopenhauer’s speeches are to himself alone; or if you like to imagine an auditor, let it be a son whom the father is instructing. It is a rough, honest, good-humoured talk to one who “ hears and loves.” Such writers are rare. His strength and sanity surround us at the first sound of his voice: it is like entering the heights of the forest, where we breathe deep and are well again. We feel a bracing air everywhere, a certain candour and naturalness of his own, that belongs to men who are at home with themselves, and masters of a very rich home indeed: he is quite different from the writers who are surprised at themselves if they have said something intelligent, and whose pronouncements for that reason have something nervous and unnatural about them. We are just as little reminded in Schopenhauer of the professor with his stiff joints worse for want of exercise, his narrow chest and scraggy figure, his slinking or strutting gait. And again his rough and rather grim soul leads us not so much to miss as to despise the suppleness and courtly grace of the excellent Frenchmen; and no one will find in him the gilded imitations of pseudo-gallicism that our German writers prize so highly. His style in places reminds me a little of Goethe, but is not otherwise on any German model. For he knows how to be profound with simplicity, striking without rhetoric, and severely logical without pedantry: and of what German could he have learnt that? He also keeps free from the hair-splitting, jerky and (with all respect) rather unGerman manner of Lessing: no small merit in him, for Lessing is the most tempting of all models for prose style. The highest praise I can give his manner of presentation is to apply his own phrase to himself:-“ A philosopher must be very honest to avail himself of no aid from poetry or rhetoric.” That honesty is something, and even a virtue, is one of those private opinions which are forbidden in this age of public opinion; and so I shall not be praising Schopenhauer, but only giving him a distinguishing mark, when I repeat that he is honest, even as a writer: so few of them are that we are apt to mistrust every one who writes at all. I only know a single author that I can rank with Schopenhauer, or even above him, in the matter of honesty; and that is Montaigne. The joy of living on this earth is increased by the existence of such a man. The effect on myself, at any rate, since my first acquaintance with that strong and masterful spirit, has been, that I can say of him as he of Plutarch-“ As soon as I open him, I seem to grow a pair of wings.” If I had the task of making myself at home on the earth, I would choose him as my companion. Schopenhauer has a second characteristic in common with Montaigne, besides honesty; a joy that really makes others joyful. “ Aliis laetus, sibi sapiens.” There are two very different kinds of joyfulness. The true thinker always communicates joy and life, whether he is showing his serious or comic side, his human insight or his godlike forbearance: without surly looks or trembling hands or watery eyes, but simply and truly, with fearlessness and strength, a little cavalierly perhaps, and sternly, but always as a conqueror: and it is this that brings the deepest and intensest joy, to see the conquering god with all the monsters that he has fought. But the joyfulness one finds here and there in the mediocre writers and limited thinkers makes some of us miserable; I felt this, for example, with the “ joyfulness” of David Strauss. We are generally ashamed of such a quality in our contemporaries, because they show the nakedness of our time, and of the men in it, to posterity. Such fils de joie do not see the sufferings and the monsters, that they pretend, as philosophers, to see and fight; and so their joy deceives us, and we hate it; it tempts to the false belief that they have gained some victory. At bottom there is only joy where there is victory: and this applies to true philosophy as much as to any work of art. The contents may be forbidding and serious, as the problem of existence always is; the work will only prove tiresome and oppressive, if the slipshod thinker and the dilettante have spread the mist of their insufficiency over it: while nothing happier or better can come to man’s lot than to be near one of those conquering spirits whose profound thought has made them love what is most vital, and whose wisdom has found its goal in beauty. They really speak: they are no stammerers or babblers; they live and move, and have no part in the danse macabre of the rest of humanity. And so in their company one feels a natural man again, and could cry out with Goethe-“ What a wondrous and priceless thing is a living creature! How fitted to his surroundings, how true, and real!” I have been describing nothing but the first, almost physiological, impression made upon me by Schopenhauer, the magical emanation of inner force from one plant of Nature to another, that follows the slightest contact. Analysing it, I find that this influence of Schopenhauer has three elements, his honesty, his joy, and his consistency. He is honest, as speaking and writing for himself alone; joyful, because his thought has conquered the greatest difficulties; consistent, because he cannot help being so. His strength rises like a flame in the calm air, straight up, without a tremor or deviation. He finds his way, without our noticing that he has been seeking it: so surely and cleverly and inevitably does he run his course, as if by some law of gravitation. If any one have felt what it means to find, in our present world of Centaurs and Chimaeras, a single-hearted and unaffected child of nature who moves unconstrained on his own road, he will understand my joy and surprise in discovering Schopenhauer: I knew in him the educator and philosopher I had so long desired. Only, however, in his writings: which was a great loss. All the more did I exert myself to see behind the book the living man whose testament it was, and who promised his inheritance to such as could, and would, be more than his readers-his pupils and his sons. 3 I get profit from a philosopher, just so far as he can be an example to me. There is no doubt that a man can draw whole nations after him by his example; as is shown by Indian history, which is practically the history of Indian philosophy. But this example must exist in his outward life, not merely in his books ; it must follow the way of the Grecian philosophers, whose doctrine was in their dress and bearing and general manner of life rather than in their speech or writing. We have nothing yet of this “ breathing testimony” in German philosophical life; the spirit has, apparently, long completed its emancipation, while the flesh has hardly begun; yet it is foolish to think that the spirit can be really free and independent when this victory over limitation-which is ultimately a formative limiting of one’s self-is not embodied anew in every look and movement. Kant held to his university, submitted to its regulations, and belonged, as his colleagues and students thought, to a definite religious faith: and naturally his example has produced, above all, University professors of philosophy. Schopenhauer makes small account of the learned tribe, keeps himself exclusive, and cultivates an independence from state and society as his ideal, to escape the chains of circumstance here : that is his value to us. Many steps in the enfranchisement of the philosopher are unknown in Germany; they cannot always remain so. Our artists live more bravely and honourably than our philosophers; and Richard Wagner, the best example of all, shows how genius need not fear a fight to the death with the established forms and
ordinances, if we wish to bring the higher truth and order, that lives in him, to the light. The “ truth,” however, of which we hear so much from our professors, seems to be a far more modest being, and no kind of disturbance is to be feared from her; she is an easy-going and pleasant creature, who is continually assuring the powers that be that no one need fear any trouble from her quarter: for man is only “ pure reason.” And therefore I will say, that philosophy in Germany has more and more to learn not to be “ pure reason”: and it may well take as its model “ Schopenhauer the man.” It is no less than a marvel that he should have come to be this human kind of example: for he was beset, within and without, by the most frightful dangers, that would have crushed and broken a weaker nature. I think there was a strong likelihood of Schopenhauer the man going under, and leaving at best a residue of “ pure reason”: and only “ at best”-it was more probable that neither man nor reason would survive. A modern Englishman sketches the most usual danger to extraordinary men who live in a society that worships the ordinary, in this manner:-“ Such uncommon characters are first cowed, then become sick and melancholy, and then die. A Shelley could never have lived in England: a race of Shelleys would have been impossible.” Our H�lderlins and Kleists were undone by their unconventionality, and were not strong enough for the climate of the so-called German culture; and only iron natures like Beethoven, Goethe, Schopenhauer and Wagner could hold out against it. Even in them the effect of this weary toiling and moiling is seen in many lines and wrinkles; their breathing is harder and their voice is forced. The old diplomatist who had only just seen and spoken to Goethe, said to a friend-“ Voil� un homme qui a eu de grands chagrins!” which Goethe translated to mean “ That is a man who has taken great pains in his life.” And he adds, “ If the trace of the sorrow and activity we have gone through cannot be wiped from our features, it is no wonder that all that survives of us and our struggles should bear the same impress.” And this is the Goethe to whom our cultured Philistines point as the happiest of Germans, that they may prove their thesis, that it must be possible to be happy among them-with the unexpressed corollary that no one can be pardoned for feeling unhappy and lonely among them. Hence they push their doctrine, in practice, to its merciless conclusion, that there is always a secret guilt in isolation. Poor Schopenhauer had this secret guilt too in his heart, the guilt of cherishing his philosophy more than his fellow-men; and he was so unhappy as to have learnt from Goethe that he must defend his philosophy at all costs from the neglect of his contemporaries, to save its very existence: for there is a kind of Grand Inquisitor’s Censure in which the Germans, according to Goethe, are great adepts: it is called-inviolable silence. This much at least was accomplished by it; the greater part of the first edition of Schopenhauer’s masterpiece had to be turned into waste paper. The imminent risk that his great work would be undone, merely by neglect, bred in him a state of unrest-perilous and uncontrollable;-for no single adherent of any note presented himself. It is tragic to watch his search for any evidence of recognition: and his piercing cry of triumph at last, that he would now really be read (legor et legar), touches us with a thrill of pain. All the traits in which we do not see the great philosopher show us the suffering man, anxious for his noblest possessions; he was tortured by the fear of losing his little property, and perhaps of no longer being able to maintain in its purity his truly antique attitude towards philosophy. He often chose falsely in his desire to find real trust and compassion in men, only to return with a heavy heart to his faithful dog again. He was absolutely alone, with no single friend of his own kind to comfort him; and between one and none there lies an infinity-as ever between something and nothing. No one who has true friends knows what real loneliness means, though he may have the whole world in antagonism round him. Ah, I see well ye do not know what isolation is! Whenever there are great societies with governments and religions and public opinions where there is a tyranny, in short, there will the lonely philosopher be hated: for philosophy offers an asylum to mankind where no tyranny can penetrate, the inner sanctuary, the centre of the heart’s labyrinth: and the tyrants are galled at it. Here do the lonely men lie hid: but here too lurks their greatest danger. These men who have saved their inner freedom, must also live and be seen in the outer world: they stand in countless human relations by their birth, position, education and country, their own circumstances and the importunity of others: and so they are presumed to hold an immense number of opinions, simply because these happen to prevail: every look that is not a denial counts as an assent, every motion of the hand that does not destroy is regarded as an aid. These free and lonely men know that they perpetually seem other than they are. While they wish for nothing but truth and honesty, they are in a net of misunderstanding; and that ardent desire cannot prevent a mist of false opinions, of adaptations and wrong conclusions, of partial misapprehension and intentional reticence, from gathering round their actions, And there settles a cloud of melancholy on their brows : for such natures hate the necessity of pretence worse than death : and the continual bitterness gives them a threatening and volcanic character. They take revenge from time to time for their forced concealment and self-restraint: they issue from their dens with lowering looks: their words and deeds are explosive, and may lead to their own destruction. Schopenhauer lived amid dangers of this sort. Such lonely men need love, and friends, to whom they can be as open and sincere as to themselves, and in whose presence the deadening silence and hypocrisy may cease. Take their friends away, and there is left an increasing peril; Heinrich von Kleist was broken by the lack of love, and the most terrible weapon against unusual men is to drive them into themselves; and then their issuing forth again is a volcanic eruption. Yet there are always some demi-gods who can bear life under these fearful conditions and can be their conquerors: and if you would hear their lonely chant, listen to the music of Beethoven. So the first danger in whose shadow Schopenhauer lived was-isolation. The second is called-doubting of the truth. To this every thinker is liable who sets out from the philosophy of Kant, provided he be strong and sincere in his sorrows and his desires, and not a mere tinkling thoughtbox or calculating machine. We all know the shameful state of things implied by this last reservation, and I believe it is only a very few men that Kant has so vitally affected as to change the current of their blood. To judge from what one reads, there must have been a revolution in every domain of thought since the work of this unobtrusive professor: I cannot believe it myself. For I see men, though darkly, as themselves needing to be revolutionised, before any “ domains of thought” can be so. In fact, we find the first mark of any influence Kant may have had on the popular mind, in a corrosive scepticism and relativity. But it is only in noble and active spirits who could never rest in doubt that the shattering despair of truth itself could take the place of doubt. This was, for example, the effect of the Kantian philosophy on Heinrich von Kleist. “ It was only a short time ago,” he writes in his poignant way, “ that I became acquainted with the Kantian philosophy; and I will tell you my thought, though I cannot fear that it will rack you to your inmost soul, as it did me.-We cannot decide, whether what we call truth is really truth, or whether it only seems so to us. If the latter, the truth that we amass here does not exist after death, and all our struggle to gain a
possession that may follow us even to the grave is in vain. If the blade of this thought do not cut your heart, yet laugh not at another who feels himself wounded by it in his Holy of Holies. My one highest aim has vanished, and I have no more.” Yes, when will men feel again deeply as Kleist did, and learn to measure a philosophy by what it means to the “ Holy of Holies”? And yet we must make this estimate of what Schopenhauer can mean to us, after Kant, as the first pioneer to bring us from the heights of sceptical disillusionment or “ critical” renunciation, to the greater height of tragic contemplation, the nocturnal heaven with its endless crown of stars. His greatness is that he can stand opposite the picture of life, and interpret it to us as a whole: while all the clever people cannot escape the error of thinking one comes nearer to the interpretation by a laborious analysis of the colours and material of the picture ; with the confession, probably, that the texture of the canvas is very complicated, and the chemical composition of the colours undiscoverable. Schopenhauer knew that one must guess the painter in order to understand the picture. But now the whole learned fraternity is engaged on understanding the colours and canvas, and not the picture: and only he who has kept the universal panorama of life and being firmly before his eyes, will use the individual sciences without harm to himself; for, without this general view as a norm, they are threads that lead nowhere and only confuse still more the maze of our existence. Here we see, as I said, the greatness of Schopenhauer, that he follows up every idea, as Hamlet follows the Ghost, without allowing himself to turn aside for a learned digression, or be drawn away by the scholastic abstractions of a rabid dialectic. The study of the minute philosophers is only interesting for the recognition that they have reached those stages in the great edifice of philosophy where learned disquisitions for and against, where hairsplitting objections and counter-objections are the rule: and for that reason they evade the demand of every great philosophy to speak sub specie aeternitatis-“ this is the picture of the whole of life: learn thence the meaning of thine own life.” And the converse: “ read thine own life, and understand thence the hieroglyphs of the universal life.” In this way must Schopenhauer’s philosophy always be interpreted ; as an individualist philosophy, starting from the single man, in his own nature, to gain an insight into his personal miseries, and needs, and limitations, and find out the remedies that will console them: namely, the sacrifice of the ego, and its submission to the nobler ends, especially those of justice and mercy. He teaches us to distinguish between the true and the apparent furtherance of man’s happiness: how neither the attainment of riches, nor honour, nor learning, can raise the individual from his deep despair at his unworthiness; and how the quest for these good things can only have meaning through a universal end that transcends and explains them;-the gaining of power to aid our physical nature by them and, as far as may be, correct its folly and awkwardness. For one’s self only, in the first instance: and finally, through one’s self, for all. It is a task that leads to scepticism: for there is so much to be made better yet, in one and all! Applying this to Schopenhauer himself, we come to the third and most intimate danger in which he lived, and which lay deep in the marrow of his being. Every one is apt to discover a limitation in himself, in his gifts of intellect as well as his moral will, that fills him with yearning and melancholy; and as he strives after holiness through a consciousness of sin, so, as an intellectual being, he has a deep longing after the “ genius” in himself. This is the root of all true culture; and if we say this means the aspiration of man to be “ born again” as saint and genius, I know that one need not be a Buddhist to understand the myth. We feel a strong loathing when we find talent without such aspiration, in the circle of the learned, or among the so-called educated; for we see that such men, with all their cleverness, are no aid but a hindrance to the beginnings of culture and the blossoming of genius, the aim of all culture. There is a rigidity in them, parallel to the cold arrogance of conventional virtue, which also remains at the opposite pole to true holiness. Schopenhauer’s nature contained an extraordinarily dangerous dualism. Few thinkers have felt as he did the complete and unmistakable certainty of genius within them; and his genius made him the highest of all promises,-that there could be no deeper furrow than that which he was ploughing in the ground of the modern world. He knew one half of his being to be fulfilled according to its strength, with no other need; and he followed with greatness and dignity his vocation of consolidating his victory. In the other half there was a gnawing aspiration, which we can understand, when we hear that he turned away with a sad look from the picture of Rance, the founder of the Trappists, with the words: “ That is a matter of grace.” For genius evermore yearns after holiness as it sees further and more clearly from its watch-tower than other men, deep into the reconciliation of Thought and Being, the kingdom of peace and the denial of the will, and up to that other shore, of which the Indians speak. The wonder is, that Schopenhauer’s nature should have been so inconceivably stable and unshakable that it could neither be destroyed nor petrified by this yearning. Every one will understand this after the measure of his own character and greatness: none of us will understand it in the fulness of its meaning. The more one considers these three dangers, the more extraordinary will appear his vigour in opposing them and his safety after the battle. True, he gained many scars and open wounds: and a cast of mind that may seem somewhat too bitter and pugnacious. But his single ideal transcends the highest humanity in him. Schopenhauer stands as a pattern to men, in spite of all those scars and scratches. We may even say, that what was imperfect and “ all too human” in him, brings us nearer to him as a man, for we see a sufferer and a kinsman to suffering, not merely a dweller on the unattainable heights of genius. These three constitutional dangers that threatened Schopenhauer, threaten us all. Each one of us bears a creative solitude within himself, and his consciousness of it forms an exotic aura of strangeness round him. Most men cannot endure it, because they are slothful, as I said, and because their solitude hangs round them a chain of troubles and burdens. No doubt, for the man with this heavy chain, life loses almost everything that one desires from it in youth-joy, safety, honour: his fellow-men pay him his due of-isolation! The wilderness and the cave are about him, wherever he may live. He must look to it that he be not enslaved and oppressed, and become melancholy thereby. And let him surround himself with the pictures of good and brave fighters such as Schopenhauer. The second danger, too, is not rare. Here and there we find one dowered by nature with a keen vision ; his thoughts dance gladly in the witches’ Sabbath of dialectic; and if he uncautiously give his talent the rein, it is easy to lose all humanity and live a ghostly life in the realm of “ pure reason”: or through the constant search for the “ pros and cons” of things, he may go astray from the truth and live without courage or confidence, in doubt, denial and discontent, and the slender hope that waits on disillusion: “ No dog could live long thus!” The third danger is a moral or intellectual hardening: man breaks the bond that united him to his ideal: he ceases to be fruitful and reproduce himself in this or that province, and becomes an enemy or a parasite of culture. The solitude of his being has become an indivisible, unrelated atom, an icy stone. And one can perish of this solitude as well as of the fear of it, of one’s self as well as one’s self-sacrifice, of both aspiration and petrifaction: and to live is ever to be in
danger. Beside these dangers to which Schopenhauer would have been constitutionally liable, in whatever century he had lived, there were also some produced by his own time; and it is essential to distinguish between these two kinds, in order to grasp the typical and formative elements in his nature. The philosopher casts his eye over existence, and wishes to give it a new standard value; for it has been the peculiar task of all great thinkers to be law-givers for the weight and stamp in the mint of reality. And his task will be hindered if the men he sees near him be a weakly and worm-eaten growth. To be correct in his calculation of existence, the unworthiness of the present time must be a very small item in the addition. The study of ancient or foreign history is valuable, if at all, for a correct judgment on the whole destiny of man; which must be drawn not only from an average estimate but from a comparison of the highest destinies that can befall individuals or nations. The present is too much with us; it directs the vision even against the philosopher’s will: and it will inevitably be reckoned too high in the final sum. And so he must put a low figure on his own time as against others, and suppress the present in his picture of life, as well as in himself; must put it into the background or paint it over; a difficult, and almost impossible task. The judgment of the ancient Greek philosophers on the value of existence means so much more than our own, because they had the full bloom of life itself before them, and their vision was untroubled by any felt dualism between their wish for freedom and beauty on the grand scale, and their search after truth, with its single question “ What is the real worth of life? “ Empedocles lived when Greek culture was full to overflowing with the joy of life, and all ages may take profit from his words; especially as no other great philosopher of that great time ventured to contradict them. Empedocles is only the clearest voice among themthey all say the same thing, if a man will but open his ears. A modern thinker is always in the throes of an unfulfilled desire; he is looking for life,-warm, red life,-that he may pass judgment on it: at any rate he will think it necessary to be a living man himself, before he can believe in his power of judging. And this is the title of the modern philosophers to sit among the great aiders of Life (or rather of the will to live), and the reason why they can look from their own out-wearied time and aspire to a truer culture, and a clearer explanation. Their yearning is, however, their danger; the reformer in them struggles with the critical philosopher. And whichever way the victory incline, it also implies a defeat. How was Schopenhauer to escape this danger ? We like to consider the great man as the noble child of his age, who feels its defects more strongly and intimately than the smaller men: and therefore the struggle of the great man against his age is apparently nothing but a mad fight to the death with himself. Only apparently, however: he only fights the elements in his time that hinder his own greatness, in other words his own freedom and sincerity. And so, at bottom, he is only an enemy to that element which is not truly himself, the irreconcilable antagonism of the temporal and eternal in him. The supposed “ child of his age” proves to be but a step-child. From boyhood Schopenhauer strove with his time, a false and unworthy mother to him, and as soon as he had banished her, he could bring back his being to its native health and purity. For this very reason we can use his writings as mirrors of his time; it is no fault of the mirror if everything contemporary appear in it stricken by a ravaging disease, pale and thin, with tired looks and hollow eyes,-the step-child’s sorrow made visible. The yearning for natural strength, for a healthy and simple humanity, was a yearning for himself: and as soon as he had conquered his time within him, he was face to face with his own genius. The secret of nature’s being and his own lay open, the step-mother’s plot to conceal his genius from him was foiled. And now he could turn a fearless eye towards the question, “ What is the real worth of life?” without having any more to weigh a bloodless and chaotic age of doubt and hypocrisy. He knew that there was something higher and purer to be won on this earth than the life of his time, and a man does bitter wrong to existence who only knows it and criticises it in this hateful form. Genius, itself the highest product of life, is now summoned to justify life, if it can: the noble creative soul must answer the question:-“ Dost thou in thy heart say ‘Yea!’ unto this existence? Is it enough for thee? Wilt thou be its advocate and its redeemer? One true ‘Yea’ from thy lips, and the sorely accused life shall go free.” How shall he answer? In the words of Empedocles. 4 The last hint may well remain obscure for a time: I have something more easy to explain, namely how Schopenhauer can help us to educate ourselves in opposition to our age, since we have the advantage of really knowing our age, through him;-if it be an advantage! It may be no longer possible in a couple, of hundred years. I sometimes amuse myself with the idea that men may soon grow tired of books and their authors, and the savant of to-morrow come to leave directions in his will that his body be burned in the midst of his books, including of course his own writings. And in the gradual clearing of the forests, might not our libraries be very reasonably used for straw and brushwood? Most books are born from the smoke and vapour of the brain: and to vapour and smoke may they well return. For having no fire within themselves, they shall be visited with fire. And possibly to a later century our own may count as the “ Dark age,” because our productions heated the furnace hotter and more continuously than ever before. We are anyhow happy that we can learn to know our time; and if there be any sense in busying ourselves with our time at all, we may as well do it as thoroughly as we can, so that no one may have any doubt about it. The possibility of this we owe to Schopenhauer. Our happiness would of course be infinitely greater, if our inquiry showed that nothing so hopeful and splendid as our present epoch had ever existed. There are simple people in some corner of the earth to-day-perhaps in Germany-who are disposed to believe in all seriousness that the world was put right two years ago, [1] and that all stern and gloomy views of life are now contradicted by “ facts.” The foundation of the New German Empire is, to them, the decisive blow that annihilates all the “ pessimistic” philosophers,-no doubt of it. To judge the philosopher’s significance in our time, as an educator, we must oppose a widespread view like this, especially common in our universities. We must say, it is a shameful thing that such abominable flattery of the Time-Fetish should be uttered by a herd of so-called reflective and honourable men; it is a proof that we no longer see how far the seriousness of philosophy is removed from that of a newspaper. Such men have lost the last remnant of feeling, not only for philosophy, but also for religion, and have put in its place a spirit not so much of optimism as of journalism, the evil spirit that broods over the day-and the daily paper. Every philosophy that believes the problem of existence to be shelved, or even solved, by a political event, is a sham philosophy. There have been innumerable states founded since the beginning of the world; that is an old story. How should a political innovation manage once and for all to make a contented race of the dwellers on this earth? If any one believe in his heart that this is possible, he should report himself to our authorities : he really deserves to be Professor of Philosophy in a German university, like Harms in Berlin, J�rgen Meyer in Bonn, and
Carriere in Munich. We are feeling the consequences of the doctrine, preached lately from all the housetops, that the state is the highest end of man and there is no higher duty than to serve it: I regard this not a relapse into paganism, but into stupidity. A man who thinks state-service to be his highest duty, very possibly knows no higher one; yet there are both men and duties in a region beyond,-and one of these duties, that seems to me at least of higher value than state-service, is to destroy stupidity in all its forms-and this particular stupidity among them. And I have to do with a class of men whose teleological conceptions extend further than the well-being of a state, I mean with philosophers-and only with them in their relation to the world of culture, which is again almost independent of the “ good of the state.” Of the many links that make up the twisted chain of humanity, some are of gold and others of pewter. How does the philosopher of our time regard culture? Quite differently, I assure you, from the professors who are so content with their new state. He seems to see the symptoms of an absolute uprooting of culture in the increasing rush and hurry of life, and the decay of all reflection and simplicity. The waters of religion are ebbing, and leaving swamps or stagnant pools : the nations are drawing away in enmity again, and long to tear each other in pieces. The sciences, blindly driving along, on a laisser faire system, without a common standard, are splitting up, and losing hold of every firm principle. The educated classes are being swept along in the contemptible struggle for wealth. Never was the world more worldly, never poorer in goodness and love. Men of learning are no longer beacons or sanctuaries in the midst of this turmoil of worldliness; they themselves are daily becoming more restless, thoughtless, loveless. Everything bows before the coming barbarism, art and science included. The educated men have degenerated into the greatest foes of education, for they will deny the universal sickness and hinder the physician. They become peevish, these poor nerveless creatures, if one speak of their weakness and combat the shameful spirit of lies in them. They would gladly make one believe that they have outstripped all the centuries, and they walk with a pretence of happiness which has something pathetic about it, because their happiness is so inconceivable. One would not even ask them, as Tannh�user did Biterolf, “ What hast thou, poor wretch, enjoyed!” For, alas! we know far better ourselves, in another way. There is a wintry sky over us, and we dwell on a high mountain, in danger and in need. Short-lived is all our joy, and the sun’s rays strike palely on our white mountains. Music is heard; an old man grinds an organ, and the dancers whirl round, and the heart of the wanderer is shaken within him to see it: everything is so disordered, so drab, so hopeless. Even now there is a sound of joy, of clear thoughtless joy! but soon the mist of evening closes round, the note dies away, and the wanderer’s footsteps are heard on the gravel; as far as his eye can reach there is nothing but the grim and desolate face of nature. It may be one-sided, to insist only on the blurred lines and the dull colours in the picture of modern life: yet the other side is no more encouraging, it is only more disturbing. There is certainly strength there, enormous strength; but it is wild, primitive and merciless. One looks on with a chill expectancy, as though into the caldron of a witch’s kitchen; every moment there may arise sparks and vapour, to herald some fearful apparition. For a century we have been ready for a world-shaking convulsion; and though we have lately been trying to set the conservative strength of the so-called national state against the great modern tendency to volcanic destructiveness, it will only be, for a long time yet, an aggravation of the universal unrest that hangs over us. We need not be deceived by individuals behaving as if they knew nothing of all this anxiety: their own restlessness shows how well they know it. They think more exclusively of themselves than men ever thought before; they plant and build for their little day, and the chase for happiness is never greater than when the quarry must be caught to-day or to-morrow: the next day perhaps there is no more hunting. We live in the Atomic Age, or rather in the Atomic Chaos. The opposing forces were practically held together in mediaeval times by the Church, and in some measure assimilated by the strong pressure which she exerted. When the common tie broke and the pressure relaxed, they rose once more against each other. The Reformation taught that many things were “ adiaphora”-departments that needed no guidance from religion: this was the price paid for its own existence. Christianity paid a similar one to guard itself against the far more religious antiquity: and laid the seeds of discord at once. Everything nowadays is directed by the fools and the knaves, the selfishness of the money-makers and the brute forces of militarism. The state in their hands makes a good show of reorganising everything, and of becoming the bond that unites the warring elements; in other words, it wishes for the same idolatry from mankind as they showed to the Church. And we shall yet feel the consequences. We are even now on the ice-floes in the stream of the Middle Ages : they are thawing fast, and their movement is ominous : the banks are flooded, and giving way. The revolution, the atomistic revolution, is inevitable: but what are those smallest indivisible elements of human society? There is surely far more danger to mankind in transitional periods like these than in the actual time of revolution and chaos; they are tortured by waiting, and snatch greedily at every moment; and this breeds all kinds of cowardice and selfishness in them: whereas the true feeling of a great and universal need ever inspires men, and makes them better. In the midst of such dangers, who will provide the guardians and champions for Humanity, for the holy and inviolate treasure that has been laid up in the temples, little by little, by countless generations? Who will set up again the Image of Man, when men in their selfishness and terror see nothing but the trail of the serpent or the cur in them, and have fallen from their high estate to that of the brute or the automaton? There are three Images of Man fashioned by our modern time, which for a long while yet will urge mortal men to transfigure their own lives; they are the men of Rousseau, Goethe, and Schopenhauer. The first has the greatest fire, and is most calculated to impress the people: the second is only for the few, for those contemplative natures “ in the grand style” who are misunderstood by the crowd. The third demands the highest activity in those who will follow it: only such men will look on that image without harm, for it breaks the spirit of that merely contemplative man, and the rabble shudder at it. From the first has come forth a strength that led and still leads to fearful revolution: for in all socialistic upheavals it is ever Rousseau’s man who is the Typhoeus under the Etna. Oppressed and half crushed to death by the pride of caste and the pitilessness of wealth, spoilt by priests and bad education, a laughing-stock even to himself, man cries in his need on “ holy mother Nature,” and feels suddenly that she is as far from him as any god of the Epicureans. His prayers do not reach her; so deeply sunk is he in the Chaos of the unnatural. He contemptuously throws aside all the finery that seemed his truest humanity a little while ago-all his arts and sciences, all the refinements of his life,-he beats with his fists against the walls, in whose shadow he has degenerated, and goes forth to seek the light and the sun, the forest and the crag. And crying out, “ Nature alone is good, the natural man alone is human,” he despises himself and aspires beyond himself: a state wherein the soul is ready for a fearful resolve, but calls the noble and the rare as well from their utter depths. Goethe’s
man is no such threatening force; in a certain sense he is a corrective and a sedative to those dangerous agitations of which Rousseau’s man is a prey. Goethe himself in his youth followed the “ gospel of kindly Nature” with all the ardour of his soul: his Faust was the highest and boldest picture of Rousseau’s man, so far at any rate as his hunger for life, his discontent and yearning, his intercourse with the demons of the heart could be represented. But what comes from these congregated storm-clouds? Not a single lightning flash! And here begins the new Image of man the man according to Goethe. One might have thought that Faust would have lived a continual life of suffering, as a revolutionary and a deliverer, as the negative force that proceeds from goodness, as the genius of ruin, alike religious and daemonic, in opposition to his utterly un-daemonic companion ; though of course he could not be free of this companion, and had at once to use and despise his evil and destructive scepticism-which is the tragic destiny of all revolutionary deliverers. One is wrong, however, to expect anything of the sort: Goethe’s man here parts company with Rousseau’s; for he hates all violence, all sudden transition that is, all action: and the universal deliverer becomes merely the universal traveller. All the riches of life and nature, all antiquity-arts, mythologies and sciences-pass before his eager eyes, his deepest desires are aroused and satisfied, Helen herself can hold him no more and the moment must come for which his mocking companion is waiting. At a fair spot on the earth, his flight comes to an end: his pinions drop, and Mephistopheles is at his side. When the German ceases to be Faust, there is no danger greater than of becoming a Philistine and falling into the hands of the devilheavenly powers alone can save him. Goethe’s man is, as I said, the contemplative man in the grand style, who is only kept from dying of ennui by feeding on all the great and memorable things that have ever existed, and by living from desire to desire. He is not the active man; and when he does take a place among active men, as things are, you may be sure that no good will come of it (think, for example, of the zeal with which Goethe wrote for the stage!); and further, you may be sure that “ things as they are” will suffer no change. Goethe’s man is a conciliatory and conservative spirit, though in danger of degenerating into a Philistine, just as Rousseau’s man may easily become a Catiline. All his virtues would be the better by the addition of a little brute force and elemental passion. Goethe appears to have seen where the weakness and danger of his creation lay, as is clear from Jarno’s word to Wilhelm Meister: “ You are bitter and ill-tempered-which is quite an excellent thing: if you could once become really angry, it would be still better.” To speak plainly, it is necessary to become really angry in order that things may be better. The picture of Schopenhauer’s man can help us here. Schopenhauer’s man voluntarily takes upon himself the pain of telling the truth: this pain serves to quench his individual will and make him ready for the complete transformation of his being, which it is the inner meaning of life to realise. This openness in him appears to other men to be an effect of malice, for they think the preservation of their shifts and pretences to be the first duty of humanity, and any one who destroys their playthings to be merely malicious. They are tempted to cry out to such a man, in Faust’s words to Mephistopheles:- “ So to the active and eternal Creative force, in cold disdain You now oppose the fist infernal”- and he who would live according to Schopenhauer would seem to be more like a Mephistopheles than a Faust-that is, to our weak modern eyes, which always discover signs of malice in any negation. But there is a kind of denial and destruction that is the effect of that strong aspiration after holiness and deliverance, which Schopenhauer was the first philosopher to teach our profane and worldly generation. Everything that can be denied, deserves to be denied; and real sincerity means the belief in a state of things which cannot be denied, or in which there is no lie. The sincere man feels that his activity has a metaphysical meaning. It can only be explained by the laws of a different and a higher life; it is in the deepest sense an affirmation: even if everything that he does seem utterly opposed to the laws of our present life. It must lead therefore to constant suffering; but he knows, as Meister Eckhard did, that “ the quickest beast that will carry you to perfection is suffering.” Every one, I should think, who has such an ideal before him, must feel a wider sympathy; and he will have a burning desire to become a “ Schopenhauer man”;-pure and wonderfully patient, on his intellectual side full of a devouring fire, and far removed from the cold and contemptuous “ neutrality” of the so-called scientific man; so high above any warped and morose outlook on life as to offer himself as the first victim of the truth he has won, with a deep consciousness of the sufferings that must spring from his sincerity. His courage will destroy his happiness on earth, he must be an enemy to the men he loves and the institutions in which he grew up, he must spare neither person nor thing, however it may hurt him, he will be misunderstood and thought an ally of forces that he abhors, in his search for righteousness he will seem unrighteous by human standards: but he must comfort himself with the words that his teacher Schopenhauer once used: “ A happy life is impossible, the highest thing that man can aspire to is a heroic life; such as a man lives, who is always fighting against unequal odds for the good of others; and wins in the end without any thanks. After the battle is over, he stands like the Prince in the re corvo of Gozzi, with dignity and nobility in his eyes, but turned to stone. His memory remains, and will be reverenced as a hero’s; his will, that has been mortified all his life by toiling and struggling, by evil payment and ingratitude, is absorbed into Nirvana.” Such a heroic life, with its full “ mortification”-corresponds very little to the paltry ideas of the people who talk most about it, and make festivals in memory of great men, in the belief that a great man is great in the sense that they are small, either through exercise of his gifts to please himself or by a blind mechanical obedience to this inner force ; so that the man who does not possess the gift or feel the compulsion has the same right to be small as the other to be great. But “ gift” and “ compulsion” are contemptible words, mere means of escape from an inner voice, a slander on him who has listened to the voice-the great man; he least of all will allow himself to be given or compelled to anything: for he knows as well as any smaller man how easily life can be taken and how soft the bed whereon he might lie if he went the pleasant and conventional way with himself and his fellowcreatures: all the regulations of mankind are turned to the end that the intense feeling of life may be lost in continual distractions. Now why will he so strongly choose the opposite, and try to feel life, which is the same as to suffer from life? Because he sees that men will tempt him to betray himself, and that there is a kind of agreement to draw him from his den. He will prick up his ears and gather himself together, and say, “ I will remain mine own.” He gradually comes to understand what a fearful decision it is. For he must go down into the depths of being, with a string of curious questions on his lips-“ Why am I alive? what lesson have I to learn from life? how have I become what I am, and why do I suffer in this existence?” He is troubled, and sees that no one is troubled in the same way; but rather that the hands of his fellow-men are passionately stretched out towards the fantastic drama of the political theatre, or they themselves are treading the boards under many disguises, youths, men and graybeards, fathers, citizens, priests, merchants and officials,-busy with the
comedy they are all playing, and never thinking of their own selves. To the question “ To what end dost thou live?” they would all immediately answer, with pride, “ To become a good citizen or professor or statesman,”-and yet they are something which can never be changed: and why are they just-this? Ah, and why nothing better? The man who only regards his life as a moment in the evolution of a race or a state or a science, and will belong merely to a history of “ becoming,” has not understood the lesson of existence, and must learn it over again. This eternal “ becoming something” is a lying puppet-show, in which man has forgot himself; it is the force that scatters individuality to the four winds, the eternal childish game that the big baby time is playing in front of us-and with us. The heroism of sincerity lies in ceasing to be the plaything of time. Everything in the process of “ becoming” is a hollow sham, contemptible and shallow: man can only find the solution of his riddle in “ being” something definite and unchangeable. He begins to test how deep both “ becoming” and “ being” are rooted in him-and a fearful task is before his soul; to destroy the first, and bring all the falsity of things to the light. He wishes to know everything, not to feed a delicate taste, like Goethe’s man, to take delight, from a safe place, in the multiplicity of existence: but he himself is the first sacrifice that he brings. The heroic man does not think of his happiness or misery, his virtues or his vices, or of his being the measure of things; he has no further hopes of himself and will accept the utter consequences of his hopelessness. His strength lies in his self-forgetfulness: if he have a thought for himself, it is only to measure the vast distance between himself and his aim, and to view what he has left behind him as so much dross. The old philosophers sought for happiness and truth, with all their strength: and there is an evil principle in nature that not one shall find that which he cannot help seeking. But the man who looks for a lie in everything, and becomes a willing friend to unhappiness, shall have a marvellous disillusioning: there hovers near him something unutterable, of which truth and happiness are but idolatrous images born of the night; the earth loses her dragging weight, the events and powers of earth become as a dream, and a gradual clearness widens round him like a summer evening. It is as though the beholder of these things began to wake, and it had only been the clouds of a passing dream that had been weaving about him. They will at some time disappear: and then will it be day. 5 But I have promised to speak of Schopenhauer, as far as my experience goes, as an educator and it is far from being sufficient to paint the ideal humanity which is the “ Platonic idea” in Schopenhauer; especially as my representation is an imperfect one. The most difficult task remains; to say how a new circle of duties may spring from this ideal, and how one can reconcile such a transcendent aim with ordinary action; to prove, in short, that the ideal is educative. One might otherwise think it to be merely the blissful or intoxicating vision of a few rare moments, that leaves us afterwards the prey of a deeper disappointment. It is certain that the ideal begins to affect us in this way when we come suddenly to distinguish light and darkness, bliss and abhorrence; this is an experience that is as old as ideals themselves. But we ought not to stand in the doorway for long; we should soon leave the first stages, and ask the question, seriously and definitely, “ Is it possible to bring that incredibly high aim so near us, that it should educate us, or ‘lead us out’ as well as lead us upward?”-in order that the great words of Goethe be not fulfilled in our case-“ Man is born to a state of limitation: he can understand ends that are simple, present and definite, and is accustomed to make use of means that are near to his hand; but as soon as he comes into the open, he knows neither what he wishes nor what he ought to do, and it is all one whether he be confused by the multitude of objects or set beside himself by their greatness and importance. It is always his misfortune to be led to strive after something which he cannot attain by any ordinary activity of his own.” The objection can be made with apparent reason against Schopenhauer’s man, that his greatness and dignity can only turn our heads, and put us beyond all community with the active men of the world: the common round of duties, the noiseless tenor of life has disappeared. One man may possibly get accustomed to living in a reluctant dualism, that is, in a contradiction with himself;-becoming unstable, daily weaker and less productive:-while another will renounce all action on principle, and scarcely endure to see others active. The danger is always great when a man is too heavy-laden, and cannot really accomplish any duties. Stronger natures may be broken by it; the weaker, which are the majority, sink into a speculative laziness, and at last, from their laziness, lose even the power of speculation. With regard to such objections, I will admit that our work has hardly begun, and so far as I know, I only see one thing clearly and definitely-that it is possible for that ideal picture to provide you and me with a chain of duties that may be accomplished; and some of us already feel its pressure. In order, however, to be able to speak in plain language of the formula under which I may gather the new circle of duties, I must begin with the following considerations. The deeper minds of all ages have had pity for animals, because they suffer from life and have not the power to turn the sting of the suffering against themselves, and understand their being metaphysically. The sight of blind suffering is the spring of the deepest emotion. And in many quarters of the earth men have supposed that the souls of the guilty have entered into beasts, and that the blind suffering which at first sight calls for such pity has a clear meaning and purpose to the divine justice,-of punishment and atonement: and a heavy punishment it is, to be condemned to live in hunger and need, in the shape of a beast, and to reach no consciousness of one’s self in this life. I can think of no harder lot than the wild beast’s; he is driven to the forest by the fierce pang of hunger, that seldom leaves him at peace; and peace is itself a torment, the surfeit after horrid food, won, maybe, by a deadly fight with other animals. To cling to life, blindly and madly, with no other aim, to be ignorant of the reason, or even the fact, of one’s punishment, nay, to thirst after it as if it were a pleasure, with all the perverted desire of a fool-this is what it means to be an animal. If universal nature leads up to man, it is to show us that he is necessary to redeem her from the curse of the beast’s life, and that in him existence can find a mirror of itself wherein life appears, no longer blind, but in its real metaphysical significance. But we should consider where the beast ends and the man begins-the man, the one concern of Nature. As long as any one desires life as a pleasure in itself, he has not raised his eyes above the horizon of the beast; he only desires more consciously what the beast seeks by a blind impulse. It is so with us all, for the greater part of our lives. We do not shake off the beast, but are beasts ourselves, suffering we know not what. But there are moments when we do know; and then the clouds break, and we see how, with the rest of nature, we are straining towards the man, as to something that stands high above us. We look round and behind us, and fear the sudden rush of light; the beasts are transfigured, and ourselves with them. The enormous migrations of mankind in the wildernesses of the world, the cities they found and the wars they wage, their ceaseless gatherings and dispersions and fusions, the doctrines they blindly follow, their mutual frauds and deceits, the cry of distress, the shriek of victory-are all a continuation of the beast in us: as if the
education of man has been intentionally set back, and his promise of self-consciousness frustrated; as if, in fact, after yearning for man so long, and at last reaching him by her labour, Nature should now recoil from him and wish to return to a state of unconscious instinct. Ah! she has need of knowledge, and shrinks before the very knowledge she needs: the flame flickers unsteadily and fears its own brightness, and takes hold of a thousand things before the one thing for which knowledge is necessary. There are moments when we all know that our most elaborate arrangements are only designed to give us refuge from our real task in life; we wish to hide our heads somewhere, as if our Argus-eyed conscience could not find us out; we are quick to send our hearts on state-service, or money-making, or social duties, or scientific work, in order to possess them no longer ourselves; we are more willing and instinctive slaves of the hard day’s work than mere living requires, because it seems to us more necessary not to be in a position to think. The hurry is universal, because every one is fleeing before himself; its concealment is just as universal, as we wish to seem contented and hide our wretchedness from the keener eyes; and so there is a common need for a new carillon of words to hang in the temple of life, and peal for its noisy festival. We all know the curious way in which unpleasant memories suddenly throng on us, and how we do our best by loud talk and violent gestures to put them out of our minds; but the gestures and the talk of our ordinary life make one think we are all in this condition, frightened of any memory or any inward gaze. What is it that is always troubling us? what is the gnat that will not let us sleep ? There are spirits all about us, each moment of life has something to say to us, but we will not listen to the spirit-voices. When we are quiet and alone, we fear that something will be whispered in our ears, and so we hate the quiet, and dull our senses in society. We understand this sometimes, as I say, and stand amazed at the whirl and the rush and the anxiety and all the dream that we call our life; we seem to fear the awakening, and our dreams too become vivid and restless, as the awakening draws near. But we feel as well that we are too weak to endure long those intimate moments, and that we are not the men to whom universal nature looks as her redeemers. It is something to be able to raise our heads but for a moment and see the stream in which we are sunk so deep. We cannot gain even this transitory moment of awakening by our own strength; we must be lifted up-and who are they that will uplift us? The sincere men who have cast out the beast, the philosophers, artists and saints. Nature-qu� nunquam facit saltum-has made her one leap in creating them; a leap of joy, as she feels herself for the first time at her goal, where she begins to see that she must learn not to have goals above her, and that she has played the game of transition too long. The knowledge transfigures her, and there rests on her face the gentle weariness of evening that men call “ beauty.” Her words after this transfiguration are as a great light shed over existence: and the highest wish that mortals can reach is to listen continually to her voice with ears that hear. If a man think of all that Schopenhauer, for example, must have heard in his life, he may well say to himself-“ The deaf ears, the feeble understanding and shrunken heart, everything that I call mine, how I despise them! Not to be able to fly but only to flutter one’s wings! To look above one’s self and have no power to rise! To know the road that leads to the wide vision of the philosopher, and to reel back after a few steps! Were there but one day when the great wish might be fulfilled, how gladly would we pay for it with the rest of life! To rise as high as any thinker yet into the pure icy air of the mountain, where there are no mists and veils, and the inner constitution of things is shown in a stark and piercing clarity! Even by thinking of this the soul becomes infinitely alone; but were its wish fulfilled, did its glance once fall straight as a ray of light on the things below, were shame and anxiety and desire gone for ever-one could find no words for its state then, for the mystic and tranquil emotion with which, like the soul of Schopenhauer, it would look down on the monstrous hieroglyphics of existence and the petrified doctrines of “ becoming”; not as the brooding night, but as the red and glowing day that streams over the earth. And what a destiny it is only to know enough of the fixity and happiness of the philosopher to feel the complete unfixity and unhappiness of the false philosopher, ‘who without hope lives in desire’: to know one’s self to be the fruit of a tree that is too much in the shade ever to ripen, and to see a world of sunshine in front, where one may not go!” There were sorrow enough here, if ever, to make such a man envious and spiteful: but he will turn aside, that he may not destroy his soul by a vain aspiration; and will discover a new circle of duties. I can now give an answer to the question whether it be possible to approach the great ideal of Schopenhauer’s man “ by any ordinary activity of our own.” In the first place, the new duties are certainly not those of a hermit; they imply rather a vast community, held together not by external forms but by a fundamental idea, namely that of culture; though only so far as it can put a single task before each of us-to bring the philosopher, the artist and the saint, within and without us, to the light, and to strive thereby for the completion of Nature. For Nature needs the artist, as she needs the philosopher, for a metaphysical end, the explanation of herself, whereby she may have a clear and sharp picture of what she only saw dimly in the troubled period of transition,-and so may reach self-consciousness. Goethe, in an arrogant yet profound phrase, showed how all Nature’s attempts only have value in so far as the artist interprets her stammering words, meets her half-way, and speaks aloud what she really means. “ I have often said, and will often repeat,” he exclaims in one place, “ the causa finalis of natural and human activity is dramatic poetry. Otherwise the stuff is of no use at all.” Finally, Nature needs the saint. In him the ego has melted away, and the suffering of his life is, practically, no longer felt as individual, but as the spring of the deepest sympathy and intimacy with all living creatures: he sees the wonderful transformation scene that the comedy of “ becoming” never reaches, the attainment, at length, of the high state of man after which all nature is striving, that she may be delivered from herself. Without doubt, we all stand in close relation to him, as well as to the philosopher and the artist: there are moments, sparks from the clear fire of love, in whose light we understand the word “ I” no longer; there is something beyond our being that comes, for those moments, to the hither side of it: and this is why we long in our hearts for a bridge from here to there. In our ordinary state we can do nothing towards the production of the new redeemer, and so we hate ourselves in this state with a hatred that is the root of the pessimism which Schopenhauer had to teach again to our age, though it is as old as the aspiration after culture.-Its root, not its flower; the foundation, not the summit; the beginning of the road, not the end: for we have to learn at some time to hate something else, more universal than our own personality with its wretched limitation, its change and its unrest-and this will be when we shall learn to love something else than we can love now. When we are ourselves received into that high order of philosophers, artists and saints, in this life or a reincarnation of it, a new object for our love and hate will also rise before us. As it is, we have our task and our circle of duties, our hates and our loves. For we know that culture requires us to make ready for the coming of the Schopenhauer man;-and this is the “ use” we are to make of him;-we must know what obstacles there are and strike them
from our path-in fact, wage unceasing war against everything that hindered our fulfilment, and prevented us from becoming Schopenhauer’s men ourselves. 6 It is sometimes harder to agree to a thing than to understand it; many will feel this when they consider the proposition-“ Mankind must toil unceasingly to bring forth individual great men: this and nothing else is its task.” One would like to apply to society and its ends a fact that holds universally in the animal and vegetable world; where progress depends only on the higher individual types, which are rarer, yet more persistent, complex and productive. But traditional notions of what the end of society is, absolutely bar the way. We can easily understand how in the natural world, where one species passes at some point into a higher one, the aim of their evolution cannot be held to lie in the high level attained by the mass, or in the latest types developed;-but rather in what seem accidental beings produced here and there by favourable circumstances. It should be just as easy to understand that it is the duty of mankind to provide the circumstances favourable to the birth of the new redeemer, simply because men can have a consciousness of their object. But there is always something to prevent them. They find their ultimate aim in the happiness of all, or the greatest number, or in the expansion of a great commonwealth. A man will very readily decide to sacrifice his life for the state; he will be much slower to respond if an individual, and not a state, ask for the sacrifice. It seems to be out of reason that one man should exist for the sake of another : “ Let it be rather for the sake of every other, or, at any rate, of as many as possible!” O upright judge! As if it were more in reason to let the majority decide a question of value and significance! For the problem is-“ In what way may your life, the individual life, retain the highest value and the deepest significance? and how may it least be squandered? “ Only by your living for the good of the rarest and most valuable types, not for that of the majority,-who are the most worthless types, taken as individuals. This way of thinking should be implanted and fostered in every young man’s mind: he should regard himself both as a failure of Nature’s handiwork and a testimony to her larger ideas. “ She has succeeded badly,” he should say; “ but I will do honour to her great idea by being a means to its better success.” With these thoughts he will enter the circle of culture, which is the child of every man’s self-knowledge and dissatisfaction. He will approach and say aloud: “ I see something above me, higher and more human than I: let all help me to reach it, as I will help all who know and suffer as I do, that the man may arise at last who feels his knowledge and love, vision and power, to be complete and boundless, who in his universality is one with nature, the critic and judge of existence.” It is difficult to give any one this courageous self-consciousness, because it is impossible to teach love; from love alone the soul gains, not only the clear vision that leads to self-contempt, but also the desire to look to a higher self which is yet hidden, and strive upward to it with all its strength. And so he who rests his hope on a future great man, receives his first “ initiation into culture.” The sign of this is shame or vexation at one’s self, a hatred of one’s own narrowness, a sympathy with the genius that ever raises its head again from our misty wastes, a feeling for all that is struggling into life, the conviction that Nature must be helped in her hour of need to press forward to the man, however ill she seem to prosper, whatever success may attend her marvellous forms and projects : so that the men with whom we live are like the debris of some precious sculptures, which cry out-“ Come and help us! Put us together, for we long to become complete.” I called this inward condition the “ first initiation into culture.” I have now to describe the effects of the “ second initiation,” a task of greater difficulty. It is the passage from the inner life to the criticism of the outer life. The eye must be turned to find in the great world of movement the desire for culture that is known from the immediate experience of the individual; who must use his own strivings and aspirations as the alphabet to interpret those of humanity. He cannot rest here either, but must go higher. Culture demands from him not only that inner experience, not only the criticism of the outer world surrounding him, but action too to crown them all, the fight for culture against the influences and conventions and institutions where he cannot find his own aim,-the production of genius. Any one who can reach the second step, will see how extremely rare and imperceptible the knowledge of that end is, though all men busy themselves with culture and expend vast labour in her service. He asks himself in amazement-“ Is not such knowledge, after all, absolutely necessary? Can Nature be said to attain her end, if men have a false idea of the aim of their own labour?” And any one who thinks a great deal of Nature’s unconscious adaptation of means to ends, will probably answer at once: “ Yes, men may think and speak what they like about their ultimate end, their blind instinct will tell them the right road.” It requires some experience of life to be able to contradict this: but let a man be convinced of the real aim of culture-the production of the true man and nothing else; let him consider that amid all the pageantry and ostentation of culture at the present time the conditions for his production are nothing but a continual “ battle of the beasts”: and he will see that there is great need for a conscious will to take the place of that blind instinct. There is another reason also;-to prevent the possibility of turning this obscure impulse to quite different ends, in a direction where our highest aim can no longer be attained. For we must beware of a certain kind of misapplied and parasitical culture; the powers at present most active in its propagation have other casts of thought that prevent their relation to culture from being pure and disinterested. The first of these is the self-interest of the business men. This needs the help of culture, and helps her in return, though at the price of prescribing her ends and limits. And their favourite sorites is: “ We must have as much knowledge and education as possible; this implies as great a need as possible for it, this again as much production, this again as much material wealth and happiness as possible.”-This is the seductive formula. Its preachers would define education as the insight that makes man through and through a “ child of his age” in his desires and their satisfaction, and gives him command over the best means of making money. Its aim would be to make “ current” men, in the same sense as one speaks of the “ currency” in money ; and in their view, the more “ current” men there are, the happier the people. The object of modern educational systems is therefore to make each man as “ current” as his nature will allow him, and to give him the opportunity for the greatest amount of success and happiness that can be got from his particular stock of knowledge. He is required to have just so much idea of his own value (through his liberal education) as to know what he can ask of life; and he is assured that a natural and necessary connection between “ intelligence and property” not only exists, but is also a moral necessity. All education is detested that makes for loneliness, and has an aim above moneymaking, and requires a long time: men look askance on such serious education, as mere “ refined egoism” or “ immoral Epicureanism.” The converse of course holds, according to the ordinary morality, that education must be soon over to allow the pursuit of money to be soon begun, and should be just thorough enough to allow of much money being made. The amount of education is determined by commercial interests. In short, “ man has a necessary claim to worldly happiness; only for that reason is education necessary.” There is,
secondly, the self-interest of the state, which requires the greatest possible breadth and universality of culture, and has the most effective weapons to carry out its wishes. If it be firmly enough established not only to initiate but control education and bear its whole weight, such breadth will merely profit the competition of the state with other states. A “ highly civilised state “ generally implies, at the present time, the task of setting free the spiritual forces of a generation just so far as they may be of use to the existing institutions,-as a mountain stream is split up by embankments and channels, and its diminished power made to drive mill-wheels, its full strength being more dangerous than useful to the mills. And thus “ setting free” comes to mean rather “ chaining up.” Compare, for example, what the self-interest of the state has done for Christianity. Christianity is one of the purest manifestations of the impulse towards culture and the production of the saint: but being used in countless ways to turn the mills of the state authorities, it gradually became sick at heart, hypocritical and degenerate, and in antagonism with its original aim. Its last phase, the German Reformation, would have been nothing but a sudden flickering of its dying flame, had it not taken new strength and light from the clash and conflagration of states. In the third place, culture will be favoured by all those people who know their own character to be offensive or tiresome, and wish to draw a veil of so-called “ good form” over them. Words, gestures, dress, etiquette, and such external things, are meant to produce a false impression, the inner side to be judged from the outer. I sometimes think that modern men are eternally bored with each other and look to the arts to make them interesting. They let their artists make savoury and inviting dishes of them; they steep themselves in the spices of the East and West, and have a very interesting aroma after it all. They are ready to suit all palates: and every one will be served, whether he want something with a good or bad taste, something sublime or coarse, Greek or Chinese, tragedy or gutter-drama. The most celebrated chefs among the moderns who wish to interest and be interested at any price, are the French the worst are the Germans. This is really more comforting for the latter, and we have no reason to mind the French despising us for our want of interest, elegance and politeness, and being reminded of the Indian who longs for a ring through his nose, and then proceeds to tattoo himself. Here I must digress a little. Many things in Germany have evidently been altered since the late war with France, and new requirements for German culture brought over. The war was for many their first venture into the more elegant half of the world: and what an admirable simplicity the conqueror shows in not scorning to learn something of culture from the conquered! The applied arts especially will be reformed to emulate our more refined neighbours, the German house furnished like the French, a “ sound taste” applied to the German language by means of an Academy on the French model, to shake off the doubtful influence of Goethe-this is the judgment of our new Berlin Academician, Dubois-Raymond. Our theatres have been gradually moving, in a dignified way, towards the same goal, even the elegant German savant is now discovered-and we must now expect everything that does not conform to this law of elegance, our music, tragedy and philosophy to be thrust aside as un-German. But there were no need to raise a ringer for German culture, did German culture (which the Germans have yet to find) mean nothing but the little amenities that make life more decorative-including the arts of the dancing-master and the upholsterer;-or were they merely interested in academic rules of language and a general atmosphere of politeness. The late war and the self-comparison with the French do not seem to have aroused any further desires, and I suspect that the German has a strong wish for the moment to be free of the old obligations laid on him by his wonderful gifts of seriousness and profundity. He would much rather play the buffoon and the monkey, and learn the arts that make life amusing. But the German spirit cannot be more dishonoured than by being treated as wax for any elegant mould. And if, unfortunately, a good many Germans will allow themselves to be thus moulded, one must continually say to them, till at last they listen:-“ The old German way is no longer yours: it was hard, rough, and full of resistance; but it is still the most valuable material-one which only the greatest modellers can work with, for they alone are worthy to use it, What you have in you now is a soft pulpy stuff: make what you will out of it,-elegant dolls and interesting idols-Richard Wagner’s phrase will still hold good, ‘The German is awkward and ungainly when he wishes to be polite; he is high above all others, when he begins to take fire.’” All the elegant people have reason to beware of this German fire; it may one day devour them with all their wax dolls and idols. The prevailing love of “ good form” in Germany may have a deeper cause in the breathless seizing at what the moment can give, the haste that plucks the fruit too green, the race and the struggle that cut the furrows in men’s brows and stamp the same mark on all their actions. As if there were a poison in them that would not let them breathe, they rush about in disorder, anxious slaves of the “ three m’s,” the moment, the mode and the mob: they see too well their want of dignity and fitness, and need a false elegance to hide their galloping consumption. The fashionable desire of “ good form” is bound up with a loathing of man’s inner nature : the one is to conceal, the other to be concealed. Education means now the concealment of man’s misery and wickedness, his wild-beast quarrels, his eternal greed, his shamelessness in fruition. In pointing out the absence of a German culture, I have often had the reproach flung at me: “ This absence is quite natural, for the Germans have been too poor and modest up to now. Once rich and conscious of themselves, our people will have a culture too.” Faith may often produce happiness, yet this particular faith makes me unhappy, for I feel that the culture whose future raises such hopes-the culture of riches, politeness, and elegant concealments-is the bitterest foe of that German culture in which I believe. Every one who has to live among Germans suffers from the dreadful grayness and apathy of their lives, their formlessness, torpor and clumsiness, still more their envy, secretiveness and impurity: he is troubled by their innate love of the false and the ignoble, their wretched mimicry and translation of a good foreign thing into a bad German one. But now that the feverish unrest, the quest of gain and success, the intense prizing of the moment, is added to it all, it makes one furious to think that all this sickness can never be cured, but only painted over, by such a “ cult of the interesting.” And this among a people that has produced a Schopenhauer and a Wagner! and will produce others, unless we are blindly deceiving ourselves; for should not their very existence be a guarantee that such forces are even now potential in the German spirit? Or will they be exceptions, the last inheritors of the qualities that were once called German? I can see nothing to help me here, and return to my main argument again, from which my doubts and anxieties have made me digress. I have not yet enumerated all the forces that help culture without recognising its end, the production of genius. Three have been named; the self-interest of business, of the state, and of those who draw the cloak of “ good form” over them. There is fourthly the self-interest of science, and the peculiar nature of her servants-the learned. Science has the same relation to wisdom as current morality to holiness: she is cold and dry, loveless, and ignorant of any deep feeling of dissatisfaction and yearning. She injures her servants in helping herself, for
she impresses her own character on them and dries up their humanity. As long as we actually mean by culture the progress of science, she will pass by the great suffering man and harden her heart, for science only sees the problems of knowledge, and suffering is something alien and unintelligible to her world-though no less a problem for that! If one accustom himself to put down every experience in a dialectical form of question and answer, and translate it into the language of “ pure reason,” he will soon wither up and rattle his bones like a skeleton. We all know it: and why is it that the young do not shudder at these skeletons of men, but give themselves blindly to science without motive or measure? It cannot be the so-called “ impulse to truth”: for how could there be an impulse towards a pure, cold and objectless knowledge? The unprejudiced eye can see the real driving forces only too plainly. The vivisection of the professor has much to recommend it, as he himself is accustomed to finger and analyse all things-even the worthiest! To speak honestly, the savant is a complex of very various impulses and attractive forces he is a base metal throughout. Take first a strong and increasing desire for intellectual adventure, the attraction of the new and rare as against the old and tedious. Add to that a certain joy in nosing the trail of dialectic, and beating the cover where the old fox, Thought, lies hid; the desire is not so much for truth as the chase of truth, and the chief pleasure is in surrounding and artistically killing it. Add thirdly a love of contradiction whereby the personality is able to assert itself against all others: the battle’s the thing, and the personal victory its aim,-truth only its pretext. The impulse to discover “ particular truths” plays a great part in the professor, coming from his submission to definite ruling persons, classes, opinions, churches, governments, for he feels it a profit to himself to bring truth to their side. The following characteristics of the savant are less common, but still found.-Firstly, downrightness and a feeling for simplicity, very valuable if more than a mere awkwardness and inability to deceive, deception requiring some mother-wit.-(Actually, we may be on our guard against too obvious cleverness and resource, and doubt the man’s sincerity.)-Otherwise this downrightness is generally of little value, and rarely of any use to knowledge, as it follows tradition and speaks the truth only in “ adiaphora”; it being lazier to speak the truth here than ignore it. Everything new means something to be unlearnt, and your downright man will respect the ancient dogmas and accuse the new evangelist of failing in the sensus recti. There was a similar opposition, with probability and custom on its side, to the theory of Copernicus. The professor’s frequent hatred of philosophy is principally a hatred of the long trains of reasoning and artificiality of the proofs. Ultimately the savants of every age have a fixed limit; beyond which ingenuity is not allowed, and everything suspected as a conspirator against honesty. Secondly, a clear vision of near objects, combined with great shortsightedness for the distant and universal. The professor’s range is generally very small, and his eye must be kept close to the object. To pass from a point already considered to another, he has to move his whole optical apparatus. He cuts a picture into small sections, like a man using an operaglass in the theatre, and sees now a head, now a bit of the dress, but nothing as a whole. The single sections are never combined for him, he only infers their connection, and consequently has no strong general impression. He judges a literary work, for example, by certain paragraphs or sentences or errors, as he can do nothing more; he will be driven to see in an oil painting nothing but a mass of daubs. Thirdly, a sober conventionality in his likes and dislikes. Thus he especially delights in history because he can put his own motives into the actions of the past. A mole is most comfortable in a mole-hill. He is on his guard against all ingenious and extravagant hypotheses; but digs up industriously all the commonplace motives of the past, because he feels in sympathy with them. He is generally quite incapable of understanding and valuing the rare or the uncommon, the great or the real. Fourthly, a lack of feeling, which makes him capable of vivisection. He knows nothing of the suffering that brings knowledge, and does not fear to tread where other men shudder. He is cold and may easily appear cruel. He is thought courageous, but he is not,-any more than the mule who does not feel giddiness. Fifthly, diffidence, or a low estimate of himself. Though he live in a miserable alley of the world, he has no sense of sacrifice or surrender; he appears often to know in his inmost heart that he is not a flying but a crawling creature. And this makes him seem even pathetic. Sixthly, loyalty to his teachers and leaders. From his heart he wishes to help them, and knows he can do it best with the truth. He has a grateful disposition, for he has only gained admittance through them to the high hall of science; he would never have entered by his own road. Any man to-day who can throw open a new province where his lesser disciples can work to some purpose, is famous at once; so great is the crowd that presses after him. These grateful pupils are certainly a misfortune to their teacher, as they all imitate him; his faults are exaggerated in their small persons, his virtues correspondingly diminished. Seventhly, he will follow the usual road of all the professors, where a feeling for truth springs from a lack of ideas, and the wheel once started goes on. Such natures become compilers, commentators, makers of indices and herbaria; they rummage about one special department because they have never thought there are others. Their industry has something of the monstrous stupidity of gravitation; and so they can often bring their labours to an end. Eighthly, a dread of ennui. While the true thinker desires nothing more than leisure, the professor fears it, not knowing how it is to be used. Books are his comfort; he listens to everybody’s different thoughts and keeps himself amused all day. He especially chooses books with a personal relation to himself, that make him feel some emotion of like or dislike; books that have to do with himself or his position, his political, aesthetic, or even grammatical doctrines; if he have mastered even one branch of knowledge, the means to flap away the flies of ennui will not fail him. Ninthly, the motive of the bread-winner, the “ cry of the empty stomach,” in fact. Truth is used as a direct means of preferment, when she can be attained; or as a way to the good graces of the fountains of honour-and bread. Only, however, in the sense of the “ particular truth”: there is a gulf between the profitable truths that many serve, and the unprofitable truths to which only those few people devote themselves whose motto is not ingenii largitor venter. Tenthly, a reverence for their fellow-professors and a fear of their displeasure-a higher and rarer motive than the last, though not uncommon. All the members of the guild are jealously on guard, that the truth which means so much bread and honour and position may really be baptized in the name of its discoverer. The one pays the other reverence for the truth he has found, in order to exact the toll again if he should find one himself. The Untruth, the Error is loudly exploded, that the workers may not be too many; here and there the real truth will be exploded to let a few bold and stiff-necked errors be on show for a time; there is never a lack of “ moral idiosyncrasies,”-formerly called rascalities. Eleventhly, the “ savant for vanity,” now rather rare. He will get a department for himself somehow, and investigate curiosities, especially if they demand unusual expenditure, travel, research, or communication with all parts of the world. He is quite satisfied with the honour of being regarded as a curiosity himself, and never dreams of earning a living by his erudite studies. Twelfthly, the “ savant for
amusement.” He loves to look for knots in knowledge and to untie them; not too energetically however, lest he lose the spirit of the game. Thus he does not penetrate the depths, though he often observes something that the microscopic eyes of the bread-and-butter scientist never see. If I speak, lastly, of the “ impulse towards justice” as a further motive of the savant, I may be answered that this noble impulse, being metaphysical in its nature, is too indistinguishable from the rest, and really incomprehensible to mortal mind; and so I leave the thirteenth heading with the pious wish that the impulse may be less rare in the professor than it seems. For a spark in his soul from the fire of justice is sufficient to irradiate and purify it, so that he can rest no more and is driven for ever from the cold or lukewarm condition in which most of his fellows do their daily work. All these elements, or a part of them, must be regarded as fused and pounded together, to form the Servant of Truth. For the sake of an absolutely inhuman thing-mere purposeless, and therefore motiveless, knowledge-a mass of very human little motives have been chemically combined, and as the result we have the professor,-so transfigured in the light of that pure unearthly object that the mixing and pounding which went to form him are all forgotten! It is very curious. Yet there are moments when they must be remembered,-when we have to think of the professor’s significance to culture. Any one with observation can see that he is in his essence and by his origin unproductive, and has a natural hatred of the productive; and thus there is an endless feud between the genius and the savant in idea and practice. The latter wishes to kill Nature by analysing and comprehending it, the former to increase it by a new living Nature. The happy age does not need or know the savant; the sick and sluggish time ranks him as its highest and worthiest. Who were physician enough to know the health or sickness of our time? It is clear that the professor is valued too highly, with evil consequences for the future genius, for whom he has no compassion, merely a cold, contemptuous criticism, a shrug of the shoulders, as if at something strange and perverted for which he has neither time nor inclination. And so he too knows nothing of the aim of culture. In fact, all these considerations go to prove that the aim of culture is most unknown precisely where the interest in it seems liveliest. The state may trumpet as it will its services to culture, it merely helps culture in order to help itself, and does not comprehend an aim that stands higher than its own well-being or even existence. The business men in their continual demand for education merely wish for-business. When the pioneers of “ good form” pretend to be the real helpers of culture, imagining that all art, for example, is merely to serve their own needs, they are clearly affirming themselves in affirming culture. Of the savant enough has already been said. All four are emulously thinking how they can benefit themselves with the help of culture, but have no thoughts at all when their own interests are not engaged. And so they have done nothing to improve the conditions for the birth of genius in modern times; and the opposition to original men has grown so far that no Socrates could ever live among us, and certainly could never reach the age of seventy. I remember saying in the third chapter that our whole modern world was not so stable that one could prophesy an eternal life to its conception of culture. It is likely that the next millennium may reach two or three new ideas that might well make the hair of our present generation stand on end. The belief in the metaphysical significance of culture would not be such a horrifying thing, but its effects on educational methods might be so. It requires a totally new attitude of mind to be able to, look away from the present educational institutions to the strangely different ones that will be necessary for the second or third generation, At present the labours of higher education produce merely the savant or the official or the business man or the Philistine or, more commonly, a mixture of all four; and the future institutions will have a harder task;-not in itself harder, as it is really more natural, and so easier; and further, could anything be harder than to make a youth into a savant against nature, as now happens?-But the difficulty lies in unlearning what we know and setting up a new aim; it will be an endless trouble to change the fundamental idea of our present educational system, that has its roots in the Middle Ages and regards the mediaeval savant as the ideal type of culture. It is already time to put these objects before us; for some generation must begin the battle, of which a later generation will reap the victory. The solitary man who has understood the new fundamental idea of culture is at the parting of the ways; on the one he will be welcomed by his age, laurels and rewards will be his, powerful parties will uphold him, he will have as many in sympathy behind him as in front, and when the leader speaks the word of deliverance, it will echo through all the ranks. The first duty is to “ fight in line,” the second to treat as foes all who will not “ fall in.” On the other way he will find fewer companions; it is steeper and more tortuous. The travellers on the first road laugh at him, as his way is the more troublesome and dangerous; and they try to entice him over. If the two ways cross, he is ill-treated, cast aside or left alone. What significance has any particular form of culture for these several travellers? The enormous throng that press to their end on the first road, understand by it the laws and institutions that enable them to go forward in regular fashion and rule out all the solitary and obstinate people who look towards higher and remoter objects. To the small company on the other road it has quite a different office: they wish to guard themselves, by means of a strong organisation, from being swept away by the throng, to prevent their individual members from fainting on the way or turning in spirit from their great task. These solitary men must finish their work; that is why they should all hold together; and those who have their part in the scheme will take thought to prepare themselves with ever-increasing purity of aim for the birth of the genius, and ensure that the time be ripe for him. Many are destined to help on the labour, even among the second-rate talents, and it is only in submission to such a destiny that they can feel they are living for a duty, and have a meaning and an object in their lives. But at present these talents are being turned from the road their instinct has chosen by the seductive tones of the “ fashionable culture,” that plays on their selfish side, their vanities and weaknesses; and the timespirit ever whispers in their ears its flattering counsel:-“ Follow me and go not thither! There you are only servants and tools, overshadowed by higher natures with no scope for your own, drawn by threads, hung with fetters, slaves and automatons. With me you may enjoy your true personality, and be masters, your talents may shine with their own light, and yourselves stand in the front ranks with an immense following round you; and the acclamation of public opinion will rejoice you more than a wandering breath of approval sent down from the cold ethereal heights of genius.” Even the best men are snared by such allurements, and the ultimate difference comes not so much from the rarity and power of their talent, as the influence of a certain heroic disposition at the base of them, and an inner feeling of kinship with genius. For there are men who feel it as their own misery when they see the genius in painful toil and struggle, in danger of self-destruction, or neglected by the short-sighted selfishness of the state, the superficiality of the business men, and the cold arrogance of the professors; and I hope there may be some to understand what I mean by my sketch of Schopenhauer’s destiny, and to what end Schopenhauer can really educate. 7
But setting aside all thoughts of any educational revolution in the distant future;-what provision is required now, that our future philosopher may have the best chance of opening his eyes to a life like Schopenhauer’s-hard as it is, yet still livable? What, further, must be discovered that may make his influence on his contemporaries more certain? And what obstacles must be removed before his example can have its full effect and the philosopher train another philosopher? Here we descend to be practical. Nature always desires the greatest utility, but does not understand how to find the best and handiest means to her end; that is her great sorrow, and the cause of her melancholy. The impulse towards her own redemption shows clearly her wish to give men a significant existence by the generation of the philosopher and the artist: but how unclear and weak is the effect she generally obtains with her artists and philosophers, and how seldom is there any effect at all ! She is especially perplexed in her efforts to make the philosopher useful; her methods are casual and tentative, her failures innumerable; most of her philosophers never touch the common good of mankind at all. Her actions seem those of a spendthrift; but the cause lies in no prodigal luxury, but in her inexperience. Were she human, she would probably never cease to be dissatisfied with herself and her bungling. Nature shoots the philosopher at mankind like an arrow; she. does not aim, but hopes that the arrow will stick somewhere. She makes countless mistakes, that give her pain. She is as extravagant in the sphere of culture as in her planting and sowing. She fulfils her ends in a large and clumsy fashion, using up far too much of her strength. The artist has the same relation to the connoisseurs and lovers of his art as a piece of heavy artillery to a flock of sparrows. It is a fool’s part to use a great avalanche to sweep away a little snow, to kill a man in order to strike the fly on his nose. The artist and the philosopher are witnesses against Nature’s adaptation of her means, however well they may show the wisdom of her ends. They only reach a few and should reach all-and even these few are not struck with the strength they used when they shot. It is sad to have to value art so differently as cause and effect; how huge in its inception, how faint the echo afterwards! The artist does his work as Nature bids him, for the benefit of other men no doubt of it; but he knows that none of those men will understand and love his work as he understands and loves it himself. That lonely height of love and understanding is necessary, by Nature’s clumsy law, to produce a lower type; the great and noble are used as the means to the small and ignoble. Nature is a bad manager; her expenses are far greater than her profits: for all her riches she must one day go bankrupt. She would have acted more reasonably to make the rule of her household-small expense and hundredfold profit; if there had been, for example, only a few artists with moderate powers, but an immense number of hearers to appreciate them, stronger and more powerful characters than the artists themselves; then the effect of the art-work, in comparison with the cause, might be a hundred-tongued echo. One might at least expect cause and effect to be of equal power; but Nature lags infinitely behind this consummation. An artist, and especially a philosopher, seems often to have dropped by chance into his age, as a wandering hermit or straggler cut off from the main body. Think how utterly great Schopenhauer is, and what a small and absurd effect he has had! An honest man can feel no greater shame at the present time than at the thought of the casual treatment Schopenhauer has received and the evil powers that have up to now killed his effect among men. First there was the want of readers,-to the eternal shame of our cultivated age;-then the inadequacy of his first public adherents, as soon as he had any; further, I think, the crassness of the modern man towards books, which he will no longer take seriously. As an outcome of many attempts to adapt Schopenhauer to this enervated age, the new danger has gradually arisen of regarding him as an odd kind of pungent herb, of taking him in grains, as a sort of metaphysical pepper. In this way he has gradually become famous, and I should think more have heard his name than Hegel’s; and, for all that, he is still a solitary being, who has failed of his effect.-Though the honour of causing the failure belongs least of all to the barking of his literary antagonists; first because there are few men with the patience to read them, and secondly, because any one who does, is sent immediately to Schopenhauer himself; for who will let a donkey-driver prevent him from mounting a fine horse, however much he praise his donkey? Whoever has recognised Nature’s unreason in our time, will have to consider some means to help her; his task will be to bring the free spirits and the sufferers from this age to know Schopenhauer; and make them tributaries to the flood that is to overbear all the clumsy uses to which Nature even now is accustomed to put her philosophers. Such men will see that the identical obstacles hinder the effect of a great philosophy and the production of the great philosopher; and so will direct their aims to prepare the regeneration of Schopenhauer, which means that of the philosophical genius. The real opposition to the further spread of his doctrine in the past, and the regeneration of the philosopher in the future, is the perversity of human nature as it is; and all the great men that are to be must spend infinite pains in freeing themselves from it. The world they enter is plastered over with pretence-including not merely religious dogmas, but such juggling conceptions as “ progress,” “ universal education,” “ nationalism,” “ the modern state” ; practically all our general terms have an artificial veneer over them that will bring a clearer-sighted posterity to reproach our age bitterly for its warped and stunted growth, however loudly we may boast of our “ health.” The beauty of the antique vases, says Schopenhauer, lies in the simplicity with which they express their meaning and object; it is so with all the ancient implements; if Nature produced amphorae, lamps, tables, chairs, helmets, shields, breastplates and the like, they would resemble these. And, as a corollary, whoever considers how we all manage our art, politics, religion and education-to say nothing of our vases!-will find in them a barbaric exaggeration and arbitrariness of expression. Nothing is more unfavourable to the rise of genius than such monstrosities. They are unseen and undiscoverable, the leaden weights on his hand when he will set it to the plough; the weights are only shaken off with violence, and his highest work must to an extent always bear the mark of it. In considering the conditions that, at best, keep the born philosopher from being oppressed by the perversity of the age, I am surprised to find they are partly those in which Schopenhauer himself grew up. True, there was no lack of opposing influences; the evil time drew perilously near him in the person of a vain and pretentious mother. But the proud republican character of his father rescued him from her and gave him the first quality of a philosopher-a rude and strong virility. His father was neither an official nor a savant; he travelled much abroad with his son,-a great help to one who must know men rather than books, and worship truth before the state. In time he got accustomed to national peculiarities: he made England, France and Italy equally his home, and felt no little sympathy with the Spanish character. On the whole, he did not think it an honour to be born in Germany, and I am not sure that the new political conditions would have made him change his mind. He held quite openly the opinion that the state’s one object was to give protection at home and abroad, and even protection against its “ protectors,” and to attribute any other object to it was to endanger its true end. And so, to the consternation of all the
so-called liberals, he left his property to the survivors of the Prussian soldiers who fell in 1848 in the fight for order. To understand the state and its duties in this single sense may seem more and more henceforth the sign of intellectual superiority; for the man with the furor philosophicus in him will no longer have time for the furor politicus and will wisely keep from reading the newspapers or serving a party; though he will not hesitate a moment to take his place in the ranks if his country be in real need. All states are badly managed, when other men than politicians busy themselves with politics; and they deserve to be ruined by their political amateurs. Schopenhauer had another great advantage-that he had never been educated for a professor, but worked for some time (though against his will) as a merchant’s clerk, and through all his early years breathed the freer air of a great commercial house. A savant can never become a philosopher: Kant himself could not, but remained in a chrysalis stage to the end, in spite of the innate force of his genius. Any one who thinks I do Kant wrong in saying this does not know what a philosopher is-not only a great thinker, but also a real man; and how could a real man have sprung from a savant? He who lets conceptions, opinions, events, books come between himself and things, and is born for history (in the widest sense), will never see anything at once, and never be himself a thing to be “ seen at once”; though both these powers should be in the philosopher, as he must take most of his doctrine from himself and be himself the copy and compendium of the whole world. If a man look at himself through a veil of other people’s opinions, no wonder he sees nothing but-those opinions. And it is thus that the professors see and live. But Schopenhauer had the rare happiness of seeing the genius not only in himself, but also outside himself-in Goethe; and this double reflection taught him everything about the aims and culture of the learned. He knew by this experience how the free strong man, to whom all artistic culture was looking, must come to be born; and could he, after this vision, have much desire to busy himself with the so-called “ art,” in the learned, hypocritical manner of the moderns? He had seen something higher than that-an awful unearthly judgment-scene in which all life, even the highest and completest, was weighed and found too light; he had beheld the saint as the judge of existence. We cannot tell how early Schopenhauer reached this view of life, and came to hold it with such intensity as to make all his writings an attempt to mirror it; we know that the youth had this great vision, and can well believe it of the child. Everything that he gained later from life and books, from all the realms of knowledge, was only a means of colour and expression to him ; the Kantian philosophy itself was to him an extraordinary rhetorical instrument for making the utterance of his vision, as he thought, clearer; the Buddhist and Christian mythologies occasionally served the same end. He had one task and a thousand means to execute it; one meaning, and innumerable hieroglyphs to express it. It was one of the high conditions of his existence that he really could live for such a task-according to his motto vitam impendere vero-and none of life’s material needs could shake his resolution; and we know the splendid return he made his father for this. The contemplative man in Germany usually pursues his scientific studies to the detriment of his sincerity, as a “ considerate fool,” in search of place and honour, circumspect and obsequious, and fawning on his influential superiors. Nothing offended the savants more than Schopenhauer’s unlikeness to them. 8 These are a few of the conditions under which the philosophical genius can at least come to light in our time, in spite of all thwarting influences;-a virility of character, an early knowledge of mankind, an absence of learned education and narrow patriotism, of compulsion to earn his livelihood or depend on the state,-freedom in fact, and again freedom; the same marvellous and dangerous element in which the Greek philosophers grew up. The man who will reproach him, as Niebuhr did Plato, with being a bad citizen, may do so, and be himself a good one; so he and Plato will be right together! Another may call this great freedom presumption; he is also right, as he could not himself use the freedom properly if he desired it, and would certainly presume too far with it. This freedom is really a grave burden of guilt; and can only be expiated by great actions. Every ordinary son of earth has the right of looking askance on such endowments; and may Providence keep him from being so endowed-burdened, that is, with such terrible duties! His freedom and his loneliness would be his ruin, and ennui would turn him into a fool, and a mischievous fool at that. A father may possibly learn something from this that he may use for his son’s private education, though one must not expect fathers to have only philosophers for their sons. It is possible that they will always oppose their sons becoming philosophers, and call it mere perversity; Socrates was sacrificed to the fathers’ anger, for “ corrupting the youth,’ and Plato even thought a new ideal state necessary to prevent the philosophers’ growth from being dependent on the fathers’ folly. It looks at present as though Plato had really accomplished something; for the modern state counts the encouragement of philosophy as one of its duties and tries to secure for a number of men at a time the sort of freedom that conditions the philosopher. But, historically, Plato has been very unlucky; as soon as a structure has risen corresponding actually to his proposals, it has always turned, on a closer view, into a goblin-child, a monstrous changeling; compare the ecclesiastical state of the Middle Ages with the government of the “ God-born king” of which Plato dreamed! The modern state is furthest removed from the idea of the Philosopher-king (Thank Heaven for that ! the Christian will say); but we must think whether it takes that very “ encouragement of philosophy” in a Platonic sense, I mean as seriously and honestly as if its highest object were to produce more Platos. If the philosopher seem, as usual, an accident of his time, does the state make it its conscious business to turn the accidental into the necessary and help Nature here also? Experience teaches us a better way-or a worse: it says that nothing so stands in the way of the birth and growth of Nature’s philosopher as the bad philosophers made “ by order.” A poor obstacle, isn’t it? and the same that Schopenhauer pointed out in his famous essay on University philosophy. I return to this point, as men must be forced to take it seriously, to be driven to activity by it; and I think all writing is useless that does not contain such a stimulus to activity. And anyhow it is a good thing to apply Schopenhauer’s eternal theories once more to our own contemporaries, as some kindly soul might think that everything has changed for the better in Germany since his fierce diatribes. Unfortunately his work is incomplete on this side as well, unimportant as the side may be. The “ freedom” that the state, as I said, bestows on certain men for the sake of philosophy is, properly speaking, no freedom at all, but an office that maintains its holder. The “ encouragement of philosophy” means that there are to-day a number of men whom the state enables to make their living out of philosophy; whereas the old sages of Greece were not paid by the state, but at best were presented, as Zeno was, with a golden crown and a monument in the Ceramicus. I cannot say generally whether truth is served by showing the way to live by her, since everything depends on the character of the individual who shows the way. I can imagine a degree of pride in a man saying to his fellow-men, “ take care of me, as I have something better to do-namely to take care of you.” We should not be angry at such a
heightened mode of expression in Plato and Schopenhauer; and so they might properly have been University philosophers,-as Plato, for example, was a court philosopher for a while without lowering the dignity of philosophy. But in Kant we have the usual submissive professor, without any nobility in his relations with the state; and thus he could not justify the University philosophy when it was once assailed. If there be natures like Schopenhauer’s and Plato’s, which can justify it, I fear they will never have the chance, as the state would never venture to give such men these positions, for the simple reason that every state fears them, and will only favour philosophers it does not fear. The state obviously has a special fear of philosophy, and will try to attract more philosophers, to create the impression that it has philosophy on its side,-because it has those men on its side who have the title without the power. But if there should come one who really proposes to cut everything to the quick, the state included, with the knife of truth, the state, that affirms its own existence above all, is justified in banishing him as an enemy, just as it bans a religion that exalts itself to be its judge. The man who consents to be a state philosopher, must also consent to be regarded as renouncing the search for truth in all its secret retreats. At any rate, so long as he enjoys his position, he must recognise something higher than truth the state. And not only the state, but everything required by it for existence-a definite form of religion, a social system, a standing army; a noli me tangere is written above all these things. Can a University philosopher ever keep clearly before him the whole round of these duties and limitations? I do not know. The man who has done so and remains a state-official, is a false friend to truth; if he has not,-I think he is no friend to truth either. But general considerations like these are always the weakest in their influence on mankind. Most people will find it enough to shrug their shoulders and say, “ As if anything great and pure has ever been able to maintain itself on this earth without some concession to human vulgarity! Would you rather the state persecuted philosophers than paid them for official services? “ Without answering this last question, I will merely say that these “ concessions” of philosophy to the state go rather far at present. In the first place, the state chooses its own philosophical servants, as many as its institutions require; it therefore pretends to be able to distinguish the good and the bad philosophers, and even assumes there must be a sufficient supply of good ones to fill all the chairs. The state is the authority not only for their goodness but their numbers. Secondly, it confines those it has chosen to a definite place and a definite activity among particular men; they must instruct every undergraduate who wants instruction, daily, at stated hours. The question is whether a philosopher can bind himself, with a good conscience, to have something to teach every day, to any one who wishes to listen. Must he not appear to know more than he does, and speak, before an unknown audience, of things that he could mention without risk only to his most intimate friends? And above all, does he not surrender the precious freedom of following his genius when and wherever it call him, by the mere fact of being bound to think at stated times on a fixed subject? And before young men, too! Is not such thinking in its nature emasculate? And suppose he felt some day that he had no ideas just then-and yet must be in his place and appear to be thinking What then? “ But,” one will say, “ he is not a thinker but mainly a depository of thought, a man of great learning in all previous philosophies. Of these he can always say something that his scholars do not know.” This is actually the third, and the most dangerous, concession made by philosophy to the state, when it is compelled to appear in the form of erudition, as the knowledge (more specifically) of the history of philosophy. The genius looks purely and lovingly on existence, like a poet, and cannot dive too deep into it;-and nothing is more abhorrent to him than to burrow among the innumerable strange and wrong-headed opinions. The learned history of the past was never a true philosopher’s business, in India or Greece; and a professor of philosophy who busies himself with such matters must be, at best, content to hear it said of him, “ He is an able scholar, antiquary, philologist, historian,”-but never, “ He is a philosopher.” I said, “ at best”: for a scholar feels that most of the learned works written by University philosophers are badly done, without any real scientific power, and generally are dread- fully tedious. Who will blow aside, for example, the Lethean vapour with which the history of Greek philosophy has been enveloped by the dull though not very scientific works of Ritter, Brandis and Zeller? I, at any rate, would rather read Diogenes Laertius than Zeller, because at least the spirit of the old philosophers lives in Diogenes, but neither that nor any other spirit in Zeller. And, after all, what does the history of philosophy matter to our young men Are they to be discouraged by the welter of opinions from having any of their own; or taught to join the chorus that approves the vastness of our progress? Are they to learn to hate or perhaps despise philosophy? One might expect the last, knowing the torture the students endure for their philosophical examinations, in having to get into their unfortunate heads the maddest efforts of the human mind as well as the greatest and profoundest. The only method of criticising a philosophy that is possible and proves anything at all-namely to see whether one can live by it-has never been taught at the universities; only the criticism of words, and again words, is taught there. Imagine a young head, without much experience of life, being stuffed with fifty systems (in the form of words) and fifty criticisms of them, all mixed up together,-what an overgrown wilderness he will come to be, what contempt he will feel for a philosophical education! It is, of course, not an education in philosophy at all, but in the art of passing a philosophical examination: the usual result being the pious ejaculation of the wearied examinee, “ Thank God I am no philosopher, but a Christian and a good citizen!” What if this cry were the ultimate object of the state, and the “ education” or leading to philosophy were merely a leading from philosophy? We may well ask.-But if so, there is one thing to fear-that the youth may some day find out to what end philosophy is thus mis-handled. “ Is the highest thing of all, the production of the philosophical genius, nothing but a pretext, and the main object perhaps to hinder his production? And is Reason turned to Unreason?” Then woe to the whole machinery of political and professorial trickery! Will it soon become notorious? I do not know; but anyhow university philosophy has fallen into a general state of doubting and despair. The cause lies partly in the feebleness of those who hold the chairs at present: and if Schopenhauer had to write his treatise on university philosophy to-day, he would find the club no longer necessary, but could conquer with a bulrush. They are the heirs and successors of those slip-shod thinkers whose crazy heads Schopenhauer struck at: their childish natures and dwarfish frames remind one of the Indian proverb: ” men are born according to their deeds, deaf, dumb, misshapen.” Those fathers deserved such sons, “ according to their deeds,” as the proverb says. Hence the students will, no doubt, soon get on without the philosophy taught at their university, just as those who are not university men manage to do without it already. This can be tested from one’s own experience: in my student-days, for example, I found the university philosophers very ordinary men indeed, who had collected together a few conclusions from the other sciences, and in their leisure hours read the newspapers and went to concerts; they were treated by their academic colleagues
with politely veiled contempt. They had the reputation of knowing very little, but of never being at a loss for obscure expressions to conceal their ignorance. They had a preference for those obscure regions where a man could not walk long with clear vision. One said of the natural sciences, “ Not one of them can fully explain to me the origin of matter; then what do I care about them all?”- Another said of history, “ It tells nothing new to the man with ideas”: in fact, they always found reasons for its being more philosophical to know nothing than to learn anything. If they let themselves be drawn to learn, a secret instinct made them fly from the actual sciences and found a dim kingdom amid their gaps and uncertainties. They “ led the way” in the sciences in the sense that the quarry “ leads the way” for the hunters who are behind him. Recently they have amused themselves with asserting they are merely the watchers on the frontier of the sciences. The Kantian doctrine is of use to them here, and they industriously build up an empty scepticism on it, of which in a short time nobody will take any more notice. Here and there one will rise to a little metaphysic of his own, with the general accompaniment of headaches and giddiness and bleeding at the nose After the usual ill-success of their voyages into the clouds and the mist, some hard-headed young student of the real sciences will pluck them down by the skirts, and their faces will assume the expression now habitual to them, of offended dignity at being found out. They have lost their happy confidence, and not one of them will venture a step further for the sake of his philosophy. Some used to believe they could find out new religions or reinstate old ones by their systems. They have given up such pretensions now, and have become mostly mild, muddled folk, with no Lucretian boldness, but merely some spiteful complaints of the “ dead weight that lies on the intellects of mankind”! No one can even learn logic from them now, and their obvious knowledge of their own powers has made them discontinue the dialectical disputations common in the old days. There is much more care and modesty, logic and inventiveness, in a word, more philosophical method in the work of the special sciences than in the so-called “ philosophy,” and every one will agree with the temperate words of Bagehot[2] on the present system builders: “ Unproved abstract principles without number have been eagerly caught up by sanguine men, and then carefully spun out into books and theories, which were to explain the whole world. But the world goes clear against these abstractions, and it must do so, as they require it to go in antagonistic directions. The mass of a system attracts the young and impresses the unwary; but cultivated people are very dubious about it. They are ready to receive hints and suggestions, and the smallest real truth is ever welcome. But a large book of deductive philosophy is much to be suspected. Who is not almost sure beforehand that the premises will contain a strange mixture of truth and error, and therefore that it will not be worth while to spend life in reasoning over their consequences?” The philosophers, especially in Germany, used to sink into such a state of abstraction that they were in continual danger of running their heads against a beam; but there is a whole herd of Laputan flappers about them to give them in time a gentle stroke on their eyes or anywhere else. Sometimes the blows are too hard; and then these scorners of earth forget themselves and strike back, but the victim always escapes them. ” Fool, you do not see the beam,” says the flapper; and often the philosopher does see the beam, and calms down. These flappers are the natural sciences and history; little by little they have so overawed the German dream-craft which has long taken the place of philosophy, that the dreamer would be only too glad to give up the attempt to run alone: but when they unexpectedly fall into the others’ arms, or try to put leading-strings on them that they may be led themselves, those others flap as terribly as they can, as if they would say, “ This is all that is wanting,-that a philosophaster like this should lay his impure hands on us, the natural sciences and history! Away with him!” Then they start back, knowing not where to turn or to ask the way. They wanted to have a little physical knowledge at their back, possibly in the form of empirical psychology (like the Herbartians), or perhaps a little history; and then they could at least make a public show of behaving scientifically, although in their hearts they may wish all philosophy and all science at the devil. But granted that this herd of bad philosophers is ridiculous-and who will deny it?-how far are they also harmful? They are harmful just because they make philosophy ridiculous. As long as this imitationthinking continues to be recognised by the state, the lasting effect of a true philosophy will be destroyed, or at any rate circumscribed; nothing does this so well as the curse of ridicule that the representatives of the great cause have drawn on them, for it attacks that cause itself. And so I think it will encourage culture to deprive philosophy of its political and academic standing, and relieve state and university of the task, impossible for them, of deciding between true and false philosophy. Let the philosophers run wild, forbid them any thoughts of office or civic position, hold them out no more bribes,-nay, rather persecute them and treat them ill,-you will see a wonderful result. They will flee in terror and seek a roof where they can, these poor phantasms; one will become a parson, another a schoolmaster, another will creep into an editorship, another write school-books for young ladies’ colleges, the wisest of them will plough the fields, the vainest go to court. Everything will be left suddenly empty, the birds flown: for it is easy to get rid of bad philosophers,-one only has to cease paying them. And that is a better plan than the open patronage of any philosophy, whatever it be, for state reasons. The state has never any concern with truth, but only with the truth useful to it, or rather, with anything that is useful to it, be it truth, half-truth, or error. A coalition between state and philosophy has only meaning when the latter can promise to be unconditionally useful to the state, to put its well-being higher than truth. It would certainly be a noble thing for the state to have truth as a paid servant; but it knows well enough that it is the essence of truth to be paid nothing and serve nothing. So the state’s servant turns out to be merely “ false truth,” a masked actor who cannot perform the office required from the real truth-the affirmation of the state’s worth and sanctity. When a mediaeval prince wished to be crowned by the Pope, but could not get him to consent, he appointed an antipope to do the business for him. This may serve up to a certain point ; but not when the modern state appoints an “ anti-philosophy” to legitimise it; for it has true philosophy against it just as much as before, or even more so. I believe in all seriousness that it is to the state’s advantage to have nothing further to do with philosophy, to demand nothing from it, and let it go its own way as much as possible. Without this indifferent attitude, philosophy may become dangerous and oppressive, and will have to be persecuted.-The only interest the state can have in the university lies in the training of obedient and useful citizens; and it should hesitate to put this obedience and usefulness in doubt by demanding an examination in philosophy from the young men. To make a bogey of philosophy may be an excellent way to frighten the idle and incompetent from its study; but this advantage is not enough to counterbalance the danger that this kind of compulsion may arouse from the side of the more reckless and turbulent spirits. They learn to know about forbidden books, begin to criticise their teachers, and finally come to understand the object of university philosophy and its examinations; not to speak of the doubts that may be fostered in the minds
of young theologians, as a consequence of which they are beginning to be extinct in Germany, like the ibexes in the Tyrol. I know the objections that the state could bring against all this, as long as the lovely Hegel-corn was yellowing in all the fields; but now that hail has destroyed the crop and all men’s hopes of it, now that nothing has been fulfilled and all the barns are empty,-there are no more objections to be made, but rather rejections of philosophy itself. The state has now the power of rejection; in Hegel’s time it only wished to have it-and that makes a great difference. The state needs no more the sanction of philosophy, and philosophy has thus become superfluous to it. It will find advantage in ceasing to maintain its professors, or (as I think will soon happen) in merely pretending to maintain them; but it is of still greater importance that the university should see the benefit of this as well. At least I believe the real sciences must see that their interest lies in freeing themselves from all contact with sham science. And further, the reputation of the universities hangs too much in the balance for them not to welcome a severance from methods that are thought little of even in academic circles. The outer world has good reason for its wide-spread contempt of universities; they are reproached with being cowardly, the small fearing the great, and the great fearing public opinion; it is said that they do not lead the higher thought of the age but hobble slowly behind it, and cleave no longer to the fundamental ideas of the recognised sciences. Grammar, for example, is studied more diligently than ever without any one seeing the necessity of a rigorous training in speech and writing. The gates of Indian antiquity are being opened, and the scholars have no more idea of the most imperishable works of the Indians-their philosophies-than a beast has of playing the harp; though Schopenhauer thinks that the acquaintance with Indian philosophy is one of the greatest advantages possessed by our century. Classical antiquity is the favourite playground nowadays, and its effect is no longer classical and formative; as is shown by the students, who are certainly no models for imitation. Where is now the spirit of Friedrich August Wolf to be found, of whom Franz Passow could say that he seemed a loyal and humanistic spirit with force enough to set half the world aflame? Instead of that a journalistic spirit is arising in the university, often under the name of philosophy; the smooth delivery-the very cosmetics of speech-with Faust and Nathan the Wise for ever on the lips, the accent and the outlook of our worst literary magazines and, more recently, much chatter about our holy German music, and the demand for lectures on Schiller and Goethe,-all this is a sign that the university spirit is beginning to be confused with the Spirit of the Age. Thus the establishment of a higher tribunal, outside the universities, to protect and criticise them with regard to culture, would seem a most valuable thing, and as soon as philosophy can sever itself from the universities and be purified from every unworthy motive or hypocrisy, it will be able to become such a tribunal. It will do its work with- out state help in money or honours, free from the spirit of the age as well as from any fear of it ; being in fact the judge, as Schopenhauer was, of the so-called culture surrounding it And in this way the philosopher can also be useful to the university, by refusing to be a part of it, but criticising it from afar. Distance will lend dignity. But, after all, what does the life of a state or the progress of universities matter in comparison with the life of philosophy on earth! For, to say quite frankly what I mean, it is infinitely more important that a philosopher should arise on the earth than that a state or a university should continue. The dignity of philosophy may rise in proportion as the submission to public opinion and the danger to liberty increase; it was at its highest during the convulsions marking the fall of the Roman Republic, and in the time of the Empire, when the names of both philosophy and history became ingrata principibus nomina. Brutus shows its dignity better than Plato; his was a time when ethics cease to have commonplaces. Philosophy is not much regarded now, and we may well ask why no great soldier or statesman has taken it up; and the answer is that a thin phantom has met him, under the name of philosophy, the cautious wisdom of the learned professor; and philosophy has soon come to seem ridiculous to him. It ought to have seemed terrible; and men who are called to authority should know the heroic power that has its source there. An American may tell them what a centre of mighty forces a great thinker can prove on this earth. “ Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet,” says Emerson.[3] “ Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end. There is not a piece of science, but its flank may be turned to-morrow; there is not any literary reputation, not the so-called eternal names of fame, that may not be revised and condemned… . The things which are dear to men at this hour are so on account of the ideas which have emerged on their mental horizon, and which cause the present order of things as a tree bears its apples. A new degree of culture would instantly revolutionise the entire system of human pursuits.” If such thinkers are dangerous, it is clear why our university thinkers are not dangerous; for their thoughts bloom as peacefully in the shade of tradition “ as ever tree bore its apples.” They do not frighten; they carry away no gates of Gaza; and to all their little contemplations one can make the answer of Diogenes when a certain philosopher was praised: “ What great result has he to show, who has so long practised philosophy and yet has hurt nobody?” Yes, the university philosophy should have on its monument, “ It has hurt nobody.” But this is rather the praise one gives to an old woman than “ to a goddess of truth; and it is not surprising that those who know the goddess only as an old woman are the less men for that, and are naturally neglected by the real men of power. If this be the case in our time, the dignity of philosophy is trodden in the mire ; and she seems herself to have become ridiculous or insignificant. All her true friends are bound to bear witness against this transformation, at least to show that it is merely her false servants in philosopher’s clothing who are so. Or better, they must prove by their own deed that the love of truth has itself awe and power. Schopenhauer proved this and will continue to prove it, more and more. HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN, A BOOK FOR FREE SPIRITS Translated by Helen Zimmern and Paul Cohn INTRODUCTION. Nietzsche’s essay, Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, appeared in 1876, and his next publication was his present work, which was issued in 1878. A comparison of the books will show that the two years of meditation intervening had brought about a great change in Nietzsche’s views, his style of expressing them, and the form in which they were cast. The Dionysian, overflowing with life, gives way to an Apollonian thinker with a touch of pessimism. The long essay form is abandoned, and instead
we have a series of aphorisms, some tinged with melancholy, others with satire, several, especially towards the end, with Nietzschian wit at its best, and a few at the beginning so very abstruse as to require careful study. Since the Bayreuth festivals of 1876, Nietzsche had gradually come to see Wagner as he really was. The ideal musician that Nietzsche had pictured in his own mind turned out to be nothing more than a rather dilettante philosopher, an opportunistic decadent with a suspicious tendency towards Christianity. The young philosopher thereupon proceeded to shake off the influence which the musician had exercised upon him. He was successful in doing so, but not without a struggle, just as he had formerly shaken off the influence of Schopenhauer. Hence he writes in his autobiography: [1] “ Human, all-too-Human, is the monument of a crisis. It is entitled: ‘A book for free spirits,’ and almost every line in it represents a victory—in its pages I freed myself from everything foreign to my real nature. Idealism is foreign to me: the title says, ‘Where you see ideal things, I see things which are only human alas! all-too-human!’ I know man better—the term ‘free spirit’ must here be understood in no other sense than this: a freed man, who has once more taken possession of himself.” [1] Ecce Homo, p. 75. The form of this book will be better understood when it is remembered that at this period Nietzsche was beginning to suffer from stomach trouble and headaches. As a cure for his complaints, he spent his time in travel when he could get a few weeks’ respite from his duties at Basel University; and it was in the course of his solitary walks and hill-climbing tours that the majority of these thoughts occurred to him and were jotted down there and then. A few of them, however, date further back, as he tells us in the preface to the second part of this work. Many of them, he says, occupied his mind even before he published his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, and several others, as we learn from his notebooks and posthumous writings, date from the period of the Thoughts out of Season. It must be clearly understood, however, that Nietzsche’s disease must not be looked upon in the same way as that of an ordinary man. People are inclined to regard a sick man as rancorous; but anyone who fights with and conquers his disease, and even exploits it, as Nietzsche did, benefits thereby to an extraordinary degree. In the first place, he has passed through several stages of human psychology with which a healthy man is entirely unacquainted; e.g. he has learnt by introspection the spiteful and revengeful spirit of the sick man and his religion. Secondly, in his moments of freedom from pain and gloom his thoughts will be all the more brilliant. In support of this last statement, one instance may be selected out of hundreds that could be adduced. Heinrich Heine spent the greater part of his life in exile from his native country, tortured by headaches, and finally dying in a foreign land as the result of a spinal disease. His splendid works were composed in his moments of respite from illness, and during the last years of his life, when his health was at its worst, he gave to the world his famous Romancero. We would likewise do well to recollect Goethe’s saying: Zart Gedicht, wie Regenbogen, Wird nur auf dunkelm Grund gezogen. [2] [2] “ Tender poetry, like rainbows, can appear only on a dark and sombre background.”—J. M. K. Thus neither the form of this book—so startling at first to those who have been brought up in the traditions of our own school—nor the fact that the writer was in poor health (the average Englishman may be reminded that there may be mens nulla in corpore sano) should deter us from perusing it as carefully as we can. We may be sure of an adequate reward; for here no abstract philosopher is discoursing, no harmless dealer in “ isms” and “ ologies”—but a man of the world, who had previously to writing come into contact with some of the best men and women of his time; who had travelled a great deal, and especially in the south; and who had finally even reached the muchbeloved home of all great Germans: Ancient Greece. From Greece Nietzsche brought back his standard measure, his infallible scales, which may be compared to those of the Goddess of Justice, and in which modern institutions, parliaments, states, and religions were weighed by him, found wanting, and severely censured. Is Hellenism, however, an ideal suitable for everybody? Does not a commercial country like ours still stand in need of the earnest gloom of Puritanism rather than of the dazzling sun of Hellenic beauty? The darker and more strict creed has at least the advantage of keeping men in the narrow path leading to duty and honesty, and may help to turn them away from the success-at-all-costs hunt; while, on the other hand, the more human and beautiful ideal, if preached to the wrong congregation, may destroy the smaller virtues of Christianity and render it impossible to rear the higher virtues of Hellenism in its stead. The danger is worth pointing out: nothing, indeed, could be more fatal than a proposal which the Editor of this series has had from an American publisher, viz., to bring out a “ Nietzsche in a Nutshell, so that the general public may know what it is all about.” No; it might be better that business people—the less educated of them, at all events—should not know what it is all about. The great exhaustion, necessarily brought about by the modern commercial death-and-life struggle for existence, is the worst possible condition in which a man can read Nietzsche. The aphorisms in this book are essentially for an order of minds which can afford otium; but sine dignitate if possible— for the British “ dignity” is another obstacle in the path leading to a complete understanding of our author. Indeed, these aphorisms would be much out of place, and might be quite false, if applied in other directions. Take, for example, No. 434, containing the now celebrated dictum that women always intrigue in secret against the higher souls of their husbands. While this statement is correct as applied to artists, it is obviously not intended for business-men, whose wives in many instances spur them on—not to philosophy or art, but to money, comfort, and worldly success. But statesmen and politicians, who, no matter what may be thought to the contrary, require new ideas occasionally, will find much to interest them here. They seem to have a certain difficulty nowadays in meeting the argument of Socialism. In aphorism 451, Nietzsche gives them a hint. The governing classes, says he, can, if they choose, treat all men as equals, and proclaim the establishment of equal rights: so far a socialistic mode of thought which is based on justice is possible; but, as has been said, only within the ranks of the governing classes, which in this case practices justice with sacrifices and abnegations. On the other hand, to demand equality of rights, as do the Socialists of the subject caste, is by no means the outcome of justice, but of covetousness. If you expose bloody pieces of flesh to a beast, and then withdraw them again until it finally begins to roar, do you think that the roaring implies justice? Theologians on the other hand, as may be expected, will find no such ready help in their difficulties from Nietzsche. They must, on the contrary, be on their guard against so alert an adversary—a duty which they are apparently not going to shirk; for theologians are amongst the most ardent students of Nietzsche in this country. Their attention may therefore be drawn to aphorism 630 of this book, dealing with convictions and their origin, which will no doubt be successfully refuted by the defenders of the true faith. In fact, there is not a single paragraph in the book that does not deserve careful study by all serious thinkers. On the whole, however, this is a calm book, and those who are accustomed to Nietzsche the out-spoken Immoralist, may be somewhat astonished at the calm tone of the present volume. The
explanation is that Nietzsche was now just beginning to walk on his own philosophical path. His life-long aim, the uplifting of the type man, was still in view, but the way leading towards it was once more uncertain. Hence the peculiarly calm, even melancholic, and what Nietzsche himself would call Apollonian, tinge of many of these aphorisms, so different from the style of his earlier and later writings. For this very reason, however, the book may appeal all the more to English readers, who are of course more Apollonian than Dionysian. Nietzsche is feeling his way, and these aphorisms represent his first steps. As such—besides having a high intrinsic value of themselves—they are enormous aids to the study of his character and temperament. J. M. KENNEDY. PREFACE. 1. I have been told frequently, and always with great surprise, that there is something common and distinctive in all my writings, from the Birth of Tragedy to the latest published Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. They all contain, I have been told, snares and nets for unwary birds, and an almost perpetual unconscious demand for the inversion of customary valuations and valued customs. What? Everything only—human—all-too-human? People lay down my writings with this sigh, not without a certain dread and distrust of morality itself, indeed almost tempted and encouraged to become advocates of the worst things: as being perhaps only the best disparaged? My writings have been called a school of suspicion and especially of disdain, more happily, also, a school of courage and even of audacity. Indeed, I myself do not think that anyone has ever looked at the world with such a profound suspicion; and not only as occasional Devil’s Advocate, but equally also, to speak theologically, as enemy and impeacher of God; and he who realizes something of the consequences involved, in every profound suspicion, something of the chills and anxieties of loneliness to which every uncompromising difference of outlook condemns him who is affected therewith, will also understand how often I sought shelter in some kind of reverence or hostility, or scientifically or levity or stupidity, in order to recover from myself, and, as it were, to obtain temporary self-forgetfulness; also why, when I did not find what I needed, I was obliged to manufacture it, to counterfeit and to imagine it in a suitable manner (and what else have poets ever done? And for what purpose has all the art in the world existed?). What I always required most, however, for my cure and self-recovery, was the belief that I was not isolated in such circumstances, that I did not see in an isolated manner—a magic suspicion of relationship and similarity to others in outlook and desire, repose in the confidence of friendship, a blindness in both parties without suspicion or note of interrogation, an enjoyment of foregrounds, and surfaces of the near and the nearest, of all that has color, epidermis, and outside appearance. Perhaps I might be reproached in this respect for much “ art” and fine false coinage; for instance, for voluntarily and knowingly shutting my eyes to Schopenhauer’s blind will to morality at a time when I had become sufficiently clear-sighted about morality; also for deceiving myself about Richard Wagner’s incurable romanticism, as if it were a beginning and not an end; also about the Greeks, also about the Germans and their future—and there would still probably be quite a long list of such alsos? Supposing however, that this were all true and that I were reproached with good reason, what do you know, what could you know as to how much artifice of self-preservation, how much rationality and higher protection there is in such self-deception, and how much falseness I still require in order to allow myself again and again the luxury of my sincerity? … In short, I still live; and life, in spite of ourselves, is not devised by morality; it demands illusion, it lives by illusion … but—There! I am already beginning again and doing what I have always done, old immoralist and bird-catcher that I am,—I am talking un-morally, ultra-morally, “ beyond good and evil “ ? … 2. Thus then, when I found it necessary, I invented once on a time the “ free spirits,” to whom this discouragingly encouraging book with the title Human, all-too-Human, is dedicated. There are no such “ free spirits” nor have there been such, but, as already said, I then required them for company to keep me cheerful in the midst of evils (sickness, loneliness, foreignness,—acedia, inactivity) as brave companions and ghosts with whom I could laugh and gossip when so inclined and send to the devil when they became bores, as compensation for the lack of friends. That such free spirits will be possible some day, that our Europe will have such bold and cheerful wights amongst her sons of to-morrow and the day after to-morrow, actually and bodily, and not merely, as in my case, as the shadows of a hermit’s phantasmagoria—I should be the last to doubt thereof. Already I see them coming, slowly, slowly; and perhaps I am doing something to hasten their coming when I describe in advance under what auspices I see them originate, and upon what paths I see them come. 3. One may suppose that a spirit in which the type “ free spirit” is to become fully mature and sweet, has had its decisive event in a great emancipation, and that it was all the more fettered previously and apparently bound forever to its corner and pillar. What is it that binds most strongly? What cords are almost unrendable? In men of a lofty and select type it will be their duties; the reverence which is suitable to youth, respect and tenderness for all that is time-honored and worthy, gratitude to the land which bore them, to the hand which led them, to the sanctuary where they learnt to adore,—their most exalted moments themselves will bind them most effectively, will lay upon them the most enduring obligations. For those who are thus bound the great emancipation comes suddenly, like an earthquake; the young soul is all at once convulsed, unloosened and extricated—it does not itself know what is happening. An impulsion and compulsion sway and over-master it like a command; a will and a wish awaken, to go forth on their course, anywhere, at any cost; a violent, dangerous curiosity about an undiscovered world flames and flares in every sense. “ Better to die than live here”—says the imperious voice and seduction, and this “ here,” this “ at home” is all that the soul has hitherto loved! A sudden fear and suspicion of that which it loved, a flash of disdain for what was called its “ duty,” a rebellious, arbitrary, volcanically throbbing longing for travel, foreignness, estrangement, coldness, disenchantment, glaciation, a hatred of love, perhaps a sacrilegious clutch and look backwards, to where it hitherto adored and loved, perhaps a glow of shame at what it was just doing, and at the same time a rejoicing that it was doing it, an intoxicated, internal, exulting thrill which betrays a
triumph—a triumph? Over what? Over whom? An enigmatical, questionable, doubtful triumph, but the first triumph nevertheless;—such evil and painful incidents belong to the history of the great emancipation. It is, at the same time, a disease which may destroy the man, this first outbreak of power and will to self-decision, self-valuation, this will to free will; and how much disease is manifested in the wild attempts and eccentricities by which the liberated and emancipated one now seeks to demonstrate his mastery over things! He roves about raging with unsatisfied longing; whatever he captures has to suffer for the dangerous tension of his pride; he tears to pieces whatever attracts him. With a malicious laugh he twirls round whatever he finds veiled or guarded by a sense of shame; he tries how these things look when turned upside down. It is a matter of arbitrariness with him, and pleasure in arbitrariness, if he now perhaps bestow his favor on what had hitherto a bad repute,—if he inquisitively and temptingly haunt what is specially forbidden. In the background of his activities and wanderings—for he is restless and aimless in his course as in a desert—stands the note of interrogation of an increasingly dangerous curiosity. “ Cannot all valuations be reversed? And is good perhaps evil? And God only an invention and artifice of the devil? Is everything, perhaps, radically false? And if we are the deceived, are we not thereby also deceivers? Must we not also be deceivers?”—Such thoughts lead and mislead him more and more, onward and away. Solitude encircles and engirdles him, always more threatening, more throttling, more heart-oppressing, that terrible goddess and mater sæva cupidinum—but who knows nowadays what solitude is? … 4. From this morbid solitariness, from the desert of such years of experiment, it is still a long way to the copious, overflowing safety and soundness which does not care to dispense with disease itself as an instrument and angling-hook of knowledge;—to that mature freedom of spirit which is equally self-control and discipline of the heart, and gives access to many and opposed modes of thought;—to that inward comprehensiveness and daintiness of superabundance, which excludes any danger of the spirit’s becoming enamored and lost in its own paths, and lying intoxicated in some corner or other; to that excess of plastic, healing, formative, and restorative powers, which is exactly the sign of splendid health, that excess which gives the free spirit the dangerous prerogative of being entitled to live by experiments and offer itself to adventure; the free spirit’s prerogative of mastership! Long years of convalescence may lie in between, years full of many-colored, painfully-enchanting magical transformations, curbed and led by a tough will to health, which often dares to dress and disguise itself as actual health. There is a middle condition therein, which a man of such a fate never calls to mind later on without emotion; a pale, delicate light and a sunshinehappiness are peculiar to him, a feeling of bird-like freedom, prospect, and haughtiness, a tertium quid in which curiosity and gentle disdain are combined. A “ free spirit”—this cool expression does good in every condition, it almost warms. One no longer lives, in the fetters of love and hatred, without Yea, without Nay, voluntarily near, voluntarily distant, preferring to escape, to turn aside, to flutter forth, to fly up and away; one is fastidious like everyone who has once seen an immense variety beneath him,—and one has become the opposite of those who trouble themselves about things which do not concern them. In fact, it is nothing but things which now concern the free spirit,—and how many things!—which no longer trouble him! 5. A step further towards recovery, and the free spirit again draws near to life; slowly, it is true, and almost stubbornly, almost distrustfully. Again it grows warmer around him, and, as it were, yellower; feeling and sympathy gain depth, thawing winds of every kind pass lightly over him. He almost feels as if his eyes were now first opened to what is near. He marvels and is still; where has he been? The near and nearest things, how changed they appear to him! What a bloom and magic they have acquired meanwhile! He looks back gratefully,—grateful to his wandering, his austerity and self-estrangement, his far-sightedness and his bird-like flights in cold heights. What a good thing that he did not always stay “ at home,” “ by himself,” like a sensitive, stupid tenderling. He has been beside himself, there is no doubt. He now sees himself for the first time,—and what surprises he feels thereby! What thrills unexperienced hitherto! What joy even in the weariness, in the old illness, in the relapses of the convalescent! How he likes to sit still and suffer, to practice patience, to lie in the sun! Who is as familiar as he with the joy of winter, with the patch of sunshine upon the wall! They are the most grateful animals in the world, and also the most unassuming, these lizards of convalescents with their faces half-turned towards life once more:—there are those amongst them who never let a day pass without hanging a little hymn of praise on its trailing fringe. And, speaking seriously, it is a radical cure for all pessimism (the well-known disease of old idealists and falsehood-mongers) to become ill after the manner of these free spirits, to remain ill a good while, and then grow well (I mean “ better”) for a still longer period. It is wisdom, practical wisdom, to prescribe even health for one’s self for a long time only in small doses. 6. About this time it may at last happen, under the sudden illuminations of still disturbed and changing health, that the enigma of that great emancipation begins to reveal itself to the free, and ever freer, spirit,—that enigma which had hitherto lain obscure, questionable, and almost intangible, in his memory. If for a long time he scarcely dared to ask himself, “ Why so apart? So alone? denying everything that I revered? denying reverence itself? Why this hatred, this suspicion, this severity towards my own virtues?”—he now dares and asks the questions aloud, and already hears something like an answer to them—“ Thou shouldst become master over thyself and master also of thine own virtues. Formerly they were thy masters; but they are only entitled to be thy tools amongst other tools. Thou shouldst obtain power over thy pro and contra, and learn how to put them forth and withdraw them again in accordance with thy higher purpose. Thou shouldst learn how to take the proper perspective of every valuation—the shifting, distortion, and apparent teleology of the horizons and everything that belongs to perspective; also the amount of stupidity which opposite values involve, and all the intellectual loss with which every pro and every contra has to be paid for. Thou shouldst learn how much necessary injustice there is in every for and against, injustice as inseparable from life, and life itself as conditioned by the perspective and its injustice. Above all thou shouldst see clearly where the injustice is always greatest:—namely, where life has developed most punily, restrictedly, necessitously, and
incipiently, and yet cannot help regarding itself as the purpose and standard of things, and for the sake of self-preservation, secretly, basely, and continuously wasting away and calling in question the higher, greater, and richer,—thou shouldst see clearly the problem of gradation of rank, and how power and right and amplitude of perspective grow up together. Thou shouldst——But enough; the free spirit knows henceforth which “ thou shalt” he has obeyed, and also what he can now do, what he only now—may do… . 7. Thus doth the free spirit answer himself with regard to the riddle of emancipation, and ends therewith, while he generalizes his case, in order thus to decide with regard to his experience. “ As it has happened to me!” he says to himself, “ so must it happen to everyone in whom a mission seeks to embody itself and to ‘come into the world.’” The secret power and necessity of this mission will operate in and upon the destined individuals like an unconscious pregnancy, long before they have had the mission itself in view and have known its name. Our destiny rules over us, even when we are not yet aware of it; it is the future that makes laws for our to-day. Granted that it is the problem of the gradations of rank, of which we may say that it is our problem, we free spirits; now only in the midday of our life do we first understand what preparations, détours, tests, experiments, and disguises the problem needed, before it was permitted to rise before us, and how we had first to experience the most manifold and opposing conditions of distress and happiness in soul and body, as adventurers and circumnavigators of the inner world called “ man,” as surveyors of all the “ higher” and the “ one-above-another,” also called “ man”—penetrating everywhere, almost without fear, rejecting nothing, losing nothing, tasting everything, cleansing everything from all that is accidental, and, as it were, sifting it out—until at last we could say, we free spirits, “ Here—a new problem! Here a long ladder, the rungs of which we ourselves have sat upon and mounted,—which we ourselves at some time have been! Here a higher place, a lower place, an under-us, an immeasurably long order, a hierarchy which we see; here—our problem!” 8. No psychologist or augur will be in doubt for a moment as to what stage of the development just described the following book belongs (or is assigned to). But where are these psychologists nowadays? In France, certainly; perhaps in Russia; assuredly not in Germany. Reasons are not lacking why the present-day Germans could still even count this as an honor to them—bad enough, surely, for one who in this respect is un-German in disposition and constitution! This German book, which has been able to find readers in a wide circle of countries and nations—it has been about ten years going its rounds—and must understand some sort of music and piping art, by means of which even coy foreign ears are seduced into listening,—it is precisely in Germany that this book has been most negligently read, and worst listened to; what is the reason? “ It demands too much,” I have been told, “ it appeals to men free from the pressure of coarse duties, it wants refined and fastidious senses, it needs superfluity—superfluity of time, of clearness of sky and heart, of otium in the boldest sense of the term:—purely good things, which we Germans of to-day do not possess and therefore cannot give.” After such a polite answer my philosophy advises me to be silent and not to question further; besides, in certain cases, as the proverb points out, one only remains a philosopher by being—silent. [3] Nice, Spring 1886. [3] An allusion to the mediæval Latin distich: O si tacuisses, Philosophus mansisses.—J. M. K. FIRST DIVISION. FIRST AND LAST THINGS. 1. Chemistry of Ideas and Sensations.—Philosophical problems adopt in almost all matters the same form of question as they did two thousand years ago; how can anything spring from its opposite? for instance, reason out of unreason, the sentient out of the dead, logic out of unlogic, disinterested contemplation out of covetous willing, life for others out of egoism, truth out of error? Metaphysical philosophy has helped itself over those difficulties hitherto by denying the origin of one thing in another, and assuming a miraculous origin for more highly valued things, immediately out of the kernel and essence of the “ thing in itself.” Historical philosophy, on the contrary, which is no longer to be thought of as separate from physical science, the youngest of all philosophical methods, has ascertained in single cases (and presumably this will happen in everything) that there are no opposites except in the usual exaggeration of the popular or metaphysical point of view, and that an error of reason lies at the bottom of the opposition: according to this explanation, strictly understood, there is neither an unegoistical action nor an entirely disinterested point of view, they are both only sublimations in which the fundamental element appears almost evaporated, and is only to be discovered by the closest observation. All that we require, and which can only be given us by the present advance of the single sciences, is a chemistry of the moral, religious, æsthetic ideas and sentiments, as also of those emotions which we experience in ourselves both in the great and in the small phases of social and intellectual intercourse, and even in solitude; but what if this chemistry should result in the fact that also in this case the most beautiful colors have been obtained from base, even despised materials? Would many be inclined to pursue such examinations? Humanity likes to put all questions as to origin and beginning out of its mind; must one not be almost dehumanized to feel a contrary tendency in one’s self? 2. Inherited Faults of Philosophers.—All philosophers have the common fault that they start from man in his present state and hope to attain their end by an analysis of him. Unconsciously they look upon “ man” as an æterna veritas, as a thing unchangeable in all commotion, as a sure standard of things. But everything that the philosopher says about man is really nothing more than testimony about the man of a very limited space of time. A lack of the historical sense is the hereditary fault of all philosophers; many, indeed, unconsciously mistake the very latest variety of man, such as has arisen under the influence of certain religions, certain political events, for the permanent form from which one must set out. They will not learn that man has developed, that his faculty of knowledge has developed also; whilst for some of them the entire world is spun out of this faculty of
knowledge. Now everything essential in human development happened in pre-historic times, long before those four thousand years which we know something of; man may not have changed much during this time. But the philosopher sees “ instincts” in the present man and takes it for granted that this is one of the unalterable facts of mankind, and, consequently, can furnish a key to the understanding of the world; the entire teleology is so constructed that man of the last four thousand years is spoken of as an eternal being, towards which all things in the world have from the beginning a natural direction. But everything has evolved; there are no eternal facts, as there are likewise no absolute truths. Therefore, historical philosophizing is henceforth necessary, and with it the virtue of diffidence. 3. Appreciation of Unpretentious Truths.—It is a mark of a higher culture to value the little unpretentious truths, which have been found by means of strict method, more highly than the joy-diffusing and dazzling errors which spring from metaphysical and artistic times and peoples. First of all one has scorn on the lips for the former, as if here nothing could have equal privileges with anything else, so unassuming, simple, bashful, apparently discouraging are they, so beautiful, stately, intoxicating, perhaps even animating, are the others. But the hardly attained, the certain, the lasting, and therefore of great consequence for all wider knowledge, is still the higher; to keep one’s self to that is manly and shows bravery, simplicity, and forbearance. Gradually not only single individuals but the whole of mankind will be raised to this manliness, when it has at last accustomed itself to the higher appreciation of durable, lasting knowledge, and has lost all belief in inspiration and the miraculous communication of truths. Respecters of forms, certainly, with their standard of the beautiful and noble, will first of all have good reasons for mockery, as soon as the appreciation of unpretentious truths, and the scientific spirit, begin to obtain the mastery; but only because their eye has either not yet recognized the charm of the simplest form, or because men educated in that spirit are not yet completely and inwardly saturated by it, so that they still thoughtlessly imitate old forms (and badly enough, as one does who no longer cares much about the matter). Formerly the spirit was not occupied with strict thought, its earnestness then lay in the spinning out of symbols and forms. This is changed; that earnestness in the symbolical has become the mark of a lower culture. As our arts themselves grow evermore intellectual, our senses more spiritual, and as, for instance, people now judge concerning what sounds well to the senses quite differently from how they did a hundred years ago, so the forms of our life grow ever more spiritual, to the eye of older ages perhaps uglier, but only because it is incapable of perceiving how the kingdom of the inward, spiritual beauty constantly grows deeper and wider, and to what extent the inner intellectual look may be of more importance to us all than the most beautiful bodily frame and the noblest architectural structure. 4. Astrology and the Like.—It is probable that the objects of religious, moral, æsthetic and logical sentiment likewise belong only to the surface of things, while man willingly believes that here, at least, he has touched the heart of the world; he deceives himself, because those things enrapture him so profoundly, and make him so profoundly unhappy, and he therefore shows the same pride here as in astrology. For astrology believes that the firmament moves round the destiny of man; the moral man, however, takes it for granted that what he has essentially at heart must also be the essence and heart of things. 5. Misunderstanding of Dreams.—In the ages of a rude and primitive civilization man believed that in dreams he became acquainted with a second actual world; herein lies the origin of all metaphysics. Without dreams there could have been found no reason for a division of the world. The distinction, too, between soul and body is connected with the most ancient comprehension of dreams, also the supposition of an imaginary soul-body, therefore the origin of all belief in spirits, and probably also the belief in gods. “ The dead continues to live, for he appears to the living in a dream”: thus men reasoned of old for thousands and thousands of years. 6. The Scientific Spirit Partially but not Wholly Powerful.—The smallest subdivisions of science taken separately are dealt with purely in relation to themselves,—the general, great sciences, on the contrary, regarded as a whole, call up the question—certainly a very non-objective one—“ Wherefore? To what end?” It is this utilitarian consideration which causes them to be dealt with less impersonally when taken as a whole than when considered in their various parts. In philosophy, above all, as the apex of the entire pyramid of science, the question as to the utility of knowledge is involuntarily brought forward, and every philosophy has the unconscious intention of ascribing to it the greatest usefulness. For this reason there is so much high-flying metaphysics in all philosophies and such a shyness of the apparently unimportant solutions of physics; for the importance of knowledge for life must appear as great as possible. Here is the antagonism between the separate provinces of science and philosophy. The latter desires, what art does, to give the greatest possible depth and meaning to life and actions; in the former one seeks knowledge and nothing further, whatever may emerge thereby. So far there has been no philosopher in whose hands philosophy has not grown into an apology for knowledge; on this point, at least, everyone is an optimist, that the greatest usefulness must be ascribed to knowledge. They are all tyrannized over by logic, and this is optimism—in its essence. 7. The Kill-Joy in Science.—Philosophy separated from science when it asked the question, “ Which is the knowledge of the world and of life which enables man to live most happily?” This happened in the Socratic schools; the veins of scientific investigation were bound up by the point of view of happiness,—and are so still. 8. Pneumatic Explanation of Nature.—Metaphysics explains the writing of Nature, so to speak, pneumatically, as the Church and her learned men formerly did with the Bible. A
great deal of understanding is required to apply to Nature the same method of strict interpretation as the philologists have now established for all books with the intention of clearly understanding what the text means, but not suspecting a double sense or even taking it for granted. Just, however, as with regard to books, the bad art of interpretation is by no means overcome, and in the most cultivated society one still constantly comes across the remains of allegorical and mystic interpretation, so it is also with regard to Nature, indeed it is even much worse. 9. The Metaphysical World.—It is true that there might be a metaphysical world; the absolute possibility of it is hardly to be disputed. We look at everything through the human head and cannot cut this head off; while the question remains, What would be left of the world if it had been cut off? This is a purely scientific problem, and one not very likely to trouble mankind; but everything which has hitherto made metaphysical suppositions valuable, terrible, delightful for man, what has produced them, is passion, error, and selfdeception; the very worst methods of knowledge, not the best, have taught belief therein. When these methods have been discovered as the foundation of all existing religions and metaphysics, they have been refuted. Then there still always remains that possibility; but there is nothing to be done with it, much less is it possible to let happiness, salvation, and life depend on the spider-thread of such a possibility. For nothing could be said of the metaphysical world but that it would be a different condition, a condition inaccessible and incomprehensible to us; it would be a thing of negative qualities. Were the existence of such a world ever so well proved, the fact would nevertheless remain that it would be precisely the most irrelevant of all forms of knowledge: more irrelevant than the knowledge of the chemical analysis of water to the sailor in danger in a storm. 10. The Harmlessness of Metaphysics in the Future.—Directly the origins of religion, art, and morals have been so described that one can perfectly explain them without having recourse to metaphysical concepts at the beginning and in the course of the path, the strongest interest in the purely theoretical problem of the “ thing-in-itself” and the “ phenomenon” ceases. For however it may be here, with religion, art, and morals we do not touch the “ essence of the world in itself”; we are in the domain of representation, no “ intuition” can carry us further. With the greatest calmness we shall leave the question as to how our own conception of the world can differ so widely from the revealed essence of the world, to physiology and the history of the evolution of organisms and ideas. 11. Language as a Presumptive Science.—The importance of language for the development of culture lies in the fact that in language man has placed a world of his own beside the other, a position which he deemed so fixed that he might therefrom lift the rest of the world off its hinges, and make himself master of it. Inasmuch as man has believed in the ideas and names of things as æternæ veritates for a great length of time, he has acquired that pride by which he has raised himself above the animal; he really thought that in language he possessed the knowledge of the world. The maker of language was not modest enough to think that he only gave designations to things, he believed rather that with his words he expressed the widest knowledge of the things; in reality language is the first step in the endeavor after science. Here also it is belief in ascertained truth, from which the mightiest sources of strength have flowed. Much later—only now—it is dawning upon men that they have propagated a tremendous error in their belief in language. Fortunately it is now too late to reverse the development of reason, which is founded upon that belief. Logic, also, is founded upon suppositions to which nothing in the actual world corresponds,—for instance, on the supposition of the equality of things, and the identity of the same thing at different points of time,—but that particular science arose out of the contrary belief (that such things really existed in the actual world). It is the same with mathematics, which would certainly not have arisen if it had been known from the beginning that in Nature there are no exactly straight lines, no real circle, no absolute standard of size. 12. Dream and Culture.—The function of the brain which is most influenced by sleep is the memory; not that it entirely ceases; but it is brought back to a condition of imperfection, such as everyone may have experienced in pre-historic times, whether asleep or awake. Arbitrary and confused as it is, it constantly confounds things on the ground of the most fleeting resemblances; but with the same arbitrariness and confusion the ancients invented their mythologies, and even at the present day travelers are accustomed to remark how prone the savage is to forgetfulness, how, after a short tension of memory, his mind begins to sway here and there from sheer weariness and gives forth lies and nonsense. But in dreams we all resemble the savage; bad recognition and erroneous comparisons are the reasons of the bad conclusions, of which we are guilty in dreams: so that, when we clearly recollect what we have dreamt, we are alarmed at ourselves at harboring so much foolishness within us. The perfect distinctness of all dream-representations, which pre-suppose absolute faith in their reality, recall the conditions that appertain to primitive man, in whom hallucination was extraordinarily frequent, and sometimes simultaneously seized entire communities, entire nations. Therefore, in sleep and in dreams we once more carry out the task of early humanity. 13. The Logic of Dreams.—In sleep our nervous system is perpetually excited by numerous inner occurrences; nearly all the organs are disjointed and in a state of activity, the blood runs its turbulent course, the position of the sleeper causes pressure on certain limbs, his coverings influence his sensations in various ways, the stomach digests and by its movements it disturbs other organs, the intestines writhe, the position of the head occasions unaccustomed play of muscles, the feet, unshod, not pressing upon the floor with the soles, occasion the feeling of the unaccustomed just as does the different clothing of the whole body: all this, according to its daily change and extent, excites by its extraordinariness the entire system to the very functions of the brain, and thus there-are a hundred occasions for the spirit to be surprised and to seek for the reasons of this excitation;—the dream,
however, is the seeking and representing of the causes of those excited sensations,—that is, of the supposed causes. A person who, for instance, binds his feet with two straps will perhaps dream that two serpents are coiling round his feet; this is first hypothesis, then a belief, with an accompanying mental picture and interpretation—“ These serpents must be the causa of those sensations which I, the sleeper, experience,”—so decides the mind of the sleeper. The immediate past, so disclosed, becomes to him the present through his excited imagination. Thus everyone knows from experience how quickly the dreamer weaves into his dream a loud sound that he hears, such as the ringing of bells or the firing of cannon, that is to say, explains it from afterwards so that he first thinks he experiences the producing circumstances and then that sound. But how does it happen that the mind of the dreamer is always so mistaken, while the same mind when awake is accustomed to be so temperate, careful, and skeptical with regard to its hypotheses? so that the first random hypothesis for the explanation of a feeling suffices for him to believe immediately in its truth? (For in dreaming we believe in the dream as if it were a reality, i.e. we think our hypothesis completely proved.) I hold, that as man now still reasons in dreams, so men reasoned also when awake through thousands of years; the first causa which occurred to the mind to explain anything that required an explanation, was sufficient and stood for truth. (Thus, according to travelers’ tales, savages still do to this very day.) This ancient element in human nature still manifests itself in our dreams, for it is the foundation upon which the higher reason has developed and still develops in every individual; the dream carries us back into remote conditions of human culture, and provides a ready means of understanding them better. Dream-thinking is now so easy to us because during immense periods of human development we have been so well drilled in this form of fantastic and cheap explanation, by means of the first agreeable notions. In so far, dreaming is a recreation for the brain, which by day has to satisfy the stern demands of thought, as they are laid down by the higher culture. We can at once discern an allied process even in our awakened state, as the door and ante-room of the dream. If we shut our eyes, the brain produces a number of impressions of light and color, probably as a kind of after-play and echo of all those effects of light which crowd in upon it by day. Now, however, the understanding, together with the imagination, instantly works up this play of color, shapeless in itself, into definite figures, forms, landscapes, and animated groups. The actual accompanying process thereby is again a kind of conclusion from the effect to the cause: since the mind asks, “ Whence come these impressions of light and color?” it supposes those figures and forms as causes; it takes them for the origin of those colors and lights, because in the daytime, with open eyes, it is accustomed to find a producing cause for every color, every effect of light. Here, therefore, the imagination constantly places pictures before the mind, since it supports itself on the visual impressions of the day in their production, and the dream-imagination does just the same thing,—that is, the supposed cause is deduced from the effect and represented after the effect; all this happens with extraordinary rapidity, so that here, as with the conjuror, a confusion of judgment may arise and a sequence may look like something simultaneous, or even like a reversed sequence. From these circumstances we may gather how lately the more acute logical thinking, the strict discrimination of cause and effect has been developed, when our reasoning and understanding faculties still involuntarily hark back to those primitive forms of deduction, and when we pass about half our life in this condition. The poet, too, and the artist assign causes for their moods and conditions which are by no means the true ones; in this they recall an older humanity and can assist us to the understanding of it. 14. Co-Echoing.—All stronger moods bring with them a co-echoing of kindred sensations and moods, they grub up the memory, so to speak. Along with them something within us remembers and becomes conscious of similar conditions and their origin. Thus there are formed quick habitual connections of feelings and thoughts, which eventually, when they follow each other with lightning speed, are no longer felt as complexes but as unities. In this sense one speaks of the moral feeling, of the religious feeling, as if they were absolute unities: in reality they are streams with a hundred sources and tributaries. Here also, as so often happens, the unity of the word is no security for the unity of the thing. 15. No Internal and External in the World.—As Democritus transferred the concepts “ above” and “ below” to endless space where they have no sense, so philosophers in general have transferred the concepts “ Internal” and “ External” to the essence and appearance of the world; they think that with deep feelings one can penetrate deeply into the internal and approach the heart of Nature. But these feelings are only deep in so far as along with them, barely noticeable, certain complicated groups of thoughts, which we call deep, are regularly excited; a feeling is deep because we think that the accompanying thought is deep. But the “ deep” thought can nevertheless be very far from the truth, as, for instance, every metaphysical one; if one take away from the deep feeling the commingled elements of thought, then the strong feeling remains, and this guarantees nothing for knowledge but itself, just as strong faith proves only its strength and not the truth of what is believed in. 16. Phenomenon and Thing-in-itself.—Philosophers are in the habit of setting themselves before life and experience—before that which they call the world of appearance—as before a picture that is once for all unrolled and exhibits unchangeably fixed the same process,—this process, they think, must be rightly interpreted in order to come to a conclusion about the being that produced the picture: about the thing-in-itself, therefore, which is always accustomed to be regarded as sufficient ground for the world of phenomenon. On the other hand, since one always makes the idea of the metaphysical stand definitely as that of the unconditioned, consequently also unconditioning, one must directly disown all connection between the unconditioned (the metaphysical world) and the world which is known to us; so that the thing-in-itself should most certainly not appear in the phenomenon, and every conclusion from the former as regards the latter is to be rejected. Both sides overlook the fact that that picture—that which we now call human life and experience—has gradually evolved,—nay, is still in the full process of evolving,—and therefore should not be regarded as a fixed magnitude from which a conclusion about its originator might be deduced (the sufficing cause) or even merely neglected. It is because for thousands of years we have looked into the world with moral, æsthetic, and religious pretensions, with blind inclination, passion, or fear, and have surfeited ourselves in the vices of illogical thought, that this world has gradually become so marvelously motley, terrible, full of meaning and of soul, it has acquired color—
but we were the colorists; the human intellect, on the basis of human needs, of human emotions, has caused this “ phenomenon” to appear and has carried its erroneous fundamental conceptions into things. Late, very late, it takes to thinking, and now the world of experience and the thing-in-itself seem to it so extraordinarily different and separated, that it gives up drawing conclusions from the former to the latter—or in a terribly mysterious manner demands the renunciation of our intellect, of our personal will, in order thereby to reach the essential, that one may become essential. Again, others have collected all the characteristic features of our world of phenomenon,—that is, the idea of the world spun out of intellectual errors and inherited by us,—and instead of accusing the intellect as the offenders, they have laid the blame on the nature of things as being the cause of the hard fact of this very sinister character of the world, and have preached the deliverance from Being. With all these conceptions the constant and laborious process of science (which at last celebrates its greatest triumph in a history of the origin of thought) becomes completed in various ways, the result of which might perhaps run as follows:—“ That which we now call the world is the result of a mass of errors and fantasies which arose gradually in the general development of organic being, which are inter-grown with each other, and are now inherited by us as the accumulated treasure of all the past,—as a treasure, for the value of our humanity depends upon it. From this world of representation strict science is really only able to liberate us to a very slight extent—as it is also not at all desirable—inasmuch as it cannot essentially break the power of primitive habits of feeling; but it can gradually elucidate the history of the rise of that world as representation,—and lift us, at least for moments, above and beyond the whole process. Perhaps we shall then recognize that the thing in itself is worth a Homeric laugh; that it seemed so much, indeed everything, and is really empty, namely, empty of meaning.” 17. Metaphysical Explanations.—The young man values metaphysical explanations, because they show him something highly significant in things which he found unpleasant or despicable, and if he is dissatisfied with himself, the feeling becomes lighter when he recognizes the innermost world-puzzle or world-misery in that which he so strongly disapproves of in himself. To feel himself less responsible and at the same time to find things more interesting—that seems to him a double benefit for which he has to thank metaphysics. Later on, certainly, he gets distrustful of the whole metaphysical method of explanation; then perhaps it grows clear to him that those results can be obtained equally well and more scientifically in another way: that physical and historical explanations produce the feeling of personal relief to at least the same extent, and that the interest in life and its problems is perhaps still more aroused thereby. 18. Fundamental Questions of Metaphysics.—When the history of the rise of thought comes to be written, a new light will be thrown on the following statement of a distinguished logician:—“ The primordial general law of the cognizant subject consists in the inner necessity of recognizing every object in itself in its own nature, as a thing identical with itself, consequently self-existing and at bottom remaining ever the same and unchangeable: in short, in recognizing everything as a substance.” Even this law, which is here called “ primordial,” has evolved: it will someday be shown how gradually this tendency arises in the lower organisms, how the feeble mole-eyes of their organizations at first see only the same thing,—how then, when the various awakenings of pleasure and displeasure become noticeable, various substances are gradually distinguished, but each with one attribute, i.e. one single relation to such an organism. The first step in logic is the judgment,—the nature of which, according to the decision of the best logicians, consists in belief. At the bottom of all belief lies the sensation of the pleasant or the painful in relation to the sentient subject. A new third sensation as the result of two previous single sensations is the judgment in its simplest form. We organic beings have originally no interest in anything but its relation to us in connection with pleasure and pain. Between the moments (the states of feeling) when we become conscious of this connection, lie moments of rest, of non-feeling; the world and everything is then without interest for us, we notice no change in it (as even now a deeply interested person does not notice when anyone passes him). To the plant, things are as a rule tranquil and eternal, everything like itself. From the period of the lower organisms man has inherited the belief that similar things exist (this theory is only contradicted by the matured experience of the most advanced science). The primordial belief of everything organic from the beginning is perhaps even this, that all the rest of the world is one and immovable. The point furthest removed from those early beginnings of logic is the idea of Causality,—indeed we still really think that all sensations and activities are acts of the free will; when the sentient individual contemplates himself, he regards every sensation, every alteration as something isolated, that is to say, unconditioned and disconnected,—it rises up in us without connection with anything foregoing or following. We are hungry, but do not originally think that the organism must be nourished; the feeling seems to make itself felt without cause and purpose, it isolates itself and regards itself as arbitrary. Therefore, belief in the freedom of the will is an original error of everything organic, as old as the existence of the awakenings of logic in it; the belief in unconditioned substances and similar things is equally a primordial as well as an old error of everything organic. But inasmuch as all metaphysics has concerned itself chiefly with substance and the freedom of will, it may be designated as the science which treats of the fundamental errors of mankind, but treats of them as if they were fundamental truths. 19. Number.—The discovery of the laws of numbers is made upon the ground of the original, already prevailing error, that there are many similar things (but in reality there is nothing similar), at least, that there are things (but there is no “ thing”). The supposition of plurality always presumes that there is something which appears frequently,—but here already error reigns, already we imagine beings, unities, which do not exist. Our sensations of space and time are false, for they lead—examined in sequence—to logical contradictions. In all scientific determinations we always reckon inevitably with certain false quantities, but as these quantities are at least constant, as, for instance, our sensation of time and space, the conclusions of science have still perfect accuracy and certainty in their connection with one another; one may continue to build upon them—until that final limit where the erroneous original suppositions, those constant faults, come into conflict with the conclusions, for instance in the doctrine of atoms. There still we always feel ourselves
compelled to the acceptance of a “ thing” or material “ substratum” that is moved, whilst the whole scientific procedure has pursued the very task of resolving everything substantial (material) into motion; here, too, we still separate with our sensation the mover and the moved and cannot get out of this circle, because the belief in things has from immemorial times been bound up with our being. When Kant says, “ The understanding does not derive its laws from Nature, but dictates them to her,” it is perfectly true with regard to the idea of Nature which we are compelled to associate with her (Nature = World as representation, that is to say as error), but which is the summing up of a number of errors of the understanding. The laws of numbers are entirely inapplicable to a world which is not our representation—these laws obtain only in the human world. 20. A Few Steps Back.—A degree of culture, and assuredly a very high one, is attained when man rises above superstitious and religious notions and fears, and, for instance, no longer believes in guardian angels or in original sin, and has also ceased to talk of the salvation of his soul,—if he has attained to this degree of freedom, he has still also to overcome metaphysics with the greatest exertion of his intelligence. Then, however, a retrogressive movement is necessary; he must understand the historical justification as well as the psychological in such representations, he must recognize how the greatest advancement of humanity has come therefrom, and how, without such a retrocursive movement, we should have been robbed of the best products of hitherto existing mankind. With regard to philosophical metaphysics, I always see increasing numbers who have attained to the negative goal (that all positive metaphysics is error), but as yet few who climb a few rungs backwards; one ought to look out, perhaps, over the last steps of the ladder, but not try to stand upon them. The most enlightened only succeed so far as to free themselves from metaphysics and look back upon it with superiority, while it is necessary here, too, as in the hippodrome, to turn round the end of the course. 21. Conjectural Victory of Skepticism.—For once let the skeptical starting-point be accepted,—granted that there were no other metaphysical world, and all explanations drawn from metaphysics about the only world we know were useless to us, in what light should we then look upon men and things? We can think this out for ourselves, it is useful, even though the question whether anything metaphysical has been scientifically proved by Kant and Schopenhauer were altogether set aside. For it is quite possible, according to historical probability, that some time or other man, as a general rule, may grow skeptical; the question will then be this: What form will human society take under the influence of such a mode of thought? Perhaps the scientific proof of some metaphysical world or other is already so difficult that mankind will never get rid of a certain distrust of it. And when there is distrust of metaphysics, there are on the whole the same results as if it had been directly refuted and could no longer be believed in. The historical question with regard to an unmetaphysical frame of mind in mankind remains the same in both cases. 22. Unbelief in the “ Monumentum ære Perennius.”—An actual drawback which accompanies the cessation of metaphysical views lies in the fact that the individual looks upon his short span of life too exclusively and receives no stronger incentives to build durable institutions intended to last for centuries,—he himself wishes to pluck the fruit from the tree which he plants, and therefore he no longer plants those trees which require regular care for centuries, and which are destined to afford shade to a long series of generations. For metaphysical views furnish the belief that in them the last conclusive foundation has been given, upon which henceforth all the future of mankind is compelled to settle down and establish itself; the individual furthers his salvation, when, for instance, he founds a church or convent, he thinks it will be reckoned to him and recompensed to him in the eternal life of the soul, it is work for the soul’s eternal salvation. Can science also arouse such faith in its results? As a matter of fact, it needs doubt and distrust as its most faithful auxiliaries; nevertheless in the course of time, the sum of inviolable truths—those, namely, which have weathered all the storms of skepticism, and all destructive analysis—may have become so great (in the regimen of health, for instance), that one may determine to found thereupon “ eternal” works. For the present the contrast between our excited ephemeral existence and the long-winded repose of metaphysical ages still operates too strongly, because the two ages still stand too closely together; the individual man himself now goes through too many inward and outward developments for him to venture to arrange his own lifetime permanently, and once and for all. An entirely modern man, for instance, who is going to build himself a house, has a feeling as if he were going to immure himself alive in a mausoleum. 23. The Age of Comparison.—The less men are fettered by tradition, the greater becomes the inward activity of their motives; the greater, again, in proportion thereto, the outward restlessness, the confused flux of mankind, the polyphony of strivings. For whom is there still an absolute compulsion to bind himself and his descendants to one place? For whom is there still anything strictly compulsory? As all styles of arts are imitated simultaneously, so also are all grades and kinds of morality, of customs, of cultures. Such an age obtains its importance because in it the various views of the world, customs, and cultures can be compared and experienced simultaneously,—which was formerly not possible with the always localized sway of every culture, corresponding to the rooting of all artistic styles in place and time. An increased æsthetic feeling will now at last decide amongst so many forms presenting themselves for comparison; it will allow the greater number, that is to say all those rejected by it, to die out. In the same way a selection amongst the forms and customs of the higher moralities is taking place, of which the aim can be nothing else than the downfall of the lower moralities. It is the age of comparison! That is its pride, but more justly also its grief. Let us not be afraid of this grief! Rather will we comprehend as adequately as possible the task our age sets us: posterity will bless us for doing so,—a posterity which knows itself to be as much above the terminated original national cultures as above the culture of comparison, but which looks back with gratitude on both kinds of culture as upon antiquities worthy of veneration.
24. The Possibility of Progress.—When a scholar of the ancient culture forswears the company of men who believe in progress, he does quite right. For the greatness and goodness of ancient culture lie behind it, and historical education compels one to admit that they can never be fresh again; an unbearable stupidity or an equally insufferable fanaticism would be necessary to deny this. But men can consciously resolve to develop themselves towards a new culture; whilst formerly they only developed unconsciously and by chance, they can now create better conditions for the rise of human beings, for their nourishment, education and instruction; they can administer the earth economically as a whole, and can generally weigh and restrain the powers of man. This new, conscious culture kills the old, which, regarded as a whole, has led an unconscious animal and plant life; it also kills distrust in progress,—progress is possible. I must say that it is over-hasty and almost nonsensical to believe that progress must necessarily follow; but how could one deny that it is possible? On the other hand, progress in the sense and on the path of the old culture is not even thinkable. Even if romantic fantasy has also constantly used the word “ progress” to denote its aims (for instance, circumscribed primitive national cultures), it borrows the picture of it in any case from the past; its thoughts and ideas on this subject are entirely without originality. 25. Private and Œcumenical Morality.—Since the belief has ceased that a God directs in general the fate of the world and, in spite of all apparent crookedness in the path of humanity, leads it on gloriously, men themselves must set themselves œcumenical aims embracing the whole earth. The older morality, especially that of Kant, required from the individual actions which were desired from all men,—that was a delightfully naïve thing, as if each one knew off-hand what course of action was beneficial to the whole of humanity, and consequently which actions in general were desirable; it is a theory like that of free trade, taking for granted that the general harmony must result of itself according to innate laws of amelioration. Perhaps a future contemplation of the needs of humanity will show that it is by no means desirable that all men should act alike; in the interest of œcumenical aims it might rather be that for whole sections of mankind, special, and perhaps under certain circumstances even evil, tasks would have to be set. In any case, if mankind is not to destroy itself by such a conscious universal rule, there must previously be found, as a scientific standard for œcumenical aims, a knowledge of the conditions of culture superior to what has hitherto been attained. Herein lies the enormous task of the great minds of the next century. 26. Reaction as Progress.—Now and again there appear rugged, powerful, impetuous, but nevertheless backward-lagging minds which conjure up once more a past phase of mankind; they serve to prove that the new tendencies against which they are working are not yet sufficiently strong, that they still lack something, otherwise they would show better opposition to those exorcisers. Thus, for example, Luther’s Reformation bears witness to the fact that in his century all the movements of the freedom of the spirit were still uncertain, tender, and youthful; science could not yet lift up its head. Indeed the whole Renaissance seems like an early spring which is almost snowed under again. But in this century also, Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics showed that even now the scientific spirit is not yet strong enough; thus the whole mediaeval Christian view of the world and human feeling could celebrate its resurrection in Schopenhauer’s doctrine, in spite of the long achieved destruction of all Christian dogmas. There is much science in his doctrine, but it does not dominate it: it is rather the old well-known “ metaphysical requirement” that does so. It is certainly one of the greatest and quite invaluable advantages which we gain from Schopenhauer, that he occasionally forces our sensations back into older, mightier modes of contemplating the world and man, to which no other path would so easily lead us. The gain to history and justice is very great,—I do not think that anyone would so easily succeed now in doing justice to Christianity and its Asiatic relations without Schopenhauer’s assistance, which is specially impossible from the basis of still existing Christianity. Only after this great success of justice, only after we have corrected so essential a point as the historical mode of contemplation which the age of enlightenment brought with it, may we again bear onward the banner of enlightenment, the banner with the three names, Petrarch, Erasmus, Voltaire. We have turned reaction into progress. 27. A Substitute for Religion.—It is believed that something good is said of philosophy when it is put forward as a substitute for religion for the people. As a matter of fact, in the spiritual economy there is need, at times, of an intermediary order of thought: the transition from religion to scientific contemplation is a violent, dangerous leap, which is not to be recommended. To this extent the recommendation is justifiable. But one should eventually learn that the needs which have been satisfied by religion and are now to be satisfied by philosophy are not unchangeable; these themselves can be weakened and eradicated. Think, for instance, of the Christian’s distress of soul, his sighing over inward corruption, his anxiety for salvation,—all notions which originate only in errors of reason and deserve not satisfaction but destruction. A philosophy can serve either to satisfy those needs or to set them aside; for they are acquired, temporally limited needs, which are based upon suppositions contradictory to those of science. Here, in order to make a transition, art is far rather to be employed to relieve the mind over-burdened with emotions; for those notions receive much less support from it than from a metaphysical philosophy. It is easier, then, to pass over from art to a really liberating philosophical science. 28. Ill-famed Words.—Away with those wearisomely hackneyed terms Optimism and Pessimism! For the occasion for using them becomes less and less from day to day; only the chatterboxes still find them so absolutely necessary. For why in all the world should anyone wish to be an optimist unless he had a God to defend who must have created the best of worlds if he himself be goodness and perfection,—what thinker, however, still needs the hypothesis of a God? But every occasion for a pessimistic confession of faith is also lacking
when one has no interest in being annoyed at the advocates of God (the theologians, or the theologizing philosophers), and in energetically defending the opposite view, that evil reigns, that pain is greater than pleasure, that the world is a bungled piece of work, the manifestation of an ill-will to life. But who still bothers about the theologians now—except the theologians? Apart from all theology and its contentions, it is quite clear that the world is not good and not bad (to say nothing of its being the best or the worst), and that the terms “ good” and “ bad” have only significance with respect to man, and indeed, perhaps, they are not justified even here in the way they are usually employed; in any case we must get rid of both the calumniating and the glorifying conception of the world. 29. Intoxicated by the Scent of the Blossoms.—It is supposed that the ship of humanity has always a deeper draught, the heavier it is laden; it is believed that the deeper a man thinks, the more delicately he feels, the higher he values himself, the greater his distance from the other animals,—the more he appears as a genius amongst the animals,—all the nearer will he approach the real essence of the world and its knowledge; this he actually does too, through science, but he means to do so still more through his religions and arts. These certainly are blossoms of the world, but by no means any nearer to the root of the world than the stalk; it is not possible to understand the nature of things better through them, although almost everyone believes he can. Error has made man so deep, sensitive, and inventive that he has put forth such blossoms as religions and arts. Pure knowledge could not have been capable of it. Whoever were to unveil for us the essence of the world would give us all the most disagreeable disillusionment. Not the world as thing-in-itself, but the world as representation (as error) is so full of meaning, so deep, so wonderful, bearing happiness and unhappiness in its bosom. This result leads to a philosophy of the logical denial of the world, which, however, can be combined with a practical world-affirming just as well as with its opposite. 30. Bad Habits in Reasoning.—The usual false conclusions of mankind are these: a thing exists, therefore it has a right to exist. Here there is inference from the ability to live to its suitability; from its suitability to its rightfulness. Then: an opinion brings happiness; therefore it is the true opinion. Its effect is good; therefore it is itself good and true. To the effect is here assigned the predicate beneficent, good, in the sense of the useful, and the cause is then furnished with the same predicate good, but here in the sense of the logically valid. The inversion of the sentences would read thus: an affair cannot be carried through, or maintained, therefore it is wrong; an opinion causes pain or excites, therefore it is false. The free spirit who learns only too often the faultiness of this mode of reasoning, and has to suffer from its consequences, frequently gives way to the temptation to draw the very opposite conclusions, which, in general, are naturally just as false: an affair cannot be carried through, therefore it is good; an opinion is distressing and disturbing, therefore it is true. 31. The Illogical Necessary.—One of those things that may drive a thinker into despair is the recognition of the fact that the illogical is necessary for man, and that out of the illogical comes much that is good. It is so firmly rooted in the passions, in language, in art, in religion, and generally in everything that gives value to life, that it cannot be withdrawn without thereby hopelessly injuring these beautiful things. It is only the all-too-naïve people who can believe that the nature of man can be changed into a purely logical one; but if there were degrees of proximity to this goal, how many things would not have to be lost on this course! Even the most rational man has need of nature again from time to time, i.e. his illogical fundamental attitude towards all things. 32. Injustice Necessary.—All judgments on the value of life are illogically developed, and therefore unjust. The inexactitude of the judgment lies, firstly, in the manner in which the material is presented, namely very imperfectly; secondly, in the manner in which the conclusion is formed out of it; and thirdly, in the fact that every separate element of the material is again the result of vitiated recognition, and this, too, of necessity. For instance, no experience of an individual, however near he may stand to us, can be perfect, so that we could have a logical right to make a complete estimate of him; all estimates are rash, and must be so. Finally, the standard by which we measure, our nature, is not of unalterable dimensions,—we have moods and vacillations, and yet we should have to recognize ourselves as a fixed standard in order to estimate correctly the relation of anything whatever to ourselves. From this it will, perhaps, follow that we should make no judgments at all; if one could only live without making estimations, without having likes and dislikes! For all dislike is connected with an estimation, as well as all inclination. An impulse towards or away from anything without a feeling that something advantageous is desired, something injurious avoided, an impulse without any kind of conscious valuation of the worth of the aim does not exist in man. We are from the beginning illogical, and therefore unjust beings, and can recognize this; it is one of the greatest and most inexplicable discords of existence. 33. Error About Life necessary for Life.—Every belief in the value and worthiness of life is based on vitiated thought; it is only possible through the fact that sympathy for the general life and suffering of mankind is very weakly developed in the individual. Even the rarer people who think outside themselves do not contemplate this general life, but only a limited part of it. If one understands how to direct one’s attention chiefly to the exceptions,—I mean to the highly gifted and the rich souls,—if one regards the production of these as the aim of the whole world-development and rejoices in its operation, then one may believe in the value of life, because one thereby overlooks the other men—one consequently thinks fallaciously. So too, when one directs one’s attention to all mankind, but only considers one species of impulses in them, the less egoistical ones, and excuses them with regard to the other instincts, one may then again entertain hopes of mankind in general and believe so far in the value of life, consequently in this case also through fallaciousness of thought. Let one, however, behave in this or that manner: with such behavior one is an exception amongst men. Now, most people bear life without any considerable grumbling, and
consequently believe in the value of existence, but precisely because each one is solely self-seeking and self-affirming, and does not step out of himself like those exceptions; everything extra-personal is imperceptible to them, or at most seems only a faint shadow. Therefore on this alone is based the value of life for the ordinary everyday man, that he regards himself as more important than the world. The great lack of imagination from which he suffers is the reason why he cannot enter into the feelings of other beings, and therefore sympathizes as little as possible with their fate and suffering. He, on the other hand, who really could sympathize therewith, would have to despair of the value of life; were he to succeed in comprehending and feeling in himself the general consciousness of mankind, he would collapse with a curse on existence; for mankind as a whole has no goals, consequently man, in considering his whole course, cannot find in it his comfort and support, but his despair. If, in all that he does, he considers the final aimlessness of man, his own activity assumes in his eyes the character of wastefulness. But to feel one’s self just as much wasted as humanity (and not only as an individual) as we see the single blossom of nature wasted, is a feeling above all other feelings. But who is capable of it? Assuredly only a poet, and poets always know how to console themselves. 34. For Tranquility.—But does not our philosophy thus become a tragedy? Does not truth become hostile to life, to improvement? A question seems to weigh upon our tongue and yet hesitate to make itself heard: whether one can consciously remain in untruthfulness? or, supposing one were obliged to do this, would not death be preferable? For there is no longer any “ must”; morality, in so far as it had any “ must” or “ shalt,” has been destroyed by our mode of contemplation, just as religion has been destroyed. Knowledge can only allow pleasure and pain, benefit and injury to subsist as motives; but how will these motives agree with the sense of truth? They also contain errors (for, as already said, inclination and aversion, and their very incorrect determinations, practically regulate our pleasure and pain). The whole of human life is deeply immersed in untruthfulness; the individual cannot draw it up out of this well, without thereby taking a deep dislike to his whole past, without finding his present motives—those of honor, for instance—inconsistent, and without opposing scorn and disdain to the passions which conduce to happiness in the future. Is it true that there remains but one sole way of thinking which brings after it despair as a personal experience, as a theoretical result, a philosophy of dissolution, disintegration, and self-destruction? I believe that the decision with regard to the aftereffects of the knowledge will be given through the temperament of a man; I could imagine another after-effect, just as well as that one described, which is possible in certain natures, by means of which a life would arise much simpler, freer from emotions than is the present one, so that though at first, indeed, the old motives of passionate desire might still have strength from old hereditary habit, they would gradually become weaker under the influence of purifying knowledge. One would live at last amongst men, and with one’s self as with Nature, without praise, reproach, or agitation, feasting one’s eyes, as if it were a play, upon much of which one was formerly afraid. One would be free from the emphasis, and would no longer feel the goading, of the thought that one is not only nature or more than nature. Certainly, as already remarked, a good temperament would be necessary for this, an even, mild, and naturally joyous soul, a disposition which would not always need to be on its guard against spite and sudden outbreaks, and would not convey in its utterances anything of a grumbling or sudden nature,—those well-known vexatious qualities, of old dogs and men who have been long chained up. On the contrary, a man from whom the ordinary fetters of life have so far fallen that he continues to live only for the sake of ever better knowledge must be able to renounce without envy and regret: much, indeed almost everything that is precious to other men, he must regard as the all-sufficing and the most desirable condition; the free, fearless soaring over men, customs, laws, and the traditional valuations of things. The joy of this condition he imparts willingly, and he has perhaps nothing else to impart,—wherein, to be sure, there is more privation and renunciation. If, nevertheless, more is demanded from him, he will point with a friendly shake of his head to his brother, the free man of action, and will perhaps not conceal a little derision, for as regards this “ freedom” it is a very peculiar case. SECOND DIVISION. THE HISTORY OF THE MORAL SENTIMENTS. 35. Advantages of Psychological Observation.—That reflection on the human, all-too-human—or, according to the learned expression, psychological observation—is one of the means by which one may lighten the burden of life, that exercise in this art produces presence of mind in difficult circumstances, in the midst of tiresome surroundings, even that from the most thorny and unpleasant periods of one’s own life one may gather maxims and thereby feel a little better: all this was believed, was known in former centuries. Why was it forgotten by our century, when in Germany at least, even in all Europe, the poverty of psychological observation betrays itself by many signs? Not exactly in novels, tales, and philosophical treatises,—they are the work of exceptional individuals,—rather in the judgments on public events and personalities; but above all there is a lack of the art of psychological analysis and summing-up in every rank of society, in which a great deal is talked about men, but nothing about man. Why do we allow the richest and most harmless subject of conversation to escape us? Why are not the great masters of psychological maxims more read? For, without any exaggeration, the educated man in Europe who has read La Rochefoucauld and his kindred in mind and art, is rarely found, and still more rare is he who knows them and does not blame them. It is probable, however, that even this exceptional reader will find much less pleasure in them than the form of this artist should afford him; for even the clearest head is not capable of rightly estimating the art of shaping and polishing maxims unless he has really been brought up to it and has competed in it. Without this practical teaching one deems this shaping and polishing to be easier than it is; one has not a sufficient perception of fitness and charm. For this reason the present readers of maxims find in them a comparatively small pleasure, hardly a mouthful of pleasantness, so that they resemble the people who generally look at cameos, who praise because they cannot love, and are very ready to admire, but still more ready to run away. 36. Objection.—Or should there be a counter-reckoning to that theory that places psychological observation amongst the means of charming, curing, and relieving existence? Should
one have sufficiently convinced one’s self of the unpleasant consequences of this art to divert from it designedly the attention of him who is educating himself in it? As a matter of fact, a certain blind belief in the goodness of human nature, an innate aversion to the analysis of human actions, a kind of shamefacedness with respect to the nakedness of the soul may really be more desirable for the general well-being of a man than that quality, useful in isolated cases, of psychological sharp-sightedness; and perhaps the belief in goodness, in virtuous men and deeds, in an abundance of impersonal goodwill in the world, has made men better inasmuch as it has made them less distrustful. When one imitates Plutarch’s heroes with enthusiasm, and turns with disgust from a suspicious examination of the motives for their actions, it is not truth which benefits thereby, but the welfare of human society; the psychological mistake and, generally speaking, the insensibility on this matter helps humanity forwards, while the recognition of truth gains more through the stimulating power of hypothesis than La Rochefoucauld has said in his preface to the first edition of his “ Sentences et maximes morales.” … “ Ce que le monde nomme vertu n’est d’ordinaire qu’un fantôme formé par nos passions, à qui on donne un nom honnête pour faire impunément ce qu’on veut” La Rochefoucauld and those other French masters of soul-examination (who have lately been joined by a German, the author of Psychological Observations) [4] resemble good marksmen who again and again hit the bull’s-eye; but it is the bull’s-eye of human nature. Their art arouses astonishment; but in the end a spectator who is not led by the spirit of science, but by humane intentions, will probably execrate an art which appears to implant in the soul the sense of the disparagement and suspicion of mankind [4] Dr. Paul Rée.—J. M. K. 37. Nevertheless.—However it may be with reckoning and counter-reckoning, in the present condition of philosophy the awakening of moral observation is necessary. Humanity can no longer be spared the cruel sight of the psychological dissecting-table with its knives and forceps. For here rules that science which inquires into the origin and history of the socalled moral sentiments, and which, in its progress, has to draw up and solve complicated sociological problems:—the older philosophy knows the latter one not at all, and has always avoided the examination of the origin and history of moral sentiments on any feeble pretext. With what consequences it is now very easy to see, after it has been shown by many examples how the mistakes of the greatest philosophers generally have their starting-point in a wrong explanation of certain human actions and sensations, just as on the ground of an erroneous analysis—for instance, that of the so-called unselfish actions—a false ethic is built up; then, to harmonize with this again, religion and mythological confusion are brought in to assist, and finally the shades of these dismal spirits fall also over physics and the general mode of regarding the world. If it is certain, however, that superficiality in psychological observation has laid, and still lays, the most dangerous snares for human judgments and conclusions, then there is need now of that endurance of work which does not grow weary of piling stone upon stone, pebble on pebble; there is need of courage not to be ashamed of such humble work and to turn a deaf ear to scorn. And this is also true,— numberless single observations on the human and all-too-human have first been discovered, and given utterance to, in circles of society which were accustomed to offer sacrifice therewith to a clever desire to please, and not to scientific knowledge,—and the odor of that old home of the moral maxim, a very seductive odor, has attached itself almost inseparably to the whole species, so that on its account the scientific man involuntarily betrays a certain distrust of this species and its earnestness. But it is sufficient to point to the consequences, for already it begins to be seen what results of a serious kind spring from the ground of psychological observation. What, after all, is the principal axiom to which the boldest and coldest thinker, the author of the book On the Origin of Moral Sensations, [5] has attained by means of his incisive and decisive analyses of human actions? “ The moral man,” he says, “ is no nearer to the intelligible (metaphysical) world than is the physical man.” This theory, hardened and sharpened under the hammer-blow of historical knowledge, may some time or other, perhaps in some future period, serve as the axe which is applied to the root of the “ metaphysical need” of man,—whether more as a blessing than a curse to the general welfare it is not easy to say, but in any case as a theory with the most important consequences, at once fruitful and terrible, and looking into the world with that Janus-face which all great knowledge possesses. [5] Dr. Paul Rée.—J. M. K. 38. How far Useful.—It must remain forever undecided whether psychological observation is advantageous or disadvantageous to man; but it is certain that it is necessary, because science cannot do without it. Science, however, has no consideration for ultimate purposes, any more than Nature has, but just as the latter occasionally achieves things of the greatest suitableness without intending to do so, so also true science, as the imitator of nature in ideas, will occasionally and in many ways further the usefulness and welfare of man,—but also without intending to do so. But whoever feels too chilled by the breath of such a reflection has perhaps too little fire in himself; let him look around him meanwhile and he will become aware of illnesses which have need of ice-poultices, and of men who are so “ kneaded together” of heat and spirit that they can hardly find an atmosphere that is cold and biting enough. Moreover, as individuals and nations that are too serious have need of frivolities, as others too mobile and excitable have need occasionally of heavily oppressing burdens for the sake of their health, should not we, the more intellectual people of this age, that grows visibly more and more inflamed, seize all quenching and cooling means that exist, in order that we may at least remain as constant, harmless, and moderate as we still are, and thus, perhaps, serve some time or other as mirror and self-contemplation for this age? 39. The Fable of Intelligible Freedom.—The history of the sentiments by means of which we make a person responsible consists of the following principal phases. First, all single actions are called good or bad without any regard to their motives, but only on account of the useful or injurious consequences which result for the community. But soon the origin of these distinctions is forgotten, and it is deemed that the qualities “ good” or “ bad” are contained in the action itself without regard to its consequences, by the same error according to which language describes the stone as hard, the tree as green,—with which, in short, the result is regarded as the cause. Then the goodness or badness is implanted in the motive, and the action in itself is looked upon as morally ambiguous. Mankind even goes further, and applies the predicate good or bad no longer to single motives, but to the whole nature of an
individual, out of whom the motive grows as the plant grows out of the earth. Thus, in turn, man is made responsible for his operations, then for his actions, then for his motives, and finally for his nature. Eventually it is discovered that even this nature cannot be responsible, inasmuch as it is an absolutely necessary consequence concreted out of the elements and influences of past and present things,—that man, therefore, cannot be made responsible for anything, neither for his nature, nor his motives, nor his actions, nor his effects. It has therewith come to be recognized that the history of moral valuations is at the same time the history of an error, the error of responsibility, which is based upon the error of the freedom of will. Schopenhauer thus decided against it: because certain actions bring ill humor (“ consciousness of guilt”) in their train, there must be a responsibility; for there would be no reason for this ill humor if not only all human actions were not done of necessity,—which is actually the case and also the belief of this philosopher,—but man himself from the same necessity is precisely the being that he is which Schopenhauer denies. From the fact of that ill humor Schopenhauer thinks he can prove a liberty which man must somehow have had, not with regard to actions, but with regard to nature; liberty, therefore, to be thus or otherwise, not to act thus or otherwise. From the esse, the sphere of freedom and responsibility, there results, in his opinion, the operari, the sphere of strict causality, necessity, and irresponsibility. This ill humor is apparently directed to the operari,—in so far it is erroneous,— but in reality it is directed to the esse, which is the deed of a free will, the fundamental cause of the existence of an individual, man becomes that which he wishes to be, his will is anterior to his existence. Here the mistaken conclusion is drawn that from the fact of the ill humor, the justification, the reasonable admissableness of this ill humor is presupposed; and starting from this mistaken conclusion, Schopenhauer arrives at his fantastic sequence of the so-called intelligible freedom. But the ill humor after the deed is not necessarily reasonable, indeed it is assuredly not reasonable, for it is based upon the erroneous presumption that the action need not have inevitably followed. Therefore, it is only because man believes himself to be free, not because he is free, that he experiences remorse and pricks of conscience. Moreover, this ill humor is a habit that can be broken off; in many people it is entirely absent in connection with actions where others experience it. It is a very changeable thing, and one which is connected with the development of customs and culture, and probably only existing during a comparatively short period of the world’s history. Nobody is responsible for his actions, nobody for his nature; to judge is identical with being unjust. This also applies when an individual judges himself. The theory is as clear as sunlight, and yet everyone prefers to go back into the shadow and the untruth, for fear of the consequences. 40. The Super-Animal.—The beast in us wishes to be deceived; morality is a lie of necessity in order that we may not be torn in pieces by it. Without the errors which lie in the assumption of morality, man would have remained an animal. Thus, however, he has considered himself as something higher and has laid strict laws upon himself. Therefore he hates the grades which have remained nearer to animalness, whereby the former scorn of the slave, as a not-yet-man, is to be explained as a fact. 41. The Unchangeable Character.—That the character is unchangeable is not true in a strict sense; this favorite theory means, rather, that during the short lifetime of an individual the new influencing motives cannot penetrate deeply enough to destroy the ingrained marks of many thousands of years. But if one were to imagine a man of eighty thousand years, one would have in him an absolutely changeable character, so that a number of different individuals would gradually develop out of him. The shortness of human life misleads us into forming many erroneous ideas about the qualities of man. 42. The Order of Possessions and Morality.—The once-accepted hierarchy of possessions, according as this or the other is coveted by a lower, higher, or highest egoism, now decides what is moral or immoral. To prefer a lesser good (for instance, the gratification of the senses) to a more highly valued good (for instance, health) is accounted immoral, and also to prefer luxury to liberty. The hierarchy of possessions, however, is not fixed and equal at all times; if anyone prefers vengeance to justice he is moral according to the standard of an earlier civilization, but immoral according to the present one. To be “ immoral,” therefore, denotes that an individual has not felt, or not felt sufficiently strongly, the higher, finer, spiritual motives which have come in with a new culture; it marks one who has remained behind, but only according to the difference of degrees. The order of possessions itself is not raised and lowered according to a moral point of view; but each time that it is fixed it supplies the decision as to whether an action is moral or immoral. 43. Cruel People as Those who have Remained Behind.—People who are cruel nowadays must be accounted for by us as the grades of earlier civilizations which have survived; here are exposed those deeper formations in the mountain of humanity which usually remain concealed. They are backward people whose brains, through all manner of accidents in the course of inheritance, have not been developed in so delicate and manifold a way. They show us what we all were and horrify us, but they themselves are as little responsible as is a block of granite for being granite. There must, too, be grooves and twists in our brains which answer to that condition of mind, as in the form of certain human organs there are supposed to be traces of a fish-state. But these grooves and twists are no longer the bed through which the stream of our sensation flows. 44. Gratitude and Revenge.—The reason why the powerful man is grateful is this: his benefactor, through the benefit he confers, has mistaken and intruded into the sphere of the powerful man,—now the latter, in return, penetrates into the sphere of the benefactor by the act of gratitude. It is a milder form of revenge. Without the satisfaction of gratitude, the powerful man would have shown himself powerless, and would have been reckoned as such ever after. Therefore every society of the good, which originally meant the powerful, places gratitude amongst the first duties.—Swift propounded the maxim that men were grateful in the same proportion as they were revengeful.
45. The Twofold Early History of Good and Evil.—The conception of good and evil has a twofold early history, namely, once in the soul of the ruling tribes and castes. Whoever has the power of returning good for good, evil for evil, and really practices requital, and who is, therefore, grateful and revengeful, is called good; whoever is powerless, and unable to requite, is reckoned as bad. As a good man one is reckoned among the “ good,” a community which has common feelings because the single individuals are bound to one another by the sense of requital. As a bad man one belongs to the “ bad,” to a party of subordinate, powerless people who have no common feeling. The good are a caste, the bad are a mass like dust. Good and bad have for a long time meant the same thing as noble and base, master and slave. On the other hand, the enemy is not looked upon as evil, he can requite. In Homer the Trojan and the Greek are both good. It is not the one who injures us, but the one who is despicable, who is called bad. Good is inherited in the community of the good; it is impossible that a bad man could spring from such good soil. If, nevertheless, one of the good ones does something which is unworthy of the good, refuge is sought in excuses; the guilt is thrown upon a god, for instance; it is said that he has struck the good man with blindness and madness.— Then in the soul of the oppressed and powerless. Here every other man is looked upon as hostile, inconsiderate, rapacious, cruel, cunning, be he noble or base; evil is the distinguishing word for man, even for every conceivable living creature, e.g. for a god; human, divine, is the same thing as devilish, evil. The signs of goodness, helpfulness, pity, are looked upon with fear as spite, the prelude to a terrible result, stupefaction and outwitting,—in short, as refined malice. With such a disposition in the individual a community could hardly exist, or at most it could exist only in its crudest form, so that in all places where this conception of good and evil obtains, the downfall of the single individuals, of their tribes and races, is at hand.—Our present civilization has grown up on the soil of the ruling tribes and castes. 46. Sympathy Stronger than Suffering.—There are cases when sympathy is stronger than actual suffering. For instance, we are more pained when one of our friends is guilty of something shameful than when we do it ourselves. For one thing, we have more faith in the purity of his character than he has himself; then our love for him, probably on account of this very faith, is stronger than his love for himself. And even if his egoism suffers more thereby than our egoism, inasmuch as it has to bear more of the bad consequences of his fault, the un-egoistic in us—this word is not to be taken too seriously, but only as a modification of the expression—is more deeply wounded by his guilt than is the un-egoistic in him. 47. Hypochondria.—There are people who become hypochondriacal through their sympathy and concern for another person; the kind of sympathy which results therefrom is nothing but a disease. Thus there is also a Christian hypochondria, which afflicts those solitary, religiously-minded people who keep constantly before their eyes the sufferings and death of Christ. 48. Economy of Goodness.—Goodness and love, as the most healing herbs and powers in human intercourse, are such costly discoveries that one would wish as much economy as possible to be exercised in the employment of these balsamic means; but this is impossible. The economy of goodness is the dream of the most daring Utopians. 49. Goodwill.—Amongst the small, but countlessly frequent and therefore very effective, things to which science should pay more attention than to the great, rare things, is to be reckoned goodwill; I mean that exhibition of a friendly disposition in intercourse, that smiling eye, that clasp of the hand, that cheerfulness with which almost all human actions are usually accompanied. Every teacher, every official, adds this to whatever is his duty; it is the perpetual occupation of humanity, and at the same time the waves of its light, in which everything grows; in the narrowest circle, namely, within the family, life blooms and flourishes only through that goodwill. Kindliness, friendliness, the courtesy of the heart, are ever-flowing streams of un-egoistic impulses, and have given far more powerful assistance to culture than even those much more famous demonstrations which are called pity, mercy, and self-sacrifice. But they are thought little of, and, as a matter of fact, there is not much that is un-egoistic in them. The sum of these small doses is nevertheless mighty, their united force is amongst the strongest forces. Thus one finds much more happiness in the world than sad eyes see, if one only reckons rightly, and does not forget all those moments of comfort in which every day is rich, even in the most harried of human lives. 50. The Wish to arouse Pity.—In the most remarkable passage of his auto-portrait (first printed in 1658), La Rochefoucauld assuredly hits the nail on the head when he warns all sensible people against pity, when he advises them to leave that to those orders of the people who have need of passion (because it is not ruled by reason), and to reach the point of helping the suffering and acting energetically in an accident; while pity, according to his (and Plato’s) judgment, weakens the soul. Certainly we should exhibit pity, but take good care not to feel it, for the unfortunate are so stupid that to them the exhibition of pity is the greatest good in the world. One can, perhaps, give a more forcible warning against this feeling of pity if one looks upon that need of the unfortunate not exactly as stupidity and lack of intellect, a kind of mental derangement which misfortune brings with it (and as such, indeed, La Rochefoucauld appears to regard it), but as something quite different and more serious. Observe children, who cry and scream in order to be pitied, and therefore wait for the moment when they will be noticed; live in intercourse with the sick and mentally oppressed, and ask yourself whether that ready complaining and whimpering, that making a show of misfortune, does not, at bottom, aim at making the spectators miserable; the pity which the spectators then exhibit is in so far a consolation for the weak and suffering in that the latter recognize therein that they possess still one power , in spite of their weakness,
the power of giving pain. The unfortunate derives a sort of pleasure from this feeling of superiority, of which the exhibition of pity makes him conscious; his imagination is exalted, he is still powerful enough to give the world pain. Thus the thirst for pity is the thirst for self-gratification, and that, moreover, at the expense of his fellow-men; it shows man in the whole inconsiderateness of his own dear self, but not exactly in his “ stupidity,” as La Rochefoucauld thinks, In society-talk three-fourths of all questions asked and of all answers given are intended to cause the interlocutor a little pain; for this reason so many people pine for company; it enables them to feel their power. There is a powerful charm of life in such countless but very small doses in which malice makes itself felt, just as goodwill, spread in the same way throughout the world, is the ever-ready means of healing. But are there many honest people who will admit that it is pleasing to give pain? that one not infrequently amuses one’s self—and amuses one’s self very well—in causing mortifications to others, at least in thought, and firing off at them the grape-shot of petty malice? Most people are too dishonest, and a few are too good, to know anything of this pudendum; these will always deny that Prosper Mérimée is right when he says, “ Sachez aussi qu’il n’y a rien de plus commun que de faire le mal pour le plaisir de le faire.” 51. How Appearance becomes Actuality.—The actor finally reaches such a point that even in the deepest sorrow he cannot cease from thinking about the impression made by his own person and the general scenic effect; for instance, even at the funeral of his child, he will weep over his own sorrow and its expression like one of his own audience. The hypocrite, who always plays one and the same part, ceases at last to be a hypocrite; for instance, priests, who as young men are generally conscious or unconscious hypocrites, become at last natural, and are then really without any affectation, just priests; or if the father does not succeed so far, perhaps the son does, who makes use of his father’s progress and inherits his habits. If anyone long and obstinately desires to appear something, he finds it difficult at last to be anything else. The profession of almost every individual, even of the artist, begins with hypocrisy, with an imitating from without, with a copying of the effective. He who always wears the mask of a friendly expression must eventually obtain a power over wellmeaning dispositions without which the expression of friendliness is not to be compelled,—and finally, these, again, obtain a power over him, he is well-meaning. 52. The Point of Honor in Deception.—In all great deceivers one thing is noteworthy, to which they owe their power. In the actual act of deception, with all their preparations, the dreadful voice, expression, and mien, in the midst of their effective scenery they are overcome by their belief in themselves; it is this, then, which speaks so wonderfully and persuasively to the spectators. The founders of religions are distinguished from those great deceivers in that they never awake from their condition of self-deception; or at times, but very rarely, they have an enlightened moment when doubt overpowers them; they generally console themselves, however, by ascribing these enlightened moments to the influence of the Evil One. There must be self-deception in order that this and that may produce great effects. For men believe in the truth of everything that is visibly, strongly believed in. 53. The Nominal Degrees of Truth.—One of the commonest mistakes is this: because someone is truthful and honest towards us, he must speak the truth. Thus the child believes in its parents’ judgment, the Christian in the assertions of the Founder of the Church. In the same way men refuse to admit that all those things which men defended in former ages with the sacrifice of life and happiness were nothing but errors; it is even said, perhaps, that they were degrees of the truth. But what is really meant is that when a man has honestly believed in something, and has fought and died for his faith, it would really be too unjust if he had only been inspired by an error. Such a thing seems a contradiction of eternal justice; therefore the heart of sensitive man ever enunciates against his head the axiom: between moral action and intellectual insight there must absolutely be a necessary connection. It is unfortunately otherwise; for there is no eternal justice. 54. Falsehood.—Why do people mostly speak the truth in daily life?—Assuredly not because a god has forbidden falsehood. But, firstly, because it is more convenient, as falsehood requires invention, deceit, and memory. (As Swift says, he who tells a lie is not sensible how great a task he undertakes; for in order to uphold one lie he must invent twenty others.) Therefore, because it is advantageous in upright circumstances to say straight out, “ I want this, I have done that,” and so on; because, in other words, the path of compulsion and authority is surer than that of cunning. But if a child has been brought up in complicated domestic circumstances, he employs falsehood, naturally and unconsciously says whatever best suits his interests; a sense of truth and a hatred of falsehood are quite foreign and unknown to him, and so he lies in all innocence. 55. Throwing Suspicion on Morality for Faith’s Sake.—No power can be maintained when it is only represented by hypocrites; no matter how many “ worldly” elements the Catholic Church possesses, its strength lies in those still numerous priestly natures who render life hard and full of meaning for themselves, and whose glance and worn bodies speak of nocturnal vigils, hunger, burning prayers, and perhaps even of scourging; these move men and inspire them with fear. What if it were necessary to live thus? This is the terrible question which their aspect brings to the lips. Whilst they spread this doubt they always uprear another pillar of their power; even the free-thinker does not dare to withstand such unselfishness with hard words of truth, and to say, “ Thyself deceived, deceive not others!” Only the difference of views divides them from him, certainly no difference of goodness or badness; but men generally treat unjustly that which they do not like. Thus we speak of the cunning and the infamous art of the Jesuits, but overlook the self-control which every individual Jesuit practices, and the fact that the lightened manner of life preached by Jesuit books is by no means for their benefit, but for that of the laity. We may even ask whether, with precisely similar tactics and organization, we enlightened ones would make equally good tools, equally admirable through self-conquest, indefatigableness, and renunciation. 56.
Victory of Knowledge over Radical Evil.—It is of great advantage to him who desires to be wise to have witnessed for a time the spectacle of a thoroughly evil and degenerate man; it is false, like the contrary spectacle, but for whole long periods it held the mastery, and its roots have even extended and ramified themselves to us and our world. In order to understand ourselves we must understand it; but then, in order to mount higher we must rise above it. We recognize, then, that there exist no sins in the metaphysical sense; but, in the same sense, also no virtues; we recognize that the entire domain of ethical ideas is perpetually tottering, that there are higher and deeper conceptions of good and evil, of moral and immoral. He who does not desire much more from things than a knowledge of them easily makes peace with his soul, and will make a mistake (or commit a sin, as the world calls it) at the most from ignorance, but hardly from covetousness. He will no longer wish to excommunicate and exterminate desires; but his only, his wholly dominating ambition, to know as well as possible at all times, will make him cool and will soften all the savageness in his disposition. Moreover, he has been freed from a number of tormenting conceptions, he has no more feeling at the mention of the words “ punishments of hell,” “ sinfulness,” “ incapacity for good,” he recognizes in them only the vanishing shadow-pictures of false views of the world and of life. 57. Morality as the Self-Disintegration of Man.—A good author, who really has his heart in his work, wishes that someone could come and annihilate him by representing the same thing in a clearer way and answering without more ado the problems therein proposed. The loving girl wishes she could prove the self-sacrificing faithfulness of her love by the unfaithfulness of her beloved. The soldier hopes to die on the field of battle for his victorious fatherland; for his loftiest desires triumph in the victory of his country. The mother gives to the child that of which she deprives herself—sleep, the best food, sometimes her health and fortune. But are all these unegoistic conditions? Are these deeds of morality miracles, because, to use Schopenhauer’s expression, they are “ impossible and yet performed”? Is it not clear that in all four cases the individual loves something of himself, a thought, a desire, a production, better than anything else of himself; that he therefore divides his nature and to one part sacrifices all the rest? Is it something entirely different when an obstinate man says, “ I would rather be shot than move a step out of my way for this man”? The desire for something (wish, inclination, longing) is present in all the instances mentioned; to give way to it, with all its consequences, is certainly not “ un-egoistic.”—In ethics man does not consider himself as individuum but as dividuum. 58. What One may Promise.—One may promise actions, but no sentiments, for these are involuntary. Whoever promises to love or hate a person, or be faithful to him forever, promises something which is not within his power; he can certainly promise such actions as are usually the results of love, hate, or fidelity, but which may also spring from other motives; for many ways and motives lead to one and the same action. The promise to love someone forever is, therefore, really: So long as I love you I will act towards you in a loving way; if I cease to love you, you will still receive the same treatment from me, although inspired by other motives, so that our fellow-men will still be deluded into the belief that our love is unchanged and ever the same. One promises, therefore, the continuation of the semblance of love, when, without self-deception, one speaks vows of eternal love. 59. Intellect and Morality.—One must have a good memory to be able to keep a given promise. One must have a strong power of imagination to be able to feel pity. So closely is morality bound to the goodness of the intellect. 60. To Wish for Revenge and to Take Revenge.—To have a revengeful thought and to carry it into effect is to have a violent attack of fever, which passes off, however,—but to have a revengeful thought without the strength and courage to carry it out is a chronic disease, a poisoning of body and soul which we have to bear about with us. Morality, which only takes intentions into account, considers the two cases as equal; usually the former case is regarded as the worse (because of the evil consequences which may perhaps result from the deed of revenge). Both estimates are short-sighted. 61. The Power of Waiting.—Waiting is so difficult that even great poets have not disdained to take incapability of waitingas the motive for their works. Thus Shakespeare in Othello or Sophocles in Ajax, to whom suicide, had he been able to let his feelings cool down for one day, would no longer have seemed necessary, as the oracle intimated; he would probably have snapped his fingers at the terrible whisperings of wounded vanity, and said to himself, “ Who has not already, in my circumstances, mistaken a fool for a hero? Is it something so very extraordinary?” On the contrary, it is something very commonly human; Ajax might allow himself that consolation. Passion will not wait; the tragedy in the lives of great men frequently lies not in their conflict with the times and the baseness of their fellow-men, but in their incapacity of postponing their work for a year or two; they cannot wait. In all duels advising friends have one thing to decide, namely whether the parties concerned can still wait awhile; if this is not the case, then a duel is advisable, inasmuch as each of the two says, “ Either I continue to live and that other man must die immediately, or vice versa.” In such case waiting would mean a prolonged suffering of the terrible martyrdom of wounded honor in the face of the insulter, and this may entail more suffering than life is worth. 62. Reveling in Vengeance.—Coarser individuals who feel themselves insulted, make out the insult to be as great as possible, and relate the affair in greatly exaggerated language, in order to be able to revel thoroughly in the rarely awakened feelings of hatred and revenge. 63.
The Value of Disparagement.—In order to maintain their self-respect in their own eyes and a certain thoroughness of action, not a few men, perhaps even the majority, find it absolutely necessary to run down and disparage all their acquaintances. But as mean natures are numerous, and since it is very important whether they possess that thoroughness or lose it, hence—— 64. The Man in a Passion.—We must beware of one who is in a passion against us as of one who has once sought our life; for the fact that we still live is due to the absence of power to kill,—if looks would suffice, we should have been dead long ago. It is a piece of rough civilization to force someone into silence by the exhibition of physical savageness and the inspiring of fear. That cold glance which exalted persons employ towards their servants is also a relic of that caste division between man and man, a piece of rough antiquity; women, the preservers of ancient things, have also faithfully retained this survival of an ancient habit. 65. Whither Honesty Can Lead.—Somebody had the bad habit of occasionally talking quite frankly about the motives of his actions, which were as good and as bad as the motives of most men. He first gave offence, then aroused suspicion, was then gradually excluded from society and declared a social outlaw, until at last justice remembered such an abandoned creature, on occasions when it would otherwise have had no eyes, or would have closed them. The lack of power to hold his tongue concerning the common secret, and the irresponsible tendency to see what no one wishes to see—himself—brought him to a prison and an early death. 66. Punishable, but Never Punished.—Our crime against criminals lies in the fact that we treat them like rascals. 67. Sancta Simplicitas of Virtue.—Every virtue has its privileges; for example, that of contributing its own little faggot to the scaffold of every condemned man, 68. Morality and Consequences.—It is not only the spectators of a deed who frequently judge of its morality or immorality according to its consequences, but the doer of the deed himself does so. For the motives and intentions are seldom sufficiently clear and simple, and sometimes memory itself seems clouded by the consequences of the deed, so that one ascribes the deed to false motives or looks upon unessential motives as essential. Success often gives an action the whole honest glamour of a good conscience; failure casts the shadow of remorse over the most estimable deed. Hence arises the well-known practice of the politician, who thinks, “ Only grant me success, with that I bring all honest souls over to my side and make myself honest in my own eyes.” In the same way success must replace a better argument. Many educated people still believe that the triumph of Christianity over Greek philosophy is a proof of the greater truthfulness of the former,—although in this case it is only the coarser and more powerful that has triumphed over the more spiritual and delicate. Which possesses the greater truth may be seen from the fact that the awakening sciences have agreed with Epicurus’ philosophy on point after point, but on point after point have rejected Christianity. 69. Love and Justice.—Why do we over-estimate love to the disadvantage of justice, and say the most beautiful things about it, as if it were something very much higher than the latter? Is it not visibly more stupid than justice? Certainly, but precisely for that reason all the pleasanter for everyone. It is blind, and possesses an abundant cornucopia, out of which it distributes its gifts to all, even if they do not deserve them, even if they express no thanks for them. It is as impartial as the rain, which, according to the Bible and experience, makes not only the unjust, but also occasionally the just wet through to the skin. 70. Execution.—How is it that every execution offends us more than does a murder? It is the coldness of the judges, the painful preparations, the conviction that a human being is here being used as a warning to scare others. For the guilt is not punished, even if it existed—it lies with educators, parents, surroundings, in ourselves, not in the murderer—I mean the determining circumstances. 71. Hope.—Pandora brought the box of ills and opened it. It was the gift of the gods to men, outwardly a beautiful and seductive gift, and called the Casket of Happiness. Out of it flew all the evils, living winged creatures, thence they now circulate and do men injury day and night. One single evil had not yet escaped from the box, and by the will of Zeus Pandora closed the lid and it remained within. Now forever man has the casket of happiness in his house and thinks he holds a great treasure; it is at his disposal, he stretches out his hand for it whenever he desires; for he does not know the box which Pandora brought was the casket of evil, and he believes the ill which remains within to be the greatest blessing, —it is hope. Zeus did not wish man, however much he might be tormented by the other evils, to fling away his life, but to go on letting himself be tormented again and again. Therefore he gives man hope,—in reality it is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man. 72. The Degree of Moral Inflammability Unknown.—According to whether we have or have not had certain disturbing views and impressions—for instance, an unjustly executed, killed, or martyred father; a faithless wife; a cruel hostile attack—it depends whether our passions reach fever heat and influence our whole life or not. No one knows to what he may be
driven by circumstances, pity, or indignation; he does not know the degree of his own inflammability. Miserable little circumstances make us miserable; it is generally not the quantity of experiences, but their quality, on which lower and higher man depends, in good and evil. 73. The Martyr in Spite of Himself.—There was a man belonging to a party who was too nervous and cowardly ever to contradict his comrades; they made use of him for everything, they demanded everything from him, because he was more afraid of the bad opinion of his companions than of death itself; his was a miserable, feeble soul. They recognized this, and on the ground of these qualities they made a hero of him, and finally even a martyr. Although the coward inwardly always said No, with his lips he always said Yes, even on the scaffold, when he was about to die for the opinions of his party; for beside him stood one of his old companions, who so tyrannized over him by word and look that he really suffered death in the most respectable manner, and has ever since been celebrated as a martyr and a great character. 74. The Every-day Standard.—One will seldom go wrong if one attributes extreme actions to vanity, average ones to habit, and petty ones to fear. 75. Misunderstanding Concerning Virtue.—Whoever has known immorality in connection with pleasure, as is the case with a man who has a pleasure-seeking youth behind him, imagines that virtue must be connected with absence of pleasure.—Whoever, on the contrary, has been much plagued by his passions and vices, longs to find in virtue peace and the soul’s happiness. Hence it is possible for two virtuous persons not to understand each other at all. 76. The Ascetic.—The ascetic makes a necessity of virtue. 77. Transferring Honor from the Person To the Thing.—Deeds of love and sacrifice for the benefit of one’s neighbor are generally honored, wherever they are manifested. Thereby we multiply the valuation of things which are thus loved, or for which we sacrifice ourselves, although perhaps they are not worth much in themselves. A brave army is convinced of the cause for which it fights. 78. Ambition a Substitute for the Moral Sense.—The moral sense must not be lacking in those natures which have no ambition. The ambitious manage without it, with almost the same results. For this reason the sons of unpretentious, unambitious families, when once they lose the moral sense, generally degenerate very quickly into complete scamps. 79. Vanity Enriches.—How poor would be the human mind without vanity! Thus, however, it resembles a well-stocked and constantly replenished bazaar which attracts buyers of every kind. There they can find almost everything, obtain almost everything, provided that they bring the right sort of coin, namely admiration. 80. Old Age and Death.—Apart from the commands of religion, the question may well be asked, Why is it more worthy for an old man who feels his powers decline, to await his slow exhaustion and extinction than with full consciousness to set a limit to his life? Suicide in this case is a perfectly natural, obvious action, which should justly arouse respect as a triumph of reason, and did arouse it in those times when the heads of Greek philosophy and the sturdiest patriots used to seek death through suicide. The seeking, on the contrary, to prolong existence from day to day, with anxious consultation of doctors and painful mode of living, without the power of drawing nearer to the actual aim of life, is far less worthy. Religion is rich in excuses to reply to the demand for suicide, and thus it ingratiates itself with those who wish to cling to life. 81. Errors of the Sufferer and the Doer.—When a rich man deprives a poor man of a possession (for instance, a prince taking the sweetheart of a plebeian), an error arises in the mind of the poor man; he thinks that the rich man must be utterly infamous to take away from him the little that he has. But the rich man does not estimate so highly the value of a single possession, because he is accustomed to have many; hence he cannot imagine himself in the poor man’s place, and does not commit nearly so great a wrong as the latter supposes. They each have a mistaken idea of the other. The injustice of the powerful, which, more than anything else, rouses indignation in history, is by no means so great as it appears. Alone the mere inherited consciousness of being a higher creation, with higher claims, produces a cold temperament, and leaves the conscience quiet; we all of us feel no injustice when the difference is very great between ourselves and another creature, and kill a fly, for instance, without any pricks of conscience. Therefore it was no sign of badness in Xerxes (whom even all Greeks describe as superlatively noble) when he took a son away from his father and had him cut in pieces, because he had expressed a nervous, ominous distrust of the whole campaign; in this case the individual is put out of the way like an unpleasant insect; he is too lowly to be allowed any longer to cause annoyance to a ruler of the world. Yes, every cruel man is not so cruel as the ill-treated one imagines; the idea of pain is not the same as its endurance. It is the same thing in the case of unjust judges, of the journalist who leads public opinion astray by small dishonesties. In all these cases cause and effect are surrounded by entirely different groups of feelings and thoughts; yet one unconsciously takes it for granted that doer and sufferer think and feel alike, and according to this supposition we measure the guilt of the one by the pain of the other. 82.
The Skin of the Soul.—As the bones, flesh, entrails, and blood-vessels are enclosed within a skin, which makes the aspect of man endurable, so the emotions and passions of the soul are enwrapped with vanity,—it is the skin of the soul. 83. The Sleep of Virtue.—When virtue has slept, it will arise again all the fresher. 84. The Refinement of Shame.—People are not ashamed to think something foul, but they are ashamed when they think these foul thoughts are attributed to them. 85. Malice is Rare.—Most people are far too much occupied with themselves to be malicious. 86. The Tongue in the Balance.—We praise or blame according as the one or the other affords more opportunity for exhibiting our power of judgment. 87. St. Luke xviii. 14, improved.—He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted. 88. The Prevention of Suicide.—There is a certain right by which we may deprive a man of life, but none by which we may deprive him of death; this is mere cruelty. 89. Vanity.—We care for the good opinion of men, firstly because they are useful to us, and then because we wish to please them (children their parents, pupils their teachers, and well-meaning people generally their fellow-men). Only where the good opinion of men is of importance to someone, apart from the advantage thereof or his wish to please, can we speak of vanity. In this case the man wishes to please himself, but at the expense of his fellow-men, either by misleading them into holding a false opinion about him, or by aiming at a degree of “ good opinion” which must be painful to everyone else (by arousing envy). The individual usually wishes to corroborate the opinion he holds of himself by the opinion of others, and to strengthen it in his own eyes; but the strong habit of authority—a habit as old as man himself—induces many to support by authority their belief in themselves: that is to say, they accept it first from others; they trust the judgment of others more than their own. The interest in himself, the wish to please himself, attains to such a height in a vain man that he misleads others into having a false, all too elevated estimation of him, and yet nevertheless sets store by their authority,—thus causing an error and yet believing in it. It must be confessed, therefore, that vain people do not wish to please others so much as themselves, and that they go so far therein as to neglect their advantage, for they often endeavor to prejudice their fellow-men unfavorably, inimicably, enviously, consequently injuriously against themselves, merely in order to have pleasure in themselves, personal pleasure. 90. The Limits of Human Love.—A man who has declared that another is an idiot and a bad companion, is angry when the latter eventually proves himself to be otherwise. 91. Moralité Larmoyante.—What a great deal of pleasure morality gives! Only think what a sea of pleasant tears has been shed over descriptions of noble and unselfish deeds! This charm of life would vanish if the belief in absolute irresponsibility were to obtain supremacy. 92. The Origin of Justice.—Justice (equity) has its origin amongst powers which are fairly equal, as Thucydides (in the terrible dialogue between the Athenian and Melian ambassadors) rightly comprehended: that is to say, where there is no clearly recognizable supremacy, and where a conflict would be useless and would injure both sides, there arises the thought of coming to an understanding and settling the opposing claims; the character of exchange is the primary character of justice. Each party satisfies the other, as each obtains what he values more than the other. Each one receives that which he desires, as his own henceforth, and whatever is desired is received in return. Justice, therefore, is recompense and exchange based on the hypothesis of a fairly equal degree of power,—thus, originally, revenge belongs to the province of justice, it is an exchange. Also gratitude.—Justice naturally is based on the point of view of a judicious self-preservation, on the egoism, therefore, of that reflection, “ Why should I injure myself uselessly and perhaps not attain my aim after all?” So much about the origin of justice. Because man, according to his intellectual custom, has forgotten the original purpose of so-called just and reasonable actions, and particularly because for hundreds of years children have been taught to admire and imitate such actions, the idea has gradually arisen that such an action is un-egoistic; upon this idea, however, is based the high estimation in which it is held: which, moreover, like all valuations, is constantly growing, for something that is valued highly is striven after, imitated, multiplied, and increases, because the value of the output of toil and enthusiasm of each individual is added to the value of the thing itself. How little moral would the world look without this forgetfulness! A poet might say that God had placed forgetfulness as door-keeper in the temple of human dignity. 93. The Right of the Weaker.—When anyone submits under certain conditions to a greater power, as a besieged town for instance, the counter-condition is that one can destroy one’s self, burn the town, and so cause the mighty one a great loss. Therefore there is a kind of equalization here, on the basis of which rights may be determined. The enemy has his
advantage in maintaining it. In so far there are also rights between slaves and masters, that is, precisely so far as the possession of the slave is useful and important to his master. The right originally extends so far as one appears to be valuable to the other, essentially unlosable, unconquerable, and so forth. In so far the weaker one also has rights, but lesser ones. Hence the famous unusquisque tantum juris habet, quantum potentia valet (or more exactly, quantum potentia valere creditur). 94. The Three Phases of Hitherto Existing Morality.—It is the first sign that the animal has become man when its actions no longer have regard only to momentary welfare, but to what is enduring, when it grows useful and practical; there the free rule of reason first breaks out. A still higher step is reached when he acts according to the principle of honor; by this means he brings himself into order, submits to common feelings, and that exalts him still higher over the phase in which he was led only by the idea of usefulness from a personal point of view; he respects and wishes to be respected, i.e. he understands usefulness as dependent upon what he thinks of others and what others think of him. Eventually he acts, on the highest step of the hitherto exiting morality, according to his standard of things and men; he himself decides for himself and others what is honorable, what is useful; he has become the law-giver of opinions, in accordance with the ever more highly developed idea of what is useful and honorable. Knowledge enables him to place that which is most useful, that is to say the general, enduring usefulness, above the personal, the honorable recognition of general, enduring validity above the momentary; he lives and acts as a collective individual. 95. The Morality of the Mature Individual.—The impersonal has hitherto been looked upon as the actual distinguishing mark of moral action; and it has been pointed out that in the beginning it was in consideration of the common good that all impersonal actions were praised and distinguished. Is not an important change in these views impending, now when it is more and more recognized that it is precisely in the most personal possible considerations that the common good is the greatest, so that a strictly personal action now pest illustrates the present idea of morality, as utility for the mass? To make a whole personality out of ourselves, and in all that we do to keep that personality’s highest good in view, carries us further than those sympathetic emotions and actions for the benefit of others. We all still suffer, certainly, from the too small consideration of the personal in us; it is badly developed,—let us admit it; rather has our mind been forcibly drawn away from it and offered as a sacrifice to the State, to science, or to those who stand in need of help, as if it were the bad part which must be sacrificed. We are still willing to work for our fellow-men, but only so far as we find our own greatest advantage in this work, no more and no less. It is only a question of what we understand as our advantage; the unripe, undeveloped, crude individual will understand it in the crudest way. 96. Custom and Morality.—To be moral, correct, and virtuous is to be obedient to an old-established law and custom. Whether we submit with difficulty or willingly is immaterial, enough that we do so. He is called “ good” who, as if naturally, after long precedent, easily and willingly, therefore, does what is right, according to whatever this may be (as, for instance, taking revenge, if to take revenge be considered as right, as amongst the ancient Greeks). He is called good because he is good “ for something”; but as goodwill, pity, consideration, moderation, and such like, have come, with the change in manners, to be looked upon as “ good for something,” as useful, the good-natured and helpful have, later on, come to be distinguished specially as “ good.” (In the beginning other and more important kinds of usefulness stood in the foreground.) To be evil is to be “ not moral” (immoral), to be immoral is to be in opposition to tradition, however sensible or stupid it may be; injury to the community (the “ neighbor” being understood thereby) has, however, been looked upon by the social laws of all different ages as being eminently the actual “ immorality,” so that now at the word “ evil” we immediately think of voluntary injury to one’s neighbor. The fundamental antithesis which has taught man the distinction between moral and immoral, between good and evil, is not the “ egoistic” and “ unegoistic,” but the being bound to the tradition, law, and solution thereof. How the tradition has arisen is immaterial, at all events without regard to good and evil or any immanent categorical imperative, but above all for the purpose of preserving a community, a generation, an association, a people; every superstitious custom that has arisen on account of some falsely explained accident, creates a tradition, which it is moral to follow; to separate one’s self from it is dangerous, but more dangerous for the community than for the individual (because the Godhead punishes the community for every outrage and every violation of its rights, and the individual only in proportion). Now every tradition grows continually more venerable, the farther off lies its origin, the more this is lost sight of; the generation paid it accumulates from generation to generation, the tradition at last becomes holy and excites awe; and thus in any case the morality of piety is a much older morality than that which requires un-egoistic actions. 97. Pleasure in Traditional Custom.—An important species of pleasure, and therewith the source of morality, arises out of habit. Man does what is habitual to him more easily, better, and therefore more willingly; he feels a pleasure therein, and knows from experience that the habitual has been tested, and is therefore useful; a custom that we can live with is proved to be wholesome and advantageous in contrast to all new and not yet tested experiments. According to this, morality is the union of the pleasant and the useful; moreover, it requires no reflection. As soon as man can use compulsion, he uses it to introduce and enforce his customs; for in his eyes they are proved as the wisdom of life. In the same way a company of individuals compels each single one to adopt the same customs. Here the inference is wrong; because we feel at ease with a morality, or at least because we are able to carry on existence with it, therefore this morality is necessary, for it seems to be the only possibility of feeling at ease; the ease of life seems to grow out of it alone. This comprehension of the habitual as a necessity of existence is pursued even to the smallest details of custom,—as insight into genuine causality is very small with lower peoples and civilizations, they take precautions with superstitious fear that everything should go in its same groove; even where custom is difficult, hard, and burdensome, it is preserved on
account of its apparent highest usefulness. It is not known that the same degree of well-being can also exist with other customs, and that even higher degrees may be attained. We become aware, however, that all customs, even the hardest, grow pleasanter and milder with time, and that the severest way of life may become a habit and therefore a pleasure. 98. Pleasure and Social Instinct.—Out of his relations with other men, man obtains a new species of pleasure in addition to those pleasurable sensations which he derives from himself; whereby he greatly increases the scope of enjoyment. Perhaps he has already taken too many of the pleasures of this sphere from animals, which visibly feel pleasure when they play with each other, especially the mother with her young. Then consider the sexual relations, which make almost every female interesting to a male with regard to pleasure, and vice versa. The feeling of pleasure on the basis of human relations generally makes man better; joy in common, pleasure enjoyed together is increased, it gives the individual security, makes him good-tempered, and dispels mistrust and envy, for we feel ourselves at ease and see others at ease. Similar manifestations of pleasure awaken the idea of the same sensations, the feeling of being like something; a like effect is produced by common sufferings, the same bad weather, dangers, enemies. Upon this foundation is based the oldest alliance, the object of which is the mutual obviating and averting of a threatening danger for the benefit of each individual. And thus the social instinct grows out of pleasure. 99. The Innocent Side of So-Called Evil Actions.—All “ evil” actions are prompted by the instinct of preservation, or, more exactly, by the desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain on the part of the individual; thus prompted, but not evil. “ To cause pain per se” does not exist, except in the brains of philosophers, neither does “ to give pleasure per se” (pity in Schopenhauer’s meaning). In the social condition before the State we kill the creature, be it ape or man, who tries to take from us the fruit of a tree when we are hungry and approach the tree, as we should still do with animals in inhospitable countries. The evil actions which now most rouse our indignation, are based upon the error that he who causes them has a free will, that he had the option, therefore, of not doing us this injury. This belief in option arouses hatred, desire for revenge, spite, and the deterioration of the whole imagination, while we are much less angry with an animal because we consider it irresponsible. To do injury, not from the instinct of preservation, but as requital, is the consequence of a false judgment and therefore equally innocent. The individual can in the condition which lies before the State, act sternly and cruelly towards other creatures for the purpose of terrifying, to establish his existence firmly by such terrifying proofs of his power. Thus act the violent, the mighty, the original founders of States, who subdue the weaker to themselves. They have the right to do so, such as the State still takes for itself; or rather, there is no right that can hinder this. The ground for all morality can only be made ready when a stronger individual or a collective individual, for instance society or the State, subdues the single individuals, draws them out of their singleness, and forms them into an association. Compulsion precedes morality, indeed morality itself is compulsion for a time, to which one submits for the avoidance of pain. Later on it becomes custom,—later still, free obedience, and finally almost instinct,—then, like everything long accustomed and natural, it is connected with pleasure—and is henceforth called virtue. 100. Shame.—Shame exists everywhere where there is a “ mystery”; this, however, is a religious idea, which was widely extended in the older times of human civilization. Everywhere were found bounded domains to which access was forbidden by divine right, except under certain conditions; at first locally, as, for example, certain spots that ought not to be trodden by the feet of the uninitiated, in the neighborhood of which these latter experienced horror and fear. This feeling was a good deal carried over into other relations, for instance, the sex relations, which, as a privilege and ± ´ÅÄ¿½ of riper years, had to be withheld from the knowledge of the young for their advantage, relations for the protection and sanctification of which many gods were invented and were set up as guardians in the nuptial chamber. (In Turkish this room is on this account called harem, “ sanctuary,” and is distinguished with the same name, therefore, that is used for the entrance courts of the mosques.) Thus the kingdom is as a centre from which radiate power and glory, to the subjects a mystery full of secrecy and shame, of which many aftereffects may still be felt among nations which otherwise do not by any means belong to the bashful type. Similarly, the whole world of inner conditions, the so-called “ soul,” is still a mystery for all who are not philosophers, after it has been looked upon for endless ages as of divine origin and as worthy of divine intercourse; according to this it is an ± ´ÅÄ¿½ and arouses shame. 101. Judge Not.—In considering earlier periods, care must be taken not to fall into unjust abuse. The injustice in slavery, the cruelty in the suppression of persons and nations, is not to be measured by our standard. For the instinct of justice was not then so far developed. Who dares to reproach the Genevese Calvin with the burning of the physician Servet? It was an action following and resulting from his convictions, and in the same way the Inquisition had a good right; only the ruling views were false, and produced a result which seems hard to us because those views have now grown strange to us. Besides, what is the burning of a single individual compared with eternal pains of hell for almost all! And yet this idea was universal at that time, without essentially injuring by its dreadfulness the conception of a God. With us, too, political sectarians are hardly and cruelly treated, but because one is accustomed to believe in the necessity of the State, the cruelty is not so deeply felt hereas it is where we repudiate the views. Cruelty to animals in children and Italians is due to ignorance, i.e. the animal, through the interests of Church teaching, has been placed too far behind man. Much that is dreadful and inhuman in history, much that one hardly likes to believe, is mitigated by the reflection that the one who commands and the one who carries out are different persons,—the former does not behold the right and therefore does not experience the strong impression on the imagination; the latter obeys a superior and therefore feels no responsibility. Most princes and military heads, through lack of imagination, easily appear hard and cruel without really being so. Egoism is not evil, because the idea of the “ neighbor”—the word is of Christian origin and does not represent the truth—is very weak in us; and we feel ourselves almost as free and irresponsible towards him as towards plants and stones. We have yet to learn that others suffer, and this can never be completely
learnt. 102. “ Man always Acts Rightly.”—We do not complain of nature as immoral because it sends a thunderstorm and makes us wet,—why do we call those who injure us immoral? Because in the latter case we take for granted a free will functioning voluntarily; in the former we see necessity. But this distinction is an error. Thus we do not call even intentional injury immoral in all circumstances; for instance, we kill a fly unhesitatingly and intentionally, only because its buzzing annoys us; we punish a criminal intentionally and hurt him in order to protect ourselves and society. In the first case it is the individual who, in order to preserve himself, or even to protect himself from worry, does intentional injury; in the second case it is the State. All morals allow intentional injury in the case of necessity, that is, when it is a matter of self-preservation! But these two points of view suffice to explain all evil actions committed by men against men, we are desirous of obtaining pleasure or avoiding pain; in any case it is always a question of self-preservation. Socrates and Plato are right: whatever man does he always does well, that is, he does that which seems to him good (useful) according to the degree of his intellect, the particular standard of his reasonableness. 103. The Harmlessness of Malice.—The aim of malice is not the suffering of others in itself, but our own enjoyment; for instance, as the feeling of revenge, or stronger nervous excitement. All teasing, even, shows the pleasure it gives to exercise our power on others and bring it to an enjoyable feeling of preponderance. Is it immoral to taste pleasure at the expense of another’s pain? Is malicious joy [6] devilish, as Schopenhauer says? We give ourselves pleasure in nature by breaking off twigs, loosening stones, fighting with wild animals, and do this in order to become thereby conscious of our strength. Is the knowledge, therefore, that another suffers through us, the same thing concerning which we otherwise feel irresponsible, supposed to make us immoral? But if we did not know this we would not thereby have the enjoyment of our own superiority, which can only manifest itself by the suffering of others, for instance, in teasing. All pleasure per se is neither good nor evil; whence should come the decision that in order to have pleasure ourselves we may not cause displeasure to others? From the point of view of usefulness alone, that is, out of consideration for the consequences, for possible displeasure, when the injured one or the replacing State gives the expectation of resentment and revenge: this only can have been the original reason for denying ourselves such actions. Pity aims just as little at the pleasure of others as malice at the pain of others per se. For it contains at least two (perhaps many more) elements of a personal pleasure, and is so far self-gratification; in the first place as the pleasure of emotion, which is the kind of pity that exists in tragedy, and then, when it impels to action, as the pleasure of satisfaction in the exercise of power. If, besides this, a suffering person is very dear to us, we lift a sorrow from ourselves by the exercise of sympathetic actions. Except by a few philosophers, pity has always been placed very low in the scale of moral feelings, and rightly so. [6] This is the untranslatable word Schadenfreude, which means joy at the misfortune of others.—J. M. K. 104. Self-Defense.—If self-defense is allowed to pass as moral, then almost all manifestations of the so-called immoral egoism must also stand; men injure, rob, or kill in order to preserve or defend themselves, to prevent personal injury; they lie where cunning and dissimulation are the right means of self-preservation. Intentional injury, when our existence or safety (preservation of our comfort) is concerned, is conceded to be moral; the State itself injures, according to this point of view, when it punishes. In unintentional injury, of course, there can be nothing immoral, that is ruled by chance. Is there, then, a kind of intentional injury where our existence or the preservation of our comfort is not concerned? Is there an injuring out of pure malice, for instance in cruelty? If one does not know how much an action hurts, it is no deed of malice; thus the child is not malicious towards the animal, not evil; he examines and destroys it like a toy. But do we ever know entirely how an action hurts another? As far as our nervous system extends we protect ourselves from pain; if it extended farther, to our fellow-men, namely, we should do no one an injury (except in such cases as we injure ourselves, where we cut ourselves for the sake of cure, tire and exert ourselves for the sake of health). We conclude by analogy that something hurts somebody, and through memory and the strength of imagination we may suffer from it ourselves. But still what a difference there is between toothache and the pain (pity) that the sight of toothache calls forth! Therefore, in injury out of so-called malice the degree of pain produced is always unknown to us; but inasmuch as there is pleasure in the action (the feeling of one’s own power, one’s own strong excitement), the action is committed, in order to preserve the comfort of the individual, and is regarded, therefore, from a similar point of view as defense and falsehood in necessity. No life without pleasure; the struggle for pleasure is the struggle for life. Whether the individual so fights this fight that men call him good, or so that they call him evil, is determined by the measure and the constitution of his intellect. 105. Recompensing Justice.—Whoever has completely comprehended the doctrine of absolute irresponsibility can no longer include the so-called punishing and recompensing justice in the idea of justice, should this consist of giving to each man his due. For he who is punished does not deserve the punishment, he is only used as a means of henceforth warning away from certain actions; equally so, he who is rewarded does not merit this reward, he could not act otherwise than he did. Therefore the reward is meant only as an encouragement to him and others, to provide a motive for subsequent actions; words of praise are flung to the runners on the course, not to the one who has reached the goal. Neither punishment nor reward is anything that comes to one as one’s own; they are given from motives of usefulness, without one having a right to claim them. Hence we must say, “ The wise man gives no reward because the deed has been well done,” just as we have said, “ The wise man does not punish because evil has been committed, but in order that evil shall not be committed.” If punishment and reward no longer existed, then the strongest motives which deter men from certain actions and impel them to certain other actions, would also no longer exist; the needs of mankind require their continuance; and inasmuch as punishment and reward, blame and praise, work most sensibly on vanity, the same need requires the
continuance of vanity. 106. At the Waterfall.—In looking at a waterfall we imagine that there is freedom of will and fancy in the countless turnings, twistings, and breakings of the waves; but everything is compulsory, every movement can be mathematically calculated. So it is also with human actions; one would have to be able to calculate every single action beforehand if one were all-knowing; equally so all progress of knowledge, every error, all malice. The one who acts certainly labors under the illusion of voluntariness; if the world’s wheel were to stand still for a moment and an all-knowing, calculating reason were there to make use of this pause, it could foretell the future of every creature to the remotest times, and mark out every track upon which that wheel would continue to roll. The delusion of the acting agent about himself, the supposition of a free will, belongs to this mechanism which still remains to be calculated. 107. Irresponsibility and Innocence.—The complete irresponsibility of man for his actions and his nature is the bitterest drop which he who understands must swallow if he was accustomed to see the patent of nobility of his humanity in responsibility and duty. All his valuations, distinctions, disinclinations, are thereby deprived of value and become false,— his deepest feeling for the sufferer and the hero was based on an error; he may no longer either praise or blame, for it is absurd to praise and blame nature and necessity. In the same way as he loves a fine work of art, but does not praise it, because it can do nothing for itself; in the same way as he regards plants, so must he regard his own actions and those of mankind. He can admire strength, beauty, abundance, in themselves; but must find no merit therein,—the chemical progress and the strife of the elements, the torments of the sick person who thirsts after recovery, are all equally as little merits as those struggles of the soul and states of distress in which we are torn hither and thither by different impulses until we finally decide for the strongest as we say (but in reality it is the strongest motive which decides for us). All these motives, however, whatever fine names we may give them, have all grown out of the same root, in which we believe the evil poisons to be situated; between good and evil actions there is no difference of species, but at most of degree. Good actions are sublimated evil ones; evil actions are vulgarized and stupefied good ones. The single longing of the individual for self-gratification (together with the fear of losing it) satisfies itself in all circumstances: man may act as he can, that is as he must, be it in deeds of vanity, revenge, pleasure, usefulness, malice, cunning; be it in deeds of sacrifice, of pity, of knowledge. The degrees of the power of judgment determine whither anyone lets himself be drawn through this longing; to every society, to every individual, a scale of possessions is continually present, according to which he determines his actions and judges those of others. But this standard changes constantly; many actions are called evil and are only stupid, because the degree of intelligence which decided for them was very low. In a certain sense, even, all actions are still stupid; for the highest degree of human intelligence which can now be attained will assuredly be yet surpassed, and then, in a retrospect, all our actions and judgments will appear as limited and hasty as the actions and judgments of primitive wild peoples now appear limited and hasty to us. To recognize all this may be deeply painful, but consolation comes after: such pains are the pangs of birth. The butterfly wants to break through its chrysalis: it rends and tears it, and is then blinded and confused by the unaccustomed light, the kingdom of liberty. In such people as are capable of such sadness—and how few are!—the first experiment made is to see whether mankind can change itself from a moral into a wise mankind. The sun of a new gospel throws its rays upon the highest point in the soul of each single individual, then the mists gather thicker than ever, and the brightest light and the dreariest shadow lie side by side. Everything is necessity—so says the new knowledge, and this knowledge itself is necessity. Everything is innocence, and knowledge is the road to insight into this innocence. Are pleasure, egoism, vanity necessary for the production of the moral phenomena and their highest result, the sense for truth and justice in knowledge; were error and the confusion of the imagination the only means through which mankind could raise itself gradually to this degree of self-enlightenment and self-liberation—who would dare to undervalue these means? Who would dare to be sad if he perceived the goal to which those roads led? Everything in the domain of morality has evolved, is changeable, unstable, everything is dissolved, it is true; but everything is also streaming towards one goal. Even if the inherited habit of erroneous valuation, love and hatred, continue to reign in us, yet under the influence of growing knowledge it will become weaker; a new habit, that of comprehension, of not loving, not hating, of over-looking, is gradually implanting itself in us upon the same ground, and in thousands of years will perhaps be powerful enough to give humanity the strength to produce wise, innocent (consciously innocent) men, as it now produces unwise, guilt-conscious men,—that is the necessary preliminary step, not its opposite. THIRD DIVISION. THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 108. The Double Fight Against Evil.—When misfortune overtakes us we can either pass over it so lightly that its cause is removed, or so that the result which it has on our temperament is altered, through a changing, therefore, of the evil into a good, the utility of which is perhaps not visible until later on. Religion and art (also metaphysical philosophy) work upon the changing of the temperament, partly through the changing of our judgment on events (for instance, with the help of the phrase “ whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth”), partly through the awakening of a pleasure in pain, in emotion generally (whence the tragic art takes its starting-point). The more a man is inclined to twist and arrange meanings the less he will grasp the causes of evil and disperse them; the momentary mitigation and influence of a narcotic, as for example in toothache, suffices him even in more serious sufferings. The more the dominion of creeds and all arts dispense with narcotics, the more strictly men attend to the actual removing of the evil, which is certainly bad for writers of tragedy; for the material for tragedy is growing scarcer because the domain of pitiless, inexorable fate is growing ever narrower,—but worse still for the priests, for they have hitherto lived on the narcotisation of human woes.
109. Sorrow is Knowledge.—How greatly we should like to exchange the false assertions of the priests, that there is a god who desires good from us, a guardian and witness of every action, every moment, every thought, who loves us and seeks our welfare in all misfortune,—how greatly we would like to exchange these ideas for truths which would be just as healing, pacifying and beneficial as those errors! But there are no such truths; at most philosophy can oppose to them metaphysical appearances (at bottom also untruths). The tragedy consists in the fact that we cannot believe those dogmas of religion and metaphysics, if we have strict methods of truth in heart and brain: on the other hand, mankind has, through development, become so delicate, irritable and suffering, that it has need of the highest means of healing and consolation; whence also the danger arises that man would bleed to death from recognized truth, or, more correctly, from discovered error. Byron has expressed this in the immortal lines:— Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most Must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth, The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life. For such troubles there is no better help than to recall the stately levity of Horace, at least for the worst hours and eclipses of the soul, and to say with him: … quid æternis minorem consiliis animum fatigas? cur non sub alta vel platano vel hac pinu jacentes. [7] [7] Why harass with eternal designs a mind too weak to compass them? Why do we not, as we lie beneath a lofty plane-tree or this pine [drink while we may]? Hor., Odes II. ii. 11-14. —J. M. K. But assuredly frivolity or melancholy of every degree is better than a romantic retrospection and desertion of the flag, an approach to Christianity in any form; for according to the present condition of knowledge it is absolutely impossible to approach it without hopelessly soiling our intellectual conscience and giving ourselves away to ourselves and others. Those pains may be unpleasant enough, but we cannot become leaders and educators of mankind without pain; and woe to him who would wish to attempt this and no longer have that clear conscience! 110. The Truth in Religion.—In the period of rationalism justice was not done to the importance of religion, of that there is no doubt, but equally there is no doubt that in the reaction that followed this rationalism justice was far overstepped; for religions were treated lovingly, even amorously, and, for instance, a deeper, even the very deepest, understanding of the world was ascribed to them; which science has only to strip of its dogmatic garment in order to possess the “ truth” in unmythical form. Religions should, therefore,—this was the opinion of all opposers of rationalism,—sensu allegorico, with all consideration for the understanding of the masses, give utterance to that ancient wisdom which is wisdom itself, inasmuch as all true science of later times has always led up to it instead of away from it, so that between the oldest wisdom of mankind and all later harmonies similarity of discernment and a progress of knowledge—in case one should wish to speak of such a thing—rests not upon the nature but upon the way of communicating it. This whole conception of religion and science is thoroughly erroneous, and none would still dare to profess it if Schopenhauer’s eloquence had not taken it under its protection; this resonant eloquence which, however, only reached its hearers a generation later. As surely as from Schopenhauer’s religious-moral interpretations of men and the world much may be gained for the understanding of the Christian and other religions, so surely also is he mistaken about the value of religion for knowledge. Therein he himself was only a too docile pupil of the scientific teachers of his time, who all worshipped romanticism and had forsworn the spirit of enlightenment; had he been born in our present age he could not possibly have talked about the sensus allegoricus of religion; he would much rather have given honor to truth, as he used to do, with the words, “ no religion, direct or indirect, either as dogma or as allegory, has ever contained a truth.” For each has been born of fear and necessity, through the byways of reason did it slip into existence; once, perhaps, when imperiled by science, some philosophic doctrine has lied itself into its system in order that it may be found there later, but this is a theological trick of the time when a religion already doubts itself. These tricks of theology (which certainly were practiced in the early days of Christianity, as the religion of a scholarly period steeped in philosophy) have led to that superstition of the sensus allegoricus, but yet more the habits of the philosophers (especially the half-natures, the poetical philosophers and the philosophizing artists), to treat all the sensations which they discovered in themselves as the fundamental nature of man in general, and hence to allow their own religious feelings an important influence in the building up of their systems. As philosophers frequently philosophized under the custom of religious habits, or at least under the anciently inherited power of that “ metaphysical need,” they developed doctrinal opinions which really bore a great resemblance to the Jewish or Christian or Indian religious views,—a resemblance, namely, such as children usually bear to their mothers, only that in this case the fathers were not clear about that motherhood, as happens sometimes,—but in their innocence romanced about a family likeness between all religion and science. In reality, between religions and real science there exists neither relationship nor friendship, nor even enmity; they live on different planets. Every philosophy which shows a religious comet’s tail shining in the darkness of its last prospects makes all the science it contains suspicious; all this is presumably also religion, even though in the guise of science. Moreover, if all nations were to agree about certain religious matters, for instance the existence of a God (which, it may be remarked, is not the case with regard to this point), this would only be an argument against those affirmed matters, for instance the existence of a God; the consensus gentium and hominum in general can only take place in case of a huge folly. On the other hand, there is no consensus omnium sapientium, with regard to any single thing; with that exception mentioned in Goethe’s lines: “ Alle die Weisesten aller der Zeiten Lächeln und winken und stimmen mit ein: Thöricht, auf Bess’rung der Thoren zu harren! Kinder der Klugheit, o habet die Narren Eben zum Narren auch, wie sich’s gehört!” [8] [8] “ All greatest sages of all latest ages Will chuckle and slily agree, ‘Tis folly to wait till a fool’s empty pate Has learnt to be knowing and free: So children of wisdom, make use of the fools And use them whenever you can as your tools.”—J. M. K Spoken without verse and rhyme and applied to our case, the consensus sapientium consists in this: that the consensus gentium counts as a folly. 111.
The Origin of the Religious Cult.—If we go back to the times in which the religious life flourished to the greatest extent, we find a fundamental conviction, which we now no longer share, and whereby the doors leading to a religious life are closed to us once for all,—it concerns Nature and intercourse with her. In those times people knew nothing of natural laws; neither for earth nor for heaven is there a “ must”; a season, the sunshine, the rain may come or may not come. In short, every idea of natural causality is lacking. When one rows, it is not the rowing that moves the boat, but rowing is only a magical ceremony by which one compels a dæmon to move the boat. All maladies, even death itself, are the result of magical influences. Illness and death never happen naturally; the whole conception of “ natural sequence” is lacking,—it dawned first amongst the older Greeks, that is, in a very late phase of humanity, in the conception of Moira, enthroned above the gods. When a man shoots with a bow, there is still always present an irrational hand and strength; if the wells suddenly dry up, men think first of subterranean dæmons and their tricks; it must be the arrow of a god beneath whose invisible blow a man suddenly sinks down. In India (says Lubbock) a carpenter is accustomed to offer sacrifice to his hammer, his hatchet, and the rest of his tools; in the same way a Brahmin treats the pen with which he writes, a soldier the weapons he requires in the field of battle, a mason his trowel, a laborer his plough. In the imagination of religious people all nature is a summary of the actions of conscious and voluntary creatures, an enormous complex of arbitrariness. No conclusion may be drawn with regard to everything that is outside of us, that anything will be so and so, must be so and so; the approximately sure, reliable are we,—man is the rule, nature is irregularity,—this theory contains the fundamental conviction which obtains in rude, religiously productive primitive civilizations. We latter-day men feel just the contrary,—the richer man now feels himself inwardly, the more polyphonous is the music and the noise of his soul the more powerfully the symmetry of nature works upon him; we all recognize with Goethe the great means in nature for the appeasing of the modern soul; we listen to the pendulum swing of this greatest of clocks with a longing for rest, for home and tranquility, as if we could absorb this symmetry into ourselves and could only thereby arrive at the enjoyment of ourselves. Formerly it was otherwise; if we consider the rude, early condition of nations, or contemplate present-day savages at close quarters, we find them most strongly influenced by law and by tradition: the individual is almost automatically bound to them, and moves with the uniformity of a pendulum. To him Nature—uncomprehended, terrible, mysterious Nature—must appear as the sphere of liberty, of voluntariness, of the higher power, even as a superhuman degree of existence, as God. In those times and conditions, however, every individual felt that his existence, his happiness, and that of the family and the State, and the success of all undertakings, depended on those spontaneities of nature; certain natural events must appear at the right time, others be absent at the right time. How can one have any influence on these terrible unknown things, how can one bind the sphere of liberty? Thus he asks himself, thus he inquires anxiously;—is there, then, no means of making those powers as regular through tradition and law as you are yourself? The aim of those who believe in magic and miracles is to impose a law on nature,—and, briefly, the religious cult is a result of this aim. The problem which those people have set themselves is closely related to this: how can the weaker race dictate laws to the stronger, rule it, and guide its actions (in relation to the weaker)? One would first remember the most harmless sort of compulsion, that compulsion which one exercises when one has gained anyone’s affection. By imploring and praying, by submission, by the obligation of regular taxes and gifts, by flattering glorifications, it is also possible to exercise an influence upon the powers of nature, inasmuch as one gains the affections; love binds and becomes bound. Then one can make compacts by which one is mutually bound to a certain behavior, where one gives pledges and exchanges vows. But far more important is a species of more forcible compulsion, by magic and witchcraft. As with the sorcerer’s help man is able to injure a more powerful enemy and keep him in fear, as the love-charm works at a distance, so the weaker man believes he can influence the mightier spirits of nature. The principal thing in all witchcraft is that we must get into our possession something that belongs to someone, hair, nails, food from their table, even their portrait, their name. With such apparatus we can then practice sorcery; for the fundamental rule is, to everything spiritual there belongs something corporeal; with the help of this we are able to bind the spirit, to injure it, and destroy it; the corporeal furnishes the handles with which we can grasp the spiritual. As man controls man, so he controls some natural spirit or other; for this has also its corporeal part by which it may be grasped. The tree and, compared with it, the seed from which it sprang,—this enigmatical contrast seems to prove that the same spirit embodied itself in both forms, now small, now large. A stone that begins to roll suddenly is the body in which a spirit operates; if there is an enormous rock lying on a lonely heath it seems impossible to conceive human strength sufficient to have brought it there, consequently the stone must have moved there by itself, that is, it must be possessed by a spirit. Everything that has a body is susceptible to witchcraft, therefore also the natural spirits. If a god is bound to his image we can use the most direct compulsion against him (through refusal of sacrificial food, scourging, binding in fetters, and so on). In order to obtain by force the missing favor of their god the lower classes in China wind cords round the image of the one who has left them in the lurch, pull it down and drag it through the streets in the dust and the dirt: “ You dog of a spirit,” they say, “ we gave you a magnificent temple to live in, we gilded you prettily, we fed you well, we offered you sacrifice, and yet you are so ungrateful.” Similar forcible measures against pictures of the Saints and Virgin when they refused to do their duty in pestilence or drought, have been witnessed even during the present century in Catholic countries. Through all these magic relations to nature, countless ceremonies have been called into life; and at last, when the confusion has grown too great, an endeavor has been made to order and systematize them, in order that the favorable course of the whole progress of nature, i.e. of the great succession of the seasons, may seem to be guaranteed by a corresponding course of a system of procedure. The essence of the religious cult is to determine and confine nature to human advantage, to impress it with a legality, therefore, which it did not originally possess; while at the present time we wish to recognize the legality of nature in order to adapt ourselves to it. In short, then, the religious cult is based upon the representations of sorcery between man and man,—and the sorcerer is older than the priest. But it is likewise based upon other and nobler representations; it premises the sympathetic relation of man to man, the presence of goodwill, gratitude, the hearing of pleaders, of treaties between enemies, the granting of pledges, and the claim to the protection of property. In very low stages of civilization man does not stand in the relation of a helpless slave to nature, he is not necessarily its involuntary bondsman. In the Greek grade of religion, particularly in relation to the Olympian gods, there may even be imagined a common life between two castes, a nobler and more powerful one, and one less noble; but in their origin
both belong to each other somehow, and are of one kind; they need not be ashamed of each other. That is the nobility of the Greek religion. 112. At the Sight of Certain Antique Sacrificial Implements.—The fact of how many feelings are lost to us may be seen, for instance, in the mingling of the droll, even of the obscene, with the religious feeling. The sensation of the possibility of this mixture vanishes, we only comprehend historically that it existed in the feasts of Demeter and Dionysus, in the Christian Easter-plays and Mysteries. But we also know that which is noble in alliance with burlesque and such like, the touching mingled with the laughable, which perhaps a later age will not be able to understand. 113. Christianity as Antiquity.—When on a Sunday morning we hear the old bells ring out, we ask ourselves, “ Is it possible! This is done on account of a Jew crucified two thousand years ago who said he was the Son of God. The proof of such an assertion is wanting.” Certainly in our times the Christian religion is an antiquity that dates from very early ages, and the fact that its assertions are still believed, when otherwise all claims are subjected to such strict examination, is perhaps the oldest part of this heritage. A God who creates a son from a mortal woman; a sage who requires that man should no longer work, no longer judge, but should pay attention to the signs of the approaching end of the world; a justice that accepts an innocent being as a substitute in sacrifice; one who commands his disciples to drink his blood; prayers for miraculous intervention; sins committed against a God and atoned for through a God; the fear of a future to which death is the portal; the form of the cross in an age which no longer knows the signification and the shame of the cross, [9] how terrible all this appears to us, as if risen from the grave of the ancient past! Is it credible that such things are still believed? [9] It may be remembered that the cross was the gallows of the ancient world.—J. M. K. 114. What is un-Greek in Christianity.—The Greeks did not regard the Homeric gods as raised above them like masters, nor themselves as being under them like servants, as the Jews did. They only saw, as in a mirror, the most perfect examples of their own caste; an ideal, therefore, and not an opposite of their own nature. There is a feeling of relationship, a mutual interest arises, a kind of symmachy. Man thinks highly of himself when he gives himself such gods, and places himself in a relation like that of the lower nobility towards the higher; while the Italian nations hold a genuine peasant-faith, with perpetual fear of evil and mischievous powers and tormenting spirits. Wherever the Olympian gods retreated into the background, Greek life was more somber and more anxious. Christianity, on the contrary, oppressed man and crushed him utterly, sinking him as if in deep mire; then into the feeling of absolute depravity it suddenly threw the light of divine mercy, so that the surprised man, dazzled by forgiveness, gave a cry of joy and for a moment believed that he bore all heaven within himself. All psychological feelings of Christianity work upon this unhealthy excess of sentiment, and upon the deep corruption of head and heart it necessitates; it desires to destroy, break, stupefy, confuse,—only one thing it does not desire, namely moderation, and therefore it is in the deepest sense barbaric, Asiatic, ignoble and un-Greek. 115. To be Religious with Advantage.—There are sober and industrious people on whom religion is embroidered like a hem of higher humanity; these do well to remain religious, it beautifies them. All people who do not understand some kind of trade in weapons—tongue and pen included as weapons—become servile; for such the Christian religion is very useful, for then servility assumes the appearance of Christian virtues and is surprisingly beautified. People to whom their daily life appears too empty and monotonous easily grow religious; this is comprehensible and excusable, only they have no right to demand religious sentiments from those whose daily life is not empty and monotonous. [10] [10] This may give us one of the reasons for the religiosity still happily prevailing in England and the United States.—J. M. K. 116. The Commonplace Christian.—If Christianity were right, with its theories of an avenging God, of general sinfulness, of redemption, and the danger of eternal damnation, it would be a sign of weak intellect and lack of character not to become a priest, apostle or hermit, and to work only with fear and trembling for one’s own salvation; it would be senseless thus to neglect eternal benefits for temporary comfort. Taking it for granted that there is belief, the commonplace Christian is a miserable figure, a man that really cannot add two and two together, and who, moreover, just because of his mental incapacity for responsibility, did not deserve to be so severely punished as Christianity has decreed. 117. Of the Wisdom of Christianity.—It is a clever stroke on the part of Christianity to teach the utter unworthiness, sinfulness, and despicableness of mankind so loudly that the disdain of their fellow-men is no longer possible. “ He may sin as much as he likes, he is not essentially different from me,—it is I who am unworthy and despicable in every way,” says the Christian to himself. But even this feeling has lost its sharpest sting, because the Christian no longer believes in his individual despicableness; he is bad as men are generally, and comforts himself a little with the axiom, “ We are all of one kind.” 118. Change of Front.—As soon as a religion triumphs it has for its enemies all those who would have been its first disciples. 119. The Fate of Christianity.—Christianity arose for the purpose of lightening the heart; but now it must first make the heart heavy in order afterwards to lighten it. Consequently it will perish.
120. The Proof of Pleasure.—The agreeable opinion is accepted as true,—this is the proof of the pleasure (or, as the Church says, the proof of the strength), of which all religions are so proud when they ought to be ashamed of it. If Faith did not make blessed it would not be believed in; of how little value must it be, then! 121. A Dangerous Game.—Whoever now allows scope to his religious feelings must also let them increase, he cannot do otherwise. His nature then gradually changes; it favors whatever is connected with and near to the religious element, the whole extent of judgment and feeling becomes clouded, overcast with religious shadows. Sensation cannot stand still; one must therefore take care. 122. The Blind Disciples.—So long as one knows well the strength and weakness of one’s doctrine, one’s art, one’s religion, its power is still small. The disciple and apostle who has no eyes for the weaknesses of the doctrine, the religion, and so forth, dazzled by the aspect of the master and by his reverence for him, has on that account usually more power than the master himself. Without blind disciples the influence of a man and his work has never yet become great. To help a doctrine to victory often means only so to mix it with stupidity that the weight of the latter carries off also the victory for the former. 123. Church Disestablishment.—There is not enough religion in the world even to destroy religions. 124. The Sinlessness of Man.—If it is understood how “ sin came into the world,” namely through errors of reason by which men held each other, even the single individual held himself, to be much blacker and much worse than was actually the case, the whole sensation will be much lightened, and man and the world will appear in a blaze of innocence which it will do one good to contemplate. In the midst of nature man is always the child per se. This child sometimes has a heavy and terrifying dream, but when it opens its eyes it always finds itself back again in Paradise. 125. The Irreligiousness of Artists.—Homer is so much at home amongst his gods, and is so familiar with them as a poet, that he must have been deeply irreligious; that which the popular faith gave him—a meager, rude, partly terrible superstition—he treated as freely as the sculptor does his clay, with the same unconcern, therefore, which Æschylus and Aristophanes possessed, and by which in later times the great artists of the Renaissance distinguished themselves, as also did Shakespeare and Goethe. 126. The Art and Power of False Interpretations.—All the visions, terrors, torpors, and ecstasies of saints are well-known forms of disease, which are only, by reason of deep-rooted religious and psychological errors, differently explained by him, namely not as diseases. Thus, perhaps, the Daimonion of Socrates was only an affection of the ear, which he, in accordance with his ruling moral mode of thought, expounded differently from what would be the case now. It is the same thing with the madness and ravings of the prophets and soothsayers; it is always the degree of knowledge, fantasy, effort, morality in the head and heart of the interpreters which has made so much of it. For the greatest achievements of the people who are called geniuses and saints it is necessary that they should secure interpreters by force, who misunderstand them for the good of mankind. 127. The Veneration of Insanity.—Because it was remarked that excitement frequently made the mind clearer and produced happy inspirations it was believed that the happiest inspirations and suggestions were called forth by the greatest excitement; and so the insane were revered as wise and oracular. This is based on a false conclusion. 128. The Promises of Science.—The aim of modern science is: as little pain as possible, as long a life as possible,—a kind of eternal blessedness, therefore; but certainly a very modest one as compared with the promises of religions. 129. Forbidden Generosity.—There is not sufficient love and goodness in the world to permit us to give some of it away to imaginary beings. 130. The Continuance of the Religious Cult in the Feelings.—The Roman Catholic Church, and before that all antique cults, dominated the entire range of means by which man was put into unaccustomed moods and rendered incapable of the cold calculation of judgment or the clear thinking of reason. A church quivering with deep tones; the dull, regular, arresting appeals of a priestly throng, unconsciously communicates its tension to the congregation and makes it listen almost fearfully, as if a miracle were in preparation; the influence of the architecture, which, as the dwelling of a Godhead, extends into the uncertain and makes its apparition to be feared in all its sombre spaces,—who would wish to bring such things back to mankind if the necessary suppositions are no longer believed? But the results of all this are not lost, nevertheless; the inner world of noble, emotional, deeply contrite dispositions, full of presentiments, blessed with hope, is inborn in mankind mainly through this cult; what exists of it now in the soul was then cultivated on a large scale as it germinated, grew up and blossomed.
131. The Painful Consequences of Religion.—However much we may think we have weaned ourselves from religion, it has nevertheless not been done so thoroughly as to deprive us of pleasure in encountering religious sensations and moods in music, for instance; and if a philosophy shows us the justification of metaphysical hopes and the deep peace of soul to be thence acquired, and speaks, for instance, of the “ whole, certain gospel in the gaze of Raphael’s Madonnas,” we receive such statements and expositions particularly warmly; here the philosopher finds it easier to prove; that which he desires to give corresponds to a heart that desires to receive. Hence it may be observed how the less thoughtful free spirits really only take offence at the dogmas, but are well acquainted with the charm of religious sensations; they are sorry to lose hold of the latter for the sake of the former. Scientific philosophy must be very careful not to smuggle in errors on the ground of that need,—a need which has grown up and is consequently temporary,—even logicians speak of “ presentiments” of truth in ethics and in art (for instance, of the suspicion that “ the nature of things is one”), which should be forbidden to them. Between the carefully established truths and such “ presaged” things there remains the unbridgeable chasm that those are due to intellect and these to requirement. Hunger does not prove that food exists to satisfy it, but that it desires food. To “ presage” does not mean the acknowledgment of the existence of a thing in any one degree, but its possibility, in so far as it is desired or feared; “ presage” does not advance one step into the land of certainty. We believe involuntarily that the portions of a philosophy which are tinged with religion are better proved than others; but actually it is the contrary, but we have the inward desire that it may be so, that that which makes blessed, therefore, may be also the true. This desire misleads us to accept bad reasons for good ones. 132. Of the Christian Need of Redemption.—With careful reflection it must be possible to obtain an explanation free from mythology of that process in the soul of a Christian which is called the need of redemption, consequently a purely psychological explanation. Up to the present, the psychological explanations of religious conditions and processes have certainly been held in some disrepute, inasmuch as a theology which called itself free carried on its unprofitable practice in this domain; for here from the beginning (as the mind of its founder, Schleiermacher, gives us reason to suppose) the preservation of the Christian religion and the continuance of Christian theology was kept in view; a theology which was to find a new anchorage in the psychological analyses of religious “ facts,” and above all a new occupation. Unconcerned about such predecessors we hazard the following interpretation of the phenomenon in question. Man is conscious of certain actions which stand far down in the customary rank of actions; he even discovers in himself a tendency towards similar actions, a tendency which appears to him almost as unchangeable as his whole nature. How willingly would he try himself in that other species of actions which in the general valuation are recognized as the loftiest and highest, how gladly would he feel himself to be full of the good consciousness which should follow an unselfish mode of thought! But unfortunately he stops short at this wish, and the discontent at not being able to satisfy it is added to all the other discontents which his lot in life or the consequences of those above-mentioned evil actions have aroused in him; so that a deep ill-humor is the result, with the search for a physician who could remove this and all its causes. This condition would not be felt so bitterly if man would only compare himself frankly with other men,—then he would have no reason for being dissatisfied with himself to a particular extent, he would only bear his share of the common burden of human dissatisfaction and imperfection. But he compares himself with a being who is said to be capable only of those actions which are called unegoistic, and to live in the perpetual consciousness of an unselfish mode of thought, i.e. with God; it is because he gazes into this clear mirror that his image appears to him so dark, so unusually warped. Then he is alarmed by the thought of that same creature, in so far as it floats before his imagination as a retributive justice; in all possible small and great events he thinks he recognizes its anger and menaces, that he even feels its scourge-strokes as judge and executioner. Who will help him in this danger, which, by the prospect of an immeasurable duration of punishment, exceeds in horror all the other terrors of the idea? 133. Before we examine the further consequences of this mental state, let us acknowledge that it is not through his “ guilt” and “ sin” that man has got into this condition, but through a series of errors of reason; that it was the fault of the mirror if his image appeared so dark and hateful to him, and that that mirror was his work, the very imperfect work of human imagination and power of judgment. In the first place, a nature that is only capable of purely unegoistic actions is more fabulous than the phoenix; it cannot even be clearly imagined, just because, when closely examined, the whole idea “ unegoistic action” vanishes into air. No man ever did a thing which was done only for others and without any personal motive; how should he be able to do anything which had no relation to himself, and therefore without inward obligation (which must always have its foundation in a personal need)? How could the ego act without ego? A God who, on the contrary, is all love, as such a one is often represented, would not be capable of a single unegoistic action, whereby one is reminded of a saying of Lichtenberg’s which is certainly taken from a lower sphere: “ We cannot possibly feel for others, as the saying is; we feel only for ourselves. This sounds hard, but it is not so really if it be rightly understood. We do not love father or mother or wife or child, but the pleasant sensations they cause us;” or, as Rochefoucauld says: “ Si on croit aimer sa maîtresse pour l’amour d’elle, on est bien trompé.” To know the reason why actions of love are valued more than others, not on account of their nature, namely, but of their usefulness, we should compare the examinations already mentioned, On the Origin of Moral Sentiments. But should a man desire to be entirely like that God of Love, to do and wish everything for others and nothing for himself, the latter is impossible for the reason that he must do very much for himself to be able to do something for the love of others. Then it is taken for granted that the other is sufficiently egoistic to accept that sacrifice again and again, that living for him,—so that the people of love and sacrifice have an interest in the continuance of those who are loveless and incapable of sacrifice, and, in order to exist, the highest morality would be obliged positively to compel the existence of un-morality (whereby it would certainly annihilate itself). Further: the conception of a God disturbs and humbles so long as it is believed in; but as to how it arose there can no longer be any doubt in the present state of the science of comparative ethnology; and with a comprehension of this origin all belief falls to the ground. The Christian who compares his nature with
God’s is like Don Quixote, who under-valued his own bravery because his head was full of the marvelous deeds of the heroes of the chivalric romances,—the standard of measurement in both cases belongs to the domain of fable. But if the idea of God is removed, so is also the feeling of “ sin” as a trespass against divine laws, as a stain in a creature vowed to God. Then, perhaps, there still remains that dejection which; is intergrown and connected with the fear of the punishment of worldly justice or of the scorn of men; the dejection of the pricks of conscience, the sharpest thorn in the consciousness of sin, is always removed if we recognize that though by our own deed we have sinned against human descent, human laws and ordinances, still that we have not imperiled the “ eternal salvation of the Soul” and its relation to the Godhead. And if man succeeds in gaining philosophic conviction of the absolute necessity of all actions and their entire irresponsibility, and absorbing this into his flesh and blood, even those remains of the pricks of conscience vanish. 134. Now if the Christian, as we have said, has fallen into the way of self-contempt in consequence of certain errors through a false, unscientific interpretation of his actions and sensations, he must notice with great surprise how that state of contempt, the pricks of conscience and displeasure generally, does not endure, how sometimes there come hours when all this is wafted away from his soul and he feels himself once more free and courageous. In truth, the pleasure in himself, the comfort of his own strength, together with the necessary weakening through time of every deep emotion, has usually been victorious; man loves himself once again, he feels it,—but precisely this new love, this self-esteem, seems to him incredible, he can only see in it the wholly undeserved descent of a stream of mercy from on high. If he formerly believed that in every event he could recognize warnings, menaces, punishments, and every kind of manifestation of divine anger, he now finds divine goodness in all his experiences,—this event appears to him to be full of love, that one a helpful hint, a third, and, indeed, his whole happy mood, a proof that God is merciful. As formerly, in his state of pain, he interpreted his actions falsely, so now he misinterprets his experiences; his mood of comfort he believes to be the working of a power operating outside of himself, the love with which he really loves himself seems to him to be divine love; that which he calls mercy, and the prologue to redemption, is actually self-forgiveness, self-redemption. 135. Therefore: A certain false psychology, a certain kind of imaginative interpretation of motives and experiences, is the necessary preliminary for one to become a Christian and to feel the need of redemption. When this error of reason and imagination is recognized, one ceases to be a Christian. 136. Of Christian Asceticism and Holiness.—As greatly as isolated thinkers have endeavored to depict as a miracle the rare manifestations of morality, which are generally called asceticism and holiness, miracles which it would be almost an outrage and sacrilege to explain by the light of common sense, as strong also is the inclination towards this outrage. A mighty impulse of nature has at all times led to a protest against those manifestations; science, in so far as it is an imitation of nature, at least allows itself to rise against the supposed inexplicableness and unapproachableness of these objections. So far it has certainly not succeeded: those appearances are still unexplained, to the great joy of the above-mentioned worshippers of the morally marvelous. For, speaking generally, the unexplained must be absolutely inexplicable, the inexplicable absolutely unnatural, supernatural, wonderful,—thus runs the demand in the souls of all religious and metaphysical people (also of artists, if they should happen to be thinkers at the same time); whilst the scientist sees in this demand the “ evil principle” in itself. The general, first probability upon which one lights in the contemplation of holiness and asceticism is this, that their nature is a complicated one, for almost everywhere, within the physical world as well as in the moral, the apparently marvelous has been successfully traced back to the complicated, the many-conditioned. Let us venture, therefore, to isolate separate impulses from the soul of saints and ascetics, and finally to imagine them as intergrown. 137. There is a defiance of self, to the sublimest manifestation of which belong many forms of asceticism. Certain individuals have such great need of exercising their power and love of ruling that, in default of other objects, or because they have never succeeded otherwise, they finally excogitate the idea of tyrannizing over certain parts of their own nature, portions or degrees of themselves. Thus many a thinker confesses to views which evidently do not serve either to increase or improve his reputation; many a one deliberately calls down the scorn of others when by keeping silence he could easily have remained respected; others contradict former opinions and do not hesitate to be called inconsistent—on the contrary, they strive after this, and behave like reckless riders who like a horse best when it has grown wild, unmanageable, and covered with sweat. Thus man climbs dangerous paths up the highest mountains in order that he may laugh to scorn his own fear and his trembling knees; thus the philosopher owns to views on asceticism, humility, holiness, in the brightness of which his own picture shows to the worst possible disadvantage. This crushing of one’s self, this scorn of one’s own nature, this spernere se sperni, of which religion has made so much, is really a very high degree of vanity. The whole moral of the Sermon on the Mount belongs here; man takes a genuine delight in doing violence to himself by these exaggerated claims, and afterwards idolizing these tyrannical demands of his soul. In every ascetic morality man worships one part of himself as a God, and is obliged, therefore, to diabolize the other parts. 138. Man is not equally moral at all hours, this is well known. If his morality is judged to be the capability for great self-sacrificing resolutions and self-denial (which, when continuous and grown habitual, are called holiness), he is most moral in the passions, the higher emotion provides him with entirely new motives, of which he, sober and cold as usual, perhaps does not even believe himself capable. How does this happen? Probably because of the proximity of everything great and highly exciting; if man is once wrought up to a state of extraordinary suspense, he is as capable of carrying out a terrible revenge as of a terrible crushing of his need for revenge. Under the influence of powerful emotion, he desires
in any case the great, the powerful, the immense; and if he happens to notice that the sacrifice of himself satisfies him as well as, or better than, the sacrifice of others, he chooses that. Actually, therefore, he only cares about discharging his emotion; in order to ease his tension he seizes the enemy’s spears and buries them in his breast. That there was something great in self-denial and not in revenge had to be taught to mankind by long habit; a Godhead that sacrificed itself was the strongest, most effective symbol of this kind of greatness. As the conquest of the most difficult enemy, the sudden mastering of an affection—thus this denial appears; and so far it passes for the summit of morality. In reality it is a question of the confusion of one idea with another, while the temperament maintains an equal height, an equal level. Temperate men who are resting from their passions no longer understand the morality of those moments; but the general admiration of those who had the same experiences upholds them; pride is their consolation when affection and the understanding of their deed vanish. Therefore, at bottom even those actions of self-denial are not moral, inasmuch as they are not done strictly with regard to others; rather the other only provides the highly-strung temperament with an opportunity of relieving itself through that denial. 139. In many respects the ascetic seeks to make life easy for himself, usually by complete subordination to a strange will or a comprehensive law and ritual; something like the way a Brahmin leaves nothing whatever to his own decision but refers every moment to holy precepts. This submission is a powerful means of attaining self-mastery: man is occupied and is therefore not bored, and yet has no incitement to self-will or passion; after a completed deed there is no feeling of responsibility and with it no tortures of remorse. We have renounced our own will once and forever, and this is easier than only renouncing it occasionally; as it is also easier to give up a desire entirely than to keep it within bounds. When we remember the present relation of man to the State, we find that, even here, unconditional obedience is more convenient than conditional. The saint, therefore, makes his life easier by absolute renunciation of his personality, and we are mistaken if in that phenomenon we admire the loftiest heroism of morality. In any case it is more difficult to carry one’s personality through without vacillation and unclearness than to liberate one’s self from it in the above-mentioned manner; moreover, it requires far more spirit and consideration. 140. After having found in many of the less easily explicable actions manifestations of that pleasure in emotion per se, I should like to recognize also in self-contempt, which is one of the signs of holiness, and likewise in the deeds of self-torture (through hunger and scourging, mutilation of limbs, feigning of madness) a means by which those natures fight against the general weariness of their life-will (their nerves); they employ the most painful irritants and cruelties in order to emerge for a time, at all events, from that dullness and boredom into which they so frequently sink through their great mental indolence and that submission to a strange will already described. 141. The commonest means which the ascetic and saint employs to render life still endurable and amusing consists in occasional warfare with alternate victory and defeat. For this he requires an opponent, and finds it in the so-called “ inward enemy.” He principally makes use of his inclination to vanity, love of honor and rule, and of his sensual desires, that he may be permitted to regard his life as a perpetual battle and himself as a battlefield upon which good and evil spirits strive with alternating success. It is well known that sensual imagination is moderated, indeed almost dispelled, by regular sexual intercourse, whereas, on the contrary, it is rendered unfettered and wild by abstinence or irregularity. The imagination of many Christian saints was filthy to an extraordinary degree; by virtue of those theories that these desires were actual demons raging within them they did not feel themselves to be too responsible; to this feeling we owe the very instructive frankness of their self-confessions. It was to their interest that this strife should always be maintained in one degree or another, because, as we have already said, their empty life was thereby entertained. But in order that the strife might seem sufficiently important and arouse the enduring sympathy and admiration of non-saints, it was necessary that sensuality should be ever more reviled and branded, the danger of eternal damnation was so tightly bound up with these things that it is highly probable that for whole centuries Christians generated children with a bad conscience, wherewith humanity has certainly suffered a great injury. And yet here truth is all topsy-turvy, which is particularly unsuitable for truth. Certainly Christianity had said that every man is conceived and born in sin, and in the insupportable superlativeChristianity of Calderon this thought again appears, tied up and twisted, as the most distorted paradox there is, in the well-known lines— “ The greatest sin of man Is that he was ever born.” In all pessimistic religions the act of generation was looked upon as evil in itself. This is by no means the verdict of all mankind, not even of all pessimists. For instance, Empedocles saw in all erotic things nothing shameful, diabolical, or, sinful; but rather, in the great plain of disaster he saw only one hopeful and redeeming figure, that of Aphrodite; she appeared to him as a guarantee that the strife should not endure eternally, but that the scepter should one day be given over to a gentler dæmon. The actual Christian pessimists had, as has been said, an interest in the dominance of a diverse opinion; for the solitude and spiritual wilderness of their lives they required an ever living enemy, and a generally recognized enemy, through whose fighting and overcoming they could constantly represent themselves to the non-saints as incomprehensible, half-supernatural beings. But when at last this enemy took to flight forever in consequence of their mode of life and their impaired health, they immediately understood how to populate their interior with new dæmons. The rising and falling of the scales of pride and humility sustained their brooding minds as well as the alternations of desire and peace of soul. At that time psychology served not only to cast suspicion upon everything human, but to oppress, to scourge, to crucify; people wished to find themselves as bad and wicked as possible, they sought anxiety for the salvation of their souls, despair of their own strength. Everything natural with which man has connected the idea of evil and sin (as, for instance, he is still accustomed to do with regard to the erotic) troubles and clouds the imagination, causes a frightened glance, makes man quarrel with himself and uncertain and distrustful of himself. Even his dreams have the flavor of a restless conscience. And yet in the reality of things this suffering from what is natural is entirely without foundation, it is only the consequence of opinions about things. It is easily seen how men grow worse by considering the inevitably-natural as bad, and afterwards always feeling themselves made thus. It is the trump-card of religion and metaphysics,
which wish to have man evil and sinful by nature, to cast suspicion on nature and thus really to make him bad, for he learns to feel himself evil since he cannot divest himself of the clothing of nature. After living for long a natural life, he gradually comes to feel himself weighed down by such a burden of sin that supernatural powers are necessary to lift this burden, and therewith arises the so-called need of redemption, which corresponds to no real but only to an imaginary sinfulness. If we survey the separate moral demands of the earliest times of Christianity it will everywhere be found that requirements are exaggerated in order that man cannot satisfy them; the intention is not that he should become more moral, but that he should feel himself as sinful as possible. If man had not found this feeling agreeable—why would he have thought out such an idea and stuck to it so long? As in the antique world an immeasurable power of intellect and inventiveness was expended in multiplying the pleasure of life by festive cults, so also in the age of Christianity an immeasurable amount of intellect has been sacrificed to another endeavor,—man must by all means be made to feel himself sinful and thereby be excited, enlivened, en-souled. To excite, enliven, en-soul at all costs—is not that the watchword of a relaxed, over-ripe, over-cultured age? The range of all natural sensations had been gone over a hundredtimes, the soul had grown weary, whereupon the saint and the ascetic invented a new species of stimulants for life. They presented themselves before the public eye, not exactly as an example for the many, but as a terrible and yet ravishing spectacle, which took place on that border-land between world and over-world, wherein at that time all people believed they saw now rays of heavenly light and now unholy tongues of flame glowing in the depths. The saint’s eye, fixed upon the terrible meaning of this short earthly life, upon the nearness of the last decision concerning endless new spans of existence, this burning eye in a half-wasted body made men of the old world tremble to their very depths; to gaze, to turn shudderingly away, to feel anew the attraction of the spectacle and to give way to it, to drink deep of it till the soul quivered with fire and ague,—that was the last pleasure that antiquity invented after it had grown blunted even at the sight of beast-baitings and human combats. 142. Now to sum up. That condition of soul in which the saint or embryo saint rejoiced, was composed of elements which we all know well, only that under the influence of other than religious conceptions they exhibit themselves in other colors and are then accustomed to encounter man’s blame as fully as, with that decoration of religion and the ultimate meaning of existence, they may reckon on receiving admiration and even worship,—might reckon, at least, in former ages. Sometimes the saint practices that defiance of himself which is a near relative of domination at any cost and gives a feeling of power even to the most lonely; sometimes his swollen sensibility leaps from the desire to let his passions have full play into the desire to overthrow them like wild horses under the mighty pressure of a proud spirit; sometimes he desires a complete cessation of all disturbing, tormenting, irritating sensations, a waking sleep, a lasting rest in the lap of a dull, animal, and plant-like indolence; sometimes he seeks strife and arouses it within himself, because boredom has shown him its yawning countenance. He scourges his self-adoration with self-contempt and cruelty, he rejoices in the wild tumult of his desires and the sharp pain of sin, even in the idea of being lost; he understands how to lay a trap for his emotions, for instance even for his keen love of ruling, so that he sinks into the most utter abasement and his tormented soul is thrown out of joint by this contrast; and finally, if he longs for visions, conversations with the dead or with divine beings, it is at bottom a rare kind of delight that he covets, perhaps that delight in which all others are united. Novalis, an authority on questions of holiness through experience and instinct, tells the whole secret with naïve joy: “ It is strange enough that the association of lust, religion, and cruelty did not long ago draw men’s attention to their close relationship and common tendency.” 143. That which gives the saint his historical value is not the thing he is, but the thing he represents in the eyes of the unsaintly. It was through the fact that errors were made about him, that the state of his soul was falsely interpreted, that men separated themselves from him as much as possible, as from something incomparable and strangely superhuman, that he acquired the extraordinary power which he exercised over the imagination of whole nations and whole ages. He did not know himself; he himself interpreted the writing of his moods, inclinations, and actions according to an art of interpretation which was as exaggerated and artificial as the spiritual interpretation of the Bible. The distorted and diseased in his nature, with its combination of intellectual poverty, evil knowledge, ruined health, and over-excited nerves, remained hidden from his own sight as well as from that of his spectators. He was not a particularly good man, and still less was he a particularly wise one; but he represented something that exceeded the human standard in goodness and wisdom. The belief in him supported the belief in the divine and miraculous, in a religious meaning of all existence, in an impending day of judgment. In the evening glory of the world’s sunset, which glowed over the Christian nations, the shadowy form of the saint grew to vast dimensions, it grew to such a height that even in our own age, which no longer believes in God, there are still thinkers who believe in the saint. 144. It need not be said that to this description of the saint which has been made from an average of the whole species, there may be opposed many a description which could give a more agreeable impression. Certain exceptions stand out from among this species, it may be through great mildness and philanthropy, it may be through the magic of unusual energy; others are attractive in the highest degree, because certain wild ravings have poured streams of light on their whole being, as is the case, for instance, with the famous founder of Christianity, who thought he was the Son of God and therefore felt himself sinless—so that through this idea—which we must not judge too hardly because the whole antique world swarms with sons of God—he reached that same goal, that feeling of complete sinlessness, complete irresponsibility, which everyone can now acquire by means of science. Neither have I mentioned the Indian saints, who stand midway between the Christian saint and the Greek philosopher, and in so far represent no pure type. Knowledge, science—such as existed then—the uplifting above other men through logical discipline and training of thought, were as much fostered by the Buddhists as distinguishing signs of holiness as the same qualities in the Christian world are repressed and branded as signs of unholiness.
FOURTH DIVISION. CONCERNING THE SOUL OF ARTISTS AND AUTHORS. 145. The Perfect Should Not Have Grown.—With regard to everything that is perfect we are accustomed to omit the question as to how perfection has been acquired, and we only rejoice in the present as if it had sprung out of the ground by magic. Probably with regard to this patter we are still under the effects of an ancient mythological feeling. It still almost seems to us (in such a Greek temple, for instance, as that of Pæstum) as if one morning a god in sport had built his dwelling of such enormous masses, at other times it seems as if his spirit had suddenly entered into a stone and now desired to speak through it. The artist knows that his work is only fully effective if it arouses the belief in an improvisation, in a marvelous instantaneousness of origin; and thus he assists this illusion and introduces into art those elements of inspired unrest, of blindly groping disorder, of listening dreaming at the beginning of creation, as a means of deception, in order so to influence the soul of the spectator or hearer that it may believe in the sudden appearance of the perfect. It is the business of the science of art to contradict this illusion most decidedly, and to show up the mistakes and pampering of the intellect, by means of which it falls into the artist’s trap. 146. The Artist’s Sense of Truth.—With regard to recognition of truths, the artist has a weaker morality than the thinker; he will on no account let himself be deprived of brilliant and profound interpretations of life, and defends himself against temperate and simple methods and results. He is apparently fighting for the higher worthiness and meaning of mankind; in reality he will not renounce the most effective suppositions for his art, the fantastical, mythical, uncertain, extreme, the sense of the symbolical, the over-valuation of personality, the belief that genius is something miraculous,—he considers, therefore, the continuance of his art of creation as more important than the scientific devotion to truth in every shape, however simple this may appear. 147. Art as Raiser of The Dead.—Art also fulfils the task of preservation and even of brightening up extinguished and faded memories; when it accomplishes this task it weaves a rope round the ages and causes their spirits to return. It is, certainly, only a phantom-life that results therefrom, as out of graves, or like the return in dreams of our beloved dead, but for some moments, at least, the old sensation lives again and the heart beats to an almost forgotten time. Hence, for the sake of the general usefulness of art, the artist himself must be excused if he does not stand in the front rank of the enlightenment and progressive civilization of humanity; all his life long he has remained a child or a youth, and has stood still at the point where he was overcome by his artistic impulse; the feelings of the first years of life, however, are acknowledged to be nearer to those of earlier times than to those of the present century. Unconsciously it becomes his mission to make mankind more childlike; this is his glory and his limitation. 148. Poets as the Lighteners of Life.—Poets, inasmuch as they desire to lighten the life of man, either divert his gaze from the wearisome present, or assist the present to acquire new colors by means of a life which they cause to shine out of the past. To be able to do this, they must in many respects themselves be beings who are turned towards the past, so that they can be used as bridges to far distant times and ideas, to dying or dead religions and cultures. Actually they are always and of necessity epigoni. There are, however, certain drawbacks to their means of lightening life,—they appease and heal only temporarily, only for the moment; they even prevent men from laboring towards a genuine improvement in their conditions, inasmuch as they remove and apply palliatives to precisely that passion of discontent that induces to action. 149. The Slow Arrow of Beauty.—The noblest kind of beauty is that which does not transport us suddenly, which does not make stormy and intoxicating impressions (such a kind easily arouses disgust), but that which slowly filters into our minds, which we take away with us almost unnoticed, and which we encounter again in our dreams; but which, however, after having long lain modestly on our hearts, takes entire possession of us, fills our eyes with tears and our hearts with longing. What is it that we long for at the sight of beauty? We long to be beautiful, we fancy it must bring much happiness with it. But that is a mistake. 150. The Animation of Art.—Art raises its head where creeds relax. It takes over many feelings and moods engendered by religion, lays them to its heart, and itself becomes deeper, more full of soul, so that it is capable of transmitting exultation and enthusiasm, which it previously was not able to do. The abundance of religious feelings which have grown into a stream are always breaking forth again and desire to conquer new kingdoms, but the growing enlightenment has shaken the dogmas of religion and inspired a deep mistrust,—thus the feeling, thrust by enlightenment out of the religious sphere, throws itself upon art, in a few cases into political life, even straight into science. Everywhere where human endeavor wears a loftier, gloomier aspect, it may be assumed that the fear of spirits, incense, and church-shadows have remained attached to it. 151. How Rhythm Beautifies.—Rhythm casts a veil over reality; it causes various artificialities of speech and obscurities of thought; by the shadow it throws upon thought it sometimes conceals it, and sometimes brings it into prominence. As shadow is necessary to beauty, so the “ dull” is necessary to lucidity. Art makes the aspect of life endurable by throwing over it the veil of obscure thought. 152. The Art of the Ugly Soul.—Art is confined within too narrow limits if it be required that only the orderly, respectable, well-behaved soul should be allowed to express itself
therein. As in the plastic arts, so also in music and poetry: there is an art of the ugly soul side by side with the art of the beautiful soul; and the mightiest effects of art, the crushing of souls, moving of stones and humanizing of beasts, have perhaps been best achieved precisely by that art. 153. Art Makes Heavy the Heart of the Thinker.—How strong metaphysical need is and how difficult nature renders our departure from it may be seen from the fact that even in the free spirit, when he has cast off everything metaphysical, the loftiest effects of art can easily produce a resounding of the long silent, even broken, metaphysical string,—it may be, for instance, that at a passage in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony he feels himself floating above the earth in a starry dome with the dream of immortality in his heart; all the stars seem to shine round him, and the earth to sink farther and farther away.—If he becomes conscious of this state, he feels a deep pain at his heart, and sighs for the man who will lead back to him his lost darling, be it called religion or metaphysics. In such moments his intellectual character is put to the test. 154. Playing With Life.—The lightness and frivolity of the Homeric imagination was necessary to calm and occasionally to raise the immoderately passionate temperament and acute intellect of the Greeks. If their intellect speaks, how harsh and cruel does life then appear! They do not deceive themselves, but they intentionally weave lies round life. Simonides advised his countrymen to look upon life as a game; earnestness was too well-known to them as pain (the gods so gladly hear the misery of mankind made the theme of song), and they knew that through art alone misery might be turned into pleasure. As a punishment for this insight, however, they were so plagued with the love of romancing that it was difficult for them in everyday life to keep themselves free from falsehood and deceit; for all poetic nations have such a love of falsehood, and yet are innocent withal. Probably this occasionally drove the neighboring nations to desperation. 155. The Belief in Inspiration.—It is to the interest of the artist that there should be a belief in sudden suggestions, so-called inspirations; as if the idea of a work of art, of poetry, the fundamental thought of a philosophy shone down from heaven like a ray of grace. In reality the imagination of the good artist or thinker constantly produces good, mediocre, and bad, but his judgment, most clear and practiced, rejects and chooses and joins together, just as we now learn from Beethoven’s notebooks that he gradually com posed the most beautiful melodies, and in a manner selected them, from many different attempts. He who makes less severe distinctions, and willingly abandons himself to imitative memories, may under certain circumstances become a great improvisatore; but artistic improvisation ranks low in comparison with serious and laboriously chosen artistic thoughts. All great men were great workers, unwearied not only in invention but also in rejection, reviewing, transforming, and arranging. 156. Inspiration Again.—If the productive power has been suspended for a length of time, and has been hindered in its outflow by some obstacle, there comes at last such a sudden outpouring, as if an immediate inspiration were taking place without previous inward working, consequently a miracle. This constitutes the familiar deception, in the continuance of which, as we have said, the interest of all artists is rather too much concerned. The capital has only accumulated, it has not suddenly fallen down from heaven. Moreover, such apparent inspirations are seen elsewhere, for instance in the realm of goodness, of virtue and of vice. 157. The Suffering of Genius and its Value.—The artistic genius desires to give pleasure, but if his mind is on a very high plane he does not easily find anyone to share his pleasure; he offers entertainment but nobody accepts it. This gives him, in certain circumstances, a comically touching pathos; for he has really no right to force pleasure on men. He pipes, but none will dance: can that be tragic? Perhaps.—As compensation for this deprivation, however, he finds more pleasure in creating than the rest of mankind experiences in all other species of activity. His sufferings are considered as exaggerated, because the sound of his complaints is louder and his tongue more eloquent; and yet sometimes his sufferings are really very great; but only because his ambition and his envy are so great. The learned genius, like Kepler and Spinoza, is usually not so covetous and does not make such an exhibition of his really greater sufferings and deprivations. He can reckon with greater certainty on future fame and can afford to do without the present, whilst an artist who does this always plays a desperate game that makes his heart ache. In very rare cases, when in one and the same individual are combined the genius of power and of knowledge and the moral genius, there is added to the above-mentioned pains that species of pain which must be regarded as the most curious exception in the world; those extra and super-personal sensations which are experienced on behalf of a nation, of humanity, of all civilization, all suffering existence, which acquire their value through the connection with particularly difficult and remote perceptions (pity in itself is worth but little). But what standard, what proof is there for its genuineness? Is it not almost imperative to be mistrustful of all who talk of feeling sensations of this kind? 158. The Destiny of Greatness.—Every great phenomenon is followed by degeneration, especially in the world of art. The example of the great tempts vainer natures to superficial imitation or exaggeration; all great gifts have the fatality of crushing many weaker forces and germs, and of laying waste all nature around them. The happiest arrangement in the development of an art is for several geniuses mutually to hold one another within bounds; in this strife it generally happens that light and air are also granted to the weaker and more delicate natures. 159.
Art Dangerous for the Artist.—When art takes strong hold of an individual it draws him back to the contemplation of those times when art flourished best, and it has then a retro grade effect. The artist grows more and more to reverence sudden inspirations; he believes in gods and dæmons, he spiritualizes all nature, hates science, is changeable in his moods like the ancients, and longs for an overthrow of all existing conditions which are not favorable to art, and does this with the impetuosity and unreasonableness of a child. Now, in himself, the artist is already a backward nature, because he halts at a game that belongs properly to youth and childhood; to this is added the fact that he is educated back into former times. Thus there gradually arises a fierce antagonism between him and his contemporaries, and a sad ending; according to the accounts of the ancients, Homer and Æschylus spent their last years, and died, in melancholy. 160. Created Individuals.—When it is said that the dramatist (and the artist above all) creates real characters, it is a fine deception and exaggeration, in the existence and propagation of which art celebrates one of its unconscious but at the same time abundant triumphs. As a matter of fact, we do not understand much about a real, living man, and we generalize very superficially when we ascribe to him this and that character; this very imperfect attitude of ours towards man is represented by the poet, inasmuch as he makes into men (in this sense “ creates”) outlines as superficial as our knowledge of man is superficial. There is a great deal of delusion about these created characters of artists; they are by no means living productions of nature, but are like painted men, somewhat too thin, they will not bear a close inspection. And when it is said that the character of the ordinary living being contradicts itself frequently, and that the one created by the dramatist is the original model conceived by nature, this is quite wrong. A genuine man is something absolutely necessary (even in those so-called contradictions), but we do not always recognize this necessity. The imaginary man, the phantasm, signifies something necessary, but only to those who understand a real man only in a crude, unnatural simplification, so that a few strong, oft-repeated traits, with a great deal of light and shade and half-light about them, amply satisfy their notions. They are, therefore, ready to treat the phantasm as a genuine, necessary man, because with real men they are accustomed to regard a phantasm, an outline, an intentional abbreviation as the whole. That the painter and the sculptor express the “ idea” of man is a vain imagination and delusion; whoever says this is in subjection to the eye, for this only sees the surface, the epidermis of the human body,—the inward body, however, is equally a part of the idea. Plastic art wishes to make character visible on the surface; histrionic art employs speech for the same purpose, it reflects character in sounds. Art starts from the natural ignorance of man about his interior condition (in body and character); it is not meant for philosophers or natural scientists. 161. The Over-Valuation of Self in the Belief in Artists and Philosophers.—We are all prone to think that the excellence of a work of art or of an artist is proved when it moves and touches us. But there our own excellence in judgment and sensibility must have been proved first, which is not the case. In all plastic art, who had greater power to effect a charm than Bernini, who made a greater effect than the orator that appeared after Demosthenes introduced the Asiatic style and gave it a predominance which lasted throughout two centuries? This predominance during whole centuries is not a proof of the excellence and enduring validity of a style; therefore we must not be too certain in our good opinion of any artist,— this is not only belief in the truthfulness of our sensations but also in the infallibility of our judgment, whereas judgment or sensation, or even both, may be too coarse or too fine, exaggerated or crude. Neither are the blessings and blissfulness of a philosophy or of a religion proofs of its truth; just as little as the happiness which an insane person derives from his fixed idea is a proof of the reasonableness of this idea. 162. The Cult of Genius for the Sake of Vanity.—Because we think well of ourselves, but nevertheless do not imagine that we are capable of the conception of one of Raphael’s pictures or of a scene such as those of one of Shakespeare’s dramas, we persuade ourselves that the faculty for doing this is quite extraordinarily wonderful, a very rare case, or, if we are religiously inclined, a grace from above. Thus the cult of genius fosters our vanity, our self-love, for it is only when we think of it as very far removed from us, as a miraculum, that it does not wound us (even Goethe, who was free from envy, called Shakespeare a star of the farthest heavens, whereby we are reminded of the line “ die Sterne, die begehrt man nicht”). [11] But, apart from those suggestions of our vanity, the activity of a genius does not seem so radically different from the activity of a mechanical inventor, of an astronomer or historian or strategist. All these forms of activity are explicable if we realize men whose minds are active in one special direction, who make use of everything as material, who always eagerly study their own inward life and that of others, who find types and incitements everywhere, who never weary in the employment of their means. Genius does nothing but learn how to lay stones, then to build, always to seek for material and always to work upon it. Every human activity is marvelously complicated, and not only that of genius, but it is no “ miracle.” Now whence comes the belief that genius is found only in artists, orators, and philosophers, that they alone have “ intuition” (by which we credit them with a kind of magic glass by means of which they see straight into one’s “ being”)? It is clear that men only speak of genius where the workings of a great intellect are most agreeable to them and they have no desire to feel envious. To call anyone “ divine” is as much as saying “ here we have no occasion for rivalry.” Thus it is that everything completed and perfect is stared at, and everything incomplete is undervalued. Now nobody can see how the work of an artist has developed; that is its advantage, for everything of which the development is seen is looked on coldly. The perfected art of representation precludes all thought of its development, it tyrannizes as a present perfection. For this reason artists of representation are especially held to be possessed of genius, but not scientific men. In reality, however, the former valuation and the latter under-valuation are only puerilities of reason. [11] The allusion is to Goethe’s lines: Die Sterne, die begehrt man nicht, Man freut sich ihrer Pracht. We do not want the stars themselves, Their brilliancy delights our hearts.—J. M. K. 163.
The Earnestness of Handicraft.—Do not talk of gifts, of inborn talents! We could mention great men of all kinds who were but little gifted. But they obtained greatness, became “ geniuses” (as they are called), through qualities of the lack of which nobody who is conscious of them likes to speak. They all had that thorough earnestness for work which learns first how to form the different parts perfectly before it ventures to make a great whole; they gave themselves time for this, because they took more pleasure in doing small, accessory things well than in the effect of a dazzling whole. For instance, the recipe for becoming a good novelist is easily given, but the carrying out of the recipe presupposes qualities which we are in the habit of overlooking when we say, “ I have not sufficient talent.” Make a hundred or more sketches of novel-plots, none more than two pages long, but of such clearness that every word in them is necessary; write down anecdotes every day until you learn to find the most pregnant, most effective form; never weary of collecting and delineating human types and characters; above all, narrate things as often as possible and listen to narrations with a sharp eye and ear for the effect upon other people present; travel like a landscape painter and a designer of costumes; take from different sciences everything that is artistically effective, if it be well represented; finally, meditate on the motives for human actions, scorn not even the smallest point of instruction on this subject, and collect similar matters by day and night. Spend some ten years in these various exercises: then the creations of your study may be allowed to see the light of day. But what do most people do, on the contrary? They do not begin with the part, but with the whole. Perhaps they make one good stroke, excite attention, and ever afterwards their work grows worse and worse, for good, natural reasons. But sometimes, when intellect and character are lacking for the formation of such an artistic career, fate and necessity take the place of these qualities and lead the future master step by step through all the phases of his craft. 164. The Danger and the Gain in the Cult of Genius.—The belief in great, superior, fertile minds is not necessarily, but still very frequently, connected with that wholly or partly religious superstition that those spirits are of superhuman origin and possess certain marvelous faculties, by means of which they obtained their knowledge in ways quite different from the rest of mankind. They are credited with having an immediate insight into the nature of the world, through a peep-hole in the mantle of the phenomenon as it were, and it is believed that, without the trouble and severity of science, by virtue of this marvelous prophetic sight, they could impart something final and decisive about mankind and the world. So long as there are still believers in miracles in the world of knowledge it may perhaps be admitted that the believers themselves derive a benefit therefrom, inasmuch as by their absolute subjection to great minds they obtain the best discipline and schooling for their own minds during the period of development On the other hand, it may at least be questioned whether the superstition of genius, of its privileges and special faculties, is useful for a genius himself when it implants itself in him. In any case it is a dangerous sign when man shudders at his own self, be it that famous Caesarian shudder or the shudder of genius which applies to this case, when the incense of sacrifice, which by rights is offered to a God alone, penetrates into the brain of the genius, so that he begins to waver and to look upon himself as something superhuman. The slow consequences are: the feeling of irresponsibility, the exceptional rights, the belief that mere intercourse with him confers a favor, and frantic rage at any attempt to compare him with others or even to place him below them and to bring into prominence whatever is unsuccessful in his work. Through the fact that he ceases to criticize himself one pinion after another falls out of his plumage,—that superstition undermines the foundation of his strength and even makes him a hypocrite after his power has failed him. For great minds it is, therefore, perhaps better when they come to an understanding about their strength and its source, when they comprehend what purely human qualities are mingled in them, what a combination they are of fortunate conditions: thus once it was continual energy, a decided application to individual aims, great personal courage, and then the good fortune of an education, which at an early period provided the best teachers, examples, and methods. Assuredly, if its aim is to make the greatest possible effect, abstruseness has always done much for itself and that gift of partial insanity; for at all times that power has been admired and envied by means of which men were deprived of will and imbued with the fancy that they were preceded by supernatural leaders. Truly, men are exalted and inspired by the belief that someone among them is endowed with supernatural powers, and in this respect insanity, as Plato says, has brought the greatest blessings to mankind. In a few rare cases this form of insanity may also have been the means by which an all-round exuberant nature was kept within bounds; in individual life the imaginings of frenzy frequently exert the virtue of remedies which are poisons in themselves; but in every “ genius” that believes in his own divinity the poison shows itself at last in the same proportion as the “ genius” grows old; we need but recollect the example of Napoleon, for it was most assuredly through his faith in himself and his star, and through his scorn of mankind, that he grew to that mighty unity which distinguished him from all modern men, until at last, however, this faith developed into an almost insane fatalism, robbed him of his quickness of comprehension and penetration, and was the causeof his downfall. 165. Genius and Nullity.—It is precisely the original artists, those who create out of their own heads, who in certain circumstances can bring forth complete emptiness and husk, whilst the more dependent natures, the so-called talented ones, are full of memories of all manner of goodness, and even in a state of weakness produce something tolerable. But if the original ones are abandoned by themselves, memory renders them no assistance; they become empty. 166. The Public.—The people really demands nothing more from tragedy than to be deeply affected, in order to have a good cry occasionally; the artist, on the contrary, who sees the new tragedy, takes pleasure in the clever technical inventions and tricks, in the management and distribution of the material, in the novel arrangement of old motives and old ideas. His attitude is the æsthetic attitude towards a work of art, that of the creator; the one first described, with regard solely to the material, is that of the people. Of the individual who stands between the two nothing need be said: he is neither “ people” nor artist, and does not know what he wants—therefore his pleasure is also clouded and insignificant 167.
The Artistic Education of the Public.—If the same motif is not employed in a hundred ways by different masters, the public never learns to get beyond their interest in the subject; but at last, when it is well acquainted with the motif through countless different treatments, and no longer finds in it any charm of novelty or excitement, it will then begin to grasp and enjoy the various shades and delicate new inventions in its treatment. 168. The Artist and his Followers Must Keep in Step.—The progress from one grade of style to another must be so slow that not only the artists but also the auditors and spectators can follow it and know exactly what is going on. Otherwise there will suddenly appear that great chasm between the artist, who creates his work upon a height apart, and the public, who cannot rise up to that height and finally sinks discontentedly deeper. For when the artist no longer raises his public it rapidly sinks downwards, and its fall is the deeper and more dangerous in proportion to the height to which genius has carried it, like the eagle, out of whose talons a tortoise that has been borne up into the clouds falls to its destruction. 169. The Source of the Comic Element.—If we consider that for many thousands of years man was an animal that was susceptible in the highest degree to fear, and that everything sudden and unexpected had to find him ready for battle, perhaps even ready for death; that even later, in social relations, all security was based on the expected, on custom in thought and action, we need not be surprised that at everything sudden and unexpected in word and deed, if it occurs without danger or injury, man becomes exuberant and passes over into the very opposite of fear—the terrified, trembling, crouching being shoots upward, stretches itself: man laughs. This transition from momentary fear into short-lived exhilaration is called the Comic. On the other hand, in the tragic phenomenon, man passes quickly from great enduring exuberance into great fear; but as amongst mortals great and lasting exuberance is much rarer than the cause for fear, there is far more comedy than tragedy in the world; we laugh much oftener than we are agitated. 170. The Artist’s Ambition.—The Greek artists, the tragedians for instance, composed in order to conquer; their whole art cannot be imagined without rivalry,—the good Hesiodian Eris, Ambition, gave wings to their genius. This ambition further demanded that their work should achieve the greatest excellence in their own eyes, as they understood excellence, without any regard for the reigning taste and the general opinion about excellence in a work of art; and thus it was long before Æschylus and Euripides achieved any success, until at last they educated judges of art, who valued their work according to the standards which they themselves appointed. Hence they strove for victory over rivals according to their own valuation, they really wished to be more excellent; they demanded assent from without to this self-valuation, the confirmation of this verdict. To achieve honor means in this case “ to make one’s self superior to others, and to desire that this should be recognized publicly.” Should the former condition be wanting, and the latter nevertheless desired, it is then called vanity. Should the latter be lacking and not missed, then it is named pride. 171. What is Needful to a Work of Art.—Those who talk so much about the needful factors of a work of art exaggerate; if they are artists they do so in majorem artis gloriam, if they are laymen, from ignorance. The form of a work of art, which gives speech to their thoughts and is, therefore, their mode of talking, is always somewhat uncertain, like all kinds of speech. The sculptor can add or omit many little traits, as can also the exponent, be he an actor or, in music, a performer or conductor. These many little traits and finishing touches afford him pleasure one day and none the next, they exist more for the sake of the artist than the art; for he also has occasionally need of sweetmeats and playthings to prevent him from becoming morose with the severity and self-restraint which the representation of the dominant idea demands from him. 172. To Cause the Master to be Forgotten.—The pianoforte player who executes the work of a master will have played best if he has made his audience forget the master, and if it seemed as if he were relating a story from his own life or just passing through some experience. Assuredly, if he is of no importance, everyone will abhor the garrulity with which he talks about his own life. Therefore he must know how to influence his hearer’s imagination favorably towards himself. Hereby are explained all the weaknesses and follies of “ the virtuoso.” 173. Corriger La Fortune.—There are unfortunate accidents in the lives of great artists, which compel the painter, for instance, to sketch out his most important picture only as a passing thought, or such as obliged Beethoven to leave behind him only the insufficient pianoforte score of many great sonatas (as in the great B flat). In these cases the artist of a later day must endeavor to fill out the life of the great man,—what, for instance, he would do who, as master of all orchestral effects, would call into life that symphony which has fallen into the piano-trance. 174. Reducing.—Many things, events, or persons, cannot bear treatment on a small scale. The Laocoon group cannot be reduced to a knick-knack; great size is necessary to it. But more seldom still does anything that is naturally small bear enlargement; for which reason biographers succeed far oftener in representing a great man as small than a small one as great. 175. Sensuousness in Present-Day Art.—Artists nowadays frequently miscalculate when they count on the sensuous effect of their works, for their spectators or hearers have no longer a
fully sensuous nature, and, quite contrary to the artist’s intention, his work produces in them a “ holiness” of feeling which is closely related to boredom. Their sensuousness begins, perhaps, just where that of the artist ceases; they meet, therefore, only at one point at the most. 176. Shakespeare as a Moralist.—Shakespeare meditated much on the passions, and on account of his temperament had probably a close acquaintance with many of them (dramatists are in general rather wicked men). He could, however not talk on the subject, like Montaigne, but put his observations thereon into the mouths of impassioned figures, which is contrary to nature, certainly, but makes his dramas so rich in thought that they cause all others to seem poor in comparison and readily arouse a general aversion to them. Schiller’s reflections (which are almost always based on erroneous or trivial fancies) are just theatrical reflections, and as such are very effective; whereas Shakespeare’s reflections do honor to his model, Montaigne, and contain quite serious thoughts in polished form, but on that account are too remote and refined for the eyes of the theatrical public, and are consequently ineffective. 177. Securing A Good Hearing.—It is not sufficient to know how to play well; one must also know how to secure a good hearing. A violin in the hand of the greatest master gives only a little squeak when the place where it is heard is too large; the master may then be mistaken for any bungler. 178. The Incomplete as the Effective.—Just as figures in relief make such a strong impression on the imagination because they seem in the act of emerging from the wall and only stopped by some sudden hindrance; so the relief-like, incomplete representation of a thought, or a whole philosophy, is sometimes more effective than its exhaustive amplification,— more is left for the investigation of the onlooker, he is incited to the further study of that which stands out before him in such strong light and shade; he is prompted to think out the subject, and even to overcome the hindrance which hitherto prevented it from emerging clearly. 179. Against the Eccentric.—When art arrays itself in the most shabby material it is most easily recognized as art. 180. Collective Intellect.—A good author possesses not only his own intellect, but also that of his friends. 181. Different Kinds of Mistakes.—The misfortune of acute and clear authors is that people consider them as shallow and therefore do not devote any effort to them; and the good fortune of obscure writers is that the reader makes an effort to understand them and places the delight in his own zeal to their credit. 182. Relation To Science.—None of the people have any real interest in a science, who only begin to be enthusiastic about it when they themselves have made discoveries in it. 183. The Key.—The single thought on which an eminent man sets a great value, arousing the derision and laughter of the masses, is for him a key to hidden treasures; for them, however, it is nothing more than a piece of old iron. 184. Untranslatable.—It is neither the best nor the worst parts of a book which are untranslatable. 185. Authors’ Paradoxes.—The so-called paradoxes of an author to which a reader objects are often not in the author’s book at all, but in the reader’s head. 186. Wit.—The wittiest authors produce a scarcely noticeable smile. 187. Antithesis.—Antithesis is the narrow gate through which error is fondest of sneaking to the truth. 188. Thinkers As Stylists.—Most thinkers write badly, because they communicate not only their thoughts, but also the thinking of them. 189. Thoughts in Poetry.—The poet conveys his thoughts ceremoniously in the vehicle of rhythm, usually because they are not able to go on foot. 190. The Sin Against the Reader’s Intellect.—When an author renounces his talent in order merely to put himself on a level with the reader, he commits the only deadly sin which the latter will never forgive, should he notice anything of it. One may say everything that is bad about a person, but in the manner in which it is said one must know how to revive his vanity anew.
191. The Limits of Uprightness.—Even the most upright author lets fall a word too much when he wishes to round off a period. 192. The Best Author.—The best author will be he who is ashamed to become one. 193. Draconian Law Against Authors.—One should regard authors as criminals who only obtain acquittal or mercy in the rarest cases,—that would be a remedy for books becoming too rife. 194. The Fools of Modern Culture.—The fools of mediæval courts correspond to our feuilleton writers; they are the same kind of men, semi-rational, witty, extravagant, foolish, sometimes there only for the purpose of lessening the pathos of the outlook with fancies and chatter, and of drowning with their clamor the far too deep and solemn chimes of great events; they were formerly in the service of princes and nobles, now they are in the service of parties (since a large portion of the old obsequiousness in the intercourse of the people with their prince still survives in party-feeling and party-discipline). Modern literary men, however, are generally very similar to the feuilleton writers, they are the “ fools of modern culture,” whom one judges more leniently when one does not regard them as fully responsible beings. To look upon writing as a regular profession should justly be regarded as a form of madness. 195. After the Example of the Greeks.—It is a great hindrance to knowledge at present that, owing to centuries of exaggeration of feeling, all words have become vague and inflated. The higher stage of culture, which is under the sway (though not under the tyranny) of knowledge, requires great sobriety of feeling and thorough concentration of words—on which points the Greeks in the time of Demosthenes set an example to us. Exaggeration is a distinguishing mark of all modern writings, and even when they are simply written the expressions therein are still felt as too eccentric. Careful reflection, conciseness, coldness, plainness, even carried intentionally to the farthest limits,—in a word, suppression of feeling and taciturnity,—these are the only remedies. For the rest, this cold manner of writing and feeling is now very attractive, as a contrast; and to be sure there is a new danger therein. For intense cold is as good a stimulus as a high degree of warmth. 196. Good Narrators, Bad Explainers.—In good narrators there is often found an admirable psychological sureness and logicalness, as far as these qualities can be observed in the actions of their personages, in positively ludicrous contrast to their inexperienced psychological reasoning, so that their culture appears to be as extra-ordinarily high one moment as it seems regrettably defective the next. It happens far too frequently that they give an evidently false explanation of their own heroes and their actions,—of this there is no doubt, however improbable the thing may appear. It is quite likely that the greatest pianoforte player has thought but little about the technical conditions and the special virtues, drawbacks, usefulness, and tractability of each finger (dactylic ethics), and makes big mistakes whenever he speaks of such things. 197. The Writings of Acquaintances and Their Readers.—We read the writings of our acquaintances (friends and enemies) in a double sense, inasmuch as our perception constantly whispers, “ That is something of himself, a remembrance of his inward being, his experiences, his talents,” and at the same time another kind of perception endeavors to estimate the profit of the work in itself, what valuation it merits apart from its author, how far it will enrich knowledge. These two manners of reading and estimating interfere with each other, as may naturally be supposed. And a conversation with a friend will only bear good fruit of knowledge when both think only of the matter under consideration and forget that they are friends. 198. Rhythmical Sacrifice.—Good writers alter the rhythm of many a period merely because they do not credit the general reader with the ability to comprehend the measure followed by the period in its first version; thus they make it easier for the reader, by giving the preference to the better known rhythms. This regard for the rhythmical incapacity of the modern reader has already called forth many a sigh, for much has been sacrificed to it. Does not the same thing happen to good musicians? 199. The Incomplete as an Artistic Stimulus.—The incomplete is often more effective than perfection, and this is the case with eulogies. To effect their purpose a stimulating incompleteness is necessary, as an irrational element, which calls up a sea before the hearer’s imagination, and, like a mist, conceals the opposite coast, i.e. the limits of the object of praise. If the well-known merits of a person are referred to and described at length and in detail, it always gives rise to the suspicion that these are his only merits. The perfect eulogist takes his stand above the person praised, he appears to overlook him. Therefore complete praise has a weakening effect. 200. Precautions in Writing and Teaching.—Whoever has once written and has been seized with the passion for writing learns from almost all that he does and experiences that which is literally communicable. He thinks no longer of himself, but of the author and his public; he desires insight into things; but not for his own use. He who teaches is mostly incapable
of doing anything for his own good: he is always thinking of the good of his scholars, and all knowledge delights him only in so far as he is able to teach it. He comes at last to regard himself as a medium of knowledge, and above all as a means thereto, so that he has lost all serious consideration for himself. 201. The Necessity for Bad Authors.—There will always be a need of bad authors; for they meet the taste of readers of an undeveloped, immature age—these have their requirements as well as mature readers. If human life were of greater length, the number of mature individuals would be greater than that of the immature, or at least equally great; but, as it is, by far the greater number die too young: i.e. there are always many more undeveloped intellects with bad taste. These demand, with the greater impetuosity of youth, the satisfaction of their needs, and they insist on having bad authors. 202. Too Near and Too Far.—The reader and the author very often do not understand each other, because the author knows his theme too well and finds it almost slow, so that he omits the examples, of which he knows hundreds; the reader, however, is interested in the subject, and is liable to consider it as badly proved if examples are lacking. 203. A Vanished Preparation For Art.—Of everything that was practiced in public schools, the thing of greatest value was the exercise in Latin style,—this was an exercise in art, whilst all other occupations aimed only at the acquirement of knowledge. It is a barbarism to put German composition before it, for there is no typical German style developed by public oratory; but if there is a desire to advance practice in thought by means of German composition, then it is certainly better for the time being to pay no attention to style, to separate the practice in thought, therefore, from the practice in reproduction. The latter should confine itself to the various modes of presenting a given subject, and should not concern itself with the independent finding of a subject. The mere presentment of a given subject was the task of the Latin style, for which the old teachers possessed a long vanished delicacy of ear. Formerly, whoever learned to write well in a modern language had to thank this practice for the acquirement (now we are obliged to go to school to the older French writers). But yet more: he obtained an idea of the loftiness and difficulty of form, and was prepared for art in the only right way: by practice. 204. Darkness and Over-Brightness Side by Side.—Authors who, in general, do not understand how to express their thoughts clearly are fond of choosing, in detail, the strongest, most exaggerated distinctions and superlatives,—thereby is produced an effect of light, which is like torchlight in intricate forest paths. 205. Literary Painting.—An important object will be best described if the colors for the painting are taken out of the object itself, as a chemist does, and then employed like an artist, so that the drawing develops from the outlines and transitions of the colors. Thus the painting acquires something of the entrancing natural element which gives such importance to the object itself. 206. Books Which Teach How to Dance.—There are authors who, by representing the impossible as possible, and by talking of morality and cleverness as if both were merely moods and humors assumed at will, produce a feeling of exuberant freedom, as if man stood on tiptoe and were compelled to dance from sheer, inward delight. 207. Unfinished Thoughts.—Just as not only manhood, but also youth and childhood have a value per se, and are not to be looked upon merely as passages and bridges, so also unfinished thoughts have their value. For this reason we must not torment a poet with subtle explanations, but must take pleasure in the uncertainty of his horizon, as if the way to further thoughts were still open. We stand on the threshold; we wait as for the digging up of a treasure, it is as if a well of profundity were about to be discovered. The poet anticipates something of the thinker’s pleasure in the discovery of a leading thought, and makes us covetous, so that we give chase to it; but it flutters past our head and exhibits the loveliest butterfly-wings,—and yet it escapes us. 208. The Book Grown Almost into a Human Being.—Every author is surprised anew at the way in which his book, as soon as he has sent it out, continues to live a life of its own; it seems to him as if one part of an insect had been cut off and now went on its own way. Perhaps he forgets it almost entirely, perhaps he rises above the view expressed therein, perhaps even he understands it no longer, and has lost that impulse upon which he soared at the time he conceived the book; meanwhile it seeks its readers, inflames life, pleases, horrifies, inspires new works, becomes the soul of designs and actions,—in short, it lives like a creature endowed with mind and soul, and yet is no human being. The happiest fate is that of the author who, as an old man, is able to say that all there was in him of life-inspiring, strengthening, exalting, enlightening thoughts and feelings still lives on in his writings, and that he himself now only represents the gray ashes, whilst the fire has been kept alive and spread out. And if we consider that every human action, not only a book, is in some way or other the cause of other actions, decisions, and thoughts; that everything that happens is inseparably connected with everything that is going to happen, we recognize the real immortality, that of movement,—that which has once moved is enclosed and immortalized in the general union of all existence, like an insect within a piece of amber. 209. Joy in Old Age.—The thinker, as likewise the artist, who has put his best self into his works, feels an almost malicious joy when he sees how mind and body are being slowly
damaged and destroyed by time, as if from a dark corner he were spying a thief at his money-chest, knowing all the time that it was empty and his treasures in safety. 210. Quiet Fruitfulness.—The born aristocrats of the mind are not in too much of a hurry; their creations appear and fall from the tree on some quiet autumn evening, without being rashly desired, instigated, or pushed aside by new matter. The unceasing desire to create is vulgar, and betrays envy, jealousy, and ambition. If a man is something, it is not really necessary for him to do anything—and yet he does a great deal. There is a human species higher even than the “ productive” man. 211. Achilles and Homer.—It is always like the case of Achilles and Homer,—the one has the experiences and sensations, the other describes them. A genuine author only puts into words the feelings and adventures of others, he is an artist, and divines much from the little he has experienced. Artists are by no means creatures of great passion; but they frequently represent themselves as such with the unconscious feeling that their depicted passion will be better believed in if their own life gives credence to their experience in these affairs. They need only let themselves go, not control themselves, and give free play to their anger and their desires, and everyone will immediately cry out, “ How passionate he is!” But the deeply stirring passion that consumes and often destroys the individual is another matter: those who have really experienced it do not describe it in dramas, harmonies or romances. Artists are frequently unbridled individuals, in so far as they are not artists, but that is a different thing. 212. Old Doubts about the Effect of Art.—Should pity and fear really be unburdened through tragedy, as Aristotle would have it, so that the hearers return home colder and quieter? Should ghost-stories really make us less fearful and superstitious? In the case of certain physical processes, in the satisfaction of love, for instance, it is true that with the fulfillment of a need there follows an alleviation and temporary decrease in the impulse. But fear and pity are not in this sense the needs of particular organs which require to be relieved. And in time every instinct is even strengthened by practice in its satisfaction, in spite of that periodical mitigation. It might be possible that in each single case pity and fear would be soothed and relieved by tragedy; nevertheless, they might, on the whole, be increased by tragic influences, and Plato would be right in saying that tragedy makes us altogether more timid and susceptible. The tragic poet himself would then of necessity acquire a gloomy and fearful view of the world, and a yielding, irritable, tearful soul; it would also agree with Plato’s view if the tragic poets, and likewise the entire part of the community that derived particular pleasure from them, degenerated into ever greater licentiousness and intemperance. But what right, indeed, has our age to give an answer to that great question of Plato’s as to the moral influence of art? If we even had art,—where have we an influence, any kind of an art-influence? 213. Pleasure In Nonsense.—How can we take pleasure in nonsense? But wherever there is laughter in the world this is the case: it may even be said that almost everywhere where there is happiness, there is found pleasure in nonsense. The transformation of experience into its opposite, of the suitable into the unsuitable, the obligatory into the optional (but in such a manner that this process produces no injury and is only imagined in jest), is a pleasure; for it temporarily liberates us from the yoke of the obligatory, suitable and experienced, in which we usually find our pitiless masters; we play and laugh when the expected (which generally causes fear and expectancy) happens without bringing any injury. It is the pleasure felt by slaves in the Saturnalian feasts. 214. The Ennobling of Reality.—Through the fact that in the aphrodisiac impulse men discerned a godhead and with adoring gratitude felt it working within themselves, this emotion has in the course of time become imbued with higher conceptions, and has thereby been materially ennobled. Thus certain nations, by virtue of this art of idealization, have created great aids to culture out of diseases,—the Greeks, for instance, who in earlier centuries suffered from great nervous epidemics (like epilepsy and St. Vitus’ Dance), and developed out of them the splendid type of the Bacchante. The Greeks, however, enjoyed an astonishingly high degree of health—their secret was, to revere even disease as a god, if it only possessed power. 215. Music.—Music by and for itself is not so portentous for our inward nature, so deeply moving, that it ought to be looked upon as the direct language of the feelings; but its ancient union with poetry has infused so much symbolism into rhythmical movement, into loudness and softness of tone, that we now imagine it speaks directly to and comes from the inward nature. Dramatic music is only possible when the art of harmony has acquired an immense range of symbolical means, through song, opera, and a hundred attempts at description by sound. “ Absolute music” is either form per se, in the rude condition of music, when playing in time and with various degrees of strength gives pleasure, or the symbolism of form which speaks to the understanding even without poetry, after the two arts were joined finally together after long development and the musical form had been woven about with threads of meaning and feeling. People who are backward in musical development can appreciate a piece of harmony merely as execution, whilst those who are advanced will comprehend it symbolically. No music is deep and full of meaning in itself, it does not speak of “ will,” of the “ thing-in-itself”; that could be imagined by the intellect only in an age which had conquered for musical symbolism the entire range of inner life. It was the intellect itself that first gave this meaning to sound, just as it also gave meaning to the relation between lines and masses in architecture, but which in itself is quite foreign to mechanical laws. 216.
Gesture and Speech.—Older than speech is the imitation of gestures, which is carried on unconsciously and which, in the general repression of the language of gesture and trained control of the muscles, is still so great that we cannot look at a face moved by emotion without feeling an agitation of our own face (it may be remarked that feigned yawning excites real yawning in anyone who sees it). The imitated gesture leads the one who imitates back to the sensation it expressed in the face or body of the one imitated. Thus men learned to understand one another, thus the child still learns to understand the mother. Generally speaking, painful sensations may also have been expressed by gestures, and the pain which caused them (for instance, tearing the hair, beating the breast, forcible distortion and straining of the muscles of the face). On the other hand, gestures of joy were themselves joyful and lent themselves easily to the communication of the understanding; (laughter, as the expression of the feeling when being tickled, serves also for the expression of other pleasurable sensations). As soon as men understood each other by gestures, there could be established a symbolism of gestures; I mean, an understanding could be arrived at respecting the language of accents, so that first accent and gesture (to which it was symbolically added) were produced, and later on the accent alone. In former times there happened very frequently that which now happens in the development of music, especially of dramatic music,—while music, without explanatory dance and pantomime (language of gesture), is at first only empty sound, but by long familiarity with that combination of music and movement the ear becomes schooled into instant interpretation of the figures of sound, and finally attains a height of quick understanding, where it has no longer any need of visible movement and understands the sound-poet without it. It is then called absolute music, that is music in which, without further help, everything is symbolically understood. 217. The Spiritualizing of Higher Art.—By virtue of extraordinary intellectual exercise through the art-development of the new music, our ears have been growing more intellectual. For this reason we can now endure a much greater volume of sound, much more “ noise,” because we are far better practiced in listening for the sense in it than were our ancestors. As a matter of fact, all our senses have been somewhat blunted, because they immediately look for the sense; that is, they ask what “ it means” and not what “ it is,”—such a blunting betrays itself, for instance, in the absolute dominion of the temperature of sounds; for ears which still make the finer distinctions, between cis and des, for instance, are now amongst the exceptions. In this respect our ear has grown coarser. And then the ugly side of the world, the one originally hostile to the senses, has been conquered for music; its power has been immensely widened, especially in the expression of the noble, the terrible, and the mysterious: our music now gives utterance to things which had formerly no tongue. In the same way certain painters have rendered the eye more intellectual, and have gone far beyond that which was formerly called pleasure in color and form. Here, too, that side of the world originally considered as ugly has been conquered by the artistic intellect. What results from all this? The more capable of thought that eye and ear become, the more they approach the limit where they become senseless, the seat of pleasure is moved into the brain, the organs of the senses themselves become dulled and weak, the symbolical takes more and more the place of the actual,—and thus we arrive at barbarism in this way as surely as in any other. In the meantime we may say: the world is uglier than ever, but it represents a more beautiful world than has ever existed. But the more the amber-scent of meaning is dispersed and evaporated, the rarer become those who perceive it, and the remainder halt at what is ugly and endeavor to enjoy it direct, an aim, however, which they never succeed in attaining. Thus, in Germany there is a twofold direction of musical development, here a throng of ten thousand with ever higher, finer demands, ever listening more and more for the “ it means,” and there the immense countless mass which yearly grows more incapable of understanding what is important even in the form of sensual ugliness, and which therefore turns ever more willingly to what in music is ugly and foul in itself, that is, to the basely sensual. 218. A Stone is More of a Stone Than Formerly.—As a general rule we no longer understand architecture, at least by no means in the same way as we understand music. We have outgrown the symbolism of lines and figures, just as we are no longer accustomed to the sound-effects of rhetoric, and have not absorbed this kind of mother’s milk of culture since our first moment of life. Everything in a Greek or Christian building originally had a meaning, and referred to a higher order of things; this feeling of inexhaustible meaning enveloped the edifice like a mystic veil. Beauty was only a secondary consideration in the system, without in any way materially injuring the fundamental sentiment of the mysteriously-exalted, the divinely and magically consecrated; at the most, beauty tempered horror—but this horror was everywhere presupposed. What is the beauty of a building now? The same thing as the beautiful face of a stupid woman, a kind of mask. 219. The Religious Source of the Newer Music.—Soulful music arose out of the Catholicism re-established after the Council of Trent, through Palestrina, who endowed the newlyawakened, earnest, and deeply moved spirit with sound; later on, in Bach, it appeared also in Protestantism, as far as this had been deepened by the Pietists and released from its originally dogmatic character. The supposition and necessary preparation for both origins is the familiarity with music, which existed during and before the Renaissance, namely that learned occupation with music, which was really scientific pleasure in the masterpieces of harmony and voice-training. On the other hand, the opera must have preceded it, wherein the layman made his protest against a music that had grown too learned and cold, and endeavored to re-endow Polyhymnia with a soul. Without the change to that deeply religious sentiment, without the dying away of the inwardly moved temperament, music would have remained learned or operatic; the spirit of the counter-reformation is the spirit of modern music (for that pietism in Bach’s music is also a kind of counter-reformation). So deeply are we indebted to the religious life. Music was the counter-reformation in the field of art; to this belongs also the later painting of the Caracci and Caravaggi, perhaps also the baroque style, in any case more than the architecture of the Renaissance or of antiquity. And we might still ask: if our newer music could move stones, would it build them up into antique architecture? I very much doubt it. For that which predominates in this music, affections,
pleasure in exalted, highly-strained sentiments, the desire to be alive at any cost, the quick change of feeling, the strong relief-effects of light and shade, the combination of the ecstatic and the naïve,—all this has already reigned in the plastic arts and created new laws of style:—but it was neither in the time of antiquity nor of the Renaissance. 220. The Beyond in Art.—It is not without deep pain that we acknowledge the fact that in their loftiest soarings, artists of all ages have exalted and divinely transfigured precisely those ideas which we now recognize as false; they are the glorifiers of humanity’s religious and philosophical errors, and they could not have been this without belief in the absolute truth of these errors. But if the belief in such truth diminishes at all, if the rainbow colors at the farthest ends of human knowledge and imagination fade, then this kind of art can never re-flourish, for, like the Divina Commedia, Raphael’s paintings, Michelangelo’s frescoes, and Gothic cathedrals, they indicate not only a cosmic but also a metaphysical meaning in the work of art. Out of all this will grow a touching legend that such an art and such an artistic faith once existed. 221. Revolution in Poetry.—The strict limit which the French dramatists marked out with regard to unity of action, time and place, construction of style, verse and sentence, selection of words and ideas, was a school as important as that of counterpoint and fugue in the development of modern music or that of the Gorgianic figures in Greek oratory. Such a restriction may appear absurd; nevertheless there is no means of getting out of naturalism except by confining ourselves at first to the strongest (perhaps most arbitrary) means. Thus we gradually learn to walk gracefully on the narrow paths that bridge giddy abysses, and acquire great suppleness of movement as a result, as the history of music proves to our living eyes. Here we see how, step by step, the fetters get looser, until at last they may appear to be altogether thrown off; this appearance is the highest achievement of a necessary development in art. In the art of modern poetry there existed no such fortunate, gradual emerging from self-imposed fetters. Lessing held up to scorn in Germany the French form, the only modern form of art, and pointed to Shakespeare; and thus the steadiness of that unfettering was lost and a spring was made into naturalism—that is, back into the beginnings of art. From this Goethe endeavored to save himself, by always trying to limit himself anew in different ways; but even the most gifted only succeeds by continuously experimenting, if the thread of development has once been broken. It is to the unconsciously revered, if also repudiated, model of French tragedy that Schiller owes his comparative sureness of form, and he remained fairly independent of Lessing (whose dramatic attempts he is well known to have rejected). But after Voltaire the French themselves suddenly lacked the great talents which would have led the development of tragedy out of constraint to that apparent freedom; later on they followed the German example and made a spring into a sort of Rousseau-like state of nature and experiments. It is only necessary to read Voltaire’s “ Mahomet” from time to time in order to perceive clearly what European culture has lost through that breaking down of tradition. Once for all, Voltaire was the last of the great dramatists who with Greek proportion controlled his manifold soul, equal even to the greatest storms of tragedy,—he was able to do what no German could, because the French nature is much nearer akin to the Greek than is the German; he was also the last great writer who in the wielding of prose possessed the Greek ear, Greek artistic conscientiousness, and Greek simplicity and grace; he was, also, one of the last men able to combine in himself the greatest freedom of mind and an absolutely unrevolutionary way of thinking without being inconsistent and cowardly. Since that time the modern spirit, with its restlessness and its hatred of moderation and restrictions, has obtained the mastery on all sides, let loose at first by the fever of revolution, and then once more putting a bridle on itself when it became filled with fear and horror at itself,—but it was the bridle of rigid logic, no longer that of artistic moderation. It is true that through that unfettering for a time we are able to enjoy the poetry of all nations, everything that has sprung up in hidden places, original, wild, wonderfully beautiful and gigantically irregular, from folk-songs up to the “ great barbarian” Shakespeare; we taste the joys of local color and costume, hitherto unknown to all artistic nations; we make liberal use of the “ barbaric advantages” of our time, which Goethe accentuated against Schiller in order to place the formlessness of his Faust in the most favorable light. But for how much longer? The encroaching flood of poetry of all styles and all nations must gradually sweep away that magic garden upon which a quiet and hidden growth would still have been possible; all poets must become experimenting imitators, daring copyists, however great their primary strength may be. Eventually, the public, which has lost the habit of seeing the actual artistic fact in the controlling of depicting power, in the organizing mastery over all artmeans, must come ever more and more to value power for power’s sake, color for color’s sake, idea for idea’s sake, inspiration for inspiration’s sake; accordingly it will not enjoy the elements and conditions of the work of art, unless isolated, and finally will make the very natural demand that the artist must deliver it to them isolated. True, the “ senseless” fetters of Franco-Greek art have been thrown off, but unconsciously we have grown accustomed to consider all fetters, all restrictions as senseless;—and so art moves towards its liberation, but, in so doing, it touches—which is certainly highly edifying—upon all the phases of its beginning, its childhood, its incompleteness, its sometime boldness and excesses,—in perishing it interprets its origin and growth. One of the great ones, whose instinct may be relied on and whose theory lacked nothing but thirty years more of practice, Lord Byron, once said: that with regard to poetry in general, the more he thought about it the more convinced he was that one and all we are entirely on a wrong track, that we are following an inwardly false revolutionary system, and that either our own generation or the next will yet arrive at this same conviction. It is the same Lord Byron who said that he “ looked upon Shakespeare as the very worst model, although the most extraordinary poet.” And does not Goethe’s mature artistic insight in the second half of his life say practically the same thing?—that insight by means of which he made such a bound in advance of whole generations that, generally speaking, it may be said that Goethe’s influence has not yet begun, that his time has still to come. Just because his nature held him fast for a long time in the path of the poetical revolution, just because he drank to the dregs of whatsoever new sources, views and expedients had been indirectly discovered through that breaking down of tradition, of all that had been unearthed from under the ruins of art, his later transformation and conversion carries so much weight; it shows that he felt the deepest longing to win back the traditions of art, and to give in fancy the ancient perfection and completeness to the abandoned ruins and colonnades of the temple, with the imagination of the eye at least, should the strength of the arm be found too weak to build where such tremendous powers were
needed even to destroy. Thus he lived in art as in the remembrance of the true art, his poetry had become an aid to remembrance, to the understanding of old and long-departed ages of art. With respect to the strength of the new age, his demands could not be satisfied; but the pain this occasioned was amply balanced by the joy that they have been satisfied once, and that we ourselves can still participate in this satisfaction. Not individuals, but more or less ideal masks; no reality, but an allegorical generality; topical characters, local colors toned down and rendered mythical almost to the point of invisibility; contemporary feeling and the problems of contemporary society reduced to the simplest forms, stripped of their attractive, interesting pathological qualities, made ineffective in every other but the artistic sense; no new materials and characters, but the old, long-accustomed ones in constant new animation and transformation; that is art, as Goethe understood it later, as the Greeks and even the French practiced it. 222. What Remains of Art.—It is true that art has a much greater value in the case of certain metaphysical hypotheses, for instance when the belief obtains that the character is unchangeable and that the essence of the world manifests itself continually in all character and action; thus the artist’s work becomes the symbol of the eternally constant, while according to our views the artist can only endow his picture with temporary value, because man on the whole has developed and is mutable, and even the individual man has nothing fixed and constant. The same thing holds good with another metaphysical hypothesis: assuming that our visible world were only a delusion, as metaphysicians declare, then art would come very near to the real world, for there would then be far too much similarity between the world of appearance and the dream-world of the artist; and the remaining difference would place the meaning of art higher even than the meaning of nature, because art would represent the same forms, the types and models of nature. But those suppositions are false; and what position does art retain after this acknowledgment? Above all, for centuries it has taught us to look upon life in every shape with interest and pleasure and to carry our feelings so far that at last we exclaim, “ Whatever it may be, life is good.” This teaching of art, to take pleasure in existence and to regard human life as a piece of nature, without too vigorous movement, as an object of regular development,—this teaching has grown into us; it reappears as an all-powerful need of knowledge. We could renounce art, but we should not there with forfeit the ability it has taught us,—just as we have given up religion, but not the exalting and intensifying of temperament acquired through religion. As the plastic arts and music are the standards of that wealth of feeling really acquired and obtained through religion, so also, after a disappearance of art, the intensity and multiplicity of the joys of life which it had implanted in us would still demand satisfaction. The scientific man is the further development of the artistic man. 223. The After-Glow of Art.—Just as in old age we remember our youth and celebrate festivals of memory, so in a short time mankind will stand towards art: its relation will be that of a touching memory of the joys of youth. Never, perhaps, in former ages was art dealt with so seriously and thoughtfully as now when it appears to be surrounded by the magic influence of death. We call to mind that Greek city in southern Italy, which once a year still celebrates its Greek feasts, amidst tears and mourning, that foreign barbarism triumphs ever more and more over the customs its people brought with them into the land; and never has Hellenism been so much appreciated, nowhere has this golden nectar been drunk with so great delight, as amongst these fast disappearing Hellenes. The artist will soon come to be regarded as a splendid relic, and to him, as to a wonderful stranger on whose power and beauty depended the happiness of former ages, there will be paid such honor as is not often enjoyed by one of our race. The best in us is perhaps inherited from the sentiments of former times, to which it is hardly possible for us now to return by direct ways; the sun has already disappeared, but the heavens of our life are still glowing and illumined by it, although we can behold it no longer. FIFTH DIVISION. THE SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. 224. Ennoblement Through Degeneration.—History teaches that a race of people is best preserved where the greater number hold one common spirit in consequence of the similarity of their accustomed and indisputable principles: in consequence, therefore, of their common faith. Thus strength is afforded by good and thorough customs, thus is learnt the subjection of the individual, and strenuousness of character becomes a birth gift and afterwards is fostered as a habit. The danger to these communities founded on individuals of strong and similar character is that gradually increasing stupidity through transmission, which follows all stability like its shadow. It is on the more unrestricted, more uncertain and morally weaker individuals that depends the intellectual progress of such communities, it is they who attempt all that is new and manifold. Numbers of these perish on account of their weakness, without having achieved any specially visible effect; but generally, particularly when they have descendants, they flare up and from time to time inflict a wound on the stable element of the community. Precisely in this sore and weakened place the community is inoculated with something new; but its general strength must be great enough to absorb and assimilate this new thing into its blood. Deviating natures are of the utmost importance wherever there is to be progress. Every wholesale progress must be preceded by a partial weakening. The strongest natures retain the type, the weaker ones help it to develop. Something similar happens in the case of individuals; a deterioration, a mutilation, even a vice and, above all, a physical or moral loss is seldom without its advantage. For instance, a sickly man in the midst of a warlike and restless race will perhaps have more chance of being alone and thereby growing quieter and wiser, the one-eyed man will possess a stronger eye, the blind man will have a deeper inward sight and will certainly have a keener sense of hearing. In so far it appears to me that the famous Struggle for Existence is not the only point of view from which an explanation can be given of the progress or strengthening of an individual or a race. Rather must two different things converge: firstly, the multiplying of stable strength through mental binding in faith and common feeling; secondly, the possibility of attaining to higher aims, through the fact that there are deviating natures and, in consequence, partial weakening and wounding of the stable strength; it is precisely the weaker nature, as the more delicate and free, that makes all progress at all possible. A people that is crumbling and weak in any one part, but as a whole still strong and healthy, is
able to absorb the infection of what is new and incorporate it to its advantage. The task of education in a single individual is this: to plant him so firmly and surely that, as a whole, he can no longer be diverted from his path. Then, however, the educator must wound him, or else make use of the wounds which fate inflicts, and when pain and need have thus arisen, something new and noble can be inoculated into the wounded places. With regard to the State, Machiavelli says that, “ the form of Government is of very small importance, although half-educated people think otherwise. The great aim of State-craft should be duration, which outweighs all else, inasmuch as it is more valuable than liberty.” It is only with securely founded and guaranteed duration that continual development and ennobling inoculation are at all possible. As a rule, however, authority, the dangerous companion of all duration, will rise in opposition to this. 225. Free-Thinker a Relative Term.—We call that man a free-thinker who thinks otherwise than is expected of him in consideration of his origin, surroundings, position, and office, or by reason of the prevailing contemporary views. He is the exception, fettered minds are the rule; these latter reproach him, saying that his free principles either have their origin in a desire to be remarkable or else cause free actions to be inferred,—that is to say, actions which are not compatible with fettered morality. Sometimes it is also said that the cause of such and such free principles may be traced to mental perversity and extravagance; but only malice speaks thus, nor does it believe what it says, but wishes thereby to do an injury, for the free-thinker usually bears the proof of his greater goodness and keenness of intellect written in his face so plainly that the fettered spirits understand it well enough. But the two other derivations of free-thought are honestly intended; as a matter of fact, many free-thinkers are created in one or other of these ways. For this reason, however, the tenets to which they attain in this manner might be truer and more reliable than those of the fettered spirits. In the knowledge of truth, what really matters is the possession of it, not the impulse under which it was sought, the way in which it was found. If the free-thinkers are right then the fettered spirits are wrong, and it is a matter of indifference whether the former have reached truth through immorality or the latter hitherto retained hold of untruths through morality. Moreover, it is not essential to the free-thinker that he should hold more correct views, but that he should have liberated himself from what was customary, be it successfully or disastrously. As a rule, however, he will have truth, or at least the spirit of truthinvestigation, on his side; he demands reasons, the others demand faith. 226. The Origin of Faith.—The fettered spirit does not take up his position from conviction, but from habit; he is a Christian, for instance, not because he had a comprehension of different creeds and could take his choice; he is an Englishman, not because he decided for England, but he found Christianity and England readymade and accepted them without any reason, just as one who is born in a wine-country becomes a wine-drinker. Later on, perhaps, as he was a Christian and an Englishman, he discovered a few reasons in favor of his habit; these reasons may be upset, but he is not therefore upset in his whole position. For instance, let a fettered spirit be obliged to bring forward his reasons against bigamy and then it will be seen whether his holy zeal in favor of monogamy is based upon reason or upon custom. The adoption of guiding principles without reasons is called faith. 227. Conclusions drawn from the Consequences and Traced back to Reason and Un-reason.—All states and orders of society, professions, matrimony, education, law: all these find strength and duration only in the faith which the fettered spirits repose in them,—that is, in the absence of reasons, or at least in the averting of inquiries as to reasons. The restricted spirits do not willingly acknowledge this, and feel that it is a pudendum. Christianity, however, which was very simple in its intellectual ideas, remarked nothing of this pudendum, required faith and nothing but faith, and passionately repulsed the demand for reasons; it pointed to the success of faith: “ You will soon feel the advantages of faith,” it suggested, “ and through faith shall ye be saved.” As an actual fact, the State pursues the same course, and every father brings up his son in the same way: “ Only believe this,” he says, “ and you will soon feel the good it does.” This implies, however, that the truth of an opinion is proved by its personal usefulness; the wholesomeness of a doctrine must be a guarantee for its intellectual surety and solidity. It is exactly as if an accused person in a court of law were to say, “ My counsel speaks the whole truth, for only see what is the result of his speech: I shall be acquitted.” Because the fettered spirits retain their principles on account of their usefulness, they suppose that the free spirit also seeks his own advantage in his views and only holds that to be true which is profitable to him. But as he appears to find profitable just the contrary of that which his compatriots or equals find profitable, these latter assume that his principles are dangerous to them; they say or feel, “ He must not be right, for he is injurious to us.” 228. The Strong, Good Character.—The restriction of views, which habit has made instinct, leads to what is called strength of character. When anyone acts from few but always from the same motives, his actions acquire great energy; if these actions accord with the principles of the fettered spirits they are recognized, and they produce, moreover, in those who perform them the sensation of a good conscience. Few motives, energetic action, and a good conscience compose what is called strength of character. The man of strong character lacks a knowledge of the many possibilities and directions of action; his intellect is fettered and restricted, because in a given case it shows him, perhaps, only two possibilities; between these two he must now of necessity choose, in accordance with his whole nature, and he does this easily and quickly because he has not to choose between fifty possibilities. The educating surroundings aim at fettering every individual, by always placing before him the smallest number of possibilities. The individual is always treated by his educators as if he were, indeed, something new, but should become a duplicate. If he makes his first appearance as something unknown, unprecedented, he must be turned into something known and precedented. In a child, the familiar manifestation of restriction is called a good character; in placing itself on the side of the fettered spirits the child first discloses its awakening common feeling; with this foundation of common sentiment, he will eventually become useful to his State or rank.
229. The Standards and Values of the Fettered Spirits.—There are four species of things concerning which the restricted spirits say they are in the right. Firstly: all things that last are right; secondly: all things that are not burdens to us are right; thirdly: all things that are advantageous for us are right; fourthly: all things for which we have made sacrifices are right. The last sentence, for instance, explains why a war that was begun in opposition to popular feeling is carried on with enthusiasm directly a sacrifice has been made for it. The free spirits, who bring their case before the forum of the fettered spirits, must prove that free spirits always existed, that free-spiritism is therefore enduring, that it will not become a burden, and, finally, that on the whole they are an advantage to the fettered spirits. It is because they cannot convince the restricted spirits on this last point that they profit nothing by having proved the first and second propositions. 230. Esprit Fort.—Compared with him who has tradition on his side and requires no reasons for his actions, the free spirit is always weak, especially in action; for he is acquainted with too many motives and points of view, and has, therefore, an uncertain and unpracticed hand. What means exist of making him strong in spite of this, so that he will, at least, manage to survive, and will not perish ineffectually? What is the source of the strong spirit (esprit fort)? This is especially the question as to the production of genius. Whence comes the energy, the unbending strength, the endurance with which the one, in opposition to accepted ideas, endeavors to obtain an entirely individual knowledge of the world? 231. The Rise of Genius.—The ingenuity with which a prisoner seeks the means of freedom, the most cold-blooded and patient employment of every smallest advantage, can teach us of what tools Nature sometimes makes use in order to produce Genius,—a word which I beg will be understood without any mythological and religious flavor; she, Nature, begins it in a dungeon and excites to the utmost its desire to free itself. Or to give another picture: someone who has completely lost his way in a wood, but who with unusual energy strives to reach the open in one direction or another, will sometimes discover a new path which nobody knew previously,—thus arise geniuses, who are credited with originality. It has already been said that mutilation, crippling, or the loss of some important organ, is frequently the cause of the unusual development of another organ, because this one has to fulfill its own and also another function. This explains the source of many a brilliant talent. These general remarks on the origin of genius may be applied to the special case, the origin of the perfect free spirit. 232. Conjecture as to the Origin of Free-Spiritism.—Just as the glaciers increase when in equatorial regions the sun shines upon the seas with greater force than hitherto, so may a very strong and spreading free-spiritism be a proof that somewhere or other the force of feeling has grown extraordinarily. 233. The Voice of History.—In general, history appears to teach the following about the production of genius: it ill-treats and torments mankind—calls to the passions of envy, hatred, and rivalry—drives them to desperation, people against people, throughout whole centuries! Then, perhaps, like a stray spark from the terrible energy thereby aroused, there flames up suddenly the light of genius; the will, like a horse maddened by the rider’s spur, thereupon breaks out and leaps over into another domain. He who could attain to a comprehension of the production of genius, and desires to carry out practically the manner in which Nature usually goes to work, would have to be just as evil and regardless as Nature itself. But perhaps we have not heard rightly. 234. The Value of the Middle of the Road.—It is possible that the production of genius is reserved to a limited period of mankind’s history. For we must not expect from the future everything that very defined conditions were able to produce; for instance, not the astounding effects of religious feeling. This has had its day, and much that is very good can never grow again, because it could grow out of that alone. There will never again be a horizon of life and culture that is bounded by religion. Perhaps even the type of the saint is only possible with that certain narrowness of intellect, which apparently has completely disappeared. And thus the greatest height of intelligence has perhaps been reserved for a single age; it appeared—and appears, for we are still in that age—when an extraordinary, long-accumulated energy of will concentrates itself, as an exceptional case, upon intellectual aims. That height will no longer exist when this wildness and energy cease to be cultivated. Mankind probably approaches nearer to its actual aim in the middle of its road, in the middle time of its existence than at the end. It may be that powers with which, for instance, art is a condition, die out altogether; the pleasure in lying, in the undefined, the symbolical, in intoxication, in ecstasy might fall into disrepute. For certainly, when life is ordered in the perfect State, the present will provide no more motive for poetry, and it would only be those persons who had remained behind who would ask for poetical unreality. These, then, would assuredly look longingly backwards to the times of the imperfect State, of halfbarbaric society, to our times. 235. Genius and the Ideal State in Conflict.—The Socialists demand a comfortable life for the greatest possible number. If the lasting house of this life of comfort, the perfect State, had really been attained, then this life of comfort would have destroyed the ground out of which grow the great intellect and the mighty individual generally, I mean powerful energy. Were this State reached, mankind would have grown too weary to be still capable of producing genius. Must we not hence wish that life should retain its forcible character, and that wild forces and energies should continue to be called forth afresh? But warm and sympathetic hearts desire precisely the removal of that wild and forcible character, and the warmest hearts
we can imagine desire it the most passionately of all, whilst all the time its passion derived its fire, its warmth, its very existence precisely from that wild and forcible character; the warmest heart, therefore, desires the removal of its own foundation, the destruction of itself,—that is, it desires something illogical, it is not intelligent. The highest intelligence and the warmest heart cannot exist together in one person, and the wise man who passes judgment upon life looks beyond goodness and only regards it as something which is not without value in the general summing-up of life. The wise man must oppose those digressive wishes of unintelligent goodness, because he has an interest in the continuance of his type and in the eventual appearance of the highest intellect; at least, he will not advance the founding of the “ perfect State,” inasmuch as there is only room in it for wearied individuals. Christ, on the contrary, he whom we may consider to have had the warmest heart, advanced the process of making man stupid, placed himself on the side of the intellectually poor, and retarded the production of the greatest intellect, and this was consistent. His opposite, the man of perfect wisdom,—this may be safely prophesied—will just as necessarily hinder the production of a Christ. The State is a wise arrangement for the protection of one individual against another; if itsennobling is exaggerated the individual will at last be weakened by it, even effaced,—thus the original purpose of the State will be most completely frustrated. 236. The Zones of Culture.—It may be figuratively said that the ages of culture correspond to the zones of the various climates, only that they lie one behind another and not beside each other like the geographical zones. In comparison with the temperate zone of culture, which it is our object to enter, the past, speaking generally, gives the impression of a tropical climate. Violent contrasts, sudden changes between day and night, heat and color-splendor, the reverence of all that was sudden, mysterious, terrible, the rapidity with which storms broke: everywhere that lavish abundance of the provisions of nature; and opposed to this, in our culture, a clear but by no means bright sky, pure but fairly unchanging air, sharpness, even cold at times; thus the two zones are contrasts to each other. When we see how in that former zone the most raging passions are suppressed and broken down with mysterious force by metaphysical representations, we feel as if wild tigers were being crushed before our very eyes in the coils of mighty serpents; our mental climate lacks such episodes, our imagination is temperate, even in dreams there does not happen to us what former peoples saw waking. But should we not rejoice at this change, even granted that artists are essentially spoiled by the disappearance of the tropical culture and find us non-artists a little too timid? In so far artists are certainly right to deny “ progress,” for indeed it is doubtful whether the last three thousand years show an advance in the arts. In the same way, a metaphysical philosopher like Schopenhauer would have no cause to acknowledge progress with a regard to metaphysical philosophy and religion if he glanced back over the last four thousand years. For us, however, the existence even of the temperate zones of culture is progress. 237. Renaissance and Reformation.—The Italian Renaissance contained within itself all the positive forces to which we owe modern culture. Such were the liberation of thought, the disregard of authorities, the triumph of education over the darkness of tradition, enthusiasm for science and the scientific past of mankind, the unfettering of the Individual, an ardor for truthfulness and a dislike of delusion and mere effect (which ardor blazed forth in an entire company of artistic characters, who with the greatest moral purity required from themselves perfection in their works, and nothing but perfection); yes, the Renaissance had positive forces, which have, as yet, never become so mighty again in our modern culture. It was the Golden Age of the last thousand years, in spite of all its blemishes and vices. On the other hand, the German Reformation stands out as an energetic protest of antiquated spirits, who were by no means tired of mediæval views of life, and who received the signs of its dissolution, the extraordinary flatness and alienation of the religious life, with deep dejection instead of with the rejoicing that would have been seemly. With their northern strength and stiff-neckedness they threw mankind back again, brought about the counter-reformation, that is, a Catholic Christianity of self-defense, with all the violences of a state of siege, and delayed for two or three centuries the complete awakening and mastery of the sciences; just as they probably made forever impossible the complete inter-growth of the antique and the modern spirit. The great task of the Renaissance could not be brought to a termination, this was prevented by the protest of the contemporary backward German spirit (which, for its salvation, had had sufficient sense in the Middle Ages to cross the Alps again and again). It was the chance of an extraordinary constellation of politics that Luther was preserved, and that his protest gained strength, for the Emperor protected him in order to employ him as a weapon against the Pope, and in the same way he was secretly favored by the Pope in order to use the Protestant princes as a counter-weight against the Emperor. Without this curious counter-play of intentions, Luther would have been burnt like Huss,—and the morning sun of enlightenment would probably have risen somewhat earlier, and with a splendor more beauteous than we can now imagine. 238. Justice Against the Becoming God.—When the entire history of culture unfolds itself to our gaze, as a confusion of evil and noble, of true and false ideas, and we feel almost seasick at the sight of these tumultuous waves, we then understand what comfort resides in the conception of a becoming God. This Deity is unveiled ever more and more throughout the changes and fortunes of mankind; it is not all blind mechanism, a senseless and aimless confusion of forces. The deification of the process of being is a metaphysical outlook, seen as from a lighthouse overlooking the sea of history, in which a far-too historical generation of scholars found their comfort. This must not arouse anger, however erroneous the view may be. Only those who, like Schopenhauer, deny development also feel none of the misery of this historical wave, and therefore, because they know nothing of that becoming God and the need of His supposition, they should in justice withhold their scorn. 239. The Fruits According to their Seasons.—Every better future that is desired for mankind is necessarily in many respects also a worse future, for it is foolishness to suppose that a new, higher grade of humanity will combine in itself all the good points of former grades, and must produce, for instance, the highest form of art. Rather has every season its own
advantages and charms, which exclude those of the other seasons. That which has grown out of religion and in its neighborhood cannot grow again if this has been destroyed; at the most, straggling and belated off-shoots may lead to deception on that point, like the occasional outbreaks of remembrance of the old art, a condition that probably betrays the feeling of loss and deprivation, but which is no proof of the power from which a new art might be born. 240. The Increasing Severity of the World.—The higher culture an individual attains, the less field there is left for mockery and scorn. Voltaire thanked Heaven from his heart for the invention of marriage and the Church, by which it had so well provided for our cheer. But he and his time, and before him the sixteenth century, had exhausted their ridicule on this theme; everything that is now made fun of on this theme is out of date, and above all too cheap to tempt a purchaser. Causes are now inquired after; ours is an age of seriousness. Who cares now to discern, laughingly, the difference between reality and pretentious sham, between that which man is and that which he wishes to represent; the feeling of this contrast has quite a different effect if we seek reasons. The more thoroughly anyone understands life, the less he will mock, though finally, perhaps, he will mock at the “ thoroughness of his understanding.” 241. The Genius of Culture.—If anyone wished to imagine a genius of culture, what would it be like? It handles as its tools falsehood, force, and thoughtless selfishness so surely that it could only be called an evil, demoniacal being; but its aims, which are occasionally transparent, are great and good. It is a centaur, half-beast, half-man, and, in addition, has angel’s wings upon its head. 242. The Miracle-Education.—Interest in Education will acquire great strength only from the moment when belief in a God and His care is renounced, just as the art of healing could only flourish when the belief in miracle-cures ceased. So far, however, there is universal belief in the miracle-education; out of the greatest disorder and confusion of aims and unfavorableness of conditions, the most fertile and mighty men have been seen to grow; could this happen naturally? Soon these cases will be more closely looked into, more carefully examined; but miracles will never be discovered. In similar circumstances countless persons perish constantly; the few saved have, therefore, usually grown stronger, because they endured these bad conditions by virtue of an inexhaustible inborn strength, and this strength they had also exercised and increased by fighting against these circumstances; thus the miracle is explained. An education that no longer believes in miracles must pay attention to three things: first, how much energy is inherited? secondly, by what means can new energy be aroused? thirdly, how can the individual be adapted to so many and manifold claims of culture without being disquieted and destroying his personality,—in short, how can the individual be initiated into the counterpoint of private and public culture, how can he lead the melody and at the same time accompany it? 243. The Future of the Physician.—There is now no profession which would admit of such an enhancement as that of the physician; that is, after the spiritual physicians the so-called pastors, are no longer allowed to practice their conjuring tricks to public applause, and a cultured person gets out of their way. The highest mental development of a physician has not yet been reached, even if he understands the best and newest methods, is practiced in them, and knows how to draw those rapid conclusions from effects to causes for which the diagnostics are celebrated; besides this, he must possess a gift of eloquence that adapts itself to every individual and draws his heart out of his body; a manliness, the sight of which alone drives away all despondency (the canker of all sick people), the tact and suppleness of a diplomatist in negotiations between such as have need of joy for their recovery and such as, for reasons of health, must (and can) give joy; the acuteness of a detective and an attorney to divine the secrets of a soul without betraying them,—in short, a good physician now has need of all the artifices and artistic privileges of every other professional class. Thus equipped, he is then ready to be a benefactor to the whole of society, by increasing good works, mental joys and fertility, by preventing evil thoughts, projects and villainies (the evil source of which is so often the belly), by the restoration of a mental and physical aristocracy (as a maker and hinderer of marriages), by judiciously checking all so-called soul-torments and pricks of conscience. Thus from a “ medicine man” he becomes a savior, and yet need work no miracle, neither is he obliged to let himself be crucified. 244. In the Neighborhood of Insanity.—The sum of sensations, knowledge and experiences, the whole burden of culture, therefore, has become so great that an overstraining of nerves and powers of thought is a common danger, indeed the cultivated classes of European countries are throughout neurotic, and almost every one of their great families is on the verge of insanity in one of their branches. True, health is now sought in every possible way; but in the main a diminution of that tension of feeling, of that oppressive burden of culture, is needful, which, even though it might be bought at a heavy sacrifice, would at least give us room for the great hope of a new Renaissance. To Christianity, to the philosophers, poets, and musicians we owe an abundance of deeply emotional sensations; in order that these may not get beyond our control we must invoke the spirit of science, which on the whole makes us somewhat colder and more skeptical, and in particular cools the faith in final and absolute truths; it is chiefly through Christianity that it has grown so wild. 245. The Bell-founding of Culture.—Culture has been made like a bell, within a covering of coarser, commoner material, falsehood, violence, the boundless extension of every individual “ I,” of every separate people—this was the covering. Is it time to take it off? Has the liquid set, have the good and useful impulses, the habits of the nobler nature become so certain and so general that they no longer require to lean on metaphysics and the errors of religion, no longer have need of hardnesses and violence as powerful bonds between man
and man, people and people? No sign from any God can any longer help us to answer this question; our own insight must decide. The earthly rule of man must be taken in hand by man himself, his “ omniscience” must watch over the further fate of culture with a sharp eye. 246. The Cyclopes of Culture.—Whoever has seen those furrowed basins which once contained glaciers, will hardly deem it possible that a time will come when the same spot will be a valley of woods and meadows and streams. It is the same in the history of mankind; the wildest forces break the way, destructively at first, but their activity was nevertheless necessary in order that later on a milder civilization might build up its house These terrible energies—that which is called Evil—are the cyclopic architects and road-makers of humanity. 247. The Circulation of Humanity.—It is possible that all humanity is only a phase of development of a certain species of animal of limited duration. Man may have grown out of the ape and will return to the ape again, [12] without anybody taking an interest in the ending of this curious comedy. Just as with the decline of Roman civilization and its most important cause, the spread of Christianity, there was a general uglification of man within the Roman Empire, so, through the eventual decline of general culture, there might result a far greater uglification and finally an animalizing of man till he reached the ape. But just because we are able to face this prospect, we shall perhaps be able to avert such an end. [12] This may remind one of Gobineau’s more jocular saying: “ Nous ne descendons pas du singe, mais nous y allons.”—J. M. K. 248. The Consoling Speech of a Desperate Advance.—Our age gives the impression of an intermediate condition; the old ways of regarding the world, the old cultures still partially exist, the new are not yet sure and customary and hence are without decision and consistency. It appears as if everything would become chaotic, as if the old were being lost, the new worthless and ever becoming weaker. But this is what the soldier feels who is learning to march; for a time he is more uncertain and awkward, because his muscles are moved sometimes according to the old system and sometimes according to the new, and neither gains a decisive victory. We waver, but it is necessary not to lose courage and give up what we have newly gained. Moreover, we cannot go back to the old, we have burnt our boats; there remains nothing but to be brave whatever happen.—March ahead, only get forward! Perhaps our behavior looks like progress; but if not, then the words of Frederick the Great may also be applied to us, and indeed as a consolation: “ Ah, mon cher Sulzer, vous ne connaissez pas assez cette race maudite, à laquelle nous appartenons.” 249. Suffering From Past Culture.—Whoever has solved the problem of culture suffers from a feeling similar to that of one who has inherited unjustly-gotten riches, or of a prince who reigns thanks to the violence of his ancestors. He thinks of their origin with grief and is often ashamed, often irritable. The whole sum of strength, joy, vigor, which he devotes to his possessions, is often balanced by a deep weariness, he cannot forget their origin. He looks despondingly at the future; he knows well that his successors will suffer from the past as he does. 250. Manners.—Good manners disappear in proportion as the influence of a Court and an exclusive aristocracy lessens; this decrease can be plainly observed from decade to decade by those who have an eye for public behavior, which grows visibly more vulgar. No one any longer knows how to court and flatter intelligently; hence arises the ludicrous fact that in cases where we must render actual homage (to a great statesman or artist, for instance), the words of deepest feeling, of simple, peasant-like honesty, have to be borrowed, owing to the embarrassment resulting from the lack of grace and wit. Thus the public ceremonious meeting of men appears ever more clumsy, but more full of feeling and honesty without really being so. But must there always be a decline in manners? It appears to me, rather, that manners take a deep curve and that we are approaching their lowest point. When society has become sure of its intentions and principles, so that they have a molding effect (the manners we have learnt from former molding conditions are now inherited and always more weakly learnt), there will then be company manners, gestures and social expressions, which must appear as necessary and simply natural because they are intentions and principles. The better division of time and work, the gymnastic exercise transformed into the accompaniment of all beautiful leisure, increased and severer meditation, which brings wisdom and suppleness even to the body, will bring all this in its train. Here, indeed, we might think with a smile of our scholars, and consider whether, as a matter of fact, they who wish to be regarded as the forerunners of that new culture are distinguished by their better manners? This is hardly the case; although their spirit may be willing enough their flesh is weak. The past of culture is still too powerful in their muscles, they still stand in a fettered position, and are half worldly priests and half dependent educators of the upper classes, and besides this they have been rendered crippled and lifeless by the pedantry of science and by antiquated, spiritless methods. In any case, therefore, they are physically, and often three-fourths mentally, still the courtiers of an old, even antiquated culture, and as such are themselves antiquated; the new spirit that occasionally inhabits these old dwellings often serves only to make them more uncertain and frightened. In them there dwell the ghosts of the past as well as the ghosts of the future; what wonder if they do not wear the best expression or show the most pleasing behavior? 251. The Future of Science.—To him who works and seeks in her, Science gives much pleasure,—to him who learns her facts, very little. But as all important truths of science must gradually become commonplace and everyday matters, even this small amount of pleasure ceases, just as we have long ceased to take pleasure in learning the admirable multiplication
table. Now if Science goes on giving less pleasure in herself, and always takes more pleasure in throwing suspicion on the consolations of metaphysics, religion and art, that greatest of all sources of pleasure, to which mankind owes almost its whole humanity, becomes impoverished. Therefore a higher culture must give man a double brain, two brain-chambers, so to speak, one to feel science and the other to feel non-science, which can lie side by side, without confusion, divisible, exclusive; this is a necessity of health. In one part lies the source of strength, in the other lies the regulator; it must be heated with illusions, onesidednesses, passions; and the malicious and dangerous consequences of over-heating must be averted by the help of conscious Science. If this necessity of the higher culture is not satisfied, the further course of human development can almost certainly be foretold: the interest in what is true ceases as it guarantees less pleasure; illusion, error, and imagination reconquer step by step the ancient territory, because they are united to pleasure; the ruin of science: the relapse into barbarism is the next result; mankind must begin to weave its web afresh after having, like Penelope, destroyed it during the night. But who will assure us that it will always find the necessary strength for this? 252. The Pleasure in Discernment.—Why is discernment, that essence of the searcher and the philosopher, connected with pleasure? Firstly, and above all, because thereby we become conscious of our strength, for the same reason that gymnastic exercises, even without spectators, are enjoyable. Secondly, because in the course of knowledge we surpass older ideas and their representatives, and become, or believe ourselves to be, conquerors. Thirdly, because even a very little new knowledge exalts us above everyone, and makes us feel we are the only ones who know the subject aright. These are the three most important reasons of the pleasure, but there are many others, according to the nature of the discerner. A not inconsiderable index of such is given, where no one would look for it, in a passage of my parenetic work on Schopenhauer, [13] with the arrangement of which every experienced servant of knowledge may be satisfied, even though he might wish to dispense with the ironical touch that seems to pervade those pages. For if it be true that for the making of a scholar “ a number of very human impulses and desires must be thrown together,” that the scholar is indeed a very noble but not a pure metal, and “ consists of a confused blending of very different impulses and attractions,” the same thing may be said equally of the making and nature of the artist, the philosopher and the moral genius—and whatever glorified great names there may be in that list. Everything human deserves ironical consideration with respect to its origin,—therefore irony is so superfluous in the world. [13] This refers to his essay, “ Schopenhauer as Educator,” in Thoughts Out of Season, vol. ii. of the English edition.—J. M. K. 253. Fidelity as a Proof of Validity.—It is a perfect sign of a sound theory if during forty years its originator does not mistrust it; but I maintain that there has never yet been a philosopher who has not eventually deprecated the philosophy of his youth. Perhaps, however, he has not spoken publicly of this change of opinion, for reasons of ambition, or, what is more probable in noble natures, out of delicate consideration for his adherents. 254. The Increase of What is Interesting.—In the course of higher education everything becomes interesting to man, he knows how to find the instructive side of a thing quickly and to put his finger on the place where it can fill up a gap in his ideas, or where it may verify a thought. Through this boredom disappears more and more, and so does excessive excitability of temperament. Finally he moves among men like a botanist among plants, and looks upon himself as a phenomenon, which only greatly excites his discerning instinct. 255. The Superstition of the Simultaneous.—Simultaneous things hold together, it is said. A relative dies far away, and at the same time we dream about him,—Consequently! But countless relatives die and we do not dream about them. It is like shipwrecked people who make vows; afterwards, in the temples, we do not see the votive tablets of those who perished. A man dies, an owl hoots, a clock stops, all at one hour of the night,—must there not be some connection? Such an intimacy with nature as this supposition implies is flattering to mankind. This species of superstition is found again in a refined form in historians and delineators of culture, who usually have a kind of hydrophobic horror of all that senseless mixture in which individual and national life is so rich. 256. Action and Not Knowledge Exercised by Science.—The value of strictly pursuing science for a time does not lie precisely in its results, for these, in proportion to the ocean of what is worth knowing, are but an infinitesimally small drop. But it gives an additional energy, decisiveness, and toughness of endurance; it teaches how to attain an aim suitably. In so far it is very valuable, with a view to all that is done later on, to have once been a scientific man. 257. The Youthful Charm of Science.—The search for truth still retains the charm of being in strong contrast to gray and now tiresome error; but this charm is gradually disappearing. It is true we still live in the youthful age of science and are accustomed to follow truth as a lovely girl; but how will it be when one day she becomes an elderly, ill-tempered looking woman? In almost all sciences the fundamental knowledge is either found in earliest times or is still being sought; what a different attraction this exerts compared to that time when everything essential has been found and there only remains for the seeker a scanty gleaning (which sensation may be learnt in several historical disciplines). 258. The Statue of Humanity.—The genius of culture fares as did Cellini when his statue of Perseus was being cast; the molten mass threatened to run short, but it had to suffice, so he flung in his plates and dishes, and whatever else his hands fell upon. In the same way genius flings in errors, vices, hopes, ravings, and other things of baser as well as of nobler
metal, for the statue of humanity must emerge and be finished; what does it matter if commoner material is used here and there? 259. A Male Culture.—The Greek culture of the classic age is a male culture. As far as women are concerned, Pericles expresses everything in the funeral speech: “ They are best when they are as little spoken of as possible amongst men.” The erotic relation of men to youths was the necessary and sole preparation, to a degree unattainable to our comprehension, of all manly education (pretty much as for a long time all higher education of women was only attainable through love and marriage). All idealism of the strength of the Greek nature threw itself into that relation, and it is probable that never since have young men been treated so attentively, so lovingly, so entirely with a view to their welfare (virtus) as in the fifth and sixth centuries B.C.—according to the beautiful saying of Hölderlin: “ denn liebend giebt der Sterbliche vom Besten.” [14] The higher the light in which this relation was regarded, the lower sank intercourse with woman; nothing else was taken into consideration than the production of children and lust; there was no intellectual intercourse, not even real love-making. If it be further remembered that women were even excluded from contests and spectacles of every description, there only remain the religious cults as their sole higher occupation. For although in the tragedies Electra and Antigone were represented, this was only tolerated in art, but not liked in real life,—just as now we cannot endure anything pathetic in life but like it in art. The women had no other mission than to produce beautiful, strong bodies, in which the father’s character lived on as unbrokenly as possible, and therewith to counteract the increasing nerve-tension of such a highly developed culture. This kept the Greek culture young for a relatively long time; for in the Greek mothers the Greek genius always returned to nature [14] For it is when loving that mortal man gives of his best.—J. M. K. 260. The Prejudice in Favor of Greatness.—It is clear that men overvalue everything great and prominent. This arises from the conscious or unconscious idea that they deem it very useful when one person throws all his strength into one thing and makes himself into a monstrous organ. Assuredly, an equal development of all his powers is more useful and happier for man; for every talent is a vampire which sucks blood and strength from other powers, and an exaggerated production can drive the most gifted almost to madness. Within the circle of the arts, too, extreme natures excite far too much attention; but a much lower culture is necessary to be captivated by them. Men submit from habit to everything that seeks power. 261. The Tyrants of the Mind.—It is only where the ray of myth falls that the life of the Greeks shines; otherwise it is gloomy. The Greek philosophers are now robbing themselves of this myth; is it not as if they wished to quit the sunshine for shadow and gloom? Yet no plant avoids the light; and, as a matter of fact, those philosophers were only seeking a brighter sun; the myth was not pure enough, not shining enough for them. They found this light in their knowledge, in that which each of them called his “ truth.” But in those times knowledge shone with a greater glory; it was still young and knew but little of all the difficulties and dangers of its path; it could still hope to reach in one single bound the central point of all being, and from thence to solve the riddle of the world. These philosophers had a firm belief in themselves and their “ truth,” and with it they overthrew all their neighbors and predecessors; each one was a warlike, violent tyrant. The happiness in believing themselves the possessors of truth was perhaps never greater in the world, but neither were the hardness, the arrogance, and the tyranny and evil of such a belief. They were tyrants, they were that, therefore, which every Greek wanted to be, and which everyone was if he was able. Perhaps Solon alone is an exception; he tells in his poems how he disdained personal tyranny. But he did it for love of his works, of his law-giving; and to be a law-giver is a sublimated form of tyranny. Parmenides also made laws. Pythagoras and Empedocles probably did the same; Anaximander founded a city. Plato was the incarnate wish to become the greatest philosophic law-giver and founder of States; he appears to have suffered terribly over the non-fulfillment of his nature, and towards his end his soul was filled with the bitterest gall. The more the Greek philosophers lost in power the more they suffered inwardly from this bitterness and malice; when the various sects fought for their truths in the street, then first were the souls of these wooers of truth completely clogged through envy and spleen; the tyrannical element then raged like poison within their bodies. These many petty tyrants would have liked to devour each other; there survived not a single spark of love and very little joy in their own knowledge. The saying that tyrants are generally murdered and that their descendants are short-lived, is true also of the tyrants of the mind. Their history is short and violent, and their after-effects break off suddenly. It may be said of almost all great Hellenes that they appear to have come too late: it was thus with Æschylus, with Pindar, with Demosthenes, with Thucydides: one generation—and then it is passed forever. That is the stormy and dismal element in Greek history. We now, it is true, admire the gospel of the tortoises. To think historically is almost the same thing now as if in all ages history had been made according to the theory “ The smallest possible amount in the longest possible time!” Oh! how quickly Greek history runs on! Since then life has never been so extravagant so unbounded. I cannot persuade myself that the history of the Greeks followed that natural course for which it is so celebrated. They were much too variously gifted to be gradual in the orderly manner of the tortoise when running a race with Achilles, and that is called natural development. The Greeks went rapidly forward, but equally rapidly downwards; the movement of the whole machine is so intensified that a single stone thrown amid its wheels was sufficient to break it. Such a stone, for instance, was Socrates; the hitherto so wonderfully regular, although certainly too rapid, development of the philosophical science was destroyed in one night. It is no idle question whether Plato, had he remained free from the Socratic charm, would not have discovered a still higher type of the philosophic man, which type is forever lost to us. We look into the ages before him as into a sculptor’s workshop of such types. The fifth and sixth centuries B.C. seemed to promise something more and higher even than they produced; they stopped short at promising and announcing. And yet there is hardly a greater loss than the loss of a type, of a new, hitherto undiscovered highest possibility of the philosophic life. Even of the older type the greater number are badly transmitted; it seems to me that all philosophers, from Thales to Democritus, are remarkably difficult to recognize, but whoever succeeds in imitating these figures
walks amongst specimens of the mightiest and purest type. This ability is certainly rare, it was even absent in those later Greeks, who occupied themselves with the knowledge of the older philosophy; Aristotle, especially, hardly seems to have had eyes in his head when he stands before these great ones. And thus it appears as if these splendid philosophers had lived in vain, or as if they had only been intended to prepare the quarrelsome and talkative followers of the Socratic schools. As I have said, here is a gap, a break in development; some great misfortune must have happened, and the only statue which might have revealed the meaning and purpose of that great artistic training was either broken or unsuccessful; what actually happened has remained forever a secret of the workshop. That which happened amongst the Greeks—namely, that every great thinker who believed himself to be in possession of the absolute truth became a tyrant, so that even the mental history of the Greeks acquired that violent, hasty and dangerous character shown by their political history,— this type of event was not therewith exhausted, much that is similar has happened even in more modern times, although gradually becoming rarer and now but seldom showing the pure, naïve conscience of the Greek philosophers. For on the whole, opposition doctrines and skepticism now speak too powerfully, too loudly. The period of mental tyranny is past. It is true that in the spheres of higher culture there must always be a supremacy, but henceforth this supremacy lies in the hands of the oligarchs of the mind. In spite of local and political separation they form a cohesive society, whose members recognize and acknowledge each other, whatever public opinion and the verdicts of review and newspaper writers who influence the masses may circulate in favor of or against them. Mental superiority, which formerly divided and embittered, nowadays generally unites; how could the separate individuals assert themselves and swim through life on their own course, against all currents, if they did not see others like them living here and there under similar conditions, and grasped their hands, in the struggle as much against the ochlocratic character of the half mind and half culture as against the occasional attempts to establish a tyranny with the help of the masses? Oligarchs are necessary to each other, they are each other’s best joy, they understand their signs, but each is nevertheless free, he fights and conquers in his place and perishes rather than submit. 262. Homer.—The greatest fact in Greek culture remains this, that Homer became so early Pan-Hellenic. All mental and human freedom to which the Greeks attained is traceable to this fact. At the same time it has actually been fatal to Greek culture, for Homer leveled, inasmuch as he centralized, and dissolved the more serious instincts of independence. From time to time there arose from the depths of Hellenism an opposition to Homer; but he always remained victorious. All great mental powers have an oppressing effect as well as a liberating one; but it certainly makes a difference whether it is Homer or the Bible orScience that tyrannizes over mankind. 263. Talents.—In such a highly developed humanity as the present, each individual naturally has access to many talents. Each has an inborn talent, but only in a few is that degree of toughness, endurance, and energy born and trained that he really becomes a talent, becomes what he is,—that is, that he discharges it in works and actions. 264. The Witty Person either Overvalued or Undervalued.—Unscientific but talented people value every mark of intelligence, whether it be on a true or a false track; above all, they want the person with whom they have intercourse to entertain them with his wit, to spur them on, to inflame them, to carry them away in seriousness and play, and in any case to be a powerful amulet to protect them against boredom. Scientific natures, on the other hand, know that the gift of possessing all manner of notions should be strictly controlled by the scientific spirit: it is not that which shines, deludes and excites, but the often insignificant truth that is the fruit which he knows how to shake down from the tree of knowledge. Like Aristotle, he is not permitted to make any distinction between the “ bores” and the “ wits,” his dæmon leads him through the desert as well as through tropical vegetation, in order that he may only take pleasure in the really actual, tangible, true. In insignificant scholars this produces a general disdain and suspicion of cleverness, and, on the other hand, clever people frequently have an aversion to science, as have, for instance, almost all artists. 265. Sense in School.—School has no task more important than to teach strict thought, cautious judgment, and logical conclusions, hence it must pay no attention to what hinders these operations, such as religion, for instance. It can count on the fact that human vagueness, custom, and need will later on unstring the bow of all-too-severe thought. But so long as its influence lasts it should enforce that which is the essential and distinguishing point in man: “ Sense and Science, the very highest power of man”—as Goethe judges. The great natural philosopher, Von Baer, thinks that the superiority of all Europeans, when compared to Asiatics, lies in the trained capability of giving reasons for that which they believe, of which the latter are utterly incapable. Europe went to the school of logical and critical thought, Asia still fails to know how to distinguish between truth and fiction, and is not conscious whether its convictions spring from individual observation and systematic thought or from imagination. Sense in the school has made Europe what it is; in the Middle Ages it was on the road to become once more a part and dependent of Asia,—forfeiting, therefore, the scientific mind which it owed to the Greeks. 266. The Undervalued Effect of Public-School Teaching.—The value of a public school is seldom sought in those things which are really learnt there and are carried away never to be lost, but in those things which are learnt and which the pupil only acquires against his will, in order to get rid of them again as soon as possible. Every educated person acknowledges that the reading of the classics, as now practiced, is a monstrous proceeding carried on before young people are ripe enough for it by teachers who with every word, often by their appearance alone, throw a mildew on a good author. But therein lies the value, generally unrecognized, of these teachers who speak the abstract language of the higher culture, which, though dry and difficult to understand, is yet a sort of higher gymnastics of the brain; and there is value in the constant recurrence in their language of ideas, artistic
expressions, methods and allusions which the young people hardly ever hear in the conversations of their relatives and in the street. Even if the pupils only hear, their intellect is involuntarily trained to a scientific mode of regarding things. It is not possible to emerge from this discipline entirely untouched by its abstract character, and to remain a simple child of nature. 267. Learning Many Languages.—The learning of many languages fills the memory with words instead of with facts and thoughts, and this is a vessel which, with every person, can only contain a certain limited amount of contents. Therefore the learning of many languages is injurious, inasmuch as it arouses a belief in possessing dexterity and, as a matter of fact, it lends a kind of delusive importance to social intercourse. It is also indirectly injurious in that it opposes the acquirement of solid knowledge and the intention to win the respect of men in an honest way. Finally, it is the axe which is laid to the root of a delicate sense of language in our mother-tongue, which thereby is incurably injured and destroyed. The two nations which produced the greatest stylists, the Greeks and the French, learned no foreign languages. But as human intercourse must always grow more cosmopolitan, and as, for instance, a good merchant in London must now be able to read and write eight languages, the learning of many tongues has certainly become a necessary evil; but which, when finally carried to an extreme, will compel mankind to find a remedy, and in some far-off future there will be a new language, used at first as a language of commerce, then as a language of intellectual intercourse generally, then for all, as surely as some time or other there will be aviation. Why else should philology have studied the laws of languages for a whole century, and have estimated the necessary, the valuable, and the successful portion of each separate language? 268. The War History of the Individual.—In a single human life that passes through many styles of culture we find that struggle condensed which would otherwise have been played out between two generations, between father and son; the closeness of the relationship sharpens this struggle, because each party ruthlessly drags in the familiar inward nature of the other party; and thus this struggle in the single individual becomes most embittered; here every new phase disregards the earlier ones with cruel injustice and misunderstanding of their means and aims. 269. A Quarter of an Hour Earlier.—A man is found occasionally whose views are beyond his time, but only to such an extent that he anticipates the common views of the next decade. He possesses public opinion before it is public; that is, he has fallen into the arms of a view that deserves to be trivial a quarter of an hour sooner than other people. But his fame is usually far noisier than the fame of those who are really great and prominent 270. The Art of Reading.—Every strong tendency is one-sided; it approaches the aim of the straight line and, like this, is exclusive, that is, it does not touch many other aims, as do weak parties and natures in their wave-like rolling to-and-fro; it must also be forgiven to philologists that they are one-sided. The restoration and keeping pure of texts, besides their explanation, carried on in common for hundreds of years, has finally enabled the right methods to be found; the whole of the Middle Ages was absolutely incapable of a strictly philological explanation, that is, of the simple desire to comprehend what an author says—it was an achievement, finding these methods, let it not be undervalued! Through this all science first acquired continuity and steadiness, so that the art of reading rightly, which is called philology, attained its summit. 271. The Art of Reasoning.—The greatest advance that men have made lies in their acquisition of the art to reason rightly. It is not so very natural, as Schopenhauer supposes when he says, “ All are capable of reasoning, but few of judging,” it is learnt late and has not yet attained supremacy. False conclusions are the rule in older ages; and the mythologies of all peoples, their magic and their superstition, their religious cult and their law are the inexhaustible sources of proof of this theory. 272. Phases of Individual Culture.—The strength and weakness of mental productiveness depend far less on inherited talents than on the accompanying amount of elasticity. Most educated young people of thirty turn round at this solstice of their lives and are afterwards disinclined for new mental turnings. Therefore, for the salvation of a constantly increasing culture, a new generation is immediately necessary, which will not do very much either, for in order to come up with the father’s culture the son must exhaust almost all the inherited energy which the father himself possessed at that stage of life when his son was born; with the little addition he gets further on (for as here the road is being traversed for the second time progress is a little quicker; in order to learn that which the father knew, the son does not consume quite so much strength). Men of great elasticity, like Goethe, for instance, get through almost more than four generations in succession would be capable of; but then they advance too quickly, so that the rest of mankind only comes up with them in the next century, and even then perhaps not completely, because the exclusiveness of culture and the consecutiveness of development have been weakened by the frequent interruptions. Men catch up more quickly with the ordinary phases of intellectual culture which has been acquired in the course of history. Nowadays they begin to acquire culture as religiously inclined children, and perhaps about their tenth year these sentiments attain to their highest point, and are then changed into weakened forms (pantheism), whilst they draw near to science; they entirely pass by God, immortality, and such-like things, but are overcome by the witchcraft of a metaphysical philosophy. Eventually they find even this unworthy of belief; art, on the contrary, seems to vouchsafe more and more, so that for a time metaphysics is metamorphosed and continues to exist either as a transition to art or as an artistically transfiguring temperament. But the scientific sense grows more imperious and conducts man to natural sciences and history, and particularly to the severest methods of knowledge,
whilst art has always a milder and less exacting meaning. All this usually happens within the first thirty years of a man’s life. It is the recapitulation of a pensum, for which humanity had labored perhaps thirty thousand years. 273. Retrograded, not Left Behind.—Whoever, in the present day, still derives his development from religious sentiments, and perhaps lives for some length of time afterwards in metaphysics and art, has assuredly gone back a considerable distance and begins his race with other modern men under unfavorable conditions; he apparently loses time and space. But because he stays in those domains where ardor and energy are liberated and force flows continuously as a volcanic stream out of an inexhaustible source, he goes forward all the more quickly as soon as he has freed himself at the right moment from those dominators; his feet are winged, his breast has learned quieter, longer, and more enduring breathing. He has only retreated in order to: have sufficient room to leap; thus something terrible and threatening may lie in this retrograde movement. 274. A Portion of Our Ego as an Artistic Object.—It is a sign of superior culture consciously to retain and present a true picture of certain phases of development which commoner men live through almost thoughtlessly and then efface from the tablets of their souls: this is a higher species of the painter’s art which only the few understand. For this it is necessary to isolate those phases artificially. Historical studies form the qualification for this painting, for they constantly incite us in regard to a portion of history, a people, or a human life, to imagine for ourselves a quite distinct horizon of thoughts, a certain strength of feelings, the prominence of this or the obscurity of that. Herein consists the historic sense, that out of given instances we can quickly reconstruct such systems of thoughts and feelings, just as we can mentally reconstruct a temple out of a few pillars and remains of walls accidentally left standing. The next result is that we understand our fellowmen as belonging to distinct systems and representatives of different cultures—that is, as necessary, but as changeable; and, again, that we can separate portions of our own development and put them down independently. 275. Cynics and Epicureans.—The cynic recognizes the connection between the multiplied and stronger pains of the more highly cultivated man and the abundance of requirements; he comprehends, therefore, that the multitude of opinions about what is beautiful, suitable, seemly and pleasing, must also produce very rich sources of enjoyment, but also of displeasure. In accordance with this view he educates himself backwards, by giving up many of these opinions and withdrawing from certain demands of culture; he thereby gains a feeling of freedom and strength; and gradually, when habit has made his manner of life endurable, his sensations of displeasure are, as a matter of fact, rarer and weaker than those of cultivated people, and approach those of the domestic animal; moreover, he experiences everything with the charm of contrast, and—he can also scold to his heart’s content; so that thereby he again rises high above the sensation-range of the animal. The Epicurean has the same point of view as the cynic; there is usually only a difference of temperament between them. Then the Epicurean makes use of his higher culture to render himself independent of prevailing opinions, he raises himself above them, whilst the cynic only remains negative. He walks, as it were, in wind-protected, well-sheltered, half-dark paths, whilst over him, in the wind, the tops of the trees rustle and show him how violently agitated is the world out there. The cynic, on the contrary, goes, as it were, naked into the rushing of the wind and hardens himself to the point of insensibility. 276. Microcosm and Macrocosm of Culture.—The best discoveries about culture man makes within himself when he finds two heterogeneous powers ruling therein. Supposing someone were living as much in love for the plastic arts or for music as he was carried away by the spirit of science, and that he were to regard it as impossible for him to end this contradiction by the destruction of one and complete liberation of the other power, there would therefore remain nothing for him to do but to erect around himself such a large edifice of culture that those two powers might both dwell within it, although at different ends, whilst between them there dwelt reconciling, intermediary powers, with predominant strength to quell, in case of need, the rising conflict. But such an edifice of culture in the single individual will bear a great resemblance to the culture of entire periods, and will afford consecutive analogical teaching concerning it. For wherever the great architecture of culture manifested itself it was its mission to compel opposing powers to agree, by means of an overwhelming accumulation of other less unbearable powers, without thereby oppressing and fettering them. 277. Happiness and Culture.—We are moved at the sight of our childhood’s surroundings,—the arbor, the church with its graves, the pond and the wood,—all this we see again with pain. We are seized with pity for ourselves; for what have we not passed through since then! And everything here is so silent, so eternal, only we are so changed, so moved; we even find a few human beings, on whom Time has sharpened his teeth no more than on an oak tree,—peasants, fishermen, woodmen—they are unchanged. Emotion and self-pity at the sight of lower culture is the sign of higher culture; from which the conclusion may be drawn that happiness has certainly not been increased by it. Whoever wishes to reap happiness and comfort in life should always avoid higher culture. 278. The Simile of the Dance.—It must now be regarded as a decisive sign of great culture if someone possesses sufficient strength and flexibility to be as pure and strict in discernment as, in other moments, to be capable of giving poetry, religion, and metaphysics a hundred paces’ start and then feeling their force and beauty. Such a position amid two such different demands is very difficult, for science urges the absolute supremacy of its methods, and if this insistence is not yielded to, there arises the other danger of a weak wavering between different impulses. Meanwhile, to cast a glance, in simile at least, on a solution of this difficulty, it may be remembered that dancing is not the same as a dull reeling to and fro
between different impulses. High culture will resemble a bold dance,—wherefore, as has been said, there is need of much strength and suppleness. 279. Of the Relieving of Life.—A primary way of lightening life is the idealization of all its occurrences; and with the help of painting we should make it quite clear to ourselves what idealizing means. The painter requires that the spectator should not observe too closely or too sharply, he forces him back to a certain distance from whence to make his observations; he is obliged to take for granted a fixed distance of the spectator from the picture,—he must even suppose an equally certain amount of sharpness of eye in his spectator; in such things he must on no account waver. Everyone, therefore, who desires to idealize his life must not look at it too closely, and must always keep his gaze at a certain distance. This was a trick that Goethe, for instance, understood. 280. Aggravation as Relief, and Vice Versa.—Much that makes life more difficult in certain grades of mankind serves to lighten it in a higher grade, because such people have become familiar with greater aggravations of life. The contrary also happens; for instance, religion has a double face, according to whether a man looks up to it to relieve him of his burden and need, or looks down upon it as upon fetters laid on him to prevent him from soaring too high into the air. 281. The Higher Culture is Necessarily Misunderstood.—He who has strung his instrument with only two strings, like the scholars (who, besides the instinct of knowledge possess only an acquired religious instinct), does not understand people who can play upon more strings. It lies in the nature of the higher, many-stringed culture that it should always be falsely interpreted by the lower; an example of this is when art appears as a disguised form of the religious. People who are only religious understand even science as a searching after the religious sentiment, just as deaf mutes do not know what music is, unless it be visible movement 282. Lamentation.—It is, perhaps, the advantages of our epoch that bring with them a backward movement and an occasional undervaluing of the vita contemplativa. But it must be acknowledged that our time is poor in the matter of great moralists, that Pascal, Epictetus, Seneca, and Plutarch are now but little read, that work and industry—formerly in the following of the great goddess Health—sometimes appear to rage like a disease. Because time to think and tranquility in thought are lacking, we no longer ponder over different views, but content ourselves with hating them. With the enormous acceleration of life, mind and eye grow accustomed to a partial and false sight and judgment, and all people are like travelers whose only acquaintance with countries and nations is derived from the railway. An independent and cautious attitude of knowledge is looked upon almost as a kind of madness; the free spirit is brought into disrepute, chiefly through scholars, who miss their thoroughness and ant-like industry in his art of regarding things and would gladly banish him into one single corner of science, while it has the different and higher mission of commanding the battalion rear-guard of scientific and learned men from an isolated position, and showing them the ways and aims of culture. A song of lamentation such as that which has just been sung will probably have its own period, and will cease of its own accord on a forcible return of the genius of meditation. 283. The Chief Deficiency of Active People.—Active people are usually deficient in the higher activity, I mean individual activity. They are active as officials, merchants, scholars, that is as a species, but not as quite distinct separate and single individuals; in this respect they are idle. It is the misfortune of the active that their activity is almost always a little senseless. For instance, we must not ask the money-making banker the reason of his restless activity, it is foolish. The active roll as the stone rolls, according to the stupidity of mechanics. All mankind is divided, as it was at all times and is still, into slaves and freemen; for whoever has not two-thirds of his day for himself is a slave, be he otherwise whatever he likes, statesman, merchant, official, or scholar. 284. In Favor of the Idle.—As a sign that the value of a contemplative life has decreased, scholars now vie with active people in a sort of hurried enjoyment, so that they appear to value this mode of enjoying more than that which really pertains to them, and which, as a matter of fact, is a far greater enjoyment Scholars are ashamed of otium. But there is one noble thing about idleness and idlers. If idleness is really the beginning of all vice, it finds itself, therefore, at least in near neighborhood of all the virtues; the idle man is still a better man than the active. You do not suppose that in speaking of idleness and idlers I am alluding to you, you sluggards? 285. Modern Unrest.—Modern restlessness increases towards the west, so that Americans look upon the inhabitants of Europe as altogether peace-loving and enjoying beings, whilst in reality they swarm about like wasps and bees. This restlessness is so great that the higher culture cannot mature its fruits, it is as if the seasons followed each other too quickly. For lack of rest our civilization is turning into a new barbarism. At no period have the active, that is, the restless, been of more importance. One of the necessary corrections, therefore, which must be undertaken in the character of humanity is to strengthen the contemplative element on a large scale. But every individual who is quiet and steady in heart and head already has the right to believe that he possesses not only a good temperament, but also a generally useful virtue, and even fulfils a higher mission by the preservation of this virtue. 286. To What Extent the Active Man is Lazy.—I believe that everyone must have his own opinion about everything concerning which opinions are possible, because he himself is a
peculiar, unique thing, which assumes towards all other things a new and never hitherto existing attitude. But idleness, which lies at the bottom of the active man’s soul, prevents him from drawing water out of his own well. Freedom of opinion is like health; both are individual, and no good general conception can be set up of either of them. That which is necessary for the health of one individual is the cause of disease in another, and many means and ways to the freedom of the spirit are for more highly developed natures the ways and means to confinement. 287. Censor Vitæ.—Alternations of love and hatred for a long period distinguish the inward condition of a man who desires to be free in his judgment of life; he does not forget, and bears everything a grudge, for good and evil. At last, when the whole tablet of his soul is written full of experiences, he will not hate and despise existence, neither will he love it, but will regard it sometimes with a joyful, sometimes with a sorrowful eye, and, like nature, will be now in a summer and now in an autumn mood. 288. The Secondary Result.—Whoever earnestly desires to be free will therewith and without any compulsion lose all inclination for faults and vices; he will also be more rarely overcome by anger and vexation. His will desires nothing more urgently than to discern, and the means to do this,—that is, the permanent condition in which he is best able to discern. 289. The Value of Disease.—The man who is bed-ridden often perceives that he is usually ill of his position, business, or society, and through them has lost all self-possession. He gains this piece of knowledge from the idleness to which his illness condemns him. 290. Sensitiveness in the Country.—If there are no firm, quiet lines on the horizon of his life, a species of mountain and forest line, man’s inmost will itself becomes restless, inattentive, and covetous, as is the nature of a dweller in towns; he has no happiness and confers no happiness. 291. Prudence of the Free Spirits.—Free-thinkers, those who live by knowledge alone, will soon attain the supreme aim of their life and their ultimate position towards society and State, and will gladly content themselves, for instance, with a small post or an income that is just sufficient to enable them to live; for they will arrange to live in such a manner that a great change of outward prosperity, even an overthrow of the political order, would not cause an overthrow of their life. To all these things they devote as little energy as possible in order that with their whole accumulated strength, and with a long breath, they may dive into the element of knowledge. Thus they can hope to dive deep and be able to see the bottom. Such a spirit seizes only the point of an event, he does not care for things in the whole breadth and prolixity of their folds, for he does not wish to entangle himself in them. He, too, knows the weekdays of restraint, of dependence and servitude. But from time to time there must dawn for him a Sunday of liberty, otherwise he could not endure life. It is probable that even his love for humanity will be prudent and somewhat short-winded, for he desires to meddle with the world of inclinations and of blindness only as far as is necessary for the purpose of knowledge. He must trust that the genius of justice will say something for its disciple and protégé if accusing voices were to call him poor in love. In his mode of life and thought there is a refined heroism, which scorns to offer itself to the great mob-reverence, as its coarser brother does, and passes quietly through and out, of the world. Whatever labyrinths it traverses, beneath whatever rocks its stream has occasionally worked its way—when it reaches the light it goes clearly, easily, and almost noiselessly on its way, and lets the sunshine strike down to its very bottom. 292. Forward.—And thus forward upon the path of wisdom, with a firm step and good confidence! However you may be situated, serve yourself as a source of experience! Throw off the displeasure at your nature, forgive yourself your own individuality, for in any case you have in yourself a ladder with a hundred steps upon which you can mount to knowledge. The age into which with grief you feel yourself thrown thinks you happy because of this good fortune; it calls out to you that you shall still have experiences which men of later ages will perhaps be obliged to forego. Do not despise the fact of having been religious; consider fully how you have had a genuine access to art. Can you not, with the help of these experiences, follow immense stretches of former humanity with a clearer understanding? Is not that ground which sometimes displeases you so greatly, that ground of clouded thought, precisely the one upon which have grown many of the most glorious fruits of older civilizations? You must have loved religion and art as you loved mother and nurse,— otherwise you cannot be wise. But you must be able to see beyond them, to outgrow them; if you remain under their ban you do not understand them. You must also be familiar with history and that cautious play with the balances: “ On the one hand—on the other hand.” Go back, treading in the footsteps made by mankind in its great and painful journey through the desert of the past, and you will learn most surely whither it is that all later humanity never can or may go again. And inasmuch as you wish with all your strength to see in advance how the knots of the future are tied, your own life acquires the value of an instrument and means of knowledge. It is within your power to see that all you have experienced, trials, errors, faults, deceptions, passions, your love and your hope, shall be merged wholly in your aim. This aim is to become a necessary chain of culture-links yourself, and from this necessity to draw a conclusion as to the necessity in the progress of general culture. When your sight has become strong enough to see to the bottom of the dark well of your nature and your knowledge, it is possible that in its mirror you may also behold the far-away visions of future civilizations. Do you think that such a life with such an aim is too wearisome, too empty of all that is agreeable? Then you have still to learn that no honey is sweeter than that of knowledge, and that the overhanging clouds of trouble must be to you
as an udder from which you shall draw milk for your refreshment. And only when old age approaches will you rightly perceive how you listened to the voice of nature, that nature which rules the whole world through pleasure; the same life which has its zenith in age has also its zenith in wisdom, in that mild sunshine of a constant mental joyfulness; you meet them both, old age and wisdom, upon one ridge of life,—it was thus intended by Nature. Then it is time, and no cause for anger, that the mists of death approach. Towards the light is your last movement; a joyful cry of knowledge is your last sound. SIXTH DIVISION. MAN IN SOCIETY. 293. Well-Meant Dissimulation.—In intercourse with men a well-meant dissimulation is often necessary, as if we did not see through the motives of their actions. 294. Copies.—We not unfrequently meet with copies of prominent persons; and as in the case of pictures, so also here, the copies please more than the originals. 295. The Public Speaker.—One may speak with the greatest appropriateness, and yet so that everybody cries out to the contrary, that is to say, when one does not speak to everybody. 296. Want of Confidence.—Want of confidence among friends is a fault that cannot be censured without becoming incurable. 297. The Art of Giving.—To have to refuse a gift, merely because it has not been offered in the right way, provokes animosity against the giver. 298. The Most Dangerous Partisan.—In every party there is one who, by his far too dogmatic expression of the party-principles, excites defection among the others. 299. Advisers of the Sick.—Whoever gives advice to a sick person acquires a feeling of superiority over him, whether the advice be accepted or rejected. Hence proud and sensitive sick persons hate advisers more than their sickness. 300. Double Nature of Equality.—The rage for equality may so manifest itself that we seek either to draw all others down to ourselves (by belittling, disregarding, and tripping up), or ourselves and all others upwards (by recognition, assistance, and congratulation). 301. Against Embarrassment.—The best way to relieve and calm very embarrassed people is to give them decided praise. 302. Preference For Certain Virtues.—We set no special value on the possession of a virtue until we perceive that it is entirely lacking in our adversary. 303. Why We Contradict.—We often contradict an opinion when it is really only the tone in which it is expressed that is unsympathetic to us. 304. Confidence and Intimacy.—Whoever proposes to command the intimacy of a person is usually uncertain of possessing his confidence. Whoever is sure of a person’s confidence attaches little value to intimacy with him. 305. The Equilibrium of Friendship.—The right equilibrium of friendship in our relation to other men is sometimes restored when we put a few grains of wrong on our own side of the scales. 306. The Most Dangerous Physicians.—The most dangerous physicians are those who, like born actors, imitate the born physician with the perfect art of imposture. 307. When Paradoxes are Permissible.—In order to interest clever persons in a theory, it is sometimes only necessary to put it before them in the form of a prodigious paradox. 308. How Courageous People Are Won Over.—Courageous people are persuaded to a course of action by representing it as more dangerous than it really is. 309. Courtesies.—We regard the courtesies shown us by unpopular persons as offences. 310. Keeping People Waiting.—A sure way of exasperating people and of putting bad thoughts into their heads is to keep them waiting long. That makes them immoral.
311. Against the Confidential.—Persons who give us their full confidence think they have thereby a right to ours. That is a mistake; people acquire no rights through gifts. 312. A Mode of Settlement.—It often suffices to give a person whom we have injured an opportunity to make a joke about us to give him personal satisfaction, and even to make him favorably disposed to us. 313. The Vanity of the Tongue.—Whether man conceals his bad qualities and vices, or frankly acknowledges them, his vanity in either case seeks its advantage thereby,—only let it be observed how nicely he distinguishes those from whom he conceals such qualities from those with whom he is frank and honest. 314. Considerate.—To have no wish to offend or injure anyone may as well be the sign of a just as of a timid nature. 315. Requisite for Disputation.—He who cannot put his thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of dispute. 316. Intercourse and Pretension.—We forget our pretensions when we are always conscious of being amongst meritorious people; being alone implants presumption in us. The young are pretentious, for they associate with their equals, who are all ciphers but would fain have a great significance. 317. Motives of an Attack.—One does not attack a person merely to hurt and conquer him, but perhaps merely to become conscious of one’s own strength. 318. Flattery.—Persons who try by means of flattery to put us off our guard in intercourse with them, employ a dangerous expedient, like a sleeping-draught, which, when it does not send the patient to sleep, keeps him all the wider awake. 319. A Good Letter-Writer.—A person who does not write books, thinks much, and lives in unsatisfying society, will usually be a good letter-writer. 320. The Ugliest of All.—It may be doubted whether a person who has travelled much has found anywhere in the world uglier places than those to be met with in the human face. 321. The Sympathetic Ones.—Sympathetic natures, ever ready to help in misfortune, are seldom those that participate in joy; in the happiness of others they have nothing to occupy them, they are superfluous, they do not feel themselves in possession of their superiority, and hence readily show their displeasure. 322. The Relatives of a Suicide.—The relatives of a suicide take it in ill part that he did not remain alive out of consideration for their reputation. 323. Ingratitude Foreseen.—He who makes a large gift gets no gratitude; for the recipient is already overburdened by the acceptance of the gift. 324. In Dull Society.—Nobody thanks a witty man for politeness when he puts himself on a par with a society in which it would not be polite to show one’s wit. 325. The Presence of Witnesses.—We are doubly willing to jump into the water after someone who has fallen in, if there are people present who have not the courage to do so. 326. Being Silent.—For both parties in a controversy, the most disagreeable way of retaliating is to be vexed and silent; for the aggressor usually regards the silence as a sign of contempt. 327. Friends’ Secrets.—Few people will not expose the private affairs of their friends when at a loss for a subject of conversation. 328. Humanity.—The humanity of intellectual celebrities consists in courteously submitting to unfairness in intercourse with those who are not celebrated. 329. The Embarrassed.—People who do not feel sure of themselves in society seize every opportunity of publicly showing their superiority to close friends, for instance by teasing them.
330. Thanks.—A refined nature is vexed by knowing that someone owes it thanks, a coarse nature by knowing that it owes thanks to someone. 331. A Sign of Estrangement.—The surest sign of the estrangement of the opinions of two persons is when they both say something ironical to each other and neither of them feels the irony. 332. Presumption in Connection with Merit.—Presumption in connection with merit offends us even more than presumption in persons devoid of merit, for merit in itself offends us. 333. Danger in the Voice.—In conversation we are sometimes confused by the tone of our own voice, and misled to make assertions that do not at all correspond to our opinions. 334. In Conversation.—Whether in conversation with others we mostly agree or mostly disagree with them is a matter of habit; there is sense in both cases. 335. Fear of our Neighbor.—We are afraid of the animosity of our neighbor, because we are apprehensive that he may thereby discover our secrets. 336. Distinguishing by Blaming.—Highly respected persons distribute even their blame in such fashion that they try to distinguish us therewith. It is intended to remind us of their serious interest in us. We misunderstand them entirely when we take their blame literally and protest against it; we thereby offend them and estrange ourselves from them. 337. Indignation at the Goodwill of Others.—We are mistaken as to the extent to which we think we are hated or feared; because, though we ourselves know very well the extent of our divergence from a person, tendency, or party, those others know us only superficially, and can, therefore, only hate us superficially. We often meet with goodwill which is inexplicable to us; but when we comprehend it, it shocks us, because it shows that we are not considered with sufficient seriousness or importance. 338. Thwarting Vanities.—When two persons meet whose vanity is equally great, they have afterwards a bad impression of each other; because each has been so occupied with the impression he wished to produce on the other that the other has made no impression upon him; at last it becomes clear to them both that their efforts have been in vain, and each puts the blame on the other. 339. Improper Behavior as a Good Sign.—A superior mind takes pleasure in the tactlessness, pretentiousness, and even hostility of ambitious youths; it is the vicious habit of fiery horses which have not yet carried a rider, but, in a short time, will be so proud to carry one. 340. When it is Advisable to Suffer Wrong.—It is well to put up with accusations without refutation, even when they injure us, when the accuser would see a still greater fault on our part if we contradicted and perhaps even refuted him. In this way, certainly, a person may always be wronged and always have right on his side, and may eventually, with the best conscience in the world, become the most intolerable tyrant and tormentor; and what happens in the individual may also take place in whole classes of society. 341. Too Little Honored.—Very conceited persons, who have received less consideration than they expected, attempt for a long time to deceive themselves and others with regard to it, and become subtle psychologists in order to make out that they have been amply honored. Should they not attain their aim, should the veil of deception be torn, they give way to all the greater fury. 342. Primitive Conditions Re-Echoing in Speech.—By the manner in which people make assertions in their intercourse we often recognize an echo of the times when they were more conversant with weapons than anything else; sometimes they handle their assertions like sharpshooters using their arms, sometimes we think we hear the whizz and clash of swords, and with some men an assertion crashes down like a stout cudgel. Women, on the contrary, speak like beings who for thousands of years have sat at the loom, plied the needle, or played the child with children. 343. The Narrator.—He who gives an account of something readily betrays whether it is because the fact interests him, or because he wishes to excite interest by the narration. In the latter case he will exaggerate, employ superlatives, and such like. He then does not usually tell his story so well, because he does not think so much about his subject as about himself. 344.
The Reciter.—He who recites dramatic works makes discoveries about his own character; he finds his voice more natural in certain moods and scenes than in others, say in the pathetic or in the scurrilous, while in ordinary life, perhaps, he has not had the opportunity to exhibit pathos or scurrility. 345. A Comedy Scene in Real Life.—Someone conceives an ingenious idea on a theme in order to express it in society. Now in a comedy we should hear and see how he sets all sail for that point, and tries to land the company at the place where he can make his remark, how he continuously pushes the conversation towards the one goal, sometimes losing the way, finding it again, and finally arriving at the moment: he is almost breathless and then one of the company takes the remark itself out of his mouth! What will he do? Oppose his own opinion? 346. Unintentionally Discourteous.—When a person treats another with unintentional discourtesy,—for instance, not greeting him because not recognizing him,—he is vexed by it, although he cannot reproach his own sentiments; he is hurt by the bad opinion which he has produced in the other person, or fears the consequences of his bad humor, or is pained by the thought of having injured him,—vanity, fear, or pity may therefore be aroused; perhaps all three together. 347. A Masterpiece of Treachery.—To express a tantalizing distrust of a fellow-conspirator, lest he should betray one, and this at the very moment when one is practicing treachery one’s self, is a masterpiece of wickedness; because it absorbs the other’s attention and compels him for a time to act very unsuspiciously and openly, so that the real traitor has thus acquired a free hand. 348. To Injure and to be Injured.—It is far pleasanter to injure and afterwards beg for forgiveness than to be injured and grant forgiveness. He who does the former gives evidence of power and afterwards of kindness of character. The person injured, however, if he does not wish to be considered inhuman, must forgive; his enjoyment of the other’s humiliation is insignificant on account of this constraint. 349. In a Dispute.—When we contradict another’s opinion and at the same time develop our own, the constant consideration of the other opinion usually disturbs the natural attitude of our own which appears more intentional, more distinct, and perhaps somewhat exaggerated. 350. An Artifice.—He who wants to get another to do something difficult must on no account treat the matter as a problem, but must set forth his plan plainly as the only one possible; and when the adversary’s eye betrays objection and opposition he must understand how to break off quickly, and allow him no time to put in a word. 351. Pricks of Conscience After Social Gatherings.—Why does our conscience prick us after ordinary social gatherings? Because we have treated serious things lightly, because in talking of persons we have not spoken quite justly or have been silent when we should have spoken, because, sometimes, we have not jumped up and run away,—in short, because we have behaved in society as if we belonged to it. 352. We are Misjudged.—He who always listens to hear how he is judged is always vexed. For we are misjudged even by those who are nearest to us (“ who know us best”). Even good friends sometimes vent their ill-humor in a spiteful word; and would they be our friends if they knew us rightly? The judgments of the indifferent wound us deeply, because they sound so impartial, so objective almost. But when we see that someone hostile to us knows us in a concealed point as well as we know ourselves, how great is then our vexation! 353. The Tyranny of the Portrait.—Artists and statesmen, who out of particular features quickly construct the whole picture of a man or an event, are mostly unjust in demanding that the event or person should afterwards be actually as they have painted it; they demand straightway that a man should be just as gifted, cunning, and unjust as he is in their representation of him. 354. Relatives as the Best Friends.—The Greeks, who knew so well what a friend was, they alone of all peoples have a profound and largely philosophical discussion of friendship; so that it is by them firstly (and as yet lastly) that the problem of the friend has been recognized as worthy of solution, these same Greeks have designated relatives by an expression which is the superlative of the word “ friend.” This is inexplicable to me. 355. Misunderstood Honesty.—When anyone quotes himself in conversation (“ I then said,” “ I am accustomed to say”), it gives the impression of presumption; whereas it often proceeds from quite an opposite source; or at least from honesty, which does not wish to deck and adorn the present moment with wit which belongs to an earlier moment. 356.
The Parasite.—It denotes entire absence of a noble disposition when a person prefers to live in dependence at the expense of others, usually with a secret bitterness against them, in order only that he may not be obliged to work. Such a disposition is far more frequent in women than in men, also far more pardonable (for historical reasons). 357. On the Altar of Reconciliation.—There are circumstances under which one can only gain a point from a person by wounding him and becoming hostile; the feeling of having a foe torments him so much that he gladly seizes the first indication of a milder disposition to effect a reconciliation, and offers on the altar of this reconciliation what was formerly of such importance to him that he would not give it up at any price. 358. Presumption in Demanding Pity.—There are people who, when they have been in a rage and have insulted others, demand, firstly, that it shall all be taken in good part; and, secondly, that they shall be pitied because they are subject to such violent paroxysms. So far does human presumption extend. 359. Bait.—“ Every man has his price”—that is not true. But perhaps everyone can be found a bait of one kind or other at which he will snap. Thus, in order to gain some supporters for a cause, it is only necessary to give it the glamour of being philanthropic, noble, charitable, and self-denying—and to what cause could this glamour not be given! It is the sweetmeat and dainty of their soul; others have different ones. 360. The Attitude in Praising.—When good friends praise a gifted person he often appears to be delighted with them out of politeness and goodwill, but in reality he feels indifferent. His real nature is quite unmoved towards them, and will not budge a step on that account out of the sun or shade in which it lies; but people wish to please by praise, and it would grieve them if one did not rejoice when they praise a person. 361. The Experience of Socrates.—If one has become a master in one thing, one has generally remained, precisely thereby, a complete dunce in most other things; but one forms the very reverse opinion, as was already experienced by Socrates. This is the annoyance which makes association with masters disagreeable. 362. A Means of Defense.—In warring against stupidity, the most just and gentle of men at last become brutal. They are thereby, perhaps, taking the proper course for defense; for the most appropriate argument for a stupid brain is the clenched fist. But because, as has been said, their character is just and gentle, they suffer more by this means of protection than they injure their opponents by it. 363. Curiosity.—If curiosity did not exist, very little would be done for the good of our neighbor. But curiosity creeps into the houses of the unfortunate and the needy under the name of duty or of pity. Perhaps there is a good deal of curiosity even in the much-vaunted maternal love. 364. Disappointment in Society.—One man wishes to be interesting for his opinions, another for his likes and dislikes, a third for his acquaintances, and a fourth for his solitariness— and they all meet with disappointment. For he before whom the play is performed thinks himself the only play that is to be taken into account. 365. The Duel.—It may be said in favor of duels and all affairs of honor that if a man has such susceptible feelings that he does not care to live when So-and-so says or thinks this or that about him; he has a right to make it a question of the death of the one or the other. With regard to the fact that he is so susceptible, it is not at all to be remonstrated with, in that matter we are the heirs of the past, of its greatness as well as of its exaggerations, without which no greatness ever existed. So when there exists a code of honor which lets blood stand in place of death, so that the mind is relieved after a regular duel it is a great blessing, because otherwise many human lives would be in danger. Such an institution, moreover, teaches men to be cautious in their utterances and makes intercourse with them possible. 366. Nobleness and Gratitude.—A noble soul will be pleased to owe gratitude, and will not anxiously avoid opportunities of coming under obligation; it will also be moderate afterwards in the expression of its gratitude; baser souls, on the other hand, are unwilling to be under any obligation, or are afterwards immoderate in their expressions of thanks and altogether too devoted. The latter is, moreover, also the case with persons of mean origin or depressed circumstances; to show them a favor seems to them a miracle of grace. 367. Occasions of Eloquence.—In order to talk well one man needs a person who is decidedly and avowedly his superior to talk to, while another can only find absolute freedom of speech and happy turns of eloquence before one who is his inferior. In both cases the cause is the same; each of them talks well only when he talks sans gêne—the one because in the presence of something higher he does not feel the impulse of rivalry and competition, the other because he also lacks the same impulse in the presence of something lower. Now there is quite another type of men, who talk well only when debating, with the intention of conquering. Which of the two types is the more aspiring: the one that talks well from excited
ambition, or the one that talks badly or not at all from precisely the same motive? 368. The Talent for Friendship.—Two types are distinguished amongst people who have a special faculty for friendship. The one is ever on the ascent, and for every phase of his development he finds a friend exactly suited to him. The series of friends which he thus acquires is seldom a consistent one, and is sometimes at variance and in contradiction, entirely in accordance with the fact that the later phases of his development neutralize or prejudice the earlier phases. Such a man may jestingly be called a ladder. The other type is represented by him who exercises an attractive influence on very different characters and endowments, so that he wins a whole circle of friends; these, however, are thereby brought voluntarily into friendly relations with one another in spite of all differences. Such a man may be called a circle, for this homogeneousness of such different temperaments and natures must somehow be typified in him. Furthermore, the faculty for having good friends is greater in many people than the faculty for being a good friend. 369. Tactics In Conversation.—After a conversation with a person one is best pleased with him when one has had an opportunity of exhibiting one’s intelligence and amiability in all its glory. Shrewd people who wish to impress a person favorably make use of this circumstance, they provide him with the best opportunities for making a good joke, and so on in conversation. An amusing conversation might be imagined between two very shrewd persons, each wishing to impress the other favorably, and therefore each throwing to the other the finest chances in conversation, which neither of them accepted, so that the conversation on the whole might turn out spiritless and unattractive because each assigned to the other the opportunity of being witty and charming. 370. Discharge of Indignation.—The man who meets with a failure attributes this failure rather to the ill-will of another than to fate. His irritated feelings are alleviated by thinking that a person and not a thing is the cause of his failure; for he can revenge himself on persons, but is obliged to swallow down the injuries of fate. Therefore when anything has miscarried with a prince, those about him are accustomed to point out some individual as the ostensible cause, who is sacrificed in the interests of all the courtiers; for otherwise the prince’s indignation would vent itself on them all, as he can take no revenge on the Goddess of Destiny herself. 371. Assuming the Colors of the Environment.—Why are likes and dislikes so contagious that we can hardly live near a very sensitive person without being filled, like a hogshead, with his fors and againsts? In the first place, complete forbearance of judgment is very difficult, and sometimes absolutely intolerable to our vanity; it has the same appearance as poverty of thought and sentiment, or as timidity and unmanliness; and so we are, at least, driven on to take a side, perhaps contrary to our environment, if this attitude gives greater pleasure to our pride. As a rule, however,—and this is the second point,—we are not conscious of the transition from indifference to liking or disliking, but we gradually accustom ourselves to the sentiments of our environment, and because sympathetic agreement and acquiescence are so agreeable, we soon wear all the signs and party-colors of our surroundings. 372. Irony.—Irony is only permissible as a pedagogic expedient, on the part of a teacher when dealing with his pupils; its purpose is to humble and to shame, but in the wholesome way that causes good resolutions to spring up and teaches people to show honor and gratitude, as they would to a doctor, to him who has so treated them. The ironical man pretends to be ignorant, and does it so well that the pupils conversing with him are deceived, and in their firm belief in their own superior knowledge they grow bold and expose all their weak points; they lose their cautiousness and reveal themselves as they are,—until all of a sudden the light which they have held up to the teacher’s face casts its rays back very humiliatingly upon themselves. Where such a relation, as that between teacher and pupil, does not exist, irony is a rudeness and a vulgar conceit. All ironical writers count on the silly species of human beings, who like to feel themselves superior to all others in common with the author himself, whom they look upon as the mouthpiece of their arrogance. Moreover, the habit of irony, like that of sarcasm, spoils the character; it gradually fosters the quality of a malicious superiority; one finally grows like a snappy dog, that has learnt to laugh as well as to bite. 373. Arrogance.—There is nothing one should so guard against as the growth of the weed called arrogance, which spoils all one’s good harvest; for there is arrogance in cordiality, in showing honor, in kindly familiarity, in caressing, in friendly counsel, in acknowledgment of faults, in sympathy for others,—and all these fine things arouse aversion when the weed in question grows up among them. The arrogant man that is to say, he who desires to appear more than he is or passes for—always miscalculates. It is true that he obtains a momentary success, inasmuch as those with whom he is arrogant generally give him the amount of honor that he demands, owing to fear or for the sake of convenience; but they take a bad revenge for it inasmuch as they subtract from the value which they hitherto attached to him just as much as he demands above that amount. There is nothing for which men ask to be paid dearer than for humiliation. The arrogant man can make his really great merit so suspicious and small in the eyes of others that they tread on it with dusty feet. If at all, we should only allow ourselves a proud manner where we are quite sure of not being misunderstood and considered as arrogant; as, for instance, with friends and wives. For in social intercourse there is no greater folly than to acquire a reputation for arrogance; it is still worse than not having learnt to deceive politely. 374. Tête-à-Tête—Private conversation is the perfect conversation, because everything the one person says receives its particular coloring, its tone, and its accompanying gestures out of
strict consideration for the other person engaged in the conversation, it therefore corresponds to what takes place in intercourse by letter, viz., that one and the same person exhibits ten kinds of psychical expression, according as he writes now to this individual and now to that one. In duologue there is only a single refraction of thought; the person conversed with produces it, as the mirror in whom we want to behold our thoughts anew in their finest form. But how is it when there are two or three, or even more persons conversing with one? Conversation then necessarily loses something of its individualizing subtlety, different considerations thwart and neutralize each other; the style which pleases one does not suit the taste of another. In intercourse with several individuals a person is therefore to withdraw within himself and represent facts as they are; but he has also to remove from the subjects the pulsating ether of humanity which makes conversation one of the pleasantest things in the world. Listen only to the tone in which those who mingle with whole groups of men are in the habit of speaking; it is as if the fundamental base of all speech were, “ It is myself; I say this, so make what you will of it!” That is the reason why clever ladies usually leave a singular, painful, and forbidding impression on those who have met them in society; it is the talking to many people, before many people, that robs them of all intellectual amiability and shows only their conscious dependence on themselves, their tactics, and their intention of gaining a public victory in full light; whilst in a private conversation the same ladies become womanly again, and recover their intellectual grace and charm. 375. Posthumous Fame.—There is sense in hoping for recognition in a distant future only when we take it for granted that mankind will remain essentially unchanged, and that whatever is great is not for one age only but will be looked upon as great for all time. But this is an error. In all their sentiments and judgments concerning what is good and beautiful mankind have greatly changed; it is mere fantasy to imagine one’s self to be a mile ahead, and that the whole of mankind is coming our way. Besides, a scholar who is misjudged may at present reckon with certainty that his discovery will be made by others, and that, at best, it will be allowed to him later on by some historian that he also already knew this or that but was not in a position to secure the recognition of his knowledge. Not to be recognized is always interpreted by posterity as lack of power. In short, one should not so readily speak in favor of haughty solitude. There are, however, exceptional cases; but it is chiefly our faults, weakness, and follies that hinder the recognition of our great qualities. 376. Of Friends.—Just consider with thyself how different are the feelings, how divided are the opinions of even the nearest acquaintances; how even the same opinions in thy friend’s mind have quite a different aspect and strength from what they have in thine own; and how manifold are the occasions which arise for misunderstanding and hostile severance. After all this thou wilt say to thyself, “ How insecure is the ground upon which all our alliances and friendships rest, how liable to cold downpours and bad weather, how lonely is every creature!” When a person recognizes this fact, and, in addition, that all opinions and the nature and strength of them in his fellowmen are just as necessary and irresponsible as their actions; when his eye learns to see this internal necessity of opinions, owing to the indissoluble interweaving of character, occupation, talent, and environment,—he will perhaps get rid of the bitterness and sharpness of the feeling with which the sage exclaimed, “ Friends, there are no friends!” Much rather will he make the confession to himself:—Yes, there are friends, but they were drawn towards thee by error and deception concerning thy character; and they must have learnt to be silent in order to remain thy friends; for such human relationships almost always rest on the fact that some few things are never said, are never, indeed, alluded to; but if these pebbles are set rolling friendship follows afterwards and is broken. Are there any who would not be mortally injured if they were to learn what their most intimate friends really knew about them? By getting a knowledge of ourselves, and by looking upon our nature as a changing sphere of opinions and moods, and thereby learning to despise ourselves a little, we recover once more our equilibrium with the rest of mankind. It is true that we have good reason to despise each of our acquaintances, even the greatest of them; but just as good reason to turn this feeling against ourselves. And so we will bear with each other, since we bear with ourselves; and perhaps there will come to each a happier hour, when he will exclaim: “ Friends, there are really no friends!” thus cried th’ expiring old sophist; “ Foes, there is really no foe!”—thus shout I, the incarnate fool. SEVENTH DIVISION. WIFE AND CHILD. 377. The Perfect Woman.—The perfect woman is a higher type of humanity than the perfect man, and also something much rarer. The natural history of animals furnishes grounds in support of this theory. 378. Friendship and Marriage.—The best friend will probably get the best wife, because a good marriage is based on talent for friendship. 379. The Survival of the Parents.—The undissolved dissonances in the relation of the character and sentiments of the parents survive in the nature of the child and make up the history of its inner sufferings. 380. Inherited From The Mother.—Everyone bears within him an image of woman, inherited from his mother: it determines his attitude towards women as a whole, whether to honor, despise, or remain generally indifferent to them. 381. Correcting Nature.—Whoever has not got a good father should procure one.
382. Fathers and Sons.—Fathers have much to do to make amends for having sons. 383. The Error of Gentlewomen.—Gentle women think that a thing does not really exist when it is not possible to talk of it in society. 384. A Male Disease.—The surest remedy for the male disease of self-contempt is to be loved by a sensible woman. 385. A Species of Jealousy.—Mothers are readily jealous of the friends of sons who are particularly successful. As a rule a mother loves herself in her son more than the son. 386. Rational Irrationality.—In the maturity of life and intelligence the feeling comes over a man that his father did wrong in begetting him. 387. Maternal Excellence.—Some mothers need happy and honored children, some need unhappy ones, otherwise they cannot exhibit their maternal excellence. 388. Different Sighs.—Some husbands have sighed over the elopement of their wives, the greater number, however, have sighed because nobody would elope with theirs. 389. Love Matches.—Marriages which are contracted for love (so-called love-matches) have error for their father and need (necessity) for their mother. 390. Women’s Friendships.—Women can enter into friendship with a man perfectly well; but in order to maintain it the aid of a little physical antipathy is perhaps required. 391. Ennui.—Many people, especially women, never feel ennui because they have never learnt to work properly. 392. An Element of Love.—In all feminine love something of maternal love also comes to light 393. Unity of Place and Drama.—If married couples did not live together, happy marriages would be more frequent. 394. The Usual Consequences of Marriage.—All intercourse which does not elevate a person, debases him, and vice versa; hence men usually sink a little when they marry, while women are somewhat elevated. Over-intellectual men require marriage in proportion as they are opposed to it as to a repugnant medicine. 395. Learning to Command.—Children of unpretentious families must be taught to command, just as much as other children must be taught to obey. 396. Wanting to be in Love.—Betrothed couples who have been matched by convenience often exert themselves to fall in love, to avoid the reproach of cold, calculating expediency. In the same manner those who become converts to Christianity for their advantage exert themselves to become genuinely pious; because the religious cast of countenance then becomes easier to them. 397. No Standing Still in Love.—A musician who loves the slow tempo will play the same pieces ever more slowly. There is thus no standing still in any love. 398. Modesty.—Women’s modesty usually increases with their beauty. [15] [15] The opposite of this aphorism also holds good.—J. M. K. 399. Marriage on a Good Basis.—A marriage in which each wishes to realize an individual aim by means of the other will stand well; for instance, when the woman wishes to become famous through the man and the man beloved through the woman. 400. Proteus-Nature.—Through love women actually become what they appear to be in the imagination of their lovers. 401. To Love and to Possess.—As a rule women love a distinguished man to the extent that they wish to possess him exclusively. They would gladly keep him under lock and key, if their vanity did not forbid, but vanity demands that he should also appear distinguished before others.
402. The Test of a Good Marriage.—The goodness of a marriage is proved by the fact that it can stand an “ exception.” 403. Bringing Anyone Round to Anything.—One may make any person so weak and weary by disquietude, anxiety, and excess of work or thought that he no longer resists anything that appears complicated, but gives way to it, diplomatists and women know this. 404. Propriety and Honesty.—Those girls who mean to trust exclusively to their youthful charms for their provision in life, and whose cunning is further prompted by worldly mothers, have just the same aims as courtesans, only they are wiser and less honest. 405. Masks.—There are women who, wherever one examines them, have no inside, but are mere masks. A man is to be pitied who has connection with such almost specter-like and necessarily unsatisfactory creatures, but it is precisely such women who know how to excite a man’s desire most strongly; he seeks for their soul, and seeks evermore. 406. Marriage as a Long Talk.—In entering on a marriage one should ask one’s self the question, “ Do you think you will pass your time well with this woman till your old age?” All else in marriage is transitory; talk, however, occupies most of the time of the association. 407. Girlish Dreams.—Inexperienced girls flatter themselves with the notion that it is in their power to make a man happy; later on they learn that it is equivalent to underrating a man to suppose that he needs only a girl to make him happy. Women’s vanity requires a man to be something more than merely a happy husband. 408. The Dying-Out Of Faust and Marguerite.—According to the very intelligent remark of a scholar, the educated men of modern Germany resemble somewhat a mixture of Mephistopheles and Wagner, but are not at all like Faust, whom our grandfathers (in their youth at least) felt agitating within them. To them, therefore,—to continue the remark,— Marguerites are not suited, for two reasons. And because the latter are no longer desired they seem to be dying out. 409. Classical Education For Girls.—For goodness’ sake let us not give our classical education to girls! An education which, out of ingenious, inquisitive, ardent youths, so frequently makes—copies of their teacher! 410. Without Rivals.—Women readily perceive in a man whether his soul has already been taken possession of; they wish to be loved without rivals, and find fault with the objects of his ambition, his political tasks, his sciences and arts, if he have a passion for such things. Unless he be distinguished thereby,—then, in the case of a love-relationship between them, women look at the same time for an increase of their own distinction; under such circumstances, they favor the lover. 411. The Feminine Intellect.—The intellect of women manifests itself as perfect mastery, presence of mind, and utilization of all advantages. They transmit it as a fundamental quality to their children, and the father adds thereto the darker background of the will. His influence determines as it were the rhythm and harmony with which the new life is to be performed; but its melody is derived from the mother. For those who know how to put a thing properly: women have intelligence, men have character and passion. This does not contradict the fact that men actually achieve so much more with their intelligence: they have deeper and more powerful impulses; and it is these which carry their understanding (in itself something passive) to such an extent. Women are often silently surprised at the great respect men pay to their character. When, therefore, in the choice of a partner men seek specially for a being of deep and strong character, and women for a being of intelligence, brilliancy, and presence of mind, it is plain that at bottom men seek for the ideal man, and women for the ideal woman,—consequently not for the complement but for the completion of their own excellence. 412. Hesiod’s Opinion Confirmed.—It is a sign of women’s wisdom that they have almost always known how to get themselves supported, like drones in a bee-hive. Let us just consider what this meant originally, and why men do not depend upon women for their support. Of a truth it is because masculine vanity and reverence are greater than feminine wisdom; for women have known how to secure for themselves by their subordination the greatest advantage, in fact, the upper hand. Even the care of children may originally have been used by the wisdom of women as an excuse for withdrawing themselves as much as possible from work. And at present they still understand when they are really active (as housekeepers, for instance) how to make a bewildering fuss about it, so that the merit of their activity is usually ten times over-estimated by men. 413. Lovers as Short-Sighted People.—A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love; and whoever has had sufficient imagination to represent a face or form twenty years older, has probably gone through life not much disturbed.
414. Women in Hatred.—In a state of hatred women are more dangerous than men; for one thing, because they are hampered by no regard for fairness when their hostile feelings have been aroused; but let their hatred develop unchecked to its utmost consequences; then also, because they are expert in finding sore spots (which every man and every party possess), andpouncing upon them: for which purpose their dagger-pointed intelligence is of good service (whilst men, hesitating at the sight of wounds, are often generously and conciliatorily inclined). 415. Love.—The love idolatry which women practice is fundamentally and originally an intelligent device, inasmuch as they increase their power by all the idealizings of love and exhibit themselves as so much the more desirable in the eyes of men. But by being accustomed for centuries to this exaggerated appreciation of love, it has come to pass that they have been caught in their own net and have forgotten the origin of the device. They themselves are now still more deceived than the men, and on that account also suffer more from the disillusionment which, almost necessarily, enters into the life of every woman—so far, at any rate, as she has sufficient imagination and intelligence to be able to be deceived and undeceived. 416. The Emancipation of Women.—Can women be at all just, when they are so accustomed to love and to be immediately biased for or against? For that reason they are also less interested in things and more in individuals: but when they are interested in things they immediately become their partisans, and thereby spoil their pure, innocent effect. Thus there arises a danger, by no means small, in entrusting politics and certain portions of science to them (history, for instance). For what is rarer than a woman who really knows what science is? Indeed the best of them cherish in their breasts a secret scorn for science, as if they were somehow superior to it. Perhaps all this can be changed in time; but meanwhile it is so. 417. The Inspiration in Women’s Judgments.—The sudden decisions, for or against, which women are in the habit of making, the flashing illumination of personal relations caused by their spasmodic inclinations and aversions,—in short, the proofs of feminine injustice have been invested with a luster by men who are in love, as if all women had inspirations of wisdom, even without the Delphic cauldron and the laurel wreaths; and their utterances are interpreted and duly set forth as Sibylline oracles for long afterwards. When one considers, however, that for every person and for every cause something can be said in favor of it but equally also something against it, that things are not only two-sided, but also three and four-sided, it is almost difficult to be entirely at fault in such sudden decisions; indeed, it might be said that the nature of things has been so arranged that women should always carry their point. [16] [16] It may be remarked that Nietzsche changed his view on this subject later on, and ascribed more importance to woman’s intuition. Cf. also Disraeli’s reference to the “ High Priestesses of predestination.”—J. M. K. 418. Being Loved.—As one of every two persons in love is usually the one who loves, the other the one who is loved, the belief has arisen that in every love-affair there is a constant amount of love; and that the more of it the one person monopolizes the less is left for the other. Exceptionally it happens that the vanity of each of the parties persuades him or her that it is he or she who must be loved; so that both of them wish to be loved: from which cause many half funny, half absurd scenes take place, especially in married life. 419. Contradictions in Feminine Minds.—Owing to the fact that women are so much more personal than objective, there are tendencies included in the range of their ideas which are logically in contradiction to one another; they are accustomed in turn to become enthusiastically fond just of the representatives of these tendencies and accept their systems in the lump; but in such wise that a dead place originates wherever a new personality afterwards gets the ascendancy. It may happen that the whole philosophy in the mind of an old lady consists of nothing but such dead places. 420. Who Suffers the More?—After a personal dissension and quarrel between a woman and a man the latter party suffers chiefly from the idea of having wounded the other, whilst the former suffers chiefly from the idea of not having wounded the other sufficiently; so she subsequently endeavors by tears, sobs, and discomposed mien, to make his heart heavier. 421. An Opportunity for Feminine Magnanimity.—If we could disregard the claims of custom in our thinking we might consider whether nature and reason do not suggest several marriages for men, one after another: perhaps that, at the age of twenty-two, he should first marry an older girl who is mentally and morally his superior, and can be his leader through all the dangers of the twenties (ambition, hatred, self-contempt, and passions of all kinds). This woman’s affection would subsequently change entirely into maternal love, and she would not only submit to it but would encourage the man in the most salutary manner, if in his thirties he contracted an alliance with quite a young girl whose education he himself should take in hand. Marriage is a necessary institution for the twenties; a useful, but not necessary, institution for the thirties; for later life it is often harmful, and promotes the mental deterioration of the man. 422. The Tragedy of Childhood.—Perhaps it not infrequently happens that noble men with lofty aims have to fight their hardest battle in childhood; by having perchance to carry out
their principles in opposition to a base-minded father addicted to feigning and falsehood, or living, like Lord Byron, in constant warfare with a childish and passionate mother. He who has had such an experience will never be able to forget all his life who has been his greatest and most dangerous enemy. 423. Parental Folly.—The grossest mistakes in judging a man are made by his parents,—this is a fact, but how is it to be explained? Have the parents too much experience of the child and cannot any longer arrange this experience into a unity? It has been noticed that it is only in the earlier period of their sojourn in foreign countries that travelers rightly grasp the general distinguishing features of a people; the better they come to know it, they are the less able to see what is typical and distinguishing in a people. As soon as they grow shortsighted their eyes cease to be long-sighted. Do parents, therefore, judge their children falsely because they have never stood far enough away from them? The following is quite another explanation: people are no longer accustomed to reflect on what is close at hand and surrounds them, but just accept it. Perhaps the usual thoughtlessness of parents is the reason why they judge so wrongly when once they are compelled to judge their children. 424. The Future of Marriage.—The noble and liberal-minded women who take as their mission the education and elevation of the female sex, should not overlook one point of view: Marriage regarded in its highest aspect, as the spiritual friendship of two persons of opposite sexes, and accordingly such as is hoped for in future, contracted for the purpose of producing and educating a new generation,—such marriage, which only makes use of the sensual, so to speak, as a rare and occasional means to a higher purpose, will, it is to be feared, probably need a natural auxiliary, namely, concubinage. For if, on the grounds of his health, the wife is also to serve for the sole satisfaction of the man’s sexual needs, a wrong perspective, opposed to the aims indicated, will have most influence in the choice of a wife. The aims referred to: the production of descendants, will be accidental, and their successful education highly improbable. A good wife, who has to be friend, helper, child-bearer, mother, family-head and manager, and has even perhaps to conduct her own business and affairs separately from those of the husband, cannot at the same time be a concubine; it would, in general, be asking too much of her. In the future, therefore, a state of things might take place the opposite of what existed at Athens in the time of Pericles; the men, whose wives were then little more to them than concubines, turned besides to the Aspasias, because they longed for the charms of a companionship gratifying both to head and heart, such as the grace and intellectual suppleness of women could alone provide. All human institutions, just like marriage, allow only a moderate amount of practical idealizing, failing which coarse remedies immediately become necessary. 425. The “ Storm and Stress” Period of Women.—In the three or four civilized countries of Europe, it is possible, by several centuries of education, to make out of women anything we like,—even men, not in a sexual sense, of course, but in every other. Under such influences they will acquire all the masculine virtues and forces, at the same time, of course, they must also have taken all the masculine weaknesses and vices into the bargain: so much, as has been said, we can command. But how shall we endure the intermediate state thereby induced, which may even last two or three centuries, during which feminine follies and injustices, woman’s original birthday endowment, will still maintain the ascendancy over all that has been otherwise gained and acquired? This will be the time when indignation will be the peculiar masculine passion; indignation, because all arts and sciences have been overflowed and choked by an unprecedented dilettanteism, philosophy talked to death by brain-bewildering chatter, politics more fantastic and partisan than ever, and society in complete disorganization, because the conservatrices of ancient customs have become ridiculous to themselves, and have endeavored in every way to place themselves outside the pale of custom. If indeed women had their greatest power in custom, where will they have to look in order to reacquire a similar plenitude of power after having renounced custom? 426. Free-Spirit and Marriage.—Will free thinkers live with women? In general, I think that, like the prophesying birds of old, like the truth-thinkers and truth-speakers of the present, they must prefer to fly alone. 427. The Happiness of Marriage.—Everything to which we are accustomed draws an ever-tightening cobweb-net around us; and presently we notice that the threads have become cords, and that we ourselves sit in the middle like a spider that has here got itself caught and must feed on its own blood. Hence the free spirit hates all rules and customs, all that is permanent and definitive, hence he painfully tears asunder again and again the net around him, though in consequence thereof he will suffer from numerous wounds, slight and severe; for he must break off every thread from himself, from his body and soul. He must learn to love where he has hitherto hated, and vice versa. Indeed, it must not be a thing impossible for him to sow dragon’s teeth in the same field in which he formerly scattered the abundance of his bounty. From this it can be inferred whether he is suited for the happiness of marriage. 428. Too Intimate.—When we live on too intimate terms with a person it is as if we were again and again handling a good engraving with our fingers; the time comes when we have soiled and damaged paper in our hands, and nothing more. A man’s soul also gets worn out by constant handling; at least, it eventually appears so to us—never again do we see its original design and beauty. We always lose through too familiar association with women and friends; and sometimes we lose the pearl of our life thereby. 429. The Golden Cradle.—The free spirit will always feel relieved when he has finally resolved to shake off the motherly care and guardianship with which women surround him. What
harm will a rough wind, from which he has been so anxiously protected, do him? Of what consequence is a genuine disadvantage, loss, misfortune, sickness, illness, fault, or folly more or less in his life, compared with the bondage of the golden cradle, the peacock’s-feather fan, and the oppressive feeling that he must, in addition, be grateful because he is waited on and spoiled like a baby? Hence it is that the milk which is offered him by the motherly disposition of the women about him can so readily turn into gall. 430. A Voluntary Victim.—There is nothing by which able women can so alleviate the lives of their husbands, should these be great and famous, as by becoming, so to speak, the receptacle for the general disfavor and occasional ill-humor of the rest of mankind. Contemporaries are usually accustomed to overlook many mistakes, follies, and even flagrant injustices in their great men if only they can find someone to maltreat and kill, as a proper victim for the relief of their feelings. A wife not infrequently has the ambition to present herself for this sacrifice, and then the husband may indeed feel satisfied,—he being enough of an egoist to have such a voluntary storm, rain, and lightning-conductor beside him. 431. Agreeable Adversaries.—The natural inclination of women towards quiet, regular, happily tuned existences and intercourse, the oil-like and calming effect of their influence upon the sea of life, operates unconsciously against the heroic inner impulse of the free spirit. Without knowing it, women act as if they were taking away the stones from the path of the wandering mineralogist in order that he might not strike his foot against them—when he has gone out for the very purpose of striking against them. 432. The Discord of Two Concords.—Woman wants to serve, and finds her happiness therein; the free spirit does not want to be served, and therein finds his happiness. 433. Xantippe.—Socrates found a wife such as he required,—but he would not have sought her had he known her sufficiently well; even the heroism of his free spirit would not have gone so far. As a matter of fact, Xantippe forced him more and more into his peculiar profession, inasmuch as she made house and home doleful and dismal to him; she taught him to live in the streets and wherever gossiping and idling went on, and thereby made him the greatest Athenian street-dialectician, who had, at last, to compare himself to a gad-fly which a god had set on the neck of the beautiful horse Athens to prevent it from resting. 434. Blind to the Future.—Just as mothers have senses and eye only for those pains of their children that are evident to the senses and eye, so the wives of men of high aspirations cannot accustom themselves to see their husbands suffering, starving, or slighted,—although all this is, perhaps, not only the proof that they have rightly chosen their attitude in life, but even the guarantee that their great aims must be achieved sometime. Women always intrigue privately against the higher souls of their husbands; they want to cheat them out of their future for the sake of a painless and comfortable present. 435. Authority and Freedom.—However highly women may honor their husbands, they honor still more the powers and ideas recognized by society; they have been accustomed for millennia to go along with their hands folded on their breasts, and their heads bent before everything dominant, disapproving of all resistance to public authority. They therefore unintentionally, and as if from instinct, hang themselves as a drag on the wheels of free-spirited, independent endeavor, and in certain circumstances make their husbands highly impatient, especially when the latter persuade themselves that it is really love which prompts the action of their wives. To disapprove of women’s methods and generously to honor the motives that prompt them—that is man’s nature and often enough his despair. 436. Ceterum Censeo.—It is laughable when a company of paupers decree the abolition of the right of inheritance, and it is not less laughable when childless persons labor for the practical lawgiving of a country: they have not enough ballast in their ship to sail safely over the ocean of the future. But it seems equally senseless if a man who has chosen for his mission the widest knowledge and estimation of universal existence, burdens himself with personal considerations for a family, with the support, protection, and care of wife and child, and in front of his telescope hangs that gloomy veil through which hardly a ray from the distant firmament can penetrate. Thus I, too, agree with the opinion that in matters of the highest philosophy all married men are to be suspected. 437. Finally.—There are many kinds of hemlock, and fate generally finds an opportunity to put a cup of this poison to the lips of the free spirit,—in order to “ punish” him, as everyone then says. What do the women do about him then? They cry and lament, and perhaps disturb the sunset-calm of the thinker, as they did in the prison at Athens. “ Oh Crito, bid someone take those women away!” said Socrates at last. EIGHTH DIVISION. A GLANCE AT THE STATE. 438. Asking to be Heard.—The demagogic disposition and the intention of working upon the masses is at present common to all political parties; on this account they are all obliged to change their principles into great al fresco follies and thus make a show of them. In this matter there is no further alteration to be made: indeed, it is superfluous even to raise a finger against it; for here Voltaire’s saying applies: “ Quand la populace se mêle de raisonner, tout est perdu.” Since this has happened we have to accommodate ourselves to the new
conditions, as we have to accommodate ourselves when an earthquake has displaced the old boundaries and the contour of the land and altered the value of property. Moreover, when it is once for all a question in the politics of all parties to make life endurable to the greatest possible majority, this majority may always decide what they understand by an endurable life; if they believe their intellect capable of finding the right means to this end why should we doubt about it? They want, once for all, to be the architects of their own good or ill fortune; and if their feeling of free choice and their pride in the five or six ideas that their brain conceals and brings to light, really makes life so agreeable to them that they gladly put up with the fatal consequences of their narrow-mindedness, there is little to object to, provided that their narrow-mindedness does not go so far as to demand that everything shall become politics in this sense, that all shall live and act according to this standard. For, in the first place, it must be more than ever permissible for some people to keep aloof from politics and to stand somewhat aside. To this they are also impelled by the pleasure of free choice, and connected with this there may even be some little pride in keeping silence when too many, and only the many, are speaking. Then this small group must be excused if they do not attach such great importance to the happiness of the majority (nations or strata of population may be understood thereby), and are occasionally guilty of an ironical grimace; for their seriousness lies elsewhere, their conception of happiness is quite different, and their aim cannot be encompassed by every clumsy hand that has just five fingers. Finally, there comes from time to time—what is certainly most difficult to concede—to them, but must also be conceded a moment when they emerge from their silent solitariness and try once more the strength of their lungs; they then call to each other like people lost in a wood, to make themselves known and for mutual encouragement; whereby, to be sure, much becomes audible that sounds evil to ears for which it is not intended. Soon, however, silence again prevails in the wood, such silence that the buzzing, humming, and fluttering of the countless insects that live in, above, and beneath it, are again plainly heard. 439. Culture and Caste.—A higher culture can only originate where there are two distinct castes of society: that of the working class, and that of the leisured class who are capable of true leisure; or, more strongly expressed, the caste of compulsory labor and the caste of free labor. The point of view of the division of happiness is not essential when it is a question of the production of a higher culture; in any case, however, the leisured caste is more susceptible to suffering and suffer more, their pleasure in existence is less and their task is greater. Now supposing there should be quite an interchange between the two castes, so that on the one hand the duller and less intelligent families and individuals are lowered from the higher caste into the lower, and, on the other hand, the freer men of the lower caste obtain access to the higher, a condition of things would be attained beyond which one can only perceive the open sea of vague wishes. Thus speaks to us the vanishing voice of the olden time; but where are there still ears to hear it? 440. Of Good Blood.—That which men and women of good blood possess much more than others, and which gives them an undoubted right to be more highly appreciated, are two arts which are always increased by inheritance: the art of being able to command, and the art of proud obedience. Now wherever commanding is the business of the day (as in the great world of commerce and industry), there results something similar to these families of good blood, only the noble bearing in obedience is lacking which is an inheritance from feudal conditions and hardly grows any longer in the climate of our culture. 441. Subordination.—The subordination which is so highly valued in military and official ranks will soon become as incredible to us as the secret tactics of the Jesuits have already become; and when this subordination is no longer possible a multitude of astonishing results will no longer be attained, and the world will be all the poorer. It must disappear, for its foundation is disappearing, the belief in unconditional authority, in ultimate truth; even in military ranks physical compulsion is not sufficient to produce it, but only the inherited adoration of the princely as of something superhuman. In freer circumstances people subordinate themselves only on conditions, in compliance with a mutual contract, consequently with all the provisos of self-interest. 442. The National Army.—The greatest disadvantage of the national army, now so much glorified, lies in the squandering of men of the highest civilization; it is only by the favorableness of all circumstances that there are such men at all; how carefully and anxiously should we deal with them, since long periods are required to create the chance conditions for the production of such delicately organized brains! But as the Greeks wallowed in the blood of Greeks, so do Europeans now in the blood of Europeans: and indeed, taken relatively, it is mostly the highly cultivated who are sacrificed, those who promise an abundant and excellent posterity; for such stand in the front of the battle as commanders, and also expose themselves to most danger, by reason of their higher ambition. At present, when quite other and higher tasks are assigned than patria and honor, the rough Roman patriotism is either something dishonorable or a sign of being behind the times. 443. Hope as Presumption.—Our social order will slowly melt away, as all former orders have done, as soon as the suns of new opinions have shone upon mankind with a new glow. We can only wish this melting away in the hope thereof, and we are only reasonably entitled to hope when we believe that we and our equals have more strength in heart and head than the representatives of the existing state of things. As a rule, therefore, this hope will be a presumption, an over-estimation. 444. War.—Against war it may be said that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished revengeful. In favor of war it may be said that it barbarizes in both its above-named results, and thereby makes more natural; it is the sleep or the winter period of culture; man emerges from it with greater strength for good and for evil.
445. In the Prince’s Service.—To be able to act quite regardlessly it is best for a statesman to carry out his work not for himself but for a prince. The eye of the spectator is dazzled by the splendor of this general disinterestedness, so that it does not see the malignancy and severity which the work of a statesman brings with it. [17] [17] This aphorism may have been suggested by Nietzsche’s observing the behavior of his great contemporary, Bismarck, towards the dynasty.—J. M. K, 446. A Question of Power, Not of Right.—As regards Socialism, in the eyes of those who always consider higher utility, if it is really a rising against their oppressors of those who for centuries have been oppressed and downtrodden, there is no problem of right involved (notwithstanding the ridiculous, effeminate question,” How far ought we to grant its demands?”) but only a problem of power (“ How far can we make use of its demands?”); the same, therefore, as in the case of a natural force,—steam, for instance,—which is either forced by man into his service, as a machine-god, or which, in case of defects of the machine, that is to say, defects of human calculation in its construction, destroys it and man together. In order to solve this question of power we must know how strong Socialism is, in what modification it may yet be employed as a powerful lever in the present mechanism of political forces; under certain circumstances we should do all we can to strengthen it. With every great force—be it the most dangerous—men have to think how they can make of it an instrument for their purposes. Socialism acquires a right only if war seems to have taken place between the two powers, the representatives of the old and the new, when, however, a wise calculation of the greatest possible preservation and advantageousness to both sides gives rise to a desire for a treaty. Without treaty no right. So far, however, there is neither war nor treaty on the ground in question, therefore no rights, no “ ought.” 447. Utilizing the Most Trivial Dishonesty.—The power of the press consists in the fact that every individual who ministers to it only feels himself bound and constrained to a very small extent. He usually expresses his opinion, but sometimes also does not express it in order to serve his party or the politics of his country, or even himself. Such little faults of dishonesty, or perhaps only of a dishonest silence, are not hard to bear by the individual, but the consequences are extraordinary, because these little faults are committed by many at the same time. Each one says to himself: “ For such small concessions I live better and can make my income; by the want of such little compliances I make myself impossible.” Because it seems almost morally indifferent to write a line more (perhaps even without signature), or not to write it, a person who has money and influence can make any opinion a public one. He who knows that most people are weak in trifles, and wishes to attain his own ends thereby, is always dangerous. 448. Too Loud a Tone in Grievances.—Through the fact that an account of a bad state of things (for instance, the crimes of an administration, bribery and arbitrary favor in political or learned bodies) is greatly exaggerated, it fails in its effect on intelligent people, but has all the greater effect on the unintelligent (who would have remained indifferent to an accurate and moderate account). But as these latter are considerably in the majority, and harbor in themselves stronger will-power and more impatient desire for action, the exaggeration becomes the cause of investigations, punishments, promises, and reorganizations. In so far it is useful to exaggerate the accounts of bad states of things. 449. The Apparent Weather-Makers of Politics.—Just as people tacitly assume that he who understands the weather, and foretells it about a day in advance, makes the weather, so even the educated and learned, with a display of superstitious faith, ascribe to great statesmen as their most special work all the important changes and conjunctures that have taken place during their administration, when it is only evident that they knew something thereof a little earlier than other people and made their calculations accordingly,—thus they are also looked upon as weather-makers—and this belief is not the least important instrument of their power. 450. New and Old Conceptions of Government.—To draw such a distinction between Government and people as if two separate spheres of power, a stronger and higher, and a weaker and lower, negotiated and came to terms with each other, is a remnant of transmitted political sentiment, which still accurately represents the historic establishment of the conditions of power in most States. When Bismarck, for instance, describes the constitutional system as a compromise between Government and people, he speaks in accordance with a principle which has its reason in history (from whence, to be sure, it also derives its admixture of folly, without which nothing human can exist). On the other hand, we must now learn—in accordance with a principle which has originated only in the brain and has still to make history—that Government is nothing but an organ of the people,—not an attentive, honorable “ higher” in relation to a “ lower” accustomed to modesty. Before we accept this hitherto unhistorical and arbitrary, although logical, formulation of the conception of Government, let us but consider its consequences, for the relation between people and Government is the strongest typical relation, after the pattern of which the relationship between teacher and pupil, master and servants, father and family, leader and soldier, master and apprentice, is unconsciously formed. At present, under the influence of the prevailing constitutional system of government, all these relationships are changing a little,—they are becoming compromises. But how they will have to be reversed and shifted, and change name and nature, when that newest of all conceptions has got the upper hand everywhere in people’s minds!—to achieve which, however, a century may yet be required. In this matter there is nothing further to be wished for except caution and slow development. 451. Justice as the Decoy-Cry of Parties.—Well may noble (if not exactly very intelligent) representatives of the governing classes asseverate: “ We will treat men equally and grant
them equal rights”; so far a socialistic mode of thought which is based on justice is possible; but, as has been said, only within the ranks of the governing class, which in this case practices justice with sacrifices and abnegations. On the other hand, to demand equality of rights, as do the Socialists of the subject caste, is by no means the outcome of justice, but of covetousness. If you expose bloody pieces of flesh to a beast, and withdraw them again, until it finally begins to roar, do you think that roaring implies justice? 452. Possession and Justice.—When the Socialists point out that the division of property at the present day is the consequence of countless deeds of injustice and violence, and, in summa, repudiate obligation to anything with so unrighteous a basis, they only perceive something isolated. The entire past of ancient civilization is built up on violence, slavery, deception, and error; we, however, cannot annul ourselves, the heirs of all these conditions, nay, the concrescences of all this past, and are not entitled to demand the withdrawal of a single fragment thereof. The unjust disposition lurks also in the souls of non-possessors; they are not better than the possessors and have no moral prerogative; for at one time or another their ancestors have been possessors. Not forcible new distributions, but gradual transformations of opinion are necessary; justice in all matters must become greater, the instinct of violence weaker. 453. The Helmsman of the Passions.—The statesman excites public passions in order to have the advantage of the counter-passions thereby aroused. To give an example: a German statesman knows quite well that the Catholic Church will never have the same plans as Russia; indeed, that it would far rather be allied with the Turks than with the former country; he likewise knows that Germany is threatened with great danger from an alliance between France and Russia. If he can succeed, therefore, in making France the focus and fortress of the Catholic Church, he has averted this danger for a lengthy period. He has, accordingly, an interest in showing hatred against the Catholics in transforming, by all kinds of hostility, the supporters of the Pope’s authority into an impassioned political power which is opposed to German politics, and must, as a matter of course, coalesce with France as the adversary of Germany; his aim is the catholicizing of France, just as necessarily as Mirabeau saw the salvation of his native land in de-catholicizing it. The one State, therefore, desires to muddle millions of minds of another State in order to gain advantage thereby. It is the same disposition which supports the republican form of government of a neighboring State—le désordre organisé, as Mérimée says—for the sole reason that it assumes that this form of government makes the nation weaker, more distracted, less fit for war. 454. The Dangerous Revolutionary Spirits.—Those who are bent on revolutionizing society may be divided into those who seek something for themselves thereby and those who seek something for their children and grandchildren. The latter are the more dangerous, for they have the belief and the good conscience of disinterestedness. The others can be appeased by favors: those in power are still sufficiently rich and wise to adopt that expedient. The danger begins as soon as the aims become impersonal; revolutionists seeking impersonal interests may consider all defenders of the present state of things as personally interested, and may therefore feel themselves superior to their opponents. 455. The Political Value of Paternity.—When a man has no sons he has not a full right to join in a discussion concerning the needs of a particular community. A person must himself have staked his dearest object along with the others: that alone binds him fast to the State; he must have in view the well-being of his descendants, and must, therefore, above all, have descendants in order to take a right and natural share in all institutions and the changes thereof. The development of higher morality depends on a person’s having sons; it disposes him to be unegoistic, or, more correctly, it extends his egoism in its duration and permits him earnestly to strive after goals which lie beyond his individual lifetime. 456. Pride of Descent.—A man may be justly proud of an unbroken line of good ancestors down to his father,—not however of the line itself, for everyone has that. Descent from good ancestors constitutes the real nobility of birth; a single break in the chain, one bad ancestor, therefore, destroys the nobility of birth. Everyone who talks about his nobility should be asked: “ Have you no violent, avaricious, dissolute, wicked, cruel man amongst your ancestors?” If with good cognizance and conscience he can answer No, then let his friendship be sought. 457. Slaves and Laborers.—The fact that we regard the gratification of vanity as of more account than all other forms of well-being (security, position, and pleasures of all sorts), is shown to a ludicrous extent by everyone wishing for the abolition of slavery and utterly abhorring to put anyone into this position (apart altogether from political reasons), while everyone must acknowledge to himself that in all respects slaves live more securely and more happily than modern laborers, and that slave labor is very easy labor compared with that of the “ laborer.” We protest in the name of the “ dignity of man”; but, expressed more simply, that is just our darling vanity which feels non-equality, and inferiority in public estimation, to be the hardest lot of all. The cynic thinks differently concerning the matter, because he despises honor:—and so Diogenes for some time a slave and tutor. 458. Leading Minds and their Instruments.—We see that great statesmen, and in general all who have to employ many people to carry out their plans, sometimes proceed one way and sometimes another; they either choose with great skill and care the people suitable for their plans, and then leave them a comparatively large amount of liberty, because they know that the nature of the persons selected impels them precisely to the point where they themselves would have them go; or else they choose badly, in fact take whatever comes to hand, but out of every piece of clay they form something useful for their purpose. These latter minds are the more high-handed; they also desire more submissive instruments; their knowledge of
mankind is usually much smaller, their contempt of mankind greater than in the case of the first mentioned class, but the machines they construct generally work better than the machines from the workshops of the former. 459. Arbitrary Law Necessary.—Jurists dispute whether the most perfectly thought-out law or that which is most easily understood should prevail in a nation. The former, the best model of which is Roman Law, seems incomprehensible to the layman, and is therefore not the expression of his sense of justice. Popular laws, the Germanic, for instance, have been rude, superstitious, illogical, and in part idiotic, but they represented very definite, inherited national morals and sentiments. But where, as with us, law is no longer custom, it can only command and be compulsion; none of us any longer possesses a traditional sense of justice; we must therefore content ourselves with arbitrary laws, which are the expressions of the necessity that there must be law. The most logical is then in any case the most acceptable, because it is the most impartial, granting even that in every case the smallest unit of measure in the relation of crime and punishment is arbitrarily fixed. 460. The Great Man of the Masses.—The recipe for what the masses call a great man is easily given. In all circumstances let a person provide them with something very pleasant, or first let him put it into their heads that this or that would be very pleasant, and then let him give it to them. On no account give it immediately, however: but let him acquire it by the greatest exertions, or seem thus to acquire it. The masses must have the impression that there is a powerful, nay indomitable strength of will operating; at least it must seem to be there operating. Everybody admires a strong will, because nobody possesses it, and everybody says to himself that if he did possess it there would no longer be any bounds for him and his egoism. If, then, it becomes evident that such a strong will effects something very agreeable to the masses, instead of hearkening to the wishes of covetousness, people admire once more, and wish good luck to themselves. Moreover, if he has all the qualities of the masses, they are the less ashamed before him, and he is all the more popular. Consequently, he may be violent, envious, rapacious, intriguing, flattering, fawning, inflated, and, according to circumstances, anything whatsoever. 461. Prince and God.—People frequently commune with their princes in the same way as with their God, as indeed the prince himself was frequently the Deity’s representative, or at least His high priest. This almost uncanny disposition of veneration, disquiet, and shame, grew, and has grown, much weaker, but occasionally it flares up again, and fastens upon powerful persons generally. The cult of genius is an echo of this veneration of Gods and Princes. Wherever an effort is made to exalt particular men to the superhuman, there is also a tendency to regard whole grades of the population as coarser and baser than they really are. 462. My Utopia.—In a better arranged society the heavy work and trouble of life will be assigned to those who suffer least through it, to the most obtuse, therefore; and so step by step up to those who are most sensitive to the highest and sublimest kinds of suffering, and who therefore still suffer notwithstanding the greatest alleviations of life. 463. A Delusion in Subversive Doctrines.—There are political and social dreamers who ardently and eloquently call for the overthrow of all order, in the belief that the proudest fane of beautiful humanity will then rear itself immediately, almost of its own accord. In these dangerous dreams there is still an echo of Rousseau’s superstition, which believes in a marvelous primordial goodness of human nature, buried up, as it were; and lays all the blame of that burying-up on the institutions of civilization, on society, State, and education. Unfortunately, it is well known by historical experiences that every such overthrow reawakens into new life the wildest energies, the long-buried horrors and extravagances of remotest ages; that an overthrow, therefore, may possibly be a source of strength to a deteriorated humanity, but never a regulator, architect, artist, or perfecter of human nature. It was not Voltaire’s moderate nature, inclined towards regulating, purifying, and reconstructing, but Rousseau’s passionate follies and half-lies that aroused the optimistic spirit of the Revolution, against which I cry, “ Ecrasez l’infame!” Owing to this the Spirit of enlightenment and progressive development has been long scared away; let us see—each of us individually—if it is not possible to recall it! 464. Moderation.—When perfect resoluteness in thinking and investigating, that is to say, freedom of spirit, has become a feature of character, it produces moderation of conduct; for it weakens avidity, attracts much extant energy for the furtherance of intellectual aims, and shows the semi-usefulness, or uselessness and danger, of all sudden changes. 465. The Resurrection of the Spirit.—A nation usually renews its youth on a political sick-bed, and there finds again the spirit which it had gradually lost in seeking and maintaining power. Culture is indebted most of all to politically weakened periods 466. New Opinions In The Old Home.—The overthrow of opinions is not immediately followed by the overthrow of institutions; on the contrary, the new opinions dwell for a long time in the desolate and haunted house of their predecessors, and conserve it even for want of a habitation. 467. Public Education.—In large States public education will always be extremely mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is at best only mediocre.
468. Innocent Corruption.—In all institutions into which the sharp breeze of public criticism does not penetrate an innocent corruption grows up like a fungus (for instance, in learned bodies and senates). 469. Scholars as Politicians.—To scholars who become politicians the comic rôle is usually assigned; they have to be the good conscience of a state policy. 470. The Wolf Hidden Behind the Sheep.—Almost every politician, in certain circumstances, has such need of an honest man that he breaks into the sheep-fold like a famished wolf; not, however, to devour a stolen sheep, but to hide himself behind its woolly back. 471. Happy Times.—A happy age is no longer possible, because men only wish for it but do not desire to have it; and each individual, when good days come for him, learns positively to pray for disquiet and misery. The destiny of mankind is arranged for happy moments—every life has such—but not for happy times. Nevertheless, such times will continue to exist in man’s imagination as “ over the hills and far away,” an heirloom of his earliest ancestors; for the idea of the happy age, from the earliest times to the present, has no doubt been derived from the state in which man, after violent exertions in hunting and warfare, gives himself over to repose, stretches out his limbs, and hears the wings of sleep rustle around him. It is a false conclusion when, in accordance with that old habit, man imagines that after whole periods of distress and trouble he will be able also to enjoy the state of happiness in proportionate increase and duration. 472. Religion and Government.—So long as the State, or, more properly, the Government, regards itself as the appointed guardian of a number of minors, and on their account considers the question whether religion should be preserved or abolished, it is highly probable that it will always decide for the preservation thereof. For religion satisfies the nature of the individual in times of loss, destitution, terror, and distrust, in cases, therefore, where the Government feels itself incapable of doing anything directly for the mitigation of the spiritual sufferings of the individual; indeed, even in general unavoidable and next to inevitable evils (famines, financial crises, and wars) religion gives to the masses an attitude of tranquility and confiding expectancy. Whenever the necessary or accidental deficiencies of the State Government, or the dangerous consequences of dynastic interests, strike the eyes of the intelligent and make them refractory, the unintelligent will only think they see the finger of God therein and will submit with patience to the dispensations from on high (a conception in which divine and human modes of government usually coalesce); thus internal civil peace and continuity of development will be preserved. The power, which lies in the unity of popular feeling, in the existence of the same opinions and aims for all, is protected and confirmed by religion,—the rare cases excepted in which a priesthood cannot agree with the State about the price, and therefore comes into conflict with it. As a rule the State will know how to win over the priests, because it needs their most private and secret system for educating souls, and knows how to value servants who apparently, and outwardly, represent quite other interests. Even at present no power can become “ legitimate” without the assistance of the priests; a fact which Napoleon understood. Thus, absolutely paternal government and the careful preservation of religion necessarily go hand-in-hand. In this connection it must be taken for granted that the rulers and governing classes are enlightened concerning the advantages which religion affords, and consequently feel themselves to a certain extent superior to it, inasmuch as they use it as a means; thus freedom of spirit has its origin here. But how will it be when the totally different interpretation of the idea of Government, such as is taught in democratic States, begins to prevail? When one sees in it nothing but the instrument of the popular will, no “ upper” in contrast to an “ under,” but merely a function of the sole sovereign, the people? Here also only the same attitude which the people assume towards religion can be assumed by the Government; every diffusion of enlightenment will have to find an echo even in the representatives, and the utilizing and exploiting of religious impulses and consolations for State purposes will not be so easy (unless powerful party leaders occasionally exercise an influence resembling that of enlightened despotism). When, however, the State is not permitted to derive any further advantage from religion, or when people think far too variously on religious matters to allow the State to adopt a consistent and uniform procedure with respect to them, the way out of the difficulty will necessarily present itself, namely to treat religion as a private affair and leave it to the conscience and custom of each single individual. The first result of all is that religious feeling seems to be strengthened, inasmuch as hidden and suppressed impulses thereof, which the State had unintentionally or intentionally stifled, now break forth and rush to extremes; later on, however, it is found that religion is overgrown with sects, and that an abundance of dragon’s teeth were sown as soon as religion was made a private affair. The spectacle of strife, and the hostile laying bare of all the weaknesses of religious confessions, admit finally of no other expedient except that every better and more talented person should make irreligiousness his private affair, a sentiment which now obtains the upper hand even in the minds of the governing classes, and, almost against their will, gives an anti-religious character to their measures. As soon as this happens, the sentiment of persons still religiously disposed, who formerly adored the State as something half sacred or wholly sacred, changes into decided hostility to the State; they lie in wait for governmental measures, seeking to hinder, thwart, and disturb as much as they can, and, by the fury of their contradiction, drive the opposing parties, the irreligious ones, into an almost fanatical enthusiasm for the State; in connection with which there is also the silently co-operating influence, that since their separation from religion the hearts of persons in these circles are conscious of a void, and seek by devotion to the State to provide themselves provisionally with a substitute for religion, a kind of stuffing for the void. After these perhaps lengthy transitional struggles, it is finally decided whether the religious parties are still strong enough to revive an old condition of things, and turn the wheel backwards: in which case enlightened despotism (perhaps less enlightened and more timorous than formerly), inevitably gets
the State into its hands,—or whether the non-religious parties achieve their purpose, and, possibly through schools and education, check the increase of their opponents during several generations, and finally make them no longer possible. Then, however, their enthusiasm for the State also abates: it always becomes more obvious that along, with the religious adoration which regards the State as a mystery and a supernatural institution, the reverent and pious relation to it has also been convulsed. Henceforth individuals see only that side of the State which may be useful or injurious to them, and press forward by all means to obtain an influence over it. But this rivalry soon becomes too great; men and parties change too rapidly, and throw each other down again too furiously from the mountain when they have only just succeeded in getting aloft. All the measures which such a Government carries out lack the guarantee of permanence; people then fight shy of undertakings which would require the silent growth of future decades or centuries to produce ripe fruit. Nobody henceforth feels any other obligation to a law than to submit for the moment to the power which introduced the law; people immediately set to work, however, to undermine it by a new power, a newly-formed majority. Finally—it may be confidently asserted—the distrust of all government, the insight into the useless and harassing nature of these short-winded struggles, must drive men to an entirely new resolution: to the abrogation of the conception of the State and the abolition of the contrast of “ private and public.” Private concerns gradually absorb the business of the State; even the toughest residue which is left over from the old work of governing (the business, for instance, which is meant to protect private persons from private persons) will at last someday be managed by private enterprise. The neglect, decline, and death of the State, the liberation of the private person (I am careful not to say the individual), are the consequences of the democratic conception of the State; that is its mission. When it has accomplished its task,—which, like everything human, involves much rationality and irrationality,—and when all relapses into the old malady have been overcome, then a new leaf in the story-book of humanity will be unrolled, on which readers will find all kinds of strange tales and perhaps also some amount of good. To repeat shortly what has been said: the interests of the tutelary Government and the interests of religion go hand-in-hand, so that when the latter begins to decay the foundations of the State are also shaken. The belief in a divine regulation of political affairs, in a mystery in the existence of the State, is of religious origin: if religion disappears, the State will inevitably lose its old veil of Isis, and will no longer arouse veneration. The sovereignty of the people, looked at closely, serves also to dispel the final fascination and superstition in the realm of these sentiments; modern democracy is the historical form of the decay of the State. The outlook which results from this certain decay is not, however, unfortunate in every respect; the wisdom and the selfishness of men are the best developed of all their qualities; when the State no longer meets the demands of these impulses, chaos will least of all result, but a still more appropriate expedient than the State will get the mastery over the State. How many organizing forces have already been seen to die out! For example, that of the gens or clan which for millennia was far mightier than the power of the family, and indeed already ruled and regulated long before the latter existed. We ourselves see the important notions of the right and might of the family, which once possessed the supremacy as far as the Roman system extended, always becoming paler and feebler. In the same way a later generation will also see the State become meaningless in certain parts of the world,—an idea which many contemporaries can hardly contemplate without alarm and horror. To labor for the propagation and realization of this idea is, certainly, another thing; one must think very presumptuously of one’s reason, and only half understand history, to set one’s hand to the plough at present—when as yet no one can show us the seeds that are afterwards to be sown upon the broken soil. Let us, therefore, trust to the “ wisdom and selfishness of men” that the State may yet exist a good while longer, and that the destructive attempts of overzealous, too hasty sciolists may be in vain! 473. Socialism, With Regard to its Means.—Socialism is the fantastic younger brother of almost decrepit despotism, which it wants to succeed; its efforts are, therefore, in the deepest sense reactionary. For it desires such an amount of State power as only despotism has possessed,—indeed, it outdoes all the past, in that it aims at the complete annihilation of the individual, whom it deems an unauthorized luxury of nature, which is to be improved by it into an appropriate organ of the general community. Owing to its relationship, it always appears in proximity to excessive developments of power, like the old typical socialist, Plato, at the court of the Sicilian tyrant; it desires (and under certain circumstances furthers) the Cæsarian despotism of this century, because, as has been said, it would like to become its heir. But even this inheritance would not suffice for its objects, it requires the most submissive prostration of all citizens before the absolute State, such as has never yet been realized; and as it can no longer even count upon the old religious piety towards the State, but must rather strive involuntarily and continuously for the abolition thereof,—because it strives for the abolition of all existing States,—it can only hope for existence occasionally, here and there for short periods, by means of the extremest terrorism. It is therefore silently preparing itself for reigns of terror, and drives the word “ justice” like a nail into the heads of the half-cultured masses in order to deprive them completely of their understanding (after they had already suffered seriously from the half-culture), and to provide them with a good conscience for the bad game they are to play. Socialism may serve to teach, very brutally and impressively, the danger of all accumulations of State power, and may serve so far to inspire distrust of the State itself. When its rough voice strikes up the way-cry “ as much State as possible,” the shout at first becomes louder than ever,—but soon the opposition cry also breaks forth, with so much greater force: “ as little State as possible.” 474. The Development of the Mind Feared by the State.—The Greek polis was, like every organizing political power, exclusive and distrustful of the growth of culture; its powerful fundamental impulse seemed almost solely to have a paralyzing and obstructive effect thereon. It did not want to let any history or any becoming have a place in culture; the education laid down in the State laws was meant to be obligatory on all generations to keep them at one stage of development. Plato also, later on, did not desire it to be otherwise in his ideal State. In spite of the polis culture developed itself in this manner; indirectly to be sure, and against its will, the polis furnished assistance because the ambition of individuals therein was stimulated to the utmost, so that, having once found the path of intellectual development, they followed it to its farthest extremity. On the other hand, appeal should not be made
to the panegyric of Pericles, for it is only a great optimistic dream about the alleged necessary connection between the Polis and Athenian culture; immediately before the night fell over Athens (the plague and the breakdown of tradition), Thucydides makes this culture flash up once more like a transfiguring afterglow, to efface the remembrance of the evil day that had preceded. 475. European Man and the Destruction of Nationalities.—Commerce and industry, interchange of books and letters, the universality of all higher culture, the rapid changing of locality and landscape, and the present nomadic life of all who are not landowners,—these circumstances necessarily bring with them a weakening, and finally a destruction of nationalities, at least of European nationalities; so that, in consequence of perpetual crossings, there must arise out of them all a mixed race, that of the European man. At present the isolation of nations, through the rise of national enmities, consciously or unconsciously counteracts this tendency; but nevertheless the process of fusing advances slowly, in spite of those occasional counter-currents. This artificial nationalism is, however, as dangerous as was artificial Catholicism, for it is essentially an unnatural condition of extremity and martial law, which has been proclaimed by the few over the many, and requires artifice, lying, and force to maintain its reputation. It is not the interests of the many (of the peoples), as they probably say, but it is first of all the interests of certain princely dynasties, and then of certain commercial and social classes, which impel to this nationalism; once we have recognized this fact, we should just fearlessly style ourselves good Europeans and labor actively for the amalgamation of nations; in which efforts Germans may assist by virtue of their hereditary position as interpreters and intermediaries between nations. By the way, the great problem of the Jews only exists within the national States, inasmuch as their energy and higher intelligence, their intellectual and volitional capital, accumulated from generation to generation in tedious schools of suffering, must necessarily attain to universal supremacy here to an extent provocative of envy and hatred; so that the literary misconduct is becoming prevalent in almost all modern nations—and all the more so as they again set up to be national—of sacrificing the Jews as the scapegoats of all possible public and private abuses. So soon as it is no longer a question of the preservation or establishment of nations, but of the production and training of a European mixed-race of the greatest possible strength, the Jew is just as useful and desirable an ingredient as any other national remnant Every nation, every individual, has unpleasant and even dangerous qualities,—it is cruel to require that the Jew should be an exception. Those qualities may even be dangerous and frightful in a special degree in his case; and perhaps the young Stock-Exchange Jew is in general the most repulsive invention of the human species. Nevertheless, in a general summing up, I should like to know how much must be excused in a nation which, not without blame on the part of all of us, has had the most mournful history of all nations, and to which we owe the most loving of men (Christ), the most upright of sages (Spinoza), the mightiest book, and the most effective moral law in the world? Moreover, in the darkest times of the Middle Ages, when Asiatic clouds had gathered darkly over Europe, it was Jewish free-thinkers, scholars, and physicians who upheld the banner of enlightenment and of intellectual independence under the severest personal sufferings, and defended Europe against Asia; we owe it not least to their efforts that a more natural, more reasonable, at all events unmythical, explanation of the world was finally able to get the upper hand once more, and that the link of culture which now unites us with the enlightenment of Greco-Roman antiquity has remained unbroken. If Christianity has done everything to orientalize the Occident, Judaism has assisted essentially in occidentalizing it anew; which, in a certain sense, is equivalent to making Europe’s mission and history a continuation of that of Greece. 476. Apparent Superiority of the Middle Ages.—The Middle Ages present in the Church an institution with an absolutely universal aim, involving the whole of humanity,—an aim, moreover, which—presumedly—concerned man’s highest interests; in comparison therewith the aims of the States and nations which modern history exhibits make a painful impression; they seem petty, base, material, and restricted in extent. But this different impression on our imagination should certainly not determine our judgment; for that universal institution corresponded to feigned and fictitiously fostered needs, such as the need of salvation, which, wherever they did not already exist, it had first of all to create: the new institutions, however, relieve actual distresses; and the time is coming when institutions will arise to minister to the common, genuine needs of all men, and to cast that fantastic prototype, the Catholic Church, into shade and oblivion. 477. War Indispensable.—It is nothing but fanaticism and beautiful soulism to expect very much (or even, much only) from humanity when it has forgotten how to wage war. For the present we know of no other means whereby the rough energy of the camp, the deep impersonal hatred, the cold-bloodedness of murder with a good conscience, the general ardor of the system in the destruction of the enemy, the proud indifference to great losses, to one’s own existence and that of one’s friends, the hollow, earthquake-like convulsion of the soul, can be as forcibly and certainly communicated to enervated nations as is done by every great war: owing to the brooks and streams that here break forth, which, certainly, sweep stones and rubbish of all sorts along with them and destroy the meadows of delicate cultures, the mechanism in the workshops of the mind is afterwards, in favorable circumstances, rotated by new power. Culture can by no means dispense with passions, vices, and malignities. When the Romans, after having become Imperial, had grown rather tired of war, they attempted to gain new strength by beast-baitings, gladiatorial combats, and Christian persecutions. The English of today, who appear on the whole to have also renounced war, adopt other means in order to generate anew those vanishing forces; namely, the dangerous exploring expeditions, sea voyages and mountaineerings, nominally undertaken for scientific purposes, but in reality to bring home surplus strength from adventures and dangers of all kinds. Many other such substitutes for war will be discovered, but perhaps precisely thereby it will become more and more obvious that such a highly cultivated and therefore necessarily enfeebled humanity as that of modern Europe not only needs wars, but the greatest and most terrible wars,—consequently occasional relapses into barbarism,—lest, by the means of culture, it should lose its culture and its very existence.
478. Industry in the South and the North.—Industry arises in two entirely different ways. The artisans of the South are not industrious because of acquisitiveness but because of the constant needs of others. The smith is industrious because someone is always coming who wants a horse shod or a carriage mended. If nobody came he would loiter about in the market-place. In a fruitful land he has little trouble in supporting himself, for that purpose he requires only a very small amount of work, certainly no industry; eventually he would beg and be contented. The industry of English workmen, on the contrary, has acquisitiveness behind it; it is conscious of itself and its aims; with property it wants power, and with power the greatest possible liberty and individual distinction. 479. Wealth as the Origin of a Nobility of Race.—Wealth necessarily creates an aristocracy of race, for it permits the choice of the most beautiful women and the engagement of the best teachers; it allows a man cleanliness, time for physical exercises, and, above all, immunity from dulling physical labor. So far it provides all the conditions for making man, after a few generations, move and even act nobly and handsomely: greater freedom of character and absence of niggardliness, of wretchedly petty matters, and of abasement before bread-givers. It is precisely these negative qualities which are the most profitable birthday gift, that of happiness, for the young man; a person who is quite poor usually comes to grief through nobility of disposition, he does not get on, and acquires nothing, his race is not capable of living. In this connection, however, it must be remembered that wealth produces almost the same effects whether one have three hundred or thirty thousand thalers a year; there is no further essential progression of the favorable conditions afterwards. But to have less, to beg in boyhood and to abase one’s self is terrible, although it may be the proper starting-point for such as seek their happiness in the splendor of courts, in subordination to the mighty and influential, or for such as wish to be heads of the Church. (It teaches how to slink crouching into the underground passages to favor.) 480. Envy and Inertia in Different Courses.—The two opposing parties, the socialist and the national,—or whatever they may be called in the different countries of Europe,—are worthy of each other; envy and laziness are the motive powers in each of them. In the one camp they desire to work as little as possible with their hands, in the other as little as possible with their heads; in the latter they hate and envy prominent, self-evolving individuals, who do not willingly allow themselves to be drawn up in rank and file for the purpose of a collective effect; in the former they hate and envy the better social caste, which is more favorably circumstanced outwardly, whose peculiar mission, the production of the highest blessings of culture, makes life inwardly all the harder and more painful. Certainly, if it be possible to make the spirit of the collective effect the spirit of the higher classes of society, the socialist crowds are quite right, when they also seek outward equalization between themselves and these classes, since they are certainly internally equalized with one another already in head and heart. Live as higher men, and always do the deeds of higher culture,—thus everything that lives will acknowledge your right, and the order of society, whose summit ye are, will be safe from every evil glance and attack! 481. High Politics and their Detriments.—Just as a nation does not suffer the greatest losses that war and readiness for war involve through the expenses of the war, or the stoppage of trade and traffic, or through the maintenance of a standing army,—however great these losses may now be, when eight European States expend yearly the sum of five milliards of marks thereon,—but owing to the fact that year after year its ablest, strongest, and most industrious men are withdrawn in extraordinary numbers from their proper occupations and callings to be turned into soldiers: in the same way, a nation that sets about practicing high politics and securing a decisive voice among the great Powers does not suffer its greatest losses where they are usually supposed to be. In fact, from this time onward it constantly sacrifices a number of its most conspicuous talents upon the “ Altar of the Fatherland” or of national ambition, whilst formerly other spheres of activity were open to those talents which are now swallowed up by politics. But apart from these public hecatombs, and in reality much more horrible, there is a drama which is constantly being performed simultaneously in a hundred thousand acts; every able, industrious, intellectually striving man of a nation that thus covets political laurels, is swayed by this covetousness, and no longer belongs entirely to himself alone as he did formerly; the new daily questions and cares of the public welfare devour a daily tribute of the intellectual and emotional capital of every citizen; the sum of all these sacrifices and losses of individual energy and labor is so enormous, that the political growth of a nation almost necessarily entails an intellectual impoverishment and lassitude, a diminished capacity for the performance of works that require great concentration and specialization. The question may finally be asked: “ Does it then pay, all this bloom and magnificence of the total (which indeed only manifests itself as the fear of the new Colossus in other nations, and as the compulsory favoring by them of national trade and commerce) when all the nobler, finer, and more intellectual plants and products, in which its soil was hitherto so rich, must be sacrificed to this coarse and opalescent flower of the nation?” [18] [18] This is once more an allusion to modern Germany.—J M. K. 482. Repeated Once More.—Public opinion—private laziness. NINTH DIVISION. MAN ALONE BY HIMSELF. 483. The Enemies of Truth.—Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. 484. A Topsy-Turvy World.—We criticize a thinker more severely when he puts an unpleasant statement before us; and yet it would be more reasonable to do so when we find his
statement pleasant. 485. Decided Character.—A man far oftener appears to have a decided character from persistently following his temperament than from persistently following his principles. 486. The One Thing Needful.—One thing a man must have: either a naturally light disposition or a disposition lightened by art and knowledge. 487. The Passion for Things.—Whoever sets his passion on things (sciences, arts, the common weal, the interests of culture) withdraws much fervor from his passion for persons (even when they are the representatives of those things; as statesmen, philosophers, and artists are the representatives of their creations). 488. Calmness in Action.—As a cascade in its descent becomes more deliberate and suspended, so the great man of action usually acts with more calmness than his strong passions previous to action would lead one to expect. 489. Not too Deep.—Persons who grasp a matter in all its depth seldom remain permanently true to it. They have just brought the depth up into the light, and there is always much evil to be seen there. 490. The Illusion of Idealists.—All idealists imagine that the cause which they serve is essentially better than all other causes, and will not believe that if their cause is really to flourish it requires precisely the same evil-smelling manure which all other human undertakings have need of. 491. Self-Observation.—Man is exceedingly well protected from himself and guarded against his self-exploring and self-besieging; as a rule he can perceive nothing of himself but his outworks. The actual fortress is inaccessible, and even invisible, to him, unless friends and enemies become traitors and lead him inside by secret paths. 492. The Right Calling.—Men can seldom hold on to a calling unless they believe or persuade themselves that it is really more important than any other. Women are the same with their lovers. 493. Nobility of Disposition.—Nobility of disposition consists largely in good-nature and absence of distrust, and therefore contains precisely that upon which money-grabbing and successful men take a pleasure in walking with superiority and scorn. 494. Goal and Path.—Many are obstinate with regard to the once-chosen path, few with regard to the goal. 495. The Offensiveness in an Individual Way of Life.—All specially individual lines of conduct excite irritation against him who adopts them; people feel themselves reduced to the level of commonplace creatures by the extraordinary treatment he bestows on himself. 496. The Privilege of Greatness.—It is the privilege of greatness to confer intense happiness with insignificant gifts. 497. Unintentionally Noble.—A person behaves with unintentional nobleness when he has accustomed himself to seek naught from others and always to give to them. 498. A Condition of Heroism.—When a person wishes to become a hero, the serpent must previously have become a dragon, otherwise he lacks his proper enemy. 499. Friends.—Fellowship in joy, and not sympathy in sorrow, makes people friends. 500. Making use of Ebb and Flow.—For the purpose of knowledge we must know how to make use of the inward current which draws us towards a thing, and also of the current which after a time draws us away from it. 501. Joy in Itself.—“ Joy in the Thing” people say; but in reality it is joy in itself by means of the thing. 502.
The Unassuming Man.—He who is unassuming towards persons manifests his presumption all the more with regard to things (town, State, society, time, humanity). That is his revenge. 503. Envy and Jealousy.—Envy and jealousy are the pudenda of the human soul. The comparison may perhaps be carried further. 504. The Noblest Hypocrite.—It is a very noble hypocrisy not to talk of one’s self at all. 505. Vexation.—Vexation is a physical disease, which is not by any means cured when its cause is subsequently removed. 506. The Champions of Truth.—Truth does not find fewest champions when it is dangerous to speak it, but when it is dull. 507. More Troublesome even than Enemies.—Persons of whose sympathetic attitude we are not, in all circumstances, convinced, while for some reason or other (gratitude, for instance) we are obliged to maintain the appearance of unqualified sympathy with them, trouble our imagination far more than our enemies do. 508. Free Nature.—We are so fond of being out among Nature, because it has no opinions about us. 509. Each Superior in One Thing.—In civilized intercourse everyone feels himself superior to all others in at least one thing; kindly feelings generally are based thereon, inasmuch as everyone can, in certain circumstances, render help, and is therefore entitled to accept help without shame. 510. Consolatory Arguments.—In the case of a death we mostly use consolatory arguments not so much to alleviate the grief as to make excuses for feeling so easily consoled. 511. Persons Loyal to their Convictions.—Whoever is very busy retains his general views and opinions almost unchanged. So also does everyone who labors in the service of an idea; he will nevermore examine the idea itself, he no longer has any time to do so; indeed, it is against his interests to consider it as still admitting of discussion. 512. Morality and Quantity.—The higher morality of one man as compared with that of another, often lies merely in the fact that his aims are quantitively greater. The other, living in a circumscribed sphere, is dragged down by petty occupations. 513. “ The Life” as the Proceeds of Life.—A man may stretch himself out ever so far with his knowledge; he may seem to himself ever so objective, but eventually he realizes nothing therefrom but his own biography. 514. Iron Necessity.—Iron necessity is a thing which has been found, in the course of history, to be neither iron nor necessary. 515. From Experience.—The unreasonableness of a thing is no argument against its existence, but rather a condition thereof. 516. Truth.—Nobody dies nowadays of fatal truths, there are too many antidotes to them. 517. A Fundamental Insight.—There is no pre-established harmony between the promotion of truth and the welfare of mankind. 518. Man’s Lot.—He who thinks most deeply knows that he is always in the wrong, however he may act and decide. 519. Truth as Circe.—Error has made animals into men; is truth perhaps capable of making man into an animal again? 520. The Danger of our Culture.—We belong to a period of which the culture is in danger of being destroyed by the appliances of culture. 521. Greatness Means Leading the Way.—No stream is large and copious of itself, but becomes great by receiving and leading on so many tributary streams. It is so, also, with all
intellectual greatnesses. It is only a question of someone indicating the direction to be followed by so many affluents; not whether he was richly or poorly gifted originally. 522. A Feeble Conscience.—People who talk about their importance to mankind have a feeble conscience for common bourgeois rectitude, keeping of contracts, promises, etc. 523. Desiring to be Loved.—The demand to be loved is the greatest of presumptions. 524. Contempt for Men.—The most unequivocal sign of contempt for man is to regard everybody merely as a means to one’s own ends, or of no account whatever. 525. Partisans Through Contradiction.—Whoever has driven men to fury against himself has also gained a party in his favor. 526. Forgetting Experiences.—Whoever thinks much and to good purpose easily forgets his own experiences, but not the thoughts which these experiences have called forth. 527. Sticking to an Opinion.—One person sticks to an opinion because he takes pride in having acquired it himself,—another sticks to it because he has learnt it with difficulty and is proud of having understood it; both of them, therefore, out of vanity. 528. Avoiding the Light.—Good deeds avoid the light just as anxiously as evil deeds; the latter fear that pain will result from publicity (as punishment), the former fear that pleasure will vanish with publicity (the pure pleasure per se, which ceases as soon as satisfaction of vanity is added to it). 529. The Length of the Day.—When one has much to put into them, a day has a hundred pockets. 530. The Genius of Tyranny.—When an invincible desire to obtain tyrannical power has been awakened in the soul, and constantly keeps up its fervor, even a very mediocre talent (in politicians, artists, etc.) gradually becomes an almost irresistible natural force. 531. The Enemy’s Life.—He who lives by fighting with an enemy has an interest in the preservation of the enemy’s life. [19] [19] This is why Nietzsche pointed out later on that he had an interest in the preservation of Christianity, and that he was sure his teaching would not undermine this faith—just as little as anarchists have undermined kings; but have left them seated all the more firmly on their thrones.—J. M. K. 532. More Important.—Unexplained, obscure matters are regarded as more important than explained, clear ones. 533. Valuation of Services Rendered.—We estimate services rendered to us according to the value set on them by those who render them, not according to the value they have for us. 534. Unhappiness.—The distinction associated with unhappiness (as if it were a sign of stupidity, unambitiousness, or commonplaceness to feel happy) is so great that when anyone says to us, “ How happy you are!” we usually protest. 535. Imagination in Anguish.—When one is afraid of anything, one’s imagination plays the part of that evil spirit which springs on one’s back just when one has the heaviest load to bear. 536. The Value of Insipid Opponents.—We sometimes remain faithful to a cause merely because its opponents never cease to be insipid. 537. The Value of a Profession.—A profession makes us thoughtless; that is its greatest blessing. For it is a bulwark behind which we are permitted to withdraw when commonplace doubts and cares assail us. 538. Talent.—Many a man’s talent appears less than it is, because he has always set himself too heavy tasks. 539. Youth.—Youth is an unpleasant period; for then it is not possible or not prudent to be productive in any sense whatsoever.
540. Too Great Aims.—Whoever aims publicly at great things and at length perceives secretly that he is too weak to achieve them, has usually also insufficient strength to renounce his aims publicly, and then inevitably becomes a hypocrite. 541. In the Current.—Mighty waters sweep many stones and shrubs away with them; mighty spirits many foolish and confused minds. 542. The Dangers of Intellectual Emancipation.—In a seriously intended intellectual emancipation a person’s mute passions and cravings also hope to find their advantage. 543. The Incarnation of the Mind.—When anyone thinks much and to good purpose, not only his face but also his body acquires a sage look. 544. Seeing Badly and Hearing Badly.—The man who sees little always sees less than there is to see; the man who hears badly always hears something more than there is to hear. 545. Self-Enjoyment in Vanity.—The vain man does not wish so much to be prominent as to feel himself prominent; he therefore disdains none of the expedients for self-deception and self-outwitting. It is not the opinion of others that he sets his heart on, but his opinion of their opinion 546. Exceptionally Vain.—He who is usually self-sufficient becomes exceptionally vain, and keenly alive to fame and praise when he is physically ill. The more he loses himself the more he has to endeavor to regain his position by means of the opinion of others. 547. The “ Witty.”—Those who seek wit do not possess it 548. A Hint to the Heads of Parties.—When one can make people publicly support a cause they have also generally been brought to the point of inwardly declaring themselves in its favor, because they wish to be regarded as consistent. 549. Contempt.—Man is more sensitive to the contempt of others than to self-contempt. 550. The Tie of Gratitude.—There are servile souls who carry so far their sense of obligation for benefits received that they strangle themselves with the tie of gratitude. 551. The Prophet’s Knack.—In predicting beforehand the procedure of ordinary individuals, it must be taken for granted that they always make use of the smallest intellectual expenditure in freeing themselves from disagreeable situations. 552. Man’s Sole Right.—He who swerves from the traditional is a victim of the unusual; he who keeps to the traditional is its slave. The man is ruined in either case. 553. Below the Beast.—When a man roars with laughter he surpasses all the animals by his vulgarity. 554. Partial Knowledge.—He who speaks a foreign language imperfectly has more enjoyment therein than he who speaks it well. The enjoyment is with the partially initiated. 555. Dangerous Helpfulness.—There are people who wish to make human life harder for no other reason than to be able afterwards to offer men their life-alleviating recipes—their Christianity, for example. 556. Industriousness and conscientiousness are often antagonists, owing to the fact that industriousness wants to pluck the fruit sour from the tree while conscientiousness wants to let it hang too long, until it falls and is bruised. 557. Casting Suspicion.—We endeavor to cast suspicion on persons whom we cannot endure. 558. The Conditions are Lacking.—Many people wait all their lives for the opportunity to be good in their own way.
559. Lack of Friends.—Lack of friends leads to the inference that a person is envious or presumptuous. Many a man owes, his friends merely to the fortunate circumstance that he has no occasion for envy. 560. Danger in Manifoldness.—With one talent more we often stand less firmly than with one less; just as a table stands better on three feet than on four. 561. An Exemplar for Others.—Whoever wants to set a good example must add a grain of folly to his virtue; people then imitate their exemplar and at the same time raise themselves above him, a thing they love to do. 562. Being a Target.—The bad things others say about us are often not really aimed at us, but are the manifestations of spite or ill-humor occasioned by quite different causes. 563. Easily Resigned.—We suffer but little on account of ungratified wishes if we have exercised our imagination in distorting the past. 564. In Danger.—One is in greatest danger of being run over when one has just got out of the way of a carriage. 565. The Rôle According to the Voice.—Whoever is obliged to speak louder than he naturally does (say, to a partially deaf person or before a large audience), usually exaggerates what he has to communicate. Many a one becomes a conspirator, malevolent gossip, or intriguer, merely because his voice is best suited for whispering. 566. Love and Hatred.—Love and hatred are not blind, but are dazzled by the fire which they carry about with them. 567. Advantageously Persecuted.—People who cannot make their merits perfectly obvious to the world endeavor to awaken a strong hostility against themselves. They have then the consolation of thinking that this hostility stands between their merits and the acknowledgment thereof—and that many others think the same thing, which is very advantageous for their recognition. 568. Confession.—We forget our fault when we have confessed it to another person, but he does not generally forget it. 569. Self-Sufficiency.—The Golden Fleece of self-sufficiency is a protection against blows, but not against needle-pricks. 570. Shadows in the Flame.—The flame is not so bright to itself as to those whom it illuminates,—so also the wise man. 571. Our Own Opinions.—The first opinion that occurs to us when we are suddenly asked about anything is not usually our own, but only the current opinion belonging to our caste, position, or family; our own opinions seldom float on the surface. 572. The Origin of Courage.—The ordinary man is as courageous and invulnerable as a hero when he does not see the danger, when he has no eyes for it. Reversely, the hero has his one vulnerable spot upon the back, where he has no eyes. 573. The Danger in the Physician.—One must be born for one’s physician, otherwise one comes to grief through him. 574. Marvelous Vanity.—Whoever has courageously prophesied the weather three times and has been successful in his hits, acquires a certain amount of inward confidence in his prophetic gift. We give credence to the marvelous and irrational when it flatters our self-esteem. 575. A Profession.—A profession is the backbone of life. 576. The Danger of Personal Influence.—Whoever feels that he exercises a great inward influence over another person must give him a perfectly free rein, must, in fact, welcome and even induce occasional opposition, otherwise he will inevitably make an enemy.
577. Recognition of the Heir.—Whoever has founded something great in an unselfish spirit is careful to rear heirs for his work. It is the sign of a tyrannical and ignoble nature to see opponents in all possible heirs, and to live in a state of self-defense against them. 578. Partial Knowledge.—Partial knowledge is more triumphant than complete knowledge; it takes things to be simpler than they are, and so makes its theory more popular and convincing. 579. Unsuitable for a Party-Man.—Whoever thinks much is unsuitable for a party-man; his thinking leads him too quickly beyond the party. 580. A Bad Memory.—The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time. 581. Self-Affliction.—Want of consideration is often the sign of a discordant inner nature, which craves for stupefaction. 582. Martyrs.—The disciples of a martyr suffer more than the martyr. 583. Arrears of Vanity.—The vanity of many people who have no occasion to be vain is the inveterate habit, still surviving from the time when people had no right to the belief in themselves and only begged it in small sums from others. 584. Punctum Saliens of Passion.—A person falling into a rage or into a violent passion of love reaches a point when the soul is full like a hogshead, but nevertheless a drop of water has still to be added, the good will for the passion (which is also generally called the evil will). This item only is necessary, and then the hogshead overflows. 585. A Gloomy Thought.—It is with men as with the charcoal fires in the forest. It is only when young men have cooled down and have got charred, like these piles, that they become useful. As long as they fume and smoke they are perhaps more interesting, but they are useless and too often uncomfortable. Humanity ruthlessly uses every individual as material for the heating of its great machines; but what then is the purpose of the machines, when all individuals (that is, the human race) are useful only to maintain them? Machines that are ends in themselves: is that the umana commedia? 586. The Hour-Hand of Life.—Life consists of rare single moments of the greatest importance, and of countless intervals during which, at best, the phantoms of those moments hover around us. Love, the Spring, every fine melody, the mountains, the moon, the sea—all speak but once fully to the heart, if, indeed, they ever do quite attain to speech. For many people have not those moments at all, and are themselves intervals and pauses in the symphony of actual life. 587. Attack or Compromise.—We often make the mistake of showing violent enmity towards a tendency, party, or period, because we happen only to get a sight of its most exposed side, its stuntedness, or the inevitable “ faults of its virtues,”—perhaps because we ourselves have taken a prominent part in them. We then turn our backs on them and seek a diametrically opposite course; but the better way would be to seek out their strong good sides, or to develop them in ourselves. To be sure, a keener glance and a better will are needed to improve the becoming and the imperfect than are required to see through it in its imperfection and to deny it. 588. Modesty.—There is true modesty (that is the knowledge that we are not the works we create); and it is especially becoming in a great mind, because such a mind can well grasp the thought of absolute irresponsibility (even for the good it creates). People do not hate a great man’s presumptuousness in so far as he feels his strength, but because he wishes to prove it by injuring others, by dominating them, and seeing how long they will stand it. This, as a rule, is even a proof of the absence of a secure sense of power, and makes people doubt his greatness. We must therefore beware of presumption from the standpoint of wisdom. 589. The Day’s First Thought.—The best way to begin a day well is to think, on awakening, whether we cannot give pleasure during the day to at least one person. If this could become a substitute for the religious habit of prayer our fellow-men would benefit by the change. 590. Presumption as the Last Consolation.—When we so interpret a misfortune, an intellectual defect, or a disease that we see therein our predestined fate, our trial, or the mysterious punishment of our former misdeeds, we thereby make our nature interesting and exalt ourselves in imagination above our fellows. The proud sinner is a well-known figure in all
religious sects. 591. The Vegetation of Happiness.—Close beside the world’s woe, and often upon its volcanic soil, man has laid out his little garden of happiness. Whether one regards life with the eyes of him who only seeks knowledge therefrom, or of him who submits and is resigned, or of him who rejoices over surmounted difficulties—everywhere one will find some happiness springing up beside the evil—and in fact always the more happiness the more volcanic the soil has been, only it would be absurd to say that suffering itself is justified by this happiness. 592. The Path of our Ancestors.—It is sensible when a person develops still further in himself the talent upon which his father or grandfather spent much trouble, and does not shift to something entirely new; otherwise he deprives himself of the possibility of attaining perfection in any one craft. That is why the proverb says, “ Which road shouldst thou ride?— That of thine ancestors.” 593. Vanity and Ambition as Educators.—As long as a person has not become an instrument of general utility, ambition may torment him; if, however, that point has been reached, if he necessarily works like a machine for the good of all, then vanity may result; it will humanize him in small matters and make him more sociable, endurable, and considerate, when ambition has completed the coarser work of making him useful. 594. Philosophical Novices.—Immediately we have comprehended the wisdom of a philosopher, we go through the streets with a feeling as if we had been recreated and had become great men; for we encounter only those who are ignorant of this wisdom, and have therefore to deliver new and unknown verdicts concerning everything. Because we now recognize a law-book we think we must also comport ourselves as judges. 595. Pleasing by Displeasing.—People who prefer to attract attention, and thereby to displease, desire the same thing as those who neither wish to please nor to attract attention, only they seek it more ardently and indirectly by means of a step by which they apparently move away from their goal. They desire influence and power, and therefore show their superiority, even to such an extent that it becomes disagreeable; for they know that he who has finally attained power pleases in almost all he says and does, and that even when he displeases he still seems to please. The free spirit also, and in like manner the believer, desire power, in order some day to please thereby; when, on account of their doctrine, evil fate, persecution, dungeon, or execution threaten them, they rejoice in the thought that their teaching will thus be engraved and branded on the heart of mankind; though its effect is remote they accept their fate as a painful but powerful means of still attaining to power. 596. Casus Belli and the Like.—The prince who, for his determination to make war against his neighbor, invents a casus belli, is like a father who foists on his child a mother who is hence forth to be regarded as such. And are not almost all publicly avowed motives of action just such spurious mothers? 597. Passion and Right.—Nobody talks more passionately of his rights than he who, in the depths of his soul, is doubtful about them. By getting passion on his side he seeks to confound his understanding and its doubts,—he thus obtains a good conscience, and along with it success with his fellow-men. 598. The Trick of the Resigning One.—He who protests against marriage, after the manner of Catholic priests, will conceive of it in its lowest and vulgarest form. In the same way he who disavows the honor of his contemporaries will have a mean opinion of it; he can thus dispense with it and struggle against it more easily. Moreover, he who denies himself much in great matters will readily indulge himself in small things. It might be possible that he who is superior to the approbation of his contemporaries would nevertheless not deny himself the gratification of small vanities. 599. The Years of Presumption.—The proper period of presumption in gifted people is between their twenty-sixth and thirtieth years; it is the time of early ripeness, with a large residue of sourness. On the ground of what we feel within ourselves we demand honor and humility from men who see little or nothing of it, and because this tribute is not immediately forthcoming we revenge ourselves by the look, the gesture of arrogance, and the tone of voice, which a keen ear and eye recognize in every product of those years, whether it be poetry, philosophy, or pictures and music. Older men of experience smile thereat, and think with emotion of those beautiful years in which one resents the fate of being so much and seeming so little. Later on one really seems more,—but one has lost the good belief in being much,—unless one remain for life an incorrigible fool of vanity. 600. Deceptive and yet Defensible.—Just as in order to pass by an abyss or to cross a deep stream on a plank we require a railing, not to hold fast by,—for it would instantly break down with us,—but to give the notion of security to the eye, so in youth we require persons who unconsciously render us the service of that railing. It is true they would not help us
if we really wished to lean upon them in great danger, but they afford the tranquillizing sensation of protection close to one (for instance, fathers, teachers, friends, as all three usually are). 601. Learning to Love.—One must learn to love, one must learn to be kind, and this from childhood onwards; when education and chance give us no opportunity for the exercise of these feelings our soul becomes dried up, and even incapable of understanding the fine devices of loving men. In the same way hatred must be learnt and fostered, when one wants to become a proficient hater,—otherwise the germ of it will gradually die out. 602. Ruin As Ornament.—Persons who pass through numerous mental phases retain certain sentiments and habits of their earlier states, which then project like a piece of inexplicable antiquity and grey stonework into their new thought and action, often to the embellishment of the whole surroundings. 603. Love and Honor.—Love desires, fear avoids. That is why one cannot be both loved and honored by the same person, at least not at the same time. [20] For he who honors recognizes power,—that is to say, he fears it, he is in a state of reverential fear (Ehr-furcht). But love recognizes no power, nothing that divides, detaches, superordinates, or subordinates. Because it does not honor them, ambitious people secretly or openly resent being loved. [20] Women never understand this.—J. M. K. 604. A Prejudice in Favor of Cold Natures.—People who quickly take fire grow cold quickly, and therefore are, on the whole, unreliable. For those, therefore, who are always cold, or pretend to be so, there is the favorable prejudice that they are particularly trustworthy, reliable persons; they are confounded with those who take fire slowly and retain it long. 605. The Danger In Free Opinions.—Frivolous occupation with free opinions has a charm, like a kind of itching; if one yields to it further, one begins to chafe the places; until at last an open, painful wound results; that is to say, until the free opinion begins to disturb and torment us in our position in life and in our human relations. 606. Desire for Sore Affliction.—When passion is over it leaves behind an obscure longing for it, and even in disappearing it casts a seductive glance at us. It must have afforded a kind of pleasure to have been beaten with this scourge. Compared with it, the more moderate sensations appear insipid; we still prefer, apparently, the more violent displeasure to languid delight. 607. Dissatisfaction with Others and with the World.—When, as so frequently happens, we vent our dissatisfaction on others when we are really dissatisfied with ourselves, we are in fact attempting to mystify and deceive our judgment; we desire to find a motive a posteriori for this dissatisfaction, in the mistakes or deficiencies of others, and so lose sight of ourselves. Strictly religious people, who have been relentless judges of themselves, have at the same time spoken most ill of humanity generally; there has never been a saint who reserved sin for himself and virtue for others, any more than a man who, according to Buddha’s rule, hides his good qualities from people and only shows his bad ones. 608. Confusion of Cause and Effect.—Unconsciously we seek the principles and opinions which are suited to our temperament, so that at last it seems as if these principles and opinions had formed our character and given it support and stability, whereas exactly the contrary has taken place. Our thoughts and judgments are, apparently, to be taken subsequently as the causes of our nature, but as a matter of fact our nature is the cause of our so thinking and judging. And what induces us to play this almost unconscious comedy? Inertness and convenience, and to a large extent also the vain desire to be regarded as thoroughly consistent and homogeneous in nature and thought; for this wins respect and gives confidence and power. 609. Age in Relation to Truth.—Young people love what is interesting and exceptional, indifferent whether it is truth or falsehood. Riper minds love what is interesting and extraordinary when it is truth. Matured minds, finally, love truth even in those in whom it appears plain and simple and is found tiresome by ordinary people, because they have observed that truth is in the habit of giving utterance to its highest intellectual verities with all the appearance of simplicity. 610. Men as Bad Poets.—Just as bad poets seek a thought to fit the rhyme in the second half of the verse, so men in the second half of life, having become more scrupulous, are in the habit of seeking pursuits, positions, and conditions which suit those of their earlier life, so that outwardly all sounds well, but their life is no longer ruled and continuously determined anew by a powerful thought: in place thereof there is merely the intention of finding a rhyme. 611. Ennui and Play.—Necessity compels us to work, with the product of which the necessity is appeased; the ever new awakening of necessity, however, accustoms us to work. But in the intervals in which necessity is appeased and asleep, as it were, we are attacked by ennui. What is this? In a word it is the habituation to work, which now makes itself felt as a
new and additional necessity; it will be all the stronger the more a person has been accustomed to work, perhaps, even, the more a person has suffered from necessities. In order to escape ennui, a man either works beyond the extent of his former necessities, or he invents play, that is to say, work that is only intended to appease the general necessity for work. He who has become satiated with play, and has no new necessities impelling him to work, is sometimes attacked by the longing for a third state, which is related to play as gliding is to dancing, as dancing is to walking, a blessed, tranquil movement; it is the artists’ and philosophers’ vision of happiness. 612. Lessons From Pictures.—If we look at a series of pictures of ourselves, from the time of later childhood to the time of mature manhood, we discover with pleased surprise that the man bears more resemblance to the child than to the youth: that probably, therefore, in accordance with this fact, there has been in the interval a temporary alienation of the fundamental character, over which the collected, concentrated force of the man has again become master. With this observation this other is also in accordance, namely, that all strong influences of passions, teachers, and political events, which in our youthful years draw us hither and thither, seem later on to be referred back again to a fixed standard; of course they still continue to exist and operate within us, but our fundamental sentiments and opinions have now the upper hand, and use their influence perhaps as a source of strength, but are no longer merely regulative, as was perhaps the case in our twenties. Thus even the thoughts and sentiments of the man appear more in accordance with those of his childish years,—and this objective fact expresses itself in the above-mentioned subjective fact. 613. The Tone Of Voice Of Different Ages—The tone in which youths speak, praise, blame, and versify, displeases an older person because it is too loud, and yet at the same time dull and confused like a sound in a vault, which acquires such a loud ring owing to the emptiness; for most of the thought of youths does not gush forth out of the fullness of their own nature, but is the accord and the echo of what has been thought, said, praised or blamed around them. As their sentiments, however (their inclinations and aversions), resound much more forcibly than the reasons thereof, there is heard, whenever they divulge these sentiments, the dull, clanging tone which is a sign of the absence or scarcity of reasons. The tone of riper age is rigorous, abruptly concise, moderately loud, but, like everything distinctly articulated, is heard very far off. Old age, finally, often brings a certain mildness and consideration into the tone of the voice, and as it were, sweetens it; in many cases, to be sure it also sours it. 614. The Atavist and the Forerunner.—The man of unpleasant character, full of distrust, envious of the success of fellow-competitors and neighbors, violent and enraged at divergent opinions, shows that he belongs to an earlier grade of culture, and is, therefore, an atavism; for the way in which he behaves to people was right and suitable only for an age of clublaw; he is an atavist. The man of a different character, rich it, sympathy, winning friends everywhere, finding all that is growing and becoming amiable, rejoicing at the honors and successes of others and claiming no privilege of solely knowing the truth, but full of a modest distrust,—he is a forerunner who presses upward towards a higher human culture. The man of unpleasant character dates from the times when the rude basis of human intercourse had yet to be laid, the other lives on the upper floor of the edifice of culture, removed as far as possible from the howling and raging wild beast imprisoned in the cellars. 615. Consolation for Hypochondriacs.—When a great thinker is temporarily subjected to hypochondriacal self-torture he can say to himself, by way of consolation: “ It is thine own great strength on which this parasite feeds and grows; if thy strength were smaller thou wouldst have less to suffer.” The statesman may say just the same thing when jealousy and vengeful feeling, or, in a word, the tone of the bellum omnium contra omnes, for which, as the representative of a nation, he must necessarily have a great capacity, occasionally intrudes into his personal relations and makes his life hard. 616. Estranged from the Present.—There are great advantages in estranging one’s self for once to a large extent from one’s age, and being as it were driven back from its shores into the ocean of past views of things. Looking thence towards the coast one commands a view, perhaps for the first time, of its aggregate formation, and when one again approaches the land one has the advantage of understanding it better, on the whole, than those who have never left it 617. Sowing and Reaping on the Field of Personal Defects.—Men like Rousseau understand how to use their weaknesses, defects, and vices as manure for their talent. When Rousseau bewails the corruption and degeneration of society as the evil results of culture, there is a personal experience at the bottom of it, the bitterness which gives sharpness to his general condemnation and poisons the arrows with which he shoots; he unburdens himself first as an individual, and thinks of getting a remedy which, while benefiting society directly, will also benefit himself indirectly by means of society. 618. Philosophically Minded.—We usually endeavor to acquire one attitude of mind, one set of opinions for all situations and events of life—it is mostly called being philosophically minded. But for the acquisition of knowledge it may be of greater importance not to make ourselves thus uniform, but to hearken to the low voice of the different situations in life; these bring their own opinions with them. We thus take an intelligent interest in the life and nature of many persons by not treating ourselves as rigid, persistent single individuals. 619.
In the Fire of Contempt.—It is a fresh step towards independence when one first dares to give utterance to opinions which it is considered as disgraceful for a person to entertain; even friends and acquaintances are then accustomed to grow anxious. The gifted nature must also pass through this fire; it afterwards belongs far more to itself. 620. Self-Sacrifice.—In the event of choice, a great sacrifice is preferred to a small one, because we compensate ourselves for the great sacrifice by self-admiration, which is not possible in the case of a small one. 621. Love as an Artifice.—Whoever really wishes to become acquainted with something new (whether it be a person, an event, or a book), does well to take up the matter with all possible love, and to avert his eye quickly from all that seems hostile, objectionable, and false therein,—in fact to forget such things; so that, for instance, he gives the author of a book the best start possible, and straightway, just as in a race, longs with beating heart that he may reach the goal. In this manner one penetrates to the heart of the new thing, to its moving point, and this is called becoming acquainted with it. This stage having been arrived at, the understanding afterwards makes its restrictions; the over-estimation and the temporary suspension of the critical pendulum were only artifices to lure forth the soul of the matter. 622. Thinking Too Well and Too Ill of the World.—Whether we think too well or too ill of things, we always have the advantage of deriving therefrom a greater pleasure, for with a too good preconception we usually put more sweetness into things (experiences) than they actually contain. A too bad preconception causes a pleasant disappointment, the pleasantness that lay in the things themselves is increased by the pleasantness of the surprise. A gloomy temperament, however, will have the reverse experience in both cases. 623. Profound People.—Those whose strength lies in the deepening of impressions—they are usually called profound people—are relatively self-possessed and decided in all sudden emergencies, for in the first moment the impression is still shallow, it only then becomes deep. Long foreseen, long expected events or persons, however, excite such natures most, and make them almost incapable of eventually having presence of mind on the arrival thereof. 624. Intercourse with the Higher Self.—Everyone has his good day, when he finds his higher self; and true humanity demands that a person shall be estimated according to this state and not according to his work-days of constraint and bondage. A painter, for instance, should be appraised and honored according to the most exalted vision he could see and represent. But men themselves commune very differently with this their higher self, and are frequently their own play actors, in so far as they repeatedly imitate what they are in those moments. Some stand in awe and humility before their ideal, and would fain deny it; they are afraid of their higher self because, when it speaks, it speaks pretentiously, Besides, it has a ghost-like freedom of coming and staying away just as it pleases; on that account it is often called a gift of the gods, while in fact everything else is a gift of the gods (of chance); this, however, is the man himself. 625. Lonely People.—Some people are so much accustomed to being alone in self-communion that they do not at all compare themselves with others, but spin out their soliloquizing life in a quiet, happy mood, conversing pleasantly, and even hilariously, with themselves. If, however, they are brought to the point of comparing themselves with others, they are inclined to a brooding under-estimation of their own worth, so that they have first to be compelled by others to form once more a good and just opinion of themselves, and even from this acquired opinion they will always want to subtract and abate something. We must not, therefore, grudge certain persons their loneliness or foolishly commiserate them on that account, as is so often done. 626. Without Melody.—There are persons to whom a constant repose in themselves and the harmonious ordering of all their capacities is so natural that every definite activity is repugnant to them. They resemble music which consists of nothing but prolonged, harmonious accords, without even the tendency to an organized and animated melody showing itself. All external movement serves only to restore to the boat its equilibrium on the sea of harmonious euphony. Modern men usually become excessively impatient when they meet such natures, who will never be anything in the world, only it is not allowable to say of them that they are nothing. But in certain moods the sight of them raises the unusual question: “ Why should there be melody at all? Why should it not suffice us when life mirrors itself peacefully in a deep lake?” The Middle Ages were richer in such natures than our times. How seldom one now meets with anyone who can live on so peacefully and happily with himself even in the midst of the crowd, saying to himself, like Goethe, “ The best thing of all is the deep calm in which I live and grow in opposition to the world, and gain what it cannot take away from me with fire and sword.” 627. To Live and Experience.—If we observe how some people can deal with their experiences—their unimportant, everyday experiences so that these become soil which yields fruit thrice a year; whilst others—and how many!—are driven through the surf of the most exciting adventures, the most diversified movements of times and peoples, and yet always remain light, always remain on the surface, like cork; we are finally tempted to divide mankind into a minority (minimality) of those who know how to make much out of little, and a majority of those who know how to make little out of much; indeed, we even meet with the counter-sorcerers who, instead of making the world out of nothing, make a nothing out of
the world. 628. Seriousness in Play.—In Genoa one evening, in the twilight, I heard from a tower a long chiming of bells; it was never like to end, and sounded as if insatiable above the noise of the streets, out into the evening sky and sea-air, so thrilling, and at the same time so childish and so sad. I then remembered the words of Plato, and suddenly felt the force of them in my heart: “ Human matters, one and all, are not worthy of great seriousness; nevertheless…” 629. Conviction and Justice.—The requirement that a person must afterwards, when cool and sober, stand by what he says, promises, and resolves during passion, is one of the heaviest burdens that weigh upon mankind. To have to acknowledge for all future time the consequences of anger, of fiery revenge, of enthusiastic devotion, may lead to a bitterness against these feelings proportionate to the idolatry with which they are idolized, especially by artists. These cultivate to its full extent the esteem of the passions, and have always done so; to be sure, they also glorify the terrible satisfaction of the passions which a person affords himself, the outbreaks of vengeance, with death, mutilation, or voluntary banishment in their train, and the resignation of the broken heart In any case they keep alive curiosity about the passions; it is as if they said: “ Without passions you have no experience whatever.” Because we have sworn fidelity (perhaps even to a purely fictitious being, such as a god), because we have surrendered our heart to a prince, a party, a woman, a priestly order, an artist, or a thinker, in a state of infatuated delusion that threw a charm over us and made those beings appear worthy of all veneration, and every sacrifice—are we, therefore, firmly and inevitably bound? Or did we not, after all, deceive ourselves then? Was there not a hypothetical promise, under the tacit presupposition that those beings to whom we consecrated ourselves were really the beings they seemed to be in our imagination? Are we under obligation to be faithful to our errors, even with the knowledge that by this fidelity we shall cause injury to our higher selves? No, there is no law, no obligation of that sort; we must become traitors, we must act unfaithfully and abandon our ideals again and again. We cannot advance from one period of life into another without causing these pains of treachery and also suffering from them. Might it be necessary to guard against the ebullitions of our feelings in order to escape these pains? Would not the world then become too arid, too ghost-like for us? Rather will we ask ourselves whether these pains are necessary on a change of convictions, or whether they do not depend on a mistaken opinion and estimate. Why do we admire a person who remains true to his convictions and despise him who changes them? I fear the answer must be, “ because everyone takes for granted that such a change is caused only by motives of more general utility or of personal trouble.” That is to say, we believe at bottom that nobody alters his opinions as long as they are advantageous to him, or at least as long as they do not cause him any harm. If it is so, however, it furnishes a bad proof of the intellectual significance of all convictions. Let us once examine how convictions arise, and let us see whether their importance is not greatly over-estimated; it will thereby be seen that the change of convictions also is in all circumstances judged according to a false standard, that we have hitherto been accustomed to suffer too much from this change. 630. Conviction is belief in the possession of absolute truth on any matter of knowledge. This belief takes it for granted, therefore, that there are absolute truths; also, that perfect methods have been found for attaining to them; and finally, that everyone who has convictions makes use of these perfect methods. All three notions show at once that the man of convictions is not the man of scientific thought; he seems to us still in the age of theoretical innocence, and is practically a child, however grown-up he may be. Whole centuries, however, have been lived under the influence of those childlike presuppositions, and out of them have flowed the mightiest sources of human strength. The countless numbers who sacrificed themselves for their convictions believed they were doing it for the sake of absolute truth. They were all wrong, however; probably no one has, ever sacrificed himself for Truth; at least, the dogmatic expression of the faith of any such person has been unscientific or only partly scientific. But really, people wanted to carry their point because they believed that they must be in the right. To allow their belief to be wrested from them probably meant calling in question their eternal salvation. In an affair of such extreme importance the “ will” was too audibly the prompter of the intellect. The presupposition of every believer of every shade of belief has been that he could not be confuted; if the counter-arguments happened to be very strong, it always remained for him to decry intellect generally, and, perhaps, even to set up the “ credo quia absurdum est” as the standard of extreme fanaticism. It is not the struggle of opinions that has made history so turbulent; but the struggle of belief in opinions,—that is to say, of convictions. If all those who thought so highly of their convictions, who made sacrifices of all kinds for them, and spared neither honor, body, nor life in their service, had only devoted half of their energy to examining their right to adhere to this or that conviction and by what road they arrived at it, how peaceable would the history of mankind now appear! How much more knowledge would there be! All the cruel scenes in connection with the persecution of heretics of all kinds would have been avoided, for two reasons: firstly, because the inquisitors would above all have inquired of themselves, and would have recognized the presumption of defending absolute truth; and secondly, because the heretics themselves would, after examination, have taken no more interest in such badly established doctrines as those of all religious sectarians and “ orthodox” believers. 631. From the ages in which it was customary to believe in the possession of absolute truth, people have inherited a profound dislike of all skeptical and relative attitudes with regard to questions of knowledge; they mostly prefer to acquiesce, for good or evil, in the convictions of those in authority (fathers, friends, teachers, princes), and they have a kind of remorse of conscience when they do not do so. This tendency is quite comprehensible, and its results furnish no ground for condemnation of the course of the development of human reason. The scientific spirit in man, however, has gradually to bring to maturity the virtue of cautious forbearance, the wise moderation, which is better known in practical than in
theoretical life, and which, for instance, Goethe has represented in “ Antonio,” as an object of provocation for all Tassos,—that is to say, for unscientific and at the same time inactive natures. The man of convictions has in himself the right not to comprehend the man of cautious thought, the theoretical Antonio; the scientific man, on the other hand, has no right to blame the former on that account, he takes no notice thereof, and knows, moreover, that in certain cases the former will yet cling to him, as Tasso finally clung to Antonio. 632. He who has not passed through different phases of conviction, but sticks to the faith in whose net he was first caught, is, under all circumstances, just on account of this unchangeableness, a representative of atavistic culture; in accordance with this lack of culture (which always presupposes plasticity for culture), he is severe, unintelligent, unteachable, without liberality, an ever suspicious person, an unscrupulous person who has recourse to all expedients for enforcing his opinions because he cannot conceive that there must be other opinions; he is, in such respects, perhaps a source of strength, and even wholesome in cultures that have become too emancipated and languid, but only because he strongly incites to opposition: for thereby the delicate organization of the new culture, which is forced to struggle with him, becomes strong itself. 633. In essential respects we are still the same men as those of the time of the Reformation; how could it be otherwise? But the fact that we no longer allow ourselves certain means for promoting the triumph of our opinions distinguishes us from that age, and proves that we belong to a higher culture. He who still combats and overthrows opinions with calumnies and outbursts of rage, after the manner of the Reformation men, obviously betrays the fact that he would have burnt his adversaries had he lived in other times, and that he would have resorted to all the methods of the Inquisition if he had been an opponent of the Reformation. The Inquisition was rational at that time; for it represented nothing else than the universal application of martial law, which had to be proclaimed throughout the entire domain of the Church, and which, like all martial law, gave a right to the extremest methods, under the presupposition, of course, (which we now no longer share with those people), that the Church possessed truth and had to preserve it at all costs, and at any sacrifice, for the salvation of mankind. Now, however, one does not so readily concede to anyone that he possesses the truth; strict methods of investigation have diffused enough of distrust and precaution, so that everyone who violently advocates opinions in word and deed is looked upon as an enemy of our modern culture, or, at least, as an atavist. As a matter of fact the pathos that man possesses truth is now of very little consequence in comparison with the certainly milder and less noisy pathos of the search for truth, which is never weary of learning afresh and examining anew. 634. Moreover, the methodical search for truth is itself the outcome of those ages in which convictions were at war with each other. If the individual had not cared about his “ truth,” that is to say, about carrying his point, there would have been no method of investigation; thus, however, by the eternal struggle of the claims of different individuals to absolute truth, people went on step by step to find irrefragable principles according to which the rights of the claims could be tested and the dispute settled. At first people decided according to authorities; later on they criticized one another’s ways and means of finding the presumed truth; in the interval there was a period when people deduced the consequences of the adverse theory, and perhaps found them to be productive of injury and unhappiness; from which it was then to be inferred by everyone that the conviction of the adversary involved an error. The personal struggle of the thinker at last so sharpened his methods that real truths could be discovered, and the mistakes of former methods exposed before the eyes of all. 635. On the whole, scientific methods are at least as important results of investigation as any other results, for the scientific spirit is based upon a knowledge of method, and if the methods were lost, all the results of science could not prevent the renewed prevalence of superstition and absurdity. Clever people may learn as much as they like of the results of science, but one still notices in their conversation, and especially in the hypotheses they make, that they lack the scientific spirit; they have not the instinctive distrust of the devious courses of thinking which, in consequence of long training, has taken root in the soul of every scientific man. It is enough for them to find any kind of hypothesis on a subject, they are then all on fire for it, and imagine the matter is thereby settled. To have an opinion is with them equivalent to immediately becoming fanatical for it, and finally taking it to heart as a conviction. In the case of an unexplained matter they become heated for the first idea that comes into their head which has any resemblance to an explanation—a course from which the worst results constantly follow, especially in the field of politics. On that account everybody should nowadays have become thoroughly acquainted with at least one science, for then surely he knows what is meant by method, and how necessary is the extremest carefulness. To women in particular this advice is to be given at present; as to those who are irretrievably the victims of all hypotheses, especially when these have the appearance of being witty, attractive, enlivening, and invigorating. Indeed, on close inspection one sees that by far the greater number of educated people still desire convictions from a thinker and nothing but convictions, and that only a small minority want certainty. The former want to be forcibly carried away in order thereby to obtain an increase of strength; the latter few have the real interest which disregards personal advantages and the increase of strength also. The former class, who greatly predominate, are always reckoned upon when the thinker comports himself and labels himself as a genius, and thus views himself as a higher being to whom authority belongs. In so far as genius of this kind upholds the ardor of convictions, and arouses distrust of the cautious and modest spirit of science, it is an enemy of truth, however much it may think itself the wooer thereof. 636. There is, certainly, also an entirely different species of genius, that of justice; and I cannot make up my mind to estimate it lower than any kind of philosophical, political, or artistic genius. Its peculiarity is to go, with heartfelt aversion, out of the way of everything that blinds and confuses people’s judgment of things; it is consequently an adversary of
convictions, for it wants to give their own to all, whether they be living or dead, real or imaginary—and for that purpose it must know thoroughly; it therefore places everything in the best light and goes around it with careful eyes. Finally, it will even give to its adversary the blind or short-sighted “ conviction” (as men call it,—among women it is called “ faith”), what is due to conviction—for the sake of truth. 637. Opinions evolve out of passions; indolence of intellect allows those to congeal into convictions. He, however, who is conscious of himself as a free, restless, lively spirit can prevent this congelation by constant change; and if he is altogether a thinking snowball, he will not have opinions in his head at all, but only certainties and properly estimated probabilities. But we, who are of a mixed nature, alternately inspired with ardor and chilled through and through by the intellect, want to kneel before justice, as the only goddess we acknowledge. The fire in us generally makes us unjust, and impure in the eyes of our goddess; in this condition we are not permitted to take her hand, and the serious smile of her approval never rests upon us. We reverence her as the veiled Isis of our life; with shame we offer her our pain as penance and sacrifice when the fire threatens to burn and consume us. It is the intellect that saves us from being utterly burnt and reduced to ashes; it occasionally drags us away from the sacrificial altar of justice or enwraps us in a garment of asbestos. Liberated from the fire, and impelled by the intellect, we then pass from opinion to opinion, through the change of parties, as noble betrayers of all things that can in any way be betrayed—and nevertheless without a feeling of guilt. 638. The Wanderer.—He who has attained intellectual emancipation to any extent cannot, for a long time, regard himself otherwise than as a wanderer on the face of the earth—and not even as a traveler towards a final goal, for there is no such thing. But he certainly wants to observe and keep his eyes open to whatever actually happens in the world; therefore he cannot attach his heart too firmly to anything individual; he must have in himself something wandering that takes pleasure in change and transitoriness. To be sure such a man will have bad nights, when he is weary and finds the gates of the town that should offer him rest closed; perhaps he may also find that, as in the East, the desert reaches to the gates, that wild beasts howl far and near, that a strong wind arises, and that robbers take away his beasts of burden. Then the dreadful night closes over him like a second desert upon the desert, and his heart grows weary of wandering. Then when the morning sun rises upon him, glowing like a Deity of anger, when the town is opened, he sees perhaps in the faces of the dwellers therein still more desert, uncleanliness, deceit, and insecurity than outside the gates—and the day is almost worse than the night. Thus it may occasionally happen to the wanderer but then there come as compensation the delightful mornings of other lands and days, when already in the grey of the dawn he sees the throng of muses dancing by, close to him, in the mist of the mountain; when afterwards, in the symmetry of his ante-meridian soul, he strolls silently under the trees, out of whose crests and leafy hiding-places all manner of good and bright things are flung to him, the gifts of all the free spirits who are at home in mountains, forests, and solitudes, and who, like himself, alternately merry and thoughtful, are wanderers and philosophers. Born of the secrets of the early dawn, they ponder the question how the day, between the hours of ten and twelve, can have such a pure, transparent, and gloriously cheerful countenance: they seek the ante-meridian philosophy. AN EPODE. AMONG FRIENDS. Nice, when mute we lie a-dreaming, Nicer still when we are laughing, ‘Neath the sky heaven’s chariot speeding, On the moss the book a-reading, Sweetly loud with friends all laughing Joyous, with white teeth a-gleaming. Do I well, we’re mute and humble; Do I ill—we’ll laugh exceeding; Make it worse and worse, unheeding, Worse proceeding, more laughs needing, Till into the grave we stumble. Friends! Yea! so shall it obtain? Amen! Till we meet again. II. No excuses need be started! Give, ye glad ones, open hearted, To this foolish book before you Ear and heart and lodging meet; Trust me, ‘twas not meant to bore you, Though of folly I may treat!
What I find, seek, and am needing, Was it e’er in book for reading? Honor now fools in my name, Learn from out this book by reading How “ our sense” from reason came. Thus, my friends, shall it obtain? Amen! Till we meet again. HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN FIRST SEQUEL: MIXED OPINIONS AND MAXIMS INTRODUCTION. The publication of Human, all-too-Human extends over the period 1878-1880. Of the two divisions which constitute the Second Part, “ Miscellaneous Maxims and Opinions” appeared in 1879, and “ The Wanderer and his Shadow” in 1880, Nietzsche being then in his thirty-sixth year. The Preface was added in 1886. The whole book forms Nietzsche’s first lengthy contribution to literature. His previous works comprise only the philological treatises, The Birth of Tragedy, and the essays on Strauss, Schopenhauer, and Wagner in Thoughts out of Season. With the volumes of Human, all-too-Human Nietzsche appears for the first time in his true colors as philosopher. His purely scholarly publications, his essays in literary and musical criticism—especially the essay on Richard Wagner at Bayreuth—had, of course, foreshadowed his work as a thinker. These efforts, however, had been mere fragments, from which hardly anyone could observe that a new philosophical star had arisen on the horizon. But by 1878 the period of transition had definitely set in. Outwardly, the new departure is marked by Nietzsche’s resignation in that year of his professorship at Bale—a resignation due partly to ill-health, and partly to his conviction that his was a voice that should speak not merely to students of philology, but to all mankind. Nietzsche himself characterizes Human, all-too-Human as “ the monument of a crisis.” He might as fitly have called it the first-fruits of a new harvest. Now, for the first time, he practices the form which he was to make so peculiarly his own. We are told—and we may well believe—that the book came as a surprise even to his most intimate friends. Wagner had already seen how matters stood at the publication of the first part, and the gulf between the two probably widened on the appearance of the Second Part. Several aphorisms are here, varying in length as in subject, and ranging over the whole human province—the emotions and aspirations, the religions and cultures and philosophies, the arts and literatures and politics of mankind. Equally varied is the range of style, the incisive epigram and the passage of pure poetry jostling each other on the same page. In this curious power of alternating between cynicism and lyricism, Nietzsche appears as the prose counterpart of Heine. One or two of the aphorisms are of peculiar interest to English readers. The essay (as it may almost be called) on Sterne (p. 60, No. 113) does ample justice, if not more than justice, to that wayward genius. The allusion to Milton (p. 77, No. 150) will come as somewhat of a shock to English readers, especially to those who hold that in Milton Art triumphed over Puritanism. It should be remembered, however, that Nietzsche’s view coincides with Goethe’s. The dictum that Shakespeare’s gold is to be valued for its quantity rather than its quality (p. 81, No. 162) also betrays a certain exclusiveness—a legacy from that eighteenth-century France which appealed so strongly to Nietzsche on its intellectual side. To Nietzsche, as to Voltaire, Shakespeare is after all “ the great barbarian.” The title of the book may be explained from a phrase in Thus Spake Zarathustra: “ Verily, even the greatest I found—all-too-human.” The keynote of these volumes is indeed disillusion and destruction. Nor is this to be wondered at, for all men must sweep away the rubbish before they can build. Hence we find here little of the constructive philosophy of Nietzsche—so far as he had a constructive philosophy. The Superman appears but faintly, the doctrine of Eternal Recurrence not at all. For this very reason, Human, all-too-Human is perhaps the best starting-point for the study of Nietzsche. The difficulties in style and thought of the later work—difficulties that at times become well-nigh insuperable in Thus Spake Zarathustra—are here practically absent. The book may, in fact, almost be described as “ popular,” bearing the same relation to Nietzsche’s later productions as Wagner’s Tannhäuser and Lohengrin bear to the Ring. The translator’s thanks are due to Mr. Thomas Common for his careful revision of the manuscript and many valuable suggestions. P. V. C. PREFACE. 1. One should only speak where one cannot remain silent, and only speak of what one has conquered—the rest is all chatter, “ literature,” bad breeding. My writings speak only of my conquests, “ I” am in them, with all that is hostile to me, ego ipsissimus, or, if a more haughty expression be permitted, ego ipsissimum. It may be guessed that I have many below me… . But first I always needed time, convalescence, distance, separation, before I felt the stirrings of a desire to flay, despoil, lay bare, “ represent” (or whatever one likes to call it) for the additional knowledge of the world, something that I had lived through and outlived, something done or suffered. Hence all my writings,—with one exception, important, it is true,—must be ante-dated—they always tell of a “ behind-me.” Some even, like the first three Thoughts out of Season, must be thrown back before the period of creation and experience of a previously published book (The Birth of Tragedy in the case cited, as anyone with subtle powers of observation and comparison could not fail to perceive). That wrathful outburst against the Germanism, smugness, and raggedness of speech of old David Strauss, the contents of the first Thought out of Season, gave a vent to feelings that had inspired me long before, as a student, in the midst of German culture and cultured Philistinism (I claim the paternity of the now much used and misused phrase “ cultured Philistinism”). What I said against the “ historical disease” I said as one who had slowly and laboriously recovered from that disease, and who was not at all disposed to renounce “ history” in the future because he had suffered from her in the past. When in the third Thought out of Season I gave expression to my reverence for my first and only teacher,
the great Arthur Schopenhauer—I should now give it a far more personal and emphatic voice—I was for my part already in the throes of moral skepticism and dissolution, that is, as much concerned with the criticism as with the study of all pessimism down to the present day. I already did not believe in “ a blessed thing,” as the people say, not even in Schopenhauer. It was at this very period that an unpublished essay of mine, “ On Truth and Falsehood in an Extra-Moral Sense,” came into being. Even my ceremonial oration in honour of Richard Wagner, on the occasion of his triumphal celebration at Bayreuth in 1876—Bayreuth signifies the greatest triumph that an artist has ever won—a work that bears the strongest stamp of “ individuality,” was in the background an act of homage and gratitude to a bit of the past in me, to the fairest but most perilous calm of my sea-voyage … and as a matter of fact a severance and a farewell. (Was Richard Wagner mistaken on this point? I do not think so. So long as we still love, we do not paint such pictures, we do not yet “ examine,” we do not place ourselves so far away as is essential for one who “ examines.” “ Examining needs at least a secret antagonism, that of an opposite point of view,” it is said on page 46 of the above-named work itself, with an insidious, melancholy application that was perhaps understood by few.) The composure that gave me the power to speak after many intervening years of solitude and abstinence, first came with the book, Human, All-too Human, to which this second preface and apologia [1] is dedicated. As a book for “ free spirits” it shows some trace of that almost cheerful and inquisitive coldness of the psychologist, who has behind him many painful things that he keeps under him, and moreover establishes them for himself and fixes them firmly as with a needle-point. Is it to be wondered at that at such sharp, ticklish work blood flows now and again, that indeed the psychologist has blood on his fingers and not only on his fingers? [1] “ Foreword” and “ forword” would be the literal rendering of the play on words.—Tr. 2. The Miscellaneous Maxims and Opinions were in the first place, like The Wanderer and His Shadow, published separately as continuations and appendices to the abovementioned human, all-too human Book for Free Spirits: and at the same time, as a continuation and confirmation of an intellectual cure, consisting in a course of anti-romantic selftreatment, such as my instinct, which had always remained healthy, had itself discovered and prescribed against a temporary attack of the most dangerous form of romantics. After a convalescence of six years I may well be permitted to collect these same writings and publish them as a second volume of Human, All-too Human. Perhaps, if surveyed together, they will more clearly and effectively teach their lesson—a lesson of health that may be recommended as a disciplina voluntatis to the more intellectual natures of the rising generation. Here speaks a pessimist who has often leaped out of his skin but has always returned into it, thus, a pessimist with goodwill towards pessimism—at all events a romanticist no longer. And has not a pessimist, who possesses this serpentine knack of changing his skin, the right to read a lecture to our pessimists of to-day, who are one and all still in the toils of romanticism? Or at least to show them how it is—done? 3. It was then, in fact, high time to bid farewell, and I soon received proof. Richard Wagner, who seemed all-conquering, but was in reality only a decayed and despairing romantic, suddenly collapsed, helpless and broken, before the Christian Cross… . Was there not a single German with eyes in his head and sympathy in his heart for this appalling spectacle? Was I the only one whom he caused—suffering? In any case, the unexpected event illumined for me in one lightning flash the place that I had abandoned; and also the horror that is felt by everyone who is unconscious of a great danger until he has passed through it. As I went forward alone, I shuddered, and not long afterwards I was ill, or rather more than ill— weary: weary from my ceaseless disappointment about all that remained to make us modern men enthusiastic, at the thought of the power, work, hope, youth, love, flung to all the winds: weary from disgust at the effeminacy and undisciplined rhapsody of this romanticism, at the whole tissue of idealistic lies and softening of conscience, which here again had won the day over one of the bravest of men: last, and not least, weary from the bitterness of an inexorable suspicion—that after this disappointment I was doomed to mistrust more thoroughly, to despise more thoroughly, to be alone more thoroughly than ever before. My task—whither had it flown? Did it not look now as if my task were retreating from me and as if I should for a long future period have no more right to it? What was I to do to endure this most terrible privation?—I began by entirely forbidding myself all romantic music, that ambiguous, pompous, stifling art, which robs the mind of its sternness and its joyousness and provides a fertile soil for every kind of vague yearning and spongy sensuality. “ Cave musicam” is even to-day my advice to all who are enough of men to cling to purity in matters of the intellect. Such music enervates, softens, feminizes, its “ eternal feminine” draws us—down! [2] My first suspicion, my most immediate precaution, was directed against romantic music. If I hoped for anything at all from music, it was in the expectation of the coming of a musician bold, subtle, malignant, southern, healthy enough to take an immortal revenge upon that other music. [2] The allusion is to the ending of the Second Part of Goethe’s Faust—“ das Ewig Weibliche Zieht uns hinan!”—“ The Eternal Feminine Draweth us on!”—Tr. 4. Lonely now and miserably self-distrustful, I took sides, not without resentment, against myself and for everything that hurt me and was hard to me. Thus I once more found the way to that courageous pessimism that is the antithesis of all romantic fraud, and, as it seems to me to-day, the way to “ myself,” to my task. That hidden masterful Something, for which we long have no name until at last it shows itself as our task—that tyrant in us exacts a terrible price for every attempt that we make to escape him or give him the slip, for every premature act of self-constraint, for every reconciliation with those to whom we do not belong, for every activity, however reputable, which turns us aside from our main purpose, yes, even for every virtue that would fain protect us from the cruelty of our most individual responsibility. “ Disease” is always the answer when we wish to have doubts of our rights to our own task, when we begin to make it easier for ourselves in any way. How strange and how terrible! It is our very alleviations for which we have to make the severest atonement! And if we want to return to health, we have no choice left—we must load ourselves more heavily than we were ever laden before. 5.
It was then that I learnt the hermitical habit of speech acquired only by the most silent and suffering. I spoke without witnesses, or rather indifferent to the presence of witnesses, so as not to suffer from silence, I spoke of various things that did not concern me in a style that gave the impression that they did. Then, too, I learnt the art of showing myself cheerful, objective, inquisitive in the presence of all that is healthy and evil—is this, in an invalid, as it seems to me, his “ good taste”? Nevertheless, a more subtle eye and sympathy will not miss what perhaps gives a charm to these writings—the fact that here speaks one who has suffered and abstained in such a way as if he had never suffered or abstained. Here equipoise, composure, even gratitude towards life shall be maintained, here rules a stern, proud, ever vigilant, ever susceptible will, which has undertaken the task of defending life against pain and snapping off all conclusions that are wont to grow like poisonous fungi from pain, disappointment, satiety, isolation and other morasses. Perhaps this gives our pessimists a hint to self-examination? For it was then that I hit upon the aphorism, “ a sufferer has as yet no right to pessimism,” and that I engaged in a tedious, patient campaign against the unscientific first principles of all romantic pessimism, which seeks to magnify and interpret individual, personal experiences into “ general judgments,” universal condemnations—it was then, in short, that I sighted a new world. Optimism for the sake of restitution, in order at some time to have the right to become a pessimist—do you understand that? Just as a physician transfers his patient to totally strange surroundings, in order to displace him from his entire “ past,” his troubles, friends, letters, duties, stupid mistakes and painful memories, and teaches him to stretch out hands and senses towards new nourishment, a new sun, a new future: so I, as physician and invalid in one, forced myself into an utterly different and untried zone of the soul, and particularly into an absorbing journey to a strange land, a strange atmosphere, into a curiosity for all that was strange. A long process of roaming, seeking, changing followed, a distaste for fixity of any kind—a dislike for clumsy affirmation and negation: and at the same time a dietary and discipline which aimed at making it as easy as possible for the soul to fly high, and above all constantly to fly away. In fact a minimum of life, an unfettering from all coarser forms of sensuality, an independence in the midst of all marks of outward disfavor, together with the pride in being able to live in the midst of all this disfavor: a little cynicism perhaps, a little of the “ tub of Diogenes,” a good deal of whimsical happiness, whimsical gaiety, much calm, light, subtle folly, hidden enthusiasm—all this produced in the end a great spiritual strengthening, a growing joy and exuberance of health. Life itself rewards us for our tenacious will to life, for such a long war as I waged against the pessimistic weariness of life, even for every observant glance of our gratitude, glances that do not miss the smallest, most delicate, most fugitive gifts… . In the end we receive Life’s great gifts, perhaps the greatest it can bestow—we regain our task. 6. Should my experience—the history of an illness and a convalescence, for it resulted in a convalescence—be only my personal experience? and merely just my “ Human, All-toohuman”? To-day I would “ fain believe the reverse, for I am becoming more and more confident that my books of travel were not penned for my sole benefit, as appeared for a time to be the case. May I, after six years of growing assurance, send them once more on a journey for an experiment?—May I commend them particularly to the ears and hearts of those who are afflicted with some sort of a “ past,” and have enough intellect left to suffer even intellectually from their past? But above all would I commend them to you whose burden is heaviest, you choice spirits, most encompassed with perils, most intellectual, most courageous, who must be the conscience of the modern soul and as such be versed in its science: [3] in whom is concentrated all of disease, poison or danger that can exist to-day: whose lot decrees that you must be more sick than any individual because you are not “ mere individuals”: whose consolation it is to know and, ah! to walk the path to a new health, a health of to-morrow and the day after: you men of destiny, triumphant, conquerors of time, the healthiest and the strongest, you good Europeans! [3] It has been attempted to render the play on “ Gewissen” and “ Wissen.”—Tr. 7. To express finally in a single formula my opposition to the romantic pessimism of the abstinent, the unfortunate, the conquered: there is a will to the tragic and to pessimism, which is a sign as much of the severity as of the strength of the intellect (taste, emotion, conscience). With this will in our hearts we do not fear, but we investigate ourselves the terrible and the problematical elements characteristic of all existence. Behind such a will stand courage and pride and the desire for a really great enemy. That was my pessimistic outlook from the first—a new outlook, methinks, an outlook that even at this day is new and strange? To this moment I hold to it firmly and (if it will be believed) not only for myself but occasionally against myself… . You would prefer to have that proved first? Well, what else does all this long preface—prove? Sils-Maria, Upper Engadine, September, 1886. HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN. MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 1. To the Disillusioned in Philosophy.—If you hitherto believed in the highest value of life and now find yourselves disillusioned, must you immediately get rid of life at the lowest possible price? 2. Overnice.—One can even become overnice as regards the clearness of concepts. How disgusted one is then at having truck with the half-clear, the hazy, the aspiring, the doubting! How ridiculous and yet not mirth-provoking is their eternal fluttering and straining without ever being able to fly or to grasp! 3. The Wooers of Reality.—He who realizes at last how long and how thoroughly he has been befooled, embraces out of spite even the ugliest reality. So that in the long run of the world’s history the best men have always been wooers of reality, for the best have always been longest and most thoroughly deceived.
4. Advance of Freethinking.—The difference between past and present freethinking cannot better be characterized than by that aphorism for the recognition and expression of which all the fearlessness of the eighteenth century was needed, and which even then, if measured by our modern view, sinks into an unconscious naïveté. I mean Voltaire’s aphorism, “ croyezmoi, mon ami, l’erreur aussi a son mérite.” 5. A Hereditary Sin of Philosophers.—Philosophers have at all times appropriated and corrupted the maxims of censors of men (moralists), by taking them over without qualification and trying to prove as necessary what the moralists only meant as a rough indication or as a truth suited to their fellow-countrymen or fellow-townsmen for a single decade. Moreover, the philosophers thought that they were thereby raising themselves above the moralists! Thus it will be found that the celebrated teachings of Schopenhauer as to the supremacy of the will over the intellect, of the immutability of character, the negativity of pleasure—all errors, in the sense in which he understands them—rest upon principles of popular wisdom enunciated by the moralists. Take the very word “ will,” which Schopenhauer twisted so as to become a common denotation of several human conditions and with which he filled a gap in the language (to his own great advantage, in so far as he was a moralist, for he became free to speak of the will as Pascal had spoken of it). In the hands of its creator, Schopenhauer’s “ will,” through the philosophic craze for generalization, already turned out to be a bane to knowledge. For this will was made into a poetic metaphor, when it was held that all things in nature possess will. Finally, that it might be applied to all kinds of disordered mysticism, the word was misused by a fraudulent convention. So now all our fashionable philosophers repeat it and seem to be perfectly certain that all things have a will and are in fact One Will. According to the description generally given of this All-OneWill, this is much as if one should positively try to have the stupid Devil for one’s God. 6. Against Visionaries.—The visionary denies the truth to himself, the liar only to others. 7. Enmity to Light.—If we make it clear to anyone that, strictly, he can never speak of truth, but only of probability and of its degrees, we generally discover, from the undisguised joy of our pupil, how greatly men prefer the uncertainty of their intellectual horizon, and how in their heart of hearts they hate truth because of its definiteness.—Is this due to a secret fear felt by all that the light of truth may at some time be turned too brightly upon themselves? To their wish to be of some consequence, and accordingly their concealment from the world of what they are? Or is it to be traced to their horror of the all-too brilliant light, to which their crepuscular, easily dazzled, bat-like souls are not accustomed, so that hate it they must? 8. Christian Skepticism.—Pilate, with his question, “ What is Truth?” is now gleefully brought on the scene as an advocate of Christ, in order to cast suspicion on all that is known or knowable as being mere appearance, and to erect the Cross on the appalling background of the Impossibility of Knowledge. 9. “ Natural Law,” a Phrase of Superstition.—When you talk so delightedly of Nature acting according to law, you must either assume that all things in Nature follow their law from a voluntary obedience imposed by themselves—in which case you admire the morality of Nature: or you are enchanted with the idea of a creative mechanician, who has made a most cunning watch with human beings as accessory ornaments.—Necessity, through the expression, “ conformity to law,” then becomes more human and a coign of refuge in the last instance for mythological reveries. 10. Fallen Forfeit to History.—All misty philosophers and obscurers of the world, in other words all metaphysicians of coarse or refined texture are seized with eyeache, earache, and toothache when they begin to suspect that there is truth in the saying: “ All philosophy has from now fallen forfeit to history.” In view of their aches and pains we may pardon them for throwing stones and filth at him who talks like this, but this teaching may itself thereby become dirty and disreputable for a time and lose in effect. 11. The Pessimist of the Intellect.—He whose intellect is really free will think freely about the intellect itself, and will not shut his eyes to certain terrible aspects of its source and tendency. For this reason others will perhaps designate him the bitterest opponent of free thought and give him that dreadful, abusive name of “ pessimist of the intellect”: accustomed as they are to typify a man not by his strong point, his pre-eminent virtue, but by the quality that is most foreign to his nature. 12. The Metaphysicians’ Knapsack.—To all who talk so boastfully of the scientific basis of their metaphysics it is best to make no reply. It is enough to tug at the bundle that they rather shyly keep hidden behind their backs. If one succeeds in lifting it, the results of that “ scientific basis” come to light, to their great confusion: a dear little “ God,” a genteel immortality, perhaps a little spiritualism, and in any case a complicated mass of poor-sinners’-misery and pharisee-arrogance. 13. Occasional Harmfulness of Knowledge.—The utility involved in the unchecked investigation of knowledge is so constantly proved in a hundred different ways that one must
remember to include in the bargain the subtler and rarer damage which individuals must suffer on that account. The chemist cannot avoid occasionally being poisoned or burnt at his experiments. What applies to the chemist, is true of the whole of our culture. This, it may be added, clearly shows that knowledge should provide itself with healing balsam against burns and should always have antidotes ready against poisons. 14. The Craving of the Philistine.—The Philistine thinks that his most urgent need is a purple patch or turban of metaphysics, nor will he let it slip. Yet he would look less ridiculous without this adornment. 15. Enthusiasts.—With all that enthusiasts say in favor of their gospel or their master they are defending themselves, however much they comport themselves as the judges and not the accused; because they are involuntarily reminded almost at every moment that they are exceptions and have to assert their legitimacy. 16. The Good Seduces to Life.—All good things, even all good books that are written against life, are strong means of attraction to life. 17. The Happiness of the Historian.—“ When we hear the hair-splitting metaphysicians and prophets of the after-world speak, we others feel indeed that we are the ‘poor in spirit,’ but that ours is the heavenly kingdom of change, with spring and autumn, summer and winter, and theirs the after-world, with its grey, everlasting frosts and shadows.” Thus soliloquized a man as he walked in the morning sunshine, a man who in his pursuit of history has constantly changed not only his mind but his heart. In contrast to the metaphysicians, he is happy to harbour in himself not an “ immortal soul” but many mortal souls. 18. Three Varieties of Thinkers.—There are streaming, flowing, trickling mineral springs, and three corresponding varieties of thinkers. The layman values them by the volume of the water, the expert by the contents of the water—in other words, by the elements in them that are not water. 19. The Picture of Life.—The task of painting the picture of life, often as it has been attempted by poets and philosophers, is nevertheless irrational. Even in the hands of the greatest artist-thinkers, pictures and miniatures of one life only—their own—have come into being, and indeed no other result is possible. While in the process of developing, a thing that develops, cannot mirror itself as fixed and permanent, as a definite object. 20. Truth will have no Gods before it.—The belief in truth begins with the doubt of all truths in which one has previously believed. 21. Where Silence is Required.—If we speak of freethinking as of a highly dangerous journey over glaciers and frozen seas, we find that those who do not care to travel on this track are offended, as if they had been reproached with cowardice and weak knees. The difficult, which we find to be beyond our powers, must not even be mentioned in our presence. 22. Historia in Nuce.—The most serious parody I ever heard was this: “ In the beginning was the nonsense, and the nonsense was with God, and the nonsense was God.” [4] [4] Cf. John i. I.—Tr. 23. Incurable.—The idealist is incorrigible: if he be thrown out of his Heaven, he makes himself a suitable ideal out of Hell. Disillusion him, and lo! he will embrace disillusionment with no less ardour than he recently embraced hope. In so far as his impulse belongs to the great incurable impulses of human nature, he can bring about tragic destinies and later become a subject for tragedy himself, for such tragedies as deal with the incurable, implacable, inevitable in the lot and character of man. 24. Applause Itself as the Continuation of the Play.—Sparkling eyes and an amiable smile are the tributes of applause paid to all the great comedy of world and existence—but this applause is a comedy within a comedy, meant to tempt the other spectators to a plaudite amici. 25. Courage for Tedium.—He who has not the courage to allow himself and his work to be considered tedious, is certainly no intellect of the first rank, whether in the arts or in the sciences.—A scoffer, who happened for once in a way to be a thinker, might add, with a glance at the world and at history: “ God did not possess this courage, for he wanted to make and he made all things so interesting.” 26. From the Most Intimate Experience of the Thinker.—Nothing is harder for a man than to conceive of an object impersonally, I mean to see in it an object and not a person. One may even ask whether it is possible for him to dispense for a single moment with the machinery of his instinct to create and construct a personality. After all, he associates with his
thoughts, however abstract they may be, as with individuals, against whom he must fight or to whom he must attach himself, whom he must protect, support and nourish. Let us watch or listen to ourselves at the moment when we hear or discover a new idea. Perhaps it displeases us because it is so defiant and so autocratic, and we unconsciously ask ourselves whether we cannot place a contradiction of it by its side as an enemy, or fasten on to it a “ perhaps” or a “ sometimes”: the mere little word “ probably” gives us a feeling of satisfaction, for it shatters the oppressive tyranny of the unconditional. If, on the other hand, the new idea enters in gentle shape, sweetly patient and humble, and falling at once into the arms of contradiction, we put our autocracy to the test in another way. Can we not come to the aid of this weak creature, stroke it and feed it, give it strength and fullness, and truth and even unconditionality? Is it possible for us to show ourselves parental or chivalrous or compassionate towards our idea?—Then again, we see here a judgment and there a judgment, sundered from each other, never looking at or making any movement towards each other. So we are tickled by the thought, whether it be not here feasible to make a match, to draw a conclusion, with the anticipation that if a consequence follows this conclusion it is not only the two judgments united in wedlock but the matchmakers that will gain honour. If, however, we cannot acquire a hold upon that thought either on the path of defiance and ill-will or on that of good-will (if we hold it to be true)—then we submit to it and do homage to it as a leader and a prince, give it a chair of honour, and speak not of it without a flourish of trumpets: for we are bright in its brightness. Woe to him who tries to dim this brightness! Perhaps we ourselves one day grow suspicious of our idea. Then we, the indefatigable “ king-makers” of the history of the intellect, cast it down from its throne and immediately exalt its adversary. Surely if this be considered and thought out a little further, no one will speak of an “ absolute impulse to knowledge”! Why, then, does man prefer the true to the untrue, in this secret combat with thought-personalities, in this generally clandestine match-making of thoughts, constitution-founding of thoughts, child-rearing of thoughts, nursing and almsgiving of thoughts? For the same reason that he practices honesty in intercourse with real persons: now from habit, heredity, and training, originally because the true, like the fair and the just, is more expedient and more reputable than the untrue. For in the realm of thought it is difficult to assume a power and glory that are built on error or on falsehood. The feeling that such an edifice might at some time collapse is humiliating to the self-esteem of the architect—he is ashamed of the fragility of the material, and, as he considers himself more important than the rest of the world, he would fain construct nothing that is less durable than the rest of the world. In his longing for truth he embraces the belief in a personal immortality, the most arrogant and defiant idea that exists, closely allied as it is to the underlying thought, pereat mundus, dum ego salvus sim! His work has become his “ ego,” he transforms himself into the Imperishable with its universal challenge. It is his immeasurable pride that will only employ the best and hardest stones for the work—truths, or what he holds for such. Arrogance has always been justly called the “ vice of the sage”; yet without this vice, fruitful in impulses. Truth and her status on earth would be in a parlous plight. In our propensity to fear our thoughts, concepts and words, and yet to honour ourselves in them, unconsciously to ascribe to them the power of rewarding, despising, praising, and blaming us, and so to associate with them as with free intellectual personalities, as with independent powers, as with our equals—herein lie the roots of the remarkable phenomenon which I have called “ intellectual conscience.” Thus something of the highest moral species has bloomed from a black root. 27. The Obscurantists.—The essential feature of the black art of obscurantism is not its intention of clouding the brain, but its attempt to darken the picture of the world and cloud our idea of existence. It often employs the method of thwarting all illumination of the intellect, but at times it uses the very opposite means, seeking by the highest refinement of the intellect to induce a satiety of the intellect’s fruits. Hair-splitting metaphysicians, who pave the way for skepticism and by their excessive acumen provoke a distrust of acumen, are excellent instruments of the more subtle form of obscurantism.—Is it possible that even Kant may be applied to this purpose? Did he even intend something of the sort, for a time at least, to judge from his own notorious exposition: “ to clear the way for belief by setting limitations to knowledge”?—Certainly he did not succeed, nor did his followers, on the wolf and fox tracks of this highly refined and dangerous form of obscurantism—the most dangerous of all, for the black art here appears in the garb of light. 28. By what Kind of Philosophy Art is Corrupted.—When the mists of a metaphysical-mystical philosophy succeed in making all aesthetic phenomena opaque, it follows that these phenomena cannot be comparatively valued, inasmuch as each becomes individually inexplicable. But when once they cannot be compared for the sake of valuation, there arises an entire absence-of-criticism, a blind indulgence. From this source springs a continual diminution of the enjoyment of art (which is only distinguished from the crude satisfaction of a need by the highest refinement of taste and appreciation). The more taste diminishes, the more does the desire for art change and revert to a vulgar hunger, which the artist henceforth seeks to appease by ever coarser fare. 29. On Gethsemane.—The most painful thing a thinker can say to artists is: “ Could ye not watch with me one hour?” 30. At the Loom.—There are many (artists and women, for instance) who work against the few that take a pleasure in untying the knot of things and unraveling their wool. The former always want to weave the wool together again and entangle it and so turn the conceived into the unconceived and if possible inconceivable. Whatever the result may be, the wool and knot always look rather untidy, because too many hands are working and tugging at them. 31. In the Desert of Science.—As the man of science proceeds on his modest and toilsome wanderings, which must often enough be journeys in the desert, he is confronted with those brilliant mirages known as “ philosophic systems.” With magic powers of deception they show him that the solution of all riddles and the most refreshing draught of true water of life
are close at hand. His weary heart rejoices, and he well-nigh touches with his lips the goal of all scientific endurance and hardship, so that almost unconsciously he presses forward. Other natures stand still, as if spellbound by the beautiful illusion: the desert swallows them up, they become lost to science. Other natures, again, that have often experienced these subjective consolations, become very disheartened and curse the salty taste which these mirages leave behind in the mouth and from which springs a raging thirst—without one’s having come one step nearer to any sort of a spring. 32. The So-called “ Real Reality.”—When the poet depicts the various callings—such as those of the warrior, the silk-weaver, the sailor—he feigns to know all these things thoroughly, to be an expert. Even in the exposition of human actions and destinies he behaves as if he had been present at the spinning of the whole web of existence. In so far he is an impostor. He practices his frauds on pure ignoramuses, and that is why he succeeds. They praise him for his deep, genuine knowledge, and lead him finally into the delusion that he really knows as much as the individual experts and creators, yes, even as the great world-spinners themselves. In the end, the impostor becomes honest, and actually believes in his own sincerity. Emotional people say to his very face that he has the “ higher” truth and sincerity—for they are weary of reality for the time being, and accept the poetic dream as a pleasant relaxation and a night’s rest for head and heart. The visions of the dream now appear to them of more value, because, as has been said, they find them more beneficial, and mankind has always held that what is apparently of more value is more true, more real. All that is generally called reality, the poets, conscious of this power, proceed with intention to disparage and to distort into the uncertain, the illusory, the spurious, the impure, the sinful, sorrowful, and deceitful. They make use of all doubts about the limits of knowledge, of all skeptical excesses, in order to spread over everything the rumpled veil of uncertainty. For they desire that when this darkening process is complete their wizardry and soul-magic may be accepted without hesitation as the path to “ true truth” and “ real reality.” 33. The Wish to be Just and the Wish to be a Judge.—Schopenhauer, whose profound understanding of what is human and all-too-human and original sense for facts was not a little impaired by the bright leopard-skin of his metaphysic (the skin must first be pulled off him if one wants to find the real moralist genius beneath)—Schopenhauer makes this admirable distinction, wherein he comes far nearer the mark than he would himself dare to admit: “ Insight into the stern necessity of human actions is the boundary line that divides philosophic from other brains.” He worked against that wonderful insight of which he was sometimes capable by the prejudice that he had in common with the moral man (not the moralist), a prejudice that he expresses quite guilelessly and devoutly as follows: “ The ultimate and true explanation of the inner being of the entirety of things must of necessity be closely connected with that about the ethical significance of human actions.” This connection is not “ necessary” at all: such a connection must rather be rejected by that principle of the stern necessity of human actions, that is, the unconditioned non-freedom and non-responsibility of the will. Philosophic brains will accordingly be distinguished from others by their disbelief in the metaphysical significance of morality. This must create between the two kinds of brain a gulf of a depth and unbridgeableness of which the much-deplored gulf between “ cultured” and “ uncultured” scarcely gives a conception. It is true that many back doors, which the “ philosophic brains,” like Schopenhauer’s own, have left for themselves, must be recognized as useless. None leads into the open, into the fresh air of the free will, but every door through which people had slipped hitherto showed behind it once more the gleaming brass wall of fate. For we are in a prison, and can only dream of freedom, not make ourselves free. That the recognition of this fact cannot be resisted much longer is shown by the despairing and incredible postures and grimaces of those who still press against it and continue their wrestling-bout with it. Their attitude at present is something like this: “ So no one is responsible for his actions? And all is full of guilt and the consciousness of guilt? But someone must be the sinner. If it is no longer possible or permissible to accuse and sentence the individual, the one poor wave in the inevitable rough-and-tumble of the waves of development—well, then, let this stormy sea, this development itself, be the sinner. Here is free will: this totality can be accused and sentenced, can atone and expiate. So let God be the sinner and man his redeemer. Let the world’s history be guilt, expiation, and self-murder. Let the evil-doer be his own judge, the judge his own hangman.” This Christianity strained to its limits—for what else is it?—is the last thrust in the fencing-match between the teaching of unconditioned morality and the teaching of unconditioned non-freedom. It would be quite horrible if it were anything more than a logical pose, a hideous grimace of the underlying thought, perhaps the death-convulsion of the heart that seeks a remedy in its despair, the heart to which delirium whispers: “ Behold, thou art the lamb which taketh away the sin of God.” This error lies not only in the feeling,” I am responsible,” but just as much in the contradiction, “ I am not responsible, but someone must be.” That is simply not true. Hence the philosopher must say, like Christ, “ Judge not,” and the final distinction between the philosophic brains and the others would be that the former wish to be just and the latter wish to be judges. 34. Sacrifice.—You hold that sacrifice is the hallmark of moral action?—Just consider whether in every action that is done with deliberation, in the best as in the worst, there be not a sacrifice. 35. Against the “ Triers of the Reins” of Morality.—One must know the best and the worst that a man is capable of in theory and in practice before one can judge how strong his moral nature is and can be. But this is an experiment that one can never carry out. 36. Serpent’s Tooth.—Whether we have a serpent’s tooth or not we cannot know before someone has set his heel upon our necks. A wife or a mother could say: until someone has
put his heel upon the neck of our darling, our child.—Our character is determined more by the absence of certain experiences than by the experiences we have undergone. 37. Deception in Love.—We forget and purposely banish from our minds a good deal of our past. In other words, we wish our picture, that beams at us from the past, to belie us, to flatter our vanity—we are constantly engaged in this self-deception. And you who talk and boast so much of “ self-oblivion in love,” of the “ absorption of the ego in the other person”—you hold that this is something different? So you break the mirror, throw yourselves into another personality that you admire, and enjoy the new portrait of your ego, though calling it by the other person’s name—and this whole proceeding is not to be thought self-deception, self-seeking, you marvellous beings?—It seems to me that those who hide something of themselves from themselves, or hide their whole selves from themselves, are alike committing a theft from the treasury of knowledge. It is clear, then, against what transgression the maxim “ Know thyself” is a warning. 38. To the Denier of his Vanity.—He who denies his own vanity usually possesses it in so brutal a form that he instinctively shuts his eyes to avoid the necessity of despising himself 39. Why the Stupid so often Become Malignant.—To those arguments of our adversary against which our head feels too weak our heart replies by throwing suspicion on the motives of his arguments. 40. The Art of Moral Exceptions.—An art that points out and glorifies the exceptional cases of morality—where the good becomes bad and the unjust just—should rarely be given a hearing: just as now and again we buy something from gypsies, with the fear that they are diverting to their own pockets much more than their mere profit from the purchase. 41. Enjoyment and Non-enjoyment of Poisons.—The only decisive argument that has always deterred men from drinking a poison is not that it is deadly, but that it has an unpleasant taste. 42. The World without Consciousness of Sin.—If men only committed such deeds as do not give rise to a bad conscience, the human world would still look bad and rascally enough, but not so sickly and pitiable as at present.—Enough wicked men without conscience have existed at all times, and many good honest folk lack the feeling of pleasure in a good conscience. 43. The Conscientious.—It is more convenient to follow one’s conscience than one’s intelligence, for at every failure conscience finds an excuse and an encouragement in itself. That is why there are so many conscientious and so few intelligent people. 44. Opposite Means of Avoiding Bitterness.—One temperament finds it useful to be able to give vent to its disgust in words, being made sweeter by speech. Another reaches its full bitterness only by speaking out: it is more advisable for it to have to gulp down something—the restraint that men of this stamp place upon themselves in the presence of enemies and superiors improves their character and prevents it from becoming too acrid and sour. 45. Not to be Too Dejected.—To get bed-sores is unpleasant, but no proof against the merits of the cure that prescribes that you should take to your bed. Men who have long lived outside themselves, and have at last devoted themselves to the inward philosophic life, know that one can also get sores of character and intellect. This, again, is on the whole no argument against the chosen way of life, but necessitates a few small exceptions and apparent relapses. 46. The Human “ Thing in Itself.”—The most vulnerable and yet most unconquerable of things is human vanity: nay, through being wounded its strength increases and can grow to giant proportions. 47. The Farce of Many Industrious Persons.—By an excess of effort they win leisure for themselves, and then they can do nothing with it but count the hours until the tale is ended. 48. The Possession of Joy Abounding.—He that has joy abounding must be a good man, but perhaps he is not the cleverest of men, although he has reached the very goal towards which the cleverest man is striving with all his cleverness. 49. In the Mirror of Nature.—Is not a man fairly well described, when we are told that he likes to walk between tall fields of golden corn: that he prefers the forest and flower colors of
sere and chilly autumn to all others, because they point to something more beautiful than Nature has ever attained: that he feels as much at home under big broad-leaved walnut trees as among his nearest kinsfolk: that in the mountains his greatest joy is to come across those tiny distant lakes from which the very eyes of solitude seem to peer at him: that he loves that grey calm of the misty twilight that steals along the windows on autumn and early winter evenings and shuts out all soulless sounds as with velvet curtains: that in unhewn stones he recognizes the last remaining traces of the primeval age, eager for speech, and honours them from childhood upwards: that, lastly, the sea with its shifting serpent skin and wild-beast beauty is, and remains to him, unfamiliar?—Yes, something of the man is described herewith, but the mirror of Nature does not say that the same man, with (and not even “ in spite of”) all his idyllic sensibilities, might be disagreeable, stingy, and conceited. Horace, who was a good judge of such matters, in his famous beatus ille qui procul negotiis puts the tenderest feeling for country life into the mouth of a Roman money-lender. 50. Power without Victory.—The strongest cognition (that of the complete non-freedom of the human will) is yet the poorest in results, for it has always had the mightiest of opponents—human vanity. 51. Pleasure and Error.—A beneficial influence on friends is exerted by one man unconsciously, through his nature; by another consciously, through isolated actions. Although the former nature is held to be the higher, the latter alone is allied to good conscience and pleasure—the pleasure in justification by good works, which rests upon a belief in the volitional character of our good and evil doing—that is to say, upon a mistake. 52. The Folly of Committing Injustice.—The injustice we have inflicted ourselves is far harder to bear than the injustice inflicted upon us by others (not always from moral grounds, be it observed). After all, the doer is always the sufferer—that is, if he be capable of feeling the sting of conscience or of perceiving that by his action he has armed society against himself and cut himself off. For this reason we should beware still more of doing than of suffering injustice, for the sake of our own inward happiness so as not to lose our feeling of well-being—quite apart from any consideration of the precepts of religion and morality. For in suffering injustice we have the consolation of a good conscience, of hope and of revenge, together with the sympathy and applause of the just, nay of the whole of society, which is afraid of the evil-doer. Not a few are skilled in the impure self-deception that enables them to transform every injustice of their own into an injustice inflicted upon them from without, and to reserve for their own acts the exceptional right to the plea of self-defence. Their object, of course, is to make their own burden lighter. 53. Envy with or without a Mouthpiece.—Ordinary envy is wont to cackle when the envied hen has laid an egg, thereby relieving itself and becoming milder. But there is a yet deeper envy that in such a case becomes dead silent, desiring that every mouth should be sealed and always more and more angry because this desire is not gratified. Silent envy grows in silence. 54. Anger as a Spy.—Anger exhausts the soul and brings its very dregs to light. Hence, if we know no other means of gaining certainty, we must understand how to arouse anger in our dependents and adversaries, in order to learn what is really done and thought to our detriment. 55. Defence Morally more Difficult than Attack.—The true heroic deed and masterpiece of the good man does not lie in attacking opinions and continuing to love their propounders, but in the far harder task of defending his own position without causing or intending to cause bitter heartburns to his opponent. The sword of attack is honest and broad, the sword of defence usually runs out to a needle point. 56. Honest towards Honesty.—One who is openly honest towards himself ends by being rather conceited about this honesty. He knows only too well why he is honest—for the same reason that another man prefers outward show and hypocrisy. 57. Coals of Fire.—The heaping of coals of fire on another’s head is generally misunderstood and falls flat, because the other knows himself to be just as much in the right, and on his side too has thought of collecting coals. 58. Dangerous Books.—A man says: “ Judging from my own case, I find that this book is harmful.” Let him but wait, and perhaps one day he will confess that the book did him a great service by thrusting forward and bringing to light the hidden disease of his soul.—Altered opinions alter not at all (or very little) the character of a man: but they illuminate individual facets of his personality, which hitherto, in another constellation of opinions, had remained dark and unrecognizable. 59. Simulated Pity.—We simulate pity when we wish to show ourselves superior to the feeling of animosity, but generally in vain. This point is not noticed without a considerable
enhancement of that feeling of animosity. 60. Open Contradiction often Conciliatory.—At the moment when a man openly makes known his difference of opinion from a well-known party leader, the whole world thinks that he must be angry with the latter. Sometimes, however, he is just on the point of ceasing to be angry with him. He ventures to put himself on the same plane as his opponent, and is free from the tortures of suppressed envy. 61. Seeing our Light Shining.—In the darkest hour of depression, sickness, and guilt, we are still glad to see others taking a light from us and making use of us as of the disk of the moon. By this roundabout route we derive some light from our own illuminating faculty. 62. Fellowship in Joy. [5]—The snake that stings us means to hurt us and rejoices in so doing: the lowest animal can picture to itself the pain of others. But to picture to oneself the joy of others and to rejoice thereat is the highest privilege of the highest animals, and again, amongst them, is the property only of the most select specimens—accordingly a rare “ human thing.” Hence there have been philosophers who denied fellowship in joy. [5] The German word Mitfreude, coined by Nietzsche in opposition to Mitleid (sympathy), is untranslatable.—Tr. 63. Supplementary Pregnancy.—Those who have arrived at works and deeds are in an obscure way, they know not how, all the more pregnant with them, as if to prove supplementarily that these are their children and not those of chance. 64. Hard-hearted from Vanity.—Just as justice is so often a cloak for weakness, so men who are fairly intelligent, but weak, sometimes attempt dissimulation from ambitious motives and purposely show themselves unjust and hard, in order to leave behind them the impression of strength. 65. Humiliation.—If in a large sack of profit we find a single grain of humiliation we still make a wry face even at our good luck. 66. Extreme Herostratism. [6]—There might be Herostratuses who set fire to their own temple, in which their images are honoured. [6] Herostratus of Ephesus (in 356 B.C.) set fire to the temple of Diana in order (as he confessed on the rack) to gain notoriety.—Tr. 67. A World of Diminutives.—The fact that all that is weak and in need of help appeals to the heart induces in us the habit of designating by diminutive and softening terms all that appeals to our hearts—and accordingly making such things weak and clinging to our imaginations. 68. The Bad Characteristic of Sympathy.—Sympathy has a peculiar impudence for its companion. For, wishing to help at all costs, sympathy is in no perplexity either as to the means of assistance or as to the nature and cause of the disease, and goes on courageously administering all its quack medicines to restore the health and reputation of the patient. 69. Importunacy.—There is even an importunacy in relation to works, and the act of associating oneself from early youth on an intimate footing with the illustrious works of all times evinces an entire absence of shame.—Others are only importunate from ignorance, not knowing with whom they have to do—for instance classical scholars young and old in relation to the works of the Greeks. 70. The Will is Ashamed of the Intellect.—In all coolness we make reasonable plans against our passions. But we make the most serious mistake in this connection in being often ashamed, when the design has to be carried out, of the coolness and calculation with which we conceived it. So we do just the unreasonable thing, from that sort of defiant magnanimity that every passion involves. 71. Why the Skeptics Offend Morality.—He who takes his morality solemnly and seriously is enraged against the skeptics in the domain of morals. For where he lavishes all his force, he wishes others to marvel but not to investigate and doubt. Then there are natures whose last shred of morality is just the belief in morals. They behave in the same way towards skeptics, if possible still more passionately. 72. Shyness.—All moralists are shy, because they know they are confounded with spies and traitors, so soon as their penchant is noticed. Besides, they are generally conscious of being impotent in action, for in the midst of work the motives of their activity almost withdraw their attention from the work.
73. A Danger to Universal Morality.—People who are at the same time noble and honest come to deify every devilry that brings out their honesty, and to suspend for a time the balance of their moral judgment. 74. The Saddest Error.—It is an unpardonable offence when one discovers that where one was convinced of being loved, one is only regarded as a household utensil and decoration, whereby the master of the house can find an outlet for his vanity before his guests. 75. Love and Duality.—What else is love but understanding and rejoicing that another lives, works, and feels in a different and opposite way to ourselves? That love may be able to bridge over the contrasts by joys, we must not remove or deny those contrasts. Even self-love presupposes an irreconcilable duality (or plurality) in one person. 76. Signs from Dreams.—What one sometimes does not know and feel accurately in waking hours—whether one has a good or a bad conscience as regards some person—is revealed completely and unambiguously by dreams. 77. Debauchery.—Not joy but joylessness is the mother of debauchery. 78. Reward and Punishment.—No one accuses without an underlying notion of punishment and revenge, even when he accuses his fate or himself. All complaint is accusation, all self-congratulation is praise. Whether we do one or the other, we always make someone responsible. 79. Doubly Unjust.—We sometimes advance truth by a twofold injustice: when we see and represent consecutively the two sides of a case which we are not in a position to see together, but in such a way that every time we mistake or deny the other side, fancying that what we see is the whole truth. 80. Mistrust.—Self-mistrust does not always proceed uncertainly and shyly, but sometimes in a furious rage, having worked itself into a frenzy in order not to tremble. 81. Philosophy of Parvenus.—If you want to be a personality you must even hold your shadow in honour. 82. Knowing how to Wash Oneself Clean.—We must know how to emerge cleaner from unclean conditions, and, if necessary, how to wash ourselves even with dirty water. 83. Letting Yourself Go.—The more you let yourself go, the less others let you go. 84. The Innocent Rogue.—There is a slow, gradual path to vice and rascality of every description. In the end, the traveller is quite abandoned by the insect-swarms of a bad conscience, and although a thorough scoundrel he walks in innocence. 85. Making Plans.—Making plans and conceiving projects involves many agreeable sentiments. He that had the strength to be nothing but a contriver of plans all his life would be a happy man. But one must occasionally have a rest from this activity by carrying a plan into execution, and then comes anger and sobriety. 86. Wherewith We See the Ideal.—Every efficient man is blocked by his efficiency and cannot look out freely from its prison. Had he not also a goodly share of imperfection, he could, by reason of his virtue, never arrive at an intellectual or moral freedom. Our shortcomings are the eyes with which we see the ideal. 87. Dishonest Praise.—Dishonest praise causes many more twinges of conscience than dishonest blame, probably only because we have exposed our capacity for judgment far more completely through excessive praise than through excessive and unjust blame. 88. How One Dies is Indifferent.—The whole way in which a man thinks of death during the prime of his life and strength is very expressive and significant for what we call his character. But the hour of death itself, his behaviour on the death-bed, is almost indifferent. The exhaustion of waning life, especially when old people die, the irregular or insufficient nourishment of the brain during this last period, the occasionally violent pain, the novel and untried nature of the whole position, and only too often the ebb and flow of superstitious impressions and fears, as if dying were of much consequence and meant the crossing of bridges of the most terrible kind—all this forbids our using death as a testimony concerning the
living. Nor is it true that the dying man is generally more honest than the living. On the contrary, through the solemn attitude of the bystanders, the repressed or flowing streams of tears and emotions, everyone is inveigled into a comedy of vanity, now conscious, now unconscious. The serious way in which every dying man is treated must have been to many a poor despised devil the highest joy of his whole life and a sort of compensation and repayment for many privations. 89. Morality and its Sacrifice.—The origin of morality may be traced to two ideas: “ The community is of more value than the individual,” and “ The permanent interest is to be preferred to the temporary.” The conclusion drawn is that the permanent interest of the community is unconditionally to be set above the temporary interest of the individual, especially his momentary well-being, but also his permanent interest and even the prolongation of his existence. Even if the individual suffers by an arrangement that suits the mass, even if he is depressed and ruined by it, morality must be maintained and the victim brought to the sacrifice. Such a trend of thought arises, however, only in those who are not the victims—for in the victim’s case it enforces the claim that the individual might be worth more than the many, and that the present enjoyment, the “ moment in paradise,” [7] should perhaps be rated higher than a tame succession of untroubled or comfortable circumstances. But the philosophy of the sacrificial victim always finds voice too late, and so victory remains with morals and morality: which are really nothing more than the sentiment for the whole concept of morals under which one lives and has been reared—and reared not as an individual but as a member of the whole, as a cipher in a majority. Hence it constantly happens that the individual makes himself into a majority by means of his morality. [7] Quotation from Schiller, Don Carlos, i. 5. —Tr. 90. The Good and the Good Conscience.—You hold that all good things have at all times had a good conscience? Science, which is certainly a very good thing, has come into the world without such a conscience and quite free from all pathos, rather clandestinely, by roundabout ways, walking with shrouded or masked face like a sinner, and always with the feeling at least of being a smuggler. Good conscience has bad conscience for its stepping-stone, not for its opposite. For all that is good has at one time been new and consequently strange, against morals, immoral, and has gnawed like a worm at the heart of the fortunate discoverer. 91. Success Sanctifies the Intentions.—We should not shrink from treading the road to a virtue, even when we see clearly that nothing but egotism, and accordingly utility, personal comfort, fear, considerations of health, reputation, or glory, are the impelling motives. These motives are styled ignoble and selfish. Very well, but if they stimulate us to some virtue —for example, self-denial, dutifulness, order, thrift, measure, and moderation—let us listen to them, whatever their epithets may be! For if we reach the goal to which they summon us, then the virtue we have attained, by means of the pure air it makes us breathe and the spiritual well-being it communicates, ennobles the remoter impulses of our action, and afterwards we no longer perform those actions from the same coarse motives that inspired us before.—Education should therefore force the virtues on the pupil, as far as possible, according to his disposition. Then virtue, the sunshine and summer atmosphere of the soul, can contribute her own share of work and add mellowness and sweetness. 92. Dabblers in Christianity, not Christians.—So that is your Christianity!—To annoy humanity you praise “ God and His Saints,” and again when you want to praise humanity you go so far that God and His Saints must be annoyed.—I wish you would at least learn Christian manners, as you are so deficient in the civility of the Christian heart. 93. The Religious and Irreligious Impression of Nature.—A true believer must be to us an object of veneration, but the same holds good of a true, sincere, convinced unbeliever. With men of the latter stamp we are near to the high mountains where mighty rivers have their source, and with believers we are under vigorous, shady, restful trees. 94. Judicial Murder.—The two greatest judicial murders [8] in the world’s history are, to speak without exaggeration, concealed and well-concealed suicide. In both cases a man willed to die, and in both cases he let his breast be pierced by the sword in the hand of human injustice. [8] This, of course, refers to Jesus and Socrates.—Tr. 95. “ Love.”—The finest artistic conception wherein Christianity had the advantage over other religious systems lay in one word—Love. Hence it became the lyric religion (whereas in its two other creations Semitism bestowed heroico-epical religions upon the world). In the word “ love” there is so much meaning, so much that stimulates and appeals to memory and hope, that even the meanest intelligence and the coldest heart feel some glimmering of its sense. The cleverest woman and the lowest man think of the comparatively unselfish moments of their whole life, even if with them Eros never soared high: and the vast number of beings who miss love from their parents or children or sweethearts, especially those whose sexual instincts have been refined away, have found their heart’s desire in Christianity. 96. The Fulfillment of Christianity.—In Christianity there is also an Epicurean trend of thought, starting from the idea that God can only demand of man, his creation and his image, what it is possible for man to fulfil, and accordingly that Christian virtue and perfection are attainable and often attained. Now, for instance, the belief in loving one’s enemies—even if
it is only a belief or fancy, and by no means a psychological reality (a real love)—gives unalloyed happiness, so long as it is genuinely believed. (As to the reason of this, psychologist and Christian might well differ.) Hence earthly life, through the belief, I mean the fancy, that it satisfies not only the injunction to love our enemies, but all the other injunctions of Christianity, and that it has really assimilated and embodied in itself the Divine perfection according to the command, “ Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” might actually become a holy life. Thus error can make Christ’s promise come true. 97. Of the Future of Christianity.—We may be allowed to form a conjecture as to the disappearance of Christianity and as to the places where it will be the slowest to retreat, if we consider where and for what reasons Protestantism spread with such startling rapidity. As is well known, Protestantism promised to do far more cheaply all that the old Church did, without costly masses, pilgrimages, and priestly pomp and circumstance. It spread particularly among the Northern nations, which were not so deeply rooted as those of the South in the old Church’s symbolism and love of ritual. In the South the more powerful pagan religion survived in Christianity, whereas in the North Christianity meant an opposition to and a break with the old-time creed, and hence was from the first more thoughtful and less sensual, but for that very reason, in times of peril, more fanatical and more obstinate. If from the standpoint of thought we succeed in uprooting Christianity, we can at once know the point where it will begin to disappear—the very point at which it will be most stubborn in defence. In other places it will bend but not break, lose its leaves but burst into leaf afresh, because the senses, and not thought, have gone over to its side. But it is the senses that maintain the belief that with all its expensive outlay the Church is more cheaply and conveniently managed than under the stern conditions of work and wages. Yet what does one hold leisure (or semi-idleness) to be worth, when once one has become accustomed to it? The senses plead against a dechristianized world, saying that there would be too much work to do in it and an insufficient supply of leisure. They take the part of magic—that is, they let God work himself (oremus nos, Deus laboret). 98. Theatricality and Honesty of Unbelievers.—There is no book that contains in such abundance or expresses so faithfully all that man occasionally finds salutary—ecstatic inward happiness, ready for sacrifice or death in the belief in and contemplation of his truth—as the book that tells of Christ. From that book a clever man may learn all the means whereby a book can be made into a world-book, a vade-mecum for all, and especially that master-means of representing everything as discovered, nothing as future and uncertain. All influential books try to leave the same impression, as if the widest intellectual horizon were circumscribed here and as if about the sun that shines here every constellation visible at present or in the future must revolve.—Must not then all purely scientific books be poor in influence on the same grounds as such books are rich in influence? Is not the book fated to live humble and among humble folk, in order to be crucified in the end and never resurrected? In relation to what the religious inform us of their “ knowledge” and their “ holy spirit,” are not all upright men of science “ poor in spirit”? Can any religion demand more self-denial and draw the selfish out of themselves more inexorably than science?—This and similar things we may say, in any case with a certain theatricality, when we have to defend ourselves against believers, for it is impossible to conduct a defence without a certain amount of theatricality. But between ourselves our language must be more honest, and we employ a freedom that those believers are not even allowed, in their own interests, to understand. Away, then, with the monastic cowl of self-denial, with the appearance of humility! Much more and much better—so rings our truth! If science were not linked with the pleasure of knowledge, the utility of the thing known, what should we care for science? If a little faith, love, and hope did not lead our souls to knowledge, what would attract us to science? And if in science the ego means nothing, still the inventive, happy ego, every upright and industrious ego, means a great deal in the republic of the men of science. The homage of those who pay homage, the joy of those whom we wish well or honour, in some cases glory and a fair share of immortality, is the personal reward for every suppression of personality: to say nothing here of meaner views and rewards, although it is just on this account that the majority have sworn and always continue to swear fidelity to the laws of the republic and of science. If we had not remained in some degree unscientific, what would science matter to us? Taking everything together and speaking in plain language: “ To a purely knowing being knowledge would be indifferent.”—Not the quality but the quantity of faith and devoutness distinguishes us from the pious, the believers. We are content with less. But should one of them cry out to us: “ Be content and show yourselves contented!” we could easily answer: “ As a matter of fact, we do not belong to the most discontented class. But you, if your faith makes you happy, show yourselves to be happy. Your faces have always done more harm to your faith than our reasons! If that glad message of your Bible were written in your faces, you would not need to demand belief in the authority of that book in such stiff-necked fashion. Your words, your actions should continually make the Bible superfluous— in fact, through you a new Bible should continually come into being. As it is, your apologia for Christianity is rooted in your unchristianity, and with your defence you write your own condemnation. If you, however, should wish to emerge from your dissatisfaction with Christianity, you should ponder over the experience of two thousand years, which, clothed in the modest form of a question, may be voiced as follows: “ If Christ really intended to redeem the world, may he not be said to have failed?” 99. The Poet as Guide to the Future.—All the surplus poetical force that still exists in modern humanity, but is not used under our conditions of life, should (without any deduction) be devoted to a definite goal—not to depicting the present nor to reviving and summarizing the past, but to pointing the way to the future. Nor should this be so done as if the poet, like an imaginative political economist, had to anticipate a more favorable national and social state of things and picture their realisation. Rather will he, just as the earlier poets portrayed the images of the Gods, portray the fair images of men. He will divine those cases where, in the midst of our modern world and reality (which will not be shirked or repudiated in the usual poetic fashion), a great, noble soul is still possible, where it may be embodied in harmonious, equable conditions, where it may become permanent, visible, and representative of a type, and so, by the stimulus to imitation and envy, help to create the future. The poems of such a poet would be distinguished by appearing secluded and
protected from the heated atmosphere of the passions. The irremediable failure, the shattering of all the strings of the human instrument, the scornful laughter and gnashing of teeth, and all tragedy and comedy in the usual old sense, would appear by the side of this new art as mere archaic lumber, a blurring of the outlines of the world-picture. Strength, kindness, gentleness, purity, and an unsought, innate moderation in the personalities and their action: a levelled soil, giving rest and pleasure to the foot: a shining heaven mirrored in faces and events: science and art welded into a new unity: the mind living together with her sister, the soul, withoutarrogance or jealousy, and enticing from contrasts the grace of seriousness, not the impatience of discord—all this would be the general environment, the background on which the delicate differences of the embodied ideals would make the real picture, that of ever-growing human majesty. Many roads to this poetry of the future start from Goethe, but the quest needs good pathfinders and above all a far greater strength than is possessed by modern poets, who unscrupulously represent the half-animal and the immaturity and intemperance that are mistaken by them for power and naturalness. 100. The Muse as Penthesilea. [9]—“ Better to rot than to be a woman without charm.” When once the Muse thinks thus, the end of her art is again at hand. But it can be a tragic and also a comic finale. [9] Queen of the Amazons, slain by Achilles in the Trojan War.—Tr. 101. The Circuitous Path to the Beautiful.—If the beautiful is to be identified with that which gives pleasure—and thus sang the Muses once—the useful is often the necessary circuitous path to the beautiful, and has a perfect right to spurn the short-sighted censure of men who live for the moment, who will not wait, and who think that they can reach all good things without ever taking a circuitous path. 102. An Excuse for many a Transgression.—The ceaseless desire to create, the eternal looking outward of the artist, hinders him from becoming better and more beautiful as a personality: unless his craving for glory be great enough to compel him to exhibit in his relations with other men a growth corresponding to the growing beauty and greatness of his works. In any case he has but a limited measure of strength, and how could the proportion of strength that he spends on himself be of any benefit to his work—or vice versa? 103. Satisfying the Best People.—If we have satisfied the best people of our time with our art, it is a sign that we shall not satisfy the best people of the succeeding period. We have indeed “ lived for all time,” and the applause of the best people ensures our fame. [10] [10] From Schiller, Wallenstein’s Lager: “ Wer den Besten seiner Zeit genug gethan, der hat gelebt für alle Zeiten” (“ He that has satisfied the best men of his time has lived for all time”). 104. Of One Substance.—If we are of one substance with a book or a work of art, we think in our heart of hearts that it must be excellent, and are offended if others find it ugly, overspiced, or pretentious. 105. Speech and Emotion.—That speech is not given to us to communicate our emotions may be seen from the fact that all simple men are ashamed to seek for words to express their deeper feelings. These feelings are expressed only in actions, and even here such men blush if others seem to divine their motives. After all, among poets, to whom God generally denies this shame, the more noble are more monosyllabic in the language of emotion, and evince a certain constraint: whereas the real poets of emotion are for the most part shameless in practical life. 106. A Mistake about a Privation.—He that has not for a long time been completely weaned from an art, and is still always at home in it, has no idea how small a privation it is to live without that art. 107. Three-quarter Strength.—A work that is meant to give an impression of health should be produced with three-quarters, at the most, of the strength of its creator. If he has gone to his farthest limit, the work excites the observer and disconcerts him by its tension. All good things have something lazy about them and lie like cows in the meadow. 108. Refusing to have Hunger as a Guest.—As refined fare serves a hungry man as well as and no better than coarser food, the more pretentious artist will not dream of inviting the hungry man to his meal. 109. Living without Art and Wine.—It is with works of art as with wine—it is better if one can do without both and keep to water, and if from the inner fire and inner sweetness of the soul the water spontaneously changes again into wine. 110. The Pirate-Genius.—The pirate-genius in art, who even knows how to deceive subtle minds, arises when someone unscrupulously and from youth upwards regards all good things, that are not protected by law, as the property of a particular person, as his legitimate spoil. Now all the good things of past ages and masters lie free around us, hedged about
and protected by the reverential awe of the few who know them. To these few our robber-genius, by the force of his impudence, bids defiance and accumulates for himself a wealth that once more calls forth homage and awe. 111. To the Poets of Great Towns.—In the gardens of modern poetry it will clearly be observed that the sewers of great towns are too near. With the fragrance of flowers is mingled something that betrays abomination and putrescence. With pain I ask: “ Must you poets always request wit and dirt to stand godfather, when an innocent and beautiful sensation has to be christened by you? Are you obliged to dress your noble goddess in a hood of devilry and caricature? But whence this necessity, this obligation?” The reason is—because you live too near the sewers. 112. Of the Salt of Speech.—No one has ever explained why the Greek writers, having at command such an unparalleled wealth and power of language, made so sparing a use of their resources that every post-classical Greek book appears by comparison crude, over-colored, and extravagant. It is said that towards the North Polar ice and in the hottest countries salt is becoming less and less used, whereas on the other hand the dwellers on the plains and by the coast in the more temperate zones use salt in great abundance. Is it possible that the Greeks from a twofold reason—because their intellect was colder and clearer but their fundamental passionate nature far more tropical than ours—did not need salt and spice to the same extent that we do? 113. The Freest Writer.—In a book for free spirits one cannot avoid mention of Laurence Sterne, the man whom Goethe honoured as the freest spirit of his century. May he be satisfied with the honour of being called the freest writer of all times, in comparison with whom all others appear stiff, square-toed, intolerant, and downright boorish! In his case we should not speak of the clear and rounded but of “ the endless melody”—if by this phrase we arrive at a name for an artistic style in which the definite form is continually broken, thrust aside and transferred to the realm of the indefinite, so that it signifies one and the other at the same time. Sterne is the great master of double entendre, this phrase being naturally used in a far wider sense than is commonly done when one applies it to sexual relations. We may give up for lost the reader who always wants to know exactly what Sterne thinks about a matter, and whether he be making a serious or a smiling face (for he can do both with one wrinkling of his features; he can be and even wishes to be right and wrong at the same moment, to interweave profundity and farce). His digressions are at once continuations and further developments of the story, his maxims contain a satire on all that is sententious, his dislike of seriousness is bound up with a disposition to take no matter merely externally and on the surface. So in the proper reader he arouses a feeling of uncertainty whether he be walking, lying, or standing, a feeling most closely akin to that of floating in the air. He, the most versatile of writers, communicates something of this versatility to his reader. Yes, Sterne unexpectedly changes the parts, and is often as much reader as author, his book being like a play within a play, a theatre audience before another theatre audience. We must surrender at discretion to the mood of Sterne, although we can always expect it to be gracious. It is strangely instructive to see how so great a writer as Diderot has affected this double entendre of Sterne’s—to be equally ambiguous throughout is just the Sternian super-humor. Did Diderot imitate, admire, ridicule, or parody Sterne in his Jacques le Fataliste? One cannot be exactly certain, and this uncertainty was perhaps intended by the author. This very doubt makes the French unjust to the work of one of their first masters, one who need not be ashamed of comparison with any of the ancients or moderns. For humor (and especially for this humorous attitude towards humor itself) the French are too serious. Is it necessary to add that of all great authors Sterne is the worst model, in fact the inimitable author, and that even Diderot had to pay for his daring? What the worthy Frenchmen and before them some Greeks and Romans aimed at and attained in prose is the very opposite of what Sterne aims at and attains. He raises himself as a masterly exception above all that artists in writing demand of themselves—propriety, reserve, character, steadfastness of purpose, comprehensiveness, perspicuity, good deportment in gait and feature. Unfortunately Sterne the man seems to have been only too closely related to Sterne the writer. His squirrel-soul sprang with insatiable unrest from branch to branch; he knew what lies between sublimity and rascality; he had sat on every seat, always with unabashed watery eyes and mobile play of feature. He was—if language does not revolt from such a combination—of a hard-hearted kindness, and in the midst of the joys of a grotesque and even corrupt imagination he showed the bashful grace of innocence. Such a carnal and spiritual hermaphroditism, such untrammeled wit penetrating into every vein and muscle, was perhaps never possessed by any other man. 114. A Choice Reality.—Just as the good prose writer only takes words that belong to the language of daily intercourse, though not by a long way all its words—whence arises a choice style—so the good poet of the future will only represent the real and turn his eyes away from all fantastic, superstitious, half-voiced, forgotten stories, to which earlier poets devoted their powers. Only reality, though by a long way not every reality—but a choice reality. 115. Degenerate Species of Art.—Side by side with the genuine species of art, those of great repose and great movement, there are degenerate species—weary, blasé art and excited art. Both would have their weakness taken for strength and wish to be confounded with the genuine species. 116. A Hero Impossible from Lack of Color.—The typical poets and artists of our age like to compose their pictures upon a background of shimmering red, green, grey, and gold, on the background of nervous sensuality—a condition well understood by the children of this century. The drawback comes when we do not look at these pictures with the eyes of our
century. Then we see that the great figures painted by these artists have something flickering, tremulous, and dizzy about them, and accordingly we do not ascribe to them heroic deeds, but at best mock-heroic, swaggering misdeeds. 117. Overladen Style.—The overladen style is a consequence of the impoverishment of the organizing force together with a lavish stock of expedients and intentions. At the beginnings of art the very reverse conditions sometimes appear. 118. Pulchrum est Paucorum Hominum.—History and experience tell us that the significant grotesqueness that mysteriously excites the imagination and carries one beyond everyday reality, is older and grows more luxuriantly than the beautiful and reverence for the beautiful in art: and that it begins to flourish exceedingly when the sense for beauty is on the wane. For the vast majority of mankind this grotesque seems to be a higher need than the beautiful, presumably because it contains a coarser narcotic. 119. Origins of Taste in Works of Art.—If we consider the primary germs of the artistic sense, and ask ourselves what are the various kinds of joy produced by the firstlings of art—as, for example, among savage tribes—we find first of all the joy of understanding what another means. Art in this case is a sort of conundrum, which causes its solver pleasure in his own quick and keen perceptions.—Then the roughest works of art remind us of the pleasant things we have actually experienced, and so give joy—as, for example, when the artist alludes to a chase, a victory, a wedding.—Again, the representation may cause us to feel excited, touched, inflamed, as for instance in the glorification of revenge and danger. Here the enjoyment lies in the excitement itself, in the victory over tedium.—The memory, too, of unpleasant things, so far as they have been overcome or make us appear interesting to the listener as subjects for art (as when the singer describes the mishaps of a daring seaman), can inspire great joy, the credit for which is given to art.—A more subtle variety is the joy that arises at the sight of all that is regular and symmetrical in lines, points, and rhythms. For by a certain analogy is awakened the feeling for all that is orderly and regular in life, which one has to thank alone for all well-being. So in the cult of symmetry we unconsciously do homage to rule and proportion as the source of our previous happiness, and the joy in this case is a kind of hymn of thanksgiving. Only when a certain satiety of the last-mentioned joy arises does a more subtle feeling step in, that enjoyment might even lie in a violation of the symmetrical and regular. This feeling, for example, impels us to seek reason in apparent unreason, and the sort of aesthetic riddle-guessing that results is in a way the higher species of the first-named artistic joy.—He who pursues this speculation still further will know what kind of hypotheses for the explanation of aesthetic phenomena are hereby fundamentally rejected. 120. Not too Near.—It is a disadvantage for good thoughts when they follow too closely on one another, for they hide the view from each other. That is why great artists and writers have made an abundant use of the mediocre. 121. Roughness and Weakness.—Artists of all periods have made the discovery that in roughness lies a certain strength, and that not everyone can be rough who wants to be: also that many varieties of weakness have a powerful effect on the emotions. From this source are derived many artistic substitutes, which not even the greatest and most conscientious artists can abstain from using. 122. Good Memory.—Many a man fails to become a thinker for the sole reason that his memory is too good. 123. Arousing instead of Appeasing Hunger.—Great artists fancy that they have taken full possession of a soul. In reality, and often to their painful disappointment, that soul has only been made more capacious and insatiable, so that a dozen greater artists could plunge into its depths without filling it up. 124. Artists’ Anxiety.—The anxiety lest people may not believe that their figures are alive can mislead many artists of declining taste to portray these figures so that they appear as if mad. From the same anxiety, on the other hand, Greek artists of the earliest ages gave even dead and sorely wounded men that smile which they knew as the most vivid sign of life— careless of the actual forms bestowed by nature on life at its last gasp. 125. The Circle must be Completed.—He who follows a philosophy or a genre of art to the end of its career and beyond, understands from inner experience why the masters and disciples who come after have so often turned, with a depreciatory gesture, into a new groove. The circle must be described—but the individual, even the greatest, sits firm on his point of the circumference, with an inexorable look of obstinacy, as if the circle ought never to be completed. 126. The Older Art and the Soul of the Present.—Since every art becomes more and more adapted to the expression of spiritual states, of the more lively, delicate, energetic, and passionate states, the later masters, spoilt by these means of expression, do not feel at their ease in the presence of the old-time works of art. They feel as if the ancients had merely
been lacking in the means of making their souls speak clearly, also perhaps in some necessary technical preliminaries. They think that they must render some assistance in this quarter, for they believe in the similarity or even unity of all souls. In truth, however, measure, symmetry, a contempt for graciousness and charm, an unconscious severity and morning chilliness, an evasion of passion, as if passion meant the death of art—such are the constituents of sentiment and morality in all old masters, who selected and arranged their means of expression not at random but in a necessary connection with their morality. Knowing this, are we to deny those that come after the right to animate the older works with their soul? No, for these works can only survive through our giving them our soul, and our blood alone enables them to speak to us. The real “ historic” discourse would talk ghostly speech to ghosts. We honour the great artists less by that barren timidity that allows every word, every note to remain intact than by energetic endeavours to aid them continually to a new life.—True, if Beethoven were suddenly to come to life and hear one of his works performed with that modern animation and nervous refinement that bring glory to our masters of execution, he would probably be silent for a long while, uncertain whether he should raise his hand to curse or to bless, but perhaps say at last: “ Well, well! That is neither I nor notI, but a third thing—it seems to me, too, something right, if not just the right thing. But you must know yourselves what to do, as in any case it is you who have to listen. As our Schiller says, ‘the living man is right.’ So have it your own way, and let me go down again.” 127. Against the Disparagers of Brevity.—A brief dictum may be the fruit and harvest of long reflection. The reader, however, who is a novice in this field and has never considered the case in point, sees something embryonic in all brief dicta, not without a reproachful hint to the author, requesting him not to serve up such raw and ill-prepared food. 128. Against the Short-Sighted.—Do you think it is piece-work because it is (and must be) offered you in pieces? 129. Readers of Aphorisms.—The worst readers of aphorisms are the friends of the author, if they make a point of referring the general to the particular instance to which the aphorism owes its origin. This namby-pamby attitude brings all the author’s trouble to naught, and instead of a philosophic lesson and a philosophic frame of mind, they deservedly gain nothing but the satisfaction of a vulgar curiosity. 130. Readers’ Insults.—The reader offers a twofold insult to the author by praising his second book at the expense of his first (or vice versa) and by expecting the author to be grateful to him on that account. 131. The Exciting Element in the History of Art.—We fall into a state of terrible tension when we follow the history of an art—as, for example, that of Greek oratory—and, passing from master to master, observe their increasing precautions to obey the old and the new laws and all these self-imposed limitations. We see that the bow must snap, and that the socalled “ loose” composition, with the wonderful means of expression smothered and concealed (in this particular case the florid style of Asianism), was once necessary and almost beneficial. 132. To the Great in Art.—That enthusiasm for some object which you, O great man, introduce into this world causes the intelligence of the many to be stunted. The knowledge of this fact spells humiliation. But the enthusiast wears his hump with pride and pleasure, and you have the consolation of feeling that you have increased the world’s happiness. 133. Conscienceless Æsthetes.—The real fanatics of an artistic school are perhaps those utterly inartistic natures that are not even grounded in the elements of artistic study and creation, but are impressed with the strongest of all the elementary influences of an art. For them there is no æsthetic conscience—hence nothing to hold them back from fanaticism. 134. How the Soul should be Moved by the New Music.—The artistic purpose followed by the new music, in what is now forcibly but none too lucidly termed “ endless melody,” can be understood by going into the sea, gradually losing one’s firm tread on the bottom, and finally surrendering unconditionally to the fluid element. One has to swim. In the previous, older music one was forced, with delicate or stately or impassioned movement, to dance. The measure necessary for dancing, the observance of a distinct balance of time and force in the soul of the hearer, imposed a continual self-control. Through the counteraction of the cooler draught of air which came from this caution and the warmer breath of musical enthusiasm, that music exercised its spell.—Richard Wagner aimed at a different excitation of the soul, allied, as above said, to swimming and floating. This is perhaps the most essential of his innovations. His famous method, originating from this aim and adapted to it—the “ endless melody”—strives to break and sometimes even to despise all mathematical equilibrium of time and force. He is only too rich in the invention of such effects, which sound to the old school like rhythmic paradoxes and blasphemies. He dreads petrifaction, crystallization, the development of music into the architectural. He accordingly sets up a three-time rhythm in opposition to the double-time, not infrequently introduces five-time and seven-time, immediately repeats a phrase, but with a prolation, so that its time is again doubled and trebled. From an easy-going imitation of such art may arise a great danger to music, for by the side of the super-abundance of rhythmic emotion demoralization and decadence lurk in ambush. The danger will become very great if such music comes to associate itself more and more closely with a quite naturalistic art of acting and pantomime, trained and dominated by no higher plastic models; an art that knows no measure in itself
and can impart no measure to the kindred element, the all-too-womanish nature of music. 135. Poet and Reality.—The Muse of the poet who is not in love with reality will not be reality, and will bear him children with hollow eyes and all too tender bones. 136. Means and End.—In art the end does not justify the means, but holy means can justify the end. 137. The Worst Readers.—The worst readers are those who act like plundering soldiers. They take out some things that they might use, cover the rest with filth and confusion, and blaspheme about the whole. 138. Signs of a Good Writer.—Good writers have two things in common: they prefer being understood to being admired, and they do not write for the critical and over-shrewd reader. 139. The Mixed Species.—The mixed species in art bear witness to their authors’ distrust of their own strength. They seek auxiliary powers, advocates, hiding-places—such is the case with the poet who calls in philosophy, the musician who calls in the drama, and the thinker who calls in rhetoric to his aid. 140. Shutting One’s Mouth.—When his book opens its mouth, the author must shut his. 141. Badges of Rank.—All poets and men of letters who are in love with the superlative want to do more than they can. 142. Cold Books.—The deep thinker reckons on readers who feel with him the happiness that lies in deep thinking. Hence a book that looks cold and sober, if seen in the right light, may seem bathed in the sunshine of spiritual cheerfulness and become a genuine soul-comforter. 143. A Knack of the Slow-Witted.—The slow-witted thinker generally allies himself with loquacity and ceremoniousness. By the former he thinks he is gaining mobility and fluency, by the latter he gives his peculiarity the appearance of being a result of free will and artistic purpose, with a view to dignity, which needs slow movement. 144. Le Style Baroque. [11]—He who as thinker and writer is not born or trained to dialectic and the consecutive arrangement of ideas, will unconsciously turn to the rhetoric and dramatic forms. For, after all, his object is to make himself understood and to carry the day by force, and he is indifferent whether, as shepherd, he honestly guides to himself the hearts of his fellow-men, or, as robber, he captures them by surprise. This is true of the plastic arts as of music: where the feeling of insufficient dialectic or a deficiency in expression or narration, together with an urgent, over-powerful impulse to form, gives birth to that species of style known as “ baroque.” Only the ill-educated and the arrogant will at once find a depreciatory force in this word. The baroque style always arises at the time of decay of a great art, when the demands of art in classical expression have become too great. It is a natural phenomenon which will be observed with melancholy—for it is a forerunner of the night—but at the same time with admiration for its peculiar compensatory arts of expression and narration. To this style belongs already a choice of material and subjects of the highest dramatic tension, at which the heart trembles even when there is no art, because heaven and hell are all too near the emotions: then, the oratory of strong passion and gestures, of ugly sublimity, of great masses, in fact of absolute quantity per se (as is shown in Michael Angelo, the father or grandfather of the Italian baroque stylists): the lights of dusk, illumination and conflagration playing upon those strongly molded forms: ever-new ventures in means and aims, strongly underscored by artists for artists, while the layman must fancy he sees an unconscious overflowing of all the horns of plenty of an original nature-art: all these characteristics that constitute the greatness of that style are neither possible nor permitted in the earlier ante-classical and classical periods of a branch of art. Such luxuries hang long on the tree like forbidden fruit. Just now, when music is passing into this last phase, we may learn to know the phenomenon of the baroque style in peculiar splendor, and, by comparison, find much that is instructive for earlier ages. For from Greek times onward there has often been a baroque style, in poetry, oratory, prose writing, sculpture, and, as is well known, in architecture. This style, though wanting in the highest nobility,—the nobility of an innocent, unconscious, triumphant perfection,—has nevertheless given pleasure to many of the best and most serious minds of their time. Hence, as aforesaid, it is presumptuous to depreciate it without reserve, however happy we may feel because our taste for it has not made us insensible to the purer and greater style. [11] In German Barockstil, i.e. the degenerate post-Renaissance style in art and literature, which spread from Italy in the seventeenth century.—Tr. 145. The Value of Honest Books.—Honest books make the reader honest, at least by exciting his hatred and aversion, which otherwise cunning cleverness knows so well how to conceal. Against a book, however, we let ourselves go, however restrained we may be in our relations with men. 146.
How Art makes Partisans.—Individual fine passages, an exciting general tenor, a moving and absorbing finale—so much of a work of art is accessible even to most laymen. In an art period when it is desired to win over the great majority of the laymen to the side of the artists and to make a party perhaps for the very preservation of art, the creative artist will do well to offer nothing more than the above. Then he will not be a squanderer of his strength, in spheres where no one is grateful to him. For to perform the remaining functions, the imitation of Nature in her organic development and growth, would in that case be like sowing seeds in water. 147. Becoming Great to the Detriment of History.—Every later master who leads the taste of art-lovers into his channel unconsciously gives rise to a selection and revaluation of the older masters and their works. Whatever in them is conformable and akin to him, and anticipates and foreshadows him, appears henceforth as the only important element in them and their works—a fruit in which a great error usually lies hidden like a worm. 148. How an Epoch becomes Lured to Art.—If we teach people by all the enchantments of artists and thinkers to feel reverence for their defects, their intellectual poverty, their absurd infatuations and passions (as it is quite possible to do); if we show them only the lofty side of crime and folly, only the touching and appealing element in weakness and flabbiness and blind devotion (that too has often enough been done):—we have employed the means for inspiring even an unphilosophical and inartistic age with an ecstatic love of philosophy and art (especially of thinkers and artists as personalities) and, in theworst case, perhaps with the only means of defending the existence of such tender and fragile beings. 149. Criticism and Joy.—Criticism, one-sided and unjust as well as intelligent criticism, gives so much pleasure to him who exercises it that the world is indebted to every work and every action that inspires much criticism and many critics. For criticism draws after it a glittering train of joyousness, wit, self-admiration, pride, instruction, designs of improvement. —The God of joy created the bad and the mediocre for the same reason that he created the good. 150. Beyond his Limits.—When an artist wants to be more than an artist—for example, the moral awakener of his people—he at last falls in love, as a punishment, with a monster of moral substance. The Muse laughs, for, though a kind-hearted Goddess, she can also be malignant from jealousy. Milton and Klopstock are cases in point. 151. A Glass Eye.—The tendency of a talent towards moral subjects, characters, motives, towards the “ beautiful soul” of the work of art, is often only a glass eye put on by the artist who lacks a beautiful soul. It may result, though rarely, that his eye finally becomes living Nature, if indeed it be Nature with a somewhat troubled look. But the ordinary result is that the whole world thinks it sees Nature where there is only cold glass. 152. Writing and Desire for Victory.—Writing should always indicate a victory, indeed a conquest of oneself which must be communicated to others for their behoof. There are, however, dyspeptic authors who only write when they cannot digest something, or when something has remained stuck in their teeth. Through their anger they try unconsciously to disgust the reader too, and to exercise violence upon him—that is, they desire victory, but victory over others. 153. A Good Book Needs Time.—Every good book tastes bitter when it first comes out, for it has the defect of newness. Moreover, it suffers damage from its living author, if he is well known and much talked about. For all the world is accustomed to confuse the author with his work. Whatever of profundity, sweetness, and brilliance the work may contain must be developed as the years go by, under the care of growing, then old, and lastly traditional reverence. Many hours must pass, many a spider must have woven its web about the book. A book is made better by good readers and clearer by good opponents. 154. Extravagance as an Artistic Means.—Artists well understand the idea of using extravagance as an artistic means in order to convey an impression of wealth. This is one of those innocent wiles of soul-seduction that the artist must know, for in his world, which has only appearance in view, the means to appearance need not necessarily be genuine. 155. The Hidden Barrel-Organ.—Genius, by virtue of its more ample drapery, knows better than talent how to hide its barrel-organ. Yet after all it too can only play its seven old pieces over and over again. 156. The Name on the Title-Page.—It is now a matter of custom and almost of duty for the author’s name to appear on the book, and this is a main cause of the fact that books have so little influence. If they are good, they are worth more than the personalities of their authors, of which they are the quintessences. But as soon as the author makes himself known on the title-page, the quintessence, from the reader’s point of view, becomes diluted with the personal, the most personal element, and the aim of the book is frustrated. It is the ambition of the intellect no longer to appear individual. 157.
The Most Cutting Criticism.—We make the most cutting criticism of a man or a book when we indicate his or its ideal. 158. Little or no Love.—Every good book is written for a particular reader and men of his stamp, and for that very reason is looked upon unfavorably by all other readers, by the vast majority. Its reputation accordingly rests on a narrow basis and must be built up by degrees.—The mediocre and bad book is mediocre and bad because it seeks to please, and does please, a great number. 159. Music and Disease.—The danger of the new music lies in the fact that it puts the cup of rapture and exaltation to the lips so invitingly, and with such a show of moral ecstasy, that even the noble and temperate man always drinks a drop too much. This minimum of intemperance, constantly repeated, can in the end bring about a deeper convulsion and destruction of mental health than any coarse excess could do. Hence nothing remains but some day to fly from the grotto of the nymph, and through perils and billowy seas to forge one’s way to the smoke of Ithaca and the embraces of a simpler and more human spouse. 160. Advantage for Opponents.—A book full of intellect communicates something thereof even to its opponents. 161. Youth and Criticism.—To criticize a book means, for the young, not to let oneself be touched by a single productive thought therefrom, and to protect one’s skin with hands and feet. The youngster lives in opposition to all novelty that he cannot love in the lump, in a position of self-defence, and in this connection he commits, as often as he can, a superfluous sin. 162. Effect of Quantity.—The greatest paradox in the history of poetic art lies in this: that in all that constitutes the greatness of the old poets a man may be a barbarian, faulty and deformed from top to toe, and still remain the greatest of poets. This is the case with Shakespeare, who, as compared with Sophocles, is like a mine of immeasurable wealth in gold, lead, and rubble, whereas Sophocles is not merely gold, but gold in its noblest form, one that almost makes us forget the money-value of the metal. But quantity in its highest intensity has the same effect as quality. That is a good thing for Shakespeare. 163. All Beginning is Dangerous.—The Poet can choose whether to raise emotion from one grade to another, and so finally to exalt it to a great height—or to try a surprise attack, and from the start to pull the bell-rope with might and main. Both processes have their danger—in the first case his hearer may run away from him through boredom, in the second through terror. 164. In Favor of Critics.—Insects sting, not from malice, but because they too want to live. It is the same with our critics—they desire our blood, not our pain. 165. Success of Aphorisms.—The inexperienced, when an aphorism at once illuminates their minds with its naked truth, always think that it is old and well known. They look askance at the author, as if he had wanted to steal the common property of all, whereas they enjoy highly spiced half-truths, and give the author to understand as much. He knows how to appreciate the hint, and easily guesses thereby where he has succeeded and failed. 166. The Desire for Victory.—An artist who exceeds the limit of his strength in all that he undertakes will end by carrying the multitude along with him through the spectacle of violent wrestling that he affords. Success is not always the accompaniment only of victory, but also of the desire for victory. 167. Sibi Scribere.—The sensible author writes for no other posterity than his own—that is, for his age—so as to be able even then to take pleasure in himself. 168. Praise of the Aphorism.—A good aphorism is too hard for the tooth of time, and is not worn away by all the centuries, although it serves as food for every epoch. Hence it is the greatest paradox in literature, the imperishable in the midst of change, the nourishment which always remains highly valued, as salt does, and never becomes stupid like salt. 169. The Art-Need of the Second Order.—The people may have something of what can be called art-need, but it is small, and can be cheaply satisfied. On the whole, the remnant of art (it must be honestly confessed) suffices for this need. Let us consider, for example, the kind of melodies and songs in which the most vigorous, unspoiled, and true-hearted classes of the population find genuine delight; let us live among shepherds, cowherds, peasants, huntsmen, soldiers, and sailors, and give ourselves the answer. And in the country town, just in the houses that are the homes of inherited civic virtue, is it not the worst music at present produced that is loved and, one might say cherished? He who speaks of deeper needs and unsatisfied yearnings for art among the people, as it is, is a crank or an impostor. Be honest! Only in exceptional men is there now an art-need in the highest sense—because art is
once more on the down-grade, and human powers and hopes are for the time being directed to other matters.—Apart from this, outside the populace, there exists indeed, in the higher and highest strata of society, a broader and more comprehensive art need, but of the second order. Here there is a sort of artistic commune, which possibly means to be sincere. But let us look at the elements! They are in general the more refined malcontents, who attain no genuine pleasure in themselves; the cultured, who have not become free enough to dispense with the consolations of religion, and yet do not find its incense sufficiently fragrant; the half-aristocratic, who are too weak to combat by a heroic conversion or renunciation the one fundamental error of their lives or the pernicious bent of their characters; the highly gifted, who think themselves too dignified to be of service by modest activity, and are too lazy for real, self-sacrificing work; girls who cannot create for themselves a satisfactory sphere of duties; women who have tied themselves by a light-hearted or nefarious marriage, and know that they are not tied securely enough; scholars, physicians, merchants, officials who specialized too early and never gave their lives a free enough scope—who do their work efficiently, it is true, but with a worm gnawing at their hearts; finally, all imperfect artists—these are nowadays the true needers of art! What do they really desire from art? Art is to drive away hours and moments of discomfort, boredom, half-bad conscience, and, if possible, transform the faults of their lives and characters into faults of world-destiny. Very different were the Greeks, who realized in their art the outflow and overflow of their own sense of well-being and health, and loved to see their perfection once more from a standpoint outside themselves. They were led to art by delight in themselves; our contemporaries—by disgust of themselves. 170. The Germans in the Theatre.—The real theatrical talent of the Germans was Kotzebue. He and his Germans, those of higher as well as those of middle-class society, were necessarily associated, and his contemporaries should have said of him in all seriousness, “ in him we live and move and have our being.” Here was nothing—no constraint, pretence, or half-enjoyment: what he could and would do was understood. Yes, until now the honest theatrical success on the German stage has been in the hands of the shamefaced or unashamed heirs of Kotzebue’s methods and influence—that is, as far as comedy still flourishes at all. The result is that much of the Germanism of that age, sometimes far off from the great towns, still survives. Good-natured; incontinent in small pleasures; always ready for tears; with the desire, in the theatre at any rate, to be able to get rid of their innate sobriety and strict attention to duty and exercise; a smiling, nay, a laughing indulgence; confusing goodness and sympathy and welding them into one, as is the essential characteristic of German sentimentality; exceedingly happy at a noble, magnanimous action; for the rest, submissive towards superiors, envious of each other, and yet in their heart of hearts thoroughly self-satisfied—such were they and such was he.—The second dramatic talent was Schiller. He discovered a class of hearers which had hitherto never been taken into consideration: among the callow German youth of both sexes. His poetry responded to their higher, nobler, more violent if more confused emotions, their delight in the jingle of moral words (a delight that begins to disappear when we reach the thirties). Thus he won for himself, by virtue of the passionateness and partisanship of the young, a success which gradually reacted with advantage upon those of riper years. Generally speaking, Schiller rejuvenated the Germans. Goethe stood and still stands above the Germans in every respect. To them he will never belong. How could a nation in well-being and well-wishing come up to the intellectuality of Goethe? Beethoven composed and Schopenhauer philosophized above the heads of the Germans, and it was above their heads, in the same way, that Goethe wrote his Tasso, his Iphigenie. He was followed by a small company of highly cultured persons, who were educated by antiquity, life, and travel, and had grown out of German ways of thought. He himself did not wish it to be otherwise.—When the Romantics set up their well-conceived Goethe cult; when their amazing skill in appreciation was passed on to the disciples of Hegel, the real educators of the Germans of this century; when the awakening national ambition turned out advantageous to the fame of the German poets; when the real standard of the nation, as to whether it could honestly find enjoyment in anything, became inexorably subordinated to the judgment of individuals and to that national ambition,—that is, when people began to enjoy by compulsion,—then arose that false, spurious German culture which was ashamed of Kotzebue; which brought Sophocles, Calderon, and even the Second Part of Goethe’s Faust on the stage; and which, on account of its foul tongue and congested stomach, no longer knows now what it likes and what it finds tedious.—Happy are those who have taste, even if it be a bad taste! Only by this characteristic can one be wise as well as happy. Hence the Greeks, who were very refined in such matters, designated the sage by a word that means “ man of taste,” and called wisdom, artistic as well as scientific, “ taste” (sophia). 171. Music as a Late-Comer in every Culture.—Among all the arts that are accustomed to grow on a definite culture-soil and under definite social and political conditions, music is the last plant to come up, arising in the autumn and fading-season of the culture to which it belongs. At the same time, the first signs and harbingers of a new spring are usually already noticeable, and sometimes music, like the language of a forgotten age, rings out into a new, astonished world, and comes too late. In the art of the Dutch and Flemish musicians the soul of the Christian middle ages at last found its fullest tone: their sound-architecture is the posthumous but legitimate and equal sister of Gothic. Not until Handel’s music was heard the note of the best in the soul of Luther and his kin, the great Judæo-heroical impulse that created the whole Reformation movement. Mozart first expressed in golden melody the age of Louis xiv. and the art of Racine and Claude Lorrain. The eighteenth century—that century of rhapsody, of broken ideals and transitory happiness—only sang itself out in the music of Beethoven and Rossini. A lover of sentimental similes might say that all really important music was a swan-song.—Music is, in fact, not a universal language for all time, as is so often said in its praise, but responds exactly to a particular period and warmth of emotion which involves a quite definite, individual culture, determined by time and place, as its inner law. The music of Palestrina would be quite unintelligible to a Greek; and again, what would the music of Rossini convey to Palestrina?—It may be that our most modern German music, with all its preeminence and desire of preeminence, will soon be no longer understood. For this music sprang from a culture that is undergoing a rapid decay, from the soil of that epoch of reaction and restoration in which a certain Catholicism of feeling, as well as a delight in all indigenous, national, primitive manners, burst into bloom
and scattered a blended perfume over Europe. These two emotional tendencies, adopted in their greatest strength and carried to their farthest limits, found final expression in the music of Wagner. Wagner’s predilection for the old native sagas, his free idealization of their unfamiliar gods and heroes,—who are really sovereign beasts of prey with occasional fits of thoughtfulness, magnanimity, and boredom,—his re-animation of those figures, to which he gave in addition the mediæval Christian thirst for ecstatic sensuality and spiritualization —all this Wagnerian give-and-take with regard to materials, souls, figures, and words—would clearly express the spirit of his music, if it could not, like all music, speak quite unambiguously of itself. This spirit wages the last campaign of reaction against the spirit of illumination which passed into this century from the last, and also against the supernational ideas of French revolutionary romanticism and of English and American insipidity in the reconstruction of state and society.—But is it not evident that the spheres of thought and emotion apparently suppressed by Wagner and his school have long since acquired fresh strength, and that his late musical protest against them generally rings into ears that prefer to hear different and opposite notes; so that one day that high and wonderful art will suddenly become unintelligible and will be covered by the spider’s web of oblivion?—In considering this state of affairs we must not let ourselves be led astray by those transitory fluctuations which arise like a reaction within a reaction, as a temporary sinking of the mountainous wave in the midst of the general upheaval. Thus, this decade of national war, ultramontane martyrdom, and socialistic unrest may, in its remoter after-effect, even aid the Wagnerian art to acquire a sudden halo, without guaranteeing that it “ has a future” or that it has the future. It is in the very nature of music that the fruits of its great culture-vintage should lose their taste and wither earlier than the fruits of the plastic arts or those that grow on the tree of knowledge. Among all the products of the human artistic sense ideas are the most solid and lasting. 172. The Poet no longer a Teacher.—Strange as it may sound to our time, there were once poets and artists whose soul was above the passions with their delights and convulsions, and who therefore took their pleasure in purer materials, worthier men, more delicate complications and dénouements. If the artists of our day for the most part unfetter the will, and so are under certain circumstances for that very reason emancipators of life, those were tamers of the will, enchanters of animals, creators of men. In fact, they molded, re-molded, and new-molded life, whereas the fame of poets of our day lies in unharnessing, unchaining, and shattering.—The ancient Greeks demanded of the poet that he should be the teacher of grown men. How ashamed the poet would be now if this demand were made of him! He is not even a good student of himself, and so never himself becomes a good poem or a fine picture. Under the most favorable circumstances he remains the shy, attractive ruin of a temple, but at the same time a cavern of cravings, overgrown like a ruin with flowers, nettles, and poisonous weeds, inhabited and haunted by snakes, worms, spiders, and birds; an object for sad reflection as to why the noblest and most precious must grow up at once like a ruin, without the past and future of perfection. 173. Looking Forward and Backward.—An art like that which streams out of Homer, Sophocles, Theocritus, Calderon, Racine, Goethe, as the super-abundance of a wise and harmonious conduct of life—that is the true art, at which we grasp when we have ourselves become wiser and more harmonious. It is not that barbaric, if ever so delightful, outpouring of hot and highly colored things from an undisciplined, chaotic soul, which is what we understood by “ art” in our youth. It is obvious from the nature of the case that for certain periods of life an art of overstrain, excitement, antipathy to the orderly, monotonous, simple, logical, is an inevitable need, to which artists must respond, lest the soul of such periods should unburden itself in other ways, through all kinds of disorder and impropriety. Hence youths as they generally are, full, fermenting, tortured above all things by boredom, and women who lack work that fully occupies their soul, require that art of delightful disorder. All the more violently on that account are they inflamed with a desire for satisfaction without change, happiness without stupor and intoxication. 174. Against the Art of Works of Art.—Art is above all and first of all meant to embellish life, to make us ourselves endurable and if possible agreeable in the eyes of others. With this task in view, art moderates us and holds us in restraint, creates forms of intercourse, binds over the uneducated to laws of decency, cleanliness, politeness, well-timed speech and silence. Hence art must conceal or transfigure everything that is ugly—the painful, terrible, and disgusting elements which in spite of every effort will always break out afresh in accordance with the very origin of human nature. Art has to perform this duty especially in regard to the passions and spiritual agonies and anxieties, and to cause the significant factor to shine through unavoidable or unconquerable ugliness. To this great, super-great task the so-called art proper, that of works of art, is a mere accessory. A man who feels within himself a surplus of such powers of embellishment, concealment, and transfiguration will finally seek to unburden himself of this surplus in works of art. The same holds good, under special circumstances, of a whole nation.—But as a rule we nowadays begin art at the end, hang on to its tail, and think that works of art constitute art proper, and that life should be improved and transformed by this means—fools that we are! If we begin a dinner with dessert, and try sweet after sweet, small wonder that we ruin our digestions and even our appetites for the good, hearty, nourishing meal to which art invites us! 175. Continued Existence of Art.—Why, really, does a creative art nowadays continue to exist? Because the majority who have hours of leisure (and such an art is for them only) think that they cannot fill up their time without music, theatres and picture-galleries, novels and poetry. Granted that one could keep them from this indulgence, either they would strive less eagerly for leisure, and the invidious sight of the rich would be less common (a great gain for the stability of society), or they would have leisure, but would learn to reflect on what can be learnt and unlearnt: on their work, for instance, their associations, the pleasure they could bestow. All the world, with the exception of the artist, would in both cases reap
the advantage.—Certainly, there are many vigorous, sensible readers who could take objection to this. Still, it must be said on behalf of the coarse and malignant that the author himself is concerned with this protest, and that there is in his book much to be read that is not actually written down therein. 176. The Mouthpiece of the Gods.—The poet expresses the universal higher opinions of the nation, he is its mouthpiece and flute; but by virtue of metre and all other artistic means he so expresses them that the nation regards them as something quite new and wonderful, and believes in all seriousness that he is the mouthpiece of the Gods. Yes, under the clouds of creation the poet himself forgets whence he derives all his intellectual wisdom—from father and mother, from teachers and books of all kinds, from the street and particularly from the priest. He is deceived by his own art, and really believes, in a naïve period, that a God is speaking through him, that he is creating in a state of religious inspiration. As a matter of fact, he is only saying what he has learnt, a medley of popular wisdom and popular foolishness. Hence, so far as a poet is really vox populi he is held to be vox dei. 177. What all Art wants to Do and Cannot.—The last and hardest task of the artist is the presentment of what remains the same, reposes in itself, is lofty and simple and free from the bizarre. Hence the noblest forms of moral perfection are rejected as inartistic by weaker artists, because the sight of these fruits is too painful for their ambition. The fruit gleams at them from the topmost branches of art, but they lack the ladder, the courage, the grip to venture so high. In himself a Phidias is quite possible as a poet, but, if modern strength be taken into consideration, almost solely in the sense that to God nothing is impossible. The desire for a poetical Claude Lorrain is already an immodesty at present, however earnestly one man’s heart may yearn for such a consummation.—The presentment of the highest man, the most simple and at the same time the most complete, has hitherto been beyond the scope of all artists. Perhaps, however, the Greeks, in the ideal of Athene, saw farther than any men did before or after their time. 178. Art and Restoration.—The retrograde movements in history, the so-called periods of restoration, which try to revive intellectual and social conditions that existed before those immediately preceding,—and seem really to succeed in giving them a brief resurrection,—have the charm of sentimental recollection, ardent longing for what is almost lost, hasty embracing of a transitory happiness. It is on account of this strange trend towards seriousness that in such transient and almost dreamy periods art and poetry find a natural soil, just as the tenderest and rarest plants grow on mountain-slopes of steep declivity.—Thus many a good artist is unwittingly impelled to a “ restoration” way of thinking in politics and society, for which, on his own account, he prepares a quiet little corner and garden. Here he collects about himself the human remains of the historical epoch that appeals to him, and plays his lyre to many who are dead, half-dead, and weary to death, perhaps with the above-mentioned result of a brief resurrection. 179. Happiness of the Age.—In two respects our age is to be accounted happy. With respect to the past, we enjoy all cultures and their productions, and nurture ourselves on the noblest blood of all periods. We stand sufficiently near to the magic of the forces from whose womb these periods are born to be able in passing to submit to their spell with pleasure and terror; whereas earlier cultures could only enjoy themselves, and never looked beyond themselves, but were rather overarched by a bell of broader or narrower dome, through which indeed light streamed down to them, but which their gaze could not pierce. With respect to the future, there opens out to us for the first time a mighty, comprehensive vista of human and economic purposes engirdling the whole inhabited globe. At the same time, we feel conscious of a power ourselves to take this new task in hand without presumption, without requiring supernatural aids. Yes, whatever the result of our enterprise, however much we may have overestimated our strength, at any rate we need render account to no one but ourselves, and mankind can henceforth begin to do with itself what it will.—There are, it is true, peculiar human bees, who only know how to suck the bitterest and worst elements from the chalice of every flower. It is true that all flowers contain something that is not honey, but these bees may be allowed to feel in their own way about the happiness of our time, and continue to build up their hive of discomfort. 180. A Vision.—Hours of instruction and meditation for adults, even the most mature, and such institutions visited without compulsion but in accordance with the moral injunction of the whole community; the churches as the meeting-places most worthy and rich in memories for the purpose; at the same time daily festivals in honour of the reason that is attained and attainable by man; a newer and fuller budding and blooming of the ideal of the teacher, in which the clergyman, the artist and the physician, the man of science and the sage are blended, and their individual virtues should come to the fore as a collective virtue in their teaching itself, in their discourses, in their method—this is my ever-recurring vision, of which I firmly believe that it has raised a corner of the veil of the future. 181. Education A Distortion.—The extraordinary haphazardness of the whole system of education, which leads every adult to say nowadays that his sole educator was chance, and the weathercock-nature of educational methods and aims, may be explained as follows. The oldest and the newest culture-powers, as in a turbulent mass-meeting, would rather be heard than understood, and wish to prove at all costs by their outcries and clamorings that they still exist or already exist. The poor teachers and educators are first dazed by this senseless noise, then become silent and finally apathetic, allowing anything to be done to them just as they in their turn allow anything to be done to their pupils. They are not trained themselves, so how are they to train others? They are themselves no straight-growing, vigorous, succulent trees, and he who wishes to attach himself to them must wind and bend himself and finally become distorted and deformed as they.
182. Philosophers and Artists of the Age.—Rhapsody and frigidity, burning desires and waning of the heart’s glow—this wretched medley is to be found in the picture of the highest European society of the present day. There the artist thinks that he is achieving a great deal when through his art he lights the torch of the heart as well as the torch of desire. The philosopher has the same notion, when in the chilliness of his heart, which he has in common with his age, he cools hot desires in himself and his following by his world-denying judgments. 183. Not to be a Soldier of Culture without Necessity.—At last people are learning what it costs us so dear not to know in our youth—that we must first do superior actions and secondly seek the superior wherever and under whatever names it is to be found; that we must at once go out of the way of all badness and mediocrity without fighting it; and that even doubt as to the excellence of a thing (such as quickly arises in one of practiced taste) should rank as an argument against it and a reason for completely avoiding it. We must not shrink from the danger of occasionally making a mistake and confounding the less accessible good with the bad and imperfect. Only he who can do nothing better should attack the world’s evils as the soldier of culture. But those who should support culture and spread its teachings ruin themselves if they go about armed, and by precautions, night-watches, and bad dreams turn the peace of their domestic and artistic life into sinister unrest. 184. How Natural History should be Expounded.—Natural history, like the history of the war and victory of moral and intellectual forces in the campaign against anxiety, self-delusion, laziness, superstition, folly, should be so expounded that every reader or listener may be continually aroused to strive after mental and physical health and soundness, after the feeling of joy, and be awakened to the desire to be the heir and continuator of mankind, to an ever nobler adventurous impulse. Hitherto natural history has not found its true language, because the inventive and eloquent artists—who are needed for this purpose—never rid themselves of a secret mistrust of it, and above all never wish to learn from it a thorough lesson. Nevertheless it must be conceded to the English that their scientific manuals for the lower strata of the people have made admirable strides towards that ideal. But then such books are written by their foremost men of learning, full, complete, and inspiring natures, and not, as among us, by mediocre investigators. 185. Genius in Humanity.—If genius, according to Schopenhauer’s observation, lies in the coherent and vivid recollection of our own experience, a striving towards genius in humanity collectively might be deduced from the striving towards knowledge of the whole historic past—which is beginning to mark off the modern age more and more as compared with earlier ages and has for the first time broken down the barriers between nature and spirit, men and animals, morality and physics. A perfectly conceived history would be cosmic self-consciousness. 186. The Cult of Culture.—On great minds is bestowed the terrifying all-too-human of their natures, their blindnesses, deformities, and extravagances, so that their more powerful, easily all-too-powerful influence may be continually held within bounds through the distrust aroused by such qualities. For the sum-total of all that humanity needs for its continued existence is so comprehensive, and demands powers so diverse and so numerous, that for every one-sided predilection, whether in science or politics or art or commerce, to which such natures would persuade us, mankind as a whole has to pay a heavy price. It has always been a great disaster to culture when human beings are worshipped. In this sense we may understand the precept of Mosaic law which forbids us to have any other gods but God.—Side by side with the cult of genius and violence we must always place, as its complement and remedy, the cult of culture. This cult can find an intelligent appreciation even for the material, the inferior, the mean, the misunderstood, the weak, the imperfect, the one-sided, the incomplete, the untrue, the apparent, even the wicked and horrible, and can grant them the concession that all this is necessary. For the continued harmony of all things human, attained by amazing toil and strokes of luck, and just as much the work of Cyclopes and ants as of geniuses, shall never be lost. How, indeed, could we dispense with that deep, universal, and often uncanny bass, without which, after all, melody cannot be melody? 187. The Antique World and Pleasure.—The man of the antique world understood better how to rejoice, we understand better how to grieve less. They continually found new motives for feeling happy, for celebrating festivals, being inventive with all their wealth of shrewdness and reflection. We, on the other hand, concentrate our intellect rather on the solving of problems which have in view painlessness and the removal of sources of discomfort. With regard to suffering existence, the ancients sought to forget or in some way to convert the sensation into a pleasant one, thus trying to supply palliatives. We attack the causes of suffering, and on the whole prefer to use prophylactics.—Perhaps we are only building upon a foundation whereon a later age will once more set up the temple of joy. 188. The Muses as Liars.—“ We know how to tell many lies,” so sang the Muses once, when they revealed themselves to Hesiod.—The conception of the artist as deceiver, once grasped, leads to important discoveries. 189. How Paradoxical Homer can be.—Is there anything more desperate, more horrible, more incredible, shining over human destiny like a winter sun, than that idea of Homer’s: “ So
the decree of the Gods willed it, and doomed man to perish, that it might be a matter for song even to distant generations”? In other words, we suffer and perish so that poets may not lack material, and this is the dispensation of those very Gods of Homer who seem much concerned about the joyousness of generations to come, but very little about us men of the present. To think that such ideas should ever have entered the head of a Greek! 190. Supplementary Justification of Existence.—Many ideas have come into the world as errors and fancies but have turned out truths, because men have afterwards given them a genuine basis to rest upon. 191. Pro and Con Necessary.—He who has not realized that every great man must not only be encouraged but also, for the sake of the common welfare, opposed, is certainly still a great child—or himself a great man. 192. Injustice of Genius.—Genius is most unjust towards geniuses, if they be contemporary. Either it thinks it has no need of them and considers them superfluous (for it can do without them), or their influence crosses the path of its electric current, in which case it even calls them pernicious. 193. The Saddest Destiny of a Prophet.—He has worked twenty years to convince his contemporaries, and succeeds at last, but in the meantime his adversaries have also succeeded— he is no longer convinced of himself. 194. Three Thinkers like one Spider.—In every philosophical school three thinkers follow one another in this relation: the first produces from himself sap and seed, the second draws it out in threads and spins a cunning web, the third waits in this web for the victims who are caught in it—and tries to live upon this philosophy. 195. From Association with Authors.—It is as bad a habit to go about with an author grasping him by the nose as grasping him by the horn (and every author has his horn). 196. A Team of Two.—Vagueness of thought and outbursts of sentimentality are as often wedded to the reckless desire to have one’s own way by hook or by crook, to make oneself alone of any consequence, as a genuinely helpful, gracious, and kindly spirit is wedded to the impulse towards clearness and purity of thought and towards emotional moderation and self-restraint. 197. Binding and Separating Forces.—Surely it is in the heads of men that there arises the force that binds them—an understanding of their common interest or the reverse; and in their hearts the force that separates them—a blind choosing and groping in love and hate, a devotion to one at the expense of all, and a consequent contempt for the common utility. 198. Marksmen and Thinkers.—There are curious marksmen who miss their mark, but leave the shooting-gallery with secret pride in the fact that their bullet at any rate flew very far (beyond the mark, it is true), or that it did not hit the mark but hit something else. There are thinkers of the same stamp. 199. Attack from Two Sides.—We act as enemies towards an intellectual tendency or movement when we are superior to it and disapprove of its aim, or when its aim is too high and unrecognizable to our eye—in other words, when it is superior to us. So the same party may be attacked from two sides, from above and from below. Not infrequently the assailants, from common hatred, form an alliance which is more repulsive than all that they hate. 200. Original.—Original minds are distinguished not by being the first to see a new thing, but by seeing the old, well-known thing, which is seen and overlooked by everyone, as something new. The first discoverer is usually that quite ordinary and unintellectual visionary—chance. 201. Error of Philosophers.—The philosopher believes that the value of his philosophy lies in the whole, in the structure. Posterity finds it in the stone with which he built and with which, from that time forth, men will build oftener and better—in other words, in the fact that the structure may be destroyed and yet have value as material. 202. Wit.—Wit is the epitaph of an emotion. 203. The Moment before Solution.—In science it occurs every day and every hour that a man, immediately before the solution, remains stuck, being convinced that his efforts have been entirely in vain—like one who, in untying a noose, hesitates at the moment when it is nearest to coming loose, because at that very moment it looks most like a knot.
204. Among the Visionaries.—The thoughtful man, and he who is sure of his intelligence, may profitably consort with visionaries for a decade and abandon himself in their torrid zone to a moderate insanity. He will thus have travelled a good part of the road towards that cosmopolitanism of the intellect which can say without presumption, “ Nothing intellectual is alien to me.” 205. Keen Air.—The best and healthiest element in science as amid the mountains is the keen air that plays about it.—Intellectual molly-coddles (such as artists) dread and abuse science on account of this atmosphere. 206. Why Savants are Nobler than Artists.—Science requires nobler natures than does poetry; natures that are more simple, less ambitious, more restrained, calmer, that think less of posthumous fame and can bury themselves in studies which, in the eye of the many, scarcely seem worthy of such a sacrifice of personality. There is another loss of which they are conscious. The nature of their occupation, its continual exaction of the greatest sobriety, weakens their will; the fire is not kept up so vigorously as on the hearths of poetic minds. As such, they often lose their strength and prime earlier than artists do—and, as has been said, they are aware of their danger. Under all circumstances they seem less gifted because they shine less, and thus they will always be rated below their value. 207. How Far Piety Obscures.—In later centuries the great man is credited with all the great qualities and virtues of his century. Thus all that is best is continually obscured by piety, which treats the picture as a sacred one, to be surrounded with all manner of votive offerings. In the end the picture is completely veiled and covered by the offerings, and thenceforth is more an object of faith than of contemplation. 208. Standing on One’s Head.—If we make truth stand on its head, we generally fail to notice that our own head, too, is not in its right position. 209. Origin and Utility of Fashion.—The obvious satisfaction of the individual with his own form excites imitation and gradually creates the form of the many—that is, fashion. The many desire, and indeed attain, that same comforting satisfaction with their own form. Consider how many reasons every man has for anxiety and shy self-concealment, and how, on this account, three-fourths of his energy and goodwill is crippled and may become unproductive! So we must be very grateful to fashion for unfettering that three-fourths and communicating self-confidence and the power of cheerful compromise to those who feel themselves bound to each other by its law. Even foolish laws give freedom and calm of the spirit, so long as many persons have submitted to their sway. 210. Looseners of Tongues.—The value of many men and books rests solely on their faculty for compelling all to speak out the most hidden and intimate things. They are looseners of tongues and crowbars to open the most stubborn teeth. Many events and misdeeds which are apparently only sent as a curse to mankind possess this value and utility. 211. Intellectual Freedom of Domicile. [12]—Who of us could dare to call himself a “ free spirit” if he could not render homage after his fashion, by taking on his own shoulders a portion of that burden of public dislike and abuse, to men to whom this name is attached as a reproach? We might as well call ourselves in all seriousness “ spirits free of domicile” (Freiziigig) (and without that arrogant or high-spirited defiance) because we feel the impulse to freedom (Zug zur Freiheit) as the strongest instinct of our minds and, in contrast to fixed and limited minds, practically see our ideal in an intellectual nomadism—-to use a modest and almost depreciatory expression. [12] The original word, Freiziigig, means, in the modem German Empire, possessing the free right of migration, without pecuniary burdens or other restrictions, from one German state to another. The play on words in Zug zur Freiheit (“ impulse to freedom”) is untranslatable.—Tr. 212. Yes, the Favor of the Muses!—What Homer says on this point goes right to our heart, so true, so terrible is it: “ The Muse loved him with all her heart and gave him good and evil, for she took away his eyes and vouchsafed him sweet song.” This is an endless text for thinking men: she gives good and evil, that is her manner of loving with all her heart and soul! And each man will interpret specially for himself why we poets and thinkers have to give up our eyes in her service. [13] [13] Nietzsche seems to allude to his own case, for he ultimately contracted a myopia which bordered on blindness.—Tr. 213. Against the Cultivation of Music.—The artistic training of the eye from childhood upwards by means of drawing, painting, landscape-sketching, figures, scenes, involves an estimable gain in life, making the eyesight keen, calm, and enduring in the observation of men and circumstances. No similar secondary advantage arises from the artistic cultivation of the ear, whence public schools will generally do well to give the art of the eye a preference over that of the ear. 214.
The Discoverers of Trivialities.—Subtle minds, from which nothing is farther than trivialities, often discover a triviality after taking all manner of circuitous routes and mountain paths, and, to the astonishment of the non-subtle, rejoice exceedingly. 215. Morals of Savants.—A regular and rapid advance in the sciences is only possible when the individual is compelled to be not so distrustful as to test every calculation and assertion of others, in fields which are remote from his own. A necessary condition, however, is that every man should have competitors in his own sphere, who are extremely distrustful and keep a sharp eye upon him. From this juxtaposition of “ not too distrustful” and “ extremely distrustful” arises sincerity in the republic of learning. 216. Reasons for Sterility.—There are highly gifted minds which are always sterile only because, from temperamental weakness, they are too impatient to wait for their pregnancy. 217. The Perverted World of Tears.—The manifold discomforts which the demands of higher culture cause to man finally pervert his nature to such an extent that he usually keeps himself stoical and unbending. Thus he has tears in reserve only for rare occasions of happiness, so that many must weep even at the enjoyment of painlessness—only when happy does his heart still beat. 218. The Greeks as Interpreters.—When we speak of the Greeks we unwittingly speak of to-day and yesterday; their universally known history is a blank mirror, always reflecting something that is not in the mirror itself. We enjoy the freedom of speaking about them in order to have the right of being silent about others—so that these Greeks themselves may whisper something in the ear of the reflective reader. Thus the Greeks facilitate to modern men the communication of much that is debatable and hard to communicate. 219. Of the Acquired Character of the Greeks.—We are easily led astray by the renowned Greek clearness, transparency, simplicity, and order, by their crystal-like naturalness and crystal-like art, into believing that all these gifts were bestowed on the Greeks—for instance, that they could not but write well, as Lichtenberg expressed it on one occasion. Yet no statement could be more hasty and more untenable. The history of prose from Gorgias to Demosthenes shows a course of toiling and wrestling towards light from the obscure, overloaded, and tasteless, reminding one of the labour of heroes who had to construct the first roads through forest and bog. The dialogue of tragedy was the real achievement of the dramatist, owing to its uncommon clearness and precision, whereas the national tendency was to riot in symbolism and innuendo, a tendency expressly fostered by the great choral lyric. Similarly it was the achievement of Homer to liberate the Greeks from Asiatic pomp and gloom, and to have attained the clearness of architecture in details great and small. Nor was it by any means thought easy to say anything in a pure and illuminating style. How else should we account for the great admiration for the epigram of Simonides, which shows itself so simple, with no gilded points or arabesques of wit, but says all that it has to say plainly and with the calm of the sun, not with the straining after effect of the lightning. Since the struggle towards light from an almost native twilight is Greek, a thrill of jubilation runs through the people when they hear a laconic sentence, the language of elegy or the maxims of the Seven Wise Men. Hence they were so fond of giving precepts in verse, a practice that we find objectionable. This was the true Apolline task of the Hellenic spirit, with the aim of rising superior to the perils of metre and the obscurity which is otherwise characteristic of poetry. Simplicity, flexibility, and sobriety were wrestled for and not given by nature to this people. The danger of a relapse into Asianism constantly hovered over the Greeks, and really overtook them from time to time like a murky, overflowing tide of mystical impulses, primitive savagery and darkness. We see them plunge in; we see Europe, as it were, flooded, washed away—for Europe was very small then; but they always emerge once more to the light, good swimmers and divers that they are, those fellow-countrymen of Odysseus. 220. The Pagan Characteristic.—Perhaps there is nothing more astonishing to the observer of the Greek world than to discover that the Greeks from time to time held festivals, as it were, for all their passions and evil tendencies alike, and in fact even established a kind of series of festivals, by order of the State, for their “ all-too-human.” This is the pagan characteristic of their world, which Christianity has never understood and never can understand, and has always combated and despised.—They accepted this all-too-human as unavoidable, and preferred, instead of railing at it, to give it a kind of secondary right by grafting it on to the usages of society and religion. All in man that has power they called divine, and wrote it on the walls of their heaven. They do not deny this natural instinct that expresses itself in evil characteristics, but regulate and limit it to definite cults and days, so as to turn those turbulent streams into as harmless a course as possible, after devising sufficient precautionary measures. That is the root of all the moral broad-mindedness of antiquity. To the wicked, the dubious, the backward, the animal element, as to the barbaric, pre-Hellenic and Asiatic, which still lived in the depths of Greek nature, they allowed a moderate outflow, and did not strive to destroy it utterly. The whole system was under the domain of the State, which was built up not on individuals or castes, but on common human qualities. In the structure of the State the Greeks show that wonderful sense for typical facts which later on enabled them to become investigators of Nature, historians, geographers, and philosophers. It was not a limited moral law of priests or castes, which had to decide about the constitution of the State and State worship, but the most comprehensive view of the reality of all that is human. Whence do the Greeks derive this freedom, this sense of reality? Perhaps from Homer and the poets who preceded him. For just those poets whose nature is generally not the most wise or just possess, in compensation, that delight in reality and activity of every kind, and prefer not to deny even evil. It suffices for them if evil moderates itself, does not kill or inwardly poison everything—in other words, they have similar ideas to those of the founders of Greek constitutions, and were their
teachers and forerunners. 221. Exceptional Greeks.—In Greece, deep, thorough, serious minds were the exception. The national instinct tended rather to regard the serious and thorough as a kind of grimace. To borrow forms from a foreign source, not to create but to transform into the fairest shapes—that is Greek. To imitate, not for utility but for artistic illusion, ever and anon to gain the mastery over forced seriousness, to arrange, beautify, simplify—that is the continual task from Homer to the Sophists of the third and fourth centuries of our era, who are all outward show, pompous speech, declamatory gestures, and address themselves to shallow souls that care only for appearance, sound, and effect. And now let us estimate the greatness of those exceptional Greeks, who created science! Whoever tells of them, tells the most heroic story of the human mind! 222. Simplicity not the First nor the Last Thing in Point of Time.—In the history of religious ideas many errors about development and false gradations are made in matters which in reality are not consecutive outgrowths but contemporary yet separate phenomena. In particular, simplicity has still far too much the reputation of being the oldest, the initial thing. Much that is human arises by subtraction and division, and not merely by doubling, addition, and unification.—For instance, men still believe in a gradual development of the idea of God from those unwieldy stones and blocks of wood up to the highest forms of anthropomorphism. Yet the fact is that so long as divinity was attributed to and felt in trees, logs of wood, stones, and beasts, people shrank from humanizing their forms as from an act of godlessness. First of all, poets, apart from all considerations of cult and the ban of religious shame, have had to make the inner imagination of man accustomed and compliant to this notion. Wherever more pious periods and phases of thought gained the upper hand, this liberating influence of poets fell into the background, and sanctity remained, after as before, on the side of the monstrous, uncanny, quite peculiarly inhuman. And then, much of what the inner imagination ventures to picture to itself would exert a painful influence if externally and corporeally represented. The inner eye is far bolder and more shameless than the outer (whence the well-known difficulty and, to some extent, impossibility, of working epic material into dramatic form). The religious imagination for a long time entirely refuses to believe in the identity of God with an image: the image is meant to fix the numen of the Deity, actually and specifically, although in a mysterious and not altogether intelligible way. The oldest image of the Gods is meant to shelter and at the same time to hide [14] the God—to indicate him but not to expose him to view. No Greek really looked upon his Apollo as a pointed pillar of wood, his Eros as a lump of stone. These were symbols, which were intended to inspire dread of the manifestation of the God. It was the same with those blocks of wood out of which individual limbs, generally in excessive number, were fashioned with the scantiest of carving—as, for instance, a Laconian Apollo with four hands and four ears. In the incomplete, symbolical, or excessive lies a terrible sanctity, which is meant to prevent us from thinking of anything human or similar to humanity. It is not an embryonic stage of art in which such things are made—as if they were not able to speak more plainly and portray more sensibly in the age when such images were honored! Rather, men are afraid of just one thing—direct speaking out. Just as the cella hides and conceals in a mysterious twilight, yet not completely, the holy of holies, the real numen of the Deity; just as, again, the peripteric temple hides the cella, protecting it from indiscreet eyes as with a screen and a veil, yet not completely—so it is with the image of the Deity, and at the same time the concealment of the Deity.—Only when outside the cult, in the profane world of athletic contest, the joy in the victor had risen so high that the ripples thus started reacted upon the lake of religious emotion, was the statue of the victor set up before the temple. Then the pious pilgrim had to accustom his eye and his soul, whether he would or no, to the inevitable sight of human beauty and super-strength, so that the worship of men and Gods melted into each other from physical and spiritual contact. Then too for the first time the fear of really humanizing the figures of the Gods is lost, and the mighty arena for great plastic art is opened—even now with the limitation that wherever there is to be adoration the primitive form and ugliness are carefully preserved and copied. But the Hellene, as he dedicates and makes offerings, may now with religious sanction indulge in his delight in making God become a man. [14] The play on bergen (shelter) and verbergen (hide) is untranslateable.—Tr. 223. Whither We must Travel.—Immediate self-observation is not enough, by a long way, to enable us to learn to know ourselves. We need history, for the past continues to flow through us in a hundred channels. We ourselves are, after all, nothing but our own sensation at every moment of this continued flow. Even here, when we wish to step down into the stream of our apparently most peculiar and personal development, Heraclitus’ aphorism, “ You cannot step twice into the same river,” holds good.—This is a piece of wisdom which has, indeed, gradually become trite, but nevertheless has remained as strong and true as it ever was. It is the same with the saying that, in order to understand history, we must scrutinize the living remains of historical periods; that we must travel, as old Herodotus travelled, to other nations, especially to those so-called savage or half-savage races in regions where man has doffed or not yet donned European garb. For they are ancient and firmly established steps of culture on which we can stand. There is, however, a more subtle art and aim in travelling, which does not always necessitate our passing from place to place and going thousands of miles away. Very probably the last three centuries, in all their colorings and refractions of culture, survive even in our vicinity, only they have to be discovered. In some families, or even in individuals, the strata are still superimposed on each other, beautifully and perceptibly; in other places there are dispersions and displacements of the structure which are harder to understand. Certainly in remote districts, in less known mountain valleys, circumscribed communities have been able more easily to maintain an admirable pattern of a far older sentiment, a pattern that must here be investigated. On the other hand, it is improbable that such discoveries will be made in Berlin, where man comes into the world washed-out and sapless. He who after long practice of this art of travel has become a hundred-eyed Argus will accompany his Io—I mean his ego—everywhere, and in Egypt and Greece, Byzantium and Rome, France and Germany, in the age of wandering or settled races, in Renaissance or Reformation, at home and abroad, in sea, forest, plant, and mountain, will again light upon the travel-adventure of this ever-growing, ever-altered ego.
—Thus self-knowledge becomes universal knowledge as regards the entire past, and, by another chain of observation, which can only be indicated here, self-direction and self-training in the freest and most far-seeing spirits might become universal direction as regards all future humanity. 224. Balm and Poison.—We cannot ponder too deeply on this fact: Christianity is the religion of antiquity grown old; it presupposes degenerate old culture-stocks, and on them it had, and still has, power to work like balm. There are periods when ears and eyes are full of slime, so that they can no longer hear the voice of reason and philosophy or see the wisdom that walks in bodily shape, whether it bears the name of Epictetus or of Epicurus. Then, perhaps, the erection of the martyr’s cross and the “ trumpet of the last judgment” may have the effect of still inspiring such races to end their lives decently. If we think of Juvenal’s Rome, of that poisonous toad with the eyes of Venus, we understand what it means to make the sign of the Cross before the world, we honour the silent Christian community and are grateful for its having stifled the Greco-Roman Empire. If, indeed, most men were then born in spiritual slavery, with the sensuality of old men, what a pleasure to meet beings who were more soul than body, and who seemed to realize the Greek idea of the shades of the under-world—shy, scurrying, chirping, kindly creatures, with a reversion on the “ better life,” and therefore so unassuming, so secretly scornful, so proudly patient!—This Christianity, as the evening chime of the good antiquity, with cracked, weary and yet melodious bell, is balm in the ears even to one who only now traverses those centuries historically. What must it have been to those men themselves!—To young and fresh barbarian nations, on the other hand, Christianity is a poison. For to implant the teaching of sinfulness and damnation in the heroic, childlike, and animal soul of the old Germans is nothing but poisoning. An enormous chemical fermentation and decomposition, a medley of sentiments and judgments, a rank growth of adventurous legend, and hence in the long run a fundamental weakening of such barbarian peoples, was the inevitable result. True, without this weakening what should we have left of Greek culture, of the whole cultured past of the human race? For the barbarians untouched by Christianity knew very well how to make a clean sweep of old cultures, as was only too clearly shown by the heathen conquerors of Romanized Britain. Thus Christianity, against its will, was compelled to aid in making “ the antique world” immortal.—There remains, however, a counter-question and the possibility of a counter-reckoning. Without this weakening through the poisoning referred to, would any of those fresh stocks—the Germans, for instance—have been in a position gradually to find by themselves a higher, a peculiar, a new culture, of which the most distant conception would therefore have been lost to humanity?—In this, as in every case, we do not know, Christianly speaking, whether God owes the devil or the devil God more thanks for everything having turned out as it has. 225. Faith makes Holy and Condemns.—A Christian who happened upon forbidden paths of thought might well ask himself on some occasion whether it is really necessary that there should be a God, side by side with a representative Lamb, if faith in the existence of these beings suffices to produce the same influences? If they do exist after all, are they not superfluous beings? For all that is given by the Christian religion to the human soul, all that is beneficent, consoling, and edifying, just as much as all that depresses and crushes, emanates from that faith and not from the objects of that faith. It is here as in another well-known case—there were indeed no witches, but the terrible effects of the belief in witches were the same as if they really had existed. For all occasions where the Christian awaits the immediate intervention of a God, though in vain (for there is no God), his religion is inventive enough to find subterfuges and reasons for tranquility. In so far Christianity is an ingenious religion.—Faith, indeed, has up to the present not been able to move real mountains, although I do not know who assumed that it could. But it can put mountains where there are none. 226. The Tragi-Comedy of Regensburg.—Here and there we see with terrible clearness the harlequinade of Fortune, how she fastens the rope, on which she wills that succeeding centuries should dance, on to a few days, one place, the condition andopinions of one brain. Thus the fate of modern German history lies in the days of that disputation at Regensburg: the peaceful settlement of ecclesiastical and moral affairs, without religious wars or a counter-reformation, and also the unity of the German nation, seemed assured: the deep, gentle spirit of Contarini hovered for one moment over the theological squabble, victorious, as representative of the riper Italian piety, reflecting the morning glory of intellectual freedom. But Luther’s hard head, full of suspicions and strange misgivings, showed resistance. Because justification by grace appeared to him his greatest motto and discovery, he did not believe the phrase in the mouth of Italians; whereas, in point of fact, as is well known, they had invented it much earlier and spread it throughout Italy in deep silence. In this apparent agreement Luther saw the tricks of the devil, and hindered the work of peace as well as he could, thereby advancing to a great extent the aims of the Empire’s foes.—And now, in order to have a still stronger idea of the dreadful farcicality of it all, let us add that none of the principles about which men then disputed in Regensburg—neither that of original sin, nor that of redemption by proxy, nor that of justification by faith—is in any way true or even has any connection with truth: that they are now all recognized as incapable of being discussed. Yet on this account the world was set on fire—that is to say, by opinions which correspond to no things or realities; whereas as regards purely philological questions—as, for instance, that of the sacramental words in the Eucharist—discussion at any rate is permitted, because in this case the truth can be said. But “ where nothing is, even truth has lost her right.” [15]—Lastly, it only remains to be said that it is true these principles give rise to sources of power so mighty that without them all the mills of the modern world could not be driven with such force. And it is primarily a matter of force, only secondarily of truth (and perhaps not even secondarily)—is it not so, my dear up-to-date friends? [15] Allusion to German proverb: “ Where there is nothing, the Emperor has lost his rights.”—Tr. 227. Goethe’s Errors.—Goethe is a signal exception among great artists in that he did not live within the limited confines of his real capacity, as if that must be the essential, the
distinctive, the unconditional, and the last thing in him and for all the world. Twice he intended to possess something higher than he really possessed—and went astray in the second half of his life, where he seems quite convinced that he is one of the great scientific discoverers and illuminators. So too in the first half of his life he demanded of himself something higher than the poetic art seemed to him—and here already he made a mistake. That nature wished to make him a plastic artist,—this was his inwardly glowing and scorching secret, which finally drove him to Italy, that he might give vent to his mania in this direction and make to it every possible sacrifice. At last, shrewd as he was, and honestly averse to any mental perversion in himself, he discovered that a tricksy elf of desire had attracted him to the belief in this calling, and that he must free himself of the greatest passion of his heart and bid it farewell. The painful conviction, tearing and gnawing at his vitals, that it was necessary to bid farewell, finds full expression in the character of Tasso. Over Tasso, that Werther intensified, hovers the premonition of something worse than death, as when one says: “ Now it is over, after this farewell: how shall I go on living without going mad?” These two fundamental errors of his life gave Goethe, in face of a purely literary attitude towards poetry (the only attitude then known to the world), such an unembarrassed and apparently almost arbitrary position. Not to speak of the period when Schiller (poor Schiller, who had no time himself and left no time to others) drove away his shy dread of poetry, his fear of all literary life and craftsmanship, Goethe appears like a Greek who now and then visits his beloved, doubting whether she be not a Goddess to whom he can give no proper name. In all his poetry one notices the inspiring neighbourhood of plastic art and Nature. The features of these figures that floated before him—and perhaps he always thought he was on the track of the metamorphoses of one Goddess—became, without his will or knowledge, the features of all the children of his art. Without the extravagances of error he would not have been Goethe—that is, the only German artist in writing who has not yet become out of date—just because he desired as little to be a writer as a German by vocation. 228. Travellers and their Grades.—Among travellers we may distinguish five grades. The first and lowest grade is of those who travel and are seen—they become really travelled and are, as it were, blind. Next come those who really see the world. The third class experience the results of their seeing. The fourth weave their experience into their life and carry it with them henceforth. Lastly, there are some men of the highest strength who, as soon as they have returned home, must finally and necessarily work out in their lives and productions all the things seen that they have experienced and incorporated in themselves.—Like these five species of travellers, all mankind goes through the whole pilgrimage of life, the lowest as purely passive, the highest as those who act and live out their lives without keeping back any residue of inner experiences. 229. In Climbing Higher.—So soon as we climb higher than those who hitherto admired us, we appear to them as sunken and fallen. For they imagined that under all circumstances they were on the heights in our company (maybe also through our agency). 230. Measure and Moderation.—Of two quite lofty things, measure and moderation, it is best never to speak. A few know their force and significance, from the mysterious paths of inner experiences and conversions: they honour in them something quite godlike, and are afraid to speak aloud. All the rest hardly listen when they are spoken about, and think the subjects under discussion are tedium and mediocrity. We must perhaps except those who have once heard a warning note from that realm but have stopped their ears against the sound. The recollection of it makes them angry and exasperated. 231. Humanity of Friendship and Comradeship.—“ If thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right,” [16] that feeling is the hall-mark of humanity in intimate intercourse, and without that feeling every friendship, every band of apostles or disciples, sooner or later becomes a fraud. [16] Genesis xiii. 9. —Tr. 232. The Profound.—Men of profound thought appear to themselves in intercourse with others like comedians, for in order to be understood they must always simulate superficiality. 233. For the Scorners of “ Herd-Humanity.”—He who regards human beings as a herd, and flies from them as fast as he can, will certainly be caught up by them and gored upon their horns. 234. The Main Transgression against the Vain.—In society, he who gives another an opportunity of favorably setting forth his knowledge, sentiments, and experience sets himself above him. Unless he is felt by the other to be a superior being without limitation, he is guilty of an attack upon his vanity, while what he aimed at was the gratification of the other man’s vanity. 235. Disappointment.—When a long life of action distinguished by speeches and writings gives publicity to a man’s personality, personal intercourse with him is generally disappointing on two grounds. Firstly, one expects too much from a brief period of intercourse (namely, all that the thousand and one opportunities of life can alone bring out). Secondly, no recognized person gives himself the trouble to woo recognition in individual cases. He is too careless, and we are at too high a tension.
236. Two Sources of Kindness.—To treat all men with equal good-humor, and to be kind without distinction of persons, may arise as much from a profound contempt for mankind as from an ingrained love of humanity. 237. The Wanderer in the Mountains to Himself.—There are certain signs that you have gone farther and higher. There is a freer, wider prospect before you, the air blows cooler yet milder in your face (you have unlearned the folly of confounding mildness with warmth), your gait is more firm and vigorous, courage and discretion have waxed together. On all these grounds your journey may now be more lonely and in any case more perilous than heretofore, if indeed not to the extent believed by those who from the misty valley see you, the roamer, striding on the mountains. 238. With the Exception of Our Neighbour.—I admit that my head is set wrong on my neck only, for every other man, as is well known, knows better than I what I should do or leave alone. The only one who cannot help me is myself, poor beggar! Are we not all like statues on which false heads have been placed? Eh, dear neighbour?—Ah no; you, just you, are the exception! 239. Caution.—We must either not go about at all with people who are lacking in the reverence for personalities, or inexorably fetter them beforehand with the manacles of convention. 240. The Wish to Appear Vain.—In conversation with strangers or little-known acquaintances, to express only selected thoughts, to speak of one’s famous acquaintances, and important experiences and travels, is a sign that one is not proud, or at least would not like to appear proud. Vanity is the polite mask of pride. 241. Good Friendship.—A good friendship arises when the one man deeply respects the other, more even than himself; loves him also, though not so much as himself; and finally, to facilitate intercourse, knows how to add the delicate bloom and veneer of intimacy, but at the same time wisely refrains from a true, real intimacy, from the confounding of meum and tuum. 242. Friends as Ghosts.—If we change ourselves vitally, our friends, who have not changed, become ghosts of our own past: their voice sounds shadowy and dreadful to us, as if we heard our own voice speaking, but younger, harder, less mellow. 243. One Eye and Two Glances.—The same people whose eyes naturally plead for favors and indulgences are accustomed, from their frequent humiliations and cravings for revenge, to assume a shameless glance as well. 244. The Haze of Distance.—A child throughout life—that sounds very touching, but is only the verdict from the distance. Seen and known close at hand, he is always called “ puerile throughout life.” 245. Advantage and Disadvantage in the Same Misunderstanding.—The mute perplexity of the subtle brain is usually understood by the non-subtle as a silent superiority, and is much dreaded whereas the perception of perplexity would produce good will. 246. The Sage giving Himself out to be a Fool.—The philanthropy of the sage sometimes makes him decide to pretend to be excited, enraged, or delighted, so that he may not hurt his surroundings by the coldness and rationality of his true nature. 247. Forcing Oneself to Attention.—So soon as we note that any one in intercourse and conversation with us has to force himself to attention, we have adequate evidence that he loves us not, or loves us no longer. 248. The Way to a Christian Virtue.—Learning from one’s enemies is the best way to love them, for it inspires us with a grateful mood towards them. 249. Stratagem of the Importunate.—The importunate man gives us gold coins as change for our convention coins, and thereby tries to force us afterwards to treat our convention as an oversight and him as an exception. 250.
Reason for Dislike.—We become hostile to many an artist or writer, not because we notice in the end that he has duped us, but because he did not find more subtle means necessary to entrap us. 251. In Parting.—Not by the way one soul approaches another, but by the way it separates, do I recognize its relationship and homogeneity with the other. 252. Silentium.—We must not speak about our friends, or we renounce the sentiment of friendship. 253. Impoliteness.—Impoliteness is often the sign of a clumsy modesty, which when taken by surprise loses its head and would fain hide the fact by means of rudeness. 254. Honesty’s Miscalculation.—Our newest acquaintances are sometimes the first to learn what we have hitherto kept dark. We have the foolish notion that our proof of confidence is the strongest fetter wherewith to hold them fast. But they do not know enough about us to feel so strongly the sacrifice involved in our speaking out, and betray our secrets to others without any idea of betrayal. Hereby we possibly lose our old friends. 255. In the Ante-Chamber of Favor.—All men whom we let stand long in the ante-chamber of our favor get into a state of fermentation or become bitter. 256. Warning to the Despised.—When we have sunk unmistakably in the estimation of mankind we should cling tooth and nail to modesty in intercourse, or we shall betray to others that we have sunk in our own estimation as well. Cynicism in intercourse is a sign that a man, when alone, treats himself too as a dog. 257. Ignorance often Ennobles.—With regard to the respect of those who pay respect, it is an advantage ostensibly not to understand certain things. Ignorance, too, confers privileges. 258. The Opponent of Grace.—The impatient and arrogant man does not care for grace, feeling it to be a corporeal, visible reproach against himself. For grace is heartfelt toleration in movement and gesture. 259. On Seeing Again.—When old friends see each other again after a long separation, it often happens that they affect an interest in matters to which they have long since become indifferent. Sometimes both remark this, but dare not raise the veil—from a mournful doubt. Hence arise conversations as in the realm of the dead. 260. Making Friends only with the Industrious.—The man of leisure is dangerous to his friends, for, having nothing to do, he talks of what his friends are doing or not doing, interferes, and finally makes himself a nuisance. The clever man will only make friends with the industrious. 261. One Weapon twice as much as Two.—It is an unequal combat when one man defends his cause with head and heart, the other with head alone. The first has sun and wind against him, as it were, and his two weapons interfere with each other: he loses the prize—in the eyes of truth. True, the victory of the second, with his one weapon, is seldom a victory after the hearts of all the other spectators, and makes him unpopular. 262. Depth and Troubled Waters.—The public easily confounds him who fishes in troubled waters with him who pumps up from the depths. 263. Demonstrating One’s Vanity to Friend and Foe.—Many a man, from vanity, maltreats even his friends, when in the presence of witnesses to whom he wishes to make his own preponderance clear. Others exaggerate the merits of their enemies, in order to point proudly to the fact that they are worthy of such foes. 264. Cooling Off.—The over-heating of the heart is generally allied with illness of the head and judgment. He who is concerned for a time with the health of his head must know what he has to cool, careless of the future of his heart. For if we are capable at all of giving warmth, we are sure to become warm again and then have our summer. 265. Mingled Feelings.—Towards science women and self-seeking artists entertain a feeling that is composed of envy and sentimentality. 266. Where Danger is Greatest.—We seldom break our leg so long as life continues a toilsome upward climb. The danger comes when we begin to take things easily and choose the convenient paths.
267. Not too Early.—We must beware of becoming sharp too early, or we shall also become thin too early. 268. Joy in Refractoriness.—The good teacher knows cases where he is proud that his pupil remains true to himself in opposition to him—at times when the youth must not understand the man or would be harmed by understanding him. 269. The Experiment of Honesty.—Young men, who wish to be more honest than they have been, seek as victim someone acknowledged to be honest, attacking him first with an attempt to reach his height by abuse—with the underlying notion that this first experiment at any rate is void of danger. For just such a one has no right to chastise the impudence of the honest man. 270. The Eternal Child.—We think, short-sighted that we are, that fairy-tales and games belong to childhood. As if at any age we should care to live without fairy-tales and games! Our words and sentiments are indeed different, but the essential fact remains the same, as is proved by the child himself looking on games as his work and fairy-tales as his truth. The shortness of life ought to preserve us from a pedantic distinction between the different ages—as if every age brought something new—and a poet ought one day to portray a man of two hundred, who really lives without fairy-tales and games. 271. Every Philosophy is the Philosophy of a Period of Life.—The period of life in which a philosopher finds his teaching is manifested by his teaching; he cannot avoid that, however elevated above time and hour he may feel himself. Thus, Schopenhauer’s philosophy remains a mirror of his hot and melancholy youth—it is no mode of thought for older men. Plato’s philosophy reminds one of the middle thirties, when a warm and a cold current generally rush together, so that spray and delicate clouds and, under favorable circumstances and glimpses of sunshine, enchanting rainbow-pictures result. 272. Of the Intellect of Women.—The intellectual strength of a woman is best proved by the fact that she offers her own intellect as a sacrifice out of love for a man and his intellect, and that nevertheless in the new domain, which was previously foreign to her nature, a second intellect at once arises as an aftergrowth, to which the man’s mind impels her. 273. Raising and Lowering in the Sexual Domain.—The storm of desire will sometimes carry a man up to a height where all desire is silenced, where he really loves and lives in a better state of being rather than in a better state of choice. On the other hand, a good woman, from true love, often climbs down to desire, and lowers herself in her own eyes. The latter action in particular is one of the most pathetic sensations which the idea of a good marriage can involve. 274. Man Promises, Woman Fulfils.—By woman Nature shows how far she has hitherto achieved her task of fashioning humanity, by man she shows what she has had to overcome and what she still proposes to do for humanity.—The most perfect woman of every age is the holiday-task of the Creator on every seventh day of culture, the recreation of the artist from his work. 275. Transplanting.—If we have spent our intellect in order to gain mastery over the intemperance of the passions, the sad result often follows that we transfer the intemperance to the intellect, and from that time forth are extravagant in thought and desire of knowledge. 276. Laughter as Treachery.—How and when a woman laughs is a sign of her culture, but in the ring of laughter her nature reveals itself, and in highly cultured women perhaps even the last insoluble residue of their nature. Hence the psychologist will say with Horace, though from different reasons: “ Ridete puellae.” 277. From the Youthful Soul.—Youths varyingly show devotion and impudence towards the same person, because at bottom they only despise or admire themselves in that other person, and between the two feelings but stagger to and fro in themselves, so long as they have not found in experience the measure of their will and ability. 278. For the Amelioration of the World.—If we forbade the discontented, the sullen, and the atrabilious to propagate, we might transform the world into a garden of happiness.—This aphorism belongs to a practical philosophy for the female sex. 279. Not to Distrust your Emotions.—The feminine phrase “ Do not distrust your emotions” does not mean much more than “ Eat what tastes good to you.” This may also, especially for moderate natures, be a good everyday rule. But other natures must live according to another maxim: “ You must eat not only with your mouth but also with your brain, in order
that the greediness of your mouth may not prove your undoing.” 280. A Cruel Fancy of Love.—Every great love involves the cruel thought of killing the object of love, so that it may be removed once for all from the mischievous play of change. For love is more afraid of change than of destruction. 281. Doors.—In everything that is learnt or experienced, the child, just like the man, sees doors; but for the former they are places to go to, for the latter to go through. 282. Sympathetic Women.—The sympathy of women, which is talkative, takes the sick-bed to market. 283. Early Merit.—He who acquires merit early in life tends to forget all reverence for age and old people, and accordingly, greatly to his disadvantage, excludes himself from the society of the mature, those who confer maturity. Thus in spite of his early merit he remains green, importunate, and boyish longer than others. 284. Souls All of a Piece.—Women and artists think that where we do not contradict them we cannot. Reverence on ten counts and silent disapproval on ten others appears to them an impossible combination, because their souls are all of a piece. 285. Young Talents.—With respect to young talents we must strictly follow Goethe’s maxim, that we should often avoid harming error in order to avoid harming truth. Their condition is like the diseases of pregnancy, and involves strange appetites. These appetites should be satisfied and humored as far as possible, for the sake of the fruit they may be expected to produce. It is true that, as nurse of these remarkable invalids, one must learn the difficult art of voluntary self-abasement. 286. Disgust with Truth.—Women are so constituted that all truth (in relation to men, love, children, society, aim of life) disgusts them—and that they try to be revenged on every one who opens their eyes. 287. The Source of Great Love.—Whence arises the sudden passion of a man for a woman, a passion so deep, so vital? Least of all from sensuality only: but when a man finds weakness, need of help, and high spirits united in the same creature, he suffers a sort of overflowing of soul, and is touched and offended at the same moment. At this point arises the source of great love. 288. Cleanliness.—In the child, the sense for cleanliness should be fanned into a passion, and then later on he will raise himself, in ever new phases, to almost every virtue, and will finally appear, in compensation for all talent, as a shining cloud of purity, temperance, gentleness, and character, happy in himself and spreading happiness around. 289. Of Vain Old Men.—Profundity of thought belongs to youth, clarity of thought to old age. When, in spite of this, old men sometimes speak and write in the manner of the profound, they do so from vanity, imagining that they thereby assume the charm of juvenility, enthusiasm, growth, apprehensiveness, hopefulness. 290. Enjoyment of Novelty.—Men use a new lesson or experience later on as a ploughshare or perhaps also as a weapon, women at once make it into an ornament. 291. How both Sexes behave when in the Right.—If it is conceded to a woman that she is right, she cannot deny herself the triumph of setting her heel on the neck of the vanquished; she must taste her victory to the full. On the other hand, man towards man in such a case is ashamed of being right. But then man is accustomed to victory; with woman it is an exception. 292. Abnegation in the Will to Beauty.—In order to become beautiful, a woman must not desire to be considered pretty. That is to say, in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases where she could please she must scorn and put aside all thoughts of pleasing. Only then can she ever reap the delight of him whose soul’s portal is wide enough to admit the great. 293. Unintelligible, Unendurable.—A youth cannot understand that an old man has also had his delights, his dawns of feeling, his changings and soarings of thought. It offends him to think that such things have existed before. But it makes him very bitter to hear that, to become fruitful, he must lose those buds and dispense with their fragrance. 294. The Party with the Air of Martyrdom.—Every party that can assume an air of martyrdom wins good-natured souls over to its side and thereby itself acquires an air of good nature
—greatly to its advantage. 295. Assertions surer than Arguments.—An assertion has, with the majority of men at any rate, more effect than an argument, for arguments provoke mistrust. Hence demagogues seek to strengthen the arguments of their party by assertions. 296. The Best Concealers.—All regularly successful men are profoundly cunning in making their faults and weaknesses look like manifestations of strength. This proves that they must know their defects uncommonly well. 297. From Time to Time.—He sat in the city gateway and said to one who passed through that this was the city gate. The latter replied that this was true, but that one must not be too much in the right if one expected to be thanked for it. “ Oh,” answered the other, “ I don’t want thanks, but from time to time it is very pleasant not merely to be in the right but to remain in the right.” 298. Virtue WAS not Invented by the Germans.—Goethe’s nobleness and freedom from envy, Beethoven’s fine hermitical resignation, Mozart’s cheerfulness and grace of heart, Handel’s unbending manliness and freedom under the law, Bach’s confident and luminous inner life, such as does not even need to renounce glamour and success—are these qualities peculiarly German?—If they are not, they at least prove to what goal Germans should strive and to what they can attain. 299. Pia Fraus or Something Else.—I hope I am mistaken, but I think that in Germany of to-day a twofold sort of hypocrisy is set up as the duty of the moment for everyone. From imperial-political misgivings Germanism is demanded, and from social apprehensions Christianity—but both only in words and gestures, and particularly in ability to keep silent. It is the veneer that nowadays costs so much and is paid for so highly; and for the benefit of the spectators the face of the nation assumes German and Christian wrinkles. 300. How Far Even in the Good the Half May be More than the Whole.—In all things that are constructed to last and demand the service of many hands, much that is less good must be made a rule, although the organizer knows what is better and harder very well. He will calculate that there will never be a lack of persons who can correspond to the rule, and he knows that the middling good is the rule.—The youth seldom sees this point, and as an innovator thinks how marvelously he is in the right and how strange is the blindness of others. 301. The Partisan.—The true partisan learns nothing more, he only experiences and judges. It is significant that Solon, who was never a partisan but pursued his aims above and apart from parties or even against them, was the father of that simple phrase wherein lies the secret of the health and vitality of Athens: “ I grow old, but I am always learning.” 302. What is German according to Goethe.—They are really intolerable people of whom one cannot even accept the good, who have freedom of disposition but do not remark that they are lacking in freedom of taste and spirit. Yet just this, according to Goethe’s well-weighed judgment, is German.—His voice and his example indicate that the German should be more than a German if he wishes to be useful or even endurable to other nations—and which direction his striving should take, in order that he may rise above and beyond himself. 303. When it is Necessary to Remain Stationary.—When the masses begin to rage, and reason is under a cloud, it is a good thing, if the health of one’s soul is not quite assured, to go under a doorway and look out to see what the weather is like. 304. The Revolution-Spirit and the Possession-Spirit.—The only remedy against Socialism that still lies in your power is to avoid provoking Socialism—in other words, to live in moderation and contentment, to prevent as far as possible all lavish display, and to aid the State as far as possible in its taxing of all superfluities and luxuries. You do not like this remedy? Then, you rich bourgeois who call yourselves “ Liberals,” confess that it is your own inclination that you find so terrible and menacing in Socialists, but allow to prevail in yourselves as unavoidable, as if with you it were something different. As you are constituted, if you had not your fortune and the cares of maintaining it, this bent of yours would make Socialists of you. Possession alone differentiates you from them. If you wish to conquer the assailants of your prosperity, you must first conquer yourselves.—And if that prosperity only meant well-being, it would not be so external and provocative of envy; it would be more generous, more benevolent, more compensatory, more helpful. But the spurious, histrionic element in your pleasures, which lie more in the feeling of contrast (because others have them not, and feel envious) than in feelings of realized and heightened power—your houses, dresses, carriages, shops, the demands of your palates and your tables, your noisy operatic and musical enthusiasm; lastly your women, formed and fashioned but of base metal, gilded but without the ring of gold, chosen by you for show and considering themselves meant for show—these are the things that spread the poison of that national disease, which seizes the masses ever more and more as a Socialistic heart-itch, but has its origin and breeding-place in you. Who shall now arrest this epidemic?
305. Party Tactics.—When a party observes that a previous member has changed from an unqualified to a qualified adherent, it endures it so ill that it irritates and mortifies him in every possible way with the object of forcing him to a decisive break and making him an opponent. For the party suspects that the intention of finding a relative value in its faith, a value which admits of pro and con, of weighing and discarding, is more dangerous than downright opposition. 306. For the Strengthening of Parties.—Whoever wishes to strengthen a party internally should give it an opportunity of being forcibly treated with obvious injustice. The party thus acquires a capital of good conscience, which hitherto it perhaps lacked. 307. To Provide for One’s Past.—As men after all only respect the old-established and slowly developed, he who would survive after his death must not only provide for posterity but still more for the past. Hence tyrants of every sort (including tyrannical artists and politicians) like to do violence to history, so that history may seem a preparation and a ladder up to them. 308. Party Writers.—The beating of drums, which delights young writers who serve a party, sounds to him who does not belong to the party like a rattling of chains, and excites sympathy rather than admiration. 309. Taking Sides against Ourselves.—Our followers never forgive us for taking sides against ourselves, for we seem in their eyes not only to be spurning their love but to be exposing them to the charge of lack of intelligence. 310. Danger in Wealth.—Only a man of intellect should hold property: otherwise property is dangerous to the community. For the owner, not knowing how to make use of the leisure which his possessions might secure to him, will continue to strive after more property. This strife will be his occupation, his strategy in the war with ennui. So in the end real wealth is produced from the moderate property that would be enough for an intellectual man. Such wealth, then, is the glittering outcrop of intellectual dependence and poverty, but it looks quite different from what its humble origin might lead one to expect, because it can mask itself with culture and art—it can, in fact, purchase the mask. Hence it excites envy in the poor and uncultured—who at bottom always envy culture and see no mask in the mask—and gradually paves the way for a social revolution. For a gilded coarseness and a histrionic blowing of trumpets in the pretended enjoyment of culture inspires that class with the thought, “ It is only a matter of money,” whereas it is indeed to some extent a matter of money, but far more of intellect. 311. Joy in Commanding and Obeying.—Commanding is a joy, like obeying; the former when it has not yet become a habit, the latter just when it has become a habit. Old servants under new masters advance each other mutually in giving pleasure. 312. Ambition for a Forlorn Hope.—There is an ambition for a forlorn hope which forces a party to place itself at the post of extreme danger. 313. When Asses are Needed.—We shall not move the crowd to cry “ Hosanna!” until we have ridden into the city upon an ass. 314. Party Usage.—Every party attempts to represent the important elements that have sprung up outside it as unimportant, and if it does not succeed, it attacks those elements the more bitterly, the more excellent they are. 315. Becoming Empty.—Of him who abandons himself to the course of events, a smaller and smaller residue is continually left, Great politicians may therefore become quite empty men, although they were once full and rich. 316. Welcome Enemies.—The Socialistic movements are nowadays becoming more and more agreeable rather than terrifying to the dynastic governments, because by these movements they are provided with a right and a weapon for making exceptional rules, and can thus attack their real bogies, democrats and anti-dynasts.—Towards all that such governments professedly detest they feel a secret cordiality and inclination. But they are compelled to draw the veil over their soul. 317. Possession Possesses.—Only up to a certain point does possession make men feel freer and more independent; one step farther, and possession becomes lord, the possessor a slave. The latter must sacrifice his time, his thoughts to the former, and feels himself compelled to an intercourse, nailed to a spot, incorporated with the State—perhaps quite in
conflict with his real and essential needs. 318. Of the Mastery of Them that Know.—It is easy, ridiculously easy, to set up a model for the choice of a legislative body. First of all the honest and reliable men of the nation, who at the same time are masters and experts in some one branch, have to become prominent by mutual scenting-out and recognition. From these, by a narrower process of selection, the learned and expert of the first rank in each individual branch must again be chosen, also by mutual recognition and guarantee. If the legislative body be composed of these, it will finally be necessary, in each individual case, that only the voices and judgments of the most specialized experts should decide; the honesty of all the rest should have become so great that it is simply a matter of decency to leave the voting also in the hands of these men. The result would be that the law, in the strictest sense, would emanate from the intelligence of the most intelligent.—As things now are, voting is done by parties, and at every division there must be hundreds of uneasy consciences among the ill-taught, the incapable of judgment, among those who merely repeat, imitate, and go with the tide. Nothing lowers the dignity of a new law so much as this inherent shamefaced feeling of insincerity that necessarily results at every party division. But, as has been said, it is easy, ridiculously easy, to set up such a model: no power on earth is at present strong enough to realize such an ideal—unless the belief in the highest utility of knowledge, and of those that know, at last dawns even upon the most hostile minds and is preferred to the prevalent belief in majorities. In the sense of such a future may our watchword be: “ More reverence for them that know, and down with all parties!” 319. Of the “ Nation of Thinkers” (or of Bad Thinking).—The vague, vacillating, premonitory, elementary, intuitive elements—to choose obscure names for obscure things—that are attributed to the German nature would be, if they really still existed, a proof that our culture has remained several stages behind and is still surrounded by the spell and atmosphere of the Middle Ages.—It is true that in this backwardness there are certain advantages: by these qualities the Germans (if, as has been said before, they still possess them) would possess the capacity, which other nations have now lost, for doing certain things and particularly for understanding certain things. Much undoubtedly is lost if the lack of sense—which is just the common factor in all those qualities—is lost. Here too, however, there are no losses without the highest compensatory gains, so that no reason is left for lamenting, granting that we do not, like children, and gourmands, wish to enjoy at once the fruits of all seasons of the year. 320. Carrying Coals to Newcastle.—The governments of the great States have two instruments for keeping the people dependent in fear and obedience: a coarser, the army, and a more refined, the school. With the aid of the former they win over to their side the ambition of the higher strata and the strength of the lower, so far as both are characteristic of active and energetic men of moderate or inferior gifts. With the aid of the latter they win over gifted poverty, especially the intellectually pretentious semi-poverty of the middle classes. Above all, they make teachers of all grades into an intellectual court looking unconsciously “ towards the heights.” By putting obstacle after obstacle in the way of private schools and the wholly distasteful individual tuition they secure the disposal of a considerable number of educational posts, towards which numerous hungry and submissive eyes are turned to an extent five times as great as can ever be satisfied. These posts, however, must support the holder but meagerly, so that he maintains a feverish thirst for promotion and becomes still more closely attached to the views of the government. For it is always more advantageous to foster moderate discontent than contentment, the mother of courage, the grandmother of free thought and exuberance. By means of this physically and mentally bridled body of teachers, the youth of the country is as far as possible raised to a certain level of culture that is useful to the State and arranged on a suitable sliding-scale. Above all, the immature and ambitious minds of all classes are almost imperceptibly imbued with the idea that only a career which is recognized and hall-marked by the State can lead immediately to social distinction. The effect of this belief in government examinations and titles goes so far that even men who have remained independent and have risen by trade or handicraft still feel a pang of discontent in their hearts until their position too is marked and acknowledged by a gracious bestowal of rank and orders from above—until one becomes a “ somebody.” Finally the State connects all these hundreds of offices and posts in its hands with the obligation of being trained and hall-marked in these State schools if one ever wishes to enter this charmed circle. Honour in society, daily bread, the possibility of a family, protection from above, the feeling of community in a common culture—all this forms a network of hopes into which every young man walks: how should he feel the slightest breath of mistrust? In the end, perhaps, the obligation of being a soldier for one year has become with every one, after the lapse of a few generations, an unreflecting habit, an understood thing, with an eye to which we construct the plan of our lives quite early. Then the State can venture on the master-stroke of weaving together school and army, talent, ambition and strength by means of common advantages—that is, by attracting the more highly gifted on favorable terms to the army and inspiring them with the military spirit of joyful obedience; so that finally, perhaps, they become attached permanently to the flag and endow it by their talents with an ever new and more brilliant luster. Then nothing more is wanted but an opportunity for great wars. These are provided from professional reasons (and so in all innocence) by diplomats, aided by newspapers and Stock Exchanges. For “ the nation,” as a nation of soldiers, need never be supplied with a good conscience in war—it has one already. 321. The Press.—If we consider how even to-day all great political transactions glide upon the stage secretly and stealthily; how they are hidden by unimportant events, and seem small when close at hand; how they only show their far-reaching effect, and leave the soil still quaking, long after they have taken place;—what significance can we attach to the Press in its present position, with its daily expenditure of lung-power in order to bawl, to deafen, to excite, to terrify? Is it anything more than an everlasting false alarm, which tries to lead our ears and our wits into a false direction?
322. After a Great Event.—A nation and a man whose soul has come to light through some great event generally feel the immediate need of some act of childishness or coarseness, as much from shame as for purposes of recreation. 323. To be A Good German means to de-Germanize Oneself.—National differences consist, far more than has hitherto been observed, only in the differences of various grades of culture, and are only to a very small extent permanent (nor even that in a strict sense). For this reason all arguments based on national character are so little binding on one who aims at the alteration of convictions—in other words, at culture. If, for instance, we consider all that has already been German, we shall improve upon the hypothetical question, “ What is German?” by the counter-question, “ What is now German?” and every good German will answer it practically, by overcoming his German characteristics. For when a nation advances and grows, it bursts the girdle previously given to it by its national outlook. When it remains stationary or declines, its soul is surrounded by a fresh girdle, and the crust, as it becomes harder and harder, builds a prison around, with walls growing ever higher. Hence if a nation has much that is firmly established, this is a sign that it wishes to petrify and would like to become nothing but a monument. This happened, from a definite date, in the case of Egypt. So he who is well-disposed towards the Germans may for his part consider how he may more and more grow out of what is German. The tendency to be un-German has therefore always been a mark of efficient members of our nation. 324. Foreignisms.—A foreigner who travelled in Germany found favor or the reverse by certain assertions of his, according to the districts in which he stayed. All intelligent Suabians, he used to say, are coquettish.—The other Suabians still believed that Uhland was a poet and Goethe immoral.—The best about German novels now in vogue was that one need not read them, for one knew already what they contained.—The native of Berlin seemed more good-humored than the South German, for he was all too fond of mocking, and so could endure mockery himself, which the South German could not.—The intellect of the Germans was kept down by their beer and their newspapers: he recommended them tea and pamphlets, of course as a cure.—He advised us to contemplate the different nations of worn-out Europe and see how well each displayed some particular quality of old age, to the delight of those who sit before the great spectacle: how the French successfully represent the cleverness and amiability of old age, the English the experience and reserve, the Italians the innocence and candor. Can the other masks of old age be wanting? Where is the proud old man, the domineering old man, the covetous old man?—The most dangerous region in Germany was Saxony and Thuringia: nowhere else was there more mental nimbleness, more knowledge of men, side by side with freedom of thought; and all this was so modestly veiled by the ugly dialect and the zealous officiousness of the inhabitants that one hardly noticed that one here had to deal with the intellectual drill-sergeants of Germany, her teachers for good or evil.—The arrogance of the North Germans was kept in check by their tendency to obey, that of the South Germans by their tendency—to make themselves comfortable.— It appeared to him that in their women German men possessed awkward but self-opinionated housewives, who belauded themselves so perseveringly that they had almost persuaded the world, and at any rate their husbands, of their peculiarly German housewifely virtue.—When the conversation turned on Germany’s home and foreign policy, he used to say (he called it “ betray the secret”) that Germany’s greatest statesman did not believe in great statesmen.—The future of Germany he found menaced and menacing, for Germans had forgotten how to enjoy themselves (an art that the Italians understood so well), but, by the great games of chance called wars and dynastic revolutions, had accustomed themselves to emotionalism, and consequently would one day have an émeute. For that is the strongest emotion that a nation can procure for itself—The German Socialist was all the more dangerous because impelled by no definite necessity: his trouble lay in not knowing what he wanted; so, even if he attained many of his objects, he would still pine away from desire in the midst of delights, just like Faust, but presumably like a very vulgar Faust. “ For the Faust-Devil,” he finally exclaimed, “ by whom cultured Germans were so much plagued, was exorcised by Bismarck; but now the Devil has entered into the swine, [17] and is worse than ever!” [17] Luke viii. 33. —Tr. 325. Opinions.—Most men are nothing and count for nothing until they have arrayed themselves in universal convictions and public opinions. This is in accordance with the tailors’ philosophy, “ The apparel makes the man.” Of exceptional men, however, it must be said, “ The wearer primarily makes the apparel.” Here opinions cease to be public, and become something else than masks, ornament, and disguise. 326. Two Kinds of Sobriety.—In order not to confound the sobriety arising from mental exhaustion with that arising from moderation, one must remark that the former is peevish, the latter cheerful. 327. Debasement of Joy.—To call a thing good not a day longer than it appears to us good, and above all not a day earlier—that is the only way to keep joy pure. Otherwise, joy all too easily becomes insipid and rotten to the taste, and counts, for whole strata of the people, among the adulterated food-stuffs. 328. The Scapegoat of Virtue.—When a man does his very best, those who mean well towards him, but are not capable of appreciating him, speedily seek a scapegoat to immolate,
thinking it is the scapegoat of sin—but it is the scapegoat of virtue. 329. Sovereignty.—To honour and acknowledge even the bad, when it pleases one, and to have no conception of how one could be ashamed of being pleased thereat, is the mark of sovereignty in things great and small. 330. Influence a Phantom, not a Reality.—The man of mark gradually learns that so far as he has influence he is a phantom in other brains, and perhaps he falls into a state of subtle vexation of soul, in which he asks himself whether he must not maintain this phantom of himself for the benefit of his fellow-men. 331. Giving and Taking.—When one takes away (or anticipates) the smallest thing that another possesses, the latter is blind to the fact that he has been given something greater, nay, even the greatest thing. 332. Good Ploughland.—All rejection and negation betoken a deficiency in fertility. If we were good ploughland, we should allow nothing to be unused or lost, and in everything, event, or person we should welcome manure, rain, or sunshine. 333. Intercourse as an Enjoyment.—If a man renounces the world and intentionally lives in solitude, he may come to regard intercourse with others, which he enjoys but seldom, as a special delicacy. 334. To Know how to Suffer in Public.—We must advertise our misfortunes and from time to time heave audible sighs and show visible marks of impatience. For if we could let others see how assured and happy we are in spite of pain and privation, how envious and ill-tempered they would become at the sight!—But we must take care not to corrupt our fellow-men; besides, if they knew the truth, they would levy a heavy toll upon us. At any rate our public misfortune is our private advantage. 335. Warmth on the Heights.—On the heights it is warmer than people in the valleys suppose, especially in winter. The thinker recognizes the full import of this simile. 336. To Will the Good and be Capable of the Beautiful.—It is not enough to practise the good one must have willed it, and, as the poet says, include the Godhead in our will. But the beautiful we must not will, we must be capable of it, in innocence and blindness, without any psychical curiosity. He that lights his lantern to find perfect men should remember the token by which to know them. They are the men who always act for the sake of the good and in so doing always attain to the beautiful without thinking of the beautiful. Many better and nobler men, from impotence or from want of beauty in their souls, remain unrefreshing and ugly to behold, with all their good will and good works. They rebuff and injure even virtue through the repulsive garb in which their bad taste arrays her. 337. Danger of Renunciation.—We must beware of basing our lives on too narrow a foundation of appetite. For if we renounce all the joys involved in positions, honours, associations, revels, creature comforts, and arts, a day may come when we perceive that this repudiation has led us not to wisdom but to satiety of life. 338. Final Opinion on Opinions.—Either we should hide our opinions or hide ourselves behind our opinions. Whoever does otherwise, does not know the way of the world, or belongs to the order of pious fire-eaters. 339. “ Gaudeamus Igitur.”—Joy must contain edifying and healing forces for the moral nature of man. Otherwise, how comes it that our soul, as soon as it basks in the sunshine of joy, unconsciously vows to itself, “ I will be good!” “ I will become perfect!” and is at once seized by a premonition of perfection that is like a shudder of religious awe? 340. To One who is Praised.—So long as you are praised, believe that you are not yet on your own course but on that of another. 341. Loving the Master.—The apprentice and the master love the master in different ways. 342. All-too-Beautiful and Human.—“ Nature is too beautiful for thee, poor mortal,” one often feels. But now and then, at a profound contemplation of all that is human, in its fullness, vigour, tenderness, and complexity, I have felt as if I must say, in all humility, “ Man also is too beautiful for the contemplation of man!” Nor did I mean the moral man alone, but everyone.
343. Real and Personal Estate.—When life has treated us in true robber fashion, and has taken away all that it could of honour, joys, connections, health, and property of every kind, we perhaps discover in the end, after the first shock, that we are richer than before. For now we know for the first time what is so peculiarly ours that no robber hand can touch it, and perhaps, after all the plunder and devastation, we come forward with the airs of a mighty real estate owner. 344. Involuntarily Idealized.—The most painful feeling that exists is finding out that we are always taken for somethinghigher than we really are. For we must thereby confess to ourselves, “ There is in you some element of fraud—your speech, your expression, your bearing, your eye, your dealings; and this deceitful something is as necessary as your usual honesty, but constantly destroys its effect and its value.” 345. Idealist and Liar.—We must not let ourselves be tyrannized even by that finest faculty of idealizing things: otherwise, truth will one day part company from us with the insulting remark: “ Thou arch-liar, what have I to do with thee?” 346. Being Misunderstood.—When one is misunderstood generally, it is impossible to remove a particular misunderstanding. This point must be recognized, to save superfluous expenditure of energy in self-defence. 347. The Water-Drinker Speaks.—Go on drinking your wine, which has refreshed you all your life—what affair is it of yours if I have to be a water-drinker? Are not wine and water peaceable, brotherly elements, that can live side by side without mutual recriminations? 348. From Cannibal Country.—In solitude the lonely man is eaten up by himself, among crowds by the many. Choose which you prefer. 349. The Freezing-Point of the Will.—“ Some time the hour will come at last, the hour that will envelop you in the golden cloud of painlessness; when the soul enjoys its own weariness and, happy in patient playing with patience resembles the waves of a lake, which on a quiet summer day, in the reflection of a many-hued evening sky, sip and sip at the shore and again are hushed—without end, without purpose, without satiety, without need—all calm rejoicing in change, all ebb and flow of Nature’s pulse.” Such is the feeling and talk of all invalids, but if they attain that hour, a brief period of enjoyment is followed by ennui. But this is the thawing-wind of the frozen will, which awakes, stirs, and once more begets desire upon desire.—Desire is a sign of convalescence or recovery. 350. The Disclaimed Ideal.—It happens sometimes by an exception that a man only reaches the highest when he disclaims his ideal. For this ideal previously drove him onward too violently, so that in the middle of the track he regularly got out of breath and had to rest. 351. A Treacherous Inclination.—It should be regarded as a sign of an envious but aspiring man, when he feels himself attracted by the thought that with regard to the eminent there is but one salvation—love. 352. Staircase Happiness.—Just as the wit of many men does not keep pace with opportunity (so that opportunity has already passed through the door while wit still waits on the staircase outside), so others have a kind of staircase happiness, which walks too slowly to keep pace with swift-footed Time. The best that it can enjoy of an experience, of a whole span of life, falls to its share long afterwards, often only as a weak, spicy fragrance, giving rise to longing and sadness—as if “ it might have been possible”—some time or other—to drink one’s fill of this element: but now it is too late. 353. Worms.—The fact that an intellect contains a few worms does not detract from its ripeness. 354. The Seat of Victory.—A good seat on horseback robs an opponent of his courage, the spectator of his heart—why attack such a man? Sit like one who has been victorious! 355. Danger in Admiration.—From excessive admiration for the virtues of others one can lose the sense of one’s own, and finally, through lack of practice, lose these virtues themselves, without retaining the alien virtues as compensation. 356. Uses of Sickliness.—He who is often ill not only has a far greater pleasure in health, on account of his so often getting well, but acquires a very keen sense of what is healthy or
sickly in actions and achievements, both his own and others’. Thus, for example, it is just the writers of uncertain health—among whom, unfortunately, nearly all great writers must be classed—who are wont to have a far more even and assured tone of health in their writings, because they are better versed than are the physically robust in the philosophy of psychical health and convalescence and in their teachers—morning, sunshine, forest, and fountain. 357. Disloyalty a Condition of Mastery.—It cannot be helped—every master has but one pupil, and he becomes disloyal to him, for he also is destined for mastery. 358. Never in Vain.—In the mountains of truth you never climb in vain. Either you already reach a higher point to-day, or you exercise your strength in order to be able to climb higher to-morrow. 359. Through: Grey Window-Panes.—Is what you see through this window of the world so beautiful that you do not wish to look through any other window—ay, and even try to prevent others from so doing? 360. A Sign of Radical Changes.—When we dream of persons long forgotten or dead, it is a sign that we have suffered radical changes, and that the soil on which we live has been completely undermined. The dead rise again, and our antiquity becomes modernity. 361. Medicine of the Soul.—To lie still and think little is the cheapest medicine for all diseases of the soul, and, with the aid of good-will, becomes pleasanter every hour that it is used. 362. Intellectual Order of Precedence.—You rank far below others when you try to establish the exception and they the rule. 363. The Fatalist.—You must believe in fate—science can compel you thereto. All that develops in you out of that belief—cowardice, devotion or loftiness, and uprightness—bears witness to the soil in which the grain was sown, but not to the grain itself, for from that seed anything and everything can grow. 364. The Reason for Much Fretfulness.—He that prefers the beautiful to the useful in life will undoubtedly, like children who prefer sweetmeats to bread, destroy his digestion and acquire a very fretful outlook on the world. 365. Excess as a Remedy.—We can make our own talent once more acceptable to ourselves by honoring and enjoying the opposite talent for some time to excess.—Using excess as a remedy is one of the more refined devices in the art of life. 366. “ Will a Self.”—Active, successful natures act, not according to the maxim, “ Know thyself,” but as if always confronted with the command, “ Will a self, so you will become a self”—Fate seems always to have left them a choice. Inactive, contemplative natures, on the other hand, reflect on how they have chosen their self “ once for all” at their entry into life. 367. To Live as Far as Possible without a Following.—How small is the importance of followers we first grasp when we have ceased to be the followers of our followers. 368. Obscuring Oneself.—We must understand how to obscure ourselves in order to get rid of the gnat-swarms of pestering admirers. 369. Ennui.—There is an ennui of the most subtle and cultured brains, to which the best that the world can offer has become stale. Accustomed to eat ever more and more recherché fare and to feel disgust at coarser diet, they are in danger of dying of hunger. For the very best exists but in small quantities, and has sometimes become inaccessible or hard as stone, so that even good teeth can no longer bite it. 370. The Danger in Admiration.—The admiration of a quality or of an art may be so strong as to deter us from aspiring to possess that quality or art. 371. What is Required of Art.—One man wants to enjoy himself by means of art, another for a time to get out of or above himself.—To meet both requirements there exists a twofold species of artists. 372.
Secessions.—Whoever secedes from us offends not us, perhaps, but certainly our adherents. 373. After Death.—It is only long after the death of a man that we find it inconceivable that he should be missed—in the case of really great men, only after decades. Those who are honest usually think when any one dies that he is not much missed, and that the pompous funeral oration is a piece of hypocrisy. Necessity first teaches the necessariness of an individual, and the proper epitaph is a belated sigh. 374. Leaving in Hades.—We must leave many things in the Hades of half-conscious feeling, and not try to release them from their shadow-existence, or else they will become, as thoughts and words, our demoniacal tyrants, with cruel lust after our blood. 375. Near to Beggary.—Even the richest intellect sometimes mislays the key to the room in which his hoarded treasures repose. He is then like the poorest of the poor, who must beg to get a living. 376. Chain-Thinkers.—To him who has thought a great deal, every new thought that he hears or reads at once assumes the form of a chain. 377. Pity.—In the gilded sheath of pity is sometimes hidden the dagger of envy. 378. What is Genius?—To aspire to a lofty aim and to will the means to that aim. 379. Vanity of Combatants.—He who has no hope of victory in a combat, or who is obviously worsted, is all the more desirous that his style of fighting should be admired. 380. The Philosophic Life Misinterpreted.—At the moment when one is beginning to take philosophy seriously, the whole world fancies that one is doing the reverse. 381. Imitation.—By imitation, the bad gains, the good loses credit—especially in art. 382. Final Teaching of History.—“ Oh that I had but lived in those times!” is the exclamation of foolish and frivolous men. At every period of history that we seriously review, even if it be the most belauded era of the past, we shall rather cry out at the end, “ Anything but a return to that! The spirit of that age would oppress you with the weight of a hundred atmospheres, the good and beautiful in it you would not enjoy, its evil you could not digest.” Depend upon it, posterity will pass the same verdict on our own epoch, and say that it was unbearable, that life under such conditions was intolerable. “ And yet every one can endure his own times?” Yes, because the spirit of his age not only lies upon him but is in him. The spirit of the age offers resistance to itself and can bear itself. 383. Greatness as a Mask.—By greatness in our comportment we embitter our foes; by envy that we do not conceal we almost reconcile them to us. For envy levels and makes equal; it is an unconscious, plaintive variety of modesty.—It may be indeed that here and there, for the sake of the above-named advantage, envy has been assumed as a mask by those who are not envious. Certainly, however, greatness in comportment is often used as the mask of envy by ambitious men who would rather suffer drawbacks and embitter their foes than let it be seen that they place them on an equal footing with themselves. 384. Unpardonable.—You gave him an opportunity of displaying the greatness of his character, and he did not make use of the opportunity. He will never forgive you for that. 385. Contrasts.—The most senile thought ever conceived about men lies in the famous saying, “ The ego is always hateful,” the most childish in the still more famous saying, “ Love thy neighbour as thyself.”—With the one knowledge of men has ceased, with the other it has not yet begun. 386. A Defective Ear.—“ We still belong to the mob so long as we always shift the blame on to others; we are on the track of wisdom when we always make ourselves alone responsible; but the wise man finds no one to blame, neither himself nor others.”—Who said that? Epictetus, eighteen hundred years ago.—The world has heard but forgotten the saying.—No, the world has not heard and not forgotten it: everything is not forgotten. But we had not the necessary ear, the ear of Epictetus.—So he whispered it into his own ear?— Even so: wisdom is the whispering of the sage to himself in the crowded market-place. 387.
A Defect of Standpoint, not of Vision.—We always stand a few paces too near ourselves and a few paces too far from our neighbour. Hence we judge him too much in the lump, and ourselves too much by individual, occasional, insignificant features and circumstances. 388. Ignorance about Weapons.—How little we care whether another knows a subject or not!—whereas he perhaps sweats blood at the bare idea that he may be considered ignorant on the point. Yes, there are exquisite fools, who always go about with a quiverful of mighty, excommunicatory utterances, ready to shoot down any one who shows freely that there are matters in which their judgment is not taken into account. 389. At the Drinking-Table of Experience.—People whose innate moderation leads them to drink but the half of every glass, will not admit that everything in the world has its lees and sediment. 390. Singing-Birds.—The followers of a great man often put their own eyes out, so that they may be the better able to sing his praise. 391. Beyond our Ken.—The good generally displeases us when it is beyond our ken. 392. Rule as Mother or as Child.—There is one condition that gives birth to rules, another to which rules give birth. 393. Comedy.—We sometimes earn honour or love for actions and achievements which we have long since sloughed as the snake sloughs his skin. We are hereby easily seduced into becoming the comic actors of our own past, and into throwing the old skin once more about our shoulders—and that not merely from vanity, but from good-will towards our admirers. 394. A Mistake of Biographers.—The small force that is required to launch a boat into the stream must not be confounded with the force of the stream that carries the boat along. Yet this mistake is made in nearly all biographies. 395. Not Buying too Dear.—The things that we buy too dear we generally turn to bad use, because we have no love for them but only a painful recollection. Thus they involve a twofold drawback. 396. The Philosophy that Society always Needs.—The pillars of the social structure rest upon the fundamental fact that everyone cheerfully contemplates all that he is, does, and attempts, his sickness or health, his poverty or affluence, his honour or insignificance, and says to himself, “ After all, I would not change places with anyone!”—Whoever wishes to add a stone to the social structure should always try to implant in mankind this cheerful philosophy of contentment and refusal to change places. 397. The Mark of a Noble Soul.—A noble soul is not that which is capable of the highest flights, but that which rises little and falls little, living always in a free and bright atmosphere and altitude 398. Greatness and its Contemplator.—The noblest effect of greatness is that it gives the contemplator a power of vision that magnifies and embellishes. 399. Being Satisfied.—We show that we have attained maturity of understanding when we no longer go where rare flowers lurk under the thorniest hedges of knowledge, but are satisfied with gardens, forests, meadows, and ploughlands, remembering that life is too short for the rare and uncommon. 400. Advantage in Privation.—He who always lives in the warmth and fullness of the heart, and, as it were, in the summer air of the soul, cannot form an idea of that fearful delight which seizes more wintry natures, who for once in a way are kissed by the rays of love and the milder breath of a sunny February day. 401. Recipe for the Sufferer.—You find the burden of life too heavy? Then you must increase the burden of your life. When the sufferer finally thirsts after and seeks the river of Lethe, then he must become a hero to be certain of finding it. 402. The Judge.—He who has seen another’s ideal becomes his inexorable judge, and as it were his evil conscience.
403. The Utility of Great Renunciation.—The useful thing about great renunciation is that it invests us with that youthful pride through which we can thenceforth easily demand of ourselves small renunciations. 404. How Duty Acquires a Glamour.—You can change a brazen duty into gold in the eyes of all by always performing something more than you have promised. 405. Prayer to Mankind.—“ Forgive us our virtues”—so should we pray to mankind. 406. They that Create and They that Enjoy.—Everyone who enjoys thinks that the principal thing to the tree is the fruit, but in point of fact the principal thing to it is the seed.— Herein lies the difference between them that create and them that enjoy. 407. The Glory of all Great Men.—What is the use of genius if it does not invest him who contemplates and reveres it with such freedom and loftiness of feeling that he no longer has need of genius?—To make themselves superfluous is the glory of all great men. 408. The Journey to Hades.—I too have been in the underworld, even as Odysseus, and I shall often be there again. Not sheep alone have I sacrificed, that I might be able to converse with a few dead souls, but not even my own blood have I spared. There were four pairs who responded to me in my sacrifice: Epicurus and Montaigne, Goethe and Spinoza, Plato and Rousseau, Pascal and Schopenhauer. With them I have to come to terms. When I have long wandered alone, I will let them prove me right or wrong; to them will I listen, if they prove each other right or wrong. In all that I say, conclude, or think out for myself and others, I fasten my eyes on those eight and see their eyes fastened on mine.—May the living forgive me if I look upon them at times as shadows, so pale and fretful, so restless and, alas! so eager for life. Those eight, on the other hand, seem to me so living that I feel as if even now, after their death, they could never become weary of life. But eternal vigour of life is the important point: what matters “ eternal life,” or indeed life at all? HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN SECOND SEQUEL: THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW A Dialog between The Shadow and The wanderer: The Shadow Since I haven’t heard your voice in so long, I would like to give you an opportunity to speak. The Wanderer Someone said something — where? and who? It almost seems as if I myself were speaking, though in an even weaker voice than mine. The Shadow (after a pause) : Are you not happy to have an opportunity to speak? The Wanderer By God and all things, in which I do not believe, my shadow speaks; I hear it, but I don’t believe it. The Shadow Let’s accept it and don’t continue to think about it — in one hour it will all be over. The Wanderer That’s what I thought, when I saw two and then five camels in a forest near Pisa. The Shadow. It’s good, that we are both indulgent in the same way, if our reason stands still: thus we will not become annoying and press each other in conversation when something sounds incomprehensible to us. If one does not know how to answer, then it is already enough to say something — that’s the reasonable policy under which I agree to converse. With longer discussions, the wisest one becomes once the fool and three times the dullard. The Wanderer Your modesty is not complimentary to your confessor. The Shadow Am I to flatter? The Wanderer I thought a man’s shadow was his vanity, but his vanity would never ask: “ Am I to flatter?” The Shadow. Nor would man’s vanity, as far as I know, inquire — as I did twice already — whether it could speak: it always speaks. The Wanderer Only now do I notice how impolite I am, my beloved shadow: I have not said a word about how pleased I am to see you as well as hear you. You should know that I love the shadow as much as I cherish the light. For facial beauty, clarity of speech, quality and firmness of character, shadow is as necessary as light. They are not opponents: they are rather affectionate, holding hands — and if the light disappears, the shadow slips away after it. The Shadow And I hate the same thing you hate: the night; I love human beings, because they are devotees of light and I’m pleased when their eyes shine as they discern and discover knowledge — untiring knowers and discoverers that they are. That shadow, which all things cast, if the sunshine of perception falls upon them — that shadow am I as well. su The Wanderer I believe I understand you, despite your somewhat shadowy expressions. But you were right: good friends give each other — here and there — a cryptic word as a sign of agreement, which should be a mystery to any third party. And we are good friends. Therefore, let’s dispense with the preliminaries! A few hundred questions press upon my soul, and the time you have to answer them is perhaps only brief. Let’s see what, in all haste and peaceableness, we can agree upon. The Shadow But shadows are shier than human beings: you won’t tell anyone how we have spoken together! The Wanderer How we have spoken together? Heaven forfend! especially from long drawn-out literary discussions. If Plato had less desire to “ spin” his readers, they would find
more pleasure in Plato. A really amusing discussion — when written down — is merely a painting with false perspectives: everything is too long or too short — nevertheless, perhaps you’ll allow me to indicate what we agreed upon? The Shadow. I’m happy with that, since everyone will recognize therein only your opinions — nobody will think of the shadow. The Wanderer. Perhaps you are wrong, my friend! Up to now one assumed in my opinions more of shadow than of me. The Shadow More shadow than light? Is it possible? The Wanderer. Dear fool, be serious! My first question requires seriousness. SECOND SEQUEL: THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW 1. Of the Tree of Knowledge.—Probability, but no truth; the semblance of freedom, but no freedom—these are the two fruits by virtue of which the tree of knowledge cannot be confounded with the tree of life. 2. The World’s Reason.—That the world is not the abstract essence of an eternal reasonableness is sufficiently proved by the fact that that bit of the world which we know—I mean our human reason—is none too reasonable. And if this is not eternally and wholly wise and reasonable, the rest of the world will not be so either. Here the conclusion a minori ad majus, a parte ad totum holds good, and that with decisive force. 3. “ In the Beginning was.”—To glorify the origin—that is the metaphysical after-shoot which sprouts again at the contemplation of history, and absolutely makes us imagine that in the beginning of things lies all that is most valuable and essential. 4. Standard for the Value of Truth.—The difficulty of climbing mountains is no gauge of their height. Yet in the case of science it is different!—we are told by certain persons who wish to be considered “ the initiated,”—the difficulty in finding truth is to determine the value of truth! This insane morality originates in the idea that “ truths” are really nothing more than gymnastic appliances, with which we have to exercise ourselves until we are thoroughly tired. It is a morality for the athletes and gymnasts of the intellect. 5. Use of Words and Reality.—There exists a simulated contempt for all the things that mankind actually holds most important, for all everyday matters. For instance, we say “ we only eat to live”—an abominable lie, like that which speaks of the procreation of children as the real purpose of all sexual pleasure. Conversely, the reverence for “ the most important things” is hardly ever quite genuine. The priests and metaphysicians have indeed accustomed us to a hypocritically exaggerated use of words regarding these matters, but they have not altered the feeling that these most important things are not so important as those despised “ everyday matters.” A fatal consequence of this twofold hypocrisy is that we never make these everyday matters (such as eating, housing, clothes, and intercourse) the object of a constant unprejudiced and universal reflection and revision, but, as such a process appears degrading, we divert from them our serious intellectual and artistic side. Hence in such matters habit and frivolity win an easy victory over the thoughtless, especially over inexperienced youth. On the other hand, our continual transgressions of the simplest laws of body and mind reduce us all, young and old, to a disgraceful state of dependence and servitude—I mean to that fundamentally superfluous dependence upon physicians, teachers and clergymen, whose dead-weight still lies heavy upon the whole of society. 6. Earthly Infirmities and their Main Cause.—If we look about us, we are always coming across men who have eaten eggs all their lives without observing that the oblong-shaped taste the best; who do not know that a thunder-storm is beneficial to the stomach; that perfumes are most fragrant in cold, clear air; that our sense of taste varies in different parts of our mouths; that every meal at which we talk well or listen well does harm to the digestion. If we are not satisfied with these examples of defective powers of observation, we shall concede all the more readily that the everyday matters are very imperfectly seen and rarely observed by the majority. Is this a matter of indifference?—Let us remember, after all, that from this defect are derived nearly all the bodily and spiritual infirmities of the individual. Ignorance of what is good and bad for us, in the arrangement of our mode of life, the division of our day, the selection of our friends and the time we devote to them, in business and leisure, commanding and obeying, our feeling for nature and for art, our eating, sleeping, and meditation; ignorance and lack of keen perceptions in the smallest and most ordinary details—this it is that makes the world “ a vale of tears” for so many. Let us not say that here as everywhere the fault lies with human unreason. Of reason there is enough and to spare, but it is wrongly directed and artificially diverted from these little intimate things. Priests and teachers, and the sublime ambition of all idealists, coarser and subtler, din it even into the child’s ears that the means of serving mankind at large depend upon altogether different things—upon the salvation of the soul, the service of the State, the advancement of science, or even upon social position and property; whereas the needs of the individual, his requirements great and small during the twenty-four hours of the day, are quite paltry or indifferent.—Even Socrates attacked with all his might this arrogant neglect of the human for the benefit of humanity, and loved to indicate by a quotation from Homer the true sphere and conception of all anxiety and reflection: “ All that really matters,” he said, “ is the good and evil hap I find at home.” 7.
Two Means of Consolation.—Epicurus, the soul-comforter of later antiquity, said, with that marvelous insight which to this very day is so rarely to be found, that for the calming of the spirit the solution of the final and ultimate theoretical problems is by no means necessary. Hence, instead of raising a barren and remote discussion of the final question, whether the Gods existed, it sufficed him to say to those who were tormented by “ fear of the Gods”: “ If there are Gods, they do not concern themselves with us.” The latter position is far stronger and more favorable, for, by conceding a few points to the other, one makes him readier to listen and to take to heart. But as soon as he sets about proving the opposite (that the Gods do concern themselves with us), into what thorny jungles of error must the poor man fall, quite of his own accord, and without any cunning on the part of his interlocutor! The latter must only have enough subtlety and humanity to conceal his sympathy with this tragedy. Finally, the other comes to feel disgust—the strongest argument against any proposition—disgust with his own hypothesis. He becomes cold, and goes away in the same frame of mind as the pure atheist who says, “ What do the Gods matter to me? The devil take them!”—In other cases, especially when a half-physical, half-moral assumption had cast a gloom over his spirit, Epicurus did not refute the assumption. He agreed that it might be true, but that there was a second assumption to explain the same phenomenon, and that it could perhaps be maintained in other ways. The plurality of hypotheses (for example, that concerning the origin of conscientious scruples) suffices even in our time to remove from the soul the shadows that arise so easily from pondering over a hypothesis which is isolated, merely visible, and hence overvalued a hundredfold.—Thus whoever wishes to console the unfortunate, the criminal, the hypochondriac, the dying, may call to mind the two soothing suggestions of Epicurus, which can be applied to a great number of problems. In their simplest form they would run: firstly, granted the thing is so, it does not concern us; secondly, the thing may be so, but it may also be otherwise. 8. In the Night.—So soon as night begins to fall our sensations concerning everyday matters are altered. There is the wind, prowling as if on forbidden paths, whispering as if in search of something, fretting because he cannot find it. There is the lamplight, with its dim red glow, its weary look, unwillingly fighting against night, a sullen slave to wakeful man. There are the breathings of the sleeper, with their terrible rhythm, to which an ever-recurring care seems to blow the trumpet-melody—we do not hear it, but when the sleeper’s bosom heaves we feel our heart-strings tighten; and when the breath sinks and almost dies away into a deathly stillness, we say to ourselves, “ Rest awhile, poor troubled spirit!” All living creatures bear so great a burden that we wish them an eternal rest; night invites to death.—If human beings were deprived of the sun and resisted night by means of moonlight and oil-lamps, what a philosophy would cast its veil over them! We already see only too plainly how a shadow is thrown over the spiritual and intellectual nature of man by that moiety of darkness and sunlessness that envelops life. 9. Origin of the Doctrine of Free Will.—Necessity sways one man in the shape of his passions, another as a habit of hearing and obeying, a third as a logical conscience, a fourth as a caprice and a mischievous delight in evasions. These four, however, seek the freedom of their will at the very point where they are most securely fettered. It is as if the silkworm sought freedom of will in spinning. What is the reason? Clearly this, that everyone thinks himself most free where his vitality is strongest; hence, as I have said, now in passion, now in duty, now in knowledge, now in caprice. A man unconsciously imagines that where he is strong, where he feels most thoroughly alive, the element of his freedom must lie. He thinks of dependence and apathy, independence and vivacity as forming inevitable pairs.—Thus an experience that a man has undergone in the social and political sphere is wrongly transferred to the ultimate metaphysical sphere. There the strong man is also the free man, there the vivid feeling of joy and sorrow, the high hopes, the keen desires, the powerful hates are the attributes of the ruling, independent natures, while the thrall and the slave live in a state of dazed oppression.—The doctrine of free will is an invention of the ruling classes. 10. “ ‘Absence of Feeling of New Chains.—So long as we do not feel that we are in some way dependent, we consider ourselves independent—a false conclusion that shows how proud man is, how eager for dominion. For he hereby assumes that he would always be sure to observe and recognize dependence so soon as he suffered it, the preliminary hypothesis being that he generally lives in independence, and that, should he lose that independence for once in a way, he would immediately detect a contrary sensation.—Suppose, however, the reverse to be true—that he is always living in a complex state of dependence, but thinks himself free where, through long habit, he no longer feels the weight of the chain? He only suffers from new chains, and “ free will” really means nothing more than an absence of feeling of new chains. 11. Freedom of the Will and the Isolation of Facts.—Our ordinary inaccurate observation takes a group of phenomena as one and calls them a fact. Between this fact and another we imagine a vacuum, we isolate each fact. In reality, however, the sum of our actions and cognitions is no series of facts and intervening vacua, but a continuous stream. Now the belief in free will is incompatible with the idea of a continuous, uniform, undivided, indivisible flow. This belief presupposes that every single action is isolated and indivisible; it is an atomic theory as regards volition and cognition.—We misunderstand facts as we misunderstand characters, speaking of similar characters and similar facts, whereas both are nonexistent. Further, we bestow praise and blame only on this false hypothesis, that there are similar facts, that a graduated order of species of facts exists, corresponding to a graduated order of values. Thus we isolate not only the single fact, but the groups of apparently equal facts (good, evil, compassionate, envious actions, and so forth). In both cases we are wrong.—The word and the concept are the most obvious reason for our belief in this isolation of groups of actions. We do not merely thereby designate the things; the thought at the back of our minds is that by the word and the concept we can grasp the essence of the actions. We are still constantly led astray by words and actions, and are induced to think of
things as simpler than they are, as separate, indivisible, existing in the absolute. Language contains a hidden philosophical mythology, which, however careful we may be, breaks out afresh at every moment. The belief in free will—that is to say, in similar facts and isolated facts—finds in language its continual apostle and advocate. 12. The Fundamental Errors.—A man cannot feel any psychical pleasure or pain unless he is swayed by one of two illusions. Either he believes in the identity of certain facts, certain sensations, and in that case finds spiritual pleasure and pain in comparing present with past conditions and in noting their similarity or difference (as is invariably the case with recollection); or he believes in the freedom of the will, perhaps when he reflects, “ I ought not to have done this,” “ This might have turned out differently,” and from these reflections likewise he derives pleasure and pain. Without the errors that are rife in every psychical pain and pleasure, humanity would never have developed. For the root idea of humanity is that man is free in a world of bondage—man, the eternal wonder-worker, whether his deeds be good or evil—man, the amazing exception, the super-beast, the quasi-God, the mind of creation, the indispensable, the key-word to the cosmic riddle, the mighty lord of nature and despiser of nature, the creature that calls its history “ the history of the world”! Vanitas vanitatum homo. 13. Repetition.—It is an excellent thing to express a thing consecutively in two ways, and thus provide it with a right and a left foot. Truth can stand indeed on one leg, but with two she will walk and complete her journey. 14. Man as the Comic Actor of the World.—It would require beings more intellectual than men to relish to the full the humorous side of man’s view of himself as the goal of all existence and of his serious pronouncement that he is satisfied only with the prospect of fulfilling a world-mission. If a God created the world, he created man to be his ape, as a perpetual source of amusement in the midst of his rather tedious eternities. The music of the spheres surrounding the world would then presumably be the mocking laughter of all the other creatures around mankind. God in his boredom uses pain for the tickling of his favorite animal, in order to enjoy his proudly tragic gestures and expressions of suffering, and, in general, the intellectual inventiveness of the vainest of his creatures—as inventor of this inventor. For he who invented man as a joke had more intellect and more joy in intellect than has man.—Even here, where our human nature is willing to humble itself, our vanity again plays us a trick, in that we men should like in this vanity at least to be quite marvelous and incomparable. Our uniqueness in the world! Oh, what an improbable thing it is! Astronomers, who occasionally acquire a horizon outside our world, give us to understand that the drop of life on the earth is without significance for the total character of the mighty ocean of birth and decay; that countless stars present conditions for the generation of life similar to those of the earth—and yet these are but a handful in comparison with the endless number that have never known, or have long been cured, of the eruption of life; that life on each of these stars, measured by the period of its existence, has been but an instant, a flicker, with long, long intervals afterwards—and thus in no way the aim and final purpose of their existence. Possibly the ant in the forest is quite as firmly convinced that it is the aim and purpose of the existence of the forest, as we are convinced in our imaginations (almost unconsciously) that the destruction of mankind involves the destruction of the world. It is even modesty on our part to go no farther than this, and not to arrange a universal twilight of the world and the Gods as the funeral ceremony of the last man. Even to the eye of the most unbiased astronomer a lifeless world can scarcely appear otherwise than as a shining and swinging star wherein man lies buried. 15. The Modesty of Man.—How little pleasure is enough for the majority to make them feel that life is good! How modest is man! 16. Where Indifference is Necessary.—Nothing would be more perverse than to wait for the truths that science will finally establish concerning the first and last things, and until then to think (and especially to believe) in the traditional way, as one is so often advised to do. The impulse that bids us seek nothing but certainties in this domain is a religious offshoot, nothing better—a hidden and only apparently skeptical variety of the “ metaphysical need,” the underlying idea being that for a long time no view of these ultimate certainties will be obtainable, and that until then the “ believer” has the right not to trouble himself about the whole subject. We have no need of these certainties about the farthermost horizons in order to live a full and efficient human life, any more than the ant needs them in order to be a good ant. Rather must we ascertain the origin of that troublesome significance that we have attached to these things for so long. For this we require the history of ethical and religious sentiments, since it is only under the influence of such sentiments that these most acute problems of knowledge have become so weighty and terrifying. Into the outermost regions to which the mental eye can penetrate (without ever penetrating into them), we have smuggled such concepts as guilt and punishment (everlasting punishment, too!). The darker those regions, the more careless we have been. For ages men have let their imaginations run riot where they could establish nothing, and have induced posterity to accept these fantasies as something serious and true, with this abominable lie as their final trump-card: that faith is worth more than knowledge. What we need now in regard to these ultimate things is not knowledge as against faith, but indifference as against faith and pretended knowledge in these matters!—Everything must lie nearer to us than what has hitherto been preached to us as the most important thing, I mean the questions: “ What end does man serve?” “ What is his fate after death?” “ How does he make his peace with God?” and all the rest of that bag of tricks. The problems of the dogmatic philosophers, be they idealists, materialists, or realists, concern us as little as do these religious questions. They all have the same object in view—to force us to a decision in matters where neither faith nor knowledge is needed. It is better even for the most ardent lover of knowledge that the territory open to investigation and to reason should be encircled by a belt of fog-laden,
treacherous marshland, a strip of ever watery, impenetrable, and indeterminable country. It is just by the comparison with the realm of darkness on the edge of the world of knowledge that the bright, accessible region of that world rises in value.—We must once more become good friends of the “ everyday matters,” and not, as hitherto, despise them and look beyond them at clouds and monsters of the night. In forests and caverns, in marshy tracts and under dull skies, on the lowest rungs of the ladder of culture, man has lived for æons, and lived in poverty. There he has learnt to despise the present, his neighbours, his life, and himself, and we, the inhabitants of the brighter fields of Nature and mind, still inherit in our blood some taint of this contempt for everyday matters. 17. Profound Interpretations.—He who has interpreted a passage in an author “ more profoundly” than was intended, has not interpreted the author but has obscured him. Our metaphysicians are in the same relation, or even in a worse relation, to the text of Nature. For, to apply their profound interpretations, they often alter the text to suit their purpose— or, in other words, corrupt the text. A curious example of the corruption and obscuration of an author’s text is furnished by the ideas of Schopenhauer on the pregnancy of women. “ The sign of a continuous will to life in time,” he says, “ is copulation; the sign of the light of knowledge which is associated anew with this will and holds the possibility of a deliverance, and that too in the highest degree of clearness, is the renewed incarnation of the will to life. This incarnation is betokened by pregnancy, which is therefore frank and open, and even proud, whereas copulation hides itself like a criminal.” He declares that every woman, if surprised in the sexual act, would be likely to die of shame, but “ displays her pregnancy without a trace of shame, nay even with a sort of pride.” Now, firstly, this condition cannot easily be displayed more aggressively than it displays itself, and when Schopenhauer gives prominence only to the intentional character of the display, he is fashioning his text to suit the interpretation. Moreover, his statement of the universality of the phenomenon is not true. He speaks of “ every woman.” Many women, especially the younger, often appear painfully ashamed of their condition, even in the presence of their nearest kinsfolk. And when women of riper years, especially in the humbler classes, do actually appear proud of their condition, it is because they would give us to understand that they are still desirable to their husbands. That a neighbour on seeing them or a passing stranger should say or think “ Can it be possible?”—that is an alms always acceptable to the vanity of women of low mental capacity. In the reverse instance, to conclude from Schopenhauer’s proposition, the cleverest and most intelligent women would tend more than any to exult openly in their condition. For they have the best prospect of giving birth to an intellectual prodigy, in whom “ the will” can once more “ negative” itself for the universal good. Stupid women, on the other hand, would have every reason to hide their pregnancy more modestly than anything they hide.—It cannot be said that this view corresponds to reality. Granted, however, that Schopenhauer was right on the general principle that women show more self-satisfaction when pregnant than at any other time, a better explanation than this lies to hand. One might imagine the clucking of a hen even before she lays an egg, saying, “ Look! look! I shall lay an egg! I shall lay an egg!” 18. The Modern Diogenes.—Before we look for man, we must have found the lantern.—Will it have to be the Cynic’s lantern? 19. Immoralists.—Moralists must now put up with being rated as immoralists, because they dissect morals. He, however, who would dissect must kill, but only in order that we may know more, judge better, live better, not in order that all the world may dissect. Unfortunately, men still think that every moralist in his every action must be a pattern for others to imitate. They confound him with the preacher of morality. The older moralists did not dissect enough and preached too often, whence that confusion and the unpleasant consequences for our latter-day moralists are derived. 20. A Caution against Confusion.—There are moralists who treat the strong, noble, self-denying attitude of such beings as the heroes of Plutarch, or the pure, enlightened, warmthgiving state of soul peculiar to truly good men and women, as difficult scientific problems. They investigate the origin of such phenomena, indicating the complex element in the apparent simplicity, and directing their gaze to the tangled skein of motives, the delicate web of conceptual illusions, and the sentiments of individuals or of groups, that are a legacy of ancient days gradually increased. Such moralists are very different from those with whom they are most commonly confounded, from those petty minds that do not believe at all in these modes of thought and states of soul, and imagine their own poverty to be hidden somewhere behind the glamour of greatness and purity. The moralists say, “ Here are problems,” and these pitiable creatures say, “ Here are impostors and deceptions.” Thus the latter deny the existence of the very things which the former are at pains to explain. 21. Man as the Measurer.—Perhaps all human morality had its origin in the tremendous excitement that seized primitive man when he discovered measure and measuring, scales and weighing (for the word Mensch [man] means “ the measurer”—he wished to name himself after his greatest discovery!). With these ideas they mounted into regions that are quite beyond all measuring and weighing, but did not appear to be so in the beginning. 22. The Principle of Equilibrium.—The robber and the man of power who promises to protect a community from robbers are perhaps at bottom beings of the same mould, save that the latter attains his ends by other means than the former—that is to say, through regular imposts paid to him by the community, and no longer through forced contributions. (The same relation exists between merchant and pirate, who for a long period are one and the same person: where the one function appears to them inadvisable, they exercise the other. Even to-day mercantile morality is really nothing but a refinement on piratical morality—buying in the cheapest market, at prime cost if possible, and selling in the dearest.) The essential
point is that the man of power promises to maintain the equilibrium against the robber, and herein the weak find a possibility of living. For either they must group themselves into an equivalent power, or they must subject themselves to some one of equivalent power (i.e. render service in return for his efforts). The latter course is generally preferred, because it really keeps two dangerous beings in check—the robber through the man of power, and the man of power through the standpoint of advantage; for the latter profits by treating his subjects with graciousness and tolerance, in order that they may support not only themselves but their ruler. As a matter of fact, conditions may still be hard and cruel enough, yet in comparison with the complete annihilation that was formerly always a possibility, men breathe freely.—The community is at first the organization of the weak to counterbalance menacing forces. An organization to outweigh those forces would be more advisable, if its members grew strong enough to destroy the adverse power: and when it is a question of one mighty oppressor, the attempt will certainly be made. But if the one man is the head of a clan, or if he has a large following, a rapid and decisive annihilation is improbable, and a long or permanent feud is only to be expected. This feud, however, involves the least desirable condition for the community, for it thereby loses the time to provide for its means of subsistence with the necessary regularity, and sees the product of all work hourly threatened. Hence the community prefers to raise its power of attack and defence to the exact plane on which the power of its dangerous neighbour stands, and to give him to understand that an equal weight now lies in its own side of the scales—so why not be good friends?—Thus equilibrium is a most important conception for the understanding of the ancient doctrines of law and morals. Equilibrium is, in fact, the basis of justice. When justice in ruder ages says, “ An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” it presupposes the attainment of this equilibrium and tries to maintain it by means of this compensation; so that, when crime is committed, the injured party will not take the revenge of blind anger. By means of the jus talionis the equilibrium of the disturbed relations of power is restored, for in such primitive times an eye or an arm more means a bit more power, more weight.—In a community where all consider themselves equal, disgrace and punishment await crime—that is, violations of the principle of equilibrium. Disgrace is thrown into the scale as a counter-weight against the encroaching individual, who has gained profit by his encroachment, and now suffers losses (through disgrace) which annul and outweigh the previous profits. Punishment, in the same way, sets up a far greater counter-weight against the preponderance which every criminal hopes to obtain—imprisonment as against a deed of violence, restitution and fines as against theft. Thus the sinner is reminded that his action has excluded him from the community and from its moral advantages, since the community treats him as an inferior, a weaker brother, an outsider. For this reason punishment is not merely retaliation, but has something more, something of the cruelty of the state of nature, and of this it would serve as a reminder. 23. Whether the Adherents of the Doctrine OF Free Will have a Right to Punish?—Men whose vocation it is to judge and punish try to establish in every case whether an evil-doer is really responsible for his act, whether he was able to apply his reasoning powers, whether he acted with motives and not unconsciously or under constraint. If he is punished, it is because he preferred the worse to the better motives, which he must consequently have known. Where this knowledge is wanting, man is, according to the prevailing view, not responsible—unless his ignorance, e.g. his ignorantia legis, be the consequence of an intentional neglect to learn what he ought: in that case he already preferred the worse to the better motives at the time when he refused to learn, and must now pay the penalty of his unwise choice. If, on the other hand, perhaps through stupidity orshortsightedness, he has never seen the better motives, he is generally not punished, for people say that he made a wrong choice, he acted like a brute beast. The intentional rejection of the better reason is now needed before we treat the offender as fit to be punished. But how can anyone be intentionally more unreasonable than he ought to be? Whence comes the decision, if the scales are loaded with good and bad motives? So the origin is not error or blindness, not an internal or external constraint? (It should furthermore be remembered that every so-called “ external constraint” is nothing more than the internal constraint of fear and pain.) Whence? is the repeated question. So reason is not to be the cause of action, because reason cannot decide against the better motives? Thus we call “ free will” to our aid. Absolute discretion is to decide, and a moment is to intervene when no motive exercises an influence, when the deed is done as a miracle, resulting from nothing. This assumed discretion is punished in a case where no discretion should rule. Reason, which knows law, prohibition, and command, should have left no choice, they say, and should have acted as a constraint and a higher power. Hence the offender is punished because he makes use of “ free will”—in other words, has acted without motive where he should have been guided by motives. But why did he do it? This question must not even be asked; the deed was done without a “ Why?” without motive, without origin, being a thing purposeless, unreasoned.—However, according to the above-named preliminary condition of punishability, such a deed should not be punished at all! Moreover, even this reason for punishing should not hold good, that in this case something had not been done, had been omitted, that reason had not been’ used at all: for at any rate the omission was unintentional and only intentional omission is considered punishable. The offender has indeed preferred the worse to the better motives, but without motive and purpose: he has indeed failed to apply his reason, but not exactly with the object of not applying it. The very assumption made in the case of punishable crime, that the criminal intentionally renounced his reason, is removed by the hypothesis of “ free will.” According to your own principles, you must not punish, you adherents of the doctrine of free will!— These principles are, however, nothing but a very marvelous conceptual mythology, and the hen that hatched them has brooded on her eggs far away from all reality. 24. Judging the Criminal and his Judge.—The criminal, who knows the whole concatenation of circumstances, does not consider his act so far beyond the bounds of order and comprehension as does his judge. His punishment, however, is measured by the degree of astonishment that seizes the judge when he finds the crime incomprehensible.—If the defending counsel’s knowledge of the case and its previous history extends far enough, the so-called extenuating circumstances which he duly pleads must end by absolving his client from all guilt. Or, to put it more plainly, the advocate will, step by step, tone down and finally remove the astonishment of the judge, by forcing every honest listener to the tacit avowal, “ He was bound to act as he did, and if we punished, we should be punishing eternal Necessity.”—Measuring the punishment by the degree of knowledge we possess or can
obtain of the previous history of the crime—is that not in conflict with all equity? 25. Exchange and Equity.—In an exchange, the only just and honest course would be for either party to demand only so much as he considers his commodity to be worth, allowance being made for trouble in acquisition, scarcity, time spent and so forth, besides the subjective value. As soon as you make your price bear a relation to the other’s need, you become a refined sort of robber and extortioner.—If money is the sole medium of exchange, we must remember that a shilling is by no means the same thing in the hands of a rich heir, a farm labourer, a merchant, and a university student. It would be equitable for everyone to receive much or little for his money, according as he has done much or little to earn it. In practice, as we all know, the reverse is the case. In the world of high finance the shilling of the idle rich man can buy more than that of the poor, industrious man. 26. Legal Conditions as Means.—Law, where it rests upon contracts between equals, holds good so long as the power of the parties to the contract remains equal or similar. Wisdom created law to end all feuds and useless expenditure among men on an equal footing. Quite as definite an end is put to this waste, however, when one party has become decidedly weaker than the other. Subjection enters and law ceases, but the result is the same as that attained by law. For now it is the wisdom of the superior which advises to spare the inferior and not uselessly to squander his strength. Thus the position of the inferior is often more favorable than that of the equal.—Hence legal conditions are temporary means counseled by wisdom, and not ends. 27. Explanation of Malicious Joy.—Malicious joy arises when a man consciously finds himself in evil plight and feels anxiety or remorse or pain. The misfortune that overtakes B. makes him equal to A., and A. is reconciled and no longer envious.—If A. is prosperous, he still hoards up in his memory B.‘s misfortune as a capital, so as to throw it in the scale as a counter-weight when he himself suffers adversity. In this case too he feels “ malicious joy” (Schadenfreude). The sentiment of equality thus applies its standard to the domain of luck and chance. Malicious joy is the commonest expression of victory and restoration of equality, even in a higher state of civilization. This emotion has only been in existence since the time when man learnt to look upon another as his equal—in other words, since the foundation of society. 28. The Arbitrary Element in the Award of Punishment.—To most criminals punishment comes just as illegitimate children come to women. They have done the same thing a hundred times without any bad consequences. Suddenly comes discovery, and with discovery punishment. Yet habit should make the deed for which the criminal is punished appear more excusable, for he has developed a propensity that is hard to resist. Instead of this, the criminal is punished more severely if the suspicion of habitual crime rests on him, and habit is made a valid reason against all extenuation. On the other hand, a model life, wherein crime shows up in more terrible contrast, should make the guilt appear more heavy! But here the custom is to soften the punishment. Everything is measured not from the standpoint of the criminal but from that of society and its losses and dangers. The previous utility of an individual is weighed against his one nefarious action, his previous criminality is added to that recently discovered, and punishment is thus meted out as highly as possible. But if we thus punish or reward a man’s past (for in the former case the diminution of punishment is a reward) we ought to go farther back and punish and reward the cause of his past—I mean parents, teachers, society. In many instances we shall then find the judges somehow or other sharing in the guilt. It is arbitrary to stop at the criminal himself when we punish his past: if we will not grant the absolute excusability of every crime, we should stop at each individual case and probe no farther into the past—in other words, isolate guilt and not connect it with previous actions. Otherwise we sin against logic. The teachers of free will should draw the inevitable conclusion from their doctrine of “ free will” and boldly decree: “ No action has a past.” 29. Envy and her Nobler Sister.—Where equality is really recognized and permanently established, we see the rise of that propensity that is generally considered immoral, and would scarcely be conceivable in a state of nature—envy. The envious man is susceptible to every sign of individual superiority to the common herd, and wishes to depress every one once more to the level—or raise himself to the superior plane. Hence arise two different modes of action, which Hesiod designated good and bad Eris. In the same way, in a condition of equality there arises indignation if A. is prosperous above and B. unfortunate beneath their deserts and equality. These latter, however, are emotions of nobler natures. They feel the want of justice and equity in things that are independent of the arbitrary choice of men—or, in other words, they desire the equality recognized by man to be recognized as well by Nature and chance. They are angry that men of equal merits should not have equal fortune. 30. The Envy of the Gods.—“ The envy of the Gods” arises when a despised person sets himself on an equality with his superior (like Ajax), or is made equal with him by the favor of fortune (like Niobe, the too favored mother). In the social class system this envy demands that no one shall have merits above his station, that his prosperity shall be on a level with his position, and especially that his self-consciousness shall not outgrow the limits of his rank. Often the victorious general, or the pupil who achieves a masterpiece, has experienced “ the envy of the gods.” 31. Vanity as an Anti-Social Aftergrowth.—As men, for the sake of security, have made themselves equal in order to found communities, but as also this conception is imposed by a
sort of constraint and is entirely opposed to the instincts of the individual, so, the more universal security is guaranteed, the more do new offshoots of the old instinct for predominance appear. Such offshoots appear in the setting-up of class distinctions, in the demand for professional dignities and privileges, and, generally speaking, in vanity (manners, dress, speech, and so forth). So soon as danger to the community is apparent, the majority, who were unable to assert their preponderance in a time of universal peace, once more bring about the condition of equality, and for the time being the absurd privileges and vanities disappear. If the community, however, collapses utterly and anarchy reigns supreme, there arises the state of nature: an absolutely ruthless inequality as recounted by Thucydides in the case of Corcyra. Neither a natural justice nor a natural injustice exists. 32. Equity.—Equity is a development of justice, and arises among such as do not come into conflict with the communal equality. This more subtle recognition of the principle of equilibrium is applied to cases where nothing is prescribed by law. Equity looks forwards and backwards, its maxim being, “ Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you.” Aequum means: “ This principle is conformable to our equality; it tones down even our small differences to an appearance of equality, and expects us to be indulgent in cases where we are not compelled to pardon.” 33. Elements of Revenge.—The word “ revenge” is spoken so quickly that it almost seems as if it could not contain more than one conceptual and emotional root. Hence we are still at pains to find this root. Our economists, in the same way, have never wearied of scenting a similar unity in the word “ value,” and of hunting after the primitive root idea of value. As if all words were not pockets, into which this or that or several things have been stuffed at once! So “ revenge” is now one thing, now another, and sometimes more composite. Let us first distinguish that defensive counter-blow, which we strike, almost unconsciously, even at inanimate objects (such as machinery in motion) that have hurt us. The notion is to set a check to the object that has hurt us, by bringing the machine to a stop. Sometimes the force of this counter-blow, in order to attain its object, will have to be strong enough to shatter the machine. If the machine be too strong to be disorganized by one man, the latter will all the same strike the most violent blow he can—as a sort of last attempt. We behave similarly towards persons who hurt us, at the immediate sensation of the hurt. If we like to call this an act of revenge, well and good: but we must remember that here selfpreservation alone has set its cog-wheels of reason in motion, and that after all we do not think of the doer of the injury but only of ourselves. We act without any idea of doing injury in return, only with a view to getting away safe and sound.—It needs time to pass in thought from oneself to one’s adversary and ask oneself at what point he is most vulnerable. This is done in the second variety of revenge, the preliminary idea of which is to consider the vulnerability and susceptibility of the other. The intention then is to give pain. On the other hand, the idea of securing himself against further injury is in this case so entirely outside the avenger’s horizon, that he almost regularly brings about his own further injury and often foresees it in cold blood. If in the first sort of revenge it was the fear of a second blow that made the counter-blow as strong as possible, in this case there is an almost complete indifference to what one’s adversary will do: the strength of the counter-blow is only determined by what he has already done to us. Then what has he done? What profit is it to us if he is now suffering, after we have suffered through him? This is a case of readjustment, whereas the first act of revenge only serves the purpose of self-preservation. It may be that through our adversary we have lost property, rank, friends, children—these losses are not recovered by revenge, the readjustment only concerns a subsidiary loss which is added to all the other losses. The revenge of readjustment does not preserve one from further injury, it does not make good the injury already suffered—except in one case. If our honour has suffered through our adversary, revenge can restore it. But in any case honour has suffered an injury if intentional harm has been done us, because our adversary proved thereby that he was not afraid of us. By revenge we prove that we are not afraid of him either, and herein lies the settlement, the readjustment. (The intention of showing their complete lack of fear goes so far in some people that the dangers of revenge—loss of health or life or other losses—are in their eyes an indispensable condition of every vengeful act. Hence they practise the duel, although the law also offers them aid in obtaining satisfaction for what they have suffered. They are not satisfied with a safe means of recovering their honour, because this would not prove their fearlessness.)—In the first-named variety of revenge it is just fear that strikes the counter-blow; in the second case it is the absence of fear, which, as has been said, wishes to manifest itself in the counter-blow.—Thus nothing appears more different than the motives of the two courses of action which are designated by the one word “ revenge.” Yet it often happens that the avenger is not precisely certain as to what really prompted his deed: perhaps he struck the counter-blow from fear and the instinct of self-preservation, but in the background, when he has time to reflect upon the standpoint of wounded honour, he imagines that he has avenged himself for the sake of his honour—this motive is in any case more reputable than the other. An essential point is whether he sees his honour injured in the eyes of others (the world) or only in the eyes of his offenders: in the latter case he will prefer secret, in the former open revenge. Accordingly, as he enters strongly or feebly into the soul of the doer and the spectator, his revenge will be more bitter or more tame. If he is entirely lacking in this sort of imagination, he will not think at all of revenge, as the feeling of “ honour” is not present in him, and accordingly cannot be wounded. In the same way, he will not think of revenge if he despises the offender and the spectator; because as objects of his contempt they cannot give him honour, and accordingly cannot rob him of honour. Finally, he will forego revenge in the not uncommon case of his loving the offender. It is true that he then suffers loss of honour in the other’s eyes, and will perhaps become less worthy of having his love returned. But even to renounce all requital of love is a sacrifice that love is ready to make when its only object is to avoid hurting the beloved object: this would mean hurting oneself more than one is hurt by the sacrifice.—Accordingly, everyone will avenge himself, unless he be bereft of honour or inspired by contempt or by love for the offender. Even if he turns to the law-courts, he desires revenge as a private individual; but also, as a thoughtful, prudent man of society, he desires the revenge of society upon one who does not respect it. Thus by legal punishment private honour as well as that of society is restored—that is to say, punishment is revenge. Punishment undoubtedly contains the first-mentioned element of revenge, in as far as by its means society helps to preserve itself, and strikes a counter-blow in self-defence. Punishment desires to prevent further injury, to
scare other offenders. In this way the two elements of revenge, different as they are, are united in punishment, and this may perhaps tend most of all to maintain the above-mentioned confusion of ideas, thanks to which the individual avenger generally does not know what he really wants. 34. The Virtues that Damage Us.—As members of communities we think we have no right to exercise certain virtues which afford us great honour and some pleasure as private individuals (for example, indulgence and favor towards miscreants of all kinds)—in short, every mode of action whereby the advantage of society would suffer through our virtue. No bench of judges, face to face with its conscience, may permit itself to be gracious. This privilege is reserved for the king as an individual, and we are glad when he makes use of it, proving that we should like to be gracious individually, but not collectively. Society recognizes only the virtues profitable to her, or at least not injurious to her—virtues like justice, which are exercised without loss, or, in fact, at compound interest. The virtues that damage us cannot have originated in society, because even now opposition to them arises in every small society that is in the making. Such virtues are therefore those of men of unequal standing, invented by the superior individuals; they are the virtues of rulers, and the idea underlying them is: “ I am mighty enough to put up with an obvious loss; that is a proof of my power.” Thus they are virtues closely akin to pride. 35. The Casuistry of Advantage.—There would be no moral casuistry if there were no casuistry of advantage. The most free and refined intelligence is often incapable of choosing between two alternatives in such a way that his choice necessarily involves the greater advantage. In such cases we choose because we must, and afterwards often feel a kind of emotional sea-sickness. 36. Turning Hypocrite.—Every beggar turns hypocrite, like everyone who makes his living out of indigence, be it personal or public.—The beggar does not feel want nearly so keenly as he must make others feel it, if he wishes to make a living by mendicancy. 37. A Sort of Cult of the Passions.—You hypochondriacs, you philosophic blind-worms talk of the formidable nature of human passions, in order to inveigh against the dreadsomeness of the whole world-structure. As if the passions were always and everywhere formidable! As if this sort of terror must always exist in the world!—Through a carelessness in small matters, through a deficiency in observation of self and of the rising generation, you have yourselves allowed your passions to develop into such unruly monsters that you are frightened now at the mere mention of the word “ passion”! It rests with you and it rests with us to divest the passions of their formidable features and so to dam them that they do not become devastating floods.—We must not exalt our errors into eternal fatalities. Rather shall we honestly endeavor to convert all the passions of humanity into sources of joy. [18] [18] The play on Freudenschaften (i.e. pleasure-giving passions) and Leidenschaften (i.e. pain-giving passions) is often used by Nietzsche, and is untranslateable. —Tr. 38. The Sting of Conscience.—The sting of conscience, like the gnawing of a dog at a stone, is mere foolishness. 39. Origin of Rights.—Rights may be traced to traditions, traditions to momentary agreements. At some time or other men were mutually content with the consequences of making an agreement, and, again, too indolent formally to renew it. Thus they went on living as if it had constantly been renewed, and gradually, when oblivion cast its veil over the origin, they thought they possessed a sacred, unalterable foundation on which every generation would be compelled to build. Tradition was how a constraint, even if it no more involved the profit originally derived from making the agreement.—Here the weak have always found their strong fortress. They are inclined to immortalize the momentary agreement, the single act of favor shown towards them. 40. The Significance of Oblivion in Moral Sentiment.—The same actions that in primitive society first aimed at the common advantage were later on performed from other motives: from fear or reverence of those who demanded and recommended them; or from habit, because men had seen them done about them from childhood upwards; or from kindness, because the practicing of them caused delight and approving looks on all sides; or from vanity, because they were praised. Such actions, in which the fundamental motive, that of utility, has been forgotten, are then called moral; not, indeed, because they are done from those other motives, but because they are not done with a conscious purpose of utility.—Whence the hatred of utility that suddenly manifests itself here, and by which all praiseworthy actions formally exclude all actions for the sake of utility?—Clearly society, the rallying-point of all morality and of all maxims in praise of moral action, has had to battle too long and too fiercely with the selfishness and obstinacy of the individual not to rate every motive morally higher than utility. Hence it looks as if morals had not sprung from utility, whereas in fact morals are originally the public utility, which had great difficulty in prevailing over the interests of the unit and securing a loftier reputation. 41. The Heirs to the Wealth of Morality.—Even in the domain of morals there is an inherited wealth, which is owned by the gentle, the good-tempered, the compassionate, the indulgent. They have inherited from their forefathers their gentle mode of action, but not common sense (the source of that mode of action). The pleasant thing about this wealth is
that one must always bestow and communicate a portion of it, if its presence is to be felt at all. Thus this wealth unconsciously aims at bridging the gulf between the morally rich and the morally poor, and, what is its best and most remarkable feature, not for the sake of a future mean between rich and poor, but for the sake of a universal prosperity and superfluity.— Such may be the prevailing view of inherited moral wealth, but it seems to me that this view is maintained more in majorem gloriam of morality than in honour of truth. Experience at least establishes a maxim which must serve, if not as a refutation, at any rate as an important check upon that generalization. Without the most exquisite intelligence, says experience, without the most refined capacity for choice and a strong propensity to observe the mean, the morally rich will become spendthrifts of morality. For by abandoning themselves without restraint to their compassionate, gentle, conciliatory, harmonizing instincts, they make all about them more careless, more covetous, and more sentimental. The children of these highly moral spendthrifts easily and (sad to relate) at best become pleasant but futile wasters. 42. The Judge and Extenuating Circumstances.—“ One should behave as a man of honour even towards the devil and pay his debts,” said an old soldier, when the story of Faust had been related to him in rather fuller detail. “ Hell is the right place for Faust!” “ You are terrible, you men!“ cried his wife; “ how can that be? After all, his only fault was having no ink in his ink-stand! It is indeed a sin to write with blood, but surely for that such a handsome man ought not to burn in Hell-fire?” 43. Problem of the Duty of Truth.—Duty is an imperious sentiment that forces us to action. We call it good, and consider it outside the pale of discussion. The origin, limits, and justification of duty we will not debate or allow to be debated. But the thinker considers everything an evolution and every evolution a subject for discussion, and is accordingly without duty so long as he is merely a thinker. As such, he would not recognize the duty of seeing and speaking the truth; he would not feel the sentiment at all. He asks, whence comes it and whither will it go? But even this questioning appears to him questionable. Surely, however, the consequence would be that the thinker’s machinery would no longer work properly if he could really feel himself unencumbered by duty in the search for knowledge? It would appear, then, that for fuel the same element is necessary as must be investigated by means of the machine.—Perhaps the formula will be: granted there were a duty of recognizing truth, what is then the truth in regard to every other kind of duty?—But is not a hypothetical sense of duty a contradiction in terms? 44. Grades of Morals.—Morality is primarily a means of preserving the community and saving it from destruction. Next it is a means of maintaining the community on a certain plane and in a certain degree of benevolence. Its motives are fear and hope, and these in a more coarse, rough, and powerful form, the more the propensity towards the perverse, onesided, and personal still persists. The most terrible means of intimidation must be brought into play so long as milder forms have no effect and that twofold species of preservation cannot be attained. (The strongest intimidation, by the way, is the invention of a hereafter with a hell everlasting.) For this purpose we must have racks and torturers of the soul. Further grades of morality, and accordingly means to the end referred to, are the commandments of a God (as in the Mosaic law). Still further and higher are the commandments of an absolute sense of duty with a “ Thou shalt”—all rather roughly hewn yet broad steps, because on the finer, narrower steps men cannot yet set their feet. Then comes a morality of inclination, of taste, finally of insight—which is beyond all the illusory motives of morality, but has convinced itself that humanity for long periods could be allowed no other. 45. The Morality of Pity in the Mouths of the Intemperate.—All those who are not sufficiently masters of themselves and do not know morality as a self-control and self-conquest continuously exercised in things great and small, unconsciously come to glorify the good, compassionate, benevolent impulses of that instinctive morality which has no head, but seems merely to consist of a heart and helpful hands. It is to their interest even to cast suspicion upon a morality of reason and to set up the other as the sole morality. 46. Sewers of the Soul.—Even the soul must have its definite sewers, through which it can allow its filth to flow off: for this purpose it may use persons, relations, social classes, its native country, or the world, or finally—for the wholly arrogant (I mean our modern “ pessimists”)—le bon Dieu. 47. A Kind of Rest and Contemplation.—Beware lest your rest and contemplation resemble that of a dog before a butcher’s stall, prevented by fear from advancing and by greed from retiring, and opening its eyes wide as though they were mouths. 48. Prohibitions without Reasons.—A prohibition, the reason of which we do not understand or admit, is almost a command, not only for the stiff-necked but for the thirster after knowledge. We at once make an experiment in order to learn why the prohibition was made. Moral prohibitions, like those of the Decalogue, are only suited to ages when reason lies vanquished. Nowadays a prohibition like “ Thou shalt not kill,” “ Thou shalt not commit adultery,” laid down without reasons, would have an injurious rather than a beneficial effect. 49. Character Portrait.—What sort of a man is it that can say of himself: “ I despise very easily, but never hate. I at once find out in every man something which can be honored and for which I honour him: the so-called amiable qualities attract me but little”? 50.
Pity and Contempt.—The expression of pity is regarded as a sign of contempt, because one has clearly ceased to be an object of fear as soon as one becomes an object of pity. One has sunk below the level of the equilibrium. For this equilibrium does not satisfy human vanity, which is only satisfied by the feeling that one is imposing respect and awe. Hence it is difficult to explain why pity is so highly prized, just as we need to explain why the unselfish man, who is originally despised or feared as being artful, is praised. 51. The Capacity of Being Small.—We must be as near to flowers, grasses, and butterflies as a child, that is, not much bigger than they. We adults have grown up beyond them and have to stoop to them. I think the grasses hate us when we confess our love for them.—He who would have a share in all good things must understand at times how to be small. 52. The Sum-Total of Conscience.—The sum-total of our conscience is all that has regularly been demanded of us, without reason, in the days of our childhood, by people whom we respected or feared. From conscience comes that feeling of obligation (“ This I must do, this omit”) which does not ask, Why must I?—In all cases where a thing is done with “ because” and “ why,” man acts without conscience, but not necessarily on that account against conscience.—The belief in authority is the source of conscience; which is therefore not the voice of God in the heart of man, but the voice of some men in man. 53. Conquest of the Passions.—The man who has overcome his passions has entered into possession of the most fruitful soil, like the colonist who has become lord over bogs and forests. To sow the seed of spiritual good works on the soil of the vanquished passions is the next and most urgent task. The conquest itself is a means, not an end: if it be not so regarded, all kind of weeds and devil’s crop quickly spring up upon the fertile soil that has been cleared, and soon the growth is all wilder and more luxuriant than before. 54. Skill in Service.—All so-called practical men have skill in service, whether it be serving others or themselves; this is what makes them practical. Robinson owned a servant even better than Friday—his name was Crusoe. 55. Danger in Speech to Intellectual Freedom.—Every word is a preconceived judgment. 56. Intellect and Boredom.—The proverb, “ The Hungarian is far too lazy to feel bored,” gives food for thought. Only the highest and most active animals are capable of being bored. —The boredom of God on the seventh day of Creation would be a subject for a great poet. 57. Intercourse with Animals.—The origin of our morality may still be observed in our relations with animals. Where advantage or the reverse do not come into play, we have a feeling of complete irresponsibility. For example, we kill or wound insects or let them live, and as a rule think no more about it. We are so clumsy that even our gracious acts towards flowers and small animals are almost always murderous: this does not in the least detract from our pleasure in them.—To-day is the festival of the small animals, the most sultry day of the year. .There is a swarming and crawling around us, and we, without intention, but also without reflection, crush here and there a little fly or winged beetle.—If animals do us harm, we strive to annihilate them in every possible way. The means are often cruel enough, even without our really intending them to be so—it is the cruelty of thoughtlessness. If they are useful, we turn them to advantage, until a more refined wisdom teaches us that certain animals amply reward a different mode of treatment, that of tending and breeding. Here responsibility first arises. Torturing is avoided in the case of the domestic animal. One man is indignant if another is cruel to his cow, quite in accordance with the primitive communal morality, which sees the commonwealth in danger whenever an individual does wrong. He who perceives any transgression in the community fears indirect harm to himself Thus we fear in this case for the quality of meat, agriculture, and means of communication if we see the domestic animals ill-treated. Moreover, he who is harsh to animals awakens a suspicion that he is also harsh to men who are weak, inferior, and incapable of revenge. He is held to be ignoble and deficient in the finer form of pride. Thus arises a foundation of moral judgments and sentiments, but the greatest contribution is made by superstition. Many animals incite men by glances, tones, and gestures to transfer themselves into them in imagination, and some religions teach us, under certain circumstances, to see in animals the dwelling-place of human and divine souls: whencethey recommend a nobler caution or even a reverential awe in intercourse with animals. Even after the disappearance of this superstition the sentiments awakened by it continue to exercise their influence, to ripen and to blossom.—Christianity, as is well known, has shown itself in this respect a poor and retrograde religion. 58. New Actors.—Among human beings there is no greater banality than death. Second in order, because it is possible to die without being born, comes birth, and next comes marriage. But these hackneyed little tragi-comedies are always presented, at each of their unnumbered and innumerable performances, by new actors, and accordingly do not cease to find interested spectators: whereas we might well believe that the whole audience of the world-theatre had long since hanged themselves to every tree from sheer boredom at these performances. So much depends on new actors, so little on the piece. 59. What is “ Being Obstinate”?—The shortest way is not the straightest possible, but that wherein favorable winds swell our sails. So says the wisdom of seamen. Not to follow his
course is obstinate, firmness of character being then adulterated by stupidity. 60. The Word “ Vanity.”—It is annoying that certain words, with which we moralists positively cannot dispense, involve in themselves a kind of censorship of morals, dating from the times when the most ordinary and natural impulses were denounced. Thus that fundamental conviction that on the waves of society we either find navigable waters or suffer shipwreck far more through what we appear than through what we are (a conviction that must act as guiding principle of all action in relation to society) is branded with the general word “ vanity.” In other words, one of the most weighty and significant of qualities is branded with an expression which denotes it as essentially empty and negative: a great thing is designated by a diminutive, ay, even slandered by the strokes of caricature. There is no help for it; we must use such words, but then we must shut our ears to the insinuations of ancient habits. 61. The Fatalism of the Turk.—The fatalism of the Turk has this fundamental defect, that it contrasts man and fate as two distinct things. Man, says this doctrine, may struggle against fate and try to baffle it, but in the end fate will always gain the victory. Hence the most rational course is to resign oneself or to live as one pleases. As a matter of fact, every man is himself a piece of fate. When he thinks that he is struggling against fate in this way, fate is accomplishing its ends even in that struggle. The combat is a fantasy, but so is the resignation in fate—all these fantasies are included in fate.—The fear felt by most people of the doctrine that denies the freedom of the will is a fear of the fatalism of the Turk. They imagine that man will become weakly resigned and will stand before the future with folded hands, because he cannot alter anything of the future. Or that he will give a free rein to his caprices, because the predestined cannot be made worse by that course. The follies of men are as much a piece of fate as are his wise actions, and even that fear of belief in fate is a fatality. You yourself, you poor timid creature, are that indomitable Moira, which rules even the Gods; whatever may happen, you are a curse or a blessing, and in any case the fetters wherein the strongest lies bound: in you the whole future of the human world is predestined, and it is no use for you to be frightened of yourself. 62. The Advocate of the Devil.—“ Only by our own suffering do we become wise, only by others’ suffering do we become good”—so runs that strange philosophy which derives all morality from pity and all intellectuality from the isolation of the individual. Herein this philosophy is the unconscious pleader for all human deterioration. For pity needs suffering, and isolation contempt of others. 63. The Moral Character-Masks.—In ages when the character-masks of different classes are definitely fixed, like the classes themselves, moralists will be seduced into holding the moral character masks, too, as absolute, and in delineating them accordingly. Thus Molière is intelligible as the contemporary of the society of Louis XIV.: in our society of transitions and intermediate stages he would seem an inspired pedant. 64. The Most Noble Virtue.—In the first era of the higher humanity courage is accounted the most noble virtue, in the next justice, in the third temperance, in the fourth wisdom. In which era do we live? In which do you live? 65. A Necessary Preliminary.—A man who will not become master of his irritability, his venomous and vengeful feelings, and his lust, and attempts to become master in anything else, is as stupid as the farmer who lays out his field beside a torrent without guarding against that torrent. 66. What is Truth?—Schwarzert (Melanchthon): We often preach our faith when we have lost it, and leave not a stone unturned to find it—and then we often do not preach worst! Luther: Brother, you are really speaking like an angel to-day. Schwarzert: But that is the idea of your enemies, and they apply it to you. Luther: Then it would be a lie from the devil’s hind-quarters. 67. The Habit of Contrasts.—Superficial, inexact observation sees contrasts everywhere in nature (for instance, “ hot and cold”), where there are no contrasts, only differences of degree. This bad habit has induced us to try to understand and interpret even the inner nature, the intellectual and moral world, in accordance with such contrasts. An infinite amount of cruelty, arrogance, harshness, estrangement, and coldness has entered into human emotion, because men imagined they saw contrasts where there were only transitions. 68. Can We Forgive?—How can we forgive them at all, if they know not what they do? We have nothing to forgive. But does a man ever fully know what he is doing? And if this point at least remains always debatable, men never have anything to forgive each other, and indulgence is for the reasonable man an impossible thing. Finally, if the evil-doers had really known what they did, we should still only have a right to forgive if we had a right to accuse and to punish. But we have not that right. 69. Habitual Shame.—Why do we feel shame when some virtue or merit is attributed to us which, as the saying goes, “ we have not deserved”? Because we appear to have intruded
upon a territory to which we do not belong, from which we should be excluded, as from a holy place or holy of holies, which ought not to be trodden by our foot. Through the errors of others we have, nevertheless, penetrated to it, and we are now swayed partly by fear, partly by reverence, partly by surprise; we do not know whether we ought to fly or to enjoy the blissful moment with all its gracious advantages. In all shame there is a mystery, which seems desecrated or in danger of desecration through us. All favor begets shame.—But if it be remembered that we have never really “ deserved” anything, this feeling of shame, provided that we surrender ourselves to this point of view in a spirit of Christian contemplation, becomes habitual, because upon such a one God seems continually to be conferring his blessing and his favors. Apart from this Christian interpretation, the state of habitual shame will be possible even to the entirely godless sage, who clings firmly to the basic non-responsibility and non-meritoriousness of all action and being. If he be treated as if he had deserved this or that, he will seem to have won his way into a higher order of beings, who do actually deserve something, who are free and can really bear the burden of responsibility for their own volition and capacity. Whoever says to him, “ You have deserved it,” appears to cry out to him, “ You are not a human being, but a God.” 70. The Most Unskillful Teacher.—In one man all his real virtues are implanted on the soil of his spirit of contradiction, in another on his incapacity to say “ no”—in other words, on his spirit of acquiescence. A third has made all his morality grow out of his pride as a solitary, a fourth from his strong social instinct. Now, supposing that the seeds of the virtues in these four cases, owing to mischance or unskillful teachers, were not sown on the soil of their nature, which provides them with the richest and most abundant mould, they would become weak, unsatisfactory men (devoid of morality). And who would have been the most unskillful of teachers, the evil genius of these men? The moral fanatic, who thinks that the good can only grow out of the good and on the soil of the good. 71. The Cautious Style.—A. But if this were known to all, it would be injurious to the majority. You yourself call your opinions dangerous to those in danger, and yet you make them public? B. I write so that neither the mob, nor the populi, nor the parties of all kinds can read me. So my opinions will never be “ public opinions.” A. How do you write, then? B. Neither usefully nor pleasantly—for the three classes I have mentioned. 72. Divine Missionaries.—Even Socrates feels himself to be a divine missionary, but I am not sure whether we should not here detect a tincture of that Attic irony and fondness for jesting whereby this odious, arrogant conception would be toned down. He talks of the fact without unction—his images of the gadfly and the horse are simple and not sacerdotal. The real religious task which he has set himself—to test God in a hundred ways and see whether he spoke the truth—betrays a bold and free attitude, in which the missionary walked by the side of his God. This testing of God is one of the most subtle compromises between piety and free-thinking that has ever been devised.—Nowadays we do not even need this compromise any longer. 73. Honesty in Painting.—Raphael, who cared a great deal for the Church (so far as she could pay him), but, like the best men of his time, cared little for the objects of the Church’s belief, did not advance one step to meet the exacting, ecstatic piety of many of his patrons. He remained honest even in that exceptional picture which was originally intended for a banner in a procession—the Sistine Madonna. Here for once he wished to paint a vision, but such a vision as even noble youths without “ faith” may and will have—the vision of the future wife, a wise, high-souled, silent, and very beautiful woman, carrying her first-born in her arms. Let men of an older generation, accustomed to prayer and devotion, find here, like the worthy elder on the left, something superhuman to revere. We younger men (so Raphael seems to call to us) are occupied with the beautiful maiden on the right, who says to the spectator of the picture, with her challenging and by no means devout look, “ The mother and her child—is not that a pleasant, inviting sight?” The face and the look are reflected in the joy in the faces of the beholders. The artist who devised all this enjoys himself in this way, and adds his own delight to the delight of the art-lover. As regards the “ messianic” expression in the face of the child, Raphael, honest man, who would not paint any state of soul in which he did not believe, has amiably cheated his religious admirers. He painted that freak of nature which is very often found, the man’s eye in the child’s face, and that, too, the eye of a brave, helpful man who sees distress. This eye should be accompanied by a beard. The fact that a beard is wanting, and that two different ages are seen in one countenance, is the pleasing paradox which believers have interpreted in accordance with their faith in miracles. The artist could only expect as much from their art of exposition and interpretation. 74. Prayer.—On two hypotheses alone is there any sense in prayer, that not quite extinct custom of olden times. It would have to be possible either to fix or alter the will of the godhead, and the devotee would have to know best himself what he needs and should really desire. Both hypotheses, axiomatic and traditional in all other religions, are denied by Christianity. If Christianity nevertheless maintained prayer side by side with its belief in the all-wise and all-provident divine reason (a belief that makes prayer really senseless and even blasphemous), it showed here once more its admirable “ wisdom of the serpent.” For an outspoken command, “ Thou shalt not pray,” would have led Christians by way of boredom to the denial of Christianity. In the Christian ora et labora ora plays the rôle of pleasure. Without ora what could those unlucky saints who renounced labora have done? But to have a chat with God, to ask him for all kinds of pleasant things, to feel a slight amusement at one’s own folly in still having any wishes at all, in spite of so excellent a father—all that was an admirable invention for saints. 75.
A Holy Lie.—The lie that was on Arria’s lips when she died (Paete, non dolet [19]) obscures all the truths that have ever been uttered by the dying. It is the only holy lie that has become famous, whereas elsewhere the odor of sanctity has clung only to errors. [19] The wife of the Stoic Thrasea Paetus, when their complicity in the great conspiracy of 65 a. d. against Nero was discovered, is reported to have said as she committed suicide, “ It doesn’t hurt, Paetus.”—Tr. 76. The Most Necessary Apostle.—Among twelve apostles one must always be hard as stone, in order that upon him the new church may be built. 77. Which is more Transitory, the Body or the Spirit?—In legal, moral, and religious institutions the external and concrete elements—in other words, rites, gestures, and ceremonies —are the most permanent. They are the body to which a new spirit is constantly being superadded. The cult, like an unchangeable text, is ever interpreted anew. Concepts and emotions are fluid, customs are solid. 78. The Belief in Disease qua Disease.—Christianity first painted the devil on the wall of the world. Christianity first brought the idea of sin into the world. The belief in the remedies, which is offered as an antidote, has gradually been shaken to its very foundations. But the belief in the disease, which Christianity has taught and propagated, still exists. 79. Speech and Writings of Religious Men.—If the priest’s style and general expression, both in speaking and writing, do not clearly betray the religious man, we need no longer take his views upon religion and his pleading for religion seriously. These opinions have become powerless for him if, judging by his style, he has at command irony, arrogance, malice, hatred, and all the changing eddies of mood, just like the most irreligious of men—how far more powerless will they be for his hearers and readers! In short, he will serve to make the latter still more irreligious. 80. The Danger in Personality.—The more God has been regarded as a personality in himself, the less loyal have we been to him. Men are far more attached to their thought-images than to their best beloved. That is why they sacrifice themselves for State, Church, and even for God—so far as he remains their creation, their thought, and is not too much looked upon as a personality. In the latter case they almost always quarrel with him. After all, it was the most pious of men who let slip that bitter cry: “ My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” 81. Worldly Justice.—It is possible to unhinge worldly justice with the doctrine of the complete non-responsibility and innocence of every man. An attempt has been made in the same direction on the basis of the opposite doctrine of the full responsibility and guilt of every man. It was the founder of Christianity who wished to abolish worldly justice and banish judgment and punishment from the world. For he understood all guilt as “ sin”—that is, an outrage against God and not against the world. On the other hand, he considered every man in a broad sense, and almost in every sense, a sinner. The guilty, however, are not to be the judges of their peers—so his rules of equity decided. Thus all dispensers of worldly justice were in his eyes as culpable as those they condemned, and their air of guiltlessness appeared to him hypocritical and pharisaical. Moreover, he looked to the motives and not to the results of actions, and thought that only one was keen-sighted enough to give a verdict on motives—himself or, as he expressed it, God. 82. An Affectation in Parting.—He who wishes to sever his connection with a party or a creed thinks it necessary for him to refute it. This is a most arrogant notion. The only thing necessary is that he should clearly see what tentacles hitherto held him to this party or creed and no longer hold him, what views impelled him to it and now impel him in some other directions. We have not joined the party or creed on strict grounds of knowledge. We should not affect this attitude on parting from it either. 83. Savior and Physician.—In his knowledge of the human soul the founder of Christianity was, as is natural, not without many great deficiencies and prejudices, and, as physician of the soul, was addicted to that disreputable, laical belief in a universal medicine. In his methods he sometimes resembles that dentist who wishes to heal all pain by extracting the tooth. Thus, for example, he assails sensuality with the advice: “ If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out.”—Yet there still remains the distinction that the dentist at least attains his object—painlessness for the patient—although in so clumsy a fashion that he becomes ridiculous; whereas the Christian who follows that advice and thinks he has killed his sensuality, is wrong, for his sensuality still lives in an uncanny, vampire form, and torments him in hideous disguises. 84. Prisoners.—One morning the prisoners entered the yard for work, but the warder was not there. Some, as their manner was, set to work at once; others stood idle and gazed defiantly around. Then one of them strode forward and cried, “ Work as much as you will or do nothing, it all comes to the same. Your secret machinations have come to light; the warder has been keeping his eye on you of late, and will cause a terrible judgment to be passed upon you in a few days’ time. You know him—he is of a cruel and resentful disposition. But now, listen: you have mistaken me hitherto. I am not what I seem, but far more—I am the son of the warder, and can get anything I like out of him. I can save you —nay, I will save you. But remember this: I will only save those of you who believe that I am the son of the prison warder. The rest may reap the fruits of their unbelief.” “ Well,”
said an old prisoner after an interval of silence, “ what can it matter to you whether we believe you or not? If you are really the son, and can do what you say, then put in a good word for us all. That would be a real kindness on your part. But have done with all talk of belief and unbelief!” “ What is more,” cried a younger man, “ I don’t believe him: he has only got a bee in his bonnet. I’ll wager that in a week’s time we shall find ourselves in the same place as we are to-day, and the warder will know nothing.” “ And if the warder ever knew anything, he knows it no longer,” said the last of the prisoners, coming down into the yard at that moment, “ for he has just died suddenly.” “ Ah ha!” cried several in confusion, “ ah ha! Sir Son, Sir Son, how stands it now with your title? Are we by any chance your prisoners now?” “ I told you,” answered the man gently, “ I will set free all who believe in me, as surely as my father still lives.”—The prisoners did not laugh, but shrugged their shoulders and left him to himself. 85. The Persecutors of God.—Paul conceived and Calvin followed up the idea that countless creatures have been predestined to damnation from time immemorial, and that this fair world was made in order that the glory of God might be manifested therein. So heaven and hell and mankind merely exist to satisfy the vanity of God! What a cruel, insatiable vanity must have smoldered in the soul of the first or second thinker of such a thought!—Paul, then, after all, remained Saul—the persecutor of God. 86. Socrates.—If all goes well, the time will come when, in order to advance themselves on the path of moral reason, men will rather take up the Memorabilia of Socrates than the Bible, and when Montaigne and Horace will be used as pioneers and guides for the understanding of Socrates, the simplest and most enduring of interpretative sages. In him converge the roads of the most different philosophic modes of life, which are in truth the modes of the different temperaments, crystallized by reason and habit and all ultimately directed towards the delight in life and in self The apparent conclusion is that the most peculiar thing about Socrates was his share in all the temperaments. Socrates excels the founder of Christianity by virtue of his merry style of seriousness and by that wisdom of sheer roguish pranks which constitutes the best state of soul in a man. Moreover, he had a superior intelligence. 87. Learning to Write Well.—The age of good speaking is over, because the age of city-state culture is over. The limit allowed by Aristotle to the great city—in which the town-crier must be able to make himself heard by the whole assembled community—troubles us as little as do any city-communities, us who even wish to be understood beyond the boundaries of nations. Therefore everyone who is of a good European turn of mind must learn to write well, and to write better and better. He cannot help himself, he must learn that: even if he was born in Germany, where bad writing is looked upon as a national privilege. Better writing means better thinking; always to discover matter more worthy of communication; to be able to communicate it properly; to be translatable into the tongues of neighboring nations; to make oneself comprehensible to foreigners who learn our language; to work with the view of making all that is good common property, and of giving free access everywhere to the free; finally, to pave the way for that still remote state of things, when the great task shall come for good Europeans—guidance and guardianship of the universal world culture.—Whoever preaches the opposite doctrine of not troubling about good writing and good reading (both virtues grow together and decline together) is really showing the peoples a way of becoming more and more national. He is intensifying the malady of this century, and is a foe to good Europeans, a foe to free spirits. 88. The Theory of the Best Style.—The theory of the best style may at one time be the theory of finding the expression by which we transfer every mood of ours to the reader and the listener. At another, it may be the theory of finding expressions for the more desirable human moods, the communication and transference of which one desires most—for the mood of a man moved from the depth of his heart, intellectually cheerful, bright, and sincere, who has conquered his passions. This will be the theory of the best style, a theory that corresponds to the good man. 89. Paying Attention to Movement.—The movement of the sentences shows whether the author be tired. Individual expressions may nevertheless be still strong and good, because they were invented earlier and for their own sake, when the thought first flashed across the author’s mind. This is frequently the case with Goethe, who too often dictated when he was tired. 90. “ Already” and “ Still.”—A. German prose is still very young. Goethe declares that Wieland is its father. B. So young and already so ugly! C. But, so far as I am aware, Bishop Ulfilas already wrote German prose, which must therefore be fifteen hundred years old. B. So old and still so ugly! 91. Original German.—German prose, which is really not fashioned on any pattern and must be considered an original creation of German taste, should give the eager advocate of a future original German culture an indication of how real German dress, German society, German furniture, German meals would look without the imitation of models.—Someone who had long reflected on these vistas finally cried in great horror, “ But, Heaven help us, perhaps we already have that original culture—only we don’t like to talk about it!” 92. Forbidden Books.—One should never read anything written by those arrogant wiseacres and puzzle-brains who have the detestable vice of logical paradox. They apply logical
formulæ just where everything is really improvised at random and built in the air. (“ Therefore” with them means, “ You idiot of a reader, this ‘therefore’ does not exist for you, but only for me.” The answer to this is: “ You idiot of a writer, then why do you write?”) 93. Displaying One’s Wit.—Everyone who wishes to display his wit thereby proclaims that he has also a plentiful lack of wit. That vice which clever Frenchmen have of adding a touch of dédain to their best ideas arises from a desire to be considered richer than they really are. They wish to be carelessly generous, as if weary of continual spending from overfull treasuries. 94. French and German Literature.—The misfortune of the French and German literature of the last hundred years is that the Germans ran away too early from the French school, and the French, later on, went too early to the German school. 95. Our Prose.—None of the present-day cultured nations has so bad a prose as the German. When clever, blasé Frenchmen say, “ There is no German prose,” we ought really not to be angry, for this criticism is more polite than we deserve. If we look for reasons, we come at last to the strange phenomenon that the German knows only improvised prose and has no conception of any other. He simply cannot understand the Italian, who says that prose is as much harder than poetry as the representation of naked beauty is harder to the sculptor than that of draped beauty. Verse, images, rhythm, and rhyme need honest effort—that even the German realizes, and he is not inclined to set a very high value on extempore poetry. But the notion of working at a page of prose as at a statue sounds to him like a tale from fairyland. 96. The Grand Style.—The grand style comes into being when the beautiful wins a victory over the monstrous. 97. Dodging.—We do not realize, in the case of distinguished minds, wherein lies the excellence of their expression, their turn of phrase, until we can say what word every mediocre writer would inevitably have hit upon in expressing the same idea. All great artists, in steering their car, show themselves prone to dodge and leave the track, but never to fall over. 98. Something like Bread.—Bread neutralizes and takes out the taste of other food, and is therefore necessary to every long meal. In all works of art there must be something like bread, in order that they may produce divers effects. If these effects followed one another without occasional pauses and intervals, they would soon make us weary and provoke disgust —in fact, a long meal of art would then be impossible. 99. Jean Paul.—Jean Paul knew a great deal, but had no science; understood all manner of tricks of art, but had no art; found almost everything enjoyable, but had no taste; possessed feeling and seriousness, but in dispensing them poured over them a nauseous sauce of tears; had even wit, but, unfortunately for his ardent desire for it, far too little—whence he drives the reader to despair by his very lack of wit. In short, he was the bright, rank-smelling weed that shot up overnight in the fair pleasaunces of Schiller and Goethe. He was a good, comfortable man, and yet a destiny, a destiny in a dressing-gown. [20] [20] It is interesting to compare this judgment with Carlyle’s praise of Jean Paul. The dressing-gown is an allusion to Jean Paul’s favorite costume.—Tr. 100. Palate for Opposites.—In order to enjoy a work of the past as its contemporaries enjoyed it, one must have a palate for the prevailing taste of the age which it attacked. 101. Spirits-of-Wine Authors.—Many writers are neither spirit nor wine, but spirits of wine. They can flare up, and then they give warmth. 102. The Interpretative Sense.—The sense of taste, as the true interpretative sense, often talks the other senses over to its point of view and imposes upon them its laws and customs. At table one can receive disclosures about the most subtle secretsof the arts; it suffices to observe what tastes good and when and after what and how long it tastes good. 103. Lessing.—Lessing had a genuine French talent, and, as writer, went most assiduously to the French school. He knows well how to arrange and display his wares in his shopwindow. Without this true art his thoughts, like the objects of them, would have remained rather in the dark, nor would the general loss be great. His art, however, has taught many (especially the last generation of German scholars) and has given enjoyment to a countless number. It is true his disciples had no need to learn from him, as they often did, his unpleasant tone with its mingling of petulance and candour.—Opinion is now unanimous on Lessing as “ lyric poet,” and will some day be unanimous on Lessing as “ dramatic poet.” 104. Undesirable Readers.—How an author is vexed by those stolid, awkward readers who always fall at every place where they stumble, and always hurt themselves when they fall!
105. Poets’ Thoughts.—Real thoughts of real poets always go about with a veil on, like Egyptian women; only the deep eye of thought looks out freely through the veil.—Poets’ thoughts are as a rule not of such value as is supposed. We have to pay for the veil and for our own curiosity into the bargain. 106. Write Simply and Usefully.—Transitions, details, color in depicting the passions—we make a present of all these to the author because we bring them with us and set them down to the credit of his book, provided he makes us some compensation. 107. Wieland.—Wieland wrote German better than anyone else, and had the genuine adequacies and inadequacies of the master. His translations of the letters of Cicero and Lucian are the best in the language. His ideas, however, add nothing to our store of thought. We can endure his cheerful moralities as little as his cheerful immoralities, for both are very closely connected. The men who enjoyed them were at bottom better men than we are, but also a good deal heavier. They needed an author of this sort. The Germans did not need Goethe, and therefore cannot make proper use of him. We have only to consider the best of our statesmen and artists in this light. None of them had or could have had Goethe as their teacher. 108. Rare Festivals.—Pithy conciseness, repose, and maturity—where you find these qualities in an author, cry halt and celebrate a great festival in the desert. It will be long before you have such a treat again. 109. The Treasure of German Prose.—Apart from Goethe’s writings and especially Goethe’s conversations with Eckermann (the best German book in existence), what German prose literature remains that is worth reading over and over again? Lichtenberg’s Aphorisms, the first book of Jung-Stilling’s Story of My Life, Adalbert Stifter’s St. Martin’s Summer and Gottfried Keller’s People of Seldwyla—and there, for the time being, it comes to an end. 110. Literary and Colloquial Style.—The art of writing demands, first and foremost, substitutions for the means of expression which speech alone possesses—in other words, for gestures, accent, intonation, and look. Hence literary style is quite different from colloquial style, and far more difficult, because it has to make itself as intelligible as the latter with fewer accessories. Demosthenes delivered his speeches differently from what we read; he worked them up for reading purposes.—Cicero’s speeches ought to be “ demosthenised” with the same object, for at present they contain more of the Roman Forum than we can endure. 111. Caution in Quotation.—Young authors do not know that a good expression or idea only looks well among its peers; that an excellent quotation may spoil whole pages, nay the whole book; for it seems to cry warningly to the reader, “ Mark you, I am the precious stone, and round about me is lead—pale, worthless lead!” Every word, every idea only desires to live in its own company—that is the moral of a choice style. 112. How should Errors be Enunciated?—We may dispute whether it be more injurious for errors to be enunciated badly or as well as the best truths. It is certain that in the former case they are doubly harmful to the brain and are less easily removed from it. But, on the other hand, they are not so certain of effect as in the latter case. They are, in fact, less contagious. 113. Limiting and Widening.—Homer limited and diminished the horizon of his subject, but allowed individual scenes to expand and blossom out. Later, the tragedians are constantly renewing this process. Each takes his material in ever smaller and smaller fragments than his predecessor did, but each attains a greater wealth of blooms within the narrow hedges of these sequestered garden enclosures. 114. Literature and Morality Mutually Explanatory.—We can show from Greek literature by what forces the Greek spirit developed, how it entered upon different channels, and where it became enfeebled. All this also depicts to us how Greek morality proceeded, and how all morality will proceed: how it was at first a constraint and displayed cruelty, then became gradually milder; how a pleasure in certain actions, in certain forms and conventions arose, and from this again a propensity for solitary exercise, for solitary possession; how the track becomes crowded and overcrowded with competitors; how satiety enters in, new objects of struggle and ambition are sought, and forgotten aims are awakened to life; how the drama is repeated, and the spectators become altogether weary of looking on, because the whole gamut seems to have been run through—and then comes a stoppage, an expiration, and the rivulets are lost in the sand. The end, or at any rate an end, has come. 115. What Landscapes give Permanent Delight.—Such and such a landscape has features eminently suited for painting, but I cannot find the formula for it; it remains beyond my grasp as a whole. I notice that all landscapes which please me permanently have a simple geometrical scheme of lines underneath all their complexity. Without such a mathematical
substratum no scenery becomes artistically pleasing. Perhaps this rule may be applied symbolically to human beings. 116. Reading Aloud.—The ability to read aloud involves of necessity the ability to declaim. Everywhere we must apply pale tints, but we must determine the degree of pallor in close relation to the richly and deeply colored background, that always hovers before our eyes and acts as our guide—in other words, in accordance with the way in which we should declaim the same passages. That is why we must be able to declaim. 117. The Dramatic Sense.—He who has not the four subtler senses of art tries to understand everything with the fifth sense, which is the coarsest of all—the dramatic sense. 118. Herder.—Herder fails to be all that he made people think he was and himself wished to think he was. He was no great thinker or discoverer, no newly fertile soil with the unexhausted strength of a virgin forest. But he possessed in the highest degree the power of scenting the future, he saw and picked the first-fruits of the seasons earlier than all others, and they then believed that he had made them grow. Between darkness and light, youth and age, his mind was like a hunter on the watch, looking everywhere for transitions, depressions, convulsions, the outward and visible signs of internal growth. The unrest of spring drove him to and fro, but he was himself not the spring.—At times, indeed, he had some inkling of this, and yet would fain not have believed it—he, the ambitious priest, who would have so gladly been the intellectual pope of his epoch! This is his despair. He seems to have lived long as a pretender to several kingdoms or even to a universal monarchy. He had his following which believed in him, among others the young Goethe. But whenever crowns were really distributed, he was passed over. Kant, Goethe, and then the first true German historians and scholars robbed him of what he thought he had reserved for himself (although in silence and secret he often thought the reverse). Just when he doubted in himself, he gladly clothed himself in dignity and enthusiasm: these were often in him mere garments, which had to hide a great deal and also to deceive and comfort him. He really had fire and enthusiasm, but his ambition was far greater! It blew impatiently at the fire, which flickered, crackled, and smoked—his style flickers, crackles, and smokes—but he yearned for the great flame which never broke out. He did not sit at the table of the genuine creators, and his ambition did not admit of his sitting modestly among those who simply enjoy. Thus he was a restless spirit, the taster of all intellectual dishes, which were collected by the Germans from every quarter and every age in the course of half a century. Never really happy and satisfied, Herder was also too often ill, and then at times envy sat by his bed, and hypocrisy paid her visit as well. He always had an air of being scarred and crippled, and he lacked simple, stalwart manliness more completely than any of the so-called “ classical writers.” 119. Scent of Words.—Every word has its scent; there is a harmony and discord of scents, and so too of words. 120. The Far-Fetched Style.—The natural style is an offence to the lover of the far-fetched style. 121. A Vow.—I will never again read an author of whom one can suspect that he wanted to make a book, but only those writers whose thoughts unexpectedly became a book. 122. The Artistic Convention.—Three-fourths of Homer is convention, and the same is the case with all the Greek artists, who had no reason for falling into the modern craze for originality. They had no fear of convention, for after all convention was a link between them and their public. Conventions are the artistic means acquired for the understanding of the hearer; the common speech, learnt with much toil, whereby the artist can really communicate his ideas. All the more when he wishes, like the Greek poets and musicians, to conquer at once with each of his works (since he is accustomed to compete publicly with one or two rivals), the first condition is that he must be understood at once, and this is only possible by means of convention. What the artist devises beyond convention he offers of his own free will and takes a risk, his success at best resulting in the setting-up of a new convention. As a rule originality is marveled at, sometimes even worshipped, but seldom understood. A stubborn avoidance of convention means a desire not to be understood. What, then, is the object of the modern craze for originality? 123. Artists’ Affectation of Scientific Method.—Schiller, like other German artists, fancied that if a man had intellect he was entitled to improvise even with the pen on all difficult subjects. So there we see his prose essays—in every way a model of how not to attack scientific questions of aesthetics and ethics, and a danger for young readers who, in their admiration for Schiller the poet, have not the courage to think meanly of Schiller the thinker and author.—The temptation to traverse for once the forbidden paths, and to have his say in science as well, is easy and pardonable in the artist. For even the ablest artist from time to time finds his handicraft and his workshop unendurable. This temptation is so strong that it makes the artist show all the world what no one wishes to see, that his little chamber of thought is cramped and untidy. Why not, indeed? He does not live there. He proceeds to show that the storeroom of his knowledge is partly empty, partly filled with lumber. Why not, indeed? This condition does not really become the artist-child badly. In particular, the artist shows that for the very easiest exercises of scientific method, which are accessible even to beginners, his joints are too stiff and untrained! Even of that he need not really be ashamed! On the other hand, he often develops no mean art in imitating all the mistakes, vices, and base pedantries that are practised in the scientific community, in the belief that
these belong to the appearance of the thing, if not to the thing itself This is the very point that is so amusing in artists’ writing, that the artist involuntarily acts as his vocation demands: he parodies the scientific and inartistic natures. Towards science he should show no attitude but that of parody, in so far as he is an artist and only an artist. 124. The Faust-Idea.—A little sempstress is seduced and plunged into despair: a great scholar of all the four Faculties is the evil-doer. That cannot have happened in the ordinary course, surely? No, certainly not! Without the aid of the devil incarnate, the great scholar would never have achieved the deed.—Is this really destined to be the greatest German “ tragic idea,” as one hears it said among Germans?—But for Goethe even this idea was too terrible. His kind heart could not avoid placing the little sempstress, “ the good soul that forgot itself but once,” near to the saints, after her involuntary death. Even the great scholar, “ the good man” with “ the dark impulse,” is brought into heaven in the nick of time, by a trick which is played upon the devil at the decisive moment. In heaven the lovers find themselves again. Goethe once said that his nature was too conciliatory for really tragic subjects. 125. Are there “ German Classics”?—Sainte-Beuve observes somewhere that the word “ classic” does not suit the genius of certain literatures. For instance, nobody could talk seriously of “ German classics.”—What do our German publishers, who are about to add fifty more to the fifty German classics we are told to accept, say to that? Does it not almost seem as if one need only have been dead for the last thirty years, and lie a lawful prey to the public, [21] in order to hear suddenly and unexpectedly the trumpet of resurrection as a “ Classic”? And this in an age and a nation where at least five out of the six great fathers of its literature are undoubtedly antiquated or becoming antiquated—without there being any need for the age or the nation to be ashamed of this. For those writers have given way before the strength of our time—let that be considered in all fairness!—Goethe, as I have indicated, I do not include. He belongs to a higher species than “ national literatures”: hence life, revival, and decay do not enter into the reckoning in his relations with his countrymen. He lived and now lives but for the few; for the majority he is nothing but a flourish of vanity which is trumpeted from time to time across the border into foreign ears. Goethe, not merely a great and good man, but a culture, is in German history an interlude without a sequel. Who, for instance, would be able to point to any trace of Goethe’s influence in German politics of the last seventy years (whereas the influence, certainly of Schiller, and perhaps of Lessing, can be traced in the political world)? But what of those five others? Klopstock, in a most honourable way, became out of date even in his own lifetime, and so completely that the meditative book of his later years, The Republic of Learning, has never been taken seriously from that day to this. Herder’s misfortune was that his writings were always either new or antiquated. Thus for stronger and more subtle minds (like Lichtenberg) even Herder’s masterpiece, his Ideas for the History of Mankind, was in a way antiquated at the very moment of its appearance. Wieland, who lived to the full and made others live likewise, was clever enough to anticipate by death the waning of his influence. Lessing, perhaps, still lives to-day—but among a young and ever younger band of scholars. Schiller has fallen from the hands of young men into those of boys, of all German boys. It is a well-known sign of obsolescence when a book descends to people of less and less mature age.—Well, what is it that has thrust these five into the background, so that well-educated men of affairs no longer read them? A better taste, a riper knowledge, a higher reverence for the real and the true: in other words, the very virtues which these five (and ten or twenty others of lesser repute) first re-planted in Germany, and which now, like a mighty forest, cast over their graves not only the shadow of awe, but something of the shadow of oblivion.—But classical writers are not planters of intellectual and literary virtues. They bring those virtues to perfection and are their highest luminous peaks, and being brighter, freer, and purer than all that surrounds them, they remain shining above the nations when the nations themselves perish. There may come an elevated stage of humanity, in which the Europe of the peoples is a dark, forgotten thing, but Europe lives on in thirty books, very old but never antiquated—in the classics. [21] The German copyright expires thirty years after publication.—Tr. 126. Interesting, but not Beautiful.—This countryside conceals its meaning, but it has one that we should like to guess. Everywhere that I look, I read words and hints of words, but I do not know where begins the sentence that solves the riddle of all these hints. So I get a stiff neck in trying to discover whether I should start reading from this or that point. 127. Against Innovators in Language.—The use of neologisms or archaisms, the preference for the rare and the bizarre, the attempt to enrich rather than to limit the vocabulary, are always signs either of an immature or of a corrupted taste. A noble poverty but a masterly freedom within the limits of that modest wealth distinguishes the Greek artists in oratory. They wish to have less than the people has—for the people is richest in old and new—but they wish to have that little better. The reckoning up of their archaic and exotic forms is soon done, but we never cease marveling if we have an eye for their light and delicate manner in handling the commonplace and apparently long outworn elements in word and phrase. 128. Gloomy and Serious Authors.—He who commits his sufferings to paper becomes a gloomy author, but he becomes a serious one if he tells us what he has suffered and why he is now enjoying a pleasurable repose. 129. Healthiness of Taste.—How is it that health is less contagious than disease—generally, and particularly in matters of taste? Or are there epidemics of health? 130. A Resolution.—Never again to read a book that is born and christened (with ink) at the same moment.
131. Improving our Ideas.—Improving our style means improving our ideas, and nothing else. He who does not at once concede this can never be convinced of the point. 132. Classical Books.—The weakest point in every classical book is that it is written too much in the mother tongue of its author. 133. Bad Books.—The book should demand pen, ink, and desk, but usually it is pen, ink, and desk that demand the book. That is why books are of so little account at present. 134. Presence of Sense.—When the public reflects on paintings, it becomes a poet; when on poems, an investigator. At the moment when the artist summons it it is always lacking in the right sense, and accordingly in presence of sense, not in presence of mind. 135. Choice Ideas.—The choice style of a momentous period does not only select its words but its ideas—and both from the customary and prevailing usage. Venturesome ideas, that smell too fresh, are to the maturer taste no less repugnant than new and reckless images and phrases. Later on both choice ideas and choice words soon smack of mediocrity, because the scent of the choice vanishes quickly, and then nothing but the customary and commonplace element is tasted. 136. Main Reason for Corruption of Style.—The desire to display more sentiment than one really feels for a thing corrupts style, in language and in all art. All great art shows rather the opposite tendency. Like every man of moral significance, it loves to check emotion on its way and not let it run its course to the very end. This modesty of letting emotion but half appear is most clearly to be observed, for example, in Sophocles. The features of sentiment seem to become beautified when sentiment feigns to be more shy than it really is. 137. An Excuse for the Heavy Style.—The lightly uttered phrase seldom falls on the ear with the full weight of the subject. This is, however, due to the bad training of the ear, which by education must pass from what has hitherto been called music to the school of the higher harmony—in other words, to conversation. 138. Bird’s-Eye Views.—Here torrents rush from every side into a ravine: their movement is so swift and stormy, and carries the eye along so quickly, that the bare or wooded mountain slopes around seem not to sink down but to fly down. We are in an agonized tension at the sight, as if behind all this were hidden some hostile element, before which all must fly, and against which the abyss alone gave protection. This landscape cannot be painted, unless we hover above it like a bird in the open air. Here for once the so-called bird’seye view is not an artistic caprice, but the sole possibility. 139. Rash Comparisons.—If rash comparisons are not proofs of the wantonness of the writer, they are proofs of the exhaustion of his imagination. In any case they bear witness to his bad taste. 140. Dancing in Chains.—In the case of every Greek artist, poet, or writer we must ask: What is the new constraint which he imposes upon himself and makes attractive to his contemporaries, so as to find imitators? For the thing called “ invention” (in metre, for example) is always a self-imposed fetter of this kind. “ Dancing in chains”—to make that hard for themselves and then to spread a false notion that it is easy—that is the trick that they wish to show us. Even in Homer we may perceive a wealth of inherited formulæ and laws of epic narration, within the circle of which he had to dance, and he himself created new conventions for them that came after. This was the discipline of the Greek poets: first to impose upon themselves a manifold constraint by means of the earlier poets; then to invent in addition a new constraint, to impose it upon themselves and cheerfully to overcome it, so that constraint and victory are perceived and admired. 141. Authors’ Copiousness.—The last quality that a good author acquires is copiousness: whoever has it to begin with will never become a good author. The noblest racehorses are lean until they are permitted to rest from their victories. 142. Wheezing Heroes.—Poets and artists who suffer from a narrow chest of the emotions generally make their heroes wheeze. They do not know what easy breathing means. 143. The Short-Sighted. [22]—The short-sighted are the deadly foes of all authors who let themselves go. These authors should know the wrath with which these people shut the book in which they observe that its creator needs fifty pages to express five ideas. And the cause of their wrath is that they have endangered what remains of their vision almost without compensation. A short-sighted person said, “ All authors let themselves go.” “ Even the Holy Ghost?” “ Even the Holy Ghost.” But he had a right to, for he wrote for those who had lost their sight altogether. [22] Nietzsche himself was extremely short-sighted—Tr.
144. The Style of Immortality.—Thucydides and Tacitus both imagined immortal life for their works when they executed them. That might be guessed (if not known otherwise) from their style. The one thought to give permanence to his ideas by salting them, the other by boiling them down; and neither, it seems, made a miscalculation. 145. Against Images and Similes.—By images and similes we convince, but we do not prove. That is why science has such a horror of images and similes. Science does not want to convince or make plausible, and rather seeks to provoke cold distrust by its mode of expression, by the bareness of its walls. For distrust is the touchstone for the gold of certainty. 146. Caution.—In Germany, he who lacks thorough knowledge should beware of writing. The good German does not say in that case “ he is ignorant,” but “ he is of doubtful character.”—This hasty conclusion, by the way, does great credit to the Germans. 147. Painted Skeletons.—Painted skeletons are those authors who try to make up for their want of flesh by artistic colorings. 148. The Grand Style and Something Better.—It is easier to learn how to write the grand style than how to write easily and simply. The reasons for this are inextricably bound up with morality. 149. Sebastian Bach.—In so far as we do not hear Bach’s music as perfect and experienced connoisseurs of counterpoint and all the varieties of the fugal style(and accordingly must dispense with real artistic enjoyment), we shall feel in listening to his music—in Goethe’s magnificent phrase—as if “ we were present at God’s creation of the world.” In other words, we feel here that something great is in the making but not yet made—our mighty modern music, which by conquering nationalities, the Church, and counterpoint has conquered the world. In Bach there is still too much crude Christianity, crude Germanism, crude scholasticism. He stands on the threshold of modern European music, but turns from thence to look at the Middle Ages. 150. Händel.—Händel, who in the invention of his music was bold, original, truthful, powerful, inclined to and akin to all the heroism of which a nation is capable, often proved stiff, cold, nay even weary of himself in composition. He applied a few well-tried methods of execution, wrote copiously and quickly, and was glad when he had finished—but that joy was not the joy of God and other creators in the eventide of their working day. 151. Haydn.—So far as genius can exist in a man who is merely good, Haydn had genius. He went just as far as the limit which morality sets to intellect, and only wrote music that has “ no past.” 152. Beethoven and Mozart.—Beethoven’s music often appears like a deeply emotional meditation on unexpectedly hearing once more a piece long thought to be forgotten, “ Tonal Innocence”: it is music about music. In the song of the beggar and child in the street, in the monotonous airs of vagrant Italians, in the dance of the village inn or in carnival nights he discovers his melodies. He stores them together like a bee, snatching here and there some notes or a short phrase. To him these are hallowed memories of “ the better world,” like the ideas of Plato.—Mozart stands in quite a different relation to his melodies. He finds his inspiration not in hearing music but in gazing at life, at the most stirring life of southern lands. He was always dreaming of Italy, when he was not there. 153. Recitative.—Formerly recitative was dry, but now we live in the age of moist recitative. It has fallen into the water, and the waves carry it whithersoever they list. 154. “ Cheerful” Music.—If for a long time we have heard no music, it then goes like a heavy southern wine all too quickly into the blood and leaves behind it a soul dazed with narcotics, half-awake, longing for sleep. This is particularly the case with cheerful music, which inspires in us bitterness and pain, satiety and home-sickness together, and forces us to sip again and again as at a sweetened draught of poison. The hall of gay, noisy merriment then seems to grow narrow, the light to lose its brightness and become browner. At last we feel as if this music were penetrating to a prison where a poor wretch cannot sleep for home-sickness. 155. Franz Schubert.—Franz Schubert, inferior as an artist to the other great musicians, had nevertheless the largest share of inherited musical wealth. He spent it with a free hand and a kind heart, so that for a few centuries musicians will continue to nibble at his ideas and inspirations. In his works we find a store of unused inventions; the greatness of others will lie inmaking use of those inventions. If Beethoven may be called the ideal listener for a troubadour, Schubert has a right to be called the ideal troubadour. 156.
Modern Musical Execution.—Great tragic or dramatic execution of music acquires its character by imitating the gesture of the great sinner, such as Christianity conceives and desires him: the slow-stepping, passionately brooding man, distracted by the agonies of conscience, now flying in terror, now clutching with delight, now standing still in despair— and all the other marks of great sinfulness. Only on the Christian assumption that all men are great sinners and do nothing but sin could we justify the application of this style of execution to all music. So far, music would be the reflection of all the actions and impulses of man, and would continually have to express by gestures the language of the great sinner. At such a performance, a listener who was not enough of a Christian to understand this logic might indeed cry out in horror, “ For the love of Heaven, how did sin find its way into music?” 157. Felix Mendelssohn.—Felix Mendelssohn’s music is the music of the good taste that enjoys all the good things that have ever existed. It always points behind. How could it have much “ in front,” much of a future?—But did he want it to have a future? He possessed a virtue rare among artists, that of gratitude without arrière-pensée. This virtue, too, always points behind. 158. A Mother of Arts.—In our skeptical age, real devotion requires almost a brutal heroism of ambition. Fanatical shutting of the eyes and bending of the knee no longer suffice. Would it not be possible for ambition—in its eagerness to be the last devotee of all the ages—to become the begetter of a final church music, as it has been the begetter of the final church architecture? (They call it the Jesuit style.) 159. Freedom in Fetters—A Princely Freedom.—Chopin, the last of the modern musicians, who gazed at and worshipped beauty, like Leopardi; Chopin, the Pole, the inimitable (none that came before or after him has a right to this name)—Chopin had the same princely punctilio in convention that Raphael shows in the use of the simplest traditional colors. The only difference is that Chopin applies them not to color but to melodic and rhythmic traditions. He admitted the validity of these traditions because he was born under the sway of etiquette. But in these fetters he plays and dances as the freest and daintiest of spirits, and, be it observed, he does not spurn the chain. 160. Chopin’s Barcarolle.—Almost all states and modes of life have a moment of rapture, and good artists know how to discover that moment. Such a moment there is even in life by the seashore—that dreary, sordid, unhealthy existence, dragged out in the neighbourhood of a noisy and covetous rabble. This moment of rapture Chopin in his Barcarolle expressed in sound so supremely that Gods themselves, when they heard it, might yearn to lie long summer evenings in a boat. 161. Robert Schumann.—“ The Stripling,” as the romantic songsters of Germany and France of the first three decades of this century imagined him—this stripling was completely translated into song and melody by Robert Schumann, the eternal youth, so long as he felt himself in full possession of his powers. There are indeed moments when his music reminds one of the eternal “ old maid.” 162. Dramatic Singers.—“ Why does this beggar sing?” “ Probably he does not know how to wail.” “ Then he does right.” But our dramatic singers, who wail because they do not know how to sing—are they also in the right? 163. Dramatic Music.—For him who does not see what is happening on the stage, dramatic music is a monstrosity, just as the running commentary to a lost text is a monstrosity. Such music requires us to have ears where our eyes are. This, however, is doing violence to Euterpe, who, poor Muse, wants to have her eyes and ears where the other Muses have theirs. 164. Victory and Reasonableness.—Unfortunately in the aesthetic wars, which artists provoke by their works and apologias for their works, just as is the case in real war, it is might and not reason that decides. All the world now assumes as a historical fact that, in his dispute with Piccini, Gluck was in the right. At any rate, he was victorious, and had might on his side. 165. Of the Principle of Musical Execution.—Do the modern musical performers really believe that the supreme law of their art is to give every piece as much high-relief as is possible, and to make it speak at all costs a dramatic language? Is not this principle, when applied for example to Mozart, a veritable sin against the spirit—the gay, sunny, airy, delicate spirit —of Mozart, whose seriousness was of a kindly and not awe-inspiring order, whose pictures do not try to leap from the wall and drive away the beholder in panic? Or do you think that all Mozart’s music is identical with the statue-music in Don Juan? And not only Mozart’s, but all music?—You reply that the advantage of your principle lies in its greater effect. You would be right if there did not remain the counter-question, “ On whom has the effect operated, and on whom should an artist of the first rank desire to produce his effect?” Never on the populace! Never on the immature! Never on the morbidly sensitive! Never on the diseased! And above all—never on the blasé!
166. The Music of To-Day.—This ultra-modern music, with its strong lungs and weak nerves, is frightened above all things of itself. 167. Where Music is at Home.—Music reaches its high-water mark only among men who have not the ability or the right to argue. Accordingly, its chief promoters are princes, whose aim is that there should be not much criticism nor even much thought in their neighbourhood. Next come societies which, under some pressure or other (political or religious), are forced to become habituated to silence, and so feel all the greater need of spells to charm away emotional ennui—these spells being generally eternal love-making and eternal music. Thirdly, we must reckon whole nations in which there is no “ society,” but all the greater number of individuals with a bent towards solitude, mystical thinking, and a reverence for all that is inexpressible; these are the genuine “ musical souls.” The Greeks, as a nation delighting in talking and argument, accordingly put up with music only as an hors d’œuvre to those arts which really admit of discussion and dispute. About music one can hardly even think clearly. The Pythagoreans, who in so many respects were exceptional Greeks, are said to have been great musicians. This was the school that invented a five-years’ silence, [23] but did not invent a dialectic. [23] In the sixth century B.C. Pythagoras founded at Croton a “ school” somewhat resembling a monastic order. Among the ordeals for novitiates was enforced silence for five years.—Tr. 168. Sentimentality in Music.—We may be ever so much in sympathy with serious and profound music, yet nevertheless, or perhaps all the more for that reason, we shall at occasional moments be over-powered, entranced, and almost melted away by its opposite—I mean, by those simple Italian operatic airs which, in spite of all their monotony of rhythm and childishness of harmony, seem at times to sing to us like the very soul of music. Admit this or not as you please, you Pharisees of good taste, it is so, and it is my present task to propound the riddle that it is so, and to nibble a little myself at the solution.—In childhood’s days we tasted the honey of many things for the first time. Never was honey so good as then; it seduced us to life, into abundant life, in the guise of the first spring, the first flower, the first butterfly, the first friendship. Then—perhaps in our ninth year or so—we heard our first music, and this was the first that we understood; thus the simplest and most childish tunes, that were not much more than a sequel to the nurse’s lullaby and the strolling fiddler’s tune, were our first experience. (For even the most trifling “ revelations” of art need preparation and study; there is no “ immediate” effect of art, whatever charming fables the philosophers may tell.) Our sensation on hearing these Italian airs is associated with those first musical raptures, the strongest of our lives. The bliss of childhood and its flight, the feeling that our most precious possession can never be brought back, all this moves the chords of the soul more strongly than the most serious and profound music can move them.—This mingling of aesthetic pleasure with moral pain, which nowadays it is customary to call (rather too haughtily, I think) “ sentimentality”—it is the mood of Faust at the end of the first scene—this “ sentimentality” of the listener is all to the advantage of Italian music. It is a feeling which the experienced connoisseurs in art, the pure “ aesthetes,” like to ignore.—Moreover, almost all music has a magical effect only when we hear it speak the language of our own past. Accordingly, it seems to the layman that all the old music is continually growing better, and that all the latest is of little value. For the latter arouses no “ sentimentality,” that most essential element of happiness, as aforesaid, for every man who cannot approach this art with pure aesthetic enjoyment. 169. As Friends of Music.—Ultimately we are and remain good friends with music, as we are with the light of the moon. Neither, after all, tries to supplant the sun: they only want to illumine our nights to the best of their powers. Yet we may jest and laugh at them, may we not? Just a little, at least, and from time to time? At the man in the moon, at the woman in the music? 170. Art in an Age of Work.—We have the conscience of an industrious epoch. This debars us from devoting our best hours and the best part of our days to art, even though that art be the greatest and worthiest. Art is for us a matter of leisure, of recreation, and we consecrate to it the residue of our time and strength. This is the cardinal fact that has altered the relation of art to life. When art makes its great demands of time and strength upon its recipients, it has to battle against the conscience of the industrious and efficient, it is relegated to the idle and conscienceless, who, by their very nature, are not exactly suited to great art, and consider its claims arrogant. It might, therefore, be all over with art, since it lacks air and the power to breathe. But perhaps the great art attempts, by a sort of coarsening and disguising, to make itself at home in that other atmosphere, or at least to put up with it—an atmosphere which is really a natural element only for petty art, the art of recreation, of pleasant distraction. This happens nowadays almost everywhere. Even the exponents of great art promise recreation and distraction; even they address themselves to the exhausted; even they demand from him the evening hours of his working-day—just like the artists of the entertaining school, who are content to smooth the furrowed brow and brighten the lack-lustre eye. What, then, are the devices of their mightier brethren? These have in their medicine-chests the most powerful excitants, which might give a shock even to a man half-dead: they can deafen you, intoxicate you, make you shudder, or bring tears to your eyes. By this means they overpower the exhausted man and stimulate him for one night to an over-lively condition, to an ecstasy of terror and delight. This great art, as it now lives in opera, tragedy, and music—have we a right to be angry with it, because of its perilous fascination, as we should be angry with a cunning courtesan? Certainly not. It would far rather live in the pure element of morning calm, and would far rather make its appeal to the fresh, expectant, vigorous morning-soul of the beholder or listener. Let us be thankful that it prefers living thus to vanishing altogether. But let us also confess that an era that once more introduces free and complete high-days and holidays into life will have no use for our great art.
171. The Employees of Science and the Others.—Really efficient and successful men of science might be collectively called “ The Employees.” If in youth their acumen is sufficiently practised, their memory is full, and hand and eye have acquired sureness, they are appointed by an older fellow-craftsman to a scientific position where their qualities may prove useful. Later on, when they have themselves gained an eye for the gaps and defects in their science, they place themselves in whatever position they are needed. These persons all exist for the sake of science. But there are rarer spirits, spirits that seldom succeed or fully mature—“ for whose sake science exists”—at least, in their view. They are often unpleasant, conceited, or cross-grained men, but almost always prodigies to a certain extent. They are neither employees nor employers; they make use of what those others have worked out and established, with a certain princely carelessness and with little and rare praise—just as if the others belonged to a lower order of beings. Yet they possess the same qualities as their fellow-workers, and that sometimes in a less developed form. Moreover, they have a peculiar limitation, from which the others are free; this makes it impossible to put them into a place and to see in them useful tools. They can only live in their own air and on their own soil. This limitation suggests to them what elements of a science “ are theirs”—in other words, what they can carry home into their house and atmosphere: they think that they are always collecting their scattered “ property.” If they are prevented from building at their own nest, they perish like shelterless birds. The loss of freedom causes them to wilt away. If they show, like their colleagues, a fondness for certain regions of science, it is always only regions where the fruits and seeds necessary to them can thrive. What do they care whether science, taken as a whole, has untilled or badly tilled regions? They lack all impersonal interest in a scientific problem. As they are themselves personal through and through, all their knowledge and ideas are remolded into a person, into a living complexity, with its parts interdependent, overlapping, jointly nurtured, and with a peculiar atmosphere and scent as a whole.—Such natures, with their system of personal knowledge, produce the illusion that a science (or even the whole of philosophy) is finished and has reached its goal. The life in their system works this magic, which at times has been fatal to science and deceptive to the really efficient workers above described, and at other times, when drought and exhaustion prevailed, has acted as a kind of restorative, as if it were the air of a cool, refreshing resting-place.—These men are usually called philosophers. 172. Recognition of Talent.—As I went through the village of S., a boy began to crack his whip with all his might—he had made great progress in this art, and he knew it. I threw him a look of recognition—in reality it hurt me cruelly. We do the same in our recognition of many of the talents. We do good to them when they hurt us. 173. Laughing and Smiling.—The more joyful and assured the mind becomes, the more man loses the habit of loud laughter. In compensation, there is an intellectual smile continually bubbling up in him, a sign of his astonishment at the innumerable concealed delights of a good existence. 174. The Talk of Invalids.—Just as in spiritual grief we tear our hair, strike our foreheads, lacerate our cheeks or even (like Œdipus) gouge our eyes out, so against violent physical pain we call to our aid a bitter, violent emotion, through the recollection of slanderous and malignant people, through the denigration of our future, through the sword-pricks and acts of malice which we mentally direct against the absent. And at times it is true that one devil drives out another—but then we have the other.—Hence a different sort of talk, tending to alleviate pain, should be recommended invalids: reflections upon the kindnesses and courtesies that can be performed towards friend and foe. 175. Mediocrity as a Mask.—Mediocrity is the happiest mask which the superior mind can wear, because it does not lead the great majority—that is, the mediocre—to think that there is any disguise. Yet the superior mind assumes the mask just for their sake—so as not to irritate them, nay, often from a feeling of pity and kindness. 176. The Patient.—The pine tree seems to listen, the fir tree to wait, and both without impatience. They do not give a thought to the petty human being below who is consumed by his impatience and his curiosity. 177. The Best Joker.—My favorite joke is the one that takes the place of a heavy and rather hesitating idea, and that at once beckons with its finger and winks its eye. 178. The Accessories of all Reverence.—Wherever the past is revered, the over-cleanly and over-tidy people should not be admitted. Piety does not feel content without a little dust, dirt, and dross. 179. The Great Danger of Savants.—It is just the most thorough and profound savants who are in peril of seeing their life’s goal set ever lower and lower, and, with a feeling of this in their minds, to become ever more discouraged and more unendurable in the latter half of their lives. At first they plunge into their science with spacious hopes and set themselves daring tasks, the ends of which are already anticipated by their imaginations. Then there are moments as in the lives of the great maritime discoverers—knowledge, presentiment, and power raise each other higher and higher, until a new shore first dawns upon the eye in the far distance. But now the stern man recognizes more and more how important it is that the individual task of the inquirer should be limited as far as possible, so that it may be entirely accomplished and the intolerable waste of force from which earlier periods of science
suffered may be avoided. In those days everything was done ten times over, and then the eleventh always had the last and best word. Yet the more the savant learns and practices this art of solving riddles in their entirety, the more pleasure he finds in so doing. But at the same time his demands upon what is here called “ entirety” grow more exacting. He sets aside everything that must remain in this sense incomplete, he acquires a disgust and an acute scent for the half-soluble—for all that can only give a kind of certainty in a general and indefinite form. His youthful plans crumble away before his eyes. There remains scarcely anything but a few little knots, in untying which the master now takes his pleasure and shows his strength. Then, in the midst of all this useful, restless activity, he, now grown old, is suddenly then often overcome by a deep misgiving, a sort of torment of conscience. He looks upon himself as one changed, as if he were diminished, humbled, transformed into a dexterous dwarf; he grows anxious as to whether mastery in small matters be not a convenience, an escape from the summons to greatness in life and form. But he cannot pass beyond any longer—the time for that has gone by. 180. Teachers in the Age of Books.—Now that self-education and mutual education are becoming more widespread, the teacher in his usual form must become almost unnecessary. Friends eager to learn, who wish to master some branch of knowledge together, find in our age of books a shorter and more natural way than “ school” and “ teachers.” 181. Vanity as the Greatest Utility.—Originally the strong individual uses not only Nature but even societies and weaker individuals as objects of rapine. He exploits them, so far as he can, and then passes on. As he lives from hand to mouth, alternating between hunger and superfluity, he kills more animals than he can eat, and robs and maltreats men more than is necessary. His manifestation of power is at the same time one of revenge against his cramped and worried existence. Furthermore, he wishes to be held more powerful than he is, and thus misuses opportunities; the accretion of fear that he begets being an accretion of power. He soon observes that he stands or falls not by what he is but by what he is thought to be. Herein lies the origin of vanity. The man of power seeks by every means to increase others’ faith in his power.—The thralls who tremble before him and serve him know, for their part, that they are worth just so much as they appear to him to be worth, and so they work with an eye to this valuation rather than to their own self-satisfaction. We know vanity only in its most weakened forms, in its idealizations and its small doses, because we live in a late and very emasculated state of society. Originally vanity is the great utility, the strongest means of preservation. And indeed vanity will be greater, the cleverer the individual, because an increase in the belief in power is easier than an increase in the power itself, but only for him who has intellect or (as must be the case under primitive conditions) who is cunning and crafty. 182. Weather-Signs of Culture.—There are so few decisive weather-signs of culture that we must be glad to have at least one unfailing sign at hand for use in house and garden. To test whether a man belongs to us (I mean to the free spirits) or not, we must test his sentiments regarding Christianity. If he looks upon Christianity with other than a critical eye, we turn our backs to him, for he brings us impure air and bad weather.—It is no longer our task to teach such men what a sirocco wind is. They have Moses and the prophets of weather and of enlightenment [24] If they will not listen to these, then—— [24] In the German Aufklärung there is a play on the sense “ clearing up” (of weather) and “ enlightenment.”—Tr. 183. There is a Proper Time for Wrath and Punishment.—Wrath and punishment are our inheritance from the animals. Man does not become of age until he has restored to the animals this gift of the cradle.—Herein lies buried one of the mightiest ideas that men can have, the idea of a progress of all progresses.—Let us go forward together a few millenniums, my friends! There is still reserved for mankind a great deal of joy, the very scent of which has not yet been wafted to the men of our day! Indeed, we may promise ourselves this joy, nay summon and conjure it up as a necessary thing, so long as the development of human reason does not stand still. Some day we shall no longer be reconciled to the logical sin that lurks in all wrath and punishment, whether exercised by the individual or by society—some day, when head and heart have learnt to live as near together as they now are far apart. That they no longer stand so far apart as they did originally is fairly palpable from a glance at the whole course of humanity. The individual who can review a life of introspective work will become conscious of the rapprochement arrived at, with a proud delight at the distance he has bridged, in order that he may thereupon venture upon more ample hopes. 184. Origin of Pessimists.—A snack of good food often decides whether we are to look to the future with hollow eye or in hopeful mood. The same influence extends to the very highest and most intellectual states. Discontent and reviling of the world are for the present generation an inheritance from starveling ancestors. Even in our artists and poets we often notice that, however exuberant their life, they are not of good birth, and have often, from oppressed and ill-nourished ancestors, inherited in their blood and brain much that comes out as the subject and even the conscious coloring of their work. The culture of the Greeks is a culture of men of wealth, in fact, inherited wealth. For a few centuries they lived better than we do (better in every sense, in particular far more simply in food and drink). Then the brain finally became so well-stored and subtle, and the blood flowed so quickly, like a joyous, clear wine, that the best in them came to light no longer as gloomy, distorted, and violent, but full of beauty and sunshine. 185. Of Reasonable Death.—Which is more reasonable, to stop the machine when the works have done the task demanded of them, or to let it run on until it stands still of its own accord—in other words, is destroyed? Is not the latter a waste of the cost of upkeep, a misuse of the strength and care of those who serve? Are men not here throwing away that which would be sorely needed elsewhere? Is not a kind of contempt of the machines propagated, in that many of them are so uselessly tended and kept up?—I am speaking of involuntary (natural) and voluntary (reasonable) death. Natural death is independent of all reason and is really an irrational death, in which the pitiable substance of the shell determines how long
the kernel is to exist or not; in which, accordingly, the stunted, diseased and dull-witted jailer is lord, and indicates the moment at which his distinguished prisoner shall die. Natural death is the suicide of nature—in other words, the annihilation of the most rational being through the most irrational element that is attached thereto. Only through religious illumination can the reverse appear; for then, as is equitable, the higher reason (God) issues its orders, which the lower reason has to obey. Outside religious thought natural death is not worth glorifying. The wise dispensation and disposal of death belongs to that now quite incomprehensible and immoral-sounding morality of the future, the dawn of which it will be an ineffable delight to behold. 186. Retrograde Influences.—All criminals force society back to earlier stages of culture than that in which they are placed for the time being. Their influence is retrograde. Let us consider the tools that society must forge and maintain for its defence: the cunning detectives, the jailers, the hangmen. Nor should we forget the public counsel for prosecution and defence. Finally we may ask ourselves whether the judge himself and punishment and the whole legal procedure are not oppressive rather than elevating in their reaction upon all who are not law-breakers. For we shall never succeed in arraying self-defence and revenge in the garb of innocence, and so long as men are used and sacrificed as a means to the end of society, all loftier humanity will deplore this necessity. 187. War as a Remedy.—For nations that are growing weak and contemptible war may be prescribed as a remedy, if indeed they really want to go on living. National consumption as well as individual admits of a brutal cure. The eternal will to live and inability to die is, however, in itself already a sign of senility of emotion. The more fully and thoroughly we live, the more ready we are to sacrifice life for a single pleasurable emotion. A people that lives and feels in this wise has no need of war. 188. Intellectual and Physical Transplantation as Remedies.—The different cultures are so many intellectual climates, every one of which is peculiarly harmful or beneficial to this or that organism. History as a whole, as the knowledge of different cultures, is the science of remedies, but not the science of the healing art itself. We still need a physician who can make use of these remedies, in order to send every one—temporarily or permanently—to the climate that just suits him. To live in the present, within the limits of a single culture, is insufficient as a universal remedy: too many highly useful kinds of men, who cannot breathe freely in this atmosphere, would perish. With the aid of history we must give them air and try to preserve them: even men of lower cultures have their value.—Add to this cure of intellects that humanity, on considerations of bodily health, must strive to discover by means of a medical geography what kinds of degeneration and disease are caused by each region of the earth, and conversely, what ingredients of health the earth affords: and then, gradually, nations, families, and individuals must be transplanted long and permanently enough for them to become masters of their inherited physical infirmities. The whole world will finally be a series of sanatoria. 189. Reason and the Tree of Mankind.—What you all fear in your senile short-sightedness, regarding the over-population of the world, gives the more hopeful a mighty task. Man is someday to become a tree overshadowing the whole earth, with millions upon millions of buds that shall all grow to fruits side by side, and the earth itself shall be prepared for the nourishment of this tree. That the shoot, tiny as yet, may increase in sap and strength; that the sap may flow in countless channels for the nutrition of the whole and the parts—from these and similar tasks we must derive our standard for measuring whether a man of to-day is useful or worthless. The task is unspeakably great and adventurous: let us all contribute our share to prevent the tree from rotting before its time! The historically trained mind will no doubt succeed in calling up the human activities of all the ages before its eyes, as the community of ants with its cunningly wrought mounds stands before our eyes. Superficially judged, mankind as a whole, like ant-kind, might admit of our speaking of “ instinct.” On a closer examination we observe how whole nations, nay whole centuries, take pains to discover and test new means of benefiting the great mass of humanity, and thus finally the great common fruit-tree of the world. Whatever injury the individual nations or periods may suffer in this testing process, they have each become wise through this injury, and from them the tide of wisdom slowly pours over the principles of whole races and whole epochs. Ants too go astray and make blunders. Through the folly of its remedies, mankind may well go to rack and ruin before the proper time. There is no sure guiding instinct for the former or the latter. Rather must we boldly face the great task of preparing the earth for a plant of the most ample and joyous fruitfulness—a task set by reason to reason! 190. The Praise of Disinterestedness and its Origin.—Between two neighbouring chieftains there was a long-standing quarrel: they laid waste each other’s territories, stole cattle, and burnt down houses, with an indecisive result on the whole, because their power was fairly equal. A third, who from the distant situation of his property was able to keep aloof from these feuds, yet had reason to dread the day when one of the two neighbours should gain a decisive preponderance, at last intervened between the combatants with ceremonial goodwill. Secretly he lent a heavy weight to his peace proposal by giving either to understand that he would henceforth join forces with the other against the one who strove to break the peace. They met in his presence, they hesitatingly placed into his hand the hands that had hitherto been the tools and only too often the causes of hatred—and then they really and seriously tried to keep the peace. Either saw with astonishment how suddenly his prosperity and his comfort increased; how he now had as neighbour a dealer ready to buy and sell instead of a treacherous or openly scornful evil-doer; how even, in unforeseen troubles, they could reciprocally save each other from distress, instead of, as before, making capital out of this distress of his neighbour and enhancing it to the highest degree. It even seemed as if the human type had improved in both countries, for the eyes had become brighter, the
forehead had lost its wrinkles; all now felt confidence in the future—and nothing is more advantageous for the souls and bodies of men than this confidence. They saw each other every year on the anniversary of the alliance, the chieftains as well as their retinue, and indeed before the eyes of the mediator, whose mode of action they admired and revered more and more, the greater the profit that they owed to him became. Then his mode of action was called disinterested. They had looked far too fixedly at the profit they had reaped themselves hitherto to see anything more of their neighbor’s method of dealing than that his condition in consequence of this had not altered so much as their own; he had rather remained the same: and thus it appeared that the former had not had his profit in view. For the first time people said to themselves that disinterestedness was a virtue. It is true that in minor private matters similar circumstances had arisen, but men only had eyes for this virtue when it was depicted on the walls in a large script that was legible to the whole community. Moral qualities are not recognized as virtues, endowed with names, held in esteem, and recommended as worthy of acquisition until the moment when they have visibly decided the happiness and destiny of whole societies. For then the loftiness of sentiment and the excitation of the inner creative forces is in many so great, that offerings are brought to this quality, offerings from the best of what each possesses. At its feet the serious man lays his seriousness, the dignified man his dignity, women their gentleness, the young all the wealth of hope and futurity that in them lies; the poet lends it words and names, sets it marching in the procession of similar beings, gives it a pedigree, and finally, as is the way ofartists, adores the picture of his fancy as a new godhead—he even teaches others to adore. Thus in the end, with the co-operation of universal love and gratitude, a virtue becomes, like a statue, a repository of all that is good and honourable, a sort of temple and divine personage combined. It appears thenceforward as an individual virtue, as an absolute entity, which it was not before, and exercises the power and privileges of a sanctified super-humanity.—In the later days of Greece the cities were full of such deified human abstractions (if one may so call them). The nation, in its own fashion, had set up a Platonic “ Heaven of Ideas” on earth, and I do not think that its inhabitants were felt to be less alive than any of the old Homeric divinities. 191. Days of Darkness.—“ Days of Darkness” is the name given in Norway to the period when the sun remains below the horizon the whole day long. The temperature then falls slowly but continually.—A fine simile for all thinkers for whom the sun of the human future is temporarily eclipsed. 192. The Philosophy of Luxury.—A garden, figs, a little cheese, and three or four good friends—that was the luxury of Epicurus. 193. The Epochs of Life.—The real epochs of life are those brief periods of cessation midway between the rise and decline of a dominating idea or emotion. Here once again there is satisfaction: all the rest is hunger and thirst—or satiety. 194. Dreams.—Our dreams, if for once in a way they succeed and are complete—generally a dream is a bungled piece of work—are symbolic concatenations of scenes and images in place of a narrative poetical language. They paraphrase our experiences or expectations or relations with poetic boldness and definiteness, so that in the morning we are always astonished at ourselves when we remember the nature of our dream. In dreams we use up too much artistry—and hence are often too poor in artistry in the daytime. 195. Nature and Science.—As in nature, so in science the worse and less fertile soils are first cultivated—because the means that science in its early stages has at command are fairly sufficient for this purpose. The working of the most fertile soils requires an enormous, carefully developed, persevering method, tangible individual results, and an organized body of well-trained workers. All these are found together only at a late stage.—Impatience and ambition often grasp too early at these most fertile soils, but the results are then from the first null and void. In nature such losses would usually be avenged by the starvation of the settlers. 196. The Simple Life.—A simple mode of life is nowadays difficult, requiring as it does far more reflection and gift for invention than even very clever people possess. The most honourable will perhaps still say, “ I have not the time for such lengthy reflection. The simple life is for me too lofty a goal: I will wait till those wiser than I have discovered it.” 197. Peaks and Needle-Points.—The poor fertility, the frequent celibacy, and in general the sexual coldness of the highest and most cultivated spirits, as that of the classes to which they belong, is essential in human economy. Intelligence recognizes and makes use of the fact that at an acme of intellectual development the danger of a neurotic offspring is very great. Such men are the peaks of mankind—they ought no longer to run out into needle-points. 198. Natura non facit saltum.—However strongly man may develop upwards and seem to leap from one contradiction to another, a close observation will reveal the dovetails where the new building grows out of the old. This is the biographer’s task: he must reflect upon his subject on the principle that nature takes no jumps. 199. Clean, but——He who clothes himself with rags washed clean dresses cleanly, to be sure, but is still ragged. 200.
The Solitary Speaks.—In compensation for much disgust, disheartenment, boredom—such as a lonely life without friends, books, duties, and passions must involve—we enjoy those short spans of deep communion with ourselves and with Nature. He who fortifies himself completely against boredom fortifies himself against himself too. He will never drink the most powerful elixir from his own innermost spring. 201. False Renown.—I hate those so-called natural beauties which really have significance only through science, especially geographical science, but are insignificant in an aesthetic sense: for example, the view of Mont Blanc from Geneva. This is an insignificant thing without the auxiliary mental joy of science: the nearer mountains are all more beautiful and fuller of expression, but “ not nearly so high,” adds that absurd depreciatory science. The eye here contradicts science: how can it truly rejoice in the contradiction? 202. Those that Travel for Pleasure.—Like animals, stupid and perspiring, they climb mountains: people forgot to tell them that there were fine views on the way. 203. Too Much and Too Little.—Men nowadays live too much and think too little. They have hunger and dyspepsia together, and become thinner and thinner, however much they eat. He who now says “ Nothing has happened to me” is a blockhead. 204. End and Goal.—Not every end is the goal. The end of a melody is not its goal, and yet if a melody has not reached its end, it has also not reached its goal. A parable. 205. Neutrality of Nature on a Grand Scale.—The neutrality of Nature on a grand scale (in mountain, sea, forest, and desert) is pleasing, but only for a brief space. Afterwards we become impatient. “ Have they all nothing to say to us? Do we not exist so far as they are concerned?” There arises a feeling that a lèse-majesté is committed against humanity. 206. Forgetting our Purpose.—In a journey we commonly forget its goal. Almost every vocation is chosen and entered upon as means to an end, but is continued as the ultimate end. Forgetting our purpose is the most frequent form of folly. 207. Solar Orbit of an Idea.—When an idea is just rising on the horizon, the soul’s temperature is usually very low. Gradually the idea develops in warmth, and is hottest (that is to say, exerts its greatest influence) when belief in the idea is already on the wane. 208. How to have every Man against You.—If someone now dared to say, “ He that is not for me is against me,” he would at once have all against him.—This sentiment does credit to our era. 209. Being Ashamed of Wealth.—Our age endures only a single species of rich men—those who are ashamed of their wealth. If we hear it said of any one that he is very rich, we at once feel a similar sentiment to that experienced at the sight of a repulsively swollen invalid, one suffering from diabetes or dropsy. We must with an effort remember our humanity, in order to go about with this rich man in such a way that he does not notice our feeling of disgust. But as soon as he prides himself at all on his wealth, our feelings are mingled with an almost compassionate surprise at such a high degree of human unreason. We would fain raise our hands to heaven and cry, “ Poor deformed and over-burdened creature, fettered a hundredfold, to whom every hour brings or may bring something unpleasant, in whose frame twitches every event that occurs in scores of countries, how can you make us believe that you feel at ease in your position? If you appear anywhere in public, we know that it is a sort of running the gauntlet amid countless glances that have for you only cold hate or importunity or silent scorn. You may earn more easily than others, but it is only a superfluous earning, which brings little joy, and the guarding of what you have earned is now, at any rate, a more troublesome business than any toilsome process of earning. You are continually suffering, because you are continually losing. What avails it you that they are always injecting you with fresh artificial blood? That does not relieve the pain of those cupping-glasses that are fixed, forever fixed, on your neck!—But, to be quite fair to you, it is difficult or perhaps impossible for you not to be rich. You must guard, you must earn more; the inherited bent of your character is the yoke fastened upon you. But do not on that account deceive us—be honestly and visibly ashamed of the yoke you wear, as in your soul you are weary and unwilling to wear it. This shame is no disgrace.” 210. Extravagant Presumptions.—There are men so presumptuous that they can only praise a greatness which they publicly admire by representing it as steps and bridges that lead to themselves. 211. On the Soil of Insult.—He who wishes to deprive men of a conception is generally not satisfied with refuting it and drawing out of it the illogical worm that resides within. Rather, when the worm has been killed, does he throw the whole fruit as well into the mire, in order to make it ignoble in men’s sight and to inspire disgust. Thus he thinks that he has found a means of making the usual “ third-day resurrection” of conceptions an impossibility.—He is wrong, for on the very soil of insult, in the midst of the filth, the kernel of the
conception soon produces new seeds.—The right thing then, is not to scorn and bespatter what one wishes finally to remove, but to lay it tenderly on ice again and again, having regard to the fact that conceptions are very tenacious of life. Here we must act according to the maxim: “ One refutation is no refutation.” 212. The Lot of Morality.—Since spiritual bondage is being relaxed, morality (the inherited, traditional, instinctive mode of action in accordance with moral sentiments) is surely also on the decline. This, however, is not the case with the individual virtues, moderation, justice, repose; for the greatest freedom of the conscious intellect leads at some time, even unconsciously, back to these virtues, and then enjoins their practice as expedient. 213. The Fanatic of Distrust and his Surety.—The Elder: You wish to make the tremendous venture and instruct mankind in the great things? What is your surety? Pyrrho: It is this: I intend to warn men against myself; I intend to confess all the defects of my character quite openly, and reveal to the world my hasty conclusions, my contradictions, and my foolish blunders. “ Do not listen to me,” I will say to them, “ until I have become equal to the meanest among you, nay am even less than he. Struggle against truth as long as you can, from your disgust with her advocate. I shall be your seducer and betrayer if you find in me the slightest glimmering of respectability and dignity.” The Elder: You promise too much; you cannot bear this burden. Pyrrho: Then I will tell men even that, and say that I am too weak, and cannot keep my promise. The greater my unworthiness, the more will they mistrust the truth, when it passes through my lips. The Elder: You propose to teach distrust of truth? Pyrrho: Yes; distrust as it never was yet on earth, distrust of anything and everything. This is the only road to truth. The right eye must not trust the left eye, and for some time light must be called darkness: this is the path that you must tread. Do not imagine that it will lead you to fruit trees and fair pastures. You will find on this road little hard grains—these are truths. For years and years you will have to swallow handfuls of lies, so as not to die of hunger, although you know that they are lies. But those grains will be sown and planted, and perhaps, perhaps someday will come the harvest. No one may promise that day, unless he be a fanatic. The Elder: Friend, friend! Your words too are those of a fanatic! Pyrrho: You are right! I will be distrustful of all words. The Elder: Then you will have to be silent. Pyrrho: I shall tell men that I have to be silent, and that they are to mistrust my silence. The Elder: So you draw back from your undertaking? Pyrrho: On the contrary—you have shown me the door through which I must pass. The Elder: I don’t know whether we yet completely understand each other? Pyrrho: Probably not. The Elder: If only you understand yourself! (Pyrrho turns round and laughs.) The Elder: Ah, friend! Silence and laughter—is that now your whole philosophy? Pyrrho: There might be a worse. 214. European Books.—In reading Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère, Fontenelle (especially the Dialogues des Morts), Vauvenargues, and Chamfort we are nearer to antiquity than in any group of six authors of other nations. Through these six the spirit of the last centuries before Christ has once more come into being, and they collectively form an important link in the great and still continuous chain of the Renaissance. Their books are raised above all changes of national taste and philosophical nuances from which as a rule every book takes and must take its hue in order to become famous. They contain more real ideas than all the books of German philosophers put together: ideas of the sort that breed ideas——I am at a loss how to define to the end: enough to say that they appear to me writers who wrote neither for children nor for visionaries, neither for virgins nor for Christians, neither for Germans nor for——I am again at a loss how to finish my list. To praise them in plain terms, I may say that had they been written in Greek, they would have been understood by Greeks. How much, on the other hand, would even a Plato have understood of the writings of our best German thinkers—Goethe and Schopenhauer, for instance—to say nothing of the repugnance that he would have felt to their style, particularly to its obscure, exaggerated, and occasionally dry-as-dust elements? And these are defects from which these two among German thinkers suffer least and yet far too much (Goethe as thinker was fonder than he should have been of embracing the cloud, and Schopenhauer almost constantly wanders, not with impunity, among symbols of objects rather than among the objects themselves).—On the other hand, what clearness and graceful precision there is in these Frenchmen! The Greeks, whose ears were most refined, could not but have approved of this art, and one quality they would even have admired and reverenced—the French verbal wit: they were extremely fond of this quality, without being particularly strong in it themselves. 215. Fashion and Modernity.—Wherever ignorance, uncleanness, and superstition are still rife, where communication is backward, agriculture poor, and the priesthood powerful, national costumes are still worn. Fashion, on the other hand, rules where the opposite conditions prevail. Fashion is accordingly to be found next to the virtues in modern Europe. Are we to call it their seamy side?—Masculine dress that is fashionable and no longer national proclaims of its wearer: firstly, that he does not wish to appear as an individual or as member of a class or race; that he has made an intentional suppression of these kinds of vanity a law unto himself: secondly, that he is a worker, and has little time for dressing and self-adornment, and moreover regards anything expensive or luxurious in material and cut as out of harmony with his work: lastly, that by his clothes he indicates the more learned and intellectual callings as those to which he stands or would like to stand nearest as a European—whereas such national costumes as still exist would exhibit the occupations of brigand, shepherd, and soldier as the most desirable and distinguished. Within this general character of masculine fashion exist the slight fluctuations demanded by the vanity of young men, the dandies and dawdlers of our great cities—in other words, Europeans who have not yet reached maturity.—European women are as yet far less mature, and for this reason the fluctuations with them are much greater. They also will not have the national costume, and hate to be recognized by their dress as German, French, or Russian. They are, however, very desirous of creating an impression as individuals. Then, too, their dress must leave no one in doubt that they belong to one of the more reputable classes of society (to “ good” or “ high” or “ great” society), and on this score their pretensions are all the greater if they belong scarcely or not at all to that class. Above all, the young woman does not
want to wear what an older woman wears, because she thinks she loses her market value if she is suspected of being somewhat advanced in years. The older woman, on the other hand, would like to deceive the world as long as possible by a youthful garb. From this competition must continually arise temporary fashions, in which the youthful element is unmistakably and inimitably apparent. But after the inventive genius of the young female artists has run riot for some time in such indiscreet revelations of youth (or rather, after the inventive genius of older, courtly civilizations and of still existing peoples—in fact, of the whole world of dress—has been pressed into the service, and, say, the Spaniards, Turks, and ancient Greeks have been yoked together for the glorification of fair flesh), then they at last discover, time and again, that they have not been good judges of their own interest; that if they wish to have power over men, the game of hide-and-seek with the beautiful body is more likely to win than naked or half-naked honesty. And then the wheel of taste and vanity turns once more in an opposite direction. The rather older young women find that their kingdom has come, and the competition of the dear, absurd creatures rages again from the beginning.—But the more women advance mentally, and no longer among themselves concede the pre-eminence to an unripe age, the smaller their fluctuations of costume grow and the less elaborate their adornment. A just verdict in this respect must not be based on ancient models—in other words, not on the standard of the dress of women who dwell on the shores of the Mediterranean—but must have an eye to the climatic conditions of the central and northern regions, where the intellectual and creative spirit of Europe now finds its most natural home.—Generally speaking, therefore, it is not change that will be the characteristic mark of fashion and modernity, for change is retrograde, and betokens the still unripened men and women of Europe; but rather the repudiation of national, social, and individual vanity. Accordingly, it is commendable, because involving a saving of time and strength, if certain cities and districts of Europe think and invent for all the rest in the matter of dress, in view of the fact that a sense of form does not seem to have been bestowed upon all. Nor is it really an excessive ambition, so long as these fluctuations still exist, for Paris, for example, to claim to be the sole inventor and innovator in this sphere. If a German, from hatred of these claims on the part of a French city, wishes to dress differently,—as, for example, in the Dürer style,—let him reflect that he then has a costume which the Germans of olden times wore, but which the Germans have not in the slightest degree invented. For there has never been a style of dress that characterized the German as a German. Moreover, let him observe how he looks in his costume, and whether his altogether modern face, with all its hues and wrinkles, does not raise a protest against a Dürer fashion of dress.—Here, where the concepts “ modern” and “ European” are almost identical, we understand by “ Europe” a far wider region than is embraced by the Europe of geography, the little peninsula of Asia. In particular, we must include America, in so far as America is the daughter of our civilization. On the other hand, not all Europe falls under the heading of cultured “ Europe,” but only those nations and divisions of nations which have their common past in Greece, Rome, Judaism, and Christianity. 216. “ German Virtue.”—There is no denying that from the end of the eighteenth century a current of moral awakening flowed through Europe. Then only Virtue found again the power of speech. She learnt to discover the unrestrained gestures of exaltation and emotion, she was no longer ashamed of herself, and she created philosophies and poems for her own glorification. If we look for the sources of this current, we come upon Rousseau, but the mythical Rousseau, the phantom formed from the impression left by his writings (one might almost say again, his mythically interpreted writings) and by the indications that he provided himself. He and his public constantly worked at the fashioning of this ideal figure. The other origin lies in the resurrection of the Stoical side of Rome’s greatness, whereby the French so nobly carried on the task of the Renaissance. With striking success they proceeded from the reproduction of antique forms to the reproduction of antique characters. Thus they may always claim a title to the highest honours, as the nation which has hitherto given the modern world its best books and its best men. How this twofold archetype, the mythical Rousseau and the resurrected spirit of Rome, affected France’s weaker neighbours, is particularly noticeable in Germany, which, in consequence of her novel and quite unwonted impulse to seriousness and loftiness in will and self-control, finally came to feel astonishment at her own newfound virtue, and launched into the world the concept “ German virtue,” as if this were the most original and hereditary of her possessions. The first great men who transfused into their own blood that French impulse towards greatness and consciousness of the moral will were more honest, and more grateful. Whence comes the moralism of Kant? He is continually reminding us: from Rousseau and the revival of Stoic Rome. The moralism of Schiller has the same source and the same glorification of the source. The moralism of Beethoven in notes is a continual song in praise of Rousseau, the antique French, and Schiller. “ Young Germany” was the first to forget its gratitude, because in the meantime people had listened to the preachers of hatred of the French. The “ young German” came to the fore with more consciousness than is generally allowed to youths. When he investigated his paternity, he might well think of the proximity of Schiller, Schleiermacher, and Fichte. But he should have looked for his grandfathers in Paris and Geneva, and it was very short-sighted of him to believe what he believed: that virtue was not more than thirty years old. People became used to demanding that the word “ German” should connote “ virtue,” and this process has not been wholly forgotten to this day.—Be it observed further that this moral awakening, as may almost be guessed, has resulted only in drawbacks and obstacles to the recognition of moral phenomena. What is the entire German philosophy, starting from Kant, with all its French, English, and Italian offshoots and by-products? A semi-theological attack upon Helvetius, a rejection of the slowly and laboriously acquired views and signposts of the right road, which in the end he collected and expressed so well. To this day Helvetius is the best-abused of all good moralists and good men in Germany. 217. Classic and Romantic.—Both classically and romantically minded spirits—two species that always exist—cherish a vision of the future; but the former derive their vision from the strength of their time, the latter from its weakness. 218. The Machine as Teacher.—Machinery teaches in itself the dovetailed working of masses of men, in activities where each has but one thing to do. It is the model of party
organizations and of warfare. On the other hand, it does not teach individual self-glorification, for it makes of the many a machine, and of each individual a tool for one purpose. Its most general effect is to teach the advantage of centralization. 219. Unable to Settle.—One likes to live in a small town. But from time to time just this small town drives us out into bare and lonely Nature, especially when we think we know it too well. Finally, in order to refresh ourselves from Nature, we go to the big town. A few draughts from this cup and we see its dregs, and the circle begins afresh, with the small town as starting-point.—So the moderns live; they are in all things rather too thorough to be able to settle like the men of other days. 220. Reaction against the Civilization of Machinery.—The machine, itself a product of the highest mental powers, sets in motion hardly any but the lower, unthinking forces of the men who serve it. True, it unfetters a vast quantity of force which would otherwise lie dormant. But it does not communicate the impulse to climb higher, to improve, to become artistic. It creates activity and monotony, but this in the long-run produces a counter-effect, a despairing ennui of the soul, which through machinery has learnt to hanker after the variety of leisure. 221. The Danger of Enlightenment.—All the half-insane, theatrical, bestially cruel, licentious, and especially sentimental and self-intoxicating elements which go to form the true revolutionary substance, and became flesh and spirit, before the revolution, in Rousseau—all this composite being, with factitious enthusiasm, finally set even “ enlightenment” upon its fanatical head, which thereby began itself to shine as in an illuminating halo. Yet, enlightenment is essentially foreign to that phenomenon, and, if left to itself, would have pierced silently through the clouds like a shaft of light, long content to transfigure individuals alone, and thus only slowly transfiguring national customs and institutions as well. But now, bound hand and foot to a violent and abrupt monster, enlightenment itself became violent and abrupt. Its danger has therefore become almost greater than its useful quality of liberation and illumination, which it introduced into the great revolutionary movement. Whoever grasps this will also know from what confusion it has to be extricated, from what impurities to be cleansed, in order that it may then by itself continue the work of enlightenment and also nip the revolution in the bud and nullify its effects. 222. Passion in the Middle Ages.—The Middle Ages are the period of great passions. Neither antiquity nor our period possesses this widening of the soul. Never was the capacity of the soul greater or measured by larger standards. The physical, primeval sensuality of the barbarian races and the over-soulful, over-vigilant, over-brilliant eyes of Christian mystics, the most childish and youthful and the most over-ripe and world-weary, the savageness of the beast of prey and the effeminacy and excessive refinement of the late antique spirit—all these elements were then not seldom united in one and the same person. Thus, if a man was seized by a passion, the rapidity of the torrent must have been greater, the whirl more confused, the fall deeper than ever before.—We modern men may be content to feel that we have suffered a loss here. 223. Robbing and Saving.—All intellectual movements whereby the great may hope to rob and the small to save are sure to prosper. That is why, for instance, the German Reformation made progress. 224. Gladsome Souls.—When even a remote hint of drink, drunkenness, and an evil-smelling kind of jocularity was given, the souls of the old Germans waxed gladsome. Otherwise they were depressed, but here they found something they really understood. 225. Debauchery at Athens.—Even when the fish-market of Athens acquired its thinkers and poets, Greek debauchery had a more idyllic and refined appearance than Roman or German debauchery ever had. The voice of Juvenal would have sounded there like a hollow trumpet, and would have been answered by a good-natured and almost childish outburst of laughter. 226. Cleverness of the Greek.—As the desire for victory and pre-eminence is an ineradicable trait of human nature, older and more primitive than any respect of or joy in equality, the Greek State sanctioned gymnastic and artistic competitions among equals. In other words, it marked out an arena where this impulse to conquer would find a vent without jeopardizing the political order. With the final decline of gymnastic and artistic contests the Greek State fell into a condition of profound unrest and dissolution. 227. The “ Eternal Epicurus.”—Epicurus has lived in all periods, and lives yet, unbeknown to those who called and still call themselves Epicureans, and without repute among philosophers. He has himself even forgotten his own name—that was the heaviest luggage that he ever cast off. 228. The Style of Superiority.—“ University slang,” the speech of the German students, has its origin among the students who do not study. The latter know how to acquire a preponderance over their more serious fellows by exposing all the farcical elements of culture, respectability, erudition, order, and moderation, and by having words taken from these
realms always on their lips, like the better and more learned students, but with malice in their glance and an accompanying grimace. This language of superiority—the only one that is original in Germany—is nowadays unconsciously used by statesmen and newspaper critics as well. It is a continual process of ironical quotation, a restless, cantankerous squinting of the eye right and left, a language of inverted commas and grimaces. 229. The Recluse.—We retire into seclusion, but not from personal misgivings, as if the political and social conditions of the day did not satisfy us; rather because by our retirement we try to save and collect forces which will someday be urgently needed by culture, the more this present is this present, and, as such, fulfils its task. We form a capital and try to make it secure, but, as in times of real danger, our method is to bury our hoard. 230. Tyrants of the Intellect.—In our times, anyone who expressed a single moral trait so thoroughly as the characters of Theophrastus and Molière do, would be considered ill, and be spoken of as possessing “ a fixed idea.” The Athens of the thirdcentury, if we could visit it, would appear to us populated by fools. Nowadays the democracy of ideas rules in every brain—there the multitude collectively is lord. A single idea that tried to be lord is now called, as above stated, “ a fixed idea.” This is our method of murdering tyrants—we hint at the madhouse. 231. A Most Dangerous Emigration.—In Russia there is an emigration of the intelligence. People cross the frontier in order to read and write good books. Thus, however, they are working towards turning their country, abandoned by the intellect, into a gaping Asiatic maw, which would fain swallow our little Europe. 232. Political Fools.—The almost religious love of the king was transferred by the Greeks, when the monarchy was abolished, to the polis. An idea can be loved more than a person, and does not thwart the lover so often as a beloved human being (for the more men know themselves to be loved, the less considerate they usually become, until they are no longer worthy of love, and a rift really arises). Hence the reverence for State and polis was greater than the reverence for princes had ever been. The Greeks are the political fools of ancient history—to-day other nations boast that distinction. 233. Against Neglect of the Eyes.—Might one not find among the cultured classes of England, who read the Times, a decline in their powers of sight every ten years? 234. Great Works and Great Faith.—One man had great works, but his comrade had great faith in these works. They were inseparable, but obviously the former was entirely dependent upon the latter. 235. The Sociable Man.—“ I don’t get on well with myself,” said someone in explanation of his fondness for society. “ Society has a stronger digestion than I have, and can put up with me.” 236. Shutting the Mind’s Eyes.—If we are practiced and accustomed to reflect upon our actions, we must nevertheless close the inner eye while performing an action (be this even only writing letters or eating or drinking). Even in conversation with average people we must know how to obscure our own mental vision in order to attain and grasp average thinking. This shutting of the eyes is a conscious act and can be achieved by the will. 237. The Most Terrible Revenge.—If we wish to take a thorough revenge upon an opponent, we must wait until we have our hand quite full of truths and equities, and can calmly use the whole lot against him. Hence the exercise of revenge may be identified with the exercise of equity. It is the most terrible kind of revenge, for there is no higher court to which an appeal can be made. Thus did Voltaire revenge himself on Piron, with five lines that sum up Piron’s whole life, work, and character: every word is a truth. So too he revenged himself upon Frederick the Great in a letter to him from Ferney. 238. Taxes of Luxury.—In shops we buy the most necessary and urgent things, and have to pay very dear, because we pay as well for what is also to be had there cheap, but seldom finds a customer-articles of luxury that minister to pleasure. Thus luxury lays a constant tax upon the man of simple life who does without luxuries. 239. Why Beggars still Live.—If all alms were given only out of compassion, the whole tribe of beggars would long since have died of starvation. 240. Why Beggars still Live.—The greatest of almsgivers is cowardice. 241.
How the Thinker Makes Use of a Conversation.—Without being eavesdroppers, we can hear a good deal if we are able to see well, and at the same time to let ourselves occasionally get out of our own sight. But people do not know how to make use of a conversation. They pay far too much attention to what they want to say and reply, whereas the true listener is often contented to make a provisional answer and to say something merely as a payment on account of politeness, but on the other hand, with his memory lurking in ambush, carries away with him all that the other said, together with his tones and gestures in speaking.—In ordinary conversation everyone thinks he is the leader, just as if two ships, sailing side by side and giving each other a slight push here and there, were each firmly convinced that the other ship was following or even being towed. 242. The Art of Excusing Oneself.—If someone excuses himself to us, he has to make out a very good case, otherwise we readily come to feel ourselves the culprits, and experience an unpleasant emotion. 243. Impossible Intercourse.—The ship of your thoughts goes too deep for you to be able to travel with it in the waters of these friendly, decorous, obliging people. There are too many shallows and sandbanks: you would have to tack and turn, and would find yourself continually at your wits’ end, and they would soon also be in perplexity as to your perplexity, the reason for which they cannot divine. 244. The Fox of Foxes.—A true fox not only calls sour the grapes he cannot reach, but also those he has reached and snatched from the grasp of others. 245. In Intimate Intercourse.—However closely men are connected, there are still all the four quarters of the heavens in their common horizon, and at times they become aware of this fact. 246. The Silence of Disgust.—Behold! someone undergoes a thorough and painful transformation as thinker and human being, and makes a public avowal of the change. And those who hear him see nothing, and still believe he is the same as before! This common experience has already disgusted many writers. They had rated the intellectuality of mankind too highly, and made a vow to be silent as soon as they became aware of their mistake. 247. Business Seriousness.—The business of many rich and eminent men is their form of recreation from too long periods of habitual leisure. They then become as serious and impassioned as other people do in their rare moments of leisure and amusement. 248. The Eye’s Double Sense.—Just as a sudden scaly ripple runs over the waters at your feet, so there are similar sudden uncertainties and ambiguities in the human eye. They lead to the question: is it a shudder, or a smile, or both? 249. Positive and Negative.—This thinker needs noone to refute him—he is quite capable of doing that himself. 250. The Revenge of the Empty Nets.—Above all we should beware of those who have the bitter feeling of the fisherman who after a hard day’s work comes home in the evening with nets empty. 251. Non-Assertion of our Rights.—The exertion of power is laborious and demands courage. That is why so many do not assert their most valid rights, because their rights are a kind of power, and they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise them. Indulgence and patience are the names given to the virtues that cloak these faults. 252. Bearers of Light.—In Society there would be no sunshine if the born flatterers (I mean the so called amiable people) did not bring some in with them. 253. When most Benevolent.—When a man has been highly honoured and has eaten a little, he is most benevolent. 254. To the Light.—Men press forward to the light not in order to see better but to shine better.—The person before whom we shine we gladly allow to be called a light. 255. The Hypochondriac.—The hypochondriac is a man who has just enough intellect and pleasure in the intellect to take his sorrows, his losses, and his mistakes seriously. But the field on which he grazes is too small: he crops it so close that in the end he has to look for single stalks. Thus he finally becomes envious and avaricious—and only then is he unbearable.
256. Giving in Return.—Hesiod advises us to give the neighbour who has helped us good measure and, if possible, fuller measure in return, as soon as we have the power. For this is where the neighbor’s pleasure comes in, since his former benevolence brings him interest. Moreover, he who gives in return also has his pleasure, inasmuch as, by giving a little more than he got, he redeems the slight humiliation of being compelled to seek aid. 257. More Subtle than is Necessary.—Our sense of observation for how far others perceive our weaknesses is far more subtle than our sense of observation for the weaknesses of others. It follows that the first-named sense is more subtle than is necessary. 258. A Kind of Bright Shadows.—Close to the nocturnal type of man we almost regularly find, as if bound up with him, a bright soul. This is, as it were, the negative shadow cast by the former. 259. Not to take Revenge.—There are so many subtle sorts of revenge that one who has occasion to take revenge can really do or omit to do what he likes. In any case, the whole world will agree, after a time, that he has avenged himself. Hence the avoidance of revenge is hardly within man’s power. He must not even so much as say that he does not want to do so, since the contempt for revenge is interpreted and felt as a sublime and exquisite form of revenge.—It follows that we must do nothing superfluous. 260. The Mistake of Those who Pay Homage.—Everyone thinks he is paying a most agreeable compliment to a thinker when he says that he himself hit upon exactly the same idea and even upon the same expression. The thinker, however, is seldom delighted at hearing such news, nay, rather, he often becomes distrustful of his own thoughts and expressions. He silently resolves to revise both someday. If we wish to pay homage to anyone, we must beware of expressing our agreement, for this puts us on the same level.—Often it is a matter of social tact to listen to an opinion as if it were not ours or even travelled beyond the limits of our own horizon—as, for example, when an old man once in a while opens the storehouse of his acquired knowledge. 261. Letters.—A letter is an unannounced visit, and the postman is the intermediary of impolite surprises. Every week we ought to have one hour for receiving letters, and then go and take a bath. 262. Prejudiced.—Someone said: I have been prejudiced against myself from childhood upwards, and hence I find some truth in every censure and some absurdity in every eulogy. Praise I generally value too low and blame too high. 263. The Path to Equality.—A few hours of mountain-climbing make a blackguard and a saint two rather similar creatures. Weariness is the shortest path to equality and fraternity— and finally liberty is bestowed by sleep. 264. Calumny.—If we begin to trace to its source a real scandalous misrepresentation, we shall rarely look for its origin in our honourable and straightforward enemies; for if they invented anything of the sort about us, they, as being our enemies, would gain no credence. Those, however, to whom for a time we have been most useful, but who, from some reason or other, may be secretly sure that they will obtain no more from us—such persons are in a position to start the ball of slander rolling. They gain credence, firstly, because it is assumed that they would invent nothing likely to do them damage; secondly, because they have learnt to know us intimately.—As a consolation, the much-slandered man may say to himself: Calumnies are diseases of others that break out in your body. They prove that Society is a (moral) organism, so that you can prescribe to yourself the cure that will in the end be useful to others. 265. The Child’s Kingdom of Heaven.—The happiness of a child is as much of a myth as the happiness of the Hyperboreans of whom the Greeks fabled. The Greeks supposed that, if indeed happiness dwells anywhere on our earth, it must certainly dwell as far as possible from us, perhaps over yonder at the edge of the world. Old people have the same thought—if man is at all capable of being happy, he must be happy as far as possible from our age, at the frontiers and beginnings of life. For many a man the sight of children, through the veil of this myth, is the greatest happiness that he can feel. He enters himself into the forecourt of heaven when he says, “ Suffer the little children to come unto me, for of them is the kingdom of heaven.” The myth of the child’s kingdom of heaven holds good, in some way or other, wherever in the modern world some sentimentality exists. 266. The Impatient.—It is just the growing man who does not want things in the growing stage. He is too impatient for that. The youth will not wait until, after long study, suffering, and privation, his picture of men and things is complete. Accordingly, he confidently accepts another picture that lies ready to his hand and is recommended to him, and pins his faith
to that, as if it must give him at once the lines and colors of his own painting. He presses a philosopher or a poet to his bosom, and must from that time forth perform long stretches of forced labour and renounce his own self. He learns much in the process, but he often forgets what is most worth learning and knowing—his self. He remains all his life a partisan. Ah, a vast amount of tedious work has to be done before you find your own colors, your own brush, your own canvas!—Even then you are very far from being a master in the art of life, but at least you are the boss in your own workshop. 267. There are no Teachers.—As thinkers we ought only to speak of self-teaching. The instruction of the young by others is either an experiment performed upon something as yet unknown and unknowable, or else a thorough leveling process, in order to make the new member of society conform to the customs and manners that prevail for the time being. In both cases the result is accordingly unworthy of a thinker—the handiwork of parents and teachers, whom some valiantly honest person [25] has called “ nos ennemis naturels.” One day, when, as the world thinks, we have long since finished our education, we discover ourselves. Then begins the task of the thinker, and then is the time to summon him to our aid —not as a teacher, but as a self-taught man who has experience. [25] Stendhal.—Tr. 268. Sympathy with Youth.—We are sorry when we hear that someone who is still young is losing his teeth or growing blind. If we knew all the irrevocable and hopeless feelings hidden in his whole being, how great our sorrow would be! Why do we really suffer on this account? Because youth has to continue the work we have undertaken, and every flaw and failing in its strength is likely to injure our work, that will fall into its hands. It is the sorrow at the imperfect guarantee of our immortality: or, if we only feel ourselves as executors of the human mission, it is the sorrow that this mission must pass to weaker hands than ours. 269. The Ages of Life.—The comparison of the four ages of life with the four seasons of the year is a venerable piece of folly. Neither the first twenty nor the last twenty years of a life correspond to a season of the year, assuming that we are not satisfied with drawing a parallel between white hair and snow and similar color-analogies. The first twenty years are a preparation for life in general, for the whole year of life, a sort of long New Year’s Day. The last twenty review, assimilate, bring into union and harmony all that has been experienced till then: as, in a small degree, we do on every New Year’s Eve with the whole past year. But in between there really lies an interval which suggests a comparison with the seasons— the time from the twentieth to the fiftieth year (to speak here of decades in the lump, while it is an understood thing that everyone must refine for himself these rough outlines). Those three decades correspond to three seasons—summer, spring, and autumn. Winter human life has none, unless we like to call the (unfortunately) often intervening hard, cold, lonely, hopeless, unfruitful periods of disease the winters of man. The twenties, hot, oppressive, stormy, impetuous, exhausting years, when we praise the day in the evening, when it is over, as we wipe the sweat from our foreheads—years in which work seems to us cruel but necessary—these twenties are the summer of life. The thirties, on the other hand, are its springtime, with the air now too warm, now too cold, ever restless and stimulating, bubbling sap, bloom of leaves, fragrance of buds everywhere, many delightful mornings and evenings, work to which the song of birds awakens us, a true work of the heart, a kind of joy in our own robustness, strengthened by the savor of hopeful anticipation. Lastly the forties, mysterious like all that is stationary, like a high, broad plateau, traversed by a fresh breeze, with a clear, cloudless sky above it, which always has the same gentle look all day and half the night—the time of harvest and cordial gaiety—that is the autumn of life. 270. Women’s Intellect in Modern Society.—What women nowadays think of men’s intellect may be divined from the fact that in their art of adornment they think of anything but of emphasizing the intellectual side of their faces or their single intellectual features. On the contrary, they conceal such traits, and understand, for example by an arrangement of their hair over their forehead, how to give themselves an appearance of vivid, eager sensuality and materialism, just when they but slightly possess those qualities. Their conviction that intellect in women frightens men goes so far that they even gladly deny the keenness of the most intellectual sense and purposely invite the reputation of short-sightedness. They think they will thereby make men more confiding. It is as if a soft, attractive twilight were spreading itself around them. 271. Great and Transitory.—What moves the observer to tears is the rapturous look of happiness with which a fair young bride gazes upon her husband. We feel all the melancholy of autumn in thinking of the greatness and of the transitoriness of human happiness. 272. Sense and Sacrifice.—Many a woman has the intelletto del sacrifizio [26], and no longer enjoys life when her husband refuses to sacrifice her. With all her wit, she then no longer knows—whither? and without perceiving it, is changed from sacrificial victim to sacrificial priest. [26] A transposition of sacrifizio dell’ intelletto, the Jesuit maxim.—Tr. 273. The Unfeminine.—“ Stupid as a man,” say the women; “ Cowardly as a woman,” say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unfeminine. 274. Masculine and Feminine Temperament and Mortality.—That the male sex has a worse temperament than the female follows from the fact that male children have a greater mortality than female, clearly because they “ leap out of their skins” more easily. Their wildness and unbearableness soon make all the bad stuff in them deadly.
275. The Age of Cyclopean Building.—The democratization of Europe is a resistless force. Even he who would stem the tide uses those very means that democratic thought first put into men’s hands, and he makes these means more handy and workable. The most inveterate enemies of democracy (I mean the spirits of upheaval) seem only to exist in order, by the fear that they inspire, to drive forward the different parties faster and faster on the democratic course. Now we may well feel sorry for those who are working consciously and honorably for this future. There is something dreary and monotonous in their faces, and the grey dust seems to have been wafted into their very brains. Nevertheless, posterity may possibly some day laugh at our anxiety, and see in the democratic work of several generations what we see in the building of stone dams and walls—an activity that necessarily covers clothes and face with a great deal of dust, and perhaps unavoidably makes the workmen, too, a little dull-witted; but who would on that account desire such work undone? It seems that the democratization of Europe is a link in the chain of those mighty prophylactic principles which are the thought of the modern era, and whereby we rise up in revolt against the Middle Ages. Now, and now only, is the age of Cyclopean building! A final security in the foundations, that the future may build on them without danger! Henceforth, an impossibility of the orchards of culture being once more destroyed overnight by wild, senseless mountain torrents! Dams and walls against barbarians, against plagues, against physical and spiritual serfdom! And all this understood at first roughly and literally, but gradually in an ever higher and more spiritual sense, so that all the principles here indicated may appear as the intellectual preparation of the highest artist in horticulture, who can only apply himself to his own task when the other is fully accomplished!—True, if we consider the long intervals of time that here lie between means and end, the great, supreme labour, straining the powers and brains of centuries, that is necessary in order to create or to provide each individual means, we must not bear too hardly upon the workers of the present when they loudly proclaim that the wall and the fence are already the end and the final goal. After all, no one yet sees the gardener and the fruit, for whose sake the fence exists. 276. The Right of Universal Suffrage.—The people has not granted itself universal suffrage but, wherever this is now in force, it has received and accepted it as a temporary measure. But in any case the people has the right to restore the gift, if it does not satisfy its anticipations. This dissatisfaction seems universal nowadays, for when, at any occasion where the vote is exercised, scarce two-thirds, nay perhaps not even the majority of all voters, go to the polls, that very fact is a vote against the whole suffrage system.—On this point, in fact, we must pronounce a much sterner verdict. A law that enacts that the majority shall decide as to the welfare of all cannot be built up on the foundation that it alone has provided, for it is bound to require a far broader foundation, namely the unanimity of all. Universal suffrage must not only be the expression of the will of a majority, but of the whole country. Thus the dissent of a very small minority is already enough to set aside the system as impracticable; and the abstention from voting is in fact a dissent of this kind, which ruins the whole institution. The “ absolute veto” of the individual, or—not to be too minute—the veto of a few thousands, hangs over the system as the consequence of justice. On every occasion when it is employed, the system must, according to the variety of the division, first prove that it has still a right to exist. 277. False Conclusions.—What false conclusions are drawn in spheres where we are not at home, even by those of us who are accustomed as men of science to draw right conclusions! It is humiliating! Now it is clear that in the great turmoil of worldly doings, in political affairs, in all sudden and urgent matters such as almost every day brings up, these false conclusions must decide. For no one feels at home with novelties that have sprung up in the night. All political work, even with great statesmen, is an improvisation that trusts to luck. 278. Premises of the Age of Machinery.—The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises of which no one has yet dared to draw the conclusions that will follow in a thousand years. 279. A Drag upon Culture.—When we are told that here men have no time for productive occupations, because military manœuvres and processions take up their days, and the rest of the population must feed and clothe them, their dress, however, being striking, often gay and full of absurdities; that there only a few distinguished qualities are recognized, individuals resemble each other more than elsewhere, or at any rate are treated as equals, yet obedience is exacted and yielded without reasoning, for men command and make no attempt to convince; that here punishments are few, but these few cruel and likely to become the final and most terrible; that there treason ranks as the capital offence, and even the criticism of evils is only ventured on by the most audacious; that there, again, human life is cheap, and ambition often takes the form of setting life in danger—when we hear all this, we at once say, “ This is a picture of a barbarous society that rests on a hazardous footing.” One man perhaps will add, “ It is a portrait of Sparta.” But another will become meditative and declare that this is a description of our modern military system, as it exists in the midst of our altogether different culture and society, a living anachronism, the picture, as above said, of a community resting on a hazardous footing; a posthumous work of the past, which can only act as a drag upon the wheels of the present.—Yet at times even a drag upon culture is vitally necessary—that is to say, when culture is advancing too rapidly downhill or (as perhaps in this case) uphill. 280. More Reverence for Them that Know.—In the competition of production and sale the public is made judge of the product. But the public has no special knowledge, and judges by the appearance of the wares. In consequence, the art of appearance (and perhaps the taste for it) must increase under the dominance of competition, while on the other hand the quality
of every product must deteriorate. The result will be—so far as reason does not fall in value—that one day an end will be put to that competition, and a new principle will win the day. Only the master of the craft should pronounce a verdict on the work, and the public should be dependent on the belief in the personality of the judge and his honesty. Accordingly, no anonymous work! At least an expert should be there as guarantor and pledge his name if the name of the creator is lacking or is unknown. The cheapness of an article is for the layman another kind of illusion and deceit, since only durability can decide that a thing is cheap and to what an extent. But it is difficult, and for a layman impossible, to judge of its durability.—Hence that which produces an effect on the eye and costs little at present gains the advantage—this being naturally machine-made work. Again, machinery— that is to say, the cause of the greatest rapidity and facility in production—favors the most saleable kind of article. Otherwise it involves no tangible profit; it would be too little used and too often stand idle. But as to what is most saleable, the public, as above said, decides: it must be the most exchangeable—in other words, the thing that appears good and also appears cheap. Thus in the domain of labour our motto must also hold good: “ More respect for them that know!” 281. The Danger of Kings.—Democracy has it in its power, without any violent means, and only by a lawful pressure steadily exerted, to make kingship and emperorship hollow, until only a zero remains, perhaps with the significance of every zero in that, while nothing in itself, it multiplies a number tenfold if placed on the right side. Kingship and emperorship would remain a gorgeous ornament upon the simple and appropriate dress of democracy, a beautiful superfluity that democracy allows itself, a relic of all the historically venerable, primitive ornaments, nay the symbol of history itself, and in this unique position a highly effective thing if, as above said, it does not stand alone, but is put on the right side.—In order to avoid the danger of this nullification, kings hold by their teeth to their dignity as war-lords. To this end they need wars, or in other words exceptional circumstances, in which that slow, lawful pressure of the democratic forces is relaxed. 282. The Teacher a Necessary Evil.—Let us have as few people as possible between the productive minds and the hungry and recipient minds! The middlemen almost unconsciously adulterate the food which they supply. For their work as middlemen they want too high a fee for themselves, and this is drawn from the original, productive spirits—namely, interest, admiration, leisure, money, and other advantages.—Accordingly, we should always look upon the teacher as a necessary evil, just like the merchant; as an evil that we should make as small as possible.—Perhaps the prevailing distress in Germany has its main cause in the fact that too many wish to live and live well by trade (in other words, desiring as far as possible to diminish prices for the producer and raise prices for the consumer, and thus to profit by the greatest possible loss to both). In the same way, we may certainly trace a main cause of the prevailing intellectual poverty in the superabundance of teachers. It is because of teachers that so little is learnt, and that so badly. 283. The Tax of Homage.—Him whom we know and honour,—be he physician, artist, or artisan,—who does and produces something for us, we gladly pay as highly as we can, often a fee beyond our means. On the other hand, we pay the unknown as low a price as possible; here is a contest in which everyone struggles and makes others struggle for a foot’s breadth of land. In the work of the known there is something that cannot be bought, the sentiment and ingenuity put into his work for our own sake. We think we cannot better express our sense of obligation than by a sort of sacrifice on our part.—The heaviest tax is the tax of homage. The more competition prevails, the more we buy for the unknown and work for the unknown, the lower does this tax become, whereas it is really the standard for the loftiness of man’s spiritual intercourse. 284. The Means towards Genuine Peace.—No government will nowadays admit that it maintains an army in order to satisfy occasionally its passion for conquest. The army is said to serve only defensive purposes. This morality, which justifies self-defence, is called in as the government’s advocate. This means, however, reserving morality for ourselves and immorality for our neighbour, because he must be thought eager for attack and conquest if our state is forced to consider means of self-defence.—At the same time, by our explanation of our need of an army (because he denies the lust of attack just as our state does, and ostensibly also maintains his army for defensive reasons), we proclaim him a hypocrite and cunning criminal, who would fain seize by surprise, without any fighting, a harmless and unwary victim. In this attitude all states face each other to-day. They presuppose evil intentions on their neighbor’s part and good intentions on their own. This hypothesis, however, is an inhuman notion, as bad as and worse than war. Nay, at bottom it is a challenge and motive to war, foisting as it does upon the neighbouring state the charge of immorality, and thus provoking hostile intentions and acts. The doctrine of the army as a means of self-defence must be abjured as completely as the lust of conquest. Perhaps a memorable day will come when a nation renowned in wars and victories, distinguished by the highest development of military order and intelligence, and accustomed to make the heaviest sacrifice to these objects, will voluntarily exclaim, “ We will break our swords,” and will destroy its whole military system, lock, stock, and barrel. Making ourselves defenseless (after having been the most strongly defended) from a loftiness of sentiment—that is the means towards genuine peace, which must always rest upon a pacific disposition. The so-called armed peace that prevails at present in all countries is a sign of a bellicose disposition, of a disposition that trusts neither itself nor its neighbour, and, partly from hate, partly from fear, refuses to lay down its weapons. Better to perish than to hate and fear, and twice as far better to perish than to make oneself hated and feared—this must someday become the supreme maxim of every political community!—Our liberal representatives of the people, as is well known, have not the time for reflection on the nature of humanity, or else they would know that they are working in vain when they work for “ a gradual diminution of the military burdens.” On the contrary, when the distress of these burdens is greatest, the sort of God who alone can help here will be nearest. The tree of military glory can only be destroyed at one swoop, with one stroke of lightning. But, as you know, lightning comes from the cloud and from above.
285. Whether Property can be squared with Justice.—When the injustice of property is strongly felt (and the hand of the great clock is once more at this place), we formulate two methods of relieving this injustice: either an equal distribution, or an abolition of private possession and a return to State ownership. The latter method is especially dear to the hearts of our Socialists, who are angry with that primitive Jew for saying, “ Thou shalt not steal.” In their view the eighth [27] commandment should rather run, “ Thou shalt not possess.”—The former method was frequently tried in antiquity, always indeed on a small scale, and yet with poor success. From this failure we too may learn. “ Equal plots of land” is easily enough said, but how much bitterness is aroused by the necessary division and separation, by the loss of time-honored possessions, how much piety is wounded and sacrificed! We uproot the foundation of morality when we uproot boundary-stones. Again, how much fresh bitterness among the new owners, how much envy and looking askance! For there have never been two really equal plots of land, and if there were, man’s envy of his neighbour would prevent him from believing in their equality. And how long would this equality, unhealthy and poisoned at the very roots, endure? In a few generations, by inheritance, here one plot would come to five owners, there five plots to one. Even supposing that men acquiesced in such abuses through the enactment of stern laws of inheritance, the same equal plots would indeed exist, but there would also be needy malcontents, owning nothing but dislike of their kinsmen and neighbours, and longing for a general upheaval.—If, however, by the second method we try to restore ownership to the community and make the individual but a temporary tenant, we interfere with agriculture. For man is opposed to all that is only a transitory possession, unblessed with his own care and sacrifice. With such property he behaves in freebooter fashion, as robber or as worthless spendthrift. When Plato declares that self-seeking would be removed with the abolition of property, we may answer him that, if self-seeking be taken away, man will no longer possess the four cardinal virtues either; as we must say that the most deadly plague could not injure mankind so terribly as if vanity were one day to disappear. Without vanity and self-seeking what are human virtues? By this I am far from meaning that these virtues are but varied names and masks for these two qualities. Plato’s Utopian refrain, which is still sung by Socialists, rests upon a deficient knowledge of men. He lacked the historical science of moral emotions, the insight into the origin of the good and useful characteristics of the human soul. He believed, like all antiquity, in good and evil as in black and white—that is to say, in a radical difference between good and bad men and good and bad qualities.—In order that property may henceforth inspire more confidence and become more moral, we should keep open all the paths of work for small fortunes, but should prevent the effortless and sudden acquisition of wealth. Accordingly, we should take all the branches of transport and trade which favor the accumulation of large fortunes—especially, therefore, the money market—out of the hands of private persons or private companies, and look upon those who own too much, just as upon those who own nothing, as types fraught with danger to the community. [27] The original, by a curious slip, has “ seventh.”—Tr. 286. The Value of Labor.—If we try to determine the value of labour by the amount of time, industry, good or bad will, constraint, inventiveness or laziness, honesty or make-believe bestowed upon it, the valuation can never be a just one. For the whole personality would have to be thrown into the scale, and this is impossible. Here the motto is, “ Judge not!” But after all the cry for justice is the cry we now hear from those who are dissatisfied with the present valuation of labour. If we reflect further we find every person non-responsible for his product, the labour; hence merit can never be derived therefrom, and every labour is as good or as bad as it must be through this or that necessary concatenation of forces and weaknesses, abilities and desires. The worker is not at liberty to say whether he shall work or not, or to decide how he shall work. Only the standpoints of usefulness, wider and narrower, have created the valuation of labour. What we at present call justice does very well in this sphere as a highly refined utility, which does not only consider the moment and exploit the immediate opportunity, but looks to the permanence of all conditions, and thus also keeps in view the well-being of the worker, his physical and spiritual contentment: in order that he and his posterity may work well for our posterity and become trustworthy for longer periods than the individual span of human life. The exploitation of the worker was, as we now understand, a piece of folly, a robbery at the expense of the future, a jeopardization of society. We almost have the war now, and in any case the expense of maintaining peace, of concluding treaties and winning confidence, will henceforth be very great, because the folly of the exploiters was very great and long-lasting. 287. Of the Study of the Social Body.—The worst drawback for the modern student of economics and political science in Europe, and especially in Germany, is that the actual conditions, instead of exemplifying rules, illustrate exceptions or stages of transition and extinction. We must therefore learn to look beyond actually existing conditions and, for example, turn our eyes to distant North America, where we can still contemplate and investigate, if we will, the initial and normal movement of the social body. In Germany such a study requires arduous and historical research, or, as I have suggested, a telescope. 288. How far Machinery Humiliates.—Machinery is impersonal; it robs the piece of work of its pride, of the individual merits and defects that cling to all work that is not machinemade—in other words, of its bit of humanity. Formerly, all buying from handicraftsmen meant a mark of distinction for their personalities, with whose productions people surrounded themselves. Furniture and dress accordingly became the symbols of mutual valuation and personal connection. Nowadays, on the other hand, we seem to live in the midst of anonymous and impersonal serfdom.—We must not buy the facilitation of labour too dear. 289. Century-old Quarantine.—Democratic institutions are centers of quarantine against the old plague of tyrannical desires. As such they are extremely useful and extremely tedious. 290.
The Most Dangerous Partisan.—The most dangerous partisan is he whose defection would involve the ruin of the whole party—in other words, the best partisan. 291. Destiny and the Stomach.—A piece more or less of bread and butter in the jockey’s body is occasionally the decisive factor in races and bets, and thus in the good and bad luck of thousands.—So long as the destiny of nations depends upon diplomats, the stomachs of diplomats will always be the object of patriotic misgivings. Quousque tandem . . 292. The Victory of Democracy.—All political powers nowadays attempt to exploit the fear of Socialism for their own strengthening. Yet in the long run democracy alone gains the advantage, for all parties are now compelled to flatter “ the masses” and grant them facilities and liberties of all kinds, with the result that the masses finally become omnipotent. The masses are as far as possible removed from Socialism as a doctrine of altering the acquisition of property. If once they get the steering-wheel into their hands, through great majorities in their Parliaments, they will attack with progressive taxation the whole dominant system of capitalists, merchants, and financiers, and will in fact slowly create a middle class which may forget Socialism like a disease that has been overcome.—The practical result of this increasing democratization will next be a European league of nations, in which each individual nation, delimited by the proper geographical frontiers, has the position of a canton with its separate rights. Small account will be taken of the historic memories of previously existing nations, because the pious affection for these memories will be gradually uprooted under the democratic regime, with all its craze for novelty and experiment. The corrections of frontiers that will prove necessary will be so carried out as to serve the interests of the great cantons and at the same time that of the whole federation, but not that of any venerable memories. To find the standpoints for these corrections will be the task of future diplomats, who will have to be at the same time students of civilization, agriculturists, and commercial experts, with no armies but motives and utilities at their back. Then only will foreign and home politics be inseparably connected, whereas to-day the latter follows its haughty dictator, and gleans in sorry baskets the stubble that is left over from the harvest of the former. 293. Goal and Means of Democracy.—Democracy tries to create and guarantee independence for as many as possible in their opinions, way of life, and occupation. For this purpose democracy must withhold the political suffrage both from those who have nothing and from those who are really rich, as being the two intolerable classes of men. At the removal of these classes it must always work, because they are continually calling its task in question. In the same way democracy must prevent all measures that seem to aim at party organization. For the three great foes of independence, in that threefold sense, are the have-nots, the rich, and the parties.—I speak of democracy as of a thing to come. What at present goes by that name is distinguished from older forms of government only by the fact that it drives with new horses; the roads and the wheels are the same as of yore.—Has the danger really become less with these conveyances of the commonwealth? 294. Discretion and Success.—That great quality of discretion, which is fundamentally the virtue of virtues, their ancestress and queen, has in common life by no means always success on its side. The wooer would find himself deceived if he had wooed that virtue only for the sake of success. For it is rated by practical people as suspicious, and is confused with cunning and hypocrisy: he who obviously lacks discretion, the man who quickly grasps and sometimes misses his grasp, has prejudice on his side—he is an honest, trustworthy fellow. Practical people, accordingly, do not like the prudent man, thinking he is to them a danger. Moreover, we often assume the prudent man to be anxious, preoccupied, pedantic —unpractical, butterfly people find him uncomfortable, because he does not live in their happy-go-lucky way, without thinking of actions and duties; he appears among them as their embodied conscience, and the bright day is dimmed to their eyes before his gaze. Thus when success and popularity fail him, he may often say by way of private consolation, “ So high are the taxes you have to pay for the possession of the most precious of human commodities—still it is worth the price!” 295. Et in Arcadia Ego.—I looked down, over waves of hills, to a milky-green lake, through firs and pines austere with age; rocky crags of all shapes about me, the soil gay with flowers and grasses. A herd of cattle moved, stretched, and expanded itself before me; single cows and groups in the distance, in the clearest evening light, hard by the forest of pines; others nearer and darker; all in calm and eventide contentment. My watch pointed to half-past six. The bull of the herd had stepped into the white foaming brook, and went forward slowly, now striving against, now giving way to his tempestuous course; thus, no doubt, he took his sort of fierce pleasure. Two dark brown beings, of Bergamasque origin, tended the herd, the girl dressed almost like a boy. On the left, over-hanging cliffs and fields of snow above broad belts of woodland; to the right, two enormous ice-covered peaks, high above me, shimmering in the veil of the sunny haze—all large, silent, and bright. The beauty of the whole was awe-inspiring and induced to a mute worship of the moment and its revelation. Unconsciously, as if nothing could be more natural, you peopled this pure, clear world of light (which had no trace of yearning, of expectancy, of looking forward or backward) with Greek heroes. You felt it all as Poussin and his school felt—at once heroic and idyllic.—So individual men too have lived, constantly feeling themselves in the world and the world in themselves, and among them one of the greatest men, the inventor of a heroico-idyllic form of philosophy—Epicurus. 296. Counting and Measuring.—The art of seeing many things, of weighing one with another, of reckoning one thing with another and constructing from them a rapid conclusion, a fairly correct sum—that goes to make a great politician or general or merchant. This quality is, in fact, a power of speedy mental calculation. The art of seeing one thing alone, of finding therein the sole motive for action, the guiding principle of all other action, goes to make the hero and also the fanatic. This quality means a dexterity in measuring with one
scale. 297. Not to See too Soon.—As long as we undergo some experience, we must give ourselves up to the experience and shut our eyes—in other words, not become observers of what we are undergoing. For to observe would disturb good digestion of the experience, and instead of wisdom we should gain nothing but dyspepsia. 298. From the Practice of the Wise.—To become wise we must will to undergo certain experiences, and accordingly leap into their jaws. This, it is true, is very dangerous. Many a “ sage” has been eaten up in the process. 299. Exhaustion of the Intellect.—Our occasional coldness and indifference towards people, which is imputed to us as hardness and defect of character, is often only an exhaustion of the intellect. In this state other men are to us, as we are to ourselves, tedious or immaterial. 300. “ The One Thing Needful.”—If we are clever, the one thing we need is to have joy in our hearts. “ Ah,” adds some one, “ if we are clever, the best thing we can do is to be wise.” 301. A Sign of Love.—Someone said, “ There are two persons about whom I have never thought deeply. That is a sign of my love for them.” 302. How we Seek to Improve Bad Arguments.—Many a man adds a bit of his personality to his bad arguments, as if they would thus go better and change into straight and good arguments. In the same way, players at skittles, even after a throw, try to give a direction to the ball by turns and gestures. 303. Honesty.—It is but a small thing to be a pattern sort of man with regard to rights and property—for instance (to name trifling points, which of course give a better proof of this sort of pattern nature than great examples), if as a boy one never steals fruit from another’s orchard, and as a man never walks on unmown fields. It is but little; you are then still only a “ law-abiding person,” with just that degree of morality of which a “ society,” a group of human beings, is capable. 304. “ Man!”—What is the vanity of the vainest individual as compared with the vanity which the most modest person feels when he thinks of his position in nature and in the world as “ Man!” 305. The Most Necessary Gymnastic.—Through deficiency in self-control in small matters a similar deficiency on great occasions slowly arises. Every day on which we have not at least once denied ourselves some trifle is turned to bad use and a danger to the next day. This gymnastic is indispensable if we wish to maintain the joy of being our own master. 306. Losing Ourselves.—When we have first found ourselves, we must understand how from time to time to lose ourselves and then to find ourselves again.—This is true on the assumption that we are thinkers. A thinker finds it a drawback always to be tied to one person. 307. When it is Necessary to Part.—You must, for a time at least, part from that which you want to know and measure. Only when you have left a city do you see how high its towers rise above its houses. 308. At Noontide.—He to whom an active and stormy morning of life is allotted, at the noontide of life feels his soul overcome by a strange longing for a rest that may last for months and years. All grows silent around him, voices sound farther and farther in the distance, the sun shines straight down upon him. On a hidden woodland sward he sees the great God Pan sleeping, and with Pan Nature seems to him to have gone to sleep with an expression of eternity on their faces. He wants nothing, he troubles about nothing; his heart stands still, only his eye lives. It is a death with waking eyes. Then man sees much that he never saw before, and, so far as his eye can reach, all is woven into and as it were buried in a net of light. He feels happy, but it is a heavy, very heavy kind of happiness.—Then at last the wind stirs in the trees, noontide is over, life carries him away again, life with its blind eyes, and its tempestuous retinue behind it—desire, illusion, oblivion, enjoyment, destruction, decay. And so comes evening, more stormy and more active than was even the morning.—To the really active man these prolonged phases of cognition seem almost uncanny and morbid, but not unpleasant. 309. To Beware of One’s Portrait-Painter.—A great painter, who in a portrait has revealed and put on canvas the fullest expression and look of which a man is capable, will almost always think, when he sees the man later in real life, that he is only looking at a caricature. 310.
The Two Principles of the New Life.—First Principle: to arrange one’s life on the most secure and tangible basis, not as hitherto upon the most distant, undetermined, and cloudy foundation. Second Principle: to establish the rank of the nearest and nearer things, and of the more and less secure, before one arranges one’s life and directs it to a final end. 311. Dangerous Irritability.—Talented men who are at the same time idle will always appear somewhat irritated when one of their friends has accomplished a thorough piece of work. Their jealousy is awakened, they are ashamed of their own laziness, or rather, they fear that their active friend will now despise them even more than before. In such a mood they criticize the new achievement, and, to the utter astonishment of the author, their criticism becomes a revenge. 312. Destructions of Illusions.—Illusions are certainly expensive amusements; but the destruction of illusions is still more expensive, if looked upon as an amusement, as it undoubtedly is by some people. 313. The Monotone of the “ Sage.”—Cows sometimes have a look of wondering which stops short on the path to questioning. In the eye of the higher intelligence, on the other hand, the nil admirari is spread out like the monotony of the cloudless sky. 314. Not to be Ill too Long.—We should beware of being ill too long. The lookers-on become impatient of their customary duty of showing sympathy, because they find it too much trouble to maintain the appearance of this emotion for any length of time. Then they immediately pass to suspicion of our character, with the conclusion: “ You deserve to be ill, and we need no longer be at pains to show our sympathy.” 315. A Hint to Enthusiasts.—He who likes to be carried away, and would fain be carried on high, must beware lest he become too heavy. For instance, he must not learn much, and especially not let himself be crammed with science. Science makes men ponderous—take care, ye enthusiasts! 316. Knowledge of how to Surprise Oneself.—He who would see himself as he is, must know how to surprise himself, torch in hand. For with the mind it is as with the body: whoever is accustomed to look at himself in the glass forgets is ugliness, and only recognizes it again by means of the portrait-painter. Yet he even grows used to the picture and forgets his ugliness all over again.—Herein we see the universal law that man cannot endure unalterable ugliness, unless for a moment. He forgets or denies it in all cases.—The moralists must reckon upon that “ moment” for ringing forward their truths. 317. Opinions and Fish.—We are possessors of our pinions as of fish—that is, in so far as we are possessors of a fish pond. We must go fishing and have luck—then we have our fish, our opinions. I speak here of live opinions, of live fish. Others are intent to possess a cabinet of fossils—and, in their read, “ convictions.” 318. Signs of Freedom and Servitude.—To satisfy one’s needs so far as possible oneself, even imperfectly, is the path towards freedom in mind and personality. To satisfy many even superfluous seeds, and that as fully as possible, is a training for servitude. The Sophist Hippias, who himself turned and made all that he wore within and without, is the representative of the highest freedom of mind and personality. It does not matter whether all is done equally well and perfectly—pride can repair the damaged places. 319. Belief in Oneself.—In our times we mistrust everyone who believes in himself. Formerly this was enough to make people believe in one. The recipe for finding faith now runs: “ Spare not thyself! In order to set thy opinion in a credible light, thou must first set fire to thy own hut!” 320. At Once Richer and Poorer.—I know a man who accustomed himself even in childhood to think well of the intellectuality of mankind—in other words, of their real devotion as regards things of the intellect, their unselfish preference for that which is recognized as true—but who had at the same time a modest or even depreciatory view of his own brain (judgment, memory, presence of mind, imagination). He set no value on himself when he compared himself with others. Now in the course of years he was compelled, first once and then in a hundred ways, to revise this verdict. One would have thought he would be thoroughly satisfied and delighted. Such, in fact, was to some extent the case, but, as he once said, “ Yet a bitterness of the deepest dye is mingled with my feeling, such as I did not know in earlier life; for since I learnt to value men and myself more correctly, my intellect seems to me of less use. I scarcely think I can now do any good at all with it, because the minds of others cannot understand the good. I now always see before me the frightful gulf between those who could give help and those who need help. So I am troubled by the misfortune of having my intellect to myself and of being forced to enjoy it alone so far as it can give any enjoyment. But to give is more blessed than to possess, and what is the richest man in the solitude of a desert?” [28] [28] Clearly autobiographical. Nietzsche, like all great men, passed through a period of modesty and doubt.—Tr. 321.
How we should attack.—The reasons for which men believe or do not believe are in very few people as strong as they might be. As a rule, in order to shake a belief it is far from necessary to use the heaviest weapon of attack. Many attain their object by merely making the attack with some noise—in fact, pop-guns are often enough. In dealing with very vain persons, the semblance of a strong attack is enough. They think they are being taken quite seriously, and readily give way. 322. Death.—Through the certain prospect of death a precious, fragrant drop of frivolity might be mixed with every life—and now, you singular druggist-souls, you have made of death a drop of poison, unpleasant to taste, which makes the whole of life hideous. 323. Repentance.—Never allow repentance free play, but say at once to yourself, “ That would be adding a second piece of folly to the first.” If you have worked evil, you must bethink yourself of doing good. If you are punished for your actions, submit to the punishment with the feeling that by this very submission you are somehow doing good, in that you are deterring others from falling into the same error. Every malefactor who is punished has a right to consider himself a benefactor to mankind. 324. Becoming a Thinker.—How can anyone become a thinker if he does not spend at least a third part of the day without passions, men, and books? 325. The Best Remedy.—A little health on and off is the best remedy for the invalid. 326. Don’t Touch.—There are dreadful people who, instead of solving a problem, complicate it for those who deal with it and make it harder to solve. [29] Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be entreated not to hit the nail at all. [29] Nietzsche here alludes to his own countrymen.—Tr. 327. Forgetting Nature.—We speak of Nature, and, in doing so, forget ourselves: we ourselves are Nature, quand même.—Consequently, Nature is something quite different from what we feel on hearing her name pronounced. 328. Profundity and Ennui.—In the case of profound men, as of deep wells, it takes a long time before anything that is thrown into them reaches the bottom. The spectators, who generally do not wait long enough, too readily look upon such aman as callous and hard—or even as boring. 329. When it is Time to Vow Fidelity to Oneself.—We sometimes go astray in an intellectual direction which does not correspond to our talents. For a time we struggle heroically against wind and tide, really against ourselves; but finally we become weary and we pant. What we accomplish gives us no real pleasure, since we think that we have paid too heavy a price for these successes. We even despair of our productivity, of our future, perhaps in the midst of victory.—Finally, finally we turn back—and then the wind swells our sails and bears us into our smooth water. What bliss! How certain of victory we feel! Only now do we know what we are and what we intend, and now we vow fidelity to ourselves, and have a right to do so—as men that know. 330. Weather Prophets.—Just as the clouds reveal to us the direction of the wind high above our heads, so the lightest and freest spirits give signs of future weather by their course. The wind in the valley and the market-place opinions of to-day have no significance for the future, but only for the past. 331. Continual Acceleration.—Those who begin slowly and find it hard to become familiar with a subject, sometimes acquire afterwards the quality of continual acceleration—so that in the end no one knows where the current will take them. 332. The Three Good Things.—Greatness, calm, sunlight—these three embrace all that a thinker desires and also demands of himself: his hopes and duties, his claims in the intellectual and moral sphere, nay even in his daily manner of life and the scenic background of his residence. Corresponding to these three things are, firstly thoughts that exalt, secondly thoughts that soothe, and thirdly thoughts that illuminate—but, fourthly, thoughts that share in all these three qualities, in which all earthly things are transfigured. This is the kingdom of the great trinity of joy. 333. Dying for “ Truth.”—We should not let ourselves be burnt for our opinions—we are not so certain of them as all that. But we might let ourselves be burnt for the right of possessing and changing our opinions. 334. Market Value.—If we wish to pass exactly for what we are, we must be something that has its market value. As, however, only objects in common use have a market value, this
desire is the consequence either of shrewd modesty or of stupid immodesty. 335. Moral for Builders.—We must remove the scaffolding when the house has been built. 336. Sophocleanism.—Who poured more water into wine than the Greeks? Sobriety and grace combined—that was the aristocratic privilege of the Athenian in the time of Sophocles and after. Imitate that whoever can! In life and in work! 337. Heroism.—The heroic consists in doing something great (or in nobly not doing something) without feeling oneself to be in competition with or before others. The hero carries with him, wherever he goes, the wilderness and the holy land with inviolable precincts. 338. Finding our “ Double” in Nature.—In some country places we rediscover ourselves, with a delightful shudder: it is the pleasantest way of finding our “ double.”—How happy must he be who has that feeling just here, in this perpetually sunny October air, in this happy elfin play of the wind from morn till eve, in this clearest of atmospheres and mildest of temperatures, in all the serious yet cheerful landscape of hill, lake, and forest on this plateau, which has encamped fearlessly next to the terrors of eternal snow: here, where Italy and Finland have joined hands, and where the home of all the silver color-tones of Nature seems to be established. How happy must he be who can say, “ True, there are many grander and finer pieces of scenery, but this is so familiar and intimate to me, related by blood, nay even more to me!” 339. Affability of the Sage.—The sage will unconsciously be affable in his intercourse with other men, as a prince would be, and will readily treat them as equals, in spite of all differences of talent, rank, and character. For this characteristic, however, so scon as people notice it, he is most heavily censured. 340. Gold.—All that is gold does not glitter. A soft sheen characterizes the most precious metal. 341. Wheel and Drag.—The wheel and the drag have different duties, but also one in common—that of hurting each other. 342. Disturbances of the Thinker.—All that interrupts the thinker in his thoughts (disturbs him, as people say) must be regarded by him calmly, as a new model who comes in by the door to offer himself to the artist. Interruptions are the ravens which bring food to the recluse. 343. Being very Clever.—Being very clever keeps men young, but they must put up with being considered, for that very reason, older than they are. For men read the handwriting of the intellect as signs of experience—that is, of having lived much and evilly, of suffering, error, and repentance. Hence, if we are very clever and show it, we appear to them older and wickeder than we are. 344. How we must Conquer.—We ought not to desire victory if we only have the prospect of overcoming our opponent by a hair’s breadth. A good victory makes the vanquished rejoice, and must have about it something divine which spares humiliation. 345. An Illusion of Superior Minds.—Superior minds find it difficult to free themselves from an illusion; for they imagine that they excite envy among the mediocre and are looked upon as exceptions. As a matter of fact, however, they are looked upon as superfluous, as something that would not be missed if it did not exist. 346. Demanded by Cleanliness.—Changing opinions is in some natures as much demanded by cleanliness as changing clothes. In the case of other natures it is only demanded by vanity. 347. Also Worthy of a Hero.—Here is a hero who did nothing but shake the tree as soon as the fruits were ripe. Do you think that too small a thing? Well, just look at the tree that he shook. 348. A Gauge for Wisdom.—The growth of wisdom may be gauged exactly by the diminution of ill-temper. 349. Expressing an Error disagreeably.—It is not to everyone’s taste to hear truth pleasantly expressed. But let no one at least believe that error will become truth if it is disagreeably
expressed. 350. The Golden Maxim.—Man has been bound with many chains, in order that he may forget to comport himself like an animal. And indeed he has become more gentle, more intellectual, more joyous, more meditative than any animal. But now he still suffers from having carried his chains so long, from having been so long without pure air and free movement—these chains, however, are, as I repeat again and again, the ponderous and significant errors of moral, religious, and metaphysical ideas. Only when the disease of chains is overcome is the first great goal reached—the separation of man from the brute. At present we stand in the midst of our work of removing the chains, and in doing so we need the strictest precautions. Only the ennobled man may be granted freedom of spirit; to him alone comes the alleviation of life and heals his wounds; he is the first who can say that he lives for the sake of joy, with no other aim; in any other mouth, his motto of “ Peace around me and goodwill towards all the most familiar things,” would be dangerous.—In this motto for single individuals he is thinking of an ancient saying, magnificent and pathetic, which applied to all, and has remained standing above all mankind, as a motto and a beacon whereby shall perish all who adorn their banner too early—the rock on which Christianity foundered. It is not even yet time, it seems, for all men to have the lot of those shepherds who saw the heavens lit up above them and heard the words: “ Peace on earth and goodwill to one another among men.”—It is still the age of the individual. AFTERWORD The Shadow From everything that you said, nothing has pleased me more than a promise: you want again to become a good neighbor to the things closest to you. This will benefit us poor shadows as well. Because, admit it, so far you have slandered us all too often. The Wanderer Slander? But why haven’t you ever defended yourselves? You were near to our ear. 63 The Shadow It seemed to us as if we were much too close to be allowed to speak of ourselves. The Wanderer Delicately! Very delicately! Oh, you shadows are “ better human beings” than we are, I see. The Shadow And, nevertheless, you call us “ obtrusive”; we understand at least one thing well: to be silent and wait — no Englishman understands it better. It is true, one very often finds us in the retinue of human beings, but nevertheless we are not servants. When human beings shun the light, we shun them: that’s the extent of our freedom. The Wanderer Oh, the light shuns human beings even more frequently, and then you abandon us as well. The Shadow. I’ve often abandoned you with sorrow: it remains dark for man since I — being eager for knowledge — cannot always be around. As full payment for the complete understanding of man, I would probably be your slave. The Wanderer Do you know — do I know? — whether you would undergo a sudden change from slave to master? Or remain a slave, but also become disdainful of your master, and lead a life of degradation and disgust? Let’s be content with this freedom, such as you have it, you and me! Because the sight of one unfree turns my greatest joys into rancor; I would be adverse to the best if I had to share it with someone — I do not want slaves around me. Thus, I don’t even like dogs, lazy tail-wagging parasites that became “ doglike” only as servants of man and who are still praised for their faithfulness to their master and follow him in this manner. The Shadow Like his shadow, that’s what they say. Yet today — have I already followed you too easily, and for too long? The Wanderer. Oh, is it time to part? I had to give you the last blow — and I see that you became darker thereby. The Shadow. I blushed, in the color that I’m able to blush. It occurred to me that I’ve often been at your heels like a dog, and that you then — The Wanderer And couldn’t I do in all haste something to please you? Don’t you have a desire? The Shadow. Nothing, except perhaps the same desire that the philosophical “ dog” had of the great Alexander: move a little out of the sun, it’s getting too cold for me. The Wanderer What am I to do? The Shadow Step under these spruces and look out at the mountains; the sun is sinking. The Wanderer — Where are you? Where are you? The End
THE DAWN OF DAY Translated by J.M. Kennedy PREFACE IN this book we find a ” subterrestrial ” at work, digging mining, undermining. You can see him, always provided that you have eyes for such deep work, -how he makes his way slowly, cautiously, gently but surely, without showing signs of the weariness that usually accompanies a long privation of light and air. He might even be called happy, despite his labours in the dark. Does it not seem as if some faith were leading him on, some solace recompensing him for his toil ? Or that he himself desires a long period of darkness, an unintelligible, hidden, enigmatic something, knowing as he does that he will in time have his own morning, his own redemption, his own rosy dawn ? Yes, verily he will return :
ask him not what he seeks in the depths ; for he himself will tell you, this apparent Trophonius and subterrestrial, whenever he once again becomes man. One easily unlearns how to hold one’s tongue when one has for so long been a mole, and all alone, like him. Indeed, my indulgent friends, I will tell you here, in this late preface, which might easily have become an obituary or a funeral oration what I sought in the depths below: for I have come back, and I have escaped. Think not that I will urge you to run the same perilous risk ! or that I will urge you on even to the same solitude ! For whoever proceeds on his own path meets nobody : that is the feature of one’s “ own path.” ”” No “ one comes to Kelp him in his task : he must face everything quite alone danger, bad luck, wickedness, foul weather - He goes his own way ; and, as is only right, meets with bitterness and occasional irritation because he pursues this “ own way” of his : for instance, the knowledge that not even his friends can guess who he is and whither he is going, and that they ask themselves now and then : ” Well ? Is he really moving at all? Has he still a “ path” before him ? ” At that time I had undertaken something which could not have been done by everybody : I went down into the deepest depths ; I tunnelled to the very bottom ; I started to investigate and unearth an old faith which for thousands of years we philosophers used to build on as the safest of all foundations which we built on again and again although every previous structure fell in : I began to undermine our faith in morals. But you do not understand me? So far it is on Good and Evil that we have meditated least profoundly: this was always too dangerous a subject. Conscience, a good reputation, hell, and at times even the police, have not allowed and do not allow of impartiality ; in the presence of morality, as before alt authority, we must not even think, much less speak : here we must obey ! Ever since the beginning of the world, no authority has permitted itself to be made the subject of criticism ; and to criticise morals to look upon morality as a problem, as problematic what ! was that not is that not immoral ? But morality has at its disposal not only every means of intimidation wherewith to keep itself free from critical hands and instruments of torture: its security lies rather in a certain art of enchantment, in which it is a past master it knows how to “ enrapture.” It can often paralyse the critical will with a single look, or even seduce it to itself: yes, there are even cases where morality can turn the critical will against itself ; so that then, like the scorpion, it thrusts the sting into its own body. Morality has for ages been an expert in all kinds of devilry in the art of convincing : even at the present day there is no orator who would not turn to it for assistance (only listen to our anarchists, for instance: how morally they speak when they would gladly convince ! In the end they even call themselves “ the good and the just”). Morality has shown herself to be the greatest mistress of seduction ever since men began to discourse and persuade on earth and, what concerns us philosophers even more, she is the veritable Circe of the philosophers. Why is it that, from Plato onwards, all the philosophic architects in Europe have built in vain ? that everything which they themselves honestly believed to be aere perennius threatens to subside or is already laid in ruins? Oh, how wrong is the answer which, even in our own day, rolls glibly off the tongue when this question is asked : ” Because they have all neglected the prerequisite, the examination of the foundation, a critique of all reason ” that fatal answer made by Kant, who has certainly not thereby attracted us modern philosophers to firmer and less treacherous ground ! (and, one may ask apropos of this, was it not rather strange to demand that an instrument should criticise its own value and effectiveness? that the intellect itself should ” recognise ” its own worth, power, and limits ? was it not even just a little ridiculous ?) The right answer would rather have been, that all philosophers, including Kant himself, were building under the seductive influence of morality that they aimed at certainty and “ truth” only in appearance; but that in reality their attention was directed towards ” majestic moral edifices? to use once more Kant’s innocent mode of expression, who deems it his ” less brilliant, but not undeserving ” task and work ” to level the ground and prepare a solid foundation for the erection A of those majestic moral edifices ” (Critique of Pure Reason, il 257). Alas! He did not succeed in his aim, quite the contrary as we must acknowledge to-day. With this exalted aim, Kant was merely a true son of his century, which more than any other may justly be called the century of exaltation: and this he fortunately continued to be in respect to the more valuable side of this century (with that solid piece of sensuality, for example, which he introduced into his theory of knowledge). He, too, had been bitten by the moral tarantula, Rousseau ; he, too, felt weighing on his soul that moral fanaticism of which another disciple of Rousseau’s, Robespierre, felt and proclaimed himself to be the executor : de fonder sur la terre {empire de la sagesse, de la justice et de la vertu. (Speech of June 4th, 1794.) On the other hand, with such a French fanaticism in his heart, no one could have cultivated it in a less French, more deep, more thorough and more German manner if the word German is still permissible in this sense than Kant did : in order to make room for his ” moral kingdom,” he found himself compelled to add to it an indemonstrable world, a logical ” beyond ” that was why he required his critique of pure reason ! In other words, he would not have wanted it, if he had not deemed one thing to be more important than all the others : to render his moral kingdom unassailable by or, better still, invisible to, reason, for he felt too strongly the vulnerability of a moral order of things in the face of reason. For, when confronted with nature and history, when confronted with the ingrained immorality of nature and history, Kant was, like all good Germans from the earliest times, a pessimist : he believed in morality, not because it is demonstrated through nature and history, but despite its being steadily contradicted by them. To understand this “ despite” we should perhaps recall a somewhat similar trait in Luther, that other great pessimist, who once urged it upon his friends with true Lutheran audacity : ” If we could conceive by reason alone how that God who shows so much wrath and malignity could be merciful and just what use should we have for faith ? w For, from the earliest times, nothing has ever made a deeper impression upon the German soul, nothing has ever ” tempted ” it more, than that deduction, the most dangerous of all, which for every true Latin is a sin against the intellect : credo quia absurdum est. With it German logic enters for the first time into the history of Christian dogma ; but even to-day, a thousand years later, we Germans of the present, late Germans in every way, catch the scent of truth, a possibility of truth, at the back of the famous fundamental principle of dialectics with which Hegel secured the victory of the German spirit over Europe ” contradiction moves the world ; all things contradict themselves.” We are pessimists even in logic. But logical judgments are not the deepest and most fundamental to which the daring of our suspicion descends : the confidence in reason which is inseparable from the validity of these judgments, is, as confidence, a moral phenomenon … perhaps German pessimism has yet to take its last step ? Perhaps it has once more to draw up its ” credo ” opposite its
“ absurdum” in a terrible manner? And if this book is pessimistic even in regard to morals, even above the confidence in morals should it not be a German book for that very reason ? For, in fact, it represents a contradiction, and one which it does not fear : in it confidence in morals is retracted but why ? Out of morality. Or how shall we call that which takes place in it in us ? for our taste inclines to the employment of more modest phrases. But there is no doubt that to us likewise there speaks a ” you shall ” ; we likewise obey a strict law which is set above us and this is the last cry of morals which is still audible to us, which we too must live : here, if anywhere, are we still men of conscience because, to put the matter in plain words, we will not return to that which we look upon as decayed, outlived, and superseded, we will not return to something ” unworthy of belief,” whether it be called God, virtue, truth, justice, love of one’s neighbour, or what not ; we will not permit ourselves to open up a lying path to old ideals ; we are thoroughly and unalterably opposed to anything that would intercede and mingle with us ; opposed to all forms of present-day faith and Christianity ; opposed to the lukewarmness of all romanticism and fatherlandism ; opposed also to the artistic sense of enjoyment and lack of principle which would gladly make us worship where we no longer believe for we are artists opposed, in short, to all this European feminism (or idealism, if this term be thought preferable) which everlastingly ” draws upward,” and which in consequence everlastingly ” lowers” and ” degrades.” You, being men of this conscience, we feel that we are related to that German uprightness and piety which dates back thousands of years, although we immoralists and atheists may be the late and uncertain offspring of these virtues yet, we even consider ourselves, in a certain respect, as their heirs, the executors of their inmost will: a pessimistic will, as I have already pointed out, which is not afraid to deny itself, because it denies itself with joy ! In us is consummated, if you desire a formula the autosuppression of morals. But, after all, why must we proclaim so loudly and with such intensity what we are, what we want, and what we do not want ? Let us look at this more calmly and wisely ; from a higher and more distant point of view. Let us proclaim it, as if among ourselves, in so low a tone that all the world fails to hear it and us ! Above all, however, let us say it slowly… . This preface comes late, but not too late : what, after all, do five or six years matter ? Such a book, and such a problem, are in no hurry ; besides, we are friends of the lento, I and my book. I have not been a philologist in vain perhaps I am one yet : a teacher of slow reading. I even come to write slowly. At present it is not only my habit, but even my taste a perverted taste, maybe to write nothing but what will drive to despair everyone who is ” in a hurry.” For philology is that venerable art which exacts from its followers one thing above all to step to one side, to leave themselves spare moments, to grow silent, to become slow the leisurely art of the goldsmith applied to language : an art which must carry out slow, fine work, and attains nothing if not lento. For this very reason philology is now more desirable than ever before ; for this very reason it is the highest attraction and incitement in an age of ” work ” : that is to say, of haste, of unseemly and immoderate hurry-skurry, which is intent upon ” getting things done ” at once, even every book, whether old or new. Philology itself, perhaps, will not “ get things done” so hurriedly : it teaches how to read well: i.e. slowly, profoundly, attentively, prudently, with inner thoughts, with the mental doors ajar, with delicate fingers and eyes … my patient friends, this book appeals only to perfect readers and philologists : learn to read me well ! RUTA, NEAR GENOA, Autumn 1886 BOOK I 1 SUBSEQUENT JUDGMENT. All things that endure for a long time are little by little so greatly permeated by reason that their origin in unreason becomes improbable. Does not almost every exact statement of an origin strike us as paradoxical and sacrilegious ? Indeed, does not the true historian constantly contradict ? 2 PREJUDICE OF THE LEARNED. Savants are quite correct in maintaining the proposition that men in all ages believed that they knew what was good and evil, praiseworthy and blamable. But it is a prejudice of the learned to say that we now know it better than any other age. 3 A TIME FOR EVERYTHING. When man assigned a sex to all things, he did not believe that he was merely playing ; but he thought, on the contrary, that he had acquired a profound insight : it was only at a much later period, and then only partly, that he acknowledged the enormity of his error. In the same way, man has attributed a moral relationship to everything that exists, throwing the cloak of ethical significance over the world’s shoulders. One day all that will be of just as much value, and no more, as the amount of belief existing to-day in the masculinity or femininity of the sun. 4 AGAINST THE FANCIFUL DISHARMONY OF THE SPHERES. We must once more sweep out of the world all this false grandeur, for it is contrary to the justice that all things about us may claim. And for this reason we must not see or wish the world to be more disharmonic than it is ! 5 BE THANKFUL ! The most important result of the past efforts of humanity is that we need no longer go about in continual fear of wild beasts, barbarians, gods, and our own dreams. 6 THE JUGGLER AND HIS COUNTERPART. That which is wonderful in science is contrary to that which is wonderful in the art of the juggler. For the latter would wish to make us believe that we see a very simple causality, where, in reality, an exceedingly complex causality is in operation. Science, on the other hand, forces us to give up our belief in the simple causality exactly where everything looks so easily comprehensible and we are merely the victims of appearances. The simplest things are very “ complicated” we can never
be sufficiently astonished at them ! 7 RECONCEIVING OUR FEELING OF SPACE. Is it real or imaginary things which have built up the greater proportion of man’s happiness? It is certain, at all events, that the extent of the distance between the highest point of happiness and the lowest point of unhappiness has been established only with the help of imaginary things. As a consequence, this kind of a conception of space is always, under the influence of science, becoming smaller and smaller : in the same way as science has taught us, and is still teaching us, to look upon the earth as small yet, to look upon the entire solar system as a mere point. 8 TRANSFIGURATION. Perplexed sufferers, confused dreamers, the hysterically ecstatic here we have the three classes into which Raphael divided mankind. We no longer consider the world in this light and Raphael himself dare not do so : his own eyes would show him a new transfiguration. 9 CONCEPTION OF THE MORALITY OF CUSTOM. In comparison with the mode of life which prevailed among men for thousands of years, we men of the present day are living in a very immoral age : the power of custom has been weakened to a remarkable degree, and the sense of morality is so refined and elevated that we might almost describe it as volatilised. That is why we late comers experience such difficulty in obtaining a fundamental conception of the origin of morality : and even if we do obtain it, our words of explanation stick in our throats, so coarse would they sound if we uttered them ! or to so great an extent would they seem to be a slander upon morality! Thus, for example, the fundamental clause : morality is nothing else (and, above all, nothing more) than obedience to customs, of whatsoever nature they may be. But customs are simply the traditional way of acting, and valuing. Where there is no tradition there is no morality ; and the less life is governed by tradition, the narrower the circle of morality. The free man is immoral, because it is his will to depend upon himself and not upon tradition : in all the primitive states of humanity ” evil ” is equivalent to ” individual,” “ free,” “ arbitrary,” “ unaccustomed” “ unforeseen,” “ incalculable.” In such primitive conditions, always measured by this standard, any action performed not because tradition commands it, but for other reasons (eg. on account of its individual utility), even for the same reasons as had been formerly established by custom is termed immoral, and is felt to be so even by the very man who performs it, for it has not been done out of obedience to the tradition. What is tradition ? A higher authority, which is beyond, not because it commands what is useful to us, but merely because it commands. And in what way can this feeling for tradition be distinguished from a general feeling of fear? It is the fear of a higher intelligence which commands, the fear of an incomprehensible power, of something that is more than personal there is superstition in this fear. In primitive times the domain of morality included education and hygienics, marriage, medicine, agriculture, war, speech and silence, the relationship between man and man, and between man and the gods morality required that a man should observe her prescriptions without thinking of himself as individual. Everything, therefore, was originally custom, and whoever wished to raise himself above it, had first of all to make himself a kind of lawgiver and medicine-man, a sort of demi-god in other words, he had to create customs, a dangerous and fearful thing to do I Who is the most moral man ? On the one hand, he who most frequently obeys the law : e.g. he who, like the Brahmins, carries a consciousness of the law about with him wherever he may go, and introduces it into the smallest divisions of time, continually exercising his mind in finding opportunities for obeying the law. On the other hand, he who obeys the law in the most difficult cases. The most moral man is he who makes the greatest sacrifices to morality; but what are the greatest sacrifices? In answering this question several different kinds of morality will be developed : but the distinction between the morality of the most frequent obedience and the morality of the most difficult obedience is of the greatest importance. Let us not be deceived as to the motives of that moral law which requires, as an indication of morality, obedience to custom in the most difficult cases! Self-conquest is required, not by reason of its useful consequences for the individual ; but that custom and tradition may appear to be dominant, in spite of all individual counter desires and advantages. The individual shall sacrifice himself so demands the morality of custom. On the other hand, those moralists who, like the followers of Socrates, recommend self-control and sobriety to the individual as his greatest possible advantage and the key to his greatest personal happiness, are exceptions and if we ourselves do not think so, this is simply due to our having been brought up under their influence. They all take a new path, and thereby bring down upon themselves the utmost disapproval of all the representatives of the morality of custom. They sever their connection with the community, as immoralists, and are, in the fullest sense of the word, evil ones. In the same way, every Christian who ( sought, above all things, his own salvation,” must have seemed evil to a virtuous Roman of the old school. Wherever a community exists, and consequently also a morality of custom, the feeling prevails that any punishment for the violation of a custom is inflicted, above all, on the community : this punishment is a supernatural punishment, the manifestations and limits of which are so difficult to understand, and are investigated with such superstitious fear. The community can compel any one member of it to make good, either to an individual or to the community itself, any ill consequences which may have followed upon such a member’s action. It can also call down a sort of vengeance upon the head of the individual by endeavouring to show that, as the result of his action, a storm of divine anger has burst over the community, but, above all, it regards the guilt of the individual more particularly as its own guilt, and bears the punishment of the isolated individual as its own punishment ” Morals,” they bewail in their innermost heart, ” morals have grown lax, if such deeds as these are possible.” And every individual action, every individual mode of thinking, causes dread. It is impossible to determine how much the more select, rare, and original minds must have suffered in the course of time by being considered as evil and dangerous, indeed because they even looked upon themselves as such. Under the dominating influence of the morality of custom, originality of every kind came to acquire a bad conscience ; and even now the sky of the best minds seems to be more overcast by this thought than it need be. 10
COUNTER-MOTION BETWEEN THE SENSE OF MORALITY AND THE SENSE OF CAUSALITY. As the sense of causality increases, so does the extent of the domain of morality decrease : for every time one has been able to grasp the necessary effects, and to conceive them as distinct from all incidentals and chance possibilities (post hoc), one has, at the same time, destroyed an enormous number of imaginary causalities, which had until now been believed in as the basis of morals the real world is much smaller than the world of our imagination and each time also one casts away a certain amount of one’s anxiousness and coercion, and some of our reverence for the authority of custom is lost : morality in general undergoes a diminution. He who, on the other hand, wishes to increase it must know how to prevent results from becoming controllable. 11 MORALS AND MEDICINES OF THE PEOPLE. Everyone is continuously occupied in bringing more or less influence to bear upon the morals which prevail in a community : most of the people bring forward example after example to show the alleged relationship between cause and effect ‘, guilt and punishment, thus upholding it as well founded and adding to the belief in it. A few make new observations upon the actions and their consequences, drawing conclusions from this and laying down laws ; a smaller number raise objections and allow belief in these things to become weakened. But they are all alike in the crude and unscientific manner in which they set about their work : if it is a question of objections to a law, or examples or observations of it, or of its proof, confirmation, expression or refutation, we always find the material and method entirely valueless, as valueless as the material and form of all popular medicine. Popular medicines and popular morals are closely related, and should not be considered and valued, as is still customary, in so different a way : both are most dangerous and make-believe sciences. 12 CONSEQUENCE AS SUPPLEMENT. Formerly the consequences of an action were considered, not as the result of that action, but a voluntary adjuvant i.e. on the part of God. Can a greater confusion be imagined ? Entirely different practices and means have to be brought into use for actions and effects ! 13 TOWARDS THE NEW EDUCATION OF MANKIND. Help us, all you who are well-disposed and willing to assist, lend your aid in the endeavor to do away with that conception of punishment which has swept over the whole world ! No weed more harmful than this ! It is not only to the consequences of our actions that this conception has been applied and how horrible and senseless it is to confuse cause and effect with cause and punishment ! but worse has followed : the pure accidentally of events has been robbed of its innocence by this execrable manner of interpreting the conception of punishment. Yet, they have even pushed their folly to such extremes that they would have us look upon existence itself as a punishment from which it would appear that the education of mankind had until now been confided to cranky gaolers and hangmen. 14 THE SIGNIFICATION OF MADNESS IN THE HISTORY OF MORALITY. If, despite that formidable pressure of the ” morality of custom,” under which all human communities lived thousands of years before our own era, and during our own era up to the present day (we ourselves are dwelling in the small world of exceptions, and, as it were, in an evil zone) : if, I say, in spite of all this, new and divergent ideas, valuations, and impulses have made their appearance time after time, this state of things has been brought about only with the assistance of a dreadful associate : it was insanity almost everywhere that paved the way for the new thought and cast off the spell of an old custom and superstition. Do you understand why this had to be done through insanity ? by something which is in both voice and appearance as horrifying and incalculable as the demoniac whims of wind and sea, and consequently calling for like dread and respect ? by something bearing upon it the signs of entire lack of consciousness as clearly as the convulsions and foam of the epileptic, which appeared to typify the insane person as the mask and speaking-trumpet of some divine being ? by something that inspired even the bearer of the new thought with awe and fear of himself, and that, suppressing all remorse, drove him on to become its prophet and martyr ? Well, in our own time, we continually hear the statement reiterated that genius is tinctured with madness instead of good sense. Men of earlier ages were far more inclined to believe that, wherever traces of insanity showed themselves, a certain proportion of genius and wisdom was likewise present something ” divine,” as they whispered to one another. More than this, they expressed their opinions on the point with sufficient emphasis. ” All the greatest benefits of Greece have sprung from madness,” said Plato, setting on record the opinion of the entire ancient world. Let us take a step further: all those superior men, who felt themselves irresistibly urged on to throw off the yoke of some morality or other, had no other resource if they were not really mad than to feign madness, or actually to become insane. And this holds good for innovators in every department of life, and not only in religion and politics. Even the reformer of the poetic metre was forced to justify himself by means of madness. (Thus even down to gentler ages madness remained a kind of convention in poets, of which Solon, for instance, took advantage when urging the Athenians to reconquer Salamis.) “ How can one make one’s self mad when one is not mad and dare not feign to be so ? ” Almost all the eminent men of antiquity have given themselves up to this dreadful mode of reasoning : a secret doctrine of artifices and dietetic jugglery grew up around this subject and was handed down from generation to generation, together with the feeling of the innocence, even sanctity, of such plans and meditations, The means of becoming a medicine-man among the Indians, a saint among Christians of the Middle Ages, an angecok among Greenlanders, a Pagee among Brazilians, are the same in essence: senseless fasting, continual abstention from sexual intercourse, isolation in a wilderness, ascending a mountain or a pillar, ” sitting on an aged willow that looks out upon a lake,” and thinking of absolutely nothing but what may give rise to ecstasy or mental derangements. Who would dare to glance at the desert of the bitterest and most superfluous agonies of spirit, in which probably the most productive men of all ages have pined away ? Who could listen to the sighs of those lonely and troubled minds : ” O you heavenly powers, grant me madness ! Madness, that I at length may believe in myself! Vouchsafe delirium and convulsions, sudden flashes of light and periods of darkness ; frighten me with such shivering and feverishness as no mortal ever experienced before, with clanging noises and haunting spectres ; let
me growl and whine and creep about like a beast, if only I can come to believe in myself! I am devoured by doubt. I have slain the law, and I now dread the law as a living person dreads a corpse. If I am not above the law, I am the most abandoned of wretches. Whence comes this new spirit that dwells within me but from you ? Prove to me, then, that I am one of you nothing but madness will prove it to me.” And only too often does such a fervour attain its object : at the very time when Christianity was giving the greatest proof of its fertility in the production of saints and martyrs, believing that it was thus proving itself, Jerusalem contained large lunatic asylums for shipwrecked saints, for those whose last spark of good sense had been quenched by the floods of insanity. 15 IS THE MOST ANCIENT MEANS OF SOLACE. First stage: In every misfortune or discomfort man sees something for which he must make somebody else suffer, no matter who in this way he finds out the amount of power still remaining to him ; and this consoles him. Second stage : In every misfortune or discomfort, man sees a punishment, i.e. an expiation of guilt and the means by which he may get rid of the malicious enchantment of a real or apparent wrong. When he perceives the advantage which misfortune brings with it, he believes he need no longer make another person suffer for it he gives up this kind of satisfaction, because he now has another. 16 FIRST PRINCIPLE OF CIVILISATION. Among savage tribes there is a certain category of customs which appear to aim at nothing but custom. They therefore lay down strict, and, on the whole, superfluous regulations (e.g. the rules of the Kamchadales, which forbid snow to be scraped off the boots with a knife, coal to be stuck on the point of a knife, or a piece of iron to be put into the fire and death to be the portion of everyone who shall act contrariwise !) Yet these laws serve to keep people continually reminded of the custom, and the imperative necessity on their parts to conform to it : and all this in support of the great principle which stands at the beginning of all civilisation : any custom is better than none. 17 GOODNESS AND MALIGNITY. At first men imposed their own personalities on Nature : everywhere they saw themselves and their like, i.e. their own evil and capricious temperaments, hidden, as it were, behind clouds, thunder-storms, wild beasts, trees, and plants : it was then that they declared Nature was evil. Afterwards there came a time, that of Rousseau, when they sought to distinguish themselves from Nature: they were so tired of each other that they wished to have separate little hiding-places where man and his misery could not penetrate: then they invented ” nature is good.” 18 THE MORALITY OF VOLUNTARY SUFFERING. What is the highest enjoyment for men living in a state of war in a small community, the existence of which is continually threatened, and the morality of which is the strictest possible ? i.e. for souls which are vigorous, vindictive, malicious, full of suspicion, ready to face the direst events, hardened by privation and morality ? The enjoyment of cruelty : just as, in such souls and in such circumstances, it would be regarded as a virtue to be ingenious and insatiable in cruelty. Such a community would find its delight in performing cruel deeds, casting aside, for once, the gloom of constant anxiety and precaution. Cruelty is one of the most ancient enjoyments at their festivities. As a consequence it is believed that the gods likewise are pleased by the sight of cruelty and rejoice at it and in this way the belief is spread that voluntary suffering, self-chosen martyrdom, has a high signification and value of its own. In the community custom gradually brings about a practice in conformity with this belief: henceforward people become more suspicious of all exuberant well-being, and more confident as they find themselves in a state of great pain ; they think that the gods may be unfavourable to them on account of happiness, and favourable on account of pain not compassionate ! For compassion is looked upon with contempt, and unworthy of a strong and awe-inspiring soul but agreeable to them, because the sight of human suffering put these gods into good humour and makes them feel powerful, and a cruel mind revels in the sensation of power. It was thus that the 41 most moral man ” of the community was considered as such by virtue of his frequent suffering, privation, laborious existence, and cruel mortification not, to repeat it again and again, as a means of discipline or self-control or a desire for individual happiness but as a virtue which renders the evil gods well-disposed towards the community, a virtue which continually wafts up to them the odour of an expiatory sacrifice. All those intellectual leaders of the nations who reached the point of being able to stir up the sluggish though prolific mire of their customs had to possess this factor of voluntary martyrdom as well as insanity in order to obtain belief especially, and above all, as is always the case, belief in themselves ! The more their minds followed new paths, and were consequently tormented by pricks of conscience, the more cruelly they battled against their own flesh, their own desires, and their own health as if they were offering the gods a compensation in pleasure, lest these gods should wax wroth at the neglect of ancient customs and the setting up of new aims. Let no one be too hasty in thinking that we have now entirely freed ourselves from such a logic of feeling! Let the most heroic souls among us question themselves on this very point. The least step forward in the domain of free thought and individual life has been achieved in all ages to the accompaniment of physical and intellectual tortures: and not only the mere step forward, no ! but every form of movement and, change has rendered necessary innumerable martyrs, throughout the entire course of thousands of years which sought their paths and laid down their foundation-stones, years, however, which we do not think of when we speak about “ world-history,” that ridiculously small division of mankind’s existence. And even in this so-called world-history, which in the main is merely a great deal of noise about the latest novelties, there is no more important theme than the old, old tragedy of the martyrs who tried to move the mire. Nothing has been more dearly bought than the minute portion of human reason and feeling of liberty upon which we now pride ourselves. But it is this very pride which makes it almost impossible for us to-day to be conscious .of that enormous lapse of time, preceding the period of ” world-history ” when ” morality of custom ” held the field, and to consider this lapse of time as the real and decisive epoch that established the character of mankind \ an epoch when suffering was considered as a virtue, cruelty
as a virtue, hypocrisy as a virtue, revenge as a virtue, and the denial of the reason as a virtue, whereas, on the other hand, well-being was regarded as a danger, longing for knowledge as a danger, peace as a danger, compassion as a danger : an epoch when being pitied was looked upon as an insult, work as an insult, madness as a divine attribute, and every kind of change as immoral and pregnant with ruin ! You imagine that all this has changed, and that humanity must likewise have changed its character ? Oh, you poor psychologists, learn to know yourselves better ! 19 MORALITY AND STUPEFACTION. Custom represents the experiences of men of earlier times in regard to what they considered as useful and harmful ; but the feeling of custom (morality) does not relate to these feelings as such, but to the age, the sanctity, and the unquestioned authority of the custom. Hence this feeling hinders our acquiring new experiences and amending morals : i.e. morality is opposed to the formation of new and better morals : it stupefies. 20 FREE-DOERS AND FREE-THINKERS. Compared with free-thinkers, free-doers are at a disadvantage, because it is evident that men suffer more from the consequences of actions than of thoughts. If we remember, however, that both seek their own satisfaction, and that free-thinkers have already found their satisfaction in reflection upon and utterance of forbidden things, there is no difference in the motives; but in respect of the consequences the issue will be decided against the free-thinker, provided that it be not judged from the most superficial and vulgar external appearance, >. not as everyone would judge it. We must make up for a good deal of the calumny with which men have covered all those who have, by their actions, broken away from the authority of some custom they are generally called criminals. Everyone who has until now overthrown a law of established morality has always at first been considered as a wicked man : but when it was afterwards found impossible to re-establish the law, and people gradually became accustomed to the change, the epithet was changed by slow degrees. History deals almost exclusively with these wicked men, who later on came to be recognized as good men. 21 “ FULFILLMENT OF THE LAW.” In cases where the observance of a moral precept has led to different consequence from that expected and promised, and does not bestow upon the moral man the happiness he had hoped for, but leads rather to misfortune and misery, the conscientious and timid man has always his excuse ready: “ Something was lacking in the proper carrying out of the law.” If the worst comes to the worst, a deeply-suffering and down-trodden humanity will even decree : ” It is impossible to carry out the precept faithfully : we are too weak and sinful, and, in the depths of our soul, incapable of morality : consequently we have no claim to happiness and success. Moral precepts and promises have been given for better beings than ourselves.” 22 WORKS AND FAITH. Protestant teachers are still spreading the fundamental error that faith only is of consequence, and that works must follow naturally upon faith. This doctrine is certainly not true, but it is so seductive in appearance that it has succeeded in fascinating quite other intellects than that of Luther (e.g. the minds of Socrates and Plato) : though the plain evidence and experience of our daily life prove the contrary. The most assured knowledge and faith cannot give us either the strength or the dexterity required for action, or the practice in that subtle and complicated mechanism which is a prerequisite for anything to be changed from an idea into action. Then, I say, let us first and foremost have works ! and this means practice! practice! practice! The necessary faith will come later be certain of that ! 23 IN WHAT RESPECT WE ARE MOST SUBTLE. By the fact that, for thousands of years, things (nature, tools, property of all kinds) were thought to be alive and to possess souls, and able to hinder and interfere with the designs of man, the feeling of impotence among men has become greater and more frequent than it need have been : for one had to secure one’s things like men and beasts, by means of force, compulsion, flattery, treaties, sacrifices and it is here that we may find the origin of the greater number of superstitious customs, i.e. of an important, perhaps paramount and nevertheless wasted and useless division of mankind’s activity ! But since the feeling of impotence and fear was so strong, and for such a length of time in a state of constant stimulation’, the feeling of power in man has been developed in so subtle a manner that, in this respect, he can compare favourably with the most delicately adjusted balance. This feeling has become his strongest propensity : and the means he discovered for creating it form almost the entire history of culture. 24 THE PROOF OF A PRECEPT. The worth or worthlessness of a recipe that for baking bread, for example is proved, generally speaking, by the result expected coming to pass or not, provided, of course, that the directions given have been carefully followed. The case is different, however, when we come to deal with moral precepts, for here the results cannot be ascertained, interpreted, and divined. These precepts, indeed, are based upon hypotheses of but little scientific value, the proof or refutation of which by means of results is impossible : but in former ages, when all science was crude and primitive, and when a matter was taken for granted on the smallest evidence, then the worth or worthlessness of a moral recipe was determined as we now determine any other precept : by reference to the results. If the natives of Alaska believe in a command which says : ” You shall not throw a bone into the fire or give it to a dog,” this will be proved by the warning : ” If you do you wilt have no luck when hunting.” Yet, in one sense or another, it almost invariably happens that one has ” no luck when hunting.” - It is no easy matter to refute the worth of the precept in this way, the more so as it is the community, and not the individual, which is regarded as the bearer of the punishment; and, again, some occurrence is almost certain to happen which seems to prove the rule. 25
CUSTOMS AND BEAUTY. In justice to custom it must not be overlooked that, in the case of all those who conform to it whole-heartedly from the very start, the organs of attack and defence, both physical and intellectual, begin to waste away ; i.e. these individuals gradually become more beautiful ! For it is the exercise of these organs and their corresponding spending feelings that brings about ugliness and helps to preserve it. It is for this reason that the old baboon is uglier than the young one, and that the young female baboon most closely resembles man, and is hence the most handsome. Let us draw from this our own conclusions as to the origin of female beauty ! 26 ANIMALS AND MORALS. The rules insisted upon in polite society, such, for example, as the avoidance of everything ridiculous, fantastic, presumptuous ; the suppression of one’s virtues just as much as of one’s most violent desires, the instant bringing of one’s self down to the general level, submitting one’s self to etiquette and self-depreciation : all this, generally speaking, is to be found, as a social morality, even in the lowest scale of the animal world and it is only in this low scale that we see the innermost plan of all these amiable precautionary regulations : one wishes to escape from one’s pursuers and to be aided in the search for plunder. Hence animals learn to control and to disguise themselves to such an extent that some of them can even adapt the colour of their bodies to that of their surroundings (by means of what is known as the ” chromatic function “ ). Others can simulate death, or adopt the forms and colours of other animals, or of sand, leaves, moss, or fungi (known to English naturalists as ” mimicry “ ), It is in this way that an individual conceals himself behind the universality of the generic term 11 man ” or ” society, 11 or adapts and attaches himself to princes, castes, political parties, current opinions of the time, or his surroundings : and we may easily find the animal equivalent of all those subtle means of making ourselves happy, thankful, powerful, and fascinating. Even that sense of truth, which is at bottom merely the sense of security, is possessed by man in common with the animals : we do not wish to be deceived by others or by ourselves ; we hear with some suspicion the promptings of our own passions, we control ourselves and remain on the watch against ourselves. Now, the animal does all this as well as man ; and in the animal likewise self-control originates in the sense of reality (prudence). In the same way, the animal observes the effects it exercises on the imagination of other beasts : it thus learns to view itself from their position, to consider itself ” objectively ” ; it has its own degree of self-knowledge. The animal judges the movements of its friends and foes, it learns their peculiarities by heart and acts accordingly : it gives up, once and for all, the struggle against individual animals of certain species, and it likewise recognises, in the approach of certain varieties, whether their intentions are agreeable and peaceful. The beginnings of justice, like those of wisdom in short, everything which we know as the Socratic virtues are of an animal nature: a consequence of those instincts which teach us to search for food and to avoid our enemies. If we remember that the higher man has merely raised and refined himself in the quality of his food and in the conception of what is contrary to his nature, it may not be going too far to describe the entire moral phenomenon as of an animal origin. 27 THE VALUE OF THE BELIEF IN SUPERHUMAN PASSIONS. The institution of marriage stubbornly upholds the belief that love, although a passion, is nevertheless capable of duration as such, yet, that lasting, lifelong love may be taken as a general rule: By means of the tenacity of a noble belief, in spite of such frequent and almost customary refutations thereby becoming a pia fraus marriage has elevated love to a higher rank. Every institution which has conceded to a passion the belief in the duration of the latter > and responsibility for this duration, in spite of the nature of the passion itself, has raised the passion to a higher level : and he who is thenceforth seized with such a passion does not, as formerly, think himself lowered in the estimation of others or brought into danger on that account, but on the contrary believes himself to be raised, both in the opinion of himself and of his equals. Let us recall institutions and customs which, out of the fiery devotion of a moment, have created eternal fidelity ; out of the pleasure of anger, eternal vengeance ; out of despair, eternal mourning; out of a single hasty word, eternal obligation. A great deal of hypocrisy and falsehood came into the world as the result of such transformations ; but each time, too, at the cost of such disadvantages, a new and superhuman conception which elevates mankind 28 STATE OF MIND AS ARGUMENT. Whence arise? within us a cheerful readiness for action ? such is the question which has greatly occupied the attention of men. The most ancient answer, and one which we still hear, is : God is the cause ; in this way He gives us to understand that He approves of our actions. When, in former ages people consulted the oracles, they did so that they might return home strengthened by this cheerful readiness; and everyone answered the doubts which came to him, if alternative actions suggested themselves, by saying : ” I shall do whatever brings about that feeling.” They did not decide, in other words, for what was most reasonable, but upon some plan the conception of which imbued the soul with courage and hope. A cheerful outlook was placed in the scales as an argument and proved to be heavier than reasonableness ; for the state of mind was interpreted in a superstitious manner as the action of a god who promises success ; and who, by this argument, lets his reason speak as the highest reasonableness. Now, let the consequences of such a prejudice be considered when shrewd men, thirsting for power, availed themselves of it and still do so I ” Bring about the right state of mind ! ” in this way you can do without all arguments and overcome every objection ! 29 ACTORS OF VIRTUE AND SIN. Among the ancients who became celebrated for their virtue there were many, it would seem, who acted to themselves, especially the Greeks, who, being actors by nature, must have acted quite unconsciously, seeing no reason why they should not do so. In addition, everyone was striving to outdo someone else’s virtue with his own, so why should they not have made use of every artifice to show off their virtues, especially among themselves, if only for the sake of practice ! Of what use was a virtue
which one could not display, and which did not know how to display itself! Christianity put an end to the career of these actors of virtue ; instead it devised the disgusting ostentation and parading of sins : it brought into the world a state of mendacious sinfulness (even at the present day this is considered as don ton among orthodox Christians). 30 REFINED CRUELTY AS VIRTUE. Here we have a morality which is based entirely upon our thirst for distinction do not therefore entertain too high an opinion of it ! Indeed, we may well ask what kind of an impulse it is, and what is its fundamental signification ? It is sought, by our appearance, to grieve our neighbour, to arouse his envy, and to awaken his feelings of impotence and degradation ; we endeavour to make him taste the bitterness of his fate by dropping a little of our honey on his tongue, and, while conferring this supposed benefit on him, looking sharply and triumphantly into his eyes. Behold such a man, now become humble, and perfect in his humility and seek those for whom, through his humility, he has for a long time been preparing a torture ; for you are sure to find them ! Here is another man who shows mercy towards animate, and is admired for doing so -but there are certain people on whom he wishes to vent his cruelty by this very means. Look at that great artist : the pleasure he enjoyed beforehand in conceiving the envy of the rivals he had outstripped, refused to let his powers lie dormant until he became a great man how many bitter moments in the souls of other men has he asked for as payment for his own greatness ! The nun’s chastity : with what threatening eyes she looks Into the faces of other women who live differently from her ! what a vindictive joy shines in those eyes ! The theme is short, and its variations, though they might well be innumerable, could not easily become tiresome for it is still too paradoxical a novelty, and almost a painful one, to affirm that the morality of distinction is nothing, at bottom, but joy in refined cruelty When I say ” at bottom,” I mean here, every time in the first generation. For, when the habit of some distinguished action becomes hereditary ‘, its root, so to speak, is not transmitted, but only its fruits (for only feelings, and not thoughts, can become hereditary) : and, if we presuppose that this root is not reintroduced by education, in the second generation the joy in the cruelty is no longer felt : but only pleasure in the habit as such. This joy, however, is the first degree of the ” good.” 31 PRIDE IN SPIRIT. The pride of man, which strives to oppose the theory of our own descent from animals and establishes a wide gulf between nature and man himself this pride is founded upon a prejudice as to what the mind is ; and this prejudice is relatively recent. In the long prehistorical period of humanity it was supposed that the mind was everywhere, and men did not look upon it as a particular characteristic of their own. Since, on the contrary, everything spiritual (including all impulses, maliciousness, and inclinations) was regarded as common property, and consequently accessible to everybody, primitive mankind was not ashamed of being descended from animals or trees (the noble races thought themselves honoured by such legends), and saw in the spiritual that which unites us with nature, and not that which severs us from her. Thus man was brought up in modesty and this likewise was the result of a prejudice. 32 THE BRAKE. To suffer morally, and then to learn afterwards that this kind of suffering was founded upon an error, shocks us. For there is a unique consolation in acknowledging, by our suffering, a ” deeper world of truth ” than any other world, and we would much rather suffer and feel ourselves above reality by doing so (through the feeling that, in this way, we approach nearer to that ” deeper world of truth “ ), than live without suffering and hence without this feeling of the sublime. Thus it is pride, and the habitual fashion of satisfying it, which opposes this new interpretation of morality. What power, then, must we bring into operation to get rid of this brake? Greater pride? A new pride ? 33 THE CONTEMPT OF CAUSES, CONSEQUENCES, AND REALITY. Those unfortunate occurrences which take place at times in the community, such as sudden storms, bad harvests, or plagues, lead members of the community to suspect that offences against custom have been committed, or that new customs must be invented to appease a new demoniac power and caprice. Suspicion and reasoning of this kind, however, evade an inquiry into the real and natural causes, and take the demoniac cause for granted. This is one source of the hereditary perversion of the human intellect ; and the other one follows in its train, for, proceeding on the same principle, people paid much less attention to the real and natural consequences of an action than to the supernatural consequences (the so-called punishments and mercies of the Divinity). It is commanded, for instance, that certain baths are to be taken at certain times : and the baths are taken, not for the sake of cleanliness, but because the command has been made. We are not taught to avoid the real consequences of dirt, but merely the supposed displeasure of the gods because a bath has been omitted. Under the pressure of superstitious fear, people began to suspect that these ablutions were of much greater importance than they seemed; they ascribed inner and supplementary meanings to them, gradually lost their sense of and pleasure in reality, and finally reality is considered as valuable only to the extent that it is a symbol. Hence a man who is under the influence of the morality of custom comes to despise causes first of all, secondly consequences, and thirdly reality, and weaves all his higher feelings (reverence, sublimity, pride, gratitude, love) into an imaginary world \ the so-called higher world. And even to-day we can see the consequences of this : wherever, and in whatever fashion, man’s feelings are raised, that imaginary world is in evidence. It is sad to have to say it ; but for the time being all higher sentiments must be looked upon with suspicion by the man of science, to so great an extent are they intermingled with illusion and extravagance. Not that they need necessarily be suspected per se and forever ; but there is no doubt that, of all the gradual purifications which await humanity, the purification of the higher feelings will be one of the slowest. 34 MORAL FEELINGS AND CONCEPTIONS. It is clear that moral feelings are transmitted in such a way that children perceive in adults violent predilections and aversions for certain actions, and then, like born apes, imitate such likes and dislikes. Later on in life, when they are thoroughly permeated by these acquired and well-practised feelings, they think
it a matter of propriety and decorum to provide a kind of justification for these predilections and aversions. These ” justifications,” however, are in no way connected with the origin or the degree of the feeling : people simply accommodate themselves to the rule that, as rational beings, they must give reasons for their pros and cons, reasons which must be assignable and acceptable into the bargain. Up to this extent the history of the moral feelings is entirely different from the history of moral conceptions. The first-mentioned are powerful before the action, and the latter especially after it, in view of the necessity for making one’s self clear in regard to them. 35 FEELINGS AND THEIR DESCENT FROM JUDGMENTS. ” Trust in your feelings ! ” But feelings comprise nothing final, original ; feelings are based upon the judgments and valuations which are transmitted to us in the shape of feelings (inclinations, dislikes). The inspiration which springs from a feeling is the grandchild of a judgment often an erroneous judgment ! and certainly not one’s own judgment ! Trusting in our feelings simply means obeying our grandfather and grandmother more than the gods within our selves \ our reason and experience. 36 A FOOLISH PIETY, WITH A CONCEALED PURPOSE. What! the inventors of ancient civilisations, the first makers of tools and tape lines, the first builders of vehicles, ships, and houses, the first observers of the laws of the heavens and the multiplication tables is it contended that they were entirely different from the inventors and observers of our own time, and superior to them ? And that the first slow steps forward were of a value which has not been equalled by the discoveries we have made with all our travels and circumnavigations of the earth? It is the voice of prejudice that speaks thus, and argues in this way to depreciate the importance of the modern mind. And yet it is plain to be seen that, in former times, hazard was the greatest of all discoverers and observers and the benevolent prompter of these ingenious ancients, and that, in the case of the most insignificant invention now made, a greater intellect, discipline, and scientific imagination are required than formerly existed throughout long ages. 37 WRONG CONCLUSIONS FROM USEFULNESS. When we have demonstrated the highest utility of a thing, we have nevertheless made no progress towards an explanation of its origin ; in other words, we can never explain, by mere utility, the necessity of existence. But precisely the contrary opinion has been maintained up to the present time, even in the domain of the most exact science. In astronomy, for example, have we not heard it stated that the (supposed) usefulness of the system of satellites (replacing the light which is diminished in intensity by the greater distance of the sun, in order that the inhabitants of the various celestial bodies should not want for light) was the final object of this system and explained its origin ? Which may remind us of the conclusions of Christopher Colombus: The earth has been created for man, ergo, if there are countries, they must be inhabited. ” Is it probable that the sun would throw his rays on nothing, and that the nocturnal vigils of the stars should be wasted upon untravelled seas and unpeopled countries ? ” 38 IMPULSES TRANSFORMED BY MORAL JUDGMENTS. The same impulse, under the impression of the blame cast upon it by custom, develops into the painful feeling of cowardice, or else the pleasurable feeling of humility ‘, in case a morality, like that of Christianity, has taken it to its heart and called it good. In other words, this instinct will fall under the influence of either a good conscience or a bad one ! In itself, like every instinct, it does not possess either this or indeed any other moral character and name, or even a definite accompanying feeling of pleasure or displeasure ; it does not acquire all these qualities as its second nature until it comes into contact with impulses which have already been baptized as good and evil, or has been recognised as the attribute of beings already weighed and valued by the people from a moral point of view. Thus the ancient conception of envy differed entirely from ours. Hesiod reckons it among the qualities of the good> benevolent Eris, and it was not considered as offensive to attribute some kind of envy even to the gods. This is easy to understand in a state of things inspired mainly by emulation, but emulation was looked upon as good, and valued accordingly. The Greeks were likewise different from us in the value they set upon hope : they conceived it as blind and deceitful. Hesiod in one of his poems has made a strong reference to it a reference so strong, indeed, that no modern commentator has quite understood it ; for it runs contrary to the modern mind, which has learnt from Christianity to look upon hope as a virtue. Among the Greeks, on the other hand, the portal leading to a knowledge of the future seemed only partly closed, and, in innumerable instances, it was impressed upon them as a religious obligation to inquire into the future, in those cases where we remain satisfied with hope. It thus came about that the Greeks, thanks to their oracles and seers, held hope in small esteem, and even lowered it to the level of an evil and a danger. The Jews, again, took a different view of anger from that held by us, and sanctified it : hence they have placed the sombre majesty of the wrathful man at an elevation so high that a European cannot conceive it. They moulded their wrathful and holy Jehovah after the images of their wrathful and holy prophets. Compared with them, all the Europeans who have exhibited the greatest wrath are, so to speak, only second-hand creatures. 39 THE PREJUDICE CONCERNING ” PURE SPIRIT.” Wherever the doctrine of pure spirituality has prevailed, its excesses have resulted in the destruction of the tone of the nerves : it taught that the body should be despised, neglected, or tormented, and that, on account of his impulses, man himself should be tortured and regarded with contempt. It gave rise to gloomy, strained, and downcast souls who, besides, thought they knew the reason of their misery and how it might possibly be relieved ! ” It must be in the body ! For it still thrives too well!” such was their conclusion, while the fact was that the body, through its agonies, protested time after time against this never-ending mockery. Finally, a universal and chronic hyper-nervousness seized upon those virtuous representatives of the pure spirit: they learned to recognise joy only in the shape of ecstasies and other preliminary symptoms of insanity and their system reached its climax when it came to look upon ecstasy as the highest aim of life, and as the standard by which all earthly things must be
condemned 40 MEDITATIONS UPON OBSERVANCES. Numerous moral precepts, carelessly drawn from a single event, quickly became incomprehensible ; it was as difficult a matter to deduce their intentions with any degree of certainty as it was to recognise the punishment which was to follow the breaking of the rule. Doubts were even held regarding the order of the ceremonies ; but, while people guessed at random about such matters, the object of their investigations increased in importance, it was precisely the greatest absurdity of an observance that developed into a holy of holies. Let us not think too little of the energy wasted by man in this regard throughout thousands of years, and least of all of the effects of such meditations upon observances ! Here we find ourselves on the wide training-ground of the intellect not only do religions develop and continue to increase within its boundaries : but here also is the venerable, though dreadful, primeval world of science; here grow up the poet, the thinker, the physician, the lawgiver. The dread of the unintelligible, which, in an ambiguous fashion, demanded ceremonies from us, gradually assumed the charm of the intricate, and where man could not unravel he learnt to create. 41 TO DETERMINE THE VALUE OF THE VlTA CONTEMPLATiVA. Let us not forget, as men leading a contemplative life, what kind of evil and misfortunes have overtaken the men of the vita activa as the result of contemplation in short, what sort of contra-account the vita activa has to offer us, if we exhibit too much boastfulness before it with respect to our good deeds. It would show us, in the first place, those so-called religious natures, who predominate among the lovers of contemplation and consequently represent their commonest type. They have at all times acted in such a manner as to render life difficult to practical men, and tried to make them disgusted with it, if possible : to darken the sky, to obliterate the sun, to cast suspicion upon joy, to depreciate hope, to paralyse the active hand all this they knew how to do, just as, for miserable times and feelings, they had their consolations, alms, blessings, and benedictions. In the second place, it can show us the artists, a species of men leading the vita contemplativa, rarer than the religious element, but still often to be met with. As beings, these people are usually intolerable, capricious, jealous, violent, quarrelsome: this, however, must be deduced from the joyous and exalting effects of their works. Thirdly, we have the philosophers, men who unite religious and artistic qualities, combined, however, with a third element, namely, dialectics and the love of controversy. They are the authors of evil in the same sense as the religious men and artists, in addition to which they have wearied many of their fellow-men with their passion for dialectics, though their number has always been very small. Fourthly, the thinkers and scientific workers. They but rarely strove after effects, and contented themselves with silently sticking to their own groove. Thus they brought about little envy and discomfort, and often, as objects of mockery and derision, they served, without wishing to do so, to make life easier for the men of the vita activa. Lastly, science ended by becoming of much advantage to all ; and if, on account of this utility ‘, many of the men who were destined for the vita activa are now slowly making their way along the road to science in the sweat of their brow, and not without brain-racking and maledictions, this is not the fault of the crowd of thinkers and scientific workers : it is ” self- wrought pain.” 42 ORIGIN OF THE VITA CONTEMPLATIVA. During barbarous ages, when pessimistic judgments held sway over men and the world, the individual, in the consciousness of his full power, always endeavoured to act in conformity with such judgments, that is to say, he put his ideas into action by means of hunting, robbery, surprise attacks, brutality, and murder : including the weaker forms of such acts, as far as they are tolerated within the community. When his strength declines, however, and he feels tired, ill, melancholy, or satiated consequently becoming temporarily void of wishes or desires he is a relatively better man, that is to say, less dangerous ; and his pessimistic ideas will now discharge themselves only in words and reflections upon his companions, for example, or his wife, his life, his gods, his judgments will be evil ones. In this frame of mind he develops into a thinker and prophet, or he adds to his superstitions and invents new observances, or mocks his enemies. Whatever he may devise, however, all the productions of his brain will necessarily reflect his frame of mind, such as the increase of fear and weariness, and the lower value he attributes to action and enjoyment. The substance of these productions must correspond to the substance of these poetic, thoughtful, and priestly moods ; the evil judgment must be supreme. In later years, all those who acted continuously as this man did in those special circumstances i.e. those who gave out pessimistic judgments, and lived a melancholy life, poor in action were called poets, thinkers, priests, or ” medicine-men.” The general body of men would have liked to disregard such people, because they were not active enough, and to turn them out of the community ; but there was a certain risk in doing so : these inactive men had found out and were following the tracks of superstition and divine power, and no one doubted that they had unknown means of power at their disposal. This was the value which was set upon the ancient race of contemplative natures despised as they were in just the same degree as they were not dreaded ! In such a masked form, in such an ambiguous aspect, with an evil heart and often with a troubled head, did Contemplation make its first appearance on earth : both weak and terrible at the same time, despised in secret, and covered in public with every mark of superstitious veneration. Here, as always, we must say : pudenda origo ! 43 HOW MANY FORCES MUST NOW BE UNITED IN A THINKER. To rise superior to considerations of the senses, to raise one’s self to abstract contemplations : this is what was formerly regarded as elevation ; but now it is not practicable for us to share the same feelings. Luxuriating in the most shadowy images of words and things ; playing with those invisible, inaudible, imperceptible beings, was considered as existence in another and higher world, a world that sprang from the deep contempt felt for the world which was perceptible to the senses, this seductive and wicked world of ours. ” These abstracta no longer mislead us, but they may lead us” with such words men soared aloft. It was not the substance of these intellectual sports, but the sports themselves, which was looked upon as “ the higher thing” in the primeval ages of science. Hence we have Plato’s admiration for
dialectics, and his enthusiastic belief in the necessary relationship of dialectics to the good man who has risen superior to the considerations of his senses. It was not only knowledge that was discovered little by little, but also the different means of acquiring it, the conditions and operations which precede knowledge in man. And it always seemed as if the newlydiscovered operation or the newly-experienced condition were not a means of acquiring knowledge, but was even the substance, goal, and sum-total of everything that was worth knowing. What does the thinker require? imagination, inspiration, abstraction, spirituality, invention, presentiment, induction, dialectics, deduction, criticism, ability to collect materials, an impersonal mode of thinking, contemplation, comprehensiveness, and lastly, but not least, justice, and love for everything that exists but each one of these means was at one time considered, in the history of the vita contemplativa, as a goal and final purpose, and they all secured for their inventors that perfect happiness which fills the human soul when its final purpose dawns upon it. 44 ORIGIN AND MEANING. Why does this thought come into my mind again and again, always in more and more vivid colours ? that, in former times, investigators, in the course of their search for the origin of things, always thought that they found something which would be of the highest importance for all kinds of action and judgment : indeed, that they even invariably postulated that the salvation of mankind depended upon insight into the origin of things whereas now, on the other hand, the more we examine into origins, the less do they concern our interests: on the contrary, all the valuations and interestedness which we have placed upon things begin to lose their meaning, the more we retrogress where knowledge is concerned and approach the things themselves. The origin becomes of less significance in proportion as we acquire insight into it ; while things nearest to ourselves, around and within us, gradually begin to manifest their wealth of colours, beauties, enigmas, and diversity of meaning, of which earlier humanity never dreamed. In former ages thinkers used to move furiously about, like wild animals in cages, steadily glaring at the bars which hemmed them in, and at times springing up against them in a vain endeavour to break through them : and happy indeed was he who could look through a gap to the outer world and could fancy that he saw something of what lay beyond and afar off. 45 A TRAGIC TERMINATION TO KNOWLEDGE. Of all the means of exaltation, human sacrifices have at times done most to elevate man. And perhaps the one powerful thought the idea of self-sacrificing humanity might be made to prevail over every other aspiration, and thus to prove the victor over even the most victorious. But to whom should the sacrifice be made? We may already swear that, if ever the constellation of such an idea appeared on the horizon, the knowledge of truth would remain the single but enormous object with which a sacrifice of such a nature would be commensurate because no sacrifice is too great for it. In the meantime the problem has never been expounded as to how far humanity, considered as a whole, could take steps to encourage the advancement of knowledge ; and even less as to what thirst for knowledge could impel humanity to the point of sacrificing itself with the light of an anticipated wisdom in its eyes. When, perhaps, with a view to the advancement of knowledge, we are able to enter into communication with the inhabitants of other stars, and when, during thousands of years, wisdom will have been carried from star to star, the enthusiasm of knowledge may rise to such a dizzy height ! 46 DOUBT IN DOUBT. ” What a good pillow doubt is for a well-balanced head!” This saying of Montaigne always made Pascal angry, for nobody ever wanted a good pillow so much as he did. Whatever was the matter with him ? 47 WORDS BLOCK UP OUR PATH. Wherever primitive men put down a word, they thought they had made a discovery. How different the case really was ! they had come upon a problem, and, while they thought they had solved it, they had in reality placed an obstacle in the way of its solution. Now, with every new piece of knowledge, we stumble over petrified words and mummified conceptions, and would rather break a leg than a word in doing so. 48 “ KNOW THYSELF” IS THE WHOLE OF SCIENCE. Only when man shall have acquired a knowledge of all things will he be able to know himself. For things are but the boundaries of man. 49 THE NEW FUNDAMENTAL FEELING: OUR FINAL CORRUPTIBILITY. In former times people sought to show the feeling of man’s greatness by pointing to his divine descent. This, however, has now become a forbidden path, for the ape stands at its entrance, and likewise other fearsome animals, showing their teeth in a knowing fashion, as if to say, No further this way ! Hence people now try the opposite direction : the road along which humanity is proceeding shall stand as an indication of their greatness and their relationship to God. But alas I this, too, is useless ! At the far end of this path stands the funeral urn of the last man and gravedigger (with the inscription, Nihil humani a me alienum putd). To whatever height mankind may have developed and perhaps in the end it will not be so high as when they began I there is as little prospect of their attaining to a higher order as there is for the ant and the earwig to enter into kinship with God and eternity at the end of their career on earth. What is to come will drag behind it that which has passed : why should any little star, or even any little species on that star, form an exception to that eternal drama ? Away with such sentimentalities ! 50 BELIEF IN INEBRIATION. Those men who have moments of sublime ecstasy, and who, on ordinary occasions, on account of the contrast and the excessive wearing away of their nervous forces, usually feel miserable and desolate, come to consider such moments as the true manifestation of their real selves, of their ” ego,” and their misery and dejection,
on the other hand, as the effect of the “ non-ego” This is why they think of their environment, the age in which they live, and the whole world in which they have their being, with feelings of vindictiveness. This intoxication appears to them as their true life, their actual ego ; and everywhere else they see only those who strive to oppose and prevent this intoxication, whether of an intellectual, moral, religious, or artistic nature. Humanity owes no small part of its evils to these fantastic enthusiasts ; for they are the insatiable sowers of the weed of discontent with one’s self and one’s neighbour, of contempt for the world and the age, and, above all, of world-lassitude. An entire hell of criminals could not, perhaps, bring about such unfortunate and far-reaching consequences, such heavy and disquieting effects that corrupt earth and sky, as are brought about by that ” noble ” little community of unbridled, fantastic, half-mad people of geniuses, too who cannot control themselves, or experience any inward joy, until they have lost themselves completely : while, on the other hand, the criminal often gives a proof of his admirable self-control, sacrifice, and wisdom, and thus maintains these qualities in those who fear him. Through him life’s sky may at times seem overcast and threatening, but the atmosphere ever remains brisk and vigorous. Furthermore, these enthusiasts bring their entire strength to bear on the task of imbuing mankind with belief in inebriation as in life itself: a dreadful belief! As savages are now quickly corrupted and ruined by “ firewater,” so likewise has mankind in general been slowly though thoroughly corrupted by these spiritual ” fire-waters ” of intoxicating feelings and by those who keep alive the craving for them. It may yet be ruined thereby. 51 SUCH AS WE STILL ARE. ” Let us be indulgent to the great one-eyed ! ” said Stuart Mill, as if it were necessary to ask for indulgence when we are willing to believe and almost to worship them. I say: Let us be indulgent towards the two-eyed, both great and small ; for, such as we are now, we shall never rise beyond indulgence ! 52 WHERE ARE THE NEW PHYSICIANS OF THE SOUL? It is the means of consolation which have stamped life with that fundamental melancholy character in which we now believe: the worst disease of mankind has arisen from the struggle against diseases, and apparent remedies have in the long run brought about worse conditions than those which it was intended to remove by their use. Men, in their ignorance, used to believe that the stupefying and intoxicating means, which appeared to act immediately, the so-called ” consolations,” were the true healing powers : they even failed to observe that they had often to pay for their immediate relief by a general and profound deterioration in health, that the sick ones had to suffer from the after-effects of the intoxication, then from the absence of the intoxication, and, later on, from a feeling of disquietude, depression, nervous starts, and illhealth. Again, men whose illness had advanced to a certain extent never recovered from it those physicians of the soul, universally believed in and Worshipped as they were, took care of that. It has been justly said of Schopenhauer that he was one who again took the sufferings of humanity seriously : where is the man who will at length take the antidotes against these sufferings seriously, and who will pillory the unheard-of quackery with which men, even up to our own age, and in the most sublime nomenclature, have been wont to treat the illnesses of their souls ? 53 ABUSE OF THE CONSCIENTIOUS ONES. It is the conscientious, and not the unscrupulous, who have suffered so greatly from exhortations to penitence and the fear of hell, especially if they happened to be men of imagination. In other words, a gloom has been cast over the lives of those who had the greatest need of cheerfulness and agreeable images not only for the sake of their own consolation and recovery from themselves, but that humanity itself might take delight in them and absorb a ray of their beauty. Alas, how much superfluous cruelty and torment have been brought about by those religions which invented sin ! and by those men who, by means of such religions, desired to reach the highest enjoyment of their power ! 54 THOUGHTS ON DISEASE. To soothe the imagination of the patient, in order that he may at least no longer keep on thinking about his illness, and thus suffer more from such thoughts than from the complaint itself, which has been the case until now that, it seems to me, is something ! and it is by no means a trifle ! And now do you understand our task ? 55 THE ” WAYS.” So-called short cuts” have always led humanity to run great risks : on hearing the ” glad tidings ” that a ” short cut ” had been found, they always left the straight path and lost their way. 56 THE APOSTATE OF THE FREE SPIRIT. Is there any one, then, who seriously dislikes pious people who hold formally to their belief? Do we not, on the contrary, regard them with silent esteem and pleasure, deeply regretting at the same time that these excellent people do not share our own feelings ? But whence arises that sudden, profound, and unreasonable dislike for the man who, having at one time possessed freedom of spirit, finally becomes a “ believer”? In thinking of him we involuntarily experience the sensation of having beheld some loathsome spectacle, which we must quickly efface from our recollection. Should we not turn our backs upon even the most venerated man if we entertained the least suspicion of him in this regard ? Not, indeed, from a moral point of view, but because of sudden disgust and horror ! Whence comes this sharpness of feeling ? Perhaps we shall be given to understand that, at bottom, we are not quite certain of our own selves ? Or that, early in life, we build round ourselves hedges of the most pointed contempt, in order that, when old age makes us weak and forgetful, we may not feel inclined to brush our own contempt away from us? Now, speaking frankly, this suspicion is quite erroneous, and whoever forms it knows nothing of what agitates and determines the free spirit : how little, to him, does the changing of an opinion seem contemptible per se ! On the contrary, how highly he prizes the ability to change an opinion as a rare and valuable distinction, especially if he can retain it far into old age ! And his pride (not his pusillanimity) even reaches so high as to
be able to pluck the fruits of the spernere se sperni and the spernere se ipsum : without his being troubled by the sensation of fear of vain and easy-going men. Furthermore, the doctrine of the innocence of all opinions appears to him to be as certain as the doctrine of the innocence of all actions : how could he act as judge and hangman before the apostate of intellectual liberty ! On the contrary, the sight of such a person would disgust him as much as the sight of a nauseous illness disgusts the physician : the physical repulsion caused by everything spongy, soft, and suppurating momentarily overcomes reason and the desire to help. Hence our goodwill is overcome by the conception of the monstrous dishonesty which must have gained the upper hand in the apostate from the free spirit : by the conception of a general gnawing which is eating its way down even to the framework of the character. 57 OTHER FEARS, OTHER SAFETIES. Christianity overspread life with a new and unlimited insecurity, thereby creating new safeties, enjoyments and recreations, and new valuations of all things. Our own century denies the existence of this insecurity, and does so with a good conscience, yet it clings to the old habit of Christian certainties, enjoyments, recreations, and valuations ! even in its noblest arts and philosophies. How feeble and worn out must all this now seem, how imperfect and clumsy, how arbitrarily fanatical, and, above all, how uncertain : now that its horrible contrast has been taken away the ever-present fear of the Christian for his eternal salvation ! 58 CHRISTIANITY AND THE EMOTIONS. In Christianity we may see a great popular protest against philosophy : the reasoning of the sages of antiquity had withdrawn men from the influence of the emotions, but Christianity would gladly give men their emotions back again. With this aim in view, it denies any moral value to virtue such as philosophers understood it as a victory of the reason over the passions generally condemns every kind of goodness, and calls upon the passions to manifest themselves in their full power and glory : as love of God, fear of God, fanatic belief in God, blind hope in God, 59 ERROR AS A CORDIAL. Let people say what they will, it is nevertheless certain that it was the aim of Christianity to deliver mankind from the yoke of moral engagements by indicating what it believed to be the shortest way to perfection : exactly in the same manner as a few philosophers thought they could dispense with tedious and laborious dialectics, and the collection of strictly-proved facts, and point out a royal road to truth. It was an error in both cases, but nevertheless a great cordial for those who were worn out and despairing in the wilderness. 60 ALL SPIRIT FINALLY BECOMES VISIBLE. Christianity has assimilated the entire spirituality of an incalculable number of men who were by nature submissive, all those enthusiasts of humiliation and reverence, both refined and coarse. It has in this way freed itself from its own original rustic coarseness of which we are vividly reminded when we look at the oldest image of St. Peter the Apostle and has become a very intellectual religion, with thousands of wrinkles, arriere-pensees ‘, and masks on its face. It has made European humanity more clever, and not only cunning from a theological standpoint. By the spirit which it has thus given to European humanity in conjunction with the power of abnegation, and very often in conjunction with the profound conviction and loyalty of that abnegation it has perhaps chiselled and shaped the most subtle individualities which have ever existed in human society :the individualities of the higher ranks of the Catholic clergy, especially when these priests have sprung from a noble family, and have brought to their work, from the very beginning, the innate grace of gesture, the dominating glance of the ‘eye, and beautiful hands and feet. Here the human face acquires that spiritualisation brought about by the continual ebb and flow of two kinds of happiness (the feeling of power and the feeling of submission) after a carefully-planned manner of living has conquered the beast in man. Here an activity, which consists in blessing, forgiving sins, and representing the Almighty, ever keeps alive in the soul, and even in the body, the consciousness of a supreme mission ; here we find that noble contempt concerning the perishable nature of the body, of well-being, and of happiness, peculiar to born soldiers : their pride lies in obedience, a distinctly aristocratic trait; their excuse and their idealism arise from the enormous impossibility of their task. The surpassing beauty and subtleties of these princes of the Church have always proved to the people the truth of the Church ; a momentary brutalisation of the clergy (such as came about in Luther’s time) always tended to encourage the contrary belief. And would it be maintained that this result of beauty and human subtlety, shown in harmony of figure, intellect, and task, would come to an end with religions ? and that nothing higher could be obtained, or even conceived ? 61 THE NEEDFUL SACRIFICE. Those earnest, able, and just men of profound feelings, who are still Christians at heart, owe it to themselves to make one attempt to live for a certain space of time without Christianity I they owe it to their faith that they should thus for once take up their abode ” in the wilderness ” if for no other reason than that of being able to pronounce on the question as to whether Christianity is needful. So far, however, they have confined themselves to their own narrow domain and insulted everyone who happened to be outside of it : indeed, they even become highly irritated when it is suggested to them that beyond this little domain of theirs lies the great world, and that Christianity is, after all, only a corner of it ! No ; your evidence on the question will be valueless until you have lived year after year without Christianity, and with the inmost desire to continue to exist without it : until, indeed, you have withdrawn far, far away from it. It is not when your nostalgia urges you back again, but when your judgment, based on a strict comparison, drives you back, that your homecoming has any significance ! Men of coming generations will deal in this manner with all the valuations of the past ; they must be voluntarily lived over again, together with their contraries, in order that such men may finally acquire the right of shifting them. 62 ON THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIONS. How can anyone regard his own opinion of things as a revelation ? This is the problem of the formation of religions : there has always been
some man in whom this phenomenon was possible. A postulate is that such a man already believed in revelations. Suddenly, however, a new idea occurs to him one day, his idea ; and the entire blessedness of a great personal hypothesis, which embraces all existence and the whole world, penetrates with such force into his conscience that he dare not think himself the creator of such blessedness, and he therefore attributes to his God the cause of this new idea and likewise the cause of the cause, believing it to be the revelation of his God. How could a man be the author of so great a happiness ? ask his pessimistic doubts. But other levers are secretly at work : an opinion may be strengthened by one’s self if it be considered as a revelation ; and in this way all its hypothetic nature is removed ; the matter is set beyond criticism and even beyond doubt : it is sanctified. It is true that, in this way, a man lowers himself to playing the r61e of “ mouthpiece” but his thought will end by being victorious as a divine thought the feeling of finally gaining the victory conquers the feeling of degradation. There is also another feeling in the background : if a man raises his products above himself, and thus apparently detracts from his own worth, there nevertheless remains a kind of joyfulness, paternal love, and paternal pride, which compensates man more than compensates man for everything. 63 HATRED OF ONE’S NEIGHBOUR. Supposing that we felt towards our neighbour as he does himself Schopenhauer calls this compassion, though it would be more correct to call it auto-passion, fellow-feeling we should be compelled to hate him, if, like Pascal, he thought himself hateful. And this was probably the general feeling of Pascal regarding mankind, and also that of ancient Christianity, which, under Nero, was “ convicted” of odium generis humani, as Tacitus has recorded. 64 THE BROKEN-HEARTED ONES, Christianity has the instinct of a hunter for finding out all those who may by hook or by crook be driven to despair only a very small number of men can be brought to this despair. Christianity lies in wait for such as those, and pursues them. Pascal made an attempt to find out whether it was not possible, with the help of the very subtlest knowledge, to drive everybody into despair. He failed : to his second despair. 65 BRAHMINISM AND CHRISTIANITY. There are certain precepts for obtaining a consciousness of power : on the one hand, for those who already know how to control themselves, and who are therefore already quite used to the feeling of power ; and, on the other hand, for those who cannot control themselves. Brahminism has given its care to the former type of man ; Christianity to the latter. 66 THE FACULTY OF VISION. During the whole of the Middle Ages, the actual and decisive sign of the highest humanity was that once was capable of having visions that is to say, of having a grave mental trouble. And, in fact, the rules of life of all the higher natures of the Middle Ages (the religiosi) were drawn up with the object of making man capable of vision ! Little wonder, then, that the exaggerated esteem for these half-mad fanatics, so-called men of genius, has continued even to our own days. ” They have seen things that others do not see ” no doubt! and this fact should inspire us with caution where they are concerned, and not with belief! 67 THE PRICE OF BELIEVERS. He who sets such a value on being believed in has to promise heaven in recompense for this belief: and everyone, even a thief on the Cross, must have suffered from a terrible doubt and experienced crucifixion in every form : otherwise he would not buy his followers so dearly. 68 THE FIRST CHRISTIAN. The whole world still believes in the literary career of the ” Holy Ghost,” or is still influenced by the effects of this belief: when we look into our Bibles we do so for the purpose of ” edifying ourselves,” to find a few words of comfort for our misery, be it great or small in short, we read ourselves into it and out of it. But who apart from a few learned men know that it also contains the history of one of the most ambitious and unrelenting souls that ever existed, of a mind full of superstition and cunning : the history of the Apostle Paul? Nevertheless, without this singular history, without the tribulations and passions of such a mind, and of such a soul, there would have been no Christian kingdom ; we should have scarcely have even heard of a little Jewish sect, the founder of which died on the Cross. It is true that, if this history had been understood in time, if we had read, really read, the writings of St. Paul, not as the revelations of the ” Holy Ghost,” but with honest and independent minds, oblivious of all our personal troubles there were no such readers for fifteen centuries it would have been all up with Christianity long ago : so searchingly do these writings of the Jewish Pascal lay bare the origins of Christianity, just as the French Pascal let us see its destiny and how it will ultimately perish. That the ship of Christianity threw overboard no inconsiderable part of its Jewish ballast, that it was able to sail into the waters of the heathen and actually did do so : this is due to the history of one single man, this apostle who was so greatly troubled in mind and so worthy of pity, but who was also very disagreeable to himself and to others. This man suffered from a fixed idea, or rather a fixed question, an ever-present and ever-burning question : what was the meaning of the Jewish Law ? and, more especially, the fulfilment of this Law ? In his youth he had done his best to satisfy it, thirsting as he did for that highest distinction which the Jews could imagine this people, which raised the imagination of moral loftiness to a greater elevation than any other people, and which alone succeeded in uniting the conception of a holy God with the idea of sin considered as an offence against this holiness. St. Paul became at once the fanatic defender and guard-of-honour of this God and His Law. Ceaselessly battling against and lying in wait for all transgressors of this Law and those who presumed to doubt it, he was pitiless and cruel towards all evildoers, whom he would gladly have punished in the most rigorous fashion possible. Now, however, he was aware in his own person of the fact that such a man as himself violent, sensual, melancholy, and malicious in his hatred could not fulfil the Law ; and furthermore, what seemed strangest of all to him, he saw that his boundless craving for power was continually
provoked to break it, and that he could not help yielding to this impulse. Was it really ” the flesh ” which made him a trespasser time and again ? Was it not rather, as it afterwards occurred to him, the Law itself, which continually showed itself to be impossible to fulfil, and seduced men into transgression with an irresistible charm? But at that time he had not thought of this means of escape. As he suggests here and there, he had many things on his conscience hatred, murder, sorcery, idolatry, debauchery, drunkenness, and orgiastic revelry, and to however great an extent he tried to soothe his conscience, and, even more, his desire for power, by the extreme fanaticism of his worship for and defence of the Law, there were times when the thought struck him : ” It is all in vain ! The anguish of the unfulfilled Law cannot be overcome,” Luther must have experienced similar feelings, when, in his cloister, he endeavoured to become the ideal man of his imagination ; and, as Luther one day began to hate the ecclesiastical ideal, and the Pope, and the saints, and the whole clergy, with a hatred which was all the more deadly as he could not avow it even to himself, an analogous feeling took possession of St. Paul. The Law was the Cross on which he felt himself crucified. How he hated it ! What a grudge he owed it ! How he began to look round on all sides to find a means for its total annihilation, that he might no longer be obliged to fulfil it himself! And at last a liberating thought, together with a vision which was only to be expected in the case of an epileptic like himself flashed into his mind : to him, the stern upholder of the Law who, in his innermost heart, was tired to death of it there appeared on the lonely path that Christ, with the divine effulgence on His countenance, and Paul heard the words : ” Why do you persecute me ? ” What actually took place, then, was this : his mind was suddenly enlightened, and he said to himself: “ It is unreasonable to persecute this Jesus Christ ! Here is my means of escape, here is my complete vengeance, here and nowhere else have I the destroyer of the Law in my hands I ” The sufferer from anguished pride felt himself restored to health all at once, his moral despair disappeared in the air; for morality itself was blown away, annihilated that is to say, fulfilled, there on the Cross ! Up to that time that ignominious death had seemed to him to be the principal argument against the ” Messiah-ship ” proclaimed by the followers of the new doctrine : but what if it were necessary for doing away with the Law? The enormous consequences of this thought, of this solution of the enigma, danced before his eyes, and he at once became the happiest of men. The destiny of the Jews, indeed, of all mankind, seemed to him to be intertwined with this instantaneous flash of enlightenment : he held the thought of thoughts, the key of keys, the light of lights ; history would henceforth revolve round him ! For from that time forward he would be the apostle of the annihilation of the Law \ TQ be dead to sin that meant to be dead to the Law also ; to be in the flesh that meant to be under the Law ! To be one with Christ that meant to have become, like Him, the destroyer of the Law ; to be dead with Him that meant likewise to be dead to the Law. Even if it were still possible to sin, it would not at any rate be possible to sin against the Law : “ I am above the Law,” thinks Paul ; adding, ” If I were now to acknowledge the Law again and to submit to it, I should make Christ an accomplice in the sin ” ; for the Law was there for the purpose of producing sin and setting it in the foreground, as an emetic produces sickness. God could not have decided upon the death of Christ had it been possible to fulfil the Law without it ; henceforth, not only are all sins expiated, but sin itself is abolished ; henceforth the Law is dead ; henceforth ” the flesh ” in which it dwelt is dead or at all events dying, gradually wasting away. To live for a short time longer amid this decay ! this is the Christian’s fate, until the time when, having become one with Christ, he arises with Him, sharing with Christ the divine glory, and becoming, like Christ, a ” Son of God.” Then Paul’s exaltation was at its height, and with it the importunity of his soul the thought of union with Christ made him lose all shame, all submission, all constraint, and his ungovernable ambition was shown to be revelling in the expectation of divine glories. Such was the first Christian, the inventor of Christianity! before him there were only a few Jewish sectaries. 69 INIMITABLE. There is an enormous strain and distance between envy and friendship, between self-contempt and pride : the Greek lived in the former, the Christian in the latter. 70 THE USE OF A COARSE INTELLECT. The Christian Church is an encyclopaedia of primitive cults and views of the most varied origin ; and is, in consequence, well adapted to missionary work : in former times she could and still does go wherever she would, and in doing so always found something resembling herself, to which she could assimilate herself and gradually substitute her own spirit for it. It is not to what is Christian in her usages, but to what is universally pagan in them, that we have to attribute the development of this universal religion. Her thoughts, which have their origin at once in the Judaic and in the Hellenic spirit, were able from the very beginning to raise themselves above the exclusiveness and subtleties of races and nations, as above prejudices. Although we may admire the power which makes even the most difficult things coalesce, we must nevertheless not overlook the contemptible qualities of this power the astonishing coarseness and narrowness of the Church’s intellect when it was in process of formation, a coarseness which permitted it to accommodate itself to any diet, and to digest contradictions like pebbles. 71 THE CHRISTIAN VENGEANCE AGAINST ROME. Perhaps nothing is more fatiguing than the sight of a continual conqueror: for more than two hundred years the world had seen Rome overcoming one nation after another, the circle was closed, all future seemed to be at an end, everything was done with a view to its lasting for all time, yet, when the Empire built anything it was erected with a view to being acre perennius. We, who know only the ” melancholy of ruins,” can scarcely understand that totally different melancholy of eternal buildings from which men endeavoured to save themselves as best they could with the light-hearted fancy of a Horace, for example. Others sought different consolations for the weariness which was closely akin to despair, against the deadening knowledge that from henceforth all progress of thought and heart would be hopeless, that the huge spider sat everywhere and mercilessly continued to drink all the blood within its reach, no matter where it might spring forth. This mute, century-old hatred of the wearied spectators against Rome, wherever Rome’s domination extended, was at length vented in Christianity, which united Rome, ” the world,” and ” sin ” into a single conception. The Christians took their revenge on Rome by proclaiming the immediate and sudden destruction of the world ; by once more introducing a future for Rome had been able to transform everything into the
history of its own past and present a future in which Rome was no longer the most important factor ; and by dreaming of the last judgment while the crucified Jew, as the symbol of salvation, was the greatest derision on the superb Roman praetors in the provinces ; for now they seemed to be only the symbols of ruin and a ” world ” ready to perish. 72 THE ” LIFE AFTER DEATH.” Christianity found the idea of punishment in hell in the entire Roman Empire : for the numerous mystic cults have hatched this idea with particular satisfaction as being the most fecund egg of their power. Epicurus thought he could do nothing better for his followers than to tear this belief up by the roots : his triumph found its finest echo in the mouth of one of his disciples, the Roman Lucretius, a poet of a gloomy, though afterwards enlightened, temperament. Alas this triumph had come too soon : Christianity took under its special protection this belief in subterranean horrors, which was already beginning to die away in the minds of men ; and that was clever of it. For, without this audacious leap into the most complete paganism, how could it have proved itself victorious over the popularity of Mithras and Isis? In this way it managed to bring timorous folk over to its side the most enthusiastic adherents of a new faith ! The Jews, being a people which, like the Greeks, and even in a greater degree than the Greeks, loved and still love life, had not cultivated that idea to any great extent: the thought of final death as the punishment of the sinner, death without resurrection as an extreme menace: this was sufficient to impress these peculiar men, who did not wish to get rid of their bodies, but hoped, with their refined Egypticism, to preserve them forever. (A Jewish martyr, about whom we may read in the Second Book of the Maccabees, would not think of giving up his intestines, which had been torn out : he wanted to have them at the resurrection : quite a Jewish characteristic !) Thoughts of eternal damnation were far from the minds of the early Christians : they thought they were delivered from death, and awaited a transformation from day to day, but not death. (What a curious effect the first death must have produced on these expectant people ! How many different feelings must have been mingled together astonishment, exultation, doubt, shame, and passion ! Verily, a subject worthy of a great artist !) St. Paul could say nothing better in praise of his Saviour than that he had opened the gates of immortality to everybody he did not believe in the resurrection of those who had not been saved : more than this, by reason of his doctrine of the impossibility of carrying out the Law, and of death considered as a consequence of sin, he even suspected that, up to that time, no one had become immortal (or at all events only a very few, solely owing to special grace and not to any merits of their own) : it was only in his time that immortality had begun to open its gates and only a few of the elect would finally gain admittance, as the pride of the elect cannot help saying. In other places, where the impulse towards life was not so strong as among the Jews and the Christian Jews, and where the prospect of immortality did not appear to be more valuable than the prospect of a final death, that pagan, yet not altogether un-Jewish addition of Hell became a very useful tool in the hands of the missionaries : then arose the new doctrine that even the sinners and the unsaved are immortal, the doctrine of eternal damnation, which was more powerful than the idea of a final death, which thereafter began to fade away. It was science alone which could overcome this idea, at the same time brushing aside all other ideas about death and an after-life. We are poorer in one particular : the ” life after death ” has no further interest for us ! an indescribable blessing, which is as yet too recent to be considered as such throughout the world. And Epicurus is once more triumphant. 73 FOR THE ” TRUTH ” ! ” The truth of Christianity was attested by the virtuous lives of the Christians, their firmness in suffering, their unshakable belief, and above all by the spread and increase of the faith in spite of all calamities.” That’s how you talk even now. How pitiable! Learn, then, that all this proves nothing either in favour of truth or against it ; that truth must be demonstrated differently from conscientiousness, and that the latter is in no respect whatever an argument in favour of the former. 74 A CHRISTIAN ARRIERE-PENSEE. Would not this have been a general reservation among Christians of the first century : ” It is better to persuade ourselves into the belief that we are guilty rather than that we are innocent ; for it is impossible to ascertain the disposition of so powerful a judge but it is to be feared that he is looking out only for those who are conscious of guilt. Bearing in mind his great power, it is more likely that he will pardon a guilty person than admit that anyone is innocent, in his presence.” This was the feeling of poor provincial folk in the presence of the Roman praetor : ” He is too proud for us to dare to be innocent.” And may not this very sentiment have made its influence felt when the Christians endeavoured to picture to themselves the aspect of the Supreme Judge ? 75 NEITHER EUROPEAN NOR NOBLE. There is something Oriental and feminine in Christianity, and this is shown in the thought, ” Whom the Lord loveth, He chastens ” ; for women in the Orient consider castigations and the strict seclusion of their persons from the world as a sign of their husband’s love, and complain if these signs of love cease. 76 IF YOU THINK IT EVIL, YOU MAKE IT EVIL. The passions become evil and malignant when regarded with evil and malignant eyes. It is in this way that Christianity has succeeded in transforming Eros and Aphrodite sublime powers, capable of idealisation into hellish genii and phantom goblins, by means of the pangs which every sexual impulse was made to raise in the conscience of the believers. Is it not a dreadful thing to transform necessary and regular sensations into a source of inward misery, and thus arbitrarily to render interior misery necessary and regular in the case of every man \ Furthermore, this misery remains secret, with the result that it is all the more deeply rooted ; for it is not all men who have the courage, which Shakespeare shows in his sonnets, of making public their Christian gloom on this point. Must a feeling, then, always be called evil against which we are forced to struggle, which we must restrain even within certain limits, or, in given cases, banish entirely from our minds ? Is it not the habit of vulgar souls always to call an enemy evil ! and must we call Eros an enemy ? The sexual feelings, like the feelings of pity and adoration, possess the particular characteristic that, in their case, one being gratifies another
by the pleasure he enjoys it is but rarely that we meet with such a benevolent arrangement in nature. And yet we calumniate and corrupt it all by our bad conscience ! We connect the procreation of man with a bad conscience ! But the outcome of this “ devil-ization” of Eros is a mere farce : the ” demon ” Eros becomes an object of greater interest to mankind than all the angels and saints put together, thanks to the mysterious Mumbo-Jumbo-ism of the Church in all things erotic : it is due to the Church that love stories, even in our own time, have become the one common interest which appeals to all classes of people with an exaggeration which would be incomprehensible to antiquity, and which will not fail to provoke roars of laughter in coming generations. All our poetising and thinking, from the highest to the lowest, is marked, and more than marked, by the exaggerated importance bestowed upon the love story as the principal item of our existence. Posterity may perhaps, on this account, come to the conclusion that its entire legacy of Christian culture is tainted with narrowness and insanity. 77 THE TORTURES OF THE SOUL. The whole world raises a shout of horror at the present day if one man presumes to torture the body of another : the indignation against such a being bursts forth almost spontaneously. Nay ; we tremble even at the very thought of torture being inflicted on a man or an animal, and we undergo unspeakable misery when we hear of such an act having been accomplished. But the same feeling is experienced in a very much lesser degree and extent when it is a question of the tortures of the soul and the dreadfulness of their infliction. Christianity has introduced such tortures on an unprecedented scale, and still continues to preach this kind of martyrdom yet, it even complains innocently of backsliding and indifference when it meets with a state of soul which is free from such agonies. From all this it now results that humanity, in the face of spiritual racks, tortures of the mind, and instruments of punishment, behaves even to-day with the same awesome patience and indecision which it exhibited in former times in the presence of the cruelties practised on the bodies of men or animals. Hell has certainly not remained merely an empty sound ; and a new kind of pity has been devised to correspond to the newlycreated fears of hell a horrible and ponderous compassion, until now unknown ; with people ” irrevocably condemned to hell,” as, for example, the Stony Guest gave Don Juan to understand, and which, during the Christian era, should often have made the very stones weep. Plutarch presents us with a gloomy picture of the state of mind of a superstitious man in pagan times : but this picture pales when compared with that of a Christian of the Middle Ages, who supposes that nothing can save him from ” torments everlasting.” Dreadful omens appear to him : perhaps he sees a stork holding a snake in his beak and hesitating to swallow it. Or all nature suddenly becomes pale ; or bright, fiery colours appear across the surface of the earth. Or the ghosts of his dead relations approach him, with features showing traces of dreadful sufferings. Or the dark walls of the room in which the man is sleeping are suddenly lighted up, and there, amidst a yellow flame, he perceives instruments of torture and a motley horde of snakes and devils. Christianity has surely turned this world of ours into a fearful habitation by raising the crucifix in all parts and thereby proclaiming the earth to be a place ” where the just man is tortured to death ! ” And when the ardour of some great preacher for once disclosed to the public the secret sufferings of the individual, the agonies of the lonely souls, when, for example, Whitefield preached ” like a dying man to the dying,” now bitterly weeping, now violently stamping his feet, speaking passionately, in abrupt and incisive tones, without fearing to turn the whole force of his attack upon any one individual present, excluding him from the assembly with excessive harshness then indeed did it seem as if the earth were being transformed into a ” field of evil.” The huge crowds were then seen to act as if seized with a sudden attack of madness : many were in fits of anguish ; others lay unconscious and motionless ; others, again, trembled or rent the air with their piercing shrieks. Everywhere there was a loud breathing, as of half-choked people who were gasping for the breath of life. ” Indeed,” said an eye-witness once, ” almost all the noises appeared to come from people who were dying in the bitterest agony.” Let us never forget that it was Christianity which first turned the death-bed into a bed of agony, and that, by the scenes which took place there, and the terrifying sounds which were made possible there for the first time, it has poisoned the senses and the blood of innumerable witnesses and their children. Imagine the ordinary man who can never efface the recollection of words like these : ” Oh, eternity ! Would that I had no soul ! Would that I had never been born ! My soul is damned, damned ; lost forever! Six days ago you might have helped me. But now all is over. I belong to the devil, and with him I will go down to hell. Break, break, you poor hearts of stone ! You will not break ? What more can be done for hearts of stone ? I am damned that you may be saved ! There he is ! Yes ; there he is ! Come, good devil ! Come ! ” 78 AVENGING JUSTICE. Misfortune and guilt: these two things have been put on one scale by Christianity ; so that, when the misfortune which follows a fault is a serious one, this fault is always judged accordingly to be a very heinous one. But this was not the valuation of antiquity, and that is why Greek tragedy in which misfortune and punishment are discussed at length, and yet in another sense forms part of the great liberators of the mind to an extent which even the ancients themselves could not realise. They remained ingenuous enough not to set up an ” adequate relation ” between guilt and misfortune. The guilt of their tragic heroes is, indeed, the little pebble that makes them stumble, and on which account they sometimes happen to break an arm or knock out an eye. Upon this the feeling of antiquity made the comment, ” Well, he should have gone his way with more caution and less pride.” It was reserved for Christianity, however, to say : ” Here we have a great misfortune, and behind this great misfortune there must lie a great fault, an equally serious fault though we cannot clearly see it ! If, wretched man, you do not feel it, it is because your heart is hardened and worse than this will happen to you ! ” Besides this, antiquity could point to examples of real misfortunes, misfortunes that were pure and innocent ; it was only with the advent of Christianity that all punishment became well-merited punishment : in addition to this it renders the imagination of the sufferer still more suffering, so that the victim, in the midst of his distress, is seized with the feeling that he has been morally reproved and cast away. Poor humanity! The Greeks had a special word to stand for the feeling of indignation which was experienced at the misfortune of another: among Christian peoples this feeling was prohibited and was not permitted to develop ; hence the reason why they have no name for this more virile brother of pity.
79 A PROPOSAL. If, according to the arguments of Pascal and Christianity, our ego is always hateful, how can we permit and suppose other people, whether God or men, to love it? It would be contrary to all good principles to let ourselves be loved when we know very well that we deserve nothing but hatred not to speak of other repugnant feelings. ” But this is the very Kingdom of Grace.” Then you look upon your love for your neighbour as a grace? Your pity as a grace? Well, then, if you can do all this, there is no reason why you should not go a step further : love yourselves through grace, and then you will no longer find your God necessary, and the entire drama of the Fall and Redemption of mankind will reach its last act in yourselves ! 80 THE COMPASSIONATE CHRISTIAN. A Christian’s compassion in the presence of his neighbour’s suffering has another side to it : viz, his profound suspicion of all the joy of his neighbour, of his neighbour’s joy in everything that he wills and is able to do. 81 THE SAINT’S HUMANITY. A saint had fallen into the company of believers, and could no longer stand their continually expressed hatred for sin. At last he said to them : ” God created all things, except sin : therefore it is no wonder that He does not like it. But man has created sin, and why, then, should he disown this only child of his merely because it is not regarded with a friendly eye by God, its grandfather ? Is that human ? Honour to whom honour is due but one’s heart and duty must speak, above all, in favour of the child and only in the second place for the honour of the grandfather ! ” 82 THE THEOLOGICAL ATTACK. “ You must arrange that with yourself; for your life is at stake I ” Luther it is who suddenly springs upon us with these words and imagines that we feel the knife at our throats. But we throw him off with the words of one higher and more considerate than he : ” We need form no opinion in regard to this or that matter, and thus save our souls from trouble. For, by their very nature, the things themselves cannot compel us to express an opinion.” 83 POOR HUMANITY ! A single drop of blood too much or too little in the brain may render our life unspeakably miserable and difficult, and we may suffer more from this single drop of blood than Prometheus from his vulture. But the worst is when we do not know that this drop is causing our sufferings and we think it is ” the devil ! ” Or ” sin ! ” 84 THE PHILOLOGY OF CHRISTIANITY. How little Christianity cultivates the sense of honesty can be inferred from the character of the writings of its learned men. They set out their conjectures as audaciously as if they were dogmas, and are but seldom at a disadvantage in regard to the interpretation of Scripture. Their continual cry is : “ I am right, for it is written ” and then follows an explanation so shameless and capricious that a philologist, when he hears it, must stand stock-still between anger and laughter, asking himself again and again : Is it possible ? Is it honest ? Is it even decent ? It is only those who never or always attend church that underestimate the dishonesty with which this subject is still dealt in Protestant pulpits ; in what a clumsy fashion the preacher takes advantage of his security from interruption ; how the Bible is pinched and squeezed ; and how the people are made acquainted with every form of the art of false reading. When all is said and done, however, what can be expected from the effects of a religion which, during the centuries when it was being firmly established, enacted that huge philological farce concerning the Old Testament ? I refer to that attempt to tear the Old Testament from the hands of the Jews under the pretext that it contained only Christian doctrines and belonged to the Christians as the true people of Israel, while the Jews had merely arrogated it to themselves without authority. This was followed by a mania of would-be interpretation and falsification, which could not under any circumstances have been allied with a good conscience. However strongly Jewish savants protested, it was everywhere sedulously asserted that the Old Testament alluded everywhere to Christ, and nothing but Christ, more especially His Cross, and thus, wherever reference was made to wood, a rod, a ladder, a twig, a tree, a willow, or a staff, such a reference could not but be a prophecy relating to the wood of the Cross ; even the setting up of the Unicorn and the Brazen Serpent, even Moses stretching forth his hands in prayer, indeed, the very spits on which the Easter lambs were roasted : all these were allusions to the Cross, and, as it were, preludes to it ! Did anyone who kept on asserting these things ever believe in them? Let it not be forgotten that the Church did not shrink from putting interpolations in the text of the Septuagint (e.g. Ps. xcvi. i o), in order that she might later on make use of these interpolated passages as Christian prophecies. They were engaged in a struggle, and thought of their foes rather than of honesty. 85 SUBTLETY IN PENURY. Take care not to laugh at the mythology of the Greeks merely because it so little resembles your own profound metaphysics ! You should admire a people who checked their quick intellect at this point, and for a long time afterwards had tact enough to avoid the danger of scholasticism and hair-splitting superstition. 86 THE CHRISTIAN INTERPRETERS OF THE BODY. Whatever originates in the stomach, the intestines, the beating of the heart, the nerves, the bile, the seed all those indispositions, debilities, irritations, and the whole contingency of that machine about which we know so little a Christian like Pascal considers it all as a moral and religious phenomenon, asking himself whether God or the devil, good or evil, salvation or damnation, is the cause. Alas for the unfortunate interpreter ! How he must distort and worry his system ! How he must? distort and worry himself in order to gain his point I
87 THE MORAL MIRACLE. In the domain of morality, Christianity knows of nothing but the miracle : the sudden change in all valuations, the sudden renouncement of all habits, the sudden and irresistible predilection for new things and persons. Christianity looks upon this phenomenon as the work of God, and calls it the act of regeneration, thus giving it a unique and incomparable value. Everything else which is called morality, and which bears no relation to this miracle, becomes in consequence a matter of indifference to the Christian, and indeed, so far as it is a feeling of well-being and pride, an object of fear. The canon of virtue, of the fulfilled law, is established in the New Testament, but in such a way as to be the canon of impossible virtue : men who still aspire to moral perfections must come to understand, in the face of this canon, that they are further and further removed from their aim; they must despair of virtue, and end by throwing themselves at the feet of the Merciful One. It is only in reaching a conclusion like this that moral efforts on the part of the Christian can still be regarded as possessing any value : the condition that these efforts shall always remain sterile, painful, and melancholy is therefore indispensable ; and it is in this way that those efforts could still avail to bring about that moment of ecstasy when man experiences the ” overflow of grace ” and the moral miracle. This struggle for morality is, however, not necessary ; for it is by no means uncommon for this miracle to happen to the sinner at the very moment when he is, so to speak, wallowing in the mire of sin : yes, the leap from the deepest and most abandoned sinfulness into its contrary seems easier, and, as a clear proof of the miracle, even more desirable. What, for the rest, may be the signification of such a sudden, unreasonable, and irresistible revolution, such a change from the depths of misery into the heights of happiness? (might it be a disguised epilepsy?) This should at all events be considered by alienists, who have frequent opportunities of observing similar “ miracles” for example, the mania of murder or suicide. The relatively “ more pleasant consequences” in the case of the Christian make no important difference. 88 LUTHER, THE GREAT BENEFACTOR. Luther’s most important result is the suspicion which he awakened against the saints and the entire Christian vita contemplativa \ only since his day has an unchristian vita contemplativa again become possible in Europe, only since then has contempt for laymen and worldly activity ceased. Luther continued to be an honest miner’s son even after he had been shut up in a monastery, and there, for lack of other depths and ” borings,” he descended into himself, and bored terrifying and dark passages through his own depths finally coming to recognise that an introspective and saintly life was impossible to him, and that his innate ” activity ” in body and soul would end by being his ruin. For a long time, too long, indeed, he endeavoured to find the way to holiness through castigations ; but at length he made up his mind, and said to himself: “ There is no real vita contemplative!, \ We have been deceived. The saints were no better than the rest of us.” This was truly a rustic way of gaining one’s case ; but for the Germans of that period it was the only proper way. How edified they felt when they could read in their Lutheran catechism : ” Apart from the Ten Commandments there is no work which could find favour in the eyes of God these much-boasted spiritual works of the saints are purely imaginary!” 89 DOUBT AS SIN. Christianity has done all it possibly could to draw a circle round itself, and has even gone so far as to declare doubt itself to be a sin. We are to be precipitated into faith by a miracle, without the help of reason, after which we are to float in it as the clearest and least equivocal of elements a mere glance at some solid ground, the thought that we exist for some purpose other than floating, the least movement of our amphibious nature : all this is a sin ! Let it be noted that, following this decision, the proofs and demonstration of the faith, and all meditations upon its origin, are prohibited as sinful. Christianity wants blindness and frenzy and an eternal swan-song above the waves under which reason has been drowned ! 90 EGOISM VERSUS EGOISM. How many are there who still come to the conclusion : ” Life would be intolerable were there no God ! ” Or, as is said in idealistic circles : ” Life would be intolerable if its ethical signification were lacking.” Hence there must be a God or an ethical signification of existence ! In reality the case stands thus : He who is accustomed to conceptions of this sort does not desire a life without them, hence these conceptions are necessary for him and his preservation but what a presumption it is to assert that everything necessary for my preservation must exist in reality \ As if my preservation were really necessary! What if others held the contrary opinion ? if they did not care to live under the conditions of these two articles of faith, and did not regard life as worth living if they were realised ! And that is the present position of affairs. 91 THE HONESTY OF GOD. An omniscient and omnipotent God who does not even take care that His intentions shall be understood by His creatures could He be a God of goodness ? A God, who, for thousands of years, has permitted innumerable doubts and scruples to continue unchecked as if they were of no importance in the salvation of mankind, and who, nevertheless, announces the most dreadful consequences for anyone who mistakes his truth ? Would he not be a cruel god if, being himself in possession of the truth, he could calmly contemplate mankind, in a state of miserable torment, worrying its mind as to what was truth ? Perhaps, however, he really is a God of goodness, and was unable to express Himself more clearly ? Perhaps he lacked intelligence enough for this? Or eloquence ? All the worse ! For in such a cas6 he may have been deceived himself in regard to what he calls his ” truth,” and may not be far from being another ” poor, deceived devil ! ” Must he not therefore experience all the torments of hell at seeing His creatures suffering so much here below and even more, suffering through all eternity when he himself can neither advise nor help them, except as a deaf and dumb person, who makes all kinds of equivocal signs when his child or his dog is threatened with the most fearful danger ? A distressed believer who argues thus might be pardoned if his pity for the suffering God were greater than his pity for his “ neighbours”; for they are his neighbours no longer if that most solitary and primeval being is also the
greatest sufferer and stands most in need of consolation. Every religion shows some traits of the fact that it owes its origin to a state of human intellectuality which was as yet too young and immature : they all make light of the necessity for speaking the truth : as yet they know nothing of the duty of God, the duty of being clear and truthful in His communications with men. No one was more eloquent than Pascal in speaking of the ” hidden God ” and the reasons why He had to keep Himself hidden, all of which indicates clearly enough that Pascal himself could never make his mind easy on this point : but he speaks with such confidence that one is led to imagine that he must have been let into the secret at some time or other. He seemed to have some idea that the deus absconditus bore a few slight traces of immorality ; and he felt too much ashamed and afraid of acknowledging this to himself: consequently, like a man who is afraid, he spoke as loudly as he could. 92 AT THE DEATH-BED OF CHRISTIANITY. All truly active men now do without inward Christianity, and the most moderate and thoughtful men of the intellectual middle classes possess only a kind of modified Christianity ; that is, a peculiarly simplified Christianity. A God who, in his love, ordains everything so that it may be best for us, a God who gives us our virtue and our happiness and then takes them away from us, so that everything at length goes on smoothly and there is no reason left why we should take life ill or grumble about it : in short, resignation and modesty raised to the rank of divinities that is the best and most lifelike remnant of Christianity now left to us. It must be remembered, however, that in this way Christianity has developed into a soft moralism : instead of ” God, freedom, and immortality,” we have now a kind of benevolence and honest sentiments, and the belief that, in the entire universe, benevolence and honest sentiments will finally prevail : this is the euthanasia of Christianity. 93 WHAT IS TRUTH ? Who will not be pleased with the conclusions which the faithful take such delight in coming to ? ” Science cannot be true ; for it denies God. Hence it does not come from God ; and consequently it cannot be true for God is truth.” It is not the deduction but the premise which is fallacious. What if God were not exactly truth, and if this were proved ? And if he were instead the vanity, the desire for power, the ambitions, the fear, and the enraptured and terrified folly of mankind ? 94 REMEDY FOR THE DISPLEASED. Even Paul already believed that some sacrifice was necessary to take away the deep displeasure which God experienced concerning sin : and ever since then Christians have never ceased to vent the ill-humour which they felt with themselves upon some victim or another whether it was “ the world,” or ” history,” or ” reason,” or joy, or the tranquillity of other men something good, no matter what, had to die for their sins (even if only in effigie) ! 95 THE HISTORICAL REFUTATION AS THE DECISIVE ONE. Formerly it was sought to prove that there was no God now it is shown how the belief that a God existed could have originated and by what means this belief gained authority and importance : in this way the counterproof that there is no God becomes unnecessary and superfluous. In former times, when the ” evidences of the existence of God ” which had been brought forward were refuted, a doubt still remained, namely whether better proofs could not be found than those which had just been refuted: at that time the atheists did not understand the art of making a tabula rasa. 96 ” IN HOC SIGNO VINCES.” To whatever degree of progress Europe may have attained in other respects, where religious affairs are concerned it has not yet reached the liberal naivety of the ancient Brahmins, which proves that, in India, four thousand years ago, people meditated more profoundly and transmitted to their descendants more pleasure in meditating than is the case in our own days. For those Brahmins believed in the first place that the priests were more powerful than the gods, and in the second place that it was observances which constituted the power of the priests : as a result of which their poets were never tired of glorifying those observances (prayers, ceremonies, sacrifices, chants, improvised melodies) as the real dispensers of all benefits. Although a certain amount of superstition and poetry was mingled with all this, the principles were true\ A step further, and the gods were cast aside which Europe likewise will have to do before very long ! One more step further, and priests and intermediaries could also be dispensed with and then Buddha, the teacher of the religion of self-redemption, appeared. How far Europe is still removed from this degree of culture ! When at length all the customs and observances, upon which rests the power of gods, priests, and saviours, shall have been destroyed, when as a consequence morality, in the old sense, will be dead, then there will come … yet, what will come then ? But let us refrain from speculating ; let us rather make certain that Europe will retrieve that which, in India, amidst this people of thinkers, was carried out thousands of years ago as a commandment of thought ! Scattered among the different nations of Europe there are now from ten to twenty millions of men who no longer ” believe in God ” is it too much to ask that they should give each other some indication or password? As soon as they recognise each other in this way, they will also make themselves known to each other; and they will immediately become a power in Europe, and, happily, a power among the nations ! among the classes ! between rich and poor ! between those who command, and those who obey ! between the most restless and the most tranquil, tranquillising people ! BOOK II 97 ONE BECOMES MORAL but not because one is moral ! Submission to morals may be due to slavishness or vanity, egoism or resignation, dismal fanaticism or thoughtlessness. It may, again, be an act of despair, such as submission to the authority of a ruler ; but there is nothing moral about it per se. 98
ALTERATIONS IN MORALS. Morals are constantly undergoing changes and transformations, occasioned by successful crimes. (To these, for example, belong all innovations in moral judgments.) 99 WHEREIN WE ARE ALL IRRATIONAL. We still continue to draw conclusions from judgments which we consider as false, or doctrines in which we no longer believe, through our feelings. 110 AWAKING FROM A DREAM. Noble and wise men once upon a time believed in the music of the spheres ; there are still noble and wise men who believe in ” the moral significance of existence,” but there will come a day when this music of the spheres also will no longer be audible to them. They will awake and perceive that their ears have been dreaming. 101 OPEN TO DOUBT. To accept a belief simply because it is customary implies that one is dishonest, cowardly, and lazy. Must dishonesty, cowardice, and laziness, therefore, be the primary conditions of morality ? 102 THE MOST ANCIENT MORAL JUDGMENTS. What attitude do we assume towards the acts of our neighbour ? In the first place, we consider how they may benefit ourselves we see them only in this light. It is this effect which we regard as the intention of the acts, and in the end we come to look upon these intentions of our neighbour as permanent qualities in him, and we call him, for example, ” a dangerous man.” Triple error ! Triple and most ancient mistake ! Perhaps this inheritance comes to us from the animals and their faculty of judgment ! Must not the origin of all morality be sought in these detestable narrow-minded conclusions : ” Whatever injures me is evil (something injurious in itself), whatever benefits me is good (beneficial and profitable in itself), whatever injures me once or several times is hostile per se ; whatever benefits me once or several times is friendly per se” O pudenda origo ! Is not this equivalent to interpreting the contemptible, occasional, and often merely accidental relations of another person to us as his primary and most essential qualities, and affirming that towards himself and everyone else he is only capable of such actions as we ourselves have experienced at his hands once or several times ! And is not this thorough folly based upon the most immodest of all mental reservations : namely, that we ourselves must be the standard of what is good, since we determine good and evil ? 103 THERE ARE Two CLASSES OF PEOPLE WHO DENY MORALITY. To deny morality may mean, in the first place, to deny the moral inducements which, men pretend, have urged them on to their actions, which is equivalent to saying that morality merely consists of words and forms, part of that coarse and subtle deceit (especially self-deceit) which is characteristic of mankind, and perhaps more especially of those men who are celebrated for their virtues. In the second place, it may mean our denying that moral judgments are founded on truths. It is admitted in such a case that these judgments are, in fact, the motives of the actions, but that in this way it is really errors as the basis of all moral judgments which urge men on to their moral actions. This is my point of view ; but I should be far from denying that in very many cases a subtle suspicion in accordance with the former point of view i.e. in the spirit of La Rochefoucauld is also justifiable, and in any case of a high general utility. Therefore I deny morality in the same way as I deny alchemy, i.e. I deny its hypotheses ; but I do not deny that there have been alchemists who believed in these hypotheses and based their actions upon them. I also deny immorality not that innumerable people feel immoral, but that there is any true reason why they should feel so. I should not, of course, deny unless I were a fool - that many actions which are called “ immoral should be avoided and resisted;, and in the same way that many which are called moral should be performed and encouraged ; but I hold that in both cases these actions should be performed from motives other than those which have prevailed up to the present time. We must learn anew in order that at last, perhaps very late in the day, we may be able to do something more : feel anew. 104 OUR VALUATIONS. All actions may be referred back to valuations, and all valuations are either one’s own or adopted, the latter being by far the more numerous. Why do we adopt them ? Through fear, i.e. we think it more advisable to pretend that they are our own, and so well do we accustom ourselves to do so that it at last becomes second nature to us. A valuation of our own, which is the appreciation of a thing in accordance with the pleasure or displeasure it causes us and no one else, is something very rare indeed ! But must not our valuation of our neighbour which is prompted by the motive that we adopt his valuation in most cases proceed from ourselves and by our own decision ? Of course, but then we come to these decisions -during our childhood, and seldom change them. We often remain during our whole lifetime the dupes of our childish and accustomed judgments in our manner of judging our fellowmen (their minds, rank, morality, character, and reprehensibility), and we find it necessary to subscribe to their valuations. 105 PSEUDO-EGOISM. The great majority of people, whatever they may think and say about their ” egoism,” do nothing for their ego all their life long, but only for a phantom of this ego which has been formed in regard to them by their friends and communicated to them. As a consequence, they all live in a haze of impersonal and half-personal opinions and of arbitrary and, as it were, poetic valuations : the one always in the head of another, and this head, again, in the head of somebody else a queer world of phantoms which manages to
give itself a rational appearance ! This haze of opinions and habits grows in extent and lives almost independently of the people it surrounds ; it is it which gives rise to the immense effect of general judgments on “ man” - all those men, who do not know themselves, believe in a bloodless abstraction which they call ” man,” i.e. in a fiction ; and every change caused in this abstraction by the judgments of powerful individualities (such as princes and philosophers) produces an extraordinary and irrational effect on the great majority, for the simple reason that not a single individual with this haze can oppose a real ego, an ego which is accessible to and fathomed by himself, to the universal pale fiction, which he could thereby destroy. 106 AGAINST DEFINITIONS OF MORAL AIMS. On all sides we now hear the aim of morals defined as the preservation and advancement of humanity; but this is merely the expression of a wish to have a formula and nothing more. Preservation wherein ? advancement whither ? These are questions which must at once be asked. Is not the most essential point, the answer to this wherein and whither ? left out of the formula ? What results from this, so far as our own actions and duties are concerned, which is not already tacitly and instinctively understood ? Can we sufficiently understand from this formula whether we must prolong as far as possible the existence of the human race, or bring about the greatest possible de-animalisation of man ? How different the means, i.e. the practical morals, would have to be in the two cases ! Supposing that the greatest possible rationality were given to mankind, this certainly would not guarantee the longest possible existence for them ! Or supposing that their ” greatest happiness ” was thought to be the answer to the questions put, do we thereby mean the highest degree of happiness which a few individuals might attain, or an incalculable, though finally attainable, average state of happiness for all ? And why should morality be the way to it ? Has not morality, considered as a whole, opened up so many sources of displeasure as to lead us to think that man up to the present, with every new refinement of morality, has become more and more discontented with himself, with his neighbour, and with his own lot ? Has not the most moral of men until now believed that the only justifiable state of mankind in the face of morals is that of the deepest misery ? 107 OUR RIGHT TO OUR FOLLY. How must we act ? Why must we act ? So far as the coarse and immediate needs of the individual are concerned, it is easy to answer these questions, but the more we enter upon the more important and more subtle domains of action, the more does the problem become uncertain and the more arbitrary its solution. An arbitrary decision, however, is the very thing that must be excluded here, thus commands the authority of morals: an obscure uneasiness and awe must relentlessly guide man in those very actions the objects and means of which he cannot at once perceive, This authority of morals undermines our thinking faculty in regard to those things concerning which it might be dangerous to think wrongly, it is in this way, at all events, that morality usually justifies itself to its accusers. Wrong in this place means dangerous; but dangerous to whom? It is not, as a rule, the danger of the doer of the action which the supporters of authoritative morals have in view, but their own danger ; the loss which their power and influence might undergo if the right to act according to their own greater or lesser reason, however wilfully and foolishly, were accorded to all men. They on their part make unhesitating use of their right to arbitrariness and folly, they even command in cases where it is hardly possible, or at all events very difficult, to answer the questions, ” How must they act, why must they act ? ” And if the reason of mankind grows with such extraordinary slowness that it was often possible to deny its growth during the whole course of humanity, what is more to blame for this than this solemn presence, even omnipresence, of moral commands, which do not even permit the individual question of how and why to be asked at all ? Have we not been educated precisely in such a way as to make us feel pathetic, and thus to obscure our vision at the very time when our reason should be able to see as clearly and calmly as possible i.e. in all higher and more important circumstances ? 108 SOME THESES. We should not give the individual, in so far as he desires his own happiness, any precepts or recommendations as to the road leading to happiness ; for individual happiness arises from particular laws that are unknown to anybody, and such a man will only be hindered or obstructed by recommendations which come to him from outside sources. Those precepts which are called moral are in reality directed against individuals, and do not by any means make for the happiness of such individuals. The relationship of these precepts to the ” happiness and well-being of mankind ” is equally slight, for it is quite impossible to assign a definite conception to these words, and still less can they be employed as guiding stars on the dark sea of moral aspirations. It is a prejudice to think that morality is more favourable to the development of the reason than immorality. It is erroneous to suppose that the unconscious aim in the development of every conscious being (namely, animal, man, humanity, etc.) is its ” greatest happiness ” : on the contrary, there is a particular and incomparable happiness to be attained at every stage of our development, one that is neither high nor low, but quite an individual happiness. Evolution does not make happiness its goal ; it aims merely at evolution, and nothing else. It is only if humanity had a universally recognised goal that we could propose to do this or that : for the time being there is no such goal. It follows that the pretensions of morality should not be brought into any relationship with mankind : this would be merely childish and irrational. It is quite another thing to recommend a goal to mankind : this goal would then be something that would depend upon our own will and pleasure. Provided that mankind in general agreed to adopt such a goal, it could then impose a moral law upon itself, a law which would, at all events, be imposed by their own free will. Up to now, however, the moral law has had to be placed above our own free will: strictly speaking, men did not wish to impose this law upon themselves ; they wished to take it from somewhere, to discover it, or to let themselves be commanded by it from somewhere. 109 SELF-CONTROL AND MODERATION, AND THEIR FINAL MOTIVE. I find not more than six essentially different methods for combating the vehemence of an impulse.
First of all, we may avoid the occasion for satisfying the impulse, weakening and mortifying it by refraining from satisfying it for long and ever-lengthening periods. Secondly, we may impose a severe and regular order upon ourselves in regard to the satisfying of our appetites. By thus regulating the impulse and limiting its ebb and flow to fixed periods, we may obtain intervals in which it ceases to disturb us ; and by beginning in this way we may perhaps be able to pass on to the first method. In the third place, we may deliberately give ourselves over to an unrestrained and unbounded gratification of the impulse in order that we may become disgusted with it, and to obtain by means of this very disgust a command over the impulse: provided, of course, that we do not imitate the rider who rides his horse to death and breaks his own neck in doing so. For this, unhappily, is generally the outcome of the application of this third method. In the fourth place, there is an intellectual trick, which consists in associating the idea of the gratification so firmly with some painful thought, that after a little practice the thought of gratification is itself immediately felt as a very painful one. (For example, when the Christian accustoms himself to think of the presence and scorn of the devil in the course of sensual enjoyment, or everlasting punishment in hell for revenge by murder ; or even merely of the contempt which he will meet with from those of his fellow-men whom he most respects, if he steals a sum of money, or if a man has often checked an intense desire for suicide by thinking of the grief and selfreproaches of his relations and friends, and has thus succeeded in balancing himself upon the edge of life : for, after some practice, these ideas follow one another in his mind like cause and effect.) Among instances of this kind may be mentioned the cases of Lord Byron and Napoleon, in whom the pride of man revolted and took offence at the preponderance of one particular passion over the collective attitude and order of reason. From this arises the habit and joy of tyrannising over the craving and making it, as it were, gnash its teeth. ” I will not be a slave of any appetite,” wrote Byron in his diary. In the fifth place, we may bring about a dislocation of our powers by imposing upon ourselves a particularly difficult and fatiguing task, or by deliberately submitting to some new charm and pleasure in order thus to turn our thoughts and physical powers into other channels. It comes to the same thing if we temporarily favour another impulse by affording it numerous opportunities of gratification, and thus rendering it the squanderer of the power which would otherwise be commandeered, so to speak, by the tyrannical impulse. A few, perhaps, will be able to restrain the particular passion which aspires to domination by granting their other known passions a temporary encouragement and license in order that they may devour the food which the tyrant wishes for himself alone. In the sixth and last place, the man who can stand it, and thinks it reasonable to weaken and subdue his entire physical and psychical organisation, likewise, of course, attains the goal of weakening a single violent instinct ; as, for example, those who starve their sensuality and at the same time their vigour, and often destroy their reason into the bargain, such as the ascetics. Hence, shunning the opportunities, regulating the impulse, bringing about satiety and disgust in the impulse, associating a painful idea (such as that of discredit, disgust, or offended pride), then the dislocation of one’s forces, and finally general debility and exhaustion : these are the six methods. But the will to combat the violence of a craving is beyond our power, equally with the method we adopt and the success we may have in applying it. In all this process our intellect is rather merely the blind instrument of another rival craving, whether it be the impulse to repose, or the fear of disgrace and other evil consequences, or love. While ” we ” thus imagine that we are complaining of the violence of an impulse, it is at bottom merely one impulse which is complaining of another, i.e. the perception of the violent suffering which is being caused us presupposes that there is another equally or more violent impulse, and that a struggle is impending in which our intellect must take part. 110 THAT WHICH OPPOSES. We may observe the following process in ourselves, and I should like it to be often observed and confirmed. There arises in us the scent of a kind of pleasure until now unknown to us, and consequently a new craving. Now, the question is, What opposes itself to this craving ? If it be things and considerations of a common kind, or people whom we hold in no very high esteem, the aim of the new craving assumes the appearance of a ” noble, good, praiseworthy feeling, and one worthy of sacrifice” : all the moral dispositions which have been inherited will adopt it and will add it to the number of those aims which we consider as moral and now we imagine that we are no longer striving after a pleasure, but after a morality, which greatly increases our confidence in our aspirations. 111 To THE ADMIRERS OF OBJECTIVENESS. He who, as a child, has observed in his parents and acquaintances in the midst of whom he has grown up, certain varied and strong feelings, with but little subtle discernment and inclination for intellectual justice, and has therefore employed his best powers and his most precious time in imitating these feelings, will observe in himself when he arrives at years of discretion that every new thing or man he meets with excites in him either sympathy or aversion, envy or contempt. Under the domination of this experience, which he is powerless to shake off, he admires neutrality of feeling or ” objectivity ” as an extraordinary thing, as something connected with genius or a very rare morality, and he cannot believe that even this neutrality is merely the product of education and habit. 112 ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DUTY AND RIGHT. Our duties are the claims which others have upon us. How did they acquire these claims ? By the fact that they considered us as capable of making and holding agreements and contracts, by assuming that we were their like and equals, and by consequently entrusting something to us, bringing us up, educating us, and supporting us. We do our duty, i.e. we justify that conception of our power for the sake of which all these things were done for us. We return them in proportion as they were meted out to us. It is thus our pride that orders us to do our duty we desire to re-establish our own independence by opposing to that which others have done for us something that we do for them, for in that way the others invade our sphere of power, and would forever have a hand in it if we did not make reprisals by means of ” duty,” and thus encroach upon their power. The rights of others can only have regard to that which lies within our power ; it would be unreasonable on their part to require something from us which does not belong to us. To put the matter more accurately, their rights can only relate to what they imagine to be in our power, provided that it is something that we ourselves
consider as being in our power. The same error may easily occur on either side. The feeling of duty depends upon our having the same belief in regard to the extent of our power as other people have, i.e. that we can promise certain things and undertake to do them freely (” free will “ ). My rights consist of that part of my power which others have not only conceded to me, but which they wish to maintain for me. Why do they do it ? On the one hand they are actuated by wisdom, fear and prudence : whether they expect something similar from us (the protection of their rights), whether they consider a struggle with us as dangerous or inopportune, or whether they see a disadvantage to themselves in every diminution of our power, since in that case we should be ill adapted for an alliance with them against a hostile third power. On the other hand rights are granted by donations and cessions. In this latter case, the other people have not only enough power, but more than enough, so that they can give up a portion and guarantee it to the person to whom they give it : whereby they presuppose a certain restricted sense of power in the person upon whom they have bestowed the gift. In this way rights arise: recognised and guaranteed degrees of power. When the relations of powers to one another are materially changed, rights disappear and new ones are formed, as is demonstrated by the constant flux and reflux of the rights of nations. When our power diminishes to any great extent, the feelings of those who until now guaranteed it undergo some change : they consider whether they shall once again restore us to our former possession, and if they do not see their way to do this they deny our ” rights ” from that time forward. In the same way, if our power increases to a considerable extent the feelings of those who previously recognised it, and whose recognition we no longer require, likewise change : they will then try to reduce our power to its former dimensions, and they will endeavour to interfere in our affairs, justifying their interference by an appeal to their ” duty.” But this is merely useless word-quibbling. Where right prevails, a certain state and degree of power is maintained, and all attempts at its augmentation and diminution are resisted. The right of others is the concession of our feeling of power to the feeling of power in these others. Whenever our power shows itself to be thoroughly shattered and broken, our rights cease : on the other hand, when we have become very much stronger, the rights of others cease in our minds to be what we have until now admitted them to be. The man who aims at being just, therefore, must keep a constant lookout for the changes in the indicator of the scales in order that he may properly estimate the degrees of power and right which, with the customary transitoriness of human things, retain their equilibrium for only a short time and in most cases continue to rise and fall. As a consequence it is thus very difficult to be “ just,” and requires much experience, good intentions, and an unusually large amount of good sense. 113 STRIVING FOR DISTINCTION. When we strive after distinction we must ceaselessly keep our eyes fixed on our neighbour and endeavour to ascertain what his feelings are ; but the sympathy and knowledge which are necessary to satisfy this desire are far from being inspired by harmlessness, compassion, or kindness. On the contrary, we wish to perceive or find out in what way our neighbour suffers from us, either internally or externally, how he loses control over himself, and yields to the impression which our hand or even our mere appearance makes on him. Even when he who aspires to distinction makes or wishes to make a joyful, elevating, or cheerful impression, he does not enjoy this success in that he rejoices, exalts, or cheers his neighbour, but in that he leaves his impress on the latter’s soul, changing its form and dominating it according to his will. The desire for distinction is the desire to subject one’s neighbour, even if it be merely in an indirect fashion, one only felt or even only dreamt of. There is a long series of stages in this secretly-desired will to subdue, and a very complete record of them would perhaps almost be like an excellent history of culture from the early distortions of barbarism down to the caricatures of modern overrefinement and sickly idealism. This desire for distinction entails upon our neighbour to indicate only a few rungs of the long ladder torture first of all, followed by blows, then terror, anxious surprise, wonder, envy, admiration, elevation, pleasure, joy, laughter, derision, mockery, sneers, scourging and self-inflicted torture. There at the very top of the ladder stands the ascetic and martyr, who himself experiences the utmost satisfaction, because he inflicts on himself, as a result of his desire for distinction, that pain which his opposite, the barbarian on the first rung of the ladder, inflicts upon those others, upon whom and before whom he wishes to distinguish himself. The triumph of the ascetic over himself, his introspective glance, which beholds a man split up into a sufferer and a spectator, and which henceforth never looks at the outside world but to gather from it, as it were, wood for his own funeral pyre : this final tragedy of the desire for distinction which shows us only one person who, so to speak, is consumed internally that is an end worthy of the beginning : in both cases there is an inexpressible happiness at the sight of torture ; indeed, happiness considered as a feeling of power developed to the utmost, has perhaps never reached a higher pitch of perfection on earth than in the souls of superstitious ascetics. This is expressed by the Brahmins in the story of King Visvamitra, who obtained so much strength by thousands of years of penance that he undertook to construct a new heaven. I believe that in the entire category of inward experiences the people of our time are mere novices and clumsy guessers who “ try to have a shot at it ” : four thousand years ago much more was known about these execrable refinements of self-enjoyment Perhaps at that time the creation of the world was imagined by some Hindu dreamer to have been an ascetic operation which a god took upon himself! Perhaps this god may have wished to join himself to a mobile nature as an instrument of torture in order thus to feel his happiness and power doubled ! And even supposing him to have been a god of love : what a delight it would have been for him to create a suffering mankind in order that he himself might suffer divinely and superhumanly from the sight of the continual torture of his creatures, and thus to tyrannise over himself! And, again, supposing him to have been not only a god of love, but also a god of holiness, we can scarcely conceive the ecstasies of this divine ascetic while creating sins and sinners and eternal punishment, and an immense place of eternal torture below his throne where there is a continual weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth ! It is not by any means impossible that the soul of a St. Paul, a Dante, or a Calvin, and people like them, may once have penetrated into the terrifying secrets of such voluptuousness of power, and in view of such souls we may well ask whether the circle of this desire for distinction has come to a close with the ascetic. Might it not be possible for the course of this circle to be traversed a second time, by uniting the fundamental idea of the ascetic, and at the same time that of a compassionate Deity ? In other words, pain would be given to others in order that pain might be given to one’s self, so that in this way one could triumph over one’s self and one’s pity to enjoy the extreme voluptuousness of power. Forgive me these
digressions, which come to my mind when I think of all the possibilities in the vast domain of psychical debaucheries to which one may be led by the desire for power ! 114 ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE SUFFERER. The state of sick men who have suffered long and terribly from the torture inflicted upon them by their illness, and whose reason has nevertheless not been in any way affected, is not without a certain amount of value in our search for knowledge quite apart from the intellectual benefits which follow upon every profound solitude and every sudden and justified liberation from duties and habits. The man who suffers severely looks forth with terrible calmness from his state of suffering upon outside things : all those little lying enchantments, by which things are usually surrounded when seen through the eye of a healthy person, have vanished from the sufferer ; his own life even lies there before him, stripped of all bloom and colour. If by chance it has happened that up to then he has lived in some kind of dangerous fantasy, this extreme disenchantment through pain is the means, and possibly the only means, of extricating him from it. (It is possible that this is what happened to the Founder of Christianity when suspended from the Cross ; for the bitterest words ever pronounced, ” My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me ? “ Section 115 to 118 unfortunately are lost to us 119 … Our experiences, as I have already said, are all in this sense means of nutriment, but scattered about with a careless hand and without discrimination between the hungry and the overfed. As a consequence of this accidental nutrition of each particular part, the polypus in its complete development will be something just as fortuitous as its growth. To put this more clearly : let us suppose that an instinct or craving has reached that point when it demands gratification, either the exercise of its power or the discharge of it, or the filling up of a vacuum (all this is metaphorical language), then it will examine every event that occurs in the course of the day to ascertain how it can be utilised with the object of fulfilling its aim : whether the man runs or rests, or is angry, or reads or speaks or fights or rejoices, the unsatiated instinct watches, as it were, every condition into which the man enters, and, as a rule, if it finds nothing for itself it must wait, still unsatisfied. After a little while it becomes feeble, and at the end of a few days or a few months, if it has not been satisfied, it will wither away like a plant which has not been watered. This cruelty of chance would perhaps be more conspicuous if all the cravings were as vehement in their demands as hunger, which refuses to be satisfied with imaginary dishes ; but the great majority of our instincts, especially those which are called moral, are thus easily satisfied, if it be permitted to suppose that our dreams serve as compensation to a certain extent for the accidental absence of ” nutriment ” during the day. Why was last night’s dream full of tenderness and tears, that of the night before amusing and gay, and the previous one adventurous and engaged in some continual obscure search ? How does it come about that in this dream I enjoy indescribable beauties of music, and in that one I soar and fly upwards with’ the delight of an eagle to the most distant heights ? These inventions in which our instincts of tenderness, merriment, or adventurousness, or our desire for music and mountains, can have free play and scope and everyone can recall striking instances are interpretations of our nervous irritations during sleep, very free and arbitrary interpretations of the movements of our blood and intestines, and the pressure of our arm and the bed coverings, or the sound of a church bell, the weathercocks, the moths, and so on. That this text, which on the whole is very much the same for one night as another, is so differently commented upon, that our creative reason imagines such different causes for the nervous irritations of one day as compared with another, may be explained by the fact that the prompter of this reason was different to-day from yesterday another instinct or craving wished to be satisfied, to show itself, to exercise itself and be refreshed and discharged : this particular one being at its height to-day and another one being at its height last night. Real life has not the freedom of interpretation possessed by dream life ; it is less poetic and less unrestrained but is it necessary for me to show that our instincts, when we are awake, likewise merely interpret our nervous irritations and determine their ” causes ” in accordance with their requirements? that there is no really essential difference between waking and dreaming! that even in comparing different degrees of culture, the freedom of the conscious interpretation of the one is not in any way inferior to the freedom in dreams of the other ! that our moral judgments and valuations are only images and fantasies concerning physiological processes unknown to us, a kind of habitual language to describe certain nervous irritations ? that all our so-called consciousness is a more or less fantastic commentary of an unknown text, one which is perhaps unknowable but yet felt ? Consider some insignificant occurrence. Let us suppose that some day as we pass along a public street we see someone laughing at us. In accordance with whatever craving has reached its culminating point within us at that moment, this incident will have this or that signification for us ; and it will be a very different occurrence in accordance with the class of men to which we belong. One man will take it like a drop of rain, another will shake it off like a fly, a third person will try to pick a quarrel on account of it, a fourth will examine his garments to see if there is anything about them likely to cause laughter, and a fifth will in consequence think about what is ridiculous/ se, a sixth will be pleased at having involuntarily contributed to add a ray of sunshine and mirth to the world, in all these cases some craving is gratified, whether anger, combativeness, meditation, or benevolence. This instinct, whatever it may be, has seized upon that incident as its prey : why that particular one ? Because, hungry and thirsty, it was lying in ambush. Not long ago at 11 o’clock in the morning a man suddenly collapsed and fell down in front of me as if struck by lightning. All the women who were near at once gave utterance to cries of horror, while I set the man on his feet again and waited until he recovered his speech. During this time no muscle of my face moved and I experienced no sensation of fear or pity ; I simply did what was most urgent and reasonable and calmly proceeded on my way. Supposing someone had told me on the previous evening that at 11 o’clock on the following day a man would fall down in front of me like this, I should have suffered all kinds of agonies in the interval, lying awake all night, and at the decisive moment should also perhaps have fallen down like the man instead of helping him ; for in the meantime all the imaginable cravings within me would have had leisure to conceive and to comment upon this incident. What are our experiences, then ? Much more what we attribute to them than what they really are. Or should we perhaps say that nothing is contained
in them ? that experiences in themselves are merely works of fancy ? 120 TO TRANQUILLISE THE SCEPTIC. “ I don’t know at all what I am doing. I don’t know in the least what I ought to do ! ” You are right, but be sure of this: you are being done at every moment ! Mankind has at all times mistaken the active for the passive : it is its eternal grammatical blunder. 121 CAUSE AND EFFECT. On this mirror and our intellect is a mirror something is going on that indicates regularity : a certain thing is each time followed by another certain thing. When we perceive this and wish to give it a name, we call it cause and effect, fools that we are ! as if in this we had understood or could understand anything ! For, of course, we have seen nothing but the images of causes and effects, and it is just this figurativeness which renders it impossible for us to see a more substantial relation than that of sequence ! 122 THE PURPOSES IN NATURE. Any impartial investigator who examines the history of the eye and its form in the lower creatures, and sees how the visual organ was slowly developed, cannot help recognising that sight was not the /first purpose of the eye, but probably only asserted itself when pure hazard had contributed to bring together the apparatus. One single example of this kind, and the ” final purposes ” fall from our eyes like scales. 123 REASON. - How did reason come into the world ? As is only proper, in an irrational manner ; by accident. We shall have to guess at this accident as a riddle. 124 WHAT is VOLITION? We laugh at a man who, stepping out of his room at the very minute when the sun is rising, says, ” It is my will that the sun shall rise ” ; or at him who, unable to stop a wheel, says, “ I wish it to roll”; or, again, at him who, thrown in a wrestling match, says, ” Here I lie, but here I wish to lie.” But, joking apart, do we not act like one of these three persons whenever we use the expression ” I wish ” ? 125 ON THE DOMAIN OF FREEDOM. We can think many more things than we can do and experience i.e. our faculty of thinking is superficial and is satisfied with what lies on the surface, it does not even perceive this surface. If our intellect were strictly developed in proportion to our power, and our exercise of this power, the primary principle of our thinking would be that we can understand only that which we are able to do if, indeed, there is any understanding at all. The thirsty man is without water, but the creations of his imagination continually bring the image of water to his sight, as if nothing could be more easily procured. The superficial and easily satisfied character of the intellect cannot understand real need, and thus feels itself superior. It is proud of being able to do more, to run faster, and to reach the goal almost within the twinkling of an eye : and in this way the domain of thought, when contrasted with the domain of action, volition, and experience, appears to be the domain of liberty, while, as I have already stated, it is nothing but the domain of superficiality and self-sufficiency. 126 FORGETFULNESS. It has never yet been proved that there is such a thing as forgetfulness : all that we know is that we have no power over recollection. In the meantime we have filled up this gap in our power with the word ” forgetfulness,” exactly as if it were another faculty added to our list. But, after all, what is within our power? If that word fills up a gap in our power, might not the other words be found capable of filling up a gap in the knowledge which we possess of our power ? 127 FOR A DEFINITE PURPOSE. Of all human actions probably the least understood are those which lire carried out for a definite purpose, because they have always been regarded as the most intelligible and commonplace to our intellect. The great problems can be picked up in the highways and byways. 128 DREAMING AND RESPONSIBILITY. You would wish to be responsible for everything except your dreams ! What miserable weakness, what lack of logical courage ! Nothing contains more of your own work than your dreams ! Nothing belongs to you so much ! Substance, form, duration, actor, spectator in these comedies you act as your complete selves ! And yet it is just here that you are afraid and ashamed of yourselves, and even Oedipus, the wise Oedipus, derived consolation from the thought that we cannot be blamed for what we dream. From this I must conclude that the great majority of men must have some dreadful dreams to reproach themselves with. If it were otherwise, to how great an extent would these nocturnal fictions have been exploited in the interests of man’s pride ! Need I add that the wise Oedipus was right, that we are really not responsible for our dreams any more than for our waking hours, and that the doctrine of free will has as its parents man’s pride and sense of power! Perhaps I say this too often ; but that does not prove that it is not true. 129 THE ALLEGED COMBAT OF MOTIVES. People speak of the ” combat of motives,” but they designate by this expression that which is not a combat of motives at all. What I mean is that, in our meditative consciousness, the consequences of different actions which we think we are able to carry out present themselves successively, one after the other, and we compare these consequences in our mind. We think we have come to a decision concerning an action after we have established to our own satisfaction that the consequences of this action will be favourable. Before we arrive at this conclusion, however, we often seriously worry because of the great difficulties we experience in guessing what the consequences are
likely to be, and in seeing them in their full importance, without exception and, after all this, we must reckon up any fortuitous elements that are likely to arise. Then comes the chief difficulty : all the consequences which we have with such difficulty determined one by one must be weighed on some scales against each other ; and it only too often comes about that, owing to the difference in the quality of all the conceivable consequences, both scales and weights are lacking for this casuistry of advantage. Even supposing, however, that in this case we are able to overcome the difficulty, and that mere hazard has placed in our scales results which permit of a mutual balance, we have now, in the idea of the consequences of a particular action, a motive for performing this very action, but only one motive ! When we have finally decided to act, however, we are fairly often influenced by another order of motives than those of the ” image of the consequences.” What brings this about may be the habitual working of our inner machinery, or some little encouragement on the part of a person whom we fear or honour or love, or the love of comfort which prefers to do that which lies nearest ; or some stirring of the imagination provoked at the decisive moment by some event of trifling importance; or some physical influence which manifests itself quite unexpectedly ; a mere whim brings it about ; or the outburst of a passion which, as it accidentally happens, is ready to burst forth in a word, motives operate which we do not understand very well, or which we do not understand at all, and which we can never balance against one another in advance. It is probable that a contest is going on among these motives too, a driving backwards and forwards, a rising and lowering of the parts, and it is this which would be the real ” contest of motives,” something quite invisible and unknown to us. I have calculated the consequences and the successes, and in doing so have set a very necessary motive in the line of combat with the other motives, but I am as little able to draw up this battle line as to see it : the battle itself is hidden from my sight, as likewise is the victory, as victory ; for I certainly come to know what I shall finally do, but I cannot know what motive has in the end proved to be the victor. Nevertheless, we are decidedly not in the habit of taking all these unconscious phenomena into account, and we generally conceive of the preliminary stages of an action only so far as they are conscious : thus we mistake the combat of the motives for a comparison of the possible consequences of different actions, a mistake that brings with it most important consequences, and consequences that are most fatal to the development of morals. 130 AIMS ? WILL ? We have accustomed ourselves to believe in two kingdoms, the domain of purposes and volition, and the domain of chance. In this latter domain everything is done senselessly, there is a continual going to and fro without any one being able to say why or wherefore. We stand in awe of this powerful realm of the great cosmic stupidity, for in most instances we learn to know it when it falls down upon the other world, that of aims and intentions, like a slate from a roof, always overwhelming some beautiful purpose of ours. This belief in these two kingdoms arises from ancient romanticism and legend : we clever dwarfs, with all our will and aims, are interfered with, knocked down, and very often crushed to death by those ultra-stupid giants, the accidents, but in spite of this we -should not like to be deprived of the fearful poetry of their proximity, for these monsters very often make their appearance when life in the spider’s web of definite aims has become too tiresome or too anxious for us, and they sometimes bring about a divine diversion when their hands for once tear the whole web in pieces, not that these irrational beings ever intend to do what they do, or even observe it. But their coarse and bony hands rend our web as if it were thin air. Moira was the name given by the Greeks to this realm of the incalculable and of sublime and eternal limitedness; and they set it round their gods like a horizon beyond which they could neither see nor act, with that secret defiance of the gods which one meets with in different nations : the gods are worshipped, but a final trump card is held in readiness to play against them. As instances of this we may recollect that the Indians and the Persians, who conceived all their gods as having to depend upon the sacrifices of mortals, so that if it came to the worst the mortals could, at least, let the gods die of starvation ; or the gods of the stubborn and melancholy Scandinavians, who enjoyed a quiet revenge in the thought that a twilight of the gods was to come as some compensation for the perpetual fear which their evil gods caused them. The case of Christianity was very different, for its essential feelings were not those of the Indians, Persians, Greeks, or Scandinavians. Christianity commanded its disciples to worship in the dust the spirit of power, and to kiss the very dust. It gave the world to understand that this omnipotent “ realm of stupidity” was not so stupid as it seemed, and that we, on the contrary, were stupid when we could not perceive that behind this realm stood God Himself : He who, although fond of dark, crooked, and wonderful ways, at last brought everything to a “ glorious end.” This new myth of God, who had until now been mistaken for a race of giants or Moira, and who was now Himself the spinner and weaver of webs and purposes even more subtle than those of our own intellect so subtle, indeed, that they appear to be incomprehensible and even unreasonable this myth was so bold a transformation and so daring a paradox that the overrefined ancient world could not resist it, however extravagant and contradictory the thing seemed : for, let it be said in confidence, there was a contradiction in it, if our intellect cannot divine the intellect and aims of God, how did it divine this quality of its intellect and this quality of God’s intellect ? In more modern times, indeed, the doubt has increased as to whether the slate that falls from the roof is really thrown by ” Divine love,” and mankind again harks back to the old romance of giants and dwarfs. Let us learn then, for it is time we did so, that even in our supposed separate domain of aims and reason the giants likewise rule. And our aims and reason are not dwarfs, but giants. And our own webs are just as often and as clumsily rent by ourselves as by the slate, And not everything is purpose that is called purpose, and still less is everything will that is called will. And if you come to the conclusion, ” Then there is only one domain, that of stupidity and hazard ? ” it must be added that possibly there is only one domain, possibly there is neither will nor aim, and we may only have imagined these things. Those iron hands of necessity that shake the dice-box of chance continue their game indefinitely : hence, it must happen that certain throws perfectly resemble every degree of appropriateness and good sense. It may be that our own voluntary acts and purposes are merely such throws, and that we are too circumscribed and vain to conceive our extremely circumscribed state ! that we ourselves shake the dice-box with iron hands, and do nothing in our most deliberate actions but play the game of necessity. Possibly ! To rise beyond this ” possibly ” we should indeed have been guests in the Underworld, playing at dice and betting with Proserpine at the table of the goddess herself.
131 MORAL FASHIONS. How moral judgments as a whole have changed ! The greatest marvels of the morality of antiquity, such as Epictetus, knew nothing of the glorification, now so common, of the spirit of sacrifice, of living for others : after the fashion of morality now prevailing we should really call them immoral ; for they fought with all their strength for their own ego and against all sympathy for others, especially for the sufferings and moral imperfections of others. Perhaps they would reply to us by saying, ” If you feel yourselves to be such dull and ugly people, by all means think of others more than yourselves. You will be quite right in doing so ! ” 132 THE LAST ECHOES OF CHRISTIANITY IN MORALS. ” On n’est bon que par la piti : il faut done qu’il y ait quelque pitte dans tous nos sentiments” so says morality nowadays. And how does this come about? The fact that the man who performs social, sympathetic, disinterested, and benevolent actions is now considered as the moral man: this is perhaps the most general effect, the most complete transformation, that Christianity has produced in Europe ; perhaps in spite of itself, and not by any means because this was part of its essential doctrine. But this was the residuum of those Christian feelings that prevailed at the time when the contrary and thoroughly selfish faith in the “ one thing needful” the absolute importance of eternal and personal salvation, together with the dogmas upon which this belief had rested, were gradually receding, and when the auxiliary beliefs in ” love ” and ” love of one’s neighbour,” harmonising with the extraordinary practice of charity by the Church, were thereby coming to the front. The more people gradually became separated from the dogmas, the more did they seek some sort of justification for this separation in a cult of the love of humanity : not to fall short in this respect of the Christian ideal, but to excel it if possible, was the secret stimulus of all the French free-thinkers from Voltaire to Auguste Comte ; and this latter with his famous moral formula “ vivre pour autrui” has indeed out-christianised even Christianity ! It was Schopenhauer in Germany and John Stuart Mill in England who were the means of bringing into the greatest prominence this doctrine of sympathetic affections and of pity or utility to others as a principle of action ; but these men themselves were only echoes. From about the time of the French Revolution these doctrines have manifested themselves in various places with enormous force. Since then they have shown themselves in their coarsest as well as their most subtle form, and all Socialistic principles have almost involuntarily taken their stand on the common ground of this doctrine. At the present time there is perhaps no more widely spread prejudice than that of thinking that we know what really and truly constitutes morality. everyone now seems to learn with satisfaction that society is beginning to adapt the individual to the general needs, and that it is at the same time the happiness and sacrifice of each one to consider himself as a useful member and instrument of the whole. They have still, however, doubts as to the form in which this whole is to be looked for, whether in a state already existing, or in one which has yet to be established, or in a nation, or in an international brotherhood, or in new and small economic communities. On this point there is still much reflection, doubt, struggling, excitement, and passion ; but it is pleasant and wonderful to observe the unanimity with which the ” ego ” is called upon to practice self-denial, until, in the form of adaptation to the whole, it once again secures its own fixed sphere of rights and duties, until, indeed, it has become something quite new and different Nothing else is being attempted, whether admitted or not, than the complete transformation, even the weakening and suppression of the individual : the supporters of the majority never tire of enumerating and anathematising all that is bad, hostile, lavish, expensive, and luxurious in the form of individual existence that has until now prevailed ; they hope that society may be administered in a cheaper, less dangerous, more uniform, and more harmonious way when nothing is left but large corporations and their members. All that is considered as good which in any way corresponds to this desire for grouping men into one particular society, and to the minor cravings which necessarily accompany this desire, this is the chief moral current of our time; sympathy and social feelings are working hand in glove. (Kant is still outside of this movement: he expressly teaches that we should be insensible to the sufferings of others if our benevolence is to have any moral value, a doctrine which Schopenhauer, very angrily, as may easily be imagined, described as the Kantian absurdity.) 133 “ NO LONGER THINKING OF ONE’S SELF.” Let us seriously consider why we should jump into the water to rescue someone who has just fallen in before our eyes, although we may have no particular sympathy for him. We do it for pity’s sake; no one thinks now but of his neighbour, so says thoughtlessness. Why do we experience grief and uneasiness when we see someone spit blood, although we may be really ill-disposed towards him and wish him no good ? Out of pity ; we have ceased to think of ourselves, so says thoughtlessness again. The truth is that in our pity I mean by this what we erroneously call ” pity” we no longer think consciously of ourselves, but quite unconsciously, exactly as when slipping we unconsciously make the best counter-motions possible in order to recover our balance, and in doing so clearly use all our intelligence. A mishap to another offends us ; it would bring our impotence, or perhaps our cowardice, into strong relief if we could do nothing to help him ; or in itself it would give rise to a diminution of our honour in the eyes of others and of ourselves. Or again, accidents that happen to others act as finger-posts to point out our own danger, and even as indications of human peril and frailty they can produce a painful effect upon us. We shake off this kind of pain and offence, and balance it by an act of pity behind which may be hidden a subtle form of self-defence or even revenge. That at bottom we strongly think of ourselves may easily be divined from the decision that we arrive at in all cases where we can avoid the sight of those who are suffering or starving or wailing. We make up our minds not to avoid such people when we can approach them as powerful and helpful ones, when we can safely reckon upon their applause, or wish to feel the contrast of our own happiness, or, again, when we hope to get rid of our own boredom. It is misleading to call the suffering that we experience at such a sight, and which may be of a very different kind, commiseration. For in all cases it is a suffering from which the suffering person before us is free : it is our own suffering, just as his suffering is his own. It is thus only this personal feeling of misery that we get rid of by acts of compassion. Nevertheless, we never act thus from one single motive: as it is certain that we wish to free ourselves from suffering thereby, it is also certain that by the same action we yield to an impulse of pleasure. Pleasure arises at the sight of a contrast to our own condition, at the knowledge
that we should be able to help if only we wished to do so, at the thought of the praise and gratitude which we should gain if we did help, at the very act of helping, in so far as this might prove successful (and because something which is gradually seen to be successful gives pleasure to the doer) ; but even more particularly at the feeling that our intervention brings to an end some deplorable injustice, even the outburst of one’s indignation is invigorating. All this, including even things still more subtle, comprises “ pity.” How clumsily with this one word does language fall foul of such a complex and polyphonic organism ! That pity, on the other hand, is identical with the suffering the sight of which brings it about, or that it has a particularly subtle and penetrating comprehension of it : this is in contradiction to experience, and he who has glorified pity under these two heads lacked sufficient experience in the domain of morals. That is why I am seized with some doubts when reading of the incredible things attributed by Schopenhauer to pity. It is obvious that he thereby wished to make us believe in the great novelty he brought forward, namely, that pity the pity which he observed so superficially and described so badly was the source of all and every past and future moral action, and all this precisely because of those faculties which he had begun by attributing to it. What is it in the end that distinguishes men without pity from men who are really compassionate ? In particular, to give merely an approximate indication, they have not the sensitive feeling for fear, the subtle faculty for perceiving danger: nor yet is their vanity so easily wounded if something happens which they might have been able to prevent, the caution of their pride commands them not to interfere uselessly with the affairs of others ; they even act on the belief that everyone should help himself and play his own cards. Again, in most cases they are more habituated to bearing pain than compassionate men, and it does not seem at all unjust to them that others should suffer, since they themselves have suffered. Lastly, the state of soft-heartedness is as painful to them as is the state of stoical impassability to compassionate men: they have only disdainful words for sensitive hearts, as they think that such a state of feeling is dangerous to their own manliness and calm bravery, they conceal their tears from others and wipe them off, angry with themselves. They belong to a different type of egoists from the compassionate men, but to call them, in a distinct sense, evil and the compassionate ones good, is merely a moral fashion which has had its innings, just as the reverse fashion had also its innings, and a long innings, too. 134 TO WHAT EXTENT WE MUST BEWARE OF PITY. Pity, in so far as it actually gives rise to suffering and this must be our only point of view here is a weakness, like every other indulgence in an injurious emotion. It increases suffering throughout the world, and although here and there a certain amount of suffering may be indirectly diminished or removed altogether as a consequence of pity, we must not bring forward these occasional consequences, which are on the whole insignificant, to justify the nature of pity which, as has already been stated, is prejudicial. Supposing that it prevailed, even if only for one day, it would bring humanity to utter ruin. In itself the nature of pity is no better than that of any other craving ; it is only where it is called for and praised and this happens when people do not understand what is injurious in it, but find in it a sort of joy that a good conscience becomes attached to it; it is only then that we willingly yield to it, and do not shrink from acknowledging it. In other circumstances where it is understood to be dangerous, it is looked upon as a weakness ; or, as in the case of the Greeks, as an unhealthy periodical emotion the danger of which might be removed by temporary and voluntary discharges. If a man were to undertake the experiment of deliberately devoting his attention to the opportunities afforded by practical life for the exercise of pity, and were over and over again to picture in his own mind the misery he might meet with in his immediate surroundings, he would inevitably become melancholy and ill. If, however, he wished in any sense of the word to serve humanity as a physician, he would have to take many precautions with respect to this feeling, as otherwise it would paralyse him at all critical moments, undermine the foundations of his knowledge, and unnerve his helpful and delicate hand. 135 AROUSING PITY. Among savages men think with a moral shudder of the possibility of becoming an object of pity, for such a state they regard as deprived of all virtue. Pitying is equivalent to despising : they do not want to see a contemptible being suffer, for this would afford them no enjoyment. On the other hand, to behold one of their enemies suffering, someone whom they look upon as their equal in pride, but whom torture cannot induce to give up his pride, and in general to see someone suffer who refuses to lower himself by appealing for pity which would in their eyes be the most profound and shameful humiliation this is the very joy of joys. Such a spectacle excites the deepest admiration in the soul of the savage, and he ends by killing such a brave man when it is in his power, afterwards according funeral honours to the unbending one. If he had groaned, however; if his countenance had lost its expression of calm disdain ; if he had shown himself to be contemptible, well, in such a case he might have been allowed to live like a dog : he would no longer have aroused the pride of the spectator, and pity would have taken the place of admiration. 136 HAPPINESS IN PITY. If, as is the case among the Hindus, we decree the end and aim of all intellectual activity to be the knowledge of human misery, and if for generation after generation this dreadful resolution be steadily adhered to, pity in the eyes of such men of hereditary pessimism comes to have a new value as a preserver of life, something that helps to make existence endurable, although it may seem worthy of being rejected with horror and disgust. Pity becomes an antidote to suicide, a sentiment which brings pleasure with it and enables us to taste superiority in small doses. It gives some diversion to our minds, makes our hearts full, banishes fear and lethargy, and incites us to speak, to complain, or to act : it is a relative happiness when compared with the misery of the knowledge that hampers the individual on every side, bewilders him, and takes away his breath. Happiness, however, no matter of what nature it may be, gives us air and light and freedom of movement. 137 WHY DOUBLE THE ” EGO ” ? To view our own experiences in the same light as we are in the habit of looking at those of others is very comforting and an advisable medicine.
On the other hand, to look upon the experiences of others and adopt them as if they were our own which is called for by the philosophy of pity would ruin us in a very short time: let us only make the experiment without trying to imagine it any longer ! The first maxim is, in addition, undoubtedly more in accordance with reason and goodwill towards reason ; for we estimate more objectively the value and significance of an event when it happens to others, the value, for instance, of a death, loss of money or slander. But pity, taking as its principle of action the injunction, ” Suffer the misfortune of another as much as he himself,” would lead the point of view of the ego with all its exaggerations and deviations to become the point of view of the other person, the sympathiser : so that we should have to suffer at the same time from our own ego and the other’s ego. In this way we would voluntarily over load ourselves with a double irrationality, instead of making the burden of our own as light as possible. 138 BECOMING MORE TENDER. Whenever we love someone and venerate and admire him, and afterwards come to perceive that he is suffering which always causes us the utmost astonishment, since we cannot but feel that the happiness we derive from him must flow from a superabundant source of personal happiness our feelings of love, veneration, and admiration are essentially changed: they become more tender ; that is, the gap that separates us seems to be bridged over and there appears to be an approach to equality. It now seems possible to give him something in return, while we had previously imagined him as being altogether above our gratitude. Our ability to requite him for what we have received from him arouses in us feelings of much joy and pleasure. We endeavour to ascertain what can best calm the grief of our friend, and we give it to him ; if he wishes for kind words, looks, attentions, services, or presents, we give them ; but, above all, if he would like to see us suffering from the sight of his suffering, we pretend to suffer, for all this secures for us the enjoyment of active gratitude, which is equivalent in a way to good-natured revenge. If he wants none of these things, and refuses to accept them from us, we depart from him chilled and sad, almost mortified ; it appears to us as if our gratitude had been declined, and on this point of honour even the best of men is still somewhat touchy. It results from all this that even in the best case there is something humiliating in suffering, and something elevating and superior in sympathy, a fact which will keep the two feelings apart forever and ever. 139 HIGHER IN NAME ONLY. You say that the morality of pity is a higher morality than that of stoicism ? Prove it ! But take care not to measure the ” higher ” and ” lower ” degrees of morality once more by moral yardsticks ; for there are no absolute morals. So take your yardstick from somewhere else, and be on your guard ! 140 PRAISE AND BLAME. When a war has come to an unsuccessful conclusion we try to find the man who is to blame for the war ; when it comes to a successful conclusion we praise the man who is responsible for it. In all unsuccessful cases attempts are made to blame somebody, for non-success gives rise to dejection, against which the single possible remedy is involuntarily applied ; a new incitement of the sense of power ; and this incitement is found in the condemnation of the ” guilty ” one. This guilty one is not perhaps the scapegoat of the faults of others ; he is merely the victim of the feeble, humiliated, and depressed people who wish to prove upon someone that they have not yet lost all their power. Even self-condemnation after a defeat may be the means of restoring the feeling of power. On the other hand, glorification of the originator is often but an equally blind result of another instinct that demands its victim, and in this case the sacrifice appears to be sweet and attractive even for the victim. This happens when the feeling of power is satiated in a nation or a society by so great and fascinating a success that a weariness of victory supervenes and pride wishes to be discharged : a feeling of self-sacrifice is aroused and looks for its object. Thus, whether we are blamed or praised we merely, as a rule, provide opportunities for the gratification of others, and are only too often caught up and whirled away for our neighbours to discharge upon us their accumulated feelings of praise or blame. In both cases we confer a benefit upon them for which we deserve no credit and they no thanks. 141 MORE BEAUTIFUL BUT LESS VALUABLE. Picturesque morality : such is the morality of those passions characterised by sudden outbursts, abrupt transitions ; pathetic, impressive, dreadful, and solemn attitudes and gestures. It is the semi-savage stage of morality : never let us be tempted to set it on a higher plane merely on account of its aesthetic charms. 142 SYMPATHY. In order to understand our neighbour, that is, in order to reproduce his sentiments in ourselves, we often, no doubt, plumb the cause of his feelings, as, for example, by asking ourselves, Why is he sad ? in order that we may become sad ourselves for the same reason. But we much more frequently neglect to act thus, and we produce these feelings in ourselves in accordance with the effects which they exhibit in the person we are studying, by imitating in our own body the expression of his eyes, his voice, his gait, his attitude (or, at any rate, the likeness of these things in words, pictures, and music), or we may at least endeavour to mimic the action of his muscles and nervous system. A like feeling will then spring up in us as the result of an old association of movements and sentiments which has been trained to run backwards and forwards. We have developed to a very high pitch this knack of sounding the feelings of others, and when we are in the presence of anyone else we bring this faculty of ours into play almost involuntarily, let the inquirer observe the animation of a woman’s countenance and notice how it vibrates and quivers with animation as the result of the continual imitation and reflection of what is going on around her. It is music, however, more than anything else that shows us what past-masters we are in the rapid and subtle divination of feelings and sympathy ; for even if music is only the imitation of an imitation of feelings, nevertheless, despite its distance and vagueness, it often enables us to participate in those feelings, so that we become sad without any reason for feeling so, like the fools that we are, merely because we hear certain sounds and rhythms that somehow or other remind us of the intonation and the movements, or perhaps even only of the behaviour, of sorrowful people. It is related of a certain Danish king that he was wrought up to such a pitch of warlike enthusiasm by the song of a minstrel that he
sprang to his feet and killed five persons of his assembled court : there was neither war nor enemy ; there was rather the exact opposite; yet the power of the retrospective inference from a feeling to the cause of it was sufficiently strong in this king to overpower both his observation and his reason. Such, however, is almost invariably the effect of music (provided that it thrills us), and we have no need of such paradoxical instances to recognise this, the state of feeling into which music transports us is almost always in contradiction to the appearance of our actual state, and of our reasoning power which recognises this actual state and its causes. If we inquire how it happened that this imitation of the feelings of others has become so common, there will be no doubt as to the answer : man being the most timid of all beings because of his subtle and delicate nature has been made familiar through his timidity with this sympathy for, and rapid comprehension of, the feelings of others, even of animals. For century after century he saw danger in everything that was unfamiliar to him, in anything that happened to be alive, and whenever the spectacle of such things and creatures came before his eyes he imitated their features and attitude, drawing at the same time his own conclusion as to the nature of the evil intentions they concealed. This interpretation of all movements and all facial characteristics in the sense of intentions, man has even brought to bear on things inanimate, urged on as he was by the illusion that there was nothing inanimate. I believe that this is the origin of everything that we now call a feeling for nature, that sensation of joy which men experience at the sight of the sky, the fields, the rocks, the forests, the storms, the stars, the landscapes, and spring : without our old habits of fear which forced us to suspect behind everything a kind of second and more recondite sense, we should now experience no delight in nature, in the same way as men and animals do not cause us to rejoice if we have not first been deterred by that source of all understanding, namely, fear. For joy and agreeable surprise, and finally the feeling of ridicule, are the younger children of sympathy, and the much younger brothers and sisters of fear. The faculty of rapid perception, which is based on the faculty of rapid dissimulation, decreases in proud and autocratic men and nations, as they are less timid ; but, on the other hand, every category of understanding and dissimulation is well known to timid peoples, and among them is to be found the real home of imitative arts and superior intelligence. When, proceeding from the theory of sympathy such as I have just outlined, I turn my attention to the theory, now so popular and almost sacrosanct, of a mystical process by means of which pity blends two beings into one, and thus permits them immediately to understand one another, when I recollect that even so clear a brain as Schopenhauer’s delighted in such fantastic nonsense, and that he in his turn transplanted this delight into other lucid and semilucid brains, I feel unlimited astonishment and compassion. How great must be the pleasure we experience in this senseless tomfoolery ! How near must even a sane man be to insanity as soon as he listens to his own secret intellectual desires ! Why did Schopenhauer really feel so grateful, so profoundly indebted to Kant ? He revealed on one occasion the undoubted answer to this question. Someone had spoken of the way in which the qualitas occulta of Kant’s Categorical Imperative might be got rid of, so that the theory itself might be rendered intelligible. Whereupon Schopenhauer gave utterance to the following outburst: “ An intelligible Categorical Imperative ! Preposterous idea ! Stygian darkness ! God forbid that it should ever become intelligible ! The fact that there is actually something unintelligible, that this misery of the understanding and its conceptions is limited, conditional, final, and deceptive, this is beyond question Kant’s great gift.” Let anyone consider whether a man can be in possession of a desire to gain an insight into moral things when he feels himself comforted from the start by a belief in the inconceivableness of these things ! one who still honestly believes in illuminations from above, in magic, in ghostly appearances, and in the metaphysical ugliness of the toad ! 143 WOE TO US IF THIS IMPULSE SHOULD RAGE I Supposing that the impulse towards devotion and care for others (” sympathetic affection “ ) were doubly as strong as it now is, life on earth could not be endured. Let it only be considered how many foolish things everyone of us does day by day and hour by hour, merely out of solicitude and devotion for himself, and how unbearable he seems in doing so : and what then would it be like if we were to become for other people the object of the stupidities and importunities with which up to the present they have only tormented themselves ! Should we not then take precipitately to our heels as soon as one of our neighbours came towards us ? And would it not be necessary to overwhelm this sympathetic affection with the abuse that we now reserve for egoism ? 144 CLOSING OUR EARS TO THE COMPLAINTS OF OTHERS. When we let our sky be clouded by the complaints and suffering of other mortals, who must bear the consequences of such gloom ? No doubt those other mortals, in addition to all their other burdens ! If we are merely to be the echoes of their complaints, we cannot accord them either help or comfort ; nor can we do so if we were continually keeping our ears open to listen to them, unless we have learnt the art of the Olympians, who, instead of trying to make themselves unhappy, endeavoured to feel edified by the misfortunes of mankind. But this is something too Olympian for us, although, in our enjoyment of tragedy, we have already taken a step towards this ideal divine cannibalism. 145 ” UNEGOISTIC.” This man is empty and wishes to be filled, that one is over-full and wishes to be emptied : both of them feel themselves urged on to look for an individual who can help them. And this phenomenon, interpreted in a higher sense, is in both cases known by the same name, ” love.” Well? and could this love be something unegoistic? 146 LOOKING BEYOND OUR NEIGHBOUR. What? Ought the nature of true morality to consist for us in fixing our eyes upon the most direct and immediate consequences of our action for other people, and in our coming to a decision accordingly ? This is only a narrow and bourgeois morality, even though it may be a morality : but it seems to me that it would be more superior and liberal to look beyond these immediate consequences for our neighbour in order to encourage more distant purposes, even at the risk of making others suffer, as, for example, by encouraging the spirit of knowledge in spite of the certainty that our free-thought will have the instant effect of plunging others into doubt, grief, and even
worse afflictions. Have we not at least the right to treat our neighbour as we treat ourselves ? And if, where we are concerned, we do not think in such a narrow and bourgeois fashion of immediate consequences and sufferings, why should we be compelled to act thus in regard to our neighbour ? Supposing that we felt ready to sacrifice ourselves, what is there to prevent us from sacrificing our neighbour together with ourselves, -just as States and Sovereigns have until now sacrificed one citizen to the others, ” for the sake of the general interest,” as they say ? We too, however, have general interests, perhaps even more general than theirs : so why may we not sacrifice a few individuals of this generation for the benefit of generations to come ? so that their affliction, anxiety, despair, blunders, and misery may be deemed essential because a new plough is to break up the ground and render it fertile for all. Finally, we communicate the disposition to our neighbour by which he is enabled to feel himself a victim : we persuade him to carry out the task for which we employ him. Are we then devoid of all pity? If, however, we wish to achieve a victory over ourselves beyond our pity, is not this a higher and more liberal attitude and disposition than that in which we only feel safe after having ascertained whether an action benefits or harms our neighbour ? On the contrary, it is by means of such sacrifice including the sacrifice of ourselves, as well as of our neighbours that we should strengthen and elevate the general sense of human power, even supposing that we attain nothing more than this. But even this itself would be a positive increase of happiness. Then, if even this … but not a word more ! You have understood me at a glance. 147 THE CAUSE OF ” ALTRUISM.” Men have on the whole spoken of love with so much emphasis and adoration because they have until now always had so little of it, and have never yet been satiated with this food: in this way it became their ambrosia. If a poet wished to show universal benevolence in the image of a Utopia, he would certainly have to describe an agonising and ridiculous state of things, the like of which was never seen on earth, everyone would be surrounded, importuned, and sighed for, not as at present, by one lover, but by thousands, by everybody indeed, as the result of an irresistible craving which would then be as vehemently insulted and cursed as selfishness has been by men of past ages. The poets of this new condition of things, if they had sufficient leisure to write, would be dreaming of nothing but the blissful and loveless past, the divine selfishness of yore, and the wonderful possibilities in former times of remaining alone, not being run after by one’s friends, and of even being hated and despised or any other odious expressions which the beautiful animal world in which we live chooses to coin. 148 LOOKING FAR AHEAD. If, in accordance with the present definition, only those actions are moral which are done for the sake of others, and for their sake only, then there are no moral actions at all ! If, in accordance with another definition, only those actions are moral which spring from our own free will, then there are no moral actions in this case either ! What is it, then, that we designate thus, which certainly exists and wishes as a consequence to be explained? It is the result of a few intellectual blunders ; and supposing that we were able to free ourselves from these errors, what would then become of ” moral actions ” ? It is due to these errors that we have up to the present attributed to certain actions a value superior to what was theirs in reality: we separated them from ” egoistic ” and ” non-free actions. When we now set them once more in the latter categories, as we must do, we certainly reduce their value (their own estimate of value) even below its reasonable level, because ” egoistic ” and ” non-free ” actions have up to the present been undervalued owing to that alleged profound and essential difference. In future, then, will these very actions be less frequently performed, since they will be less highly esteemed ? Inevitably ! Or at all events for a fairly long time, as long as the scale of valuations remains under the reacting influence of former mistakes ! But we make some return for this by giving back to men their good courage for the carrying out of actions that are now reputed to be selfish, and thus restore their value, we relieve men’s bad consciences ! and as up to the present egoistic actions have been by far the most frequent, and will be so to all eternity, we free the whole conception of these actions and of life from its evil appearance ! This is a very high and important result. When men no longer believe themselves to be evil, they cease to be so. BOOK III 149 LITTLE UNCONVENTIONAL ACTIONS ARE NECESSARY ! To act occasionally in matters of custom against our own better judgments ; to yield in practice while reserving our own intellectual liberty ; to behave like everybody else and thus to show ourselves amiable and considerate to all, to compensate them, as it were, even if only to some extent, for our unconventional opinions all this among many tolerably liberal-minded men is looked upon not only as permissible but even as ” honourable,” ” humane,” ” tolerant,” and ” un-pedantic,” or whatever fine words may be used to lull to sleep the intellectual conscience. So, for example, one man, although he may be an atheist, has his infant baptized in the usual Christian fashion ; another goes through his period of military service, though he may severely condemn all hatred between nations ; and a third runs into the Church with a girl because she comes from a religious family, and makes his vows to a priest without feeling ashamed of it. ” It is of no importance if one of us does what everyone else does and has done ” so says ignorant prejudice! What a profound mistake! For nothing is of greater importance than that a powerful, long-established, and irrational custom should be once again confirmed by the act of someone who is recognised as rational. In this way the proceeding is thought to be sanctioned by reason itself! All honour to your opinions! but little unconventional actions are of still greater value. 150 THE HAZARD OF MARRIAGES. If I were a god, and a benevolent god, the marriages of men would cause me more displeasure than anything else. An individual can make very great progress within the seventy years of his life yes, even within thirty years : such progress, indeed, as to surprise even the gods ! But when we then see him exposing the inheritance and legacy of his struggles and victories, the laurel crown of his humanity, on the first convenient peg where any female may pick it to pieces for him ; when we observe
how well he can acquire and how little he is capable of preserving his acquisitions, and how he does not even dream that by procreation he might prepare a still more victorious life, we then, indeed, become impatient and say, “ Nothing can in the end result from humanity, individuals are wasted, for all rationality of a great advance of humanity is rendered impossible by the hazard of marriages : let us cease from being the assiduous spectators and fools of this aimless drama ! ” It was in this mood that the gods of Epicurus withdrew long ago to their divine seclusion and felicity : they were tired of men and their love affairs. 151 HERE ARE NEW IDEALS TO INVENT. At a time when a man is in love he should not be allowed to come to a decision about his life and to determine once and for all the character of his society on account of a whim. We ought publicly to declare invalid the vows of lovers, and to refuse them permission to marry : and this because we should treat marriage itself much more seriously, so that in cases where it is now contracted it would not usually be allowed in future ! Are not the majority of marriages such that we should not care to have them witnessed by a third party ? And yet this third party is scarcely ever lacking the child and he is more than a witness ; he is the whipping-boy and scapegoat. 152 FORMULA OF OATH. ” If I am now telling a lie I am no longer an honourable man, and everyone may say so to my face.” I recommend this formula in place of the present judicial oath and its customary invocation to the Deity: it is stronger. There is no reason why even religious men should oppose it ; for as soon as the customary oath no longer serves, all the religious people will have to turn to their catechism, which says, ” You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” 153 THE MALCONTENT. He Is one of the brave old warriors : angry with civilisation because he believes that its object is to make all good things honour, rewards, and fair women accessible even to cowards. 154 CONSOLATION AMID PERILS. The Greeks, in the course of a life that was always surrounded by great dangers and cataclysms, endeavoured to find in meditation and knowledge a kind of security of feeling, a last refuge. We, who live in a much more secure state, have introduced danger into meditation and knowledge, and it is in life itself that we endeavour to find repose, a refuge from danger. 155 EXTINCT SCEPTICISM. Hazardous enterprises are rarer in modern times than in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, probably because modern times have no more belief in omens, oracles, stars, and soothsayers. In other words, we have become incapable of believing in a future which is reserved for us, as the ancients did, who in contradistinction to ourselves were much less sceptical regarding that which is to be than that which is. 156 EVIL THROUGH EXUBERANCE. ” Oh, that we should not feel too happy ! ” such was the secret fear of the Greeks in their best age. That is why they preached moderation to themselves. And we ? 157 THE WORSHIP OF NATURAL SOUNDS. What signification can we find in the fact that our culture is not only indulgent to the manifestations of grief, such as tears, complaints, reproaches, and attitudes of rage and humility, but even approves them and reckons them among the most noble and essential things? while, on the other hand, the spirit of ancient philosophy looked down upon them with contempt, without admitting their necessity in any way. Let us remember how Plato who was by no means one of the most inhuman of the philosophers speaks of the Philoctetus of the tragic stage. Is it possible that our modern culture is wanting in ” philosophy ” ? or, in accordance with the valuations of those old philosophers, do we perhaps all form part of the ” mob ” ? 158 THE CLIMATE FOR FLATTERY. In our day flatterers should no longer be sought at the courts of kings, since these have all acquired a taste for militarism, which cannot tolerate flattery. But this flower even now often grows in abundance in the neighbourhood of bankers and artists. 159 THE REVIVERS. Vain men value a fragment of the past more highly from the moment when they are able to revive it in their imagination (especially if it is difficult to do so), they would even like if possible to raise it from the dead. Since, however, the number of vain people is always very large, the danger presented by historical studies, if an entire epoch devotes its attention to them, is by no means small : too great an amount of strength is then wasted on all sorts of imaginable resurrections. The entire movement of romanticism is perhaps best understood from this point of view. 160 VAIN, GREEDY, AND NOT VERY WISE. Your desires are greater than your understanding, and your vanity is even greater than your desires, to people of your type a great deal of Christian practice and a little Schopenhauerian theory may be strongly recommended. 161
BEAUTY CORRESPONDING TO THE AGE. If our sculptors, painters, and musicians wish to catch the significance of the age, they should represent beauty as bloated, gigantic, and nervous: just as the Greeks, under the influence of their morality of moderation, saw and represented beauty in the Apollo di Belvedere. We should, indeed, call him ugly ! But the pedantic ” classicists ” have deprived us of all our honesty ! 162 THE IRONY OF THE PRESENT TIME. At the present day it is the habit of Europeans to treat all matters of great importance with irony, because, as the result of our activity in their service, we have no time to take them seriously. 163 AGAINST ROUSSEAU. If it is true that there is something contemptible about our civilisation, we have two alternatives : of concluding with Rousseau that, ” This despicable civilisation is to blame for our bad morality,” or to infer, contrary to Rousseau’s view, that ” Our good morality is to blame for this contemptible civilisation. Our social conceptions of good and evil, weak and effeminate as they are, and their enormous influence over both body and soul, have had the effect of weakening all bodies and souls and of crushing all unprejudiced, independent, and self-reliant men, the real pillars of a strong civilisation : wherever we still find the evil morality to-day, we see the last crumbling ruins of these pillars.” Thus let paradox be opposed by paradox ! It is quite impossible for the truth to lie with both sides : and can we say, indeed, that it lies with either ? Decide for yourself. 164 PERHAPS PREMATURE. It would seem at the present time that, under many different and misleading names, and often with a great want of clearness, those who do not feel themselves attached to morals and to established laws are taking the first initial steps to organise themselves, and thus to create a right for themselves ; while until now, as criminals, free-thinkers, immoral men and miscreants, they have lived beyond the pale of the law, under the bane of outlawry and bad conscience, corrupted and corrupting. On the whole, we should consider this as right and proper, although it may result in insecurity for the coming century and compel everyone to bear arms. There is thereby a counterforce which continually reminds us that there is no exclusively moral-making morality, and that a morality which asserts itself to the exclusion of all other morality destroys too much sound strength and is too dearly bought by mankind. The non-conventional and deviating people, who are so often productive and inventive, must no longer be sacrificed : it must never again be considered as a disgrace to depart from morality either in actions or thought; many new experiments must be made upon life and society, and the world must be relieved from a huge weight of bad conscience. These general aims must be recognised and encouraged by all those upright people who are seeking truth. 165 A MORALITY WHICH DOES NOT BORE ONE. The principal moral commandments which a nation permits its teachers to emphasise again and again stand in relation to its chief defects, and that is why it does not find them tiresome. The Greeks, who so often failed to employ moderation, coolness, fair-mindedness, and rationality in general, turned a willing ear to the four Socratic virtues, they stood in such need of them, and yet had so little talent for them ! 166 AT THE PARTING OF THE WAYS. Shame! You wish to form part of a system in which you must be a wheel, fully and completely, or risk being crushed by wheels ! where it is understood that each one will be that which his superiors make of him ! where the seeking for ” connections ” will form part of one’s natural duties ! where no one feels himself offended when he has his attention drawn to someone with the remark, ” He may be useful to you some time”; where people do not feel ashamed of paying a visit to ask for somebody’s intercession, and where they do not even suspect that by such a voluntary submission to these morals, they are once and for all stamped as the common pottery of nature, which others can employ or break up of their free will without feeling in any way responsible for doing so, just as if one were to say, ” People of my type will never be lacking, therefore, do what you will with me ! Do not stand on ceremony ! ” 167 UNCONDITIONAL HOMAGE. When I think of the most read German philosopher, the most popular German musician, and the most distinguished German statesman, I cannot but acknowledge that life is now rendered unusually arduous for these Germans, this nation of unconditional sentiments, and that, too, by their own great men. We see three magnificent spectacles spread out before us : on each occasion there is a river rushing along in the bed which it has made for itself, and even so agitated that one thinks at times it intends to flow uphill. And yet, however we might admire Schopenhauer, who would not, all things considered, like to have other opinions than his ? Who in all greater and smaller things would now share the opinions of Richard Wagner, although there may be truth in the view expressed by someone : namely that wherever Wagner gave or took offence some problem lay hidden, which, however, he did not unearth for us. And, finally, how many are there who would be willing and eager to agree with Bismarck, if only he could always agree with himself, or were even to show some signs of doing so for the future ! It is true that it is by no means astonishing to find statesmen without principles, but with dominant instincts ; a versatile mind, actuated by these dominant and violent instincts, and hence without principles these qualities are looked upon as reasonable and natural in a statesman. But, alas, this has up to the present been so un-German ; as un-German as the fuss made about music and the discord and bad temper excited around the person of the musician ; or as un-German as the new and extraordinary position taken up by Schopenhauer : he did not feel himself to be either above things or on his knees before them one or other of these alternatives might still have been German but he assumed an attitude against things ! How incredible and disagreeable! to range one’s self with things and nevertheless be their adversary, and finally the adversary of one’s self, what can the unconditional admirer do with such an example ? And what, again, can he do with three such examples who cannot
keep the peace towards one another ! Here we see Schopenhauer as the antagonist of Wagner’s music, Wagner attacking Bismarck’s politics, and Bismarck attacking Wagnerism and Schopenhauerism. What remains for us to do ? Where shall we flee with our thirst for wholesale hero-worship ! Would it not be possible to choose from the music of the musician a few hundred bars of good music which appealed to the heart, and which we should like to take to heart because they are inspired by the heart, could we not stand aside with this small piece of plunder, and forget the rest ? And could we not make a similar compromise as regards the philosopher and the statesman, select, take to heart, and in particular forget the rest ? Yes, if only forgetfulness were not so difficult ! There was once a very proud man who would never on any account accept anything, good or evil, from others, from any one, indeed, but himself. When he wanted to forget, however, he could not bestow this gift upon himself, and was three times compelled to conjure up the spirits. They came, listened to his desire, and said at last, ” This is the only thing it is not in our power to give ! ” Could not the Germans take warning by this experience of Manfred ? Why, then, should the spirits be conjured up ? It is useless. We never forget what we endeavour to forget. And how great would be the ” balance ” which we should have to forget if we wished henceforth to continue wholesale admirers of these three great men ! It would therefore be far more advisable to profit by the excellent opportunity offered us to try something new, i.e. to advance in the spirit of honesty towards ourselves and become, instead of a nation of credulous repetition and of bitter and blind animosity, a people of conditional assent and benevolent opposition. We must come to learn in the first place, however, that unconditional homage to people is something rather ridiculous, that a change of view on this point would not discredit even Germans, and that there is a profound and memorable saying : ” Ce qui importe, ce ne sont point les personnes : mais les choses.” This saying is like the man who uttered it great, honest, simple, and silent, just like Carnot, the soldier and Republican. But may I at the present time speak thus to Germans of a Frenchman, and a Republican into the bargain ? Perhaps not : perhaps I must not even recall what Niebuhr in his time dared to say to the Germans : that no one had made such an impression of true greatness upon him as Carnot. 168 A MODEL. What do I like about Thucydides, and how does it come that I esteem him more highly than Plato ? He exhibits the most widespread and artless pleasure in everything typical in men and events, and finds that each type is possessed of a certain quantity of good sense : it is this good sense which he seeks to discover. He likewise exhibits a larger amount of practical justice than Plato ; he never reviles or belittles those men whom he dislikes or who have in any way injured him in the course of his life. On the contrary : while seeing only types, he introduces something noble and additional into all things and persons ; for what could posterity, to which he dedicates his work, do with things not typical ! Thus this culture of the disinterested knowledge of the world attains in him, the poet-thinker, a final marvellous bloom, this culture which has its poet in Sophocles, its statesman in Pericles, its doctor in Hippocrates, and its natural philosopher in Democritus : this culture which deserves to be called by the name of its teachers, the Sophists, and which, unhappily, from the moment of its baptism at once begins to grow pale and incomprehensible to us, for henceforward we suspect that this culture, which was combated by Plato and all the Socratic schools, must have been very immoral ! The truth of this matter is so complicated and entangled that we feel unwilling to unravel it : so let the old error (error veritate simplicior) run its old course. 169 THE GREEK GENIUS FOREIGN TO us. Oriental or modern, Asiatic or European : compared with the ancient Greeks, everything is characterised by enormity of size and by the revelling in great masses as the expression of the sublime, while in Paestum, Pompeii, and Athens we are astonished, when contemplating Greek architecture, to see with what small masses the Greeks were able to express the sublime, and how they loved to express it thus. In the same way, how simple were the Greeks in the idea which they formed of themselves I How far we surpass them in the knowledge of man ! Again, how full of labyrinths would our souls and our conceptions of our souls appear in comparison with theirs ! If we had to venture upon an architecture after the style of our own souls (we are too cowardly for that !) a labyrinth would have to be our model. That music which is peculiar to us, and which really expresses us, lets this be clearly seen ! (for in music men let themselves go, because they think there is no one who can see them hiding behind their music). 170 ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW. How we babble about the Greeks ! What do we understand of their art, the soul of which was the passion for naked masculine beauty ! It was only by starting from this that they appreciated feminine beauty. For the latter they had thus a perspective quite different from ours. It was the same in regard to their love for women : their worship was of a different kind, and so also was their contempt. 171 THE FOOD OF THE MODERN MAN. He has learned to digest many things ; nay, almost everything ; it is his ambition to do so. He would, however, be really of a higher order if he did not understand this so well : homo pamphagus is not the finest type of the human race. We live between a past which had a more wayward and deranged taste than we, and a future which will possibly have a more select taste, we live too much midway. 172 TRAGEDY AND MUSIC. Men of essentially warlike disposition, such, for example, as the ancient Greeks in the time of Eschylus, are difficult to rouse, and when pity once triumphs over their hardness they are seized as by a kind of giddiness or a ” demoniacal power,” they feel themselves overpowered and thrilled by a religious horror. After this they become sceptical about their condition ; but as long as they are in it they enjoy the charm of being, as it were, outside themselves, and the delight of the marvellous mixed with the bitterest gall of suffering : this is the proper kind of drink for fighting men, something rare, dangerous, and bitter-sweet, which does not often fall to one’s lot. Tragedy appeals to
souls who feel pity in this way, to those fierce and warlike souls which are difficult to overcome, whether by fear or pity, but which lose nothing by being softened from time to time. Of what use, however, is tragedy to those who are as open to the ” sympathetic affections ” as the sails of a ship to the wind ! When at the time of Plato the Athenians had become more softened and sensitive, oh, how far they were still removed from the gushing emotions of the inhabitants of our modern towns and villages ! And yet even then the philosophers were beginning to complain of the injurious nature of tragedy. An epoch full of danger such as that now beginning, in which bravery and manliness are rising in value, will perhaps again harden souls to such an extent that they will once more stand in need of tragic poets : but in the meantime these are somewhat superfluous, to put it mildly. For music, too, a better age may be approaching (it will certainly be a more evil age !) when artists will have to make their music appeal to strongly individual beings, beings which will have become hard and which will be dominated by the gloomy earnestness of their own passion ; but of what use is music to the little souls of the present age which is fast passing away, souls that are too unsteady, ill-developed, half-personal, inquisitive, and envious of everything ? 173 THE FLATTERERS OF WORK. In the glorification of” work ” and the never-ceasing talk about the ” blessing of labour,” I see the same secret idea as I do in the praise bestowed on impersonal acts of a general interest, namely a fear of everything individual. For at the sight of work that is to say, severe toil from morning till night we have the feeling that it is the best police, namely that it holds everyone in check and effectively hinders the development of reason, of greed, and of desire for independence. For work uses up an extraordinary proportion of nervous force, withdrawing it from reflection, meditation, dreams, cares, love, and hatred ; it dangles unimportant aims before the eyes of the worker and affords easy and regular gratification. Thus it happens that a society where work is continually being performed will enjoy greater security, and it is security which is now venerated as the supreme deity. And now, horror of horrors ! it is the ” workman ” himself who has become dangerous ; the whole world is swarming with ” dangerous individuals ” and behind them follows the danger of dangers - the individual ! 174 THE MORAL FASHION OF A COMMERCIAL COMMUNITY. Behind the principle of the present moral fashion : ” Moral actions are actions performed out of sympathy for others,” I see the social instinct of fear, which thus assumes an intellectual disguise: this instinct sets forth as its supreme, most important, and most immediate principle that life shall be relieved of all the dangerous characteristics which it possessed in former times, and that everyone must help with all his strength towards the attainment of this end. It is for that reason that only those actions which keep in view the general security and the feeling of security of society are called ” good.” How little joy must men now have in themselves when such a tyranny of fear prescribes their supreme moral law, if they make no objection when commanded to turn their eyes from themselves and to look aside from themselves ! And yet at the same time they have lynx eyes for all distress and suffering elsewhere ! Are we not, then, with this gigantic intention of ours of smoothing down every sharp edge and corner in life, utilising the best means of turning mankind into sand! Small, soft, round, infinite sand ! Is that your ideal, you harbingers of the “ sympathetic affections ” ? In the meantime even the question remains unanswered whether we are of more use to our neighbour in running immediately and continually to his help, which for the most part can only be done in a very superficial way, as otherwise it would become a tyrannical meddling and changing, or by transforming ourselves into something which our neighbour can look upon with pleasure, something, for example, which may be compared to a beautiful, quiet, and secluded garden, protected by high walls against storms and the dust of the roads, but likewise with a hospitable gate. 175 FUNDAMENTAL BASIS OF A CULTURE OF TRADERS. We have now an opportunity of watching the manifold growth of the culture of a society of which commerce is the soul, just as personal rivalry was the soul of culture among the ancient Greeks, and war, conquest, and law among the ancient Romans. The tradesman is able to value everything without producing it, and to value it according to the requirements of the consumer rather than his own personal needs. ” How many and what class of people will consume this ? ” is his question of questions. Hence, he instinctively and incessantly employs this mode of valuation and applies it to everything, including the productions of art and science, and of thinkers, scholars, artists, statesmen, nations, political parties, and even entire ages: with respect to everything produced or created he inquires into the supply and demand in order to estimate for himself the value of a thing. This, when once it has been made the principle of an entire culture, worked out to its most minute and subtle details, and imposed upon every kind of will and knowledge, this is what you men of the coming century will be proud of, if the prophets of the commercial classes are right in putting that century into your possession ! But I have little belief in these prophets. Credat Judaus Apella to speak with Horace. 176 THE CRITICISM OF OUR ANCESTORS. Why should we now endure the truth, even about the most recent past ? Because there is now always a new generation which feels itself in contradiction to the past and enjoys in this criticism the first fruits of its sense of power. In former times the new generation, on the contrary, wished to base itself on the old and began to feel conscious of its power, not only in accepting the opinions of its ancestors but, if possible, taking them even more seriously. To criticise ancestral authority was in former times a vice ; but at the present time our idealists begin by making it their starting-point. 177 TO LEARN SOLITUDE. O you poor fellows in the great centres of the world’s politics, you young and talented men, who, urged on by ambition, think it your duty to propound your opinion of every event of the day, for something is always happening, who, by thus making a noise and raising a cloud of dust, mistake yourselves for the rolling
chariot of history ; who, because you always listen, always suit the moment when you can put in your word or two, thereby lose all real productiveness. Whatever may be your desire to accomplish great deeds, the deep silence of pregnancy never comes to you ! The event of the day sweeps you along like straws before the wind while you lie under the illusion that you are chasing the event, poor fellows ! If a man wishes to act the hero on the stage he must not think of forming part of the chorus ; he should not even know how the chorus is made up. 178 DAILY WEAR AND TEAR. These young men are lacking neither in character, nor talent, nor zeal, but they have never had sufficient time to choose their own path ; they have, on the contrary, been habituated from the most tender age to have their path pointed out to them. At the time when they were ripe enough to be sent into the ” desert,” something else was done with them. They were turned to account, estranged from themselves, and brought up In such a way that they became accustomed to be worn out by their daily toil. This was imposed on them as a duty, and now they cannot do without it ; they would not wish it to be otherwise. The only thing that cannot be refused to these poor beasts of burden is their ” holidays ” such is the name they give to this ideal of leisure in an overworked century ; ” holidays” in which they may for once be idle, idiotic, and childish to their heart’s content. 179 AS LITTLE STATE AS POSSIBLE ! All political and economic matters are not of such great value that they ought to be dealt with by the most talented minds: such a waste of intellect is at bottom worse than any state of distress. These matters are, and ever will be, the province of smaller minds, and others than the smaller minds should not be at the service of this workshop : it would be better to let the machinery work itself to pieces again ! But as matters stand at the present time, when not only do all people believe that they must know all about it day by day, but wish likewise to be always busy about it, and in so doing neglect their own work, it is a great and ridiculous mistake. The price that has to be paid for the ” public safety ” is far too high, and, what is maddest of all, we effect the very opposite of ” public safety,” a fact which our own dear century has undertaken to prove, as if this had never been proved before I To make society secure against thieves and fire, and to render it thoroughly fit for all kinds of trade and traffic, and to transform the State in a good and evil sense into a kind of Providence these aims are low, mediocre, and not by any means indispensable ; and we should not seek to attain them by the aid of the highest means and instruments which exist means which we should reserve precisely for our highest and rarest aims ! Our epoch, however much it may babble about economy, is a spendthrift : it wastes intellect, the most precious thing of all. 180 WARS. The great wars of our own day are the outcome of historical study. 181 GOVERNING. Some people govern because of their passion for governing ; others in order that they may not be governed, the latter choose it as the lesser of two evils. 182 ROUGH AND READY CONSISTENCY. People say of a man with great respect, ” He is a character” that is, when he exhibits a rough and ready consistency, when it is evident even to the dullest eye. But, whenever a more subtle and profound intellect sets itself up and shows consistency in a higher manner, the spectators deny the existence of any character. That is why cunning statesmen usually act their comedy under the cloak of a kind of rough and ready consistency. 183 THE OLD AND THE YOUNG. ” There is something immoral about Parliaments,” so many-people still think, ” for in them views even against the Government may be expressed.” “ We should always adopt that view of a subject which our gracious Lord commands,” this is the eleventh commandment in many an honest old head, especially in Northern Germany. We laugh at it as an out-of-date fashion, but in former times it was the moral law itself. Perhaps we shall again some day laugh at that which is now considered as moral by a generation brought up under a parliamentary regime, namely, the policy of placing one’s party before one’s own wisdom, and of answering every question concerning the public welfare in such a way as to fill the sails of the party with a favourable gust of wind. ” We must take that view of a subject which the position of our party calls for ” such would be the canon. In the service of such morals we may now behold every kind of sacrifice, even martyrdom and conquest over one’s self. 184 THE STATE AS A PRODUCTION OF ANARCHISTS. In countries inhabited by tractable men there are always a few backsliders and intractable people. For the present the latter have joined the Socialists more than any other party. If it should happen that these people once come to have the making of the laws, they may be relied upon to impose iron chains upon themselves, and to practise a dreadful discipline, they know themselves ! and they will endure these harsh laws with the knowledge that they themselves have imposed them the feeling of power and of this particular power will be too recent among them and too attractive for them not to suffer anything for its sake. 185 BEGGARS. Beggars ought to be suppressed; because we get angry both when we help them and when we do not. 186 BUSINESS MEN. Your business is your greatest prejudice, it binds you to your locality, your society and your tastes. Diligent in business but lazy in thought, satisfied with
your paltriness and with the cloak of duty concealing this contentment: thus you live, and thus you like your children to be. 187 A POSSIBLE FUTURE. Is it impossible for us to imagine a social state in which the criminal will publicly denounce himself and dictate his own punishment, in the proud feeling that he is thus honouring the law which he himself has made, that he is exercising his power, the power of a lawmaker, in thus punishing himself? He may offend for once, but by his own voluntary punishment he raises himself above his offence, and not only expiates it by his frankness, greatness, and calmness, but adds to it a public benefit. Such would be the criminal of a possible future, a criminal who would, it is true, presuppose a future legislation based upon this fundamental idea : ” I yield in great things as well as in small only to the law which I myself have made.” How many experiments must yet be made! How many futures have yet to dawn upon mankind ! 188 STIMULANTS AND FOOD. Nations are deceived so often because they are always looking for a deceiver, i.e. a stimulating wine for their senses. When they can only have this wine they are glad to put up even with inferior bread. Intoxication is to them more than nutriment this is the bait with which they always let themselves be caught! What, to them, are men chosen from among themselves although they may be the most expert specialists as compared with the brilliant conquerors, or ancient and magnificent princely houses ! In order that he may inspire them with faith, the demagogue must at least exhibit to them a prospect of conquest and splendour. People will always obey, and even do more than obey, provided that they can become intoxicated in doing so. We may not even offer them repose and pleasure without this laurel crown and its maddening influence. This vulgar taste which ascribes greater importance to intoxication than nutrition did not by any means originate in the lower ranks of the population : it was, on the contrary, transplanted there, and on this backward soil it grows in great abundance, while its real origin must be sought amongst the highest intellects, where it flourished for thousands of years. The people is the last virgin soil upon which this brilliant weed can grow. Well, then, is it really to the people that we should entrust politics in order that they may thereby have their daily intoxication ? 189 HIGH POLITICS. Whatever may be the influence in high politics of utilitarianism and the vanity of individuals and nations, the sharpest spur which urges them onwards is their need for the feeling of power a need which rises not only in the souls of princes and rulers, but also gushes forth from time to time from inexhaustible sources in the people. The time comes again and again when the masses are ready to stake their lives and their fortunes, their consciences and their virtue, in order that they may secure that highest of all enjoyments and rule as a victorious, tyrannical, and arbitrary nation over other nations (or at all events think that they do). On occasions such as these, feelings of prodigality, sacrifice, hope, confidence, extraordinary audacity, and enthusiasm will burst forth so abundantly that a sovereign who is ambitious or far-sighted will be able to seize the opportunity for making war, counting upon the good conscience of his people to hide his injustice. Great conquerors have always given utterance to the pathetic language of virtue ; they have always been surrounded by crowds of people who felt themselves, as it were, in a state of exaltation and would listen to none but the most elevated oratory. The strange madness of moral judgments ! When man experiences the sensation of power he feels and calls himself good ; and at exactly the same time the others who have to endure his power call him evil ! Hesiod, in his fable of the epochs of man, has twice in succession depicted the same epoch, that of the heroes of Homer, and has thus made two epochs out of one : to those who lived under the terrible iron heel of those adventurous despots, or had heard their ancestors speak of them, the epoch appeared to be evil ; but the descendants of those chivalric races worshipped it as the” good old times,” and as an almost ideally blissful age. The poet could thus not help doing what he did, his audience probably included the descendants of both races. 190 FORMER GERMAN CULTURE. When the Germans began to interest other European nations, which is not so very long ago, it was owing to a culture which they no longer possess to-day, and which they have indeed shaken off with a blind ardour, as if it had been some disease ; and yet they have not been able to replace it by anything better than political and national lunacy. They have in this way succeeded in becoming even more interesting to other nations than they were formerly through their culture : and may that satisfy them ! It is nevertheless undeniable that this German culture has fooled Europeans, and that it did not deserve the interest shown in it, and much less the imitation and emulation displayed by other nations in trying to rival it. Let us look back for a moment upon Schiller, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Schleiermacher, Hegel, and Schelling ; let us read their correspondence and mingle for a time with the large circle of their followers: what have they in common, what characteristics have they, that fill us, as we are now, partly with a feeling of nausea and partly with pitiful and touching emotions ? First and foremost, the passion for appearing at all costs to be morally exalted, and then the desire for giving utterance to brilliant, feeble, and inconsequential remarks, together with their fixed purpose of looking upon everything (characters, passions, times, customs) as beautiful ” beautiful,” alas, in accordance with a bad and vague taste, which nevertheless pretended to be of Hellenic origin. We behold in these people a weak, good-natured, and glistening idealism, which, above all, wished to exhibit noble attitudes and noble voices, something at once presumptuous and inoffensive, and animated by a cordial aversion to ” cold ” or ” dry ” reality as also to anatomy, complete passions, and every kind of philosophical continence and scepticism, but especially towards the knowledge of nature in so far as it was impossible to use it as religious symbolism. Goethe, in his own characteristic fashion, observed from afar these movements of German culture: placing himself beyond their influence, gently remonstrating, silent, more and more confirmed in his own better course. A little later, and Schopenhauer also was an observer of these movements a great deal of the world and devilry of the world had again been revealed to him, and he spoke of it both roughly and enthusiastically, for there is a certain beauty in this devilry ! And what was it, then, that
really seduced the foreigners and prevented them from viewing this movement as did Goethe and Schopenhauer, or, better, from ignoring it altogether ? It was that faint lustre, that inexplicable starlight which formed a mysterious halo around this culture. The foreigners said to themselves : ” This is all very very remote from us ; our sight, hearing, understanding, enjoyment, and powers of valuations are lost here, but in spite of that there may be some stars ! There may be something in it ! Is it possible that the Germans have quietly discovered some corner of heaven and settled there ? We must try to come nearer to these Germans.” So they did begin to come nearer to the Germans, while not so very long afterwards the Germans put themselves to some trouble to get rid of this starlight halo : they knew only too well that they had not been in heaven, but only in a cloud ! 191 BETTER MEN. They tell me that our art is meant for the men of the present day, these greedy, unsatisfied, undisciplined, disgusted, and harassed spirits, and that it exhibits to them a picture of happiness, exaltation, and un-worldliness beside that of their own brutality, so that for once they may forget and breathe freely ; nay, perhaps find that they may derive some encouragement towards flight and conversion from that oblivion. Poor artists, with such a public as this ; half of whose thoughts require the attention of a priest, and the other half the attention of an alienist ! How much happier was Corneille ” Our great Corneille ! ” as Madame de Svign exclaimed, with the accent of a woman in the presence of a whole man, how far superior was his audience, which he could please with pictures of chivalric virtues, strict duty, generous devotion, and heroic self-denial ! How differently did he and they love existence, not as coming from blind and confused ” will,” which we curse because we cannot destroy it ; but loving existence as a place, so to speak, where greatness joined with humanity is possible, and where even the greatest restraint of form, such as submission to the caprice of priests and princes, could not suppress either the pride, chivalric feeling, the grace or the intellect of individuals, but could, on the contrary, be felt as a charm and incentive, as a welcome contrast to innate self-glorification and distinction and the inherited power of volition and passion. 192 THE DESIRE FOR PERFECT OPPONENTS. It cannot be denied that the French have been the most Christian nation in the world, not because the devotion of masses in France has been greater than elsewhere, but because those Christian ideals which are most difficult to realise have become incarnated here instead of merely remaining fancies, intentions, or imperfect beginnings. Take Pascal, for example, the greatest of all Christians in his combination of ardour, intellect, and honesty, and consider what elements had to be combined in his case ! Take Fenelon, the most perfect and attractive embodiment of ecclesiastical culture in all its power: a sublime golden mean of whom a historian would be tempted to prove the impossibility, while in reality he was merely the perfection of something exceedingly difficult and improbable. Take Madame de Guyon among her companions, the French Quietists : and everything that the eloquence and ardour of the Apostle Paul has endeavoured to divine with regard to the Christian’s state of semi-divinity, this most sublime, loving, silent, and ecstatic state is seen verified in her, without, however, that Jewish obtrusiveness that Paul showed towards God due in the case of Madame de Guyon to the real old French artlessness in words and gestures, artlessness at once womanly, subtle, and distinguished. Consider, again, the founder of the Trappists the last person who really took seriously the ascetic ideal of Christianity, not because he was an exception among Frenchmen, but because he was a true Frenchman : for up to our own day his gloomy organisation has not been able to acclimatise itself and to prosper, except among Frenchmen ; and it has followed them into Alsace and Algeria. Let us not forget the Huguenots, either : that combination of a martial and industrial spirit, refined manners and Christian severity, has never been more beautifully exhibited. And it was at Port Royal that the great Christian erudition beheld its last era of prosperity ; and in France more than anywhere else great men know how to prosper. Though not at all superficial, a great Frenchman has always his apparent superficiality ; he has, so to speak, a natural skin for his real contents and depth, while, on the other hand, the depth of a great German is generally, as it were, closed up in an ugly-shaped box, like an elixir, which, by means of a hard and curious covering, endeavours to preserve itself from the light of day and the touch of thoughtless hands. And now let us endeavour to find out why a people like the French, so prolific in perfect types of Christians, likewise necessarily brought forth the perfect contrary types, those of unchristian free-thought ! The French free-thinker, in his own inward being, had to fight against truly great men, and not, like the free-thinkers of other nations, merely against dogmas and sublime abortions. 193 ESPRIT AND MORALS. The German, who possesses the secret of knowing how to be tedious in spite of wit, knowledge, and feeling, and who has habituated himself to consider tediousness as moral, is in dread in the presence of French esprit lest it should tear out the eyes of morality but a dread mingled with ” fascination/’ like that experienced by the little bird in the presence of the rattlesnake. Amongst all the celebrated Germans none possessed more esprit than Hegel, but he also had that great German dread of it which brought about his peculiar and defective style. For the nature of this style resembles a kernel, which is wrapped up so many times in an outer covering that it can scarcely peep through, now and then glancing forth bashfully and inquisitively, like ” young women peeping through their veils,” to use the words of that old woman-hater, Eschylus. This kernel, however, is a witty though often impertinent joke on intellectual subjects, a subtle and daring combination of words, such as is necessary in a society of thinkers as gilding for a scientific pill but, enveloped as it is in an almost impenetrable cover, it exhibits itself as the most abstruse science, and likewise as the worst possible moral tediousness. Here the Germans had a permissible form of esprit and they revelled in it with such boundless delight that even Schopenhauer’s unusually fine understanding could not grasp it during the whole of his life he thundered against the spectacle that the Germans offered to him, but he could never explain it. 194 VANITY OF THE TEACHERS OF MORALS. The relatively small success which teachers of morals have met with may be explained by the fact that they wanted too much at
once, i.e. they were too ambitious and too fond of laying down precepts for everybody. In other words, they were beating the air and making speeches to animals in order to turn them into men ; what wonder, then, that the animals thought this tedious ! We should rather choose limited circles and endeavour to find and promote morals for them : for instance, we should make speeches to wolves with the object of turning them into dogs ; but, above all, the greatest success will remain for the man who does not seek to educate either everybody or certain limited circles, but only one single individual, and who cannot be turned to the right or left from his straight purpose. The last century was superior to ours precisely because it possessed so many individually educated men, as well as educators in the same proportion, who had made this their life’s task, and who with this task were dignified not only in their own eyes but in those of all the remaining ” good society.” 195 THE SO-CALLED CLASSICAL EDUCATION. Alas ! we discover that our life is consecrated to knowledge and that we should throw it away, nay, that we should even have to throw it away if this consecration did not protect us from ourselves : we repeat this couplet, and not without deep emotion : you, Fate, I follow, though I gladly would not, And yet I must, with many a sigh and groan ! And then, in looking backwards over the course of our lives, we discover that there is one thing that cannot be restored to us : the wasted period of our youth, when our teachers did not utilise these ardent and eager years to lead us to the knowledge of things, but merely to this so-called ” classical education ” ! Only think of this wasted youth, when we were inoculated clumsily and painfully with an imperfect knowledge of the Greeks and Romans as well as of their languages, contrary to the highest principle of all culture, which holds that we should not give food except to those who hunger for it ! Think of that period of our lives when we had mathematics and physics forced down our throats, instead of being first of all made acquainted with the despair of ignorance, instead of having our little daily life, our activities, and everything occurring in our houses, our workshops, in the sky, and in nature, split up into thousands of problems, painful, humiliating and irritating problems and thus having- our curiosity made acquainted with the fact that we first of all require a mathematical and mechanical knowledge before we can be allowed to rejoice in the absolute logic of this knowledge ! If we had only been imbued with reverence for those branches of science, if we had only been made to tremble with emotion were it only for once at the struggles, the defeats, and the renewed combats of those great men, of the martyrdom which is the history of pure science ! But, on the contrary, we were allowed to develop a certain contempt for those sciences in favour of historical training, formal education and ” classicism.” And we allowed ourselves to be so easily deceived ! Formal education ! Might we not have pointed to the best teachers at our high schools and asked laughingly, ” Where then do they keep their formal education ? and, if it is wanting in them, how can they teach it ? ” And classicism ! Did we get any of that instruction which the ancients used to impart to their youth ? Did we learn to speak or to write like them ? Did we ceaselessly exercise ourselves in that duel of speech, dialectic ? Did we learn to move as beautifully and proudly as they did, and to excel as they did in wrestling, throwing, and boxing ? Did we learn anything of that practical asceticism of all the Greek philosophers ? Did we receive any training in a single ancient virtue, and in the way in which the ancients were trained in it ? Was not all meditation upon morals wanting in our education ? And how much more the only possible criticism on the subject of morality, those courageous and earnest attempts to live according to this or that morality ! Did our teachers ever stir up a feeling in us which the ancients valued more highly than moderns ? Did they in the spirit of the ancients indicate to us the divisions of the day and of life, and those aims by which the lives of the ancients were guided ? Did we learn the ancient languages as we now learn the modern ones, namely that we might speak them fluently and well ? Nowhere can we find a real proficiency or any new faculty as the result of those toilsome years ! only the knowledge of what men had learnt and were able to do in past ages ! And what knowledge ! Nothing becomes clearer to me year by year than the fact that the entire Greek and ancient mode of life, however simple and evident it must seem to our eyes, is in truth very difficult to understand, and even scarcely accessible, and that the customary ease with which we babble about the ancients is either giddy levity or the old hereditary conceit of our thoughtlessness. We are deceived by words and ideas which appear to resemble our own, but behind them there is always concealed a feeling which must be strange, incomprehensible, or painful to our modern conceptions. And these are realms in which boys are allowed to roam about I Enough : we roamed about them in our childhood, and there we became seized with an almost ineradicable antipathy for all antiquity, the antipathy arising from an intimacy which was apparently too great ! For so great is the conceit of our classical teachers, who would almost make it appear that they had gained full control over the ancients, that they pass on this conceit to their pupils, together with the suspicion that such a possession is of little use for making people happy, but is good enough for honest, foolish old bookworms. ” Let them brood over their treasure : it is well worthy of them ! ” It is with this unexpressed thought that we completed our classical education. It can’t be changed now for us, at all events ! But let us not think of ourselves alone ! 196 THE MOST PERSONAL QUESTIONS OF TRUTH. What am I really doing, and what do I mean by doing it ? That is the question of truth which is not taught under our present system of education, and consequently not asked, because there is no time for it. On the other hand, we have always time and inclination for talking nonsense with children, rather than telling them the truth ; for flattering women who will later on be mothers, rather than telling them the truth ; and for speaking with young men about their future and their pleasures, rather than about the truth ! But what, after all, are seventy years ! Time passes, and they soon come to an end ; it matters as little to us as it does to the wave to know how and whither it is rolling ! No, it might even be wisdom not to know it. ” Agreed ; but it shows a want of pride not even to inquire into the matter; our culture does not tend to make people proud.” ” So much the better ! ” ” Is it really ? ” 197 ENMITY OF THE GERMANS TOWARDS ENLIGHTENMENT. Let us consider the contributions which in the first half of this century the Germans made to general culture by their intellectual work. In the first place, let us take the German philosophers : they went back to the first and oldest stage of speculation, for they were content with conceptions
instead of explanations, like the thinkers of dreamy epochs a pre-scientific type of philosophy was thus revived by them. Secondly, we have the German historians and romanticists : their efforts on the whole aimed at restoring to the place of honour certain old and primitive sentiments, especially Christianity, the “ soul of the people,” folklore, folk-speech, medievalism, Oriental asceticism, and Hinduism. In the third place, there are the natural philosophers who fought against the spirit of Newton and Voltaire, and, like Goethe and Schopenhauer, endeavoured to re-establish the idea of a deified or diabolised nature, and of its absolute ethical and symbolical meaning. The main general tendency of the Germans was directed against enlightenment and against those social revolutions which were stupidly mistaken for the consequences of enlightenment: the piety towards everything that existed tried to become piety towards everything that had ever existed, only in order that heart and mind might be permitted to fill themselves and gush forth again, thus leaving no space for future and novel aims. The cult of feeling took the place of the cult of reason, and the German musicians, as the best exponents of all that is invisible, enthusiastic, legendary, and passionate, showed themselves more successful in building up the new temple than all the other artists in words and thoughts. If, in considering these details, we have taken into account the fact that many good things were said and investigated, and that many things have since then been more fairly judged than on any previous occasion, there yet remains to be said of the whole that it was a general danger, and one by no means small, to set knowledge altogether below feeling, under the appearance of an entire and definitive acquaintance with the past and, to use that expression of Kant, who thus defined his own particular task ” To make way again for belief by fixing the limits of knowledge.” Let us once more breathe freely, the hour of this danger is past ! And yet, strange to say, the very spirits which these Germans conjured up with such eloquence have at length become the most dangerous for the intentions of those who did conjure them up: history, the comprehension of origin and development, sympathy with the past, the new passion for feeling and knowledge, after they had been for a long time at the service of this obscure exalted and retrograde spirit, have once more assumed another nature, and are now soaring with outstretched wings above the heads of those who once upon a time conjured them forth, as new and stronger genii of that very enlightenment to combat which they had been resuscitated. It is this enlightenment which we have now to carry forward, caring nothing for the fact that there has been and still is ” a great revolution,” and again a great ” reaction ” against it : these are but playful crests of foam when compared with the truly great current on which we float, and want to float. 198 ASSIGNING PRESTIGE TO ONE’S COUNTRY. It is the men of culture who determine the rank of their country, and they are characterised by an innumerable number of great inward experiences, which they have digested and can now value justly. In France and Italy this fell to the lot of the nobility ; in Germany, where up to now the nobility has been, as a rule, composed of men who had not much intellect to boast about (perhaps this will soon cease to be the case), it was the task of the priests, the school teachers and their descendants. 199 WE ARE NOBLER. Fidelity, generosity, concern for one’s good reputation : these three qualities, combined in one sentiment, we call noble, distinguished, aristocratic ; and in this respect we excel the Greeks. We do not wish to give this up at any cost under the pretext that the ancient objects of these virtues have rightly fallen in esteem, but we wish cautiously to substitute new objects for these most precious and hereditary impulses. To understand why the sentiments of the noblest Greeks must be considered as inferior and scarcely respectable in the present age, where we are still under the influence of the chivalric and feudal nobility, we must recall the words of consolation to which Ulysses gave utterance in the midst of the most humiliating situations, ” Bear with it, my dear heart, bear with it ! You have borne with many more swinish things than these ! ” As an instance of this mythical example, consider also the tale of that Athenian officer, who, when threatened with a stick by another officer in the presence of the entire general staff, shook off his disgrace with the words, ” Strike, but listen to me.” (This was Themistocles, that ingenious Ulysses of the classical epoch, who was just the man at the moment of disgrace to address to his ” dear heart ” that verse of comfort and affliction.) The Greeks were far from making light of life and death because of an insult, as we, influenced by a hereditary spirit of chivalric adventurousness and self-devotion, are in the habit of doing ; or from looking for opportunities of honourably risking life and death, as in duels ; or from valuing the preservation of an unstained name (honour) more than the acquirement of an evil reputation, when the latter was compatible with glory and the feeling of power ; or from remaining faithful to the prejudices and the articles of faith of a caste, when these could prevent them from becoming tyrants. For this is the ignoble secret of the good Greek aristocrat : out of sheer jealousy he treats every one of the members of his caste as being on an equal footing with himself, but he is ready at every moment to spring like a tiger on his prey despotism. What matter lies, murders, treason, or the betrayal of his native city to him ! Justice was an extremely difficult matter for people of this kind to understand nay, justice was almost something incredible. ” The just man ” was to the Greeks what “ the saint” was to the Christians. When Socrates, however, laid down the axiom, “ The most virtuous man is the happiest,” they could not trust their ears ; they thought they had heard a madman speaking. For, as a picture of the happiest man, every nobleman had in his mind the cheeky audacity and devilry of the tyrant who sacrifices everything and everyone to his own exuberance and pleasure. Among people whose imagination secretly raved about such happiness, the worship of the State could not, of course, have been too deeply implanted but I think that men whose desire for power does not rage so blindly as that of the Greek noblemen no longer stand in need of such idolatry of the State, by means of which, in past ages, such a passion was kept within due bounds. 200 ENDURANCE OF POVERTY. There is one great advantage in noble extraction : it makes us endure poverty better. 201 THE FUTURE OF THE NOBILITY. The bearing of the aristocratic classes shows that, in all the members of their body the consciousness of power is continually playing its
fascinating game. Thus people of aristocratic habits, men or women, never sink worn out into a chair ; when everyone else makes himself comfortable, as in a train, for example, they avoid reclining at their ease ; they do not appear to get tired after standing at Court for hours at a stretch ; they do not furnish their houses in a comfortable manner, but in such a way as to produce the impression of something grand and imposing, as if they had to serve as a residence for greater and taller beings ; they reply to a provoking speech with dignity and clearness of mind, and not as if scandalised, crushed, shamed, or out of breath in the plebeian fashion. As the aristocrat is able to preserve the appearance of being possessed of a superior physical force which never leaves him, he likewise wishes by his aspect of constant serenity and civility of disposition, even in the most trying circumstances, to convey the impression that his mind and soul are equal to all dangers and surprises. A noble culture may resemble, so far as passions are concerned, either a horseman who takes pleasure in making his proud and fiery animal trot in the Spanish fashion, we have only to recollect the age of Louis XIV,, or like the rider who feels his horse dart away with him like the elemental forces, to such a degree that both horse and rider come near losing their heads, but, owing to the enjoyment of the delight, do keep very clear heads : in both these cases this aristocratic culture breathes power, and if very often in its customs only the appearance of the feeling of power is required, nevertheless the real sense of superiority continues constantly to increase as the result of the impression which this display makes upon those who are not aristocrats. This indisputable happiness of aristocratic culture, based as it is on the feeling of superiority, is now beginning to rise to ever higher levels ; for now, thanks to the free spirits, it is henceforth permissible and not dishonourable for people who have been born and reared in aristocratic circles to enter the domain of knowledge, where they may secure more intellectual consecrations and learn chivalric services even higher than those of former times, and where they may look up to that ideal of victorious wisdom which as yet no age has been able to set before itself with so good a conscience as the period which is about to dawn. Lastly, what is to be the occupation of the nobility in the future if it becomes more evident from day to day that it is less and less indecorous to take any part in politics ? 202 THE CARE OF THE HEALTH. We have scarcely begun to devote any attention to the physiology of criminals, and yet we have already reached the inevitable conclusion that between criminals and madmen there is no really essential difference : if we suppose that the current moral fashion of thinking is a healthy way of thinking. No belief, however, is nowadays more firmly believed in than this one, so we should not therefore shrink from drawing the inevitable conclusion and treating the criminal like a lunatic above all, not with haughty pity, but with medical skill and good will. He may perhaps be in need of a change of air, a change of society, or temporary absence : perhaps of solitude and new occupations very well I He may perhaps feel that it would be to his advantage to live under surveillance for a short time in order thus to obtain protection from himself and from a troublesome tyrannical impulse very well ! We should make clear to him the possibility and the means of curing him (the extermination, transformation, and sublimation of these impulses), and also, in the worst cases the improbability of a cure ; and we should offer to the incurable criminal, who has become a useless burden to himself, the opportunity of committing suicide. While holding this in reserve as an extreme measure of relief, we should neglect nothing which would tend above all to restore to the criminal his good courage and freedom of spirit ; we should free his soul from all remorse, as if it were something unclean, and show him how he may atone for a wrong which he may have done someone by benefiting someone else, perhaps the community at large, in such a way that he might even do more than balance his previous offence. All this must be done with the greatest tact ! The criminal must, above all, remain anonymous or adopt an assumed name, changing his place of residence frequently, so that his reputation and future life may suffer as little as possible. At the present time it is true that the man who has been injured, apart altogether from the manner in which this injury might be redressed, wishes for revenge in addition, and applies to the courts that he may obtain it and this is why our dreadful penal laws are still in force : Justice, as it were, holding up a pair of shopkeeper’s scales and endeavouring to balance the guilt by punishment ; but can we not take a step beyond this ? Would it not be a great relief to the general sentiment of life if, while getting rid of our belief in guilt, we could also get rid of our old craving for vengeance, and gradually come to believe that it is a refined wisdom for happy men to bless their enemies and to do good to those who have offended them, exactly in accordance with the spirit of Christian teaching ! Let us free the world from this idea of sin, and take care to cast out with it the idea of punishment. May these monstrous ideas henceforth live banished far from the abodes of men if, indeed, they must live at all, and do not perish from disgust with themselves. Let us not forget also, however, that the injury caused to society and to the individual by the criminal is of the same species as that caused by the sick : for the sick spread cares and ill-humour ; they are non-productive, consume the earnings of others, and at the same time require attendance, doctors, and support, and they really live on the time and strength of the healthy. In spite of this, however, we should designate as inhuman anyone who, for this reason, would wish to wreak vengeance on the sick. In past ages, indeed, this was actually done : in primitive conditions of society, and even now among certain savage peoples, the sick man is treated as a criminal and as a danger to the community, and it is believed that he is the restingplace of certain demoniacal beings who have entered into his body as the result of some offence he has committed those ages and peoples hold that the sick are the guilty ! And what of ourselves ? Are we not yet ripe for the contrary conception? Shall we not be allowed to say, ” The guilty are the sick ” ? No ; the hour for that has not yet come. We still lack, above all, those physicians who have learnt something from what we have until now called practical morals and have transformed it into the art and science of healing. We still lack that intense interest in those things which some day perhaps may seem not unlike the ” storm and stress ” of those old religious ecstasies. The Churches have not yet come into the possession of those who look after our health ; the study of the body and of dietary are not yet amongst the obligatory subjects taught in our primary and secondary schools ; there are as yet no quiet associations of those people who are pledged to one another to do without the help of law courts, and who renounce the punishment and vengeance now meted out to those who have offended against society. No thinker has as yet been daring enough to determine the health of society, and of the individuals who compose it, by the number of parasites which it can support ; and no statesman has yet been found to use the ploughshare in the spirit of that generous and tender saying, ” If you wilt till the land, till it with the plough ; then the bird and the wolf, walking behind your plough, will rejoice in you all creatures will rejoice in you.”
203 AGAINST BAD DIET. Fie upon the meals which people nowadays eat in hotels and everywhere else where the well-off classes of society live ! Even when eminent men of science meet together their tables groan under the weight of the dishes, in accordance with the principle of the bankers : the principle of too many dishes and too much to eat. The result of this is that dinners are prepared with a view to their mere appearance rather than the consequences that may follow from eating them, and that stimulating drinks are required to help in driving away the heaviness in the stomach and in the brain. Fie on the dissoluteness and extreme nervousness which must follow upon all this ! Fie upon the dreams that such repasts bring ! Fie upon the arts and books which must be the desert of such meals ! Despite all the efforts of such people their acts will taste of pepper and ill-temper, or general weariness ! (The wealthy classes in England stand in great need of their Christianity in order to be able to endure their bad digestions and their headaches.) Finally, to mention not only the disgusting but also the more pleasant side of the matter, these people are by no means mere gluttons : our century and its spirit of activity has more power over the limbs than the belly. What then is the meaning of these banquets ? They represent ! What in Heaven’s name do they represent ? Rank ? no, money ! There is no rank now! We are all “ individuals”! but money now stands for power, glory, pre-eminence, dignity, and influence ; money at the present time acts as a greater or lesser moral prejudice for a man in proportion to the amount he may possess. Nobody wishes to hide it under a bushel or display it in heaps on a table : hence money must have some representative which can be put on the table so behold our banquets ! 204 AND THE GOD OF GOLD. Whence arises this excessive impatience in our day which turns men into criminals even in circumstances which would be more likely to bring about the contrary tendency ? What induces one man to use false weights, another to set his house on fire after having insured it for more than its value, a third to take part in counterfeiting, while three-fourths of our upper classes indulge in legalised fraud, and suffer from the pangs of conscience that follow speculation and dealings on the Stock Exchange : what gives rise to all this ? It is not real want, for their existence is by no means precarious ; perhaps they have even enough to eat and drink without worrying, but they are urged on day and night by a terrible impatience at seeing their wealth pile up so slowly, and by an equally terrible longing and love for these heaps of gold. In this impatience and love, however, we see re-appear once more that fanaticism of the desire for power which was stimulated in former times by the belief that we were in the possession of truth, a fanaticism which bore such beautiful names that we could dare to be inhuman with a good conscience (burning Jews, heretics, and good books, and exterminating entire cultures superior to ours, such as those of Peru and Mexico). The means of this desire for power are changed in our day, but the same volcano is still smouldering, impatience and intemperate love call for their victims, and what was once done ” for the love of God ” is now done for the love of money, i.e. for the love of that which at present affords us the highest feeling of power and a good conscience. 205 THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. One of the spectacles which the next century will invite us to witness is the decision regarding the fate of the European Jews. It is quite obvious now that they have cast their die and crossed their Rubicon : the only thing that remains for them is either to become masters of Europe or to lose Europe, as they once centuries ago lost Egypt, where they were confronted with similar alternatives. In Europe, however, they have gone through a schooling of eighteen centuries such as no other nation has ever undergone, and the experiences of this dreadful time of probation have benefited not only the Jewish community but, even to a greater extent, the individual. As a consequence of this, the resourcefulness of the modern Jews, both in mind and soul, is extraordinary. Amongst all the inhabitants of Europe it is the Jews least of all who try to escape from any deep distress by recourse to drink or to suicide, as other less gifted people are so prone to do. Every Jew can find in the history of his own family and of his ancestors a long record of instances of the greatest coolness and perseverance amid difficulties and dreadful situations, an artful cunning in fighting with misfortune and hazard. And above all it is their bravery under the cloak of wretched submission, their heroic spernere se sperni that surpasses the virtues of all the saints. People wished to make them contemptible by treating them contemptibly for nearly twenty centuries, and refusing them access to all honourable positions and dignities, and by pushing them further down into the meaner trades and under this process indeed they have not become any cleaner, But contemptible ? They have never ceased for a moment from believing themselves qualified for the very highest functions, nor have the virtues of the suffering ever ceased to adorn them. Their manner of honouring their parents and children, the rationality of their marriages and marriage customs, distinguishes them amongst all Europeans. Besides this, they have been able to create for themselves a sense of power and eternal vengeance from the very trades that were left to them (or to which they were abandoned). Even in palliation of their usury we cannot help saying that, without this occasional pleasant and useful torture inflicted on their scorners, they would have experienced difficulty in preserving their self-respect for so long. For our self-respect depends upon our ability to make reprisals in both good and evil things. Nevertheless, their revenge never urges them on too far, for they all have that liberty of mind, and even of soul, produced in men by frequent changes of place, climate, and customs of neighbours and oppressors, they possess by far the greatest experience in all human intercourse, and even in their passions they exercise the caution which this experience has developed in them. They are so certain of their intellectual versatility and shrewdness that they never, even when reduced to the direst straits, have to earn their bread by manual labour as common workmen, porters, or farm hands. In their manners we can still see that they have never been inspired by chivalric and noble feelings, or that their bodies have ever been girt with fine weapons : a certain obtrusiveness alternates with a submissiveness which Is often tender and almost always painful. Now, however, that they unavoidably inter-marry more and more year after year with the noblest blood of Europe, they will soon have a considerable heritage of good intellectual and physical manners, so that in another hundred years they will have a sufficiently noble aspect not to render themselves, as masters, ridiculous to those whom they will have subdued. And this is important ! and therefore a settlement of the question is still premature.
They themselves know very well that the conquest of Europe or any act of violence is not to be thought of; but they also know that some day or other Europe may, like a ripe fruit, fall into their hands, if they do not clutch at it too eagerly. In the meantime, it is necessary for them to distinguish themselves in all departments of European distinction and to stand in the front rank : until they shall have advanced so far as to determine themselves what distinction shall mean. Then they will be called the pioneers and guides of the Europeans whose modesty they will no longer offend. And then where shall an outlet be found for this abundant wealth of great impressions accumulated during such an extended period and representing Jewish history for every Jewish family, this wealth of passions, virtues, resolutions, resignations, struggles, and conquests of all kinds where can it find an outlet but in great intellectual men and works ! On the day when the Jews will be able to exhibit to us as their own work such jewels and golden vessels as no European nation, with its shorter and less profound experience, can or could produce, when Israel shall have changed its eternal vengeance into an eternal benediction for Europe: then that seventh day will once more appear when old Jehovah may rejoice in Himself, in His creation, in His chosen people and all, all of us, will rejoice with Him ! 206 THE IMPOSSIBLE CLASS. Poverty, cheerfulness, and independence it is possible to find these three qualities combined in one individual; poverty, cheerfulness, and slavery this is likewise a possible combination : and I can say nothing better to the workmen who serve as factory slaves ; presuming that it does not appear to them altogether to be a shameful thing to be utilised as they are, as the screws of a machine and the stopgaps, as it were, of the human spirit of invention. Fie on the thought that merely by means of higher wages the essential part of their misery, i.e. their impersonal enslavement, might be removed ! Fie, that we should allow ourselves to be convinced that, by an increase of this impersonality within the mechanical working of a new society, the disgrace of slavery could be changed into a virtue ! Fie, that there should be a regular price at which a man should cease to be a personality and become a screw instead ! Are you accomplices in the present madness of nations which desire above all to produce as much as possible, and to be as rich as possible? Would it not be your duty to present a counter-claim to them, and to show them what large sums of internal value are wasted in the pursuit of such an external object ? But where is your internal value when you no longer know what it is to breathe freely ; when you have scarcely any command over your own selves, and often feel disgusted with yourselves as with some stale food; when you zealously study the newspapers and look enviously at your wealthy neighbour, made envious by the rapid rise and fall of power, money, and opinions : when you no longer believe in a philosophy in rags, or in the freedom of spirit of a man who has few needs ; when a voluntary and idyllic poverty without profession or marriage, such as should suit the more intellectual ones among you, has become for you an object of derision ? On the other hand, the piping of the Socialistic ratcatchers who wish to inspire you with foolish hopes is continually sounding in your ears : they tell you to be ready and nothing further, ready from this day to the next, so that you wait and wait for something to come from outside, though living in all other respects as you lived before until this waiting is at length changed into hunger and thirst and fever and madness, and the day of the bestia triumphans at last dawns in all its glory. Every one of you should on the contrary say to himself: ” It would be better to emigrate and endeavour to become a master in new and savage countries, and especially to become master over myself, changing my place of abode whenever the least sign of slavery threatens me, endeavouring to avoid neither adventure nor war, and, if things come to the worst, holding myself ready to die : anything rather than continuing in this state of disgraceful thraldom, this bitterness, malice and rebelliousness ! ” This would be the proper spirit : the workmen in Europe ought to make it clear that their position as a class has become a human impossibility, and not merely, as they at present maintain, the result of some hard and aimless arrangement of society. They should bring about an age of great swarming forth from the European beehive such as has never yet been seen, protesting by this voluntary and huge migration against machines and capital and the alternatives that now threaten them either of becoming slaves of the State or slaves of some revolutionary party. May Europe be freed from one-fourth of her inhabitants ! Both she and they will experience a sensation of relief. It is only far in the distance, in the undertaking of vast colonisations, that we shall be able to observe how much rationality, fairness, and healthy suspicion mother Europe has incorporated in her sons these sons who could no longer endure life in the home of the dull old woman, always running the danger of becoming as bad-tempered, irritable, and pleasure-seeking as she herself. The European virtues will travel along with these workmen far beyond the boundaries of Europe ; and those very qualities which on their native soil had begun to degenerate into a dangerous discontent and criminal inclinations will, when abroad, be transformed into a beautiful, savage naturalness and will be called heroism ; so that at last a purer air would again be wafted over this old, over-populated, and brooding Europe of ours. What would it matter if there was a scarcity of ” hands ” ? Perhaps people would then recollect that they had accustomed themselves to many wants merely because it was easy to gratify them it would be sufficient to unlearn some of these wants ! Perhaps also Chinamen would be called in, and these would bring with them their modes of living and thinking, which would be found very suitable for industrious ants. They would also perhaps help to imbue this fretful and restless Europe with some of their Asiatic calmness and contemplation, and what is perhaps most needful of all their Asiatic stability. 207 THE ATTITUDE OF THE GERMANS TO MORALITY. A German is capable of great things, but he is unlikely to accomplish them, for he obeys whenever he can, as suits a naturally lazy intellect. If he is ever in the dangerous situation of having to stand alone and cast aside his sloth, when he finds it no longer possible to disappear like a cipher in a number (in which respect he is far inferior to a Frenchman or an Englishman), he shows his true strength: then he becomes dangerous, evil, deep, and audacious, and exhibits to the light of day that wealth of latent energy which he had previously carried hidden in himself, and in which no one, not even himself, had ever believed. When in such a case a German obeys himself it is very exceptional for him to do so he does so with the same heaviness, inflexibility, and endurance with which he obeys his prince and performs his official duties: so that, as I have said, he is then capable of great things which bear no relation to the ” weak disposition ” he attributes to himself. As a rule, however, he is afraid of depending upon himself alone, he is afraid of taking the initiative : that is why Germany uses up so many officials and so much ink. Light-heartedness is a stranger to the German ; he is too timid for
it : but in entirely new situations which rouse him from his torpor he exhibits an almost frivolous spirit he then delights in the novelty of his new position as if it were some intoxicating drink, and he is, as we know, quite a connoisseur in intoxication. It thus happens that the German of the present day is almost always frivolous in politics, though even here he has the advantage and prejudice of thoroughness and seriousness ; and, although he may take full advantage of these qualities in negotiations with other political powers, he nevertheless rejoices inwardly at being able for once in his life to feel enthusiastic and capricious, to show his fondness for innovations, and to change persons, parties, and hopes as if they were masks. Those learned German scholars, who until now have been considered as the most German of Germans, were and perhaps still are as good as the German soldiers on account of their profound and almost childish inclination to obey in all external things, and on account of being often compelled to stand alone in science and to answer for many things : if they can only preserve their proud, simple, and patient disposition, and their freedom from political madness at those times when the wind changes, we may yet expect great things from them such as they are or such as they were, they are the embryonic stage of something higher. So far the advantages and disadvantages of the Germans, including even their learned men, have been that they were more given to superstition and showed greater eagerness to believe than any of the other nations ; their vices are, and always have been, their drunkenness and suicidal inclinations (the latter a proof of the clumsiness of their intellect, which is easily tempted to throw away the reins). Their danger is to be sought in everything that binds down the faculties of reason and unchains the passions (as, for example, the excessive use of music and spirits), for the German passion acts contrarily to its own advantage, and is as self-destructive as the passions of the drunkard. Indeed, German enthusiasm is worth less than that of other nations, for it is barren. When a German ever did anything great it was done at a time of danger, or when his courage was high, with his teeth firmly set and his prudence on the alert, and often enough in a fit of generosity. Intercourse with these Germans is indeed advisable, for almost every one of them has something to give, if we can only understand how to make him find it, or rather recover it (for he is very untidy in storing away his knowledge). Well: when people of this type occupy themselves with morals, what precisely will be the morality that will satisfy them ? In the first place, they will wish to see idealised in their morals their sincere instinct for obedience. ” Man must have something which he can implicitly obey ” this is a German sentiment, a German deduction ; it is the basis of all German moral teaching. How different is the impression, however, when we compare this with the entire morality of the ancient world ! All those Greek thinkers, however varied they may appear to us, seem to resemble, as moralists, the gymnastic teacher who encourages his pupils by saying, ” Come, follow me ! Submit to my discipline ! Then perhaps you may carry off the prize from all the other Greeks.” Personal distinction : such was the virtue of antiquity. Submission, obedience, whether public or private : such is German virtue. Long before Kant set forth his doctrine of the Categorical Imperative, Luther, actuated by the same impulse, said that there surely must be a being in whom man could trust implicitly it was his proof of the existence of God ; it was his wish, coarser and more popular than that of Kant, that people should implicitly obey a person and not an idea, and Kant also finally took his roundabout route through morals merely that he might secure obedience for the person. This is indeed the worship of the German, the more so as there is now less worship left in his religion. The Greeks and Romans had other opinions on these matters, and would have laughed at such ” there must be a being ” : it is part of the boldness of their Southern nature to take up a stand against “ implicit belief, and to retain in their inmost heart a trace of scepticism against all and every one, whether God, man, or idea. The thinker of antiquity went even further, and said nil admirari: in this phrase he saw reflected all philosophy. A German, Schopenhauer, goes so far in the contrary direction as to say: admirari id est philosophari. But what if, as happens now and then, the German should attain to that state of mind which would enable him to perform great things ? if the hour of exception comes, the hour of disobedience ? I do not think Schopenhauer is right in saying that the single advantage the Germans have over other nations is that there are more atheists among them than elsewhere ; but I do know this : whenever the German reaches the state in which he is capable of great things, he invariably raises himself above morals ! And why should he not ? Now he has something new to do, namely to command either himself or others ! But this German morality of his has not taught him how to command ! Commanding has been forgotten in it. BOOK IV 208 A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE. ” Now, in summa, tell me what this new thing is that you want.” ” We no longer wish causes to be sinners and effects to be executioners.” 209 THE UTILITY OF THE STRICTEST THEORIES. People are indulgent towards a man’s moral weaknesses, and in this connection they use a coarse sieve, provided that he always professes to hold the most strict moral theories. On the other hand, the lives of free-thinking moralists have always been examined closely through a microscope, in the tacit belief that an error in their lives would be the best argument against their disagreeable knowledge. 210 THE “ THING IN ITSELF.” We used to ask formerly : What is the ridiculous ? as if there were something above and beyond ourselves that possessed the quality of provoking laughter, and we exhausted ourselves in trying to guess what it was (a theologian even held that it might be ” the naivete of sin “ ). At the present time we ask : What is laughter ? how does it arise ? We have considered the point, and finally reached the conclusion that there is nothing which is good, beautiful, sublime, or evil in itself; but rather that there are conditions of soul which lead us to attribute such qualities to things outside ourselves and in us. We have taken back their predicates from things ; or we have at all events recollected that we have merely lent the things these predicates. Let us be careful that this insight does not cause us to lose the faculty of lending, and that we do not become at the same time wealthier and more avaricious. 211
To THOSE WHO DREAM OF IMMORTALITY. So you desire the everlasting perpetuity of this beautiful consciousness of yourselves ? Is it not shameful? Do you forget all those other things which would in their turn have to support you for all eternity, just as they have borne with you up to the present with more than Christian patience ? Or do you think that you can inspire them with an eternally pleasant feeling towards yourself? A single immortal man on earth would imbue everyone around him with such a disgust for him that a general epidemic of murder and suicide would be brought about. And yet, you petty dwellers on earth, with your narrow conceptions of a few thousand little minutes of time, you would wish to be an everlasting burden on this everlasting universal existence ! Could anything be more impertinent ? After all, however, let us be indulgent towards a being of seventy years : he has not been able to exercise his imagination in conceiving his own ” eternal tediousness ” he had not time enough for that ! 212 WHEREIN WE KNOW OURSELVES. As soon as one animal sees another it mentally compares itself with it ; and men of uncivilised ages did the same. The consequence is that almost all men come to know themselves only as regards their defensive and offensive faculties. 213 MEN WHOSE LIVES HAVE BEEN FAILURES. Some men are built of such stuff that society is at liberty to do what it likes with them they will do well in any case, and will not have to complain of having failed in life. Other men are formed of such peculiar material it need not be a particularly noble one, but simply rarer that they are sure to fare ill except in one single instance : when they can live according to their own designs, in all other cases the injury has to be borne by society. For everything that seems to the individual to be a wasted or blighted life, his entire burden of discouragement, powerlessness, sickness, irritation, covetousness, is attributed by him to society and thus a heavy, vitiated atmosphere is gradually formed round society, or, in the most favourable cases, a thundercloud. 214 WHAT INDULGENCE! You suffer, and call upon us to be indulgent towards you, even when in your suffering you are unjust towards things and men ! But what does our indulgence matter ! You, however, should take greater precautions for your own sake ! That’s a nice way of compensating yourself for your sufferings, by imposing still further suffering on your own judgment ! Your own revenge recoils upon yourselves when you start reviling something : you dim your own eyes in this way, and not the eyes of others; you accustom yourself to looking at things in the wrong way, and with a squint, 215 THE MORALITY OF VICTIMS. ” Enthusiastic sacrifice,” ” self-immolation ” these are the catchwords of your morality, and I willingly believe that you, as you say, ” mean it honestly ” : but I know you better than you know yourselves, if your ” honesty ” is capable of going arm in arm with such a morality. You look down from the heights of this morality upon that other sober morality which calls for self-control, severity, and obedience ; you even go so far as to call it egoistic and you are indeed frank towards yourselves in saying that it displeases you it must displease you ! For, in sacrificing and immolating yourselves with such enthusiasm, you delight in the intoxication of the thought that you are now one with the powerful being, God or man, to whom you are consecrating yourselves: you revel in the feeling of his power, which is again attested by this sacrifice. In reality, however, you only appear to sacrifice yourselves ; for your imagination turns you into gods and you enjoy yourselves as such. Judged from the point of view of this enjoyment, how poor and feeble must that other ” egoistic ” morality of obedience, duty, and reason seem to you : it is displeasing to you because in this instance true self-sacrifice and self-surrender are called for, without the victim thinking himself to be transformed into a god, as you do. In a word, you want intoxication and excess, and this morality which you despise takes up a stand against intoxication and excess no wonder it causes you some displeasure ! 216 EVIL PEOPLE AND Music. Should the full bliss of love, which consists in unlimited confidence, ever have fallen to the lot of persons other than those who are profoundly suspicious, evil, and bitter? For such people enjoy in this bliss the gigantic, unlooked-for, and incredible exception of their souls ! One day they are seized with that infinite, dreamy sensation which is entirely opposed to the remainder of their private and public life, like a delicious enigma, full of golden splendour, and impossible to be described by mere words or similes. Implicit confidence makes them speechless there is even a species of suffering and heaviness in this blissful silence ; and this is why souls that are overcome with happiness generally feel more grateful to music than others and better ones do : for they see and hear through music, as through a coloured mist, their love becoming, as it were, more distant, more touching, and less heavy. Music is the only means that such people have of observing their extraordinary condition and of becoming aware of its presence with a feeling of estrangement and relief. When the sound of music reaches the ears of every lover he thinks : ” It speaks of me, it speaks in my stead ; it knows everything ! ” 217 THE ARTIST. The Germans wish to be transported by the artist into a state of dreamy passion ; by his aid the Italians wish to rest from their real passions ; the French wish him to give them an opportunity of showing their judgment and of making speeches. So let us be just ! 218 TO DEAL LIKE AN ARTIST WITH ONE’S WEAKNESSES. If we must positively have weaknesses and come in the end to look upon them as laws beyond ourselves, I wish that everybody may be possessed of as much artistic capacity as will enable him to set off his virtues by means of his weaknesses, and to make us, through his weaknesses, desirous of acquiring his virtues : a power which great musicians have possessed in quite an exceptional degree. How frequently do we notice in Beethoven’s music a coarse, dogmatic, and
impatient tone ; in Mozart, the joviality of an honest man, whose heart and mind have not overmuch to give us ; in Richard Wagner, an abrupt and aggressive restlessness, in the midst of which, just as the most patient listener is on the point of losing his temper, the composer regains his powers, and likewise the others. Through their very weaknesses, these musicians have created in us an ardent desire for their virtues, and have given us a palate which is ten times more sensitive to every note of this tuneful intellect, tuneful beauty, and tuneful goodness. 219 DECEIT IN HUMILIATION. By your foolishness you have done a great wrong to your neighbour and destroyed his happiness irretrievably and then, having overcome your vanity, you humble yourself before him, surrender your foolishness to his contempt, and fancy that, after this difficult scene, which is an exceedingly painful one for you, everything has been set right, that your own voluntary loss of honour compensates your neighbour for the injury you have done to his happiness. With this feeling you take your leave comforted, believing that your virtue has been re-established. Your neighbour, however, suffers as intensely as before. He finds nothing to comfort him in the fact that you have been irrational and have told him so : on the contrary, he remembers the painful appearance you presented to him when you were disparaging yourself in his presence it is as if another wound had been inflicted on him. He does not think of revenging himself, however ; and cannot conceive how a proper balance can be struck between you and him. In point of fact, you have been acting that scene for yourself and before yourself: you invited a witness to be present, not on his account, but on your own don’t deceive yourself! 220 DIGNITY AND TIMIDITY. Ceremonies, official robes and court dresses, grave countenances, solemn aspects, the slow pace, involved speech everything, in short, known as dignity are all pretences adopted by those who are timid at heart : they wish to make themselves feared (themselves or the things they represent). The fearless (i.e. originally those who naturally inspire others with awe) have no need of dignity and ceremonies: they bring into repute or, still more, into ill-repute honesty and straightforward words and bearing, as characteristics of their self-confident awefulness. 221 THE MORALITY OF SACRIFICE. The morality which is measured by the spirit of sacrifice is that of a semi-civilised state of society. Reason in this instance gains a hardfought and bloody victory within the soul; for there are powerful contrary instincts to be overcome. This cannot be brought about without the cruelty which the sacrifices to cannibal gods demand. 222 WHERE FANATICISM is TO BE DESIRED. Phlegmatic natures can be rendered enthusiastic only by being fanaticised. 223 THE DREADED EYE. Nothing is dreaded more by artists, poets, and writers than the eye which sees through their little deceptions and subsequently notices how often they have stopped at the boundary where the paths branch off either to innocent delight in themselves or to the straining after effect ; the eye which checks them when they try to sell little things dear, or when they try to exalt and adorn without being exalted themselves ; the eye which, despite all the artifices of their art, sees the thought as it first presented itself to them, perhaps as a charming vision of light, perhaps also, however, as a theft from the whole world, or as an everyday conception which they had to expand, contract, colour, wrap up, and spice, in order to make something out of it, instead of the thought making something out of them. Oh, this eye, which sees in your work all your restlessness, inquisitiveness, and covetousness, your imitation and exaggeration (which is only envious imitation) which knows both your blush of shame and your skill in concealing it from others and interpreting it to yourselves ! 224 THE ” EDIFYING ” ELEMENT IN OUR NEIGHBOUR’S MISFORTUNE, He is in distress, and straightway the “ compassionate” ones come to him and depict his misfortune to him. At last they go away again, satisfied and elevated, after having gloated over the unhappy man’s misfortune and their own, and spent a pleasant Sunday afternoon. 225 To BE QUICKLY DESPISED. A man who speaks a great deal, and speaks quickly, soon sinks exceedingly low in our estimation, even when he speaks rationally not only to the extent that he annoys us personally, but far lower. For we conjecture how great a burden he has already proved to many other people, and we thus add to the discomfort which he causes us all the contempt which we presume he has caused to others. 226 RELATIONS WITH CELEBRITIES. A. But why do you shun this great man ? B, I should not like to misunderstand him. Our defects are incompatible with one another : I am short-sighted, and he wears his false diamonds as willingly as his real ones. 227 THE CHAIN-WEARERS. Beware of all those intellects which are bound in chains ! clever women, for example, who have been banished by fate to narrow and dull surroundings, amid which they grow old. True, there they lie in the sun, apparently lazy and half-blind ; but at every unknown step, at everything unexpected, they start up to bite : they revenge themselves on everything that has escaped from their dog-kennel.
228 REVENGE IN PRAISE. Here we have a written page which is covered with praise, and you call it lat; but when you find out that revenge is concealed n this praise you will find it almost too subtle, and you will experience a great deal of pleasure in the numerous delicate and bold strokes and similes. It is not the man himself, but his revenge, which is 50 subtle, rich, and ingenious : he himself is scarcely aware of it. 229 PRIDE. Ah, not one of you knows the feeling of the tortured man after he has been put to the torture, when he is being carried back to his cell, and his secret with him ! he still holds it in a stubborn and tenacious grip. What know you of the exultation of human pride ? 230 “ UTILITARIAN.” At the present time men’s sentiments on moral things run in such labyrinthine paths that, while we demonstrate morality to one man by virtue of its utility, we refute it to another on account of this utility. 231 ON GERMAN VIRTUE. How degenerate in its taste, how servile to dignities, ranks, uniforms, pomp, and splendour must a nation have been, when it began to consider the simple as the bad, the simple man (schlichf) as the bad man (schlechf) ! We should always oppose the moral bumptiousness of the Germans with this one little word ” bad,” and nothing else. 232 FROM A DISPUTE. A. Friend, you have talked yourself hoarse. B. Then I am refuted, so let’s drop the subject. 233 THE ” CONSCIENTIOUS ” ONES. Have you noticed the kind of men who attach the greatest value to the most scrupulous conscientiousness ? Those who are conscious of many mean and petty sentiments, who are anxiously thinking of and about themselves, are afraid of others, and are desirous of concealing their inmost feelings as far as possible. They endeavour to impose upon themselves by means of this strict conscientiousness and rigorousness of duty, and by the stern and harsh impression which others, especially their inferiors, cannot fail to receive of them. 234 DREAD OF FAME. A. The endeavour to avoid one’s renown, the intentional offending of one’s panegyrists, the dislike of hearing opinions about one’s self, and all through fear of renown : instances like these are to be met with ; they actually exist believe it or not ! B. They are found, no doubt ! They exist I A little patience, Sir Arrogance ! 235 REFUSING THANKS. We are perfectly justified in refusing a request, but it is never right to refuse thanks or, what comes to the same thing, to accept them coldly and conventionally. This gives deep offence and why ? 236 PUNISHMENT. A strange thing, this punishment of ours ! It does not purify the criminal ; it is not a’ form of expiation ; but, on the contrary, it is even more defiling than the crime itself. 237 PARTY GRIEVANCES. In almost every party there is a ridiculous, but nevertheless somewhat dangerous grievance. The sufferers from it are those who have long been the faithful and honourable upholders of the doctrine propagated by the party, and who suddenly remark that one day a much stronger figure than themselves has got the ear of the public. How can they bear being reduced to silence ? So they raise their voices, sometimes changing their notes. 238 STRIVING FOR GENTLENESS. When a vigorous nature has not an inclination towards cruelty, and is not always preoccupied with itself, it involuntarily strives after gentleness this is its distinctive characteristic. Weak natures, on the other hand, have a tendency towards harsh judgments they associate themselves with the heroes of the contempt of mankind, the religious or philosophical traducers of existence, or they take up their position behind strict habits and punctilious “ callings” : in this way they seek to give themselves a character and a kind of strength. This is likewise done quite involuntarily. 239 A HINT TO MORALISTS. Our musicians have made a great discovery. They have found out that interesting ugliness is possible even in their art ; this is why they throw themselves with such enthusiastic intoxication into this ocean of ugliness, and never before has it been so easy to make music. It is only now that we have got the general, dark coloured background, upon which every luminous ray of fine music, however faint, seems tinged with golden emerald lustre ; it is only now that we dare to inspire our audience with feelings of impetuosity and indignation, taking away their breath, so to speak, in order that we may afterwards, in an interval of restful harmony, inspire them with a feeling of bliss which will be to the general advantage of a proper appreciation of music. We have discovered the contrast : it is only now that the strongest effects are possible and cheap. No one
bothers any more about good music. But you must hurry up ! When any art has once made this discovery, it has but a short space of time to live. Oh, if only our thinkers could probe into the depths of the souls of our musicians when listening to their music ! How long we must wait until we again have an opportunity of surprising the inward man in the very act of his evil doing, and his innocence of this act ! For our musicians have not the slightest suspicion that it is their own history, the history of the disfigurement of the soul, which they are transposing into music. In former times a good musician was almost forced by the exigencies of his art to become a good man and now ! 240 THE MORALITY OF THE STAGE. The man who imagines that the effect of Shakespeare’s plays is a moral one, and that the sight of Macbeth irresistibly induces us to shun the evil of ambition, is mistaken, and he is mistaken once more if he believes that Shakespeare himself thought so. He who is truly obsessed by an ardent ambition takes delight in beholding this picture of himself; and when the hero is driven to destruction by his passion, this is the most pungent spice in the hot drink of this delight. Did the poet feel this in another way ? How royally and with how little of the knave in him does his ambitious hero run his course from the moment of his great crime ! It is only from this moment that he becomes ” demoniacally ” attractive, and that he encourages similar natures to imitate him. There is something demoniacal here : something which is in revolt against advantage and life, in favour of a thought and an impulse. Do you think that Tristan and Isolde are warnings against adultery, merely because adultery has resulted in the death of both of them ? This would be turning poets upside down, these poets who, especially Shakespeare, are in love with the passions in themselves, and not less so with the readiness for death which they give rise to : this mood in which the heart no more clings to life than a drop of water does to the glass. It is not the guilt and its pernicious consequences which interests these poets Shakespeare as little as Sophocles (in the Ajax, Philoctetes, Oedipus] however easy it might have been in the cases just mentioned to make the guilt the lever of the play, it was carefully avoided by the poets. In the same way the tragic poet by his images of life does not wish to set us against life. On the contrary, he exclaims : ” It is the charm of charms, this exciting, changing, and dangerous existence of ours, so often gloomy and so often bathed in sun ! Life is an adventure whichever side you may take in life it will always retain this character ! ” Thus speaks the poet of a restless and vigorous age, an age which is almost intoxicated and stupefied by its superabundance of blood and energy, in an age more evil than our own : and this is why it is necessary for us to adapt and accommodate ourselves first to the purpose of a Shakespearian play, that is, by misunderstanding it. 241 FEAR AND INTELLIGENCE. If that which is now expressly maintained is true, namely that the cause of the black pigment of the skin must not be sought in light, might this phenomenon perhaps be the ultimate effect of frequent fits of passion accumulated for century after century (and an afflux of blood under the skin) ? while in other and more intelligent races the equally frequent spasms of fear and blanching may have resulted in the white colour of the skin ? For the degree of timidity is the standard by which the intelligence may be measured ; and the fact that men give themselves up to blind anger is an indication that their animal nature is still near the surface, and is longing for an opportunity to make its presence felt once more. Thus a brownish-grey would probably be the primitive colour of man something of the ape and the bear, as is only proper. D 242 INDEPENDENCE. Independence (which in its weakest form is called ” freedom of thought “ ) is the type of resignation which the tyrannical man ends by accepting he who for a long time had been looking for something to govern, but without finding anything except himself. 243 THE TWO COURSES. When we endeavour to examine the mirror in itself we discover in the end that we can detect nothing there but the things which it reflects. If we wish to grasp the things reflected we touch nothing in the end but the mirror. This is the general history of knowledge. D 244 DELIGHT IN REALITY. Our present inclination to take delight in reality for almost everyone of us possesses it can only be explained by the fact that we have taken delight in the unreal for such a long time that we have got tired of it. This inclination in its present form, without choice and without refinement, is not without danger its least danger is its want of taste. 245 THE SUBTLETY OF THE FEELING OF POWER. Napoleon was greatly mortified at the fact that he could not speak well, and he did not deceive himself in this respect : but his thirst for power, which never despised the slightest opportunity of showing itself, and which was still more subtle than his subtle intellect, led him to speak even worse than he might have done. It was in this way that he revenged himself upon his own mortification (he was jealous of all his emotions because they possessed power) in order to enjoy his autocratic pleasure. He enjoyed this pleasure a second time in respect to the ears and judgment of his audience, as if it were good enough for them to be addressed in this way. He even secretly enjoyed the thought of bewildering their judgment and good taste by the thunder and lightning of his highest authority that authority which lies in the union of power and genius while both his judgment and his good taste held fast proudly and indifferently to the truth that he did not speak well. Napoleon, as the complete and fully developed type of a single instinct, belongs to ancient humanity, whose characteristic the simple construction and ingenious development and realisation of a single motive or a small number of motives may be easily enough recognised. 246 ARISTOTLE AND MARRIAGE. Insanity makes its appearance in the children of great geniuses, and stupidity in those of the most virtuous so says Aristotle. Did he mean by
this to invite exceptional men to marry? 247 THE ORIGIN OF A BAD TEMPERAMENT. Injustice and instability in the minds of certain men, their disordered and immoderate manner, are the ultimate consequences of the innumerable logical inexactitudes, superficialities, and hasty conclusions of which their ancestors have been guilty. Men of a good temperament, on the other hand, are descended from solid and meditative races which have set a high value upon reason whether for praiseworthy or evil purposes is of no great importance. 248 DISSIMULATION AS A DUTY. Kindness has been best developed by the long dissimulation which endeavoured to appear as kindness : wherever great power existed the necessity for dissimulation of this nature was recognised it inspires security and confidence, and multiplies the actual sum of our physical power. Falsehood, if not actually the mother, is at all events the nurse of kindness. In the same way, honesty has been brought to maturity by the need for a semblance of honesty and integrity : in hereditary aristocracies. The persistent exercise of such a dissimulation ends by bringing about the actual nature of the thing itself: the dissimulation in the long run suppresses itself, and organs and instincts are the unexpected fruits in this garden of hypocrisy. 249 WHO, THEN, IS EVER ALONE. The fainthearted wretch does not know what it means to be lonely. An enemy is always prowling in his tracks. Oh, for the man who could give us the history of that subtle feeling called loneliness ! 250 NIGHT AND Music. It was only at night time, and in the semi-obscurity of dark forests and caverns, that the ear, the organ of fear, was able to develop itself so well, in accordance with the mode of living of the timid that is, the longest human epoch which has ever yet existed : when it is clear daylight the ear is less necessary. Hence the character of music, which is an art of night and twilight. 251 STOICAL. The Stoic experiences a certain sense of cheerfulness when he feels oppressed by the ceremonial which he has prescribed for himself: he enjoys himself then as a ruler. 252 CONSIDER. The man who is being punished is no longer he who has done the deed. He is always the scapegoat. 253 APPEARANCE. Alas ! what must be best and most resolutely proved is appearance itself; for only too many people lack eyes to observe it. But it is so tiresome ! 254 THOSE WHO ANTICIPATE. What distinguishes poetic natures, but is also a danger for them, is their imagination, which exhausts itself in advance : which anticipates what will happen or what may happen, which enjoys and suffers in advance, and which at the final moment of the event or the action is already fatigued. Lord Byron, who was only too familiar with this, wrote in his diary : ” If ever I have a son he shall choose a very prosaic profession that of a lawyer or a pirate.” 255 CONVERSATION ON MUSIC. A. What do you say to that music ? B. It has overpowered me, I can say nothing about it. Listen ! there it is beginning again. A. All the better ! This time let us do our best to overpower it. Will you allow me to add a few words to this music ? and also to show you a drama which perhaps at your first hearing you did not wish to observe ? B. Very well, I have two ears and even more if necessary ; move up closer to me. A. We have not yet heard what he wishes to say to us, up to the present he has only promised to say something, something as yet unheard, so he gives us to understand by his gestures, for they are gestures. How he beckons ! How he raises himself up ! How he gesticulates ! and now the moment of supreme tension seems to have come to him : two more fanfares, and he will present us with his superb and splendidly-adorned theme, rattling, as it were, with precious stones. Is it a handsome woman ? or a beautiful horse ? Enough, he looks about him as if enraptured, for he must assemble looks of rapture. It is only now that his theme quite pleases him : it is only now that he becomes inventive and risks new and audacious features. How he forces out his theme ! Ah, take care ! he not only understands how to adorn, but also how to gloss it over ! Yes, he knows what the colour of health is, and he knows how to make it up, he is more subtle in his self-consciousness than I thought. And now he is convinced that he has convinced his hearers ; he sets off his impromptus as if they were the most important things under the sun : he points to his theme with an insolent finger as if it were too good for this world. Ah, how distrustful he is ! He is afraid we may get tired ! that is why he buries his melody in sweet notes. Now he even appeals to our coarser senses that he may excite us and thus get us once again into his power. Listen to him as he conjures up the elementary force of tempestuous and thundering rhythms ! And now that he sees that these things have captivated our attention, strangle us, and almost overwhelm us, he once again ventures to introduce his theme amidst this play of the elements in order to convince us> confused and agitated as we are, that our confusion and agitation are the effects of his miraculous theme. And from now onwards his hearers believe in him : as soon as the theme is heard once more they are reminded of its thrilling elementary effects. The theme profits by this recollection now it has become demoniacal ! What a connoisseur of the soul he is ! He gains command over us by all the artifices of the popular orator. But the music has stopped again. B. And I am glad of it ; for I could no longer bear listening to your observations ! I should prefer ten times over to let myself be deceived to knowing the truth once after your version, A. That is just
what I wished to hear from you. The best people now are just like you : you are quite content to let yourselves be deceived. You come here with coarse, lustful ears, and you do not bring with you your conscience of the art of listening. On the way here you have cast away your intellectual honesty, and thus you corrupt both art and artists. Whenever you applaud and cheer you have in your hands the conscience of the artists and woe to art if they get to know that you cannot distinguish between innocent and guilty music ! I do not indeed refer to ” good ” and ” bad ” music we meet with both in the two kinds of music mentioned ! but I call innocent music that which thinks only of itself and believes only in itself, and which on account of itself has forgotten the world at large this spontaneous expression of the most profound solitude which speaks of itself and with itself, and has entirely forgotten that there are listeners, effects, misunderstandings and failures in the world outside. In short, the music which we have just heard is precisely of this rare and noble type ; and everything I said about it was a fable pardon my little trick if you will ! B. Oh, then you like this music, too ? In that case many sins shall be forgiven you ! 256 THE HAPPINESS OF THE EVIL ONES. These silent, gloomy, and evil men possess a peculiar something which you cannot dispute with them an uncommon and strange enjoyment in the “ dolce far niente” a sunset and evening rest, such as none can enjoy but a heart which has been too often devoured, lacerated, and poisoned by the passions. 257 WORDS PRESENT IN OUR MINDS. We always express our thoughts with those words which lie nearest to hand. Or rather, if I may reveal my full suspicion ; at every moment we have only the particular thought for the words that are present in our minds. 258 FLATTERING THE DOG. You have only to stroke this dog’s coat once, and he immediately splutters and gives off sparks like any other flatterer and he is witty in his own way. Why should we not endure him thus ? 259 THE QUONDAM PANEGYRIST. ” He has now become silent now in regard to me, although he knows the truth and could tell it ; but it would sound like vengeance and he values truth so highly, this honourable man ! ” 260 THE AMULET OF DEPENDENT MEN. He who is unavoidably dependent upon some master ought to possess something by which he can inspire his master with fear, and keep him in check : integrity, for example, or probity, or an evil tongue. 26l. WHY SO SUBLIME ! Oh, I know them well this breed of animals ! Certainly it pleases them better to walk on two legs ” like a god ” but it pleases me better when they fall back on their four feet. This is incomparably more natural for them ! 262 THE DEMON OF POWER. Neither necessity nor desire, but the love of power, is the demon of mankind. You may give men everything possible health, food, shelter, enjoyment but they are and remain unhappy and capricious, for the demon waits and waits ; and must be satisfied. Let everything else be taken away from men, and let this demon be satisfied, and then they will nearly be happy as happy as men and demons can be ; but why do I repeat this ? Luther has already said it, and better than I have done, in the verses : ” And though they take our life, Goods, honour, children, wife, Yet is their profit small, These things shall vanish all, The Kingdom it remains.” The Kingdom ! there it is again ! 263 CONTRADICTION INCARNATE AND ANIMATED. There is a physiological contradiction in what is called genius : genius possesses on the one hand a great deal of savage disorder and involuntary movement, and on the other hand a great deal of superior activity in this movement Joined to this a genius possesses a mirror which reflects the two movements beside one another, and within one another, but often opposed to one another. Genius in consequence of this sight is often unhappy, and if it feels its greatest happiness in creating, it is because it forgets that precisely then, with the highest determinate activity, it does something fantastic and irrational (such is all art) and cannot help doing it. 264 DECEIVING ONE’S SELF. Envious men with a discriminating intuition endeavour not to become too closely acquainted with their rivals in order that they may feel themselves superior to them. 265 THERE is A TIME FOR THE THEATRE. When the imagination of a people begins to diminish, there arises the desire to have its legends represented on the stage : it then tolerates the coarse substitutes for imagination. In the age of the epic rhapsodist, however, the theatre itself, and the actor dressed up as a hero, form an obstacle in the path of the imagination instead of acting as wings for it too near, too definite, too heavy, and with too little of dreamland and the flights of birds about them. 266 WITHOUT CHARM. He lacks charm and knows it. Ah, how skilful he is in masking this defect ! He does it by a strict virtue, gloomy looks, and acquired distrust of all men, and of existence itself; by coarse jests, by contempt for a more refined manner of living, by pathos and pretensions, and by a cynical philosophy yes, he has even developed into a character through the continual knowledge of his deficiency. 267
WHY SO PROUD ? A noble character is distinguished from a vulgar one by the fact that the latter has not at ready command a certain number of habits and points of view like the former : fate willed that they should not be his either by inheritance or by education. 268 THE ORATOR’S SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS. How difficult it was in Athens to speak in such a way as to win over the hearers to one’s cause without repelling them at the same time by the form in which one’s speech was cast, or withdrawing their attention from the cause itself by this form ! How difficult it still is to write thus in France ! 269 SICK PEOPLE AND ART. For all kinds of sadness and misery of soul we should first of all try a change of diet and severe manual labour ; but in such cases men are in the habit of having recourse to mental intoxicants, to art for example which is both to their own detriment and that of art ! Can you not see that when you call for art as sick people you make the artists themselves sick ? 270 APPARENT TOLERATION. Those are good, benevolent, and rational words on and in favour of science, but, alas ! I see behind these words your toleration of science. In a corner of your inmost mind you think, in spite of all you say, that it is not necessary for you y that it shows magnanimity on your part to admit and even to advocate it, more especially as science on its part does not exhibit this magnanimity in regard to your opinion ! Do you know that you have no right whatever to exercise this toleration ? that this condescension of yours is an even coarser disparagement of science than any of that open scorn which a presumptuous priest or artist might allow himself to indulge in towards science ? What is lacking in you is a strong sense for everything that is true and actual, you do not feel grieved and worried to find that science is in contradiction to your own sentiments, you are unacquainted with that intense desire for knowledge ruling over you like a law, you do not feel a duty in the need of being present with your own eyes wherever knowledge exists, and to let nothing that is ” known ” escape you. You do not know that which you are treating with such toleration ! and it is only because you do not know it that you can succeed in adopting such a gracious attitude towards it. You, indeed, would look upon science with hatred and fanaticism if it for once cast its shining and illuminating glance upon you ! What does it matter to us, then, if you do exhibit toleration and towards a phantom ! and not even towards us ! and what do we matter ! 271 FESTIVE MOODS. It is exactly those men who aspire most ardently towards power who feel it indescribably agreeable to be overpowered ! to sink suddenly and deeply into a feeling as into a whirlpool ! To suffer the reins to be snatched out of their hand, and to watch a movement which takes them they know not where ! Whatever or whoever may be the person or thing that renders us this service, it is nevertheless a great service : we are so happy and breathless, and feel around us an exceptional silence, as if we were in the most central bowels of the earth. To be for once entirely powerless ! the plaything of the elementary forces of nature ! There is a restfulness in this happiness, a casting away of the great burden, a descent without fatigue, as if one had been given up to the blind force of gravity. This is the dream of the mountain climber, who, although he sees his goal far above him, nevertheless falls asleep on the way from utter exhaustion, and dreams of the happiness of the contrast this effortless rolling down hill. I describe happiness as I imagine it to be in our present-day society, the badgered, ambitious society of Europe and America. Now and then they wish to fall back into impotence this enjoyment is offered them by wars, arts, religions, and geniuses. When a man has temporarily abandoned himself to a momentary impression which devours and crushes everything and this is the modern festive mood he afterwards becomes freer, colder, more refreshed, and more strict, and again strives tirelessly after the contrary of all this : power. 272 THE PURIFICATION OF RACES. It is probable that there are no pure races, but only races which have become purified, and even these are extremely rare. We more often meet with crossed races, among whom, together with the defects in the harmony of the bodily forms (for example when the eyes do not accord with the mouth) we necessarily always find defects of harmony in habits and appreciations. (Livingstone heard someone say,” God created white and black men, but the devil created the half-castes.”) Crossed races are always at the same time-crossed cultures and crossed moralities : they are, as a rule, more evil, cruel, and restless. Purity is the final result of innumerable adjustments, absorptions, and eliminations ; and progress towards purity in a race is shown by the fact that the latent strength in the race is more and more restricted to a few special functions, while it formerly had to carry out too many and often contradictory things. Such a restriction will always have the appearance of an impoverishment, and must be judged with prudence and moderation. In the long run, however, when the process of purification has come to a successful termination, all those forces which were formerly wasted in the struggle between the disharmonious qualities are at the disposal of the organism as a whole, and this is why purified races have always become stronger and more beautiful. The Greeks may serve us as a model of a purified race and culture ! and it is to be hoped that someday a pure European race and culture may arise. 273 PRAISE. Here is someone who, you perceive, wishes to praise you : you bite your lips and brace up your heart: Oh, that that cup might go hence ! But it does not, it comes ! let us therefore drink the sweet impudence of the panegyrist, let us overcome the disgust and profound contempt that we feel for the innermost substance of his praise, let us assume a look of thankful joy for he wished to make himself agreeable to us ! And now that it is all over we know that he feels greatly exalted ; he has been victorious over us. Yes, and also over himself, the villain ! for it was no easy matter for him to wring this praise from himself. 274
THE RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES OF MAN. We human beings are the only creatures who, when things do not go well with us, can blot ourselves out like a clumsy sentence, whether we do so out of honour for humanity or pity for it, or on account of the aversion we feel towards ourselves. 275 THE TRANSFORMED BEING. Now he becomes virtuous ; but only for the sake of hurting others by being so. Don’t pay so much attention to him. 276 HOW OFTEN ! HOW UNEXPECTED ! How may married men have some morning awakened to the fact that their young wife is dull, although she thinks quite the contrary ! not to speak of those wives whose flesh is willing but whose intellect is weak ! 277 WARM AND COLD VIRTUES. Courage is sometimes the consequence of cold and unshaken resolution, and at other times of a fiery and reckless bravery. For these two kinds of courage there is only the one name! but how different, nevertheless, are cold virtues and warm virtues! and the man would be a fool who could suppose that ” goodness” could only be brought about by warmth, and no less a fool he who would only attribute it to cold. The truth is that mankind has found both warm and cold courage very useful, yet not often enough to prevent it from setting them both in the category of precious stones. 278 THE GRACIOUS MEMORY. A man of high rank will do well to develop a gracious memory, that is, to note all the good qualities of people and remember them particularly ; for in this way he holds them in an agreeable dependence. A man may also act in this way towards himself: whether or not he has a gracious memory determines in the end the superiority, gentleness, or distrust with which he observes his own inclinations and intentions, and finally even the nature of these inclinations and intentions. 279 WHEREIN WE BECOME ARTISTS. He who makes an idol of someone endeavours to justify himself in his own eyes by idealising this person : in other words, he becomes an artist that he may have a clear conscience. When he suffers he does not suffer from his ignorance, but from the lie he has told himself to make himself ignorant - The inmost misery and desire of such a man and all passionate lovers are included in this category - it cannot be exhausted by normal means. 280 CHILDLIKE, Those who live like children- those who have not to struggle for their daily bread, and do not think that their actions have any ultimate signification remain childlike. 281 OUR EGO DESIRES EVERYTHING. It would seem as if men in general were only inspired by the desire to possess : languages at least would permit of this supposition, for they view past actions from the standpoint that we have been put in possession of something ” I have spoken, struggled, conquered ” as if to say, I am now in possession of my word, my struggle, my victory. How greedy man appears in this light ! he cannot even let the past escape him : he even wishes to have it still ! 282 DANGER IN BEAUTY. This woman is beautiful and intelligent : alas, how much more intelligent she would have become if she had not been beautiful ! 283 DOMESTIC AND MENTAL PEACE. Our habitual mood depends upon the mood in which we maintain our habitual entourage. 284 NEW THINGS AS OLD ONES. Many people seem irritated when something new is told them : they feel the ascendancy which the news has given to the person who has learnt it first. 285 WHAT ARE THE LIMITS OF THE EGO. The majority of people take under their protection, as it were, something that they know, as if the fact of knowing it was sufficient in itself to make it their property. The acquisitiveness of the egoistic feeling has no limits : Great men speak as if they had behind them the whole of time, and had placed themselves at the head of this enormous host ; and good women boast of the beauty of their children, their clothes, their dog, their physician, or their native town, but the only thing they dare not say is, ” I am all that.” “ Chi non ha non e” as they say in Italy. 286 DOMESTIC ANIMALS, PETS AND THE LIKE. Could there be anything more repugnant than the sentimentality which is shown to plants and animals and this on the part of a creature who from the very beginning has made such ravages among them as their most ferocious enemy, and who ends by even claiming affectionate feelings from his weakened and mutilated victims ! Before this kind of “ nature ” man must above all be serious, if he is any sort of a thinking being. 287 Two FRIENDS. They were friends once, but now they have ceased to be so, and both of them broke off the friendship at the same time, the one because he believed himself to be
too greatly misunderstood, and the other because he thought he was known too intimately and both were wrong ! For neither of them knew himself well enough. 288 THE COMEDY OF THE NOBLE SOULS. Those who cannot succeed in exhibiting a noble and cordial familiarity endeavour to let the nobleness of their nature be seen by their exercise of reserve and strictness, and a certain contempt for familiarity, as if their strong sense of confidence were ashamed to show itself. 289 WHERE WE MAY SAY NOTHING AGAINST VIRTUE. Among cowards it is thought bad form to say anything against bravery, for any expression of this kind would give rise to some contempt ; and unfeeling people are irritated when anything is said against pity. 290 A WASTE. We find that with irritable and abrupt people their first words and actions generally afford no indication of their actual character they are prompted by circumstances, and are to some extent simply reproductions of the spirit of these circumstances. Because, however, as the words have been uttered and the deeds done, the subsequent words and deeds, indicating the real nature of such people, have often to be used to reconcile, amend, or extinguish the former. 291 ARROGANCE. Arrogance is an artificial and simulated pride ; but it is precisely the essential nature of pride to be incapable of artifice, simulation, or hypocrisy and thus arrogance is the hypocrisy of the incapacity for hypocrisy, a very difficult thing, and one which is a failure in most cases. But if we suppose that, as most frequently happens, the presumptuous person betrays himself, then a treble annoyance falls to his lot : people are angry with him because he has endeavoured to deceive them, and because he wished to show himself superior to them, and finally they laugh at him because he failed in both these endeavours. How earnestly, therefore, should we dissuade our fellowmen from arrogance ! 292 A SPECIES OF MISCONCEPTION. When we hear somebody speak it is often sufficient for his pronunciation of a single consonant (the letter r, for example) to fill us with doubts as to the honesty of his feelings : we are not accustomed to this particular pronunciation, and should have to make it ourselves as it were arbitrarily it sounds “ forced” to us. This is the domain of the greatest possible misconception : and it is the same with the style of a writer who has certain habits which are not the habits of everybody. His ” artlessness ” is felt as such only by himself, and precisely in regard to that which he himself feels to be ” forced ” (because he has yielded in this matter to the prevailing fashion and to so called ” good taste “ ), he may perhaps give pleasure and inspire confidence. 293 THANKFUL. One superfluous grain of gratitude and piety makes one suffer as from a vice in spite of all one’s independence and honesty one begins to have a bad conscience. 294 SAINTS. It is the most sensual men who find it necessary to avoid women and to torture their bodies. 295 THE SUBTLETY OF SERVING. One of the most subtle tasks in the great art of serving is that of serving a more than usually ambitious man, who, indeed, is excessively egoistic in all things, but is entirely adverse to being thought so (this is part of his ambition). He requires that everything shall be according to his own will and humour, yet in such a way as to give him the appearance of always having sacrificed himself, and of rarely desiring anything for himself alone. 296 DUELLING. I think it a great advantage, said someone, to be able to fight a duel if, of course, it is absolutely necessary ; for I have at all times brave companions about me. The duel is the last means of thoroughly honourable suicide left to us ; but it is unfortunately a circuitous means, and not even a certain one. 297 PERNICIOUS. A young man can be most surely corrupted when he is taught to value the likeminded more highly than the differently minded. 298 HERO-WORSHIP AND ITS FANATICS. The fanatic of an ideal that possesses flesh and blood is right as a rule so long as he assumes a negative attitude, and he is terrible in his negation : he knows what he denies as well as he knows himself, for the simple reason that he comes thence, that he feels at home there, and that he has always the secret fear of being forced to return there someday. He therefore wishes to make his return impossible by the manner of his negation. As soon as he begins to affirm, however, he partly shuts his eyes and begins to idealise (frequently merely for the sake of annoying those who have stayed at home). We might say that there was something artistic about this agreed, but there is also something dishonest about it. The idealist of a person imagines this person to be so far from him that he can no longer see him distinctly, and then he travesties that which he can just perceive into something ” beautiful ” that is to say, symmetrical, vaguely outlined, uncertain. Since he wishes to worship from afar that ideal which floats on high in the distance, he finds it essential to build a temple for the object of his worship as a protection from the profanum vulgus. He brings into this temple for the object of his worship all the venerable and sanctified objects which he still possesses, so that his ideal may benefit by their charm, and that, nourished in this way, it may grow more and more divine. In the end he really succeeds in forming his God, but, alas for him ! there is someone who knows how all this has been done, namely his intellectual conscience ; and there is also someone
who, quite unconsciously, begins to protest against these things, namely the deified one himself, who, in consequence of all this worship, praise, and incense, now becomes completely unbearable and shows himself in the most obvious and dreadful manner to be non-divine, and only too human. In a case like this there is only one means of escape left for such a fanatic ; he patiently suffers himself and his fellows to be maltreated, and interprets all this misery in maiorem del gloriam by a new kind of self-deceit and noble falsehood. He takes up a stand against himself, and in doing so experiences, as an interpreter and ill-treated person, something like martyrdom and in this way he climbs to the height of his conceit. Men of this kind to be found, for example, in the entourage of Napoleon: indeed, perhaps it may have been he who inspired the soul of his century with that romantic prostration in the presence of the ” genius ” and the ” hero,” which was so foreign to the spirit of rationalism of the nineteenth century a man about whom even Byron was not ashamed to say that he was a “ worm compared with such a being.” (The formulae of this prostration have been discovered by Thomas Carlyle, that arrogant old muddle-head and grumbler, who spent his long life in trying to romanticise the common sense of his Englishmen : but in vain !) 299 THE APPEARANCE OF HEROISM. Throwing ourselves in the midst of our enemies may be a sign of cowardice. 300 CONDESCENDING TOWARDS THE FLATTERER. It is the ultimate prudence of insatiably ambitious men not only to conceal their contempt for man which the sight of flatterers causes them : but also to appear even condescending to them, like a God who can be nothing if not condescending. 301 ” STRENGTH OF CHARACTER.” ” What I have said once I will do ” This manner of thinking is believed to indicate great strength of character. How many actions are accomplished, not because they have been selected as being the most rational, but because at the moment when we thought of them they influenced our ambition and vanity by some means or another, so that we do not stop until we have blindly carried them out. Thus they strengthen in us our belief in our character and our good conscience, in short our strength ; while the choice of the most rational acts possible brings about a certain amount of scepticism towards ourselves, and thus encourages a sense of weakness in us. 302 ONCE, TWICE, AND THRICE TRUE. Men lie unspeakably and often, but they do not think about it afterwards, and generally do not believe in it. 303 THE PASTIME OF THE PSYCHOLOGIST. He thinks he knows me, and fancies himself to be subtle and important when he has any kind of relations with me ; and I take care not to undeceive him. For in such a case I should suffer for it, while now he wishes me well because I arouse in him a feeling of conscious superiority. There is another, who fears that I think I know him, and feels a sense of inferiority at this. As a result he behaves in a timid and vacillating manner, in my presence, and endeavours to mislead me in regard to himself so that he may regain an ascendancy over me. 304 THE DESTROYOURS OF THE WORLD. When some men fail to accomplish what they desire to do they exclaim angrily, ” May the whole world perish ! ” This odious feeling is the height of envy which reasons thus : because I cannot have one thing the whole world in general must have nothing ! the whole world shall not exist ! 305 GREED. When we set out to buy something our greed increases with the cheapness of the object Why ? Is it because the small differences in price make up the little eye of greed ? 306 THE GREEK IDEAL. What did the Greeks admire in Ulysses ? Above all his capacity for lying and for taking a shrewd and dreadful revenge, his being equal to circumstances, his appearing to be nobler than the noblest when necessary, his ability to be everything he desired, his heroic pertinacity, having all means within his command, possessing genius the genius of Ulysses is an object of the admiration of the gods, they smile when they think of it all this is the Greek ideal ! What is most remarkable about it is that the contradiction between seeming and being was not felt in any way, and that as a consequence it could not be morally estimated. Were there ever such accomplished actors ? 307 FACTA! YES, FACTA FICTA! The historian need not concern himself with events which have actually happened, but only those which are supposed to have happened ; for none but the latter have produced an effect. The same remark applies to the imaginary heroes. His theme this so-called world-history what is it but opinions on imaginary actions and their imaginary motives, which in their turn give rise to opinions and actions the reality of which, however, is at once evaporated, and is only effective as vapour, a continual generating and impregnating of phantoms above the dense mists of unfathomable reality. All historians record things which have never existed, except in imagination. 308 NOT TO UNDERSTAND TRADE IS NOBLE. To sell one’s virtue only at the highest price, or even to carry on usury with it as a teacher, a civil servant, or an artist, for instance, brings genius and talent down to the level of the common tradesman. We must be careful not to be clever with our wisdom ! 309
FEAR AND LOVE. The general knowledge of mankind has been furthered to a greater extent by fear than by love ; for fear endeavours to find out who the other is, what he can do, and what he wants: it would be dangerous and prejudicial to be deceived on this point. On the other hand, love is induced by its secret craving to discover as many beautiful qualities as possible in the loved object, or to raise this loved object as high as possible : it is a joy and an advantage to love to be deceived in this way and this is why it does it. 310 GOOD-NATURED PEOPLE. Good-natured people have acquired their character from the continual fear of foreign attacks in which their ancestors lived, these ancestors, who were in the habit of mitigating and tranquillising, humbling themselves, preventing, distracting, flattering, and apologising, concealing their grief and anger, and preserving an unruffled countenance, and they ultimately bequeathed all this delicate and well-formed mechanism to their children and grandchildren. These latter, thanks to their more favourable lot, did not experience this feeling of dread, but they nevertheless continue in the same groove. 311 THE SO-CALLED SOUL. The sum-total of those internal movements which come naturally to men, and which they can consequently set in motion readily and gracefully, is called the soul - men are looked upon as void of soul when they let it be seen that their inward emotions are difficult and painful to them. 312 THE FORGETFUL ONES. In outbursts of passion and the delusions of dreams and madness, man rediscovers his own primitive history, and that of humanity : animality and its savage grimaces. For once his memory stretches back into the past, while his civilised condition is developed from the forgetfulness of these primitive experiences, that is to say, from the failing of this memory. He who, as a forgetful man of a higher nature, has always remained aloof from these things, does not understand men but it is an advantage if from time to time there are individuals who do not understand men, individuals who are, so to speak, created from the divine seed and born of reason. 313 THE FRIEND WHOM WE WANT NO LONGER. That friend whose hopes we cannot satisfy we should prefer to have as an enemy. 314 IN THE SOCIETY OF THINKERS. In the midst of the ocean of becoming we adventurers and birds of passage wake up on an island no larger than a small boat, and here we look round us for a moment with as much haste and curiosity as possible ; for how quickly may some gale blow us away or some wave sweep over the little island and leave nothing of us remaining ! Here, however, upon this little piece of ground we meet with other birds of passage and hear of still earlier ones, and thus we live together for one precious minute of recognition and divining, amid the cheerful fluttering of wings and joyful chirping, and then adventure in spirit far out on the ocean, feeling no less proud than the ocean itself. 315 PARTING WITH SOMETHING. To give up some of our property, or to waive a right, gives pleasure when it denotes great wealth. Generosity may be placed in this category. 316 WEAK SECTS. Those sects which feel that they will always remain weak hunt up a few intelligent individual adherents, wishing to make up in quality what they lack in quantity. This gives rise to no little danger for intelligent minds. 317 THE JUDGMENT OF THE EVENING. The man who meditates upon his day’s and life’s work when he has reached the end of his journey and feels weary, generally arrives at a melancholy conclusion ; but this is not the fault of the day or his life, but of weariness. In the midst of creative work we do not take time, as a rule, to meditate upon life and existence, nor yet in the midst of our pleasures ; but if by a chance this did happen once we should no longer believe him to be right who waited for the seventh day and for repose to find everything that exists very beautiful. He had missed the right moment. 318 BEWARE OF SYSTEMISERS ! There is a certain amount of comedy about systemisers : in trying to complete a system and to round off its horizon they have to try to let their weaker qualities appear in the same style as their stronger ones. They wish to represent complete and uniformly strong natures. 319 HOSPITALITY. The object of hospitality is to paralyse all hostile feeling in a stranger. When we cease to look upon strangers as enemies, hospitality diminishes ; it flourishes so long as its evil presupposition does. 320 THE WEATHER. An exceptional and uncertain state of the weather makes men suspicious even of one another : at the same time they come to like innovations, for they must diverge from their accustomed habits. This is why despots like those countries where the weather is moral. 321 DANGER IN INNOCENCE. Innocent people become easy victims in all circumstances because their lack of knowledge prevents them from distinguishing between moderation and excess, and from being betimes on their guard against themselves. It is as a result of this that innocent, that is, ignorant young women become accustomed to the frequent
enjoyment of sexual intercourse, and feel the want of it very much in later years when their husbands fall ill or grow prematurely old. It is on account of this harmless and orthodox conception, as if frequent sexual intercourse were right and proper, that they come to experience a need which afterwards exposes them to the severest tribulations, and even worse. Considering the matter, however, from a higher and more general point of view, whoever loves a man or a thing without knowing him or it, falls a prey to something which he would not love if he could see it. In all cases where experience, precautions, and prudent steps are required, it is the innocent man who will be most thoroughly corrupted, for he has to drink with closed eyes the dregs and most secret poison of everything put before him. Let us consider the procedure of all princes, churches, sects, parties, and corporations : Is not the innocent man always used as the sweetest bait for the most dangerous and wicked traps ? just as Ulysses availed himself of the services of the innocent Neoptolemos to cheat the old and infirm anchorite and ogre of Lemnos out of his bow and arrows. Christianity, with its contempt for the world, has made ignorance a virtue innocence, perhaps because the most frequent result of this innocence is precisely, as I have indicated above, guilt, the sense of guilt, and despair : In other words, a virtue which leads to Heaven by the circuitous route of Hell ; for only then can the gloomy entrances of Christian salvation be thrown open, and only then is the promise of a posthumous second innocence effective. This is one of the finest inventions of Christianity ! 322 LIVING WITHOUT A DOCTOR WHEN POSSIBLE. It seems to me that a sick man lives more carelessly when he is under medical observation than when he attends to his own health. In the first case it suffices for him to obey strictly all his Doctor’s prescriptions ; but in the second case he gives more attention to the ultimate object of these prescriptions, namely, his health ; he observes much more, and submits himself to a more severe discipline than the directions of his physician would compel him to do. All rules have this effect: they distract our attention from the fundamental aim of the rule, and make us more thoughtless. But to what heights of immoderation and destruction would men have risen if ever they had completely and honestly left everything to the Godhead as to their physician, and acted in accordance with the words “ as God will”! 323 THE DARKENING OF THE HEAVENS. Do you know the vengeance of those timid people who behave in society just as if they had stolen their limbs ? The vengeance of the humble, Christianlike souls who just manage to slink quietly through the world ? The vengeance of those who always judge hastily, and are as hastily said to be in the wrong ? The vengeance of all classes of drunkards, for whom the morning is always the most miserable part of the day? and also of all kinds of invalids and sick and depressed people who have no longer the courage to become healthy ? The number of these petty vengeful people, and, even more, the number of their petty acts of revenge, is incalculable. The air around us is continually whizzing with the discharged arrows of their malignity, so that the sun and the sky of their lives become darkened thereby, and, alas not only theirs, but more often ours and other men’s : and this is worse than the frequent wounds which they make on our skins and hearts. Do we not occasionally deny the existence of the sun and sky merely because we have not seen them for so long ? Well then, solitude ! because of this, solitude ! 324 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ACTOR. It is the blissful illusion of all great actors to imagine that the historical personages whom they are representing were really in the same state of mind as they themselves are when interpreting them but in this they are very much mistaken. Their powers of imitation and divination, which they would gladly exhibit as a clairvoyant faculty, penetrate only far enough to explain gestures, accent, and looks, and in general anything exterior : that is, they can grasp the shadow of the soul of a great hero, statesman, or warrior, or of an ambitious, jealous, or desperate person they penetrate fairly near to the soul, but they never reach the inmost spirit of the man they are imitating. It would, indeed, be a fine thing to discover that instead of thinkers, psychologists, or experts we required nothing but clairvoyant actors to throw light upon the essence of any condition. Let us never forget, whenever such pretensions are heard, that the actor is nothing but an ideal ape so much of an ape is he, indeed, that he is not capable of believing in the “ essence” or in the “ essential”: everything becomes for him merely performance, intonation, attitude, stage, scenery, and public. 325 LIVING AND BELIEVING APART. The means of becoming the prophet and wonder-worker of one’s age are the same to-day as in former times : one must live apart, with little knowledge, some ideas, and a great deal of presumption we then finish by believing that mankind cannot do without us, because it is clear that we can do without it When we are inspired with this belief we find faith. Finally, a piece of advice to him who needs it (it was given to Wesley by Boehler, his spiritual teacher) : ” Preach faith until you have it; then you will preach it because you have it 1” 326 KNOWING OUR CIRCUMSTANCES. We may estimate our powers, but not our power. Not only do circumstances conceal it from us and show it to us time about, but they even exaggerate or diminish it. We must consider ourselves as variable quantities whose productive capacity may in favourable circumstances reach the greatest possible heights : we must therefore reflect upon these circumstances, and spare no pains in studying them. 327 A FABLE. The Don Juan of knowledge no philosopher or poet has yet succeeded in discovering him. He is wanting in love for the things he recognises, but he possesses wit, a lust for the hunting after knowledge, and the intrigues in connection with it, and he, finds enjoyment in all these, even up to the highest and most distant stars of knowledge until at last there is nothing left for him to pursue but the absolutely injurious side of knowledge, just as the drunkard who ends by drinking absinthe and nitric acid. That is why last of all
he feels a longing for hell, for this is the final knowledge which seduces him. Perhaps even this would disappoint him, as all things do which one knows ! and then he would have to stand still for all eternity, a victim to eternal deception, and transformed into his enemy, the Stony Guest, who longs for an evening meal of knowledge which will never more fall to his share ! for the whole world of things will not have another mouthful left to offer to these hungry men. 328 WHAT IDEALISTIC THEORIES DISCLOSE. We are most certain to find idealistic theories among unscrupulously practical men ; for such men stand in need of the lustre of these theories for the sake of their reputation. They adopt them instinctively without by any means feeling hypocritical in doing so no more hypocritical than Englishmen with their Christianity and their Sabbath-keeping. On the other hand, contemplative natures who have to keep themselves on their guard against all kinds of fantasies and who dread to be reputed as enthusiasts, are only to be satisfied with hard realistic theories: they take possession of them under the same instinctive compulsion without thereby losing their honesty. 329 THE CALUMNIATORS OF CHEERFULNESS. People who have been deeply wounded by the disappointments of life look with suspicion upon all cheerfulness as if it were something childish and puerile, and revealed a lack of common sense that moves them to pity and tenderness, such as one would experience when seeing a dying child caressing his toys on his death-bed. Such men appear to see hidden graves under every rose; rejoicings, tumult, and cheerful music appear to them to be the voluntary illusions of a man who is dangerously ill and yet wishes to take a momentary draught from the intoxicating cup of life. But this judgment about cheerfulness is merely the reflection of the latter on the dark background of weariness and ill-health : in itself it is something touching, irrational, and pitiable, even childlike and puerile, but connected with that second childhood which follows in the train of old age, and is the harbinger of death. 330 NOT YET ENOUGH! It is not sufficient to prove a case, we must also tempt or raise men to it : hence the wise man must learn to convey his wisdom ; and often in such a manner that it may sound like foolishness ! 331 RIGHT AND LIMITS. Asceticism is the proper mode of thinking for those who must extirpate their carnal instincts, because these are ferocious beasts, but only for such people ! 332 THE BOMBASTIC STYLE. An artist who does not wish to put his elevated feelings into a work and thus unburden himself, but who rather wishes to impart these feelings of elevation to others, becomes pompous, and his style becomes the bombastic style. 333 “ HUMANITY.” We do not consider animals as moral beings. But do you think that animals consider us as moral beings ? An animal which had the power of speech once said : ” Humanity is a prejudice from which we animals at least do not suffer.” 334 THE CHARITABLE MAN. The charitable man gratifies a need of his own inward feelings when doing good. The stronger this need is the less does such a man try to put himself in the place of those who serve the purpose of gratifying his desire : he becomes indelicate and sometimes even offensive. (This remark applies to the benevolence and charity of the Jews, which, as is well known, is somewhat more effusive than that of other peoples.) 335 THAT LOVE MAY BE FELT AS LOVE. We must be honest towards ourselves, and must know ourselves very well indeed, to be able to practise upon others that humane dissimulation known as love and kindness. 336 WHAT ARE WE CAPABLE OF ? A man who had been tormented all day by his wicked and malicious son slew him in the evening, and then with a sigh of relief said to the other members of his family : ” Well now we can sleep in peace.” Who knows what circumstances might drive us to ! 337 “ NATURAL.” To be natural, at least in his deficiencies, is perhaps the last praise that can be bestowed upon an artificial artist, who is in other respects theatrical and half genuine. Such a man will for this very reason boldly parade his deficiencies. 338 CONSCIENCE-SUBSTITUTE. One man is another’s conscience : and this is especially important when the other has none else. 339 THE TRANSFORMATION OF DUTIES. When our duties cease to be difficult of accomplishment, and after long practice become changed into agreeable delights and needs, then the rights of others to whom our duties (though now our inclinations) refer change into something else: that is, they become the occasion of pleasant feelings for us. Henceforth the “ other,” by virtue of his rights, becomes an object of love to us instead of an object of reverence and awe as formerly. It is our own pleasure we seek when we recognise and
maintain the extent of his power. When the Quietists no longer felt their Christian faith as a burden, and experienced their delight only in God, they took the motto : ” Do all to the glory of God.” Whatever they performed henceforth in this sense was no longer a sacrifice, it was as much as to say, ” Everything for the sake of our pleasure.” To demand that duty should be always rather burdensome, as Kant does, is to demand that it shall never develop into a habit or custom. There is a small residue of ascetic cruelty in this demand. 340 APPEARANCES ARE AGAINST THE HISTORIAN. It is a sufficiently demonstrated fact that human beings come from the womb ; nevertheless when children grow up and stand by the side of their mother this hypothesis appears very absurd all appearances are against it. 341 THE ADVANTAGE OF IGNORANCE. Someone has said that in his childhood he experienced such a contempt for the caprices and whims of a melancholy temperament that, until he had grown up and had become a middle-aged man, he did not know what his own temperament was like : it was precisely a melancholy temperament. He declared that this was the best of all possible kinds of ignorance. 342 Do NOT BE DECEIVED ! Yes, he examined the matter from every side and you think him to be a man of profound knowledge. But he only wishes to lower the price he wants to buy it ! 343 A MORAL PRETENCE. You refuse to be dissatisfied with yourselves or to suffer from yourselves, and this you call your moral tendency ! Very well ; another may perhaps call it your cowardice ! One thing, however, is certain, and that is that you will never take a trip round the world (and you yourselves are this world), and you will always remain in yourselves an accident and a clod on the face of the earth ! Do you fancy that we who hold different views from you are merely exposing ourselves out of pure folly to the journey through our own deserts, swamps, and glaciers, and that we are voluntarily choosing grief and disgust with ourselves, like the Stylites ? 344 SUBTLETY IN MISTAKES. If Homer, as they say, sometimes nodded, he was wiser than all the artists of sleepless ambition. We must allow admirers to stop for a time and take breath by letting them find fault now and then ; for nobody can bear an uninterruptedly brilliant and untiring excellence and instead of doing good such a master would merely become a taskmaster, whom we hate while he precedes us. 345 OUR HAPPINESS is NOT AN ARGUMENT EITHER PRO OR CON. Many men are only capable of a small share of happiness : and it is not an argument against their wisdom if this wisdom is unable to afford them a greater degree of happiness, any more than it is an argument against medical skill that many people are incurable, and others always ailing. May everyone have the good fortune to discover the conception of existence which will enable him to realise his greatest share of happiness ! though this will not necessarily prevent his life from being miserable and not worth envying. 346 THE ENEMIES OF WOMEN. ” Woman is our enemy ” the man who speaks to men in this way exhibits an unbridled lust which not only hates itself but also its means. 347 THE SCHOOL OF THE ORATOR. When a man has kept silence for a whole year he learns to stop chattering, and to discourse instead. The Pythagoreans were the best statesmen of their age. 348 THE FEELING OF POWER. Note the distinction : the man who wishes to acquire the feeling of power seizes upon any means, and looks upon nothing as too petty which can foster this feeling. He who already possesses power, however, has grown fastidious and refined in his tastes; few things can be found to satisfy him. 349 NOT SO VERY IMPORTANT. When we are present at a death-bed there regularly arises in us a thought that we immediately suppress from a false sense of propriety : the thought that the act of dying is less important than the customary veneration of it would wish us to believe, and that the dying man has probably lost in his life things which were more important than he is now about to lose by his death. In this case the end is certainly not the goal. 350 THE BEST WAY TO PROMISE. When a man makes a promise it is not merely the word that promises, but what lies unexpressed behind the word. Words indeed weaken a promise by discharging and using up a power which forms part of that power which promises. Therefore shake hands when making a promise, but put your finger on your lips in this way you will make the safest promises. 351 GENERALLY MISUNDERSTOOD. In conversation we sometimes observe people endeavouring to set a trap in which to catch others not out of evil-mindedness, as one might
suppose, but from delight in their own shrewdness. Others again prepare a joke so that someone else may utter it, they tie the knot so that others may undo it : not out of goodwill, as might be supposed, but from wickedness, and their contempt for coarse intellects. 352 CENTRE. The feeling, ” I am the centre of the world,” forcibly comes to us when we are unexpectedly overtaken by disgrace : we then feel as if we were standing dazed in the midst of a surge, and dazzled by the glance of one enormous eye which gazes down upon us from all sides and looks us through and through. 353 FREEDOM OF SPEECH. “ The truth must be told, even if the world should be shivered in fragments” so cries the eminent and grandiloquent Fichte. Yes, certainly ; but we must have it first. What he really means, however, is that each man should speak his mind, even if everything were to be turned upside down. This point, however, is open to dispute, 354 THE COURAGE FOR SUFFERING. Such as we now are, we are capable of bearing a tolerable amount of displeasure, and our stomach is suited to such indigestible food. If we were deprived of it, indeed, we should perhaps think the banquet of life insipid ; and if it were not for our willingness to suffer pain we should have to let too many pleasures escape us ! 355 ADMIRERS. The man who admires up to the point that he would be ready to crucify anyone who did not admire, must be reckoned among the executioners of his party beware of shaking hands with him, even when he belongs to your own side. 356 THE EFFECT OF HAPPINESS. The first effect of happiness is the feeling of power, and this feeling longs to manifest itself, whether towards ourselves or other men, or towards ideas and imaginary beings. Its most common modes of manifestation are making presents, derision, and destruction all three being due to a common fundamental instinct. 357 MORAL MOSQUITOES. Those moralists who are lacking in the love of knowledge, and who are only acquainted with the pleasure of giving pain, have the spirit and tediousness of provincials. Their pastime, as cruel as it is lamentable, is to observe their neighbour with the greatest possible closeness, and, unperceived, to place a pin in such position that he cannot help pricking himself with it. Such men have preserved something of the wickedness of schoolboys, who cannot amuse themselves without hunting and torturing either the living or the dead. 358 REASONS AND THEIR UNREASON. You feel a dislike for him, and adduce innumerable reasons for this dislike, but I only believe in your dislike and not in your reasons ! You flatter yourself by adducing as a rational conclusion, both to yourself and to me, that which happens to be merely a matter of instinct. 359 APPROVING OF SOMETHING. We approve of marriage in the first place because we are not yet acquainted with it, in the second place because we have accustomed ourselves to it, and in the third place because we have contracted it that is to say, in most cases. And yet nothing has been proved thereby in favour of the value of marriage in general. 360 No UTILITARIANS. ” Power which has greatly suffered both in deed and in thought is better than powerlessness which only meets with kind treatment” such was the Greek way of thinking. In other words, the feeling of power was prized more highly by them than any mere utility or fair renown. 361 UGLY IN APPEARANCE. Moderation appears to itself to be quite beautiful : it is unaware of the fact that in the eyes of the immoderate it seems coarse and insipid, and consequently ugly. 362 DIFFERENT IN THEIR HATRED. There are men who do not begin to hate until they feel weak and tired : in other respects they are fair-minded and superior. Others only begin to hate when they see an opportunity for revenge : in other respects they carefully avoid both secret and open wrath, and overlook it whenever there is any occasion for it. 363 MEN OF CHANCE. It is pure hazard which plays the essential part in every invention, but most men do not meet with this hazard. 364 CHOICE OF ENVIRONMENT. We should beware of living in an environment where we are neither able to maintain a dignified silence nor to express our loftier thoughts, so that only our complaints and needs and the whole story of our misery are left to be told. We thus become dissatisfied with ourselves and with our surroundings, and to the discomfort which brings about our complaints we add the vexation which we feel at always being in the position of grumblers. But we should, on the contrary, live in a place where we should
be ashamed to speak of ourselves and where it would not be necessary to do so. Who, however, thinks of such things, or of the choice in such things ? We talk about our ” fate,” brace up our shoulders, and sigh, “ Unfortunate Atlas that I am I ” 365 VANITY. Vanity is the dread of appearing to be original. Hence it is a lack of pride, but not necessarily a lack of originality. 366 THE CRIMINAL’S GRIEF. The criminal who has been found out does not suffer because of the crime he has committed, but because of the shame and annoyance caused him either by some blunder which he has made or by being deprived of his habitual element ; and keen discernment is necessary to distinguish such cases. Everyone who has had much experience of prisons and reformatories is astonished at the rare instances of really genuine ” remorse,” and still more so at the longing shown to return to the old wicked and beloved crime. 367 ALWAYS APPEARING HAPPY. When, in the Greece of the third century, philosophy had become a matter of public emulation, there were not a few philosophers who became happy through the thought that others who lived according to different principles, and suffered from them, could not but feel envious of their happiness. They thought they could refute these other people with their happiness better than anything else, and to achieve this object they were content to appear to be always happy; but, following this practice, they were obliged to become happy in the long run ! This, for example, was the case of the cynics. 368 THE CAUSE OF MUCH MISUNDERSTANDING. The morality of increasing nervous force is joyful and restless ; the morality of diminishing nervous force, towards evening, or in invalids and old people, is passive, calm, patient, and melancholy, and not rarely even gloomy. In accordance with what we may possess of one or other of these moralities, we do not understand that which we lack, and we often interpret it in others as immorality and weakness. 369 RAISING ONE’S SELF ABOVE ONE’S OWN LOWNESS. ” Proud” fellows they are indeed, those who, in order to establish a sense of their own dignity and importance, stand in need of other people whom they may tyrannise and oppress those whose powerlessness and cowardice permits someone to make sublime and furious gestures in their presence with impunity, so that they require the baseness of their surroundings to raise themselves for one short moment above their own baseness ! For this purpose one man requires a dog, another a friend, a third a wife, a fourth a party, a fifth, again, one very rarely to be met with, a whole age. 370 TO WHAT EXTENT THE THINKER LOVES HIS ENEMY, Make it a rule never to withhold or conceal from yourself anything that may be thought against your own thoughts. Vow it ! This is the essential requirement of honest thinking. You must undertake such a campaign against yourself every day. A victory and a conquered position are no longer your concern, but that of truth and your defeat also is no longer your concern ! 371 THE EVIL OF STRENGTH. Violence as the outcome of passion, for example, of rage, must be understood from the physiological point of view as an attempt to avoid an imminent fit of suffocation. Innumerable acts arising from animal spirits and vented upon others are simply outlets for getting rid of sudden congestion by a violent muscular exertion : and perhaps the entire ” evil of strength ” must be considered from this point of view. (This evil of strength wounds others unintentionally it must find an outlet somewhere ; while the evil of weakness wishes to wound and to see signs of suffering.) 372 To THE CREDIT OF THE CONNOISSEUR. As soon as someone who is no connoisseur begins to pose as a judge we should remonstrate, whether it is a male or female whipper-snapper. Enthusiasm or delight in a thing or a human being is not an argument; neither is repugnance or hatred. 373 TREACHEROUS BLAME. “ He has no knowledge of men ” means in the mouth of some ” He does not know what baseness is ” ; and in the mouths of others, ” He does not know the exception and knows only too well what baseness means.” 374 THE VALUE OF SACRIFICE. The more the rights of states and princes are questioned as to their right to sacrifice the individual (for example, in the administration of justice, conscription, etc.), the more will the value of self-sacrifice rise. 375 SPEAKING TOO DISTINCTLY. There are several reasons why we articulate our words too distinctly : in the first place, from distrust of ourselves when using a new and unpractised language ; secondly, when we distrust others on account of their stupidity or their slowness of comprehension. The same remark applies to intellectual matters: our communications are sometimes too distinct, too painful, because if it were otherwise those to whom we communicate our ideas would not understand us. Consequently the perfect
and easy style is only permissible when addressing a perfect audience. 376 PLENTY OF SLEEP. What can we do to arouse ourselves when we are weary and tired of our ego ? Some recommend the gambling table, others Christianity, and others again electricity. But the best remedy, my dear hypochondriac, is, and always will be, plenty of sleep in both the literal and figurative sense of the word. Thus another morning will at length dawn upon us. The knack of worldly wisdom is to find the proper time for applying this remedy in both its forms. 377 WHAT WE MAY CONCLUDE FROM FANTASTIC IDEALS. Where our deficiencies are, there also is our enthusiasm. The enthusiastic principle “ love your enemies ” had to be invented by the Jews, the best haters that ever existed ; and the finest glorifications of chastity have been written by those who in their youth led dissolute and licentious lives. 378 CLEAN HANDS AND CLEAN WALLS. Do not paint the picture either of God or the devil on your walls : for in so doing you will spoil your walls as well as your surroundings. 379 PROBABLE AND IMPROBABLE. A woman secretly loved a man, raised him far above her, and said to herself hundreds of times in her inmost heart, ” If a man like that were to love me, I should look upon it as a condescension before which I should have to humble myself in the dust,” And the man entertained the same feelings towards the woman, and in his inmost heart he felt the very same thought. When at last both their tongues were loosened, and they had communicated their most secret thoughts to one another, a deep and meditative silence ensued. Then the woman said in a cold voice : ” The thing is quite clear ! We are neither of us that which we loved ! If you are what you say you are, and nothing more, then I have humbled myself in vain and loved you ; the demon misled me as well as you.” This very probable story never happens and why doesn’t it ? 380 TESTED ADVICE. Of all the means of consolation there is none so efficacious for him who has need of it as the declaration that in his case no consolation can be given. This implies such a distinction that the afflicted person will at once raise his head again. 381 KNOWING ONE’S ” INDIVIDUALITY.” We too often forget that in the eyes of strangers who see us for the first time we are quite different beings from what we consider ourselves to be in most cases we exhibit nothing more than one particular characteristic which catches the eye of the stranger, and determines the impression we make on him. Thus the most peaceful and fair-minded man, if only he has a big moustache, may, as it were, repose in the shade of this moustache ; for ordinary eyes will merely see in him the accessory of a big moustache, that is to say, a military, irascible, and occasionally violent character, and will act accordingly. 382 GARDENERS AND GARDENS. Wet dreary days, loneliness, and unkind words give rise within us to conclusions like fungi ; some morning we find that they have grown up in front of us we know not whence, and there they scowl at us, sullen and morose. Woe to the thinker who instead of being the gardener of his plants, is merely the soil from which they spring. 383 THE COMEDY OF PITY. However much we may feel for an unhappy friend of ours, we always act with a certain amount of insincerity in his presence : we refrain from telling him everything we think, and how we think it, with all the circumspection of a doctor standing by the bedside of a patient who is seriously ill. 384 CURIOUS SAINTS. There are pusillanimous people who have a bad opinion of everything that is best in their works, and who at the same time interpret and comment upon them badly : but also, by a kind of revenge, they entertain a bad opinion of the sympathy of others, and do not believe in sympathy at all ; they are ashamed to appear to be carried away from themselves, and feel a defiant comfort in appearing or becoming ridiculous. States of soul like these are to be found in melancholy artists. 385 VAIN PEOPLE. We are like shop-windows, where we ourselves are constantly arranging, concealing, or setting in the foreground those supposed qualities which others attribute to us in order to deceive ourselves 386 PATHETIC AND NAIVE. It may be a very vulgar habit to let no opportunity slip of assuming a pathetic air for the sake of the enjoyment to be experienced in imagining the spectator striking his breast and feeling himself to be small and miserable. Consequently it may also be the indication of a noble mind to make fun of pathetic situations, and to behave in an undignified manner in them. The old, warlike nobility of France possessed that kind of distinction and delicacy. 387 A REFLECTION BEFORE MARRIAGE. Supposing she loved me, what a burden she would be to me in the long run ! and supposing that she did not love me, what a much
greater burden she would be to me in the long run ! We have to choose between two different kinds of burdens ; therefore let us marry. 388 RASCALITY WITH A GOOD CONSCIENCE. It is exceedingly annoying to be cheated in small bargains in certain countries, in the Tyrol, for example, because, in addition to the bad bargain, we are compelled to accept the evil countenance and coarse greediness of the man who has cheated us, together with his bad conscience and his hostile feeling against us. At Venice, on the other hand, the cheater is highly delighted at his successful fraud, and is not in the least angry with the man he has cheated nay, he is even inclined to show him some kindness, and above all to have a hearty laugh with him if he likes. In short, one must possess wit and a good conscience in order to be a knave, and this will almost reconcile the cheated one with the cheat. 389 RATHER TOO AWKWARD. Good people who are too awkward to be polite and amiable promptly endeavour to return an act of politeness by an important service, or by a contribution beyond their power. It is touching to see them timidly producing their gold coins when others have offered them their gilded coppers ! 390 HIDING ONE’S INTELLIGENCE. When we surprise someone in the act of hiding his intelligence from us we call him evil : the more so if we suspect that it is his civility and benevolence which have induced him to do so. 391 THE EVIL MOMENT. Lively dispositions only lie for a moment : after this they have deceived themselves, and are convinced and honest. 392 THE CONDITION OF POLITENESS. Politeness is a very good thing, and really one of the four chief virtues (although the last), but in order that it may not result in our becoming tiresome to one another the person with whom I have to deal must be either one degree more or less polite than I otherwise we should never get on, and the ointment would not only anoint us, but would cement us together. 393 DANGEROUS VIRTUES. ” He forgets nothing, but forgives everything” wherefore he shall be doubly detested, for he causes us double shame by his memory and his magnanimity. 394 WITHOUT VANITY. Passionate people think little of what others may think ; their state of mind raises them above vanity 395 CONTEMPLATION. In some thinkers the contemplative state peculiar to a thinker is always the consequence of a state of fear, in others always of desire. In the former, contemplation thus seems allied to the feeling of security, in the latter to the feeling of surfeit in other words, the former are spirited in their mood, the latter over-satiated and neutral. 396 HUNTING. The one is hunting for agreeable truths, the other for disagreeable ones. But even the former takes greater pleasure in the hunt than in the booty. 397 EDUCATION. Education is a continuation of procreation, and very often a kind of supplementary varnishing of it. 398 HOW TO RECOGNISE THE CHOLERIC. Of two persons who are struggling together, or who love and admire one another, the more choleric will always be at a disadvantage. The same remark applies to two nations, 399 SELF-EXCUSE. Many men have the best possible right to act in this or that way ; but as soon as they begin to excuse their actions we no longer believe that they are right and we are mistaken, 400 MORAL PAMPERING. There are tender, moral natures who are ashamed of all their successes and feel remorse after every failure. 401 DANGEROUS UNLEARNING. We begin by unlearning to love others, and end by finding nothing lovable in ourselves. 402 ANOTHER FORM OF TOLERATION. “ To remain a minute too long on red-hot coals and to be burnt a little does no harm either to men or to chestnuts. The slight bitterness and hardness makes the kernel all the sweeter.” Yes, this is your opinion, you who enjoy the taste ! You sublime cannibals ! 403
DIFFERENT PRIDE. Women turn pale at the thought that their lover may not be worthy of them ; Men turn pale at the thought that they may not be worthy of the women they love. I speak of perfect women, perfect men. Such men, who are self-reliant and conscious of power at ordinary times, grow diffident and doubtful of themselves when under the influence of a strong passion. Such women, on the other hand, though always looking upon themselves as the weak and devoted sex, become proud and conscious of their power in the great exception of passion, they ask : ” Who then is worthy of me ? ” 404 WHEN WE SELDOM DO JUSTICE. Certain men are unable to feel enthusiasm for a great and good cause without committing a great injustice in some other quarter : this is their kind of morality. 405 LUXURY. The love of luxury is rooted in the depths of a man’s heart : it shows that the superfluous and immoderate is the sea wherein his soul prefers to float. 406 TO IMMORTALISE. Let him who wishes to kill his opponent first consider whether by doing so he will not immortalise him in himself. 407 AGAINST OUR CHARACTER. If the truth which we have to utter goes against our character as very often happens we behave as if we had uttered a clumsy falsehood, and thus rouse suspicion. 408 WHERE A GREAT DEAL OF GENTLENESS is NEEDED. Many natures have only the choice of being either public evil-doers or secret sorrow-bearers. 409 ILLNESS. Among illness are to be reckoned the premature approach of old age, ugliness, and pessimistic opinions three things that always go together. 410 TIMID PEOPLE. It is the awkward and timid people who easily become murderers : they do not understand slight but sufficient means of defence or revenge, and their hatred, owing to their lack of intelligence and presence of mind, can conceive of no other expedient than destruction. 411 WITHOUT HATRED. You wish to bid farewell to your passion ? Very well, but do so without hatred against it ! Otherwise you have a second passion. The soul of the Christian who has freed himself from sin is generally ruined afterwards by the hatred for sin. Just look at the faces of the great Christians ! they are the faces of great haters. 412 INGENIOUS AND NARROW-MINDED. He can appreciate nothing beyond himself, and when he wishes to appreciate other people he must always begin by transforming them into himself. In this, however, he is ingenious. 413 PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ACCUSERS. Watch closely the accuser and inquirer, for he reveals his true character ; and it is not rare for this to be a worse character than that of the victim whose crime he is investigating. The accuser believes in all innocence that the opponent of a crime and criminal must be by nature of good character, or at least must appear as such and this is why he lets himself go, that is to say, he drops his mask. 414 VOLUNTARY BLINDNESS. There is a kind of enthusiastic and extreme devotion to a person or a party which reveals that in our inmost hearts we feel ourselves superior to this person or party, and for this reason we feel indignant with ourselves. We blind ourselves, as it were, of our own free will to punish our eyes for having seen too much. 415 REMEDWM AMORIS. That old radical remedy for love is now in most cases as effective as it always was : love in return. 416 WHERE is OUR WORST ENEMY ? He who can look after his own affairs well, and knows that he can do so, is as a rule conciliatory towards his adversary. But to believe that we have right on our side, and to know that we are incapable of defending it this gives rise to a fierce and implacable hatred against the opponent of our cause. Let everyone judge accordingly where his worst enemies are to be sought. 417 THE LIMITS OF ALL HUMILITY. Many men may certainly have attained that humility which says “ credo quia absurdum est y” and sacrifices its reason ; but, so far as I know, not one has attained to that humility which after all is only one step further, and which says credo quia absurdus sum. 418 ACTING THE TRUTH. Many a man is truthful, not because he would be ashamed to exhibit hypocritical feelings, but because he would not succeed very well in inducing
others to believe in his hypocrisy. In a word, he has no confidence in his talent as an actor, and therefore prefers honestly to act the truth. 419 COURAGE IN A PARTY. The poor sheep say to their bell-wether : ” Only lead us, and we shall never lack courage to follow you.” But the poor bell- wether thinks in his heart : ” Only follow me, and I shall never lack courage to lead you.” 420 CUNNING OF THE VICTIM. What a sad cunning there is in the wish to deceive ourselves with respect to the person for whom we have sacrificed ourselves, when we give him an opportunity in which he must appear to us as we should wish him to be ! 421 THROUGH OTHERS. There are men who do not wish to be seen except through the eyes of others: a wish which implies a great deal of wisdom. 422 MAKING OTHERS HAPPY. Why is the fact of our making others happy more gratifying to us than all other pleasures? Because in so doing we gratify fifty cravings at one time. Taken separately they would, perhaps, be very small pleasures ; but when put into one hand, that hand will be fuller than ever before and the heart also. BOOK V 423 IN THE GREAT SILENCE. Here is the sea, here may we forget the town. It is true that its bells are still ringing the Angelus that solemn and foolish yet sweet sound at the junction between day and night, but one moment more ! now all is silent. Yonder lies the ocean, pale and brilliant ; it cannot speak. The sky is glistening with its eternal mute evening hues, red, yellow, and green : it cannot speak. The small cliffs and rocks which stretch out into the sea as if each one of them were endeavouring. to find the loneliest spot they too are dumb. Beautiful and awful indeed is this vast silence, which so suddenly overcomes us and makes our heart swell. Alas ! what deceit lies in this dumb beauty ! How well could it speak, and how evilly, too, if it wished ! Its tongue, tied up and fastened, and its face of suffering happiness all this is but malice, mocking at your sympathy : be it so ! I do not feel ashamed to be the plaything of such powers ! but I pity you, oh nature, because you must be silent, even though it be only malice that binds your tongue : nay, I pity you for the sake of your malice ! Alas, the silence deepens, and once again my heart swells within me : it is startled by a fresh truth it, too, is dumb; it likewise sneers when the mouth calls out something to this beauty ; it also enjoys the sweet malice of its silence. I come to hate speaking ; yes, even thinking. Behind every word I utter do I not hear the laughter of error, imagination, and insanity ? Must I not laugh at my pity and mock my own mockery ? Oh sea, oh evening, you are bad teachers ! You teach man how to cease to be a man. Is he to give himself up to you ? Shall he become as you now are, pale, brilliant, dumb, immense, reposing calmly upon himself? exalted above himself? 424 FOR WHOM THE TRUTH EXISTS. Up to the present time errors have been the power most fruitful in consolations : we now expect the same effects from accepted truths, and we have been waiting rather too long for them. What if these truths could not give us this consolation we are looking for ? Would that be an argument against them ? What have these truths in common with the sick condition of suffering and degenerate men that they should be useful to them? It is, of course, no proof against the truth of a plant when it is clearly established that it does not contribute in any way to the recovery of sick people. Formerly, however, people were so convinced that man was the ultimate end of nature that they believed that knowledge could reveal nothing that was not beneficial and useful to nay, there could not, should not be, any other things in existence. Perhaps all this leads to the conclusion that truth as an entity and a coherent whole exists only for those natures who, like Aristotle, are at once powerful and harmless, joyous and peaceful : just as none but these would be in a position to seek such truths ; for the others seek remedies for themselves however proud they may be of their intellect and its freedom, they do not seek truth. Hence it comes about that these others take no real joy in science, but reproach it for its coldness, dryness, and inhumanity. This is the judgment of sick people about the games of the healthy. Even the Greek gods were unable to administer consolation ; and when at length the entire Greek world fell ill, this was a reason for the destruction of such gods. 425 WE GODS IN EXILE. Owing to errors regarding their descent, their uniqueness, their mission, and by claims based upon these errors, men have again and again “ surpassed themselves”; but through these same errors the world has been filled with unspeakable suffering, mutual persecution, suspicion, misunderstanding, and an even greater amount of individual misery. Men have become suffering creatures in consequence of their morals, and the sum-total of what they have obtained by those morals is simply the feeling that they are far too good and great for this world, and that they are enjoying merely a transitory existence on it. As yet the ” proud sufferer ” is the highest type of mankind. 426 THE COLOUR-BLINDNESS OF THINKERS. How differently from us the Greeks must have viewed nature, since, as we cannot help admitting, they were quite colour-blind in regard to blue and green, believing the former to be a deeper brown, and the latter to be yellow. Thus, for instance, they used the same word to describe the colour of dark hair, of the corn-flower, and the southern sea ; and again they employed exactly the same expression for the colour of the greenest herbs, the human skin, honey, and yellow raisins : whence it follows that their greatest painters reproduced the world they lived in only in black, white, red, and yellow. How different and how much nearer to mankind, therefore, must nature have seemed to them, since in their eyes the tints of mankind predominated also in nature, and nature was, as it were, floating in the coloured ether of humanity ! (blue and green
more than anything else dehumanise nature). It is this defect which developed the playful facility that characterised the Greeks of seeing the phenomena of nature as gods and demigods that is to say, as human forms. Let this, however, merely serve as a simile for another supposition. Every thinker paints his world and the things that surround him in fewer colours than really exist, and he is blind to individual colours. This is something more than a mere deficiency. Thanks to this nearer approach and simplification, he imagines he sees in things those harmonies of colours which possess a great charm, and may greatly enrich nature. Perhaps, indeed, it was in this way that men first learnt to take delight in viewing existence, owing to its being first of all presented to them in one or two shades, and consequently harmonised. They practised these few shades, so to speak, before they could pass on to any more. And even now certain individuals endeavour to get rid of a partial colour-blindness that they may obtain a richer faculty of sight and discernment, in the course of which they find that they not only discover new pleasures, but are also obliged to lose and give up some of their former ones. 427 THE EMBELLISHMENT OF SCIENCE. In the same way that the feeling that ” nature is ugly, wild, tedious we must embellish it (embellir la nature) ” brought about rococo horticulture, so does the view that ” science is ugly, difficult, dry, dreary and weary, we must embellish it,” invariably gives rise to something called philosophy. This philosophy sets out to do what all art and poetry endeavour to do, namely, giving amusement above all else ; but it wishes to do this, in conformity with its hereditary pride, in a higher and more sublime fashion before an audience of superior intellects. It is no small ambition to create for these intellects a kind of horticulture, the principal charm of which like that of the usual gardening is to bring about an optical illusion (by means of temples, perspective, grottos, winding walks, and waterfalls, to speak in similes), exhibiting science in a condensed form and in all kinds of strange and unexpected illuminations, infusing into it as much indecision, irrationality, and dreaminess as will enable us to walk about in it ” as in savage nature,” but without trouble and boredom. Those who are possessed of this ambition even dream of making religion superfluous religion, which among men of former times served as the highest kind of entertainment. All this is now running its course, and will one day attain its highest tide. Even now hostile voices are being raised against philosophy, exclaiming : ” Return to science, to nature, and the naturalness of science ! ” and thus an age may begin which may discover the most powerful beauty precisely in the ” savage and ugly ” domains of science, just as it is only since the time of Rousseau that we have discovered the sense for the beauty of high mountains and deserts. 428 TWO KINDS OF MORALISTS. To see a law of nature for the first time, and to see it whole (for example, the law of gravity or the reflection of light and sound), and afterwards to explain such a law, are two different things and concern different classes of minds. In the same way, those moralists who observe and exhibit human laws and habits moralists with discriminating ears, noses, and eyes differ entirely from those who interpret their observations. These latter must above all be inventive, and must possess an imagination untrammelled by sagacity and knowledge. 429 THE NEW PASSION. Why do we fear and dread a possible return to barbarism ? Is it because it would make people less happy than they are now ? Certainly not ! the barbarians of all ages possessed more happiness than we do : let us not deceive ourselves on this point ! but our impulse towards knowledge is too widely developed to allow us to value happiness without knowledge, or the happiness of a strong and fixed delusion : it is painful to us even to imagine such a state of things ! Our restless pursuit of discoveries and divinations has become for us as attractive and indispensable as hapless love to the lover, which on no account would he exchange for indifference, nay, perhaps we, too, are hapless lovers ! Knowledge within us has developed into a passion, which does not shrink from any sacrifice, and at bottom fears nothing but its own extinction. We sincerely believe that all humanity, weighed down as it is by the burden of this passion, are bound to feel more exalted and comforted than formerly, when they had not yet overcome the longing for the coarser satisfaction which accompanies barbarism. It may be that mankind may perish eventually from this passion for knowledge ! but even that does not daunt us. Did Christianity ever shrink from a similar thought ? Are not love and death brother and sister ? Yes, we detest barbarism, we all prefer that humanity should perish rather than that knowledge should enter into a stage of retrogression. And, finally, if mankind does not perish through some passion it will perish through some weakness : which would we prefer ? This is the main question. Do we wish its end to be in fire and light, or in the sands ? 430 LIKEWISE HEROIC. To do things of the worst possible odour, things % of which we scarcely dare to speak, but which are nevertheless useful and necessary, is also heroic. The Greeks were not ashamed of numbering even the cleansing of a stable among the great tasks of Hercules. 431 THE OPINIONS OF OPPONENTS. In order to measure the natural subtlety or weakness of even the cleverest heads, we must consider the manner in which they take up and reproduce the opinions of their adversaries, for the natural measure of any intellect is thereby revealed. The perfect sage involuntarily idealises his opponent and frees his inconsistencies from all defects and accidentalities : he only takes up arms against him when he has thus turned his opponent into a god with shining weapons. 432 INVESTIGATOR AND ATTEMPTER. There is no exclusive method of knowing in science. We must deal with things tentatively, treating them by turns harshly or justly, passionately or coldly. One investigator deals with things like a policeman, another like a confessor, and yet a third like an inquisitive traveller. We force something from them now by sympathy and now by violence : the one is urged on ward and led to see clearly by the veneration which the secrets of the things inspire in him, and the other again by the indiscretion and malice met with in the explanation of these secrets. We investigators, like all conquerors, explorers, navigators, and adventurers, are men of a daring morality, and we
must put up with our liability to be in the main looked upon as evil. 433 SEEING WITH NEW EYES. Presuming that by the term ” beauty in art ” is always implied the imitation of something that is happy and this I consider to be true according as an age or a people or a great autocratic individuality represents happiness : what then is disclosed by the so-called realism of our modern artists in regard to the happiness of our epoch ? It is undoubtedly its type of beauty which we now understand most easily and enjoy best of any, As a consequence, we are induced to believe that this happiness which is now peculiar to us is based on realism, on the sharpest possible senses, and on the true conception of the actual that is to say, not upon reality, but upon what we know of reality. The results of science have already gained so much in depth and extent that the artists of our century have involuntarily become the glorifiers of scientific ” blessings ” per $e. 434 INTERCESSION. Unpretentious regions are subjects for great landscape painters ; remarkable and rare regions for inferior painters : for the great things of nature and humanity must intercede in favour of their little, mediocre, and vain admirers whereas the great man intercedes in favour of unassuming things. 435 NOT TO PERISH UNNOTICED. It is not only once but continuously that our excellence and greatness are constantly crumbling away; the weeds that grow among everything and cling to everything ruin all that is great in us the wretchedness of our surroundings, which we always try to overlook and which is before our eyes at every hour of the day, the innumerable little roots of mean and petty feelings which we allow to grow up all about us, in our office, among our companions, or our daily labours. If we permit these small weeds to escape our notice we shall perish through them unnoticed ! And, if you must perish, then do so immediately and suddenly ; for in that case you will perhaps leave proud ruins behind you ! and not, as is now to be feared, merely molehills, covered with grass and weeds these petty and miserable conquerors, as humble as ever, and too wretched even to triumph. 436 CASUISTIC: We are confronted with a very bitter and painful dilemma, for the solution of which not every one’s bravery and character are equal : when, as passengers on board a steamer, we discover that the captain and the helmsman are making dangerous mistakes, and that we are their superiors in nautical science and then we ask ourselves: “ What would happen if we organised a mutiny against them, and made them both prisoners ? Is it not our duty to do so in view of our superiority ? and would not they in their turn be justified in putting us in irons for encouraging disobedience ? ” This is a simile for higher and worse situations ; and the final question to be decided is, What guarantees our superiority and our faith in ourselves in such a case ? Success ? but in order to do that we must do the very thing in which all the danger lies not only dangerous for ourselves, but also for the ship. 437 PRIVILEGES. The man who really owns himself, that is to say, he who has finally conquered himself, regards it as his own right to punish, to pardon, or to pity himself : he need not concede this privilege to any one, though he may freely bestow it upon someone else a friend, for example but he knows that in doing this he is conferring a right, and that rights can only be conferred by one who is in full possession of power. 438 MAN AND THINGS. Why does the man not see the things ? He himself is in the way : he conceals the things, 439 CHARACTERISTICS OF HAPPINESS. There are two things common to all sensations of happiness : a profusion of feelings, accompanied by animal spirits, so that, like the fishes, we feel ourselves to be in our element and play about in it. Good Christians will understand what Christian exuberance means. 440 NEVER RENOUNCE. Renouncing the world without knowing it, like a nun, results in a fruitless and perhaps melancholy solitude. This has nothing in common with the solitude of the vita contemplativa of the thinker : when he chooses this form of solitude he wishes to renounce nothing ; but he would on the contrary regard it as a renunciation, a melancholy destruction of his own self, if he were obliged to continue in the vita practica. He forgoes this latter because he knows it, because he knows himself. So he jumps into his water, and thus gains his cheerfulness. 441 WHY THE NEAREST THINGS BECOME EVER MORE DISTANT FOR US. The more we give up our minds to all that has been and will be, the paler will become that which actually is. When we live with the dead and participate in their death, what are our ” neighbours ” to us ? We grow lonelier simply because the entire flood of humanity is surging round about us. The fire that burns within us, and glows for all that is human, is continually increasing and hence we look upon everything that surrounds us as if it had become more indifferent, more shadowy, but our cold glance is offensive. 442 THE RULE. ” The rule always appears to me to be more interesting than the exception ” whoever thinks thus has made considerable progress in knowledge, and is one of the initiated.
443 ON EDUCATION. I have gradually come to see daylight in regard to the most general defect in our methods of education and training : nobody learns, nobody teaches, nobody wishes, to endure solitude. 444 SURPRISE AT RESISTANCE. Because we have reached the point of being able to see through a thing we believe that henceforth it can offer us no further resistance and then we are surprised to find that we can see through it and yet cannot penetrate through it. This is the same kind of foolishness and surprise as that of the fly on a pane of glass. 445 WHERE THE NOBLEST ARE MISTAKEN. We give someone at length our dearest and most valued possession, and then love has nothing more to give : but the recipient of the gift will certainly not consider it as his dearest possession, and will consequently be wanting in that full and complete gratitude which we expect from him. 446 HIERARCHY. First and foremost, there are the superficial thinkers, and secondly the profound thinkers such as dive into the depths of a thing, thirdly, the thorough thinkers, who get to the bottom of a thing which is of much greater importance than merely diving into its depths, and, finally, those who leap head foremost into the marsh : though this must not be looked upon as indicating either depth or thoroughness ! these are the lovers of obscurity. 447 MASTER AND PUPIL. By cautioning his pupils against himself the teacher shows his humanity. 448 HONOURING REALITY. How can we look at this exulting multitude without tears and acquiescence ? at one time we thought little of the object of their exultation, and we should still think so if we ourselves had not come through a similar experience. And what may these experiences lead us to ! what are our opinions ! In order that we may not lose ourselves and our reason we must fly from experiences. It was thus that Plato fled from actuality, and wished to contemplate things only in their pale mental concepts : he was full of sensitiveness, and knew how easily the waves of this sensitiveness would drown his reason. Must the sage therefore say, ” I will honour reality, but I will at the same time turn my back to it because I know and dread it ? ” Ought he to behave as certain African tribes do in the presence of their sovereign, whom they approach backwards, thus showing their reverence at the same time as their dread ? 449 WHERE ARE THE POOR IN SPIRIT ? Oh, how greatly it goes against my grain to impose my own thoughts upon others ! How I rejoice over every mood and secret change within me as the result of which the thoughts of others are victorious over my own ! but from time to time I enjoy an even greater satisfaction, when I am allowed to give away my intellectual possessions, like the confessor sitting in his box and anxiously awaiting the arrival of some distressed person who stands in need of consolation, and will be only too glad to relate the full misery of his thoughts so that the listener’s hand and heart will once again be filled, and the troubled soul eased ! Not only has the confessor no desire for renown : he would gladly shun gratitude as well, for it is obtrusive, and does not stand in awe of solitude or silence. But to live without a name, and even to be slightly sneered at ; too obscure to arouse envy or enmity; with a head free from fever, a handful of knowledge, and a pocketful of experience ; a physician, as it were, of the poor in spirit, helping this one or that one whose head is troubled with opinions, without the latter perceiving who has actually helped him ! without any desire to appear to be in the right in the presence of his patient, or to carry off a victory. To speak to him in such a way that, after a short and almost imperceptible hint or objection, the listener may find out for himself what is right and proudly walk away ! To be like an obscure and unknown inn which turns no one away who is in need, but which is afterwards forgotten and laughed at ! To be without any advantages over others neither possessing better food nor purer air, nor a more cheerful mind but always to be giving away, returning, communicating, and becoming poorer ! To know how to be humble in order to be accessible to many people and humiliating to none ! To take a great deal of injustice on his shoulders and creep through the cracks and crannies of all kinds of errors, in order that we may reach many obscure souls on their secret paths ! Forever in possession of some kind of love, and some kind of egoism and self-enjoyment ! in possession of power, and yet at the same time hidden and resigned ! constantly basking in the sunshine and sweetness of grace, and yet knowing that quite near to us stands the ladder leading to the sublime ! that would be life ! that would indeed be a reason for a long life ! 450 THE TEMPTATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE. A glance through the gate of science acts upon passionate spirits as the charm of charms : they will probably become dreamers, or in the most favourable cases poets, so great is their desire for the happiness of the man who can discern. Does it not enter into all your senses, this note of sweet temptation by which science has announced its joyful message in a thousand ways, and in the thousand and first way, the noblest of all, ” Be gone, illusion ! for then ‘ Woe is me also vanished, and with it woe itself is gone” (Marcus Aurelius). 451 FOR WHOM A COURT JESTER is NEEDFUL. Those who are very beautiful, very good, and very powerful scarcely ever learn the full and naked truth about anything, for in their presence we involuntarily lie a little, because we feel their influence, and in view of this influence convey a truth in the form of an adaptation (by falsifying the shades and degrees
of facts, by omitting or adding details, and withholding that which is insusceptible of adaptation). If, however, in spite of all this, people of this description insist upon hearing the truth, they must keep a court jester a being with the madman’s privilege of being unable to adapt himself. 452 IMPATIENCE. There is a certain degree of impatience in men of thought and action, which in cases of failure at once drives them to the opposite camp, induces them to take a great interest in it, and to give themselves up to new undertakings until here again the slowness of their success drives them away. Thus they rove about, like so many reckless adventurers, through the practices of many kingdoms and natures ; and in the end, as the result of their wide knowledge of men and things, acquired by their unheard of travel and practice, and with a certain moderation of their craving, they become powerful practical men. Hence a defect in character may become the school of genius. 453 A MORAL INTERREGNUM. Who is now in a position to describe that which will one day supplant moral feelings and judgments ! however certain we may be that these are founded on error, and that the building erected upon such foundations cannot be repaired: their obligation must gradually diminish from day to day, in so far as the obligation of reason does not diminish ! To carry out the task of re-establishing the laws of life and action is still beyond the power of our sciences of physiology and medicine, society and solitude : though it is only from them that we can borrow the foundation-stones of new ideals (but not the ideals themselves). Thus we live a preliminary or after existence, according to our tastes and talents, and the best we can do in this interregnum is to be as much as possible our own ” reges” and to establish small experimental states. We are experiments : if we want to be sol 454 A DIGRESSION. A book like this is not intended to be read through at once, or to be read aloud. It is intended more particularly for reference, especially on our walks and travels : we must take it up and put it down again after a short reading, and, more especially, we ought not to be amongst our usual surroundings. 455 THE PRIMARY NATURE. As we are now brought up, we begin by acquiring a secondary nature, and we possess it when the world calls us mature, of age, efficient. A few have sufficient of the serpent about them to cast this skin some day, when their primary nature has come to maturity under it. But in the majority of people the germ of it withers away. 456 A VIRTUE IN PROCESS OF BECOMING. Such assertions and promises as those of the ancient philosophers on the unity of virtue and felicity, or that of Christianity, ” Seek you first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you,” have never been made with absolute sincerity, but always without a bad conscience nevertheless. People were in the habit of boldly laying down principles which they wished to be true exactly as if they were truth itself, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, and in doing this they felt neither religious nor moral compunction ; for it was in honorem maiorem of virtue or of God that one had gone beyond truth, without, however, any selfish intention ! Many good people still act up to this degree of truthfulness : when they feel unselfish they think it permissible to treat truth more lightly. Let it be remembered that the word honesty is neither to be found among the Socratic nor the Christian virtues : it is one of our most recent virtues, not yet quite mature, frequently misconstrued and misunderstood, scarcely conscious of itself something in embryo, which we may either promote or check according to our inclination. 457 FINAL TACITURNITY. There are some men who fare like the digger after hidden treasures: they quite accidentally discover the carefully preserved secrets of another’s soul, and as a result come into the possession of knowledge which it is often a heavy burden to bear. In certain circumstances we may know the living and the dead, and sound their inmost thoughts to such an extent that it becomes painful to us to speak to others about them : at every word we utter we are afraid of being indiscreet. I can easily imagine a sudden silence on the part of the wisest historian. 458 THE GREAT PRIZE. There is a very rare thing, but a very delightful one, namely the man with a nobly-formed intellect who possesses at the same time the character and inclinations, and even meets with the experiences, suited to such an intellect. 459 THE MAGNANIMITY OF THE THINKER. Both Rousseau and Schopenhauer were proud enough to inscribe upon their lives the motto, Vitam impendere vero. And how they both must have suffered in their pride because they could not succeed in verum impendere vita! verum y such as each of them understood it, when their lives ran side by side with their knowledge like an uncouth bass which is not in tune with the melody. Knowledge, however, would be in a bad way if it were measured out to every thinker only in proportion as it can be adapted to his own person. And thinkers would be in a bad way if their vanity were so great that they could only endure such an adaptation, for the noblest virtue of a great thinker is his magnanimity, which urges him on in his search for knowledge to sacrifice himself and his life unshrinkingly, often shamefacedly, and often with sublime scorn, and smiling. 460 UTILISING OUR HOURS OF DANGER. Those men and conditions whose every movement may mean danger to our possessions, honour, and life or death, and to those most
dear to us, we shall naturally learn to know thoroughly. Tiberius, for instance, must have meditated much more deeply on the character and methods of government of the Emperor Augustus, and must have known far more about them than even the wisest historian. At the present day we all live, relatively speaking, in a security which is much too great to make us true psychologists : some survey their fellow-men as a hobby, others out of ennui, and others again merely from habit ; but never to the extent they would do if they were told ” Discern or perish ! ” As long as truths do not cut us to the quick we assume an attitude of contempt towards them : they still appear to us too much like the ” winged dreams/’ as if we could or could not have them at our discretion, as if we could likewise be aroused from these truths as from a dream ! 461 HIC RHODUS, HIC SALTA. Our music, which can and must change into everything, because like the demon of the sea, it has no character of its own : this music in former times devoted its attention to the Christian savant, and transposed his ideals into sounds : why cannot it likewise find those brighter, more cheerful, and universal sounds which correspond to the ideal thinker ? a music which could rock itself at ease in the vast floating vaults of the soul ? So far our music has been so great and so good ; nothing seemed impossible to its powers. May it therefore prove possible to create these three sensations at one time : sublimity, deep and warm light, and rapture of the greatest possible consistency ! 462 SLOW CURES. Chronic illnesses of the soul, like those of the body, are very rarely due to one gross offence against physical and mental reason, but as a general rule they arise from innumerable and petty negligences of a minor order. A man, for example, whose breathing becomes a trifle weaker every day, and whose lungs, by inhaling too little air, are deprived of their proper amount of exercise, will end by being struck down by some chronic disease of the lungs. The only remedy for cases like these is a countless number of minor exercises of a contrary tendency making it a rule, for example, to take a long and deep breath every quarter of an hour, lying flat on the ground if possible. For this purpose a clock which strikes the quarters should be chosen as a lifelong companion. All these remedies are slow and trifling but yet the man who wishes to cure his soul will carefully consider a change, even in his least important habits. Many a man will utter a cold and angry word to his surroundings ten times a day without thinking about it, and he will forget that after a few years it will have become a regular habit with him to put his surroundings out of temper ten times a day. But he can also acquire the habit of doing good to them ten times. 463 ON THE SEVENTH DAY. “ You praise this as my creation ? but I have only put aside what was a burden to me ! my soul is above the vanity of creators. You praise this as my resignation? but I have only stripped myself of what had become burdensome ! My soul is above the vanity of the resigned ones ! ” 464 THE DONOR’S MODESTY. There is such a want of generosity in always posing as the donor and benefactor, and showing one’s face when doing so ! But to give and bestow, and at the same time to conceal one’s name and favour ! or not to have a name at all, like nature, in whom this fact is more refreshing to us than anything else here at last we no more meet with the giver and bestower, no more with a “ gracious countenance.” It is true that you have now forfeited even this comfort, for you have placed a God in this nature and now everything is once again fettered and oppressed ! Well ? are we never to have the right of remaining alone with ourselves? are we always to be watched, guarded, surrounded by leading strings and gifts? If there is always someone round about us, the best part of courage and kindness will ever remain impossible of attainment in this world. Are we not tempted to fly to hell before this continual obtrusiveness of heaven, this inevitable supernatural neighbour? Never mind, it was only a dream ; let us wake up ! 465 AT A MEETING. A. What are you looking at? you have been standing here for a very long time. B. Always the new and the old over again ! the helplessness of a thing urges me on to plunge into it so deeply that I end by penetrating to its deepest depths, and perceive that in reality it is not worth so very much. At the end of all experiences of this kind we meet with a kind of sorrow and stupor. I experience this on a small scale several times a day. 466 A LOSS OF RENOWN. What an advantage it is to be able to speak as a stranger to mankind ! When they take away our anonymity, and make us famous, the gods deprive us of ” half our virtue.” 467 DOUBLY PATIENT. “ By doing this you will hurt many people.” I know that, and I also know that I shall have to suffer for it doubly: in the first place out of pity for their suffering, and secondly from the revenge they will take on me. But in spite of this I cannot help doing what I do. 468 THE KINGDOM OF BEAUTY is GREATER. We move about in nature, cunning and cheerful, in order that we may surprise everything in the beauty peculiar to it ; we make an effort, whether in sunshine or under a stormy sky, to see a distant part of the coast with its rocks, bays, and olive and pine trees under an aspect in which it achieves its perfection and consummation. Thus also we should walk about among men as their discoverers and explorers, meting out to them good and evil in order that we may unveil the peculiar beauty which is seen with some in the sunshine, in others under thunder-clouds, or with others again only in twilight and under a rainy sky. Are we then forbidden to enjoy the evil man like some savage landscape which possesses its own bold and daring lines and luminous effects, while this same man, so long as he behaves well, and in conformity with the law,
appears to us to be an error of drawing, and a mere caricature which offends us like a defect in nature ? Yes, this is forbidden : for as yet we have only been permitted to seek beauty in anything that is morally good, and this is sufficient to explain why we have found so little and have been compelled to look for beauty without either flesh or bones ! in the same way as evil men are familiar with innumerable kinds of happiness which the virtuous never dream of, we may also find among them innumerable types of beauty, many of them as yet undiscovered. 469 THE INHUMANITY OF THE SAGE. The heavy and grinding progress of the sage, who in the words of the Buddhist song, ” Wanders lonely like the rhinoceros,” now and again stands in need of proofs of a conciliatory and softened humanity, and not only proofs of those accelerated steps, those polite and sociable witticisms ; not only of humour and a certain self-mockery, but likewise of contradictions and occasional returns to the predominating inconsistencies. In order that he may not resemble the heavy roller that rolls along like fate, the sage who wishes to teach must take advantage of his defects, and utilise them for his own adornment ; and when saying “ despise me” he will implore permission to be the advocate of a presumptuous truth. This sage wishes to lead you to the mountains, and he will perhaps endanger your life : therefore as the price of his enjoyment he willingly authorises you to take your revenge either before or afterwards on such a guide. Do you remember what thoughts came into your head when he once led you to a gloomy cavern over a slippery path? Your distrustful heart beat rapidly, and said inwardly, “ This guide might surely do something better than crawl about here ! he is one of those idle people who are full of curiosity is it not doing him too much honour to appear to attach any value at all to him by following him ? ” 470 MANY AT THE BANQUET. How happy we are when we are fed like the birds by the hand of someone who throws them their crumbs without examining them too closely, or inquiring into their worthiness ! To live like a bird which comes and flies away, and does not carry its name on its beak ! I take great pleasure in satisfying my appetite at the banquet of the many. 471 ANOTHER TYPE OF LOVE FOR ONE’S NEIGHBOUR. Everything that is agitated, noisy, fitful, and nervous forms a contrast to the great passion which, glowing in the heart of man like a quiet and gloomy flame, and gathering about it all that is flaming and ardent, gives to man the appearance of coldness and indifference, and stamps a certain impassiveness on his features. Such men are occasionally capable of showing their love for their neighbour, but this love is different from that of sociable people who are anxious to please. It is a mild, contemplative, and calm amiability : these people, as it were, look out of the windows of the castle which serves them as a stronghold, and consequently as a prison ; for the outlook into the far distance, the open air, and a different world is so pleasant for them ! 472 NOT JUSTIFYING ONESELF. A. But why are you not willing to justify yourself? B. I could do it in this instance, as in dozens of others ; but I despise the pleasure which lies in justification, for all that matters little to me, and I would rather bear a stained reputation than give those petty folks the spiteful pleasure of saying, ” He takes these things very seriously.” This is not true. Perhaps I ought to have more consideration for myself, and look upon it as a duty to rectify erroneous opinions about myself I am too indifferent and too indolent regarding myself, and consequently also regarding everything that is brought about through my agency. 473 WHERE TO BUILD ONE’S HOUSE. If you feel great and productive in solitude, society will belittle and isolate you, and vice versa. A powerful mildness such as that of a father : wherever this feeling takes possession of you, there build your house, whether in the midst of the multitude, or on some silent spot. Ubi pater sum, ibi patria 474 THE ONLY MEANS. “ Dialectic is the only means of reaching the divine essence, and penetrating behind the veil of appearance.” This declaration of Plato in regard to dialectic is as solemn and passionate as that of Schopenhauer in regard to the contrary of dialectic and both are wrong. For that to which they wish to point out the way to us does not exist. And so far have not all the great passions of mankind been passions for something non-existent? and all their ceremonies - ceremonies for something non-existent also ? 475 BECOMING HEAVY. You know him not : whatever weights he may attach to himself he will nevertheless be able to raise them all with him. But you, judging from the weak flapping of your own wings, come to the conclusion that he wishes to remain below, merely because he does burden himself with those weights. 476 AT THE HARVEST THANKSGIVING OF THE INTELLECT. There is a daily increase and accumulation of experiences, events, opinions upon these experiences and events, and dreams upon these opinions a boundless and delightful display of wealth ! its aspect dazzles the eyes : I can no longer understand how the poor in spirit can be called blessed ! Occasionally, however, I envy them when I am tired : for the superintendence of such vast wealth is no easy task, and its weight frequently crushes all happiness. Alas, if only the mere sight of it were sufficient ! If only we could be misers of our knowledge ! 477 FREED FROM SCEPTICISM. A. Some men emerge from a general moral scepticism bad-tempered and feeble, corroded, worm-eaten, and even partly consumed but I on the
other hand, more courageous and healthier than ever, and with my instincts conquered once more. Where a strong wind blows, where the waves are rolling angrily, and where more than usual danger is to be faced, there I feel happy. I did not become a worm, although I often had to work and dig like a worm. B. You have just ceased to be a sceptic ; for you deny ! A. And in doing so I have learnt to say yes again. 478 LET US PASS BY. Spare him ! Leave him in his solitude ! Do you wish to crush him down entirely? He became cracked like a glass into which some hot liquid was poured suddenly and he was such a precious glass ! 479 LOVE AND TRUTHFULNESS. Through our love we have become dire offenders against truth, and even habitual dissimulators and thieves, who give out more things as true than seem to us to be true. On this account the thinker must from time to time drive away those whom he loves (not necessarily those who love him), so that they may show their sting and wickedness, and cease to tempt him. Consequently the kindness of the thinker will have its waning and waxing moon. 480 INEVITABLE. No matter what your experience may be, anyone who does not feel well disposed towards you will find in this experience some pretext for disparaging you ! You may undergo the greatest possible revolutions of mind and knowledge, and at length, with the melancholy smile of the convalescent, you may be able to step out into freedom and bright stillness, and yet someone will say : ” This fellow looks upon his illness as an argument, and takes his impotence to be a proof of the impotence of all others he is vain enough to fall ill that he may feel the superiority of the sufferer.” And again, if somebody were to break the chains that bound him down, and wounded himself severely in doing so, someone else would point at him mockingly and cry : ” How awkward he is ! there is a man who had got accustomed to his chains, and yet he is fool enough to burst them asunder ! ” 481 Two GERMANS. If we compare Kant and Schopenhauer with Plato, Spinoza, Pascal, Rousseau, and Goethe, with reference to their souls and not their intellects, we shall see that the two first-named thinkers are at a disadvantage: their thoughts do not constitute a passionate history of their souls we are not led to expect in them romance, crises, catastrophes, or death struggles. Their thinking is not at the same time the involuntary biography of a soul, but in the case of Kant merely of a head; and in the case of Schopenhauer again merely the description and reflection of a character (” the invariable “ ) and the pleasure which this reflection causes, that is to say, the pleasure of meeting with an intellect of the first order. Kant, when he shimmers through his thoughts, appears to us as an honest and honourable man in the best sense of the words, but likewise as an insignificant one: he is wanting in breadth and power ; he had not come through many experiences, and his method of working did not allow him sufficient time to undergo experiences, Of course, in speaking of experiences, I do not refer to the ordinary external events of life, but to those fatalities and convulsions which occur in the course of the most solitary and quiet life which has some leisure and glows with the passion for thinking. Schopenhauer has at all events one advantage over him ; for he at least was distinguished by a certain fierce ugliness of disposition, which showed itself in hatred, desire, vanity, and suspicion : he was of a rather more ferocious disposition, and had both time and leisure to indulge this ferocity. But he lacked ” development,” which was also wanting in his range of thought : he had no ” history.” 482 SEEKING ONE’S COMPANY. Arc we then looking for too much when we seek the company of men who have grown mild, agreeable to the taste, and nutritive, like chestnuts which have been put into the fire and taken out just at the right moment ? Of men who expect little from life, and prefer to accept this little as a present rather than as a merit of their own, as if it were carried to them by birds and bees ? Of men who are too proud ever to feel themselves rewarded, and too serious in their passion for knowledge and honesty to have time for or pleasure in fame? Such men we should call philosophers ; but they themselves will always find some more modest designation. 483 SATIATED WITH MANKIND. A. Seek for knowledge ! Yes ! but always as a man ! What ? must I always be a spectator of the same comedy, and always play a part in the same comedy, without ever being able to observe things with other eyes than those ? and yet there may be countless types of beings whose organs are better adapted for knowledge than ours ! At the end of all their searching for knowledge what will men at length come to know ? Their organs ! which perhaps is as much as to say : the impossibility of knowledge ! misery and disgust ! B. This is a bad attack you have reason is attacking you ! to-morrow, however, you will again be in the midst of knowledge, and hence of irrationality that is to say, delighted about all that is human. Let us go to the sea ! 484 GOING OUR OWN WAY. When we take the decisive step, and make up our minds to follow our own path, a secret is suddenly revealed to us : it is clear that all those who had until now been friendly to us and on intimate terms with us judged themselves to be superior to us, and are offended now. The best among them are indulgent, and are content to wait patiently until we once more find the ” right path ” they know it, apparently. Others make fun of us, and pretend that we have been seized with a temporary attack of mild insanity, or spitefully point out some seducer. The more malicious say we are vain fools, and do their best to blacken our motives ; while the worst of all see in us their greatest enemy, someone who is thirsting for revenge after many years of dependence, and are afraid of us. What, then, are we to do ? My own opinion is that we should begin our sovereignty by promising to all our acquaintances in advance a whole year’s amnesty for sins of every kind.
485 FAR-OFF PERSPECTIVES. A. But why this solitude? B. I am not angry with anybody. But when I am alone it seems to me that I can see my friends in a clearer and rosier light than when I am with them ; and when I loved and felt music best I lived far from it. It would seem that I must have distant perspectives in order that I may think well of things. 486 GOLD AND HUNGER. Here and there we meet with a man who changes into gold everything that he touches. But some fine evil day he will discover that he himself must starve through this gift of his. Everything around him is brilliant, superb, and unapproachable in its ideal beauty, and now he eagerly longs for things which it is impossible for him to turn into gold and how intense is this longing ! like that of a starving man for a meal ! Query : What will he seize ? 487 SHAME. Look at that noble steed pawing the ground, snorting, longing for a ride, and loving its accustomed rider but, shameful to relate, the rider cannot mount to-day, he is tired. Such is the shame felt by the weary thinker, in the presence of his own philosophy ! 488 AGAINST THE WASTE OF LOVE. Do we not blush when we surprise ourselves in a state of violent aversion ? Well, then, we should also blush when we find ourselves possessed of strong affections on account of the injustice contained in them. More: there are people who feel their hearts weighed down and oppressed when someone gives them the benefit of his love and sympathy to the extent that he deprives others of a share. The tone of his voice reveals to us the fact that we have been specially selected and preferred ! but, alas ! I am not thankful for being thus selected : I experience within myself a certain feeling of resentment against him who wishes to distinguish me in this way he shall not love me at the expense of others ! I shall always try to look after myself and to endure myself, and my heart is often filled to overflowing, and with some reason. To such a man nothing ought to be given of which others stand so greatly in need. 489 FRIENDS IN NEED. We may occasionally remark that one of our friends sympathises with another more than with us. His delicacy is troubled thereby, and his selfishness is not equal to the task of breaking down his feelings of affection : in such a case we should facilitate the separation for him, and estrange him in some way in order to widen the distance between us. This is also necessary when we fall into a habit of thinking which might be detrimental to him : our affection for him should induce us to ease his conscience in separating himself from us by means of some injustice which we voluntarily take upon ourselves. 490 THOSE PETTY TRUTHS. ” You know all that, but you have never lived through it so I will not accept your evidence. Those ‘ petty truths ‘ you deem them petty because you have not paid for them with your blood ! ” But are they really great, simply because they have been bought at so high a price ? and blood is always too high a price ! ” Do you really think so ? How stingy you are with your blood !” 491 SOLITUDE, THEREFORE ! A. So you wish to go back to your desert? B. I am not a quick thinker ; I must wait for myself a long time it is always later and later before the water from the fountain of my own ego spurts forth, and I have often to go thirsty longer than suits my patience. That is why I retire into solitude in order that I may not have to drink from the common cisterns. When I live in the midst of the multitude my life is like theirs, and I do not think like myself; but after some time it always seems to me as if the multitude wished to banish me from myself, and to rob me of my soul. Then I get angry with all these people, and afraid of them; and I must have the desert to become well disposed again. 492 UNDER THE SOUTH WIND. A. I can no longer understand myself! It was only yesterday that I felt myself so tempestuous and ardent, and at the same time so warm and sunny and exceptionally bright ! but to-day I Now everything is calm, wide, oppressive, and dark like the lagoon at Venice. I wish for nothing, and draw a deep breath, and yet I feel inwardly indignant at this “ wish for nothing” so the waves rise and fall in the ocean of my melancholy. B. You describe a petty, agreeable illness. The next wind from the north-east will blow it away. A. Why so? 493 ON ONE’S OWN TREE. A. No thinker’s thoughts give me so much pleasure as my own : this, of course, proves nothing in favour of their value ; but I should be foolish to neglect fruits which are tasteful to me only because they happen to grow on my own tree ! and I was once such a fool. B. Others have the contrary feeling : which likewise proves nothing in favour of their thoughts, nor yet is it any argument against their value, 494 THE LAST ARGUMENT OF THE BRAVE MAN. There are snakes in this little clump of trees. Very well, I will rush into the thicket and kill them. But by doing that you will run the risk of falling a victim to them, and not they to you. But what do I matter? 495
OUR TEACHERS. During our period of youth we select our teachers and guides from our own times, and from those circles which we happen to meet with : we have the thoughtless conviction that the present age must have teachers who will suit us better than any others, and that we are sure to find them without having to look very far. Later on we find that we have to pay a heavy penalty for this childishness: we have to expiate our teachers in ourselves, and then perhaps we begin to look for the proper guides. We look for them throughout the whole world, including even present and past ages but perhaps it may be too late, and at the worst we discover that they lived when we were young and that at that time we lost our opportunity. 496 THE EVIL PRINCIPLE. Plato has marvellously described how the philosophic thinker must necessarily be regarded as the essence of depravity in the midst of every existing society : for as the critic of all its morals he is naturally the antagonist of the moral man, and, unless he succeeds in becoming the legislator of new morals, he lives long in the memory of men as an instance of the “ evil principle.” From this we may judge to how great an extent the city of Athens, although fairly liberal and fond of innovations, abused the reputation of Plato during his lifetime. What wonder then that he who, as he has himself recorded, had the ” political instinct ” in his body made three different attempts in Sicily, where at that time a united Mediterranean Greek State appeared to be in process of formation ? It was in this State, and with its assistance, that Plato thought he could do for the Greeks what Mohammed did for the Arabs several centuries later: namely establishing both minor and more important customs, and especially regulating the daily life of every man. His ideas were quite practicable just as certainly as those of Mohammed were practicable ; for even much more incredible ideas, those of Christianity, proved themselves to be practicable ! a few hazards less and a few hazards more and then the world would have witnessed the Platonisation of Southern Europe; and, if we suppose that this state of things had continued to our own days, we should probably be worshipping Plato now as the ” good principle.” But he was unsuccessful, and so his traditional character remains that of a dreamer and a Utopian stronger epithets than these passed away with ancient Athens. 497 THE PURIFYING EYE. We have the best reason for speaking of “ genius” in men for example, Plato, Spinoza, and Goethe whose minds appear to be but loosely linked to their character and temperament, like winged beings which easily separate themselves from them, and then rise far above them. On the other hand, those who never succeeded in cutting themselves loose from their temperament, and who knew how to give to it the most intellectual, lofty, and at times even cosmic expression (Schopenhauer, for instance) have always been very fond of speaking about their genius. These geniuses could not rise above themselves, but they believed that, fly where they would, they would always find and recover themselves this is their ” greatness,” and this can be greatness ! The others who are entitled to this name possess the pure and purifying eye which does not seem to have sprung out of their temperament and character, but separately from them, and generally in contradiction to them, and looks out upon the world as on a God whom it loves. But even people like these do not come into possession of such an eye all at once : they require practice and a preliminary school of sight, and he who is really fortunate will at the right moment also fall in with a teacher of pure sight. 498 NEVER DEMAND ! You do not know him ! it is true that he easily and readily submits both to men and things, and that he is kind to both his only wish is to be left in peace but only in so far as men and things do not demand his submission. Any demand makes him proud, bashful, and warlike. 499 THE EVIL ONE. ” Only the solitary are evil ! ” thus spoke Diderot, and Rousseau at once felt deeply offended. Thus he proved that Diderot was right Indeed, in society, or amid social life, every evil instinct is compelled to restrain itself, to assume so many masks, and to press itself so often into the Procrustean bed of virtue, that we are quite justified in speaking of the martyrdom of the evil man. In solitude, however, all this disappears. The evil man is still more evil in solitude and consequently for him whose eye sees only a drama everywhere he is also more beautiful. 500 AGAINST THE GRAIN. A thinker may for years at a time force himself to think against the grain : that is, not to pursue the thoughts that spring up within him, but, instead, those which he is compelled to follow by the exigencies of his office, an established division of time, or any arbitrary duty which he may find it necessary to fulfil. In the long run, however, he will fall ill ; for this apparently moral self-command will destroy his nervous system as thoroughly and completely as regular debauchery. 501 MORTAL SOULS. Where knowledge is concerned perhaps the most useful conquest that has ever been made is the abandonment of the belief in the immortality of the soul. Humanity is henceforth at liberty to wait : men need no longer be in a hurry to swallow badly-tested ideas as they had to do in former times. For in those times the salvation of this poor ” immortal soul ” depended upon the extent of the knowledge which could be acquired in the course of a short existence : decisions had to be reached from one day to another, and ” knowledge ” was a matter of dreadful importance ! Now we have acquired good courage for errors, experiments, and the provisional acceptance of ideas all this is not so very important ! and for this very reason individuals and whole races may now face tasks so vast in extent that in former years they would have looked like madness, and defiance of heaven and hell. Now we have the right to experiment upon ourselves ! Yes, men have the right to do so ! the greatest sacrifices have not yet been offered up to knowledge nay, in earlier periods it would have been sacrilege, and a sacrifice of our eternal salvation, even to surmise such ideas as now precede our actions.
502 ONE WORD FOR THREE DIFFERENT CONDITIONS. When in a state of passion one man will be forced to let loose the savage, dreadful, unbearable animal. Another when under the influence of passion will raise himself to a high, noble, and lofty demeanour, in comparison with which his usual self appears petty. A third, whose whole person is permeated with nobility of feeling, has also the most noble storm and stress : and in this state he represents Nature in her state of savageness and beauty, and stands only one degree lower than Nature in her periods of greatness and serenity, which he usually represents. It is while in this state of passion, however, that men understand him better, and venerate him more highly at these moments for then he is one step nearer and more akin to them. They feel at once delighted and horrified at such a sight and call it divine. 503 FRIENDSHIP. The objection to a philosophic life that it renders us useless to our friends would never have arisen in a modern mind : it belongs rather to classical antiquity. Antiquity knew the stronger bonds of friendship, meditated upon it, and almost took it to the grave with it. This is the advantage it has over us : we, on the other hand, can point to our idealisation of sexual love. All the great excellencies of ancient humanity owed their stability to the fact that man was standing side by side with man, and that no woman was allowed to put forward the claim of being the nearest and highest, nay even sole object of his love, as the feeling of passion would teach. Perhaps our trees do not grow so high now owing to the ivy and the vines that cling round them. 504 RECONCILIATION. Should it then be the task of philosophy to reconcile what the child has learnt with what the man has come to recognise ? Should philosophy be the task of young men because they stand midway between child and man and possess intermediate necessities ? It would almost appear to be so if you consider at what ages of their life philosophers are now in the habit of setting forth their conceptions : at a time when it is too late for faith and too early for knowledge. 505 PRACTICAL PEOPLE. We thinkers have the right of deciding good taste in all things, and if necessary of decreeing it. The practical people finally receive it from us : their dependence upon us is incredibly great, and is one of the most ridiculous spectacles in the world, little though they themselves know it and however proudly they like to carp at us unpractical people. Nay, they would even go so far as to belittle their practical life if we should show a tendency to despise it whereto at times we might be urged on by a slightly vindictive feeling. 506 THE NECESSARY DESICCATION OF EVERYTHING GOOD. What ! must we conceive of a work exactly in the spirit of the age that has produced it ? but we experience greater delight and surprise, and get more information out of it when we do not conceive it in this spirit ! Have you not remarked that every new and good work, so long as it is exposed to the damp air of its own age is least valuable just because it still has about it all the odour of the market, of opposition, of modern ideas, and of all that is transient from day to day ? Later on, however, it dries up, its ” actuality ” dies away : and then only does it obtain its deep lustre and its perfume and also, if it is destined for it, the calm eye of eternity. 507 AGAINST THE TYRANNY OF TRUTH. Even if we were mad enough to consider all our opinions as truth, we should nevertheless not wish them alone to exist. I cannot see why we should ask for an autocracy and omnipotence of truth : it is sufficient for me to know that it is a great power. Truth, however, must meet with opposition and be able to fight, and we must be able to rest from it at times in falsehood otherwise truth will grow tiresome, powerless, and insipid, and will render us equally so. 508 NOT TO TAKE A THING PATHETICALLY. What we do to benefit ourselves should not bring us in any moral praise, either from others or from ourselves, and the same remark applies to those things which we do to please ourselves. It is looked upon as bon ton among superior men to refrain from taking things pathetically in such cases, and to refrain from all pathetic feelings : the man who has accustomed himself to this has retrieved his naivety. 509 THE THIRD EYE. What! You are still in need of the theatre ! are you still so young ? Be wise, and seek tragedy and comedy where they are better acted, and where the incidents are more interesting, and the actors more eager. It is indeed by no means easy to be merely a spectator in these cases but learn ! and then, amid all difficult or painful situations, you will have a little gate leading to joy and refuge, even when your passions attack you. Open your stage eye, that big third eye of yours, which looks out into the world through the other two. 510 ESCAPING FROM ONE’S VIRTUES. Of what account is a thinker who does not know how to escape from his own virtues occasionally ! Surely a thinker should be more than ” a moral being ” ! 511 THE TEMPTRESS. Honesty is the great temptress of all fanatics. What seemed to tempt Luther in the guise of the devil or a beautiful woman, and from which he defended
himself in that uncouth way of his, was probably nothing but honesty, and perhaps in a few rarer cases even truth. 512 BOLD TOWARDS THINGS. The man who, in accordance with his character, is considerate and timid towards persons, but is courageous and bold towards things, is afraid of new and closer acquaintances, and limits his old ones in order that he may thus make his incognito and his inconsiderateness coincide with truth. 513 LIMITS AND BEAUTY. Are you looking for men with a fine culture ? Then you will have to be satisfied with restricted views and sights, exactly as when you are looking for fine countries. There are, of course, such panoramic men : they are like panoramic regions, instructive and marvellous : but not beautiful. 514 TO THE STRONGER. You stronger and arrogant intellects, we ask you for only one thing : throw no further burdens upon our shoulders, but take some of our burdens upon your own, since you are stronger ! but you delight in doing the exact contrary : for you wish to soar, so that we must carry your burden in addition to our own we must crawl ! 515 THE INCREASE OF BEAUTY. Why has beauty increased by the progress of civilisation ? because the three occasions for ugliness appear ever more rarely among civilised men : first, the wildest outbursts of ecstasy ; secondly, extreme bodily exertion, and, thirdly, the necessity of inducing fear by one’s very sight and presence a matter which is so frequent and of so great importance in the lower and more dangerous stages of culture that it even lays down the proper gestures and ceremonials and makes ugliness a duty. 516 NOT TO IMBUE OUR NEIGHBOURS WITH OUR OWN DEMON. Let us in our age continue to hold the belief that benevolence and beneficence are the characteristics of a good man ; but let us not fail to add ” provided that in the first place he exhibits his benevolence and beneficence towards himself.” For if he acts otherwise that is to say, if he shuns, hates, or injures himself he is certainly not a good man. He then merely saves himself through others : and let these others take care that they do not come to grief through him, however well disposed he may appear to be to them ! but to shun and hate one’s own ego, and to live in and for others, this has up to the present, with as much thoughtlessness as conviction, been looked upon as ” unselfish,” and consequently as ” good.” 517 TEMPTING INTO LOVE. We ought to fear a man who hates himself; for we are liable to become the victims of his anger and revenge. Let us therefore try to tempt him into selflove. 518 RESIGNATION. What is resignation ? It is the most comfortable position of a patient, who, after having suffered a long time from tormenting pains in order to find it, at last became tired and then found it. 519 DECEPTION. When you wish to act you must close the door upon doubt, said a man of action. And are you not afraid of being deceived in doing so ? replied the man of a contemplative mind. 520 ETERNAL OBSEQUIES. Both within and beyond the confines of history we might imagine that we were listening to a continual funeral oration : we have buried, and are still burying, all that we have loved best, our thoughts, and our hopes, receiving in exchange pride, gloria mundi that is, the pomp of the graveside speech. It is thus that everything is made good ! Even at the present time the funeral orator remains the greatest public benefactor. 521 EXCEPTIONAL VANITY. Yonder man possesses one great quality which serves as a consolation for him: his look passes with contempt over the remainder of his being, and almost his entire character is included in this. But he recovers from himself when, as it were, he approaches his sanctuary ; already the road leading to it appears to him to be an ascent on broad soft steps and yet, you cruel ones, you call him vain on this account ! 522 WISDOM WITHOUT EARS. To hear every day what is said about us, or even to endeavour to discover what people think of us, will in the end kill even the strongest man. Our neighbours permit us to live only that they may exercise a daily claim upon us ! They certainly would not tolerate us if we wished to claim rights over them, and still less if we wished to be right ! In short, let us offer up a sacrifice to the general peace, let us not listen when they Speak of us, when they praise us, blame us, wish for us, or hope for us nay, let us not even think of it. 523 A QUESTION OF PENETRATION. When we are confronted with any manifestation which someone has permitted us to see, we may ask : what is it meant to conceal ? What is it meant to draw our attention from? What prejudices does it seek to raise ? and again, how far does the subtlety of the dissimulation go ? and in what respect is the man mistaken ?
524 THE JEALOUSY OF THE LONELY ONES. This is the difference between sociable and solitary natures, provided that both possess an intellect: the former are satisfied, or nearly satisfied, with almost anything whatever ; from the moment that their minds have discovered a communicable and happy version of it they will be reconciled even with the devil himself! But the lonely souls have their silent rapture, and their speechless agony about a thing: they hate the ingenious and brilliant display of their inmost problems as much as they dislike to see the women they love too loudly dressed they watch her mournfully in such a case, as if they were just beginning to suspect that she was desirous of pleasing others. This is the jealousy which all lonely thinkers and passionate dreamers exhibit with regard to the esprit. 525 THE EFFECT OF PRAISE. Some people become modest when highly praised, others insolent. 526 UNWILLING TO BE A SYMBOL. I sympathise with princes: they are not at liberty to discard their high rank even for a short time, and thus they come to know people only from the very uncomfortable position of constant dissimulation their continual compulsion to represent something actually ends by making solemn ciphers of them. Such is the fate of all those who deem it their duty to be symbols. 527 THE HIDDEN MEN. Have you never come across those people who check and restrain even their enraptured hearts, and who would rather become mute than lose the modesty of moderation ? and have you never met those embarrassing, and yet so often good-natured people who do not wish to be recognised, and who time and again efface the tracks they have made in the sand ? and who even deceive others as well as themselves in order to remain obscure and hidden ? 528 UNUSUAL FORBEARANCE. It is often no small indication of kindness to be unwilling to criticise someone, and even to refuse to think of him. 529 How MEN AND NATIONS GAIN LUSTRE. How many really individual actions are left undone merely because before performing them we perceive or suspect that they will be misunderstood ! those actions, for example, which have some intrinsic value, both in good and evil. The more highly an age or a nation values its individuals, therefore, and the more right and ascendancy we accord them, the more will actions of this kind venture to make themselves known, and thus in the long run a lustre of honesty, of genuineness in good and evil, will spread over entire ages and nations, so that they the Greeks, for example like certain stars, will continue to shed light for thousands of years after their sinking. 530 DIGRESSIONS OF THE THINKER. The course of thought in certain men is strict and inflexibly bold. At times it is even cruel towards such men, although considered individually they may be gentle and pliable. With well-meaning hesitation they will turn the matter ten times over in their heads, but will at length continue their strict course. They are like streams that wind their way past solitary hermitages : there are places in their course where the stream plays hide and seek with itself, and indulges in short idylls with islets, trees, grottos, and cascades and then it rushes ahead once more, passes by the rocks, and forces its way through the hardest stones. 531 DIFFERENT FEELINGS TOWARDS ART. From the time when we begin to live as a hermit, consuming and consumed, our only company being deep and prolific thoughts, we expect from art either nothing more, or else something quite different from what we formerly expected in a word, we change our taste. For in former times we wished to penetrate for a moment by means of art into the element in which we are now living permanently: at that time we dreamt ourselves into the rapture of a possession which we now actually possess. Indeed, flinging away from us for the time being what we now have, and imagining ourselves to be poor, or to be a child, a beggar, or a fool, may now at times fill us with delight. 532 ” LOVE EQUALISES.” Love wishes to spare the other to whom it devotes itself any feeling of strangeness : as a consequence it is permeated with disguise and simulation ; it keeps on deceiving continuously, and feigns an equality which in reality does not exist. And all this is done so instinctively that women who love deny this simulation and constant tender trickery, and have even the audacity to assert that love equalises (in other words that it performs a miracle) ! This phenomenon is a simple matter if one of the two permits himself or herself to be loved, and does not deem it necessary to feign, but leaves this to the other. No drama, however, could offer a more intricate and confused instance than when both persons are passionately in love with one another; for in this case both are anxious to surrender and to endeavour to conform to the other, and finally they are both at a loss to know what to imitate and what to feign. The beautiful madness of this spectacle is too good for this world, and too subtle for human eyes. 533 WE BEGINNERS. How many things does an actor see and divine when he watches another on the stage ! He notices at once when a muscle fails in some gesture; he can distinguish those little artificial tricks which are so calmly practised separately before the mirror, and are not in conformity with the whole ; he feels when the actor is surprised on the stage by his own invention, and when he spoils it amid this surprise. How differently, again, does a painter look at someone who happens to be moving before him ! He will see a
great deal that does not actually exist in order to complete the actual appearance of the person, and to give it its full effect. In his mind he attempts several different illuminations of the same object, and divides the whole by an additional contrast. Oh, that we now possessed the eyes of such an actor and such a painter for the province of the human soul ! 534 SMALL DOSES. If we wish a change to be as deep and radical as possible, we must apply the remedy in minute doses, but unremittingly for long periods. What great action can be performed all at once? Let us therefore be careful not to exchange violently and precipitately the moral conditions with which we are familiar for a new valuation of things, nay, we may even wish to continue living in the old way for a long time to come, until probably at some very remote period we become aware of the fact that the new valuation has made itself the predominating power within us, and that its minute doses to which we must henceforth become accustomed have set up a new nature within us. We now also begin to understand that the last attempt at a great change of valuations that which concerned itself with political affairs (the ” great revolution “ ) was nothing more than a pathetic and sanguinary piece of quackery which, by means of sudden crises, was able to inspire a credulous Europe with the hope of a sudden recovery, and has therefore made all political invalids impatient and dangerous up to this very moment. 535 TRUTH REQUIRES POWER. Truth in itself is no power at all, in spite of all that flattering rationalists are in the habit of saying to the contrary. Truth must either attract power to its side, or else side with power, for otherwise it will perish again and again. This has already been sufficiently demonstrated, and more than sufficiently ! 536 THE THUMBSCREW. It is disgusting to observe with what cruelty everyone charges his two or three private virtues to the account of others who may perhaps not possess them, and whom he torments and worries with them. Let us therefore deal humanely with the “ sense of honesty,” although we may possess in it a thumbscrew with which we can worry to death all these presumptuous egoists who even yet wish to impose their own beliefs upon the whole world we have tried this thumbscrew on ourselves ! 537 MASTERY. We have reached mastery when we neither mistake nor hesitate in the achievement. 538 THE MORAL INSANITY OF GENIUS, In a certain category of great intellects we may observe a painful and partly horrible spectacle : in their most productive moments their flights aloft and into the far distance appear to be out of harmony with their general constitution and to exceed their power in one way or another, so that each time there remains a deficiency, and also in the long run a defectiveness in the entire machinery, which latter is manifested among those highly intellectual natures by various kinds of moral and intellectual symptoms more regularly than by conditions of bodily distress. Thus those incomprehensible characteristics of their nature all their timidity, vanity, hatefulness, envy, their narrow and narrowing disposition and that too personal and awkward element in natures like those of Rousseau and Schopenhauer, may very well be the consequences of a periodical attack of heart disease; and this in its turn may be the result of a nervous complaint, and this latter the consequence of - . So long as genius dwells within us we are full of audacity, yes, almost mad, and heedless of health, life, and honour ; we fly through the day as free and swift as an eagle, and in the darkness we feel as confident as an owl. But let genius once leave us and we are instantly overcome by a feeling of the most profound despondency : we can no longer understand ourselves ; we suffer from everything that we experience and do not experience ; we feel as if we were in the midst of shelter-less rocks with the tempest raging round us, and we are at the same time like pitiful childish souls, afraid of a rustle or a shadow. Three-fourths of all the evil committed in the world is due to timidity ; and this is above all a physiological process. 539 DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU WANT ? Have you never been troubled by the fear that you might not be at all fitted for recognising what is true ? by the fear that your senses might be too dull, and even your delicacy of sight far too blunt ? If you could only perceive, even once, to what extent your volition dominates your sight ! How, for example, you wished yesterday to see more than someone else, while to-day you wish to see it differently ! and how from the start you were anxious to see something which would be in conformity with or in opposition to anything that people thought they had observed up to the present. Oh, those shameful cravings ! How often you keep your eyes open for what is efficacious, for what is soothing, just because you happen to be tired at the moment ! Always full of secret predeterminations of what truth should be like, so that you, you, indeed ! might accept it ! or do you think that to-day, because you are as frozen and dry as a bright winter morning, and because nothing is weighing on your mind, you have better eyesight ! Are not ardour and enthusiasm necessary to do justice to the creations of thought ? and this indeed is what is called sight ! as if you could treat matters of thought any differently from the manner in which you treat men. In all relations with thought there is the same morality, the same honesty of purpose, the same reservations, the same slackness, the same faintheartedness your whole lovable and hateful self! Your physical exhaustion will lend the things pale colours while your feverishness will turn them into monsters I Does not your morning show the things in a different light from the evening? Are you not afraid of finding in the cave of all knowledge your own phantom, the veil in which truth is wrapped up and hidden from your sight? Is it not a dreadful comedy in which you so thoughtlessly wish to take part ? 540 LEARNING. Michelangelo considered Raphael’s genius as having been acquired by study, and upon his own as a natural gift : learning as opposed to talent ; though this is mere pedantry, with all due respect to the great pedant himself. For what is talent but a name for an older piece of learning, experience, exercise, appropriation, and incorporation, perhaps as
far back as the times of our ancestors, or even earlier ! And again : he who learns forms his own talents, only learning is not such an easy matter and depends not only upon our willingness, but also upon our being able to learn at all. Jealousy often prevents this in an artist, or that pride which, when it experiences any strange feeling, at once assumes an attitude of defence instead of an attitude of scholarly receptiveness. Raphael, like Goethe, lacked this pride, on which account they were great learners, and not merely the exploiters of those quarries which had been formed by the manifold genealogy of their forefathers. Raphael vanishes before our eyes as a learner in the midst of that assimilation of what his great rival called his ” nature ” : this noblest of all thieves daily carried off a portion of it ; but before he had appropriated all the genius of Michelangelo he died and the final series of his works, because it is the beginning of a new plan of study, is less perfect and good, for the simple reason that the great student was interrupted by death in the midst of his most difficult task, and took away with him that justifying and final goal which he had in view. 541 HOW WE SHOULD TURN TO STONE. By slowly, very, very slowly, becoming hard like a precious stone, and at last lie still, a joy to all eternity. 542 THE PHILOSOPHER AND OLD AGE. It is not wise to permit evening to act as a judge of the day ; for only too often in this case weariness becomes the judge of success and good will. We should also take the greatest precautions in regard to everything connected with old age and its judgment upon life, more especially since old age, like the evening, is fond of assuming a new and charming morality, and knows well enough how to humiliate the day by the glow of the evening skies, twilight and a peaceful and wistful silence. The reverence which we feel for an old man, especially if he is an old thinker and sage, easily blinds us to the deterioration of his intellect, and it is always necessary to bring to light the hidden symptoms of such a deterioration and lassitude, that is to say, to uncover the physiological phenomenon which is still concealed behind the old man’s moral judgments and prejudices, in case we should be deceived by our veneration for him, and do something to the disadvantage of knowledge, For it is not seldom that the illusion of a great moral renovation and regeneration takes possession of the old man. Basing his views upon this, he then proceeds to express his opinions on the work and development of his life as if he had only then for the first time become clear-sighted and nevertheless it is not wisdom, but fatigue, which prompts his present state of well-being and his positive judgments. The most dangerous indication of this weariness is above all the belief in genius, which as a rule only arises in great and semi-great men of intellect at this period of their lives : the belief in an exceptional position, and exceptional rights. The thinker who thus believes himself to be inspired by genius henceforth deems it permissible for him to take things more easily, and takes advantage of his position as a genius to decree rather than to prove. It is probable, however, that the need felt by the weary intellect for alleviation is the main source of this belief it precedes it in time, though appearances may indicate the contrary. At this time too, as the result of the love which all weary and old people feel for enjoyment, such men as those I am ‘speaking of wish to enjoy the results of their thinking instead of again testing them and scattering the seeds abroad once more. This leads them to make their thoughts palatable and enjoyable, and to take away their dryness, coldness, and want of flavour ; and thus it comes about that the old thinker apparently raises himself above his life’s work, while in reality he spoils it by infusing into it a certain amount of fantasy, sweetness, flavour, poetic mists, and mystic lights. This is how Plato ended, as did also that great and honest Frenchman, Auguste Comte, who, as a conqueror of the exact sciences, cannot be matched either among the Germans or the Englishmen of this century. There is a third symptom of fatigue: that ambition which actuated the great thinker when he was young, and which could not then find anything to satisfy it, has also grown old, and, like one that has no more time to lose, it begins to snatch at the coarser and more immediate means of its gratification, means which are peculiar to active, dominating, violent, and conquering dispositions. From this time onwards the thinker wishes to found institutions which shall bear his name, instead of erecting mere brain-structures. What are now to him the ethereal victories and honours to be met with in the realm of proofs and refutations, or the perpetuation of his fame in books, or the thrill of exultation in the soul of the reader ? But the institution, on the other hand, is a temple, as he well knows a temple of stone, a durable edifice, which will keep its god alive with more certainty than the sacrifices of rare and tender souls. Perhaps, too, at this period of his life the old thinker will for the first time meet with that love which is fitted for a god rather than for a human being, and his whole nature becomes softened and sweetened in the rays of such a sun, like fruit in autumn. Yes, he grows more divine and beautiful, this great old man, and nevertheless it is old age and weariness which permit him to ripen in this way, to grow more silent, and to repose in the luminous adulation of a woman. Now it is all up with his former desire a desire which was superior even to his own ego for real disciples, followers who would carry on his thought, that is, true opponents. This desire arose from his until now undiminished energy, the conscious pride he felt in being able at any time to become an opponent himself, nay, even the deadly enemy of his own doctrine, but now his desire is for resolute partisans, unwavering comrades, auxiliary forces, heralds, a pompous train of followers. He is now no longer able to bear that dreadful isolation in which every intellect that advances beyond the others is compelled to live. From this time forward he surrounds himself with objects of veneration, companionship, tenderness, and love ; but he also wishes to enjoy the privileges of all religious people, and to worship what he venerates most highly in his little community he will even go as far as to invent a religion for the purpose of having a community. Thus lives the wise old man, and in living thus he falls almost imperceptibly into such a deplorable proximity to priestly and poetic extravagances that it is difficult to recollect all his wise and severe period of youth, the former rigid morality of his mind, and his truly virile dread of fancies and misplaced enthusiasm. When he was formerly in the habit of comparing himself with the older thinkers, he did so merely that he might measure his weakness against their strength, and that he might become colder and more audacious towards himself; but now he only makes this comparison to intoxicate himself with his own delusions. Formerly he looked forward with confidence to future thinkers, and he even took a delight in imagining himself to be cast into the shade by their brighter light. Now, however, he is mortified to think that he cannot be the last : he endeavours to discover some way of imposing upon mankind, together with the inheritance which he is leaving to them, a restriction of sovereign thinking. He fears and reviles the pride and the love of freedom of
individual minds : after him no one must allow his intellect to govern with absolute unrestriction : he himself wishes to remain forever the bulwark on which the waves of ideas may break these are his secret wishes, and perhaps, indeed, they are not always secret. The hard fact upon which such wishes are based, however, is that he himself has come to a halt before his teaching, and has set up his boundary stone, his ” thus far and no farther.” In canonising himself he has drawn up his own death warrant : from now on his mind cannot develop further. His race is run ; the hour-hand stops. Whenever a great thinker tries to make himself .a lasting institution for posterity, we may readily suppose that he has passed the climax of his powers, and is very tired, very near the setting of his sun. 543 WE MUST NOT MAKE PASSION AN ARGUMENT FOR TRUTH. Oh, you kind-hearted and even noble enthusiasts, I know you ! You wish to seem right in our eyes as well as in your own, but especially in your own ! and an irritable and subtle evil conscience so often spurs you on against your very enthusiasm ! How ingenious you then become in deceiving your conscience, and lulling it to sleep ! How you hate honest, simple, and clean souls ; how you avoid their innocent glances ! That better knowledge whose representatives they are, and whose voice you hear only too distinctly within yourselves when it questions your belief, how you try to cast suspicion upon it as a bad habit, as a disease of the age, as the neglect and infection of your own intellectual health ! It drives you on to hate even criticism, science, reason ! You must falsify history to make it testify in your favour ; you must deny virtues in case they should obscure those of your own idols and ideals. Coloured images where arguments are needed ! Ardour and power of expression ! Silver mists ! Ambrosian nights ! well do you know how to enlighten and to darken to darken by means of light ! and indeed when your passion can no longer be kept within bounds the moment comes when you say to yourselves, ” Now I have won for myself a good conscience, now I am exalted, courageous, self-denying, magnanimous; now I am honest!” How you long for these moments when your passion will confer upon you full and absolute rights, and also, as it were, innocence. How happy you are when engaged in battle and inspired with ecstasy or courage, when you are elated beyond yourself, when gnawing doubt has left you, and when you can even decree : ” Any man who is not in ecstasy as we are cannot by any chance know what or where truth is.” How you long to meet with those who share your belief in this state which is a state of intellectual depravity and to set your own fire alight with their flames ! Oh, for your martyrdom, your victory of the sanctified lie ! Must you really inflict so much pain upon yourselves? Must you ? 544 HOW PHILOSOPHY IS NOW PRACTISED. I can see quite well that our philosophising youths, women, and artists require from philosophy exactly the opposite of what the Greeks derived from it. What does he who does not hear the continual exultation that resounds through every speech and counter-argument in a Platonic dialogue, this exultation over the new invention of rational thinking, know about Plato or about ancient philosophy ? At that time souls were filled with enthusiasm when they gave themselves up to the severe and sober sport of ideas, generalisations, refutations, that enthusiasm which perhaps those old, great, severe, and prudent contrapuntists in music have also known. At that time the Greek palate still possessed that older and formerly omnipotent taste : and by the side of this taste their new taste appeared to be enveloped in so much charm that the divine art of dialectic was sung by hesitating voices as if its followers were intoxicated with the frenzy of love. That old form of thinking, however, was thought within the bounds of morality, and for it nothing existed but fixed judgments and established facts, and it had no reasons but those of authority. Thinking, therefore, was simply a matter of repetition, and all the enjoyment of speech and dialogue could only lie in their form. Wherever the substance of a thing is looked upon as eternal and universally approved, there is only one great charm, the charm of variable forms, that is, of fashion. Even in the poets ever since the time of Homer, and later on in the case of the sculptors, the Greeks did not enjoy originality, but its contrary. It was Socrates who discovered another charm, that of cause and effect, of reason and sequence, and we moderns have become so used to it, and have been brought up to the necessity of logic that we look upon it as the normal taste, and as such it cannot but be repugnant to ardent and presumptuous people. Such people are pleased by whatever stands out boldly from the normal : their more subtle ambition leads them to believe only too readily that they are exceptional souls, not dialectic and rational beings, but, let us say, ” intuitive ” beings gifted with an ” inner sense,” or with a certain ” intellectual perception.” Above all, however, they wish to be ” artistic natures ” with a genius in their heads, and a demon in their bodies, and consequently with special rights in this world and in the world to come especially the divine privilege of being incomprehensible. And people like these are ” going in for ” philosophy nowadays ! I fear they will discover one day that they have made a mistake what they are looking for is religion ! 545 BUT WE DO NOT BELIEVE YOU. You would gladly pass for psychologists, but we shall not allow it ! Are we not to notice that you pretend to be more experienced, profound, passionate, and perfect than you actually are ? just as we notice in yonder painter that there is a trifling presumptuousness in his manner of wielding the brush, and in yonder musician that he brings forward his theme with the desire to make it appear superior to what it really is. Have you experienced history within yourselves, commotions, earthquakes, long and profound sadness, and sudden flashes of happiness ? Have you acted foolishly with great and little fools ? Have you really undergone the delusions and woe of the good people? and also the woe and the peculiar happiness of the most evil ? Then you may speak to me of morality, but not otherwise ! 546 SLAVE AND IDEALIST. The followers of Epictetus would doubtless not be to the taste of those who are now striving after the ideal. The constant tension of his being, the indefatigable inward glance, the prudent and reserved incommunicativeness of his eye whenever it happens to gaze upon the outer world, and above all, his silence or laconic speech : all these are characteristics of the strictest fortitude, and what would our idealists, who above all else are desirous of expansion, care for this ? But in spite of all this the Stoic is not fanatical. He detests the display and boasting of our idealists : his pride, however great it may be, is not eager to disturb others. It permits of a certain gentle approach, and has no
desire to spoil anybody’s good humour nay, it can even smile. A great deal of ancient humanity is to be seen exemplified in this ideal. The most excellent feature about it, however, is that the thinker is completely free from the fear of God, strictly believes in reason, and is no preacher of penitence. Epictetus was a slave : his ideal man is without any particular rank, and may exist in any grade of society, but above all he is to be sought in the deepest and lowest social classes, as the silent and self-sufficient man in the midst of a general state of servitude, a man who defends himself alone against the outer world, and is constantly living in a state of the highest fortitude. He is distinguished from the Christian especially, because the latter lives in hope in the promise of ” unspeakable glory,” permits presents to be made to him, and expects and accepts the best things from divine love and grace, and not from himself. Epictetus, on the other hand, neither hopes nor allows his best treasure to be given him he possesses it already, holds it bravely in his hand, and defies the world to take it away from him. Christianity was devised for another class of ancient slaves, for those who had a weak will and weak reason that is to say, for the majority of slaves. 547 THE TYRANTS OF THE INTELLECT. The progress of science is at the present time no longer hindered by the purely accidental fact that man attains to about seventy years, which was the case far too long. In former times people wished to master the entire extent of knowledge within this period, and all the methods of knowledge were valued according to this general desire. Minor questions and individual experiments were looked upon as unworthy of notice : people wanted to take the shortest path under the impression that, since everything in this world seemed to be arranged with a view to man’s needs, even the acquirement of knowledge was regulated in view of the limits of human life. To solve everything at a single stroke, with one word this was the secret desire ; and the task was represented in the symbol of the Gordian knot or the egg of Columbus. No one doubted that it was possible to reach the goal of knowledge after the manner of Alexander or Columbus, and to settle all questions with one answer. ” There is a mystery to be solved,” seemed to be the aim of life in the eyes of the philosopher : it was necessary in the first place to find out what this enigma was, and to condense the problem of the world into the simplest enigmatical formula possible. The boundless ambition and delight of being the ” unraveller of the world ” charmed the dreams of many a thinker : nothing seemed to him worth troubling about in this world but the means of bringing everything to a satisfactory conclusion. Philosophy thus became a kind of supreme struggle for the tyrannical sway over the intellect, and no one doubted that such a tyrannical domination was reserved for some very happy, subtle, ingenious, bold, and powerful person a single individual ! and many (the last was Schopenhauer) fancied themselves to be this privileged person. From this it follows that, on the whole, science has up to the present remained in a rather backward state owing to the moral narrow-mindedness of its disciples, and that henceforth it will have to be pursued from a higher and more generous motive. ” What do I matter ? ” is written over the door of the thinker of the future. 548 VICTORY OVER POWER. If we consider all that has been venerated up to the present as ” superhuman intellect ” or ” genius,” we must come to the sad conclusion that, considered as a whole, the intellectuality of mankind must have been extremely low and poor: so little mind has until now been necessary in order to feel at once considerably superior to all this ! Alas for the cheap glory of ” genius ” ! How quickly has it been raised to the throne, and its worship grown into a custom ! We still fall on our knees before power according to the old custom of slaves and nevertheless, when the degree of venerability comes to be determined, only the degree of reason in the power will be the deciding factor. We must find out, indeed, to how great an extent power has been overcome by something higher, which it now obeys as a tool and instrument. As yet, however, there have been too few eyes for such investigations : even in the majority of cases the mere valuation of genius has almost been looked upon as blasphemy. And thus perhaps everything that is most beautiful still takes place in the midst of darkness and vanishes in endless night almost as soon as it has made its appearance, I refer to the spectacle of that power which a genius does not lay out upon works, but upon himself as a work, that is, his own self-control, the purifying of his own imagination, the order and selection in his inspirations and tasks. The great man ever remains invisible in the greatest thing that claims worship, like some distant star : his victory over power remains without witnesses, and hence also without songs and singers. The hierarchy of the great men in all the past history of the human race has not yet been determined. 549 FLIGHT FROM ONE’S SELF. Those sufferers from intellectual spasms who are impatient towards themselves and look upon themselves with a gloomy eye such as Byron or Alfred de Musset and who, in everything that they do, resemble runaway horses, and from their own works derive only a transient joy and an ardent passion which almost bursts their veins, followed by sterility and disenchantment how are they able to bear up ! They would gladly attain to something ” beyond themselves.” If we happen to be Christians, and are seized by such a desire as this, we strive to reach God and to become one with Him ; if we are a Shakespeare we shall be glad to perish in images of a passionate life ; if we are like Byron we long for actions, because these detach us from ourselves to an even greater extent than thoughts, feelings, and works. And should the desire for performing great deeds really be at bottom nothing but a flight from our own selves ? as Pascal would ask us. And indeed this assertion might be proved by considering the most noble representations of this desire for action : in this respect let us remember, bringing the knowledge of an alienist to our aid, that four of the greatest men of all ages who were possessed of this lust for action were epileptics Alexander the Great, Caesar, Mohammed, and Napoleon ; and Byron likewise was subject to the same complaint. 550 KNOWLEDGE AND BEAUTY. If men, as they are still in the habit of doing, reserve their veneration and feelings of happiness for works of fancy and imagination, we should not be surprised if they feel chilled and displeased by the contrary of fancy and imagination. The rapture which arises from even the smallest, sure, and definite step in advance into insight, and which our present state of science yields to so many in such abundance this rapture is in the meantime not believed in by all those who are in the habit of feeling
enraptured only when they leave reality altogether and plunge into the depths of vague appearance romanticism. These people look upon reality as ugly, but they entirely overlook the fact that the knowledge of even the ugliest reality is beautiful, and that the man who can discern much and often is in the end very far from considering as ugly the main items of that reality, the discovery of which has always inspired him with the feeling of happiness. Is there anything “ beautiful in itself”? The happiness of those who can recognise augments the beauty of the world, bathing everything that exists in a sunnier light : discernment not only envelops all things in its own beauty, but in the long run permeates the things themselves with its beauty may ages to come bear witness to the truth of this statement ! In the meantime let us recall an old experience: two men so thoroughly different in every respect as Plato and Aristotle were agreed in regard to what constituted superior happiness not merely their own and that of men in general, but happiness in itself, even the happiness of the gods. They found this happiness to lie in knowledge, in the activity of a well practised and inventive understanding (not in ” intuition ” like the German theologians and semitheologians ; not in visions, like the mystics ; and not in work, like the merely practical men). Similar opinions were expressed by Descartes and Spinoza. What great delight must all these men have felt in knowledge ! and how great was the danger that their honesty might give way, and that they themselves might become panegyrists of things ! 551 FUTURE VIRTUES. How has it come about that, the more intelligible the world has become, the more all kinds of ceremonies have diminished ? Was fear so frequently the fundamental basis of that awe which overcame us at the sight of anything until now unknown and mysterious, and which taught us to fall upon our knees before the unintelligible, and to beg for mercy? And has the world, perhaps, through the very fact that we have grown less timid, lost some of the charms it formerly had for us ? Is it not possible that our own dignity and stateliness, our formidable character, has decreased together with our spirit of dread? Perhaps we value the world and ourselves less highly since we have begun to think more boldly about it and ourselves ? Perhaps there will come a moment in the future when this courageous spirit of thinking will have reached such a point that it will feel itself soaring in supreme pride, far above men and things when the wise man, being also the boldest, will see himself, and even more particularly existence, the lowest of all beneath himself? This type of courage, which is not far removed from excessive generosity, has been lacking in humanity up to the present. Oh, that our poets might once again become what they once were : seers, telling us something about what might possibly happen ! now that what is real and what is past are being ever more and more taken from them, and must continue to be taken from them for the time of innocent counterfeiting is at an end ! Let them try to enable us to anticipate future virtues, or virtues that will never be found on earth, although they may exist somewhere in the world ! purple-glowing constellations and whole Milky Ways of the beautiful ! Where are you, you astronomers of the ideal ? 552 IDEAL SELFISHNESS. Is there a more sacred state than that of pregnancy ? To perform everyone of our actions in the silent conviction that in one way or another it will be to the benefit of that which is being generated within us that it must augment its mysterious value, the very thought of which fills us with rapture ? At such a time we refrain from many things without having to force ourselves to do so : we suppress the angry word, we grasp the hand forgivingly ; our child must be born from all that is best and gentlest. We shun our own harshness and brusqueness in case it should instil a drop of unhappiness into the cup of the beloved unknown. Everything is veiled, ominous ; we know nothing about what is going on, but simply wait and try to be prepared. During this time, too, we experience a pure and purifying feeling of profound irresponsibility, similar to that felt by a spectator before a drawn curtain ; it is growing, it is coming to light ; we have nothing to do with determining its value, or the hour of its arrival. We are thrown back altogether upon indirect, beneficent and defensive influences. ” Something greater than we are is growing here ” such is our most secret hope : we prepare everything with a view to his birth and prosperity not merely everything that is useful, but also the noblest gifts of our souls. We should, and can, live under the influence of such a blessed inspiration ! Whether what we are looking forward to is a thought or a deed, our relationship to every essential achievement is none other than that of pregnancy, and all our vainglorious boasting about ” willing ” and ” creating ” should be cast to the winds ! True and ideal selfishness consists in always watching over and restraining the soul, so that our productiveness may come to a beautiful termination. Thus in this indirect manner we must provide for and watch over the good of all ; and the frame of mind, the mood in which we live, is a kind of soothing oil which spreads far around” us on the restless souls. Still, these pregnant ones are funny people! let us therefore dare to be funny also, and not reproach others if they must be the same. And even when this phenomenon becomes dangerous and evil we must not show less respect to that which is generating within us or others than ordinary worldly justice, which does not allow the judge or the hangman to interfere with a pregnant woman. 553 CIRCUITOUS ROUTES. Where does all this philosophy mean to end with its circuitous routes ? Does it do more than transpose into reason, so to speak, a continuous and strong impulse a craving for a mild sun, a bright and bracing atmosphere, southern plants, sea breezes, short meals of meat, eggs, and fruit, hot water to drink, quiet walks for days at a time, little talking, rare and cautious reading, living alone, pure, simple, and almost soldier-like habits a craving, in short, for all things which are suited to my own personal taste ? a philosophy which is in the main the instinct for a personal regimen an instinct that longs for my air, my height, my temperature, and my kind of health, and takes the circuitous route of my head to persuade me to it ! There are many other and certainly more lofty philosophies, and not only such as are more gloomy and pretentious than mine and are they perhaps, taking them as a whole, nothing but intellectual circuitous routes of the same kind of personal impulses? In the meantime I look with a new eye upon the mysterious and solitary flight of a butterfly high on the rocky banks of the lake where so many plants are growing : there it flies hither and thither, heedless of the fact that its life will last only one more day, and that the night will be too cold for its winged fragility. For it, too, a philosophy might be found, though it might not be my own. 554
LEADING. When we praise progress we only praise the movement and those who do not let us remain on the same spot, and in the circumstances this is certainly something, especially if we live among Egyptians. In changeable Europe, however, where movement is ” understood,” to use their own expression, ” as a matter of course ” alas, if we only understood something about it too ! I praise leaders and forerunners : that is to say, those who always leave themselves behind, and do not care in the least whether anyone is following them or not. ” Wherever I halt I find myself alone : why should I halt ! the desert is still so wide ! ” such is the sentiment of the true leader. 555 THE LEAST IMPORTANT ARE SUFFICIENT. We ought to avoid events when we know that even the least important of them frequently enough leave a strong impression upon us and these we cannot avoid. The thinker must possess an approximate canon of all the things he still wishes to experience. 556 THE FOUR VIRTUES. Honest towards ourselves, and to all and everything friendly to us ; brave in the face of our enemy ; generous towards the vanquished ; polite at all times : such do the four cardinal virtues wish us to be. 557 MARCHING AGAINST AN ENEMY. How pleasant is the sound of even bad music and bad motives when we are setting out to march against an enemy ! 558 NOT CONCEALING ONE’S VIRTUES. I love those men who are as transparent as water, and who, to use Pope’s expression, hide not from view the turbid bottom of their stream. Even they, however, possess a certain vanity, though of a rare and more sublimated kind : some of them would wish us to see nothing but the mud, and to take no notice of the clearness of the water which enables us to look right to the bottom. No less a man than Gautama Buddha has imagined the vanity of these few in the formula, ” Let your sins appear before men, and conceal your virtues.” But this would exhibit a disagreeable spectacle to the world it would be a sin against good taste. 559 “ NOTHING IN EXCESS!” How often is the individual recommended to set up a goal which it is beyond his power to reach, in order that he may at least attain that which lies within the scope of his abilities and most strenuous efforts ! Is it really so desirable, however, that he should do so ? Do not the best men who try to act according to this doctrine, together with their, best deeds, necessarily assume a somewhat exaggerated and distorted appearance on account of their excessive tension ? and in the future will not a grey mist of failure envelop the world, owing to the fact that we may see everywhere struggling athletes and tremendous gestures, but nowhere a conqueror crowned with the laurel, and rejoicing in his victory ? THE END Return to First Page
THE GAY SCIENCE (THE JOYFUL WISDOM) Translated by Thomas Common BOOK ONE 1 The Teachers of the Object of Existence. - Whether I look with a good or an evil eye upon men, I find them always at one problem, each and all of them : to do that which conduces to the conservation of the human species. And certainly not out of any sentiment of love for this species, but simply because nothing in them is older, stronger, more inexorable and more unconquerable than that instinct,- because it is precisely the essence of our race and herd. Although we are accustomed readily enough, with our usual shortsightedness, to separate our neighbours precisely into useful and hurtful, into good and evil men, yet when we make a general calculation, and reflect longer on the whole question, we become distrustful of this defining and separating, and finally leave it alone. Even the most hurtful man is still perhaps, in respect to the conservation of the race, the most useful of all; for he conserves in himself, or by his effect on others, impulses without which mankind might long ago have languished or decayed. Hatred, delight in mischief, rapacity and ambition, and whatever else is called evil-belong to the marvellous economy of the conservation of the race; to be sure a costly, lavish, and on the whole very foolish economy:-which has, however, until now preserved our race, as is demonstrated to us. I no longer know, my dear fellow-man and neighbour, if you canst at all live to the disadvantage of the race, and therefore, ” unreasonably” and “ badly”; that which could have injured the race has perhaps died out many millenniums ago, and now belongs to the things which are no longer possible even to God. Indulge your best or your worst desires, and above all, go to wreck!-in either case you are still probably the furtherer and benefactor of mankind in some way or other, and in that respect you may have your panegyrists-and similarly your mockers! But you will never find him who would be quite qualified to mock at you, the individual, at your best, who could bring home to your conscience its limitless, buzzing and croaking wretchedness so as to be in accord with truth! To laugh at oneself as one would have to laugh in order to laugh out of the veriest truth,-to do this, the best have not until now had enough of the sense of truth, and the most endowed have had far too little genius! There is perhaps still a future even for laughter! When the maxim, ” The race is all, the individual is nothing,”-has incorporated itself in humanity, and when access stands open to everyone at all times to this ultimate emancipation and irresponsibility.-Perhaps then laughter will have united with wisdom, perhaps then there will be only “ joyful wisdom.” Meanwhile, however, it is quite otherwise, meanwhile the comedy of existence has not yet ” become conscious ” of itself, meanwhile it is still the period of tragedy, the period of morals and
religions. What does the ever new appearing of founders of morals and religions, of instigators of struggles for moral valuations, of teachers of remorse of conscience and religious war, imply? What do these heroes on this stage imply ? For they have until now been the heroes of it, and all else, though solely visible for the time being, and too close to one, has served only as preparation for these heroes, whether as machinery and coulisse, or in the r61e of confidants and valets. (The poets, for example, have always been the valets of some morality or other.)-It is obvious of itself that these tragedians also work in the interest of the race, though they may believe that they work in the interest of God, and as emissaries of God. They also further the life of the species, in that they further the belief in life. ” It is worthwhile to live” - each of them calls out,-” there is something of importance in this life; life has something behind it and under it; take care!” That impulse, which rules equally in the noblest and the ignoblest, the impulse to the conservation of the species, breaks forth from time to time as reason and passion of spirit; it has then a brilliant train of motives about it, and tries with all its power to make us forget that fundamentally it is just impulse, instinct, folly and baselessness. Life should be loved, for … ! Man should benefit himself and his neighbour, for … ! And whatever all these shoulds and fors imply, and may imply in future! In order that that which necessarily and always happens of itself and without design, may henceforth appear to be done by design, and may appeal to men as reason and ultimate command,-for that purpose the ethi-culturist comes forward as the teacher of design in existence ; for that purpose he devises a second and different existence, and by means of this new mechanism he lifts the old common existence off its old common hinges. No! he does not at all want us to laugh at existence, nor even at ourselves -nor at himself; to him an individual is always an individual, something first and last and immense, to him there are no species, no sums, no noughts. However foolish and fanatical his inventions and valuations may be, however much he may misunderstand the course of nature and deny its conditions-and all systems of ethics until now have been foolish and anti-natural to such a degree that mankind would have been ruined by anyone of them had it got the upper hand,-at any rate, every time that ” the hero” came upon the stage something new was attained: the frightful counterpart of laughter, the profound convulsion of many individuals at the thought, ” Yes, it is worthwhile to live! yes, I am worthy to live!”-life, and you, and I, and all of us together became for a while interesting to ourselves once more.-It is not to be denied that until now laughter and reason and nature have in the long run got the upper hand of all the great teachers of design: in the end the short tragedy always passed over once more into the eternal comedy of existence; and the ” waves of innumerable laughter”-to use the expression of Aeschylus-must also in the end beat over the greatest of these tragedies. But with all this corrective laughter, human nature has on the whole been changed by the ever new appearance of those teachers of the design of existence,-human nature has now an additional requirement, the very requirement of the ever new appearance of such teachers and doctrines of ” design.” Man has gradually become a visionary animal, who has to fulfil one more condition of existence than the other animals : man must from time to time believe that he knows why he exists; his species cannot flourish without periodically confiding in life! Without the belief in reason in life! And always from time to time will the human race decree anew that “ there is something which really may not be laughed at.” And the most clairvoyant philanthropist will add that” not only laughing and joyful wisdom, but also the tragic with all its sublime irrationality, counts among the means and necessities for the conservation of the race!”-And consequently! Consequently ! Consequently! Do you understand me, oh my brothers? Do you understand this new law of ebb and flow? We also shall have our time ! 2 The Intellectual Conscience.-I have always the same experience over again, and always make a new effort against it; for although it is evident to me I do not want to believe it: in the greater number of men the intellectual conscience is lacking; indeed, it would often seem to me that in demanding such a thing, one is as solitary in the largest cities as in the desert. Everyone looks at you with strange eyes, and continues to make use of his scales, calling this good and that bad ; and no one blushes for shame when you remark that these weights are not the full amount,-there is also no indignation against you ; perhaps they laugh at your doubt. I mean to say that the greater number of people do not find it contemptible to believe this or that, and live according to it, without having been previously aware of the ultimate and surest reasons for and against it, and without even giving themselves any trouble about such reasons afterwards,-the most gifted men and the noblest women still belong to this ” greater number.” But what is kind-heartedness, refinement and genius to me, if he who has these virtues harbours indolent sentiments in belief and judgment, if the longing for certainty does not rule in him, as his innermost desire and profoundest need-as that which separates higher from lower men! In certain pious people I have found a hatred of reason, and have been favourably disposed to them for it: their bad intellectual conscience at least still betrayed itself, in this manner! But to stand in the midst of this rerum concordia discors and all the marvellous uncertainty and ambiguity of existence, and not to question, not to tremble with desire and delight in questioning, not even to hate the questioner-perhaps even to make merry over him to the extent of wearinessthat is what I regard as contemptible, and it is this sentiment which I first of all search for in every one:-some folly or other always persuades me anew that every man has this sentiment, as man. This is my special kind of unrighteousness. 3 Noble and Ignoble.-To ignoble natures all noble, magnanimous sentiments appear inexpedient, and on that account first and foremost, as incredible: they blink with their eyes when they hear of such matters, and seem inclined to say, ” there will, no doubt, be some advantage from that, one cannot see through all walls;”-they are jealous of the noble person, as if he sought advantage by back-stair methods. When they are all too plainly convinced of the absence of selfish intentions and emoluments, the noble person is regarded by them as a kind of fool: they despise him in his gladness, and laugh at the lustre of his eye. ” How can a person rejoice at being at a disadvantage, how can a person with open eyes want to meet with disadvantage ! It must be a disease of the reason with which the noble affection is associated ” ;-so they think, and they look depreciatingly thereon ; just as they depreciate the joy which the lunatic derives from his fixed idea. The ignoble nature is distinguished by the fact that it keeps its advantage steadily in view, and that this thought of the end and advantage is even stronger than its strongest impulse: not to be tempted to inexpedient activities by its impulses-that is its wisdom and inspiration. In comparison with the ignoble
nature the higher nature is more irrational: - for the noble, magnanimous, and self-sacrificing person succumbs in fact to his impulses, and in his best moments his reason lapses altogether. An animal, which at the risk of life protects its young, or in the pairing season follows the female where it meets with death, does not think of the risk and the death; its reason pauses likewise, because its delight in its young, or in the female, and the fear of being deprived of this delight, dominate it exclusively ; it becomes stupider than at other times, like the noble and magnanimous person. He possesses feelings of pleasure and pain of such intensity that the intellect must either be silent before them, or yield itself to their service: his heart then goes into his head, and one henceforth speaks of ” passions.” (Here and there to be sure, the antithesis to this, and as it were the ” reverse of passion,” presents itself; for example in Fontenelle, to whom someone once laid the hand on the heart with the words, ” What you have there, my dearest friend, is brain also.”) It is the unreason, or perverse reason of passion, which the ignoble man despises in the noble individual, especially when it concentrates upon objects whose value appears to him to be altogether fantastic and arbitrary. He is offended at him who succumbs to the passion of the belly, but he understands the allurement which here plays the tyrant; but he does not understand, for example, how a person out of love of knowledge can stake his health and honour on the game. The taste of the higher nature devotes itself to exceptional matters, to things which usually do not affect people, and seem to have no sweetness ; the higher nature has a singular standard of value. Yet it is mostly of the belief that it has not a singular standard of value in its idiosyncrasies of taste; it rather sets up its values and non-values as the generally valid values and non-values, and thus becomes incomprehensible and impracticable. It is very rarely that a higher nature has so much reason over and above as to understand and deal with everyday men as such; for the most part it believes in its passion as if it were the concealed passion of every one, and precisely in this belief it is full of ardour and eloquence. If then such exceptional men do not perceive themselves as exceptions, how can they ever understand the ignoble natures and estimate average men fairly! Thus it is that they also speak of the folly, inexpediency and fantasy of mankind, full of astonishment at the madness of the world, and that it will not recognise the “ one thing needful for it.”-This is the eternal unrighteousness of noble natures. 4 That which Preserves the Species.-The strongest and most evil spirits have until now advanced mankind the most: they always rekindled the sleeping passions-all orderly arranged society lulls the passions to sleep;. they always reawakened the sense of comparison, of contradiction, of delight in the new, the adventurous, the untried; they compelled men to set opinion against opinion, ideal plan against ideal plan. By means of arms, by upsetting boundary-stones, by violations of piety most of all: but also by new religions and morals ! The same kind of ” wickedness ” is in every teacher and preacher of the new-which makes a conqueror infamous, although it expresses itself more refined, and does not immediately set the muscles in motion (and just on that account does not make so infamous !). The new, however, is under all circumstances the evil, as that which wants to conquer, which tries to upset the old boundary-stones and the old piety; only the old is the good! The good men of every age are those who go to the roots of the old thoughts and bear fruit with them, the agriculturists of the spirit. But every soil becomes finally exhausted, and the ploughshare of evil must always come once more.-There is at present a fundamentally erroneous theory of morals which is much celebrated, especially in England: according to it the judgments “ good” and “ evil” are the accumulation of the experiences of that which is ” expedient” and ” inexpedient” ; according to this theory, that which is called good is conservative of the species, what is called evil, however, is detrimental to it. But in reality the evil impulses are just in as high a degree expedient, indispensable, and conservative of the species as the good :-only, their function is different. 5 Unconditional Duties.-All men who feel that they need the strongest words and intonations, the most eloquent gestures and attitudes, in order to operate at all-revolutionary politicians, socialists, preachers of repentance with or without Christianity, with all of whom there must be no mere half-success, -all these speak of ” duties,” and indeed, always of duties, which have the character of being unconditional-without such they would have no right to their excessive pathos: they know that right well! They grasp, therefore, at philosophies of morality which preach some kind of categorical imperative, or they assimilate a good lump of religion, as, for example, Mazzini did. Because they want to be trusted unconditionally, it is first of all necessary for them to trust themselves unconditionally, on the basis of some ultimate, undebate-able command, sublime in itself, as the ministers and instruments of which, they would gladly feel and announce themselves. Here we have the most natural, and for the most part, very influential opponents of moral enlightenment and scepticism : but they are rare. On the other hand, there is always a very numerous class of those opponents wherever interest teaches subjection, while repute and honour seem to forbid it. He who feels himself dishonoured at the thought of being the instrument of a prince, or of a party and sect, or even of wealthy power (for example, as the descendant of a proud, ancient family), but wishes just to be this instrument, or must be so before himself and before the public - such a person has need of pathetic principles which can at all times be appealed to :-principles of an unconditional ought, to which a person can subject himself without shame, and can show himself subjected. All more refined servility holds fast to the categorical imperative, and is the mortal enemy of those who want to take away the unconditional character of duty: propriety demands this from them, and not only propriety. 6 Loss of Dignity.-Meditation has lost all its dignity of form; the ceremonial and solemn bearing of the meditative person have been made a mockery, and one would no longer endure a wise man of the old style. We think too hastily and on the way and while walking and in the midst of business of all kinds, even when we think on the most serious matters; we require little preparation, even little quiet:-it is as if each of us carried about an unceasingly revolving machine in his head, which still works, even under the most unfavourable circumstances. Formerly it was perceived in a person that on some occasion he wanted to think-it was perhaps the exception !-that he now wanted to become wiser and collected his mind on a thought: he put on a long face for it, as for a prayer, and arrested his step-nay, stood still for hours on the street when the thought ” came”-on one or on two legs. It was thus ” worthy of the affair “ !
7 Something for the Laborious.-He who at present wants to make moral questions a subject of study has an immense field of labour before him. All kinds of passions must be thought about singly, and followed singly throughout periods, peoples, great and insignificant individuals ; all their rationality, all their valuations and elucidations of things, ought to come to light! Until now all that has given colour to existence has lacked a history: where would one find a history of love, of avarice, of envy, of conscience, of piety, of cruelty ? Even a comparative history of law, as also of punishment, has until now been completely lacking. Have the different divisions of the day, the consequences of a regular appointment of the times for labour, feast, and repose, ever been made the object of investigation ? Do we know the moral effects of the alimentary substances ? Is there a philosophy of nutrition ? (The ever-recurring outcry for and against vegetarianism proves that as yet there is no such philosophy!) Have the experiences with regard to communal living, for example, in monasteries, been collected ? Has the dialectic of marriage and friendship been set forth? The customs of the learned, of trades-people, of artists, and of mechanics-have they already found their thinkers ? There is so much to think of thereon ! All that up till now has been considered as the “ conditions of existence,” of human beings, and all reason, passion and superstition in this consideration-have they been investigated to the end ? The observation alone of the different degrees of development which the human impulses have attained, and could yet attain, according to the different moral climates, would furnish too much work for the most laborious; whole generations, and regular co-operating generations of the learned, would be needed in order to exhaust the points of view and the material here furnished. The same is true of the determining of the reasons for the differences of the moral climates (“ on what account does this sun of a fundamental moral judgment and standard of highest value shine here-and that sun there ? “ ). And there is again a new labour which points out the erroneousness of all these reasons, and determines the entire essence of the moral judgments until now made. Supposing all these labours to be accomplished, the most critical of all questions would then come into the foreground : whether science is in a position to furnish goals for human action, after it has proved that it can take them away and annihilate themand then would be the time for a process of experimenting, in which every kind of heroism could satisfy itself, an experimenting for centuries, which would put into the shade all the great labours and sacrifices of previous history. Science has not until now built its Cyclopic structures; for that also the time will come. 8 Unconscious Virtues.-All qualities in a man of which he is conscious-and especially when he presumes that they are visible and evident to his environment also-are subject to quite other laws of development than those qualities which are unknown to him, or imperfectly known, which by their subtlety can also conceal themselves from the subtlest observer, and hide as it were behind nothing,-as in the case of the delicate sculptures on the scales of reptiles (it would be an error to suppose them an adornment or a defence-for one sees them only with the microscope ; consequently, with an eye artificially strengthened to an extent of vision which similar animals, to which they might perhaps have meant adornment or defence, do not possess!). Our visible moral qualities, and especially our moral qualities believed to be visible, follow their own course,-and our invisible qualities of similar name, which in relation to others neither serve for adornment nor defence, also follow their own course: quite a different course probably, and with lines and refinements, and sculptures, which might perhaps give pleasure to a God with a divine microscope. We have, for example, our diligence, our ambition, our acuteness: all the world knows about them,-and besides, we have probably once more our diligence, our ambition, our acuteness ; but for these-our reptile scales-the microscope has not yet been invented !-And here the adherents of instinctive morality will say, ” Bravo! He at least regards unconscious virtues as possible-that suffices us!”-Oh, you unexacting creatures ! 9 Our Eruptions. - Numberless things which humanity acquired in its earlier stages, but so weakly and embryonically that it could not be noticed that they were acquired, are thrust suddenly into light long afterwards, perhaps after the lapse of centuries: they have in the interval become strong and mature. In some ages this or that talent, this or that virtue seems to be entirely lacking, as it is in some men; but let us wait only for the grandchildren and grandchildren’s children, if we have time to wait,-they bring the interior of their grandfathers into the sun, that interior of which the grandfathers themselves were unconscious. The son, indeed, is often the betrayer of his father; the latter understands himself better since he has got his son. We have all hidden gardens and plantations in us; and by another simile, we are all growing volcanoes, which will have their hours of eruption:-how near or how distant this is, nobody of course knows, not even the good God. 10 A Species of Atavism.-I like best to think of the rare men of an age as suddenly emerging after-shoots of past cultures, and of their persistent strength : like the atavism of a people and its civilisation :-there is thus still something in them to think of! They now seem strange, rare, and extraordinary : and he who feels these forces in himself has to foster them in face of a different, opposing world; he has to defend them, honour them, and rear them to maturity: and he either becomes a great man thereby, or a deranged and eccentric person, if he does not altogether break down betimes. Formerly these rare qualities were usual, and were consequently regarded as common: they did not distinguish people. Perhaps they were demanded and presupposed; it was impossible to become great with them, for indeed there was also no danger of becoming insane andsolitary with them.- It is principally in the oldestablished families and castes of a people that such after-effects of old impulses present themselves, while there is no probability of such atavism where races, habits, and valuations change too rapidly. For the tempo of the evolutional forces in peoples implies just as much as in music; for our case an andante of evolution is absolutely necessary, as the tempo of a passionate and slow spirit:-and the spirit of conserving families is certainly of that sort. 11 Consciousness. - Consciousness is the last and latest development of the organic, and consequently also the most unfinished and least powerful of these developments.
Innumerable mistakes originate out of consciousness, which,” in spite of fate,” as Homer says, cause an animal or a man to break down earlier than might be necessary. If the conserving bond of the instincts were not very much more powerful, it would not generally serve as a regulator: by perverse judging and dreaming with open eyes, by superficiality and credulity, in short, just by consciousness, mankind would necessarily have broken down: or rather, without the former there would long ago have been nothing more of the latter! Before a function is fully formed and matured, it is a danger to the organism: all the better if it be then thoroughly tyrannised over! Consciousness is thus thoroughly tyrannised over and not least by the pride in it! It is thought that here is the quintessence of man ; that which is enduring, eternal, ultimate, and most original in him! Consciousness is regarded as a fixed, given magnitude! Its growth and intermittences are denied! It is accepted as the ” unity of the organism “ !-This ludicrous overvaluation and misconception of consciousness has as its result the great utility that a too rapid maturing of it has thereby been hindered. Because men believed that they already possessed consciousness, they gave themselves very little trouble to acquire it-and even now it is not otherwise! It is still an entirely new problem just dawning on the human eye, and hardly yet plainly recognisable : to embody knowledge in ourselves and make it instinctive,-a problem which is only seen by those who have grasped the fact that until now our errors alone have been embodied in us, and that all our consciousness is relative to errors ! 12 The Goal of Science.-What ? The ultimate goal of science is to create the most pleasure possible to man, and the least possible pain ? But what if pleasure and pain should be so closely connected that he who wants the greatest possible amount of the one must also have the greatest possible amount of the other,-that he who wants to experience the “ heavenly high jubilation,” * must also be ready to be “ sorrowful unto death”?* And it is so, perhaps! The Stoics at least believed it was so, and they were consistent when they wished to have the least possible pleasure, in order to have the least possible pain from life. (When one uses the expression: ” The virtuous man is the happiest,” it is as much the sign-board of the school for the masses, as a casuistic subtlety for the subtle.) At present also you have still the choice: either the least possible pain, in short painlessness-and after all, socialists and politicians of all parties could not honourably promise more to their people,-or the greatest possible amount of pain, as the price of the growth of a fullness of refined delights and enjoyments rarely tasted until now! If you decide for the former, if you therefore want to depress and minimise man’s capacity for pain, well, you must also depress and minimise his capacity for enjoyment. In fact, one can further the one as well as the other goal by science! Perhaps science is as yet best known by its capacity for depriving man of enjoyment, and making him colder, more statuesque, and more Stoical. But it might also turn out to be the great-pain-bringer !-And then, perhaps, its counteracting force would be discovered simultaneously, its immense capacity for making new sidereal worlds of enjoyment beam forth! 13 The Theory of the Sense of Power.-We exercise our power over others by doing them good or by doing them ill-that is all we care for! Doing ill to those on whom we have to make our power felt; for pain is a far more sensitive means for that purpose than pleasure:-pain always asks concerning the cause, while pleasure is inclined to keep within itself and not look backward. Doing good and being kind to those who are in any way already dependent on us (that is, who are accustomed to think of us as their raison d’etre); we want to increase their power, because we thus increase our own; or we want to show them the advantage there is in being in our power,-they thus become more contented with their position, and more hostile to the enemies of our power and readier to contend with them. If we make sacrifices in doing good or in doing ill, it does not alter the ultimate value of our actions; even if we stake our life in the cause, as martyrs for the sake of our church, it is a sacrifice to our longing for power, or for the purpose of conserving our sense of power. He who under these circumstances feels that he “ is in possession of truth,” how many possessions does he not let go, in order to preserve this feeling! What does he not throw overboard, in order to keep himself ” up,”-that is to say, above the others who lack the ” truth”! Certainly the condition we are in when we do ill is seldom so pleasant, so purely pleasant, as that in which we practise kindness,-it is an indication that we still lack power, or it betrays ill-humour at this defect in us ; it brings with it new dangers and uncertainties as to the power we already possess, and clouds our horizon by the prospect of revenge, scorn, punishment and failure. Perhaps only those most susceptible to the sense of power, and eager for it, will prefer to impress the seal of power on the resisting individual,-those to whom the sight of the already subjugated person as the object of benevolence is a burden and a tedium. It is a question how a person is accustomed to season his life; it is a matter of taste whether a person would rather have the slow or the sudden, the safe or the dangerous and daring increase of power,-he seeks this or that seasoning always according to his temperament. An easy booty is something contemptible to proud natures ; they have an agreeable sensation only at the sight of men of unbroken spirit who could be enemies to them, and similarly, also, at the sight of all not easily accessible possession; they are often hard toward the sufferer, for he is not worthy of their effort or their pride,-but they show themselves so much the more courteous towards their equals, with whom strife and struggle would in any case be full of honour, if at any time an occasion for it should present itself. It is under the agreeable feelings of this perspective that the members of the knightly caste have habituated themselves to exquisite courtesy toward one another.-Pity is the most pleasant feeling in those who have not much pride, and have no prospect of great conquests: the easy booty-and that is what every sufferer is-is for them an enchanting thing. Pity is said to be the virtue of the gay lady. 14 What is called Love.-The lust of property, and love: what different associations each of these ideas evoke!-and yet it might be the same impulse twice named: on the one occasion disparaged from the standpoint of those already possessing (in whom the impulse has attained something of repose,-who are now apprehensive for the safety of their ” possession”); on the other occasion viewed from the standpoint of the unsatisfied and thirsty, and therefore glorified as “ good.” Our love of our neighbour,-is it not a striving after new property ? And similarly our love of knowledge, of truth; and in general all the striving after novelties? We gradually become satiated with the old and securely possessed, and again stretch out our
hands; even the finest landscape in which we live for three months is no longer certain of our love, and any kind of more distant coast excites our covetousness: the possession for the most part becomes smaller through possessing. Our pleasure in ourselves seeks to maintain itself by always transforming something new into ourselves,-that is just possessing. To become satiated with a possession, that is to become satiated with ourselves. (One can also suffer from excess,-even the desire to cast away, to share out, may assume the honourable name of “ love.”) When we see anyone suffering, we willingly utilise the opportunity then afforded to take possession of him ; the beneficent and sympathetic man, for example, does this ; he also calls the desire for new possession awakened in him, by the name of ” love,” and has enjoyment in it, as in a new acquisition suggesting itself to him. The love of the sexes, however, betrays itself most plainly as the striving after possession: the lover wants the unconditioned, sole possession of the person longed for by him ; he wants just as absolute power over her soul as over her body; he wants to be loved solely, and to dwell and rule in the other soul as what is highest and most to be desired. When one considers that this means precisely to exclude all the world from a precious possession, a happiness, and an enjoyment; when one considers that the lover has in view the impoverishment and privation of all other rivals, and would like to become the dragon of his golden hoard, as the most inconsiderate and selfish of all ” conquerors ” and exploiters; when one considers finally that to the lover himself, the whole world besides appears indifferent, colourless, and worthless, and that he is ready to make every sacrifice, disturb every arrangement, and put every other interest behind his own,-one is verily surprised that this ferocious lust of property and injustice of sexual love should have been glorified and deified to such an extent at all times ; yea, that out of this love the conception of love as the antithesis of egoism should have been derived, when it is perhaps precisely the most unqualified expression of egoism. Here, evidently, the non-possessors and desirers have determined the usage of language,-there were, of course, always too many of them. Those who have been favoured with much possession and satiety, have, to be sure, dropped a word now and then about the ” raging demon,” as, for instance, the most lovable and most beloved of all the AtheniansSophocles; but Eros always laughed at such revilers, - they were always his greatest favourites.-There is, of course, here and there on this terrestrial sphere a kind of sequel to love, in which that envious longing of two persons for one another has yielded to a new desire and covetousness, to a common, higher thirst for a superior ideal standing above them : but who knows this love? Who has experienced it? Its right name is friendship. 15 Out of the Distance.-This mountain makes the whole district which it dominates charming in every way, and full of significance. After we have said this to ourselves for the hundredth time, we are so irrationally and so gratefully disposed towards it, as the giver of this charm, that we fancy it must itself be the most charming thing in the district - and so we climb it, and are undeceived. All of a sudden, both it and the landscape around us and under us, are as it were disenchanted ; we had forgotten that many a greatness, like many a goodness, wants only to be seen at a certain distance, and entirely from below, not from above,-it is thus only that it operates. Perhaps you know men in your neighbourhood who can only look at themselves from a certain distance to find themselves at all endurable, or attractive and enlivening; they are to be dissuaded from self-knowledge. 16 Across the Plank.-One must be able to dissimulate in intercourse with persons who are ashamed of their feelings ; they take a sudden aversion to anyone who surprises them in a state of tenderness, or of enthusiastic and high-running feeling, as if he had seen their secrets; If one wants to be kind to them in such moments one should make them laugh, or say some kind of cold, playful wickedness :-their feeling thereby congeals, and they are again self-possessed. But I give the moral before the story.-We were once on a time so near one another in the course of our lives, that nothing more seemed to hinder our friendship and fraternity, and there was merely a small plank between us. While you were just about to step on it, I asked you: ” Do you want to come across the plank to me ? ” But then you did not want to come any longer ; and when I again entreated, you were silent. Since then mountains and torrents, and whatever separates and alienates, have interposed between us, and even if we wanted to come to one another, we could no longer do so! When, however, you now remember that small plank, you have no longer words,-but merely sobs and amazement. 17 Motivation of Poverty.-We cannot, to be sure, by any artifice make a rich and richly-flowing virtue out of a poor one, but we can gracefully enough reinterpret its poverty into necessity, so that its aspect no longer gives pain to us, and we cease making reproachful faces at fate on account of it. It is thus that the wise gardener does who puts the tiny streamlet of his garden into the arms of a fountain-nymph, and thus motivates the poverty:- and who would not like him need the nymphs ! 18 Ancient Pride.-The ancient savour of nobility is lacking in us, because the ancient slave is lacking in our sentiment. A Greek of noble descent found such immense intermediate stages, and such a distance between his elevation and that ultimate baseness, that he could hardly even see the slave plainly: even Plato no longer saw him entirely. It is otherwise with us, accustomed as we are to the doctrine of the equality of men, although not to the equality itself. A being who has not the free disposal of himself and has not got leisure, -that is not regarded by us as anything contemptible ; there is perhaps too much of this kind of slavishness in each of us, in accordance with the conditions of our social order and activity, which are fundamentally different from those of the ancients.-The Greek philosopher went through life with the secret feeling that there were many more slaves than people supposed that is to say, that everyone was a slave who was not a philosopher. His pride was puffed up when he considered that even the mightiest of the earth were thus to be looked upon as slaves. This pride is also unfamiliar to us, and impossible; the word ” slave” has not its full force for us even as a metaphor. 19 Evil.-Test the life of the best and most productive men and nations, and ask yourselves whether a tree which is to grow proudly heavenward can dispense with bad weather and
tempests : whether disfavour and opposition from without, whether every kind of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, distrust, severity, greed, and violence do not belong to the favouring circumstances without which a great growth even in virtue is hardly possible ? The poison by which the weaker nature is destroyed is strengthening to the strong individual-and he does not call it poison. 20 Dignity of Folly.-Several millenniums further on in the path of the last century!-and in everything that man does the highest prudence will be exhibited: but just thereby prudence will have lost all its dignity. It will then, sure enough, be necessary to be prudent, but it will also be so usual and common, that a more fastidious taste will feel this necessity as vulgarity. And just as a tyranny of truth and science would be in a position to raise the value of falsehood, a tyranny of prudence could force into prominence a new species of nobleness. To be noble-that might then mean, perhaps, to be capable of follies. 21 To the Teachers of Unselfishness.-The virtues of a man are called good, not in respect to the results they have for himself, but in respect to the results which we expect from that for ourselves and for society:-we have all along had very little unselfishness, very little ” non-egoism ” in our praise of the virtues ! For otherwise it could not but have been seen that the virtues (such as diligence, obedience, chastity, piety, justice) are mostly injurious to their possessors, as impulses which rule in them too vehemently and ardently, and do not want to be kept in co-ordination with the other impulses by the reason. If you have a virtue, an actual, perfect virtue (and not merely a kind of impulse towards virtue!)-you are its victim ! But your neighbour praises your virtue precisely on that account! One praises the diligent man though he injures his sight, or the originality and freshness of his spirit, by his diligence; the youth is honoured and regretted who has “ worn himself out by work,” because one passes the judgment that ” for society as a whole the loss of the best individual is only a small sacrifice! A pity that this sacrifice should be necessary ! A much greater pity, it is true, if the individual should think differently, and regard his preservation and development as more important than his work in the service of society!” And so one regrets this youth, not on his own account, but because a devoted instrument, regardless of self-a so-called “ good man,” has been lost to society by his death. Perhaps one further considers the question, whether it would not have been more advantageous for the interests of society if he had laboured with less disregard of himself, and had preserved himself longer,-indeed, one readily admits an advantage from that, but one esteems the other advantage, namely, that a sacrifice has been made, and that the disposition of the sacrificial animal has once more been obviously endorsed-as higher and more enduring. It is accordingly, on the one part, the instrumental character in the virtues which is praised when the virtues are praised, and on the other part, the blind, ruling impulse in every virtue, which refuses to let itself be kept within bounds by the general advantage to the individual; in short, what is praised is the unreason in the virtues, in consequence of which the individual allows himself to be transformed into a function of the whole. The praise of the virtues is the praise of something which is privately injurious to the individual; it is praise of impulses which deprive man of his noblest self-love, and the power to take the best care of himself. To be sure, for the teaching and embodying of virtuous habits a series of effects of virtue are displayed, which make it appear that virtue and private advantage are closely related,-and there is in fact such a relationship! Blindly furious diligence, for example, the typical virtue of an instrument, is represented as the way to riches and honour, and as the most beneficial antidote to tedium and passion : but people are silent concerning its danger, its greatest dangerousness. Education proceeds in this manner throughout: it endeavours, by a series of enticements and advantages, to determine the individual to a certain mode of thinking and acting, which, when it has become habit, impulse and passion, rules in him and over him, in opposition to his ultimate advantage, but ” for the general good.” How often do I see that blindly furious diligence does indeed create riches and honours, but at the same time deprives the organs of the refinement by virtue of which alone an enjoyment of riches and honours is possible; so that really the main expedient for combating tedium and passion, simultaneously blunts the senses and makes the spirit refractory towards new stimuli! (The busiest of all ages- our age-does not know how to make anything out of its great diligence and wealth, except always more and more wealth, and more and more diligence; there is even more genius needed for laying out wealth than for acquiring it!-Well, we shall have our ” grandchildren ” !) If the education succeeds, every virtue of the individual is a public utility, and a private disadvantage in respect to the highest private end,-probably some psycho-aesthetic stunting, or even premature dissolution. One should consider successively from the same standpoint the virtues of obedience, chastity, piety, and justice. The praise of the unselfish, self-sacrificing, virtuous person-he, consequently, who does not expend his whole energy and reason for his own conservation, development, elevation, furtherance and augmentation of power, but lives as regards himself unassumingly and thoughtlessly, perhaps even indifferently or ironically,-this praise has in any case not originated out of the spirit of unselfishness ! The ” neighbour ” praises unselfishness because he profits by it! If the neighbour were ” unselfishly” disposed himself, he would reject that destruction of power, that injury for his advantage, he would thwart such inclinations in their origin, and above all he would manifest his unselfishness just by not giving it a good name! The fundamental contradiction in that morality which at present stands in high honour is here indicated: the motives to such a morality are in antithesis to its principle ! That with which this morality wishes to prove itself, refutes it out of its criterion of what is moral! The maxim, ” You shall renounce yourself and offer yourself as a sacrifice,” in order not to be inconsistent with its own morality, could only be decreed by a being who himself renounced his own advantage thereby, and who perhaps in the required self-sacrifice of individuals brought about his own dissolution. As soon, however, as the neighbour (or society) recommended altruism on account of its utility, the precisely antithetical proposition, ” You shall seek your advantage even at the expense of everybody else,” was brought into use: accordingly, ” you shall,” and ” you shall not,” are preached in one breath! 22 L’Ordre du Jour pour le Roi.-The day commences : let us begin to arrange for this day the business and fetes of our most gracious lord, who at present is still pleased to repose.
His Majesty has bad weather to-day: we shall be careful not to call it bad; we shall not speak of the weather,- but we shall go through to-day’s business somewhat more ceremoniously and make the fetes somewhat more festive than would otherwise be necessary. His Majesty may perhaps even be sick: we shall give the last good news of the evening at breakfast, the arrival of M. Montaigne, who knows how to joke so pleasantly about his sickness,-he suffers from stone. We shall receive several persons (persons!- what would that old inflated frog, who will be among them, say, if he heard this word! ” I am no person,” he would say, ” but always the thing itself”)-and the reception will last longer than is pleasant to anybody; a sufficient reason for telling about the poet who wrote over his door, ” He who enters here will do me an honour; he who does not-a favour.”-That is, indeed, saying a discourteous thing in a courteous manner! And perhaps this poet is quite justified on his part in being discourteous ; they say that his rhymes are better than the rhymester. Well, let him still make many of them, and withdraw himself as much as possible from the world: and that is doubtless the significance of his well-bred rudeness! A prince, on the other hand, is always of more value than his ” verse,” even when-but what are we about ? We gossip, and the whole court believes that we have already been at work and racked our brains : there is no light to be seen earlier than that which burns in our window.-Hark ! Was that not the bell ? The devil! The day and the dance commence, and we do not know our rounds! We must then improvise,-all the world improvises its day. Today, let us for once do like all the world!-And therewith vanished my wonderful morning dream, probably owing to the violent strokes of the tower-clock, which just then announced the fifth hour with all the importance which is peculiar to it. It seems to me that on this occasion the God of dreams wanted to make merry over my habits,- it is my habit to commence the day by arranging it properly, to make it endurable for myself, and it is possible that I may often have done this too formally, and too much like a prince. 23The Characteristics of Corruption.-Let us observe the following characteristics in that condition of society from time to time necessary, which is designated by the word ” corruption.” Immediately upon the appearance of corruption anywhere, a motley superstition gets the upper hand, and the until now universal belief of a people becomes colourless and impotent in comparison with it; for superstition is freethinking of the second rank,-he who gives himself over to it selects certain forms and formulae which appeal to him, and permits himself a right of choice. The superstitious man is always much more of a ” person,” in comparison with the religious man, and a superstitious society will be one in which there are many individuals, and a delight in individuality. Seen from this standpoint superstition always appears as a progress in comparison with belief, and as a sign that the intellect becomes more independent and claims to have its rights. Those who reverence the old religion and the religious disposition then complain of corruption,- they have until now also determined the usage of language, and have given a bad repute to superstition, even among the freest spirits. Let us learn that it is a symptom of enlightenment.-Secondly, a society in which corruption takes a hold is blamed for effeminacy: for the appreciation of war, and the delight in war, perceptibly diminish in such a society, and the conveniences of life are now just as eagerly sought after as were military and gymnastic honours formerly. But one is accustomed to overlook the fact that the old national energy and national passion, which acquired a magnificent splendour in war and in the tourney, has now transferred itself into innumerable private passions, and has merely become less visible; indeed in periods of ” corruption ” the quantity and quality of the expended energy of a people is probably greater than ever, and the individual spends it lavishly, to such an extent as could not be done formerly-he was not then rich enough to do so! And thus it is precisely in times of ” effeminacy” that tragedy runs at large in and out of doors, it is then that ardent love and ardent hatred are born, and the flame of knowledge flashes heavenward in full blaze.-Thirdly, as if in amends for the reproach of superstition and effeminacy, it is customary to say of such periods of corruption that they are milder, and that cruelty has then greatly diminished in comparison with the older, more credulous, and stronger period. But to this praise I am just as little able to assent as to that reproach: I only grant so much-namely, that cruelty now becomes more refined, and its older forms are henceforth counter to the taste ; but the wounding and torturing by word and look reaches its highest development in times of corruption,-it is now only that wickedness is created, and the delight in wickedness. The men of the period of corruption are witty and calumnious; they know that there are yet other ways of murdering than by the dagger and the ambush-they know also that all that is well said is believed in.-Fourthly, it is when ” morals decay ” that those beings who one calls tyrants first make their appearance; they are the forerunners of the individual, and as it were early matured firstlings. Yet a little while, and this fruit of fruits hangs ripe and yellow on the tree of a people,-and only for the sake of such fruit did this tree exist! When the decay has reached’ its worst, and likewise the conflict of all sorts of tyrants, there always arises the Caesar, the final tyrant, who puts an end to the exhausted struggle for sovereignty, by making the exhaustedness work for him. In his time the individual is usually most mature, and consequently the “ culture” is highest and most fruitful, but not on his account nor through him : although the men of highest culture love to flatter their Caesar by pretending that they are his creation. The truth, however, is that they need quietness externally, because they have disquietude and labour internally. In these times bribery and treason are at their height: for the love of the ego, then first discovered, is much more powerful than the love of the old, used-up, hackneyed “ fatherland”; and the need to be secure in one way or other against the frightful fluctuations of fortune, opens even the nobler hands, as soon as a richer and more powerful person shows himself ready to put gold into them. There is then, so little certainty with regard to the future; people live only for the day : a psychical condition which enables every deceiver to play an easy game,-people of course only let themselves be misled and bribed ” for the present,” and reserve for themselves futurity and virtue. The individuals, as is well known, the men who only live for themselves, provide for the moment more than do their opposites, the gregarious men, because they consider themselves just as incalculable as the future; and similarly they attach themselves willingly to despots, because they believe themselves capable of activities and expedients, which can neither reckon on being understood by the multitude, nor on rending favour with them,- but the tyrant or the Caesar understands the rights of the individual even in his excesses, and has an interest in speaking on behalf of a bolder private morality, and even in giving his hand to it. For he thinks of himself, and wishes people to think of him what Napoleon once uttered in his classical style-” I have the right to answer by an eternal ‘ thus I am’ to everything about which complaint is brought against me. I am apart from all the world, I accept conditions from nobody. I wish people also to submit to my fancies, and to take it quite as a simple matter, if I should indulge in this or that diversion.” Thus spoke Napoleon once to his wife,
when she had reasons for calling in question the fidelity of her husband.-The times of corruption are the seasons when the apples fall from the tree: I mean the individuals, the seedbearers of the future, the pioneers of spiritual colonisation, and of a new construction of national and social unions. Corruption is only an abusive term for the harvest time of a people. 24 Different Dissatisfactions.-The feeble and as it were feminine dissatisfied people, have ingenuity for beautifying and deepening life; the strong dissatisfied people-the masculine persons among them, to continue the metaphor-have ingenuity for improving and safeguarding life. The former show their weakness and feminine character by willingly letting themselves be temporarily deceived, and perhaps even by putting up with a little ecstasy and enthusiasm on a time, but on the whole they are never to be satisfied, and suffer from the incurability of their dissatisfaction ; moreover they are the patrons of all those who manage to concoct opiate and narcotic comforts, and on that account are averse to those who value the physician higher than the priest,-they thereby encourage the continuance of actual distress! If there had not been a surplus of dissatisfied persons of this kind in Europe since the time of the Middle Ages, the remarkable capacity of Europeans for constant transformation would perhaps not have originated at all; for the claims of the strong dissatisfied persons are too gross, and really too modest to resist being finally quieted down. China is an instance of a country in which dissatisfaction on a grand scale and the capacity for transformation have died out for many centuries ; and the Socialists and state-idolaters of Europe could easily bring things to Chinese conditions and to a Chinese “ happiness,” with their measures for the amelioration and security of life, provided that they could first of all root out the sicklier, tenderer, more feminine dissatisfaction and Romanticism which are still very abundant among us. Europe is an invalid who owes her best thanks to her incurability and the eternal transformations of her sufferings ; these constant new situations, these equally constant new dangers, pains, and make-shifts, have at last generated an intellectual sensitiveness which is almost equal to genius, and is in any case the mother of all genius. 25 Not Pre-ordained to Knowledge.-There is a blind humility not at all rare, and when a person is afflicted with it, he is once for all disqualified for being a disciple of knowledge. It is this in fact: the moment a man of this kind perceives anything striking, he turns as it were on his heel, and says to himself: “ You have deceived yourself! Where have your wits been! This cannot be the truth!”-and then, instead of looking at it and listening to it with more attention, he runs out of the way of the striking object as if intimidated, and seeks to get it out of his head as quickly as possible. For his fundamental rule runs thus : ” I want to see nothing that contradicts the usual opinion concerning things ! Am / created for the purpose of discovering new truths ? There are already too many of the old ones.” 26 What is Living!-Living-that is to continually eliminate from ourselves what is about to die; Living-that is to be cruel and inexorable towards all that becomes weak and old in ourselves, and not only in ourselves. Living-that means, therefore, to be without piety toward the dying, the wretched and the old ? To be continually a murderer ?-And yet old Moses said : ” You shall not kill!” 27 The Self-Renouncer. - What does the self-renouncer do? He strives after a higher world, he wants to fly longer and further and higher than all men of affirmation-he throws away many things that would impede his flight, and several things among them that are not valueless, that are not unpleasant to him : he sacrifices them to his desire for elevation. Now this sacrificing, this casting away, is the very thing which becomes visible in him: on that account one calls him a self-renouncer, and as such he stands before us, enveloped in his cowl, and as the soul of a hair-shirt. With this effect, however, which he makes upon us he is well content: he wants to keep concealed from us his desire, his pride, his intention of flying above us.-Yes! He is wiser than we thought, and so courteous towards us- this affirmer! For that is what he is, like us, even in his self-renunciation. 28 Injuring with one’s best Qualities.-Our strong points sometimes drive us so far forward that we cannot any longer endure our weaknesses, and we perish by them: we also perhaps see this result beforehand, but nevertheless do not want it to be otherwise. We then become hard towards that which would gladly be spared in us, and our pitiless-ness is also our greatness. Such an experience, which must in the end cost us our life, is a symbol of the collective effect of great men upon others and upon their epoch:-it is just with their best abilities, with that which only they can do, that they destroy much that is weak, uncertain, evolving, and willing, and are thereby injurious. Indeed, the case may happen in which, taken on the whole, they only do injury, because their best is accepted and drunk up as it were solely by those who lose their understanding and their egoism by it, as by too strong a beverage; they become so intoxicated that they go breaking their limbs on all the wrong roads where their drunkenness drives them. 29 Adventitious Liars. - When people began to combat the unity of Aristotle in France, and consequently also to defend it, there was once more to be seen that which has been seen so often, but seen so unwillingly:-people imposed false reasons on themselves on account of which those laws ought to exist, merely for the sake of not acknowledging to themselves that they had accustomed themselves to the authority of those laws, and did not want any longer to have things otherwise. And people do so in every prevailing morality and religion, and have always done so: the reasons and intentions behind the habit, are only added surreptitiously when people begin to combat the habit, and ask for reasons and intentions. It is here that the great dishonesty of the conservatives of all times hides : -they are adventitious liars. 30 The Comedy of Celebrated Men.-Celebrated men who need their fame, as, for instance, all politicians, no longer select their associates and friends without fore-thought: from the
one they want a portion of the splendour and reflection of his virtues; from the other they want the fear-inspiring power of certain dubious qualities in him, of which everybody is aware; from another they steal his reputation for idleness and basking in the sun, because it is advantageous for their own ends to be regarded temporarily as heedless and lazy:-it conceals the fact that they lie in ambush; they now use the visionaries, now the experts, now the brooders, now the pedants in their neighbourhood, as their actual selves for the time; but very soon they do not need them any longer! And thus while their environment and outside die off continually, everything seems to crowd into this environment, and wants to become a ” character” of it; they are like great cities in this respect. Their repute is continually in process of mutation, like their character, for their changing methods require this change, and they show and exhibit sometimes this and sometimes that actual or fictitious quality on the stage; their friends and associates, as we have said, belong to these stage properties. On the other hand, that which they aim at must remain so much the more steadfast, and burnished and resplendent in the distance,-and this also sometimes needs its comedy and its stage-play. 31 Commerce and Nobility. - Buying and selling is now regarded as something ordinary, like the art of reading and writing; everyone is now trained to it even when he is not a tradesman exercising himself daily in the art; precisely as formerly in the period of uncivilised humanity, everyone was a hunter and exercised himself day by day in the art of hunting. Hunting was then something common : but just as this finally became a privilege of the powerful and noble, and thereby lost the character of the commonplace and the ordinary- by ceasing to be necessary and by becoming an affair of fancy and luxury,-so it might become the same someday with buying and selling. Conditions of society are imaginable in which there will be no selling and buying, and in which the necessity for this art will become quite lost; perhaps it may then happen that individuals who are less subjected to the law of the prevailing condition of things will indulge in buying and selling as a luxury of sentiment. ‘ It is then only that commerce would acquire nobility, and the noble would then perhaps occupy themselves just as readily with commerce as they have done until now with war and politics: while on the other hand the valuation of politics might then have entirely altered. Already even politics ceases to be the business of a gentleman ; and it is possible that one day it may be found to be so vulgar as to be brought, like all party literature and daily literature, under the rubric : ” Prostitution of the intellect.” 32 Undesirable Disciples.-What shall I do with these two youths! called out a philosopher dejectedly, who ” corrupted ” youths, as Socrates had once corrupted them,-they are unwelcome disciples to me. One of them cannot say ” Nay,” and the other says ” Half and half” to everything. Provided they grasped my doctrine, the former would suffer too much, for my mode of thinking requires a martial soul, willingness to cause pain, delight in denying, and a hard skin,-he would succumb by open wounds and internal injuries. And the other will choose the mediocre in everything he represents, and thus make a mediocrity of the whole,-I should like my enemy to have such a disciple. 33 Outside the Lecture-room.-” In order to prove that man after all belongs to the good-natured animals, I would remind you how credulous he has been for so long a time. It is now only, quite late, and after an immense self-conquest, that he has become a distrustful animal,-yes! man is now more wicked than ever.”-I do not understand this ; why should man now be more distrustful and more wicked ?-” Because now he has science,- because he needs to have it!”34 Historia abscondita.-Every great man has a power which operates backward; all history is again placed on the scales on his account, and a thousand secrets of the past crawl out of their lurking-places-into his sunlight. There is absolutely no knowing what history may be some day. The past is still perhaps undiscovered in its essence! There is yet so much reinterpreting ability needed! 35 Heresy and Witchcraft.-To think otherwise than is customary-that is by no means so much the activity of a better intellect, as the activity of strong, wicked inclinations,-severing, isolating, refractory, mischief-loving, malicious inclinations. Heresy is the counterpart of witchcraft, and is certainly just as little a merely harmless affair, or a thing worthy of honour in itself. Heretics and sorcerers are two kinds of bad men; they have it in common that they also feel themselves wicked; their unconquerable delight is to attack and injure whatever rules,-whether it be men or opinions. The Reformation, a kind of duplication of the spirit of the Middle Ages at a time when it had no longer a good conscience, produced both of these kinds of people in the greatest profusion. 36 Last Words.-It will be recollected that the Emperor Augustus, that terrible man, who had himself as much in his own power and could be silent as well as any wise Socrates, became indiscreet about himself in his last words; for the first time he let his mask fall, when he gave to understand that he had carried a mask and played a comedy,-he had played the father of his country and wisdom on the throne well, even to the point of illusion ! Plaudite amici, comoedia finita est!- The thought of the dying Nero: qualis artifexpereo ! was also the thought of the dying Augustus: histrionic conceit! histrionic loquacity ! And the very counterpart to the dying Socrates!-But Tiberius died silently,! that most tortured of all selftorturers,-he was genuine and not a stage-player! What may have passed through his head in the end ! Perhaps this : ” Life - that is a long death. I am a fool, who shortened the lives of so many! Was / created for the purpose of being a benefactor ? I should have given them eternal life: and then I could have seen them dying eternally. I had such good eyes for that: qualis spectator pereo!” When he seemed once more to regain his powers after a long death-struggle, it was considered advisable to smother him with pillows,-he died a double death.
37 Owing to three Errors.-Science has been furthered during recent centuries, partly because it was hoped that God’s goodness and wisdom would be best understood therewith and thereby-the principal motive in the soul of great Englishmen (like Newton); partly because the absolute utility of knowledge was believed in, and especially the most intimate connection of morality, knowledge, and happiness-the principal motive in the soul of great Frenchmen (like Voltaire); and partly because it was thought that in science there was something unselfish, harmless, self-sufficing, lovable, and truly innocent to be had, in which the evil human impulses did not at all participate-the principal motive in the soul of Spinoza, who felt himself divine, as a knowing being:-it is consequently owing to three errors that science has been furthered. 38 Explosive People.-When one considers how ready are the forces of young men for discharge, one does not wonder at seeing them decide so uncritically and with so little selection for this or that cause: that which attracts them is the sight of eagerness for a cause, as it were the sight of the burning match-not the cause itself. The more ingenious seducers on that account operate by holding out the prospect of an explosion to such persons, and do not urge their cause by means of reasons; these powder-barrels are not won over by means of reasons! 39 Altered Taste.-The alteration of the general taste is more important than the alteration of opinions ; opinions, with all their proving, refuting, and intellectual masquerade, are merely symptoms of altered taste, and are certainly not what they are still so often claimed to be, the causes of the altered taste. How does the general taste alter? By the fact of individuals, the powerful and influential persons, expressing and tyrannically enforcing without any feeling of shame, their hoc est ridiculum, hoc est absurdum; the decisions, therefore, of their taste and their disrelish :-they thereby lay a constraint upon many people, out of which there gradually grows a habituation for still more, and finally a necessity for all. The fact, however, that these individuals feel and ” taste” differently, has usually its origin in a peculiarity of their mode of life, nourishment, or digestion, perhaps in a surplus or deficiency of the inorganic salts in their blood and brain, in short in their physis; they have, however, the courage to avow their physical constitution, and to lend an ear even to the most delicate tones of its requirements : their aesthetic and moral judgments are those ” most delicate tones ” of their physis. 40 The Lack of a noble Presence.-Soldiers and their leaders have always a much higher mode of comportment toward one another than workmen and their employers. At present at least, all militarily established civilisation still stands high above all so-called industrial civilisation; the latter, in its present form, is in general the meanest mode of existence that has ever been. It is simply the law of necessity that operates here: people want to live, and have to sell themselves; but they despise him who exploits their necessity and purchases the workman. It is curious that the subjection to powerful, fear-inspiring, and even dreadful individuals, to tyrants and leaders ofarmies, is not at all felt so painfully as the subjection to such undistinguished and uninteresting persons as the captains of industry; in the employer the workman usually sees merely a crafty, blood-sucking dog of a man, speculating on every necessity, whose name, form, character, and reputation are altogether indifferent to him. It is probable that the manufacturers and great magnates of commerce have until now lacked too much all those forms and attributes of a superior race, which alone make persons interesting; if they had had the nobility of the nobly-born in their looks and bearing, there would perhaps have been no socialism in the masses of the people. For these are really ready for slavery of every kind, provided that the superior class above them constantly shows itself legitimately superior, and born to command-by its noble presence! The commonest man feels that nobility is not to be improvised, and that it is his part to honour it as the fruit of protracted race-culture,-but the absence of superior presence, and the notorious vulgarity of manufacturers with red, fat hands, brings up the thought to him that it is only chance and fortune that has here elevated the one above the other; well then - so he reasons with himself-let us in our turn tempt chance and fortune! Let us in our turn throw the dice !-and socialism commences. 41 Against Remorse. - The thinker sees in his own actions attempts and questionings to obtain information about something or other; success and failure are answers to him first and foremost. To vex himself, however, because something does not succeed, or to feel remorse at all-he leaves that to those who act because they are commanded to do so, and expect to get a beating when their gracious master is not satisfied with the result. 42 Work and Ennui.-In respect to seeking work for the sake of the pay, almost all men are alike at present in civilised countries; to all of them work is a means, and not itself the end ; on which account they are not very select in the choice of the work, provided it yields an abundant profit. But still there are rarer men who would rather perish than work without delight in their labour: the fastidious people, difficult to satisfy, whose object is not served by an abundant profit, unless the work itself be the reward of all rewards. Artists and contemplative men of all kinds belong to this rare species of human beings; and also the idlers who spend their life in hunting and travelling, or in love-affairs and adventures. They all seek toil and trouble in so far as these are associated with pleasure, and they want the severest and hardest labour, if it be necessary. In other respects, however, they have a resolute indolence, even should impoverishment, dishonour, and danger to health and life be associated therewith. They are not so much afraid of ennui as of labour without pleasure; indeed they require much ennui, if their work is to succeed with them. For the thinker and for all inventive spirits ennui is the unpleasant ” calm” of the soul which precedes the happy voyage and the dancing breezes; he must endure it, he must await the effect it has on him :-it is precisely this which lesser natures cannot at all experience! It is common to scare away
ennui in every way, just as it is common to labour without pleasure. It perhaps distinguishes the Asians above the Europeans, that they are capable of a longer and pro-founder repose ; even their narcotics operate slowly and require patience, in contrast to the obnoxious suddenness of the European poison, alcohol. 43 What the Laws Betray.-One makes a great mistake when one studies the penal laws of a people, as if they were an expression of its character ; the laws do not betray what a people is, but what appears to them foreign, strange, monstrous, and outlandish. The laws concern themselves with the exceptions to the morality of custom; and the severest punishments fall on acts which conform to the customs of the neighbouring peoples. Thus among the Wahabites, there are only two mortal sins: having another God than the Wahabite God, andsmoking (it is designated by them as “ the disgraceful kind of drinking”). ” And how is it with regard to murder and adultery ? “ -asked the Englishman with astonishment on learning these things. ” Well,, God is gracious and pitiful!” answered the old chief.-Thus among the ancient Romans there was the idea that a woman could only sin mortally in two ways : by adultery on the one hand, and-by wine-drinking on the other. Old Cato pretended that kissing among relatives had only been made a custom in order to keep women in control on this point; a kiss meant: did her breath smell of wine ? Wives had actually been punished by death who were surprised taking wine: and certainly not merely because women under the influence of wine sometimes unlearn altogether the art of saying No; the Romans were afraid above all things of the orgiastic and Dionysian spirit with which the women of Southern Europe at that time (when wine was still new in Europe) were sometimes visited, as by a monstrous foreignness which subverted the basis of Roman sentiments; it seemed to them treason against Rome, as the embodiment of foreignness. 44 The Believed Motive.-However important it may be to know the motives according to which mankind has really acted until now, perhaps the belief in this or that motive, and therefore that which mankind has assumed and imagined to be the actual mainspring of its activity until now, is something still more essential for the thinker to know. For the internal happiness and misery of men have always come to them through their belief in this or that motive,-not however, through that which was actually the motive! All about the latter has an interest of secondary rank. 45 Epicurus.-Yes, I am proud of perceiving the character of Epicurus differently from anyone else perhaps, and of enjoying the happiness of the afternoon of antiquity in all that I hear and read of him:-I see his eye gazing out on a broad whitish sea, over the shore-rocks on which the sunshine rests, while great and small creatures play in its light, secure and calm like this light and that eye itself. Such happiness could only have been devised by a chronic sufferer, the happiness of an eye before which the sea of existence has become calm, and which can no longer tire of gazing at the surface and at the variegated, tender, tremulous skin of this sea. Never previously was there such a moderation of voluptuousness. 46 Our Astonishment.-There is a profound and fundamental satisfaction in the fact that science ascertains things that hold their ground, and again furnish the basis for new researches:it could certainly be otherwise. Indeed, we are so much convinced of all the uncertainty and caprice of our judgments, and of the everlasting change of all human laws and conceptions, that we are really astonished how persistently the results of science hold their ground ! In earlier times people knew nothing of this changeability of all human things ; the custom of morality maintained the belief that the whole inner life of man was bound to iron necessity by eternal fetters:-perhaps people then felt a similar voluptuousness of astonishment when they listened to tales and fairy stories. The wonderful did so much good to those men, who might well get tired sometimes of the regular and the eternal. To leave the ground for once! To soar! To stray ! To be mad !:-that belonged to the paradise and the revelry of earlier times; while our felicity is like that of the shipwrecked man who has gone ashore, and places himself with both feet on the old, firm ground-in astonishment that it does not rock. 47 The Suppression of the Passions.-When one continually prohibits the expression of the passions as something to be left to the ” vulgar,” to coarser, bourgeois, and peasant natures-that is, when one does not want to suppress the passions themselves, but only their language and demeanour, one nevertheless realises therewith just what one does not want: the suppression of the passions themselves, or at least their weakening and alteration,-as the court of Louis XIV. (to cite the most instructive instance), and all that was dependent on it, experienced. The generation that followed, trained in suppressing their expression, no longer possessed the passions themselves, but had a pleasant, superficial, playful disposition in their place,- a generation which was so permeated with the incapacity to be ill-mannered, that even an injury was not taken and retaliated, except with courteous words. Perhaps our own time furnishes the most remarkable counterpart to this period: I see everywhere (in life, in the theatre, and not least in all that is written) satisfaction at all the coarser outbursts and gestures of passion ; a certain convention of passionateness is now desired,- only not the passion itself! Nevertheless it will thereby be at last reached, and our posterity will have a genuine savagery, and not merely a formal savagery and unmannerliness. 48 Knowledge of Distress.-Perhaps there is nothing by which men and periods are so much separated from one another, as by the different degrees of knowledge of distress which they possess ; distress of the soul as well as of the body. With respect to the latter, owing to lack of sufficient self-experience, we men of the present day (in spite of our deficiencies and infirmities), are perhaps all of us blunderers and visionaries in comparison with the men of the age of fear - the longest of all ages,-when the individual had to protect himself against violence, and for that purpose had to be a man of violence himself. At that time a man went through a long schooling of corporeal tortures and privations, and found even in a certain
kind of cruelty toward himself, in a voluntary use of pain, a necessary means for his preservation ; at that time a person trained his environment to the endurance of pain; at that time a person willingly inflicted pain, and saw the most frightful things of this kind happen to others, without having any other feeling than for his own security. As regards the distress of the soul, however, I now look at every man with respect to whether he knows it by experience or by description ; whether he still regards it as necessary to simulate this knowledge, perhaps as an indication of more refined culture; or whether, at the bottom of his heart, he does not at all believe in great sorrows of soul, and at the naming of them calls to mind a similar experience as at the naming of great corporeal sufferings, such as toothaches, and stomach-aches. It is thus, however, that it seems to be with most people at present. Owing to the universal inexperience of both kinds of pain, and the comparative rarity of the spectacle of a sufferer, an important consequence results: people now hate pain far more than earlier man did, and calumniate it worse than ever; indeed people nowadays can hardly endure the thought of pain, and make out of it an affair of conscience and a reproach to collective existence. The appearance of pessimistic philosophies is not at all the sign of great and dreadful miseries; for these interrogative marks regarding the worth of life appear in periods when the refinement and alleviation of existence already deem the unavoidable gnat-stings of the soul and body as altogether too bloody and wicked; and in the poverty of actual experiences of pain, would now like to make painful general ideas appear as suffering of the worst kind.-There might indeed be a remedy for pessimistic philosophies and the excessive sensibility which seems to me the real ” distress of the present”:-but perhaps this remedy already sounds too cruel, and would itself be reckoned among the symptoms owing to which people at present conclude that” existence is something evil.” Well! the remedy for “ the distress” is distress. 49 Magnanimity and allied Qualities.-These paradoxical phenomena, such as the sudden coldness in the demeanour of good-natured men, the humour of the melancholy, and above all magnanimity, as a sudden renunciation of revenge or of the gratification of envy-appear in men in whom there is a powerful inner impulsiveness, in men of sudden satiety and sudden disgust. Their satisfactions are so rapid and violent that satiety, aversion, and flight into the antithetical taste, immediately follow upon them: in this contrast the convulsion of feeling liberates itself, in one person by sudden coldness, in another by laughter, and in a third by tears and self-sacrifice. The magnanimous person appears to me-at least that kind of magnanimous person who has always made most impression-as a man with the strongest thirst for vengeance, to whom a gratification presents itself close at hand, and who already drinks it off in imagination so copiously, thoroughly, and to the last drop, that an excessive, rapid disgust follows this rapid licentiousness ;-he now elevates himself “ above himself,” as one says, and forgives his enemy, yea, blesses and honours him. With this violence done to himself, however, with this mockery of his impulse to revenge, even still so powerful, he merely yields to the new impulse, the disgust which has become powerful, and does this just as impatiently and licentiously, as a short time previously he forestalled, and as it were exhausted, the joy of revenge with his fantasy. In magnanimity there is the same amount of egoism as in revenge, but a different quality of egoism. 50 The Argument of Isolation.-The reproach of conscience, even in the most conscientious, is weak against the feeling: ” This and that are contrary to the good morals of your society.” A cold glance or a wry mouth on the part of those among whom and for whom one has been educated, is still feared even by the strongest. What is really feared there ? Isolation! as the argument which demolishes even the best arguments for a person or cause!-It is thus that the gregarious instinct speaks in us. 51 Sense for Truth.-Commend me to all scepticism where I am permitted to answer: ” Let us put it to the test!” But I don’t wish to hear anything more of things and questions which do not admit of being tested. That is the limit of my ” sense for truth ” : for bravery has there lost its right. 52 What others Know of us.-That which we know of ourselves and have in our memory is not so decisive for the happiness of our life as is generally believed. One day it flashes upon our mind what others know of us (or think they know)-^-and then we acknowledge that it is the more powerful. We get on with our bad conscience more easily than with our bad reputation. 53 Where Goodness Begins.-Where bad eyesight can no longer see the evil impulse as such, on account of its refinement,-there man sets up the kingdom of goodness ; and the feeling of having now gone over into the kingdom of goodness brings all those impulses (such as the feelings of security, of comfortableness, of benevolence) into simultaneous activity, which were threatened and confined by the evil impulses. Consequently, the duller the eye so much the further does goodness extend ! Hence the eternal cheerfulness of the populace and of children ! Hence the gloominess and grief (allied to the bad conscience) of great thinkers. 54 The Consciousness of Appearance.-How wonderfully and newly, and at the same time how awfully and ironically, do I feel myself situated with respect to collective existence, with my knowledge ! I have discovered for myself that the old humanity and animality, yea, the collective primeval age, and the past of all sentient being, continues to meditate, love, hate, and reason in me,-I have suddenly awoke in the midst of this dream, but merely to the consciousness that I just dream, and that I must dream on in order not to perish; just as the sleep-walker must dream on in order not to tumble down. What is it that is now ” appearance ” to me! Verily, not the antithesis of any kind of essence,-what knowledge can I assert of any kind of essence whatsoever, except merely the predicates of its appearance! Verily not a dead mask which one could put upon an unknown X, and which to be sure one could also remove! Appearance is for me the operating and living thing itself; which goes so far in its self-mockery as to make me feel that here there is appearance, and Will o’
the Wisp, and spirit-dance, and nothing more,-that among all these dreamers, I also, the “ thinker,” dance my dance, that the thinker is a means of prolonging further the terrestrial dance, and in so far is one of the masters of ceremony of existence, and that the sublime consistency and connectedness of all branches of knowledge is perhaps, and will perhaps, be the best means for maintaining the universality of the dreaming, the complete, mutual understandability of all those dreamers, and thereby the duration of the dream. 55 The Ultimate Nobility of Character.-What then makes a person ” noble ” ? Certainly not that he makes sacrifices ; even the frantic libertine makes sacrifices. Certainly not that he generally follows his passions; there are contemptible passions. Certainly not that he does something for others, and without selfishness; perhaps the effect of selfishness is precisely at its greatest in the noblest persons.-But that the passion which seizes the noble man is a peculiarity, without his knowing that it is so: the use of a rare and singular measuring-rod, almost a frenzy: the feeling of heat in things which feel cold to all other persons : a divining of values for which scales have not yet been invented : a sacrificing on altars which are consecrated to an unknown God: a bravery without the desire for honour: a self-sufficiency which has superabundance, and imparts to men and things. Until now, therefore, it has been the rare in man, and the unconsciousness of this rareness, that has made men noble. Here, however, let us consider that everything ordinary, immediate, and indispensable, in short, what has been most preservative of the species, and generally the rule in mankind until now, has been judged unreasonable and calumniated in its entirety by this standard, in favour of the exceptions. To become the advocate of the rule-that may perhaps be the ultimate form and refinement in which nobility of character will reveal itself on earth. 56 The Desire for Suffering.-When I think of the desire to do something, how it continually tickles and stimulates millions of young Europeans, who cannot endure themselves and all their ennui,- I conceive that there must be a desire in them to suffer something, in order to derive from their suffering a worthy motive for acting, for doing something. Distress is necessary! Hence the cry of the politicians, hence the many false, trumped-up, exaggerated ” states of distress ” of all possible kinds, and the blind readiness to believe in them This young world desires that there should arrive or appear from the outside-not happiness-but misfortune; and their imagination is already busy beforehand to form a monster out of it, so that they may afterwards be able to fight with a monster. If these distress-seekers felt the power to benefit themselves, to do something for themselves from internal sources, they would also understand how to create a distress of their own, specially their own, from internal sources. Their inventions might then be more refined, and their gratifications might sound like good music: while at present they fill the world with their cries of distress, and consequently too often with the feeling of distress in the first place! They do not know what to make of themselves-and so they paint the misfortune of others on the wall; they always need others! And always again other others!-Pardon me, my friends, I have ventured to paint my happiness on the wall. BOOK TWO 57 To the Realists.-Ye sober beings, who feel yourselves armed against passion and fantasy, and would gladly make a pride and an ornament out of your emptiness, you call yourselves realists, and give to understand that the world is actually constituted as it appears to you ; before you alone reality stands unveiled, and you yourselves would perhaps be the best part of it,-oh, you dear images of Sais! But are not you also in your unveiled condition still extremely passionate and dusky beings compared with the fish, and still all too like an enamoured artist ? *-and what is ” reality ” to an enamoured artist! You still carry about with you the valuations of things which had their origin in the passions and infatuations of earlier centuries! There is still a secret and ineffaceable drunkenness embodied in your sobriety! Your love of ” reality,” for example-oh, that is an old, primitive ” love “ ! In every feeling, in every sense-impression, there is a portion of this old love: and similarly also some kind of fantasy, prejudice, irrationality, ignorance, fear, and whatever else has become mingled and woven into it. There is that mountain! There is that cloud ! What is ” real” in them ? Remove the phantasm and the whole human element from that, you sober ones! Yes, if you could do that! If you could forget your origin, your past, your preparatory schooling,-your whole history as man and beast! There is no ” reality ” for us-nor for you either, you sober ones,-we are far from being so alien to one another as you suppose; and perhaps our good-will to get beyond drunkenness is just as respectable as your belief that you are altogether incapable of drunkenness. 58 Only as Creators !-It has caused me the greatest trouble, and forever causes me the greatest trouble, to perceive that unspeakably more depends upon what things are called, than on what they are. The reputation, the name and appearance, the importance, the usual measure and weight of things - each being in origin most frequently an error and arbitrariness thrown over the things like a garment, and quite alien to their essence and even to their exterior-have gradually, by the belief therein and its continuous growth from generation to generation, grown as it were on-and-into things and become their very body; the appearance at the very beginning becomes almost always the essence in the end, and operates as the essence! What a fool he would be who would think it enough to refer here to this origin and this nebulous veil of illusion, in order to annihilate that which virtually passes for the world-namely, so-called ” reality “ ! It is only as creators that we can annihilate!-But let us not forget this: it suffices to create new names and valuations and probabilities, in order in the long run to create new ” things.” 59 We Artists !-When we love a woman we have readily a hatred against nature, on recollecting all the disagreeable natural functions to which every woman is subject; we prefer not to think of them at all, but if once our soul touches on these things it twitches impatiently, and glances, as we have said, contemptuously at nature :- we are hurt; nature seems to
encroach upon our possessions, and with the profanest hands. We then shut our ears against all physiology, and we decree in secret that “ we will hear nothing of the fact that man is something else than soul and form ! ” ” The man under the skin ” is an abomination and monstrosity, a blasphemy of God and of love to all lovers.-Well, just as the lover still feels with respect to nature and natural functions, so did every worshipper of God and his ” holy omnipotence ” feel formerly: in all that was said of nature by astronomers, geologists, physiologists, and physicians, he saw an encroachment on his most precious possession, and consequently an attack, - and moreover also an impertinence of the assailant! The ” law of nature” sounded to him as blasphemy against God ; in truth he would too willingly have seen the whole of mechanics traced back to moral acts of volition and arbitrariness:-but because nobody could render him this service, he concealed nature and mechanism from himself as best he could, and lived in a dream. Oh, those men of former times understood how to dream, and did not need first to go to sleep!-and we men of the present day also still understand it too well, with all our good-will for wakefulness and daylight! It suffices to love, to hate, to desire, and in general to feel,-immediately the spirit and the power of the dream come over us, and we ascend, with open eyes and indifferent to all danger, the most dangerous paths, to the roofs and towers of fantasy, and without any giddiness, as persons born for climbing-we the night-walkers by day! We artists! We concealers of naturalness ! We moon-struck and God-struck ones ! We death-silent, untiring wanderers on heights which we do not see as heights, but as our plains, as our places of safety ! 60 Women and their Effect in the Distance.-Have I still ears? Am I only ear, and nothing else besides? Here I stand in the midst of the surging of the breakers, whose white flames fork up to my feet;-from all sides there is howling, threatening, crying, and screaming at me, while in the lowest depths the old earth-shaker sings his aria hollow like a roaring bull; he beats such an earth-‘ shaker’s measure thereto, that even the hearts of these weathered rock-monsters tremble at the sound. Then, suddenly, as if born out of nothingness, there appears before the portal of this hellish labyrinth, only a few fathoms distant,-a great sailing-ship gliding silently along like a ghost. Oh, this ghostly beauty! With what enchantment it seizes me! What? Has all the repose and silence in the world embarked here? Does my happiness itself sit in this quiet place, my happier ego, my second immortalised self? Still not dead, but also no longer living ? As a ghost-like, “ calm, gazing, gliding, sweeping, neutral being ? Similar to the ship, which, with its white sails, like an immense butterfly, passes over the dark sea! Yes! Passing over existence! That is it! That would be it!––It seems that the noise here has made me a visionary ? All great noise causes one to place happiness in the calm and the distance. When a man is in the midst of his hubbub, in the midst of the breakers of his plots and plans, he there sees perhaps calm, enchanting beings glide past him, for whose happiness and retirement he longs-they are women. He almost thinks that there with the women dwells his better self; that in these calm places even the loudest breakers become still as death, and life itself a dream of life. But still! but still! my noble enthusiast, there is also in the most beautiful sailing-ship so much noise and bustling, and alas, so much petty, pitiable bustling! The enchantment and the most powerful effect of women is, to use the language of philosophers, an effect at a distance, an actio in distans; there belongs thereto, however, primarily and above all,-distance ! 61 In Honour of Friendship.-That the sentiment of friendship was regarded by antiquity as the highest sentiment, higher even than the most vaunted pride of the self-sufficient and wise, yea, as it were its sole and still holier brotherhood, is very well expressed by the story of the Macedonian king who made the present of a talent to a cynical Athenian philosopher from whom he received it back again. ” What ?” said the king, ” has he then no friend ? ” He therewith meant to say,” I honour this pride of the wise and independent man, but I should have honoured his humanity still higher, if the friend in him had gained the victory over his pride. The philosopher has lowered himself in my estimation, for he showed that he did not know one of the two highest sentiments-and in fact the higher of them !” 62 Love.-Love pardons even the passion of the beloved. 63 Woman in Music.-How does it happen that warm and rainy winds bring the musical mood and the inventive delight in melody with them ? Are they not the same winds that fill the churches and give women amorous thoughts ? 64 Sceptics.-I fear that women who have grown old are more sceptical in the secret recesses of their hearts than any of the men; they believe in the superficiality of existence as in its essence, and all virtue and profundity is to them only the disguising of this ” truth,” the very desirable disguising of a pudendum,-an affair, therefore, of decency and modesty, and nothing more! 65 Devotedness.-There are noble women with a certain poverty of spirit, who, in order to express their profoundest devotedness, have no other alternative but to offer their virtue and modesty: it is the highest thing they have. And this present is often accepted without putting the recipient under such deep obligation as the giver supposed, -a very melancholy story! 66 The Strength of the Weak.-Women are all skilful in exaggerating their weaknesses, indeed they are inventive in weaknesses, so as to seem quite fragile ornaments to which even a grain of dust does harm; their existence is meant to bring home to man’s mind his coarseness, and to appeal to his conscience. They thus defend themselves against the strong and all
” rights of might.” 67 Self-dissembling.-She loves him now and has since been looking forth with as quiet confidence as a cow; but alas! It was precisely his delight that she seemed so fitful and absolutely incomprehensible ! He had rather too much steady weather in himself already! Would she not do well to feign her old character ? to feign indifference ? Does not-love itself advise her to do so ? Vivat comadia ! 68 Will and Willingness.-Someone brought a youth to a wise man, and said, ” See, this is one who is being corrupted by women!” The wise man shook his head and smiled. ” It is men,” he called out, ” who corrupt women; and everything that women lack should be atoned for and improved in men,-for man creates for himself the ideal of woman, and woman moulds herself according to this ideal.”-” You are too tender-hearted towards women,” said one of the bystanders, ” you do not know them !” The wise man answered : ” Man’s attribute is will, woman’s attribute is willingness,- such is the law of the sexes, verily! a hard law for woman! All human beings are innocent of their existence, women, however, are doubly innocent; who could have enough of salve and gentleness for them !”-“ What about salve! What about gentleness ! ” called out another person in the crowd, ” we must educate women better!”-” We must educate men better,” said the wise man, and made a sign to the youth to follow him.-The youth, however, did not follow him. 69 Capacity for Revenge.-That a person cannot and consequently will not defend himself, does not yet cast disgrace upon him in our eyes; but we despise the person who has neither the ability nor the good-will for revenge - whether it be a man or a woman. Would a woman be able to captivate us (or, as people say, to ” fetter” us) whom we did not credit with knowing how to employ the dagger (any kind of dagger) skilfully against us under certain circumstances? Or against herself; which in a certain case might be the severest revenge (the Chinese revenge). 70 The Mistresses of the Masters.- -A powerful contralto voice, as we occasionally hear it in the theatre, raises suddenly for us the curtain on possibilities in which we usually do not believe; all at once we are convinced that somewhere in the world there may be women with high, heroic, royal souls, capable and prepared for magnificent remonstrances, resolutions, and self-sacrifices, capable and prepared for domination over men, because in them the best in man, superior to sex, has become a corporeal ideal. To be sure, it is not the intention of the theatre that such voices should give such a conception of women; they are usually intended to represent the ideal male lover, for example, a Romeo; but, to judge by my experience, the theatre regularly miscalculates here, and the musician also, who expects such effects from such a voice. People do not believe in these lovers; these voices still contain a tinge of the motherly and housewifely character, and most of all when love is in their tone. 71 On Female Chastity.-There is something quite astonishing and extraordinary in the education of women of the higher class ; indeed, there is perhaps nothing more paradoxical. All the world is agreed to educate them with as much ignorance as possible in eroticism, and to inspire their soul with a profound shame of such things, and the extremest impatience and horror at the suggestion of them. It is really here only that all the “ honour” of woman is at stake ; what would one not forgive them in other respects! But here they are intended to remain ignorant to the very backbone :-they are intended to have neither eyes, ears, words, nor thoughts for this, their ” wickedness ” ; indeed knowledge here is already evil. And then! To be hurled as with an awful thunderbolt into reality and knowledge with marriage-and indeed by him whom they most love and esteem: to have to encounter love and shame in contradiction, yea, to have to feel rapture, abandonment, duty, sympathy, and fright at the unexpected proximity of God and animal, and whatever else besides! all at once!-There, in fact, a psychic entanglement has been effected which is quite unequalled ! Even the sympathetic curiosity of the wisest discerner of men does not suffice to divine how this or that woman gets along with the solution of this enigma and the enigma of this solution; what dreadful, far-reaching suspicions must awaken thereby in the poor unhinged soul; and indeed, how the ultimate philosophy and scepticism of the woman casts anchor at this point!-Afterwards the same profound silence as before : and often even a silence to herself, a shutting of her eyes to herself.-Young wives on that account make great efforts to appear superficial and thoughtless ; the most ingenious of them simulate a kind of impudence.-Wives easily feel their husbands as a question-mark to their honour, and their children as an apology or atonement,-they require children, and wish for them in quite another spirit than a husband wishes for them.-In short, one cannot be gentle enough towards women ! 72 Mothers.-Animals think differently from men with respect to females; with them the female is regarded as the productive being. There is no paternal love among them, but there is such a thing as love of the children of a beloved, and habituation to them. In the young, the females find gratification for their lust of dominion; the young are a property, an occupation, something quite comprehensible to them, with which they can chatter: all this conjointly is maternal love,- it is to be compared to the love of the artist for his work. Pregnancy has made the females gentler, more expectant, more timid, more submissively inclined ; and similarly intellectual pregnancy engenders the character of the contemplative, who are allied to women in character:-they are the masculine mothers.-Among animals the masculine sex is regarded as the beautiful sex. 73 Saintly Cruelty.-A man holding a newly born child in his hands came to a saint. ” What should I do with this child,” he asked, “ it is wretched, deformed, and has not even
enough of life to die.” “ Kill it,” cried the saint with a dreadful voice, ” kill it, and then hold it in your arms for three days and three nights to brand it on your memory:-thus wilt you never again beget a child when it is not the time for you to beget.”-When the man had heard this he went away disappointed; and many found fault with the saint because he had advised cruelty; for he had advised to kill the child. ” But is it not more cruel to let it live ?” asked the saint. 74 The Unsuccessful.-Those poor women always fail of success who become agitated and uncertain, and talk too much in presence of him whom they love; for men are most successfully seduced by a certain subtle and phlegmatic tenderness. 75 The Third Sex.-” A small man is a paradox, but still a man,-but a small woman seems to me to be of another sex in comparison with well-grown ones”-said an old dancingmaster. A small woman is never beautiful-said old Aristotle. 76 The greatest Danger.-Had there not at all times been a larger number of men who regarded the cultivation of their mind-their “ rationality”- as their pride, their obligation, their virtue, and were injured or shamed by all play of fancy and extravagance of thinking-as lovers of “ sound common sense “ :-mankind would long ago have perished! Incipient insanity has hovered, and hovers continually over mankind as its greatest danger: it is precisely the breaking out of inclination in feeling, seeing, and hearing; the enjoyment of the unruliness of the mind ; the delight in human unreason. It is not truth and certainty that is the antithesis of the world of the insane, but the universality and all-obligatoriness of a belief, in short, non-voluntariness in forming opinions. And the greatest labour of human beings until now has been to agree with one another regarding a number of things, and to impose upon themselves a law of agreement-indifferent whether these things are true or false. This is the discipline of the mind which has preserved mankind;-but the counter-impulses are still so powerful that one can really speak of the future of mankind with little confidence. The ideas of things still continually shift and move, and will perhaps alter more than ever in the future; it is continually the most select spirits themselves who strive against universal obligatoriness-the investigators of truth above all! The accepted belief, as the belief of all the world, continually engenders a disgust and a new longing in the more ingenious minds; and already the slow tempo which it demands for all intellectual processes (the imitation of the tortoise, which is here recognised as the rule) makes the artists and poets runaways:-it is in these impatient spirits that a downright delight in delirium breaks out, because delirium has such a joyful tempo I Virtuous intellects, therefore, are needed-ah ! I want to use the least ambiguous word,-virtuous stupidity is needed, imperturbable conductors of the slow spirits are needed, in order that the faithful of the great collective belief may remain with one another and dance their dance further: it is a necessity of the first importance that here enjoins and demands. We others are the exceptions and the danger,-we eternally need protection !-Well, there can actually be something said in favour of the exceptions provided that they never want to become the rule. 77 The Animal with good Conscience.-It is not unknown to me that there is vulgarity in everything that pleases Southern Europe-whether it be Italian opera (for example, Rossini’s and Bellini’s), or the Spanish adventure-romance (most readily accessible to us in the French garb of Gil Bias)-but it does not offend me, any more than the vulgarity which one encounters in a walk through Pompeii, or even in the reading of every ancient book : what is the reason of this ? Is it because shame is lacking here, and because the vulgar always comes forward just as sure and certain of itself as anything noble, lovely, and passionate in the same kind of music or romance ? ” The animal has its rights like man, so let it run about freely; and you, my dear fellow-man, are still this animal, in spite of all!” - that seems to me the moral of the case, and the peculiarity of southern humanity. Bad taste has its rights like good taste, and even a prerogative over the latter when it is the great requisite, the sure satisfaction, and as it were a universal language, an immediately intelligible mask and attitude; the excellent, select taste on the other hand has always something of a seeking, tentative character, not fully certain that it understands,-it is never, and has never been popular! The masque is and remains popular! So let all this masquerade run along in the melodies and cadences, in the leaps and merriment of the rhythm of these operas! Quite the ancient life! What does one understand of it, if one does not understand the delight in the masque, the good conscience of all masquerade! Here is the bath and the refreshment of the ancient spirit: - and perhaps this bath was still more necessary for the rare and sublime natures of the ancient world than for the vulgar.-On the other hand, a vulgar turn in northern works, for example in German music, offends me unutterably. There is shame in it, the artist has lowered himself in his own sight, and could not even avoid blushing: we are ashamed with him, and are so hurt because we surmise that he believed he had to lower himself on our account. 78 What we should be Grateful for.-It is only the artists, and especially the theatrical artists, who have furnished men with eyes and ears to hear and see with some pleasure what everyone is in himself, what he experiences and aims at: it is only they who have taught us how to estimate the hero that is concealed in each of these common-place men, and the art of looking at ourselves from adistance as heroes, and as ‘it were simplified and transfigured,-the art of ” putting ourselves on the stage” before ourselves. It is thus only that we get beyond some of the paltry details in ourselves ! Without that art we should be nothing but foreground, and would live absolutely under the spell of the perspective which makes the closest and the commonest seem immensely large and like reality in itself.-Perhaps there is merit of a similar kind in the religion which commanded us to look at the sinfulness of every individual man with a magnify-ing-glass, and made a great, immortal criminal of the sinner; in that it put eternal perspectives around man, it taught him to see himself from a distance, and as something past, something entire.
79 The Charm of Imperfection.-I see here a poet, who, like so many men, exercises a higher charm by his imperfections than by all that is rounded off and takes perfect shape under his hands,-indeed, he derives his advantage and reputation far more from his actual limitations than from his abundant powers. His work never expresses altogether what he would really like to express, what he would like to have seen: he appears to have had the foretaste of a vision and never the vision itself:-but an extraordinary longing for this vision has remained in his soul; and from this he derives his equally extraordinary eloquence of longing and craving. With this he raises those who listen to him above his work and above all ” works,” and gives them wings to rise higher than hearers have ever risen before, thus making them poets and seers themselves ; they then show an admiration for the originator of their happiness, as if he had led them immediately to the vision of his holiest and ultimate verities, as if he had reached his goal, and had actually seen and communicated his vision. It is to the advantage of his reputation that he has not really arrived at his goal. 80 Art and Nature.-The Greeks (or at least the Athenians) liked to hear good talking: indeed they had an eager inclination for it, which distinguished them more than anything else from non-Greeks. And so they required good talking even from passion on the stage, and submitted to the unnaturalness of dramatic verse with delight: -in nature, in truth, passion is so sparing of words! so dumb and confused! Or if it finds words, so embarrassed and irrational and a shame to itself! We have now, all of us, thanks to the Greeks, accustomed ourselves to this unnaturalness on the stage, as we endure that other unnaturalness, the singing passion, and willingly endure it, thanks to the Italians.-It has become a necessity to us, which we cannot satisfy out of the resources of actuality, to hear men talk well and in full detail in the most trying situations : it enraptures us at present when the tragic hero still finds words, reasons, eloquent gestures, and on the whole a bright spirituality, where life approaches the abysses, and where the actual man mostly loses his head, and certainly his fine language. This kind of deviation from nature is perhaps the most agreeable repast for man’s pride: he loves art generally on account of it, as the expression of high, heroic unnatural-ness and convention. One rightly objects to the dramatic poet when he does not transform everything into reason and speech, but always retains a remnant of silence:-just as one is dissatisfied with an operatic musician who cannot find a melody for the highest emotion, but only an emotional, “ natural” stammering and crying. Here nature has to be contradicted! Here the common charm of illusion has to give place to a higher charm! The Greeks go far, far in this direction -frightfully far! As they constructed the stage as narrow as possible and dispensed with all the effect of deep backgrounds, as they made pantomime and easy motion impossible to the actor, and transformed him into a solemn, stiff, masked bogey, so they have also deprived passion itself of its deep background, and have dictated to it a law of fine talk; indeed, they have really done everything to counteract the elementary effect of representations that inspire pity and terror: they did not want pity and terror,-with due deference, with the highest deference to Aristotle! but he certainly did not hit the nail, to say nothing of the head of the nail, when he spoke about the final aim of Greek tragedy! Let us but look at the Grecian tragic poets with respect to what most excited their diligence, their inventiveness, and their emulation,-certainly it was not the intention of subjugating the spectators by emotion! The Athenian went to the theatre to hear fine talking! And fine talking was arrived at by Sophocles!- pardon me this heresy!-It is very different with serious opera: all its masters make it their business to prevent their personages being understood. ” An occasional word picked up may come to the assistance of the inattentive listener; but on the whole the situation must be self-explanatory,- the talking is of no account!”-so they all think, and so they have all made fun of the words. Perhaps they have only lacked courage to express fully their extreme contempt for words: a little additional insolence in Rossini, and he would have allowed la-la-la-la to be sung throughout-and it might have been the rational course! The personages of the opera are not meant to be believed ” in their words,” but in their tones! That is the difference, that is the fine unnaturalness on account of which people go to the opera ! Even the recita-tivo secco is not really intended to be heard as words and text: this kind of half-music is meant rather in the first place to give the musical ear a little repose (the repose from melody, as from the sublimest, and on that account the most straining enjoyment of this art),-but very soon something different results, namely, an increasing impatience, an increasing resistance, a new longing for entire music, for melody.-How is it with the art of Richard Wagner as seen from this standpoint ? Is it perhaps the same ? Perhaps otherwise ? It would often seem to me as if one needed to have learned by heart both the words and the music of his creations before the performances; for without that-so it seemed to me-one may hear neither the words, nor even the music. 81 Grecian Taste.-” What is beautiful in it ?”- asked a certain geometrician, after a performance of the Iphigenia-” there is nothing proved in it! ” Could the Greeks have been so far from this taste ? In Sophocles at least “ everything is proved.” 82 Esprit Un-Grecian.-The Greeks were exceedingly logical and plain in all their thinking; they did not get tired of it, at least during their long flourishing period, as is so often the case with the French ; who too willingly made a little excursion into the opposite, and in fact endure the spirit of logic only when it betrays its sociable courtesy, its sociable selfrenunciation, by a multitude of such little excursions into its opposite. Logic appears to them as necessary as bread and water, but also like these as a kind of prison-fare, as soon as it is to be taken pure and by itself. In good society one must never want to be in the right absolutely and solely, as all pure logic requires; hence, the little dose of irrationality in all French esprit.-The social sense of the Greeks was far less developed than that of the French in the present and the past; hence, so little esprit in their cleverest men, hence, so little wit, even in their wags, hence-alas! But people will not readily believe these tenets of mine, and how much of the kind I have still on my soul!-Est res magna tacere -says Martial, like all garrulous people. 83
Translations.-One can estimate the amount of the historical sense which an age possesses by the way in which it makes translations and seeks to embody in itself past periods and literatures. The French of Corneille, and even the French of the Revolution, appropriated Roman antiquity in a manner for which we would no longer have the courage-owing to our superior historical sense. And Roman antiquity itself: how violently, and at the same time how naively, did it lay its hand on everything excellent and elevated belonging to the older Grecian antiquity! How they translated these writings into the Roman present! How they wiped away intentionally and unconcernedly the wing-dust of the butterfly moment! It is thus that Horace now and then translated Alcasus or Archilochus, it is thus that Propertius translated Callimachus and Philetas (poets of equal rank with Theocritus, if we be allowed to judge): of what consequence was it to them that the actual creator experienced this and that, and had inscribed the indication thereof in his poem !- as poets they were averse to the antiquarian, inquisitive spirit which precedes the historical sense ; as poets they did not respect those essentially personal traits and names, nor anything peculiar to city, coast, or century, such as its costume and mask, but at once put the present and the Roman in its place. They seem to us to ask: ” Should we not make the old new for ourselves, and adjust ourselves to it? Should we not be allowed to inspire this dead body with our soul ? for it is dead indeed : how loathsome is everything dead !”-They did not know the pleasure of the historical sense; the past and the alien was painful to them, and as Romans it was an incitement to a Roman conquest. In fact, they conquered when they translated,-not only in that they omitted the historical: they added also allusions to the present; above all, they struck out the name of the poet and put their own in its place -not with the feeling of theft, but with the very best conscience of the imperium Romanum. 84 The Origin of Poetry.-The lovers of the fantastic in man, who at the same time represent the doctrine of instinctive morality, draw this conclusion: ” Granted that utility has been honoured at all times as the highest divinity, where then in all the world has poetry come from ?-this rhythmising of speech which thwarts rather than furthers plainness of communication, and which, nevertheless, has sprung up everywhere on the earth, and still springs up, as a mockery of all useful purpose! The wildly beautiful irrationality of poetry refutes you, you utilitarians! The wish to get rid of utility in some way-that is precisely what has elevated man, that is what has inspired him to morality and art!” Well, I must here speak for once to please the utilitarians,-they are so seldom in the right that it is pitiful! In the old times which called poetry into being, people had still utility in view with respect to it, and a very important utility- at the time when rhythm was introduced into speech, that force which arranges all the particles of the sentence anew, commands the choosing of the words, recolours the thought, and makes it more obscure, more foreign, and more distant: to be sure a superstitious utility! It was intended that a human entreaty should be more profoundly impressed upon the Gods by virtue of rhythm, after it had been observed that men could remember a verse better than an unmetrical speech. It was likewise thought that people could make themselves audible at greater distances by the rhythmical beat; the rhythmical prayer seemed to come nearer to the ear of the Gods. Above all, however, people wanted to have the advantage of the elementary conquest which man experiences in himself when he hears music: rhythm is a constraint ; it produces an unconquerable desire to yield, to join in ; not only the step of the foot, but also the soul itself follows the measure,- probably the soul of the Gods also, as people thought! They attempted, therefore, to constrain the Gods by rhythm, and to exercise a power over them; they threw poetry around the Gods like a magic noose. There was a still more wonderful idea, and it has perhaps operated most powerfully of all in the originating of poetry. Among the Pythagoreans it made its appearance as a philosophical doctrine and as an artifice of teaching : but long before there were philosophers music was acknowledged to possess the power of unburdening the emotions, of purifying the soul, of soothing the ferocia animi-and this was owing to the rhythmical element in music. When the proper tension and harmony of the soul were lost a person had to dance to the measure of the singer,-that was the recipe of this medical art. By means of it Terpander quieted a tumult, Empedocles calmed a maniac, Damon purged a love-sick youth; by means of it even the maddened, revengeful Gods were treated for the purpose of a cure. This was effected by driving the frenzy and wantonness of their emotions to the highest pitch, by making the furious mad, and the revengeful intoxicated with vengeance:-all the orgiastic cults seek to discharge the ferocia of a deity all at once, and thus make an orgy, so that the deity may feel freer and quieter afterwards, and leave man in peace. Melos, according to its root, signifies a soothing agency, not because the song is gentle itself, but because its after-effect is gentle.-And not only in the religious song, but also in the secular song of the most ancient times, the prerequisite is that the rhythm should exercise a magical influence ; for example, in drawing water, or in rowing: the song is for the enchanting of the spirits supposed to be active thereby ; it makes them obliging, involuntary, and the instruments of man. And as often as a person acts he has occasion to sing, every action is dependent on the assistance of spirits : magic song and incantation appear to be the original form of poetry. When verse also came to be used in oracles-the Greeks said that the hexameter was invented at Delphi,-the rhythm was here also intended to exercise a compulsory influence. To make a prophecy-that means originally (according to what seems to me the probable derivation of the Greek word) to determine something; people thought they could determine the future by winning Apollo over to their side: he who, according to the most ancient idea, is far more than a foreseeing deity. According as the formula is pronounced with literal and rhythmical correctness, it determines the future: the formula, however, is the invention of Apollo, who as the God of rhythm, can also determine the goddesses of fate.-Looked at and investigated as a whole, was there ever anything more serviceable to the ancient superstitious species of human being than rhythm? People could do everything with it: they could make labour go on magically; they could compel a God to appear, to be near at hand, and listen to them ; they could arrange the future for themselves according to their will; they could unburden their own souls of any kind of excess (of anxiety, of mania, of sympathy, of revenge), and not only their own souls, but the souls of the most evil spirits,-without verse a person was nothing, by means of verse a person became almost a God. Such a fundamental feeling no longer allows itself to be fully eradicated,-and even now, after millenniums of long labour in combating such superstition, the very wisest of us occasionally becomes the fool of rhythm, be it only that one perceives a thought to be truer when it has a metrical form and approaches with a divine hopping. Is it not a very funny thing that the most serious philosophers, however anxious they are in other respects for strict certainty, still appeal to poetical sayings in order to give their thoughts force and
credibility ? -and yet it is more dangerous to a truth when the poet assents to it than when he contradicts it! For, as Homer says, ” Minstrels speak much falsehood ! “ 85 The Good and the Beautiful.-Artists glorify continually-they do nothing else,-and indeed they glorify all those conditions and things that have a reputation, so that man may feel himself good or great, or intoxicated, or merry, or pleased and wise by it. Those select things and conditions whose value for human happiness is regarded as secure and determined, are the objects of artists: they are ever lying in wait to discover such things, to transfer them into the domain of art. I mean to say that they are not themselves the valuers of happiness and of the happy ones, but they always press close to these valuers with the greatest curiosity and longing, in order immediately to use their valuations advantageously. As besides their impatience, they have also the big lungs of heralds and the feet of runners, they are generally always among the first to glorify the new excellence, and often seem to be the first who have called it good and valued it as good. This, however, as we have said, is an error; they are only faster and louder than the actual valuers:- And who then are these ?-They are the rich and the leisurely. 86 The Theatre.-This day has given me once more strong and elevated sentiments, and if I could have music and art in the evening, I know well what music and art I should not like to have; namely, none of that which would gladly intoxicate its hearers and excite them to a crisis of strong and high feeling,-those men with commonplace souls, who in the evening are not like victors on triumphal cars, but like tired mules to whom life has rather too often applied the whip. What would those men at all know of ” higher moods,” unless there were expedients for causing ecstasy and idealistic strokes of the whip!-and thus they have their inspirers as they have their wines. But what is their drink and their drunkenness to me! Does the inspired one need wine ? He rather looks with a kind of disgust at the agency and the agent which are here intended to produce an effect without sufficient reason,-an imitation of the high tide of the soul! What? One gives the mole wings and proud fancies-before going to sleep, before he creeps into his hole? One sends him into the theatre and puts great magnifying-glasses to his blind and tired eyes? Men, whose life is not “ action” but business, sit in front of the stage and look at strange beings to whom life is more than business? “ This is proper,” you say, “ this is entertaining, this is what culture wants!”-Well then! culture is too often lacking in me, for this sight is too often disgusting to me. He who has enough of tragedy and comedy in himself surely prefers to remain away from the theatre; or, as an exception, the whole procedure-theatre and public and poet includedbecomes for him a truly tragic and comic play, so that the performed piece counts for little in comparison. He who is something like Faust and Manfred, what does it matter to him about the Fausts and Manfreds of the theatre!-while it certainly gives him something to think about that such figures are brought into the theatre at all. The strongest thoughts and passions before those who are not capable of thought and passion-but of intoxication only! And those as a means to this end ! And theatre and music the hashish-smoking and betelchewing of Europeans! Oh, who will narrate to us the whole history of narcotics!-It is almost the history of ” culture,” the so-called higher culture! 87 The Conceit of Artists.—I think artists often do not know what they can do best, because they are too conceited, and have set their minds on something loftier than those little plants appear to be, which can grow up to perfection on their soil, fresh, rare, and beautiful. The final value of their own garden and vineyard is superciliously underestimated by them, and their love and their insight are not of the same quality. Here is a musician, who, more than anyone else, has the genius for discovering the tones peculiar to suffering, oppressed, tortured souls, and who can endow even dumb animals with speech. No one equals him in the colours of the late autumn, in the indescribably touching happiness of a last, a final, and all too short enjoyment; he knows a chord for those secret and weird midnights of the soul when cause and effect seem out of joint, and when every instant something may originate “ out of nothing.” He draws his resources best of all out of the lower depths of human happiness, and so to speak, out of its drained goblet, where the bitterest and most nauseous drops have ultimately, for good or for ill, commingled with the sweetest. He knows the weary shuffling along of the soul which can no longer leap or fly, yea, not even walk ; he has the shy glance of concealed pain, of understanding without comfort, of leave-taking without avowal; yea, as the Orpheus of all secret misery, he is greater than anyone; and in fact much has been added to art by him which was until now inexpressible and not even thought worthy of art, and which was only to be scared away, by words, and not grasped many small and quite microscopic features of the soul: yes, he is the master of miniature. But he does not wish to be so! His character is more in love with large walls and daring frescoes! He fails to see that his spirit has a different taste and inclination, and prefers to sit quietly in the corners of ruined houses:-concealed in this way, concealed even from himself, he there paints his proper masterpieces, all of which are very short, often only one bar in length,-there only does he become quite good, great, and perfect, perhaps there only.-But he does not know it! He is too conceited to know it. 88 Earnestness for the Truth.-Earnest for the truth ! What different things men understand by these words! Just the same opinions, and modes of demonstration and testing which a thinker regards as a frivolity in himself, to which he has succumbed with shame at one time or other,-just the same opinions may give to an artist, who comes in contact with them and accepts them temporarily, the consciousness that the profoundest earnestness for the truth has now taken hold of him, and that it is worthy of admiration that, although an artist, he at the same time exhibits the most ardent desire for the antithesis of the apparent. It is thus possible that a person may, just by his pathos of earnestness, betray how superficially and sparingly his intellect has until now operated in the domain of knowledge.-And is not everything that we consider important our betrayer ? It shows where our motives lie, and where our motives are altogether lacking. 89
Now and Formerly.-Of what consequence is all our art in artistic products, if that higher art, the art of the festival, be lost by us? Formerly all artistic products were exhibited on the great festive-path of humanity, as tokens of remembrance, and monuments of high and happy moments. One now seeks to allure the exhausted and sickly from the great sufferingpath of humanity for a wanton moment by means of works of art; one furnishes them with a little ecstasy and insanity. 90 Lights and Shades.-Books and writings are different with different thinkers. One writer has collected together in his book all the rays of light which he could quickly plunder and carry home from an illuminating experience; while another gives only the shadows, and the grey and black replicas of that which on the previous day had towered up in his soul. 91 Precaution.-Alfieri, as is well known, told a great many falsehoods when he narrated the history of his life to his astonished contemporaries. He told falsehoods owing to the despotism toward himself which he exhibited, for example, in the way in which he created his own language, and tyrannised himself into a poet:-he finally found a rigid form of sublimity into which he forced his life and his memory; he must have suffered much in the process.-I would also give no credit to a history of Plato’s life written by himself, as little as to Rousseau’s, or to the Vita nuova of Dante. 92 Prose and Poetry.-Let it be observed that the great masters of prose have almost always beenpoets as well, whether openly, or only in secret and for the ” closet” ; and in truth one only writes good prose in view of poetry ! For prose is an uninterrupted, polite warfare with poetry; all its charm consists in the fact that poetry is constantly avoided and contradicted ; every abstraction wants to have a gibe at poetry, and wishes to be uttered with a mocking voice; all dryness and coolness is meant to bring the amiable goddess into an amiable despair; there are often approximations and reconciliations for the moment, and then a sudden recoil and a burst of laughter ; the curtain is often drawn up and dazzling light let in just while the goddess is enjoying her twilights and dull colours; the word is often taken out of her mouth and chanted to a melody while she holds her fine hands before her delicate little ears:-and so there are a thousand enjoyments of the warfare, the defeats included, of which the unpoetic, the so - called prose - men know nothing at all: -� they consequently write and speak only bad prose! Warfare is the father of all good things, it is also the father of good prose!-There have been four very singular and truly poetical men in this century who have arrived at mastership in prose, for which otherwise this century is not suited, owing to lack of poetry, as we have indicated. Not to take Goethe into account, for he is reasonably claimed by the century that produced him, I look only on Giacomo Leopardi, Prosper Merimde, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walter Savage Landor the author of Imaginary Conversations., as worthy to be called masters of prose. 93 But why, then, do you Write ?-A: I do not belong to those who think with the wet pen in hand ; and still less to those who yield themselves entirely to their passions before the open ink-bottle, sitting on their chair and staring at the paper. I am always vexed and abashed by writing ; writing is a necessity for me,-even to speak of it in a simile is disagreeable. B: But why, then, do you write ? A : Well, my dear Sir, to tell you in confidence, I have until now found no other means of getting rid of my thoughts. B : And why do you wish to get rid of them ? A : Why I wish ? Do I really wish! I must.-B : Enough ! Enough ! 94 Growth after Death.-Those few daring words about moral matters which Fontenelle threw into his immortal Dialogues of the Dead, were regarded by his age as paradoxes and amusements of a not unscrupulous wit; even the highest judges of taste and intellect saw nothing more in them,- indeed, Fontenelle himself perhaps saw nothing more. Then something incredible takes place: these thoughts become truths! Science proves them ! The game becomes serious! And we read those dialogues with a feeling different from that with which Voltaire and Helvetius read them, and we involuntarily raise their originator into another and much higher class of intellects than they did.- Rightly ? Wrongly ? 95 Chamfort.’-That such a judge of men and of the multitude as Chamfort should side with the multitude, instead of standing apart in philosophical resignation and defence-I am at a loss to explain this, except as follows:-There was an instinct in him stronger than his wisdom, and it had never been gratified: the hatred against all noblesse of blood ; perhaps his mother’s old and only too explicable hatred, which was consecrated in him by love of her,-an instinct of revenge from his boyhood, which waited for the hour to avenge his mother. But then the course of his life, his genius, and alas ! most of all, perhaps, the paternal blood in his veins, had seduced him to rank and consider himself equal to the noblesse - for many, many years! In the end, however, he could not endure the sight of himself, the ” old man ” under the old regime, any longer; he got into a violent, penitential passion, and in this state he put on the raiment of the populace as his special kind of hair-shirt! His bad conscience was the neglect of revenge.-If Chamfort had then been a little more of the philosopher, the Revolution would not have had its tragic wit and its sharpest sting; it would have been regarded as a much more stupid affair, and would have had no such seductive influence on men’s minds. But Chamfort’s hatred and revenge educated an entire generation; and the most illustrious men passed through his school. Let us but consider that Mirabeau looked up to Chamfort as to his higher and older self, from whom he expected (and endured) impulses, warnings, and condemnations,-Mirabeau, who as a man belongs to an entirely different order of greatness, as the very foremost among the statesman-geniuses of yesterday and to-day.-Strange, that in spite of such a friend and advocate-we possess Mirabeau’s letters to Chamfort - this wittiest of all moralists has remained unfamiliar to the French, quite the same as Stendhal, who has perhaps had the most penetrating eyes and ears of any Frenchman of this century. Is it because the latter had really too much of the German and the Englishman in his nature for the Parisians to endure him?-while Chamfort, a
man with ample knowledge of the profundities and secret motives of the soul, gloomy, suffering, ardent-a thinker who found laughter necessary as the remedy of life, and who almost gave himself up as lost every day that he had not laughed,- seems much more like an Italian, and related by blood to Dante and Leopardi, than like a Frenchman. One knows Chamfort’s last words: “ Ah! mon ami” he said to Sieyes, “ j’e nien vais enfin de ce monde, oil il faut que le cesur se brise ou se bronze-.” These were certainly not the words of a dying Frenchman. 96 Two Orators.-Of these two orators the one arrives at a full understanding of his case only when he yields himself to emotion ; it is only this that pumps sufficient blood and heat into his brain to compel his high intellectuality to reveal itself. The other attempts, indeed, now and then to do the same: to state his case sonorously, vehemently, and spiritedly with the aid of emotion, -but usually with bad success. He then very soon speaks obscurely and confusedly; he exaggerates, makes omissions, and excites suspicion of the justice of his case: indeed, he himself feels this suspicion, and the sudden changes into the coldest and most repulsive tones (which raise a doubt in the hearer as to his passionateness being genuine) are thereby explicable. With him emotion always drowns the spirit; perhaps because it is stronger than in the former. But he is at the height of his power when he resists the impetuous storm of his feeling, and as it were scorns it; it is then only that his spirit emerges fully from its concealment, a spirit logical, mocking and playful, but nevertheless aweinspiring. 97 The Loquacity of Authors.-There is a loquacity of anger-frequent in Luther, also in Schopenhauer. A loquacity which comes from too great a store of conceptual formulae, as in Kant. A loquacity which comes from delight in ever new modifications of the same idea: one finds it in Montaigne. A loquacity of malicious natures: whoever reads writings of our period will recollect two authors in this connection. A loquacity which comes from delight in fine words and forms of speech: by no means rare in Goethe’s prose. A loquacity which comes from pure satisfaction in noise and confusion of feelings: for example in Carlyle. 98 In Honour of Shakespeare. - The best thing I could say in honour of Shakespeare, the man, is that he believed in Brutus, and cast not a shadow of suspicion on the kind of virtue which Brutus represents! It is to him that Shakespeare consecrated his best tragedy-it is at present still called by a wrong name,-to him, and to the most terrible essence of lofty morality. Independence of soul! -that is the question at issue! No sacrifice can be too great there: one must be able to sacrifice to it even one’s dearest friend, although he be the grandest of men, the ornament of the world, the genius without peer,-if one really loves freedom as the freedom of great souls, and if this freedom be threatened by him :-it is thus that Shakespeare must have felt! The elevation in which he places Caesar is the most exquisite honour he could confer upon Brutus; it is thus only that he lifts into vastness the inner problem of his hero, and similarly the strength of soul which could cut this knot!- And was it actually political freedom that impelled the poet to sympathy with Brutus,-and made him the accomplice of Brutus ? Or was political freedom merely a symbol for something inexpressible ? Do we perhaps stand before some sombre event or adventure of the poet’s own soul, which has remained unknown, and of which he only cared to speak symbolically? What is all Hamlet-melancholy in comparison with the melancholy of Brutus!- and perhaps Shakespeare also knew this, as he knew the other, by experience! Perhaps he also had his dark hour and his bad angel, just as Brutus had them!-But whatever similarities and secret relationships of that kind there may have been, Shakespeare cast himself on the ground and felt unworthy and alien in presence of the aspect and virtue of Brutus:-he has inscribed the testimony thereof in the tragedy itself. He has twice brought in a poet in it, and twice heaped upon him such an impatient and extreme contempt, that it sounds like a cry,-like the cry of self-contempt. Brutus, even Brutus loses patience when the poet appears, self-important, pathetic and obtrusive, as poets usually are,-persons who seem to abound in the possibilities of greatness, even moral greatness, and nevertheless rarely attain even to ordinary uprightness in the philosophy of practice and of life. ” He may know the times, but I know his temper,-away with the jigging fool!”-shouts Brutus. We may translate this back into the soul of the poet that composed it. 99 The Followers of Schopenhauer.-What one sees at the contact of civilized peoples with barbarians, -namely, that the lower civilization regularly accepts in the first place the vices, weaknesses, and excesses of the higher; then, from that point onward, feels the influence of a charm ; and finally, by means of the appropriated vices and weaknesses, also allows something of the valuable influence of the higher culture to leaven it:-one can also see this close at hand and without journeys to barbarian peoples, to be sure, somewhat refined and spiritualised, and not so readily palpable. What are the German followers of Schopenhauer still accustomed to receive first of all from their master ? -those who, when placed beside his superior culture, must deem themselves sufficiently barbarous to be first of all barbarously fascinated and seduced by him. Is it his hard matter-of-fact sense, his inclination to clearness and rationality, which often makes him appear so English, and so unlike Germans? Or the strength of his intellectual conscience, which endured a life-long contradiction of “ being” and “ willing,” and compelled him to contradict himself constantly even in his writings on almost every point ? Or his purity in matters relating to the Church and the Christian God ?- for here he was pure as no German philosopher had been until now, so that he lived and died ” as a Voltairian.” Or his immortal doctrines of the intellectuality of intuition, the apriority of the law of causality, the instrumental nature of the intellect, and the non-freedom of the will ? No, nothing of this enchants, nor is felt as enchanting; but Schopenhauer’s mystical embarrassments and shufflings in those passages where the matter-of-fact thinker allowed himself to be seduced and corrupted by the vain impulse to be the unraveller of the world’s riddle : his undemonstrable doctrine of one will (” all causes are merely occasional causes of the phenomenon of the will at such a time and at such a place,” “ the will to live, whole and undivided, is present in every being, even in the smallest, as perfectly as in the sum of all that was, is, and will be”); his denial of the individual (“ all
lions are really only one lion,” ” plurality of individuals is an appearance,” as also development is only an appearance: he calls the opinion of Lamarck ” an ingenious, absurd error”); his fantasy about genius (” in aesthetic contemplation the individual is no longer an individual, but a pure, will-less, painless, timeless subject of knowledge,” ” the subject, in that it entirely merges in the contemplated object, has become this object itself”); his nonsense about sympathy, and about the outburst of the principium individuationis thus rendered possible, as the source of all morality; including also such assertions as, “ dying is really the design of existence,” “ the possibility should not be absolutely denied that a magical effect could proceed from a person already dead ” :-these, and similar extravagances and vices of the philosopher, are always first accepted and made articles of faith; for vices and extravagances are always easiest to imitate, and do not require a long preliminary practice. But let us speak of the most celebrated of the living Schopenhauerians, Richard Wagner. It has happened to him as it has already happened to many an artist: he made a mistake in the interpretation of the characters he created, and misunderstood the unexpressed philosophy of the art peculiarly his own. Richard Wagner allowed himself to be misled by Hegel’s influence till the middle of his life; and he did the same again when later on he read Schopenhauer’s doctrine between the lines of his characters, and began to express himself with such terms as “ will,” “ genius,” and “ sympathy.” Nevertheless it will remain true that nothing is more counter to Schopenhauer’s spirit than the essentially Wagnerian element in Wagner’s heroes: I mean the innocence of the supremest selfishness, the belief in strong passion as the good in itself, in a word, the Siegfried trait in the countenances of his heroes. ” All that still smacks more of Spinoza than of me,”-Schopenhauer would probably have said. Whatever good reasons, therefore, Wagner might have had to be on the outlook for other philosophers than Schopenhauer, the enchantment to which he succumbed in respect to this thinker, not only made him blind towards all other philosophers, but even towards science itself; his entire art is more and more inclined to become the counterpart and complement of the Schopen-hauerian philosophy, and it always renounces more emphatically the higher ambition to become the counterpart and complement of human knowledge and science. And not only is he allured thereto by the whole mystic pomp of this philosophy (which would also have allured a Cagliostro), the peculiar airs and emotions of the philosopher have all along been seducing him as well! For example, Wagner’s indignation about the corruption of the German language is Schopenhauerian ; and if one should commend his imitation in this respect, it is nevertheless not to be denied that Wagner’s style itself suffers in no small degree from all the tumours and turgidities, the sight of which made Schopenhauer so furious; and that, in respect to the German-writing Wagnerians, Wagneromania is beginning to be as dangerous as only some kinds of Hegelomania have been. From Schopenhauer comes Wagner’s hatred of the Jews, to whom he cannot do justice even in their greatest exploit: are not the Jews the inventors of Christianity! The attempt of Wagner to construe Christianity as a seed blown away from Buddhism, and his endeavour to initiate a Buddhistic era in Europe, under a temporary approximation to CatholicChristian formulas and sentiments, are both Schopenhauerian. Wagner’s preaching in favour of pity in dealing with animals is Schopenhauerian; Schopenhauer’s predecessor here, as is well known, was Voltaire, who already perhaps, like his successors, knew how to disguise his hatred of certain men and things as pity towards animals. At least Wagner’s hatred of science, which manifests itself in his preaching, has certainly not been inspired by the spirit of charitableness and kindness-nor by the spirit at all, as is sufficiently obvious.Finally, it is of little importance what the philosophy of an artist is, provided it is only a supplementary philosophy, and does not do any injury to his art itself. We cannot be sufficiently on our guard against taking a dislike to an artist on account of an occasional, perhaps very unfortunate and presumptuous masquerade; let us not forget that the dear artists are all of them something of actors-and must be so; it would, be difficult for them to hold out in the long run without stage-playing. Let us be loyal to Wagner in that which is true and original in him,-and especially in this point, that we, his disciples, remain loyal to ourselves in that which is true and original in us. Let us allow him his intellectual humours and spasms, let us in fairness rather consider what strange nutriments and necessaries an art like his is entitled to, in order to be able to live and grow ! It is of no account that he is often wrong as a thinker ; justice and patience are not his affair. It is sufficient that his life is right in his own eyes, and maintains its right,-the life which calls to each of us : ” Be a man, and do not follow me-but yourself! Yourself!” Our life, also ought to maintain its right in our own eyes! We also are to grow and blossom out of ourselves, free and fearless, in innocent selfishness! And so, on the contemplation of such a man, these thoughts still ring in my ears to-day, as formerly: “ That passion is better than stoicism or hypocrisy; that straightforwardness, even in evil, is better than losing oneself in trying to observe traditional morality; that the free man is just as able to be good as evil, but that the unemancipated man is a disgrace to nature, and has no share in heavenly or earthly bliss ; finally, that all who wish to be free must become so through themselves, and that freedom falls to nobody’s lot as a gift from Heaven.” {Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, Vol. I. of this Translation, pp. 199-200). 100 Learning to do Homage.-One must learn the art of homage, as well as the art of contempt. Whoever goes in new paths and has led many persons therein, discovers with astonishment how awkward and incompetent all of them are in the expression of their gratitude, and indeed how rarely gratitude is able even to express itself. It is always as if something comes into people’s throats when their gratitude wants to speak, so that it only hems and haws, and becomes silent again. The way in which a thinker succeeds in tracing the effect of his thoughts, and their transforming and convulsing power, is almost a comedy : it sometimes seems as if those who have been operated upon felt profoundly injured thereby, and could only assert their independence, which they suspect to be threatened, by all kinds of improprieties. It needs whole generations in order merely to devise a courteous convention of gratefulness; it is only very late that the period arrives when something of spirit and genius enters into gratitude. Then there is usually someone who is the great receiver of thanks, not only for the good he himself has done, but mostly for that which has been gradually accumulated by his predecessors, as a treasure of what is highest and best. 101 Voltaire.-Wherever there has been a court, it has furnished the standard of good-speaking, and with this also the standard of style for writers. The court language, however, is the language of the courtier who has no profession, and who even in conversations on scientific subjects avoids all convenient, technical expressions, because they smack of the profession;
on that account the technical expression, and everything that betrays the specialist, is a blemish of style in countries which have a court culture. At present, when all courts have become caricatures of past and present times, one is astonished to find even Voltaire unspeakably reserved and scrupulous on this point (for example, in his judgments concerning such stylists as Fontenelle and Montesquieu),-we are now, all of us, emancipated from court taste, while Voltaire was its perfecter ! 102 A Word for Philologists.-It is thought that there are books so valuable and royal that whole generations of scholars are well employed when through their efforts these books are kept genuine and intelligible,-to confirm this belief again and again is the purpose of philology. It presupposes that the rare men are not lacking (though they may not be visible), who actually know how to use such valuable books :-those men perhaps who write such books themselves, or could write them. I mean to say that philology presupposes a noble belief,that for the benefit of some few who are always ” to come,” and are not there, a very great amount of painful, and even dirty labour has to be done beforehand : it is all labour in usum Delphinorum. 103 German Music.-German music, more than any other, has now become European music; because the changes which Europe experienced through the Revolution have therein alone found expression : it is only German music that knows how to express the agitation of popular masses, the tremendous artificial uproar, which does not even need to be very noisy,while Italian opera, for example, knows only the choruses of domestics or soldiers, but not ” the people.” There is the additional fact that in all German music a profound bourgeois jealousy of the noblesse can be traced, especially a jealousy of esprit and elegance, as the expressions of a courtly, chivalrous, ancient, and self-confident society. It is not music like that of Goethe’s musician at the gate, which was pleasing also “ in the hall,” and to the king as well; it is not here said: ” The knights looked on with martial air; with bashful eyes the ladies.” Even the Graces are not allowed in German music without a touch of remorse; it is only with Pleasantness, the country sister of the Graces that the German begins to feel morally at ease-and from this point up to his enthusiastic, learned, and often gruff ” sublimity” (the Beethoven-like sublimity), he feels more and more so. If we want to imagine the man of this music,-well, let us just imagine Beethoven as he appeared beside Goethe, say, at their meeting at Teplitz : as semi-barbarism beside culture, as the masses beside the nobility, as the good-natured man beside the good and more than ” good ” man, as the visionary beside the artist, as the man needing comfort beside the comforted, as the man given to exaggeration and distrust beside the man of reason, as the crank and self-tormenter, as the foolishly enraptured, blessedly unfortunate, sincerely immoderate man, as the pretentious and awkward man,-and altogether as the ” untamed man “ : it was thus that Goethe conceived and characterised him, Goethe, the exceptional German, for whom a music of equal rank has not yet been found! - Finally, let us consider whether the present continually extending contempt of melody and the stunting of the sense for melody among Germans should not be understood as a democratic impropriety and an after-effect of the Revolution ? For melody has such an obvious delight in conformity to law, and such an aversion to everything evolving, unformed and arbitrary, that it sounds like a note out of the ancient European regime, and as a seduction and guidance back to it. 104 The Tone of the German Language.-We know whence the German originated which for several centuries has been the universal literary language of Germany. The Germans, with their reverence for everything that came from the court, intentionally took the chancery style as their pattern in all that they had to write, especially in their letters, records, wills, &c. To write in the chancery style, that was to write in court and government style,-that was regarded as something select, compared with the language of the city in which a person lived. People gradually drew this inference, and spoke also as they wrote,-they thus became still more select in the forms of their words, in the choice of their terms and modes of expression, and finally also in their tones : they affected a court tone when they spoke, and the affectation at last became natural. Perhaps nothing quite similar has ever happened elsewhere:-the predominance of the literary style over the talk, and the formality and affectation of an entire people becoming the basis of a common and no longer dialectical language. I believe that the sound of the German language in the Middle Ages, and especially after the Middle Ages, was extremely rustic and vulgar; it has ennobled itself somewhat during the last centuries, principally because it was found necessary to imitate so many French, Italian, and Spanish sounds, and particularly on the part of the German (and Austrian) nobility, who could not at all content themselves with their mother-tongue. But notwithstanding this practice, German must have sounded intolerably vulgar to Montaigne, and even to Racine: even at present, in the mouths of travellers among the Italian populace, it still sounds very coarse, sylvan, and hoarse, as if it had originated in smoky rooms and outlandish districts.Now I notice that at present a similar striving after selectness of tone is spreading among the former admirers of the chancery style, and that the Germans are beginning to accommodate themselves to a peculiar ” witchery of sound,” which might in the long run become an actual danger to the German language,-for one may seek in vain for more execrable sounds in Europe. Something mocking, cold, indifferent and careless in the voice: that is what at present sounds ” noble” to the Germans - and I hear the approval of this nobleness in the voices of young officials, teachers, women, and trades-people; indeed, even the little girls already imitate this German of the officers. For the officer, and in fact the Prussian officer is the inventor of these tones : this same officer, who as soldier and professional man possesses that admirable tact for modesty which the Germans as a whole might well imitate (German professors and musicians included !). But as soon as he speaks and moves he is the most immodest and inelegant figure in old Europe - no doubt unconsciously to himself! And unconsciously also to the good Germans, who gaze at him as the man of the foremost and most select society, and willingly let him ” give them his tone.” And indeed he gives it to them!-in the first place it is the sergeant-majors and non-commissioned officers that imitate his tone and coarsen it. One should note the roars of command, with which the German cities are absolutely surrounded at present, when there is drilling at all the gates: what presumption, furious imperiousness, and mocking coldness speaks in this uproar! Could the Germans actually be a musical people?-It is certain that the Germans martialise themselves at present in the tone of their language : it is probable that, being
exercised to speak martially, they will finally write martially also. For habituation to definite tones extends deeply into the character:-people soon have the words and modes of expression, and finally also the thoughts which just suit these tones! Perhaps they already write in the officers’ style; perhaps I only read too little of what is at present written in Germany to know this. But one thing I know all the surer: the German public declarations which also reach places abroad, are not inspired by German music, but just by that new tone of tasteless arrogance. Almost in every speech of the foremost German statesman, and even when he makes himself heard through his imperial mouth-piece, there is an accent which the ear of a foreigner repudiates with aversion: but the Germans endure it,-they endure themselves. 105 The Germans as Artists.-When once a German actually experiences passion (and not only, as is usual, the mere inclination to it), he then behaves just as he must do in passion, and does not think further of his behaviour. The truth is, however, that he then behaves very awkwardly and uglily, and as if destitute of rhythm and melody; so that onlookers are pained or moved thereby, but nothing more-unless he elevate himself to the sublimity and enrapturedness of which certain passions are capable. Then even the German becomes beautiful. The consciousness of the height at which beauty begins to shed its charm even over Germans, forces German artists to the height and the super-height, and to the extravagances of passion: they have an actual, profound longing, therefore, to get beyond, or at least to look beyond the ugliness and awkwardness - into a better, easier, more southern, more sunny world. And thus their convulsions are often merely indications that they would like to dance: these poor bears in whom hidden nymphs and satyrs, and sometimes still higher divinities, carry on their game! 106 Music as Advocate.-“ I have a longing for a master of the musical art,” said an innovator to his disciple, ” that he may learn from me my ideas and speak them more widely in his language: I shall thus be better able to reach men’s ears and hearts. For by means of tones one can seduce men to every error and every truth: who could refute a tone ? “ -” You would, therefore, like to be regarded as irrefutable ?” said his disciple. The innovator answered: ” I should like the germ to become a tree. In order that a doctrine may become a tree, it must be believed in for a considerable period ; in order that it may be believed in it must be regarded as irrefutable. Storms and doubts and worms and wickedness are necessary to the tree, that it may manifest its species and the strength of its germ; let it perish if it is not strong enough! But a germ is always merely annihilated,-not refuted!”-When he had said this, his disciple called out impetuously: ” But I believe in your cause, and regard it as so strong that I will say everything against it, everything that I still have in my heart.”-The innovator laughed to himself and threatened the disciple with his finger. “ This kind of discipleship,” said he then, “ is the best, but it is dangerous, and not every kind of doctrine can stand it.” 107 Our Ultimate Gratitude to Art.-If we had not approved of the Arts and invented this sort of cult of the untrue, the insight into the general untruth and falsity of things now given us by science- an insight into delusion and error as conditions of intelligent and sentient existence-would be quite unendurable. Honesty would have disgust and suicide in its train. Now, however, our honesty has a counterpoise which helps us to escape such consequences;-namely, Art, as the good-will to illusion. We do not always restrain our eyes from rounding off and perfecting in imagination: and then it is no longer the eternal imperfection that we carry over the river of Becoming-for we think we carry a goddess, and are proud and artless in rendering this service. As an aesthetic phenomenon existence is still endurable to us ; and by Art, eye and hand and above all the good conscience are given to us, to be able to make such a phenomenon out of ourselves. We must rest from ourselves occasionally by contemplating and looking down upon ourselves, and by laughing or weeping over ourselves from an artistic remoteness : we must discover the hero, and likewise the fool, that is hidden in our passion for knowledge; we must now and then be joyful in our folly, that we may continue to be joyful in our wisdom! And just because we are heavy and serious men in our ultimate depth, and are rather weights than men, there is nothing that does us so much good as the fool’s cap and bells: we need them in presence of ourselves-we need all arrogant, soaring, dancing, mocking, childish and blessed Art, in order not to lose the free dominion over things which our ideal demands of us. It would be backsliding for us, with our susceptible integrity, to lapse entirely into morality, and actually become virtuous monsters and scarecrows, on account of the over - strict requirements which we here lay down for ourselves. We ought also to be able to stand above morality, and not only stand with the painful stiffness of one who every moment fears to slip and fall, but we should also be able to soar and play above it! How could we dispense with Art for that purpose, how could we dispense with the fool ? -And as long as you are still ashamed of yourselves in any way, you still do not belong to us! BOOK THREE 108 New Struggles.-After Buddha was dead people showed his shadow for centuries afterwards in a cave,-an immense frightful shadow. God is dead : but as the human race is constituted, there will perhaps be caves for millenniums yet, in which people will show his shadow.-And we-we have still to overcome his shadow ! 109 Let us beware.-Let us beware against thinking that the world is a living being. Where could it extend itself? What could it nourish itself with? How could it grow and increase? We know tolerably well what the organic is ; and we are to reinterpret the emphatically derivative, tardy, rare and accidental, which we only perceive on the crust of the earth, into the essential, universal and eternal, as those do who call the universe an organism ? That disgusts me. Let us now beware against believing that the universe is a machine ; it is assuredly not constructed with a view to one end ; we invest it with far too high an honour with the word ” machine.” Let us beware against supposing that anything so methodical as the
cyclic motions of our neighbouring stars obtains generally and throughout the universe; indeed a glance at the Milky Way induces doubt as to whether there are not many cruder and more contradictory motions there, and even stars with continuous, rectilinearly gravitating orbits, and the like. The astral arrangement in which we live is an exception; this arrangement, and the relatively long durability which is determined by it, has again made possible the exception of exceptions, the formation of organic life. The general character of the world, on the other hand, is to all eternity chaos; not by the absence of necessity, but in the sense of the absence of order, structure, form, beauty, wisdom, and whatever else our aesthetic humanities are called. Judged by our reason, the unlucky casts are far oftenest the rule, the exceptions are not the secret purpose; and the whole musical box repeats eternally its air, which can never be called a melody, -and finally the very expression, ” unlucky cast” is already an anthropomorphising which involves blame. But how could we presume to blame or praise the universe! Let us beware against ascribing to it heartlessness and unreason, or their opposites ; it is neither perfect, nor beautiful, nor noble; nor does it seek to be anything of the kind, it does not at all attempt to imitate man ! It is altogether unaffected by our aesthetic and moral judgments! Neither has it any self-preservative instinct, nor instinct at all; it also knows no law. Let us beware against saying that there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is no one who commands, no one who obeys, no one who transgresses. When you know that there is no design, you know also that there is no chance: for it is only where there is a world of design that the word ” chance ” has a meaning. Let us beware against saying that death is contrary to life. The living being is only a species of dead being, and a very rare species. - Let us beware against thinking that the world eternally creates the new. There are no eternally enduring substances; matter is just another such error as the God of the Eleatics. But when shall we be at an end with our foresight and precaution ! When will all these shadows of God cease to obscure us ? When shall we have nature entirely un-deified! When shall we be permitted to naturalise ourselves by means of the pure, newly discovered, newly redeemed nature ? 110 Origin of Knowledge.-Throughout immense stretches of time the intellect produced nothing but errors ; some of them proved to be useful and preservative of the species: he who fell in with them, or inherited them, waged the battle for himself and his offspring with better success. Those erroneous articles of faith which were successively transmitted by inheritance, and have finally become almost the property and stock of the human species, are, for example, the following :-that there are enduring things, that there are equal things, that there are things, substances, and bodies, that a thing is what it appears, that our will is free, that what is good for me is also good absolutely. It was only very late that the deniers and doubters of such propositions came forward,- it was only very late that truth made its appearance as the most impotent form of knowledge. It seemed as if it were impossible to get along with truth, our organism was adapted for the very opposite; all its higher functions, the perceptions of the senses, and in general every kind of sensation, cooperated with those primeval embodied, fundamental errors. Moreover, those propositions became the very standards of knowledge according to which the ” true” and the ” false” were determined- throughout the whole domain of pure logic. The strength of conceptions does not, therefore, depend on their degree of truth, but on their antiquity, their embodiment, their character as conditions of life. Where life and knowledge seemed to conflict, there has never been serious contention; denial and doubt have there been regarded as madness. The exceptional thinkers like the Eleatics, who, in spite of this, advanced and maintained the antitheses of the natural errors, believed that it was possible also to live these counterparts: it was they who devised the sage as the man of immutability, impersonality and universality of intuition, as one and all at the same time, with a special faculty for that reverse kind of knowledge; they were of the belief that their knowledge was at the same time the principle of life. To be able to affirm all this, however, they had to deceive themselves concerning their own condition: they had to attribute to themselves impersonality and unchanging permanence, they had to mistake the nature of the philosophic individual, deny the force of the impulses in cognition, and conceive of reason generally as an entirely free and self-originating activity; they kept their eyes shut to the fact that they also had reached their doctrines in contradiction to valid methods, or through their longing for repose or for exclusive possession or for domination. The subtler development of sincerity and of scepticism finally made these men impossible; their life also, and their judgments, turned out to be dependent on the primeval impulses and fundamental errors of all sentient being.-The subtler sincerity and scepticism arose wherever two antithetical maxims appeared to be applicable to life, because both of them were compatible with the fundamental errors ; where, therefore, there could be contention concerning a higher or lower degree of utility for life ; and likewise where new maxims proved to be, not necessarily useful, but at least not injurious, as expressions of an intellectual impulse to play a game that was like all games innocent and happy. The human brain was gradually filled with such judgments and convictions; and in this tangled skein there arose ferment, strife and lust for power. Not only utility and delight, but every kind of impulse took part in the struggle for ” truths ” : the intellectual struggle became a business, an attraction, a calling, a duty, an honour-: cognizing and striving for the true finally arranged themselves as needs among other needs. From that moment, not only belief and conviction, but also examination, denial, distrust and contradiction became forces; all “ evil “ instincts were subordinated to knowledge, were placed in its service, and acquired the prestige of the permitted, the honoured, the useful, and finally the appearance and innocence of the good. Knowledge, thus became a portion of life itself, and as life it became a continually growing power: until finally the cognitions and those primeval, fundamental errors clashed with each other, both as life, both as power, both in the same man. The thinker is now the being in whom the impulse to truth and those life-preserving errors wage their first conflict, now that the impulse to truth has also proved itself to be a life-preserving power. In comparison with the importance of this conflict everything else is indifferent; the final question concerning the conditions of life is here raised, and the first attempt is here made to answer it by experiment. How far is truth susceptible of embodiment?-that is the question, that is the experiment. in. 111 Origin of the Logical.-Where has logic originated in men’s heads? Undoubtedly out of the illogical, the domain of which must originally have been immense. But numberless beings who reasoned otherwise than we do at present, perished ; albeit that they may have come nearer to truth than we! Whoever, for example, could not discern the ” like” often
enough with regard to food, and with regard to animals dangerous to him, whoever, therefore, deduced too slowly, or was too circumspect in his deductions, had smaller probability of survival than he who in all similar cases immediately divined the equality. The preponderating is; inclination, however, to deal with the similar as the equal-an illogical inclination, for there is nothing equal in itself-first created the whole basis of logic. It was just so (in order that the conception of substance should originate, this being indispensable to logic, although in the strictest sense nothing actual corresponds to it) that for a long period the changing process in things had to be overlooked, and remain unperceived ; the beings not seeing correctly had an advantage over those who saw everything ” in flux.” In itself every high degree of circumspection in conclusions, every sceptical inclination, is a great danger to life. No living being might have been preserved unless the contrary inclination-to affirm rather than suspend judgment, to mistake and fabricate rather than wait, to assent rather than deny, to decide rather than be in the right-had been cultivated with extraordinary assiduity.-The course of logical thought and reasoning in our modern brain corresponds to a process and struggle of impulses, which singly and in themselves are all very illogical and unjust ; we experience usually only the result of the struggle, so rapidly and secretly does this primitive mechanism now operate in us. 112 Cause and Effect.-We say it is ” explanation ” ; but it is only in ” description” that we are in advance of the older stages of knowledge and science. We describe better,-we explain just as little as our predecessors. We have discovered a manifold succession where the naive man and investigator of older cultures saw only two things, ” cause ” and ” effect,” as it was said ; we have perfected the conception of becoming, but have not got a knowledge of what is above and behind the conception. The series of ” causes ” stands before us much more complete in every case; we conclude that this and that must first precede in order that that other may follow-but we have not grasped anything thereby. The peculiarity, for example, in every chemical process seems a ” miracle,” the same as before, just like all locomotion; nobody has ” explained ” impulse. How could we ever explain! We operate only with things which do not exist, with lines, surfaces, bodies, atoms, divisible times, divisible spaces-how can explanation ever be possible when we first make everything a conception, our conception! It is sufficient to regard science as the exactest humanising of things that is possible; we always learn to describe ourselves more accurately by describing things and their successions. Cause and effect: there is probably never any such duality; in fact there is a continuum before us, from which we isolate a few portions ;- just as we always observe a motion as isolated points, and therefore do not properly see it, but infer it. The abruptness with which many effects take place leads us into error; it is however only an abruptness for us. There is an infinite multitude of processes in that abrupt moment which escape us. An intellect which could see cause and effect as a continuum, which could see the flux of events not according to our mode of perception, as things arbitrarily separated and broken-would throw aside the conception of cause and effect, and would deny all conditionality. 113 The Theory of Poisons.-So many things have to be united in order that scientific thinking may arise, and all the necessary powers must have been devised, exercised, and fostered singly! In their isolation, however, they have very often had quite a different effect than at present, when they are confined within the limits of scientific thinking and kept mutually in check :-they have operated as poisons ; for example, the doubting impulse, the denying impulse, the waiting impulse, the collecting impulse, the disintegrating impulse. Many hecatombs of men were sacrificed ere these impulses learned to understand their juxtaposition and regard themselves as functions of one organising force in one man ! And how far are we still from the point at which the artistic powers and the practical wisdom of life shall co-operate with scientific thinking, so that a higher organic system may be formed, in relation to which the scholar, the physician, the artist, and the lawgiver, as we know them at present, will seem sorry antiquities! 114 The Extent of the Moral.-We construct a new picture, which we see immediately with the aid of all the old experiences which we have had, always according to the degree of our honesty and justice. The only experiences are moral experiences, even in the domain of sense-perception. 115 The Four Errors.-Man has been reared by his errors: firstly, he saw himself always imperfect; secondly, he attributed to himself imaginary qualities ; thirdly, he felt himself in a false position in relation to the animals and nature ; fourthly, he always devised new tables of values, and accepted them for a time as eternal and unconditioned, so that at one time this, and at another time that human impulse or state stood first, and was ennobled in consequence. When one has deducted the effect of these four errors, one has also deducted humanity, humaneness, and ” human dignity.” 116 Herd-Instinct. - Wherever we meet with a morality we find a valuation and order of rank of the human impulses and activities. These valuations and orders of rank are always the expression of the needs of a community or herd: that which is in the first place to its advantage- and in the second place and third place-is also the authoritative standard for the worth of every individual. By morality the individual is taught to become a function of the herd, and to ascribe to himself value only as a function. As the conditions for the maintenance of one community have been very different from those of another community, there have been very different moralities; and in respect to the future essential transformations of herds and communities, states and societies, one can prophesy that there will still be very divergent moralities. Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual. 117 The Herd’s Sting of Conscience.-In the longest and remotest ages of the human race there was quite a different sting of conscience from that of the present day. At present one only
feels responsible for what one intends and for what one does, and we have our pride in ourselves. All our professors of jurisprudence^ start with this sentiment of individual independence and pleasure, as if the source of right had taken its rise here from the beginning. But throughout the longest period in the life of mankind there was nothing more terrible to a person than to feel himself independent. To be alone, to feel independent, neither to obey nor to rule, to represent an individual-that was no pleasure to a person then, but a punishment; he was condemned “ to be an individual.” Freedom of thought was regarded as discomfort personified. While we feel law and regulation as constraint and loss, people formerly regarded egoism as a painful thing, and a veritable evil. For a person to be himself, to value himself according to his own measure and weight-that was then quite distasteful. The inclination to such a thing would have been regarded as madness; for all miseries and terrors were associated with being alone. At that time the ” free will” had bad conscience in close proximity to it; and the less independently a person acted, the more the herd-instinct, and not his personal character, expressed itself in his conduct, so much the more moral did he esteem himself. All thatdid injury to the herd, whether the individual had intended it or not, then caused him a sting of conscience-and his neighbour likewise, indeed the whole herd !-It is in this respect that we have most changed our mode of thinking. 118 Benevolence.-Is it virtuous when a cell transforms itself into the function of a stronger cell ? It must do so. And is it wicked when the stronger one assimilates the other ? It must do so likewise: it is necessary, for it has to have abundant indemnity and seeks to regenerate itself. One has therefore to distinguish the instinct of appropriation and the instinct of submission in benevolence, according as the stronger or the weaker feels benevolent. Gladness and covetousness are united in the stronger person, who wants to transform something to his function: gladness and desire-to-be-coveted in the weaker person, who would like to become a function.-The former case is essentially pity, a pleasant excitation of the instinct of appropriation at the sight of the weak: it is to be remembered, however, that ” strong ” and ” weak ” are relative conceptions. 119 No Altruism I-I see in many men an excessive impulse and delight in wanting to be a function; they strive after it, and have the keenest scent for all those positions in which precisely they themselves can be functions. Among such persons are those women who transform themselves into just that function of a man that is but weakly developed in him, and then become his purse, or his politics, or his social intercourse. Such beings maintain themselves best when they insert themselves in an alien organism; if they do not succeed they become vexed, irritated, and eat themselves up. 120 Health of the Soul.-The favourite medico-moral formula (whose originator was Ariston of Chios), ” Virtue is the health of the soul,” would, for all practical purposes, have to be altered to this: ” Your virtue is the health of your soul.” For there is no such thing as health in itself, and all attempts to define a thing in that way have lamentably failed. It is necessary to know your aim, your horizon, your powers, your impulses, your errors, and especially the ideals and fantasies of your soul, in order to determine what health implies even for your body. There are consequently innumerable kinds of physical health; and the more one again permits the unique and unparalleled to raise its head, the more one unlearns the dogma of the ” Equality of men,” so much the more also must the conception of a normal health, together with a normal diet and a normal course of disease, be abrogated by our physicians. And then only would it be time to turn our thoughts to the health and disease of the soul, and make the special virtue of everyone consist in its health; but, to be sure, what appeared as health in one person might appear as the contrary of health in another. In the end the great question might still remain open:-Whether we could do without sickness for the development of our virtue, and whether our thirst for knowledge and self-knowledge would not especially need the sickly soul as well as the sound one; in short, whether the mere will to health is not a prejudice, a cowardice, and perhaps an instance of the subtlest barbarism and unprogressiveness ? 121 Life no Argument.-We have arranged for ourselves a world in which we can live-by the postulating of bodies, lines, surfaces, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content: without these articles of faith no one could manage to live at present! But for all that they are still unproved. Life is no argument; error might be among the conditions of life. 122 The Element of Moral Scepticism in Christianity. -Christianity also has made a great contribution to enlightenment, and has taught moral scepticism -in a very impressive and effective manner, accusing and embittering, but with untiring patience and subtlety; it annihilated in every individual the belief in his virtues : it made the great virtuous ones, of whom antiquity had no lack, vanish for ever from the earth, those popular men, who, in the belief in their perfection, walked about with the dignity of a hero of the bull-fight. When, trained in this Christian school of scepticism, we now read the moral books of the ancients, for example those of Seneca and Epictetus, we feel a pleasurable superiority, and are full of secret insight and penetration,-it seems to us as if a child talked before an old man, or a pretty, gushing girl before La Rochefoucauld:-we know better what virtue is! After all, however, we have applied the same scepticism to all religious states and processes, such as sin, repentance, grace, sanctification, &c, and have allowed the worm to burrow so well, that we have now the same feeling of subtle superiority and insight even in reading all Christian books:-we know also the religious feelings better ! And it is time to know them well and describe them well, for the pious ones of the old belief die out also; let us save their likeness and type, at least for the sake of knowledge. 123 Knowledge more than a Means.-Also without this passion-I refer to the passion for knowledge -science would be furthered : science has until now increased and grown up without it. The good faith in science, the prejudice in its favour, by which States are at present dominated (it was even the Church formerly), rests fundamentally on the fact that the absolute
inclination and impulse has so rarely revealed itself in it, and that science is regarded not as a passion, but as a condition and an ” ethos.” Indeed, amour-plaisir of knowledge (curiosity) often enough suffices, amour-vanite” suffices, and habituation to it, with the afterthought of obtaining honour and bread; it even suffices for many that they do not know what to do with a surplus of leisure, except to continue reading, collecting, arranging, observing and narrating; their “ scientific impulse” is their ennui. Pope Leo X. once (in the brief to Beroaldus) sang the praise of science; he designated it as the finest ornament and the greatest pride of our life, a noble employment in happiness and in misfortune; ” without it,” he says finally, ” all human undertakings would be without a firm basis,-even with it they are still sufficiently mutable and insecure!” But this rather sceptical Pope, like all other ecclesiastical panegyrists of science, suppressed his ultimate judgment concerning it. If one may deduce from his words what is remarkable enough for such a lover of art, that he places science above art, it is after all, however, only from politeness that he omits to speak of that which he places high above all science: the ” revealed truth,” and the ” eternal salvation of the soul,”-what are ornament, pride, entertainment and security of life to him, in comparison thereto ? ” Science is something of secondary rank, nothing ultimate or unconditioned, no object of passion “ - this judgment was kept back in Leo’s soul: the truly Christian judgment concerning science! In antiquity its dignity and appreciation were lessened by the fact that, even among its most eager disciples, the striving after virtue stood foremost, and that people thought they had given the highest praise to knowledge when they celebrated it as the best means to virtue. It is something new in history that knowledge claims to be more than a means. 124 In the Horizon of the Infinite.-We have left the land and have gone aboard ship! We have broken down the bridge behind us,-nay, more, the land behind us! Well, little ship! look out! Beside you is the ocean; it is true it does not always roar, and sometimes it spreads out like silk and gold and a gentle reverie. But times will come when you wilt feel that it is infinite, and that there is nothing more frightful than infinity. Oh, the poor bird that felt itself free, and now strikes against the walls of this cage! Alas, if homesickness for the land should attack you, as if there had been more freedom there,-and there is no ” land ” any longer! 125 The Madman. - Have you ever heard of the madman who on a bright morning lighted a lantern and ran to the market - place calling out unceasingly: “ I seek God! I seek God!” As there were many people standing about who did not believe in God, he caused a great deal of amusement. Why! Is he lost? said one. Has he strayed away like a child? said another. Or does he keep himself hidden ? Is he afraid of us? Has he taken a sea-voyage? Has he emigrated?-the people cried out laughingly, all in a hubbub. The insane man jumped into their midst and transfixed them with his glances. “ Where is God gone?” he called out. “ I mean to tell you! We have killed him, - you and I! We are all his murderers! But how have we done it? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon? What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun? Whither does it now move? Whither do we move? Away from all suns? Do we not dash on unceasingly? Backwards, sideways, forewards, in all directions? Is there still an above and below? Do we not stray, as through infinite nothingness? Does not empty space breathe upon us? Has it not become colder? Does not night come on continually, darker and darker? Shall we not have to light lanterns in the morning? Do we not hear the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we not smell the divine putrefaction? - for even Gods putrefy! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we console ourselves, the most murderous of all murderers? The holiest and the mightiest that the world has hitherto possessed, has bled to death under our knives ,- who will wipe the blood from us? With what water could we clean ourselves? What festivals, what sacred games shall we have to devise? Is not the magnitude of this deed too great for us? Shall we not ourselves have to become Gods, merely to seem worthy of it? There never was a greater event,- and on account of it, all who are born after us belong to a higher history than any history before this!” - Here the madman was silent and looked again at his listeners ; they also were silent and looked at him in surprise. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, so that it broke in pieces and was extinguished. “ I come too early,” he then said, “ I am not yet at the right time. This prodigious event is still on its way, and is travelling, - it has not yet reached men’s ears. Lightning and thunder need time, the light of the stars needs time, deeds need time, even after they are done, to be seen and heard. This deed is as yet further from them than the furthest star, - and yet they have done it!” - It is further stated that the madman made his way into different churches on the same day, and there intoned his Requiem aeternam dec When led out and called to account, he always gave the reply: ” What are these churches now, if they are not the tombs and monuments of God? “ 126 Mystical Explanations.-Mystical explanations are regarded as profound ; the truth is that they do not even go the length of being superficial. 127 After-Effect of the most Ancient Religiousness.- The thoughtless man thinks that the Will is the only thing that operates, that willing is something simple, manifestly given, underived, and comprehensible in itself. He is convinced that when he does anything, for example, when he delivers a blow, it is he who strikes, and he has struck because he willed to strike. He does not notice anything of a problem therein, but the feeling of willing suffices to him, not only for the acceptance of cause and effect, but also for the belief that he understands their relationship. Of the mechanism of the occurrence, and of the manifold subtle operations that must be performed in order that the blow may result, and likewise of the incapacity of the Will in itself to effect even the smallest part of those operations-he knows nothing. The Will is to him a magically operating force; the belief in the Will as the cause of effects is the belief in magically operating forces. In fact, whenever he saw anything happen, man originally believed in a Will as cause, and in personally willing beings operating in the background,-the conception of mechanism was very remote from him. Because, however, man for immense periods of time believed only in persons (and not in matter, forces, things, &c), the belief in cause and effect has become a fundamental belief with him, which he applies everywhere when anything happens,-and even still uses instinctively as a piece
of atavism of remotest origin. The propositions, ” No effect without a cause,” and ” Every effect again implies a cause,” appear as generalisations of several less general propositions: -“ Where there is operation there has been willing” ” Operating is only possible on willing beings.” “ There is never a pure, resultless experience of activity, but every experience involves stimulation of the Will” (to activity, defence, revenge or retaliation). But in the primitive period of the human race, the latter and the former propositions were identical, the first were not generalisations of the second, but the second were explanations of the first.-Schopenhauer, with his assumption that all that exists is something volitional, has set a primitive mythology on the throne; he seems never to have attempted an analysis of the Will, because he believed like everybody in the simplicity and immediateness of all volition:while volition is in fact such a cleverly practised mechanical process that it almost escapes the observing eye. I set the following propositions against those of Schopenhauer:-Firstly, in order that Will may arise, an idea of pleasure and pain is necessary. Secondly, that a vigorous excitation may be felt as pleasure or pain, is the affair of the interpreting intellect, which, to be sure, operates thereby for the most part unconsciously to us, and one and the same excitation may be interpreted as pleasure or pain. Thirdly, it is only in an intellectual being that there is pleasure, displeasure and Will; the immense majority of organisms have nothing of the kind. 128 The Value of Prayer.-Prayer has been devised for such men as have never any thoughts of their own, and to whom an elevation of the soul is unknown, or passes unnoticed; what shall these people do in holy places and in all important situations in life which require repose and some kind of dignity ? In order at least that they may not disturb, the wisdom of all the founders of religions, the small as well as the great, has commended to them the formula of prayer, as a long mechanical labour of the lips, united with an effort of the memory, and with a uniform, prescribed attitude of hands and feet-and eyes! They may then, like the Tibetans, chew the cud of their ” om matie padme hum” innumerable times, or, as in Benares, count the name of the God Ram-Ram-Ram (etc., with or without grace) on their fingers ; or honour Vishnu with his thousand names of invocation, Allah with his ninetynine; or they may make use of the prayer-wheels and the rosary: the main thing is that they are settled down for a time at this work, and present a tolerable appearance; their mode of prayer is devised for the advantage of the pious who have thought and elevation of their own. But even these have their weary hours when a series of venerable words and sounds, and a mechanical, pious ritual does them good. But supposing that these rare men-in every religion the religious man is an exception-know how to help themselves, the poor in spirit do not know, and to forbid them the prayer-babbling would mean to take their religion from them, a fact which Protestantism brings more and more to light. All that religion wants with such persons is that they should keep still with their eyes, hands, legs, and all their organs : they thereby become temporarily beautified and-more human-looking! 129 The Conditions for God.-1’ God himself cannot subsist without wise men,” said Luther, and with good reason ; but ” God can still less subsist without unwise men,”-good Luther did not say that! 130 A Dangerous Resolution.-The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad, has made the world ugly and bad. 131 Christianity and Suicide.-Christianity made use of the excessive longing for suicide at the time of its origin as a lever for its power: it left only two forms of suicide, invested them with the highest dignity and the highest hopes, and forbade all others with dreadful threats. But martyrdom and the slow self-annihilation of the ascetic were permitted. 132 Against Christianity.-It is now no longer our reason, but our taste that decides against Christianity. 133 Axioms.-An unavoidable hypothesis on which mankind must always fall back again, is in the long run more powerful than the most firmly believed belief in something untrue (like the Christian belief). In the long run: that means a hundred thousand years hence. 134 Pessimists as Victims.-When a profound dislike of existence gets the upper hand, the after-effect of a great error in diet of which a people has been long guilty comes to light. The spread of Buddhism {not its origin) is thus to a considerable extent dependent on the excessive and almost exclusive rice-fare of the Indians, and on the universal enervation that results from that. Perhaps the modern, European discontentedness is to be looked upon as caused by the fact that the world of our forefathers, the whole Middle Ages, was given to drink, owing to the influence of German tastes in Europe : the Middle Ages, that means the alcoholic poisoning of Europe.-The German dislike of life (including the influence of the cellar-air and stove-poison in German dwellings), is essentially a cold-weather complaint. 135 Origin of Sin.-Sin, as it is at present felt wherever Christianity prevails or has prevailed, is a Jewish feeling and a Jewish invention; and in respect to this background of all Christian morality, Christianity has in fact aimed at ” Judaising” the whole world. To what an extent this has succeeded in Europe is traced most accurately in our remarkable alienness to Greek antiquity-a world without the feeling of sin-in our sentiments even at present; in spite of all the good will to approximation and assimilation, which whole generations and many distinguished individuals have not failed to display. “ Only when you repent is God gracious to you”-that would arouse the laughter or the wrath of a Greek : he would say, “ Slaves may have such sentiments.” Here a mighty being, an almighty being, and yet a revengeful being, is presupposed ; his power is so great that no injury whatever
can be done to him, except in the point of honour. Every sin is an infringement of respect, a crimen Icbscb majestatis divines-and nothing more ! Contrition, degradation, rolling-inthe-dust,-these are the first and last conditions on which his favour depends: the restoration, therefore, of his divine honour! If injury be caused otherwise by sin, if a profound, spreading evil be propagated by it, an evil which, like a disease, attacks and strangles one man after another-that does not trouble this honour-craving Oriental in heaven ; sin is an offence against him, not against mankind!-to him on whom he has bestowed his favour he bestows also this indifference to the natural consequences of sin. God and mankind are here thought of as separated, as so antithetical that sin against the latter cannot be at all possible,-all deeds are to be looked upon solely with respect to their supernatural consequences, and not with respect to their natural results: it is thus that the Jewish feeling, to which all that is natural seems unworthy in itself, would have things. The Greeks, on the other hand, were more familiar with the thought that transgression also may have dignity,-even theft, as in the case of Prometheus, even the slaughtering of cattle as the expression of frantic jealousy, as in the case of Ajax; in their need to attribute dignity to transgression and embody it therein, they invented tragedy,-an art and a delight, which in its profoundest essence has remained alien to the Jew, in spite of all his poetic endowment and taste for the sublime. 136 The Chosen People.-The Jews, who regard themselves as the chosen people among the nations, and that too because they are the moral genius among the nations (in virtue of their capacity for despising the human in themselves more than any other people)-the Jews have a pleasure in their divine monarch and saint similar to that which the French nobility had in Louis XIV. This nobility hadallowed its power and autocracy to be taken from it, and had become contemptible: in order not to feel this, in order to be able to forget it, an unequalled royal magnificence, royal authority and plenitude of power was needed, to which there was access only for the nobility. As in accordance with this privilege they raised themselves to the elevation of the court, and from that elevation saw everything under them,-saw everything contemptible,-they got beyond all uneasiness of conscience. They thus elevated intentionally the tower of the royal power more and more into the clouds, and set the final coping-stone of their own power thereon. 137 Spoken in Parable.-A Jesus Christ was only possible in a Jewish landscape-I mean in one over which the gloomy and sublime thunder-cloud of the angry Jehovah hung continually. Here only was the rare, sudden flashing of a single sunbeam through the dreadful, universal and continuous nocturnal-day regarded as a miracle of “ love,” as a beam of the most unmerited ” grace.” Here only could Christ dream of his rainbow and celestial ladder on which God descended to man; everywhere else the clear weather and the sun were considered the rule and the commonplace. 138 The Error of Christ.-The founder of Christianity thought there was nothing from which men suffered so much as from their sins :-it was his error, the error of him who felt himself without sin, to whom experience was lacking in this respect! It was thus that his soul filled with that marvellous, fantastic pity which had reference to a trouble that even among his own people, the inventors of sin, was rarely a great trouble! But Christians understood subsequently how to do justice to their master, and how to sanctify his error into a ” truth.” 139 Colour of the Passions.-Natures such as the apostle Paul, have an evil eye for the passions; they learn to know only the filthy, the distorting, and the heart-breaking in them,-their ideal aim, therefore, is the annihilation of the passions ; in the divine they see complete purification from passion. The Greeks, quite otherwise than Paul and the Jews, directed their ideal, aim precisely to the passions, and loved, elevated, embellished and deified them : in passion they evidently not only felt themselves happier, but also purer and diviner than otherwise.-And now the Christians ? Have they wished to become Jews in this respect? Have they perhaps become Jews ? 140 Too Jewish.-If God had wanted to become an object of love, he would first of all have had to forgo judging and justice:-a judge, and even a gracious judge, is no object of love. The founder of Christianity showed too little of the finer feelings in this respect-being a Jew. 141 Too Oriental.-What? A God who loves men, provided that they believe in him, and who hurls frightful glances and threats at him who does not believe in this love! What ? A conditioned love as the feeling of an almighty God! A love which has not even become master of the sentiment of honour and of the irritable desire for vengeance ! How Oriental is all that! ” If I love you, what does it concern you ? ” * is already a sufficient criticism of the whole of Christianity. 142 Frankincense.-Buddha says : ” Do not flatter your benefactor !” Let one repeat this saying in a Christian church:-it immediately purifies the air of all Christianity. 143 The Greatest Advantage of Polytheism. - For the individual to set up his own ideal and derive from it his laws, his pleasures and his rights - that has perhaps been until now regarded as the most monstrous of all human aberrations, and as idolatry in itself; in fact, the few who have ventured to do this have always needed to apologise to themselves, usually in this way: ” Not I! not I ! but a God, through me!” It was in the marvellous art and capacity for creating Gods - in polytheism - that this impulse was permitted to discharge itself, it was here that it became purified, perfected, and ennobled ; for it was originally a commonplace and unimportant impulse, akin to stubbornness, disobedience and envy. To be hostile to this impulse towards the individual ideal, - that was formerly the law of every morality. There was then only one norm, “ the man” - and every people believed that it had
this one and ultimate norm. But above himself, and outside of himself, in a distant over-world, a person could see a multitude of norms: the one God was not the denial or blasphemy of the other Gods! It was here that individuals were first permitted, it was here that the right of individuals was first respected. The inventing of Gods, heroes, and supermen of all kinds, as well as co-ordinate men and undermen-dwarfs, fairies, centaurs, satyrs, demons, devils - was the inestimable preliminary to the justification of the selfishness and sovereignty of the individual: the freedom which was granted to one God in respect to other Gods, was at last given to the individual himself in respect to laws, customs and neighbours. Monotheism, on the contrary, the rigid consequence of the doctrine of one normal human being - consequently the belief in a normal God, beside whom there are only false, spurious Gods - has perhaps been the greatest danger of mankind in the past: man was then threatened by that premature state of inertia, which, so far as we can see, most of the other species of animals reached long ago, as creatures who all believed in one normal animal and ideal in their species, and definitely translated their morality of custom into flesh and blood. In polytheism man’s free-thinking and many-sided thinking had a prototype set up: the power to create for himself new and individual eyes, always newer and more individualised: so that it is for man alone, of all the animals, that there are no eternal horizons and perspectives. 144 Religious Wars.-The greatest advance of the masses until now has been religious war, for it proves that the masses have begun to deal reverently with conceptions of things. Religious wars only result, when human reason generally has been refined by the subtle disputes of sects ; so that even the populace becomes punctilious and regards trifles as important, actually thinking it possible that the ” eternal salvation of the soul” may depend upon minute distinctions of concepts. 145 Danger of Vegetarians. - The immense prevalence of rice-eating impels to the use of opium and narcotics, in like manner as the immense prevalence of potato - eating impels to the use of brandy:-it also impels, however, in its more subtle after-effects to modes of thought and feeling which operate narcotically. This is in accord with the fact that those who promote narcotic modes of thought and feeling, like those Indian teachers, praise a purely vegetable diet, and would like to make it a law for the masses: they want thereby to call forth and augment the need which they are in a position to satisfy. 146 German Hopes. - Do not let us forget that the names of peoples are generally names of reproach. The Tartars, for example, according to their name, are ” the dogs”; they were so christened by the Chinese. ” Deutschen” (Germans) means originally ” heathen ” : it is thus that the Goths after their conversion named the great mass of their unbaptized fellowtribes, according to the indication in their translation of the Septuagint, in which the heathen are designated by the word which in Greek signifies ” the nations.” (See Ulfilas.)-It might still be possible for the Germans to make an honourable name ultimately out of their old name of reproach, by becoming the first- non-Christian nation of Europe ; for which purpose Schopenhauer, to their honour, regarded them as highly qualified. The work of Luther would thus be consummated,-he who taught them to be anti-Roman, and to say: ” Here / stand ! / cannot do otherwise!”147 Question and Answer.-What do savage tribes at present accept first of all from Europeans? Brandy and Christianity, the European narcotics.- And by what means are they most quickly ruined ?-By the European narcotics. 148 Where Reformations Originate.-At the time of the great corruption of the church it was least of all corrupt in Germany: it was on that account that the Reformation originated here, as a sign that even the beginnings of corruption were felt to be unendurable. For, comparatively speaking, no people was ever more Christian than the Germans at the time of Luther ; their Christian culture was just about to burst into bloom with a hundred-fold splendour,-one night only was still lacking; but that night brought the storm which put an end to all. 149 The Failure of Reformations.-It testifies to the higher culture of the Greeks, even in rather early ages, that attempts to establish new Grecian religions frequently failed; it testifies that quite early there must have been a multitude of dissimilar individuals in Greece, whose dissimilar troubles were not cured by a single recipe of faith and hope. Pythagoras and Plato, perhaps also Empedocles, and already much earlier the Orphic enthusiasts, aimed at founding new religions; and the two first-named were so endowed with the qualifications for founding religions, that one cannot be sufficiently astonished at their failure : they just reached the point of founding sects. Every time that the Reformation of an entire people fails and only sects raise their heads, one may conclude that the people already contains many types, and has begun to free itself from the gross herding instincts and the morality of custom,-a momentous state of suspense, which one is accustomed to disparage as decay of morals and corruption, while it announces the maturing of the egg and the early rupture of the shell. That Luther’s Reformation succeeded in the north, is a sign that the north had remained backward in comparison with the south of Europe, and still had requirements tolerably uniform in colour and kind ; and there would have been no Christianising of Europe at all, if the culture of the old world of the south had not been gradually barbarized by an excessive admixture of the blood of German barbarians, and thus lost its ascendency. The more universally and unconditionally an individual, or the thought of an individual, can operate, so much more homogeneous and so much lower must be the mass that is there operated upon; while counter-strivings betray internal counter-requirements, which also want to gratify and realise themselves. Reversely, one may always conclude with regard to an actual elevation of culture, when powerful and ambitious natures only produce a limited and sectarian effect: this is true also for the separate arts, and for the provinces of knowledge. Where there is ruling there are masses: where there are masses there is need of slavery. Where
there is slavery the individuals are but few, and have the instincts and conscience of the herd opposed to them. 150 Criticism of Saints.-Must one then, in order to have a virtue, be desirous of having it precisely in its most brutal form ?-as the Christian saints desired and needed ;-those who only endured life with the thought that at the sight of their virtue self-contempt might seize every man. A virtue with such an effect I call brutal. 151 The Origin of Religion. - The metaphysical requirement is not the origin of religions, as Schopenhauer claims, but only a later sprout from them. Under the dominance of religious thoughts we have accustomed ourselves to the idea of ” another (back, under, or upper) world,” and feel an uncomfortable void and privation through the annihilation of the religious illusion;-and then “ another world” grows out of this feeling once more, but now it is only a metaphysical world, and no longer a religious one. That however which in general led to the assumption of ” another world ” in primitive times, was not an impulse or requirement, but an error in the interpretation of certain natural phenomena, a difficulty of the intellect. 152 The greatest Change.-The lustre and the hues of all things have changed! We no longer quite understand how earlier men conceived of the most familiar and frequent things,-for example, of the day, and the awakening in the morning: owing to their belief in dreams the waking state seemed to them differently illuminated. And similarly of the whole of life, with its reflection of death and its significance: our ” death ” is an entirely different death. All events were of a different lustre, for a God shone forth in them ; and similarly of all resolutions and peeps into the distant future: for people had oracles, and secret hints, and believed in prognostication. ” Truth ” was conceived in quite a different manner, for the insane could formerly be regarded as its mouthpiece-a thing which makes us shudder, or laugh. Injustice made a different impression on the feelings: for people were afraid of divine retribution, and not only of legal punishment and disgrace. What joy was there in an age when men believed in the devil and tempter! What passion was there when people saw demons lurking close at hand ! What philosophy was there when doubt was regarded as sinfulness of the most dangerous kind, and in fact as an outrage on eternal love, as distrust of everything good, high, pure, and compassionate!-We have coloured things anew, we paint them over continually,-but what have we been able to do until now in comparison with the splendid colouring of that old master!-I mean ancient humanity. 153 Homo poeta.-” I myself who have made this tragedy of tragedies altogether independently, in so far as it is completed ; I who have first entwined the perplexities of morality about existence, and have tightened them so that only a God could unravel them - so Horace demands ! - I have already in the fourth act killed all the Gods- for the sake of morality! What is now to be done about the fifth act ? Where shall I get the tragic denouement! Must I now think about a comic denouement?” 154 Differences in the Dangerousness of Life.-You don’t know at all what you experience; you run through life as if intoxicated, and now and then fall down a stair. Thanks however to your intoxication you still do not break your limbs: your muscles are too languid and your head too confused to find the stones of the staircase as hard as we others do! For us life is a greater danger: we are made of glass-alas, if we should strike against anything! And all is lost if we should fall/ 155 What we Lack.-We love the grandeur of Nature, and have discovered it; that is because human grandeur is lacking in our minds. It was the reverse with the Greeks : their feeling towards Nature was quite different from ours. 156 The most Influential Person.-The fact that a person resists the whole spirit of his age, stops it at the door and calls it to account, must exert an influence! It is indifferent whether he wishes to exert an influence ; the point is that he can. 157 Mentiri.—Take care ! - he reflects : he will have a lie ready immediately. This is a stage in the civilisation of whole nations. Consider only what the Romans expressed by mentiri! 158 An Inconvenient Peculiarity.-To find everything deep is an inconvenient peculiarity: it makes one constantly strain one’s eyes, so that in the end one always finds more than one wishes. 159 Every Virtue has its Time. - The honesty of him who is at present inflexible often causes him remorse; for inflexibility is the virtue of a time different from that in which honesty prevails. 160 In Intercourse with Virtues.-One can also be undignified and flattering towards a virtue.
161 To the Admirers of the Age.-The runaway priest and the liberated criminal are continually making grimaces; what they want is a look without a past. -But have you ever seen men who know that their looks reflect the future, and who are so courteous to you, the admirers of the ” age,” that they assume a look without a future ?162 Egoism.-Egoism is the perspective law of our sentiment, according to which the near appears large and momentous, while in the distance the magnitude and importance of all things diminish. 163 After a Great Victory.-The best thing in a great victory is that it deprives the conqueror of the fear of defeat. ” Why should I not be worsted for once ? ” he says to himself, ” I am now rich enough to stand it.” 164 Those who Seek Repose.-I recognise the minds that seek repose by the many dark objects with which they surround themselves: those who want to sleep darken their chambers, or creep into caverns. A hint to those who do not know what they really seek most, and would like to know! 165 The Happiness of Renunciation.-He who has absolutely dispensed with something for a long time will almost imagine, when he accidentally meets with it again, that he has discovered it,-and what happiness every discoverer has! Let us be wiser than the serpents that lie too long in the same sunshine. 166 Always in our own Company. - All that is akin to me in nature and history, speaks to me, praises me, urges me forward and comforts me - other things I don’t hear, or immediately forget. We are always only in our own company. 167 Misanthropy and Philanthropy.-We only speak about being sick of men when we can no longer digest them, and yet have the stomach full of them. Misanthropy is the result of a far too eager philanthropy and ” cannibalism,” - but who ever bade you swallow men like oysters, my Prince Hamlet? 168 Concerning an Invalid.-” Things go badly with him !”-What is wrong ?-” He suffers from the longing to be praised, and finds no sustenance for it.”-Inconceivable! All the world does honour to him, and he is reverenced not only in deed but in word !-” Certainly, but he is dull of hearing for the praise. When a friend praises him it sounds to him as if the friend praised himself; when an enemy praises him, it sounds to him as if the enemy wanted to be praised for it; when, finally, someone else praises him-there are by no means so many of these, he is so famous!-he is offended because they neither want him for a friend nor for an enemy; he is accustomed to say: ‘ What do I care for those who can still pose as the allrighteous towards me!1” 169 Avowed Enemies.-Bravery in presence of an enemy is a thing by itself: a person may possess it and still be a coward and an irresolute numskull. That was Napoleon’s opinion concerning the ” bravest man ” he knew, Murat:-whence it follows that avowed enemies are indispensable to some men, if they are to attain to their virtue, to their manliness, to their cheerfulness. 170 With the Multitude.-He has until now gone with the multitude and is its panegyrist; but one day he will be its opponent! For he follows it in the belief that his laziness will find its advantage thereby: he has not yet learned that the multitude is not lazy enough for him ! that it always presses forward! that it does not allow anyone to stand still!-And he likes so well to stand still! 171 Fame.-When the gratitude of many to one casts aside all shame, then fame originates. 172 The Perverter of Taste.-A: “ You are a perverter of taste-they say so everywhere!” B: “ Certainly! I pervert every one’s taste for his party :-no party forgives me for that.” 173 To be Profound and to Appear Profound.-He who knows that he is profound strives for clearness; he who would like to appear profound to the multitude strives for obscurity. The multitude thinks everything profound of which it cannot see the bottom ; it is so timid and goes so unwillingly into the water. 174 Apart.- Parliamentarism, that is to say, the public permission to choose between five main political opinions, flatters and makes its way into the favor of the numerous people who would like to seem independent and individual, as if they had fought for their opinions. After all, however, it is a matter of indifference whether the herd is commanded to have one
opinion, or whether it is permitted to have five opinions. - He who diverges from the five public opinions and stands apart, always has the whole herd against him. 175 Concerning Eloquence.-What has until now had the most convincing eloquence? The rolling of the drum : and as long as kings have this at their command, they will always be the best orators and popular leaders. 176 Compassion.-The poor, ruling princes! All their rights now change unexpectedly into claims, and all these claims immediately sound like pretensions ! And if they but say ” we,” or ” my people,” wicked old Europe begins laughing. Verily, a chief-master-of-ceremonies of the modern world would make little ceremony with them ; perhaps he would decree that ” les souverains rangent aux parvenus!’ 177 On “ Educational Matters!’-In Germany an important educational means is lacking for higher men ; namely, the laughter of higher men ; these men do not laugh in Germany. 178 For Moral Enlightenment.-The Germans must be talked out of their Mephistopheles—and out of their Faust also. These are two moral prejudices against the value of knowledge. 179 Thoughts.-Thoughts are the shadows of our sentiments - always however obscurer, emptier and simpler. 180 The Good Time for Free Spirits.-Free Spirits take liberties even with regard to Science-and meanwhile they are allowed to do so,-while the Church still remains!-In so far they have now their good time. 181 Following and Leading.-A : ” Of the two, the one will always follow, the other will always lead, whatever be the course of their destiny. And yet the former is superior to the other in virtue and intellect.” B: “ And yet? And yet? That is spoken for the others; not for me, not for us! -Fit secundum regulam.” 182 In Solitude.-When one lives alone one does not speak too loudly, and one does not write too loudly either, for one fears the hollow reverberation -the criticism of the nymph Echo.-And all voices sound differently in solitude! 183 The Music of the Best Future.-The first musician for me would be he who knew only the sorrow of the profoundest happiness, and no other sorrow: there has not until now been such a musician. 184 Justice.-Better allow oneself to be robbed than have scarecrows around one-that is my taste. And under all circumstances it is just a matter of taste-and nothing more! 185 Poor.-He is now poor, but not because everything has been taken from him, but because he has thrown everything away:-what does he care ? He is accustomed to find new things.-It is the poor who misunderstand his voluntary poverty. 186 Bad Conscience.-All that he now does is excellent and proper-and yet he has a bad conscience with it all. For the exceptional is his task. 187 Offensiveness in Expression.-This artist offends me by the way in which he expresses his ideas, his very excellent ideas: so diffusely and forcibly, and with such gross rhetorical artifices, as if he were speaking to the mob. We feel always as if “ in bad company” when devoting some time to his art. 188 Work.-How closely work and the workers now stand even to the most leisurely of us! The royal courtesy in the words : ” We are all workers,” would have been a cynicism and an indecency even under Louis XIV. 189 The Thinker,-He is a thinker: that is to say, he knows how to take things more simply than they are. 190 Against Eulogisers.-A : ” One is only praised by one’s equals!” B : ” Yes! And he who praises you says : ‘ You are my equal!’” 191 Against many a Vindication.-The most perfidious manner of injuring a cause is to vindicate it intentionally with fallacious arguments.
192 The Good-natured.-What is it that distinguishes the good-natured, whose countenances beam kindness, from other people ? They feel quite at ease in presence of a new person, and are quickly enamoured of him ; they therefore wish him well; their first opinion is: ” He pleases me.” With them there follow in succession the wish to appropriate (they make little scruple about the person’s worth), rapid appropriation, joy in the possession, and actions in favour of the person possessed. 193 Kant’s Joke.-Kant tried to prove, in a way that dismayed “ everybody,” that “ everybody” was in the right:-that was his secret joke. He wrote against the learned, in favour of popular prejudice ; he wrote, however, for the learned and not for the people. 194 The ” Open-hearted ” Man.-That man acts probably always from concealed motives; for he has always communicable motives on his tongue, and almost in his open hand. 195 Laughable !-See! See! He runs away from men-: they follow him, however, because he runs before them,-they are such a gregarious lot! 196 The Limits of our Sense of Hearing.-We hear only the questions to which we are capable of finding an answer. 197 Caution therefore!-There is nothing we are fonder of communicating to others than the seal of secrecy-together with what is under it. 198 Vexation of the Proud Man.-The proud man is vexed even with those who help him forward: he looks angrily at his carriage-horses 199 Liberality.-Liberality is often only a form of timidity in the rich. 200 Laughing.-To laugh means to love mischief, but with a good conscience. 201 In Applause.-In applause there is always some kind of noise: even in self-applause. 202 A Spendthrift.-He has not yet the poverty of the rich man who has counted all his treasure,-he squanders his spirit with the irrationalness of the spendthrift Nature. 203 Hie niger est.-Usually he has no thoughts,-but in exceptional cases bad thoughts come to him. 204 Beggars and Courtesy.-” One is not discourteous when one knocks at a door with a stone when the bell-pull is wanting”-so think all beggars and necessitous persons, but no one thinks they are in the right. 205 Need.-Need is supposed to be the cause of things; but in truth it is often only the result of things. 206 During the Rain.-It rains, and I think of the poor people who now crowd together with their many cares, which they are unaccustomed to conceal ; all of them, therefore, ready and anxious to give pain to one another, and thus provide themselves with a pitiable kind of comfort, even in bad weather. This, this only, is the poverty of the poor! 207 The Envious Man.-That is an envious man- it is not desirable that he should have children; he would be envious of them, because he can no longer be a child. 208 A Great Man !-Because a person is ” a great man,” we are not authorised to infer that he is a man. Perhaps he is only a boy, or a chameleon of all ages, or a bewitched girl. 209 A Mode of Asking for Reasons.-There is a mode of asking for our reasons which not only makes us forget our best reasons, but also arouses in us a spite and repugnance against reason generally:- a very stupefying mode of questioning, and really an artifice of tyrannical men! 210 Moderation in Diligence.-One must not be anxious to surpass the diligence of one’s father- that would make one ill. 211
Secret Enemies.-To be able to keep a secret enemy-that is a luxury which the morality even of the highest-minded persons can rarely afford. 212 Not Letting oneself be Deluded.-His spirit has bad manners, it is hasty and always stutters with impatience ; so that one would hardly suspect the deep breathing and the large chest of the soul in which it resides. 213 The Way to Happiness.-A sage asked of a fool the way to happiness. The fool answered without delay, like one who had been asked the way to the next town: ” Admire yourself, and live on the street!” ” Hold,” cried the sage, ” you require too much; it suffices to admire oneself!” The fool replied: ” But how can one constantly admire without constantly despising ? ” 214 Faith Saves.-Virtue gives happiness and a state of blessedness only to those who have a strong faith in their virtue:-not, however, to the more refined souls whose virtue consists of a profound distrust of themselves and of all virtue. After all, therefore, it is ” faith that saves ” here also!-and be it well observed, not virtue! 215 The Ideal and the Material.-You have a noble ideal before your eyes: but are you also such a noble stone that such a divine image could be formed out of you ? And without thatis not all your labour barbaric sculpturing? A blasphemy of your ideal ? 216 Danger in the Voice.-With a very loud voice a person is almost incapable of reflecting on subtle matters. 217 Cause and Effect.-Before the effect one believes in other causes than after the effect. 218 My Antipathy.-I do not like those people who, in order to produce an effect, have to burst like bombs, and in whose neighbourhood one is always in danger of suddenly losing one’s hearing-or even something more. 219 The Object of Punishment.-The object of punishment is to improve him who punishes,-that is the ultimate appeal of those who justify punishment. 220 Sacrifice.-The victims think otherwise than the spectators about sacrifice and sacrificing: but they have never been allowed to express their opinion. 221 Consideration.-Fathers and sons are much more considerate of one another than mothers and daughters. 222 Poet and Liar.-The poet sees in the liar his foster-brother whose milk he has drunk up; the latter has thus remained wretched, and has not even attained to a good conscience. 223 Vicariousness of the Senses.-” We have also eyes in order to hear with them,”-said an old confessor who had grown deaf; “ and among the blind he that has the longest ears is king.” 224 Animal Criticism.-I fear the animals regard man as a being like themselves, seriously endangered by the loss of sound animal understanding ; - they regard him perhaps as the absurd animal, the laughing animal, the crying animal, the unfortunate animal. 225 The Natural.-” Evil has always had the great effect! And Nature is evil! Let us therefore be natural!”-so reason secretly the great aspirants after effect, who are too often counted among great men. 226 The Distrustful and their Style.-We say the strongest things simply, provided people are about us who believe in our strength:-such an environment educates to “ simplicity of style.” The distrustful, on the other hand, speak emphatically ; they make things emphatic. 227 Fallacy, Fallacy. - He cannot rule himself; therefore that woman concludes that it will be easy to rule him, and throws out her lines to catch him;-the poor creature, who in a short time will be his slave. 228
Against Mediators.-He who attempts to mediate between two decided thinkers is rightly called mediocre : he has not an eye for seeing the unique ; similarising and equalising are signs of weak eyes. 229 Obstinacy and Loyalty.-Out of obstinacy he holds fast to a cause of which the questionableness has become obvious,-he calls that, however, his “ loyalty.” 230 Lack of Reserve.-His whole nature fails to convince-that results from the fact that he has never been reticent about a good action he has performed. 231 The ” Plodders!’-Persons slow of apprehension think that slowness forms part of knowledge. 232 Dreaming.-Either one does not dream at all, or one dreams in an interesting manner. One must learn to be awake in the same fashion:- either not at all, or in an interesting manner. 233 The most Dangerous Point of View.-What I now do, or neglect to do, is as important for all that is to come, as the greatest event of the past: in this immense perspective of effects all actions are equally great and small. 234 Consolatory Words of a Musician.-“ Your life does not sound into people’s ears: for them you live a dumb life, and all refinements of melody, all fond resolutions in following or leading the way, are concealed from them. To be sure you do not parade the thoroughfares with regimental music,-but these good people have no right to say on that account that your life is lacking in music. He that hath ears let him hear.” 235 Spirit and Character.-Many a one attains his full height of character, but his spirit is not adapted to the elevation,-and many a one reversely. 236 To Move the Multitude.-Is it not necessary for him who wants to move the multitude to give a stage representation of himself? Has he not first to translate himself into the grotesquely obvious, and then set forth his whole personality and cause in that vulgarised and simplified fashion ? 237 The Polite Man.-” He is so polite! “ -Yes, he has always a sop for Cerberus with him, and is so timid that he takes everybody for Cerberus, even you and me,-that is his ” politeness.” 238 Without Envy.-He is wholly without envy, but there is no merit therein : for he wants to conquer a land which no one has yet possessed and hardly anyone has even seen. 239 The Joyless Person.-A single joyless person is enough to make constant displeasure and a clouded heaven in a household; and it is only by a miracle that such a person is lacking!- Happiness is not nearly such a contagious disease; -how is that ? 240 On the Sea-Shore.-I would not build myself a house (it is an element of my happiness not to be ahouse-owner!). If I had to do so, however, I should build it, like many of the Romans, right into the sea,-I should like to have some secrets in common with that beautiful monster. 241 Work and Artist.-This artist is ambitious and nothing more; ultimately, however, his work is only a magnifying-glass, which he offers to everyone who looks in his direction. 242 Suum cuique.-However great be my greed of knowledge, I cannot appropriate aught of things but what already belongs to me,-the property of others still remains in the things. How is it possible for a man to be a thief or a robber ? 243 Origin of “ Good” and “ Bad.”—He only will devise an improvement who can feel that ” this is not good.” 244 Thoughts and Words.-Even our thoughts we are unable to render completely in words. 245 Praise in Choice.-The artist chooses his subjects ; that is his mode of praising.
246 Mathematics.-We want to carry the refinement and rigour of mathematics into all the sciences, as far as it is in any way possible, hot in the belief that we shall apprehend things in this way, but in order thereby to assert our human relation to things. Mathematics is only a means to general and ultimate human knowledge. 247 Habits.-All habits make our hand wittier and our wit unhandier. 248 Books.-Of what account is a book that never carries us away beyond all books ? 249 The Sigh of the Seeker of Knowledge.-” Oh, my covetousness! In this soul there is no disinterestedness-but an all-desiring self, which, by means of many individuals, would gladly see as with its own eyes, and grasp as with its own hands-a self bringing back even the entire past, and wanting to lose nothing that could in anyway belong to it! Oh, this flame of my covetousness! Oh, that I were reincarnated in a hundred individuals!”-He who does not know this sigh by experience, does not know the passion of the seeker of knowledge either. 250 Guilt.-Although the most intelligent judges of the witches, and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchcraft, the guilt, nevertheless, was not there. So it is with all guilt. eyes. As people are usually constituted, it is the name that first makes a thing generally visible to them.-Original persons have also for the most part been the namers of things. 251 Misunderstood Sufferers.-Great natures suffer otherwise than their worshippers imagine; they suffer most severely from the ignoble, petty emotions of certain evil moments ; in short, from doubt of their own greatness;-not however from the sacrifices and martyrdoms which their tasks require of them. As long as Prometheus sympathises with men and sacrifices himself for them, he is happy and proud in himself; but on becoming envious of Zeus and of the homage which mortals pay him-then Prometheus suffers ! 252 Better to be in Debt.-” Better to remain in debt than to pay with money which does not bear our stamp!”-that is what our sovereignty prefers. 253 Always at Home.-One day we attain our goal- and then refer with pride to the long journeys we have made to reach it. In truth, we did not notice that we travelled. We got into the habit of thinking that we were at home in every place. 254 Against Embarrassment.-He who is always thoroughly occupied is rid of all embarrassment. 255 Imitators.-A : ” What ? You don’t want to have imitators ? ” B : ” I don’t want people to do anything after me; I want everyone to do something before himself (as a pattern to himself)-just as / do.” A: “ Consequently-?” 256 Skinniness.-All profound men have their happiness in imitating the flying-fish at times, and playing on the crests of the waves; they think that what is best of all in things is their surface: their skinniness-sit venia verbo. 257 From Experience.-A person often does not know how rich he is, until he learns from experience what rich men even play the thief on him. 258 The Deniers of Chance.-No conqueror believes in chance. 259 From Paradise.-“ Good and Evil are God’s prejudices “ -said the serpent. 260 One times One.-One only is always in the wrong, but with two truth begins.-One only cannot prove himself right; but two are already beyond refutation. 261 Originality.-What is originality ? To see something that does not yet bear a name, that cannot yet be named, although it is before everybody’s 262 Sub specie aeterni.-A : ” You withdraw faster and faster from the living; they will soon strike you out of their lists!”-B : ” It is the only way to participate in the privilege of the
dead.” A: ” In what privilege ?”-B : ” No longer having to die.” 263 Without Vanity.-When we love we want our defects to remain concealed,-not out of vanity, but lest the person loved should suffer from that. Indeed, the lover would like to appear as a God,- and not out of vanity either. 264 What we Do.-What we do is never understood, but only praised and blamed. 265 Ultimate Scepticism.-But what after all are man’s truths ?-They are his irrefutable errors. 266 Where Cruelty is Necessary.-He who is great is cruel to his second-rate virtues and judgments. 267 With a high Aim.-With a high aim a person is superior even to justice, and not only to his deeds and his judges. 268 What makes Heroic?-To face simultaneously one’s greatest suffering and one’s highest hope. 269 What do you Believe in ?-In this : That the weights of all things must be determined anew. 270 What Says your Conscience?-“ You shall become what you art.” 271 Where are your Greatest Dangers ?-In pity. 272 What do you Love in others ?-My hopes. 273 Whom do you call Bad?-Him who always wants to put others to shame. 274 What do you think most humane ?-To spare a person shame. 275 What is the Seal of Attained Liberty ?-To be no longer ashamed of oneself. BOOK FOUR Sanctus Januarius You who with cleaving fiery lances The stream of my soul from its ice do free, Till with a rush and a roar it advances To enter with glorious hoping the sea: Brighter to see and purer ever, Free in the bonds of your sweet constraint,- So it praises your wondrous endeavour, January, you beauteous saint! Genoa, January 1882 276 For the New Year.-I still live, I still think; 1 must still live, for I must still think. Sum, ergo cogito: cogilo, ergo sum. To-day everyone takes the liberty of expressing his wish and his favourite thought: well, I also mean to tell what I have wished for myself to-day, and what thought first crossed my mind this year,-a thought which ought to be the basis, the pledge and the sweetening of all my future life! I want more and more to perceive the necessary characters in things as the beautiful: - I shall thus be one of those who beautify things. Amor fati: let that henceforth be my love! I do not want to wage war with the ugly. I do not want to accuse, I do not want even to accuse the accusers. Looking aside, let that be my sole negation! And all in all, to sum up: I wish to be at any time hereafter only a yea-sayer ! 277 Personal Providence.-There is a certain climax in life, at which, notwithstanding all our freedom, and however much we may have denied all directing reason and goodness in the beautiful chaos of existence, we are once more in great danger of intellectual bondage, and have to face our hardest test. For now the thought of a personal Providence first presents itself before us with its most persuasive force, and has the best of advocates, apparentness, in its favour, now when it is obvious that all and everything that happens to us always turns out for the best. The life of every day and of every hour seems to be anxious for nothing else but always to prove this proposition anew; let it be what it will, bad or good weather, the loss of a friend, a sickness, a calumny, the non-receipt of a letter, the spraining of one’s foot, a glance into a shop-window, a counterargument, the opening of a book, a dream, a deception :-it shows itself immediately, or very soon afterwards, as something “ not permitted to be absent,”-it is full of profound significance and utility precisely for us ! Is there a
more dangerous temptation to rid ourselves of the belief in the Gods of Epicurus, those careless, unknown Gods, and believe in some anxious and mean Divinity, who knows personally every little hair on our heads, and feels no disgust in rendering the most wretched services ? Well-I mean in spite of all this! we want to leave the Gods alone (and the serviceable genii likewise), and wish to content ourselves with the assumption that our own practical and theoretical skilfulness in explaining and suitably arranging events has now reached its highest point. We do not want either to think too highly of this dexterity of our wisdom, when the wonderful harmony which results from playing on our instrument sometimes surprises us too much: aharmony which sounds too well for us to dare to ascribe it to ourselves. In fact, now and then there is one who plays with us-beloved Chance : he leads our hand occasionally, and even the all-wisest Providence could not devise any finer music than that of which our foolish hand is then capable. 278 The Thought of Death.- It gives me a melancholy happiness to live in the midst of this confusion of streets, of necessities, of voices: how much enjoyment, impatience and desire, how much thirsty life and drunkenness of life comes to light here every moment! And yet it will soon be so still for all these shouting, lively, life-loving people! How everyone’s shadow, his gloomy travelling-companion stands behind him! It is always as in the last moment before the departure of an emigrant-ship : people have more than ever to say to one another, the hour presses, the ocean with its lonely silence waits impatiently behind all the noise-so greedy, so certain of its prey! And all, all, suppose that the past has been nothing, or a small matter, that the near future is everything: hence this haste, this crying, this self-shouting and self-overreaching! Everyone wants to be foremost in this future,- and yet death and the stillness of death are the only things certain and common to all in this future! How strange that this sole thing that is certain and common to all, exercises almost no influence on men, and that they are the furthest from regarding themselves as the brotherhood of death! It makes me happy to see that men do not want to think at all of the idea of death! I would gladly do something to make the idea of life even a hundred times more worthy of their attention. 279 Stellar Friendship.-We were friends, and have become strangers to each other. But this is as it ought to be, and we do not want either to conceal or obscure the fact, as if we had to be ashamed of it. We are two ships, each of which has its goal and its course; we may, to be sure, cross one another in our paths, and celebrate a feast together as we did before,-and then the gallant ships lay quietly in one harbour and in one sunshine, so that it might have been thought they were already at their goal, and that they had had one goal. But then the almighty strength of our tasks forced us apart once more into different seas and into different zones, and perhaps we shall never see one another again,-or perhaps we may see one another, but not know one another again; the different seas and suns have altered us ! That we had to become strangers to one another is the law to which we are subject: just by that shall we become more sacred to one another! Just by that shall the thought of our former friendship become holier! There is probably some immense, invisible curve and stellar orbit in which our courses and goals, so widely different, may be comprehended as small stages of the way,-let us raise ourselves to this thought! But our life is too short, and our power of vision too limited for us to be more than friends in the sense of that sublime possibility.-And so we will believe in our stellar friendship, though we should have to be terrestrial enemies to one another. 280 Architecture for Thinkers.-An insight is needed (and that probably very soon) as to what is specially lacking in our great cities-namely, quiet, spacious, and widely extended places for reflection, places with long, lofty colonnades for bad weather, or for too sunny days, where no noise of wagons or of shouters would penetrate, and where a more refined propriety would prohibit loud praying even to the priest: buildings and situations which as a whole would express the sublimity of self-communion and seclusion from the world. The time is past when the Church possessed the monopoly of reflection, when the vita contemplativa had always in the first place to be the vita religiosa: and everything that the Church has built expresses this thought. I know not how we could content ourselves with their structures, even if they should be divested of their ecclesiastical purposes: these structures speak a far too pathetic and too biased speech, as houses of God and places of splendour for supernatural intercourse, for us godless ones to be able to think our thoughts in them. We want to have ourselves translated into stone and plant, we want to go for a walk in ourselves when we wander in these halls and gardens. 281 Knowing how to Find the End.-Masters of the first rank are recognised by knowing in a perfect manner how to find the end, in the whole as well as in the part; be it the end of a melody or of a thought, be it the fifth act of a tragedy or of a state affair. The masters of the second degree always become restless towards the end, and seldom dip down into the sea with such proud, quiet equilibrium as, for example, the mountain-ridge at Portofino- where the Bay of Genoa sings its melody to an end. 282 The Gait.-There are mannerisms of the intellect by which even great minds betray that they originate from the populace, or from the semi-populace :-it is principally the gait and step of their thoughts which betray them ; they cannot -walk. It was thus that even Napoleon, to his profound chagrin, could not walk ” legitimately” and in princely fashion on occasions when it was necessary to do so properly, as in great coronation processions and on similar occasions : even there he was always just the leader of a column-proud and brusque at the same time, and very self-conscious of it all.-It is something laughable to see those writers who make the folding robes of their periods rustle around them : they want to cover their7^. 283 Pioneers.-I greet all the signs indicating that a more manly and warlike age is commencing, which will, above all, bring heroism again into honour! For it has to prepare the way
for a yet higher age, and gather the force which the latter will one day require,-the age which will carry heroism into knowledge, and wage war for the sake of ideas and their consequences. For that end many brave pioneers are now needed, who, however, cannot originate out of nothing,-and just as little out of the sand and slime of present-day civilisation and the culture of great cities : men silent, solitary and resolute, who know how to be content and persistent in invisible activity: men who with innate disposition seek in all things that which is to be overcome in them : men to whom cheerfulness, patience, simplicity, and contempt of the great vanities belong just as much as do magnanimity in victory and indulgence to the trivial vanities of all the vanquished: men with an acute and independent judgment regarding all victors, and concerning the part which chance has played in the winning of victory and fame : men with their own holidays, their own work-days, and their own periods of mourning; accustomed to command with perfect assurance, and equally ready, if need be, to obey, proud in the one case as in the other, equally serving their own interests: men more imperilled, more productive, more happy ! For believe me !-the secret of realising the largest productivity and the greatest enjoyment of existence is to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slope of Vesuvius! Send your ships into unexplored seas! Live in war with your equals and with yourselves ! Be robbers and spoilers, you knowing ones, as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors! The time will soon pass when you can be satisfied to live like timorous deer concealed in the forests. Knowledge will finally stretch out her hand for that which belongs to her:-she means to rule and possess, and you with her! 284 Belief in Oneself.-In general, few men have belief in themselves :-and of those few some are endowed with it as a useful blindness or partial obscuration of intellect (what would they perceive if they could see to the bottom of themselves /). The others must first acquire the belief for themselves : everything good, clever, or great that they do, is first of all an argument against the sceptic that dwells in them : the question is how to convince or persuade this sceptic, and for that purpose genius almost is needed. They are signally dissatisfied with themselves. 285 Excelsior I-“ You will never more pray, never more worship, never more repose in infinite trust- you refuse to stand still and dismiss your thoughts before an ultimate wisdom, an ultimate virtue, an ultimate power,- you have no constant guardian and friend in your seven solitudes-you live without the outlook on a mountain that has snow on its head and fire in its heart-there is no longer any avenger for you, nor any improver with his finishing touch-there is no longer any reason in that which happens, or any love in that which will happen to thee-there is no longer any resting-place for your weary heart, where it has only to find and no longer to seek, you are opposed to any kind of ultimate peace, you desire the eternal recurrence of war and peace:-man of renunciation, wilt you renounce in all these things? Who will give you the strength to do so ? No one has yet had this strength !”-There is a lake which one day refused to flow away, and threw up a dam at the place where it had until now discharged: since then this lake has always risen higher and higher. Perhaps the very renunciation will also furnish us with the strength with which the renunciation itself can be borne; perhaps man will ever rise higher and higher from that point onward, when he no longer flows out into a God. 286 A Digression.-Here are hopes; but what will you see and hear of them, if you have not experienced glance and glow and dawn of day in your own souls ? I can only suggest-I cannot do more! To move the stones, to make animals men-would you have me do that ? Alas, if you are yet stones and animals, you must seek your Orpheus! 287 Love of Blindness.-“ My thoughts,” said the wanderer to his shadow, “ ought to show me where I stand, but they should not betray to me whither I go. I love ignorance of the future, and do not want to come to grief by impatience and anticipatory tasting of promised things.” 288 Lofty Moods.-It seems to me that most men do not believe in lofty moods, unless it be for the moment, or at the most for a quarter of an hour,- except the few who know by experience a longer duration of high feeling. But to be absolutely a man with a single lofty feeling, the incarnation of a single lofty mood-that has until now been only a dream and an enchanting possibility: history does not yet give us any trustworthy example of it. Nevertheless one might also someday produce such men-when a multitude of favourable conditions have been created and established, which at present even the happiest chance is unable to throw together. Perhaps that very state which has until now entered into our soul as an exception, felt with horror now and then, may be the usual condition of those future souls : a continuous movement between high and low, and the feeling of high and low, a constant state of mounting as on steps, and at the same time reposing as on clouds. 289 Embark! - When one considers how a full philosophical justification of his way of living and thinking operates upon every individual - namely, as a warming, blessing, and fertilizing sun, specially shining on him ; how it makes him independent of praise and blame, self-sufficient, rich and generous in the bestowal of happiness and kindness; how it unceasingly transforms the evil to the good, brings all the energies to bloom and mature, and altogether hinders the growth of the greater and lesser weeds of chagrin and discontent : one at last exclaims : Oh, that many such new suns were created! The evil man, also, the unfortunate man, and the exceptional man, shall each have his philosophy, his rights, and his sunshine! It is not pity for them that is necessary! - we must unlearn this arrogant fancy, notwithstanding that humanity has so long learned it and used it exclusively, - we need not set up any confessor, exorcist, or pardoner for them! It is a new justice, however, that is necessary! And a new solution! And new philosophers! The moral earth also is round!
The moral earth also has its antipodes ! The antipodes also have their right to exist! there is still another world to discover - and more than one! Embark, philosophers! 290 One Thing is Needful. - To “ give style” to one’s character - that is a grand and a rare art! He who surveys all that his nature presents in its strength and in its weakness, and then fashions it into an artistic plan, until everything appears as art and reason, and even the weaknesses enchant the eye - he exercises that admirable art. Here there has been a great amount of second nature added, there a portion of first nature has been taken away:- in both cases with long exercise and daily labour at the task. Here the ugly, which does not permit of being taken away, has been concealed, there it has been re-interpreted into the sublime. Much of the vague, which refuses to take form, has been reserved and utilised for distant views :-it is meant to give a hint of the remote and immeasurable. In the end, when the work has been completed, it is revealed how it was the constraint of the same taste that organised and fashioned it, in whole and in part: whether the taste was good or bad is of less importance than one thinks,- it is sufficient that it was a single taste!-It will be the strong imperious natures which experience their most refined joy in such constraint, in such confinement and perfection under their own law; the passion of their violent volition lessens at the sight of all disciplined nature, all conquered and ministering nature: even when they have palaces to build and gardens to lay out, it is not to their taste to allow nature to be free.It is the reverse with weak characters who have not power- over themselves, and hate the restriction of style: they feel that if this repugnant constraint were laid upon them, they would necessarily become vulgarised under it: they become slaves as soon as they serve, they hate service. Such intellects-they may be intellects of the first rank-are always concerned with fashioning and interpreting themselves and their surroundings as free nature-wild, arbitrary, fantastic, confused and surprising: and it is well for them to do so, because only in this manner can they please themselves! For one thing is needful: namely, that man should attain to satisfaction with himself-be it but through this or that fable and artifice: it is only then that man’s aspect is at all endurable! He who is dissatisfied with himself is ever ready to avenge himself on that account: we others will be his victims, if only in having always to endure his ugly aspect. For the aspect of the ugly makes one mean and sad. 291 Genoa.-I have looked upon this city, its villas and pleasure-grounds, and the wide circuit of its inhabited heights and slopes, for a considerable time: in the end I must say that I see countenances out of past generations,-this district is strewn with the images of bold and autocratic men. They have lived and have wanted to live on-they say so with their houses, built and decorated for centuries, and not for the passing hour: they were well disposed to life, however ill-disposed they may often have been towards themselves. I always see the builder, how he casts his eye on all that is built around him far and near, and likewise on the city, the sea, and the chain of mountains; how he expresses power and conquest with his gaze: all this he wishes to fit into his plan, and in the end make it his property, by its becoming a portion of the same. The whole district is overgrown with this superb, insatiable egoism of the desire to possess and exploit; and as these men when abroad recognised no frontiers, and in their thirst for the new placed a new world beside the old, so also at home everyone rose up against everyone else, and devised some mode of expressing his superiority, and of placing between himself and his neighbour his personal illimitableness. Everyone won for himself his home once more by overpowering it with his architectural thoughts, and by transforming it into a delightful sight for his race. When we consider the mode of building cities in the north, the law, and the general delight in legality and obedience, impose upon us: we thereby divine the propensity to equality and submission which must have ruled in those builders. Here, however, on turning every corner you find a man by himself, who knows the sea, knows adventure, and knows the Orient, a man who is averse to law and to neighbour, as if it bored him to have to do with them, a man who scans all that is already old and established with envious glances: with a wonderful craftiness of fantasy, he would like, at least in thought, to establish all this anew, to lay his hand upon it, and introduce his meaning into it-if only for the passing hour of a sunny afternoon, when for once his insatiable and melancholy soul feels satiety, and when only what is his own, and nothing strange, may show itself to his eye. 292 To the Preachers of Morality.-I do not mean to moralise, but to those who do, I would give this advice : if you mean ultimately to deprive the best things and the best conditions of all honour and worth, continue to speak of them in the same way as heretofore! Put them at the head of your morality, and speak from morning till night of the happiness of virtue, of repose of soul, of righteousness, and of reward and punishment in the nature of things : according as you go on in this manner, all these good things will finally acquire a popularity and a street-cry for themselves: but then all the gold on them will also be worn off*, and more besides: all the gold in them will have changed into lead. Truly, you understand the reverse art of alchemy, the depreciating of the most valuable things! Try, just for once, another recipe, in order not to realise as until now the opposite of what you mean to attain : deny those good things, withdraw from them the applause of the populace and discourage the spread of them, make them once more the concealed chastities of solitary souls, and say: morality is something forbidden ! Perhaps you will thus attract to your cause the sort of men who are only of any account, I mean the heroic. But then there must be something formidable in it, and not as until now something disgusting! Might one not be inclined to say at present with reference to morality what Master Eckardt says: ” I pray God to deliver me from God !” 293 Our Atmosphere.-We know it well: in him who only casts a glance now and then at science, as when taking a walk (in the manner of women, and alas! also like many artists), the strictness in its service, its inexorability in small matters as well as in great, its rapidity in weighing, judging and condemning, produce something of a feeling of giddiness and fright. It is especially terrifying to him that the hardest is here demanded, that the best is done without the reward of praise or distinction ; it is rather as among soldiers-almost nothing but blame and sharp reprimand is heard; for doing well prevails here as the rule, doing ill as the exception; the rule, however, has, here as everywhere, a silent tongue. It is
the same with this ” severity of science ” as with the manners and politeness of the best society: it frightens the uninitiated. He, however, who is accustomed to it, does not like to live anywhere but in this clear, transparent, powerful, and highly electrified atmosphere, this manly atmosphere. Anywhere else it is not pure and airy enough for him : he suspects that there his best art would neither be properly advantageous to anyone else, nor a delight to himself, that through misunderstandings half of his life would slip through his fingers, that much foresight, much concealment and reticence would constantly be necessary,-nothing but great and useless losses of power! In this keen and clear element, however, he has his entire power: here he can fly! Why should he again go down into those muddy waters where he has to swim and wade and soil his wings!-No! There it is too hard for us to live! we cannot help it that we are born for the atmosphere, the pure atmosphere, we rivals of the ray of light; and that we should like best to ride like it on the atoms of ether, not away from the sun, but towards the sun! That, however, we cannot do:-so we want to do the only thing that is in our power: namely, to bring light to the earth, we want to be ” the light of the earth !” And for that purpose we have our wings and our swiftness and our severity, on that account we are manly, and even terrible like the fire. Let those fear us, who do not know how to warm and brighten themselves by our influence! 294 Against the Disparagers of Nature.-They are disagreeable to me, those men in whom every natural inclination forthwith becomes a disease, something disfiguring, or even disgraceful. They have seduced us to the opinion that the inclinations and impulses of men are evil; � they are the cause of our great injustice to our own nature, and to all nature! There are enough of men who may yield to their impulses gracefully and carelessly: but they do not do so, for fear of that imaginary ” evil thing ” in nature! That is the cause why there is so little nobility to be found among men: the indication of which will always be to have no fear of oneself, to expect nothing disgraceful from oneself, to fly without hesitation whithersoever we are impelled-we free-born birds! Wherever we come, there will always be freedom and sunshine around us. 295 Short-lived Habits.-I love short-lived habits, and regard them as an invaluable means for getting a knowledge of many things and various conditions, to the very bottom of their sweetness and bitterness ; my nature is altogether arranged for short-lived habits, even in the needs of its bodily health, and in general, as far as I can see, from the lowest up to the highest matters. I always think that this will at last satisfy me permanently (the short-lived habit has also this characteristic belief of passion, the belief in everlasting duration; I am to be envied for having found it and recognised it), and then it nourishes me at noon and at eve, and spreads a profound satisfaction around me and in me, so that I have no longing for anything else, not needing to compare, or despise, or hate. But one day the habit has had its time: the good thing separates from me, not as something which then inspires disgust in me-but peaceably, and as though satisfied with me, as I am with it; as if we had to be mutually thankful, and thus shook hands for farewell. And already the new habit waits at the door, and similarly also my belief-indestructible fool and sage that I am !-that this new habit will be the right one, the ultimate right one. So it is with me as regards foods, thoughts, men, cities, poems, music, doctrines, arrangements of the day, and modes of life.-On the other hand, I hate permanent habits, and feel as if a tyrant came into my neighbourhood, and as if my life’s breath condensed, when events take such a form that permanent habits seem necessarily to grow out of them: for example, through an official position, through constant companionship with the same persons, through a settled abode, or through a uniform state of health. Indeed, from the bottom of my soul I am gratefully disposed to all my misery and sickness, and to whatever is imperfect in me, because such things leave me a hundred back-doors through which I can escape from permanent habits. The most unendurable thing, to be sure, the really terrible thing, would be a life without habits, a life which continually required improvisation : - that would be my banishment and my Siberia. 296 A Fixed Reputation.-A fixed reputation was formerly a matter of the very greatest utility; and wherever society continues to be ruled by the herd - instinct, it is still most suitable for every individual to give to his character and business the appearance of unalterableness,-even when they are not so in reality. ” One can rely on him, he remains the same”-that is the praise which has most significance in all dangerous conditions of society. Society feels with satisfaction that it has a reliable tool ready at all times in the virtue of this one, in the ambition of that one, and in the reflection and passion of a third one,-it honours this tool-like nature, this self-constancy, this unchangeableness in opinions, efforts, and even in faults, with the highest honours. Such a valuation, which prevails and has prevailed everywhere simultaneously with the morality of custom, educates ” characters,” and brings all changing, re-learning, and self-transforming into disrepute. Be the advantage of this mode of thinking ever so great otherwise, it is in any case the mode of judging which is most injurious to knowledge: for precisely the good-will of the knowing one ever to declare himself unhesitatingly as opposed to his former opinions, and in general to be distrustful of all that wants to be fixed in him -is here condemned and brought into disrepute. The disposition of the thinker, as incompatible with a ” fixed reputation,” is regarded as dishonourable, while the petrifaction of opinions has all the honour to itself:-we have at present still to live under the interdict of such rules! How difficult it is to live when one feels that the judgment of many millenniums is around one and against one. It is probable that for many millenniums knowledge was afflicted with a bad conscience, and there must have been much self-contempt and secret misery in the history of the greatest intellects. 297 Ability to Contradict.-Everyone knows at present that the ability, to endure contradiction is a good indication of culture. Some people even know that the higher man courts opposition, and provokes it, so as to get a cue to his until now unknown partiality. But the ability to contradict, the attainment of a good conscience in hostility to the accustomed, the traditional and the hallowed,-that is more than both the above-named abilities, and is the really great, new and astonishing thing in our culture, the step of all steps of the emancipated intellect: who knows that ?-
298 A Sigh.-I caught this notion on the way, and rapidly took the readiest, poor words to hold it fast, so that it might not again fly away. But it has died in these dry words, and hangs and flaps about in them-and now I hardly know, when I look upon it, how I could have had such happiness when I caught this bird. 299 What one should Learn from Artists.-What means have we for making things beautiful, attractive, and desirable, when they are not so ?- and I suppose they are never so in themselves! We have here something to learn from physicians, when, for example, they dilute what is bitter, or put wine and sugar into their mixing-bowl; but we have still more to learn from artists, who in fact, are continually concerned in devising such inventions and artifices. To withdraw from things until one no longer sees much of them, until one has even to see things into them, in order to see them at all-or to view them from the side, and as in a frame - or to place them so that they partly disguise themselves and only permit of perspective views-or to look at them through coloured glasses, or in the light of the sunset-or to furnish them with a surface or skin which is not fully transparent: we should learn all this from artists, and moreover be wiser than they. For this fine power of theirs usually ceases with them where art ceases and life begins ; we, however, want to be the poets of our lives, and first of all in the smallest and most commonplace matters. 300 Prelude to Science.-Do you believe then that the sciences would have arisen and grown up if the sorcerers, alchemists, astrologers and witches had not been their forerunners; those who, with their promisings and foreshadowings, had first to create a thirst, a hunger, and a taste for hidden and forbidden powers ? Yea, that infinitely more had to be promised than could ever be fulfilled, in order that something might be fulfilled in the domain of knowledge? Perhaps the whole of religion, also, may appear to some distant age as an exercise and a prelude, in like manner as the prelude and preparation of science here exhibit themselves, though not at all practised and regarded as such. Perhaps religion may have been the peculiar means for enabling individual men to enjoy but once the entire self-satisfaction of a God and all his self-redeeming power. Indeed !-one may ask-would man have learned at all to get on the tracks of hunger and thirst for himself, and to extract satiety and fullness out of himself without that religious schooling and preliminary history? Had Prometheus first to fancy that he had stolen the light, and that he did penance for the theft,-in order finally to discover that he had created the light, in that he had longed for the light, and that not only man, but also God, had been the work of his hands and the clay in his hands ? All mere creations of the creator?-just as the illusion, the theft, the Caucasus, the vulture, and the whole tragic Prometheia of all thinkers ? 301 Illusion of the Contemplative.-Higher men are distinguished from lower, by seeing and hearing immensely more, and in a thoughtful manner-and it is precisely this that distinguishes man from the animal, and the higher animal from the lower. The world always becomes fuller for him who grows up to the full stature of humanity ; there are always more interesting fishing-hooks, thrown out to him ; the number of his stimuli is continually on the increase, and similarly the varieties of his pleasure and pain,-the higher man becomes always at the same time happier and unhappier. An illusion, however, is his constant accompaniment all along : he thinks he is placed as a spectator and auditor before the great pantomime and concert of life ; he calls his nature a contemplative nature, and thereby overlooks the fact that he himself is also a real creator, and continuous poet of life,-that he no doubt differs greatly from the actor in this drama, the so-called practical man, but differs still more from a mere onlooker or spectator before the stage. There is certainly vis contemplativa, and re-examination of his work peculiar to him as poet, but at the same time, and first and foremost, he has the vis creativa, which the practical man or doer lacks, whatever appearance and current belief may say to the contrary. It is we, who think and feel, that actually and unceasingly make something which did not before exist: the whole eternally increasing world of valuations, colours, weights, perspectives, gradations, affirmations and negations. This composition of ours is continually learnt, practised, and translated into flesh and actuality, and even into the commonplace, by the so-called practical men (our actors, as we have said). Whatever has value in the present world, has not it in itself, by its nature,-nature is always worthless :- but a value was once given to it, bestowed upon it and it was we who gave and bestowed ! We only have created the world which is of any account to man t-But it is precisely this knowledge that we lack, and when we get hold of it for a moment we have forgotten it the next: we misunderstand our highest power, we contemplative men, and estimate ourselves at too low a rate, - we are neither as proud nor as happy as we might be. 302 The Danger of the Happiest Ones.-To have fine senses and a fine taste; to be accustomed to the select and the intellectually best as our proper and readiest fare; to be blessed with a strong, bold, and daring soul; to go through life with a quiet eye and a firm step, ever ready for the worst as for a festival, and full of longing for undiscovered worlds and seas, men and Gods ; to listen to all joyous music, as if there perhaps brave men, soldiers and seafarers, took a brief repose and enjoyment, and in the profoundest pleasure of the moment were overcome with tears and the whole purple melancholy of happiness: who would not like all this to be his possession, his condition ! It was the happiness of Homer! The condition of him who invented the Gods for the Greeks,-nay, who invented his Gods for himself! But let us not conceal the fact that with this happiness of Homer in one’s soul, one is more liable to suffering than any other creature under the sun! And only at this price do we purchase the most precious pearl that the waves of existence have until now washed ashore! As its possessor one always becomes more sensitive to pain, and at last too sensitive: a little displeasure and loathing sufficed in the end to make Homer disgusted with life. He was unable to solve a foolish little riddle which some young fishers proposed to him! Yes, the little riddles are the dangers of the happiest ones !303
Two Happy Ones.-Certainly this man, notwithstanding his youth, understands the improvisation of life, and astonishes even the acutest observers. For it seems that he never makes a mistake, although he constantly plays the most hazardous games. One is reminded of the improvising masters of the musical art, to whom even the listeners would gladly ascribe a divine infallibility of the hand, notwithstanding that they now and then make a mistake, as every mortal is liable to do. But they are skilled and inventive, and always ready in a moment to arrange into the structure of the score the most accidental tone (where the jerk of a finger or a humour brings it about), and to animate the accident with a fine meaning and soul.-Here is quite a different man: everything that he intends and plans fails with him in the long run. That on which he has now and again set his heart has already brought him several times to the abyss, and to the very verge of ruin ; and if he has as yet got out of the scrape, it certainly has not been merely with a “ black eye.” Do you think he is unhappy over it? He resolved long ago not to regard his own wishes and plans as of so much importance. ” If this does not succeed with me,” he says to himself, ” perhaps that will succeed ; and on the whole I do not know but that I am under more obligation to thank my failures than any of my successes. Am I made to be headstrong, and to wear the bull’s horns ? That which constitutes the worth and the sum of life for me, lies somewhere else; I know more of life, because I have been so often on the point of losing it; and just on that account I have more of life than any of you!” 304 In Doing we Leave Undone.-In the main .all those moral systems are distasteful to me which say: ” Do not do this ! Renounce! Overcome yourself!” On the other hand I am favourable to those moral systems which stimulate me to do something, and to do it again from morning till evening, to dream of it at night, and think of nothing else but to do it well, as well as is possible for me alone! From him who so lives there fall off one after the other the things that do not pertain to such a life: without hatred or antipathy, he sees this take leave of him to-day, and that to-morrow, like the yellow leaves which every livelier breeze strips from the tree: or he does not see at all that they take leave of him, so firmly is his eye fixed upon his goal, and generally forward, not sideways, backward, or downward. ” Our doing must determine what we leave undone; in that we do, we leave undone ” -so it pleases me, so runs my placitum. But I do not mean to strive with open eyes for my impoverishment; I do not like any of the negative virtues whose very essence is negation and self-renunciation. 305 Self-control. - Those moral teachers who first and foremost order man to get himself into his own power, induce thereby a curious infirmity in him,-namely, a constant sensitiveness with reference to all natural strivings and inclinations, and as it were, a sort of itching. Whatever may henceforth drive him, draw him, allure or impel him, whether internally or externally-it always seems to this sensitive being as if his self-control were in danger: he is no longer at liberty to trust himself to any instinct, to any free flight, but stands constantly with defensive mien, armed against himself, with sharp distrustful eye, the eternal watcher of his stronghold, to which office he has appointed himself. Yes, he can be great in that position! But how unendurable he has now become to others, how difficult even for himself to bear, how impoverished and cut off from the finest accidents of his soul! Yea, even from all further instruction ! For we must be able to lose ourselves at times, if we want to learn something of what we have not in ourselves. 306 Stoic and Epicurean.-The Epicurean selects the situations, the persons, and even the events which suit his extremely sensitive, intellectual constitution ; he renounces the rest-that is to say, by far the greater part of experience-because it would be too strong and too heavy fare for him. The Stoic, on the contrary, accustoms himself to swallow stones and vermin, glass-splinters and scorpions, without feeling any disgust: his stomach is meant to become indifferent in the end to all that the accidents of existence cast into it:-he reminds one of the Arabic sect of the Assaua, with which the French became acquainted in Algiers; and like those insensible persons, he also likes well to have an invited public at the exhibition of his insensibility, the very thing the Epicurean willingly dispenses with :-he has of course his ” garden “ ! Stoicism may be quite advisable for men with whom fate improvises, for those who live in violent times and are dependent on abrupt and changeable individuals. He, however, who anticipates that fate will permit him to spin ” a long thread,” does well to make his arrangements in Epicurean fashion; all men devoted to intellectual labour have done it until now ! For it would be. a supreme loss to them to forfeit their fine sensibility, and to acquire the hard, stoical hide with hedgehog prickles in exchange. 307 In Favour of Criticism.-Something now appears to you as an error which you formerly loved as a truth, or as a probability: you push it from you and imagine that your reason has there gained a victory. But perhaps that error was then, when you were still another person-you are always another person,-just as necessary to you as all your present ” truths,” like a skin, as it were, which concealed and veiled from you much which you still may not see. Your new life, and not your reason, has slain that opinion for you: you do not require it any longer, and now it breaks down of its own accord, and the irrationality crawls out of it as a worm into the light. When we make use of criticism it is not something arbitrary and impersonal,-it is, at least very often, a proof that there are lively, active forces in us, which cast a skin. We deny, and must deny, because something in us wants to live and affirm itself, something which we perhaps do not as yet know, do not as yet see!-So much in favour of criticism. 308 The History of each Day,-What is it that constitutes the history of each day for you ? Look at your habits of which it consists: are they the product of numberless little acts of cowardice and laziness, or of your bravery and inventive reason ? Although the two cases are so different, it is possible that men might bestow the same praise upon you, and that you might also be equally useful to them in the one case as in the other. But praise and utility and respectability may suffice for him whose only desire is to have a good conscience,-not
however for you, the ” trier of the reins,” who has a consciousness of the conscience ! 309 Out of the Seventh Solitude.-One day the wanderer shut a door behind him, stood still, and wept. Then he said: ” Oh, this inclination and impulse towards the true, the real, the non-apparent, the certain! How I detest it! Why does this gloomy and passionate taskmaster follow just me? I should like to rest, but it does not permit me to do so. Are there not a host of things seducing me to tarry! Everywhere there are gardens of Armida for me, and therefore there will ever be fresh separations and fresh bitterness of heart! I must set my foot forward, my weary wounded foot: and because I feel I must do this, I often cast grim glances back at the most beautiful things which could not detain me-because they could not detain me!” 310 Will and Wave.-How eagerly this wave comes hither, as if it were a question of its reaching something ! How it creeps with frightful haste into the innermost corners of the rocky cliff! It seems that it wants to forestall someone; it seems that something is concealed there that has value, high value. -And now it retreats somewhat more slowly, still quite white with excitement,-is it disappointed ? Has it found what it sought? Does it merely pretend to be disappointed ?-But already another wave approaches, still more eager and wild than the first, and its soul also seems to be full of secrets, and of longing for treasure-seeking. Thus live the waves,-thus live we who exercise will!-I do not say more.-But what! You distrust me ? You are angry at me, you beautiful monsters ? Do you fear that I will quite betray your secret ? Well! Just be angry with me, raise your green, dangerous bodies as high as you can, make a wall between me and the sun-as at present! Verily, there is now nothing more left of the world save green twilight and green lightning-flashes. Do as you will, you wanton creatures, roar with delight and wickedness -or dive under again, pour your emeralds down into the depths, and cast your endless white tresses of foam and spray over them-it is all the same to me, for all is so well with you, and I am so pleased with you for it all: how could I betray you ! For -take this to heart!-I know you and your secret, I know your race! You and I are indeed of one race! You and I have indeed one secret! 311 Broken Lights.-We are not always brave, and when we are weary, people of our stamp are liable to lament occasionally in this wise :-” It is so hard to cause pain to men-oh, that it should be necessary! What good is it to live concealed, when we do not want to keep to ourselves that which causes vexation ? Would it not be more advisable to live in the madding crowd, and compensate individuals for sins that are committed, and must be committed, against mankind in general? Foolish with fools, vain with the vain, enthusiastic with enthusiasts? Would that not be reasonable when there is such an inordinate amount of divergence in the main ? When I hear of the malignity of others against me-is not my first feeling that of satisfaction? It is well that it should be so!-I seem to myself to say to them- I am so little in harmony with you, and have so much truth on my side: see henceforth that you be merry at my expense as often as you can! Here are my defects and mistakes, here are my illusions, my bad taste, my confusion, my tears, my vanity, my owlish concealment, my contradictions ! Here you have something to laugh at! Laugh then; and enjoy yourselves! I am not averse to the law and nature of things, which is that defects and errors should give pleasure!-To be sure, there were once ‘ more glorious’ times, when as soon as anyone got an idea, however moderately new it might be, he would think himself so indispensable as to go out into the street with it, and call to everybody: ‘ Behold! the kingdom of heaven is at hand!’-I should not miss myself, if I were a-wanting. We are none of us indispensable!”-As we have said, however, we do not think thus when we are brave; we do not think about it at all. 312 My Dog.-I have given a name to my pain, and call it “ a dog,”-it is just as faithful, just as importunate and shameless, just as entertaining, just as wise, as any other dog-and I can domineer over it, and vent my bad humour on it, as others do with their dogs, servants, and wives. 313 No Picture of a Martyr.-I will take my cue from Raphael, and not paint any more martyr- pictures. There are enough of sublime things without its being necessary to seek sublimity where it is linked with cruelty; moreover my ambition would not be gratified in the least if I aspired to be a sublime executioner. 314 New Domestic Animals.-I want to have my lion and my eagle about me, that I may always have hints and premonitions concerning the amount of my strength or weakness. Must I look down on them to-day, and be afraid of them? And will the hour come once more when they will look up to me, and tremble ?315 The Last Hour.-Storms are my danger. Shall I have my storm in which I perish, as Oliver Cromwell perished in his storm? Or shall I go out as a light does, not first blown out by the wind, but grown tired and weary of itself-a burnt-out light? Or finally, shall I blow myself out, so as not to burn out ? 316 Prophetic Men.-Ye cannot divine how sorely prophetic men suffer: you think only that a fine “ gift” has been given to them, and would gladly have it yourselves,-but I will express my meaning by a simile. How much may not the animals suffer from the electricity 01 the atmosphere and the clouds! Some of them, as we see, have a prophetic faculty with regard to the weather, for example, apes (as one can observe very well even in Europe,- and not only in menageries, but at Gibraltar). But it never occurs to us that it is their sufferings-that are their prophets! When strong positive electricity, under the influence of an
approaching cloud not at all visible, is suddenly converted into negative electricity, and an alteration of the weather is imminent, these animals then behave as if an enemy were approaching them, and prepare for defence, or flight: they generally hide themselves,-they do not think of the bad weather as weather, but as an enemy whose hand they already feel! 317 Retrospect.-We seldom become conscious of the real pathos of any period of life as such, as long as we continue in it, but always think it is the only possible and reasonable thing for us henceforth, and that it is altogether ethos and not pathos *-to speak and distinguish like the Greeks. A few notes of music to-day recalled a winter and a house, and a life of utter solitude to my mind, and at the same time the sentiments in which I then lived: I thought I should be able to live in such a state always. But now I understand that it was entirely pathos and passion, something comparable to this painfully bold and truly comforting music,-it is not one’s lot to have these sensations for years, still less for eternities: otherwise one would become too “ ethereal” for this planet. 318 Wisdom in Pain.-In pain there is as much wisdom as in pleasure: like the latter it is one of the best self-preservatives of a species. Were it not so, pain would long ago have been done away with ; that it is hurtful is no argument against it, for to be hurtful is its very essence. In pain I hear the commanding call of the ship’s captain : ” Take in sail!” ” Man,” the bold seafarer, must have learned to set his sails in a thousand different ways, otherwise he could not have sailed long, for the ocean would soon have swallowed him up. We must also know how to live with reduced energy : as soon as pain gives its precautionary signal, it is time to reduce the speed-some great danger, some storm, is approaching, and we do well to “ catch” as little wind as possible.-It is true that there are men who, on the approach of severe pain, hear the very opposite call of command, and never appear more proud, more martial, or more happy than when the storm is brewing; indeed, pain itself provides them with their supreme moments! These are the heroic men, the great pain-bringers of mankind: those few and rare ones who need just the same apology as pain generally,-and verily, it should not be denied them! They are forces of the greatest importance for preserving and advancing the species, be it only because they are opposed to smug ease, and do not conceal their disgust at this kind of happiness. 319 As Interpreters of our Experiences.-One form of honesty has always been lacking among founders of religions and their kin :-they have never made their experiences a matter of the intellectual conscience. ” What did I really experience ? What then took place in me and around me ? Was my understanding clear enough? Was my will directly opposed to all deception of the senses, and courageous in its defence against fantastic notions ?” - None of them ever asked these questions, nor to this day do any of the good religious people ask them. They have rather a thirst for things which are contrary to reason, and they don’t want to have too much difficulty in satisfying this thirst,-so they experience “ miracles” and “ regenerations,” and hear the voices of angels! But we who are different, who are thirsty for reason, want to look as carefully into our experiences as in the case of a scientific experiment, hour by hour, day by day! We ourselves want to be our own experiments, and our own subjects of experiment. 320 On Meeting Again.-A : Do I quite understand you ? You are in search of something ? Where, in the midst of the present, actual world, is your niche and star? Where can you lay yourself in the sun, so that you also may have a surplus of well-being, that your existence may justify itself? Let everyone do that for himself-you seem to say, -and let him put talk about generalities, concern for others and society, out of his mind!-B: I want more ; I am no seeker. I want to create my own sun for myself. 321 A New Precaution.-Let us no longer think so much about punishing, blaming, and improving! We shall seldom be able to alter an individual, and if we should succeed in doing so, something else may also succeed, perhaps unawares : we may have been altered by him! Let us rather see to it that our own influence on all that is to come outweighs and overweighs his influence! Let us not struggle in direct conflict!-all blaming, punishing, and desire to improve comes under this category. But let us elevate ourselves all the higher! Let us ever give to our pattern more shining colours! Let us obscure the other by our light! No! We do not mean to become darker ourselves on his account, like those who punish and are discontented! Let us rather go aside! Let us look away! 322 A Simile.-Those thinkers in whom all the stars move in cyclic orbits, are not the most profound. He who looks into himself, as into an immense universe, and carries Milky Ways in himself, knows also how irregular all Milky Ways are; they lead into the very chaos and labyrinth of existence. 323 Happiness in Destiny.-Destiny confers its greatest distinction upon us when it has made us fight for a time on the side of our adversaries. We are thereby predestined to a great victory. 324 In Media Vita.-No! Life has not deceived me! On the contrary, from year to year I find it richer, more desirable and more mysterious-from the day on which the great liberator broke my fetters, the thought that life may be an experiment of the thinker-and not a duty, not a fatality, not a deceit!-And knowledge itself may be for others something different; for example, a bed of ease, or the path to a bed of ease, or an entertainment, or a course of idling,-for me it is a world of dangers and victories, in which even the heroic sentiments have their arena and dancing-floor. “ Life as a means to knowledge”-with this principle in one’s heart, one can not only be brave, but can even live joyfully and laugh joyfully ! And who
could know how to laugh well and live well, who did not first understand the full significance of war and victory? 325 What Belongs to Greatness.-Who can attain to anything great if he does not feel in himself the force and will to inflict great pain ? The ability to suffer is a small matter: in that line, weak women and even slaves often attain masterliness. But not to perish from internal distress and doubt when one inflicts great suffering and hears the cry of it-that is great, that belongs to greatness. 326 Physicians of the Soul and Pain.-All preachers of morality, as also all theologians, have a bad habit in common : all of them try to persuade man that he is very ill, and that a severe, final, radical cure is necessary. And because mankind as a whole has for centuries listened too eagerly to those teachers, something of the superstition that the human race is in a very bad way has actually come over men : so that they are now far too ready to sigh; they find nothing more in life and make melancholy faces at each other, as if life were indeed very hard to endure. In truth, they are inordinately assured of their life and in love with it, and full of untold intrigues and subtleties for suppressing everything disagreeable, and for extracting the thorn from pain and misfortune. It seems to me that people always speak with exaggeration about pain and misfortune, as if it were a matter of good behaviour to exaggerate here: on the other hand people are intentionally silent in regard to the number of expedients for alleviating pain; as for instance, the deadening of it, feverish flurry of thought, a peaceful position, or good and bad reminiscences, intentions, and hopes, -also many kinds of pride and fellow-feeling, which have almost the effect of anaesthetics: while in the greatest degree of pain fainting takes place of itself. We understand very well how to pour sweetness on our bitterness, especially on the bitterness of our soul; we find a remedy in our bravery and sublimity, as well as in the nobler delirium of submission and resignation. A loss scarcely remains a loss for an hour: in some way or other a gift from heaven has always fallen into our lap at the same moment-a new form of strength, for example: be it but a new opportunity for the exercise of strength! What have the preachers of morality not dreamt concerning the inner ” misery ” of evil men! What lies have they not told us about the misfortunes of impassioned men ! Yes, lying is here the right word : they were only too well aware of the overflowing happiness of this kind of man, but they kept silent as death about it; because it was a refutation of their theory, according to which happiness only originates through the annihilation of the passions and the silencing of the will! And finally, as regards the recipe of all those physicians of the soul and their recommendation of a severe radical cure, we may be allowed to ask: Is our life really painful and burdensome enough for us to exchange it with advantage for a Stoical mode of living, and Stoical petrification ? We do not feel sufficiently miserable to have to feel ill in the Stoical fashion! 327 Taking Things Seriously.-The intellect is with most people an awkward, obscure and creaking machine, which is difficult to set in motion : they call it ” taking a thing seriously ” when they work with this machine and want to think well-oh, how burdensome must good thinking be to them ! That delightful animal, man, seems to lose his good-humour whenever he thinks well; he becomes “ serious”! And “ where there is laughing and gaiety, thinking cannot be worth anything:”-so speaks the prejudice of this serious animal against all ” Joyful Wisdom.”-Well, then ! Let us show that it is prejudice! 328 Doing Harm to Stupidity.-It is certain that the belief in the reprehensibility of egoism, preached with such stubbornness and conviction, has on the whole done harm to egoism (in favour of the herd-instinct, as I shall repeat a hundred times !), especially by depriving it of a good conscience, and by bidding us seek in it the source of all misfortune. ” Your selfishness is the bane of your life “ -so rang the preaching for millenniums : it did harm, as we have said, to selfishness, and deprived it of much spirit, much cheerfulness, much ingenuity, and much beauty; it stultified and deformed and poisoned selfishness!-Philosophical antiquity, on the other hand, taught that there was another principal source of evil: from Socrates downwards, the thinkers were never weary of preaching that “ your thoughtlessness and stupidity, your unthinking way of living according to rule, and your subjection to the opinion of your neighbour, are the reasons why you so seldom attain to happiness,-we thinkers are, as thinkers, the happiest of mortals.” Let us not decide here whether this preaching against stupidity was more sound than the preaching against selfishness; it is certain, however, that stupidity was thereby deprived of its good conscience:-those philosophers did harm to stupidity. 329 Leisure and Idleness. - There is an Indian savagery, a savagery peculiar to the Indian blood, in the manner in which the Americans strive after gold: and the breathless hurry of their work- the characteristic vice of the New World-already begins to infect old Europe, and makes it savage also, spreading over it a strange lack of intellectuality. One is now ashamed of repose: even long reflection almost causes remorse of conscience. Thinking is done with a stop-watch, as dining is done with the eyes fixed on the financial newspaper; we live like men who are continually ” afraid of letting opportunities slip.” ” Better do anything whatever, than nothing “ -this principle also is a noose with which all culture and all higher taste may be strangled. And just as all form obviously disappears in this hurry of workers, so the sense for form itself, the ear and the eye for the melody of movement, also disappear. The proof of this is the clumsy perspicuity which is now everywhere demanded in all positions where a person would like to be sincere with his fellows, in intercourse with friends, women, relatives, children, teachers, pupils, leaders and princes,-one has no longer either time or energy for ceremonies, for roundabout courtesies, for any esprit in conversation, or for any otium whatever. For life in the hunt for gain continually compels a person to consume his intellect, even to exhaustion, in constant dissimulation, overreaching, or forestalling: the real virtue nowadays is to do something in a shorter time than another person. And so there are only rare hours of sincere intercourse permitted: in
them, however, people are tired, and would not only like ” to let themselves go,” but to stretch their legs out wide in awkward style. The way people write their letters nowadays is quite in keeping with the age; their style and spirit will always be the true ” sign of the times.” If there be still enjoyment in society and in art, it is enjoyment such as over-worked slaves provide for themselves. Oh, this moderation in “ joy” of our cultured and uncultured classes! Oh, this increasing suspiciousness of all enjoyment! Work is winning over more and more the good conscience to its side: the desire for enjoyment already calls itself ” need of recreation,” and even begins to be ashamed of itself. ” One owes it to one’s health,” people say, when they are caught at a picnic. Indeed, it might soon go so far that one could not yield to the desire for the vita contemplativa (that is to say, excursions with thoughts and friends), without self-contempt and a bad conscience.-Well! Formerly it was the very reverse: it was “ action” that suffered from a bad conscience. A man of good family concealed his work when need compelled him to labour. The slave laboured under the weight of the feeling that he did something contemptible :- the “ doing” itself was something contemptible. “ Only in otium and bellum is there nobility and honour:” so rang the voice of ancient prejudice ! 330 Applause.-The thinker does not need applause or the clapping of hands, provided he be sure of the clapping of his own hands : the latter, however, he cannot do without. Are there men who could also do without this, and in general without any kind of applause ? I doubt it: and even as regards the wisest, Tacitus, who is no calumniator of the wise, says: quando etiam sapientibus gloria cupido novisshna exuitur-that means with him : never. 331 Better Deaf than Deafened.-Formerly a person wanted to have his calling, but that no longer suffices to-day, for the market has become too large,- there has now to be bawling. The consequence is that even good throats outcry each other, and the best wares are offered for sale with hoarse voices; without market-place bawling and hoarseness there is now no longer any genius.-It is, sure enough, an evil age for the thinker: he has to learn to find his stillness between two noises, and has to pretend to be deaf until he finally becomes so. As long as he has not learned this, he is in danger of perishing from impatience and headaches. 332 The Evil Hour.-There has perhaps been an evil hour for every philosopher, in which he thought: What do I matter, if people should not believe my poor arguments!-And then some malicious bird has flown past him and twittered : ” What do you matter ? What do you matter ? ” 333 What does Knowing Mean ?-Non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere ! says Spinoza, so simply and sublimely, as is his wont. Nevertheless, what else is this “ intelligere” ultimately, but just the form in which the three other things become perceptible to us all at once? A result of the diverging and opposite impulses of desiring to deride, lament and execrate? Before knowledge is possible each of these impulses must first have brought forward its one-sided view of the object or event. The struggle of these one-sided views occurs afterwards, and out of it there occasionally arises a compromise, a pacification, a recognition of rights on all three sides, a sort of justice and agreement: for in virtue of the justice and agreement all those impulses can maintain themselves in existence and retain their mutual rights. We, to whose consciousness only the closing reconciliation scenes and final settling of accounts of these long processes manifest themselves, think on that account that “ intelligere” is something conciliating, just and good, something essentially antithetical to the impulses; whereas it is only a certain relation of the impulses to one another. For a very long time conscious thinking was regarded as the only thinking: it is now only that the truth dawns upon us that the greater part of our intellectual activity goes on unconsciously and unfelt by us; I believe, however, that the impulses which are here in mutual conflict understand rightly how to make themselves felt by one another, and how to cause pain:-the violent, sudden exhaustion which overtakes all thinkers, may have its origin here (it is the exhaustion of the battle-field). Aye, perhaps in our struggling interior there is much concealed heroism, but certainly nothing divine, or eternally-reposing-initself, as Spinoza supposed. Conscious thinking, and especially that of the philosopher, is the weakest, and on that account also the relatively mildest and quietest mode of thinking: and thus it is precisely the philosopher who is most easily misledconcerning the nature of knowledge. 334 One must Learn to Love.-This is our experience in music: we must first learn in general to hear, to hear fully, and to distinguish a theme or a melody, we have to isolate and limit it as a life by itself; then we need to exercise effort and good-will in order to endure it in spite of its strangeness, we need patience towards its aspect and expression, and indulgence towards what is odd in it:-in the end there comes a moment when we are accustomed to it, when we expect it, when it dawns upon us that we should miss it if it were lacking; and then it goes on to exercise its spell and charm more and more, and does not cease until we have become its humble and enraptured lovers, who want it, and want it again, and ask for nothing better from the world.-It is thus with us, however, not only in music: it is precisely thus that we have learned to love everything that we love. We are always finally recompensed for our good-will, our patience, reasonableness and gentleness towards what is unfamiliar, by the unfamiliar slowly throwing off its veil and presenting itself to us as a new, ineffable beauty :-that is its thanks for our hospitality. He also who loves himself must have learned it in this way: there is no other way. Love also has to be learned. 335 Cheers for Physics !-How many men are there who know how to observe? And among the few who do know,-how many observe themselves? “ Everyone is furthest from himself”all the “ triers of the reins ” know that to their discomfort; and the saying, ” Know yourself,” in the mouth of a God and spoken to man, is almost a mockery. But that the case of self-
observation is so desperate, is attested best of all by the manner in which almost everybody talks of the nature of a moral action, that prompt, willing, convinced, loquacious manner, with its look, its smile, and its pleasing eagerness! Everyone seems inclined to say to you: “ Why, my dear Sir, that is precisely my affair! You address yourself with your question to him who is authorised to answer, for I happen to be wiser with regard to this matter than in anything else. Therefore, when a man decides that ‘this is right’, when he accordingly concludes that ‘ it must therefore be done’, and thereupon does what he has thus recognised as right and designated as necessary- then the nature of his action is moral!” But, my friend, you are talking to me about three actions instead of one: your deciding, for instance, that “ this is right,” is also an action,-could one not judge either morally or immorally ? Why do you regard this, and just this, as right?-“ Because my conscience tells me so; conscience never speaks immorally, indeed it determines in the first place what shall be moral! “ -But why do you listen to the voice of your conscience ? And in how far are you justified in regarding such a judgment as true and infallible? This belief—is there no further conscience for it ? Do you know nothing of an intellectual conscience ? A conscience behind your ” conscience ” ? Your decision, ” this is right,” has a previous history in your impulses, your likes and dislikes, your experiences and non-experiences; ” how has it originated ? ” you must ask, and afterwards the further question : ” what really impels me to give ear to it ? ” You can listen to its command like a brave soldier who hears the command of his officer. Or like a woman who loves him who commands. Or like a flatterer and coward, afraid of the commander. Or like a blockhead who follows because he has nothing to say to the contrary. In short, you can give ear to your conscience in a hundred different ways. But that you hear this or that judgment as the voice of conscience, consequently, that you feel a thing to be right-may have its cause in the fact that you have never thought about your nature, and have blindly accepted from your childhood what has been designated to you as right: or in the fact that until now bread and honours have fallen to your share with that which you call your duty,-it is ” right” to you, because it seems to be your ” condition of existence ” (that you, however, have a right to existence seems to you irrefutable!). The persistency of your moral judgment might still be just a proof of personal wretchedness or impersonality; your “ moral force” might have its source in your obstinacy-or in your incapacity to perceive new ideals! And to be brief: if you had thought more acutely, observed more accurately, and had learned more, you would no longer under all circumstances call this and that your ” duty ” and your ” conscience ” : the knowledge how moral judgments have in general always originated would make you tired of these pathetic words,-as you have already grown tired of other pathetic words, for instance “ sin,” “ salvation,” and “ redemption.”-And now, my friend, do not talk to me about the categorical imperative! That word tickles my ear, and I must laugh in spite of your presence and your seriousness. In this connection I recollect old Kant, who, as a punishment for having gained possession surreptitiously of the ” thing in itself”-also a very ludicrous affair!-was imposed upon by the categorical imperative, and with that in his heart strayed back again to ” God,” the ” soul,” “ freedom,” and “ immortality,” like a fox which strays back into its cage: and it had been his strength and shrewdness which had broken open this cage!- What ? You admire the categorical imperative in you ? This ” persistency ” of your so-called moral judgment? This absoluteness of the feeling that ” as I think on this matter, so must everyone think”? Admire rather your selfishness therein! And the blindness, paltriness, and modesty of your selfishness ! For it is selfishness in a person to regard his judgment as universal law, and a blind, paltry and modest selfishness besides, because it betrays that you have not yet discovered yourself, that you have not yet created for yourself any personal, quite personal ideal:for this could never be the ideal of another, to say nothing of all, of every one!––He who still thinks that ” each would have to act in this manner in this case,” has not yet advanced half a dozen paces in self-knowledge: otherwise he would know that there neither are, nor can be, similar actions,-that every action that has been done, has been done in an entirely unique and inimitable manner, and that it will be the same with regard to all future actions; that all precepts of conduct (and even the most esoteric and subtle precepts of all moralities up to the present), apply only to the coarse exterior,-that by means of them, indeed, a semblance of equality can be attained, but only a semblance,-that in outlook and retrospect, every action is, and remains, an impenetrable affair, -that our opinions of the “ good,” “ noble” and “ great” can never be proved by our actions, because no action is cognisable,-that our opinions, estimates, and tables of values are certainly among the most powerful levers in the mechanism of our actions, that in every single case, nevertheless, the law of their mechanism is untraceable. Let us confine ourselves, therefore, to the purification of our opinions and appreciations, and to the construction of new tables of value of our own:-we will, however, brood no longer over the ” moral worth of our actions”! Yes, my friends ! As regards the whole moral twaddle of people about one another, it is time to be disgusted with it! To sit in judgment morally ought to be opposed to our taste! Let us leave this nonsense and this bad taste to those who have nothing else to do, save to drag the past a little distance further through time, and who are never themselves the present,-consequently to the many, to the majority! We, however, would seek to become what we are,-the new, the unique, the incomparable, making laws for ourselves and creating ourselves! And for this purpose we must become the best students and discoverers of all the laws and necessities in the world. We must be physicists in order to be creators in that sense,-whereas until now all appreciations and ideals have been based on ignorance of physics, or in contradiction thereto. And therefore, three cheers for physics! And still louder cheers for that which impels us thereto-our honesty. 336 Avarice of Nature.-Why has nature been so niggardly towards humanity that she has not let human beings shine, this man more and that man less, according to their inner abundance of light? Why have not great men such a fine visibility in their rising and setting as the sun? How much less equivocal would life among men then be! 337 Future ” Humanity!’-When I look at this age with the eye of a distant future, I find nothing so remarkable in the man of the present day as his peculiar virtue and sickness called “ the historical sense.” It is a tendency to something quite new and foreign in history: if this embryo were given several centuries and more, there might finally evolve out of it a marvellous plant, with a smell equally marvellous, on account of which our old earth might be more pleasant to live in than it has been until now. We moderns are just beginning to form the chain of a very powerful, future sentiment, link by link,-we hardly know what we are doing. It almost seems to us as if it were not the question of a new sentiment, but of the
decline of all old sentiments :-the historical sense is still something so poor and cold, and many are attacked by it as by a frost, and are made poorer and colder by it. To others it appears as the indication of stealthily approaching age, and our planet is regarded by them as a melancholy invalid, who, in order to forget his present condition, writes the history of his youth. In fact, this is one aspect of the new sentiment. He who knows how to regard the history of man in its entirety as his own history, feels in the immense generalisation all the grief of the invalid who thinks of health, of the old man who thinks of the dream of his youth, of the lover who is robbed of his beloved, of the martyr whose ideal is destroyed, of the hero on the evening of the indecisive battle which has brought him wounds and the loss of a friend. But to bear this immense sum of grief of all kinds, to be able to bear it, and yet still be the hero who at the commencement of a second day of battle greets the dawn and his happiness, as one who has an horizon of centuries before and behind him, as the heir of all nobility, of all past intellect, and the obligatory heir (as the noblest) of all the old nobles; while at the same time the first of a new nobility, the equal of which has never been seen nor even dreamt of: to take all this upon his soul, the oldest, the newest, the losses, hopes, conquests, and victories of mankind : to have all this at last in one soul, and to comprise it in one feeling:-this would necessarily furnish a happiness which man has not until now known,-a God’s happiness, full of power and love, full of tears and laughter, a happiness which, like the sun in the evening, continually gives of its inexhaustible riches and empties into the sea,- and like the sun, too, feels itself richest when even the poorest fisherman rows with golden oars! This divine feeling might then be called-humanity! 338 The Will to Suffering and the Compassionate.-Is it to your advantage to be above all compassionate ? And is it to the advantage of the sufferers when you are so ? But let us leave the first question for a moment without an answer.-That from which we suffer most profoundly and personally is almost incomprehensible and inaccessible to everyone else : in this matter we are hidden from our neighbour even when he eats at the same table with us. Everywhere, however, where we are noticed as sufferers, our suffering is interpreted in a shallow way; it belongs to the nature of the emotion of pity to divest unfamiliar suffering of its properly personal character :-our ” benefactors ” lower our value and volition more than our enemies. In most benefits which are conferred on the unfortunate there is something shocking in the intellectual levity with which the compassionate person plays the role of fate : he knows nothing of all the inner consequences and complications which are called misfortune for me or for you ! The entire economy of my soul and its adjustment by ” misfortune,” the uprising of new sources and needs, the closing up of old wounds, the repudiation of whole periods of the past-none of these things which may be connected with misfortune preoccupy the dear sympathiser. He wishes to succour, and does not reflect that there is a personal necessity for misfortune; that terror, want, impoverishment, midnight watches, adventures, hazards and mistakes are as necessary to me and to you as their opposites, yea, that, to speak mystically, the path to one’s own heaven always leads through the voluptuousness of one’s own hell. No, he knows nothing thereof. The ” religion of compassion ” (or ” the heart”) bids him help, and he thinks he has helped best when he has helped most speedily! If you adherents of this religion actually have the same sentiments towards yourselves which you have towards your fellows, if you are unwilling to endure your own suffering even for an hour, and continually forestall all possible misfortune, if you regard suffering and pain generally as evil, as detestable, as deserving of annihilation, and as blots on existence, well, you have then, besides your religion of compassion, yet another religion in your heart (and this is perhaps the mother of the former)-the religion of smug ease. Ah, how little you know of the happiness of man, you comfortable and good-natured ones !-for happiness and misfortune are brother and sister, and twins, who grow tall together, or, as with you, remain small together! But now let us return to the first question.-How is it at all possible for a person to keep to his path! Some cry or other is continually calling one aside: our eye then rarely lights on anything without it becoming necessary for us to leave for a moment our own affairs and rush to give assistance. I know there are hundreds of respectable and laudable methods of making me stray from my course, and in truth the most ” moral” of methods! Indeed, the opinion of the present-day preachers of the morality of compassion goes so far as to imply that just this, and this alone is moral:-to stray from our course to that extent and to run to the assistance of our neighbour. I am equally certain that I need only give myself over to the sight of one case of actual distress, and I, too, am lost! And if a suffering friend said to me, “ See, I shall soon die, only promise to die with me”-I might promise it, just as-to select for once bad examples for good reasons-the sight of a small, mountain people struggling for freedom, would bring me to the point of offering them my hand and my life. Indeed, there is even a secret seduction in all this awakening of compassion, and calling for help: our ” own way” is a thing too hard and insistent, and too far removed from the love and gratitude of others,-we escape from it and from our most personal conscience, not at all unwillingly, and, seeking security in the conscience of others, we take refuge in the lovely temple of the ” religion of pity.” As soon now as any war breaks out, there always breaks out at the same time a certain secret delight precisely in the noblest class of the people: they rush with rapture to meet the new danger of death, because they believe that in the sacrifice for their country they have finally that long-sought-for permission-the permission to shirk their aim:-war is for them a detour to suicide, a detour, however, with a good conscience. And although silent here about some things, I will not, however, be silent about my morality, which says to me: Live in concealment in order that you may live to yourself. Live ignorant of that which seems to your age to be most important! Put at least the skin of three centuries between yourself and the present day! And the clamour of the present day, the noise of wars and revolutions, ought to be a murmur to you! You wilt also want to help, but only those whose distress you entirely understand, because they have one sorrow and one hope in common with thee-thy friends: and only in the way that you help yourself:-I want to make them more courageous, more enduring, more simple, more joyful! I want to teach them that which at present so few understand, and the preachers of fellowship in sorrow least of all:- namely, fellow ship in joy ! 339 Vita femina.-To see the ultimate beauties in a work-all knowledge and good-will is not enough ; it requires the rarest, good chance for the veil of clouds to move for once from the summits, and for the sun to shine on them. We must not only stand at precisely the right place to see this, our very soul itself must have pulled away the veil from its heights, and
must be in need of an external expression and simile, so as to have a hold and remain master of itself. All these, however, are so rarely united at the same time that I am inclined to believe that the highest summit of all that is good, be it work, deed, man, or nature, has until now remained for most people, and even for the best, as something concealed and shrouded :- that, however, which unveils itself to us, unveils itself to us but once. The Greeks indeed prayed : ” Twice and thrice, everything beautiful!” Ah, they had their good reason to call on the Gods, for ungodly actuality does not furnish us with the beautiful at all, or only does so once! I mean to say that the world is overfull of beautiful things, but it is nevertheless poor, very poor, in beautiful moments, and in the unveiling of those beautiful things. But perhaps this is the greatest charm of life: it puts a gold-embroidered veil of lovely potentialities over itself, promising, resisting, modest, mocking, sympathetic, seductive. Yes, life is a woman ! 340 The Dying Socrates.-I admire the courage and wisdom of Socrates in all that he did, said-and did not say. This mocking and amorous demon and rat-catcher of Athens, who made the most insolent youths tremble and sob, was not only the wisest babbler that has ever lived, but was just as great in his silence. I would that he had also been silent in the last moment of his life,-perhaps he might then have belonged to a still higher order of intellects. Whether it was death, or the poison, or piety, or wickedness-something or other loosened his tongue at that moment, and he said: ” O Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepios.” For him who has ears, this ludicrous and terrible ” last word ” implies : ” O Crito, life is a long sickness ! ” Is it possible! A man like him, who had lived cheerfully and to all appearance as a soldier,- was a pessimist! He had merely put on a good demeanour towards life, and had all along concealed his ultimate judgment, his profoundest sentiment! Socrates, Socrates had suffered from life! And he also took his revenge for it-with that veiled, fearful, pious, and blasphemous phrase! Had even a Socrates to revenge himself? Was there a grain too little of magnanimity in his superabundant virtue ? Ah, my friends ! We must surpass even the Greeks! 341 The Greatest Weight.-What if a demon crept after you into your loneliest loneliness some day or night, and said to you: ” This life, as you live it at present, and have lived it, you must live it once more, and also innumerable times; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and every sigh, and all the unspeakably small and great in your life must come to you again, and all in the same series and sequence - and similarly this spider and this moonlight among the trees, and similarly this moment, and I myself. The eternal sand-glass of existence will ever be turned once more, and you with it, you speck of dust!” - Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth, and curse the demon that so spoke? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment in which you would answer him : ” You are a God, and never did I hear anything so divine!” If that thought acquired power over you as you are, it would transform you, and perhaps crush you; the question with regard to all and everything: ” Do you want this once more, and also for innumerable times ? ” would lie as the heaviest burden upon your activity! Or, how would you have to become favourably inclined to yourself and to life, so as to long for nothing more ardently than for this last eternal sanctioning and sealing ?342 Incipit Tragoedia.-When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the Lake of Urmi, and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and his solitude, and for ten years did not weary of it. But at last his heart changed,- and rising one morning with the rosy dawn, he went before the sun and spake thus to it: ” You great star! What would be your happiness if you had not those for whom you shine! For ten years have you climbed hither unto my cave: you would have wearied of your light and of the journey, had it not been for me, mine eagle, and my serpent. But we awaited you every morning, took from you your overflow, and blessed you for it. Lo ! I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that hath gathered too much honey ; I need hands outstretched to take it. I would gladly bestow and distribute, until the wise have once more become joyous in their folly, and the poor happy in their riches. Therefore must I descend into the deep, as you doest in the evening, when you go behind the sea and give light also to the netherworld, you most rich star! Like you must I go down, as men say, to whom I shall descend. Bless me then, you tranquil eye, that canst behold even the greatest happiness without envy! Bless the cup that is about to overflow, that the water may flow golden out of it, and carry everywhere the reflection of your bliss! Lo! This cup is again going to empty itself, and Zarathustra is again going to be a man.”-Thus began Zarathustra’s down-going. BOOK FIVE 343 We Fearless Ones “ Carcasse, tu trembles? Tu tremblerais bien davan-tage, si tu savais oft je te mene.” Turenne What our Cheerfulness Signifies. - The most important of more recent events-that “ God is dead,” that the belief in the Christian God has become unworthy of belief-already begins to cast its first shadows over Europe. To the few at least whose eye, whose suspecting glance, is strong enough and subtle enough for this drama, some sun seems to have set, some old, profound confidence seems to have changed into doubt: our old world must seem to them daily more darksome, distrustful, strange and ” old.” In the main, however, one may say that the event itself is far too great, too remote, too much beyond most people’s power of apprehension, for one to suppose that so much as the report of it could have reached them; not to speak of many who already knew what had taken place, and what must all collapse now that this belief had been undermined,-because so much was built upon it, so much rested on it, and had become one with it: for example, our entire European morality. This lengthy, vast and uninterrupted process of crumbling, destruction, ruin and overthrow which is now imminent: who has realised it sufficiently to-day to have to stand up as the teacher and herald of such a tremendous logic of terror, as the prophet of a period of gloom and eclipse, the like of which has probably never taken place on earth before ? … Even we, the born riddle-readers, who wait as it were on the mountains posted ‘twixt to-day and to-morrow, and engirt by their contradiction, we, the firstlings and
premature children of the coming century, into whose sight especially the shadows which must forthwith envelop Europe should already have come-how is it that even we, without genuine sympathy for this period of gloom, contemplate its advent without any personal solicitude or fear ? Are we still, perhaps, too much under the immediate effects of the eventand are these effects, especially as regards ourselves, perhaps the reverse of what was to be expected-not at all sad and depressing, but rather like a new and indescribable variety of light, happiness, relief, enlivenment, encouragement, and dawning day? … In fact, we philosophers and ” free spirits ” feel ourselves irradiated as by a new dawn by the report that the “ old God is dead ” ; our hearts overflow with gratitude, astonishment, presentiment and expectation. At last the horizon seems open once more, granting even that it is not bright; our ships can at last put out to sea in face of every danger; every hazard is again permitted to the discerner; the sea, our sea, again lies open before us; perhaps never before did such an ” open sea ” exist.344To what Extent even We are still Pious.-It is said with good reason that convictions have no civic rights in the domain of science: it is only when a conviction voluntarily condescends to the modesty of an hypothesis, a preliminary standpoint for experiment, or a regulative fiction, that its access to the realm of knowledge, and a certain value therein, can be conceded,-always, however, with the restriction that it must remain under police supervision, under the police of our distrust.-Regarded more accurately, however, does not this imply that only when a conviction ceases to be a conviction can it obtain admission into science? Does not the discipline of the scientific spirit just commence when one no longer harbours any conviction ? … It is probably so: only, it remains to be asked whether, in order that this discipline may commence, it is not necessary that there should already be a conviction, and in fact one so imperative and absolute, that it makes a sacrifice of all other convictions. One sees that science also rests on a belief: there is no science at all ” without premises.” The question whether truth is necessary, must not merely be affirmed beforehand, but must be affirmed to such an extent that the principle, belief, or conviction finds expression, that ” there is nothing more necessary than truth, and in comparison with it everything else has only secondary value.”-This absolute will to truth: what is it? Is it the will not to allow ourselves to be deceived? Is it the will not to deceive? For the will to truth could also be interpreted in this fashion, provided one included under the generalisation, ” I will not deceive,” the special case, ” I will not deceive myself.” But why not deceive ? Why not allow oneself to be deceived ?-Let it be noted that the reasons for the former eventuality belong to a category quite different from those for the latter: one does not want to be deceived oneself, under the supposition that it is injurious, dangerous, or fatal to be deceived, -in this sense science would be a prolonged process of caution, foresight and utility; against which, however, one might reasonably make objections. What ? is not-wishingto-be-deceived really less injurious, less dangerous, less fatal ? What do you know of the character of existence in all its phases to be able to decide whether the greater advantage is on the side of absolute distrust, or of absolute trustfulness ? In case, however, of both being necessary, much trusting and much distrusting, whence then should science derive the absolute belief, the conviction on which it rests, that truth is more important than anything else, even than every other conviction? This conviction could not have arisen if truth and untruth had both continually proved themselves to be useful : as is the case. Thus-the belief in science, which now undeniably exists, cannot have had its origin in such a utilitarian calculation, but rather in spite of the fact of the inutility and dangerousness of the ” Will to truth,” of ” truth at all costs,” being continually demonstrated. ” At all costs”: alas, we understand that sufficiently well, after having sacrificed and slaughtered one belief after another at this altar!-Consequently, ” Will to truth” does not imply, ” I will not allow myself to be deceived,” but-there is no other alternative-” I will not deceive, not even myself”: and thus we have reached the realm of morality. For, let one just ask oneself fairly: ” Why will you not deceive ? ” especially if it should seem- and it does seem-as if life were laid out with a view to appearance, I mean, with a view to error, deceit, dissimulation, delusion, selfdelusion; and when on the other hand it is a matter of fact that the great type of life has always manifested itself on the side of the most unscrupulous polytropoi [Wily, manifold, versatile]. Such an intention might perhaps, to express it mildly, be a piece of Quixotism, a little enthusiastic craziness; it might also, however, be something worse, namely, a destructive principle, hostile to life. …” Will to Truth,”-that might be a concealed Will to Death.-Thus the question, Why is there science? leads back to the moral problem : What in general is the purpose of morality, if life, nature, and history are “ non-moral”? There is no doubt that the conscientious man in the daring and extreme sense in which he is presupposed by the belief in science, affirms thereby a world other than that of life, nature, and history; and in so far as he affirms this ” other world,” what? must he not just therebydeny its counterpart, this world, our world? … But what I have in view will now be understood, namely, that it is always a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science rests,and that even we knowing ones of to-day, the godless and anti-metaphysical, still take our fire from the conflagration kindled by a belief a millennium old, the Christian belief, which was also the belief of Plato, that God is truth, that the truth is divine… . But what if this itself always becomes more untrustworthy, what if nothing any longer proves itself divine, except it be error, blindness, and falsehood ;-what if God himself turns out to be our most persistent lie?345 Morality as a Problem.-A defect in personality revenges itself everywhere: an enfeebled, lank, obliterated, self-disavowing and disowning personality is no longer fit for anything good-it is least of all fit for philosophy. ” Selflessness” has no value either in heaven or on earth ; the great problems all demand great love, and it is only the strong, well-rounded, secure spirits, those who have a solid basis, that are qualified for them. It makes the most material difference whether a thinker stands personally related to his problems, having his fate, his need, and even his highest happiness therein; or merely impersonally, that is to say, if he can only feel and grasp them with the tentacles of cold, prying thought. In the latter case I warrant that nothing comes of it: for the great problems, granting that they let themselves be grasped at all, do not let themselves be held by toads and weaklings : that has ever been their taste-a taste also which they share with all high-spirited women.-How is it that I have not yet met with any one, not even in books, who seems to have stood to morality in this position, as one who knew morality as a problem, and this problem as his own personal need, affliction, pleasure and passion ? It is obvious that up to the present morality has not been a problem at all; it has rather been the very ground on which people have met after all distrust, dissension and contradiction, the hallowed place of peace, where thinkers
could obtain rest even from themselves, could recover breath and revive. I see no one who has ventured to criticise the estimates of moral worth. I miss in this connection even the attempts of scientific curiosity, and the fastidious, groping imagination of psychologists and historians, which easily anticipates a problem and catches it on the wing, without rightly knowing what it catches. With difficulty I have discovered some scanty data for the purpose of furnishing a history of the origin of these feelings and estimates of value (which is something different from a criticism of them, and also something different from a history of ethical systems). In an individual case I have done everything to encourage the inclination and talent for this kind of history- in vain, as it would seem to me at present. There is little to be learned from those historians of morality (especially Englishmen) : they themselves are usually, quite unsuspiciously, under the influence of a definite morality, and act unwittingly as its armour-bearers and followers-perhaps still repeating sincerely the popular superstition of Christian Europe, that the characteristic of moral action consists in abnegation, self-denial, self-sacrifice, or in fellow-feeling and fellow-suffering. The usual error in their premises is their insistence on a certain consensus among human beings, at least among civilised human beings, with regard to certain propositions of morality, from thence they conclude that these propositions are absolutely binding even upon you and me; or reversely, they come to the conclusion that no morality is binding, after the truth has dawned upon them that among different peoples moral valuations are necessarily different: both of which conclusions are equally childish follies. The error of the more subtle amongst them is that they discover and criticise the probably foolish opinions of a people about its own morality, or the opinions of mankind about human morality generally (they treat accordingly of its origin, its religious sanctions, the superstition of free will, and such matters), and they think that just by so doing they have criticised the morality itself. But the worth of a precept, ” You shall,” is fundamentally different from and independent of such opinions about it, and must be distinguished from the weeds of error with which it has perhaps been overgrown : just as the worth of a medicine to a sick person is altogether independent of the question whether he has a scientific opinion about medicine, or merely thinks about it as an old wife would do. A morality could even have grown out of an error: but with this knowledge the problem of its worth would not even be touched.-Thus, no one until now has tested the value of that most celebrated of all medicines, called morality: for which purpose it is first of all necessary for one-to call it in question. Well, that is just our work.-o 346 Our Note of Interrogation.-But you don’t understand it ? As a matter of fact, an effort will be necessary in order to understand us. We seek for words; we seek perhaps also for ears. Who are we after all ? If we wanted simply to call ourselves in older phraseology, atheists, unbelievers, or even immoralists, we should still be far from thinking ourselves designated thereby: we are all three in too late a phase for people generally to conceive, for you, my inquisitive friends, to be able to conceive, what is our state of mind under the circumstances. No! we have no longer the bitterness and passion of him who has broken loose, who has to make for himself a belief, a goal, and even a martyrdom out of his unbelief! We have become saturated with the conviction (and have grown cold and hard in it) that things are not at all divinely ordered in this world, nor even according to human standards do they go on rationally, mercifully, or justly: we know the fact that the world in which we live is ungodly, immoral, and ” inhuman,”-we have far too long interpreted it to ourselves falsely and mendaciously, according to the wish and will of our veneration, that is to say, according to our need. For man is a venerating animal! But he is also a distrustful animal: and that the world is not worth what we believed it to be worth is about the surest thing our distrust has at last managed to grasp. So much distrust, so much philosophy! We take good care not to say that the world is of less value: it seems to us at present absolutely ridiculous when man claims to devise values to surpass the values of the actual world,-it is precisely from that point that we have retraced our steps; as from an extravagant error of human conceit and irrationality, which for a long period has not been recognised as such. This error had its last expression in modern Pessimism; an older and stronger manifestation in the teaching of Buddha ; but Christianity also contains it, more dubiously, to be sure, and more ambiguously, but none the less seductive on that account. The whole attitude of “ man versus the world,” man as world-denying principle, man as the standard of the value of things, as judge of the world, who in the end puts existence itself on his scales and finds it too light-the monstrous impertinence of this attitude has dawned upon us as such, and has disgusted us,-we now laugh when we find, “ Man and World” placed beside one another, separated by the sublime presumption of the little word ” and “ ! But how is it ? Have we not in our very laughing just made a further step in despising mankind ? And consequently also in Pessimism, in despising the existence cognisable by us ? Have we not just thereby awakened suspicion that there is an opposition between the world in which we have until now been at home with our venerations-for the sake of which we perhaps endure lifeand another world which we ourselves are: an inexorable, radical, most profound suspicion concerning ourselves, which is continually getting us Europeans more annoyingly into its power, and could easily face the coming generation with the terrible alternative: Either do away with your venerations, or - with yourselves ! ” The latter would be Nihilism-but would not the former also be Nihilism? This is our note of interrogation. 347 Believers and their Need of Belief.-How much faith a person requires in order to flourish, how much ” fixed opinion” he requires which he does not wish to have shaken, because he holds himself thereby-is a measure of his power (or more plainly speaking, of his weakness). Most people in old Europe, as it seems to me, still need Christianity at present, and on that account it still finds belief. For such is man: a theological dogma might be refuted to him a thousand times,-provided, however, that he had need of it, he would again and again accept it as ” true,”-according to the famous “ proof of power” of which the Bible speaks. Some have still need of metaphysics; but also the impatient longing for certainty which at present discharges itself in scientific, positivist fashion among large numbers of the people, the longing by all means to get at something stable (while on account of the warmth of the longing the establishing of the certainty is more leisurely and negligently undertaken):-even this is still the longing for a hold, a support; in short, the instinct of weakness, which, while not actually creating religions, metaphysics, and convictions of all kinds, nevertheless-preserves them. In fact, around all these positivist systems there fume the vapours of a certain pessimistic gloom, something of weariness, fatalism, disillusionment, and fear of new disillusionment-or else manifest animosity, ill-humour, anarchic exasperation, and
whatever there is of symptom or masquerade of the feeling of weakness. Even the readiness with which our cleverest contemporaries get lost in wretched corners and alleys, for example, in Vaterlanderei (so I designate Jingoism, called chauvinisme in France, and “ deutsch” in Germany), or in petty aesthetic creeds in the manner of Parisian naturalisme (which only brings into prominence and uncovers that aspect of nature which excites simultaneously disgust and astonishment-they like at present to call this aspect la veriti vraie), or in Nihilism in the St Petersburg style (that is to say, in the belief in unbelief, even to martyrdom for it):-this shows always and above all the need of belief, support, backbone, and buttress… . Belief is always most desired, most pressingly needed, where there is a lack of will: for the will, as emotion of command, is the distinguishing characteristic of sovereignty and power. That is to say, the less a person knows how to command, the more urgent is his desire for that which commands, and commands sternly,-a God, a prince, a caste, a physician, a confessor, a dogma, a party conscience. From whence perhaps it could be inferred that the two world-religions, Buddhism and Christianity, might well have had the cause of their rise, and especially of their rapid extension, in an extraordinary malady of the will. And in truth it has been so: both religions lighted upon a longing, monstrously exaggerated by malady of the will, for an imperative, a ” You-shall,” a longing going the length of despair; both religions were teachers of fanaticism in times of slackness of willpower, and thereby offered to innumerable persons a support, a new possibility of exercising will, an enjoyment in willing. For in fact fanaticism is the sole ” volitional strength” to which the weak and irresolute can be excited, as a sort of hypnotising of the entire sensory-intellectual system, in favour of the over-abundant nutrition (hypertrophy) of a particular point of view and a particular sentiment, which then dominates-the Christian calls it his faith. When a man arrives at the fundamental conviction that he requires to be commanded, he becomes ” a believer.” Reversely, one could imagine a delight and a power of self-determining, and a freedom of will, whereby a spirit could bid farewell to every belief, to every wish for certainty, accustomed as it would be to support itself on slender cords and possibilities, and to dance even on the verge of abysses. Such a spirit would be the free spirit par excellence. 348 The Origin of the Scholar.-The learned man in Europe grows out of all the different ranks and social conditions, like a plant requiring no specific soil: on that account he belongs essentially and involuntarily to the partisans of democratic thought. But this origin betrays itself. If one has trained one’s glance to some extent to recognise in a learned book or scientific treatise the intellectual idiosyncrasy of the learned man-all of them have such idiosyncrasy,-and if we take it by surprise, we shall almost always get a glimpse behind it of the “ antecedent history” of the learned man and his family, especially of the nature of their callings and occupations. Where the feeling finds expression, ” That is at last proved, I am now done with it,” it is commonly the ancestor in the blood and instincts of the learned man that approves of the “ accomplished work ” in the nook from which he sees things;- the belief in the proof is only an indication of what has been looked upon for ages by a laborious family as ” good work.” Take an example: the sons of registrars and office-clerks of every kind, whose main task has always been to arrange a variety of material, distribute it in drawers, and systematise it generally, evince, when they become learned men, an inclination to regard a problem as almost solved when they have systematised it. There are philosophers who are at bottom nothing but systematising brains-the formal part of the paternal occupation has become its essence to them. The talent for classifications, for tables of categories, betrays something; it is not for nothing that a person is the child of his parents. The son of an advocate will also have to be an advocate as investigator: he seeks as a first consideration, to carry the point in his case, as a second consideration, he perhaps seeks to be in the right. One recognises the sons of Protestant clergymen and schoolmasters by the naive assurance with which as learned men they already assume their case to be proved, when it has but been presented by them staunchly and warmly: they are thoroughly accustomed to people believing in them,-it belonged to their fathers’ “ trade”! A Jew, contrariwise, in accordance with his business surroundings and the past of his race, is least of all accustomed-to people believing him. Observe Jewish scholars with regard to this matter,-they all lay great stress on logic, that is to say, on compelling assent by means of reasons ; they know that they must conquer thereby, even when race and class antipathy is against them, even where people are unwilling to believe them. For 1 fact, nothing is more democratic than logic: it knows no respect of persons, and takes even the crooked nose as straight. (In passing we may remark that in respect to logical thinking, in respect to cleaner intellectual habits, Europe is not a little indebted to the Jews; above all the Germans, as being a lamentably de’raisonnable race, who, even at the present day, must always have their ” heads washed ” in the first place. Wherever the Jews have attained to influence, they have taught to analyse more subtly, to argue more acutely, to write more clearly and purely: it has always been their problem to bring a people “ to raison.”) 349 The Origin of the Scholar once more.-To seek self-preservation merely, is the expression of a state of distress, or of limitation of the true, fundamental instinct of life, which aims at the extension of power, and with this in view often enough calls in question self-preservation and sacrifices it. It should be taken as symptomatic when individual philosophers, as for example, the consumptive Spinoza, have seen and have been obliged to see the principal feature of life precisely in the so-called self-preservative instinct:-they have just been men in states of distress. That our modern natural sciences have entangled themselves so much with Spinoza’s dogma (finally and most grossly in Darwinism, with its inconceivably onesided doctrine of the ” struggle for existence “ -), is probably owing to the origin of most of the inquirers into nature: they belong in this respect to the people, their forefathers have been poor and humble persons, who knew too well by immediate experience the difficulty of making a living. Over the whole of English Darwinism there hovers something of the suffocating air of over-crowded England, something of the odour of humble people in need and in straits. But as an investigator of nature, a person ought to emerge from his paltry human nook: and in nature the state of distress does not prevail, but superfluity, even prodigality to the extent of folly. The struggle for existence is only an exception, a temporary restriction of the will to live ; the struggle, be it great or small, turns everywhere on predominance, on increase and expansion, on power, in conformity to the will to power, which is
just the will to live. 350 In Honour of Homines Religiosi.-The struggle against the church is certainly (among other things-for it has a manifold significance) the struggle of the more ordinary, cheerful, confiding, superficial natures against the rule of the graver, profounder, more contemplative natures, that is to say, the more malign and suspicious men, who ‘ with long continued distrust in the worth of life, brood also over their own worth:-the ordinary instinct of the people, its sensual gaiety, its ” good heart,” revolts against them. The entire Roman Church rests on a Southern suspicion of the nature of man (always misunderstood in the North), a suspicion whereby the European South has succeeded to the inheritance of the profound Orient- the mysterious, venerable Asia-and its contemplative spirit. Protestantism was a popular insurrection in favour of the simple, the respectable, the superficial (the North has always been more good-natured and more shallow than the South), but it was the French Revolution that first gave the sceptre wholly and solemnly into the hands of the ” good man ” (the sheep, the ass, the goose, and everything incurably shallow, bawling, and fit for the Bedlam of ” modern ideas “ ). 351 In Honour of Priestly Natures.-I think that philosophers have always felt themselves very remote from that which the people (in all classes of society nowadays) take for wisdom : the prudent, bovine placidity, piety, and country-parson meekness, which lies in the meadow and gazes at life seriously and ruminatingly:-this is probably because philosophers have not had sufficiently the taste of the ” people,” or of the country-parson, for that kind of wisdom. Philosophers will also perhaps be the last to acknowledge that the people should understand something of that which lies furthest from them, something of the’ great passion of the thinker, who lives and must live continually in the storm-cloud of the highest problems and the heaviest responsibilities (consequently, not gazing at all, to say nothing of doing so indifferently, securely, objectively). The people venerate an entirely different type of men when on their part they form the ideal of a “ sage,” and they are a thousand times justified in rendering homage with the highest eulogies and honours to precisely that type of men-namely, the gentle, serious, simple, chaste, priestly natures and those related to them,-it is to them that the praise falls due in the popular veneration of wisdom. And to whom should the multitude have more reason to be grateful than to these men who pertain to its class and rise from its ranks, but are persons consecrated, chosen, and sacrificed for its good-they themselves believe themselves sacrificed to God,-before whom everyone can pour forth his heart with impunity, by whom he can get rid of his secrets, cares, and worse things (for the man who “ communicates himself” gets rid of himself, and he who has ” confessed ” forgets). Here there exists a great need: for sewers and pure cleansing waters are required also for spiritual filth, and rapid currents of love are needed, and strong, lowly, pure hearts, who qualify and sacrifice themselves for such service of the non-public healthdepartment- for it is a sacrificing, the priest is, and continues to be, a human sacrifice… . The people regard such sacrificed, silent, serious men of ” faith ” as ” wise,” that is to say, as men who have become sages, as “ reliable” in relation to their own unreliability. Who would desire to deprive the people of that expression and that veneration ?-But as is fair on the other side, among philosophers the priest also is still held to belong to the ” people,” and is not regarded as a sage, because, above all, they themselves do not believe in ” sages,” and they already scent “ the people” in thi3 very belief and superstition. It was modesty which invented in Greece the word “ philosopher,” and left to the play-actors of the spirit the superb arrogance of assuming the name “ wise”-the modesty of such monsters of pride and self-glorification as Pythagoras and Plato.352 Why we can hardly Dispense with Morality.- The naked man is generally an ignominious spectacle-I speak of us European males (and by no means of European females!). If the most joyous company at table suddenly found themselves stripped and divested of their garments through the trick of an enchanter, I believe that not only would the joyousness be gone and the strongest appetite lost;-it seems that we Europeans cannot at all dispense with the masquerade that is called clothing. But should not the disguise of ” moral men,” the screening under moral formulae and notions of decency, the whole kindly concealment of our conduct under conceptions of duty, virtue, public sentiment, honourableness, and disinterestedness, have just as good reasons in support of it? Not that I mean hereby that human wickedness and baseness, in short, the evil wild beast in us, should be disguised; on the contrary, my idea is that it is precisely as tame animals that we are an ignominious spectacle and require moral disguising,-that the “ inner man” in Europe is far from having enough of intrinsic evil ” to let himself be seen ” with it (to be beautiful with it). The European disguises himself in morality because he has become a sick, sickly, crippled animal, who has good reasons for being ” tame,” because he is almost an abortion, an imperfect, weak and clumsy thing. … It is not the fierceness of the beast of prey that finds moral disguise necessary, but the gregarious animal, with its profound mediocrity, anxiety and ennui. Morality dresses up the European-let us acknowledge it!- in more distinguished, more important, more conspicuous guise- in ” divine ” guise353 The Origin of Religions,-The real inventions of founders of religions are, on the one hand, to establish a definite mode of life and everyday custom, which operates as disciplina voluntatis, and at the same time does away with ennui; and on the other hand, to give to that very mode of life an interpretation, by virtue of which it appears illumined with the highest value; so that it henceforth becomes a good for which people struggle, and under certain circumstances lay down their lives. In truth, the second of these inventions is the more essential: the first, the mode of life, has usually been there already, side by side, however, with other modes of life, and still unconscious of the value which it embodies. The import, the originality of the founder of a religion, discloses itself usually in the fact that he sees the mode of life, selects it, and divines for the first time the purpose for which it can be used, how it can be interpreted. Jesus (or Paul) for example, found around him the life of the common people in the Roman province, a modest, virtuous, oppressed life: he
interpreted it, he put the highest significance and value into it-and thereby the courage to despise every other mode of life, the calm fanaticism of the Moravians, the secret, subterranean self-confidence which goes on increasing, and is at last ready ” to overcome the world ” (that is to say, Rome, and the upper classes throughout the empire). Buddha, in like manner, found the same type of man,-he found it in fact dispersed among all the classes and social ranks of a people who were good and kind (and above all inoffensive), owing to indolence, and who likewise owing to indolence, lived abstemiously, almost without requirements. He understood that such a type of man, with all its vis inertiae, had inevitably to glide into a belief which promises to avoid the return of earthly ill (that is to say, labour and activity generally),-this ” understanding ” was his genius. The founder of a religion possesses psychological infallibility in the knowledge of a definite, average type of souls, who have not yet recognised themselves as akin. It is he who brings them together: the founding of a religion, therefore, always becomes a long ceremony of recognition.354 The ” Genius of the Species?’-The problem of consciousness (or more correctly: of becoming conscious of oneself) meets us only when we begin to perceive in what measure we could dispense with it: and it is at the beginning of this perception that we are now placed by physiology and zoology (which have thus required two centuries to overtake the hint thrown out in advance by Leibnitz). For we could in fact think, feel, will, and recollect, we could likewise ” act” in every sense of the term, and nevertheless nothing of it all need necessarily ” come into consciousness” (as one says metaphorically). The whole of life would be possible without its seeing itself as it were in a mirror: as in fact even at present the far greater part of our life still goes on without this mirroring,-and even our thinking, feeling, volitional life as well, however painful this statement may sound to an older philosopher. What then is the purpose of consciousness generally, when it is in the main superfluous ?- Now it seems to me, if you will hear my answer and its perhaps extravagant supposition, that the subtlety and strength of consciousness are always in proportion to the capacity for communication of a man (or an animal), the capacity for communication in its turn being in proportion to the necessity for communication: the latter not to be understood as if precisely the individual himself who is master in the art of communicating and making known his necessities would at the same time have to be most dependent upon others for his necessities. It seems to me, however, to be so in relation to whole races and successions of generations : where necessity and need have long compelled men to communicate with their fellows and understand one another rapidly and subtly, a surplus of the power and art of communication is at last acquired, as if it were a fortune which had gradually accumulated, and now waited for an heir to squander it prodigally (the so-called artists are these heirs, in like manner the orators, preachers, and authors: all of them men who come at the end of a long succession, ” late-born ” always, in the best sense of the word, and as has been said, squanderers by their very nature). Granted that this observation is correct, I may proceed further to the conjecture that consciousness generally has only been developed under the pressure of the necessity for communication,-that from the first it has been necessary and useful only between man and man (especially between those commanding and those obeying), and has only developed in proportion to its utility. Consciousness is properly only a connecting net-work between man and man,-it is only as ,such that it has had to develop; the recluse and wild-beast species of men would not have needed it. The very fact that our actions, thoughts, feelings and emotions come within the range of our consciousness-at least a part of them -is the result of a terrible, prolonged ” must” ruling man’s destiny: as the most endangered animal he needed help and protection; he needed his fellows, he was obliged to express his distress, he had to know how to make himself understood- and for all this he needed ” consciousness ” first of all: he had to ” know” himself what he lacked, to ” know ” how he felt, and to ” know ” what he thought. For, to repeat it once more, man, like every living creature, thinks unceasingly, but does not know it; the thinking which is becoming conscious of itself is only the smallest part thereof, we may say, the most superficial part, the worst part:-for this conscious thinking alone is done in words, that is to say, in the symbols for communication, by means of which the origin of consciousness is revealed. In short, the development of speech and the development of consciousness (not of reason, but of reason becoming self-conscious) go hand in hand. Let it be further accepted that it is not only speech that serves as a bridge between man and man, but also the looks, the pressure and the gestures ; our becoming conscious of our sense impressions, our power of being able to fix them, and as it were to locate them outside of ourselves, has increased in proportion as the necessity has increased for communicating them to others by means of signs. The sign-inventing man is at the same time the man who is always more acutely self-conscious ; it is only as a social animal that man has learned to become conscious of himself,-he is doing so still, and doing so more and more.-As is obvious, my idea is that consciousness does not properly belong to the individual existence of man, but rather to the social and herd nature in him ; that, as follows from that, it is only in relation to communal and herd utility that it is finely developed; and that consequently each of us, in spite of the best intention of understanding himself as individually as possible, and of “ knowing himself”, will always just call into consciousness the non-individual in him, namely, his “ average-ness “ ;- that our thought itself is continuously as it were governed by the character of consciousness- by the commanding “ genius of the species” therein - and is translated back into the perspective of the herd. Fundamentally our actions are in an incomparable manner altogether personal, unique and absolutely individual - there is no doubt about it; but as soon as we translate them into consciousness, they do not appear so any longer… . This is the proper phenomenalism and perspectivism as I understand it: the nature of animal consciousness involves the notion that the world of which we can become conscious is only a superficial and symbolic world, a generalised and vulgarised world;-that everything which becomes conscious becomes just thereby shallow, meagre, relatively stupid, - a generalisation, a symbol, a characteristic of the herd; that with the evolving of consciousness there is always combined a great, radical perversion, falsification, superficial-isation, and generalisation. Finally, the growing consciousness is a danger, and whoever lives among the most conscious Europeans knows even that it is a disease. As may be conjectured, it is not the antithesis of subject and object with which I am here concerned : I leave that distinction to the epistemologists who have remained entangled in the toils of grammar (popular metaphysics). It is still less the antithesis of “ thing in itself” and phenomenon, for we do not ” know ” enough to be entitled even to make such a distinction. Indeed, we have not any organ at all for knowing, or for “ truth”: we “ know” (or believe, or fancy) just as much as may be of use in the interest of the human herd,
the species ; and even what is here called “ usefulness” is ultimately only a belief, a fancy, and perhaps precisely the most fatal stupidity by which we shall one day be ruined. 355 The Origin of our Conception of “ Knowledge”-I take this explanation from the street. I heard one of the people saying that “ he knew me,” so I asked myself: What do the people really understand by knowledge? what do they want when they seek “ knowledge”? Nothing more than that what is strange is to be traced back to something known. And we philosophers - have we really understood anything more by knowledge? The known, that is to say, what we are accustomed to so that we no longer marvel at it, the commonplace, any kind of rule to which we are habituated, all and everything in which we know ourselves to be at home:-what? is our need of knowing not just this need of the known? the will to discover in everything strange, unusual, or questionable, something which no longer disquiets us? Is it not possible that it should be the instinct of fear which enjoins upon us to know ? Is it not possible that the rejoicing of the discerner should be just his rejoicing in the regained feeling of security ? … One philosopher imagined the world ” known” when he had traced it back to the ” idea”: alas, was it not because the idea was so known, so familiar to him ? because he had so much less fear of the “ idea”-Oh, this moderation of the discerners! let us but look at their principles, and at their solutions of the riddle 01 the world in this connection ! When they again find aught in things, among things, or behind things that is unfortunately very well known to us, for example, our multiplication table, or our logic, or our willing and desiring, how happy they immediately are! For ” what is known is understood”: they are unanimous as to that. Even the most circumspect among them think that the known is at least more easily understood than the strange; that for example, it is methodically ordered to proceed outward from the “ inner world,” from ” the facts of consciousness,” because it is the world which is better known to us ! Error of errors! The known is the accustomed, and the accustomed is the most difficult of all to “ understand,” that is to say, to perceive as a problem, to perceive as strange, distant, “ outside of us.” … The great certainty of the natural sciences in comparison with psychology and the criticism of the elements of consciousness-unnatural sciences, as one might almost be entitled to call them-rests precisely on the fact that they take what is strange as their object: while it is almost like something contradictory and absurd to wish to take generally what is not strange as an object… . 356 In what Manner Europe will always become ” more Artistic!’-Providing a living still enforces even in the present day (in our transition period when so much ceases to enforce) a definite role on almost all male Europeans, their so-called callings; some have the liberty, an apparent liberty, to choose this role themselves, but most have it chosen for them. The result is strange enough. Almost all Europeans confound themselves with their role when they advance in age; they themselves are the victims of their ” good acting,” they have forgotten how much chance, whim and arbitrariness swayed them when their ” calling ” was decided-and how many other roles they could perhaps have played : for it is now too late! Looked at more closely, we see that their characters have actually evolved out of their role, nature out of art. There were ages in which people believed with unshaken confidence, yea, with piety, in their predestination for this very business, for that very mode of livelihood, and would not at all acknowledge chance, or the fortuitous role, or arbitrariness therein. Ranks, guilds, and hereditary trade privileges succeeded, with the help of this belief, in rearing those extraordinary broad towers of society which distinguished the Middle Ages, and of which at all events one thing remains to their credit: capacity for duration (and duration is a thing of the first rank on earth!). But there are ages entirely the reverse, the properly democratic ages, in which people tend to become more and more oblivious of this belief, and a sort of impudent conviction and quite contrary mode of viewing things comes to the front, the Athenian conviction which is first observed in the epoch of Pericles, the American conviction of the present day, which wants also more and more to become a European conviction: whereby the individual is convinced that he can do almost anything, that he can play almost any role, whereby everyone makes experiments with himself, improvises, tries anew, tries with delight, whereby all nature ceases and becomes art… . The Greeks, having adopted this role-creed-an artist creed, if you will-underwent step by step, as is well known, a curious transformation, not in every respect worthy of imitation: they became actual stage-players; and as such they enchanted, they conquered all the world, and at last even the conqueror of the world, (for the Graeculus histrio conquered Rome, and not Greek culture, as the naive are accustomed to say …). What I fear, however, and what is at present obvious, if we desire to perceive it, is that we modern men are quite on the same road already; and whenever a man begins to discover in what respect he plays a r61e, and to what extent he can be a stage-player, he becomes a stage-player. … A new flora and fauna of men thereupon springs up, which cannot grow in more stable, more restricted eras-or is left ” at the bottom,” under the ban and suspicion of infamy; thereupon the most interesting and insane periods of history always make their appearance, in which ” stage-players,” all kinds of stage-players, are the real masters. Precisely thereby another species of man is always more and more injured, and in the end made impossible: above all the great ” architects”; the building power is now being paralysed; the courage that makes plans for the distant future is disheartened; there begins to be a lack of organising geniuses. Who is there who would now venture to undertake works for the completion of which millenniums would have to be reckoned upon ? The fundamental belief is dying out, on the basis of which one could calculate, promise and anticipate the future in one’s plan, and offer it as a sacrifice thereto, that in fact man has only value and significance in so far as he is a stone in a great building; for which purpose he has first of all to be solid, he has to be a ” stone.” … Above all, not a-stage-player ! In short-alas! this fact will be hushed up for some considerable time to come!-that which from henceforth will no longer be built, and can no longer be built, is-a society in the old sense of the term ; to build that structure everything is lacking, above all, the material. None of us are any longer material for a society: that is a truth which is seasonable at present! It seems to me a matter of indifference that meanwhile the most shortsighted, perhaps the most honest, and at any rate the noisiest species of men of the present day, our friends the Socialists, believe, hope, dream, and above all scream and scribble almost the opposite; in fact one already reads their watchword of the future: ” free society,” on all tables and walls. Free society ? Indeed ! Indeed ! But you know, gentlemen, sure enough whereof one builds it? Out of wooden iron! Out of the famous wooden iron! And not even out of wooden …
357 The old Problem: ” What is German ? “ -Let us count up apart the real acquisitions of philosophical thought for which we have to thank German intellects: are they in any allowable sense to be counted also to the credit of the whole race ? Can we say that they are at the same time the work of the ” German soul,” or at least a symptom of it, in the sense in which we are accustomed to think, for example, of Plato’s ideomania, his almost religious madness for form, as an event and an evidence of the ” Greek soul” ? Or would the reverse perhaps be true? Were they individually as much exceptions to the spirit of the race, as was, for example, Goethe’s Paganism with a good conscience ? Or as Bismarck’s Macchiavelism was with a good conscience, his so-called ” practical politics ” in Germany? Did our philosophers perhaps even go counter to the need of the ” German soul” ? In short, were the German philosophers really philosophical Germans ?-I call to mind three cases. Firstly, Leibnitz’s incomparable insight-with which he obtained the advantage not only over Descartes, but over all who had philosophised up to his time,- that consciousness is only an accident of mental representation, and not its necessary and essential attribute; that consequently what we call consciousness only constitutes a state of our spiritual and psychical world (perhaps a morbid state), and is far from being that world itself:-is there anything German in this thought, the profundity of which has not as yet been exhausted ? Is there reason to think that a person of the Latin race would not readily have stumbled on this reversal of the apparent ?-for it is a reversal. Let us call to mind secondly, the immense note of interrogation which Kant wrote after the notion of causality. Not that he at all doubted its legitimacy, like Hume: on the contrary, he began cautiously to define the domain within which this notion has significance generally (we have not even yet got finished with the marking out of these limits). Let us take thirdly, the astonishing hit of Hegel, who stuck at no logical usage or fastidiousness when he ventured to teach that the conceptions of kinds develop out of one another: with which theory the thinkers in Europe were prepared for the last great scientific movement, for Darwinism-for without Hegel there would have been no Darwin. Is there anything German in this Hegelian innovation which first introduced the decisive conception of evolution into science?-Yes, without doubt we feel that there is something of ourselves ” discovered ” and divined in all three cases; we are thankful for it, and at the same time surprised; each of these three principles is a thoughtful piece of German self-confession, self-understanding, and self-knowledge. We feel with Leibnitz that “ our inner world is far richer, ampler, and more concealed”; as Germans we are doubtful, like Kant, about the ultimate validity of scientific knowledge of nature, and in general about whatever can be known causaliter[causally]: the knowable as such now appears to us of less worth. We Germans should still have been Hegelians, even though there had never been a Hegel, inasmuch as we (in contradistinction to all Latin peoples) instinctively attribute to becoming, to evolution, a profounder significance and higher value than to that which ” is “ -we hardly believe at all in the validity of the concept “ being.” This is all the more the case because we are not inclined to concede to our human logic that it is logic in itself, that it is the only kind of logic (we should rather like, on the contrary, to convince ourselves that it is only a special case, and perhaps one of the strangest and most stupid).-A fourth question would be whether also Schopenhauer with his Pessimism, that is to say, the problem of the worth of existence, had to be a German. I think not. The event after which this problem was to be expected with certainty, so that an astronomer of the soul could have calculated the day and the hour for it-namely, the decay of the belief in the Christian God, the victory of scientific atheism,-is a universal European event, in which all races are to have their share of service and honour. On the contrary, it has to be ascribed precisely to the Germans-those with whom Schopenhauer was contemporary,-that they delayed this victory of atheism longest, and endangered it most. Hegel especially was its retarder par excellence, in virtue of the grandiose attempt which he made to persuade us at the very last of the divinity of existence, with the help of our sixth sense,” the historical sense.” As philosopher, Schopenhauer was the first avowed and inflexible atheist we Germans have had: his hostility to Hegel had here its motive. The non-divinity of existence was regarded by him as something understood, palpable, indisputable ; he always lost his philosophical composure and got into a passion when he saw anyone hesitate and beat about the bush here. It is at this point that his thorough uprightness of character comes in : unconditional, honest atheism is precisely the preliminary condition for his raising the problem, as a final and hard-won victory of the European conscience, as the most prolific act of two thousand years’ discipline to truth, which in the end no longer tolerates the lie of the belief in a God… . One sees what has really gained the victory over the Christian God-, Christian morality itself, the conception of veracity, taken ever more strictly, the confessional subtlety of the Christian conscience, translated and sublimated to the scientific conscience, to intellectual purity at any price. To look upon nature as if it were a proof of the goodness and care of a God ; to interpret history in honour of a divine reason, as a constant testimony to a moral order in the world and a moral final purpose; to explain personal experiences as pious men have long enough explained them, as if everything were a dispensation or intimation of Providence, something planned and sent on behalf of the salvation of the soul: all that is now past, it has conscience against it, it is. regarded by all the more acute consciences as disreputable and dishonourable, as mendaciousness, feminism, weakness, and cowardice,-by virtue of this severity, if by anything, we are good Europeans, the heirs of Europe’s longest and bravest self-conquest. When we thus reject the Christian interpretation, and condemn its ” significance ” as a forgery, we are immediately confronted in a striking manner with the Schopenhauerian question : Has existence then a significance at all?-the question which will require a couple of centuries even to be completely heard in all its profundity. Schopenhauer’s own answer to this question was-if I may be forgiven for saying so- a premature, juvenile reply, a mere compromise, a stoppage and sticking in the very same Christian-ascetic, moral perspectives, the belief in which had got notice to quit along with the belief in God… . But he raised the question-as a good European, as we have said, and not as a German.-Or did the Germans prove at least by the way in which they seized on the Schopenhauerian question, their inner connection and relationship to him, their preparation for his problem, and their need of it ? That there has been thinking and printing even in Germany since Schopenhauer’s time on the problem raised by him,-it was late enough!- does not at all suffice to enable us to decide in favour of this closer relationship; one could, on the contrary, lay great stress on the peculiar awkwardness of this postSchopenhauerian Pessimism -Germans evidently do not behave themselves here as in their element. I do not at all allude here to Eduard von Hartmann; on the contrary, my old suspicion is not vanished even at present that he is too clever for us ; I mean to say that as arrant rogue from the very first, he did not perhaps make merry solely over German
Pessimism-and that in the end he might probably ” bequeath” to them the truth as to how far a person could bamboozle the Germans themselves in the age of bubble companies. But further, are we perhaps to reckon to the honour of Germans, the old humming-top, Bahnsen, who all his life spun about with the greatest pleasure around his realistically dialectic misery and ” personal ill-luck,”-was that German? (In passing I recommend his writings for the purpose for which I myself have used them, as anti-pessimistic fare, especially on account of his elegantia psychologica, which, it seems to me, could alleviate even the most constipated body and soul). Or would it be proper to count such dilettanti and old maids as the mawkish apostle of virginity, Mainlander, among the genuine Germans? After all he was probably a Jew (all Jews become mawkish when they moralise). Neither Bahnsen, nor Mainlander, nor even Eduard von Hartmann, give us a reliable grasp of the question whether the pessimism of Schopenhauer (his frightened glance into an undeified world, which has become stupid, blind, deranged and problematic, his honourable fright) was not only an exceptional case among Germans, but a German event: while everything else which stands in the foreground, like our valiant politics and our joyful Jingoism (which decidedly enough regards everything with reference to a principle sufficiently unphilosophical: “ Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles”* consequently sub specie speciei, namely, the German species), testifies very plainly to the contrary. No ! [“ Germany, Germany, above all”];The Germans of to-day are not pessimists! And Schopenhauer was a pessimist, I repeat it once more, as a good European, and not as a German. 358 The Peasant Revolt of the Spirit.-We Europeans find ourselves in view of an immense world of ruins, where some things still tower aloft, while other objects stand mouldering and dismal, where most things however already lie on the ground, picturesque enough-where were there ever finer ruins?-overgrown with weeds, large and small. It is the Church which is this city of decay: we see the religious organisation of Christianity Aaken to its deepest foundations. The belief in God is overthrown, the belief in the Christian ascetic ideal is now fighting its last fight. Such a long and solidly built work as Christianity-it was the last construction of the Romans!-could not of course be demolished all at once; every sort of earthquake had to shake it, every sort of spirit which perforates, digs, gnaws and moulders had to assist in the work of destruction. But that which is strangest is that those who have exerted themselves most to retain and preserve Christianity, have been precisely those who did most to destroy it,-the Germans. It seems that the Germans do not understand the essence of a Church. Are they cot spiritual enough, or not distrustful enough to do so? In any case the structure of the Church rests on a southern freedom and liberality of spirit, and similarly on a southern suspicion of nature, man, and spirit,-it rests on a knowledge of man an experience of man, entirely different from what the north has had. The Lutheran Reformation in all its length and breadth was the indignation of the simple against something “ complicated.” To speak cautiously, it was a coarse, honest misunderstanding, in which much is to be forgiven,- people did not understand the mode of expression of a victorious Church, and only saw corruption; they misunderstood the noble scepticism, the luxury of scepticism and toleration which every victorious, self-confident power permits… . One overlooks the fact readily enough at present that as regards all cardinal questions concerning power Luther was badly endowed; he was fatally short-sighted, superficial and imprudent-and above all, as a man sprung from the people, he lacked all the hereditary qualities of a ruling caste, and all the instincts for power; so that his work, his intention to restore the work of the Romans, merely became involuntarily and unconsciously the commencement of a work of destruction. He unravelled, he tore asunder with honest rage, where the old spider had woven longest and most carefully. He gave the sacred books into the hands of everyone,-they thereby got at last into the hands of the philologists, that is to say, the annihilators of every belief based upon books. He demolished the conception of ” the Church” in that he repudiated the belief in the inspiration of the Councils : for only under the supposition that theinspiring spirit which had founded the Church still lives in it, still builds it, still goes on building its house, does the conception of ” the Church ” retain its power. He gave back to the priest sexual intercourse: but three-fourths of the reverence of which the people (and above all the women of the people) are capable, rests on the belief that an exceptional man in this respect will also be an exceptional man in other respects. It is precisely here that the popular belief in something superhuman in man, in a miracle, in the saving God in man, has its most subtle and insidious advocate. After Luther had given a wife to the priest, he had to take from him auricular confession ; that was psychologically right: but thereby he practically did away with the Christian priest himself, whose profoundest utility has ever consisted in his being a sacred ear, a silent well, and a grave for secrets. ” Every man his own priest”-behind such formulas and their bucolic slyness, there was concealed in Luther the profoundest hatred of ” higher men,” and of the rule of ” higher men,” as the Church had conceived them. Luther disowned an ideal which he did not know how to attain, while he seemed to combat and detest the degeneration thereof. As a matter of fact, he, the impossible monk, repudiated the rule of the homines religiosi ; he consequently brought about precisely the same thing within the ecclesiastical social order that he combated so impatiently in the civic order,- namely a “ peasant insurrection.”-As to all that grew out of his Reformation afterwards, good and bad, which can at present be almost counted up,- who would be naive enough to praise or blame Luther simply on account of these results? He is innocent of all; he knew not what he did. The art of making the European spirit shallower especially in the north, or more good-natured, if people would rather hear it designated by a moral expression, undoubtedly took a clever step in advance in the Lutheran Reformation ; and similarly there grew out of it the mobility and disquietude of the spirit, its thirst for independence, its belief in the right to freedom, and its ” naturalness.” If people wish to ascribe to the Reformation in the last instance the merit of having prepared and favoured that which we at present honour as ” modern science,” they must of course add that it is also accessory to bringing about the degeneration of the modern scholar, with his lack of reverence, of shame and of profundity; and that it is also responsible for all naive candour and plain-dealing in matters of knowledge, in short for the plebeianism of the spirit which is peculiar to the last two centuries, and from which even pessimism until now, has not in any way delivered us. ” Modern ideas ” also belong to this peasant insurrection of the north against the colder, more ambiguous, more suspicious spirit of the south, which has built itself its greatest monument in the Christian Church. Let us not forget in the end what a Church is, and especially in contrast to every ” State”: a Church is above all an authoritative organisation which secures to the most spiritual men the highest rank, and believes in the power of spirituality so far as to forbid all grosser appliances of authority. Through this alone the Church is under all circumstances a nobler institution than
the State.359 Vengeance on Intellect, and other Backgrounds of Morality.-Morality-where do you think it has its most dangerous and rancorous advocates?- There, for example, is an illconstituted man, who does not possess enough of intellect to be able to take pleasure in it, and just enough of culture to be aware of the fact; bored, satiated, and a self-despiser; besides being cheated unfortunately by some hereditary property out of the last consolation, the “ blessing of labour,” the self-forgetfulness in the ” day’s work ” ; one who is thoroughly ashamed f his existence-perhaps also harbouring some vices,-and who on the other hand (by means of books to which he has no right, or more intellectual society than he can digest), cannot help vitiating himself more and more, and making himself vain and irritable: such a thoroughly poisoned man- for intellect becomes poison, culture becomes poison, possession becomes poison, solitude becomes poison, to such ill-constituted beings-gets at last into a habitual state of vengeance and inclination for vengeance… . What do you think he finds necessary, absolutely necessary in order to give himself the appearance in his own eyes of superiority over more intellectual men, so as to give himself the delight of perfect revenge, at least in imagination? It is always morality that he requires, one may wager on it; always the big moral words, always the high-sounding words: justice, wisdom, holiness, virtue; always the Stoicism of gestures (how well Stoicism hides what one does not possess!); always the mantle of wise silence, of affability, of gentleness, and whatever else the idealist-mantle is called, in which the incurable self-despisers and also the incurably conceited walk about. Let me not be misunderstood : out of such born enemies of the spirit there arises now and then the rare specimen of humanity who is honoured by the people under the name of saint or sage: it is out of such men that there arise those prodigies of morality that make a noise, and make history,- St Augustine was one of these men. Fear of the intellect, vengeance on the intellect-Oh! how often have these powerfully impelling vices become the root of virtues ! Yea, virtue itself!-And asking the question among ourselves, even the philosopher’s pretension to wisdom, which has occasionally been made here and there on the earth, the maddest and most immodest of all pretensions,-has it not always been above all in India as well as in Greece, a means of concealment ? Sometimes, perhaps, from the point of view of education which hallows so many lies, it is a tender regard for growing and evolving persons, for disciples who have often to be guarded against themselves by means of the belief in a person (by means of an error). In most cases, however, it is a means of concealment for a philosopher, behind which he seeks protection, owing to exhaustion, age, chilliness, or hardening; as a feeling of the approaching end, as the sagacity of the instinct which animals have before their death,-they go apart, remain at rest, choose solitude, creep into caves, become wise… . What ? Wisdom a means of concealment of the philosopher from-intellect ?360 Two Kinds of Causes which are Confounded.- It seems to me one of my most essential steps and advances that I have learned to distinguish the cause of an action generally from the cause of an action in a particular manner, say, in this direction, with this aim. The first kind of cause is a quantum of stored-up force, which waits to be used in some manner, for some purpose; the second kind of cause, on the contrary, is something quite unimportant in comparison with the first, an insignificant hazard for the most part, in conformity with which the quantum of force in question ” discharges ” itself in some unique and definite manner: the Lucifer-match in relation to the barrel of gunpowder. Among those insignificant hazards and Lucifer-matches I count all the so-called ” aims,” and similarly the still more so-called ” occupations ” of people: they are relatively optional, arbitrary, and almost indifferent in relation to the immense quantum of force which presses on, as we have said, to be used up in any way whatever. One generally looks at the matter in a different manner: one is accustomed to see the impelling force precisely in the aim (object, calling, &c), according to a primeval error,-but it is only the directing force ; the steersman and the steam have thereby been confounded. And yet it is not even always a steersman, the directing force. … Is the “ aim,” the ” purpose,” not often enough only an extenuating pretext, an additional self-blinding of conceit, which does not wish it to be said that the ship follows the stream into which it has accidentally run ? That it ” wishes ” to go that way, because it must go that way ? That it has a direction, sure enough, but-not a steersman ? We still require a criticism of the conception of ” purpose.” 361 The Problem of the Actor.-The problem of the actor has disquieted me the longest; I was uncertain (and am sometimes so still) whether one could not get at the dangerous conception of ” artist “ - a conception until now treated with unpardonable leniency-from this point of view. Falsity with a good conscience ; delight in dissimulation breaking forth as power, pushing aside, overflowing, and sometimes extinguishing the so-called “ character”; the inner longing to play a role, to assume a mask, to put on an appearance; a surplus of capacity for adaptations of every kind, which can no longer gratify themselves in the service of the nearest and narrowest utility: all that perhaps does not pertain solely to the actor in himself? … Such an instinct would develop most readily in families of the lower class of the people, who have had to pass their lives in absolute dependence, under shifting pressure and constraint, who (to accommodate themselves to their conditions, to adapt themselves always to new circumstances) had again and again to pass themselves off and represent themselves as different persons, - thus having gradually qualified themselves to adjust the mantle to every wind, thereby almost becoming the mantle itself, as masters of the embodied and incarnated art of eternally playing the game of hide and seek, which one calls mimicry among the animals :-until at last this ability, stored up from generation to generation, has become domineering, irrational and intractable, till as instinct it begins to command the other instincts, and begets the actor and “ artist” (the buffoon, the pantaloon, the Jack-Pudding, the fool, and the clown in the first place, also the classical type of servant, Gil Bias : for in such types one has the precursors of the artist, and often enough even of the ” genius”). Also under higher social conditions there grows under similar pressure a similar species of men : only the histrionic instinct is there for the most part held strictly in check by another instinct, for example, among “ diplomatists”;-for the rest, I should think that it would always be open to a good diplomatist to become a good actor on the stage, provided his dignity “ allowed” it. As regards the Jews, however, the adaptable people par excellence, we should, in conformity to this line of thought, expect to see among them a
world-wide historical institution at the very first, for the rearing of actors, a proper breeding-place for actors; and in fact the question is very pertinent just now: what good actor at present is not-a Jew? The Jew also, as a born literary man, as the actual ruler of the European press, exercises this power on the basis of his histrionic capacity: for the literary man is essentially an actor, - he plays the part of ” expert,” of ” specialist.” - Finally women. If we consider the whole history of women, are they not obliged first of all, and above all to be actresses? If we listen to doctors who have hypnotised women, or, finally, if we love them- and let ourselves be ” hypnotised ” by them,-what is always divulged thereby ? That they ” give themselves airs,” even when they-“ give themselves.” … Woman is so artistic … 362 My Belief in the Virilising of Europe.-We owe it to Napoleon (and not at all to the French Revolution, which had in view the ” fraternity ” of the nations, and the florid interchange of good graces among people generally) that several warlike centuries, which have not had their like in past history, may now follow one another-in short, that we have entered upon the classical age of war, war at the same time scientific and popular, on the grandest scale (as regards means, talents and discipline), to which all coming millenniums will look back with envy and awe as a work of perfection :-for the national movement out of which this martial glory springs, is only the counter-shock against Napoleon, and would not have existed without him. To him, consequently, one will one day be able to attribute the fact that man in Europe has again got the upper hand of the merchant and the Philistine; perhaps even of ” woman” also, who has become pampered owing to Christianity and the extravagant spirit of the eighteenth century, and still more owing to ” modern ideas.” Napoleon, who saw in modern ideas, and accordingly in civilisation, something like a personal enemy, has by this hostility proved himself one of 1m greatest continuators of the Renaissance: he has brought to the surface a whole block of the ancient character, the decisive block perhaps, the block of granite. And who knows but that this block of ancient character will in the end get the upper hand of the national movement, and will have to make itself in a positive sense the heir and continuator of Napoleon :-who, as one knows, wanted one Europe, which was to be mistress of the world.363 How each Sex has its Prejudice about Love.- Notwithstanding all the concessions which I am inclined to make to the prejudice of monogamy, I will never admit that we should speak of equal rights in the love of man and woman: there are no such equal rights. The reason is that man and woman understand something different by the term love,-and it belongs to the conditions of love in both sexes that the one sex does not presuppose the same feeling, the same conception of ” love,” in the other sex. What woman understands by love is clear enough: complete surrender (not merely devotion) of soul and body, without any motive, without any reservation, rather with shame and terror at the thought of a devotion restricted by clauses or associated with conditions. In this absence of conditions her love is precisely a faith : woman has no other.-Man, when he loves a woman, wants precisely this love from her; he is consequently, as regards himself, furthest removed from the prerequisites of feminine love; granted, however, that there should also be men to whom on their side the demand for complete devotion is not unfamiliar,-well, they are really- not men. A man who loves like a woman becomes thereby a slave ; a woman, however, who loves like a woman becomes thereby a more perfect woman… . The passion of woman in its unconditional renunciation of its own rights presupposes in fact that there does not exist on the other side an equal pathos, an equal desire for renunciation : for if both renounced themselves out of love, there would result-well, I don’t know what, perhaps an empty space? Woman wants to be taken and accepted as a possession, she wishes to be merged in the conceptions of ” possession ” and ” possessed “ ; consequently she wants one who takes, who does not offer and give himself away, but who reversely is rather to be made richer in “ himself”-by the increase of power, happiness and faith which the woman herself gives to him. Woman gives herself, man takes her. - I do not think one will get over this natural contrast by any social contract, or with the very best will to do justice, however desirable it may be to avoid bringing the severe, frightful, enigmatical, and unmoral elements of this antagonism constantly before our eyes. For love, regarded as complete, great, and full, is nature, and as nature, is to all eternity something ” unmoral.” -Fidelity is accordingly included in woman’s love, it follows from the definition thereof; with man fidelity may readily result in consequence of his love, perhaps as gratitude or idiosyncrasy of taste, and so-called elective affinity, but it does not belong to the essence of his love-and indeed so little, that one might almost be entitled to speak of a natural opposition between love and fidelity in man, whose love is just a desire to possess, and not a renunciation and giving away; the desire to possess, however, comes to an end every time with the possession… . As a matter of fact it is the more subtle and jealous thirst for possession in a man (who is rarely and tardily convinced of having this ” possession “ ), which makes1 his love continue ; in that case it is even possible that his love may increase after the surrender,-he does not readily own that a woman has nothing more to ” surrender ” to him.364 The Anchorite Speaks.-The art of associating with men rests essentially on one’s skilfulness (which presupposes long exercise) in accepting a repast, in taking a repast, in the cuisine of which one has no confidence. Provided one comes to the table with the hunger of a wolf everything is easy ‘the worst society gives you experience” - as Mephistopheles says); but one has not always this wolf s-hunger when one needs it! Alas! how difficult are our fellow-men to digest! First principle : to stake one’s courage as in a misfortune, to seize boldly, to admire oneself at the same time, to take one’s repugnance between one’s teeth, to cram down one’s disgust. Second principle: to “ improve” one’s fellow-man, by praise for example, so that he may begin to sweat out his self-complacency; or to seize a tuft of his good or ” interesting” qualities, and pull at it till one gets his whole virtue out, and can put him under the folds of it. Third principle: self-hypnotism. To fix one’s eye on the object of one’s intercourse as on a glass knob, until, ceasing to feel pleasure or pain thereat, one falls asleep unobserved, becomes rigid, and acquires a fixed pose: a household recipe used in married life and in friendship, well tested and prized as indispensable, but not yet scientifically formulated. Its proper name is-patience.-
365 The Anchorite Speaks once more.-We also have intercourse with ” men,” we also modestly put on the clothes in which people know us (as such), respect us and seek us ; and we thereby mingle in society, that is to say, among the disguised who do not wish to be so called ; we also do like all prudent masqueraders, and courteously dismiss all curiosity which has not reference merely to our “ clothes.” There are however other modes and artifices for ” going about” among men and associating with them: for example, as a ghost,-which is very advisable when one wants to scare them, and get rid of them easily. An example : a person grasps at us, and is unable to seize us. That frightens him. Or we enter by a closed door. Or when the lights are extinguished. Or after we are dead. The latter is the artifice of posthumous men par excellence. (” What ? ” said such a one once impatiently, ” do you think we should delight in enduring this strangeness, coldness, death-stillness about us, all this subterranean, hidden, dim, undiscovered solitude, which is called life with us, and might just as well be called death, if we were not conscious of what will arise out of us,-and that only after our death shall we attain to our life and become living, ah! very living! we posthumous men!”-) 366 At the Sight of a Scholarly Book.-We do not belong to those who only get their thoughts from books, or at the prompting of books,-it is our custom to think in the open air, walking, leaping, climbing, or dancing on lonesome mountains by preference, or close to the sea, where even the paths become thoughtful. Our first question concerning the value of a book, a man, or a piece of music is : Can it walk ? or still better: Can it dance ? … We seldom read ; we do not read the worse for that -oh, how quickly we divine how a person has arrived at his thoughts:-if it is by sitting before an ink-bottle with compressed belly and head bent over the paper : oh, how quickly we are then done with his book! The constipated bowels betray themselves, one may wager on it, just as the atmosphere of the room, the ceiling of the room, the smallness of the room, betray themselves.-These were my feelings when closing a straightforward, scholarly book, thankful, very thankful, but also relieved. … In the book of a scholar there is almost always something oppressive and oppressed: the ” specialist” comes to light somewhere, his ardour, his seriousness, his wrath, his over-estimation of the nook in which he sits and spins, his hump- every specialist has his hump. A scholarly book also always mirrors a distorted soul: every trade distorts. Look at our friends again with whom we have spent our youth, after they have taken possession of their science : alas! how the reverse has always taken place! Alas! how they themselves are now for ever occupied and possessed by their science! Grown into their nook, crumpled into unrecognisability, constrained, deprived of their equilibrium, emaciated and angular everywhere, perfectly round only in one place,-we are moved and silent when we find them so. Every handicraft, granting even that it has a golden floor,* has also a leaden ceiling above it, which presses and presses on the soul, till it is pressed into a strange and distorted shape. There is nothing to alter here. We need not think that it is at all possible to obviate this disfigurement by any educational artifice whatever. Every kind of perfection is purchased at a high price on earth, where everything is perhaps purchased too dear; one is an expert in one’s department at the price of being also a victim of one’s department. But you want to have it otherwise-“ more reasonable,” above all more convenient-is it not so, my dear contemporaries ? Very well! But then you will also immediately get something different: instead of the craftsman and expert, you will get the literary man, the versatile, ” many-sided ” litterateur, who to be sure lacks the hump-not taking account of the hump or bow which he makes before you as the shop keeper of the intellect and the ” porter ” of culture-, the litterateur, who is really nothing, but ” represents ” almost everything: he plays and ” represents ” the expert, he also takes it upon himself in all modesty to see that he is paid, honoured and celebrated in this position.-No, my scholarly friends! I bless you even on account of your humps! And also because like me you despise the litterateurs and parasites of culture! And because you do not know how to make merchandise of your intellect! And have so many opinions which cannot be expressed in money value! And because you do not represent anything which you are not! Because your sole desire is to become masters of your craft; because you reverence every kind of mastery and ability, and repudiate with the most relentless scorn everything of a make-believe, half-genuine, dressed-up, virtuoso, demagogic, histrionic nature in litteris et artibus-all that which does not convince you by its absolute genuineness of discipline and preparatory training, or cannot stand your test! (Even genius does not help a person to get over such a defect, however well it may be able to deceive with regard to it: one understands this if one has once looked closely at our most gifted painters and musicians,-who almost without exception, can artificially and supplementarily appropriate to themselves (by means of artful inventions of style, make-shifts, and even principles), the appearance of that genuineness, that solidity of training and culture; to be sure, without thereby deceiving themselves, without thereby imposing perpetual silence on their bad consciences. For you know of course that all great modern artists suffer from bad consciences ? …) 367 How one has to Distinguish first of all in Works of Art.-Everything that is thought, versified, painted and composed, yea, even built and moulded, belongs either to monologic art, or to art before witnesses. Under the latter there is also to be included the apparently monologic art which involves the belief in God, the whole lyric of prayer; because for a pious man there is no solitude,-we, the godless, have been the first to devise this invention. I know of no profounder distinction in all the perspective of the artist than this: Whether he looks at his growing work of art (at ” himself-“ ) with the eye of the witness; or whether he ” has forgotten the world,” as is the essential thing in all monologic art,-it rests on forgetting, it is the music of forgetting. 368 The Cynic Speaks.-My objections to Wagner’s music are physiological objections. Why should I therefore begin by disguising them under aesthetic formulae ? My ” point” is that I can no longer breathe freely when this music begins to operate on me; my foot immediately becomes indignant at it and rebels: for what it needs is time, dance and march ; it demands first of all from music the ecstasies which are in good walking, striding, leaping and dancing. But do not my stomach, my heart, my blood and my bowels also protest? Do
I not become hoarse unawares under its influence? And then I ask myself what my body really wants from music generally. I believe it wants to have relief: so that all animal functions should be accelerated by means of light, bold, unfettered, self-assured rhythms; so that brazen, leaden life should be gilded by means of golden, good, tender harmonies. My melancholy would gladly rest its head in the hiding-places and abysses of perfection: for this reason I need music. What do I care for the drama! What do I care for the spasms of its moral ecstasies, in which the ” people” have their satisfaction! What do I care for the whole pantomimic hocus-pocus of the actor! . . , It will now be divined that I am essentially anti-theatrical at heart,-but Wagner on the contrary, was essentially a man of the stage and an actor, the most enthusiastic mummer-worshipper that has ever existed, even, among musicians! … And let it be said in passing that if Wagner’s theory was that “ drama is the object, and music is only the means to it,”-his practice on the contrary from beginning to end has been to the effect that ” attitude is the object, drama and even music can never be anything else but means to this.” Music as a means of elucidating, strengthening and intensifying dramatic poses and the actor’s appeal to the senses, and Wagnerian drama only an opportunity for a number of dramatic attitudes! Wagner possessed, along with all other instincts, the dictatorial instinct of agreat actor in all and everything, and as has been said, also as a musician.-I once made this clear with some trouble to a thoroughgoing Wagnerian, and I had reasons for adding:- ” Do be a little more honest with yourself: we are not now in the theatre. In the theatre we are only honest in the mass; as individuals we lie, we belie even ourselves. We leave ourselves at home when we go to the theatre; we there renounce the right to our own tongue and choice, to our taste, and even to our courage as we possess it and practise it within our own four walls in relation to God and man. No one takes his finest taste in art into the theatre with him, not even the artist who works for the theatre: there one is people, public, herd, woman, Pharisee, voting animal, democrat, neighbour, and fellow-creature; there even the most personal conscience succumbs to the levelling charm of the ‘ great multitude’; there stupidity operates as wantonness and contagion; there the neighbour rules, there one becomes a neighbour… .” (I have forgotten to mention what my enlightened Wagnerian answered to my physiological objections : ” So the fact is that you are really not healthy enough for our music ?”-) 369 Juxtapositions in us.-Must we not acknowledge to ourselves, we artists, that there is a strange discrepancy in us; that on the one hand our taste, and on the other hand our creative power, keep apart in an extraordinary manner, continue apart, and have a separate growth ;-I mean to say that they have entirely different gradations and tempi of age, youth, maturity, mellowness and rottenness ? So that, for example, a musician could all his life create things which contradicted all that his ear and heart, spoilt for listening, prized, relished and preferred:-he would not even require to be aware of the contradiction! As an almost painfully regular experience shows, a person’s taste can easily outgrow the taste of his power, even without the latter being thereby paralysed or checked in its productivity. The reverse, however, can also to some extent take place,-and it is to this especially that I should like to direct the attention of artists. A constant producer, a man who is a ” mother” in the grand sense of the term, one who no longer knows or hears of anything except pregnancies and childbeds of his spirit, who has no time at all to reflect and make comparisons with regard to himself and his work, who is also no longer inclined to exercise his taste, but simply forgets it, letting it take its chance of standing, lying or falling,-perhaps such a man at last produces works on which he is then quite unfit to pass a judgment: so that he speaks and thinks foolishly about them and about himself. This seems to me almost the normal condition with fruitful artists,-nobody knows a child worse than its parents-and the rule applies even (to take an immense example) to the entire Greek world of poetry and art, which was never ” conscious ” of what it had done… . 370 What is Romanticism ?-It will be remembered perhaps, at least among my friends, that at first I assailed the modern world with some gross errors and exaggerations, but at any rate with hope in my heart. I recognised-who knows from what personal experiences?-the philosophical pessimism of the nineteenth century as the symptom of a higher power of thought, a more daring courage and a more triumphant plenitude of life than had been characteristic of the eighteenth century, the age of Hume, Kant, Condillac, and the sensualists : so that the tragic view of things seemed to me the peculiar luxury of our culture, its most precious, noble, and dangerous mode of prodigality; but nevertheless, in view of its overflowing wealth, a justifiable luxury. In the same way I interpreted for myself German music as the expression of a Dionysian power in the German soul: I thought I heard in it the earthquake by means of which a primeval force that had been imprisoned for ages was finally finding vent-indifferent as to whether all that usually calls itself culture was thereby made to totter. It is obvious that I then misunderstood what constitutes the veritable character both of philosophical pessimism and of German music, - namely, their Romanticism. What is Romanticism ? Every art and every philosophy may be regarded as a healing and helping appliance in the service of growing, struggling life: they always presuppose suffering and sufferers. But there are two kinds of sufferers: on the one hand those that suffer from overflowing vitality, who need Dionysian art, and require a tragic view and insight into life ; and on the other hand those who suffer from reduced vitality, who seek repose, quietness, calm seas, and deliverance from themselves through art or knowledge, or else intoxication, spasm, bewilderment and madness. All Romanticism in art and knowledge responds to the twofold craving of the latter ; to them Schopenhauer as well as Wagner responded (and responds),-to name those most celebrated and decided romanticists, who were then misunderstood by me (not however to their disadvantage, as may be reasonably conceded to me). The being richest in overflowing vitality, the Dionysian God and man, may not only allow himself the spectacle of the horrible and questionable, but even the fearful deed itself, and all the luxury of destruction, disorganisation and negation. With him evil, senselessness and ugliness seem as it were licensed, in consequence of the overflowing plenitude of procreative, fructifying power, which can convert every desert into a luxuriant orchard. Conversely, the greatest sufferer, the man poorest in vitality, would have most need of mildness, peace and kindliness in thought and action : he would need, if possible, a God who is specially the God of the sick, a ” Saviour ” ; similarly he would have need of logic, the abstract intelligibility of existence-for logic soothes and gives confidence ;-in short he would need a certain warm, fear-dispelling narrowness and imprisonment within optimistic horizons. In this manner I gradually began to understand Epicurus, the opposite of a Dionysian pessimist;-in a similar manner also the “ Christian,” who in fact is only a type of
Epicurean, and like him essentially a romanticist:-and my vision has always become keener in tracing that most difficult and insidious of all forms of retrospective inference, in which most mistakes have been made- the inference from the work to its author from the deed to its doer, from the ideal to him who needs it, from every mode of thinking and valuing to the imperative want behind it.-In regard to all aesthetic values I now avail myself of this radical distinction : I ask in every single case, ” Has hunger or superfluity become creative here ?” At the outset another distinction might seem to recommend itself more-it is far more conspicuous,-namely, to have in view whether the desire for rigidity, for perpetuation, for being is the cause of the creating, or the desire for destruction, for change, for the new, for the future-for becoming. But when looked at more carefully, both these kinds of desire prove themselves ambiguous, and are explicable precisely according to the before-mentioned, and, as it seems to me, rightly preferred scheme. The desire for destruction, change and becoming, may be the expression of overflowing power, pregnant with futurity (my terminus for this is of course the word “ Dionysian”); but it may also be the hatred of the illconstituted, destitute and unfortunate, which destroys, and must destroy, because the enduring, yea, all that endures, in fact all being, excites and provokes it. To understand this emotion we have but to look closely at our anarchists. The will to perpetuation requires equally a double interpretation. It may on the one hand proceed from gratitude and love:-art of this origin will always be an art of apotheosis, perhaps dithyrambic, as with Rubens, mocking divinely, as with Hafiz, or clear and kind-hearted as with Goethe, and spreading a Homeric brightness and glory over everything (in this case I speak of Apollonian art). It may also, however, be the tyrannical will of a sorely-suffering, struggling or tortured being, who would like to stamp his most personal, individual and narrow characteristics, the very idiosyncrasy of his suffering, as an obligatory law and constraint on others; who, as it were, takes revenge on all things, in that he imprints, enforces and brands his image, the image of his torture, upon them. The latter is romantic pessimism in its most extreme form, whether it be as Schopenhauerian will-philosophy, or as Wagnerian music:- romantic pessimism, the last great event in the destiny of our civilisation. (That there may be quite a different kind of pessimism, a classical pessimism-this presentiment and vision belongs to me, as something inseparable from me, as my proprium and ipsissimum; only that the word ” classical” is repugnant to my ears, it has become far too worn, too indefinite and indistinguishable. I call that pessimism of the future,-for it is coming! I see it coming!Dionysian pessimism.) 371 We Unintelligible Ones.-Have we ever complained among ourselves of being misunderstood, misjudged, and confounded with others; of being calumniated, misheard, and not heard ? That is just our lot-alas, for a long time yet! say, to be modest, until 1901-, it is also our distinction ; we should not have sufficient respect for ourselves if we wished it otherwise. People confound us with others- the reason of it is that we ourselves grow, we change continually, we cast off old bark, we still slough every spring, we always become younger, higher, stronger, as men of the future, we thrust our roots always more powerfully into the deep- into evil-, while at the same time we embrace the heavens ever more lovingly, more extensively, and suck in their light ever more eagerly with all our branches and leaves. We grow like trees -that is difficult to understand, like all life !-not in one place, but everywhere, not in one direction only, but upwards and outwards, as well as inwards and downwards. At the same time our force shoots forth in stem, branches, and roots ; we are really no longer free to do anything separately, or to be anything separately… . Such is our lot, as we have said : we grow in height; and even should it be our calamity-for we dwell ever closer to the lightning!-well, we honour it none the less on that account; it is that which we do not wish to share with others, which we do not wish to bestow upon others, the fate of all elevation, our fate… . 372 Why we are not Idealists.-Formerly philosophers were afraid of the senses : have we, perhaps, been far too forgetful of this fear ? We are at present all of us sensualists, we representatives of the present and of the future in philosophy,-not according to theory, however, but in praxis, in practice… . Those former philosophers, on the contrary, thought that the senses lured them out of their world, the cold realm of ” ideas,” to a dangerous southern island, where they were afraid that their philosopher-virtues would melt away like snow in the sun. ” Wax in the ears,” was then almost a condition of philosophising; a genuine philosopher no longer listened to life, in so far as life is music, he denied the music of life-it is an old philosophical superstition that all music is Sirens’ music.- Now we should be inclined at the present day to judge precisely in the opposite manner (which in itself might be just as false), and to regard ideas, with their cold, anaemic appearance, and not even in spite of this appearance, as worse seducers than the senses. They have always lived on the “ blood” of the philosopher, they always consumed his senses, and indeed, if you will believe me, his ” heart” as well. Those old philosophers were heartless: philosophising was always a species of vampirism. At the sight of such figures even as Spinoza, do you not feel a profoundly enigmatical and disquieting sort of impression ? Do you not see the drama which is here performed, the constantly increasing pallor-, the spiritualisation always more ideally displayed? Do you not imagine some long-concealed blood-sucker in the background, which makes its beginning with the senses, and in the end retains or leaves behind nothing but bones and their rattling?-I mean categories, formulae, and words (for you will pardon me in saying that what remains of Spinoza, amor intellectualis dei, is rattling and nothing more! What is amor, what is deus, when they have lost every drop of blood ? …) In summa: all philosophical idealism has until now been something like a disease, where it has not been, as in the case of Plato, the prudence of superabundant and dangerous healthfulness, the fear of overpowerful senses, and the wisdom of a wise Socratic.-Perhaps, is it the case that we moderns are merely not sufficiently sound to require Plato’s idealism ? And we do not fear the senses because–– 373 ” Science” as Prejudice.-It follows from the laws of class distinction that the learned, in so far as they belong to the intellectual middle-class, are debarred from getting even a sight of the really great problems and notes of interrogation. Besides, their courage, and similarly their outlook, does not reach so far,-and above all their need which makes them
investigators, their innate anticipation and desire that things should be constituted in such and such a way, their fears and hopes, are too soon quieted and set at rest. For example, that which makes the pedantic Englishman, Herbert Spencer, so enthusiastic in his way, and impels him to draw a line of hope, a horizon of desirability, the final reconciliation of “ egoism and altruism” of which he dreams,-that almost causes nausea to people like us :-a humanity with such Spencerian perspectives as ultimate perspectives would seem to us deserving of contempt, of extermination! But the fact that something has to be taken by him as his highest hope, which is regarded, and may well be regarded, by others merely as a distasteful possibility, is a note of interrogation which Spencer could not have foreseen. … It is just the same with the belief with which at present so many materialistic naturalscientists are content, the belief in a world which is supposed to have its equivalent and measure in human thinking and human valuations, a ” world of truth ” at which we might be able ultimately to arrive with the help of our insignificant, four-cornered human reason! What? do we actually wish to have existence debased in that fashion to a ready-reckoner exercise and calculation for stay-at-home mathematicians? We should not, above all, seek to divest existence of its ambiguous character: good taste forbids it, gentlemen, the taste of reverence for everything that goes beyond your horizon! That a world-interpretation is alone right by which you maintain your position, by which investigation and work can go on scientifically in your sense (you really mean mechanically?}, an interpretation which acknowledges numbering, calculating, weighing, seeing and handling, and nothing more-such an idea is a piece of grossness and naivety, provided it is not lunacy and idiocy. Would the reverse not be quite probable, that the most superficial and external characters of existence-its most apparent quality, its outside, its embodiment- should let themselves be apprehended first? perhaps alone allow themselves to be apprehended ? A “ scientific” interpretation of the world as you understand it might consequently still be one of the stupidest, that is to say, the most destitute of significance, of all possible world-interpretations :-I say this in confidence to my friends the Mechanists, who to-day like to hobnob with philosophers, and absolutely believe that mechanics is the teaching of the first and last laws upon which, as upon a ground-floor, all existence must be built. But an essentially mechanical world would be an essentially meaningless world ! Supposing we valued the worth of a music with reference to how much it could be counted, calculated, or formulated -how absurd such a ” scientific ” estimate of music would be! What would one have apprehended, understood, or discerned in it! Nothing, absolutely nothing of what is really ” music ” in it! … 374 Our new “ Infinite!’-How far the perspective character of existence extends, or whether it have any other character at all, whether an existence without explanation, without “ sense” does not just become “ nonsense,” whether, on the other hand, all existence is not essentially an explaining existence-these questions, as is right and proper, cannot be determined even by the most diligent and severely conscientious analysis and self-examination of the intellect, because in this analysis the human intellect cannot avoid seeing itself in its perspective forms, and only in them. We cannot see round our corner: it is hopeless curiosity to want to know what other modes of intellect and perspective there might be: for example, whether any kind of being could perceive time backwards, or alternately forwards and backwards (by which another direction of life and another conception of cause and effect would be given). But I think that we are to-day at least far from the ludicrous immodesty of decreeing from our nook that there can only be legitimate perspectives from that nook. The world, on the contrary, has once more become ” infinite” to us: in so far we cannot dismiss the possibility that it contains infinite interpretations. Once more the great horror seizes us-but who would desire forthwith to deify once more this monster of an unknown world in the old fashion ? And perhaps worship the unknown thing as the ” unknown person ” in future ? Ah! there are too many ungodly possibilities of interpretation comprised in this unknown, too much devilment, stupidity and folly of interpretation,- our own human, all too human interpretation itself, which we know… . 375 Why we Seem to be Epicureans.-We are cautious, we modern men, with regard to final convictions, our distrust lies in wait for the enchantments and tricks of conscience involved in every strong belief, in every absolute Yea and Nay: how is this explained? Perhaps one may see in it a good deal of the caution of the “ burnt child,” of the disillusioned idealist; but one may also see in it another and better element, the joyful curiosity of a former lingerer in a corner, who has been brought to despair by his nook, and now luxuriates and revels in its antithesis, in the unbounded, in the “ open air in itself.” Thus there is developed an almost Epicurean inclination for knowledge, which does not readily lose sight of the questionable character of things; likewise also a repugnance to pompous moral phrases and attitudes, a taste that repudiates all coarse, square contrasts, and is proudly conscious of its habitual reserve. For this too constitutes our pride, this easy tightening of the reins in our headlong impulse after certainty, this self-control of the rider in his most furious riding: for now, as of old, we have mad, fiery steeds under us, and if we delay, it is certainly least of all the danger which causes us to delay… 376 Our Slow Periods.-It is thus that artists feel, and all men of “ works,” the maternal species of men : they always believe at every chapter of their life-a work always makes a chapterthat they have now reached the goal itself; they would always patiently accept death with the feeling: ” we are ripe for it.” This is not the expression of exhaustion,-but rather that of a certain autumnal sunniness and mildness, which the work itself, the maturing of the work, always leaves behind in its originator. Then the tempo of life slows down-turns thick and flows with honey-into long pauses, into the belief in the long pause… . 377 We Homeless Ones.-Among the Europeans of to-day there are not lacking those who may call themselves homeless ones in a way which is at once a distinction and an honour; it is by them that my secret wisdom and gaya scienza is especially to be laid to heart! For their lot is hard, their hope uncertain ; it is a clever feat to devise consolation for them. But what good does it do! We children of the future, how could we be at home in the present ? We are unfavourable to all ideals which could make us feel at home in this frail, broken-
down, transition period; and as regards the ” realities” thereof, we do not believe in their endurance. The ice which still carries has become very thin: the thawing wind blows; we ourselves, the homeless ones, are an agency that breaks the ice, and the other too thin ” realities.” … We ” preserve” nothing, nor would we return to any past age; we are not at all ” liberal,” we do not labour for ” progress,” we do not need first to stop our ears to the song of the market-place and the sirens of the future-their song of “ equal rights,” “ free society,” ” no longer either lords or slaves,” does not allure us! We do not by any means think it desirable that the kingdom of righteousness and peace should be established on earth (because under any circumstances it would be the kingdom of the profoundest mediocrity and Chinese-like levelling); we rejoice in all men, who like ourselves love danger, war and adventure, who do not make compromises, nor let themselves be captured, conciliated and stunted; we count ourselves among the conquerors; we ponder over the need of a new order of things, even of a new slavery-for every strengthening and elevation of the type ” man ” also involves a new form of slavery. Is it not obvious that with all this we must feel ill at ease in an age which claims the honour of being the most humane, gentle and just that the sun has ever seen ? What a pity that at the mere mention of these fine words, the thoughts at the bottom of our hearts are all the more unpleasant, that we see therein only the expression-or the masquerade -of profound weakening, exhaustion, age, and declining power! What can it matter to us with what kind of tinsel an invalid decks out his weakness ? He may parade it as his virtue; there is no doubt whatever that weakness makes people gentle, alas, so gentle, so just, so inoffensive, so ” humane ” !- The ” religion of pity,” to which people would like to persuade us-yes, we know sufficiently well the hysterical little men and women who need this religion at present as a cloak and adornment! We are no humanitarians; we should not dare to speak of our ” love of mankind ” ; for that, a person of our stamp is not enough of an actor! Or not sufficiently Saint-Simonist, not sufficiently French. A person must have been affected with a Gallic excess of erotic susceptibility and amorous impatience even to approach mankind honourably with his lewdness… . Mankind! Was there ever a more hideous old woman among all old women (unless perhaps it were ” the Truth”: a question for philosophers)? No, we do not love Mankind ! On the other hand, however, we are not nearly ” German ” enough (in the sense in which the word ” German ” is current at present) to advocate nationalism and race-hatred, or take delight in the national heart-itch and. blood-poisoning, on account of which the nations of Europe are at present bounded off and secluded from one another as if by quarantines. We are too unprejudiced for that, too perverse, too fastidious ; also too well-informed, and too much ” travelled.” We prefer much rather to live on mountains, apart and ” out of season,” in past or coming centuries, in order merely to spare ourselves the silent rage to which we know we should be condemned as witnesses of a system of politics which makes the German nation barren by making it vain, and which is a petty system besides:-will it not be necessary for this system to plant itself between two mortal hatreds, lest its own creation should immediately collapse? Will it not be obliged to desire the perpetuation of the petty-state system of Europe? … We homeless ones are too diverse and mixed in race and descent for ” modern men,” and are consequently little tempted to participate in the falsified racial self-admiration and lewdness which at present display themselves in Germany, as signs of German sentiment, and which strike one as doubly false and unbecoming in the people with the ” historical sense.” We are, in a word-and it shall be our word of honour!- good Europeans, the heirs of Europe, the rich, over-wealthy heirs, but too deeply obligated heirs of millenniums of European thought. As such, we have also outgrown Christianity, and are disinclined to it - and just because we have grown out of it, because our forefathers were Christians uncompromising in their Christian integrity, who willingly sacrificed possessions and positions, blood and country, for the sake of their belief. We-do the same. For what, then ? For our unbelief? For all sorts of unbelief? Nay, you know better than that, my friends! The hidden Yea in you is stronger than all the Nays and Perhapses, of which you and your age are sick; and when you are obliged to put out to sea, you emigrants, it is-once more a faith which urges you thereto! . . , 378 “ And once more Grow Clear”-We, the generous and rich in spirit, who stand at the sides of the streets like open fountains and would hinder no one from drinking from us: we do not know, alas! how to defend ourselves when we should like to do so; we have no means of preventing ourselves being made turbid and dark,-we have no means of preventing the age in which we live casting its ” up-to-date rubbish” into us, or of hindering filthy birds throwing their excrement, the boys their trash, and fatigued resting travellers their misery, great and small, into us. But we do as we have always done: we take whatever is cast into us down into our depths - for we are deep, we do not forget-and once more grow clear… . 379 The Fool’s Interruption.-It is not a misanthrope who has written this book : the hatred of men costs too dear to-day. To hate as they formerly hated man, in the fashion of Timon, completely, without qualification, with all the heart, from the pure love of hatred - for that purpose one would have to renounce contempt: - and how much refined pleasure, how much patience, how much benevolence even, do we owe to contempt! Moreover we are thereby the ” elect of God “ : refined contempt is our taste and privilege, our art, our virtue perhaps, we, the most modern amongst the moderns! … Hatred, on the contrary, makes equal, it puts men face to face, in hatred there is honour; finally, in hatred there is fear, quite a large amount of fear. We fearless ones, however, we, the most intellectual men of the period, know our advantage well enough to live without fear as the most intellectual persons of this age. People will not easily behead us, shut us up, or banish us; they will not even ban or burn our books. The age loves intellect, it loves us, and needs us, even when we have to give it to understand that we are artists in despising; that all intercourse with men is something of a horror to us; that with all our gentleness, patience, humanity and courteousness, we cannot persuade our nose to abandon its prejudice against the proximity of man ; that we love nature the more, the less humanly things are done by her, and that we love art when it is the flight of the artist from man, or the raillery of the artist at man, or the raillery of the artist at himself… . 380 ” The Wanderer ” Speaks.-In order for once to get a glimpse of our European morality from a distance, in order to compare it with other earlier or future moralities, one must do as the traveller who wants to know the height of the towers of a city: for that purpose he leaves the city. ” Thoughts concerning moral prejudices,” if they are not to be prejudices
concerning prejudices, presuppose a position outside of morality, some sort of world beyond good and evil, to which one must ascend, climb, or fly-and in the given case at any rate, a position beyond our good and evil, an emancipation from all ” Europe,” understood as a sum of inviolable valuations which have become part and parcel of our flesh and blood. That one does want to get outside, or aloft, is perhaps a sort of madness, a peculiar, unreasonable ” you must”-for even we thinkers have our idiosyncrasies of ” unfree will”-: the question is whether one can really get there. That may depend on manifold conditions: in the main it is a question of how light or how heavy we are, the problem of our “ specific gravity.” One must be very light in order to impel one’s will to knowledge to such a distance, and as it were beyond one’s age, in order to create eyes for oneself for the survey of millenniums, and a pure heaven in these eyes besides! One must have freed oneself from many things by which we Europeans of to-day are oppressed, hindered, held down, and made heavy. The man of such a ” Beyond,” who wants to get even in sight of the highest standards of worth of his age, must first of all “ surmount” this age in himself-it is the test of his power-and consequently not only his age, but also his past aversion and opposition to his age, his suffering caused by his age, his unseasonableness, his Romanticism… . 381 The Question of Intelligibility.-One not only wants to be understood when one writes, but also -quite as certainly-not to be understood. It is by no means an objection to a book when someone finds it unintelligible : perhaps this might just have been the intention of its author,-perhaps he did not want to be understood by ” anyone.” A distinguished intellect and taste, when it wants to communicate its thoughts, always selects its hearers; by selecting them, it at the same time closes its barriers against ” the others.” It is there that all the more refined laws of style have their origin: they at the same time keep off, they create distance, they prevent ” access” (intelligibility, as we have said,)-while they open the ears of those who are acoustically related to them. And to say it between ourselves and with reference to my own case,-I do not desire that either my ignorance, or the vivacity of my temperament, should prevent me being understood by you, my friends : I certainly do not desire that my vivacity should have that effect, however much it may impel me to arrive quickly at an object, in order to arrive at it at all. For I think it is best to do with profound problems as with a cold bath-quickly in, quickly out. That one does not thereby get into the depths, that one does not get deep enough down-is a superstition of the hydrophobic, the enemies of cold water; they speak without experience. Oh! the great cold makes one quick!-And let me ask by the way: Is it a fact that a thing has been misunderstood and unrecognised when it has only been touched upon in passing, glanced at, flashed at? Must one absolutely sit upon it in the first place? Must one have brooded on it as on an egg ? Diu noctuque incubando, as Newton said of himself? At least there are truths of a peculiar shyness and ticklishness which one can only get hold of suddenly, and in no other way,-which one must either take by surprise, or leave alone… . Finally, my brevity has still another value: on those questions which pre-occupy me, I must say a great deal briefly, in order that it may be heard yet more briefly. For as immoralist, one has to take care lest one ruins innocence, I mean the asses and old maids of both sexes, who get nothing from life but their innocence ; moreover my writings are meant to fill them with enthusiasm, to elevate them, to encourage them in virtue. I should be at a loss to know of anything more amusing than to see enthusiastic old asses and maids moved by the sweet feelings of virtue : and ” that have I seen “ -spake Zara-thustra. So much with respect to brevity; the matter stands worse as regards my ignorance, of which I make no secret to myself. There are hours in which I am ashamed of it; to be sure there are likewise hours in which I am ashamed of this shame. Perhaps we philosophers, all of us, are badly placed at present with regard to knowledge: science is growing, the most learned of us are on the point of discovering that we know too little. But it would be worse still if it were otherwise,- if we knew too much; our duty is and remains first of all, not to get into confusion about ourselves. We are different from the learned; although it cannot be denied that amongst other things we are also learned. We have different needs, a different growth, a different digestion : we need more, we need also less. There is no formula as to how much an intellect needs for its nourishment ; if, however, its taste be in the direction of independence, rapid coming and going, travelling, and perhaps adventure for which only the swiftest are qualified, it prefers rather to live free on poor fare, than to be unfree and plethoric. Not fat, but the greatest suppleness and power is what a good dancer wishes from his nourishment,-and I know not what the spirit of a philosopher would like better than to be a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, and also his art, in the end likewise his sole piety, his ” divine service.” … 382 Great Healthiness.- We, the new, the nameless, the hard-to-understand, we firstlings of a yet untried future-we require for a new end also a new means, namely, a new healthiness, stronger, sharper, tougher, bolder and merrier than any healthiness until now. He whose soul longs to experience the whole range of until now recognised values and desirabilities, and to circumnavigate all the coasts of this ideal ” Mediterranean Sea,” who, from the adventures of his most personal experience, wants to know how it feels to be a conqueror and discoverer of the ideal-as likewise how it is with the artist, the saint, the legislator, the sage, the scholar, the devotee, the prophet, and the godly Nonconformist of the old style:requires one thing above all for that purpose, great healthiness- such healthiness as one not only possesses, but also constantly acquires and must acquire, because one continually sacrifices it again, and must sacrifice it!-And now, after having been long on the way in this fashion, we Argonauts of the ideal, who are more courageous perhaps than prudent, and often enough shipwrecked and brought to grief, nevertheless, as said above, healthier than people would like to admit, dangerously healthy, always healthy again,-it would seem, as if in recompense for it all, that we have a still undiscovered country before us, the boundaries of which no one has yet seen, a beyond to all countries and corners of the ideal known until now, a world so over-rich in the beautiful, the strange, the questionable, the frightful, and the divine, that our curiosity as well as our thirst for possession thereof, have got out of hand- alas ! that nothing will now any longer satisfy us! How could we still be content with the man of the present day after such peeps, and with such a craving in our conscience and consciousness? What a pity; but it is unavoidable that we should look on the worthiest aims and hopes of the man of the present day with ill-concealed amusement, and perhaps should no longer look at them. Another ideal runs on before us, a strange, tempting ideal, full of danger, to which we should not like to persuade any one, because we do not so readily acknowledge any one’s right thereto: the ideal of a spirit who plays naively (that is to say involuntarily and from overflowing abundance and power) with everything that has
until now been called holy, good, inviolable, divine ; to whom the loftiest conception which the people have reasonably made their measure of value, would already imply danger, ruin, abasement, or at least relaxation, blindness, or temporary self-forgetfulness ; the ideal of a humanly superhuman welfare and benevolence, which may often enough appear inhuman, for example, when put by the side of all past seriousness on earth, and in comparison with all past solemnities in bearing, word, tone, look, morality and pursuit, as their truest involuntary parody,- but with which, nevertheless, perhaps the great seriousness only commences, the proper interrogation mark is set up, the fate of the soul changes, the hourhand moves, and tragedy begins… . Epilogue.-But while I slowly, slowly finish the painting of this sombre interrogation-mark, and am still inclined to remind my readers of the virtues of right reading-oh, what forgotten and unknown virtues-it comes to pass that the wickedest, merriest, gnome-like laughter resounds around me : the spirits of my book themselves pounce upon me, pull me by the ears, and call me to order. ” We cannot endure it any longer,” they shout to me, “ away, away with this raven-black music. Is it not clear morning round about us ? And green, soft ground and turf, the domain of the dance? Was there ever a better hour in which to be joyful ? Who will sing us a song, a morning song, so sunny, so light and so fledged that it will not scare the tantrums,-but will rather invite them to take part in the singing and dancing. And better a simple rustic bagpipe than such weird sounds, such toad-croakings, grave-voices and marmot-pipings, with which you have until now regaled us in your wilderness, Mr Anchorite and Musician of the Future! No! Not such tones ! But let us strike up something more agreeable and more joyful!”-You would like to have it so, my impatient friends? Well! Who would not willingly accede to your wishes ? My bagpipe is waiting, and my voice also-it may sound a little hoarse; take it as it is! don’t forget we are in the mountains! But what you will hear is at least new; and if you do not understand it, if you misunderstand the minstrel, what does it matter ! That-has always been ” The Minstrel’s Curse.” * So much the more distinctly can you hear his music and melody, so much the better also can you-dance to his piping. Would you like to do that ? …
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA - A BOOK FOR ALL AND NONE Translated by Thomas Common Notes by A.M. Ludovici INTRODUCTION BY MRS FORSTER-NIETZSCH - HOW ZARATHUSTRA CAME INTO BEING. “ Zarathustra” is my brother’s most personal work; it is the history of his most individual experiences, of his friendships, ideals, raptures, bitterest disappointments and sorrows. Above it all, however, there soars, transfiguring it, the image of his greatest hopes and remotest aims. My brother had the figure of Zarathustra in his mind from his very earliest youth: he once told me that even as a child he had dreamt of him. At different periods in his life, he would call this haunter of his dreams by different names; “ but in the end,” he declares in a note on the subject, “ I had to do a PERSIAN the honour of identifying him with this creature of my fancy. Persians were the first to take a broad and comprehensive view of history. Every series of evolutions, according to them, was presided over by a prophet; and every prophet had his ‘Hazar,’—his dynasty of a thousand years.” All Zarathustra’s views, as also his personality, were early conceptions of my brother’s mind. Whoever reads his posthumously published writings for the years 1869-82 with care, will constantly meet with passages suggestive of Zarathustra’s thoughts and doctrines. For instance, the ideal of the Superman is put forth quite clearly in all his writings during the years 1873-75; and in “ We Philologists”, the following remarkable observations occur:— “ How can one praise and glorify a nation as a whole?—Even among the Greeks, it was the INDIVIDUALS that counted.” “ The Greeks are interesting and extremely important because they reared such a vast number of great individuals. How was this possible? The question is one which ought to be studied. “ I am interested only in the relations of a people to the rearing of the individual man, and among the Greeks the conditions were unusually favourable for the development of the individual; not by any means owing to the goodness of the people, but because of the struggles of their evil instincts. “ WITH THE HELP OF FAVOURLE MEASURES GREAT INDIVIDUALS MIGHT BE REARED WHO WOULD BE BOTH DIFFERENT FROM AND HIGHER THAN THOSE WHO HERETOFORE HAVE OWED THEIR EXISTENCE TO MERE CHANCE. Here we may still be hopeful: in the rearing of exceptional men.” The notion of rearing the Superman is only a new form of an ideal Nietzsche already had in his youth, that “ THE OBJECT OF MANKIND SHOULD LIE IN ITS HIGHEST INDIVIDUALS” (or, as he writes in “ Schopenhauer as Educator”: “ Mankind ought constantly to be striving to produce great men—this and nothing else is its duty.”) But the ideals he most revered in those days are no longer held to be the highest types of men. No, around this future ideal of a coming humanity—the Superman—the poet spread the veil of becoming. Who can tell to what glorious heights man can still ascend? That is why, after having tested the worth of our noblest ideal—that of the Saviour, in the light of the new valuations, the poet cries with passionate emphasis in “ Zarathustra”: “ Never yet hath there been a Superman. Naked have I seen both of them, the greatest and the smallest man:— All-too-similar are they still to each other. Verily even the greatest found I—all-too-human!”— The phrase “ the rearing of the Superman,” has very often been misunderstood. By the word “ rearing,” in this case, is meant the act of modifying by means of new and higher values—values which, as laws and guides of conduct and opinion, are now to rule over mankind. In general the doctrine of the Superman can only be understood correctly in conjunction with other ideas of the author’s, such as:—the Order of Rank, the Will to Power, and the Transvaluation of all Values. He assumes that Christianity, as a product of the resentment of the botched and the weak, has put in ban all that is beautiful, strong, proud, and powerful, in fact all the qualities resulting from strength, and that, in consequence, all
forces which tend to promote or elevate life have been seriously undermined. Now, however, a new table of valuations must be placed over mankind—namely, that of the strong, mighty, and magnificent man, overflowing with life and elevated to his zenith—the Superman, who is now put before us with overpowering passion as the aim of our life, hope, and will. And just as the old system of valuing, which only extolled the qualities favourable to the weak, the suffering, and the oppressed, has succeeded in producing a weak, suffering, and “ modern” race, so this new and reversed system of valuing ought to rear a healthy, strong, lively, and courageous type, which would be a glory to life itself. Stated briefly, the leading principle of this new system of valuing would be: “ All that proceeds from power is good, all that springs from weakness is bad.” This type must not be regarded as a fanciful figure: it is not a nebulous hope which is to be realised at some indefinitely remote period, thousands of years hence; nor is it a new species (in the Darwinian sense) of which we can know nothing, and which it would therefore be somewhat absurd to strive after. But it is meant to be a possibility which men of the present could realise with all their spiritual and physical energies, provided they adopted the new values. The author of “ Zarathustra” never lost sight of that egregious example of a transvaluation of all values through Christianity, whereby the whole of the deified mode of life and thought of the Greeks, as well as strong Romedom, was almost annihilated or transvalued in a comparatively short time. Could not a rejuvenated Graeco-Roman system of valuing (once it had been refined and made more profound by the schooling which two thousand years of Christianity had provided) effect another such revolution within a calculable period of time, until that glorious type of manhood shall finally appear which is to be our new faith and hope, and in the creation of which Zarathustra exhorts us to participate? In his private notes on the subject the author uses the expression “ Superman” (always in the singular, by-the-bye), as signifying “ the most thoroughly well-constituted type,” as opposed to “ modern man”; above all, however, he designates Zarathustra himself as an example of the Superman. In “ Ecco Homo” he is careful to enlighten us concerning the precursors and prerequisites to the advent of this highest type, in referring to a certain passage in the “ Gay Science”:— “ In order to understand this type, we must first be quite clear in regard to the leading physiological condition on which it depends: this condition is what I call GREAT HEALTHINESS. I know not how to express my meaning more plainly or more personally than I have done already in one of the last Chapters (Aphorism 382) of the fifth book of the ‘Gaya Scienza’.” “ We, the new, the nameless, the hard-to-understand,”—it says there,—“ we firstlings of a yet untried future—we require for a new end also a new means, namely, a new healthiness, stronger, sharper, tougher, bolder and merrier than all healthiness hitherto. He whose soul longeth to experience the whole range of hitherto recognised values and desirabilities, and to circumnavigate all the coasts of this ideal ‘Mediterranean Sea’, who, from the adventures of his most personal experience, wants to know how it feels to be a conqueror, and discoverer of the ideal—as likewise how it is with the artist, the saint, the legislator, the sage, the scholar, the devotee, the prophet, and the godly non-conformist of the old style:—requires one thing above all for that purpose, GREAT HEALTHINESS—such healthiness as one not only possesses, but also constantly acquires and must acquire, because one unceasingly sacrifices it again, and must sacrifice it!—And now, after having been long on the way in this fashion, we Argonauts of the ideal, more courageous perhaps than prudent, and often enough shipwrecked and brought to grief, nevertheless dangerously healthy, always healthy again,—it would seem as if, in recompense for it all, that we have a still undiscovered country before us, the boundaries of which no one has yet seen, a beyond to all countries and corners of the ideal known hitherto, a world so over-rich in the beautiful, the strange, the questionable, the frightful, and the divine, that our curiosity as well as our thirst for possession thereof, have got out of hand—alas! that nothing will now any longer satisfy us!— “ How could we still be content with THE MAN OF THE PRESENT DAY after such outlooks, and with such a craving in our conscience and consciousness? Sad enough; but it is unavoidable that we should look on the worthiest aims and hopes of the man of the present day with ill-concealed amusement, and perhaps should no longer look at them. Another ideal runs on before us, a strange, tempting ideal full of danger, to which we should not like to persuade any one, because we do not so readily acknowledge any one’s RIGHT THERETO: the ideal of a spirit who plays naively (that is to say involuntarily and from overflowing abundance and power) with everything that has hitherto been called holy, good, intangible, or divine; to whom the loftiest conception which the people have reasonably made their measure of value, would already practically imply danger, ruin, abasement, or at least relaxation, blindness, or temporary self-forgetfulness; the ideal of a humanly superhuman welfare and benevolence, which will often enough appear INHUMAN, for example, when put alongside of all past seriousness on earth, and alongside of all past solemnities in bearing, word, tone, look, morality, and pursuit, as their truest involuntary parody—and WITH which, nevertheless, perhaps THE GREAT SERIOUSNESS only commences, when the proper interrogative mark is set up, the fate of the soul changes, the hour-hand moves, and tragedy begins…” Although the figure of Zarathustra and a large number of the leading thoughts in this work had appeared much earlier in the dreams and writings of the author, “ Thus Spake Zarathustra” did not actually come into being until the month of August 1881 in Sils Maria; and it was the idea of the Eternal Recurrence of all things which finally induced my brother to set forth his new views in poetic language. In regard to his first conception of this idea, his autobiographical sketch, “ Ecce Homo”, written in the autumn of 1888, contains the following passage:— “ The fundamental idea of my work—namely, the Eternal Recurrence of all things—this highest of all possible formulae of a Yea-saying philosophy, first occurred to me in August 1881. I made a note of the thought on a sheet of paper, with the postscript: 6,000 feet beyond men and time! That day I happened to be wandering through the woods alongside of the lake of Silvaplana, and I halted beside a huge, pyramidal and towering rock not far from Surlei. It was then that the thought struck me. Looking back now, I find that exactly two months previous to this inspiration, I had had an omen of its coming in the form of a sudden and decisive alteration in my tastes—more particularly in music. It would even be
possible to consider all ‘Zarathustra’ as a musical composition. At all events, a very necessary condition in its production was a renaissance in myself of the art of hearing. In a small mountain resort (Recoaro) near Vicenza, where I spent the spring of 1881, I and my friend and Maestro, Peter Gast—also one who had been born again—discovered that the phoenix music that hovered over us, wore lighter and brighter plumes than it had done theretofore.” During the month of August 1881 my brother resolved to reveal the teaching of the Eternal Recurrence, in dithyrambic and psalmodic form, through the mouth of Zarathustra. Among the notes of this period, we found a page on which is written the first definite plan of “ Thus Spake Zarathustra”:— “ MIDDAY AND ETERNITY.” “ GUIDE-POSTS TO A NEW WAY OF LIVING.” Beneath this is written:— “ Zarathustra born on lake Urmi; left his home in his thirtieth year, went into the province of Aria, and, during ten years of solitude in the mountains, composed the Zend-Avesta.” “ The sun of knowledge stands once more at midday; and the serpent of eternity lies coiled in its light—: It is YOUR time, ye midday brethren.” In that summer of 1881, my brother, after many years of steadily declining health, began at last to rally, and it is to this first gush of the recovery of his once splendid bodily condition that we owe not only “ The Gay Science”, which in its mood may be regarded as a prelude to “ Zarathustra”, but also “ Zarathustra” itself. Just as he was beginning to recuperate his health, however, an unkind destiny brought him a number of most painful personal experiences. His friends caused him many disappointments, which were the more bitter to him, inasmuch as he regarded friendship as such a sacred institution; and for the first time in his life he realised the whole horror of that loneliness to which, perhaps, all greatness is condemned. But to be forsaken is something very different from deliberately choosing blessed loneliness. How he longed, in those days, for the ideal friend who would thoroughly understand him, to whom he would be able to say all, and whom he imagined he had found at various periods in his life from his earliest youth onwards. Now, however, that the way he had chosen grew ever more perilous and steep, he found nobody who could follow him: he therefore created a perfect friend for himself in the ideal form of a majestic philosopher, and made this creation the preacher of his gospel to the world. Whether my brother would ever have written “ Thus Spake Zarathustra” according to the first plan sketched in the summer of 1881, if he had not had the disappointments already referred to, is now an idle question; but perhaps where “ Zarathustra” is concerned, we may also say with Master Eckhardt: “ The fleetest beast to bear you to perfection is suffering.” My brother writes as follows about the origin of the first part of “ Zarathustra”:—“ In the winter of 1882-83, I was living on the charming little Gulf of Rapallo, not far from Genoa, and between Chiavari and Cape Porto Fino. My health was not very good; the winter was cold and exceptionally rainy; and the small inn in which I lived was so close to the water that at night my sleep would be disturbed if the sea were high. These circumstances were surely the very reverse of favourable; and yet in spite of it all, and as if in demonstration of my belief that everything decisive comes to life in spite of every obstacle, it was precisely during this winter and in the midst of these unfavourable circumstances that my ‘Zarathustra’ originated. In the morning I used to start out in a southerly direction up the glorious road to Zoagli, which rises aloft through a forest of pines and gives one a view far out into the sea. In the afternoon, as often as my health permitted, I walked round the whole bay from Santa Margherita to beyond Porto Fino. This spot was all the more interesting to me, inasmuch as it was so dearly loved by the Emperor Frederick III. In the autumn of 1886 I chanced to be there again when he was revisiting this small, forgotten world of happiness for the last time. It was on these two roads that all ‘Zarathustra’ came to me, above all Zarathustra himself as a type;—I ought rather to say that it was on these walks that these ideas waylaid me.” The first part of “ Zarathustra” was written in about ten days—that is to say, from the beginning to about the middle of February 1883. “ The last lines were written precisely in the hallowed hour when Richard Wagner gave up the ghost in Venice.” With the exception of the ten days occupied in composing the first part of this book, my brother often referred to this winter as the hardest and sickliest he had ever experienced. He did not, however, mean thereby that his former disorders were troubling him, but that he was suffering from a severe attack of influenza which he had caught in Santa Margherita, and which tormented him for several weeks after his arrival in Genoa. As a matter of fact, however, what he complained of most was his spiritual condition—that indescribable forsakenness—to which he gives such heartrending expression in “ Zarathustra”. Even the reception which the first part met with at the hands of friends and acquaintances was extremely disheartening: for almost all those to whom he presented copies of the work misunderstood it. “ I found no one ripe for many of my thoughts; the case of ‘Zarathustra’ proves that one can speak with the utmost clearness, and yet not be heard by any one.” My brother was very much discouraged by the feebleness of the response he was given, and as he was striving just then to give up the practice of taking hydrate of chloral—a drug he had begun to take while ill with influenza,—the following spring, spent in Rome, was a somewhat gloomy one for him. He writes about it as follows:—“ I spent a melancholy spring in Rome, where I only just managed to live,—and this was no easy matter. This city, which is absolutely unsuited to the poet-author of ‘Zarathustra’, and for the choice of which I was not responsible, made me inordinately miserable. I tried to leave it. I wanted to go to Aquila—the opposite of Rome in every respect, and actually founded in a spirit of enmity towards that city (just as I also shall found a city some day), as a memento of an atheist and genuine enemy of the Church—a person very closely related to me,—the great Hohenstaufen, the Emperor Frederick II. But Fate lay behind it all: I had to return again to Rome. In the end I was obliged to be satisfied with the Piazza Barberini, after I had exerted myself in vain to find an anti-Christian quarter. I fear that on one occasion, to avoid bad smells as much as possible, I actually inquired at the Palazzo del Quirinale whether they could not provide a quiet room for a philosopher. In a chamber high above the Piazza just mentioned, from which one obtained a general view of Rome and could hear the fountains plashing far below, the loneliest of all songs was composed—‘The Night-Song’. About this time I was
obsessed by an unspeakably sad melody, the refrain of which I recognised in the words, ‘dead through immortality.’” We remained somewhat too long in Rome that spring, and what with the effect of the increasing heat and the discouraging circumstances already described, my brother resolved not to write any more, or in any case, not to proceed with “ Zarathustra”, although I offered to relieve him of all trouble in connection with the proofs and the publisher. When, however, we returned to Switzerland towards the end of June, and he found himself once more in the familiar and exhilarating air of the mountains, all his joyous creative powers revived, and in a note to me announcing the dispatch of some manuscript, he wrote as follows: “ I have engaged a place here for three months: forsooth, I am the greatest fool to allow my courage to be sapped from me by the climate of Italy. Now and again I am troubled by the thought: WHAT NEXT? My ‘future’ is the darkest thing in the world to me, but as there still remains a great deal for me to do, I suppose I ought rather to think of doing this than of my future, and leave the rest to THEE and the gods.” The second part of “ Zarathustra” was written between the 26th of June and the 6th July. “ This summer, finding myself once more in the sacred place where the first thought of ‘Zarathustra’ flashed across my mind, I conceived the second part. Ten days sufficed. Neither for the second, the first, nor the third part, have I required a day longer.” He often used to speak of the ecstatic mood in which he wrote “ Zarathustra”; how in his walks over hill and dale the ideas would crowd into his mind, and how he would note them down hastily in a note-book from which he would transcribe them on his return, sometimes working till midnight. He says in a letter to me: “ You can have no idea of the vehemence of such composition,” and in “ Ecce Homo” (autumn 1888) he describes as follows with passionate enthusiasm the incomparable mood in which he created Zarathustra:— “ —Has any one at the end of the nineteenth century any distinct notion of what poets of a stronger age understood by the word inspiration? If not, I will describe it. If one had the smallest vestige of superstition in one, it would hardly be possible to set aside completely the idea that one is the mere incarnation, mouthpiece or medium of an almighty power. The idea of revelation in the sense that something becomes suddenly visible and audible with indescribable certainty and accuracy, which profoundly convulses and upsets one— describes simply the matter of fact. One hears—one does not seek; one takes—one does not ask who gives: a thought suddenly flashes up like lightning, it comes with necessity, unhesitatingly—I have never had any choice in the matter. There is an ecstasy such that the immense strain of it is sometimes relaxed by a flood of tears, along with which one’s steps either rush or involuntarily lag, alternately. There is the feeling that one is completely out of hand, with the very distinct consciousness of an endless number of fine thrills and quiverings to the very toes;—there is a depth of happiness in which the painfullest and gloomiest do not operate as antitheses, but as conditioned, as demanded in the sense of necessary shades of colour in such an overflow of light. There is an instinct for rhythmic relations which embraces wide areas of forms (length, the need of a wide-embracing rhythm, is almost the measure of the force of an inspiration, a sort of counterpart to its pressure and tension). Everything happens quite involuntarily, as if in a tempestuous outburst of freedom, of absoluteness, of power and divinity. The involuntariness of the figures and similes is the most remarkable thing; one loses all perception of what constitutes the figure and what constitutes the simile; everything seems to present itself as the readiest, the correctest and the simplest means of expression. It actually seems, to use one of Zarathustra’s own phrases, as if all things came unto one, and would fain be similes: ‘Here do all things come caressingly to thy talk and flatter thee, for they want to ride upon thy back. On every simile dost thou here ride to every truth. Here fly open unto thee all being’s words and word-cabinets; here all being wanteth to become words, here all becoming wanteth to learn of thee how to talk.’ This is MY experience of inspiration. I do not doubt but that one would have to go back thousands of years in order to find some one who could say to me: It is mine also!—” In the autumn of 1883 my brother left the Engadine for Germany and stayed there a few weeks. In the following winter, after wandering somewhat erratically through Stresa, Genoa, and Spezia, he landed in Nice, where the climate so happily promoted his creative powers that he wrote the third part of “ Zarathustra”. “ In the winter, beneath the halcyon sky of Nice, which then looked down upon me for the first time in my life, I found the third ‘Zarathustra’—and came to the end of my task; the whole having occupied me scarcely a year. Many hidden corners and heights in the landscapes round about Nice are hallowed to me by unforgettable moments. That decisive Chapter entitled ‘Old and New Tables’ was composed in the very difficult ascent from the station to Eza—that wonderful Moorish village in the rocks. My most creative moments were always accompanied by unusual muscular activity. The body is inspired: let us waive the question of the ‘soul.’ I might often have been seen dancing in those days. Without a suggestion of fatigue I could then walk for seven or eight hours on end among the hills. I slept well and laughed well—I was perfectly robust and patient.” As we have seen, each of the three parts of “ Zarathustra” was written, after a more or less short period of preparation, in about ten days. The composition of the fourth part alone was broken by occasional interruptions. The first notes relating to this part were written while he and I were staying together in Zurich in September 1884. In the following November, while staying at Mentone, he began to elaborate these notes, and after a long pause, finished the manuscript at Nice between the end of January and the middle of February 1885. My brother then called this part the fourth and last; but even before, and shortly after it had been privately printed, he wrote to me saying that he still intended writing a fifth and sixth part, and notes relating to these parts are now in my possession. This fourth part (the original MS. of which contains this note: “ Only for my friends, not for the public”) is written in a particularly personal spirit, and those few to whom he presented a copy of it, he pledged to the strictest secrecy concerning its contents. He often thought of making this fourth part public also, but doubted whether he would ever be able to do so without considerably altering certain portions of it. At all events he resolved to distribute this manuscript production, of which only forty copies were printed, only among those who had proved themselves worthy of it, and it speaks eloquently of his utter loneliness and need of sympathy in those days, that he had occasion to present only seven copies of his book according to this resolution. Already at the beginning of this history I hinted at the reasons which led my brother to select a Persian as the incarnation of his ideal of the majestic philosopher. His reasons, however, for choosing Zarathustra of all others to be his mouthpiece, he gives us in the following words:—“ People have never asked me, as they should have done, what the name
Zarathustra precisely means in my mouth, in the mouth of the first Immoralist; for what distinguishes that philosopher from all others in the past is the very fact that he was exactly the reverse of an immoralist. Zarathustra was the first to see in the struggle between good and evil the essential wheel in the working of things. The translation of morality into the metaphysical, as force, cause, end in itself, was HIS work. But the very question suggests its own answer. Zarathustra CREATED the most portentous error, MORALITY, consequently he should also be the first to PERCEIVE that error, not only because he has had longer and greater experience of the subject than any other thinker—all history is the experimental refutation of the theory of the so-called moral order of things:—the more important point is that Zarathustra was more truthful than any other thinker. In his teaching alone do we meet with truthfulness upheld as the highest virtue—i.e.: the reverse of the COWARDICE of the ‘idealist’ who flees from reality. Zarathustra had more courage in his body than any other thinker before or after him. To tell the truth and TO AIM STRAIGHT: that is the first Persian virtue. Am I understood?… The overcoming of morality through itself—through truthfulness, the overcoming of the moralist through his opposite—THROUGH ME—: that is what the name Zarathustra means in my mouth.” ELIZETH FORSTER-NIETZSCHE. Nietzsche Archives, Weimar, December 1905. FIRST PART. ZARATHUSTRA’S DISCOURSES. ZARATHUSTRA’S PROLOGUE. 1. When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home, and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and solitude, and for ten years did not weary of it. But at last his heart changed,—and rising one morning with the rosy dawn, he went before the sun, and spake thus unto it: Thou great star! What would be thy happiness if thou hadst not those for whom thou shinest! For ten years hast thou climbed hither unto my cave: thou wouldst have wearied of thy light and of the journey, had it not been for me, mine eagle, and my serpent. But we awaited thee every morning, took from thee thine overflow and blessed thee for it. Lo! I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that hath gathered too much honey; I need hands outstretched to take it. I would fain bestow and distribute, until the wise have once more become joyous in their folly, and the poor happy in their riches. Therefore must I descend into the deep: as thou doest in the evening, when thou goest behind the sea, and givest light also to the nether-world, thou exuberant star! Like thee must I GO DOWN, as men say, to whom I shall descend. Bless me, then, thou tranquil eye, that canst behold even the greatest happiness without envy! Bless the cup that is about to overflow, that the water may flow golden out of it, and carry everywhere the reflection of thy bliss! Lo! This cup is again going to empty itself, and Zarathustra is again going to be a man. Thus began Zarathustra’s down-going. 2. Zarathustra went down the mountain alone, no one meeting him. When he entered the forest, however, there suddenly stood before him an old man, who had left his holy cot to seek roots. And thus spake the old man to Zarathustra: “ No stranger to me is this wanderer: many years ago passed he by. Zarathustra he was called; but he hath altered. Then thou carriedst thine ashes into the mountains: wilt thou now carry thy fire into the valleys? Fearest thou not the incendiary’s doom? Yea, I recognise Zarathustra. Pure is his eye, and no loathing lurketh about his mouth. Goeth he not along like a dancer? Altered is Zarathustra; a child hath Zarathustra become; an awakened one is Zarathustra: what wilt thou do in the land of the sleepers? As in the sea hast thou lived in solitude, and it hath borne thee up. Alas, wilt thou now go ashore? Alas, wilt thou again drag thy body thyself?” Zarathustra answered: “ I love mankind.” “ Why,” said the saint, “ did I go into the forest and the desert? Was it not because I loved men far too well? Now I love God: men, I do not love. Man is a thing too imperfect for me. Love to man would be fatal to me.” Zarathustra answered: “ What spake I of love! I am bringing gifts unto men.” “ Give them nothing,” said the saint. “ Take rather part of their load, and carry it along with them—that will be most agreeable unto them: if only it be agreeable unto thee! If, however, thou wilt give unto them, give them no more than an alms, and let them also beg for it!” “ No,” replied Zarathustra, “ I give no alms. I am not poor enough for that.” The saint laughed at Zarathustra, and spake thus: “ Then see to it that they accept thy treasures! They are distrustful of anchorites, and do not believe that we come with gifts. The fall of our footsteps ringeth too hollow through their streets. And just as at night, when they are in bed and hear a man abroad long before sunrise, so they ask themselves concerning us: Where goeth the thief?
Go not to men, but stay in the forest! Go rather to the animals! Why not be like me—a bear amongst bears, a bird amongst birds?” “ And what doeth the saint in the forest?” asked Zarathustra. The saint answered: “ I make hymns and sing them; and in making hymns I laugh and weep and mumble: thus do I praise God. With singing, weeping, laughing, and mumbling do I praise the God who is my God. But what dost thou bring us as a gift?” When Zarathustra had heard these words, he bowed to the saint and said: “ What should I have to give thee! Let me rather hurry hence lest I take aught away from thee!”—And thus they parted from one another, the old man and Zarathustra, laughing like schoolboys. When Zarathustra was alone, however, he said to his heart: “ Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that GOD IS DEAD!” 3. When Zarathustra arrived at the nearest town which adjoineth the forest, he found many people assembled in the market-place; for it had been announced that a rope-dancer would give a performance. And Zarathustra spake thus unto the people: I TEACH YOU THE SUPERMAN. Man is something that is to be surpassed. What have ye done to surpass man? All beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and ye want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to the beast than surpass man? What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just the same shall man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame. Ye have made your way from the worm to man, and much within you is still worm. Once were ye apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than any of the apes. Even the wisest among you is only a disharmony and hybrid of plant and phantom. But do I bid you become phantoms or plants? Lo, I teach you the Superman! The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Superman SHALL BE the meaning of the earth! I conjure you, my brethren, REMAIN TRUE TO THE EARTH, and believe not those who speak unto you of superearthly hopes! Poisoners are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying ones and poisoned ones themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so away with them! Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy; but God died, and therewith also those blasphemers. To blaspheme the earth is now the dreadfulest sin, and to rate the heart of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth! Once the soul looked contemptuously on the body, and then that contempt was the supreme thing:—the soul wished the body meagre, ghastly, and famished. Thus it thought to escape from the body and the earth. Oh, that soul was itself meagre, ghastly, and famished; and cruelty was the delight of that soul! But ye, also, my brethren, tell me: What doth your body say about your soul? Is your soul not poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency? Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure. Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that sea; in him can your great contempt be submerged. What is the greatest thing ye can experience? It is the hour of great contempt. The hour in which even your happiness becometh loathsome unto you, and so also your reason and virtue. The hour when ye say: “ What good is my happiness! It is poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency. But my happiness should justify existence itself!” The hour when ye say: “ What good is my reason! Doth it long for knowledge as the lion for his food? It is poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency!” The hour when ye say: “ What good is my virtue! As yet it hath not made me passionate. How weary I am of my good and my bad! It is all poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency!” The hour when ye say: “ What good is my justice! I do not see that I am fervour and fuel. The just, however, are fervour and fuel!” The hour when ye say: “ What good is my pity! Is not pity the cross on which he is nailed who loveth man? But my pity is not a crucifixion.” Have ye ever spoken thus? Have ye ever cried thus? Ah! would that I had heard you crying thus! It is not your sin—it is your self-satisfaction that crieth unto heaven; your very sparingness in sin crieth unto heaven! Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the frenzy with which ye should be inoculated? Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that lightning, he is that frenzy!— When Zarathustra had thus spoken, one of the people called out: “ We have now heard enough of the rope-dancer; it is time now for us to see him!” And all the people laughed at Zarathustra. But the rope-dancer, who thought the words applied to him, began his performance. 4. Zarathustra, however, looked at the people and wondered. Then he spake thus: Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman—a rope over an abyss.
A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is an OVER-GOING and a DOWN-GOING. I love those that know not how to live except as down-goers, for they are the over-goers. I love the great despisers, because they are the great adorers, and arrows of longing for the other shore. I love those who do not first seek a reason beyond the stars for going down and being sacrifices, but sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth of the Superman may hereafter arrive. I love him who liveth in order to know, and seeketh to know in order that the Superman may hereafter live. Thus seeketh he his own down-going. I love him who laboureth and inventeth, that he may build the house for the Superman, and prepare for him earth, animal, and plant: for thus seeketh he his own down-going. I love him who loveth his virtue: for virtue is the will to down-going, and an arrow of longing. I love him who reserveth no share of spirit for himself, but wanteth to be wholly the spirit of his virtue: thus walketh he as spirit over the bridge. I love him who maketh his virtue his inclination and destiny: thus, for the sake of his virtue, he is willing to live on, or live no more. I love him who desireth not too many virtues. One virtue is more of a virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for one’s destiny to cling to. I love him whose soul is lavish, who wanteth no thanks and doth not give back: for he always bestoweth, and desireth not to keep for himself. I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favour, and who then asketh: “ Am I a dishonest player?”—for he is willing to succumb. I love him who scattereth golden words in advance of his deeds, and always doeth more than he promiseth: for he seeketh his own down-going. I love him who justifieth the future ones, and redeemeth the past ones: for he is willing to succumb through the present ones. I love him who chasteneth his God, because he loveth his God: for he must succumb through the wrath of his God. I love him whose soul is deep even in the wounding, and may succumb through a small matter: thus goeth he willingly over the bridge. I love him whose soul is so overfull that he forgetteth himself, and all things are in him: thus all things become his down-going. I love him who is of a free spirit and a free heart: thus is his head only the bowels of his heart; his heart, however, causeth his down-going. I love all who are like heavy drops falling one by one out of the dark cloud that lowereth over man: they herald the coming of the lightning, and succumb as heralds. Lo, I am a herald of the lightning, and a heavy drop out of the cloud: the lightning, however, is the SUPERMAN.— 5. When Zarathustra had spoken these words, he again looked at the people, and was silent. “ There they stand,” said he to his heart; “ there they laugh: they understand me not; I am not the mouth for these ears. Must one first batter their ears, that they may learn to hear with their eyes? Must one clatter like kettledrums and penitential preachers? Or do they only believe the stammerer? They have something whereof they are proud. What do they call it, that which maketh them proud? Culture, they call it; it distinguisheth them from the goatherds. They dislike, therefore, to hear of ‘contempt’ of themselves. So I will appeal to their pride. I will speak unto them of the most contemptible thing: that, however, is THE LAST MAN!” And thus spake Zarathustra unto the people: It is time for man to fix his goal. It is time for man to plant the germ of his highest hope. Still is his soil rich enough for it. But that soil will one day be poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow thereon. Alas! there cometh the time when man will no longer launch the arrow of his longing beyond man—and the string of his bow will have unlearned to whizz! I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: ye have still chaos in you. Alas! There cometh the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There cometh the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself. Lo! I show you THE LAST MAN. “ What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?”—so asketh the last man and blinketh. The earth hath then become small, and on it there hoppeth the last man who maketh everything small. His species is ineradicable like that of the ground-flea; the last man liveth longest. “ We have discovered happiness”—say the last men, and blink thereby. They have left the regions where it is hard to live; for they need warmth. One still loveth one’s neighbour and rubbeth against him; for one needeth warmth. Turning ill and being distrustful, they consider sinful: they walk warily. He is a fool who still stumbleth over stones or men! A little poison now and then: that maketh pleasant dreams. And much poison at last for a pleasant death. One still worketh, for work is a pastime. But one is careful lest the pastime should hurt one. One no longer becometh poor or rich; both are too burdensome. Who still wanteth to rule? Who still wanteth to obey? Both are too burdensome.
No shepherd, and one herd! Every one wanteth the same; every one is equal: he who hath other sentiments goeth voluntarily into the madhouse. “ Formerly all the world was insane,”—say the subtlest of them, and blink thereby. They are clever and know all that hath happened: so there is no end to their raillery. People still fall out, but are soon reconciled—otherwise it spoileth their stomachs. They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the night, but they have a regard for health. “ We have discovered happiness,”—say the last men, and blink thereby.— And here ended the first discourse of Zarathustra, which is also called “ The Prologue”: for at this point the shouting and mirth of the multitude interrupted him. “ Give us this last man, O Zarathustra,”—they called out—“ make us into these last men! Then will we make thee a present of the Superman!” And all the people exulted and smacked their lips. Zarathustra, however, turned sad, and said to his heart: “ They understand me not: I am not the mouth for these ears. Too long, perhaps, have I lived in the mountains; too much have I hearkened unto the brooks and trees: now do I speak unto them as unto the goatherds. Calm is my soul, and clear, like the mountains in the morning. But they think me cold, and a mocker with terrible jests. And now do they look at me and laugh: and while they laugh they hate me too. There is ice in their laughter.” 6. Then, however, something happened which made every mouth mute and every eye fixed. In the meantime, of course, the rope-dancer had commenced his performance: he had come out at a little door, and was going along the rope which was stretched between two towers, so that it hung above the market-place and the people. When he was just midway across, the little door opened once more, and a gaudily-dressed fellow like a buffoon sprang out, and went rapidly after the first one. “ Go on, halt-foot,” cried his frightful voice, “ go on, lazy-bones, interloper, sallow-face!—lest I tickle thee with my heel! What dost thou here between the towers? In the tower is the place for thee, thou shouldst be locked up; to one better than thyself thou blockest the way!”—And with every word he came nearer and nearer the first one. When, however, he was but a step behind, there happened the frightful thing which made every mouth mute and every eye fixed—he uttered a yell like a devil, and jumped over the other who was in his way. The latter, however, when he thus saw his rival triumph, lost at the same time his head and his footing on the rope; he threw his pole away, and shot downwards faster than it, like an eddy of arms and legs, into the depth. The market-place and the people were like the sea when the storm cometh on: they all flew apart and in disorder, especially where the body was about to fall. Zarathustra, however, remained standing, and just beside him fell the body, badly injured and disfigured, but not yet dead. After a while consciousness returned to the shattered man, and he saw Zarathustra kneeling beside him. “ What art thou doing there?” said he at last, “ I knew long ago that the devil would trip me up. Now he draggeth me to hell: wilt thou prevent him?” “ On mine honour, my friend,” answered Zarathustra, “ there is nothing of all that whereof thou speakest: there is no devil and no hell. Thy soul will be dead even sooner than thy body: fear, therefore, nothing any more!” The man looked up distrustfully. “ If thou speakest the truth,” said he, “ I lose nothing when I lose my life. I am not much more than an animal which hath been taught to dance by blows and scanty fare.” “ Not at all,” said Zarathustra, “ thou hast made danger thy calling; therein there is nothing contemptible. Now thou perishest by thy calling: therefore will I bury thee with mine own hands.” When Zarathustra had said this the dying one did not reply further; but he moved his hand as if he sought the hand of Zarathustra in gratitude. 7. Meanwhile the evening came on, and the market-place veiled itself in gloom. Then the people dispersed, for even curiosity and terror become fatigued. Zarathustra, however, still sat beside the dead man on the ground, absorbed in thought: so he forgot the time. But at last it became night, and a cold wind blew upon the lonely one. Then arose Zarathustra and said to his heart: Verily, a fine catch of fish hath Zarathustra made to-day! It is not a man he hath caught, but a corpse. Sombre is human life, and as yet without meaning: a buffoon may be fateful to it. I want to teach men the sense of their existence, which is the Superman, the lightning out of the dark cloud—man. But still am I far from them, and my sense speaketh not unto their sense. To men I am still something between a fool and a corpse. Gloomy is the night, gloomy are the ways of Zarathustra. Come, thou cold and stiff companion! I carry thee to the place where I shall bury thee with mine own hands. 8. When Zarathustra had said this to his heart, he put the corpse upon his shoulders and set out on his way. Yet had he not gone a hundred steps, when there stole a man up to him and whispered in his ear—and lo! he that spake was the buffoon from the tower. “ Leave this town, O Zarathustra,” said he, “ there are too many here who hate thee. The good and just hate thee, and call thee their enemy and despiser; the believers in the orthodox belief hate thee, and call thee a danger to the multitude. It was thy good fortune to be laughed at: and verily thou spakest like a buffoon. It was thy good fortune to associate with the dead dog; by so humiliating thyself thou hast saved thy life to-day. Depart, however, from this town,
—or tomorrow I shall jump over thee, a living man over a dead one.” And when he had said this, the buffoon vanished; Zarathustra, however, went on through the dark streets. At the gate of the town the grave-diggers met him: they shone their torch on his face, and, recognising Zarathustra, they sorely derided him. “ Zarathustra is carrying away the dead dog: a fine thing that Zarathustra hath turned a grave-digger! For our hands are too cleanly for that roast. Will Zarathustra steal the bite from the devil? Well then, good luck to the repast! If only the devil is not a better thief than Zarathustra!—he will steal them both, he will eat them both!” And they laughed among themselves, and put their heads together. Zarathustra made no answer thereto, but went on his way. When he had gone on for two hours, past forests and swamps, he had heard too much of the hungry howling of the wolves, and he himself became a-hungry. So he halted at a lonely house in which a light was burning. “ Hunger attacketh me,” said Zarathustra, “ like a robber. Among forests and swamps my hunger attacketh me, and late in the night. “ Strange humours hath my hunger. Often it cometh to me only after a repast, and all day it hath failed to come: where hath it been?” And thereupon Zarathustra knocked at the door of the house. An old man appeared, who carried a light, and asked: “ Who cometh unto me and my bad sleep?” “ A living man and a dead one,” said Zarathustra. “ Give me something to eat and drink, I forgot it during the day. He that feedeth the hungry refresheth his own soul, saith wisdom.” The old man withdrew, but came back immediately and offered Zarathustra bread and wine. “ A bad country for the hungry,” said he; “ that is why I live here. Animal and man come unto me, the anchorite. But bid thy companion eat and drink also, he is wearier than thou.” Zarathustra answered: “ My companion is dead; I shall hardly be able to persuade him to eat.” “ That doth not concern me,” said the old man sullenly; “ he that knocketh at my door must take what I offer him. Eat, and fare ye well!”— Thereafter Zarathustra again went on for two hours, trusting to the path and the light of the stars: for he was an experienced night-walker, and liked to look into the face of all that slept. When the morning dawned, however, Zarathustra found himself in a thick forest, and no path was any longer visible. He then put the dead man in a hollow tree at his head—for he wanted to protect him from the wolves—and laid himself down on the ground and moss. And immediately he fell asleep, tired in body, but with a tranquil soul. 9. Long slept Zarathustra; and not only the rosy dawn passed over his head, but also the morning. At last, however, his eyes opened, and amazedly he gazed into the forest and the stillness, amazedly he gazed into himself. Then he arose quickly, like a seafarer who all at once seeth the land; and he shouted for joy: for he saw a new truth. And he spake thus to his heart: A light hath dawned upon me: I need companions—living ones; not dead companions and corpses, which I carry with me where I will. But I need living companions, who will follow me because they want to follow themselves—and to the place where I will. A light hath dawned upon me. Not to the people is Zarathustra to speak, but to companions! Zarathustra shall not be the herd’s herdsman and hound! To allure many from the herd—for that purpose have I come. The people and the herd must be angry with me: a robber shall Zarathustra be called by the herdsmen. Herdsmen, I say, but they call themselves the good and just. Herdsmen, I say, but they call themselves the believers in the orthodox belief. Behold the good and just! Whom do they hate most? Him who breaketh up their tables of values, the breaker, the lawbreaker:—he, however, is the creator. Behold the believers of all beliefs! Whom do they hate most? Him who breaketh up their tables of values, the breaker, the law-breaker—he, however, is the creator. Companions, the creator seeketh, not corpses—and not herds or believers either. Fellow-creators the creator seeketh—those who grave new values on new tables. Companions, the creator seeketh, and fellow-reapers: for everything is ripe for the harvest with him. But he lacketh the hundred sickles: so he plucketh the ears of corn and is vexed. Companions, the creator seeketh, and such as know how to whet their sickles. Destroyers, will they be called, and despisers of good and evil. But they are the reapers and rejoicers. Fellow-creators, Zarathustra seeketh; fellow-reapers and fellow-rejoicers, Zarathustra seeketh: what hath he to do with herds and herdsmen and corpses! And thou, my first companion, rest in peace! Well have I buried thee in thy hollow tree; well have I hid thee from the wolves. But I part from thee; the time hath arrived. ‘Twixt rosy dawn and rosy dawn there came unto me a new truth. I am not to be a herdsman, I am not to be a grave-digger. Not any more will I discourse unto the people; for the last time have I spoken unto the dead. With the creators, the reapers, and the rejoicers will I associate: the rainbow will I show them, and all the stairs to the Superman. To the lone-dwellers will I sing my song, and to the twain-dwellers; and unto him who hath still ears for the unheard, will I make the heart heavy with my happiness. I make for my goal, I follow my course; over the loitering and tardy will I leap. Thus let my on-going be their down-going! 10. This had Zarathustra said to his heart when the sun stood at noon-tide. Then he looked inquiringly aloft,—for he heard above him the sharp call of a bird. And behold! An eagle swept through the air in wide circles, and on it hung a serpent, not like a prey, but like a friend: for it kept itself coiled round the eagle’s neck. “ They are mine animals,” said Zarathustra, and rejoiced in his heart. “ The proudest animal under the sun, and the wisest animal under the sun,—they have come out to reconnoitre.
They want to know whether Zarathustra still liveth. Verily, do I still live? More dangerous have I found it among men than among animals; in dangerous paths goeth Zarathustra. Let mine animals lead me! When Zarathustra had said this, he remembered the words of the saint in the forest. Then he sighed and spake thus to his heart: “ Would that I were wiser! Would that I were wise from the very heart, like my serpent! But I am asking the impossible. Therefore do I ask my pride to go always with my wisdom! And if my wisdom should some day forsake me:—alas! it loveth to fly away!—may my pride then fly with my folly!” Thus began Zarathustra’s down-going. I. THE THREE METAMORPHOSES. Three metamorphoses of the spirit do I designate to you: how the spirit becometh a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child. Many heavy things are there for the spirit, the strong load-bearing spirit in which reverence dwelleth: for the heavy and the heaviest longeth its strength. What is heavy? so asketh the load-bearing spirit; then kneeleth it down like the camel, and wanteth to be well laden. What is the heaviest thing, ye heroes? asketh the load-bearing spirit, that I may take it upon me and rejoice in my strength. Is it not this: To humiliate oneself in order to mortify one’s pride? To exhibit one’s folly in order to mock at one’s wisdom? Or is it this: To desert our cause when it celebrateth its triumph? To ascend high mountains to tempt the tempter? Or is it this: To feed on the acorns and grass of knowledge, and for the sake of truth to suffer hunger of soul? Or is it this: To be sick and dismiss comforters, and make friends of the deaf, who never hear thy requests? Or is it this: To go into foul water when it is the water of truth, and not disclaim cold frogs and hot toads? Or is it this: To love those who despise us, and give one’s hand to the phantom when it is going to frighten us? All these heaviest things the load-bearing spirit taketh upon itself: and like the camel, which, when laden, hasteneth into the wilderness, so hasteneth the spirit into its wilderness. But in the loneliest wilderness happeneth the second metamorphosis: here the spirit becometh a lion; freedom will it capture, and lordship in its own wilderness. Its last Lord it here seeketh: hostile will it be to him, and to its last God; for victory will it struggle with the great dragon. What is the great dragon which the spirit is no longer inclined to call Lord and God? “ Thou-shalt,” is the great dragon called. But the spirit of the lion saith, “ I will.” “ Thou-shalt,” lieth in its path, sparkling with gold—a scale-covered beast; and on every scale glittereth golden, “ Thou shalt!” The values of a thousand years glitter on those scales, and thus speaketh the mightiest of all dragons: “ All the values of things—glitter on me. All values have already been created, and all created values—do I represent. Verily, there shall be no ‘I will’ any more. Thus speaketh the dragon. My brethren, wherefore is there need of the lion in the spirit? Why sufficeth not the beast of burden, which renounceth and is reverent? To create new values—that, even the lion cannot yet accomplish: but to create itself freedom for new creating—that can the might of the lion do. To create itself freedom, and give a holy Nay even unto duty: for that, my brethren, there is need of the lion. To assume the right to new values—that is the most formidable assumption for a load-bearing and reverent spirit. Verily, unto such a spirit it is preying, and the work of a beast of prey. As its holiest, it once loved “ Thou-shalt”: now is it forced to find illusion and arbitrariness even in the holiest things, that it may capture freedom from its love: the lion is needed for this capture. But tell me, my brethren, what the child can do, which even the lion could not do? Why hath the preying lion still to become a child? Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea. Aye, for the game of creating, my brethren, there is needed a holy Yea unto life: ITS OWN will, willeth now the spirit; HIS OWN world winneth the world’s outcast. Three metamorphoses of the spirit have I designated to you: how the spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.— Thus spake Zarathustra. And at that time he abode in the town which is called The Pied Cow. II. THE ACADEMIC CHAIRS OF VIRTUE. People commended unto Zarathustra a wise man, as one who could discourse well about sleep and virtue: greatly was he honoured and rewarded for it, and all the youths sat before his chair. To him went Zarathustra, and sat among the youths before his chair. And thus spake the wise man: Respect and modesty in presence of sleep! That is the first thing! And to go out of the way of all who sleep badly and keep awake at night! Modest is even the thief in presence of sleep: he always stealeth softly through the night. Immodest, however, is the night-watchman; immodestly he carrieth his horn. No small art is it to sleep: it is necessary for that purpose to keep awake all day. Ten times a day must thou overcome thyself: that causeth wholesome weariness, and is poppy to the soul. Ten times must thou reconcile again with thyself; for overcoming is bitterness, and badly sleep the unreconciled.
Ten truths must thou find during the day; otherwise wilt thou seek truth during the night, and thy soul will have been hungry. Ten times must thou laugh during the day, and be cheerful; otherwise thy stomach, the father of affliction, will disturb thee in the night. Few people know it, but one must have all the virtues in order to sleep well. Shall I bear false witness? Shall I commit adultery? Shall I covet my neighbour’s maidservant? All that would ill accord with good sleep. And even if one have all the virtues, there is still one thing needful: to send the virtues themselves to sleep at the right time. That they may not quarrel with one another, the good females! And about thee, thou unhappy one! Peace with God and thy neighbour: so desireth good sleep. And peace also with thy neighbour’s devil! Otherwise it will haunt thee in the night. Honour to the government, and obedience, and also to the crooked government! So desireth good sleep. How can I help it, if power like to walk on crooked legs? He who leadeth his sheep to the greenest pasture, shall always be for me the best shepherd: so doth it accord with good sleep. Many honours I want not, nor great treasures: they excite the spleen. But it is bad sleeping without a good name and a little treasure. A small company is more welcome to me than a bad one: but they must come and go at the right time. So doth it accord with good sleep. Well, also, do the poor in spirit please me: they promote sleep. Blessed are they, especially if one always give in to them. Thus passeth the day unto the virtuous. When night cometh, then take I good care not to summon sleep. It disliketh to be summoned—sleep, the lord of the virtues! But I think of what I have done and thought during the day. Thus ruminating, patient as a cow, I ask myself: What were thy ten overcomings? And what were the ten reconciliations, and the ten truths, and the ten laughters with which my heart enjoyed itself? Thus pondering, and cradled by forty thoughts, it overtaketh me all at once—sleep, the unsummoned, the lord of the virtues. Sleep tappeth on mine eye, and it turneth heavy. Sleep toucheth my mouth, and it remaineth open. Verily, on soft soles doth it come to me, the dearest of thieves, and stealeth from me my thoughts: stupid do I then stand, like this academic chair. But not much longer do I then stand: I already lie.— When Zarathustra heard the wise man thus speak, he laughed in his heart: for thereby had a light dawned upon him. And thus spake he to his heart: A fool seemeth this wise man with his forty thoughts: but I believe he knoweth well how to sleep. Happy even is he who liveth near this wise man! Such sleep is contagious—even through a thick wall it is contagious. A magic resideth even in his academic chair. And not in vain did the youths sit before the preacher of virtue. His wisdom is to keep awake in order to sleep well. And verily, if life had no sense, and had I to choose nonsense, this would be the desirablest nonsense for me also. Now know I well what people sought formerly above all else when they sought teachers of virtue. Good sleep they sought for themselves, and poppy-head virtues to promote it! To all those belauded sages of the academic chairs, wisdom was sleep without dreams: they knew no higher significance of life. Even at present, to be sure, there are some like this preacher of virtue, and not always so honourable: but their time is past. And not much longer do they stand: there they already lie. Blessed are those drowsy ones: for they shall soon nod to sleep.— Thus spake Zarathustra. III. BACKWORLDSMEN. Once on a time, Zarathustra also cast his fancy beyond man, like all backworldsmen. The work of a suffering and tortured God, did the world then seem to me. The dream—and diction—of a God, did the world then seem to me; coloured vapours before the eyes of a divinely dissatisfied one. Good and evil, and joy and woe, and I and thou—coloured vapours did they seem to me before creative eyes. The creator wished to look away from himself,—thereupon he created the world. Intoxicating joy is it for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and forget himself. Intoxicating joy and self-forgetting, did the world once seem to me. This world, the eternally imperfect, an eternal contradiction’s image and imperfect image—an intoxicating joy to its imperfect creator:—thus did the world once seem to me. Thus, once on a time, did I also cast my fancy beyond man, like all backworldsmen. Beyond man, forsooth? Ah, ye brethren, that God whom I created was human work and human madness, like all the Gods! A man was he, and only a poor fragment of a man and ego. Out of mine own ashes and glow it came unto me, that phantom. And verily, it came not unto me from the beyond! What happened, my brethren? I surpassed myself, the suffering one; I carried mine own ashes to the mountain; a brighter flame I contrived for myself. And lo! Thereupon the phantom WITHDREW from me! To me the convalescent would it now be suffering and torment to believe in such phantoms: suffering would it now be to me, and humiliation. Thus speak I to backworldsmen. Suffering was it, and impotence—that created all backworlds; and the short madness of happiness, which only the greatest sufferer experienceth. Weariness, which seeketh to get to the ultimate with one leap, with a death-leap; a poor ignorant weariness, unwilling even to will any longer: that created all Gods and
backworlds. Believe me, my brethren! It was the body which despaired of the body—it groped with the fingers of the infatuated spirit at the ultimate walls. Believe me, my brethren! It was the body which despaired of the earth—it heard the bowels of existence speaking unto it. And then it sought to get through the ultimate walls with its head—and not with its head only—into “ the other world.” But that “ other world” is well concealed from man, that dehumanised, inhuman world, which is a celestial naught; and the bowels of existence do not speak unto man, except as man. Verily, it is difficult to prove all being, and hard to make it speak. Tell me, ye brethren, is not the strangest of all things best proved? Yea, this ego, with its contradiction and perplexity, speaketh most uprightly of its being—this creating, willing, evaluing ego, which is the measure and value of things. And this most upright existence, the ego—it speaketh of the body, and still implieth the body, even when it museth and raveth and fluttereth with broken wings. Always more uprightly learneth it to speak, the ego; and the more it learneth, the more doth it find titles and honours for the body and the earth. A new pride taught me mine ego, and that teach I unto men: no longer to thrust one’s head into the sand of celestial things, but to carry it freely, a terrestrial head, which giveth meaning to the earth! A new will teach I unto men: to choose that path which man hath followed blindly, and to approve of it—and no longer to slink aside from it, like the sick and perishing! The sick and perishing—it was they who despised the body and the earth, and invented the heavenly world, and the redeeming blood-drops; but even those sweet and sad poisons they borrowed from the body and the earth! From their misery they sought escape, and the stars were too remote for them. Then they sighed: “ O that there were heavenly paths by which to steal into another existence and into happiness!” Then they contrived for themselves their by-paths and bloody draughts! Beyond the sphere of their body and this earth they now fancied themselves transported, these ungrateful ones. But to what did they owe the convulsion and rapture of their transport? To their body and this earth. Gentle is Zarathustra to the sickly. Verily, he is not indignant at their modes of consolation and ingratitude. May they become convalescents and overcomers, and create higher bodies for themselves! Neither is Zarathustra indignant at a convalescent who looketh tenderly on his delusions, and at midnight stealeth round the grave of his God; but sickness and a sick frame remain even in his tears. Many sickly ones have there always been among those who muse, and languish for God; violently they hate the discerning ones, and the latest of virtues, which is uprightness. Backward they always gaze toward dark ages: then, indeed, were delusion and faith something different. Raving of the reason was likeness to God, and doubt was sin. Too well do I know those godlike ones: they insist on being believed in, and that doubt is sin. Too well, also, do I know what they themselves most believe in. Verily, not in backworlds and redeeming blood-drops: but in the body do they also believe most; and their own body is for them the thing-in-itself. But it is a sickly thing to them, and gladly would they get out of their skin. Therefore hearken they to the preachers of death, and themselves preach backworlds. Hearken rather, my brethren, to the voice of the healthy body; it is a more upright and pure voice. More uprightly and purely speaketh the healthy body, perfect and square-built; and it speaketh of the meaning of the earth.— Thus spake Zarathustra. IV. THE DESPISERS OF THE BODY. To the despisers of the body will I speak my word. I wish them neither to learn afresh, nor teach anew, but only to bid farewell to their own bodies,—and thus be dumb. “ Body am I, and soul”—so saith the child. And why should one not speak like children? But the awakened one, the knowing one, saith: “ Body am I entirely, and nothing more; and soul is only the name of something in the body.” The body is a big sagacity, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a flock and a shepherd. An instrument of thy body is also thy little sagacity, my brother, which thou callest “ spirit”—a little instrument and plaything of thy big sagacity. “ Ego,” sayest thou, and art proud of that word. But the greater thing—in which thou art unwilling to believe—is thy body with its big sagacity; it saith not “ ego,” but doeth it. What the sense feeleth, what the spirit discerneth, hath never its end in itself. But sense and spirit would fain persuade thee that they are the end of all things: so vain are they. Instruments and playthings are sense and spirit: behind them there is still the Self. The Self seeketh with the eyes of the senses, it hearkeneth also with the ears of the spirit. Ever hearkeneth the Self, and seeketh; it compareth, mastereth, conquereth, and destroyeth. It ruleth, and is also the ego’s ruler. Behind thy thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a mighty lord, an unknown sage—it is called Self; it dwelleth in thy body, it is thy body. There is more sagacity in thy body than in thy best wisdom. And who then knoweth why thy body requireth just thy best wisdom? Thy Self laugheth at thine ego, and its proud prancings. “ What are these prancings and flights of thought unto me?” it saith to itself. “ A by-way to my purpose. I am the leadingstring of the ego, and the prompter of its notions.”
The Self saith unto the ego: “ Feel pain!” And thereupon it suffereth, and thinketh how it may put an end thereto—and for that very purpose it IS MEANT to think. The Self saith unto the ego: “ Feel pleasure!” Thereupon it rejoiceth, and thinketh how it may ofttimes rejoice—and for that very purpose it IS MEANT to think. To the despisers of the body will I speak a word. That they despise is caused by their esteem. What is it that created esteeming and despising and worth and will? The creating Self created for itself esteeming and despising, it created for itself joy and woe. The creating body created for itself spirit, as a hand to its will. Even in your folly and despising ye each serve your Self, ye despisers of the body. I tell you, your very Self wanteth to die, and turneth away from life. No longer can your Self do that which it desireth most:—create beyond itself. That is what it desireth most; that is all its fervour. But it is now too late to do so:—so your Self wisheth to succumb, ye despisers of the body. To succumb—so wisheth your Self; and therefore have ye become despisers of the body. For ye can no longer create beyond yourselves. And therefore are ye now angry with life and with the earth. And unconscious envy is in the sidelong look of your contempt. I go not your way, ye despisers of the body! Ye are no bridges for me to the Superman!— Thus spake Zarathustra. V. JOYS AND PASSIONS. My brother, when thou hast a virtue, and it is thine own virtue, thou hast it in common with no one. To be sure, thou wouldst call it by name and caress it; thou wouldst pull its ears and amuse thyself with it. And lo! Then hast thou its name in common with the people, and hast become one of the people and the herd with thy virtue! Better for thee to say: “ Ineffable is it, and nameless, that which is pain and sweetness to my soul, and also the hunger of my bowels.” Let thy virtue be too high for the familiarity of names, and if thou must speak of it, be not ashamed to stammer about it. Thus speak and stammer: “ That is MY good, that do I love, thus doth it please me entirely, thus only do I desire the good. Not as the law of a God do I desire it, not as a human law or a human need do I desire it; it is not to be a guide-post for me to superearths and paradises. An earthly virtue is it which I love: little prudence is therein, and the least everyday wisdom. But that bird built its nest beside me: therefore, I love and cherish it—now sitteth it beside me on its golden eggs.” Thus shouldst thou stammer, and praise thy virtue. Once hadst thou passions and calledst them evil. But now hast thou only thy virtues: they grew out of thy passions. Thou implantedst thy highest aim into the heart of those passions: then became they thy virtues and joys. And though thou wert of the race of the hot-tempered, or of the voluptuous, or of the fanatical, or the vindictive; All thy passions in the end became virtues, and all thy devils angels. Once hadst thou wild dogs in thy cellar: but they changed at last into birds and charming songstresses. Out of thy poisons brewedst thou balsam for thyself; thy cow, affliction, milkedst thou—now drinketh thou the sweet milk of her udder. And nothing evil groweth in thee any longer, unless it be the evil that groweth out of the conflict of thy virtues. My brother, if thou be fortunate, then wilt thou have one virtue and no more: thus goest thou easier over the bridge. Illustrious is it to have many virtues, but a hard lot; and many a one hath gone into the wilderness and killed himself, because he was weary of being the battle and battlefield of virtues. My brother, are war and battle evil? Necessary, however, is the evil; necessary are the envy and the distrust and the back-biting among the virtues. Lo! how each of thy virtues is covetous of the highest place; it wanteth thy whole spirit to be ITS herald, it wanteth thy whole power, in wrath, hatred, and love. Jealous is every virtue of the others, and a dreadful thing is jealousy. Even virtues may succumb by jealousy. He whom the flame of jealousy encompasseth, turneth at last, like the scorpion, the poisoned sting against himself. Ah! my brother, hast thou never seen a virtue backbite and stab itself? Man is something that hath to be surpassed: and therefore shalt thou love thy virtues,—for thou wilt succumb by them.— Thus spake Zarathustra. VI. THE PALE CRIMINAL. Ye do not mean to slay, ye judges and sacrificers, until the animal hath bowed its head? Lo! the pale criminal hath bowed his head: out of his eye speaketh the great contempt. “ Mine ego is something which is to be surpassed: mine ego is to me the great contempt of man”: so speaketh it out of that eye. When he judged himself—that was his supreme moment; let not the exalted one relapse again into his low estate! There is no salvation for him who thus suffereth from himself, unless it be speedy death. Your slaying, ye judges, shall be pity, and not revenge; and in that ye slay, see to it that ye yourselves justify life!
It is not enough that ye should reconcile with him whom ye slay. Let your sorrow be love to the Superman: thus will ye justify your own survival! “ Enemy” shall ye say but not “ villain,” “ invalid” shall ye say but not “ wretch,” “ fool” shall ye say but not “ sinner.” And thou, red judge, if thou would say audibly all thou hast done in thought, then would every one cry: “ Away with the nastiness and the virulent reptile!” But one thing is the thought, another thing is the deed, and another thing is the idea of the deed. The wheel of causality doth not roll between them. An idea made this pale man pale. Adequate was he for his deed when he did it, but the idea of it, he could not endure when it was done. Evermore did he now see himself as the doer of one deed. Madness, I call this: the exception reversed itself to the rule in him. The streak of chalk bewitcheth the hen; the stroke he struck bewitched his weak reason. Madness AFTER the deed, I call this. Hearken, ye judges! There is another madness besides, and it is BEFORE the deed. Ah! ye have not gone deep enough into this soul! Thus speaketh the red judge: “ Why did this criminal commit murder? He meant to rob.” I tell you, however, that his soul wanted blood, not booty: he thirsted for the happiness of the knife! But his weak reason understood not this madness, and it persuaded him. “ What matter about blood!” it said; “ wishest thou not, at least, to make booty thereby? Or take revenge?” And he hearkened unto his weak reason: like lead lay its words upon him—thereupon he robbed when he murdered. He did not mean to be ashamed of his madness. And now once more lieth the lead of his guilt upon him, and once more is his weak reason so benumbed, so paralysed, and so dull. Could he only shake his head, then would his burden roll off; but who shaketh that head? What is this man? A mass of diseases that reach out into the world through the spirit; there they want to get their prey. What is this man? A coil of wild serpents that are seldom at peace among themselves—so they go forth apart and seek prey in the world. Look at that poor body! What it suffered and craved, the poor soul interpreted to itself—it interpreted it as murderous desire, and eagerness for the happiness of the knife. Him who now turneth sick, the evil overtaketh which is now the evil: he seeketh to cause pain with that which causeth him pain. But there have been other ages, and another evil and good. Once was doubt evil, and the will to Self. Then the invalid became a heretic or sorcerer; as heretic or sorcerer he suffered, and sought to cause suffering. But this will not enter your ears; it hurteth your good people, ye tell me. But what doth it matter to me about your good people! Many things in your good people cause me disgust, and verily, not their evil. I would that they had a madness by which they succumbed, like this pale criminal! Verily, I would that their madness were called truth, or fidelity, or justice: but they have their virtue in order to live long, and in wretched self-complacency. I am a railing alongside the torrent; whoever is able to grasp me may grasp me! Your crutch, however, I am not.— Thus spake Zarathustra. VII. READING AND WRITING. Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit. It is no easy task to understand unfamiliar blood; I hate the reading idlers. He who knoweth the reader, doeth nothing more for the reader. Another century of readers—and spirit itself will stink. Every one being allowed to learn to read, ruineth in the long run not only writing but also thinking. Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it even becometh populace. He that writeth in blood and proverbs doth not want to be read, but learnt by heart. In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak, but for that route thou must have long legs. Proverbs should be peaks, and those spoken to should be big and tall. The atmosphere rare and pure, danger near and the spirit full of a joyful wickedness: thus are things well matched. I want to have goblins about me, for I am courageous. The courage which scareth away ghosts, createth for itself goblins—it wanteth to laugh. I no longer feel in common with you; the very cloud which I see beneath me, the blackness and heaviness at which I laugh—that is your thunder-cloud. Ye look aloft when ye long for exaltation; and I look downward because I am exalted. Who among you can at the same time laugh and be exalted? He who climbeth on the highest mountains, laugheth at all tragic plays and tragic realities. Courageous, unconcerned, scornful, coercive—so wisdom wisheth us; she is a woman, and ever loveth only a warrior. Ye tell me, “ Life is hard to bear.” But for what purpose should ye have your pride in the morning and your resignation in the evening? Life is hard to bear: but do not affect to be so delicate! We are all of us fine sumpter asses and assesses. What have we in common with the rose-bud, which trembleth because a drop of dew hath formed upon it? It is true we love life; not because we are wont to live, but because we are wont to love.
There is always some madness in love. But there is always, also, some method in madness. And to me also, who appreciate life, the butterflies, and soap-bubbles, and whatever is like them amongst us, seem most to enjoy happiness. To see these light, foolish, pretty, lively little sprites flit about—that moveth Zarathustra to tears and songs. I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity—through him all things fall. Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity! I learned to walk; since then have I let myself run. I learned to fly; since then I do not need pushing in order to move from a spot. Now am I light, now do I fly; now do I see myself under myself. Now there danceth a God in me.— Thus spake Zarathustra. VIII. THE TREE ON THE HILL. Zarathustra’s eye had perceived that a certain youth avoided him. And as he walked alone one evening over the hills surrounding the town called “ The Pied Cow,” behold, there found he the youth sitting leaning against a tree, and gazing with wearied look into the valley. Zarathustra thereupon laid hold of the tree beside which the youth sat, and spake thus: “ If I wished to shake this tree with my hands, I should not be able to do so. But the wind, which we see not, troubleth and bendeth it as it listeth. We are sorest bent and troubled by invisible hands.” Thereupon the youth arose disconcerted, and said: “ I hear Zarathustra, and just now was I thinking of him!” Zarathustra answered: “ Why art thou frightened on that account?—But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeketh to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthward, downward, into the dark and deep—into the evil.” “ Yea, into the evil!” cried the youth. “ How is it possible that thou hast discovered my soul?” Zarathustra smiled, and said: “ Many a soul one will never discover, unless one first invent it.” “ Yea, into the evil!” cried the youth once more. “ Thou saidst the truth, Zarathustra. I trust myself no longer since I sought to rise into the height, and nobody trusteth me any longer; how doth that happen? I change too quickly: my to-day refuteth my yesterday. I often overleap the steps when I clamber; for so doing, none of the steps pardons me. When aloft, I find myself always alone. No one speaketh unto me; the frost of solitude maketh me tremble. What do I seek on the height? My contempt and my longing increase together; the higher I clamber, the more do I despise him who clambereth. What doth he seek on the height? How ashamed I am of my clambering and stumbling! How I mock at my violent panting! How I hate him who flieth! How tired I am on the height!” Here the youth was silent. And Zarathustra contemplated the tree beside which they stood, and spake thus: “ This tree standeth lonely here on the hills; it hath grown up high above man and beast. And if it wanted to speak, it would have none who could understand it: so high hath it grown. Now it waiteth and waiteth,—for what doth it wait? It dwelleth too close to the seat of the clouds; it waiteth perhaps for the first lightning?” When Zarathustra had said this, the youth called out with violent gestures: “ Yea, Zarathustra, thou speakest the truth. My destruction I longed for, when I desired to be on the height, and thou art the lightning for which I waited! Lo! what have I been since thou hast appeared amongst us? It is mine envy of thee that hath destroyed me!”—Thus spake the youth, and wept bitterly. Zarathustra, however, put his arm about him, and led the youth away with him. And when they had walked a while together, Zarathustra began to speak thus: It rendeth my heart. Better than thy words express it, thine eyes tell me all thy danger. As yet thou art not free; thou still SEEKEST freedom. Too unslept hath thy seeking made thee, and too wakeful. On the open height wouldst thou be; for the stars thirsteth thy soul. But thy bad impulses also thirst for freedom. Thy wild dogs want liberty; they bark for joy in their cellar when thy spirit endeavoureth to open all prison doors. Still art thou a prisoner—it seemeth to me—who deviseth liberty for himself: ah! sharp becometh the soul of such prisoners, but also deceitful and wicked. To purify himself, is still necessary for the freedman of the spirit. Much of the prison and the mould still remaineth in him: pure hath his eye still to become. Yea, I know thy danger. But by my love and hope I conjure thee: cast not thy love and hope away! Noble thou feelest thyself still, and noble others also feel thee still, though they bear thee a grudge and cast evil looks. Know this, that to everybody a noble one standeth in the way. Also to the good, a noble one standeth in the way: and even when they call him a good man, they want thereby to put him aside. The new, would the noble man create, and a new virtue. The old, wanteth the good man, and that the old should be conserved. But it is not the danger of the noble man to turn a good man, but lest he should become a blusterer, a scoffer, or a destroyer.
Ah! I have known noble ones who lost their highest hope. And then they disparaged all high hopes. Then lived they shamelessly in temporary pleasures, and beyond the day had hardly an aim. “ Spirit is also voluptuousness,”—said they. Then broke the wings of their spirit; and now it creepeth about, and defileth where it gnaweth. Once they thought of becoming heroes; but sensualists are they now. A trouble and a terror is the hero to them. But by my love and hope I conjure thee: cast not away the hero in thy soul! Maintain holy thy highest hope!— Thus spake Zarathustra. IX. THE PREACHERS OF DEATH. There are preachers of death: and the earth is full of those to whom desistance from life must be preached. Full is the earth of the superfluous; marred is life by the many-too-many. May they be decoyed out of this life by the “ life eternal”! “ The yellow ones”: so are called the preachers of death, or “ the black ones.” But I will show them unto you in other colours besides. There are the terrible ones who carry about in themselves the beast of prey, and have no choice except lusts or self-laceration. And even their lusts are self-laceration. They have not yet become men, those terrible ones: may they preach desistance from life, and pass away themselves! There are the spiritually consumptive ones: hardly are they born when they begin to die, and long for doctrines of lassitude and renunciation. They would fain be dead, and we should approve of their wish! Let us beware of awakening those dead ones, and of damaging those living coffins! They meet an invalid, or an old man, or a corpse—and immediately they say: “ Life is refuted!” But they only are refuted, and their eye, which seeth only one aspect of existence. Shrouded in thick melancholy, and eager for the little casualties that bring death: thus do they wait, and clench their teeth. Or else, they grasp at sweetmeats, and mock at their childishness thereby: they cling to their straw of life, and mock at their still clinging to it. Their wisdom speaketh thus: “ A fool, he who remaineth alive; but so far are we fools! And that is the foolishest thing in life!” “ Life is only suffering”: so say others, and lie not. Then see to it that YE cease! See to it that the life ceaseth which is only suffering! And let this be the teaching of your virtue: “ Thou shalt slay thyself! Thou shalt steal away from thyself!”— “ Lust is sin,”—so say some who preach death—“ let us go apart and beget no children!” “ Giving birth is troublesome,”—say others—“ why still give birth? One beareth only the unfortunate!” And they also are preachers of death. “ Pity is necessary,”—so saith a third party. “ Take what I have! Take what I am! So much less doth life bind me!” Were they consistently pitiful, then would they make their neighbours sick of life. To be wicked—that would be their true goodness. But they want to be rid of life; what care they if they bind others still faster with their chains and gifts!— And ye also, to whom life is rough labour and disquiet, are ye not very tired of life? Are ye not very ripe for the sermon of death? All ye to whom rough labour is dear, and the rapid, new, and strange—ye put up with yourselves badly; your diligence is flight, and the will to self-forgetfulness. If ye believed more in life, then would ye devote yourselves less to the momentary. But for waiting, ye have not enough of capacity in you—nor even for idling! Everywhere resoundeth the voices of those who preach death; and the earth is full of those to whom death hath to be preached. Or “ life eternal”; it is all the same to me—if only they pass away quickly!— Thus spake Zarathustra. X. WAR AND WARRIORS. By our best enemies we do not want to be spared, nor by those either whom we love from the very heart. So let me tell you the truth! My brethren in war! I love you from the very heart. I am, and was ever, your counterpart. And I am also your best enemy. So let me tell you the truth! I know the hatred and envy of your hearts. Ye are not great enough not to know of hatred and envy. Then be great enough not to be ashamed of them! And if ye cannot be saints of knowledge, then, I pray you, be at least its warriors. They are the companions and forerunners of such saintship. I see many soldiers; could I but see many warriors! “ Uniform” one calleth what they wear; may it not be uniform what they therewith hide! Ye shall be those whose eyes ever seek for an enemy—for YOUR enemy. And with some of you there is hatred at first sight. Your enemy shall ye seek; your war shall ye wage, and for the sake of your thoughts! And if your thoughts succumb, your uprightness shall still shout triumph thereby! Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars—and the short peace more than the long. You I advise not to work, but to fight. You I advise not to peace, but to victory. Let your work be a fight, let your peace be a victory! One can only be silent and sit peacefully when one hath arrow and bow; otherwise one prateth and quarrelleth. Let your peace be a victory! Ye say it is the good cause which halloweth even war? I say unto you: it is the good war which halloweth every cause. War and courage have done more great things than charity. Not your sympathy, but your bravery hath hitherto saved the victims.
“ What is good?” ye ask. To be brave is good. Let the little girls say: “ To be good is what is pretty, and at the same time touching.” They call you heartless: but your heart is true, and I love the bashfulness of your goodwill. Ye are ashamed of your flow, and others are ashamed of their ebb. Ye are ugly? Well then, my brethren, take the sublime about you, the mantle of the ugly! And when your soul becometh great, then doth it become haughty, and in your sublimity there is wickedness. I know you. In wickedness the haughty man and the weakling meet. But they misunderstand one another. I know you. Ye shall only have enemies to be hated, but not enemies to be despised. Ye must be proud of your enemies; then, the successes of your enemies are also your successes. Resistance—that is the distinction of the slave. Let your distinction be obedience. Let your commanding itself be obeying! To the good warrior soundeth “ thou shalt” pleasanter than “ I will.” And all that is dear unto you, ye shall first have it commanded unto you. Let your love to life be love to your highest hope; and let your highest hope be the highest thought of life! Your highest thought, however, ye shall have it commanded unto you by me—and it is this: man is something that is to be surpassed. So live your life of obedience and of war! What matter about long life! What warrior wisheth to be spared! I spare you not, I love you from my very heart, my brethren in war!— Thus spake Zarathustra. XI. THE NEW IDOL. Somewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not with us, my brethren: here there are states. A state? What is that? Well! open now your ears unto me, for now will I say unto you my word concerning the death of peoples. A state, is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly lieth it also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: “ I, the state, am the people.” It is a lie! Creators were they who created peoples, and hung a faith and a love over them: thus they served life. Destroyers, are they who lay snares for many, and call it the state: they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them. Where there is still a people, there the state is not understood, but hated as the evil eye, and as sin against laws and customs. This sign I give unto you: every people speaketh its language of good and evil: this its neighbour understandeth not. Its language hath it devised for itself in laws and customs. But the state lieth in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it saith it lieth; and whatever it hath it hath stolen. False is everything in it; with stolen teeth it biteth, the biting one. False are even its bowels. Confusion of language of good and evil; this sign I give unto you as the sign of the state. Verily, the will to death, indicateth this sign! Verily, it beckoneth unto the preachers of death! Many too many are born: for the superfluous ones was the state devised! See just how it enticeth them to it, the many-too-many! How it swalloweth and cheweth and recheweth them! “ On earth there is nothing greater than I: it is I who am the regulating finger of God”—thus roareth the monster. And not only the long-eared and short-sighted fall upon their knees! Ah! even in your ears, ye great souls, it whispereth its gloomy lies! Ah! it findeth out the rich hearts which willingly lavish themselves! Yea, it findeth you out too, ye conquerors of the old God! Weary ye became of the conflict, and now your weariness serveth the new idol! Heroes and honourable ones, it would fain set up around it, the new idol! Gladly it basketh in the sunshine of good consciences,—the cold monster! Everything will it give YOU, if YE worship it, the new idol: thus it purchaseth the lustre of your virtue, and the glance of your proud eyes. It seeketh to allure by means of you, the many-too-many! Yea, a hellish artifice hath here been devised, a death-horse jingling with the trappings of divine honours! Yea, a dying for many hath here been devised, which glorifieth itself as life: verily, a hearty service unto all preachers of death! The state, I call it, where all are poison-drinkers, the good and the bad: the state, where all lose themselves, the good and the bad: the state, where the slow suicide of all—is called “ life.” Just see these superfluous ones! They steal the works of the inventors and the treasures of the wise. Culture, they call their theft—and everything becometh sickness and trouble unto them! Just see these superfluous ones! Sick are they always; they vomit their bile and call it a newspaper. They devour one another, and cannot even digest themselves. Just see these superfluous ones! Wealth they acquire and become poorer thereby. Power they seek for, and above all, the lever of power, much money—these impotent ones! See them clamber, these nimble apes! They clamber over one another, and thus scuffle into the mud and the abyss. Towards the throne they all strive: it is their madness—as if happiness sat on the throne! Ofttimes sitteth filth on the throne.—and ofttimes also the throne on filth. Madmen they all seem to me, and clambering apes, and too eager. Badly smelleth their idol to me, the cold monster: badly they all smell to me, these idolaters. My brethren, will ye suffocate in the fumes of their maws and appetites! Better break the windows and jump into the open air!
Do go out of the way of the bad odour! Withdraw from the idolatry of the superfluous! Do go out of the way of the bad odour! Withdraw from the steam of these human sacrifices! Open still remaineth the earth for great souls. Empty are still many sites for lone ones and twain ones, around which floateth the odour of tranquil seas. Open still remaineth a free life for great souls. Verily, he who possesseth little is so much the less possessed: blessed be moderate poverty! There, where the state ceaseth—there only commenceth the man who is not superfluous: there commenceth the song of the necessary ones, the single and irreplaceable melody. There, where the state CEASETH—pray look thither, my brethren! Do ye not see it, the rainbow and the bridges of the Superman?— Thus spake Zarathustra. XII. THE FLIES IN THE MARKET-PLACE. Flee, my friend, into thy solitude! I see thee deafened with the noise of the great men, and stung all over with the stings of the little ones. Admirably do forest and rock know how to be silent with thee. Resemble again the tree which thou lovest, the broad-branched one—silently and attentively it o’erhangeth the sea. Where solitude endeth, there beginneth the market-place; and where the market-place beginneth, there beginneth also the noise of the great actors, and the buzzing of the poisonflies. In the world even the best things are worthless without those who represent them: those representers, the people call great men. Little do the people understand what is great—that is to say, the creating agency. But they have a taste for all representers and actors of great things. Around the devisers of new values revolveth the world:—invisibly it revolveth. But around the actors revolve the people and the glory: such is the course of things. Spirit, hath the actor, but little conscience of the spirit. He believeth always in that wherewith he maketh believe most strongly—in HIMSELF! Tomorrow he hath a new belief, and the day after, one still newer. Sharp perceptions hath he, like the people, and changeable humours. To upset—that meaneth with him to prove. To drive mad—that meaneth with him to convince. And blood is counted by him as the best of all arguments. A truth which only glideth into fine ears, he calleth falsehood and trumpery. Verily, he believeth only in Gods that make a great noise in the world! Full of clattering buffoons is the market-place,—and the people glory in their great men! These are for them the masters of the hour. But the hour presseth them; so they press thee. And also from thee they want Yea or Nay. Alas! thou wouldst set thy chair betwixt For and Against? On account of those absolute and impatient ones, be not jealous, thou lover of truth! Never yet did truth cling to the arm of an absolute one. On account of those abrupt ones, return into thy security: only in the market-place is one assailed by Yea? or Nay? Slow is the experience of all deep fountains: long have they to wait until they know WHAT hath fallen into their depths. Away from the market-place and from fame taketh place all that is great: away from the market-Place and from fame have ever dwelt the devisers of new values. Flee, my friend, into thy solitude: I see thee stung all over by the poisonous flies. Flee thither, where a rough, strong breeze bloweth! Flee into thy solitude! Thou hast lived too closely to the small and the pitiable. Flee from their invisible vengeance! Towards thee they have nothing but vengeance. Raise no longer an arm against them! Innumerable are they, and it is not thy lot to be a fly-flap. Innumerable are the small and pitiable ones; and of many a proud structure, rain-drops and weeds have been the ruin. Thou art not stone; but already hast thou become hollow by the numerous drops. Thou wilt yet break and burst by the numerous drops. Exhausted I see thee, by poisonous flies; bleeding I see thee, and torn at a hundred spots; and thy pride will not even upbraid. Blood they would have from thee in all innocence; blood their bloodless souls crave for—and they sting, therefore, in all innocence. But thou, profound one, thou sufferest too profoundly even from small wounds; and ere thou hadst recovered, the same poison-worm crawled over thy hand. Too proud art thou to kill these sweet-tooths. But take care lest it be thy fate to suffer all their poisonous injustice! They buzz around thee also with their praise: obtrusiveness, is their praise. They want to be close to thy skin and thy blood. They flatter thee, as one flattereth a God or devil; they whimper before thee, as before a God or devil. What doth it come to! Flatterers are they, and whimperers, and nothing more. Often, also, do they show themselves to thee as amiable ones. But that hath ever been the prudence of the cowardly. Yea! the cowardly are wise! They think much about thee with their circumscribed souls—thou art always suspected by them! Whatever is much thought about is at last thought suspicious. They punish thee for all thy virtues. They pardon thee in their inmost hearts only—for thine errors. Because thou art gentle and of upright character, thou sayest: “ Blameless are they for their small existence.” But their circumscribed souls think: “ Blamable is all great existence.” Even when thou art gentle towards them, they still feel themselves despised by thee; and they repay thy beneficence with secret maleficence. Thy silent pride is always counter to their taste; they rejoice if once thou be humble enough to be frivolous. What we recognise in a man, we also irritate in him. Therefore be on your guard against the small ones! In thy presence they feel themselves small, and their baseness gleameth and gloweth against thee in invisible vengeance.
Sawest thou not how often they became dumb when thou approachedst them, and how their energy left them like the smoke of an extinguishing fire? Yea, my friend, the bad conscience art thou of thy neighbours; for they are unworthy of thee. Therefore they hate thee, and would fain suck thy blood. Thy neighbours will always be poisonous flies; what is great in thee—that itself must make them more poisonous, and always more fly-like. Flee, my friend, into thy solitude—and thither, where a rough strong breeze bloweth. It is not thy lot to be a fly-flap.— Thus spake Zarathustra. XIII. CHASTITY. I love the forest. It is bad to live in cities: there, there are too many of the lustful. Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer, than into the dreams of a lustful woman? And just look at these men: their eye saith it—they know nothing better on earth than to lie with a woman. Filth is at the bottom of their souls; and alas! if their filth hath still spirit in it! Would that ye were perfect—at least as animals! But to animals belongeth innocence. Do I counsel you to slay your instincts? I counsel you to innocence in your instincts. Do I counsel you to chastity? Chastity is a virtue with some, but with many almost a vice. These are continent, to be sure: but doggish lust looketh enviously out of all that they do. Even into the heights of their virtue and into their cold spirit doth this creature follow them, with its discord. And how nicely can doggish lust beg for a piece of spirit, when a piece of flesh is denied it! Ye love tragedies and all that breaketh the heart? But I am distrustful of your doggish lust. Ye have too cruel eyes, and ye look wantonly towards the sufferers. Hath not your lust just disguised itself and taken the name of fellow-suffering? And also this parable give I unto you: Not a few who meant to cast out their devil, went thereby into the swine themselves. To whom chastity is difficult, it is to be dissuaded: lest it become the road to hell—to filth and lust of soul. Do I speak of filthy things? That is not the worst thing for me to do. Not when the truth is filthy, but when it is shallow, doth the discerning one go unwillingly into its waters. Verily, there are chaste ones from their very nature; they are gentler of heart, and laugh better and oftener than you. They laugh also at chastity, and ask: “ What is chastity? Is chastity not folly? But the folly came unto us, and not we unto it. We offered that guest harbour and heart: now it dwelleth with us—let it stay as long as it will!”— Thus spake Zarathustra. XIV. THE FRIEND. “ One, is always too many about me”—thinketh the anchorite. “ Always once one—that maketh two in the long run!” I and me are always too earnestly in conversation: how could it be endured, if there were not a friend? The friend of the anchorite is always the third one: the third one is the cork which preventeth the conversation of the two sinking into the depth. Ah! there are too many depths for all anchorites. Therefore, do they long so much for a friend, and for his elevation. Our faith in others betrayeth wherein we would fain have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer. And often with our love we want merely to overleap envy. And often we attack and make ourselves enemies, to conceal that we are vulnerable. “ Be at least mine enemy!”—thus speaketh the true reverence, which doth not venture to solicit friendship. If one would have a friend, then must one also be willing to wage war for him: and in order to wage war, one must be CAPLE of being an enemy. One ought still to honour the enemy in one’s friend. Canst thou go nigh unto thy friend, and not go over to him? In one’s friend one shall have one’s best enemy. Thou shalt be closest unto him with thy heart when thou withstandest him. Thou wouldst wear no raiment before thy friend? It is in honour of thy friend that thou showest thyself to him as thou art? But he wisheth thee to the devil on that account! He who maketh no secret of himself shocketh: so much reason have ye to fear nakedness! Aye, if ye were Gods, ye could then be ashamed of clothing! Thou canst not adorn thyself fine enough for thy friend; for thou shalt be unto him an arrow and a longing for the Superman. Sawest thou ever thy friend asleep—to know how he looketh? What is usually the countenance of thy friend? It is thine own countenance, in a coarse and imperfect mirror. Sawest thou ever thy friend asleep? Wert thou not dismayed at thy friend looking so? O my friend, man is something that hath to be surpassed. In divining and keeping silence shall the friend be a master: not everything must thou wish to see. Thy dream shall disclose unto thee what thy friend doeth when awake. Let thy pity be a divining: to know first if thy friend wanteth pity. Perhaps he loveth in thee the unmoved eye, and the look of eternity.
Let thy pity for thy friend be hid under a hard shell; thou shalt bite out a tooth upon it. Thus will it have delicacy and sweetness. Art thou pure air and solitude and bread and medicine to thy friend? Many a one cannot loosen his own fetters, but is nevertheless his friend’s emancipator. Art thou a slave? Then thou canst not be a friend. Art thou a tyrant? Then thou canst not have friends. Far too long hath there been a slave and a tyrant concealed in woman. On that account woman is not yet capable of friendship: she knoweth only love. In woman’s love there is injustice and blindness to all she doth not love. And even in woman’s conscious love, there is still always surprise and lightning and night, along with the light. As yet woman is not capable of friendship: women are still cats, and birds. Or at the best, cows. As yet woman is not capable of friendship. But tell me, ye men, who of you are capable of friendship? Oh! your poverty, ye men, and your sordidness of soul! As much as ye give to your friend, will I give even to my foe, and will not have become poorer thereby. There is comradeship: may there be friendship! Thus spake Zarathustra. XV. THE THOUSAND AND ONE GOALS. Many lands saw Zarathustra, and many peoples: thus he discovered the good and bad of many peoples. No greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than good and bad. No people could live without first valuing; if a people will maintain itself, however, it must not value as its neighbour valueth. Much that passed for good with one people was regarded with scorn and contempt by another: thus I found it. Much found I here called bad, which was there decked with purple honours. Never did the one neighbour understand the other: ever did his soul marvel at his neighbour’s delusion and wickedness. A table of excellencies hangeth over every people. Lo! it is the table of their triumphs; lo! it is the voice of their Will to Power. It is laudable, what they think hard; what is indispensable and hard they call good; and what relieveth in the direst distress, the unique and hardest of all,—they extol as holy. Whatever maketh them rule and conquer and shine, to the dismay and envy of their neighbours, they regard as the high and foremost thing, the test and the meaning of all else. Verily, my brother, if thou knewest but a people’s need, its land, its sky, and its neighbour, then wouldst thou divine the law of its surmountings, and why it climbeth up that ladder to its hope. “ Always shalt thou be the foremost and prominent above others: no one shall thy jealous soul love, except a friend”—that made the soul of a Greek thrill: thereby went he his way to greatness. “ To speak truth, and be skilful with bow and arrow”—so seemed it alike pleasing and hard to the people from whom cometh my name—the name which is alike pleasing and hard to me. “ To honour father and mother, and from the root of the soul to do their will”—this table of surmounting hung another people over them, and became powerful and permanent thereby. “ To have fidelity, and for the sake of fidelity to risk honour and blood, even in evil and dangerous courses”—teaching itself so, another people mastered itself, and thus mastering itself, became pregnant and heavy with great hopes. Verily, men have given unto themselves all their good and bad. Verily, they took it not, they found it not, it came not unto them as a voice from heaven. Values did man only assign to things in order to maintain himself—he created only the significance of things, a human significance! Therefore, calleth he himself “ man,” that is, the valuator. Valuing is creating: hear it, ye creating ones! Valuation itself is the treasure and jewel of the valued things. Through valuation only is there value; and without valuation the nut of existence would be hollow. Hear it, ye creating ones! Change of values—that is, change of the creating ones. Always doth he destroy who hath to be a creator. Creating ones were first of all peoples, and only in late times individuals; verily, the individual himself is still the latest creation. Peoples once hung over them tables of the good. Love which would rule and love which would obey, created for themselves such tables. Older is the pleasure in the herd than the pleasure in the ego: and as long as the good conscience is for the herd, the bad conscience only saith: ego. Verily, the crafty ego, the loveless one, that seeketh its advantage in the advantage of many—it is not the origin of the herd, but its ruin. Loving ones, was it always, and creating ones, that created good and bad. Fire of love gloweth in the names of all the virtues, and fire of wrath. Many lands saw Zarathustra, and many peoples: no greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than the creations of the loving ones—“ good” and “ bad” are they called. Verily, a prodigy is this power of praising and blaming. Tell me, ye brethren, who will master it for me? Who will put a fetter upon the thousand necks of this animal? A thousand goals have there been hitherto, for a thousand peoples have there been. Only the fetter for the thousand necks is still lacking; there is lacking the one goal. As yet humanity hath not a goal.
But pray tell me, my brethren, if the goal of humanity be still lacking, is there not also still lacking—humanity itself?— Thus spake Zarathustra. XVI. NEIGHBOUR-LOVE. Ye crowd around your neighbour, and have fine words for it. But I say unto you: your neighbour-love is your bad love of yourselves. Ye flee unto your neighbour from yourselves, and would fain make a virtue thereof: but I fathom your “ unselfishness.” The THOU is older than the I; the THOU hath been consecrated, but not yet the I: so man presseth nigh unto his neighbour. Do I advise you to neighbour-love? Rather do I advise you to neighbour-flight and to furthest love! Higher than love to your neighbour is love to the furthest and future ones; higher still than love to men, is love to things and phantoms. The phantom that runneth on before thee, my brother, is fairer than thou; why dost thou not give unto it thy flesh and thy bones? But thou fearest, and runnest unto thy neighbour. Ye cannot endure it with yourselves, and do not love yourselves sufficiently: so ye seek to mislead your neighbour into love, and would fain gild yourselves with his error. Would that ye could not endure it with any kind of near ones, or their neighbours; then would ye have to create your friend and his overflowing heart out of yourselves. Ye call in a witness when ye want to speak well of yourselves; and when ye have misled him to think well of you, ye also think well of yourselves. Not only doth he lie, who speaketh contrary to his knowledge, but more so, he who speaketh contrary to his ignorance. And thus speak ye of yourselves in your intercourse, and belie your neighbour with yourselves. Thus saith the fool: “ Association with men spoileth the character, especially when one hath none.” The one goeth to his neighbour because he seeketh himself, and the other because he would fain lose himself. Your bad love to yourselves maketh solitude a prison to you. The furthest ones are they who pay for your love to the near ones; and when there are but five of you together, a sixth must always die. I love not your festivals either: too many actors found I there, and even the spectators often behaved like actors. Not the neighbour do I teach you, but the friend. Let the friend be the festival of the earth to you, and a foretaste of the Superman. I teach you the friend and his overflowing heart. But one must know how to be a sponge, if one would be loved by overflowing hearts. I teach you the friend in whom the world standeth complete, a capsule of the good,—the creating friend, who hath always a complete world to bestow. And as the world unrolled itself for him, so rolleth it together again for him in rings, as the growth of good through evil, as the growth of purpose out of chance. Let the future and the furthest be the motive of thy to-day; in thy friend shalt thou love the Superman as thy motive. My brethren, I advise you not to neighbour-love—I advise you to furthest love!— Thus spake Zarathustra. XVII. THE WAY OF THE CREATING ONE. Wouldst thou go into isolation, my brother? Wouldst thou seek the way unto thyself? Tarry yet a little and hearken unto me. “ He who seeketh may easily get lost himself. All isolation is wrong”: so say the herd. And long didst thou belong to the herd. The voice of the herd will still echo in thee. And when thou sayest, “ I have no longer a conscience in common with you,” then will it be a plaint and a pain. Lo, that pain itself did the same conscience produce; and the last gleam of that conscience still gloweth on thine affliction. But thou wouldst go the way of thine affliction, which is the way unto thyself? Then show me thine authority and thy strength to do so! Art thou a new strength and a new authority? A first motion? A self-rolling wheel? Canst thou also compel stars to revolve around thee? Alas! there is so much lusting for loftiness! There are so many convulsions of the ambitions! Show me that thou art not a lusting and ambitious one! Alas! there are so many great thoughts that do nothing more than the bellows: they inflate, and make emptier than ever. Free, dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thought would I hear of, and not that thou hast escaped from a yoke. Art thou one ENTITLED to escape from a yoke? Many a one hath cast away his final worth when he hath cast away his servitude. Free from what? What doth that matter to Zarathustra! Clearly, however, shall thine eye show unto me: free FOR WHAT? Canst thou give unto thyself thy bad and thy good, and set up thy will as a law over thee? Canst thou be judge for thyself, and avenger of thy law? Terrible is aloneness with the judge and avenger of one’s own law. Thus is a star projected into desert space, and into the icy breath of aloneness. To-day sufferest thou still from the multitude, thou individual; to-day hast thou still thy courage unabated, and thy hopes. But one day will the solitude weary thee; one day will thy pride yield, and thy courage quail. Thou wilt one day cry: “ I am alone!” One day wilt thou see no longer thy loftiness, and see too closely thy lowliness; thy sublimity itself will frighten thee as a phantom. Thou wilt one day cry: “ All is false!” There are feelings which seek to slay the lonesome one; if they do not succeed, then must they themselves die! But art thou capable of it—to be a murderer? Hast thou ever known, my brother, the word “ disdain”? And the anguish of thy justice in being just to those that disdain thee?
Thou forcest many to think differently about thee; that, charge they heavily to thine account. Thou camest nigh unto them, and yet wentest past: for that they never forgive thee. Thou goest beyond them: but the higher thou risest, the smaller doth the eye of envy see thee. Most of all, however, is the flying one hated. “ How could ye be just unto me!”—must thou say—“ I choose your injustice as my allotted portion.” Injustice and filth cast they at the lonesome one: but, my brother, if thou wouldst be a star, thou must shine for them none the less on that account! And be on thy guard against the good and just! They would fain crucify those who devise their own virtue—they hate the lonesome ones. Be on thy guard, also, against holy simplicity! All is unholy to it that is not simple; fain, likewise, would it play with the fire—of the fagot and stake. And be on thy guard, also, against the assaults of thy love! Too readily doth the recluse reach his hand to any one who meeteth him. To many a one mayest thou not give thy hand, but only thy paw; and I wish thy paw also to have claws. But the worst enemy thou canst meet, wilt thou thyself always be; thou waylayest thyself in caverns and forests. Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way to thyself! And past thyself and thy seven devils leadeth thy way! A heretic wilt thou be to thyself, and a wizard and a sooth-sayer, and a fool, and a doubter, and a reprobate, and a villain. Ready must thou be to burn thyself in thine own flame; how couldst thou become new if thou have not first become ashes! Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way of the creating one: a God wilt thou create for thyself out of thy seven devils! Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way of the loving one: thou lovest thyself, and on that account despisest thou thyself, as only the loving ones despise. To create, desireth the loving one, because he despiseth! What knoweth he of love who hath not been obliged to despise just what he loved! With thy love, go into thine isolation, my brother, and with thy creating; and late only will justice limp after thee. With my tears, go into thine isolation, my brother. I love him who seeketh to create beyond himself, and thus succumbeth.— Thus spake Zarathustra. XVIII. OLD AND YOUNG WOMEN. “ Why stealest thou along so furtively in the twilight, Zarathustra? And what hidest thou so carefully under thy mantle? Is it a treasure that hath been given thee? Or a child that hath been born thee? Or goest thou thyself on a thief’s errand, thou friend of the evil?”— Verily, my brother, said Zarathustra, it is a treasure that hath been given me: it is a little truth which I carry. But it is naughty, like a young child; and if I hold not its mouth, it screameth too loudly. As I went on my way alone to-day, at the hour when the sun declineth, there met me an old woman, and she spake thus unto my soul: “ Much hath Zarathustra spoken also to us women, but never spake he unto us concerning woman.” And I answered her: “ Concerning woman, one should only talk unto men.” “ Talk also unto me of woman,” said she; “ I am old enough to forget it presently.” And I obliged the old woman and spake thus unto her: Everything in woman is a riddle, and everything in woman hath one solution—it is called pregnancy. Man is for woman a means: the purpose is always the child. But what is woman for man? Two different things wanteth the true man: danger and diversion. Therefore wanteth he woman, as the most dangerous plaything. Man shall be trained for war, and woman for the recreation of the warrior: all else is folly. Too sweet fruits—these the warrior liketh not. Therefore liketh he woman;—bitter is even the sweetest woman. Better than man doth woman understand children, but man is more childish than woman. In the true man there is a child hidden: it wanteth to play. Up then, ye women, and discover the child in man! A plaything let woman be, pure and fine like the precious stone, illumined with the virtues of a world not yet come. Let the beam of a star shine in your love! Let your hope say: “ May I bear the Superman!” In your love let there be valour! With your love shall ye assail him who inspireth you with fear! In your love be your honour! Little doth woman understand otherwise about honour. But let this be your honour: always to love more than ye are loved, and never be the second. Let man fear woman when she loveth: then maketh she every sacrifice, and everything else she regardeth as worthless. Let man fear woman when she hateth: for man in his innermost soul is merely evil; woman, however, is mean. Whom hateth woman most?—Thus spake the iron to the loadstone: “ I hate thee most, because thou attractest, but art too weak to draw unto thee.” The happiness of man is, “ I will.” The happiness of woman is, “ He will.” “ Lo! now hath the world become perfect!”—thus thinketh every woman when she obeyeth with all her love. Obey, must the woman, and find a depth for her surface. Surface, is woman’s soul, a mobile, stormy film on shallow water.
Man’s soul, however, is deep, its current gusheth in subterranean caverns: woman surmiseth its force, but comprehendeth it not.— Then answered me the old woman: “ Many fine things hath Zarathustra said, especially for those who are young enough for them. Strange! Zarathustra knoweth little about woman, and yet he is right about them! Doth this happen, because with women nothing is impossible? And now accept a little truth by way of thanks! I am old enough for it! Swaddle it up and hold its mouth: otherwise it will scream too loudly, the little truth.” “ Give me, woman, thy little truth!” said I. And thus spake the old woman: “ Thou goest to women? Do not forget thy whip!”— Thus spake Zarathustra. XIX. THE BITE OF THE ADDER. One day had Zarathustra fallen asleep under a fig-tree, owing to the heat, with his arms over his face. And there came an adder and bit him in the neck, so that Zarathustra screamed with pain. When he had taken his arm from his face he looked at the serpent; and then did it recognise the eyes of Zarathustra, wriggled awkwardly, and tried to get away. “ Not at all,” said Zarathustra, “ as yet hast thou not received my thanks! Thou hast awakened me in time; my journey is yet long.” “ Thy journey is short,” said the adder sadly; “ my poison is fatal.” Zarathustra smiled. “ When did ever a dragon die of a serpent’s poison?”—said he. “ But take thy poison back! Thou art not rich enough to present it to me.” Then fell the adder again on his neck, and licked his wound. When Zarathustra once told this to his disciples they asked him: “ And what, O Zarathustra, is the moral of thy story?” And Zarathustra answered them thus: The destroyer of morality, the good and just call me: my story is immoral. When, however, ye have an enemy, then return him not good for evil: for that would abash him. But prove that he hath done something good to you. And rather be angry than abash any one! And when ye are cursed, it pleaseth me not that ye should then desire to bless. Rather curse a little also! And should a great injustice befall you, then do quickly five small ones besides. Hideous to behold is he on whom injustice presseth alone. Did ye ever know this? Shared injustice is half justice. And he who can bear it, shall take the injustice upon himself! A small revenge is humaner than no revenge at all. And if the punishment be not also a right and an honour to the transgressor, I do not like your punishing. Nobler is it to own oneself in the wrong than to establish one’s right, especially if one be in the right. Only, one must be rich enough to do so. I do not like your cold justice; out of the eye of your judges there always glanceth the executioner and his cold steel. Tell me: where find we justice, which is love with seeing eyes? Devise me, then, the love which not only beareth all punishment, but also all guilt! Devise me, then, the justice which acquitteth every one except the judge! And would ye hear this likewise? To him who seeketh to be just from the heart, even the lie becometh philanthropy. But how could I be just from the heart! How can I give every one his own! Let this be enough for me: I give unto every one mine own. Finally, my brethren, guard against doing wrong to any anchorite. How could an anchorite forget! How could he requite! Like a deep well is an anchorite. Easy is it to throw in a stone: if it should sink to the bottom, however, tell me, who will bring it out again? Guard against injuring the anchorite! If ye have done so, however, well then, kill him also!— Thus spake Zarathustra. XX. CHILD AND MARRIAGE. I have a question for thee alone, my brother: like a sounding-lead, cast I this question into thy soul, that I may know its depth. Thou art young, and desirest child and marriage. But I ask thee: Art thou a man ENTITLED to desire a child? Art thou the victorious one, the self-conqueror, the ruler of thy passions, the master of thy virtues? Thus do I ask thee. Or doth the animal speak in thy wish, and necessity? Or isolation? Or discord in thee? I would have thy victory and freedom long for a child. Living monuments shalt thou build to thy victory and emancipation. Beyond thyself shalt thou build. But first of all must thou be built thyself, rectangular in body and soul. Not only onward shalt thou propagate thyself, but upward! For that purpose may the garden of marriage help thee! A higher body shalt thou create, a first movement, a spontaneously rolling wheel—a creating one shalt thou create. Marriage: so call I the will of the twain to create the one that is more than those who created it. The reverence for one another, as those exercising such a will, call I marriage. Let this be the significance and the truth of thy marriage. But that which the many-too-many call marriage, those superfluous ones—ah, what shall I call it? Ah, the poverty of soul in the twain! Ah, the filth of soul in the twain! Ah, the pitiable self-complacency in the twain! Marriage they call it all; and they say their marriages are made in heaven.
Well, I do not like it, that heaven of the superfluous! No, I do not like them, those animals tangled in the heavenly toils! Far from me also be the God who limpeth thither to bless what he hath not matched! Laugh not at such marriages! What child hath not had reason to weep over its parents? Worthy did this man seem, and ripe for the meaning of the earth: but when I saw his wife, the earth seemed to me a home for madcaps. Yea, I would that the earth shook with convulsions when a saint and a goose mate with one another. This one went forth in quest of truth as a hero, and at last got for himself a small decked-up lie: his marriage he calleth it. That one was reserved in intercourse and chose choicely. But one time he spoilt his company for all time: his marriage he calleth it. Another sought a handmaid with the virtues of an angel. But all at once he became the handmaid of a woman, and now would he need also to become an angel. Careful, have I found all buyers, and all of them have astute eyes. But even the astutest of them buyeth his wife in a sack. Many short follies—that is called love by you. And your marriage putteth an end to many short follies, with one long stupidity. Your love to woman, and woman’s love to man—ah, would that it were sympathy for suffering and veiled deities! But generally two animals alight on one another. But even your best love is only an enraptured simile and a painful ardour. It is a torch to light you to loftier paths. Beyond yourselves shall ye love some day! Then LEARN first of all to love. And on that account ye had to drink the bitter cup of your love. Bitterness is in the cup even of the best love: thus doth it cause longing for the Superman; thus doth it cause thirst in thee, the creating one! Thirst in the creating one, arrow and longing for the Superman: tell me, my brother, is this thy will to marriage? Holy call I such a will, and such a marriage.— Thus spake Zarathustra. XXI. VOLUNTARY DEATH. Many die too late, and some die too early. Yet strange soundeth the precept: “ Die at the right time! Die at the right time: so teacheth Zarathustra. To be sure, he who never liveth at the right time, how could he ever die at the right time? Would that he might never be born!—Thus do I advise the superfluous ones. But even the superfluous ones make much ado about their death, and even the hollowest nut wanteth to be cracked. Every one regardeth dying as a great matter: but as yet death is not a festival. Not yet have people learned to inaugurate the finest festivals. The consummating death I show unto you, which becometh a stimulus and promise to the living. His death, dieth the consummating one triumphantly, surrounded by hoping and promising ones. Thus should one learn to die; and there should be no festival at which such a dying one doth not consecrate the oaths of the living! Thus to die is best; the next best, however, is to die in battle, and sacrifice a great soul. But to the fighter equally hateful as to the victor, is your grinning death which stealeth nigh like a thief,—and yet cometh as master. My death, praise I unto you, the voluntary death, which cometh unto me because I want it. And when shall I want it?—He that hath a goal and an heir, wanteth death at the right time for the goal and the heir. And out of reverence for the goal and the heir, he will hang up no more withered wreaths in the sanctuary of life. Verily, not the rope-makers will I resemble: they lengthen out their cord, and thereby go ever backward. Many a one, also, waxeth too old for his truths and triumphs; a toothless mouth hath no longer the right to every truth. And whoever wanteth to have fame, must take leave of honour betimes, and practise the difficult art of—going at the right time. One must discontinue being feasted upon when one tasteth best: that is known by those who want to be long loved. Sour apples are there, no doubt, whose lot is to wait until the last day of autumn: and at the same time they become ripe, yellow, and shrivelled. In some ageth the heart first, and in others the spirit. And some are hoary in youth, but the late young keep long young. To many men life is a failure; a poison-worm gnaweth at their heart. Then let them see to it that their dying is all the more a success. Many never become sweet; they rot even in the summer. It is cowardice that holdeth them fast to their branches. Far too many live, and far too long hang they on their branches. Would that a storm came and shook all this rottenness and worm-eatenness from the tree! Would that there came preachers of SPEEDY death! Those would be the appropriate storms and agitators of the trees of life! But I hear only slow death preached, and patience with all that is “ earthly.” Ah! ye preach patience with what is earthly? This earthly is it that hath too much patience with you, ye blasphemers! Verily, too early died that Hebrew whom the preachers of slow death honour: and to many hath it proved a calamity that he died too early. As yet had he known only tears, and the melancholy of the Hebrews, together with the hatred of the good and just—the Hebrew Jesus: then was he seized with the longing for
death. Had he but remained in the wilderness, and far from the good and just! Then, perhaps, would he have learned to live, and love the earth—and laughter also! Believe it, my brethren! He died too early; he himself would have disavowed his doctrine had he attained to my age! Noble enough was he to disavow! But he was still immature. Immaturely loveth the youth, and immaturely also hateth he man and earth. Confined and awkward are still his soul and the wings of his spirit. But in man there is more of the child than in the youth, and less of melancholy: better understandeth he about life and death. Free for death, and free in death; a holy Naysayer, when there is no longer time for Yea: thus understandeth he about death and life. That your dying may not be a reproach to man and the earth, my friends: that do I solicit from the honey of your soul. In your dying shall your spirit and your virtue still shine like an evening after-glow around the earth: otherwise your dying hath been unsatisfactory. Thus will I die myself, that ye friends may love the earth more for my sake; and earth will I again become, to have rest in her that bore me. Verily, a goal had Zarathustra; he threw his ball. Now be ye friends the heirs of my goal; to you throw I the golden ball. Best of all, do I see you, my friends, throw the golden ball! And so tarry I still a little while on the earth—pardon me for it! Thus spake Zarathustra. XXII. THE BESTOWING VIRTUE. 1. When Zarathustra had taken leave of the town to which his heart was attached, the name of which is “ The Pied Cow,” there followed him many people who called themselves his disciples, and kept him company. Thus came they to a crossroad. Then Zarathustra told them that he now wanted to go alone; for he was fond of going alone. His disciples, however, presented him at his departure with a staff, on the golden handle of which a serpent twined round the sun. Zarathustra rejoiced on account of the staff, and supported himself thereon; then spake he thus to his disciples: Tell me, pray: how came gold to the highest value? Because it is uncommon, and unprofiting, and beaming, and soft in lustre; it always bestoweth itself. Only as image of the highest virtue came gold to the highest value. Goldlike, beameth the glance of the bestower. Gold-lustre maketh peace between moon and sun. Uncommon is the highest virtue, and unprofiting, beaming is it, and soft of lustre: a bestowing virtue is the highest virtue. Verily, I divine you well, my disciples: ye strive like me for the bestowing virtue. What should ye have in common with cats and wolves? It is your thirst to become sacrifices and gifts yourselves: and therefore have ye the thirst to accumulate all riches in your soul. Insatiably striveth your soul for treasures and jewels, because your virtue is insatiable in desiring to bestow. Ye constrain all things to flow towards you and into you, so that they shall flow back again out of your fountain as the gifts of your love. Verily, an appropriator of all values must such bestowing love become; but healthy and holy, call I this selfishness.— Another selfishness is there, an all-too-poor and hungry kind, which would always steal—the selfishness of the sick, the sickly selfishness. With the eye of the thief it looketh upon all that is lustrous; with the craving of hunger it measureth him who hath abundance; and ever doth it prowl round the tables of bestowers. Sickness speaketh in such craving, and invisible degeneration; of a sickly body, speaketh the larcenous craving of this selfishness. Tell me, my brother, what do we think bad, and worst of all? Is it not DEGENERATION?—And we always suspect degeneration when the bestowing soul is lacking. Upward goeth our course from genera on to super-genera. But a horror to us is the degenerating sense, which saith: “ All for myself.” Upward soareth our sense: thus is it a simile of our body, a simile of an elevation. Such similes of elevations are the names of the virtues. Thus goeth the body through history, a becomer and fighter. And the spirit—what is it to the body? Its fights’ and victories’ herald, its companion and echo. Similes, are all names of good and evil; they do not speak out, they only hint. A fool who seeketh knowledge from them! Give heed, my brethren, to every hour when your spirit would speak in similes: there is the origin of your virtue. Elevated is then your body, and raised up; with its delight, enraptureth it the spirit; so that it becometh creator, and valuer, and lover, and everything’s benefactor. When your heart overfloweth broad and full like the river, a blessing and a danger to the lowlanders: there is the origin of your virtue. When ye are exalted above praise and blame, and your will would command all things, as a loving one’s will: there is the origin of your virtue. When ye despise pleasant things, and the effeminate couch, and cannot couch far enough from the effeminate: there is the origin of your virtue. When ye are willers of one will, and when that change of every need is needful to you: there is the origin of your virtue. Verily, a new good and evil is it! Verily, a new deep murmuring, and the voice of a new fountain! Power is it, this new virtue; a ruling thought is it, and around it a subtle soul: a golden sun, with the serpent of knowledge around it. 2. Here paused Zarathustra awhile, and looked lovingly on his disciples. Then he continued to speak thus—and his voice had changed:
Remain true to the earth, my brethren, with the power of your virtue! Let your bestowing love and your knowledge be devoted to be the meaning of the earth! Thus do I pray and conjure you. Let it not fly away from the earthly and beat against eternal walls with its wings! Ah, there hath always been so much flown-away virtue! Lead, like me, the flown-away virtue back to the earth—yea, back to body and life: that it may give to the earth its meaning, a human meaning! A hundred times hitherto hath spirit as well as virtue flown away and blundered. Alas! in our body dwelleth still all this delusion and blundering: body and will hath it there become. A hundred times hitherto hath spirit as well as virtue attempted and erred. Yea, an attempt hath man been. Alas, much ignorance and error hath become embodied in us! Not only the rationality of millenniums—also their madness, breaketh out in us. Dangerous is it to be an heir. Still fight we step by step with the giant Chance, and over all mankind hath hitherto ruled nonsense, the lack-of-sense. Let your spirit and your virtue be devoted to the sense of the earth, my brethren: let the value of everything be determined anew by you! Therefore shall ye be fighters! Therefore shall ye be creators! Intelligently doth the body purify itself; attempting with intelligence it exalteth itself; to the discerners all impulses sanctify themselves; to the exalted the soul becometh joyful. Physician, heal thyself: then wilt thou also heal thy patient. Let it be his best cure to see with his eyes him who maketh himself whole. A thousand paths are there which have never yet been trodden; a thousand salubrities and hidden islands of life. Unexhausted and undiscovered is still man and man’s world. Awake and hearken, ye lonesome ones! From the future come winds with stealthy pinions, and to fine ears good tidings are proclaimed. Ye lonesome ones of to-day, ye seceding ones, ye shall one day be a people: out of you who have chosen yourselves, shall a chosen people arise:—and out of it the Superman. Verily, a place of healing shall the earth become! And already is a new odour diffused around it, a salvation-bringing odour—and a new hope! 3. When Zarathustra had spoken these words, he paused, like one who had not said his last word; and long did he balance the staff doubtfully in his hand. At last he spake thus— and his voice had changed: I now go alone, my disciples! Ye also now go away, and alone! So will I have it. Verily, I advise you: depart from me, and guard yourselves against Zarathustra! And better still: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he hath deceived you. The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends. One requiteth a teacher badly if one remain merely a scholar. And why will ye not pluck at my wreath? Ye venerate me; but what if your veneration should some day collapse? Take heed lest a statue crush you! Ye say, ye believe in Zarathustra? But of what account is Zarathustra! Ye are my believers: but of what account are all believers! Ye had not yet sought yourselves: then did ye find me. So do all believers; therefore all belief is of so little account. Now do I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when ye have all denied me, will I return unto you. Verily, with other eyes, my brethren, shall I then seek my lost ones; with another love shall I then love you. And once again shall ye have become friends unto me, and children of one hope: then will I be with you for the third time, to celebrate the great noontide with you. And it is the great noontide, when man is in the middle of his course between animal and Superman, and celebrateth his advance to the evening as his highest hope: for it is the advance to a new morning. At such time will the down-goer bless himself, that he should be an over-goer; and the sun of his knowledge will be at noontide. “ DEAD ARE ALL THE GODS: NOW DO WE DESIRE THE SUPERMAN TO LIVE.”—Let this be our final will at the great noontide!— Thus spake Zarathustra. SECOND PART “ —and only when ye have all denied me, will I return unto you. Verily, with other eyes, my brethren, shall I then seek my lost ones; with another love shall I then love you.”—ZARATHUSTRA, I., “ The Bestowing Virtue.” XXIII. THE CHILD WITH THE MIRROR. After this Zarathustra returned again into the mountains to the solitude of his cave, and withdrew himself from men, waiting like a sower who hath scattered his seed. His soul, however, became impatient and full of longing for those whom he loved: because he had still much to give them. For this is hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver. Thus passed with the lonesome one months and years; his wisdom meanwhile increased, and caused him pain by its abundance. One morning, however, he awoke ere the rosy dawn, and having meditated long on his couch, at last spake thus to his heart: Why did I startle in my dream, so that I awoke? Did not a child come to me, carrying a mirror?
“ O Zarathustra”—said the child unto me—“ look at thyself in the mirror!” But when I looked into the mirror, I shrieked, and my heart throbbed: for not myself did I see therein, but a devil’s grimace and derision. Verily, all too well do I understand the dream’s portent and monition: my DOCTRINE is in danger; tares want to be called wheat! Mine enemies have grown powerful and have disfigured the likeness of my doctrine, so that my dearest ones have to blush for the gifts that I gave them. Lost are my friends; the hour hath come for me to seek my lost ones!— With these words Zarathustra started up, not however like a person in anguish seeking relief, but rather like a seer and a singer whom the spirit inspireth. With amazement did his eagle and serpent gaze upon him: for a coming bliss overspread his countenance like the rosy dawn. What hath happened unto me, mine animals?—said Zarathustra. Am I not transformed? Hath not bliss come unto me like a whirlwind? Foolish is my happiness, and foolish things will it speak: it is still too young—so have patience with it! Wounded am I by my happiness: all sufferers shall be physicians unto me! To my friends can I again go down, and also to mine enemies! Zarathustra can again speak and bestow, and show his best love to his loved ones! My impatient love overfloweth in streams,—down towards sunrise and sunset. Out of silent mountains and storms of affliction, rusheth my soul into the valleys. Too long have I longed and looked into the distance. Too long hath solitude possessed me: thus have I unlearned to keep silence. Utterance have I become altogether, and the brawling of a brook from high rocks: downward into the valleys will I hurl my speech. And let the stream of my love sweep into unfrequented channels! How should a stream not finally find its way to the sea! Forsooth, there is a lake in me, sequestered and self-sufficing; but the stream of my love beareth this along with it, down—to the sea! New paths do I tread, a new speech cometh unto me; tired have I become— like all creators—of the old tongues. No longer will my spirit walk on worn-out soles. Too slowly runneth all speaking for me:—into thy chariot, O storm, do I leap! And even thee will I whip with my spite! Like a cry and an huzza will I traverse wide seas, till I find the Happy Isles where my friends sojourn;— And mine enemies amongst them! How I now love every one unto whom I may but speak! Even mine enemies pertain to my bliss. And when I want to mount my wildest horse, then doth my spear always help me up best: it is my foot’s ever ready servant:— The spear which I hurl at mine enemies! How grateful am I to mine enemies that I may at last hurl it! Too great hath been the tension of my cloud: ‘twixt laughters of lightnings will I cast hail-showers into the depths. Violently will my breast then heave; violently will it blow its storm over the mountains: thus cometh its assuagement. Verily, like a storm cometh my happiness, and my freedom! But mine enemies shall think that THE EVIL ONE roareth over their heads. Yea, ye also, my friends, will be alarmed by my wild wisdom; and perhaps ye will flee therefrom, along with mine enemies. Ah, that I knew how to lure you back with shepherds’ flutes! Ah, that my lioness wisdom would learn to roar softly! And much have we already learned with one another! My wild wisdom became pregnant on the lonesome mountains; on the rough stones did she bear the youngest of her young. Now runneth she foolishly in the arid wilderness, and seeketh and seeketh the soft sward—mine old, wild wisdom! On the soft sward of your hearts, my friends!—on your love, would she fain couch her dearest one!— Thus spake Zarathustra. XXIV. IN THE HAPPY ISLES. The figs fall from the trees, they are good and sweet; and in falling the red skins of them break. A north wind am I to ripe figs. Thus, like figs, do these doctrines fall for you, my friends: imbibe now their juice and their sweet substance! It is autumn all around, and clear sky, and afternoon. Lo, what fullness is around us! And out of the midst of superabundance, it is delightful to look out upon distant seas. Once did people say God, when they looked out upon distant seas; now, however, have I taught you to say, Superman. God is a conjecture: but I do not wish your conjecturing to reach beyond your creating will. Could ye CREATE a God?—Then, I pray you, be silent about all Gods! But ye could well create the Superman. Not perhaps ye yourselves, my brethren! But into fathers and forefathers of the Superman could ye transform yourselves: and let that be your best creating!— God is a conjecture: but I should like your conjecturing restricted to the conceivable. Could ye CONCEIVE a God?—But let this mean Will to Truth unto you, that everything be transformed into the humanly conceivable, the humanly visible, the humanly sensible! Your own discernment shall ye follow out to the end! And what ye have called the world shall but be created by you: your reason, your likeness, your will, your love, shall it itself become! And verily, for your bliss, ye discerning ones! And how would ye endure life without that hope, ye discerning ones? Neither in the inconceivable could ye have been born, nor in the irrational.
But that I may reveal my heart entirely unto you, my friends: IF there were gods, how could I endure it to be no God! THEREFORE there are no Gods. Yea, I have drawn the conclusion; now, however, doth it draw me.— God is a conjecture: but who could drink all the bitterness of this conjecture without dying? Shall his faith be taken from the creating one, and from the eagle his flights into eagle-heights? God is a thought—it maketh all the straight crooked, and all that standeth reel. What? Time would be gone, and all the perishable would be but a lie? To think this is giddiness and vertigo to human limbs, and even vomiting to the stomach: verily, the reeling sickness do I call it, to conjecture such a thing. Evil do I call it and misanthropic: all that teaching about the one, and the plenum, and the unmoved, and the sufficient, and the imperishable! All the imperishable—that’s but a simile, and the poets lie too much.— But of time and of becoming shall the best similes speak: a praise shall they be, and a justification of all perishableness! Creating—that is the great salvation from suffering, and life’s alleviation. But for the creator to appear, suffering itself is needed, and much transformation. Yea, much bitter dying must there be in your life, ye creators! Thus are ye advocates and justifiers of all perishableness. For the creator himself to be the new-born child, he must also be willing to be the child-bearer, and endure the pangs of the child-bearer. Verily, through a hundred souls went I my way, and through a hundred cradles and birth-throes. Many a farewell have I taken; I know the heart-breaking last hours. But so willeth it my creating Will, my fate. Or, to tell you it more candidly: just such a fate—willeth my Will. All FEELING suffereth in me, and is in prison: but my WILLING ever cometh to me as mine emancipator and comforter. Willing emancipateth: that is the true doctrine of will and emancipation—so teacheth you Zarathustra. No longer willing, and no longer valuing, and no longer creating! Ah, that that great debility may ever be far from me! And also in discerning do I feel only my will’s procreating and evolving delight; and if there be innocence in my knowledge, it is because there is will to procreation in it. Away from God and Gods did this will allure me; what would there be to create if there were—Gods! But to man doth it ever impel me anew, my fervent creative will; thus impelleth it the hammer to the stone. Ah, ye men, within the stone slumbereth an image for me, the image of my visions! Ah, that it should slumber in the hardest, ugliest stone! Now rageth my hammer ruthlessly against its prison. From the stone fly the fragments: what’s that to me? I will complete it: for a shadow came unto me—the stillest and lightest of all things once came unto me! The beauty of the Superman came unto me as a shadow. Ah, my brethren! Of what account now are—the Gods to me!— Thus spake Zarathustra. XXV. THE PITIFUL. My friends, there hath arisen a satire on your friend: “ Behold Zarathustra! Walketh he not amongst us as if amongst animals?” But it is better said in this wise: “ The discerning one walketh amongst men AS amongst animals.” Man himself is to the discerning one: the animal with red cheeks. How hath that happened unto him? Is it not because he hath had to be ashamed too oft? O my friends! Thus speaketh the discerning one: shame, shame, shame—that is the history of man! And on that account doth the noble one enjoin upon himself not to abash: bashfulness doth he enjoin on himself in presence of all sufferers. Verily, I like them not, the merciful ones, whose bliss is in their pity: too destitute are they of bashfulness. If I must be pitiful, I dislike to be called so; and if I be so, it is preferably at a distance. Preferably also do I shroud my head, and flee, before being recognised: and thus do I bid you do, my friends! May my destiny ever lead unafflicted ones like you across my path, and those with whom I MAY have hope and repast and honey in common! Verily, I have done this and that for the afflicted: but something better did I always seem to do when I had learned to enjoy myself better. Since humanity came into being, man hath enjoyed himself too little: that alone, my brethren, is our original sin! And when we learn better to enjoy ourselves, then do we unlearn best to give pain unto others, and to contrive pain. Therefore do I wash the hand that hath helped the sufferer; therefore do I wipe also my soul. For in seeing the sufferer suffering—thereof was I ashamed on account of his shame; and in helping him, sorely did I wound his pride. Great obligations do not make grateful, but revengeful; and when a small kindness is not forgotten, it becometh a gnawing worm. “ Be shy in accepting! Distinguish by accepting!”—thus do I advise those who have naught to bestow. I, however, am a bestower: willingly do I bestow as friend to friends. Strangers, however, and the poor, may pluck for themselves the fruit from my tree: thus doth it cause less shame.
Beggars, however, one should entirely do away with! Verily, it annoyeth one to give unto them, and it annoyeth one not to give unto them. And likewise sinners and bad consciences! Believe me, my friends: the sting of conscience teacheth one to sting. The worst things, however, are the petty thoughts. Verily, better to have done evilly than to have thought pettily! To be sure, ye say: “ The delight in petty evils spareth one many a great evil deed.” But here one should not wish to be sparing. Like a boil is the evil deed: it itcheth and irritateth and breaketh forth—it speaketh honourably. “ Behold, I am disease,” saith the evil deed: that is its honourableness. But like infection is the petty thought: it creepeth and hideth, and wanteth to be nowhere—until the whole body is decayed and withered by the petty infection. To him however, who is possessed of a devil, I would whisper this word in the ear: “ Better for thee to rear up thy devil! Even for thee there is still a path to greatness!”— Ah, my brethren! One knoweth a little too much about every one! And many a one becometh transparent to us, but still we can by no means penetrate him. It is difficult to live among men because silence is so difficult. And not to him who is offensive to us are we most unfair, but to him who doth not concern us at all. If, however, thou hast a suffering friend, then be a resting-place for his suffering; like a hard bed, however, a camp-bed: thus wilt thou serve him best. And if a friend doeth thee wrong, then say: “ I forgive thee what thou hast done unto me; that thou hast done it unto THYSELF, however—how could I forgive that!” Thus speaketh all great love: it surpasseth even forgiveness and pity. One should hold fast one’s heart; for when one letteth it go, how quickly doth one’s head run away! Ah, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the pitiful? And what in the world hath caused more suffering than the follies of the pitiful? Woe unto all loving ones who have not an elevation which is above their pity! Thus spake the devil unto me, once on a time: “ Even God hath his hell: it is his love for man.” And lately, did I hear him say these words: “ God is dead: of his pity for man hath God died.”— So be ye warned against pity: FROM THENCE there yet cometh unto men a heavy cloud! Verily, I understand weather-signs! But attend also to this word: All great love is above all its pity: for it seeketh—to create what is loved! “ Myself do I offer unto my love, AND MY NEIGHBOUR AS MYSELF”—such is the language of all creators. All creators, however, are hard.— Thus spake Zarathustra. XXVI. THE PRIESTS. And one day Zarathustra made a sign to his disciples, and spake these words unto them: “ Here are priests: but although they are mine enemies, pass them quietly and with sleeping swords! Even among them there are heroes; many of them have suffered too much—: so they want to make others suffer. Bad enemies are they: nothing is more revengeful than their meekness. And readily doth he soil himself who toucheth them. But my blood is related to theirs; and I want withal to see my blood honoured in theirs.”— And when they had passed, a pain attacked Zarathustra; but not long had he struggled with the pain, when he began to speak thus: It moveth my heart for those priests. They also go against my taste; but that is the smallest matter unto me, since I am among men. But I suffer and have suffered with them: prisoners are they unto me, and stigmatised ones. He whom they call Saviour put them in fetters:— In fetters of false values and fatuous words! Oh, that some one would save them from their Saviour! On an isle they once thought they had landed, when the sea tossed them about; but behold, it was a slumbering monster! False values and fatuous words: these are the worst monsters for mortals—long slumbereth and waiteth the fate that is in them. But at last it cometh and awaketh and devoureth and engulfeth whatever hath built tabernacles upon it. Oh, just look at those tabernacles which those priests have built themselves! Churches, they call their sweet-smelling caves! Oh, that falsified light, that mustified air! Where the soul—may not fly aloft to its height! But so enjoineth their belief: “ On your knees, up the stair, ye sinners!” Verily, rather would I see a shameless one than the distorted eyes of their shame and devotion! Who created for themselves such caves and penitence-stairs? Was it not those who sought to conceal themselves, and were ashamed under the clear sky? And only when the clear sky looketh again through ruined roofs, and down upon grass and red poppies on ruined walls—will I again turn my heart to the seats of this God. They called God that which opposed and afflicted them: and verily, there was much hero-spirit in their worship! And they knew not how to love their God otherwise than by nailing men to the cross!
As corpses they thought to live; in black draped they their corpses; even in their talk do I still feel the evil flavour of charnel-houses. And he who liveth nigh unto them liveth nigh unto black pools, wherein the toad singeth his song with sweet gravity. Better songs would they have to sing, for me to believe in their Saviour: more like saved ones would his disciples have to appear unto me! Naked, would I like to see them: for beauty alone should preach penitence. But whom would that disguised affliction convince! Verily, their Saviours themselves came not from freedom and freedom’s seventh heaven! Verily, they themselves never trod the carpets of knowledge! Of defects did the spirit of those Saviours consist; but into every defect had they put their illusion, their stop-gap, which they called God. In their pity was their spirit drowned; and when they swelled and o’erswelled with pity, there always floated to the surface a great folly. Eagerly and with shouts drove they their flock over their foot-bridge; as if there were but one foot-bridge to the future! Verily, those shepherds also were still of the flock! Small spirits and spacious souls had those shepherds: but, my brethren, what small domains have even the most spacious souls hitherto been! Characters of blood did they write on the way they went, and their folly taught that truth is proved by blood. But blood is the very worst witness to truth; blood tainteth the purest teaching, and turneth it into delusion and hatred of heart. And when a person goeth through fire for his teaching—what doth that prove! It is more, verily, when out of one’s own burning cometh one’s own teaching! Sultry heart and cold head; where these meet, there ariseth the blusterer, the “ Saviour.” Greater ones, verily, have there been, and higher-born ones, than those whom the people call Saviours, those rapturous blusterers! And by still greater ones than any of the Saviours must ye be saved, my brethren, if ye would find the way to freedom! Never yet hath there been a Superman. Naked have I seen both of them, the greatest man and the smallest man:— All-too-similar are they still to each other. Verily, even the greatest found I—all-too-human!— Thus spake Zarathustra. XXVII. THE VIRTUOUS. With thunder and heavenly fireworks must one speak to indolent and somnolent senses. But beauty’s voice speaketh gently: it appealeth only to the most awakened souls. Gently vibrated and laughed unto me to-day my buckler; it was beauty’s holy laughing and thrilling. At you, ye virtuous ones, laughed my beauty to-day. And thus came its voice unto me: “ They want—to be paid besides!” Ye want to be paid besides, ye virtuous ones! Ye want reward for virtue, and heaven for earth, and eternity for your to-day? And now ye upbraid me for teaching that there is no reward-giver, nor paymaster? And verily, I do not even teach that virtue is its own reward. Ah! this is my sorrow: into the basis of things have reward and punishment been insinuated—and now even into the basis of your souls, ye virtuous ones! But like the snout of the boar shall my word grub up the basis of your souls; a ploughshare will I be called by you. All the secrets of your heart shall be brought to light; and when ye lie in the sun, grubbed up and broken, then will also your falsehood be separated from your truth. For this is your truth: ye are TOO PURE for the filth of the words: vengeance, punishment, recompense, retribution. Ye love your virtue as a mother loveth her child; but when did one hear of a mother wanting to be paid for her love? It is your dearest Self, your virtue. The ring’s thirst is in you: to reach itself again struggleth every ring, and turneth itself. And like the star that goeth out, so is every work of your virtue: ever is its light on its way and travelling—and when will it cease to be on its way? Thus is the light of your virtue still on its way, even when its work is done. Be it forgotten and dead, still its ray of light liveth and travelleth. That your virtue is your Self, and not an outward thing, a skin, or a cloak: that is the truth from the basis of your souls, ye virtuous ones!— But sure enough there are those to whom virtue meaneth writhing under the lash: and ye have hearkened too much unto their crying! And others are there who call virtue the slothfulness of their vices; and when once their hatred and jealousy relax the limbs, their “ justice” becometh lively and rubbeth its sleepy eyes. And others are there who are drawn downwards: their devils draw them. But the more they sink, the more ardently gloweth their eye, and the longing for their God. Ah! their crying also hath reached your ears, ye virtuous ones: “ What I am NOT, that, that is God to me, and virtue!” And others are there who go along heavily and creakingly, like carts taking stones downhill: they talk much of dignity and virtue—their drag they call virtue! And others are there who are like eight-day clocks when wound up; they tick, and want people to call ticking—virtue. Verily, in those have I mine amusement: wherever I find such clocks I shall wind them up with my mockery, and they shall even whirr thereby! And others are proud of their modicum of righteousness, and for the sake of it do violence to all things: so that the world is drowned in their unrighteousness. Ah! how ineptly cometh the word “ virtue” out of their mouth! And when they say: “ I am just,” it always soundeth like: “ I am just—revenged!” With their virtues they want to scratch out the eyes of their enemies; and they elevate themselves only that they may lower others.
And again there are those who sit in their swamp, and speak thus from among the bulrushes: “ Virtue—that is to sit quietly in the swamp. We bite no one, and go out of the way of him who would bite; and in all matters we have the opinion that is given us.” And again there are those who love attitudes, and think that virtue is a sort of attitude. Their knees continually adore, and their hands are eulogies of virtue, but their heart knoweth naught thereof. And again there are those who regard it as virtue to say: “ Virtue is necessary”; but after all they believe only that policemen are necessary. And many a one who cannot see men’s loftiness, calleth it virtue to see their baseness far too well: thus calleth he his evil eye virtue.— And some want to be edified and raised up, and call it virtue: and others want to be cast down,—and likewise call it virtue. And thus do almost all think that they participate in virtue; and at least every one claimeth to be an authority on “ good” and “ evil.” But Zarathustra came not to say unto all those liars and fools: “ What do YE know of virtue! What COULD ye know of virtue!”— But that ye, my friends, might become weary of the old words which ye have learned from the fools and liars: That ye might become weary of the words “ reward,” “ retribution,” “ punishment,” “ righteous vengeance.”— That ye might become weary of saying: “ That an action is good is because it is unselfish.” Ah! my friends! That YOUR very Self be in your action, as the mother is in the child: let that be YOUR formula of virtue! Verily, I have taken from you a hundred formulae and your virtue’s favourite playthings; and now ye upbraid me, as children upbraid. They played by the sea—then came there a wave and swept their playthings into the deep: and now do they cry. But the same wave shall bring them new playthings, and spread before them new speckled shells! Thus will they be comforted; and like them shall ye also, my friends, have your comforting—and new speckled shells!— Thus spake Zarathustra. XXVIII. THE RBLE. Life is a well of delight; but where the rabble also drink, there all fountains are poisoned. To everything cleanly am I well disposed; but I hate to see the grinning mouths and the thirst of the unclean. They cast their eye down into the fountain: and now glanceth up to me their odious smile out of the fountain. The holy water have they poisoned with their lustfulness; and when they called their filthy dreams delight, then poisoned they also the words. Indignant becometh the flame when they put their damp hearts to the fire; the spirit itself bubbleth and smoketh when the rabble approach the fire. Mawkish and over-mellow becometh the fruit in their hands: unsteady, and withered at the top, doth their look make the fruit-tree. And many a one who hath turned away from life, hath only turned away from the rabble: he hated to share with them fountain, flame, and fruit. And many a one who hath gone into the wilderness and suffered thirst with beasts of prey, disliked only to sit at the cistern with filthy camel-drivers. And many a one who hath come along as a destroyer, and as a hailstorm to all cornfields, wanted merely to put his foot into the jaws of the rabble, and thus stop their throat. And it is not the mouthful which hath most choked me, to know that life itself requireth enmity and death and torture-crosses:— But I asked once, and suffocated almost with my question: What? is the rabble also NECESSARY for life? Are poisoned fountains necessary, and stinking fires, and filthy dreams, and maggots in the bread of life? Not my hatred, but my loathing, gnawed hungrily at my life! Ah, ofttimes became I weary of spirit, when I found even the rabble spiritual! And on the rulers turned I my back, when I saw what they now call ruling: to traffic and bargain for power—with the rabble! Amongst peoples of a strange language did I dwell, with stopped ears: so that the language of their trafficking might remain strange unto me, and their bargaining for power. And holding my nose, I went morosely through all yesterdays and to-days: verily, badly smell all yesterdays and to-days of the scribbling rabble! Like a cripple become deaf, and blind, and dumb—thus have I lived long; that I might not live with the power-rabble, the scribe-rabble, and the pleasure-rabble. Toilsomely did my spirit mount stairs, and cautiously; alms of delight were its refreshment; on the staff did life creep along with the blind one. What hath happened unto me? How have I freed myself from loathing? Who hath rejuvenated mine eye? How have I flown to the height where no rabble any longer sit at the wells? Did my loathing itself create for me wings and fountain-divining powers? Verily, to the loftiest height had I to fly, to find again the well of delight! Oh, I have found it, my brethren! Here on the loftiest height bubbleth up for me the well of delight! And there is a life at whose waters none of the rabble drink with me! Almost too violently dost thou flow for me, thou fountain of delight! And often emptiest thou the goblet again, in wanting to fill it! And yet must I learn to approach thee more modestly: far too violently doth my heart still flow towards thee:— My heart on which my summer burneth, my short, hot, melancholy, over-happy summer: how my summer heart longeth for thy coolness! Past, the lingering distress of my spring! Past, the wickedness of my snowflakes in June! Summer have I become entirely, and summer-noontide!
A summer on the loftiest height, with cold fountains and blissful stillness: oh, come, my friends, that the stillness may become more blissful! For this is OUR height and our home: too high and steep do we here dwell for all uncleanly ones and their thirst. Cast but your pure eyes into the well of my delight, my friends! How could it become turbid thereby! It shall laugh back to you with ITS purity. On the tree of the future build we our nest; eagles shall bring us lone ones food in their beaks! Verily, no food of which the impure could be fellow-partakers! Fire, would they think they devoured, and burn their mouths! Verily, no abodes do we here keep ready for the impure! An ice-cave to their bodies would our happiness be, and to their spirits! And as strong winds will we live above them, neighbours to the eagles, neighbours to the snow, neighbours to the sun: thus live the strong winds. And like a wind will I one day blow amongst them, and with my spirit, take the breath from their spirit: thus willeth my future. Verily, a strong wind is Zarathustra to all low places; and this counsel counselleth he to his enemies, and to whatever spitteth and speweth: “ Take care not to spit AGAINST the wind!”— Thus spake Zarathustra. XXIX. THE TARANTULAS. Lo, this is the tarantula’s den! Wouldst thou see the tarantula itself? Here hangeth its web: touch this, so that it may tremble. There cometh the tarantula willingly: Welcome, tarantula! Black on thy back is thy triangle and symbol; and I know also what is in thy soul. Revenge is in thy soul: wherever thou bitest, there ariseth black scab; with revenge, thy poison maketh the soul giddy! Thus do I speak unto you in parable, ye who make the soul giddy, ye preachers of EQUALITY! Tarantulas are ye unto me, and secretly revengeful ones! But I will soon bring your hiding-places to the light: therefore do I laugh in your face my laughter of the height. Therefore do I tear at your web, that your rage may lure you out of your den of lies, and that your revenge may leap forth from behind your word “ justice.” Because, FOR MAN TO BE REDEEMED FROM REVENGE—that is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms. Otherwise, however, would the tarantulas have it. “ Let it be very justice for the world to become full of the storms of our vengeance”—thus do they talk to one another. “ Vengeance will we use, and insult, against all who are not like us”—thus do the tarantula-hearts pledge themselves. “ And ‘Will to Equality’—that itself shall henceforth be the name of virtue; and against all that hath power will we raise an outcry!” Ye preachers of equality, the tyrant-frenzy of impotence crieth thus in you for “ equality”: your most secret tyrant-longings disguise themselves thus in virtue-words! Fretted conceit and suppressed envy—perhaps your fathers’ conceit and envy: in you break they forth as flame and frenzy of vengeance. What the father hath hid cometh out in the son; and oft have I found in the son the father’s revealed secret. Inspired ones they resemble: but it is not the heart that inspireth them—but vengeance. And when they become subtle and cold, it is not spirit, but envy, that maketh them so. Their jealousy leadeth them also into thinkers’ paths; and this is the sign of their jealousy—they always go too far: so that their fatigue hath at last to go to sleep on the snow. In all their lamentations soundeth vengeance, in all their eulogies is maleficence; and being judge seemeth to them bliss. But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! They are people of bad race and lineage; out of their countenances peer the hangman and the sleuth-hound. Distrust all those who talk much of their justice! Verily, in their souls not only honey is lacking. And when they call themselves “ the good and just,” forget not, that for them to be Pharisees, nothing is lacking but—power! My friends, I will not be mixed up and confounded with others. There are those who preach my doctrine of life, and are at the same time preachers of equality, and tarantulas. That they speak in favour of life, though they sit in their den, these poison-spiders, and withdrawn from life—is because they would thereby do injury. To those would they thereby do injury who have power at present: for with those the preaching of death is still most at home. Were it otherwise, then would the tarantulas teach otherwise: and they themselves were formerly the best world-maligners and heretic-burners. With these preachers of equality will I not be mixed up and confounded. For thus speaketh justice UNTO ME: “ Men are not equal.” And neither shall they become so! What would be my love to the Superman, if I spake otherwise? On a thousand bridges and piers shall they throng to the future, and always shall there be more war and inequality among them: thus doth my great love make me speak! Inventors of figures and phantoms shall they be in their hostilities; and with those figures and phantoms shall they yet fight with each other the supreme fight! Good and evil, and rich and poor, and high and low, and all names of values: weapons shall they be, and sounding signs, that life must again and again surpass itself! Aloft will it build itself with columns and stairs—life itself: into remote distances would it gaze, and out towards blissful beauties— THEREFORE doth it require elevation! And because it requireth elevation, therefore doth it require steps, and variance of steps and climbers! To rise striveth life, and in rising to surpass itself. And just behold, my friends! Here where the tarantula’s den is, riseth aloft an ancient temple’s ruins—just behold it with enlightened eyes!
Verily, he who here towered aloft his thoughts in stone, knew as well as the wisest ones about the secret of life! That there is struggle and inequality even in beauty, and war for power and supremacy: that doth he here teach us in the plainest parable. How divinely do vault and arch here contrast in the struggle: how with light and shade they strive against each other, the divinely striving ones.— Thus, steadfast and beautiful, let us also be enemies, my friends! Divinely will we strive AGAINST one another!— Alas! There hath the tarantula bit me myself, mine old enemy! Divinely steadfast and beautiful, it hath bit me on the finger! “ Punishment must there be, and justice”—so thinketh it: “ not gratuitously shall he here sing songs in honour of enmity!” Yea, it hath revenged itself! And alas! now will it make my soul also dizzy with revenge! That I may NOT turn dizzy, however, bind me fast, my friends, to this pillar! Rather will I be a pillar-saint than a whirl of vengeance! Verily, no cyclone or whirlwind is Zarathustra: and if he be a dancer, he is not at all a tarantula-dancer!— Thus spake Zarathustra. XXX. THE FAMOUS WISE ONES. The people have ye served and the people’s superstition—NOT the truth!—all ye famous wise ones! And just on that account did they pay you reverence. And on that account also did they tolerate your unbelief, because it was a pleasantry and a by-path for the people. Thus doth the master give free scope to his slaves, and even enjoyeth their presumptuousness. But he who is hated by the people, as the wolf by the dogs—is the free spirit, the enemy of fetters, the non-adorer, the dweller in the woods. To hunt him out of his lair—that was always called “ sense of right” by the people: on him do they still hound their sharpest-toothed dogs. “ For there the truth is, where the people are! Woe, woe to the seeking ones!”—thus hath it echoed through all time. Your people would ye justify in their reverence: that called ye “ Will to Truth,” ye famous wise ones! And your heart hath always said to itself: “ From the people have I come: from thence came to me also the voice of God.” Stiff-necked and artful, like the ass, have ye always been, as the advocates of the people. And many a powerful one who wanted to run well with the people, hath harnessed in front of his horses—a donkey, a famous wise man. And now, ye famous wise ones, I would have you finally throw off entirely the skin of the lion! The skin of the beast of prey, the speckled skin, and the dishevelled locks of the investigator, the searcher, and the conqueror! Ah! for me to learn to believe in your “ conscientiousness,” ye would first have to break your venerating will. Conscientious—so call I him who goeth into God-forsaken wildernesses, and hath broken his venerating heart. In the yellow sands and burnt by the sun, he doubtless peereth thirstily at the isles rich in fountains, where life reposeth under shady trees. But his thirst doth not persuade him to become like those comfortable ones: for where there are oases, there are also idols. Hungry, fierce, lonesome, God-forsaken: so doth the lion-will wish itself. Free from the happiness of slaves, redeemed from Deities and adorations, fearless and fear-inspiring, grand and lonesome: so is the will of the conscientious. In the wilderness have ever dwelt the conscientious, the free spirits, as lords of the wilderness; but in the cities dwell the well-foddered, famous wise ones—the draught-beasts. For, always, do they draw, as asses—the PEOPLE’S carts! Not that I on that account upbraid them: but serving ones do they remain, and harnessed ones, even though they glitter in golden harness. And often have they been good servants and worthy of their hire. For thus saith virtue: “ If thou must be a servant, seek him unto whom thy service is most useful! The spirit and virtue of thy master shall advance by thou being his servant: thus wilt thou thyself advance with his spirit and virtue!” And verily, ye famous wise ones, ye servants of the people! Ye yourselves have advanced with the people’s spirit and virtue—and the people by you! To your honour do I say it! But the people ye remain for me, even with your virtues, the people with purblind eyes—the people who know not what SPIRIT is! Spirit is life which itself cutteth into life: by its own torture doth it increase its own knowledge,—did ye know that before? And the spirit’s happiness is this: to be anointed and consecrated with tears as a sacrificial victim,—did ye know that before? And the blindness of the blind one, and his seeking and groping, shall yet testify to the power of the sun into which he hath gazed,—did ye know that before? And with mountains shall the discerning one learn to BUILD! It is a small thing for the spirit to remove mountains,—did ye know that before? Ye know only the sparks of the spirit: but ye do not see the anvil which it is, and the cruelty of its hammer! Verily, ye know not the spirit’s pride! But still less could ye endure the spirit’s humility, should it ever want to speak! And never yet could ye cast your spirit into a pit of snow: ye are not hot enough for that! Thus are ye unaware, also, of the delight of its coldness. In all respects, however, ye make too familiar with the spirit; and out of wisdom have ye often made an almshouse and a hospital for bad poets. Ye are not eagles: thus have ye never experienced the happiness of the alarm of the spirit. And he who is not a bird should not camp above abysses.
Ye seem to me lukewarm ones: but coldly floweth all deep knowledge. Ice-cold are the innermost wells of the spirit: a refreshment to hot hands and handlers. Respectable do ye there stand, and stiff, and with straight backs, ye famous wise ones!—no strong wind or will impelleth you. Have ye ne’er seen a sail crossing the sea, rounded and inflated, and trembling with the violence of the wind? Like the sail trembling with the violence of the spirit, doth my wisdom cross the sea—my wild wisdom! But ye servants of the people, ye famous wise ones—how COULD ye go with me!— Thus spake Zarathustra. XXXI. THE NIGHT-SONG. ‘Tis night: now do all gushing fountains speak louder. And my soul also is a gushing fountain. ‘Tis night: now only do all songs of the loving ones awake. And my soul also is the song of a loving one. Something unappeased, unappeasable, is within me; it longeth to find expression. A craving for love is within me, which speaketh itself the language of love. Light am I: ah, that I were night! But it is my lonesomeness to be begirt with light! Ah, that I were dark and nightly! How would I suck at the breasts of light! And you yourselves would I bless, ye twinkling starlets and glow-worms aloft!—and would rejoice in the gifts of your light. But I live in mine own light, I drink again into myself the flames that break forth from me. I know not the happiness of the receiver; and oft have I dreamt that stealing must be more blessed than receiving. It is my poverty that my hand never ceaseth bestowing; it is mine envy that I see waiting eyes and the brightened nights of longing. Oh, the misery of all bestowers! Oh, the darkening of my sun! Oh, the craving to crave! Oh, the violent hunger in satiety! They take from me: but do I yet touch their soul? There is a gap ‘twixt giving and receiving; and the smallest gap hath finally to be bridged over. A hunger ariseth out of my beauty: I should like to injure those I illumine; I should like to rob those I have gifted:—thus do I hunger for wickedness. Withdrawing my hand when another hand already stretcheth out to it; hesitating like the cascade, which hesitateth even in its leap:—thus do I hunger for wickedness! Such revenge doth mine abundance think of: such mischief welleth out of my lonesomeness. My happiness in bestowing died in bestowing; my virtue became weary of itself by its abundance! He who ever bestoweth is in danger of losing his shame; to him who ever dispenseth, the hand and heart become callous by very dispensing. Mine eye no longer overfloweth for the shame of suppliants; my hand hath become too hard for the trembling of filled hands. Whence have gone the tears of mine eye, and the down of my heart? Oh, the lonesomeness of all bestowers! Oh, the silence of all shining ones! Many suns circle in desert space: to all that is dark do they speak with their light—but to me they are silent. Oh, this is the hostility of light to the shining one: unpityingly doth it pursue its course. Unfair to the shining one in its innermost heart, cold to the suns:—thus travelleth every sun. Like a storm do the suns pursue their courses: that is their travelling. Their inexorable will do they follow: that is their coldness. Oh, ye only is it, ye dark, nightly ones, that extract warmth from the shining ones! Oh, ye only drink milk and refreshment from the light’s udders! Ah, there is ice around me; my hand burneth with the iciness! Ah, there is thirst in me; it panteth after your thirst! ‘Tis night: alas, that I have to be light! And thirst for the nightly! And lonesomeness! ‘Tis night: now doth my longing break forth in me as a fountain,—for speech do I long. ‘Tis night: now do all gushing fountains speak louder. And my soul also is a gushing fountain. ‘Tis night: now do all songs of loving ones awake. And my soul also is the song of a loving one.— Thus sang Zarathustra. XXXII. THE DANCE-SONG. One evening went Zarathustra and his disciples through the forest; and when he sought for a well, lo, he lighted upon a green meadow peacefully surrounded with trees and bushes, where maidens were dancing together. As soon as the maidens recognised Zarathustra, they ceased dancing; Zarathustra, however, approached them with friendly mien and spake these words: Cease not your dancing, ye lovely maidens! No game-spoiler hath come to you with evil eye, no enemy of maidens. God’s advocate am I with the devil: he, however, is the spirit of gravity. How could I, ye light-footed ones, be hostile to divine dances? Or to maidens’ feet with fine ankles? To be sure, I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses. And even the little God may he find, who is dearest to maidens: beside the well lieth he quietly, with closed eyes. Verily, in broad daylight did he fall asleep, the sluggard! Had he perhaps chased butterflies too much?
Upbraid me not, ye beautiful dancers, when I chasten the little God somewhat! He will cry, certainly, and weep—but he is laughable even when weeping! And with tears in his eyes shall he ask you for a dance; and I myself will sing a song to his dance: A dance-song and satire on the spirit of gravity my supremest, powerfulest devil, who is said to be “ lord of the world.”— And this is the song that Zarathustra sang when Cupid and the maidens danced together: Of late did I gaze into thine eye, O Life! And into the unfathomable did I there seem to sink. But thou pulledst me out with a golden angle; derisively didst thou laugh when I called thee unfathomable. “ Such is the language of all fish,” saidst thou; “ what THEY do not fathom is unfathomable. But changeable am I only, and wild, and altogether a woman, and no virtuous one: Though I be called by you men the ‘profound one,’ or the ‘faithful one,’ ‘the eternal one,’ ‘the mysterious one.’ But ye men endow us always with your own virtues—alas, ye virtuous ones!” Thus did she laugh, the unbelievable one; but never do I believe her and her laughter, when she speaketh evil of herself. And when I talked face to face with my wild Wisdom, she said to me angrily: “ Thou willest, thou cravest, thou lovest; on that account alone dost thou PRAISE Life!” Then had I almost answered indignantly and told the truth to the angry one; and one cannot answer more indignantly than when one “ telleth the truth” to one’s Wisdom. For thus do things stand with us three. In my heart do I love only Life—and verily, most when I hate her! But that I am fond of Wisdom, and often too fond, is because she remindeth me very strongly of Life! She hath her eye, her laugh, and even her golden angle-rod: am I responsible for it that both are so alike? And when once Life asked me: “ Who is she then, this Wisdom?”—then said I eagerly: “ Ah, yes! Wisdom! One thirsteth for her and is not satisfied, one looketh through veils, one graspeth through nets. Is she beautiful? What do I know! But the oldest carps are still lured by her. Changeable is she, and wayward; often have I seen her bite her lip, and pass the comb against the grain of her hair. Perhaps she is wicked and false, and altogether a woman; but when she speaketh ill of herself, just then doth she seduce most.” When I had said this unto Life, then laughed she maliciously, and shut her eyes. “ Of whom dost thou speak?” said she. “ Perhaps of me? And if thou wert right—is it proper to say THAT in such wise to my face! But now, pray, speak also of thy Wisdom!” Ah, and now hast thou again opened thine eyes, O beloved Life! And into the unfathomable have I again seemed to sink.— Thus sang Zarathustra. But when the dance was over and the maidens had departed, he became sad. “ The sun hath been long set,” said he at last, “ the meadow is damp, and from the forest cometh coolness. An unknown presence is about me, and gazeth thoughtfully. What! Thou livest still, Zarathustra? Why? Wherefore? Whereby? Whither? Where? How? Is it not folly still to live?— Ah, my friends; the evening is it which thus interrogateth in me. Forgive me my sadness! Evening hath come on: forgive me that evening hath come on!” Thus sang Zarathustra. XXXIII. THE GRAVE-SONG. “ Yonder is the grave-island, the silent isle; yonder also are the graves of my youth. Thither will I carry an evergreen wreath of life.” Resolving thus in my heart, did I sail o’er the sea.— Oh, ye sights and scenes of my youth! Oh, all ye gleams of love, ye divine fleeting gleams! How could ye perish so soon for me! I think of you to-day as my dead ones. From you, my dearest dead ones, cometh unto me a sweet savour, heart-opening and melting. Verily, it convulseth and openeth the heart of the lone seafarer. Still am I the richest and most to be envied—I, the lonesomest one! For I HAVE POSSESSED you, and ye possess me still. Tell me: to whom hath there ever fallen such rosy apples from the tree as have fallen unto me? Still am I your love’s heir and heritage, blooming to your memory with many-hued, wild-growing virtues, O ye dearest ones! Ah, we were made to remain nigh unto each other, ye kindly strange marvels; and not like timid birds did ye come to me and my longing—nay, but as trusting ones to a trusting one! Yea, made for faithfulness, like me, and for fond eternities, must I now name you by your faithlessness, ye divine glances and fleeting gleams: no other name have I yet learnt. Verily, too early did ye die for me, ye fugitives. Yet did ye not flee from me, nor did I flee from you: innocent are we to each other in our faithlessness. To kill ME, did they strangle you, ye singing birds of my hopes! Yea, at you, ye dearest ones, did malice ever shoot its arrows—to hit my heart! And they hit it! Because ye were always my dearest, my possession and my possessedness: ON THAT ACCOUNT had ye to die young, and far too early!
At my most vulnerable point did they shoot the arrow—namely, at you, whose skin is like down—or more like the smile that dieth at a glance! But this word will I say unto mine enemies: What is all manslaughter in comparison with what ye have done unto me! Worse evil did ye do unto me than all manslaughter; the irretrievable did ye take from me:—thus do I speak unto you, mine enemies! Slew ye not my youth’s visions and dearest marvels! My playmates took ye from me, the blessed spirits! To their memory do I deposit this wreath and this curse. This curse upon you, mine enemies! Have ye not made mine eternal short, as a tone dieth away in a cold night! Scarcely, as the twinkle of divine eyes, did it come to me—as a fleeting gleam! Thus spake once in a happy hour my purity: “ Divine shall everything be unto me.” Then did ye haunt me with foul phantoms; ah, whither hath that happy hour now fled! “ All days shall be holy unto me”—so spake once the wisdom of my youth: verily, the language of a joyous wisdom! But then did ye enemies steal my nights, and sold them to sleepless torture: ah, whither hath that joyous wisdom now fled? Once did I long for happy auspices: then did ye lead an owl-monster across my path, an adverse sign. Ah, whither did my tender longing then flee? All loathing did I once vow to renounce: then did ye change my nigh ones and nearest ones into ulcerations. Ah, whither did my noblest vow then flee? As a blind one did I once walk in blessed ways: then did ye cast filth on the blind one’s course: and now is he disgusted with the old footpath. And when I performed my hardest task, and celebrated the triumph of my victories, then did ye make those who loved me call out that I then grieved them most. Verily, it was always your doing: ye embittered to me my best honey, and the diligence of my best bees. To my charity have ye ever sent the most impudent beggars; around my sympathy have ye ever crowded the incurably shameless. Thus have ye wounded the faith of my virtue. And when I offered my holiest as a sacrifice, immediately did your “ piety” put its fatter gifts beside it: so that my holiest suffocated in the fumes of your fat. And once did I want to dance as I had never yet danced: beyond all heavens did I want to dance. Then did ye seduce my favourite minstrel. And now hath he struck up an awful, melancholy air; alas, he tooted as a mournful horn to mine ear! Murderous minstrel, instrument of evil, most innocent instrument! Already did I stand prepared for the best dance: then didst thou slay my rapture with thy tones! Only in the dance do I know how to speak the parable of the highest things:—and now hath my grandest parable remained unspoken in my limbs! Unspoken and unrealised hath my highest hope remained! And there have perished for me all the visions and consolations of my youth! How did I ever bear it? How did I survive and surmount such wounds? How did my soul rise again out of those sepulchres? Yea, something invulnerable, unburiable is with me, something that would rend rocks asunder: it is called MY WILL. Silently doth it proceed, and unchanged throughout the years. Its course will it go upon my feet, mine old Will; hard of heart is its nature and invulnerable. Invulnerable am I only in my heel. Ever livest thou there, and art like thyself, thou most patient one! Ever hast thou burst all shackles of the tomb! In thee still liveth also the unrealisedness of my youth; and as life and youth sittest thou here hopeful on the yellow ruins of graves. Yea, thou art still for me the demolisher of all graves: Hail to thee, my Will! And only where there are graves are there resurrections.— Thus sang Zarathustra. XXXIV. SELF-SURPASSING. “ Will to Truth” do ye call it, ye wisest ones, that which impelleth you and maketh you ardent? Will for the thinkableness of all being: thus do I call your will! All being would ye MAKE thinkable: for ye doubt with good reason whether it be already thinkable. But it shall accommodate and bend itself to you! So willeth your will. Smooth shall it become and subject to the spirit, as its mirror and reflection. That is your entire will, ye wisest ones, as a Will to Power; and even when ye speak of good and evil, and of estimates of value. Ye would still create a world before which ye can bow the knee: such is your ultimate hope and ecstasy. The ignorant, to be sure, the people—they are like a river on which a boat floateth along: and in the boat sit the estimates of value, solemn and disguised. Your will and your valuations have ye put on the river of becoming; it betrayeth unto me an old Will to Power, what is believed by the people as good and evil. It was ye, ye wisest ones, who put such guests in this boat, and gave them pomp and proud names—ye and your ruling Will! Onward the river now carrieth your boat: it MUST carry it. A small matter if the rough wave foameth and angrily resisteth its keel! It is not the river that is your danger and the end of your good and evil, ye wisest ones: but that Will itself, the Will to Power—the unexhausted, procreating life-will. But that ye may understand my gospel of good and evil, for that purpose will I tell you my gospel of life, and of the nature of all living things. The living thing did I follow; I walked in the broadest and narrowest paths to learn its nature. With a hundred-faced mirror did I catch its glance when its mouth was shut, so that its eye might speak unto me. And its eye spake unto me.
But wherever I found living things, there heard I also the language of obedience. All living things are obeying things. And this heard I secondly: Whatever cannot obey itself, is commanded. Such is the nature of living things. This, however, is the third thing which I heard—namely, that commanding is more difficult than obeying. And not only because the commander beareth the burden of all obeyers, and because this burden readily crusheth him:— An attempt and a risk seemed all commanding unto me; and whenever it commandeth, the living thing risketh itself thereby. Yea, even when it commandeth itself, then also must it atone for its commanding. Of its own law must it become the judge and avenger and victim. How doth this happen! so did I ask myself. What persuadeth the living thing to obey, and command, and even be obedient in commanding? Hearken now unto my word, ye wisest ones! Test it seriously, whether I have crept into the heart of life itself, and into the roots of its heart! Wherever I found a living thing, there found I Will to Power; and even in the will of the servant found I the will to be master. That to the stronger the weaker shall serve—thereto persuadeth he his will who would be master over a still weaker one. That delight alone he is unwilling to forego. And as the lesser surrendereth himself to the greater that he may have delight and power over the least of all, so doth even the greatest surrender himself, and staketh—life, for the sake of power. It is the surrender of the greatest to run risk and danger, and play dice for death. And where there is sacrifice and service and love-glances, there also is the will to be master. By by-ways doth the weaker then slink into the fortress, and into the heart of the mightier one—and there stealeth power. And this secret spake Life herself unto me. “ Behold,” said she, “ I am that WHICH MUST EVER SURPASS ITSELF. To be sure, ye call it will to procreation, or impulse towards a goal, towards the higher, remoter, more manifold: but all that is one and the same secret. Rather would I succumb than disown this one thing; and verily, where there is succumbing and leaf-falling, lo, there doth Life sacrifice itself—for power! That I have to be struggle, and becoming, and purpose, and cross-purpose—ah, he who divineth my will, divineth well also on what CROOKED paths it hath to tread! Whatever I create, and however much I love it,—soon must I be adverse to it, and to my love: so willeth my will. And even thou, discerning one, art only a path and footstep of my will: verily, my Will to Power walketh even on the feet of thy Will to Truth! He certainly did not hit the truth who shot at it the formula: ‘Will to existence’: that will—doth not exist! For what is not, cannot will; that, however, which is in existence—how could it still strive for existence! Only where there is life, is there also will: not, however, Will to Life, but—so teach I thee—Will to Power! Much is reckoned higher than life itself by the living one; but out of the very reckoning speaketh—the Will to Power!”— Thus did Life once teach me: and thereby, ye wisest ones, do I solve you the riddle of your hearts. Verily, I say unto you: good and evil which would be everlasting—it doth not exist! Of its own accord must it ever surpass itself anew. With your values and formulae of good and evil, ye exercise power, ye valuing ones: and that is your secret love, and the sparkling, trembling, and overflowing of your souls. But a stronger power groweth out of your values, and a new surpassing: by it breaketh egg and egg-shell. And he who hath to be a creator in good and evil—verily, he hath first to be a destroyer, and break values in pieces. Thus doth the greatest evil pertain to the greatest good: that, however, is the creating good.— Let us SPEAK thereof, ye wisest ones, even though it be bad. To be silent is worse; all suppressed truths become poisonous. And let everything break up which—can break up by our truths! Many a house is still to be built!— Thus spake Zarathustra. XXXV. THE SUBLIME ONES. Calm is the bottom of my sea: who would guess that it hideth droll monsters! Unmoved is my depth: but it sparkleth with swimming enigmas and laughters. A sublime one saw I to-day, a solemn one, a penitent of the spirit: Oh, how my soul laughed at his ugliness! With upraised breast, and like those who draw in their breath: thus did he stand, the sublime one, and in silence: O’erhung with ugly truths, the spoil of his hunting, and rich in torn raiment; many thorns also hung on him—but I saw no rose. Not yet had he learned laughing and beauty. Gloomy did this hunter return from the forest of knowledge. From the fight with wild beasts returned he home: but even yet a wild beast gazeth out of his seriousness—an unconquered wild beast! As a tiger doth he ever stand, on the point of springing; but I do not like those strained souls; ungracious is my taste towards all those self-engrossed ones. And ye tell me, friends, that there is to be no dispute about taste and tasting? But all life is a dispute about taste and tasting! Taste: that is weight at the same time, and scales and weigher; and alas for every living thing that would live without dispute about weight and scales and weigher!
Should he become weary of his sublimeness, this sublime one, then only will his beauty begin—and then only will I taste him and find him savoury. And only when he turneth away from himself will he o’erleap his own shadow—and verily! into HIS sun. Far too long did he sit in the shade; the cheeks of the penitent of the spirit became pale; he almost starved on his expectations. Contempt is still in his eye, and loathing hideth in his mouth. To be sure, he now resteth, but he hath not yet taken rest in the sunshine. As the ox ought he to do; and his happiness should smell of the earth, and not of contempt for the earth. As a white ox would I like to see him, which, snorting and lowing, walketh before the plough-share: and his lowing should also laud all that is earthly! Dark is still his countenance; the shadow of his hand danceth upon it. O’ershadowed is still the sense of his eye. His deed itself is still the shadow upon him: his doing obscureth the doer. Not yet hath he overcome his deed. To be sure, I love in him the shoulders of the ox: but now do I want to see also the eye of the angel. Also his hero-will hath he still to unlearn: an exalted one shall he be, and not only a sublime one:—the ether itself should raise him, the will-less one! He hath subdued monsters, he hath solved enigmas. But he should also redeem his monsters and enigmas; into heavenly children should he transform them. As yet hath his knowledge not learned to smile, and to be without jealousy; as yet hath his gushing passion not become calm in beauty. Verily, not in satiety shall his longing cease and disappear, but in beauty! Gracefulness belongeth to the munificence of the magnanimous. His arm across his head: thus should the hero repose; thus should he also surmount his repose. But precisely to the hero is BEAUTY the hardest thing of all. Unattainable is beauty by all ardent wills. A little more, a little less: precisely this is much here, it is the most here. To stand with relaxed muscles and with unharnessed will: that is the hardest for all of you, ye sublime ones! When power becometh gracious and descendeth into the visible—I call such condescension, beauty. And from no one do I want beauty so much as from thee, thou powerful one: let thy goodness be thy last self-conquest. All evil do I accredit to thee: therefore do I desire of thee the good. Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings, who think themselves good because they have crippled paws! The virtue of the pillar shalt thou strive after: more beautiful doth it ever become, and more graceful—but internally harder and more sustaining—the higher it riseth. Yea, thou sublime one, one day shalt thou also be beautiful, and hold up the mirror to thine own beauty. Then will thy soul thrill with divine desires; and there will be adoration even in thy vanity! For this is the secret of the soul: when the hero hath abandoned it, then only approacheth it in dreams—the superhero.— Thus spake Zarathustra. XXXVI. THE LAND OF CULTURE. Too far did I fly into the future: a horror seized upon me. And when I looked around me, lo! there time was my sole contemporary. Then did I fly backwards, homewards—and always faster. Thus did I come unto you, ye present-day men, and into the land of culture. For the first time brought I an eye to see you, and good desire: verily, with longing in my heart did I come. But how did it turn out with me? Although so alarmed—I had yet to laugh! Never did mine eye see anything so motley-coloured! I laughed and laughed, while my foot still trembled, and my heart as well. “ Here forsooth, is the home of all the paintpots,”—said I. With fifty patches painted on faces and limbs—so sat ye there to mine astonishment, ye present-day men! And with fifty mirrors around you, which flattered your play of colours, and repeated it! Verily, ye could wear no better masks, ye present-day men, than your own faces! Who could—RECOGNISE you! Written all over with the characters of the past, and these characters also pencilled over with new characters—thus have ye concealed yourselves well from all decipherers! And though one be a trier of the reins, who still believeth that ye have reins! Out of colours ye seem to be baked, and out of glued scraps. All times and peoples gaze divers-coloured out of your veils; all customs and beliefs speak divers-coloured out of your gestures. He who would strip you of veils and wrappers, and paints and gestures, would just have enough left to scare the crows. Verily, I myself am the scared crow that once saw you naked, and without paint; and I flew away when the skeleton ogled at me. Rather would I be a day-labourer in the nether-world, and among the shades of the by-gone!—Fatter and fuller than ye, are forsooth the nether-worldlings! This, yea this, is bitterness to my bowels, that I can neither endure you naked nor clothed, ye present-day men! All that is unhomelike in the future, and whatever maketh strayed birds shiver, is verily more homelike and familiar than your “ reality.” For thus speak ye: “ Real are we wholly, and without faith and superstition”: thus do ye plume yourselves—alas! even without plumes!
Indeed, how would yeLE to believe, ye divers-coloured ones!—ye who are pictures of all that hath ever been believed! Perambulating refutations are ye, of belief itself, and a dislocation of all thought. UNTRUSTWORTHY ONES: thus do I call you, ye real ones! All periods prate against one another in your spirits; and the dreams and pratings of all periods were even realer than your awakeness! Unfruitful are ye: THEREFORE do ye lack belief. But he who had to create, had always his presaging dreams and astral premonitions—and believed in believing!— Half-open doors are ye, at which grave-diggers wait. And this is YOUR reality: “ Everything deserveth to perish.” Alas, how ye stand there before me, ye unfruitful ones; how lean your ribs! And many of you surely have had knowledge thereof. Many a one hath said: “ There hath surely a God filched something from me secretly whilst I slept? Verily, enough to make a girl for himself therefrom! “ Amazing is the poverty of my ribs!” thus hath spoken many a present-day man. Yea, ye are laughable unto me, ye present-day men! And especially when ye marvel at yourselves! And woe unto me if I could not laugh at your marvelling, and had to swallow all that is repugnant in your platters! As it is, however, I will make lighter of you, since I have to carry what is heavy; and what matter if beetles and May-bugs also alight on my load! Verily, it shall not on that account become heavier to me! And not from you, ye present-day men, shall my great weariness arise.— Ah, whither shall I now ascend with my longing! From all mountains do I look out for fatherlands and motherlands. But a home have I found nowhere: unsettled am I in all cities, and decamping at all gates. Alien to me, and a mockery, are the present-day men, to whom of late my heart impelled me; and exiled am I from fatherlands and motherlands. Thus do I love only my CHILDREN’S LAND, the undiscovered in the remotest sea: for it do I bid my sails search and search. Unto my children will I make amends for being the child of my fathers: and unto all the future—for THIS present-day!— Thus spake Zarathustra. XXXVII. IMMACULATE PERCEPTION. When yester-eve the moon arose, then did I fancy it about to bear a sun: so broad and teeming did it lie on the horizon. But it was a liar with its pregnancy; and sooner will I believe in the man in the moon than in the woman. To be sure, little of a man is he also, that timid night-reveller. Verily, with a bad conscience doth he stalk over the roofs. For he is covetous and jealous, the monk in the moon; covetous of the earth, and all the joys of lovers. Nay, I like him not, that tom-cat on the roofs! Hateful unto me are all that slink around half-closed windows! Piously and silently doth he stalk along on the star-carpets:—but I like no light-treading human feet, on which not even a spur jingleth. Every honest one’s step speaketh; the cat however, stealeth along over the ground. Lo! cat-like doth the moon come along, and dishonestly.— This parable speak I unto you sentimental dissemblers, unto you, the “ pure discerners!” You do I call—covetous ones! Also ye love the earth, and the earthly: I have divined you well!—but shame is in your love, and a bad conscience—ye are like the moon! To despise the earthly hath your spirit been persuaded, but not your bowels: these, however, are the strongest in you! And now is your spirit ashamed to be at the service of your bowels, and goeth by-ways and lying ways to escape its own shame. “ That would be the highest thing for me”—so saith your lying spirit unto itself—“ to gaze upon life without desire, and not like the dog, with hanging-out tongue: To be happy in gazing: with dead will, free from the grip and greed of selfishness—cold and ashy-grey all over, but with intoxicated moon-eyes! That would be the dearest thing to me”—thus doth the seduced one seduce himself,—“ to love the earth as the moon loveth it, and with the eye only to feel its beauty. And this do I call IMMACULATE perception of all things: to want nothing else from them, but to be allowed to lie before them as a mirror with a hundred facets.”— Oh, ye sentimental dissemblers, ye covetous ones! Ye lack innocence in your desire: and now do ye defame desiring on that account! Verily, not as creators, as procreators, or as jubilators do ye love the earth! Where is innocence? Where there is will to procreation. And he who seeketh to create beyond himself, hath for me the purest will. Where is beauty? Where I MUST WILL with my whole Will; where I will love and perish, that an image may not remain merely an image. Loving and perishing: these have rhymed from eternity. Will to love: that is to be ready also for death. Thus do I speak unto you cowards! But now doth your emasculated ogling profess to be “ contemplation!” And that which can be examined with cowardly eyes is to be christened “ beautiful!” Oh, ye violators of noble names! But it shall be your curse, ye immaculate ones, ye pure discerners, that ye shall never bring forth, even though ye lie broad and teeming on the horizon! Verily, ye fill your mouth with noble words: and we are to believe that your heart overfloweth, ye cozeners? But MY words are poor, contemptible, stammering words: gladly do I pick up what falleth from the table at your repasts. Yet still can I say therewith the truth—to dissemblers! Yea, my fish-bones, shells, and prickly leaves shall—tickle the noses of dissemblers!
Bad air is always about you and your repasts: your lascivious thoughts, your lies, and secrets are indeed in the air! Dare only to believe in yourselves—in yourselves and in your inward parts! He who doth not believe in himself always lieth. A God’s mask have ye hung in front of you, ye “ pure ones”: into a God’s mask hath your execrable coiling snake crawled. Verily ye deceive, ye “ contemplative ones!” Even Zarathustra was once the dupe of your godlike exterior; he did not divine the serpent’s coil with which it was stuffed. A God’s soul, I once thought I saw playing in your games, ye pure discerners! No better arts did I once dream of than your arts! Serpents’ filth and evil odour, the distance concealed from me: and that a lizard’s craft prowled thereabouts lasciviously. But I came NIGH unto you: then came to me the day,—and now cometh it to you,—at an end is the moon’s love affair! See there! Surprised and pale doth it stand—before the rosy dawn! For already she cometh, the glowing one,—HER love to the earth cometh! Innocence and creative desire, is all solar love! See there, how she cometh impatiently over the sea! Do ye not feel the thirst and the hot breath of her love? At the sea would she suck, and drink its depths to her height: now riseth the desire of the sea with its thousand breasts. Kissed and sucked WOULD it be by the thirst of the sun; vapour WOULD it become, and height, and path of light, and light itself! Verily, like the sun do I love life, and all deep seas. And this meaneth TO ME knowledge: all that is deep shall ascend—to my height!— Thus spake Zarathustra. XXXVIII. SCHOLARS. When I lay asleep, then did a sheep eat at the ivy-wreath on my head,—it ate, and said thereby: “ Zarathustra is no longer a scholar.” It said this, and went away clumsily and proudly. A child told it to me. I like to lie here where the children play, beside the ruined wall, among thistles and red poppies. A scholar am I still to the children, and also to the thistles and red poppies. Innocent are they, even in their wickedness. But to the sheep I am no longer a scholar: so willeth my lot—blessings upon it! For this is the truth: I have departed from the house of the scholars, and the door have I also slammed behind me. Too long did my soul sit hungry at their table: not like them have I got the knack of investigating, as the knack of nut-cracking. Freedom do I love, and the air over fresh soil; rather would I sleep on ox-skins than on their honours and dignities. I am too hot and scorched with mine own thought: often is it ready to take away my breath. Then have I to go into the open air, and away from all dusty rooms. But they sit cool in the cool shade: they want in everything to be merely spectators, and they avoid sitting where the sun burneth on the steps. Like those who stand in the street and gape at the passers-by: thus do they also wait, and gape at the thoughts which others have thought. Should one lay hold of them, then do they raise a dust like flour-sacks, and involuntarily: but who would divine that their dust came from corn, and from the yellow delight of the summer fields? When they give themselves out as wise, then do their petty sayings and truths chill me: in their wisdom there is often an odour as if it came from the swamp; and verily, I have even heard the frog croak in it! Clever are they—they have dexterous fingers: what doth MY simplicity pretend to beside their multiplicity! All threading and knitting and weaving do their fingers understand: thus do they make the hose of the spirit! Good clockworks are they: only be careful to wind them up properly! Then do they indicate the hour without mistake, and make a modest noise thereby. Like millstones do they work, and like pestles: throw only seed-corn unto them!—they know well how to grind corn small, and make white dust out of it. They keep a sharp eye on one another, and do not trust each other the best. Ingenious in little artifices, they wait for those whose knowledge walketh on lame feet,—like spiders do they wait. I saw them always prepare their poison with precaution; and always did they put glass gloves on their fingers in doing so. They also know how to play with false dice; and so eagerly did I find them playing, that they perspired thereby. We are alien to each other, and their virtues are even more repugnant to my taste than their falsehoods and false dice. And when I lived with them, then did I live above them. Therefore did they take a dislike to me. They want to hear nothing of any one walking above their heads; and so they put wood and earth and rubbish betwixt me and their heads. Thus did they deafen the sound of my tread: and least have I hitherto been heard by the most learned. All mankind’s faults and weaknesses did they put betwixt themselves and me:—they call it “ false ceiling” in their houses. But nevertheless I walk with my thOVE their heads; and even should I walk on mine own errors, still would I be above them and their heads.
For men are NOT equal: so speaketh justice. And what I will, THEY may not will!— Thus spake Zarathustra. XXXIX. POETS. “ Since I have known the body better”—said Zarathustra to one of his disciples—“ the spirit hath only been to me symbolically spirit; and all the ‘imperishable’—that is also but a simile.” “ So have I heard thee say once before,” answered the disciple, “ and then thou addedst: ‘But the poets lie too much.’ Why didst thou say that the poets lie too much?” “ Why?” said Zarathustra. “ Thou askest why? I do not belong to those who may be asked after their Why. Is my experience but of yesterday? It is long ago that I experienced the reasons for mine opinions. Should I not have to be a cask of memory, if I also wanted to have my reasons with me? It is already too much for me even to retain mine opinions; and many a bird flieth away. And sometimes, also, do I find a fugitive creature in my dovecote, which is alien to me, and trembleth when I lay my hand upon it. But what did Zarathustra once say unto thee? That the poets lie too much?—But Zarathustra also is a poet. Believest thou that he there spake the truth? Why dost thou believe it?” The disciple answered: “ I believe in Zarathustra.” But Zarathustra shook his head and smiled.— Belief doth not sanctify me, said he, least of all the belief in myself. But granting that some one did say in all seriousness that the poets lie too much: he was right—WE do lie too much. We also know too little, and are bad learners: so we are obliged to lie. And which of us poets hath not adulterated his wine? Many a poisonous hotchpotch hath evolved in our cellars: many an indescribable thing hath there been done. And because we know little, therefore are we pleased from the heart with the poor in spirit, especially when they are young women! And even of those things are we desirous, which old women tell one another in the evening. This do we call the eternally feminine in us. And as if there were a special secret access to knowledge, which CHOKETH UP for those who learn anything, so do we believe in the people and in their “ wisdom.” This, however, do all poets believe: that whoever pricketh up his ears when lying in the grass or on lonely slopes, learneth something of the things that are betwixt heaven and earth. And if there come unto them tender emotions, then do the poets always think that nature herself is in love with them: And that she stealeth to their ear to whisper secrets into it, and amorous flatteries: of this do they plume and pride themselves, before all mortals! Ah, there are so many things betwixt heaven and earth of which only the poets have dreamed! And especOVE the heavens: for all Gods are poet-symbolisations, poet-sophistications! Verily, ever are we drawn aloft—that is, to the realm of the clouds: on these do we set our gaudy puppets, and then call them Gods and Supermen:— Are not they light enough for those chairs!—all these Gods and Supermen?— Ah, how I am weary of all the inadequate that is insisted on as actual! Ah, how I am weary of the poets! When Zarathustra so spake, his disciple resented it, but was silent. And Zarathustra also was silent; and his eye directed itself inwardly, as if it gazed into the far distance. At last he sighed and drew breath.— I am of to-day and heretofore, said he thereupon; but something is in me that is of the morrow, and the day following, and the hereafter. I became weary of the poets, of the old and of the new: superficial are they all unto me, and shallow seas. They did not think sufficiently into the depth; therefore their feeling did not reach to the bottom. Some sensation of voluptuousness and some sensation of tedium: these have as yet been their best contemplation. Ghost-breathing and ghost-whisking, seemeth to me all the jingle-jangling of their harps; what have they known hitherto of the fervour of tones!— They are also not pure enough for me: they all muddle their water that it may seem deep. And fain would they thereby prove themselves reconcilers: but mediaries and mixers are they unto me, and half-and-half, and impure!— Ah, I cast indeed my net into their sea, and meant to catch good fish; but always did I draw up the head of some ancient God. Thus did the sea give a stone to the hungry one. And they themselves may well originate from the sea. Certainly, one findeth pearls in them: thereby they are the more like hard molluscs. And instead of a soul, I have often found in them salt slime. They have learned from the sea also its vanity: is not the sea the peacock of peacocks? Even before the ugliest of all buffaloes doth it spread out its tail; never doth it tire of its lace-fan of silver and silk. Disdainfully doth the buffalo glance thereat, nigh to the sand with its soul, nigher still to the thicket, nighest, however, to the swamp.
What is beauty and sea and peacock-splendour to it! This parable I speak unto the poets. Verily, their spirit itself is the peacock of peacocks, and a sea of vanity! Spectators, seeketh the spirit of the poet—should they even be buffaloes!— But of this spirit became I weary; and I see the time coming when it will become weary of itself. Yea, changed have I seen the poets, and their glance turned towards themselves. Penitents of the spirit have I seen appearing; they grew out of the poets.— Thus spake Zarathustra. XL. GREAT EVENTS. There is an isle in the sea—not far from the Happy Isles of Zarathustra—on which a volcano ever smoketh; of which isle the people, and especially the old women amongst them, say that it is placed as a rock before the gate of the nether-world; but that through the volcano itself the narrow way leadeth downwards which conducteth to this gate. Now about the time that Zarathustra sojourned on the Happy Isles, it happened that a ship anchored at the isle on which standeth the smoking mountain, and the crew went ashore to shoot rabbits. About the noontide hour, however, when the captain and his men were together again, they saw suddenly a man coming towards them through the air, and a voice said distinctly: “ It is time! It is the highest time!” But when the figure was nearest to them (it flew past quickly, however, like a shadow, in the direction of the volcano), then did they recognise with the greatest surprise that it was Zarathustra; for they had all seen him before except the captain himself, and they loved him as the people love: in such wise that love and awe were combined in equal degree. “ Behold!” said the old helmsman, “ there goeth Zarathustra to hell!” About the same time that these sailors landed on the fire-isle, there was a rumour that Zarathustra had disappeared; and when his friends were asked about it, they said that he had gone on board a ship by night, without saying whither he was going. Thus there arose some uneasiness. After three days, however, there came the story of the ship’s crew in addition to this uneasiness—and then did all the people say that the devil had taken Zarathustra. His disciples laughed, sure enough, at this talk; and one of them said even: “ Sooner would I believe that Zarathustra hath taken the devil.” But at the bottom of their hearts they were all full of anxiety and longing: so their joy was great when on the fifth day Zarathustra appeared amongst them. And this is the account of Zarathustra’s interview with the fire-dog: The earth, said he, hath a skin; and this skin hath diseases. One of these diseases, for example, is called “ man.” And another of these diseases is called “ the fire-dog”: concerning HIM men have greatly deceived themselves, and let themselves be deceived. To fathom this mystery did I go o’er the sea; and I have seen the truth naked, verily! barefooted up to the neck. Now do I know how it is concerning the fire-dog; and likewise concerning all the spouting and subversive devils, of which not only old women are afraid. “ Up with thee, fire-dog, out of thy depth!” cried I, “ and confess how deep that depth is! Whence cometh that which thou snortest up? Thou drinkest copiously at the sea: that doth thine embittered eloquence betray! In sooth, for a dog of the depth, thou takest thy nourishment too much from the surface! At the most, I regard thee as the ventriloquist of the earth: and ever, when I have heard subversive and spouting devils speak, I have found them like thee: embittered, mendacious, and shallow. Ye understand how to roar and obscure with ashes! Ye are the best braggarts, and have sufficiently learned the art of making dregs boil. Where ye are, there must always be dregs at hand, and much that is spongy, hollow, and compressed: it wanteth to have freedom. ‘Freedom’ ye all roar most eagerly: but I have unlearned the belief in ‘great events,’ when there is much roaring and smoke about them. And believe me, friend Hullabaloo! The greatest events—are not our noisiest, but our stillest hours. Not around the inventors of new noise, but around the inventors of new values, doth the world revolve; INAUDIBLY it revolveth. And just own to it! Little had ever taken place when thy noise and smoke passed away. What, if a city did become a mummy, and a statue lay in the mud! And this do I say also to the o’erthrowers of statues: It is certainly the greatest folly to throw salt into the sea, and statues into the mud. In the mud of your contempt lay the statue: but it is just its law, that out of contempt, its life and living beauty grow again! With diviner features doth it now arise, seducing by its suffering; and verily! it will yet thank you for o’erthrowing it, ye subverters! This counsel, however, do I counsel to kings and churches, and to all that is weak with age or virtue—let yourselves be o’erthrown! That ye may again come to life, and that virtue—may come to you!—” Thus spake I before the fire-dog: then did he interrupt me sullenly, and asked: “ Church? What is that?” “ Church?” answered I, “ that is a kind of state, and indeed the most mendacious. But remain quiet, thou dissembling dog! Thou surely knowest thine own species best! Like thyself the state is a dissembling dog; like thee doth it like to speak with smoke and roaring—to make believe, like thee, that it speaketh out of the heart of things. For it seeketh by all means to be the most important creature on earth, the state; and people think it so.”
When I had said this, the fire-dog acted as if mad with envy. “ What!” cried he, “ the most important creature on earth? And people think it so?” And so much vapour and terrible voices came out of his throat, that I thought he would choke with vexation and envy. At last he became calmer and his panting subsided; as soon, however, as he was quiet, I said laughingly: “ Thou art angry, fire-dog: so I am in the right about thee! And that I may also maintain the right, hear the story of another fire-dog; he speaketh actually out of the heart of the earth. Gold doth his breath exhale, and golden rain: so doth his heart desire. What are ashes and smoke and hot dregs to him! Laughter flitteth from him like a variegated cloud; adverse is he to thy gargling and spewing and grips in the bowels! The gold, however, and the laughter—these doth he take out of the heart of the earth: for, that thou mayst know it,—THE HEART OF THE EARTH IS OF GOLD.” When the fire-dog heard this, he could no longer endure to listen to me. Abashed did he draw in his tail, said “ bow-wow!” in a cowed voice, and crept down into his cave.— Thus told Zarathustra. His disciples, however, hardly listened to him: so great was their eagerness to tell him about the sailors, the rabbits, and the flying man. “ What am I to think of it!” said Zarathustra. “ Am I indeed a ghost? But it may have been my shadow. Ye have surely heard something of the Wanderer and his Shadow? One thing, however, is certain: I must keep a tighter hold of it; otherwise it will spoil my reputation.” And once more Zarathustra shook his head and wondered. “ What am I to think of it!” said he once more. “ Why did the ghost cry: ‘It is time! It is the highest time!’ For WHAT is it then—the highest time?”— Thus spake Zarathustra. XLI. THE SOOTHSAYER. “ -And I saw a great sadness come over mankind. The best turned weary of their works. A doctrine appeared, a faith ran beside it: ‘All is empty, all is alike, all hath been!’ And from all hills there re-echoed: ‘All is empty, all is alike, all hath been!’ To be sure we have harvested: but why have all our fruits become rotten and brown? What was it fell last night from the evil moon? In vain was all our labour, poison hath our wine become, the evil eye hath singed yellow our fields and hearts. Arid have we all become; and fire falling upon us, then do we turn dust like ashes:—yea, the fire itself have we made aweary. All our fountains have dried up, even the sea hath receded. All the ground trieth to gape, but the depth will not swallow! ‘Alas! where is there still a sea in which one could be drowned?’ so soundeth our plaint—across shallow swamps. Verily, even for dying have we become too weary; now do we keep awake and live on—in sepulchres.” Thus did Zarathustra hear a soothsayer speak; and the foreboding touched his heart and transformed him. Sorrowfully did he go about and wearily; and he became like unto those of whom the soothsayer had spoken.— Verily, said he unto his disciples, a little while, and there cometh the long twilight. Alas, how shall I preserve my light through it! That it may not smother in this sorrowfulness! To remoter worlds shall it be a light, and also to remotest nights! Thus did Zarathustra go about grieved in his heart, and for three days he did not take any meat or drink: he had no rest, and lost his speech. At last it came to pass that he fell into a deep sleep. His disciples, however, sat around him in long night-watches, and waited anxiously to see if he would awake, and speak again, and recover from his affliction. And this is the discourse that Zarathustra spake when he awoke; his voice, however, came unto his disciples as from afar: Hear, I pray you, the dream that I dreamed, my friends, and help me to divine its meaning! A riddle is it still unto me, this dream; the meaning is hidden in it and encaged, and doth not yet fly above it on free pinions. All life had I renounced, so I dreamed. Night-watchman and grave-guardian had I become, aloft, in the lone mountain-fortress of Death. There did I guard his coffins: full stood the musty vaults of those trophies of victory. Out of glass coffins did vanquished life gaze upon me. The odour of dust-covered eternities did I breathe: sultry and dust-covered lay my soul. And who could have aired his soul there! Brightness of midnight was ever around me; lonesomeness cowered beside her; and as a third, death-rattle stillness, the worst of my female friends. Keys did I carry, the rustiest of all keys; and I knew how to open with them the most creaking of all gates. Like a bitterly angry croaking ran the sound through the long corridors when the leaves of the gate opened: ungraciously did this bird cry, unwillingly was it awakened. But more frightful even, and more heart-strangling was it, when it again became silent and still all around, and I alone sat in that malignant silence. Thus did time pass with me, and slip by, if time there still was: what do I know thereof! But at last there happened that which awoke me. Thrice did there peal peals at the gate like thunders, thrice did the vaults resound and howl again: then did I go to the gate.
Alpa! cried I, who carrieth his ashes unto the mountain? Alpa! Alpa! who carrieth his ashes unto the mountain? And I pressed the key, and pulled at the gate, and exerted myself. But not a finger’s-breadth was it yet open: Then did a roaring wind tear the folds apart: whistling, whizzing, and piercing, it threw unto me a black coffin. And in the roaring, and whistling, and whizzing the coffin burst up, and spouted out a thousand peals of laughter. And a thousand caricatures of children, angels, owls, fools, and child-sized butterflies laughed and mocked, and roared at me. Fearfully was I terrified thereby: it prostrated me. And I cried with horror as I ne’er cried before. But mine own crying awoke me:—and I came to myself.— Thus did Zarathustra relate his dream, and then was silent: for as yet he knew not the interpretation thereof. But the disciple whom he loved most arose quickly, seized Zarathustra’s hand, and said: “ Thy life itself interpreteth unto us this dream, O Zarathustra! Art thou not thyself the wind with shrill whistling, which bursteth open the gates of the fortress of Death? Art thou not thyself the coffin full of many-hued malices and angel-caricatures of life? Verily, like a thousand peals of children’s laughter cometh Zarathustra into all sepulchres, laughing at those night-watchmen and grave-guardians, and whoever else rattleth with sinister keys. With thy laughter wilt thou frighten and prostrate them: fainting and recovering will demonstrate thy power over them. And when the long twilight cometh and the mortal weariness, even then wilt thou not disappear from our firmament, thou advocate of life! New stars hast thou made us see, and new nocturnal glories: verily, laughter itself hast thou spread out over us like a many-hued canopy. Now will children’s laughter ever from coffins flow; now will a strong wind ever come victoriously unto all mortal weariness: of this thou art thyself the pledge and the prophet! Verily, THEY THEMSELVES DIDST THOU DREAM, thine enemies: that was thy sorest dream. But as thou awokest from them and camest to thyself, so shall they awaken from themselves—and come unto thee!” Thus spake the disciple; and all the others then thronged around Zarathustra, grasped him by the hands, and tried to persuade him to leave his bed and his sadness, and return unto them. Zarathustra, however, sat upright on his couch, with an absent look. Like one returning from long foreign sojourn did he look on his disciples, and examined their features; but still he knew them not. When, however, they raised him, and set him upon his feet, behold, all on a sudden his eye changed; he understood everything that had happened, stroked his beard, and said with a strong voice: “ Well! this hath just its time; but see to it, my disciples, that we have a good repast; and without delay! Thus do I mean to make amends for bad dreams! The soothsayer, however, shall eat and drink at my side: and verily, I will yet show him a sea in which he can drown himself!”— Thus spake Zarathustra. Then did he gaze long into the face of the disciple who had been the dream-interpreter, and shook his head.— XLII. REDEMPTION. When Zarathustra went one day over the great bridge, then did the cripples and beggars surround him, and a hunchback spake thus unto him: “ Behold, Zarathustra! Even the people learn from thee, and acquire faith in thy teaching: but for them to believe fully in thee, one thing is still needful—thou must first of all convince us cripples! Here hast thou now a fine selection, and verily, an opportunity with more than one forelock! The blind canst thou heal, and make the lame run; and from him who hath too much behind, couldst thou well, also, take away a little;—that, I think, would be the right method to make the cripples believe in Zarathustra!” Zarathustra, however, answered thus unto him who so spake: When one taketh his hump from the hunchback, then doth one take from him his spirit—so do the people teach. And when one giveth the blind man eyes, then doth he see too many bad things on the earth: so that he curseth him who healed him. He, however, who maketh the lame man run, inflicteth upon him the greatest injury; for hardly can he run, when his vices run away with him—so do the people teach concerning cripples. And why should not Zarathustra also learn from the people, when the people learn from Zarathustra? It is, however, the smallest thing unto me since I have been amongst men, to see one person lacking an eye, another an ear, and a third a leg, and that others have lost the tongue, or the nose, or the head. I see and have seen worse things, and divers things so hideous, that I should neither like to speak of all matters, nor even keep silent about some of them: namely, men who lack everything, except that they have too much of one thing—men who are nothing more than a big eye, or a big mouth, or a big belly, or something else big,—reversed cripples, I call such men. And when I came out of my solitude, and for the first time passed over this bridge, then I could not trust mine eyes, but looked again and again, and said at last: “ That is an ear! An ear as big as a man!” I looked still more attentively—and actually there did move under the ear something that was pitiably small and poor and slim. And in truth this immense ear was perched on a small thin stalk—the stalk, however, was a man! A person putting a glass to his eyes, could even recognise further a small envious countenance, and also that a bloated soullet dangled at the stalk. The people told me, however, that the big ear was not only a man, but a great man, a genius. But I never believed in the people when they spake
of great men—and I hold to my belief that it was a reversed cripple, who had too little of everything, and too much of one thing. When Zarathustra had spoken thus unto the hunchback, and unto those of whom the hunchback was the mouthpiece and advocate, then did he turn to his disciples in profound dejection, and said: Verily, my friends, I walk amongst men as amongst the fragments and limbs of human beings! This is the terrible thing to mine eye, that I find man broken up, and scattered about, as on a battle- and butcher-ground. And when mine eye fleeth from the present to the bygone, it findeth ever the same: fragments and limbs and fearful chances—but no men! The present and the bygone upon earth—ah! my friends—that is MY most unbearable trouble; and I should not know how to live, if I were not a seer of what is to come. A seer, a purposer, a creator, a future itself, and a bridge to the future—and alas! also as it were a cripple on this bridge: all that is Zarathustra. And ye also asked yourselves often: “ Who is Zarathustra to us? What shall he be called by us?” And like me, did ye give yourselves questions for answers. Is he a promiser? Or a fulfiller? A conqueror? Or an inheritor? A harvest? Or a ploughshare? A physician? Or a healed one? Is he a poet? Or a genuine one? An emancipator? Or a subjugator? A good one? Or an evil one? I walk amongst men as the fragments of the future: that future which I contemplate. And it is all my poetisation and aspiration to compose and collect into unity what is fragment and riddle and fearful chance. And how could I endure to be a man, if man were not also the composer, and riddle-reader, and redeemer of chance! To redeem what is past, and to transform every “ It was” into “ Thus would I have it!”—that only do I call redemption! Will—so is the emancipator and joy-bringer called: thus have I taught you, my friends! But now learn this likewise: the Will itself is still a prisoner. Willing emancipateth: but what is that called which still putteth the emancipator in chains? “ It was”: thus is the Will’s teeth-gnashing and lonesomest tribulation called. Impotent towards what hath been done—it is a malicious spectator of all that is past. Not backward can the Will will; that it cannot break time and time’s desire—that is the Will’s lonesomest tribulation. Willing emancipateth: what doth Willing itself devise in order to get free from its tribulation and mock at its prison? Ah, a fool becometh every prisoner! Foolishly delivereth itself also the imprisoned Will. That time doth not run backward—that is its animosity: “ That which was”: so is the stone which it cannot roll called. And thus doth it roll stones out of animosity and ill-humour, and taketh revenge on whatever doth not, like it, feel rage and ill-humour. Thus did the Will, the emancipator, become a torturer; and on all that is capable of suffering it taketh revenge, because it cannot go backward. This, yea, this alone is REVENGE itself: the Will’s antipathy to time, and its “ It was.” Verily, a great folly dwelleth in our Will; and it became a curse unto all humanity, that this folly acquired spirit! THE SPIRIT OF REVENGE: my friends, that hath hitherto been man’s best contemplation; and where there was suffering, it was claimed there was always penalty. “ Penalty,” so calleth itself revenge. With a lying word it feigneth a good conscience. And because in the willer himself there is suffering, because he cannot will backwards—thus was Willing itself, and all life, claimed—to be penalty! And then did cloud after cloud roll over the spirit, until at last madness preached: “ Everything perisheth, therefore everything deserveth to perish!” “ And this itself is justice, the law of time—that he must devour his children:” thus did madness preach. “ Morally are things ordered according to justice and penalty. Oh, where is there deliverance from the flux of things and from the ‘existence’ of penalty?” Thus did madness preach. “ Can there be deliverance when there is eternal justice? Alas, unrollable is the stone, ‘It was’: eternal must also be all penalties!” Thus did madness preach. “ No deed can be annihilated: how could it be undone by the penalty! This, this is what is eternal in the ‘existence’ of penalty, that existence also must be eternally recurring deed and guilt! Unless the Will should at last deliver itself, and Willing become non-Willing—:” but ye know, my brethren, this fabulous song of madness! Away from those fabulous songs did I lead you when I taught you: “ The Will is a creator.” All “ It was” is a fragment, a riddle, a fearful chance—until the creating Will saith thereto: “ But thus would I have it.”— Until the creating Will saith thereto: “ But thus do I will it! Thus shall I will it!” But did it ever speak thus? And when doth this take place? Hath the Will been unharnessed from its own folly? Hath the Will become its own deliverer and joy-bringer? Hath it unlearned the spirit of revenge and all teeth-gnashing? And who hath taught it reconciliation with time, and something higher than all reconciliation? Something higher than all reconciliation must the Will will which is the Will to Power—: but how doth that take place? Who hath taught it also to will backwards? —But at this point in his discourse it chanced that Zarathustra suddenly paused, and looked like a person in the greatest alarm. With terror in his eyes did he gaze on his
disciples; his glances pierced as with arrows their thoughts and arrear-thoughts. But after a brief space he again laughed, and said soothedly: “ It is difficult to live amongst men, because silence is so difficult— especially for a babbler.”— Thus spake Zarathustra. The hunchback, however, had listened to the conversation and had covered his face during the time; but when he heard Zarathustra laugh, he looked up with curiosity, and said slowly: “ But why doth Zarathustra speak otherwise unto us than unto his disciples?” Zarathustra answered: “ What is there to be wondered at! With hunchbacks one may well speak in a hunchbacked way!” “ Very good,” said the hunchback; “ and with pupils one may well tell tales out of school. But why doth Zarathustra speak otherwise unto his pupils—than unto himself?”— XLIII. MANLY PRUDENCE. Not the height, it is the declivity that is terrible! The declivity, where the gaze shooteth DOWNWARDS, and the hand graspeth UPWARDS. There doth the heart become giddy through its double will. Ah, friends, do ye divine also my heart’s double will? This, this is MY declivity and my danger, that my gaze shooteth towards the summit, and my hand would fain clutch and lean—on the depth! To man clingeth my will; with chains do I bind myself to man, because I am pulled upwards to the Superman: for thither doth mine other will tend. And THEREFORE do I live blindly among men, as if I knew them not: that my hand may not entirely lose belief in firmness. I know not you men: this gloom and consolation is often spread around me. I sit at the gateway for every rogue, and ask: Who wisheth to deceive me? This is my first manly prudence, that I allow myself to be deceived, so as not to be on my guard against deceivers. Ah, if I were on my guard against man, how could man be an anchor to my ball! Too easily would I be pulled upwards and away! This providence is over my fate, that I have to be without foresight. And he who would not languish amongst men, must learn to drink out of all glasses; and he who would keep clean amongst men, must know how to wash himself even with dirty water. And thus spake I often to myself for consolation: “ Courage! Cheer up! old heart! An unhappiness hath failed to befall thee: enjoy that as thy—happiness!” This, however, is mine other manly prudence: I am more forbearing to the VAIN than to the proud. Is not wounded vanity the mother of all tragedies? Where, however, pride is wounded, there there groweth up something better than pride. That life may be fair to behold, its game must be well played; for that purpose, however, it needeth good actors. Good actors have I found all the vain ones: they play, and wish people to be fond of beholding them—all their spirit is in this wish. They represent themselves, they invent themselves; in their neighbourhood I like to look upon life—it cureth of melancholy. Therefore am I forbearing to the vain, because they are the physicians of my melancholy, and keep me attached to man as to a drama. And further, who conceiveth the full depth of the modesty of the vain man! I am favourable to him, and sympathetic on account of his modesty. From you would he learn his belief in himself; he feedeth upon your glances, he eateth praise out of your hands. Your lies doth he even believe when you lie favourably about him: for in its depths sigheth his heart: “ What am I?” And if that be the true virtue which is unconscious of itself—well, the vain man is unconscious of his modesty!— This is, however, my third manly prudence: I am not put out of conceit with the WICKED by your timorousness. I am happy to see the marvels the warm sun hatcheth: tigers and palms and rattle-snakes. Also amongst men there is a beautiful brood of the warm sun, and much that is marvellous in the wicked. In truth, as your wisest did not seem to me so very wise, so found I also human wickedness below the fame of it. And oft did I ask with a shake of the head: Why still rattle, ye rattle-snakes? Verily, there is still a future even for evil! And the warmest south is still undiscovered by man. How many things are now called the worst wickedness, which are only twelve feet broad and three months long! Some day, however, will greater dragons come into the world. For that the Superman may not lack his dragon, the superdragon that is worthy of him, there must still much warm sun glow on moist virgin forests! Out of your wild cats must tigers have evolved, and out of your poison-toads, crocodiles: for the good hunter shall have a good hunt! And verily, ye good and just! In you there is much to be laughed at, and especially your fear of what hath hitherto been called “ the devil!” So alien are ye in your souls to what is great, that to you the Superman would be FRIGHTFUL in his goodness! And ye wise and knowing ones, ye would flee from the solar-glow of the wisdom in which the Superman joyfully batheth his nakedness!
Ye highest men who have come within my ken! this is my doubt of you, and my secret laughter: I suspect ye would call my Superman—a devil! Ah, I became tired of those highest and best ones: from their “ height” did I long to be up, out, and away to the Superman! A horror came over me when I saw those best ones naked: then there grew for me the pinions to soar away into distant futures. Into more distant futures, into more southern souths than ever artist dreamed of: thither, where Gods are ashamed of all clothes! But disguised do I want to see YOU, ye neighbours and fellowmen, and well-attired and vain and estimable, as “ the good and just;”— And disguised will I myself sit amongst you—that I may MISTAKE you and myself: for that is my last manly prudence.— Thus spake Zarathustra. XLIV. THE STILLEST HOUR. What hath happened unto me, my friends? Ye see me troubled, driven forth, unwillingly obedient, ready to go—alas, to go away from YOU! Yea, once more must Zarathustra retire to his solitude: but unjoyously this time doth the bear go back to his cave! What hath happened unto me? Who ordereth this?—Ah, mine angry mistress wisheth it so; she spake unto me. Have I ever named her name to you? Yesterday towards evening there spake unto me MY STILLEST HOUR: that is the name of my terrible mistress. And thus did it happen—for everything must I tell you, that your heart may not harden against the suddenly departing one! Do ye know the terror of him who falleth asleep?— To the very toes he is terrified, because the ground giveth way under him, and the dream beginneth. This do I speak unto you in parable. Yesterday at the stillest hour did the ground give way under me: the dream began. The hour-hand moved on, the timepiece of my life drew breath—never did I hear such stillness around me, so that my heart was terrified. Then was there spoken unto me without voice: “ THOU KNOWEST IT, ZARATHUSTRA?”— And I cried in terror at this whispering, and the blood left my face: but I was silent. Then was there once more spoken unto me without voice: “ Thou knowest it, Zarathustra, but thou dost not speak it!”— And at last I answered, like one defiant: “ Yea, I know it, but I will not speak it!” Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: “ Thou WILT not, Zarathustra? Is this true? Conceal thyself not behind thy defiance!”— And I wept and trembled like a child, and said: “ Ah, I would indeed, but how can I do it! Exempt me only from this! It is beyond my power!” Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: “ What matter about thyself, Zarathustra! Speak thy word, and succumb!” And I answered: “ Ah, is it MY word? Who am I? I await the worthier one; I am not worthy even to succumb by it.” Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: “ What matter about thyself? Thou art not yet humble enough for me. Humility hath the hardest skin.”— And I answered: “ What hath not the skin of my humility endured! At the foot of my height do I dwell: how high are my summits, no one hath yet told me. But well do I know my valleys.” Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: “ O Zarathustra, he who hath to remove mountains removeth also valleys and plains.”— And I answered: “ As yet hath my word not removed mountains, and what I have spoken hath not reached man. I went, indeed, unto men, but not yet have I attained unto them.” Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: “ What knowest thou THEREOF! The dew falleth on the grass when the night is most silent.”— And I answered: “ They mocked me when I found and walked in mine own path; and certainly did my feet then tremble. And thus did they speak unto me: Thou forgottest the path before, now dost thou also forget how to walk!” Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: “ What matter about their mockery! Thou art one who hast unlearned to obey: now shalt thou command! Knowest thou not who is most needed by all? He who commandeth great things. To execute great things is difficult: but the more difficult task is to command great things. This is thy most unpardonable obstinacy: thou hast the power, and thou wilt not rule.”— And I answered: “ I lack the lion’s voice for all commanding.” Then was there again spoken unto me as a whispering: “ It is the stillest words which bring the storm. Thoughts that come with doves’ footsteps guide the world. O Zarathustra, thou shalt go as a shadow of that which is to come: thus wilt thou command, and in commanding go foremost.”— And I answered: “ I am ashamed.” Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: “ Thou must yet become a child, and be without shame. The pride of youth is still upon thee; late hast thou become young: but he who would become a child must surmount even his youth.”— And I considered a long while, and trembled. At last, however, did I say what I had said at first. “ I will not.” Then did a laughing take place all around me. Alas, how that laughing lacerated my bowels and cut into my heart!
And there was spoken unto me for the last time: “ O Zarathustra, thy fruits are ripe, but thou art not ripe for thy fruits! So must thou go again into solitude: for thou shalt yet become mellow.”— And again was there a laughing, and it fled: then did it become still around me, as with a double stillness. I lay, however, on the ground, and the sweat flowed from my limbs. —Now have ye heard all, and why I have to return into my solitude. Nothing have I kept hidden from you, my friends. But even this have ye heard from me, WHO is still the most reserved of men—and will be so! Ah, my friends! I should have something more to say unto you! I should have something more to give unto you! Why do I not give it? Am I then a niggard?— When, however, Zarathustra had spoken these words, the violence of his pain, and a sense of the nearness of his departure from his friends came over him, so that he wept aloud; and no one knew how to console him. In the night, however, he went away alone and left his friends. THIRD PART. “ Ye look aloft when ye long for exaltation, and I look downward because I am exalted. “ Who among you can at the same time laugh and be exalted? “ He who climbeth on the highest mountains, laugheth at all tragic plays and tragic realities.”—ZARATHUSTRA, I., “ Reading and Writing.” XLV. THE WANDERER. Then, when it was about midnight, Zarathustra went his way over the ridge of the isle, that he might arrive early in the morning at the other coast; because there he meant to embark. For there was a good roadstead there, in which foreign ships also liked to anchor: those ships took many people with them, who wished to cross over from the Happy Isles. So when Zarathustra thus ascended the mountain, he thought on the way of his many solitary wanderings from youth onwards, and how many mountains and ridges and summits he had already climbed. I am a wanderer and mountain-climber, said he to his heart, I love not the plains, and it seemeth I cannot long sit still. And whatever may still overtake me as fate and experience—a wandering will be therein, and a mountain-climbing: in the end one experienceth only oneself. The time is now past when accidents could befall me; and what COULD now fall to my lot which would not already be mine own! It returneth only, it cometh home to me at last—mine own Self, and such of it as hath been long abroad, and scattered among things and accidents. And one thing more do I know: I stand now before my last summit, and before that which hath been longest reserved for me. Ah, my hardest path must I ascend! Ah, I have begun my lonesomest wandering! He, however, who is of my nature doth not avoid such an hour: the hour that saith unto him: Now only dost thou go the way to thy greatness! Summit and abyss—these are now comprised together! Thou goest the way to thy greatness: now hath it become thy last refuge, what was hitherto thy last danger! Thou goest the way to thy greatness: it must now be thy best courage that there is no longer any path behind thee! Thou goest the way to thy greatness: here shall no one steal after thee! Thy foot itself hath effaced the path behind thee, and over it standeth written: Impossibility. And if all ladders henceforth fail thee, then must thou learn to mount upon thine own head: how couldst thou mount upward otherwise? Upon thine own head, and beyond thine own heart! Now must the gentlest in thee become the hardest. He who hath always much-indulged himself, sickeneth at last by his much-indulgence. Praises on what maketh hardy! I do not praise the land where butter and honey—flow! To learn TO LOOK AWAY FROM oneself, is necessary in order to see MANY THINGS:—this hardiness is needed by every mountain-climber. He, however, who is obtrusive with his eyes as a discerner, how can he ever see more of anything than its foreground! But thou, O Zarathustra, wouldst view the ground of everything, and its background: thus must thou mount even above thyself—up, upwards, until thou hast even thy stars UNDER thee! Yea! To look down upon myself, and even upon my stars: that only would I call my SUMMIT, that hath remained for me as my LAST summit!— Thus spake Zarathustra to himself while ascending, comforting his heart with harsh maxims: for he was sore at heart as he had never been before. And when he had reached the top of the mountain-ridge, behold, there lay the other sea spread out before him: and he stood still and was long silent. The night, however, was cold at this height, and clear and starry. I recognise my destiny, said he at last, sadly. Well! I am ready. Now hath my last lonesomeness begun. Ah, this sombre, sad sea, below me! Ah, this sombre nocturnal vexation! Ah, fate and sea! To you must I now GO DOWN! Before my highest mountain do I stand, and before my longest wandering: therefore must I first go deeper down than I ever ascended: —Deeper down into pain than I ever ascended, even into its darkest flood! So willeth my fate. Well! I am ready. Whence come the highest mountains? so did I once ask. Then did I learn that they come out of the sea. That testimony is inscribed on their stones, and on the walls of their summits. Out of the deepest must the highest come to its height.— Thus spake Zarathustra on the ridge of the mountain where it was cold: when, however, he came into the vicinity of the sea, and at last stood alone amongst the cliffs, then had he
become weary on his way, and eagerer than ever before. Everything as yet sleepeth, said he; even the sea sleepeth. Drowsily and strangely doth its eye gaze upon me. But it breatheth warmly—I feel it. And I feel also that it dreameth. It tosseth about dreamily on hard pillows. Hark! Hark! How it groaneth with evil recollections! Or evil expectations? Ah, I am sad along with thee, thou dusky monster, and angry with myself even for thy sake. Ah, that my hand hath not strength enough! Gladly, indeed, would I free thee from evil dreams!— And while Zarathustra thus spake, he laughed at himself with melancholy and bitterness. What! Zarathustra, said he, wilt thou even sing consolation to the sea? Ah, thou amiable fool, Zarathustra, thou too-blindly confiding one! But thus hast thou ever been: ever hast thou approached confidently all that is terrible. Every monster wouldst thou caress. A whiff of warm breath, a little soft tuft on its paw—: and immediately wert thou ready to love and lure it. LOVE is the danger of the lonesomest one, love to anything, IF IT ONLY LIVE! Laughable, verily, is my folly and my modesty in love!— Thus spake Zarathustra, and laughed thereby a second time. Then, however, he thought of his abandoned friends—and as if he had done them a wrong with his thoughts, he upbraided himself because of his thoughts. And forthwith it came to pass that the laugher wept—with anger and longing wept Zarathustra bitterly. XLVI. THE VISION AND THE ENIGMA. 1. When it got abroad among the sailors that Zarathustra was on board the ship—for a man who came from the Happy Isles had gone on board along with him,—there was great curiosity and expectation. But Zarathustra kept silent for two days, and was cold and deaf with sadness; so that he neither answered looks nor questions. On the evening of the second day, however, he again opened his ears, though he still kept silent: for there were many curious and dangerous things to be heard on board the ship, which came from afar, and was to go still further. Zarathustra, however, was fond of all those who make distant voyages, and dislike to live without danger. And behold! when listening, his own tongue was at last loosened, and the ice of his heart broke. Then did he begin to speak thus: To you, the daring venturers and adventurers, and whoever hath embarked with cunning sails upon frightful seas,— To you the enigma-intoxicated, the twilight-enjoyers, whose souls are allured by flutes to every treacherous gulf: —For ye dislike to grope at a thread with cowardly hand; and where ye can DIVINE, there do ye hate to CALCULATE— To you only do I tell the enigma that I SAW—the vision of the lonesomest one.— Gloomily walked I lately in corpse-coloured twilight—gloomily and sternly, with compressed lips. Not only one sun had set for me. A path which ascended daringly among boulders, an evil, lonesome path, which neither herb nor shrub any longer cheered, a mountain-path, crunched under the daring of my foot. Mutely marching over the scornful clinking of pebbles, trampling the stone that let it slip: thus did my foot force its way upwards. Upwards:—in spite of the spirit that drew it downwards, towards the abyss, the spirit of gravity, my devil and arch-enemy. Upwards:—although it sat upon me, half-dwarf, half-mole; paralysed, paralysing; dripping lead in mine ear, and thoughts like drops of lead into my brain. “ O Zarathustra,” it whispered scornfully, syllable by syllable, “ thou stone of wisdom! Thou threwest thyself high, but every thrown stone must—fall! O Zarathustra, thou stone of wisdom, thou sling-stone, thou star-destroyer! Thyself threwest thou so high,—but every thrown stone—must fall! Condemned of thyself, and to thine own stoning: O Zarathustra, far indeed threwest thou thy stone—but upon THYSELF will it recoil!” Then was the dwarf silent; and it lasted long. The silence, however, oppressed me; and to be thus in pairs, one is verily lonesomer than when alone! I ascended, I ascended, I dreamt, I thought,—but everything oppressed me. A sick one did I resemble, whom bad torture wearieth, and a worse dream reawakeneth out of his first sleep.— But there is something in me which I call courage: it hath hitherto slain for me every dejection. This courage at last bade me stand still and say: “ Dwarf! Thou! Or I!”— For courage is the best slayer,—courage which ATTACKETH: for in every attack there is sound of triumph. Man, however, is the most courageous animal: thereby hath he overcome every animal. With sound of triumph hath he overcome every pain; human pain, however, is the sorest pain. Courage slayeth also giddiness at abysses: and where doth man not stand at abysses! Is not seeing itself—seeing abysses? Courage is the best slayer: courage slayeth also fellow-suffering. Fellow-suffering, however, is the deepest abyss: as deeply as man looketh into life, so deeply also doth he look into suffering. Courage, however, is the best slayer, courage which attacketh: it slayeth even death itself; for it saith: “ WAS THAT life? Well! Once more!” In such speech, however, there is much sound of triumph. He who hath ears to hear, let him hear.— 2. “ Halt, dwarf!” said I. “ Either I—or thou! I, however, am the stronger of the two:—thou knowest not mine abysmal thought! IT—couldst thou not endure!”
Then happened that which made me lighter: for the dwarf sprang from my shoulder, the prying sprite! And it squatted on a stone in front of me. There was however a gateway just where we halted. “ Look at this gateway! Dwarf!” I continued, “ it hath two faces. Two roads come together here: these hath no one yet gone to the end of. This long lane backwards: it continueth for an eternity. And that long lane forward—that is another eternity. They are antithetical to one another, these roads; they directly abut on one another:—and it is here, at this gateway, that they come together. The name of the gateway is inscribed above: ‘This Moment.’ But should one follow them further—and ever further and further on, thinkest thou, dwarf, that these roads would be eternally antithetical?”— “ Everything straight lieth,” murmured the dwarf, contemptuously. “ All truth is crooked; time itself is a circle.” “ Thou spirit of gravity!” said I wrathfully, “ do not take it too lightly! Or I shall let thee squat where thou squattest, Haltfoot,—and I carried thee HIGH!” “ Observe,” continued I, “ This Moment! From the gateway, This Moment, there runneth a long eternal lane BACKWARDS: behind us lieth an eternity. Must not whatever CAN run its course of all things, have already run along that lane? Must not whatever CAN happen of all things have already happened, resulted, and gone by? And if everything have already existed, what thinkest thou, dwarf, of This Moment? Must not this gateway also—have already existed? And are not all things closely bound together in such wise that This Moment draweth all coming things after it? CONSEQUENTLY—itself also? For whatever CAN run its course of all things, also in this long lane OUTWARD—MUST it once more run!— And this slow spider which creepeth in the moonlight, and this moonlight itself, and thou and I in this gateway whispering together, whispering of eternal things—must we not all have already existed? —And must we not return and run in that other lane out before us, that long weird lane—must we not eternally return?”— Thus did I speak, and always more softly: for I was afraid of mine own thoughts, and arrear-thoughts. Then, suddenly did I hear a dog HOWL near me. Had I ever heard a dog howl thus? My thoughts ran back. Yes! When I was a child, in my most distant childhood: —Then did I hear a dog howl thus. And saw it also, with hair bristling, its head upwards, trembling in the stillest midnight, when even dogs believe in ghosts: —So that it excited my commiseration. For just then went the full moon, silent as death, over the house; just then did it stand still, a glowing globe—at rest on the flat roof, as if on some one’s property:— Thereby had the dog been terrified: for dogs believe in thieves and ghosts. And when I again heard such howling, then did it excite my commiseration once more. Where was now the dwarf? And the gateway? And the spider? And all the whispering? Had I dreamt? Had I awakened? ‘Twixt rugged rocks did I suddenly stand alone, dreary in the dreariest moonlight. BUT THERE LAY A MAN! And there! The dog leaping, bristling, whining—now did it see me coming—then did it howl again, then did it CRY:—had I ever heard a dog cry so for help? And verily, what I saw, the like had I never seen. A young shepherd did I see, writhing, choking, quivering, with distorted countenance, and with a heavy black serpent hanging out of his mouth. Had I ever seen so much loathing and pale horror on one countenance? He had perhaps gone to sleep? Then had the serpent crawled into his throat—there had it bitten itself fast. My hand pulled at the serpent, and pulled:—in vain! I failed to pull the serpent out of his throat. Then there cried out of me: “ Bite! Bite! Its head off! Bite!”—so cried it out of me; my horror, my hatred, my loathing, my pity, all my good and my bad cried with one voice out of me.— Ye daring ones around me! Ye venturers and adventurers, and whoever of you have embarked with cunning sails on unexplored seas! Ye enigma-enjoyers! Solve unto me the enigma that I then beheld, interpret unto me the vision of the lonesomest one! For it was a vision and a foresight:—WHAT did I then behold in parable? And WHO is it that must come some day? WHO is the shepherd into whose throat the serpent thus crawled? WHO is the man into whose throat all the heaviest and blackest will thus crawl? —The shepherd however bit as my cry had admonished him; he bit with a strong bite! Far away did he spit the head of the serpent—: and sprang up.— No longer shepherd, no longer man—a transfigured being, a light-surrounded being, that LAUGHED! Never on earth laughed a man as HE laughed! O my brethren, I heard a laughter which was no human laughter,—and now gnaweth a thirst at me, a longing that is never allayed. My longing for that laughter gnaweth at me: oh, how can I still endure to live! And how could I endure to die at present!— Thus spake Zarathustra. XLVII. INVOLUNTARY BLISS. With such enigmas and bitterness in his heart did Zarathustra sail o’er the sea. When, however, he was four day-journeys from the Happy Isles and from his friends, then had he surmounted all his pain—: triumphantly and with firm foot did he again accept his fate. And then talked Zarathustra in this wise to his exulting conscience: Alone am I again, and like to be so, alone with the pure heaven, and the open sea; and again is the afternoon around me.
On an afternoon did I find my friends for the first time; on an afternoon, also, did I find them a second time:—at the hour when all light becometh stiller. For whatever happiness is still on its way ‘twixt heaven and earth, now seeketh for lodging a luminous soul: WITH HAPPINESS hath all light now become stiller. O afternoon of my life! Once did my happiness also descend to the valley that it might seek a lodging: then did it find those open hospitable souls. O afternoon of my life! What did I not surrender that I might have one thing: this living plantation of my thoughts, and this dawn of my highest hope! Companions did the creating one once seek, and children of HIS hope: and lo, it turned out that he could not find them, except he himself should first create them. Thus am I in the midst of my work, to my children going, and from them returning: for the sake of his children must Zarathustra perfect himself. For in one’s heart one loveth only one’s child and one’s work; and where there is great love to oneself, then is it the sign of pregnancy: so have I found it. Still are my children verdant in their first spring, standing nigh one another, and shaken in common by the winds, the trees of my garden and of my best soil. And verily, where such trees stand beside one another, there ARE Happy Isles! But one day will I take them up, and put each by itself alone: that it may learn lonesomeness and defiance and prudence. Gnarled and crooked and with flexible hardness shall it then stand by the sea, a living lighthouse of unconquerable life. Yonder where the storms rush down into the sea, and the snout of the mountain drinketh water, shall each on a time have his day and night watches, for HIS testing and recognition. Recognised and tested shall each be, to see if he be of my type and lineage:—if he be master of a long will, silent even when he speaketh, and giving in such wise that he TAKETH in giving:— —So that he may one day become my companion, a fellow-creator and fellow-enjoyer with Zarathustra:—such a one as writeth my will on my tables, for the fuller perfection of all things. And for his sake and for those like him, must I perfect MYSELF: therefore do I now avoid my happiness, and present myself to every misfortune—for MY final testing and recognition. And verily, it were time that I went away; and the wanderer’s shadow and the longest tedium and the stillest hour—have all said unto me: “ It is the highest time!” The word blew to me through the keyhole and said “ Come!” The door sprang subtlely open unto me, and said “ Go!” But I lay enchained to my love for my children: desire spread this snare for me—the desire for love—that I should become the prey of my children, and lose myself in them. Desiring—that is now for me to have lost myself. I POSSESS YOU, MY CHILDREN! In this possessing shall everything be assurance and nothing desire. But brooding lay the sun of my love upon me, in his own juice stewed Zarathustra,—then did shadows and doubts fly past me. For frost and winter I now longed: “ Oh, that frost and winter would again make me crack and crunch!” sighed I:—then arose icy mist out of me. My past burst its tomb, many pains buried alive woke up—: fully slept had they merely, concealed in corpse-clothes. So called everything unto me in signs: “ It is time!” But I—heard not, until at last mine abyss moved, and my thought bit me. Ah, abysmal thought, which art MY thought! When shall I find strength to hear thee burrowing, and no longer tremble? To my very throat throbbeth my heart when I hear thee burrowing! Thy muteness even is like to strangle me, thou abysmal mute one! As yet have I never ventured to call thee UP; it hath been enough that I—have carried thee about with me! As yet have I not been strong enough for my final lion-wantonness and playfulness. Sufficiently formidable unto me hath thy weight ever been: but one day shall I yet find the strength and the lion’s voice which will call thee up! When I shall have surmounted myself therein, then will I surmount myself also in that which is greater; and a VICTORY shall be the seal of my perfection!— Meanwhile do I sail along on uncertain seas; chance flattereth me, smooth-tongued chance; forward and backward do I gaze—, still see I no end. As yet hath the hour of my final struggle not come to me—or doth it come to me perhaps just now? Verily, with insidious beauty do sea and life gaze upon me round about: O afternoon of my life! O happiness before eventide! O haven upon high seas! O peace in uncertainty! How I distrust all of you! Verily, distrustful am I of your insidious beauty! Like the lover am I, who distrusteth too sleek smiling. As he pusheth the best-beloved before him—tender even in severity, the jealous one—, so do I push this blissful hour before me. Away with thee, thou blissful hour! With thee hath there come to me an involuntary bliss! Ready for my severest pain do I here stand:—at the wrong time hast thou come! Away with thee, thou blissful hour! Rather harbour there—with my children! Hasten! and bless them before eventide with MY happiness! There, already approacheth eventide: the sun sinketh. Away—my happiness!— Thus spake Zarathustra. And he waited for his misfortune the whole night; but he waited in vain. The night remained clear and calm, and happiness itself came nigher and nigher unto him. Towards morning, however, Zarathustra laughed to his heart, and said mockingly: “ Happiness runneth after me. That is because I do not run after women. Happiness, however, is a woman.” XLVIII. BEFORE SUNRISE.
O heaven above me, thou pure, thou deep heaven! Thou abyss of light! Gazing on thee, I tremble with divine desires. Up to thy height to toss myself—that is MY depth! In thy purity to hide myself—that is MINE innocence! The God veileth his beauty: thus hidest thou thy stars. Thou speakest not: THUS proclaimest thou thy wisdom unto me. Mute o’er the raging sea hast thou risen for me to-day; thy love and thy modesty make a revelation unto my raging soul. In that thou camest unto me beautiful, veiled in thy beauty, in that thou spakest unto me mutely, obvious in thy wisdom: Oh, how could I fail to divine all the modesty of thy soul! BEFORE the sun didst thou come unto me—the lonesomest one. We have been friends from the beginning: to us are grief, gruesomeness, and ground common; even the sun is common to us. We do not speak to each other, because we know too much—: we keep silent to each other, we smile our knowledge to each other. Art thou not the light of my fire? Hast thou not the sister-soul of mine insight? Together did we learn everything; together did we learn to ascend beyond ourselves to ourselves, and to smile uncloudedly:— —Uncloudedly to smile down out of luminous eyes and out of miles of distance, when under us constraint and purpose and guilt steam like rain. And wandered I alone, for WHAT did my soul hunger by night and in labyrinthine paths? And climbed I mountains, WHOM did I ever seek, if not thee, upon mountains? And all my wandering and mountain-climbing: a necessity was it merely, and a makeshift of the unhandy one:—to FLY only, wanteth mine entire will, to fly into THEE! And what have I hated more than passing clouds, and whatever tainteth thee? And mine own hatred have I even hated, because it tainted thee! The passing clouds I detest—those stealthy cats of prey: they take from thee and me what is common to us—the vast unbounded Yea- and Amen-saying. These mediators and mixers we detest—the passing clouds: those half-and-half ones, that have neither learned to bless nor to curse from the heart. Rather will I sit in a tub under a closed heaven, rather will I sit in the abyss without heaven, than see thee, thou luminous heaven, tainted with passing clouds! And oft have I longed to pin them fast with the jagged gold-wires of lightning, that I might, like the thunder, beat the drum upon their kettle-bellies:— —An angry drummer, because they rob me of thy Yea and Amen!—thou heaven above me, thou pure, thou luminous heaven! Thou abyss of light!—because they rob thee of MY Yea and Amen. For rather will I have noise and thunders and tempest-blasts, than this discreet, doubting cat-repose; and also amongst men do I hate most of all the soft-treaders, and half-and-half ones, and the doubting, hesitating, passing clouds. And “ he who cannot bless shall LEARN to curse!”—this clear teaching dropt unto me from the clear heaven; this star standeth in my heaven even in dark nights. I, however, am a blesser and a Yea-sayer, if thou be but around me, thou pure, thou luminous heaven! Thou abyss of light!—into all abysses do I then carry my beneficent Yeasaying. A blesser have I become and a Yea-sayer: and therefore strove I long and was a striver, that I might one day get my hands free for blessing. This, however, is my blessing: to stand above everything as its own heaven, its round roof, its azure bell and eternal security: and blessed is he who thus blesseth! For all things are baptized at the font of eternity, and beyond good and evil; good and evil themselves, however, are but fugitive shadows and damp afflictions and passing clouds. Verily, it is a blessing and not a blasphemy when I teach that “ above all things there standeth the heaven of chance, the heaven of innocence, the heaven of hazard, the heaven of wantonness.” “ Of Hazard”—that is the oldest nobility in the world; that gave I back to all things; I emancipated them from bondage under purpose. This freedom and celestial serenity did I put like an azure bell above all things, when I taught that over them and through them, no “ eternal Will”—willeth. This wantonness and folly did I put in place of that Will, when I taught that “ In everything there is one thing impossible—rationality!” A LITTLE reason, to be sure, a germ of wisdom scattered from star to star—this leaven is mixed in all things: for the sake of folly, wisdom is mixed in all things! A little wisdom is indeed possible; but this blessed security have I found in all things, that they prefer—to DANCE on the feet of chance. O heaven above me! thou pure, thou lofty heaven! This is now thy purity unto me, that there is no eternal reason-spider and reason-cobweb:— —That thou art to me a dancing-floor for divine chances, that thou art to me a table of the Gods, for divine dice and dice-players!— But thou blushest? Have I spoken unspeakable things? Have I abused, when I meant to bless thee? Or is it the shame of being two of us that maketh thee blush!—Dost thou bid me go and be silent, because now—DAY cometh? The world is deep:—and deeper than e’er the day could read. Not everything may be uttered in presence of day. But day cometh: so let us part! O heaven above me, thou modest one! thou glowing one! O thou, my happiness before sunrise! The day cometh: so let us part!— Thus spake Zarathustra. XLIX. THE BEDWARFING VIRTUE. 1. When Zarathustra was again on the continent, he did not go straightway to his mountains and his cave, but made many wanderings and questionings, and ascertained this and
that; so that he said of himself jestingly: “ Lo, a river that floweth back unto its source in many windings!” For he wanted to learn what had taken place AMONG MEN during the interval: whether they had become greater or smaller. And once, when he saw a row of new houses, he marvelled, and said: “ What do these houses mean? Verily, no great soul put them up as its simile! Did perhaps a silly child take them out of its toy-box? Would that another child put them again into the box! And these rooms and chambers—can MEN go out and in there? They seem to be made for silk dolls; or for dainty-eaters, who perhaps let others eat with them.” And Zarathustra stood still and meditated. At last he said sorrowfully: “ There hath EVERYTHING become smaller! Everywhere do I see lower doorways: he who is of MY type can still go therethrough, but—he must stoop! Oh, when shall I arrive again at my home, where I shall no longer have to stoop—shall no longer have to stoop BEFORE THE SMALL ONES!”—And Zarathustra sighed, and gazed into the distance.— The same day, however, he gave his discourse on the bedwarfing virtue. 2. I pass through this people and keep mine eyes open: they do not forgive me for not envying their virtues. They bite at me, because I say unto them that for small people, small virtues are necessary—and because it is hard for me to understand that small people are NECESSARY! Here am I still like a cock in a strange farm-yard, at which even the hens peck: but on that account I am not unfriendly to the hens. I am courteous towards them, as towards all small annoyances; to be prickly towards what is small, seemeth to me wisdom for hedgehogs. They all speak of me when they sit around their fire in the evening—they speak of me, but no one thinketh—of me! This is the new stillness which I have experienced: their noise around me spreadeth a mantle over my thoughts. They shout to one another: “ What is this gloomy cloud about to do to us? Let us see that it doth not bring a plague upon us!” And recently did a woman seize upon her child that was coming unto me: “ Take the children away,” cried she, “ such eyes scorch children’s souls.” They cough when I speak: they think coughing an objection to strong winds—they divine nothing of the boisterousness of my happiness! “ We have not yet time for Zarathustra”—so they object; but what matter about a time that “ hath no time” for Zarathustra? And if they should altogether praise me, how could I go to sleep on THEIR praise? A girdle of spines is their praise unto me: it scratcheth me even when I take it off. And this also did I learn among them: the praiser doeth as if he gave back; in truth, however, he wanteth more to be given him! Ask my foot if their lauding and luring strains please it! Verily, to such measure and ticktack, it liketh neither to dance nor to stand still. To small virtues would they fain lure and laud me; to the ticktack of small happiness would they fain persuade my foot. I pass through this people and keep mine eyes open; they have become SMALLER, and ever become smaller:—THE REASON THEREOF IS THEIR DOCTRINE OF HAPPINESS AND VIRTUE. For they are moderate also in virtue,—because they want comfort. With comfort, however, moderate virtue only is compatible. To be sure, they also learn in their way to stride on and stride forward: that, I call their HOBBLING.—Thereby they become a hindrance to all who are in haste. And many of them go forward, and look backwards thereby, with stiffened necks: those do I like to run up against. Foot and eye shall not lie, nor give the lie to each other. But there is much lying among small people. Some of them WILL, but most of them are WILLED. Some of them are genuine, but most of them are bad actors. There are actors without knowing it amongst them, and actors without intending it—, the genuine ones are always rare, especially the genuine actors. Of man there is little here: therefore do their women masculinise themselves. For only he who is man enough, will—SAVE THE WOMAN in woman. And this hypocrisy found I worst amongst them, that even those who command feign the virtues of those who serve. “ I serve, thou servest, we serve”—so chanteth here even the hypocrisy of the rulers—and alas! if the first lord be ONLY the first servant! Ah, even upon their hypocrisy did mine eyes’ curiosity alight; and well did I divine all their fly-happiness, and their buzzing around sunny window-panes. So much kindness, so much weakness do I see. So much justice and pity, so much weakness. Round, fair, and considerate are they to one another, as grains of sand are round, fair, and considerate to grains of sand. Modestly to embrace a small happiness—that do they call “ submission”! and at the same time they peer modestly after a new small happiness. In their hearts they want simply one thing most of all: that no one hurt them. Thus do they anticipate every one’s wishes and do well unto every one. That, however, is COWARDICE, though it be called “ virtue.”— And when they chance to speak harshly, those small people, then do I hear therein only their hoarseness—every draught of air maketh them hoarse. Shrewd indeed are they, their virtues have shrewd fingers. But they lack fists: their fingers do not know how to creep behind fists. Virtue for them is what maketh modest and tame: therewith have they made the wolf a dog, and man himself man’s best domestic animal.
“ We set our chair in the MIDST”—so saith their smirking unto me—“ and as far from dying gladiators as from satisfied swine.” That, however, is—MEDIOCRITY, though it be called moderation.— 3. I pass through this people and let fall many words: but they know neither how to take nor how to retain them. They wonder why I came not to revile venery and vice; and verily, I came not to warn against pickpockets either! They wonder why I am not ready to abet and whet their wisdom: as if they had not yet enough of wiseacres, whose voices grate on mine ear like slate-pencils! And when I call out: “ Curse all the cowardly devils in you, that would fain whimper and fold the hands and adore”—then do they shout: “ Zarathustra is godless.” And especially do their teachers of submission shout this;—but precisely in their ears do I love to cry: “ Yea! I AM Zarathustra, the godless!” Those teachers of submission! Wherever there is aught puny, or sickly, or scabby, there do they creep like lice; and only my disgust preventeth me from cracking them. Well! This is my sermon for THEIR ears: I am Zarathustra the godless, who saith: “ Who is more godless than I, that I may enjoy his teaching?” I am Zarathustra the godless: where do I find mine equal? And all those are mine equals who give unto themselves their Will, and divest themselves of all submission. I am Zarathustra the godless! I cook every chance in MY pot. And only when it hath been quite cooked do I welcome it as MY food. And verily, many a chance came imperiously unto me: but still more imperiously did my WILL speak unto it,—then did it lie imploringly upon its knees— —Imploring that it might find home and heart with me, and saying flatteringly: “ See, O Zarathustra, how friend only cometh unto friend!”— But why talk I, when no one hath MINE ears! And so will I shout it out unto all the winds: Ye ever become smaller, ye small people! Ye crumble away, ye comfortable ones! Ye will yet perish— —By your many small virtues, by your many small omissions, and by your many small submissions! Too tender, too yielding: so is your soil! But for a tree to become GREAT, it seeketh to twine hard roots around hard rocks! Also what ye omit weaveth at the web of all the human future; even your naught is a cobweb, and a spider that liveth on the blood of the future. And when ye take, then is it like stealing, ye small virtuous ones; but even among knaves HONOUR saith that “ one shall only steal when one cannot rob.” “ It giveth itself”—that is also a doctrine of submission. But I say unto you, ye comfortable ones, that IT TAKETH TO ITSELF, and will ever take more and more from you! Ah, that ye would renounce all HALF-willing, and would decide for idleness as ye decide for action! Ah, that ye understood my word: “ Do ever what ye will—but first be such as CAN WILL. Love ever your neighbour as yourselves—but first be such as LOVE THEMSELVES— —Such as love with great love, such as love with great contempt!” Thus speaketh Zarathustra the godless.— But why talk I, when no one hath MINE ears! It is still an hour too early for me here. Mine own forerunner am I among this people, mine own cockcrow in dark lanes. But THEIR hour cometh! And there cometh also mine! Hourly do they become smaller, poorer, unfruitfuller,—poor herbs! poor earth! And SOON shall they stand before me like dry grass and prairie, and verily, weary of themselves—and panting for FIRE, more than for water! O blessed hour of the lightning! O mystery before noontide!—Running fires will I one day make of them, and heralds with flaming tongues:— —Herald shall they one day with flaming tongues: It cometh, it is nigh, THE GREAT NOONTIDE! Thus spake Zarathustra. L. ON THE OLIVE-MOUNT. Winter, a bad guest, sitteth with me at home; blue are my hands with his friendly hand-shaking. I honour him, that bad guest, but gladly leave him alone. Gladly do I run away from him; and when one runneth WELL, then one escapeth him! With warm feet and warm thoughts do I run where the wind is calm—to the sunny corner of mine olive-mount. There do I laugh at my stern guest, and am still fond of him; because he cleareth my house of flies, and quieteth many little noises. For he suffereth it not if a gnat wanteth to buzz, or even two of them; also the lanes maketh he lonesome, so that the moonlight is afraid there at night. A hard guest is he,—but I honour him, and do not worship, like the tenderlings, the pot-bellied fire-idol. Better even a little teeth-chattering than idol-adoration!—so willeth my nature. And especially have I a grudge against all ardent, steaming, steamy fire-idols. Him whom I love, I love better in winter than in summer; better do I now mock at mine enemies, and more heartily, when winter sitteth in my house. Heartily, verily, even when I CREEP into bed—: there, still laugheth and wantoneth my hidden happiness; even my deceptive dream laugheth. I, a—creeper? Never in my life did I creep before the powerful; and if ever I lied, then did I lie out of love. Therefore am I glad even in my winter-bed. A poor bed warmeth me more than a rich one, for I am jealous of my poverty. And in winter she is most faithful unto me. With a wickedness do I begin every day: I mock at the winter with a cold bath: on that account grumbleth my stern house-mate.
Also do I like to tickle him with a wax-taper, that he may finally let the heavens emerge from ashy-grey twilight. For especially wicked am I in the morning: at the early hour when the pail rattleth at the well, and horses neigh warmly in grey lanes:— Impatiently do I then wait, that the clear sky may finally dawn for me, the snow-bearded winter-sky, the hoary one, the white-head,— —The winter-sky, the silent winter-sky, which often stifleth even its sun! Did I perhaps learn from it the long clear silence? Or did it learn it from me? Or hath each of us devised it himself? Of all good things the origin is a thousandfold,—all good roguish things spring into existence for joy: how could they always do so—for once only! A good roguish thing is also the long silence, and to look, like the winter-sky, out of a clear, round-eyed countenance:— —Like it to stifle one’s sun, and one’s inflexible solar will: verily, this art and this winter-roguishness have I learnt WELL! My best-loved wickedness and art is it, that my silence hath learned not to betray itself by silence. Clattering with diction and dice, I outwit the solemn assistants: all those stern watchers, shall my will and purpose elude. That no one might see down into my depth and into mine ultimate will—for that purpose did I devise the long clear silence. Many a shrewd one did I find: he veiled his countenance and made his water muddy, that no one might see therethrough and thereunder. But precisely unto him came the shrewder distrusters and nut-crackers: precisely from him did they fish his best-concealed fish! But the clear, the honest, the transparent—these are for me the wisest silent ones: in them, so PROFOUND is the depth that even the clearest water doth not—betray it.— Thou snow-bearded, silent, winter-sky, thou round-eyed whitehead above me! Oh, thou heavenly simile of my soul and its wantonness! And MUST I not conceal myself like one who hath swallowed gold—lest my soul should be ripped up? MUST I not wear stilts, that they may OVERLOOK my long legs—all those enviers and injurers around me? Those dingy, fire-warmed, used-up, green-tinted, ill-natured souls—how COULD their envy endure my happiness! Thus do I show them only the ice and winter of my peaks—and NOT that my mountain windeth all the solar girdles around it! They hear only the whistling of my winter-storms: and know NOT that I also travel over warm seas, like longing, heavy, hot south-winds. They commiserate also my accidents and chances:—but MY word saith: “ Suffer the chance to come unto me: innocent is it as a little child!” How COULD they endure my happiness, if I did not put around it accidents, and winter-privations, and bear-skin caps, and enmantling snowflakes! —If I did not myself commiserate their PITY, the pity of those enviers and injurers! —If I did not myself sigh before them, and chatter with cold, and patiently LET myself be swathed in their pity! This is the wise waggish-will and good-will of my soul, that it CONCEALETH NOT its winters and glacial storms; it concealeth not its chilblains either. To one man, lonesomeness is the flight of the sick one; to another, it is the flight FROM the sick ones. Let them HEAR me chattering and sighing with winter-cold, all those poor squinting knaves around me! With such sighing and chattering do I flee from their heated rooms. Let them sympathise with me and sigh with me on account of my chilblains: “ At the ice of knowledge will he yet FREEZE TO DEATH!”—so they mourn. Meanwhile do I run with warm feet hither and thither on mine olive-mount: in the sunny corner of mine olive-mount do I sing, and mock at all pity.— Thus sang Zarathustra. LI. ON PASSING-BY. Thus slowly wandering through many peoples and divers cities, did Zarathustra return by round-about roads to his mountains and his cave. And behold, thereby came he unawares also to the gate of the GREAT CITY. Here, however, a foaming fool, with extended hands, sprang forward to him and stood in his way. It was the same fool whom the people called “ the ape of Zarathustra:” for he had learned from him something of the expression and modulation of language, and perhaps liked also to borrow from the store of his wisdom. And the fool talked thus to Zarathustra: O Zarathustra, here is the great city: here hast thou nothing to seek and everything to lose. Why wouldst thou wade through this mire? Have pity upon thy foot! Spit rather on the gate of the city, and—turn back! Here is the hell for anchorites’ thoughts: here are great thoughts seethed alive and boiled small. Here do all great sentiments decay: here may only rattle-boned sensations rattle! Smellest thou not already the shambles and cookshops of the spirit? Steameth not this city with the fumes of slaughtered spirit? Seest thou not the souls hanging like limp dirty rags?—And they make newspapers also out of these rags! Hearest thou not how spirit hath here become a verbal game? Loathsome verbal swill doth it vomit forth!—And they make newspapers also out of this verbal swill. They hound one another, and know not whither! They inflame one another, and know not why! They tinkle with their pinchbeck, they jingle with their gold. They are cold, and seek warmth from distilled waters: they are inflamed, and seek coolness from frozen spirits; they are all sick and sore through public opinion. All lusts and vices are here at home; but here there are also the virtuous; there is much appointable appointed virtue:—
Much appointable virtue with scribe-fingers, and hardy sitting-flesh and waiting-flesh, blessed with small breast-stars, and padded, haunchless daughters. There is here also much piety, and much faithful spittle-licking and spittle-backing, before the God of Hosts. “ From on high,” drippeth the star, and the gracious spittle; for the high, longeth every starless bosom. The moon hath its court, and the court hath its moon-calves: unto all, however, that cometh from the court do the mendicant people pray, and all appointable mendicant virtues. “ I serve, thou servest, we serve”—so prayeth all appointable virtue to the prince: that the merited star may at last stick on the slender breast! But the moon still revolveth around all that is earthly: so revolveth also the prince around what is earthliest of all—that, however, is the gold of the shopman. The God of the Hosts of war is not the God of the golden bar; the prince proposeth, but the shopman—disposeth! By all that is luminous and strong and good in thee, O Zarathustra! Spit on this city of shopmen and return back! Here floweth all blood putridly and tepidly and frothily through all veins: spit on the great city, which is the great slum where all the scum frotheth together! Spit on the city of compressed souls and slender breasts, of pointed eyes and sticky fingers— —On the city of the obtrusive, the brazen-faced, the pen-demagogues and tongue-demagogues, the overheated ambitious:— Where everything maimed, ill-famed, lustful, untrustful, over-mellow, sickly-yellow and seditious, festereth pernicious:— —Spit on the great city and turn back!— Here, however, did Zarathustra interrupt the foaming fool, and shut his mouth.— Stop this at once! called out Zarathustra, long have thy speech and thy species disgusted me! Why didst thou live so long by the swamp, that thou thyself hadst to become a frog and a toad? Floweth there not a tainted, frothy, swamp-blood in thine own veins, when thou hast thus learned to croak and revile? Why wentest thou not into the forest? Or why didst thou not till the ground? Is the sea not full of green islands? I despise thy contempt; and when thou warnedst me—why didst thou not warn thyself? Out of love alone shall my contempt and my warning bird take wing; but not out of the swamp!— They call thee mine ape, thou foaming fool: but I call thee my grunting-pig,—by thy grunting, thou spoilest even my praise of folly. What was it that first made thee grunt? Because no one sufficiently FLATTERED thee:—therefore didst thou seat thyself beside this filth, that thou mightest have cause for much grunting,— —That thou mightest have cause for much VENGEANCE! For vengeance, thou vain fool, is all thy foaming; I have divined thee well! But thy fools’-word injureth ME, even when thou art right! And even if Zarathustra’s word WERE a hundred times justified, thou wouldst ever—DO wrong with my word! Thus spake Zarathustra. Then did he look on the great city and sighed, and was long silent. At last he spake thus: I loathe also this great city, and not only this fool. Here and there— there is nothing to better, nothing to worsen. Woe to this great city!—And I would that I already saw the pillar of fire in which it will be consumed! For such pillars of fire must precede the great noontide. But this hath its time and its own fate.— This precept, however, give I unto thee, in parting, thou fool: Where one can no longer love, there should one—PASS BY!— Thus spake Zarathustra, and passed by the fool and the great city. LII. THE APOSTATES. 1. Ah, lieth everything already withered and grey which but lately stood green and many-hued on this meadow! And how much honey of hope did I carry hence into my beehives! Those young hearts have already all become old—and not old even! only weary, ordinary, comfortable:—they declare it: “ We have again become pious.” Of late did I see them run forth at early morn with valorous steps: but the feet of their knowledge became weary, and now do they malign even their morning valour! Verily, many of them once lifted their legs like the dancer; to them winked the laughter of my wisdom:—then did they bethink themselves. Just now have I seen them bent down —to creep to the cross. Around light and liberty did they once flutter like gnats and young poets. A little older, a little colder: and already are they mystifiers, and mumblers and mollycoddles. Did perhaps their hearts despond, because lonesomeness had swallowed me like a whale? Did their ear perhaps hearken yearningly-long for me IN VAIN, and for my trumpet-notes and herald-calls? —Ah! Ever are there but few of those whose hearts have persistent courage and exuberance; and in such remaineth also the spirit patient. The rest, however, are COWARDLY. The rest: these are always the great majority, the common-place, the superfluous, the far-too many—those all are cowardly!— Him who is of my type, will also the experiences of my type meet on the way: so that his first companions must be corpses and buffoons. His second companions, however—they will call themselves his BELIEVERS,—will be a living host, with much love, much folly, much unbearded veneration.
To those believers shall he who is of my type among men not bind his heart; in those spring-times and many-hued meadows shall he not believe, who knoweth the fickly fainthearted human species! COULD they do otherwise, then would they also WILL otherwise. The half-and-half spoil every whole. That leaves become withered,—what is there to lament about that! Let them go and fall away, O Zarathustra, and do not lament! Better even to blow amongst them with rustling winds,— —Blow amongst those leaves, O Zarathustra, that everything WITHERED may run away from thee the faster!— 2. “ We have again become pious”—so do those apostates confess; and some of them are still too pusillanimous thus to confess. Unto them I look into the eye,—before them I say it unto their face and unto the blush on their cheeks: Ye are those who again PRAY! It is however a shame to pray! Not for all, but for thee, and me, and whoever hath his conscience in his head. For THEE it is a shame to pray! Thou knowest it well: the faint-hearted devil in thee, which would fain fold its arms, and place its hands in its bosom, and take it easier:—this faint-hearted devil persuadeth thee that “ there IS a God!” THEREBY, however, dost thou belong to the light-dreading type, to whom light never permitteth repose: now must thou daily thrust thy head deeper into obscurity and vapour! And verily, thou choosest the hour well: for just now do the nocturnal birds again fly abroad. The hour hath come for all light-dreading people, the vesper hour and leisure hour, when they do not—“ take leisure.” I hear it and smell it: it hath come—their hour for hunt and procession, not indeed for a wild hunt, but for a tame, lame, snuffling, soft-treaders’, soft-prayers’ hunt,— —For a hunt after susceptible simpletons: all mouse-traps for the heart have again been set! And whenever I lift a curtain, a night-moth rusheth out of it. Did it perhaps squat there along with another night-moth? For everywhere do I smell small concealed communities; and wherever there are closets there are new devotees therein, and the atmosphere of devotees. They sit for long evenings beside one another, and say: “ Let us again become like little children and say, ‘good God!’”—ruined in mouths and stomachs by the pious confectioners. Or they look for long evenings at a crafty, lurking cross-spider, that preacheth prudence to the spiders themselves, and teacheth that “ under crosses it is good for cobwebspinning!” Or they sit all day at swamps with angle-rods, and on that account think themselves PROFOUND; but whoever fisheth where there are no fish, I do not even call him superficial! Or they learn in godly-gay style to play the harp with a hymn-poet, who would fain harp himself into the heart of young girls:—for he hath tired of old girls and their praises. Or they learn to shudder with a learned semi-madcap, who waiteth in darkened rooms for spirits to come to him—and the spirit runneth away entirely! Or they listen to an old roving howl-and growl-piper, who hath learnt from the sad winds the sadness of sounds; now pipeth he as the wind, and preacheth sadness in sad strains. And some of them have even become night-watchmen: they know now how to blow horns, and go about at night and awaken old things which have long fallen asleep. Five words about old things did I hear yester-night at the garden-wall: they came from such old, sorrowful, arid night-watchmen. “ For a father he careth not sufficiently for his children: human fathers do this better!”— “ He is too old! He now careth no more for his children,”—answered the other night-watchman. “ HATH he then children? No one can prove it unless he himself prove it! I have long wished that he would for once prove it thoroughly.” “ Prove? As if HE had ever proved anything! Proving is difficult to him; he layeth great stress on one’s BELIEVING him.” “ Ay! Ay! Belief saveth him; belief in him. That is the way with old people! So it is with us also!”— —Thus spake to each other the two old night-watchmen and light-scarers, and tooted thereupon sorrowfully on their horns: so did it happen yester-night at the garden-wall. To me, however, did the heart writhe with laughter, and was like to break; it knew not where to go, and sunk into the midriff. Verily, it will be my death yet—to choke with laughter when I see asses drunken, and hear night-watchmen thus doubt about God. Hath the time not LONG since passed for all such doubts? Who may nowadays awaken such old slumbering, light-shunning things! With the old Deities hath it long since come to an end:—and verily, a good joyful Deity-end had they! They did not “ begloom” themselves to death—that do people fabricate! On the contrary, they—LAUGHED themselves to death once on a time! That took place when the unGodliest utterance came from a God himself—the utterance: “ There is but one God! Thou shalt have no other Gods before me!”— —An old grim-beard of a God, a jealous one, forgot himself in such wise:— And all the Gods then laughed, and shook upon their thrones, and exclaimed: “ Is it not just divinity that there are Gods, but no God?” He that hath an ear let him hear.— Thus talked Zarathustra in the city he loved, which is surnamed “ The Pied Cow.” For from here he had but two days to travel to reach once more his cave and his animals; his soul, however, rejoiced unceasingly on account of the nighness of his return home.
LIII. THE RETURN HOME. O lonesomeness! My HOME, lonesomeness! Too long have I lived wildly in wild remoteness, to return to thee without tears! Now threaten me with the finger as mothers threaten; now smile upon me as mothers smile; now say just: “ Who was it that like a whirlwind once rushed away from me?— —Who when departing called out: ‘Too long have I sat with lonesomeness; there have I unlearned silence!’ THAT hast thou learned now—surely? O Zarathustra, everything do I know; and that thou wert MORE FORSAKEN amongst the many, thou unique one, than thou ever wert with me! One thing is forsakenness, another matter is lonesomeness: THAT hast thou now learned! And that amongst men thou wilt ever be wild and strange: —Wild and strange even when they love thee: for above all they want to be TREATED INDULGENTLY! Here, however, art thou at home and house with thyself; here canst thou utter everything, and unbosom all motives; nothing is here ashamed of concealed, congealed feelings. Here do all things come caressingly to thy talk and flatter thee: for they want to ride upon thy back. On every simile dost thou here ride to every truth. Uprightly and openly mayest thou here talk to all things: and verily, it soundeth as praise in their ears, for one to talk to all things—directly! Another matter, however, is forsakenness. For, dost thou remember, O Zarathustra? When thy bird screamed overhead, when thou stoodest in the forest, irresolute, ignorant where to go, beside a corpse:— —When thou spakest: ‘Let mine animals lead me! More dangerous have I found it among men than among animals:’—THAT was forsakenness! And dost thou remember, O Zarathustra? When thou sattest in thine isle, a well of wine giving and granting amongst empty buckets, bestowing and distributing amongst the thirsty: —Until at last thou alone sattest thirsty amongst the drunken ones, and wailedst nightly: ‘Is taking not more blessed than giving? And stealing yet more blessed than taking?’— THAT was forsakenness! And dost thou remember, O Zarathustra? When thy stillest hour came and drove thee forth from thyself, when with wicked whispering it said: ‘Speak and succumb!’— —When it disgusted thee with all thy waiting and silence, and discouraged thy humble courage: THAT was forsakenness!”— O lonesomeness! My home, lonesomeness! How blessedly and tenderly speaketh thy voice unto me! We do not question each other, we do not complain to each other; we go together openly through open doors. For all is open with thee and clear; and even the hours run here on lighter feet. For in the dark, time weigheth heavier upon one than in the light. Here fly open unto me all being’s words and word-cabinets: here all being wanteth to become words, here all becoming wanteth to learn of me how to talk. Down there, however—all talking is in vain! There, forgetting and passing-by are the best wisdom: THAT have I learned now! He who would understand everything in man must handle everything. But for that I have too clean hands. I do not like even to inhale their breath; alas! that I have lived so long among their noise and bad breaths! O blessed stillness around me! O pure odours around me! How from a deep breast this stillness fetcheth pure breath! How it hearkeneth, this blessed stillness! But down there—there speaketh everything, there is everything misheard. If one announce one’s wisdom with bells, the shopmen in the market-place will out-jingle it with pennies! Everything among them talketh; no one knoweth any longer how to understand. Everything falleth into the water; nothing falleth any longer into deep wells. Everything among them talketh, nothing succeedeth any longer and accomplisheth itself. Everything cackleth, but who will still sit quietly on the nest and hatch eggs? Everything among them talketh, everything is out-talked. And that which yesterday was still too hard for time itself and its tooth, hangeth to-day, outchamped and outchewed, from the mouths of the men of to-day. Everything among them talketh, everything is betrayed. And what was once called the secret and secrecy of profound souls, belongeth to-day to the street-trumpeters and other butterflies. O human hubbub, thou wonderful thing! Thou noise in dark streets! Now art thou again behind me:—my greatest danger lieth behind me! In indulging and pitying lay ever my greatest danger; and all human hubbub wisheth to be indulged and tolerated. With suppressed truths, with fool’s hand and befooled heart, and rich in petty lies of pity:—thus have I ever lived among men. Disguised did I sit amongst them, ready to misjudge MYSELF that I might endure THEM, and willingly saying to myself: “ Thou fool, thou dost not know men!” One unlearneth men when one liveth amongst them: there is too much foreground in all men—what can far-seeing, far-longing eyes do THERE! And, fool that I was, when they misjudged me, I indulged them on that account more than myself, being habitually hard on myself, and often even taking revenge on myself for the indulgence. Stung all over by poisonous flies, and hollowed like the stone by many drops of wickedness: thus did I sit among them, and still said to myself: “ Innocent is everything petty of its pettiness!” Especially did I find those who call themselves “ the good,” the most poisonous flies; they sting in all innocence, they lie in all innocence; how COULD they—be just towards
me! He who liveth amongst the good—pity teacheth him to lie. Pity maketh stifling air for all free souls. For the stupidity of the good is unfathomable. To conceal myself and my riches—THAT did I learn down there: for every one did I still find poor in spirit. It was the lie of my pity, that I knew in every one, —That I saw and scented in every one, what was ENOUGH of spirit for him, and what was TOO MUCH! Their stiff wise men: I call them wise, not stiff—thus did I learn to slur over words. The grave-diggers dig for themselves diseases. Under old rubbish rest bad vapours. One should not stir up the marsh. One should live on mountains. With blessed nostrils do I again breathe mountain-freedom. Freed at last is my nose from the smell of all human hubbub! With sharp breezes tickled, as with sparkling wine, SNEEZETH my soul— sneezeth, and shouteth self-congratulatingly: “ Health to thee!” Thus spake Zarathustra. LIV. THE THREE EVIL THINGS. 1. In my dream, in my last morning-dream, I stood to-day on a promontory— beyond the world; I held a pair of scales, and WEIGHED the world. Alas, that the rosy dawn came too early to me: she glowed me awake, the jealous one! Jealous is she always of the glows of my morning-dream. Measurable by him who hath time, weighable by a good weigher, attainable by strong pinions, divinable by divine nut-crackers: thus did my dream find the world:— My dream, a bold sailor, half-ship, half-hurricane, silent as the butterfly, impatient as the falcon: how had it the patience and leisure to-day for world-weighing! Did my wisdom perhaps speak secretly to it, my laughing, wide-awake day-wisdom, which mocketh at all “ infinite worlds”? For it saith: “ Where force is, there becometh NUMBER the master: it hath more force.” How confidently did my dream contemplate this finite world, not new-fangledly, not old-fangledly, not timidly, not entreatingly:— —As if a big round apple presented itself to my hand, a ripe golden apple, with a coolly-soft, velvety skin:—thus did the world present itself unto me:— —As if a tree nodded unto me, a broad-branched, strong-willed tree, curved as a recline and a foot-stool for weary travellers: thus did the world stand on my promontory:— —As if delicate hands carried a casket towards me—a casket open for the delectation of modest adoring eyes: thus did the world present itself before me to-day:— —Not riddle enough to scare human love from it, not solution enough to put to sleep human wisdom:—a humanly good thing was the world to me to-day, of which such bad things are said! How I thank my morning-dream that I thus at to-day’s dawn, weighed the world! As a humanly good thing did it come unto me, this dream and heart-comforter! And that I may do the like by day, and imitate and copy its best, now will I put the three worst things on the scales, and weigh them humanly well.— He who taught to bless taught also to curse: what are the three best cursed things in the world? These will I put on the scales. VOLUPTUOUSNESS, PASSION FOR POWER, and SELFISHNESS: these three things have hitherto been best cursed, and have been in worst and falsest repute—these three things will I weigh humanly well. Well! Here is my promontory, and there is the sea—IT rolleth hither unto me, shaggily and fawningly, the old, faithful, hundred-headed dog-monster that I love!— Well! Here will I hold the scales over the weltering sea: and also a witness do I choose to look on—thee, the anchorite-tree, thee, the strong-odoured, broad-arched tree that I love! — On what bridge goeth the now to the hereafter? By what constraint doth the high stoop to the low? And what enjoineth even the highest still—to grow upwards?— Now stand the scales poised and at rest: three heavy questions have I thrown in; three heavy answers carrieth the other scale. 2. Voluptuousness: unto all hair-shirted despisers of the body, a sting and stake; and, cursed as “ the world,” by all backworldsmen: for it mocketh and befooleth all erring, misinferring teachers. Voluptuousness: to the rabble, the slow fire at which it is burnt; to all wormy wood, to all stinking rags, the prepared heat and stew furnace. Voluptuousness: to free hearts, a thing innocent and free, the garden-happiness of the earth, all the future’s thanks-overflow to the present. Voluptuousness: only to the withered a sweet poison; to the lion-willed, however, the great cordial, and the reverently saved wine of wines. Voluptuousness: the great symbolic happiness of a higher happiness and highest hope. For to many is marriage promised, and more than marriage,— —To many that are more unknown to each other than man and woman:—and who hath fully understood HOW UNKNOWN to each other are man and woman! Voluptuousness:—but I will have hedges around my thoughts, and even around my words, lest swine and libertine should break into my gardens!— Passion for power: the glowing scourge of the hardest of the heart-hard; the cruel torture reserved for the cruellest themselves; the gloomy flame of living pyres. Passion for power: the wicked gadfly which is mounted on the vainest peoples; the scorner of all uncertain virtue; which rideth on every horse and on every pride. Passion for power: the earthquake which breaketh and upbreaketh all that is rotten and hollow; the rolling, rumbling, punitive demolisher of whited sepulchres; the flashing
interrogative-sign beside premature answers. Passion for power: before whose glance man creepeth and croucheth and drudgeth, and becometh lower than the serpent and the swine:—until at last great contempt crieth out of him—, Passion for power: the terrible teacher of great contempt, which preacheth to their face to cities and empires: “ Away with thee!”—until a voice crieth out of themselves: “ Away with ME!” Passion for power: which, however, mounteth alluringly even to the pure and lonesome, and up to self-satisfied elevations, glowing like a love that painteth purple felicities alluringly on earthly heavens. Passion for power: but who would call it PASSION, when the height longeth to stoop for power! Verily, nothing sick or diseased is there in such longing and descending! That the lonesome height may not for ever remain lonesome and self-sufficing; that the mountains may come to the valleys and the winds of the heights to the plains:— Oh, who could find the right prenomen and honouring name for such longing! “ Bestowing virtue”—thus did Zarathustra once name the unnamable. And then it happened also,—and verily, it happened for the first time!—that his word blessed SELFISHNESS, the wholesome, healthy selfishness, that springeth from the powerful soul:— —From the powerful soul, to which the high body appertaineth, the handsome, triumphing, refreshing body, around which everything becometh a mirror: —The pliant, persuasive body, the dancer, whose symbol and epitome is the self-enjoying soul. Of such bodies and souls the self-enjoyment calleth itself “ virtue.” With its words of good and bad doth such self-enjoyment shelter itself as with sacred groves; with the names of its happiness doth it banish from itself everything contemptible. Away from itself doth it banish everything cowardly; it saith: “ Bad—THAT IS cowardly!” Contemptible seem to it the ever-solicitous, the sighing, the complaining, and whoever pick up the most trifling advantage. It despiseth also all bitter-sweet wisdom: for verily, there is also wisdom that bloometh in the dark, a night-shade wisdom, which ever sigheth: “ All is vain!” Shy distrust is regarded by it as base, and every one who wanteth oaths instead of looks and hands: also all over-distrustful wisdom,—for such is the mode of cowardly souls. Baser still it regardeth the obsequious, doggish one, who immediately lieth on his back, the submissive one; and there is also wisdom that is submissive, and doggish, and pious, and obsequious. Hateful to it altogether, and a loathing, is he who will never defend himself, he who swalloweth down poisonous spittle and bad looks, the all-too-patient one, the all-endurer, the all-satisfied one: for that is the mode of slaves. Whether they be servile before Gods and divine spurnings, or before men and stupid human opinions: at ALL kinds of slaves doth it spit, this blessed selfishness! Bad: thus doth it call all that is spirit-broken, and sordidly-servile—constrained, blinking eyes, depressed hearts, and the false submissive style, which kisseth with broad cowardly lips. And spurious wisdom: so doth it call all the wit that slaves, and hoary-headed and weary ones affect; and especially all the cunning, spurious-witted, curious-witted foolishness of priests! The spurious wise, however, all the priests, the world-weary, and those whose souls are of feminine and servile nature—oh, how hath their game all along abused selfishness! And precisely THAT was to be virtue and was to be called virtue—to abuse selfishness! And “ selfless”—so did they wish themselves with good reason, all those world-weary cowards and cross-spiders! But to all those cometh now the day, the change, the sword of judgment, THE GREAT NOONTIDE: then shall many things be revealed! And he who proclaimeth the EGO wholesome and holy, and selfishness blessed, verily, he, the prognosticator, speaketh also what he knoweth: “ BEHOLD, IT COMETH, IT IS NIGH, THE GREAT NOONTIDE!” Thus spake Zarathustra. LV. THE SPIRIT OF GRAVITY. 1. My mouthpiece—is of the people: too coarsely and cordially do I talk for Angora rabbits. And still stranger soundeth my word unto all ink-fish and pen-foxes. My hand—is a fool’s hand: woe unto all tables and walls, and whatever hath room for fool’s sketching, fool’s scrawling! My foot—is a horse-foot; therewith do I trample and trot over stick and stone, in the fields up and down, and am bedevilled with delight in all fast racing. My stomach—is surely an eagle’s stomach? For it preferreth lamb’s flesh. Certainly it is a bird’s stomach. Nourished with innocent things, and with few, ready and impatient to fly, to fly away—that is now my nature: why should there not be something of bird-nature therein! And especially that I am hostile to the spirit of gravity, that is bird-nature:—verily, deadly hostile, supremely hostile, originally hostile! Oh, whither hath my hostility not flown and misflown! Thereof could I sing a song—and WILL sing it: though I be alone in an empty house, and must sing it to mine own ears.
Other singers are there, to be sure, to whom only the full house maketh the voice soft, the hand eloquent, the eye expressive, the heart wakeful:—those do I not resemble.— 2. He who one day teacheth men to fly will have shifted all landmarks; to him will all landmarks themselves fly into the air; the earth will he christen anew—as “ the light body.” The ostrich runneth faster than the fastest horse, but it also thrusteth its head heavily into the heavy earth: thus is it with the man who cannot yet fly. Heavy unto him are earth and life, and so WILLETH the spirit of gravity! But he who would become light, and be a bird, must love himself:—thus do I teach. Not, to be sure, with the love of the sick and infected, for with them stinketh even self-love! One must learn to love oneself—thus do I teach—with a wholesome and healthy love: that one may endure to be with oneself, and not go roving about. Such roving about christeneth itself “ brotherly love”; with these words hath there hitherto been the best lying and dissembling, and especially by those who have been burdensome to every one. And verily, it is no commandment for to-day and to-morrow to LEARN to love oneself. Rather is it of all arts the finest, subtlest, last and patientest. For to its possessor is all possession well concealed, and of all treasure-pits one’s own is last excavated—so causeth the spirit of gravity. Almost in the cradle are we apportioned with heavy words and worths: “ good” and “ evil”—so calleth itself this dowry. For the sake of it we are forgiven for living. And therefore suffereth one little children to come unto one, to forbid them betimes to love themselves—so causeth the spirit of gravity. And we—we bear loyally what is apportioned unto us, on hard shoulders, over rugged mountains! And when we sweat, then do people say to us: “ Yea, life is hard to bear!” But man himself only is hard to bear! The reason thereof is that he carrieth too many extraneous things on his shoulders. Like the camel kneeleth he down, and letteth himself be well laden. Especially the strong load-bearing man in whom reverence resideth. Too many EXTRANEOUS heavy words and worths loadeth he upon himself—then seemeth life to him a desert! And verily! Many a thing also that is OUR OWN is hard to bear! And many internal things in man are like the oyster—repulsive and slippery and hard to grasp;— So that an elegant shell, with elegant adornment, must plead for them. But this art also must one learn: to HAVE a shell, and a fine appearance, and sagacious blindness! Again, it deceiveth about many things in man, that many a shell is poor and pitiable, and too much of a shell. Much concealed goodness and power is never dreamt of; the choicest dainties find no tasters! Women know that, the choicest of them: a little fatter a little leaner— oh, how much fate is in so little! Man is difficult to discover, and unto himself most difficult of all; often lieth the spirit concerning the soul. So causeth the spirit of gravity. He, however, hath discovered himself who saith: This is MY good and evil: therewith hath he silenced the mole and the dwarf, who say: “ Good for all, evil for all.” Verily, neither do I like those who call everything good, and this world the best of all. Those do I call the all-satisfied. All-satisfiedness, which knoweth how to taste everything,—that is not the best taste! I honour the refractory, fastidious tongues and stomachs, which have learned to say “ I” and “ Yea” and “ Nay.” To chew and digest everything, however—that is the genuine swine-nature! Ever to say YE-A—that hath only the ass learnt, and those like it!— Deep yellow and hot red—so wanteth MY taste—it mixeth blood with all colours. He, however, who whitewasheth his house, betrayeth unto me a whitewashed soul. With mummies, some fall in love; others with phantoms: both alike hostile to all flesh and blood—oh, how repugnant are both to my taste! For I love blood. And there will I not reside and abide where every one spitteth and speweth: that is now MY taste,—rather would I live amongst thieves and perjurers. Nobody carrieth gold in his mouth. Still more repugnant unto me, however, are all lickspittles; and the most repugnant animal of man that I found, did I christen “ parasite”: it would not love, and would yet live by love. Unhappy do I call all those who have only one choice: either to become evil beasts, or evil beast-tamers. Amongst such would I not build my tabernacle. Unhappy do I also call those who have ever to WAIT,—they are repugnant to my taste—all the toll-gatherers and traders, and kings, and other landkeepers and shopkeepers. Verily, I learned waiting also, and thoroughly so,—but only waiting for MYSELF. And above all did I learn standing and walking and running and leaping and climbing and dancing. This however is my teaching: he who wisheth one day to fly, must first learn standing and walking and running and climbing and dancing:—one doth not fly into flying! With rope-ladders learned I to reach many a window, with nimble legs did I climb high masts: to sit on high masts of perception seemed to me no small bliss;— —To flicker like small flames on high masts: a small light, certainly, but a great comfort to cast-away sailors and ship-wrecked ones! By divers ways and wendings did I arrive at my truth; not by one ladder did I mount to the height where mine eye roveth into my remoteness. And unwillingly only did I ask my way—that was always counter to my taste! Rather did I question and test the ways themselves. A testing and a questioning hath been all my travelling:—and verily, one must also LEARN to answer such questioning! That, however,—is my taste:
—Neither a good nor a bad taste, but MY taste, of which I have no longer either shame or secrecy. “ This—is now MY way,—where is yours?” Thus did I answer those who asked me “ the way.” For THE way—it doth not exist! Thus spake Zarathustra. LVI. OLD AND NEW TLES. 1. Here do I sit and wait, old broken tables around me and also new half-written tables. When cometh mine hour? —The hour of my descent, of my down-going: for once more will I go unto men. For that hour do I now wait: for first must the signs come unto me that it is MINE hour—namely, the laughing lion with the flock of doves. Meanwhile do I talk to myself as one who hath time. No one telleth me anything new, so I tell myself mine own story. 2. When I came unto men, then found I them resting on an old infatuation: all of them thought they had long known what was good and bad for men. An old wearisome business seemed to them all discourse about virtue; and he who wished to sleep well spake of “ good” and “ bad” ere retiring to rest. This somnolence did I disturb when I taught that NO ONE YET KNOWETH what is good and bad:—unless it be the creating one! —It is he, however, who createth man’s goal, and giveth to the earth its meaning and its future: he only EFFECTETH it THAT aught is good or bad. And I bade them upset their old academic chairs, and wherever that old infatuation had sat; I bade them laugh at their great moralists, their saints, their poets, and their Saviours. At their gloomy sages did I bid them laugh, and whoever had sat admonishing as a black scarecrow on the tree of life. On their great grave-highway did I seat myself, and even beside the carrion and vultures—and I laughed at all their bygone and its mellow decaying glory. Verily, like penitential preachers and fools did I cry wrath and shame on all their greatness and smallness. Oh, that their best is so very small! Oh, that their worst is so very small! Thus did I laugh. Thus did my wise longing, born in the mountains, cry and laugh in me; a wild wisdom, verily!—my great pinion-rustling longing. And oft did it carry me off and up and away and in the midst of laughter; then flew I quivering like an arrow with sun-intoxicated rapture: —Out into distant futures, which no dream hath yet seen, into warmer souths than ever sculptor conceived,—where gods in their dancing are ashamed of all clothes: (That I may speak in parables and halt and stammer like the poets: and verily I am ashamed that I have still to be a poet!) Where all becoming seemed to me dancing of Gods, and wantoning of Gods, and the world unloosed and unbridled and fleeing back to itself:— —As an eternal self-fleeing and re-seeking of one another of many Gods, as the blessed self-contradicting, recommuning, and refraternising with one another of many Gods:— Where all time seemed to me a blessed mockery of moments, where necessity was freedom itself, which played happily with the goad of freedom:— Where I also found again mine old devil and arch-enemy, the spirit of gravity, and all that it created: constraint, law, necessity and consequence and purpose and will and good and evil:— For must there not be that which is danced OVER, danced beyond? Must there not, for the sake of the nimble, the nimblest,—be moles and clumsy dwarfs?— 3. There was it also where I picked up from the path the word “ Superman,” and that man is something that must be surpassed. —That man is a bridge and not a goal—rejoicing over his noontides and evenings, as advances to new rosy dawns: —The Zarathustra word of the great noontide, and whatever else I have hung up over men like purple evening-afterglows. Verily, also new stars did I make them see, along with new nights; and over cloud and day and night, did I spread out laughter like a gay-coloured canopy. I taught them all MY poetisation and aspiration: to compose and collect into unity what is fragment in man, and riddle and fearful chance;— —As composer, riddle-reader, and redeemer of chance, did I teach them to create the future, and all that HATH BEEN—to redeem by creating. The past of man to redeem, and every “ It was” to transform, until the Will saith: “ But so did I will it! So shall I will it—” —This did I call redemption; this alone taught I them to call redemption.— Now do I await MY redemption—that I may go unto them for the last time. For once more will I go unto men: AMONGST them will my sun set; in dying will I give them my choicest gift! From the sun did I learn this, when it goeth down, the exuberant one: gold doth it then pour into the sea, out of inexhaustible riches,— —So that the poorest fisherman roweth even with GOLDEN oars! For this did I once see, and did not tire of weeping in beholding it.— Like the sun will also Zarathustra go down: now sitteth he here and waiteth, old broken tables around him, and also new tables—half-written. 4. Behold, here is a new table; but where are my brethren who will carry it with me to the valley and into hearts of flesh?—
Thus demandeth my great love to the remotest ones: BE NOT CONSIDERATE OF THY NEIGHBOUR! Man is something that must be surpassed. There are many divers ways and modes of surpassing: see THOU thereto! But only a buffoon thinketh: “ man can also be OVERLEAPT.” Surpass thyself even in thy neighbour: and a right which thou canst seize upon, shalt thou not allow to be given thee! What thou doest can no one do to thee again. Lo, there is no requital. He who cannot command himself shall obey. And many a one CAN command himself, but still sorely lacketh self-obedience! 5. Thus wisheth the type of noble souls: they desire to have nothing GRATUITOUSLY, least of all, life. He who is of the populace wisheth to live gratuitously; we others, however, to whom life hath given itself—we are ever considering WHAT we can best give IN RETURN! And verily, it is a noble dictum which saith: “ What life promiseth US, that promise will WE keep—to life!” One should not wish to enjoy where one doth not contribute to the enjoyment. And one should not WISH to enjoy! For enjoyment and innocence are the most bashful things. Neither like to be sought for. One should HAVE them,—but one should rather SEEK for guilt and pain!— 6. O my brethren, he who is a firstling is ever sacrificed. Now, however, are we firstlings! We all bleed on secret sacrificial altars, we all burn and broil in honour of ancient idols. Our best is still young: this exciteth old palates. Our flesh is tender, our skin is only lambs’ skin:—how could we not excite old idol-priests! IN OURSELVES dwelleth he still, the old idol-priest, who broileth our best for his banquet. Ah, my brethren, how could firstlings fail to be sacrifices! But so wisheth our type; and I love those who do not wish to preserve themselves, the down-going ones do I love with mine entire love: for they go beyond.— 7. To be true—that CAN few be! And he who can, will not! Least of all, however, can the good be true. Oh, those good ones! GOOD MEN NEVER SPEAK THE TRUTH. For the spirit, thus to be good, is a malady. They yield, those good ones, they submit themselves; their heart repeateth, their soul obeyeth: HE, however, who obeyeth, DOTH NOT LISTEN TO HIMSELF! All that is called evil by the good, must come together in order that one truth may be born. O my brethren, are ye also evil enough for THIS truth? The daring venture, the prolonged distrust, the cruel Nay, the tedium, the cutting-into-the-quick—how seldom do THESE come together! Out of such seed, however—is truth produced! BESIDE the bad conscience hath hitherto grown all KNOWLEDGE! Break up, break up, ye discerning ones, the old tables! 8. When the water hath planks, when gangways and railings o’erspan the stream, verily, he is not believed who then saith: “ All is in flux.” But even the simpletons contradict him. “ What?” say the simpletons, “ all in flux? Planks and railings are still OVER the stream! “ OVER the stream all is stable, all the values of things, the bridges and bearings, all ‘good’ and ‘evil’: these are all STLE!”— Cometh, however, the hard winter, the stream-tamer, then learn even the wittiest distrust, and verily, not only the simpletons then say: “ Should not everything—STAND STILL?” “ Fundamentally standeth everything still”—that is an appropriate winter doctrine, good cheer for an unproductive period, a great comfort for winter-sleepers and fireside-loungers. “ Fundamentally standeth everything still”—: but CONTRARY thereto, preacheth the thawing wind! The thawing wind, a bullock, which is no ploughing bullock—a furious bullock, a destroyer, which with angry horns breaketh the ice! The ice however—BREAKETH GANGWAYS! O my brethren, is not everything AT PRESENT IN FLUX? Have not all railings and gangways fallen into the water? Who would still HOLD ON to “ good” and “ evil”? “ Woe to us! Hail to us! The thawing wind bloweth!”—Thus preach, my brethren, through all the streets! 9. There is an old illusion—it is called good and evil. Around soothsayers and astrologers hath hitherto revolved the orbit of this illusion. Once did one BELIEVE in soothsayers and astrologers; and THEREFORE did one believe, “ Everything is fate: thou shalt, for thou must!” Then again did one distrust all soothsayers and astrologers; and THEREFORE did one believe, “ Everything is freedom: thou canst, for thou willest!” O my brethren, concerning the stars and the future there hath hitherto been only illusion, and not knowledge; and THEREFORE concerning good and evil there hath hitherto been only illusion and not knowledge! 10. “ Thou shalt not rob! Thou shalt not slay!”—such precepts were once called holy; before them did one bow the knee and the head, and take off one’s shoes.
But I ask you: Where have there ever been better robbers and slayers in the world than such holy precepts? Is there not even in all life—robbing and slaying? And for such precepts to be called holy, was not TRUTH itself thereby—slain? —Or was it a sermon of death that called holy what contradicted and dissuaded from life?—O my brethren, break up, break up for me the old tables! 11. It is my sympathy with all the past that I see it is abandoned,— —Abandoned to the favour, the spirit and the madness of every generation that cometh, and reinterpreteth all that hath been as its bridge! A great potentate might arise, an artful prodigy, who with approval and disapproval could strain and constrain all the past, until it became for him a bridge, a harbinger, a herald, and a cock-crowing. This however is the other danger, and mine other sympathy:—he who is of the populace, his thoughts go back to his grandfather,—with his grandfather, however, doth time cease. Thus is all the past abandoned: for it might some day happen for the populace to become master, and drown all time in shallow waters. Therefore, O my brethren, a NEW NOBILITY is needed, which shall be the adversary of all populace and potentate rule, and shall inscribe anew the word “ noble” on new tables. For many noble ones are needed, and many kinds of noble ones, FOR A NEW NOBILITY! Or, as I once said in parable: “ That is just divinity, that there are Gods, but no God!” 12. O my brethren, I consecrate you and point you to a new nobility: ye shall become procreators and cultivators and sowers of the future;— —Verily, not to a nobility which ye could purchase like traders with traders’ gold; for little worth is all that hath its price. Let it not be your honour henceforth whence ye come, but whither ye go! Your Will and your feet which seek to surpass you—let these be your new honour! Verily, not that ye have served a prince—of what account are princes now!—nor that ye have become a bulwark to that which standeth, that it may stand more firmly. Not that your family have become courtly at courts, and that ye have learned—gay-coloured, like the flamingo—to stand long hours in shallow pools: (FLITY-to-stand is a merit in courtiers; and all courtiers believe that unto blessedness after death pertaineth—PERMISSION-to-sit!) Nor even that a Spirit called Holy, led your forefathers into promised lands, which I do not praise: for where the worst of all trees grew—the cross,—in that land there is nothing to praise!— —And verily, wherever this “ Holy Spirit” led its knights, always in such campaigns did—goats and geese, and wryheads and guyheads run FOREMOST!— O my brethren, not backward shall your nobility gaze, but OUTWARD! Exiles shall ye be from all fatherlands and forefather-lands! Your CHILDREN’S LAND shall ye love: let this love be your new nobility,—the undiscovered in the remotest seas! For it do I bid your sails search and search! Unto your children shall ye MAKE AMENDS for being the children of your fathers: all the past shall ye THUS redeem! This new table do I place over you! 13. “ Why should one live? All is vain! To live—that is to thrash straw; to live—that is to burn oneself and yet not get warm.”— Such ancient babbling still passeth for “ wisdom”; because it is old, however, and smelleth mustily, THEREFORE is it the more honoured. Even mould ennobleth.— Children might thus speak: they SHUN the fire because it hath burnt them! There is much childishness in the old books of wisdom. And he who ever “ thrasheth straw,” why should he be allowed to rail at thrashing! Such a fool one would have to muzzle! Such persons sit down to the table and bring nothing with them, not even good hunger:—and then do they rail: “ All is vain!” But to eat and drink well, my brethren, is verily no vain art! Break up, break up for me the tables of the never-joyous ones! 14. “ To the clean are all things clean”—thus say the people. I, however, say unto you: To the swine all things become swinish! Therefore preach the visionaries and bowed-heads (whose hearts are also bowed down): “ The world itself is a filthy monster.” For these are all unclean spirits; especially those, however, who have no peace or rest, unless they see the world FROM THE BACKSIDE—the backworldsmen! TO THOSE do I say it to the face, although it sound unpleasantly: the world resembleth man, in that it hath a backside,—SO MUCH is true! There is in the world much filth: SO MUCH is true! But the world itself is not therefore a filthy monster! There is wisdom in the fact that much in the world smelleth badly: loathing itself createth wings, and fountain-divining powers! In the best there is still something to loathe; and the best is still something that must be surpassed!— O my brethren, there is much wisdom in the fact that much filth is in the world!— 15. Such sayings did I hear pious backworldsmen speak to their consciences, and verily without wickedness or guile,—although there is nothing more guileful in the world, or more
wicked. “ Let the world be as it is! Raise not a finger against it!” “ Let whoever will choke and stab and skin and scrape the people: raise not a finger against it! Thereby will they learn to renounce the world.” “ And thine own reason—this shalt thou thyself stifle and choke; for it is a reason of this world,—thereby wilt thou learn thyself to renounce the world.”— —Shatter, shatter, O my brethren, those old tables of the pious! Tatter the maxims of the world-maligners!— 16. “ He who learneth much unlearneth all violent cravings”—that do people now whisper to one another in all the dark lanes. “ Wisdom wearieth, nothing is worth while; thou shalt not crave!”—this new table found I hanging even in the public markets. Break up for me, O my brethren, break up also that NEW table! The weary-o’-the-world put it up, and the preachers of death and the jailer: for lo, it is also a sermon for slavery: — Because they learned badly and not the best, and everything too early and everything too fast; because they ATE badly: from thence hath resulted their ruined stomach;— —For a ruined stomach, is their spirit: IT persuadeth to death! For verily, my brethren, the spirit IS a stomach! Life is a well of delight, but to him in whom the ruined stomach speaketh, the father of affliction, all fountains are poisoned. To discern: that is DELIGHT to the lion-willed! But he who hath become weary, is himself merely “ willed”; with him play all the waves. And such is always the nature of weak men: they lose themselves on their way. And at last asketh their weariness: “ Why did we ever go on the way? All is indifferent!” TO THEM soundeth it pleasant to have preached in their ears: “ Nothing is worth while! Ye shall not will!” That, however, is a sermon for slavery. O my brethren, a fresh blustering wind cometh Zarathustra unto all way-weary ones; many noses will he yet make sneeze! Even through walls bloweth my free breath, and in into prisons and imprisoned spirits! Willing emancipateth: for willing is creating: so do I teach. And ONLY for creating shall ye learn! And also the learning shall ye LEARN only from me, the learning well!—He who hath ears let him hear! 17. There standeth the boat—thither goeth it over, perhaps into vast nothingness—but who willeth to enter into this “ Perhaps”? None of you want to enter into the death-boat! How should ye then be WORLD-WEARY ones! World-weary ones! And have not even withdrawn from the earth! Eager did I ever find you for the earth, amorous still of your own earth-weariness! Not in vain doth your lip hang down:—a small worldly wish still sitteth thereon! And in your eye—floateth there not a cloudlet of unforgotten earthly bliss? There are on the earth many good inventions, some useful, some pleasant: for their sake is the earth to be loved. And many such good inventions are there, that they are like woman’s breasts: useful at the same time, and pleasant. Ye world-weary ones, however! Ye earth-idlers! You, shall one beat with stripes! With stripes shall one again make you sprightly limbs. For if ye be not invalids, or decrepit creatures, of whom the earth is weary, then are ye sly sloths, or dainty, sneaking pleasure-cats. And if ye will not again RUN gaily, then shall ye—pass away! To the incurable shall one not seek to be a physician: thus teacheth Zarathustra:—so shall ye pass away! But more COURAGE is needed to make an end than to make a new verse: that do all physicians and poets know well.— 18. O my brethren, there are tables which weariness framed, and tables which slothfulness framed, corrupt slothfulness: although they speak similarly, they want to be heard differently. — See this languishing one! Only a span-breadth is he from his goal; but from weariness hath he lain down obstinately in the dust, this brave one! From weariness yawneth he at the path, at the earth, at the goal, and at himself: not a step further will he go,—this brave one! Now gloweth the sun upon him, and the dogs lick at his sweat: but he lieth there in his obstinacy and preferreth to languish:— —A span-breadth from his goal, to languish! Verily, ye will have to drag him into his heaven by the hair of his head—this hero! Better still that ye let him lie where he hath lain down, that sleep may come unto him, the comforter, with cooling patter-rain. Let him lie, until of his own accord he awakeneth,—until of his own accord he repudiateth all weariness, and what weariness hath taught through him! Only, my brethren, see that ye scare the dogs away from him, the idle skulkers, and all the swarming vermin:— —All the swarming vermin of the “ cultured,” that—feast on the sweat of every hero!— 19. I form circles around me and holy boundaries; ever fewer ascend with me ever higher mountains: I build a mountain-range out of ever holier mountains.—
But wherever ye would ascend with me, O my brethren, take care lest a PARASITE ascend with you! A parasite: that is a reptile, a creeping, cringing reptile, that trieth to fatten on your infirm and sore places. And THIS is its art: it divineth where ascending souls are weary, in your trouble and dejection, in your sensitive modesty, doth it build its loathsome nest. Where the strong are weak, where the noble are all-too-gentle—there buildeth it its loathsome nest; the parasite liveth where the great have small sore-places. What is the highest of all species of being, and what is the lowest? The parasite is the lowest species; he, however, who is of the highest species feedeth most parasites. For the soul which hath the longest ladder, and can go deepest down: how could there fail to be most parasites upon it?— —The most comprehensive soul, which can run and stray and rove furthest in itself; the most necessary soul, which out of joy flingeth itself into chance:— —The soul in Being, which plungeth into Becoming; the possessing soul, which SEEKETH to attain desire and longing:— —The soul fleeing from itself, which overtaketh itself in the widest circuit; the wisest soul, unto which folly speaketh most sweetly:— —The soul most self-loving, in which all things have their current and counter-current, their ebb and their flow:—oh, how could THE LOFTIEST SOUL fail to have the worst parasites? 20. O my brethren, am I then cruel? But I say: What falleth, that shall one also push! Everything of to-day—it falleth, it decayeth; who would preserve it! But I—I wish also to push it! Know ye the delight which rolleth stones into precipitous depths?—Those men of to-day, see just how they roll into my depths! A prelude am I to better players, O my brethren! An example! DO according to mine example! And him whom ye do not teach to fly, teach I pray you—TO FALL FASTER!— 21. I love the brave: but it is not enough to be a swordsman,—one must also know WHEREON to use swordsmanship! And often is it greater bravery to keep quiet and pass by, that THEREBY one may reserve oneself for a worthier foe! Ye shall only have foes to be hated; but not foes to be despised: ye must be proud of your foes. Thus have I already taught. For the worthier foe, O my brethren, shall ye reserve yourselves: therefore must ye pass by many a one,— —Especially many of the rabble, who din your ears with noise about people and peoples. Keep your eye clear of their For and Against! There is there much right, much wrong: he who looketh on becometh wroth. Therein viewing, therein hewing—they are the same thing: therefore depart into the forests and lay your sword to sleep! Go YOUR ways! and let the people and peoples go theirs!—gloomy ways, verily, on which not a single hope glinteth any more! Let there the trader rule, where all that still glittereth is—traders’ gold. It is the time of kings no longer: that which now calleth itself the people is unworthy of kings. See how these peoples themselves now do just like the traders: they pick up the smallest advantage out of all kinds of rubbish! They lay lures for one another, they lure things out of one another,—that they call “ good neighbourliness.” O blessed remote period when a people said to itself: “ I will be— MASTER over peoples!” For, my brethren, the best shall rule, the best also WILLETH to rule! And where the teaching is different, there—the best is LACKING. 22. If THEY had—bread for nothing, alas! for what would THEY cry! Their maintainment—that is their true entertainment; and they shall have it hard! Beasts of prey, are they: in their “ working”—there is even plundering, in their “ earning”—there is even overreaching! Therefore shall they have it hard! Better beasts of prey shall they thus become, subtler, cleverer, MORE MAN-LIKE: for man is the best beast of prey. All the animals hath man already robbed of their virtues: that is why of all animals it hath been hardest for man. Only the birds are still beyond him. And if man should yet learn to fly, alas! TO WHAT HEIGHT—would his rapacity fly! 23. Thus would I have man and woman: fit for war, the one; fit for maternity, the other; both, however, fit for dancing with head and legs. And lost be the day to us in which a measure hath not been danced. And false be every truth which hath not had laughter along with it! 24. Your marriage-arranging: see that it be not a bad ARRANGING! Ye have arranged too hastily: so there FOLLOWETH therefrom—marriage-breaking! And better marriage-breaking than marriage-bending, marriage-lying!—Thus spake a woman unto me: “ Indeed, I broke the marriage, but first did the marriage break—me! The badly paired found I ever the most revengeful: they make every one suffer for it that they no longer run singly. On that account want I the honest ones to say to one another: “ We love each other: let us SEE TO IT that we maintain our love! Or shall our pledging be blundering?”
—“ Give us a set term and a small marriage, that we may see if we are fit for the great marriage! It is a great matter always to be twain.” Thus do I counsel all honest ones; and what would be my love to the Superman, and to all that is to come, if I should counsel and speak otherwise! Not only to propagate yourselves onwards but UPWARDS—thereto, O my brethren, may the garden of marriage help you! 25. He who hath grown wise concerning old origins, lo, he will at last seek after the fountains of the future and new origins.— O my brethren, not long will it be until NEW PEOPLES shall arise and new fountains shall rush down into new depths. For the earthquake—it choketh up many wells, it causeth much languishing: but it bringeth also to light inner powers and secrets. The earthquake discloseth new fountains. In the earthquake of old peoples new fountains burst forth. And whoever calleth out: “ Lo, here is a well for many thirsty ones, one heart for many longing ones, one will for many instruments”:—around him collecteth a PEOPLE, that is to say, many attempting ones. Who can command, who must obey—THAT IS THERE ATTEMPTED! Ah, with what long seeking and solving and failing and learning and re-attempting! Human society: it is an attempt—so I teach—a long seeking: it seeketh however the ruler!— —An attempt, my brethren! And NO “ contract”! Destroy, I pray you, destroy that word of the soft-hearted and half-and-half! 26. O my brethren! With whom lieth the greatest danger to the whole human future? Is it not with the good and just?— —As those who say and feel in their hearts: “ We already know what is good and just, we possess it also; woe to those who still seek thereafter! And whatever harm the wicked may do, the harm of the good is the harmfulest harm! And whatever harm the world-maligners may do, the harm of the good is the harmfulest harm! O my brethren, into the hearts of the good and just looked some one once on a time, who said: “ They are the Pharisees.” But people did not understand him. The good and just themselves were not free to understand him; their spirit was imprisoned in their good conscience. The stupidity of the good is unfathomably wise. It is the truth, however, that the good MUST be Pharisees—they have no choice! The good MUST crucify him who deviseth his own virtue! That IS the truth! The second one, however, who discovered their country—the country, heart and soil of the good and just,—it was he who asked: “ Whom do they hate most?” The CREATOR, hate they most, him who breaketh the tables and old values, the breaker,—him they call the law-breaker. For the good—they CANNOT create; they are always the beginning of the end:— —They crucify him who writeth new values on new tables, they sacrifice UNTO THEMSELVES the future—they crucify the whole human future! The good—they have always been the beginning of the end.— 27. O my brethren, have ye also understood this word? And what I once said of the “ last man”?— With whom lieth the greatest danger to the whole human future? Is it not with the good and just? BREAK UP, BREAK UP, I PRAY YOU, THE GOOD AND JUST!—O my brethren, have ye understood also this word? 28. Ye flee from me? Ye are frightened? Ye tremble at this word? O my brethren, when I enjoined you to break up the good, and the tables of the good, then only did I embark man on his high seas. And now only cometh unto him the great terror, the great outlook, the great sickness, the great nausea, the great sea-sickness. False shores and false securities did the good teach you; in the lies of the good were ye born and bred. Everything hath been radically contorted and distorted by the good. But he who discovered the country of “ man,” discovered also the country of “ man’s future.” Now shall ye be sailors for me, brave, patient! Keep yourselves up betimes, my brethren, learn to keep yourselves up! The sea stormeth: many seek to raise themselves again by you. The sea stormeth: all is in the sea. Well! Cheer up! Ye old seaman-hearts! What of fatherland! THITHER striveth our helm where our CHILDREN’S LAND is! Thitherwards, stormier than the sea, stormeth our great longing!— 29. “ Why so hard!”—said to the diamond one day the charcoal; “ are we then not near relatives?”— Why so soft? O my brethren; thus do I ask you: are ye then not—my brethren? Why so soft, so submissive and yielding? Why is there so much negation and abnegation in your hearts? Why is there so little fate in your looks? And if ye will not be fates and inexorable ones, how can ye one day— conquer with me?
And if your hardness will not glance and cut and chip to pieces, how can ye one day—create with me? For the creators are hard. And blessedness must it seem to you to press your hand upon millenniums as upon wax,— —Blessedness to write upon the will of millenniums as upon brass,—harder than brass, nobler than brass. Entirely hard is only the noblest. This new table, O my brethren, put I up over you: BECOME HARD!— 30. O thou, my Will! Thou change of every need, MY needfulness! Preserve me from all small victories! Thou fatedness of my soul, which I call fate! Thou In-me! Over-me! Preserve and spare me for one great fate! And thy last greatness, my Will, spare it for thy last—that thou mayest be inexorable IN thy victory! Ah, who hath not succumbed to his victory! Ah, whose eye hath not bedimmed in this intoxicated twilight! Ah, whose foot hath not faltered and forgotten in victory—how to stand!— —That I may one day be ready and ripe in the great noontide: ready and ripe like the glowing ore, the lightning-bearing cloud, and the swelling milk-udder:— —Ready for myself and for my most hidden Will: a bow eager for its arrow, an arrow eager for its star:— —A star, ready and ripe in its noontide, glowing, pierced, blessed, by annihilating sun-arrows:— —A sun itself, and an inexorable sun-will, ready for annihilation in victory! O Will, thou change of every need, MY needfulness! Spare me for one great victory!– Thus spake Zarathustra. LVII. THE CONVALESCENT. 1. One morning, not long after his return to his cave, Zarathustra sprang up from his couch like a madman, crying with a frightful voice, and acting as if some one still lay on the couch who did not wish to rise. Zarathustra’s voice also resounded in such a manner that his animals came to him frightened, and out of all the neighbouring caves and lurking-places all the creatures slipped away—flying, fluttering, creeping or leaping, according to their variety of foot or wing. Zarathustra, however, spake these words: Up, abysmal thought out of my depth! I am thy cock and morning dawn, thou overslept reptile: Up! Up! My voice shall soon crow thee awake! Unbind the fetters of thine ears: listen! For I wish to hear thee! Up! Up! There is thunder enough to make the very graves listen! And rub the sleep and all the dimness and blindness out of thine eyes! Hear me also with thine eyes: my voice is a medicine even for those born blind. And once thou art awake, then shalt thou ever remain awake. It is not MY custom to awake great-grandmothers out of their sleep that I may bid them—sleep on! Thou stirrest, stretchest thyself, wheezest? Up! Up! Not wheeze, shalt thou,—but speak unto me! Zarathustra calleth thee, Zarathustra the godless! I, Zarathustra, the advocate of living, the advocate of suffering, the advocate of the circuit—thee do I call, my most abysmal thought! Joy to me! Thou comest,—I hear thee! Mine abyss SPEAKETH, my lowest depth have I turned over into the light! Joy to me! Come hither! Give me thy hand—ha! let be! aha!—Disgust, disgust, disgust—alas to me! 2. Hardly, however, had Zarathustra spoken these words, when he fell down as one dead, and remained long as one dead. When however he again came to himself, then was he pale and trembling, and remained lying; and for long he would neither eat nor drink. This condition continued for seven days; his animals, however, did not leave him day nor night, except that the eagle flew forth to fetch food. And what it fetched and foraged, it laid on Zarathustra’s couch: so that Zarathustra at last lay among yellow and red berries, grapes, rosy apples, sweet-smelling herbage, and pine-cones. At his feet, however, two lambs were stretched, which the eagle had with difficulty carried off from their shepherds. At last, after seven days, Zarathustra raised himself upon his couch, took a rosy apple in his hand, smelt it and found its smell pleasant. Then did his animals think the time had come to speak unto him. “ O Zarathustra,” said they, “ now hast thou lain thus for seven days with heavy eyes: wilt thou not set thyself again upon thy feet? Step out of thy cave: the world waiteth for thee as a garden. The wind playeth with heavy fragrance which seeketh for thee; and all brooks would like to run after thee. All things long for thee, since thou hast remained alone for seven days—step forth out of thy cave! All things want to be thy physicians! Did perhaps a new knowledge come to thee, a bitter, grievous knowledge? Like leavened dough layest thou, thy soul arose and swelled beyond all its bounds.—” —O mine animals, answered Zarathustra, talk on thus and let me listen! It refresheth me so to hear your talk: where there is talk, there is the world as a garden unto me. How charming it is that there are words and tones; are not words and tones rainbows and seeming bridges ‘twixt the eternally separated? To each soul belongeth another world; to each soul is every other soul a back-world. Among the most alike doth semblance deceive most delightfully: for the smallest gap is most difficult to bridge over. For me—how could there be an outside-of-me? There is no outside! But this we forget on hearing tones; how delightful it is that we forget! Have not names and tones been given unto things that man may refresh himself with them? It is a beautiful folly, speaking; therewith danceth man over everything.
How lovely is all speech and all falsehoods of tones! With tones danceth our love on variegated rainbows.— —“ O Zarathustra,” said then his animals, “ to those who think like us, things all dance themselves: they come and hold out the hand and laugh and flee—and return. Everything goeth, everything returneth; eternally rolleth the wheel of existence. Everything dieth, everything blossometh forth again; eternally runneth on the year of existence. Everything breaketh, everything is integrated anew; eternally buildeth itself the same house of existence. All things separate, all things again greet one another; eternally true to itself remaineth the ring of existence. Every moment beginneth existence, around every ‘Here’ rolleth the ball ‘There.’ The middle is everywhere. Crooked is the path of eternity.”— —O ye wags and barrel-organs! answered Zarathustra, and smiled once more, how well do ye know what had to be fulfilled in seven days:— —And how that monster crept into my throat and choked me! But I bit off its head and spat it away from me. And ye—ye have made a lyre-lay out of it? Now, however, do I lie here, still exhausted with that biting and spitting-away, still sick with mine own salvation. AND YE LOOKED ON AT IT ALL? O mine animals, are ye also cruel? Did ye like to look at my great pain as men do? For man is the cruellest animal. At tragedies, bull-fights, and crucifixions hath he hitherto been happiest on earth; and when he invented his hell, behold, that was his heaven on earth. When the great man crieth—: immediately runneth the little man thither, and his tongue hangeth out of his mouth for very lusting. He, however, calleth it his “ pity.” The little man, especially the poet—how passionately doth he accuse life in words! Hearken to him, but do not fail to hear the delight which is in all accusation! Such accusers of life—them life overcometh with a glance of the eye. “ Thou lovest me?” saith the insolent one; “ wait a little, as yet have I no time for thee.” Towards himself man is the cruellest animal; and in all who call themselves “ sinners” and “ bearers of the cross” and “ penitents,” do not overlook the voluptuousness in their plaints and accusations! And I myself—do I thereby want to be man’s accuser? Ah, mine animals, this only have I learned hitherto, that for man his baddest is necessary for his best,— —That all that is baddest is the best POWER, and the hardest stone for the highest creator; and that man must become better AND badder:— Not to THIS torture-stake was I tied, that I know man is bad,—but I cried, as no one hath yet cried: “ Ah, that his baddest is so very small! Ah, that his best is so very small!” The great disgust at man—IT strangled me and had crept into my throat: and what the soothsayer had presaged: “ All is alike, nothing is worth while, knowledge strangleth.” A long twilight limped on before me, a fatally weary, fatally intoxicated sadness, which spake with yawning mouth. “ Eternally he returneth, the man of whom thou art weary, the small man”—so yawned my sadness, and dragged its foot and could not go to sleep. A cavern, became the human earth to me; its breast caved in; everything living became to me human dust and bones and mouldering past. My sighing sat on all human graves, and could no longer arise: my sighing and questioning croaked and choked, and gnawed and nagged day and night: —“ Ah, man returneth eternally! The small man returneth eternally!” Naked had I once seen both of them, the greatest man and the smallest man: all too like one another—all too human, even the greatest man! All too small, even the greatest man!—that was my disgust at man! And the eternal return also of the smallest man!—that was my disgust at all existence! Ah, Disgust! Disgust! Disgust!—Thus spake Zarathustra, and sighed and shuddered; for he remembered his sickness. Then did his animals prevent him from speaking further. “ Do not speak further, thou convalescent!”—so answered his animals, “ but go out where the world waiteth for thee like a garden. Go out unto the roses, the bees, and the flocks of doves! Especially, however, unto the singing-birds, to learn SINGING from them! For singing is for the convalescent; the sound ones may talk. And when the sound also want songs, then want they other songs than the convalescent.” —“ O ye wags and barrel-organs, do be silent!” answered Zarathustra, and smiled at his animals. “ How well ye know what consolation I devised for myself in seven days! That I have to sing once more—THAT consolation did I devise for myself, and THIS convalescence: would ye also make another lyre-lay thereof?” —“ Do not talk further,” answered his animals once more; “ rather, thou convalescent, prepare for thyself first a lyre, a new lyre! For behold, O Zarathustra! For thy new lays there are needed new lyres. Sing and bubble over, O Zarathustra, heal thy soul with new lays: that thou mayest bear thy great fate, which hath not yet been any one’s fate! For thine animals know it well, O Zarathustra, who thou art and must become: behold, THOU ART THE TEACHER OF THE ETERNAL RETURN,—that is now THY fate! That thou must be the first to teach this teaching—how could this great fate not be thy greatest danger and infirmity! Behold, we know what thou teachest: that all things eternally return, and ourselves with them, and that we have already existed times without number, and all things with us. Thou teachest that there is a great year of Becoming, a prodigy of a great year; it must, like a sand-glass, ever turn up anew, that it may anew run down and run out:— —So that all those years are like one another in the greatest and also in the smallest, so that we ourselves, in every great year, are like ourselves in the greatest and also in the smallest. And if thou wouldst now die, O Zarathustra, behold, we know also how thou wouldst then speak to thyself:—but thine animals beseech thee not to die yet! Thou wouldst speak, and without trembling, buoyant rather with bliss, for a great weight and worry would be taken from thee, thou patientest one!—
‘Now do I die and disappear,’ wouldst thou say, ‘and in a moment I am nothing. Souls are as mortal as bodies. But the plexus of causes returneth in which I am intertwined,—it will again create me! I myself pertain to the causes of the eternal return. I come again with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle, with this serpent—NOT to a new life, or a better life, or a similar life: —I come again eternally to this identical and selfsame life, in its greatest and its smallest, to teach again the eternal return of all things,— —To speak again the word of the great noontide of earth and man, to announce again to man the Superman. I have spoken my word. I break down by my word: so willeth mine eternal fate—as announcer do I succumb! The hour hath now come for the down-goer to bless himself. Thus—ENDETH Zarathustra’s down-going.’”— When the animals had spoken these words they were silent and waited, so that Zarathustra might say something to them: but Zarathustra did not hear that they were silent. On the contrary, he lay quietly with closed eyes like a person sleeping, although he did not sleep; for he communed just then with his soul. The serpent, however, and the eagle, when they found him silent in such wise, respected the great stillness around him, and prudently retired. LVIII. THE GREAT LONGING. O my soul, I have taught thee to say “ to-day” as “ once on a time” and “ formerly,” and to dance thy measure over every Here and There and Yonder. O my soul, I delivered thee from all by-places, I brushed down from thee dust and spiders and twilight. O my soul, I washed the petty shame and the by-place virtue from thee, and persuaded thee to stand naked before the eyes of the sun. With the storm that is called “ spirit” did I blow over thy surging sea; all clouds did I blow away from it; I strangled even the strangler called “ sin.” O my soul, I gave thee the right to say Nay like the storm, and to say Yea as the open heaven saith Yea: calm as the light remainest thou, and now walkest through denying storms. O my soul, I restored to thee liberty over the created and the uncreated; and who knoweth, as thou knowest, the voluptuousness of the future? O my soul, I taught thee the contempt which doth not come like worm-eating, the great, the loving contempt, which loveth most where it contemneth most. O my soul, I taught thee so to persuade that thou persuadest even the grounds themselves to thee: like the sun, which persuadeth even the sea to its height. O my soul, I have taken from thee all obeying and knee-bending and homage-paying; I have myself given thee the names, “ Change of need” and “ Fate.” O my soul, I have given thee new names and gay-coloured playthings, I have called thee “ Fate” and “ the Circuit of circuits” and “ the Navel-string of time” and “ the Azure bell.” O my soul, to thy domain gave I all wisdom to drink, all new wines, and also all immemorially old strong wines of wisdom. O my soul, every sun shed I upon thee, and every night and every silence and every longing:—then grewest thou up for me as a vine. O my soul, exuberant and heavy dost thou now stand forth, a vine with swelling udders and full clusters of brown golden grapes:— —Filled and weighted by thy happiness, waiting from superabundance, and yet ashamed of thy waiting. O my soul, there is nowhere a soul which could be more loving and more comprehensive and more extensive! Where could future and past be closer together than with thee? O my soul, I have given thee everything, and all my hands have become empty by thee:—and now! Now sayest thou to me, smiling and full of melancholy: “ Which of us oweth thanks?— —Doth the giver not owe thanks because the receiver received? Is bestowing not a necessity? Is receiving not—pitying?”— O my soul, I understand the smiling of thy melancholy: thine over-abundance itself now stretcheth out longing hands! Thy fulness looketh forth over raging seas, and seeketh and waiteth: the longing of over-fulness looketh forth from the smiling heaven of thine eyes! And verily, O my soul! Who could see thy smiling and not melt into tears? The angels themselves melt into tears through the over-graciousness of thy smiling. Thy graciousness and over-graciousness, is it which will not complain and weep: and yet, O my soul, longeth thy smiling for tears, and thy trembling mouth for sobs. “ Is not all weeping complaining? And all complaining, accusing?” Thus speakest thou to thyself; and therefore, O my soul, wilt thou rather smile than pour forth thy grief— —Than in gushing tears pour forth all thy grief concerning thy fulness, and concerning the craving of the vine for the vintager and vintage-knife! But wilt thou not weep, wilt thou not weep forth thy purple melancholy, then wilt thou have to SING, O my soul!—Behold, I smile myself, who foretell thee this: —Thou wilt have to sing with passionate song, until all seas turn calm to hearken unto thy longing,— —Until over calm longing seas the bark glideth, the golden marvel, around the gold of which all good, bad, and marvellous things frisk:— —Also many large and small animals, and everything that hath light marvellous feet, so that it can run on violet-blue paths,— —Towards the golden marvel, the spontaneous bark, and its master: he, however, is the vintager who waiteth with the diamond vintage-knife,— —Thy great deliverer, O my soul, the nameless one—for whom future songs only will find names! And verily, already hath thy breath the fragrance of future songs,— —Already glowest thou and dreamest, already drinkest thou thirstily at all deep echoing wells of consolation, already reposeth thy melancholy in the bliss of future songs!— O my soul, now have I given thee all, and even my last possession, and all my hands have become empty by thee:—THAT I BADE THEE SING, behold, that was my last thing to give!
That I bade thee sing,—say now, say: WHICH of us now—oweth thanks?— Better still, however: sing unto me, sing, O my soul! And let me thank thee!— Thus spake Zarathustra. LIX. THE SECOND DANCE-SONG. 1. “ Into thine eyes gazed I lately, O Life: gold saw I gleam in thy night-eyes,—my heart stood still with delight: —A golden bark saw I gleam on darkened waters, a sinking, drinking, reblinking, golden swing-bark! At my dance-frantic foot, dost thou cast a glance, a laughing, questioning, melting, thrown glance: Twice only movedst thou thy rattle with thy little hands—then did my feet swing with dance-fury.— My heels reared aloft, my toes they hearkened,—thee they would know: hath not the dancer his ear—in his toe! Unto thee did I spring: then fledst thou back from my bound; and towards me waved thy fleeing, flying tresses round! Away from thee did I spring, and from thy snaky tresses: then stoodst thou there half-turned, and in thine eye caresses. With crooked glances—dost thou teach me crooked courses; on crooked courses learn my feet—crafty fancies! I fear thee near, I love thee far; thy flight allureth me, thy seeking secureth me:—I suffer, but for thee, what would I not gladly bear! For thee, whose coldness inflameth, whose hatred misleadeth, whose flight enchaineth, whose mockery—pleadeth: —Who would not hate thee, thou great bindress, inwindress, temptress, seekress, findress! Who would not love thee, thou innocent, impatient, wind-swift, child-eyed sinner! Whither pullest thou me now, thou paragon and tomboy? And now foolest thou me fleeing; thou sweet romp dost annoy! I dance after thee, I follow even faint traces lonely. Where art thou? Give me thy hand! Or thy finger only! Here are caves and thickets: we shall go astray!—Halt! Stand still! Seest thou not owls and bats in fluttering fray? Thou bat! Thou owl! Thou wouldst play me foul? Where are we? From the dogs hast thou learned thus to bark and howl. Thou gnashest on me sweetly with little white teeth; thine evil eyes shoot out upon me, thy curly little mane from underneath! This is a dance over stock and stone: I am the hunter,—wilt thou be my hound, or my chamois anon? Now beside me! And quickly, wickedly springing! Now up! And over!—Alas! I have fallen myself overswinging! Oh, see me lying, thou arrogant one, and imploring grace! Gladly would I walk with thee—in some lovelier place! —In the paths of love, through bushes variegated, quiet, trim! Or there along the lake, where gold-fishes dance and swim! Thou art now a-weary? There above are sheep and sun-set stripes: is it not sweet to sleep—the shepherd pipes? Thou art so very weary? I carry thee thither; let just thine arm sink! And art thou thirsty—I should have something; but thy mouth would not like it to drink!— —Oh, that cursed, nimble, supple serpent and lurking-witch! Where art thou gone? But in my face do I feel through thy hand, two spots and red blotches itch! I am verily weary of it, ever thy sheepish shepherd to be. Thou witch, if I have hitherto sung unto thee, now shalt THOU—cry unto me! To the rhythm of my whip shalt thou dance and cry! I forget not my whip?—Not I!”— 2. Then did Life answer me thus, and kept thereby her fine ears closed: “ O Zarathustra! Crack not so terribly with thy whip! Thou knowest surely that noise killeth thought,—and just now there came to me such delicate thoughts. We are both of us genuine ne’er-do-wells and ne’er-do-ills. Beyond good and evil found we our island and our green meadow—we two alone! Therefore must we be friendly to each other! And even should we not love each other from the bottom of our hearts,—must we then have a grudge against each other if we do not love each other perfectly? And that I am friendly to thee, and often too friendly, that knowest thou: and the reason is that I am envious of thy Wisdom. Ah, this mad old fool, Wisdom! If thy Wisdom should one day run away from thee, ah! then would also my love run away from thee quickly.”— Thereupon did Life look thoughtfully behind and around, and said softly: “ O Zarathustra, thou art not faithful enough to me! Thou lovest me not nearly so much as thou sayest; I know thou thinkest of soon leaving me. There is an old heavy, heavy, booming-clock: it boometh by night up to thy cave:— —When thou hearest this clock strike the hours at midnight, then thinkest thou between one and twelve thereon— —Thou thinkest thereon, O Zarathustra, I know it—of soon leaving me!”— “ Yea,” answered I, hesitatingly, “ but thou knowest it also”—And I said something into her ear, in amongst her confused, yellow, foolish tresses. “ Thou KNOWEST that, O Zarathustra? That knoweth no one—” And we gazed at each other, and looked at the green meadow o’er which the cool evening was just passing, and we wept together.—Then, however, was Life dearer unto me than
all my Wisdom had ever been.— Thus spake Zarathustra. 3. One! O man! Take heed! Two! What saith deep midnight’s voice indeed? Three! “ I slept my sleep— Four! “ From deepest dream I’ve woke and plead:— Five! “ The world is deep, Six! “ And deeper than the day could read. Seven! “ Deep is its woe— Eight! “ Joy—deeper still than grief can be: Nine! “ Woe saith: Hence! Go! Ten! “ But joys all want eternity— Eleven! “ Want deep profound eternity!” Twelve! LX. THE SEVEN SEALS. (OR THE YEA AND AMEN LAY.) 1. If I be a diviner and full of the divining spirit which wandereth on high mountain-ridges, ‘twixt two seas,— Wandereth ‘twixt the past and the future as a heavy cloud—hostile to sultry plains, and to all that is weary and can neither die nor live: Ready for lightning in its dark bosom, and for the redeeming flash of light, charged with lightnings which say Yea! which laugh Yea! ready for divining flashes of lightning:— —Blessed, however, is he who is thus charged! And verily, long must he hang like a heavy tempest on the mountain, who shall one day kindle the light of the future!— Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity and for the marriage-ring of rings—the ring of the return? Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love thee, O Eternity! FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY! 2. If ever my wrath hath burst graves, shifted landmarks, or rolled old shattered tables into precipitous depths: If ever my scorn hath scattered mouldered words to the winds, and if I have come like a besom to cross-spiders, and as a cleansing wind to old charnel-houses: If ever I have sat rejoicing where old Gods lie buried, world-blessing, world-loving, beside the monuments of old world-maligners:— —For even churches and Gods’-graves do I love, if only heaven looketh through their ruined roofs with pure eyes; gladly do I sit like grass and red poppies on ruined churches— Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of rings—the ring of the return? Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love thee, O Eternity! FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY! 3.
If ever a breath hath come to me of the creative breath, and of the heavenly necessity which compelleth even chances to dance star-dances: If ever I have laughed with the laughter of the creative lightning, to which the long thunder of the deed followeth, grumblingly, but obediently: If ever I have played dice with the Gods at the divine table of the earth, so that the earth quaked and ruptured, and snorted forth fire-streams:— —For a divine table is the earth, and trembling with new creative dictums and dice-casts of the Gods: Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of rings—the ring of the return? Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love thee, O Eternity! FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY! 4. If ever I have drunk a full draught of the foaming spice- and confection-bowl in which all things are well mixed: If ever my hand hath mingled the furthest with the nearest, fire with spirit, joy with sorrow, and the harshest with the kindest: If I myself am a grain of the saving salt which maketh everything in the confection-bowl mix well:— —For there is a salt which uniteth good with evil; and even the evilest is worthy, as spicing and as final over-foaming:— Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of rings—the ring of the return? Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love thee, O Eternity! FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY! 5. If I be fond of the sea, and all that is sealike, and fondest of it when it angrily contradicteth me: If the exploring delight be in me, which impelleth sails to the undiscovered, if the seafarer’s delight be in my delight: If ever my rejoicing hath called out: “ The shore hath vanished,—now hath fallen from me the last chain— The boundless roareth around me, far away sparkle for me space and time,—well! cheer up! old heart!”— Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of rings—the ring of the return? Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love thee, O Eternity! FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY! 6. If my virtue be a dancer’s virtue, and if I have often sprung with both feet into golden-emerald rapture: If my wickedness be a laughing wickedness, at home among rose-banks and hedges of lilies: —For in laughter is all evil present, but it is sanctified and absolved by its own bliss:— And if it be my Alpha and Omega that everything heavy shall become light, every body a dancer, and every spirit a bird: and verily, that is my Alpha and Omega!— Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of rings—the ring of the return? Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love thee, O Eternity! FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY! 7. If ever I have spread out a tranquil heaven above me, and have flown into mine own heaven with mine own pinions: If I have swum playfully in profound luminous distances, and if my freedom’s avian wisdom hath come to me:— —Thus however speaketh avian wisdom:—“ Lo, there is no above and no below! Throw thyself about,—outward, backward, thou light one! Sing! speak no more! —Are not all words made for the heavy? Do not all words lie to the light ones? Sing! speak no more!”— Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of rings—the ring of the return? Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love thee, O Eternity! FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY! FOURTH AND LAST PART. Ah, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the pitiful? And what in the world hath caused more suffering than the follies of the pitiful? Woe unto all loving ones who have not an elevation which is above their pity! Thus spake the devil unto me, once on a time: “ Even God hath his hell: it is his love for man.” And lately did I hear him say these words: “ God is dead: of his pity for man hath God died.”—ZARATHUSTRA, II., “ The Pitiful.” LXI. THE HONEY SACRIFICE.
—And again passed moons and years over Zarathustra’s soul, and he heeded it not; his hair, however, became white. One day when he sat on a stone in front of his cave, and gazed calmly into the distance—one there gazeth out on the sea, and away beyond sinuous abysses,—then went his animals thoughtfully round about him, and at last set themselves in front of him. “ O Zarathustra,” said they, “ gazest thou out perhaps for thy happiness?”—“ Of what account is my happiness!” answered he, “ I have long ceased to strive any more for happiness, I strive for my work.”—“ O Zarathustra,” said the animals once more, “ that sayest thou as one who hath overmuch of good things. Liest thou not in a sky-blue lake of happiness?”—“ Ye wags,” answered Zarathustra, and smiled, “ how well did ye choose the simile! But ye know also that my happiness is heavy, and not like a fluid wave of water: it presseth me and will not leave me, and is like molten pitch.”— Then went his animals again thoughtfully around him, and placed themselves once more in front of him. “ O Zarathustra,” said they, “ it is consequently FOR THAT REASON that thou thyself always becometh yellower and darker, although thy hair looketh white and flaxen? Lo, thou sittest in thy pitch!”—“ What do ye say, mine animals?” said Zarathustra, laughing; “ verily I reviled when I spake of pitch. As it happeneth with me, so is it with all fruits that turn ripe. It is the HONEY in my veins that maketh my blood thicker, and also my soul stiller.”—“ So will it be, O Zarathustra,” answered his animals, and pressed up to him; “ but wilt thou not to-day ascend a high mountain? The air is pure, and to-day one seeth more of the world than ever.”—“ Yea, mine animals,” answered he, “ ye counsel admirably and according to my heart: I will to-day ascend a high mountain! But see that honey is there ready to hand, yellow, white, good, ice-cool, golden-comb-honey. For know that when aloft I will make the honey-sacrifice.”— When Zarathustra, however, was aloft on the summit, he sent his animals home that had accompanied him, and found that he was now alone:—then he laughed from the bottom of his heart, looked around him, and spake thus: That I spake of sacrifices and honey-sacrifices, it was merely a ruse in talking and verily, a useful folly! Here aloft can I now speak freer than in front of mountain-caves and anchorites’ domestic animals. What to sacrifice! I squander what is given me, a squanderer with a thousand hands: how could I call that—sacrificing? And when I desired honey I only desired bait, and sweet mucus and mucilage, for which even the mouths of growling bears, and strange, sulky, evil birds, water: —The best bait, as huntsmen and fishermen require it. For if the world be as a gloomy forest of animals, and a pleasure-ground for all wild huntsmen, it seemeth to me rather— and preferably—a fathomless, rich sea; —A sea full of many-hued fishes and crabs, for which even the Gods might long, and might be tempted to become fishers in it, and casters of nets,—so rich is the world in wonderful things, great and small! Especially the human world, the human sea:—towards IT do I now throw out my golden angle-rod and say: Open up, thou human abyss! Open up, and throw unto me thy fish and shining crabs! With my best bait shall I allure to myself to-day the strangest human fish! —My happiness itself do I throw out into all places far and wide ‘twixt orient, noontide, and occident, to see if many human fish will not learn to hug and tug at my happiness; — Until, biting at my sharp hidden hooks, they have to come up unto MY height, the motleyest abyss-groundlings, to the wickedest of all fishers of men. For THIS am I from the heart and from the beginning—drawing, hither-drawing, upward-drawing, upbringing; a drawer, a trainer, a training-master, who not in vain counselled himself once on a time: “ Become what thou art!” Thus may men now come UP to me; for as yet do I await the signs that it is time for my down-going; as yet do I not myself go down, as I must do, amongst men. Therefore do I here wait, crafty and scornful upon high mountains, no impatient one, no patient one; rather one who hath even unlearnt patience,—because he no longer “ suffereth.” For my fate giveth me time: it hath forgotten me perhaps? Or doth it sit behind a big stone and catch flies? And verily, I am well-disposed to mine eternal fate, because it doth not hound and hurry me, but leaveth me time for merriment and mischief; so that I have to-day ascended this high mountain to catch fish. Did ever any one catch fish upon high mountains? And though it be a folly what I here seek and do, it is better so than that down below I should become solemn with waiting, and green and yellow— —A posturing wrath-snorter with waiting, a holy howl-storm from the mountains, an impatient one that shouteth down into the valleys: “ Hearken, else I will scourge you with the scourge of God!” Not that I would have a grudge against such wrathful ones on that account: they are well enough for laughter to me! Impatient must they now be, those big alarm-drums, which find a voice now or never! Myself, however, and my fate—we do not talk to the Present, neither do we talk to the Never: for talking we have patience and time and more than time. For one day must it yet come, and may not pass by. What must one day come and may not pass by? Our great Hazar, that is to say, our great, remote human-kingdom, the Zarathustra-kingdom of a thousand years—
How remote may such “ remoteness” be? What doth it concern me? But on that account it is none the less sure unto me—, with both feet stand I secure on this ground; —On an eternal ground, on hard primary rock, on this highest, hardest, primary mountain-ridge, unto which all winds come, as unto the storm-parting, asking Where? and Whence? and Whither? Here laugh, laugh, my hearty, healthy wickedness! From high mountains cast down thy glittering scorn-laughter! Allure for me with thy glittering the finest human fish! And whatever belongeth unto ME in all seas, my in-and-for-me in all things—fish THAT out for me, bring THAT up to me: for that do I wait, the wickedest of all fish-catchers. Out! out! my fishing-hook! In and down, thou bait of my happiness! Drip thy sweetest dew, thou honey of my heart! Bite, my fishing-hook, into the belly of all black affliction! Look out, look out, mine eye! Oh, how many seas round about me, what dawning human futures! And above me—what rosy red stillness! What unclouded silence! LXII. THE CRY OF DISTRESS. The next day sat Zarathustra again on the stone in front of his cave, whilst his animals roved about in the world outside to bring home new food,—also new honey: for Zarathustra had spent and wasted the old honey to the very last particle. When he thus sat, however, with a stick in his hand, tracing the shadow of his figure on the earth, and reflecting—verily! not upon himself and his shadow,—all at once he startled and shrank back: for he saw another shadow beside his own. And when he hastily looked around and stood up, behold, there stood the soothsayer beside him, the same whom he had once given to eat and drink at his table, the proclaimer of the great weariness, who taught: “ All is alike, nothing is worth while, the world is without meaning, knowledge strangleth.” But his face had changed since then; and when Zarathustra looked into his eyes, his heart was startled once more: so much evil announcement and ashy-grey lightnings passed over that countenance. The soothsayer, who had perceived what went on in Zarathustra’s soul, wiped his face with his hand, as if he would wipe out the impression; the same did also Zarathustra. And when both of them had thus silently composed and strengthened themselves, they gave each other the hand, as a token that they wanted once more to recognise each other. “ Welcome hither,” said Zarathustra, “ thou soothsayer of the great weariness, not in vain shalt thou once have been my messmate and guest. Eat and drink also with me to-day, and forgive it that a cheerful old man sitteth with thee at table!”—“ A cheerful old man?” answered the soothsayer, shaking his head, “ but whoever thou art, or wouldst be, O Zarathustra, thou hast been here aloft the longest time,—in a little while thy bark shall no longer rest on dry land!”—“ Do I then rest on dry land?”—asked Zarathustra, laughing. —“ The waves around thy mountain,” answered the soothsayer, “ rise and rise, the waves of great distress and affliction: they will soon raise thy bark also and carry thee away.”— Thereupon was Zarathustra silent and wondered.—“ Dost thou still hear nothing?” continued the soothsayer: “ doth it not rush and roar out of the depth?”—Zarathustra was silent once more and listened: then heard he a long, long cry, which the abysses threw to one another and passed on; for none of them wished to retain it: so evil did it sound. “ Thou ill announcer,” said Zarathustra at last, “ that is a cry of distress, and the cry of a man; it may come perhaps out of a black sea. But what doth human distress matter to me! My last sin which hath been reserved for me,—knowest thou what it is called?” —“ PITY!” answered the soothsayer from an overflowing heart, and raised both his hands aloft—“ O Zarathustra, I have come that I may seduce thee to thy last sin!”— And hardly had those words been uttered when there sounded the cry once more, and longer and more alarming than before—also much nearer. “ Hearest thou? Hearest thou, O Zarathustra?” called out the soothsayer, “ the cry concerneth thee, it calleth thee: Come, come, come; it is time, it is the highest time!”— Zarathustra was silent thereupon, confused and staggered; at last he asked, like one who hesitateth in himself: “ And who is it that there calleth me?” “ But thou knowest it, certainly,” answered the soothsayer warmly, “ why dost thou conceal thyself? It is THE HIGHER MAN that crieth for thee!” “ The higher man?” cried Zarathustra, horror-stricken: “ what wanteth HE? What wanteth HE? The higher man! What wanteth he here?”—and his skin covered with perspiration. The soothsayer, however, did not heed Zarathustra’s alarm, but listened and listened in the downward direction. When, however, it had been still there for a long while, he looked behind, and saw Zarathustra standing trembling. “ O Zarathustra,” he began, with sorrowful voice, “ thou dost not stand there like one whose happiness maketh him giddy: thou wilt have to dance lest thou tumble down! But although thou shouldst dance before me, and leap all thy side-leaps, no one may say unto me: ‘Behold, here danceth the last joyous man!’ In vain would any one come to this height who sought HIM here: caves would he find, indeed, and back-caves, hiding-places for hidden ones; but not lucky mines, nor treasurechambers, nor new gold-veins of happiness. Happiness—how indeed could one find happiness among such buried-alive and solitary ones! Must I yet seek the last happiness on the Happy Isles, and far away among forgotten seas? But all is alike, nothing is worth while, no seeking is of service, there are no longer any Happy Isles!”— Thus sighed the soothsayer; with his last sigh, however, Zarathustra again became serene and assured, like one who hath come out of a deep chasm into the light. “ Nay! Nay! Three times Nay!” exclaimed he with a strong voice, and stroked his beard—“ THAT do I know better! There are still Happy Isles! Silence THEREON, thou sighing sorrow-sack! Cease to splash THEREON, thou rain-cloud of the forenoon! Do I not already stand here wet with thy misery, and drenched like a dog? Now do I shake myself and run away from thee, that I may again become dry: thereat mayest thou not wonder! Do I seem to thee discourteous? Here however is MY court. But as regards the higher man: well! I shall seek him at once in those forests: FROM THENCE came his cry. Perhaps he is there hard beset by an evil beast. He is in MY domain: therein shall he receive no scath! And verily, there are many evil beasts about me.”—
With those words Zarathustra turned around to depart. Then said the soothsayer: “ O Zarathustra, thou art a rogue! I know it well: thou wouldst fain be rid of me! Rather wouldst thou run into the forest and lay snares for evil beasts! But what good will it do thee? In the evening wilt thou have me again: in thine own cave will I sit, patient and heavy like a block—and wait for thee!” “ So be it!” shouted back Zarathustra, as he went away: “ and what is mine in my cave belongeth also unto thee, my guest! Shouldst thou however find honey therein, well! just lick it up, thou growling bear, and sweeten thy soul! For in the evening we want both to be in good spirits; —In good spirits and joyful, because this day hath come to an end! And thou thyself shalt dance to my lays, as my dancing-bear. Thou dost not believe this? Thou shakest thy head? Well! Cheer up, old bear! But I also—am a soothsayer.” Thus spake Zarathustra. LXIII. TALK WITH THE KINGS. 1. Ere Zarathustra had been an hour on his way in the mountains and forests, he saw all at once a strange procession. Right on the path which he was about to descend came two kings walking, bedecked with crowns and purple girdles, and variegated like flamingoes: they drove before them a laden ass. “ What do these kings want in my domain?” said Zarathustra in astonishment to his heart, and hid himself hastily behind a thicket. When however the kings approached to him, he said half-aloud, like one speaking only to himself: “ Strange! Strange! How doth this harmonise? Two kings do I see—and only one ass!” Thereupon the two kings made a halt; they smiled and looked towards the spot whence the voice proceeded, and afterwards looked into each other’s faces. “ Such things do we also think among ourselves,” said the king on the right, “ but we do not utter them.” The king on the left, however, shrugged his shoulders and answered: “ That may perhaps be a goat-herd. Or an anchorite who hath lived too long among rocks and trees. For no society at all spoileth also good manners.” “ Good manners?” replied angrily and bitterly the other king: “ what then do we run out of the way of? Is it not ‘good manners’? Our ‘good society’? Better, verily, to live among anchorites and goat-herds, than with our gilded, false, over-rouged populace—though it call itself ‘good society.’ —Though it call itself ‘nobility.’ But there all is false and foul, above all the blood—thanks to old evil diseases and worse curers. The best and dearest to me at present is still a sound peasant, coarse, artful, obstinate and enduring: that is at present the noblest type. The peasant is at present the best; and the peasant type should be master! But it is the kingdom of the populace—I no longer allow anything to be imposed upon me. The populace, however—that meaneth, hodgepodge. Populace-hodgepodge: therein is everything mixed with everything, saint and swindler, gentleman and Jew, and every beast out of Noah’s ark. Good manners! Everything is false and foul with us. No one knoweth any longer how to reverence: it is THAT precisely that we run away from. They are fulsome obtrusive dogs; they gild palm-leaves. This loathing choketh me, that we kings ourselves have become false, draped and disguised with the old faded pomp of our ancestors, show-pieces for the stupidest, the craftiest, and whosoever at present trafficketh for power. We ARE NOT the first men—and have nevertheless to STAND FOR them: of this imposture have we at last become weary and disgusted. From the rabble have we gone out of the way, from all those bawlers and scribe-blowflies, from the trader-stench, the ambition-fidgeting, the bad breath—: fie, to live among the rabble; —Fie, to stand for the first men among the rabble! Ah, loathing! Loathing! Loathing! What doth it now matter about us kings!”— “ Thine old sickness seizeth thee,” said here the king on the left, “ thy loathing seizeth thee, my poor brother. Thou knowest, however, that some one heareth us.” Immediately thereupon, Zarathustra, who had opened ears and eyes to this talk, rose from his hiding-place, advanced towards the kings, and thus began: “ He who hearkeneth unto you, he who gladly hearkeneth unto you, is called Zarathustra. I am Zarathustra who once said: ‘What doth it now matter about kings!’ Forgive me; I rejoiced when ye said to each other: ‘What doth it matter about us kings!’ Here, however, is MY domain and jurisdiction: what may ye be seeking in my domain? Perhaps, however, ye have FOUND on your way what I seek: namely, the higher man.” When the kings heard this, they beat upon their breasts and said with one voice: “ We are recognised! With the sword of thine utterance severest thou the thickest darkness of our hearts. Thou hast discovered our distress; for lo! we are on our way to find the higher man— —The man that is higher than we, although we are kings. To him do we convey this ass. For the highest man shall also be the highest lord on earth. There is no sorer misfortune in all human destiny, than when the mighty of the earth are not also the first men. Then everything becometh false and distorted and monstrous. And when they are even the last men, and more beast than man, then riseth and riseth the populace in honour, and at last saith even the populace-virtue: ‘Lo, I alone am virtue!’”— What have I just heard? answered Zarathustra. What wisdom in kings! I am enchanted, and verily, I have already promptings to make a rhyme thereon:—
—Even if it should happen to be a rhyme not suited for every one’s ears. I unlearned long ago to have consideration for long ears. Well then! Well now! (Here, however, it happened that the ass also found utterance: it said distinctly and with malevolence, Y-E-A.) ‘Twas once—methinks year one of our blessed Lord,—Drunk without wine, the Sybil thus deplored:—“ How ill things go! Decline! Decline! Ne’er sank the world so low! Rome now hath turned harlot and harlot-stew, Rome’s Caesar a beast, and God—hath turned Jew! 2. With those rhymes of Zarathustra the kings were delighted; the king on the right, however, said: “ O Zarathustra, how well it was that we set out to see thee! For thine enemies showed us thy likeness in their mirror: there lookedst thou with the grimace of a devil, and sneeringly: so that we were afraid of thee. But what good did it do! Always didst thou prick us anew in heart and ear with thy sayings. Then did we say at last: What doth it matter how he look! We must HEAR him; him who teacheth: ‘Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars, and the short peace more than the long!’ No one ever spake such warlike words: ‘What is good? To be brave is good. It is the good war that halloweth every cause.’ O Zarathustra, our fathers’ blood stirred in our veins at such words: it was like the voice of spring to old wine-casks. When the swords ran among one another like red-spotted serpents, then did our fathers become fond of life; the sun of every peace seemed to them languid and lukewarm, the long peace, however, made them ashamed. How they sighed, our fathers, when they saw on the wall brightly furbished, dried-up swords! Like those they thirsted for war. For a sword thirsteth to drink blood, and sparkleth with desire.”— —When the kings thus discoursed and talked eagerly of the happiness of their fathers, there came upon Zarathustra no little desire to mock at their eagerness: for evidently they were very peaceable kings whom he saw before him, kings with old and refined features. But he restrained himself. “ Well!” said he, “ thither leadeth the way, there lieth the cave of Zarathustra; and this day is to have a long evening! At present, however, a cry of distress calleth me hastily away from you. It will honour my cave if kings want to sit and wait in it: but, to be sure, ye will have to wait long! Well! What of that! Where doth one at present learn better to wait than at courts? And the whole virtue of kings that hath remained unto them—is it not called to-day:LITY to wait?” Thus spake Zarathustra. LXIV. THE LEECH. And Zarathustra went thoughtfully on, further and lower down, through forests and past moory bottoms; as it happeneth, however, to every one who meditateth upon hard matters, he trod thereby unawares upon a man. And lo, there spurted into his face all at once a cry of pain, and two curses and twenty bad invectives, so that in his fright he raised his stick and also struck the trodden one. Immediately afterwards, however, he regained his composure, and his heart laughed at the folly he had just committed. “ Pardon me,” said he to the trodden one, who had got up enraged, and had seated himself, “ pardon me, and hear first of all a parable. As a wanderer who dreameth of remote things on a lonesome highway, runneth unawares against a sleeping dog, a dog which lieth in the sun: —As both of them then start up and snap at each other, like deadly enemies, those two beings mortally frightened—so did it happen unto us. And yet! And yet—how little was lacking for them to caress each other, that dog and that lonesome one! Are they not both—lonesome ones!” —“ Whoever thou art,” said the trodden one, still enraged, “ thou treadest also too nigh me with thy parable, and not only with thy foot! Lo! am I then a dog?”—And thereupon the sitting one got up, and pulled his naked arm out of the swamp. For at first he had lain outstretched on the ground, hidden and indiscernible, like those who lie in wait for swamp-game. “ But whatever art thou about!” called out Zarathustra in alarm, for he saw a deal of blood streaming over the naked arm,—“ what hath hurt thee? Hath an evil beast bit thee, thou unfortunate one?” The bleeding one laughed, still angry, “ What matter is it to thee!” said he, and was about to go on. “ Here am I at home and in my province. Let him question me whoever will: to a dolt, however, I shall hardly answer.” “ Thou art mistaken,” said Zarathustra sympathetically, and held him fast; “ thou art mistaken. Here thou art not at home, but in my domain, and therein shall no one receive any hurt. Call me however what thou wilt—I am who I must be. I call myself Zarathustra. Well! Up thither is the way to Zarathustra’s cave: it is not far,—wilt thou not attend to thy wounds at my home? It hath gone badly with thee, thou unfortunate one, in this life: first a beast bit thee, and then—a man trod upon thee!”— When however the trodden one had heard the name of Zarathustra he was transformed. “ What happeneth unto me!” he exclaimed, “ WHO preoccupieth me so much in this life as this one man, namely Zarathustra, and that one animal that liveth on blood, the leech? For the sake of the leech did I lie here by this swamp, like a fisher, and already had mine outstretched arm been bitten ten times, when there biteth a still finer leech at my blood,
Zarathustra himself! O happiness! O miracle! Praised be this day which enticed me into the swamp! Praised be the best, the livest cupping-glass, that at present liveth; praised be the great conscienceleech Zarathustra!”— Thus spake the trodden one, and Zarathustra rejoiced at his words and their refined reverential style. “ Who art thou?” asked he, and gave him his hand, “ there is much to clear up and elucidate between us, but already methinketh pure clear day is dawning.” “ I am THE SPIRITUALLY CONSCIENTIOUS ONE,” answered he who was asked, “ and in matters of the spirit it is difficult for any one to take it more rigorously, more restrictedly, and more severely than I, except him from whom I learnt it, Zarathustra himself. Better know nothing than half-know many things! Better be a fool on one’s own account, than a sage on other people’s approbation! I—go to the basis: —What matter if it be great or small? If it be called swamp or sky? A handbreadth of basis is enough for me, if it be actually basis and ground! —A handbreadth of basis: thereon can one stand. In the true knowing-knowledge there is nothing great and nothing small.” “ Then thou art perhaps an expert on the leech?” asked Zarathustra; “ and thou investigatest the leech to its ultimate basis, thou conscientious one?” “ O Zarathustra,” answered the trodden one, “ that would be something immense; how could I presume to do so! That, however, of which I am master and knower, is the BRAIN of the leech:—that is MY world! And it is also a world! Forgive it, however, that my pride here findeth expression, for here I have not mine equal. Therefore said I: ‘here am I at home.’ How long have I investigated this one thing, the brain of the leech, so that here the slippery truth might no longer slip from me! Here is MY domain! —For the sake of this did I cast everything else aside, for the sake of this did everything else become indifferent to me; and close beside my knowledge lieth my black ignorance. My spiritual conscience requireth from me that it should be so—that I should know one thing, and not know all else: they are a loathing unto me, all the semi-spiritual, all the hazy, hovering, and visionary. Where mine honesty ceaseth, there am I blind, and want also to be blind. Where I want to know, however, there want I also to be honest—namely, severe, rigorous, restricted, cruel and inexorable. Because THOU once saidest, O Zarathustra: ‘Spirit is life which itself cutteth into life’;—that led and allured me to thy doctrine. And verily, with mine own blood have I increased mine own knowledge!” —“ As the evidence indicateth,” broke in Zarathustra; for still was the blood flowing down on the naked arm of the conscientious one. For there had ten leeches bitten into it. “ O thou strange fellow, how much doth this very evidence teach me—namely, thou thyself! And not all, perhaps, might I pour into thy rigorous ear! Well then! We part here! But I would fain find thee again. Up thither is the way to my cave: to-night shalt thou there be my welcome guest! Fain would I also make amends to thy body for Zarathustra treading upon thee with his feet: I think about that. Just now, however, a cry of distress calleth me hastily away from thee.” Thus spake Zarathustra. LXV. THE MAGICIAN. 1. When however Zarathustra had gone round a rock, then saw he on the same path, not far below him, a man who threw his limbs about like a maniac, and at last tumbled to the ground on his belly. “ Halt!” said then Zarathustra to his heart, “ he there must surely be the higher man, from him came that dreadful cry of distress,—I will see if I can help him.” When, however, he ran to the spot where the man lay on the ground, he found a trembling old man, with fixed eyes; and in spite of all Zarathustra’s efforts to lift him and set him again on his feet, it was all in vain. The unfortunate one, also, did not seem to notice that some one was beside him; on the contrary, he continually looked around with moving gestures, like one forsaken and isolated from all the world. At last, however, after much trembling, and convulsion, and curling-himself-up, he began to lament thus: Who warm’th me, who lov’th me still? Give ardent fingers! Give heartening charcoal-warmers! Prone, outstretched, trembling, Like him, half dead and cold, whose feet one warm’th— And shaken, ah! by unfamiliar fevers, Shivering with sharpened, icy-cold frost-arrows, By thee pursued, my fancy! Ineffable! Recondite! Sore-frightening! Thou huntsman ‘hind the cloud-banks! Now lightning-struck by thee, Thou mocking eye that me in darkness watcheth: —Thus do I lie, Bend myself, twist myself, convulsed With all eternal torture, And smitten By thee, cruellest huntsman, Thou unfamiliar—GOD… Smite deeper! Smite yet once more! Pierce through and rend my heart! What mean’th this torture With dull, indented arrows? Why look’st thou hither, Of human pain not weary, With mischief-loving, godly flash-glances? Not murder wilt thou, But torture, torture? For why—ME torture, Thou mischief-loving, unfamiliar God?— Ha! Ha! Thou stealest nigh In midnight’s gloomy hour?… What wilt thou? Speak! Thou crowdst me, pressest— Ha! now far too closely! Thou hearst me breathing, Thou o’erhearst my heart, Thou ever jealous one! —Of what, pray, ever jealous? Off! Off! For why the ladder? Wouldst thou GET IN? To heart in-clamber? To mine own secretest Conceptions in-clamber? Shameless one! Thou unknown one!—Thief! What seekst thou by thy stealing? What seekst thou by thy hearkening? What seekst thou by thy torturing? Thou torturer! Thou—hangman-God! Or shall I, as the mastiffs do, Roll me before thee? And cringing, enraptured, frantical, My tail friendly—waggle!
In vain! Goad further! Cruellest goader! No dog—thy game just am I, Cruellest huntsman! Thy proudest of captives, Thou robber ‘hind the cloud-banks… Speak finally! Thou lightning-veiled one! Thou unknown one! Speak! What wilt thou, highway-ambusher, from—ME? What WILT thou, unfamiliar—God? What? Ransom-gold? How much of ransom-gold? Solicit much—that bid’th my pride! And be concise—that bid’th mine other pride! Ha! Ha! ME—wantst thou? me? —Entire?… Ha! Ha! And torturest me, fool that thou art, Dead-torturest quite my pride? Give LOVE to me—who warm’th me still? Who lov’th me still?— Give ardent fingers Give heartening charcoal-warmers, Give me, the lonesomest, The ice (ah! seven-fold frozen ice For very enemies, For foes, doth make one thirst). Give, yield to me, Cruellest foe, — THYSELF!— Away! There fled he surely, My final, only comrade, My greatest foe, Mine unfamiliar— My hangman-God!… —Nay! Come thou back! WITH all of thy great tortures! To me the last of lonesome ones, Oh, come thou back! All my hot tears in streamlets trickle Their course to thee! And all my final hearty fervour— Up-glow’th to THEE! Oh, come thou back, Mine unfamiliar God! my PAIN! My final bliss! 2. —Here, however, Zarathustra could no longer restrain himself; he took his staff and struck the wailer with all his might. “ Stop this,” cried he to him with wrathful laughter, “ stop this, thou stage-player! Thou false coiner! Thou liar from the very heart! I know thee well! I will soon make warm legs to thee, thou evil magician: I know well how—to make it hot for such as thou!” —“ Leave off,” said the old man, and sprang up from the ground, “ strike me no more, O Zarathustra! I did it only for amusement! That kind of thing belongeth to mine art. Thee thyself, I wanted to put to the proof when I gave this performance. And verily, thou hast well detected me! But thou thyself—hast given me no small proof of thyself: thou art HARD, thou wise Zarathustra! Hard strikest thou with thy ‘truths,’ thy cudgel forceth from me—THIS truth!” —“ Flatter not,” answered Zarathustra, still excited and frowning, “ thou stage-player from the heart! Thou art false: why speakest thou—of truth! Thou peacock of peacocks, thou sea of vanity; WHAT didst thou represent before me, thou evil magician; WHOM was I meant to believe in when thou wailedst in such wise?” “ THE PENITENT IN SPIRIT,” said the old man, “ it was him—I represented; thou thyself once devisedst this expression— —The poet and magician who at last turneth his spirit against himself, the transformed one who freezeth to death by his bad science and conscience. And just acknowledge it: it was long, O Zarathustra, before thou discoveredst my trick and lie! Thou BELIEVEDST in my distress when thou heldest my head with both thy hands,— —I heard thee lament ‘we have loved him too little, loved him too little!’ Because I so far deceived thee, my wickedness rejoiced in me.” “ Thou mayest have deceived subtler ones than I,” said Zarathustra sternly. “ I am not on my guard against deceivers; I HAVE TO BE without precaution: so willeth my lot. Thou, however,—MUST deceive: so far do I know thee! Thou must ever be equivocal, trivocal, quadrivocal, and quinquivocal! Even what thou hast now confessed, is not nearly true enough nor false enough for me! Thou bad false coiner, how couldst thou do otherwise! Thy very malady wouldst thou whitewash if thou showed thyself naked to thy physician. Thus didst thou whitewash thy lie before me when thou saidst: ‘I did so ONLY for amusement!’ There was also SERIOUSNESS therein, thou ART something of a penitent-inspirit! I divine thee well: thou hast become the enchanter of all the world; but for thyself thou hast no lie or artifice left,—thou art disenchanted to thyself! Thou hast reaped disgust as thy one truth. No word in thee is any longer genuine, but thy mouth is so: that is to say, the disgust that cleaveth unto thy mouth.”— —“ Who art thou at all!” cried here the old magician with defiant voice, “ who dareth to speak thus unto ME, the greatest man now living?”—and a green flash shot from his eye at Zarathustra. But immediately after he changed, and said sadly: “ O Zarathustra, I am weary of it, I am disgusted with mine arts, I am not GREAT, why do I dissemble! But thou knowest it well—I sought for greatness! A great man I wanted to appear, and persuaded many; but the lie hath been beyond my power. On it do I collapse. O Zarathustra, everything is a lie in me; but that I collapse—this my collapsing is GENUINE!”— “ It honoureth thee,” said Zarathustra gloomily, looking down with sidelong glance, “ it honoureth thee that thou soughtest for greatness, but it betrayeth thee also. Thou art not great. Thou bad old magician, THAT is the best and the honestest thing I honour in thee, that thou hast become weary of thyself, and hast expressed it: ‘I am not great.’ THEREIN do I honour thee as a penitent-in-spirit, and although only for the twinkling of an eye, in that one moment wast thou—genuine. But tell me, what seekest thou here in MY forests and rocks? And if thou hast put thyself in MY way, what proof of me wouldst thou have?— —Wherein didst thou put ME to the test?” Thus spake Zarathustra, and his eyes sparkled. But the old magician kept silence for a while; then said he: “ Did I put thee to the test? I—seek only. O Zarathustra, I seek a genuine one, a right one, a simple one, an unequivocal one, a man of perfect honesty, a vessel of wisdom, a saint of knowledge, a great man!
Knowest thou it not, O Zarathustra? I SEEK ZARATHUSTRA.” —And here there arose a long silence between them: Zarathustra, however, became profoundly absorbed in thought, so that he shut his eyes. But afterwards coming back to the situation, he grasped the hand of the magician, and said, full of politeness and policy: “ Well! Up thither leadeth the way, there is the cave of Zarathustra. In it mayest thou seek him whom thou wouldst fain find. And ask counsel of mine animals, mine eagle and my serpent: they shall help thee to seek. My cave however is large. I myself, to be sure—I have as yet seen no great man. That which is great, the acutest eye is at present insensible to it. It is the kingdom of the populace. Many a one have I found who stretched and inflated himself, and the people cried: ‘Behold; a great man!’ But what good do all bellows do! The wind cometh out at last. At last bursteth the frog which hath inflated itself too long: then cometh out the wind. To prick a swollen one in the belly, I call good pastime. Hear that, ye boys! Our to-day is of the populace: who still KNOWETH what is great and what is small! Who could there seek successfully for greatness! A fool only: it succeedeth with fools. Thou seekest for great men, thou strange fool? Who TAUGHT that to thee? Is to-day the time for it? Oh, thou bad seeker, why dost thou—tempt me?”— Thus spake Zarathustra, comforted in his heart, and went laughing on his way. LXVI. OUT OF SERVICE. Not long, however, after Zarathustra had freed himself from the magician, he again saw a person sitting beside the path which he followed, namely a tall, black man, with a haggard, pale countenance: THIS MAN grieved him exceedingly. “ Alas,” said he to his heart, “ there sitteth disguised affliction; methinketh he is of the type of the priests: what do THEY want in my domain? What! Hardly have I escaped from that magician, and must another necromancer again run across my path,— —Some sorcerer with laying-on-of-hands, some sombre wonder-worker by the grace of God, some anointed world-maligner, whom, may the devil take! But the devil is never at the place which would be his right place: he always cometh too late, that cursed dwarf and club-foot!”— Thus cursed Zarathustra impatiently in his heart, and considered how with averted look he might slip past the black man. But behold, it came about otherwise. For at the same moment had the sitting one already perceived him; and not unlike one whom an unexpected happiness overtaketh, he sprang to his feet, and went straight towards Zarathustra. “ Whoever thou art, thou traveller,” said he, “ help a strayed one, a seeker, an old man, who may here easily come to grief! The world here is strange to me, and remote; wild beasts also did I hear howling; and he who could have given me protection—he is himself no more. I was seeking the pious man, a saint and an anchorite, who, alone in his forest, had not yet heard of what all the world knoweth at present.” “ WHAT doth all the world know at present?” asked Zarathustra. “ Perhaps that the old God no longer liveth, in whom all the world once believed?” “ Thou sayest it,” answered the old man sorrowfully. “ And I served that old God until his last hour. Now, however, am I out of service, without master, and yet not free; likewise am I no longer merry even for an hour, except it be in recollections. Therefore did I ascend into these mountains, that I might finally have a festival for myself once more, as becometh an old pope and church-father: for know it, that I am the last pope!—a festival of pious recollections and divine services. Now, however, is he himself dead, the most pious of men, the saint in the forest, who praised his God constantly with singing and mumbling. He himself found I no longer when I found his cot—but two wolves found I therein, which howled on account of his death,—for all animals loved him. Then did I haste away. Had I thus come in vain into these forests and mountains? Then did my heart determine that I should seek another, the most pious of all those who believe not in God—, my heart determined that I should seek Zarathustra!” Thus spake the hoary man, and gazed with keen eyes at him who stood before him. Zarathustra however seized the hand of the old pope and regarded it a long while with admiration. “ Lo! thou venerable one,” said he then, “ what a fine and long hand! That is the hand of one who hath ever dispensed blessings. Now, however, doth it hold fast him whom thou seekest, me, Zarathustra. It is I, the ungodly Zarathustra, who saith: ‘Who is ungodlier than I, that I may enjoy his teaching?’”— Thus spake Zarathustra, and penetrated with his glances the thoughts and arrear-thoughts of the old pope. At last the latter began: “ He who most loved and possessed him hath now also lost him most—: —Lo, I myself am surely the most godless of us at present? But who could rejoice at that!”— —“ Thou servedst him to the last?” asked Zarathustra thoughtfully, after a deep silence, “ thou knowest HOW he died? Is it true what they say, that sympathy choked him; —That he saw how MAN hung on the cross, and could not endure it;—that his love to man became his hell, and at last his death?”— The old pope however did not answer, but looked aside timidly, with a painful and gloomy expression. “ Let him go,” said Zarathustra, after prolonged meditation, still looking the old man straight in the eye. “ Let him go, he is gone. And though it honoureth thee that thou speakest only in praise of this dead one, yet thou knowest as well as I WHO he was, and that he went curious
ways.” “ To speak before three eyes,” said the old pope cheerfully (he was blind of one eye), “ in divine matters I am more enlightened than Zarathustra himself—and may well be so. My love served him long years, my will followed all his will. A good servant, however, knoweth everything, and many a thing even which a master hideth from himself. He was a hidden God, full of secrecy. Verily, he did not come by his son otherwise than by secret ways. At the door of his faith standeth adultery. Whoever extolleth him as a God of love, doth not think highly enough of love itself. Did not that God want also to be judge? But the loving one loveth irrespective of reward and requital. When he was young, that God out of the Orient, then was he harsh and revengeful, and built himself a hell for the delight of his favourites. At last, however, he became old and soft and mellow and pitiful, more like a grandfather than a father, but most like a tottering old grandmother. There did he sit shrivelled in his chimney-corner, fretting on account of his weak legs, world-weary, will-weary, and one day he suffocated of his all-too-great pity.”— “ Thou old pope,” said here Zarathustra interposing, “ hast thou seen THAT with thine eyes? It could well have happened in that way: in that way, AND also otherwise. When Gods die they always die many kinds of death. Well! At all events, one way or other—he is gone! He was counter to the taste of mine ears and eyes; worse than that I should not like to say against him. I love everything that looketh bright and speaketh honestly. But he—thou knowest it, forsooth, thou old priest, there was something of thy type in him, the priest-type—he was equivocal. He was also indistinct. How he raged at us, this wrath-snorter, because we understood him badly! But why did he not speak more clearly? And if the fault lay in our ears, why did he give us ears that heard him badly? If there was dirt in our ears, well! who put it in them? Too much miscarried with him, this potter who had not learned thoroughly! That he took revenge on his pots and creations, however, because they turned out badly—that was a sin against GOOD TASTE. There is also good taste in piety: THIS at last said: ‘Away with SUCH a God! Better to have no God, better to set up destiny on one’s own account, better to be a fool, better to be God oneself!’” —“ What do I hear!” said then the old pope, with intent ears; “ O Zarathustra, thou art more pious than thou believest, with such an unbelief! Some God in thee hath converted thee to thine ungodliness. Is it not thy piety itself which no longer letteth thee believe in a God? And thine over-great honesty will yet lead thee even beyond good and evil! Behold, what hath been reserved for thee? Thou hast eyes and hands and mouth, which have been predestined for blessing from eternity. One doth not bless with the hand alone. Nigh unto thee, though thou professest to be the ungodliest one, I feel a hale and holy odour of long benedictions: I feel glad and grieved thereby. Let me be thy guest, O Zarathustra, for a single night! Nowhere on earth shall I now feel better than with thee!”— “ Amen! So shall it be!” said Zarathustra, with great astonishment; “ up thither leadeth the way, there lieth the cave of Zarathustra. Gladly, forsooth, would I conduct thee thither myself, thou venerable one; for I love all pious men. But now a cry of distress calleth me hastily away from thee. In my domain shall no one come to grief; my cave is a good haven. And best of all would I like to put every sorrowful one again on firm land and firm legs. Who, however, could take THY melancholy off thy shoulders? For that I am too weak. Long, verily, should we have to wait until some one re-awoke thy God for thee. For that old God liveth no more: he is indeed dead.”— Thus spake Zarathustra. LXVII. THE UGLIEST MAN. —And again did Zarathustra’s feet run through mountains and forests, and his eyes sought and sought, but nowhere was he to be seen whom they wanted to see—the sorely distressed sufferer and crier. On the whole way, however, he rejoiced in his heart and was full of gratitude. “ What good things,” said he, “ hath this day given me, as amends for its bad beginning! What strange interlocutors have I found! At their words will I now chew a long while as at good corn; small shall my teeth grind and crush them, until they flow like milk into my soul!”— When, however, the path again curved round a rock, all at once the landscape changed, and Zarathustra entered into a realm of death. Here bristled aloft black and red cliffs, without any grass, tree, or bird’s voice. For it was a valley which all animals avoided, even the beasts of prey, except that a species of ugly, thick, green serpent came here to die when they became old. Therefore the shepherds called this valley: “ Serpent-death.” Zarathustra, however, became absorbed in dark recollections, for it seemed to him as if he had once before stood in this valley. And much heaviness settled on his mind, so that he walked slowly and always more slowly, and at last stood still. Then, however, when he opened his eyes, he saw something sitting by the wayside shaped like a man, and hardly like a man, something nondescript. And all at once there came over Zarathustra a great shame, because he had gazed on such a thing. Blushing up to the very roots of his white hair, he turned aside his glance, and raised his foot that he might leave this ill-starred place. Then, however, became the dead wilderness vocal: for from the ground a noise welled up, gurgling and rattling, as water gurgleth and rattleth at night through stopped-up water-pipes; and at last it turned into human voice and human speech:—it sounded thus:
“ Zarathustra! Zarathustra! Read my riddle! Say, say! WHAT IS THE REVENGE ON THE WITNESS? I entice thee back; here is smooth ice! See to it, see to it, that thy pride doth not here break its legs! Thou thinkest thyself wise, thou proud Zarathustra! Read then the riddle, thou hard nut-cracker,—the riddle that I am! Say then: who am I!” —When however Zarathustra had heard these words,—what think ye then took place in his soul? PITY OVERCAME HIM; and he sank down all at once, like an oak that hath long withstood many tree-fellers,—heavily, suddenly, to the terror even of those who meant to fell it. But immediately he got up again from the ground, and his countenance became stern. “ I know thee well,” said he, with a brazen voice, “ THOU ART THE MURDERER OF GOD! Let me go. Thou couldst not ENDURE him who beheld THEE,—who ever beheld thee through and through, thou ugliest man. Thou tookest revenge on this witness!” Thus spake Zarathustra and was about to go; but the nondescript grasped at a corner of his garment and began anew to gurgle and seek for words. “ Stay,” said he at last— —“ Stay! Do not pass by! I have divined what axe it was that struck thee to the ground: hail to thee, O Zarathustra, that thou art again upon thy feet! Thou hast divined, I know it well, how the man feeleth who killed him,—the murderer of God. Stay! Sit down here beside me; it is not to no purpose. To whom would I go but unto thee? Stay, sit down! Do not however look at me! Honour thus—mine ugliness! They persecute me: now art THOU my last refuge. NOT with their hatred, NOT with their bailiffs;—Oh, such persecution would I mock at, and be proud and cheerful! Hath not all success hitherto been with the well-persecuted ones? And he who persecuteth well learneth readily to be OBSEQUENT—when once he is—put behind! But it is their PITY— —Their pity is it from which I flee away and flee to thee. O Zarathustra, protect me, thou, my last refuge, thou sole one who divinedst me: —Thou hast divined how the man feeleth who killed HIM. Stay! And if thou wilt go, thou impatient one, go not the way that I came. THAT way is bad. Art thou angry with me because I have already racked language too long? Because I have already counselled thee? But know that it is I, the ugliest man, —Who have also the largest, heaviest feet. Where I have gone, the way is bad. I tread all paths to death and destruction. But that thou passedst me by in silence, that thou blushedst—I saw it well: thereby did I know thee as Zarathustra. Every one else would have thrown to me his alms, his pity, in look and speech. But for that—I am not beggar enough: that didst thou divine. For that I am too RICH, rich in what is great, frightful, ugliest, most unutterable! Thy shame, O Zarathustra, HONOURED me! With difficulty did I get out of the crowd of the pitiful,—that I might find the only one who at present teacheth that ‘pity is obtrusive’— thyself, O Zarathustra! —Whether it be the pity of a God, or whether it be human pity, it is offensive to modesty. And unwillingness to help may be nobler than the virtue that rusheth to do so. THAT however—namely, pity—is called virtue itself at present by all petty people:—they have no reverence for great misfortune, great ugliness, great failure. Beyond all these do I look, as a dog looketh over the backs of thronging flocks of sheep. They are petty, good-wooled, good-willed, grey people. As the heron looketh contemptuously at shallow pools, with backward-bent head, so do I look at the throng of grey little waves and wills and souls. Too long have we acknowledged them to be right, those petty people: SO we have at last given them power as well;—and now do they teach that ‘good is only what petty people call good.’ And ‘truth’ is at present what the preacher spake who himself sprang from them, that singular saint and advocate of the petty people, who testified of himself: ‘I—am the truth.’ That immodest one hath long made the petty people greatly puffed up,—he who taught no small error when he taught: ‘I—am the truth.’ Hath an immodest one ever been answered more courteously?—Thou, however, O Zarathustra, passedst him by, and saidst: ‘Nay! Nay! Three times Nay!’ Thou warnedst against his error; thou warnedst—the first to do so—against pity:—not every one, not none, but thyself and thy type. Thou art ashamed of the shame of the great sufferer; and verily when thou sayest: ‘From pity there cometh a heavy cloud; take heed, ye men!’ —When thou teachest: ‘All creators are hard, all great love is beyond their pity:’ O Zarathustra, how well versed dost thou seem to me in weather-signs! Thou thyself, however,—warn thyself also against THY pity! For many are on their way to thee, many suffering, doubting, despairing, drowning, freezing ones— I warn thee also against myself. Thou hast read my best, my worst riddle, myself, and what I have done. I know the axe that felleth thee. But he—HAD TO die: he looked with eyes which beheld EVERYTHING,—he beheld men’s depths and dregs, all his hidden ignominy and ugliness. His pity knew no modesty: he crept into my dirtiest corners. This most prying, over-intrusive, over-pitiful one had to die. He ever beheld ME: on such a witness I would have revenge—or not live myself. The God who beheld everything, AND ALSO MAN: that God had to die! Man cannot ENDURE it that such a witness should live.” Thus spake the ugliest man. Zarathustra however got up, and prepared to go on: for he felt frozen to the very bowels. “ Thou nondescript,” said he, “ thou warnedst me against thy path. As thanks for it I praise mine to thee. Behold, up thither is the cave of Zarathustra. My cave is large and deep and hath many corners; there findeth he that is most hidden his hiding-place. And close beside it, there are a hundred lurking-places and by-places for creeping, fluttering, and hopping creatures.
Thou outcast, who hast cast thyself out, thou wilt not live amongst men and men’s pity? Well then, do like me! Thus wilt thou learn also from me; only the doer learneth. And talk first and foremost to mine animals! The proudest animal and the wisest animal—they might well be the right counsellors for us both!”— Thus spake Zarathustra and went his way, more thoughtfully and slowly even than before: for he asked himself many things, and hardly knew what to answer. “ How poor indeed is man,” thought he in his heart, “ how ugly, how wheezy, how full of hidden shame! They tell me that man loveth himself. Ah, how great must that self-love be! How much contempt is opposed to it! Even this man hath loved himself, as he hath despised himself,—a great lover methinketh he is, and a great despiser. No one have I yet found who more thoroughly despised himself: even THAT is elevation. Alas, was THIS perhaps the higher man whose cry I heard? I love the great despisers. Man is something that hath to be surpassed.”— LXVIII. THE VOLUNTARY BEGGAR. When Zarathustra had left the ugliest man, he was chilled and felt lonesome: for much coldness and lonesomeness came over his spirit, so that even his limbs became colder thereby. When, however, he wandered on and on, uphill and down, at times past green meadows, though also sometimes over wild stony couches where formerly perhaps an impatient brook had made its bed, then he turned all at once warmer and heartier again. “ What hath happened unto me?” he asked himself, “ something warm and living quickeneth me; it must be in the neighbourhood. Already am I less alone; unconscious companions and brethren rove around me; their warm breath toucheth my soul.” When, however, he spied about and sought for the comforters of his lonesomeness, behold, there were kine there standing together on an eminence, whose proximity and smell had warmed his heart. The kine, however, seemed to listen eagerly to a speaker, and took no heed of him who approached. When, however, Zarathustra was quite nigh unto them, then did he hear plainly that a human voice spake in the midst of the kine, and apparently all of them had turned their heads towards the speaker. Then ran Zarathustra up speedily and drove the animals aside; for he feared that some one had here met with harm, which the pity of the kine would hardly be able to relieve. But in this he was deceived; for behold, there sat a man on the ground who seemed to be persuading the animals to have no fear of him, a peaceable man and Preacher-on-the-Mount, out of whose eyes kindness itself preached. “ What dost thou seek here?” called out Zarathustra in astonishment. “ What do I here seek?” answered he: “ the same that thou seekest, thou mischief-maker; that is to say, happiness upon earth. To that end, however, I would fain learn of these kine. For I tell thee that I have already talked half a morning unto them, and just now were they about to give me their answer. Why dost thou disturb them? Except we be converted and become as kine, we shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. For we ought to learn from them one thing: ruminating. And verily, although a man should gain the whole world, and yet not learn one thing, ruminating, what would it profit him! He would not be rid of his affliction, —His great affliction: that, however, is at present called DISGUST. Who hath not at present his heart, his mouth and his eyes full of disgust? Thou also! Thou also! But behold these kine!”— Thus spake the Preacher-on-the-Mount, and turned then his own look towards Zarathustra—for hitherto it had rested lovingly on the kine—: then, however, he put on a different expression. “ Who is this with whom I talk?” he exclaimed frightened, and sprang up from the ground. “ This is the man without disgust, this is Zarathustra himself, the surmounter of the great disgust, this is the eye, this is the mouth, this is the heart of Zarathustra himself.” And whilst he thus spake he kissed with o’erflowing eyes the hands of him with whom he spake, and behaved altogether like one to whom a precious gift and jewel hath fallen unawares from heaven. The kine, however, gazed at it all and wondered. “ Speak not of me, thou strange one; thou amiable one!” said Zarathustra, and restrained his affection, “ speak to me firstly of thyself! Art thou not the voluntary beggar who once cast away great riches,— —Who was ashamed of his riches and of the rich, and fled to the poorest to bestow upon them his abundance and his heart? But they received him not.” “ But they received me not,” said the voluntary beggar, “ thou knowest it, forsooth. So I went at last to the animals and to those kine.” “ Then learnedst thou,” interrupted Zarathustra, “ how much harder it is to give properly than to take properly, and that bestowing well is an ART—the last, subtlest master-art of kindness.” “ Especially nowadays,” answered the voluntary beggar: “ at present, that is to say, when everything low hath become rebellious and exclusive and haughty in its manner—in the manner of the populace. For the hour hath come, thou knowest it forsooth, for the great, evil, long, slow mob-and-slave-insurrection: it extendeth and extendeth! Now doth it provoke the lower classes, all benevolence and petty giving; and the overrich may be on their guard! Whoever at present drip, like bulgy bottles out of all-too-small necks:—of such bottles at present one willingly breaketh the necks. Wanton avidity, bilious envy, careworn revenge, populace-pride: all these struck mine eye. It is no longer true that the poor are blessed. The kingdom of heaven, however, is with the kine.”
“ And why is it not with the rich?” asked Zarathustra temptingly, while he kept back the kine which sniffed familiarly at the peaceful one. “ Why dost thou tempt me?” answered the other. “ Thou knowest it thyself better even than I. What was it drove me to the poorest, O Zarathustra? Was it not my disgust at the richest? —At the culprits of riches, with cold eyes and rank thoughts, who pick up profit out of all kinds of rubbish—at this rabble that stinketh to heaven, —At this gilded, falsified populace, whose fathers were pickpockets, or carrion-crows, or rag-pickers, with wives compliant, lewd and forgetful:—for they are all of them not far different from harlots— Populace above, populace below! What are ‘poor’ and ‘rich’ at present! That distinction did I unlearn,—then did I flee away further and ever further, until I came to those kine.” Thus spake the peaceful one, and puffed himself and perspired with his words: so that the kine wondered anew. Zarathustra, however, kept looking into his face with a smile, all the time the man talked so severely—and shook silently his head. “ Thou doest violence to thyself, thou Preacher-on-the-Mount, when thou usest such severe words. For such severity neither thy mouth nor thine eye have been given thee. Nor, methinketh, hath thy stomach either: unto IT all such rage and hatred and foaming-over is repugnant. Thy stomach wanteth softer things: thou art not a butcher. Rather seemest thou to me a plant-eater and a root-man. Perhaps thou grindest corn. Certainly, however, thou art averse to fleshly joys, and thou lovest honey.” “ Thou hast divined me well,” answered the voluntary beggar, with lightened heart. “ I love honey, I also grind corn; for I have sought out what tasteth sweetly and maketh pure breath: —Also what requireth a long time, a day’s-work and a mouth’s-work for gentle idlers and sluggards. Furthest, to be sure, have those kine carried it: they have devised ruminating and lying in the sun. They also abstain from all heavy thoughts which inflate the heart.” —“ Well!” said Zarathustra, “ thou shouldst also see MINE animals, mine eagle and my serpent,—their like do not at present exist on earth. Behold, thither leadeth the way to my cave: be to-night its guest. And talk to mine animals of the happiness of animals,— —Until I myself come home. For now a cry of distress calleth me hastily away from thee. Also, shouldst thou find new honey with me, ice-cold, golden-comb-honey, eat it! Now, however, take leave at once of thy kine, thou strange one! thou amiable one! though it be hard for thee. For they are thy warmest friends and preceptors!”— —“ One excepted, whom I hold still dearer,” answered the voluntary beggar. “ Thou thyself art good, O Zarathustra, and better even than a cow!” “ Away, away with thee! thou evil flatterer!” cried Zarathustra mischievously, “ why dost thou spoil me with such praise and flattery-honey? “ Away, away from me!” cried he once more, and heaved his stick at the fond beggar, who, however, ran nimbly away. LXIX. THE SHADOW. Scarcely however was the voluntary beggar gone in haste, and Zarathustra again alone, when he heard behind him a new voice which called out: “ Stay! Zarathustra! Do wait! It is myself, forsooth, O Zarathustra, myself, thy shadow!” But Zarathustra did not wait; for a sudden irritation came over him on account of the crowd and the crowding in his mountains. “ Whither hath my lonesomeness gone?” spake he. “ It is verily becoming too much for me; these mountains swarm; my kingdom is no longer of THIS world; I require new mountains. My shadow calleth me? What matter about my shadow! Let it run after me! I—run away from it.” Thus spake Zarathustra to his heart and ran away. But the one behind followed after him, so that immediately there were three runners, one after the other—namely, foremost the voluntary beggar, then Zarathustra, and thirdly, and hindmost, his shadow. But not long had they run thus when Zarathustra became conscious of his folly, and shook off with one jerk all his irritation and detestation. “ What!” said he, “ have not the most ludicrous things always happened to us old anchorites and saints? Verily, my folly hath grown big in the mountains! Now do I hear six old fools’ legs rattling behind one another! But doth Zarathustra need to be frightened by his shadow? Also, methinketh that after all it hath longer legs than mine.” Thus spake Zarathustra, and, laughing with eyes and entrails, he stood still and turned round quickly—and behold, he almost thereby threw his shadow and follower to the ground, so closely had the latter followed at his heels, and so weak was he. For when Zarathustra scrutinised him with his glance he was frightened as by a sudden apparition, so slender, swarthy, hollow and worn-out did this follower appear. “ Who art thou?” asked Zarathustra vehemently, “ what doest thou here? And why callest thou thyself my shadow? Thou art not pleasing unto me.” “ Forgive me,” answered the shadow, “ that it is I; and if I please thee not—well, O Zarathustra! therein do I admire thee and thy good taste. A wanderer am I, who have walked long at thy heels; always on the way, but without a goal, also without a home: so that verily, I lack little of being the eternally Wandering Jew, except that I am not eternal and not a Jew. What? Must I ever be on the way? Whirled by every wind, unsettled, driven about? O earth, thou hast become too round for me! On every surface have I already sat, like tired dust have I fallen asleep on mirrors and window-panes: everything taketh from me, nothing giveth; I become thin—I am almost equal to a shadow.
After thee, however, O Zarathustra, did I fly and hie longest; and though I hid myself from thee, I was nevertheless thy best shadow: wherever thou hast sat, there sat I also. With thee have I wandered about in the remotest, coldest worlds, like a phantom that voluntarily haunteth winter roofs and snows. With thee have I pushed into all the forbidden, all the worst and the furthest: and if there be anything of virtue in me, it is that I have had no fear of any prohibition. With thee have I broken up whatever my heart revered; all boundary-stones and statues have I o’erthrown; the most dangerous wishes did I pursue,—verily, beyond every crime did I once go. With thee did I unlearn the belief in words and worths and in great names. When the devil casteth his skin, doth not his name also fall away? It is also skin. The devil himself is perhaps—skin. ‘Nothing is true, all is permitted’: so said I to myself. Into the coldest water did I plunge with head and heart. Ah, how oft did I stand there naked on that account, like a red crab! Ah, where have gone all my goodness and all my shame and all my belief in the good! Ah, where is the lying innocence which I once possessed, the innocence of the good and of their noble lies! Too oft, verily, did I follow close to the heels of truth: then did it kick me on the face. Sometimes I meant to lie, and behold! then only did I hit—the truth. Too much hath become clear unto me: now it doth not concern me any more. Nothing liveth any longer that I love,—how should I still love myself? ‘To live as I incline, or not to live at all’: so do I wish; so wisheth also the holiest. But alas! how have I still—inclination? Have I—still a goal? A haven towards which MY sail is set? A good wind? Ah, he only who knoweth WHITHER he saileth, knoweth what wind is good, and a fair wind for him. What still remaineth to me? A heart weary and flippant; an unstable will; fluttering wings; a broken backbone. This seeking for MY home: O Zarathustra, dost thou know that this seeking hath been MY home-sickening; it eateth me up. ‘WHERE is—MY home?’ For it do I ask and seek, and have sought, but have not found it. O eternal everywhere, O eternal nowhere, O eternal—in-vain!” Thus spake the shadow, and Zarathustra’s countenance lengthened at his words. “ Thou art my shadow!” said he at last sadly. “ Thy danger is not small, thou free spirit and wanderer! Thou hast had a bad day: see that a still worse evening doth not overtake thee! To such unsettled ones as thou, seemeth at last even a prisoner blessed. Didst thou ever see how captured criminals sleep? They sleep quietly, they enjoy their new security. Beware lest in the end a narrow faith capture thee, a hard, rigorous delusion! For now everything that is narrow and fixed seduceth and tempteth thee. Thou hast lost thy goal. Alas, how wilt thou forego and forget that loss? Thereby—hast thou also lost thy way! Thou poor rover and rambler, thou tired butterfly! wilt thou have a rest and a home this evening? Then go up to my cave! Thither leadeth the way to my cave. And now will I run quickly away from thee again. Already lieth as it were a shadow upon me. I will run alone, so that it may again become bright around me. Therefore must I still be a long time merrily upon my legs. In the evening, however, there will be—dancing with me!”— Thus spake Zarathustra. LXX. NOONTIDE. —And Zarathustra ran and ran, but he found no one else, and was alone and ever found himself again; he enjoyed and quaffed his solitude, and thought of good things—for hours. About the hour of noontide, however, when the sun stood exactly over Zarathustra’s head, he passed an old, bent and gnarled tree, which was encircled round by the ardent love of a vine, and hidden from itself; from this there hung yellow grapes in abundance, confronting the wanderer. Then he felt inclined to quench a little thirst, and to break off for himself a cluster of grapes. When, however, he had already his arm out-stretched for that purpose, he felt still more inclined for something else—namely, to lie down beside the tree at the hour of perfect noontide and sleep. This Zarathustra did; and no sooner had he laid himself on the ground in the stillness and secrecy of the variegated grass, than he had forgotten his little thirst, and fell asleep. For as the proverb of Zarathustra saith: “ One thing is more necessary than the other.” Only that his eyes remained open:—for they never grew weary of viewing and admiring the tree and the love of the vine. In falling asleep, however, Zarathustra spake thus to his heart: “ Hush! Hush! Hath not the world now become perfect? What hath happened unto me? As a delicate wind danceth invisibly upon parqueted seas, light, feather-light, so—danceth sleep upon me. No eye doth it close to me, it leaveth my soul awake. Light is it, verily, feather-light. It persuadeth me, I know not how, it toucheth me inwardly with a caressing hand, it constraineth me. Yea, it constraineth me, so that my soul stretcheth itself out:— —How long and weary it becometh, my strange soul! Hath a seventh-day evening come to it precisely at noontide? Hath it already wandered too long, blissfully, among good and ripe things? It stretcheth itself out, long—longer! it lieth still, my strange soul. Too many good things hath it already tasted; this golden sadness oppresseth it, it distorteth its mouth. —As a ship that putteth into the calmest cove:—it now draweth up to the land, weary of long voyages and uncertain seas. Is not the land more faithful?
As such a ship huggeth the shore, tuggeth the shore:—then it sufficeth for a spider to spin its thread from the ship to the land. No stronger ropes are required there. As such a weary ship in the calmest cove, so do I also now repose, nigh to the earth, faithful, trusting, waiting, bound to it with the lightest threads. O happiness! O happiness! Wilt thou perhaps sing, O my soul? Thou liest in the grass. But this is the secret, solemn hour, when no shepherd playeth his pipe. Take care! Hot noontide sleepeth on the fields. Do not sing! Hush! The world is perfect. Do not sing, thou prairie-bird, my soul! Do not even whisper! Lo—hush! The old noontide sleepeth, it moveth its mouth: doth it not just now drink a drop of happiness— —An old brown drop of golden happiness, golden wine? Something whisketh over it, its happiness laugheth. Thus—laugheth a God. Hush!— —‘For happiness, how little sufficeth for happiness!’ Thus spake I once and thought myself wise. But it was a blasphemy: THAT have I now learned. Wise fools speak better. The least thing precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a lizard’s rustling, a breath, a whisk, an eye-glance—LITTLE maketh up the BEST happiness. Hush! —What hath befallen me: Hark! Hath time flown away? Do I not fall? Have I not fallen—hark! into the well of eternity? —What happeneth to me? Hush! It stingeth me—alas—to the heart? To the heart! Oh, break up, break up, my heart, after such happiness, after such a sting! —What? Hath not the world just now become perfect? Round and ripe? Oh, for the golden round ring—whither doth it fly? Let me run after it! Quick! Hush—” (and here Zarathustra stretched himself, and felt that he was asleep.) “ Up!” said he to himself, “ thou sleeper! Thou noontide sleeper! Well then, up, ye old legs! It is time and more than time; many a good stretch of road is still awaiting you— Now have ye slept your fill; for how long a time? A half-eternity! Well then, up now, mine old heart! For how long after such a sleep mayest thou—remain awake?” (But then did he fall asleep anew, and his soul spake against him and defended itself, and lay down again)—“ Leave me alone! Hush! Hath not the world just now become perfect? Oh, for the golden round ball!— “ Get up,” said Zarathustra, “ thou little thief, thou sluggard! What! Still stretching thyself, yawning, sighing, falling into deep wells? Who art thou then, O my soul!” (and here he became frightened, for a sunbeam shot down from heaven upon his face.) “ O heaven above me,” said he sighing, and sat upright, “ thou gazest at me? Thou hearkenest unto my strange soul? When wilt thou drink this drop of dew that fell down upon all earthly things,—when wilt thou drink this strange soul— —When, thou well of eternity! thou joyous, awful, noontide abyss! when wilt thou drink my soul back into thee?” Thus spake Zarathustra, and rose from his couch beside the tree, as if awakening from a strange drunkenness: and behold! there stood the sun still exactly above his head. One might, however, rightly infer therefrom that Zarathustra had not then slept long. LXXI. THE GREETING. It was late in the afternoon only when Zarathustra, after long useless searching and strolling about, again came home to his cave. When, however, he stood over against it, not more than twenty paces therefrom, the thing happened which he now least of all expected: he heard anew the great CRY OF DISTRESS. And extraordinary! this time the cry came out of his own cave. It was a long, manifold, peculiar cry, and Zarathustra plainly distinguished that it was composed of many voices: although heard at a distance it might sound like the cry out of a single mouth. Thereupon Zarathustra rushed forward to his cave, and behold! what a spectacle awaited him after that concert! For there did they all sit together whom he had passed during the day: the king on the right and the king on the left, the old magician, the pope, the voluntary beggar, the shadow, the intellectually conscientious one, the sorrowful soothsayer, and the ass; the ugliest man, however, had set a crown on his head, and had put round him two purple girdles,—for he liked, like all ugly ones, to disguise himself and play the handsome person. In the midst, however, of that sorrowful company stood Zarathustra’s eagle, ruffled and disquieted, for it had been called upon to answer too much for which its pride had not any answer; the wise serpent however hung round its neck. All this did Zarathustra behold with great astonishment; then however he scrutinised each individual guest with courteous curiosity, read their souls and wondered anew. In the meantime the assembled ones had risen from their seats, and waited with reverence for Zarathustra to speak. Zarathustra however spake thus: “ Ye despairing ones! Ye strange ones! So it was YOUR cry of distress that I heard? And now do I know also where he is to be sought, whom I have sought for in vain to-day: THE HIGHER MAN—: —In mine own cave sitteth he, the higher man! But why do I wonder! Have not I myself allured him to me by honey-offerings and artful lure-calls of my happiness? But it seemeth to me that ye are badly adapted for company: ye make one another’s hearts fretful, ye that cry for help, when ye sit here together? There is one that must first come, —One who will make you laugh once more, a good jovial buffoon, a dancer, a wind, a wild romp, some old fool:—what think ye? Forgive me, however, ye despairing ones, for speaking such trivial words before you, unworthy, verily, of such guests! But ye do not divine WHAT maketh my heart wanton:— —Ye yourselves do it, and your aspect, forgive it me! For every one becometh courageous who beholdeth a despairing one. To encourage a despairing one—every one thinketh himself strong enough to do so. To myself have ye given this power,—a good gift, mine honourable guests! An excellent guest’s-present! Well, do not then upbraid when I also offer you something of mine. This is mine empire and my dominion: that which is mine, however, shall this evening and tonight be yours. Mine animals shall serve you: let my cave be your resting-place!
At house and home with me shall no one despair: in my purlieus do I protect every one from his wild beasts. And that is the first thing which I offer you: security! The second thing, however, is my little finger. And when ye have THAT, then take the whole hand also, yea, and the heart with it! Welcome here, welcome to you, my guests!” Thus spake Zarathustra, and laughed with love and mischief. After this greeting his guests bowed once more and were reverentially silent; the king on the right, however, answered him in their name. “ O Zarathustra, by the way in which thou hast given us thy hand and thy greeting, we recognise thee as Zarathustra. Thou hast humbled thyself before us; almost hast thou hurt our reverence—: —Who however could have humbled himself as thou hast done, with such pride? THAT uplifteth us ourselves; a refreshment is it, to our eyes and hearts. To behold this, merely, gladly would we ascend higher mountains than this. For as eager beholders have we come; we wanted to see what brighteneth dim eyes. And lo! now is it all over with our cries of distress. Now are our minds and hearts open and enraptured. Little is lacking for our spirits to become wanton. There is nothing, O Zarathustra, that groweth more pleasingly on earth than a lofty, strong will: it is the finest growth. An entire landscape refresheth itself at one such tree. To the pine do I compare him, O Zarathustra, which groweth up like thee—tall, silent, hardy, solitary, of the best, supplest wood, stately,— —In the end, however, grasping out for ITS dominion with strong, green branches, asking weighty questions of the wind, the storm, and whatever is at home on high places; —Answering more weightily, a commander, a victor! Oh! who should not ascend high mountains to behold such growths? At thy tree, O Zarathustra, the gloomy and ill-constituted also refresh themselves; at thy look even the wavering become steady and heal their hearts. And verily, towards thy mountain and thy tree do many eyes turn to-day; a great longing hath arisen, and many have learned to ask: ‘Who is Zarathustra?’ And those into whose ears thou hast at any time dripped thy song and thy honey: all the hidden ones, the lone-dwellers and the twain-dwellers, have simultaneously said to their hearts: ‘Doth Zarathustra still live? It is no longer worth while to live, everything is indifferent, everything is useless: or else—we must live with Zarathustra!’ ‘Why doth he not come who hath so long announced himself?’ thus do many people ask; ‘hath solitude swallowed him up? Or should we perhaps go to him?’ Now doth it come to pass that solitude itself becometh fragile and breaketh open, like a grave that breaketh open and can no longer hold its dead. Everywhere one seeth resurrected ones. Now do the waves rise and rise around thy mountain, O Zarathustra. And however high be thy height, many of them must rise up to thee: thy boat shall not rest much longer on dry ground. And that we despairing ones have now come into thy cave, and already no longer despair:—it is but a prognostic and a presage that better ones are on the way to thee,— —For they themselves are on the way to thee, the last remnant of God among men—that is to say, all the men of great longing, of great loathing, of great satiety, —All who do not want to live unless they learn again to HOPE—unless they learn from thee, O Zarathustra, the GREAT hope!” Thus spake the king on the right, and seized the hand of Zarathustra in order to kiss it; but Zarathustra checked his veneration, and stepped back frightened, fleeing as it were, silently and suddenly into the far distance. After a little while, however, he was again at home with his guests, looked at them with clear scrutinising eyes, and said: “ My guests, ye higher men, I will speak plain language and plainly with you. It is not for YOU that I have waited here in these mountains.” (“ ‘Plain language and plainly?’ Good God!” said here the king on the left to himself; “ one seeth he doth not know the good Occidentals, this sage out of the Orient! But he meaneth ‘blunt language and bluntly’—well! That is not the worst taste in these days!”) “ Ye may, verily, all of you be higher men,” continued Zarathustra; “ but for me—ye are neither high enough, nor strong enough. For me, that is to say, for the inexorable which is now silent in me, but will not always be silent. And if ye appertain to me, still it is not as my right arm. For he who himself standeth, like you, on sickly and tender legs, wisheth above all to be TREATED INDULGENTLY, whether he be conscious of it or hide it from himself. My arms and my legs, however, I do not treat indulgently, I DO NOT TREAT MY WARRIORS INDULGENTLY: how then could ye be fit for MY warfare? With you I should spoil all my victories. And many of you would tumble over if ye but heard the loud beating of my drums. Moreover, ye are not sufficiently beautiful and well-born for me. I require pure, smooth mirrors for my doctrines; on your surface even mine own likeness is distorted. On your shoulders presseth many a burden, many a recollection; many a mischievous dwarf squatteth in your corners. There is concealed populace also in you. And though ye be high and of a higher type, much in you is crooked and misshapen. There is no smith in the world that could hammer you right and straight for me. Ye are only bridges: may higher ones pass over upon you! Ye signify steps: so do not upbraid him who ascendeth beyond you into HIS height! Out of your seed there may one day arise for me a genuine son and perfect heir: but that time is distant. Ye yourselves are not those unto whom my heritage and name belong. Not for you do I wait here in these mountains; not with you may I descend for the last time. Ye have come unto me only as a presage that higher ones are on the way to me,— —NOT the men of great longing, of great loathing, of great satiety, and that which ye call the remnant of God; —Nay! Nay! Three times Nay! For OTHERS do I wait here in these mountains, and will not lift my foot from thence without them; —For higher ones, stronger ones, triumphanter ones, merrier ones, for such as are built squarely in body and soul: LAUGHING LIONS must come!
O my guests, ye strange ones—have ye yet heard nothing of my children? And that they are on the way to me? Do speak unto me of my gardens, of my Happy Isles, of my new beautiful race—why do ye not speak unto me thereof? This guests’-present do I solicit of your love, that ye speak unto me of my children. For them am I rich, for them I became poor: what have I not surrendered, —What would I not surrender that I might have one thing: THESE children, THIS living plantation, THESE life-trees of my will and of my highest hope!” Thus spake Zarathustra, and stopped suddenly in his discourse: for his longing came over him, and he closed his eyes and his mouth, because of the agitation of his heart. And all his guests also were silent, and stood still and confounded: except only that the old soothsayer made signs with his hands and his gestures. LXXII. THE SUPPER. For at this point the soothsayer interrupted the greeting of Zarathustra and his guests: he pressed forward as one who had no time to lose, seized Zarathustra’s hand and exclaimed: “ But Zarathustra! One thing is more necessary than the other, so sayest thou thyself: well, one thing is now more necessary UNTO ME than all others. A word at the right time: didst thou not invite me to TLE? And here are many who have made long journeys. Thou dost not mean to feed us merely with discourses? Besides, all of you have thought too much about freezing, drowning, suffocating, and other bodily dangers: none of you, however, have thought of MY danger, namely, perishing of hunger-“ (Thus spake the soothsayer. When Zarathustra’s animals, however, heard these words, they ran away in terror. For they saw that all they had brought home during the day would not be enough to fill the one soothsayer.) “ Likewise perishing of thirst,” continued the soothsayer. “ And although I hear water splashing here like words of wisdom—that is to say, plenteously and unweariedly, I—want WINE! Not every one is a born water-drinker like Zarathustra. Neither doth water suit weary and withered ones: WE deserve wine—IT alone giveth immediate vigour and improvised health!” On this occasion, when the soothsayer was longing for wine, it happened that the king on the left, the silent one, also found expression for once. “ WE took care,” said he, “ about wine, I, along with my brother the king on the right: we have enough of wine,—a whole ass-load of it. So there is nothing lacking but bread.” “ Bread,” replied Zarathustra, laughing when he spake, “ it is precisely bread that anchorites have not. But man doth not live by bread alone, but also by the flesh of good lambs, of which I have two: —THESE shall we slaughter quickly, and cook spicily with sage: it is so that I like them. And there is also no lack of roots and fruits, good enough even for the fastidious and dainty,—nor of nuts and other riddles for cracking. Thus will we have a good repast in a little while. But whoever wish to eat with us must also give a hand to the work, even the kings. For with Zarathustra even a king may be a cook.” This proposal appealed to the hearts of all of them, save that the voluntary beggar objected to the flesh and wine and spices. “ Just hear this glutton Zarathustra!” said he jokingly: “ doth one go into caves and high mountains to make such repasts? Now indeed do I understand what he once taught us: Blessed be moderate poverty!’ And why he wisheth to do away with beggars.” “ Be of good cheer,” replied Zarathustra, “ as I am. Abide by thy customs, thou excellent one: grind thy corn, drink thy water, praise thy cooking,—if only it make thee glad! I am a law only for mine own; I am not a law for all. He, however, who belongeth unto me must be strong of bone and light of foot,— —Joyous in fight and feast, no sulker, no John o’ Dreams, ready for the hardest task as for the feast, healthy and hale. The best belongeth unto mine and me; and if it be not given us, then do we take it:—the best food, the purest sky, the strongest thoughts, the fairest women!”— Thus spake Zarathustra; the king on the right however answered and said: “ Strange! Did one ever hear such sensible things out of the mouth of a wise man? And verily, it is the strangest thing in a wise man, if over and above, he be still sensible, and not an ass.” Thus spake the king on the right and wondered; the ass however, with ill-will, said YE-A to his remark. This however was the beginning of that long repast which is called “ The Supper” in the history-books. At this there was nothing else spoken of but THE HIGHER MAN. LXXIII. THE HIGHER MAN. 1. When I came unto men for the first time, then did I commit the anchorite folly, the great folly: I appeared on the market-place. And when I spake unto all, I spake unto none. In the evening, however, rope-dancers were my companions, and corpses; and I myself almost a corpse. With the new morning, however, there came unto me a new truth: then did I learn to say: “ Of what account to me are market-place and populace and populace-noise and long populace-ears!” Ye higher men, learn THIS from me: On the market-place no one believeth in higher men. But if ye will speak there, very well! The populace, however, blinketh: “ We are all
equal.” “ Ye higher men,”—so blinketh the populace—“ there are no higher men, we are all equal; man is man, before God—we are all equal!” Before God!—Now, however, this God hath died. Before the populace, however, we will not be equal. Ye higher men, away from the market-place! 2. Before God!—Now however this God hath died! Ye higher men, this God was your greatest danger. Only since he lay in the grave have ye again arisen. Now only cometh the great noontide, now only doth the higher man become—master! Have ye understood this word, O my brethren? Ye are frightened: do your hearts turn giddy? Doth the abyss here yawn for you? Doth the hell-hound here yelp at you? Well! Take heart! ye higher men! Now only travaileth the mountain of the human future. God hath died: now do WE desire—the Superman to live. 3. The most careful ask to-day: “ How is man to be maintained?” Zarathustra however asketh, as the first and only one: “ How is man to be SURPASSED?” The Superman, I have at heart; THAT is the first and only thing to me—and NOT man: not the neighbour, not the poorest, not the sorriest, not the best.— O my brethren, what I can love in man is that he is an over-going and a down-going. And also in you there is much that maketh me love and hope. In that ye have despised, ye higher men, that maketh me hope. For the great despisers are the great reverers. In that ye have despaired, there is much to honour. For ye have not learned to submit yourselves, ye have not learned petty policy. For to-day have the petty people become master: they all preach submission and humility and policy and diligence and consideration and the long et cetera of petty virtues. Whatever is of the effeminate type, whatever originateth from the servile type, and especially the populace-mishmash:—THAT wisheth now to be master of all human destiny—O disgust! Disgust! Disgust! THAT asketh and asketh and never tireth: “ How is man to maintain himself best, longest, most pleasantly?” Thereby—are they the masters of to-day. These masters of to-day—surpass them, O my brethren—these petty people: THEY are the Superman’s greatest danger! Surpass, ye higher men, the petty virtues, the petty policy, the sand-grain considerateness, the ant-hill trumpery, the pitiable comfortableness, the “ happiness of the greatest number”—! And rather despair than submit yourselves. And verily, I love you, because ye know not to-day how to live, ye higher men! For thus do YE live—best! 4. Have ye courage, O my brethren? Are ye stout-hearted? NOT the courage before witnesses, but anchorite and eagle courage, which not even a God any longer beholdeth? Cold souls, mules, the blind and the drunken, I do not call stout-hearted. He hath heart who knoweth fear, but VANQUISHETH it; who seeth the abyss, but with PRIDE. He who seeth the abyss, but with eagle’s eyes,—he who with eagle’s talons GRASPETH the abyss: he hath courage.— 5. “ Man is evil”—so said to me for consolation, all the wisest ones. Ah, if only it be still true to-day! For the evil is man’s best force. “ Man must become better and eviler”—so do I teach. The evilest is necessary for the Superman’s best. It may have been well for the preacher of the petty people to suffer and be burdened by men’s sin. I, however, rejoice in great sin as my great CONSOLATION.— Such things, however, are not said for long ears. Every word, also, is not suited for every mouth. These are fine far-away things: at them sheep’s claws shall not grasp! 6. Ye higher men, think ye that I am here to put right what ye have put wrong? Or that I wished henceforth to make snugger couches for you sufferers? Or show you restless, miswandering, misclimbing ones, new and easier footpaths? Nay! Nay! Three times Nay! Always more, always better ones of your type shall succumb,—for ye shall always have it worse and harder. Thus only— —Thus only groweth man aloft to the height where the lightning striketh and shattereth him: high enough for the lightning! Towards the few, the long, the remote go forth my soul and my seeking: of what account to me are your many little, short miseries! Ye do not yet suffer enough for me! For ye suffer from yourselves, ye have not yet suffered FROM MAN. Ye would lie if ye spake otherwise! None of you suffereth from what I have suffered.— 7. It is not enough for me that the lightning no longer doeth harm. I do not wish to conduct it away: it shall learn—to work for ME.— My wisdom hath accumulated long like a cloud, it becometh stiller and darker. So doeth all wisdom which shall one day bear LIGHTNINGS.— Unto these men of to-day will I not be LIGHT, nor be called light. THEM—will I blind: lightning of my wisdom! put out their eyes! 8. Do not will anything beyond your power: there is a bad falseness in those who will beyond their power.
Especially when they will great things! For they awaken distrust in great things, these subtle false-coiners and stage-players:— —Until at last they are false towards themselves, squint-eyed, whited cankers, glossed over with strong words, parade virtues and brilliant false deeds. Take good care there, ye higher men! For nothing is more precious to me, and rarer, than honesty. Is this to-day not that of the populace? The populace however knoweth not what is great and what is small, what is straight and what is honest: it is innocently crooked, it ever lieth. 9. Have a good distrust to-day ye, higher men, ye enheartened ones! Ye open-hearted ones! And keep your reasons secret! For this to-day is that of the populace. What the populace once learned to believe without reasons, who could— refute it to them by means of reasons? And on the market-place one convinceth with gestures. But reasons make the populace distrustful. And when truth hath once triumphed there, then ask yourselves with good distrust: “ What strong error hath fought for it?” Be on your guard also against the learned! They hate you, because they are unproductive! They have cold, withered eyes before which every bird is unplumed. Such persons vaunt about not lying: but inability to lie is still far from being love to truth. Be on your guard! Freedom from fever is still far from being knowledge! Refrigerated spirits I do not believe in. He who cannot lie, doth not know what truth is. 10. If ye would go up high, then use your own legs! Do not get yourselves CARRIED aloft; do not seat yourselves on other people’s backs and heads! Thou hast mounted, however, on horseback? Thou now ridest briskly up to thy goal? Well, my friend! But thy lame foot is also with thee on horseback! When thou reachest thy goal, when thou alightest from thy horse: precisely on thy HEIGHT, thou higher man,—then wilt thou stumble! 11. Ye creating ones, ye higher men! One is only pregnant with one’s own child. Do not let yourselves be imposed upon or put upon! Who then is YOUR neighbour? Even if ye act “ for your neighbour”—ye still do not create for him! Unlearn, I pray you, this “ for,” ye creating ones: your very virtue wisheth you to have naught to do with “ for” and “ on account of” and “ because.” Against these false little words shall ye stop your ears. “ For one’s neighbour,” is the virtue only of the petty people: there it is said “ like and like,” and “ hand washeth hand”:—they have neither the right nor the power for YOUR selfseeking! In your self-seeking, ye creating ones, there is the foresight and foreseeing of the pregnant! What no one’s eye hath yet seen, namely, the fruit—this, sheltereth and saveth and nourisheth your entire love. Where your entire love is, namely, with your child, there is also your entire virtue! Your work, your will is YOUR “ neighbour”: let no false values impose upon you! 12. Ye creating ones, ye higher men! Whoever hath to give birth is sick; whoever hath given birth, however, is unclean. Ask women: one giveth birth, not because it giveth pleasure. The pain maketh hens and poets cackle. Ye creating ones, in you there is much uncleanliness. That is because ye have had to be mothers. A new child: oh, how much new filth hath also come into the world! Go apart! He who hath given birth shall wash his soul! 13. Be not virtuous beyond your powers! And seek nothing from yourselves opposed to probability! Walk in the footsteps in which your fathers’ virtue hath already walked! How would ye rise high, if your fathers’ will should not rise with you? He, however, who would be a firstling, let him take care lest he also become a lastling! And where the vices of your fathers are, there should ye not set up as saints! He whose fathers were inclined for women, and for strong wine and flesh of wildboar swine; what would it be if he demanded chastity of himself? A folly would it be! Much, verily, doth it seem to me for such a one, if he should be the husband of one or of two or of three women. And if he founded monasteries, and inscribed over their portals: “ The way to holiness,”—I should still say: What good is it! it is a new folly! He hath founded for himself a penance-house and refuge-house: much good may it do! But I do not believe in it. In solitude there groweth what any one bringeth into it—also the brute in one’s nature. Thus is solitude inadvisable unto many. Hath there ever been anything filthier on earth than the saints of the wilderness? AROUND THEM was not only the devil loose—but also the swine. 14. Shy, ashamed, awkward, like the tiger whose spring hath failed—thus, ye higher men, have I often seen you slink aside. A CAST which ye made had failed. But what doth it matter, ye dice-players! Ye had not learned to play and mock, as one must play and mock! Do we not ever sit at a great table of mocking and playing?
And if great things have been a failure with you, have ye yourselves therefore—been a failure? And if ye yourselves have been a failure, hath man therefore—been a failure? If man, however, hath been a failure: well then! never mind! 15. The higher its type, always the seldomer doth a thing succeed. Ye higher men here, have ye not all—been failures? Be of good cheer; what doth it matter? How much is still possible! Learn to laugh at yourselves, as ye ought to laugh! What wonder even that ye have failed and only half-succeeded, ye half-shattered ones! Doth not—man’s FUTURE strive and struggle in you? Man’s furthest, profoundest, star-highest issues, his prodigious powers—do not all these foam through one another in your vessel? What wonder that many a vessel shattereth! Learn to laugh at yourselves, as ye ought to laugh! Ye higher men, O, how much is still possible! And verily, how much hath already succeeded! How rich is this earth in small, good, perfect things, in well-constituted things! Set around you small, good, perfect things, ye higher men. Their golden maturity healeth the heart. The perfect teacheth one to hope. 16. What hath hitherto been the greatest sin here on earth? Was it not the word of him who said: “ Woe unto them that laugh now!” Did he himself find no cause for laughter on the earth? Then he sought badly. A child even findeth cause for it. He—did not love sufficiently: otherwise would he also have loved us, the laughing ones! But he hated and hooted us; wailing and teeth-gnashing did he promise us. Must one then curse immediately, when one doth not love? That—seemeth to me bad taste. Thus did he, however, this absolute one. He sprang from the populace. And he himself just did not love sufficiently; otherwise would he have raged less because people did not love him. All great love doth not SEEK love:—it seeketh more. Go out of the way of all such absolute ones! They are a poor sickly type, a populace-type: they look at this life with ill-will, they have an evil eye for this earth. Go out of the way of all such absolute ones! They have heavy feet and sultry hearts:—they do not know how to dance. How could the earth be light to such ones! 17. Tortuously do all good things come nigh to their goal. Like cats they curve their backs, they purr inwardly with their approaching happiness,—all good things laugh. His step betrayeth whether a person already walketh on HIS OWN path: just see me walk! He, however, who cometh nigh to his goal, danceth. And verily, a statue have I not become, not yet do I stand there stiff, stupid and stony, like a pillar; I love fast racing. And though there be on earth fens and dense afflictions, he who hath light feet runneth even across the mud, and danceth, as upon well-swept ice. Lift up your hearts, my brethren, high, higher! And do not forget your legs! Lift up also your legs, ye good dancers, and better still, if ye stand upon your heads! 18. This crown of the laughter, this rose-garland crown: I myself have put on this crown, I myself have consecrated my laughter. No one else have I found to-day potent enough for this. Zarathustra the dancer, Zarathustra the light one, who beckoneth with his pinions, one ready for flight, beckoning unto all birds, ready and prepared, a blissfully light-spirited one: — Zarathustra the soothsayer, Zarathustra the sooth-laugher, no impatient one, no absolute one, one who loveth leaps and side-leaps; I myself have put on this crown! 19. Lift up your hearts, my brethren, high, higher! And do not forget your legs! Lift up also your legs, ye good dancers, and better still if ye stand upon your heads! There are also heavy animals in a state of happiness, there are club-footed ones from the beginning. Curiously do they exert themselves, like an elephant which endeavoureth to stand upon its head. Better, however, to be foolish with happiness than foolish with misfortune, better to dance awkwardly than walk lamely. So learn, I pray you, my wisdom, ye higher men: even the worst thing hath two good reverse sides,— —Even the worst thing hath good dancing-legs: so learn, I pray you, ye higher men, to put yourselves on your proper legs! So unlearn, I pray you, the sorrow-sighing, and all the populace-sadness! Oh, how sad the buffoons of the populace seem to me to-day! This to-day, however, is that of the populace. 20. Do like unto the wind when it rusheth forth from its mountain-caves: unto its own piping will it dance; the seas tremble and leap under its footsteps. That which giveth wings to asses, that which milketh the lionesses:— praised be that good, unruly spirit, which cometh like a hurricane unto all the present and unto all the populace,— —Which is hostile to thistle-heads and puzzle-heads, and to all withered leaves and weeds:—praised be this wild, good, free spirit of the storm, which danceth upon fens and afflictions, as upon meadows!
Which hateth the consumptive populace-dogs, and all the ill-constituted, sullen brood:—praised be this spirit of all free spirits, the laughing storm, which bloweth dust into the eyes of all the melanopic and melancholic! Ye higher men, the worst thing in you is that ye have none of you learned to dance as ye ought to dance—to dance beyond yourselves! What doth it matter that ye have failed! How many things are still possible! So LEARN to laugh beyond yourselves! Lift up your hearts, ye good dancers, high! higher! And do not forget the good laughter! This crown of the laughter, this rose-garland crown: to you my brethren do I cast this crown! Laughing have I consecrated; ye higher men, LEARN, I pray you—to laugh! LXXIV. THE SONG OF MELANCHOLY. 1. When Zarathustra spake these sayings, he stood nigh to the entrance of his cave; with the last words, however, he slipped away from his guests, and fled for a little while into the open air. “ O pure odours around me,” cried he, “ O blessed stillness around me! But where are mine animals? Hither, hither, mine eagle and my serpent! Tell me, mine animals: these higher men, all of them—do they perhaps not SMELL well? O pure odours around me! Now only do I know and feel how I love you, mine animals.” —And Zarathustra said once more: “ I love you, mine animals!” The eagle, however, and the serpent pressed close to him when he spake these words, and looked up to him. In this attitude were they all three silent together, and sniffed and sipped the good air with one another. For the air here outside was better than with the higher men. 2. Hardly, however, had Zarathustra left the cave when the old magician got up, looked cunningly about him, and said: “ He is gone! And already, ye higher men—let me tickle you with this complimentary and flattering name, as he himself doeth—already doth mine evil spirit of deceit and magic attack me, my melancholy devil, —Which is an adversary to this Zarathustra from the very heart: forgive it for this! Now doth it wish to conjure before you, it hath just ITS hour; in vain do I struggle with this evil spirit. Unto all of you, whatever honours ye like to assume in your names, whether ye call yourselves ‘the free spirits’ or ‘the conscientious,’ or ‘the penitents of the spirit,’ or ‘the unfettered,’ or ‘the great longers,’— —Unto all of you, who like me suffer FROM THE GREAT LOATHING, to whom the old God hath died, and as yet no new God lieth in cradles and swaddling clothes—unto all of you is mine evil spirit and magic-devil favourable. I know you, ye higher men, I know him,—I know also this fiend whom I love in spite of me, this Zarathustra: he himself often seemeth to me like the beautiful mask of a saint, —Like a new strange mummery in which mine evil spirit, the melancholy devil, delighteth:—I love Zarathustra, so doth it often seem to me, for the sake of mine evil spirit.— But already doth IT attack me and constrain me, this spirit of melancholy, this evening-twilight devil: and verily, ye higher men, it hath a longing— —Open your eyes!—it hath a longing to come NAKED, whether male or female, I do not yet know: but it cometh, it constraineth me, alas! open your wits! The day dieth out, unto all things cometh now the evening, also unto the best things; hear now, and see, ye higher men, what devil—man or woman—this spirit of eveningmelancholy is!” Thus spake the old magician, looked cunningly about him, and then seized his harp. 3. In evening’s limpid air, What time the dew’s soothings Unto the earth downpour, Invisibly and unheard— For tender shoe-gear wear The soothing dews, like all that’s kindgentle—: Bethinkst thou then, bethinkst thou, burning heart, How once thou thirstedest For heaven’s kindly teardrops and dew’s down-droppings, All singed and weary thirstedest, What time on yellow grass-pathways Wicked, occidental sunny glances Through sombre trees about thee sported, Blindingly sunny glow-glances, gladly-hurting? “ Of TRUTH the wooer? Thou?”—so taunted they— “ Nay! Merely poet! A brute insidious, plundering, grovelling, That aye must lie, That wittingly, wilfully, aye must lie: For booty lusting, Motley masked, Self-hidden, shrouded, Himself his booty— HE—of truth the wooer? Nay! Mere fool! Mere poet! Just motley speaking, From mask of fool confusedly shouting, Circumambling on fabricated word-bridges, On motley rainbow-arches, ‘Twixt the spurious heavenly, And spurious earthly, Round us roving, round us soaring, — MERE FOOL! MERE POET! HE—of truth the wooer? Not still, stiff, smooth and cold, Become an image, A godlike statue, Set up in front of temples, As a God’s own door-guard: Nay! hostile to all such truthfulness-statues, In every desert homelier than at temples, With cattish wantonness, Through every window leaping Quickly into chances, Every wild forest a-sniffing, Greedilylongingly, sniffing, That thou, in wild forests, ‘Mong the motley-speckled fierce creatures, Shouldest rove, sinful-sound and fine-coloured, With longing lips smacking, Blessedly mocking, blessedly hellish, blessedly bloodthirsty, Robbing, skulking, lying—roving:— Or unto eagles like which fixedly, Long adown the precipice look, Adown THEIR precipice:— Oh, how they whirl down now, Thereunder, therein, To ever deeper profoundness whirling!— Then, Sudden, With aim aright, With quivering flight, On LAMBKINS pouncing, Headlong down, sore-hungry, For lambkins longing, Fierce ‘gainst all lamb-spirits,
Furious-fierce all that look Sheeplike, or lambeyed, or crisp-woolly, —Grey, with lambsheep kindliness! Even thus, Eaglelike, pantherlike, Are the poet’s desires, Are THINE OWN desires ‘neath a thousand guises, Thou fool! Thou poet! Thou who all mankind viewedst— So God, as sheep—: The God TO REND within mankind, As the sheep in mankind, And in rending LAUGHING— THAT, THAT is thine own blessedness! Of a panther and eagle—blessedness! Of a poet and fool—the blessedness!— In evening’s limpid air, What time the moon’s sickle, Green, ‘twixt the purple-glowings, And jealous, steal’th forth: —Of day the foe, With every step in secret, The rosy garland-hammocks Downsickling, till they’ve sunken Down nightwards, faded, downsunken:— Thus had I sunken one day From mine own truth-insanity, From mine own fervid day-longings, Of day aweary, sick of sunshine, —Sunk downwards, evenwards, shadowwards: By one sole trueness All scorched and thirsty: —Bethinkst thou still, bethinkst thou, burning heart, How then thou thirstedest?— THAT I SHOULD BANNED BE FROM ALL THE TRUENESS! MERE FOOL! MERE POET! LXXV. SCIENCE. Thus sang the magician; and all who were present went like birds unawares into the net of his artful and melancholy voluptuousness. Only the spiritually conscientious one had not been caught: he at once snatched the harp from the magician and called out: “ Air! Let in good air! Let in Zarathustra! Thou makest this cave sultry and poisonous, thou bad old magician! Thou seducest, thou false one, thou subtle one, to unknown desires and deserts. And alas, that such as thou should talk and make ado about the TRUTH! Alas, to all free spirits who are not on their guard against SUCH magicians! It is all over with their freedom: thou teachest and temptest back into prisons,— —Thou old melancholy devil, out of thy lament soundeth a lurement: thou resemblest those who with their praise of chastity secretly invite to voluptuousness!” Thus spake the conscientious one; the old magician, however, looked about him, enjoying his triumph, and on that account put up with the annoyance which the conscientious one caused him. “ Be still!” said he with modest voice, “ good songs want to re-echo well; after good songs one should be long silent. Thus do all those present, the higher men. Thou, however, hast perhaps understood but little of my song? In thee there is little of the magic spirit. “ Thou praisest me,” replied the conscientious one, “ in that thou separatest me from thyself; very well! But, ye others, what do I see? Ye still sit there, all of you, with lusting eyes—: Ye free spirits, whither hath your freedom gone! Ye almost seem to me to resemble those who have long looked at bad girls dancing naked: your souls themselves dance! In you, ye higher men, there must be more of that which the magician calleth his evil spirit of magic and deceit:—we must indeed be different. And verily, we spake and thought long enough together ere Zarathustra came home to his cave, for me not to be unaware that we ARE different. We SEEK different things even here aloft, ye and I. For I seek more SECURITY; on that account have I come to Zarathustra. For he is still the most steadfast tower and will— —To-day, when everything tottereth, when all the earth quaketh. Ye, however, when I see what eyes ye make, it almost seemeth to me that ye seek MORE INSECURITY, —More horror, more danger, more earthquake. Ye long (it almost seemeth so to me—forgive my presumption, ye higher men)— —Ye long for the worst and dangerousest life, which frighteneth ME most,—for the life of wild beasts, for forests, caves, steep mountains and labyrinthine gorges. And it is not those who lead OUT OF danger that please you best, but those who lead you away from all paths, the misleaders. But if such longing in you be ACTUAL, it seemeth to me nevertheless to be IMPOSSIBLE. For fear—that is man’s original and fundamental feeling; through fear everything is explained, original sin and original virtue. Through fear there grew also MY virtue, that is to say: Science. For fear of wild animals—that hath been longest fostered in man, inclusive of the animal which he concealeth and feareth in himself:—Zarathustra calleth it ‘the beast inside.’ Such prolonged ancient fear, at last become subtle, spiritual and intellectual—at present, me thinketh, it is called SCIENCE.”— Thus spake the conscientious one; but Zarathustra, who had just come back into his cave and had heard and divined the last discourse, threw a handful of roses to the conscientious one, and laughed on account of his “ truths.” “ Why!” he exclaimed, “ what did I hear just now? Verily, it seemeth to me, thou art a fool, or else I myself am one: and quietly and quickly will I put thy ‘truth’ upside down. For FEAR—is an exception with us. Courage, however, and adventure, and delight in the uncertain, in the unattempted—COURAGE seemeth to me the entire primitive history of man. The wildest and most courageous animals hath he envied and robbed of all their virtues: thus only did he become—man. THIS courage, at last become subtle, spiritual and intellectual, this human courage, with eagle’s pinions and serpent’s wisdom: THIS, it seemeth to me, is called at present—” “ ZARATHUSTRA!” cried all of them there assembled, as if with one voice, and burst out at the same time into a great laughter; there arose, however, from them as it were a heavy cloud. Even the magician laughed, and said wisely: “ Well! It is gone, mine evil spirit! And did I not myself warn you against it when I said that it was a deceiver, a lying and deceiving spirit? Especially when it showeth itself naked. But what can I do with regard to its tricks! Have I created it and the world?
Well! Let us be good again, and of good cheer! And although Zarathustra looketh with evil eye—just see him! he disliketh me—: —Ere night cometh will he again learn to love and laud me; he cannot live long without committing such follies. HE—loveth his enemies: this art knoweth he better than any one I have seen. But he taketh revenge for it—on his friends!” Thus spake the old magician, and the higher men applauded him; so that Zarathustra went round, and mischievously and lovingly shook hands with his friends,—like one who hath to make amends and apologise to every one for something. When however he had thereby come to the door of his cave, lo, then had he again a longing for the good air outside, and for his animals,—and wished to steal out. LXXVI. AMONG DAUGHTERS OF THE DESERT. 1. “ Go not away!” said then the wanderer who called himself Zarathustra’s shadow, “ abide with us—otherwise the old gloomy affliction might again fall upon us. Now hath that old magician given us of his worst for our good, and lo! the good, pious pope there hath tears in his eyes, and hath quite embarked again upon the sea of melancholy. Those kings may well put on a good air before us still: for that have THEY learned best of us all at present! Had they however no one to see them, I wager that with them also the bad game would again commence,— —The bad game of drifting clouds, of damp melancholy, of curtained heavens, of stolen suns, of howling autumn-winds, —The bad game of our howling and crying for help! Abide with us, O Zarathustra! Here there is much concealed misery that wisheth to speak, much evening, much cloud, much damp air! Thou hast nourished us with strong food for men, and powerful proverbs: do not let the weakly, womanly spirits attack us anew at dessert! Thou alone makest the air around thee strong and clear! Did I ever find anywhere on earth such good air as with thee in thy cave? Many lands have I seen, my nose hath learned to test and estimate many kinds of air: but with thee do my nostrils taste their greatest delight! Unless it be,—unless it be—, do forgive an old recollection! Forgive me an old after-dinner song, which I once composed amongst daughters of the desert:— For with them was there equally good, clear, Oriental air; there was I furthest from cloudy, damp, melancholy Old-Europe! Then did I love such Oriental maidens and other blue kingdoms of heaven, over which hang no clouds and no thoughts. Ye would not believe how charmingly they sat there, when they did not dance, profound, but without thoughts, like little secrets, like beribboned riddles, like dessert-nuts— Many-hued and foreign, forsooth! but without clouds: riddles which can be guessed: to please such maidens I then composed an after-dinner psalm.” Thus spake the wanderer who called himself Zarathustra’s shadow; and before any one answered him, he had seized the harp of the old magician, crossed his legs, and looked calmly and sagely around him:—with his nostrils, however, he inhaled the air slowly and questioningly, like one who in new countries tasteth new foreign air. Afterward he began to sing with a kind of roaring. 2. THE DESERTS GROW: WOE HIM WHO DOTH THEM HIDE! —Ha! Solemnly! In effect solemnly! A worthy beginning! Afric manner, solemnly! Of a lion worthy, Or perhaps of a virtuous howl-monkey— —But it’s naught to you, Ye friendly damsels dearly loved, At whose own feet to me, The first occasion, To a European under palm-trees, A seat is now granted. Selah. Wonderful, truly! Here do I sit now, The desert nigh, and yet I am So far still from the desert, Even in naught yet deserted: That is, I’m swallowed down By this the smallest oasis—: —It opened up just yawning, Its loveliest mouth agape, Most sweet-odoured of all mouthlets: Then fell I right in, Right down, right through—in ‘mong you, Ye friendly damsels dearly loved! Selah. Hail! hail! to that whale, fishlike, If it thus for its guest’s convenience Made things nice!—(ye well know, Surely, my learned allusion?) Hail to its belly, If it had e’er A such loveliest oasis-belly As this is: though however I doubt about it, —With this come I out of Old-Europe, That doubt’th more eagerly than doth any Elderly married woman. May the Lord improve it! Amen! Here do I sit now, In this the smallest oasis, Like a date indeed, Brown, quite sweet, gold-suppurating, For rounded mouth of maiden longing, But yet still more for youthful, maidlike, Ice-cold and snow-white and incisory Front teeth: and for such assuredly, Pine the hearts all of ardent date-fruits. Selah. To the there-named south-fruits now, Similar, all-too-similar, Do I lie here; by little Flying insects Round-sniffled and round-played, And also by yet littler, Foolisher, and peccabler Wishes and phantasies,— Environed by you, Ye silent, presentientest Maiden-kittens, Dudu and Suleika, —ROUNDSPHINXED, that into one word I may crowd much feeling: (Forgive me, O God, All such speech-sinning!) —Sit I here the best of air sniffling, Paradisal air, truly, Bright and buoyant air, golden-mottled, As goodly air as ever From lunar orb downfell— Be it by hazard, Or supervened it by arrogancy? As the ancient poets relate it. But doubter, I’m now calling it In question: with this do I come indeed Out of Europe, That doubt’th more eagerly than doth any Elderly married woman. May the Lord improve it! Amen. This the finest air drinking, With nostrils out-swelled like goblets, Lacking future, lacking remembrances Thus do I sit here, ye Friendly damsels dearly loved, And look at the
palm-tree there, How it, to a dance-girl, like, Doth bow and bend and on its haunches bob, —One doth it too, when one view’th it long!— To a dance-girl like, who as it seem’th to me, Too long, and dangerously persistent, Always, always, just on SINGLE leg hath stood? —Then forgot she thereby, as it seem’th to me, The OTHER leg? For vainly I, at least, Did search for the amissing Fellow-jewel —Namely, the other leg— In the sanctified precincts, Nigh her very dearest, very tenderest, Flapping and fluttering and flickering skirting. Yea, if ye should, ye beauteous friendly ones, Quite take my word: She hath, alas! LOST it! Hu! Hu! Hu! Hu! Hu! It is away! For ever away! The other leg! Oh, pity for that loveliest other leg! Where may it now tarry, all-forsaken weeping? The lonesomest leg? In fear perhaps before a Furious, yellow, blond and curled Leonine monster? Or perhaps even Gnawed away, nibbled badly— Most wretched, woeful! woeful! nibbled badly! Selah. Oh, weep ye not, Gentle spirits! Weep ye not, ye Date-fruit spirits! Milk-bosoms! Ye sweetwood-heart Purselets! Weep ye no more, Pallid Dudu! Be a man, Suleika! Bold! Bold! —Or else should there perhaps Something strengthening, heart-strengthening, Here most proper be? Some inspiring text? Some solemn exhortation?— Ha! Up now! honour! Moral honour! European honour! Blow again, continue, Bellows-box of virtue! Ha! Once more thy roaring, Thy moral roaring! As a virtuous lion Nigh the daughters of deserts roaring! — For virtue’s out-howl, Ye very dearest maidens, Is more than every European fervour, European hot-hunger! And now do I stand here, As European, I can’t be different, God’s help to me! Amen! THE DESERTS GROW: WOE HIM WHO DOTH THEM HIDE! LXXVII. THE AWAKENING. 1. After the song of the wanderer and shadow, the cave became all at once full of noise and laughter: and since the assembled guests all spake simultaneously, and even the ass, encouraged thereby, no longer remained silent, a little aversion and scorn for his visitors came over Zarathustra, although he rejoiced at their gladness. For it seemed to him a sign of convalescence. So he slipped out into the open air and spake to his animals. “ Whither hath their distress now gone?” said he, and already did he himself feel relieved of his petty disgust—“ with me, it seemeth that they have unlearned their cries of distress! —Though, alas! not yet their crying.” And Zarathustra stopped his ears, for just then did the YE-A of the ass mix strangely with the noisy jubilation of those higher men. “ They are merry,” he began again, “ and who knoweth? perhaps at their host’s expense; and if they have learned of me to laugh, still it is not MY laughter they have learned. But what matter about that! They are old people: they recover in their own way, they laugh in their own way; mine ears have already endured worse and have not become peevish. This day is a victory: he already yieldeth, he fleeth, THE SPIRIT OF GRAVITY, mine old arch-enemy! How well this day is about to end, which began so badly and gloomily! And itOUT TO end. Already cometh the evening: over the sea rideth it hither, the good rider! How it bobbeth, the blessed one, the home-returning one, in its purple saddles! The sky gazeth brightly thereon, the world lieth deep. Oh, all ye strange ones who have come to me, it is already worth while to have lived with me!” Thus spake Zarathustra. And again came the cries and laughter of the higher men out of the cave: then began he anew: “ They bite at it, my bait taketh, there departeth also from them their enemy, the spirit of gravity. Now do they learn to laugh at themselves: do I hear rightly? My virile food taketh effect, my strong and savoury sayings: and verily, I did not nourish them with flatulent vegetables! But with warrior-food, with conqueror-food: new desires did I awaken. New hopes are in their arms and legs, their hearts expand. They find new words, soon will their spirits breathe wantonness. Such food may sure enough not be proper for children, nor even for longing girls old and young. One persuadeth their bowels otherwise; I am not their physician and teacher. The DISGUST departeth from these higher men; well! that is my victory. In my domain they become assured; all stupid shame fleeth away; they empty themselves. They empty their hearts, good times return unto them, they keep holiday and ruminate,—they become THANKFUL. THAT do I take as the best sign: they become thankful. Not long will it be ere they devise festivals, and put up memorials to their old joys. They are CONVALESCENTS!” Thus spake Zarathustra joyfully to his heart and gazed outward; his animals, however, pressed up to him, and honoured his happiness and his silence. 2. All on a sudden however, Zarathustra’s ear was frightened: for the cave which had hitherto been full of noise and laughter, became all at once still as death;—his nose, however, smelt a sweet-scented vapour and incense-odour, as if from burning pine-cones. “ What happeneth? What are they about?” he asked himself, and stole up to the entrance, that he might be able unobserved to see his guests. But wonder upon wonder! what was he then obliged to behold with his own eyes! “ They have all of them become PIOUS again, they PRAY, they are mad!”—said he, and was astonished beyond measure. And forsooth! all these higher men, the two kings, the pope out of service, the evil magician, the voluntary beggar, the wanderer and shadow, the old soothsayer, the spiritually conscientious one, and the ugliest man—they all lay on their knees like children and credulous old women, and worshipped the ass. And just then began the ugliest man to gurgle and snort, as if something unutterable in him tried to find expression; when, however, he had actually found words, behold! it was a pious, strange litany in praise of the adored and censed ass. And the litany sounded thus:
Amen! And glory and honour and wisdom and thanks and praise and strength be to our God, from everlasting to everlasting! —The ass, however, here brayed YE-A. He carrieth our burdens, he hath taken upon him the form of a servant, he is patient of heart and never saith Nay; and he who loveth his God chastiseth him. —The ass, however, here brayed YE-A. He speaketh not: except that he ever saith Yea to the world which he created: thus doth he extol his world. It is his artfulness that speaketh not: thus is he rarely found wrong. —The ass, however, here brayed YE-A. Uncomely goeth he through the world. Grey is the favourite colour in which he wrappeth his virtue. Hath he spirit, then doth he conceal it; every one, however, believeth in his long ears. —The ass, however, here brayed YE-A. What hidden wisdom it is to wear long ears, and only to say Yea and never Nay! Hath he not created the world in his own image, namely, as stupid as possible? —The ass, however, here brayed YE-A. Thou goest straight and crooked ways; it concerneth thee little what seemeth straight or crooked unto us men. Beyond good and evil is thy domain. It is thine innocence not to know what innocence is. —The ass, however, here brayed YE-A. Lo! how thou spurnest none from thee, neither beggars nor kings. Thou sufferest little children to come unto thee, and when the bad boys decoy thee, then sayest thou simply, YE-A. —The ass, however, here brayed YE-A. Thou lovest she-asses and fresh figs, thou art no food-despiser. A thistle tickleth thy heart when thou chancest to be hungry. There is the wisdom of a God therein. —The ass, however, here brayed YE-A. LXXVIII. THE ASS-FESTIVAL. 1. At this place in the litany, however, Zarathustra could no longer control himself; he himself cried out YE-A, louder even than the ass, and sprang into the midst of his maddened guests. “ Whatever are you about, ye grown-up children?” he exclaimed, pulling up the praying ones from the ground. “ Alas, if any one else, except Zarathustra, had seen you: Every one would think you the worst blasphemers, or the very foolishest old women, with your new belief! And thou thyself, thou old pope, how is it in accordance with thee, to adore an ass in such a manner as God?”— “ O Zarathustra,” answered the pope, “ forgive me, but in divine matters I am more enlightened even than thou. And it is right that it should be so. Better to adore God so, in this form, than in no form at all! Think over this saying, mine exalted friend: thou wilt readily divine that in such a saying there is wisdom. He who said ‘God is a Spirit’—made the greatest stride and slide hitherto made on earth towards unbelief: such a dictum is not easily amended again on earth! Mine old heart leapeth and boundeth because there is still something to adore on earth. Forgive it, O Zarathustra, to an old, pious pontiff-heart!—” —“ And thou,” said Zarathustra to the wanderer and shadow, “ thou callest and thinkest thyself a free spirit? And thou here practisest such idolatry and hierolatry? Worse verily, doest thou here than with thy bad brown girls, thou bad, new believer!” “ It is sad enough,” answered the wanderer and shadow, “ thou art right: but how can I help it! The old God liveth again, O Zarathustra, thou mayst say what thou wilt. The ugliest man is to blame for it all: he hath reawakened him. And if he say that he once killed him, with Gods DEATH is always just a prejudice.” —“ And thou,” said Zarathustra, “ thou bad old magician, what didst thou do! Who ought to believe any longer in thee in this free age, when THOU believest in such divine donkeyism? It was a stupid thing that thou didst; how couldst thou, a shrewd man, do such a stupid thing!” “ O Zarathustra,” answered the shrewd magician, “ thou art right, it was a stupid thing,—it was also repugnant to me.” —“ And thou even,” said Zarathustra to the spiritually conscientious one, “ consider, and put thy finger to thy nose! Doth nothing go against thy conscience here? Is thy spirit not too cleanly for this praying and the fumes of those devotees?” “ There is something therein,” said the spiritually conscientious one, and put his finger to his nose, “ there is something in this spectacle which even doeth good to my conscience. Perhaps I dare not believe in God: certain it is however, that God seemeth to me most worthy of belief in this form. God is said to be eternal, according to the testimony of the most pious: he who hath so much time taketh his time. As slow and as stupid as possible: THEREBY can such a one nevertheless go very far. And he who hath too much spirit might well become infatuated with stupidity and folly. Think of thyself, O Zarathustra!
Thou thyself—verily! even thou couldst well become an ass through superabundance of wisdom. Doth not the true sage willingly walk on the crookedest paths? The evidence teacheth it, O Zarathustra,—THINE OWN evidence!” —“ And thou thyself, finally,” said Zarathustra, and turned towards the ugliest man, who still lay on the ground stretching up his arm to the ass (for he gave it wine to drink). “ Say, thou nondescript, what hast thou been about! Thou seemest to me transformed, thine eyes glow, the mantle of the sublime covereth thine ugliness: WHAT didst thou do? Is it then true what they say, that thou hast again awakened him? And why? Was he not for good reasons killed and made away with? Thou thyself seemest to me awakened: what didst thou do? why didst THOU turn round? Why didst THOU get converted? Speak, thou nondescript!” “ O Zarathustra,” answered the ugliest man, “ thou art a rogue! Whether HE yet liveth, or again liveth, or is thoroughly dead—which of us both knoweth that best? I ask thee. One thing however do I know,—from thyself did I learn it once, O Zarathustra: he who wanteth to kill most thoroughly, LAUGHETH. ‘Not by wrath but by laughter doth one kill’—thus spakest thou once, O Zarathustra, thou hidden one, thou destroyer without wrath, thou dangerous saint,—thou art a rogue!” 2. Then, however, did it come to pass that Zarathustra, astonished at such merely roguish answers, jumped back to the door of his cave, and turning towards all his guests, cried out with a strong voice: “ O ye wags, all of you, ye buffoons! Why do ye dissemble and disguise yourselves before me! How the hearts of all of you convulsed with delight and wickedness, because ye had at last become again like little children—namely, pious,— —Because ye at last did again as children do—namely, prayed, folded your hands and said ‘good God’! But now leave, I pray you, THIS nursery, mine own cave, where to-day all childishness is carried on. Cool down, here outside, your hot child-wantonness and heart-tumult! To be sure: except ye become as little children ye shall not enter into THAT kingdom of heaven.” (And Zarathustra pointed aloft with his hands.) “ But we do not at all want to enter into the kingdom of heaven: we have become men,—SO WE WANT THE KINGDOM OF EARTH.” 3. And once more began Zarathustra to speak. “ O my new friends,” said he,— “ ye strange ones, ye higher men, how well do ye now please me,— —Since ye have again become joyful! Ye have, verily, all blossomed forth: it seemeth to me that for such flowers as you, NEW FESTIVALS are required. —A little valiant nonsense, some divine service and ass-festival, some old joyful Zarathustra fool, some blusterer to blow your souls bright. Forget not this night and this ass-festival, ye higher men! THAT did ye devise when with me, that do I take as a good omen,—such things only the convalescents devise! And should ye celebrate it again, this ass-festival, do it from love to yourselves, do it also from love to me! And in remembrance of me!” Thus spake Zarathustra. LXXIX. THE DRUNKEN SONG. 1. Meanwhile one after another had gone out into the open air, and into the cool, thoughtful night; Zarathustra himself, however, led the ugliest man by the hand, that he might show him his night-world, and the great round moon, and the silvery water-falls near his cave. There they at last stood still beside one another; all of them old people, but with comforted, brave hearts, and astonished in themselves that it was so well with them on earth; the mystery of the night, however, came nigher and nigher to their hearts. And anew Zarathustra thought to himself: “ Oh, how well do they now please me, these higher men!”—but he did not say it aloud, for he respected their happiness and their silence.— Then, however, there happened that which in this astonishing long day was most astonishing: the ugliest man began once more and for the last time to gurgle and snort, and when he had at length found expression, behold! there sprang a question plump and plain out of his mouth, a good, deep, clear question, which moved the hearts of all who listened to him. “ My friends, all of you,” said the ugliest man, “ what think ye? For the sake of this day—I am for the first time content to have lived mine entire life. And that I testify so much is still not enough for me. It is worth while living on the earth: one day, one festival with Zarathustra, hath taught me to love the earth. ‘Was THAT—life?’ will I say unto death. ‘Well! Once more!’ My friends, what think ye? Will ye not, like me, say unto death: ‘Was THAT—life? For the sake of Zarathustra, well! Once more!’”— Thus spake the ugliest man; it was not, however, far from midnight. And what took place then, think ye? As soon as the higher men heard his question, they became all at once conscious of their transformation and convalescence, and of him who was the cause thereof: then did they rush up to Zarathustra, thanking, honouring, caressing him, and kissing his hands, each in his own peculiar way; so that some laughed and some wept. The old soothsayer, however, danced with delight; and though he was then, as some narrators suppose, full of sweet wine, he was certainly still fuller of sweet life, and had renounced all weariness. There are even those who narrate that the ass then danced: for not in vain had the ugliest man previously given it wine to drink. That may be the case, or it may be otherwise; and if in truth the ass did not dance that evening, there nevertheless happened then greater and
rarer wonders than the dancing of an ass would have been. In short, as the proverb of Zarathustra saith: “ What doth it matter!” 2. When, however, this took place with the ugliest man, Zarathustra stood there like one drunken: his glance dulled, his tongue faltered and his feet staggered. And who could divine what thoughts then passed through Zarathustra’s soul? Apparently, however, his spirit retreated and fled in advance and was in remote distances, and as it were “ wandering on high mountain-ridges,” as it standeth written, “ ‘twixt two seas, —Wandering ‘twixt the past and the future as a heavy cloud.” Gradually, however, while the higher men held him in their arms, he came back to himself a little, and resisted with his hands the crowd of the honouring and caring ones; but he did not speak. All at once, however, he turned his head quickly, for he seemed to hear something: then laid he his finger on his mouth and said: “ COME!” And immediately it became still and mysterious round about; from the depth however there came up slowly the sound of a clock-bell. Zarathustra listened thereto, like the higher men; then, however, laid he his finger on his mouth the second time, and said again: “ COME! COME! IT IS GETTING ON TO MIDNIGHT!”—and his voice had changed. But still he had not moved from the spot. Then it became yet stiller and more mysterious, and everything hearkened, even the ass, and Zarathustra’s noble animals, the eagle and the serpent,—likewise the cave of Zarathustra and the big cool moon, and the night itself. Zarathustra, however, laid his hand upon his mouth for the third time, and said: COME! COME! COME! LET US NOW WANDER! IT IS THE HOUR: LET US WANDER INTO THE NIGHT! 3. Ye higher men, it is getting on to midnight: then will I say something into your ears, as that old clock-bell saith it into mine ear,— —As mysteriously, as frightfully, and as cordially as that midnight clock-bell speaketh it to me, which hath experienced more than one man: —Which hath already counted the smarting throbbings of your fathers’ hearts—ah! ah! how it sigheth! how it laugheth in its dream! the old, deep, deep midnight! Hush! Hush! Then is there many a thing heard which may not be heard by day; now however, in the cool air, when even all the tumult of your hearts hath become still,— —Now doth it speak, now is it heard, now doth it steal into overwakeful, nocturnal souls: ah! ah! how the midnight sigheth! how it laugheth in its dream! —Hearest thou not how it mysteriously, frightfully, and cordially speaketh unto THEE, the old deep, deep midnight? O MAN, TAKE HEED! 4. Woe to me! Whither hath time gone? Have I not sunk into deep wells? The world sleepeth— Ah! Ah! The dog howleth, the moon shineth. Rather will I die, rather will I die, than say unto you what my midnight-heart now thinketh. Already have I died. It is all over. Spider, why spinnest thou around me? Wilt thou have blood? Ah! Ah! The dew falleth, the hour cometh— —The hour in which I frost and freeze, which asketh and asketh and asketh: “ Who hath sufficient courage for it? —Who is to be master of the world? Who is going to say: THUS shall ye flow, ye great and small streams!” —The hour approacheth: O man, thou higher man, take heed! this talk is for fine ears, for thine ears—WHAT SAITH DEEP MIDNIGHT’S VOICE INDEED? 5. It carrieth me away, my soul danceth. Day’s-work! Day’s-work! Who is to be master of the world? The moon is cool, the wind is still. Ah! Ah! Have ye already flown high enough? Ye have danced: a leg, nevertheless, is not a wing. Ye good dancers, now is all delight over: wine hath become lees, every cup hath become brittle, the sepulchres mutter. Ye have not flown high enough: now do the sepulchres mutter: “ Free the dead! Why is it so long night? Doth not the moon make us drunken?” Ye higher men, free the sepulchres, awaken the corpses! Ah, why doth the worm still burrow? There approacheth, there approacheth, the hour,— —There boometh the clock-bell, there thrilleth still the heart, there burroweth still the wood-worm, the heart-worm. Ah! Ah! THE WORLD IS DEEP! 6. Sweet lyre! Sweet lyre! I love thy tone, thy drunken, ranunculine tone!—how long, how far hath come unto me thy tone, from the distance, from the ponds of love! Thou old clock-bell, thou sweet lyre! Every pain hath torn thy heart, father-pain, fathers’-pain, forefathers’-pain; thy speech hath become ripe,— —Ripe like the golden autumn and the afternoon, like mine anchorite heart—now sayest thou: The world itself hath become ripe, the grape turneth brown, —Now doth it wish to die, to die of happiness. Ye higher men, do ye not feel it? There welleth up mysteriously an odour, —A perfume and odour of eternity, a rosy-blessed, brown, gold-wine-odour of old happiness, —Of drunken midnight-death happiness, which singeth: the world is deep, AND DEEPER THAN THE DAY COULD READ! 7. Leave me alone! Leave me alone! I am too pure for thee. Touch me not! Hath not my world just now become perfect? My skin is too pure for thy hands. Leave me alone, thou dull, doltish, stupid day! Is not the midnight brighter?
The purest are to be masters of the world, the least known, the strongest, the midnight-souls, who are brighter and deeper than any day. O day, thou gropest for me? Thou feelest for my happiness? For thee am I rich, lonesome, a treasure-pit, a gold chamber? O world, thou wantest ME? Am I worldly for thee? Am I spiritual for thee? Am I divine for thee? But day and world, ye are too coarse,— —Have cleverer hands, grasp after deeper happiness, after deeper unhappiness, grasp after some God; grasp not after me: —Mine unhappiness, my happiness is deep, thou strange day, but yet am I no God, no God’s-hell: DEEP IS ITS WOE. 8. God’s woe is deeper, thou strange world! Grasp at God’s woe, not at me! What am I! A drunken sweet lyre,— —A midnight-lyre, a bell-frog, which no one understandeth, but which MUST speak before deaf ones, ye higher men! For ye do not understand me! Gone! Gone! O youth! O noontide! O afternoon! Now have come evening and night and midnight,—the dog howleth, the wind: —Is the wind not a dog? It whineth, it barketh, it howleth. Ah! Ah! how she sigheth! how she laugheth, how she wheezeth and panteth, the midnight! How she just now speaketh soberly, this drunken poetess! hath she perhaps overdrunk her drunkenness? hath she become overawake? doth she ruminate? —Her woe doth she ruminate over, in a dream, the old, deep midnight—and still more her joy. For joy, although woe be deep, JOY IS DEEPER STILL THAN GRIEF CAN BE. 9. Thou grape-vine! Why dost thou praise me? Have I not cut thee! I am cruel, thou bleedest—: what meaneth thy praise of my drunken cruelty? “ Whatever hath become perfect, everything mature—wanteth to die!” so sayest thou. Blessed, blessed be the vintner’s knife! But everything immature wanteth to live: alas! Woe saith: “ Hence! Go! Away, thou woe!” But everything that suffereth wanteth to live, that it may become mature and lively and longing, —Longing for the further, the higher, the brighter. “ I want heirs,” so saith everything that suffereth, “ I want children, I do not want MYSELF,”— Joy, however, doth not want heirs, it doth not want children,—joy wanteth itself, it wanteth eternity, it wanteth recurrence, it wanteth everything eternally-like-itself. Woe saith: “ Break, bleed, thou heart! Wander, thou leg! Thou wing, fly! Onward! upward! thou pain!” Well! Cheer up! O mine old heart: WOE SAITH: “ HENCE! GO!” 10. Ye higher men, what think ye? Am I a soothsayer? Or a dreamer? Or a drunkard? Or a dream-reader? Or a midnight-bell? Or a drop of dew? Or a fume and fragrance of eternity? Hear ye it not? Smell ye it not? Just now hath my world become perfect, midnight is also mid-day,— Pain is also a joy, curse is also a blessing, night is also a sun,—go away! or ye will learn that a sage is also a fool. Said ye ever Yea to one joy? O my friends, then said ye Yea also unto ALL woe. All things are enlinked, enlaced and enamoured,— —Wanted ye ever once to come twice; said ye ever: “ Thou pleasest me, happiness! Instant! Moment!” then wanted ye ALL to come back again! —All anew, all eternal, all enlinked, enlaced and enamoured, Oh, then did ye LOVE the world,— —Ye eternal ones, ye love it eternally and for all time: and also unto woe do ye say: Hence! Go! but come back! FOR JOYS ALL WANT—ETERNITY! 11. All joy wanteth the eternity of all things, it wanteth honey, it wanteth lees, it wanteth drunken midnight, it wanteth graves, it wanteth grave-tears’ consolation, it wanteth gilded evening-red— —WHAT doth not joy want! it is thirstier, heartier, hungrier, more frightful, more mysterious, than all woe: it wanteth ITSELF, it biteth into ITSELF, the ring’s will writheth in it,— —It wanteth love, it wanteth hate, it is over-rich, it bestoweth, it throweth away, it beggeth for some one to take from it, it thanketh the taker, it would fain be hated,— —So rich is joy that it thirsteth for woe, for hell, for hate, for shame, for the lame, for the WORLD,—for this world, Oh, ye know it indeed! Ye higher men, for you doth it long, this joy, this irrepressible, blessed joy—for your woe, ye failures! For failures, longeth all eternal joy. For joys all want themselves, therefore do they also want grief! O happiness, O pain! Oh break, thou heart! Ye higher men, do learn it, that joys want eternity. —Joys want the eternity of ALL things, they WANT DEEP, PROFOUND ETERNITY! 12. Have ye now learned my song? Have ye divined what it would say? Well! Cheer up! Ye higher men, sing now my roundelay! Sing now yourselves the song, the name of which is “ Once more,” the signification of which is “ Unto all eternity!”—sing, ye higher men, Zarathustra’s roundelay! O man! Take heed! What saith deep midnight’s voice indeed? “ I slept my sleep—, “ From deepest dream I’ve woke, and plead:— “ The world is deep, “ And deeper than the day could read. “ Deep is its woe—, “ Joy—deeper still than grief can be: “ Woe saith: Hence! Go! “ But joys all want eternity-, “ -Want deep, profound eternity!” LXXX. THE SIGN. In the morning, however, after this night, Zarathustra jumped up from his couch, and, having girded his loins, he came out of his cave glowing and strong, like a morning sun
coming out of gloomy mountains. “ Thou great star,” spake he, as he had spoken once before, “ thou deep eye of happiness, what would be all thy happiness if thou hadst not THOSE for whom thou shinest! And if they remained in their chambers whilst thou art already awake, and comest and bestowest and distributest, how would thy proud modesty upbraid for it! Well! they still sleep, these higher men, whilst I am awake: THEY are not my proper companions! Not for them do I wait here in my mountains. At my work I want to be, at my day: but they understand not what are the signs of my morning, my step—is not for them the awakening-call. They still sleep in my cave; their dream still drinketh at my drunken songs. The audient ear for ME—the OBEDIENT ear, is yet lacking in their limbs.” —This had Zarathustra spoken to his heart when the sun arose: then looked he inquiringly aloft, for he heard above him the sharp call of his eagle. “ Well!” called he upwards, “ thus is it pleasing and proper to me. Mine animals are awake, for I am awake. Mine eagle is awake, and like me honoureth the sun. With eagle-talons doth it grasp at the new light. Ye are my proper animals; I love you. But still do I lack my proper men!”— Thus spake Zarathustra; then, however, it happened that all on a sudden he became aware that he was flocked around and fluttered around, as if by innumerable birds,—the whizzing of so many wings, however, and the crowding around his head was so great that he shut his eyes. And verily, there came down upon him as it were a cloud, like a cloud of arrows which poureth upon a new enemy. But behold, here it was a cloud of love, and showered upon a new friend. “ What happeneth unto me?” thought Zarathustra in his astonished heart, and slowly seated himself on the big stone which lay close to the exit from his cave. But while he grasped about with his hands, around him, above him and below him, and repelled the tender birds, behold, there then happened to him something still stranger: for he grasped thereby unawares into a mass of thick, warm, shaggy hair; at the same time, however, there sounded before him a roar,—a long, soft lion-roar. “ THE SIGN COMETH,” said Zarathustra, and a change came over his heart. And in truth, when it turned clear before him, there lay a yellow, powerful animal at his feet, resting its head on his knee,—unwilling to leave him out of love, and doing like a dog which again findeth its old master. The doves, however, were no less eager with their love than the lion; and whenever a dove whisked over its nose, the lion shook its head and wondered and laughed. When all this went on Zarathustra spake only a word: “ MY CHILDREN ARE NIGH, MY CHILDREN”—, then he became quite mute. His heart, however, was loosed, and from his eyes there dropped down tears and fell upon his hands. And he took no further notice of anything, but sat there motionless, without repelling the animals further. Then flew the doves to and fro, and perched on his shoulder, and caressed his white hair, and did not tire of their tenderness and joyousness. The strong lion, however, licked always the tears that fell on Zarathustra’s hands, and roared and growled shyly. Thus did these animals do.— All this went on for a long time, or a short time: for properly speaking, there is NO time on earth for such things—. Meanwhile, however, the higher men had awakened in Zarathustra’s cave, and marshalled themselves for a procession to go to meet Zarathustra, and give him their morning greeting: for they had found when they awakened that he no longer tarried with them. When, however, they reached the door of the cave and the noise of their steps had preceded them, the lion started violently; it turned away all at once from Zarathustra, and roaring wildly, sprang towards the cave. The higher men, however, when they heard the lion roaring, cried all aloud as with one voice, fled back and vanished in an instant. Zarathustra himself, however, stunned and strange, rose from his seat, looked around him, stood there astonished, inquired of his heart, bethought himself, and remained alone. “ What did I hear?” said he at last, slowly, “ what happened unto me just now?” But soon there came to him his recollection, and he took in at a glance all that had taken place between yesterday and to-day. “ Here is indeed the stone,” said he, and stroked his beard, “ on IT sat I yester-morn; and here came the soothsayer unto me, and here heard I first the cry which I heard just now, the great cry of distress. O ye higher men, YOUR distress was it that the old soothsayer foretold to me yester-morn,— —Unto your distress did he want to seduce and tempt me: ‘O Zarathustra,’ said he to me, ‘I come to seduce thee to thy last sin.’ To my last sin?” cried Zarathustra, and laughed angrily at his own words: “ WHAT hath been reserved for me as my last sin?” —And once more Zarathustra became absorbed in himself, and sat down again on the big stone and meditated. Suddenly he sprang up,— “ FELLOW-SUFFERING! FELLOW-SUFFERING WITH THE HIGHER MEN!” he cried out, and his countenance changed into brass. “ Well! THAT—hath had its time! My suffering and my fellow-suffering—what matter about them! Do I then strive after HAPPINESS? I strive after my WORK! Well! The lion hath come, my children are nigh, Zarathustra hath grown ripe, mine hour hath come:— This is MY morning, MY day beginneth: ARISE NOW, ARISE, THOU GREAT NOONTIDE!”— Thus spake Zarathustra and left his cave, glowing and strong, like a morning sun coming out of gloomy mountains. NOTES ON “ THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA” BY ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI. I have had some opportunities of studying the conditions under which Nietzsche is read in Germany, France, and England, and I have found that, in each of these countries, students of his philosophy, as if actuated by precisely similar motives and desires, and misled by the same mistaken tactics on the part of most publishers, all proceed in the same happy-go-lucky style when “ taking him up.” They have had it said to them that he wrote without any system, and they very naturally conclude that it does not matter in the least
whether they begin with his first, third, or last book, provided they can obtain a few vague ideas as to what his leading and most sensational principles were. Now, it is clear that the book with the most mysterious, startling, or suggestive title, will always stand the best chance of being purchased by those who have no other criteria to guide them in their choice than the aspect of a title-page; and this explains why “ Thus Spake Zarathustra” is almost always the first and often the only one of Nietzsche’s books that falls into the hands of the uninitiated. The title suggests all kinds of mysteries; a glance at the Chapter-headings quickly confirms the suspicions already aroused, and the sub-title: “ A Book for All and None”, generally succeeds in dissipating the last doubts the prospective purchaser may entertain concerning his fitness for the book or its fitness for him. And what happens? “ Thus Spake Zarathustra” is taken home; the reader, who perchance may know no more concerning Nietzsche than a magazine article has told him, tries to read it and, understanding less than half he reads, probably never gets further than the second or third part,—and then only to feel convinced that Nietzsche himself was “ rather hazy” as to what he was talking about. Such Chapters as “ The Child with the Mirror”, “ In the Happy Isles”, “ The Grave-Song,” “ Immaculate Perception,” “ The Stillest Hour”, “ The Seven Seals”, and many others, are almost utterly devoid of meaning to all those who do not know something of Nietzsche’s life, his aims and his friendships. As a matter of fact, “ Thus Spake Zarathustra”, though it is unquestionably Nietzsche’s opus magnum, is by no means the first of Nietzsche’s works that the beginner ought to undertake to read. The author himself refers to it as the deepest work ever offered to the German public, and elsewhere speaks of his other writings as being necessary for the understanding of it. But when it is remembered that in Zarathustra we not only have the history of his most intimate experiences, friendships, feuds, disappointments, triumphs and the like, but that the very form in which they are narrated is one which tends rather to obscure than to throw light upon them, the difficulties which meet the reader who starts quite unprepared will be seen to be really formidable. Zarathustra, then,—this shadowy, allegorical personality, speaking in allegories and parables, and at times not even refraining from relating his own dreams—is a figure we can understand but very imperfectly if we have no knowledge of his creator and counterpart, Friedrich Nietzsche; and it were therefore well, previous to our study of the more abstruse parts of this book, if we were to turn to some authoritative book on Nietzsche’s life and works and to read all that is there said on the subject. Those who can read German will find an excellent guide, in this respect, in Frau Foerster-Nietzsche’s exhaustive and highly interesting biography of her brother: “ Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsche’s” (published by Naumann); while the works of Deussen, Raoul Richter, and Baroness Isabelle von Unger-Sternberg, will be found to throw useful and necessary light upon many questions which it would be difficult for a sister to touch upon. In regard to the actual philosophical views expounded in this work, there is an excellent way of clearing up any difficulties they may present, and that is by an appeal to Nietzsche’s other works. Again and again, of course, he will be found to express himself so clearly that all reference to his other writings may be dispensed with; but where this is not the case, the advice he himself gives is after all the best to be followed here, viz.:—to regard such works as: “ Joyful Science”, “ Beyond Good and Evil”, “ The Genealogy of Morals”, “ The Twilight of the Idols”, “ The Antichrist”, “ The Will to Power”, etc., etc., as the necessary preparation for “ Thus Spake Zarathustra”. These directions, though they are by no means simple to carry out, seem at least to possess the quality of definiteness and straightforwardness. “ Follow them and all will be clear,” I seem to imply. But I regret to say that this is not really the case. For my experience tells me that even after the above directions have been followed with the greatest possible zeal, the student will still halt in perplexity before certain passages in the book before us, and wonder what they mean. Now, it is with the view of giving a little additional help to all those who find themselves in this position that I proceed to put forth my own personal interpretation of the more abstruse passages in this work. In offering this little commentary to the Nietzsche student, I should like it to be understood that I make no claim as to its infallibility or indispensability. It represents but an attempt on my part—a very feeble one perhaps—to give the reader what little help I can in surmounting difficulties which a long study of Nietzsche’s life and works has enabled me, partially I hope, to overcome. … Perhaps it would be as well to start out with a broad and rapid sketch of Nietzsche as a writer on Morals, Evolution, and Sociology, so that the reader may be prepared to pick out for himself, so to speak, all passages in this work bearing in any way upon Nietzsche’s views in those three important branches of knowledge. (A.) Nietzsche and Morality. In morality, Nietzsche starts out by adopting the position of the relativist. He says there are no absolute values “ good” and “ evil”; these are mere means adopted by all in order to acquire power to maintain their place in the world, or to become supreme. It is the lion’s good to devour an antelope. It is the dead-leaf butterfly’s good to tell a foe a falsehood. For when the dead-leaf butterfly is in danger, it clings to the side of a twig, and what it says to its foe is practically this: “ I am not a butterfly, I am a dead leaf, and can be of no use to thee.” This is a lie which is good to the butterfly, for it preserves it. In nature every species of organic being instinctively adopts and practises those acts which most conduce to the prevalence or supremacy of its kind. Once the most favourable order of conduct is found, proved efficient and established, it becomes the ruling morality of the species that adopts it and bears them along to victory. All species must not and cannot value alike, for what is the lion’s good is the antelope’s evil and vice versa. Concepts of good and evil are therefore, in their origin, merely a means to an end, they are expedients for acquiring power. Applying this principle to mankind, Nietzsche attacked Christian moral values. He declared them to be, like all other morals, merely an expedient for protecting a certain type of man. In the case of Christianity this type was, according to Nietzsche, a low one.
Conflicting moral codes have been no more than the conflicting weapons of different classes of men; for in mankind there is a continual war between the powerful, the noble, the strong, and the well-constituted on the one side, and the impotent, the mean, the weak, and the ill-constituted on the other. The war is a war of moral principles. The morality of the powerful class, Nietzsche calls NOBLE- or MASTER-MORALITY; that of the weak and subordinate class he calls SLAVE-MORALITY. In the first morality it is the eagle which, looking down upon a browsing lamb, contends that “ eating lamb is good.” In the second, the slave-morality, it is the lamb which, looking up from the sward, bleats dissentingly: “ Eating lamb is evil.” (B.) The Master- and Slave-Morality Compared. The first morality is active, creative, Dionysian. The second is passive, defensive,—to it belongs the “ struggle for existence.” Where attempts have not been made to reconcile the two moralities, they may be described as follows:—All is GOOD in the noble morality which proceeds from strength, power, health, well-constitutedness, happiness, and awfulness; for, the motive force behind the people practising it is “ the struggle for power.” The antithesis “ good and bad” to this first class means the same as “ noble” and “ despicable.” “ Bad” in the master-morality must be applied to the coward, to all acts that spring from weakness, to the man with “ an eye to the main chance,” who would forsake everything in order to live. With the second, the slave-morality, the case is different. There, inasmuch as the community is an oppressed, suffering, unemancipated, and weary one, all THAT will be held to be good which alleviates the state of suffering. Pity, the obliging hand, the warm heart, patience, industry, and humility—these are unquestionably the qualities we shall here find flooded with the light of approval and admiration; because they are the most USEFUL qualities—; they make life endurable, they are of assistance in the “ struggle for existence” which is the motive force behind the people practising this morality. To this class, all that is AWFUL is bad, in fact it is THE evil par excellence. Strength, health, superabundance of animal spirits and power, are regarded with hate, suspicion, and fear by the subordinate class. Now Nietzsche believed that the first or the noble-morality conduced to an ascent in the line of life; because it was creative and active. On the other hand, he believed that the second or slave-morality, where it became paramount, led to degeneration, because it was passive and defensive, wanting merely to keep those who practised it alive. Hence his earnest advocacy of noble-morality. (C.) Nietzsche and Evolution. Nietzsche as an evolutionist I shall have occasion to define and discuss in the course of these notes (see Notes on Chapter LVI., par.10, and on Chapter LVII.). For the present let it suffice for us to know that he accepted the “ Development Hypothesis” as an explanation of the origin of species: but he did not halt where most naturalists have halted. He by no means regarded man as the highest possible being which evolution could arrive at; for though his physical development may have reached its limit, this is not the case with his mental or spiritual attributes. If the process be a fact; if things have BECOME what they are, then, he contends, we may describe no limit to man’s aspirations. If he struggled up from barbarism, and still more remotely from the lower Primates, his ideal should be to surpass man himself and reach Superman (see especially the Prologue). (D.) Nietzsche and Sociology. Nietzsche as a sociologist aims at an aristocratic arrangement of society. He would have us rear an ideal race. Honest and truthful in intellectual matters, he could not even think that men are equal. “ With these preachers of equality will I not be mixed up and confounded. For thus speaketh justice unto ME: ‘Men are not equal.’” He sees precisely in this inequality a purpose to be served, a condition to be exploited. “ Every elevation of the type ‘man,’” he writes in “ Beyond Good and Evil”, “ has hitherto been the work of an aristocratic society—and so will it always be—a society believing in a long scale of gradations of rank and differences of worth among human beings.” Those who are sufficiently interested to desire to read his own detailed account of the society he would fain establish, will find an excellent passage in Aphorism 57 of “ The Antichrist”. … PART I. THE PROLOGUE. In Part I. including the Prologue, no very great difficulties will appear. Zarathustra’s habit of designating a whole class of men or a whole school of thought by a single fitting nickname may perhaps lead to a little confusion at first; but, as a rule, when the general drift of his arguments is grasped, it requires but a slight effort of the imagination to discover whom he is referring to. In the ninth paragraph of the Prologue, for instance, it is quite obvious that “ Herdsmen” in the verse “ Herdsmen, I say, etc., etc.,” stands for all those to-day who are the advocates of gregariousness—of the ant-hill. And when our author says: “ A robber shall Zarathustra be called by the herdsmen,” it is clear that these words may be taken almost literally from one whose ideal was the rearing of a higher aristocracy. Again, “ the good and just,” throughout the book, is the expression used in referring to the self-righteous of modern times,—those who are quite sure that they know all that is to be known concerning good and evil, and are satisfied that the values their little world of tradition has handed down to them, are destined to rule mankind as long as it lasts. In the last paragraph of the Prologue, verse 7, Zarathustra gives us a foretaste of his teaching concerning the big and the little sagacities, expounded subsequently. He says he would he were as wise as his serpent; this desire will be found explained in the discourse entitled “ The Despisers of the Body”, which I shall have occasion to refer to later. … THE DISCOURSES.
Chapter I. The Three Metamorphoses. This opening discourse is a parable in which Zarathustra discloses the mental development of all creators of new values. It is the story of a life which reaches its consummation in attaining to a second ingenuousness or in returning to childhood. Nietzsche, the supposed anarchist, here plainly disclaims all relationship whatever to anarchy, for he shows us that only by bearing the burdens of the existing law and submitting to it patiently, as the camel submits to being laden, does the free spirit acquire that ascendancy over tradition which enables him to meet and master the dragon “ Thou shalt,”—the dragon with the values of a thousand years glittering on its scales. There are two lessons in this discourse: first, that in order to create one must be as a little child; secondly, that it is only through existing law and order that one attains to that height from which new law and new order may be promulgated. Chapter II. The Academic Chairs of Virtue. Almost the whole of this is quite comprehensible. It is a discourse against all those who confound virtue with tameness and smug ease, and who regard as virtuous only that which promotes security and tends to deepen sleep. Chapter IV. The Despisers of the Body. Here Zarathustra gives names to the intellect and the instincts; he calls the one “ the little sagacity” and the latter “ the big sagacity.” Schopenhauer’s teaching concerning the intellect is fully endorsed here. “ An instrument of thy body is also thy little sagacity, my brother, which thou callest ‘spirit,’” says Zarathustra. From beginning to end it is a warning to those who would think too lightly of the instincts and unduly exalt the intellect and its derivatives: Reason and Understanding. Chapter IX. The Preachers of Death. This is an analysis of the psychology of all those who have the “ evil eye” and are pessimists by virtue of their constitutions. Chapter XV. The Thousand and One Goals. In this discourse Zarathustra opens his exposition of the doctrine of relativity in morality, and declares all morality to be a mere means to power. Needless to say that verses 9, 10, 11, and 12 refer to the Greeks, the Persians, the Jews, and the Germans respectively. In the penultimate verse he makes known his discovery concerning the root of modern Nihilism and indifference,—i.e., that modern man has no goal, no aim, no ideals (see Note A). Chapter XVIII. Old and Young Women. Nietzsche’s views on women have either to be loved at first sight or they become perhaps the greatest obstacle in the way of those who otherwise would be inclined to accept his philosophy. Women especially, of course, have been taught to dislike them, because it has been rumoured that his views are unfriendly to themselves. Now, to my mind, all this is pure misunderstanding and error. German philosophers, thanks to Schopenhauer, have earned rather a bad name for their views on women. It is almost impossible for one of them to write a line on the subject, however kindly he may do so, without being suspected of wishing to open a crusade against the fair sex. Despite the fact, therefore, that all Nietzsche’s views in this respect were dictated to him by the profoundest love; despite Zarathustra’s reservation in this discourse, that “ with women nothing (that can be said) is impossible,” and in the face of other overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Nietzsche is universally reported to have mis son pied dans le plat, where the female sex is concerned. And what is the fundamental doctrine which has given rise to so much bitterness and aversion?—Merely this: that the sexes are at bottom ANTAGONISTIC—that is to say, as different as blue is from yellow, and that the best possible means of rearing anything approaching a desirable race is to preserve and to foster this profound hostility. What Nietzsche strives to combat and to overthrow is the modern democratic tendency which is slowly labouring to level all things—even the sexes. His quarrel is not with women—what indeed could be more undignified?—it is with those who would destroy the natural relationship between the sexes, by modifying either the one or the other with a view to making them more alike. The human world is just as dependent upon women’s powers as upon men’s. It is women’s strongest and most valuable instincts which help to determine who are to be the fathers of the next generation. By destroying these particular instincts, that is to say by attempting to masculinise woman, and to feminise men, we jeopardise the future of our people. The general democratic movement of modern times, in its frantic struggle to mitigate all differences, is now invading even the world of sex. It is against this movement that Nietzsche raises his voice; he would have woman become ever more woman and man become ever more man. Only thus, and he is undoubtedly right, can their combined instincts lead to the excellence of humanity. Regarded in this light, all his views on woman appear not only necessary but just (see Note on Chapter LVI., par. 21.) It is interesting to observe that the last line of the discourse, which has so frequently been used by women as a weapon against Nietzsche’s views concerning them, was suggested to Nietzsche by a woman (see “ Das Leben F. Nietzsche’s”). Chapter XXI. Voluntary Death. In regard to this discourse, I should only like to point out that Nietzsche had a particular aversion to the word “ suicide”—self-murder. He disliked the evil it suggested, and in rechristening the act Voluntary Death, i.e., the death that comes from no other hand than one’s own, he was desirous of elevating it to the position it held in classical antiquity (see Aphorism 36 in “ The Twilight of the Idols”). Chapter XXII. The Bestowing Virtue. An important aspect of Nietzsche’s philosophy is brought to light in this discourse. His teaching, as is well known, places the Aristotelian man of spirit, above all others in the
natural divisions of man. The man with overflowing strength, both of mind and body, who must discharge this strength or perish, is the Nietzschean ideal. To such a man, giving from his overflow becomes a necessity; bestowing develops into a means of existence, and this is the only giving, the only charity, that Nietzsche recognises. In paragraph 3 of the discourse, we read Zarathustra’s healthy exhortation to his disciples to become independent thinkers and to find themselves before they learn any more from him (see Notes on Chapters LVI., par. 5, and LXXIII., pars. 10, 11). … PART II. Chapter XXIII. The Child with the Mirror. Nietzsche tells us here, in a poetical form, how deeply grieved he was by the manifold misinterpretations and misunderstandings which were becoming rife concerning his publications. He does not recognise himself in the mirror of public opinion, and recoils terrified from the distorted reflection of his features. In verse 20 he gives us a hint which it were well not to pass over too lightly; for, in the introduction to “ The Genealogy of Morals” (written in 1887) he finds it necessary to refer to the matter again and with greater precision. The point is this, that a creator of new values meets with his surest and strongest obstacles in the very spirit of the language which is at his disposal. Words, like all other manifestations of an evolving race, are stamped with the values that have long been paramount in that race. Now, the original thinker who finds himself compelled to use the current speech of his country in order to impart new and hitherto untried views to his fellows, imposes a task upon the natural means of communication which it is totally unfitted to perform, —hence the obscurities and prolixities which are so frequently met with in the writings of original thinkers. In the “ Dawn of Day”, Nietzsche actually cautions young writers against THE DANGER OF ALLOWING THEIR THOUGHTS TO BE MOULDED BY THE WORDS AT THEIR DISPOSAL. Chapter XXIV. In the Happy Isles. While writing this, Nietzsche is supposed to have been thinking of the island of Ischia which was ultimately destroyed by an earthquake. His teaching here is quite clear. He was among the first thinkers of Europe to overcome the pessimism which godlessness generally brings in its wake. He points to creating as the surest salvation from the suffering which is a concomitant of all higher life. “ What would there be to create,” he asks, “ if there were—Gods?” His ideal, the Superman, lends him the cheerfulness necessary to the overcoming of that despair usually attendant upon godlessness and upon the apparent aimlessness of a world without a god. Chapter XXIX. The Tarantulas. The tarantulas are the Socialists and Democrats. This discourse offers us an analysis of their mental attitude. Nietzsche refuses to be confounded with those resentful and revengeful ones who condemn society FROM BELOW, and whose criticism is only suppressed envy. “ There are those who preach my doctrine of life,” he says of the Nietzschean Socialists, “ and are at the same time preachers of equality and tarantulas” (see Notes on Chapter XL. and Chapter LI.). Chapter XXX. The Famous Wise Ones. This refers to all those philosophers hitherto, who have run in the harness of established values and have not risked their reputation with the people in pursuit of truth. The philosopher, however, as Nietzsche understood him, is a man who creates new values, and thus leads mankind in a new direction. Chapter XXXIII. The Grave-Song. Here Zarathustra sings about the ideals and friendships of his youth. Verses 27 to 31 undoubtedly refer to Richard Wagner (see Note on Chapter TOCFLXV.). Chapter XXXIV. Self-Surpassing. In this discourse we get the best exposition in the whole book of Nietzsche’s doctrine of the Will to Power. I go into this question thoroughly in the Note on Chapter LVII. Nietzsche was not an iconoclast from choice. Those who hastily class him with the anarchists (or the Progressivists of the last century) fail to understand the high esteem in which he always held both law and discipline. In verse 41 of this most decisive discourse he truly explains his position when he says: “ …he who hath to be a creator in good and evil— verily he hath first to be a destroyer, and break values in pieces.” This teaching in regard to self-control is evidence enough of his reverence for law. Chapter XXXV. The Sublime Ones. These belong to a type which Nietzsche did not altogether dislike, but which he would fain have rendered more subtle and plastic. It is the type that takes life and itself too seriously, that never surmounts the camel-stage mentioned in the first discourse, and that is obdurately sublime and earnest. To be able to smile while speaking of lofty things and NOT TO BE OPPRESSED by them, is the secret of real greatness. He whose hand trembles when it lays hold of a beautiful thing, has the quality of reverence, without the artist’s unembarrassed friendship with the beautiful. Hence the mistakes which have arisen in regard to confounding Nietzsche with his extreme opposites the anarchists and agitators. For what they dare to touch and break with the impudence and irreverence of the unappreciative, he seems likewise to touch and break,—but with other fingers—with the fingers of the loving and unembarrassed artist who is on good terms with the beautiful and who feels able to create it and to enhance it with his touch. The question of taste plays an important part in Nietzsche’s philosophy, and verses 9, 10 of this discourse exactly state Nietzsche’s ultimate views on the subject. In the “ Spirit of Gravity”, he actually cries:—“ Neither a good nor a bad taste, but MY taste, of which I have no longer either shame or secrecy.” Chapter XXXVI. The Land of Culture. This is a poetical epitome of some of the scathing criticism of scholars which appears in the first of the “ Thoughts out of Season”—the polemical pamphlet (written in 1873)
against David Strauss and his school. He reproaches his former colleagues with being sterile and shows them that their sterility is the result of their not believing in anything. “ He who had to create, had always his presaging dreams and astral premonitions—and believed in believing!” (See Note on Chapter TOCFLXXVII.) In the last two verses he reveals the nature of his altruism. How far it differs from that of Christianity we have already read in the discourse “ Neighbour-Love”, but here he tells us definitely the nature of his love to mankind; he explains why he was compelled to assail the Christian values of pity and excessive love of the neighbour, not only because they are slave-values and therefore tend to promote degeneration (see Note B.), but because he could only love his children’s land, the undiscovered land in a remote sea; because he would fain retrieve the errors of his fathers in his children. Chapter XXXVII. Immaculate Perception. An important feature of Nietzsche’s interpretation of Life is disclosed in this discourse. As Buckle suggests in his “ Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge”, the scientific spirit of the investigator is both helped and supplemented by the latter’s emotions and personality, and the divorce of all emotionalism and individual temperament from science is a fatal step towards sterility. Zarathustra abjures all those who would fain turn an IMPERSONAL eye upon nature and contemplate her phenomena with that pure objectivity to which the scientific idealists of to-day would so much like to attain. He accuses such idealists of hypocrisy and guile; he says they lack innocence in their desires and therefore slander all desiring. Chapter XXXVIII. Scholars. This is a record of Nietzsche’s final breach with his former colleagues—the scholars of Germany. Already after the publication of the “ Birth of Tragedy”, numbers of German philologists and professional philosophers had denounced him as one who had strayed too far from their flock, and his lectures at the University of Bale were deserted in consequence; but it was not until 1879, when he finally severed all connection with University work, that he may be said to have attained to the freedom and independence which stamp this discourse. Chapter XXXIX. Poets. People have sometimes said that Nietzsche had no sense of humour. I have no intention of defending him here against such foolish critics; I should only like to point out to the reader that we have him here at his best, poking fun at himself, and at his fellow-poets (see Note on Chapter LXIII., pars. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20). Chapter XL. Great Events. Here we seem to have a puzzle. Zarathustra himself, while relating his experience with the fire-dog to his disciples, fails to get them interested in his narrative, and we also may be only too ready to turn over these pages under the impression that they are little more than a mere phantasy or poetical flight. Zarathustra’s interview with the fire-dog is, however, of great importance. In it we find Nietzsche face to face with the creature he most sincerely loathes—the spirit of revolution, and we obtain fresh hints concerning his hatred of the anarchist and rebel. “ ‘Freedom’ ye all roar most eagerly,” he says to the fire-dog, “ but I have unlearned the belief in ‘Great Events’ when there is much roaring and smoke about them. Not around the inventors of new noise, but around the inventors of new values, doth the world revolve; INAUDIBLY it revolveth.” Chapter XLI. The Soothsayer. This refers, of course, to Schopenhauer. Nietzsche, as is well known, was at one time an ardent follower of Schopenhauer. He overcame Pessimism by discovering an object in existence; he saw the possibility of raising society to a higher level and preached the profoundest Optimism in consequence. Chapter XLII. Redemption. Zarathustra here addresses cripples. He tells them of other cripples—the GREAT MEN in this world who have one organ or faculty inordinately developed at the cost of their other faculties. This is doubtless a reference to a fact which is too often noticeable in the case of so many of the world’s giants in art, science, or religion. In verse 19 we are told what Nietzsche called Redemption—that is to say, the ability to say of all that is past: “ Thus would I have it.” The in ability to say this, and the resentment which results therefrom, he regards as the source of all our feelings of revenge, and all our desires to punish—punishment meaning to him merely a euphemism for the word revenge, invented in order to still our consciences. He who can be proud of his enemies, who can be grateful to them for the obstacles they have put in his way; he who can regard his worst calamity as but the extra strain on the bow of his life, which is to send the arrow of his longing even further than he could have hoped;—this man knows no revenge, neither does he know despair, he truly has found redemption and can turn on the worst in his life and even in himself, and call it his best (see Notes on Chapter LVII.). Chapter XLIII. Manly Prudence. This discourse is very important. In “ Beyond Good and Evil” we hear often enough that the select and superior man must wear a mask, and here we find this injunction explained. “ And he who would not languish amongst men, must learn to drink out of all glasses: and he who would keep clean amongst men, must know how to wash himself even with dirty water.” This, I venture to suggest, requires some explanation. At a time when individuality is supposed to be shown most tellingly by putting boots on one’s hands and gloves on one’s feet, it is somewhat refreshing to come across a true individualist who feels the chasm between himself and others so deeply, that he must perforce adapt himself to them outwardly, at least, in all respects, so that the inner difference should be overlooked. Nietzsche practically tells us here that it is not he who intentionally wears eccentric clothes or does eccentric things who is truly the individualist. The profound man, who is by nature differentiated from his fellows, feels this difference too keenly to call attention to it by any outward show. He is shamefast and bashful with those who surround him and wishes not to be discovered by them, just as one instinctively avoids all lavish display of comfort or
wealth in the presence of a poor friend. Chapter XLIV. The Stillest Hour. This seems to me to give an account of the great struggle which must have taken place in Nietzsche’s soul before he finally resolved to make known the more esoteric portions of his teaching. Our deepest feelings crave silence. There is a certain self-respect in the serious man which makes him hold his profoundest feelings sacred. Before they are uttered they are full of the modesty of a virgin, and often the oldest sage will blush like a girl when this virginity is violated by an indiscretion which forces him to reveal his deepest thoughts. … PART III. This is perhaps the most important of all the four parts. If it contained only “ The Vision and the Enigma” and “ The Old and New Tables” I should still be of this opinion; for in the former of these discourses we meet with what Nietzsche regarded as the crowning doctrine of his philosophy and in “ The Old and New Tables” we have a valuable epitome of practically all his leading principles. Chapter XLVI. The Vision and the Enigma. “ The Vision and the Enigma” is perhaps an example of Nietzsche in his most obscure vein. We must know how persistently he inveighed against the oppressing and depressing influence of man’s sense of guilt and consciousness of sin in order fully to grasp the significance of this discourse. Slowly but surely, he thought the values of Christianity and Judaic traditions had done their work in the minds of men. What were once but expedients devised for the discipline of a certain portion of humanity, had now passed into man’s blood and had become instincts. This oppressive and paralysing sense of guilt and of sin is what Nietzsche refers to when he speaks of “ the spirit of gravity.” This creature half-dwarf, half-mole, whom he bears with him a certain distance on his climb and finally defies, and whom he calls his devil and arch-enemy, is nothing more than the heavy millstone “ guilty conscience,” together with the concept of sin which at present hangs round the neck of men. To rise above it—to soar—is the most difficult of all things to-day. Nietzsche is able to think cheerfully and optimistically of the possibility of life in this world recurring again and again, when he has once cast the dwarf from his shoulders, and he announces his doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence of all things great and small to his arch-enemy and in defiance of him. That there is much to be said for Nietzsche’s hypothesis of the Eternal Recurrence of all things great and small, nobody who has read the literature on the subject will doubt for an instant; but it remains a very daring conjecture notwithstanding and even in its ultimate effect, as a dogma, on the minds of men, I venture to doubt whether Nietzsche ever properly estimated its worth (see Note on Chapter LVII.). What follows is clear enough. Zarathustra sees a young shepherd struggling on the ground with a snake holding fast to the back of his throat. The sage, assuming that the snake must have crawled into the young man’s mouth while he lay sleeping, runs to his help and pulls at the loathsome reptile with all his might, but in vain. At last, in despair, Zarathustra appeals to the young man’s will. Knowing full well what a ghastly operation he is recommending, he nevertheless cries, “ Bite! Bite! Its head off! Bite!” as the only possible solution of the difficulty. The young shepherd bites, and far away he spits the snake’s head, whereupon he rises, “ No longer shepherd, no longer man—a transfigured being, a light-surrounded being, that LAUGHED! Never on earth laughed a man as he laughed!” In this parable the young shepherd is obviously the man of to-day; the snake that chokes him represents the stultifying and paralysing social values that threaten to shatter humanity, and the advice “ Bite! Bite!” is but Nietzsche’s exasperated cry to mankind to alter their values before it is too late. Chapter XLVII. Involuntary Bliss. This, like “ The Wanderer”, is one of the many introspective passages in the work, and is full of innuendos and hints as to the Nietzschean outlook on life. Chapter XLVIII. Before Sunrise. Here we have a record of Zarathustra’s avowal of optimism, as also the important statement concerning “ Chance” or “ Accident” (verse 27). Those who are familiar with Nietzsche’s philosophy will not require to be told what an important role his doctrine of chance plays in his teaching. The Giant Chance has hitherto played with the puppet “ man,”—this is the fact he cannot contemplate with equanimity. Man shall now exploit chance, he says again and again, and make it fall on its knees before him! (See verse 33 in “ On the Olive Mount”, and verses 9-10 in “ The Bedwarfing Virtue”). Chapter XLIX. The Bedwarfing Virtue. This requires scarcely any comment. It is a satire on modern man and his belittling virtues. In verses 23 and 24 of the second part of the discourse we are reminded of Nietzsche’s powerful indictment of the great of to-day, in the Antichrist (Aphorism 43):—“ At present nobody has any longer the courage for separate rights, for rights of domination, for a feeling of reverence for himself and his equals,—FOR PATHOS OF DISTANCE…Our politics are MORBID from this want of courage!—The aristocracy of character has been undermined most craftily by the lie of the equality of souls; and if the belief in the ‘privilege of the many,’ makes revolutions and WILL CONTINUE TO MAKE them, it is Christianity, let us not doubt it, it is CHRISTIAN valuations, which translate every revolution merely into blood and crime!” (see also “ Beyond Good and Evil”, pages 120, 121). Nietzsche thought it was a bad sign of the times that even rulers have lost the courage of their positions, and that a man of Frederick the Great’s power and distinguished gifts should have been able to say: “ Ich bin der erste Diener des Staates” (I am the first servant of the State.) To this utterance of the great sovereign, verse 24 undoubtedly refers. “ Cowardice” and “ Mediocrity,” are the names with which he labels modern notions of virtue and moderation.
In Part III., we get the sentiments of the discourse “ In the Happy Isles”, but perhaps in stronger terms. Once again we find Nietzsche thoroughly at ease, if not cheerful, as an atheist, and speaking with vertiginous daring of making chance go on its knees to him. In verse 20, Zarathustra makes yet another attempt at defining his entirely anti-anarchical attitude, and unless such passages have been completely overlooked or deliberately ignored hitherto by those who will persist in laying anarchy at his door, it is impossible to understand how he ever became associated with that foul political party. The last verse introduces the expression, “ THE GREAT NOONTIDE!” In the poem to be found at the end of “ Beyond Good and Evil”, we meet with the expression again, and we shall find it occurring time and again in Nietzsche’s works. It will be found fully elucidated in the fifth part of “ The Twilight of the Idols”; but for those who cannot refer to this book, it were well to point out that Nietzsche called the present period—our period—the noon of man’s history. Dawn is behind us. The childhood of mankind is over. Now we KNOW; there is now no longer any excuse for mistakes which will tend to botch and disfigure the type man. “ With respect to what is past,” he says, “ I have, like all discerning ones, great toleration, that is to say, GENEROUS self-control…But my feeling changes suddenly, and breaks out as soon as I enter the modern period, OUR period. Our age KNOWS…” (See Note on Chapter LXX.). Chapter LI. On Passing-by. Here we find Nietzsche confronted with his extreme opposite, with him therefore for whom he is most frequently mistaken by the unwary. “ Zarathustra’s ape” he is called in the discourse. He is one of those at whose hands Nietzsche had to suffer most during his life-time, and at whose hands his philosophy has suffered most since his death. In this respect it may seem a little trivial to speak of extremes meeting; but it is wonderfully apt. Many have adopted Nietzsche’s mannerisms and word-coinages, who had nothing in common with him beyond the ideas and “ business” they plagiarised; but the superficial observer and a large portion of the public, not knowing of these things,—not knowing perhaps that there are iconoclasts who destroy out of love and are therefore creators, and that there are others who destroy out of resentment and revengefulness and who are therefore revolutionists and anarchists,—are prone to confound the two, to the detriment of the nobler type. If we now read what the fool says to Zarathustra, and note the tricks of speech he has borrowed from him: if we carefully follow the attitude he assumes, we shall understand why Zarathustra finally interrupts him. “ Stop this at once,” Zarathustra cries, “ long have thy speech and thy species disgusted me…Out of love alone shall my contempt and my warning bird take wing; BUT NOT OUT OF THE SWAMP!” It were well if this discourse were taken to heart by all those who are too ready to associate Nietzsche with lesser and noiser men,—with mountebanks and mummers. Chapter LII. The Apostates. It is clear that this applies to all those breathless and hasty “ tasters of everything,” who plunge too rashly into the sea of independent thought and “ heresy,” and who, having miscalculated their strength, find it impossible to keep their head above water. “ A little older, a little colder,” says Nietzsche. They soon clamber back to the conventions of the age they intended reforming. The French then say “ le diable se fait hermite,” but these men, as a rule, have never been devils, neither do they become angels; for, in order to be really good or evil, some strength and deep breathing is required. Those who are more interested in supporting orthodoxy than in being over nice concerning the kind of support they give it, often refer to these people as evidence in favour of the true faith. Chapter LIII. The Return Home. This is an example of a class of writing which may be passed over too lightly by those whom poetasters have made distrustful of poetry. From first to last it is extremely valuable as an autobiographical note. The inevitable superficiality of the rabble is contrasted with the peaceful and profound depths of the anchorite. Here we first get a direct hint concerning Nietzsche’s fundamental passion—the main force behind all his new values and scathing criticism of existing values. In verse 30 we are told that pity was his greatest danger. The broad altruism of the law-giver, thinking over vast eras of time, was continually being pitted by Nietzsche, in himself, against that transient and meaner sympathy for the neighbour which he more perhaps than any of his contemporaries had suffered from, but which he was certain involved enormous dangers not only for himself but also to the next and subsequent generations (see Note B., where “ pity” is mentioned among the degenerate virtues). Later in the book we shall see how his profound compassion leads him into temptation, and how frantically he struggles against it. In verses 31 and 32, he tells us to what extent he had to modify himself in order to be endured by his fellows whom he loved (see also verse 12 in “ Manly Prudence”). Nietzsche’s great love for his fellows, which he confesses in the Prologue, and which is at the root of all his teaching, seems rather to elude the discerning powers of the average philanthropist and modern man. He cannot see the wood for the trees. A philanthropy that sacrifices the minority of the present-day for the majority constituting posterity, completely evades his mental grasp, and Nietzsche’s philosophy, because it declares Christian values to be a danger to the future of our kind, is therefore shelved as brutal, cold, and hard (see Note on Chapter XXXVI.). Nietzsche tried to be all things to all men; he was sufficiently fond of his fellows for that: in the Return Home he describes how he ultimately returns to loneliness in order to recover from the effects of his experiment. Chapter LIV. The Three Evil Things. Nietzsche is here completely in his element. Three things hitherto best-cursed and most calumniated on earth, are brought forward to be weighed. Voluptuousness, thirst of power, and selfishness,—the three forces in humanity which Christianity has done most to garble and besmirch,—Nietzsche endeavours to reinstate in their former places of honour. Voluptuousness, or sensual pleasure, is a dangerous thing to discuss nowadays. If we mention it with favour we may be regarded, however unjustly, as the advocate of savages, satyrs, and pure sensuality. If we condemn it, we either go over to the Puritans or we join those who are wont to come to table with no edge to their appetites and who therefore grumble at
all good fare. There can be no doubt that the value of healthy innocent voluptuousness, like the value of health itself, must have been greatly discounted by all those who, resenting their inability to partake of this world’s goods, cried like St Paul: “ I would that all men were even as I myself.” Now Nietzsche’s philosophy might be called an attempt at giving back to healthy and normal men innocence and a clean conscience in their desires—NOT to applaud the vulgar sensualists who respond to every stimulus and whose passions are out of hand; not to tell the mean, selfish individual, whose selfishness is a pollution (see Aphorism 33, “ Twilight of the Idols”), that he is right, nor to assure the weak, the sick, and the crippled, that the thirst of power, which they gratify by exploiting the happier and healthier individuals, is justified;—but to save the clean healthy man from the values of those around him, who look at everything through the mud that is in their own bodies,—to give him, and him alone, a clean conscience in his manhood and the desires of his manhood. “ Do I counsel you to slay your instincts? I counsel to innocence in your instincts.” In verse 7 of the second paragraph (as in verse I of paragraph 19 in “ The Old and New Tables”) Nietzsche gives us a reason for his occasional obscurity (see also verses 3 to 7 of “ Poets”). As I have already pointed out, his philosophy is quite esoteric. It can serve no purpose with the ordinary, mediocre type of man. I, personally, can no longer have any doubt that Nietzsche’s only object, in that part of his philosophy where he bids his friends stand “ Beyond Good and Evil” with him, was to save higher men, whose growth and scope might be limited by the too strict observance of modern values from foundering on the rocks of a “ Compromise” between their own genius and traditional conventions. The only possible way in which the great man can achieve greatness is by means of exceptional freedom—the freedom which assists him in experiencing HIMSELF. Verses 20 to 30 afford an excellent supplement to Nietzsche’s description of the attitude of the noble type towards the slaves in Aphorism 260 of the work “ Beyond Good and Evil” (see also Note B.) Chapter LV. The Spirit of Gravity. (See Note on Chapter XLVI.) In Part II. of this discourse we meet with a doctrine not touched upon hitherto, save indirectly;—I refer to the doctrine of self-love. We should try to understand this perfectly before proceeding; for it is precisely views of this sort which, after having been cut out of the original context, are repeated far and wide as internal evidence proving the general unsoundness of Nietzsche’s philosophy. Already in the last of the “ Thoughts out of Season” Nietzsche speaks as follows about modern men: “ …these modern creatures wish rather to be hunted down, wounded and torn to shreds, than to live alone with themselves in solitary calm. Alone with oneself!—this thought terrifies the modern soul; it is his one anxiety, his one ghastly fear” (English Edition, page 141). In his feverish scurry to find entertainment and diversion, whether in a novel, a newspaper, or a play, the modern man condemns his own age utterly; for he shows that in his heart of hearts he despises himself. One cannot change a condition of this sort in a day; to become endurable to oneself an inner transformation is necessary. Too long have we lost ourselves in our friends and entertainments to be able to find ourselves so soon at another’s bidding. “ And verily, it is no commandment for to-day and to-morrow to LEARN to love oneself. Rather is it of all arts the finest, subtlest, last, and patientest.” In the last verse Nietzsche challenges us to show that our way is the right way. In his teaching he does not coerce us, nor does he overpersuade; he simply says: “ I am a law only for mine own, I am not a law for all. This—is now MY way,—where is yours?” Chapter LVI. Old and New Tables. Par. 2. Nietzsche himself declares this to be the most decisive portion of the whole of “ Thus Spake Zarathustra”. It is a sort of epitome of his leading doctrines. In verse 12 of the second paragraph, we learn how he himself would fain have abandoned the poetical method of expression had he not known only too well that the only chance a new doctrine has of surviving, nowadays, depends upon its being given to the world in some kind of art-form. Just as prophets, centuries ago, often had to have recourse to the mask of madness in order to mitigate the hatred of those who did not and could not see as they did; so, to-day, the struggle for existence among opinions and values is so great, that an art-form is practically the only garb in which a new philosophy can dare to introduce itself to us. Pars. 3 and 4. Many of the paragraphs will be found to be merely reminiscent of former discourses. For instance, par. 3 recalls “ Redemption”. The last verse of par. 4 is important. Freedom which, as I have pointed out before, Nietzsche considered a dangerous acquisition in inexperienced or unworthy hands, here receives its death-blow as a general desideratum. In the first Part we read under “ The Way of the Creating One”, that freedom as an end in itself does not concern Zarathustra at all. He says there: “ Free from what? What doth that matter to Zarathustra? Clearly, however, shall thine eye answer me: free FOR WHAT?” And in “ The Bedwarfing Virtue”: “ Ah that ye understood my word: ‘Do ever what ye will—but first be such as CAN WILL.’” Par. 5. Here we have a description of the kind of altruism Nietzsche exacted from higher men. It is really a comment upon “ The Bestowing Virtue” (see Note on Chapter XXII.). Par. 6. This refers, of course, to the reception pioneers of Nietzsche’s stamp meet with at the hands of their contemporaries. Par. 8. Nietzsche teaches that nothing is stable,—not even values,—not even the concepts good and evil. He likens life unto a stream. But foot-bridges and railings span the stream, and they seem to stand firm. Many will be reminded of good and evil when they look upon these structures; for thus these same values stand over the stream of life, and life flows on beneath them and leaves them standing. When, however, winter comes and the stream gets frozen, many inquire: “ Should not everything—STAND STILL? Fundamentally everything standeth still.” But soon the spring cometh and with it the thaw-wind. It breaks the ice, and the ice breaks down the foot-bridges and railings, whereupon everything is
swept away. This state of affairs, according to Nietzsche, has now been reached. “ Oh, my brethren, is not everything AT PRESENT IN FLUX? Have not all railings and foot-bridges fallen into the water? Who would still HOLD ON to ‘good’ and ‘evil’?” Par. 9. This is complementary to the first three verses of par. 2. Par. 10. So far, this is perhaps the most important paragraph. It is a protest against reading a moral order of things in life. “ Life is something essentially immoral!” Nietzsche tells us in the introduction to the “ Birth of Tragedy”. Even to call life “ activity,” or to define it further as “ the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations,” as Spencer has it, Nietzsche characterises as a “ democratic idiosyncracy.” He says to define it in this way, “ is to mistake the true nature and function of life, which is Will to Power…Life is ESSENTIALLY appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of its own forms, incorporation and at least, putting it mildest, exploitation.” Adaptation is merely a secondary activity, a mere re-activity (see Note on Chapter LVII.). Pars. 11, 12. These deal with Nietzsche’s principle of the desirability of rearing a select race. The biological and historical grounds for his insistence upon this principle are, of course, manifold. Gobineau in his great work, “ L’Inegalite des Races Humaines”, lays strong emphasis upon the evils which arise from promiscuous and inter-social marriages. He alone would suffice to carry Nietzsche’s point against all those who are opposed to the other conditions, to the conditions which would have saved Rome, which have maintained the strength of the Jewish race, and which are strictly maintained by every breeder of animals throughout the world. Darwin in his remarks relative to the degeneration of CULTIVATED types of animals through the action of promiscuous breeding, brings Gobineau support from the realm of biology. The last two verses of par. 12 were discussed in the Notes on Chapters TOCFXXXVI. and LIII. Par. 13. This, like the first part of “ The Soothsayer”, is obviously a reference to the Schopenhauerian Pessimism. Pars. 14, 15, 16, 17. These are supplementary to the discourse “ Backworld’s-men”. Par. 18. We must be careful to separate this paragraph, in sense, from the previous four paragraphs. Nietzsche is still dealing with Pessimism here; but it is the pessimism of the hero—the man most susceptible of all to desperate views of life, owing to the obstacles that are arrayed against him in a world where men of his kind are very rare and are continually being sacrificed. It was to save this man that Nietzsche wrote. Heroism foiled, thwarted, and wrecked, hoping and fighting until the last, is at length overtaken by despair, and renounces all struggle for sleep. This is not the natural or constitutional pessimism which proceeds from an unhealthy body—the dyspeptic’s lack of appetite; it is rather the desperation of the netted lion that ultimately stops all movement, because the more it moves the more involved it becomes. Par. 20. “ All that increases power is good, all that springs from weakness is bad. The weak and ill-constituted shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one shall also help them thereto.” Nietzsche partly divined the kind of reception moral values of this stamp would meet with at the hands of the effeminate manhood of Europe. Here we see that he had anticipated the most likely form their criticism would take (see also the last two verses of par. 17). Par. 21. The first ten verses, here, are reminiscent of “ War and Warriors” and of “ The Flies in the Market-place.” Verses 11 and 12, however, are particularly important. There is a strong argument in favour of the sharp differentiation of castes and of races (and even of sexes; see Note on Chapter XVIII.) running all through Nietzsche’s writings. But sharp differentiation also implies antagonism in some form or other—hence Nietzsche’s fears for modern men. What modern men desire above all, is peace and the cessation of pain. But neither great races nor great castes have ever been built up in this way. “ Who still wanteth to rule?” Zarathustra asks in the “ Prologue”. “ Who still wanteth to obey? Both are too burdensome.” This is rapidly becoming everybody’s attitude to-day. The tame moral reading of the face of nature, together with such democratic interpretations of life as those suggested by Herbert Spencer, are signs of a physiological condition which is the reverse of that bounding and irresponsible healthiness in which harder and more tragic values rule. Par. 24. This should be read in conjunction with “ Child and Marriage”. In the fifth verse we shall recognise our old friend “ Marriage on the ten-years system,” which George Meredith suggested some years ago. This, however, must not be taken too literally. I do not think Nietzsche’s profoundest views on marriage were ever intended to be given over to the public at all, at least not for the present. They appear in the biography by his sister, and although their wisdom is unquestionable, the nature of the reforms he suggests render it impossible for them to become popular just now. Pars. 26, 27. See Note on “ The Prologue”.
Par. 28. Nietzsche was not an iconoclast from predilection. No bitterness or empty hate dictated his vituperations against existing values and against the dogmas of his parents and forefathers. He knew too well what these things meant to the millions who profess them, to approach the task of uprooting them with levity or even with haste. He saw what modern anarchists and revolutionists do NOT see—namely, that man is in danger of actual destruction when his customs and values are broken. I need hardly point out, therefore, how deeply he was conscious of the responsibility he threw upon our shoulders when he invited us to reconsider our position. The lines in this paragraph are evidence enough of his earnestness. Chapter LVII. The Convalescent. We meet with several puzzles here. Zarathustra calls himself the advocate of the circle (the Eternal Recurrence of all things), and he calls this doctrine his abysmal thought. In the last verse of the first paragraph, however, after hailing his deepest thought, he cries: “ Disgust, disgust, disgust!” We know Nietzsche’s ideal man was that “ world-approving, exuberant, and vivacious creature, who has not only learnt to compromise and arrange with that which was and is, but wishes to have it again, AS IT WAS AND IS, for all eternity insatiably calling out da capo, not only to himself, but to the whole piece and play” (see Note on Chapter XLII.). But if one ask oneself what the conditions to such an attitude are, one will realise immediately how utterly different Nietzsche was from his ideal. The man who insatiably cries da capo to himself and to the whole of his mise-en-scene, must be in a position to desire every incident in his life to be repeated, not once, but again and again eternally. Now, Nietzsche’s life had been too full of disappointments, illness, unsuccessful struggles, and snubs, to allow of his thinking of the Eternal Recurrence without loathing—hence probably the words of the last verse. In verses 15 and 16, we have Nietzsche declaring himself an evolutionist in the broadest sense—that is to say, that he believes in the Development Hypothesis as the description of the process by which species have originated. Now, to understand his position correctly we must show his relationship to the two greatest of modern evolutionists—Darwin and Spencer. As a philosopher, however, Nietzsche does not stand or fall by his objections to the Darwinian or Spencerian cosmogony. He never laid claim to a very profound knowledge of biology, and his criticism is far more valuable as the attitude of a fresh mind than as that of a specialist towards the question. Moreover, in his objections many difficulties are raised which are not settled by an appeal to either of the men above mentioned. We have given Nietzsche’s definition of life in the Note on Chapter LVI., par. 10. Still, there remains a hope that Darwin and Nietzsche may some day become reconciled by a new description of the processes by which varieties occur. The appearance of varieties among animals and of “ sporting plants” in the vegetable kingdom, is still shrouded in mystery, and the question whether this is not precisely the ground on which Darwin and Nietzsche will meet, is an interesting one. The former says in his “ Origin of Species”, concerning the causes of variability: “ …there are two factors, namely, the nature of the organism, and the nature of the conditions. THE FORMER SEEMS TO BE MUCH THE MORE IMPORTANT (The italics are mine.), for nearly similar variations sometimes arise under, as far as we can judge, dissimilar conditions; and on the other hand, dissimilar variations arise under conditions which appear to be nearly uniform.” Nietzsche, recognising this same truth, would ascribe practically all the importance to the “ highest functionaries in the organism, in which the life-will appears as an active and formative principle,” and except in certain cases (where passive organisms alone are concerned) would not give such a prominent place to the influence of environment. Adaptation, according to him, is merely a secondary activity, a mere re-activity, and he is therefore quite opposed to Spencer’s definition: “ Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.” Again in the motive force behind animal and plant life, Nietzsche disagrees with Darwin. He transforms the “ Struggle for Existence”—the passive and involuntary condition—into the “ Struggle for Power,” which is active and creative, and much more in harmony with Darwin’s own view, given above, concerning the importance of the organism itself. The change is one of such far-reaching importance that we cannot dispose of it in a breath, as a mere play upon words. “ Much is reckoned higher than life itself by the living one.” Nietzsche says that to speak of the activity of life as a “ struggle for existence,” is to state the case inadequately. He warns us not to confound Malthus with nature. There is something more than this struggle between the organic beings on this earth; want, which is supposed to bring this struggle about, is not so common as is supposed; some other force must be operative. The Will to Power is this force, “ the instinct of self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results thereof.” A certain lack of acumen in psychological questions and the condition of affairs in England at the time Darwin wrote, may both, according to Nietzsche, have induced the renowned naturalist to describe the forces of nature as he did in his “ Origin of Species”. In verses 28, 29, and 30 of the second portion of this discourse we meet with a doctrine which, at first sight, seems to be merely “ le manoir a l’envers,” indeed one English critic has actually said of Nietzsche, that “ Thus Spake Zarathustra” is no more than a compendium of modern views and maxims turned upside down. Examining these heterodox pronouncements a little more closely, however, we may possibly perceive their truth. Regarding good and evil as purely relative values, it stands to reason that what may be bad or evil in a given man, relative to a certain environment, may actually be good if not highly virtuous in him relative to a certain other environment. If this hypothetical man represent the ascending line of life—that is to say, if he promise all that which is highest in a Graeco-Roman sense, then it is likely that he will be condemned as wicked if introduced into the society of men representing the opposite and descending line of life. By depriving a man of his wickedness—more particularly nowadays— therefore, one may unwittingly be doing violence to the greatest in him. It may be an outrage against his wholeness, just as the lopping-off of a leg would be. Fortunately, the natural so-called “ wickedness” of higher men has in a certain measure been able to resist this lopping process which successive slave-moralities have practised; but signs are not wanting which show that the noblest wickedness is fast vanishing from society—the wickedness of courage and determination—and that Nietzsche had good reasons for crying: “ Ah, that (man’s) baddest is so very small! Ah, that his best is so very small. What is good? To be brave is good! It is the good war which halloweth every cause!” (see also par. 5, “ Higher Man”).
Chapter LX. The Seven Seals. This is a final paean which Zarathustra sings to Eternity and the marriage-ring of rings, the ring of the Eternal Recurrence. … PART IV. In my opinion this part is Nietzsche’s open avowal that all his philosophy, together with all his hopes, enthusiastic outbursts, blasphemies, prolixities, and obscurities, were merely so many gifts laid at the feet of higher men. He had no desire to save the world. What he wished to determine was: Who is to be master of the world? This is a very different thing. He came to save higher men;—to give them that freedom by which, alone, they can develop and reach their zenith (see Note on Chapter LIV., end). It has been argued, and with considerable force, that no such philosophy is required by higher men, that, as a matter of fact, higher men, by virtue of their constitutions always, do stand Beyond Good and Evil, and never allow anything to stand in the way of their complete growth. Nietzsche, however, was evidently not so confident about this. He would probably have argued that we only see the successful cases. Being a great man himself, he was well aware of the dangers threatening greatness in our age. In “ Beyond Good and Evil” he writes: “ There are few pains so grievous as to have seen, divined, or experienced how an exceptional man has missed his way and deteriorated…” He knew “ from his painfullest recollections on what wretched obstacles promising developments of the highest rank have hitherto usually gone to pieces, broken down, sunk, and become contemptible.” Now in Part IV. we shall find that his strongest temptation to descend to the feeling of “ pity” for his contemporaries, is the “ cry for help” which he hears from the lips of the higher men exposed to the dreadful danger of their modern environment. Chapter LXI. The Honey Sacrifice. In the fourteenth verse of this discourse Nietzsche defines the solemn duty he imposed upon himself: “ Become what thou art.” Surely the criticism which has been directed against this maxim must all fall to the ground when it is remembered, once and for all, that Nietzsche’s teaching was never intended to be other than an esoteric one. “ I am a law only for mine own,” he says emphatically, “ I am not a law for all.” It is of the greatest importance to humanity that its highest individuals should be allowed to attain to their full development; for, only by means of its heroes can the human race be led forward step by step to higher and yet higher levels. “ Become what thou art” applied to all, of course, becomes a vicious maxim; it is to be hoped, however, that we may learn in time that the same action performed by a given number of men, loses its identity precisely that same number of times.—“ Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi.” At the last eight verses many readers may be tempted to laugh. In England we almost always laugh when a man takes himself seriously at anything save sport. And there is of course no reason why the reader should not be hilarious.—A certain greatness is requisite, both in order to be sublime and to have reverence for the sublime. Nietzsche earnestly believed that the Zarathustra-kingdom—his dynasty of a thousand years—would one day come; if he had not believed it so earnestly, if every artist in fact had not believed so earnestly in his Hazar, whether of ten, fifteen, a hundred, or a thousand years, we should have lost all our higher men; they would have become pessimists, suicides, or merchants. If the minor poet and philosopher has made us shy of the prophetic seriousness which characterized an Isaiah or a Jeremiah, it is surely our loss and the minor poet’s gain. Chapter LXII. The Cry of Distress. We now meet with Zarathustra in extraordinary circumstances. He is confronted with Schopenhauer and tempted by the old Soothsayer to commit the sin of pity. “ I have come that I may seduce thee to thy last sin!” says the Soothsayer to Zarathustra. It will be remembered that in Schopenhauer’s ethics, pity is elevated to the highest place among the virtues, and very consistently too, seeing that the Weltanschauung is a pessimistic one. Schopenhauer appeals to Nietzsche’s deepest and strongest sentiment—his sympathy for higher men. “ Why dost thou conceal thyself?” he cries. “ It is THE HIGHER MAN that calleth for thee!” Zarathustra is almost overcome by the Soothsayer’s pleading, as he had been once already in the past, but he resists him step by step. At length he can withstand him no longer, and, on the plea that the higher man is on his ground and therefore under his protection, Zarathustra departs in search of him, leaving Schopenhauer—a higher man in Nietzsche’s opinion—in the cave as a guest. Chapter LXIII. Talk with the Kings. On his way Zarathustra meets two more higher men of his time; two kings cross his path. They are above the average modern type; for their instincts tell them what real ruling is, and they despise the mockery which they have been taught to call “ Reigning.” “ We ARE NOT the first men,” they say, “ and have nevertheless to STAND FOR them: of this imposture have we at last become weary and disgusted.” It is the kings who tell Zarathustra: “ There is no sorer misfortune in all human destiny than when the mighty of the earth are not also the first men. There everything becometh false and distorted and monstrous.” The kings are also asked by Zarathustra to accept the shelter of his cave, whereupon he proceeds on his way. Chapter LXIV. The Leech. Among the higher men whom Zarathustra wishes to save, is also the scientific specialist—the man who honestly and scrupulously pursues his investigations, as Darwin did, in one department of knowledge. “ I love him who liveth in order to know, and seeketh to know in order that the Superman may hereafter live. Thus seeketh he his own down-going.” “ The spiritually conscientious one,” he is called in this discourse. Zarathustra steps on him unawares, and the slave of science, bleeding from the violence he has done to himself by his self-imposed task, speaks proudly of his little sphere of knowledge—his little hand’s breadth of ground on Zarathustra’s territory, philosophy. “ Where mine honesty ceaseth,” says the true scientific specialist, “ there am I blind and want also to be blind. Where I want to know, however, there want I also to be honest—namely, severe, rigorous, restricted,
cruel, and inexorable.” Zarathustra greatly respecting this man, invites him too to the cave, and then vanishes in answer to another cry for help. Chapter LXV. The Magician. The Magician is of course an artist, and Nietzsche’s intimate knowledge of perhaps the greatest artist of his age rendered the selection of Wagner, as the type in this discourse, almost inevitable. Most readers will be acquainted with the facts relating to Nietzsche’s and Wagner’s friendship and ultimate separation. As a boy and a youth Nietzsche had shown such a remarkable gift for music that it had been a question at one time whether he should not perhaps give up everything else in order to develop this gift, but he became a scholar notwithstanding, although he never entirely gave up composing, and playing the piano. While still in his teens, he became acquainted with Wagner’s music and grew passionately fond of it. Long before he met Wagner he must have idealised him in his mind to an extent which only a profoundly artistic nature could have been capable of. Nietzsche always had high ideals for humanity. If one were asked whether, throughout his many changes, there was yet one aim, one direction, and one hope to which he held fast, one would be forced to reply in the affirmative and declare that aim, direction, and hope to have been “ the elevation of the type man.” Now, when Nietzsche met Wagner he was actually casting about for an incarnation of his dreams for the German people, and we have only to remember his youth (he was twenty-one when he was introduced to Wagner), his love of Wagner’s music, and the undoubted power of the great musician’s personality, in order to realise how very uncritical his attitude must have been in the first flood of his enthusiasm. Again, when the friendship ripened, we cannot well imagine Nietzsche, the younger man, being anything less than intoxicated by his senior’s attention and love, and we are therefore not surprised to find him pressing Wagner forward as the great Reformer and Saviour of mankind. “ Wagner in Bayreuth” (English Edition, 1909) gives us the best proof of Nietzsche’s infatuation, and although signs are not wanting in this essay which show how clearly and even cruelly he was sub-consciously “ taking stock” of his friend—even then, the work is a record of what great love and admiration can do in the way of endowing the object of one’s affection with all the qualities and ideals that a fertile imagination can conceive. When the blow came it was therefore all the more severe. Nietzsche at length realised that the friend of his fancy and the real Richard Wagner—the composer of Parsifal—were not one; the fact dawned upon him slowly; disappointment upon disappointment, revelation after revelation, ultimately brought it home to him, and though his best instincts were naturally opposed to it at first, the revulsion of feeling at last became too strong to be ignored, and Nietzsche was plunged into the blackest despair. Years after his break with Wagner, he wrote “ The Case of Wagner”, and “ Nietzsche contra Wagner”, and these works are with us to prove the sincerity and depth of his views on the man who was the greatest event of his life. The poem in this discourse is, of course, reminiscent of Wagner’s own poetical manner, and it must be remembered that the whole was written subsequent to Nietzsche’s final break with his friend. The dialogue between Zarathustra and the Magician reveals pretty fully what it was that Nietzsche grew to loathe so intensely in Wagner,—viz., his pronounced histrionic tendencies, his dissembling powers, his inordinate vanity, his equivocalness, his falseness. “ It honoureth thee,” says Zarathustra, “ that thou soughtest for greatness, but it betrayeth thee also. Thou art not great.” The Magician is nevertheless sent as a guest to Zarathustra’s cave; for, in his heart, Zarathustra believed until the end that the Magician was a higher man broken by modern values. Chapter LXVI. Out of Service. Zarathustra now meets the last pope, and, in a poetical form, we get Nietzsche’s description of the course Judaism and Christianity pursued before they reached their final break-up in Atheism, Agnosticism, and the like. The God of a strong, warlike race—the God of Israel—is a jealous, revengeful God. He is a power that can be pictured and endured only by a hardy and courageous race, a race rich enough to sacrifice and to lose in sacrifice. The image of this God degenerates with the people that appropriate it, and gradually He becomes a God of love—“ soft and mellow,” a lower middle-class deity, who is “ pitiful.” He can no longer be a God who requires sacrifice, for we ourselves are no longer rich enough for that. The tables are therefore turned upon Him; HE must sacrifice to us. His pity becomes so great that he actually does sacrifice something to us—His only begotten Son. Such a process carried to its logical conclusions must ultimately end in His own destruction, and thus we find the pope declaring that God was one day suffocated by His all-too-great pity. What follows is clear enough. Zarathustra recognises another higher man in the ex-pope and sends him too as a guest to the cave. Chapter LXVII. The Ugliest Man. This discourse contains perhaps the boldest of Nietzsche’s suggestions concerning Atheism, as well as some extremely penetrating remarks upon the sentiment of pity. Zarathustra comes across the repulsive creature sitting on the wayside, and what does he do? He manifests the only correct feelings that can be manifested in the presence of any great misery—that is to say, shame, reverence, embarrassment. Nietzsche detested the obtrusive and gushing pity that goes up to misery without a blush either on its cheek or in its heart—the pity which is only another form of self-glorification. “ Thank God that I am not like thee!”—only this self-glorifying sentiment can lend a well-constituted man the impudence to SHOW his pity for the cripple and the ill-constituted. In the presence of the ugliest man Nietzsche blushes,—he blushes for his race; his own particular kind of altruism—the altruism that might have prevented the existence of this man—strikes him with all its force. He will have the world otherwise. He will have a world where one need not blush for one’s fellows— hence his appeal to us to love only our children’s land, the land undiscovered in the remotest sea. Zarathustra calls the ugliest man the murderer of God! Certainly, this is one aspect of a certain kind of Atheism—the Atheism of the man who reveres beauty to such an extent that his own ugliness, which outrages him, must be concealed from every eye lest it should not be respected as Zarathustra respected it. If there be a God, He too must be evaded. His pity must be foiled. But God is ubiquitous and omniscient. Therefore, for the really GREAT ugly man, He must not exist. “ Their pity IS it from which I flee away,” he says—that is to say: “ It is from their want of reverence and lack of shame in presence of my great misery!” The ugliest man despises himself; but Zarathustra said in his Prologue: “ I love the great
despisers because they are the great adorers, and arrows of longing for the other shore.” He therefore honours the ugliest man: sees height in his self-contempt, and invites him to join the other higher men in the cave. Chapter LXVIII. The Voluntary Beggar. In this discourse, we undoubtedly have the ideal Buddhist, if not Gautama Buddha himself. Nietzsche had the greatest respect for Buddhism, and almost wherever he refers to it in his works, it is in terms of praise. He recognised that though Buddhism is undoubtedly a religion for decadents, its decadent values emanate from the higher and not, as in Christianity, from the lower grades of society. In Aphorism 20 of “ The Antichrist”, he compares it exhaustively with Christianity, and the result of his investigation is very much in favour of the older religion. Still, he recognised a most decided Buddhistic influence in Christ’s teaching, and the words in verses 29, 30, and 31 are very reminiscent of his views in regard to the Christian Savior. The figure of Christ has been introduced often enough into fiction, and many scholars have undertaken to write His life according to their own lights, but few perhaps have ever attempted to present Him to us bereft of all those characteristics which a lack of the sense of harmony has attached to His person through the ages in which His doctrines have been taught. Now Nietzsche disagreed entirely with Renan’s view, that Christ was “ le grand maitre en ironie”; in Aphorism 31 of “ The Antichrist”, he says that he (Nietzsche) always purged his picture of the Humble Nazarene of all those bitter and spiteful outbursts which, in view of the struggle the first Christians went through, may very well have been added to the original character by Apologists and Sectarians who, at that time, could ill afford to consider nice psychological points, seeing that what they needed, above all, was a wrangling and abusive deity. These two conflicting halves in the character of the Christ of the Gospels, which no sound psychology can ever reconcile, Nietzsche always kept distinct in his own mind; he could not credit the same man with sentiments sometimes so noble and at other times so vulgar, and in presenting us with this new portrait of the Saviour, purged of all impurities, Nietzsche rendered military honours to a foe, which far exceed in worth all that His most ardent disciples have ever claimed for Him. In verse 26 we are vividly reminded of Herbert Spencer’s words “ ‘Le mariage de convenance’ is legalised prostitution.” Chapter LXIX. The Shadow. Here we have a description of that courageous and wayward spirit that literally haunts the footsteps of every great thinker and every great leader; sometimes with the result that it loses all aims, all hopes, and all trust in a definite goal. It is the case of the bravest and most broad-minded men of to-day. These literally shadow the most daring movements in the science and art of their generation; they completely lose their bearings and actually find themselves, in the end, without a way, a goal, or a home. “ On every surface have I already sat! …I become thin, I am almost equal to a shadow!” At last, in despair, such men do indeed cry out: “ Nothing is true; all is permitted,” and then they become mere wreckage. “ Too much hath become clear unto me: now nothing mattereth to me any more. Nothing liveth any longer that I love,—how should I still love myself! Have I still a goal? Where is MY home?” Zarathustra realises the danger threatening such a man. “ Thy danger is not small, thou free spirit and wanderer,” he says. “ Thou hast had a bad day. See that a still worse evening doth not overtake thee!” The danger Zarathustra refers to is precisely this, that even a prison may seem a blessing to such a man. At least the bars keep him in a place of rest; a place of confinement, at its worst, is real. “ Beware lest in the end a narrow faith capture thee,” says Zarathustra, “ for now everything that is narrow and fixed seduceth and tempteth thee.” Chapter LXX. Noontide. At the noon of life Nietzsche said he entered the world; with him man came of age. We are now held responsible for our actions; our old guardians, the gods and demi-gods of our youth, the superstitions and fears of our childhood, withdraw; the field lies open before us; we lived through our morning with but one master—chance—; let us see to it that we MAKE our afternoon our own (see Note XLIX., Part III.). Chapter LXXI. The Greeting. Here I think I may claim that my contention in regard to the purpose and aim of the whole of Nietzsche’s philosophy (as stated at the beginning of my Notes on Part IV.) is completely upheld. He fought for “ all who do not want to live, unless they learn again to HOPE—unless THEY learn (from him) the GREAT hope!” Zarathustra’s address to his guests shows clearly enough how he wished to help them: “ I DO NOT TREAT MY WARRIORS INDULGENTLY,” he says: “ how then could ye be fit for MY warfare?” He rebukes and spurns them, no word of love comes from his lips. Elsewhere he says a man should be a hard bed to his friend, thus alone can he be of use to him. Nietzsche would be a hard bed to higher men. He would make them harder; for, in order to be a law unto himself, man must possess the requisite hardness. “ I wait for higher ones, stronger ones, more triumphant ones, merrier ones, for such as are built squarely in body and soul.” He says in par. 6 of “ Higher Man”:— “ Ye higher men, think ye that I am here to put right what ye have put wrong? Or that I wished henceforth to make snugger couches for you sufferers? Or show you restless, miswandering, misclimbing ones new and easier footpaths?” “ Nay! Nay! Three times nay! Always more, always better ones of your type shall succumb—for ye shall always have it worse and harder.” Chapter LXXII. The Supper. In the first seven verses of this discourse, I cannot help seeing a gentle allusion to Schopenhauer’s habits as a bon-vivant. For a pessimist, be it remembered, Schopenhauer led quite an extraordinary life. He ate well, loved well, played the flute well, and I believe he smoked the best cigars. What follows is clear enough. Chapter LXXIII. The Higher Man. Par. 1.
Nietzsche admits, here, that at one time he had thought of appealing to the people, to the crowd in the market-place, but that he had ultimately to abandon the task. He bids higher men depart from the market-place. Par. 3. Here we are told quite plainly what class of men actually owe all their impulses and desires to the instinct of self-preservation. The struggle for existence is indeed the only spur in the case of such people. To them it matters not in what shape or condition man be preserved, provided only he survive. The transcendental maxim that “ Life per se is precious” is the ruling maxim here. Par. 4. In the Note on Chapter LVII. (end) I speak of Nietzsche’s elevation of the virtue, Courage, to the highest place among the virtues. Here he tells higher men the class of courage he expects from them. Pars. 5, 6. These have already been referred to in the Notes on Chapters LVII. (end) and LXXI. Par. 7. I suggest that the last verse in this paragraph strongly confirms the view that Nietzsche’s teaching was always meant by him to be esoteric and for higher man alone. Par. 9. In the last verse, here, another shaft of light is thrown upon the Immaculate Perception or so-called “ pure objectivity” of the scientific mind. “ Freedom from fever is still far from being knowledge.” Where a man’s emotions cease to accompany him in his investigations, he is not necessarily nearer the truth. Says Spencer, in the Preface to his Autobiography: —“ In the genesis of a system of thought, the emotional nature is a large factor: perhaps as large a factor as the intellectual nature” (see pages 134, 141 of Vol. I., “ Thoughts out of Season”). Pars. 10, 11. When we approach Nietzsche’s philosophy we must be prepared to be independent thinkers; in fact, the greatest virtue of his works is perhaps the subtlety with which they impose the obligation upon one of thinking alone, of scoring off one’s own bat, and of shifting intellectually for oneself. Par. 13. “ I am a railing alongside the torrent; whoever is able to grasp me, may grasp me! Your crutch, however, I am not.” These two paragraphs are an exhortation to higher men to become independent. Par. 15. Here Nietzsche perhaps exaggerates the importance of heredity. As, however, the question is by no means one on which we are all agreed, what he says is not without value. A very important principle in Nietzsche’s philosophy is enunciated in the first verse of this paragraph. “ The higher its type, always the seldomer doth a thing succeed” (see page 82 of “ Beyond Good and Evil”). Those who, like some political economists, talk in a business-like way about the terrific waste of human life and energy, deliberately overlook the fact that the waste most to be deplored usually occurs among higher individuals. Economy was never precisely one of nature’s leading principles. All this sentimental wailing over the larger proportion of failures than successes in human life, does not seem to take into account the fact that it is the rarest thing on earth for a highly organised being to attain to the fullest development and activity of all its functions, simply because it is so highly organised. The blind Will to Power in nature therefore stands in urgent need of direction by man. Pars. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. These paragraphs deal with Nietzsche’s protest against the democratic seriousness (Pobelernst) of modern times. “ All good things laugh,” he says, and his final command to the higher men is, “ LEARN, I pray you—to laugh.” All that is GOOD, in Nietzsche’s sense, is cheerful. To be able to crack a joke about one’s deepest feelings is the greatest test of their value. The man who does not laugh, like the man who does not make faces, is already a buffoon at heart. “ What hath hitherto been the greatest sin here on earth? Was it not the word of him who said: ‘Woe unto them that laugh now!’ Did he himself find no cause for laughter on the earth? Then he sought badly. A child even findeth cause for it.” Chapter LXXIV. The Song of Melancholy. After his address to the higher men, Zarathustra goes out into the open to recover himself. Meanwhile the magician (Wagner), seizing the opportunity in order to draw them all into his net once more, sings the Song of Melancholy. Chapter LXXV. Science. The only one to resist the “ melancholy voluptuousness” of his art, is the spiritually conscientious one—the scientific specialist of whom we read in the discourse entitled “ The Leech”. He takes the harp from the magician and cries for air, while reproving the musician in the style of “ The Case of Wagner”. When the magician retaliates by saying that the spiritually conscientious one could have understood little of his song, the latter replies: “ Thou praisest me in that thou separatest me from thyself.” The speech of the scientific man to his fellow higher men is well worth studying. By means of it, Nietzsche pays a high tribute to the honesty of the true specialist, while, in representing him as the only one who
can resist the demoniacal influence of the magician’s music, he elevates him at a stroke, above all those present. Zarathustra and the spiritually conscientious one join issue at the end on the question of the proper place of “ fear” in man’s history, and Nietzsche avails himself of the opportunity in order to restate his views concerning the relation of courage to humanity. It is precisely because courage has played the most important part in our development that he would not see it vanish from among our virtues to-day. “ …courage seemeth to me the entire primitive history of man.” Chapter LXXVI. Among the Daughters of the Desert. This tells its own tale. Chapter LXXVII. The Awakening. In this discourse, Nietzsche wishes to give his followers a warning. He thinks he has so far helped them that they have become convalescent, that new desires are awakened in them and that new hopes are in their arms and legs. But he mistakes the nature of the change. True, he has helped them, he has given them back what they most need, i.e., belief in believing—the confidence in having confidence in something, but how do they use it? This belief in faith, if one can so express it without seeming tautological, has certainly been restored to them, and in the first flood of their enthusiasm they use it by bowing down and worshipping an ass! When writing this passage, Nietzsche was obviously thinking of the accusations which were levelled at the early Christians by their pagan contemporaries. It is well known that they were supposed not only to be eaters of human flesh but also assworshippers, and among the Roman graffiti, the most famous is the one found on the Palatino, showing a man worshipping a cross on which is suspended a figure with the head of an ass (see Minucius Felix, “ Octavius” IX.; Tacitus, “ Historiae” v. 3; Tertullian, “ Apologia”, etc.). Nietzsche’s obvious moral, however, is that great scientists and thinkers, once they have reached the wall encircling scepticism and have thereby learned to recover their confidence in the act of believing, as such, usually manifest the change in their outlook by falling victims to the narrowest and most superstitious of creeds. So much for the introduction of the ass as an object of worship. Now, with regard to the actual service and Ass-Festival, no reader who happens to be acquainted with the religious history of the Middle Ages will fail to see the allusion here to the asinaria festa which were by no means uncommon in France, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Chapter LXXVIII. The Ass-Festival. At length, in the middle of their feast, Zarathustra bursts in upon them and rebukes them soundly. But he does not do so long; in the Ass-Festival, it suddenly occurs to him, that he is concerned with a ceremony that may not be without its purpose, as something foolish but necessary—a recreation for wise men. He is therefore highly pleased that the higher men have all blossomed forth; they therefore require new festivals,—“ A little valiant nonsense, some divine service and ass-festival, some old joyful Zarathustra fool, some blusterer to blow their souls bright.” He tells them not to forget that night and the ass-festival, for “ such things only the convalescent devise! And should ye celebrate it again,” he concludes, “ do it from love to yourselves, do it also from love to me! And in remembrance of ME!” Chapter LXXIX. The Drunken Song. It were the height of presumption to attempt to fix any particular interpretation of my own to the words of this song. With what has gone before, the reader, while reading it as poetry, should be able to seek and find his own meaning in it. The doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence appears for the last time here, in an art-form. Nietzsche lays stress upon the fact that all happiness, all delight, longs for repetitions, and just as a child cries “ Again! Again!” to the adult who happens to be amusing him; so the man who sees a meaning, and a joyful meaning, in existence must also cry “ Again!” and yet “ Again!” to all his life. Chapter LXXX. The Sign. In this discourse, Nietzsche disassociates himself finally from the higher men, and by the symbol of the lion, wishes to convey to us that he has won over and mastered the best and the most terrible in nature. That great power and tenderness are kin, was already his belief in 1875—eight years before he wrote this speech, and when the birds and the lion come to him, it is because he is the embodiment of the two qualities. All that is terrible and great in nature, the higher men are not yet prepared for; for they retreat horror-stricken into the cave when the lion springs at them; but Zarathustra makes not a move towards them. He was tempted to them on the previous day, he says, but “ That hath had its time! My suffering and my fellow suffering,—what matter about them! Do I then strive after HAPPINESS? I strive after my work! Well! the lion hath come, my children are nigh. Zarathustra hath grown ripe. MY day beginneth: ARISE NOW, ARISE, THOU GREAT NOONDAY!” … The above I know to be open to much criticism. I shall be grateful to all those who will be kind enough to show me where and how I have gone wrong; but I should like to point out that, as they stand, I have not given to these Notes by any means their final form. ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI. London, February 1909.
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
Translated by Helen Zimmern PREFACE SUPPOSING that Truth is a woman—what then? Is there not ground for suspecting that all philosophers, in so far as they have been dogmatists, have failed to understand women—that the terrible seriousness and clumsy importunity with which they have usually paid their addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly methods for winning a woman? Certainly she has never allowed herself to be won; and at present every kind of dogma stands with sad and discouraged mien—IF, indeed, it stands at all! For there are scoffers who maintain that it has fallen, that all dogma lies on the ground—nay more, that it is at its last gasp. But to speak seriously, there are good grounds for hoping that all dogmatizing in philosophy, whatever solemn, whatever conclusive and decided airs it has assumed, may have been only a noble puerilism and tyronism; and probably the time is at hand when it will be once and again understood WHAT has actually sufficed for the basis of such imposing and absolute philosophical edifices as the dogmatists have hitherto reared: perhaps some popular superstition of immemorial time (such as the soul-superstition, which, in the form of subject- and ego-superstition, has not yet ceased doing mischief): perhaps some play upon words, a deception on the part of grammar, or an audacious generalization of very restricted, very personal, very human—all-too-human facts. The philosophy of the dogmatists, it is to be hoped, was only a promise for thousands of years afterwards, as was astrology in still earlier times, in the service of which probably more labour, gold, acuteness, and patience have been spent than on any actual science hitherto: we owe to it, and to its “ super-terrestrial” pretensions in Asia and Egypt, the grand style of architecture. It seems that in order to inscribe themselves upon the heart of humanity with everlasting claims, all great things have first to wander about the earth as enormous and awe-inspiring caricatures: dogmatic philosophy has been a caricature of this kind—for instance, the Vedanta doctrine in Asia, and Platonism in Europe. Let us not be ungrateful to it, although it must certainly be confessed that the worst, the most tiresome, and the most dangerous of errors hitherto has been a dogmatist error—namely, Plato’s invention of Pure Spirit and the Good in Itself. But now when it has been surmounted, when Europe, rid of this nightmare, can again draw breath freely and at least enjoy a healthier—sleep, we, WHOSE DUTY IS WAKEFULNESS ITSELF, are the heirs of all the strength which the struggle against this error has fostered. It amounted to the very inversion of truth, and the denial of the PERSPECTIVE—the fundamental condition—of life, to speak of Spirit and the Good as Plato spoke of them; indeed one might ask, as a physician: “ How did such a malady attack that finest product of antiquity, Plato? Had the wicked Socrates really corrupted him? Was Socrates after all a corrupter of youths, and deserved his hemlock?” But the struggle against Plato, or—to speak plainer, and for the “ people”—the struggle against the ecclesiastical oppression of millenniums of Christianity (FOR CHRISTIANITY IS PLATONISM FOR THE “ PEOPLE”), produced in Europe a magnificent tension of soul, such as had not existed anywhere previously; with such a tensely strained bow one can now aim at the furthest goals. As a matter of fact, the European feels this tension as a state of distress, and twice attempts have been made in grand style to unbend the bow: once by means of Jesuitism, and the second time by means of democratic enlightenment—which, with the aid of liberty of the press and newspaper-reading, might, in fact, bring it about that the spirit would not so easily find itself in “ distress”! (The Germans invented gunpowder—all credit to them! but they again made things square—they invented printing.) But we, who are neither Jesuits, nor democrats, nor even sufficiently Germans, we GOOD EUROPEANS, and free, VERY free spirits—we have it still, all the distress of spirit and all the tension of its bow! And perhaps also the arrow, the duty, and, who knows? THE GOAL TO AIM AT…. Sils Maria Upper Engadine, JUNE, 1885. CHAPTER I. PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS 1. The Will to Truth, which is to tempt us to many a hazardous enterprise, the famous Truthfulness of which all philosophers have hitherto spoken with respect, what questions has this Will to Truth not laid before us! What strange, perplexing, questionable questions! It is already a long story; yet it seems as if it were hardly commenced. Is it any wonder if we at last grow distrustful, lose patience, and turn impatiently away? That this Sphinx teaches us at last to ask questions ourselves? WHO is it really that puts questions to us here? WHAT really is this “ Will to Truth” in us? In fact we made a long halt at the question as to the origin of this Will—until at last we came to an absolute standstill before a yet more fundamental question. We inquired about the VALUE of this Will. Granted that we want the truth: WHY NOT RATHER untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? The problem of the value of truth presented itself before us—or was it we who presented ourselves before the problem? Which of us is the Oedipus here? Which the Sphinx? It would seem to be a rendezvous of questions and notes of interrogation. And could it be believed that it at last seems to us as if the problem had never been propounded before, as if we were the first to discern it, get a sight of it, and RISK RAISING it? For there is risk in raising it, perhaps there is no greater risk. 2. “ HOW COULD anything originate out of its opposite? For example, truth out of error? or the Will to Truth out of the will to deception? or the generous deed out of selfishness? or the pure sun-bright vision of the wise man out of covetousness? Such genesis is impossible; whoever dreams of it is a fool, nay, worse than a fool; things of the highest value must have a different origin, an origin of THEIR own—in this transitory, seductive, illusory, paltry world, in this turmoil of delusion and cupidity, they cannot have their source. But rather in the lap of Being, in the intransitory, in the concealed God, in the ‘Thing-in-itself—THERE must be their source, and nowhere else!”—This mode of reasoning discloses the typical prejudice by which metaphysicians of all times can be recognized, this mode of valuation is at the back of all their logical procedure; through this “ belief” of theirs, they exert themselves for their “ knowledge,” for something that is in the end solemnly christened “ the Truth.” The fundamental belief of metaphysicians is THE BELIEF IN ANTITHESES OF VALUES. It never occurred even to the wariest of them to doubt here on the very threshold (where doubt, however, was most necessary); though they had made a solemn vow, “ DE OMNIBUS DUBITANDUM.” For it may be doubted, firstly, whether antitheses exist at all; and secondly, whether the popular valuations and antitheses of value upon which metaphysicians have set their seal, are not perhaps merely superficial estimates, merely provisional perspectives, besides being probably made from
some corner, perhaps from below—“ frog perspectives,” as it were, to borrow an expression current among painters. In spite of all the value which may belong to the true, the positive, and the unselfish, it might be possible that a higher and more fundamental value for life generally should be assigned to pretence, to the will to delusion, to selfishness, and cupidity. It might even be possible that WHAT constitutes the value of those good and respected things, consists precisely in their being insidiously related, knotted, and crocheted to these evil and apparently opposed things—perhaps even in being essentially identical with them. Perhaps! But who wishes to concern himself with such dangerous “ Perhapses”! For that investigation one must await the advent of a new order of philosophers, such as will have other tastes and inclinations, the reverse of those hitherto prevalent—philosophers of the dangerous “ Perhaps” in every sense of the term. And to speak in all seriousness, I see such new philosophers beginning to appear. 3. Having kept a sharp eye on philosophers, and having read between their lines long enough, I now say to myself that the greater part of conscious thinking must be counted among the instinctive functions, and it is so even in the case of philosophical thinking; one has here to learn anew, as one learned anew about heredity and “ innateness.” As little as the act of birth comes into consideration in the whole process and procedure of heredity, just as little is “ being-conscious” OPPOSED to the instinctive in any decisive sense; the greater part of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly influenced by his instincts, and forced into definite channels. And behind all logic and its seeming sovereignty of movement, there are valuations, or to speak more plainly, physiological demands, for the maintenance of a definite mode of life For example, that the certain is worth more than the uncertain, that illusion is less valuable than “ truth” such valuations, in spite of their regulative importance for US, might notwithstanding be only superficial valuations, special kinds of niaiserie, such as may be necessary for the maintenance of beings such as ourselves. Supposing, in effect, that man is not just the “ measure of things.” 4. The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it: it is here, perhaps, that our new language sounds most strangely. The question is, how far an opinion is lifefurthering, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing, and we are fundamentally inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions (to which the synthetic judgments a priori belong), are the most indispensable to us, that without a recognition of logical fictions, without a comparison of reality with the purely IMAGINED world of the absolute and immutable, without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers, man could not live—that the renunciation of false opinions would be a renunciation of life, a negation of life. TO RECOGNISE UNTRUTH AS A CONDITION OF LIFE; that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so, has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil. 5. That which causes philosophers to be regarded half-distrustfully and half-mockingly, is not the oft-repeated discovery how innocent they are—how often and easily they make mistakes and lose their way, in short, how childish and childlike they are,—but that there is not enough honest dealing with them, whereas they all raise a loud and virtuous outcry when the problem of truthfulness is even hinted at in the remotest manner. They all pose as though their real opinions had been discovered and attained through the self-evolving of a cold, pure, divinely indifferent dialectic (in contrast to all sorts of mystics, who, fairer and foolisher, talk of “ inspiration”), whereas, in fact, a prejudiced proposition, idea, or “ suggestion,” which is generally their heart’s desire abstracted and refined, is defended by them with arguments sought out after the event. They are all advocates who do not wish to be regarded as such, generally astute defenders, also, of their prejudices, which they dub “ truths,”—and VERY far from having the conscience which bravely admits this to itself, very far from having the good taste of the courage which goes so far as to let this be understood, perhaps to warn friend or foe, or in cheerful confidence and self-ridicule. The spectacle of the Tartuffery of old Kant, equally stiff and decent, with which he entices us into the dialectic by-ways that lead (more correctly mislead) to his “ categorical imperative”—makes us fastidious ones smile, we who find no small amusement in spying out the subtle tricks of old moralists and ethical preachers. Or, still more so, the hocus-pocus in mathematical form, by means of which Spinoza has, as it were, clad his philosophy in mail and mask—in fact, the “ love of HIS wisdom,” to translate the term fairly and squarely—in order thereby to strike terror at once into the heart of the assailant who should dare to cast a glance on that invincible maiden, that Pallas Athene:—how much of personal timidity and vulnerability does this masquerade of a sickly recluse betray! 6. It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now has consisted of—namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography; and moreover that the moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true vital germ out of which the entire plant has always grown. Indeed, to understand how the abstrusest metaphysical assertions of a philosopher have been arrived at, it is always well (and wise) to first ask oneself: “ What morality do they (or does he) aim at?” Accordingly, I do not believe that an “ impulse to knowledge” is the father of philosophy; but that another impulse, here as elsewhere, has only made use of knowledge (and mistaken knowledge!) as an instrument. But whoever considers the fundamental impulses of man with a view to determining how far they may have here acted as INSPIRING GENII (or as demons and cobolds), will find that they have all practiced philosophy at one time or another, and that each one of them would have been only too glad to look upon itself as the ultimate end of existence and the legitimate LORD over all the other impulses. For every impulse is imperious, and as SUCH, attempts to philosophize. To be sure, in the case of scholars, in the case of really scientific men, it may be otherwise—“ better,” if you will; there there may really be such a thing as an “ impulse to knowledge,” some kind of small, independent clock-work, which, when well wound up, works away industriously to that end, WITHOUT the rest of the scholarly impulses taking any material part therein. The actual “ interests” of the scholar, therefore, are generally in quite another direction—in the family, perhaps, or in money-making, or in politics; it is, in fact, almost indifferent at what point of research his little machine is placed, and whether the hopeful young worker becomes a good philologist, a mushroom specialist, or a chemist; he is not CHARACTERISED by becoming this or that. In the philosopher, on the contrary, there is absolutely nothing impersonal; and above all, his morality furnishes a decided and decisive testimony as to WHO HE IS,—that is to say, in what order the deepest impulses of his nature stand to each other. 7. How malicious philosophers can be! I know of nothing more stinging than the joke Epicurus took the liberty of making on Plato and the Platonists; he called them
Dionysiokolakes. In its original sense, and on the face of it, the word signifies “ Flatterers of Dionysius”—consequently, tyrants’ accessories and lick-spittles; besides this, however, it is as much as to say, “ They are all ACTORS, there is nothing genuine about them” (for Dionysiokolax was a popular name for an actor). And the latter is really the malignant reproach that Epicurus cast upon Plato: he was annoyed by the grandiose manner, the mise en scene style of which Plato and his scholars were masters—of which Epicurus was not a master! He, the old school-teacher of Samos, who sat concealed in his little garden at Athens, and wrote three hundred books, perhaps out of rage and ambitious envy of Plato, who knows! Greece took a hundred years to find out who the garden-god Epicurus really was. Did she ever find out? 8. There is a point in every philosophy at which the “ conviction” of the philosopher appears on the scene; or, to put it in the words of an ancient mystery: Adventavit asinus, Pulcher et fortissimus. 9. You desire to LIVE “ according to Nature”? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power—how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference? To live—is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, “ living according to Nature,” means actually the same as “ living according to life”—how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature “ according to the Stoa,” and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise—and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves—Stoicism is self-tyranny—Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature?… But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to “ creation of the world,” the will to the causa prima. 10. The eagerness and subtlety, I should even say craftiness, with which the problem of “ the real and the apparent world” is dealt with at present throughout Europe, furnishes food for thought and attention; and he who hears only a “ Will to Truth” in the background, and nothing else, cannot certainly boast of the sharpest ears. In rare and isolated cases, it may really have happened that such a Will to Truth—a certain extravagant and adventurous pluck, a metaphysician’s ambition of the forlorn hope—has participated therein: that which in the end always prefers a handful of “ certainty” to a whole cartload of beautiful possibilities; there may even be puritanical fanatics of conscience, who prefer to put their last trust in a sure nothing, rather than in an uncertain something. But that is Nihilism, and the sign of a despairing, mortally wearied soul, notwithstanding the courageous bearing such a virtue may display. It seems, however, to be otherwise with stronger and livelier thinkers who are still eager for life. In that they side AGAINST appearance, and speak superciliously of “ perspective,” in that they rank the credibility of their own bodies about as low as the credibility of the ocular evidence that “ the earth stands still,” and thus, apparently, allowing with complacency their securest possession to escape (for what does one at present believe in more firmly than in one’s body?),—who knows if they are not really trying to win back something which was formerly an even securer possession, something of the old domain of the faith of former times, perhaps the “ immortal soul,” perhaps “ the old God,” in short, ideas by which they could live better, that is to say, more vigorously and more joyously, than by “ modern ideas”? There is DISTRUST of these modern ideas in this mode of looking at things, a disbelief in all that has been constructed yesterday and today; there is perhaps some slight admixture of satiety and scorn, which can no longer endure the BRIC-A-BRAC of ideas of the most varied origin, such as so-called Positivism at present throws on the market; a disgust of the more refined taste at the village-fair motleyness and patchiness of all these reality-philosophasters, in whom there is nothing either new or true, except this motleyness. Therein it seems to me that we should agree with those skeptical anti-realists and knowledge-microscopists of the present day; their instinct, which repels them from MODERN reality, is unrefuted… what do their retrograde by-paths concern us! The main thing about them is NOT that they wish to go “ back,” but that they wish to get AWAY therefrom. A little MORE strength, swing, courage, and artistic power, and they would be OFF—and not back! 11. It seems to me that there is everywhere an attempt at present to divert attention from the actual influence which Kant exercised on German philosophy, and especially to ignore prudently the value which he set upon himself. Kant was first and foremost proud of his Table of Categories; with it in his hand he said: “ This is the most difficult thing that could ever be undertaken on behalf of metaphysics.” Let us only understand this “ could be”! He was proud of having DISCOVERED a new faculty in man, the faculty of synthetic judgment a priori. Granting that he deceived himself in this matter; the development and rapid flourishing of German philosophy depended nevertheless on his pride, and on the eager rivalry of the younger generation to discover if possible something—at all events “ new faculties”—of which to be still prouder!—But let us reflect for a moment—it is high time to do so. “ How are synthetic judgments a priori POSSIBLE?” Kant asks himself—and what is really his answer? “ BY MEANS OF A MEANS (faculty)”—but unfortunately not in five words, but so circumstantially, imposingly, and with such display of German profundity and verbal flourishes, that one altogether loses sight of the comical niaiserie allemande involved in such an answer. People were beside themselves with delight over this new faculty, and the jubilation reached its climax when Kant further discovered a moral faculty in man—for at that time Germans were still moral, not yet dabbling in the “ Politics of hard fact.” Then came the honeymoon of German philosophy. All the young theologians of the
Tubingen institution went immediately into the groves—all seeking for “ faculties.” And what did they not find—in that innocent, rich, and still youthful period of the German spirit, to which Romanticism, the malicious fairy, piped and sang, when one could not yet distinguish between “ finding” and “ inventing”! Above all a faculty for the “ transcendental”; Schelling christened it, intellectual intuition, and thereby gratified the most earnest longings of the naturally pious-inclined Germans. One can do no greater wrong to the whole of this exuberant and eccentric movement (which was really youthfulness, notwithstanding that it disguised itself so boldly, in hoary and senile conceptions), than to take it seriously, or even treat it with moral indignation. Enough, however—the world grew older, and the dream vanished. A time came when people rubbed their foreheads, and they still rub them today. People had been dreaming, and first and foremost—old Kant. “ By means of a means (faculty)”—he had said, or at least meant to say. But, is that—an answer? An explanation? Or is it not rather merely a repetition of the question? How does opium induce sleep? “ By means of a means (faculty),” namely the virtus dormitiva, replies the doctor in Moliere, Quia est in eo virtus dormitiva, Cujus est natura sensus assoupire. But such replies belong to the realm of comedy, and it is high time to replace the Kantian question, “ How are synthetic judgments a PRIORI possible?” by another question, “ Why is belief in such judgments necessary?”—in effect, it is high time that we should understand that such judgments must be believed to be true, for the sake of the preservation of creatures like ourselves; though they still might naturally be false judgments! Or, more plainly spoken, and roughly and readily—synthetic judgments a priori should not “ be possible” at all; we have no right to them; in our mouths they are nothing but false judgments. Only, of course, the belief in their truth is necessary, as plausible belief and ocular evidence belonging to the perspective view of life. And finally, to call to mind the enormous influence which “ German philosophy”—I hope you understand its right to inverted commas (goosefeet)?—has exercised throughout the whole of Europe, there is no doubt that a certain VIRTUS DORMITIVA had a share in it; thanks to German philosophy, it was a delight to the noble idlers, the virtuous, the mystics, the artiste, the three-fourths Christians, and the political obscurantists of all nations, to find an antidote to the still overwhelming sensualism which overflowed from the last century into this, in short—“ sensus assoupire.”… 12. As regards materialistic atomism, it is one of the best-refuted theories that have been advanced, and in Europe there is now perhaps no one in the learned world so unscholarly as to attach serious signification to it, except for convenient everyday use (as an abbreviation of the means of expression)—thanks chiefly to the Pole Boscovich: he and the Pole Copernicus have hitherto been the greatest and most successful opponents of ocular evidence. For while Copernicus has persuaded us to believe, contrary to all the senses, that the earth does NOT stand fast, Boscovich has taught us to abjure the belief in the last thing that “ stood fast” of the earth—the belief in “ substance,” in “ matter,” in the earth-residuum, and particle-atom: it is the greatest triumph over the senses that has hitherto been gained on earth. One must, however, go still further, and also declare war, relentless war to the knife, against the “ atomistic requirements” which still lead a dangerous after-life in places where no one suspects them, like the more celebrated “ metaphysical requirements”: one must also above all give the finishing stroke to that other and more portentous atomism which Christianity has taught best and longest, the SOUL-ATOMISM. Let it be permitted to designate by this expression the belief which regards the soul as something indestructible, eternal, indivisible, as a monad, as an atomon: this belief ought to be expelled from science! Between ourselves, it is not at all necessary to get rid of “ the soul” thereby, and thus renounce one of the oldest and most venerated hypotheses—as happens frequently to the clumsiness of naturalists, who can hardly touch on the soul without immediately losing it. But the way is open for new acceptations and refinements of the soul-hypothesis; and such conceptions as “ mortal soul,” and “ soul of subjective multiplicity,” and “ soul as social structure of the instincts and passions,” want henceforth to have legitimate rights in science. In that the NEW psychologist is about to put an end to the superstitions which have hitherto flourished with almost tropical luxuriance around the idea of the soul, he is really, as it were, thrusting himself into a new desert and a new distrust—it is possible that the older psychologists had a merrier and more comfortable time of it; eventually, however, he finds that precisely thereby he is also condemned to INVENT—and, who knows? perhaps to DISCOVER the new. 13. Psychologists should bethink themselves before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to DISCHARGE its strength—life itself is WILL TO POWER; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent RESULTS thereof. In short, here, as everywhere else, let us beware of SUPERFLUOUS teleological principles!—one of which is the instinct of self-preservation (we owe it to Spinoza’s inconsistency). It is thus, in effect, that method ordains, which must be essentially economy of principles. 14. It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that natural philosophy is only a world-exposition and world-arrangement (according to us, if I may say so!) and NOT a worldexplanation; but in so far as it is based on belief in the senses, it is regarded as more, and for a long time to come must be regarded as more—namely, as an explanation. It has eyes and fingers of its own, it has ocular evidence and palpableness of its own: this operates fascinatingly, persuasively, and CONVINCINGLY upon an age with fundamentally plebeian tastes—in fact, it follows instinctively the canon of truth of eternal popular sensualism. What is clear, what is “ explained”? Only that which can be seen and felt—one must pursue every problem thus far. Obversely, however, the charm of the Platonic mode of thought, which was an ARISTOCRATIC mode, consisted precisely in RESISTANCE to obvious sense-evidence—perhaps among men who enjoyed even stronger and more fastidious senses than our contemporaries, but who knew how to find a higher triumph in remaining masters of them: and this by means of pale, cold, grey conceptional networks which they threw over the motley whirl of the senses—the mob of the senses, as Plato said. In this overcoming of the world, and interpreting of the world in the manner of Plato, there was an ENJOYMENT different from that which the physicists of today offer us—and likewise the Darwinists and anti-teleologists among the physiological workers, with their principle of the “ smallest possible effort,” and the greatest possible blunder. “ Where there is nothing more to see or to grasp, there is also nothing more for men to do”—that is certainly an imperative different from the Platonic one, but it may notwithstanding be the right imperative
for a hardy, laborious race of machinists and bridge-builders of the future, who have nothing but ROUGH work to perform. 15. To study physiology with a clear conscience, one must insist on the fact that the sense-organs are not phenomena in the sense of the idealistic philosophy; as such they certainly could not be causes! Sensualism, therefore, at least as regulative hypothesis, if not as heuristic principle. What? And others say even that the external world is the work of our organs? But then our body, as a part of this external world, would be the work of our organs! But then our organs themselves would be the work of our organs! It seems to me that this is a complete REDUCTIO ADSURDUM, if the conception CAUSA SUI is something fundamentally absurd. Consequently, the external world is NOT the work of our organs—? 16. There are still harmless self-observers who believe that there are “ immediate certainties”; for instance, “ I think,” or as the superstition of Schopenhauer puts it, “ I will”; as though cognition here got hold of its object purely and simply as “ the thing in itself,” without any falsification taking place either on the part of the subject or the object. I would repeat it, however, a hundred times, that “ immediate certainty,” as well as “ absolute knowledge” and the “ thing in itself,” involve a CONTRADICTIO IN ADJECTO; we really ought to free ourselves from the misleading significance of words! The people on their part may think that cognition is knowing all about things, but the philosopher must say to himself: “ When I analyze the process that is expressed in the sentence, ‘I think,’ I find a whole series of daring assertions, the argumentative proof of which would be difficult, perhaps impossible: for instance, that it is I who think, that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an ‘ego,’ and finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking—that I KNOW what thinking is. For if I had not already decided within myself what it is, by what standard could I determine whether that which is just happening is not perhaps ‘willing’ or ‘feeling’? In short, the assertion ‘I think,’ assumes that I COMPARE my state at the present moment with other states of myself which I know, in order to determine what it is; on account of this retrospective connection with further ‘knowledge,’ it has, at any rate, no immediate certainty for me.”—In place of the “ immediate certainty” in which the people may believe in the special case, the philosopher thus finds a series of metaphysical questions presented to him, veritable conscience questions of the intellect, to wit: “ Whence did I get the notion of ‘thinking’? Why do I believe in cause and effect? What gives me the right to speak of an ‘ego,’ and even of an ‘ego’ as cause, and finally of an ‘ego’ as cause of thought?” He who ventures to answer these metaphysical questions at once by an appeal to a sort of INTUITIVE perception, like the person who says, “ I think, and know that this, at least, is true, actual, and certain”—will encounter a smile and two notes of interrogation in a philosopher nowadays. “ Sir,” the philosopher will perhaps give him to understand, “ it is improbable that you are not mistaken, but why should it be the truth?” 17. With regard to the superstitions of logicians, I shall never tire of emphasizing a small, terse fact, which is unwillingly recognized by these credulous minds—namely, that a thought comes when “ it” wishes, and not when “ I” wish; so that it is a PERVERSION of the facts of the case to say that the subject “ I” is the condition of the predicate “ think.” ONE thinks; but that this “ one” is precisely the famous old “ ego,” is, to put it mildly, only a supposition, an assertion, and assuredly not an “ immediate certainty.” After all, one has even gone too far with this “ one thinks”—even the “ one” contains an INTERPRETATION of the process, and does not belong to the process itself. One infers here according to the usual grammatical formula—“ To think is an activity; every activity requires an agency that is active; consequently”… It was pretty much on the same lines that the older atomism sought, besides the operating “ power,” the material particle wherein it resides and out of which it operates—the atom. More rigorous minds, however, learnt at last to get along without this “ earth-residuum,” and perhaps some day we shall accustom ourselves, even from the logician’s point of view, to get along without the little “ one” (to which the worthy old “ ego” has refined itself). 18. It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable; it is precisely thereby that it attracts the more subtle minds. It seems that the hundred-times-refuted theory of the “ free will” owes its persistence to this charm alone; some one is always appearing who feels himself strong enough to refute it. 19. Philosophers are accustomed to speak of the will as though it were the best-known thing in the world; indeed, Schopenhauer has given us to understand that the will alone is really known to us, absolutely and completely known, without deduction or addition. But it again and again seems to me that in this case Schopenhauer also only did what philosophers are in the habit of doing—he seems to have adopted a POPULAR PREJUDICE and exaggerated it. Willing seems to me to be above all something COMPLICATED, something that is a unity only in name—and it is precisely in a name that popular prejudice lurks, which has got the mastery over the inadequate precautions of philosophers in all ages. So let us for once be more cautious, let us be “ unphilosophical”: let us say that in all willing there is firstly a plurality of sensations, namely, the sensation of the condition “ AWAY FROM WHICH we go,” the sensation of the condition “ TOWARDS WHICH we go,” the sensation of this “ FROM” and “ TOWARDS” itself, and then besides, an accompanying muscular sensation, which, even without our putting in motion “ arms and legs,” commences its action by force of habit, directly we “ will” anything. Therefore, just as sensations (and indeed many kinds of sensations) are to be recognized as ingredients of the will, so, in the second place, thinking is also to be recognized; in every act of the will there is a ruling thought;—and let us not imagine it possible to sever this thought from the “ willing,” as if the will would then remain over! In the third place, the will is not only a complex of sensation and thinking, but it is above all an EMOTION, and in fact the emotion of the command. That which is termed “ freedom of the will” is essentially the emotion of supremacy in respect to him who must obey: “ I am free, ‘he’ must obey”—this consciousness is inherent in every will; and equally so the straining of the attention, the straight look which fixes itself exclusively on one thing, the unconditional judgment that “ this and nothing else is necessary now,” the inward certainty that obedience will be rendered—and whatever else pertains to the position of the commander. A man who WILLS commands something within himself which renders obedience, or which he believes renders obedience. But now let us notice what is the strangest thing about the will,—this affair so extremely complex, for which the people have only one name. Inasmuch as in the given circumstances
we are at the same time the commanding AND the obeying parties, and as the obeying party we know the sensations of constraint, impulsion, pressure, resistance, and motion, which usually commence immediately after the act of will; inasmuch as, on the other hand, we are accustomed to disregard this duality, and to deceive ourselves about it by means of the synthetic term “ I”: a whole series of erroneous conclusions, and consequently of false judgments about the will itself, has become attached to the act of willing—to such a degree that he who wills believes firmly that willing SUFFICES for action. Since in the majority of cases there has only been exercise of will when the effect of the command—consequently obedience, and therefore action—was to be EXPECTED, the APPEARANCE has translated itself into the sentiment, as if there were a NECESSITY OF EFFECT; in a word, he who wills believes with a fair amount of certainty that will and action are somehow one; he ascribes the success, the carrying out of the willing, to the will itself, and thereby enjoys an increase of the sensation of power which accompanies all success. “ Freedom of Will”—that is the expression for the complex state of delight of the person exercising volition, who commands and at the same time identifies himself with the executor of the order—who, as such, enjoys also the triumph over obstacles, but thinks within himself that it was really his own will that overcame them. In this way the person exercising volition adds the feelings of delight of his successful executive instruments, the useful “ underwills” or under-souls —indeed, our body is but a social structure composed of many souls—to his feelings of delight as commander. L’EFFET C’EST MOI. what happens here is what happens in every well-constructed and happy commonwealth, namely, that the governing class identifies itself with the successes of the commonwealth. In all willing it is absolutely a question of commanding and obeying, on the basis, as already said, of a social structure composed of many “ souls”, on which account a philosopher should claim the right to include willing-assuch within the sphere of morals—regarded as the doctrine of the relations of supremacy under which the phenomenon of “ life” manifests itself. 20. That the separate philosophical ideas are not anything optional or autonomously evolving, but grow up in connection and relationship with each other, that, however suddenly and arbitrarily they seem to appear in the history of thought, they nevertheless belong just as much to a system as the collective members of the fauna of a Continent—is betrayed in the end by the circumstance: how unfailingly the most diverse philosophers always fill in again a definite fundamental scheme of POSSIBLE philosophies. Under an invisible spell, they always revolve once more in the same orbit, however independent of each other they may feel themselves with their critical or systematic wills, something within them leads them, something impels them in definite order the one after the other—to wit, the innate methodology and relationship of their ideas. Their thinking is, in fact, far less a discovery than a re-recognizing, a remembering, a return and a home-coming to a far-off, ancient common-household of the soul, out of which those ideas formerly grew: philosophizing is so far a kind of atavism of the highest order. The wonderful family resemblance of all Indian, Greek, and German philosophizing is easily enough explained. In fact, where there is affinity of language, owing to the common philosophy of grammar—I mean owing to the unconscious domination and guidance of similar grammatical functions—it cannot but be that everything is prepared at the outset for a similar development and succession of philosophical systems, just as the way seems barred against certain other possibilities of world-interpretation. It is highly probable that philosophers within the domain of the Ural-Altaic languages (where the conception of the subject is least developed) look otherwise “ into the world,” and will be found on paths of thought different from those of the Indo-Germans and Mussulmans, the spell of certain grammatical functions is ultimately also the spell of PHYSIOLOGICAL valuations and racial conditions.—So much by way of rejecting Locke’s superficiality with regard to the origin of ideas. 21. The CAUSA SUI is the best self-contradiction that has yet been conceived, it is a sort of logical violation and unnaturalness; but the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with this very folly. The desire for “ freedom of will” in the superlative, metaphysical sense, such as still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated, the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one’s actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society therefrom, involves nothing less than to be precisely this CAUSA SUI, and, with more than Munchausen daring, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the slough of nothingness. If any one should find out in this manner the crass stupidity of the celebrated conception of “ free will” and put it out of his head altogether, I beg of him to carry his “ enlightenment” a step further, and also put out of his head the contrary of this monstrous conception of “ free will”: I mean “ non-free will,” which is tantamount to a misuse of cause and effect. One should not wrongly MATERIALISE “ cause” and “ effect,” as the natural philosophers do (and whoever like them naturalize in thinking at present), according to the prevailing mechanical doltishness which makes the cause press and push until it “ effects” its end; one should use “ cause” and “ effect” only as pure CONCEPTIONS, that is to say, as conventional fictions for the purpose of designation and mutual understanding,—NOT for explanation. In “ being-in-itself” there is nothing of “ casual-connection,” of “ necessity,” or of “ psychological non-freedom”; there the effect does NOT follow the cause, there “ law” does not obtain. It is WE alone who have devised cause, sequence, reciprocity, relativity, constraint, number, law, freedom, motive, and purpose; and when we interpret and intermix this symbol-world, as “ being-in-itself,” with things, we act once more as we have always acted—MYTHOLOGICALLY. The “ non-free will” is mythology; in real life it is only a question of STRONG and WEAK wills.—It is almost always a symptom of what is lacking in himself, when a thinker, in every “ causal-connection” and “ psychological necessity,” manifests something of compulsion, indigence, obsequiousness, oppression, and nonfreedom; it is suspicious to have such feelings—the person betrays himself. And in general, if I have observed correctly, the “ non-freedom of the will” is regarded as a problem from two entirely opposite standpoints, but always in a profoundly PERSONAL manner: some will not give up their “ responsibility,” their belief in THEMSELVES, the personal right to THEIR merits, at any price (the vain races belong to this class); others on the contrary, do not wish to be answerable for anything, or blamed for anything, and owing to an inward self-contempt, seek to GET OUT OF THE BUSINESS, no matter how. The latter, when they write books, are in the habit at present of taking the side of criminals; a sort of socialistic sympathy is their favourite disguise. And as a matter of fact, the fatalism of the weak-willed embellishes itself surprisingly when it can pose as “ la religion de la souffrance humaine”; that is ITS “ good taste.” 22. Let me be pardoned, as an old philologist who cannot desist from the mischief of putting his finger on bad modes of interpretation, but “ Nature’s conformity to law,” of which
you physicists talk so proudly, as though—why, it exists only owing to your interpretation and bad “ philology.” It is no matter of fact, no “ text,” but rather just a naively humanitarian adjustment and perversion of meaning, with which you make abundant concessions to the democratic instincts of the modern soul! “ Everywhere equality before the law —Nature is not different in that respect, nor better than we”: a fine instance of secret motive, in which the vulgar antagonism to everything privileged and autocratic—likewise a second and more refined atheism—is once more disguised. “ Ni dieu, ni maitre”—that, also, is what you want; and therefore “ Cheers for natural law!”—is it not so? But, as has been said, that is interpretation, not text; and somebody might come along, who, with opposite intentions and modes of interpretation, could read out of the same “ Nature,” and with regard to the same phenomena, just the tyrannically inconsiderate and relentless enforcement of the claims of power—an interpreter who should so place the unexceptionalness and unconditionalness of all “ Will to Power” before your eyes, that almost every word, and the word “ tyranny” itself, would eventually seem unsuitable, or like a weakening and softening metaphor—as being too human; and who should, nevertheless, end by asserting the same about this world as you do, namely, that it has a “ necessary” and “ calculable” course, NOT, however, because laws obtain in it, but because they are absolutely LACKING, and every power effects its ultimate consequences every moment. Granted that this also is only interpretation—and you will be eager enough to make this objection?—well, so much the better. 23. All psychology hitherto has run aground on moral prejudices and timidities, it has not dared to launch out into the depths. In so far as it is allowable to recognize in that which has hitherto been written, evidence of that which has hitherto been kept silent, it seems as if nobody had yet harboured the notion of psychology as the Morphology and DEVELOPMENT-DOCTRINE OF THE WILL TO POWER, as I conceive of it. The power of moral prejudices has penetrated deeply into the most intellectual world, the world apparently most indifferent and unprejudiced, and has obviously operated in an injurious, obstructive, blinding, and distorting manner. A proper physio-psychology has to contend with unconscious antagonism in the heart of the investigator, it has “ the heart” against it even a doctrine of the reciprocal conditionalness of the “ good” and the “ bad” impulses, causes (as refined immorality) distress and aversion in a still strong and manly conscience—still more so, a doctrine of the derivation of all good impulses from bad ones. If, however, a person should regard even the emotions of hatred, envy, covetousness, and imperiousness as life-conditioning emotions, as factors which must be present, fundamentally and essentially, in the general economy of life (which must, therefore, be further developed if life is to be further developed), he will suffer from such a view of things as from sea-sickness. And yet this hypothesis is far from being the strangest and most painful in this immense and almost new domain of dangerous knowledge, and there are in fact a hundred good reasons why every one should keep away from it who CAN do so! On the other hand, if one has once drifted hither with one’s bark, well! very good! now let us set our teeth firmly! let us open our eyes and keep our hand fast on the helm! We sail away right OVER morality, we crush out, we destroy perhaps the remains of our own morality by daring to make our voyage thither—but what do WE matter. Never yet did a PROFOUNDER world of insight reveal itself to daring travelers and adventurers, and the psychologist who thus “ makes a sacrifice”—it is not the sacrifizio dell’ intelletto, on the contrary!—will at least be entitled to demand in return that psychology shall once more be recognized as the queen of the sciences, for whose service and equipment the other sciences exist. For psychology is once more the path to the fundamental problems. CHAPTER II. THE FREE SPIRIT 24. O sancta simplicitiatas! In what strange simplification and falsification man lives! One can never cease wondering when once one has got eyes for beholding this marvel! How we have made everything around us clear and free and easy and simple! how we have been able to give our senses a passport to everything superficial, our thoughts a godlike desire for wanton pranks and wrong inferences!—how from the beginning, we have contrived to retain our ignorance in order to enjoy an almost inconceivable freedom, thoughtlessness, imprudence, heartiness, and gaiety—in order to enjoy life! And only on this solidified, granite-like foundation of ignorance could knowledge rear itself hitherto, the will to knowledge on the foundation of a far more powerful will, the will to ignorance, to the uncertain, to the untrue! Not as its opposite, but—as its refinement! It is to be hoped, indeed, that LANGUAGE, here as elsewhere, will not get over its awkwardness, and that it will continue to talk of opposites where there are only degrees and many refinements of gradation; it is equally to be hoped that the incarnated Tartuffery of morals, which now belongs to our unconquerable “ flesh and blood,” will turn the words round in the mouths of us discerning ones. Here and there we understand it, and laugh at the way in which precisely the best knowledge seeks most to retain us in this SIMPLIFIED, thoroughly artificial, suitably imagined, and suitably falsified world: at the way in which, whether it will or not, it loves error, because, as living itself, it loves life! 25. After such a cheerful commencement, a serious word would fain be heard; it appeals to the most serious minds. Take care, ye philosophers and friends of knowledge, and beware of martyrdom! Of suffering “ for the truth’s sake”! even in your own defense! It spoils all the innocence and fine neutrality of your conscience; it makes you headstrong against objections and red rags; it stupefies, animalizes, and brutalizes, when in the struggle with danger, slander, suspicion, expulsion, and even worse consequences of enmity, ye have at last to play your last card as protectors of truth upon earth—as though “ the Truth” were such an innocent and incompetent creature as to require protectors! and you of all people, ye knights of the sorrowful countenance, Messrs Loafers and Cobweb-spinners of the spirit! Finally, ye know sufficiently well that it cannot be of any consequence if YE just carry your point; ye know that hitherto no philosopher has carried his point, and that there might be a more laudable truthfulness in every little interrogative mark which you place after your special words and favourite doctrines (and occasionally after yourselves) than in all the solemn pantomime and trumping games before accusers and law-courts! Rather go out of the way! Flee into concealment! And have your masks and your ruses, that ye may be mistaken for what you are, or somewhat feared! And pray, don’t forget the garden, the garden with golden trellis-work! And have people around you who are as a garden—or as music on the waters at eventide, when already the day becomes a memory. Choose the GOOD solitude, the free, wanton, lightsome solitude, which also gives you the right still to remain good in any sense whatsoever! How poisonous, how crafty, how bad, does every long war make one, which cannot be waged openly by means of force! How PERSONAL does a long fear make one, a long watching of enemies, of possible enemies! These pariahs of society, these
long-pursued, badly-persecuted ones—also the compulsory recluses, the Spinozas or Giordano Brunos—always become in the end, even under the most intellectual masquerade, and perhaps without being themselves aware of it, refined vengeance-seekers and poison-Brewers (just lay bare the foundation of Spinoza’s ethics and theology!), not to speak of the stupidity of moral indignation, which is the unfailing sign in a philosopher that the sense of philosophical humour has left him. The martyrdom of the philosopher, his “ sacrifice for the sake of truth,” forces into the light whatever of the agitator and actor lurks in him; and if one has hitherto contemplated him only with artistic curiosity, with regard to many a philosopher it is easy to understand the dangerous desire to see him also in his deterioration (deteriorated into a “ martyr,” into a stage-and-tribune-bawler). Only, that it is necessary with such a desire to be clear WHAT spectacle one will see in any case—merely a satyric play, merely an epilogue farce, merely the continued proof that the long, real tragedy IS AT AN END, supposing that every philosophy has been a long tragedy in its origin. 26. Every select man strives instinctively for a citadel and a privacy, where he is FREE from the crowd, the many, the majority—where he may forget “ men who are the rule,” as their exception;—exclusive only of the case in which he is pushed straight to such men by a still stronger instinct, as a discerner in the great and exceptional sense. Whoever, in intercourse with men, does not occasionally glisten in all the green and grey colours of distress, owing to disgust, satiety, sympathy, gloominess, and solitariness, is assuredly not a man of elevated tastes; supposing, however, that he does not voluntarily take all this burden and disgust upon himself, that he persistently avoids it, and remains, as I said, quietly and proudly hidden in his citadel, one thing is then certain: he was not made, he was not predestined for knowledge. For as such, he would one day have to say to himself: “ The devil take my good taste! but ‘the rule’ is more interesting than the exception—than myself, the exception!” And he would go DOWN, and above all, he would go “ inside.” The long and serious study of the AVERAGE man—and consequently much disguise, self-overcoming, familiarity, and bad intercourse (all intercourse is bad intercourse except with one’s equals):—that constitutes a necessary part of the life-history of every philosopher; perhaps the most disagreeable, odious, and disappointing part. If he is fortunate, however, as a favourite child of knowledge should be, he will meet with suitable auxiliaries who will shorten and lighten his task; I mean so-called cynics, those who simply recognize the animal, the commonplace and “ the rule” in themselves, and at the same time have so much spirituality and ticklishness as to make them talk of themselves and their like BEFORE WITNESSES—sometimes they wallow, even in books, as on their own dung-hill. Cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach what is called honesty; and the higher man must open his ears to all the coarser or finer cynicism, and congratulate himself when the clown becomes shameless right before him, or the scientific satyr speaks out. There are even cases where enchantment mixes with the disgust—namely, where by a freak of nature, genius is bound to some such indiscreet billy-goat and ape, as in the case of the Abbe Galiani, the profoundest, acutest, and perhaps also filthiest man of his century—he was far profounder than Voltaire, and consequently also, a good deal more silent. It happens more frequently, as has been hinted, that a scientific head is placed on an ape’s body, a fine exceptional understanding in a base soul, an occurrence by no means rare, especially among doctors and moral physiologists. And whenever anyone speaks without bitterness, or rather quite innocently, of man as a belly with two requirements, and a head with one; whenever any one sees, seeks, and WANTS to see only hunger, sexual instinct, and vanity as the real and only motives of human actions; in short, when any one speaks “ badly”—and not even “ ill”—of man, then ought the lover of knowledge to hearken attentively and diligently; he ought, in general, to have an open ear wherever there is talk without indignation. For the indignant man, and he who perpetually tears and lacerates himself with his own teeth (or, in place of himself, the world, God, or society), may indeed, morally speaking, stand higher than the laughing and self-satisfied satyr, but in every other sense he is the more ordinary, more indifferent, and less instructive case. And no one is such a LIAR as the indignant man. 27. It is difficult to be understood, especially when one thinks and lives gangasrotogati [Footnote: Like the river Ganges: presto.] among those only who think and live otherwise —namely, kurmagati [Footnote: Like the tortoise: lento.], or at best “ froglike,” mandeikagati [Footnote: Like the frog: staccato.] (I do everything to be “ difficultly understood” myself!)—and one should be heartily grateful for the good will to some refinement of interpretation. As regards “ the good friends,” however, who are always too easy-going, and think that as friends they have a right to ease, one does well at the very first to grant them a play-ground and romping-place for misunderstanding—one can thus laugh still; or get rid of them altogether, these good friends—and laugh then also! 28. What is most difficult to render from one language into another is the TEMPO of its style, which has its basis in the character of the race, or to speak more physiologically, in the average TEMPO of the assimilation of its nutriment. There are honestly meant translations, which, as involuntary vulgarizations, are almost falsifications of the original, merely because its lively and merry TEMPO (which overleaps and obviates all dangers in word and expression) could not also be rendered. A German is almost incapacitated for PRESTO in his language; consequently also, as may be reasonably inferred, for many of the most delightful and daring NUANCES of free, free-spirited thought. And just as the buffoon and satyr are foreign to him in body and conscience, so Aristophanes and Petronius are untranslatable for him. Everything ponderous, viscous, and pompously clumsy, all long-winded and wearying species of style, are developed in profuse variety among Germans—pardon me for stating the fact that even Goethe’s prose, in its mixture of stiffness and elegance, is no exception, as a reflection of the “ good old time” to which it belongs, and as an expression of German taste at a time when there was still a “ German taste,” which was a rococo-taste in moribus et artibus. Lessing is an exception, owing to his histrionic nature, which understood much, and was versed in many things; he who was not the translator of Bayle to no purpose, who took refuge willingly in the shadow of Diderot and Voltaire, and still more willingly among the Roman comedy-writers—Lessing loved also free-spiritism in the TEMPO, and flight out of Germany. But how could the German language, even in the prose of Lessing, imitate the TEMPO of Machiavelli, who in his “ Principe” makes us breathe the dry, fine air of Florence, and cannot help presenting the most serious events in a boisterous allegrissimo, perhaps not without a malicious artistic sense of the contrast he ventures to present—long, heavy, difficult, dangerous thoughts, and a TEMPO of the gallop, and of the best, wantonest humour? Finally, who would venture on a German translation of
Petronius, who, more than any great musician hitherto, was a master of PRESTO in invention, ideas, and words? What matter in the end about the swamps of the sick, evil world, or of the “ ancient world,” when like him, one has the feet of a wind, the rush, the breath, the emancipating scorn of a wind, which makes everything healthy, by making everything RUN! And with regard to Aristophanes—that transfiguring, complementary genius, for whose sake one PARDONS all Hellenism for having existed, provided one has understood in its full profundity ALL that there requires pardon and transfiguration; there is nothing that has caused me to meditate more on PLATO’S secrecy and sphinx-like nature, than the happily preserved petit fait that under the pillow of his death-bed there was found no “ Bible,” nor anything Egyptian, Pythagorean, or Platonic—but a book of Aristophanes. How could even Plato have endured life—a Greek life which he repudiated—without an Aristophanes! 29. It is the business of the very few to be independent; it is a privilege of the strong. And whoever attempts it, even with the best right, but without being OBLIGED to do so, proves that he is probably not only strong, but also daring beyond measure. He enters into a labyrinth, he multiplies a thousandfold the dangers which life in itself already brings with it; not the least of which is that no one can see how and where he loses his way, becomes isolated, and is torn piecemeal by some minotaur of conscience. Supposing such a one comes to grief, it is so far from the comprehension of men that they neither feel it, nor sympathize with it. And he cannot any longer go back! He cannot even go back again to the sympathy of men! 30. Our deepest insights must—and should—appear as follies, and under certain circumstances as crimes, when they come unauthorizedly to the ears of those who are not disposed and predestined for them. The exoteric and the esoteric, as they were formerly distinguished by philosophers—among the Indians, as among the Greeks, Persians, and Mussulmans, in short, wherever people believed in gradations of rank and NOT in equality and equal rights—are not so much in contradistinction to one another in respect to the exoteric class, standing without, and viewing, estimating, measuring, and judging from the outside, and not from the inside; the more essential distinction is that the class in question views things from below upwards—while the esoteric class views things FROMOVE DOWNWARDS. There are heights of the soul from which tragedy itself no longer appears to operate tragically; and if all the woe in the world were taken together, who would dare to decide whether the sight of it would NECESSARILY seduce and constrain to sympathy, and thus to a doubling of the woe?… That which serves the higher class of men for nourishment or refreshment, must be almost poison to an entirely different and lower order of human beings. The virtues of the common man would perhaps mean vice and weakness in a philosopher; it might be possible for a highly developed man, supposing him to degenerate and go to ruin, to acquire qualities thereby alone, for the sake of which he would have to be honoured as a saint in the lower world into which he had sunk. There are books which have an inverse value for the soul and the health according as the inferior soul and the lower vitality, or the higher and more powerful, make use of them. In the former case they are dangerous, disturbing, unsettling books, in the latter case they are herald-calls which summon the bravest to THEIR bravery. Books for the general reader are always illsmelling books, the odour of paltry people clings to them. Where the populace eat and drink, and even where they reverence, it is accustomed to stink. One should not go into churches if one wishes to breathe PURE air. 31. In our youthful years we still venerate and despise without the art of NUANCE, which is the best gain of life, and we have rightly to do hard penance for having fallen upon men and things with Yea and Nay. Everything is so arranged that the worst of all tastes, THE TASTE FOR THE UNCONDITIONAL, is cruelly befooled and abused, until a man learns to introduce a little art into his sentiments, and prefers to try conclusions with the artificial, as do the real artists of life. The angry and reverent spirit peculiar to youth appears to allow itself no peace, until it has suitably falsified men and things, to be able to vent its passion upon them: youth in itself even, is something falsifying and deceptive. Later on, when the young soul, tortured by continual disillusions, finally turns suspiciously against itself—still ardent and savage even in its suspicion and remorse of conscience: how it upbraids itself, how impatiently it tears itself, how it revenges itself for its long self-blinding, as though it had been a voluntary blindness! In this transition one punishes oneself by distrust of one’s sentiments; one tortures one’s enthusiasm with doubt, one feels even the good conscience to be a danger, as if it were the self-concealment and lassitude of a more refined uprightness; and above all, one espouses upon principle the cause AGAINST “ youth.”—A decade later, and one comprehends that all this was also still—youth! 32. Throughout the longest period of human history—one calls it the prehistoric period—the value or non-value of an action was inferred from its CONSEQUENCES; the action in itself was not taken into consideration, any more than its origin; but pretty much as in China at present, where the distinction or disgrace of a child redounds to its parents, the retro-operating power of success or failure was what induced men to think well or ill of an action. Let us call this period the PRE-MORAL period of mankind; the imperative, “ Know thyself!” was then still unknown.—In the last ten thousand years, on the other hand, on certain large portions of the earth, one has gradually got so far, that one no longer lets the consequences of an action, but its origin, decide with regard to its worth: a great achievement as a whole, an important refinement of vision and of criterion, the unconscious effect of the supremacy of aristocratic values and of the belief in “ origin,” the mark of a period which may be designated in the narrower sense as the MORAL one: the first attempt at selfknowledge is thereby made. Instead of the consequences, the origin—what an inversion of perspective! And assuredly an inversion effected only after long struggle and wavering! To be sure, an ominous new superstition, a peculiar narrowness of interpretation, attained supremacy precisely thereby: the origin of an action was interpreted in the most definite sense possible, as origin out of an INTENTION; people were agreed in the belief that the value of an action lay in the value of its intention. The intention as the sole origin and antecedent history of an action: under the influence of this prejudice moral praise and blame have been bestowed, and men have judged and even philosophized almost up to the present day.—Is it not possible, however, that the necessity may now have arisen of again making up our minds with regard to the reversing and fundamental shifting of values, owing to a new selfconsciousness and acuteness in man—is it not possible that we may be standing on the threshold of a period which to begin with, would be distinguished negatively as ULTRAMORAL: nowadays when, at least among us immoralists, the suspicion arises that the decisive value of an action lies precisely in that which is NOT INTENTIONAL, and that all
its intentionalness, all that is seen, sensible, or “ sensed” in it, belongs to its surface or skin—which, like every skin, betrays something, but CONCEALS still more? In short, we believe that the intention is only a sign or symptom, which first requires an explanation—a sign, moreover, which has too many interpretations, and consequently hardly any meaning in itself alone: that morality, in the sense in which it has been understood hitherto, as intention-morality, has been a prejudice, perhaps a prematureness or preliminariness, probably something of the same rank as astrology and alchemy, but in any case something which must be surmounted. The surmounting of morality, in a certain sense even the selfmounting of morality—let that be the name for the long-secret labour which has been reserved for the most refined, the most upright, and also the most wicked consciences of today, as the living touchstones of the soul. 33. It cannot be helped: the sentiment of surrender, of sacrifice for one’s neighbour, and all self-renunciation-morality, must be mercilessly called to account, and brought to judgment; just as the aesthetics of “ disinterested contemplation,” under which the emasculation of art nowadays seeks insidiously enough to create itself a good conscience. There is far too much witchery and sugar in the sentiments “ for others” and “ NOT for myself,” for one not needing to be doubly distrustful here, and for one asking promptly: “ Are they not perhaps—DECEPTIONS?”—That they PLEASE—him who has them, and him who enjoys their fruit, and also the mere spectator—that is still no argument in their FAVOUR, but just calls for caution. Let us therefore be cautious! 34. At whatever standpoint of philosophy one may place oneself nowadays, seen from every position, the ERRONEOUSNESS of the world in which we think we live is the surest and most certain thing our eyes can light upon: we find proof after proof thereof, which would fain allure us into surmises concerning a deceptive principle in the “ nature of things.” He, however, who makes thinking itself, and consequently “ the spirit,” responsible for the falseness of the world—an honourable exit, which every conscious or unconscious advocatus dei avails himself of—he who regards this world, including space, time, form, and movement, as falsely DEDUCED, would have at least good reason in the end to become distrustful also of all thinking; has it not hitherto been playing upon us the worst of scurvy tricks? and what guarantee would it give that it would not continue to do what it has always been doing? In all seriousness, the innocence of thinkers has something touching and respect-inspiring in it, which even nowadays permits them to wait upon consciousness with the request that it will give them HONEST answers: for example, whether it be “ real” or not, and why it keeps the outer world so resolutely at a distance, and other questions of the same description. The belief in “ immediate certainties” is a MORAL NAIVETE which does honour to us philosophers; but—we have now to cease being “ MERELY moral” men! Apart from morality, such belief is a folly which does little honour to us! If in middle-class life an ever-ready distrust is regarded as the sign of a “ bad character,” and consequently as an imprudence, here among us, beyond the middle-class world and its Yeas and Nays, what should prevent our being imprudent and saying: the philosopher has at length a RIGHT to “ bad character,” as the being who has hitherto been most befooled on earth—he is now under OBLIGATION to distrustfulness, to the wickedest squinting out of every abyss of suspicion.—Forgive me the joke of this gloomy grimace and turn of expression; for I myself have long ago learned to think and estimate differently with regard to deceiving and being deceived, and I keep at least a couple of pokes in the ribs ready for the blind rage with which philosophers struggle against being deceived. Why NOT? It is nothing more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than semblance; it is, in fact, the worst proved supposition in the world. So much must be conceded: there could have been no life at all except upon the basis of perspective estimates and semblances; and if, with the virtuous enthusiasm and stupidity of many philosophers, one wished to do away altogether with the “ seeming world”—well, granted that YOU could do that,—at least nothing of your “ truth” would thereby remain! Indeed, what is it that forces us in general to the supposition that there is an essential opposition of “ true” and “ false”? Is it not enough to suppose degrees of seemingness, and as it were lighter and darker shades and tones of semblance—different valeurs, as the painters say? Why might not the world WHICH CONCERNS US—be a fiction? And to any one who suggested: “ But to a fiction belongs an originator?”—might it not be bluntly replied: WHY? May not this “ belong” also belong to the fiction? Is it not at length permitted to be a little ironical towards the subject, just as towards the predicate and object? Might not the philosopher elevate himself above faith in grammar? All respect to governesses, but is it not time that philosophy should renounce governess-faith? 35. O Voltaire! O humanity! O idiocy! There is something ticklish in “ the truth,” and in the SEARCH for the truth; and if man goes about it too humanely—“ il ne cherche le vrai que pour faire le bien”—I wager he finds nothing! 36. Supposing that nothing else is “ given” as real but our world of desires and passions, that we cannot sink or rise to any other “ reality” but just that of our impulses—for thinking is only a relation of these impulses to one another:—are we not permitted to make the attempt and to ask the question whether this which is “ given” does not SUFFICE, by means of our counterparts, for the understanding even of the so-called mechanical (or “ material”) world? I do not mean as an illusion, a “ semblance,” a “ representation” (in the Berkeleyan and Schopenhauerian sense), but as possessing the same degree of reality as our emotions themselves—as a more primitive form of the world of emotions, in which everything still lies locked in a mighty unity, which afterwards branches off and develops itself in organic processes (naturally also, refines and debilitates)—as a kind of instinctive life in which all organic functions, including self-regulation, assimilation, nutrition, secretion, and change of matter, are still synthetically united with one another—as a PRIMARY FORM of life?—In the end, it is not only permitted to make this attempt, it is commanded by the conscience of LOGICAL METHOD. Not to assume several kinds of causality, so long as the attempt to get along with a single one has not been pushed to its furthest extent (to absurdity, if I may be allowed to say so): that is a morality of method which one may not repudiate nowadays—it follows “ from its definition,” as mathematicians say. The question is ultimately whether we really recognize the will as OPERATING, whether we believe in the causality of the will; if we do so—and fundamentally our belief IN THIS is just our belief in causality itself—we MUST make the attempt to posit hypothetically the causality of the will as the only causality. “ Will” can naturally only operate on “ will”—and not on “ matter” (not on “ nerves,” for instance): in short, the hypothesis must be
hazarded, whether will does not operate on will wherever “ effects” are recognized—and whether all mechanical action, inasmuch as a power operates therein, is not just the power of will, the effect of will. Granted, finally, that we succeeded in explaining our entire instinctive life as the development and ramification of one fundamental form of will—namely, the Will to Power, as my thesis puts it; granted that all organic functions could be traced back to this Will to Power, and that the solution of the problem of generation and nutrition—it is one problem—could also be found therein: one would thus have acquired the right to define ALL active force unequivocally as WILL TO POWER. The world seen from within, the world defined and designated according to its “ intelligible character”—it would simply be “ Will to Power,” and nothing else. 37. “ What? Does not that mean in popular language: God is disproved, but not the devil?”—On the contrary! On the contrary, my friends! And who the devil also compels you to speak popularly! 38. As happened finally in all the enlightenment of modern times with the French Revolution (that terrible farce, quite superfluous when judged close at hand, into which, however, the noble and visionary spectators of all Europe have interpreted from a distance their own indignation and enthusiasm so long and passionately, UNTIL THE TEXT HAS DISAPPEARED UNDER THE INTERPRETATION), so a noble posterity might once more misunderstand the whole of the past, and perhaps only thereby make ITS aspect endurable.—Or rather, has not this already happened? Have not we ourselves been—that “ noble posterity”? And, in so far as we now comprehend this, is it not—thereby already past? 39. Nobody will very readily regard a doctrine as true merely because it makes people happy or virtuous—excepting, perhaps, the amiable “ Idealists,” who are enthusiastic about the good, true, and beautiful, and let all kinds of motley, coarse, and good-natured desirabilities swim about promiscuously in their pond. Happiness and virtue are no arguments. It is willingly forgotten, however, even on the part of thoughtful minds, that to make unhappy and to make bad are just as little counter-arguments. A thing could be TRUE, although it were in the highest degree injurious and dangerous; indeed, the fundamental constitution of existence might be such that one succumbed by a full knowledge of it—so that the strength of a mind might be measured by the amount of “ truth” it could endure—or to speak more plainly, by the extent to which it REQUIRED truth attenuated, veiled, sweetened, damped, and falsified. But there is no doubt that for the discovery of certain PORTIONS of truth the wicked and unfortunate are more favourably situated and have a greater likelihood of success; not to speak of the wicked who are happy—a species about whom moralists are silent. Perhaps severity and craft are more favourable conditions for the development of strong, independent spirits and philosophers than the gentle, refined, yielding good-nature, and habit of taking things easily, which are prized, and rightly prized in a learned man. Presupposing always, to begin with, that the term “ philosopher” be not confined to the philosopher who writes books, or even introduces HIS philosophy into books!—Stendhal furnishes a last feature of the portrait of the free-spirited philosopher, which for the sake of German taste I will not omit to underline—for it is OPPOSED to German taste. “ Pour etre bon philosophe,” says this last great psychologist, “ il faut etre sec, clair, sans illusion. Un banquier, qui a fait fortune, a une partie du caractere requis pour faire des decouvertes en philosophie, c’est-a-dire pour voir clair dans ce qui est.” 40. Everything that is profound loves the mask: the profoundest things have a hatred even of figure and likeness. Should not the CONTRARY only be the right disguise for the shame of a God to go about in? A question worth asking!—it would be strange if some mystic has not already ventured on the same kind of thing. There are proceedings of such a delicate nature that it is well to overwhelm them with coarseness and make them unrecognizable; there are actions of love and of an extravagant magnanimity after which nothing can be wiser than to take a stick and thrash the witness soundly: one thereby obscures his recollection. Many a one is able to obscure and abuse his own memory, in order at least to have vengeance on this sole party in the secret: shame is inventive. They are not the worst things of which one is most ashamed: there is not only deceit behind a mask—there is so much goodness in craft. I could imagine that a man with something costly and fragile to conceal, would roll through life clumsily and rotundly like an old, green, heavily-hooped winecask: the refinement of his shame requiring it to be so. A man who has depths in his shame meets his destiny and his delicate decisions upon paths which few ever reach, and with regard to the existence of which his nearest and most intimate friends may be ignorant; his mortal danger conceals itself from their eyes, and equally so his regained security. Such a hidden nature, which instinctively employs speech for silence and concealment, and is inexhaustible in evasion of communication, DESIRES and insists that a mask of himself shall occupy his place in the hearts and heads of his friends; and supposing he does not desire it, his eyes will some day be opened to the fact that there is nevertheless a mask of him there —and that it is well to be so. Every profound spirit needs a mask; nay, more, around every profound spirit there continually grows a mask, owing to the constantly false, that is to say, SUPERFICIAL interpretation of every word he utters, every step he takes, every sign of life he manifests. 41. One must subject oneself to one’s own tests that one is destined for independence and command, and do so at the right time. One must not avoid one’s tests, although they constitute perhaps the most dangerous game one can play, and are in the end tests made only before ourselves and before no other judge. Not to cleave to any person, be it even the dearest—every person is a prison and also a recess. Not to cleave to a fatherland, be it even the most suffering and necessitous—it is even less difficult to detach one’s heart from a victorious fatherland. Not to cleave to a sympathy, be it even for higher men, into whose peculiar torture and helplessness chance has given us an insight. Not to cleave to a science, though it tempt one with the most valuable discoveries, apparently specially reserved for us. Not to cleave to one’s own liberation, to the voluptuous distance and remoteness of the bird, which always flies further aloft in order always to see more under it—the danger of the flier. Not to cleave to our own virtues, nor become as a whole a victim to any of our specialties, to our “ hospitality” for instance, which is the danger of dangers for highly developed and wealthy souls, who deal prodigally, almost indifferently with themselves, and push the virtue of liberality so far that it becomes a vice. One must know how TO CONSERVE ONESELF—the best test of independence. 42. A new order of philosophers is appearing; I shall venture to baptize them by a name not without danger. As far as I understand them, as far as they allow themselves to be
understood—for it is their nature to WISH to remain something of a puzzle—these philosophers of the future might rightly, perhaps also wrongly, claim to be designated as “ tempters.” This name itself is after all only an attempt, or, if it be preferred, a temptation. 43. Will they be new friends of “ truth,” these coming philosophers? Very probably, for all philosophers hitherto have loved their truths. But assuredly they will not be dogmatists. It must be contrary to their pride, and also contrary to their taste, that their truth should still be truth for every one—that which has hitherto been the secret wish and ultimate purpose of all dogmatic efforts. “ My opinion is MY opinion: another person has not easily a right to it”—such a philosopher of the future will say, perhaps. One must renounce the bad taste of wishing to agree with many people. “ Good” is no longer good when one’s neighbour takes it into his mouth. And how could there be a “ common good”! The expression contradicts itself; that which can be common is always of small value. In the end things must be as they are and have always been—the great things remain for the great, the abysses for the profound, the delicacies and thrills for the refined, and, to sum up shortly, everything rare for the rare. 44. Need I say expressly after all this that they will be free, VERY free spirits, these philosophers of the future—as certainly also they will not be merely free spirits, but something more, higher, greater, and fundamentally different, which does not wish to be misunderstood and mistaken? But while I say this, I feel under OBLIGATION almost as much to them as to ourselves (we free spirits who are their heralds and forerunners), to sweep away from ourselves altogether a stupid old prejudice and misunderstanding, which, like a fog, has too long made the conception of “ free spirit” obscure. In every country of Europe, and the same in America, there is at present something which makes an abuse of this name a very narrow, prepossessed, enchained class of spirits, who desire almost the opposite of what our intentions and instincts prompt—not to mention that in respect to the NEW philosophers who are appearing, they must still more be closed windows and bolted doors. Briefly and regrettably, they belong to the LEVELLERS, these wrongly named “ free spirits”—as glib-tongued and scribe-fingered slaves of the democratic taste and its “ modern ideas” all of them men without solitude, without personal solitude, blunt honest fellows to whom neither courage nor honourable conduct ought to be denied, only, they are not free, and are ludicrously superficial, especially in their innate partiality for seeing the cause of almost ALL human misery and failure in the old forms in which society has hitherto existed—a notion which happily inverts the truth entirely! What they would fain attain with all their strength, is the universal, green-meadow happiness of the herd, together with security, safety, comfort, and alleviation of life for every one, their two most frequently chanted songs and doctrines are called “ Equality of Rights” and “ Sympathy with All Sufferers”—and suffering itself is looked upon by them as something which must be DONE AWAY WITH. We opposite ones, however, who have opened our eye and conscience to the question how and where the plant “ man” has hitherto grown most vigorously, believe that this has always taken place under the opposite conditions, that for this end the dangerousness of his situation had to be increased enormously, his inventive faculty and dissembling power (his “ spirit”) had to develop into subtlety and daring under long oppression and compulsion, and his Will to Life had to be increased to the unconditioned Will to Power—we believe that severity, violence, slavery, danger in the street and in the heart, secrecy, stoicism, tempter’s art and devilry of every kind,—that everything wicked, terrible, tyrannical, predatory, and serpentine in man, serves as well for the elevation of the human species as its opposite—we do not even say enough when we only say THIS MUCH, and in any case we find ourselves here, both with our speech and our silence, at the OTHER extreme of all modern ideology and gregarious desirability, as their antipodes perhaps? What wonder that we “ free spirits” are not exactly the most communicative spirits? that we do not wish to betray in every respect WHAT a spirit can free itself from, and WHERE perhaps it will then be driven? And as to the import of the dangerous formula, “ Beyond Good and Evil,” with which we at least avoid confusion, we ARE something else than “ libres-penseurs,” “ liben pensatori” “ free-thinkers,” and whatever these honest advocates of “ modern ideas” like to call themselves. Having been at home, or at least guests, in many realms of the spirit, having escaped again and again from the gloomy, agreeable nooks in which preferences and prejudices, youth, origin, the accident of men and books, or even the weariness of travel seemed to confine us, full of malice against the seductions of dependency which he concealed in honours, money, positions, or exaltation of the senses, grateful even for distress and the vicissitudes of illness, because they always free us from some rule, and its “ prejudice,” grateful to the God, devil, sheep, and worm in us, inquisitive to a fault, investigators to the point of cruelty, with unhesitating fingers for the intangible, with teeth and stomachs for the most indigestible, ready for any business that requires sagacity and acute senses, ready for every adventure, owing to an excess of “ free will”, with anterior and posterior souls, into the ultimate intentions of which it is difficult to pry, with foregrounds and backgrounds to the end of which no foot may run, hidden ones under the mantles of light, appropriators, although we resemble heirs and spendthrifts, arrangers and collectors from morning till night, misers of our wealth and our full-crammed drawers, economical in learning and forgetting, inventive in scheming, sometimes proud of tables of categories, sometimes pedants, sometimes night-owls of work even in full day, yea, if necessary, even scarecrows—and it is necessary nowadays, that is to say, inasmuch as we are the born, sworn, jealous friends of SOLITUDE, of our own profoundest midnight and midday solitude—such kind of men are we, we free spirits! And perhaps ye are also something of the same kind, ye coming ones? ye NEW philosophers? CHAPTER III. THE RELIGIOUS MOOD 45. The human soul and its limits, the range of man’s inner experiences hitherto attained, the heights, depths, and distances of these experiences, the entire history of the soul UP TO THE PRESENT TIME, and its still unexhausted possibilities: this is the preordained hunting-domain for a born psychologist and lover of a “ big hunt”. But how often must he say despairingly to himself: “ A single individual! alas, only a single individual! and this great forest, this virgin forest!” So he would like to have some hundreds of hunting assistants, and fine trained hounds, that he could send into the history of the human soul, to drive HIS game together. In vain: again and again he experiences, profoundly and bitterly, how difficult it is to find assistants and dogs for all the things that directly excite his curiosity. The evil of sending scholars into new and dangerous hunting-domains, where courage, sagacity, and subtlety in every sense are required, is that they are no longer serviceable just when the “ BIG hunt,” and also the great danger commences,—it is precisely then
that they lose their keen eye and nose. In order, for instance, to divine and determine what sort of history the problem of KNOWLEDGE AND CONSCIENCE has hitherto had in the souls of homines religiosi, a person would perhaps himself have to possess as profound, as bruised, as immense an experience as the intellectual conscience of Pascal; and then he would still require that wide-spread heaven of clear, wicked spirituality, which, from above, would be able to oversee, arrange, and effectively formulize this mass of dangerous and painful experiences.—But who could do me this service! And who would have time to wait for such servants!—they evidently appear too rarely, they are so improbable at all times! Eventually one must do everything ONESELF in order to know something; which means that one has MUCH to do!—But a curiosity like mine is once for all the most agreeable of vices—pardon me! I mean to say that the love of truth has its reward in heaven, and already upon earth. 46. Faith, such as early Christianity desired, and not infrequently achieved in the midst of a skeptical and southernly free-spirited world, which had centuries of struggle between philosophical schools behind it and in it, counting besides the education in tolerance which the Imperium Romanum gave—this faith is NOT that sincere, austere slave-faith by which perhaps a Luther or a Cromwell, or some other northern barbarian of the spirit remained attached to his God and Christianity, it is much rather the faith of Pascal, which resembles in a terrible manner a continuous suicide of reason—a tough, long-lived, worm-like reason, which is not to be slain at once and with a single blow. The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice the sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit, it is at the same time subjection, self-derision, and self-mutilation. There is cruelty and religious Phoenicianism in this faith, which is adapted to a tender, many-sided, and very fastidious conscience, it takes for granted that the subjection of the spirit is indescribably PAINFUL, that all the past and all the habits of such a spirit resist the absurdissimum, in the form of which “ faith” comes to it. Modern men, with their obtuseness as regards all Christian nomenclature, have no longer the sense for the terribly superlative conception which was implied to an antique taste by the paradox of the formula, “ God on the Cross”. Hitherto there had never and nowhere been such boldness in inversion, nor anything at once so dreadful, questioning, and questionable as this formula: it promised a transvaluation of all ancient values—It was the Orient, the PROFOUND Orient, it was the Oriental slave who thus took revenge on Rome and its noble, light-minded toleration, on the Roman “ Catholicism” of non-faith, and it was always not the faith, but the freedom from the faith, the half-stoical and smiling indifference to the seriousness of the faith, which made the slaves indignant at their masters and revolt against them. “ Enlightenment” causes revolt, for the slave desires the unconditioned, he understands nothing but the tyrannous, even in morals, he loves as he hates, without NUANCE, to the very depths, to the point of pain, to the point of sickness—his many HIDDEN sufferings make him revolt against the noble taste which seems to DENY suffering. The skepticism with regard to suffering, fundamentally only an attitude of aristocratic morality, was not the least of the causes, also, of the last great slave-insurrection which began with the French Revolution. 47. Wherever the religious neurosis has appeared on the earth so far, we find it connected with three dangerous prescriptions as to regimen: solitude, fasting, and sexual abstinence —but without its being possible to determine with certainty which is cause and which is effect, or IF any relation at all of cause and effect exists there. This latter doubt is justified by the fact that one of the most regular symptoms among savage as well as among civilized peoples is the most sudden and excessive sensuality, which then with equal suddenness transforms into penitential paroxysms, world-renunciation, and will-renunciation, both symptoms perhaps explainable as disguised epilepsy? But nowhere is it MORE obligatory to put aside explanations around no other type has there grown such a mass of absurdity and superstition, no other type seems to have been more interesting to men and even to philosophers—perhaps it is time to become just a little indifferent here, to learn caution, or, better still, to look AWAY, TO GO AWAY—Yet in the background of the most recent philosophy, that of Schopenhauer, we find almost as the problem in itself, this terrible note of interrogation of the religious crisis and awakening. How is the negation of will POSSIBLE? how is the saint possible?—that seems to have been the very question with which Schopenhauer made a start and became a philosopher. And thus it was a genuine Schopenhauerian consequence, that his most convinced adherent (perhaps also his last, as far as Germany is concerned), namely, Richard Wagner, should bring his own life-work to an end just here, and should finally put that terrible and eternal type upon the stage as Kundry, type vecu, and as it loved and lived, at the very time that the mad-doctors in almost all European countries had an opportunity to study the type close at hand, wherever the religious neurosis—or as I call it, “ the religious mood”—made its latest epidemical outbreak and display as the “ Salvation Army”—If it be a question, however, as to what has been so extremely interesting to men of all sorts in all ages, and even to philosophers, in the whole phenomenon of the saint, it is undoubtedly the appearance of the miraculous therein—namely, the immediate SUCCESSION OF OPPOSITES, of states of the soul regarded as morally antithetical: it was believed here to be self-evident that a “ bad man” was all at once turned into a “ saint,” a good man. The hitherto existing psychology was wrecked at this point, is it not possible it may have happened principally because psychology had placed itself under the dominion of morals, because it BELIEVED in oppositions of moral values, and saw, read, and INTERPRETED these oppositions into the text and facts of the case? What? “ Miracle” only an error of interpretation? A lack of philology? 48. It seems that the Latin races are far more deeply attached to their Catholicism than we Northerners are to Christianity generally, and that consequently unbelief in Catholic countries means something quite different from what it does among Protestants—namely, a sort of revolt against the spirit of the race, while with us it is rather a return to the spirit (or non-spirit) of the race. We Northerners undoubtedly derive our origin from barbarous races, even as regards our talents for religion—we have POOR talents for it. One may make an exception in the case of the Celts, who have theretofore furnished also the best soil for Christian infection in the North: the Christian ideal blossomed forth in France as much as ever the pale sun of the north would allow it. How strangely pious for our taste are still these later French skeptics, whenever there is any Celtic blood in their origin! How Catholic, how un-German does Auguste Comte’s Sociology seem to us, with the Roman logic of its instincts! How Jesuitical, that amiable and shrewd cicerone of Port Royal, Sainte-Beuve, in spite of all his hostility to Jesuits! And even Ernest Renan: how inaccessible to us Northerners does the language of such a Renan appear, in whom every instant the merest touch of religious thrill
throws his refined voluptuous and comfortably couching soul off its balance! Let us repeat after him these fine sentences—and what wickedness and haughtiness is immediately aroused by way of answer in our probably less beautiful but harder souls, that is to say, in our more German souls!—“ DISONS DONC HARDIMENT QUE LA RELIGION EST UN PRODUIT DE L’HOMME NORMAL, QUE L’HOMME EST LE PLUS DANS LE VRAI QUANT IL EST LE PLUS RELIGIEUX ET LE PLUS ASSURE D’UNE DESTINEE INFINIE…. C’EST QUAND IL EST BON QU’IL VEUT QUE LA VIRTU CORRESPONDE A UN ORDER ETERNAL, C’EST QUAND IL CONTEMPLE LES CHOSES D’UNE MANIERE DESINTERESSEE QU’IL TROUVE LA MORT REVOLTANTE ET SURDE. COMMENT NE PAS SUPPOSER QUE C’EST DANS CES MOMENTS-LA, QUE L’HOMME VOIT LE MIEUX?”… These sentences are so extremely ANTIPODAL to my ears and habits of thought, that in my first impulse of rage on finding them, I wrote on the margin, “ LA NIAISERIE RELIGIEUSE PAR EXCELLENCE!”—until in my later rage I even took a fancy to them, these sentences with their truth absolutely inverted! It is so nice and such a distinction to have one’s own antipodes! 49. That which is so astonishing in the religious life of the ancient Greeks is the irrestrainable stream of GRATITUDE which it pours forth—it is a very superior kind of man who takes SUCH an attitude towards nature and life.—Later on, when the populace got the upper hand in Greece, FEAR became rampant also in religion; and Christianity was preparing itself. 50. The passion for God: there are churlish, honest-hearted, and importunate kinds of it, like that of Luther—the whole of Protestantism lacks the southern DELICATEZZA. There is an Oriental exaltation of the mind in it, like that of an undeservedly favoured or elevated slave, as in the case of St. Augustine, for instance, who lacks in an offensive manner, all nobility in bearing and desires. There is a feminine tenderness and sensuality in it, which modestly and unconsciously longs for a UNIO MYSTICA ET PHYSICA, as in the case of Madame de Guyon. In many cases it appears, curiously enough, as the disguise of a girl’s or youth’s puberty; here and there even as the hysteria of an old maid, also as her last ambition. The Church has frequently canonized the woman in such a case. 51. The mightiest men have hitherto always bowed reverently before the saint, as the enigma of self-subjugation and utter voluntary privation—why did they thus bow? They divined in him—and as it were behind the questionableness of his frail and wretched appearance—the superior force which wished to test itself by such a subjugation; the strength of will, in which they recognized their own strength and love of power, and knew how to honour it: they honoured something in themselves when they honoured the saint. In addition to this, the contemplation of the saint suggested to them a suspicion: such an enormity of self-negation and anti-naturalness will not have been coveted for nothing—they have said, inquiringly. There is perhaps a reason for it, some very great danger, about which the ascetic might wish to be more accurately informed through his secret interlocutors and visitors? In a word, the mighty ones of the world learned to have a new fear before him, they divined a new power, a strange, still unconquered enemy:—it was the “ Will to Power” which obliged them to halt before the saint. They had to question him. 52. In the Jewish “ Old Testament,” the book of divine justice, there are men, things, and sayings on such an immense scale, that Greek and Indian literature has nothing to compare with it. One stands with fear and reverence before those stupendous remains of what man was formerly, and one has sad thoughts about old Asia and its little out-pushed peninsula Europe, which would like, by all means, to figure before Asia as the “ Progress of Mankind.” To be sure, he who is himself only a slender, tame house-animal, and knows only the wants of a house-animal (like our cultured people of today, including the Christians of “ cultured” Christianity), need neither be amazed nor even sad amid those ruins—the taste for the Old Testament is a touchstone with respect to “ great” and “ small”: perhaps he will find that the New Testament, the book of grace, still appeals more to his heart (there is much of the odour of the genuine, tender, stupid beadsman and petty soul in it). To have bound up this New Testament (a kind of ROCOCO of taste in every respect) along with the Old Testament into one book, as the “ Bible,” as “ The Book in Itself,” is perhaps the greatest audacity and “ sin against the Spirit” which literary Europe has upon its conscience. 53. Why Atheism nowadays? “ The father” in God is thoroughly refuted; equally so “ the judge,” “ the rewarder.” Also his “ free will”: he does not hear—and even if he did, he would not know how to help. The worst is that he seems incapable of communicating himself clearly; is he uncertain?—This is what I have made out (by questioning and listening at a variety of conversations) to be the cause of the decline of European theism; it appears to me that though the religious instinct is in vigorous growth,—it rejects the theistic satisfaction with profound distrust. 54. What does all modern philosophy mainly do? Since Descartes—and indeed more in defiance of him than on the basis of his procedure—an ATTENTAT has been made on the part of all philosophers on the old conception of the soul, under the guise of a criticism of the subject and predicate conception—that is to say, an ATTENTAT on the fundamental presupposition of Christian doctrine. Modern philosophy, as epistemological skepticism, is secretly or openly ANTI-CHRISTIAN, although (for keener ears, be it said) by no means anti-religious. Formerly, in effect, one believed in “ the soul” as one believed in grammar and the grammatical subject: one said, “ I” is the condition, “ think” is the predicate and is conditioned—to think is an activity for which one MUST suppose a subject as cause. The attempt was then made, with marvelous tenacity and subtlety, to see if one could not get out of this net,—to see if the opposite was not perhaps true: “ think” the condition, and “ I” the conditioned; “ I,” therefore, only a synthesis which has been MADE by thinking itself. KANT really wished to prove that, starting from the subject, the subject could not be proved—nor the object either: the possibility of an APPARENT EXISTENCE of the subject, and therefore of “ the soul,” may not always have been strange to him,—the thought which once had an immense power on earth as the Vedanta philosophy. 55. There is a great ladder of religious cruelty, with many rounds; but three of these are the most important. Once on a time men sacrificed human beings to their God, and perhaps just those they loved the best—to this category belong the firstling sacrifices of all primitive religions, and also the sacrifice of the Emperor Tiberius in the Mithra-Grotto on the Island of Capri, that most terrible of all Roman anachronisms. Then, during the moral epoch of mankind, they sacrificed to their God the strongest instincts they possessed, their
“ nature”; THIS festal joy shines in the cruel glances of ascetics and “ anti-natural” fanatics. Finally, what still remained to be sacrificed? Was it not necessary in the end for men to sacrifice everything comforting, holy, healing, all hope, all faith in hidden harmonies, in future blessedness and justice? Was it not necessary to sacrifice God himself, and out of cruelty to themselves to worship stone, stupidity, gravity, fate, nothingness? To sacrifice God for nothingness—this paradoxical mystery of the ultimate cruelty has been reserved for the rising generation; we all know something thereof already. 56. Whoever, like myself, prompted by some enigmatical desire, has long endeavoured to go to the bottom of the question of pessimism and free it from the half-Christian, halfGerman narrowness and stupidity in which it has finally presented itself to this century, namely, in the form of Schopenhauer’s philosophy; whoever, with an Asiatic and superAsiatic eye, has actually looked inside, and into the most world-renouncing of all possible modes of thought—beyond good and evil, and no longer like Buddha and Schopenhauer, under the dominion and delusion of morality,—whoever has done this, has perhaps just thereby, without really desiring it, opened his eyes to behold the opposite ideal: the ideal of the most world-approving, exuberant, and vivacious man, who has not only learnt to compromise and arrange with that which was and is, but wishes to have it again AS IT WAS AND IS, for all eternity, insatiably calling out da capo, not only to himself, but to the whole piece and play; and not only the play, but actually to him who requires the play—and makes it necessary; because he always requires himself anew—and makes himself necessary.—What? And this would not be—circulus vitiosus deus? 57. The distance, and as it were the space around man, grows with the strength of his intellectual vision and insight: his world becomes profounder; new stars, new enigmas, and notions are ever coming into view. Perhaps everything on which the intellectual eye has exercised its acuteness and profundity has just been an occasion for its exercise, something of a game, something for children and childish minds. Perhaps the most solemn conceptions that have caused the most fighting and suffering, the conceptions “ God” and “ sin,” will one day seem to us of no more importance than a child’s plaything or a child’s pain seems to an old man;—and perhaps another plaything and another pain will then be necessary once more for “ the old man”—always childish enough, an eternal child! 58. Has it been observed to what extent outward idleness, or semi-idleness, is necessary to a real religious life (alike for its favourite microscopic labour of self-examination, and for its soft placidity called “ prayer,” the state of perpetual readiness for the “ coming of God”), I mean the idleness with a good conscience, the idleness of olden times and of blood, to which the aristocratic sentiment that work is DISHONOURING—that it vulgarizes body and soul—is not quite unfamiliar? And that consequently the modern, noisy, timeengrossing, conceited, foolishly proud laboriousness educates and prepares for “ unbelief” more than anything else? Among these, for instance, who are at present living apart from religion in Germany, I find “ free-thinkers” of diversified species and origin, but above all a majority of those in whom laboriousness from generation to generation has dissolved the religious instincts; so that they no longer know what purpose religions serve, and only note their existence in the world with a kind of dull astonishment. They feel themselves already fully occupied, these good people, be it by their business or by their pleasures, not to mention the “ Fatherland,” and the newspapers, and their “ family duties”; it seems that they have no time whatever left for religion; and above all, it is not obvious to them whether it is a question of a new business or a new pleasure—for it is impossible, they say to themselves, that people should go to church merely to spoil their tempers. They are by no means enemies of religious customs; should certain circumstances, State affairs perhaps, require their participation in such customs, they do what is required, as so many things are done—with a patient and unassuming seriousness, and without much curiosity or discomfort;—they live too much apart and outside to feel even the necessity for a FOR or AGAINST in such matters. Among those indifferent persons may be reckoned nowadays the majority of German Protestants of the middle classes, especially in the great laborious centres of trade and commerce; also the majority of laborious scholars, and the entire University personnel (with the exception of the theologians, whose existence and possibility there always gives psychologists new and more subtle puzzles to solve). On the part of pious, or merely church-going people, there is seldom any idea of HOW MUCH good-will, one might say arbitrary will, is now necessary for a German scholar to take the problem of religion seriously; his whole profession (and as I have said, his whole workmanlike laboriousness, to which he is compelled by his modern conscience) inclines him to a lofty and almost charitable serenity as regards religion, with which is occasionally mingled a slight disdain for the “ uncleanliness” of spirit which he takes for granted wherever any one still professes to belong to the Church. It is only with the help of history (NOT through his own personal experience, therefore) that the scholar succeeds in bringing himself to a respectful seriousness, and to a certain timid deference in presence of religions; but even when his sentiments have reached the stage of gratitude towards them, he has not personally advanced one step nearer to that which still maintains itself as Church or as piety; perhaps even the contrary. The practical indifference to religious matters in the midst of which he has been born and brought up, usually sublimates itself in his case into circumspection and cleanliness, which shuns contact with religious men and things; and it may be just the depth of his tolerance and humanity which prompts him to avoid the delicate trouble which tolerance itself brings with it.—Every age has its own divine type of naivete, for the discovery of which other ages may envy it: and how much naivete—adorable, childlike, and boundlessly foolish naivete is involved in this belief of the scholar in his superiority, in the good conscience of his tolerance, in the unsuspecting, simple certainty with which his instinct treats the religious man as a lower and less valuable type, beyond, before, and OVE which he himself has developed—he, the little arrogant dwarf and mob-man, the sedulously alert, head-and-hand drudge of “ ideas,” of “ modern ideas”! 59. Whoever has seen deeply into the world has doubtless divined what wisdom there is in the fact that men are superficial. It is their preservative instinct which teaches them to be flighty, lightsome, and false. Here and there one finds a passionate and exaggerated adoration of “ pure forms” in philosophers as well as in artists: it is not to be doubted that whoever has NEED of the cult of the superficial to that extent, has at one time or another made an unlucky dive BENEATH it. Perhaps there is even an order of rank with respect to those burnt children, the born artists who find the enjoyment of life only in trying to FALSIFY its image (as if taking wearisome revenge on it), one might guess to what degree life has disgusted them, by the extent to which they wish to see its image falsified, attenuated, ultrified, and deified,—one might reckon the homines religiosi among the artists, as their
HIGHEST rank. It is the profound, suspicious fear of an incurable pessimism which compels whole centuries to fasten their teeth into a religious interpretation of existence: the fear of the instinct which divines that truth might be attained TOO soon, before man has become strong enough, hard enough, artist enough…. Piety, the “ Life in God,” regarded in this light, would appear as the most elaborate and ultimate product of the FEAR of truth, as artist-adoration and artist-intoxication in presence of the most logical of all falsifications, as the will to the inversion of truth, to untruth at any price. Perhaps there has hitherto been no more effective means of beautifying man than piety, by means of it man can become so artful, so superficial, so iridescent, and so good, that his appearance no longer offends. 60. To love mankind FOR GOD’S SAKE—this has so far been the noblest and remotest sentiment to which mankind has attained. That love to mankind, without any redeeming intention in the background, is only an ADDITIONAL folly and brutishness, that the inclination to this love has first to get its proportion, its delicacy, its gram of salt and sprinkling of ambergris from a higher inclination—whoever first perceived and “ experienced” this, however his tongue may have stammered as it attempted to express such a delicate matter, let him for all time be holy and respected, as the man who has so far flown highest and gone astray in the finest fashion! 61. The philosopher, as WE free spirits understand him—as the man of the greatest responsibility, who has the conscience for the general development of mankind,—will use religion for his disciplining and educating work, just as he will use the contemporary political and economic conditions. The selecting and disciplining influence—destructive, as well as creative and fashioning—which can be exercised by means of religion is manifold and varied, according to the sort of people placed under its spell and protection. For those who are strong and independent, destined and trained to command, in whom the judgment and skill of a ruling race is incorporated, religion is an additional means for overcoming resistance in the exercise of authority—as a bond which binds rulers and subjects in common, betraying and surrendering to the former the conscience of the latter, their inmost heart, which would fain escape obedience. And in the case of the unique natures of noble origin, if by virtue of superior spirituality they should incline to a more retired and contemplative life, reserving to themselves only the more refined forms of government (over chosen disciples or members of an order), religion itself may be used as a means for obtaining peace from the noise and trouble of managing GROSSER affairs, and for securing immunity from the UNAVOIDLE filth of all political agitation. The Brahmins, for instance, understood this fact. With the help of a religious organization, they secured to themselves the power of nominating kings for the people, while their sentiments prompted them to keep apart and outside, as men with a higher and super-regal mission. At the same time religion gives inducement and opportunity to some of the subjects to qualify themselves for future ruling and commanding the slowly ascending ranks and classes, in which, through fortunate marriage customs, volitional power and delight in self-control are on the increase. To them religion offers sufficient incentives and temptations to aspire to higher intellectuality, and to experience the sentiments of authoritative self-control, of silence, and of solitude. Asceticism and Puritanism are almost indispensable means of educating and ennobling a race which seeks to rise above its hereditary baseness and work itself upwards to future supremacy. And finally, to ordinary men, to the majority of the people, who exist for service and general utility, and are only so far entitled to exist, religion gives invaluable contentedness with their lot and condition, peace of heart, ennoblement of obedience, additional social happiness and sympathy, with something of transfiguration and embellishment, something of justification of all the commonplaceness, all the meanness, all the semi-animal poverty of their souls. Religion, together with the religious significance of life, sheds sunshine over such perpetually harassed men, and makes even their own aspect endurable to them, it operates upon them as the Epicurean philosophy usually operates upon sufferers of a higher order, in a refreshing and refining manner, almost TURNING suffering TO ACCOUNT, and in the end even hallowing and vindicating it. There is perhaps nothing so admirable in Christianity and Buddhism as their art of teaching even the lowest to elevate themselves by piety to a seemingly higher order of things, and thereby to retain their satisfaction with the actual world in which they find it difficult enough to live—this very difficulty being necessary. 62. To be sure—to make also the bad counter-reckoning against such religions, and to bring to light their secret dangers—the cost is always excessive and terrible when religions do NOT operate as an educational and disciplinary medium in the hands of the philosopher, but rule voluntarily and PARAMOUNTLY, when they wish to be the final end, and not a means along with other means. Among men, as among all other animals, there is a surplus of defective, diseased, degenerating, infirm, and necessarily suffering individuals; the successful cases, among men also, are always the exception; and in view of the fact that man is THE ANIMAL NOT YET PROPERLY ADAPTED TO HIS ENVIRONMENT, the rare exception. But worse still. The higher the type a man represents, the greater is the improbability that he will SUCCEED; the accidental, the law of irrationality in the general constitution of mankind, manifests itself most terribly in its destructive effect on the higher orders of men, the conditions of whose lives are delicate, diverse, and difficult to determine. What, then, is the attitude of the two greatest religions above-mentioned to the SURPLUS of failures in life? They endeavour to preserve and keep alive whatever can be preserved; in fact, as the religions FOR SUFFERERS, they take the part of these upon principle; they are always in favour of those who suffer from life as from a disease, and they would fain treat every other experience of life as false and impossible. However highly we may esteem this indulgent and preservative care (inasmuch as in applying to others, it has applied, and applies also to the highest and usually the most suffering type of man), the hitherto PARAMOUNT religions—to give a general appreciation of them—are among the principal causes which have kept the type of “ man” upon a lower level—they have preserved too much THAT WHICH SHOULD HAVE PERISHED. One has to thank them for invaluable services; and who is sufficiently rich in gratitude not to feel poor at the contemplation of all that the “ spiritual men” of Christianity have done for Europe hitherto! But when they had given comfort to the sufferers, courage to the oppressed and despairing, a staff and support to the helpless, and when they had allured from society into convents and spiritual penitentiaries the broken-hearted and distracted: what else had they to do in order to work systematically in that fashion, and with a good conscience, for the preservation of all the sick and suffering, which means, in deed and in truth, to work for the DETERIORATION OF THE EUROPEAN RACE? To REVERSE all estimates of value—THAT is what they had to do! And to shatter the strong, to spoil great hopes, to cast suspicion on the delight in beauty, to break down everything autonomous, manly, conquering, and
imperious—all instincts which are natural to the highest and most successful type of “ man”—into uncertainty, distress of conscience, and self-destruction; forsooth, to invert all love of the earthly and of supremacy over the earth, into hatred of the earth and earthly things—THAT is the task the Church imposed on itself, and was obliged to impose, until, according to its standard of value, “ unworldliness,” “ unsensuousness,” and “ higher man” fused into one sentiment. If one could observe the strangely painful, equally coarse and refined comedy of European Christianity with the derisive and impartial eye of an Epicurean god, I should think one would never cease marvelling and laughing; does it not actually seem that some single will has ruled over Europe for eighteen centuries in order to make a SUBLIME ORTION of man? He, however, who, with opposite requirements (no longer Epicurean) and with some divine hammer in his hand, could approach this almost voluntary degeneration and stunting of mankind, as exemplified in the European Christian (Pascal, for instance), would he not have to cry aloud with rage, pity, and horror: “ Oh, you bunglers, presumptuous pitiful bunglers, what have you done! Was that a work for your hands? How you have hacked and botched my finest stone! What have you presumed to do!”—I should say that Christianity has hitherto been the most portentous of presumptions. Men, not great enough, nor hard enough, to be entitled as artists to take part in fashioning MAN; men, not sufficiently strong and far-sighted to ALLOW, with sublime self-constraint, the obvious law of the thousandfold failures and perishings to prevail; men, not sufficiently noble to see the radically different grades of rank and intervals of rank that separate man from man:—SUCH men, with their “ equality before God,” have hitherto swayed the destiny of Europe; until at last a dwarfed, almost ludicrous species has been produced, a gregarious animal, something obliging, sickly, mediocre, the European of the present day. CHAPTER IV. APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES 63. He who is a thorough teacher takes things seriously—and even himself—only in relation to his pupils. 64. “ Knowledge for its own sake”—that is the last snare laid by morality: we are thereby completely entangled in morals once more. 65. The charm of knowledge would be small, were it not so much shame has to be overcome on the way to it. 65A. We are most dishonourable towards our God: he is not PERMITTED to sin. 66. The tendency of a person to allow himself to be degraded, robbed, deceived, and exploited might be the diffidence of a God among men. 67. Love to one only is a barbarity, for it is exercised at the expense of all others. Love to God also! 68. “ I did that,” says my memory. “ I could not have done that,” says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually—the memory yields. 69. One has regarded life carelessly, if one has failed to see the hand that—kills with leniency. 70. If a man has character, he has also his typical experience, which always recurs. 71. THE SAGE AS ASTRONOMER.—So long as thou feelest the stars as an “ above thee,” thou lackest the eye of the discerning one. 72. It is not the strength, but the duration of great sentiments that makes great men. 73. He who attains his ideal, precisely thereby surpasses it. 73A. Many a peacock hides his tail from every eye—and calls it his pride. 74. A man of genius is unbearable, unless he possess at least two things besides: gratitude and purity. 75. The degree and nature of a man’s sensuality extends to the highest altitudes of his spirit. 76. Under peaceful conditions the militant man attacks himself. 77. With his principles a man seeks either to dominate, or justify, or honour, or reproach, or conceal his habits: two men with the same principles probably seek fundamentally different ends therewith. 78. He who despises himself, nevertheless esteems himself thereby, as a despiser. 79. A soul which knows that it is loved, but does not itself love, betrays its sediment: its dregs come up. 80. A thing that is explained ceases to concern us—What did the God mean who gave the advice, “ Know thyself!” Did it perhaps imply “ Cease to be concerned about thyself! become objective!”—And Socrates?—And the “ scientific man”? 81. It is terrible to die of thirst at sea. Is it necessary that you should so salt your truth that it will no longer—quench thirst? 82. “ Sympathy for all”—would be harshness and tyranny for THEE, my good neighbour. 83. INSTINCT—When the house is on fire one forgets even the dinner—Yes, but one recovers it from among the ashes. 84. Woman learns how to hate in proportion as she—forgets how to charm. 85. The same emotions are in man and woman, but in different TEMPO, on that account man and woman never cease to misunderstand each other. 86. In the background of all their personal vanity, women themselves have still their impersonal scorn—for “ woman”. 87. FETTERED HEART, FREE SPIRIT—When one firmly fetters one’s heart and keeps it prisoner, one can allow one’s spirit many liberties: I said this once before But people do not believe it when I say so, unless they know it already. 88. One begins to distrust very clever persons when they become embarrassed. 89. Dreadful experiences raise the question whether he who experiences them is not something dreadful also.
90. Heavy, melancholy men turn lighter, and come temporarily to their surface, precisely by that which makes others heavy—by hatred and love. 91. So cold, so icy, that one burns one’s finger at the touch of him! Every hand that lays hold of him shrinks back!—And for that very reason many think him red-hot. 92. Who has not, at one time or another—sacrificed himself for the sake of his good name? 93. In affability there is no hatred of men, but precisely on that account a great deal too much contempt of men. 94. The maturity of man—that means, to have reacquired the seriousness that one had as a child at play. 95. To be ashamed of one’s immorality is a step on the ladder at the end of which one is ashamed also of one’s morality. 96. One should part from life as Ulysses parted from Nausicaa—blessing it rather than in love with it. 97. What? A great man? I always see merely the play-actor of his own ideal. 98. When one trains one’s conscience, it kisses one while it bites. 99. THE DISAPPOINTED ONE SPEAKS—“ I listened for the echo and I heard only praise.” 100. We all feign to ourselves that we are simpler than we are, we thus relax ourselves away from our fellows. 101. A discerning one might easily regard himself at present as the animalization of God. 102. Discovering reciprocal love should really disenchant the lover with regard to the beloved. “ What! She is modest enough to love even you? Or stupid enough? Or—or–” 103. THE DANGER IN HAPPINESS.—“ Everything now turns out best for me, I now love every fate:—who would like to be my fate?” 104. Not their love of humanity, but the impotence of their love, prevents the Christians of today—burning us. 105. The pia fraus is still more repugnant to the taste (the “ piety”) of the free spirit (the “ pious man of knowledge”) than the impia fraus. Hence the profound lack of judgment, in comparison with the Church, characteristic of the type “ free spirit”—as ITS non-freedom. 106. By means of music the very passions enjoy themselves. 107. A sign of strong character, when once the resolution has been taken, to shut the ear even to the best counter-arguments. Occasionally, therefore, a will to stupidity. 108. There is no such thing as moral phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena. 109. The criminal is often enough not equal to his deed: he extenuates and maligns it. 110. The advocates of a criminal are seldom artists enough to turn the beautiful terribleness of the deed to the advantage of the doer. 111. Our vanity is most difficult to wound just when our pride has been wounded. 112. To him who feels himself preordained to contemplation and not to belief, all believers are too noisy and obtrusive; he guards against them. 113. “ You want to prepossess him in your favour? Then you must be embarrassed before him.” 114. The immense expectation with regard to sexual love, and the coyness in this expectation, spoils all the perspectives of women at the outset. 115. Where there is neither love nor hatred in the game, woman’s play is mediocre. 116. The great epochs of our life are at the points when we gain courage to rebaptize our badness as the best in us. 117. The will to overcome an emotion, is ultimately only the will of another, or of several other, emotions. 118. There is an innocence of admiration: it is possessed by him to whom it has not yet occurred that he himself may be admired some day. 119. Our loathing of dirt may be so great as to prevent our cleaning ourselves—“ justifying” ourselves. 120. Sensuality often forces the growth of love too much, so that its root remains weak, and is easily torn up. 121. It is a curious thing that God learned Greek when he wished to turn author—and that he did not learn it better. 122. To rejoice on account of praise is in many cases merely politeness of heart—and the very opposite of vanity of spirit. 123. Even concubinage has been corrupted—by marriage. 124. He who exults at the stake, does not triumph over pain, but because of the fact that he does not feel pain where he expected it. A parable. 125. When we have to change an opinion about any one, we charge heavily to his account the inconvenience he thereby causes us. 126. A nation is a detour of nature to arrive at six or seven great men.—Yes, and then to get round them. 127. In the eyes of all true women science is hostile to the sense of shame. They feel as if one wished to peep under their skin with it—or worse still! under their dress and finery. 128. The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more must you allure the senses to it. 129. The devil has the most extensive perspectives for God; on that account he keeps so far away from him:—the devil, in effect, as the oldest friend of knowledge. 130. What a person IS begins to betray itself when his talent decreases,—when he ceases to show what he CAN do. Talent is also an adornment; an adornment is also a concealment. 131. The sexes deceive themselves about each other: the reason is that in reality they honour and love only themselves (or their own ideal, to express it more agreeably). Thus man wishes woman to be peaceable: but in fact woman is ESSENTIALLY unpeaceable, like the cat, however well she may have assumed the peaceable demeanour.
132. One is punished best for one’s virtues. 133. He who cannot find the way to HIS ideal, lives more frivolously and shamelessly than the man without an ideal. 134. From the senses originate all trustworthiness, all good conscience, all evidence of truth. 135. Pharisaism is not a deterioration of the good man; a considerable part of it is rather an essential condition of being good. 136. The one seeks an accoucheur for his thoughts, the other seeks some one whom he can assist: a good conversation thus originates. 137. In intercourse with scholars and artists one readily makes mistakes of opposite kinds: in a remarkable scholar one not infrequently finds a mediocre man; and often, even in a mediocre artist, one finds a very remarkable man. 138. We do the same when awake as when dreaming: we only invent and imagine him with whom we have intercourse—and forget it immediately. 139. In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man. 140. ADVICE AS A RIDDLE.—“ If the band is not to break, bite it first—secure to make!” 141. The belly is the reason why man does not so readily take himself for a God. 142. The chastest utterance I ever heard: “ Dans le veritable amour c’est l’ame qui enveloppe le corps.” 143. Our vanity would like what we do best to pass precisely for what is most difficult to us.—Concerning the origin of many systems of morals. 144. When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is generally something wrong with her sexual nature. Barrenness itself conduces to a certain virility of taste; man, indeed, if I may say so, is “ the barren animal.” 145. Comparing man and woman generally, one may say that woman would not have the genius for adornment, if she had not the instinct for the SECONDARY role. 146. He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee. 147. From old Florentine novels—moreover, from life: Buona femmina e mala femmina vuol bastone.—Sacchetti, Nov. 86. 148. To seduce their neighbour to a favourable opinion, and afterwards to believe implicitly in this opinion of their neighbour—who can do this conjuring trick so well as women? 149. That which an age considers evil is usually an unseasonable echo of what was formerly considered good—the atavism of an old ideal. 150. Around the hero everything becomes a tragedy; around the demigod everything becomes a satyr-play; and around God everything becomes—what? perhaps a “ world”? 151. It is not enough to possess a talent: one must also have your permission to possess it;—eh, my friends? 152. “ Where there is the tree of knowledge, there is always Paradise”: so say the most ancient and the most modern serpents. 153. What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil. 154. Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology. 155. The sense of the tragic increases and declines with sensuousness. 156. Insanity in individuals is something rare—but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule. 157. The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets successfully through many a bad night. 158. Not only our reason, but also our conscience, truckles to our strongest impulse—the tyrant in us. 159. One MUST repay good and ill; but why just to the person who did us good or ill? 160. One no longer loves one’s knowledge sufficiently after one has communicated it. 161. Poets act shamelessly towards their experiences: they exploit them. 162. “ Our fellow-creature is not our neighbour, but our neighbour’s neighbour”:—so thinks every nation. 163. Love brings to light the noble and hidden qualities of a lover—his rare and exceptional traits: it is thus liable to be deceptive as to his normal character. 164. Jesus said to his Jews: “ The law was for servants;—love God as I love him, as his Son! What have we Sons of God to do with morals!” 165. IN SIGHT OF EVERY PARTY.—A shepherd has always need of a bell-wether—or he has himself to be a wether occasionally. 166. One may indeed lie with the mouth; but with the accompanying grimace one nevertheless tells the truth. 167. To vigorous men intimacy is a matter of shame—and something precious. 168. Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice. 169. To talk much about oneself may also be a means of concealing oneself. 170. In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame. 171. Pity has an almost ludicrous effect on a man of knowledge, like tender hands on a Cyclops. 172. One occasionally embraces some one or other, out of love to mankind (because one cannot embrace all); but this is what one must never confess to the individual. 173. One does not hate as long as one disesteems, but only when one esteems equal or superior.
174. Ye Utilitarians—ye, too, love the UTILE only as a VEHICLE for your inclinations,—ye, too, really find the noise of its wheels insupportable! 175. One loves ultimately one’s desires, not the thing desired. 176. The vanity of others is only counter to our taste when it is counter to our vanity. 177. With regard to what “ truthfulness” is, perhaps nobody has ever been sufficiently truthful. 178. One does not believe in the follies of clever men: what a forfeiture of the rights of man! 179. The consequences of our actions seize us by the forelock, very indifferent to the fact that we have meanwhile “ reformed.” 180. There is an innocence in lying which is the sign of good faith in a cause. 181. It is inhuman to bless when one is being cursed. 182. The familiarity of superiors embitters one, because it may not be returned. 183. “ I am affected, not because you have deceived me, but because I can no longer believe in you.” 184. There is a haughtiness of kindness which has the appearance of wickedness. 185. “ I dislike him.”—Why?—“ I am not a match for him.”—Did any one ever answer so? CHAPTER V. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS 186. The moral sentiment in Europe at present is perhaps as subtle, belated, diverse, sensitive, and refined, as the “ Science of Morals” belonging thereto is recent, initial, awkward, and coarse-fingered:—an interesting contrast, which sometimes becomes incarnate and obvious in the very person of a moralist. Indeed, the expression, “ Science of Morals” is, in respect to what is designated thereby, far too presumptuous and counter to GOOD taste,—which is always a foretaste of more modest expressions. One ought to avow with the utmost fairness WHAT is still necessary here for a long time, WHAT is alone proper for the present: namely, the collection of material, the comprehensive survey and classification of an immense domain of delicate sentiments of worth, and distinctions of worth, which live, grow, propagate, and perish—and perhaps attempts to give a clear idea of the recurring and more common forms of these living crystallizations—as preparation for a THEORY OF TYPES of morality. To be sure, people have not hitherto been so modest. All the philosophers, with a pedantic and ridiculous seriousness, demanded of themselves something very much higher, more pretentious, and ceremonious, when they concerned themselves with morality as a science: they wanted to GIVEASIC to morality—and every philosopher hitherto has believed that he has given it a basis; morality itself, however, has been regarded as something “ given.” How far from their awkward pride was the seemingly insignificant problem—left in dust and decay—of a description of forms of morality, notwithstanding that the finest hands and senses could hardly be fine enough for it! It was precisely owing to moral philosophers’ knowing the moral facts imperfectly, in an arbitrary epitome, or an accidental abridgement—perhaps as the morality of their environment, their position, their church, their Zeitgeist, their climate and zone—it was precisely because they were badly instructed with regard to nations, eras, and past ages, and were by no means eager to know about these matters, that they did not even come in sight of the real problems of morals—problems which only disclose themselves by a comparison of MANY kinds of morality. In every “ Science of Morals” hitherto, strange as it may sound, the problem of morality itself has been OMITTED: there has been no suspicion that there was anything problematic there! That which philosophers called “ giving a basis to morality,” and endeavoured to realize, has, when seen in a right light, proved merely a learned form of good FAITH in prevailing morality, a new means of its EXPRESSION, consequently just a matter-of-fact within the sphere of a definite morality, yea, in its ultimate motive, a sort of denial that it is LAWFUL for this morality to be called in question—and in any case the reverse of the testing, analyzing, doubting, and vivisecting of this very faith. Hear, for instance, with what innocence—almost worthy of honour—Schopenhauer represents his own task, and draw your conclusions concerning the scientificness of a “ Science” whose latest master still talks in the strain of children and old wives: “ The principle,” he says (page 136 of the Grundprobleme der Ethik), [Footnote: Pages 54-55 of Schopenhauer’s Basis of Morality, translated by Arthur B. Bullock, M.A. (1903).] “ the axiom about the purport of which all moralists are PRACTICALLY agreed: neminem laede, immo omnes quantum potes juva—is REALLY the proposition which all moral teachers strive to establish, … the REAL basis of ethics which has been sought, like the philosopher’s stone, for centuries.”—The difficulty of establishing the proposition referred to may indeed be great—it is well known that Schopenhauer also was unsuccessful in his efforts; and whoever has thoroughly realized how absurdly false and sentimental this proposition is, in a world whose essence is Will to Power, may be reminded that Schopenhauer, although a pessimist, ACTUALLY—played the flute… daily after dinner: one may read about the matter in his biography. A question by the way: a pessimist, a repudiator of God and of the world, who MAKES A HALT at morality—who assents to morality, and plays the flute to laede-neminem morals, what? Is that really—a pessimist? 187. Apart from the value of such assertions as “ there is a categorical imperative in us,” one can always ask: What does such an assertion indicate about him who makes it? There are systems of morals which are meant to justify their author in the eyes of other people; other systems of morals are meant to tranquilize him, and make him self-satisfied; with other systems he wants to crucify and humble himself, with others he wishes to take revenge, with others to conceal himself, with others to glorify himself and gave superiority and distinction,—this system of morals helps its author to forget, that system makes him, or something of him, forgotten, many a moralist would like to exercise power and creative arbitrariness over mankind, many another, perhaps, Kant especially, gives us to understand by his morals that “ what is estimable in me, is that I know how to obey—and with you it SHALL not be otherwise than with me!” In short, systems of morals are only a SIGN-LANGUAGE OF THE EMOTIONS. 188. In contrast to laisser-aller, every system of morals is a sort of tyranny against “ nature” and also against “ reason”, that is, however, no objection, unless one should again
decree by some system of morals, that all kinds of tyranny and unreasonableness are unlawful What is essential and invaluable in every system of morals, is that it is a long constraint. In order to understand Stoicism, or Port Royal, or Puritanism, one should remember the constraint under which every language has attained to strength and freedom—the metrical constraint, the tyranny of rhyme and rhythm. How much trouble have the poets and orators of every nation given themselves!—not excepting some of the prose writers of today, in whose ear dwells an inexorable conscientiousness—“ for the sake of a folly,” as utilitarian bunglers say, and thereby deem themselves wise—“ from submission to arbitrary laws,” as the anarchists say, and thereby fancy themselves “ free,” even free-spirited. The singular fact remains, however, that everything of the nature of freedom, elegance, boldness, dance, and masterly certainty, which exists or has existed, whether it be in thought itself, or in administration, or in speaking and persuading, in art just as in conduct, has only developed by means of the tyranny of such arbitrary law, and in all seriousness, it is not at all improbable that precisely this is “ nature” and “ natural”—and not laisser-aller! Every artist knows how different from the state of letting himself go, is his “ most natural” condition, the free arranging, locating, disposing, and constructing in the moments of “ inspiration”—and how strictly and delicately he then obeys a thousand laws, which, by their very rigidness and precision, defy all formulation by means of ideas (even the most stable idea has, in comparison therewith, something floating, manifold, and ambiguous in it). The essential thing “ in heaven and in earth” is, apparently (to repeat it once more), that there should be long OBEDIENCE in the same direction, there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living; for instance, virtue, art, music, dancing, reason, spirituality—anything whatever that is transfiguring, refined, foolish, or divine. The long bondage of the spirit, the distrustful constraint in the communicability of ideas, the discipline which the thinker imposed on himself to think in accordance with the rules of a church or a court, or conformable to Aristotelian premises, the persistent spiritual will to interpret everything that happened according to a Christian scheme, and in every occurrence to rediscover and justify the Christian God:—all this violence, arbitrariness, severity, dreadfulness, and unreasonableness, has proved itself the disciplinary means whereby the European spirit has attained its strength, its remorseless curiosity and subtle mobility; granted also that much irrecoverable strength and spirit had to be stifled, suffocated, and spoilt in the process (for here, as everywhere, “ nature” shows herself as she is, in all her extravagant and INDIFFERENT magnificence, which is shocking, but nevertheless noble). That for centuries European thinkers only thought in order to prove something—nowadays, on the contrary, we are suspicious of every thinker who “ wishes to prove something”—that it was always settled beforehand what WAS TO BE the result of their strictest thinking, as it was perhaps in the Asiatic astrology of former times, or as it is still at the present day in the innocent, Christian-moral explanation of immediate personal events “ for the glory of God,” or “ for the good of the soul”:—this tyranny, this arbitrariness, this severe and magnificent stupidity, has EDUCATED the spirit; slavery, both in the coarser and the finer sense, is apparently an indispensable means even of spiritual education and discipline. One may look at every system of morals in this light: it is “ nature” therein which teaches to hate the laisser-aller, the too great freedom, and implants the need for limited horizons, for immediate duties—it teaches the NARROWING OF PERSPECTIVES, and thus, in a certain sense, that stupidity is a condition of life and development. “ Thou must obey some one, and for a long time; OTHERWISE thou wilt come to grief, and lose all respect for thyself”—this seems to me to be the moral imperative of nature, which is certainly neither “ categorical,” as old Kant wished (consequently the “ otherwise”), nor does it address itself to the individual (what does nature care for the individual!), but to nations, races, ages, and ranks; above all, however, to the animal “ man” generally, to MANKIND. 189. Industrious races find it a great hardship to be idle: it was a master stroke of ENGLISH instinct to hallow and begloom Sunday to such an extent that the Englishman unconsciously hankers for his week—and work-day again:—as a kind of cleverly devised, cleverly intercalated FAST, such as is also frequently found in the ancient world (although, as is appropriate in southern nations, not precisely with respect to work). Many kinds of fasts are necessary; and wherever powerful influences and habits prevail, legislators have to see that intercalary days are appointed, on which such impulses are fettered, and learn to hunger anew. Viewed from a higher standpoint, whole generations and epochs, when they show themselves infected with any moral fanaticism, seem like those intercalated periods of restraint and fasting, during which an impulse learns to humble and submit itself—at the same time also to PURIFY and SHARPEN itself; certain philosophical sects likewise admit of a similar interpretation (for instance, the Stoa, in the midst of Hellenic culture, with the atmosphere rank and overcharged with Aphrodisiacal odours).—Here also is a hint for the explanation of the paradox, why it was precisely in the most Christian period of European history, and in general only under the pressure of Christian sentiments, that the sexual impulse sublimated into love (amour-passion). 190. There is something in the morality of Plato which does not really belong to Plato, but which only appears in his philosophy, one might say, in spite of him: namely, Socratism, for which he himself was too noble. “ No one desires to injure himself, hence all evil is done unwittingly. The evil man inflicts injury on himself; he would not do so, however, if he knew that evil is evil. The evil man, therefore, is only evil through error; if one free him from error one will necessarily make him—good.”—This mode of reasoning savours of the POPULACE, who perceive only the unpleasant consequences of evil-doing, and practically judge that “ it is STUPID to do wrong”; while they accept “ good” as identical with “ useful and pleasant,” without further thought. As regards every system of utilitarianism, one may at once assume that it has the same origin, and follow the scent: one will seldom err.—Plato did all he could to interpret something refined and noble into the tenets of his teacher, and above all to interpret himself into them—he, the most daring of all interpreters, who lifted the entire Socrates out of the street, as a popular theme and song, to exhibit him in endless and impossible modifications—namely, in all his own disguises and multiplicities. In jest, and in Homeric language as well, what is the Platonic Socrates, if not—[Greek words inserted here.] 191. The old theological problem of “ Faith” and “ Knowledge,” or more plainly, of instinct and reason—the question whether, in respect to the valuation of things, instinct deserves more authority than rationality, which wants to appreciate and act according to motives, according to a “ Why,” that is to say, in conformity to purpose and utility—it is always the old moral problem that first appeared in the person of Socrates, and had divided men’s minds long before Christianity. Socrates himself, following, of course, the taste of
his talent—that of a surpassing dialectician—took first the side of reason; and, in fact, what did he do all his life but laugh at the awkward incapacity of the noble Athenians, who were men of instinct, like all noble men, and could never give satisfactory answers concerning the motives of their actions? In the end, however, though silently and secretly, he laughed also at himself: with his finer conscience and introspection, he found in himself the same difficulty and incapacity. “ But why”—he said to himself—“ should one on that account separate oneself from the instincts! One must set them right, and the reason ALSO—one must follow the instincts, but at the same time persuade the reason to support them with good arguments.” This was the real FALSENESS of that great and mysterious ironist; he brought his conscience up to the point that he was satisfied with a kind of self-outwitting: in fact, he perceived the irrationality in the moral judgment.—Plato, more innocent in such matters, and without the craftiness of the plebeian, wished to prove to himself, at the expenditure of all his strength—the greatest strength a philosopher had ever expended—that reason and instinct lead spontaneously to one goal, to the good, to “ God”; and since Plato, all theologians and philosophers have followed the same path—which means that in matters of morality, instinct (or as Christians call it, “ Faith,” or as I call it, “ the herd”) has hitherto triumphed. Unless one should make an exception in the case of Descartes, the father of rationalism (and consequently the grandfather of the Revolution), who recognized only the authority of reason: but reason is only a tool, and Descartes was superficial. 192. Whoever has followed the history of a single science, finds in its development a clue to the understanding of the oldest and commonest processes of all “ knowledge and cognizance”: there, as here, the premature hypotheses, the fictions, the good stupid will to “ belief,” and the lack of distrust and patience are first developed—our senses learn late, and never learn completely, to be subtle, reliable, and cautious organs of knowledge. Our eyes find it easier on a given occasion to produce a picture already often produced, than to seize upon the divergence and novelty of an impression: the latter requires more force, more “ morality.” It is difficult and painful for the ear to listen to anything new; we hear strange music badly. When we hear another language spoken, we involuntarily attempt to form the sounds into words with which we are more familiar and conversant—it was thus, for example, that the Germans modified the spoken word ARCUBALISTA into ARMBRUST (cross-bow). Our senses are also hostile and averse to the new; and generally, even in the “ simplest” processes of sensation, the emotions DOMINATE—such as fear, love, hatred, and the passive emotion of indolence.—As little as a reader nowadays reads all the single words (not to speak of syllables) of a page—he rather takes about five out of every twenty words at random, and “ guesses” the probably appropriate sense to them—just as little do we see a tree correctly and completely in respect to its leaves, branches, colour, and shape; we find it so much easier to fancy the chance of a tree. Even in the midst of the most remarkable experiences, we still do just the same; we fabricate the greater part of the experience, and can hardly be made to contemplate any event, EXCEPT as “ inventors” thereof. All this goes to prove that from our fundamental nature and from remote ages we have been—ACCUSTOMED TO LYING. Or, to express it more politely and hypocritically, in short, more pleasantly—one is much more of an artist than one is aware of.—In an animated conversation, I often see the face of the person with whom I am speaking so clearly and sharply defined before me, according to the thought he expresses, or which I believe to be evoked in his mind, that the degree of distinctness far exceeds the STRENGTH of my visual faculty—the delicacy of the play of the muscles and of the expression of the eyes MUST therefore be imagined by me. Probably the person put on quite a different expression, or none at all. 193. Quidquid luce fuit, tenebris agit: but also contrariwise. What we experience in dreams, provided we experience it often, pertains at last just as much to the general belongings of our soul as anything “ actually” experienced; by virtue thereof we are richer or poorer, we have a requirement more or less, and finally, in broad daylight, and even in the brightest moments of our waking life, we are ruled to some extent by the nature of our dreams. Supposing that someone has often flown in his dreams, and that at last, as soon as he dreams, he is conscious of the power and art of flying as his privilege and his peculiarly enviable happiness; such a person, who believes that on the slightest impulse, he can actualize all sorts of curves and angles, who knows the sensation of a certain divine levity, an “ upwards” without effort or constraint, a “ downwards” without descending or lowering—without TROUBLE!—how could the man with such dream-experiences and dream-habits fail to find “ happiness” differently coloured and defined, even in his waking hours! How could he fail —to long DIFFERENTLY for happiness? “ Flight,” such as is described by poets, must, when compared with his own “ flying,” be far too earthly, muscular, violent, far too “ troublesome” for him. 194. The difference among men does not manifest itself only in the difference of their lists of desirable things—in their regarding different good things as worth striving for, and being disagreed as to the greater or less value, the order of rank, of the commonly recognized desirable things:—it manifests itself much more in what they regard as actually HAVING and POSSESSING a desirable thing. As regards a woman, for instance, the control over her body and her sexual gratification serves as an amply sufficient sign of ownership and possession to the more modest man; another with a more suspicious and ambitious thirst for possession, sees the “ questionableness,” the mere apparentness of such ownership, and wishes to have finer tests in order to know especially whether the woman not only gives herself to him, but also gives up for his sake what she has or would like to have—only THEN does he look upon her as “ possessed.” A third, however, has not even here got to the limit of his distrust and his desire for possession: he asks himself whether the woman, when she gives up everything for him, does not perhaps do so for a phantom of him; he wishes first to be thoroughly, indeed, profoundly well known; in order to be loved at all he ventures to let himself be found out. Only then does he feel the beloved one fully in his possession, when she no longer deceives herself about him, when she loves him just as much for the sake of his devilry and concealed insatiability, as for his goodness, patience, and spirituality. One man would like to possess a nation, and he finds all the higher arts of Cagliostro and Catalina suitable for his purpose. Another, with a more refined thirst for possession, says to himself: “ One may not deceive where one desires to possess”—he is irritated and impatient at the idea that a mask of him should rule in the hearts of the people: “ I must, therefore, MAKE myself known, and first of all learn to know myself!” Among helpful and charitable people, one almost always finds the awkward craftiness which first gets up suitably him who has to be helped, as though, for instance, he should “ merit” help,
seek just THEIR help, and would show himself deeply grateful, attached, and subservient to them for all help. With these conceits, they take control of the needy as a property, just as in general they are charitable and helpful out of a desire for property. One finds them jealous when they are crossed or forestalled in their charity. Parents involuntarily make something like themselves out of their children—they call that “ education”; no mother doubts at the bottom of her heart that the child she has borne is thereby her property, no father hesitates about his right to HIS OWN ideas and notions of worth. Indeed, in former times fathers deemed it right to use their discretion concerning the life or death of the newly born (as among the ancient Germans). And like the father, so also do the teacher, the class, the priest, and the prince still see in every new individual an unobjectionable opportunity for a new possession. The consequence is… 195. The Jews—a people “ born for slavery,” as Tacitus and the whole ancient world say of them; “ the chosen people among the nations,” as they themselves say and believe— the Jews performed the miracle of the inversion of valuations, by means of which life on earth obtained a new and dangerous charm for a couple of millenniums. Their prophets fused into one the expressions “ rich,” “ godless,” “ wicked,” “ violent,” “ sensual,” and for the first time coined the word “ world” as a term of reproach. In this inversion of valuations (in which is also included the use of the word “ poor” as synonymous with “ saint” and “ friend”) the significance of the Jewish people is to be found; it is with THEM that the SLAVEINSURRECTION IN MORALS commences. 196. It is to be INFERRED that there are countless dark bodies near the sun—such as we shall never see. Among ourselves, this is an allegory; and the psychologist of morals reads the whole star-writing merely as an allegorical and symbolic language in which much may be unexpressed. 197. The beast of prey and the man of prey (for instance, Caesar Borgia) are fundamentally misunderstood, “ nature” is misunderstood, so long as one seeks a “ morbidness” in the constitution of these healthiest of all tropical monsters and growths, or even an innate “ hell” in them—as almost all moralists have done hitherto. Does it not seem that there is a hatred of the virgin forest and of the tropics among moralists? And that the “ tropical man” must be discredited at all costs, whether as disease and deterioration of mankind, or as his own hell and self-torture? And why? In favour of the “ temperate zones”? In favour of the temperate men? The “ moral”? The mediocre?—This for the chapter: “ Morals as Timidity.” 198. All the systems of morals which address themselves with a view to their “ happiness,” as it is called—what else are they but suggestions for behaviour adapted to the degree of DANGER from themselves in which the individuals live; recipes for their passions, their good and bad propensities, insofar as such have the Will to Power and would like to play the master; small and great expediencies and elaborations, permeated with the musty odour of old family medicines and old-wife wisdom; all of them grotesque and absurd in their form—because they address themselves to “ all,” because they generalize where generalization is not authorized; all of them speaking unconditionally, and taking themselves unconditionally; all of them flavoured not merely with one grain of salt, but rather endurable only, and sometimes even seductive, when they are over-spiced and begin to smell dangerously, especially of “ the other world.” That is all of little value when estimated intellectually, and is far from being “ science,” much less “ wisdom”; but, repeated once more, and three times repeated, it is expediency, expediency, expediency, mixed with stupidity, stupidity, stupidity—whether it be the indifference and statuesque coldness towards the heated folly of the emotions, which the Stoics advised and fostered; or the no-more-laughing and no-more-weeping of Spinoza, the destruction of the emotions by their analysis and vivisection, which he recommended so naively; or the lowering of the emotions to an innocent mean at which they may be satisfied, the Aristotelianism of morals; or even morality as the enjoyment of the emotions in a voluntary attenuation and spiritualization by the symbolism of art, perhaps as music, or as love of God, and of mankind for God’s sake—for in religion the passions are once more enfranchised, provided that…; or, finally, even the complaisant and wanton surrender to the emotions, as has been taught by Hafis and Goethe, the bold letting-go of the reins, the spiritual and corporeal licentia morum in the exceptional cases of wise old codgers and drunkards, with whom it “ no longer has much danger.”—This also for the chapter: “ Morals as Timidity.” 199. Inasmuch as in all ages, as long as mankind has existed, there have also been human herds (family alliances, communities, tribes, peoples, states, churches), and always a great number who obey in proportion to the small number who command—in view, therefore, of the fact that obedience has been most practiced and fostered among mankind hitherto, one may reasonably suppose that, generally speaking, the need thereof is now innate in every one, as a kind of FORMAL CONSCIENCE which gives the command “ Thou shalt unconditionally do something, unconditionally refrain from something”, in short, “ Thou shalt”. This need tries to satisfy itself and to fill its form with a content, according to its strength, impatience, and eagerness, it at once seizes as an omnivorous appetite with little selection, and accepts whatever is shouted into its ear by all sorts of commanders—parents, teachers, laws, class prejudices, or public opinion. The extraordinary limitation of human development, the hesitation, protractedness, frequent retrogression, and turning thereof, is attributable to the fact that the herd-instinct of obedience is transmitted best, and at the cost of the art of command. If one imagine this instinct increasing to its greatest extent, commanders and independent individuals will finally be lacking altogether, or they will suffer inwardly from a bad conscience, and will have to impose a deception on themselves in the first place in order to be able to command just as if they also were only obeying. This condition of things actually exists in Europe at present—I call it the moral hypocrisy of the commanding class. They know no other way of protecting themselves from their bad conscience than by playing the role of executors of older and higher orders (of predecessors, of the constitution, of justice, of the law, or of God himself), or they even justify themselves by maxims from the current opinions of the herd, as “ first servants of their people,” or “ instruments of the public weal”. On the other hand, the gregarious European man nowadays assumes an air as if he were the only kind of man that is allowable, he glorifies his qualities, such as public spirit, kindness, deference, industry, temperance, modesty, indulgence, sympathy, by virtue of which he is gentle, endurable, and useful to the herd, as the peculiarly human virtues. In cases, however, where it is believed that the leader and bell-wether cannot be dispensed with, attempt after attempt is made nowadays to replace commanders by the summing together of clever gregarious men all representative constitutions, for example, are of this origin. In spite of all, what a blessing, what a deliverance from
a weight becoming unendurable, is the appearance of an absolute ruler for these gregarious Europeans—of this fact the effect of the appearance of Napoleon was the last great proof the history of the influence of Napoleon is almost the history of the higher happiness to which the entire century has attained in its worthiest individuals and periods. 200. The man of an age of dissolution which mixes the races with one another, who has the inheritance of a diversified descent in his body—that is to say, contrary, and often not only contrary, instincts and standards of value, which struggle with one another and are seldom at peace—such a man of late culture and broken lights, will, on an average, be a weak man. His fundamental desire is that the war which is IN HIM should come to an end; happiness appears to him in the character of a soothing medicine and mode of thought (for instance, Epicurean or Christian); it is above all things the happiness of repose, of undisturbedness, of repletion, of final unity—it is the “ Sabbath of Sabbaths,” to use the expression of the holy rhetorician, St. Augustine, who was himself such a man.—Should, however, the contrariety and conflict in such natures operate as an ADDITIONAL incentive and stimulus to life—and if, on the other hand, in addition to their powerful and irreconcilable instincts, they have also inherited and indoctrinated into them a proper mastery and subtlety for carrying on the conflict with themselves (that is to say, the faculty of self-control and self-deception), there then arise those marvelously incomprehensible and inexplicable beings, those enigmatical men, predestined for conquering and circumventing others, the finest examples of which are Alcibiades and Caesar (with whom I should like to associate the FIRST of Europeans according to my taste, the Hohenstaufen, Frederick the Second), and among artists, perhaps Leonardo da Vinci. They appear precisely in the same periods when that weaker type, with its longing for repose, comes to the front; the two types are complementary to each other, and spring from the same causes. 201. As long as the utility which determines moral estimates is only gregarious utility, as long as the preservation of the community is only kept in view, and the immoral is sought precisely and exclusively in what seems dangerous to the maintenance of the community, there can be no “ morality of love to one’s neighbour.” Granted even that there is already a little constant exercise of consideration, sympathy, fairness, gentleness, and mutual assistance, granted that even in this condition of society all those instincts are already active which are latterly distinguished by honourable names as “ virtues,” and eventually almost coincide with the conception “ morality”: in that period they do not as yet belong to the domain of moral valuations—they are still ULTRA-MORAL. A sympathetic action, for instance, is neither called good nor bad, moral nor immoral, in the best period of the Romans; and should it be praised, a sort of resentful disdain is compatible with this praise, even at the best, directly the sympathetic action is compared with one which contributes to the welfare of the whole, to the RES PUBLICA. After all, “ love to our neighbour” is always a secondary matter, partly conventional and arbitrarily manifested in relation to our FEAR OF OUR NEIGHBOUR. After the fabric of society seems on the whole established and secured against external dangers, it is this fear of our neighbour which again creates new perspectives of moral valuation. Certain strong and dangerous instincts, such as the love of enterprise, foolhardiness, revengefulness, astuteness, rapacity, and love of power, which up till then had not only to be honoured from the point of view of general utility—under other names, of course, than those here given—but had to be fostered and cultivated (because they were perpetually required in the common danger against the common enemies), are now felt in their dangerousness to be doubly strong—when the outlets for them are lacking— and are gradually branded as immoral and given over to calumny. The contrary instincts and inclinations now attain to moral honour, the gregarious instinct gradually draws its conclusions. How much or how little dangerousness to the community or to equality is contained in an opinion, a condition, an emotion, a disposition, or an endowment—that is now the moral perspective, here again fear is the mother of morals. It is by the loftiest and strongest instincts, when they break out passionately and carry the individual far above and beyond the average, and the low level of the gregarious conscience, that the self-reliance of the community is destroyed, its belief in itself, its backbone, as it were, breaks, consequently these very instincts will be most branded and defamed. The lofty independent spirituality, the will to stand alone, and even the cogent reason, are felt to be dangers, everything that elevates the individual above the herd, and is a source of fear to the neighbour, is henceforth called EVIL, the tolerant, unassuming, self-adapting, self-equalizing disposition, the MEDIOCRITY of desires, attains to moral distinction and honour. Finally, under very peaceful circumstances, there is always less opportunity and necessity for training the feelings to severity and rigour, and now every form of severity, even in justice, begins to disturb the conscience, a lofty and rigorous nobleness and self-responsibility almost offends, and awakens distrust, “ the lamb,” and still more “ the sheep,” wins respect. There is a point of diseased mellowness and effeminacy in the history of society, at which society itself takes the part of him who injures it, the part of the CRIMINAL, and does so, in fact, seriously and honestly. To punish, appears to it to be somehow unfair—it is certain that the idea of “ punishment” and “ the obligation to punish” are then painful and alarming to people. “ Is it not sufficient if the criminal be rendered HARMLESS? Why should we still punish? Punishment itself is terrible!”—with these questions gregarious morality, the morality of fear, draws its ultimate conclusion. If one could at all do away with danger, the cause of fear, one would have done away with this morality at the same time, it would no longer be necessary, it WOULD NOT CONSIDER ITSELF any longer necessary!— Whoever examines the conscience of the present-day European, will always elicit the same imperative from its thousand moral folds and hidden recesses, the imperative of the timidity of the herd “ we wish that some time or other there may be NOTHING MORE TO FEAR!” Some time or other—the will and the way THERETO is nowadays called “ progress” all over Europe. 202. Let us at once say again what we have already said a hundred times, for people’s ears nowadays are unwilling to hear such truths—OUR truths. We know well enough how offensive it sounds when any one plainly, and without metaphor, counts man among the animals, but it will be accounted to us almost a CRIME, that it is precisely in respect to men of “ modern ideas” that we have constantly applied the terms “ herd,” “ herd-instincts,” and such like expressions. What avail is it? We cannot do otherwise, for it is precisely here that our new insight is. We have found that in all the principal moral judgments, Europe has become unanimous, including likewise the countries where European influence prevails in Europe people evidently KNOW what Socrates thought he did not know, and what the famous serpent of old once promised to teach—they “ know” today what is good and evil. It must then sound hard and be distasteful to the ear, when we always insist that that which here thinks it knows, that which here glorifies itself with praise and blame, and
calls itself good, is the instinct of the herding human animal, the instinct which has come and is ever coming more and more to the front, to preponderance and supremacy over other instincts, according to the increasing physiological approximation and resemblance of which it is the symptom. MORALITY IN EUROPE AT PRESENT IS HERDING-ANIMAL MORALITY, and therefore, as we understand the matter, only one kind of human morality, beside which, before which, and after which many other moralities, and above all HIGHER moralities, are or should be possible. Against such a “ possibility,” against such a “ should be,” however, this morality defends itself with all its strength, it says obstinately and inexorably “ I am morality itself and nothing else is morality!” Indeed, with the help of a religion which has humoured and flattered the sublimest desires of the herding-animal, things have reached such a point that we always find a more visible expression of this morality even in political and social arrangements: the DEMOCRATIC movement is the inheritance of the Christian movement. That its TEMPO, however, is much too slow and sleepy for the more impatient ones, for those who are sick and distracted by the herdinginstinct, is indicated by the increasingly furious howling, and always less disguised teeth-gnashing of the anarchist dogs, who are now roving through the highways of European culture. Apparently in opposition to the peacefully industrious democrats and Revolution-ideologues, and still more so to the awkward philosophasters and fraternity-visionaries who call themselves Socialists and want a “ free society,” those are really at one with them all in their thorough and instinctive hostility to every form of society other than that of the AUTONOMOUS herd (to the extent even of repudiating the notions “ master” and “ servant”—ni dieu ni maitre, says a socialist formula); at one in their tenacious opposition to every special claim, every special right and privilege (this means ultimately opposition to EVERY right, for when all are equal, no one needs “ rights” any longer); at one in their distrust of punitive justice (as though it were a violation of the weak, unfair to the NECESSARY consequences of all former society); but equally at one in their religion of sympathy, in their compassion for all that feels, lives, and suffers (down to the very animals, up even to “ God”—the extravagance of “ sympathy for God” belongs to a democratic age); altogether at one in the cry and impatience of their sympathy, in their deadly hatred of suffering generally, in their almost feminine incapacity for witnessing it or ALLOWING it; at one in their involuntary beglooming and heart-softening, under the spell of which Europe seems to be threatened with a new Buddhism; at one in their belief in the morality of MUTUAL sympathy, as though it were morality in itself, the climax, the ATTAINED climax of mankind, the sole hope of the future, the consolation of the present, the great discharge from all the obligations of the past; altogether at one in their belief in the community as the DELIVERER, in the herd, and therefore in “ themselves.” 203. We, who hold a different belief—we, who regard the democratic movement, not only as a degenerating form of political organization, but as equivalent to a degenerating, a waning type of man, as involving his mediocrising and depreciation: where have WE to fix our hopes? In NEW PHILOSOPHERS—there is no other alternative: in minds strong and original enough to initiate opposite estimates of value, to transvalue and invert “ eternal valuations”; in forerunners, in men of the future, who in the present shall fix the constraints and fasten the knots which will compel millenniums to take NEW paths. To teach man the future of humanity as his WILL, as depending on human will, and to make preparation for vast hazardous enterprises and collective attempts in rearing and educating, in order thereby to put an end to the frightful rule of folly and chance which has hitherto gone by the name of “ history” (the folly of the “ greatest number” is only its last form)—for that purpose a new type of philosopher and commander will some time or other be needed, at the very idea of which everything that has existed in the way of occult, terrible, and benevolent beings might look pale and dwarfed. The image of such leaders hovers before OUR eyes:—is it lawful for me to say it aloud, ye free spirits? The conditions which one would partly have to create and partly utilize for their genesis; the presumptive methods and tests by virtue of which a soul should grow up to such an elevation and power as to feel a CONSTRAINT to these tasks; a transvaluation of values, under the new pressure and hammer of which a conscience should be steeled and a heart transformed into brass, so as to bear the weight of such responsibility; and on the other hand the necessity for such leaders, the dreadful danger that they might be lacking, or miscarry and degenerate:—these are OUR real anxieties and glooms, ye know it well, ye free spirits! these are the heavy distant thoughts and storms which sweep across the heaven of OUR life. There are few pains so grievous as to have seen, divined, or experienced how an exceptional man has missed his way and deteriorated; but he who has the rare eye for the universal danger of “ man” himself DETERIORATING, he who like us has recognized the extraordinary fortuitousness which has hitherto played its game in respect to the future of mankind—a game in which neither the hand, nor even a “ finger of God” has participated!—he who divines the fate that is hidden under the idiotic unwariness and blind confidence of “ modern ideas,” and still more under the whole of Christo-European morality—suffers from an anguish with which no other is to be compared. He sees at a glance all that could still BE MADE OUT OF MAN through a favourable accumulation and augmentation of human powers and arrangements; he knows with all the knowledge of his conviction how unexhausted man still is for the greatest possibilities, and how often in the past the type man has stood in presence of mysterious decisions and new paths:—he knows still better from his painfulest recollections on what wretched obstacles promising developments of the highest rank have hitherto usually gone to pieces, broken down, sunk, and become contemptible. The UNIVERSAL DEGENERACY OF MANKIND to the level of the “ man of the future”—as idealized by the socialistic fools and shallowpates—this degeneracy and dwarfing of man to an absolutely gregarious animal (or as they call it, to a man of “ free society”), this brutalizing of man into a pigmy with equal rights and claims, is undoubtedly POSSIBLE! He who has thought out this possibility to its ultimate conclusion knows ANOTHER loathing unknown to the rest of mankind—and perhaps also a new MISSION! CHAPTER VI. WE SCHOLARS 204. At the risk that moralizing may also reveal itself here as that which it has always been—namely, resolutely MONTRER SES PLAIES, according to Balzac—I would venture to protest against an improper and injurious alteration of rank, which quite unnoticed, and as if with the best conscience, threatens nowadays to establish itself in the relations of science and philosophy. I mean to say that one must have the right out of one’s own EXPERIENCE—experience, as it seems to me, always implies unfortunate experience?—to treat of such an important question of rank, so as not to speak of colour like the blind, or AGAINST science like women and artists (“ Ah! this dreadful science!” sigh their instinct and
their shame, “ it always FINDS THINGS OUT!”). The declaration of independence of the scientific man, his emancipation from philosophy, is one of the subtler after-effects of democratic organization and disorganization: the self-glorification and self-conceitedness of the learned man is now everywhere in full bloom, and in its best springtime—which does not mean to imply that in this case self-praise smells sweet. Here also the instinct of the populace cries, “ Freedom from all masters!” and after science has, with the happiest results, resisted theology, whose “ hand-maid” it had been too long, it now proposes in its wantonness and indiscretion to lay down laws for philosophy, and in its turn to play the “ master”—what am I saying! to play the PHILOSOPHER on its own account. My memory—the memory of a scientific man, if you please!—teems with the naivetes of insolence which I have heard about philosophy and philosophers from young naturalists and old physicians (not to mention the most cultured and most conceited of all learned men, the philologists and schoolmasters, who are both the one and the other by profession). On one occasion it was the specialist and the Jack Horner who instinctively stood on the defensive against all synthetic tasks and capabilities; at another time it was the industrious worker who had got a scent of OTIUM and refined luxuriousness in the internal economy of the philosopher, and felt himself aggrieved and belittled thereby. On another occasion it was the colour-blindness of the utilitarian, who sees nothing in philosophy but a series of REFUTED systems, and an extravagant expenditure which “ does nobody any good”. At another time the fear of disguised mysticism and of the boundary-adjustment of knowledge became conspicuous, at another time the disregard of individual philosophers, which had involuntarily extended to disregard of philosophy generally. In fine, I found most frequently, behind the proud disdain of philosophy in young scholars, the evil after-effect of some particular philosopher, to whom on the whole obedience had been foresworn, without, however, the spell of his scornful estimates of other philosophers having been got rid of—the result being a general ill-will to all philosophy. (Such seems to me, for instance, the after-effect of Schopenhauer on the most modern Germany: by his unintelligent rage against Hegel, he has succeeded in severing the whole of the last generation of Germans from its connection with German culture, which culture, all things considered, has been an elevation and a divining refinement of the HISTORICAL SENSE, but precisely at this point Schopenhauer himself was poor, irreceptive, and un-German to the extent of ingeniousness.) On the whole, speaking generally, it may just have been the humanness, all-too-humanness of the modern philosophers themselves, in short, their contemptibleness, which has injured most radically the reverence for philosophy and opened the doors to the instinct of the populace. Let it but be acknowledged to what an extent our modern world diverges from the whole style of the world of Heraclitus, Plato, Empedocles, and whatever else all the royal and magnificent anchorites of the spirit were called, and with what justice an honest man of science MAY feel himself of a better family and origin, in view of such representatives of philosophy, who, owing to the fashion of the present day, are just as much aloft as they are down below—in Germany, for instance, the two lions of Berlin, the anarchist Eugen Duhring and the amalgamist Eduard von Hartmann. It is especially the sight of those hotch-potch philosophers, who call themselves “ realists,” or “ positivists,” which is calculated to implant a dangerous distrust in the soul of a young and ambitious scholar those philosophers, at the best, are themselves but scholars and specialists, that is very evident! All of them are persons who have been vanquished and BROUGHT BACK AGAIN under the dominion of science, who at one time or another claimed more from themselves, without having a right to the “ more” and its responsibility—and who now, creditably, rancorously, and vindictively, represent in word and deed, DISBELIEF in the master-task and supremacy of philosophy After all, how could it be otherwise? Science flourishes nowadays and has the good conscience clearly visible on its countenance, while that to which the entire modern philosophy has gradually sunk, the remnant of philosophy of the present day, excites distrust and displeasure, if not scorn and pity Philosophy reduced to a “ theory of knowledge,” no more in fact than a diffident science of epochs and doctrine of forbearance a philosophy that never even gets beyond the threshold, and rigorously DENIES itself the right to enter—that is philosophy in its last throes, an end, an agony, something that awakens pity. How could such a philosophy—RULE! 205. The dangers that beset the evolution of the philosopher are, in fact, so manifold nowadays, that one might doubt whether this fruit could still come to maturity. The extent and towering structure of the sciences have increased enormously, and therewith also the probability that the philosopher will grow tired even as a learner, or will attach himself somewhere and “ specialize” so that he will no longer attain to his elevation, that is to say, to his superspection, his circumspection, and his DESPECTION. Or he gets aloft too late, when the best of his maturity and strength is past, or when he is impaired, coarsened, and deteriorated, so that his view, his general estimate of things, is no longer of much importance. It is perhaps just the refinement of his intellectual conscience that makes him hesitate and linger on the way, he dreads the temptation to become a dilettante, a millepede, a milleantenna, he knows too well that as a discerner, one who has lost his self-respect no longer commands, no longer LEADS, unless he should aspire to become a great play-actor, a philosophical Cagliostro and spiritual rat-catcher—in short, a misleader. This is in the last instance a question of taste, if it has not really been a question of conscience. To double once more the philosopher’s difficulties, there is also the fact that he demands from himself a verdict, a Yea or Nay, not concerning science, but concerning life and the worth of life— he learns unwillingly to believe that it is his right and even his duty to obtain this verdict, and he has to seek his way to the right and the belief only through the most extensive (perhaps disturbing and destroying) experiences, often hesitating, doubting, and dumbfounded. In fact, the philosopher has long been mistaken and confused by the multitude, either with the scientific man and ideal scholar, or with the religiously elevated, desensualized, desecularized visionary and God-intoxicated man; and even yet when one hears anybody praised, because he lives “ wisely,” or “ as a philosopher,” it hardly means anything more than “ prudently and apart.” Wisdom: that seems to the populace to be a kind of flight, a means and artifice for withdrawing successfully from a bad game; but the GENUINE philosopher—does it not seem so to US, my friends?—lives “ unphilosophically” and “ unwisely,” above all, IMPRUDENTLY, and feels the obligation and burden of a hundred attempts and temptations of life—he risks HIMSELF constantly, he plays THIS bad game. 206. In relation to the genius, that is to say, a being who either ENGENDERS or PRODUCES—both words understood in their fullest sense—the man of learning, the scientific average man, has always something of the old maid about him; for, like her, he is not conversant with the two principal functions of man. To both, of course, to the scholar and to the old maid, one concedes respectability, as if by way of indemnification—in these cases one emphasizes the respectability—and yet, in the compulsion of this concession, one has the
same admixture of vexation. Let us examine more closely: what is the scientific man? Firstly, a commonplace type of man, with commonplace virtues: that is to say, a non-ruling, non-authoritative, and non-self-sufficient type of man; he possesses industry, patient adaptableness to rank and file, equability and moderation in capacity and requirement; he has the instinct for people like himself, and for that which they require—for instance: the portion of independence and green meadow without which there is no rest from labour, the claim to honour and consideration (which first and foremost presupposes recognition and recognisability), the sunshine of a good name, the perpetual ratification of his value and usefulness, with which the inward DISTRUST which lies at the bottom of the heart of all dependent men and gregarious animals, has again and again to be overcome. The learned man, as is appropriate, has also maladies and faults of an ignoble kind: he is full of petty envy, and has a lynx-eye for the weak points in those natures to whose elevations he cannot attain. He is confiding, yet only as one who lets himself go, but does not FLOW; and precisely before the man of the great current he stands all the colder and more reserved—his eye is then like a smooth and irresponsive lake, which is no longer moved by rapture or sympathy. The worst and most dangerous thing of which a scholar is capable results from the instinct of mediocrity of his type, from the Jesuitism of mediocrity, which labours instinctively for the destruction of the exceptional man, and endeavours to break—or still better, to relax— every bent bow To relax, of course, with consideration, and naturally with an indulgent hand—to RELAX with confiding sympathy that is the real art of Jesuitism, which has always understood how to introduce itself as the religion of sympathy. 207. However gratefully one may welcome the OBJECTIVE spirit—and who has not been sick to death of all subjectivity and its confounded IPSISIMOSITY!—in the end, however, one must learn caution even with regard to one’s gratitude, and put a stop to the exaggeration with which the unselfing and depersonalizing of the spirit has recently been celebrated, as if it were the goal in itself, as if it were salvation and glorification—as is especially accustomed to happen in the pessimist school, which has also in its turn good reasons for paying the highest honours to “ disinterested knowledge” The objective man, who no longer curses and scolds like the pessimist, the IDEAL man of learning in whom the scientific instinct blossoms forth fully after a thousand complete and partial failures, is assuredly one of the most costly instruments that exist, but his place is in the hand of one who is more powerful He is only an instrument, we may say, he is a MIRROR—he is no “ purpose in himself” The objective man is in truth a mirror accustomed to prostration before everything that wants to be known, with such desires only as knowing or “ reflecting” implies—he waits until something comes, and then expands himself sensitively, so that even the light footsteps and gliding-past of spiritual beings may not be lost on his surface and film Whatever “ personality” he still possesses seems to him accidental, arbitrary, or still oftener, disturbing, so much has he come to regard himself as the passage and reflection of outside forms and events He calls up the recollection of “ himself” with an effort, and not infrequently wrongly, he readily confounds himself with other persons, he makes mistakes with regard to his own needs, and here only is he unrefined and negligent Perhaps he is troubled about the health, or the pettiness and confined atmosphere of wife and friend, or the lack of companions and society—indeed, he sets himself to reflect on his suffering, but in vain! His thoughts already rove away to the MORE GENERAL case, and tomorrow he knows as little as he knew yesterday how to help himself He does not now take himself seriously and devote time to himself he is serene, NOT from lack of trouble, but from lack of capacity for grasping and dealing with HIS trouble The habitual complaisance with respect to all objects and experiences, the radiant and impartial hospitality with which he receives everything that comes his way, his habit of inconsiderate good-nature, of dangerous indifference as to Yea and Nay: alas! there are enough of cases in which he has to atone for these virtues of his!—and as man generally, he becomes far too easily the CAPUT MORTUUM of such virtues. Should one wish love or hatred from him—I mean love and hatred as God, woman, and animal understand them—he will do what he can, and furnish what he can. But one must not be surprised if it should not be much—if he should show himself just at this point to be false, fragile, questionable, and deteriorated. His love is constrained, his hatred is artificial, and rather UN TOUR DE FORCE, a slight ostentation and exaggeration. He is only genuine so far as he can be objective; only in his serene totality is he still “ nature” and “ natural.” His mirroring and eternally self-polishing soul no longer knows how to affirm, no longer how to deny; he does not command; neither does he destroy. “ JE NE MEPRISE PRESQUE RIEN”—he says, with Leibniz: let us not overlook nor undervalue the PRESQUE! Neither is he a model man; he does not go in advance of any one, nor after, either; he places himself generally too far off to have any reason for espousing the cause of either good or evil. If he has been so long confounded with the PHILOSOPHER, with the Caesarian trainer and dictator of civilization, he has had far too much honour, and what is more essential in him has been overlooked—he is an instrument, something of a slave, though certainly the sublimest sort of slave, but nothing in himself—PRESQUE RIEN! The objective man is an instrument, a costly, easily injured, easily tarnished measuring instrument and mirroring apparatus, which is to be taken care of and respected; but he is no goal, not outgoing nor upgoing, no complementary man in whom the REST of existence justifies itself, no termination—and still less a commencement, an engendering, or primary cause, nothing hardy, powerful, self-centred, that wants to be master; but rather only a soft, inflated, delicate, movable potter’s-form, that must wait for some kind of content and frame to “ shape” itself thereto—for the most part a man without frame and content, a “ selfless” man. Consequently, also, nothing for women, IN PARENTHESI. 208. When a philosopher nowadays makes known that he is not a skeptic—I hope that has been gathered from the foregoing description of the objective spirit?—people all hear it impatiently; they regard him on that account with some apprehension, they would like to ask so many, many questions… indeed among timid hearers, of whom there are now so many, he is henceforth said to be dangerous. With his repudiation of skepticism, it seems to them as if they heard some evil-threatening sound in the distance, as if a new kind of explosive were being tried somewhere, a dynamite of the spirit, perhaps a newly discovered Russian NIHILINE, a pessimism BONAE VOLUNTATIS, that not only denies, means denial, but—dreadful thought! PRACTISES denial. Against this kind of “ good-will”—a will to the veritable, actual negation of life—there is, as is generally acknowledged nowadays, no better soporific and sedative than skepticism, the mild, pleasing, lulling poppy of skepticism; and Hamlet himself is now prescribed by the doctors of the day as an antidote to the “ spirit,” and its underground noises. “ Are not our ears already full of bad sounds?” say the skeptics, as lovers of repose, and almost as a kind of safety police; “ this
subterranean Nay is terrible! Be still, ye pessimistic moles!” The skeptic, in effect, that delicate creature, is far too easily frightened; his conscience is schooled so as to start at every Nay, and even at that sharp, decided Yea, and feels something like a bite thereby. Yea! and Nay!—they seem to him opposed to morality; he loves, on the contrary, to make a festival to his virtue by a noble aloofness, while perhaps he says with Montaigne: “ What do I know?” Or with Socrates: “ I know that I know nothing.” Or: “ Here I do not trust myself, no door is open to me.” Or: “ Even if the door were open, why should I enter immediately?” Or: “ What is the use of any hasty hypotheses? It might quite well be in good taste to make no hypotheses at all. Are you absolutely obliged to straighten at once what is crooked? to stuff every hole with some kind of oakum? Is there not time enough for that? Has not the time leisure? Oh, ye demons, can ye not at all WAIT? The uncertain also has its charms, the Sphinx, too, is a Circe, and Circe, too, was a philosopher.”—Thus does a skeptic console himself; and in truth he needs some consolation. For skepticism is the most spiritual expression of a certain many-sided physiological temperament, which in ordinary language is called nervous debility and sickliness; it arises whenever races or classes which have been long separated, decisively and suddenly blend with one another. In the new generation, which has inherited as it were different standards and valuations in its blood, everything is disquiet, derangement, doubt, and tentativeness; the best powers operate restrictively, the very virtues prevent each other growing and becoming strong, equilibrium, ballast, and perpendicular stability are lacking in body and soul. That, however, which is most diseased and degenerated in such nondescripts is the WILL; they are no longer familiar with independence of decision, or the courageous feeling of pleasure in willing—they are doubtful of the “ freedom of the will” even in their dreams Our present-day Europe, the scene of a senseless, precipitate attempt at a radical blending of classes, and CONSEQUENTLY of races, is therefore skeptical in all its heights and depths, sometimes exhibiting the mobile skepticism which springs impatiently and wantonly from branch to branch, sometimes with gloomy aspect, like a cloud over-charged with interrogative signs—and often sick unto death of its will! Paralysis of will, where do we not find this cripple sitting nowadays! And yet how bedecked oftentimes’ How seductively ornamented! There are the finest gala dresses and disguises for this disease, and that, for instance, most of what places itself nowadays in the show-cases as “ objectiveness,” “ the scientific spirit,” “ L’ART POUR L’ART,” and “ pure voluntary knowledge,” is only decked-out skepticism and paralysis of will—I am ready to answer for this diagnosis of the European disease—The disease of the will is diffused unequally over Europe, it is worst and most varied where civilization has longest prevailed, it decreases according as “ the barbarian” still—or again—asserts his claims under the loose drapery of Western culture It is therefore in the France of today, as can be readily disclosed and comprehended, that the will is most infirm, and France, which has always had a masterly aptitude for converting even the portentous crises of its spirit into something charming and seductive, now manifests emphatically its intellectual ascendancy over Europe, by being the school and exhibition of all the charms of skepticism The power to will and to persist, moreover, in a resolution, is already somewhat stronger in Germany, and again in the North of Germany it is stronger than in Central Germany, it is considerably stronger in England, Spain, and Corsica, associated with phlegm in the former and with hard skulls in the latter—not to mention Italy, which is too young yet to know what it wants, and must first show whether it can exercise will, but it is strongest and most surprising of all in that immense middle empire where Europe as it were flows back to Asia—namely, in Russia There the power to will has been long stored up and accumulated, there the will—uncertain whether to be negative or affirmative—waits threateningly to be discharged (to borrow their pet phrase from our physicists) Perhaps not only Indian wars and complications in Asia would be necessary to free Europe from its greatest danger, but also internal subversion, the shattering of the empire into small states, and above all the introduction of parliamentary imbecility, together with the obligation of every one to read his newspaper at breakfast I do not say this as one who desires it, in my heart I should rather prefer the contrary—I mean such an increase in the threatening attitude of Russia, that Europe would have to make up its mind to become equally threatening—namely, TO ACQUIRE ONE WILL, by means of a new caste to rule over the Continent, a persistent, dreadful will of its own, that can set its aims thousands of years ahead; so that the long spun-out comedy of its petty-statism, and its dynastic as well as its democratic many-willed-ness, might finally be brought to a close. The time for petty politics is past; the next century will bring the struggle for the dominion of the world—the COMPULSION to great politics. 209. As to how far the new warlike age on which we Europeans have evidently entered may perhaps favour the growth of another and stronger kind of skepticism, I should like to express myself preliminarily merely by a parable, which the lovers of German history will already understand. That unscrupulous enthusiast for big, handsome grenadiers (who, as King of Prussia, brought into being a military and skeptical genius—and therewith, in reality, the new and now triumphantly emerged type of German), the problematic, crazy father of Frederick the Great, had on one point the very knack and lucky grasp of the genius: he knew what was then lacking in Germany, the want of which was a hundred times more alarming and serious than any lack of culture and social form—his ill-will to the young Frederick resulted from the anxiety of a profound instinct. MEN WERE LACKING; and he suspected, to his bitterest regret, that his own son was not man enough. There, however, he deceived himself; but who would not have deceived himself in his place? He saw his son lapsed to atheism, to the ESPRIT, to the pleasant frivolity of clever Frenchmen—he saw in the background the great bloodsucker, the spider skepticism; he suspected the incurable wretchedness of a heart no longer hard enough either for evil or good, and of a broken will that no longer commands, is noLE to command. Meanwhile, however, there grew up in his son that new kind of harder and more dangerous skepticism—who knows TO WHAT EXTENT it was encouraged just by his father’s hatred and the icy melancholy of a will condemned to solitude?—the skepticism of daring manliness, which is closely related to the genius for war and conquest, and made its first entrance into Germany in the person of the great Frederick. This skepticism despises and nevertheless grasps; it undermines and takes possession; it does not believe, but it does not thereby lose itself; it gives the spirit a dangerous liberty, but it keeps strict guard over the heart. It is the GERMAN form of skepticism, which, as a continued Fredericianism, risen to the highest spirituality, has kept Europe for a considerable time under the dominion of the German spirit and its critical and historical distrust Owing to the insuperably strong and tough masculine character of the great German philologists and historical critics (who, rightly estimated, were also all of them artists of destruction and dissolution), a NEW conception of the German spirit gradually established itself—in spite of all Romanticism in music and philosophy—in which the leaning towards masculine skepticism was decidedly prominent whether, for instance, as
fearlessness of gaze, as courage and sternness of the dissecting hand, or as resolute will to dangerous voyages of discovery, to spiritualized North Pole expeditions under barren and dangerous skies. There may be good grounds for it when warm-blooded and superficial humanitarians cross themselves before this spirit, CET ESPRIT FATALISTE, IRONIQUE, MEPHISTOPHELIQUE, as Michelet calls it, not without a shudder. But if one would realize how characteristic is this fear of the “ man” in the German spirit which awakened Europe out of its “ dogmatic slumber,” let us call to mind the former conception which had to be overcome by this new one—and that it is not so very long ago that a masculinized woman could dare, with unbridled presumption, to recommend the Germans to the interest of Europe as gentle, good-hearted, weak-willed, and poetical fools. Finally, let us only understand profoundly enough Napoleon’s astonishment when he saw Goethe it reveals what had been regarded for centuries as the “ German spirit” “ VOILA UN HOMME!”—that was as much as to say “ But this is a MAN! And I only expected to see a German!” 210. Supposing, then, that in the picture of the philosophers of the future, some trait suggests the question whether they must not perhaps be skeptics in the last-mentioned sense, something in them would only be designated thereby—and not they themselves. With equal right they might call themselves critics, and assuredly they will be men of experiments. By the name with which I ventured to baptize them, I have already expressly emphasized their attempting and their love of attempting is this because, as critics in body and soul, they will love to make use of experiments in a new, and perhaps wider and more dangerous sense? In their passion for knowledge, will they have to go further in daring and painful attempts than the sensitive and pampered taste of a democratic century can approve of?—There is no doubt these coming ones will be least able to dispense with the serious and not unscrupulous qualities which distinguish the critic from the skeptic I mean the certainty as to standards of worth, the conscious employment of a unity of method, the wary courage, the standing-alone, and the capacity for self-responsibility, indeed, they will avow among themselves a DELIGHT in denial and dissection, and a certain considerate cruelty, which knows how to handle the knife surely and deftly, even when the heart bleeds They will be STERNER (and perhaps not always towards themselves only) than humane people may desire, they will not deal with the “ truth” in order that it may “ please” them, or “ elevate” and “ inspire” them—they will rather have little faith in “ TRUTH” bringing with it such revels for the feelings. They will smile, those rigorous spirits, when any one says in their presence “ That thought elevates me, why should it not be true?” or “ That work enchants me, why should it not be beautiful?” or “ That artist enlarges me, why should he not be great?” Perhaps they will not only have a smile, but a genuine disgust for all that is thus rapturous, idealistic, feminine, and hermaphroditic, and if any one could look into their inmost hearts, he would not easily find therein the intention to reconcile “ Christian sentiments” with “ antique taste,” or even with “ modern parliamentarism” (the kind of reconciliation necessarily found even among philosophers in our very uncertain and consequently very conciliatory century). Critical discipline, and every habit that conduces to purity and rigour in intellectual matters, will not only be demanded from themselves by these philosophers of the future, they may even make a display thereof as their special adornment—nevertheless they will not want to be called critics on that account. It will seem to them no small indignity to philosophy to have it decreed, as is so welcome nowadays, that “ philosophy itself is criticism and critical science—and nothing else whatever!” Though this estimate of philosophy may enjoy the approval of all the Positivists of France and Germany (and possibly it even flattered the heart and taste of KANT: let us call to mind the titles of his principal works), our new philosophers will say, notwithstanding, that critics are instruments of the philosopher, and just on that account, as instruments, they are far from being philosophers themselves! Even the great Chinaman of Konigsberg was only a great critic. 211. I insist upon it that people finally cease confounding philosophical workers, and in general scientific men, with philosophers—that precisely here one should strictly give “ each his own,” and not give those far too much, these far too little. It may be necessary for the education of the real philosopher that he himself should have once stood upon all those steps upon which his servants, the scientific workers of philosophy, remain standing, and MUST remain standing he himself must perhaps have been critic, and dogmatist, and historian, and besides, poet, and collector, and traveler, and riddle-reader, and moralist, and seer, and “ free spirit,” and almost everything, in order to traverse the whole range of human values and estimations, and that he may BELE with a variety of eyes and consciences to look from a height to any distance, from a depth up to any height, from a nook into any expanse. But all these are only preliminary conditions for his task; this task itself demands something else—it requires him TO CREATE VALUES. The philosophical workers, after the excellent pattern of Kant and Hegel, have to fix and formalize some great existing body of valuations—that is to say, former DETERMINATIONS OF VALUE, creations of value, which have become prevalent, and are for a time called “ truths”—whether in the domain of the LOGICAL, the POLITICAL (moral), or the ARTISTIC. It is for these investigators to make whatever has happened and been esteemed hitherto, conspicuous, conceivable, intelligible, and manageable, to shorten everything long, even “ time” itself, and to SUBJUGATE the entire past: an immense and wonderful task, in the carrying out of which all refined pride, all tenacious will, can surely find satisfaction. THE REAL PHILOSOPHERS, HOWEVER, ARE COMMANDERS AND LAW-GIVERS; they say: “ Thus SHALL it be!” They determine first the Whither and the Why of mankind, and thereby set aside the previous labour of all philosophical workers, and all subjugators of the past—they grasp at the future with a creative hand, and whatever is and was, becomes for them thereby a means, an instrument, and a hammer. Their “ knowing” is CREATING, their creating is a law-giving, their will to truth is—WILL TO POWER.—Are there at present such philosophers? Have there ever been such philosophers? MUST there not be such philosophers some day? … 212. It is always more obvious to me that the philosopher, as a man INDISPENSLE for the morrow and the day after the morrow, has ever found himself, and HAS BEEN OBLIGED to find himself, in contradiction to the day in which he lives; his enemy has always been the ideal of his day. Hitherto all those extraordinary furtherers of humanity whom one calls philosophers—who rarely regarded themselves as lovers of wisdom, but rather as disagreeable fools and dangerous interrogators—have found their mission, their hard, involuntary, imperative mission (in the end, however, the greatness of their mission), in being the bad conscience of their age. In putting the vivisector’s knife to the breast of the very VIRTUES OF THEIR AGE, they have betrayed their own secret; it has been for the sake of a NEW greatness of man, a new untrodden path to his aggrandizement. They have always
disclosed how much hypocrisy, indolence, self-indulgence, and self-neglect, how much falsehood was concealed under the most venerated types of contemporary morality, how much virtue was OUTLIVED, they have always said “ We must remove hence to where YOU are least at home” In the face of a world of “ modern ideas,” which would like to confine every one in a corner, in a “ specialty,” a philosopher, if there could be philosophers nowadays, would be compelled to place the greatness of man, the conception of “ greatness,” precisely in his comprehensiveness and multifariousness, in his all-roundness, he would even determine worth and rank according to the amount and variety of that which a man could bear and take upon himself, according to the EXTENT to which a man could stretch his responsibility Nowadays the taste and virtue of the age weaken and attenuate the will, nothing is so adapted to the spirit of the age as weakness of will consequently, in the ideal of the philosopher, strength of will, sternness, and capacity for prolonged resolution, must specially be included in the conception of “ greatness”, with as good a right as the opposite doctrine, with its ideal of a silly, renouncing, humble, selfless humanity, was suited to an opposite age —such as the sixteenth century, which suffered from its accumulated energy of will, and from the wildest torrents and floods of selfishness In the time of Socrates, among men only of worn-out instincts, old conservative Athenians who let themselves go—“ for the sake of happiness,” as they said, for the sake of pleasure, as their conduct indicated—and who had continually on their lips the old pompous words to which they had long forfeited the right by the life they led, IRONY was perhaps necessary for greatness of soul, the wicked Socratic assurance of the old physician and plebeian, who cut ruthlessly into his own flesh, as into the flesh and heart of the “ noble,” with a look that said plainly enough “ Do not dissemble before me! here—we are equal!” At present, on the contrary, when throughout Europe the herding-animal alone attains to honours, and dispenses honours, when “ equality of right” can too readily be transformed into equality in wrong—I mean to say into general war against everything rare, strange, and privileged, against the higher man, the higher soul, the higher duty, the higher responsibility, the creative plenipotence and lordliness—at present it belongs to the conception of “ greatness” to be noble, to wish to be apart, to be capable of being different, to stand alone, to have to live by personal initiative, and the philosopher will betray something of his own ideal when he asserts “ He shall be the greatest who can be the most solitary, the most concealed, the most divergent, the man beyond good and evil, the master of his virtues, and of super-abundance of will; precisely this shall be called GREATNESS: as diversified as can be entire, as ample as can be full.” And to ask once more the question: Is greatness POSSIBLE—nowadays? 213. It is difficult to learn what a philosopher is, because it cannot be taught: one must “ know” it by experience—or one should have the pride NOT to know it. The fact that at present people all talk of things of which they CANNOT have any experience, is true more especially and unfortunately as concerns the philosopher and philosophical matters:—the very few know them, are permitted to know them, and all popular ideas about them are false. Thus, for instance, the truly philosophical combination of a bold, exuberant spirituality which runs at presto pace, and a dialectic rigour and necessity which makes no false step, is unknown to most thinkers and scholars from their own experience, and therefore, should any one speak of it in their presence, it is incredible to them. They conceive of every necessity as troublesome, as a painful compulsory obedience and state of constraint; thinking itself is regarded by them as something slow and hesitating, almost as a trouble, and often enough as “ worthy of the SWEAT of the noble”—but not at all as something easy and divine, closely related to dancing and exuberance! “ To think” and to take a matter “ seriously,” “ arduously”—that is one and the same thing to them; such only has been their “ experience.”—Artists have here perhaps a finer intuition; they who know only too well that precisely when they no longer do anything “ arbitrarily,” and everything of necessity, their feeling of freedom, of subtlety, of power, of creatively fixing, disposing, and shaping, reaches its climax—in short, that necessity and “ freedom of will” are then the same thing with them. There is, in fine, a gradation of rank in psychical states, to which the gradation of rank in the problems corresponds; and the highest problems repel ruthlessly every one who ventures too near them, without being predestined for their solution by the loftiness and power of his spirituality. Of what use is it for nimble, everyday intellects, or clumsy, honest mechanics and empiricists to press, in their plebeian ambition, close to such problems, and as it were into this “ holy of holies”—as so often happens nowadays! But coarse feet must never tread upon such carpets: this is provided for in the primary law of things; the doors remain closed to those intruders, though they may dash and break their heads thereon. People have always to be born to a high station, or, more definitely, they have to be BRED for it: a person has only a right to philosophy—taking the word in its higher significance—in virtue of his descent; the ancestors, the “ blood,” decide here also. Many generations must have prepared the way for the coming of the philosopher; each of his virtues must have been separately acquired, nurtured, transmitted, and embodied; not only the bold, easy, delicate course and current of his thoughts, but above all the readiness for great responsibilities, the majesty of ruling glance and contemning look, the feeling of separation from the multitude with their duties and virtues, the kindly patronage and defense of whatever is misunderstood and calumniated, be it God or devil, the delight and practice of supreme justice, the art of commanding, the amplitude of will, the lingering eye which rarely admires, rarely looks up, rarely loves…. CHAPTER VII. OUR VIRTUES 214. OUR Virtues?—It is probable that we, too, have still our virtues, although naturally they are not those sincere and massive virtues on account of which we hold our grandfathers in esteem and also at a little distance from us. We Europeans of the day after tomorrow, we firstlings of the twentieth century—with all our dangerous curiosity, our multifariousness and art of disguising, our mellow and seemingly sweetened cruelty in sense and spirit—we shall presumably, IF we must have virtues, have those only which have come to agreement with our most secret and heartfelt inclinations, with our most ardent requirements: well, then, let us look for them in our labyrinths!—where, as we know, so many things lose themselves, so many things get quite lost! And is there anything finer than to SEARCH for one’s own virtues? Is it not almost to BELIEVE in one’s own virtues? But this “ believing in one’s own virtues”—is it not practically the same as what was formerly called one’s “ good conscience,” that long, respectable pigtail of an idea, which our grandfathers used to hang behind their heads, and often enough also behind their understandings? It seems, therefore, that however little we may imagine ourselves to be old-fashioned and grandfatherly respectable in other respects, in one thing we are nevertheless the worthy grandchildren of our grandfathers, we last Europeans with good consciences: we also still
wear their pigtail.—Ah! if you only knew how soon, so very soon—it will be different! 215. As in the stellar firmament there are sometimes two suns which determine the path of one planet, and in certain cases suns of different colours shine around a single planet, now with red light, now with green, and then simultaneously illumine and flood it with motley colours: so we modern men, owing to the complicated mechanism of our “ firmament,” are determined by DIFFERENT moralities; our actions shine alternately in different colours, and are seldom unequivocal—and there are often cases, also, in which our actions are MOTLEY-COLOURED. 216. To love one’s enemies? I think that has been well learnt: it takes place thousands of times at present on a large and small scale; indeed, at times the higher and sublimer thing takes place:—we learn to DESPISE when we love, and precisely when we love best; all of it, however, unconsciously, without noise, without ostentation, with the shame and secrecy of goodness, which forbids the utterance of the pompous word and the formula of virtue. Morality as attitude—is opposed to our taste nowadays. This is ALSO an advance, as it was an advance in our fathers that religion as an attitude finally became opposed to their taste, including the enmity and Voltairean bitterness against religion (and all that formerly belonged to freethinker-pantomime). It is the music in our conscience, the dance in our spirit, to which Puritan litanies, moral sermons, and goody-goodness won’t chime. 217. Let us be careful in dealing with those who attach great importance to being credited with moral tact and subtlety in moral discernment! They never forgive us if they have once made a mistake BEFORE us (or even with REGARD to us)—they inevitably become our instinctive calumniators and detractors, even when they still remain our “ friends.”— Blessed are the forgetful: for they “ get the better” even of their blunders. 218. The psychologists of France—and where else are there still psychologists nowadays?—have never yet exhausted their bitter and manifold enjoyment of the betise bourgeoise, just as though… in short, they betray something thereby. Flaubert, for instance, the honest citizen of Rouen, neither saw, heard, nor tasted anything else in the end; it was his mode of self-torment and refined cruelty. As this is growing wearisome, I would now recommend for a change something else for a pleasure—namely, the unconscious astuteness with which good, fat, honest mediocrity always behaves towards loftier spirits and the tasks they have to perform, the subtle, barbed, Jesuitical astuteness, which is a thousand times subtler than the taste and understanding of the middle-class in its best moments—subtler even than the understanding of its victims:—a repeated proof that “ instinct” is the most intelligent of all kinds of intelligence which have hitherto been discovered. In short, you psychologists, study the philosophy of the “ rule” in its struggle with the “ exception”: there you have a spectacle fit for Gods and godlike malignity! Or, in plainer words, practise vivisection on “ good people,” on the “ homo bonae voluntatis,” ON YOURSELVES! 219. The practice of judging and condemning morally, is the favourite revenge of the intellectually shallow on those who are less so, it is also a kind of indemnity for their being badly endowed by nature, and finally, it is an opportunity for acquiring spirit and BECOMING subtle—malice spiritualises. They are glad in their inmost heart that there is a standard according to which those who are over-endowed with intellectual goods and privileges, are equal to them, they contend for the “ equality of all before God,” and almost NEED the belief in God for this purpose. It is among them that the most powerful antagonists of atheism are found. If any one were to say to them “ A lofty spirituality is beyond all comparison with the honesty and respectability of a merely moral man”—it would make them furious, I shall take care not to say so. I would rather flatter them with my theory that lofty spirituality itself exists only as the ultimate product of moral qualities, that it is a synthesis of all qualities attributed to the “ merely moral” man, after they have been acquired singly through long training and practice, perhaps during a whole series of generations, that lofty spirituality is precisely the spiritualising of justice, and the beneficent severity which knows that it is authorized to maintain GRADATIONS OF RANK in the world, even among things—and not only among men. 220. Now that the praise of the “ disinterested person” is so popular one must—probably not without some danger—get an idea of WHAT people actually take an interest in, and what are the things generally which fundamentally and profoundly concern ordinary men—including the cultured, even the learned, and perhaps philosophers also, if appearances do not deceive. The fact thereby becomes obvious that the greater part of what interests and charms higher natures, and more refined and fastidious tastes, seems absolutely “ uninteresting” to the average man—if, notwithstanding, he perceive devotion to these interests, he calls it desinteresse, and wonders how it is possible to act “ disinterestedly.” There have been philosophers who could give this popular astonishment a seductive and mystical, other-worldly expression (perhaps because they did not know the higher nature by experience?), instead of stating the naked and candidly reasonable truth that “ disinterested” action is very interesting and “ interested” action, provided that… “ And love?”—What! Even an action for love’s sake shall be “ unegoistic”? But you fools—! “ And the praise of the self-sacrificer?”—But whoever has really offered sacrifice knows that he wanted and obtained something for it—perhaps something from himself for something from himself; that he relinquished here in order to have more there, perhaps in general to be more, or even feel himself “ more.” But this is a realm of questions and answers in which a more fastidious spirit does not like to stay: for here truth has to stifle her yawns so much when she is obliged to answer. And after all, truth is a woman; one must not use force with her. 221. “ It sometimes happens,” said a moralistic pedant and trifle-retailer, “ that I honour and respect an unselfish man: not, however, because he is unselfish, but because I think he has a right to be useful to another man at his own expense. In short, the question is always who HE is, and who THE OTHER is. For instance, in a person created and destined for command, self-denial and modest retirement, instead of being virtues, would be the waste of virtues: so it seems to me. Every system of unegoistic morality which takes itself unconditionally and appeals to every one, not only sins against good taste, but is also an incentive to sins of omission, an ADDITIONAL seduction under the mask of philanthropy —and precisely a seduction and injury to the higher, rarer, and more privileged types of men. Moral systems must be compelled first of all to bow before the GRADATIONS OF RANK; their presumption must be driven home to their conscience—until they thoroughly understand at last that it is IMMORAL to say that ‘what is right for one is proper for another.’”—So said my moralistic pedant and bonhomme. Did he perhaps deserve to be laughed at when he thus exhorted systems of morals to practise morality? But one should not
be too much in the right if one wishes to have the laughers on ONE’S OWN side; a grain of wrong pertains even to good taste. 222. Wherever sympathy (fellow-suffering) is preached nowadays—and, if I gather rightly, no other religion is any longer preached—let the psychologist have his ears open through all the vanity, through all the noise which is natural to these preachers (as to all preachers), he will hear a hoarse, groaning, genuine note of SELF-CONTEMPT. It belongs to the overshadowing and uglifying of Europe, which has been on the increase for a century (the first symptoms of which are already specified documentarily in a thoughtful letter of Galiani to Madame d’Epinay)—IF IT IS NOT REALLY THE CAUSE THEREOF! The man of “ modern ideas,” the conceited ape, is excessively dissatisfied with himself—this is perfectly certain. He suffers, and his vanity wants him only “ to suffer with his fellows.” 223. The hybrid European—a tolerably ugly plebeian, taken all in all—absolutely requires a costume: he needs history as a storeroom of costumes. To be sure, he notices that none of the costumes fit him properly—he changes and changes. Let us look at the nineteenth century with respect to these hasty preferences and changes in its masquerades of style, and also with respect to its moments of desperation on account of “ nothing suiting” us. It is in vain to get ourselves up as romantic, or classical, or Christian, or Florentine, or barocco, or “ national,” in moribus et artibus: it does not “ clothe us”! But the “ spirit,” especially the “ historical spirit,” profits even by this desperation: once and again a new sample of the past or of the foreign is tested, put on, taken off, packed up, and above all studied—we are the first studious age in puncto of “ costumes,” I mean as concerns morals, articles of belief, artistic tastes, and religions; we are prepared as no other age has ever been for a carnival in the grand style, for the most spiritual festival—laughter and arrogance, for the transcendental height of supreme folly and Aristophanic ridicule of the world. Perhaps we are still discovering the domain of our invention just here, the domain where even we can still be original, probably as parodists of the world’s history and as God’s Merry-Andrews,—perhaps, though nothing else of the present have a future, our laughter itself may have a future! 224. The historical sense (or the capacity for divining quickly the order of rank of the valuations according to which a people, a community, or an individual has lived, the “ divining instinct” for the relationships of these valuations, for the relation of the authority of the valuations to the authority of the operating forces),—this historical sense, which we Europeans claim as our specialty, has come to us in the train of the enchanting and mad semi-barbarity into which Europe has been plunged by the democratic mingling of classes and races—it is only the nineteenth century that has recognized this faculty as its sixth sense. Owing to this mingling, the past of every form and mode of life, and of cultures which were formerly closely contiguous and superimposed on one another, flows forth into us “ modern souls”; our instincts now run back in all directions, we ourselves are a kind of chaos: in the end, as we have said, the spirit perceives its advantage therein. By means of our semi-barbarity in body and in desire, we have secret access everywhere, such as a noble age never had; we have access above all to the labyrinth of imperfect civilizations, and to every form of semi-barbarity that has at any time existed on earth; and in so far as the most considerable part of human civilization hitherto has just been semi-barbarity, the “ historical sense” implies almost the sense and instinct for everything, the taste and tongue for everything: whereby it immediately proves itself to be an IGNOBLE sense. For instance, we enjoy Homer once more: it is perhaps our happiest acquisition that we know how to appreciate Homer, whom men of distinguished culture (as the French of the seventeenth century, like Saint-Evremond, who reproached him for his ESPRIT VASTE, and even Voltaire, the last echo of the century) cannot and could not so easily appropriate—whom they scarcely permitted themselves to enjoy. The very decided Yea and Nay of their palate, their promptly ready disgust, their hesitating reluctance with regard to everything strange, their horror of the bad taste even of lively curiosity, and in general the averseness of every distinguished and self-sufficing culture to avow a new desire, a dissatisfaction with its own condition, or an admiration of what is strange: all this determines and disposes them unfavourably even towards the best things of the world which are not their property or could not become their prey—and no faculty is more unintelligible to such men than just this historical sense, with its truckling, plebeian curiosity. The case is not different with Shakespeare, that marvelous Spanish-Moorish-Saxon synthesis of taste, over whom an ancient Athenian of the circle of AEschylus would have half-killed himself with laughter or irritation: but we—accept precisely this wild motleyness, this medley of the most delicate, the most coarse, and the most artificial, with a secret confidence and cordiality; we enjoy it as a refinement of art reserved expressly for us, and allow ourselves to be as little disturbed by the repulsive fumes and the proximity of the English populace in which Shakespeare’s art and taste lives, as perhaps on the Chiaja of Naples, where, with all our senses awake, we go our way, enchanted and voluntarily, in spite of the drain-odour of the lower quarters of the town. That as men of the “ historical sense” we have our virtues, is not to be disputed:—we are unpretentious, unselfish, modest, brave, habituated to self-control and self-renunciation, very grateful, very patient, very complaisant—but with all this we are perhaps not very “ tasteful.” Let us finally confess it, that what is most difficult for us men of the “ historical sense” to grasp, feel, taste, and love, what finds us fundamentally prejudiced and almost hostile, is precisely the perfection and ultimate maturity in every culture and art, the essentially noble in works and men, their moment of smooth sea and halcyon self-sufficiency, the goldenness and coldness which all things show that have perfected themselves. Perhaps our great virtue of the historical sense is in necessary contrast to GOOD taste, at least to the very bad taste; and we can only evoke in ourselves imperfectly, hesitatingly, and with compulsion the small, short, and happy godsends and glorifications of human life as they shine here and there: those moments and marvelous experiences when a great power has voluntarily come to a halt before the boundless and infinite,—when a super-abundance of refined delight has been enjoyed by a sudden checking and petrifying, by standing firmly and planting oneself fixedly on still trembling ground. PROPORTIONATENESS is strange to us, let us confess it to ourselves; our itching is really the itching for the infinite, the immeasurable. Like the rider on his forward panting horse, we let the reins fall before the infinite, we modern men, we semi-barbarians—and are only in OUR highest bliss when we—ARE IN MOST DANGER. 225. Whether it be hedonism, pessimism, utilitarianism, or eudaemonism, all those modes of thinking which measure the worth of things according to PLEASURE and PAIN, that is, according to accompanying circumstances and secondary considerations, are plausible modes of thought and naivetes, which every one conscious of CREATIVE powers and
an artist’s conscience will look down upon with scorn, though not without sympathy. Sympathy for you!—to be sure, that is not sympathy as you understand it: it is not sympathy for social “ distress,” for “ society” with its sick and misfortuned, for the hereditarily vicious and defective who lie on the ground around us; still less is it sympathy for the grumbling, vexed, revolutionary slave-classes who strive after power—they call it “ freedom.” OUR sympathy is a loftier and further-sighted sympathy:—we see how MAN dwarfs himself, how YOU dwarf him! and there are moments when we view YOUR sympathy with an indescribable anguish, when we resist it,—when we regard your seriousness as more dangerous than any kind of levity. You want, if possible—and there is not a more foolish “ if possible”—TO DO AWAY WITH SUFFERING; and we?—it really seems that WE would rather have it increased and made worse than it has ever been! Well-being, as you understand it—is certainly not a goal; it seems to us an END; a condition which at once renders man ludicrous and contemptible—and makes his destruction DESIRLE! The discipline of suffering, of GREAT suffering—know ye not that it is only THIS discipline that has produced all the elevations of humanity hitherto? The tension of soul in misfortune which communicates to it its energy, its shuddering in view of rack and ruin, its inventiveness and bravery in undergoing, enduring, interpreting, and exploiting misfortune, and whatever depth, mystery, disguise, spirit, artifice, or greatness has been bestowed upon the soul—has it not been bestowed through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering? In man CREATURE and CREATOR are united: in man there is not only matter, shred, excess, clay, mire, folly, chaos; but there is also the creator, the sculptor, the hardness of the hammer, the divinity of the spectator, and the seventh day—do ye understand this contrast? And that YOUR sympathy for the “ creature in man” applies to that which has to be fashioned, bruised, forged, stretched, roasted, annealed, refined—to that which must necessarily SUFFER, and IS MEANT to suffer? And our sympathy—do ye not understand what our REVERSE sympathy applies to, when it resists your sympathy as the worst of all pampering and enervation? —So it is sympathy AGAINST sympathy!—But to repeat it once more, there are higher problems than the problems of pleasure and pain and sympathy; and all systems of philosophy which deal only with these are naivetes. 226. WE IMMORALISTS.—This world with which WE are concerned, in which we have to fear and love, this almost invisible, inaudible world of delicate command and delicate obedience, a world of “ almost” in every respect, captious, insidious, sharp, and tender—yes, it is well protected from clumsy spectators and familiar curiosity! We are woven into a strong net and garment of duties, and CANNOT disengage ourselves—precisely here, we are “ men of duty,” even we! Occasionally, it is true, we dance in our “ chains” and betwixt our “ swords”; it is none the less true that more often we gnash our teeth under the circumstances, and are impatient at the secret hardship of our lot. But do what we will, fools and appearances say of us: “ These are men WITHOUT duty,”—we have always fools and appearances against us! 227. Honesty, granting that it is the virtue of which we cannot rid ourselves, we free spirits—well, we will labour at it with all our perversity and love, and not tire of “ perfecting” ourselves in OUR virtue, which alone remains: may its glance some day overspread like a gilded, blue, mocking twilight this aging civilization with its dull gloomy seriousness! And if, nevertheless, our honesty should one day grow weary, and sigh, and stretch its limbs, and find us too hard, and would fain have it pleasanter, easier, and gentler, like an agreeable vice, let us remain HARD, we latest Stoics, and let us send to its help whatever devilry we have in us:—our disgust at the clumsy and undefined, our “ NITIMUR IN VETITUM,” our love of adventure, our sharpened and fastidious curiosity, our most subtle, disguised, intellectual Will to Power and universal conquest, which rambles and roves avidiously around all the realms of the future—let us go with all our “ devils” to the help of our “ God”! It is probable that people will misunderstand and mistake us on that account: what does it matter! They will say: “ Their ‘honesty’—that is their devilry, and nothing else!” What does it matter! And even if they were right—have not all Gods hitherto been such sanctified, re-baptized devils? And after all, what do we know of ourselves? And what the spirit that leads us wants TO BE CALLED? (It is a question of names.) And how many spirits we harbour? Our honesty, we free spirits—let us be careful lest it become our vanity, our ornament and ostentation, our limitation, our stupidity! Every virtue inclines to stupidity, every stupidity to virtue; “ stupid to the point of sanctity,” they say in Russia,—let us be careful lest out of pure honesty we eventually become saints and bores! Is not life a hundred times too short for us—to bore ourselves? One would have to believe in eternal life in order to… 228. I hope to be forgiven for discovering that all moral philosophy hitherto has been tedious and has belonged to the soporific appliances—and that “ virtue,” in my opinion, has been MORE injured by the TEDIOUSNESS of its advocates than by anything else; at the same time, however, I would not wish to overlook their general usefulness. It is desirable that as few people as possible should reflect upon morals, and consequently it is very desirable that morals should not some day become interesting! But let us not be afraid! Things still remain today as they have always been: I see no one in Europe who has (or DISCLOSES) an idea of the fact that philosophizing concerning morals might be conducted in a dangerous, captious, and ensnaring manner—that CALAMITY might be involved therein. Observe, for example, the indefatigable, inevitable English utilitarians: how ponderously and respectably they stalk on, stalk along (a Homeric metaphor expresses it better) in the footsteps of Bentham, just as he had already stalked in the footsteps of the respectable Helvetius! (no, he was not a dangerous man, Helvetius, CE SENATEUR POCOCURANTE, to use an expression of Galiani). No new thought, nothing of the nature of a finer turning or better expression of an old thought, not even a proper history of what has been previously thought on the subject: an IMPOSSIBLE literature, taking it all in all, unless one knows how to leaven it with some mischief. In effect, the old English vice called CANT, which is MORAL TARTUFFISM, has insinuated itself also into these moralists (whom one must certainly read with an eye to their motives if one MUST read them), concealed this time under the new form of the scientific spirit; moreover, there is not absent from them a secret struggle with the pangs of conscience, from which a race of former Puritans must naturally suffer, in all their scientific tinkering with morals. (Is not a moralist the opposite of a Puritan? That is to say, as a thinker who regards morality as questionable, as worthy of interrogation, in short, as a problem? Is moralizing not-immoral?) In the end, they all want English morality to be recognized as authoritative, inasmuch as mankind, or the “ general utility,” or “ the happiness of the greatest number,”—no! the happiness of ENGLAND, will be best served thereby. They would like, by all means, to convince themselves that the striving after English happiness, I mean after COMFORT and FASHION
(and in the highest instance, a seat in Parliament), is at the same time the true path of virtue; in fact, that in so far as there has been virtue in the world hitherto, it has just consisted in such striving. Not one of those ponderous, conscience-stricken herding-animals (who undertake to advocate the cause of egoism as conducive to the general welfare) wants to have any knowledge or inkling of the facts that the “ general welfare” is no ideal, no goal, no notion that can be at all grasped, but is only a nostrum,—that what is fair to one MAY NOT at all be fair to another, that the requirement of one morality for all is really a detriment to higher men, in short, that there is a DISTINCTION OF RANK between man and man, and consequently between morality and morality. They are an unassuming and fundamentally mediocre species of men, these utilitarian Englishmen, and, as already remarked, in so far as they are tedious, one cannot think highly enough of their utility. One ought even to ENCOURAGE them, as has been partially attempted in the following rhymes:— Hail, ye worthies, barrow-wheeling, “ Longer—better,” aye revealing, Stiffer aye in head and knee; Unenraptured, never jesting, Mediocre everlasting, SANS GENIE ET SANS ESPRIT! 229. In these later ages, which may be proud of their humanity, there still remains so much fear, so much SUPERSTITION of the fear, of the “ cruel wild beast,” the mastering of which constitutes the very pride of these humaner ages—that even obvious truths, as if by the agreement of centuries, have long remained unuttered, because they have the appearance of helping the finally slain wild beast back to life again. I perhaps risk something when I allow such a truth to escape; let others capture it again and give it so much “ milk of pious sentiment” [FOOTNOTE: An expression from Schiller’s William Tell, Act IV, Scene 3.] to drink, that it will lie down quiet and forgotten, in its old corner.—One ought to learn anew about cruelty, and open one’s eyes; one ought at last to learn impatience, in order that such immodest gross errors—as, for instance, have been fostered by ancient and modern philosophers with regard to tragedy—may no longer wander about virtuously and boldly. Almost everything that we call “ higher culture” is based upon the spiritualising and intensifying of CRUELTY—this is my thesis; the “ wild beast” has not been slain at all, it lives, it flourishes, it has only been—transfigured. That which constitutes the painful delight of tragedy is cruelty; that which operates agreeably in so-called tragic sympathy, and at the basis even of everything sublime, up to the highest and most delicate thrills of metaphysics, obtains its sweetness solely from the intermingled ingredient of cruelty. What the Roman enjoys in the arena, the Christian in the ecstasies of the cross, the Spaniard at the sight of the faggot and stake, or of the bull-fight, the present-day Japanese who presses his way to the tragedy, the workman of the Parisian suburbs who has a homesickness for bloody revolutions, the Wagnerienne who, with unhinged will, “ undergoes” the performance of “ Tristan and Isolde”—what all these enjoy, and strive with mysterious ardour to drink in, is the philtre of the great Circe “ cruelty.” Here, to be sure, we must put aside entirely the blundering psychology of former times, which could only teach with regard to cruelty that it originated at the sight of the suffering of OTHERS: there is an abundant, super-abundant enjoyment even in one’s own suffering, in causing one’s own suffering—and wherever man has allowed himself to be persuaded to self-denial in the RELIGIOUS sense, or to self-mutilation, as among the Phoenicians and ascetics, or in general, to desensualisation, decarnalisation, and contrition, to Puritanical repentance-spasms, to vivisection of conscience and to Pascal-like SACRIFIZIA DELL’ INTELLETO, he is secretly allured and impelled forwards by his cruelty, by the dangerous thrill of cruelty TOWARDS HIMSELF.—Finally, let us consider that even the seeker of knowledge operates as an artist and glorifier of cruelty, in that he compels his spirit to perceive AGAINST its own inclination, and often enough against the wishes of his heart:—he forces it to say Nay, where he would like to affirm, love, and adore; indeed, every instance of taking a thing profoundly and fundamentally, is a violation, an intentional injuring of the fundamental will of the spirit, which instinctively aims at appearance and superficiality,—even in every desire for knowledge there is a drop of cruelty. 230. Perhaps what I have said here about a “ fundamental will of the spirit” may not be understood without further details; I may be allowed a word of explanation.—That imperious something which is popularly called “ the spirit,” wishes to be master internally and externally, and to feel itself master; it has the will of a multiplicity for a simplicity, a binding, taming, imperious, and essentially ruling will. Its requirements and capacities here, are the same as those assigned by physiologists to everything that lives, grows, and multiplies. The power of the spirit to appropriate foreign elements reveals itself in a strong tendency to assimilate the new to the old, to simplify the manifold, to overlook or repudiate the absolutely contradictory; just as it arbitrarily re-underlines, makes prominent, and falsifies for itself certain traits and lines in the foreign elements, in every portion of the “ outside world.” Its object thereby is the incorporation of new “ experiences,” the assortment of new things in the old arrangements—in short, growth; or more properly, the FEELING of growth, the feeling of increased power—is its object. This same will has at its service an apparently opposed impulse of the spirit, a suddenly adopted preference of ignorance, of arbitrary shutting out, a closing of windows, an inner denial of this or that, a prohibition to approach, a sort of defensive attitude against much that is knowable, a contentment with obscurity, with the shutting-in horizon, an acceptance and approval of ignorance: as that which is all necessary according to the degree of its appropriating power, its “ digestive power,” to speak figuratively (and in fact “ the spirit” resembles a stomach more than anything else). Here also belong an occasional propensity of the spirit to let itself be deceived (perhaps with a waggish suspicion that it is NOT so and so, but is only allowed to pass as such), a delight in uncertainty and ambiguity, an exulting enjoyment of arbitrary, out-of-the-way narrowness and mystery, of the too-near, of the foreground, of the magnified, the diminished, the misshapen, the beautified—an enjoyment of the arbitrariness of all these manifestations of power. Finally, in this connection, there is the not unscrupulous readiness of the spirit to deceive other spirits and dissemble before them—the constant pressing and straining of a creating, shaping, changeable power: the spirit enjoys therein its craftiness and its variety of disguises, it enjoys also its feeling of security therein—it is precisely by its Protean arts that it is best protected and concealed!—COUNTER TO this propensity for appearance, for simplification, for a disguise, for a cloak, in short, for an outside—for every outside is a cloak—there operates the sublime tendency of the man of knowledge, which takes, and INSISTS on taking things profoundly, variously, and thoroughly; as a kind of cruelty of the intellectual conscience and taste, which every courageous thinker will acknowledge in himself, provided, as it ought to be, that he has sharpened
and hardened his eye sufficiently long for introspection, and is accustomed to severe discipline and even severe words. He will say: “ There is something cruel in the tendency of my spirit”: let the virtuous and amiable try to convince him that it is not so! In fact, it would sound nicer, if, instead of our cruelty, perhaps our “ extravagant honesty” were talked about, whispered about, and glorified—we free, VERY free spirits—and some day perhaps SUCH will actually be our—posthumous glory! Meanwhile—for there is plenty of time until then —we should be least inclined to deck ourselves out in such florid and fringed moral verbiage; our whole former work has just made us sick of this taste and its sprightly exuberance. They are beautiful, glistening, jingling, festive words: honesty, love of truth, love of wisdom, sacrifice for knowledge, heroism of the truthful—there is something in them that makes one’s heart swell with pride. But we anchorites and marmots have long ago persuaded ourselves in all the secrecy of an anchorite’s conscience, that this worthy parade of verbiage also belongs to the old false adornment, frippery, and gold-dust of unconscious human vanity, and that even under such flattering colour and repainting, the terrible original text HOMO NATURA must again be recognized. In effect, to translate man back again into nature; to master the many vain and visionary interpretations and subordinate meanings which have hitherto been scratched and daubed over the eternal original text, HOMO NATURA; to bring it about that man shall henceforth stand before man as he now, hardened by the discipline of science, stands before the OTHER forms of nature, with fearless Oedipus-eyes, and stopped Ulysses-ears, deaf to the enticements of old metaphysical bird-catchers, who have piped to him far too long: “ Thou art more! thou art higher! thou hast a different origin!”—this may be a strange and foolish task, but that it is a TASK, who can deny! Why did we choose it, this foolish task? Or, to put the question differently: “ Why knowledge at all?” Every one will ask us about this. And thus pressed, we, who have asked ourselves the question a hundred times, have not found and cannot find any better answer…. 231. Learning alters us, it does what all nourishment does that does not merely “ conserve”—as the physiologist knows. But at the bottom of our souls, quite “ down below,” there is certainly something unteachable, a granite of spiritual fate, of predetermined decision and answer to predetermined, chosen questions. In each cardinal problem there speaks an unchangeable “ I am this”; a thinker cannot learn anew about man and woman, for instance, but can only learn fully—he can only follow to the end what is “ fixed” about them in himself. Occasionally we find certain solutions of problems which make strong beliefs for us; perhaps they are henceforth called “ convictions.” Later on—one sees in them only footsteps to self-knowledge, guide-posts to the problem which we ourselves ARE—or more correctly to the great stupidity which we embody, our spiritual fate, the UNTEACHLE in us, quite “ down below.”—In view of this liberal compliment which I have just paid myself, permission will perhaps be more readily allowed me to utter some truths about “ woman as she is,” provided that it is known at the outset how literally they are merely—MY truths. 232. Woman wishes to be independent, and therefore she begins to enlighten men about “ woman as she is”—THIS is one of the worst developments of the general UGLIFYING of Europe. For what must these clumsy attempts of feminine scientificality and self-exposure bring to light! Woman has so much cause for shame; in woman there is so much pedantry, superficiality, schoolmasterliness, petty presumption, unbridledness, and indiscretion concealed—study only woman’s behaviour towards children!—which has really been best restrained and dominated hitherto by the FEAR of man. Alas, if ever the “ eternally tedious in woman”—she has plenty of it!—is allowed to venture forth! if she begins radically and on principle to unlearn her wisdom and art-of charming, of playing, of frightening away sorrow, of alleviating and taking easily; if she forgets her delicate aptitude for agreeable desires! Female voices are already raised, which, by Saint Aristophanes! make one afraid:—with medical explicitness it is stated in a threatening manner what woman first and last REQUIRES from man. Is it not in the very worst taste that woman thus sets herself up to be scientific? Enlightenment hitherto has fortunately been men’s affair, men’s gift—we remained therewith “ among ourselves”; and in the end, in view of all that women write about “ woman,” we may well have considerable doubt as to whether woman really DESIRES enlightenment about herself—and CAN desire it. If woman does not thereby seek a new ORNAMENT for herself—I believe ornamentation belongs to the eternally feminine?—why, then, she wishes to make herself feared: perhaps she thereby wishes to get the mastery. But she does not want truth—what does woman care for truth? From the very first, nothing is more foreign, more repugnant, or more hostile to woman than truth—her great art is falsehood, her chief concern is appearance and beauty. Let us confess it, we men: we honour and love this very art and this very instinct in woman: we who have the hard task, and for our recreation gladly seek the company of beings under whose hands, glances, and delicate follies, our seriousness, our gravity, and profundity appear almost like follies to us. Finally, I ask the question: Did a woman herself ever acknowledge profundity in a woman’s mind, or justice in a woman’s heart? And is it not true that on the whole “ woman” has hitherto been most despised by woman herself, and not at all by us?—We men desire that woman should not continue to compromise herself by enlightening us; just as it was man’s care and the consideration for woman, when the church decreed: mulier taceat in ecclesia. It was to the benefit of woman when Napoleon gave the too eloquent Madame de Stael to understand: mulier taceat in politicis!—and in my opinion, he is a true friend of woman who calls out to women today: mulier taceat de mulierel. 233. It betrays corruption of the instincts—apart from the fact that it betrays bad taste—when a woman refers to Madame Roland, or Madame de Stael, or Monsieur George Sand, as though something were proved thereby in favour of “ woman as she is.” Among men, these are the three comical women as they are—nothing more!—and just the best involuntary counter-arguments against feminine emancipation and autonomy. 234. Stupidity in the kitchen; woman as cook; the terrible thoughtlessness with which the feeding of the family and the master of the house is managed! Woman does not understand what food means, and she insists on being cook! If woman had been a thinking creature, she should certainly, as cook for thousands of years, have discovered the most important physiological facts, and should likewise have got possession of the healing art! Through bad female cooks—through the entire lack of reason in the kitchen—the development of mankind has been longest retarded and most interfered with: even today matters are very little better. A word to High School girls. 235. There are turns and casts of fancy, there are sentences, little handfuls of words, in which a whole culture, a whole society suddenly crystallises itself. Among these is the
incidental remark of Madame de Lambert to her son: “ MON AMI, NE VOUS PERMETTEZ JAMAIS QUE DES FOLIES, QUI VOUS FERONT GRAND PLAISIR”—the motherliest and wisest remark, by the way, that was ever addressed to a son. 236. I have no doubt that every noble woman will oppose what Dante and Goethe believed about woman—the former when he sang, “ ELLA GUARDAVA SUSO, ED IO IN LEI,” and the latter when he interpreted it, “ the eternally feminine draws us ALOFT”; for THIS is just what she believes of the eternally masculine. 237. SEVEN APOPHTHEGMS FOR WOMEN How the longest ennui flees, When a man comes to our knees! Age, alas! and science staid, Furnish even weak virtue aid. Sombre garb and silence meet: Dress for every dame—discreet. Whom I thank when in my bliss? God!—and my good tailoress! Young, a flower-decked cavern home; Old, a dragon thence doth roam. Noble title, leg that’s fine, Man as well: Oh, were HE mine! Speech in brief and sense in mass—Slippery for the jenny-ass! 237A. Woman has hitherto been treated by men like birds, which, losing their way, have come down among them from an elevation: as something delicate, fragile, wild, strange, sweet, and animating—but as something also which must be cooped up to prevent it flying away. 238. To be mistaken in the fundamental problem of “ man and woman,” to deny here the profoundest antagonism and the necessity for an eternally hostile tension, to dream here perhaps of equal rights, equal training, equal claims and obligations: that is a TYPICAL sign of shallow-mindedness; and a thinker who has proved himself shallow at this dangerous spot—shallow in instinct!—may generally be regarded as suspicious, nay more, as betrayed, as discovered; he will probably prove too “ short” for all fundamental questions of life, future as well as present, and will be unable to descend into ANY of the depths. On the other hand, a man who has depth of spirit as well as of desires, and has also the depth of benevolence which is capable of severity and harshness, and easily confounded with them, can only think of woman as ORIENTALS do: he must conceive of her as a possession, as confinable property, as a being predestined for service and accomplishing her mission therein—he must take his stand in this matter upon the immense rationality of Asia, upon the superiority of the instinct of Asia, as the Greeks did formerly; those best heirs and scholars of Asia—who, as is well known, with their INCREASING culture and amplitude of power, from Homer to the time of Pericles, became gradually STRICTER towards woman, in short, more Oriental. HOW necessary, HOW logical, even HOW humanely desirable this was, let us consider for ourselves! 239. The weaker sex has in no previous age been treated with so much respect by men as at present—this belongs to the tendency and fundamental taste of democracy, in the same way as disrespectfulness to old age—what wonder is it that abuse should be immediately made of this respect? They want more, they learn to make claims, the tribute of respect is at last felt to be well-nigh galling; rivalry for rights, indeed actual strife itself, would be preferred: in a word, woman is losing modesty. And let us immediately add that she is also losing taste. She is unlearning to FEAR man: but the woman who “ unlearns to fear” sacrifices her most womanly instincts. That woman should venture forward when the fearinspiring quality in man—or more definitely, the MAN in man—is no longer either desired or fully developed, is reasonable enough and also intelligible enough; what is more difficult to understand is that precisely thereby—woman deteriorates. This is what is happening nowadays: let us not deceive ourselves about it! Wherever the industrial spirit has triumphed over the military and aristocratic spirit, woman strives for the economic and legal independence of a clerk: “ woman as clerkess” is inscribed on the portal of the modern society which is in course of formation. While she thus appropriates new rights, aspires to be “ master,” and inscribes “ progress” of woman on her flags and banners, the very opposite realises itself with terrible obviousness: WOMAN RETROGRADES. Since the French Revolution the influence of woman in Europe has DECLINED in proportion as she has increased her rights and claims; and the “ emancipation of woman,” insofar as it is desired and demanded by women themselves (and not only by masculine shallow-pates), thus proves to be a remarkable symptom of the increased weakening and deadening of the most womanly instincts. There is STUPIDITY in this movement, an almost masculine stupidity, of which a well-reared woman—who is always a sensible woman—might be heartily ashamed. To lose the intuition as to the ground upon which she can most surely achieve victory; to neglect exercise in the use of her proper weapons; to let-herself-go before man, perhaps even “ to the book,” where formerly she kept herself in control and in refined, artful humility; to neutralize with her virtuous audacity man’s faith in a VEILED, fundamentally different ideal in woman, something eternally, necessarily feminine; to emphatically and loquaciously dissuade man from the idea that woman must be preserved, cared for, protected, and indulged, like some delicate, strangely wild, and often pleasant domestic animal; the clumsy and indignant collection of everything of the nature of servitude and bondage which the position of woman in the hitherto existing order of society has entailed and still entails (as though slavery were a counter-argument, and not rather a condition of every higher culture, of every elevation of culture):—what does all this betoken, if not a disintegration of womanly instincts, a defeminising? Certainly, there are enough of idiotic friends and corrupters of woman among the learned asses of the masculine sex, who advise woman to defeminize herself in this manner, and to imitate all the stupidities from which “ man” in Europe, European “ manliness,” suffers,—who would like to lower woman to “ general culture,” indeed even to newspaper reading and meddling with politics. Here and there they wish even to make women into free spirits and literary workers: as though a woman without piety would not be something perfectly obnoxious or ludicrous to a profound and godless man;—almost everywhere her nerves are being ruined by the most morbid
and dangerous kind of music (our latest German music), and she is daily being made more hysterical and more incapable of fulfilling her first and last function, that of bearing robust children. They wish to “ cultivate” her in general still more, and intend, as they say, to make the “ weaker sex” STRONG by culture: as if history did not teach in the most emphatic manner that the “ cultivating” of mankind and his weakening—that is to say, the weakening, dissipating, and languishing of his FORCE OF WILL—have always kept pace with one another, and that the most powerful and influential women in the world (and lastly, the mother of Napoleon) had just to thank their force of will—and not their schoolmasters—for their power and ascendancy over men. That which inspires respect in woman, and often enough fear also, is her NATURE, which is more “ natural” than that of man, her genuine, carnivora-like, cunning flexibility, her tiger-claws beneath the glove, her NAIVETE in egoism, her untrainableness and innate wildness, the incomprehensibleness, extent, and deviation of her desires and virtues. That which, in spite of fear, excites one’s sympathy for the dangerous and beautiful cat, “ woman,” is that she seems more afflicted, more vulnerable, more necessitous of love, and more condemned to disillusionment than any other creature. Fear and sympathy it is with these feelings that man has hitherto stood in the presence of woman, always with one foot already in tragedy, which rends while it delights—What? And all that is now to be at an end? And the DISENCHANTMENT of woman is in progress? The tediousness of woman is slowly evolving? Oh Europe! Europe! We know the horned animal which was always most attractive to thee, from which danger is ever again threatening thee! Thy old fable might once more become “ history”—an immense stupidity might once again overmaster thee and carry thee away! And no God concealed beneath it—no! only an “ idea,” a “ modern idea”! CHAPTER VIII. PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES 240. I HEARD, once again for the first time, Richard Wagner’s overture to the Mastersinger: it is a piece of magnificent, gorgeous, heavy, latter-day art, which has the pride to presuppose two centuries of music as still living, in order that it may be understood:—it is an honour to Germans that such a pride did not miscalculate! What flavours and forces, what seasons and climes do we not find mingled in it! It impresses us at one time as ancient, at another time as foreign, bitter, and too modern, it is as arbitrary as it is pompously traditional, it is not infrequently roguish, still oftener rough and coarse—it has fire and courage, and at the same time the loose, dun-coloured skin of fruits which ripen too late. It flows broad and full: and suddenly there is a moment of inexplicable hesitation, like a gap that opens between cause and effect, an oppression that makes us dream, almost a nightmare; but already it broadens and widens anew, the old stream of delight—the most manifold delight,—of old and new happiness; including ESPECIALLY the joy of the artist in himself, which he refuses to conceal, his astonished, happy cognizance of his mastery of the expedients here employed, the new, newly acquired, imperfectly tested expedients of art which he apparently betrays to us. All in all, however, no beauty, no South, nothing of the delicate southern clearness of the sky, nothing of grace, no dance, hardly a will to logic; a certain clumsiness even, which is also emphasized, as though the artist wished to say to us: “ It is part of my intention”; a cumbersome drapery, something arbitrarily barbaric and ceremonious, a flirring of learned and venerable conceits and witticisms; something German in the best and worst sense of the word, something in the German style, manifold, formless, and inexhaustible; a certain German potency and super-plenitude of soul, which is not afraid to hide itself under the RAFFINEMENTS of decadence—which, perhaps, feels itself most at ease there; a real, genuine token of the German soul, which is at the same time young and aged, too ripe and yet still too rich in futurity. This kind of music expresses best what I think of the Germans: they belong to the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow—THEY HAVE AS YET NO TODAY. 241. We “ good Europeans,” we also have hours when we allow ourselves a warm-hearted patriotism, a plunge and relapse into old loves and narrow views—I have just given an example of it—hours of national excitement, of patriotic anguish, and all other sorts of old-fashioned floods of sentiment. Duller spirits may perhaps only get done with what confines its operations in us to hours and plays itself out in hours—in a considerable time: some in half a year, others in half a lifetime, according to the speed and strength with which they digest and “ change their material.” Indeed, I could think of sluggish, hesitating races, which even in our rapidly moving Europe, would require half a century ere they could surmount such atavistic attacks of patriotism and soil-attachment, and return once more to reason, that is to say, to “ good Europeanism.” And while digressing on this possibility, I happen to become an ear-witness of a conversation between two old patriots—they were evidently both hard of hearing and consequently spoke all the louder. “ HE has as much, and knows as much, philosophy as a peasant or a corps-student,” said the one—“ he is still innocent. But what does that matter nowadays! It is the age of the masses: they lie on their belly before everything that is massive. And so also in politicis. A statesman who rears up for them a new Tower of Babel, some monstrosity of empire and power, they call ‘great’—what does it matter that we more prudent and conservative ones do not meanwhile give up the old belief that it is only the great thought that gives greatness to an action or affair. Supposing a statesman were to bring his people into the position of being obliged henceforth to practise ‘high politics,’ for which they were by nature badly endowed and prepared, so that they would have to sacrifice their old and reliable virtues, out of love to a new and doubtful mediocrity;—supposing a statesman were to condemn his people generally to ‘practise politics,’ when they have hitherto had something better to do and think about, and when in the depths of their souls they have been unable to free themselves from a prudent loathing of the restlessness, emptiness, and noisy wranglings of the essentially politics-practising nations;—supposing such a statesman were to stimulate the slumbering passions and avidities of his people, were to make a stigma out of their former diffidence and delight in aloofness, an offence out of their exoticism and hidden permanency, were to depreciate their most radical proclivities, subvert their consciences, make their minds narrow, and their tastes ‘national’—what! a statesman who should do all this, which his people would have to do penance for throughout their whole future, if they had a future, such a statesman would be GREAT, would he?”—“ Undoubtedly!” replied the other old patriot vehemently, “ otherwise he COULD NOT have done it! It was mad perhaps to wish such a thing! But perhaps everything great has been just as mad at its commencement!”—“ Misuse of words!” cried his interlocutor, contradictorily—“ strong! strong! Strong and mad! NOT great!”—The old men had obviously become heated as they thus shouted their “ truths” in each other’s faces, but I, in my happiness and apartness, considered how soon a stronger one may become master of the strong, and also that there is a compensation for the intellectual
superficialising of a nation—namely, in the deepening of another. 242. Whether we call it “ civilization,” or “ humanising,” or “ progress,” which now distinguishes the European, whether we call it simply, without praise or blame, by the political formula the DEMOCRATIC movement in Europe—behind all the moral and political foregrounds pointed to by such formulas, an immense PHYSIOLOGICAL PROCESS goes on, which is ever extending the process of the assimilation of Europeans, their increasing detachment from the conditions under which, climatically and hereditarily, united races originate, their increasing independence of every definite milieu, that for centuries would fain inscribe itself with equal demands on soul and body,—that is to say, the slow emergence of an essentially SUPER-NATIONAL and nomadic species of man, who possesses, physiologically speaking, a maximum of the art and power of adaptation as his typical distinction. This process of the EVOLVING EUROPEAN, which can be retarded in its TEMPO by great relapses, but will perhaps just gain and grow thereby in vehemence and depth—the stillraging storm and stress of “ national sentiment” pertains to it, and also the anarchism which is appearing at present—this process will probably arrive at results on which its naive propagators and panegyrists, the apostles of “ modern ideas,” would least care to reckon. The same new conditions under which on an average a levelling and mediocrising of man will take place—a useful, industrious, variously serviceable, and clever gregarious man—are in the highest degree suitable to give rise to exceptional men of the most dangerous and attractive qualities. For, while the capacity for adaptation, which is every day trying changing conditions, and begins a new work with every generation, almost with every decade, makes the POWERFULNESS of the type impossible; while the collective impression of such future Europeans will probably be that of numerous, talkative, weak-willed, and very handy workmen who REQUIRE a master, a commander, as they require their daily bread; while, therefore, the democratising of Europe will tend to the production of a type prepared for SLAVERY in the most subtle sense of the term: the STRONG man will necessarily in individual and exceptional cases, become stronger and richer than he has perhaps ever been before—owing to the unprejudicedness of his schooling, owing to the immense variety of practice, art, and disguise. I meant to say that the democratising of Europe is at the same time an involuntary arrangement for the rearing of TYRANTS—taking the word in all its meanings, even in its most spiritual sense. 243. I hear with pleasure that our sun is moving rapidly towards the constellation Hercules: and I hope that the men on this earth will do like the sun. And we foremost, we good Europeans! 244. There was a time when it was customary to call Germans “ deep” by way of distinction; but now that the most successful type of new Germanism is covetous of quite other honours, and perhaps misses “ smartness” in all that has depth, it is almost opportune and patriotic to doubt whether we did not formerly deceive ourselves with that commendation: in short, whether German depth is not at bottom something different and worse—and something from which, thank God, we are on the point of successfully ridding ourselves. Let us try, then, to relearn with regard to German depth; the only thing necessary for the purpose is a little vivisection of the German soul.—The German soul is above all manifold, varied in its source, aggregated and super-imposed, rather than actually built: this is owing to its origin. A German who would embolden himself to assert: “ Two souls, alas, dwell in my breast,” would make a bad guess at the truth, or, more correctly, he would come far short of the truth about the number of souls. As a people made up of the most extraordinary mixing and mingling of races, perhaps even with a preponderance of the pre-Aryan element as the “ people of the centre” in every sense of the term, the Germans are more intangible, more ample, more contradictory, more unknown, more incalculable, more surprising, and even more terrifying than other peoples are to themselves:—they escape DEFINITION, and are thereby alone the despair of the French. It IS characteristic of the Germans that the question: “ What is German?” never dies out among them. Kotzebue certainly knew his Germans well enough: “ We are known,” they cried jubilantly to him—but Sand also thought he knew them. Jean Paul knew what he was doing when he declared himself incensed at Fichte’s lying but patriotic flatteries and exaggerations,—but it is probable that Goethe thought differently about Germans from Jean Paul, even though he acknowledged him to be right with regard to Fichte. It is a question what Goethe really thought about the Germans?—But about many things around him he never spoke explicitly, and all his life he knew how to keep an astute silence—probably he had good reason for it. It is certain that it was not the “ Wars of Independence” that made him look up more joyfully, any more than it was the French Revolution,—the event on account of which he RECONSTRUCTED his “ Faust,” and indeed the whole problem of “ man,” was the appearance of Napoleon. There are words of Goethe in which he condemns with impatient severity, as from a foreign land, that which Germans take a pride in, he once defined the famous German turn of mind as “ Indulgence towards its own and others’ weaknesses.” Was he wrong? it is characteristic of Germans that one is seldom entirely wrong about them. The German soul has passages and galleries in it, there are caves, hiding-places, and dungeons therein, its disorder has much of the charm of the mysterious, the German is well acquainted with the bypaths to chaos. And as everything loves its symbol, so the German loves the clouds and all that is obscure, evolving, crepuscular, damp, and shrouded, it seems to him that everything uncertain, undeveloped, self-displacing, and growing is “ deep”. The German himself does not EXIST, he is BECOMING, he is “ developing himself”. “ Development” is therefore the essentially German discovery and hit in the great domain of philosophical formulas,—a ruling idea, which, together with German beer and German music, is labouring to Germanise all Europe. Foreigners are astonished and attracted by the riddles which the conflicting nature at the basis of the German soul propounds to them (riddles which Hegel systematised and Richard Wagner has in the end set to music). “ Good-natured and spiteful”—such a juxtaposition, preposterous in the case of every other people, is unfortunately only too often justified in Germany one has only to live for a while among Swabians to know this! The clumsiness of the German scholar and his social distastefulness agree alarmingly well with his physical rope-dancing and nimble boldness, of which all the Gods have learnt to be afraid. If any one wishes to see the “ German soul” demonstrated ad oculos, let him only look at German taste, at German arts and manners what boorish indifference to “ taste”! How the noblest and the commonest stand there in juxtaposition! How disorderly and how rich is the whole constitution of this soul! The German DRAGS at his soul, he drags at everything he experiences. He digests his events badly; he never gets “ done” with them; and German depth is often only a difficult, hesitating “ digestion.” And just as all chronic invalids, all dyspeptics like what is convenient, so the German loves
“ frankness” and “ honesty”; it is so CONVENIENT to be frank and honest!—This confidingness, this complaisance, this showing-the-cards of German HONESTY, is probably the most dangerous and most successful disguise which the German is up to nowadays: it is his proper Mephistophelean art; with this he can “ still achieve much”! The German lets himself go, and thereby gazes with faithful, blue, empty German eyes—and other countries immediately confound him with his dressing-gown!—I meant to say that, let “ German depth” be what it will—among ourselves alone we perhaps take the liberty to laugh at it—we shall do well to continue henceforth to honour its appearance and good name, and not barter away too cheaply our old reputation as a people of depth for Prussian “ smartness,” and Berlin wit and sand. It is wise for a people to pose, and LET itself be regarded, as profound, clumsy, good-natured, honest, and foolish: it might even be—profound to do so! Finally, we should do honour to our name—we are not called the “ TIUSCHE VOLK” (deceptive people) for nothing…. 245. The “ good old” time is past, it sang itself out in Mozart—how happy are WE that his ROCOCO still speaks to us, that his “ good company,” his tender enthusiasm, his childish delight in the Chinese and its flourishes, his courtesy of heart, his longing for the elegant, the amorous, the tripping, the tearful, and his belief in the South, can still appeal to SOMETHING LEFT in us! Ah, some time or other it will be over with it!—but who can doubt that it will be over still sooner with the intelligence and taste for Beethoven! For he was only the last echo of a break and transition in style, and NOT, like Mozart, the last echo of a great European taste which had existed for centuries. Beethoven is the intermediate event between an old mellow soul that is constantly breaking down, and a future over-young soul that is always COMING; there is spread over his music the twilight of eternal loss and eternal extravagant hope,—the same light in which Europe was bathed when it dreamed with Rousseau, when it danced round the Tree of Liberty of the Revolution, and finally almost fell down in adoration before Napoleon. But how rapidly does THIS very sentiment now pale, how difficult nowadays is even the APPREHENSION of this sentiment, how strangely does the language of Rousseau, Schiller, Shelley, and Byron sound to our ear, in whom COLLECTIVELY the same fate of Europe was able to SPEAK, which knew how to SING in Beethoven!—Whatever German music came afterwards, belongs to Romanticism, that is to say, to a movement which, historically considered, was still shorter, more fleeting, and more superficial than that great interlude, the transition of Europe from Rousseau to Napoleon, and to the rise of democracy. Weber—but what do WE care nowadays for “ Freischutz” and “ Oberon”! Or Marschner’s “ Hans Heiling” and “ Vampyre”! Or even Wagner’s “ Tannhauser”! That is extinct, although not yet forgotten music. This whole music of Romanticism, besides, was not noble enough, was not musical enough, to maintain its position anywhere but in the theatre and before the masses; from the beginning it was second-rate music, which was little thought of by genuine musicians. It was different with Felix Mendelssohn, that halcyon master, who, on account of his lighter, purer, happier soul, quickly acquired admiration, and was equally quickly forgotten: as the beautiful EPISODE of German music. But with regard to Robert Schumann, who took things seriously, and has been taken seriously from the first—he was the last that founded a school,—do we not now regard it as a satisfaction, a relief, a deliverance, that this very Romanticism of Schumann’s has been surmounted? Schumann, fleeing into the “ Saxon Switzerland” of his soul, with a half Werther-like, half Jean-Paul-like nature (assuredly not like Beethoven! assuredly not like Byron!)—his MANFRED music is a mistake and a misunderstanding to the extent of injustice; Schumann, with his taste, which was fundamentally a PETTY taste (that is to say, a dangerous propensity—doubly dangerous among Germans—for quiet lyricism and intoxication of the feelings), going constantly apart, timidly withdrawing and retiring, a noble weakling who revelled in nothing but anonymous joy and sorrow, from the beginning a sort of girl and NOLI ME TANGERE—this Schumann was already merely a GERMAN event in music, and no longer a European event, as Beethoven had been, as in a still greater degree Mozart had been; with Schumann German music was threatened with its greatest danger, that of LOSING THE VOICE FOR THE SOUL OF EUROPE and sinking into a merely national affair. 246. What a torture are books written in German to a reader who has a THIRD ear! How indignantly he stands beside the slowly turning swamp of sounds without tune and rhythms without dance, which Germans call a “ book”! And even the German who READS books! How lazily, how reluctantly, how badly he reads! How many Germans know, and consider it obligatory to know, that there is ART in every good sentence—art which must be divined, if the sentence is to be understood! If there is a misunderstanding about its TEMPO, for instance, the sentence itself is misunderstood! That one must not be doubtful about the rhythm-determining syllables, that one should feel the breaking of the too-rigid symmetry as intentional and as a charm, that one should lend a fine and patient ear to every STACCATO and every RUBATO, that one should divine the sense in the sequence of the vowels and diphthongs, and how delicately and richly they can be tinted and retinted in the order of their arrangement—who among book-reading Germans is complaisant enough to recognize such duties and requirements, and to listen to so much art and intention in language? After all, one just “ has no ear for it”; and so the most marked contrasts of style are not heard, and the most delicate artistry is as it were SQUANDERED on the deaf.—These were my thoughts when I noticed how clumsily and unintuitively two masters in the art of prose-writing have been confounded: one, whose words drop down hesitatingly and coldly, as from the roof of a damp cave—he counts on their dull sound and echo; and another who manipulates his language like a flexible sword, and from his arm down into his toes feels the dangerous bliss of the quivering, over-sharp blade, which wishes to bite, hiss, and cut. 247. How little the German style has to do with harmony and with the ear, is shown by the fact that precisely our good musicians themselves write badly. The German does not read aloud, he does not read for the ear, but only with his eyes; he has put his ears away in the drawer for the time. In antiquity when a man read—which was seldom enough—he read something to himself, and in a loud voice; they were surprised when any one read silently, and sought secretly the reason of it. In a loud voice: that is to say, with all the swellings, inflections, and variations of key and changes of TEMPO, in which the ancient PUBLIC world took delight. The laws of the written style were then the same as those of the spoken style; and these laws depended partly on the surprising development and refined requirements of the ear and larynx; partly on the strength, endurance, and power of the ancient lungs. In the ancient sense, a period is above all a physiological whole, inasmuch as it is comprised in one breath. Such periods as occur in Demosthenes and Cicero, swelling twice and sinking twice, and all in one breath, were pleasures to the men of ANTIQUITY, who knew by their own schooling how to appreciate the virtue therein, the
rareness and the difficulty in the deliverance of such a period;—WE have really no right to the BIG period, we modern men, who are short of breath in every sense! Those ancients, indeed, were all of them dilettanti in speaking, consequently connoisseurs, consequently critics—they thus brought their orators to the highest pitch; in the same manner as in the last century, when all Italian ladies and gentlemen knew how to sing, the virtuosoship of song (and with it also the art of melody) reached its elevation. In Germany, however (until quite recently when a kind of platform eloquence began shyly and awkwardly enough to flutter its young wings), there was properly speaking only one kind of public and APPROXIMATELY artistical discourse—that delivered from the pulpit. The preacher was the only one in Germany who knew the weight of a syllable or a word, in what manner a sentence strikes, springs, rushes, flows, and comes to a close; he alone had a conscience in his ears, often enough a bad conscience: for reasons are not lacking why proficiency in oratory should be especially seldom attained by a German, or almost always too late. The masterpiece of German prose is therefore with good reason the masterpiece of its greatest preacher: the BIBLE has hitherto been the best German book. Compared with Luther’s Bible, almost everything else is merely “ literature”—something which has not grown in Germany, and therefore has not taken and does not take root in German hearts, as the Bible has done. 248. There are two kinds of geniuses: one which above all engenders and seeks to engender, and another which willingly lets itself be fructified and brings forth. And similarly, among the gifted nations, there are those on whom the woman’s problem of pregnancy has devolved, and the secret task of forming, maturing, and perfecting—the Greeks, for instance, were a nation of this kind, and so are the French; and others which have to fructify and become the cause of new modes of life—like the Jews, the Romans, and, in all modesty be it asked: like the Germans?—nations tortured and enraptured by unknown fevers and irresistibly forced out of themselves, amorous and longing for foreign races (for such as “ let themselves be fructified”), and withal imperious, like everything conscious of being full of generative force, and consequently empowered “ by the grace of God.” These two kinds of geniuses seek each other like man and woman; but they also misunderstand each other—like man and woman. 249. Every nation has its own “ Tartuffery,” and calls that its virtue.—One does not know—cannot know, the best that is in one. 250. What Europe owes to the Jews?—Many things, good and bad, and above all one thing of the nature both of the best and the worst: the grand style in morality, the fearfulness and majesty of infinite demands, of infinite significations, the whole Romanticism and sublimity of moral questionableness—and consequently just the most attractive, ensnaring, and exquisite element in those iridescences and allurements to life, in the aftersheen of which the sky of our European culture, its evening sky, now glows—perhaps glows out. For this, we artists among the spectators and philosophers, are—grateful to the Jews. 251. It must be taken into the bargain, if various clouds and disturbances—in short, slight attacks of stupidity—pass over the spirit of a people that suffers and WANTS to suffer from national nervous fever and political ambition: for instance, among present-day Germans there is alternately the anti-French folly, the anti-Semitic folly, the anti-Polish folly, the Christian-romantic folly, the Wagnerian folly, the Teutonic folly, the Prussian folly (just look at those poor historians, the Sybels and Treitschkes, and their closely bandaged heads), and whatever else these little obscurations of the German spirit and conscience may be called. May it be forgiven me that I, too, when on a short daring sojourn on very infected ground, did not remain wholly exempt from the disease, but like every one else, began to entertain thoughts about matters which did not concern me—the first symptom of political infection. About the Jews, for instance, listen to the following:—I have never yet met a German who was favourably inclined to the Jews; and however decided the repudiation of actual anti-Semitism may be on the part of all prudent and political men, this prudence and policy is not perhaps directed against the nature of the sentiment itself, but only against its dangerous excess, and especially against the distasteful and infamous expression of this excess of sentiment;—on this point we must not deceive ourselves. That Germany has amply SUFFICIENT Jews, that the German stomach, the German blood, has difficulty (and will long have difficulty) in disposing only of this quantity of “ Jew”—as the Italian, the Frenchman, and the Englishman have done by means of a stronger digestion:—that is the unmistakable declaration and language of a general instinct, to which one must listen and according to which one must act. “ Let no more Jews come in! And shut the doors, especially towards the East (also towards Austria)!”—thus commands the instinct of a people whose nature is still feeble and uncertain, so that it could be easily wiped out, easily extinguished, by a stronger race. The Jews, however, are beyond all doubt the strongest, toughest, and purest race at present living in Europe, they know how to succeed even under the worst conditions (in fact better than under favourable ones), by means of virtues of some sort, which one would like nowadays to label as vices—owing above all to a resolute faith which does not need to be ashamed before “ modern ideas”, they alter only, WHEN they do alter, in the same way that the Russian Empire makes its conquest—as an empire that has plenty of time and is not of yesterday—namely, according to the principle, “ as slowly as possible”! A thinker who has the future of Europe at heart, will, in all his perspectives concerning the future, calculate upon the Jews, as he will calculate upon the Russians, as above all the surest and likeliest factors in the great play and battle of forces. That which is at present called a “ nation” in Europe, and is really rather a RES FACTA than NATA (indeed, sometimes confusingly similar to a RES FICTA ET PICTA), is in every case something evolving, young, easily displaced, and not yet a race, much less such a race AERE PERENNUS, as the Jews are such “ nations” should most carefully avoid all hot-headed rivalry and hostility! It is certain that the Jews, if they desired—or if they were driven to it, as the anti-Semites seem to wish—COULD now have the ascendancy, nay, literally the supremacy, over Europe, that they are NOT working and planning for that end is equally certain. Meanwhile, they rather wish and desire, even somewhat importunely, to be insorbed and absorbed by Europe, they long to be finally settled, authorized, and respected somewhere, and wish to put an end to the nomadic life, to the “ wandering Jew”,—and one should certainly take account of this impulse and tendency, and MAKE ADVANCES to it (it possibly betokens a mitigation of the Jewish instincts) for which purpose it would perhaps be useful and fair to banish the anti-Semitic bawlers out of the country. One should make advances with all prudence, and with selection, pretty much as the English nobility do It stands to reason that the more powerful and strongly marked types of new Germanism could enter into relation with the Jews with the least hesitation, for instance, the nobleman officer from the Prussian border it would be interesting in many ways to see whether the
genius for money and patience (and especially some intellect and intellectuality—sadly lacking in the place referred to) could not in addition be annexed and trained to the hereditary art of commanding and obeying—for both of which the country in question has now a classic reputation But here it is expedient to break off my festal discourse and my sprightly Teutonomania for I have already reached my SERIOUS TOPIC, the “ European problem,” as I understand it, the rearing of a new ruling caste for Europe. 252. They are not a philosophical race—the English: Bacon represents an ATTACK on the philosophical spirit generally, Hobbes, Hume, and Locke, an abasement, and a depreciation of the idea of a “ philosopher” for more than a century. It was AGAINST Hume that Kant uprose and raised himself; it was Locke of whom Schelling RIGHTLY said, “ JE MEPRISE LOCKE”; in the struggle against the English mechanical stultification of the world, Hegel and Schopenhauer (along with Goethe) were of one accord; the two hostile brother-geniuses in philosophy, who pushed in different directions towards the opposite poles of German thought, and thereby wronged each other as only brothers will do.—What is lacking in England, and has always been lacking, that half-actor and rhetorician knew well enough, the absurd muddle-head, Carlyle, who sought to conceal under passionate grimaces what he knew about himself: namely, what was LACKING in Carlyle—real POWER of intellect, real DEPTH of intellectual perception, in short, philosophy. It is characteristic of such an unphilosophical race to hold on firmly to Christianity—they NEED its discipline for “ moralizing” and humanizing. The Englishman, more gloomy, sensual, headstrong, and brutal than the German—is for that very reason, as the baser of the two, also the most pious: he has all the MORE NEED of Christianity. To finer nostrils, this English Christianity itself has still a characteristic English taint of spleen and alcoholic excess, for which, owing to good reasons, it is used as an antidote—the finer poison to neutralize the coarser: a finer form of poisoning is in fact a step in advance with coarse-mannered people, a step towards spiritualization. The English coarseness and rustic demureness is still most satisfactorily disguised by Christian pantomime, and by praying and psalm-singing (or, more correctly, it is thereby explained and differently expressed); and for the herd of drunkards and rakes who formerly learned moral grunting under the influence of Methodism (and more recently as the “ Salvation Army”), a penitential fit may really be the relatively highest manifestation of “ humanity” to which they can be elevated: so much may reasonably be admitted. That, however, which offends even in the humanest Englishman is his lack of music, to speak figuratively (and also literally): he has neither rhythm nor dance in the movements of his soul and body; indeed, not even the desire for rhythm and dance, for “ music.” Listen to him speaking; look at the most beautiful Englishwoman WALKING—in no country on earth are there more beautiful doves and swans; finally, listen to them singing! But I ask too much… 253. There are truths which are best recognized by mediocre minds, because they are best adapted for them, there are truths which only possess charms and seductive power for mediocre spirits:—one is pushed to this probably unpleasant conclusion, now that the influence of respectable but mediocre Englishmen—I may mention Darwin, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer—begins to gain the ascendancy in the middle-class region of European taste. Indeed, who could doubt that it is a useful thing for SUCH minds to have the ascendancy for a time? It would be an error to consider the highly developed and independently soaring minds as specially qualified for determining and collecting many little common facts, and deducing conclusions from them; as exceptions, they are rather from the first in no very favourable position towards those who are “ the rules.” After all, they have more to do than merely to perceive:—in effect, they have to BE something new, they have to SIGNIFY something new, they have to REPRESENT new values! The gulf between knowledge and capacity is perhaps greater, and also more mysterious, than one thinks: the capable man in the grand style, the creator, will possibly have to be an ignorant person;— while on the other hand, for scientific discoveries like those of Darwin, a certain narrowness, aridity, and industrious carefulness (in short, something English) may not be unfavourable for arriving at them.—Finally, let it not be forgotten that the English, with their profound mediocrity, brought about once before a general depression of European intelligence. What is called “ modern ideas,” or “ the ideas of the eighteenth century,” or “ French ideas”—that, consequently, against which the GERMAN mind rose up with profound disgust —is of English origin, there is no doubt about it. The French were only the apes and actors of these ideas, their best soldiers, and likewise, alas! their first and profoundest VICTIMS; for owing to the diabolical Anglomania of “ modern ideas,” the AME FRANCAIS has in the end become so thin and emaciated, that at present one recalls its sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its profound, passionate strength, its inventive excellency, almost with disbelief. One must, however, maintain this verdict of historical justice in a determined manner, and defend it against present prejudices and appearances: the European NOBLESSE—of sentiment, taste, and manners, taking the word in every high sense—is the work and invention of FRANCE; the European ignobleness, the plebeianism of modern ideas—is ENGLAND’S work and invention. 254. Even at present France is still the seat of the most intellectual and refined culture of Europe, it is still the high school of taste; but one must know how to find this “ France of taste.” He who belongs to it keeps himself well concealed:—they may be a small number in whom it lives and is embodied, besides perhaps being men who do not stand upon the strongest legs, in part fatalists, hypochondriacs, invalids, in part persons over-indulged, over-refined, such as have the AMBITION to conceal themselves. They have all something in common: they keep their ears closed in presence of the delirious folly and noisy spouting of the democratic BOURGEOIS. In fact, a besotted and brutalized France at present sprawls in the foreground—it recently celebrated a veritable orgy of bad taste, and at the same time of self-admiration, at the funeral of Victor Hugo. There is also something else common to them: a predilection to resist intellectual Germanizing—and a still greater inability to do so! In this France of intellect, which is also a France of pessimism, Schopenhauer has perhaps become more at home, and more indigenous than he has ever been in Germany; not to speak of Heinrich Heine, who has long ago been reincarnated in the more refined and fastidious lyrists of Paris; or of Hegel, who at present, in the form of Taine—the FIRST of living historians—exercises an almost tyrannical influence. As regards Richard Wagner, however, the more French music learns to adapt itself to the actual needs of the AME MODERNE, the more will it “ Wagnerite”; one can safely predict that beforehand,—it is already taking place sufficiently! There are, however, three things which the French can still boast of with pride as their heritage and possession,
and as indelible tokens of their ancient intellectual superiority in Europe, in spite of all voluntary or involuntary Germanizing and vulgarizing of taste. FIRSTLY, the capacity for artistic emotion, for devotion to “ form,” for which the expression, L’ART POUR L’ART, along with numerous others, has been invented:—such capacity has not been lacking in France for three centuries; and owing to its reverence for the “ small number,” it has again and again made a sort of chamber music of literature possible, which is sought for in vain elsewhere in Europe.—The SECOND thing whereby the French can lay claim to a superiority over Europe is their ancient, many-sided, MORALISTIC culture, owing to which one finds on an average, even in the petty ROMANCIERS of the newspapers and chance BOULEVARDIERS DE PARIS, a psychological sensitiveness and curiosity, of which, for example, one has no conception (to say nothing of the thing itself!) in Germany. The Germans lack a couple of centuries of the moralistic work requisite thereto, which, as we have said, France has not grudged: those who call the Germans “ naive” on that account give them commendation for a defect. (As the opposite of the German inexperience and innocence IN VOLUPTATE PSYCHOLOGICA, which is not too remotely associated with the tediousness of German intercourse,—and as the most successful expression of genuine French curiosity and inventive talent in this domain of delicate thrills, Henri Beyle may be noted; that remarkable anticipatory and forerunning man, who, with a Napoleonic TEMPO, traversed HIS Europe, in fact, several centuries of the European soul, as a surveyor and discoverer thereof:—it has required two generations to OVERTAKE him one way or other, to divine long afterwards some of the riddles that perplexed and enraptured him—this strange Epicurean and man of interrogation, the last great psychologist of France).—There is yet a THIRD claim to superiority: in the French character there is a successful half-way synthesis of the North and South, which makes them comprehend many things, and enjoins upon them other things, which an Englishman can never comprehend. Their temperament, turned alternately to and from the South, in which from time to time the Provencal and Ligurian blood froths over, preserves them from the dreadful, northern grey-in-grey, from sunless conceptual-spectrism and from poverty of blood—our GERMAN infirmity of taste, for the excessive prevalence of which at the present moment, blood and iron, that is to say “ high politics,” has with great resolution been prescribed (according to a dangerous healing art, which bids me wait and wait, but not yet hope).—There is also still in France a pre-understanding and ready welcome for those rarer and rarely gratified men, who are too comprehensive to find satisfaction in any kind of fatherlandism, and know how to love the South when in the North and the North when in the South—the born Midlanders, the “ good Europeans.” For them BIZET has made music, this latest genius, who has seen a new beauty and seduction,—who has discovered a piece of the SOUTH IN MUSIC. 255. I hold that many precautions should be taken against German music. Suppose a person loves the South as I love it—as a great school of recovery for the most spiritual and the most sensuous ills, as a boundless solar profusion and effulgence which o’erspreads a sovereign existence believing in itself—well, such a person will learn to be somewhat on his guard against German music, because, in injuring his taste anew, it will also injure his health anew. Such a Southerner, a Southerner not by origin but by BELIEF, if he should dream of the future of music, must also dream of it being freed from the influence of the North; and must have in his ears the prelude to a deeper, mightier, and perhaps more perverse and mysterious music, a super-German music, which does not fade, pale, and die away, as all German music does, at the sight of the blue, wanton sea and the Mediterranean clearness of sky—a super-European music, which holds its own even in presence of the brown sunsets of the desert, whose soul is akin to the palm-tree, and can be at home and can roam with big, beautiful, lonely beasts of prey… I could imagine a music of which the rarest charm would be that it knew nothing more of good and evil; only that here and there perhaps some sailor’s home-sickness, some golden shadows and tender weaknesses might sweep lightly over it; an art which, from the far distance, would see the colours of a sinking and almost incomprehensible MORAL world fleeing towards it, and would be hospitable enough and profound enough to receive such belated fugitives. 256. Owing to the morbid estrangement which the nationality-craze has induced and still induces among the nations of Europe, owing also to the short-sighted and hasty-handed politicians, who with the help of this craze, are at present in power, and do not suspect to what extent the disintegrating policy they pursue must necessarily be only an interlude policy—owing to all this and much else that is altogether unmentionable at present, the most unmistakable signs that EUROPE WISHES TO BE ONE, are now overlooked, or arbitrarily and falsely misinterpreted. With all the more profound and large-minded men of this century, the real general tendency of the mysterious labour of their souls was to prepare the way for that new SYNTHESIS, and tentatively to anticipate the European of the future; only in their simulations, or in their weaker moments, in old age perhaps, did they belong to the “ fatherlands”—they only rested from themselves when they became “ patriots.” I think of such men as Napoleon, Goethe, Beethoven, Stendhal, Heinrich Heine, Schopenhauer: it must not be taken amiss if I also count Richard Wagner among them, about whom one must not let oneself be deceived by his own misunderstandings (geniuses like him have seldom the right to understand themselves), still less, of course, by the unseemly noise with which he is now resisted and opposed in France: the fact remains, nevertheless, that Richard Wagner and the LATER FRENCH ROMANTICISM of the forties, are most closely and intimately related to one another. They are akin, fundamentally akin, in all the heights and depths of their requirements; it is Europe, the ONE Europe, whose soul presses urgently and longingly, outwards and upwards, in their multifarious and boisterous art— whither? into a new light? towards a new sun? But who would attempt to express accurately what all these masters of new modes of speech could not express distinctly? It is certain that the same storm and stress tormented them, that they SOUGHT in the same manner, these last great seekers! All of them steeped in literature to their eyes and ears—the first artists of universal literary culture—for the most part even themselves writers, poets, intermediaries and blenders of the arts and the senses (Wagner, as musician is reckoned among painters, as poet among musicians, as artist generally among actors); all of them fanatics for EXPRESSION “ at any cost”—I specially mention Delacroix, the nearest related to Wagner; all of them great discoverers in the realm of the sublime, also of the loathsome and dreadful, still greater discoverers in effect, in display, in the art of the show-shop; all of them talented far beyond their genius, out and out VIRTUOSI, with mysterious accesses to all that seduces, allures, constrains, and upsets; born enemies of logic and of the straight line, hankering after the strange, the exotic, the monstrous, the crooked, and the self-contradictory; as men, Tantaluses of the will, plebeian parvenus, who knew themselves to be incapable of a noble TEMPO or of a LENTO in life and action—think of Balzac, for instance,—unrestrained workers, almost destroying themselves by work; antinomians and rebels
in manners, ambitious and insatiable, without equilibrium and enjoyment; all of them finally shattering and sinking down at the Christian cross (and with right and reason, for who of them would have been sufficiently profound and sufficiently original for an ANTI-CHRISTIAN philosophy?);—on the whole, a boldly daring, splendidly overbearing, high-flying, and aloft-up-dragging class of higher men, who had first to teach their century—and it is the century of the MASSES—the conception “ higher man.”… Let the German friends of Richard Wagner advise together as to whether there is anything purely German in the Wagnerian art, or whether its distinction does not consist precisely in coming from SUPERGERMAN sources and impulses: in which connection it may not be underrated how indispensable Paris was to the development of his type, which the strength of his instincts made him long to visit at the most decisive time—and how the whole style of his proceedings, of his self-apostolate, could only perfect itself in sight of the French socialistic original. On a more subtle comparison it will perhaps be found, to the honour of Richard Wagner’s German nature, that he has acted in everything with more strength, daring, severity, and elevation than a nineteenth-century Frenchman could have done—owing to the circumstance that we Germans are as yet nearer to barbarism than the French;—perhaps even the most remarkable creation of Richard Wagner is not only at present, but for ever inaccessible, incomprehensible, and inimitable to the whole latter-day Latin race: the figure of Siegfried, that VERY FREE man, who is probably far too free, too hard, too cheerful, too healthy, too ANTI-CATHOLIC for the taste of old and mellow civilized nations. He may even have been a sin against Romanticism, this anti-Latin Siegfried: well, Wagner atoned amply for this sin in his old sad days, when—anticipating a taste which has meanwhile passed into politics —he began, with the religious vehemence peculiar to him, to preach, at least, THE WAY TO ROME, if not to walk therein.—That these last words may not be misunderstood, I will call to my aid a few powerful rhymes, which will even betray to less delicate ears what I mean—what I mean COUNTER TO the “ last Wagner” and his Parsifal music:— —Is this our mode?—From German heart came this vexed ululating? From German body, this self-lacerating? Is ours this priestly hand-dilation, This incense-fuming exaltation? Is ours this faltering, falling, shambling, This quite uncertain ding-dong-dangling? This sly nun-ogling, Ave-hour-bell ringing, This wholly false enraptured heaven-o’erspringing?— Is this our mode?—Think well!—ye still wait for admission—For what ye hear is ROME—ROME’S FAITH BY INTUITION! CHAPTER IX. WHAT IS NOBLE? 257. EVERY elevation of the type “ man,” has hitherto been the work of an aristocratic society and so it will always be—a society believing in a long scale of gradations of rank and differences of worth among human beings, and requiring slavery in some form or other. Without the PATHOS OF DISTANCE, such as grows out of the incarnated difference of classes, out of the constant out-looking and down-looking of the ruling caste on subordinates and instruments, and out of their equally constant practice of obeying and commanding, of keeping down and keeping at a distance—that other more mysterious pathos could never have arisen, the longing for an ever new widening of distance within the soul itself, the formation of ever higher, rarer, further, more extended, more comprehensive states, in short, just the elevation of the type “ man,” the continued “ self-surmounting of man,” to use a moral formula in a supermoral sense. To be sure, one must not resign oneself to any humanitarian illusions about the history of the origin of an aristocratic society (that is to say, of the preliminary condition for the elevation of the type “ man”): the truth is hard. Let us acknowledge unprejudicedly how every higher civilization hitherto has ORIGINATED! Men with a still natural nature, barbarians in every terrible sense of the word, men of prey, still in possession of unbroken strength of will and desire for power, threw themselves upon weaker, more moral, more peaceful races (perhaps trading or cattle-rearing communities), or upon old mellow civilizations in which the final vital force was flickering out in brilliant fireworks of wit and depravity. At the commencement, the noble caste was always the barbarian caste: their superiority did not consist first of all in their physical, but in their psychical power—they were more COMPLETE men (which at every point also implies the same as “ more complete beasts”). 258. Corruption—as the indication that anarchy threatens to break out among the instincts, and that the foundation of the emotions, called “ life,” is convulsed—is something radically different according to the organization in which it manifests itself. When, for instance, an aristocracy like that of France at the beginning of the Revolution, flung away its privileges with sublime disgust and sacrificed itself to an excess of its moral sentiments, it was corruption:—it was really only the closing act of the corruption which had existed for centuries, by virtue of which that aristocracy had abdicated step by step its lordly prerogatives and lowered itself to a FUNCTION of royalty (in the end even to its decoration and parade-dress). The essential thing, however, in a good and healthy aristocracy is that it should not regard itself as a function either of the kingship or the commonwealth, but as the SIGNIFICANCE and highest justification thereof—that it should therefore accept with a good conscience the sacrifice of a legion of individuals, who, FOR ITS SAKE, must be suppressed and reduced to imperfect men, to slaves and instruments. Its fundamental belief must be precisely that society is NOT allowed to exist for its own sake, but only as a foundation and scaffolding, by means of which a select class of beings may be able to elevate themselves to their higher duties, and in general to a higher EXISTENCE: like those sun-seeking climbing plants in Java—they are called Sipo Matador,—which encircle an oak so long and so often with their arms, until at last, high above it, but supported by it, they can unfold their tops in the open light, and exhibit their happiness. 259. To refrain mutually from injury, from violence, from exploitation, and put one’s will on a par with that of others: this may result in a certain rough sense in good conduct among individuals when the necessary conditions are given (namely, the actual similarity of the individuals in amount of force and degree of worth, and their co-relation within one organization). As soon, however, as one wished to take this principle more generally, and if possible even as the FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF SOCIETY, it would immediately disclose what it really is—namely, a Will to the DENIAL of life, a principle of dissolution and decay. Here one must think profoundly to the very basis and resist all sentimental weakness: life itself is ESSENTIALLY appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation;—but why should one for ever use precisely these words on which for ages a disparaging purpose has been stamped? Even the organization within which, as was previously supposed, the individuals treat each other as equal—it takes place in every healthy aristocracy—must itself, if it be a living and not a dying
organization, do all that towards other bodies, which the individuals within it refrain from doing to each other it will have to be the incarnated Will to Power, it will endeavour to grow, to gain ground, attract to itself and acquire ascendancy—not owing to any morality or immorality, but because it LIVES, and because life IS precisely Will to Power. On no point, however, is the ordinary consciousness of Europeans more unwilling to be corrected than on this matter, people now rave everywhere, even under the guise of science, about coming conditions of society in which “ the exploiting character” is to be absent—that sounds to my ears as if they promised to invent a mode of life which should refrain from all organic functions. “ Exploitation” does not belong to a depraved, or imperfect and primitive society it belongs to the nature of the living being as a primary organic function, it is a consequence of the intrinsic Will to Power, which is precisely the Will to Life—Granting that as a theory this is a novelty—as a reality it is the FUNDAMENTAL FACT of all history let us be so far honest towards ourselves! 260. In a tour through the many finer and coarser moralities which have hitherto prevailed or still prevail on the earth, I found certain traits recurring regularly together, and connected with one another, until finally two primary types revealed themselves to me, and a radical distinction was brought to light. There is MASTER-MORALITY and SLAVEMORALITY,—I would at once add, however, that in all higher and mixed civilizations, there are also attempts at the reconciliation of the two moralities, but one finds still oftener the confusion and mutual misunderstanding of them, indeed sometimes their close juxtaposition—even in the same man, within one soul. The distinctions of moral values have either originated in a ruling caste, pleasantly conscious of being different from the ruled—or among the ruled class, the slaves and dependents of all sorts. In the first case, when it is the rulers who determine the conception “ good,” it is the exalted, proud disposition which is regarded as the distinguishing feature, and that which determines the order of rank. The noble type of man separates from himself the beings in whom the opposite of this exalted, proud disposition displays itself he despises them. Let it at once be noted that in this first kind of morality the antithesis “ good” and “ bad” means practically the same as “ noble” and “ despicable”,—the antithesis “ good” and “ EVIL” is of a different origin. The cowardly, the timid, the insignificant, and those thinking merely of narrow utility are despised; moreover, also, the distrustful, with their constrained glances, the self-abasing, the dog-like kind of men who let themselves be abused, the mendicant flatterers, and above all the liars:—it is a fundamental belief of all aristocrats that the common people are untruthful. “ We truthful ones”—the nobility in ancient Greece called themselves. It is obvious that everywhere the designations of moral value were at first applied to MEN; and were only derivatively and at a later period applied to ACTIONS; it is a gross mistake, therefore, when historians of morals start with questions like, “ Why have sympathetic actions been praised?” The noble type of man regards HIMSELF as a determiner of values; he does not require to be approved of; he passes the judgment: “ What is injurious to me is injurious in itself;” he knows that it is he himself only who confers honour on things; he is a CREATOR OF VALUES. He honours whatever he recognizes in himself: such morality equals self-glorification. In the foreground there is the feeling of plenitude, of power, which seeks to overflow, the happiness of high tension, the consciousness of a wealth which would fain give and bestow:— the noble man also helps the unfortunate, but not—or scarcely—out of pity, but rather from an impulse generated by the super-abundance of power. The noble man honours in himself the powerful one, him also who has power over himself, who knows how to speak and how to keep silence, who takes pleasure in subjecting himself to severity and hardness, and has reverence for all that is severe and hard. “ Wotan placed a hard heart in my breast,” says an old Scandinavian Saga: it is thus rightly expressed from the soul of a proud Viking. Such a type of man is even proud of not being made for sympathy; the hero of the Saga therefore adds warningly: “ He who has not a hard heart when young, will never have one.” The noble and brave who think thus are the furthest removed from the morality which sees precisely in sympathy, or in acting for the good of others, or in DESINTERESSEMENT, the characteristic of the moral; faith in oneself, pride in oneself, a radical enmity and irony towards “ selflessness,” belong as definitely to noble morality, as do a careless scorn and precaution in presence of sympathy and the “ warm heart.”—It is the powerful who KNOW how to honour, it is their art, their domain for invention. The profound reverence for age and for tradition—all law rests on this double reverence,—the belief and prejudice in favour of ancestors and unfavourable to newcomers, is typical in the morality of the powerful; and if, reversely, men of “ modern ideas” believe almost instinctively in “ progress” and the “ future,” and are more and more lacking in respect for old age, the ignoble origin of these “ ideas” has complacently betrayed itself thereby. A morality of the ruling class, however, is more especially foreign and irritating to present-day taste in the sternness of its principle that one has duties only to one’s equals; that one may act towards beings of a lower rank, towards all that is foreign, just as seems good to one, or “ as the heart desires,” and in any case “ beyond good and evil”: it is here that sympathy and similar sentiments can have a place. The ability and obligation to exercise prolonged gratitude and prolonged revenge— both only within the circle of equals,—artfulness in retaliation, RAFFINEMENT of the idea in friendship, a certain necessity to have enemies (as outlets for the emotions of envy, quarrelsomeness, arrogance—in fact, in order to be a good FRIEND): all these are typical characteristics of the noble morality, which, as has been pointed out, is not the morality of “ modern ideas,” and is therefore at present difficult to realize, and also to unearth and disclose.—It is otherwise with the second type of morality, SLAVE-MORALITY. Supposing that the abused, the oppressed, the suffering, the unemancipated, the weary, and those uncertain of themselves should moralize, what will be the common element in their moral estimates? Probably a pessimistic suspicion with regard to the entire situation of man will find expression, perhaps a condemnation of man, together with his situation. The slave has an unfavourable eye for the virtues of the powerful; he has a skepticism and distrust, a REFINEMENT of distrust of everything “ good” that is there honoured—he would fain persuade himself that the very happiness there is not genuine. On the other hand, THOSE qualities which serve to alleviate the existence of sufferers are brought into prominence and flooded with light; it is here that sympathy, the kind, helping hand, the warm heart, patience, diligence, humility, and friendliness attain to honour; for here these are the most useful qualities, and almost the only means of supporting the burden of existence. Slave-morality is essentially the morality of utility. Here is the seat of the origin of the famous antithesis “ good” and “ evil”:—power and dangerousness are assumed to reside in the evil, a certain dreadfulness, subtlety, and strength, which do not admit of being despised. According to slave-morality, therefore, the “ evil” man arouses fear; according to master-morality, it is precisely the “ good” man who arouses fear and seeks to arouse it, while the bad man is
regarded as the despicable being. The contrast attains its maximum when, in accordance with the logical consequences of slave-morality, a shade of depreciation—it may be slight and well-intentioned—at last attaches itself to the “ good” man of this morality; because, according to the servile mode of thought, the good man must in any case be the SAFE man: he is good-natured, easily deceived, perhaps a little stupid, un bonhomme. Everywhere that slave-morality gains the ascendancy, language shows a tendency to approximate the significations of the words “ good” and “ stupid.”—A last fundamental difference: the desire for FREEDOM, the instinct for happiness and the refinements of the feeling of liberty belong as necessarily to slave-morals and morality, as artifice and enthusiasm in reverence and devotion are the regular symptoms of an aristocratic mode of thinking and estimating. —Hence we can understand without further detail why love AS A PASSION—it is our European specialty—must absolutely be of noble origin; as is well known, its invention is due to the Provencal poet-cavaliers, those brilliant, ingenious men of the “ gai saber,” to whom Europe owes so much, and almost owes itself. 261. Vanity is one of the things which are perhaps most difficult for a noble man to understand: he will be tempted to deny it, where another kind of man thinks he sees it selfevidently. The problem for him is to represent to his mind beings who seek to arouse a good opinion of themselves which they themselves do not possess—and consequently also do not “ deserve,”—and who yet BELIEVE in this good opinion afterwards. This seems to him on the one hand such bad taste and so self-disrespectful, and on the other hand so grotesquely unreasonable, that he would like to consider vanity an exception, and is doubtful about it in most cases when it is spoken of. He will say, for instance: “ I may be mistaken about my value, and on the other hand may nevertheless demand that my value should be acknowledged by others precisely as I rate it:—that, however, is not vanity (but self-conceit, or, in most cases, that which is called ‘humility,’ and also ‘modesty’).” Or he will even say: “ For many reasons I can delight in the good opinion of others, perhaps because I love and honour them, and rejoice in all their joys, perhaps also because their good opinion endorses and strengthens my belief in my own good opinion, perhaps because the good opinion of others, even in cases where I do not share it, is useful to me, or gives promise of usefulness:—all this, however, is not vanity.” The man of noble character must first bring it home forcibly to his mind, especially with the aid of history, that, from time immemorial, in all social strata in any way dependent, the ordinary man WAS only that which he PASSED FOR:—not being at all accustomed to fix values, he did not assign even to himself any other value than that which his master assigned to him (it is the peculiar RIGHT OF MASTERS to create values). It may be looked upon as the result of an extraordinary atavism, that the ordinary man, even at present, is still always WAITING for an opinion about himself, and then instinctively submitting himself to it; yet by no means only to a “ good” opinion, but also to a bad and unjust one (think, for instance, of the greater part of the self-appreciations and self-depreciations which believing women learn from their confessors, and which in general the believing Christian learns from his Church). In fact, conformably to the slow rise of the democratic social order (and its cause, the blending of the blood of masters and slaves), the originally noble and rare impulse of the masters to assign a value to themselves and to “ think well” of themselves, will now be more and more encouraged and extended; but it has at all times an older, ampler, and more radically ingrained propensity opposed to it—and in the phenomenon of “ vanity” this older propensity overmasters the younger. The vain person rejoices over EVERY good opinion which he hears about himself (quite apart from the point of view of its usefulness, and equally regardless of its truth or falsehood), just as he suffers from every bad opinion: for he subjects himself to both, he feels himself subjected to both, by that oldest instinct of subjection which breaks forth in him.—It is “ the slave” in the vain man’s blood, the remains of the slave’s craftiness—and how much of the “ slave” is still left in woman, for instance!—which seeks to SEDUCE to good opinions of itself; it is the slave, too, who immediately afterwards falls prostrate himself before these opinions, as though he had not called them forth.—And to repeat it again: vanity is an atavism. 262. A SPECIES originates, and a type becomes established and strong in the long struggle with essentially constant UNFAVOURLE conditions. On the other hand, it is known by the experience of breeders that species which receive super-abundant nourishment, and in general a surplus of protection and care, immediately tend in the most marked way to develop variations, and are fertile in prodigies and monstrosities (also in monstrous vices). Now look at an aristocratic commonwealth, say an ancient Greek polis, or Venice, as a voluntary or involuntary contrivance for the purpose of REARING human beings; there are there men beside one another, thrown upon their own resources, who want to make their species prevail, chiefly because they MUST prevail, or else run the terrible danger of being exterminated. The favour, the super-abundance, the protection are there lacking under which variations are fostered; the species needs itself as species, as something which, precisely by virtue of its hardness, its uniformity, and simplicity of structure, can in general prevail and make itself permanent in constant struggle with its neighbours, or with rebellious or rebellion-threatening vassals. The most varied experience teaches it what are the qualities to which it principally owes the fact that it still exists, in spite of all Gods and men, and has hitherto been victorious: these qualities it calls virtues, and these virtues alone it develops to maturity. It does so with severity, indeed it desires severity; every aristocratic morality is intolerant in the education of youth, in the control of women, in the marriage customs, in the relations of old and young, in the penal laws (which have an eye only for the degenerating): it counts intolerance itself among the virtues, under the name of “ justice.” A type with few, but very marked features, a species of severe, warlike, wisely silent, reserved, and reticent men (and as such, with the most delicate sensibility for the charm and nuances of society) is thus established, unaffected by the vicissitudes of generations; the constant struggle with uniform UNFAVOURLE conditions is, as already remarked, the cause of a type becoming stable and hard. Finally, however, a happy state of things results, the enormous tension is relaxed; there are perhaps no more enemies among the neighbouring peoples, and the means of life, even of the enjoyment of life, are present in superabundance. With one stroke the bond and constraint of the old discipline severs: it is no longer regarded as necessary, as a condition of existence—if it would continue, it can only do so as a form of LUXURY, as an archaizing TASTE. Variations, whether they be deviations (into the higher, finer, and rarer), or deteriorations and monstrosities, appear suddenly on the scene in the greatest exuberance and splendour; the individual dares to be individual and detach himself. At this turning-point of history there manifest themselves, side by side, and often mixed and entangled together, a magnificent, manifold, virgin-forest-like up-growth and upstriving, a kind of TROPICAL TEMPO in the rivalry of growth, and an extraordinary decay and self-destruction, owing to the savagely opposing and seemingly exploding egoisms,
which strive with one another “ for sun and light,” and can no longer assign any limit, restraint, or forbearance for themselves by means of the hitherto existing morality. It was this morality itself which piled up the strength so enormously, which bent the bow in so threatening a manner:—it is now “ out of date,” it is getting “ out of date.” The dangerous and disquieting point has been reached when the greater, more manifold, more comprehensive life IS LIVED BEYOND the old morality; the “ individual” stands out, and is obliged to have recourse to his own law-giving, his own arts and artifices for self-preservation, self-elevation, and self-deliverance. Nothing but new “ Whys,” nothing but new “ Hows,” no common formulas any longer, misunderstanding and disregard in league with each other, decay, deterioration, and the loftiest desires frightfully entangled, the genius of the race overflowing from all the cornucopias of good and bad, a portentous simultaneousness of Spring and Autumn, full of new charms and mysteries peculiar to the fresh, still inexhausted, still unwearied corruption. Danger is again present, the mother of morality, great danger; this time shifted into the individual, into the neighbour and friend, into the street, into their own child, into their own heart, into all the most personal and secret recesses of their desires and volitions. What will the moral philosophers who appear at this time have to preach? They discover, these sharp onlookers and loafers, that the end is quickly approaching, that everything around them decays and produces decay, that nothing will endure until the day after tomorrow, except one species of man, the incurably MEDIOCRE. The mediocre alone have a prospect of continuing and propagating themselves—they will be the men of the future, the sole survivors; “ be like them! become mediocre!” is now the only morality which has still a significance, which still obtains a hearing.—But it is difficult to preach this morality of mediocrity! it can never avow what it is and what it desires! it has to talk of moderation and dignity and duty and brotherly love—it will have difficulty IN CONCEALING ITS IRONY! 263. There is an INSTINCT FOR RANK, which more than anything else is already the sign of a HIGH rank; there is a DELIGHT in the NUANCES of reverence which leads one to infer noble origin and habits. The refinement, goodness, and loftiness of a soul are put to a perilous test when something passes by that is of the highest rank, but is not yet protected by the awe of authority from obtrusive touches and incivilities: something that goes its way like a living touchstone, undistinguished, undiscovered, and tentative, perhaps voluntarily veiled and disguised. He whose task and practice it is to investigate souls, will avail himself of many varieties of this very art to determine the ultimate value of a soul, the unalterable, innate order of rank to which it belongs: he will test it by its INSTINCT FOR REVERENCE. DIFFERENCE ENGENDRE HAINE: the vulgarity of many a nature spurts up suddenly like dirty water, when any holy vessel, any jewel from closed shrines, any book bearing the marks of great destiny, is brought before it; while on the other hand, there is an involuntary silence, a hesitation of the eye, a cessation of all gestures, by which it is indicated that a soul FEELS the nearness of what is worthiest of respect. The way in which, on the whole, the reverence for the BIBLE has hitherto been maintained in Europe, is perhaps the best example of discipline and refinement of manners which Europe owes to Christianity: books of such profoundness and supreme significance require for their protection an external tyranny of authority, in order to acquire the PERIOD of thousands of years which is necessary to exhaust and unriddle them. Much has been achieved when the sentiment has been at last instilled into the masses (the shallow-pates and the boobies of every kind) that they are not allowed to touch everything, that there are holy experiences before which they must take off their shoes and keep away the unclean hand—it is almost their highest advance towards humanity. On the contrary, in the so-called cultured classes, the believers in “ modern ideas,” nothing is perhaps so repulsive as their lack of shame, the easy insolence of eye and hand with which they touch, taste, and finger everything; and it is possible that even yet there is more RELATIVE nobility of taste, and more tact for reverence among the people, among the lower classes of the people, especially among peasants, than among the newspaper-reading DEMIMONDE of intellect, the cultured class. 264. It cannot be effaced from a man’s soul what his ancestors have preferably and most constantly done: whether they were perhaps diligent economizers attached to a desk and a cash-box, modest and citizen-like in their desires, modest also in their virtues; or whether they were accustomed to commanding from morning till night, fond of rude pleasures and probably of still ruder duties and responsibilities; or whether, finally, at one time or another, they have sacrificed old privileges of birth and possession, in order to live wholly for their faith—for their “ God,”—as men of an inexorable and sensitive conscience, which blushes at every compromise. It is quite impossible for a man NOT to have the qualities and predilections of his parents and ancestors in his constitution, whatever appearances may suggest to the contrary. This is the problem of race. Granted that one knows something of the parents, it is admissible to draw a conclusion about the child: any kind of offensive incontinence, any kind of sordid envy, or of clumsy self-vaunting—the three things which together have constituted the genuine plebeian type in all times—such must pass over to the child, as surely as bad blood; and with the help of the best education and culture one will only succeed in DECEIVING with regard to such heredity.—And what else does education and culture try to do nowadays! In our very democratic, or rather, very plebeian age, “ education” and “ culture” MUST be essentially the art of deceiving—deceiving with regard to origin, with regard to the inherited plebeianism in body and soul. An educator who nowadays preached truthfulness above everything else, and called out constantly to his pupils: “ Be true! Be natural! Show yourselves as you are!”—even such a virtuous and sincere ass would learn in a short time to have recourse to the FURCA of Horace, NATURAM EXPELLERE: with what results? “ Plebeianism” USQUE RECURRET. [FOOTNOTE: Horace’s “ Epistles,” I. x. 24.] 265. At the risk of displeasing innocent ears, I submit that egoism belongs to the essence of a noble soul, I mean the unalterable belief that to a being such as “ we,” other beings must naturally be in subjection, and have to sacrifice themselves. The noble soul accepts the fact of his egoism without question, and also without consciousness of harshness, constraint, or arbitrariness therein, but rather as something that may have its basis in the primary law of things:—if he sought a designation for it he would say: “ It is justice itself.” He acknowledges under certain circumstances, which made him hesitate at first, that there are other equally privileged ones; as soon as he has settled this question of rank, he moves among those equals and equally privileged ones with the same assurance, as regards modesty and delicate respect, which he enjoys in intercourse with himself—in accordance with an innate heavenly mechanism which all the stars understand. It is an ADDITIONAL instance of his egoism, this artfulness and self-limitation in intercourse with his equals—every star
is a similar egoist; he honours HIMSELF in them, and in the rights which he concedes to them, he has no doubt that the exchange of honours and rights, as the ESSENCE of all intercourse, belongs also to the natural condition of things. The noble soul gives as he takes, prompted by the passionate and sensitive instinct of requital, which is at the root of his nature. The notion of “ favour” has, INTER PARES, neither significance nor good repute; there may be a sublime way of letting gifts as it were light upon one from above, and of drinking them thirstily like dew-drops; but for those arts and displays the noble soul has no aptitude. His egoism hinders him here: in general, he looks “ aloft” unwillingly—he looks either FORWARD, horizontally and deliberately, or downwards—HE KNOWS THAT HE IS ON A HEIGHT. 266. “ One can only truly esteem him who does not LOOK OUT FOR himself.”—Goethe to Rath Schlosser. 267. The Chinese have a proverb which mothers even teach their children: “ SIAO-SIN” (“ MAKE THY HEART SMALL”). This is the essentially fundamental tendency in latter-day civilizations. I have no doubt that an ancient Greek, also, would first of all remark the self-dwarfing in us Europeans of today—in this respect alone we should immediately be “ distasteful” to him. 268. What, after all, is ignobleness?—Words are vocal symbols for ideas; ideas, however, are more or less definite mental symbols for frequently returning and concurring sensations, for groups of sensations. It is not sufficient to use the same words in order to understand one another: we must also employ the same words for the same kind of internal experiences, we must in the end have experiences IN COMMON. On this account the people of one nation understand one another better than those belonging to different nations, even when they use the same language; or rather, when people have lived long together under similar conditions (of climate, soil, danger, requirement, toil) there ORIGINATES therefrom an entity that “ understands itself”—namely, a nation. In all souls a like number of frequently recurring experiences have gained the upper hand over those occurring more rarely: about these matters people understand one another rapidly and always more rapidly—the history of language is the history of a process of abbreviation; on the basis of this quick comprehension people always unite closer and closer. The greater the danger, the greater is the need of agreeing quickly and readily about what is necessary; not to misunderstand one another in danger—that is what cannot at all be dispensed with in intercourse. Also in all loves and friendships one has the experience that nothing of the kind continues when the discovery has been made that in using the same words, one of the two parties has feelings, thoughts, intuitions, wishes, or fears different from those of the other. (The fear of the “ eternal misunderstanding”: that is the good genius which so often keeps persons of different sexes from too hasty attachments, to which sense and heart prompt them —and NOT some Schopenhauerian “ genius of the species”!) Whichever groups of sensations within a soul awaken most readily, begin to speak, and give the word of command— these decide as to the general order of rank of its values, and determine ultimately its list of desirable things. A man’s estimates of value betray something of the STRUCTURE of his soul, and wherein it sees its conditions of life, its intrinsic needs. Supposing now that necessity has from all time drawn together only such men as could express similar requirements and similar experiences by similar symbols, it results on the whole that the easy COMMUNICLITY of need, which implies ultimately the undergoing only of average and COMMON experiences, must have been the most potent of all the forces which have hitherto operated upon mankind. The more similar, the more ordinary people, have always had and are still having the advantage; the more select, more refined, more unique, and difficultly comprehensible, are liable to stand alone; they succumb to accidents in their isolation, and seldom propagate themselves. One must appeal to immense opposing forces, in order to thwart this natural, all-too-natural PROGRESSUS IN SIMILE, the evolution of man to the similar, the ordinary, the average, the gregarious—to the IGNOBLE—! 269. The more a psychologist—a born, an unavoidable psychologist and soul-diviner—turns his attention to the more select cases and individuals, the greater is his danger of being suffocated by sympathy: he NEEDS sternness and cheerfulness more than any other man. For the corruption, the ruination of higher men, of the more unusually constituted souls, is in fact, the rule: it is dreadful to have such a rule always before one’s eyes. The manifold torment of the psychologist who has discovered this ruination, who discovers once, and then discovers ALMOST repeatedly throughout all history, this universal inner “ desperateness” of higher men, this eternal “ too late!” in every sense—may perhaps one day be the cause of his turning with bitterness against his own lot, and of his making an attempt at self-destruction—of his “ going to ruin” himself. One may perceive in almost every psychologist a tell-tale inclination for delightful intercourse with commonplace and well-ordered men; the fact is thereby disclosed that he always requires healing, that he needs a sort of flight and forgetfulness, away from what his insight and incisiveness—from what his “ business”—has laid upon his conscience. The fear of his memory is peculiar to him. He is easily silenced by the judgment of others; he hears with unmoved countenance how people honour, admire, love, and glorify, where he has PERCEIVED—or he even conceals his silence by expressly assenting to some plausible opinion. Perhaps the paradox of his situation becomes so dreadful that, precisely where he has learnt GREAT SYMPATHY, together with great CONTEMPT, the multitude, the educated, and the visionaries, have on their part learnt great reverence—reverence for “ great men” and marvelous animals, for the sake of whom one blesses and honours the fatherland, the earth, the dignity of mankind, and one’s own self, to whom one points the young, and in view of whom one educates them. And who knows but in all great instances hitherto just the same happened: that the multitude worshipped a God, and that the “ God” was only a poor sacrificial animal! SUCCESS has always been the greatest liar—and the “ work” itself is a success; the great statesman, the conqueror, the discoverer, are disguised in their creations until they are unrecognizable; the “ work” of the artist, of the philosopher, only invents him who has created it, is REPUTED to have created it; the “ great men,” as they are reverenced, are poor little fictions composed afterwards; in the world of historical values spurious coinage PREVAILS. Those great poets, for example, such as Byron, Musset, Poe, Leopardi, Kleist, Gogol (I do not venture to mention much greater names, but I have them in my mind), as they now appear, and were perhaps obliged to be: men of the moment, enthusiastic, sensuous, and childish, light-minded and impulsive in their trust and distrust; with souls in which usually some flaw has to be concealed; often taking revenge with their works for an internal defilement, often seeking forgetfulness in their soaring from a too true memory, often lost in the mud and almost in love with it, until they become like the Will-o’-the-Wisps around the
swamps, and PRETEND TO BE stars—the people then call them idealists,—often struggling with protracted disgust, with an ever-reappearing phantom of disbelief, which makes them cold, and obliges them to languish for GLORIA and devour “ faith as it is” out of the hands of intoxicated adulators:—what a TORMENT these great artists are and the socalled higher men in general, to him who has once found them out! It is thus conceivable that it is just from woman—who is clairvoyant in the world of suffering, and also unfortunately eager to help and save to an extent far beyond her powers—that THEY have learnt so readily those outbreaks of boundless devoted SYMPATHY, which the multitude, above all the reverent multitude, do not understand, and overwhelm with prying and self-gratifying interpretations. This sympathizing invariably deceives itself as to its power; woman would like to believe that love can do EVERYTHING—it is the SUPERSTITION peculiar to her. Alas, he who knows the heart finds out how poor, helpless, pretentious, and blundering even the best and deepest love is—he finds that it rather DESTROYS than saves!—It is possible that under the holy fable and travesty of the life of Jesus there is hidden one of the most painful cases of the martyrdom of KNOWLEDGEOUT LOVE: the martyrdom of the most innocent and most craving heart, that never had enough of any human love, that DEMANDED love, that demanded inexorably and frantically to be loved and nothing else, with terrible outbursts against those who refused him their love; the story of a poor soul insatiated and insatiable in love, that had to invent hell to send thither those who WOULD NOT love him—and that at last, enlightened about human love, had to invent a God who is entire love, entire CAPACITY for love—who takes pity on human love, because it is so paltry, so ignorant! He who has such sentiments, he who has such KNOWLEDGE about love—SEEKS for death!—But why should one deal with such painful matters? Provided, of course, that one is not obliged to do so. 270. The intellectual haughtiness and loathing of every man who has suffered deeply—it almost determines the order of rank HOW deeply men can suffer—the chilling certainty, with which he is thoroughly imbued and coloured, that by virtue of his suffering he KNOWS MORE than the shrewdest and wisest can ever know, that he has been familiar with, and “ at home” in, many distant, dreadful worlds of which “ YOU know nothing”!—this silent intellectual haughtiness of the sufferer, this pride of the elect of knowledge, of the “ initiated,” of the almost sacrificed, finds all forms of disguise necessary to protect itself from contact with officious and sympathizing hands, and in general from all that is not its equal in suffering. Profound suffering makes noble: it separates.—One of the most refined forms of disguise is Epicurism, along with a certain ostentatious boldness of taste, which takes suffering lightly, and puts itself on the defensive against all that is sorrowful and profound. They are “ gay men” who make use of gaiety, because they are misunderstood on account of it—they WISH to be misunderstood. There are “ scientific minds” who make use of science, because it gives a gay appearance, and because scientificness leads to the conclusion that a person is superficial—they WISH to mislead to a false conclusion. There are free insolent minds which would fain conceal and deny that they are broken, proud, incurable hearts (the cynicism of Hamlet—the case of Galiani); and occasionally folly itself is the mask of an unfortunate OVER-ASSURED knowledge.—From which it follows that it is the part of a more refined humanity to have reverence “ for the mask,” and not to make use of psychology and curiosity in the wrong place. 271. That which separates two men most profoundly is a different sense and grade of purity. What does it matter about all their honesty and reciprocal usefulness, what does it matter about all their mutual good-will: the fact still remains—they “ cannot smell each other!” The highest instinct for purity places him who is affected with it in the most extraordinary and dangerous isolation, as a saint: for it is just holiness—the highest spiritualization of the instinct in question. Any kind of cognizance of an indescribable excess in the joy of the bath, any kind of ardour or thirst which perpetually impels the soul out of night into the morning, and out of gloom, out of “ affliction” into clearness, brightness, depth, and refinement:—just as much as such a tendency DISTINGUISHES—it is a noble tendency—it also SEPARATES.—The pity of the saint is pity for the FILTH of the human, alltoo-human. And there are grades and heights where pity itself is regarded by him as impurity, as filth. 272. Signs of nobility: never to think of lowering our duties to the rank of duties for everybody; to be unwilling to renounce or to share our responsibilities; to count our prerogatives, and the exercise of them, among our DUTIES. 273. A man who strives after great things, looks upon every one whom he encounters on his way either as a means of advance, or a delay and hindrance—or as a temporary resting-place. His peculiar lofty BOUNTY to his fellow-men is only possible when he attains his elevation and dominates. Impatience, and the consciousness of being always condemned to comedy up to that time—for even strife is a comedy, and conceals the end, as every means does—spoil all intercourse for him; this kind of man is acquainted with solitude, and what is most poisonous in it. 274. THE PROBLEM OF THOSE WHO WAIT.—Happy chances are necessary, and many incalculable elements, in order that a higher man in whom the solution of a problem is dormant, may yet take action, or “ break forth,” as one might say—at the right moment. On an average it DOES NOT happen; and in all corners of the earth there are waiting ones sitting who hardly know to what extent they are waiting, and still less that they wait in vain. Occasionally, too, the waking call comes too late—the chance which gives “ permission” to take action—when their best youth, and strength for action have been used up in sitting still; and how many a one, just as he “ sprang up,” has found with horror that his limbs are benumbed and his spirits are now too heavy! “ It is too late,” he has said to himself—and has become self-distrustful and henceforth for ever useless.—In the domain of genius, may not the “ Raphael without hands” (taking the expression in its widest sense) perhaps not be the exception, but the rule?—Perhaps genius is by no means so rare: but rather the five hundred HANDS which it requires in order to tyrannize over the [GREEK INSERTED HERE], “ the right time”—in order to take chance by the forelock! 275. He who does not WISH to see the height of a man, looks all the more sharply at what is low in him, and in the foreground—and thereby betrays himself. 276. In all kinds of injury and loss the lower and coarser soul is better off than the nobler soul: the dangers of the latter must be greater, the probability that it will come to grief and perish is in fact immense, considering the multiplicity of the conditions of its existence.—In a lizard a finger grows again which has been lost; not so in man.— 277. It is too bad! Always the old story! When a man has finished building his house, he finds that he has learnt unawares something which he OUGHT absolutely to have
known before he—began to build. The eternal, fatal “ Too late!” The melancholia of everything COMPLETED—! 278.—Wanderer, who art thou? I see thee follow thy path without scorn, without love, with unfathomable eyes, wet and sad as a plummet which has returned to the light insatiated out of every depth—what did it seek down there?—with a bosom that never sighs, with lips that conceal their loathing, with a hand which only slowly grasps: who art thou? what hast thou done? Rest thee here: this place has hospitality for every one—refresh thyself! And whoever thou art, what is it that now pleases thee? What will serve to refresh thee? Only name it, whatever I have I offer thee! “ To refresh me? To refresh me? Oh, thou prying one, what sayest thou! But give me, I pray thee–” What? what? Speak out! “ Another mask! A second mask!” 279. Men of profound sadness betray themselves when they are happy: they have a mode of seizing upon happiness as though they would choke and strangle it, out of jealousy— ah, they know only too well that it will flee from them! 280. “ Bad! Bad! What? Does he not—go back?” Yes! But you misunderstand him when you complain about it. He goes back like every one who is about to make a great spring. 281.—“ Will people believe it of me? But I insist that they believe it of me: I have always thought very unsatisfactorily of myself and about myself, only in very rare cases, only compulsorily, always without delight in ‘the subject,’ ready to digress from ‘myself,’ and always without faith in the result, owing to an unconquerable distrust of the POSSIBILITY of self-knowledge, which has led me so far as to feel a CONTRADICTIO IN ADJECTO even in the idea of ‘direct knowledge’ which theorists allow themselves:— this matter of fact is almost the most certain thing I know about myself. There must be a sort of repugnance in me to BELIEVE anything definite about myself.—Is there perhaps some enigma therein? Probably; but fortunately nothing for my own teeth.—Perhaps it betrays the species to which I belong?—but not to myself, as is sufficiently agreeable to me.” 282.—“ But what has happened to you?”—“ I do not know,” he said, hesitatingly; “ perhaps the Harpies have flown over my table.”—It sometimes happens nowadays that a gentle, sober, retiring man becomes suddenly mad, breaks the plates, upsets the table, shrieks, raves, and shocks everybody—and finally withdraws, ashamed, and raging at himself— whither? for what purpose? To famish apart? To suffocate with his memories?—To him who has the desires of a lofty and dainty soul, and only seldom finds his table laid and his food prepared, the danger will always be great—nowadays, however, it is extraordinarily so. Thrown into the midst of a noisy and plebeian age, with which he does not like to eat out of the same dish, he may readily perish of hunger and thirst—or, should he nevertheless finally “ fall to,” of sudden nausea.—We have probably all sat at tables to which we did not belong; and precisely the most spiritual of us, who are most difficult to nourish, know the dangerous DYSPEPSIA which originates from a sudden insight and disillusionment about our food and our messmates—the AFTER-DINNER NAUSEA. 283. If one wishes to praise at all, it is a delicate and at the same time a noble self-control, to praise only where one DOES NOT agree—otherwise in fact one would praise oneself, which is contrary to good taste:—a self-control, to be sure, which offers excellent opportunity and provocation to constant MISUNDERSTANDING. To be able to allow oneself this veritable luxury of taste and morality, one must not live among intellectual imbeciles, but rather among men whose misunderstandings and mistakes amuse by their refinement—or one will have to pay dearly for it!—“ He praises me, THEREFORE he acknowledges me to be right”—this asinine method of inference spoils half of the life of us recluses, for it brings the asses into our neighbourhood and friendship. 284. To live in a vast and proud tranquility; always beyond… To have, or not to have, one’s emotions, one’s For and Against, according to choice; to lower oneself to them for hours; to SEAT oneself on them as upon horses, and often as upon asses:—for one must know how to make use of their stupidity as well as of their fire. To conserve one’s three hundred foregrounds; also one’s black spectacles: for there are circumstances when nobody must look into our eyes, still less into our “ motives.” And to choose for company that roguish and cheerful vice, politeness. And to remain master of one’s four virtues, courage, insight, sympathy, and solitude. For solitude is a virtue with us, as a sublime bent and bias to purity, which divines that in the contact of man and man—“ in society”—it must be unavoidably impure. All society makes one somehow, somewhere, or sometime —“ commonplace.” 285. The greatest events and thoughts—the greatest thoughts, however, are the greatest events—are longest in being comprehended: the generations which are contemporary with them do not EXPERIENCE such events—they live past them. Something happens there as in the realm of stars. The light of the furthest stars is longest in reaching man; and before it has arrived man DENIES—that there are stars there. “ How many centuries does a mind require to be understood?”—that is also a standard, one also makes a gradation of rank and an etiquette therewith, such as is necessary for mind and for star. 286. “ Here is the prospect free, the mind exalted.” [FOOTNOTE: Goethe’s “ Faust,” Part II, Act V. The words of Dr. Marianus.]—But there is a reverse kind of man, who is also upon a height, and has also a free prospect—but looks DOWNWARDS. 287. What is noble? What does the word “ noble” still mean for us nowadays? How does the noble man betray himself, how is he recognized under this heavy overcast sky of the commencing plebeianism, by which everything is rendered opaque and leaden?—It is not his actions which establish his claim—actions are always ambiguous, always inscrutable; neither is it his “ works.” One finds nowadays among artists and scholars plenty of those who betray by their works that a profound longing for nobleness impels them; but this very NEED of nobleness is radically different from the needs of the noble soul itself, and is in fact the eloquent and dangerous sign of the lack thereof. It is not the works, but the BELIEF which is here decisive and determines the order of rank—to employ once more an old religious formula with a new and deeper meaning—it is some fundamental certainty which a noble soul has about itself, something which is not to be sought, is not to be found, and perhaps, also, is not to be lost.—THE NOBLE SOUL HAS REVERENCE FOR ITSELF.
— 288. There are men who are unavoidably intellectual, let them turn and twist themselves as they will, and hold their hands before their treacherous eyes—as though the hand were not a betrayer; it always comes out at last that they have something which they hide—namely, intellect. One of the subtlest means of deceiving, at least as long as possible, and of successfully representing oneself to be stupider than one really is—which in everyday life is often as desirable as an umbrella,—is called ENTHUSIASM, including what belongs to it, for instance, virtue. For as Galiani said, who was obliged to know it: VERTU EST ENTHOUSIASME. 289. In the writings of a recluse one always hears something of the echo of the wilderness, something of the murmuring tones and timid vigilance of solitude; in his strongest words, even in his cry itself, there sounds a new and more dangerous kind of silence, of concealment. He who has sat day and night, from year’s end to year’s end, alone with his soul in familiar discord and discourse, he who has become a cave-bear, or a treasure-seeker, or a treasure-guardian and dragon in his cave—it may be a labyrinth, but can also be a goldmine—his ideas themselves eventually acquire a twilight-colour of their own, and an odour, as much of the depth as of the mould, something uncommunicative and repulsive, which blows chilly upon every passer-by. The recluse does not believe that a philosopher—supposing that a philosopher has always in the first place been a recluse—ever expressed his actual and ultimate opinions in books: are not books written precisely to hide what is in us?—indeed, he will doubt whether a philosopher CAN have “ ultimate and actual” opinions at all; whether behind every cave in him there is not, and must necessarily be, a still deeper cave: an ampler, stranger, richer world beyond the surface, an abyss behind every bottom, beneath every “ foundation.” Every philosophy is a foreground philosophy—this is a recluse’s verdict: “ There is something arbitrary in the fact that the PHILOSOPHER came to a stand here, took a retrospect, and looked around; that he HERE laid his spade aside and did not dig any deeper—there is also something suspicious in it.” Every philosophy also CONCEALS a philosophy; every opinion is also a LURKING-PLACE, every word is also a MASK. 290. Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood. The latter perhaps wounds his vanity; but the former wounds his heart, his sympathy, which always says: “ Ah, why would you also have as hard a time of it as I have?” 291. Man, a COMPLEX, mendacious, artful, and inscrutable animal, uncanny to the other animals by his artifice and sagacity, rather than by his strength, has invented the good conscience in order finally to enjoy his soul as something SIMPLE; and the whole of morality is a long, audacious falsification, by virtue of which generally enjoyment at the sight of the soul becomes possible. From this point of view there is perhaps much more in the conception of “ art” than is generally believed. 292. A philosopher: that is a man who constantly experiences, sees, hears, suspects, hopes, and dreams extraordinary things; who is struck by his own thoughts as if they came from the outside, from above and below, as a species of events and lightning-flashes PECULIAR TO HIM; who is perhaps himself a storm pregnant with new lightnings; a portentous man, around whom there is always rumbling and mumbling and gaping and something uncanny going on. A philosopher: alas, a being who often runs away from himself, is often afraid of himself—but whose curiosity always makes him “ come to himself” again. 293. A man who says: “ I like that, I take it for my own, and mean to guard and protect it from every one”; a man who can conduct a case, carry out a resolution, remain true to an opinion, keep hold of a woman, punish and overthrow insolence; a man who has his indignation and his sword, and to whom the weak, the suffering, the oppressed, and even the animals willingly submit and naturally belong; in short, a man who is a MASTER by nature—when such a man has sympathy, well! THAT sympathy has value! But of what account is the sympathy of those who suffer! Or of those even who preach sympathy! There is nowadays, throughout almost the whole of Europe, a sickly irritability and sensitiveness towards pain, and also a repulsive irrestrainableness in complaining, an effeminizing, which, with the aid of religion and philosophical nonsense, seeks to deck itself out as something superior—there is a regular cult of suffering. The UNMANLINESS of that which is called “ sympathy” by such groups of visionaries, is always, I believe, the first thing that strikes the eye.—One must resolutely and radically taboo this latest form of bad taste; and finally I wish people to put the good amulet, “ GAI SER” (“ gay science,” in ordinary language), on heart and neck, as a protection against it. 294. THE OLYMPIAN VICE.—Despite the philosopher who, as a genuine Englishman, tried to bring laughter into bad repute in all thinking minds—“ Laughing is a bad infirmity of human nature, which every thinking mind will strive to overcome” (Hobbes),—I would even allow myself to rank philosophers according to the quality of their laughing —up to those who are capable of GOLDEN laughter. And supposing that Gods also philosophize, which I am strongly inclined to believe, owing to many reasons—I have no doubt that they also know how to laugh thereby in an overman-like and new fashion—and at the expense of all serious things! Gods are fond of ridicule: it seems that they cannot refrain from laughter even in holy matters. 295. The genius of the heart, as that great mysterious one possesses it, the tempter-god and born rat-catcher of consciences, whose voice can descend into the nether-world of every soul, who neither speaks a word nor casts a glance in which there may not be some motive or touch of allurement, to whose perfection it pertains that he knows how to appear,—not as he is, but in a guise which acts as an ADDITIONAL constraint on his followers to press ever closer to him, to follow him more cordially and thoroughly;—the genius of the heart, which imposes silence and attention on everything loud and self-conceited, which smoothes rough souls and makes them taste a new longing—to lie placid as a mirror, that the deep heavens may be reflected in them;—the genius of the heart, which teaches the clumsy and too hasty hand to hesitate, and to grasp more delicately; which scents the hidden and forgotten treasure, the drop of goodness and sweet spirituality under thick dark ice, and is a divining-rod for every grain of gold, long buried and imprisoned in mud and sand; the genius of the heart, from contact with which every one goes away richer; not favoured or surprised, not as though gratified and oppressed by the good things of others; but richer in himself, newer than before, broken up, blown upon, and sounded by a thawing wind; more uncertain, perhaps, more delicate, more fragile, more bruised, but full of hopes which as yet
lack names, full of a new will and current, full of a new ill-will and counter-current… but what am I doing, my friends? Of whom am I talking to you? Have I forgotten myself so far that I have not even told you his name? Unless it be that you have already divined of your own accord who this questionable God and spirit is, that wishes to be PRAISED in such a manner? For, as it happens to every one who from childhood onward has always been on his legs, and in foreign lands, I have also encountered on my path many strange and dangerous spirits; above all, however, and again and again, the one of whom I have just spoken: in fact, no less a personage than the God DIONYSUS, the great equivocator and tempter, to whom, as you know, I once offered in all secrecy and reverence my first-fruits—the last, as it seems to me, who has offered a SACRIFICE to him, for I have found no one who could understand what I was then doing. In the meantime, however, I have learned much, far too much, about the philosophy of this God, and, as I said, from mouth to mouth— I, the last disciple and initiate of the God Dionysus: and perhaps I might at last begin to give you, my friends, as far as I am allowed, a little taste of this philosophy? In a hushed voice, as is but seemly: for it has to do with much that is secret, new, strange, wonderful, and uncanny. The very fact that Dionysus is a philosopher, and that therefore Gods also philosophize, seems to me a novelty which is not unensnaring, and might perhaps arouse suspicion precisely among philosophers;—among you, my friends, there is less to be said against it, except that it comes too late and not at the right time; for, as it has been disclosed to me, you are loth nowadays to believe in God and gods. It may happen, too, that in the frankness of my story I must go further than is agreeable to the strict usages of your ears? Certainly the God in question went further, very much further, in such dialogues, and was always many paces ahead of me… Indeed, if it were allowed, I should have to give him, according to human usage, fine ceremonious tides of lustre and merit, I should have to extol his courage as investigator and discoverer, his fearless honesty, truthfulness, and love of wisdom. But such a God does not know what to do with all that respectable trumpery and pomp. “ Keep that,” he would say, “ for thyself and those like thee, and whoever else require it! I—have no reason to cover my nakedness!” One suspects that this kind of divinity and philosopher perhaps lacks shame?—He once said: “ Under certain circumstances I love mankind”—and referred thereby to Ariadne, who was present; “ in my opinion man is an agreeable, brave, inventive animal, that has not his equal upon earth, he makes his way even through all labyrinths. I like man, and often think how I can still further advance him, and make him stronger, more evil, and more profound.”—“ Stronger, more evil, and more profound?” I asked in horror. “ Yes,” he said again, “ stronger, more evil, and more profound; also more beautiful”—and thereby the tempter-god smiled with his halcyon smile, as though he had just paid some charming compliment. One here sees at once that it is not only shame that this divinity lacks;—and in general there are good grounds for supposing that in some things the Gods could all of them come to us men for instruction. We men are—more human.— 296. Alas! what are you, after all, my written and painted thoughts! Not long ago you were so variegated, young and malicious, so full of thorns and secret spices, that you made me sneeze and laugh—and now? You have already doffed your novelty, and some of you, I fear, are ready to become truths, so immortal do they look, so pathetically honest, so tedious! And was it ever otherwise? What then do we write and paint, we mandarins with Chinese brush, we immortalisers of things which LEND themselves to writing, what are we alone capable of painting? Alas, only that which is just about to fade and begins to lose its odour! Alas, only exhausted and departing storms and belated yellow sentiments! Alas, only birds strayed and fatigued by flight, which now let themselves be captured with the hand—with OUR hand! We immortalize what cannot live and fly much longer, things only which are exhausted and mellow! And it is only for your AFTERNOON, you, my written and painted thoughts, for which alone I have colours, many colours, perhaps, many variegated softenings, and fifty yellows and browns and greens and reds;—but nobody will divine thereby how ye looked in your morning, you sudden sparks and marvels of my solitude, you, my old, beloved—EVIL thoughts! FROM THE HEIGHTS (POEM BY NIETZSCHE) By F W Nietzsche Translated by L. A. Magnus 1. MIDDAY of Life! Oh, season of delight! My summer’s park! Uneaseful joy to look, to lurk, to hark— I peer for friends, am ready day and night,— Where linger ye, my friends? The time is right! 2. Is not the glacier’s grey today for you Rose-garlanded? The brooklet seeks you, wind, cloud, with longing thread And thrust themselves yet higher to the blue, To spy for you from farthest eagle’s view. 3. My table was spread out for you on high— Who dwelleth so Star-near, so near the grisly pit below?— My realm—what realm hath wider boundary? My honey—who hath sipped its fragrancy? 4. Friends, ye are there! Woe me,—yet I am not He whom ye seek? Ye stare and stop—better your wrath could speak! I am not I? Hand, gait, face, changed? And what I am, to you my friends, now am I not? 5. Am I an other? Strange am I to Me? Yet from Me sprung? A wrestler, by himself too oft self-wrung? Hindering too oft my own self’s potency, Wounded and hampered by self-
victory? 6. I sought where-so the wind blows keenest. There I learned to dwell Where no man dwells, on lonesome ice-lorn fell, And unlearned Man and God and curse and prayer? Became a ghost haunting the glaciers bare? 7. Ye, my old friends! Look! Ye turn pale, filled o’er With love and fear! Go! Yet not in wrath. Ye could ne’er live here. Here in the farthest realm of ice and scaur, A huntsman must one be, like chamois soar. 8. An evil huntsman was I? See how taut My bow was bent! Strongest was he by whom such bolt were sent— Woe now! That arrow is with peril fraught, Perilous as none.—Have yon safe home ye sought! 9. Ye go! Thou didst endure enough, oh, heart;— Strong was thy hope; Unto new friends thy portals widely ope, Let old ones be. Bid memory depart! Wast thou young then, now —better young thou art! 10. What linked us once together, one hope’s tie— (Who now doth con Those lines, now fading, Love once wrote thereon?)— Is like a parchment, which the hand is shy To touch —like crackling leaves, all seared, all dry. 11. Oh! Friends no more! They are—what name for those?— Friends’ phantom-flight Knocking at my heart’s window-pane at night, Gazing on me, that speaks “ We were” and goes, — Oh, withered words, once fragrant as the rose! 12. Pinings of youth that might not understand! For which I pined, Which I deemed changed with me, kin of my kind: But they grew old, and thus were doomed and banned: None but new kith are native of my land! 13. Midday of life! My second youth’s delight! My summer’s park! Unrestful joy to long, to lurk, to hark! I peer for friends!—am ready day and night, For my new friends. Come! Come! The time is right! 14. This song is done,—the sweet sad cry of rue Sang out its end; A wizard wrought it, he the timely friend, The midday-friend,—no, do not ask me who; At midday ‘twas, when one became as two. 15. We keep our Feast of Feasts, sure of our bourne, Our aims self-same: The Guest of Guests, friend Zarathustra, came! The world now laughs, the grisly veil was torn, And Light and Dark were one that wedding-morn.
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS Transalted by H.B. Samuel PREFACE We are unknown, we knowers, ourselves to ourselves: this has its own good reason. We have never searched for ourselves - how should it then come to pass, that we should ever find ourselves? Rightly has it been said: “ Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Our treasure is there, where stand the hives of our knowledge. It is to those hives that we are always striving; as born creatures of flight, and as the honey-gatherers of the spirit, we care really in our hearts only for one thing - to bring something “ home to the hive!” As far as the rest of life with its so-called “ experiences” is concerned, which of us has even sufficient serious interest? or sufficient time? In our dealings with such points of life, we are, I fear, never properly to the point; to be precise, our heart is not there, and certainly not our ear. Rather like one who, delighting in a divine distraction, or sunken in the seas of his own soul, in whose ear the clock has just thundered with all its force its twelve strokes of noon, suddenly wakes up, and asks himself, “ What has in point of fact just struck?” so do we at times rub afterwards, as it were, our puzzled ears, and ask in complete astonishment and complete embarrassment, “ Through what have we in point of fact just lived?” further, “ Who are we in point of fact?” and count, after they have struck,as I have explained, all the twelve throbbing beats of the clock of our experience, of our life, of our being - ah! - and count wrong in the endeavour. Of necessity we remain strangers to ourselves, we understand ourselves not, in ourselves we are bound to be mistaken, for of us holds good to all
eternity the motto, “ Each one is the farthest away from himself” - as far as ourselves are concerned we are not “ knowers.” My thoughts concerning the genealogy of our moral prejudices - for they constitute the issue in this polemic - have their first, bald, and provisional expression in that collection of aphorisms entitled Human, all-too-Human. a Book for Free Minds, the writing of which was begun in Sorrento, during a winter which allowed me to gaze over the broad and dangerous territory through which my mind had up to that time wandered. This took place in the winter of 1876-77; the thoughts themselves are older. They were in their substance already the same thoughts which I take up again in the following treatises: - we hope that they have derived benefit from the long interval, that they have grown riper, clearer, stronger, more complete. The fact, however, that I still cling to them even now, that in the meanwhile they have always held faster by each other, have, in fact, grown out of their original shape and into each other, all this strengthens in my mind the joyous confidence that they must have been originally neither separate disconnected capricious nor sporadic phenomena, but have sprung from a common root, from a fundamental “ fiat” of knowledge, whose empire reached to the soul’s depth, and that ever grew more definite in its voice, and more definite in its demands. That is the only state of affairs that is proper in the case of a philosopher. We have no right to be “ disconnected”; we must neither err “ disconnectedly” nor strike the truth “ disconnectedly.” Rather with the necessity with which a tree bears its fruit, so do our thoughts, our values, our Yes’s and No’s and If’s and Whether’s, grow connected and interrelated, mutual witnesses of one will, one health, one kingdom, one sun - as to whether they are to your taste, these fruits of ours? - But what matters that to the trees? What matters that to us, us the philosophers? Owing to a scrupulosity peculiar to myself, which I confess reluctantly, - it concerns indeed morality, - a scrupulosity, which manifests itself in my life at such an early period, with so much spontaneity, with so chronic a persistence and so keen an opposition to environment, epoch, precedent, and ancestry that I should have been almost entitled to style it my “ a priori”- my curiosity and my suspicion felt themselves betimes bound to halt at the question, of what in point of actual fact was the origin of our “ Good” and of our “ Evil.” Indeed, at the boyish age of thirteen the problem of the origin of Evil already haunted me: at an age “ when games and God divide one’s heart,” I devoted to that problem my first childish attempt at the literary game, my first philosophic essay- and as regards my infantile solution of the problem, well, I gave quite properly the honour to God, and made him the father of evil. Did my own “ a priori” demand that precise solution from me? that new, immoral, or at least amoral” “ d priori” and that “ categorical imperative” which was its voice (but, oh! how hostile to the Kantian article, and how pregnant with problems!), to which since then I have given more and more attention, and indeed what is more than attention. Fortunately I soon learned to separate theological from moral prejudices, and I gave up looking for a supernatural origin of evil. A certain amount of historical and philological education, to say nothing of an innate faculty of psychological discrimination par excellence succeeded in transforming almost immediately my original problem into the following one: - Under what conditions did Man invent for himself those judgements of values, “ Good” and “ Evil”? And ‘what intrinsic value do they possess in themselves? Have they up to the present hindered or advanced human well-being? Are they a symptom of the distress, impoverishment, and degeneration of Human Life? Or, conversely, is it in them that is manifested the fullness, the strength, and the will of Life, its courage, its self-confidence, its future? On this point I found and hazarded in my mind the most diverse answers, I established distinctions in periods, peoples, and castes, I became a specialist in my problem, and from my answers grew new questions, new investigations, new conjectures, new probabilities; until at last I had a land of my own and a soil of my own, a whole secret world growing and flowering, like hidden gardens of whose existence no one could have an inkling - oh, how happy are we, we finders of knowledge, provided that we know how to keep silent sufficiently long. My first impulse to publish some of my hypotheses concerning the origin of morality I owe to a clear, well-written, and even precocious little book, in which a perverse and vicious kind of moral philosophy (your real English kind) was definitely presented to me for the first time; and this attracted me- with that magnetic attraction, inherent in that which is diametrically opposed and antithetical to one’s own ideas. The title of the book was The Origin of the Moral Emotions; its author, Dr. Paul Ree; the year of its appearance, 1877. I may almost say that I have never read anything in which every single dogma and conclusion has called forth from me so emphatic a negation as did that book; albeit a negation untainted by either pique or intolerance. I referred accordingly both’ in season and out of season in the previous works, at which I was then working, to the arguments of that book, not to refute them - for what have I got to do with mere refutations - but substituting, as is natural to a positive mind, for an improbable theory one which is more probable, and occasionally no doubt for one philosophic error another. In that early period I gave, as I have said, the first public expression to those theories of origin to which these essays are devoted, but with a clumsiness which I was the last to conceal from myself, for I was as yet cramped, being still without a special language for these special subjects, still frequently liable to relapse and to vacillation. To go into details, compare what T say in Human, all-too-Human, part i., about the parallel early history of Good and Evil, Aph. 45 (namely, their origin from the castes of the aristocrats and the slaves) ; similarly, Aph. 136 et seq., concerning the birth and value of ascetic morality; similarly, Aphs. 96, 99, vol. ii., Aph. 89, concerning the Morality of Custom, that far older and more original kind of morality which is totally different from the altruistic ethics (in which Dr. Ree, like all the English moral philosophers, sees the ethical l Thing-in-itself”); finally, Aph. 92. Similarly, Aph. 26 in Human, all-too-Human, part ii., and Aph. 112, the Dawn of Day, concerning the origin of Justice as a balance between persons of approximately equal power (equilibrium as the hypothesis of all contract, consequently of all law) ; similarly, concerning the origin of Punishment, Human, all-too-Human, part ii., Aphs. 22, 23, in regard to which the deterrent object is neither essential nor original (as Dr. Ree thinks:- rather is it that this object is only imported, under certain definite conditions, and always as something extra and additional). In reality I had set my heart at that time on something much more important than the nature of the theories of myself or others concerning the origin of morality (or, more
precisely, the real function from my view of these theories was to point an end to which they were one among many means). The issue for me was the value of morality, and on that subject I had to place myself in a state of abstraction, in which I was almost alone with my great teacher Schopenhauer, to whom that book, with all its passion and inherent contradiction (for that book also was a polemic), turned for present help as though he were still alive. The issue was, strangely enough, the value of the “ unegoistic” instincts, the instincts of pity, self-denial, and self-sacrifice which Schopenhauer had so persistently painted in golden colours, deified and etherealised, that eventually they appeared to him, as it were, high and dry, as “ intrinsic values in themselves,” on the strength of which he uttered both to Life and to himself his own negation. But against these very instincts there voiced itself in my soul a more and more fundamental mistrust, a skepticism that dug ever deeper and deeper: and in this very instinct I saw the great danger of mankind, its most sublime temptation and seduction - seduction to what? to nothingness? - in these very instincts I saw the beginning of the end, stability, the exhaustion that gazes backwards, the will turning against Life, the last illness announcing itself with its own mincing melancholy: I realised that the morality of pity which spread wider and wider, and whose grip infected even philosophers with its disease, was the most sinister symptom of our modern European civilisation; I realised that it was the route along which that civilisation slid on its way to - a new Buddhism? - a European Buddhism?- Nihilism? This exaggerated estimation in which modern philosophers have held pity, is quite a new phenomenon: up to that time philosophers were absolutely unanimous as to the worthlessness of pity. I need only mention Plato, Spinoza, La Rochefoucauld, and Kant- four minds as mutually different as is possible, but united on one point; their contempt of pity. This problem of the value of pity and of the pity-morality (I am an opponent of the modern infamous emasculation of our emotions) seems at the first blush a mere isolated problem, a note of interrogation for itself; he, however, who once halts at this problem, and learns how to put questions, will experience what I experienced: - a new and immense vista unfolds itself before him, a sense of potentiality seizes him like a vertigo, every species of doubt, mistrust, and fear springs up, the belief in morality, nay, in all morality, totters, - finally a new demand voices itself. Let us speak out this new demand: we need a critique of moral values, the value of these values is for the first time to be called into question - and for this purpose a knowledge is necessary of the conditions and circumstances out of which these values grew, and under which they experienced their evolution and their distortion (morality as a result, as a symptom, as a mask, as Tartuffism, as disease, as a misunderstanding; but also morality as a cause, as a remedy, as a stimulant, as a fetter, as a drug), especially as such a knowledge has neither existed up to the present time nor is even now generally desired. The value of these “ values” was taken for granted as an indisputable fact, which was beyond all question. No one has, up to the present, exhibited the faintest doubt or hesitation in judging the “ good man” to be of a higher value than the “ evil man,” of a higher value with regard specifically to human progress, utility, and prosperity generally, not forgetting the future. What? Suppose the converse were the truth! What? Suppose there lurked in the “ good man” a symptom of retrogression, such as a danger, a temptation, a poison, a narcotic, by means of which the present battened on the future! More comfortable and less risky perhaps than its opposite, but also pettier, meaner! So that morality would really be saddled with the guilt, if the maximum potentiality of the power and splendour of the human species were never to be attained? So that really morality would be the danger of dangers? Enough, that after this vista had disclosed itself to me, I myself had reason to search for learned, bold, and industrious colleagues (I am doing it even to this very day). It means traversing with new clamorous questions, and at the same time with new eyes, the immense, distant, and completely unexplored land of morality - of a morality which has actually existed and been actually lived ! and is this not practically equivalent to first discovering that land? If, in this context, I thought, amongst others, of the aforesaid Dr. Ree, I did so because I had no doubt that from the very nature of his questions he would be compelled to have recourse to a truer method, in order to obtain his answers. Have I deceived myself on that score? I wished at all events to give a better direction of vision to an eye of such keenness and such impartiality. I wished to direct him to the real history of morality, and to warn him, while there was yet time, against a world of English theories that culminated in the blue vacuum of heaven. Other colours, of course, rise immediately to one’s mind as being a hundred times more potent than blue for instance, grey, by which I mean authentic facts capable of definite proof and having actually existed, or, to put it shortly, the whole of that long hieroglyphic script (which is so hard to decipher) about the past history of human morals. This script was unknown to Dr. Ree; but he had read Darwin: - and so in his philosophy the Darwinian beast and that pink of modernity, the demure weakling and dilettante, who “ bites no longer,” shake hands politely in a fashion that is at least instructive, the latter exhibiting a certain facial expression of refined and good-humoured indolence, tinged with a touch of pessimism and exhaustion; as if it really did not pay to take all these things - I mean moral problems - so seriously. I, on the other hand, think that there are no subjects which pay better for being taken seriously; part of this payment is, that perhaps eventually they admit of being taken gaily. This gaiety, indeed, or, to use my own language, this joyful wisdom, is a payment; a payment for a protracted, brave, laborious, and burrowing seriousness, which, it goes without saying, is the attribute of but a few. But on that day on which we say from the fullness of our hearts, “ Forward! our old morality too is fit material for Comedy,** we shall have discovered a new plot, and a new possibility for the Dionysian drama entitled The Soul’s Fate - and he will speedily utilise it, one can wager safely, he, the great ancient eternal dramatist of the comedy of our existence. If this writing be obscure to any individual, and jar on his ears, I do not think that it is necessarily I who am to blame. It is clear enough, on the hypothesis which I presuppose, namely, that the reader has first read my previous writings and has not grudged them a certain amount of trouble: it is not, indeed, a simple matter to get really at their essence. Take, for instance, my Zarathustra; I allow no one to pass muster as knowing that book, unless every single word therein has at some time wrought in him a profound wound, and at some time exercised on him a profound enchantment: then and not till then can he enjoy the privilege of participating reverently in the halcyon element, from which that work is born, in its sunny brilliance, its distance, its spaciousness, its certainty In other cases the aphoristic form produces difficulty, but this is only because this form is treated too casually. An aphorism properly coined and cast into its final mould is far from being “ deciphered” as soon as it has been read; on the contrary, it is then that it first requires to be expounded - of
course for that purpose an art of exposition is necessary. The third essay in this book provides an example of what is offered, of what in such cases I call exposition: an aphorism is prefixed to that essay, the essay itself is its commentary. Certainly one quality which nowadays has been best forgotten- and that is why it will take some time yet for my writings to become readable - is essential in order to practise reading as an art - a quality for the exercise of which it is necessary to be a cow, and under no circumstances a modern man! rumination. Sils-Maria, Upper Engadine, July, 1887. FIRST ESSAY “ GOOD AND EVIL,” “ GOOD AND BAD” ESSAY 1 s1 Those English psychologists, who up to the present are the only philosophers who are to be thanked for any endeavour to get as far as a history of the origin of morality - these men, I say, offer us in their own personalities no paltry problem; - they even have, if I am to be quite frank about it, in their capacity of living riddles, an advantage over their books they themselves are interesting! These English psychologists - what do they really mean? We always find them voluntarily or involuntarily at the same task of pushing to the front the partie honteuse of our inner world, and looking for the efficient, governing, and decisive principle in that precise quarter where the intellectual self-respect of the race would be the most reluctant to find it (for example, in the vis inertice of habit, or in forgetfulness, or in a blind and fortuitous mechanism and association of ideas, or in some factor that is purely passive, reflex, molecular, or fundamentally stupid) - what is the real motive power which always impels these psychologists in precisely this direction? Is it an instinct for human disparagement somewhat sinister, vulgar, and malignant, or perhaps incomprehensible even to itself? or perhaps a touch of pessimistic jealousy, the mistrust of disillusioned idealists who have become gloomy, poisoned, and bitter? or a petty subconscious enmity and rancour against Christianity (and Plato), that has conceivably never crossed the threshold of consciousness? or just a vicious taste for those elements of life which are bizarre, painfully paradoxical, mystical, and illogical? or, as a final alternative. a dash of each of these motives; - a little vulgarity, a little gloominess, a little anti-Christianity, a little craving for the necessary piquancy? But I am told that it is simply a case of old frigid and tedious frogs crawling and hopping around men and inside men, as if they were as thoroughly at home there, as they would be in a swamp. I am opposed to this statement, nay, I do not believe it: and if, in the impossibility of knowledge, one is permitted to wish, so do I wish from my heart that just the converse metaphor should apply, and that these analysts with their psychological microscopes should be, at bottom, brave, proud, and magnanimous animals who know how to bridle both their hearts and their smarts, and have specifically trained themselves to sacrifice what is desirable to what is true, any truth in fact, even the simple, bitter, ugly, repulsive, unchristian, and immoral truths - for there are truths of that description. s2 All honour, then, to the noble spirits who would rather dominate these historians of morality. But it is certainly a pity that they lack the historical sense itself, that they themselves are quite deserted by all the beneficent spirits of history. The whole train of their thought runs, as was always the way of old-fashioned philosophers, on thoroughly unhistorical lines: there is no doubt on this point. The crass ineptitude of their is immediately apparent when the question arises of ascertaining the origin of the idea and judgment of “ good.” “ Man had originally,” so speaks their decree, “ praised and called ‘good’ altruistic acts from the standpoint of those on whom they were conferred, that is. those to whom they were useful; subsequently the origin of this praise was forgotten, and altruistic acts, simply because, as a sheer matter of habit, they were praised as good, came also to be felt as good - as though they contained in themselves some intrinsic goodness.” The thing is obvious: - this initial derivation contains already all the typical and idiosyncratic traits of the English psychologists we have “ utility,” “ forgetting.” “ habit.” and finally “ error,” the whole assemblage forming the basis of a system of values, on which the higher man has up to the present prided himself as though it were a kind of privilege of man in general. This pride must be brought low. this system of values must lose its values: is that attained? Now the first argument that comes ready to my hand is that the real homestead of the concept “ good” is sought and located in the wrong place: the judgment “ good” did riot originate among those to whom goodness was shown. Much rather has it been the good themselves, that is, the aristocratic, the powerful, the high-stationed, the high-minded, who have felt that they themselves were good, and that their actions were good, that is to say of the first order, in contradistinction to all the low, the low-minded, the vulgar, and the plebeian. It was out of this pathos of distance that they first arrogated the right to create values for their own profit, and to coin the names of such values: what had they to do with utility? The standpoint of utility is as alien and as inapplicable as it could possibly be, when we have to deal with so volcanic an effervescence of supreme values, creating and demarcating as they do a hierarchy within themselves: it is at this juncture that one arrives at an appreciation of the contrast to that tepid temperature, which is the presupposition on which every combination of worldly wisdom and every calculation of practical expediency is always based - and not for one occasional, not for one exceptional instance, but chronically. The pathos of nobility and distance, as I have said, the chronic and despotic esprit du corps and fundamental instinct of a higher dominant race coming into association with a meaner race, an “ under race,” this the origin of the antithesis of good and bad. (The masters’ right of giving names goes so far that it is permissible to look upon language itself as the expression of the power of the masters: they say “ this is that, and that,” they seal finally every object and every event with a sound, and thereby at the same time take possession of it.) It is because of this origin that the word “ good” is far from having any necessary connection with altruistic acts, in accordance with the superstitious belief of these moral philosophers. On the contrary, it is on the occasion of the decay of aristocratic values, that the antitheses between “ egoistic” and “ altruistic” presses more and more heavily on the human conscience- it is, to use my own language, the herd instinct which finds in this antithesis an expression in many ways. And even then it takes a considerable time for this instinct to become sufficiently dominant, for the valuation to be inextricably dependent on this antithesis (as is the case in contemporary Europe); for today the prejudice is predominant, which, acting even now with all the intensity of an obsession and brain disease, holds that
“ moral,” “ altruistic,” and “ desinteresse” are concepts of equal value. s3 In the second place, quite apart from the fact that this hypothesis as to the genesis of the value “ good” cannot be historically upheld, it suffers from an inherent psychological contradiction. The utility of altruistic conduct has presumably been the origin of its being praised, and this origin has become forgotten: - But in what conceivable way is this forgetting possible? Has perchance the utility of such conduct ceased at some given moment? The contrary is the case. This utility has rather been experienced every day at all times, and is consequently a feature that obtains a new and regular emphasis with every fresh day; it follows that, so far from vanishing from the consciousness, so far indeed from being forgotten, it must necessarily become impressed on the consciousness with ever-increasing distinctness. How much more logical is that contrary theory (it is not the truer for that) which is represented, for instance, by Herbert Spencer, who places the concept “ good” as essentially similar to the concept “ useful,” “ purposive,” so that in the judgments “ good” and “ bad” mankind is simply summarising and investing with a sanction its unforgotten and unforgettable experiences concerning the “ useful-purposive” and the “ mischievous-nonpurposive.” According to this theory, “ good” is the attribute of that which has previously shown itself useful; and so is able to claim to be considered “ valuable in the highest degree,” “ valuable in itself.” This method of explanation is also, as I have said, wrong, but at any rate the explanation itself is coherent, and psychologically tenable. s4 The guidepost which first put me on the right track was this question - what is the true etymological significance of the various symbols for the idea “ good” which have been coined in the various languages? I then found that they all led back to the same evolution of the same idea - that everywhere “ aristocrat,” “ noble” (in the social sense), is the root idea, out of which have necessarily developed “ good” in the sense of “ with aristocratic soul.” “ noble,” in the sense of “ with a soul of high calibre.” “ with a privileged soul” - a development which invariably runs parallel with that other evolution by which “ vulgar,” “ plebeian,” “ low,” are made to change finally into “ bad.” The most eloquent proof of this last contention is the German word “ schlccht” itself: this word is identical with “ schlicht” - (compare “ schlcchtivcg” and “ schlcchtcrdings”)- which, originally and as yet without any sinister innuendo, simply denoted the plebeian man in contrast to the aristocratic man. It is at the sufficiently late period of the Thirty Years’ War that this sense becomes changed to the sense now current. From the standpoint of the this discovery seems to be substantial: the lateness of it is to be attributed to the retarding influence exercised in the modern world by democratic prejudice in the sphere of all questions of origin. This extends, as will shortly be shown, even to the province of natural science and physiology, which prima facia is the most objective. The extent of the mischief which is caused by this prejudice (once it is free of all trammels except those of its own malice), particularly to Ethics and History, is shown by the notorious case of Buckle: it was in Buckle that that plebeianism of the modern spirit, which is of English origin, broke out once again from its malignant soil with all the violence of a slimy volcano, and with that salted, rampant, and vulgar eloquence with which up to the present time all volcanoes have spoken. s5 With regard to our problem, which can justly be called an intimate problem, and which elects to appeal to only a limited number of ears: it is of no small interest to ascertain that in those words and roots which denote “ good” we catch glimpses of that arch-trait, on the strength of which the aristocrats feel themselves to be beings of a higher order than their fellows. Indeed, they call themselves in perhaps the most frequent instances simply after their superiority in power (e.g. “ the powerful,” “ the lords,” “ the commanders”), or after the most obvious sign of their superiority, as for example “ the rich,” “ the possessors” (that is the meaning of arya; and the Iranian and Slav languages correspond). But they also call themselves after some characteristic idiosyncrasy ; and this is the case which now concerns us. They name themselves, for instance, “ the truthful”: this is first done by the Greek nobility whose mouthpiece is found in Theognis, the Megarian poet. The word esthlos[good,brave];, which is coined for the purpose, signifies etymologically “ one who is” who has reality, who is real, who is true; and then with a subjective twist, the “ true,” as the “ truthful”: at this stage in the evolution of the idea, it becomes the motto and party cry of the nobility, and quite completes the transition to the meaning “ noble,” so as to place outside the pale the lying, vulgar man, as Theognis conceives and portrays him - till finally the word after the decay of the nobility is left to delineate psychological noblesse, and becomes as it were ripe and mellow. In the word kakos[bad, ugly]; as in deilos[cowardly, vile]; (the plebeian in contrast to the agathos[good, well-born]) the cowardice is emphasised. This affords perhaps an inkling on what lines the etymological origin of the very ambiguous agathos is to be investigated. In the Latin malus[bad] (which I place side by side with melas[black, dark] the vulgar man can be distinguished as the dark-coloured, and above all as the black-haired (“ hic niger est”[from Horace, Satires]), as the pre-Aryan inhabitants of the Italian soil, whose complexion formed the clearest feature of distinction from the dominant blondes, namely, the Aryan conquering race: - at any rate Gaelic has afforded me the exact analogue - Fin (for instance, in the name Fin-Gal), the distinctive word of the nobility, finally - good, noble, clean, but originally the blonde-haired man in contrast to the dark black-haired aboriginals. The Celts, if I may make a parenthetic statement, were throughout a blonde race; and it is wrong to connect, as Virchow [German pathologist] still connects, those traces of an essentially dark-haired population which are to be seen on the more elaborate ethnographical maps of Germany with any Celtic ancestry or with any admixture of Celtic blood: in this context it is rather the pre-Aryan population of Germany which surges up to these districts. (The same is true substantially of the whole of Europe: in point of fact, the subject race has finally again obtained the upper hand, in complexion and the shortness of the skull, and perhaps in the intellectual and social qualities. Who can guarantee that modern democracy, still more modern anarchy, and indeed that tendency to the “ Commune,” the most primitive form of society, which is now common to all the Socialists in Europe, does not in its real essence signify a monstrous reversion - and that the conquering and master race - the Aryan race, is not also becoming inferior physiologically?) I believe that I can explain the Latin bonus as the “ warrior”: my hypothesis is that I am
right in deriving bonus from an older duonus [war] (compare bellum = duellum = duen-lum, in which the word duonus appears to me to be contained). Bonus accordingly as the man of discord, of variance, “ entzweiung” (duo), as the warrior: one sees what in ancient Rome “ the good” meant for a man. Must not our actual German word gut mean “ the godlike, the man of godlike race”? and be identical with the national name (originally the nobles’ name) of the Goths? The grounds for this supposition do not appertain to this work. s6 Above all, there is no exception (though there are opportunities for exceptions) to this rule, that the idea of political superiority always resolves itself into the idea of psychological superiority, in those cases where the highest caste is at the same time the priestly caste, and in accordance with its general characteristics confers on itself the privilege of a title which alludes specifically to its priestly function. It is in these cases, for instances, that “ dean” and “ unclean” confront each other for the first time as badges of class distinction; here again there develops a “ good” and a “ bad,” in a sense which has ceased to be merely social. Moreover, care should be taken not to take these ideas of “ clean” and “ unclean” too seriously, too broadly, or too symbolically: all the ideas of ancient man have, on the contrary, got to be understood in their initial stages, in a sense which is, to an almost inconceivable extent, crude, coarse, physical, and narrow, and above all essentially unsymbolical. The “ clean man” is originally only a man who washes himself, who abstains from certain foods which are conducive to skin diseases, who does not sleep with the unclean women of the lower classes, who has a horror of blood - not more, not much more! On the other hand, the very nature of a priestly aristocracy shows the reasons why just at such an early juncture there should ensue a really dangerous sharpening and intensification of opposed values: it is, in fact, through these opposed values that gulfs are cleft in the social plane, which a veritable Achilles of free thought would shudder to cross. There is from the outset a certain diseased taint in such sacerdotal aristocracies, and in the habits which prevail in such societies - habits which, averse as they are to action, constitute a compound of introspection and explosive emotionalism, as a result of which there appears that introspective morbidity and* neurasthenia, which adheres almost inevitably to all priests at all times: with regard, however, to the remedy which they themselves have invented for this disease - the philosopher has no option but to state, that it has proved itself in its effects a hundred times more dangerous than the disease, from which it should have been the deliverer. Humanity itself is still diseased from the effects of the naivetes of this priestly cure. Take, for instance, certain kinds of diet (abstention from flesh), fasts, sexual continence, flight into the wilderness (a kind of Weir-Mitchell isolation, though of course without that system of excessive feeding and fattening which is the most efficient antidote to all the hysteria of the ascetic ideal) ; consider too the whole metaphysic of the priests, with its war on the senses, its enervation, its hair-splitting; consider its self-hypnotism on the fakir and Brahman principles (it uses Brahman as a glass disc and obsession), and that climax which we can understand only too well of an unusual satiety with its panacea of nothingness (or God: - the demand for a unio mystica with God is the demand of the Buddhist for nothingness. Nirvana - and nothing else ! ) . In sacerdotal societies every element is on a more dangerous scale, not merely cures and remedies, but also pride, revenge, cunning, exaltation, love, ambition, virtue, morbidity: - further, it can fairly be stated that it is on the soil of this essentially dangerous form of human society, the sacerdotal form, that man really becomes for the first time an interesting animal, that it is in this form that the soul of man has in a higher sense attained depths and become evil - and those are the two fundamental forms of the superiority which up to the present was has exhibited over every other animal. s7 The reader will have already surmised with what ease the priestly mode of valuation can branch off from the knightly aristocratic mode, and then develop into the very antithesis of the latter: special impetus is given to this opposition, by every occasion when the castes of the priests and warriors confront each other with mutual jealousy and cannot agree over the prize. The knightly-aristocratic “ values” are based on a careful cult of the physical, on a flowering, rich, and even effervescing healthiness, that goes considerably beyond what is necessary for maintaining life, on war, adventure, the chase, the dance, the tourney - on everything, in fact, which is contained in strong, free, and joyous action. The priestlyaristocratic mode of valuation is - we have seen - based on other hypotheses: it is bad enough for this class when it is a question of war! Yet the priests are, as is notorious, the worst enemies - why? Because they are the weakest. Their weakness causes their hate to expand into a monstrous and sinister shape, a shape which is most crafty and most poisonous. The really great haters in the history of the world have always been priests, who are also the cleverest haters - in comparison with the cleverness of priestly revenge, every other piece of cleverness is practically negligible. Human history would be too fatuous for anything were it not for the cleverness imported into it by the weak - take at once the most important instance. All the world’s efforts against the “ aristocrats,” the “ mighty,” the “ masters,” the “ holders of power,” are negligible by comparison with what has been accomplished against those classes by the Jews - the Jews, that priestly nation which eventually realised that the one method of effecting satisfaction on its enemies and tyrants was by means of a radical transvaluation of values, which was at the same time an act of the cleverest revenge. Yet the method was only appropriate to a nation of priests, to a nation of the most jealously nursed priestly revengefulness. It was the Jews who, in opposition to the aristocratic equation (good = aristocratic = beautiful = happy = loved by the gods), dared with a terrifying logic to suggest the contrary equation, and indeed to maintain with the teeth of the most profound hatred (the hatred of weakness) this contrary equation, namely, “ the wretched are alone the good; the poor, the weak, the lowly, are alone the good; the suffering, the needy, the sick, the loathsome, are the only ones who are pious, the only ones who are blessed, for them alone is salvation - but you, on the other hand, you aristocrats, you men of power, you are to all eternity the evil, the horrible, the covetous, the insatiate, the godless; eternally also shall you be the unblessed, the cursed, the damned!” We know who it was who reaped the heritage of this Jewish transvaluation. In the context of the monstrous and inordinately fateful initiative which the Jews have exhibited in connection with this most fundamental of all declarations of war, I remember the passage which came to my pen on another occasion (Beyond Good and Evil, Aph. 195) - that it was, in fact, with the Jews that the revolt of the slaves begins in the sphere of morals; that revolt which has behind it a history of two millennia, and which at the present day has only moved out of our sight, because it - has achieved victory.
s8 But you understand this not? You have no eyes for a force which has taken two thousand years to achieve victory? - There is nothing wonderful in this: all lengthy processes are hard to see and to realise. But this is what took place: from the trunk of that tree of revenge and hate, Jewish hate, - that most profound and sublime hate, which creates ideals and changes old values to new creations, the like of which has never been on earth, - there grew a phenomenon which was equally incomparable, a new love, the most profound and sublime of all kinds of love; - and from what other trunk could it have grown? But beware of supposing that this love has soared on its upward growth, as in any way a real negation of that thirst for revenge, as an antithesis to the Jewish hate! No, the contrary is the truth! This love grew out of that hate, as its crown, as its triumphant crown, circling wider and wider amid the clarity and fullness of the sun, and pursuing in the very kingdom of light and height its goal of hatred, its victory, its spoil, its strategy, with the same intensity with which the roots of that tree of hate sank into everything which was deep and evil with increasing stability and increasing desire. This Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnate gospel of love, this “ Redeemer” bringing salvation and victory to the poor, the sick, the sinful- was he not really temptation in its most sinister and irresistible form, temptation to take the tortuous path to those very Jewish values and those very Jewish ideals? Has not Israel really obtained the final goal of its sublime revenge, by the tortuous paths of this “ Redeemer,” for all that he might pose as Israel’s adversary and Israel’s destroyer? Is it not due to the black magic of a really great policy of revenge, of a far-seeing, burrowing revenge, both acting and calculating with slowness, that Israel himself must repudiate before all the world the actual instrument of his own revenge and nail it to the cross, so that all the world - that is, all the enemies of Israel - could nibble without suspicion at this very bait? Could, moreover, any human mind with all its elaborate ingenuity invent a bait that was more truly dangerous? Anything that was even equivalent in the power of its seductive, intoxicating, defiling, and corrupting influence to that symbol of the holy cross, to that awful paradox of a “ god on the cross,” to that mystery of the unthinkable, supreme, and utter horror of the self-crucifixion of a god for the salvation of man? It is at least certain that sub hoc signo[under this sign] Israel, with its revenge and transvaluation of all values, has up to the present always triumphed again over all other ideals, over all more aristocratic ideals. s9 “ But why do you talk of nobler ideals? Let us submit to the facts; that the people have triumphed - or the slaves, or the populace, or the herd, or whatever name you care to give them - if this has happened through the Jews, so be it! In that case no nation ever had a greater mission in the world’s history. The ‘masters’ have been done away with; the morality of the vulgar man has triumphed. This triumph may also be called a blood-poisoning (it has mutually fused the races) - I do not dispute it; but there is no doubt but that this intoxication has succeeded. The ‘redemption’ of the human race (that is, from the masters) is progressing; swimmingly; everything is obviously becoming Judaised, or Christianised, or vulgarised (what is there in the words?). It seems impossible to stop the course of this poisoning through the whole body politic of mankind - but its tempo and pace may from the present time be slower, more delicate, quieter, more discreet - there is time enough. In view of this context has the Church nowadays any necessary purpose? Has it, in fact, a right to live? Or could man get on without it? Quaeritur[one asks]. It seems that it fetters and retards this tendency, instead of accelerating it. Well, even that might be its utility. The Church certainly is a crude and boorish institution, that is repugnant to an intelligence with any pretence at delicacy, to a really modern taste. Should it not at any rate learn to be somewhat more subtle? It alienates nowadays, more than it allures. Which of us would, in truth, be a freethinker if there were no Church? It is the Church which repels us, not its poison - apart from the Church we like the poison.” This is the epilogue of a freethinker to my discourse, of an honourable animal (as he has given abundant proof), and a democrat to boot; he had up to that time listened to me, and could not endure my silence, but for me, indeed, with regard to this topic there is much on which to be silent. s10 The revolt of the slaves in morals begins in the very principle of resentment becoming creative and giving birth to values - a resentment experienced by creatures who, deprived as they are of the proper outlet of action, are forced to find their compensation in an imaginary revenge. While every aristocratic morality springs from a triumphant affirmation of its own demands, the slave morality says “ no” from the very outset to what is “ outside itself,” “ different from itself,” and “ not itself: and this “ no” is its creative deed. This volte-face of the valuing standpoint - this inevitable gravitation to the objective instead of back to the subjective - is typical of resentment”: the slave-morality requires as the condition of its existence an external and objective world, to employ physiological terminology, it requires objective stimuli to be capable of action at all - its action is fundamentally a reaction. The contrary is the case when we come to the aristocrat’s system of values: it acts and grows spontaneously, it merely seeks its antithesis in order to pronounce a more grateful and exultant “ yes” to its own self; - its negative conception, “ low,” “ vulgar.” “ bad,” is merely a pale late-born foil in comparison with its positive and fundamental conception (saturated as it is with life and passion), of “ we aristocrats, we good ones, we beautiful ones, we happy ones.” When the aristocratic morality goes astray and commits sacrilege on reality, this is limited to that particular 1 sphere with which it is not sufficiently acquainted - a sphere, in fact, from the real knowledge of which it disdainfully defends itself. It misjudges, in some cases, the sphere which it despises, the sphere of the common vulgar man and the low people: on the other hand, due weight should be given to the consideration that in any case the mood of contempt, of disdain, of superciliousness, even on the supposition that it falsely portrays the object of its contempt, will always be far removed from mat degree of falsity which will always characterise the attacks - in effigy, of course - of the vindictive hatred and revengefulness of the weak in onslaughts on their enemies. In point of fact, there is in contempt too strong an admixture of nonchalance, of casualness, of boredom, of impatience, even of personal exultation, for it to be capable of distorting its victim into a real caricature or a real monstrosity. Attention again should be paid to the almost benevolent nuances which, for instance, the Greek nobility imports into all the words by which it distinguishes the common people from itself; note how continuously a kind of pity, care, and consideration imparts its honeyed flavour, until at last almost all the words which are applied to the vulgar man survive finally
as expressions for “ unhappy,” “ worthy of pity” (campore deilos, deilaios, poneros, mochtheros, [wretched, cowardly, worthless, vile] the latter two names really denoting the vulgar man as labour-slave and beast of burden) - and how, conversely, “ bad,” “ low,” “ unhappy” have never ceased to ring in the Greek ear with a tone in which “ unhappy” is the predominant note: this is a heritage of the old noble aristocratic morality, which remains true to itself even in contempt (let philologists remember the sense in which oizyros [woeful], anolbos [wretched], tlemon [miserable], dystychein [unlucky], xymphora [misfortune] used to be employed. The “ well-born” simply felt themselves the “ happy”; they did not have to manufacture their happiness artificially through looking at their enemies, or in cases to talk and lie themselves into happiness (as is the custom with all resentful men) ; and similarly, complete men as they were, exuberant with strength, and consequently necessarily energetic, they were too wise to dissociate happiness from action - activity becomes in their minds necessarily counted as happiness (that is the etymology of eu prattein [to do well])- all in sharp contrast to the “ happiness” of the weak and the oppressed, with their festering venom and malignity, among whom happiness appears essentially as a narcotic, a deadening, a quietude, a peace, a “ Sabbath,” an enervation of the mind and relaxation of the limbs, - in short, a purely passive phenomenon. While the aristocratic man lived in confidence and openness with himself (gennaios, “ noble-born,” emphasises the nuance “ sincere,” and perhaps also “ naif”), the resentful man, on the other hand, is neither sincere nor naive, nor honest and candid with himself. His soul squints; his mind loves hidden crannies, tortuous paths and backdoors, everything secret appeals to him as his world, his safety, his balm; he is past master in silence, in not forgetting, in waiting, in provisional self-depreciation and self-abasement. A race of such resentful men will of necessity eventually prove more prudent than any aristocratic race, it will honour prudence on quite a distinct scale, as, in fact, a paramount condition of existence, while prudence among aristocratic men is apt to be tinged with a delicate flavour of luxury and refinement; so among them it plays nothing like so integral a part as that complete certainty of function of the governing unconscious instincts, or as indeed a certain lack of prudence, such as a vehement and valiant charge, whether against danger or the enemy, or as those ecstatic bursts of rage, love, reverence, gratitude, by which at all times noble souls have recognised each other. When the resentment of the aristocratic man manifests itself, it fulfils and exhausts itself in an immediate reaction, and consequently instills no venom: on the other hand, it never manifests itself at all in countless instances, when in the case of the feeble and weak it would be inevitable. An inability to take seriously for any length of time their enemies, their disasters, their misdeeds- that is the sign of the full strong natures who possess a superfluity of moulding plastic force, that heals completely and produces forgetfulness: a good example of this in the modern world is Mirabeau, who had no memory for any insults and meannesses which were practised on him, and who was only incapable of forgiving because he forgot. Such a man indeed shakes off with a shrug many a worm which would have buried itself in another; it is only in characters like these that we see the possibility (supposing, of course, that there is such a possibility in the world) of the real “ love of one’s enemies.” What respect for his enemies is found, indeed, in an aristocratic man- - and such a reverence is already a bridge to love! He insists on having his enemy to himself as his distinction. He tolerates no other enemy but a man in whose character there is nothing to despise and much to honour! On the other hand, imagine the “ enemy” as the resentful man conceives him - and it is here exactly that we see his work, his creativeness; he has conceived “ the evil enemy,” the “ evil one,” and indeed that is the root idea from which he now evolves as a contrasting and corresponding figure a “ good one,” himself - his very self! s11 The method of this man is quite contrary to that of the aristocratic man, who conceives the root idea “ good” spontaneously and straight away, that is to say, out of ‘ himself, and from that material then creates for himself a concept of “ bad”! This “ bad” of aristocratic origin and that “ evil” out of the cauldron of unsatisfied hatred - the former an imitation, an “ extra,” an additional nuance; the latter, on the other hand, the original, the beginning, the essential act in the conception of a slave-morality - these two words “ bad” and “ evil,” how great a difference- do they mark, in spite of the fact that they have an identical contrary in the idea “ good.” But the idea “ good” is not the same: much rather let the question be asked, “ Who is really evil according to the meaning of the morality of resentment?” In all sternness let it be answered thus: - just the good man of the other morality, just the aristocrat, the powerful one, the one who rules, but who is distorted by the venomous eye of resentfulnese, into a new colour, a new signification, a new appearance. This particular point we would be the last to deny: the man who learnt to know those “ good” ones only as enemies, learnt at the same time not to know them only as “ evil enemies,” and the same men who inter pares were kept so rigorously in bounds through convention, respect, custom, and gratitude, though much more through mutual vigilance and jealousy inter pares, these men who in their relations with each other find so many new ways of manifesting consideration, self-control, delicacy, loyalty, pride, and friendship, these men are in reference to what is outside their circle (where the foreign element, a foreign country, begins) , not much better than beasts of prey, which have been let loose. They enjoy there freedom from all social control, they feel that in the wilderness they can give vent with impunity to that tension which is produced by enclosure and imprisonment in the peace of society, they revert to the innocence of the beast-of-prey conscience, like jubilant monsters, who perhaps come from a ghostly bout of murder, arson, rape, and torture, with bravado and a moral equanimity, as though merely some wild student’s prank had been played, perfectly convinced that the poets have now an ample theme to sing and celebrate. It is impossible not to recognise at the core of all these aristocratic races the beast of prey; the magnificent blonde bride, avidly rampant for spoil and victory; this hidden core needed an outlet from time to time, the beast must get loose again, must return into the wilderness - the Roman, Arabic, German, and Japanese nobility, the Homeric heroes, the Scandinavian Vikings, are all alike in this need. It is the aristocratic races who have left the idea “ Barbarian” on all the tracks in which they have marched; nay, a consciousness of this very barbarianism, and even a pride in it, manifests itself even in their highest civilisation (for example, when Pericles says to his Athenians in that celebrated funeral oration, “ Our audacity has forced a way over every land and sea, rearing everywhere imperishable memorials of itself for good and for evil”). This audacity of aristocratic races, mad, absurd, and spasmodic as may be its expression; the incalculable and fantastic nature of their enterprises, - Pericles sets in special relief and glory the rhathymia [ease of mind] of the Athenians, their nonchalance and contempt for safety, body, life, and comfort, their awful joy and intense delight in all destruction, in all the ecstasies of victory and cruelty, - all these features become crystallised, for
those who suffered thereby in the picture of the “ barbarian,” of the “ evil enemy,” perhaps of the “ Goth” and of the “ Vandal.” The profound, icy mistrust which the German provokes, as soon as he arrives at power, - even at the present time, - is always still an aftermath of that inextinguishable horror with which for whole centuries Europe has regarded the wrath of the blonde Teuton beast (although between the old Germans and ourselves there exists scarcely a psychological, let alone a physical, relationship). I have once called attention to the embarrassment of Hesiod, when he conceived the series of social ages, and endeavoured to express them in gold, silver, and bronze. He could only dispose of the contradiction, with which he was confronted, by the Homeric world, an age magnificent indeed, but at the same time so awful and so violent, by making two ages out of one, which he henceforth placed one behind the other - first, the age of the heroes and demigods, as that world had remained in the memories of the aristocratic families, who found therein their own ancestors; secondly, the bronze age, as that corresponding age appeared to the descendants of the oppressed, spoiled, ill-treated, exiled, enslaved; namely, as an age of bronze, as I have said, hard, cold, terrible, without feelings and without conscience, crushing everything, and bespattering everything with blood. Granted the truth of the theory now believed to be true, that the very essence of all civilisation is to train out of man, the beast of prey, a tame and civilised animal, a domesticated animal, it follows indubitably that we must regard as the real tools of civilisation all those instincts of reaction and resentment, by the help of which the aristocratic races, together with their ideals, were finally degraded and overpowered; though that has not yet come to be synonymous with saying that the bearers of those tools also represented the civilisation. It is rather the contrary that is not only probable- nay, it is palpable today: these bearers of vindictive instincts that have to be bottled up, these descendants of all European and non-European slavery, especially of the pre- Aryan populationthe people, I say, represent the decline of humanity! These “ tools of civilisation” are a disgrace to humanity, and constitute in reality more of an argument against civilisation, more of a reason why civilisation should be suspected. One may be perfectly justified in being always afraid of the blonde beast that lies at the core of all aristocratic races, and in being on one’s guard: but who would not a hundred times prefer to be afraid, when one at the same time admires, than to be immune from fear, at the cost of being perpetually obsessed with the loathsome spectacle of the distorted, the dwarfed, the stunted, the envenomed? And is that not our fate? What produces today our repulsion towards “ man”? - for we suffer from “ man,” there is no doubt about it. It is not fear; it is rather that we have nothing more to fear from men ; it is that the worm “ man” is in the foreground and pullulates; it is that the “ tame man,” the wretched mediocre and unedifying creature, has learnt to consider himself a goal and a pinnacle, an inner meaning, an historic principle, a “ higher man”; yes, it is that he has a certain right so to consider himself, in so far as he feels that in contrast to that excess of deformity, disease, exhaustion, and effeteness whose odour is beginning to pollute present-day Europe, he at any rate has achieved a relative success, he at any rate still says “ yes” to life. s12 I cannot refrain at this juncture from uttering a sigh and one last hope. What is it precisely which I find intolerable? That which I alone cannot get rid of, which makes me choke and faint? Bad air! Bad air! That something misbegotten comes near me; that I must inhale the odour of the entrails of a misbegotten soul! - ? That excepted, what can one not endure in the way of need, privation, bad weather, sickness, toil, solitude? In point of fact, one manages to get over everything, born as one is to a burrowing and battling existence; one always returns once again to the light, one always lives again one’s golden hour of victory - and then one stands as one was born, unbreakable, tense, ready for something more difficult, for something more distant, like a bow stretched but the tauter by every strain, from time to time do ye grant me - assuming that “ beyond good and evil” there are goddesses who can grant - one glimpse, grant me but one glimpse only, of something perfect, fully realised, happy, mighty, triumphant, of something that still gives cause for fear! A glimpse of a man that justifies the existence of man, a glimpse of an incarnate human happiness that realises and redeems, for the sake of which one may hold fast to the belie] in man! For the position is this: in the dwarfing and levelling of the European man lurks our greatest peril, for it is this outlook which fatigues - we see today nothing which wishes to be greater, we surmise that the process is always still backwards, still backwards towards something more attentuated, more inoffensive, more cunning, more comfortable, more mediocre, more indifferent, more Chinese, more Christian - man, there is no doubt about it, grows always “ better” - the destiny of Europe lies even in this - that in losing the fear of man, we have also lost the hope in man, yea, the will to be man. The sight of man now fatigues. - What is present-day Nihilism if it is n.)t that? - We are tired of man. s13 But let us come back to it; the problem of another origin of the good - of the good, as the resentful man has thought it out - demands its solution. It is not surprising that the lambs should bear a grudge against the great birds of prey, but that is no reason for blaming the great birds of prey for taking the little lambs. And when the lambs say among themselves, “ Those birds of prey are evil, and he who is as far removed from being a bird of prey, who is rather its opposite, a lamb, - is he not good?” then there is nothing to cavil at in the setting up of this ideal, though it may also be that the birds of prey will regard it a little sneeringly, and perchance say to themselves, “ We bear no grudge against them, these good lambs, we even like them: nothing is tastier than a tender lamb.” To require of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a wish to overpower, a wish to overthrow, a wish to become master, a thirst for enemies and antagonisms and triumphs, is just as absurd as to require of weakness that it should express itself as strength. A quantum of force is just such a quantum of movement, will, action - rather it is nothing else than just those very phenomena of moving, willing, acting, and can only appear otherwise in the misleading errors of language (and the fundamental fallacies of reason which have become petrified therein), which understands, and understands wrongly, all working as conditioned by a worker, by a “ subject.” And just exactly as the people separate the lightning from its flash, and interpret the latter as a thing done, as the working of a subject which is called lightning, so also does the popular morality separate strength from the expression of strength, as though behind the strong man there existed some indifferent neutral substratum, which enjoyed a caprice and option as to whether or not it should express strength. But there is no such substratum, there is no “ being” behind doing, working, becoming; “ the doer” is a mere appendage to the action. The action is everything. In point of fact, the people duplicate the doing, when they make the lightning lighten, that is a
“ doing-doing”; they make the same phenomenon first a cause, and then, secondly, the effect of that cause. The scientists fail to improve matters when they say, “ Force moves, force causes,” and so on. Our whole science is still, in spite of all its coldness, of all its freedom from passion, a dupe of the tricks of language, and has never succeeded in getting rid of that superstitious changeling “ the subject” (the atom, to give another instance, is such a changeling, just as the Kantian “ Thing-in-itself”). ? What wonder, if the suppressed and stealthily simmering passions of revenge and hatred exploit for their own advantage their belief, and indeed hold no belief with a more steadfast enthusiasm than this - “ that the strong has the option of being weak, and the bird of prey of being a lamb.” Thereby do they win for themselves the right of attributing to the birds of prey the responsibility for being birds of prey: when the oppressed, downtrodden, and overpowered say to themselves with the vindictive guile of weakness, “ Let us be otherwise than evil, namely, good! and good is everyone who does not oppress, who hurts no one, who does not attack, who does not pay back, who hands over revenge to God, who holds himself, as we do, in hiding; who goes out of the way of evil, and demands, in short, little from life; like ourselves the patient, the meek, the just,” - yet all this, in its cold and unprejudiced interpretation, means nothing more than “ once for all, the weak are weak; it is good to do nothing for which we are not strong enough”; but this dismal state of affairs, this prudence of the lowest order, which even insects possess (which in a great danger are ready to sham death so as to avoid doing “ too much”), has, thanks to the counterfeiting and self-deception of weakness, come to masquerade in the pomp of an ascetic, mute, and expectant virtue, just as though the very weakness of the weak - that is, indeed, its being, its working, its whole unique inevitable inseparable reality - were a voluntary result, something wished, chosen, a deed, an act of merit. This kind of man finds the belief in a neutral, free-choosing “ subject” necessary from an instinct of self-preservation, of self-assertion, in which every lie is ready to sanctify itself. The subject (or, to use popular language, the soul) has perhaps proved itself the best dogma in the world simply because it rendered possible to the horde of mortal, weak, and oppressed individuals of every kind, that most sublime specimen of self-deception, the interpretation of weakness as freedom, of being this, or being that, as merit. s14 Will anyone look a little into - right into - the mystery of how ideals are manufactured in this world? Who has the courage to do it? Come! Here we have a vista opened into these grimy workshops. Wait just a moment, dear Mr. Inquisitive and Foolhardy; your eye must first grow accustomed to this false changing light - Yes! Enough! Now speak! What is happening below down yonder? Speak out! Tell what you see, man of the most dangerous curiosity - for now / am the listener. “ I see nothing, I hear the more. It is a cautious, spiteful, gentle whispering and muttering together in all the corners and crannies. It seems to me that they are lying; a sugary softness adheres to every sound. Weakness is turned to merit, there is no doubt about it - it is just as you say.” Further ! “ And the impotence which requites not, is turned to ‘goodness,’ craven baseness to meekness, submission to those whom one hates, to obedience (namely, obedience to one of whom they say that he ordered this submission - they call him God). The inoffensive character of the weak, the very cowardice in which he is rich, his standing at the door, his forced necessity of waiting, gain here fine names, such as ‘patience,’ which is also called ‘virtue 1 ; not being able to avenge one’s self, is called not wishing to avenge one’s self, perhaps even forgiveness (for they know not what they do - we alone know what they do). They also talk of the ‘love of their enemies’ and sweat thereby.” Further! “ They are miserable, there is no doubt about it, all these whisperers and counterfeiters in the corners, although they try to get warm by crouching close to each other, but they tell me that their misery is a favour and distinction given to them by God, just as one beats the dogs one likes best; that perhaps this misery is also a preparation, a probation, a training; that perhaps it is still more something which will one day be compensated and paid back with a tremendous interest in gold, nay in happiness. This they call ‘Blessedness.’ ” Further ! “ They are now giving me to understand, that not only are they better men than the mighty, the lords of the earth, whose spittle they have got to lick {not out of fear, not at all out of fear! But because God ordains that one should honour all authority) - not only are they better men, but that they also have a ‘better time,’ at any rate, will one day have a ‘better time.’ But enough! Enough! I can endure it no longer. Bad air! Bad air! These workshops where ideals are manufactured - verily they reek with the crassest lies.” Nay. Just one minute! You are saying nothing about the masterpieces of these virtuosos of black magic, who can produce whiteness, milk, and innocence out of any black you like: have you not noticed what a pitch of refinement is attained by their chef d’oeuvre, their most audacious, subtle, ingenious, and lying artist-trick? Take care! These cellar-beasts, full of revenge and hate - what do they make, indeed, out of their revenge and hate? Do you hear these words? Would you suspect, if you trusted only their words, that you are among men of resentment and nothing else? “ I understand, I prick my ears up again (ah! ah! ah! and I hold my nose). Now do I hear for the first time that which they have said so often: ‘We good, we are the righteous’ - what they demand they call not revenge but f the triumph of righteousness’ ; what they hate is not their enemy, no, they hate ‘unrighteousness,’ ‘godless-ness’; what they believe in and hope is not the hope of revenge, the intoxication of sweet revenge ( - “ sweeter than honey,” did Homer call it?), but the victory of God, of the righteous God over the ‘godless’; what is left for them to love in this world is not their brothers in hate, but their ‘brothers in love,’ as they say, all the good and righteous on the earth.” And how do they name that which serves them as a solace against all the troubles of life - their phantasmagoria of their anticipated future blessedness? “ How? Do I hear right? They call it ‘the last judgement,’ the advent of their kingdom, ‘the kingdom of God’ - but in the meanwhile they live ‘in faith,’ ‘in love,’ ‘in hope.’ ” Enough ! Enough ! s15 In the faith in what? In the love for what? In the hope of what? These weaklings! - they also, in truth, wish to be strong some time; there is no doubt about it. some time their kingdom also must come - “ the kingdom of God” is their name for it, as has been mentioned: - they are so meek in everything! Yet in order to experience that kingdom it is necessary to live long, to live beyond death, - yes, eternal life is necessary so that one can make up for ever for that earthly life “ in faith,” “ in love,” “ in hope.” Make up for what? Make up by what? Dante, as it seems to me, made a crass mistake when with aweinspiring ingenuity he placed that inscription over the gate of his hell, “ Me too made eternal love”:
at any rate the following inscription would have a much better right to stand over the gate of the Christian Paradise and its “ eternal blessedness” - “ Me too made eternal hate” granted of course that a truth may rightly stand over the gate to a lie! For what is the blessedness of that Paradise? Possibly we could quickly surmise it; but it is better that it should be explicitly attested by an authority who in such matters is not to be disparaged, Thomas of Aquinas, the great teacher and saint. “ Beati in regno celesti,” says he, as gently as a lamb, “ videbunt poenas damnatorum, ut beatitudo illis magis complaceat.” Or if we wish to hear a stronger tone, a word from the mouth of a triumphant father of the Church, who warned his disciples against the cruel ecstasies of the public spectacles - But why? Faith offers us much more, - says he, De Spectaculis, ch. 29f., - something much stronger; thanks to the redemption, joys of quite another kind stand at our disposal; instead of athletes we have our martyrs; we wish for blood, well, we have the blood of Christ - but what then awaits us on the day of his return, of his triumph? And then does he proceed, does this enraptured visionary: At enim supersunt alia spectacula, ille ultimus et perpetuus judicii dies, ille nationibus insperatus, ille derisus, cum tanta saeculi vetustas et tot ejus nativitates uno igne haurientur. Quae tunc spectaculi latitudo! Quid admirer! Quid rideam! Ubi gaudeam! Ubi exultem, spectans tot et tantos reges, qui in coelum recepti nuntiabantur, cum ipso Jove et ipsis suis testibus in imis tenebris congemescentes! Item praesides (the provincial governors) persecutores dominici nominis saevioribus quam ipsi flammis saevierunt insultantibus contra Christianos liquescentes! Quos praeterea sapientes illos philosophos coram discipulis suis una conflagrantibus erubescentes, quibus nihil ad deum pertinere suadebant, quibus animas aut nullas aut non in pristine corpora redituras affirmabant! Etiam po�t�s non ad Rhadamanti nec ad Minois, sed ad inopinati Christi tribunal palpitantes! Tunc magis tragoedi audiendi, magis scilicet vocales (better voices since they will be screaming in greater terror) in sua propria calamitate; tunc histriones cognoscendi, solutiores multo per ignem; tunc spectandus auriga in flammea rota totus rubens, tunc xystici contemplandi non in gymnasiis, sed in igne jaculati, nisi quod ne tunc quidem illos velim vivos, ut qui malim ad eos potius conspectum insatiabilem conferre, qui in dominum desaevierung. ‘Hic est ille, dicam, fabri aut quaestuariae filis (in everything that follows and especially in the well-known description of the mother of Jesus from the Talamud Tertullian from this point on is referring to the Jews), sabbati destructor, Samarites et daemonium habens. Hic est, quem a Juda redemistis, hic est ille arundine et colaphis diverberatus, sputamentis dedecoratus, felle et aceto potatus. Hic est, quem clam discentes subripuerunt, ut resurrexisse dicatur vel hortulanus detraxit, ne lactucae suae frequentia commeantium laederentur.’ Ut talia spectes, ut talibus exultes, quis tibi praetor aut consul aut quaestor aut sacerdos de sua liberalitate praestabit? Et tamen haec jam habemus quodammodo per fidem spiritu imaginante repraesentata. Ceterum qualia illa sunt, quae nec oculus vidit nec auris audivit nec in cor hominis ascenderunt” (1. Cor. 2, 9.) Credo circo et utraque cavea” (first and fourth row, or, according to others, the comic and the tragic stage) “ et omni studio gratiora.” Per fidem: so stands it written. [However there are other spectacles — that last eternal day of judgment, ignored by nations, derided by them, when the accumulation of the years and all the many things which they produced will be burned in a single fire. What a broad spectacle then appears! How I will be lost in admiration! How I will laugh! How I will rejoice! I’ll be full of exaltation then as I see so many great kings who by public report were accepted into heaven groaning in the deepest darkness with Jove himself and alongside those very men who testified on their behalf! They will include governors of provinces who persecuted the name of our lord burning in flames more fierce that those with which they proudly raged against the Christians! And those wise philosophers who earlier convinced their disciples that god was irrelevant and who claimed either that there is no such thing as a soul or that our souls would not return to their original bodies will be ashamed as they burn in the conflagration with those very disciples. And the poets will be there, shaking with fear, not in front of the tribunal of Rhadamanthus or Minos, but of the Christ they did not anticipate! Then it will be easier to hear the tragic actors, because their voice will be more resonant in their own calamity (better voices since they will be screaming in greater terror). The actors will then be easier to recognize, for the fire will make them much more agile. Then the charioteer will be on show, all red in a wheel of fire, and the athletes will visible, thrown, not in the gymnasium, but in the fire, unless I have no wish to look at their bodies then, so that I can more readily cast an insatiable gaze on those who raged against our Lord. “ This is the man,” I will say, “ the son of a workman or a prostitute (in everything that follows and especially in the well-known description of the mother of Jesus from the Talamud Tertullian from this point on is refering to the Jews), the destroyer of the sabbath, the Samaritan possessed by the devil. He is the man whom you brought from Judas, the man who was beaten with a reed and with fists, reviled with spit, who was given gall and vinegar to drink. He is the man whom his disciples took away in secret, so that it could be said that he was resurrected or whom the gardener took away, so that the crowd of visitors would not harm his lettuces.” What praetor or consul or quaestor or priest will from his own generosity grant you the sight of such things or the exultation in them? And yet we already have these things to a certain extent through faith, represented to us by the imagining spirit. Besides, what sorts of things has the eye not seen or the ear not heard and what sorts of things have not arisen in the human heart (1. Cor. 2, 9)? I believe these are more pleasing than the race track and the circus and both enclosures (first and fourth tier of seats or, according to others, the comic and tragic stages). Through faith: that’s how it’s written.] (trans. Ian Johnston) s16 Let us come to a conclusion. The two opposing values, “ good and bad,” “ good and evil,” have fought a dreadful, thousand-year fight in the world, and though indubitably the second value has been for a long time in the preponderance, there are not wanting places where the fortune of the fight is still undecisive. It can almost be said that in the meanwhile the fight reaches a higher and higher level, and that in the meanwhile it has become more and more intense, and always more and more psychological; so that nowadays there is perhaps no more decisive mark of the higher nature, of the more psychological nature, than to be in that sense self-contradictory, and to be actually still a battleground for those two opposites. The symbol of this fight, written in a writing which has remained worthy of perusal throughout the course of history up to the present time, is called “ Rome against Judaea, Judaea against Rome.” Hitherto there has been no greater event than that fight, the putting of that question, that deadly antagonism. Rome found in the Jew the incarnation of the unnatural, as though it were its diametrically opposed monstrosity, and in Rome the Jew was held to be convicted of hatred of the whole human race: and rightly so, in so far as it
is right to link the well-being and the future of the human race to the unconditional mastery of the aristocratic values, of the Roman values. What, conversely, did the Jews feel against Rome? One can surmise it from a thousand symptoms, but it is sufficient to carry one’s mind back, to the Johannian Apocalypse, that most obscene of all the written outbursts, which has revenge on its conscience. (One should also appraise at its full value the profound logic of the Christian instinct, when over this very book of hate it wrote the name of the Disciple of Love, that self-same disciple to whom it attributed that impassioned and ecstatic Gospel - therein lurks a portion of truth, however much literary forging may have been necessary for this purpose.) The Romans were the strong and aristocratic; a nation stronger and more aristocratic has never existed in the world, has never even been dreamed of; every relic of them, every inscription enraptures, granted that one can divine what it is that writes the inscription. The Jews, conversely, were that priestly nation of resentment par excellence, possessed by a unique genius for popular morals: just compare with the Jews the nations with analogous gifts, such as the Chinese or the Germans, so as to realise afterwards what is first rate, and what is fifth rate. Which of them has been provisionally victorious. Rome or Judaea? but there is not a shadow of doubt; just consider to whom in Rome itself nowadays you bow down, as though before the quintessence of all the highest values - and not only in Rome, but almost over half the world, everywhere where man has been tamed or is about to be tamed - to three Jews, as we know, and one Jewess (to Jesus of Nazareth, to Peter the fisher, to Paul the tent-maker, and to the mother of the aforesaid Jesus, named Mary). This is very remarkable: Rome is undoubtedly defeated. At any rate there took place in the Renaissance a brilliantly sinister revival of the classical ideal, of the aristocratic valuation of all things: Rome herself, like a man waking up from a trance, stirred beneath the burden of the new Judaised Rome that had been built over her, which presented the appearance of an oecumenical synagogue and was called the “ Church”: but immediately Judaea triumphed again, thanks to that fundamentally popular (German and English) movement of revenge, which is called the Reformation, and taking also into account its inevitable corollary, the restoration of the Church - the restoration also of the ancient graveyard peace of classical Rome. Judaea proved yet once more victorious over the classical ideal in the French Revolution, and in a sense which was even more crucial and even more profound: the last political aristocracy that existed in Europe, that of the French seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, broke into pieces beneath the instincts of a resentful populace - never had the world heard a greater jubilation, a more uproarious enthusiasm: indeed, there took place in the midst of it the most monstrous and unexpected phenomenon; the ancient ideal itself swept before the eyes and conscience of humanity with all its life and with unheard-of splendour, and in opposition to resentment’s lying war-cry of the prerogative of the of the most, in opposition to the will to lowliness, abasement, and equalisation, the will to a retrogression and twilight of humanity, there rang out once again, stronger, simpler, more penetrating than ever, the terrible and enchanting counter-war-cry of the prerogative of the few! Like a final sign-post to other ways, there appeared Napoleon, the most unique and violent anachronism that ever existed, and in him the incarnate problem of the aristocratic ideal in itself - consider well what a problem it is: - Napoleon, that synthesis of Monster and overman. s17 Was it therewith over? Was that greatest of all antitheses of ideals thereby relegated ad acta for all time? Or only postponed, postponed for a long time? May there not take place at some time or other a much more awful, much more carefully prepared flaring up of the old conflagration? Further! Should not one wish that consummation with all one’s strength? - will it one’s self? demand it one’s self? He who at this juncture begins, like my readers, to reflect, to think further, will have difficulty in coming quickly to a conclusion, - ground enough for me to come myself to a conclusion, taking it for granted that for some time past what I mean has been sufficiently clear, what I exactly mean by that dangerous motto which is inscribed on the body of my last book: Beyond Good and Evil - at any rate that is not the same as “ Beyond Good and Bad.” Note. - I avail myself of the opportunity offered by this treatise to express, openly and formally, a wish which up to the present has only been expressed in occasional conversations with scholars, namely, that some Faculty of philosophy should, by means of a series of prize essays, gain the glory of having promoted the further study of the history of morals - perhaps this book may serve to give a forcible impetus in such a direction. With regard to a possibility of this character, the following question deserves consideration. It merits quite as much the attention of philologists and historians as of actual professional philosophers. “ What indication of the history of the evolution of the moral ideas is afforded by philology, and especially by etymological investigation ?” On the other hand, it is, of course, equally necessary to induce physiologists and doctors to be interested in these problems (of the value of the valuations which have prevailed up to the present) : in this connection the professional philosophers may be trusted to act as the spokesmen and intermediaries in these particular instances, after, of course, they have quite succeeded in transforming the relationship between philosophy and physiology and medicine, which is originally one of coldness and suspicion, into the most friendly and fruitful reciprocity. In point of fact, all tables of values, all the “ thou shalts” known to history and ethnology, need primarily a physiological, at any rate in preference to a psychological, elucidation and interpretation : all equally require a critique from medical science. The question, “ What is the value of this or that table of ‘values’ and morality?” will be asked from the most varied standpoints. For instance, the question of “ valuable for what” can never be analysed with sufficient nicety. That, for instance, which would evidently have value with regard to promoting in a race the greatest possible powers of endurance (or with regard to increasing its adaptability to a specific climate, or with regard to the preservation of the greatest number) would have nothing like the same value, if it were a question of evolving a stronger species. In gauging values, the good of the majority and the good of the minority are opposed standpoints : we leave it to the naivete of English biologists to regard the former standpoint as intrinsically superior. All the sciences have now to pave the way for the future task of the philosopher ; this task being understood to mean, that he must solve the problem of value, that he has to fix the hierarchy of values. SECOND ESSAY “ GUILT,” “ BAD CONSCIENCE,” AND THE LIKE ESSAY 2 s1
The breeding of an animal that can promise - is not this just that very paradox of a task which nature has set itself in regard to man? Is not this the very problem of man? The fact that this problem has been to a great extent solved, must appear all the more phenomenal to one who can estimate at its full value that force of forgetfulness which works in opposition to it. Forgetfulness is no mere vis inertia:, as the superficial believe, rather is it a power of obstruction, active and, in the strictest sense of the word, positive - a power responsible for the fact that what we have lived, experienced, taken into ourselves, no more enters into consciousness during the process of digestion (it might be called psychic absorption) than all the whole manifold process by which our physical nutrition, the so-called “ incorporation,” is carried on. The temporary shutting of the doors and windows of consciousness, the relief from the clamant alarums and excursions, with which our subconscious world of servant organs works in mutual cooperation and antagonism; a little quietude, a little tabula rasa of the consciousness, so as to make room again for the new, and above all for the more noble functions and functionaries, room for government, foresight, predetermination (for our organism is on an oligarchic model) - this is the utility, as I have said, of the active forgetfulness, which is a very sentinel and nurse of psychic order, repose, etiquette; and this shows at once why it is that there can exist no happiness, no gladness, no hope, no pride, no real present, without forgetfulness. The man in whom this preventative apparatus is damaged and discarded, is to be compared to a dyspeptic, and it is something more than a comparison - he can “ get rid of” nothing. But this very animal who finds it necessary to be forgetful, in whom, in fact, forgetfulness represents a force and a form of robust health, has reared for himself an opposition-power, a memory, with whose help forgetfulness is, in certain instances, kept in check - in the cases, namely, where promises have to be made; - so that it is by no means a mere passive inability to get rid of a once indented impression, not merely the indigestion occasioned by a once pledged word, which one cannot dispose of, but an active refusal to get rid of it, a continuing and a wish to continue what has once been willed, an actual memory of the will; so that between the original “ I will,” “ I shall do,” and the actual discharge of the will, its act, we can easily interpose a world of new strange phenomena, circumstances, veritable volitions, without the snapping of this long chain of the will. But what is the underlying hypothesis of all this? How thoroughly, in order to be able to regulate the future in this way, must man have first learnt to distinguish between necessitated and accidental phenomena, to think casually, to see the distant as present and to anticipate it, to fix with certainty what is the end, and what is the means to that end; above all, to reckon, to have power to calculate - how thoroughly must man have first become calculable, disciplined, necessitated even for himself and his own conception of himself, that, like a man entering a promise, he could guarantee himself as a future. s2 This is simply the long history of the origin of responsibility. That task of breeding an animal which can make promises, includes, as we have already grasped, as its condition and preliminary, the more immediate task of first making man to a certain extent, necessitated, uniform, like among his like, regular, and consequently calculable. The immense work of what I have called, “ morality of custom”* (cp. Dawn of Day, Aphs. 9, 14, and 16), the actual work of man on himself during the longest period of the human race, his whole prehistoric work, finds its meaning, its great justification (in spite of all its innate hardness, despotism, stupidity, and idiocy) in this fact: man, with the help of the morality of customs and of social strait-waistcoats, was made genuinely calculable. If, however, we place ourselves at the end of this colossal process, at the point where the tree finally matures its fruits, when society and its morality of custom finally bring to light that to which it was only the means, then do we find as the ripest fruit on its tree the sovereign individual, that resembles only himself, that has got loose from the morality of custom, the autonomous “ super-moral” individual (for “ autonomous” and “ moral” are mutually exclusive terms), - in short, the man of the personal, long, and independent will, competent to promise, - and we find in him a proud consciousness (vibrating in every fibre), of what has been at last achieved and become vivified in him, a genuine consciousness of power and freedom, a feeling of human perfection in general. And this man who has grown to freedom, who is really competent to promise, this lord of the free will, this sovereign - how is it possible for him not to know how great is his superiority over everything incapable of binding itself by promises, or of being its own security, how great is the trust, the awe, the reverence that he awakes - he “ deserves” all three - not to know that with this mastery over himself he is necessarily also given the mastery over circumstances, over nature, over all creatures with shorter wills, less reliable characters? The “ free” man, the owner of a long unbreakable will, finds in this possession his standard of value: looking out from himself upon the others, he honours or he despises, and just as necessarily as he honours his peers, the strong and the reliable (those who can bind themselves by promises), - that is, everyone who promises like a sovereign, with difficulty, rarely and slowly, who is sparing with his trusts but confers honour by the very fact of trusting, who gives his word as something that can be relied on, because he knows himself strong enough to keep it even in the teeth of disasters, even in the “ teeth of fate,” - so with equal necessity will he have the heel of his foot ready for the lean and empty jackasses, who promise when they have no business to do so, and his rod of chastisement ready for the liar, who already breaks his word at the very minute when it is on his lips. The proud knowledge of the extraordinary privilege of responsibility, the consciousness of this rare freedom, of this power over himself and over fate, has sunk right down to his innermost depths, and has become an instinct, a dominating instinct - what name will he give to it, to this dominating instinct, if he needs to have a word for it? But there is no doubt about it - the sovereign man calls it his conscience. s3 His conscience? - One apprehends at once that the idea “ conscience,” which is here seen in its supreme manifestation, supreme in fact to almost the point of strangeness, should already have behind it a long history and evolution. The ability to guarantee one’s self with all due pride, and also at the same time to say yes to one’s self - that is, as has been said, a ripe fruit, but also a late fruit: - How long must needs this fruit hang sour and bitter on the tree! And for an even longer period there was not a glimpse of such a fruit to be had - no one had taken it on himself to promise it, although everything on the tree was quite ready for it, and everything was maturing for that very consummation. ”How is a memory to be made for the man-animal? How is an impression to be so deeply fixed upon this ephemeral understanding, half dense, and half silly, upon this incarnate forgetfulness, that it will be permanently present?” As one may imagine, this primeval problem was not solved by exactly gentle answers and gentle means; perhaps there is nothing more awful and more sinister
in the early history of man than his system of mnemonics. “ Something is burnt in so as to remain in his memory: only that which never stops hurting remains in his memory.” This is an axiom of the oldest (unfortunately also the longest) psychology in the world. It might even be said that wherever solemnity, seriousness, mystery, and gloomy colours are now found in the life of the men and of nations of the world, there is some survival of that horror which was once the universal concomitant of all promises, pledges, and obligations. The past, the past with all its length, depth, and hardness, wafts to us its breath, and bubbles up in us again, when we become “ serious.” When man thinks it necessary to make for himself a memory, he never accomplishes it without blood, tortures and sacrifice; the most dreadful sacrifices and forfeitures (among them the sacrifice of the first-born), the most loathsome mutilation (for instance, castration), the most cruel rituals of all the religious cults (for all religions are really at bottom systems of cruelty) - all these things originate from that instinct which found in pain its most potent mnemonic. In a certain sense the whole of asceticism is to be ascribed to this: certain ideas have got to be made inextinguishable, omnipresent, “ fixed,” with the object of hypnotising the whole nervous and intellectual system through these “ fixed ideas” - and the ascetic methods and modes of life are the means of freeing those ideas from the competition of all other ideas so as to make them “ unforgettable.” The worse memory man had, the ghastlier the signs presented by his customs; the severity of the penal laws affords in particular a gauge of the extent of man’s difficulty in conquering forgetfulness, and in keeping a few primal postulates of social intercourse ever present to the minds of those who were the slaves of every momentary emotion and every momentary desire. We Germans do certainly not regard ourselves as an especially cruel and hard-hearted nation, still less as an especially casual and happy-go-lucky one; but one has only to look at our old penal ordinances in order to realise what a lot of trouble it takes in the world to evolve a ”nation of thinkers” (I mean: the European nation which exhibits at this very day the maximum of reliability, seriousness, bad taste, and positiveness, which has on the strength of these qualities a right to train every kind of European mandarin). These Germans employed terrible means to make for themselves a memory. to enable them to master their rooted plebeian instincts and the brutal crudity of those instincts: think of the old German punishments, for instance, stoning (as far back as the legend, the millstone falls on the head of the guilty man), breaking on the wheel (the most original invention and speciality of the German genius in the sphere of punishment), dart-throwing, tearing, or trampling by horses (“ ‘quartering”), boiling the criminal in oil or wine (still prevalent in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries >. the highly popular flaying (”slicing into strips”), cutting the flesh out of the breast; think also of the evil-doer being besmeared with honey, and then exposed to the flies in a blazing sun. It was by the help of such images and precedents that man eventually kept in his memory five or six “ I will nots” with regard to which he had already given his promise, so as to be able to enjoy the advantages of society - and verily with the help of this kind of memory man eventually attained “ reason”! Alas! reason, seriousness, mastery over the emotions, all these gloomy, dismal things which are called reflection, all these privileges and pageantries of humanity: how dear is the price that they have exacted! How much blood and cruelty is the foundation of all “ good things”! s4 But how is it that that other melancholy object, the consciousness of sin, the whole “ bad conscience,” came into the world? And it is here that we turn back to our genealogists of morals. For the second time I say - or have I not said it yet? - that they are worth nothing. Just their own five-spans-long limited modern experience; no knowledge of the past, and no wish to know it; still less a historic instinct, a power of “ second sight” (which is what is really required in this case) - and despite this to go in for the history of morals. It stands to reason that this must needs produce results which are removed from the truth by something more than a respectful distance. Have these current genealogists of morals ever allowed themselves to have even the vaguest notion, for instance, that the cardinal moral idea of “ ought” originates from the very material idea of “ owe”? Or that punishment developed as a retaliation absolutely independently of any preliminary hypothesis of the freedom or determination of the will? - And this to such an extent, that a high degree of civilisation was always first necessary for the animal man to begin to make those much more primitive distinctions of “ intentional,” “ negligent,” “ accidental,” “ responsible,” and their contraries, and apply them in the assessing of punishment. That idea- “ the wrong-doer deserves punishment because he might have acted otherwise,” in spite of the fact that it is nowadays so cheap, obvious, natural, and inevitable, and that it has had to serve as an illustration of the way in which the sentiment of justice appeared on earth, is in point of fact an exceedingly late, and even refined form of human judgment and inference; the placing of this idea back at the beginning of the world is simply a clumsy violation of the principles of primitive psychology. Throughout the* longest period of human history punishment was never based on the responsibility of the evil-doer for his action, and was consequently not based on the hypothesis that only the guilty should be punished; - on the contrary, punishment was inflicted in those days for the same reason that parents punish their children even nowadays, out of anger at an injury that they have suffered, an anger which vents itself mechanically on the author of the injury - but this anger is kept in bounds and modified through the idea that every injury has somewhere or other its equivalent price, and can really be paid off, even though it be by means of pain to the author. Whence is it that this ancient deeprooted and now perhaps ineradicable idea has drawn its strength, this idea of an equivalency between injury and pain? I have already revealed its origin, in the contractual relationship between creditor anddebtor, that is as old as the existence of legal rights at all, and in its turn points back to the primary forms of purchase, sale, barter, and trade. s5 The realisation of these contractual relations excites, of course (as would be already expected from our previous observations), a great deal of suspicion and opposition towards the primitive society which made or sanctioned them. In this society promises will be made; in this society the object is to provide the promiser with a memory; in this society, so may we suspect, there will be full scope for hardness, cruelty, and pain: the “ ower,” in order to induce credit in his promise of repayment, in order to give a guarantee of the earnestness and sanctity of his promise, in order to drill into his own conscience the duty, the solemn duty, of repayment, will, by virtue of a contract with his creditor to meet the contingency of his not paying, pledge something that he still possesses, something that he still has in his power, for instance, his life or his wife, or his freedom or his body (or under certain religious conditions even his salvation, his soul’s welfare, even his peace in the grave; so in Egypt, where the corpse of the debtor found even in the grave no rest from the creditor - of
course, from the Egyptian standpoint, this peace was a matter of particular importance) . But especially has the creditor the power of inflicting on the body of the debtor all kinds of pain and torture - the power, for instance, of cutting off from it an amount that appeared proportionate to the greatness of the debt; - this point of view resulted in the universal prevalence at an early date of precise schemes of valuation, frequently horrible in the minuteness and meticulosity of their application, legally sanctioned schemes of valuation for individual limbs and parts of the body. I consider it as already a progress, as a proof of a freer, less petty, and more Roman conception of law, when the Roman Code of the Twelve Tables decreed that it was immaterial how much or how little the creditors in such a contingency cut off, “ si plus minusve secuerunt, ne fraude esto” [let it not be thought a crime if they cut off more or less]. Let us make the logic of the whole of this equalisation process clear; it is strange enough. The equivalence consists in this: instead of an advantage directly compensatory of his injury (that is, instead of an equalisation in money, lands, or some kind of chattel), the creditor is granted by way of repayment and compensation a certain sensation of satisfaction - the satisfaction of being able to vent, without any trouble, his power on one who is powerless, the delight “ de fair le mal pour le plaisir de le faire” [doing wrong for the pleasure of doing it] the joy in sheer violence: and this joy will be relished in proportion to the lowness and humbleness of the creditor in the social scale, and is quite apt to have the effect of the most delicious dainty, and even seem the foretaste of a higher social position. Thanks to the punishment of the ”ower,” the creditor participates in the rights of the masters. At last he too, for once in a way, attains the edifying consciousness of being able to despise and ill-treat a creature - as an “ inferior” - or at any rate of seeing him being despised and ill-treated, in case the actual power of punishment, the administration of punishment, has already become transferred to the “ authorities.” The compensation consequently consists in a claim on cruelty and a right to draw thereon. s6 It is then in this sphere of the law of contract that we find the cradle of the whole moral world of the ideas of “ guilt,” “ conscience,” “ duty,” the “ sacredness of duty,” - their commencement, like the commencement of all great things in the world, is thoroughly and continuously saturated with blood. And should we not add that this world has never really lost a certain savour of blood and torture (not even in old Kant: the categorical imperative reeks of cruelty). It was in this sphere likewise that there first became formed that sinister and perhaps now indissoluble association of the ideas of “ guilt” and “ suffering.” To put the question yet again, why can suffering be a compensation for “ owing”? - Because the infliction of suffering produces the highest degree of happiness, because the injured party will get in exchange for his loss (including his vexation at his loss) an extraordinary counterpleasure: the infliction of suffering - a real feast, something that, as I have said, was all the more appreciated the greater the paradox created by the rank and social status of the creditor. These observations are purely conjectural; for, apart from the painful nature of the task, it is hard to plumb such profound depths: the clumsy introduction of the idea of “ revenge” as a connecting-link simply hides and obscures the view instead of rendering it clearer (revenge itself simply leads back again to the identical problem - “ How can the infliction of suffering be a satisfaction?’). In my opinion it is repugnant to the delicacy, and still more to the hypocrisy of tame domestic animals (that is, modern men; that is, ourselves), to realise with all their energy the extent to which cruelty constituted the great joy and delight of ancient man, was an ingredient which seasoned nearly all his pleasures, and conversely the extent of the naivete and innocence with which he manifested his need for cruelty, when he actually made as a matter of principle “ disinterested malice” (or, to use Spinoza’s expression, the sympathia malevolens [malevolent sympathy] into a normal characteristic of man - as consequently something to which the conscience says a hearty yes. The more profound observer has perhaps already had sufficient opportunity for noticing this most ancient and radical joy and delight of mankind; in Beyond Good and Evil, Aph. 188 (and even earlier, in The Dawn of Day, Aphs. 18, 77, 113), I have cautiously indicated the continually growing spiritualisation and “ deification” of cruelty, which pervades the whole history of the higher civilisation (and in the larger sense even constitutes it). At any rate the time is not so long past when it was impossible to conceive of royal weddings and national festivals on a grand scale, without executions, tortures, or perhaps an auto-da-fe [burning at the stake], or similarly to conceive of an aristocratic household, without a creature to serve as a butt for the cruel and malicious baiting of the inmates. (The reader will perhaps remember Don Quixote at the court of the Duchess: we read nowadays the whole of Don Quixote with a bitter taste in the mouth, almost with a sensation of torture, a fact which would appear very strange and very incomprehensible to the author and his contemporaries they read it with the best conscience in the world as the gayest of books; they almost died with laughing at it.) The sight of suffering does one good, the infliction of suffering does one more good - this is a hard maxim, but none the less a fundamental maxim, old, powerful, and “ human, all-too-human”; one, moreover, to which perhaps even the apes as well would subscribe: for it is said that in inventing bizarre cruelties they are giving abundant proof of their future humanity, to which, as it were, they are playing the prelude. Without cruelty, no feast: so teaches the oldest and longest history of man - and in punishment too is there so much of the festive. s7 Entertaining, as I do, these thoughts, I am, let me say in parenthesis, fundamentally opposed to helping our pessimists to new water for the discordant and groaning mills of their disgust with life; on the contrary, it should be shown specifically that, at the time when mankind was not yet ashamed of its cruelty, life in the world was brighter than it is nowadays when there are pessimists. The darkening of the heavens over man has always increased in proportion to the growth of man’s shame before man. The tired pessimistic outlook, the mistrust of the riddle of life, the icy negation of disgusted ennui, all those are not the signs of the most evil age of the human race: much rather do they come first to the light of day, as the swamp-flowers, which they are, when the swamp to which they belong, comes into existence - I mean the diseased refinement and moralisation, thanks to which the “ animal man” has at last learnt to be ashamed of all his instincts. On the road to angel-hood (not to use in this context a harder word) man has developed that dyspeptic stomach and coated tongue, which have made not only the joy and innocence of the animal repulsive to him, but also life itself: - so that sometimes he stands with stopped nostrils before his own self, and, like Pope Innocent the Third, makes a black list of his own horrors (“ unclean generation, loathsome nutrition when in the maternal body, badness of the matter out of which
man develops, awful stench, secretion of saliva, urine, and excrement”). Nowadays, when suffering is always trotted out as the first argument against existence, as its most sinister query, it is well to remember the times when men judged on converse principles because they could not dispense with the infliction of suffering, and saw therein a magic of the first order, a veritable bait of seduction to life. Perhaps in those days (this is to solace the weaklings) pain did not hurt so much as it does nowadays: any physician who has treated negroes (granted that these are taken as representative of the prehistoric man) suffering from severe internal inflammations which would bring a European, even though he had the soundest constitution, almost to despair, would be in a position to come to this conclusion. Pain has not the same effect with negroes. (The curve of human sensibilities to pain seems indeed to sink in an extraordinary and almost sudden fashion, as soon as one has passed the upper ten thousand or ten millions of over-civilised humanity, and I personally have no doubt that, by comparison with one painful night passed by one single hysterical chit of a cultured woman, the suffering of all the animals taken together who have been put to the question of the knife, so as to give scientific answers, are simply negligible.) We may perhaps be allowed to admit the possibility of the craving for cruelty not necessarily having become really extinct: it only requires, in view of the fact that pain hurts more nowadays, a certain sublimation and made more subtle, it must especially be translated to the imaginative and psychic plane, and be adorned with such smug euphemisms, that even the most fastidious and hypocritical conscience could never grow suspicious of their real nature (“ Tragic pity” is one of these euphemisms: another is “ les nostalgies de la croix” [nostalgia for the cross]). What really raises one’s indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering; such a senselessness, however, existed neither in Christianity, which interpreted suffering into a whole mysterious salvation-apparatus, nor in the beliefs of the naive ancient man, who only knew how to find a meaning in suffering from the standpoint of the spectator, or the inflictor of the suffering. In order to get the secret, undiscovered, and unwitnessed suffering out of the world it was almost compulsory to invent gods and a hierarchy of intermediate beings, in short, something which wanders even among secret places, sees even in the dark, and makes a point of never missing an interesting and painful spectacle. It was with the help of such inventions that life got to learn the tour de force, which has become part of its stock-in-trade, the tour de force of self-justification, of the justification of evil; nowadays this would perhaps require other auxiliary devices (for instance, life as a riddle, life as a problem of knowledge). “ Every evil is justified in the sight of which a god finds edification,” so rang the logic of primitive sentiment and, indeed, was it only of primitive? The gods conceived as friends of spectacles of cruelty - oh, how far does this primeval conception extend even nowadays into our European civilisation! One would perhaps like in this context to consult Luther and Calvin. It is at any rate certain that even the Greeks knew no more piquant seasoning for the happiness of their gods than the joys of cruelty. What, do you think, was the mood with which Homer makes his gods look down upon the fates of men? What final meaning have at bottom the Trojan War and similar tragic horrors? It is impossible to entertain any doubt on the point: they were intended as festival games for the gods, and, in so far as the poet is of a more godlike breed than other men. as festival games also for the poets. It was in just this spirit and no other, that at a later date the moral philosophers of Greece conceived the eyes of God as still looking down on the moral struggle, the heroism, and the self-torture of the virtuous; the Heracles of duty was on a stage, and was conscious of the fact; virtue without witnesses was something quite unthinkable for this nation of actors. Must not that philosophic invention, so audacious and so fatal, which was then absolutely new to Europe, the invention of “ free will,” of the absolute spontaneity of man in good and evil, simply have been made for the specific purpose of justifying the idea, that the interest of the gods in humanity and human virtue was inexhaustible? There would never on the stage of this free-will world be a dearth of really new, really novel and exciting situations, plots, catastrophes. A world thought out on completely deterministic lines would be easily guessed by the gods, and would consequently soon bore them - sufficient reason for these friends of the gods, the philosophers, not to ascribe to their gods such a deterministic world. The whole of ancient humanity is full of delicate consideration for the spectator, being as it is a world of thorough publicity and theatricality, which could not conceive of happiness without spectacles and festivals. - And, as has already been said, even in great punishment there is so much which is festive. s8 The feeling of “ ought,” of personal obligation (to take up again the train of our inquiry), has had, as we saw, its origin in the oldest and most original personal relationship that there is, the relationship between buyer and seller, creditor and owner: here it was that individual confronted individual, and that individual matched himself against individual. There has not yet been found a grade of civilisation so low, as not to manifest some trace of this relationship. Making prices, assessing values, thinking out equivalents, exchanging- all this preoccupied the primal thoughts of man to such an extent that in a certain sense it constituted thinking itself: it was here that was trained the oldest form of sagacity, it was here in this sphere that we can perhaps trace the first commencement of man’s pride, of his feeling of superiority over other animals. Perhaps our word “ Mensch” (manas) still expresses just something of this self-pride: man denoted himself as the being who measures values, who values and measures, as the “ assessing” animal par excellence. Sale and purchase, together with their psychological concomitants, are older than the origins of any form of social organisation and union: it is rather from the most rudimentary form of individual right that the budding consciousness of exchange, commerce, debt, right, obligation, compensation was first transferred to the rudest and most elementary of the social complexes (in their relation to similar complexes), the habit of comparing force with force, together with that of measuring, of calculating. His eye was now focussed to this perspective; and with that ponderous consistency characteristic of ancient thought, which, though set in motion with difficulty, yet proceeds inflexibly along the line on which it has started, man soon arrived at the great generalisation, “ everything has its price, all can be paid for,” the oldest and most naive moral canon of justice, the beginning of all “ kindness,” of all “ equity,” of all “ goodwill,” of all “ objectivity” in the world. Justice in this initial phase is the goodwill among people of about equal power to come to terms with each other, to come to an understanding again by means of a settlement, and with regard to the less powerful, to compel them to agree among themselves to a settlement. s9
Measured always by the standard of antiquity (this antiquity, moreover, is present or again possible at all periods) , the community stands to its members in that important and radical relationship of creditor to his debtors.” Man lives in a community, man enjoys the advantages of a community (and what advantages! we occasionally underestimate them nowadays), man lives protected, spared, in peace and trust, secure from certain injuries and enmities, to which the man outside the community, the “ peaceless” man, is exposed, - a German understands the original meaning of “ Elend” {elend), - secure because he has entered into pledges and obligations to the community in respect of these very injuries and enmities. What happens when this is not the case? The community, the defrauded creditor, will get itself paid, as well as it can, one can reckon on that. In this case the question of the direct damage done by the offender is quite subsidiary: quite apart from this the criminal* is above all a breaker, a breaker of word and covenant to the whole, as regards all the advantages and amenities of the communal life in which up to that time he had participated. The criminal is an “ debtor” who not only fails to repay the advances and advantages that have been given to him, but even sets out to attack his creditor: consequently he is in the future not only, as is fair, deprived of all these advantages and amenities - he is in addition reminded of the importance of those advantages. The wrath of the injured creditor, of the community, puts him back in the wild and outlawed status from which he was previously protected: the community repudiates him - and now every kind of enmity can vent itself on him. Punishment is in. this stage of civilisation simply the copy, the mimic, of the normal treatment of the hated, disdained, and conquered enemy, who is not only deprived of every right and protection but of every mercy; so we have the martial law and triumphant festival of the vae victis [woe to the conquered] in all its mercilessness and cruelty. This shows why war itself (counting the sacrificial cult of war) has produced all the forms under which punishment has manifested itself in history. s10 As it grows more powerful, the community tends to take the offences of the individual less seriously, because they are now regarded as being much less revolutionary and dangerous to the corporate existence: the evil-doer is no more outlawed and put outside the pale, the common wrath can no longer vent itself upon him with its old license, - on the contrary, from this very time it is against this wrath, and particularly against the wrath of those directly injured, that the evil-doer is carefully shielded and protected by the community. As, in fact, the penal law develops, the following characteristics become more and more clearly marked: compromise with the wrath of those directly affected by the misdeed; a consequent endeavour to localise the matter and to prevent a further, or indeed a general spread of the disturbance; attempts to find equivalents and to settle the whole matter (compositio); above all, the will, which manifests itself with increasing definiteness, to treat every offence as in a certain degree capable of being paid off, and consequently, at any rate up to a certain point, to isolate the offender from his act. As the power and the self-consciousness of a community increases, so proportionately does the penal law become mitigated; conversely every weakening and jeopardising of the community revives the harshest forms of that law. The creditor has always grown more humane proportionately as he has grown more rich; finally the amount of injury he can endure without really suffering becomes the criterion of his wealth. It is possible to conceive of a society blessed with so great a consciousness of its own power as to indulge in the most aristocratic luxury of letting its wrong-doers go scot-free. - “ What do my parasites matter to me?” might society say. “ Let them live and flourish! I am strong enough for it.” - The justice which began with the maxim, “ Everything can be paid off, everything must be paid off,” ends with connivance at the escape of those who cannot pay to escape - it ends, like every good thing on earth, by destroying itself. - The self-destruction of Justice! we know the pretty name it calls itself Grace! it remains, as is obvious, the privilege of the strongest, better still, their super-law. s11 A deprecatory word here against the attempts, that have lately been made, to find the origin of justice on quite another basis - namely, on that of resentment. Let me whisper a word in the ear of the psychologists, if they would rather study revenge itself at close quarters: this plant blooms its prettiest at present among Anarchists and anti-Semites, a hidden flower, as it has ever been, like the violet, though, in truth, with another perfume. And as like must necessarily emanate from like, it will not be a matter for surprise that it is just in such circles that we see the birth of endeavours (it is their old birthplace - compare above, First Essay, paragraph 14), to sanctify revenge under the name of justice (as though Justice were at bottom merely a development of the consciousness of injury), and thus with the rehabilitation of revenge to reinstate generally and collectively all the reactive emotions. I object to this last point least of all. It even seems meritorious when regarded from the standpoint of the whole problem of biology (from which standpoint the value of these emotions has up to the present been underestimated). And that to which I alone call attention, is the circumstance that it is the spirit of revenge itself, from which develops this new nuance of scientific equity (for the benefit of hate, envy, mistrust, jealousy, suspicion, rancour, revenge). This scientific “ equity” stops immediately and makes way for the accents of deadly enmity and prejudice, so soon as another group of emotions comes on the scene, which in my opinion are of a much higher biological value than these reactions, and consequently have a paramount claim to the valuation and appreciation of science: I mean the really active emotions, such as personal and material ambition, and so forth. (E. Duhring, Value of Life; Course of Philosophy, and passim.) So much against this tendency in general: but as for the particular maxim of Duhring’s, that the home of Justice is to be found in the sphere of the reactive feelings, our love of truth compels us drastically to invert his own proposition and to oppose to him this other maxim: the last sphere conquered by the spirit of justice is the sphere of the feeling of reaction! When it really comes about that the just man remains just even as regards his injurer (and not merely cold, moderate, reserved, indifferent: being just is always a positive state); when, in spite of the strong provocation of personal insult, contempt, and calumny, the lofty and clear objectivity of the just and judging eye (whose glance is as profound as it is gentle) is untroubled, why then we have a piece of perfection, a past master of the world - something, in fact, which it would not be wise to expect, and which should not at any rate be too easily believed. Speaking generally, there is no doubt but that even the justest individual only requires a little dose of hostility, malice, or innuendo to drive the blood into his brain and the fairness from it. The active man, the attacking, aggressive man is always a hundred degrees nearer to justice than the man
who merely reacts; he certainly has no need to adopt the tactics, necessary in the case of the reacting man, of making false and biased valuations of his object. It is, in point of fact, for this reason that the aggressive man has at all times enjoyed the stronger, bolder, more aristocratic, and also freer outlook, the better conscience. On the other hand, we already surmise who it really is that has on his conscience the invention of the “ bad conscience,” - the resentful man ! Finally, let man look at himself in history. In what sphere up to the present has the whole administration of law, the actual need of law, found its earthly home? Perchance in the sphere of the reacting man? Not for a minute: rather in that of the active, strong, spontaneous, aggressive man? I deliberately defy the above-mentioned agitator (who himself makes this self-confession, “ the creed of revenge has run through all my works and endeavours like the red thread of Justice”), and say, that judged historically law in the world represents the very war against the reactive feelings, the very war waged on those feelings by the powers of activity and aggression, which devote some of their strength to damming and keeping within bounds this effervescence of hysterical re-activity, and to forcing it to some compromise. Everywhere where justice is practiced and justice is maintained, it is to be observed that the stronger power, when confronted with the weaker powers which are inferior to it (whether they be groups, or individuals), searches for weapons to put an end to the senseless fury of resentment, while it carries on its object, partly by taking the victim of resentment out of the clutches of revenge, partly by substituting for revenge a campaign of its own against the enemies of peace and order, partly by finding, suggesting, and occasionally enforcing settlements, partly by standardising certain equivalents for injuries, to which equivalents the element of resentment is henceforth finally referred. The most drastic measure, however, taken and effectuated by the supreme power, to combat the preponderance of the feelings of spite and vindictiveness - it takes this measure as soon as it is at all strong enough to do so - is the foundation of law, the imperative declaration of what in its eyes is to be regarded as just and lawful, and what unjust and unlawful: and while, after the foundation of law, the supreme power treats the aggressive and arbitrary acts of individuals, or of whole groups, as a violation of law, and a revolt against itself, it distracts the feelings of its subjects from the immediate injury inflicted by such a violation, and thus eventually attains the very opposite result to that always desired by revenge, which sees and recognises nothing but the standpoint of the injured party. From henceforth the eye becomes trained to a more and more impersonal valuation of the deed, even the eye of the injured party himself (though this is in the final stage of all, as has been previously remarked) - on this principle “ right” and “ wrong” first manifest themselves after the foundation of law (and not, as Duhring maintains, only after the act of violation). To talk of intrinsic right and intrinsic wrong is absolutely nonsensical; intrinsically, an injury, an oppression, an exploitation, an annihilation can be nothing wrong, inasmuch as life is essentially (that is, in its cardinal functions) something which functions by injuring, oppressing, exploiting, and annihilating, and is absolutely inconceivable without such a character. It is necessary to make an even more serious confession: - viewed from the most advanced biological standpoint, conditions of legality can be only exceptional conditions, in that they are partial restrictions of the real life-will, which makes for power, and in that they are subordinated to the life-will’s general end as particular means, that is, as means to create larger units of strength. A legal organisation, conceived of as sovereign and universal, not as a weapon in a fight of complexes of power, but as a weapon against fighting, generally something after the style of Duhring’s communistic model of treating every will as equal with every other will, would be a principle hostile to life, a destroyer and dissolver of man, an outrage on the future of man, a symptom of fatigue, a secret cut to Nothingness. s12 A word more on the origin and end of punishment - two problems which are or ought to be kept distinct, but which unfortunately are usually lumped into one. And what tactics have our moral genealogists employed up to the present in these cases? Their inveterate naivete. They find out some “ end” in the punishment, for instance, revenge and deterrence, and then in all their innocence set this end at the beginning, as the causa fiendi [creative cause] of the punishment, and - they have done the trick. But the patching up of a history of the origin of law is the last use to which the “ End in Law”* ought to be put. Perhaps there is no more pregnant principle for any kind of history than the following, which, difficult though it is to master, should none the less be mastered in every detail. - The origin of the existence of a thing and its final utility, its practical application and incorporation in a system of ends, are toto ado opposed to each other - everything, anything, which exists and which prevails anywhere, will always be put to new purposes by a force superior to itself, will be commandeered afresh, will be turned and transformed to new uses; all “ happening” in the organic world consists of overpowering and dominating, and again all overpowering and domination is a new interpretation and adjustment, which must necessarily obscure or absolutely extinguish the subsisting “ meaning” and “ end.” The most perfect comprehension of the utility of any-physiological organ (or also of a legal institution, social custom, political habit, form in art or in religious worship) does not for a minute imply any simultaneous comprehension of its origin: this may seem uncomfortable and unpalatable to the older men, - for it has been the immemorial belief that understanding the final cause or the utility of a thing, a form, an institution, means also understanding the reason for its origin: to give an example of this logic, the eye was made to see, the hand was made to grasp. So even punishment was conceived as invented with a view to punishing. But all ends and all utilities are only signs that a Will to Power has mastered a less powerful force, has impressed thereon out of its own self the meaning of a function; and the whole history of a “ Thing,” an organ, a custom, can on the same principle be regarded as a continuous “ sign-chain” of perpetually new interpretations and adjustments, whose causes, so far from needing to have even a mutual connection, sometimes follow and alternate with each other absolutely haphazard. Similarly, the evolution of a “ Thing,” of a custom, is anything but its progression to an end, still less a logical and direct progress attained with the minimum expenditure of energy and cost: it is rather the succession of processes of subjugation, more or less profound, more or less mutually independent, which operate on the thing itself; it is, further, the resistance which in each case invariably displayed this subjugation, the Protean wriggles by way of defence and reaction, and, further, the results of successful counter-efforts. The form is fluid, but the meaning is even more so - even inside every individual organism the case is the same: with every genuine growth of the whole, the “ function” of the individual organs becomes shifted, - in certain cases a partial perishing of these organs, a diminution of their numbers (for instance, through annihilation of the connecting members), can be a symptom of growing strength and perfection. What I mean is this: even partial loss of utility, decay, and degeneration, loss of function and purpose, in
a word, death, appertain to the conditions of the genuine progress; which always appears in the shape of a will and way to greater power, and is always realised at the expense of innumerable smaller powers. The magnitude of a “ progress” is gauged by the greatness of the sacrifice that it requires: humanity as a mass sacrificed to the prosperity of the one stronger species of Man - that would be a. progress. I emphasise all the more this cardinal characteristic of the historic method, for the reason that in its essence it runs counter to predominant instincts and prevailing taste, which must prefer to put up with absolute casualness, even with the mechanical senselessness of ail phenomena, than with the theory of a power-will, in exhaustive play throughout all phenomena. The democratic idiosyncrasy against everything which rules and wishes to rule, the modern misarchism (to coin a bad word for a bad thing), has gradually but so thoroughly transformed itself into the guise of intellectualism, the most abstract intellectualism, that even nowadays it penetrates and has the right to penetrate step by step into the most exact and apparently the most objective sciences: this tendency has, in fact, in my view already dominated the whole of physiology and biology, and to their detriment, as is obvious, in so far as it has spirited away a radical idea, the idea of true activity. The tyranny of this idiosyncrasy, however, results in the theory of “ adaptation” being pushed forward into the van of the argument, exploited; adaptation - that means to say, a second-class activity, a mere capacity for “ reacting”; in fact, life itself has been defined (by Herbert Spencer) as an increasingly effective internal adaptation to external circumstances. This definition, however, fails to realise the real essence of life, its will to power. It fails to appreciate the paramount superiority enjoyed by those plastic forces of spontaneity, aggression, and encroachment with their new interpretations and tendencies, to the operation of which adaptation is only a natural corollary: consequently the sovereign office of the highest functionaries in the organism itself (among which the life-will appears as an active and formative principle) is repudiated. One remembers Huxley’s reproach to Spencer of his “ administrative Nihilism”: but it is a case of something much more than “ administration.” s13 To return to our subject, namely punishment, we must make consequently a double distinction: first, the relatively permanent element, the custom, the act, the “ drama,” a certain rigid sequence of methods of procedure; on the other hand, the fluid element, the meaning, the end, the expectation which is attached to the operation of such procedure. At this point we immediately assume, per analogiam (in accordance with the theory of the historic method, which we have elaborated above), that the procedure itself is something older and earlier than its utilisation in punishment, that this utilisation was introduced and interpreted into the procedure (which had existed for a long time, but whose employment had another meaning), in short, that the case is different from that hftherto supposed by our naif genealogists of morals and of law, who thought that the procedure was invented for the purpose of punishment, in the same way that the hand had been previously thought to have been invented for the purpose of grasping. With regard to the other element in punishment, its fluid element, its meaning, the idea of punishment in a very Jate stage of civilisation (for instance, contemporary Europe) is not content with manifesting merely one meaning, but manifests a whole synthesis “ of meanings.” The past general history of punishment, the history of its employment for the most diverse ends, crystallises eventually into a kind of unity, which is difficult to analyse into its parts, and which, it is necessary to emphasise, absolutely defies definition. (It is nowadays impossible to say definitely the precise reason fur punishment: all ideas, in which a whole process is promiscuously comprehended, elude definition; it is only that which has no history, which can be defined.) At an earlier stage, on the contrary, that synthesis of meanings appears much less rigid and much more elastic; we can realise how in each individual case the elements of the synthesis change their value and their position, so that now one element and now another stands nut and predominates over the others, nay, in certain cases one element (perhaps the end of deterrence) seems to eliminate all the rest. At any rate, so as to give some idea of the uncertain, supplementary, and accidental nature of the meaning of punishment and of the manner in which one identical procedure can be employed and adapted for the most diametrically opposed objects, I will at this point give a scheme that has suggested itself to me, a scheme itself based on comparatively small and accidental material. - Punishment, as rendering the criminal harmless and incapable of further injury. - Punishment, as compensation for the injury sustained by the injured party, in any form whatsoever (including the form of sentimental compensation). - Punishment, as an isolation of that which disturbs the equilibrium, so as to prevent the further spreading of the disturbance. - Punishment as a means of inspiring fear of those who determine and execute the punishment. - Punishment as a kind of compensation for advantages which the wrong-doer has up to that time enjoyed (for example, when he is utilised as a slave in the mines) . - Punishment, as the elimination of an element of decay (sometimes of a whole branch, as according to the Chinese laws, consequently as a means to the purification of the race, or the preservation of a social type). - Punishment as a festival, as the violent oppression and humiliation of an enemy that has at last been subdued. - Punishment as a mnemonic, whether for him who suffers the punishment - the so-called “ correction,” or for the witnesses of its administration. - Punishment, as the payment of a fee stipulated for by the power which protects the evil-doer from the excesses of revenge. Punishment, as a compromise with the natural phenomenon of revenge, in so far as revenge is still maintained and claimed as a privilege by the stronger races. - Punishment as a declaration and measure of war against an enemy of peace, of law, of order, of authority, who is fought by society with the weapons which war provides, as a spirit dangerous to the community, as a breaker of the contract on which the community is based, as a rebel, a traitor, and a breaker of the peace. s14 This list is certainly not complete; it is obvious that punishment is overloaded with utilities of all kinds. This makes it all the more permissible to eliminate one supposed utility, which passes, at any rate in the popular mind. for its most essential utility, and which is just what even now provides the strongest support for that faith in punishment which is nowadays for many reasons tottering. Punishment is supposed to have the value of exciting in the guilty the consciousness of guilt; in punishment is sought the proper instrumcntum of that psychic reaction which becomes known as a “ bad conscience,” “ remorse.” But this theory is even, from the point of view of the present, a violation of reality and psychology: and how much more so is the case when we have to deal with the longest period of man’s history, his primitive history! Genuine remorse is certainly extremely rare
among wrong-doers and the victims of punishment; prisons and houses of correction are not the soil on which this worm of remorse pullulates for choice- this is the unanimous opinion of all conscientious observers, who in many cases arrive at such a judgment with enough reluctance and against their own personal wishes. Speaking generally, punishment hardens and numbs, it produces concentration, it sharpens the consciousness of alienation, it strengthens the power of resistance. When it happens that it breaks the man’s energy and brings about a piteous prostration and abjectness, such a result is certainly even less salutary than the average effect of punishment, which is characterised by a harsh and sinister doggedness. The thought of those prehistoric millennia brings us to the unhesitating conclusion, that it was simply through punishment that the evolution of the consciousness of guilt was most forcibly retarded - at any rate in the victims of the punishing power. In particular, let us not underestimate the extent to which, by the very sight of the judicial and executive procedure, the wrong-doer is himself prevented from feeling that his deed, the character of his act, is intrinsically reprehensible: for he sees clearly the same kind of acts practised in the service of justice, and then called good, and practised with a good conscience; acts such as espionage, trickery, bribery, trapping, the whole intriguing and insidious art of the policeman and the informer - the whole system, in fact, manifested in the different kinds of punishment (a system not excused by passion, but based on principle), of robbing, oppressing, insulting, imprisoning, racking, murdering. - All this he sees treated by his judges, not as acts meriting censure and condemnation in themselves, but only in a particular context and application. It was not on this soil that grew the “ bad conscience,” that most sinister and interesting plant of our earthly vegetation - in point of fact, throughout a most lengthy period, no suggestion of having to do with a ‘oguilty man” manifested itself in the consciousness of the man who judged and punished. One had merely to deal with an author of an injury, an irresponsible piece of fate. And the man himself, on whom the punishment subsequently fell like a piece of fate, was occasioned no more of an “ inner pain” than would be occasioned by the sudden approach of some uncalculated event, some terrible natural catastrophe, a rushing, crushing avalanche against which there is no resistance. s15 This truth came insidiously enough to the consciousness of Spinoza (to the disgust of his commentators, who (like Kuno Fischer, for instance) give themselves no end of trouble to misunderstand him on this point), when one afternoon (as he sat raking up who knows what memory ) he indulged in the question of what was really left for him personally of the celebrated Morsus coiiscicnt’uc - Spinoza, who had relegated ”good and evil” to the sphere of human imagination, and indignantly defended the honour of his “ free” God against those blasphemers who affirmed that God did everything sub rationc bom (“ but this was tantamount to subordinating God to fate, and would really be the greatest of all absurdities”). For Spinoza the world had returned again to that innocence in which it lay before the discovery of the bad conscience: what, then, had happened to the morsus consdentia? “ The antithesis of gaudium,” said he at last to himself, - “ A sadness accompanied by the recollection of a past event which has turned out contrary to all expectation” (Eth. iii., Propos. xviii. Schol. i. ii.). Evil-doers have throughout thousands of years felt when overtaken by punishment exactly like Spinoza, on the subject of their “ offence”: “ here is something which went wrong contrary to my anticipation,” not “ I ought not to have done this.” - They submitted themselves to punishment, just as one submits one’s self to a disease, to a misfortune, or to death, with that stubborn and resigned fatalism which gives the Russians, for instance, even nowadays, the advantage over us Westerners, in the handling of life. If at that period there was a critique of action, the criterion was prudence: the real effect of punishment is unquestionably chiefly to be found in a sharpening of the sense of prudence, in a lengthening of the memory, in a will to adopt more of a policy of caution, suspicion, and secrecy; in the recognition that there are many things which are unquestionably beyond one’s capacity; in a kind of improvement in self-criticism. The broad effects which can be obtained by punishment in man and beast, are the increase of fear, the sharpening of the sense of cunning, the mastery of the desires: so it is that punishment tames man, but does not make him “ better” - it would be more correct even to go so far as to assert the contrary (“ Injury makes a man cunning,” says a popular proverb: so far as it makes him cunning, it makes him also bad. Fortunately, it often enough makes him stupid). s16 At this juncture I cannot avoid trying to give a tentative and provisional expression to my own hypothesis concerning the origin of the bad conscience: it is difficult to make it fully appreciated, and it requires continuous meditation, attention, and digestion. I regard the bad conscience as the serious illness which man was bound to contract under the stress of the most radical change which he has ever experienced - that change, when he found himself finally imprisoned within the pale of society and of peace. Just like the plight of the water-animals, when they were compelled either to become land-animals or to perish, so was the plight of these half-animals, perfectly adapted as they were to the savage life of war, prowling, and adventure - suddenly all their instincts were rendered worthless and “ switched off.” Henceforward they had to walk on their feet - “ carry themselves,” whereas heretofore they had been carried by the water: a terrible heaviness oppressed them. They found themselves clumsy in obeying the simplest directions, confronted with this new and unknown world they had no longer their old guides - the regulative instincts that had led them unconsciously to safety - they were reduced, were those unhappy creatures, to thinking, inferring, calculating, putting together causes and results, reduced to that poorest and most erratic organ of theirs, their “ consciousness.” I do not believe there was ever in the world such a feeling of misery, such a leaden discomfort - further, those old instincts had not immediately ceased their demands! Only it was difficult and rarely possible to gratify them: speaking broadly, they were compelled to satisfy themselves by new and, as it were, hole-and-corner methods. All instincts which do not find a vent without, turn inwards - this is what I mean by the growing “ internalisation” of man: consequently we have the first growth in man, of what subsequently was called his soul. The whole inner world, originally as thin as if it had been stretched between two layers of skin, burst apart and expanded proportionately, and obtained depth, breadth, and height, when man’s external outlet became obstructed. These terrible bulwarks, with which the social organisation protected itself against the old instincts of freedom (punishments belong pre-eminently to these bulwarks), brought it about that all those instincts of wild, free, prowling man became turned backwards against man himself. Enmity, cruelty, the delight in persecution, in surprises, change, destruction the turning all these instincts against their own possessors: this is the origin of the “ bad conscience.” It was man, who, lacking external enemies and obstacles, and imprisoned as he
was in the oppressive narrowness and monotony of custom, in his own impatience lacerated, persecuted, gnawed, frightened, and ill-treated himself; it was this animal in the hands of the tamer, which beat itself against the bars of its cage; it was this being who, pining and yearning for that desert home of which it had been deprived, was compelled to create out of its own self, an adventure, a torture-chamber, a hazardous and perilous desert - it was this fool, this homesick and desperate prisoner- who invented the “ bad conscience.” But thereby he introduced that most grave and sinister illness, from which mankind has not yet recovered, the suffering of man from the disease called man, as the result of a violent breaking from his animal past, the result, as it were, of a spasmodic plunge into a new environment and new conditions of existence, the result of a declaration of war against the old instincts, which up to that time had been the staple of his power, his joy, his formidableness. Let us immediately add that this fact of an animal ego turning against itself, taking part against itself, produced in the world so novel, profound, unheard-of, problematic, inconsistent, and pregnant a phenomenon, that the aspect of the world was radically altered thereby. In sooth, only divine spectators could have appreciated the drama that then began, and whose end baffles conjecture as yet - a drama too subtle, too wonderful, too paradoxical to warrant its undergoing a nonsensical and unheeded performance on some random grotesque planet! Henceforth man is to be counted as one of the most unexpected and sensational lucky shots in the game of the “ big baby” of Heracleitus, whether he be called Zeus or Chance - he awakens on his behalf the interest, excitement, hope, almost the confidence, of his being the harbinger and forerunner of something, of man being no end, but only a stage, an interlude, a bridge, a great promise. s17 It is primarily involved in this hypothesis of the origin of the bad conscience, that that alteration was no gradual and no voluntary alteration, and that it did not manifest itself as an organic adaptation to new conditions, but as a break, a jump, a necessity, an inevitable fate, against which there was no resistance and never a spark of resentment. And secondarily, that the fitting of a hitherto unchecked and amorphous population into a fixed form, starting as it had done in an act of violence, could only be accomplished by acts of violence and nothing else - that the oldest “ State” appeared consequently as a ghastly tyranny, a grinding ruthless piece of machinery, which went on working, till this raw material of a semi-animal populace was not only thoroughly kneaded and elastic, but also moulded. I used the word “ State”; my meaning is self-evident, namely, a herd of blonde beasts of prey, a race of conquerors and masters, which with all its war-like organisation and all its organising power pounces with its terrible claws en a population, in numbers possibly tremendously superior, but as yet formless, as yet nomad. Such is the origin of the “ State.” That fantastic theory that makes it begin with a contract is, I think, disposed of. He who can command, he who is a master by “ nature,” he who comes on the scene forceful in deed and gesture - what has he to do with contracts? Such beings defy calculation, they come like fate, without cause, reason, notice, excuse, they are there as the lightning is there, too terrible, too sudden, too convincing, too “ different,” to be personally even hated. Their work is an instinctive creating and impressing of forms, they are the most involuntary, unconscious artists that there are: - their appearance produces instantaneously a scheme of sovereignty which is live, in which the functious are partitioned and apportioned, in which above all no part is received or finds a place, until pregnant with a “ meaning” in regard to the whole. They are ignorant of the meaning of guilt, responsibility, consideration, are these born organisers; in them predominates that terrible artist-ego-ism, that gleams like brass, and that knows itself justified to all eternity, in its work, even as a mother in her child. It is not in them that there grew the bad conscience, that is elementary -but it would not have grown without than, repulsive growth as it was, it would be missing, had not a tremendous quantity of freedom been expelled from the world by the stress of their hammer-strokes, their artist violence, or been at any rate made invisible and, as it were, latent. This instinct of freedom forced into being latent - it is already clear - this instinct of freedom farced back, trodden back, imprisoned within itself, and finally only able to find vent and relief in itself; this, only this, is the beginning of the “ bad conscience.” s18 Beware of thinking lightly of this phenomenon, by reason of its initial painful ugliness. At bottom it is the same active force which is at work on a more grandiose scale in those potent artists and organisers, and builds states, where here, internally, on a smaller and pettier scale and with a retrogressive tendency, makes itself a bad conscience in the “ labyrinth of the breast,” to use Goethe’s phrase, and which builds negative ideals; it is, I repeat, that identical instinct of freedom (to use my own language, the will to power) : only the material, on which this force with all its constructive and tyrannous nature is let loose, is here man himself, his whole old animal self - and not as in the case of that more grandiose and sensational phenomenon, the other man, other men. This secret self-tyranny, this cruelty of the artist, this delight in giving a form to one’s self as a piece of difficult, refractory, and suffering material, in burning in a will, a critique, a contradiction, a contempt, a negation; this sinister and ghastly labour of love on the part of a soul, whose will is cloven in two within itself, which makes itself suffer from delight in the infliction of suffering; this wholly active bad conscience has finally (as one already anticipates) - true fountainhead as it is of idealism and imagination - produced an abundance of novel and amazing beauty and affirmation, and perhaps has really been the first to give birth to beauty at all. What would beauty be, in truth, if its contradiction had not first been presented to consciousness, if the ugly had not first said to itself, “ I am ugly”? At any rate, after this hint the problem of how far idealism and beauty can be traced in such opposite ideas as “ selflessness,” self-denial, self-sacrifice, becomes less problematical; and indubitably in future we shall certainly know the real and original character of the delight experienced by the selfless, the self-denying, the self-sacrificing: this delight is a phase of cruelty. - So much provisionally for the origin of “ altruism” as a moral value, and the marking out the ground from which this value has grown: it is only the bad conscience, only the will for self-abuse, that provides the necessary conditions for the existence of altruism as a value. s19 Undoubtedly the bad conscience is an illness, but an illness as pregnancy is an illness. If we search out the conditions under which this illness reaches its most terrible and sublime zenith, we shall see what really first brought about its entry into the world. But to do this we must take a long breath, and we must first of all go back once again to an
earlier point of view. The relation at civil law of the debtor to his creditor (which has ready been discussed in detail), has been interpreted once again (and indeed in a manner which historically is exceedingly remarkable and suspicious) into a relationship, which is perhaps more incomprehensible to us moderns than to any other era; that is, into the relationship of the existing generation to its ancestors. Within the original tribal association - we are talking of primitive times - each living generation recognises a legal obligation towards the earlier generation, and particularly towards the earliest, which founded the family (and this is something much more than a mere sentimental obligation, the existence of which, during the longest period of man’s history, is by no means indisputable). There prevails in them the conviction that it is only thanks to sacrifices and efforts of their ancestors, that the race persists at all - and that this has to be paid back to them by sacrifices and services. Thus is recognized the owing of a debt, which accumulates continually by reason of these ancestors never ceasing in their subsequent life as potent spirits to secure by their power new privileges and advantages to the race. Gratis, perchance? But there is no gratis for that raw and “ mean-souled” age. What return can be made?- Sacrifice (at first, nourishment, in its crude;! sense), festivals, temples, tributes of veneration, above all, obedience - since all customs are, qua works of the ancestors, equally their precepts and commands - are the ancestors ever given enough? This suspicion remains and grows: from time to time it extorts a great wholesale ransom, something monstrous in the way of repayment of the creditor (the notorious sacrifice of the first-born, for example, blood, human blood in any case). The fear of ancestors and their power, the consciousness of owing debts to them, necessarily increases, according to this kind of logic, in the exact proportion that the race itself increases, that the race itself becomes more victorious, more independent, more honoured, more feared. This, and not the contrary, is the fact. Each step towards race decay, all disastrous events, all symptoms of degeneration, of approaching disintegration, always diminish the fear of the founders’ spirit, and whittle away the idea of his sagacity, providence, and potent presence. Conceive this crude kind of logic carried to its climax: it follows that the ancestors of the most powerful races must, through the growing fear that they exercise on the imaginations, grow themselves into monstrous dimensions, and become relegated to the gloom of a divine mystery that transcends imagination - the ancestor becomes at last necessarily transfigured into a god. Perhaps this is the very origin of the gods, that is, an origin from fear/ And those who feel bound to add, “ but from piety also,” will have difficulty in maintaining this theory, with regard to the primeval and longest period of the human race. And, of course, this is even more the case as regards the middle period, the formative period of the aristocratic races - the aristocratic races which have given back with interest to their founders, the ancestors (heroes, gods), all those qualities which in the meanwhile have appeared in themselves, that is, the aristocratic qualities. We will later on glance again at the ennobling and promotion of the gods (which, of course, is totally distinct from their “ sanctification”) : let us now provisionally follow to its end the course of the whole of this development of the consciousness of “ owing.” s20 According to the teaching of history, the consciousness of owing debts to the deity by no means came to an end with the decay of the clan organisation of society; just as mankind has inherited the ideas of “ good” and “ bad” from the race-nobility (together with its fundamental tendency towards establishing social distinctions) , so with the heritage of the racial and tribal gods it has also inherited the incubus of debts as yet unpaid and the desire to discharge them. The transition is effected by those large populations of slaves and bondsmen, who, whether through compulsion or through submission and “ mimicry” have accommodated themselves to the religion of their masters; through this channel these inherited tendencies inundate the world. The feeling of owing a debt to the deity has grown continuously for several centuries, always in the same proportion in which the idea of God and the consciousness of God have grown and become exalted among mankind. (The whole history of ethnic fights, victories, reconciliations, amalgamations, everything, in fact, which precedes the eventual classing of all the social elements in each great race-synthesis, are mirrored in the hodge-podge genealogy of their gods, in the legends of their fights, victories, and reconciliations. Progress towards universal empires invariably means progress towards universal deities; despotism, with its subjugation of the independent nobility, always paves the way for some system or other of monotheism.) The appearance of the Christian god, as the record god up to this time, has for that very reason brought equally into the world the record amount of guilt consciousness. Granted that we have gradually started on the reverse movement, there is no little probability in the deduction, based on the continuous decay in the belief in the Christian god, to the effect that there also already exists a considerable decay in the human consciousness of owing (ought) ; in fact, we cannot shut our eyes to the prospect of the complete and eventual triumph of atheism freeing mankind from all this feeling of obligation to their origin, their causa prima [first cause] . Atheism and a kind of second innocence complement and supplement each other. s21 So much for my rough and preliminary sketch of the interrelation of the ideas “ ought” (owe) and “ duty” with the postulates of religion. I have intentionally shelved up to the present the actual moralisation of these ideas (their being pushed back into the conscience, or more precisely the interweaving of the bad conscience with the idea of God), and at the end of the last paragraph used language to the effect that this moralisation did not exist, and that consequently these ideas had necessarily come to an end, by reason of what had happened to their hypothesis, the credence in our “ creditor,” in God. The actual facts differ terribly from this theory. It is with the moralisation of the ideas “ ought” and “ duty,” and with their being pushed back into the bad conscience, that comes the first actual attempt to reverse the direction of the development we have just described, or at any rate to arrest its evolution ; it is just at this juncture that the very hope of an eventual redemption has to put itself once for all into the prison of pessimism, it is at this juncture that the eye likes to recoil and rebound in despair from off an adamantine impossibility, it is at this juncture that the ideas “ guilt” and “ duty” have to turn backwards - turn backwards against whom? There is no doubt about it; primarily against the “ debtor,” in whom the bad conscience now establishes itself, eats, extends, and grows like a polypus throughout its length and breadth, all with such virulence, that at last, with the impossibility of paying the debt, there becomes conceived the idea of the impossibility of paying the penalty, the thought of its inexpiability (the idea of “ eternal punishment”) - finally, too, it turns against the “ creditor,” whether found in the causa prima [first cause] of man, the origin of the human race, its
sire, who henceforth becomes burdened with a curse (o’Adam,” “ original sin,” “ determination of the will”), or in Nature from whose womb man springs, and on whom the responsibility for the principle of evil is now cast (“ Diabolisation of Nature”), or in existence generally, on this logic an absolute white elephant, with which mankind is landed (the Nihilistic flight from life, the demand for Nothingness, or for the opposite of existence, for some other existence, Buddhism and the like) - till suddenly we stand before that paradoxical and awful expedient, through which a tortured humanity has found a temporary alleviation, that stroke of genius called Christianity: - God personally immolating himself for the debt of man, God paying himself personally out of a pound of his own flesh, God as the one being who can deliver man from what man had become unable to deliver himself the creditor playing scapegoat for his debtor, from love (can you believe it?), from love of his debtor! … s22 The reader will already have conjectured what took place on the stage and behind the scenes of this drama. That will for self-torture, that inverted cruelty of the animal man, who, turned subjective and scared into introspection (encaged as he was in “ the State,” as part of his taming process), invented the bad conscience so as to hurt himself, after the natural outlet for this will to hurt, became blocked - in other words, this man of the bad conscience exploited the religious hypothesis so as to carry his martyrdom to the ghastliest pitch of agonised intensity. Owing something to God: this thought becomes his instrument of torture. He apprehends in God the most extreme antitheses that he can find to his own characteristic and ineradicable animal instincts, he himself gives a new interpretation to these animal instincts as being against what he “ owes” to God (as enmity, rebellion, and revolt against the “ Lord,” the “ Father,” the “ Sire,” the “ Beginning of the world”), he places himself between the horns of the dilemma, “ God” and “ Devil.” Every negation which he is inclined to utter to himself, to the nature, naturalness, and reality of his being, he whips into an ejaculation of “ yes,” uttering it as something existing, living, efficient, as being God, as the holiness of God, the judgment of God, as the hangmanship of God, as transcendence, as eternity, as unending torment, as hell, as infinity of punishment and guilt. This is a kind of madness of the will in the sphere of psychological cruelty which is absolutely unparalleled: - man’s will to find himself guilty and blameworthy to the point of inexpiability, his will to think of himself as punished, without the punishment ever being able to balance the guilt, his will to infect and to poison the fundamental basis of the universe with the problem of punishment and guilt, in order to cut off once and for all any escape out of this labyrinth of “ fixed ideas,” his will for rearing an ideal - that of the “ holy God” - face to face with which he can have tangible proof of his own unworthiness. Alas for this mad melancholy beast man! What phantasies invade it, what paroxysms of perversity, hysterical senselessness, and mental bestiality break out immediately, at the very slightest check on its being the beast of action ! All this is excessively interesting, but at the same time tainted with a black, gloomy, enervating melancholy, so that a forcible veto must be invoked against looking too long into these abysses. Here is disease, indubitably, the most ghastly disease that has as yet played havoc among men: and he who can still hear (but man turns now deaf ears to such sounds), how in this night of torment and nonsense there has rung out the cry of love, the cry of the most passionate ecstasy, of redemption in love, he turns away gripped by an invincible horror - in man there is so much that is ghastly - too long has the world been a mad-house. s23 Let this suffice once for all concerning the origin of the “ holy God.” The fact that in itself the conception of gods is not bound to lead necessarily to this degradation of the imagination (a temporary representation of whose vagaries we felt bound to give), the fact that there exist nobler methods of utilising the invention of gods than in this self-crucifixion and self- degradation of man, in which the last two thousand years of Europe have been past masters - these facts can fortunately be still perceived from every glance that we cast at the Grecian gods, these mirrors of noble and grandiose men, in which the animal in man felt itself deified, and did not devour itself in subjective frenzy. These Greeks long utilised their gods as simple buffers against the “ bad conscience”- so that they could continue to enjoy their freedom of soul: this, of course, is diametrically opposed to Christianity’s theory of its god. They went very jar on this principle, did these splendid and lion-hearted children; and there is no lesser authority than that of the Homeric Zeus for making them realise occasionally that they are taking life too casually. “ Wonderful,” says he on one occasion - it has to do with the case of Aegisthus, a very bad case indeed - “ Wonderful how they grumble, the mortals against the immortals Only from us, they presume, comes evil, but in their folly, Fashion they, spite of fate, the doom of their own disaster.” Yet the reader will note and observe that this Olympian spectator and judge is far from being angry with them and thinking evil of them on this score. “ How foolish they are,” so thinks he of the misdeeds of mortals - and “ folly,” “ imprudence,” “ a little brain disturbance.” and nothing more, are what the Greeks, even of the strongest, bravest period, have admitted to be the ground of much that is evil and fatal. - Folly, not sin, do you understand? … But even this brain disturbance was a problem - “ Come, how is it even possible? How could it have really got in brains like ours, the brains of men of aristocratic ancestry, of men of fortune, of men of good natural endowments, of men of the best society, of men of nobility and virtue?” This was the question that for century on century the aristocratic Greek put to himself when confronted with every (to him incomprehensible) outrage and sacrilege with which one of his peers had polluted himself. “ It must be that a god had infatuated him,” he would say at last, nodding his head. - This solution is typical of the (?reeks, … accordingly the gods in those times subserved the functions of justifying man to a certain extent even in evil- in those days they took upon themselves not the punishment, but, what is more noble, the guilt. s24 I conclude with three queries, as you will sec. “ Is an ideal actually set up here, or is one pulled down?” I am perhaps asked… . But have ye sufficiently asked yourselves how dear a payment has the setting up of every ideal in the world exacted? To achieve that consummation how much truth must always be traduced and misunderstood, how many lies must be sanctified, hew much conscience has got to be disturbed, how many pounds of “ God” have got to be sacrificed every time?^ To enable a sanctuary to be set up a sanctuary has got
to be destroyed: that is a law - show me an instance where it has not been fulfilled! … We modern men, we inherit the immemorial tradition of vivisecting the conscience, and practicing cruelty to our animal selves. That is the sphere of our most protracted training, perhaps of our artistic prowess, at any rate of our dilettantism and our perverted taste. Man has for too long regarded his natural proclivities with an “ evil eye,” so that eventually they have become in his system affiliated to a bad conscience. A converse endeavour would be intrinsically feasible - but who is strong enough to attempt it? - namely, to affiliate to the “ bad conscience” all those unnatural proclivities, all those transcendental aspirations, contrary to sense, instinct, nature, and animalism - in short, all past and present ideals, which are all ideals opposed to life, and traducing the world. To whom is one to turn nowadays with such hopes and pretensions? - It is just the good men that we should thus bring about our ears; and in addition, as stands to reason, the indolent, the hedgers, the vain, the hysterical, the tired… . What is more offensive or more thoroughly calculated to alienate, than giving any hint of the exalted severity with which we treat ourselves? And again how conciliatory, how full of love does all the world show itself towards us so soon as we do as all the world does, and “ let ourselves go” like all the world. For such a consummation we need spirits of different caliber than seems really feasible in this age; spirits rendered potent through wars and victories, to whom conquest, adventure, danger, even pain, have become a need; for such a consummation we need habituation to sharp, rare air, to winter wanderings, to literal and metaphorical ice and mountains; we even need a kind of sublime malice, a supreme and most self conscious insolence of knowledge, which is the apanage of great health; we need (to summarise the awful truth) just this great health’. Is this even feasible today? … But some day, in a stronger age than this rotting and introspective present, must he in sooth come to us, even the redeemer of great love and scorn, the creative spirit, rebounding by the impetus of his own force back again away from every transcendental plane and dimension, he whose solitude is misunderstanded of the people, as though it were a flight from reality; - while actually it is only his diving, burrowing, and penetrating into reality, so that when he comes again to the light he can at once bring about by these means the redemption of this reality; its redemption from the curse which the old ideal has laid upon it. This man of the future, who in this wise will redeem us from the old ideal, as he will from that ideal’s necessary corollary of great nausea, will to nothingness, and Nihilism; this tocsin of noon and of the great verdict, which renders the will again free, who gives back to the world its goal and to man his hope, this Antichrist and Anti-nihilist, this conqueror of God and of Nothingness - he must one day come. s25 But what am I talking of? Enough! Enough? At this juncture I have only one proper course, silence: otherwise I trespass on a domain open alone to one who is younger than I, one stronger, more “ future” than I - open alone to Zarathustra, Zarathustra the godless. THIRD ESSAY WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? “ Careless, mocking, forceful - so does wisdom wish us: she is a woman, and never loves anyone but a warrior.” Thus Spake Zarathustra. ESSAY 3 s1 What is the meaning of ascetic ideals? In artists, nothing, or too much; in philosophers and scholars, a kind of “ flair” and instinct for the conditions most favourable to advanced intellectualism; in women, at best an additional seductive fascination, a little morbidezza [softness] on a fine piece of flesh, the angelic quality of a fat, pretty animal; in physiological failures and whiners (in the majority of mortals), an attempt to pose as “ too good” for this world, a holy form of debauchery, their chief weapon in the battle with lingering pain and ennui; in priests, the actual priestly faith, their best engine of power, and also the supreme authority for power; in saints, finally a pretext for hibernation, their novissima gloriae cupido [most recent desire for glory], their peace in nothingness (“ God”), their form of madness. but in the very fact that the ascetic ideal has meant so much to man, lies expressed the fundamental feature of man’s will, his horror vacui [horror of a vacuum]: he needs a goal - and he will sooner will nothingness than not will at all. - Am I not understood? - Have I not been understood? - “ Certainly not, sir?” - Well, let us begin at the beginning. s2 What is the meaning of ascetic ideals? Or, to take an individual case in regard to which I have often been consulted, what is the meaning, for example, of an artist like Richard Wagner paying homage to chastity in his old age? He had always done so, of course, in a certain sense, but it was not till quite the end, that he did so in an ascetic sense. What is the meaning of this “ change of attitude,” this radical revolution in his attitude - for that was what it was? Wagner veered thereby straight round into his own opposite. What is the meaning of an artist veering round into his own opposite? At this point (granted that we do not mind stopping a little over this question), we immediately call to mind the best, strongest, gayest, and boldest period, that there perhaps ever was in Wagner’s life: that was the period when he was genuinely and deeply occupied with the idea of “ Luther’s Wedding.” Who knows what chance is responsible for our now having the Die Meistersinger [Wagner’s opera The Master Singers] singers instead of this wedding music? And how much in the latter is perhaps just an echo of the former? But there is no doubt but that the theme would have dealt with the praise of chastity. And certainly it would also have dealt with the praise of sensuality, and even so, it would seem quite in order, and even so, it would have been equally Wagnerian. For there is no necessary antithesis between chastity and sensuality: every good marriage, every authentic heartfelt love transcends this antithesis. Wagner would, it seems to me, have done well to have brought this pleasing reality home once again to his Germans, by means of a bold and graceful “ Luther Comedy,” for there were and are among the Germans many revilers of sensuality; and perhaps Luther’s greatest merit lies just in the fact of his having had the courage of his sensuality (it used to be called, prettily enough, “ evangelistic freedom”). But even in those cases where that antithesis between chastity and sensuality does exist, there has fortunately been for some time no necessity for it to be in any way a tragic antithesis. This should, at any rate, be the case with all beings who are sound in mind and body, who are far from reckoning their delicate balance between “ animal” and “ angel,” as being on the face of it one of the principles opposed to existence - the most subtle and brilliant spirits, such as Goethe, such as Hafiz, have even seen in this a further charm of life. Such “ conflicts” actually allure one to life. On the other
hand, it is only too clear that when once these ruined swine are reduced to worshipping chastity - and there are such swine - they only see and worship in it the antithesis to themselves, the antithesis to ruined swine. Oh, what a tragic grunting and eagerness! You can just think of it - they worship that painful and superfluous contrast, which Richard Wagner in his latter days undoubtedly wished to set to music, and to place on the stage! “ For what purpose, indeed’” as we may reasonably ask. What did the swine matter to him; what do they matter to us? s3 At this point it is impossible to beg the further question of what he really had to do with that manly (ah, so unmanly) country bumpkin, that poor devil and natural, Parsifal, whom he eventually made a Catholic by such fraudulent devices. What? Was this Parsifal really meant seriously? One might be tempted to suppose the contrary, even to wish it that the Wagnerian Parsifal was meant joyously, like a concluding play of a trilogy or satyric drama, in which Wagner the tragedian wished to take farewell of us, of himself, above all of tragedy, and to do so in a manner that should be quite fitting and worthy, that is, with an excess of the most extreme and flippant parody of the tragic itself, of the ghastly earthly seriousness and earthly woe of old - a parody of that most crude phase in the unnaturalness of the ascetic ideal, that had at length been overcome. That, as I have said, would have been quite worthy of a great tragedian; who like every artist first attains the supreme pinnacle of his greatness when he can look down into himself and his art, when he can laugh at himself. Is Wagner’s Parsifal his secret laugh of superiority over himself, the triumph of that supreme artistic freedom and artistic transcendency which he has at length attained. We might, I repeat, wish it were so, for what can Parsifal, taken seriously, amount to? Is it really necessary to see in it (according to an expression once used against me) the product of an insane hate of knowledge, mind, and flesh? A curse on flesh and spirit in one breath of hate? An apostasy and reversion to the morbid Christian and obscurantist ideals? And finally a self-negation and self-elimination on the part of an artist, who till then had devoted all the strength of his will to the contrary, namely, the highest artistic expression of soul and body. And not only his art; of his life as well. Just remember with what enthusiasm Wagner followed in the footsteps of Feuerbach. Feuerbach’s motto of “ healthy sensuality” rang in the ears of Wagner during the thirties and forties of the century, as it did in the ears of many Germans (they dubbed themselves “ Young Germans”), like the word of redemption. Did he eventually change Ids mind on the subject? For it seems at any rate that he eventually wished to change his teaching on that subject … and not only is that the case with the Parsifal trumpets on the stage: in the melancholy, cramped, and embarrassed cloudy writings of his later years, there are a hundred places in which there are manifestations of a secret wish and will, a despondent, uncertain, unavowed will to preach actual retrogression, conversion, Christianity, medievalism, and to say to his disciples, “ All is vanity! Seek salvation elsewhere!” Even the “ blood of the Redeemer” is once invoked. s4 Let me speak out my mind in a case like this, which has many painful elements - and it is a typical case: it is certainly best to separate an artist from his work so completely that he cannot be taken as seriously as his work. He is after all merely the presupposition of his work, the womb, the soil, in certain cases the dung and manure, on which and out of which it grows - and consequently, in most cases, something that must be forgotten if the work itself is to be enjoyed. The insight into the origin of a work is a matter for physiologists and vivisectionists of the spirit, but never either in the present or the future for the aesthetes, the artists. The author and creator of Parsifal was as little spared the necessity of sinking and living himself into the terrible depths and foundations of the conflicts of the mediaeval soul , the necessity of a malignant abstraction from all intellectual elevation, severity, and discipline, the necessity of a kind of mental perversity (if the reader will pardon me such a word), as little as a pregnant woman is spared the horrors and marvels of pregnancy, which, as I have said, must be forgotten if the child is to be enjoyed. We must guard ourselves against the confusion, into which an artist himself would fall only too easily (to employ the English terminology) out of psychological “ contiguity”; as though the artist’ himself actually were the object which he is able to represent, imagine, and express. In point of fact, the position is that even if he conceived he were such an object, he would certainly not represent, conceive, express it. Homer would not have created an Achilles, nor Goth a Faust, if Homer had been an Achilles or if Goth had been a Faust. A complete and perfect artist is to all eternity separated from the “ real,” from the actual ; on the other hand, it will be appreciated that he can at times get tired to the point of despair of this eternal “ unreality” and falseness of his innermost being - and that he then sometimes attempts to trespass on to the most forbidden ground, on reality, and attempts to have real existence. With what success? The success will be guessed - it is the typical velleity of the artist; the same velleity to which Wagner fell a victim in his old age, and for which he had to pay so dearly and so fatally (he lost thereby his most valuable friends). But after all, quite apart from this velleity, who would not wish emphatically for Wagner’s own sake that he had taken farewell of us and of his art in a different manner, not with a Parsifal, but in more victorious, more self-confident, more Wagnerian style - a style less misleading, a style less ambiguous with regard to his whole meaning, less Schopenhauerian, less Nihilistic? … s5 What, then, is the meaning of ascetic ideals? In the case of an artist we are getting to understand their meaning: Nothing at all … or so much that it is as good as nothing at all. Indeed, what is the use of them? Our artists have for a long time past not taken up a sufficiently independent attitude, either in the world or against it, to warrant their valuations and the changes in these valuations exciting interest. At all times they have played the valet of some morality, philosophy, or religion, quite apart from the fact that unfortunately they have often enough been the inordinately supple courtiers of their clients and patrons, and the inquisitive toadies of the powers that are existing, or even of the new powers to come. To put it at the lowest, they always need a rampart, a support, an already constituted authority: artists never stand by themselves, standing alone is opposed to their deepest instincts. So, for example, did Richard Wagner take, “ when the time had come,” the philosopher Schopenhauer for his covering man in front, for his rampart. Who would consider it even
thinkable, that he would have had the courage for an ascetic ideal, without the support afforded him by the philosophy of Schopenhauer, without the authority of Schopenhauer, which dominated Europe in the seventies? (This is without consideration of the question whether an artist without the milk * of an orthodoxy would have been possible at all.) This brings us to the more serious question: What is the meaning of a real philosopher paying homage to the ascetic ideal, a really self-dependent intellect like Schopenhauer, a man and knight with a glance of bronze, who has the courage to be himself, who knows how to stand alone without first waiting for men who cover him in front, and the nods of his superiors? Let us now consider at once the remarkable attitude of Schopenhauer towards art, an attitude which has even a fascination for certain types. For that is obviously the reason why Richard Wagner all at once went over to Schopenhauer (persuaded thereto, as one knows, by a poet, Herwegh), went over so completely that there ensued the cleavage of a complete theoretic contradiction between his earlier and his later aesthetic faiths - the earlier, for example, being expressed in Opera and Drama, the later in the writings which he published from 1870 onwards. In particular, Wagner from that time onwards (and this is the volte-face which alienates us the most) had no scruples about changing his judgment concerning the value and position of music itself. What did he care if up to that time he had made of music a means, a medium, a “ woman,” that in order to thrive needed an end, a man - that is, the drama? He suddenly realised that more could be effected by the novelty of the Schopenhauerian theory in majorem musicae gloriam [for the greater glory of music] - that is to say, by means of the sovereignty of music, as Schopenhauer understood it; music abstracted from and opposed to all the other arts, music as the independent art-in-itself, not like the other arts, affording reflections of the phenomenal world, but rather the language of the will itself, speaking straight out of the “ abyss” as its most personal, original, and direct manifestation. This extraordinary rise in the value of music (a rise which seemed to grow out of the Schopenhauerian philosophy) was at once accompanied by an unprecedented rise in the estimation in which the musician himself was held: he became now an oracle, a priest, nay, more than a priest, a kind of mouthpiece for the “ intrinsic essence of things,” a telephone from the other world - from henceforward he talked not only music, did this ventriloquist of God, he talked metaphysic; what wonder that one day he eventually talked ascetic ideals! s6 Schopenhauer has made use of the Kantian treatment of the aesthetic problem - though he certainly did not regard it with the Kantian eyes. Kant thought that he showed honour to art when he favoured and placed in the foreground those of the predicates of the beautiful, which constitute the honour of knowledge: impersonality and universality. This is not the place to discuss whether this was not a complete mistake; all that I wish to emphasise is that Kant, just like other philosophers, instead of envisaging the aesthetic problem from the standpoint of the experiences of the artist (the creator), has only considered art and beauty from the standpoint of the spectator, and has thereby imperceptibly imported the spectator himself into the idea of the “ beautiful”! But if only the philosophers of the beautiful had sufficient knowledge of this “ spectator”! - Knowledge of him as a great fact of personality, as a great experience, as a wealth of strong and most individual events, desires, surprises, and raptures in the sphere of beauty! But, as I feared, the contrary was always the case. And so we get from our philosophers, from the very beginning, definitions on which the lack of a subtler personal experience squats like a fat worm of crass error, as it does on Kant’s famous definition of the beautiful. “ That is beautiful,” says Kant, “ which pleases without interesting.” Without interesting! Compare this definition with this other one, made by a real “ spectator” and “ artist” - by Stendhal, who once called the beautiful a promesse de bonheur [a promise of happiness]. Here the disinterestedness [desinteressement] which Kant made the single element in the aesthetic state is clearly rejected and deleted. Who’s right, Kant or Stendhal? Naturally if our aestheticians never get tired of throwing into the scales in Kant’s favour the fact that under the magic of beauty men can look at even naked female statues “ without interest,” w T e can certainly laugh a little at their expense: - in regard to this ticklish point the experiences of artists are more “ interesting,” and at any rate Pygmalion was not necessarily an “ unaesthetic man.” Let us think all the better of the innocence of our aesthetes, reflected as it is in such arguments; let us, for instance, count to Kant’s honour the country-parson naivete of his doctrine concerning the peculiar character of the sense of touch! And here we come back to Schopenhauer, who stood in much closer neighbourhood to the arts than did Kant, and yet never escaped outside the pale of the Kantian definition; how was that? The circumstance is marvellous enough: he interprets the expression, “ without interest,” in the most personal fashion, out of an experience which must in his case have been part and parcel of his regular routine. On few subjects does Schopenhauer speak with such certainty as on the working of aesthetic contemplation: he says of it that it simply counteracts sexual interest, like lupulin and camphor; he never gets tired of glorifying this escape from the “ Life-will” as the great advantage and utility of the aesthetic state. In fact, one is tempted to ask if his fundamental conception of Will and Idea, the thought that there can only exist freedom from the “ will” by means of “ idea,” did not originate in a generalisation from this sexual experience. (In all questions concerning the Schopenhauerian philosophy, one should, by the bye, never lose sight of the consideration that it is the conception of a youth of twenty-six, so that it participates not only in what is peculiar to Schopenhauer’s life, but in what is peculiar to that special period of his life.) Let us listen, for instance, to one of the most expressive among the countless passages which he has written in honour of the aesthetic state (World as Will and Idea, i. 231); let us listen to the tone, the suffering, the happiness, the gratitude, with which such words are uttered: “ This is the painless state which Epicurus praised as the highest good and as the state of the gods; we are during that moment freed from the vile pressure of the will, we celebrate the Sabbath of the will’s hard labour, the wheel of Ixion stands still.” What vehemence of language! What images of anguish and protracted revulsion! How almost pathological is that temporal antithesis between “ that moment” and everything else, the “ wheel of Ixion,” “ the hard labour of the will,” “ the vile pressure of the will.” But granted that Schopenhauer was a hundred times right for himself personally, how does that help our insight into the nature of the beautiful? Schopenhauer has described one effect of the beautiful, - the calming of the will,- but is this effect really normal? As has been mentioned, Stendhal, an equally sensual but more happily constituted nature than Schopenhauer, gives prominence to another effect of the “ beautiful.” “ The beautiful promises happiness.” To him it is just the excitement of the will (the “ interest”) by the beauty that seems the essential fact. And does not Schopenhauer ultimately lay himself open to the objection, that he is quite wrong in regarding
himself as a Kantian on this point, that he has absolutely failed to understand in a Kantian sense the Kantian definition of the beautiful - that the beautiful pleased him as well by means of an interest, by means, in fact, of the strongest and most personal interest of all, that of the victim of torture who escapes from his torture? - And to come back again to our first question, “ What is the meaning of a philosopher paying homage to ascetic ideals?” We get now, at any rate, a first hint; he wishes to escape from a torture. s7 Let us beware of making dismal faces at the word “ torture” - there is certainly in this case enough to deduct, enough to discount - there is even something to laugh at. For we must certainly not underestimate the fact that Schopenhauer, who in practice treated sexuality as a personal enemy (including its tool, woman, that “ instrumentum diaboli” [tool of the devil]), needed enemies to keep him in a good humour; that he loved grim, bitter, blackish-green words; that he raged for the sake of raging, out of passion; that he would have grown ill, would have become a pessimist (for he was not a pessimist, however much he wished to be), without his enemies, without Hegel, woman, sensuality, and the whole “ will for existence” “ keeping on.” Without them Schopenhauer would not have “ kept on,” that is a safe wager; he would have run away: but his enemies held him fast, his enemies always enticed him back again to existence, his wrath was just as theirs was to the ancient Cynics, his balm, his recreation, his recompense, his remedy against disgust, his happiness. So much with regard to what is most personal in the case of Schopenhauer; on the other hand, there is still much which is typical in him - and only now we come back to our problem. It is an accepted and indisputable fact, so long as there are philosophers in the world, and wherever philosophers have existed (from India to England, to take the opposite poles of philosophic ability), that there exists a real irritation and rancour on the part of philosophers towards sensuality. Schopenhauer is merely the most eloquent, and if one has the ear for it, also the most fascinating and enchanting outburst. There similarly exists a real philosophic bias and affection for the whole ascetic ideal; there should be no illusions on this score. Both these feelings, as has been said, belong to the type; if a philosopher lacks both of them, then he is - you may be certain of it - never anything but a “ pseudo.” What does this mean? For this state of affairs must first be interpreted: in itself it stands there stupid to all eternity, like any “ Thing-in-itself.” Every animal, including la b�te philosophe [the philosophical beast], strives instinctively after an optimum of favourable conditions, under which he can let his whole strength have play, and achieves his maximum consciousness of power; with equal instinctiveness, and with a fine perceptive flair which is superior to any reason, every animal shudders mortally at every kind of disturbance and hindrance which obstructs or could obstruct his way to that optimum (it is not his way to happiness of which I am talking, but his way to power, to action, the most powerful action, and in point of fact in many cases his way to unhappiness) . Similarly, the philosopher shudders mortally at marriage, together with all that could persuade him to it - marriage as a fatal hindrance on the way to the optimum. Up to the present what great philosophers have been married? Heracleitus, Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant, Schopenhauer - they were not married, and, further, one cannot imagine them as married. A married philosopher belongs to comedy, that is my rule; as for that exception of a Socrates - the malicious Socrates married himself, it seems, ironically, just to prove this very rule. Every philosopher would say, as Buddha said, when the birth of a son was announced to him: “ Rahula has been born to me, a fetter has been forged for me” (Rahula means here “ a little demon”) ; there must come an hour of reflection to every “ free spirit” (granted that he has had previously an hour of thoughtlessness), just as one came once to the same Buddha: “ Narrowly cramped,” he reflected, “ is life in the house; it is a place of uncleanness; freedom is found in leaving the house.” Because he thought like this, he left the house. So many bridges to independence are shown in the ascetic ideal, that the philosopher cannot refrain from exultation and clapping of hands when he hears the history of all those resolute ones, who on one day uttered a nay to all servitude and went into some desert; even granting that they were only strong asses, and the absolute opposite of strong minds. What, then, does the ascetic ideal mean in a philosopher? This is my answer - it will have been guessed long ago: when he sees this ideal the philosopher smiles because he sees therein an optimum of the conditions of the highest and boldest intellectuality; he does not thereby deny ‘“ existence,” he rather affirms thereby his existence and only his existence, and this perhaps to the point of not being far off the blasphemous wish,perat mundus, fiat philosphia, fiat phiosophus, fiam! [let the world perish, but let philosophy exist, let the philosopher exist, let me exist] … s8 These philosophers, you see, are by no means uncorrupted witnesses and judges of the value of the ascetic ideal. They think of themselves - what is the “ saint” to them? They think of that which to them personally is most indispensable; of freedom from compulsion, disturbance, noise; freedom from business, duties, cares; of a clear head; of the dance, spring, and flight of thoughts; of good air - rare, clear, free, dry, as is the air on the heights, in which every animal creature becomes more intellectual and gains wings; they think of peace in every cellar; all the hounds neatly chained; no baying of enmity and uncouth rancour; no remorse of wounded ambition; quiet and submissive internal organs, busy as mills, but unnoticed; the heart alien, transcendent, future, posthumous - to summarise, they mean by the ascetic ideal the joyous asceticism of a deified and newly fledged animal, sweeping over life rather than resting. We know what are the three great catch- words of the ascetic ideal: poverty, humility, chastity; and now just look closely at the life of all the great fruitful inventive spirits - you will always find again and again these three qualities up to a certain extent. Not for a minute, as is self-evident, as though, perchance, they were part of their virtues - what has this type of man to do with virtues - but as the most essential and natural conditions of their best existence, their finest fruitfulness. In this connection it is quite possible that their predominant intellectualism had first to curb an unruly and irritable pride, or an insolent sensualism, or that it had all its work cut out to maintain its wish for the “ desert” against perhaps an inclination to luxury and dilettantism, or similarly against an extravagant liberality of heart and hand. But their intellect did effect all this, simply because it was the dominant instinct, which carried through its orders in the case of all the other instincts. It effects it still: if it ceased to do so, it ?would simply not be dominant. But there is not one iota of “ virtue” in all this. Further, the desert, of which I just spoke, in which the strong, independent, and well-equipped spirits retreat into their hermitage - oh, how different is it from the cultured classes’ dream of a desert! In certain cases, in fact, the cultured classes themselves are the desert. And it is certain that all the actors of the intellect
would not endure this desert for a minute. It is nothing like romantic and Syrian enough for them, nothing like enough of a stage desert! Here as well there are plenty of asses, but at this point the resemblance ceases. But a desert nowadays is something like this - perhaps a deliberate obscurity; a getting-out-of the way of one’s self; a fear of noise, admiration, papers, influence; a little office, a daily task, something that hides rather than brings to light; sometimes associating with harmless, cheerful beasts and fowls, the sight of which refreshes; a mountain for company, but not a dead one, one with eyes (that is, with lakes) ; in certain cases even a room in a crowded hotel where one can reckon on not being recognised, and on being able to talk with impunity to every one: here is the desert - oh, it is lonely enough, believe me! I grant that when Heracleitus retreated to the courts and cloisters of the colossal temple of Artemis, that “ wilderness” was worthier; why do we lack such temples? (perchance we do not lack them: I just think of my splendid study in the Piazza di San Marco, in spring, of course, and in the morning, between ten and twelve). But that which Heracleitus shunned is still just what we too avoid nowadays: the noise and democratic babble of the Ephesians, their politics, their news from the “ empire” (I mean, of course, Persia), their market-trade in “ the things of today” - for there is one thing from which we philosophers especially need a rest - from the things of “ today.” We honour the silent, the cold, the noble, the far, the past, everything, in fact, at the sight of which the soul is not bound to brace itself up and defend itself - something with which one can speak without speaking aloud. Just listen now to the tone a spirit has when it speaks; every spirit has its own tone and loves its own tone. That thing yonder, for instance, is bound to be an agitator, that is, a hollow head, a hollow mug: whatever may go into him, everything comes back from him dull and thick, heavy with the echo of the great void. That spirit yonder nearly always speaks hoarse: has he, perchance, thought himself hoarse? It may be so - ask the physiologists - but he who thinks in words, thinks as a speaker and not as a thinker (it shows that he does not think of objects or think objectively, but only of his relations with objects - that, in point of fact, he only thinks of himself and his audience). This third one speaks aggressively, he comes too near our body, his breath blows on us we shut our mouth involuntarily, although he speaks to us through a book: the tone of his style supplies the reason - he has no time, he has small faith in himself, he finds expression now or never. But a spirit who is sure of himself speaks softly; he seeks secrecy, he lets himself be awaited. A philosopher is recognised by the fact that he shuns three brilliant and noisy things - fame, princes, and women: which is not to say that they do not come to him. He shuns every glaring light: therefore he shuns his time and its “ daylight.” Therein he is as a shadow; the deeper sinks the sun, the greater grows the shadow. As for his humility, he endures, as he endures darkness, a certain dependence and obscurity: further, he is afraid of the shock of lightning, he shudders at the insecurity of a tree which is too isolated and too exposed, on which every storm vents its temper, every temper its storm. His “ maternal” instinct, his secret love for that which grows in him, guides him into states where he is relieved from the necessity of taking care of himself, in the same way in which the “ mother” instinct in woman has thoroughly maintained up to the present woman’s dependent position. After all, they demand little enough, do these philosophers, their favourite motto is, “ He who possesses is possessed.” All this is not, as I must say again and again, to be attributed to a virtue, to a meritorious wish for moderation and simplicity: but because their supreme lord so demands of them, demands wisely and inexorably; their lord who is eager only for one thing, for which alone he musters, and for which alone he hoards everything time, strength, love, interest. This kind of man likes not to be disturbed by enmity, he likes not to be disturbed by friendship, it is a type which forgets or despises easily. It strikes him as bad form to play the martyr, “ to suffer for truth” - he leaves all that to the ambitious and to the stage-heroes of the intellect, and to all those, in fact, who have time enough for such luxuries (they themselves, the philosophers, have something to do for truth). They make a sparing use of big words; they are said to be adverse to the word “ truth” itself: it has a “ high falutin’ ” ring. Finally, as far as the chastity of philosophers is concerned, the fruitfulness of this type of mind is manifestly in another sphere than that of children; perchance in some other sphere, too, they have the survival of their name, their little immortality (philosophers in ancient India would express themselves with still greater boldness: “ Of what use is posterity to him whose soul is the world?”). In this attitude there is not a trace of chastity, by reason of any ascetic scruple or hatred of the flesh, any more than it is chastity for an athlete or a jockey to abstain from women; it is rather the will of the dominant instinct, at any rate, during the period of their advanced philosophic pregnancy. Every artist knows the harm done by sexual intercourse on occasions of great mental strain and preparation; as far as the strongest artists and those with the surest instincts are concerned, this is not necessarily a case of experience - hard experience - but it is simply their “ maternal” instinct which, in order to benefit the growing work, disposes recklessly (beyond all its normal stocks and supplies) of the vigour of its animal life; the greater power then absorbs the lesser. Let us now apply this interpretation to gauge correctly the case of Schopenhauer, which we have already mentioned: in his case, the sight of the beautiful acted manifestly like a resolving irritant on the chief power of his nature (the power of contemplation and of intense penetration) ; so that this strength exploded and became suddenly master of his consciousness. But this by no means excludes the possibility of that particular sweetness and fullness, which is peculiar to the aesthetic state, springing directly from the ingredient of sensuality (just as that “ idealism” which is peculiar to girls at puberty originates in the same source) it may be, consequently, that sensuality is not removed by the approach of the aesthetic state, as Schopenhauer believed, but merely becomes transfigured, and ceases to enter into the consciousness as sexual excitement. (I shall return once again to this point in connection with the more delicate problems of the physiology of the (esthetic, a subject which up to the present has been singularly untouched and unelucidated.) s9 A certain asceticism, a grimly gay wholehearted renunciation, is, as we have seen, one of the most favourable conditions for the highest intellectualism, and, consequently, for the most natural corollaries of such intellectualism: we shall therefore be proof against any surprise at the philosophers in particular always treating the ascetic ideal with a certain amount of predilection. A serious historical investigation shows the bond between the ascetic ideal and philosophy to be still much tighter and still much stronger. It may be said that it was only in the leading strings of this ideal that philosophy really learnt to make its first steps and baby paces - alas how clumsily, alas how crossly, alas how ready to tumble down and lie on its stomach was this shy little darling of a brat with its bandy legs! The early history of philosophy is like that of all good things; - for a long time they had not the courage to
be themselves, they kept always looking round to see if no one would come to their help; further, they were afraid of all who looked at them. Just enumerate in order the particular tendencies and virtues of the philosopher- his tendency to doubt, his tendency to deny, his tendency to wait (the “ ephectic” desire), his tendency to analyse, search, explore, dare, his tendency to compare and to equalise, his will to be neutral and objective, his will for everything which is “ sine ira et studio” [without anger and partiality]: has it yet been realised that for quite a lengthy period these tendencies went counter to the first claims of morality and conscience? (To say nothing at all of Reason, which even Luther liked to call Mrs. Clever, the Clever Whore.) Has it been yet appreciated that a philosopher, in the event of his arriving at self-consciousness, must needs feel himself an incarnate “ nitimur in vetitum” [we search for what’s forbidden],- and consequently guard himself against “ his own sensations,” against self -consciousness? It is, I repeat, just the same with all good things, on which we now pride ourselves; even judged by the standard of the ancient Greeks, our whole modern life, in so far as it is not weakness, but power and the consciousness of power, appears pure “ Hubris” and godlessness: for the things which are the very reverse of those which we honour today, have had for a long time conscience on their side, and God as their guardian. “ Hubris” is our whole attitude to nature nowadays, our violation of nature with the help of machinery, and all the unscrupulous ingenuity of our scientists and engineers. “ Hubris” is our attitude to God, that is, to some alleged teleological and ethical spider behind the meshes of the great trap of the causal web. Like Charles the Bold in his war with Louis the Eleventh, we may say, “ Je combats l’universealle araignee” [I am fighting the universal spider]; our attitude to ourselves is hubris, - for we experiment with ourselves in a way that we would not allow with any animal, and with pleasure and curiosity open our soul in our living body: what matters now to us the “ salvation” of the soul? We heal ourselves afterwards: being ill is instructive, we doubt it not, even more instructive than being well - inoculators of disease seem to us today even more necessary than any medicinemen and “ saviours.” There is no doubt we do violence to ourselves nowadays.-, we crackers of the soul’s kernel, we incarnate riddles, who are ever asking riddles, as though life were naught else than the cracking of a nut; and even thereby must we necessarily become day by day more and more worthy to be asked questions and worthy to ask them, even thereby do we perchance also become worthier to - live? … All good things were once bad thins;?: from every original sin has grown an original virtue. Marriage, for example, seemed for a long time a sin against the rights of the community ; a man formerly paid a fine for the insolence of claiming one woman to himself (to this phase belongs, for instance, the jus primae noctis [the right of the first night], today still in Cambodia the privilege of the priest, that guardian of the “ good old customs”). The soft, benevolent, yielding, sympathetic feelings eventually valued so highly that they almost became “ intrinsic values,” were for a very long time actually despised by their possessors: gentleness was then a subject for shame, just as hardness is now (compare Beyond Good and Evil, Aph. 260). The submission to law: oh, with what qualms of conscience was it that the noble races throughout the world renounced the vendetta and gave the law power over themselves! Law was long a vetitum [something prohibited], a blasphemy, an innovation; it was introduced with force like a force, to which men only submitted with a sense of personal shame. Every tiny step forward in the world was formerly made at the cost of mental and physical torture. Nowadays the whole of this point of view - “ that not only stepping forward, nay, stepping at all, movement, change, all needed their countless martyrs,” rings in our ears quite strangely. I have put it forward in the Dawn of Day, Aph. 18. “ Nothing is purchased more dearly,” says the same book a little later, “ than the modicum of human reason and freedom which is now our pride. But that pride is the reason why it is now almost impossible for us to feel in sympathy with those immense periods of the ‘Morality of Custom,’ which lie at the beginning of the ‘world’s history,’ constituting as they do the real decisive historical principle which has fixed the character of humanity; those periods, I repeat, when throughout the world suffering passed for virtue, cruelty for virtue, deceit for virtue, revenge for virtue, repudiation of the reason for virtue; and when, conversely, well-being passed current for danger, the desire for knowledge for danger, pity for danger, peace for danger, being pitied for shame, work for shame, madness for divinity, and change for immorality and incarnate corruption!” s10 There is in the same book, Aph. 12, an explanation of the burden of unpopularity under which the earliest race of contemplative men had to live - despised almost as widely as they were first feared! Contemplation first appeared on earth in a disguised shape, in an ambiguous form, with an evil heart and often with an uneasy head: there is no doubt about it. The inactive, brooding, un-warlike element in the instincts of contemplative men long invested them with a cloud of suspicion: the only way to combat this was to excite a definite fear. And the old Brahmans, for example, knew to a nicety how to do this! The oldest philosophers were well versed in giving to their very existence and appearance, meaning, firmness, background, by reason whereof men learnt to fear them; considered more precisely, they did this from an even more fundamental need, the need of inspiring in themselves fear and self-reverence. For they found even in their own souls all the valuations turned against themselves; they had to fight down every kind of suspicion and antagonism against “ the philosophic element in themselves.” Being men of a terrible age, they did this with terrible means: cruelty to themselves, ingenious self-mortification - this was the chief method of these ambitious hermits and intellectual revolutionaries, who were obliged to force down the gods and the traditions of their own soul, so as to enable themselves to believe in their own revolution. I remember the famous story of the King Vishvamitra, who, as the result of a thousand years of self-martyrdom, reached such a consciousness of power and such a confidence in himself that he undertook to build a new heaven: the sinister symbol of the oldest and newest history of philosophy in the whole world. everyone who has ever built anywhere a “ new heaven” first found the power thereto in his own hell… . Let us compress the facts into a short formula. The philosophic spirit had, in order to be possible to any extent at all, to masquerade and disguise itself as one of the previously fixed types of the contemplative man, to disguise itself as priest, wizard, soothsayer, as a religious man generally: the ascetic ideal has for a long time served the philosopher as a superficial form, as a condition which enabled him to exist. … To be able to be a philosopher he had to exemplify the ideal; to exemplify it, he was bound to believe in it. The peculiarly etherealised abstraction of philosophers, with their negation of the world, their enmity to life, their disbelief in the senses, which has been maintained up to the most recent time, and has almost thereby come to be accepted as the ideal philosophic attitude - this abstraction is the result of those enforced conditions under which philosophy came into existence, and continued to exist; inasmuch as for quite a very long time philosophy would have been
absolutely impossible in the world without an ascetic cloak and dress, without an ascetic self-misunderstanding. Expressed plainly and palpably, the ascetic priest has taken the repulsive and sinister form of the caterpillar, beneath which and behind which alone philosophy could live and slink about… . Has all that really changed? Has that flamboyant and dangerous winged creature, that “ spirit” which that caterpillar concealed within itself, has it, I say, thanks to a sunnier, warmer, lighter world, really and finally flung off its hood and escaped into the light? Can we today point to enough pride, enough daring, enough courage, enough self-confidence, enough mental will, enough will for responsibility, enough freedom of the will, to enable the philosopher to be now in the world really - possible? s11 And now, after we have caught sight of the ascetic priest, let us tackle our problem. What is the meaning of the ascetic ideal? It now first becomes serious - vitally serious. We are now confronted with the real representatives of the serious. “ What is the meaning of all seriousness?” This even more radical question is perchance already on the tip of our tongue: a question, fairly, for physiologists, but which we for the time being skip. In that ideal the ascetic priest finds not only his faith, but also his will, his power, his interest. His right to existence stands and falls with that ideal. What wonder that we here run up against a terrible opponent (on the supposition, of course, that we are the opponents of that ideal), an opponent fighting for his life against those who repudiate that ideal! … On the other hand, it is from the outset improbable that such a biased attitude towards our problem will do him any particular good; the ascetic priest himself will scarcely prove the happiest champion of his own ideal (on the same principle on which a woman usually fails when she wishes to champion “ woman”) - let alone proving the most objective critic and judge of the controversy now raised. We shall therefore - so much is already obvious - rather have actually to help him to defend himself properly against ourselves, than we shall have to fear being too well beaten by him. The idea, which is the subject of this dispute, is the value of our life from the standpoint of the ascetic priests: this life, then (together with the whole of which it is a part, “ Nature,” “ the world,” the whole sphere of becoming and passing away), is placed by them in relation to an existence of quite another character, which it excludes and to which it is opposed, unless it deny its own self: in this case, the case of an ascetic life, life is taken as a bridge to another existence. The ascetic treats life as a maze, in which one must walk backwards till one comes to the place where it starts; or he treats it as an error which one may, nay must, refute by action: for he demands that he should be followed; he enforces, where he can, his valuation of existence. What does this mean? Such a monstrous valuation is not an exceptional case, or a curiosity recorded in human history: it is one of the most general and persistent facts that there are. The reading from the vantage of a distant star of the capital letters of our earthly life, would perchance lead to the conclusion that the earth was the especially ascetic planet, a den of discontented, arrogant, and repulsive creatures, who never got rid of a deep disgust of themselves, of the world, of all life, and did themselves as much hurt as possible out of pleasure in hurting - presumably their one and only pleasure. Let us consider how regularly, how universally, how practically at every single period the ascetic priest puts in his appearance: he belongs to no particular race; he thrives everywhere; he grows out of all classes. Not that he perhaps bred this valuation by heredity and propagated it - the contrary is the case. It must be a necessity of the first order which makes this species, hostile, as it is, to life, always grow again and always thrive again. - Life itself must certainly have an interest in the continuance of such a type of selfcontradiction. For an ascetic life is a self-contradiction: here rules resentment without parallel, the resentment of an insatiate instinct and ambition, that would be master, not over some element in life, but over life itself, over life’s deepest, strongest, innermost conditions; here is an attempt made to utilise power to dam the sources of power; here does the green eye of jealousy turn even against physiological well-being, especially against the expression of such well-being, beauty, joy, while a sense of pleasure is experienced and sought in abortion, in decay, in pain, in misfortune, in ugliness, in voluntary punishment, in the exercising, flagellation, and sacrifice of the self. All this is in the highest degree paradoxical: we are here confronted with a rift that wills itself to be a rift, which enjoys itself in this very suffering, and even becomes more and more certain of itself, more and more triumphant, in proportion as its own presupposition, physiological vitality, decreases. “ The triumph just in the supreme agony”: under this extravagant emblem did the ascetic ideal fight from of old; in this mystery of seduction, in this picture of rapture and torture, it recognised its brightest light, its salvation, its final victory. Crux, nux, lux [cross, nut, light]- it has all these three in one. s12 Granted that such an incarnate will for contradiction and unnaturalness is induced to philosophise; on what will it vent its pet caprice? On that which has been felt with the greatest certainty to be true, to be real; it will look for error in those very places where the life instinct fixes truth with the greatest positiveness. It will, for instance, after the example of the ascetics of the Vedanta Philosophy, reduce matter to an illusion, and similarly treat pain, multiplicity, the whole logical contrast of “ Subject” and “ Object” - errors, nothing but errors! To renounce the belief in one’s own ego, to deny to one’s self one’s own “ reality” - what a triumph! and here already we have a much higher kind of triumph, which is not merely a triumph over the senses, over the palpable, but an infliction of violence and cruelty on reason; and this ecstasy culminates in the ascetic self-contempt, the ascetic scorn of one’s own reason making this decree: there is a domain of truth and of life, but reason is specially excluded from there. … By the bye, even in the Kantian idea of “ the intelligible character of things” there remains a trace of that schism, so dear to the heart of the ascetic, that schism which likes to turn reason against reason; in fact, “ intelligible character” means in Kant a kind of quality in things of which the intellect comprehends so much, that for it, the intellect, it is absolutely incomprehensible. After all, let us, in our character of knowers, not be ungrateful towards such determined reversals of the ordinary perspectives and values, with which the mind had for too long raged against itself with an apparently futile sacrilege! In the same way the very seeing of another vista, the very wishing to see another vista, is no little training and preparation of the intellect for its eternal “ Objectivity” objectivity being understood not as “ contemplation without interest” (for that is inconceivable and nonsensical), but as the ability to have the pros and cons in one’s power and to switch them on and off, so as to get to know how to utilise, for the advancement of knowledge, the difference in the perspective and in the emotional interpretations. But let us,
indeed, my philosophic colleagues, henceforward guard ourselves more carefully against this mythology of dangerous ancient ideas, which has set up a “ pure, will-less, painless, timeless subject of knowledge”; let us guard ourselves from the tentacles of such contradictory ideas as “ pure reason,” “ absolute spirituality,” “ knowledge-in-itself”: - in these theories an eye that cannot be thought of is required to think, an eye which ex hypothesi has no direction at all, an eye in which the active and interpreting functions are cramped, are absent; those functions, I say, by means of which “ abstract” seeing first became seeing something; in these theories consequently the absurd and the nonsensical is always demanded of the eye. There is only a seeing from a perspective, only a “ knowing” from a perspective, and the more emotions we express over a thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we train on the same thing, the more complete will be our “ idea” of that thing, our “ objectivity.” But the elimination of the will altogether, the switching off of the emotions all and sundry, granted that we could do so, what! would not that be called intellectual castration? s13 But let us turn back. Such a self-contradiction, as apparently manifests itself among the ascetics, “ Life turned against Life,” is - so much is absolutely obvious - from the physiological and not now from the psychological standpoint, simply nonsense. It can only be an apparent contradiction; it must be a kind of provisional expression, an explanation, a formula, an adjustment, a psychological misunderstanding of something, whose real nature could not be understood for a long time, and whose real essence could not be described; a mere word jammed into an old gap of human knowledge. To put briefly the facts against its being real: the ascetic ideal springs from the prophylactic and self-preservative instincts which mark a decadent life, which seeks by every means in its power to maintain its position and fight for its existence; it points to a partial physiological depression and exhaustion, against which the most profound and intact life-instincts fight ceaselessly with new weapons and discoveries. The ascetic ideal is such a weapon: its position is consequently exactly the reverse of that which the worshippers of the ideal imagine - life struggles in it and through it with death and against death; the ascetic ideal is a dodge for the preservation of life. An important fact is brought out in the extent to which, as history teaches, this ideal could rule and exercise power over man, especially in all those places where the civilisation and taming of man was completed: that fact is, the diseased state of man up to the present, at any rate, of the man who has been tamed, the physiological struggle of man with death (more precisely, with the disgust with life, with exhaustion, with the wish for the “ end”). The ascetic priest is the incarnate wish for an existence of another kind, an existence on another plane, - he is, in fact, the highest point of this wish, its official ecstasy and passion: but it is the very power of this wish which is the fetter that binds him here; it is just that which makes him into a tool that must labour to create more favourable conditions for earthly existence, for existence on the human plane - it is with this very power that he keeps the whole herd of failures, distortions, abortions, unfortunates, sufferers from themselves of every kind, fast to existence, while he as the herdsman goes instinctively on in front. You understand me already: this ascetic priest, this apparent enemy of life, this denier - he actually belongs to the really great conservative and affirmative forces of life… . What does it come from, this diseased state? For man is more diseased, more uncertain, more changeable, more unstable than any other animal, there is no doubt of it - he is the diseased animal : what does it spring from? Certainly he has also dared, innovated, braved more, challenged fate more than all the other animals put together; he, the great experimenter with himself, the unsatisfied, the insatiate, who struggles for the supreme mastery with beast, Nature, and gods, he, the as yet ever uncompelled, the ever future, who finds no more any rest from his own aggressive strength, goaded inexorably on by the spur of the future dug into the flesh of the present: - how should not so brave and rich an animal also be the most endangered, the animal with the longest and deepest sickness among all sick animals?… Man is sick of it, oft enough there are whole epidemics of this satiety (as about 1348, the time of the Dance of Death) : but even this very nausea, this tiredness, this disgust with himself, all this is discharged from him with such force that it is immediately made into a new fetter. His “ nay,” which he utters to life, brings to light as though by magic an abundance of graceful “ yeas”; even when he wounds himself, this master of destruction, of self-destruction, it is subsequently the wound itself that forces him to live. s14 The more normal is this sickliness in man - and we cannot dispute this normality - the higher honour should be paid to the rare cases of psychical and physical powerfulness, the windfalls of humanity, and the more strictly should the sound be guarded from that worst of air, the air of the sickroom. Is that done? The sick are the greatest danger for the healthy; it is not from the strongest that harm comes to the strong, but from the weakest. Is that known? Broadly considered, it is not for a minute the fear of man, whose diminution should be wished for; for this fear forces the strong to be strong, to be at times terrible- it preserves in its integrity the sound type of man. What is to be feared, what does work with a fatality found in no other fate, is not the great fear of, but the great nausea with, man; and equally so the great pity for man. Supposing that both these things were one day to espouse each other, then inevitably the maximum of monstrousness would immediately come into the world - the “ last will” of man, his will for nothingness, Nihilism. And, in sooth, the way is well paved thereto. He who not only has his nose to smell with, but also has eyes and ears, he sniffs almost wherever he goes today an air something like that of a mad-house, the air of a hospital - I am speaking, as stands to reason, of the cultured areas of mankind, of every kind of “ Europe” that there is in fact in the world. The sick are the great danger of man, not the evil, not the “ beasts of prey.” They who are from the outset botched, oppressed, broken, those are they, the weakest are they, who most undermine the life beneath the feet of man, who instill the most dangerous venom and skepticism into our trust in life, in man, in ourselves. Where shall we escape from it, from that covert look (from which we carry away a deep sadness), from that averted look of him who is misborn from the beginning, that look which betrays what such a man says to himself - that look which is a groan? “ Would that I were something else,” so groans this look, “ but there is no hope. I am what I am: how could I get away from myself? And, verily - / am sick of myself!” On such a soil of self-contempt, a veritable swamp soil, grows that weed, that poisonous growth, and all so tiny. so hidden, so ignoble, so sugary. Here teem the worms of revenge and vindictiveness; here the air reeks of things secret and unmentionable; here is ever spun the net of the most malignant conspiracy - the conspiracy of the sufferers against the sound and
the victorious; here is the sight of the victorious hated. And what lying so as not to acknowledge this hate as hate! What a show of big words and attitudes, what an art of “ righteous” calumniation! These abortions! what a noble eloquence gushes from their lips! What an amount of sugary, slimy, humble submission oozes in their eyes! What do they really want? At any rate to represent righteousness, love, wisdom, superiority, that is the ambition of these “ lowest ones,” these sick ones! And how clever does such an ambition make them! You cannot, in fact, but admire the counterfeiter dexterity with which the stamp of virtue, even the ring, the golden ring of virtue, is here imitated. They have taken a lease of virtue absolutely for themselves, have these weaklings and wretched invalids, there is no doubt of it; “ We alone are the good, the righteous,” so do they speak, “ we alone are the homines bonae voluntatis [men of good will].” They stalk about in our midst as living reproaches, as warnings to us - as though health, fitness, strength, pride, the sensation of power, were really vicious things in themselves, for which one would have some day to do penance, bitter penance. Oh, how they themselves are ready in their hearts to exact penance, how they thirst after being hangmen! Among them is an abundance of revengeful ones disguised as judges, who ever mouth the word righteousness like a venomous spittle - with mouth, I say, always pursed, always ready to spit at everything, which does not wear a discontented look, but is of good cheer as it goes on its way. Among them, again, is that most loathsome species of the vain, the lying abortions, who make a point of representing “ beautiful souls,” and perchance of bringing to the market as “ purity of heart” their distorted sensualism swathed in verses and other bandages; the species of “ self-comforters” and masturbators of their own souls. The sick man’s will to represent some form or other of superiority, his instinct for crooked paths, which lead to a tyranny over the healthy - where can it not be found, this will to power of the very weakest? The sick woman especially: no one surpasses her in refinements for ruling, oppressing, tyrannising. The sick woman, moreover, spares nothing living, nothing dead; she grubs up again the most buried things (the Bogos say, “ Woman is a hyena”). Look into the background of every family, of every body, of every community: everywhere the fight of the sick against the healthy - a silent fight for the most part with minute poisoned powders, with pin-pricks, with spiteful grimaces of patience, but also at times with that diseased practices of the Pharisees of pure pantomime, which plays for the choice role of “ righteous indignation.” Right into the hallowed chambers of knowledge can it make itself heard, can this hoarse yelping of sick hounds, this, rabid lying and frenzy of such “ noble” Pharisees (I remind readers, who have ears, once more of that Berlin apostle of revenge, Eugen Duhring, who makes most disreputable and revolting use in all present-day Germany of moral refuse; Duhring, the paramount moral blusterer that there is today, even among his own kidney, the Anti-Semites). They are all men of resentment, are these physiological distortions and worm-riddled objects, a whole quivering kingdom of burrowing revenge, indefatigable and insatiable in its out-bursts against the happy, and equally so in disguises for revenge, in pretexts for revenge: when will they really reach their final, fondest, most sublime triumph of revenge? At that time, doubtless, when they succeed in pushing their own misery, in fact, all misery, into the consciousness of the happy: so that the latter begin one day to be ashamed of their happiness, and perchance say to themselves when they meet, “ It is a shame to be happy; there is too much misery!” … But there could not possibly be a greater and more fatal misunderstanding than that of the happy, the fit, the strong in body and soul, beginning in this way to doubt their right to happiness. Away with this “ perverse world”! Away with this shameful soddenness of sentiment! Preventing the sick making the healthy sick - for that is what such a soddenness comes to - this ought to be our supreme object in the world - but for this it is above all essential that the healthy should remain separated from the sick, that they should even guard themselves from the look of the sick, that they should not even associate with the sick. Or may it, perchance, be their mission to be nurses or doctors? But they could not mistake and disown their mission more grossly - the higher must not degrade itself to be the tool of the lower, the pathos of distance must to all eternity keep their missions also separate. The right of the happy to existence, the right of bells with a full tone over the discordant cracked bells, is verily a thousand times greater: they alone are the sureties of the future, they alone are bound to man’s future. What they can, what they must do, that can the sick never do, should never do! but if they are to be enabled to do what only they must do, how can they possibly be free to play the doctor, the comforter, the “ Saviour” of the sick?, . . And therefore good air! good air! and away, at any rate, from the neighbourhood of all the madhouses and hospitals of civilisation! And therefore good company, our own company, or solitude, if it must be so! but away, at any rate, from the evil fumes of internal corruption and the secret worm-eaten state of the sick! that, in truth, my friends, we may defend ourselves, at any rate for still a time, against the two worst plagues that could have been reserved for us - against the great nausea with man! against the great pity for man! s15 If you have understood in all their depths - and I demand that you should grasp them profoundly and understand them profoundly - the reasons for the impossibility of its being the business of the healthy to nurse the sick, to make the sick healthy, it follows that you have grasped this further necessity - the necessity of doctors and nurses who themselves are sick. And now we have and hold with both our hands the essence of the ascetic priest. The ascetic priest must be accepted by us as the predestined saviour, herdsman, and champion of the sick herd: thereby do we first understand his awful historic mission. The lordship over sufferers is his kingdom, to that points his instinct, in that he finds his own special art, his master-skill, his kind of happiness. He must himself be sick, he must be kith and kin to the sick and the abortions so as to understand them, so as to arrive at an understanding with them; but he must also be strong, even more master of himself than of others, impregnable, in truth, in his will for power, so as to acquire the trust and the awe of the weak, so that he can be their hold, bulwark, prop, compulsion, overseer, tyrant, god. He has to protect them, protect his herds - against whom? Against the healthy, doubtless also against the envy towards the healthy. He must be the natural adversary and scorner of every rough, stormy, reinless, hard, violently-predatory health and power. The priest is the first form of the more delicate animal that scorns more easily than it hates. He will not be spared the waging of war with the beasts of prey, a war of guile (of “ spirit”) rather than of force, as is selfevident - he will in certain cases find it necessary to conjure up out of himself, or at any rate to represent practically a new type of the beast of prey - a new animal monstrosity in which the polar bear, the supple, cold, crouching panther, and, not least important, the fox, are joined together in a trinity as fascinating as it is fearsome. If necessity exacts it, then will he come on the scene with bearish seriousness, venerable, wise, cold, full of treacherous superiority, as the herald and mouthpiece of mysterious powers, sometimes going among
even the other kind of beasts of prey, determined as he is to sow on their soil, wherever he can, suffering, discord, self-contradiction, and only too sure of his art, always to be lord of sufferers at all times. He brings with him, doubtless, salve and balsam; but before he can play the physician he must first wound; so, while he soothes the pain which the wound makes, he at the same time poisons the wound. Well versed is he in this above all things, is this wizard and wild beast tamer, in whose vicinity everything healthy must needs become ill, and everything ill must needs become tame. He protects, in sooth, his sick herd well enough, does this strange herdsman; he protects them also against themselves, against the sparks (even in the centre of the herd) of wickedness, knavery, malice, and all the other ills that the plaguey and the sick are heir to; he fights with cunning, hardness, and stealth against anarchy and against the ever imminent break-up inside the herd, where resentment, that most dangerous blasting-stuff and explosive, ever accumulates and accumulates. Getting rid of this blasting-stuff in such a way that it does not blow up the herd and the herdsman, that is his real feat, his supreme utility; if you wish to comprise in the shortest formula the value of the priestly life, it would be correct to say the priest is the diverter of the course of resentment. Every sufferer, in fact, searches instinctively for a cause of his suffering; to put it more exactly, a doer, - to put it still more precisely, a sentient responsible doer, - in brief, something living, on which, either actually or in effigy, he can on any pretext vent his emotions. For the venting of emotions is the sufferer’s greatest attempt at alleviation, that is to say, stupefaction, his mechanically desired narcotic against pain of any kind. It is in this phenomenon alone that is found, according to my judgment, the real physiological cause of resentment, revenge, and their family is to be found - that is, in a demand for the deadening of pain through emotion: this cause is generally, but in my view very erroneously, looked for in the defensive parry of a bare protective principle of reaction, of a “ reflex movement” in the case of any sudden hurt and danger, after the manner that a decapitated frog still moves in order to get away from a corrosive acid. But the difference is fundamental. In one case the object is to prevent being hurt any more; in the other case the object is to deaden a racking, insidious, nearly unbearable pain by a more violent emotion of any kind whatsoever, and at any rate for the time being to drive it out of the consciousness- for this purpose an emotion is needed, as wild an emotion as possible, and to excite that emotion some excuse or other is needed. “ It must be somebody’s fault that I feel bad” - this kind of reasoning is peculiar to all invalids, and is but the more pronounced, the more ignorant they remain of the real cause of their feeling bad, the physiological cause (the cause may lie in a disease of the nervous sympathicus, or in an excessive secretion of bile, or in a want of sulphate and phosphate of potash in the blood, or in pressure in the bowels which stops the circulation of the blood, or in degeneration of the ovaries, and so forth). All sufferers have an awful resourcefulness and ingenuity in finding excuses for painful emotions; they even enjoy their jealousy, their broodings over base actions and apparent injuries, they burrow through the intestines of their past and present in their search for obscure mysteries, wherein they will be at liberty to wallow in a torturing suspicion and get drunk on the venom of their own malice - they tear open the oldest wounds, they make themselves bleed from the scars which have long been healed, they make evil-doers out of friends, wife, child, and everything which is nearest to them. “ I suffer: it must be somebody’s fault” - so thinks every sick sheep. But his herdsman, the ascetic priest, says to him, “ Quite so, my sheep, it must be the fault of some one; but thou thyself art that same one, it is all the fault of thyself alone - it is* the fault of thyself alone against thyself”: that is bold enough, false enough, but one thing is at least attained; thereby, as I have said, the course of resentment is - diverted. s16 You can see now what the remedial instinct of life has at least tried to effect, according to my conception, through the ascetic priest, and the purpose for which he had to employ a temporary tyranny of such paradoxical and anomalous ideas as “ guilt,” “ sin,” “ sinfulness,” “ corruption,” “ damnation.” What was done was to make the sick harmless up to a certain point, to destroy the incurable by means of themselves, to turn the milder cases severely on to themselves, to give their resentment a backward direction (“ man needs but one thing”), and to exploit similarly the bad instincts of all sufferers with a view to self-discipline, self-surveillance, self-mastery. It is obvious that there can be no question at all in the case of a “ medication” of this kind, a mere emotional medication, of any real healing of the sick in the physiological sense; it cannot even for a moment be asserted that in this connection the instinct of life has taken healing as its goal and purpose. On the one hand, a kind of congestion and organisation of the sick (the word “ Church” is the most popular name for it) ; on the other, a kind of provisional safeguarding of the comparatively healthy, the more perfect specimens, the cleavage of a rift between healthy and sick - for a long time that was all! and it was much! it was very much! I am proceeding, as you see, in this essay, from an hypothesis which, as far as such readers as I want are concerned, does not require to be proved; the hypothesis that “ sinfulness” in man is not an actual fact, but rather merely the interpretation of a fact, of a physiological discomfort, - a discomfort seen through a moral religious perspective which is no longer binding upon us. The fact, therefore, that anyone feels “ guilty,” “ sinful,” is certainly not yet any proof that he is right in feeling so, any more than anyone is healthy simply because he feels healthy. Remember the celebrated witch-ordeals: in those days the most acute and humane judges had no doubt but that in these cases they were confronted with guilt, - the “ witches” themselves had no doubt on the point, - and yet the guilt was lacking. Let me elaborate this hypothesis: I do not for a minute accept the very “ pain in the soul” as a real fact, but only as an explanation (a casual explanation) of facts that could not hitherto be precisely formulated; I regard it therefore as something as yet absolutely in the air and devoid of scientific cogency - just a nice fat word in the place of a lean note of interrogation. When anyone fails to get rid of this “ pain in the soul,” the cause is, speaking crudely, to be found not in his “ soul” but more probably in his stomach (speaking crudely, I repeat, but by no means wishing thereby that you should listen to me or understand me in a crude spirit). A strong and well-constituted man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds all included) just as he digests his meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow. If he fails to “ relieve himself” of an experience, this kind of indigestion is quite as much physiological as the other indigestion - and indeed, in more ways than one, simply one of the results of the other. With such an view, a person can, just between ourselves, still remain the strongest opponent of materialism. s17 But is he really a physician, this ascetic priest? We already understand why we are scarcely allowed to call him a physician, however much he likes to feel a “ saviour” and let
himself be worshipped as a saviour. It is only the actual suffering, the discomfort of the sufferer, which he combats, not its cause, not the actual state of sickness - this needs must constitute our most radical objection to priestly medication. But just once put yourself into that point of view, of which the priests have a monopoly, you will find it hard to exhaust your amazement, at what from that standpoint he has completely seen, sought, and found. The mitigation of suffering, every kind of “ consoling” - all this manifests itself as his very genius: with what ingenuity has he interpreted his mission of consoler, with what aplomb and audacity has he chosen weapons necessary for the part. Christianity in particular should be dubbed a great treasure-chamber of ingenious consolations, - such a store of refreshing, soothing, deadening drugs has it accumulated within itself; so many of the most dangerous and daring expedients has it hazarded; with such subtlety, refinement. Oriental refinement, has it divined what emotional stimulants can conquer, at any rate for a time, the deep depression, the leaden fatigue, the black melancholy of physiological cripples - for, speaking generally, all religions are mainly concerned with fighting a certain fatigue and heaviness that has infected everything. You can regard it as prima facie probable that in certain places in the world there was almost bound to prevail from time to time among large masses of the population a sense of physiological depression, which, however, owing to their lack of physiological knowledge, did not appear to their consciousness as such, so that consequently its “ cause” and its cure can only be sought and essayed in the science of moral psychology (this, in fact, is my most general formula for what is generally called a “ religion”). Such a feeling of depression can have the most diverse origins; it may be the result of the crossing of too heterogeneous races (or of classes- genealogical and racial differences are also brought out in the classes: the European “ Weltschmerz,” the “ Pessimism” of the nineteenth century, is really the result of an absurd and sudden class-mixture) ; it may be brought about by a mistaken emigration - a race falling into a climate for which its power of adaptation is insufficient (the case of the Indians in India) ; it may be the effect of old age and fatigue (the Parisian pessimism from 1850 onwards) ; it may be a wrong diet (the alcoholism of the Middle Ages, the nonsense of vegetarianism - which, however, have in their favour the authority of Sir Christopher in Shakespeare) ; it may be blood-deterioration, malaria, syphilis, and the like (German depression after the Thirty Years’ War, which infected half Germany with evil diseases, and thereby paved the way for German servility, for German pusillanimity). In such a case there is invariably recourse to a war on a grand scale with the feeling of depression; let us inform ourselves briefly on its most important practices and phases (I leave on one side, as stands to reason, the actual philosophic war against the feeling of depression which is usually simultaneous - it is interesting enough, but too absurd, too practically negligible, too full of cobwebs, too much of a hole-and-corner affair, especially when pain is proved to be a mistake, on the naif hypothesis that pain must needs vanish when the mistake underlying it is recognised - but behold! it does anything but vanish …)o That dominant depression is primarily fought by weapons which reduce the consciousness of life itself to the lowest degree. Wherever possible, no more wishes, no more wants; shun everything which produces emotion, which produces “ blood” (eating no salt, the fakir hygiene); no love; no hate; equanimity; no revenge; no getting rich; no work; begging! as far as possible, no woman, or as little woman as possible; as far as the intellect is concerned, Pascal’s principle, “ l faut s’ab�tir” [it’s necessary to turn oneself into an animal] To put the result in ethical and psychological language, “ self-annihilation,” “ sanctification”; to put it in physiological language, “ hypnotism” - the attempt to find some approximate human equivalent for what hibernation is for certain animals, for what (hibernation is for many tropical plants, a minimum of assimilation and metabolism in which life just manages to subsist without r�ally coming into the consciousness. An amazing amount of human energy has been devoted to this object - perhaps uselessly? There cannot be the slightest doubt but that such sportsmen of “ saintliness,” in whom at times nearly every nation has abounded, have really found a genuine relief from that which they have combated with such a rigorous training - in countless cases they really escaped by the help of their system of hypnotism away from deep physiological depression; their method is consequently counted among the most universal ethnological facts. Similarly it is improper to consider such a plan for starving the physical element and the desires, as in itself a symptom of insanity (as a clumsy species of roast-beef-eating “ freethinkers” and Sir Christophers are ready to do) ; all the more certain is it that their method can and does pave the way to all kinds of mental disturbances, for instance, “ inner lights” (as far as the case of the Hesychasts on Mount Athos), auditory and visual hallucinations, voluptuous ecstasies and effervescences of sensualism (the history of St. Theresa). The explanation of such events given by the victims is always the acme of fanatical falsehood; this is self-evident. Note well, however, the tone of implicit gratitude that rings in the very will for an explanation of such a character. The supreme state, salvation itself, that final goal of universal hypnosis and peace, is always regarded by them as the mystery of mysteries, which even the most supreme symbols are inadequate to express; it is regarded as an entry and homecoming to the essence of things, as a liberation from all illusions, as “ knowledge,” as “ truth,” as “ being,” as an escape from every end, every wish, every action, as something even beyond Good and Evil. “ Good and Evil,” quoth the Buddhists, “ both are fetters. The perfect man is master of them both.” “ The done and the undone,” quoth the disciple of the Vedanta, “ do him no hurt; the good and the evil he shakes from off him, sage that he is; his kingdom suffers no more from any act; good and evil, he goes beyond them both.” - An absolutely Indian conception, as much Brahmanist as Buddhist. Neither in the Indian nor in the Christian doctrine is this “ Redemption” regarded as attainable by means of virtue and moral improvement, however, high they may place the value of the hypnotic efficiency of virtue: keep clear on this point - indeed it simply corresponds with the facts. The fact that they remained true on this point is perhaps to be regarded as the best specimen of realism in the three great religions, absolutely soaked as they are with morality, with this one exception. “ For those who know, there is no duty.” “ Redemption is not attained by the acquisition of virtues; for redemption consists in being one with Brahman, who is incapable of acquiring any perfection; and equally little does it consist in the giving up of faults, for the Brahman, unity with whom is what constitutes redemption, is eternally pure” (these passages are from the Commentaries of the Shankara, quoted from the first real European expert of the Indian philosophy, my friend Paul Deussen). We wish, therefore, to pay honour to the idea of “ redemption” in the great religions, but it is somewhat hard to remain serious in view of the appreciation meted out to the deep sleep by these exhausted pessimists who are too tired even to dream - to the deep sleep considered, that is, as already a fusing into Brahman, as the attainment of the unio mystica [mysterious union] with God. “ When he has completely gone to sleep,” says on this point
the oldest and most venerable “ script,” “ and come to perfect rest, so that he sees no more any vision, then, oh dear one, is he united with Being, he has entered into his own self encircled by the Self with its absolute knowledge, he has no more any consciousness of that which is without or of that which is within. Day and night cross not these bridges, nor age, nor death, nor suffering, nor good deeds, nor evil deeds.” “ In deep sleep,” say similarly the believers in this deepest of the three great religions, “ does the soul lift itself from out this body of ours, enters the supreme light and stands out therein in its true shape: therein is it he supreme spirit itself, which travels about, while it jests and plays and enjoys itself, whether with women, or chariots, or friends; there do its thoughts turn no more back to this appendage of a body, to which the ‘prana’ ‘the vital breath) is harnessed like a beast of burden to the cart.” None the less we will take care to realise (as we did when discussing “ redemption”) that in spite of all its splendours of Oriental extravagance this simply expresses the same criticism on life as did the clear, cold, Greekly cold, but yet suffering Epicurus. The hypnotic sensation of nothingness, the peace of deepest sleep, anaesthesia in short - that is what passes with the sufferers and the absolutely depressed for, in truth, their supreme good, their value of values ; that is what must be treasured by them as something positive, be felt by them as the essence of the Positive (according to the same logic of the feelings, nothingness is in all pessimistic religions called God). s18 Such a hypnotic deadening of sensibility and susceptibility to pain, which presupposes somewhat rare powers, especially courage, contempt of opinion, intellectual stoicism, is less frequent than another and certainly easier framing which is tried against states of depression. I mean mechanical activity. It is indisputable that a suffering existence can be thereby considerably alleviated. This fact is called today by the somewhat ignoble title of the “ Blessing of work.” The alleviation consists in the attention of the sufferer being absolutely diverted from suffering, in the incessant monopoly of the consciousness by action, so that consequently there is little room left for suffering - for narrow is it, this chamber of human consciousness! Mechanical activity and its corollaries, such as absolute regularity, punctilious unreasoning obedience, the chronic routine of life, the complete occupation of time, a certain liberty to be impersonal, nay, a training in “ impersonality,” self-forgetfulness, “ incuria sui [no care for oneself]” - with what thoroughness and expert subtlety have all these methods been exploited by the ascetic priest in his war with pain! When he has to tackle sufferers of the lower orders, slaves, or prisoners (or women, who for the most part are a compound of labour-slave and prisoner), all he has to do is to juggle a little with the names, and to re-christen, so as to make them see henceforth a benefit, a comparative happiness, in objects which they hated - the slave’s discontent with his lot was at any rate not invented by the priests. An even more popular means of fighting depression is die ordaining of a little joy, which is easily accessible and can be made into a rule; this medication is frequently used in conjunction with the former ones. The most frequent form in which joy is prescribed as a cure is the joy in producing joy (such as doing good, giving presents, alleviating, helping, exhorting, comforting, praising, treating with distinction) ; together with the prescription of “ love your neighbour.” The ascetic priest prescribes, though in the most cautious doses, what is practically a stimulation of the strongest and most life-assertive impulse - the Will for Power. The happiness involved in the “ smallest superiority” which is the concomitant of all benefiting, helping, extolling, making one’s self useful, is the most ample consolation, of which, if they are well-advised, physiological distortions avail themselves: in other cases they hurt each other, and naturally in obedience to the same radical instinct. An investigation of the origin of Christianity in the Roman world shows that cooperative unions for poverty, sickness, and burial sprang up in the lowest stratum of contemporary society, amid which the chief antidote against depression, the little joy experienced in mutual benefits, was deliberately fostered. Perchance this was then a novelty, a real discovery? This conjuring up of the will for cooperation, for family organisation, for communal life, for “ Coznacula,” necessarily brought the Will for Power, which had been already infinitesimally stimulated, to a new and much fuller manifestation. The herd organisation is a genuine advance and triumph in the fight with depression. With the growth of the community there matures even to individuals a new interest, which often enough takes him out of the more personal element in his discontent, his aversion to himself, the “ despectio sui” [self-contempt] of Geulincx. All sick and diseased people strive instinctively after a herd-organisation, out of a desire to shake off their sense of oppressive discomfort and weakness; the ascetic priest divines this instinct and promotes it; wherever a herd exists it is the instinct of weakness which has wished for the herd, and the cleverness of the priests which has organised it, for, mark this: by an equally natural necessity the strong strive as much for isolation as the weak for union: when the former bind themselves it is only with a view to an aggressive joint action and joint satisfaction of their Will for Power, much against the wishes of their individual consciences; the latter, on the contrary, range themselves together with positive delimit in such a muster - their instincts are as much gratified thereby as the instincts of the “ born master” (that is, the solitary beast-of-prey species of man) are disturbed and wounded to the quick by organisation. There is always lurking beneath every oligarchy- such is the universal lesson of history - the desire for tyranny. Every oligarchy is continually quivering with the tension of the effort required by each individual to keep mastering this desire. (Such, e.g., was the Greek; Plato shows it in a hundred places, Plato, who knew his contemporaries - and himself.) s19 The methods employed by the ascetic priest, which we have already leant to know- stifling of all vitality, mechanical energy, the little joy, and especially the method of “ love your neighbour” herd-organisation, the awaking of the communal consciousness of power, to such a pitch that the individual’s disgust with himself becomes eclipsed by his delight in the thriving of the community - these are, according to modern standards, the “ innocent” methods employed in the fight with depression; let us turn now to the more interesting topic of the “ guilty” methods. The guilty methods spell one thing: to produce emotional excess - which is used as the most efficacious anaesthetic against their depressing state of protracted pain; this is why priestly ingenuity has proved quite inexhaustible in thinking out this one question: “ By what means can you produce an emotional excess?” This sounds harsh: it is manifest that it would sound nicer and would grate on one’s ears less, if I were to say, indeed: “ The ascetic priest made use at all times of the enthusiasm contained in all strong emotions.” But why keep caressing the mollycoddled ears of our modern delicate sensibilities? Why should we, for our part, retreat even one step back from the hypocrisy of
their vocabulary? Doing something like that would make us psychologists active hypocrites — apart from the fact that it would be disgusting. The good taste (others might say, the righteousness) of a psychologist nowadays consists, if at all, in combating the shamefully moralised language with which all modern judgments on men and things are smeared. For, do not deceive yourself: what constitutes the chief characteristic of modern souls and of modern books is not the lying, but the innocence which is part and parcel of their intellectual dishonesty. The inevitable running up against this “ innocence” everywhere constitutes the most distasteful feature of the somewhat dangerous business which a modern psychologist has to undertake: it is a part of our great danger - it is a road which perhaps leads us straight to the great nausea- I know quite well the purpose which all modern books will and can serve (granted that they last, which I am not afraid of, and granted equally that there is to be at some future day a generation with a more rigid, more severe, and healthier taste) - the junction which all modernity generally will serve with posterity: that of an emetic, - and this by reason of its moral sugariness and falsity, its ingrained feminism, which it is pleased to call “ Idealism,” and at any rate believes to be idealism. Our cultured men of today, our “ good” men, do not lie - that is true; but it doe? not redound to their honour! The real lie, the genuine, determined, “ honest” lie (on whose value you can listen to Plato) would prove too tough and strong an article for them by a long way; it would be asking them to do what people have been forbidden to ask them to do, to open their eyes to their own selves, and to learn to distinguish between “ true” and “ false” in their own selves. The dishonest lie alone suits them: everything which fools a good man is perfectly incapable of any other attitude to anything than that of a dishonourable liar, an absolute liar, but none the less an innocent liar, a blue-eyed liar, a virtuous liar. These “ good men,” they are all now tainted with morality through and through, and as far as honour is concerned they are disgraced and corrupted for all eternity. Which of them could stand a further truth “ about man”? or, put more tangibly, which of them could put up with a true biography? One or two instances: Lord Byron composed a most personal autobiography, but Thomas Moore was “ too good” for it; he burnt his friend’s papers. Dr. Gwinner, Schopenhauer’s executor, is said to have done the same; for Schopenhauer as well wrote much about himself, and perhaps also against himself (“ eis auton”). The virtuous American Thayer, Beethoven’s biographer, suddenly stopped his work: he had come to a certain point in that honourable and simple life, and could stand it no longer. Moral: What sensible man nowadays writes one honest word about himself? He must already belong to the Order of Holy Foolhardiness. We are promised an autobiography of Richard Wagner; who doubts but that it would be a clever autobiography? Think, indeed, of the grotesque horror which the Catholic priest Janssen aroused in Germany with his inconceivably square and harmless pictures of the German Reformation; what wouldn’t people do if some real psychologist were to tell us about a genuine Luther, tell us, not with the moralist simplicity of a country priest or the sweet and cautious modesty of a Protestant historian, but say with the fearlessness of a Taine, that springs from force of character and not from a prudent toleration of force. (The Germans, by the bye, have already produced the classic specimen of this toleration - they may well be allowed to reckon him as one of their own, in Leopold Ranke, that born classical advocate of every causa fortior [stronger cause], that cleverest of all the clever opportunists.) s20 But you will soon understand me. - Putting it shortly, there is reason enough, is there not, for us psychologists nowadays never to get away from a certain mistrust of our own selves? Probably even we ourselves are still “ too good” for our work; probably, whatever contempt we feel for this popular craze for morality, we ourselves are perhaps none the less its victims, prey, and slaves; probably it infects even us. Of what was that diplomat warning us, when he said to his colleagues: “ Let us especially mistrust our first impulses, gentlemen! they arc almost always good”? So should nowadays every psychologist talk to his colleagues. And thus we get back to our problem, which in point of fact does require from us a certain severity, a certain mistrust especially against “ first impulses.” The ascetic ideal in the service of projected emotional excess: - he who remembers the previous essay will already partially anticipate the essential meaning compressed into these above ten words. The thorough unswitching of the human soul, the plunging of it into terror, frost, ardour, rapture, so as to free it, as through some lightning shock, from all the smallness and pettiness of unhappiness, depression, and discomfort: what ways lead to this goal? And which of these ways does so most safely? … At bottom all great emotions have this power, provided that they find a sudden outlet - emotions such as rage, fear, lust, revenge, hope, triumph, despair, cruelty; and, in sooth, the ascetic priest has had no scruples in taking into his service the whole pack of hounds that rage in the human kennel, unleashing now these and now those, with the same constant object of waking man out of his protracted melancholy, of chasing away, at any rate for a time, his dull pain, his shrinking misery, but always under the sanction of a religious interpretation and justification. This emotional excess has subsequently to be paid for, this is self-evident - it makes the ill more ill - and therefore this kind of remedy for pain is according to modern standards a “ guilty” kind. The dictates of fairness, however, require that we should all the more emphasise the fact that this remedy is applied with a good conscience, that the ascetic priest has prescribed it in the most implicit belief in its utility and indispensability ; - often enough almost collapsing in the presence of the pain which he created; - that we should similarly emphasise the fact that the violent physiological revenges of such excesses, even perhaps the mental disturbances, are not absolutely inconsistent with the general tenor of this kind of remedy; this remedy, which, as we have shown previously, is not for the purpose of healing diseases, but of fighting the unhappiness of that depression, the alleviation and deadening of which was its object. The object was consequently achieved. The keynote by which the ascetic priest was enabled to get every kind of agonising and ecstatic music to play on the fibres of the human soul - was, as everyone knows, the exploitation of the feeling of “ guilt.” I have already indicated in the previous essay the origin of this feeling - as a piece of animal psychology and nothing else: we were thus confronted with the feeling of “ guilt,” in its crude state, as it were. It was first in the hands of the priest, real artist that he was in the feeling of guilt, that it took shape- oh, what a shape! “ Sin” - for that is the name of the new priestly version of the animal “ bad-conscience” (the inverted cruelty) - has up to the present been the greatest event in the history of the diseased soul; in “ sin” we find the most perilous and fatal masterpiece of religious interpretation. Imagine man, suffering from himself, some way or other but at any rate physiologically, perhaps like an animal shut up in a cage, not clear as to the why and the wherefore! imagine him in his desire for reasons - reasons bring relief - in his desire again for remedies, narcotics at last, consulting one, who knows even the
occult - and see, lo and behold, he gets a hint from his wizard, the ascetic priest, his first hint on the “ cause” of his trouble: he must search for it in himself, in his guiltiness, in a piece of the past, he must understand his very suffering as a state of punishment. He has heard, he has understood, has the unfortunate: he is now in the plight of a hen round which a line has been drawn. He never gets out of the circle of lines. The sick man has been turned into “ the sinner” - and now for a few thousand years we t away from the sight of this new invalid, of “ a sinner” - shall we ever get away from it? - wherever we just look, everywhere the hypnotic gaze of the sinner always moving in one direction (in the direction of guilt, as the single cause of suffering)) ; everywhere the evil conscience, this “ greuliche Thier,” [horrible beast] to use Luther’s language; everywhere rumination over the past, a distorted view of action, the gaze of the “ green-eyed monster” turned on all action: everywhere the willful misunderstanding of Buffering, its transvaluation into feelings of guilt, fear of retribution; everywhere the scourge, the hairy shirt, the starving body, contrition; everywhere the sinner breaking himself on the ghastly wheel of a restless and morbidly eager conscience; everywhere mute pain, extreme fear, the agony of a tortured heart, the spasms of an unknown happiness, the shriek for “ redemption.” In point of fact, thanks to this system of procedure, the old depression, dullness, and fatigue were absolutely conquered, life itself became very interesting again, awake, eternally awake, sleepless, glowing, burnt away, exhausted and yet not tired - such was the figure cut by man, “ the sinner,” who was initiated into these mysteries. This grand old wizard of an ascetic priest fighting with depression he had clearly triumphed, his kingdom had come: men no longer grumbled at pain, men panted after pain: “ More pain! More pain!” So for centuries on end shrieked the demand of his acolytes and initiates. Every emotional excess which hurt; everything which broke, overthrew, crushed, transported, ravished; the mystery of torture-chambers, the ingenuity of hell itself - all this was now discovered, divined, exploited, all this was at the service of the wizard, all this served to promote the triumph of his ideal, the ascetic ideal. “ My kingdom is not of this world,” quoth he, both at the beginning and at the end: had he still the right to talk like that? - Goethe has maintained that there are only thirty-six tragic situations: we would infer from that, did we not know otherwise, that Goethe was no ascetic priest. He - knows more. s21 So far as all this kind of priestly medicine-mongering,the “ guilty” kind, is concerned, every word of criticism is superfluous. As for the suggestion that emotional excess of the type, which in these cases the ascetic priest is ready to order to his sick patients (under the most sacred euphemism, as is obvious, and equally impregnated with the sanctity of his purpose), has ever really been of use to any sick man, who, indeed, would feel inclined to maintain a proposition of that character? At any rate, some understanding should be come to as to the expression “ be of use.” If you only wish to express that such a system of treatment has reformed man, I do not gainsay it: I merely add that “ reformed” conveys to my mind much as “ tamed,” “ weakened,” “ discouraged,” “ refined,” daintified,” “ emasculated” (and thus it means almost as much as injured). But when you have to deal principally with sick, depressed, and oppressed creatures, such a system, even granted that it makes the ill “ better,” under any circumstances also makes them more ill: ask the mad-doctors the invariable result of a methodical application of penance-torture, contritions, and salvation ecstasies. Similarly ask history. In every body politic where the ascetic priest has established this treatment of the sick, disease has on every occasion spread with sinister speed throughout its length and breadth. What was always the “ result”? A shattered nervous system, in addition to the existing malady, and this in the greatest as in the smallest, in the individuals as in masses. We find, in consequence of the penance and redemption-training, awful epileptic epidemics, the greatest known to history, such as the St. Vitus and St. John dances of the Middle Ages; we find, as another phase of its after-effect, frightful mutilations and chronic depressions, by means of which the temperament of a nation or a city (Geneva, Bale) is turned once for all into its opposite; - this training, again, is responsible for the witchhysteria, a phenomenon analogous to somnambulism (eight great epidemic outbursts of this only between 1564 and 1605) ; - we find similarly in its train those delirious death-cravings of large masses, whose awful “ shriek,” “ eviva la morte” [long live death] was heard over the whole of Europe, now interrupted by voluptuous variations and anon by a rage for destruction, just as the same emotional sequence with the same intermittencies and sudden changes is now universally observed in every case where the ascetic doctrine of sin scores once more a great success (religious neurosis appears as a manifestation of the devil, there is no doubt of it. What is it? Quaeritur [that’s what we need to ask]) . Speaking generally, the ascetic ideal and its sublime-moral cult, this most ingenious, reckless, and perilous systematisation of all methods of emotional excess, is writ large in a dreadful and unforgettable fashion on the whole history of man, and unfortunately not only on history. I was scarcely able to put forward any other element which attacked the health and race efficiency of Europeans with more destructive power than did this ideal; it can be dubbed, without exaggeration, the real fatality in the history of the health of the European man. At the most you can merely draw a comparison with the specifically German influence: I mean the alcohol poisoning of Europe, which up to the present has kept pace exactly with the political and racial predominance of the Germans (where they inoculated their blood, there too did they inoculate their vice). Third in the series comes syphilis - magno sed proxima intervallo [next in line, but after a large gap]. s22 The ascetic priest has, wherever he has obtained the mastery, corrupted the health of the soul, he has consequently also corrupted taste n artibus et litteris [in arts and letters] - he corrupts it still. “ Consequently?” I hope I shall be granted this “ consequently”; at any rate, I am not going to prove it first. One solitary indication, it concerns the arch-book of Christian literature, their real model, their “ book-in-itself.” In the very midst of the Greco-Roman splendour, which was also a splendour of books, face to face with an ancient world of writings which had not yet fallen into decay and ruin, at a time when certain books were still to be read, to possess which we would give nowadays half our literature in exchange, at that time the simplicity and vanity of Christian agitators (they are generally called Fathers of the Church) dared to proclaim, “ We also have our classical literature. We don’t need the Greeks.” - and meanwhile they proudly pointed to their books of legends, their letters of apostles, and their little apologetic treatises, just in the same way that today the English “ Salvation Army” wages its fight against Shakespeare and other “ heathens” with an analogous literature You already guess it, I do not like the “ New Testament”; it almost upsets
me that I stand so isolated in my taste so far as concerns this valued, this over-valued Scripture; the taste of two thousand years is against me; but what boots it! “ Here I stand! I cannot help myself” [Luther] - I have the courage of my bad taste. The Old Testament - yes, that is something quite different, all honour to the Old Testament! I find therein great men, an heroic landscape, and one of the rarest phenomena in the world, the incomparable naivete of the strong heart; further still, I find a people.In the New Testament, by contrast, I find nothing but small sectarian households, nothing but spiritual rococo, nothing but ornament, twisty little corners, oddities, nothing but conventional air, not to forget an occasional whiff of bucolic sweetness which appertains to the epoch (and the Roman province) and is less Jewish than Hellenistic. Meekness and braggadocio cheek by jowl; an emotional garrulousness that almost deafens; passionate hysteria, but no passion ; painful pantomime ; here manifestly everyone lacked good breeding. How dare anyone make so much fuss about their little failings as do these pious little fellows! No one cares a straw about it- let alone God. Finally they actually wish to have “ the crown of eternal life,” do all these little provincials! In return for what, in sooth? For what end? It is impossible to carry insolence any further. An immortal Peter! who could stand him! They have an ambition which makes one laugh: the thing dishes up cut and dried his most personal life, his melancholies, and common-or-garden troubles, as though the Universe itself were under an obligation to bother itself about them, for it never gets tired of wrapping up God Himself in the petty misery in which its troubles are involved. And how about the atrocious form of this chronic hobnobbing with God? This Jewish, and not merely Jewish, excessive importuning God with mouth and paw! - There exist little despised “ heathen nations” in East Africa, from whom these first Christians could have learnt something worth learning, a little tact in worshipping; these nations do not allow themselves to say aloud the name of their God. This seems to me delicate enough, it is certain that it is too delicate, and not only for primitive Christians; to take a contrast, just recollect Luther, the most “ eloquent” and insolent peasant whom Germany has had, think of the Lutherian tone, in which he felt quite the most in his element during his tete-a-tetes with God. Luther’s opposition to the medieval saints of the Church (in particular, against “ that devil’s hog, the Pope”), was, there is no doubt, at bottom the opposition of a boor, who was offended at the good etiquette of the Church, that worship-etiquette of the sacerdotal code, which only admits to the holy of holies the initiated and the silent, and shuts the door against the boors. These definitely were not to be allowed a hearing in this planet - but Luther the peasant simply wished it otherwise; as it was, it was not German enough for him. He personally wished himself to talk direct, to talk personally, to talk “ straight from the shoulder” with his God. Well, he’s done it. The ascetic ideal, you will guess, was at no time and in no place, a school of good taste, still less of good manners - at the best it was a school for sacerdotal manners: that is. it contains in itself something which was a deadly enemy to all good manners. Lack of measure, opposition to measure it is itself a “ non plus ultra.” s23 The ascetic ideal has corrupted not only health and taste, there are also third, fourth, fifth, and sixth things which it has corrupted - I shall take care not to go through the catalogue (when should I get to the end?). I have here to expose not what this ideal effected; but rather only what it means, on what it is based, what lies lurking behind it and under it, that of which it is the provisional expression, an obscure expression bristling with queries and misunderstandings. And with this object only in view I presumed “ not to spare” my readers a glance at the awfulness of its results, a glance at its fatal results; I did this to prepare them for the final and most awful aspect presented to me by the question of the significance of that ideal. What is the significance of the power of that ideal, the monstrousness of its power? Why is it given such an amount of scope? Why is not a better resistance offered against it? The ascetic ideal expresses one will: where is the opposition will, in which an opposition ideal expresses itself? The ascetic ideal has an aim - this goal is, putting it generally, that all the other interests of human life should, measured by its standard, appear petty and narrow; it explains epochs, nations, men, in reference to this one end; it forbids any other interpretation, any other end; it repudiates, denies, affirms, confirms, only in the sense of its own interpretation (and was there ever a more thoroughly elaborated system of interpretation?) ; it subjects itself to no power, rather does it believe in its own precedence over every power- it believes that nothing powerful exists in the world that has not first got to receive from “ it” a meaning, a right to exist, a value, as being an instrument in its work, a way and means to its end, to one end. Where is the counterpart of this complete system of will, end, and interpretation? Why is the counterpart lacking? Where is the other “ one aim”? But I am told it is not lacking, that not only has it fought a long and fortunate fight with that ideal, but that further it has already won the mastery over that ideal in all essentials: let our whole modern science attest this - that modern science, which, like the genuine reality-philosophy which it is, manifestly believes in itself alone, manifestly has the courage to be itself, the will to be itself, and has got on well enough without God, another world, and negative virtues. With all their noisy agitator-babble, however, they effect nothing with me; these trumpeters of reality are bad musicians, their voices do not come from the deeps with sufficient audibility, they are not the mouthpiece for the abyss of scientific knowledge - for today scientific knowledge is an abyss - the word “ science,” in such trumpetermouths, is a prostitution, an abuse, an impertinence. The truth is just the opposite from what is maintained in the ascetic theory. Science has today absolutely no belief in itself, let alone in an ideal superior to Itself, and wherever science still consists of passion, love, ardour, suffering it is not the opposition to that ascetic ideal, but rather the incarnation of its latest and noblest form. Does that ring strange? There are enough brave and decent working people, even among the learned men of today, who like their little corner, and who, just because they are pleased so to do, become at times indecently loud with their demand, that people today should be quite content, especially in science - for in science there is so much useful work to do. I do not deny it - there is nothing I should like less than to spoil the delight of these honest workers in their handiwork; for I rejoice in their work. But the fact of science requiring hard work, the fact of its having contented workers, is absolutely no proof of science as a whole having today one end, one will, one ideal, one passion for a great faith; the contrary, as I have said, is the case. When science is not the latest manifestation of the ascetic ideal - but these are cases of such rarity, selectness, and exquisiteness, as to preclude the general judgment being affected thereby - science is a hiding-place for every kind of cowardice, disbelief, remorse, despectio sui [self-contempt], bad conscience - it is the very anxiety that springs from having no ideal, the suffering from the lack of a great love, the discontent with an enforced moderation. Oh, what does all science not cover today? How
much, at any rate, does it not try to cover? The diligence of our best scholars, their senseless industry, their burning the candle of their brain at both ends - their very mastery in their handiwork - how often is the real meaning of all that to prevent themselves continuing to see a certain thing? Science as a self-anaesthetic: do you know that? You wound them everyone who consorts with scholars experiences this - you wound them sometimes to the quick through just a harmless word; when you think you are paying them a compliment you embitter them beyond all bounds, simply because you didn’t have the finesse to infer the real kind of customers you had to tackle, the sufferer kind (who won’t own up even to themselves what they really are), the dazed and unconscious kind who have only one fear - coming to consciousness. s24 And now look at the other side, at those rare cases, of which I spoke, the most supreme idealists to be found nowadays among philosophers and scholars. Have we, perchance, found in them the sought-for opponents of the ascetic ideal, the opposing idealists? In fact, they believe themselves to be such, these “ unbelievers” (for they are all of them that) : it seems that this idea is their last remnant of faith, the idea of being opponents of this ideal, so earnest are they on this subject, so passionate in word and gesture; - but does it follow that what they believe must necessarily be trite? We “ knowers” have grown by degrees suspicious of all kinds of believers, our suspicion has step by step habituated us to draw just the opposite conclusions to what people have drawn before; that is to say, wherever the strength of a belief is particularly prominent to draw the conclusion of the difficulty of proving what is believed, the conclusion of its actual improbability. We do Dot again deny that “ faith produces salvation”: for that very reason we do deny that faith proves anything, - a strong faith, which produces happiness, causes suspicion of the object of that faith, it does not establish its “ truth,” it does establish a certain probability of - illusion. What is now the position in these cases? These solitaries and deniers of today; these fanatics in one thing, in their claim to intellectual cleanness; these hard, stern, continent, heroic spirits, who constitute the glory of our time; all these pale atheists, anti-Christians, immoralists, Nihilists; these skeptics, “ ephectics,” and “ spiritually hectics” of the intellect (in a certain sense they are the latter, both collectively and individually) ; these supreme idealists of knowledge, in whom alone nowadays the intellectual conscience dwells and is alive - in point of fact they believe themselves as far away as possible from the ascetic ideal, do these “ free, very free spirits”: and yet, if I may reveal what they themselves cannot see - for they stand too near themselves: this ideal is simply their ideal, they represent it nowadays and perhaps no one else, they themselves are its most spiritualised product, its most advanced picket of skirmishers and scouts, its most insidious delicate and elusive form of seduction. - If I am in any way a reader of riddles, then I will be one with this sentence: for some time past there have been no free spirits; for they still believe in truth. When the Christian Crusaders in the East came into collision with that invincible order of assassins, that order of free spirits par excellence, whose lowest grade lives in a state of discipline such as no order of monks has ever attained, then in some way or other they managed to get an inkling of that symbol and tally-word, that was reserved for the highest grade alone as their secret, “ Nothing is true, everything is allowed,” - in sooth, that was freedom of thought, thereby was taking leave of the very belief in truth. Has indeed any European, any Christian freethinker, ever yet wandered into this proposition and its labyrinthine consequences? Does he know from experience the Minotaur of this den. - I doubt it - nay, I know otherwise. Nothing is more really alien to these “ mono-fanatics,” these so-called “ free spirits,” than freedom and unfettering in that sense; in no respect are they more closely tied, the absolute fanaticism of their belief in truth is unparalleled. I know all this perhaps too much from experience at close quarters - that dignified philosophic abstinence to which a belief like that binds its adherents, that stoicism of the intellect, which eventually vetoes negation as rigidly as it does affirmation, that wish for standing still in front of the actual, the factum brutum [brute fact], that fatalism of the “ petits faits” [small facts] (what I call ce petit faitalisme [this small factism], in which French Science now attempts a kind of moral superiority over German, this renunciation of interpretation generally (that is, of forcing, doctoring, abridging, omitting, suppressing, inventing, falsifying, and all the other essential attributes of interpretation) - all this, considered broadly, expresses the asceticism of virtue, quite as efficiently as does any repudiation of the senses (it is at bottom only a modus of that repudiation). Hut what forces it into that unqualified will for truth is the faith in the ascetic ideal itself, even though it take the form of its unconscious imperatives, - make no mistake about it, it is the faith, I repeat, in a metaphysical value, an intrinsic value of truth, of a character which is only warranted and guaranteed in this ideal (it stands and falls with that ideal). Judged strictly, there does not exist a science without its “ hypotheses,” the thought of such a science is inconceivable, illogical: a philosophy, a faith, must always exist first to enable science to gain thereby a direction, a meaning, a limit and method, a rigid to existence. (He who holds a contrary opinion on the subject - he, for example, who takes it upon himself to establish philosophy “ upon a strictly scientific basis” - has first got to “ turn upside-down” not only philosophy but also truth itself - the gravest insult which could possibly be offered to two such respectable females!) Yes, there is no doubt about it - and here I quote my Joyful Wisdom, cp. Book V. Aph. 344: “ The man who is truthful in that daring and extreme fashion, which is the presupposition of the faith in science, asserts thereby a different world from that of life, nature, and history; and in so far as he asserts the existence of that different world, come, must he not similarly repudiate its counterpart, this world, our world? The belief on which our faith in science is based has remained to this day a metaphysical belief - even we knowers of today, we godless foes of metaphysics, we, too, take our fire from that conflagration which was kindled by a thousand-year-old faith, from that Christian belief, which was also Plato’s belief, the belief that God is truth, that truth is divine… . But what if this belief becomes more and more incredible, what if nothing proves itself to be divine, unless it be error, blindness, lies - what if God Himself proved Himself to be our oldest lie?” - It is necessary to stop at this point and to consider the situation carefully. Science itself now needs a justification (which is not for a minute to say that there is such a justification). Turn in this context to the most ancient and the most modern philosophers: they all fail to realise the extent of the need of a justification on the part of the Will for Truth - here is a gap in every philosophy - what is it caused by? Because up to the present the ascetic ideal dominated all philosophy, because Truth was fixed as Being, as God, as the Supreme Court of Appeal, because Truth was not allowed to be a problem. Do you understand this “ allowed”? From the minute that the belief in the God of the ascetic ideal is repudiated, there exists a new problem: the problem of the value of truth. The Will for Truth needed a critique- let us define by these words our own task - the value of truth is tentatively to be
called in question. … (If this seems too laconically expressed, I recommend the reader to peruse again that passage from the Joyful Wisdom which bears the title, ”How far we also are still pious,” Aph. 344, and best of all the whole fifth book of that work, as well as the Preface to The Dawn 0} Day. s25 No! You can’t get round me with science, when I search for the natural antagonists of the ascetic ideal, when I put the question: “ Where is the opposed will in which the opponent ideal expresses itself?” Science is not. by 2 long way, independent enough to fulfil this function ; in every department science needs an ideal value, a power which creates values, and in whose service it can believe in itself science itself never creates values. Its relation to the ascetic ideal is not in itself antagonistic: speaking roughly, it rather represents the progressive force in the inner evolution of that ideal. Tested more exactly, its opposition and antagonism are concerned not with the ideal itself, but only with that ideal’s outworks, its outer ASCETIC IDEALS 167 garb, its masquerade, with its temporary hardening, stiffening, and dogmatising - it makes the life in the ideal free once more, while it repudiates its superficial elements. These two phenomena, science and the ascetic ideal, both rest on the same basis - I have already made this clear - the basis, I say, of the same over-appreciation of truth (more accurately the same belief in the impossibility of valuing and of criticising truth), and consequently they are necessarily allies, so that, in the event of their being attacked, they must always be attacked and called into question together. A valuation of the ascetic ideal inevitably entails a valuation of science as well; lose no time in seeing this clearly, and be sharp to catch it! {Art, I am speaking provisionally, for I will treat it on some other occasion in greater detail, - art, I repeat, in which lying is sanctified and the will for deception has good conscience on its side, is much more fundamentally opposed to the ascetic ideal than is science: Plato’s instinct felt this - Plato, the greatest enemy of art which Europe has produced up to the present. Plato versus Homer, that is the complete, the true antagonism - on the one side, the whole-hearted “ transcendental,” the great defamer of life; on the other, its involuntary panegyrist, the golden nature. An artistic subservience to the service of the ascetic ideal is consequently the most absolute artistic corruption that there can be, though unfortunately it is one of the most frequent phases, for nothing is more corruptible than an artist.) Considered physiologically, moreover, science rests on the same basis as does the ascetic ideal : a certain impoverishment 0} life is the presupposition of the latter as of the former- add, frigidity of the emotions, slackening of the tempo, the substitution of dialectic for instinct, seriousness impressed on mien and gesture (seriousness, that most unmistakable sign of strenuous metabolism, of Struggling, toiling life). Consider the periods in a nation in which the learned man comes into prominence; they are the periods of exhaustion, often of sunset, of decay - the effervescing strength, the confidence in life, the confidence in the future are no more. The preponderance of the mandarins never signifies any good, any more than does the advent of democracy, or arbitration instead of war, equal rights for women, the religion of pity, and all the other symptoms of declining life. (Science handled as a problem! what is the meaning of science? - upon this point the Preface to the Birth of Tragedy.) No! this “ modern science” - mark you this well - is at times the best ally for the ascetic ideal, and for the very reason that it is the ally which is most unconscious, most automatic, most secret, and most subterranean! They have been playing into each other’s hands up to the present, have these “ poor in spirit” and the scientific opponents of that ideal (take care, by the bye, not to think that these opponents are the antithesis of this ideal, that they are the rich in spirit - that they are not; I have called them the hectic in spirit). As for these celebrated victories of science; there is no doubt that they are victories - but victories over what? There was not for a single minute any victory among their list over the ascetic ideal, rather was it made stronger, that is to say, more elusive, more abstract, more insidious, from the fact that a wall, an out-work, that had got built on to the main fortress and disfigured its appearance, should from time to time be ruthlessly destroyed and broken down by science. Does anyone seriously suggest that the downfall of the theological astronomy signified the downfall of that ideal? - Has, perchance, man grown less in need of a transcendental solution of his riddle of existence, because since that time this existence has become more random, casual, and superfluous in the visible order of the universe? Has there not been since the time of Copernicus an unbroken progress in the self-belittling of man and his will for belittling himself? Alas, his belief in his dignity, his uniqueness, his irreplaceable-ness in the scheme of existence, is gone - he has become animal, literal, unqualified, and unmitigated animal, he who in his earlier belief was almost God (“ child of God,” “ demi-God”). Since Copernicus man seems to have fallen on to a steep plane - he rolls faster and faster away from the centre - whither? into nothingness? into the “ thrilling sensation of his own nothingness”? - Well! this would be the straight way - to the old ideal? - All science (and by no means only astronomy, with regard to the humiliating and deteriorating effect of which Kant has made a remarkable confession, “ it annihilates my own importance”), all science, natural as much as unnatural- -by unnatural I mean the self-critique of reason - nowadays sets out to talk man out of his present opinion of himself, as though that opinion had been nothing but a bizarre piece of conceit; you might go so far as to say that science finds its peculiar pride, its peculiar bitter form of stoical ataraxia [indifference], in preserving man’s contempt of himself, that state which it took so much trouble to bring about, as man’s final and most serious claim to self-appreciation (rightly so, in point of fact, for he who despises is always “ one who has not forgotten how to appreciate”). But does all this involve any real effort to counteract the ascetic ideal? Is it really seriously suggested that Kant’s victory over the theological dogmatism about “ God,” “ Soul,” “ Freedom,” “ Immortality,” has damaged that ideal in any way (as the theologians have imagined to be the case for a long time past)? - And in this connection it does not concern us for a single minute, if Kant himself intended any such consummation. What is certain is that all sorts of transcendentalists since Kant have once more won the game - they are emancipated from the theologians; what luck! - he has revealed to them that secret art, by which they can now pursue their “ heart’s desire” on their own responsibility, and with all the respectability of science. Similarly, who can grumble at the agnostics, reverers, as they are, of the unknown and the absolute mystery, if they now worship their very query as God? (Xaver Doudan talks somewhere of the ravages which l’habitude d’admirer l’inintelligible au lieu de rester tout simplement dans l’inconnu” [the habit of admiring the unintelligible instead of simply staying in the unknown] has produced - the ancients, he thinks, must have been exempt from those ravages.) Supposing that everything, “ known” to man, fails to satisfy his desires, and on the contrary contradicts and horrifies them, what a divine way out of all this to be
able to look for the responsibility, not in the “ desiring” but in “ knowing”! - “ There is no knowledge. Consequently there is a God”; what a novel elegantia syllogismi ! [syllogistic excellence] what a triumph for the ascetic ideal! s26 Or, perchance, does the whole of modern history show in its demeanour greater confidence in life, greater confidence in its ideals? Its loftiest pretension is now to be a mirror; it repudiates all teleology; it will have no more “ improving”; it disdains to play the judge, and thereby follows its good taste - it asserts as little as it denies, it ascertains, it “ describes.” All this is to a high degree ascetic, but at the same time it is to a much greater degree nihilistic; make no mistake about this! You see in the historian a gloomy, hard, but determined gaze, - an eye that looks out as an isolated North Pole explorer looks out (perhaps so as not to look within, so as not to look back? ) -there is snow - here is life silenced, the last crows which caw here are called “ whither?” “ Vanity,” “ nada” [nothing] - here nothing more flourishes and grows, at the most the meta-politics of St. Petersburg and the “ pity” of Tolstoy. But as for that other school of historians a perhaps still more modern” school, a voluptuous and lascivious school which flirts with life and the ascetic ideal with equal fervour, which uses the word “ artist” as a glove, and has nowadays established a “ corner” for itself, in all the praise given to contemplation ; oh, what a thirst do these sweet intellectuals excite even for ascetics and winter landscapes! Nay! the devil take these “ contemplative” folk! I would even prefer to wander with those historical Nihilists, through the gloomiest, grey, cold mist! - nay, I shall not mind listening (supposing I have to choose) to one who is completely unhistorical and anti-historical (a man, like Duhring for instance, over whose periods a hitherto shy and unavowed species of “ beautiful souls” has grown intoxicated in contemporary Germany, the species anarchistica within the educated proletariat). The “ contemplative” are a hundred times worse - I never knew anything which produced such intense nausea as one of those “ objective” chairs one of those scented manikins-about-town of history, a thing half-priest, half-satyr, with perfume by Renan, which betrays by the high, shrill falsetto of his applause what he lacks and where he lacks it, who betrays where in this case the Fates have plied their ghastly shears, alas: in too surgeon-like a fashion! This is distasteful to me, and irritates my patience; let him keep patient at such sights who has nothing to lose thereby, - such a sight enrages me, such spectators embitter me against the “ play,” even more than does the play itself (history itself, you understand); Anacreontic moods imperceptibly come over me. This Nature, who gave to the steer its horn, to the lion its chasm odonton [chasm of teeth], for what purpose did Nature give me my foot? - To kick, by St. Anacreon, and not merely to run away! To trample on all the worm-eaten “ chairs,” the cowardly contemplators, the lascivious eunuchs of history, the flirters with ascetic ideals, the righteous hypocrites of impotence! All reverence on my part to the ascetic ideal, in so far as it is honourable! So long as it believes in itself and plays no pranks on us! But I like not all these coquettish bugs who have an insatiate ambition to smell of the infinite, until eventually the infinite smells of bugs; I like not the whited sepulchres with their stagey reproduction of life; I like not the tired and the used up who wrap themselves in wisdom and look “ objective”; I like not the agitators dressed up as heroes, who hide their dummy-heads behind the stalking-horse of an ideal; I like not the ambitious artists who would rather play the ascetic and the priest, and are at bottom nothing but tragic clowns; I like not, again, these newest speculators in idealism, the Anti-Semites, who nowadays roll their eyes in the patent Christian-Aryan-man-of-honour fashion, and by an abuse of moralist attitudes and agitation dodges, so cheap as to exhaust any patience, strive to excite all the blockhead elements in the populace (the invariable success of every kind of intellectual charlatanism in present-day Germany hangs together with the almost indisputable and already quite palpable desolation of the German mind, whose cause I look for in a too exclusive diet, of papers, politics, beer, and Wagnerian music, not forgetting the condition precedent of this diet, the national exclusiveness and vanity, the strong but narrow principle, “ Germany, Germany above everything,” [Patriotic song] and finally the paralysis agitans [trembling palsy] of “ modern ideas”). Europe nowadays is, above all, wealthy and ingenious in means of excitement; it apparently has no more crying necessity than stimulants and alcohol. Hence the enormous counterfeiting of ideals, those most fiery spirits of the mind; hence too the repulsive, evil-smelling, perjured, pseudo-alcoholic air everywhere. I should like to know how many cargoes of imitation idealism, of hero-costumes and high falutin’ clap- trap, how many casks of sweetened pity liqueur (Firm: la religion de la souffrance [the religion of suffering]), how many crutches of righteous indignation for the help of these flat-footed intellects, how many comedians of the Christian moral ideal would need today to be exported from Europe, to enable its air to smell pure again. It is obvious that, in regard to this over-production, a new trade possibility lies open; it is obvious that there is a new business to be done in little ideal idols and obedient “ idealists”- don’t pass over this tip! Who has sufficient courage? We have in our hands the possibility of idealising the whole earth. But what am I talking about courage? we only need one thing here - a hand, a free, a very free hand. s27 Enough ! enough ! let us leave these curiosities and complexities of the modern spirit, which excite as much laughter as disgust. Our problem can certainly do without them, the problem of the meaning of the ascetic ideal - what has it got to do with yesterday or today? those things shall be handled by me more thoroughly and severely in another connection (under the title “ A Contribution to the History of European Nihilism,” I refer for this to a work which I am preparing: The Will to Power, an Attempt at a Transvaluation of All Values). The only reason why I come to allude to it here is this: the ascetic ideal has at times, even in the most intellectual sphere, only one real kind of enemies and dangers: these are the comedians of this ideal - for they awake mistrust, everywhere otherwise, where the mind is at work seriously, powerfully, and without counterfeiting, it dispenses altogether now with an ideal (the popular expression for this abstinence is “ Atheism”) - with the exception of the will jar truth. Hut this will, this remnant of an ideal, is, If you will believe me, that ideal itself in its severest and cleverest formulation, esoteric through and through. stripped of all outworks, and consequently not so much its remnant as its kernel. Unqualified honest atheism (and its air only do we breathe, we, the most intellectual men of this age) is not opposed to that ideal, to the extent that it appears to be; it is rather one of the final phases of its evolution, one of its syllogisms and pieces of inherent logic - it is the awe-inspiring catastrophe of a two-thousand-year training in truth, which finally forbids itself the
lie of the belief in God. (The same course of development in India - quite independently, and consequently of some demonstrative value - the same ideal driving to the same conclusion the decisive point reached five hundred years before the European era, or more precisely at the time of Buddha - it started in the Sankhya philosophy, and then this was popularised through Buddha, and made into a religion.) What, I put the question with all strictness, has really triumphed over the Christian God? The answer stands in my Joyful Wisdom, Aph. 357: “ the Christian morality itself, the idea of truth, taken as it was with increasing seriousness, the confessor-subtlety of the Christian conscience translated and sublimated into the scientific conscience into intellectual cleanness at any price. Regarding Nature as though it were a proof of the goodness and guardianship of God; interpreting history in honour of a divine reason, as a constant proof of a moral order of the world and a moral teleology; explaining our own personal experiences, as pious men have for long enough explained them, as though every arrangement, every nod, every single thing were invented and sent out of love for the salvation of the soul; all this is now done away with, all this has the conscience against it, and is regarded by every subtler conscience as disreputable, dishonourable, as lying, feminism, weakness, cowardice - by means of this severity, if by means of anything at all, are we, in sooth, good Europeans and heirs of Europe’s longest and bravest self-mastery.” … All great things go to ruin by reason of themselves, by reason of an act of self -dissolution: so wills the law of life, the law of necessary “ self-mastery” even in the essence of life - ever is the law-giver finally exposed to the cry, “ patere legem, quam ipse tulisti” [submit to the law which you yourself have established] ; in thus wise did Christianity go to ruin as a dogma, through its own morality; in thus wise must Christianity go again to ruin today as a morality - we are standing on the threshold of this event. After Christian truthfulness has drawn one conclusion after the other, it finally draws its strongest conclusion, its conclusion against itself; this, however, happens, when it puts the question, “ what is the meaning of every will for truth?” And here again do I touch on my problem, on our problem, my unknown friends (for as yet / know of no friends) : what sense has our whole being, if it does not mean that in our own selves that will for truth has come to its own consciousness as a problem/ - By reason of this attainment of self-consciousness on the part of the will for truth, morality from hence forward - there is no doubt about it - goes to pieces: this la that put hundred-act play that is reserved for the next two centuries of Europe, the most terrible, the most mysterious, and perhaps also the most hopeful of all plays. s28 If you except the ascetic ideal, man, the animal man had no meaning. His existence on earth contained no end; “ What is the purpose of man at all?” was a question without an answer; the will for man and the world was lacking; behind every great human destiny rang as a refrain a still greater “ Vanity!” The ascetic ideal simply means this: that something was lacking, that a tremendous void encircled man - he did not know how to justify himself, to explain himself, to affirm himself, he suffered from the problem of his own meaning. He suffered also in other ways, he was in the main a diseased animal ; but his problem was not suffering itself, but the lack of an answer to that crying question, “ To what purpose do we suffer?” Man, the bravest animal and the one most inured to suffering, does not repudiate suffering in itself: he wills it, he even seeks it out, provided that he is shown a meaning for it, a purpose of suffering. Not suffering, but the senselessness of suffering was the curse which till then lay spread over humanity - and the ascetic ideal gave it a meaning! It was up till then the only meaning; but any meaning is better than no meaning; the ascetic ideal was in that connection the “ faute de mieux” [for lack of something better] par excellence that existed at that time. In that ideal suffering found an explanation; the tremendous gap seemed filled; the door to all suicidal Nihilism was closed. The explanation - there is no doubt about it - brought in its train new suffering, deeper, more penetrating, more venomous, gnawing more brutally into life: it brought all suffering under the perspective of guilt; but in spite of all that - man was saved thereby, he had a meaning, and from henceforth was no more like a leaf in the wind, a shuttle-cock of chance, of nonsense, he could now “ will” something - absolutely immaterial to what end, to what purpose, with what means he wished: the will itself was saved. It is absolutely impossible to disguise what in point of fact is made clear by every complete will that has taken its direction from the ascetic ideal: this hate of the human, and even more of the animal, and more still of the material, this horror of the senses, of reason itself, this fear of happiness and beauty, this desire to get right away from all illusion, change, growth, death, wishing and even desiring - all this means - let us have the courage to grasp it - a will for Nothingness, a will opposed to life, a repudiation of the most fundamental conditions of life, but it is and remains a will! - and to say at the end that which I said at the beginning - man will wish Nothingness rather than not wish at all. END OF
THE CASE OF WAGNER - CONTRA-WAGNER - SELECTED APHORISMS Translated by A. M. LUDOVICI. TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE Nietzsche wrote the rough draft of “ The Case of Wagner” in Turin, during the month of May 1888; he completed it in Sils Maria towards the end of June of the same year, and it was published in the following autumn. “ Nietzsche contra Wagner” was written about the middle of December 1888; but, although it was printed and corrected before the New Year, it was not published until long afterwards owing to Nietzsche’s complete breakdown in the first days of 1889. In reading these two essays we are apt to be deceived, by their virulent and forcible tone, into believing that the whole matter is a mere cover for hidden fire,-a mere blind of �sthetic discussion concealing a deep and implacable personal feud which demands and will have vengeance. In spite of all that has been said to the contrary, many people still hold this view of the two little works before us; and, as the actual facts are not accessible to every one, and rumours are more easily believed than verified, the error of supposing that these pamphlets were dictated by personal animosity, and even by Nietzsche’s envy of Wagner in his glory, seems to be a pretty common one. Another very general error is to suppose that
the point at issue here is not one concerning music at all, but concerning religion. It is taken for granted that the aspirations, the particular quality, the influence, and the method of an art like music, are matters quite distinct from the values and the conditions prevailing in the culture with which it is in harmony, and that however many Christian elements may be discovered in Wagnerian texts, Nietzsche had no right to raise �sthetic objections because he happened to entertain the extraordinary view that these Christian elements had also found their way into Wagnerian music. To both of these views there is but one reply:-they are absolutely false. In the “ Ecce Homo,” Nietzsche’s autobiography,-a book which from cover to cover and line for line is sincerity itself-we learn what Wagner actually meant to Nietzsche. On pages 41, 44, 84, 122, 129, &c, we cannot doubt that Nietzsche is speaking from his heart,-and what does he say?-In impassioned tones he admits his profound indebtedness to the great musician, his love for him, his gratitude to him,-how Wagner was the only German who had ever been anything to him-how his friendship with Wagner constituted the happiest and most valuable experience of his life,-how his breach with Wagner almost killed him. And, when we remember, too, that Wagner on his part also declared that he was “ alone” after he had lost “ that man” (Nietzsche), we begin to perceive that personal bitterness and animosity are out of the question here. We feel we are on a higher plane, and that we must not judge these two men as if they were a couple of little business people who had had a suburban squabble. Nietzsche declares (“ Ecce Homo,” p. 24) that he never attacked persons as persons. If he used a name at all, it was merely as a means to an end, just as one might use a magnifying glass in order to make a general, but elusive and intricate fact more clear and more apparent, and if he used the name of David Strauss, without bitterness or spite (for he did not even know the man), when he wished to personify Culture-Philistinism, so, in the same spirit, did he use the name of Wagner, when he wished to personify the general decadence of modern ideas, values, aspirations and Art. Nietzsche’s ambition, throughout his life, was to regenerate European culture. In the first period of his relationship with Wagner, he thought that he had found the man who was prepared to lead in this direction. For a long while he regarded his master as the Saviour of Germany, as the innovator and renovator who was going to arrest the decadent current of his time and lead men to a greatness which had died with antiquity. And so thoroughly did he understand his duties as a disciple, so wholly was he devoted to this cause, that, in spite of all his unquestioned gifts and the excellence of his original achievements, he was for a long while regarded as a mere “ literary lackey” in Wagner’s service, in all those circles where the rising musician was most disliked. Gradually, however, as the young Nietzsche developed and began to gain an independent view of life and humanity, it seemed to him extremely doubtful whether Wagner actually was pulling the same way with him. Whereas, theretofore, he had identified Wagner’s ideals with his own, it now dawned upon him slowly that the regeneration of German culture, of European culture, and the transvaluation of values which would be necessary for this regeneration, really lay off the track of Wagnerism. He saw that he had endowed Wagner with a good deal that was more his own than Wagner’s. In his love he had transfigured the friend, and the composer of “ Parsifal” and the man of his imagination were not one. The fact was realised step by step; disappointment upon disappointment, revelation after revelation, ultimately brought it home to him, and though his best instincts at first opposed it, the revulsion of feeling at last became too strong to be scouted, and Nietzsche was plunged into the blackest despair. Had he followed his own human inclinations, he would probably have remained Wagner’s friend until the end. As it was, however, he remained loyal to his cause, and this meant denouncing his former idol. “ Joyful Wisdom,” “ Thus Spake Zarathustra,” “ Beyond Good and Evil,” “ The Genealogy of Morals,” “ The Twilight of the Idols,” “ The Antichrist”-all these books were but so many exhortations to mankind to step aside from the general track now trodden by Europeans. And what happened? Wagner began to write some hard things about Nietzsche; the world assumed that Nietzsche and Wagner had engaged in a paltry personal quarrel in the press, and the whole importance of the real issue was buried beneath the human, all-toohuman interpretations which were heaped upon it. Nietzsche was a musician of no mean attainments. For a long while, in his youth, his superiors had been doubtful whether he should not be educated for a musical career, so great were his gifts in this art; and if his mother had not been offered a six-years’ scholarship for her son at the famous school of Pforta, Nietzsche, the scholar and philologist, would probably have been an able composer. When he speaks about music, therefore, he knows what he is talking about, and when he refers to Wagner’s music in particular, the simple fact of his long intimacy with Wagner during the years at Tribschen, is a sufficient guarantee of his deep knowledge of the subject. Now Nietzsche was one of the first to recognise that the principles of art are inextricably bound up with the laws of life, that an �sthetic dogma may therefore promote or depress all vital force, and that a picture, a symphony, a poem or a statue, is just as capable of being pessimistic, anarchic, Christian or revolutionary, as a philosophy or a science is. To speak of a certain class of music as being compatible with the decline of culture, therefore, was to Nietzsche a perfectly warrantable association of ideas, and that is why, throughout his philosophy, so much stress is laid upon �sthetic considerations. But if in England and America Nietzsche’s attack on Wagner’s art may still seem a little incomprehensible, let it be remembered that the Continent has long known that Nietzsche was actually in the right. Every year thousands are now added to the large party abroad who have ceased from believing in the great musical revolutionary of the seventies; that he was one with the French Romanticists and rebels has long since been acknowledged a fact in select circles, both in France and Germany, and if we still have Wagner with us in England, if we still consider Nietzsche as a heretic, when he declares that “ Wagner was a musician for unmusical people,” it is only because we are more removed than we imagine, from all the great movements, intellectual and otherwise, which take place on the Continent. In Wagner’s music, in his doctrine, in his whole concept of art, Nietzsche saw the confirmation, the promotion-aye, even the encouragement, of that decadence and degeneration
which is now rampant in Europe; and it is for this reason, although to the end of his life he still loved Wagner, the man and the friend, that we find him, on the very eve of his spiritual death, exhorting us to abjure Wagner the musician and the artist. Anthony M. Ludovici. PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION In spite of the adverse criticism with which the above preface has met at the hands of many reviewers since the summer of last year, I cannot say that I should feel justified, even after mature consideration, in altering a single word or sentence it contains. If I felt inclined to make any changes at all, these would take the form of extensive additions, tending to confirm rather than to modify the general argument it advances; but, any omissions of which I may have been guilty in the first place, have been so fully rectified since, thanks to the publication of the English translations of Daniel Halevy’s and Henri Lichtenberger’s works, “ The Life of Friedrich Nietzsche,”(2) and “ The Gospel of Superman,”(3) respectively, that, were it not for the fact that the truth about this matter cannot be repeated too often, I should have refrained altogether from including any fresh remarks of my own in this Third Edition. In the works just referred to (pp. 129 et seq. in Halevy’s book, and pp. 78 et seq. in Lichtenberger’s book), the statement I made in my preface to “ Thoughts out of Season,” vol. i., and which I did not think it necessary to repeat in my first preface to these pamphlets, will be found to receive the fullest confirmation. The statement in question was to the effect that many long years before these pamphlets were even projected, Nietzsche’s apparent volte-face in regard to his hero Wagner had been not only foreshadowed but actually stated in plain words, in two works written during his friendship with Wagner,-the works referred to being “ The Birth of Tragedy” (1872), and “ Wagner in Bayreuth” (1875) of which Houston Stuart Chamberlain declares not only that it possesses “ undying classical worth” but that “ a perusal of it is indispensable to all who wish to follow the question [of Wagner] to its roots.”(4) The idea that runs through the present work like a leitmotif-the idea that Wagner was at bottom more of a mime than a musician-was so far an ever present thought with Nietzsche that it is ever impossible to ascertain the period when it was first formulated. In Nietzsche’s wonderful autobiography (Ecce Homo, p. 88), in the section dealing with the early works just mentioned, we find the following passage-“ In the second of the two essays [Wagner in Bayreuth] with a profound certainty of instinct, I already characterised the elementary factor in Wagner’s nature as a theatrical talent which, in all his means and aspirations, draws its final conclusions.” And as early as 1874, Nietzsche wrote in his diary-“ Wagner is a born actor. Just as Goethe was an abortive painter, and Schiller an abortive orator, so Wagner was an abortive theatrical genius. His attitude to music is that of the actor; for he knows how to sing and speak, as it were out of different souls and from absolutely different worlds (Tristan and the Meistersinger).” There is, however, no need to multiply examples, seeing, as I have said, that in the translations of Halevy’s and Lichtenberger’s books the reader will find all the independent evidence he could possibly desire, disproving the popular, and even the learned belief that, in the two pamphlets before us we have a complete, apparently unaccountable, and therefore “ demented” volte-face on Nietzsche’s part. Nevertheless, for fear lest some doubt should still linger in certain minds concerning this point, and with the view of adding interest to these essays, the Editor considered it advisable, in the Second Edition, to add a number of extracts from Nietzsche’s diary of the year 1878 (ten years before “ The Case of Wagner,” and “ Nietzsche contra Wagner” were written) in order to show to what extent those learned critics who complain of Nietzsche’s “ morbid and uncontrollable recantations and revulsions of feeling,” have overlooked even the plain facts of the case when forming their all-too-hasty conclusions. These extracts will be found at the end of “ Nietzsche contra Wagner.” While reading them, however, it should not be forgotten that they were never intended for publication by Nietzsche himself-a fact which accounts for their unpolished and sketchy form-and that they were first published in vol. xi. of the first German Library Edition (pp. 99-129) only when he was a helpless invalid, in 1897. Since then, in 1901 and 1906 respectively, they have been reprinted, once in the large German Library Edition (vol. xi. pp. 181-202), and once in the German Pocket Edition, as an appendix to “ Human-Alltoo-Human,” Part II. An altogether special interest now attaches to these pamphlets; for, in the first place we are at last in possession of Wagner’s own account of his development, his art, his aspirations and his struggles, in the amazing self-revelation entitled My Life;(5) and secondly, we now have Ecce Homo, Nietzsche’s autobiography, in which we learn for the first time from Nietzsche’s own pen to what extent his history was that of a double devotion-to Wagner on the one hand, and to his own life task, the Transvaluation of all Values, on the other. Readers interested in the Nietzsche-Wagner controversy will naturally look to these books for a final solution of all the difficulties which the problem presents. But let them not be too sanguine. From first to last this problem is not to be settled by “ facts.” A good deal of instinctive choice, instinctive aversion, and instinctive suspicion are necessary here. A little more suspicion, for instance, ought to be applied to Wagner’s My Life, especially in England, where critics are not half suspicious enough about a continental artist’s selfrevelations, and are too prone, if they have suspicions at all, to apply them in the wrong place. An example of this want of finesse in judging foreign writers is to be found in Lord Morley’s work on Rousseau,-a book which ingenuously takes for granted everything that a writer like Rousseau cares to say about himself, without considering for an instant the possibility that Rousseau might have practised some hypocrisy. In regard to Wagner’s life we might easily fall into the same error-that is to say, we might take seriously all he says concerning himself and his family affairs. We should beware of this, and should not even believe Wagner when he speaks badly about himself. No one speaks badly about himself without a reason, and the question in this
case is to find out the reason. Did Wagner-in the belief that genius was always immoral-wish to pose as an immoral Egotist, in order to make us believe in his genius, of which he himself was none too sure in his innermost heart? Did Wagner wish to appear “ sincere” in his biography, in order to awaken in us a belief in the sincerity of his music, which he likewise doubted, but wished to impress upon the world as “ true”? Or did he wish to be thought badly of in connection with things that were not true, and that consequently did not affect him, in order to lead us off the scent of true things, things he was ashamed of and which he wished the world to ignore-just like Rousseau (the similarity between the two is more than a superficial one) who barbarously pretended to have sent his children to the foundling hospital, in order not to be thought incapable of having had any children at all? In short, where is the bluff in Wagner’s biography? Let us therefore be careful about it, and all the more so because Wagner himself guarantees the truth of it in the prefatory note. If we were to be credulous here, we should moreover be acting in direct opposition to Nietzsche’s own counsel as given in the following aphorisms (Nos. 19 and 20, p. 89):“ It is very difficult to trace the course of Wagner’s development,-no trust must be placed in his own description of his soul’s experiences. He writes party-pamphlets for his followers. “ It is extremely doubtful whether Wagner is able to bear witness about himself.” While on p. 37 (the note), we read:-“ He [Wagner] was not proud enough to be able to suffer the truth about himself. Nobody had less pride than he. Like Victor Hugo he remained true to himself even in his biography,-he remained an actor.” However, as a famous English judge has said-“ Truth will come out, even in the witness box,” and, as we may add in this case, even in an autobiography. There is one statement in Wagner’s My Life which sounds true to my ears at least-a statement which, in my opinion, has some importance, and to which Wagner himself seems to grant a mysterious significance. I refer to the passage on p. 93 of vol i., in which Wagner says:-“ Owing to the exceptional vivacity and innate susceptibility of my nature … I gradually became conscious of a certain power of transporting or bewildering my more indolent companions.” This seems innocent enough. When, however, it is read in conjunction with Nietzsche’s trenchant criticism, particularly on pp. 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 of this work, and also with a knowledge of Wagner’s music, it becomes one of the most striking passages in Wagner’s autobiography, for it records how soon he became conscious of his dominant instinct and faculty. I know perfectly well that the Wagnerites will not be influenced by these remarks. Their gratitude to Wagner is too great for this. He has supplied the precious varnish wherewith to hide the dull ugliness of our civilisation. He has given to souls despairing over the materialism of this world, to souls despairing of themselves, and longing to be rid of themselves, the indispensable hashish and morphia wherewith to deaden their inner discords. These discords are everywhere apparent nowadays. Wagner is therefore a common need, a common benefactor. As such he is bound to be worshipped and adored in spite of all egotistical and theatrical autobiographies. Albeit, signs are not wanting-at least among his Anglo-Saxon worshippers who stand even more in need of romanticism than their continental brethren,-which show that, in order to uphold Wagner, people are now beginning to draw distinctions between the man and the artist. They dismiss the man as “ human-all-too-human,” but they still maintain that there are divine qualities in his music. However distasteful the task of disillusioning these psychological tyros may be, they should be informed that no such division of a man into two parts is permissible, save in Christianity (the body and the soul), but that outside purely religious spheres it is utterly unwarrantable. There can be no such strange divorce between a bloom and the plant on which it blows, and has a black woman ever been known to give birth to a white child? Wagner, as Nietzsche tells us on p. 19, “ was something complete, he was a typical decadent in whom every sign of ‘free will’ was lacking, in whom every feature was necessary.” Wagner, allow me to add, was a typical representative of the nineteenth century, which was the century of contradictory values, of opposed instincts, and of every kind of inner disharmony. The genuine, the classical artists of that period, such men as Heine, Goethe, Stendhal, and Gobineau, overcame their inner strife, and each succeeded in making a harmonious whole out of himself-not indeed without a severe struggle; for everyone of them suffered from being the child of his age, i.e., a decadent. The only difference between them and the romanticists lies in the fact that they (the former) were conscious of what was wrong with them, and possessed the will and the strength to overcome their illness; whereas the romanticists chose the easier alternative-namely, that of shutting their eyes on themselves. “ I am just as much a child of my age as Wagner-i.e., I am a decadent,” says Nietzsche. “ The only difference is that I recognised the fact, that I struggled against it”(6) What Wagner did was characteristic of all romanticists and contemporary artists: he drowned and overshouted his inner discord by means of exuberant pathos and wild exaltation. Far be it from me to value Wagner’s music in extenso here-this is scarcely a fitting opportunity to do so;-but I think it might well be possible to show, on purely psychological grounds, how impossible it was for a man like Wagner to produce real art. For how can harmony, order, symmetry, mastery, proceed from uncontrolled discord, disorder, disintegration, and chaos? The fact that an art which springs from such a marshy soil may, like certain paludal plants, be “ wonderful,” “ gorgeous,” and “ overwhelming,” cannot be denied; but true art it is not. It is so just as little as Gothic architecture is,-that style which, in its efforts to escape beyond the tragic contradiction in its medi�val heart, yelled its hysterical cry heavenwards and even melted the stones of its structures into a quivering and fluid jet, in order to give adequate expression to the painful and wretched conflict then raging between the body and the soul. That Wagner, too, was a great sufferer, there can be no doubt; not, however, a sufferer from strength, like a true artist, but from weakness-the weakness of his age, which he never overcame. It is for this reason that he should be rather pitied than judged as he is now being judged by his German and English critics, who, with thoroughly neurotic suddenness, have acknowledged their revulsion of feeling a little too harshly.
“ I have carefully endeavoured not to deride, or deplore, or detest…” says Spinoza, “ but to understand”; and these words ought to be our guide, not only in the case of Wagner, but in all things. Inner discord is a terrible affliction, and nothing is so certain to produce that nervous irritability which is so trying to the patient as well as to the outer world, as this so-called spiritual disease. Nietzsche was probably quite right when he said the only real and true music that Wagner ever composed did not consist of his elaborate arias and overtures, but of ten or fifteen bars which, dispersed here and there, gave expression to the composer’s profound and genuine melancholy. But this melancholy had to be overcome, and Wagner with the blood of a cabotin in his veins, resorted to the remedy that was nearest to hand-that is to say, the art of bewildering others and himself. Thus he remained ignorant about himself all his life; for there was, as Nietzsche rightly points out (p. 37, note), not sufficient pride in the man for him to desire to know or to suffer gladly the truth concerning his real nature. As an actor his ruling passion was vanity, but in his case it was correlated with a semi-conscious knowledge of the fact that all was not right with him and his art. It was this that caused him to suffer. His egomaniacal behaviour and his almost Rousseauesque fear and suspicion of others were only the external manifestations of his inner discrepancies. But, to repeat what I have already said, these abnormal symptoms are not in the least incompatible with Wagner’s music, they are rather its very cause, the root from which it springs. In reality, therefore, Wagner the man and Wagner the artist were undoubtedly one, and constituted a splendid romanticist. His music as well as his autobiography are proofs of his wonderful gifts in this direction. His success in his time, as in ours, is due to the craving of the modern world for actors, sorcerers, bewilderers and idealists who are able to conceal the ill-health and the weakness that prevail, and who please by intoxicating and exalting. But this being so, the world must not be disappointed to find the hero of a preceding age explode in the next. It must not be astonished to find a disparity between the hero’s private life and his “ elevating” art or romantic and idealistic gospel. As long as people will admire heroic attitudes more than heroism, such disillusionment is bound to be the price of their error. In a truly great man, life-theory and life-practice, if seen from a sufficiently lofty point of view, must and do always agree, in an actor, in a romanticist, in an idealist, and in a Christian, there is always a yawning chasm between the two, which, whatever wellmeaning critics may do, cannot be bridged posthumously by acrobatic feats in psychologicis. Let anyone apply this point of view to Nietzsche’s life and theory. Let anyone turn his life inside out, not only as he gives it to us in his Ecce Homo, but as we find it related by all his biographers, friends and foes alike, and what will be the result? Even if we ignore his works-the blooms which blowed from time to time from his life-we absolutely cannot deny the greatness of the man’s private practice, and if we fully understand and appreciate the latter, we must be singularly deficient in instinct and in flair if we do not suspect that some of this greatness is reflected in his life-task. ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI London, July 1911.
TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS Translated by A.M. Ludovici PREFACE Maintaining cheerfulness in the midst of a gloomy affair, fraught with immeasurable responsibility, is no small feat; and yet what is needed more than cheerfulness? Nothing succeeds if prankishness has no part in it. Excess of strength alone is the proof of strength. A revaluation of all values, this question mark, so black, so tremendous that it casts shadows upon the man who puts it down—such a destiny of a task compels one to run into the sun every moment to shake off a heavy, all-too-heavy seriousness. Every means is proper for this; every “ case”—a case of luck. Especially, war. War has always been the great wisdom of all spirits who have become too inward, too profound; even in a wound there is the power to heal. A maxim, the origin of which I withhold from scholarly curiosity, has long been my motto: Increscunt animi, virescit volnere virtus. [“ The spirits increase, vigor grows through a wound.”] Another mode of convalescence—under certain circumstances even more to my liking—is sounding out idols. There are more idols than realities in the world: that is my “ evil eye” for this world; that is also my “ evil ear.” For once to pose questions here with a hammer, and, perhaps, to hear as a reply that famous hollow sound which speaks of bloated entrails—what a delight for one who has ears even behind his ears, for me, an old psychologist and pied piper before whom just that which would remain silent must become outspoken. This essay too—the title betrays it—is above all a recreation, a spot of sunshine, a leap sideways into the idleness of a psychologist. Perhaps a new war, too? And are new idols sounded out? This little essay is a great declaration of war; and regarding the sounding out of idols, this time they are not just idols of the age, but eternal idols, which are here touched with a hammer as with a tuning fork: there are altogether no older, no more convinced, no more puffed-up idols—and none more hollow. That does not prevent them from being those in which people have the most faith; nor does one ever say “ idol,” especially not in the most distinguished instance. Turin, September 30, 1888, on the day when the first book of the Revaluation of All Values was completed. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE MAXIMS AND ARROWS 1 Idleness is the beginning of all psychology. What? Should psychology be a vice? 2 Even the most courageous among us only rarely has the courage for that which he really knows. 3 To live alone one must be a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the third case: one must be both—a philosopher. 4 “ All truth is simple.” Is that not doubly a lie? 5 I want, once and for all, not to know many things. Wisdom sets limits to knowledge too. 6 In our own wild nature we find the best recreation from our un-nature, from our
spirituality. 7 What? Is man merely a mistake of God’s? Or God merely a mistake of man’s? 8 Out of life’s school of war: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger. 9 Help yourself, then everyone will help you. Principle of neighbor-love. 10 Not to perpetrate cowardice against one’s own acts! Not to leave them in the lurch afterward! The bite of conscience is indecent. 11 Can an ass be tragic? To perish under a burden one can neither bear nor throw off? The case of the philosopher. 12 If we have our own why of life, we shall get along with almost any how. Man does not strive for pleasure; only the Englishman does. 13 Man has created woman—out of what? Out of a rib of his god—of his “ ideal.” 14 What? You search? You would multiply yourself by ten, by a hundred? You seek followers? Seek zeros! 15 Posthumous men—I, for example—are understood worse than timely ones, but heard better. More precisely: we are never understood—hence our authority. 16 Among women: “ Truth? Oh, you don’t know truth! Is it not an attempt to assassinate all our pudeurs?” 17 That is an artist as I love artists, modest in his needs: he really wants only two things, his bread and his art—panem et Circen. [“ bread and Circe”] 18 Whoever does not know how to lay his will into things, at least lays some meaning into them: that means, he has the faith that they already obey a will. (Principle of “ faith.) 19 What? You elected virtue and the swelled bosom and yet you leer enviously at the advantages of those without qualms? But virtue involves renouncing “ advantages.” (Inscription for an antiSemite’s door.) 20 The perfect woman perpetrates literature as she perpetrates a small sin: as an experiment, in passing, looking around to see if anybody notices it—and to make sure that somebody does. 21 To venture into all sorts of situations in which one may not have any sham virtues, where, like the tightrope walker on his rope, one either stands or falls— or gets away. 22 “ Evil men have no songs.” How is it, then, that the Russians have songs? 23 “ German spirit”: for the past eighteen years a contradiction in terms. 24 By searching out origins, one becomes a crab. The historian looks backward; eventually he also believes backward. 25 Contentment protects even against colds. Has a woman who knew herself to be well dressed ever caught cold? I am assuming that she was barely dressed. 26 I mistrust all systematizers and I avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity. 27 Women are considered profound. Why? Because one never fathoms their depths. Women aren’t even shallow. 28 If a woman has manly virtues, one feels like running away; and if she has no manly virtues, she herself runs away. 29 “ How much conscience has had to chew on in the past! And what excellent teeth it had! And today—what is lacking?” A dentist’s question. 30 One rarely rushes into a single error. Rushing into the first one, one always does too much. So one usually perpetrates another one—and now one does too little. 31 When stepped on, a worm doubles up. That is clever. In that way he lessens the probability of being stepped on again. In the language of morality: humility. 32 There is a hatred of lies and simulation, stemming from an easily provoked sense of honor. There is another such hatred, from cowardice, since lies are forbidden by a divine commandment. Too cowardly to lie. 33 How little is required for pleasure! The sound of a bagpipe. Without music, life would be an error. The German imagines even God singing songs. 34 On ne peut penser et ecrire qu’assis [One cannot think and write except when seated] (G. Flaubert). There I have caught you, nihilist! The sedentary life is the very sin against the Holy Spirit. Only thoughts reached by walking have value. 35 There are cases in which we are like horses, we psychologists, and become restless: we see our own shadow wavering up and down before us. A psychologist must turn his eyes from himself to eye anything at all. 36 Whether we immoralists are harming virtue? Just as little as anarchists harm princes. Only since the latter are shot at do they again sit securely on their thrones. Moral: morality must be shot at. 37 You run ahead? Are you doing it as a shepherd? Or as an exception? A third case would be the fugitive. First question of conscience. 38 Are you genuine? Or merely an actor? A representative? Or that which is represented? In the end, perhaps you are merely a copy of an actor. Second question of conscience. 39 The disappointed one speaks. I searched for great human beings; I always found only the apes of their ideals. 40 Are you one who looks on? Or one who lends a hand? Or one who looks away and walks off? Third question of conscience. 41 Do you want to walk along? Or walk ahead? Or walk by yourself? One must know what one wants and that one wants. Fourth question of conscience. 42 Those were steps for me, and I have climbed up over them: to that end I had to pass over them. Yet they thought that I wanted to retire on them. 43 What does it matter if I remain right. I am much too right. And he who laughs best today will also laugh last. 44 The formula of my happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal. THE PROBLEM OF SOCRATES 1 Concerning life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is no good. Always and everywhere one has heard the same sound from their mouths—a sound full of doubt, full of melancholy, full of weariness of life, full of resistance to life. Even Socrates said, as he died: “ To live—that means to be sick a long time: I owe Asclepius the Savior a rooster.” Even Socrates was tired of it. What does that evidence? What does it evince? Formerly one would have said (—oh, it has been said, and loud enough, and especially by our pessimists): “ At least something of all this must be true! The consensus of the sages evidences the truth.” Shall we still talk like that today? May we? “ At least something must be sick here,” we retort. These wisest men of all ages—they should first be scrutinized closely. Were they all perhaps shaky on their legs? late? tottery? decadents? Could it be that wisdom appears on earth as a raven, inspired by a little whiff of carrion? 2 This irreverent thought that the great sages are types of decline first occurred to me precisely in a case where it is most strongly opposed by both scholarly and unscholarly prejudice: I recognized Socrates and Plato to be symptoms of degeneration, tools of the Greek dissolution, pseudoGreek, anti-Greek (Birth of Tragedy, 1872). The consensus of the sages—I comprehended this ever more clearly—proves least of all that they were right in what they agreed on: it shows rather that they themselves, these wisest men, agreed in some physiological respect, and hence adopted the same negative attitude to life—had to adopt it. Judgments, judgments of value, concerning life, for it or against it, can, in the end, never be true: they have value only as symptoms, they are worthy of consideration only as symptoms; in themselves such judgments are stupidities. One must by all means stretch out one’s fingers and make the attempt to grasp this amazing finesse, that the value of life cannot be estimated. Not by the living, for they are an interested party, even a bone of contention, and not judges; not by the dead, for a different reason. For a philosopher to see a problem in the value of life is thus an objection to him, a question mark concerning his wisdom, an un-wisdom. Indeed? All these great wise men—they were not only decadents but not wise at all? But I return to the problem of Socrates. 3 In origin, Socrates belonged to the lowest class: Socrates was plebs. We know, we can still see for ourselves, how ugly he was. But
ugliness, in itself an objection, is among the Greeks almost a refutation. Was Socrates a Greek at all? Ugliness is often enough the expression of a development that has been crossed, thwarted by crossing. Or it appears as declining development. The anthropologists among the criminologists tell us that the typical criminal is ugly: monstrum in fronte, monstrum in animo. But the criminal is a decadent. Was Socrates a typical criminal? At least that would not be contradicted by the famous judgment of the physiognomist which sounded so offensive to the friends of Socrates. A foreigner who knew about faces once passed through Athens and told Socrates to his face that he was a monstrum—that he harbored in himself all the bad vices and appetites. And Socrates merely answered: “ You know me, sir!” 4 Socrates’ decadence is suggested not only by the admitted wantonness and anarchy of his instincts, but also by the hypertrophy of the logical faculty and that sarcasm of the rachitic which distinguishes him. Nor should we forget those auditory hallucinations which, as “ the daimonion of Socrates,” have been interpreted religiously. Everything in him is exaggerated, buffo, a caricature; everything is at the same time concealed, ulterior, subterranean. I seek to comprehend what idiosyncrasy begot that Socratic equation of reason, virtue, and happiness: that most bizarre of all equations which, moreover, is opposed to all the instincts of the earlier Greeks. 5 With Socrates, Greek taste changes in favor of dialectics. What really happened there? Above all, a noble taste is thus vanquished; with dialectics the plebs come to the top. Before Socrates, dialectic manners were repudiated in good society: they were considered bad manners, they were compromising. The young were warned against them. Furthermore, all such presentations of one’s reasons were distrusted. Honest things, like honest men, do not carry their reasons in their hands like that. It is indecent to show all five fingers. What must first be proved is worth little. Wherever authority still forms part of good bearing, where one does not give reasons but commands, the dialectician is a kind of buffoon: one laughs at him, one does not take him seriously. Socrates was the buffoon who got himself taken seriously: what really happened there? 6 One chooses dialectic only when one has no other means. One knows that one arouses mistrust with it, that it is not very persuasive. Nothing is easier to erase than a dialectical effect: the experience of every meeting at which there are speeches proves this. It can only be self-defense for those who no longer have other weapons. One must have to enforce one’s right: until one reaches that point, one makes no use of it. The Jews were dialecticians for that reason; Reynard the Fox was one—and Socrates too? 7 Is the irony of Socrates an expression of revolt? Of plebeian ressentiment? Does he, as one oppressed, enjoy his own ferocity in the knife-thrusts of his syllogisms? Does he avenge himself on the noble people whom he fascinates? As a dialectician, one holds a merciless tool in one’s hand; one can become a tyrant by means of it; one compromises those one conquers. The dialectician leaves it to his opponent to prove that he is no idiot: he makes one furious and helpless at the same time. The dialectician renders the intellect of his opponent powerless. Indeed? Is dialectic only a form of revenge in Socrates? 8 I have given to understand how it was that Socrates could repel: it is therefore all the more necessary to explain his fascination. That he discovered a new kind of agon, that he became its first fencing master for the noble circles of Athens, is one point. He fascinated by appealing to the agonistic impulse of the Greeks—he introduced a variation into the wrestling match between young men and youths. Socrates was also a great erotic. 9 But Socrates guessed even more. He saw through his noble Athenians; he comprehended that his own case, his idiosyncrasy, was no longer exceptional. The same kind of degeneration was quietly developing everywhere: old Athens was coming to an end. And Socrates understood that all the world needed him—his means, his cure, his personal artifice of self-preservation. Everywhere the instincts were in anarchy everywhere one was within five paces of excess: monstrum in animo was the general danger. “ The impulses want to play the tyrant; one must invent a counter-tyrant who is stronger. When the physiognomist had revealed to Socrates who he was—a cave of bad appetites—the great master of irony let slip another word which is the key to his character. “ This is true,” he said, “ but I mastered them all.” How did Socrates become master over himself? His case was, at bottom, merely the extreme case, only the most striking instance of what was then beginning to be a universal distress: no one was any longer master over himself, the instincts turned against each other. He fascinated, being this extreme case; his awe-inspiring ugliness proclaimed him as such to all who could see: he fascinated, of course, even more as an answer, a solution, an apparent cure of this case. 10 When one finds it necessary to turn reason into a tyrant, as Socrates did, the danger cannot be slight that something else will play the tyrant. Rationality was then hit upon as the savior; neither Socrates nor his “ patients” had any choice about being rational: it was de rigeur, it was their last resort. The fanaticism with which all Greek reflection throws itself upon rationality betrays a desperate situation; there was danger, there was but one choice: either to perish or—to be absurdly rational. The moralism of the Greek philosophers from Plato on is pathologically conditioned; so is their esteem of dialectics. Reason-virtue-happiness, that means merely that one must imitate Socrates and counter the dark appetites with a permanent daylight—the daylight of reason. One must be clever, clear, bright at any price: any concession to the instincts, to the unconscious, leads downward. 11 I have given to understand how it was that Socrates fascinated: he seemed to be a physician, a savior. Is it necessary to go on to demonstrate the error in his faith in “ rationality at any price”? It is a self-deception on the part of philosophers and moralists if they believe that they are extricating themselves from decadence when they merely wage war against it. Extrication lies beyond their strength: what they choose as a means, as salvation, is itself but another expression of decadence; they change its expression, but they do not get rid of decadence itself. Socrates was a misunderstanding; the whole improvement-morality, including the Christian, was a misunderstanding. The most blinding daylight; rationality at any price; life, bright, cold, cautious, conscious, without instinct, in opposition to the instincts—all this too was a mere disease, another disease, and by no means a return to “ virtue,” to “ health,” to happiness. To have to fight the instincts—that is the formula of decadence: as long as life is ascending, happiness equals instinct. 12 Did he himself still comprehend this, this most brilliant of all self-outwitters? Was this what he said to himself in the end, in the wisdom of his courage to die? Socrates wanted to die: not Athens, but he himself chose the hemlock; he forced Athens to sentence him. “ Socrates is no physician,” he said softly to himself, “ here death alone is the physician. Socrates himself has merely been sick a long time.” “ REASON” IN PHILOSOPHY 1 You ask me which of the philosophers’ traits are really idiosyncrasies? For example, their lack of historical sense, their hatred of the very idea of becoming, their Egypticism. They think that they show their respect for a subject when they de-historicize it, sub specie aeternitas—when they turn it into a mummy. All that philosophers have handled for
thousands of years have been concept-mummies; nothing real escaped their grasp alive. When these honorable idolators of concepts worship something, they kill it and stuff it; they threaten the life of everything they worship. Death, change, old age, as well as procreation and growth, are to their minds objections—even refutations. Whatever has being does not become; whatever becomes does not have being. Now they all believe, desperately even, in what has being. But since they never grasp it, they seek for reasons why it is kept from them. “ There must be mere appearance, there must be some deception which prevents us from perceiving that which has being: where is the deceiver?” “ We have found him,” they cry ecstatically; “ it is the senses! These senses, which are so immoral in other ways too, deceive us concerning the true world. Moral: let us free ourselves from the deception of the senses, from becoming, from history, from lies; history is nothing but faith in the senses, faith in lies. Moral: let us say No to all who have faith in the senses, to all the rest of mankind; they are all ‘mob.’ Let us be philosophers! Let us be mummies” Let us represent monotono-theism by adopting the expression of a gravedigger! And above all, away with the body, this wretched idee fixe of the senses, disfigured by all the fallacies of logic, refuted, even impossible, although it is impudent enough to behave as if it were real!” 2 With the highest respect, I except the name of Heraclitus. When the rest of the philosophic folk rejected the testimony of the senses because they showed multiplicity and change, he rejected their testimony because they showed things as if they had permanence and unity. Heraclitus too did the senses an injustice. They lie neither in the way the Eleatics believed, nor as he believed—they do not lie at all. What we make of their testimony, that alone introduces lies; for example, the lie of unity, the lie of thinghood, of substance, of permanence. “ Reason” is the cause of our falsification of the testimony of the senses. Insofar as the senses show becoming, passing away, and change, they do not lie. But Heraclitus will remain eternally right with his assertion that being is an empty fiction. The “ apparent” world is the only one: the “ true” world is merely added by a lie. 3 And what magnificent instruments of observation we possess in our senses! This nose, for example, of which no philosopher has yet spoken with reverence and gratitude, is actually the most delicate instrument so far at our disposal: it is able to detect minimal differences of motion which even a spectroscope cannot detect. Today we possess science precisely to the extent to which we have decided to accept the testimony of the senses—to the extent to which we sharpen them further, arm them, and have learned to think them through. The rest is miscarriage and not-yet-science —in other words, metaphysics, theology, psychology, epistemology—or formal science, a doctrine of signs, such as logic and that applied logic which is called mathematics. In them reality is not encountered at all, not even as a problem—no more than the question of the value of such a sign-convention as logic. 4 The other idiosyncrasy of the philosophers is no less dangerous; it consists in confusing the last and the first. They place that which comes at the end—unfortunately! for it ought not to come at all!—namely, the “ highest concepts,” which means the most general, the emptiest concepts, the last smoke of evaporating reality, in the beginning, as the beginning. This again is nothing but their way of showing reverence: the higher may not grow out of the lower, may not have grown at all. Moral: whatever is of the first rank must be causa sui. Origin out of something else is considered an objection, a questioning of value. All the highest values are of the first rank; all the highest concepts, that which has being, the unconditional, the good, the true, the perfect—all these cannot have become and must therefore be causes. All these, moreover, cannot be unlike each other or in contradiction to each other. Thus they arrive at their stupendous concept, “ God.” That which is last, thinnest, and emptiest is put first, as the cause, as ens realissimum. Why did mankind have to take seriously the brain afflictions of sick web-spinners? They have paid dearly for it! 5 At long last, let us contrast the very different manner in which we conceive the problem of error and appearance. (I say “ we” for politeness’ sake.) Formerly, alteration, change, any becoming at all, were taken as proof of mere appearance, as an indication that there must be something which led us astray. Today, conversely, precisely insofar as the prejudice of reason forces us to posit unity, identity, permanence, substance, cause, thinghood, being, we see ourselves somehow caught in error, compelled into error. So certain are we, on the basis of rigorous examination, that this is where the error lies. It is no different in this case than with the movement of the sun: there our eye is the constant advocate of error, here it is our language. In its origin language belongs in the age of the most rudimentary form of psychology. We enter a realm of crude fetishism when we summon before consciousness the basic presuppositions of the metaphysics of language, in plain talk, the presuppositions of reason. Everywhere it sees a doer and doing; it believes in will as the cause; it believes in the ego, in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and it projects this faith in the ego-substance upon all things—only thereby does it first create the concept of “ thing.” Everywhere “ being” is projected by thought, pushed underneath, as the cause; the concept of being follows, and is a derivative of, the concept of ego. In the beginning there is that great calamity of an error that the will is something which is effective, that will is a capacity. Today we know that it is only a word. Very much later, in a world which was in a thousand ways more enlightened, philosophers, to their great surprise, became aware of the sureness, the subjective certainty, in our handling of the categories of reason: they concluded that these categories could not be derived from anything empirical—for everything empirical plainly contradicted them. Whence, then, were they derived? And in India, as in Greece, the same mistake was made: “ We must once have been at home in a higher world (instead of a very much lower one, which would have been the truth); we must have been divine, for we have reason!” Indeed, nothing has yet possessed a more naive power of persuasion than the error concerning being, as it has been formulated by the Eleatics, for example. After all, every word and every sentence we say speak in its favor. Even the opponents of the Eleatics still succumbed to the seduction of their concept of being: Democritus, among others, when he invented his atom. “ Reason” in language—oh, what an old deceptive female she is! I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar. 6 It will be appreciated if I condense so essential and so new an insight into four theses. In that way I facilitate comprehension; in that way I provoke contradiction. First proposition. The reasons for which “ this” world has been characterized as “ apparent” are the very reasons which indicate its reality; any other kind of reality is absolutely indemonstrable. Second proposition. The criteria which have been bestowed on the “ true being” of things are the criteria of not-being, of naught, the “ true world” has been constructed out of contradiction to the actual world: indeed an apparent world, insofar as it is merely a moral-optical illusion. Third proposition. To invent fables about a world “ other” than this one has no meaning at all, unless an instinct of slander, detraction, and suspicion against life has gained the upper hand in us: in that case, we avenge ourselves against life with a phantasmagoria of “ another,” a “ better” life. Fourth proposition. Any distinction between a “ true” and an “ apparent” world—whether in the Christian manner or in
the manner of Kant (in the end, an underhanded Christian)—is only a suggestion of decadence, a symptom of the decline of life. That the artist esteems appearance higher than reality is no objection to this proposition. For “ appearance” in this case means reality once more, only by way of selection, reinforcement, and correction. The tragic artist is no pessimist: he is precisely the one who says Yes to everything questionable, even to the terrible—he is Dionysian. HOW THE “ TRUE WORLD” FINALLY BECAME A FLE. The History of an Error 1. The true world—attainable for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man; he lives in it, he is it. (The oldest form of the idea, relatively sensible, simple, and persuasive. A circumlocution for the sentence, “ I, Plato, am the truth.”) 2. The true world—unattainable for now, but promised for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man (“ for the sinner who repents”). (Progress of the idea: it becomes more subtle, insidious, incomprehensible—it becomes female, it becomes Christian. ) 3. The true world—unattainable, indemonstrable, unpromisable; but the very thought of it—a consolation, an obligation, an imperative. (At bottom, the old sun, but seen through mist and skepticism. The idea has become elusive, pale, Nordic, K�nigsbergian.) 4. The true world—unattainable? At any rate, unattained. And being unattained, also unknown. Consequently, not consoling, redeeming, or obligating: how could something unknown obligate us? (Gray morning. The first yawn of reason. The cockcrow of positivism.) 5. The “ true” world—an idea which is no longer good for anything, not even obligating—an idea which has become useless and superfluous—consequently, a refuted idea: let us abolish it! (Bright day; breakfast; return of bon sens and cheerfulness; Plato’s embarrassed blush; pandemonium of all free spirits.) 6. The true world—we have abolished. What world has remained? The apparent one perhaps? But no! With the true world we have also abolished the apparent one. (Noon; moment of the briefest shadow; end of the longest error; high point of humanity; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA.) MORALITY AS ANTI-NATURE 1 All passions have a phase when they are merely disastrous, when they drag down their victim with the weight of stupidity—and a later, very much later phase when they wed the spirit, when they “ spiritualize” themselves. Formerly, in view of the element of stupidity in passion, war was declared on passion itself, its destruction was plotted; all the old moral monsters are agreed on this: il faut tuer les passions. The most famous formula for this is to be found in the New Testament, in that Sermon on the Mount, where, incidentally, things are by no means looked at from a height. There it is said, for example, with particular reference to sexuality: “ If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out.” Fortunately, no Christian acts in accordance with this precept. Destroying the passions and cravings, merely as a preventive measure against their stupidity and the unpleasant consequences of this stupidity— today this itself strikes us as merely another acute form of stupidity. We no longer admire dentists who “ pluck out” teeth so that they will not hurt any more. To be fair, it should be admitted, however, that on the ground out of which Christianity grew, the concept of the “ spiritualization of passion” could never have been formed. After all, the first church, as is well known, fought against the “ intelligent” in favor of the “ poor in spirit.” How could one expect from it an intelligent war against passion? The church fights passion with excision in every sense: its practice, its “ cure,” is castratism. It never asks: “ How can one spiritualize, beautify, deify a craving?” It has at all times laid the stress of discipline on extirpation (of sensuality, of pride, of the lust to rule, of avarice, of vengefulness). But an attack on the roots of passion means an attack on the roots of life: the practice of the church is hostile to life. 2 The same means in the fight against a craving—castration, extirpation—is instinctively chosen by those who are too weak-willed, too degenerate, to be able to impose moderation on themselves; by those who are so constituted that they require La Trappe, to use a figure of speech, or (without any figure of speech) some kind of definitive declaration of hostility, a cleft between themselves and the passion. Radical means are indispensable only for the degenerate; the weakness of the will—or, to speak more definitely, the inability not to respond to a stimulus—is itself merely another form of degeneration. The radical hostility, the deadly hostility against sensuality, is always a symptom to reflect on: it entitles us to suppositions concerning the total state of one who is excessive in this manner. This hostility, this hatred, by the way, reaches its climax only when such types lack even the firmness for this radical cure, for this renunciation of their “ devil.” One should survey the whole history of the priests and philosophers, including the artists: the most poisonous things against the senses have been said not by the impotent, nor by ascetics, but by the impossible ascetics, by those who really were in dire need of being ascetics. 3 The spiritualization of sensuality is called love: it represents a great triumph over Christianity. Another triumph is our spiritualization of hostility. It consists in a profound appreciation of the value of having enemies: in short, it means acting and thinking in the opposite way from that which has been the rule. The church always wanted the destruction of its enemies; we, we immoralists and Antichristians, find our advantage in this, that the church exists. In the political realm too, hostility has now become more spiritual—much more sensible, much more thoughtful, much more considerate. Almost every party understands how it is in the interest of its own self-preservation that the opposition should not lose all strength; the same is true of power politics. A new creation in particular—the new Reich, for example—needs enemies more than friends: in opposition alone does it feel itself necessary, in opposition alone does it become necessary. Our attitude to the “ internal enemy” is no different: here too we have spiritualized hostility; here too we have come to appreciate its value. The price of fruitfulness is to be rich in internal opposition; one remains young only as long as the soul does not stretch itself and desire peace. Nothing has become more alien to us than that desideratum of former times, “ peace of soul,” the Christian desideratum; there is nothing we envy less than the moralistic cow and the fat happiness of the good conscience. One has renounced the great life when one renounces war. In many cases, to be sure, “ peace of soul” is merely a misunderstanding—something else, which lacks only a more honest name. Without further ado or prejudice, a few examples. “ Peace of soul” can be, for one, the gentle radiation of a rich animality into the moral (or religious) sphere. Or the beginning of weariness, the first shadow of evening, of any kind of evening. Or a sign that the air is humid, that south winds are approaching. Or unrecognized gratitude for a good digestion (sometimes called “ love of man”). Or the attainment of calm by a convalescent who feels a new relish in all things and waits. Or the state which follows a thorough satisfaction of our dominant passion, the well-being of a rare repletion. Or the senile weakness of our will, our cravings, our vices. Or laziness, persuaded by vanity to give itself moral airs. Or the emergence of certainty, even a dreadful certainty, after long tension and torture by uncertainty. Or the expression of maturity and mastery in the midst of doing, creating, working, and
willing—calm breathing, attained “ freedom of the will.” Twilight of the Idols—who knows? perhaps also only a kind of “ peace of soul.” I reduce a principle to a formula. Every naturalism in morality—that is, every healthy morality—is dominated by an instinct of life, some commandment of life is fulfilled by a determinate canon of “ shalt” and “ shalt not”; some inhibition and hostile element on the path of life is thus removed. Anti-natural morality—that is, almost every morality which has so far been taught, revered, and preached— turns, conversely, against the instincts of life: it is condemnation of these instincts, now secret, now outspoken and impudent. When it says, “ God looks at the heart,” it says No to both the lowest and the highest desires of life, and posits God as the enemy of life. The saint in whom God delights is the ideal eunuch. Life has come to an end where the “ kingdom of God” begins. 5 Once one has comprehended the outrage of such a revolt against life as has become almost sacrosanct in Christian morality, one has, fortunately, also comprehended something else: the futility, apparentness, absurdity, and mendaciousness of such a revolt. A condemnation of life by the living remains in the end a mere symptom of a certain kind of life: the question whether it is justified or unjustified is not even raised thereby. One would require a position outside of life, and yet have to know it as well as one, as many, as all who have lived it, in order to be permitted even to touch the problem of the value of life: reasons enough to comprehend that this problem is for us an unapproachable problem. When we speak of values, we speak with the inspiration, with the way of looking at things, which is part of life: life itself forces us to posit values; life itself values through us when we posit values. From this it follows that even that anti-natural morality which conceives of God as the counter-concept and condemnation of life is only a value judgment of life—but of what life? of what kind of life? I have already given the answer: of declining, weakened, weary, condemned life. Morality, as it has so far been understood—as it has in the end been formulated once more by Schopenhauer, as “ negation of the will to life”—is the very instinct of decadence, which makes an imperative of itself. It says: “ Perish!” It is a condemnation pronounced by the condemned. 6 Let us finally consider how naive it is altogether to say: “ Man ought to be such and such!” Reality shows us an enchanting wealth of types, the abundance of a lavish play and change of forms—and some wretched loafer of a moralist comments: “ No! Man ought to be different.” He even knows what man should be like, this wretched bigot and prig: he paints himself on the wall and comments, “ Ecce homo!” But even when the moralist addresses himself only to the single human being and says to him, “ You ought to be such and such!” he does not cease to make himself ridiculous. The single human being is a piece of fatum from the front and from the rear, one law more, one necessity more for all that is yet to come and to be. To say to him, “ Change yourself!” is to demand that everything be changed, even retroactively. And indeed there have been consistent moralists who wanted man to be different, that is, virtuous—they wanted him remade in their own image, as a prig: to that end, they negated the world! No small madness! No modest kind of immodesty! Morality, insofar as it condemns for its own sake, and not out of regard for the concerns, considerations, and contrivances of life, is a specific error with which one ought to have no pity—an idiosyncrasy of degenerates which has caused immeasurable harm. We others, we immoralists, have, conversely, made room in our hearts for every kind of understanding, comprehending, and approving. We do not easily negate; we make it a point of honor to be affirmers. More and more, our eyes have opened to that economy which needs and knows how to utilize everything that the holy witlessness of the priest, the diseased reason in the priest, rejects—that economy in the law of life which finds an advantage even in the disgusting species of the prigs, the priests, the virtuous. What advantage? But we ourselves, we immoralists, are the answer. THE FOUR GREAT ERRORS 1 The error of confusing cause and effect. There is no more dangerous error than that of mistaking the effect for the cause: I call it the real corruption of reason. Yet this error belongs among the most ancient and recent habits of mankind: it is even hallowed among us and goes by the name of “ religion” or “ morality.” Every single sentence which religion and morality formulate contains it; priests and legislators of moral codes are the originators of this corruption of reason. I give an example. Everybody knows the book of the famous Cornaro in which he recommends his slender diet as a recipe for a long and happy life—a virtuous one too. Few books have been read so much; even now thousands of copies are sold in England every year. I do not doubt that scarcely any book (except the Bible, as is meet) has done as much harm, has shortened as many lives, as this well-intentioned curiosum. The reason: the mistaking of the effect for the cause. The worthy Italian thought his diet was the cause of his long life, whereas the precondition for a long life, the extraordinary slowness of his metabolism, the consumption of so little, was the cause of his slender diet. He was not free to eat little or much; his frugality was not a matter of “ free will”: he became sick when he ate more. But whoever is no carp not only does well to eat properly, but needs to. A scholar in our time, with his rapid consumption of nervous energy, would simply destroy himself with Cornaro’s diet. Crede experto. [Believe him who has tried.] 2 The most general formula on which every religion and morality is founded is: “ Do this and that, refrain from this and that—then you will be happy! Otherwise…” Every morality, every religion, is this imperative; I call it the great original sin of reason, the immortal unreason. In my mouth, this formula is changed into its opposite—first example of my “ revaluation of all values”: a well-turned-out human being, a “ happy one,” must perform certain actions and shrinks instinctively from other actions; he carries the order, which he represents physiologically, into his relations with other human beings and things. In a formula: his virtue is the effect of his happiness. A long life, many descendants—these are not the wages of virtue: rather virtue itself is that slowing down of the metabolism which leads, among other things, also to a long life, many descendants—in short, to Cornarism. The church and morality say: “ A generation, a people, are destroyed by license and luxury.” My recovered reason says: when a people approaches destruction, when it degenerates physiologically, then license and luxury follow from this (namely, the craving for ever stronger and more frequent stimulation, as every exhausted nature knows it). This young man turns pale early and wilts; his friends say: that is due to this or that disease. I say: that he became diseased, that he did not resist the disease, was already the effect of an impoverished life or hereditary exhaustion. The newspaper reader says: this party destroys itself by making such a mistake. My higher politics says: a party which makes such mistakes has reached its end; it has lost its sureness of instinct. Every mistake in every sense is the effect of the degeneration of instinct, of the disintegration of the will: one could almost define what is bad in this way. All that is good is instinct—and hence easy, necessary, free. Laboriousness is an objection: the god is typically different from the hero. (In my language: light feet are the first attribute of divinity.) 3 The error of a false causality. People have
believed at all times that they knew what a cause is; but whence did we take our knowledge—or more precisely, our faith—that we had such knowledge? From the realm of the famous “ inner facts,” of which not a single one has so far proved to be factual. We believed ourselves to be causal in the act of willing: we thought that here at least we caught causality in the act. Nor did one doubt that all the antecedents of an act, its causes, were to be sought in consciousness and would be found there once sought—as “ motives”: else one would not have been free and responsible for it. Finally, who would have denied that a thought is caused? that the ego causes the thought? Of these three “ inward facts” which seem to guarantee causality, the first and most persuasive is that of the will as cause. The conception of a consciousness (“ spirit”) as a cause, and later also that of the ego as cause (the “ subject”), are only afterbirths: first the causality of the will was firmly accepted as given, as empirical. Meanwhile we have thought better of it. Today we no longer believe a word of all this. The “ inner world” is full of phantoms and will-o’-the-wisps: the will is one of them. The will no longer moves anything, hence does not explain anything either—it merely accompanies events; it can also be absent. The so-called motive: another error. Merely a surface phenomenon of consciousness, something alongside the deed that is more likely to cover up the antecedents of the deeds than to represent them. And as for the ego! That has become a fable, a fiction, a play on words: it has altogether ceased to think, feel, or will! What follows from this? There are no mental causes at all. The whole of the allegedly empirical evidence for that has gone to the devil. That is what follows! And what a fine abuse we had perpetrated with this “ empirical evidence”; we created the world on this basis as a world of causes, a world of will, a world of spirits. The most ancient and enduring psychology was at work here and did not do anything else: all that happened was considered a doing, all doing the effect of a will; the world became to it a multiplicity of doers; a doer (a “ subject”) was slipped under all that happened. It was out of himself that man projected his three “ inner facts”—that in which he believed most firmly: the will, the spirit, the ego. He even took the concept of being from the concept of the ego; he posited “ things” as “ being,” in his image, in accordance with his concept of the ego as a cause. Small wonder that later he always found in things only that which he gad put into them. The thing itself, to say it once more, the concept of thing is a mere reflex of the faith in the ego as cause. And even your atom, my dear mechanists and physicists—how much error, how much rudimentary psychology is still residual in your atom! Not to mention the “ thing-in-itself,” the horrendum pudendum of the metaphysicians! The error of the spirit as cause mistaken for reality! And made the very measure of reality! And called God! 4 The error of imaginary causes. To begin with dreams: ex post facto, a cause is slipped under a particular sensation (for example, one following a far-off cannon shot)—often a whole little novel in which the dreamer turns up as the protagonist. The sensation endures meanwhile in a kind of resonance: it waits, as it were, until the causal instinct permits it to step into the foreground—now no longer as a chance occurrence, but as “ meaning.” The cannon shot appears in a causal mode, in an apparent reversal of time. What is really later, the motivation, is experienced first—often with a hundred details which pass like lightning and the shot follows. What has happened? The representations which were produced by a certain state have been misunderstood as its causes. In fact, we do the same thing when awake. Most of our general feelings—every kind of inhibition, pressure, tension, and explosion in the play and counterplay of our organs, and particularly the state of the nervus sympaticus—excite our causal instinct: we want to have a reason for feeling this way or that—for feeling bad or for feeling good. We are never satisfied merely to state the fact that we feel this way or that: we admit this fact only—become conscious of it only—when we have furnished some kind of motivation. Memory, which swings into action in such cases, unknown to us, brings up earlier states of the same kind, together with the causal interpretations associated with them —not their real causes. The faith, to be sure, that such representations, such accompanying conscious processes are the causes is also brought forth by memory. Thus originates a habitual acceptance of a particular causal interpretation, which, as a matter of fact, inhibits any investigation into the real cause—even precludes it. 5 The psychological explanation of this. To derive something unknown from something familiar relieves, comforts, and satisfies, besides giving a feeling of power. With the unknown, one is confronted with danger, discomfort, and care; the first instinct is to abolish these painful states. First principle: any explanation is better than none. Since at bottom it is merely a matter of wishing to be rid of oppressive representations, one is not too particular about the means of getting rid of them: the first representation that explains the unknown as familiar feels so good that one “ considers it true.” The proof of pleasure (“ of strength”) as a criterion of truth. The causal instinct is thus conditional upon, and excited by, the feeling of fear. The “ why?” shall, if at all possible, not give the cause for its own sake so much as for a particular kind of cause—a cause that is comforting, liberating, and relieving. That it is something already familiar, experienced, and inscribed in the memory, which is posited as a cause, that is the first consequence of this need. That which is new and strange and has not been experienced before, is excluded as a cause. Thus one searches not only for some kind of explanation to serve as a cause, but for a particularly selected and preferred kind of explanation—that which has most quickly and most frequently abolished the feeling of the strange, new, and hitherto unexperienced: the most habitual explanations. Consequence: one kind of positing of causes predominates more and more, is concentrated into a system and finally emerges as dominant, that is, as simply precluding other causes and explanations. The banker immediately thinks of “ business,” the Christian of “ sin,” and the girl of her love. 6 The whole realm of morality and religion belongs under this concept of imaginary causes. The “ explanation” of disagreeable general feelings. They are produced by beings that are hostile to us (evil spirits: the most famous case—the misunderstanding of the hysterical as witches). They are produced by acts which cannot be approved (the feeling of “ sin,” of “ sinfulness,” is slipped under a physiological discomfort; one always finds reasons for being dissatisfied with oneself). They are produced as punishments, as payment for something we should not have done, for what we should not have been (impudently generalized by Schopenhauer into a principle in which morality appears as what it really is—as the very poisoner and slanderer of life: “ Every great pain, whether physical or spiritual, declares what we deserve; for it could not come to us if we did not deserve it.” World as Will and Representation II, 666). They are produced as effects of ill-considered actions that turn out badly. (Here the affects, the senses, are posited as causes, as “ guilty”; and physiological calamities are interpreted with the help of other calamities as “ deserved.”) The “ explanation” of agreeable general feelings. They are produced by trust in God. They are produced by the consciousness of good deeds (the so-called “ good conscience”—a physiological state which at times looks so much like good digestion that it is hard to tell them apart). They are produced by the successful termination of some enterprise (a naive fallacy: the successful termination of some
enterprise does not by any means give a hypochondriac or a Pascal agreeable general feelings). They are produced by faith, charity, and hope—the Christian virtues. In truth, all these supposed explanations are resultant states and, as it were, translations of pleasurable or unpleasurable feelings into a false dialect: one is in a state of hope because the basic physiological feeling is once again strong and rich; one trusts in God because the feeling of fullness and strength gives a sense of rest. Morality and religion belong altogether to the psychology of error: in every single case, cause and effect are confused; or truth is confused with the effects of believing something to be true; or a state of consciousness is confused with its causes. 7 The error of free will. Today we no longer have any pity for the concept of “ free will”: we know only too well what it really is—the foulest of all theologians’ artifices aimed at making mankind “ responsible” in their sense, that is, dependent upon them. Here I simply supply the psychology of all “ making responsible.” Wherever responsibilities are sought, it is usually the instinct of wanting to judge and punish which is at work. Becoming has been deprived of its innocence when any being-such-and-such is traced back to will, to purposes, to acts of responsibility: the doctrine of the will has been invented essentially for the purpose of punishment, that is, because one wanted to impute guilt. The entire old psychology, the psychology of will, was conditioned by the fact that its originators, the priests at the head of ancient communities, wanted to create for themselves the right to punish—or wanted to create this right for God. Men were considered “ free” so that they might be judged and punished—so that they might become guilty: consequently, every act had to be considered as willed, and the origin of every act had to be considered as lying within the consciousness (and thus the most fundamental counterfeit in psychologicis was made the principle of psychology itself). Today, as we have entered into the reverse movement and we immoralists are trying with all our strength to take the concept of guilt and the concept of punishment out of the world again, and to cleanse psychology, history, nature, and social institutions and sanctions of them, there is in our eyes no more radical opposition than that of the theologians, who continue with the concept of a “ moral world-order” to infect the innocence of becoming by means of “ punishment” and “ guilt.” Christianity is a metaphysics of the hangman. 8 What alone can be our doctrine? That no one gives man his qualities—neither God, nor society, nor his parents and ancestors, nor he himself. (The nonsense of the last idea was taught as “ intelligible freedom” by Kant—perhaps by Plato already.) No one is responsible for man’s being there at all, for his being such-and-such, or for his being in these circumstances or in this environment. The fatality of his essence is not to be disentangled from the fatality of all that has been and will be. Man is not the effect of some special purpose, of a will, an end; nor is he the object of an attempt to attain an “ ideal of humanity” or an “ ideal of happiness” or an “ ideal of morality.” It is absurd to wish to devolve one’s essence on some end or other. We have invented the concept of “ end”: in reality there is no end. One is necessary, one is a piece of fatefulness, one belongs to the whole, one is in the whole; there is nothing which could judge, measure, compare, or sentence our being, for that would mean judging, measuring, comparing, or sentencing the whole. But there is nothing besides the whole. That nobody is held responsible any longer, that the mode of being may not be traced back to a causa prima, that the world does not form a unity either as a sensorium or as “ spirit”—that alone is the great liberation; with this alone is the innocence of becoming restored. The concept of “ God” was until now the greatest objection to existence. We deny God, we deny the responsibility in God: only thereby do we redeem the world. THE “ IMPROVERS” OF MANKIND 1 My demand upon the philosopher is known, that he take his stand beyond good and evil and leave the illusion of moral judgment beneath himself. This demand follows from an insight which I was the first to formulate: that there are altogether no moral facts. Moral judgments agree with religious ones in believing in realities which are no realities. Morality is merely an interpretation of certain phenomena—more precisely, a misinterpretation. Moral judgments, like religious ones, belong to a stage of ignorance at which the very concept of the real, and the distinction between what is real and imaginary, are still lacking; thus “ truth,” at this stage, designates all sorts of things which we today call “ imaginings.” Moral judgments are therefore never to be taken literally: so understood, they always contain mere absurdity. Semeiotically, however, they remain invaluable: they reveal, at least for those who know, the most valuable realities of cultures and inwardnesses which did not know enough to “ understand” themselves. Morality is mere sign language, mere symptomatology: one must know what it is all about to be able to profit from it. 2 A first example, quite provisional. At all times they have wanted to “ improve” men: this above all was called morality. Under the same word, however, the most divergent tendencies are concealed. Both the taming of the beast, man, and the breeding of a particular kind of man have been called “ improvement.” Such zoological terms are required to express the realities—realities, to be sure, of which the typical “ improver,” the priest, neither knows anything nor wants to know anything. To call the taming of an animal its “ improvement” sounds almost like a joke to our ears. Whoever knows what goes on in menageries doubts that the beasts are “ improved” there. They are weakened, they are made less harmful, and through the depressive effect of fear, through pain, through wounds, and through hunger, they become sickly beasts. It is no different with the tamed man whom the priest has “ improved.” In the early Middle Ages, when the church was indeed, above all, a menagerie, the most beautiful specimens of the “ blond beast” were hunted down everywhere; and the noble Teutons, for example, were “ improved.” But how did such an “ improved” Teuton who had been seduced into a monastery look afterward? Like a caricature of man, like a miscarriage: he had become a “ sinner,” he was stuck in a cage, imprisoned among all sorts of terrible concepts. And there he lay, sick, miserable, malevolent against himself, full of hatred against the springs of life, full of suspicion against all that was still strong and happy. In short, a “ Christian.” Physiologically speaking: in the struggle with beasts, to make them sick may be the only means for making them weak. This the church understood: it ruined man, it weakened him—but it claimed to have “ improved” him. 3 Let us consider the other case of so-called morality, the case of breeding, a particular race and kind. The most magnificent example of this is furnished by Indian morality, sanctioned as religion in the form of “ the law of Manu.” Here the task set is to breed no less than four races at once: one priestly, one warlike, one for trade and agriculture, and finally a race of servants, the Sudras. Obviously, we are here no longer among animal tamers: a kind of man that is a hundred times milder and more reasonable is the condition for even conceiving such a plan of breeding. One heaves a sigh of relief at leaving the Christian atmosphere of disease and dungeons for this healthier, higher, and wider world. How wretched is the New Testament compared to Manu, how foul it smells! Yet this organization too found it necessary to be terrible—
this time not in the struggle with beasts, but with their counter-concept, the unbred man, the mishmash man, the chandala. And again it had no other means for keeping him from being dangerous, for making him weak, than to make him sick—it was the fight with the “ great number.” Perhaps there is nothing that contradicts our feeling more than these protective measures of Indian morality. The third edict, for example (Avadana-Sastra I), “ on impure vegetables,” ordains that the only nourishment permitted to the chandala shall be garlic and onions, seeing that the holy scripture prohibits giving them grain or fruit with grains, or water or fire. The same edict orders that the water they need may not be taken from rivers or wells, nor from ponds, but only from the approaches to swamps and from holes made by the footsteps of animals. They are also prohibited from washing their laundry and from washing themselves, since the water they are conceded as an act of grace may be used only to quench thirst. Finally, a prohibition that Sudra women may not assist chandala women in childbirth, and a prohibition that the latter may not assist each other in this condition. The success of such sanitary police measures was inevitable: murderous epidemics, ghastly venereal diseases, and thereupon again “ the law of the knife,” ordaining circumcision for male children and the removal of the internal labia for female children. Manu himself says: “ The chandalas are the fruit of adultery, incest, and crime (these, the necessary consequences of the concept of breeding). For clothing they shall have only rags from corpses; for dishes, broken pots; for adornment, old iron; for divine services, only evil spirits. They shall wander without rest from place to place. They are prohibited from writing from left to right, and from using the right hand in writing: the use of the right hand and of from-left-to-right is reserved for the virtuous, for the people of race.” 4 These regulations are instructive enough: here we encounter for once Aryan humanity, quite pure, quite primordial—we learn that the concept of “ pure blood” is the opposite of a harmless concept. On the other hand, it becomes clear in which people the hatred, the chandala hatred, against this “ humaneness” has eternalized itself, where it has become religion, where it has become genius. Seen in this perspective, the Gospels represent a document of prime importance; even more, the Book of Enoch. Christianity, sprung from Jewish roots and comprehensible only as a growth on this soil, represents the counter-movement to any morality of breeding, of race, privilege: it is the anti-Aryan religion par excellence. Christianity—the revaluation of all Aryan values, the victory of chandala values, the gospel preached to the poor and base, the general revolt of all the downtrodden, the wretched, the failures, the less favored, against “ race”: the undying chandala hatred as the religion of love. 5 The morality of breeding, and the morality of taming, are, in the means they use, entirely worthy of each other: we may proclaim it as the supreme principle that, to make morality, one must have the unconditional will to its opposite. This is the great, the uncanny problem which I have been pursuing the longest: the psychology of the “ improvers” of mankind. A small, and at bottom modest, fact—that of the so-called pia fraus [holy lie]—offered me the first approach to this problem: the pia fraus, the heirloom of all philosophers and priests who “ improved” mankind. Neither Manu nor Plato nor Confucius nor the Jewish and Christian teachers have ever doubted their right to lie. They have not doubted that they had very different rights too. Expressed in a formula, one might say: all the means by which one has so far attempted to make mankind moral were through and through immoral. WHAT THE GERMANS LACK 1 Among Germans today it is not enough to have spirit: one must arrogate it, one must have the arrogance to have spirit. Perhaps I know the Germans, perhaps I may even tell them some truths. The new Germany represents a large quantum of fitness, both inherited and acquired by training, so that for a time it may expend its accumulated store of strength, even squander it. It is not a high culture that has thus become the master, and even less a delicate taste, a noble “ beauty” of the instincts; but more virile virtues than any other country in Europe can show. Much cheerfulness and self-respect, much assurance in social relations and in the reciprocality of duties, much industriousness, much perseverance—and an inherited moderation which needs the spur rather than the brake. I add that here one still obeys without feeling that obedience humiliates. And nobody despises his opponent. One will notice that I wish to be just to the Germans: I do not want to break faith with myself here. I must therefore also state my objections to them. One pays heavily for coming to power: power makes stupid. The Germans—once they were called the people of thinkers: do they think at all today? The Germans are now bored with the spirit, the Germans now mistrust the spirit; politics swallows up all serious concern for really spiritual matters. Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles—I fear that was the end of German philosophy. “ Are there any German philosophers? Are there German poets? Are there good German books?” they ask me abroad. I blush; but with the courage which I maintain even in desperate situations I reply: “ Well, Bismarck.” Would it be permissible for me to confess what books are read today? Accursed instinct of mediocrity! 2 What the German spirit might be—who has not had his melancholy ideas about that! But this people has deliberately made itself stupid, for nearly a millennium: nowhere have the two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity, been abused more dissolutely. Recently even a third has been added—one that alone would be suffficient to dispatch all fine and bold fiexibility of the spirit—music, our constipated, constipating German music. How much disgruntled heaviness, lameness, dampness, dressing gown—how much beer there is in the German intelligence! How is it at all possible that young men who dedicate their lives to the most spiritual goals do not feel the first instinct of spirituality, the spirit’s instinct of self-preservation—and drink beer? The alcoholism of young scholars is perhaps no question mark concerning their scholarliness—without spirit one can still be a great scholar—but in every other respect it remains a problem. Where would one not find the gentle degeneration which beer produces in the spirit? Once, in a case that has almost become famous, I put my finger on such a degeneration —the degeneration of our number-one German free spirit, the clever David Strauss, into the author of a beer-bench gospel and “ new faith.” It was not for nothing that he had made his vow to the “ fair brunette” [dark beer] in verse—loyalty unto death. 3 I was speaking of the German spirit: it is becoming cruder, it is becoming shallower. Is that enough? At bottom, it is something quite different that alarms me: how German seriousness, German depth, German passion in spiritual matters are declining more and more. The verve has changed, not just the intellectuality. Here and there I come into contact with German universities: what an atmosphere prevails among their scholars, what desolate spirituality—and how contented and lukewarm it has become! It would be a profound misunderstanding if one wanted to adduce German science against me-it would also be proof that one has not read a word I have written. For seventeen years I have never tired of calling attention to the despiritualizing influence of our current science-industry. The hard helotism to which the tremendous range of
the sciences condemns every scholar today is a main reason why those with a fuller, richer, profounder disposition no longer find a congenial education and congenial educators. There is nothing of which our culture suffers more than of the superabundance of pretentious jobbers and fragments of humanity; our universities are, against their will, the real hothouses for this kind of withering of the instincts of the spirit. And the whole of Europe already has some idea of this—power politics deceives nobody. Germany is considered more and more as Europe’s flatland. I am still looking for a German with whom I might be able to be serious in my own way—and how much more for one with whom I might be cheerful! Twilight of the Idols: who today would comprehend from what seriousness a philosopher seeks recreation here? Our cheerfulness is what is most incomprehensible about us. 4 Even a rapid estimate shows that it is not only obvious that German culture is declining but that there is sufficient reason for that. In the end, no one can spend more than he has: that is true of an individual, it is true of a people. If one spends oneself for power, for power politics, for economics, world trade, parliamentarianism, and military interests—if one spends in the direction the quantum of understanding, seriousness, will, and self- overcoming which one represents, then it will be lacking for the other direction. Culture and the state—one should not deceive one-self about this—are antagonists: “ Kultur-Staat” is merely a modern idea. One lives off the other, one thrives at the expense of the other. All great ages of culture are ages of political decline: what is great culturally has always been unpolitical, even anti-political. Goethe’s heart opened at the phenomenon of Napoleon—it closed at the “ Wars of Liberation.” At the same moment when Germany comes up as a great power, France gains a new importance as a cultural power. Even today much new seriousness, much new passion of the spirit, have migrated to Paris; the question of pessimism, for example, the question of Wagner, and almost all psychological and artistic questions are there weighed incomparably more delicately and thoroughly than in Germany—the Germans are altogether incapable of this kind of seriousness. In the history of European culture the rise of the “ Reich” means one thing above all: a displacement of the center of gravity. It is already known everywhere: in what matters most—and that always remains culture—the Germans are no longer worthy of consideration. One asks: Can you point to even a single spirit who counts from a European point of view, as your Goethe, your Hegel, your Heinrich Heine, your Schopenhauer counted? That there is no longer a single German philosopher—about that there is no end of astonishment. 5 The entire system of higher education in Germany has lost what matters most: the end as well as the means to the end. That education, that Bildung, is itself an end—and not “ the Reich”—and that educators are needed to that end, and not secondary-school teachers and university scholars—that has been forgotten. Educators are needed who have themselves been educated, superior, noble spirits, proved at every moment, proved by words and silence, representing culture which has grown ripe and sweet—not the learned louts whom secondary schools and universities today offer our youth as “ higher wet nurses.” Educators are lacking, not counting the most exceptional of exceptions, the very first condition of education: hence the decline of German culture. One of this rarest of exceptions is my venerable friend, Jacob Burckhardt in Basel: it is primarily to him that Basel owes its pre-eminence in humaneness. What the “ higher schools” in Germany really achieve is a brutal training, designed to prepare huge numbers of young men, with as little loss of time as possible, to become usable, abusable, in government service. “ Higher education” and huge numbers—that is a contradiction to start with. All higher education belongs only to the exception: one must be privileged to have a right to so high a privilege. All great, all beautiful things can never be common property: pulchrum est paucorum hominum. What contributes to the decline of German culture? That “ higher education” is no longer a privilege—the democratism of Bildung, which has become “ common”—too common. Let it not be forgotten that military privileges really compel an all-too-great attendance in the higher schools, and thus their downfall. In present-day Germany no one is any longer free to give his children a noble education: our “ higher schools” are all set up for the most ambiguous mediocrity, with their teachers, curricula, and teaching aims. And everywhere an indecent haste prevails, as if something would be lost if the young man of twenty-three were not yet “ finished,” or if he did not yet know the answer to the “ main question”: which calling? A higher kind of human being, if I may say so, does not like “ callings,” precisely because he knows himself to be called. He has time, he takes time, he does not even think of “ finishing”: at thirty one is, in the sense of high culture, a beginner, a child. Our overcrowded secondary schools, our overworked, stupefied secondary-school teachers, are a scandal: for one to defend such conditions, as the professors at Heidelberg did recently, there may perhaps be causes—reasons there are none. 6 I put forward at once—lest I break with my style, which is affirmative and deals with contradiction and criticism only as a means, only involuntarily—the three tasks for which educators are required. One must learn to see, one must learn to think, one must learn to speak and write: the goal in all three is a noble culture. Learning to see—accustoming the eye to calmness, to patience, to letting things come up to it; postponing judgment, learning to go around and grasp each individual case from all sides. That is the first preliminary schooling for spirituality: not to react at once to a stimulus, but to gain control of all the inhibiting, excluding instincts. Learning to see, as I understand it, is almost what, unphilosophically speaking, is called a strong will: the essential feature is precisely not to “ will”—to be able to suspend decision. All unspirituality, all vulgar commonness, depend on the inability to resist a stimulus: one must react, one follows every impulse. In many cases, such a compulsion is already pathology, decline, a symptom of exhaustion—almost everything that unphilosophical crudity designates with the word “ vice” is merely this physiological inability not to react. A practical application of having learned to see: as a learner, one will have become altogether slow, mistrustful, recalcitrant. One will let strange, new things of every kind come up to oneself, inspecting them with hostile calm and withdrawing one’s hand. To have all doors standing open, to lie servilely on one’s stomach before every little fact, always to be prepared for the leap of putting oneself into the place of, or of plunging into, others and other things—in short, the famous modern “ objectivity”—is bad taste, is ignoble par excellence. 7 Learning to think: in our schools one no longer has any idea of this. Even in the universities, even among the real scholars of philosophy, logic as a theory, as a practice, as a craft, is beginning to die out. One need only read German books: there is no longer the remotest recollection that thinking requires a technique, a teaching curriculum, a will to mastery—that thinking wants to be learned like dancing, as a kind of dancing. Who among Germans still knows from experience the delicate shudder which light feet in spiritual matters send into every muscle? The stiff clumsiness of the spiritual gesture, the bungling hand at grasping—that is German to such a degree that abroad one mistakes it for the German character as such. The German has no fingers for nuances. That the Germans have been able to stand their philosophers at all, especially that most deformed concept-
cripple of all time, the great Kant, provides not a bad notion of German grace. For one cannot subtract dancing in every form from a noble education—to be able to dance with one’s feet, with concepts, with words: need I still add that one must be able to dance with the pen too—that one must learn to write? But at this point I should become completely enigmatic for German readers. SKIRMISHES OF AN UNTIMELY MAN 1 My impossible ones. — Seneca: or the toreador of virtue. Rousseau: or the return to nature in impuris naturalibus [in natural filth]. Schiller: or the Moral-Trumpeter of S�ckingen. Dante: or the hyena who writes poetry in tombs. Kant: or cant as an intelligible character. Victor Hugo: or the pharos at the sea of nonsense. Liszt: or the school of smoothness—with women. George Sand: or lactea ubertas—in translation, the milk cow with “ a beautiful style.“ Michelet: or the enthusiasm which takes off its coat. Carlyle: or pessimism as a poorly digested dinner. John Stuart Mill: or insulting clarity. Les fr�res de Goncourt: or the two Ajaxes in battle with Homer—music by Offenbach. Zola: or “ the delight in stinking.” 2 Renan. — Theology: or the corruption of reason by ‘original sin” (Christianity). Witness Renan who, whenever he risks a Yes or No of a more general nature scores a miss with painful regularity. He wants for example, to weld together la science and la noblesse: but la science belongs with democracy; what could be plainer? With no little ambition, he wishes to represent an aristocracy of the spirit: yet at the same time he is on his knees before its very counter-doctrine, the evangile des humbles—and not only on his knees. To what avail is all free-spiritedness, modernity, mockery, and wry-neck suppleness, if in one’s guts one is still a Christian, a Catholic—in fact, a priest! Renan is most inventive, just like a Jesuit and father confessor, when it comes to seduction; his spirituality does not even lack the broad fat popish smile—like all priests, he becomes dangerous only when he loves. Nobody can equal him when it comes to adoring in a manner endangering life itself. This spirit of Renan’s, a spirit which is enervated, is one more calamity for poor, sick, will-sick France. 3 Sainte Beuve. — Nothing of virility, full of petty wrath against all virile spirits. Wanders around, cowardly, curious, bored, eavesdropping—a female at bottom, with a female’s lust for revenge and a female’s sensuality. As a psychologist, a genius of medisance [slander], inexhaustibly rich in means to that end; no one knows better how to mix praise with poison. Plebeian in the lowest instincts and related to the ressentiment of Rousseau: consequently, a romantic—for underneath all romantisme lie the grunting and greed of Rousseau’s instinct for revenge. A revolutionary, but still pretty well harnessed by fear. Without freedom when confronted with anything strong (public opinion, the Academy, the court, even Port Royal). Embittered against everything great in men and things, against whatever believes in itself. Poet and half-female enough to sense the great as a power; always writhing like the famous worm because he always feels stepped upon. As a critic, without any standard, steadiness, and backbone, with the cosmopolitan libertine’s tongue for a medley of things, but without the courage even to confess his libertinage. As a historian, without philosophy, without the power of the philosophical eye—hence declining the task of judging in all significant matters, hiding behind the mask of “ objectivity.” It is different with his attitude to all things in which a fine, well-worn taste is the highest tribunal: there he really has the courage to stand by himself and delight in himself—there he is a master. In some respects, a preliminary version of Baudelaire. 4 De imitatione Christi is one of those books which I cannot hold in my hand without a physiological reaction: it exudes a perfume of the Eternal-Feminine which is strictly for Frenchmen —or Wagnerians. This saint has a way of talking about love which arouses even Parisian women to curiosity. I am told that that cleverest of Jesuits, Auguste Comte, who wanted to lead his Frenchmen to Rome via the detour of science, found his inspiration in this book. I believe it: “ the religion of the heart.” 5 G. Eliot. — They are rid of the Christian God and now believe all the more firmly that they must cling to Christian morality. That is an English consistency; we do not wish to hold it against little moralistic females � la Eliot. In England one must rehabilitate oneself after every little emancipation from theology by showing in a veritably awe-inspiring manner what a moral fanatic one is. That is the penance they pay there. We others hold otherwise. When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet. This morality is by no means self-evident: this point has to be exhibited again and again, despite the English flatheads. Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one’s hands. Christianity presupposes that man does not know, cannot know, what is good for him, what evil: he believes in God, who alone knows it. Christian morality is a command; its origin is transcendent; it is beyond all criticism, all right to criticism; it has truth only if God is the truth—it stands and falls with faith in God. When the English actually believe that they know “ intuitively” what is good and evil, when they therefore suppose that they no longer require Christianity as the guarantee of morality, we merely witness the effects of the dominion of the Christian value judgment and an expression of the strength and depth of this dominion: such that the origin of English morality has been forgotten, such that the very conditional character of its right to existence is no longer felt. For the English, morality is not yet a problem. 6 George Sand. — I read the first Lettres d’un voyageur: like everything that is descended from Rousseau, false, fabricated, bellows, exaggerated. I cannot stand this motley wallpaper style any more than the mob aspiration for generous feelings. The worst feature, to be sure, is the female’s coquetry with male attributes, with the manners of naughty boys. How cold she must have been throughout, this insufferable artist! She wound herself up like a clock—and wrote. Cold, like Hugo, like Balzac, like all the romantics as soon as they took up poetic invention. And how self-satisfied she may have lain there all the while, this fertile writing-cow who had in her something German in the bad sense, like Rousseau himself, her master, and who in any case was possible only during the decline of French taste! But Renan reveres her. 7 Moral for psychologists. — Not to go in for backstairs psychology. Never to observe in order to observe! That gives a false perspective, leads to squinting and something forced and exaggerated. Experience as the wish to experience does not succeed. One must not eye oneself while having an experience; else the eye becomes “ an evil eye.” A born psychologist guards instinctively against seeing in order to see; the same is true of the born painter. He never works “ from nature”; he leaves it to his instinct, to his camera obscura, to sift through and express the “ case,” “ nature,” that which is “ experienced.” He is conscious only of what is general, of the conclusion, the result: he does not know arbitrary abstractions from an individual case. What happens when one proceeds differently? For example, if, in the manner of the Parisian novelists, one goes in for backstairs psychology and deals in gossip, wholesale and retail? Then one lies
in wait for reality, as it were, and every evening one brings home a handful of curiosities. But note what finally comes of all this: a heap of splotches, a mosaic at best, but in any case something added together, something restless, a mess of screaming colors. The worst in this respect is accomplished by the Goncourts; they do not put three sentences together without really hurting the eye, the psychologist’s eye. Nature, estimated artistically, is no model. It exaggerates, it distorts, it leaves gaps. Nature is chance. To study “ from nature” seems to me to be a bad sign: it betrays submission, weakness, fatalism; this lying in the dust before petit faits [little facts] is unworthy of a whole artist. To see what is—that is the mark of another kind of spirit, the anti-artistic, the factual. One must know who one is. 8 Toward a psychology of the artist. — If there is to be art, if there is to be any aesthetic doing and seeing, one physiological condition is indispensable: frenzy. Frenzy must first have enhanced the excitability of the whole machine; else there is no art. All kinds of frenzy, however diversely conditioned, have the strength to accomplish this: above all, the frenzy of sexual excitement, this most ancient and original form of frenzy. Also the frenzy that follows all great cravings, all strong affects; the frenzy of feasts, contests, feats of daring, victory, all extreme movement; the frenzy of cruelty; the frenzy in destruction, the frenzy under certain meteorological influences, as for example the frenzy of spring; or under the influence of narcotics; and finally the frenzy of will, the frenzy of an overcharged and swollen will. What is essential in such frenzy is the feeling of increased strength and fullness. Out of this feeling one lends to things, one forces them to accept from us, one violates them—this process is called idealizing. Let us get rid of a prejudice here: idealizing does not consist, as is commonly held, in subtracting or discounting the petty and inconsequential. What is decisive is rather a tremendous drive to bring out the main features so that the others disappear in the process. 9 In this state one enriches everything out of one’s own fullness: whatever one sees, whatever one wills, is seen swelled, taut, strong, overloaded with strength. A man in this state transforms things until they mirror his power—until they are reflections of his perfection. This having to transform into perfection is—art. Even everything that he is not yet, becomes for him an occasion of joy in himself; in art man enjoys himself as perfection. It would be permissible to imagine an opposite state, a specific anti-artistry by instinct—a mode of being which would impoverish all things, making them thin and consumptive. And, as a matter of fact, history is rich in such anti-artists, in such people who are starved by life and must of necessity grab things, eat them out, and make them more meager. This is, for example, the case of the genuine Christian—of Pascal, for example: a Christian who would at the same time be an artist simply does not occur. One should not be childish and object by naming Raphael or some homeopathic Christian of the nineteenth century: Raphael said Yes, Raphael did Yes; consequently, Raphael was no Christian. 10 What is the meaning of the conceptual opposites which I have introduced into aesthetics, Apollinian and Dionysian, both conceived as kinds of frenzy? The Apollinian frenzy excites the eye above all, so that it gains the power of vision. The painter, the sculptor, the epic poet are visionaries par excellence. In the Dionysian state, on the other hand, the whole affective system is excited and enhanced: so that it discharges all its means of expression at once and drives forth simultaneously the power of representation, imitation, transfiguration, transformation, and every kind of mimicking and acting. The essential feature here remains the ease of metamorphosis, the inability not to react (similar to certain hysterical types who also, upon any suggestion, enter into any role). It is impossible for the Dionysian type not to understand any suggestion; he does not overlook any sign of an affect; he possesses the instinct of understanding and guessing in the highest degree, just as he commands the art of communication in the highest degree. He enters into any skin, into any affect: he constantly transforms himself. Music, as we understand it today, is also a total excitement and a total discharge of the affects, but even so only the remnant of a much fuller world of expression of the affects, a mere residue of the Dionysian histrionicism. To make music possible as a separate art, a number of senses, especially the muscle sense, have been immobilized (at least relatively, for to a certain degree all rhythm still appeals to our muscles); so that man no longer bodily imitates and represents everything he feels. Nevertheless, that is really the normal Dionysian state, at least the original state. Music is the specialization of this state attained slowly at the expense of those faculties which are most closely related to it. 11 The actor, the mime, the dancer, the musician, and the lyric poet are basically related in their instincts and, at bottom, one—but gradually they have become specialized and separated from each other, even to the point of mutual opposition. The lyric poet remained united with the musician for the longest time; the actor, with the dancer. The architect represents neither a Dionysian nor an Apollinian state: here it is the great act of will, the will that moves mountains, the frenzy of the great will which aspires to art. The most powerful human beings have always inspired architects; the architect has always been under the spell of power. His buildings are supposed to render pride visible, and the victory over gravity, the will to power. Architecture is a kind of eloquence of power in forms—now persuading, even flattering, now only commanding. The highest feeling of power and sureness finds expression in a grand style. The power which no longer needs any proof, which spurns pleasing, which does not answer lightly, which feels no witness near, which lives oblivious of all opposition to it, which reposes within itself, fatalistically, a law among laws—that speaks of itself as a grand style. 12 I have been reading the life of Thomas Carlyle, this unconscious and involuntary farce, this heroic-moralistic interpretation of dyspeptic states. Carlyle: a man of strong words and attitudes, a rhetor from need, constantly lured by the craving for a strong faith and the feeling of his incapacity for it (in this respect, a typical romantic!). The craving for a strong faith is no proof of a strong faith, but quite the contrary. If one has such a faith, then one can afford the beautiful luxury of skepticism: one is sure enough, firm enough, has ties enough for that. Carlyle drugs something in himself with the fortissimo of his veneration of men of strong faith and with his rage against the less simple-minded: he requires noise. A constant passionate dishonesty against himself-that is his proprium; in this respect he is and remains interesting. Of course, in England he is admired precisely for his honesty. Well, that is English; and in view of the fact that the English are the people of consummate cant, it is even as it should be, and not only comprehensible. At bottom, Carlyle is an English atheist who makes it a point of honor not to be one. 13 Emerson. — Much more enlightened, more roving, more manifold, subtler than Carlyle; above all, happier. One who instinctively nourishes himself only on ambrosia, leaving behind what is indigestible in things. Compared with Carlyle, a man of taste. Carlyle, who loved him very much, nevertheless said of him: “ He does not give us enough to chew on”—which may be true, but is no reflection on Emerson. Emerson has that gracious and clever cheerfulness which discourages all seriousness; he simply does not know how old he is already and how young he is still going to be; he could say of himself, quoting Lope de Vega, “ Yo me sucedo a mi mismo” [I am my own heir]. His spirit
always finds reasons for being satisfied and even grateful; and at times he touches on the cheerful transcendency of the worthy gentleman who returned from an amorous rendezvous, tamquiam re bene gesta [as if he had accomplished his mission]. “ Ut desint vires,” he said gratefully, “ tamen est laudanda voluptas” [Though the power is lacking, the lust is nevertheless praiseworthy]. 14 Anti-Darwin. — As for the famous “ struggle for existence,” so far it seems to me to be asserted rather than proved. It occurs, but as an exception; the total appearance of life is not the extremity, not starvation, but rather riches, profusion, even absurd squandering—and where there is struggle, it is a struggle for power. One should not mistake Malthus for nature. Assuming, however, that there is such a struggle for existence—and, indeed, it occurs—its result is unfortunately the opposite of what Darwin’s school desires, and of what one might perhaps desire with them—namely, in favor of the strong, the privileged, the fortunate exceptions. The species do not grow in perfection: the weak prevail over the strong again and again, for they are the great majority—and they are also more intelligent. Darwin forgot the spirit (that is English!); the weak have more spirit. One must need spirit to acquire spirit; one loses it when one no longer needs it. Whoever has strength dispenses with the spirit (“ Let it go!” they think in Germany today; “ the Reich must still remain to us”). It will be noted that by “ spirit” I mean care, patience, cunning, simulation, great self-control, and everything that is mimicry (the latter includes a great deal of so-called virtue). 15 Casuistry of Psychologists. — This man knows human nature; why does he really study people? He wants to seize little advantages over them—or big ones, for that matter—he is a politician. That one over there also knows human nature, and you say that he seeks no profit for himself, that he is thoroughly “ impersonal.” Look more closely! Perhaps he even wants a worse advantage to feel superior to other human beings, to be able to look down on them, and no longer to mistake himself for one of them. This “ impersonal” type as a despiser of human beings, while the first type is the more humane species, appearances notwithstanding. At least he places himself on the same plane, he places himself among them. 16 The psychological tact of the Germans seems very questionable to me, in view of quite a number of cases which modesty prevents me from enumerating. In one case I shall not lack a great occasion to substantiate my thesis: I bear the Germans a grudge for having made such a mistake about Kant and his “ backdoor philosophy,” as I call it—for that was not the type of intellectual integrity. The other thing I do not like to hear is a notorious “ and”: the Germans say “ Goethe and Schiller”—I am afraid they say “ Schiller and Goethe.” Don’t they know this Schiller yet? And there are even worse “ ands”; with my own ears I have heard, if only among university professors, “ Schopenhauer and Hartmann.” 17 The most spiritual human beings, if we assume that they are the most courageous, also experience by far the most painful tragedies: but just for that reason they honor life because it pits its greatest opposition against them. 18 On the “ intellectual conscience.” — Nothing seems rarer to me today than genuine hypocrisy. I greatly suspect that the soft air of our culture is insalubrious for this plant. Hypocrisy belongs in the ages of strong faith when, even though constrained to display another faith, one did not abandon one’s own faith. Today one does abandon it; or, even more commonly, one adds a second faith—and in either case one remains honest. Without a doubt, a very much greater number of convictions is possible today than formerly: “ possible” means permissible, which means harmless. This begets tolerance toward oneself. Tolerance toward oneself permits several convictions and they get along with each other: they are careful, like all the rest of the world, not to compromise themselves. How does one compromise oneself today? If one is consistent. If one proceeds in a straight line. If one is not ambiguous enough to permit five conflicting interpretations. If one is genuine. I fear greatly that modern man is simply too comfortable for some vices, so that they die out by default. All evil that is a function of a strong will—and perhaps there is no evil without strength of will —degenerates into virtue in our tepid air. The few hypocrites whom I have met imitated hypocrisy: like almost every tenth person today, they were actors. 19 Beautiful and ugly [“ fair and foul”]. — Nothing is more conditional—or, let us say, narrower—than our feeling for beauty. Whoever would think of it apart from man’s joy in man would immediately lose any foothold. “ Beautiful in itself” is a mere phrase, not even a concept. In the beautiful, man posits himself as the measure of perfection; in special cases he worships himself in it. A species cannot do otherwise but thus affirm itself alone. Its lowest instinct, that of self-preservation and self-expansion, still radiates in such sublimities. Man believes the world itself to be overloaded with beauty—and he forgets himself as the cause of this. He alone has presented the world with beauty—alas! only with a very human, all-too-human beauty. At bottom, man mirrors himself in things; he considers everything beautiful that reflects his own image: the judgment “ beautiful” is the vanity of his species. For a little suspicion may whisper this question into the skeptic’s ear: Is the world really beautified by the fact that man thinks it beautiful? He has humanized it, that is all. But nothing, absolutely nothing, guarantees that man should be the model of beauty. Who knows what he looks like in the eyes of a higher judge of beauty? Daring perhaps? Perhaps even amusing? Perhaps a little arbitrary? “ O Dionysus, divine one, why do you pull me by my ears?” Ariadne once asked her philosophic lover during one of those famous dialogues on Naxos. “ I find a kind of humor in your ears, Ariadne: why are they not even longer?” 20 Nothing is beautiful, except man alone: all aesthetics rests upon this na�vete, which is its first truth. Let us immediately add the second: nothing is ugly except the degenerating man—and with this the realm of aesthetic judgment is circumscribed. Physiologically, everything ugly weakens and saddens man. It reminds him of decay, danger, impotence; it actually deprives him of strength. One can measure the effect of the ugly with a dynamometer. Wherever man is depressed at all, he senses the proximity of something “ ugly.” His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride—all fall with the ugly and rise with the beautiful. In both cases we draw an inference: the premises for it are piled up in the greatest abundance in instinct. The ugly is understood as a sign and symptom of degeneration: whatever reminds us in the least of degeneration causes in us the judgment of “ ugly.” Every suggestion of exhaustion, of heaviness, of age, of weariness; every kind of lack of freedom, such as cramps, such as paralysis; and above all, the smell, the color, the form of dissolution, of decomposition—even in the ultimate attenuation into a symbol—all evoke the same reaction, the value judgment, “ ugly.” A hatred is aroused—but whom does man hate then? There is no doubt: the decline of his type. Here he hates out of the deepest instinct of the species; in this hatred there is a shudder, caution, depth, farsightedness—it is the deepest hatred there is. It is because of this that art is deep. 21 Schopenhauer. — Schopenhauer, the last German worthy of consideration (who represents a European event like Goethe, like Hegel, like Heinrich Heine, and not merely a local event, a “ national” one), is for a psychologist a first- rate case: namely, as a maliciously ingenious attempt to adduce in favor of a nihilistic total depreciation of life precisely the counter-instances, the great self-affirmations of the
“ will to life,” life’s forms of exuberance. He has interpreted art, heroism, genius, beauty, great sympathy, knowledge, the will to truth, and tragedy, in turn, as consequences of “ negation” or of the “ will’s” need to negate—the greatest psychological counterfeit in all history, not counting Christianity. On closer inspection, he is at this point merely the heir of the Christian interpretation: only he knew how to approve that which Christianity had repudiated, the great cultural facts of humanity—albeit in a Christian, that is, nihilistic, manner (namely, as ways of “ redemption,” as anticipations of “ redemption,” as stimuli of the need for “ redemption”). 22 I take a single case. Schopenhauer speaks of beauty with a melancholy fervor. Why? Because he sees in it a bridge on which one will go farther, or develop a thirst to go farther. Beauty is for him a momentary redemption from the “ will”—a lure to eternal redemption. Particularly, he praises beauty as the redeemer from “ the focal point of the will,” from sexuality—in beauty he sees the negation of the drive toward procreation. Queer saint! Somebody seems to be contradicting you; I fear it is nature. To what end is there any such thing as beauty in tone, color, fragrance, or rhythmic movement in nature? What is it that beauty evokes? Fortunately, a philosopher contradicts him too. No lesser authority than that of the divine Plato (so Schopenhauer himself calls him) maintains a different proposition: that all beauty incites procreation, that just this is the proprium of its effect, from the most sensual up to the most spiritual. 23 Plato goes further. He says with an innocence possible only for a Greek, not a “ Christian,” that there would be no Platonic philosophy at all if there were not such beautiful youths in Athens: it is only their sight that transposes the philosopher’s soul into an erotic trance, leaving it no peace until it lowers the seed of all exalted things into such beautiful soil. Another queer saint! One does not trust one’s ears, even if one should trust Plato. At least one guesses that they philosophized differently in Athens, especially in public. Nothing is less Greek than the conceptual web-spinning of a hermit—amor intellectualis dei [intellectual love of God] after the fashion of Spinoza. Philosophy after the fashion of Plato might rather be defined as an erotic contest, as a further development and turning inward of the ancient agonistic gymnastics and of its presuppositions. What ultimately grew out of this philosophic eroticism of Plato? A new art form of the Greek agon: dialectics. Finally, I recall—against Schopenhauer and in honor of Plato—that the whole higher culture and literature of classical France too grew on the soil of sexual interest. Everywhere in it one may look for the amatory, the senses, the sexual contest, “ the woman”—one will never look in vain. 24 L’art pour l’art. — The fight against purpose in art is always a fight against the moralizing tendency in art, against its subordination to morality. L’art pour l’art means, “ The devil take morality!” But even this hostility still betrays the overpowering force of the prejudice. When the purpose of moral preaching and of improving man has been excluded from art, it still does not follow by any means that art is altogether purposeless, aimless, senseless—in short, l’art pour l’art, a worm chewing its own tail. “ Rather no purpose at all than a moral purpose!”—that is the talk of mere passion. A psychologist, on the other hand, asks: what does all art do? does it not praise? glorify? choose? prefer? With all this it strengthens or weakens certain valuations. Is this merely a “ moreover”? an accident? something in which the artist’s instinct had no share? Or is it not the very presupposition of the artist’s ability? Does his basic instinct aim at art, or rather at the sense of art, at life? at a desirability of life? Art is the great stimulus to life: how could one understand it as purposeless, as aimless, as l’art pour l’art? One question remains: art also makes apparent much that is ugly, hard, and questionable in life; does it not thereby spoil life for us? And indeed there have been philosophers who attributed this sense to it: “ liberation from the will” was what Schopenhauer taught as the overall end of art; and with admiration he found the great utility of tragedy in its “ evoking resignation.” But this, as I have already suggested, is the pessimist’s perspective and “ evil eye.” We must appeal to the artists themselves. What does the tragic artist communicate of himself? Is it not precisely the state without fear in the face of the fearful and questionable that he is showing? This state itself is a great desideratum, whoever knows it, honors it with the greatest honors. He communicates it—must communicate it, provided he is an artist, a genius of communication. Courage and freedom of feeling before a powerful enemy, before a sublime calamity, before a problem that arouses dread—this triumphant state is what the tragic artist chooses, what he glorifies. Before tragedy, what is warlike in our soul celebrates its Saturnalia; whoever is used to suffering, whoever seeks out suffering, the heroic man praises his own being through tragedy—to him alone the tragedian presents this drink of sweetest cruelty. 25 To put up with people, to keep open house with one’s heart—that is liberal, but that is merely liberal. One recognizes those hearts which are capable of noble hospitality by the many draped windows and closed shutters: they keep their best rooms empty. Why? Because they expect guests with whom one does not “ put up.” 26 We no longer have sufficiently high esteem for ourselves when we communicate. Our true experiences are not at all garrulous. They could not communicate themselves even if they tried: they lack the right words. We have already gone beyond whatever we have words for. In all talk there is a grain of contempt. Language, it seems, was invented only for what is average, medium, communicable. By speaking the speaker immediately vulgarizes himself. — Out of a morality for deaf-mutes and other philosophers. 27 “ This picture is enchantingly beautiful…!” The literary female: unsatisfied, excited, her heart and entrails void, ever listening, full of painful curiosity, to the imperative which whispers from the depths of her organism, aut liberi aut libri [either children or books]—the literary female: educated enough to understand the voice of nature even when it speaks Latin, and yet vain enough and goose enough to speak secretly with herself in French: ‘je me verrai, je me lirai, je m’extasierai et je dirai: possible, que j’aie eu tant d’esprit?’ [“ I shall see myself, I shall read myself, I shall go into ecstasies, and I shall say: is it possible that I should have had so much wit?”] 28 The “ impersonal” get a word in. — “ Nothing is easier for us than to be wise, patient, and superior. We drip with the oil of forgiveness and sympathy, we are absurdly just, we pardon everything. For that very reason we ought to be a little more strict with ourselves; for that very reason we ought to breed a little affect in ourselves from time to time, a little vice of an affect. It may be hard on us; and among ourselves we may even laugh at the sight we thus offer. But what can be done about it? No other way of self-overcoming is left to us any more: this is our asceticism, our penance.” Developing personal traits: the virtue of the “ impersonal.” 29 From a doctoral examination. — “ What is the task of all higher education?” To turn men into machines. “ What are the means?” Man must learn to be bored. “ How is that accomplished?” By means of the concept of duty. “ Who serves as the model?” The philologist: he teaches grinding. “ Who is the perfect man?” The civil servant. “ Which philosophy offers the highest formula for the civil servant?” Kant’s: the civil servant as a thing-in-itself, raised up to be judge over the civil servant as phenomenon. 30 The right to stupidity. — The weary laborer who breathes slowly, looks genial, and lets things go as they may—this typical figure, encountered
today, in the age of labor (and of the “ Reich”!), in all classes of society, claims art, no less, as his proper sphere, including books and, above all, magazines—and even more the beauties of nature, Italy. The man of the evening, with his “ savage drives gone to sleep” (as Faust says), needs a summer resort, the seashore, glaciers, Bayreuths. In such ages art has a right to pure foolishness—as a kind of vacation for spirit, wit, and feeling. Wagner understood that. Pure foolishness restores. 31 Another problem of diet. — The means by which Julius Caesar defended himself against sickliness and headaches: tremendous marches, the most frugal way of life, uninterrupted sojourn in the open air, continuous exertion—these are, in general, the universal rules of preservation and protection against the extreme vulnerability of that subtle machine, working under the highest pressure, which we call genius. 32 The immoralist speaks. — Nothing offends the philosopher’s taste more than man, insofar as man desires. If he sees man in action, even if he sees this most courageous, most cunning, most enduring animal lost in labyrinthian distress—how admirable man appears to him! He still likes him. But the philosopher despises the desiring man, also the “ desirable” man—and altogether all desirabilities, all ideals of man. If a philosopher could be a nihilist, he would be one because he finds nothing behind all the ideals of man. Or not even nothing—but only what is abject, absurd, sick, cowardly, and weary, all kinds of dregs out of the emptied cup of his life. Man being so venerable in his reality, how is it that he deserves no respect insofar as he desires? Must he atone for being so capable in reality? Must he balance his activity, the strain on head and will in all his activity, by stretching his limbs in the realm of the imaginary and the absurd? The history of his desirabilities has so far been the partie honteuse of man: one should beware of reading in it too long. What justifies man is his reality—it will eternally justify him. How much greater is the worth of the real man, compared with any merely desired, dreamed-up, foully fabricated man? with any ideal man? And it is only the ideal man who offends the philosopher’s taste. 33 The natural value of egoism. — Self-interest is worth as much as the person who has it: it can be worth a great deal, and it can be unworthy and contemptible. Every individual may be scrutinized to see whether he represents the ascending or the descending line of life. Having made that decision, one has a canon for the worth of his self-interest. If he represents the ascending line, then his worth is indeed extraordinary—and for the sake of life as a whole, which takes a step farther through him, the care for his preservation and for the creation of the best conditions for him may even be extreme. The single one, the “ individual,” as hitherto understood by the people and the philosophers alike, is an error after all: he is nothing by himself, no atom, no “ link in the chain,” nothing merely inherited from former times; he is the whole single line of humanity up to himself. If he represents the descending development, decay, chronic degeneration, and sickness (sicknesses are, in general, the consequences of decay, not its causes), then he has small worth, and the minimum of decency requires that he take away as little as possible from those who have turned out well. He is merely their parasite. 34 Christian and anarchist. — When the anarchist, as the mouthpiece of the declining strata of society, demands with a fine indignation what is “ right,” “ justice,” and “ equal rights,” he is merely under the pressure of his own uncultured state, which cannot comprehend the real reason for his suffering—what it is that he is poor in: life. A causal instinct asserts itself in him: it must be somebody’s fault that he is in a bad way. Also, the “ fine indignation” itself soothes him; it is a pleasure for all wretched devils to scold: it gives a slight but intoxicating sense of power. Even plaintiveness and complaining can give life a charm for the sake of which one endures it: there is a fine dose of revenge in every complaint; one charges one’s own bad situation, and under certain circumstances even one’s own badness, to those who are different, as if that were an injustice, a forbidden privilege. “ If I am canaille, you ought to be too”—on such logic are revolutions made. Complaining is never any good: it stems from weakness. Whether one charges one’s misfortune to others or to oneself—the socialist does the former; the Christian, for example, the latter—really makes no difference. The common and, let us add, the unworthy thing is that it is supposed to be somebody’s fault that one is suffering; in short, that the sufferer prescribes the honey of revenge for himself against his suffering. The objects of this need for revenge, as a need for pleasure, are mere occasions: everywhere the sufferer finds occasions for satisfying his little revenge. If he is a Christian—to repeat it once more—he finds them in himself. The Christian and the anarchist are both decadents. When the Christian condemns, slanders, and besmirches “ the world,” his instinct is the same as that which prompts the socialist worker to condemn, slander, and besmirch society. The “ last judgment” is the sweet comfort of revenge—the revolution, which the socialist worker also awaits, but conceived as a little farther off. The “ beyond”—why a beyond, if not as a means for besmirching this world? 35 Critique of the morality of decadence. — An “ altruistic” morality—a morality in which self-interest wilts away—remains a bad sign under all circumstances. This is true of individuals; it is particularly true of nations. The best is lacking when selfinterest begins to be lacking. Instinctively to choose what is harmful for oneself, to feel attracted by “ disinterested” motives, that is virtually the formula of decadence. “ Not to seek one’s own advantage”—that is merely the moral fig leaf for quite a different, namely, a physiological, state of affairs: “ I no longer know how to find my own advantage.” Disintegration of the instincts! Man is finished when he becomes altruistic. Instead of saying naively, “ I am no longer worth anything,” the moral lie in the mouth of the decadent says, “ Nothing is worth anything, life is not worth anything.” Such a judgment always remains very dangerous, it is contagious: throughout the morbid soil of society it soon proliferates into a tropical vegetation of concepts—now as a religion (Christianity), now as a philosophy (Schopenhauerism). Sometimes the poisonous vegetation which has grown out of such decomposition poisons life itself for millennia with its fumes. 36 Morality for physicians. — The sick man is a parasite of society. In a certain state it is indecent to live longer. To go on vegetating in cowardly dependence on physicians and machinations, after the meaning of life, the right to life, has been lost, that ought to prompt a profound contempt in society. The physicians, in turn, would have to be the mediators of this contempt—not prescriptions, but every day a new dose of nausea with their patients. To create a new responsibility, that of the physician, for all cases in which the highest interest of life, of ascending life, demands the most inconsiderate pushing down and aside of degenerating life—for example, for the right of procreation, for the right to be born, for the right to live. To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Death freely chosen, death at the right time, brightly and cheerfully accomplished amid children and witnesses: then a real farewell is still possible, as the one who is taking leave is still there; also a real estimate of what one has achieved and what one has wished, drawing the sum of one’s life—all in opposition to the wretched and revolting comedy that Christianity has made of the hour of death. One should never forget that Christianity has exploited the weakness of the dying for a rape of the conscience; and the manner of death itself, for value judgments about man and
the past. Here it is important to defy all the cowardices of prejudice and to establish, above all, the real, that is, the physiological, appreciation of so-called natural death—which is in the end also “ unnatural,” a kind of suicide. One never perishes through anybody but oneself. But usually it is death under the most contemptible conditions, an unfree death, death not at the right time, a coward’s death. From love of life, one should desire a different death: free, conscious, without accident, without ambush. Finally, some advice for our dear pessimists and other decadents. It is not in our hands to prevent our birth; but we can correct this mistake—for in some cases it is a mistake. When one does away with oneself, one does the most estimable thing possible: one almost earns the right to live. Society—what am I saying?—life itself derives more advantage from this than from any “ life” of renunciation, anemia, and other virtues: one has liberated the others from one’s sight; one has liberated life from an objection. Pessimism, pur, vert, is proved only by the selfrefutation of our dear pessimists: one must advance a step further in its logic and not only negate life with “ will and representation,” as Schopenhauer did—one must first of all negate Schopenhauer. Incidentally, however contagious pessimism is, it still does not increase the sickliness of an age, of a generation as a whole: it is an expression of this sickliness. One falls victim to it as one falls victim to cholera: one has to be morbid enough in one’s whole predisposition. Pessimism itself does not create a single decadent more; I recall the statistics which show that the years in which cholera rages do not differ from other years in the total number of deaths. 37 Whether we have become more moral. — Against my conception of “ beyond good and evil”—as was to be expected—the whole ferocity of moral hebetation, mistaken for morality itself in Germany, as is well known, has gone into action: I could tell fine stories about that. Above all I was asked to consider the “ undeniable superiority” of our age in moral judgment, the real progress we have made here: compared with us, a Cesare Borgia is by no means to be represented after any manner as a “ higher man,” a kind of overman. A Swiss editor of the Bund went so far that he “ understood” the meaning of my work—not without expressing his respect for my courage and daring—to be a demand for the abolition of all decent feelings. Thank you! In reply, I take the liberty of raising the question whether we have really become more moral. That all the world believes this to be the case merely constitutes an objection. We modern men, very tender, very easily hurt, and offering as well as receiving consideration a hundredfold, really have the conceit that this tender humanity which we represent, this attained unanimity in sympathetic regard, in readiness to help, in mutual trust, represents positive progress; and that in this respect we are far above the men of the Renaissance. But that is how every age thinks, how it must think. What is certain is that we may not place ourselves in renaissance conditions, not even by an act of thought: our nerves would not endure that reality, not to speak of our muscles. But such incapacity does not prove progress, only another, later constitution, one which is weaker, frailer, more easily hurt, and which necessarily generates a morality rich in consideration. Were we to think away our frailty and lateness, our physiological senescence, then our morality of “ humanization” would immediately lose its value too (in itself, no morality has any value)—it would even arouse disdain. On the other hand, let us not doubt that we moderns, with our thickly padded humanity, which at all costs wants to avoid bumping into a stone, would have provided Cesare Borgia’s contemporaries with a comedy at which they could have laughed themselves to death. Indeed, we are unwittingly funny beyond all measure with our modern “ virtues.” The decrease in instincts which are hostile and arouse mistrust—and that is all our “ progress” amounts to—represents but one of the consequences attending the general decrease in vitality: it requires a hundred times more trouble and caution to make so conditional and late an existence prevail. Hence each helps the other; hence everyone is to a certain extent sick, and everyone is a nurse for the sick. And that is called “ virtue.” Among men who still knew life differently—fuller, more squandering, more overflowing—it would have been called by another name: “ cowardice” perhaps, “ wretchedness,” “ old ladies’ morality.” Our softening of manners—that is my proposition; that is, if you will, my innovation—is a consequence of decline; the hardness and terribleness of morals, conversely, can be a consequence of an excess of life. For in that case much may also be dared, much challenged, and much squandered. What was once the spice of life would be poison for us. To be indifferent—that too is a form of strength—for that we are likewise too old, too late. Our morality of sympathy, against which I was the first to issue a warning—that which one might call l’impressionisme morale—is just another expression of that physiological overexcitability which is characteristic of everything decadent. That movement which tried to introduce itself scientifically with Schopenhauer’s morality of pity—a very unfortunate attempt!—is the real movement of decadence in morality; as such, it is profoundly related to Christian morality. Strong ages, noble cultures, all consider pity, “ neighbor-love,” and the lack of self and self-assurance as something contemptible. Ages must be measured by their positive strength—and then that lavishly squandering and fatal age of the Renaissance appears as the last great age; and we moderns, with our anxious self-solicitude and neighbor-love, with our virtues of work, modesty, legality, and scientism—accumulating, economic, machinelike—appear as a weak age. Our virtues are conditional on, are provoked by, our weaknesses. “ Equality” as a certain factual increase in similarity, which merely finds expression in the theory of “ equal rights,” is an essential feature of decline. The cleavage between man and man, status and status, the plurality of types, the will to be oneself, to stand out—what I call the pathos of distance, that is characteristic of every strong age. The strength to withstand tension, the width of the tensions between extremes, becomes ever smaller today; finally, the extremes themselves become blurred to the point of similarity. All our political theories and constitutions—and the “ German Reich” is by no means an exception—are consequences, necessary consequences, of decline; the unconscious effect of decadence has assumed mastery even over the ideals of some of the sciences. My objection against the whole of sociology in England and France remains that it knows from experience only the forms of social decay, and with perfect innocence accepts its own instincts of decay as the norm of sociological value-judgments. The decline of life, the decrease in the power to organize—that is, to separate, tear open clefts, subordinate and superordinate—all this has been formulated as the ideal in contemporary sociology. Our socialists are decadents, but Mr. Herbert Spencer is a decadent too: he considers the triumph of altruism desirable. 38 My conception of freedom. — The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it—what it costs us. I shall give an example. Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions. Their effects are known well enough: they undermine the will to power; they level mountain and valley, and call that morality; they make men small, cowardly, and hedonistic—every time it is the herd animal that triumphs with them. Liberalism: in other words, herd-animalization. These same
institutions produce quite different effects while they are still being fought for; then they really promote freedom in a powerful way. On closer inspection it is war that produces these effects, the war for liberal institutions, which, as a war, permits illiberal instincts to continue. And war educates for freedom. For what is freedom? That one has the will to assume responsibility for oneself. That one maintains the distance which separates us. That one becomes more indifferent to difficulties, hardships, privation, even to life itself. That one is prepared to sacrifice human beings for one’s cause, not excluding oneself. Freedom means that the manly instincts which delight in war and victory dominate over other instincts, for example, over those of “ pleasure.” The human being who has become free—and how much more the spirit who has become free—spits on the contemptible type of well-being dreamed of by shopkeepers, Christians, cows, females, Englishmen, and other democrats. The free man is a warrior. How is freedom measured in individuals and peoples? According to the resistance which must be overcome, according to the exertion required, to remain on top. The highest type of free men should be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude. This is true psychologically if by “ tyrants” are meant inexorable and fearful instincts that provoke the maximum of authority and discipline against themselves; most beautiful type: Julius Caesar. This is true politically too; one need only go through history. The peoples who had some value, attained some value, never attained it under liberal institutions: it was great danger that made something of them that merits respect. Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources, our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit, and forces us to be strong. First principle: one must need to be strong—otherwise one will never become strong. Those large hothouses for the strong—for the strongest kind of human being that has so far been known—the aristocratic commonwealths of the type of Rome or Venice, understood freedom exactly in the sense in which I understand it: as something one has or does not have, something one wants, something one conquers. 39 Critique of modernity. — Our institutions are no good any more: on that there is universal agreement. However, it is not their fault but ours. Once we have lost all the instincts out of which institutions grow, we lose institutions altogether because we are no longer good for them. Democracy has ever been the form of decline in organizing power: in Human, All-TooHuman (I, 472) I already characterized modern democracy, together with its hybrids such as the “ German Reich,” as the form of decline of the state. In order that there may be institutions, there must be a kind of will, instinct, or imperative, which is anti-liberal to the point of malice: the will to tradition, to authority, to responsibility for centuries to come, to the solidarity of chains of generations, forward and backward ad infinitum. When this will is present, something like the imperium Romanum is founded; or like Russia, the only power today which has endurance, which can wait, which can still promise something—Russia, the concept that suggests the opposite of the wretched European nervousness and system of small states, which has entered a critical phase with the founding of the German Reich. The whole of the West no longer possesses the instincts out of which institutions grow, out of which a future grows: perhaps nothing antagonizes its “ modern spirit” so much. One lives for the day, one lives very fast, one lives very irresponsibly: precisely this is called “ freedom.” That which makes an institution an institution is despised, hated, repudiated: one fears the danger of a new slavery the moment the word “ authority” is even spoken out loud. That is how far decadence has advanced in the value-instincts of our politicians, of our political parties: instinctively they prefer what disintegrates, what hastens the end. Witness modern marriage. All rationality has clearly vanished from modern marriage; yet that is no objection to marriage, but to modernity. The rationality of marriage—that lay in the husband’s sole juridical responsibility, which gave marriage a center of gravity, while today it limps on both legs. The rationality of marriage—that lay in its indissolubility in principle, which lent it an accent that could be heard above the accident of feeling, passion, and what is merely momentary. It also lay in the family’s responsibility for the choice of a spouse. With the growing indulgence of love matches, the very foundation of marriage has been eliminated, that which alone makes an institution of it. Never, absolutely never, can an institution be founded on an idiosyncrasy; one cannot, as I have said, found marriage on “ love”—it can be founded on the sex drive, on the property drive (wife and child as property), on the drive to dominate, which continually organizes for itself the smallest structure of domination, the family, and which needs children and heirs to hold fast— physiologically too—to an attained measure of power, influence, and wealth, in order to prepare for long-range tasks, for a solidarity of instinct between the centuries. Marriage as an institution involves the affirmation of the largest and most enduring form of organization: when society cannot affirm itself as a whole, down to the most distant generations, then marriage has altogether no meaning. Modern marriage has lost its meaning—consequently one abolishes it. 40 The Labor question. — The stupidity—at bottom, the degeneration of instinct, which is today the cause of all stupidities—is that there is a labor question at all. Certain things one does not question: that is the first imperative of instinct. I simply cannot see what one proposes to do with the European worker now that one has made a question of him. He is far too well off not to ask for more and more, not to ask more immodestly. In the end, he has numbers on his side. The hope is gone forever that a modest and self-sufficient kind of man, a Chinese type, might here develop as a class: and there would have been reason in that, it would almost have been a necessity. But what was done? Everything to nip in the bud even the preconditions for this: the instincts by virtue of which the worker becomes possible as a class, possible in his own eyes, have been destroyed through and through with the most irresponsible thoughtlessness. The worker was qualified for military service, granted the right to organize and to vote: is it any wonder that the worker today experiences his own existence as distressing—morally speaking, as an injustice? But what is wanted? I ask once more. If one wants an end, one must also want the means: if one wants slaves, then one is a fool if one educates them to be masters. 41 “ Freedom which I do not mean.” — In times like these, abandonment to one’s instincts is one calamity more. Our instincts contradict, disturb, destroy each other; I have a ready defined what is modern as physiological self-contradiction. Rationality in education would require that under iron pressure at least one of these instinct systems be paralyzed to permit another to gain in power, to become strong, to become master. Today the individual still has to be made possible by being pruned: possible here means whole. The reverse is what happens: the claim for independence, for free development, for laisser aller is pressed most hotly by the very people for whom no reins would be too strict. This is true in politics, this is true in art. But that is a symptom of decadence: our modern conception of “ freedom” is one more proof of the degeneration of the instincts. 42 Where faith is needed. — Nothing is rarer among moralists and saints than honesty. Perhaps they say the contrary, perhaps they even believe it. For when a faith is more useful, more effective, and more persuasive than
conscious hypocrisy, then hypocrisy soon turns instinctively into innocence: first principle for the understanding of great saints. The philosophers are merely another kind of saint, and their whole craft is such that they admit only certain truths—namely those for the sake of which their craft is accorded public sanction—in Kantian terms, truths of practical reason. They know what they must prove; in this they are practical. They recognize each other by their agreement about “ the truths.” “ Thou shalt not lie”: in other words, beware, my dear philosopher, of telling the truth. 43 Whispered to the conservatives. — What was not known formerly, what is known, or might be known, today: a reversion, a return in any sense or degree is simply not possible. We physiologists know that. Yet all priests and moralists have believed the opposite—they wanted to take mankind back, to screw it back, to a former measure of virtue. Morality was always a bed of Procrustes. Even the politicians have aped the preachers of virtue at this point: today too there are still parties whose dream it is that all things might walk backwards like crabs. But no one is free to be a crab. Nothing avails: one must go forward—step by step further into decadence (that is my definition of modern “ progress”). One can check this development and thus dam up degeneration, gather it and make it more vehement and sudden: one can do no more. 44 My conception of genius. — Great men, like great ages, are explosives in which a tremendous force is stored up; their precondition is always, historically and physiologically, that for a long time much has been gathered, stored up, saved up, and conserved for them—that there has been no explosion for a long time. Once the tension in the mass has become too great, then the most accidental stimulus suffices to summon into the world the “ genius,” the “ deed,” the great destiny. What does the environment matter then, or the age, or the “ spirit of the age,” or “ public opinion”! Take the case of Napoleon. Revolutionary France, and even more, prerevolutionary France, would have brought forth the opposite type; in fact, it did. Because Napoleon was different, the heir of a stronger, older, more ancient civilization than the one which was then perishing in France, he became the master there, he was the only master. Great men are necessary, the age in which they appear is accidental; that they almost always become masters over their age is only because they are stronger, because they are older, because for a longer time much was gathered for them. The relationship between a genius and his age is like that between strong and weak, or between old and young: the age is relatively always much younger, thinner, more immature, less assured, more childish. That in France today they think quite differently on this subject (in Germany too, but that does not matter), that the milieu theory, which is truly a neurotic’s theory, has become sacrosanct and almost scientific and has found adherents even among physiologists—that “ smells bad” and arouses sad reflections. It is no different in England, but that will not grieve anybody. For the English there are only two ways of coming to terms with the genius and the “ great man”: either democratically in the manner of Buckle or religiously in the manner of Carlyle. The danger that lies in great men and ages is extraordinary; exhaustion of every kind, sterility, follow in their wake. The great human being is a finale; the great age—the Renaissance, for example—is a finale. The genius, in work and deed, is necessarily a squanderer: that he squanders himself, that is his greatness! The instinct of self-preservation is suspended, as it were: the overpowering pressure of outflowing forces forbids him any such care or caution. People call this “ self-sacrifice” and praise his “ heroism,” his indifference to his own well-being, his devotion to an idea, a great cause, a fatherland: without exception, misunderstandings. He flows out, he overflows, he uses himself up, he does not spare himself—and this is a calamitous involuntary fatality, no less than a river’s flooding the land. Yet, because much is owed to such explosives, much has also been given them in return: for example, a kind of higher morality. After all, that is the way of human gratitude: it misunderstands its benefactors. 45 The criminal and what is related to him. — The criminal type is the type of the strong human being under unfavorable circumstances: a strong human being made sick. He lacks the wilderness, a somehow freer and more dangerous environment and form of existence, where everything that is weapons and armor in the instinct of the strong human being has its rightful place. His virtues are ostracized by society; the most vivid drives with which he is endowed soon grow together with the depressing affects—with suspicion, fear, and dishonor. Yet this is almost the recipe for physiological degeneration. Whoever must do secretly, with long suspense, caution, and cunning, what he can do best and would like most to do, becomes anemic; and because he always harvests only danger, persecution, and calamity from his instincts, his attitude to these instincts is reversed too, and he comes to experience them fatalistically. It is society, our tame, mediocre, emasculated society, in which a natural human being, who comes from the mountains or from the adventures of the sea, necessarily degenerates into a criminal. Or almost necessarily; for there are cases in which such a man proves stronger than society: the Corsican, Napoleon, is the most famous case. The testimony of Dostoevski is relevant to this problem—Dostoevski, the only psychologist, incidentally, from whom I had something to learn; he ranks among the most beautiful strokes of fortune in my life, even more than my discovery of Stendhal. This profound human being, who was ten times right in his low estimate of the superficial Germans, lived for a long time among the convicts in Siberia—hardened criminals for whom there was no way back to society—and found them very different from what he himself had expected: they were carved out of just about the best, hardest, and most valuable wood that grows anywhere on Russian soil. Let us generalize the case of the criminal: let us think of men so constituted that for one reason or another, they lack public approval and know that they are not felt to be beneficent or useful—that chandala feeling that one is not considered equal, but an outcast, unworthy, contaminating. All men so constituted have a subterranean hue to their thoughts and actions; everything about them becomes paler than in those whose existence is touched by daylight. Yet almost all forms of existence which we consider distinguished today once lived in this half tomblike atmosphere: the scientific character, the artist, the genius, the free spirit, the actor, the merchant, the great discoverer. As long as the priest was considered the supreme type, every valuable kind of human being was devaluated. The time will come, I promise, when the priest will be considered the lowest type, our chandala the most mendacious, the most indecent kind of human being. I call attention to the fact that even now—under the mildest regimen of morals which has ever ruled on earth, or at least in Europe—every deviation, every long, all-too-long sojourn below, every unusual or opaque form of existence, brings one closer to that type which is perfected in the criminal. All innovators of the spirit must for a time bear the pallid and fatal mark of the chandala on their foreheads—not because they are considered that way by others, but because they themselves feel the terrible cleavage which separates them from everything that is customary or reputable. Almost every genius knows, as one stage of his development, the “ Catilinarian existence”—a feeling of hatred, revenge, and rebellion against everything which already is, which no longer becomes. Catiline—the form of pre-existence of every Caesar. 46 Here the view is free. — It may be
nobility of the soul when a philosopher is silent, it may be love when he contradicts himself; and he who has knowledge maybe polite enough to lie. It has been said, not without delicacy: II est indigne des grand coeurs de repandre le trouble qu’ils ressentent [It is unworthy of great hearts to pour out the disturbance they feel]. But one must add that not to be afraid of the most unworthy may also be greatness of soul. A woman who loves, sacrifices her honor; a knower who “ loves” may perhaps sacrifice his humanity; a God who loved became a Jew. 47 Beauty no accident. — The beauty of a race or a family, their grace and graciousness in all gestures, is won by work: like genius, it is the end result of the accumulated work of generations. One must have made great sacrifices to good taste, one must have done much and omitted much, for its sake—seventeenth-century France is admirable in both respects—and good taste must have furnished a principle for selecting company, place, dress, sexual satisfaction; one must have preferred beauty to advantage, habit, opinion, and inertia. Supreme rule of conduct: before oneself too, one must not “ let oneself go.” The good things are immeasurably costly; and the law always holds that those who have them are different from those who acquire them. All that is good is inherited: whatever is not inherited is imperfect, is a mere beginning. In Athens, in the time of Cicero (who expresses his surprise about this), the men and youths were far superior in beauty to the women. But what work and exertion in the service of beauty had the male sex there imposed on itself for centuries! For one should make no mistake about the method in this case: a breeding of feelings and thoughts alone is almost nothing (this is the great misunderstanding underlying German education, which is wholly illusory), one must first persuade the body. Strict perseverance in significant and exquisite gestures together with the obligation to live only with people who do not “ let themselves go”—that is quite enough for one to become significant and exquisite, and in two or three generations all this becomes inward. It is decisive for the lot of a people and of humanity that culture should begin in the right place—not in the “ soul” (as was the fateful superstition of the priests and half-priests): the right place is the body, the gesture, the diet, physiology; the rest follows from that. Therefore the Greeks remain the first cultural event in history: they knew, they did, what was needed; and Christianity, which despised the body, has been the greatest misfortune of humanity so far. 48 Progress in my sense. — I too speak of a “ return to nature,” although it is really not a going back but a going up—an ascent to the high, free, even terrible nature and naturalness where great tasks are something one plays with, one may play with. To put it metaphorically: Napoleon was a piece of “ return to nature,” as I understand the phrase (for example, in rebus tacticis; even more, as military men know, in matters of strategy). But Rousseau—to what did he really want to return? Rousseau, this first modern man, idealist and rabble in one person—one who needed moral “ dignity” to be able to stand his own sight, sick with unbridled vanity and unbridled self-contempt. This miscarriage, couched on the threshold of modern times, also wanted a “ return to nature”; to ask this once more, to what did Rousseau want to return? I still hate Rousseau in the French Revolution: it is the world-historical expression of this duality of idealist and rabble. The bloody farce which became an aspect of the Revolution, its “ immorality,” is of little concern to me: what I hate is its Rousseauan morality—the so-called “ truths” of the Revolution through which it still works and attracts everything shallow and mediocre. The doctrine of equality! There is no more poisonous poison anywhere: for it seems to be preached by justice itself, whereas it really is the termination of justice. “ Equal to the equal, unequal to the unequal”—that would be the true slogan of justice; and also its corollary: “ Never make equal what is unequal.” That this doctrine of equality was surrounded by such gruesome and bloody events, that has given this “ modern idea” par excellence a kind of glory and fiery aura so that the Revolution as a spectacle has seduced even the noblest spirits. In the end, that is no reason for respecting it any more. I see only one man who experienced it as it must be experienced, with nausea—Goethe. 49 Goethe—not a German event, but a European one: a magnificent attempt to overcome the eighteenth century by a return to nature, by an ascent to the naturalness of the Renaissance—a kind of self-overcoming on the part of that century. He bore its strongest instincts within himself: the sensibility, the idolatry of nature, the anti-historic, the idealistic, the unreal and revolutionary (the latter being merely a form of the unreal). He sought help from history, natural science, antiquity, and also Spinoza, but, above all, from practical activity; he surrounded himself with limited horizons; he did not retire from life but put himself into the midst of it; he if was not fainthearted but took as much as possible upon himself, over himself, into himself. What he wanted was totality; he fought the mutual extraneousness of reason, senses, feeling, and will (preached with the most abhorrent scholasticism by Kant, the antipode of Goethe); he disciplined himself to wholeness, he created himself. In the middle of an age with an unreal outlook, Goethe was a convinced realist: he said Yes to everything that was related to him in this respect—and he had no greater experience than that ens realissimum [most real being] called Napoleon. Goethe conceived a human being who would be strong, highly educated, skillful in all bodily matters, self-controlled, reverent toward himself, and who might dare to afford the whole range and wealth of being natural, being strong enough for such freedom; the man of tolerance, not from weakness but from strength, because he knows how to use to his advantage even that from which the average nature would perish; the man for whom there is no longer anything that is forbidden—unless it be weakness, whether called vice or virtue. Such a spirit who has become free stands amid the cosmos with a joyous and trusting fatalism, in the faith that only the particular is loathesome, and that all is redeemed and affirmed in the whole—he does not negate anymore. Such a faith, however, is the highest of all possible faiths: I have baptized it with the name of Dionysus. 50 One might say that in a certain sense the nineteenth century also strove for all that which Goethe as a person had striven for: universality in understanding and in welcoming, letting everything come close to oneself, an audacious realism, a reverence for everything factual. How is it that the overall result is no Goethe, but a chaos, a nihilistic sigh, an utter bewilderment, an instinct of weariness which in practice continually drives toward a recourse to the eighteenth century? (For example, as a romanticism of feeling, as altruism and hypersentimentality, as feminism in taste, as socialism in politics.) Is not the nineteenth century, especially at its close, merely an intensified, brutalized eighteenth century, that is, a century of decadence? So that Goethe would have been—not merely for Germany, but for all of Europe—a mere interlude, a beautiful “ in vain”? But one misunderstands great human beings if one views them from the miserable perspective of some public use. That one cannot put them to any use, that in itself may belong to greatness. 51 Goethe is the last German for whom I feel any reverence: he would have felt three things which I feel—we also understand each other about the “ cross.” I am often asked why, after all, I write in German: nowhere am I read worse than in the Fatherland. But who knows in the end whether I even wish to be read today? To create things on which time tests its teeth in vain; in form, in substance, to strive for a little
immortality—I have never yet been modest enough to demand less of myself. The aphorism, the apothegm, in which I am the first among the Germans to be a master, are the forms of “ eternity”; it is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book—what everyone else does not say in a book. I have given mankind the most profound book it possesses, my Zarathustra; shortly I shall give it the most independent. WHAT I OWE TO THE ANCIENTS 1 In conclusion, a word about that world to which I sought approaches, to which I have perhaps found a new approach—the ancient world. My taste, which may be the opposite of a tolerant taste, is in this case too far from saying Yes indiscriminately: it does not like to say Yes; rather even No; but best of all, nothing. That applies to whole cultures, it applies to books—also to places and landscapes. At bottom it is a very small number of ancient books that counts in my life; the most famous are not among them. My sense of style, for the epigram as a style, was awakened almost instantly when I came into contact with Sallust. I have not forgotten the surprise of my honored teacher, Corssen, when he had to give his worst Latin pupil the best grade: I had finished with one stroke. Compact, severe, with as much substance as possible, a cold sarcasm against “ beautiful words” and “ beautiful sentiments”—here I found myself. And even in my Zarathustra one will recognize a very serious ambition for a Roman style, for the aere perennius [more enduring than bronze] in style. Nor was my experience any different in my first contact with Horace. To this day, no other poet has given me the same artistic delight that a Horatian ode gave me from the first. In certain languages that which has been achieved here could not even be attempted. This mosaic of words, in which every word—as sound, as place, as concept—pours out its strength right and left and over the whole, this minimum in the extent and number of the signs, and the maximum thereby attained in the energy of the signs—all that is Roman and, if one will believe me, noble par excellence. All the rest of poetry becomes, in contrast, something too popular—a mere garrulity of feelings. 2 To the Greeks I do not by any means owe similarly strong impressions; and—to come right out with it—they cannot mean as much to us as the Romans. One does not learn from the Greeks—their manner is too foreign, and too fluid, to have an imperative, a “ classical” effect. Who could ever have learned to write from a Greek? Who could ever have learned it without the Romans? For heaven’s sake, do not throw Plato at me. I am a complete skeptic about Plato, and I have never been able to join in the admiration for the artist Plato which is customary among scholars. In the end, the subtlest judges of taste among the ancients themselves are here on my side. Plato, it seems to me, throws all stylistic forms together and is thus a first-rate decadent in style: his responsibility is thus comparable to that of the Cynics, who invented the satura Menippea. To be attracted by the Platonic dialogue, this horribly self-satisfied and childish kind of dialectic, one must never have read good French writers—Fontenelle, for example. Plato is boring. In the end, my mistrust of Plato goes deep: he represents such an aberration from all the basic instincts of the Hellene, is so moralistic, so pre-existently Christian—he already takes the concept “ good” for the highest concept—that for the whole phenomenon of Plato I would sooner use the harsh phrase “ higher swindle,” or, if it sounds better, “ idealism,” than any other. We have paid dearly for the fact that this Athenian got his schooling from the Egyptians (or from the Jews in Egypt?). In that great calamity, Christianity, Plato represents that ambiguity and fascination, called an “ ideal,” which made it possible for the nobler spirits of antiquity to misunderstand themselves and to set foot on the bridge leading to the cross. And how much Plato there still is in the concept “ church,” in the construction, system, and practice of the church! My recreation, my preference, my cure from all Platonism has always been Thucydides. Thucydides and, perhaps, Machiavelli’s Principe are most closely related to myself by the unconditional will not to gull oneself and to see reason in reality—not in “ reason,” still less in “ morality.” For the wretched embellishment of the Greeks into an ideal, which the “ classically educated” youth carries into life as a prize for his classroom drill, there is no more complete cure than Thucydides. One must follow him line by line and read no less clearly between the lines: there are few thinkers who say so much between the lines. With him the culture of the Sophists, by which I mean the culture of the realists, reaches its perfect expression—this inestimable movement amid the moralistic and idealistic swindle set loose on all sides by the Socratic schools. Greek philosophy: the decadence of the Greek instinct. Thucydides: the great sum, the last revelation of that strong, severe, hard factuality which was instinctive with the older Hellenes. In the end, it is courage in the face of reality that distinguishes a man like Thucydides from Plato: Plato is a coward before reality, consequently he flees into the ideal; Thucydides has control of himself, consequently he also maintains control of things. 3 To smell out “ beautiful souls,” “ golden means,” and other perfections in the Greeks, or to admire their calm in greatness, their ideal cast of mind, their noble simplicity—the psychologist in me protected me against such “ noble simplicity,” a niaiserie allemande anyway. I saw their strongest instinct, the will to power: I saw them tremble before the indomitable force of this drive—I saw how all their institutions grew out of preventive measures taken to protect each other against their inner explosives. This tremendous inward tension then discharged itself in terrible and ruthless hostility to the outside world: the city-states tore each other to pieces so that the citizens of each might find peace from themselves. One needed to be strong: danger was near, it lurked everywhere. The magnificent physical suppleness, the audacious realism and immoralism which distinguished the Hellene constituted a need, not “ nature.” It only resulted, it was not there from the start. And with festivals and the arts they also aimed at nothing other than to feel on top, to show themselves on top. These are means of glorifying oneself, and in certain cases, of inspiring fear of oneself. How could one possibly judge the Greeks by their philosophers, as the Germans have done, and use the Philistine moralism of the Socratic schools as a clue to what was basically Hellenic! After all, the philosophers are the decadents of Greek culture, the counter-movement to the ancient, noble taste (to the agonistic instinct, to the polis, to the value of race, to the authority of descent). The Socratic virtues were preached because the Greeks had lost them: excitable, timid, fickle comedians, every one of them, they had a few reasons too many for having morals preached to them. Not that it did any good—but big words and attitudes suit decadents so well. 4 I was the first to take seriously, for the understanding of the older, the still rich and even overflowing Hellenic instinct, that wonderful phenomenon which bears the name of Dionysus: it is explicable only in terms of an excess of force. Whoever followed the Greeks, like that most profound student of their culture in our time, Jacob Burckhardt in Basel, knew immediately that something had been accomplished thereby; and Burckhardt added a special section on this phenomenon to his Civilization of the Greeks. To see the opposite, one should look at the almost amusing poverty of instinct among the German
philologists when they approach the Dionysian. The famous Lobeck, above all, crawled into this world of mysterious states with all the venerable sureness of a worm dried up between books, and persuaded himself that it was scientific of him to be glib and childish to the point of nausea—and with the utmost erudition, Lobeck gave us to understand that all these curiosities really did not amount to anything. In fact, the priests could have told the participants in such orgies some not altogether worthless things; for example, that wine excites lust, that man can under certain circumstances live on fruit, that plants bloom in the spring and wilt in the fall. As regards the astonishing wealth of rites, symbols, and myths of an orgiastic origin, with which the ancient world is literally overrun, this gave Lobeck an opportunity to become still more ingenious. “ The Greeks,” he said (Aglaophamus I, 672), “ when they had nothing else to do, laughed, jumped, and ran around; or, since man sometimes feels that urge too, they sat down, cried, and lamented. Others came later on and sought some reason for this spectacular behavior; and thus there originated, as explanations for these customs, countless traditions concerning feasts and myths. On the other hand, it was believed that this droll ado, which took place on the feast days after all, must also form a necessary part of the festival and therefore it was maintained as an indispensable feature of the religious service.” This is contemptible prattle; a Lobeck simply cannot be taken seriously for a moment. We have quite a different feeling when we examine the concept “ Greek” which was developed by Winckelmann and Goethe, and find it incompatible with that element out of which Dionysian art grows—the orgiastic. Indeed I do not doubt that as a matter of principle Goethe excluded a thing of the sort from the possibilities of the Greek soul. Consequently Goethe did not understand the Greeks. For it is only in the Dionysian mysteries, in the psychology of the Dionysian state, that the basic fact of the Hellenic instinct finds expression—its “ will to life.” What was it that the Hellene guaranteed himself by means of these mysteries? Eternal life, the eternal return of life, the future promised and hallowed in the past; the triumphant Yes to life beyond all death and change; true life as the overall continuation of life through procreation, through the mysteries of sexuality. For the Greeks the sexual symbol was therefore the venerable symbol par excellence, the real profundity in the whole of ancient piety. Every single element in the act of procreation, of pregnancy, and of birth aroused the highest and most solemn feelings. In the doctrine of the mysteries, pain is pronounced holy: the pangs of the woman giving birth hallow all pain; all becoming and growing—all that guarantees a future—involves pain. That there may be the eternal joy of creating, that the will to life may eternally affirm itself, the agony of the woman giving birth must also be there eternally. All this is meant by the word Dionysus: I know no higher symbolism than this Greek symbolism of the Dionysian festivals. Here the most profound instinct of life, that directed toward the future of life, the eternity of life, is experienced religiously—and the way to life, procreation, as the holy way. It was Christianity, with its ressentiment against life at the bottom of its heart, which first made something unclean of sexuality: it threw filth on the origin, on the presupposition of our life. 5 The psychology of the orgiastic as an overflowing feeling of life and strength, where even pain still has the effect of a stimulus, gave me the key to the concept of tragic feeling, which had been misunderstood both by Aristotle and, quite especially, by our modern pessimists. Tragedy is so far from proving anything about the pessimism of the Hellenes, in Schopenhauer’s sense, that it may, on the contrary, be considered its decisive repudiation and counter-instance. Saying Yes to life even in its strangest and hardest problems, the will to life rejoicing over its own inexhaustibility even in the very sacrifice of its highest types— that is what I called Dionysian, that is what I guessed to be the bridge to the psychology of the tragic poet. Not in order to be liberated from terror and pity, not in order to purge oneself of a dangerous affect by its vehement discharge—Aristotle understood it that way—but in order to be oneself the eternal joy of becoming, beyond all terror and pity—that joy which included even joy in destroying. And herewith I again touch that point from which I once went forth: The Birth of Tragedy was my first revaluation of all values. Herewith I again stand on the soil out of which my intention, my ability grows—I, the last disciple of the philosopher Dionysus-I, the teacher of the eternal recurrence. THE HAMMER SPEAKS “ Why so hard?” the kitchen coal once said to the diamond. “ After all, are we not close kin?” Why so soft? O my brothers, thus I ask you: are you not after all my brothers? Why so soft, so pliant and yielding? Why is there so much denial, self-denial, in your hearts? So little destiny in your eyes? And if you do not want to be destinies and inexorable ones, how can you one day triumph with me? And if your hardness does not wish to flash and cut through, how can you one day create with me? For all creators are hard. And it must seem blessedness to you to impress your hand on millennia as on wax. Blessedness to write on the will of millennia as on bronze—harder than bronze, nobler than bronze. Only the noblest is altogether hard. This new tablet, O my brothers, I place over you: Become hard! —Zarathustra, III: On Old and New Tablets, 29.
THE ANTICHRIST H. L. MENCKEN INTRODUCTION Save for his raucous, rhapsodical autobiography, “ Ecce Homo,” “ The Antichrist” is the last thing that Nietzsche ever wrote, and so it may be accepted as a statement of some of his most salient ideas in their final form. Notes for it had been accumulating for years and it was to have constituted the first volume of his long-projected magnum opus, “ The Will to Power.” His full plan for this work, as originally drawn up, was as follows: Vol. I. The Antichrist: an Attempt at a Criticism of Christianity. Vol. II. The Free Spirit: a Criticism of Philosophy as a Nihilistic Movement. Vol. III. The Immoralist: a Criticism of Morality, the Most Fatal Form of Ignorance. Vol. IV. Dionysus: the Philosophy of Eternal Recurrence.
The first sketches for “ The Will to Power” were made in 1884, soon after the publication of the first three parts of “ Thus Spake Zarathustra,” and thereafter, for four years, Nietzsche piled up notes. They were written at all the places he visited on his endless travels in search of health—at Nice, at Venice, at Sils-Maria in the Engadine (for long his favourite resort), at Cannobio, at Z�rich, at Genoa, at Chur, at Leipzig. Several times his work was interrupted by other books, first by “ Beyond Good and Evil,” then by “ The Genealogy of Morals” (written in twenty days), then by his Wagner pamphlets. Almost as often he changed his plan. Once he decided to expand “ The Will to Power” to ten volumes, with “ An Attempt at a New Interpretation of the World” as a general sub-title. Again he adopted the sub-title of “ An Interpretation of All That Happens.” Finally, he hit upon “ An Attempt at a Transvaluation of All Values,” and went back to four volumes, though with a number of changes in their arrangement. In September, 1888, he began actual work upon the first volume, and before the end of the month it was completed. The Summer had been one of almost hysterical creative activity. Since the middle of June he had written two other small books, “ The Case of Wagner” and “ The Twilight of the Idols,” and before the end of the year he was destined to write “ Ecce Homo.” Some time during December his health began to fail rapidly, and soon after the New Year he was helpless. Thereafter he wrote no more. The Wagner diatribe and “ The Twilight of the Idols” were published immediately, but “ The Antichrist” did not get into type until 1895. I suspect that the delay was due to the influence of the philosopher’s sister, Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche, an intelligent and ardent but by no means uniformly judicious propagandist of his ideas. During his dark days of neglect and misunderstanding, when even family and friends kept aloof, Frau Forster-Nietzsche went with him farther than any other, but there were bounds beyond which she, also, hesitated to go, and those bounds were marked by crosses. One notes, in her biography of him—a useful but not always accurate work—an evident desire to purge him of the accusation of mocking at sacred things. He had, she says, great admiration for “ the elevating effect of Christianity … upon the weak and ailing,” and “ a real liking for sincere, pious Christians,” and “ a tender love for the Founder of Christianity.” All his wrath, she continues, was reserved for “ St. Paul and his like,” who perverted the Beatitudes, which Christ intended for the lowly only, into a universal religion which made war upon aristocratic values. Here, obviously, one is addressed by an interpreter who cannot forget that she is the daughter of a Lutheran pastor and the grand-daughter of two others; a touch of conscience gets into her reading of “ The Antichrist.” She even hints that the text may have been garbled, after the author’s collapse, by some more sinister heretic. There is not the slightest reason to believe that any such garbling ever took place, nor is there any evidence that their common heritage of piety rested upon the brother as heavily as it rested upon the sister. On the contrary, it must be manifest that Nietzsche, in this book, intended to attack Christianity headlong and with all arms, that for all his rapid writing he put the utmost care into it, and that he wanted it to be printed exactly as it stands. The ideas in it were anything but new to him when he set them down. He had been developing them since the days of his beginning. You will find some of them, clearly recognizable, in the first book he ever wrote, “ The Birth of Tragedy.” You will find the most important of all of them—the conception of Christianity as ressentiment—set forth at length in the first part of “ The Genealogy of Morals,” published under his own supervision in 1887. And the rest are scattered through the whole vast mass of his notes, sometimes as mere questionings but often worked out very carefully. Moreover, let it not be forgotten that it was Wagner’s yielding to Christian sentimentality in “ Parsifal” that transformed Nietzsche from the first among his literary advocates into the most bitter of his opponents. He could forgive every other sort of mountebankery, but not that. “ In me,” he once said, “ the Christianity of my forbears reaches its logical conclusion. In me the stern intellectual conscience that Christianity fosters and makes paramount turns against Christianity. In me Christianity … devours itself.” In truth, the present philippic is as necessary to the completeness of the whole of Nietzsche’s system as the keystone is to the arch. All the curves of his speculation lead up to it. What he flung himself against, from beginning to end of his days of writing, was always, in the last analysis, Christianity in some form or other—Christianity as a system of practical ethics, Christianity as a political code, Christianity as metaphysics, Christianity as a gauge of the truth. It would be difficult to think of any intellectual enterprise on his long list that did not, more or less directly and clearly, relate itself to this master enterprise of them all. It was as if his apostasy from the faith of his fathers, filling him with the fiery zeal of the convert, and particularly of the convert to heresy, had blinded him to every other element in the gigantic self-delusion of civilized man. The will to power was his answer to Christianity’s affectation of humility and self-sacrifice; eternal recurrence was his mocking criticism of Christian optimism and millennialism; the superman was his candidate for the place of the Christian ideal of the “ good” man, prudently abased before the throne of God. The things he chiefly argued for were anti-Christian things—the abandonment of the purely moral view of life, the rehabilitation of instinct, the dethronement of weakness and timidity as ideals, the renunciation of the whole hocus-pocus of dogmatic religion, the extermination of false aristocracies (of the priest, of the politician, of the plutocrat), the revival of the healthy, lordly “ innocence” that was Greek. If he was anything in a word, Nietzsche was a Greek born two thousand years too late. His dreams were thoroughly Hellenic; his whole manner of thinking was Hellenic; his peculiar errors were Hellenic no less. But his Hellenism, I need not add, was anything but the pale neo-Platonism that has run like a thread through the thinking of the Western world since the days of the Christian Fathers. From Plato, to be sure, he got what all of us must get, but his real forefather was Heraclitus. It is in Heraclitus that one finds the germ of his primary view of the universe—a view, to wit, that sees it, not as moral phenomenon, but as mere aesthetic representation. The God that Nietzsche imagined, in the end, was not far from the God that such an artist as Joseph Conrad imagines—a supreme craftsman, ever experimenting, ever coming closer to an ideal balancing of lines and forces, and yet always failing to work out the final harmony. The late war, awakening all the primitive racial fury of the Western nations, and therewith all their ancient enthusiasm for religious taboos and sanctions, naturally focused attention upon Nietzsche, as upon the most daring and provocative of recent amateur theologians. The Germans, with their characteristic tendency to explain their every act in terms as realistic and unpleasant as possible, appear to have mauled him in a belated and unexpected embrace, to the horror, I daresay, of the Kaiser, and perhaps to the even greater horror of Nietzsche’s own ghost. The folks of Anglo-Saxondom, with their equally characteristic tendency to explain all their enterprises romantically, simultaneously set him up as the Antichrist he no doubt secretly longed to be. The result was a great deal of misrepresentation and misunderstanding of him. From the pulpits of the allied countries, and particularly
from those of England and the United States, a horde of patriotic ecclesiastics denounced him in extravagant terms as the author of all the horrors of the time, and in the newspapers, until the Kaiser was elected sole bugaboo, he shared the honors of that office with von Hindenburg, the Crown Prince, Capt. Boy-Ed, von Bernstorff and von Tirpitz. Most of this denunciation, of course, was frankly idiotic—the na�ve pishposh of suburban Methodists, notoriety-seeking college professors, almost illiterate editorial writers, and other such numskulls. In much of it, including not a few official hymns of hate, Nietzsche was gravely discovered to be the teacher of such spokesmen of the extremest sort of German nationalism as von Bernhardi and von Treitschke—which was just as intelligent as making George Bernard Shaw the mentor of Lloyd-George. In other solemn pronunciamentoes he was credited with being philosophically responsible for various imaginary crimes of the enemy—the wholesale slaughter or mutilation of prisoners of war, the deliberate burning down of Red Cross hospitals, the utilization of the corpses of the slain for soap-making. I amused myself, in those gaudy days, by collecting newspaper clippings to this general effect, and later on I shall probably publish a digest of them, as a contribution to the study of war hysteria. The thing went to unbelievable lengths. On the strength of the fact that I had published a book on Nietzsche in 1906, six years after his death, I was called upon by agents of the Department of Justice, elaborately outfitted with badges, to meet the charge that I was an intimate associate and agent of “ the German monster, Nietzsky.” I quote the official proc�s verbal, an indignant but often misspelled document. Alas, poor Nietzsche! After all his laborious efforts to prove that he was not a German, but a Pole—even after his heroic readiness, via anti-anti-Semitism, to meet the deduction that, if a Pole, then probably also a Jew! But under all this alarmed and preposterous tosh there was at least a sound instinct, and that was the instinct which recognized Nietzsche as the most eloquent, pertinacious and effective of all the critics of the philosophy to which the Allies against Germany stood committed, and on the strength of which, at all events in theory, the United States had engaged itself in the war. He was not, in point of fact, involved with the visible enemy, save in remote and transient ways; the German, officially, remained the most ardent of Christians during the war and became a democrat at its close. But he was plainly a foe of democracy in all its forms, political, religious and epistemological, and what is worse, his opposition was set forth in terms that were not only extraordinarily penetrating and devastating, but also uncommonly offensive. It was thus quite natural that he should have aroused a degree of indignation verging upon the pathological in the two countries that had planted themselves upon the democratic platform most boldly, and that felt it most shaky, one may add, under their feet. I daresay that Nietzsche, had he been alive, would have got a lot of satisfaction out of the execration thus heaped upon him, not only because, being a vain fellow, he enjoyed execration as a tribute to his general singularity, and hence to his superiority, but also and more importantly because, being no mean psychologist, he would have recognized the disconcerting doubts underlying it. If Nietzsche’s criticism of democracy were as ignorant and empty, say, as the average evangelical clergyman’s criticism of Darwin’s hypothesis of natural selection, then the advocates of democracy could afford to dismiss it as loftily as the Darwinians dismiss the blather of the holy clerks. And if his attack upon Christianity were mere sound and fury, signifying nothing, then there would be no call for anathemas from the sacred desk. But these onslaughts, in point of fact, have behind them a tremendous learning and a great deal of point and plausibility—there are, in brief, bullets in the gun, teeth in the tiger,—and so it is no wonder that they excite the ire of men who hold, as a primary article of belief, that their acceptance would destroy civilization, darken the sun, and bring Jahveh to sobs upon His Throne. But in all this justifiable fear, of course, there remains a false assumption, and that is the assumption that Nietzsche proposed to destroy Christianity altogether, and so rob the plain people of the world of their virtue, their spiritual consolations, and their hope of heaven. Nothing could be more untrue. The fact is that Nietzsche had no interest whatever in the delusions of the plain people—that is, intrinsically. It seemed to him of small moment what they believed, so long as it was safely imbecile. What he stood against was not their beliefs, but the elevation of those beliefs, by any sort of democratic process, to the dignity of a state philosophy—what he feared most was the pollution and crippling of the superior minority by intellectual disease from below. His plain aim in “ The Antichrist” was to combat that menace by completing the work begun, on the one hand, by Darwin and the other evolutionist philosophers, and, on the other hand, by German historians and philologians. The net effect of this earlier attack, in the eighties, had been the collapse of Christian theology as a serious concern of educated men. The mob, it must be obvious, was very little shaken; even to this day it has not put off its belief in the essential Christian doctrines. But the intelligentsia, by 1885, had been pretty well convinced. No man of sound information, at the time Nietzsche planned “ The Antichrist,” actually believed that the world was created in seven days, or that its fauna was once overwhelmed by a flood as a penalty for the sins of man, or that Noah saved the boa constrictor, the prairie dog and the pediculus capitis by taking a pair of each into the ark, or that Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt, or that a fragment of the True Cross could cure hydrophobia. Such notions, still almost universally prevalent in Christendom a century before, were now confined to the great body of ignorant and credulous men—that is, to ninety-five or ninety-six percent. of the race. For a man of the superior minority to subscribe to one of them publicly was already sufficient to set him off as one in imminent need of psychiatrical attention. Belief in them had become a mark of inferiority, like the allied belief in madstones, magic and apparitions. But though the theology of Christianity had thus sunk to the lowly estate of a mere delusion of the rabble, propagated on that level by the ancient caste of sacerdotal parasites, the ethics of Christianity continued to enjoy the utmost acceptance, and perhaps even more acceptance than ever before. It seemed to be generally felt, in fact, that they simply must be saved from the wreck—that the world would vanish into chaos if they went the way of the revelations supporting them. In this fear a great many judicious men joined, and so there arose what was, in essence, an absolutely new Christian cult—a cult, to wit, purged of all the supernaturalism superimposed upon the older cult by generations of theologians, and harking back to what was conceived to be the pure ethical doctrine of Jesus. This cult still flourishes; Protestantism tends to become identical with it; it invades Catholicism as Modernism; it is supported by great numbers of men whose intelligence is manifest and whose sincerity is not open to question. Even Nietzsche himself yielded to it in weak moments, as you will discover on examining his somewhat laborious effort to make Paul the villain of Christian theology, and Jesus no more than an innocent bystander. But this
sentimental yielding never went far enough to distract his attention for long from his main idea, which was this: that Christian ethics were quite as dubious, at bottom, as Christian theology—that they were founded, just as surely as such childish fables as the story of Jonah and the whale, upon the peculiar prejudices and credulities, the special desires and appetites, of inferior men—that they warred upon the best interests of men of a better sort quite as unmistakably as the most extravagant of objective superstitions. In brief, what he saw in Christian ethics, under all the poetry and all the fine show of altruism and all the theoretical benefits therein, was a democratic effort to curb the egoism of the strong—a conspiracy of the chandala against the free functioning of their superiors, nay, against the free progress of mankind. This theory is the thing he exposes in “ The Antichrist,” bringing to the business his amazingly chromatic and exigent eloquence at its finest flower. This is the “ conspiracy” he sets forth in all the panoply of his characteristic italics, dashes, sforzando interjections and exclamation points. Well, an idea is an idea. The present one may be right and it may be wrong. One thing is quite certain: that no progress will be made against it by denouncing it as merely immoral. If it is ever laid at all, it must be laid evidentially, logically. The notion to the contrary is thoroughly democratic; the mob is the most ruthless of tyrants; it is always in a democratic society that heresy and felony tend to be most constantly confused. One hears without surprise of a Bismarck philosophizing placidly (at least in his old age) upon the delusion of Socialism and of a Frederick the Great playing the hose of his cynicism upon the absolutism that was almost identical with his own person, but men in the mass never brook the destructive discussion of their fundamental beliefs, and that impatience is naturally most evident in those societies in which men in the mass are most influential. Democracy and free speech are not facets of one gem; democracy and free speech are eternal enemies. But in any battle between an institution and an idea, the idea, in the long run, has the better of it. Here I do not venture into the absurdity of arguing that, as the world wags on, the truth always survives. I believe nothing of the sort. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that an idea that happens to be true—or, more exactly, as near to truth as any human idea can be, and yet remain generally intelligible—it seems to me that such an idea carries a special and often fatal handicap. The majority of men prefer delusion to truth. It soothes. It is easy to grasp. Above all, it fits more snugly than the truth into a universe of false appearances—of complex and irrational phenomena, defectively grasped. But though an idea that is true is thus not likely to prevail, an idea that is attacked enjoys a great advantage. The evidence behind it is now supported by sympathy, the sporting instinct, sentimentality—and sentimentality is as powerful as an army with banners. One never hears of a martyr in history whose notions are seriously disputed today. The forgotten ideas are those of the men who put them forward soberly and quietly, hoping fatuously that they would conquer by the force of their truth; these are the ideas that we now struggle to rediscover. Had Nietzsche lived to be burned at the stake by outraged Mississippi Methodists, it would have been a glorious day for his doctrines. As it is, they are helped on their way every time they are denounced as immoral and against God. The war brought down upon them the maledictions of vast herds of right-thinking men. And now “ The Antichrist,” after fifteen years of neglect, is being reprinted…. One imagines the author, a sardonic wraith, snickering somewhat sadly over the fact. His shade, wherever it suffers, is favoured in these days by many such consolations, some of them of much greater horsepower. Think of the facts and arguments, even the underlying theories and attitudes, that have been borrowed from him, consciously and unconsciously, by the foes of Bolshevism during these last thrilling years! The face of democracy, suddenly seen hideously close, has scared the guardians of the reigning plutocracy half to death, and they have gone to the devil himself for aid. Southern Senators, almost illiterate men, have mixed his acids with well water and spouted them like affrighted geysers, not knowing what they did. Nor are they the first to borrow from him. Years ago I called attention to the debt incurred with characteristic forgetfulness of obligation by the late Theodore Roosevelt, in “ The Strenuous Life” and elsewhere. Roosevelt, a typical apologist for the existing order, adeptly dragging a herring across the trail whenever it was menaced, yet managed to delude the native boobery, at least until toward the end, into accepting him as a fiery exponent of pure democracy. Perhaps he even fooled himself; charlatans usually do so soon or late. A study of Nietzsche reveals the sources of much that was honest in him, and exposes the hollowness of much that was sham. Nietzsche, an infinitely harder and more courageous intellect, was incapable of any such confusion of ideas; he seldom allowed sentimentality to turn him from the glaring fact. What is called Bolshevism today he saw clearly a generation ago and described for what it was and is—democracy in another aspect, the old ressentiment of the lower orders in free function once more. Socialism, Puritanism, Philistinism, Christianity—he saw them all as allotropic forms of democracy, as variations upon the endless struggle of quantity against quality, of the weak and timorous against the strong and enterprising, of the botched against the fit. The world needed a staggering exaggeration to make it see even half of the truth. It trembles today as it trembled during the French Revolution. Perhaps it would tremble less if it could combat the monster with a clearer conscience and less burden of compromising theory—if it could launch its forces frankly at the fundamental doctrine, and not merely employ them to police the transient orgy. Nietzsche, in the long run, may help it toward that greater honesty. His notions, propagated by cuttings from cuttings from cuttings, may conceivably prepare the way for a sounder, more healthful theory of society and of the state, and so free human progress from the stupidities which now hamper it, and men of true vision from the despairs which now sicken them. I say it is conceivable, but I doubt that it is probable. The soul and the belly of mankind are too evenly balanced; it is not likely that the belly will ever put away its hunger or forget its power. Here, perhaps, there is an example of the eternal recurrence that Nietzsche was fond of mulling over in his blacker moods. We are in the midst of one of the perennial risings of the lower orders. It got under way long before any of the current Bolshevist demons was born; it was given its long, secure start by the intolerable tyranny of the plutocracy—the end product of the Eighteenth Century revolt against the old aristocracy. It found resistance suddenly slackened by civil war within the plutocracy itself—one gang of traders falling upon another gang, to the tune of vast hymn-singing and yells to God. Perhaps it has already passed its apogee; the plutocracy, chastened, shows signs of a new solidarity; the wheel continues to swing ‘round. But this combat between proletariat and plutocracy is, after all, itself a civil war. Two inferiorities struggle for the privilege of polluting the world. What actual difference does it make to a civilized man, when there is a steel strike, whether the workmen win or the mill-owners win? The conflict can interest
him only as spectacle, as the conflict between Bonaparte and the old order in Europe interested Goethe and Beethoven. The victory, whichever way it goes, will simply bring chaos nearer, and so set the stage for a genuine revolution later on, with (let us hope) a new feudalism or something better coming out of it, and a new Thirteenth Century at dawn. This seems to be the slow, costly way of the worst of habitable worlds. In the present case my money is laid upon the plutocracy. It will win because it will be able, in the long run, to enlist the finer intelligences. The mob and its maudlin causes attract only sentimentalists and scoundrels, chiefly the latter. Politics, under a democracy, reduces itself to a mere struggle for office by flatterers of the proletariat; even when a superior man prevails at that disgusting game he must prevail at the cost of his self-respect. Not many superior men make the attempt. The average great captain of the rabble, when he is not simply a weeper over irremediable wrongs, is a hypocrite so far gone that he is unconscious of his own hypocrisy—a slimy fellow, offensive to the nose. The plutocracy can recruit measurably more respectable janissaries, if only because it can make self-interest less obviously costly to amour propre. Its defect and its weakness lie in the fact that it is still too young to have acquired dignity. But lately sprung from the mob it now preys upon, it yet shows some of the habits of mind of that mob: it is blatant, stupid, ignorant, lacking in all delicate instinct and governmental finesse. Above all, it remains somewhat heavily moral. One seldom finds it undertaking one of its characteristic imbecilities without offering a sonorous moral reason; it spends almost as much to support the Y. M. C. A., vice-crusading, Prohibition and other such puerilities as it spends upon Congressmen, strike-breakers, gun-men, kept patriots and newspapers. In England the case is even worse. It is almost impossible to find a wealthy industrial over there who is not also an eminent non-conformist layman, and even among financiers there are praying brothers. On the Continent, the day is saved by the fact that the plutocracy tends to become more and more Jewish. Here the intellectual cynicism of the Jew almost counterbalances his social unpleasantness. If he is destined to lead the plutocracy of the world out of Little Bethel he will fail, of course, to turn it into an aristocracy—i. e., a caste of gentlemen—, but he will at least make it clever, and hence worthy of consideration. The case against the Jews is long and damning; it would justify ten thousand times as many pogroms as now go on in the world. But whenever you find a Davidsb�ndlerschaft making practise against the Philistines, there you will find a Jew laying on. Maybe it was this fact that caused Nietzsche to speak up for the children of Israel quite as often as he spoke against them. He was not blind to their faults, but when he set them beside Christians he could not deny their general superiority. Perhaps in America and England, as on the Continent, the increasing Jewishness of the plutocracy, while cutting it off from all chance of ever developing into an aristocracy, will yet lift it to such a dignity that it will at least deserve a certain grudging respect. But even so, it will remain in a sort of half-world, midway between the gutter and the stars. Above it will still stand the small group of men that constitutes the permanent aristocracy of the race—the men of imagination and high purpose, the makers of genuine progress, the brave and ardent spirits, above all petty fears and discontents and above all petty hopes and ideals no less. There were heroes before Agamemnon; there will be Bachs after Johann Sebastian. And beneath the Judaized plutocracy, the sublimated bourgeoisie, there the immemorial proletariat, I venture to guess, will roar on, endlessly tortured by its vain hatreds and envies, stampeded and made to tremble by its ancient superstitions, prodded and made miserable by its sordid and degrading hopes. It seems to me very likely that, in this proletariat, Christianity will continue to survive. It is nonsense, true enough, but it is sweet. Nietzsche, denouncing its dangers as a poison, almost falls into the error of denying it its undoubtedly sugary smack. Of all the religions ever devised by the great practical jokers of the race, this is the one that offers most for the least money, so to speak, to the inferior man. It starts out by denying his inferiority in plain terms: all men are equal in the sight of God. It ends by erecting that inferiority into a sort of actual superiority: it is a merit to be stupid, and miserable, and sorely put upon—of such are the celestial elect. Not all the eloquence of a million Nietzsches, nor all the painful marshalling of evidence of a million Darwins and Harnacks, will ever empty that great consolation of its allure. The most they can ever accomplish is to make the superior orders of men acutely conscious of the exact nature of it, and so give them armament against the contagion. This is going on; this is being done. I think that “ The Antichrist” has a useful place in that enterprise. It is strident, it is often extravagant, it is, to many sensitive men, in the worst of possible taste, but at bottom it is enormously apt and effective—and on the surface it is undoubtedly a good show. One somehow enjoys, with the malice that is native to man, the spectacle of anathemas batted back; it is refreshing to see the pitchfork employed against gentlemen who have doomed such innumerable caravans to hell. In Nietzsche they found, after many long years, a foeman worthy of them—not a mere fancy swordsman like Voltaire, or a mob orator like Tom Paine, or a pedant like the heretics of exegesis, but a gladiator armed with steel and armoured with steel, and showing all the ferocious gusto of a mediaeval bishop. It is a pity that Holy Church has no process for the elevation of demons, like its process for the canonization of saints. There must be a long roll of black miracles to the discredit of the Accursed Friedrich—sinners purged of conscience and made happy in their sinning, clerics shaken in their theology by visions of a new and better holy city, the strong made to exult, the weak robbed of their old sad romance. It would be a pleasure to see the Advocatus Diaboli turn from the table of the prosecution to the table of the defence, and move in solemn form for the damnation of the Naumburg hobgoblin…. Of all Nietzsche’s books, “ The Antichrist” comes nearest to conventionality in form. It presents a connected argument with very few interludes, and has a beginning, a middle and an end. Most of his works are in the form of collections of apothegms, and sometimes the subject changes on every second page. This fact constitutes one of the counts in the orthodox indictment of him: it is cited as proof that his capacity for consecutive thought was limited, and that he was thus deficient mentally, and perhaps a downright moron. The argument, it must be obvious, is fundamentally nonsensical. What deceives the professors is the traditional prolixity of philosophers. Because the average philosophical writer, when he essays to expose his ideas, makes such inordinate drafts upon the parts of speech that the dictionary is almost emptied these defective observers jump to the conclusion that his intrinsic notions are of corresponding weight. This is not unseldom quite untrue. What makes philosophy so garrulous is not the profundity of philosophers, but their lack of art; they are like physicians who sought to cure a slight hyperacidity by giving the patient a carload of burned oyster-shells to eat. There is, too, the endless poll-parrotting that goes on: each new philosopher must prove his learning by laboriously rehearsing the ideas of all previous philosophers…. Nietzsche avoided both faults. He always assumed that his readers knew
the books, and that it was thus unnecessary to rewrite them. And, having an idea that seemed to him to be novel and original, he stated it in as few words as possible, and then shut down. Sometimes he got it into a hundred words; sometimes it took a thousand; now and then, as in the present case, he developed a series of related ideas into a connected book. But he never wrote a word too many. He never pumped up an idea to make it appear bigger than it actually was. The pedagogues, alas, are not accustomed to that sort of writing in serious fields. They resent it, and sometimes they even try to improve it. There exists, in fact, a huge and solemn tome on Nietzsche by a learned man of America in which all of his brilliancy is painfully translated into the windy phrases of the seminaries. The tome is satisfactorily ponderous, but the meat of the cocoanut is left out: there is actually no discussion of the Nietzschean view of Christianity!… Always Nietzsche daunts the pedants. He employed too few words for them—and he had too many ideas. ***** The present translation of “ The Antichrist” is published by agreement with Dr. Oscar Levy, editor of the English edition of Nietzsche. There are two earlier translations, one by Thomas Common and the other by Anthony M. Ludovici. That of Mr. Common follows the text very closely, and thus occasionally shows some essentially German turns of phrase; that of Mr. Ludovici is more fluent but rather less exact. I do not offer my own version on the plea that either of these is useless; on the contrary, I cheerfully acknowledge that they have much merit, and that they helped me at almost every line. I began this new Englishing of the book, not in any hope of supplanting them, and surely not with any notion of meeting a great public need, but simply as a private amusement in troubled days. But as I got on with it I began to see ways of putting some flavour of Nietzsche’s peculiar style into the English, and so amusement turned into a more or less serious labour. The result, of course, is far from satisfactory, but it at least represents a very diligent attempt. Nietzsche, always under the influence of French models, wrote a German that differs materially from any other German that I know. It is more nervous, more varied, more rapid in tempo; it runs to more effective climaxes; it is never stodgy. His marks begin to show upon the writing of the younger Germans of today. They are getting away from the old thunderous manner, with its long sentences and its tedious grammatical complexities. In the course of time, I daresay, they will develop a German almost as clear as French and almost as colourful and resilient as English. I owe thanks to Dr. Levy for his imprimatur, to Mr. Theodor Hemberger for criticism, and to Messrs. Common and Ludovici for showing me the way around many a difficulty. H. L. MENCKEN. PREFACE This book belongs to the most rare of men. Perhaps not one of them is yet alive. It is possible that they may be among those who understand my “ Zarathustra”: how could I confound myself with those who are now sprouting ears?—First the day after tomorrow must come for me. Some men are born posthumously. The conditions under which any one understands me, and necessarily understands me—I know them only too well. Even to endure my seriousness, my passion, he must carry intellectual integrity to the verge of hardness. He must be accustomed to living on mountain tops—and to looking upon the wretched gabble of politics and nationalism as beneath him. He must have become indifferent; he must never ask of the truth whether it brings profit to him or a fatality to him…. He must have an inclination, born of strength, for questions that no one has the courage for; the courage for the forbidden; predestination for the labyrinth. The experience of seven solitudes. New ears for new music. New eyes for what is most distant. A new conscience for truths that have hitherto remained unheard. And the will to economize in the grand manner—to hold together his strength, his enthusiasm…. Reverence for self; love of self; absolute freedom of self…. Very well, then! of that sort only are my readers, my true readers, my readers foreordained: of what account are the rest?—The rest are merely humanity.—One must make one’s self superior to humanity, in power, in loftiness of soul,—in contempt. FRIEDRICH W. NIETZSCHE. THE ANTICHRIST 1. —Let us look each other in the face. We are Hyperboreans—we know well enough how remote our place is. “ Neither by land nor by water will you find the road to the Hyperboreans”: even Pindar,[1] in his day, knew that much about us. Beyond the North, beyond the ice, beyond death—our life, our happiness…. We have discovered that happiness; we know the way; we got our knowledge of it from thousands of years in the labyrinth. Who else has found it?—The man of today?—“ I don’t know either the way out or the way in; I am whatever doesn’t know either the way out or the way in”—so sighs the man of today…. This is the sort of modernity that made us ill,—we sickened on lazy peace, cowardly compromise, the whole virtuous dirtiness of the modern Yea and Nay. This tolerance and largeur of the heart that “ forgives” everything because it “ understands” everything is a sirocco to us. Rather live amid the ice than among modern virtues and other such south-winds!… We were brave enough; we spared neither ourselves nor others; but we were a long time finding out where to direct our courage. We grew dismal; they called us fatalists. Our fate—it was the fulness, the tension, the storing up of powers. We thirsted for the lightnings and great deeds; we kept as far as possible from the happiness of the weakling, from “ resignation”… There was thunder in our air; nature, as we embodied it, became overcast—for we had not yet found the way. The formula of our happiness: a Yea, a Nay, a straight line, a goal…. [1] Cf. the tenth Pythian ode. See also the fourth book of Herodotus. The Hyperboreans were a mythical people beyond the Rhipaean mountains, in the far North. They enjoyed unbroken happiness and perpetual youth. 2.
What is good?—Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man. What is evil?—Whatever springs from weakness. What is happiness?—The feeling that power increases—that resistance is overcome. Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtu, virtue free of moral acid). The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help them to it. What is more harmful than any vice?—Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak—Christianity…. 3. The problem that I set here is not what shall replace mankind in the order of living creatures (—man is an end—): but what type of man must be bred, must be willed, as being the most valuable, the most worthy of life, the most secure guarantee of the future. This more valuable type has appeared often enough in the past: but always as a happy accident, as an exception, never as deliberately willed. Very often it has been precisely the most feared; hitherto it has been almost the terror of terrors;—and out of that terror the contrary type has been willed, cultivated and attained: the domestic animal, the herd animal, the sick brute-man—the Christian…. 4. Mankind surely does not represent an evolution toward a better or stronger or higher level, as progress is now understood. This “ progress” is merely a modern idea, which is to say, a false idea. The European of today, in his essential worth, falls far below the European of the Renaissance; the process of evolution does not necessarily mean elevation, enhancement, strengthening. True enough, it succeeds in isolated and individual cases in various parts of the earth and under the most widely different cultures, and in these cases a higher type certainly manifests itself; something which, compared to mankind in the mass, appears as a sort of superman. Such happy strokes of high success have always been possible, and will remain possible, perhaps, for all time to come. Even whole races, tribes and nations may occasionally represent such lucky accidents. 5. We should not deck out and embellish Christianity: it has waged a war to the death against this higher type of man, it has put all the deepest instincts of this type under its ban, it has developed its concept of evil, of the Evil One himself, out of these instincts—the strong man as the typical reprobate, the “ outcast among men.” Christianity has taken the part of all the weak, the low, the botched; it has made an ideal out of antagonism to all the self-preservative instincts of sound life; it has corrupted even the faculties of those natures that are intellectually most vigorous, by representing the highest intellectual values as sinful, as misleading, as full of temptation. The most lamentable example: the corruption of Pascal, who believed that his intellect had been destroyed by original sin, whereas it was actually destroyed by Christianity!— 6. It is a painful and tragic spectacle that rises before me: I have drawn back the curtain from the rottenness of man. This word, in my mouth, is at least free from one suspicion: that it involves a moral accusation against humanity. It is used—and I wish to emphasize the fact again—without any moral significance: and this is so far true that the rottenness I speak of is most apparent to me precisely in those quarters where there has been most aspiration, hitherto, toward “ virtue” and “ godliness.” As you probably surmise, I understand rottenness in the sense of decadence: my argument is that all the values on which mankind now fixes its highest aspirations are decadence-values. I call an animal, a species, an individual corrupt, when it loses its instincts, when it chooses, when it prefers, what is injurious to it. A history of the “ higher feelings,” the “ ideals of humanity”—and it is possible that I’ll have to write it—would almost explain why man is so degenerate. Life itself appears to me as an instinct for growth, for survival, for the accumulation of forces, for power: whenever the will to power fails there is disaster. My contention is that all the highest values of humanity have been emptied of this will—that the values of decadence, of nihilism, now prevail under the holiest names. 7. Christianity is called the religion of pity.—Pity stands in opposition to all the tonic passions that augment the energy of the feeling of aliveness: it is a depressant. A man loses power when he pities. Through pity that drain upon strength which suffering works is multiplied a thousandfold. Suffering is made contagious by pity; under certain circumstances it may lead to a total sacrifice of life and living energy—a loss out of all proportion to the magnitude of the cause (—the case of the death of the Nazarene). This is the first view of it; there is, however, a still more important one. If one measures the effects of pity by the gravity of the reactions it sets up, its character as a menace to life appears in a much clearer light. Pity thwarts the whole law of evolution, which is the law of natural selection. It preserves whatever is ripe for destruction; it fights on the side of those disinherited and condemned by life; by maintaining life in so many of the botched of all kinds, it gives life itself a gloomy and dubious aspect. Mankind has ventured to call pity a virtue (—in every superior moral system it appears as a weakness—); going still further, it has been called the virtue, the source and foundation of all other virtues—but let us always bear in mind that this was from the standpoint of a philosophy that was nihilistic, and upon whose shield the denial of life was inscribed. Schopenhauer was right in this: that by means of pity life is denied, and made worthy of denial—pity is the technic of nihilism. Let me repeat: this depressing and contagious instinct stands against all those instincts which work for the preservation and enhancement of life: in the r�le of protector of the miserable, it is a prime agent in the promotion of decadence—pity persuades to extinction…. Of course, one
doesn’t say “ extinction”: one says “ the other world,” or “ God,” or “ the true life,” or Nirvana, salvation, blessedness…. This innocent rhetoric, from the realm of religious-ethical balderdash, appears a good deal less innocent when one reflects upon the tendency that it conceals beneath sublime words: the tendency to destroy life. Schopenhauer was hostile to life: that is why pity appeared to him as a virtue…. Aristotle, as every one knows, saw in pity a sickly and dangerous state of mind, the remedy for which was an occasional purgative: he regarded tragedy as that purgative. The instinct of life should prompt us to seek some means of puncturing any such pathological and dangerous accumulation of pity as that appearing in Schopenhauer’s case (and also, alack, in that of our whole literary decadence, from St. Petersburg to Paris, from Tolstoi to Wagner), that it may burst and be discharged…. Nothing is more unhealthy, amid all our unhealthy modernism, than Christian pity. To be the doctors here, to be unmerciful here, to wield the knife here—all this is our business, all this is our sort of humanity, by this sign we are philosophers, we Hyperboreans!— 8. It is necessary to say just whom we regard as our antagonists: theologians and all who have any theological blood in their veins—this is our whole philosophy…. One must have faced that menace at close hand, better still, one must have had experience of it directly and almost succumbed to it, to realize that it is not to be taken lightly (—the alleged freethinking of our naturalists and physiologists seems to me to be a joke—they have no passion about such things; they have not suffered—). This poisoning goes a great deal further than most people think: I find the arrogant habit of the theologian among all who regard themselves as “ idealists”—among all who, by virtue of a higher point of departure, claim a right to rise above reality, and to look upon it with suspicion…. The idealist, like the ecclesiastic, carries all sorts of lofty concepts in his hand (—and not only in his hand!); he launches them with benevolent contempt against “ understanding,” “ the senses,” “ honor,” “ good living,” “ science”; he sees such things as beneath him, as pernicious and seductive forces, on which “ the soul” soars as a pure thing-in-itself—as if humility, chastity, poverty, in a word, holiness, had not already done much more damage to life than all imaginable horrors and vices…. The pure soul is a pure lie…. So long as the priest, that professional denier, calumniator and poisoner of life, is accepted as a higher variety of man, there can be no answer to the question, What is truth? Truth has already been stood on its head when the obvious attorney of mere emptiness is mistaken for its representative…. 9. Upon this theological instinct I make war: I find the tracks of it everywhere. Whoever has theological blood in his veins is shifty and dishonourable in all things. The pathetic thing that grows out of this condition is called faith: in other words, closing one’s eyes upon one’s self once for all, to avoid suffering the sight of incurable falsehood. People erect a concept of morality, of virtue, of holiness upon this false view of all things; they ground good conscience upon faulty vision; they argue that no other sort of vision has value any more, once they have made theirs sacrosanct with the names of “ God,” “ salvation” and “ eternity.” I unearth this theological instinct in all directions: it is the most widespread and the most subterranean form of falsehood to be found on earth. Whatever a theologian regards as true must be false: there you have almost a criterion of truth. His profound instinct of self-preservation stands against truth ever coming into honour in any way, or even getting stated. Wherever the influence of theologians is felt there is a transvaluation of values, and the concepts “ true” and “ false” are forced to change places: whatever is most damaging to life is there called “ true,” and whatever exalts it, intensifies it, approves it, justifies it and makes it triumphant is there called “ false.”… When theologians, working through the “ consciences” of princes (or of peoples—), stretch out their hands for power, there is never any doubt as to the fundamental issue: the will to make an end, the nihilistic will exerts that power…. 10. Among Germans I am immediately understood when I say that theological blood is the ruin of philosophy. The Protestant pastor is the grandfather of German philosophy; Protestantism itself is its peccatum originale. Definition of Protestantism: hemiplegic paralysis of Christianity—and of reason…. One need only utter the words “ T�bingen School” to get an understanding of what German philosophy is at bottom—a very artful form of theology…. The Suabians are the best liars in Germany; they lie innocently…. Why all the rejoicing over the appearance of Kant that went through the learned world of Germany, three-fourths of which is made up of the sons of preachers and teachers—why the German conviction still echoing, that with Kant came a change for the better? The theological instinct of German scholars made them see clearly just what had become possible again…. A backstairs leading to the old ideal stood open; the concept of the “ true world,” the concept of morality as the essence of the world (—the two most vicious errors that ever existed!), were once more, thanks to a subtle and wily scepticism, if not actually demonstrable, then at least no longer refutable…. Reason, the prerogative of reason, does not go so far…. Out of reality there had been made “ appearance”; an absolutely false world, that of being, had been turned into reality…. The success of Kant is merely a theological success; he was, like Luther and Leibnitz, but one more impediment to German integrity, already far from steady.— 11. A word now against Kant as a moralist. A virtue must be our invention; it must spring out of our personal need and defence. In every other case it is a source of danger. That which does not belong to our life menaces it; a virtue which has its roots in mere respect for the concept of “ virtue,” as Kant would have it, is pernicious. “ Virtue,” “ duty,” “ good for its own sake,” goodness grounded upon impersonality or a notion of universal validity—these are all chimeras, and in them one finds only an expression of the decay, the last collapse of life, the Chinese spirit of K�nigsberg. Quite the contrary is demanded by the most profound laws of self-preservation and of growth: to wit, that every man find his own virtue, his own categorical imperative. A nation goes to pieces when it confounds its duty with the general concept of duty. Nothing works a more complete and penetrating disaster than every “ impersonal” duty, every sacrifice before the Moloch of abstraction.—To think that no one has thought of Kant’s categorical imperative as dangerous to life!… The theological instinct alone took it under protection!—An action prompted by the life-instinct proves that it is a right action by the amount of pleasure that goes with it: and yet that
Nihilist, with his bowels of Christian dogmatism, regarded pleasure as an objection…. What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure—as a mere automaton of duty? That is the recipe for decadence, and no less for idiocy…. Kant became an idiot.—And such a man was the contemporary of Goethe! This calamitous spinner of cobwebs passed for the German philosopher—still passes today!… I forbid myself to say what I think of the Germans…. Didn’t Kant see in the French Revolution the transformation of the state from the inorganic form to the organic? Didn’t he ask himself if there was a single event that could be explained save on the assumption of a moral faculty in man, so that on the basis of it, “ the tendency of mankind toward the good” could be explained, once and for all time? Kant’s answer: “ That is revolution.” Instinct at fault in everything and anything, instinct as a revolt against nature, German decadence as a philosophy—that is Kant!— 12. I put aside a few sceptics, the types of decency in the history of philosophy: the rest haven’t the slightest conception of intellectual integrity. They behave like women, all these great enthusiasts and prodigies—they regard “ beautiful feelings” as arguments, the “ heaving breast” as the bellows of divine inspiration, conviction as the criterion of truth. In the end, with “ German” innocence, Kant tried to give a scientific flavour to this form of corruption, this dearth of intellectual conscience, by calling it “ practical reason.” He deliberately invented a variety of reasons for use on occasions when it was desirable not to trouble with reason—that is, when morality, when the sublime command “ thou shalt,” was heard. When one recalls the fact that, among all peoples, the philosopher is no more than a development from the old type of priest, this inheritance from the priest, this fraud upon self, ceases to be remarkable. When a man feels that he has a divine mission, say to lift up, to save or to liberate mankind—when a man feels the divine spark in his heart and believes that he is the mouthpiece of supernatural imperatives—when such a mission inflames him, it is only natural that he should stand beyond all merely reasonable standards of judgment. He feels that he is himself sanctified by this mission, that he is himself a type of a higher order!… What has a priest to do with philosophy! He stands far above it!—And hitherto the priest has ruled!—He has determined the meaning of “ true” and “ not true”!… 13. Let us not underestimate this fact: that we ourselves, we free spirits, are already a “ transvaluation of all values,” a visualized declaration of war and victory against all the old concepts of “ true” and “ not true.” The most valuable intuitions are the last to be attained; the most valuable of all are those which determine methods. All the methods, all the principles of the scientific spirit of today, were the targets for thousands of years of the most profound contempt; if a man inclined to them he was excluded from the society of “ decent” people—he passed as “ an enemy of God,” as a scoffer at the truth, as one “ possessed.” As a man of science, he belonged to the Chandala[2]…. We have had the whole pathetic stupidity of mankind against us—their every notion of what the truth ought to be, of what the service of the truth ought to be—their every “ thou shalt” was launched against us…. Our objectives, our methods, our quiet, cautious, distrustful manner—all appeared to them as absolutely discreditable and contemptible.—Looking back, one may almost ask one’s self with reason if it was not actually an aesthetic sense that kept men blind so long: what they demanded of the truth was picturesque effectiveness, and of the learned a strong appeal to their senses. It was our modesty that stood out longest against their taste…. How well they guessed that, these turkey-cocks of God! [2] The lowest of the Hindu castes. 14. We have unlearned something. We have become more modest in every way. We no longer derive man from the “ spirit,” from the “ godhead”; we have dropped him back among the beasts. We regard him as the strongest of the beasts because he is the craftiest; one of the results thereof is his intellectuality. On the other hand, we guard ourselves against a conceit which would assert itself even here: that man is the great second thought in the process of organic evolution. He is, in truth, anything but the crown of creation: beside him stand many other animals, all at similar stages of development…. And even when we say that we say a bit too much, for man, relatively speaking, is the most botched of all the animals and the sickliest, and he has wandered the most dangerously from his instincts—though for all that, to be sure, he remains the most interesting!—As regards the lower animals, it was Descartes who first had the really admirable daring to describe them as machina; the whole of our physiology is directed toward proving the truth of this doctrine. Moreover, it is illogical to set man apart, as Descartes did: what we know of man today is limited precisely by the extent to which we have regarded him, too, as a machine. Formerly we accorded to man, as his inheritance from some higher order of beings, what was called “ free will”; now we have taken even this will from him, for the term no longer describes anything that we can understand. The old word “ will” now connotes only a sort of result, an individual reaction, that follows inevitably upon a series of partly discordant and partly harmonious stimuli—the will no longer “ acts,” or “ moves.”… Formerly it was thought that man’s consciousness, his “ spirit,” offered evidence of his high origin, his divinity. That he might be perfected, he was advised, tortoise-like, to draw his senses in, to have no traffic with earthly things, to shuffle off his mortal coil—then only the important part of him, the “ pure spirit,” would remain. Here again we have thought out the thing better: to us consciousness, or “ the spirit,” appears as a symptom of a relative imperfection of the organism, as an experiment, a groping, a misunderstanding, as an affliction which uses up nervous force unnecessarily—we deny that anything can be done perfectly so long as it is done consciously. The “ pure spirit” is a piece of pure stupidity: take away the nervous system and the senses, the so-called “ mortal shell,” and the rest is miscalculation—that is all!… 15. Under Christianity neither morality nor religion has any point of contact with actuality. It offers purely imaginary causes (“ God,” “ soul,” “ ego,” “ spirit,” “ free will”—or even “ unfree”), and purely imaginary effects (“ sin,” “ salvation,” “ grace,” “ punishment,” “ forgiveness of sins”). Intercourse between imaginary beings (“ God,” “ spirits,” “ souls”); an
imaginary natural history (anthropocentric; a total denial of the concept of natural causes); an imaginary psychology (misunderstandings of self, misinterpretations of agreeable or disagreeable general feelings—for example, of the states of the nervus sympathicus with the help of the sign-language of religio-ethical balderdash—, “ repentance,” “ pangs of conscience,” “ temptation by the devil,” “ the presence of God”); an imaginary teleology (the “ kingdom of God,” “ the last judgment,” “ eternal life”).—This purely fictitious world, greatly to its disadvantage, is to be differentiated from the world of dreams; the latter at least reflects reality, whereas the former falsifies it, cheapens it and denies it. Once the concept of “ nature” had been opposed to the concept of “ God,” the word “ natural” necessarily took on the meaning of “ abominable”—the whole of that fictitious world has its sources in hatred of the natural (—the real!—), and is no more than evidence of a profound uneasiness in the presence of reality…. This explains everything. Who alone has any reason for living his way out of reality? The man who suffers under it. But to suffer from reality one must be a botched reality…. The preponderance of pains over pleasures is the cause of this fictitious morality and religion: but such a preponderance also supplies the formula for decadence…. 16. A criticism of the Christian concept of God leads inevitably to the same conclusion.—A nation that still believes in itself holds fast to its own god. In him it does honour to the conditions which enable it to survive, to its virtues—it projects its joy in itself, its feeling of power, into a being to whom one may offer thanks. He who is rich will give of his riches; a proud people need a god to whom they can make sacrifices…. Religion, within these limits, is a form of gratitude. A man is grateful for his own existence: to that end he needs a god.—Such a god must be able to work both benefits and injuries; he must be able to play either friend or foe—he is wondered at for the good he does as well as for the evil he does. But the castration, against all nature, of such a god, making him a god of goodness alone, would be contrary to human inclination. Mankind has just as much need for an evil god as for a good god; it doesn’t have to thank mere tolerance and humanitarianism for its own existence…. What would be the value of a god who knew nothing of anger, revenge, envy, scorn, cunning, violence? who had perhaps never experienced the rapturous ardeurs of victory and of destruction? No one would understand such a god: why should any one want him?—True enough, when a nation is on the downward path, when it feels its belief in its own future, its hope of freedom slipping from it, when it begins to see submission as a first necessity and the virtues of submission as measures of self-preservation, then it must overhaul its god. He then becomes a hypocrite, timorous and demure; he counsels “ peace of soul,” hate-no-more, leniency, “ love” of friend and foe. He moralizes endlessly; he creeps into every private virtue; he becomes the god of every man; he becomes a private citizen, a cosmopolitan…. Formerly he represented a people, the strength of a people, everything aggressive and thirsty for power in the soul of a people; now he is simply the good god…. The truth is that there is no other alternative for gods: either they are the will to power—in which case they are national gods—or incapacity for power—in which case they have to be good…. 17. Wherever the will to power begins to decline, in whatever form, there is always an accompanying decline physiologically, a decadence. The divinity of this decadence, shorn of its masculine virtues and passions, is converted perforce into a god of the physiologically degraded, of the weak. Of course, they do not call themselves the weak; they call themselves “ the good.”… No hint is needed to indicate the moments in history at which the dualistic fiction of a good and an evil god first became possible. The same instinct which prompts the inferior to reduce their own god to “ goodness-in-itself” also prompts them to eliminate all good qualities from the god of their superiors; they make revenge on their masters by making a devil of the latter’s god.—The good god, and the devil like him—both are abortions of decadence.—How can we be so tolerant of the na�vete of Christian theologians as to join in their doctrine that the evolution of the concept of god from “ the god of Israel,” the god of a people, to the Christian god, the essence of all goodness, is to be described as progress?—But even Renan does this. As if Renan had a right to be na�ve! The contrary actually stares one in the face. When everything necessary to ascending life; when all that is strong, courageous, masterful and proud has been eliminated from the concept of a god; when he has sunk step by step to the level of a staff for the weary, a sheet-anchor for the drowning; when he becomes the poor man’s god, the sinner’s god, the invalid’s god par excellence, and the attribute of “ saviour” or “ redeemer” remains as the one essential attribute of divinity—just what is the significance of such a metamorphosis? what does such a reduction of the godhead imply?—To be sure, the “ kingdom of God” has thus grown larger. Formerly he had only his own people, his “ chosen” people. But since then he has gone wandering, like his people themselves, into foreign parts; he has given up settling down quietly anywhere; finally he has come to feel at home everywhere, and is the great cosmopolitan—until now he has the “ great majority” on his side, and half the earth. But this god of the “ great majority,” this democrat among gods, has not become a proud heathen god: on the contrary, he remains a Jew, he remains a god in a corner, a god of all the dark nooks and crevices, of all the noisesome quarters of the world!… His earthly kingdom, now as always, is a kingdom of the underworld, a souterrain kingdom, a ghetto kingdom…. And he himself is so pale, so weak, so decadent…. Even the palest of the pale are able to master him—messieurs the metaphysicians, those albinos of the intellect. They spun their webs around him for so long that finally he was hypnotized, and began to spin himself, and became another metaphysician. Thereafter he resumed once more his old business of spinning the world out of his inmost being sub specie Spinozae; thereafter he became ever thinner and paler—became the “ ideal,” became “ pure spirit,” became “ the absolute,” became “ the thing-in-itself.”… The collapse of a god: he became a “ thing-in-itself.” 18. The Christian concept of a god—the god as the patron of the sick, the god as a spinner of cobwebs, the god as a spirit—is one of the most corrupt concepts that has ever been set up in the world: it probably touches low-water mark in the ebbing evolution of the god-type. God degenerated into the contradiction of life. Instead of being its transfiguration and eternal Yea! In him war is declared on life, on nature, on the will to live! God becomes the formula for every slander upon the “ here and now,” and for every lie about the “ beyond”!
In him nothingness is deified, and the will to nothingness is made holy!… 19. The fact that the strong races of northern Europe did not repudiate this Christian god does little credit to their gift for religion—and not much more to their taste. They ought to have been able to make an end of such a moribund and worn-out product of the decadence. A curse lies upon them because they were not equal to it; they made illness, decrepitude and contradiction a part of their instincts—and since then they have not managed to create any more gods. Two thousand years have come and gone—and not a single new god! Instead, there still exists, and as if by some intrinsic right,—as if he were the ultimatum and maximum of the power to create gods, of the creator spiritus in mankind—this pitiful god of Christian monotono-theism! This hybrid image of decay, conjured up out of emptiness, contradiction and vain imagining, in which all the instincts of decadence, all the cowardices and wearinesses of the soul find their sanction!— 20. In my condemnation of Christianity I surely hope I do no injustice to a related religion with an even larger number of believers: I allude to Buddhism. Both are to be reckoned among the nihilistic religions—they are both decadence religions—but they are separated from each other in a very remarkable way. For the fact that he is able to compare them at all the critic of Christianity is indebted to the scholars of India.—Buddhism is a hundred times as realistic as Christianity—it is part of its living heritage that it is able to face problems objectively and coolly; it is the product of long centuries of philosophical speculation. The concept, “ god,” was already disposed of before it appeared. Buddhism is the only genuinely positive religion to be encountered in history, and this applies even to its epistemology (which is a strict phenomenalism). It does not speak of a “ struggle with sin,” but, yielding to reality, of the “ struggle with suffering.” Sharply differentiating itself from Christianity, it puts the self-deception that lies in moral concepts behind it; it is, in my phrase, beyond good and evil.—The two physiological facts upon which it grounds itself and upon which it bestows its chief attention are: first, an excessive sensitiveness to sensation, which manifests itself as a refined susceptibility to pain, and secondly, an extraordinary spirituality, a too protracted concern with concepts and logical procedures, under the influence of which the instinct of personality has yielded to a notion of the “ impersonal.” (—Both of these states will be familiar to a few of my readers, the objectivists, by experience, as they are to me). These physiological states produced a depression, and Buddha tried to combat it by hygienic measures. Against it he prescribed a life in the open, a life of travel; moderation in eating and a careful selection of foods; caution in the use of intoxicants; the same caution in arousing any of the passions that foster a bilious habit and heat the blood; finally, no worry, either on one’s own account or on account of others. He encourages ideas that make for either quiet contentment or good cheer—he finds means to combat ideas of other sorts. He understands good, the state of goodness, as something which promotes health. Prayer is not included, and neither is asceticism. There is no categorical imperative nor any disciplines, even within the walls of a monastery (—it is always possible to leave—). These things would have been simply means of increasing the excessive sensitiveness above mentioned. For the same reason he does not advocate any conflict with unbelievers; his teaching is antagonistic to nothing so much as to revenge, aversion, ressentiment (—“ enmity never brings an end to enmity”: the moving refrain of all Buddhism….) And in all this he was right, for it is precisely these passions which, in view of his main regiminal purpose, are unhealthful. The mental fatigue that he observes, already plainly displayed in too much “ objectivity” (that is, in the individual’s loss of interest in himself, in loss of balance and of “ egoism”), he combats by strong efforts to lead even the spiritual interests back to the ego. In Buddha’s teaching egoism is a duty. The “ one thing needful,” the question “ how can you be delivered from suffering,” regulates and determines the whole spiritual diet. (—Perhaps one will here recall that Athenian who also declared war upon pure “ scientificality,” to wit, Socrates, who also elevated egoism to the estate of a morality). 21. The things necessary to Buddhism are a very mild climate, customs of great gentleness and liberality, and no militarism; moreover, it must get its start among the higher and better educated classes. Cheerfulness, quiet and the absence of desire are the chief desiderata, and they are attained. Buddhism is not a religion in which perfection is merely an object of aspiration: perfection is actually normal.— Under Christianity the instincts of the subjugated and the oppressed come to the fore: it is only those who are at the bottom who seek their salvation in it. Here the prevailing pastime, the favourite remedy for boredom is the discussion of sin, self-criticism, the inquisition of conscience; here the emotion produced by power (called “ God”) is pumped up (by prayer); here the highest good is regarded as unattainable, as a gift, as “ grace.” Here, too, open dealing is lacking; concealment and the darkened room are Christian. Here body is despised and hygiene is denounced as sensual; the church even ranges itself against cleanliness (—the first Christian order after the banishment of the Moors closed the public baths, of which there were 270 in Cordova alone). Christian, too, is a certain cruelty toward one’s self and toward others; hatred of unbelievers; the will to persecute. Sombre and disquieting ideas are in the foreground; the most esteemed states of mind, bearing the most respectable names, are epileptoid; the diet is so regulated as to engender morbid symptoms and overstimulate the nerves. Christian, again, is all deadly enmity to the rulers of the earth, to the “ aristocratic”—along with a sort of secret rivalry with them (—one resigns one’s “ body” to them; one wants only one’s “ soul”…). And Christian is all hatred of the intellect, of pride, of courage, of freedom, of intellectual libertinage; Christian is all hatred of the senses, of joy in the senses, of joy in general…. 22. When Christianity departed from its native soil, that of the lowest orders, the underworld of the ancient world, and began seeking power among barbarian peoples, it no longer had to deal with exhausted men, but with men still inwardly savage and capable of self-torture—in brief, strong men, but bungled men. Here, unlike in the case of the Buddhists, the
cause of discontent with self, suffering through self, is not merely a general sensitiveness and susceptibility to pain, but, on the contrary, an inordinate thirst for inflicting pain on others, a tendency to obtain subjective satisfaction in hostile deeds and ideas. Christianity had to embrace barbaric concepts and valuations in order to obtain mastery over barbarians: of such sort, for example, are the sacrifices of the first-born, the drinking of blood as a sacrament, the disdain of the intellect and of culture; torture in all its forms, whether bodily or not; the whole pomp of the cult. Buddhism is a religion for peoples in a further state of development, for races that have become kind, gentle and over-spiritualized (—Europe is not yet ripe for it—): it is a summons that takes them back to peace and cheerfulness, to a careful rationing of the spirit, to a certain hardening of the body. Christianity aims at mastering beasts of prey; its modus operandi is to make them ill—to make feeble is the Christian recipe for taming, for “ civilizing.” Buddhism is a religion for the closing, over-wearied stages of civilization. Christianity appears before civilization has so much as begun—under certain circumstances it lays the very foundations thereof. 23. Buddhism, I repeat, is a hundred times more austere, more honest, more objective. It no longer has to justify its pains, its susceptibility to suffering, by interpreting these things in terms of sin—it simply says, as it simply thinks, “ I suffer.” To the barbarian, however, suffering in itself is scarcely understandable: what he needs, first of all, is an explanation as to why he suffers. (His mere instinct prompts him to deny his suffering altogether, or to endure it in silence.) Here the word “ devil” was a blessing: man had to have an omnipotent and terrible enemy—there was no need to be ashamed of suffering at the hands of such an enemy.— At the bottom of Christianity there are several subtleties that belong to the Orient. In the first place, it knows that it is of very little consequence whether a thing be true or not, so long as it is believed to be true. Truth and faith: here we have two wholly distinct worlds of ideas, almost two diametrically opposite worlds—the road to the one and the road to the other lie miles apart. To understand that fact thoroughly—this is almost enough, in the Orient, to make one a sage. The Brahmins knew it, Plato knew it, every student of the esoteric knows it. When, for example, a man gets any pleasure out of the notion that he has been saved from sin, it is not necessary for him to be actually sinful, but merely to feel sinful. But when faith is thus exalted above everything else, it necessarily follows that reason, knowledge and patient inquiry have to be discredited: the road to the truth becomes a forbidden road.—Hope, in its stronger forms, is a great deal more powerful stimulans to life than any sort of realized joy can ever be. Man must be sustained in suffering by a hope so high that no conflict with actuality can dash it—so high, indeed, that no fulfilment can satisfy it: a hope reaching out beyond this world. (Precisely because of this power that hope has of making the suffering hold out, the Greeks regarded it as the evil of evils, as the most malign of evils; it remained behind at the source of all evil.)[3]—In order that love may be possible, God must become a person; in order that the lower instincts may take a hand in the matter God must be young. To satisfy the ardor of the woman a beautiful saint must appear on the scene, and to satisfy that of the men there must be a virgin. These things are necessary if Christianity is to assume lordship over a soil on which some aphrodisiacal or Adonis cult has already established a notion as to what a cult ought to be. To insist upon chastity greatly strengthens the vehemence and subjectivity of the religious instinct—it makes the cult warmer, more enthusiastic, more soulful.—Love is the state in which man sees things most decidedly as they are not. The force of illusion reaches its highest here, and so does the capacity for sweetening, for transfiguring. When a man is in love he endures more than at any other time; he submits to anything. The problem was to devise a religion which would allow one to love: by this means the worst that life has to offer is overcome—it is scarcely even noticed.—So much for the three Christian virtues: faith, hope and charity: I call them the three Christian ingenuities.—Buddhism is in too late a stage of development, too full of positivism, to be shrewd in any such way.— [3] That is, in Pandora’s box. 24. Here I barely touch upon the problem of the origin of Christianity. The first thing necessary to its solution is this: that Christianity is to be understood only by examining the soil from which it sprung—it is not a reaction against Jewish instincts; it is their inevitable product; it is simply one more step in the awe-inspiring logic of the Jews. In the words of the Saviour, “ salvation is of the Jews.”[4]—The second thing to remember is this: that the psychological type of the Galilean is still to be recognized, but it was only in its most degenerate form (which is at once maimed and overladen with foreign features) that it could serve in the manner in which it has been used: as a type of the Saviour of mankind.— [4] John iv, 22. The Jews are the most remarkable people in the history of the world, for when they were confronted with the question, to be or not to be, they chose, with perfectly unearthly deliberation, to be at any price: this price involved a radical falsification of all nature, of all naturalness, of all reality, of the whole inner world, as well as of the outer. They put themselves against all those conditions under which, hitherto, a people had been able to live, or had even been permitted to live; out of themselves they evolved an idea which stood in direct opposition to natural conditions—one by one they distorted religion, civilization, morality, history and psychology until each became a contradiction of its natural significance. We meet with the same phenomenon later on, in an incalculably exaggerated form, but only as a copy: the Christian church, put beside the “ people of God,” shows a complete lack of any claim to originality. Precisely for this reason the Jews are the most fateful people in the history of the world: their influence has so falsified the reasoning of mankind in this matter that today the Christian can cherish anti-Semitism without realizing that it is no more than the final consequence of Judaism. In my “ Genealogy of Morals” I give the first psychological explanation of the concepts underlying those two antithetical things, a noble morality and a ressentiment morality, the second of which is a mere product of the denial of the former. The Judaeo-Christian moral system belongs to the second division, and in every detail. In order to be able to say Nay to everything representing an ascending evolution of life—that is, to well-being, to power, to beauty, to self-approval—the instincts of ressentiment, here become downright genius, had to invent an other world in which the acceptance of life appeared as the most evil and abominable thing imaginable. Psychologically, the Jews are a people gifted with the very
strongest vitality, so much so that when they found themselves facing impossible conditions of life they chose voluntarily, and with a profound talent for self-preservation, the side of all those instincts which make for decadence—not as if mastered by them, but as if detecting in them a power by which “ the world” could be defied. The Jews are the very opposite of decadents: they have simply been forced into appearing in that guise, and with a degree of skill approaching the non plus ultra of histrionic genius they have managed to put themselves at the head of all decadent movements (—for example, the Christianity of Paul—), and so make of them something stronger than any party frankly saying Yes to life. To the sort of men who reach out for power under Judaism and Christianity,—that is to say, to the priestly class—decadence is no more than a means to an end. Men of this sort have a vital interest in making mankind sick, and in confusing the values of “ good” and “ bad,” “ true” and “ false” in a manner that is not only dangerous to life, but also slanders it. 25. The history of Israel is invaluable as a typical history of an attempt to denaturize all natural values: I point to five facts which bear this out. Originally, and above all in the time of the monarchy, Israel maintained the right attitude of things, which is to say, the natural attitude. Its Jahveh was an expression of its consciousness of power, its joy in itself, its hopes for itself: to him the Jews looked for victory and salvation and through him they expected nature to give them whatever was necessary to their existence—above all, rain. Jahveh is the god of Israel, and consequently the god of justice: this is the logic of every race that has power in its hands and a good conscience in the use of it. In the religious ceremonial of the Jews both aspects of this self-approval stand revealed. The nation is grateful for the high destiny that has enabled it to obtain dominion; it is grateful for the benign procession of the seasons, and for the good fortune attending its herds and its crops.—This view of things remained an ideal for a long while, even after it had been robbed of validity by tragic blows: anarchy within and the Assyrian without. But the people still retained, as a projection of their highest yearnings, that vision of a king who was at once a gallant warrior and an upright judge—a vision best visualized in the typical prophet (i. e., critic and satirist of the moment), Isaiah.—But every hope remained unfulfilled. The old god no longer could do what he used to do. He ought to have been abandoned. But what actually happened? Simply this: the conception of him was changed—the conception of him was denaturized; this was the price that had to be paid for keeping him.—Jahveh, the god of “ justice”—he is in accord with Israel no more, he no longer vizualizes the national egoism; he is now a god only conditionally…. The public notion of this god now becomes merely a weapon in the hands of clerical agitators, who interpret all happiness as a reward and all unhappiness as a punishment for obedience or disobedience to him, for “ sin”: that most fraudulent of all imaginable interpretations, whereby a “ moral order of the world” is set up, and the fundamental concepts, “ cause” and “ effect,” are stood on their heads. Once natural causation has been swept out of the world by doctrines of reward and punishment some sort of un-natural causation becomes necessary: and all other varieties of the denial of nature follow it. A god who demands—in place of a god who helps, who gives counsel, who is at bottom merely a name for every happy inspiration of courage and self-reliance…. Morality is no longer a reflection of the conditions which make for the sound life and development of the people; it is no longer the primary life-instinct; instead it has become abstract and in opposition to life—a fundamental perversion of the fancy, an “ evil eye” on all things. What is Jewish, what is Christian morality? Chance robbed of its innocence; unhappiness polluted with the idea of “ sin”; well-being represented as a danger, as a “ temptation”; a physiological disorder produced by the canker worm of conscience…. 26. The concept of god falsified; the concept of morality falsified;—but even here Jewish priest-craft did not stop. The whole history of Israel ceased to be of any value: out with it!— These priests accomplished that miracle of falsification of which a great part of the Bible is the documentary evidence; with a degree of contempt unparalleled, and in the face of all tradition and all historical reality, they translated the past of their people into religious terms, which is to say, they converted it into an idiotic mechanism of salvation, whereby all offences against Jahveh were punished and all devotion to him was rewarded. We would regard this act of historical falsification as something far more shameful if familiarity with the ecclesiastical interpretation of history for thousands of years had not blunted our inclinations for uprightness in historicis. And the philosophers support the church: the lie about a “ moral order of the world” runs through the whole of philosophy, even the newest. What is the meaning of a “ moral order of the world”? That there is a thing called the will of God which, once and for all time, determines what man ought to do and what he ought not to do; that the worth of a people, or of an individual thereof, is to be measured by the extent to which they or he obey this will of God; that the destinies of a people or of an individual are controlled by this will of God, which rewards or punishes according to the degree of obedience manifested.—In place of all that pitiable lie reality has this to say: the priest, a parasitical variety of man who can exist only at the cost of every sound view of life, takes the name of God in vain: he calls that state of human society in which he himself determines the value of all things “ the kingdom of God”; he calls the means whereby that state of affairs is attained “ the will of God”; with cold-blooded cynicism he estimates all peoples, all ages and all individuals by the extent of their subservience or opposition to the power of the priestly order. One observes him at work: under the hand of the Jewish priesthood the great age of Israel became an age of decline; the Exile, with its long series of misfortunes, was transformed into a punishment for that great age—during which priests had not yet come into existence. Out of the powerful and wholly free heroes of Israel’s history they fashioned, according to their changing needs, either wretched bigots and hypocrites or men entirely “ godless.” They reduced every great event to the idiotic formula: “ obedient or disobedient to God.”—They went a step further: the “ will of God” (in other words some means necessary for preserving the power of the priests) had to be determined—and to this end they had to have a “ revelation.” In plain English, a gigantic literary fraud had to be perpetrated, and “ holy scriptures” had to be concocted—and so, with the utmost hierarchical pomp, and days of penance and much lamentation over the long days of “ sin” now ended, they were duly published. The “ will of God,” it appears, had long stood like a rock; the trouble was that mankind had neglected the “ holy scriptures”…. But the “ will of God” had already been revealed to Moses…. What happened? Simply this: the priest had formulated, once and for all time and with the strictest meticulousness, what tithes were to be paid to him, from the largest to the smallest (—not forgetting the most appetizing cuts of meat, for the priest is a
great consumer of beefsteaks); in brief, he let it be known just what he wanted, what “ the will of God” was…. From this time forward things were so arranged that the priest became indispensable everywhere; at all the great natural events of life, at birth, at marriage, in sickness, at death, not to say at the “ sacrifice” (that is, at meal-times), the holy parasite put in his appearance, and proceeded to denaturize it—in his own phrase, to “ sanctify” it…. For this should be noted: that every natural habit, every natural institution (the state, the administration of justice, marriage, the care of the sick and of the poor), everything demanded by the life-instinct, in short, everything that has any value in itself, is reduced to absolute worthlessness and even made the reverse of valuable by the parasitism of priests (or, if you chose, by the “ moral order of the world”). The fact requires a sanction—a power to grant values becomes necessary, and the only way it can create such values is by denying nature…. The priest depreciates and desecrates nature: it is only at this price that he can exist at all.—Disobedience to God, which actually means to the priest, to “ the law,” now gets the name of “ sin”; the means prescribed for “ reconciliation with God” are, of course, precisely the means which bring one most effectively under the thumb of the priest; he alone can “ save”…. Psychologically considered, “ sins” are indispensable to every society organized on an ecclesiastical basis; they are the only reliable weapons of power; the priest lives upon sins; it is necessary to him that there be “ sinning”…. Prime axiom: “ God forgiveth him that repenteth”—in plain English, him that submitteth to the priest. 27. Christianity sprang from a soil so corrupt that on it everything natural, every natural value, every reality was opposed by the deepest instincts of the ruling class—it grew up as a sort of war to the death upon reality, and as such it has never been surpassed. The “ holy people,” who had adopted priestly values and priestly names for all things, and who, with a terrible logical consistency, had rejected everything of the earth as “ unholy,” “ worldly,” “ sinful”—this people put its instinct into a final formula that was logical to the point of selfannihilation: as Christianity it actually denied even the last form of reality, the “ holy people,” the “ chosen people,” Jewish reality itself. The phenomenon is of the first order of importance: the small insurrectionary movement which took the name of Jesus of Nazareth is simply the Jewish instinct redivivus—in other words, it is the priestly instinct come to such a pass that it can no longer endure the priest as a fact; it is the discovery of a state of existence even more fantastic than any before it, of a vision of life even more unreal than that necessary to an ecclesiastical organization. Christianity actually denies the church…. I am unable to determine what was the target of the insurrection said to have been led (whether rightly or wrongly) by Jesus, if it was not the Jewish church—“ church” being here used in exactly the same sense that the word has today. It was an insurrection against the “ good and just,” against the “ prophets of Israel,” against the whole hierarchy of society— not against corruption, but against caste, privilege, order, formalism. It was unbelief in “ superior men,” a Nay flung at everything that priests and theologians stood for. But the hierarchy that was called into question, if only for an instant, by this movement was the structure of piles which, above everything, was necessary to the safety of the Jewish people in the midst of the “ waters”—it represented their last possibility of survival; it was the final residuum of their independent political existence; an attack upon it was an attack upon the most profound national instinct, the most powerful national will to live, that has ever appeared on earth. This saintly anarchist, who aroused the people of the abyss, the outcasts and “ sinners,” the Chandala of Judaism, to rise in revolt against the established order of things—and in language which, if the Gospels are to be credited, would get him sent to Siberia today—this man was certainly a political criminal, at least in so far as it was possible to be one in so absurdly unpolitical a community. This is what brought him to the cross: the proof thereof is to be found in the inscription that was put upon the cross. He died for his own sins—there is not the slightest ground for believing, no matter how often it is asserted, that he died for the sins of others.— 28. As to whether he himself was conscious of this contradiction—whether, in fact, this was the only contradiction he was cognizant of—that is quite another question. Here, for the first time, I touch upon the problem of the psychology of the Saviour.—I confess, to begin with, that there are very few books which offer me harder reading than the Gospels. My difficulties are quite different from those which enabled the learned curiosity of the German mind to achieve one of its most unforgettable triumphs. It is a long while since I, like all other young scholars, enjoyed with all the sapient laboriousness of a fastidious philologist the work of the incomparable Strauss.[5] At that time I was twenty years old: now I am too serious for that sort of thing. What do I care for the contradictions of “ tradition”? How can any one call pious legends “ traditions”? The histories of saints present the most dubious variety of literature in existence; to examine them by the scientific method, in the entire absence of corroborative documents, seems to me to condemn the whole inquiry from the start —it is simply learned idling…. [5] David Friedrich Strauss (1808-74), author of “ Das Leben Jesu” (1835-6), a very famous work in its day. Nietzsche here refers to it. 29. What concerns me is the psychological type of the Saviour. This type might be depicted in the Gospels, in however mutilated a form and however much overladen with extraneous characters—that is, in spite of the Gospels; just as the figure of Francis of Assisi shows itself in his legends in spite of his legends. It is not a question of mere truthful evidence as to what he did, what he said and how he actually died; the question is, whether his type is still conceivable, whether it has been handed down to us.—All the attempts that I know of to read the history of a “ soul” in the Gospels seem to me to reveal only a lamentable psychological levity. M. Renan, that mountebank in psychologicus, has contributed the two most unseemly notions to this business of explaining the type of Jesus: the notion of the genius and that of the hero (“ heros”). But if there is anything essentially unevangelical, it is surely the concept of the hero. What the Gospels make instinctive is precisely the reverse of all heroic struggle, of all taste for conflict: the very incapacity for resistance is here converted into something moral: (“ resist not evil!”—the most profound sentence in the Gospels, perhaps the true key to them), to wit, the blessedness of peace, of
gentleness, the inability to be an enemy. What is the meaning of “ glad tidings”?—The true life, the life eternal has been found—it is not merely promised, it is here, it is in you; it is the life that lies in love free from all retreats and exclusions, from all keeping of distances. Every one is the child of God—Jesus claims nothing for himself alone—as the child of God each man is the equal of every other man…. Imagine making Jesus a hero!—And what a tremendous misunderstanding appears in the word “ genius”! Our whole conception of the “ spiritual,” the whole conception of our civilization, could have had no meaning in the world that Jesus lived in. In the strict sense of the physiologist, a quite different word ought to be used here…. We all know that there is a morbid sensibility of the tactile nerves which causes those suffering from it to recoil from every touch, and from every effort to grasp a solid object. Brought to its logical conclusion, such a physiological habitus becomes an instinctive hatred of all reality, a flight into the “ intangible,” into the “ incomprehensible”; a distaste for all formulae, for all conceptions of time and space, for everything established—customs, institutions, the church—; a feeling of being at home in a world in which no sort of reality survives, a merely “ inner” world, a “ true” world, an “ eternal” world…. “ The Kingdom of God is within you”…. 30. The instinctive hatred of reality: the consequence of an extreme susceptibility to pain and irritation—so great that merely to be “ touched” becomes unendurable, for every sensation is too profound. The instinctive exclusion of all aversion, all hostility, all bounds and distances in feeling: the consequence of an extreme susceptibility to pain and irritation—so great that it senses all resistance, all compulsion to resistance, as unbearable anguish (—that is to say, as harmful, as prohibited by the instinct of self-preservation), and regards blessedness (joy) as possible only when it is no longer necessary to offer resistance to anybody or anything, however evil or dangerous—love, as the only, as the ultimate possibility of life…. These are the two physiological realities upon and out of which the doctrine of salvation has sprung. I call them a sublime super-development of hedonism upon a thoroughly unsalubrious soil. What stands most closely related to them, though with a large admixture of Greek vitality and nerve-force, is epicureanism, the theory of salvation of paganism. Epicurus was a typical decadent: I was the first to recognize him.—The fear of pain, even of infinitely slight pain—the end of this can be nothing save a religion of love…. 31. I have already given my answer to the problem. The prerequisite to it is the assumption that the type of the Saviour has reached us only in a greatly distorted form. This distortion is very probable: there are many reasons why a type of that sort should not be handed down in a pure form, complete and free of additions. The milieu in which this strange figure moved must have left marks upon him, and more must have been imprinted by the history, the destiny, of the early Christian communities; the latter indeed, must have embellished the type retrospectively with characters which can be understood only as serving the purposes of war and of propaganda. That strange and sickly world into which the Gospels lead us—a world apparently out of a Russian novel, in which the scum of society, nervous maladies and “ childish” idiocy keep a tryst—must, in any case, have coarsened the type: the first disciples, in particular, must have been forced to translate an existence visible only in symbols and incomprehensibilities into their own crudity, in order to understand it at all—in their sight the type could take on reality only after it had been recast in a familiar mould…. The prophet, the messiah, the future judge, the teacher of morals, the worker of wonders, John the Baptist—all these merely presented chances to misunderstand it…. Finally, let us not underrate the proprium of all great, and especially all sectarian veneration: it tends to erase from the venerated objects all its original traits and idiosyncrasies, often so painfully strange—it does not even see them. It is greatly to be regretted that no Dostoyevsky lived in the neighbourhood of this most interesting decadent—I mean some one who would have felt the poignant charm of such a compound of the sublime, the morbid and the childish. In the last analysis, the type, as a type of the decadence, may actually have been peculiarly complex and contradictory: such a possibility is not to be lost sight of. Nevertheless, the probabilities seem to be against it, for in that case tradition would have been particularly accurate and objective, whereas we have reasons for assuming the contrary. Meanwhile, there is a contradiction between the peaceful preacher of the mount, the sea-shore and the fields, who appears like a new Buddha on a soil very unlike India’s, and the aggressive fanatic, the mortal enemy of theologians and ecclesiastics, who stands glorified by Renan’s malice as “ le grand ma�tre en ironie.” I myself haven’t any doubt that the greater part of this venom (and no less of esprit) got itself into the concept of the Master only as a result of the excited nature of Christian propaganda: we all know the unscrupulousness of sectarians when they set out to turn their leader into an apologia for themselves. When the early Christians had need of an adroit, contentious, pugnacious and maliciously subtle theologian to tackle other theologians, they created a “ god” that met that need, just as they put into his mouth without hesitation certain ideas that were necessary to them but that were utterly at odds with the Gospels—“ the second coming,” “ the last judgment,” all sorts of expectations and promises, current at the time.— 32. I can only repeat that I set myself against all efforts to intrude the fanatic into the figure of the Saviour: the very word imperieux, used by Renan, is alone enough to annul the type. What the “ glad tidings” tell us is simply that there are no more contradictions; the kingdom of heaven belongs to children; the faith that is voiced here is no more an embattled faith —it is at hand, it has been from the beginning, it is a sort of recrudescent childishness of the spirit. The physiologists, at all events, are familiar with such a delayed and incomplete puberty in the living organism, the result of degeneration. A faith of this sort is not furious, it does not denounce, it does not defend itself: it does not come with “ the sword”—it does not realize how it will one day set man against man. It does not manifest itself either by miracles, or by rewards and promises, or by “ scriptures”: it is itself, first and last, its own miracle, its own reward, its own promise, its own “ kingdom of God.” This faith does not formulate itself—it simply lives, and so guards itself against formulae. To be sure, the accident of environment, of educational background gives prominence to concepts of a certain sort: in primitive Christianity one finds only concepts of a Judaeo-Semitic character (— that of eating and drinking at the last supper belongs to this category—an idea which, like everything else Jewish, has been badly mauled by the church). But let us be careful not to
see in all this anything more than symbolical language, semantics[6] an opportunity to speak in parables. It is only on the theory that no work is to be taken literally that this antirealist is able to speak at all. Set down among Hindus he would have made use of the concepts of Sankhya,[7] and among Chinese he would have employed those of Lao-tse[8]—and in neither case would it have made any difference to him.—With a little freedom in the use of words, one might actually call Jesus a “ free spirit”[9]—he cares nothing for what is established: the word killeth,[10] whatever is established killeth. The idea of “ life” as an experience, as he alone conceives it, stands opposed to his mind to every sort of word, formula, law, belief and dogma. He speaks only of inner things: “ life” or “ truth” or “ light” is his word for the innermost—in his sight everything else, the whole of reality, all nature, even language, has significance only as sign, as allegory.—Here it is of paramount importance to be led into no error by the temptations lying in Christian, or rather ecclesiastical prejudices: such a symbolism par excellence stands outside all religion, all notions of worship, all history, all natural science, all worldly experience, all knowledge, all politics, all psychology, all books, all art—his “ wisdom” is precisely a pure ignorance[11] of all such things. He has never heard of culture; he doesn’t have to make war on it—he doesn’t even deny it…. The same thing may be said of the state, of the whole bourgeoise social order, of labour, of war—he has no ground for denying “ the world,” for he knows nothing of the ecclesiastical concept of “ the world”…. Denial is precisely the thing that is impossible to him.—In the same way he lacks argumentative capacity, and has no belief that an article of faith, a “ truth,” may be established by proofs (—his proofs are inner “ lights,” subjective sensations of happiness and self-approval, simple “ proofs of power”—). Such a doctrine cannot contradict: it doesn’t know that other doctrines exist, or can exist, and is wholly incapable of imagining anything opposed to it…. If anything of the sort is ever encountered, it laments the “ blindness” with sincere sympathy—for it alone has “ light”—but it does not offer objections…. [6] The word Semiotik is in the text, but it is probable that Semantik is what Nietzsche had in mind. [7] One of the six great systems of Hindu philosophy. [8] The reputed founder of Taoism. [9] Nietzsche’s name for one accepting his own philosophy. [10] That is, the strict letter of the law—the chief target of Jesus’s early preaching. [11] A reference to the “ pure ignorance” (reine Thorheit) of Parsifal. 33. In the whole psychology of the “ Gospels” the concepts of guilt and punishment are lacking, and so is that of reward. “ Sin,” which means anything that puts a distance between God and man, is abolished—this is precisely the “ glad tidings.” Eternal bliss is not merely promised, nor is it bound up with conditions: it is conceived as the only reality—what remains consists merely of signs useful in speaking of it. The results of such a point of view project themselves into a new way of life, the special evangelical way of life. It is not a “ belief” that marks off the Christian; he is distinguished by a different mode of action; he acts differently. He offers no resistance, either by word or in his heart, to those who stand against him. He draws no distinction between strangers and countrymen, Jews and Gentiles (“ neighbour,” of course, means fellow-believer, Jew). He is angry with no one, and he despises no one. He neither appeals to the courts of justice nor heeds their mandates (“ Swear not at all”).[12] He never under any circumstances divorces his wife, even when he has proofs of her infidelity.—And under all of this is one principle; all of it arises from one instinct.— [12] Matthew v, 34. The life of the Saviour was simply a carrying out of this way of life—and so was his death…. He no longer needed any formula or ritual in his relations with God—not even prayer. He had rejected the whole of the Jewish doctrine of repentance and atonement; he knew that it was only by a way of life that one could feel one’s self “ divine,” “ blessed,” “ evangelical,” a “ child of God.” Not by “ repentance,” not by “ prayer and forgiveness” is the way to God: only the Gospel way leads to God—it is itself “ God!”—What the Gospels abolished was the Judaism in the concepts of “ sin,” “ forgiveness of sin,” “ faith,” “ salvation through faith”—the whole ecclesiastical dogma of the Jews was denied by the “ glad tidings.” The deep instinct which prompts the Christian how to live so that he will feel that he is “ in heaven” and is “ immortal,” despite many reasons for feeling that he is not “ in heaven”: this is the only psychological reality in “ salvation.”—A new way of life, not a new faith…. 34. If I understand anything at all about this great symbolist, it is this: that he regarded only subjective realities as realities, as “ truths”—that he saw everything else, everything natural, temporal, spatial and historical, merely as signs, as materials for parables. The concept of “ the Son of God” does not connote a concrete person in history, an isolated and definite individual, but an “ eternal” fact, a psychological symbol set free from the concept of time. The same thing is true, and in the highest sense, of the God of this typical symbolist, of the “ kingdom of God,” and of the “ sonship of God.” Nothing could be more un-Christian than the crude ecclesiastical notions of God as a person, of a “ kingdom of God” that is to come, of a “ kingdom of heaven” beyond, and of a “ son of God” as the second person of the Trinity. All this—if I may be forgiven the phrase—is like thrusting one’s fist into the eye (and what an eye!) of the Gospels: a disrespect for symbols amounting to world-historical cynicism…. But it is nevertheless obvious enough what is meant by the symbols “ Father” and “ Son”—not, of course, to every one—: the word “ Son” expresses entrance into the feeling that there is a general transformation of all things (beatitude), and “ Father” expresses that feeling itself—the sensation of eternity and of perfection.—I am ashamed to remind you of what the church has made of this symbolism: has it not set an
Amphitryon story[13] at the threshold of the Christian “ faith”? And a dogma of “ immaculate conception” for good measure?… And thereby it has robbed conception of its immaculateness— [13] Amphitryon was the son of Alcaeus, King of Tiryns. His wife was Alcmene. During his absence she was visited by Zeus, and bore Heracles. The “ kingdom of heaven” is a state of the heart—not something to come “ beyond the world” or “ after death.” The whole idea of natural death is absent from the Gospels: death is not a bridge, not a passing; it is absent because it belongs to a quite different, a merely apparent world, useful only as a symbol. The “ hour of death” is not a Christian idea —“ hours,” time, the physical life and its crises have no existence for the bearer of “ glad tidings.”… The “ kingdom of God” is not something that men wait for: it had no yesterday and no day after tomorrow, it is not going to come at a “ millennium”—it is an experience of the heart, it is everywhere and it is nowhere…. 35. This “ bearer of glad tidings” died as he lived and taught—not to “ save mankind,” but to show mankind how to live. It was a way of life that he bequeathed to man: his demeanour before the judges, before the officers, before his accusers—his demeanour on the cross. He does not resist; he does not defend his rights; he makes no effort to ward off the most extreme penalty—more, he invites it…. And he prays, suffers and loves with those, in those, who do him evil…. Not to defend one’s self, not to show anger, not to lay blames…. On the contrary, to submit even to the Evil One—to love him…. 36. —We free spirits—we are the first to have the necessary prerequisite to understanding what nineteen centuries have misunderstood—that instinct and passion for integrity which makes war upon the “ holy lie” even more than upon all other lies…. Mankind was unspeakably far from our benevolent and cautious neutrality, from that discipline of the spirit which alone makes possible the solution of such strange and subtle things: what men always sought, with shameless egoism, was their own advantage therein; they created the church out of denial of the Gospels…. Whoever sought for signs of an ironical divinity’s hand in the great drama of existence would find no small indication thereof in the stupendous question-mark that is called Christianity. That mankind should be on its knees before the very antithesis of what was the origin, the meaning and the law of the Gospels—that in the concept of the “ church” the very things should be pronounced holy that the “ bearer of glad tidings” regards as beneath him and behind him—it would be impossible to surpass this as a grand example of worldhistorical irony— 37. —Our age is proud of its historical sense: how, then, could it delude itself into believing that the crude fable of the wonder-worker and Saviour constituted the beginnings of Christianity—and that everything spiritual and symbolical in it only came later? Quite to the contrary, the whole history of Christianity—from the death on the cross onward—is the history of a progressively clumsier misunderstanding of an original symbolism. With every extension of Christianity among larger and ruder masses, even less capable of grasping the principles that gave birth to it, the need arose to make it more and more vulgar and barbarous—it absorbed the teachings and rites of all the subterranean cults of the imperium Romanum, and the absurdities engendered by all sorts of sickly reasoning. It was the fate of Christianity that its faith had to become as sickly, as low and as vulgar as the needs were sickly, low and vulgar to which it had to administer. A sickly barbarism finally lifts itself to power as the church—the church, that incarnation of deadly hostility to all honesty, to all loftiness of soul, to all discipline of the spirit, to all spontaneous and kindly humanity.—Christian values—noble values: it is only we, we free spirits, who have re-established this greatest of all antitheses in values!… 38. —I cannot, at this place, avoid a sigh. There are days when I am visited by a feeling blacker than the blackest melancholy—contempt of man. Let me leave no doubt as to what I despise, whom I despise: it is the man of today, the man with whom I am unhappily contemporaneous. The man of today—I am suffocated by his foul breath!… Toward the past, like all who understand, I am full of tolerance, which is to say, generous self-control: with gloomy caution I pass through whole millenniums of this madhouse of a world, call it “ Christianity,” “ Christian faith” or the “ Christian church,” as you will—I take care not to hold mankind responsible for its lunacies. But my feeling changes and breaks out irresistibly the moment I enter modern times, our times. Our age knows better…. What was formerly merely sickly now becomes indecent—it is indecent to be a Christian today. And here my disgust begins.—I look about me: not a word survives of what was once called “ truth”; we can no longer bear to hear a priest pronounce the word. Even a man who makes the most modest pretensions to integrity must know that a theologian, a priest, a pope of today not only errs when he speaks, but actually lies—and that he no longer escapes blame for his lie through “ innocence” or “ ignorance.” The priest knows, as every one knows, that there is no longer any “ God,” or any “ sinner,” or any “ Saviour”—that “ free will” and the “ moral order of the world” are lies—: serious reflection, the profound self-conquest of the spirit, allow no man to pretend that he does not know it…. All the ideas of the church are now recognized for what they are—as the worst counterfeits in existence, invented to debase nature and all natural values; the priest himself is seen as he actually is—as the most dangerous form of parasite, as the venomous spider of creation…. We know, our conscience now knows—just what the real value of all those sinister inventions of priest and church has been and what ends they have served, with their debasement of humanity to a state of self-pollution, the very sight of which excites loathing,—the concepts “ the other world,” “ the last judgment,” “ the immortality of the soul,” the “ soul” itself: they are all merely so many instruments of torture, systems of cruelty, whereby the priest becomes master and remains master…. Every one knows this, but nevertheless things remain as before. What has become of the last trace of decent feeling, of self-respect, when our statesmen,
otherwise an unconventional class of men and thoroughly anti-Christian in their acts, now call themselves Christians and go to the communion-table?… A prince at the head of his armies, magnificent as the expression of the egoism and arrogance of his people—and yet acknowledging, without any shame, that he is a Christian!… Whom, then, does Christianity deny? what does it call “ the world”? To be a soldier, to be a judge, to be a patriot; to defend one’s self; to be careful of one’s honour; to desire one’s own advantage; to be proud … every act of everyday, every instinct, every valuation that shows itself in a deed, is now anti-Christian: what a monster of falsehood the modern man must be to call himself nevertheless, and without shame, a Christian!— 39. —I shall go back a bit, and tell you the authentic history of Christianity.—The very word “ Christianity” is a misunderstanding—at bottom there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross. The “ Gospels” died on the cross. What, from that moment onward, was called the “ Gospels” was the very reverse of what he had lived: “ bad tidings,” a Dysangelium.[14] It is an error amounting to nonsensicality to see in “ faith,” and particularly in faith in salvation through Christ, the distinguishing mark of the Christian: only the Christian way of life, the life lived by him who died on the cross, is Christian…. To this day such a life is still possible, and for certain men even necessary: genuine, primitive Christianity will remain possible in all ages…. Not faith, but acts; above all, an avoidance of acts, a different state of being…. States of consciousness, faith of a sort, the acceptance, for example, of anything as true—as every psychologist knows, the value of these things is perfectly indifferent and fifth-rate compared to that of the instincts: strictly speaking, the whole concept of intellectual causality is false. To reduce being a Christian, the state of Christianity, to an acceptance of truth, to a mere phenomenon of consciousness, is to formulate the negation of Christianity. In fact, there are no Christians. The “ Christian”—he who for two thousand years has passed as a Christian—is simply a psychological self-delusion. Closely examined, it appears that, despite all his “ faith,” he has been ruled only by his instincts—and what instincts!—In all ages—for example, in the case of Luther—“ faith” has been no more than a cloak, a pretense, a curtain behind which the instincts have played their game—a shrewd blindness to the domination of certain of the instincts…. I have already called “ faith” the specially Christian form of shrewdness—people always talk of their “ faith” and act according to their instincts…. In the world of ideas of the Christian there is nothing that so much as touches reality: on the contrary, one recognizes an instinctive hatred of reality as the motive power, the only motive power at the bottom of Christianity. What follows therefrom? That even here, in psychologicis, there is a radical error, which is to say one conditioning fundamentals, which is to say, one in substance. Take away one idea and put a genuine reality in its place—and the whole of Christianity crumbles to nothingness!—Viewed calmly, this strangest of all phenomena, a religion not only depending on errors, but inventive and ingenious only in devising injurious errors, poisonous to life and to the heart—this remains a spectacle for the gods—for those gods who are also philosophers, and whom I have encountered, for example, in the celebrated dialogues at Naxos. At the moment when their disgust leaves them (—and us!) they will be thankful for the spectacle afforded by the Christians: perhaps because of this curious exhibition alone the wretched little planet called the earth deserves a glance from omnipotence, a show of divine interest…. Therefore, let us not underestimate the Christians: the Christian, false to the point of innocence, is far above the ape—in its application to the Christians a wellknown theory of descent becomes a mere piece of politeness…. [14] So in the text. One of Nietzsche’s numerous coinages, obviously suggested by Evangelium, the German for gospel. 40. —The fate of the Gospels was decided by death—it hung on the “ cross.”… It was only death, that unexpected and shameful death; it was only the cross, which was usually reserved for the canaille only—it was only this appalling paradox which brought the disciples face to face with the real riddle: “ Who was it? what was it?”—The feeling of dismay, of profound affront and injury; the suspicion that such a death might involve a refutation of their cause; the terrible question, “ Why just in this way?”—this state of mind is only too easy to understand. Here everything must be accounted for as necessary; everything must have a meaning, a reason, the highest sort of reason; the love of a disciple excludes all chance. Only then did the chasm of doubt yawn: “ Who put him to death? who was his natural enemy?”—this question flashed like a lightning-stroke. Answer: dominant Judaism, its ruling class. From that moment, one found one’s self in revolt against the established order, and began to understand Jesus as in revolt against the established order. Until then this militant, this nay-saying, nay-doing element in his character had been lacking; what is more, he had appeared to present its opposite. Obviously, the little community had not understood what was precisely the most important thing of all: the example offered by this way of dying, the freedom from and superiority to every feeling of ressentiment—a plain indication of how little he was understood at all! All that Jesus could hope to accomplish by his death, in itself, was to offer the strongest possible proof, or example, of his teachings in the most public manner…. But his disciples were very far from forgiving his death—though to have done so would have accorded with the Gospels in the highest degree; and neither were they prepared to offer themselves, with gentle and serene calmness of heart, for a similar death…. On the contrary, it was precisely the most unevangelical of feelings, revenge, that now possessed them. It seemed impossible that the cause should perish with his death: “ recompense” and “ judgment” became necessary (—yet what could be less evangelical than “ recompense,” “ punishment,” and “ sitting in judgment”!). Once more the popular belief in the coming of a messiah appeared in the foreground; attention was rivetted upon an historical moment: the “ kingdom of God” is to come, with judgment upon his enemies…. But in all this there was a wholesale misunderstanding: imagine the “ kingdom of God” as a last act, as a mere promise! The Gospels had been, in fact, the incarnation, the fulfilment, the realization of this “ kingdom of God.” It was only now that all the familiar contempt for and bitterness against Pharisees and theologians began to appear in the character of the Master—he was thereby turned into a Pharisee and theologian himself! On the other hand, the savage veneration of these completely unbalanced souls could no longer endure the Gospel doctrine, taught by Jesus, of the equal right of all men to be children of God: their revenge took the form of elevating Jesus in an extravagant fashion, and thus separating him from themselves: just as, in earlier times, the Jews, to revenge themselves
upon their enemies, separated themselves from their God, and placed him on a great height. The One God and the Only Son of God: both were products of ressentiment…. 41. —And from that time onward an absurd problem offered itself: “ how could God allow it!” To which the deranged reason of the little community formulated an answer that was terrifying in its absurdity: God gave his son as a sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins. At once there was an end of the gospels! Sacrifice for sin, and in its most obnoxious and barbarous form: sacrifice of the innocent for the sins of the guilty! What appalling paganism!—Jesus himself had done away with the very concept of “ guilt,” he denied that there was any gulf fixed between God and man; he lived this unity between God and man, and that was precisely his “ glad tidings”…. And not as a mere privilege!—From this time forward the type of the Saviour was corrupted, bit by bit, by the doctrine of judgment and of the second coming, the doctrine of death as a sacrifice, the doctrine of the resurrection, by means of which the entire concept of “ blessedness,” the whole and only reality of the gospels, is juggled away—in favour of a state of existence after death!… St. Paul, with that rabbinical impudence which shows itself in all his doings, gave a logical quality to that conception, that indecent conception, in this way: “ If Christ did not rise from the dead, then all our faith is in vain!”—And at once there sprang from the Gospels the most contemptible of all unfulfillable promises, the shameless doctrine of personal immortality…. Paul even preached it as a reward…. 42. One now begins to see just what it was that came to an end with the death on the cross: a new and thoroughly original effort to found a Buddhistic peace movement, and so establish happiness on earth—real, not merely promised. For this remains—as I have already pointed out—the essential difference between the two religions of decadence: Buddhism promises nothing, but actually fulfils; Christianity promises everything, but fulfils nothing.—Hard upon the heels of the “ glad tidings” came the worst imaginable: those of Paul. In Paul is incarnated the very opposite of the “ bearer of glad tidings”; he represents the genius for hatred, the vision of hatred, the relentless logic of hatred. What, indeed, has not this dysangelist sacrificed to hatred! Above all, the Saviour: he nailed him to his own cross. The life, the example, the teaching, the death of Christ, the meaning and the law of the whole gospels—nothing was left of all this after that counterfeiter in hatred had reduced it to his uses. Surely not reality; surely not historical truth!… Once more the priestly instinct of the Jew perpetrated the same old master crime against history—he simply struck out the yesterday and the day before yesterday of Christianity, and invented his own history of Christian beginnings. Going further, he treated the history of Israel to another falsification, so that it became a mere prologue to his achievement: all the prophets, it now appeared, had referred to his “ Saviour.”… Later on the church even falsified the history of man in order to make it a prologue to Christianity…. The figure of the Saviour, his teaching, his way of life, his death, the meaning of his death, even the consequences of his death—nothing remained untouched, nothing remained in even remote contact with reality. Paul simply shifted the centre of gravity of that whole life to a place behind this existence—in the lie of the “ risen” Jesus. At bottom, he had no use for the life of the Saviour—what he needed was the death on the cross, and something more. To see anything honest in such a man as Paul, whose home was at the centre of the Stoical enlightenment, when he converts an hallucination into a proof of the resurrection of the Saviour, or even to believe his tale that he suffered from this hallucination himself—this would be a genuine niaiserie in a psychologist. Paul willed the end; therefore he also willed the means…. What he himself didn’t believe was swallowed readily enough by the idiots among whom he spread his teaching.—What he wanted was power; in Paul the priest once more reached out for power—he had use only for such concepts, teachings and symbols as served the purpose of tyrannizing over the masses and organizing mobs. What was the only part of Christianity that Mohammed borrowed later on? Paul’s invention, his device for establishing priestly tyranny and organizing the mob: the belief in the immortality of the soul—that is to say, the doctrine of “ judgment”…. 43. When the centre of gravity of life is placed, not in life itself, but in “ the beyond”—in nothingness—then one has taken away its centre of gravity altogether. The vast lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all natural instinct—henceforth, everything in the instincts that is beneficial, that fosters life and that safeguards the future is a cause of suspicion. So to live that life no longer has any meaning: this is now the “ meaning” of life…. Why be public-spirited? Why take any pride in descent and forefathers? Why labour together, trust one another, or concern one’s self about the common welfare, and try to serve it?… Merely so many “ temptations,” so many strayings from the “ straight path.”—“ One thing only is necessary”…. That every man, because he has an “ immortal soul,” is as good as every other man; that in an infinite universe of things the “ salvation” of every individual may lay claim to eternal importance; that insignificant bigots and the three-fourths insane may assume that the laws of nature are constantly suspended in their behalf —it is impossible to lavish too much contempt upon such a magnification of every sort of selfishness to infinity, to insolence. And yet Christianity has to thank precisely this miserable flattery of personal vanity for its triumph—it was thus that it lured all the botched, the dissatisfied, the fallen upon evil days, the whole refuse and off-scouring of humanity to its side. The “ salvation of the soul”—in plain English: “ the world revolves around me.”… The poisonous doctrine, “ equal rights for all,” has been propagated as a Christian principle: out of the secret nooks and crannies of bad instinct Christianity has waged a deadly war upon all feelings of reverence and distance between man and man, which is to say, upon the first prerequisite to every step upward, to every development of civilization—out of the ressentiment of the masses it has forged its chief weapons against us, against everything noble, joyous and high-spirited on earth, against our happiness on earth…. To allow “ immortality” to every Peter and Paul was the greatest, the most vicious outrage upon noble humanity ever perpetrated.—And let us not underestimate the fatal influence that Christianity has had, even upon politics! Nowadays no one has courage any more for special rights, for the right of dominion, for feelings of honourable pride in himself and his equals—for the pathos of distance…. Our politics is sick with this lack of courage!—The aristocratic attitude of mind has been undermined by the lie of the equality of souls; and if belief in the “ privileges of the majority” makes and will continue to make revolutions—it
is Christianity, let us not doubt, and Christian valuations, which convert every revolution into a carnival of blood and crime! Christianity is a revolt of all creatures that creep on the ground against everything that is lofty: the gospel of the “ lowly” lowers…. 44. —The gospels are invaluable as evidence of the corruption that was already persistent within the primitive community. That which Paul, with the cynical logic of a rabbi, later developed to a conclusion was at bottom merely a process of decay that had begun with the death of the Saviour.—These gospels cannot be read too carefully; difficulties lurk behind every word. I confess—I hope it will not be held against me—that it is precisely for this reason that they offer first-rate joy to a psychologist—as the opposite of all merely na�ve corruption, as refinement par excellence, as an artistic triumph in psychological corruption. The gospels, in fact, stand alone. The Bible as a whole is not to be compared to them. Here we are among Jews: this is the first thing to be borne in mind if we are not to lose the thread of the matter. This positive genius for conjuring up a delusion of personal “ holiness” unmatched anywhere else, either in books or by men; this elevation of fraud in word and attitude to the level of an art—all this is not an accident due to the chance talents of an individual, or to any violation of nature. The thing responsible is race. The whole of Judaism appears in Christianity as the art of concocting holy lies, and there, after many centuries of earnest Jewish training and hard practice of Jewish technic, the business comes to the stage of mastery. The Christian, that ultima ratio of lying, is the Jew all over again —he is threefold the Jew…. The underlying will to make use only of such concepts, symbols and attitudes as fit into priestly practice, the instinctive repudiation of every other mode of thought, and every other method of estimating values and utilities—this is not only tradition, it is inheritance: only as an inheritance is it able to operate with the force of nature. The whole of mankind, even the best minds of the best ages (with one exception, perhaps hardly human—), have permitted themselves to be deceived. The gospels have been read as a book of innocence … surely no small indication of the high skill with which the trick has been done.—Of course, if we could actually see these astounding bigots and bogus saints, even if only for an instant, the farce would come to an end,—and it is precisely because I cannot read a word of theirs without seeing their attitudinizing that I have made an end of them…. I simply cannot endure the way they have of rolling up their eyes.—For the majority, happily enough, books are mere literature.—Let us not be led astray: they say “ judge not,” and yet they condemn to hell whoever stands in their way. In letting God sit in judgment they judge themselves; in glorifying God they glorify themselves; in demanding that every one show the virtues which they themselves happen to be capable of—still more, which they must have in order to remain on top—they assume the grand air of men struggling for virtue, of men engaging in a war that virtue may prevail. “ We live, we die, we sacrifice ourselves for the good” (—“ the truth,” “ the light,” “ the kingdom of God”): in point of fact, they simply do what they cannot help doing. Forced, like hypocrites, to be sneaky, to hide in corners, to slink along in the shadows, they convert their necessity into a duty: it is on grounds of duty that they account for their lives of humility, and that humility becomes merely one more proof of their piety…. Ah, that humble, chaste, charitable brand of fraud! “ Virtue itself shall bear witness for us.”… One may read the gospels as books of moral seduction: these petty folks fasten themselves to morality—they know the uses of morality! Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose!—The fact is that the conscious conceit of the chosen here disguises itself as modesty: it is in this way that they, the “ community,” the “ good and just,” range themselves, once and for always, on one side, the side of “ the truth”—and the rest of mankind, “ the world,” on the other…. In that we observe the most fatal sort of megalomania that the earth has ever seen: little abortions of bigots and liars began to claim exclusive rights in the concepts of “ God,” “ the truth,” “ the light,” “ the spirit,” “ love,” “ wisdom” and “ life,” as if these things were synonyms of themselves and thereby they sought to fence themselves off from the “ world”; little super-Jews, ripe for some sort of madhouse, turned values upside down in order to meet their notions, just as if the Christian were the meaning, the salt, the standard and even the last judgment of all the rest…. The whole disaster was only made possible by the fact that there already existed in the world a similar megalomania, allied to this one in race, to wit, the Jewish: once a chasm began to yawn between Jews and Judaeo-Christians, the latter had no choice but to employ the self-preservative measures that the Jewish instinct had devised, even against the Jews themselves, whereas the Jews had employed them only against non-Jews. The Christian is simply a Jew of the “ reformed” confession.— 45. —I offer a few examples of the sort of thing these petty people have got into their heads—what they have put into the mouth of the Master: the unalloyed creed of “ beautiful souls.”— “ And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city” (Mark vi, 11)—How evangelical!… “ And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea” (Mark ix, 42).—How evangelical!… “ And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire; Where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” (Mark ix, 47.[15])—It is not exactly the eye that is meant…. [15] To which, without mentioning it, Nietzsche adds verse 48. “ Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.” (Mark ix, 1.)— Well lied, lion![16]… [16] A paraphrase of Demetrius’ “ Well roar’d, Lion!” in act v, scene 1 of “ A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The lion, of course, is the familiar Christian symbol for Mark. “ Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For…” (Note of a psychologist. Christian morality is refuted by its fors: its reasons
are against it,—this makes it Christian.) Mark viii, 34.— “ Judge not, that ye be not judged. With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” (Matthew vii, 1.[17])—What a notion of justice, of a “ just” judge!… [17] Nietzsche also quotes part of verse 2. “ For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?” (Matthew v, 46.[18])—Principle of “ Christian love”: it insists upon being well paid in the end…. [18] The quotation also includes verse 47. “ But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” (Matthew vi, 15.)—Very compromising for the said “ father.”… “ But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” (Matthew vi, 33.)—All these things: namely, food, clothing, all the necessities of life. An error, to put it mildly…. A bit before this God appears as a tailor, at least in certain cases…. “ Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets.” (Luke vi, 23.)—Impudent rabble! It compares itself to the prophets…. “ Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.” (Paul, 1 Corinthians iii, 16.[19])—For that sort of thing one cannot have enough contempt…. [19] And 17. “ Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?” (Paul, 1 Corinthians vi, 2.)— Unfortunately, not merely the speech of a lunatic…. This frightful impostor then proceeds: “ Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life?”… “ Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe…. Not many wise men after the flesh, not men mighty, not many noble are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence.” (Paul, 1 Corinthians i, 20ff.[20])—In order to understand this passage, a first-rate example of the psychology underlying every Chandala-morality, one should read the first part of my “ Genealogy of Morals”: there, for the first time, the antagonism between a noble morality and a morality born of ressentiment and impotent vengefulness is exhibited. Paul was the greatest of all apostles of revenge…. [20] Verses 20, 21, 26, 27, 28, 29. 46. —What follows, then? That one had better put on gloves before reading the New Testament. The presence of so much filth makes it very advisable. One would as little choose “ early Christians” for companions as Polish Jews: not that one need seek out an objection to them…. Neither has a pleasant smell.—I have searched the New Testament in vain for a single sympathetic touch; nothing is there that is free, kindly, open-hearted or upright. In it humanity does not even make the first step upward—the instinct for cleanliness is lacking…. Only evil instincts are there, and there is not even the courage of these evil instincts. It is all cowardice; it is all a shutting of the eyes, a self-deception. Every other book becomes clean, once one has read the New Testament: for example, immediately after reading Paul I took up with delight that most charming and wanton of scoffers, Petronius, of whom one may say what Domenico Boccaccio wrote of C�sar Borgia to the Duke of Parma: “ � tutto festo”—immortally healthy, immortally cheerful and sound…. These petty bigots make a capital miscalculation. They attack, but everything they attack is thereby distinguished. Whoever is attacked by an “ early Christian” is surely not befouled…. On the contrary, it is an honour to have an “ early Christian” as an opponent. One cannot read the New Testament without acquired admiration for whatever it abuses—not to speak of the “ wisdom of this world,” which an impudent wind-bag tries to dispose of “ by the foolishness of preaching.”… Even the scribes and pharisees are benefitted by such opposition: they must certainly have been worth something to have been hated in such an indecent manner. Hypocrisy—as if this were a charge that the “ early Christians” dared to make!—After all, they were the privileged, and that was enough: the hatred of the Chandala needed no other excuse. The “ early Christian”—and also, I fear, the “ last Christian,” whom I may perhaps live to see—is a rebel against all privilege by profound instinct—he lives and makes war for ever for “ equal rights.”… Strictly speaking, he has no alternative. When a man proposes to represent, in his own person, the “ chosen of God”—or to be a “ temple of God,” or a “ judge of the angels”—then every other criterion, whether based upon honesty, upon intellect, upon manliness and pride, or upon beauty and freedom of the heart, becomes simply “ worldly”—evil in itself…. Moral: every word that comes from the lips of an “ early Christian” is a lie, and his every act is instinctively dishonest—all his values, all his aims are noxious, but whoever he hates, whatever he hates, has real value…. The Christian, and particularly the Christian priest, is thus a criterion of values. —Must I add that, in the whole New Testament, there appears but a solitary figure worthy of honour? Pilate, the Roman viceroy. To regard a Jewish imbroglio seriously—that was quite beyond him. One Jew more or less—what did it matter?… The noble scorn of a Roman, before whom the word “ truth” was shamelessly mishandled, enriched the New Testament with the only saying that has any value—and that is at once its criticism and its destruction: “ What is truth?…” 47.
—The thing that sets us apart is not that we are unable to find God, either in history, or in nature, or behind nature—but that we regard what has been honoured as God, not as “ divine,” but as pitiable, as absurd, as injurious; not as a mere error, but as a crime against life…. We deny that God is God…. If any one were to show us this Christian God, we’d be still less inclined to believe in him.—In a formula: deus, qualem Paulus creavit, dei negatio.—Such a religion as Christianity, which does not touch reality at a single point and which goes to pieces the moment reality asserts its rights at any point, must be inevitably the deadly enemy of the “ wisdom of this world,” which is to say, of science—and it will give the name of good to whatever means serve to poison, calumniate and cry down all intellectual discipline, all lucidity and strictness in matters of intellectual conscience, and all noble coolness and freedom of the mind. “ Faith,” as an imperative, vetoes science—in praxi, lying at any price…. Paul well knew that lying—that “ faith”—was necessary; later on the church borrowed the fact from Paul.—The God that Paul invented for himself, a God who “ reduced to absurdity” “ the wisdom of this world” (especially the two great enemies of superstition, philology and medicine), is in truth only an indication of Paul’s resolute determination to accomplish that very thing himself: to give one’s own will the name of God, thora—that is essentially Jewish. Paul wants to dispose of the “ wisdom of this world”: his enemies are the good philologians and physicians of the Alexandrine school—on them he makes his war. As a matter of fact no man can be a philologian or a physician without being also Antichrist. That is to say, as a philologian a man sees behind the “ holy books,” and as a physician he sees behind the physiological degeneration of the typical Christian. The physician says “ incurable”; the philologian says “ fraud.”… 48. —Has any one ever clearly understood the celebrated story at the beginning of the Bible—of God’s mortal terror of science?… No one, in fact, has understood it. This priest-book par excellence opens, as is fitting, with the great inner difficulty of the priest: he faces only one great danger; ergo, “ God” faces only one great danger.— The old God, wholly “ spirit,” wholly the high-priest, wholly perfect, is promenading his garden: he is bored and trying to kill time. Against boredom even gods struggle in vain.[21] What does he do? He creates man—man is entertaining…. But then he notices that man is also bored. God’s pity for the only form of distress that invades all paradises knows no bounds: so he forthwith creates other animals. God’s first mistake: to man these other animals were not entertaining—he sought dominion over them; he did not want to be an “ animal” himself.—So God created woman. In the act he brought boredom to an end—and also many other things! Woman was the second mistake of God.—“ Woman, at bottom, is a serpent, Heva”—every priest knows that; “ from woman comes every evil in the world”—every priest knows that, too. Ergo, she is also to blame for science…. It was through woman that man learned to taste of the tree of knowledge.—What happened? The old God was seized by mortal terror. Man himself had been his greatest blunder; he had created a rival to himself; science makes men godlike—it is all up with priests and gods when man becomes scientific!—Moral: science is the forbidden per se; it alone is forbidden. Science is the first of sins, the germ of all sins, the original sin. This is all there is of morality.—“ Thou shall not know”:—the rest follows from that.—God’s mortal terror, however, did not hinder him from being shrewd. How is one to protect one’s self against science? For a long while this was the capital problem. Answer: Out of paradise with man! Happiness, leisure, foster thought—and all thoughts are bad thoughts!—Man must not think.—And so the priest invents distress, death, the mortal dangers of childbirth, all sorts of misery, old age, decrepitude, above all, sickness—nothing but devices for making war on science! The troubles of man don’t allow him to think…. Nevertheless—how terrible!—, the edifice of knowledge begins to tower aloft, invading heaven, shadowing the gods—what is to be done?—The old God invents war; he separates the peoples; he makes men destroy one another (—the priests have always had need of war….). War—among other things, a great disturber of science!—Incredible! Knowledge, deliverance from the priests, prospers in spite of war. —So the old God comes to his final resolution: “ Man has become scientific—there is no help for it: he must be drowned!”… [21] A paraphrase of Schiller’s “ Against stupidity even gods struggle in vain.” 49. —I have been understood. At the opening of the Bible there is the whole psychology of the priest.—The priest knows of only one great danger: that is science—the sound comprehension of cause and effect. But science flourishes, on the whole, only under favourable conditions—a man must have time, he must have an overflowing intellect, in order to “ know.”… “ Therefore, man must be made unhappy,”—this has been, in all ages, the logic of the priest.—It is easy to see just what, by this logic, was the first thing to come into the world:—“ sin.”… The concept of guilt and punishment, the whole “ moral order of the world,” was set up against science—against the deliverance of man from priests…. Man must not look outward; he must look inward. He must not look at things shrewdly and cautiously, to learn about them; he must not look at all; he must suffer…. And he must suffer so much that he is always in need of the priest.—Away with physicians! What is needed is a Saviour.—The concept of guilt and punishment, including the doctrines of “ grace,” of “ salvation,” of “ forgiveness”—lies through and through, and absolutely without psychological reality—were devised to destroy man’s sense of causality: they are an attack upon the concept of cause and effect!—And not an attack with the fist, with the knife, with honesty in hate and love! On the contrary, one inspired by the most cowardly, the most crafty, the most ignoble of instincts! An attack of priests! An attack of parasites! The vampirism of pale, subterranean leeches!… When the natural consequences of an act are no longer “ natural,” but are regarded as produced by the ghostly creations of superstition—by “ God,” by “ spirits,” by “ souls”—and reckoned as merely “ moral” consequences, as rewards, as punishments, as hints, as lessons, then the whole ground-work of knowledge is destroyed—then the greatest of crimes against humanity has been perpetrated.—I repeat that sin, man’s self-desecration par excellence, was invented in order to make science, culture, and every elevation and ennobling of man impossible; the priest rules through the invention of sin.— 50. —In this place I can’t permit myself to omit a psychology of “ belief,” of the “ believer,” for the special benefit of “ believers.” If there remain any today who do not yet know how
indecent it is to be “ believing”—or how much a sign of decadence, of a broken will to live—then they will know it well enough tomorrow. My voice reaches even the deaf.—It appears, unless I have been incorrectly informed, that there prevails among Christians a sort of criterion of truth that is called “ proof by power.” “ Faith makes blessed: therefore it is true.”—It might be objected right here that blessedness is not demonstrated, it is merely promised: it hangs upon “ faith” as a condition—one shall be blessed because one believes…. But what of the thing that the priest promises to the believer, the wholly transcendental “ beyond”—how is that to be demonstrated?—The “ proof by power,” thus assumed, is actually no more at bottom than a belief that the effects which faith promises will not fail to appear. In a formula: “ I believe that faith makes for blessedness—therefore, it is true.”… But this is as far as we may go. This “ therefore” would be absurdum itself as a criterion of truth.—But let us admit, for the sake of politeness, that blessedness by faith may be demonstrated (—not merely hoped for, and not merely promised by the suspicious lips of a priest): even so, could blessedness—in a technical term, pleasure—ever be a proof of truth? So little is this true that it is almost a proof against truth when sensations of pleasure influence the answer to the question “ What is true?” or, at all events, it is enough to make that “ truth” highly suspicious. The proof by “ pleasure” is a proof of “ pleasure”—nothing more; why in the world should it be assumed that true judgments give more pleasure than false ones, and that, in conformity to some pre-established harmony, they necessarily bring agreeable feelings in their train?—The experience of all disciplined and profound minds teaches the contrary. Man has had to fight for every atom of the truth, and has had to pay for it almost everything that the heart, that human love, that human trust cling to. Greatness of soul is needed for this business: the service of truth is the hardest of all services.—What, then, is the meaning of integrity in things intellectual? It means that a man must be severe with his own heart, that he must scorn “ beautiful feelings,” and that he makes every Yea and Nay a matter of conscience!—Faith makes blessed: therefore, it lies…. 51. The fact that faith, under certain circumstances, may work for blessedness, but that this blessedness produced by an idee fixe by no means makes the idea itself true, and the fact that faith actually moves no mountains, but instead raises them up where there were none before: all this is made sufficiently clear by a walk through a lunatic asylum. Not, of course, to a priest: for his instincts prompt him to the lie that sickness is not sickness and lunatic asylums not lunatic asylums. Christianity finds sickness necessary, just as the Greek spirit had need of a superabundance of health—the actual ulterior purpose of the whole system of salvation of the church is to make people ill. And the church itself—doesn’t it set up a Catholic lunatic asylum as the ultimate ideal?—The whole earth as a madhouse?—The sort of religious man that the church wants is a typical decadent; the moment at which a religious crisis dominates a people is always marked by epidemics of nervous disorder; the “ inner world” of the religious man is so much like the “ inner world” of the overstrung and exhausted that it is difficult to distinguish between them; the “ highest” states of mind, held up before mankind by Christianity as of supreme worth, are actually epileptoid in form— the church has granted the name of holy only to lunatics or to gigantic frauds in majorem dei honorem…. Once I ventured to designate the whole Christian system of training[22] in penance and salvation (now best studied in England) as a method of producing a folie circulaire upon a soil already prepared for it, which is to say, a soil thoroughly unhealthy. Not every one may be a Christian: one is not “ converted” to Christianity—one must first be sick enough for it…. We others, who have the courage for health and likewise for contempt, —we may well despise a religion that teaches misunderstanding of the body! that refuses to rid itself of the superstition about the soul! that makes a “ virtue” of insufficient nourishment! that combats health as a sort of enemy, devil, temptation! that persuades itself that it is possible to carry about a “ perfect soul” in a cadaver of a body, and that, to this end, had to devise for itself a new concept of “ perfection,” a pale, sickly, idiotically ecstatic state of existence, so-called “ holiness”—a holiness that is itself merely a series of symptoms of an impoverished, enervated and incurably disordered body!… The Christian movement, as a European movement, was from the start no more than a general uprising of all sorts of outcast and refuse elements (—who now, under cover of Christianity, aspire to power). It does not represent the decay of a race; it represents, on the contrary, a conglomeration of decadence products from all directions, crowding together and seeking one another out. It was not, as has been thought, the corruption of antiquity, of noble antiquity, which made Christianity possible; one cannot too sharply challenge the learned imbecility which today maintains that theory. At the time when the sick and rotten Chandala classes in the whole imperium were Christianized, the contrary type, the nobility, reached its finest and ripest development. The majority became master; democracy, with its Christian instincts, triumphed…. Christianity was not “ national,” it was not based on race—it appealed to all the varieties of men disinherited by life, it had its allies everywhere. Christianity has the rancour of the sick at its very core—the instinct against the healthy, against health. Everything that is well-constituted, proud, gallant and, above all, beautiful gives offence to its ears and eyes. Again I remind you of Paul’s priceless saying: “ And God hath chosen the weak things of the world, the foolish things of the world, the base things of the world, and things which are despised”:[23] this was the formula; in hoc signo the decadence triumphed.—God on the cross—is man always to miss the frightful inner significance of this symbol?—Everything that suffers, everything that hangs on the cross, is divine…. We all hang on the cross, consequently we are divine…. We alone are divine…. Christianity was thus a victory: a nobler attitude of mind was destroyed by it—Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.— [22] The word training is in English in the text. [23] 1 Corinthians i, 27, 28. 52. Christianity also stands in opposition to all intellectual well-being,—sick reasoning is the only sort that it can use as Christian reasoning; it takes the side of everything that is idiotic; it pronounces a curse upon “ intellect,” upon the superbia of the healthy intellect. Since sickness is inherent in Christianity, it follows that the typically Christian state of “ faith” must be a form of sickness too, and that all straight, straightforward and scientific paths to knowledge must be banned by the church as forbidden ways. Doubt is thus a sin from the start…. The complete lack of psychological cleanliness in the priest—revealed by a glance at him—is a phenomenon resulting from decadence,—one may observe in
hysterical women and in rachitic children how regularly the falsification of instincts, delight in lying for the mere sake of lying, and incapacity for looking straight and walking straight are symptoms of decadence. “ Faith” means the will to avoid knowing what is true. The pietist, the priest of either sex, is a fraud because he is sick: his instinct demands that the truth shall never be allowed its rights on any point. “ Whatever makes for illness is good; whatever issues from abundance, from superabundance, from power, is evil”: so argues the believer. The impulse to lie—it is by this that I recognize every foreordained theologian.—Another characteristic of the theologian is his unfitness for philology. What I here mean by philology is, in a general sense, the art of reading with profit—the capacity for absorbing facts without interpreting them falsely, and without losing caution, patience and subtlety in the effort to understand them. Philology as ephexis[24] in interpretation: whether one be dealing with books, with newspaper reports, with the most fateful events or with weather statistics—not to mention the “ salvation of the soul.”… The way in which a theologian, whether in Berlin or in Rome, is ready to explain, say, a “ passage of Scripture,” or an experience, or a victory by the national army, by turning upon it the high illumination of the Psalms of David, is always so daring that it is enough to make a philologian run up a wall. But what shall he do when pietists and other such cows from Suabia[25] use the “ finger of God” to convert their miserably commonplace and huggermugger existence into a miracle of “ grace,” a “ providence” and an “ experience of salvation”? The most modest exercise of the intellect, not to say of decency, should certainly be enough to convince these interpreters of the perfect childishness and unworthiness of such a misuse of the divine digital dexterity. However small our piety, if we ever encountered a god who always cured us of a cold in the head at just the right time, or got us into our carriage at the very instant heavy rain began to fall, he would seem so absurd a god that he’d have to be abolished even if he existed. God as a domestic servant, as a letter carrier, as an almanac-man—at bottom, he is a mere name for the stupidest sort of chance…. “ Divine Providence,” which every third man in “ educated Germany” still believes in, is so strong an argument against God that it would be impossible to think of a stronger. And in any case it is an argument against Germans!… [24] That is, to say, scepticism. Among the Greeks scepticism was also occasionally called ephecticism. [25] A reference to the University of T�bingen and its famous school of Biblical criticism. The leader of this school was F. C. Baur, and one of the men greatly influenced by it was Nietzsche’s pet abomination, David F. Strauss, himself a Suabian. Vide � 10 and � 28. 53. —It is so little true that martyrs offer any support to the truth of a cause that I am inclined to deny that any martyr has ever had anything to do with the truth at all. In the very tone in which a martyr flings what he fancies to be true at the head of the world there appears so low a grade of intellectual honesty and such insensibility to the problem of “ truth,” that it is never necessary to refute him. Truth is not something that one man has and another man has not: at best, only peasants, or peasant-apostles like Luther, can think of truth in any such way. One may rest assured that the greater the degree of a man’s intellectual conscience the greater will be his modesty, his discretion, on this point. To know in five cases, and to refuse, with delicacy, to know anything further…. “ Truth,” as the word is understood by every prophet, every sectarian, every free-thinker, every Socialist and every churchman, is simply a complete proof that not even a beginning has been made in the intellectual discipline and self-control that are necessary to the unearthing of even the smallest truth.—The deaths of the martyrs, it may be said in passing, have been misfortunes of history: they have misled…. The conclusion that all idiots, women and plebeians come to, that there must be something in a cause for which any one goes to his death (or which, as under primitive Christianity, sets off epidemics of death-seeking)—this conclusion has been an unspeakable drag upon the testing of facts, upon the whole spirit of inquiry and investigation. The martyrs have damaged the truth…. Even to this day the crude fact of persecution is enough to give an honourable name to the most empty sort of sectarianism.—But why? Is the worth of a cause altered by the fact that some one had laid down his life for it?—An error that becomes honourable is simply an error that has acquired one seductive charm the more: do you suppose, Messrs. Theologians, that we shall give you the chance to be martyred for your lies?—One best disposes of a cause by respectfully putting it on ice—that is also the best way to dispose of theologians…. This was precisely the world-historical stupidity of all the persecutors: that they gave the appearance of honour to the cause they opposed—that they made it a present of the fascination of martyrdom…. Women are still on their knees before an error because they have been told that some one died on the cross for it. Is the cross, then, an argument?—But about all these things there is one, and one only, who has said what has been needed for thousands of years—Zarathustra. They made signs in blood along the way that they went, and their folly taught them that the truth is proved by blood. But blood is the worst of all testimonies to the truth; blood poisoneth even the purest teaching and turneth it into madness and hatred in the heart. And when one goeth through fire for his teaching—what doth that prove? Verily, it is more when one’s teaching cometh out of one’s own burning![26] [26] The quotations are from “ Also sprach Zarathustra” ii, 24: “ Of Priests.” 54. Do not let yourself be deceived: great intellects are sceptical. Zarathustra is a sceptic. The strength, the freedom which proceed from intellectual power, from a superabundance of intellectual power, manifest themselves as scepticism. Men of fixed convictions do not count when it comes to determining what is fundamental in values and lack of values. Men of convictions are prisoners. They do not see far enough, they do not see what is below them: whereas a man who would talk to any purpose about value and non-value must be able to see five hundred convictions beneath him—and behind him…. A mind that aspires to great things, and that wills the means thereto, is necessarily sceptical. Freedom from any sort of conviction belongs to strength, and to an independent point of view…. That grand passion which is at once the foundation and the power of a sceptic’s existence, and is both more enlightened and more despotic than he is himself, drafts the whole of his intellect into its service; it makes him unscrupulous; it gives him courage to employ unholy means; under
certain circumstances it does not begrudge him even convictions. Conviction as a means: one may achieve a good deal by means of a conviction. A grand passion makes use of and uses up convictions; it does not yield to them—it knows itself to be sovereign.—On the contrary, the need of faith, of something unconditioned by yea or nay, of Carlylism, if I may be allowed the word, is a need of weakness. The man of faith, the “ believer” of any sort, is necessarily a dependent man—such a man cannot posit himself as a goal, nor can he find goals within himself. The “ believer” does not belong to himself; he can only be a means to an end; he must be used up; he needs some one to use him up. His instinct gives the highest honours to an ethic of self-effacement; he is prompted to embrace it by everything: his prudence, his experience, his vanity. Every sort of faith is in itself an evidence of selfeffacement, of self-estrangement…. When one reflects how necessary it is to the great majority that there be regulations to restrain them from without and hold them fast, and to what extent control, or, in a higher sense, slavery, is the one and only condition which makes for the well-being of the weak-willed man, and especially woman, then one at once understands conviction and “ faith.” To the man with convictions they are his backbone. To avoid seeing many things, to be impartial about nothing, to be a party man through and through, to estimate all values strictly and infallibly—these are conditions necessary to the existence of such a man. But by the same token they are antagonists of the truthful man— of the truth…. The believer is not free to answer the question, “ true” or “ not true,” according to the dictates of his own conscience: integrity on this point would work his instant downfall. The pathological limitations of his vision turn the man of convictions into a fanatic—Savonarola, Luther, Rousseau, Robespierre, Saint-Simon—these types stand in opposition to the strong, emancipated spirit. But the grandiose attitudes of these sick intellects, these intellectual epileptics, are of influence upon the great masses—fanatics are picturesque, and mankind prefers observing poses to listening to reasons…. 55. —One step further in the psychology of conviction, of “ faith.” It is now a good while since I first proposed for consideration the question whether convictions are not even more dangerous enemies to truth than lies. (“ Human, All-Too-Human,” I, aphorism 483.)[27] This time I desire to put the question definitely: is there any actual difference between a lie and a conviction?—All the world believes that there is; but what is not believed by all the world!—Every conviction has its history, its primitive forms, its stage of tentativeness and error: it becomes a conviction only after having been, for a long time, not one, and then, for an even longer time, hardly one. What if falsehood be also one of these embryonic forms of conviction?—Sometimes all that is needed is a change in persons: what was a lie in the father becomes a conviction in the son.—I call it lying to refuse to see what one sees, or to refuse to see it as it is: whether the lie be uttered before witnesses or not before witnesses is of no consequence. The most common sort of lie is that by which a man deceives himself: the deception of others is a relatively rare offence.—Now, this will not to see what one sees, this will not to see it as it is, is almost the first requisite for all who belong to a party of whatever sort: the party man becomes inevitably a liar. For example, the German historians are convinced that Rome was synonymous with despotism and that the Germanic peoples brought the spirit of liberty into the world: what is the difference between this conviction and a lie? Is it to be wondered at that all partisans, including the German historians, instinctively roll the fine phrases of morality upon their tongues—that morality almost owes its very survival to the fact that the party man of every sort has need of it every moment? —“ This is our conviction: we publish it to the whole world; we live and die for it—let us respect all who have convictions!”—I have actually heard such sentiments from the mouths of anti-Semites. On the contrary, gentlemen! An anti-Semite surely does not become more respectable because he lies on principle…. The priests, who have more finesse in such matters, and who well understand the objection that lies against the notion of a conviction, which is to say, of a falsehood that becomes a matter of principle because it serves a purpose, have borrowed from the Jews the shrewd device of sneaking in the concepts, “ God,” “ the will of God” and “ the revelation of God” at this place. Kant, too, with his categorical imperative, was on the same road: this was his practical reason.[28] There are questions regarding the truth or untruth of which it is not for man to decide; all the capital questions, all the capital problems of valuation, are beyond human reason…. To know the limits of reason—that alone is genuine philosophy…. Why did God make a revelation to man? Would God have done anything superfluous? Man could not find out for himself what was good and what was evil, so God taught him His will…. Moral: the priest does not lie—the question, “ true” or “ untrue,” has nothing to do with such things as the priest discusses; it is impossible to lie about these things. In order to lie here it would be necessary to know what is true. But this is more than man can know; therefore, the priest is simply the mouthpiece of God.—Such a priestly syllogism is by no means merely Jewish and Christian; the right to lie and the shrewd dodge of “ revelation” belong to the general priestly type—to the priest of the decadence as well as to the priest of pagan times (—Pagans are all those who say yes to life, and to whom “ God” is a word signifying acquiescence in all things).—The “ law,” the “ will of God,” the “ holy book,” and “ inspiration”—all these things are merely words for the conditions under which the priest comes to power and with which he maintains his power,—these concepts are to be found at the bottom of all priestly organizations, and of all priestly or priestly-philosophical schemes of governments. The “ holy lie”—common alike to Confucius, to the Code of Manu, to Mohammed and to the Christian church—is not even wanting in Plato. “ Truth is here”: this means, no matter where it is heard, the priest lies…. [27] The aphorism, which is headed “ The Enemies of Truth,” makes the direct statement: “ Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.” [28] A reference, of course, to Kant’s “ Kritik der praktischen Vernunft” (Critique of Practical Reason). 56. —In the last analysis it comes to this: what is the end of lying? The fact that, in Christianity, “ holy” ends are not visible is my objection to the means it employs. Only bad ends appear: the poisoning, the calumniation, the denial of life, the despising of the body, the degradation and self-contamination of man by the concept of sin—therefore, its means are also bad.—I have a contrary feeling when I read the Code of Manu, an incomparably more intellectual and superior work, which it would be a sin against the intelligence to so much as name in the same breath with the Bible. It is easy to see why: there is a genuine philosophy behind it, in it, not merely an evil-smelling mess of Jewish rabbinism and
superstition,—it gives even the most fastidious psychologist something to sink his teeth into. And, not to forget what is most important, it differs fundamentally from every kind of Bible: by means of it the nobles, the philosophers and the warriors keep the whip-hand over the majority; it is full of noble valuations, it shows a feeling of perfection, an acceptance of life, and triumphant feeling toward self and life—the sun shines upon the whole book.—All the things on which Christianity vents its fathomless vulgarity—for example, procreation, women and marriage—are here handled earnestly, with reverence and with love and confidence. How can any one really put into the hands of children and ladies a book which contains such vile things as this: “ to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband; … it is better to marry than to burn”? [29] And is it possible to be a Christian so long as the origin of man is Christianized, which is to say, befouled, by the doctrine of the immaculata conceptio?… I know of no book in which so many delicate and kindly things are said of women as in the Code of Manu; these old grey-beards and saints have a way of being gallant to women that it would be impossible, perhaps, to surpass. “ The mouth of a woman,” it says in one place, “ the breasts of a maiden, the prayer of a child and the smoke of sacrifice are always pure.” In another place: “ there is nothing purer than the light of the sun, the shadow cast by a cow, air, water, fire and the breath of a maiden.” Finally, in still another place—perhaps this is also a holy lie—: “ all the orifices of the body above the navel are pure, and all below are impure. Only in the maiden is the whole body pure.” [29] 1 Corinthians vii, 2, 9. 57. One catches the unholiness of Christian means in flagranti by the simple process of putting the ends sought by Christianity beside the ends sought by the Code of Manu—by putting these enormously antithetical ends under a strong light. The critic of Christianity cannot evade the necessity of making Christianity contemptible.—A book of laws such as the Code of Manu has the same origin as every other good law-book: it epitomizes the experience, the sagacity and the ethical experimentation of long centuries; it brings things to a conclusion; it no longer creates. The prerequisite to a codification of this sort is recognition of the fact that the means which establish the authority of a slowly and painfully attained truth are fundamentally different from those which one would make use of to prove it. A law-book never recites the utility, the grounds, the casuistical antecedents of a law: for if it did so it would lose the imperative tone, the “ thou shall,” on which obedience is based. The problem lies exactly here.—At a certain point in the evolution of a people, the class within it of the greatest insight, which is to say, the greatest hindsight and foresight, declares that the series of experiences determining how all shall live—or can live—has come to an end. The object now is to reap as rich and as complete a harvest as possible from the days of experiment and hard experience. In consequence, the thing that is to be avoided above everything is further experimentation—the continuation of the state in which values are fluent, and are tested, chosen and criticized ad infinitum. Against this a double wall is set up: on the one hand, revelation, which is the assumption that the reasons lying behind the laws are not of human origin, that they were not sought out and found by a slow process and after many errors, but that they are of divine ancestry, and came into being complete, perfect, without a history, as a free gift, a miracle…; and on the other hand, tradition, which is the assumption that the law has stood unchanged from time immemorial, and that it is impious and a crime against one’s forefathers to bring it into question. The authority of the law is thus grounded on the thesis: God gave it, and the fathers lived it.—The higher motive of such procedure lies in the design to distract consciousness, step by step, from its concern with notions of right living (that is to say, those that have been proved to be right by wide and carefully considered experience), so that instinct attains to a perfect automatism—a primary necessity to every sort of mastery, to every sort of perfection in the art of life. To draw up such a law-book as Manu’s means to lay before a people the possibility of future mastery, of attainable perfection—it permits them to aspire to the highest reaches of the art of life. To that end the thing must be made unconscious: that is the aim of every holy lie.—The order of castes, the highest, the dominating law, is merely the ratification of an order of nature, of a natural law of the first rank, over which no arbitrary fiat, no “ modern idea,” can exert any influence. In every healthy society there are three physiological types, gravitating toward differentiation but mutually conditioning one another, and each of these has its own hygiene, its own sphere of work, its own special mastery and feeling of perfection. It is not Manu but nature that sets off in one class those who are chiefly intellectual, in another those who are marked by muscular strength and temperament, and in a third those who are distinguished in neither one way or the other, but show only mediocrity—the last-named represents the great majority, and the first two the select. The superior caste—I call it the fewest—has, as the most perfect, the privileges of the few: it stands for happiness, for beauty, for everything good upon earth. Only the most intellectual of men have any right to beauty, to the beautiful; only in them can goodness escape being weakness. Pulchrum est paucorum hominum:[30] goodness is a privilege. Nothing could be more unbecoming to them than uncouth manners or a pessimistic look, or an eye that sees ugliness—or indignation against the general aspect of things. Indignation is the privilege of the Chandala; so is pessimism. “ The world is perfect”—so prompts the instinct of the intellectual, the instinct of the man who says yes to life. “ Imperfection, whatever is inferior to us, distance, the pathos of distance, even the Chandala themselves are parts of this perfection.” The most intelligent men, like the strongest, find their happiness where others would find only disaster: in the labyrinth, in being hard with themselves and with others, in effort; their delight is in self-mastery; in them asceticism becomes second nature, a necessity, an instinct. They regard a difficult task as a privilege; it is to them a recreation to play with burdens that would crush all others…. Knowledge—a form of asceticism.—They are the most honourable kind of men: but that does not prevent them being the most cheerful and most amiable. They rule, not because they want to, but because they are; they are not at liberty to play second.—The second caste: to this belong the guardians of the law, the keepers of order and security, the more noble warriors, above all, the king as the highest form of warrior, judge and preserver of the law. The second in rank constitute the executive arm of the intellectuals, the next to them in rank, taking from them all that is rough in the business of ruling—their followers, their right hand, their most apt disciples.—In all this, I repeat, there is nothing arbitrary, nothing “ made up”; whatever is to the contrary is made up—by it nature is brought to shame…. The order of castes, the order of rank, simply formulates the supreme law of life itself; the separation of the three types is necessary to the maintenance of society, and to the evolution of higher types, and the highest types—the
inequality of rights is essential to the existence of any rights at all.—A right is a privilege. Every one enjoys the privileges that accord with his state of existence. Let us not underestimate the privileges of the mediocre. Life is always harder as one mounts the heights—the cold increases, responsibility increases. A high civilization is a pyramid: it can stand only on a broad base; its primary prerequisite is a strong and soundly consolidated mediocrity. The handicrafts, commerce, agriculture, science, the greater part of art, in brief, the whole range of occupational activities, are compatible only with mediocre ability and aspiration; such callings would be out of place for exceptional men; the instincts which belong to them stand as much opposed to aristocracy as to anarchism. The fact that a man is publicly useful, that he is a wheel, a function, is evidence of a natural predisposition; it is not society, but the only sort of happiness that the majority are capable of, that makes them intelligent machines. To the mediocre mediocrity is a form of happiness; they have a natural instinct for mastering one thing, for specialization. It would be altogether unworthy of a profound intellect to see anything objectionable in mediocrity in itself. It is, in fact, the first prerequisite to the appearance of the exceptional: it is a necessary condition to a high degree of civilization. When the exceptional man handles the mediocre man with more delicate fingers than he applies to himself or to his equals, this is not merely kindness of heart—it is simply his duty…. Whom do I hate most heartily among the rabbles of today? The rabble of Socialists, the apostles to the Chandala, who undermine the workingman’s instincts, his pleasure, his feeling of contentment with his petty existence—who make him envious and teach him revenge…. Wrong never lies in unequal rights; it lies in the assertion of “ equal” rights…. What is bad? But I have already answered: all that proceeds from weakness, from envy, from revenge.—The anarchist and the Christian have the same ancestry…. [30] Few men are noble. 58. In point of fact, the end for which one lies makes a great difference: whether one preserves thereby or destroys. There is a perfect likeness between Christian and anarchist: their object, their instinct, points only toward destruction. One need only turn to history for a proof of this: there it appears with appalling distinctness. We have just studied a code of religious legislation whose object it was to convert the conditions which cause life to flourish into an “ eternal” social organization,—Christianity found its mission in putting an end to such an organization, because life flourished under it. There the benefits that reason had produced during long ages of experiment and insecurity were applied to the most remote uses, and an effort was made to bring in a harvest that should be as large, as rich and as complete as possible; here, on the contrary, the harvest is blighted overnight…. That which stood there aere perennis, the imperium Romanum, the most magnificent form of organization under difficult conditions that has ever been achieved, and compared to which everything before it and after it appears as patchwork, bungling, dilletantism—those holy anarchists made it a matter of “ piety” to destroy “ the world,” which is to say, the imperium Romanum, so that in the end not a stone stood upon another—and even Germans and other such louts were able to become its masters…. The Christian and the anarchist: both are decadents; both are incapable of any act that is not disintegrating, poisonous, degenerating, blood-sucking; both have an instinct of mortal hatred of everything that stands up, and is great, and has durability, and promises life a future…. Christianity was the vampire of the imperium Romanum,—overnight it destroyed the vast achievement of the Romans: the conquest of the soil for a great culture that could await its time. Can it be that this fact is not yet understood? The imperium Romanum that we know, and that the history of the Roman provinces teaches us to know better and better,—this most admirable of all works of art in the grand manner was merely the beginning, and the structure to follow was not to prove its worth for thousands of years. To this day, nothing on a like scale sub specie aeterni has been brought into being, or even dreamed of!—This organization was strong enough to withstand bad emperors: the accident of personality has nothing to do with such things—the first principle of all genuinely great architecture. But it was not strong enough to stand up against the corruptest of all forms of corruption—against Christians…. These stealthy worms, which under the cover of night, mist and duplicity, crept upon every individual, sucking him dry of all earnest interest in real things, of all instinct for reality—this cowardly, effeminate and sugar-coated gang gradually alienated all “ souls,” step by step, from that colossal edifice, turning against it all the meritorious, manly and noble natures that had found in the cause of Rome their own cause, their own serious purpose, their own pride. The sneakishness of hypocrisy, the secrecy of the conventicle, concepts as black as hell, such as the sacrifice of the innocent, the unio mystica in the drinking of blood, above all, the slowly rekindled fire of revenge, of Chandala revenge—all that sort of thing became master of Rome: the same kind of religion which, in a pre-existent form, Epicurus had combatted. One has but to read Lucretius to know what Epicurus made war upon—not paganism, but “ Christianity,” which is to say, the corruption of souls by means of the concepts of guilt, punishment and immortality.—He combatted the subterranean cults, the whole of latent Christianity—to deny immortality was already a form of genuine salvation.—Epicurus had triumphed, and every respectable intellect in Rome was Epicurean—when Paul appeared … Paul, the Chandala hatred of Rome, of “ the world,” in the flesh and inspired by genius— the Jew, the eternal Jew par excellence…. What he saw was how, with the aid of the small sectarian Christian movement that stood apart from Judaism, a “ world conflagration” might be kindled; how, with the symbol of “ God on the cross,” all secret seditions, all the fruits of anarchistic intrigues in the empire, might be amalgamated into one immense power. “ Salvation is of the Jews.”—Christianity is the formula for exceeding and summing up the subterranean cults of all varieties, that of Osiris, that of the Great Mother, that of Mithras, for instance: in his discernment of this fact the genius of Paul showed itself. His instinct was here so sure that, with reckless violence to the truth, he put the ideas which lent fascination to every sort of Chandala religion into the mouth of the “ Saviour” as his own inventions, and not only into the mouth—he made out of him something that even a priest of Mithras could understand…. This was his revelation at Damascus: he grasped the fact that he needed the belief in immortality in order to rob “ the world” of its value, that the concept of “ hell” would master Rome—that the notion of a “ beyond” is the death of life…. Nihilist and Christian: they rhyme in German, and they do more than rhyme…. 59. The whole labour of the ancient world gone for naught: I have no word to describe the feelings that such an enormity arouses in me.—And, considering the fact that its labour was
merely preparatory, that with adamantine self-consciousness it laid only the foundations for a work to go on for thousands of years, the whole meaning of antiquity disappears!… To what end the Greeks? to what end the Romans?—All the prerequisites to a learned culture, all the methods of science, were already there; man had already perfected the great and incomparable art of reading profitably—that first necessity to the tradition of culture, the unity of the sciences; the natural sciences, in alliance with mathematics and mechanics, were on the right road,—the sense of fact, the last and more valuable of all the senses, had its schools, and its traditions were already centuries old! Is all this properly understood? Every essential to the beginning of the work was ready:—and the most essential, it cannot be said too often, are methods, and also the most difficult to develop, and the longest opposed by habit and laziness. What we have today reconquered, with unspeakable self-discipline, for ourselves—for certain bad instincts, certain Christian instincts, still lurk in our bodies—that is to say, the keen eye for reality, the cautious hand, patience and seriousness in the smallest things, the whole integrity of knowledge—all these things were already there, and had been there for two thousand years! More, there was also a refined and excellent tact and taste! Not as mere brain-drilling! Not as “ German” culture, with its loutish manners! But as body, as bearing, as instinct—in short, as reality…. All gone for naught! Overnight it became merely a memory!—The Greeks! The Romans! Instinctive nobility, taste, methodical inquiry, genius for organization and administration, faith in and the will to secure the future of man, a great yes to everything entering into the imperium Romanum and palpable to all the senses, a grand style that was beyond mere art, but had become reality, truth, life….—All overwhelmed in a night, but not by a convulsion of nature! Not trampled to death by Teutons and others of heavy hoof! But brought to shame by crafty, sneaking, invisible, an�mic vampires! Not conquered,—only sucked dry!… Hidden vengefulness, petty envy, became master! Everything wretched, intrinsically ailing, and invaded by bad feelings, the whole ghetto-world of the soul, was at once on top!—One needs but read any of the Christian agitators, for example, St. Augustine, in order to realize, in order to smell, what filthy fellows came to the top. It would be an error, however, to assume that there was any lack of understanding in the leaders of the Christian movement:—ah, but they were clever, clever to the point of holiness, these fathers of the church! What they lacked was something quite different. Nature neglected—perhaps forgot—to give them even the most modest endowment of respectable, of upright, of cleanly instincts…. Between ourselves, they are not even men…. If Islam despises Christianity, it has a thousandfold right to do so: Islam at least assumes that it is dealing with men…. 60. Christianity destroyed for us the whole harvest of ancient civilization, and later it also destroyed for us the whole harvest of Mohammedan civilization. The wonderful culture of the Moors in Spain, which was fundamentally nearer to us and appealed more to our senses and tastes than that of Rome and Greece, was trampled down (—I do not say by what sort of feet—) Why? Because it had to thank noble and manly instincts for its origin—because it said yes to life, even to the rare and refined luxuriousness of Moorish life!… The crusaders later made war on something before which it would have been more fitting for them to have grovelled in the dust—a civilization beside which even that of our nineteenth century seems very poor and very “ senile.”—What they wanted, of course, was booty: the orient was rich…. Let us put aside our prejudices! The crusades were a higher form of piracy, nothing more! The German nobility, which is fundamentally a Viking nobility, was in its element there: the church knew only too well how the German nobility was to be won…. The German noble, always the “ Swiss guard” of the church, always in the service of every bad instinct of the church—but well paid…. Consider the fact that it is precisely the aid of German swords and German blood and valour that has enabled the church to carry through its war to the death upon everything noble on earth! At this point a host of painful questions suggest themselves. The German nobility stands outside the history of the higher civilization: the reason is obvious…. Christianity, alcohol—the two great means of corruption…. Intrinsically there should be no more choice between Islam and Christianity than there is between an Arab and a Jew. The decision is already reached; nobody remains at liberty to choose here. Either a man is a Chandala or he is not…. “ War to the knife with Rome! Peace and friendship with Islam!”: this was the feeling, this was the act, of that great free spirit, that genius among German emperors, Frederick II. What! must a German first be a genius, a free spirit, before he can feel decently? I can’t make out how a German could ever feel Christian…. 61. Here it becomes necessary to call up a memory that must be a hundred times more painful to Germans. The Germans have destroyed for Europe the last great harvest of civilization that Europe was ever to reap—the Renaissance. Is it understood at last, will it ever be understood, what the Renaissance was? The transvaluation of Christian values,—an attempt with all available means, all instincts and all the resources of genius to bring about a triumph of the opposite values, the more noble values…. This has been the one great war of the past; there has never been a more critical question than that of the Renaissance—it is my question too—; there has never been a form of attack more fundamental, more direct, or more violently delivered by a whole front upon the center of the enemy! To attack at the critical place, at the very seat of Christianity, and there enthrone the more noble values—that is to say, to insinuate them into the instincts, into the most fundamental needs and appetites of those sitting there … I see before me the possibility of a perfectly heavenly enchantment and spectacle:—it seems to me to scintillate with all the vibrations of a fine and delicate beauty, and within it there is an art so divine, so infernally divine, that one might search in vain for thousands of years for another such possibility; I see a spectacle so rich in significance and at the same time so wonderfully full of paradox that it should arouse all the gods on Olympus to immortal laughter—C�sar Borgia as pope!… Am I understood?… Well then, that would have been the sort of triumph that I alone am longing for today—: by it Christianity would have been swept away!—What happened? A German monk, Luther, came to Rome. This monk, with all the vengeful instincts of an unsuccessful priest in him, raised a rebellion against the Renaissance in Rome…. Instead of grasping, with profound thanksgiving, the miracle that had taken place: the conquest of Christianity at its capital—instead of this, his hatred was stimulated by the spectacle. A religious man thinks only of himself.—Luther saw only the depravity of the papacy at the very moment when the opposite was becoming apparent: the old corruption, the peccatum originale, Christianity itself, no longer occupied the papal chair! Instead there was life!
Instead there was the triumph of life! Instead there was a great yea to all lofty, beautiful and daring things!… And Luther restored the church: he attacked it…. The Renaissance—an event without meaning, a great futility!—Ah, these Germans, what they have not cost us! Futility—that has always been the work of the Germans.—The Reformation; Leibnitz; Kant and so-called German philosophy; the war of “ liberation”; the empire—every time a futile substitute for something that once existed, for something irrecoverable…. These Germans, I confess, are my enemies: I despise all their uncleanliness in concept and valuation, their cowardice before every honest yea and nay. For nearly a thousand years they have tangled and confused everything their fingers have touched; they have on their conscience all the half-way measures, all the three-eighths-way measures, that Europe is sick of,—they also have on their conscience the uncleanest variety of Christianity that exists, and the most incurable and indestructible—Protestantism…. If mankind never manages to get rid of Christianity the Germans will be to blame…. 62. —With this I come to a conclusion and pronounce my judgment. I condemn Christianity; I bring against the Christian church the most terrible of all the accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. It is, to me, the greatest of all imaginable corruptions; it seeks to work the ultimate corruption, the worst possible corruption. The Christian church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul. Let any one dare to speak to me of its “ humanitarian” blessings! Its deepest necessities range it against any effort to abolish distress; it lives by distress; it creates distress to make itself immortal…. For example, the worm of sin: it was the church that first enriched mankind with this misery!—The “ equality of souls before God”—this fraud, this pretext for the rancunes of all the base-minded—this explosive concept, ending in revolution, the modern idea, and the notion of overthrowing the whole social order—this is Christian dynamite…. The “ humanitarian” blessings of Christianity forsooth! To breed out of humanitas a self-contradiction, an art of self-pollution, a will to lie at any price, an aversion and contempt for all good and honest instincts! All this, to me, is the “ humanitarianism” of Christianity!—Parasitism as the only practice of the church; with its an�mic and “ holy” ideals, sucking all the blood, all the love, all the hope out of life; the beyond as the will to deny all reality; the cross as the distinguishing mark of the most subterranean conspiracy ever heard of,— against health, beauty, well-being, intellect, kindness of soul—against life itself…. This eternal accusation against Christianity I shall write upon all walls, wherever walls are to be found—I have letters that even the blind will be able to see…. I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and small enough,—I call it the one immortal blemish upon the human race…. And mankind reckons time from the dies nefastus when this fatality befell—from the first day of Christianity!—Why not rather from its last?—From today?—The transvaluation of all values!… THE END
ECCE HOMO Translated by A.M. Ludovici PREFACE As it is my intention within a very short time to confront my fellow-men with the very greatest demand that has ever yet been made upon them, it seems to me above all necessary to declare here who and what I am. As a matter of fact, this ought to be pretty well known already, for I have not “ held my tongue” about myself. But the difference between the greatness of my task and the smallness of my contemporaries, is revealed by the fact that people have neither heard me nor yet seen me. I live on my own self-made credit, and it is probably only a prejudice that I live at all. I only have to speak with one of the “ educated” who come here in the summer to the Swiss Upper Engadine to convince myself that I am not alive… . Under these circumstances, it is my duty - against which my usual reserve and, even more, the pride of my instincts rebel - to say : Listen ! for I am such and such a person. Above all, do not mistake me for someone else ! I am, for example, in no way a bogey man, or moral monster. I am really the very opposite of the kind of man that has been honoured until now as virtuous. Between ourselves, it seems to me that precisely this is part of my pride. I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus, and I would prefer to be even a satyr than a saint. But just read this little book ! Maybe I have succeeded, perhaps this work had no other meaning than to give expression to this contrast in a cheerful and philanthropic manner. The very last thing I should promise would be to ” improve ” mankind. I’m not setting up any new idols; let the old idols learn what it means to have feet of clay. To overthrow idols (my name for “ ideals”) is much closer to my craft. Reality has been robbed of its value, its meaning, and its truthfulness, to precisely the extent to which one has falsely invented an ideal world … . The ” true world ” and the ” apparent world ” - in plain English, the falsely invented world and reality… . The lie of the ideal has always been the curse on reality; through it mankind’s most fundamental instincts have become lying and false; to the point of worshipping those values opposite to those which would ensure its thriving, its future, the lofty right to its future. He who knows how to breathe the air of my writings is conscious that it is the air of the heights, a strong air. A man must be built for it, otherwise there is danger he will become sick with a cold. Ice is near, the loneliness is terrible - but how serenely everything lies in the sunshine! how freely one can breathe! one feels how much lies beneath oneself! Philosophy, as I have so far understood and lived it, is living voluntarily among ice and high mountains - seeking out everything strange and questionable in existence, everything so
far prohibited by morality. Long experience, derived from such wanderings in the forbidden, taught me to regard the causes that have prompted moralizing and idealizing in a very different light from what may seem desirable: The hidden history of the philosophers, the psychology of the great names, was revealed to me. How much truth can a spirit endure ; how much truth does it dare ? - for me more and more these questions became the real test of value. Error (the faith in the ideal) is not blindness ; error is cowardice… . Every achievement, every step forward in knowledge, arises from courage, from hardness towards one’s self, from cleanliness towards one’s self. I do not refute ideals; I merely put on gloves in their presence… . Nitimur in vetitum [“ We strive for the forbidden”: Ovid, Amores, III, 4, 17]; with this indication my philosophy will one day triumph; for that which has so far been fundamentally forbidden is, without exception, truth. To me among my writings my Zarathustra stands apart. With it, I gave humanity the greatest gift that has ever been bestowed on it. This book, whose voice bridges thousands of years, is not only the highest book there is, truly the book of high mountain air,- the whole phenomenon, mankind, lies at an tremendous distance beneath it - but it is also the deepest book, born of the innermost abundance of truth; an inexhaustible well, into which no pail goes down without coming up again filled with gold and goodness. Here no “ prophet” speaks, none of those gruesome hybrids of sickness and will to power, whom men call founders of religions. If one is not to do a grave injustice to its wisdom, he must above all hear the tone - a halcyon tone- that comes from the mouth of Zarathustra : ” The most silent words are harbingers of the storm ; thoughts that come on dove’s feet lead the world. ” The figs fall from the trees ; they are good and sweet, and, when they fall, their red skins are rent. ” A north wind am I unto ripe figs. ” Thus, like figs, do these precepts drop down to you, my friends; now drink their juice and their sweet pulp. ” It is autumn all around, and clear sky, and afternoon.” No fanatic speaks to you here; this is not a ” sermon”; no faith is demanded in these pages. From out an infinite treasure of light and well of joy, drop by drop, my words fall out-a slow and gentle gait is the cadence of these discourses. Such things can reach only the most elect ; it is a rare privilege to be a listener here; not everyone who likes can have ears to hear Zarathustra. Is not Zarathustra, because of these things, a seducer! … But what, indeed, does he himself say, when for the first time he goes back to his solitude? Just the reverse of that which any ” Sage,” ” Saint,” ” Saviour of the world,” and other decadent would say… . Not only his words, but he himself is other than they. ” Alone do I now go, my disciples ! Get you also hence, and alone! Thus would I have it. ” Verily, I beseech you: take your leave of me and arm yourselves against Zarathustra! And better still, be ashamed of him ! Maybe he hath deceived you. ” The knight of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends. ” The man who remains a pupil requites his teacher but ill. And why would you not pluck at my wreath ? You honour me; but what if your reverence should one day break down ? Take heed, lest a statue crush you. ” You say you believe in Zarathustra ? But of what account is Zarathustra ? You are my believers : but of what account are all believers ? ” You had not yet sought yourselves when you found me. Thus do all believers; therefore is all believing worth so little. ” Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves ; and only when you have all denied me will I come back unto you. Friedrich Nietzsche On this perfect day, when everything is ripening, and not only the grapes are getting brown, a ray of sunshine has fallen on my life: I looked behind me, I looked before me, and never have I seen so many good things all at once. Not in vain have I buried my four-and-fortieth year to-day; I had the right to bury it-that in it which still had life, has been saved and is immortal. The first book of the Transvaluation of all Values, The Songs of Zarathustra, The Twilight of the Idols, my attempt to philosophise with the hammer-all these things are the gift of this year, and even of its last quarter. How could I help being thankful to the whole of my life? That is why I am now going to tell myself the story of my life. PART 1 WHY I AM SO WISE s1 The happiness of my existence, its unique character perhaps, consists in its fatefulness: to speak in a riddle, as my own father I am already dead, as my own mother I still live and grow old. This double origin, taken as it were from the highest and lowest rungs of the ladder of life, at once a decadent and a beginning, this, if anything, explains that neutrality, that freedom from partisanship in regard to the general problem of existence, which perhaps distinguishes me. To the first indications of ascending or of descending life my nostrils are more sensitive than those of any man that has yet lived. In this domain I am a master to my backbone-I know both sides, for I am both sides. My father died in his six-and-thirtieth year: he was delicate, lovable, and morbid, like one who is preordained to pay simply a flying visit- a gracious reminder of life rather than life itself. In the same year that his life declined mine also declined: in my six-and-thirtieth year I reached the lowest point in my vitality,-I still lived, but my eyes could distinguish nothing that lay three paces away from me. At that time-it was the year 1879-I resigned my professorship at Bale, lived through the summer like a shadow in St. Moritz, and spent the following winter, the most sunless of my life, like a shadow in Naumburg. This was my lowest ebb. During this period I wrote The Wanderer and His Shadow. Without a doubt I was conversant with shadows then. The winter that followed, my first winter in Genoa, brought forth that sweetness and spirituality which is almost inseparable from extreme poverty of blood and muscle, in the shape of The Dawn of Day. The perfect lucidity and cheerfulness, the intellectual exuberance even, that this work reflects, coincides, in my case, not only with the most profound physiological weakness, but also with an excess of suffering. In the midst of the agony of a headache which lasted three days, accompanied by violent nausea, I was possessed of most singular dialectical clearness, and in absolutely cold blood I then thought out things, for which, in my more healthy moments, I am not enough of a climber, not sufficiently subtle, not sufficiently cold. My readers perhaps know to what extent I consider dialectic a symptom of decadence, as, for instance, in the most famous of all cases-the case of Socrates. All the morbid disturbances of the intellect, even that semi-stupor which accompanies fever, have, unto this day, remained completely unknown to me; and for my first information concerning their nature and frequency, I was obliged to have recourse to the learned works which have been compiled on the subject. My circulation is slow. No one has ever been able to detect fever in me. A doctor who treated me for some time as a nerve patient finally declared : ” No ! there is nothing wrong with your nerves, it is simply I who am nervous.” It has been absolutely impossible to ascertain any local degeneration in me, nor any organic stomach trouble, however much I may have suffered from profound weakness of the gastric
system as the result of general exhaustion. Even my eye trouble, which sometimes approached so parlously near to blindness, was only an effect and not a cause ; for, whenever my general vital condition improved, my power of vision also increased. Having admitted all this, do I need to say that I am experienced in questions of decadence ? I know them inside and out. Even that filigree art of prehension and comprehension in general, that feeling for delicate shades of difference, that psychology of ” seeing through brick walls,” and whatever else I may be able to do, was first learnt then, and is the specific gift of that period during which everything in me was subtilised,-observation itself, together with all the organs of observation. To look upon healthier concepts and values from the standpoint of the sick, and conversely to look down upon the secret work of the instincts of decadence from the standpoint of him who is laden and self-reliant with the richness of life-this has been my longest exercise, my principal experience. If in anything at all, it was in this that I became a master. To-day my hand knows the trick, I now have the knack of reversing perspectives: the first reason perhaps why a Transvaluation of all Values has been possible to me alone. s2 For, apart from the fact that I am a decadent, I am also the reverse of such a creature. Among other things my proof of this is, that I always instinctively select the proper remedy when my spiritual or bodily health is low; whereas the decadent, as such, invariably chooses those remedies which are bad for him. As a whole I was sound, but in certain details I was a decadent. That energy with which I sentenced myself to absolute solitude, and to a severance from all those conditions in life to which I had grown accustomed ; my discipline of myself, and my refusal to allow myself to be pampered, to be tended hand and foot, and to be doctored-all this betrays the absolute certainty of my instincts respecting what at that time was most needful to me. I placed myself in my own hands, I restored myself to health: the first condition of success in such an undertaking, as every physiologist will admit, is that at bottom a man should be sound. An intrinsically morbid nature cannot become healthy. On the other hand, to an intrinsically sound nature, illness may even constitute a powerful stimulus to life, to a surplus of life. It is in this light that I now regard the long period of illness that I endured: it seemed as if I had discovered life afresh, my own self included. I tasted all good things and even trifles in a way in which it was not easy for others to taste them- out of my Will to Health and to Life I made my philosophy… . For this should be thoroughly understood; it was during those years in which my vitality reached its lowest point that I ceased from being a pessimist: the instinct of self-recovery forbade my holding to a philosophy of poverty and desperation. Now, by what signs are Nature’s lucky strokes recognised among men ? They are recognised by the fact that any such lucky stroke gladdens our senses; that he is carved from one integral block, which is hard, sweet, and fragrant as well. He enjoys that only which is good for him ; his pleasure, his desire, ceases when the limits of that which is good for him are overstepped. He divines remedies for injuries; he knows how to turn serious accidents to his own advantage ; that which does not kill him makes him stronger. He instinctively gathers his material from all he sees, hears, and experiences. He is a selective principle ; he rejects much. He is always in his own company, whether his intercourse be with books, with men, or with natural scenery; he honours the things he chooses, the things he acknowledges, the things he trusts. He reacts slowly to all kinds of stimuli, with that tardiness which long caution and deliberate pride have bred in him-he tests the approaching stimulus; he would not dream of meeting it halfway. He believes neither in ” ill-luck” nor “ guilt”; he can digest himself and others; he knows how to forget-he is strong enough to make everything turn to his own advantage. Lo then ! I am the very reverse of a decadent, for he whom I have just described is none other than myself. s3 This double thread of experiences, this means of access to two worlds that seem so far asunder, finds in every detail its counterpart in my own nature-I am my own complement: I have a ” second ” sight, as well as a first. And perhaps I also have a third sight. By the very nature of my origin I was allowed an outlook beyond all merely local, merely national and limited horizons ; it required no effort on my part to he a ” good European.” On the other hand, I am perhaps more German than modern Germans-mere Imperial Germans-can hope to be,-I, the last anti-political German. Be this as it may, my ancestors were Polish noblemen: it is owing to them that I have so much race instinct in my blood-who knows ? perhaps even the liberum veto [The veto power of Polish noblemen] When I think of the number of times in my travels that I have been accosted as a Pole, even by Poles themselves, and how seldom I have been taken for a German, it seems to me as if I belonged to those only who have a sprinkling of German in them. But my mother, Franziska Oehler, is at any rate something very German; as is also my paternal grandmother, Erdmuthe Krause. The latter spent the whole of her youth in good old Weimar, not without coming into contact with Goethe’s circle. Her brother, Krause, the Professor of Theology in Konigsberg, was called to the post of General Superintendent at Weimar after Herder’s death. It is not unlikely that her mother, my great grandmother, is mentioned in young Goethe’s diary under the name of ” Muthgen.” She married twice, and her second husband was Superintendent Nietzsche of Eilenburg. In 1813, the year of the great war, when Napoleon with his general staff entered Eilenburg on the 10th of October, she gave birth to a son. As a daughter of Saxony she was a great admirer of Napoleon, and maybe I am so still. My father, born in 1813, died in 1849. Previous to taking over the pastorship of the parish of Rocken, not far from Liitzen, he lived for some years at the Castle of Altenburg, where he had charge of the education of the four princesses. His pupils are the Queen of Hanover, the Grand-Duchess Constantine, the Grand-Duchess of Oldenburg, and the Princess Theresa of Saxe-Altenburg. He was full of loyal respect for the Prussian King, Frederick William the Fourth, from whom he obtained his living at Rocken; the events of 1848 saddened him extremely. As I was born on the 15th of October, the birthday of the king above mentioned, I naturally received the Hohenzollern names of Frederick William. There was at all events one advantage in the choice of this day : my birthday throughout the whole of my childhood was a day of public rejoicing. I regard it as a great privilege to have had such a father : it even seems to me that this embraces all that I can claim in the matter of privileges-life, the great yea to life, excepted. What I owe to him above all is this, that I do not need any special intention, but merely a little patience, in order involuntarily to enter a world of higher and more delicate things. There I am at home, there alone does my inmost passion become free. The fact that I had to pay for this privilege almost with my life, certainly does not make it a bad bargain. In order to understand even a little of my
Zarathustra, perhaps a man must be situated and constituted very much as I am myself-with one foot beyond the realm of the living. s4 I have never understood the art of arousing ill-feeling against myself,-this is also something for which I have to thank my incomparable father,- even when it seemed to me highly desirable to do so. However un-Christian it may seem, I do not even bear any ill-feeling towards myself. Turn my life about as you may, you will find but seldom- perhaps indeed only once-any trace of some one’s having shown me ill-will. You might perhaps discover, however, too many traces of good-will… . My experiences even with those on whom every other man has burnt his fingers, speak without exception in their favour; I tame every bear, I can make even clowns behave decently. During the seven years in which I taught Greek to the sixth form of the College at Bale, I never had occasion to administer a punishment; the laziest youths were diligent in my class. The unexpected has always found me equal to it; I must be unprepared in order to keep my self-command. Whatever the instrument was, even if it were as out of tune as the instrument ” man ” can possibly be,-it was only when I was ill that I could not succeed in making it express something that was worth hearing. And how often have I not been told by the ” instruments ” themselves, that they had never before heard their voices express such beautiful things… . This was said to me most delightfully perhaps by that young fellow Heinrich von Stein, who died at such an unpardonably early age, and who, after having considerately asked leave to do so, once appeared in Sils-Maria for a three days’ sojourn, telling everybody there that it was not for the Engadine that he had come. This excellent person, who with all the impetuous simplicity of a young Prussian nobleman, had waded deep into the swamp of Wagnerism (and into that of Duhringism * into the bargain !), seemed almost transformed during these three days by a hurricane of freedom, like one who has been suddenly raised to his full height and given wings. Again and again I said to him that this was all owing to the splendid air; everybody felt the same, -one could not stand 6000 feet above Bayreuth for nothing,-but he would not believe me… . Be this as it may, if I have been the victim of many a small or even great offence, it was not ” will,” and least of all ill-will that actuated the offenders ; but rather, as I have already suggested, it was goodwill, the cause of no small amount of mischief in my life, about which I had to complain. My experience gave me a right to feel suspicious in regard to all so-called “ unselfish” instincts, in regard to the whole of “ neighbourly love” which is ever ready and waiting with deeds or with advice. To me it seems that these instincts are a sign of weakness, they are an example of the inability to withstand a stimulus-it is only among decadents that this pity is called a virtue. What I reproach the pitiful with is, that they are too ready to forget shame, reverence, and the delicacy of feeling which knows how to keep at a distance ; they do not remember that this gushing pity stinks of the mob, and that it is next of kin to bad manners-that pitiful hands may be thrust with results fatally destructive into a great destiny, into a lonely and wounded retirement, and into the privileges with which great guilt endows one. The overcoming of pity I reckon among the noble virtues. In the ” Temptation of Zarathustra ” I have imagined a case, in which a great cry of distress reaches his ears, in which pity swoops down upon him like a last sin, and would make him break faith with himself. To remain one’s own master in such circumstances, to keep the sublimity of one’s mission pure in such cases,.-pure from the many ignoble and more short-sighted impulses which come into play in so-called unselfish actions,-this is the rub, the last test perhaps which a Zarathustra has to undergo-the actual proof of his power. s5 In yet another respect I am no more than my father over again, and as it were the continuation of his life after an all-too-early death. Like every man who has never been able to meet his equal, and unto whom the concept ” retaliation ” is just as incomprehensible as the notion of ” equal rights,” I have forbidden myself the use of any sort of measure of security or protection-and also, of course, of defence and “ justification”-in all cases in which I have been made the victim either of trifling or even very great foolishness. My form of retaliation consists in this : as soon as possible to set a piece of cleverness at the heels of an act of stupidity; by this means perhaps it may still be possible to overtake it. To speak in a parable : I dispatch a pot of jam in order to get rid of a bitter experience… . Let anybody only give me offence, I shall ” retaliate,” he can be quite sure of that: before long I discover an opportunity of expressing my thanks to the ” offender ” (among other things even for the offence)-or of asking him for something, which can be more courteous even than giving. It also seems to me that the rudest word, the rudest letter, is more good-natured, more straightforward, than silence. Those who keep silent are almost always lacking in subtlety and refinement of heart; silence is an objection, to swallow a grievance must necessarily produce a bad temper-it even upsets the stomach. All silent people are dyspeptic. You perceive that I should not like to see rudeness undervalued ; it is by far the most humane form of contradiction, and, in the midst of modern effeminacy, it is one of our first virtues. If one is sufficiently rich for it, it may even be a joy to be wrong. If a god were to descend to this earth, he would have to do nothing but wrong-to take guilt, not punishment, on one’s shoulders, is the first proof of divinity. s6 Freedom from resentment and the understanding of the nature of resentment-who knows how very much after all I am indebted to my long illness for these two things ? The problem is not exactly simple: a man must have experienced both through his strength and through his weakness. If illness and weakness are to be charged with anything at all, it is with the fact that when they prevail, the very instinct of recovery, which is the instinct of. defence and of war in man, becomes decayed. He knows not how to get rid of anything, how to come to terms with anything, and how to cast anything behind him. Everything wounds him. People and things draw importunately near, all experiences strike deep, memory is a gathering wound. To be ill is a sort of resentment in itself. Against this resentment the invalid has only one great remedy-I call it Russian fatalism, that fatalism which is free from revolt, and with which the Russian soldier, to whom a campaign proves unbearable, ultimately lays himself down in the snow. To accept nothing more, to undertake nothing more, to absorb nothing more-to cease entirely from reacting… . The tremendous sagacity of this fatalism, which does not always imply merely the courage for death, but which in the most dangerous cases may actually constitute a self-preservative measure, amounts to a reduction of activity in the vital functions, the slackening down of which is like a sort of will to
hibernate. A few steps farther in this direction we find the fakir, who will sleep for weeks in a tomb……Owing to the fact that one would be used up too quickly if one reacted, one no longer reacts at all: this is the principle. And nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment. Mortification, morbid susceptibility, the inability to wreak revenge, the desire and thirst for revenge, the concoction of every sort of poison-this is surely the most injurious manner of reacting which could possibly be conceived by exhausted men. It involves a rapid wasting away of nervous energy, an abnormal increase of detrimental secretions, as, for instance, that of bile into the stomach. To the sick man resentment ought to be more strictly forbidden than anything else- it is his special danger: unfortunately, however, it is also his most natural propensity. This was fully grasped by that profound physiologist Buddha. His ” religion,” which it would be better to call a system of hygiene, in order to avoid confounding it with a creed so wretched as Christianity, depended for its effect upon the triumph over resentment: to make the soul free from that was considered the first step towards recovery. ” Not through hostility is hostility put to flight; through friendship does hostility end”: this stands at the beginning of Buddha’s teaching- this is not a precept of morality, but of physiology. Resentment born of weakness is not more deleterious to anybody than it is to the weak man himself conversely, in the case of that man whose nature ~ fundamentally a rich one, resentment is a superfluous feeling, a feeling to remain master of which is almost a proof of riches. Those of my readers who know the earnestness with which my philosophy wages war against the feelings of revenge and rancour, even to the extent of attacking the doctrine of ” free will ” (my conflict with Christianity is only a particular instance of it), will understand why I wish to focus attention upon my own personal attitude and the certainty of my practical instincts precisely in this matter. In my moments of decadence I forbade myself the indulgence of the above feelings, because they were harmful; as soon as my life recovered enough riches and pride, however, I regarded them again as forbidden, but this time because they were beneath me. That ” Russian fatalism ” of which I have spoken manifested itself in me in such a way that for years I held tenaciously to almost insufferable conditions, places, habitations, and companions, once chance had placed them on my path-it was better than changing them, than feeling that they could be changed, than revolting against them… . He who stirred me from this fatalism, he who violently tried to shake me into consciousness, seemed to me then a mortal enemy-in point of fact, there was danger of death each time this was done. To regard one’s self as a destiny, not to wish one’s self ” different “ -this, in such circumstances, is sagacity itself. s7 War, on the other hand, is something different. At heart I am a warrior. Attacking belongs to my instincts. To be able to be an enemy, to be an enemy-maybe these things presuppose a strong nature ; in any case all strong natures involve these things. Such natures need resistance, consequently they go in search of obstacles: the pathos of aggression belongs of necessity to strength as much as the feelings of revenge and of rancour belong to weakness. Woman, for instance, is revengeful; her weakness involves this passion, just as it involves her susceptibility in the presence of other people’s suffering. The strength of the aggressor can be measured by the opposition which he needs; every increase of growth betrays itself by a seeking out of more formidable opponents-or problems : for a philosopher who is combative challenges even problems to a duel. The task is not to overcome opponents in general, but only those opponents against whom one has to summon all one’s strength, one’s skill, and one’s swordsmanship-in fact, opponents who are one’s equals… . To be one’s enemy’s equal-this is the first condition of an honourable duel. Where one despises, one cannot wage war. Where one commands, where one sees something beneath one, one ought not to wage war. My practice of war can be reduced to four principles : First, I attack only things that are triumphant-if necessary I wait until they become triumphant. Secondly, I attack only those things against which I find no allies, against which I stand alone-against which I compromise nobody but myself. … I have not yet taken one single step before the public eye, which did not compromise me: that is my criterion of a proper mode of action. Thirdly, I never make personal attacks-I use a personality merely as a magnifying-glass, by means of which I render a general, but elusive and scarcely noticeable evil, more apparent. In this way I attacked David Strauss, or rather the success given to a senile book by the cultured classes of Germany -by this means I caught German culture red-handed. In this way I attacked Wagner, or rather the falsity or mongrel instincts of our ” culture ” which confounds the super-refined with the strong, and the effete with the great. Fourthly, I attack only those things from which all personal differences are excluded, in which any such thing as a background of disagreeable experiences is lacking. On the contrary, attacking is to me a proof of goodwill and, in certain circumstances, of gratitude. By means of it, I do honour to a thing, I distinguish a thing ; whether I associate my name with that of an institution or a person, by being against or for either, is all the same to me. If I wage war against Christianity, I feel justified in doing so, because in that quarter I have met with no fatal experiences and difficulties-the most earnest Christians have always been kindly disposed to me. I, personally, the most essential opponent of Christianity, am far from holding the individual responsible for what is the fatality of long ages. s8 May I be allowed to hazard a suggestion concerning one last trait in my character, which in my intercourse with other men has led me into some difficulties ? I am gifted with a sense of cleanliness the keenness of which is phenomenal; so much so, that I can ascertain physiologically-that is to say, smell-the proximity, nay, the inmost core, the ” entrails ” of every human soul… . This sensitiveness of mine is furnished with psychological antennae, wherewith I feel and grasp every secret: the quality of concealed filth lying at the base of many a human character which may be the inevitable outcome of base blood, and which education may have veneered, is revealed to me at the first glance. If my observation has been correct, such people, whom my sense of cleanliness rejects, also become conscious, on their part, of the cautiousness to which my loathing prompts me: and this does not make them any more fragrant. … In keeping with a custom which I have long observed,-pure habits and honesty towards myself are among the first conditions of my existence, I would die in unclean surroundings,-I swim, bathe, and splash about, as it were, incessantly in water, in any kind of perfectly transparent and shining element. That is why my relations with my fellows try my patience to no small extent; my humanity does not consist in the fact that I understand the feelings of my fellows, but that I can endure to understand… . My humanity is a perpetual process of self-mastery. But I need solitude-that is to say, recovery, return to myself, the breathing of free, crisp, bracing air… . The whole of my Zarathustra is a
dithyramb in honour of solitude, or, if I have been understood, in honour of purity. Thank Heaven, it is not in honour of ” pure foolery ” ! * He who has an eye for colour will call him a diamond. The loathing of mankind, of the rabble, was always my greatest danger… . Would you listen to the words spoken by Zarathustra concerning deliverance from loathing? ” What in truth hath come unto me ? How did I deliver myself from loathing? Who hath made mine eye younger ? How did I soar to the height, where there are no more rabble sitting about the well? ” Did my very loathing forge me wings and the strength to scent fountains afar off? Verily to the loftiest heights did I need to fly, to find once more the spring of joyfulness. ” Oh, I found it, my brothers ! Up here, on the loftiest height, the spring of joyfulness gushes forth for me. And there is a life at the well of which no rabble can drink with you. ” Almost too fiercely do you rush, for me, you spring of joyfulness ! And oft times do you empty the pitcher again in trying to fill it. ” And yet must I learn to draw near you more humbly. Far too eagerly does my heart jump to meet you. ” My heart, whereon my summer burneth, my short, hot, melancholy, over-blessed summer: how my summer heart yearns for your coolness ! * This, of course, is a reference to Wagner’s Parsifal. See my note on p. 96 of The Will to Power, vol. i.-Tr. ” Farewell, the lingering affliction of my spring ! Past is the wickedness of my snowflakes in June! Summer have I become entirely, and summer noontide! ” A summer in the loftiest heights, with cold springs and blessed stillness: oh come, my friends, that the stillness may wax even more blessed! ” For this is our height and our home: too high and steep is our dwelling for all the unclean and their appetites. ” Do but cast your pure eyes into the well of my joyfulness, my friends ! How could it thus become muddy ! It will laugh back at you with its purity. ” On the tree called Future do we build our nest: eagles shall bring food in their beaks unto us lonely ones! ” Verily not the food whereof the unclean might partake. They would think they ate fire and would burn their mouths! ” Verily, no abodes for the unclean do we here hold in readiness ! To their bodies our happiness would seem an ice-cavern, and to their spirits also ! ” And like strong winds will we live above them, neighbours to the eagles, companions of the snow, and playmates of the sun: thus do strong winds live. ” And like a wind shall I one day blow amidst them, and take away their soul’s breath with my spirit: thus my future wills it. ” Verily, a strong wind is Zarathustra to all low lands; and this is his counsel to his foes and to all those who spit and spew: ‘ Beware of spitting against the wind !’ ” PART 2 - WHY I AM SO CLEVER s1 Why do I know more things than other people ? Why, in fact, am I so clever ? I have never pondered over questions that are not questions. I have never squandered my strength. Of actual religious difficulties, for instance, I have no experience. I have never known what it is to feel ” sinful.” In the same way I completely lack any reliable criterion for ascertaining what constitutes a prick of conscience : from all accounts a prick of conscience does not seem to be a very estimable thing… . Once it was done I should hate to leave an action of mine in the lurch ; I should prefer completely to omit the evil outcome, the consequences, from the problem concerning the value of an action. In the face of evil consequences one is too ready to lose the proper standpoint from which one’s deed ought to be considered. A prick of conscience strikes me as a sort of ” evil eye.” Something that has failed should be honoured all the more jealously, precisely because it has failed-this is much more in keeping with my morality.-” God,” ” the immortality of the soul,” “ salvation,“ a “ beyond”-to all these notions, even as a child, I never paid any attention whatsoever, nor did I waste any time upon them,-maybe I was never naif enough for that ?-I am quite unacquainted with atheism as a result, and still less as an event in my life.: in me it is inborn, instinctive. I am too inquisitive, too incredulous, too high spirited, to be satisfied with such a palpably clumsy solution of things. God is a too palpably clumsy solution of things ; a solution which shows a lack of delicacy towards us thinkers-at bottom He is really no more than a coarse and rude prohibition of us: you shall not think ! … I am much more interested in another question,-a question upon which the ” salvation of humanity ” depends to a far greater degree than it does upon any piece of theological curiosity: I refer to nutrition. For ordinary purposes, it may be formulated as follows : ” How precisely must you feed yourself in order to attain to your maximum of power, or virtu in the Renaissance style,-of virtue free from moralic acid ? ” My experiences in regard to this matter have been as bad as they possibly could be ; I am surprised that I set myself this question so late in life, and that it took me so long to draw ” rational ” conclusions from my experiences. Only the absolute worth-lessness of German culture-its ” idealism “ -can to some extent explain how it was that precisely in this matter I was so backward that my ignorance was almost saintly. This “ culture,” which from first to last teaches one to lose sight of actual things and to hunt after thoroughly problematic and so-called ideal aims, as, for instance, ” classical culture “ �-as if it were not hopeless from the start to try to unite ” classical ” and ” German” in one concept. It is even a little comical-try and imagine a ” classically cultured ” citizen of Leipzig!-Indeed, I can say, that up to a very mature age, my food was entirely bad - expressed morally, it was “ impersonal,” ” selfless,” ” altruistic,” to the glory of cooks and all other fellow-Christians. It was through the cooking in vogue at Leipzig, for instance, together with my first study of Schopenhauer (1865), that I earnestly renounced my ” Will to Live.” To spoil one’s stomach by absorbing insufficient nourishment-this problem seemed to my mind solved with admirable felicity by the abovementioned cookery. (It is said that in the year 1866 changes were introduced into this department.) But as to German cookery in general- what has it not got on its conscience! Soup before the meal (still called alia tedesca in the Venetian cookery books of the sixteenth century) ; meat boiled to shreds, vegetables cooked with fat and flour; the degeneration of pastries into paperweights ! And, if you add thereto the absolutely bestial post-prandial drinking habits of the ancients, and not alone of the ancient Germans, you will understand where German intellect took its origin- that is to say, in sadly disordered intestines… . German intellect is indigestion; it can assimilate nothing. But even English diet, which in comparison with German, and indeed with French alimentation, seems to me to constitute a ” return to Nature,”-that is to say, to cannibalism,-is profoundly opposed to my own instincts. It seems to me to give the intellect heavy feet, in fact, Englishwomen’s feet… . The best cooking is that of Piedmont. Alcoholic drinks do not agree with me; a single glass of wine or beer a day is amply sufficient to turn life into a valley of tears for me;-in Munich live my antipodes. Although I admit that this knowledge came to me somewhat late, it already formed part of my experience even as a child.
As a boy I believed that the drinking of wine and the smoking of tobacco were at first but the vanities of youths, and later merely bad habits. Maybe the poor wine of Naumburg was partly responsible for this poor opinion of wine in general. In order to believe that wine was exhilarating, I should have had to be a Christian-in other words, I should have had to believe in what, to my mind, is an absurdity. Strange to say, whereas small quantities of alcohol, taken with plenty of water, succeed in making me feel out of sorts, large quantities turn me almost into a rollicking tar. Even as a boy I showed my bravado in this respect. To compose a long Latin essay in one night, to revise and recopy it, to aspire with my pen to emulating the exactitude and the terseness of my model, Sallust, and to pour a few very strong grogs over it all-this mode of procedure, while I was a pupil at the venerable old school of Pforta, was not in the least out of keeping with my physiology, nor perhaps with that of Sallust, however much it may have been alien to dignified Pforta. Later on, towards the middle of my life, I grew more and more opposed to alcoholic drinks : I, an opponent of vegetarianism, who have experienced what vegetarianism is,-just as Wagner, who converted me back to meat, experienced it,-cannot with sufficient earnestness advise all more spiritual natures to abstain absolutely from alcohol. Water answers the purpose. … I have a predilection in favour of those places where in all directions one has opportunities of drinking from running brooks (Nice, Turin, Sils). In vino veritas: it seems that here once more I am at variance with the rest of the world about the concept ” Truth “ -with me spirit moves on the face of the waters… . Here are a few more indications as to my morality. A heavy meal is digested more easily than an inadequate one. The first principle of a good digestion is that the stomach should become active as a whole. A man ought, therefore, to know the size of his stomach. For the same reasons all those interminable meals, which I call interrupted sacrificial feasts, and which are to be had at any table d’h6te, are strongly to be deprecated. Nothing should be eaten between meals, coffee should be given up-coffee makes one gloomy. Tea is beneficial only in the morning. It should be taken in small quantities, but very strong. It may be very harmful, and indispose you for the whole day, if it be taken the least bit too weak. Everybody has his own standard in this matter, often between the narrowest and most delicate limits. In an enervating climate tea is not a good beverage with which to start the day: an hour before taking it an excellent thing is to drink a cup of thick cocoa, freed from oil. Remain seated as little as possible, put no trust in any thought that is not born in the open, to the accompaniment of free bodily motion-nor in one in which even the muscles do not celebrate a feast. All prejudices take their origin in the intestines. A sedentary life, as I have already said elsewhere, is the real sin against the Holy Spirit. s2 To the question of nutrition, that of locality and climate is next of kin. Nobody is so constituted as to be able to live everywhere and anywhere; and he who has great duties to perform, which lay claim to all his strength, has, in this respect, a very limited choice. The influence of climate upon the bodily functions, affecting their acceleration or retardation, extends so far, that a blunder in the choice of locality and climate is able not only to alienate a man from his actual duty, but also to withhold it from him altogether, so that he never even comes face to face with it. Animal vigour never acquires enough strength in him in order to reach that pitch of artistic freedom which makes his own soul whisper to him: I, alone, can do that… . Ever so slight a tendency to laziness in the intestines, once it has become a habit, is quite sufficient to make something mediocre, something ” German ” out of a genius; the climate of Germany, alone, is enough to discourage the strongest and most heroically disposed intestines. The tempo of the body’s functions is closely bound up with the agility or the clumsiness of the spirit’s feet; spirit itself is indeed only a form of these organic functions. Let anybody make a list of the places in which men of great intellect have been found, and are still found; where wit, subtlety, and malice constitute happiness ; where genius is almost necessarily at home : all of them rejoice in exceptionally dry air. Paris, Provence, Florence, Jerusalem, Athens-these names prove something, namely : that genius is conditioned by dry air, by a pure sky-that is to say, by rapid organic functions, by the constant and ever-present possibility of procuring for one’s self great and even enormous quantities of strength. I have a certain case in mind in which a man of remarkable intellect and independent spirit became a narrow, craven specialist and a grumpy old crank, simply owing to a lack of subtlety in his instinct for climate. And I myself might have been an example of the same thing, if illness had not compelled me to reason, and to reflect upon reason realistically. Now that I have learnt through long practice to read the effects of climatic and meteorological influences, from my own body, as though from a very delicate and reliable instrument, and that I am able to calculate the change in degrees of atmospheric moisture by means of physiological observations upon myself, even on so short a journey as that from Turin to Milan ; I think with horror of the ghastly fact that my whole life, until the last ten years,-the most perilous years,-has always been spent in the wrong, and what to me ought to have been the most forbidden, places. Naumburg, Pforta, Thuringia in general, Leipzig, Bale, Venice-so many ill-starred places for a constitution like mine. If I cannot recall one single happy reminiscence of my childhood and youth, it is nonsense to suppose that socalled ” moral” causes could account for this-as, for instance, the incontestable fact that I lacked companions that could have satisfied me; for this fact is the same to-day as it ever was, and it does not prevent me from being cheerful and brave. But it was ignorance in physiological matters-that confounded ” Idealism “ -that was the real curse of my life. This was the superfluous and foolish element in my existence; something from which nothing could spring, and for which there can be no settlement and no compensation. As the outcome of this ” Idealism” I regard all the blunders, the great aberrations of instinct, and the ” modest specialisations ” which drew me aside from the task of my life ; as, for instance, the fact that I became a philologist-why not at least a medical man or anything else which might have opened my eyes ? My days at Bale, the whole of my intellectual routine, including my daily time-table, was an absolutely senseless abuse of extraordinary powers, without the slightest compensation for the strength that I spent, without even a thought of what I was squandering and how its place might be filled. I lacked all subtlety in egoism, all the fostering care of an imperative instinct; I was in a state in which one is ready to regard one’s self as anybody’s equal, a state of ” disinterestedness,” a forgetting of one’s distance from others-something, in short, for which I can never forgive myself. When I had well-nigh reached the end of my tether, simply because I had almost reached my end, I began to reflect upon the fundamental absurdity of my life-” Idealism.” It was illness that first brought me to reason. s3
After the choice of nutrition, the choice of climate and locality, the third matter concerning which one must not on any account make a blunder, is the choice of the manner in which one recuperates one’s strength. Here, again, according to the extent to which a spirit is sui generis, the limits of that which he can allow himself-in other words, the limits of that which is beneficial to him-become more and more confined. As far as I in particular am concerned, reading in general belongs to my means of recuperation; consequently it belongs to that which rids me of myself, to that which enables me to wander in strange sciences and strange souls- to that, in fact, about which I am no longer in earnest. Indeed, it is while reading that I recover from my earnestness. During the time that I am deeply absorbed in my work, no books are found within my reach ; it would never occur to me to allow anyone to speak or even to think in my presence. For that is what reading would mean… . Has anyone ever actually noticed, that, during the period of profound tension to which the state of pregnancy condemns not only the mind, but also, at bottom, the whole organism, accident and every kind of external stimulus acts too acutely and strikes too deep ? Accident and external stimuli must, as far as possible, be avoided : a sort of walling-of-one’s-self-in is one of the primary instinctive precautions of spiritual pregnancy. Shall I allow a strange thought to steal secretly over the wall ? For that is what reading would mean… . The periods of work and fruit-fulness are followed by periods of recuperation: come hither, you delightful, intellectual, intelligent books ! Shall I read German books ? … I must go back six months to catch myself with a book in my hand. What was it ? An excellent study by Victor Brochard upon the Greek sceptics, in which my Laertiana* was used to advantage. The sceptics !-the only honourable types among that double-faced and sometimes quintuple-faced throng, the philosophers ! … Otherwise I almost always take refuge in the same books: altogether their number is small; they are books which are precisely my proper fare. It is not perhaps in my nature to read much, and of all sorts : a library makes me ill. Neither is it my nature to love much or many kinds of things. Suspicion or even hostility towards new books is much more akin to my instinctive feeling than ” toleration,” largeur de cceur, and other forms of ” neighbour-love.” … It is to a small number of old French authors, that I always return again and again; I believe only in French culture, and regard everything else in Europe which calls itself ” culture ” as a misunderstanding. I do not even take the German kind into consideration… . The few instances of higher culture with which I have met in Germany were all French in their origin. The most striking example of this was Madame Cosima Wagner, by far the most decisive voice in matters of taste that I have ever heard. If I do not read, but literally love Pascal, as the most instinctive sacrifice to Christianity, killing himself inch by inch, first bodily, then spiritually, according to the terrible consistency of this most appalling form of inhuman cruelty ; if I have something of Montaigne’s mischievousness in my soul, and-who knows ?-perhaps also in my body ; if my artist’s taste endeavours to defend the names of Moliere, Corneille, and Racine, and not without bitterness, against such a wild genius as Shakespeare-all this does not prevent me from regarding even the latter-day Frenchmen also as charming companions. I can think of absolutely no century in history, in which a netful of more inquisitive and at the same time more subtle psychologists could be drawn up together than in the Paris of the present day. Let me mention a few at random-for their number is by no means small-Paul Bourget, Pierre Loti, Gyp, Meilhac, Anatole France, Jules Lemaitre; or, to point to one of strong race, a genuine Latin, of whom I am particularly fond, Guy de Maupassant. Between ourselves, I prefer this generation even to its masters, all of whom were corrupted by German philosophy (Taine, for instance, by Hegel, whom he has to thank for his misunderstanding of great men and great periods). Wherever Germany extends her sway, she ruins culture. It was the war which first saved the spirit of France… . Stendhal is one of the happiest accidents of my life-for everything that marks an epoch in it has been brought to me by accident and never by means of a recommendation. He is quite priceless, with his psychologist’s eye, quick at forestalling and anticipating ; with his grasp of facts, which is reminiscent of the same art in the greatest of all masters of facts (ex ungue Napo-leonem) ; and, last but not least, as an honest atheist -a specimen which is both rare and difficult to discover in France-all honour to Prosper Meri-mee ! … Maybe that I am even envious of Stendhal ? He robbed me of the best atheistic joke, which I of all people could have perpetrated : ” God’s only excuse is that He does not exist.” … I myself have said somewhere-What has been the greatest objection to Life until now ?-God… . s4 It was Heinrich Heine who gave me the most perfect idea of what a lyrical poet could be. In vain do I search through all the kingdoms of antiquity or of modern times for anything to resemble his sweet and passionate music. He possessed that divine wickedness, without which perfection itself becomes unthinkable to me,-I estimate the value of men, of races, according to the extent to which they are unable to conceive of a god who has not a dash of the satyr in him. And with what mastery he wields his native tongue ! One day it will be said of Heine and me that we were by far the greatest artists of the German language that have ever existed, and that we left all the efforts that mere Germans made in this language an incalculable distance behind us. I must be profoundly related to Byron’s Manfred: of all the dark abysses in this work I found the counterparts in my own soul-at the age of thirteen I was ripe for this book. Words fail me, I have only a look, for those who dare to utter the name of Faust in the presence of Manfred. The Germans are incapable of conceiving anything sublime : for a proof of this, look at Schumann ! Out of anger for this mawkish Saxon, I once deliberately composed a counter-overture to Manfred, of which Hans von Bulow declared he had never seen the like before on paper: such compositions amounted to a violation of Euterpe. When I cast about me for my highest formula of Shakespeare, I find invariably but this one : that he conceived the type of Caesar. Such things a man cannot guess- he either is the thing, or he is not. The great poet draws his creations only from out of his own reality. This is so to such an extent, that often after a lapse of time he can no longer endure his own work… . After casting a glance between the pages of my Zarathustra, I pace my room to and fro for half an hour at a time, unable to overcome an insufferable fit of tears. I know of no more heartrending reading than Shakespeare: how a man must have suffered to be so much in need of playing the clown ! Is Hamlet understood”} It is not doubt, but certitude that drives one mad… . But in order to feel this, one must be profound, one must be an abyss, a philosopher… . We all fear the truth… . And, to make a confession; I feel instinctively certain and convinced that Lord Bacon is the originator, the self-torturer, of this most sinister kind of literature: what do I care about the miserable gabble of American muddlers and blockheads ? But the power for the greatest realism in vision is not only compatible with the greatest realism in deeds, with the monstrous in deeds, with crime-it actually presupposes the latter… . We do not know half enough about Lord Bacon-the first realist in all
the highest acceptation of this word-to be sure of everything he did, everything he willed, and everything he experienced in his inmost soul… . Let the critics go to hell! Suppose I had christened my Zarathustra with a name not my own,-let us say with Richard Wagner’s name,-the acumen of two thousand years would not have sufficed to guess that the author of Human, all-too-Human was the visionary of Zarathustra. s5 As I am speaking here of the recreations of my life, I feel I must express a word or two of gratitude for that which has refreshed me by far the most heartily and most profoundly. This, without the slightest doubt, was my intimate relationship with Richard Wagner. All my other relationships with men I treat quite lightly; but I would not have the days I spent at Tribschen-those days of confidence, of cheerfulness, of sublime flashes, and of profound moments-blotted from my life at any price. I know not what Wagner may have been for others; but no cloud ever darkened our sky. And this brings me back again to France,-I have no arguments against Wagnerites, and hoc genus omne, who believe that they do honour to Wagner by believing him to be like themselves; for such people I have only a contemptuous curl of my lip. With a nature like mine, which is so strange to everything Teutonic, that even the presence of a German retards my digestion, my first meeting with Wagner was the first moment in my life in which I breathed freely: I felt him, I honoured him, as a foreigner, as the opposite and the incarnate contradiction of all ” German virtues.” We who as children breathed the marshy atmosphere of the fifties, are necessarily pessimists in regard to the concept ” German”; we cannot be anything else than revolutionaries-we can assent to no state of affairs which allows the canting bigot to be at the top. I care not a jot whether this canting bigot acts in different colours to-day, whether he dresses in scarlet or dons the uniform of a hussar.* Very well, then! Wagner was a revolutionary— he fled from the Germans…. As an artist, a man has no home in Europe save in Paris; that subtlety of all the five senses which Wagner’s art presupposes, those fingers that can detect slight gradations, psychological morbidity-all these things can be found only in Paris. Nowhere else can you meet with this passion for questions of form, this earnestness in matters of mise-en-scene, which is the Parisian earnestness par excellence. In Germany no one has any idea of the tremendous ambition that fills the heart of a Parisian artist. The German is a good fellow. Wagner was by no means a good fellow… . But I have already said quite enough on the subject of Wagner’s real nature (see Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 256), and about those to whom he is most closely related. He is one of the late French romanticists, that high-soaring and heaven-aspiring band of artists, like Delacroix and Berlioz, who in their inmost natures are sick and incurable, and who are all fanatics of expression, and virtuosos through and through… . Who, in sooth, was the first intelligent follower of Wagner? Charles Baudelaire, the very man who first understood Delacroix—that typical decadent, in whom a whole generation of artists saw their reflection; he was perhaps the last of them too… . What is it that I have never forgiven Wagner ? The fact that he condescended to the Germans-that he became a German Imperialist… . Wherever Germany spreads, she ruins culture. s6 Taking everything into consideration, I could never have survived my youth without Wagnerian music. For I was condemned to the society of Germans. If a man wish to get rid of a feeling of insufferable oppression, he has to take to hashish. Well, I had to take to Wagner. Wagner is the counter-poison to everything essentially German- the fact that he is a poison too, I do not deny. From the moment that Tristan was arranged for the piano -all honour to you, Herr von Blow!-I was a Wagnerite. Wagner’s previous works seemed beneath me-they were too commonplace, too ” German.” … But to this day I am still seeking for a work which would be a match to Tristan in dangerous fascination, and possess the same gruesome and dulcet quality of infinity ; I seek among all the arts in vain. All the quaint features of Leonardo da Vinci’s work lose their charm at the sound of the first bar in Tristan. This work is without question Wagner’s non plus ultra ; after its creation, the composition of the Mastersingers and of the Ring was a relaxation to him. To become more healthythis in a nature like Wagner’s amounts to going backwards. The curiosity of the psychologist is so great in me, that I regard it as quite a special privilege to have lived at the right time, and to have lived precisely among Germans, in order to be ripe for this work. The world must indeed be empty for him who has never been unhealthy enough for this ” infernal voluptuousness ” : it is allowable, it is even imperative, to employ a mystic formula for this purpose. I suppose I know better than anyone the prodigious feats of which Wagner was capable, the fifty worlds of strange ecstasies to which no one else had wings to soar; and as I am alive to-day and strong enough to turn even the most suspicious and most dangerous things to my own advantage, and thus to grow stronger, I declare Wagner to have been the greatest benefactor of my life. The bond which unites us is the fact that we have suffered greater agony, even at each other’s hands, than most men are able to bear nowadays, and this will always keep our names associated in the minds of men. For, just as Wagner is merely a misunderstanding among Germans, so, in truth, am I, and ever will be. You lack two centuries of psychological and artistic discipline, my dear countrymen ! … But you can never recover the time lost. s7 To the most exceptional of my readers I should like to say just one word about what I really exact from music. It must be cheerful and yet profound, like an October afternoon. It must be original, exuberant, and tender, and like a dainty, soft woman in roguishness and grace. … I shall never admit that a German can understand what music is. Those musicians who are called German, the greatest and most famous foremost, are all foreigners, either Slavs, Croats, Italians, Dutchmen-or Jews ; or else, like Heinrich Schiitz, Bach, and Handel, they are Germans of a strong race which is now extinct. For my own part, I have still enough of the Pole left in me to let all other music go, if only I can keep Chopin. For three reasons I would except Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, and perhaps also one or two things of Liszt, who excelled all other musicians in the noble tone of his orchestration ; and finally everything that has been produced beyond the Alps -this side of the Alps.* I could not possibly dispense with Rossini, and still less with my Southern soul in music, the work of my Venetian maestro, Pietro Gasti. And when I say beyond the Alps, all I really mean is Venice. If I try to find a new word for music, I can never find any other than Venice. I know
not how to draw any distinction between tears and music. I do not know how to think either of joy, or of the south, without a shudder of fear. On the bridge I stood Lately, in gloomy night. Came a distant song : In golden drops it rolled Over the glittering rim away. Music, gondolas, lights- Drunk, swam far forth in the gloom… - A stringed instrument, my soul, Sang, imperceptibly moved, A gondola song by stealth, Gleaming for gaudy blessedness. �-‘Listened any thereto ? s8 In all these things-in the choice of food, place, climate, and recreation-the instinct of self-preservation is dominant, and this instinct manifests itself with least ambiguity when it acts as an instinct of defence. To close one’s eyes to much, to seal one’s ears to much, to keep certain things at a distance-this is the first principle of prudence, the first proof of the fact that a man is not an accident but a necessity. The popular word for this instinct of defence is taste. A man’s imperative command is not only to say ” no” in cases where ” yes ” would be a sign of ” disinterestedness,” but also to say ” no ” as seldom as possible. One must part with all that which compels one to repeat “ no,” with ever greater frequency. The rationale of this principle is that all discharges of defensive forces, however slight they may be, involve enormous and absolutely superfluous losses when they become regular and habitual. Our greatest expenditure of strength is made up of those small and most frequent discharges of it. The act of keeping things off, of holding them at a distance, amounts to a discharge of strength,- do not deceive yourselves on this point!-and an expenditure of energy directed at purely negative ends. Simply by being compelled to keep constantly on his guard, a man may grow so weak as to be unable any longer to defend himself. Suppose I were to step out of my house, and, instead of the quiet and aristocratic city of Turin, I were to find a German provincial town, my instinct would have to brace itself together in order to repel all that which would pour in upon it from this crushed-down and cowardly world. Or suppose I were to find a large German city-that structure of vice in which nothing grows, but where every single thing, whether good or bad, is squeezed in from outside. In such circumstances should I not be compelled to become a hedgehog ? But to have prickles amounts to a squandering of strength; they even constitute a twofold luxury, when, if we only chose to do so, we could dispense with them and open our hands instead… . Another form of prudence and self-defence consists in trying to react as seldom as possible, and to keep one’s self aloof from those circumstances and conditions wherein one would be condemned, as it were, to suspend one’s ” liberty ” and one’s initiative, and become a mere reacting medium. As an example of this I point to the intercourse with books. The scholar who, in sooth, does little else than handle books-with the philologist of average attainments their number may amount to two hundred a day-ultimately forgets entirely and completely the capacity of thinking for himself. When he has not a book between his fingers he cannot think. When he thinks, he responds to a stimulus (a thought he has read),-finally all he does is to react. The scholar exhausts his whole strength in saying either ” yes ” or ” no ” to matter which has already been thought out, or in criticising it-he is no longer capable of thought on his own account. … In him the instinct of self-defence has decayed, otherwise he would defend himself against books. The scholar is a decadent. With my own eyes I have seen gifted, richly endowed, and free-spirited natures already ” read to ruins” at thirty, and mere wax vestas that have to be rubbed before they can give off any sparks -or ” thoughts.” To set to early in the morning, at the break of day, in all the fullness and dawn of one’s strength, and to read a book-this I call positively vicious ! s9 At this point I can no longer evade a direct answer to the question, how one becomes what one is. And in giving it, I shall have to touch upon that masterpiece in the art of selfpreservation, which is selfishness… . Granting that one’s life-task-the determination and the fate of one’s life-task-greatly exceeds the average measure of such things, nothing more dangerous could be conceived than to come face to face with one’s self by the side of this life-task. The fact that one becomes what one is, presupposes that one has not the remotest suspicion of what one is. From this standpoint even the blunders of one’s life have their own meaning and value, the temporary deviations and aberrations, the moments of hesitation and of modesty, the earnestness wasted upon duties which lie outside the actual life-task. In these matters great wisdom, perhaps even the highest wisdom, comes into activity : in these circumstances, in which nosce teipsum would be the sure road to ruin, forgetting one’s self, misunderstanding one’s self, belittling one’s self, narrowing one’s self, and making one’s self mediocre, amount to reason itself. Expressed morally, to love one’s neighbour and to live for others and for other things may be the means of protection employed to maintain the hardest kind of egoism. This is the exceptional case in which I, contrary to my principle and conviction, take the side of the altruistic instincts; for here they are concerned in subserving selfishness and self-discipline. The whole surface of consciousness-for consciousness is a surface-must be kept free from anyone of the great imperatives. Beware even of every striking word, of every striking attitude ! They are all so many risks which the instinct runs of” understanding itself” too soon. Meanwhile the organising ” idea,” which is destined to become master, grows and continues to grow into the depths,-it begins to command, it leads you slowly back from your deviations and aberrations, it prepares individual qualities and capacities, which one day will make themselves felt as indispensable to the whole of your task,-step by step it cultivates all the serviceable faculties, before it ever whispers a word concerning the dominant task, the ” goal,” the ” object,” and the ” meaning ” of it all. Looked at from this standpoint my life is simply amazing. For the task of transvaluing values, more capacities were needful perhaps than could well be found side by side in one individual; and above all, antagonistic capacities which had to be free from the mutual strife and destruction which they involve. An order of rank among capacities ; distance ; the art of separating without creating hostility ; to refrain from confounding things; to keep from reconciling things; to possess enormous multifarious-ness and yet to be the reverse of chaos-all this was the first condition, the long secret work, and the artistic mastery of my instinct. Its superior guardianship manifested itself with such exceeding strength, that not once did I ever dream of what was growing within me-until suddenly all my capacities were ripe, and one day burst forth in all the perfection of their highest bloom. I cannot remember ever having exerted myself, I can point to no trace of struggle in my life; I am the reverse of a heroic nature. To ” will” something, to ” strive” after something, to have an ” aim ” or a ” desire ” in my mind-I know none of these things from experience. Even at this moment I look out upon my future-a broad future !-as upon a calm sea: no sigh of longing makes a ripple on its surface. I have not the slightest wish
that anything should be otherwise than it is : I myself would not be otherwise… . But in this matter I have always been the same. I have never had a desire. A man who, after his four-and-fortieth year, can say that he has never bothered himself about honours, women, or money ! -not that they did not come his way. … It was thus that I became one day a University Professor -I had never had the remotest idea of such a thing; for I was scarcely four-and-twenty years of age. In the same way, two years previously, I had one day become a philologist, in the sense that my first philological work, my start in every way, was expressly obtained by my master Ritschl for publication in his Rheinisckes Museum (Ritschl and I say it in all reverence-was the only genial scholar that I have ever met. He possessed that pleasant kind of depravity which distinguishes us Thuringians, and which makes even a German sympathetic-even in the pursuit of truth we prefer to avail ourselves of roundabout ways. In saying this I do not mean to underestimate in any way my Thuringian brother, the intelligent Leopold von Ranke, …) s10 You may be wondering why I should actually have related all these trivial and, according to traditional accounts, insignificant details to you ; such action can but tell against me, more particularly if I am fated to figure in great causes. To this I reply that these trivial matters �-diet, locality, climate, and one’s mode of recreation, the whole casuistry of selflove-are inconceivably more important than all that which has until now been held in high esteem. It is precisely in this quarter that we must begin to learn afresh. All those things which mankind has valued with such earnestness heretofore are not even real; they are mere creations of fancy, or, more strictly speaking, lies born of the evil instincts of diseased and, in the deepest sense, noxious natures-all the concepts, ” God,” ” soul,” ” virtue,” ” sin,” ” Beyond,” ” truth,” ” eternal life.” … But the greatness of human nature, its ” divinity,” was sought for in them… . All questions of politics, of social order, of education, have been falsified, root and branch, owing to the fact that the most noxious men have been taken for great men, and that people were taught to despise the small things, or rather the fundamental things, of life. If I now choose to compare myself with those creatures who have until now been honoured as the first among men, the difference becomes obvious. I do not reckon the so-called ” first” men even as human beings- for me they are the excrements of mankind, the products of disease and of the instinct of revenge : they are so many monsters laden with rottenness, so many hopeless incurables, who avenge themselves on life. … I wish to be the opposite of these people: it is my privilege to have the very sharpest discernment for every sign of healthy instincts. There is no such thing as a morbid trait in me ; even in times of serious illness I have never grown morbid, and you might seek in vain for a trace of fanaticism in my nature. No one can point to any moment of my life in which I have assumed either an arrogant or a pathetic attitude. Pathetic attitudes are not in keeping with greatness; he who needs attitudes is false… . Beware of all picturesque men ! Life was easy-in fact easiest-to me, in those periods when it exacted the heaviest duties from me. Whoever could have seen me during the seventy days of this autumn, when, without interruption, I did a host of things of the highest rank- things that no man can do nowadays-with a sense of responsibility for all the ages yet to come, would have noticed no sign of tension in my condition, but rather a state of overflowing freshness and good cheer. Never have I eaten with more pleasant sensations, never has my sleep been better. I know of no other manner of dealing with great tasks, than as play: this, as a sign of greatness, is an essential prerequisite. The slightest constraint, a sombre mien, any hard accent in the voice-all these things are objections to a man, but how much more to his work ! … One must not have nerves… . Even to suffer from solitude is an objection-the only thing I have always suffered from is ” multitude.” At an absurdly tender age, in fact when I was seven years old, I already knew that no human speech would ever reach me : did anyone ever see me sad on that account? At present I still possess the same affability towards everybody, I am even full of consideration for the lowest: in all this there is not an atom of haughtiness or of secret contempt. He whom I despise soon guesses that he is despised by me: the very fact of my existence is enough to rouse indignation in all those who have polluted blood in their veins. My formula for greatness in man is amor fati: the fact that a man wishes nothing to be different, either in front of him or behind him, or for all eternity. Not only must the necessary be borne, and on no account concealed,-all idealism is falsehood in the face of necessity,-but it must also be loved… . PART 3 - WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS s1 I am one thing, my creations are another. Here, before I speak of the books themselves, I shall touch upon the question of the understanding and misunderstanding with which they have met. I shall proceed to do this in as perfunctory a manner as the occasion demands; for the time has by no means come for this question. My time has not yet come either; some are born posthumously. One day institutions will be needed in which men will live and teach, as I understand living and teaching; maybe, also, that by that time, chairs will be founded and endowed for the interpretation of Zarathustra. But I should regard it as a complete contradiction of myself, if I expected to find ears and eyes for my truths to-day : the fact that no one listens to me, that no one knows how to receive at my hands to-day, is not only comprehensible, it seems to me quite the proper thing. I do not wish to be mistaken for another-and to this end I must not mistake myself. To repeat what I have already said, I can point to but few instances of ill-will in my life: and as for literary ill-will, I could mention scarcely a single example of it. On the other hand, I have met with far too much pure foolery! … It seems to me that to take up one of my books is one of the rarest honours that a man can pay himself-even supposing that he put his shoes from off his feet beforehand, not to mention boots… . When on one occasion Dr. Heinrich von Stein honestly complained that he could not understand a word of my Zarathustra, I said to him that this was just as it should be: to have understood six sentences in that book-that is to say, to have lived them-raises a man to a higher level among mortals than ” modern” men can attain. With this feeling of distance how could I even wish to be read by the ” moderns ” whom I know ! My triumph is just the opposite of what Schopenhauer’s was-I say ” Non legor, non legar.”-Not that I should like to underestimate the pleasure I have derived from the innocence with which my works have frequently been contradicted. As late as last summer, at a time when I was attempting, perhaps by means of my weighty, all-too-weighty literature, to throw the rest of literature off its balance, a certain professor of Berlin University kindly gave me to understand that I ought really to make use of a different form: no one could read
such stuff as I wrote.-Finally, it was not Germany, but Switzerland that presented me with the two most extreme cases. An essay on Beyond Good and Evil, by Dr. V. Widmann in the paper called the Bund, under the heading ” Nietzsche’s Dangerous Book,” and a general account of all my works, from the pen of Herr Karl Spitteler, also in the Bund, constitute a maximum in my life-I shall not say of what…. The latter treated my Zarathustra, for instance, as “ advanced exercises in style”and expressed the wish that later on I might try and attend to the question of substance as well; Dr. Widmann assured me of his respect for the courage I showed in endeavouring to abolish all decent feeling. Thanks to a little trick of destiny, every sentence in these criticisms seemed, with a consistency that I could but admire, to be an inverted truth. In fact it was most remarkable that all one had to do was to ” transvalue all values,” in order to hit the nail on the head with regard to me, instead of striking my head with the nail. … I am more particularly anxious therefore to discover an explanation. After all, no one can draw more out of things, books included, than he already knows. A man has no ears for that to which experience has given him no access. To take an extreme case, suppose a book contains simply incidents which lie quite outside the range of general or even rare experience-suppose it to be the first language to express a whole series of experiences. In this case nothing it contains will really be heard at all, and, thanks to an acoustic delusion, people will believe that where nothing is heard there is nothing to hear… . This, at least, has been my usual experience, and proves, if you will, the originality of my experience. He who thought he had understood something in my work, had as a rule adjusted something in it to his own image—not infrequently the very opposite of myself, an ” idealist,” for instance. He who understood nothing in my work, would deny that I was worth considering at all.-The word “ overman”, which designates a type of man that would be one of nature’s rarest and luckiest strokes, as opposed to ” modern ” men, to ” good ” men, to Christians and other Nihilists,-a word which in the mouth of Zarathustra, the annihilator of morality, acquires a very profound meaning,-is understood almost everywhere, and with perfect innocence, in the light of those values to which a flat contradiction was made manifest in the figure of Zarathustra -that is to say, as an ” ideal ” type, a higher kind of man, half ” saint ” and half” genius.” … Other learned cattle have suspected me of Darwinism on account of this word : even the ” hero cult” of that great unconscious and involuntary swindler, Carlyle, -a cult which I repudiated with such roguish malice,-was recognised in my doctrine. Once, when I whispered to a man that he would do better to seek for the overman in a Caesar Borgia than in a Parsifal, he could not believe his ears. The fact that I am quite free from curiosity in regard to criticisms of my books, more particularly when they appear in newspapers, will have to be forgiven me. My friends and my publishers know this, and never speak to me of such things. In one particular case, I once saw all the sins that had been committed against a single book-it was Beyond Good and Evil; I could tell you a nice story about it. Is it possible that the National-Zeitung-a Prussian paper (this comment is for the sake of my foreign readers-for my own part, I beg to state, I read only Le Journal des Dttats)-really and seriously regarded the book as a ” sign of the times,” or a genuine and typical example of Junker philosophy, for which the Kreuz-Zeitung had not sufficient courage? … s2 This was said for the benefit of Germans: for everywhere else I have my readers-all of them exceptionally intelligent men, characters that have won their spurs and that have been reared in high offices and superior duties ; I have even real geniuses among my readers. In Vienna, in St. Petersburg, in Stockholm, in Copenhagen, in Paris, and New York-I have been discovered everywhere: I have not yet been discovered in Europe’s flatland— Germany… . And, to make a confession, I rejoice much more heartily over those who do not read me, over those who have neither heard of my name nor of the word philosophy. But whithersoever I go, here in Turin, for instance, every face brightens and softens at the sight of me. A thing that has flattered me more than anything else until now, is the fact that old market-women cannot rest until they have picked out the sweetest of their grapes for me. To this extent must a man be a philosopher. … It is not in vain that the Poles are considered as the French among the Slavs. A charming Russian lady will not be mistaken for a single moment concerning my origin. I am not successful at being pompous, the most I can do is to appear embarrassed. … I can think in German, I can feel in German-I can do most things; but this is beyond my powers…. My old master Ritschl went so far as to declare that I planned even my philological treatises after the manner of a Parisian novelist-that I made them absurdly thrilling. In Paris itself people are surprised at ” toutes mes audaces et finesses “ ;- the words are Monsieur Taine’s;-I fear that even in the highest forms of the dithyramb, that salt will be found pervading my work which never becomes insipid, which never becomes ” German “ -and that is, wit. … I can do nought else. God help me ! Amen.-We all know, some of us even from experience, what a ” long-ears ” is. Well then, I venture to assert that I have the smallest ears that have ever been seen. This fact is not without interest to women-it seems to me they feel that I understand them better! … I am essentially the anti-ass, and on this account alone a monster in the world’s history -in Greek, and not only in Greek, I am the Antichrist. s3 I am to a great extent aware of my privileges as a writer: in one or two cases it has even been brought home to me how very much the habitual reading of my works ” spoils ” a man’s taste. Other books simply cannot be endured after mine, and least of all philosophical ones. It is an incomparable distinction to cross the threshold of this noble and subtle world-in order to do so one must certainly not be a German ; it is, in short, a distinction which one must have deserved. He, however, who is related to me through loftiness of will, experiences genuine raptures of understanding in my books: for I swoop down from heights into which no bird has ever soared ; I know abysses into which no foot has ever slipped. People have told me that it is impossible to lay down a book of mine-that I disturb even the night’s rest… . There is no prouder or at the same time more subtle kind of books : they sometimes attain to the highest pinnacle of earthly endeavour, cynicism; to capture their thoughts a man must have the ten-derest fingers as well as the most intrepid fists. Any kind of spiritual decrepitude utterly excludes all intercourse with them-even any kind of dyspepsia : a man must have no nerves, but he must have a cheerful belly. Not only the poverty of a man’s soul and its stuffy air excludes all intercourse with them, but also, and to a much greater degree, cowardice, uncleanliness, and secret intestinal re-vengefulness ; a word from my lips suffices to make the colour of all evil instincts rush into a face. Among my acquaintances I have a number of experimental subjects, in whom I see depicted all the different,
and instructively different, reactions which follow upon a perusal of my works. Those who will have nothing to do with the contents of my books, as for instance my so-called friends, assume an “ impersonal” tone concerning them : they wish me luck, and congratulate me for having produced another work ; they also declare that my writings show progress, because they exhale a more cheerful spirit… . The thoroughly vicious people, the ” beautiful souls,” the false from top to toe, do not know in the least what to do with my booksconsequently, with the beautiful consistency of all beautiful souls, they regard my work as beneath them. The cattle among my acquaintances, the mere Germans, leave me to understand, if you please, that they are not always of my opinion, though here and there they agree with me. … I have heard this said even about Zarathustra. ” Feminism,” whether in mankind or in man, is likewise a barrier to my writings; with it, no one could ever enter into this labyrinth of fearless knowledge. To this end, a man must never have spared himself, he must have been hard in his habits, in order to be good-humoured and merry among a host of inexorable truths. When I try to picture the character of a perfect reader, I always imagine a monster of courage and curiosity, as well as of suppleness, cunning, and prudence-in short, a born adventurer and explorer. After all, I could not describe better than Zarathustra has done unto whom I really address myself: unto whom alone would he reveal his riddle ? ” Unto you, daring explorers and experimenters, and unto all who have ever embarked beneath cunning sails upon terrible seas ; ” Unto you who revel in riddles and in twilight, whose souls are lured by flutes unto every treacherous abyss : ” For you care not to grope your way along a thread with craven fingers; and where you are able to guess, you hate to argue!’ s4 I will now pass just one or two general remarks about ray art of style. To communicate a state an inner tension of pathos by means of signs, including the tempo of these signs,that is the meaning of every style; and in view of the fact that the multiplicity of inner states in me is enormous, I am capable of many kinds of style-in short, the most multifarious art of style that any man has ever had at his disposal. Any style is good which genuinely communicates an inner condition, which does not blunder over the signs, over the tempo of the signs, or over moods—all the laws of phrasing are the outcome of representing moods artistically. Good style, in itself, is a piece of sheer foolery, mere idealism, like ” beauty in itself/’ for instance, or ” goodness in itself,” or ” the thing-in-itself.” All this takes for granted, of course, that there exist ears that can hear, and such men as are capable and worthy of a like pathos, that those are not wanting unto whom one may communicate one’s self. Meanwhile my Zarathustra, for instance, is still in quest of such people-alas ! he will have to seek a long while yet! A man must be worthy of listening to him… . And, until that time, there will be no one who will understand the art that has been squandered in this book. No one has ever existed who has had more novel, more strange, and purposely created art forms to fling to the winds. The fact that such things were possible in the German language still awaited proof; former!)’, I myself would have denied most emphatically that it was possible. Before my time people did not know what could be done with the German language-what could be done with language in general. The art of grand rhythm, of grand style in periods, for expressing the tremendous fluctuations of sublime and superhuman passion, was first discovered by me: with the dithyramb entitled ” The Seven Seals,” which constitutes the last discourse of the third part of Zarathustra, I soared miles above all that which heretofore has been called poetry. s5 The fact that the voice which speaks in my works is that of a psychologist who has not his peer, is perhaps the first conclusion at which a good reader will arrive-a reader such as I deserve, and one who reads me just as the good old philologists used to read their Horace. Those propositions about which all the world is fundamentally agreed -not to speak of fashionable philosophy, of moralists and other empty-headed and cabbage-brained people-are to me but ingenuous blunders : for instance, the belief that ” altruistic ” and ” egoistic ” are opposites, while all the time the ” ego ” itself is merely a “ supreme swindle,” an “ ideal.” … There are no such things as egoistic or altruistic actions : both concepts are psychological nonsense. Or the proposition that ” man pursues happiness ” ; or the proposition that “ happiness is the reward of virtue.” … Or the proposition that “ pleasure and pain are opposites.” … Morality, the Circe of mankind, has falsified everything psychological, root and branch -it has bemoralised everything, even to the terribly nonsensical point of calling love “ unselfish.” A man must first be firmly poised, he must stand securely on his two legs, otherwise he cannot love at all. This indeed the girls know only too well: they don’t care two pins about unselfish and merely objective men… . May I venture to suggest, incidentally, that I know women? This knowledge is part of my Dionysian patrimony. Who knows ? maybe I am the first psychologist of the eternally feminine. Women all like me… . But that’s an old story: save, of course, the abortions among them, the emancipated ones, those who lack the wherewithal to have children. Thank goodness I am not willing to let myself be torn to pieces ! the perfect woman tears you to pieces when she loves you: I know these amiable Maenads… . Oh! what a dangerous, creeping, subterranean little beast of prey she is! And so agreeable withal! … A little woman, pursuing her vengeance, would force open even the iron gates of Fate itself. Woman is incalculably more wicked than man, she is also cleverer. Goodness in a woman is already a sign of degeneration. All cases of ” beautiful souls ” in women may be traced to a faulty physiological condition-but I go no further, lest I should become medi-cynical. The struggle for equal rights is even a symptom of disease; every doctor knows this. The more womanly a woman is, the more she fights tooth and nail against rights in general: the natural order of things, the eternal war between the sexes, assigns to her by far the foremost rank. Have people had ears to hear my definition of love ? It is the only definition worthy of a philosopher. Love, in its means, is war; in its foundation, it is the mortal hatred of the sexes. Have you heard my reply to the question how a woman can be cured, ” saved ” in fact?-Give her a child! A woman needs children, man is always only a means, thus spake Zarathustra. “ The emancipation of women,”-this is the instinctive hatred of physiologically botched -that is to say, barren-women for those of their sisters who are well constituted: the fight against ” man ” is always only a means, a pretext, a piece of strategy. By trying to rise to ” Woman per se,” to ” Higher Woman,” to the ” Ideal Woman,” all they wish to do is to lower the general level of women’s rank: and there are no more certain means to this end than university education, trousers, and the rights of voting cattle. Truth to tell, the emancipated are the anarchists in the ” eternally feminine ” world, the physiological mishaps, the most deep-rooted instinct of whom is
revenge. A whole species of the most malicious ” idealism “ -which, by the bye, also manifests itself in men, in Henrik Ibsen for instance, that typical old maid-whose object is to poison the clean conscience, the natural spirit, of sexual love… . And in order to leave no doubt in your minds in regard to my opinion, which, on this matter, is as honest as it is severe, I will reveal to you one more clause out of my moral code against vice-with the word ” vice ” I combat every kind of opposition to Nature, or, if you prefer fine words, idealism. The clause reads: “ Preaching of chastity is a public incitement to unnatural practices. All depreciation of the sexual life, all the sullying of it by means of the concept ‘ impure,’ is the essential crime against Life-is the essential crime against the Holy Spirit of Life,” s6 In order to give you some idea of myself as a psychologist, let me take this curious piece of psychological analysis out of the book Beyond Good and Evil, in which it appears. I forbid, by the bye, any guessing as to whom I am describing in this passage. ” The genius of the heart, as that great anchorite possesses it, the divine tempter and born Pied Piper of consciences, whose voice knows how to sink into the inmost depths of every soul, who neither utters a word nor casts a glance, in which some seductive motive or trick does not lie : a part of whose masterliness is that he understands the art of seeming-not what he is, but that which will place a fresh constraint upon his followers to press ever more closely upon him, to follow him ever more enthusiastically and whole-heartedly… . The genius of the heart, which makes all loud and self-conceited things hold their tongues and lend their ears, which polishes all rough souls and makes them taste a new longing-to lie placid as a mirror, that the deep heavens may be reflected in them… . The genius of the heart which teaches the clumsy and too hasty hand to hesitate and grasp more tenderly; which scents the hidden and forgotten treasure, the pearl of goodness and sweet spirituality, beneath thick black ice, and is a divining rod for every grain of gold, long buried and imprisoned in heaps of mud and sand… . The genius of the heart, from contact with which every man goes away richer, not ‘ blessed’ and overcome, not as though favoured and crushed by the good things of others ; but richer in himself, fresher to himself than before, opened up, breathed upon and sounded by a thawing wind ; more uncertain, perhaps, more delicate, more fragile, more bruised; but full of hopes which as yet lack names, full of a new will and striving, full of a new unwillingness and counter-striving.” … PART 4 - “ THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY” s1 In order to be fair to the Birth of Tragedy (1872) it is necessary to forget a few things. It created a sensation and even fascinated by means of its mistakes-by means of its application to Wagner-ism, as if the latter were the sign of an ascending tendency. On that account alone, this treatise was an event in Wagner’s life: thenceforward great hopes surrounded the name of Wagner. Even to this day, people remind me, sometimes in the middle of Parsifal, that it rests on my conscience if the opinion, that this movement is of great value to culture, at length became prevalent. I have often seen the book quoted as ” The Second Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music “ : people had ears only for new formulae for Wagner’s art, his object and his mission-and in this way the real hidden value of the book was overlooked. ” Hellenism and Pessimism “ -this would have been a less equivocal title, seeing that the book contains the first attempt at showing how the Greeks succeeded in disposing of pessimism-in what manner they overcame it… . Tragedy itself is the proof of the fact that the Greeks were not pessimists: Schopenhauer blundered here as he blundered in everything else.-Regarded impartially, The Birth of Tragedy is a book quite strange to its age: no one would dream that it was begun in the thunder of the battle of Worth. I thought out these problems on cold September nights beneath the walls of Metz, in the midst of my duties as nurse to the wounded; it would be easier to think that it was written fifty years earlier. Its attitude towards politics is one of indifference,-” un-German,” # as people would say to-day,-it smells offensively of Hegel; only in one or two formulae is it infected with the bitter odour of corpses which is peculiar to Schopenhauer. An idea-the antagonism of the two concepts Dionysian and Apollonian -is translated into metaphysics ; history itself is depicted as the development of this idea; in tragedy this antithesis has become unity; from this standpoint things which theretofore had never been face to face are suddenly confronted, and understood and illuminated by each other… . Opera and revolution, for instance… . The two decisive innovations in the book are, first, the comprehension of the Dionysian phenomenon among the Greeks-it provides the first psychological analysis of this phenomenon, and sees in it the single root of all Greek art; and, secondly, the comprehension of Socraticism-Socrates being presented for the first time as the instrument of Greek dissolution, as a typical decadent. ” Reason” versus Instinct. ” Reason ” at any cost, as a dangerous, life-undermining force. The whole book is profoundly and politely silent concerning Christianity: the latter is neither Apollonian nor Dionysian; it denies all aesthetic values, which are the only values that The Birth of Tragedy recognises. Christianity is most profoundly nihilistic, whereas in the Dionysian symbol, the most extreme limits of a yea-saying attitude to life are attained. In one part of the book the Christian priesthood is referred to as a ” perfidious order of goblins,” as ” subterraneans.” s2 This start of mine was remarkable beyond measure. As a confirmation of my inmost personal experience I had discovered the only example of this fact that history possesses,-with this I was the first to understand the amazing Dionysian phenomenon. At the same time, by recognising Socrates as a decadent, I proved most conclusively that the certainty of my psychological grasp of things ran very little risk at the hands of any sort of moral idiosyncrasy: to regard morality itself as a symptom of degeneration is an innovation, a unique event of the first order in the history of knowledge. How high I had soared above the pitifully foolish gabble about Optimism and Pessimism with my two new doctrines! I was the first to see the actual contrast: the degenerate instinct which turns upon life with a subterranean lust of vengeance (Christianity, WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 71 Schopenhauer’s philosophy, and in some respects too even Plato’s philosophy-in short, the whole of idealism in its typical forms), as opposed to a formula of the highest yeasaying to life, born of an abundance and a superabundance of life-a yea-saying free from all reserve, applying even to suffering, and guilt, and all that is questionable and strange in
existence… . This last, most joyous, most exuberant and exultant yea to life, is not only the highest, but also the profoundest conception, and one which is most strictly confirmed and supported by truth and science. Nothing that exists must be suppressed, nothing can be dispensed with. Those aspects of life which Christians and other Nihilists reject, belong to an incalculably higher order in the hierarchy of values, than that which the instinct of degeneration calls good, and may call good. In order to understand this, a certain courage is necessary, and, as a prerequisite of this, a certain superfluity of strength : for a man can approach only as near to truth as he has the courage to advance-that is to say, everything depends strictly upon the measure of his strength. Knowledge, and the affirmation of reality, are just as necessary to the strong man as cowardice, the flight from reality-in fact, the “ ideal”-are necessary to the weak inspired by weakness… . These people are not at liberty to “ know,” -decadents stand in need of lies,-it is one of their self-preservative measures. He who not only understands the word ” Dionysian,” but understands himself”in that term, does not require any refutation of Plato, or of Christianity, or of Schopenhauer-for his nose scents decomposition. s3 The extent to which I had by means of these doctrines discovered the idea of ” tragedy,” the ultimate explanation of what the psychology of tragedy is, I discussed finally in The Twilight of the Idols (Aph. 5, part I o)… . ” The saying of yea to life, and even to its weirdest and most difficult problems : the will to life rejoicing at its own infinite vitality in the sacrifice of its highest types-that is what I called Dionysian, that is what I meant as the bridge to the psychology of the tragic poet. Not to cast out terror and pity, or to purge one’s self of dangerous passion by discharging it with vehemence,-this was Aristotle’s * misunderstanding of it,-but to be far beyond terror and pity and to be the eternal lust of Becoming itself-that lust which also involves the joy of destruction.” … In this sense I have the right to regard myself as the first tragic philosopher-that is to say, the most extreme antithesis and antipodes of a pessimistic philosopher. Before my time no such thing existed as this translation of the Dionysian phenomenon into philosophic emotion : tragic wisdom was lacking ; in vain have I sought for signs of it even among the great Greeks in philosophy-those belonging to the two centuries before Socrates. I still remained a little doubtful about Heraclitus, in whose presence, alone, I felt warmer and more at ease than anywhere else. The yea-saying to the impermanence and annihilation of things, which is the decisive feature of a Dionysian philosophy; the. yea-saying to contradiction and war, the postulation of Becoming, together with the radical rejection even of the concept Being- in all these things, at all events, I must recognise him who has come nearest to me in thought hither to. The doctrine of the ” Eternal Recurrence “ - that is to say, of the absolute and eternal repetition of all things in periodical cycles-this doctrine of Zarathustra’s might, it is true, have been taught before. In any case, the Stoics, who derived nearly all their fundamental ideas from Heraclitus, show traces of it. s4 A tremendous hope finds expression in this work. After all, I have absolutely no reason to renounce the hope for a Dionysian future of music. Let us look a century ahead, and let us suppose that my attempt to destroy two millenniums of hostility to Nature and of the violation of humanity be crowned with success. That new party of life-advocates, which will undertake the greatest of all tasks, the elevation and perfection of mankind, as well as the relentless destruction of all degenerate and parasitical elements, will make that superabundance of life on earth once more possible, out of which the Dionysian state will perforce arise again. I promise the advent of a tragic age: the highest art in the saying of yea to life, ” tragedy,” will be born again when mankind has the knowledge of the hardest, but most necessary of wars, behind it, without, however, suffering from that knowledge… . A psychologist might add that what I heard in Wagnerian music in my youth and early manhood had nothing whatsoever to do with Wagner; that when I described Dionysian music, I described merely what / personally had heard-that I was compelled instinctively to translate and transfigure everything into the new spirit which filled my breast. A proof of this, and as strong a proof as you could have, is my essay, Wagner in Bayreuth: in all its decisive psychological passages I am the only person concerned-without any hesitation you may read my name or the word ” Zarathustra ” wherever the text contains the name of Wagner. The whole panorama of the dithyrambic artist is the representation of the already existing author of Zarathustra, and it is drawn with an abysmal depth which does not even once come into contact with the real Wagner. Wagner himself had a notion of the truth ; he did not recognise himself in the essay.-In this way, “ the idea of Bayreuth” was changed into something which to those who are acquainted with my Zarathustra will be no riddle-that is to say, into the Great Noon when the highest of the elect will consecrate themselves for the greatest of all duties-who knows? the vision of a feast which I may live to see… . The pathos of the first few pages is universal history ; the look which is discussed on page 105* of the book, is the actual look of Zarathustra; Wagner, Bayreuth, the whole of this petty German wretchedness, is a cloud upon which an infinite Fata Morgana of the future is reflected. Even from the psychological standpoint, all the decisive traits in my character are introduced into Wagner’s nature -the juxtaposition of the most brilliant and most fatal forces, a Will to Power such as no man has ever possessed-inexorable bravery in matters spiritual, an unlimited power of learning unaccompanied by depressed powers for action. Everything in this essay is a prophecy: the proximity of the resurrection of the Greek spirit, the need of men who will be counter-Alexanders, who will once more tie the Gordian knot of Greek culture, after it has been cut. Listen to the world-historic accent with which the concept ” sense for the tragic ” is introduced on page 180: there are little else but world-historic accents in this essay. This is the strangest kind of ” objectivity ” that ever existed : my absolute certainty in regard to what I am, projected itself into any chance reality-truth about myself was voiced from out appalling depths. On pages 174 and 175 the style of Zarathustra is described and foretold with incisive certainty, and no more magnificent expression will ever he found than that on pages 144-147 for the event for which Zarathustra stands -that prodigious act of the purification and consecration of mankind. PART 5 - “ THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON”
s1 The four essays composing the Thoughts out of Season are thoroughly warlike in tone. They prove that I was no mere dreamer, that I delight in drawing the sword-and perhaps, also, that my wrist is dangerously supple. The first onslaught (1873) was directed against German culture, upon which I looked down even at that time with unmitigated contempt. Without either sense, substance, or goal, it was simply ” public opinion.” There could be no more dangerous misunderstanding than to suppose that Germany’s success at arms proved anything in favour of German culture-and still less the triumph of this culture over that of France. The second essay (1874) brings to light that which is dangerous, that which corrodes and poisons life in our manner of pursuing scientific study : Life is diseased, thanks to this dehumanised piece of clockwork and mechanism, thanks to the ” impersonality” of the workman, and the false economy of the ” division of labour.” The object, which is culture, is lost sight of: modern scientific activity as a means thereto simply produces barbarism. In this treatise, the ” historical sense,” of which this century is so proud, is for the first time recognised as sickness, as a typical symptom of decay. In the third and fourth essays, a sign-post is set up pointing to a higher concept of culture, to a re-establishment of the notion ” culture ” ; and two pictures of the hardest self-love and self-discipline are presented, two essentially un-modern types, full of the most sovereign contempt for all that which lay around them and was called ” Empire,” ” Culture,” ” Christianity,” ” Bismarck,” and ” Success,” - these two types were Schopenhauer and Wagner, or, in a word, Nietzsche… . s2 Of these four attacks, the first met with extraordinary success. The stir which it created was in every way gorgeous. I had put my finger on the vulnerable spot of a triumphant nation-I had told it that its victory was not a red-letter day for culture, but, perhaps, something very different. The reply rang out from all sides, and certainly not only from old friends of David Strauss, whom I had made ridiculous as the type of a German Philistine of Culture and a man of smug self-content-in short, as the author of that suburban gospel of his, called The Old and the New Faith (the term ” Philistine of Culture” passed into the current language of Germany after the appearance of my book). These old friends, whose vanity as Wiirtembergians and Swabians I had deeply wounded in regarding their unique animal, their bird of Paradise, as a trifle comic, replied to me as ingenuously and as grossly as I could have wished. The Prussian replies were smarter; they contained more “ Prussian blue.” The most disreputable attitude was assumed by a Leipzig paper, the egregious Grentzboten; and it cost me some pains to prevent my indignant friends in Bale from taking action against it. Only a few old gentlemen decided in my favour, and for very diverse and sometimes unaccountable reasons. Among them was one, Ewald of Gottingen, who made it clear that my attack on Strauss had been deadly. There was also the Hegelian, Bruno Bauer, who from that time became one of my most attentive readers. In his later years he liked to refer to me, when, for instance, he wanted to give Herr von Treitschke, the Prussian Historiographer, a hint as to where he could obtain information about the notion ” Culture,” of which he (Herr von T.) had completely lost sight. The weightiest and longest notice of my book and its author appeared in Wiirzburg, and was written by Professor Hoffmann, an old pupil of the philosopher von Baader. The essays made him foresee a great future for me, namely, that of bringing about a sort of crisis and decisive turning-point in the problem of atheism, of which he recognised in me the most instinctive and most radical advocate. It was atheism that had drawn me to Schopenhauer. The review which received by far the most attention, and which excited the most bitterness, was an extraordinarily powerful and plucky appreciation of my work by Carl Hillebrand, a man who was usually so mild, and the last humane German who knew how to wield a pen. The article appeared in the Augsburg Gazette, and it can be read to-day, couched in rather more cautious language, among his collected essays. In it my work was referred to as an event, as a decisive turningpoint, as the first sign of an awakening, as an excellent symptom, and as an actual revival of German earnestness and of German passion in things spiritual. Hillebrand could speak only in the terms of the highest respect, of the form of my book, of its consummate taste, of its perfect tact in discriminating between persons and causes : he characterised it as the best polemical work in the German language,-the best performance in the art of polemics, which for Germans is so dangerous and so strongly to be deprecated. Besides confirming my standpoint, he laid even greater stress upon what I had dared to say about the deterioration of language in Germany (nowadays writers assume the airs of Purists * and can no longer even construct a sentence) ; sharing my contempt for the literary stars of this nation, he concluded by expressing his admiration for my courage - that ” greatest courage of all which places the very favourites of the people in the dock.” … The after-effects of this essay of mine proved invaluable to me in my life. No one has ever tried to meddle with me since. People are silent. In Germany I am treated with gloomy caution: for years I have rejoiced in the privilege of such absolute freedom of speech, as no one nowadays, least of all in the ” Empire,” has enough liberty to claim. My paradise is ” in the shadow of my sword.” At bottom all I had done was to put one of Stendhal’s maxims into practice: he advises one to make one’s entrance into society by means of a duel. And how well I had chosen my opponent!-the foremost free-thinker of Germany. As a matter of fact, quite a novel kind of free thought found its expression in this way: up to the present nothing has been more strange and more foreign to my blood than the whole of that European and American species known as libres penseurs. Incorrigible blockheads and clowns of ” modern ideas ” that they are, I feel much more profoundly at variance with them than with anyone of their adversaries. They also wish to ” improve ” mankind, after their own fashion-that is to say, in their own image; against that which I stand for and desire, they would wage an implacable war, if only they understood it; the whole gang of them still believe in an ” ideal.” … I am the first Immoralist. s3 I should not like to say that the last two essays in the Thoughts out of Season, associated with the names of Schopenhauer and Wagner respectively, serve any special purpose in throwing light upon these two cases, or in formulating their psychological problems. This of course does not apply to a few details. Thus, for instance, in the second of the two essays, with a profound certainty of instinct I already characterised the elementary factor in Wagner’s nature as a theatrical talent which in all his means and inspirations only draws its final conclusions. At bottom, my desire in this essay was to do something very different from writing psychology: an unprecedented educational problem, a new understanding of self-
discipline and self-defence carried to the point of hardness, a road to greatness and to world-historic duties, yearned to find expression. Roughly speaking, I seized two famous and, theretofore, completely undefined types by the forelock, after the manner in which one seizes opportunities, simply in order to speak my mind on certain questions, in order to have a few more formulas, signs, and means of expression at my disposal. Indeed I actually suggest this, with most unearthly sagacity, on page 183 of Schopenhauer as Educator. Plato made use of Socrates in the same way-that is to say, as a cipher for Plato. Now that, from some distance, I can look back upon the conditions of which these essays are the testimony, I would be loth to deny that they refer simply to me. The essay Wagner in Bayreuth is a vision of my own future; on the other hand, my most secret history, my development, is written down in Schopenhauer as Educator. But, above all, the vow I made! What I am today, the place I now hold-at a height from which I speak no longer with words but with thunderbolts -oh, how far I was from all this in those days! But I saw the land-I did not deceive myself for one moment as to the way, the sea, the danger- and success ! The great calm in promising, this happy prospect of a future which must not remain only a promise !-In this book every word has been lived, profoundly and intimately; the most painful things are not lacking in it; it contains words which are positively running with blood. But a wind of great freedom blows over the whole; even its wounds do not constitute an objection. As to what I understand by being a philosopher,-that is to say, a terrible explosive in the presence of which everything is in danger; as to how I sever my idea of the philosopher by miles from that other idea of him which includes even a Kant, not to speak of the academic ” ruminators ” and other professors of philosophy,concerning all these things this essay provides invaluable information, even granting that at bottom, it is not ” Schopenhauer as Educator ” but ” Nietzsche as Educator,” who speaks his sentiments in it. Considering that, in those days, my trade was that of a scholar, and perhaps, also, that I understood my trade, the piece of austere scholar psychology which suddenly makes its appearance in this essay is not without importance: it expresses the feeling of distance, and my profound certainty regarding what was my real life-task, and what were merely means, intervals, and accessory work to me. My wisdom consists in my having been many things, and in many places, in order to become one thing-in order to be able to attain to one thing. It was part of my fate to be a scholar for a while. PART 6 - “ HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN” s1 Human, all-too-Human, with its two sequels, is the memorial of a crisis. It is called a book for free spirits: almost every sentence in it is the expression of a triumph-by means of it I purged myself of everything in me which was foreign to my nature. Idealism is foreign to me : the title of the book means: “ Where you see ideal things I see- human, alas ! alltoo-human things ! ” … I know men better. The word ” free spirit” in this book must not be understood as anything else than a spirit that has become free, that has once more taken possession of itself. My tone, the pitch of my voice, has completely changed; the book will be thought clever, cool, and at times both hard and scornful. A certain spirituality, of noble taste, seems to be ever struggling to dominate a passionate torrent at its feet. In this respect there is some sense in the fact that it was the hundredth anniversary of Voltaire’s death that served, so to speak, as an excuse for the publication of the book as early as 1878. For Voltaire, as the opposite of everyone who wrote after him, was above all a grandee of the intellect: precisely what I am also. The name of Voltaire on one of my writings-that was verily a step forward -in my direction… . Looking into this book a little more closely, you perceive a pitiless spirit who knows all the secret hiding-places in which ideals are wont to skulk-where they find their dungeons, and, as it were, their last refuge. With a torch in my hand, the light of which is not by any means a flickering one, I illuminate this nether world with beams that cut like blades. It is war, but war without powder and smoke, without warlike attitudes, without pathos and contorted limbs-all these things would still be “ idealism.” One error after the other is quietly laid upon ice; the ideal is not refuted -it freezes. Here, for instance, “ genius” freezes; round the corner the ” saint ” freezes ; under a thick icicle the ” hero ” freezes; and in the end ” faith ” itself freezes. Socalled”conviction”and also “ pity” are considerably cooled-and almost everywhere the “ thing in itself” is freezing to death. s2 This book was begun during the first musical festival at Bayreuth; a feeling of profound strangeness towards everything that surrounded me there, is one of its first conditions. He who has any notion of the visions which even at that time had flitted across my path, will be able to guess what I felt when one day I came to my senses in Bayreuth. It was just as if I had been dreaming. Where on earth was I ? I recognised nothing that I saw; I scarcely recognised Wagner. It was in vain that I called up reminiscences. Tribschen- remote island of bliss : not the shadow of a resemblance ! The incomparable days devoted to the laying of the first stone, the small group of the initiated who celebrated them, and who were far from lacking fingers for the handling of delicate things : not the shadow of a resemblance ! What had happened?-Wagner had been translated into German! The Wagnerite had become master of Wagner! - Gentian art! the German master! German beer! … We who know only too well the kind of refined artists and cosmopolitanism in taste, to which alone Wagner’s art can appeal, were beside ourselves at the sight of Wagner bedecked with German virtues. I think I know the Wagnerite, I have experienced three generations of them, from Brendel of blessed memory, who confounded Wagner with Hegel, to the ” idealists ” of the Bayreuth Gazette, who confound Wagner with themselves,-I have been the recipient of every kind of confession about Wagner, from ” beautiful souls.” My kingdom for just one intelligent word!-In very truth, a blood-curdling company! Nohl, Pohl, and Kohl* and others of their kidney to infinity! There was not a single abortion that was lacking among them-no, not even the anti-Semite.-Poor Wagner! Into whose hands had he fallen ? If only he had gone into a herd of swine ! But among Germans ! Some day, for the edification of posterity, one ought really to have a genuine Bayreuthian stuffed, or, better still, preserved in spirit,-for it is precisely spirit that is lacking in this quarter,-with this inscription at the foot of the jar: ” A sample of the spirit whereon the ‘ German Empire’ was founded.” … But enough ! In the middle of the festivities I suddenly packed my trunk and left the place for a few weeks, despite the fact that a charming Parisian lady sought to comfort me ; I excused myself to Wagner simply by means of a fatalistic telegram. In a little spot called Klingenbrunn, deeply buried in the recesses of the Bohmerwald, I carried my melancholy and my contempt of
Germans about with me like an illness-and, from time to time, under the general title of ” The Ploughshare,” I wrote a sentence or two down in my notebook, nothing but severe psychological stuff, which it is possible may have found its way into Human, all-too-Human. s3 That which had taken place in me, then, was not only a breach with Wagner-I was suffering from a general aberration of my instincts, of which a mere isolated blunder, whether it were Wagner or my professorship at Bale, was nothing more than a symptom. I was seized with a fit of impatience with myself; I saw that it was high time that I should turn my thoughts upon my own lot. In a trice I realised, with appalling clearness, how much time had already been squandered-how futile and how senseless my whole existence as a philologist appeared by the side of my life-task. I was ashamed of this false modesty… . Ten years were behind me, during which, to tell the truth, the nourishment of my spirit had been at a standstill, during which I had added not a single useful fragment to my knowledge, and had forgotten countless things in the pursuit of a hodge-podge of dry-as-dust scholarship. To crawl with meticulous care and short-sighted eyes through old Greek metricians-that is what I had come to! … Moved to pity I saw myself quite thin, quite emaciated: realities were only too plainly absent from my stock of knowledge, and what the ” idealities ” were worth the devil alone knew ! A positively burning thirst overcame me: and from that time forward I have done literally nothing else than study physiology, medicine, and natural science -I even returned to the actual study of history only when my lifetask compelled me to. It was at that time, too, that I first divined the relation between an instinctively repulsive occupation, a so-called vocation, which is the last thing to which one is ” called,” and that need of lulling a feeling of emptiness and hunger, by means of an art which is a narcotic-by means of Wagner’s art, for instance. After looking carefully about me, I have discovered that a large number of young men are all in the same state of distress: one kind of unnatural practice perforce leads to another. In Germany, or rather, to avoid all ambiguity, in the Empire,* only too many are condemned to determine their choice too soon, and then to pine away beneath a burden that they can no longer throw off… . Such creatures crave for Wagner as for an opiate,-they are thus able to forget themselves, to be rid of themselves for a moment… . What am I saying !-for five or six hours. s4 At this time my instincts turned resolutely against any further yielding or following on my part, and any further misunderstanding of myself. Every kind of life, the most unfavourable circumstances, illness, poverty-anything seemed to me preferable to that undignified ” selfishness ” into which I had fallen; in the first place, thanks to my ignorance and youth, and in which I had afterwards remained owing to laziness-the so-called ” sense of duty.” At this juncture there came to my help, in a way that I cannot sufficiently admire, and precisely at the right time, that evil heritage which I derive from my father’s side of the family, and which, at bottom, is no more than a predisposition to die young. Illness slowly liberated me from the toils, it spared me any sort of sudden breach, any sort of violent and offensive step. At that time I lost not a particle of the good will of others, but rather added to my store. Illness likewise gave me the right completely to reverse my mode of life ; it not only allowed, it actually commanded, me to forget; it bestowed upon me the necessity of lying still, of having leisure, of waiting, and of exercising patience… . But all this means thinking! … The state of my eyes alone put an end to all book-wormishness, or, in plain English-philology: I was thus delivered from books ; for years I ceased from reading, and this was the greatest boon I ever conferred upon myself! That nethermost self, which was, as it were, entombed, and which had grown dumb because it had been forced to listen perpetually to other selves (for that is what reading means!), slowly awakened ; at first it was shy and doubtful, but at last it spoke again. Never have I rejoiced more over my condition than during the sickest and most painful moments of my life. You have only to examine The Dawn of Day, or, perhaps, The Wanderer and his Shadow* in order to understand what this “ return to myself” actually meant: in itself it was the highest kind of recovery ! … My cure was simply the result of it. s5 Human, all-too-Human, this monument of a course of vigorous self-discipline, by means of which I put an abrupt end to all the ” Superior Bunkum,” ” Idealism,” ” Beautiful Feelings,” and other effeminacies that had percolated into my being, was written principally in Sorrento ; it was finished and given definite shape during a winter at Bale, under conditions far less favourable than those in Sorrento. Truth to tell, it was Peter Gast, at that time a student at the University of Bale, and a devoted friend of mine, who was responsible for the book. With my head wrapped in bandages, and extremely painful, I dictated while he wrote and corrected as he went along-to be accurate, he was the real composer, whereas I was only the author. When the completed book ultimately reached me,-to the great surprise of the serious invalid I then was, -I sent, among others, two copies to Bayreuth. Thanks to a miraculous flash of intelligence on the part of chance, there reached me precisely at the same time a splendid copy of the Parsifal text, with the following inscription from Wagner’s pen: ” To his dear friend Friedrich Nietzsche, from Richard Wagner, Ecclesiastical Councillor.” At this crossing of the two books I seemed to hear an ominous note. Did it not sound as if two swords had crossed ? At all events we both felt this was so, for each of us remained silent. At about this time the first Bayreuth Pamphlets appeared: and I then understood the move on my part for which it was high time. Incredible! Wagner had become pious. s6 My attitude to myself at that time (1876), and the unearthly certitude with which I grasped my life-task and all its world-historic consequences, is well revealed throughout the book, but more particularly in one very significant passage, despite the fact that, with my instinctive cunning, I once more circumvented the use of the little word ” I,” -not however, this time, in order to shed world-historic glory on the names of Schopenhauer and Wagner, but on that of another of my friends, the excellent Dr. Paul Ree-fortunately much too acute a creature to be deceived-others were less subtle. Among my readers I have a number of hopeless people, the typical German professor for instance, who can always be recognised from the fact that, judging from the passage in question, he feels compelled to regard the whole book as a sort of superior Re”ealism. As a matter of fact it contradicts five or six of my
friend’s utterances: only read the introduction to The orals on this question.-The passage above referred to reads: ” What, after all, is the principal axiom to which the boldest and coldest thinker, the author of the book On the Origin of Moral Sensations” (read Nietzsche, the first Immoralist),” has attained by means of his incisive and decisive analysis of human actions ? ‘ The moral man,’ he says,’ is no nearer to the intelligible (metaphysical) world than is the physical man, for there is no intelligible world.’ This theory, hardened and sharpened under the hammer-blow of historical knowledge “ (read The Transvaluation of all Values), ” may some time or other, perhaps in some future period,-1890!- serve as the axe which is applied to the root of the ‘ metaphysical need’ of man,-whether more as a blessing than a curse to the general welfare it is not easy to say; but in any case as a theory with the most important consequences, at once fruitful and terrible, and looking into the world with that Janus-face which all great knowledge possesses.” PART 7 - “ THE DAWN OF DAY” Thoughts about Morality as a Prejudice s1 With this book I open my campaign against morality. Not that it is at all redolent of powder- you will find quite other and much nicer smells in it, provided that you have any keenness in your nostrils. There is nothing either of light or of heavy artillery in its composition, and if its general end be a negative one, its means are not so-means out of which the end follows like a logical conclusion, not like a cannon-shot. And if the reader takes leave of this book with a feeling of timid caution in regard to everything which has until now been honoured and even worshipped under the name of morality, it does not alter the fact that there is not one negative word, not one attack, and not one single piece of malice in the whole work-on the contrary, it lies in the sunshine, smooth and happy, like a marine animal, basking in the sun between two rocks. For, after all, I was this marine animal: almost every sentence in the book was thought out, or rather caught, among that medley of rocks in the neighbourhood of Genoa, where I lived quite alone, and exchanged secrets with the ocean. Even to this day, when by chance I happen to turn over the leaves of this book, almost every sentence seems to me like a hook by means of which I draw something incomparable out of the depths ; its whole skin quivers with delicate shudders of recollection. This book is conspicuous for no little art in gently catching things which whisk rapidly and silently away, moments which I call godlike lizards-not with the cruelty of that young Greek god who simply transfixed the poor little beast; but nevertheless with something pointed -with a pen. ” There are so many dawns which have not yet shed their light”-this Indian maxim is written over the doorway of this book. Where does its author seek that new morning, that delicate red, as yet undiscovered, with which another day-ah! a whole series of days, a whole world of new days !- will begin ? In the Transvaluation of all Values, in an emancipation from all moral values, in a saying of yea, and in an attitude of trust, to all that which until now has been forbidden, despised, and damned. This yea-saying book projects its light, its love, its tenderness, over all evil things, it restores to them their soul, their clear conscience, and their superior right and privilege to exist on earth. Morality is not assailed, it simply ceases to be considered. This book closes with the word ” or ? ” -it is the only book which closes with an ” or ?”. s2 My life-task is to prepare for humanity one supreme moment in which it can come to its senses, a Great Noon in which it will turn its gaze backwards and forwards, in which it will step from under the yoke of accident and of priests, and for the first time set the question of the Why and Wherefore of humanity as a whole-this life-task naturally follows out of the conviction that mankind does not get on the right road of its own accord, that it is by no means divinely ruled, but rather that it is precisely under the cover of its most holy valuations that the instinct of negation, of corruption, and of degeneration has held such a seductive sway. The question concerning the origin of moral valuations is therefore a matter of the highest importance to me because it determines the future of mankind. The demand made upon us to believe that everything is really in the best hands, that a certain book, the Bible, gives us the definite and comforting assurance that there is a Providence that wisely rules the fate of man,-when translated back into reality amounts simply to this, namely, the will to stifle the truth which maintains the reverse of all this, which is that until now man has been in the worst possible hands, and that he has been governed by the physiologically botched, the men of cunning and burning revengefulness, and the so-called ” saints ” -those slanderers of the world and traducers of humanity. The definite proof of the fact that the priest (including the priest in disguise, the philosopher) has become master, not only within a certain limited religious community, but everywhere, and that the morality of decadence, the will to nonentity, has become morality per se, is to be found in this: that altruism is now an absolute value, and egoism is regarded with hostility everywhere. He who disagrees with me on this point, I regard as infected. But all the world disagrees with me. To a physiologist a like antagonism between values admits of no doubt. If the most insignificant organ within the body neglects, however slightly, to assert with absolute certainty its self-preservative powers, its recuperative claims, and its egoism, the whole system degenerates. The physiologist insists upon the removal of degenerated parts, he denies all fellow-feeling for such parts, and has not the smallest feeling of pity for them. But the desire of the priest is precisely the degeneration of the whole of mankind ; hence his preservation of that which is degenerate-this is what his dominion costs humanity. What meaning have those lying concepts, those handmaids of morality,” Soul,” ” Spirit,” ” Free will,” ” God,” if their aim is not the physiological ruin of mankind ? When earnestness is diverted from the instincts that aim at self-preservation and an increase of bodily energy, i.e. at an increase of life; when anaemia is raised to an ideal and the contempt of the body is construed as ” the salvation of the soul,” what is all this if it is not a recipe for decadence ? Loss of ballast, resistance offered to natural instincts, selflessness, in fact-this is what has until now been known as morality. With The Dawn of Day I first engaged in a struggle against the morality of self-renunciation. PART 8 - “ THE GAY SCIENCE” La Gaya Scienza s1 Dawn of Day is a yea-saying book, profound, but clear and kindly. The same applies once more and in the highest degree to La Gaya Scienza : in almost every sentence of this book, profundity and playfulness go gently hand in hand. A verse which expresses my gratitude for the most wonderful month of January which I have ever lived- the whole book is a
gift-sufficiently reveals the abysmal depths from which ” wisdom” has here become joyful. ” You who with cleaving fiery lances The stream of my soul from its ice do free, Till with a rush and a roar it advances To enter with glorious hoping the sea: Brighter to see and purer ever, Free in the bonds of your sweet constraint,- So it praises your wondrous endeavour, January, you beauteous saint!”* Who can be in any doubt as to what ” glorious hoping” means here, when he has realised the diamond beauty of the first of Zarathustra’s words as they appear in a glow of light at the close of the fourth book ? Or when he reads the granite sentences at the end of the third book, wherein a fate for all times is first given a formula ? The songs of Prince Free-as-a-Bird, which, for the most part, were written in Sicily, remind me quite forcibly of that Provengal notion of ” Gaya Scienza” of that union of singer, knight, and free spirit, which distinguishes that wonderfully early culture of the Provencals from all ambiguous cultures. The last poem of all,” To the Mistral,”-an exuberant dance song in which, if you please, the new spirit dances freely upon the corpse of morality,-is a perfect Provencalism. PART 9 - “ THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA” A Book for All and None ” s1 I now wish to relate the history of Zarathustra, The fundamental idea of the work, the Eternal Recurrence, the highest formula of a Yea-saying to life that can ever be attained, was first conceived in the month of August 1881. I made a note of the idea on a sheet of paper, with the postscript: ” Six thousand feet beyond man and time.” That day I happened to be wandering through the woods alongside of the Lake of Silvaplana, and I halted not far from Surlei, beside a huge rock that towered aloft like a pyramid. It was then that the thought struck me. Looking back now, I find that exactly two months before this inspiration I had an omen of its coming in the form of a sudden and decisive change in my tastes-more particularly in music. The whole of Zarathustra might perhaps be classified under the rubric music. At all events, the essential condition of its production was a second birth within me of the art of hearing. In Recoaro, a small mountain resort near Vicenza, where I spent the spring of 1881, I and my friend and maestro, Peter Gast-who was also one who had been born again, discovered that the phoenix music hovered over us, in lighter and brighter plumage than it had ever worn before. If, therefore, I now calculate from that day forward the sudden production of the book, under the most unlikely circumstances, in February 1883, -the last part, out of which I quoted a few lines in my preface, was written precisely in the hallowed hour when Richard Wagner gave up the ghost in Venice,-I come to the conclusion that the period of gestation covered eighteen months. This period of exactly eighteen months, might suggest, at least to Buddhists, that 1 am in reality a female elephant. The interval was devoted to the Gaya Scienza, which contains hundreds of indications of the proximity of something unparalleled ; for, after all, it shows the beginning of Zarathustra, since it presents Zarathustrds fundamental thought in the last aphorism but one of the fourth book. To this interval also belongs that Hymn to Life (for a mixed choir and orchestra), the score of which was published in Leipzig two years ago by E. W. Fritsch, and which gave perhaps no slight indication of my spiritual state during this year, in which the essentially yea-saying pathos, which I call the tragic pathos, completely filled me heart and limb. One day people will sing it to my memory. The text, let it be well understood, as there is some misunderstanding abroad on this point, is not by me; it was the astounding inspiration of a young Russian lady, Miss Lou von Salome, with whom I was then on friendly terms. He who is in any way able to make some sense of the last words of the poem, will divine why I preferred and admired it: there is greatness in them. Pain is not regarded as an objection to existence: ” And if you have no bliss now left to crown me-Lead on ! You have your Sorrow still.” Maybe that my music is also great in this passage. (The last note of the oboe, by the bye, is C sharp, not C. The latter is a misprint.) During the following winter, I was living on that charmingly peaceful Gulf of Rapallo, not far from Genoa, which cuts inland between Chiavari and Cape Porto Fino. My health was not very good ; the winter was cold and exceptionally rainy; and the small albergo in which I lived was so close to the water that at night my sleep was disturbed if the sea was rough. These circumstances were surely the very reverse of favourable; and yet, in spite of it all, and as if in proof of my belief that everything decisive comes to life in defiance of every obstacle, it was precisely during this winter and in the midst of these unfavourable circumstances that my Zarathustra originated. In the morning I used to start out in a southerly direction up the glorious road to Zoagli, which rises up through a forest of pines and gives one a view far out to sea. In the afternoon, or as often as my health allowed, I walked round the whole bay from Santa Margherita to beyond Porto Fino. This spot affected me all the more deeply because it was so dearly loved by the Emperor Frederick III. In the autumn of 1886 I chanced to be there again when he was revisiting this small forgotten world of happiness for the last time. It was on these two roads that all Zarathustra came to me, above all, Zarathustra himself as a type-I ought rather to say that it was on these walks that he waylaid me. s2 In order to understand this type, you must first be quite clear concerning its fundamental physiological condition: this condition is what I call great healthiness. In regard to this idea I cannot make my meaning more plain or more personal than I have done already in one of the last aphorisms (No. 382) of the fifth book of the Gaya Scienza: ” We new, nameless, and unfathomable creatures,” so reads the passage, ” we firstlings of a future still unproved-we who have a new end in view also require new means to that end, that is to say, a new healthiness, a stronger, keener, tougher, bolder, and merrier healthiness than any that has existed heretofore. He who longs to feel in his own soul the whole range of values and aims that have prevailed on earth until his day, and to sail round all the coasts of this ideal ‘ Mediterranean Sea’; who, from the adventures of his own inmost experience, would gladly know how it feels to be a conqueror and discoverer of the ideal;-as also how it is with the artist, the saint, the legislator, the sage, the scholar, the man of piety and the godlike anchorite of yore ;-such a man requires one thing above all for his purpose, and that is, great healthiness-such healthiness as he not only possesses, but also constantly acquires and must acquire, because he is continually sacrificing it again, and is compelled to sacrifice it! And now, therefore, after having been long on the way, we Argonauts of the ideal, whose pluck is greater than prudence would allow, and who are often shipwrecked and bruised, but, as I have said, healthier than people would like to admit, dangerously healthy, and for
ever recovering our health- it would seem as if we had before us, as a reward for all our toils, a country still undiscovered, the horizon of which no one has yet seen, a beyond to every country and every refuge of the ideal that man has ever known, a world so overflowing with beauty, strangeness, doubt, terror, and divinity, that both our curiosity and our lust of possession are frantic with eagerness. Alas! how in the face of such vistas, and with such burning desire in our conscience and consciousness, could we still be content with the man of the present day ? This is bad indeed; but, that we should regard his worthiest aims and hopes with ill-concealed amusement, or perhaps give them no thought at all, is inevitable. Another ideal now leads us on, a wonderful, seductive ideal, full of danger, the pursuit of which we should be loath to urge upon any one, because we are not so ready to acknowledge any one’s right to it: the ideal of a spirit who plays ingenuously (that is to say, involuntarily, and as the outcome of superabundant energy and power) with everything that, until now, has been called holy, good, inviolable, and divine; to whom even the loftiest thing that the people have with reason made their measure of value would be no better than a danger, a decay, and an abasement, or at least a relaxation and temporary forgetfulness of self: the ideal of a humanly superhuman well-being and goodwill, which often enough will seem inhuman-as when, for instance, it stands beside all past earnestness on earth, and all past solemnities in hearing, speech, tone, look, morality, and duty, as their most lifelike and unconscious parody- but with which, nevertheless, great earnestness perhaps alone begins, the first note of interrogation is affixed, the fate of the soul changes, the hour hand moves, and tragedy begins.” s3 Has anyone at the end of the nineteenth century any distinct notion of what poets of a stronger age understood by the word inspiration ? If not, I will describe it. If one had the smallest vestige of superstition left in one, it would hardly be possible completely to set aside the idea that one is the mere incarnation, mouthpiece, or medium of an almighty power. The idea of revelation, in the sense that something which profoundly convulses and upsets one becomes suddenly visible and audible with indescribable certainty and accuracy-describes the simple fact. One hears-one does not seek; one takes-one does not ask who gives: a thought suddenly flashes up like lightning, it comes with necessity, without faltering-I have never had any choice in the matter. There is an ecstasy so great that the immense strain of it is sometimes relaxed by a flood of tears, during which one’s steps now involuntarily rush and anon involuntarily lag. There is the feeling that one is utterly out of hand, with the very distinct consciousness of an endless number of fine thrills and titillations descending to one’s very toes ;-there is a depth of happiness in which the most painful and gloomy parts do not act as antitheses to the rest, but are produced and required as necessary shades of colour in such an overflow of light. There is an instinct for rhythmic relations which embraces a whole world of forms (length, the need of a wide-embracing rhythm, is almost the measure of the force of an inspiration, a sort of counterpart to its pressure and tension). Everything happens quite involuntarily, as if in a tempestuous outburst of freedom, of absoluteness, of power and divinity. The involuntary nature of the figures and similes is the most remarkable thing; one loses all perception of what is imagery and metaphor ; everything seems to present itself as the readiest, the truest, and simplest means of expression. It actually seems, to use one of Zarathustra’s own phrases, as if all things came to one, and offered themselves as similes. (” Here do all things come caressingly to your discourse and flatter you, for they would gladly ride upon your back. On every simile you ride here unto every truth. Here fly open unto you all the speech and word shrines of the world, here would all existence become speech, here would all Becoming learn of you how to speak.”) This is my experience of inspiration. I do not doubt but that I should have to go back thousands of years before I could find another who could say to me : ” It is mine also ! ” s4 For a few weeks afterwards I lay an invalid in Genoa. Then followed a melancholy spring in Rome, where I only just managed to live-and this was no easy matter. This city, which is absolutely unsuited to the poet-author of Zarathustra, and for the choice of which I was not responsible, made me inordinately miserable. I tried to leave it. I wanted to go to Aquila-the opposite of Rome in every respect, and actually founded in a spirit of hostility towards that city, just as I also shall found a city some day, as a memento of an atheist and genuine enemy of the Church, a person very closely related to me, the great Hohenstaufen, the Emperor Frederick II. But Fate lay behind it all: I had to return again to Rome. In the end I was obliged to be satisfied with the Piazza Barberini, after I had exerted myself in vain to find an anti-Christian quarter. I fear that on one occasion, to avoid bad smells as much as possible, I actually inquired at the Palazzo del Quirinale whether they could not provide a quiet room for a philosopher. In a chamber high above the Piazza just mentioned, from which one obtained a general view of Rome, and could hear the fountains plashing far below, the loneliest of all songs was composed-” The Night-Song.” About this time I was obsessed by an unspeakably sad melody, the refrain of which I recognised in the words, ” dead through immortality.” … In the summer, finding myself once more in the sacred place where the first thought of Zarathustra flashed like a light across my mind, I conceived the second part. Ten days sufficed. Neither for the second, the first, nor the third part, have I required a day longer. In the ensuing winter, beneath the halcyon sky of Nice, which then for the first time poured its light into my life, I found the third Zarathustra-and came to the end of my task: the whole having occupied me scarcely a year. Many hidden corners and heights in the country round about Nice are hallowed for me by moments that I can never forget. That decisive chapter, entitled ” Old and New Tables,” was composed during the arduous ascent from the station to Eza -that wonderful Moorish village in the rocks. During those moments when my creative energy flowed most plentifully, my muscular activity was always greatest. The body is inspired: let us waive the question of ” soul.” I might often have been seen dancing in those days, and I could then walk for seven or eight hours on end over the hills without a suggestion of fatigue. I slept well and laughed a good deal—I was perfectly robust and patient. s5 With the exception of these periods of industry lasting ten days, the years I spent during the production of Zarathustra, and thereafter, were for me years of unparalleled distress. A
man pays dearly for being immortal: to this end he must die many times over during his life. There is such a thing as what I call the rancour of greatness : everything great, whether a work or a deed, once it is completed, turns immediately against its author. The very fact that he is its author makes him weak at this time. He can no longer endure his deed. He can no longer look it full in the face. To have something at one’s back which one could never have willed, something to which the knot of human destiny is attached-and to be forced thenceforward to bear it on one’s shoulders! Why, it almost crushes one ! The rancour of greatness ! A some-what different experience is the uncanny silence that reigns about one. Solitude has seven skins which nothing can penetrate. One goes among men ; one greets friends: but these things are only new deserts, the looks of those one meets no longer bear a greeting. At the best one encounters a sort of revolt. This feeling of revolt, I suffered, in varying degrees of intensity, at the hands of almost everyone who came near me; it would seem that nothing inflicts a deeper wound than suddenly to make one’s distance felt. Those noble natures are scarce who know not how to live unless they can revere. A third thing is the absurd susceptibility of the skin to small pin-pricks, a kind of helplessness in the presence of all small things. This seems to me a necessary outcome of the appalling expenditure of all defensive forces, which is the first condition of every creative act, of every act which proceeds from the most intimate, most secret, and most concealed recesses of a man’s being. The small defensive forces are thus, as it were, suspended, and no fresh energy reaches them. I even think it probable that one does not digest so well, that one is less willing to move, and that one is much too open to sensations of coldness and suspicion; for, in a large number of cases, suspicion is merely a blunder in etiology. On one occasion when I felt like this I became conscious of the proximity of a herd of cows, some time before I could possibly have seen it with my eyes, simply owing to a return in me of milder and more humane sentiments : they communicated warmth to me… . s6 This work stands alone. Do not let us mention the poets in the same breath: nothing perhaps has ever been produced out of such a superabundance of strength. My concept ” Dionysian ” here became the highest deed ; compared with it everything that other men have done seems poor and limited. The fact that a Goethe or a Shakespeare would not for an instant have known how to take breath in this atmosphere of passion and of the heights ; the fact that by the side of Zarathustra, Dante is no more than a believer, and not one who first creates the truth-that is to say, not a world-ruling spirit, a Fate; the fact that the poets of the Veda were priests and not even fit to unfasten Zarathustra’s sandal-all this is the least of things, and gives no idea of the distance, of the azure solitude, in which this work dwells. Zarathustra has an eternal right to say : ” I draw around me circles and holy boundaries. Ever fewer are they that mount with me to ever loftier heights. I build me a mountain range of ever holier mountains.” If all the spirit and goodness of every great soul were collected together, the whole could not create a single one of Zarathustra’s discourses. The ladder upon which he rises and descends is of boundless length; he has seen further, he has willed further, and gone further than any other man. There is contradiction in every word that he utters, this most yea-saying of all spirits. Through him all contradictions are bound up into a new unity. The loftiest and the basest powers of human nature, the sweetest, the lightest, and the most terrible, rush forth from out one spring with everlasting certainty. Until his coming no one knew what was height, or depth, and still less what was truth. There is not a single passage in this revelation of truth which had already been anticipated and divined by even the greatest among men. Before Zarathustra there was no wisdom, no probing of the soul, no art of speech : in his book, the most familiar and most vulgar thing utters unheard-of words. The sentence quivers with passion. Eloquence has become music. Forks of lightning are hurled towards futures of which no one has ever dreamed before. The most powerful use of parables that has yet existed is poor beside it, and mere child’s-play compared with this return of language to the nature of imagery. See how Zarathustra goes down from the mountain and speaks the kindest words to every one! See with what delicate fingers he touches his very adversaries, the priests, and how he suffers with them from themselves ! Here, at every moment, man is overcome, and the concept ” overman ” becomes the greatest reality,-out of sight, almost far away beneath him, lies all that which heretofore has been called great in man. The halcyonic brightness, the light feet, the presence of wickedness and exuberance throughout, and all that is the essence of the type Zarathustra, was never dreamt of before as a prerequisite of greatness. In precisely these limits of space and in this accessibility to opposites Zarathustra feels himself the highest of all living things : and when you hear how he defines this highest, you will give up trying to find his equal. ” The soul which hath the longest ladder and can step down deepest, ” The vastest soul that can run and stray and rove furthest in its own domain, ” The most necessary soul, that out of desire flings itself to chance, ” The stable soul that plunges into Becoming, the possessing soul that must needs taste of willing and longing, ” The soul that flies from itself, and over-takes itself in the widest circle, ” The wisest soul that folly exhorts most sweetly, ” The most self-loving soul, in whom all things have their rise, their ebb and flow.” But this is the very idea of Dionysus. Another consideration leads to this idea. The psychological problem presented by the type of Zarathustra is, how can he, who in an unprecedented manner says no, and acts no, in regard to all that which has been affirmed until now, remain nevertheless a yea-saying spirit ? how can he who bears the heaviest destiny on his shoulders and whose very life-task is a fatality, yet be the brightest and the most transcendental of spirits-for Zarathustra is a dancer? how can he who has the hardest and most terrible grasp of reality, and who has thought the most ” abysmal thoughts,” nevertheless avoid conceiving these things as objections to existence, or even as objections to the eternal recurrence of existence ?- how is it that on the contrary he finds reasons for being himself the eternal affirmation of all things, ” the tremendous and unlimited saying of Yea and Amen”?…” Into every abyss do I bear the benediction of my yea to Life.” … But this, once more, is precisely the idea of Dionysus. s7 What language will such a spirit speak, when he speaks unto his soul ? The language of the dithyramb. I am the inventor of the dithyramb. Listen unto the manner in which Zarathustra speaks to his soul Before Sunrise (iii. 48). Before my time such emerald joys and divine tenderness had found no tongue. Even the profoundest melancholy of such a Dionysus takes shape as a dithyramb. As an example of this I take ” The Night-Song,”-the immortal plaint of one who, thanks to his superabundance of light and power, thanks to
the sun within him, is condemned never to love. ” It is night: now do all gushing springs raise their voices. And my soul too is a gushing spring. “ It is night: now only do all lovers burst into song. And my soul too is the song of a lover. ” Something unquenched and unquenchable is within me, that would raise its voice. A craving for love is within me, which itself speaks the language of love. ” Light am I: would that I were night! But this is my loneliness, that I am begirt with light. ” Alas, why am I not dark and like unto the night! How joyfully would I then suck at the breasts of light! ” And even you would I bless, you twinkling starlets and glow-worms on high! and be blessed in the gifts of your light. ” But in mine own light do I live, ever back into myself do I drink the flames I send forth. ” I know not the happiness of the hand stretched forth to grasp ; and oft have I dreamt that stealing must be more blessed than taking. ” Wretched am I that my hand may never rest from giving -. an envious fate is mine that I see expectant eyes and nights made bright with longing. ” Oh, the wretchedness of all them that give! Oh, the clouds that cover the face of my sun! That craving for desire! that burning hunger at the end of the feast! ” They take what I give them; but do I touch their soul ? A gulf is there ‘twixt giving and taking ; and the smallest gulf is the last to be bridged. ” An appetite is born from out my beauty : would that I might do harm to them that I fill with light; would that I might rob them of the gifts I have given:-thus do I thirst for wickedness. ” To withdraw my hand when their hand is ready stretched forth like the waterfall that wavers, wavers even in its fall:-thus do I thirst for wickedness. ” For such vengeance does my fullness yearn : to such tricks does my loneliness give birth. ” My joy in giving died with the deed. By its very fullness did my virtue grow weary of itself. ” He who gives risks to lose his shame; he that is ever distributing grows callous in hand and heart from that. ” Mine eyes no longer melt into tears at the sight of the suppliant’s shame; my hand hath become too hard to feel the quivering of laden hands. ” Whither have you fled, the tears of mine eyes and the bloom of my heart ? Oh, the solitude of all givers ! Oh, the. silence of all beacons ! ” Many are the suns that circle in barren space; to all that is dark do they speak with their light- to me alone are they silent. ” Alas, this is the hatred of light for that which shines : pitiless it runs its course. ” Unfair in its inmost heart to that which shines ; cold toward suns,-thus does every sun go its way. ” Like a tempest do the suns fly over their course : for such is their way. Their own unswerving will do they follow: that is their coldness. ” Alas, it is you alone, you creatures of gloom, you spirits of the night, that take your warmth from that which shines. You alone suck your milk and comfort from the udders of light. ” Alas, about me there is ice, my hand burns itself against ice! ” Alas, within me is a thirst that thirsts for your thirst! ” It is night: woe is me, that I must needs be light! And thirst after darkness! And loneliness! ” It is night: now does my longing burst forth like a spring,-for speech do I long. ” It is night: now do all gushing springs raise their voices. And my soul too is a gushing spring. ” It is night: now only do all lovers burst into song. And my soul too is the song of a lover.” s8 Such things have never been written, never been felt, never been suffered: only a God, only Dionysus suffers in this way. The reply to such a dithyramb on the sun’s solitude in light would be Ariadne… . Who knows, but I, who Ariadne is ! To all such riddles no one heretofore had ever found an answer; I doubt even whether anyone had ever seen a riddle here. One day Zarathustra severely WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 113 determines his life-task-and it is also mine. Let no one misunderstand its meaning. It is a yea-saying to the point of justifying, to the point of redeeming even all that is past. ” I walk among men as among fragments of the future : of that future which I see. ” And all my creativeness and effort is but this, that I may be able to think and recast all these fragments and riddles and dismal accidents into one piece. ” And how could I bear to be a man, if man were not also a poet, a riddle reader, and a redeemer of chance! ” To redeem all the past, and to transform every ‘ it was ‘ into ‘ thus would I have it’-that alone would be my salvation ! ” In another passage he defines as strictly as possible what to him alone ” man ” can be,-not a subject for love nor yet for pity-Zarathustra became master even of his loathing of man : man is to him a thing unshaped, raw material, an ugly stone that needs the sculptor’s chisel. ” No longer to will, no longer to value, no longer to create! Oh, that this great weariness may never be mine ! ” Even in the lust of knowledge, I feel only the joy of my will to beget and to grow; and if there be innocence in my knowledge, it is because my procreative will is in it. ” Away from God and gods did this will lure me: what would there be to create if there were gods ? ” But to man does it ever drive me anew, my burning, creative will. Thus drives it the hammer to the stone. ” Alas, you men, within the stone there sleeps an image for me, the image of all my dreams! Alas, that it should have to sleep in the hardest and ugliest stone! ” Now rages my hammer ruthlessly against its prison. From the stone the fragments fly: what’s that to me ? ” I will finish it: for a shadow came unto me- the stillest and lightest thing on earth once came unto me ! ” The beauty of the overman came unto me as a shadow. Alas, my brothers ! What are the- gods to me now ? ” Let me call attention to one last point of view. The line in italics is my pretext for this remark. A Dionysian life-task needs the hardness of the hammer, and one of its first essentials is without doubt the joy even of destruction. The command, ” Harden yourselves !” and the deep conviction that all creators are hard, is the really distinctive sign of a Dionysian nature. PART 10 - “ BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL” The Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future” s1 My work for the years that followed was prescribed as distinctly as possible. Now that the yea-saying part of my life-task was accomplished, there came the turn of the negative portion, both in word and deed: the transvaluation of all values that had existed until now, the great war,-the con-juring-up of the day when the fatal outcome of the struggle would be decided. Meanwhile, I had slowly to look about me for my peers, for those who, out of strength, would proffer me a helping hand in my work of destruction. From that time onward, all my writings are so much bait: maybe I understand as much about fishing as most people ? If nothing was caught, it was not I who was at fault. There were no fish to come and bite. 0 s2
In all its essential points, this book (1886) is a criticism of modernity, embracing the modern sciences, arts, even politics, together with certain indications as to a type which would be the reverse of modern man, or as little like him as possible, a noble and yea-saying type. In this last respect the book is a school for gentlemen-the term gentleman being understood here in a much more spiritual and radical sense than it has implied until now. All those things of which the age is proud,- as, for instance, far-famed ” objectivity,” ” sympathy with all that suffers,” ” the historical sense,” with its subjection to foreign tastes, with its lying-in-the-dust before petits faits, and the rage for science,- are shown to be the contradiction of the type recommended, and are regarded as almost ill-bred. If you remember that this book follows upon Zarathustra, you may possibly guess to what system of diet it owes its life. The eye which, owing to tremendous constraint, has become accustomed to see at a great distance,-Zara-thustra is even more far-sighted than the Tsar,- is here forced to focus sharply that which is close at hand, the present time, the things that lie about him. In all the aphorisms and more particularly in the form of this book, the reader will find the same voluntary turning away from those instincts which made a Zarathustra a possible feat. Refinement in form, in aspiration, and in the art of keeping silent, are its more or less obvious qualities ; psychology is handled with deliberate hardness and cruelty,—the whole book does not contain one single good-natured word… . All this sort of thing refreshes a man. Who can guess the kind of recreation that is necessary after such an expenditure of goodness as is to be found in Zarathustra! From a theological standpoint- now pay you heed; for it is but on rare occasions that I speak as a theologian-it was God Himself who, at the end of His great work, coiled Himself up in the form of a serpent at the foot of the tree of knowledge. It was thus that He recovered from being a God… . He had made everything too beautiful… . The devil is simply God’s moment of idleness, on that seventh day. PART 11 - “ THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS” s1 The three essays which constitute this genealogy are, as regards expression, aspiration, and the art of the unexpected, perhaps the most curious things that have ever been written. Dionysus, as you know, is also the god of darkness. In each case the beginning is calculated to mystify; it is cool, scientific, even ironical, intentionally thrust to the fore, intentionally reticent. Gradually less calmness prevails; here and there a flash of lightning defines the horizon; exceedingly unpleasant truths break upon your ears from out remote distances with a dull, rumbling sound,-until very soon a fierce tempo is attained in which everything presses forward at a terrible degree of tension. At the end, in each case, amid fearful thunderclaps, a new truth shines out between thick clouds. The truth of the first essay is the psychology of Christianity : the birth of Christianity out of the spirit of resentment, not, as is supposed, out of the ” Spirit,”-in all its essentials, a counter-movement, the great insurrection against the dominion of noble values. The second essay contains the psychology of conscience: this is not, as you may believe, ” the voice of God in man ” ; it is the instinct of cruelty, which turns inwards once it is unable to discharge itself outwardly. Cruelty is here exposed, for the first time, as one of the oldest and most indispensable elements in the foundation of culture. The third essay replies to the question as to the origin of the formidable power of the ascetic ideal, of the priest ideal, despite the fact that this ideal is essentially detrimental, that it is a will to nonentity and to decadence. Reply : it flourished not because God was active behind the priests, as is generally believed, but because it was a faute de mieux-from the fact that until now it has been the only ideal and has had no competitors. ” For man prefers to aspire to nonentity than not to aspire at all.” But above all, until the time of Zarathustra there was no such thing as a counter-ideal. You have understood my meaning. Three decisive overtures on the part of a psychologist to a Transvaluation of all Values.-This book contains the first psychology of the priest. PART 12 - “ THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS” How to Philosophise with the Hammer s1 This work-which covers scarcely one hundred and fifty pages, with its cheerful and fateful tone, like a laughing demon, and the production of which occupied so few days that I hesitate to give their number-is altogether an exception among books : there is no work more rich in substance, more independent, more upsetting-more wicked. If anyone should desire to obtain a rapid sketch of how everything, before my time, was standing on its head, he should begin reading me in this book. That which is called ” Idols ” on the title page is simply the old truth that has been believed in until now. In plain English, The Twilight of the Idols means that the old truth is on its last legs. 2 s2 There is no reality, no ” ideality,” which has not been touched in this book (touched! what a cautious euphemism !). Not only the eternal idols, but also the youngest-that is to say, the most senile: modern ideas, for instance. A strong wind blows between the trees and in all directions fall the fruit-the truths. There is the waste of an all-too-rich autumn in this book : you trip over truths. You even crush some to death, there are too many of them. Those things that you can grasp, however, are quite unquestionable ; they are irrevocable decrees. I alone have the criterion of ” truths ” in my possession. I alone can decide. It would seem as if a second consciousness had grown up in me, as if the ” life-will ” in me had thrown a light upon the downward path along which it has been running throughout the ages. The downward path-hitherto this had been called the road to ” Truth.” All obscure impulse- ” darkness and dismay “ -is at an end, the “ good man ” was precisely he who was least aware of the proper way.* And, speaking in all earnestness, no one before me knew the proper way, the way upwards: only after my time could men once more find hope, life-tasks, and roads mapped out that lead to culture- I am the joyful harbinger of this culture… . On this account alone I am also a fatality. 2 s3 Immediately after the completion of the above-named work, and without letting even one day go by, I tackled the formidable task of the Transvaluation with a supreme feeling of pride which nothing could equal; and, certain at each moment of my immortality, I cut sign after sign upon tablets of brass with the sureness of Fate. The Preface came into being on 3rd September 1888. When, after having written it down, I went out into the open that morning, I was greeted by the most beautiful day I had ever seen in the Upper Engadine-clear,
glowing with colour, and presenting all the contrasts and all the intermediary gradations between ice and the south. I left Sils-Maria only on the 20th of September. I had been forced to delay my departure owing to floods, and I was very soon, and for some days, the only visitor in this wonderful spot, on which my gratitude bestows the gift of an immortal name. After a journey that was full of incidents, and not without danger to life,- as for instance at Como, which was flooded when I reached it in the dead of night,-I got to Turin on the afternoon of the 21 st. Turin is the only suitable place for me, and it shall be my home henceforward. I took the same lodgings as I had occupied in the spring, 6111 Via Carlo Alberto, opposite the mighty Palazzo Carignano, in which Vittorio Emanuele was born ; and I had a view of the Piazza Carlo Alberto and above it across to the hills. Without hesitating, or allowing myself to be disturbed for a single moment, I returned to my work, only the last quarter of which had still to be written. On the 30th September, tremendous triumph ; the seventh day; the leisure of a god on the banks of the Po.* On the same day, I wrote the Preface to The Twilight of the Idols, the correction of the proofs of which provided me with recreation during the month of September. Never in my life have I experienced such an autumn ; nor had I ever imagined that such things were possible on earth-a Claude Lorrain extended to infinity, each day equal to the last in its wild perfection. PART 13 - “ THE CASE OF WAGNER” A Musician’s Problem” s1 In order to do justice to this essay a man ought to suffer from the fate of music as from an open wound.-From what do I suffer when I suffer from the fate of music ? From the fact that music has lost its world-transfiguring, yea-saying character- that it is decadent music and no longer the flute of Dionysus. Supposing, however, that the fate of music be as dear to man as his own life, because joy and suffering are alike bound up with it; then he will find this pamphlet comparatively mild and full of consideration. To be cheerful in such circumstances, and laugh good-naturedly with others at one’s self,-ridendo dicere severum* when the verum dicere would justify every sort of hardness,-is humanity itself. Who doubts that I, old artilleryman that I am, would be able if I liked to point my heavy guns at Wagner?-Everything decisive in this question I kept to myself-I have loved Wagner.-After all, an attack upon a more than usually subtle ” unknown person ” whom another would not have divined so easily, lies in the meaning and path of my life-task. Oh, I have still quite a number of other ” unknown persons ” to unmask besides a Cagliostro of Music ! Above all, I have to direct an attack against the German people, who, in matters of the spirit, grow every day more indolent, poorer in instincts, and more honest; who, with an appetite for which they are to be envied, continue to diet themselves on contradictions, and gulp down ” Faith” in company with science, Christian love together with anti-Semitism, and the will to power (to the ” Empire “ ), dished up with the gospel of the humble, without showing the slightest signs of indigestion. Fancy this absence of party-feeling in the presence of opposites! Fancy this gastric neutrality and ” disinterestedness” ! Behold this sense of justice in the German palate, which can grant equal rights to all,-which finds everything tasteful! Without a shadow of a doubt the Germans are idealists. When I was last in Germany, I found German taste striving to grant Wagner and the Trumpeter of Sdkkingen * equal rights; while I myself witnessed the attempts of the people of Leipzig to do honour to one of the most genuine and most German of musicians,-using German here in the old sense of the word,-a man who was no mere German of the Empire, the master Heinrich Schiitz, by founding a Liszt Society, the object of which was to cultivate and spread of cunning Church music. Without a shadow of doubt the Germans are idealists. 3 s2 But here nothing shall stop me from being rude, and from telling the Germans one or two unpleasant home truths: who else would do it if I did not ? I refer to their laxity in matters historical. Not only have the Germans entirely lost the breadth of vision which enables one to grasp the course of culture and the values of culture; not only are they one and all political (or Church) puppets ; but they have also actually put a ban upon this very breadth of vision. A man must first and foremost be ” German,” he must belong to ” the race “ ; then only can he pass judgment upon all values and lack of values in history-then only can he establish them… . To be German is in itself an argument, ” Germany, Germany above all,” J is a principle ; the Germans stand for the “ moral order of the universe” in history; compared with the Roman Empire, they are the upholders of freedom ; compared with the eighteenth century, they are the restorers of morality, of the ” Categorical Imperative.” There is such a thing as the writing of history according to the lights of Imperial Germany; there is, I fear, anti-Semitic history-there is also history written with an eye to the Court, and Herr von Treitschke is not ashamed of himself. Quite recently an idiotic opinion in historicis, an observation of Vischer the Swabian aesthete, since happily deceased, made the round of the German newspapers as a ” truth ” to which every German must assent. The observation was this : ” The Renaissance and the Reformation only together constitute a whole-the aesthetic rebirth, and the moral rebirth.” When I listen to such things, I lose all patience, and I feel inclined, I even feel it my duty, to tell the Germans, for once in a way, all that they have on their conscience. Every great crime against culture for the last four centuries lies on their conscience… . And always for the same reason, always owing to their bottomless cowardice in the face of reality, which is also cowardice in the face of truth ; always owing to the love of falsehood which has become almost instinctive in them-in short, ” idealism.” It was the Germans who caused Europe to lose the fruits, the whole meaning of her last period of greatness-the period of the Renaissance. At a moment when a higher order of values, values that were noble, that said yea to life, and that guaranteed a future, had succeeded in triumphing over the opposite values, the values of degeneration, in the very seat of Christianity itself,-and even in the hearts of those sitting there,-Luther, that cursed monk, not only restored the Church, but, what was a thousand times worse, restored Christianity, and at a time too when it lay defeated. Christianity, the Denial of the Will to Live, exalted to a religion ! Luther was an impossible monk who, thanks to his own ” impossibility,” attacked the Church, and in so doing restored it! Catholics would be perfectly justified in celebrating feasts in honour of Luther, and in producing festival plays * in his honour. Luther and the ” rebirth of morality ” ! May all psychology go to the devil! Without a shadow of a doubt the Germans are idealists. On two occasions when, at the cost of enormous courage and self-control, an upright, unequivocal, and perfectly scientific attitude of mind had
been attained, the Germans were able to discover back stairs leading down to the old ” ideal” again, compromises between truth and the ” ideal,” and, in short, formulae for the right to reject science and to perpetrate falsehoods. Leibniz and Kant-these two great breaks upon the intellectual honesty of Europe ! Finally, at a moment when there appeared on the bridge that spanned two centuries of decadence, a superior force of genius and will which was strong enough to consolidate Europe and to convert it into a political and economic unit, with the object of ruling the world, the Germans, with their Wars of Independence, robbed Europe of the significance-the marvellous significance, of Napoleon’s life. And in so doing they laid on their conscience everything that followed, everything that exists to-day,-this sickliness and want of reason which is most opposed to culture, and which is called Nationalism,-this nevrose nationale from which Europe is suffering acutely; this eternal subdivision of Europe into petty states, with politics on a municipal scale: they have robbed Europe itself of its significance, of its reason,-and have stuffed it into a cul-de-sac. Is there anyone except me who knows the way out of this cul-de-sac ? Does anyone except me know of an aspiration which would be great enough to bind the people of Europe once more together? 3 s3 And after all, why should I not express my suspicions? In my case, too, the Germans will attempt to make a great fate give birth merely to a mouse. Up to the present they have compromised themselves with me; I doubt whether the future will improve them. Alas! how happy I should be to prove a false prophet in this matter! My natural readers and listeners are already Russians, Scandinavians, and Frenchmen-will they always be the same ? In the history of knowledge, Germans are represented only by doubtful names, they have been able to produce only ” unconscious ” swindlers (this word applies to Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Hegel, and Schleiermacher, just as well as to Kant or Leibniz; they were all mere intellect in which truth ultimately got the better of the fraud of four thousand years, reckoned as one with the German intellect. ” German intellect” is my foul air: I breathe with difficulty in the neighbourhood of this psychological uncleanliness that has now become instinctive-an uncleanliness which in every word and expression betrays a German. They have never undergone a seventeenth century of hard self-examination, as the French have,-a La Rochefoucauld, a Descartes, are a thousand times more upright than the very first among Germans,-the latter have not yet had any psychologists. But psychology is almost the standard of measurement for the cleanliness or uncleanliness of a race… . For if a man is not even clean, how can he be deep ? The Germans are like women, you can scarcely ever fathom their depths-they haven’t any, and that’s the end of it. Thus they cannot even be called shallow. That which is called ” deep ” in Germany, is precisely this instinctive uncleanliness towards one’s self, of which I have just spoken : people refuse to be clear in regard to their own natures. Might I be allowed, perhaps, to suggest the word ” German ” as an international epithet denoting this psychological depravity ?-At the moment of writing, for instance, the German Emperor is declaring it to be his Christian duty to liberate the slaves in Africa ; among us Europeans, then, this would be called simply ” German.” … Have the Germans ever produced even a book that had depth ? They are lacking in the mere idea of what constitutes a book. I have known scholars who thought that Kant was deep. At the Court of Prussia I fear that Herr von Treitschke is regarded as deep. And when I happen to praise Stendhal as a deep psychologist, I have often been compelled, in the company of German University Professors, to spell his name aloud. 3 s4 And why should I not proceed to the end ? I am fond of clearing the air. It is even part of my ambition to be considered as essentially a despiser of Germans. I expressed my suspicions of the German character even at the age of six-and-twenty (see Thoughts out of Season, vol. ii. pp. 164, 165), -to my mind the Germans are impossible. When I try to think of the kind of man who is opposed to me in all my instincts, my mental image takes the form of a German. The first thing I ask myself when I begin analysing a man, is, whether he has a feeling for distance in him; whether he sees rank, gradation, and order everywhere between man and man ; whether he makes distinctions; for this is what constitutes a gentleman. Otherwise he belongs hopelessly to that open-hearted, open-minded -alas ! and always very good-natured species, la canaille ! But the Germans are canaille-alas ! they are so good-natured ! A man lowers himself by frequenting the society of Germans : the German places everyone on an equal footing. With the exception of my intercourse with one or two artists, and above all with Richard Wagner, I cannot say that I have spent one pleasant hour with Germans. Suppose, for one moment, that the profoundest spirit of all ages were to appear among Germans, then one of the saviours of the Capitol would be sure to arise and declare that his own ugly soul was just as great. I can no longer abide this race with which a man is always in bad company, which has no idea of nuances-woe to me ! I am a nuance -and which has not esprit in its feet, and cannot even walk withal! In short, the Germans have no feet at all, they simply have legs. The Germans have not the faintest idea of how vulgar they are-but this in itself is the acme of vulgarity,-they are not even ashamed of being merely Germans. They will have their say in everything, they regard themselves as fit to decide all questions; I even fear that they have decided about me. My whole life is essentially a proof of this remark. In vain have I sought among them for a sign of tact and delicacy towards myself. Among Jews I did indeed find it, but not among Germans. I am so constituted as to be gentle and kindly to every one,-I have the right not to draw distinctions,-but this does not prevent my eyes from being open. I except no one, and least of all my friends,-I only trust that this has not prejudiced my reputation for humanity among them ? There are five or six things which I have always made points of honour. Albeit, the truth remains that for many years I have considered almost every letter that has reached me as a piece of cynicism. There is more cynicism in an attitude of goodwill towards me than in any sort of hatred. I tell every friend to his face that he has never thought it worth his while to study any one of my writings : from the slightest hints I gather that they do not even know what lies hidden in my books. And with regard even to my Zarathustra, which of my friends would have seen more in it than a piece of unwarrantable, though fortunately harmless, arrogance ? Ten years have elapsed, and no one has yet felt it a duty to his conscience to defend my name against the absurd silence beneath which it has been entombed. It was a foreigner, a Dane, who first showed sufficient keenness of instinct and of courage to do this, and who protested indignantly against my so-called friends. At what German University to-day would such lectures on my philosophy be possible, as those which Dr. Brandes delivered last spring in Copenhagen, thus proving once more his right to the title psychologist
? For my part, these things have never caused me any pain; that which is necessary does not offend me. Amor fati is the core of my nature. This, however, does not alter the fact that I love irony and even world-historic irony. And thus, about two years before hurling the destructive thunderbolt of the Trans-valuation, which will send the whole of civilisation into convulsions, I sent my Case of Wagner out into the world. The Germans were given the chance of blundering and immortalising their stupidity once more on my account, and they still have just enough time to do it in. And have they fallen in with my plans ? Admirably ! my dear Germans. Allow me to congratulate you. PART 14 - WHY I AM A DESTINY s1 I KNOW my destiny. There will come a day when my name will recall the memory of something formidable-a crisis the like of which has never been known on earth, the memory of the most profound clash of consciences, and the passing of a sentence upon all that which theretofore had been believed, exacted, and hallowed. I am not a man, I am dynamite. And with it all there is nought of the founder of a religion in me. Religions are matters for the mob; after coming in contact with a religious man, I always feel that I must wash my hands. … I require no ” believers,” it is my opinion that I am too full of malice to believe even in myself; I never address myself to masses. I am horribly frightened that one day I shall be pronounced ” holy.” You will understand why I publish this book beforehand- it is to prevent people from wronging me. I refuse to be a saint; I would rather be a clown. Maybe I am a clown. And I am notwithstanding, or rather not notwithstanding, the mouthpiece of truth; for nothing more blown-out with falsehood has ever existed, than a saint. But my truth is terrible: for until now lies have been called truth. The Transvaluation of all Values, this is my formula for mankind’s greatest step towards coming to its senses-a step which in me became flesh and genius. My destiny ordained that I should be the first decent human being, and that I should feel myself opposed to the falsehood of millenniums. I was the first to discover truth, and for the simple reason that I was the first who became conscious of falsehood as falsehood-that is to say, I smelt it as such. My genius resides in my nostrils. I contradict as no one has contradicted until now, and am nevertheless the reverse of a negative spirit. I am the harbinger of joy, the like of which has never existed before; I have discovered tasks of such lofty greatness that, until my time, no one had any idea of such things. Mankind can begin to have fresh hopes, only now that I have lived; Thus, I am necessarily a man of Fate. For when Truth enters the lists against the falsehood of ages, shocks are bound to ensue, and a spell of earthquakes, followed by the transposition of hills and valleys, such as the world has never yet imagined even in its dreams. The concept ” politics ” then becomes elevated entirely to the sphere of spiritual warfare. All the mighty realms of the ancient order of society are blown into space-for they are all based on falsehood : there will be wars, the like of which have never been seen on earth before. Only from my time and after me will politics on a large scale exist on earth. 4 s2 If you should require a formula for a destiny of this kind that has taken human form, you will find it in my Zarathustra. ” And he who would be a creator in good and evil-verily, he must first be a destroyer, and break values into pieces. ” Thus the greatest evil belongs unto the greatest good: but this is the creative good.” I am by far the most terrible man that has ever existed ; but this does not alter the fact that I shall become the most beneficent. I know the joy of annihilation to a degree which is commensurate with my power to annihilate. In both cases I obey my Dionysian nature, which knows not how to separate the negative deed from the saying of yea. I am the first immoralist, and in this sense I am essentially the annihilator. 4 s3 People have never asked me as they should have done, what the name of Zarathustra precisely meant in my mouth, in the mouth of the first immoralist; for that which distinguishes this Persian from all others in the past is the very fact that he was the exact reverse of an immoralist. Zarathustra was the first to see in the struggle between good and evil the essential wheel in the working of things. The translation of morality into the realm of metaphysics, as force, cause, end-in-itself, is his work. But the very question suggests its own answer. Zarathustra created this most portentous of all errors,-morality; therefore he must be the first to expose it. Not only because he has had longer and greater experience of the subject than any other thinker,-all history is indeed the experimental refutation of the theory of the so-called moral order of things,-but because of the more important fact that Zarathustra was the most truthful of thinkers. In his teaching alone is truthfulness upheld as the highest virtue-that is to say, as the reverse of the cowardice of the ” idealist” who takes to his heels at the sight of reality. Zarathustra has more pluck in his body than all other thinkers put together. To tell the truth and to aim straight: that is the first Persian virtue. Have I made myself clear ? … The overcoming of morality by itself, through truthfulness, the moralist’s overcoming of himself in his opposite-in me-that is what the name Zarathustra means in my mouth. 4 s4 In reality two negations are involved in my title Immoralist. I first of all deny the type of man that has until now been regarded as the highest-the good, the kind, and the charitable; and I also deny that kind of morality which has become recognised and paramount as morality-in-itself-I speak of the morality of decadence, or, to use a still cruder term, Christian morality. I would agree to the second of the two negations being regarded as the more decisive, for, reckoned as a whole, the over-estimation of goodness and kindness seems to me already a consequence of decadence, a symptom of weakness, and incompatible with any ascending and yea-saying life. Negation and annihilation are inseparable from a yea-saying attitude towards life. Let me halt for a moment at the question of the psychology of the good man. In order to appraise the value of a certain type of man, the cost of his maintenance must be calculated,-and the conditions of his existence must be known. The condition of the existence of the good is falsehood: or, otherwise expressed, the refusal at any price to see how reality is actually constituted. The refusal to see that this reality is not so constituted as always to be stimulating beneficent instincts, and still less, so as to suffer at
all moments the intrusion of ignorant and good-natured hands. To consider distress of all kinds as an objection, as something which must be done away with, is the greatest nonsense on earth; generally speaking, it is nonsense of the most disastrous sort, fatal in its stupidity- almost as mad as the will to abolish bad weather, out of pity for the poor, so to speak. In the great economy of the whole universe, the terrors of reality (in the passions, in the desires, in the will to power) are incalculably more necessary than that form of petty happiness which is called ” goodness “ ; it is even needful to practise leniency in order so much as to allow the latter a place at all, seeing that it is based upon a falsification of the instincts. I shall have an excellent opportunity of showing the incalculably calamitous consequences to the whole of history, of the credo of optimism, this monstrous offspring of the homines optimi. Zarathustra,* the first who recognised that the optimist is just as degenerate as the pessimist, though perhaps more detrimental, says: ” Good men never speak the truth. False shores and false harbours were you taught by the good. In the lies of the good were you born and bred. Through the good everything hath become false and crooked from the roots.” Fortunately the world is not built merely upon those instincts which would secure to the good-natured herd animal his paltry happiness. To desire everybody to become a ” good man,” ” a gregarious animal,’ ” a blue-eyed, benevolent, beautiful soul,” or-as Herbert Spencer wished-a creature of altruism, would mean robbing existence of its greatest character, castrating man, and reducing humanity to a level of desiccated Chinese stagnation. And this some have tried to do! It is precisely this that men called morality. In this sense Zarathustra calls “ the good,” now ” the last men,” and anon ” the beginning of the end “ ; and above all, he considers them as the most detrimental kind of men, because they secure their existence at the cost of Truth and at the cost of the Future. ” The good-they cannot create; they are ever the beginning of the end. ” They crucify him who writes new values on new tables; they sacrifice unto themselves the future; they crucify the whole future of humanity ! ” The good-they are ever the beginning of the end. ” And whatever harm the slanderers of the world may do, the harm of the good is the most calamitous of all harm.” 4 s5 Zarathustra, as the first psychologist of the good man, is perforce the friend of the evil man. When a degenerate kind of man has succeeded to the highest rank among the human species, his position must have been gained at the cost of the reverse type-at the cost of the strong man who is certain of life. When the gregarious animal stands in the glorious rays of the purest virtue, the exceptional man must be degraded to the rank of the evil. If falsehood insists at all costs on claiming the word ” truth ” for its own particular standpoint, the really truthful man must be sought out among the despised. Zarathustra allows of no doubt here; he says that it was precisely the knowledge of the good, of the ” best,” which inspired his absolute horror of men. And it was out of this feeling of repulsion that he grew the wings which allowed him to soar into remote futures. He does not conceal the fact that his type of man is one which is relatively superhuman-especially as opposed to the ” good ” man, and that the good and the just would regard his overman as the devil. ” You higher men, on whom my gaze now falls, this is the doubt that you wake in my breast, and this is my secret laughter: methinks you would call my overman-the devil! So strange are you in your souls to all that is great, that the overman would be terrible in your eyes for his goodness.” It is from this passage, and from no other, that you must set out to understand the goal to which Zarathustra aspires-the kind of man that he conceives sees reality as it is; he is strong enough for this-he is not estranged or far removed from it, he is that reality himself, in his own nature can be found all the terrible and questionable character of reality: only thus can man have greatness. 4 s6 But I have chosen the title of Immoralist as a surname and as a badge of honour in yet another sense; I am very proud to possess this name which distinguishes me from all the rest of mankind. No one until now has felt Christian morality beneath him; to that end there were needed height, a remoteness of vision, and an abysmal psychological depth, not believed to be possible until now. Up to the present Christian morality has been the Circe of all thinkers-they stood at her service. What man, before my time, had descended into the underground caverns from out of which the poisonous fumes of this ideal-of this slandering of the world -burst forth ? What man had even dared to suppose that they were underground caverns ? Was a single one of the philosophers who preceded me a psychologist at all, and not the very reverse of a psychologist-that is to say, a ” superior swindler,” an ” Idealist” ? Before my time there was no psychology. To be the first in this new realm may amount to a curse ; at all events, it is a fatality : for one is also the first to despise. My danger is the loathing of mankind. 4 s7 Have you understood me ? That which defines me, that which makes me stand apart from the whole of the rest of humanity, is the fact that I unmasked Christian morality. For this reason I was in need of a word which conveyed the idea of a challenge to everybody. Not to have awakened to these discoveries before, struck me as being the sign of the greatest uncleanliness that mankind has on its conscience, as self-deception become instinctive, as the fundamental will to be blind to every phenomenon, all causality and all reality; in fact, as an almost criminal fraud in psychologicis. Blindness in regard to Christianity is the essence of criminality-for it is the crime against life. Ages and peoples, the first as well as the last, philosophers and old women, with the exception of five or six moments in history (and of myself, the seventh), are all alike in this. Until now the Christian has been the ” moral being,” a peerless oddity, and, as ” a moral being,” he was more absurd, more vain, more thoughtless, and a greater disadvantage to himself, than the greatest despiser of humanity could have deemed possible. Christian morality is the most malignant form of all falsehood, the actual Circe of humanity : that which has corrupted mankind. It is not error as error which infuriates me at the sight of this spectacle; it is not the millenniums of absence of ” goodwill,” of discipline, of decency, and of bravery in spiritual things, which betrays itself in the triumph of Christianity; it is rather the absence of nature, it is the perfectly ghastly fact that anti-nature itself received the highest honours as morality and as law, and remained suspended over man as the Categorical Imperative. Fancy blundering in this way, not as an individual, not as a people, but as a whole species ! as humanity! To teach the contempt of all the principal instincts of life; to posit falsely the existence of a ” soul,” of a ” spirit,” in order to be able to defy the body ; to spread the feeling that there is something impure in
the very first prerequisite of life-in sex ; to seek the principle of evil in the profound need of growth and expansion-that is to say, in severe self-love (the term itself is slanderous) ; and conversely to see a higher moral value- but what am I talking about ?-I mean the moral value per se, in the typical signs of decline, in the antagonism of the instincts, in ” selflessness,” in the loss of ballast, in ” the suppression of the personal element,” and in ” love of one’s neighbour ” (neigh-bour-itis !). What! is humanity itself in a state of degeneration ? Has it always been in this state ? One thing is certain, that you are taught only the values of decadence as the highest values. The morality of self-renunciation is essentially the morality of degeneration ; the fact, ” I am going to the dogs,” is translated into the imperative,” Ye shall all go to the dogs “ -and not only into the imperative. This morality of self-renunciation, which is the only kind of morality that has been taught until now, betrays the will to nonentity-it denies life to the very roots. There still remains the possibility that it is not mankind that is in a state of degeneration, but only that parasitical kind of man-the priest, who, by means of morality and lies, has climbed up to his position of determinator of values, who divined in Christian morality his road to power. And, to tell the truth, this is my opinion. The teachers and leaders of mankind-including the theologians- have been, everyone of them, decadents: hence their transvaluation of all values into a hostility towards life; hence morality. The definition of morality ; Morality is the idiosyncrasy of decadents, actuated by a desire to avenge themselves with success upon life. I attach great value to this definition. 4 s8 Have you understood me ? I have not uttered a single word which I had not already said five years ago through my mouthpiece Zarathustra. The unmasking of Christian morality is an event which is unequalled in history, it is a real catastrophe. The man who throws light upon it is a force majeure, a fatality; he breaks the history of man into two. Time is reckoned up before him and after him. The lightning flash of truth struck precisely that which theretofore had stood highest: he who understands what was destroyed by that flash should look to see whether he still holds anything in his hands. Everything which until then was called truth, has been revealed as the most detrimental, most spiteful, and most subterranean form of life ; the holy pretext, which was the ” improvement ” of man, has been recognised as a ruse for draining life of its energy and of its blood. Morality conceived as Vampirism… . The man who unmasks morality has also unmasked the worth-lessness of the values in which men either believe or have believed ; he no longer sees anything to be revered in the most venerable man-even in the types of men that have been pronounced holy; all he can see in them is the most fatal kind of abortions, fatal, because they fascinate. The concept ” God ” was invented as the opposite of the concept life-everything detrimental, poisonous, and slanderous, and all deadly hostility to life, was bound together in one horrible unit in Him. The concepts ” beyond ” and ” true world ” were invented in order to depreciate the only world that exists-in order that no goal or aim, no sense or task, might be left to earthly reality. The concepts ” soul,” ” spirit,” and last of all the concept ” immortal soul,” were invented in order to throw contempt on the body, in order to make it sick and ” holy,” in order to cultivate an attitude of appalling levity towards all things in life which deserve to be treated seriously, i.e. the questions of nutrition and habitation, of intellectual diet, the treatment of the sick, cleanliness, and weather. Instead of health, we find the ” salvation of the soul”-that is to say, a folie cir-culaire fluctuating between convulsions and penitence and the hysteria of redemption. The concept ” sin,” together with the torture instrument appertaining to it, which is the concept ” free will,” was invented in order to confuse and muddle our instincts, and to render the mistrust of them man’s second nature ! In the concepts ” disinterestedness and ” self-denial,” the actual signs of decadence are to be found. The allurement of that which is detrimental, the inability to discover one’s own advantage and self-destruction, are made into absolute qualities, into the ” duty,” the ” holiness,” and the ” divinity ” of man. Finally-to keep the worst to the last-by the notion of the good man, all that is favoured which is weak, ill, botched, and sick-initself, which ought to be wiped out. The law of selection is thwarted, an ideal is made out of opposition to the proud, well-constituted man, to him who says yea to life, to him who is certain of the future, and who guarantees the future-this man is henceforth called the evil one. And all this was believed in as morality!-Ecrasez I’infame ! 4 s9 Have you understood me? Dionysus versus Christ. THE END
THE GREEK STATE (POSTHUMOUS) Translated by Maximillian A. Mugge Preface to an unwritten book (1871) WE moderns have an advantage over the Greeks in two ideas, which are given as it were as a compensation to a world behaving thoroughly slavishly and yet at the same time anxiously eschewing the word ” slave “ : we talk of the ” dignity of man ” and of the ” dignity of labour.” Everybody worries in order miserably to perpetuate a miserable existence; this awful need compels man to consuming labour; he (or, more exactly, the human intellect) seduced by the ” Will ” now occasionally marvels at labour as something dignified. However, in order that labour might have a claim on titles of honour, it would be necessary above all, that Existence itself, to which labour after all is only a painful means, should have more dignity and value than it appears to have had, up to the present, to serious philosophies and religions. What else may we find in the labour-need of all the millions but the impulse to exist at any price, the same all-powerful impulse by which stunted plants stretch their roots through earthless rocks ! Out of this awful struggle for existence only individuals can emerge, and they are at once occupied with the noble phantoms of artistic culture, lest they should arrive at practical pessimism, which Nature abhors as her exact opposite. In the modern world, which, compared with the Greek,,usually produces only abnormalities and centaurs, in which the individual, like that fabulous creature in the beginning of the Horatian Art of Poetry, is jumbled together out of pieces, here in the modern world in one and the same man the greed of
the struggle for existence and the need for art show themselves at the same time: out of this unnatural amalgamation has originated the dilemma, to excuse and to consecrate that first greed before this need for art. Therefore we believe in the ” Dignity of man ” and the ” Dignity of labour.” The Greeks did not require such conceptual hallucinations, for among them the idea that labour is a disgrace is expressed with startling frankness; and another piece of wisdom, more hidden and less articulate, but everywhere alive, added that the human thing also was an ignominious and piteous nothing and the “ dream of a shadow.” Labour is a disgrace, because existence has no value in itself; but even though this very existence in the alluring embellishment of artistic illusions shines forth and really seems to have a value in itself, yet that proposition is still valid that labour is a disgraced disgrace indeed by the fact that it is impossible for man, fighting for the continuance of bare existence, to become an artist. In modern times it is not the art-needing man but the slave who determines the general conceptions, the slave who according to his nature must give deceptive names to all conditions in order to be able to live. Such phantoms as the dignity of man, the dignity of labour, are the needy products of slavedom hiding itself from itself. Woful time, in which the slave requires such conceptions, in which he is incited to think about and beyond himself! Cursed seducers, who have destroyed the slave’s state of innocence by the fruit of the tree of knowledge! Now the slave must vainly scrape through from one day to another with transparent lies recognisable to every one of deeper insight, such as the alleged ” equal rights of all ” or the so-called ” fundamental rights of man,” of man as such, or the ” dignity of labour:’ Indeed he is not to understand at what stage and at what height dignity can first be mentioned namely, at the point, where the individual goes wholly beyond himself and no longer has to work and to produce in order to preserve his individual existence. And even on this height of “ labour” the Greek at times is overcome by a feeling, that looks like shame. In one place Plutarch with earlier Greek instinct says that no nobly born youth on beholding the Zeus in Pisa would have the desire to become himself a Phidias, or on seeing the Hera in Argos, to become himself a Polyklet; and just as little would he wish to be Anacreon, Philetas or Archilochus, however much he might revel in their poetry. To the Greek the work of the artist falls just as much under the undignified conception of labour as any ignoble craft. But if the compelling force of the artistic impulse operates in him, then he must produce and submit himself to that need of labour. And as a father admires the beauty and the gift of his child but thinks of the act of procreation with shamefaced dislike, so it was with the Greek. The joyful astonishment at the beautiful has not blinded him as to its origin which appeared to him, like all ” Becoming ” in nature, to be a powerful necessity, a forcing of itself into existence. That feeling by which the process of procreation is considered as something shamefacedly to be hidden, although by it man serves a higher purpose than his individual preservation, the same feeling veiled also the origin of the great works of art, in spite of the fact that through them a higher form of existence is inaugurated, just as through that other act comes a new generation. The feeling of shame seems therefore to occur where man is merely a tool of manifestations of will infinitely greater than he is permitted to consider himself in the isolated shape of the individual. Now we have the general idea to which are to be subordinated the feelings which the Greek had with regard to labour and slavery. Both were considered by them as a necessary disgrace, of which one feels ashamed, as a disgrace and as a necessity at the same time. In this feeling of shame is hidden the unconscious discernment that the real aim needs those conditional factors, but that in that need lies the fearful and beast-of-prey-like quality of the Sphinx Nature, who in the glorification of the artistically free culture-life so beautifully stretches forth her virgin-body, Culture, which is chiefly a real need for art, rests upon a terrible basis: the latter however makes itself known in the twilight sensation of shame. In order that there may be a broad, deep, and fruitful soil for the development of art, the enormous majority must, in the service of a minority be slavishly subjected to life’s struggle, to a greater degree than their own wants necessitate. At their cost, through the surplus of their labour, that privileged class is to be relieved from the struggle for existence, in order to create and to satisfy a new world of want. Accordingly we must accept this cruel sounding truth, that slavery is of the essence of Culture; a truth of course, which leaves no doubt as to the absolute value of Existence. This truth is the vulture, that gnaws at the liver of the Promethean promoter of Culture. The misery of toiling men must still increase in order to make the production of the world of art possible to a small number of Olympian men. Here is to be found the source of that secret wrath nourished by Communists and Socialists of all times, and also by their feebler descendants, the white race of the ” Liberals,” not only against the arts, but also against classical antiquity. If Culture really rested upon the will of a people, if here inexorable powers did not rule, powers which are law and barrier to the individual, then the contempt for Culture, the glorification of a “ poorness in spirit,” the iconoclastic annihilation of artistic claims would be more than an insurrection of the suppressed masses against dronelike individuals; it would be the cry of compassion tearing down the walls of Culture; the desire for justice, for the equalization of suffering, would swamp all other ideas. In fact here and there sometimes an exuberant degree of compassion has for a short time opened all the flood gates of Culture-life; a rainbow of compassionate love and of peace appeared with the first radiant rise of Christianity and under it was born Christianity’s most beautiful fruit, the gospel according to St John. But there are also instances to show that powerful religions for long periods petrify a given degree of Culture, and cut off with inexorable sickle everything that still grows on strongly and luxuriantly. For it is not to be forgotten that the same cruelty, which we found in the essence of every Culture, lies also in the essence of every powerful religion and in general in the essence of power, which is always evil; so that we shall understand it just as well, when a Culture is shattering, with a cry for liberty or at least justice, a too highly piled bulwark of religious claims. That which in this “ sorry scheme” of things will live (i.e., must live), is at the bottom of its nature a reflex of the primal-pain and primal-contradiction, and must therefore strike our eyes-” an organ fashioned for this world and earth “ -as an insatiable greed for existence and an eternal selfcontradiction, within the form of time, therefore as Becoming. Every moment devours the preceding one, every birth is the death of innumerable beings; begetting, living, murdering, all is one. Therefore we may compare this grand Culture with a blood-stained victor, who in his triumphal procession carries the defeated along as slaves chained to his chariot, slaves whom a beneficent power has so blinded that, almost crushed by the wheels of the chariot, they nevertheless still exclaim: “ Dignity of labour!” “ Dignity of Man!” The voluptuous Cleopatra-Culture throws ever again the most priceless pearls, the tears of compassion for the misery of slaves, into her golden goblet. Out of the emasculation of modern man has
been born the enormous social distress of the present time, not out of the true and deep commiseration for that misery; and if it should be true that the Greeks perished through their slavedom then another fact is much more certain, that we shall perish through the lack of slavery. Slavedom did not appear in any way objectionable, much less abominable, either to early Christianity or to the Germanic race. What an uplifting effect on us has the contemplation of the medieval bondman, with his legal and moral relations,-relations that were inwardly strong and tender,-towards the man of higher rank, with the profound fencing-in of his narrow existence-how uplifting!-and how reproachful! He who cannot reflect upon the position of affairs in Society without melancholy, who has learnt to conceive of it as the continual painful birth of those privileged Culture-men, in whose service everything else must be devoured-he will no longer be deceived by that false glamour, which the moderns have spread over the origin and meaning of the State. For what can the State mean to us, if not the means by which that social-process described just now is to be fused and to be guaranteed in its unimpeded continuance? Be the sociable instinct in individual man as strong as it may, it is only the iron clamp of the State that constrains the large masses upon one another in such a fashion that a chemical decomposition of Society, with its pyramid-like superstructure, is bound to take place. Whence however originates this sudden power of the State, whose aim lies much beyond the insight and beyond the egoism of the individual? How did the slave, the blind mole of Culture, originate? The Greeks in their instinct relating to the law of nations have betrayed it to us, in an instinct, which even in the ripest fulness of their civilisation and humanity never ceased to utter as out of a brazen mouth such words as: “ to the victor belongs the vanquished, with wife and child, life and property. Power gives the first right, and there is no right, which at bottom is not presumption, usurpation, violence.” Here again we see with what pitiless inflexibility Nature, in order to arrive at Society, forges for herself the cruel tool of the State-namely, that conqueror with the iron hand, who is nothing else than the objectivation of the instinct indicated. By the indefinable greatness and power of such conquerors the spectator feels, that they are only the means of an intention manifesting itself through them and yet hiding itself from them. The weaker forces attach themselves to them with such mysterious speed, and transform themselves so wonderfully, in the sudden swelling of that violent avalanche, under the charm of that creative kernel, into an affinity hitherto not existing, that it seems as if a magic will were emanating from them. Now when we see how little the vanquished trouble themselves after a short time about the horrible origin of the State, so that history informs us of no class of events worse than the origins of those sudden, violent, bloody and, at least in one point, inexplicable usurpations: when hearts involuntarily go out towards the magic of the growing State with the presentiment of an invisible deep purpose, where the calculating intellect is enabled to see an addition of forces only; when now the State is even contemplated with fervour as the goal and ultimate aim of the sacrifices and duties of the individual: then out of all that speaks the enormous necessity of the State, without which Nature might not succeed in coming, through Society, to her deliverance in semblance, in the mirror of the genius. What discernments does the instinctive pleasure in the State not overcome! One would indeed feel inclined to think that a man who looks into the origin of the State will henceforth seek his salvation at an awful distance from it; and where can one not see the monuments of its origin-devastated lands, destroyed cities, brutalised men, devouring hatred of nations! The State, of ignominiously low birth, for the majority of men a continually flowing source of hardship, at frequently recurring periods the consuming torch of mankind-and yet a word, at which we forget ourselves, a battle cry, which has filled men with enthusiasm for innumerable really heroic deeds, perhaps the highest and most venerable object for the blind and egoistic multitude which only in the tremendous moments of State-life has the strange expression of greatness on its face! We have, however, to consider the Greeks, with regard to the unique sun-height of their art, as the “ political men in themselves,” and certainly history knows of no second instance of such an awful unchaining of the political passion, such an unconditional immolation of all other interests in the service of this State-instinct; at the best one might distinguish the men of the Renascence in Italy with a similar title for like reasons and by way of comparison. So overloaded is that passion among the Greeks that it begins ever anew to rage against itself and to strike its teeth into its own flesh. This bloody jealousy of city against city, of party against party, this murderous greed of those little wars, the tiger-like triumph over the corpse of the slain enemy, in short, the incessant renewal of those Trojan scenes of struggle and horror, in the spectacle of which, as a genuine Hellene, Homer stands before us absorbed with delight-whither does this naive barbarism of the Greek State point? What is its excuse before the tribunal of eternal justice? Proud and calm, the State steps before this tribunal and by the hand it leads the flower of blossoming womanhood: Greek society. For this Helena the State waged those wars-and what grey-bearded judge could here condemn?Under this mysterious connection which we here divine between State and art, political greed and artistic creation, battlefield and work of art, we understand by the State, as already remarked, only the cramp-iron, which compels the Social process; whereas without the State, in the natural bellum omnizim contra omnes Society cannot strike root at all on a larger scale and beyond the reach of the family. Now, after States have been established almost everywhere, that bent of the bellum omnium contra omnes concentrates itself from time to time into a terrible gathering of war-clouds and discharges itself as it were in rare but so much the more violent shocks and lightning flashes. But in consequence of the effect of that belt’um,-an effect which is turned inwards and compressed,-Society is given time during the intervals to germinate and burst into leaf, in order, as soon as warmer days come, to let the shining blossoms of genius sprout forth. In face of the political world of the Hellenes, I will not hide those phenomena of the present in which I believe I discern dangerous atrophies of the political sphere equally critical for art and society. I f there should exist men, who as it were through birth are placed outside the national- and State-instincts, who consequently have to esteem the State onlyin so far as they conceive that it coincides with their own interest, then such men will necessarily imagine as the ultimate political aim the most undisturbed collateral existence of great political communities possible,in which they might be permitted to pursue their ownpurposeswithoutrestriction. Withthisideain their heads they will promote that policy which will
offer the greatest security to these purposes; whereas it is unthinkable, that they, against their intentions, guided perhaps by an unconscious instinct, should sacrifice themselves for the State-tendency, unthinkable because they lack that very instinct. All other citizens of the State are in the dark about what Nature intends with her State-instinct within them, and they follow blindly; only those who stand outside this instinct know what they want from the State and what the State is to grant them. Therefore it is almost unavoidable that such men should gain great influence in the State because they are allowed to consider it as a means, whereas all the others under the sway of those unconscious purposes of the State are themselves only means for the fulfilment of the State-purpose. In order now to attain, through the medium of the State the highest furtherance of their selfish aims, it is above all necessary, that the State be wholly freed from those awfully incalculable war-convulsions so that it may be used rationally; and thereby they strive with all their might for a condition of things in which war is an impossibility. For that purpose the thing to do is first to curtail and to enfeeble the political separatisms and factions and through the establishment of large equipoised State-bodies and the mutual safeguarding of them to make the successful result of an aggressive war and consequently war itself the greatest improbability; as on the other hand they will endeavour to wrest the question of war and peace from the decision of individual lords, in order to be able rather to appeal to the egoism of the masses or their representatives; for which purpose they again need slowly to dissolve the monarchic instincts of the nations. This purpose they attain best through the most general promulgation of the liberal optimistic view of the world, which has its roots in the doctrines of French Rationalism and the French Revolution, ie., in a wholly un-Germanic, genuinely neo-Latin, shallow, and unmetaphysical philosophy. I cannot help seeing in the prevailing international movements of the present day, and the simultaneous promulgation of universal suffrage, the effects of the fear of war above everything else, yea I behold behind these movements, those truly international homeless money-hermits, as the really alarmed, who, with their natural lack of the State-instinct, have learnt to abuse politics as a means of the Exchange, and State and Society as an apparatus for their own enrichment. Against the deviation of the State tendency into a money-tendency, to be feared from this side, the only remedy is war and once again war, in the emotions of which this at least becomes obvious, that the State is not founded upon the fear of the war-demon, as a protective institution for egoistic individuals, but in love to fatherland and prince, it produces an ethical impulse, indicative of a much higher destiny. If I therefore designate as a dangerous and characteristic sign of the present political situation the application of revolutionary thought in the service of a selfish State-less money-aristocracy, if at the same time I conceive of the enormous dissemination of liberal optimism as the result of modern financial affairs fallen into strange hands, and if I imagine all evils of social conditions together with the necessary decay of the arts to have either germinated from that root or grown together with it, one will have to pardon my occasionally chanting a Paean on war. Horribly clangs its silvery bow; and although it comes along like the night, war is nevertheless Apollo, the true divinity for consecrating and purifying the State. First of all, however, as is said in the beginning of the ” Iliad,” he lets fly his arrow on the mules and dogs. Then he strikes the men themselves, and everywhere pyres break into flames. Be it then pronounced that war is just as much a necessity for the State as the slave is for society, and who can avoid this verdict if he honestly asks himself about the causes of the never-equalled Greek art-perfection ? He who contemplates war and its uniformed possibility, the soldiers profession, with respect to the hitherto described nature of the State, must arrive at the conviction, that through war and in the profession of arms is placed before our eyes an image, or even perhaps the prototype of the State. Here we see as the most general effect of the war-tcndcncy, an immediate decomposition and division of the chaotic mass into military castes, out of which rises, pyramid shaped, on an exceedingly broad base of slaves, the edifice of the ” martial society.” The unconscious purpose of the whole movement constrains every individual under its yoke, and produces also in heterogeneous natures as it were a chemical transformation of their qualities until they are brought into affinity with that purpose. In the highest castes one perceivcs already a little more of what in this internal process is involved at the bottom, namely the creation of the military genius-with whom we have become acquainted as the original founder of states. In the case of many States, as, for example, in the Lycurgian constitution of Sparta, one can distinctly perceive the impress of that fundamental idea of the State, that of the creation of the military genius. If we now imagine the military primal State in its greatest activity, at its proper ” labour,” and if we fix our glance upon the whole technique of war, we cannot avoid correcting our notions picked up from everywhere, as to the “ dignity of man ” and the “ dignity of labour” by the question, whether the idea of dignity is applicable also to that labour, which has as its purpose the destruction of the “ dignified ” man, as well as to the man who is entrusted with that “ dignified labour,” or whether in this warlike task of the State those mutually contradictory ideas do not neutralise one another. I should like to think the warlike man to be a means of the military genius and his labour again only a tool in the hands of that same genius; and not to him, as absolute man and non-genius, but to him as a means of the genius-whose pleasure also can be to choose his tool’s destruction as a mere pawn sacrificed on the strategist’s chessboard-is due a degree of dignity, of that dignity namely, to have been deemed worthy of being a means of the genius. But what is shown here in a single instance is valid in the most general sense; every human being, with his total activity, only has dignity in so far as he is a tool of the genius, consciously or unconsciously ; from this we may immediately deduce the ethical conclusion, that “ man in himself,” the absolute man possesses neither dignity, nor rights, nor duties; only as a wholly determined being serving unconscious purposes can man excuse his existence. Plato’s perfect State is according to these considerations certainly something still greater than even the warm-blooded among his admirers believe, not to mention the smiling mien of superiority with which our ” historically ” educated refuse such a fruit of antiquity. The proper aim of the State, the Olympian existence and ever-renewed procreation and preparation of the genius,-compared with which all other things are only tools, expedients and factors towards realisation-is here discovered with a poetic intuition and painted with firmness. Plato saw through the awfully devastated Herma of the then-existing State-life and perceived even then something divine in its interior. He believed that one might be able to take out this divine image and that the grim and barbarically distorted outside and shell did not belong to the essence of the State: the whole fervour and sublimity of his political passion threw itself upon this belief, upon that desire-and in the flames of this fire he perished. That in his perfect State he did not place at the head the genius in its general meaning,
but only the genius of wisdom and of knowledge, that he altogether excluded the inspired artist from his State, that was a rigid consequence of the Socratian judgment on art, which Plato, struggling against himself, had made his own. This more external, almost incidental gap must not prevent our recognising in the total conception of the Platonic State the wonderfully great hieroglyph of a profound and eternally to be interpreted esoteric doctrine of the connection between State and Genius. What we believed we could divine of this cryptograph we have said in this preface. THE GREEK WOMAN (POSTHUMOUS) Translated by Maximillian A. Mugge (1871) JUST as Plato from disguises and obscurities brought to light the innermost purpose of the State, so also he conceived the chief cause of the position of the Hellenic Woman with regard to the State; in both cases he saw in what existed around him the image of the ideas manifested to him, and of these ideas of course the actual was only a hazy picture and phantasmagoria. He who according to the usual custom considers the position of the Hellenic Woman to be altogether unworthy and repugnant to humanity, must also turn with this reproach against the Platonic conception of this position; for, as it were, the existing forms were only precisely set forth in this latter conception. Here therefore our question repeats itself: should not the nature and the position of the Hellenic Woman have a necessary relation to the goals of the Hellenic Will? Of course there is one side of the Platonic conception of woman, which stands in abrupt contrast with Hellenic custom: Plato gives to woman a full share in the rights, knowledge and duties of man, and considers woman only as the weaker sex, in that she will not achieve remarkable success in all things, without however disputing this sex’s title to all those things. We must not attach more value to this strange notion than to the expulsion of the artist from the ideal State; these are side-lines daringly mis-drawn, aberrations as it were of the hand otherwise so sure and of the so calmly contemplating eye which at times under the influence of the deceased master becomes dim and dejected; in this mood he exaggerates the master’s paradoxes and in the abundance of his love gives himself satisfaction by very eccentrically intensifying the latter’s doctrines even to foolhardiness. The most significant word however that Plato as a Greek could say on the relation of woman to the State, was that so objectionable demand, that in the perfect State, the Faviily was to cease. At present let us take no account of his abolishing even marriage, in order to carry out this demand fully, and of his substituting solemn nuptials arranged by order of the State, between the bravest men and the noblest women, for the attainment of beautiful offspring. In that principal proposition however he has indicated most distinctly-indeed too distinctly, offensively distinctly-an important preparatory step of the Hellenic Will towards the procreation of the genius. But in the customs of the Hellenic people the claim of the family on man and child was extremely limited: the man lived in the State, the child grew up for the State and was guided by the hand of the State. The Greek Will took care that the need of culture could not be satisfied in the seclusion of a small circle. From the State the individual has to receive everything in order to return everything to the State. Woman accordingly means to the State, what sleep does to man. In her nature lies the healing power, which replaces that which has been used up, the beneficial rest in which everything immoderate confines itself, the eternal Same, by which the excessive and the surplus regulate themselves. In her the future generation dreams. Woman is more closely related to Nature than man and in all her essentials she remains ever herself. Culture is with her always something external, a something which does not touch the kernel that is eternally faithful to Nature, therefore the culture of woman might well appear to the Athenian as something indifferent, yea-if one only wanted to conjure it up in one’s mind, as something ridiculous. He who at once feels himself compelled from that to infer the position of women among the Greeks as unworthy and all too cruel, should not indeed take as his criterion the ” culture ” of modern woman and her claims, against which it is sufficient just to point out the Olympian women together with Penelope, Antigone, Elektra. Of course it is true that these are ideal figures, but who would be able to create such ideals out of the present world?-Further indeed is to be considered what sons these women have borne, and what women they must have been to have given birth to such sons! The Hellenic woman as mother had to live in obscurity, because the political instinct together with its highest aim demanded it. She had to vegetate like a plant, in the narrow circle, as a symbol of the Epicurean wisdom la/qe biw/saj (living unseen, unknown). Again, in more recent times, with the complete disintegration of the principle of the State, she had to step in as helper; the family as a makeshift for the State is her work; and in this sense the artistic aim of the, State had to abase itself to the level of a domestic art. Thereby it has been brought about, that the passion of love, as the one realm wholly accessible to women, regulates our art to the very core. Similarly, home-education considers itself so to speak as the only natural one and suffers State-education only as a questionable infringement upon the right of home-education : all this is right as far as the modern State only is concerned.-With that the nature of woman withal remains unaltered, but herpower is, according to the position which the State takes up with regard to women, a different one. Women have indeed really the power to make good to a certain extent the deficiencies of the State-ever faithful to their nature, which I have compared to sleep. In Greek antiquity they held that position, which the most supreme will of the State assigned to them: for that reason they have been glorified as never since. The goddesses of Greek mythology are their images: the Pythia and the Sibyl, as well as the Socratic Diotima are the priestesses out of whom divine wisdom speaks. Now one understands why the proud resignation of the Spartan woman at the news of her son’s death in battle can be no fable. Woman in relation to the State felt herself in her proper position, therefore she had more dignity than woman has ever had since. Plato who through abolishing family and marriage still intensifies the position of woman, feels now so much reverence towards them, that oddly enough he is misled by a subsequent statement of their equality with man, to abolish again the order of rank which is their due: the highest triumph of the woman of antiquity, to have seduced even the wisest! As long as the State is still in an embryonic condition woman as mother preponderates and determines the grade and the manifestations of Culture: in the same way as woman is destined to complement the disorganised State. What Tacitus says of German women: inesse quin etiam sanctum aliquid et providum putant, nec aut consilia earum aspernantur aut
responsa neglegunt, applies on the whole to all nations not yet arrived at the real State. In such stages one feels only the more strongly that which at all times becomes again manifest, that the instincts of woman as the bulwark of the future generation are invincible and that in her care for the preservation of the species Nature speaks out of these instincts very distinctly. How far this divining power reaches is determined, it seems, by the greater or lesser consolidation of the State: in disorderly and more arbitrary conditions, where the whim or the passion of the individual man carries along with itself whole tribes, then woman suddenly comes forward as the warning prophetess. But in Greece too there was a never slumbering care that the terribly overcharged political instinct might splinter into dust and atoms the little political organisms before they attained their goals in any way. Here the Hellenic Will created for itself ever new implements by means of which it spoke, adjusting, moderating, warning: above all it is in the Pythia, that the power of woman to compensate the State manifested itself so clearly, as it has never done since. That a people split up thus into small tribes and municipalities, was yet at bottom whole and was performing the task of its nature within its faction, was assured by that wonderful phenomenon the Pythia and the Delphian oracle: for always, as long as Hellenism created its great works of art, it spoke out of one mouth and as one Pythia. We cannot hold back the portentous discernment that to the Will individuation means much suffering, and that in order to reach those individuals It needs an enormous step-ladder of individuals. It is true our brains reel with the consideration whether the Will in order to arrive at Art, has perhaps effused Itself out into these worlds, stars, bodies, and atoms: at least it ought to become clear to us then, that Art is not necessary for the individuals, but for the Will itself: a sublime outlook at which we shall be permitted to glance once more from another position.
HOMER’S COMPETITION Translated by Maximillian A. Mugge When one speaks of “ humanity” the notion lies at the bottom, that humanity is that which separates and distinguishes man from nature. But such a distinction does not in reality exist: the “ natural” qualities and the properly called “ human” ones have grown up inseparably together. Man in his highest and noblest capacities is nature and bears in himself her awful twofold character. His abilities generally considered dreadful and inhuman are perhaps indeed the fertile soil, out of which alone can grow forth all humanity in emotions, actions and works. Thus the Greeks, the most humane men (Menschen) of ancient times, have in themselves a trait of cruelty, of tiger-like pleasure in destruction: a trait, which in the grotesquely magnified image of the Hellene, in Alexander the Great, is very plainly visible, which, however, in their whole history, as well as in their mythology, must terrify us who meet them with the emasculate idea of modern humanity. When Alexander has the feet of Batis, the brave defender of Gaza, bored through, and binds the living body to his chariot in order to drag him about exposed to the scorn of his soldiers, that is a sickening caricature of Achilles, who at night ill-uses Hector’s corpse by a similar trailing; but even this trait has for us something offensive, something which inspires horror. It gives us a peep into the abysses of hatred. With the same sensation perhaps we stand before the bloody and insatiable selflaceration of two Greek parties, as for example in the Corcyrean revolution. When the victor, in a fight of the cities, according to the law of warfare, executes the whole male population and sells all the women and children into slavery, we see, in the sanction of such a law, that the Greek deemed it a positive necessity to allow his hatred to break forth unimpeded; in such moments the compressed and swollen feeling relieved itself; the tiger bounded forth, a voluptuous cruelty shone out of his fearful eye. Why had the Greek sculptor to represent again and again war and fights in innumerable repetitions, extended human bodies whose sinews are tightened through hatred or through the recklessness of triumph, fighters wounded and writhing with pain, or the dying with the last rattle in their throat? Why did the whole Greek world exult in the fighting scenes of the Iliad? I am afraid, we do not understand them enough in “ Greek fashion,” and that we should even shudder, if for once we did understand them thus. But what lies, as the womb of the Hellenic, behind the Homeric world? In the latter, by the extremely artistic definiteness, and the calm and purity of the lines we are already lifted far above the purely material amalgamation: its colours, by an artistic deception, appear lighter, milder, warmer; its men, in this coloured, warm illumination, appear better and more sympathetic—but where do we look, if, no longer guided and protected by Homer’s hand, we step backwards into the pre-Homeric world? Only the night and horror, into the products of a fancy accustomed to the horrible. What earthly existence is reflected in the loathsome-awful theogonian lore: a life swayed only the children of the night, strife, amorous desires, deception, age and death. Let us imagine the suffocating atmosphere of Hesiod’s poem, still thickened and darkened and without the mitigations and purifications, which poured over Hellas from Delphi and the numerous seats of the gods! If we mix this thickened Beotian air with the grim voluptuousness of the Etruscans, then such a reality would extort from us a world of myths within which Uranos, Kronos and Zeus and the struggles of the Titans would appear as a relief. Combat in this brooding atmosphere is salvation and safety; the cruelty of victory is the summit of life’s glories. And just as in truth the idea of Greek law has developed from murder and expiation of murder, so also nobler civilisation takes her first wreath of victory from the altar of the expiation of murder. Behind that bloody age stretches a wave-furrow deep into Hellenic history. The names of Orpheus, of Mus�us, and their cults indicate to what consequences the uninterrupted sight of a world of warfare and cruelty led—to the loathing of existence, to the conception of this existence as a punishment to be borne to the end, to the belief in the identify of existence and indebtedness. But these particular conclusions are not specifically Hellenic; through them Greece comes into contact with India and the Orient generally. The Hellenic genius had ready yet another answer to the question: what does a life of fighting and of victory mean? and gives this answer in the whole breadth of Greek history. In order to understand the latter we must start from the fact that the Greek genius admitted the existing fearful impulse, and deemed it justified; whereas in the Orphic phase of
thought was contained the belief that life with such an impulse as its root would not be worth living. Strife and the pleasure of victory were acknowledged; and nothing separates the Greek world more from ours than the colouring, derived hence, of some ethical ideas, e.g., of Eris and of Envy. When the traveller Pausanius during his wanderings through Greece visited the Helicon, a very old copy of the first didactic poem of the Greeks, Hesiod’s The Works and Days, was shown to him, inscribed upon plates of lead and severely damaged by time and weather. However he recognised this much, that, unlike the usual copies it had not at its head that little hymnus on Zeus, but began at once with the declaration: “ Two Eris-goddesses are on earth.” This is one of the most noteworthy Hellenic thoughts and worthy to be impressed on the newcomer immediately at the entrance-gate of Greek ethics. “ One would like to praise the one Eris, just as much as to blame the other, of one uses one’s reason. For these two goddesses have quite different dispositions. For the one, the cruel one, furthers the evil war and feud! No mortal likes her, but under the yoke of need one pays honour to the burdensome Eris, according to the decree of the immortals. She, as the elder, gave birth to black night. Zeus the high-ruling one, however, placed the other Eris upon the roots of the earth and among men as a much better one. She urges even the unskilled man to work, and if one who lacks property beholds another who is rich, then he hastens to sow in similar fashion and to plant and to put his house in order; the neighbour vies with the neighbour who strives after fortune. Good is this Eris to men. The potter also has a grudge against the potter, and the carpenter against the carpenter; the beggar envies the beggar, and the singer the singer.” The two last verses which treat of the odium figulinum appear to our scholars to be incomprehensible in this place. According to their judgment the predicates: “ grudge” and “ envy” fit only the nature of the evil Eris, and for this reason they do not hesitate to designate these verses as spurious or thrown by chance into this place. For that judgment however a system of ethics other than the Hellenic must have inspired these scholars unawares; for in these verses to the good Eris Aristotle finds no offence. And not only Aristotle but the whole Greek antiquity thinks of spite and envy otherwise than we do and agrees with Hesiod, who first designates as an evil one that Eris who leads men against one another to a hostile war of extermination, and secondly praises another Eris as the good one, who as jealousy, spite, envy, incites men to activity but not to the action of war to the knife but the action of competition. The Greek is envious and conceives of this quality not as a blemish, but as the effect of a beneficent deity. What a gulf of ethical judgment between us and him? Because he is envious he also feels, with every superfluity of honour, riches, splendour and fortune, the envious eye of a god resting on himself, and he fears this envy; in this case the latter reminds him of the transitoriness of every human lot; he dreads his very happiness and, sacrificing the best of it, he bows before the divine envy. This conception does not perhaps estrange him from his gods; their significance on the contrary is expressed by the thought that with them man in whose soul jealousy is enkindled against every other living being, is never allowed to venture into competition. In the fight of Thamyris with the Muses, of Marsyas with Apollo, in the heart-moving fate of Niobe appears the horrible opposition of the two powers, who must never fight with one another, man and god. The greater and more sublime however a Greek is, the brighter in him appears the ambitious flame, devouring everybody who runs with him on the same track. Aristotle once made a list of such competitions on a large scale; among them is the most striking instance how even a dead person can still incite a living one to consuming jealousy; thus for example Aristotle designates the relation between the Kolophonian Xenophanes and Homer. We do not understand this attack on the national hero of poetry in all its strength, if we do not imagine, as later on also with Plato, the root of this attack to be the ardent desire to step into the place of the overthrown poet and to inherit his fame. Every great Hellene hands on the torch of the competition; at every great virtue a new light is kindled. If the young Themistocles could not sleep at the thought of the laurels of Miltiades so his early awakened bent released itself only in the long emulation with Aristides in that uniquely noteworthy, purely instinctive genius of his political activity, which Thucydides describes. How characteristic are both question and answer, when a notable opponent of Pericles is asked, whether he or Pericles was the better wrestler in the city, and he gives the answer: “ Even if I throw him down he denies that he has fallen, attains his purpose and convinces those who saw him fall.” If one wants to see that sentiment unashamed in its naive expressions, the sentiment as to the necessity of competition lest the state’s welfare be threatened, one should think of the original meaning of ostracism, as for example the Ephesians pronounced it at the banishment of Hermodor. “ Among us nobody shall be the best; if however someone is the best, then let him be so elsewhere and among others” [Heraklitus]. Why should not someone be the best? Because with that the competition would fail, and the eternal life-basis of the Hellenic state would be endangered. Later on ostracism receives quite another position with regard to competition; it is applied, when the danger becomes obvious that one of the great competing politicians and party-leaders feels himself urged on in the heat of the conflict towards harmful and destructive measures and dubious coups d’etat. The original sense of this peculiar institution however is not that of a safety-valve but that of a stimulant. The all-excelling individual was to be removed in order that the competition of forces might reawaken, a thought which is hostile to the “ exclusiveness” of genius in the modern sense but which assumes that in the natural order of things there are always several geniuses which incite one another to action, as much also as they hold one another within the bounds of moderation. That is the kernel of the Hellenic competition-conception: it abominates autocracy, and fears its dangers; it desires as a preventive against the genius—a second genius. Every natural gift must develop itself by competition. Thus the Hellenic national pedagogy demands, whereas modern educators fear nothing as much as the unchaining of the socalled ambition. Here one fears selfishness as the “ evil in itself”—with the exception of the Jesuits, who agree with the Ancients and who, possibly, for that reason, are the most efficient educators of our time. They seem to believe that selfishness, i.e., the individual element is only the most powerful agens but that it obtains its character as “ good” and “ evil” essentially from the aims towards which it strives. To the Ancients however the aim of the agonistic education was the welfare of the whole, of the civic society. Every Athenian, for instance, was to cultivate his ego in competition, so far that it should be of the highest service to Athens and should do the least harm. It was not unmeasured and immeasurable as modern ambition generally is; the youth thought of the welfare of his native town when he vied with others in running, throwing or singing; it was her glory that he wanted to
increase with his own; it was to his town’s gods that he dedicated the wreaths which the umpires as a mark of honour set upon his head. Every Greek from childhood felt within himself the burning wish to be in the competition of the towns as an instrument for the welfare of his own town; in this his selfishness was kindled into flame, by this his selfishness was bridled and restricted. Therefore the individuals in antiquity were freer, because their aims were nearer and more tangible. Modern man, on the contrary, is everywhere hampered by infinity, like the fleet-footed Achilles in the allegory of the Eleate Zeno: infinity impedes him, he does not even overtake the tortoise. But as the youths to be educated were brought up struggling against one another, so their educators were in turn in emulation amongst themselves. Distrustfully jealous, the great musical masters, Pindar and Simonides, stepped side by side; in rivalry the sophist, the higher teacher of antiquity meets his fellow-sophist; even the most universal kind of instruction, through the drama, was imparted to the people only under the form of an enormous wrestling of the great musical and dramatic artists. How wonderful! “ And even the artist has a grudge against the artist!” And the modern man dislikes in an artist nothing so much as the personal battle-feeling, whereas the Greek recognises the artist only in such a personal struggle. There were the modern suspects weakness of the work of art, the Hellene seeks the source of his highest strength! That, which by way of example in Plato is of special artistic importance in his dialogues, is usually the result of an emulation with the art of the orators, of the sophists, of the dramatists of his time, invented deliberately in order that at the end he could say: “ Behold, I can also do what my great rivals can; yea I can do it even better than they. No Protagoras has composed such beautiful myths as I, no dramatist such a spirited and fascinating whole as the Symposion, no orator penned such an oration as I put up in the Gorgias—and now I reject all that together and condemn all imitative art! Only the competition made me a poet, a sophist, an orator!” What a problem unfolds itself there before us, if we ask about the relationship between the competition and the conception of the work of art!— If on the other hand we remove the competition from Greek life, then we look at once into the pre-Homeric abyss of horrible savagery, hatred, and pleasure in destruction. This phenomenon alas! shows itself frequently when a great personality was, owing to an enormously brilliant deed, suddenly withdrawn from the competition and became hors de concours according to his, and his fellow-citizens’ judgment. Almost without exception the effect is awful; and if one usually draws from these consequences the conclusion that the Greek was unable to bear glory and fortune, one should say more exactly that he was unable to bear fame without further struggle, and fortune at the end of the competition. There is no more distinct instance than the fate of Miltiades. Placed upon a solitary height and lifted far above every fellow-combatant through is incomparable success at Marathon, he feels a low thirsting for revenge awakened within himself against a citizen of Para, with whom he had been at enmity long ago. To satisfy his desire he misuses reputation, the public exchequer and civic honour and disgraces himself. Conscious of his ill-success he falls into unworthy machinations. He forms a clandestine and godless connection with Timo a priestess of Demeter, and enters at night the sacred temple, from which every man was excluded. After he has leapt over the wall and comes ever nearer the shrine of the goddess, the dreadful horror of a panic-like terror suddenly seizes him; almost prostrate and unconscious he feels himself driven back and leaping the wall once more, he falls down paralysed and severely injured. The siege must be raised and a disgraceful death impresses its seal upon a brilliant heroic career, in order to darken it for all posterity. After the battle at Marathon the envy of the celestials has caught him. And this divine envy breaks into flames when it beholds man without rival, without opponent, on the solitary height of glory. He now has beside him only the gods—and therefore he has them against him. These however betray him into a deed of the Hybris, and under it he collapses. Let us well observe that just as Miltiades perishes so the noblest Greek states perish when they, merit and fortune, have arrived from the racecourse at the temple of Nike. Athens, which had destroyed the independence of her allies and avenged with severity the rebellions of her subjected foes, Sparta, which after the battle of �gospotamoi used her preponderance over Hellas in a still harsher and more cruel fashion, both these, as in the case of Miltiades, brought about their ruin through deeds of the Hybris, as a proof that without envy, jealousy, and competing ambition the Hellenic State like the Hellenic man degenerates. He becomes bad and cruel, thirsting for revenge, and godless; in short, he becomes “ pre-Homeric”—and then it needs only a panic in order to bring about his fall and to crush him. Sparta and Athens surrender to Persia, as Themistocles and Alcibiades have done; they betray Hellenism after they have given up the noblest Hellenic fundamental thought, the competition, and Alexander, the coarsened copy and abbreviation of Greek history, now invents the cosmopolitan Hellene, and the so-called “ Hellenism.” (Completed on December 29, 1872) NIETZSCHE ON THALES Translated by Maximillian A. Mugge Greek philosophy seems to begin with a preposterous idea, with the proposition that water is the origin and mother-womb of all things. Is it really necessary to stop there and become serious ? Yes, and for three reasons: Firstly, because the proposition does enunciate something about the origin of things; secondly, because it does so without figure and fable; thirdly and lastly, because in it is contained, although only in the chrysalis state, the idea: Everything is one. The first mentioned reason leaves Thales still in the company of religious and superstitious people, the second however takes him out of this company and shows him to us as a natural philosopher, but by virtue of the third, Thales becomes the first Greek philosopher. If he had said: “ Out of water earth is evolved,” we should only have a scientific hypothesis; a false one, though nevertheless difficult to refute. But he went beyond the scientific. In his presentation of this concept of unity through the hypothesis of water, Thales has not surmounted the low level of the physical discernments of his time, but actually leapt over them. The deficient and unorganized observations of an empiric nature which Thales had made as to the occurrence and transformations of water, or to be more exact, of the Moist, would not in the least have made possible or even suggested such an immense generalization. That which drove him to this generalization was a metaphysical thought, which had its origin in mystic intuition and which together with the ever renewed endeavours to express it better, we find in all philosophies,-the proposition: Everything is
one ! How forcefully such a faith deals with all empiricism is worthy of note; with Thales especially one can learn how Philosophy has behaved at all times, when she wanted to get beyond the hedges of experience to her magically attracting goal. On light supports she leaps in advance; hope and divination wing her feet. Calculating reason too, clumsily pants after her and seeks better supports in its attempt to reach that alluring goal, at which its divine companion has already arrived. One imagines two wanderers by a wild forest-stream which carries with it rolling stones; the one, light-footed, leaps over it using the stones and swinging upon them ever further and further, though they precipitously sink into the depths behind. The other stands helpless there most of the time; one has first to build a pathway which will bear a heavy, weary step; sometimes that cannot be done and then no god will help one across the stream. What therefore carries philosophical thinking so quickly to its goal ? Does it distinguish itself from calculating and measuring thought only by its more rapid flight through large spaces ? No, for a strange illogical power wings the foot of philosophical thinking; and this power is creative imagination. Lifted by the latter, philosophical thinking leaps from possibility to possibility, and these for the time being are taken as certainties; and now and then even whilst on the wing it gets hold of certainties. An ingenious presentiment shows them to the flier; demonstrable certainties are divined at a distance to be at this point. Especially powerful is the strength of imagination in the lightning-like seizing and illuminating of similarities; afterwards reflection applies its measuring and models (templates) and seeks to substitute the similarities by equalities, that which was seen side by side by causalities. But though this should never be possible, even in the case of Thales the indemonstrable philosophizing has yet its value; although all supports are broken when Logic and the rigidity of Empiricism want to get across to the proposition: Everything is water; yet still there is always, after the demolition of the scientific edifice, a remainder, and in this very remainder lies a moving force and as it were the hope of future fertility. Of course I do not mean that the thought in any restriction or attenuation, or as allegory, still retains some kind of ” truth “ ; as if, for instance, one might imagine the creating artist standing near a waterfall, and seeing in the forms which leap towards him, an artistically prefiguring game of the water with human and animal bodies, masks, plants, rocks, nymphs, griffins, and with all existing types in general, so that to him the proposition: Everything is water, is confirmed. The thought of Thales has rather its value — even after the perception of its indemonstrableness — in the very fact, that it was meant unmythically and unallegorically. The Greeks among whom Thales became so suddenly conspicuous were the anti-type of all realists by only believing essentially in the reality of mortals and gods, and by contemplating the whole of nature as if it were only a disguise, masquerade and metamorphosis of these god-humans. Humans were to them the truth, and essence of things; everything else mere phenomenon and deceiving play. For that very reason they experienced incredible difficulty in conceiving of ideas as ideas. Whilst with the moderns the most personal item sublimates itself into abstractions, with them the most abstract notions became personified. Thales, however, said, “ Not man but water is the reality of things”; he began to believe in nature, in so far that he at least believed in water. As a mathematician and astronomer he had grown cold towards everything mythical and allegorical, and even if he did not succeed in becoming disillusioned as to the pure abstraction, Everything is one, and although he left off at a physical expression he was nevertheless among the Greeks of his time a surprising rarity. Perhaps the exceedingly conspicuous Orpheans possessed in a still higher degree than he the faculty of conceiving abstractions and of thinking unplastically (without images); only they did not succeed in expressing these abstractions except in the form of the allegory. Also Pherecydes of Syrus who is a contemporary of Thales and akin to him in many physical conceptions hovers with the expression of the latter in that middle region where Allegory is wedded to Mythos, so that he dares, for example, to compare the earth with a winged oak, which hangs in the air with spread pinions and which Zeus bedecks, after the defeat of Kronos, with a magnificent robe of honour, into which with his own hands Zeus embroiders lands, water and rivers. In contrast with such gloomy allegorical philosophizing scarcely to be translated into the realm of the comprehensible, Thales’ are the works of a creative master who began to look into Nature’s depths without fantastic fabling. If as it is true he used Science and the demonstrable but soon outleapt them, then this likewise is a typical characteristic of the philosophical genius. The Greek word which designates the Sage belongs etymologically to sapio, I taste, sapiens, the tasting one,sisyphos, the person of the most delicate taste; the peculiar art of the philosopher therefore consists, according to the opinion of the people, in a delicate selective judgment by taste, by discernment, by significant differentiation. He is not prudent, if one calls him prudent, who in his own affairs finds out the good; Aristotle rightly says: “ That which Thales and Anaxagoras know, people will call unusual, astounding,difficult,divine but — useless, since human possessions were of no concern to those two.” Through thus selecting and precipitating the unusual, astounding, difficult, and divine, Philosophy marks the boundary lines dividing her from Science in the same way as she does it from Prudence by the emphasizing of the useless. Science without thus selecting, without such delicate taste, pounces upon everything knowable, in the blind covetousness to know all at any price; philosophical thinking however is always on the track of the things worth knowing, on the track of the great and most important discernments. Now the idea of greatness is changeable, as well in the moral as in the esthetic realm, thus Philosophy begins with a legislation with respect to greatness, she becomes a Nomenclator (name-giver). ” That is great,” she says, and therewith she raises us above the blind, untamed covetousness of our thirst for knowledge. By the idea of greatness she assuages this thirst: and it is chiefly by this, that she contemplates the greatest discernment, that of the essence and kernel of things, as attainable and attained. When Thales says, ” Everything is water,” we are startled up out of our worm-like mauling of and crawling about among the individual sciences; we divine the last solution of things and master through this divination the common perplexity of the lower grades of knowledge. Philosophers try to make the total-chord of the universe reecho within themselves and then to project it into ideas outside themselves: whilst they are contemplative like the artistic, sympathetic like the religious, looking out for ends and causalities like the scientific, whilst they feel themselves swell up to the macrocosm, they still retain the circumspection to contemplate themselves coldly as the reflex of the world; they retain that cool-headedness, which dramatic artists possess, when they transform themselves into other bodies, speak out of them, and yet know how to project this transformation outside themselves into written verses. What the verse is to the poet, dialectic thinking is to philosophers; they snatch at it in order to hold fast their enchantment, in
order to petrify it. And just as words and verse to dramatists are only stammerings in a foreign language, to tell in it what they lived, what they saw, and what they can directly promulgate by gesture and music only, thus the expression of every deep philosophical intuition by means of dialectics and scientific reflection is, it is true, on the one hand the only means to communicate what has been seen, but on the other hand it is a paltry means, and at the bottom a metaphorical, absolutely inexact translation into a different sphere and language. Thus Thales saw the Unity of the ” Existent,” and when he wanted to communicate this idea he talked of water. NIETZSCHE ON PARMENIDES Translated by Maximillian A. Mugge While each word of Heraclitus expresses the pride and the majesty of truth, but of truth grasped in intuitions rather than attained by the rope ladder of logic, while in Sibylline rapture Heraclitus gazes but does not peer, knows but does not calculate, his contemporary Parmenides stands beside him as counter-image, likewise expressing a type of truth-teller but one formed of ice rather than fire, pouring cold piercing light all around. Once in his life Parmenides, probably at a fairly advanced age, had a moment of purest absolutely bloodless abstraction, unclouded by any reality. This moment—un-Greek as no other in the two centuries of the Tragic Age—whose product is the doctrine of Being—became for Parmenides’ own life the boundary stone that separates two periods. At the same time however, this moment divides pre-Socratic thinking into two halves. The first might be called the Anaximandrian period, the second the Parmenidean proper. The first, older period of Parmenides’ own philosophizing still bears Anaximandrian traces; it brought forth an organized philosophic-physical system in answer to Anaximander’s questions. When later Parmenides was seized by that icy tremor of abstraction and came face to face with his utterly simple proposition as to being and non-being, his own previous teachings joined the rubbish-heap of the older doctrines. Still, he seems not to have lost every trace of paternal good-will toward the sturdy and well-made child of his youth, and he helped himself out by saying, “ There is only one right way, to be sure, but if one wishes for a change to try another, then my former view, as to quality and consistency, is the only right one.” Guarding himself by this approach, he awarded to his former physical system a dignified and extensive position, even in that great poem on nature which was meant to proclaim his new insight as really the only way of truth. This paternal solicitude, even considering that it might have crept in by error, presents the only trace of human sentiment in a nature wholly petrified by logical rigidity and almost transformed into a thinking machine. Parmenides, whose personal acquaintance with Anaximander does not seem unbelievable to me, and whose starting position from Anaximander’s doctrines is not merely credible but evident, had the same distrust toward a total separation of a world which only is and a world which only comes-to-be that Heraclitus too had seized upon and which had led him to the denial of all being. Both men sought a way out of the contradictoriness and disparity of a double world order. The leap into the indefinite, undefineable, by which Anaximander had once and for all escaped the realm of come-to-be and its empirically given qualities, did not come easy to minds as independent as those of Heraclitus and Parmenides. They sought to stay on their feet as long as they could, preserving their leap for the spot where the foot no longer finds support and one must jump to keep from falling. Both of them looked repeatedly at just that world which Anaximander had condemned with such melancholy and had declared as the place of wickedness and simultaneously of atonement for the unjustness of all coming-to-be. Gazing at this world, Heraclitus, as we have seen, discovered what wonderful order, regularity and certainty manifested themselves in all coming-to-be; from this he concluded that coming-to-be itself could not be anything evil or unjust. His look was oriented from a point of view totally different from that of Parmenides. The latter compared the qualities and believed that he found them not equal, but divided into two rubrics. Comparing, for example, light and dark, he found the latter obviously but the negation of the former. Thus he differentiated between positive and negative qualities, seriously attempting to find and note this basic contradictory principle throughout all nature. His method was as follows: he took several contradictories, light and heavy for example, rare and dense, active and passive, and held them against his original model contradictories light and dark. Whatever corresponded to light was the positive quality, whatever corresponded to dark, the negative. Taking heavy and light, for example, light [in the sense of ‘weightless’] was apportioned to light, heavy to dark, and thus heavy seemed to him but the negation of weightless, but weightlessness seemed a positive quality. The very method exhibits a defiant talent for abstract-logical procedure, closed against all influences of sensation. For heaviness surely seems to urge itself upon the senses as a positive quality; yet this did not prevent Parmenides from labelling it as a negation. Likewise he designated earth as against fire, cold as against warm, dense as against rare, feminine as against masculine, and passive as against active, to be negatives. Thus before his gaze our empirical world divided into two separate spheres, the one characterized by light, fieriness, warmth, weightlessness, rarification, activity and masculinity, and the other by the opposite, negative qualities. The latter really express only the lack, the absence of the former, positive ones. Thus he described the sphere which lacks the positive qualities as dark, earthy, cold, heavy, dense, and feminine-passive in general. Instead of the words “ positive” and “ negative” he used the absolute terms “ existent” and “ nonexistent.” Now he had arrived at the principle—Anaximander notwithstanding that this world of ours contains something which is existent, as well as something which is nonexistent. The existent should therefore not be sought out-side the world and beyond our horizon. Right here before us, everywhere, in all coming-to-be, there is contained an active something which is existent. But now he was left with the task of formulating a more exact answer to the question “ What is coming-to-be?” And this was the moment when he had to leap to keep from falling, although for natures such as Parmenides’ perhaps all leaping constitutes a kind of falling. Suffice it to say that we shall enter the fog, the mysticism of qualitas occulta and even, just a little, the realm of mythology. Parmenides, like Heraclitus, gazes at universal coming-to-be and at impermanence, and he can interpret passing-away only as though it were a fault of nonexistence. For how could the existent be guilty of passing away! But coming-to-be, too, must be produced with the help of the nonexistent, for the existent is always there. Of and by itself it could not come-to-be nor could it explain coming-to-be. Hence coming-to-be as well as passing-away would seem to be produced by the negative
qualities. But since that which comes-to-be has a content which is lost in the process of passing away, it presupposes that the positive qualities (for they are the essence of such content) likewise participate in both processes of change. In brief, we now have the dictum that “ For coming-to-be, the existent as well as the nonexistent are necessary; whenever they interact, we have coming-to-be.” But how are the positive and the negative to get together? Should they not forever flee each other, as contradictories, and thus make all comingto-be impossible? Here Parmenides appeals to a qualitas occulta, to the mystic tendency of opposites to attract and unite, and he symbolizes the opposition in the name of Aphrodite and the empirically well-known relationship between masculinity and femininity. It is the power of Aphrodite that weds the opposites, the existent with the nonexistent. Desire unites the contradictory and mutually repellent elements: the result is coming-to-be. When desire is satiated, hatred and inner opposition drives the existent and the nonexistent apart once more-and man says, “ All things pass.” But no one lays hands with impunity on such fearsome abstractions as “ the existent” and “ the nonexistent.” Slowly, upon touching them, the blood congeals. There came the day when a strange insight befell Parmenides, an insight which seemed to withdraw the value from all his old combinations so that he felt like throwing them away like a bag of old worn-out coins. It is usually assumed that an external influence, in addition to the inwardly compelling consistency of such terms as “ existent” and “ nonexistent” shared in the invention of that fateful day. This external event is supposed to be Parmenides’ acquaintance with the theology of that ancient far-travelled rhapsodist, singer of mystic nature deification, the Colophonian Xenophanes. Throughout an extraordinary lifetime, Xenophanes lived as a travelling poet and through his travels became a widely informed and widely informative person who understood how to ask questions and tell stories. Heraclitus counted him among the polyhistorians and among “ historical” natures in general, in the sense already alluded to. Whence and when he picked up the mystical tendency toward the one, and the “ one forever at rest,” no one can now reconstruct. Perhaps it was the concept of an old man finally settled down, one before whose soul there appeared, after all the mobility of his wanderings and after all his restless learning and looking, the highest and greatest thing of all, a vision of divine rest, of the permanence of all things within a pantheistic archetypal peace. To me, by the way, it seems no more than accidental that in the same place, in Elea, two men should be living for a while who both carried in their minds a concept of unity. They did not form a school; they had nothing in common which one might have learned from the other and then passed along to others in turn. For the origin of their concepts of unity was a totally different one in each case, a downright opposite one in fact. If one of them did know the doctrine of the other, he would have had to translate it into a language of his own, even to understand it. But even in such translation the specific import of each would surely have been lost. Whereas Parmenides came to the unity of the existent purely by adherence to his supposed logic, spinning it out of the concepts of being and nonbeing, Xenophanes was a religious mystic who with his mystic unity belongs very typically to the sixth century. Even though he was not as cataclysmic a personality as Pythagoras, he shared his tendency and compulsion to improve human beings, to cleanse and to heal them, as he wandered from place to place. He is the teacher of ethics, though still on the rhapsodic level; in later times he would have been a Sophist. In his bold disapproval of the current mores and values he has not his equal in Greece. And to disapprove, he by no means withdraws into solitude, like Heraclitus and Plato, but stands up before the very public whose jubilant admiration of Homer, whose passionate yearning for the honors of the gymnastic festivals, whose worship of anthropomorphic stones he scourged wrathfully and scornfully, yet not in the quarrelsome fashion of a Thersites. The freedom of the individual finds its high point in Xenophanes, and it is in this almost boundless withdrawal from all conventionality that he is related more closely to Parmenides, not in that ultimate divine unity which he once saw in a vision befitting his century and which has hardly the expression or terminology in common with Parmenides’ one being, not to mention origin. It was rather an opposite frame of mind in which Parmenides found his doctrine of being. On a certain day and in a certain frame of mind he tested his two interactive contradictories, whose mutual desire and hatred constitute the world and all coming-to-be. He tested the existent and the nonexistent, the positive and the negative properties-and suddenly he found that he could not get past the concept of a negative duality, the concept of non-existence. Can some-thing which is not be a quality? Or, more basically, can something which is not, be? For the only single form of knowledge which we trust immediately and absolutely and to deny which amounts to insanity is the tautology A = A. But just this tautological insight proclaims inexorably: What is not, is not. What is, is. And suddently Parmenides felt a monstrous logical sin burdening his whole previous life. Had he not light-heartedly always assumed that there are such things as negative qualities, nonexistent entities, that, in other words, A is not A? But only total perversity of thinking could have done so. To be sure, he reflected, the great mass of people had always made the same perverse judgment; he had merely participated in a universal crime against logic. But the same moment that shows him his crime illuminates him with a glorious discovery. He has found a principle, the key to the cosmic secret, remote from all human illusion. Now, grasping the firm and awful hand of tautological truth about being, he can climb down, into the abyss of all things. On his way down he meets Heraclitus—an unhappy encounter. Caring now for nothing except the strictest separation of being from non-being, he must hate in his deepest soul the antinomy-play of Heraclitus. Propositions such as “ We are and at the same time are not,” or “ Being and nonbeing is at the same time the same and not the same,” tangle and cloud everything which he had just illuminated and distinguished. They drove him to fury. “ Away with those people,” he screamed, “ who seem to have two heads and yet know nothing. Everything is in flux with them, including their thinking. They stand in dull astonishment before things and yet must be deaf as well as blind to mix up the opposites the way they do!” The irrationality of the masses, glorified in playful antinomies and lauded as the culmination of all wisdom was now a painful and incomprehensible experience. And then he really dipped into the cold bath of his awe-inspiring abstractions. That which truly is must be forever present; you cannot say of it “ it was,” “ it will be.” The existent cannot have come to be, for out of what could it have come? Out of the nonexistent? But the nonexistent is not, and cannot produce anything. Out of the existent? This would reproduce nothing but itself. It is the same with passing away. Passing away is just as impossible as coming-to-be, as is all change, all decrease, all increase. In fact the only valid proposition that can be stated is “ Everything of which you can say ‘it has been’ or ‘it will be’ is not; of the existent you can never say ‘it is not.”’ The existent is indivisible,
for where is the second power that could divide it? It is immobile, for where could it move to? It can be neither infinitely large nor infinitely small, for it is perfect, and a perfectly given infinity is a contradiction. Thus it hovers: bounded, finished, immobile, everywhere in balance, equally perfect at each point, like a globe, though not in space, for this space would be a second existent. But there cannot be several existents. For in order to separate them, there would have to be something which is not existent, a supposition which cancels itself. Thus there is only eternal unity. And now, whenever Parmenides glances back-ward at the world of come-to-be, the world whose existence he used to try to comprehend by means of ingenious conjectures, he becomes angry with his eyes for so much as seeing come-to-be, with his ears for hearing it. “ Whatever you do, do not be guided by your dull eyes,” is now his imperative, “ nor by your resounding ears, nor by your tongue, but test all things with the power of your thinking alone.” Thus he accomplished the immensely significant first critique of man’s apparatus of knowledge, a critique as yet in-adequate but doomed to bear dire consequences. By wrenching apart the senses and the capacity for abstraction, in other words by splitting up mind as though it were composed of two quite separate capacities, he demolished intellect itself, encouraging man to indulge in that wholly erroneous distinction between “ spirit” and “ body” which, especially since Plato, lies upon philosophy like a curse. All sense perceptions, says Parmenides, yield but illusions. And their main illusoriness lies in their pretense that the non-existent coexists with the existent, that Becoming, too, has Being. All the manifold colorful world known to experience, all the transformations of its qualities, all the orderliness of its ups and downs, are cast aside mercilessly as mere semblance and illusion. Nothing may be learned from them. All effort spent upon this false deceitful world which is futile and negligible, faked into a lying existence by the senses is therefore wasted. When one makes as total a judgment as does Parmenides about the whole of the world, one ceases to be a scientist, an investigator into any of the world’s parts. One’s sympathy toward phenomena atrophies; one even develops a hatred for phenomena including oneself, a hatred for being unable to get rid of the everlasting deceitfulness of sensation. Henceforward truth shall live only in the palest, most abstracted generalities, in the empty husks of the most indefinite terms, as though in a house of cobwebs. And be-side such truth now sits our philosopher, like-wise as bloodless as his abstractions, in the spun out fabric of his formulas. A spider at least wants blood from its victims. The Parmenidean philosopher hates most of all the blood of his victims, the blood of the empirical reality which was sacrificed and shed by him. And this was a Greek who flourished approximately during the outbreak of the Ionian Revolt. In those days it was possible for a Greek to flee from an over-abundant reality as though it were but the tricky scheming of the imagination-and to flee, not like Plato into the land of eternal ideas, into the workshop of the world-creator, feasting one’s eyes on the unblemished unbreakable archetypes, but into the rigor mortis of the coldest emptiest concept of all, the concept of being. Let us be exceedingly careful not to interpret such a remarkable event according to false analogies. The Parmenidean escape was not the flight from the world taken by the Hindu philosophers; it was not evoked by a profound religious conviction as to the depravity, ephemerality and accursedness of human existence. Its ultimate goal, peace in being, was not striven after as though it were the mystic absorption into one all-sufficing ecstatic state of mind which is the enigma and vexation of ordinary minds. Parmenides’ thinking conveys nothing whatever of the dark intoxicating fragrance of Hindu wisdom which is not entirely absent from Pythagoras and Empedocles. No, the strange thing about his philosophic feat at this period is just its lack of fragrance, of color, soul, and form, its total lack of blood, religiosity and ethical warmth. What astonishes us is the degree of schematism and abstraction (in a Greek!), above all, the terrible energetic striving for certainty in an epoch which otherwise thought mythically and whose imagination was highly mobile and fluid. “ Grant me, ye gods, but one certainty,” runs Parmenides’ prayer, “ and if it be but a log’s breadth on which to lie, on which to ride upon the sea of uncertainty. Take away every-thing that comes-to-be, everything lush, colorful, blossoming, illusory, everything that charms and is alive. Take all these for yourselves and grant me but the one and only, poor empty certainty.” The prelude in Parmenides’ philosophy is played with ontology as its theme. Experience nowhere offered him being as he imagined it, but he concluded its existence from the fact that he was able to think it. This is a conclusion which rests on the assumption that we have an organ of knowledge which reaches into the essence of things and is independent of experience. The content of our thinking, according to Parmenides, is not present in sense perception but is an additive from somewhere else, from an extra-sensory world to which we have direct access by means of our thinking. Now Aristotle asserted against all similar reasoning that existence is never an intrinsic part of essence. One may never infer the existentia of being from the concept being-whose essentia is nothing more than being itself. The logical truth of the pair of opposites being and nonbeing is completely empty, if the object of which it is a reflection cannot be given, i.e., the sense perception from which this antithesis was abstracted. Without such derivation from a perception, it is no more than a playing with ideas, which in fact yields no knowledge. For the mere logical criterion of truth, as Kant teaches it, the correspondence of knowledge with the universal and formal laws of understanding and reason, is, to be sure, the conditio sine qua non, the negative condition of all truth. But further than this, logic cannot go, and the error as to content rather than form cannot be detected by using any logical touch-stone whatever. As soon as we seek the content of the logical truth of the paired propositions “ What is, is; what is not, is not,” we cannot in-deed find any reality whatever which is construrted strictly in accordance with those propositions. I may say of a tree that “ it is” in distinction to things which are not trees; I may say “ it is coming to be” in distinction to itself seen at a different time; I may even say “ it is not,” as for example in “ it is not yet a tree” when I am looking at a shrub. Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth. Above all, the word “ being” designates only the most general relationship which connects all things, as does the word “ nonbeing.” But if the existence of things themselves cannot be proved, surely the inter-relationship of things, their so-called being or nonbeing, will advance us not a step toward the land of truth. Through words and concepts we shall never reach beyond the wall of relations, to some sort of fabulous primal ground of things. Even in the pure forms of sense and understanding, in space, time and causality, we gain nothing that resembles an eternal verity. It is absolutely impossible for a subject to see or have insight into something while leaving itself out of the picture, so impossible that knowing and being are the most opposite of all spheres. And if Parmenides
could permit himself, in the uninformed naivete of his time, so far as critique of the intellect is concerned, to derive absolute being from a forever subjective concept, today, after Kant, it. is certainly reckless ignorance to attempt it. Now and again, particularly among badly taught theologians who would like to play philosopher, the task of philosophy is designated as “ comprehending the absolute by means of consciousness,” even in the form of “ The absolute is already present, how could it otherwise be sought?” (Hegel) or “ Being must be given to us somehow, must be somehow attainable; if it were not we could not have the concept.” (Beneke) The concept of being! As though it did not show its low empirical origin in its very etymology For esse basically means “ to breathe.” And if man uses it of all things other than himself as well, he projects his conviction that he himself breathes and lives by means of a metaphor, i.e., a non-logical process, upon all other things. He comprehends their existence as a “ breathing” by analogy with his own. The original meaning of the word was soon blurred, but enough remains to make it obvious that man imagines the existence of other things by analogy with his own existence, in other words anthropomorphically and in any event, with non-logical projection. But even for man-quite aside from his projection—the proposition “ I breathe, therefore being exists” is wholly insufficient. The same objection must be made against it as must be made against ambulo, ergo sum or ergo est. The second concept, of more content than being, likewise invented by Parmenides though not used by him as skillfully as by his disciple Zeno, is that of the infinite. Nothing infinite can exist, for to assume it would yield the contradictory concept of a perfect infinity. Now since our reality, our given world, everywhere bears the stamp of just such perfect infinity, the word signifies in its very nature a contradiction to logic and hence to the real, and is therefore an illusion, a lie, a phantasm. Zeno especially makes use of indirect proof. He says, for example, “ There can be no movement from one place to another, for if there were such movement, we would have a perfect infinity, but this is an impossibility. Achilles cannot catch up with the tortoise which has a small start over him, for in order to reach even the starting point of the tortoise, Achilles must have traversed innumerable, infinitely many spaces: first half of the interval, then a fourth of it, an eighth, a sixteenth, and so on ad infinitum. If he in reality does catch up with the tortoise, this is an un-logical phenomenon, not a real one. It is not true Being; it is merely an illusion. For it is never possible to finish the infinite.” Another popular device of this doc-trine is the example of the flying and yet resting arrow. At each moment of its flight it occupies a position. In this position it is at rest. But can we say that the sum of infinitely many positions of rest is identical with motion? Can we say that resting, infinitely repeated, equals motion, which is its contrary? The infinite is here utilized as the catalyst of reality; in its presence reality dissolves. If the concepts are firm, eternal and exist-ent (remembering that being and thinking coincide for Parmenides), if in other words the infinite can never be complete, if rest can never become motion, then the arrow has really never flown at all. It never left its initial position of rest; no moment of time has passed. Or, to express it differently: in this so-called, but merely alleged reality, there is really neither time nor space nor motion. Finally, even the arrow itself is an illusion, for it has its origin in the many, in the sense-produced phantasmagoria of the non-one. Let us assume that the arrow has true being. Then it would be immobile, timeless, uncreated rigid and eternal-which is impossible to conceive. Let us assume that motion is truly real. Then there would be no rest, hence no position for the arrow, hence no space-which is impossible to conceive. Let us assume that time is real. Then it could not be infinitely divisible. The time that the arrow needs would have to consist of a limited number of moments; each of these moments would have to be an atomon—which is impossible to conceive. All our conceptions lead to contradictions as soon as their empirically given content, drawn from our perceivable world, is taken as an eternal verity. If absolute motion exists, then space does not; if absolute space exists, then motion does not; if absolute being exists, then the many does not. Wouldn’t one think that confronted with such logic a man would attain the insight that such concepts do not touch the heart of things, do not undo the tangle of reality? Parmenides and Zeno, on the contrary, hold fast to the truth and universal validity of the concepts and discard the perceivable world as the antithesis to all true and universally valid concepts, as the objectification of illogic and contradiction. The starting point of all their proof is the wholly unprovable, improbable assumption that with our capacity to form concepts we possess the decisive and highest criterion as to being and nonbeing, i.e., as to objective reality and its antithesis. Instead of being corrected and tested against reality (considering that they are in fact derived from it) the concepts, on the contrary, are supposed to measure and direct reality and, in case reality contradicts logic, to condemn the former. In order to impose upon the concepts this capacity for judging reality, Parmenides had to ascribe to them the being which was for him the only true being. Thinking and that single uncreated perfect globe of existentiality were not to be comprehended as two different types of being, since of course there could be no dichotomy in being. Thus an incredibly bold notion became necessary, the notion of the identity of thinking and being. No form of perception, no symbol, no allegory could help here; the notion was utterly beyond conceiving, but-it was necessary. In its very lack of any and all possibility for being translated into sensation, it celebrated the highest triumph over the world and the claims of the senses. Thinking and that bulbous-spherical being, wholly dead-inert and rigid-immobile must, according to Parmenides’ imperative, coincide and be utterly the same thing. What a shock to human imagination! But let their identity contradict sensation! Just that fact guarantees better than anything else that this was a conception not derived from the senses. One might advance against Parmenides a sturdy pair of arguments ad hominem or ex concessis. They would not bring the truth to light, to be sure, though they do expose the falsehood inherent in the absolute separation of senses and concepts, and in the identity of being and thinking. In the first place: if thinking in concepts, on the part of reason, is real, then the many and motion must partake of reality also, for reasoned thinking is mobile. It moves from concept to concept. It is mobile, in other words, within a plurality of realities. Against this, no objection can be made; it is quite impossible to designate thinking as a rigid persistence, as an eternally unmoved thinking-in-and-on-itself on the part of a unity. In the second place: if only fraud and semblance emanate from the senses, and if in truth there is only the real identity of being and thinking, what then are the senses themselves? Evidently a part of semblance, since they do not coincide with thinking, and since their product, the sensuous world, does not coincide with semblance. But if the senses are semblance, to whom do they dissemble? How, being unreal, can they deceive? Nonbeing cannot even practice deceit. Therefore the whence of illusion and semblance remains an enigma, in fact a contradiction. We shall call these two argumenta ad hominem one, the argument based on the mobility of reason; two, the argument based on the origin of
semblance. From the first follows the reality of motion and of the many, from the second the impossibility of Parmenidean semblance. In both cases, we are still accepting Parmenides’ main doctrine concerning being as well-founded. But this doctrine merely states, “ The existent alone has being; the nonexistent does not.” Now if motion has being, then what is true of being in general and in all cases is true of motion: it is uncreated, eternal, indestructible, without increase or decrease. But if semblance is denied of this world (by means of the question as to its origin), if the stage of so-called coming-to-be, of change -in other words our whole multi-formed restless colorful and rich existence-is protected against Parmenidean discard, then it is necessary to characterize this world of interaction and transformation as a sum of such truly existent essences, existing simultaneously in all eternity. In this sup-position too there is no room for transformation in a narrow sense, i.e., for coming-to-be. But what we have now is a multiplicity which has true being; all the properties have true being, as has motion. About each and every moment of this world, even if we choose moments that lie a millenium apart, one would have to be able to say: all true essences contained in the world are existent simultaneously, unchanged, undiminished, without increase, without decrease. A millenium later exactly the same holds true; nothing has meanwhile changed. If, in spite of this, the world looks totally different from time to time, this is not an illusion, not mere semblance, but rather the consequence of everlasting motion. True being is moved sometimes this way, sometimes that way, together asunder, upwardly downward, withinly in all directions.
THE WILL TO POWER (POSTHUMOUS) Translated by A.M. Ludovici PREFACE (Nov. 1887-March 1888) 1 Of what is great one must either be silent or speak with greatness. With greatness—that means cynically and with innocence. 2 What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism. This history can be related even now; for necessity itself is at work here. This future speaks even now in a hundred signs, this destiny announces itself everywhere; for this music of the future all ears are cocked even now. For some time now, our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect. 3 He that speaks here, conversely, has done nothing so far but reflect: a philosopher and solitary by instinct, who has found his advantage in standing aside and outside, in patience, in procrastination, in staying behind; as a spirit of daring and experiment that has already lost its way once in every labyrinth of the future; as a soothsayer-bird spirit who looks back when relating what will come; as the first perfect nihilist of Europe who, however, has even now lived through the whole of nihilism, to the end, leaving it behind, outside himself. 4 For one should make no mistake about the meaning of the title that this gospel of the future wants to bear. “ The Will to Power: Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values”—in this formulation a countermovement finds expression, regarding both principle and task; a movement that in some future will take the place of this perfect nihilism—but presupposes it, logically and psychologically, and certainly can come only after and out of it. For why has the advent of nihilism become necessary? Because the values we have had hitherto thus draw their final consequence; because nihilism represents the ultimate logical conclusion of our great values and ideals—because we must experience nihilism before we can find out what value these “ values” really had.—We require, sometime, new values. BOOK ONE- EUROPEAN NIHILISM 1 (1885-1886) Toward an Outline 1. Nihilism stands at the door: whence comes this uncanniest of all guests? Point of departure: it is an error to consider “ social distress” or “ physiological degeneration” or, worse, corruption, as the cause of nihilism. Ours is the most decent and compassionate age. Distress, whether of the soul, body, or intellect, cannot of itself give birth to nihilism (i.e., the radical repudiation of value, meaning, and desirability). Such distress always permits a variety of interpretations. Rather: it is in one particular interpretation, the Christianmoral one, that nihilism is rooted. 2. The end of Christianity—at the hands of its own morality (which cannot be replaced), which turns against the Christian God (the sense of truthfulness, developed highly by Christianity, is nauseated by the falseness and mendaciousness of all Christian interpretations of the world and of history; rebound from “ God is truth” to the fanatical faith “ All is false”; Buddhism of action). 3. Skepticism regarding morality is what is decisive. The end of the moral interpretation of the world, which no longer has any sanction after it has tried to escape into some beyond, leads to nihilism. “ Everything lacks meaning” (the untenability of one interpretation of the world, upon which a tremendous amount of energy has been lavished, awakens
the suspicion that all interpretations of the world are false). Buddhistic tendency, yearning for Nothing. (Indian Buddhism is not the culmination of a thoroughly moralistic development; its nihilism is therefore full of morality that is not overcome: existence as punishment, existence construed as error, error thus as a punishment—a moral valuation.) Philosophical attempts to overcome the “ moral God” (Hegel, pantheism). Overcoming popular ideals: the sage; the saint; the poet. The antagonism of “ true” and “ beautiful” and “ good”. 4. Against “ meaninglessness” on the one hand, against moral value judgments on the other: to what extent has all science and philosophy so far been influenced by moral judgments? and won’t this net us the hostility of science? Or an antiscientific mentality? Critique of Spinozism. Residues of Christian value judgments are found everywhere in socialistic and positivistic systems. A critique of Christian morality is still lacking 5. The nihilistic consequences of contemporary natural science (together with its attempts to escape into some beyond). The industry of its pursuit eventually leads to selfdisintegration, opposition, an antiscientific mentality. Since Copernicus man has been rolling from the center toward X.* 6. The nihilistic consequences of the ways of thinking in politics and economics, where all “ principles” are practically histrionic: the air of mediocrity, wretchedness, dishonesty, etc. Nationalism. Anarchism, etc. Punishment. The redeeming class and human being are lacking—the justifiers. 7. The nihilistic consequences of historiography and of the “ practical historians,” i.e., the romantics. The position of art: its position in the modern world absolutely lacking in originality. Its decline into gloom. Goethe’s allegedly Olympian stance. 8. Art and the preparation of nihilism: romanticism (the conclusion of Wagner’s Nibelungen). I. NIHILISM 2 (Spring-Fall 1887) What does nihilism mean? That the highest values devaluate themselves. The aim is lacking; “ why?” finds no answer. 3 (Spring-Fall 1887) Radical nihilism is the conviction of an absolute untenability of existence when it comes to the highest values one recognizes; plus the realization that we lack the least right to posit a beyond or an in-itself of things that might be “ divine” or morality incarnate. This realization is a consequence of the cultivation of “ truthfulness”—thus itself a consequence of the faith in morality. 4 (June 10, 1887)3 What were the advantages of the Christian moral hypothesis? 1. It granted man an absolute value, as opposed to his smallness and accidental occurrence in the flux of becoming and passing away. 2. It served the advocates of God insofar as it conceded to the world, in spite of suffering and evil, the character of perfection-including “ freedom”: evil appeared full of meaning. 3. It posited that man had a knowledge of absolute values and thus adequate knowledge precisely regarding what is most important. 4. It prevented man from despising himself as man, from taking sides against life; from despairing of knowledge: it was a means of preservation. In sum: morality was the great antidote against practical and theoretical nihilism. 5 (June 10, 1887) But among the forces cultivated by morality was truthfulness: this eventually turned against morality, discovered its teleology, its partial perspective—and now the recognition of this inveterate mendaciousness that one despairs of shedding becomes a stimulant. Now we discover in ourselves needs implanted by centuries of moral interpretation—needs that now appear to us as needs for untruth; on the other hand, the value for which we endure life seems to hinge on these needs. This antagonism—not to esteem what we know, and not to be allowed any longer to esteem the lies we should like to tell ourselves—results in a process of dissolution. 6 (Spring-Fall 1887) This is the antinomy: Insofar as we believe in morality we pass sentence on existence. 7 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) The supreme values in whose service man should live, especially when they were very hard on him and exacted a high puce—these social values were erected over man to strengthen their voice, as if they were commands of God, as ‘reality,” as the true” world, as a hope and future world. Now that the shabby origin of these values is becoming clear, the universe seems to have lost value, seems “ meaningless”—but that is only a transitional stage. 8 (1883-1888) The nihilistic consequence (the belief in valuelessness) as a consequence of moral valuation: everything egoistic has come to disgust us (even though we realize the impossibility of the unegoistic); what is necessary has come to disgust us (even though we realize the impossibility of any liberum arbitrium or intelligible freedom”). We see that we cannot reach the sphere in which we have placed our values; but this does not by any means confer any value on that other sphere in which we live: on the contrary, we are weary because we have lost the main stimulus “ In vain so far!” 9 (Spring-Fall 1887)
Pessimism as a preliminary form of nihilism. 10 (Spring-Fall 1887) Pessimism as strength—in what? in the energy of its logic, as anarchism and nihilism, as analytic. Pessimism as decline—in what? as growing effeteness, as a sort of cosmopolitan fingering, as “ tout comprendre and historicism. The critical tension: the extremes appear and become predominant. 11 (Spring-Fall 1887, rev. Spring-Fall 1888) The logic of pessimism down to ultimate nihilism: what is at work in it? The idea of valuelessness, meaninglessness: to what extent moral valuations hide behind all other high values. Conclusion: Moral value judgments are ways of passing sentence, negations; morality is a way of turning one’s back on the will to existence. Problem: But what is morality? 12 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) Decline of Cosmological Values (A) Nihilism as a psychological state will have to be reached, first, when we have sought a “ meaning” in all events that is not there: so the seeker eventually becomes discouraged. Nihilism, then, is the recognition of the long waste of strength, the agony of the “ in vain,” insecurity, the lack of any opportunity to recover and to regain composure—being ashamed in front of oneself, as if one had deceived oneself all too long.—This meaning could have been: the “ fulfillment” of some highest ethical canon in all events, the moral world order; or the growth of love and harmony in the intercourse of beings; or the gradual approximation of a state of universal happiness; or even the development toward a state of universal annihilation—any goal at least constitutes some meaning. What all these notions have in common is that something is to be achieved through the process—and now one realizes that becoming aims at nothing and achieves nothing.— Thus, disappointment regarding an alleged aim of becoming as a cause of nihilism: whether regarding a specific aim or, universalized, the realization that all previous hypotheses about aims that concern the whole “ evolution” are inadequate (man no longer the collaborator, let alone the center, of becoming). Nihilism as a psychological state is reached, secondly, when one has posited a totality, a systematization, indeed any organization in all events, and underneath all events, and a soul that longs to admire and revere has wallowed in the idea of some supreme form of domination and administration (—if the soul be that of a logician, complete consistency and real dialectic are quite sufficient to reconcile it to everything). Some sort of unity, some form of “ monism”: this faith suffices to give man a deep feeling of standing in the context of, and being dependent on, some whole that is infinitely superior to him, and he sees himself as a mode of the deity.—“ The well-being of the universal demands the devotion of the individual”—but behold, there is no such universal! At bottom, man has lost the faith in his own value when no infinitely valuable whole works through him; i.e., he conceived such a whole in order to be able to believe in his own value. Nihilism as psychological state has yet a third and last form. Given these two insights, that becoming has no goal and that underneath all becoming there is no grand unity in which the individual could immerse himself completely as in an element of supreme value, an escape remains: to pass sentence on this whole world of becoming as a deception and to invent a world beyond it, a true world. But as soon as man finds out how that world is fabricated solely from psychological needs, and how he has absolutely no right to it, the last form of nihilism comes into being: it includes disbelief in any metaphysical world and forbids itself any belief in a true world. Having reached this standpoint, one grants the reality of becoming as the only reality, forbids oneself every kind of clandestine access to afterworlds and false divinities—but cannot endure this world though one does not want to deny it. What has happened, at bottom? The feeling of valuelessness was reached with the realization that the overall character of existence may not be interpreted by means of the concept of “ aim,” the concept of “ unity,” or the concept of “ truth.” Existence has no goal or end; any comprehensive unity in the plurality of events is lacking: the character of existence is not “ true,” is false. One simply lacks any reason for convincing oneself that there is a true world. Briefly: the categories “ aim,” “ unity,” “ being” which we used to project some value into the world—we pull out again; so the world looks valueless. (B) Suppose we realize how the world may no longer be interpreted in terms of these three categories, and that the world begins to become valueless for us after this insight: then we have to ask about the sources of our faith in these three categories. Let us try if it is not possible to give up our faith in them. Once we have devaluated these three categories, the demonstration that they cannot be applied to the universe is no longer any reason for devaluating the universe. Conclusion: The faith in the categories of reason is the cause of nihilism. We have measured the value of the world according to categories that refer to a purely fictitious world. Final conclusion: All the values by means of which we have tried so far to render the world estimable for ourselves and which then proved inapplicable and therefore devaluated the world—all these values are, psychologically considered, the results of certain perspectives of utility, designed to maintain and increase human constructs of domination—and they have been falsely projected into the essence of things. What we find here is still the hyperbolic naivete of man: positing himself as the meaning and measure of the value of things.
13 (Spring-Fall 1887) Nihilism represents a pathological transitional stage (what is pathological is the tremendous generalization, the inference that there is no meaning at all): whether the productive forces are not yet strong enough, or whether decadence still hesitates and has not yet invented its remedies. Presupposition of this hypothesis: that there is no truth, that there is no absolute nature of things nor a “ thing-in-itself.” This, too, IS merely nihilism—even the most extreme nihilism. It places the value of things precisely in the lack of any reality corresponding to these values and in their being merely a symptom of strength on the part of the valuepositers, a simplification for the sake of life. 14 (Spring-Fall 1887) Values and their changes are related to increases in the power of those positing the values. The measure of unbelief, of permitted “ freedom of the spirit” as an expression of an increase in power. “ Nihilism” an ideal of the highest degree of powerfulness of spirit, the over-richest life—partly destructive, partly ironic. 15 (Spring-Fall 1837) What is a belief? How does it originate? Every belief is a considering-something-true. The most extreme form of nihilism would be the view that every belief, every considering-something-true, is necessarily false cause there simply is no true world. Thus, a perspectival appearance whose origin lies in us (in so far as we continually need a narrower, abbreviated, simplified world). -That it is the measure of strength to what extent we can admit to ourselves, without perishing, the merely apparent character, the necessity of lies. To this extent, nihilism, as the denial of a truthful world, of being, might be a divine way of thinking. 16 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) If we are “ disappointed,” it is at least not regarding life: rather we are now facing up to all kinds of “ desiderata.” With scornful wrath we contemplate what are called “ ideals”; we despise ourselves only because there are moments when we cannot subdue that absurd impulse that is called “ idealism.” The influence of too much coddling is stronger than the wrath of the disappointed. 17 (Spring-Fall 1887; rev. 1888) To what extent Schopenhauer’s nihilism still follows from the same ideal that created Christian theism.—One felt so certain about the highest desiderata, the highest values, the highest perfection that the philosophers assumed this as an absolute certainty, as if it were a priori: “ God” at the apex as a given truth. “ To become as God,” “ to be absorbed into God”—for thousands of years these were the most naive and convincing desiderata (but what convinces is not necessarily true—it is merely convincing: a note for asses). One has unlearned the habit of conceding to this posited ideal the reality of a person; one has become atheistic. But has the ideal itself been renounced?—At bottom, the last metaphysicians still seek in it true “ reality,” the “ thing-in-itself” compared to which everything else is merely apparent. It is their dogma that our apparent world, being so plainly not the expression of this ideal, cannot be “ true”—and that, at bottom, it does not even lead us back to that metaphysical world as its cause. The unconditional, representing that highest perfection, cannot possibly be the ground of all that is conditional. Schopenhauer wanted it otherwise and therefore had to conceive of this metaphysical ground as the opposite of the ideal—as “ evil, blind will”: that way it could be that “ which appears,” that which reveals itself in the world of appearances. But even so he did not renounce the absoluteness of the ideal—he sneaked by.(Kant considered the hypothesis of “ intelligible freedom” necessary in order to acquit the ens perfection of responsibility for the world’s being such-and-such-in short, to account for evil and ills: a scandalous bit of logic for a philosopher.) 18 (1883-1888) The most universal sign of the modern age: man has lost dignity in his own eyes to an incredible extent. For a long time the center and tragic hero of existence in general; then at least intent on proving himself closely related to the decisive and essentially valuable side of existence—like all metaphysicians who wish to cling to the dignity of man, with their faith that moral values are cardinal values. Those who have abandoned God cling that much more firmly to the faith in morality. 19 (1883-1888) Every purely moral value system (that of Buddhism, for example) ends in nihilism: this to be expected in Europe. One still hopes to get along with a moralism without religious background: but that necessarily leads to nihilism.—In religion the constraint is lacking to consider ourselves as value-positing. 20 (Spring-Fall 1887) The nihilistic question “ for what?” is rooted in the old habit of supposing that the goal must be put up, given, demanded from outside-by some superhuman authority. Having unlearned faith in that, one still follows the old habit and seeks another authority that can speak unconditionally and command goals and tasks. The authority of conscience now steps up front (the more emancipated one is from theology, the more imperativistic morality becomes) to compensate for the loss of a personal authority. Or the authority of reason. Or the social instinct (the herd). Or history with an immanent spirit and a goal within, so one can entrust oneself to it. One wants to get around the will, the willing of a goal, the risk of positing a goal for oneself; one wants to rid oneself of the responsibility (one would accept fatalism). Finally, happiness—and, with a touch of Tartuffe, the happiness of the greatest
number. One says to oneself: 1. a definite goal is not necessary at all, 2. cannot possibly be anticipated. Just now when the greatest strength of will would be necessary, it is weakest and least confident. Absolute mistrust regarding the organizing strength of the will for the whole. 21 (Spring-Fall 1887; rev. 1888) The perfect nihilist.—The nihilist’s eye idealizes in the direction of ugliness and is unfaithful to his memories: it allows them to drop, lose their leaves; it does not guard them against the corpselike pallor that weakness pours out over what is distant and gone. And what he does not do for himself, he also does not do for the whole past of mankind: he lets it drop. 22 (Spring-Fall 1887) Nihilism. It is ambiguous: A. Nihilism as a sign of increased power of the spirit: as active nihilism. B. Nihilism as decline and recession of the power of the spirit: as passive nihilism. 23 (Spring-Fall 1887) Nihilism as a normal condition. It can be a sign of strength: the spirit may have grown so strong that previous goals (“ convictions,” articles of faith) have become incommensurate (for a faith generally expresses the constraint of conditions of existence, submission to the authority of circumstances under which one flourishes, grows, gains power). Or a sign of the lack of strength to posit for oneself, productively, a goal, a why, a faith. It reaches its maximum of relative strength as a violent force of destruction—as active nihilism. Its opposite: the weary nihilism that no longer attacks; its most famous form, Buddhism; a passive nihilism, a sign of weakness. The strength of the spirit may be worn out, exhausted, so that previous goals and values have become incommensurate and no longer are believed; so that the synthesis of values and goals (on which every strong culture rests) dissolves and the individual values war against each other: disintegration—and whatever refreshes, heals, calms, numbs emerges into the foreground in various disguises, religious or moral, or political, or aesthetic, etc. 24 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) Nihilism does not only contemplate the “ in vain!” nor is it merely the belief that everything deserves to perish: one helps to destroy.—This is, if you will, illogical; but the nihilist does not believe that one needs to be logical.—It is the condition of strong spirits and wills, and these do not find it possible to stop with the No of “ judgment”: their nature demands the No of the deed. The reduction to nothing by judgment is seconded by the reduction to nothing by hand. 25 (Spring-Fall 1887) On the genesis of the nihilist.—It is only late that one musters the courage for what one really knows.’. That I have hitherto been a thorough-going nihilist, I have admitted to myself only recently: the energy and radicalism with which I advanced as a nihilist deceived me about this basic fact. When one moves toward a goal it seems impossible that “ goallessness as such” is the principle of our faith. 26 (Spring-Fall 1887) The pessimism of active energy: the question “ for what?” after a terrible struggle, even victory. That something is a hundred times more important than the question of whether we feel well or not: basic instinct of all strong natures—and consequently also whether others feel well or not. In sum, that we have a goal for which one does not hesitate to offer human sacrifices, to risk every danger, to take upon oneself whatever is bad and worst: the great passion. 27 (Spring-Fall 1887) Causes of nihilism: 1. The higher species is lacking, i.e., those whose inexhaustible fertility and power keep up the faith in man. (One should recall what one owes to Napoleon: almost all of the higher hopes of this century.) 2. The lower species (“ herd,” “ mass,” “ society”) unlearns modesty and blows up its needs into cosmic and metaphysical values. In this way the whole of existence is vulgarized: in so far as the mass is dominant it bullies the exceptions, so they lose their faith in themselves and become nihilists. All attempts to think up higher types failed (“ romanticism”; the artist, the philosopher; against Carlyle’s attempt to ascribe to them the highest moral values). The resistance to higher types as a result. Decline and insecurity of all higher types. The fight against the genius (“ folk poetry,” etc.). Pity for the lowly and suffering as a measure for the height of a soul. The philosopher is lacking who interprets the deed and does not merely transpose it. 28 (Spring-Fall 1887)
Main proposition. How complete nihilism is the necessary consequence of the ideals entertained hitherto. Incomplete nihilism; its forms: we live in the midst of it. Attempts to escape nihilism without revaluating our values so far: they produce the opposite, make the problem more acute. 29 (1883-1888) The ways of self-narcotization.—Deep down: not knowing whither. Emptiness. Attempt to get over it by intoxication intoxication as music; intoxication as cruelty in the tragic enjoyment of the destruction of the noblest; intoxication as blind enthusiasm for single human beings or ages (as hatred, etc.).—Attempt to work blindly as an instrument of science: opening one’s eyes to the many small enjoyments; e.g., also in the quest of knowledge (modesty toward oneself); resignation to generalizing about oneself, a pathos; mysticism, the voluptuous enjoyment of eternal emptiness; art “ for its own sake” (“ le fait”) and “ pure knowledge” as narcotic states of disgust with oneself; some kind or other of continual work, or of some stupid little fanaticism; a medley of all means, sickness owing to general immoderation (debauchery kills enjoyment). 1. Weakness of the will as a result. 2. Extreme pride and the humiliation of petty weakness felt in contrast. 30 (Nov. 1887-March 1888; rev. 1888) The time has come when we have to pay for having been Christians for two thousand years: we are losing the center of gravity by virtue of which we lived; we are lost for a while. Abruptly we plunge into the opposite valuations, with all the energy that such an extreme overvaluation of man has generated in man. Now everything is false through and through, mere “ words,” chaotic, weak, or extravagant: a. one attempts a kind of this-worldly solution, but in the same sense—that of the eventual triumph of truth, love, and justice (socialism: “ equality of the person”); b. one also tries to hold on to the moral ideal (with the pre-eminence of what is un-egoistic, self-denial, negation of the win); c. one tries to hold on even to the “ beyond”—even if only as some antilogical “ x”—but one immediately interprets it in such a way that some sort of old-fashioned metaphysical comfort can be derived from it; d. one tries to find in events an old-fashioned divine governance—an order of things that rewards, punishes, educates, and betters; e. one still believes in good and evil and experiences the triumph of the good and the annihilation of evil as a task (that is English; typical case: the flathead John Stuart Mill); f. contempt for what is “ natural,” for desire, for the ego: attempt to understand even the highest spirituality and art as the consequence of depersonalization and as desinteressement; g. the church is still permitted to obtrude into all important experiences and main points of individual life to hallow them and give them a higher meaning: we still have the “ Christian state,” “ Christian marriage” 31 (1884) There have been more thoughtful and thought-addicted ages than ours: ages, e.g., like that in which the Buddha appeared, when after centuries of quarrels among sects the people themselves were as deeply lost in the ravines of philosophic doctrines as European nations were at times in the subtleties of religious dogmas. Surely, one should not let “ literature” and the press seduce us to think well of the “ spirit” of our time: the existence of millions of spiritists and a Christianity that goes in for gymnastics of that gruesome ugliness that characterizes all English inventions are more instructive. European pessimism is still in its early stages—bears witness against itself: it still lacks that tremendous, yearning rigidity of expression in which the Nothing is reflected, once found in India; it is still far too contrived and too little “ organic”-too much a pessimism of scholars and poets: I mean, much of it is excogitated and invented, is “ created” and not a “ cause.” 32 (Summer-Fall 1888) Critique of pessimism to date.—Resistance to eudaemonistic considerations as the last reduction to the question: what does it mean? The reduction of growing gloom.Our pessimism: the world does not have the value we thought it had. Our faith itself has so increased our desire for knowledge that today we have to say this. Initial result: it seems worth less; that is how it is experienced initially. It is only in this sense that we are pessimists; i.e., in our determination to admit this revaluation to ourselves without any reservation, and to stop telling ourselves tales-lies-the old way. That is precisely how we find the pathos that impels us to seek new values. In sum: the world might be far more valuable than we used to believe; we must see through the naivete of our ideals, and while we thought that we accorded it the highest interpretation, we may not even have given our human existence a moderately fair value. What has been de�fied? The value instincts in the community (that which made possible its continued existence). What has been slandered? That which set apart the higher men from the lower, the desires that create clefts. 33 (Spring-Fall 1887) Causes of the advent of pessimism: 1. that the most powerful desires of life that have the most future have hitherto been slandered, so a curse weighs on life;
2. that the growing courage and integrity and the bolder mistrust that now characterize man comprehend that these instincts are inseparable from life, and one therefore turns against life; 3. that only the most mediocre, who have no feeling at all for this conflict, flourish while the higher kind miscarries and, as a product of degeneration, invites antipathy—that the mediocre on the other hand, when they pose as the goal and meaning, arouse indignation (that nobody is able any more to answer any “ for what or who?” 4. that diminution, sensitivity to pain, restlessness, haste, and hustling grow continually—that it becomes easier and easier to recognize this whole commotion, this so-called “ civilization,” and that the individual, faced with this tremendous machinery, loses courage and submits. 34 (1&35-1886) Modern pessimism is an expression of the uselessness of the modern world—not of the world of existence. 35 (Spring-Fall 1887) The “ predominance of suffering over pleasure” or the opposite (hedonism): these two doctrines are already signposts to nihilism. For in both of these cases no ultimate meaning is posited except the appearance of pleasure or displeasure. But that is how a kind of man speaks that no longer dares to posit a will, a purpose, a meaning: for any healthier kind of man the value of life is certainly not measured by the standard of these trifles. And suffering might predominate, and in spite of that a powerful will might exist, a Yes to life, a need for thus predominance. “ Life is not worthwhile”; “ resignation”; “ why the tears?— a weakly and sentimental way of thinking. “ Un monstre gai vaut mieux qu’un sentimental ennuyeux. 36 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) The philosophical nihilist is convinced that all that happens is meaningless and in vain; and that there ought not to be anything meaningless and in vain. But whence this: there ought not to be. From where does one get this “ meaning,” this standard?— At bottom, the nihilist thinks that the sight of such a bleak, useless existence makes a philosopher feel dissatisfied, bleak, desperate. Such an insight goes against our finer sensibility as philosophers. It amounts to the absurd valuation: to have any right to be, the character of existence would have to give the philosopher pleasure. Now it is easy to see that pleasure and displeasure can only be means in the course of events: the question remains whether we are at all able to see the “ meaning,” the “ aim,” whether the question of meaninglessness or its opposite is not insoluble for us. 37 (Spring-Fall 1887) The development of pessimism into nihilism.—Denaturalization of values. Scholasticism of values. Detached and idealistic, values, instead of dominating and guiding action, turn against action and condemn it. Opposites replace natural degrees and ranks. Hatred against the order of rank. Opposites suit a plebeian age because easier to comprehend. The repudiated world versus an artificially built “ true, valuable” one.—Finally: one discovers of what material one has built the “ true world”: and now all one has left is the repudiated world, and one adds this supreme disappointment to the reasons why it deserves to be repudiated. At this point nihilism is reached: all one has left are the values that pass judgment—nothing else. Here the problem of strength and weakness originates: 1. The weak perish of it; 2. those who are stronger destroy what does not perish; 3. those who are strongest overcome the values that pass judgment. In sum this constitutes the tragic age. 38 (1883-1888) Recently much mischief has been done with an accidental and in every way unsuitable word: everywhere “ pessimism” is discussed, and the question is debated whether pessmism or optimism is right, as if there must be answers to that. One fails to see, although it could hardly be more obvious, that pessimism is not a problem but a symptom, that the name should be replaced by “ nihilism,” that the question whether not-to-be is better than to be is itself a disease, a sign of decline, an idiosyncrasy. The nihilistic movement is merely the expression of physiological decadence. 39 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) To be comprehended: That every kind of decay and sickness has continually helped to form overall value judgments; that decadence has actually gained predominance in the value judgments that have become accepted; that we not only have to fight against the consequences of all present misery of degeneration, but that all previous decadence is still residual, i.e., survives. Such a total aberration of mankind from its basic instincts, such a total decadence of value judgments—that is the question mark par excellence, the real riddle that the animal “ man” poses for the philosopher. 40 (March-June 1888)
The concept of decadence.—Waste, decay, elimination need not be condemned: they are necessary consequences of life, of the growth of life. The phenomenon of decadence is as necessary as any increase and advance of life: one is in no position to abolish it. Reason demands, on the contrary, that we do justice to it. It is a disgrace for all socialist systematizers that they suppose there could be circumstances—social combinations—in which vice, disease, prostitution, distress would no longer grow.—But that means condemning life.—A society is not free to remain young. And even at the height of its strength it has to form refuse and waste materials. The more energetically and boldly it advances, the richer it will be in failures and deformities, the closer to decline.—Age is not abolished by means of institutions. Neither is disease. Nor vice. 41 (Jan.-Fall 1888) Basic insight regarding the nature of decadence: its supposed causes are its consequences. This changes the whole perspective of moral problems. The whole moral struggle against vice, luxury, crime, even disease, appears a naivete and superfluous: there is no “ improvement” (against repentance). Decadence itself is nothing to be fought: it is absolutely necessary and belongs to every age and every people. What should be fought vigorously is the contagion of the healthy parts of the organism. Is this being done? The opposite is done. Precisely that is attempted in the name of humanity. How are the supreme values held so far, related to this basic biological question? Philosophy, religion, morality, art, etc. (The cure: e.g., militarism, beginning with Napoleon who considered civilization his natural enemy.) 42 (March-June 1888) First principle: The supposed causes of degeneration are its consequences. But the supposed remedies of degeneration are also mere palliatives against some of its effects: the “ cured” are merely one type of the degenerates. Consequences of decadence: vice—the addiction to vice; sickness, crime-criminality; celibacy-sterility; hystericism,weakness of the will; alcoholism; pessimism; anarchism; libertinism (also of the spirit). The slanderers, underminers, doubters, destroyers. 43 (March-June 1888) On the concept of decadence. 1. Skepticism is a consequence of decadence, as is libertinism of the spirit. 2. The corruption of morals is a consequence of decadence (weakness of the will, need for strong stimuli). 3. Attempted cures, psychological and moral, do not change the course of decadence, do not arrest it, are physiologically naught: Insight into the great nullity of these presumptuous “ reactions”; they are forms of narcotization against certain terrible consequences; they do not eliminate the morbid element; often they are heroic attempts to annul the man of decadence and to realize the minimum of his harmfulness. 4. Nihilism is no cause but merely the logical result of decadence. 5. The “ good” and “ bad” man are merely two types of decadence: in all basic phenomena they agree. 6. The social question is a consequence of decadence. 7. Sicknesses, especially those affecting nerves and head, are signs that the defensive strength of the strong natures is lacking; precisely this is suggested by irritability, so pleasure and displeasure become foreground problems. 44 (Spring-Summer 1888) Most general types of decadence: 1. Believing one chooses remedies, one chooses in fact that which hastens exhaustion; Christianity is an example (to name the greatest example of such an aberration of the instincts); “ progress” is another instance.2. One loses one’s power of resistance against stimuli—and comes to be at the mercy of accidents: one coarsens and enlarges one’s experiences tremendously —“ depersonalization,” disintegration of the will; example: one whole type of morality, the altruistic one which talks much of pity—and is distinguished by the weakness of the personality, so that it is sounded, too, and like an overstimulated string vibrates continually—an extreme irritability.3. One confuses cause and effect: one fails to understand decadence as a physiological condition and mistakes its consequences for the real cause of the indisposition; example: all of religious morality. 4. One longs for a condition in which one no longer suffers: life is actually experienced as the ground of ills; one esteems unconscious states, without feeling, (sleep, fainting) as incomparably more valuable than conscious ones; from this a method. 45 (March-June 1888) On the hygiene of the “ weak.”—Everything done in weakness fails. Moral: do nothing. Only there is the hitch that precisely the strength to suspend activity, not to react, is
sickest of all under the influence of weakness: one never reacts more quickly and blindly than when one should not react at all. A strong nature manifests itself by waiting and postponing any reaction: it is as much characterized by a certain adiaphoria as weakness is by an involuntary countermovement and the suddenness and inevitability of “ action.”— The will is weak— and the prescription to avoid stupidities would be to have a strong will and to do nothing.—Contradictio.—A kind of self- destruction; the instinct of preservation is compromised.—The weak harm themselves.—That is the type of decadence. In fact, we find a tremendous amount of reflection about practices that would lead to impassability. The instinct is on the right track insofar as doing nothing is more expedient than doing something. All the practices of the orders, the solitary philosophers, the fakirs are inspired by the right value standard that a certain kind of man cannot benefit himself more than by preventing himself as much as possible from acting.Means of relief: absolute obedience, machinelike activity, avoidance of people and things that would demand instant decisions and actions. 46 (March-June 1888) Weakness of the will: that is a metaphor that can prove misleading. For there is no will, and consequently neither a strong nor a weak will. The multitude and disgregation of impulses and the lack of any systematic order among them result in a “ weak will”; their coordination under a single predominant impulse results in a “ strong will”: in the first case it is the oscillation and the lack of gravity; in the latter, the precision and clarity of the direction. 47 (March-June 1888) What is inherited is not the sickness but sickliness: the lack of strength to resist the danger of infections, etc., the broken resistance; morally speaking, resignation and meekness in face of the enemy. I have asked myself if all the supreme values of previous philosophy, morality, and religion could not be compared to the values of the weakened, the mentally ill, and neurasthenics: in a milder form, they represent the same ills.It is the value of all morbid states that they show us under a magnifying glass certain states that are normal—but not easily visible when normal.Health and sickness are not essentially different, as the ancient physicians and some practitioners even today suppose. One must not make of them distinct principles or entities that fight over the living organism and turn it into their arena. That is silly nonsense and chatter that is no good any longer. In fact, there are only differences in degree between these two kinds of existence: the exaggeration, the disproportion, the nonharmony of the normal phenomena constitute the pathological state (Claude Bernard). Just as “ evil” can be considered as exaggeration, disharmony, disproportion, “ the good” may be a protective diet against the danger of exaggeration, disharmony, and disproportion. Hereditary weakness as the dominant feeling: cause of the supreme values. N.B. One wants weakness: why? Usually because one is necessarily weak. Weakness as a task: weakening the desires, the feelings of pleasure and displeasure, the will to power, to a sense of pride, to want to have and have more; weakening as meekness; weakening as faith; weakening as aversion and shame in the face of everything natural, as negation of life, as sickness and habitual weakness—weakening as the renunciation of revenge, of resistance, of enmity and wrath. -The error in treatment: one does not want to fight weakness with a systeme fortifiant, but rather with a kind of justification and moralization; i.e., with an interpretation.-Two totally different states confounded: e.g., the calm of strength, which is essentially forbearance from reaction (type of the gods whom nothing moves)—and the calm of exhaustion,. rigidity to the point of anesthesia. All philosophic-ascetic procedures aim at the second, but really intend the former—for they attribute predicates to the attained state as if a divine state had been attained. 48 (March-June 1888) The most dangerous misunderstanding.—One concept apparently permits no confusion or ambiguity: that of exhaustion. Exhaustion can be acquired or inherited—in any case it changes the aspect of things, the value of things. As opposed to those who, from the fullness they represent and feel, involuntarily give to things and see them fuller, more powerful, and pregnant with future—who at least are able to bestow something—the exhausted diminish and botch all they see—they impoverish the value: they are harmful.About this no mistake seems possible: yet history contains the gruesome fact that the exhausted have always been mistaken for the fullest—and the fullest for the most harmful. Those poor in life, the weak, impoverish life; those rich in life, the strong, enrich it. The first are parasites of life; the second give presents to it.—How is it possible to confound these two? When the exhausted appeared with the gesture of the highest activity and energy (when degeneration effected an excess of spiritual and nervous discharge), they were mistaken for the rich. They excited fear.—The cult of the fool is always the cult of those rich in life, the powerful. The fanatic, the possessed, the religious epileptic, all eccentrics have been experienced as the highest types of power: as divine. This kind of strength that excites fear was considered preeminently divine: here was the origin of authority; here one interpreted, heard, sought wisdom.—This led to the
development, almost everywhere, of a will to “ deify,” i.e., a will to the typical degeneration of spirit, body, and nerves: an attempt to find the way to this higher level of being. To make oneself sick, mad, to provoke the symptoms of derangement and ruin-that was taken for becoming stronger, more superhuman, more terrible, wiser. One thought that in this way one became so rich in power that one could give from one’s fullness. Wherever one adored one sought one who could give. Here the experience of intoxication proved misleading. This increases the feeling of power in the highest degree—therefore, naively judged, power itself. On the highest rung of power one placed the most intoxicated, the ecstatic. (—There are two sources of intoxication: the over-great fullness of life and a state of pathological nourishment of the brain.) 49 (Jan.-Fall 1888) Acquired, not inherited, exhaustion: (1) Inadequate nourishment, often from ignorance about norishment; e.g., among scholars. (2) Erotic precociousness: the curse in particular of French youth, above all in Paris, who emerge into the world from their Lycees botched and soiled and never free themselves again from the chain of contemptible inclinations, ironical and disdainful toward themselves—galley slaves with all refinements (incidentally, in most cases already a symptom of the decadence of race and family, like all hypersensitivity; also the contagion of the milieu—to let oneself be determined by one’s environment is decadent). (3) Alcoholism—not the instinct but the habit, the stupid imitation, the cowardly or vain assimilation to a dominant regime: What a blessing a Jew is among Germans! How much dullness, how blond the head, how blue the eye; the lack of esprit in face, word, posture; the lazy stretching-oneself, the German need for a good rest—not prompted by overwork but by the disgusting stimulation and overstimulation through alcoholica.50 (1888) Theory of exhaustion.—Vice, the mentally ill (resp., the artists-), the criminals, the anarchists—these are not the oppressed classes but the scum of previous society of all classes.Realizing that all our classes are permeated by these elements, we understand that modern society is no “ society,” no “ body,” but a sick conglomerate of chandalas—a society that no longer has the strength to excrete. To what extent sickliness, owing to the symbiosis of centuries, goes much deeper: modern virtue,= modern spirituality, = as forms of sickness. Our science = 51 (March-June 1888) The state of corruption.—To understand how all forms of corruption belong together, without forgetting the Christian corruption (Pascal as type) as well as the socialistcommunist corruption (a consequence of the Christian—from the point of view of the natural sciences, the socialists’ conception of the highest society is the lowest in the order of rank); also the “ beyond” corruption: as if outside the actual world, that of becoming, there were another world of being. Here no terms are permissible: here one has to eradicate, annihilate, wage war; everywhere the Christian-nihilistic value standard still has to be pulled up and fought under every mask; e.g., in present-day sociology, in present-day music, in present-day pessimism (all of them forms of the Christian value ideal). Either the one is true or the other: true here means elevating the type of man. The priest, the shepherd of souls, as objectionable forms of existence. All of education to date, helpless, untenable, without center of gravity, stained by the contradiction of values. 52 (Jan.-Fall 1888) Nature is not immoral when it has no pity for the degenerate: on the contrary, the growth of physiological and moral ills among mankind is the consequence of a pathological and unnatural morality. The sensibility of the majority of men is pathological and unnatural. Why is it that mankind is corrupt morally and physiologically?-The body perishes when an organ is altered. The right of altruism cannot be derived from physiology; nor can the right to help and to an equality of lots: these are prizes for the degenerate and underprivileged. There is no solidarity in a society in which there are sterile, unproductive, and destructive elements—which, incidentally? will have descendants even more degenerate than they are themselves. 53 (March-June 1888) Even the ideals of science can be deeply, yet completely unconsciously influenced by decadence: our entire sociology is proof of that. The objection to it is that from experience it knows only the form of the decay of society, and inevitably it takes its own instincts of decay for the norms of sociological judgment. In these norms the life that is declining in present-day Europe formulates its social ideals: one cannot tell them from the ideals of old races that have outlived themselves.The herd instinct, then—a power that has now become sovereign—is something totally different from the instinct of an aristocratic society: and the value of the units determines the significance of the sum.—Our entire sociology simply does not know any other instinct than that of the herd, i.e., that of the sum of zeroes—where every zero has “ equal rights,” where it is virtuous to be zero.-
The valuation that is today applied to the different forms of society is entirely identical with that which assigns a higher value to peace than to war: but this judgment is antibiological, is itself a fruit of the decadence of life.—Life is a consequence of war, society itself a means to war.—As a biologist, Mr. Herbert Spencer is a decadent; as a moralist, too (he considers the triumph of altruism a desideratum! ! !). 54 (Jan.-Fall 1888) It is my good fortune that after whole millennia of error and confusion I have rediscovered the way that leads to a Yes and a No. I teach the No to all that makes weak—that exhausts. I teach the Yes to all that strengthens, that stores up strength, that justifies the feeling of strength. So far one has taught neither the one nor the other: virtue has been taught, mortification of the self, pity, even the negation of life. All these are the values of the exhausted. Prolonged reflection on the physiology of exhaustion forced me to ask to what extent the judgments of the exhausted had penetrated the world of values. My result was as surprising as possible, even for me who was at home in many a strange world: I found that all of the supreme value judgments—all that have come to dominate mankind, at least that part that has become tame—can be derived from the judgments of the exhausted. Under the holiest names I pulled up destructive tendencies; one has called God what weakens, teaches weakness, infects with weakness.—I found that the “ good man” is one of the forms in which decadence affirms itself. That virtue of which Schopenhauer still taught that it is the supreme, the only virtue, and the basis of all virtues—precisely pity I recognized as more dangerous than any vice. To cross as a matter of principle selection in the species and its purification of refuse—that has so far been called virtue par excellence.One should respect fatality—that fatality that says to the weak: perish!One has called it God—that one resisted fatality, that one—corrupted mankind and made it rot.— One should not use the name of God in vain.The race is corrupted—not by its vices but by its ignorance; it is corrupted because it did not recognize exhaustion as exhaustion: mistakes about physiological states are the source of all ills.Virtue is our greatest misunderstanding. Problem: How did the exhausted come to make the laws about values? Put differently: How did those come to power who are the last.—How did the instinct of the human animal come to stand on its head?55 (June 10, 1887)31 Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones but by extreme positions of the opposite kind. Thus the belief in the absolute immorality of nature, in aim- and meaninglessness, is the psychologically necessary affect once the belief in God and an essentially moral order becomes untenable. Nihilism appears at that point, not that the displeasure at existence has become greater than before but because one has come to mistrust any “ meaning” in suffering, indeed in existence. One interpretation has collapsed; but because it was considered the interpretation it now seems as if there were no meaning at all in existence, as if everything were in vain. That this “ in vain” constitutes the character of present-day nihilism remains to be shown. The mistrust of our previous valuations grows until it becomes the question: “ Are not all ‘values’ lures that draw out the comedy without bringing it closer to a solution?” Duration “ in vain,” without end or aim, is the most paralyzing idea, particularly when one understands that one is being fooled and yet lacks the power not to be fooled. Let us think this thought in its most terrible form: existence as it is, without meaning or aim, yet recurring inevitably without any finale of nothingness: “ the eternal recurrence.” This is the most extreme form of nihilism: the nothing (the “ meaningless”), eternally! The European form of Buddhism: the energy of knowledge and strength compels this belief. It is the most scientific of all possible hypotheses. We deny end goals: if existence had one it would have to have been reached. So one understands that an antithesis to pantheism is attempted here: for “ everything perfect, divine, eternal” also compels a faith in the “ eternal recurrence.” Question: does morality make impossible *is pantheistic affirmation of all things, too? At bottom, it is only the moral god that has been overcome. Does it make sense to conceive a god “ beyond good and evil”? Would a pantheism in this sense be possible? Can we remove the idea of a goal from the process and then affirm the process in spite of this?-This would be the case if something were attained at every moment within this process—and always the same. Spinoza reached such an affirmative position in so far as every moment has a logical necessity, and with his basic instinct, which was logical, he felt a sense of triumph that the world should be constituted that way. But his case is only a single case. Every basic character trait that is encountered at the bottom of every event, that finds expression in every event, would have to lead every individual who experienced it as his own basic character trait to welcome every moment of universal existence with a sense of triumph. The crucial point would be that one experienced this basic character trait in oneself as good, valuable—with pleasure. It was morality that protected life against despair and the leap into nothing, among men and classes who were violated and oppressed by men: for it is the experience of being powerless against men, not against nature, that generates the most desperate embitterment against existence. Morality treated the violent despots, the doers of violence, the “ masters” in general as the enemies against whom the common man must be protected, which means first of all encouraged and strengthened. Morality consequently taught men to hate and
despise most profoundly what is the basic character trait of those who rule: their will to power. To abolish, deny, and dissolve this morality—that would mean looking at the besthated drive with an opposite feeling and valuation. If the suffering and oppressed lost the faith that they have the right to despise the will to power, they would enter the phase of hopeless despair. This would be the case if this trait were essential to life and it could be shown that even in this will to morality this very “ will to power” were hidden, and even this hatred and contempt were still a will to power. The oppressed would come to see that they were on the same plain with the oppressors, without prerogative, without higher rank. Rather the opposite! There is nothing to life that has value, except the degree of power-assuming that life itself is the will to power. Morality guarded the underprivileged against nihilism by assigning to each an infinite value, a metaphysical value, and by placing each in an order that did not agree with the worldly order of rank and power: it taught resignation, meekness, etc. Supposipg that the faith in this morality would perish, then the underprivileged would no longer have their comfort—and they would perish. This perishing takes the form of self-destruction—the instinctive selection of that which must destroy. Symptoms of this selfdestruction of the underprivileged: self-vivisection, poisoning, intoxication, romanticism, above all the instinctive need for actions that turn the powerful into mortal enemies (as it were, one breeds one’s own hangmen); the will to destruction as the will of a still deeper instinct, the instinct of self-destruction, the will for nothingness. Nihilism as a symptom that the underprivileged have no comfort left; that they destroy in order to be destroyed; that without morality they no longer have any reason to “ resign themselves” —that they place themselves on the plain of the opposite principle and also want power by compelling the powerful to become their hangmen. This is the European form of Buddhism—saying No after all existence has lost its “ meaning.” It is not that “ distress” has grown: on the contrary. “ God, morality, resignation,” were remedies on terribly low rungs of misery: active nihilism appears in relatively much more favorable conditions. The feeling that morality has been overcome presupposes a fair degree of spiritual culture, and this in turn that one is relatively well off. A certain spiritual weariness that, owing to the long fight of philosophical opinions, has reached the most hopeless skepticism regarding all philosophy, is another sign of the by no means low position of these nihilists. Consider the situation in which the Buddha appeared. The doctrine of the eternal recurrence would have scholarly presuppositions (as did the Buddha’s doctrine; e.g., the concept of causality, etc.). * What does “ underprivileged” mean? Above all, physiologically—no longer politically. The unhealthiest kind of man in Europe (in all classes) furnishes the soil for this nihilism: they will experience the belief in the eternal recurrence as a curse, struck by which one no longer shrinks from any action; not to be extinguished passively but to extinguish everything that is so aim- and meaningless, although this is a mere convulsion, a blind rage at the insight that everything has been for eternities—even this moment of nihilism and lust for destruction.—It is the value of such a crisis that it purlfies, that it pushes together related elements to perish of each other, that it assigns common tasks to men who have opposite ways of thinking—and it also brings to light the weaker and less secure among them and thus promotes an order of rank according to strength, from the point of view of health: those who command are recognized as those who command, those who obey as those who obey. Of course, outside every existing social order. * Who will prove to be the strongest in the course of this? The most moderate; those who do not require any extreme articles of faith; those who not only concede but love a fair amount of accidents and nonsense; those who can think of man with a considerable reduction of his value without becoming small and weak on that account: those richest in health who are equal to most misfortunes and therefore not so afraid of misfortunes—human beings who are sure of their power and represent the attained strength of humanity with conscious pride. * How would such a human being even think of the eternal recurrence? 56 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) - Periods of European Nihilism The period of unclarity, of all kinds of tentative men who would conserve the old without letting go of the new. The period of clarity: one understands that the old and the new are basically opposite, the old values born of declining and the new ones of ascending life—that all the old ideals are hostile to life (born of decadence and agents of decadence, even if in the magnificent Sunday-clothes of morality). We understand the old and are far from strong enough for something new. The period of the three great affects: contempt, pity, destruction. The period of catastrophe: the advent of a doctrine that sifts men—driving the weak to decisions, and the strong as well— II. HISTORY OF EUROPEAN NIHILISM 57 (1884) My friends, it was hard for us when we were young: we suffered youth itself like a serious sickness. That is due to the time into which we have been thrown—a time of extensive inner decay and disintegration, a time that with all its weaknesses, and even with its best strength, opposes the spirit of youth. Disintegration characterizes this time, and thus uncertainty: nothing stands firmly on its feet or on a hard faith in itself; one lives for tomorrow, as the day after tomorrow is dubious. Everything on our way is slippery and dangerous, and the ice that still supports us has become thin: all of us feel the warm, uncanny breath of the thawing wind; where we still walk, soon no one will be able to walk.
58 (1885-1888) If this is not an age of decay and declining vitality, it is at least one of headlong and arbitrary experimentation:—and it is probable that a superabundance of bungled experiments should create an overall impression as of decay—and perhaps even decay itself. 59 (1885-1886) Toward a History of the Modern Eclipse The state nomads (civil servants, etc.): without home. The decline of the family. The “ good man” as a symptom of exhaustion. Justice as will to power (breeding). Lasciviousness and neurosis. Black music: whither refreshing music? The anarchist. Contempt for man, nausea. Deepest difference: whether hunger or overabundance becomes creative? The former generates the ideals of romanticism. Nordic unnaturalness. The need for alcoholica: the “ distress” of the workers. Philosophical nihilism. 60 (1885) The slow emergence and rise of the middle and lower classes (including the lower kind of spirit and body), of which one finds many preludes before the French Revolution-and it —would have taken place without the Revolution, too—on the whole, then, the predominance of the herd over all shepherds and bellwethers— involves 1. eclipse of the spirit (the fusion of a Stoic and a frivolous appearance of happiness, characteristic of noble cultures, decreases; one lets much suffering be seen and heard that one formerly bore and hid); 2. moral hypocrisy (a way of wishing to distinguish oneself not by means of morality, but by means of the herd virtues: pity, consideration, moderation, which are not recognized and honored outside the herd ability); 3. a really great amount of shared suffering (pity) and joy (the pleasure in large-scale associations found in all herd animals —“ community spirit,” “ Fatherland,” everything in which the individual does not count). 61 (Summer-Fall 1883) Our time, with its aspiration to remedy and prevent accidental distresses and to wage preventive war against disagreeable possibilities, is a time of the poor. Our “ rich”—are poorest of all. The true purpose of all riches is forgotten. 62 (Spring-Fall 1887) Critique of modern man (his moralistic mendaciousness) :~A -the “ good man” corrupted and seduced by bad institutions (tyrants and priests);-reason as authority;-history as overcoming of errors;-the future as progress;-the Christian state (“ the Lord of hosts”);-the Christian sex impulse (or marriage); -the kingdom of “ justice” (the cult of “ humanity”);-“ freedom.” The romantic pose of modern man:-the noble man (Byron, Victor Hugo, George Sand);-noble indignation;-consecration through passion (as true “ nature”);-siding with the oppressed and underprivileged: motto of the historians and novelists;-the Stoics of duty,-selflessness as art and knowledge,-altruism as the most mendacious form of egoism (utilitarianism), most sentimental egoism. All this is eighteenth century. What, on the other hand, has not been inherited from it: insouciance, cheerfulness, elegance, brightness of the spirit. The tempo of the spirit has changed; the enjoyment of refinement and clarity of the spirit has given place to the enjoyment of color, harmony, mass, reality, etc. Sensualism in matters of the spirit. In short, it is the eighteenth century of Rousseau. 63 (Jan.-Fall 1888) On the whole, a tremendous quantum of humaneness has been attained in present-day mankind. That this is not felt generally is itself a proof: we have become so sensitive concerning small states of distress that we unjustly ignore what has been attained. Here one must make allowance for the existence of much decadence, and seen with such eyes our world has to look wretched and miserable. But such eyes have at all times seen the same things: 1. a certain overirritation even of the moral feelings; 2. the quantum of embitterment and eclipse that pessimism carries into judgments: these two together account for the predominance of the opposite notion, that our morality is in a bad way. The fact of credit, of worldwide trade, of the means of transportation—here a tremendous mild trust in man finds expression.—Another contributing factor is 3. the emancipation of science from moral and religious purposes: a very good sign that, however, is usually misunderstood. In my own way I attempt a justification of history. 64 (Spring-Fall 1887) The second Buddhism. The nihilistic catastrophe that finishes Indian culture.—Early signs of it: The immense increase of pity. Spiritual weariness. The reduction of problems to questions of pleasure and displeasure. The war glory that provokes a counterstroke. Just as national demarcation provokes a countermovement, the most cordial “ fraternity.” The impossibility for religion to go on working with dogmas and fables.
65 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) What is attacked deep down today is the instinct and the will of tradition: all institutions that owe their origins to this instinct violate the taste of the modern spirit–At bottom, nothing is thought and done without the purpose of eradicating this sense for tradition. One considers tradition a fatality; one studies it, recognizes it (as “ heredity”), but one does not want it. The tensing of a will over long temporal distances, the selection of the states and valuations that allow one to dispose of future centuries —precisely this is antimodern in the highest degree. Which goes to show that it is the disorganizing principles that give our age its character. 66 (Spring-Fall 1887) “ Be simple!”—for us complicated and elusive triers of the reins a demand that is a simple stupidity.—Be natural! But how if one happens to be “ unnatural”? 67 (1884) The former means for obtaining homogeneous, enduring characters for long generations: unalienable landed property, honoring the old (origin of the belief in gods and heroes as ancestors). Now the breaking up of landed property belongs to the opposite tendency: newspapers (in place of daily prayers), railway, telegraph. Centralization of a tremendous number of different interests in a single soul, which for that reason must be very strong and protean. 68 (March-June 1888) Why everything turns into histrionics.—Modern man lacks: the sure instinct (consequence of a long homogeneous form of activity of one kind of man); the inability to achieve anything perfect is merely a consequence of this: as an individual one can never make up for lost schooling. That which creates a morality, a code of laws: the profound instinct that only automatism makes possible perfection in life and creation. But now we have reached the opposite point; indeed, we wanted to reach it: the most extreme consciousness, man’s ability to see through himself and history. With this we are practically as far as possible from perfection in being, doing, and willing: our desire, even our will for knowledge is a symptom of a tremendous decadence. We strive for the opposite of that which strong races, strong natures want—understanding is an ending.That science is possible in this sense that is cultivated today is proof that all elementary instincts, life’s instincts of self-defense and protection, no longer function. We no longer collect, we squander the capital of our ancestors, even in the way in which we seek knowledge.69 (1885-1886) Nihilistic Traits a. In the natural sciences (“ meaninglessness”); causalism, mechanism. “ Lawfulness” an entr’acte, a residue. b. Ditto in politics: one lacks the faith in one’s right, innocence; mendaciousness rules and serving the moment. c. Ditto in economics: the abolition of slavery. The lack of a redeeming class, one that justifies-advent of anarchism. “ Education”? d. Ditto in history: fatalism, Darwinism; the final attempts to read reason and divinity into it fail. Sentimentality in face of the past; one could not endure a biography!— (Here, too, phenomenalism: character as a mask; there are no facts.) e. Ditto in art: romanticism and its counterstroke (aversion against romantic ideals and lies). The latter, moral as a sense of greater truthfulness, but pessimistic. Pure “ artists” (indifferent toward content). (Father-confessor psychology and puritan psychology, two forms of psychological romanticism: but even its counterproposal, the attempt to adopt a purely artistic attitude toward man—even there the opposite valuation is not yet ventured!) 70 (1885-1886) Against the doctrine of the influence of the milieu and external causes: the force within is infinitely superior; much that looks like external influence is merely its adaptation from within. The very same milieus can be interpreted and exploited in opposite ways: there are no facts.—A genius is not explained in terms of such conditions of his origin. 71 (Spring-Fall 1887; rev. Spring-Fall 1888) “ Modernity” in the perspective of the metaphor of nourishment and digestion.Sensibility immensely more irritable (—dressed up moralistically: the increase in pity—); the abundance of disparate impressions greater than ever: cosmopolitanism in foods, literatures, newspapers, forms, tastes, even landscapes. The tempo of this influx prestissimo; the impressions erase each other; one instinctively resists taking in anything, taking anything deeply, to “ digest” anything; a weakening of the power to digest results from this. A kind of adaptation to this flood of impressions takes place: men unlearn spontaneous action, they merely react to stimuli from outside. They spend their strength partly in assimilating things, partly in defense, partly in opposition. Profound weakening of spontaneity: the historian, critic, analyst, the interpreter, the observer, the collector, the reader-all of them reactive talents—all science! Artificial change of one’s nature into a “ mirror”; interested but, as it were, merely epidermically interested; a coolness on principle, a balance, a fixed low temperature closely underneath the thin surface on which warmth, movement, “ tempest,” and the play of waves are encountered. Opposition of external mobility and a certain deep heaviness and weariness. 72 (Jan.-Fall 1888) Where does our modern world belong—to exhaustion or ascent?—Its manifoldness and unrest conditioned by the attainment of the highest level of consciousness.
73 (Spring-Fall 1887) Overwork, curiosity and sympathy—our modern vices. 74 (Spring-Fall 1887) Toward a characterization of “ modernity.”—Overabundant development of intermediary forms; atrophy of types; traditions break off, schools; the overlordship of the instincts (prepared philosophically: the unconscious worth more) after the will power, the willing of end and means, has been weakened. 75 (1885) An able craftsman or scholar cuts a fine figure when he takes pride in his art and looks on life content and satisfied. But nothing looks more wretched than when a shoemaker or schoolmaster gives us to understand with a suffering mien that he was really born for something better. There is nothing better than what is good— and good is having some ability and using that to create, Tuchtigkeit or virtu in the Italian Renaissance sense. Today, in our time when the state has an absurdly fat stomach, there are in all fields and departments, in addition to the real workers, also “ representatives”; e.g., besides the scholars also scribblers, besides the suffering classes also garrulous, boastful peter-do-wells who “ represent” this suffering, not to speak of the professional politicians who are well off while “ representing” distress with powerful lungs before a parliament. Our modern life is extremely expensive owing to the large number of intermediaries; in an ancient city, on the other hand, and, echoing that, also in many cities in Spain and Italy, one appeared oneself and would have given a hoot to such modern representatives and intermediaries—or a kick! 76 (Spring-Fall 1887) The predominance of dealers and intermediaries in spiritual matters, too: the scribbler, the “ representative,” the historian (who fuses past and present), the exotician and cosmopolitan, the intermediaries between science and philosophy, the semitheologians. 77(1883-1888) Nothing to date has nauseated me more than the parasites of the spirit: in our unhealthy Europe one already finds them everywhere—and they have the best conscience in the world. Perhaps a little dim, a little air pessimiste, but in the main voraclous, dirty, dirtying, creeping in, nestling, thievish, scurvy—and as innocent as all little sinners and microbes. They live off the fact that other people have spirit and squander it: they know that it is of the very essence of the rich spirit to squander itself carelessly, without petty caution, from day to day.—For the spirit is a bad householder and pays no heed to how everybody lives and feeds on it. 78(1885-1886) Histrionics The colorfulness of modern man and its charm. Essentially concealment and satiety. The scribbler. The politician (in “ the nationalist swindle”). Histrionics in the arts: lack of probity in prior training and schooling (Fromentin); the romantics (lack of philosophy and science and superabundance of literature); the novelists (Walter Scott, but also the Nibelungen monsters along with the most nervous music); the Iyric poets. Being “ scientific.” Virtuosos (Jews). Popular ideals overcome, but not yet in the eyes of the people: the saint, the sage, the prophet. 79 (Spring-Fall 1887) The modern spirit’s lack of discipline, dressed up in all sorts of moral fashions.—The showy words are: tolerance (for “ the incapacity for Yes and No”); la largeur de sympathie ( = one-third indifference, one-third curiosity, one-third pathological irritability); “ objectivity” (lack of personality, lack of will, incapacity for “ love”); “ freedom” versus rules (romanticism); “ truth” versus forgery and lies (naturalism); being “ scientific” (the “ document hurnain”: in other words, the novel of colportage and addition in place of composition); “ passion” meaning disorder and immoderation; “ depth” meaning confusion, the profuse chaos of symbols. 80 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) Toward a critique of the big words.—I am full of suspicion and malice against what they call “ ideals”: this is my pessimism, to have recognized how the “ higher feelings” are a source of misfortune and man’s loss of value. One is deceived every time one expects “ progress” from an ideal; every time so far the victory of the ideal has meant a retrograde movement. Christianity, the revolution, the abolition of slavery, equal rights, philanthropy, love of peace, justice, truth: all these big words have value only in a fight, as flags: not as realities but as showy words for something quite different (indeed, opposite!) 81 (1883-1888)
One knows the kind of human being who has fallen in love with the motto, tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner. It is the weak, it is above all the disappointed: if there is something to be forgiven in all, perhaps there is also something to be despised in all. It is the philosophy of disappointment that wraps itself so humanely in pity and looks sweet. These are romantics whose faith flew the coop: now they at least want to watch how everything passes and goes. They call it l’art pour l’art, “ objectivity,” etc. 82 (Spring-Fall 1887) Chief symptoms of pessimism: the diners chez Maguy; Russian pessimism (Tolstoy, Dostoevsky); aesthetic pessimism, l’art pour l’art, “ description” (romantic and antiromantic pessimism); epistemological pessimism (Schopenhauer, phenomenalism-); anarchistic pessimism; the “ religion of pity,” Buddhistic premovement; cultural pessimism (exoticism, cosmopolitanism); moralistic pessimism: I myself. 83 (Spring-Fall 1887) “ Without the Christian faith,” Pascal thought, “ you, no less than nature and history, will become for yourselves un monstre et un chaos.” This prophecy we have furfilled, after the feeble-optimistic eighteenth century had prettified and rationalized man. Schopenhauer and Pascal.—In an important sense, Schopenhauer is the first to take up again the movement of Pascal: un rnonstre et un chaos, consequently something to be negated.— History, nature, man himself. “ Our inability to know the truth is the consequence of our corruption, our moral decay”; thus Pascal. And thus, at bottom, Schopenhauer. “ The deeper the corruption of reason, the more necessary the doctrine of salvation”—or, in Schopenhauer’s terms, negation. 84 (Spring-Fall 1887) Schopenhauer as throwback (state before the revolution): Pity, sensuality, art, weakness of the will, catholicism of spiritual cravings—that is good eighteenth century au fond. Schopenhauer’s basic misunderstanding of the will (as if craving, instinct, drive were the essence of will) is typical: lowering the value of the will to the point of making a real mistake. Also hatred against willing; attempt to see something higher, indeed that which is higher and valuable, in willing no more, in “ being a subject without aim and purpose” (in the “ pure subject free of will”). Great symptom of the exhaustion or the weakness of the will: for the will is precisely that which treats cravings as their master and appoints to them their way and measure. 85 (Jan.-Fall 1888) The unworthy attempt has been made to see Wagner and Schopenhauer as types of mental illness: one would gain an incomparably more essential insight by making more precise scientifically the type of decadence both represent. 86 (1888) Your Henrik Ibsen has become very clear to me. For all his robust idealism and “ will to truth” he did not dare to liberate himself from the illusionism of morality that speaks of freedom without wishing to admit to itself what freedom is: the second stage in the metamorphosis of the “ will to power”—for those who lack freedom. On the first stage one demands justice from those who are in power. On the second, one speaks of “ freedom—that is, one wants to get away from those in power. On the third, one speaks of “ equal rights”—that is, as long as one has not yet gained superiority one wants to prevent one’s competitors from growing in power. 87 (Spring-Fall 1887) Decline of Protestantism: understood as a halfway house both theoretically and historically. Actual superiority of Catholicism; the feeling of Protestantism extinguished to such an extent that the strongest anti-Protestant movements are no longer experienced as such (for example, Wagner’s Parsifal). All of the higher regions of the spirit in France are Catholic in their instincts; Bismarck realizes that Protestantism simply doesn’t exist any more. 88 (Spring-Fall 1887) Protestantism, that spiritually unclean and boring form of decadence in which Christianity has been able so far to preserve itself in the mediocre north: valuable for knowledge as something complex and a halfway house, in so far as it brought together in the same heads experiences of different orders and origins. 89 (March-June 1888) How did the German spirit transform Christianity!—And to stick to Protestantism: how much beer there is in Protestant Christianity! Can one even imagine a spiritually staler, lazier, more comfortably relaxed form of the Christian faith than that of the average Protestant in Germany? That’s what I call a modest version of Christianity! A homoeopathy of Christianity is what I call it. One reminds me that today we also encounter an immodest Protestantism—that of the court chaplains and anti-Semitic speculators: but nobody has claimed yet that any “ spirit” whatever “ moved” on the faces of these waters.—That is merely a more indecent form of Christianity, by no means more sensible. 90 (Jan.-Fall 1888) Progress.—Let us not be deceived! Time marches forward; we’d like to believe that everything that is in it also marches forward—that the development is one that moves forward. The most level-headed are led astray by this illusion. But the nineteenth century does not represent progress over the sixteenth; and the German spirit of 1888 represents a regress from the German spirit of 1788.
“ Mankind” does not advance, it does not even exist. The overall aspect is that of a tremendous experimental laboratory in which a few successes are scored, scattered throughout all ages, while there are untold failures, and all order, logic, union, and obligingness are lacking. How can we fail to recognize that the ascent of Christianity is a movement of decadence?-That the German Reformation is a recrudescence of Christian barbarism?-That the Revolution destroyed the instinct for a grand organization of society? Man represents no progress over the animal: the civilized tenderfoot is an abortion compared to the Arab and Corsican; the Chinese is a more successful type, namely more durable, than the European. 91 (1888) On German Pessimism The eclipse, the pessimistic coloring, comes necessarily in the wake of the Enlightenment. Around 1770 the decline of cheerfulness began to be noticed; women, with that feminine instinct which always sides with virtue, supposed that immorality was the cause. Galiani hit the nail on the head: he cites Voltaire’s verse: Un monstre gai vaut mieux Qu’un sentimental ennuyeux. When I believe now that I am a few centuries ahead in Enlightenment not only of Voltaire but even of Galiani, who was far profounder—how far must I have got in the increase of darkness! And this is really the case, and I bewared in time, with some sort of regret, of the German and Christian narrowness and inconsequence of pessimism a la Schopenhauer or, worse, Leopardi, and sought out the most quintessential forms (Asia). But in order to endure this type of extreme pessimism (it can be perceived here and there in my Birth of Tragedy) and to live alone “ without God and morality” I had to invent a counterpart for myself. Perhaps I know best why man alone laughs: he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter. The unhappiest and most melancholy animal is, as fitting, the most cheerful. 92 (1883-1888) Regarding German culture, I have always had the feeling of decline. This fact, that I first became acquainted with a type in decline, has often made me unfair to the whole phenomenon of European culture. The Germans always come after the others, much later: they are carrying something in the depths; e.g.,Dependence on other countries; e.g., Kant-Rousseau, Sensualists, Hume, Swedenborg. Schopenhauer-Indians and romanticism, Voltaire. Wagner-French cult of the gruesome and of grand opera, Paris and the flight into primeval states (marriage with the sister). —The law of the latecomers (province to Paris, Germany to France). Why the Germans of all people discovered the Greek spirit (the more one develops a drive, the more attractive does it become to plunge for once into its opposite). Music is swan song. 93 (Jan.-Fall 1888) Renaissance and Reformation.-What does the Renaissance prove? That the reign of the individual has to be brief. The squandering is too great; the very possibility of collecting and capitalizing is lacking; and exhaustion follows immediately. These are times when everything is spent, when the very strength is spent with which one collects, capitalizes, and piles riches upon riches.- Even the opponents of such movements are forced into an absurd waste of energy; they, too, soon become exhausted, spent, desolate. In the Reformation we possess a wild and vulgar counterpart to the Italian Renaissance, born of related impulses; only in the retarded north, which had remained coarse, they had to don a religious disguise; for there the concept of the higher life had not yet detached itself from that of the religious life. Through the Reformation, too, the individual sought freedom; “ everybody his own priest” is also a mere formula of libertinage. In truth, one word was enough—“ evangelical freedom”—and all instincts that had reason to remain hidden broke out like wild dogs, the most brutal requirements suddenly acquired the courage to face themselves, and everything seemed justified.—One was careful not to understand what liberty one had really meant at bottom; one shut one’s eyes before oneself.—But shutting one’s eyes and moistening one’s lips with enthusiastic orations did not prevent one’s hands from grasping whatever could be grabbed, and the belly became the god of the “ free evangel,” and all the cravings of revenge and envy satisfied themselves with insatiable rage.This took a while; then exhaustion set in, just as it had in the south of Europe—and here, too, a vulgar kind of exhaustion, a general were in servitium.— The indecent century of Germany arrived.94 (1884) Chivalry as the conquered position of power: its gradual breaking up (and in part transition into what is more spread out, bourgeois). In La Rochefoucauld we find a consciousness of the true motive springs of noblesse of the mind—and a view of these motive springs that is darkened by Christianity. The French Revolution as the continuation of Christianity. Rousseau is the seducer: he again unfetters woman who is henceforth represented in an ever more interesting manner— as suffering. Then the slaves and Mrs. Beecher- Stowe. Then the poor and the workers. Then the vice addicts and the sick—all this is moved into the foreground (even to develop sympathy for the genius one no longer knows any other way for the past five hundred years than to represent him as the bearer of great suffering!). Next come the curse on voluptuousness (Baudelaire and Schopenhauer); the most decided conviction that the lust to rule is the greatest vice; the perfect certainty that morality and disinterestedness are identical concepts and that the “ happiness of all” is a goal worth striving for (i.e., the kingdom of heaven of Christ). We are well along on the way: the kingdom of heaven of the poor
in spirit has begun.— Intermediary stages: the bourgeois (a parvenu on account of money) and the worker (on account of the machine). Comparison of Greek culture and that of the French in the age of Louis XIV. Decided faith in oneself. A leisure class whose members make things difficult for themselves and exercise much self-overcoming. The power of form, the will to give form to oneself. “ Happiness” admitted as a goal. Much strength and energy behind the emphasis on forms. The delight in looking at a life that seems so easy.—To the French, the Greeks looked like children. 95 (Spring-Fall 1887) The Three Centuries Their different sensibilities are best expressed thus: Aristocratism: Descartes, rule of reason, testimony of the sovereignty of the will; Feminism: Rousseau, rule of feeling, testimony of the sovereignty of the senses, mendacious; Animalism: Schopenhauer, rule of craving, testimony of the sovereignty of animality, more honest but gloomy. The seventeenth century is aristocratic, imposes order, looks down haughtily upon the animalic, is severe against the heart, not cozy, without sentiment, “ un-German,” averse to what is burlesque and what is natural, inclined to generalizations and sovereign confronted with the past—for it believes in itself. Much beast of prey au fond, much ascetic habit to remain master. The century of strong will; also of strong passion. The eighteenth century is dominated by woman, given to enthusiasm, full of esprit, shallow, but with a spirit in the service of what is desirable, of the heart, libertine in the enjoyment of what is most spiritual, and undermines all authorities; intoxicated, cheerful, clear, humane, false before itself, much canaille au fond, sociable.The nineteenth century is more animalic and subterranean, uglier, more realistic and vulgar, and precisely for that reason “ better,” “ more honest,” more submissive before every kind of “ reality,” truer; but weak in will, but sad and full of dark cravings, but fatalistic. Not full of awe and reverence for either “ reason” or “ heart”; deeply convinced of the rule of cravings (Schopenhauer spoke of “ will”; but nothing is more characteristic of his philosophy than the absence of all genuine willing). Even morality reduced to one instinct (“ pity”). Auguste Comte is a continuation of the eighteenth century (domination of coeur over la t�te, sensualism in the theory of knowledge, altruistic enthusiasm). That science has become sovereign to such a degree proves how the nineteenth century has rid itself of the domination of ideals. A certain frugality of desire makes possible our scientific curiosity and severity—which is our kind of virtue.Romanticism is an echo of the eighteenth century; a kind of piled-high desire for its enthusiasm in the grand style (as a matter of fact, a good deal of histrionics and self-deception: one wanted to represent strong natures and grand passions). The nineteenth century looks instinctively for theories that seem to justify its fatalistic submission to matters of fact. Already Hegel’s success against “ sentimentality” and romantic idealism was due to his fatalistic way of thinking, to his faith in the greater reason on the side of the victorious, to his justification of the actual “ state” (in place of “ mankind,” etc.).Schopenhauer: we are something stupid and, at best, even something that cancels itself. Success of determinism, of the genealogical derivation of obligations that had formerly been considered absolute, the doctrine of milieu and adaptation, the reduction of will to reflexes, the denial of the will as an “ efficient cause”; finally—a real rechristening: one sees so little will that the word becomes free to designate something else. Further theories: the doctrine of objectivity—“ will- less” contemplation—as the only road to truth; also to beauty (—also the faith in the “ genius” to justify a right to submission); mechanism, the calculable rigidity of the mechanical process; the alleged “ naturalism,” elimination of the choosing, judging, interpreting subject as a principleKant, with his “ practical reason” and his moral fanaticism is wholly eighteenth century; still entirely outside the historical movement; without any eye for the actuality of his time, e.g., Revolution; untouched by Greek philosophy; fanciful visionary of the concept of duty; sensualist with the backdrop of the pampering of dogmatism.The movement back to Kant in our century is a movement back to the eighteenth century: one wants to regain a right to the old ideals and the old enthusiasm—for that reason an epistemology that “ sets boundaries,” which means that it permits one to posit as one may see fit a beyond of reason.Hegel’s way of thinking is not far different from Goethe’s: one needs only to listen to Goethe about Spinoza. Will to deify the universe and life in order to find repose and happiness in contemplation and in getting to the bottom of things; Hegel seeks reason everywhere—before reason one may submit and acquiesce. In Goethe a kind of almost joyous and trusting fatalism that does not revolt, that does not flag, that seeks to form a totality out of himself, in the faith that only in the totality everything redeems itself and appears good and justified. 96 (Spring-Fall 1887) Period of the Enlightenment—followed by the period of sentimentality. To what extent Schopenhauer belongs to “ sentimentality” (Hegel to spirituality). 97 (Spring-Fall 1887) The seventeenth century suffers of man as of a sum of contradictions (“ l’ames de contradictions” that we are); it seeks to discover, order, excavate man—while the eighteenth century seeks to forget what is known of man’s nature in order to assimilate him to its utopia. “ Superficial, tender, humane”—enthusiastic about “ man”The seventeenth century seeks to erase the tracks of the individual to make the work look as similar to life as possible. The eighteenth uses the work in an attempt to arouse
interest in the author. The seventeenth century seeks in art—art, a piece of culture; the eighteenth uses art to make propaganda for reforms of a social and political nature. “ Utopia,” the “ ideal man,” the de�fication of nature, the vanity of posing, the subordination to propaganda for social goals, charlatanism—these are our gifts from the eighteenth century. The style of the seventeenth century: propre, exact et libre. The strong individual, self-aufficient or zealously occupied before God—and this modern obtrusiveness of authors who all but leap out at you—these furnish some contrast. “ To perform” —compare that with the scholars of Port-Royal. Alfieri had a sense for grand style. Hatred of the burlesque (undignified), lack of a sense for nature belong to the seventeenth century. 98 (Spring-Fall 1887) Against Rousseau.- Unfortunately, man is no longer evil enough; Rousseau’s opponents who say “ man is a beast of prey” are unfortunately wrong. Not the corruption of man but the extent to which he has become tender and moralized is his curse. Precisely in the sphere that Rousseau fought most violently one could find the relatively still strong and well-turned-out type of man (those in whom the grand affects were still unbroken: will to power, will to enjoyment, will and capacity to command). The man of the eighteenth century has to be compared with the man of the Renaissance (also with the man of the seventeenth century in France), so that one feels what is at stake: Rousseau is a symptom of self-contempt and heated vanity—both signs that the domineering will is lacking: he moralizes and, as a man of rancor, seeks the cause of his wretchedness in the ruling classes. 99 (Spring-Fall 1887) Against Rousseau.—The state of nature is terrible, man is a beast of prey; our civilization represents a tremendous triumph over this beast-of-prey nature: thus argued Voltaire. He felt the mitigation, the subtleties, the spiritual joys of the civilized state; he despised narrowmindedness, also in the form of virtue, and the lack of delicatesse, also among ascetics and monks. The moral reprehensibility of man seemed to preoccupy Rousseau; with the words “ unjust” and “ cruel” one can best stir up the instincts of the oppressed who otherwise smart under the ban of the vetitum and disfavor, so their conscience advises them against rebellious cravings. Such emancipators seek one thing above all: to give their party the grand accents and poses of the higher nature. 100 (Spring-Fall 1887) Rousseau: the rule based on feeling; nature as the source of justice; man perfects himself to the extent to which he approaches nature (according to Voltaire, to the extent to which he moves away from nature). The very same epochs are for one ages of the progress of humanity; for the other, times when injustice and inequality grow worse. Voltaire still comprehended umanita in the Renaissance sense; also virtu (as “ high culture”); he tights for the cause of the “ honnetes gens” and “ de la bonne compagnie,” the cause of taste, of science, of the arts, of progress itself and civilization. The fight began around 1760: the citizen of Geneva and le seigneur de Ferney. Only from that moment on Voltaire becomes the man of his century, the philosopher, the representative of tolerance and unbelief (till then merely un bel esprit). Envy and hatred of Rousseau’s success impelled him forward, “ to the heights.” Pour “ la canaille” un dieu remunerateur et vengeur- Voltaire. Critique of both points of view in regard to the value of civilization. The social invention is for Voltaire the most beautiful there is: there is no higher goal than to maintain and perfect it; precisely this is honn�tete, to respect social conventions; virtue as obedience to certain necessary “ prejudices” in favor of the preservation of “ society.” Missionary of culture, aristocrat, representative of the victorious, ruling classes and their valuations. But Rousseau remained a plebeian, also as homme de lettres; that was unheard of; his impudent contempt of all that was not he himself. What was sick in Rousseau was admired and imitated most. (Lord Byron related to him; also worked himself up into sublime poses and into vindictive rancor; sign of “ meanness”; later attained balance through Venice and comprehended what produces more ease and well- being~‘insouciance.) Rousseau is proud in regard to what he is, in spite of his origins; but he is beside himself when one reminds him of it.Rousseau, beyond a doubt, mentally disturbed; in Voltaire an uncommon health and light touch. The rancor of the sick; the periods of his insanity also those of his contempt of man and his mistrust. The defense of providence by Rousseau (against the pessimism of Voltaire): he needed God in order to be able to cast a curse upon society and civilization; everything had to be good in itself because God had created it; only man has corrupted men. The “ good man” as the natural man was pure fantasy; but with the dogma of God’s authorship it seemed probable and well-founded. Romanticism a la Rousseau: passion (“ the sovereign right of passion”); “ naturalness”; the fascination of madness (folly included in greatness); the absurd vanity of the weak man; the rancor of the mob as judge (“ for a hundred years now, a sick man has been accepted as a leader in politics”). 101 (Spring-Fall 1887)
Kant: makes the epistemological skepticism of the English possible for Germans: 1. by enlisting for it the sympathy of the moral and religious needs of the Germans; just as the later philosophers of the Academy used skepticism for the same reason, as a preparation for Platonism (vice Augustin); and as Pascal used even moralistic skepticism in order to excite the need for faith (“ to justify it”); 2. by scholastically involuting and curlicueing it and thus making it acceptable for the German taste regarding scientific form (for Locke and Hume in themselves were too bright, too clear, i.e., judged according to German value instincts, “ too superficial”-) Kant: inferior in his psychology and knowledge of human nature; way off when it comes to great historical values (French Revolution); a moral fanatic a la Rousseau; a subterranean Christianity in his values; a dogmatist through and through, but ponderously sick of this inclination, to such an extent that he wished to tyrannize it, but also weary right away of skepticism; not yet touched by the slightest breath of cosmopolitan taste and the beauty of antiquity—a delayer and mediator, nothing original (just as Leibniz mediated and built a bridge between mechanism and spiritualism, as Goethe did between the taste of the eighteenth century and that of the “ historical sense” (which is essentially a sense for the exotic), as German music did between French and Italian music, as Charlemagne did between imperium Romanum and nationalism—delayers par excellence. ) 102 (Spring-Fall 1887) In how far the Christian centuries with their pessimism were stronger centuries than the eighteenth century—like the tragic era of the Greeks. The nineteenth century vis-a-vis the eighteenth century. In what respects heir—in what respects a regression (poorer in “ spirit” and taste)—in what respects progress (darker, more realistic, stronger). 103 (1883-1888)75 What does it mean that we have such a feeling for the campagna Romana? And for high mountain ranges? What is the meaning of our nationalism? Chateaubriand in 1803, in a letter to M. de Fontanes, gives the first impression of the campagna Romana. President de Grosses says of the campagna Romana: “ il fallait que Romulus fut ivre, quand il songea a batir une ville dans un terrain aussi laid.” Delacroix, too, did not like Rome, it frightened him. He was enthusiastic about Venice, like Shakespeare, like Byron, like George Sand. This aversion to Rome also in Theoph. Gautier—and in Rich. Wagner. Lamartine has found language for Sorrent and Posilipp. Victor Hugo was enthusiastic about Spain, “ parce que aucune autre nation n’a moins emprunte’ a l’antiquite’, parce qu’elle n’a subi aucune influence classique.” 104 (Jan.-Fall 1888) The two great tentative ones, made to overcome the eighteenth century: Napoleon, by awakening again the man, the soldier, and the great fight for power-conceiving Europe as a political unit; Goethe, by imagining a European culture that would harvest the full inheritance of attained humanity. German culture of this century arouses mistrust-in music this full, redeeming and binding element of Goethe is lacking- The Austrians have remained German only by virtue of their music. 105 (1883-1888) The preponderance of music in the romantics of 1839 and 1840. Delacroix. Ingres, a passionate musician (cult of Gluck, Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart), said to his students in Rome, “ si je pouvais vous rendre tous musicians, vous y gagneriez comme peintres”; also Horace Vernet, with a special passion for Don Giovanni (as Mendelssohn testifies, 1831); also Stendhal, who said of himself: Combien de lieues ne ferais-je pas a pied, et combien de jours de prison ne me soumetterais-je pas pour entendre Don Juan ou le Matromonio segreto: et je ne sais pour queue autre chose je ferais cet eport. At that time he was 56. Borrowed forms; e.g., Brahms as typical “ epigone”; Mendelssohn’s educated Protestantism, ditto (an earlier “ soul” is recaptured poetically-) -moral and poetical substitutions in Wagner, one art as stopgap for deficiencies in the others -the “ historical sense,” inspiration from poetry and ancient sagas -that typical transformation of which G. Flaubert offers the clearest example among the French and Richard Wagner among the Germans, in which the romantic faith in love and the future is transformed into the desire for the nothing, 1830 into 1850. 106 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) Why does German music culminate in the period of German romanticism? Why is Goethe missing in German music? How much Schiller—more precisely, how much “ Thekla”—there is in Beethoven! Schumann has in himself Eichendorff, Uhland, Heine, Hoffmann, Tieck. Richard Wagner has Freischutz, Hoffmann, Grimm, the romantic saga, the mystical catholicism of instinct, symbolism, the “ libertinism of passion” (Rousseau’s intent). The Flying Dutchman tastes of France, where le tene’breux was the type of the seducer in 1830. Cult of music, of the revolutionary romanticism of form. Wagner sums up romanticism, German as well as French107 (1888)
Estimated merely for his value for Germany and German culture, Richard Wagner remains a great question mark, perhaps a German misfortune, in any case a destiny: but what does it matter? Isn’t he very much more than merely a German event? It even seems to me that there is no place where he belongs less than Germany: nothing was prepared for him there; his whole type remains simply strange among Germans, odd, uncomprehended, incomprehensible But one is careful not to admit this to oneself: for that one is too kindly, too square, too German. “ Credo quia absurdus est”: that is what the German spirit wants and also wanted in this case—and so it believes for the present whatever Wagner wanted people to believe about him. The German spirit has at all times lacked subtlety and divination in psychologicis. Today, under the high pressure of fatherlandism and self-admiration, it is visibly thickening and becoming coarser: how should it be capable of coping with the problem of Wagner!108 (1885) So far, the Germans are nothing, but they will become something; thus they have no culture yet-thus they cannot have any culture yet. That is my proposition: let those who cannot help it take offense.—So far they are nothing: that means, they are all sorts of things. They will become something: that means, they will stop some day being all sorts of things. The latter is at bottom a mere wish, scarcely a hope; fortunately, a wish on which one can live, a matter of will, of work, of discipline, of breeding, as well as a matter of annoyance, of desire, of missing something, of discomfort, even of embitterment-in brief, we Germans desire something from ourselves that has not yet been desired from us—we desire something more! That this “ German as he is not yet” deserves something better than today’s German “ Bildung”; that all who are “ in the process of becoming” must be furious when they perceive some satisfaction in this area, an impertinent “ retiring on one’s laurels” or “ selfcongratulation”: that is my second proposition on which I also have not yet changed my mind. 109 (1885) Principle: There is an element of decay in everything that characterizes modern man: but close beside this sickness stand signs of an untested force and powerfulness of the soul. The same reasons that produce the increasing smallness of man drive the stronger and rarer individuals up to greatness. 110 (Spring-Fall 1887) Overall insight: the ambiguous character of our modern world the very same symptoms could point to decline and to strength. And the signs of strength, of the attainment of majority, could be misconstrued as weakness on the basis of traditional (residual) negative emotional valuations. In brief, our feelings, as feelings about values, are not up to date. To generalize: feelings about values are always behind the times; they express conditions of preservation and growth that belong to times long gone by; they resist new conditions of existence with which they cannot cope and which they necessarily misunderstand: thus they inhibit and arouse suspicion against what is new.111 (Spring-Fall 1887) The problem of the nineteenth century. Whether its strong and weak sides belong together? Whether it is all of one piece? Whether the diverseness of its ideals and their mutual inconsistency are due to a higher aim: as something higher.–For it could be the precondition of greatness to grow to such an extent in violent tension. Dissatisfaction, nihilism could be a good sign. 112 (Spring-Fall 1887) Overall insight.-Actually, every major growth is accompanied by a tremendous crumbling and passing away: suffering, the symptoms of decline belong in the times of tremendous advances; every fruitful and powerful movement of humanity has also created at the same time a nihilistic movement. It could be the sign of a crucial and most essential growth, of the transition to new conditions of existence, that the most extreme form of pessimism, genuine nihilism, would come into the world. This I have comprehended. 113 (1883-1888) (A) To begin with a full and cordial tribute to contemporary humanity: not to be deceived by appearances—this type of humanity is less striking but gives far better warranties of duration; its tempo is slower, but the beat is much richer. Health is increasing, the actual conditions for a strong body get recognized and are slowly created, “ asceticism” ironice. One shrinks from extremes; a certain confidence in the “ right road”; no enthusing; temporary acclimatization to narrower values (like “ fatherland,” like “ scholarship,” etc.). Still, this whole picture would remain ambiguous: it could be an ascending but also a descending movement of life. (B) Faith in “ progress”-in the lower spheres of intelligence it appears as ascending life; but this is self-deception; in the higher spheres of intelligence as decending life. Description of the symptoms. Unity of point of view: uncertainty about standards of value. Fear of a general “ in vain.” Nihilism. 114 (June 10,1887) Actually, we have no longer such need of an antidote to the first nihilism: life in our Europe is no longer that uncertain, capricious, absurd. Such a tremendous increase in the value of man, the value of trouble, etc., is not so needful now; we can take a significant decrease of this value, we may concede much absurdity and caprice: the power man has attained now permits a demotion of the means of breeding of which the moral interpretation was the strongest. “ God”’ is far too extreme a hypothesis. 115 (Jan.-Fall 1888)
If anything signifies our humanization—a genuine and actual progress—it is the fact that we no longer require excessive oppositions, indeed no opposites at all— we may love the senses, we have spiritualized and made them artistic in every degree; we have a right to all those things which were most maligned until now.” 116 (Jan.-Fall 1888) The inversion of the order of rank.-The pious counterfeiters, the priests, among us become chandalas—they replace the charlatans, quacks, counterfeiters, and wizards; we consider them corrupters of the will, great slanderers of life on which they wish to revenge themselves, rebels among the underprivileged. We have turned the caste of senants, the Sudras, into our middle class, our “ Volk” [“ people”], those who make political decisions. On the other hand, the chandala of former times is at the top: foremost, those who blaspheme God, the immoralists, the nomads of every type, the artists, Jews, musicians—at bottom, all disreputable classes of menWe have raised ourselves to the level of honorable thoughts; even more, we determine honor on earth, “ nobility”—All of us are today advocates of life.—We immoralists are today the strongest power: the other great powers need us—we construe the world in our imageWe have transferred the concept of the “ chandala” to the priests, teachers of a beyond, and the Christian society that is grown together with them, as well as all who are of the same origin, the pessimists, nihilists, romantics of pity, criminals, vice addicts— the whole sphere in which the concept of “ God” is imagined as a saviorWe are proud of no longer having to be liars, slanderers, men who cast suspicion on life117 (Spring-Fall 1887) Progress of the nineteenth century against the eighteenth (—at bottom we good Europeans wage a war against the eighteenth century—): 1. “ Return to nature” understood more and more decisively in the opposite sense from Rousseau’s. Away from idyl and opera! 2. more and more decisively anti-idealistic, more concrete, more fearless, industrious, moderate, suspicious against sudden changes, antirevolutionary; 3. more and more decisively the question concerning the health of the body is put ahead of that of “ the soul”: the latter being understood as a state consequent upon the former, and the former at the very least as a precondition of the health of the soul. 118 (1883-1888) If anything at all has been achieved, it is a more innocuous relation to the senses, a more joyous, benevolent, Goethean attitude toward sensuality; also a prouder feeling regarding the search for knowledge, so that the “ pure fool” is not given much credit. 119 (Spring-Fall 1887; rev. 1888) We who are “ objective.”-It is not “ pity” that opens the gates to the most distant and strange types of being and culture to us, but rather our accessibility and lack of partiality that does not empathize with or share suffering but on the contrary takes delight in a hundred things that formerly led people to suffer (feel outraged or deeply moved, or prompted hostile and cold looks-). Suffering in all its nuances has become interesting for us: in this respect we are certainly not fuller of pity, even when we are shaken by the sight of suffering and moved to tears: we do not by any means for that reason feel like helping. In this voluntary desire to contemplate all sorts of distress and transgressions we have become stronger and more vigorous than the eighteenth century was; it is a proof of our increase in vigor (we have come closer to the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries.). But it is a profound misunderstanding to construe our “ romanticism” as a proof that our “ souls” have become “ more beautiful”We desire strong sensations as all coarser ages and social strata do.—This should be distinguished from the needs of those with weak nerves and the decadents: they have a need for pepper, even for crueltyAll of us seek states in which bourgeois morality no longer has any say, and priestly morality even less (—every book to which some of the air of pastors and theologians still clings gives us the impression of a pitiable niaiserie and poverty.—“ Good society” consists of those whom at bottom nothing interests except what is forbidden in bourgeois society and gives a bad reputation: the same applies to books, music, politics, and the estimation of woman. 120 (Spring-Fall 1887) How man has become more natural in the nineteenth century (the eighteenth century is that of elegance, refinement, and sentiments genereux).—Not “ return to nature”—for there has never yet been a natural humanity. The scholasticism of un- and antinatural values is the rule, is the beginning; man reaches nature only after a long struggle—he never “ returns” to Nature: i.e., daring to be immoral like nature. We are coarser, more direct, full of irony against generous feelings even when we succumb to them. More natural is our first society, that of the rich, the leisure class: they hunt each other, love between the sexes is a kind of sport in which marriage furnishes an obstacle and a provocation; they amuse themselves and live for pleasure; they esteem physical advantages above all, are curious and bold. More natural is our attitude to the search for knowledge: we possess libertinage of the spirit in all innocence, we hate pompous and hieratical manners, we delight in what is most forbidden, we should hardly know any longer of any interest of knowledge if the way to it were paved with boredom. More natural is our attitude toward morality. Principles have become ridiculous; nobody permits himself any longer to speak without irony of his “ duty.” But a helpful,
benevolent disposition is esteemed (morality is found in an instinct, and the rest is spurned. In addition a few concepts of points of honor-). More natural is our position in politicis: we see problems of power, of one quantum of power against another. We do not believe in any right that is not supported by the power of enforcement: we feel all rights to be conquests. More natural is our estimation of great human beings and great things: we consider passion a privilege, we consider nothing great unless it includes a great crime; we conceive all being-great as a placing-oneself-outside as far as morality is concerned. More natural is our attitude toward nature: we no longer love it on account of its “ innocence,” “ reason,” or “ beauty”; we have made it nicely “ devilish” and “ dumb.” But instead of despising it on that account, we have felt more closely related to it ever since, more at home in it. It does not aspire to virtue, and for that we respect nature. More natural is our attitude toward art: we do not demand beautiful illusory lies from it, etc.; brutal positivism reigns, recognizing facts without becoming excited. In summa: there are signs that the European of the nineteenth century is less ashamed of his instincts; he has taken a goodly step toward admitting to himself his unconditional naturalness, i.e., his immorality, without becoming embittered—on the contrary, strong enough to endure only this sight. This sounds to some ears as if corruption had progressed— and it is certain that man has not come dose to that “ nature” of which Rousseau speaks but has progressed another step in civilization, which Rousseau abhorred. We have become stronger: we have again come closer to the seventeenth century, especially to the taste of its end (Dancourt, Lesage, Regnard). 121 (1888) Culture contra civilization.-The high points of culture and civilization do not coincide: one should not be deceived about the abysmal antagonism of culture and civilization. The great moments of culture were always, morally speaking, times of corruption; and conversely, the periods when the taming of the human animal (“ civilization”) was desired and enforced were times of intolerance against the boldest and most spiritual natures. Civilization has aims different from those of culture—perhaps they are even opposite122 (January-Fall 1888) What I warn against: the instincts of decadence should not be confused with humaneness; the means of civilization, which lead to disintegration and necessarily to decadence, should not be confused with culture; the libertinage, the principle of “ laisser aller,” should not be confused with the will to power (—which is the counterprinciple). 123 (Spring-Fall 1887) The unfinished problems I pose anew: the problem of civilization, the fight between Rousseau and Voltaire around 1760. Man becomes more profound, mistrustful, “ immoral,” stronger, more confident of himself—and to this extent “ more natural”: this is “ progress.”—At the same time, in accordance with a kind of division of labor, the strata that have become more evil are separated from those that have become milder and tamer-so that the overall fact is not noticed immediately.—It is characteristic of strength, of the self-control and fascination of strength, that these stronger strata possess the art of making others experience their progress in evil as something higher. It is characteristic of every “ progress” that the strengthened elements are reinterpreted as “ good.” 124 (Spring-Fall 1887) To give men back the courage to their natural drivesTo check their self-underestimation (not that of man as an individual but that of man as nature-)To remove antitheses from things after comprehending that we have projected them thereTo remove the idiosyncrasies of society from existence (guilt, punishment, justice, honesty, freedom, love, etc.)Progress toward “ naturalness”: in all political questions, also in the relations of parties, even of commercial, workers’, and employers’ parties, questions of power are at stake —“ what one can do,” and only after that what one ought to do. 125 (1885)l Socialism—as the logical conclusion of the tyranny of the least and the dumbest, i.e., those who are superficial, envious, and three-quarters actors-is indeed entailed by “ modern ideas” and their latent anarchism; but in the tepid air of democratic well-being the capacity to reach conclusions, or to finish, weakens. One follows —but one no longer sees what follows. Therefore socialism is on the whole a hopeless and sour affair; and nothing offers a more amusing spectacle than the contrast between the poisonous and desperate faces cut by today’s socialists—and to what wretched and pinched feelings their style bears witness!—and the harmless lambs’ happiness of their hopes and desiderata. Nevertheless, in many places in Europe they may yet bring off occasional coups and attacks: there will be deep “ rumblings” in the stomach of the next century, and the Paris commune, which has its apologists and advocates in Germany, too, was perhaps no more than a minor indigestion compared to what is coming. But there will always be too many who have possessions for socialism to signify more than an attack of sickness—and those who have possessions are of one mind on one article of faith: “ one must possess something in order to be something.” But this is the oldest and healthiest of all instincts: I should add, “ one must want to have more than one has in order to become more.” For this is the doctrine preached by life itself to all that has life: the morality of development. To have and to want to have more—growth, in one word—that is life itself. In the doctrine of socialism there is hidden, rather badly, a “ will to negate life”; the human beings or races that think up such a doctrine must be bungled. Indeed, I should wish that a few great experiments might prove that in a socialist society life negates itself, cuts off its own roots. The earth is large enough and man still sufficiently unexhausted; hence such a practical instruction and demonstratio ad absurdum
would not strike me as undesirable, even if it were gained and paid for with a tremendous expenditure of human lives. In any case, even as a restless mole under the soil of a society that wallows in stupidity, socialism will be able to be something useful and therapeutic: it delays “ peace on earth” and the total mollification of the democratic herd animal; it forces the Europeans to retain spirit, namely cunning and cautious care, not to abjure manly and warlike virtues altogether, and to retain some remnant of spirit, of clarity, sobriety, and coldness of the spirit- it protects Europe for the time being from the marasmus femininus that threatens it. 126 (Spring-Fall 1887) The most favorable inhibitions and remedies of modernity: 1. universal military service with real wars in which the time for joking is past; 2. national bigotry (simplifies, concentrates); 3. improved nutrition (meat); 4. increasing cleanliness and healthfulness of domiciles; 5. hegemony of physiology over theology, moralism, economics,and politics; 6. military severity in the demand for and handling of one’s”obligations” (one does not praise any more-). 127 (1884) I am glad about the military development of Europe; also of the internal states of anarchy: the time of repose and Chinese ossification, which Galiani predicted for this century, is over. Personal manly virtu of the body, is regaining value, estimation becomes more physical, nutrition meatier. Beautiful men are again becoming possible. Pallid hypocrisy (with mandarins at the top, as Comte dreamed) is over. The barbarian in each of us is affirmed; also the wild beast. Precisely for that reason philosophers have a future.—Kant is a scarecrow, some day! 128 (1884) I have as yet found no reason for discouragement. Whoever has preserved, and bred in himself, a strong will, together with an ample spirit, has more favorable opportunities than ever. For the trainability of men has become very great in this democratic Europe; men who learn easily and adapt themselves easily are the rule: the herd animal, even highly intelligent, has been prepared. Whoever can command finds those who must obey: I am thinking, e.g., of Napoleon and Bismarck. The rivalry with strong and unintelligent wills, which is the greatest obstacle, is small. Who doesn’t topple these “ objective” gentlemen with weak wills, like Rancle or Renan! 129 (1885) Spiritual enlightenment is an infallible means for making men unsure, weaker in will, so they are more in need of company and support—in short, for developing the herd animal in man. Therefore all great artists of government so far (Confucius in China, the imperium Romanum, Napoleon, the papacy at the time when it took an interest in power and not merely in the world), in the places where the dominant instincts have culminated so far, also employed spiritual enlightenment—at least let it have its way (like the popes of the Renaissance). The self-deception of the mass concerning this point, e.g., in every democracy, is extremely valuable: making men smaller and more governable is desired as “ progress”! 130 (1883-1888) The highest equity and mildness as a state of weakening (the New Testament and the original Christian community—apparent as complete betisel in the Englishmen, Darwin and Wallace). Your equity, you higher natures, impels you toward suffrage universel, etc.; your “ humanity,” toward mildness confronted with crime and stupidity. In the long run you thus make stupidity and the unscrupulous victorious: comfort and stupidity—the mean. Externally: age of tremendous wars, upheavals, explosions. Internally: ever greater weakness of man, events as excitants. The Parisian as the European extreme. Consequences: (1) barbarians (at first, of course, below the form of culture so far [e.g., Duhring]); (2) sovereign individuals (where masses of barbarian force are crossed with a lack of all restraint regarding whatever has been). Age of the greatest stupidity, brutality, and the masses, and of the highest individuals. 131 (1884) Innumerable individuals of a higher type now perish: but whoever gets away is strong as the devil. Similar to the situation at the time of the Renaissance. 132 (1885) Good Europeans that we are—what distinguishes us above the men of fatherlands?-First, we are atheists and immoralists, but for the present we support the religions and moralities of the herd instinct: for these prepare a type of man that must one day fall into our hands, that must desire our hands. Beyond good and evil—but we demand that herd morality should be held sacred unconditionally. We hold in reserve many types of philosophy which need to be taught: possibly, the pessimistic type, as a hammer; a European Buddhism might perhaps be indispensable. We probably support the development and maturing of democratic institutions: they enhance weakness of the will: in socialism we see a thorn that protects against comfortableness.
Position toward peoples. Our preferences; we pay attention to the results of interbreeding. Apart, wealthy, strong: irony at the expense of the “ press” and its culture. Worry lest scholars become journalistic. We feel contemptuous of every kind of culture that is compatible with reading, not to speak of writing for, newspapers. We take our accidental positions (like Goethe, Stendhal), our experiences, as foreground and stress them to deceive about our depths. We ourselves are waiting and beware of staking our hearts on them. They serve us as hostels for a night, which a wanderer needs and accepts—we beware of settling down. We are ahead of our fellow men in possessing a disciplina voluntaris. All strength applied to development of strength of the will, an art that permits us to wear masks, an art of understanding beyond the affects (also to think in a “ supra-European” way, at times). Preparation for becoming the legislators of the future, the masters of the earth, at least our children. Basic concern with marriages. 133 (1885) The twentieth century.—Abbe Galiani once said: La prevoyance est la cause des guerres actuelles de l’Europe. Si l’on voulait se donner la peine de ne rien prevoir, tout le monde serait tranquille, et je ne crois pas qu’on serait plus malheureux parce qu’on ne ferait pas la guerre. Since I do not by any means share the unwarlike views of my friend Galiani, I am not afraid of predicting a few things and thus, possibly, of conjuring up the cause of wars. A tremendous stock-taking after the most terrible earth quake: with new questions. 134 (1885-1886) This is the time of the great noon, of the most terrible clearing up: my type of pessimism—great point of departure. I. Basic contradiction in civilization and the enhancement of man. II. Moral valuations as a history of lies and the art of slander in the service of a will to power (the herd will that rebels against the human beings who are stronger). III. The conditions of every enhancement of culture (making possible a selection at the expense of a mass) are the conditions of all growth. IV. The multiple ambiguity of the world as a question of strength that sees all things in the perspective of its growth. Moral-Christian value judgments as slaves’ rebellion and slaves’ mendaciousness (against the aristocratic values of the ancient world). How far does art reach down into the essence of strength? BOOK II - CRITIQUE OF HIGHEST VALUES HITHERTO Excerpts I. Critique of Religion 1. Genesis of Religions 142 (Jan.-Fall 1888) Toward a critique of the law-book of Manu.— The whole book is founded on the holy lie. Was the well-being of mankind the inspiration of this system? Was this species of man, who believes in the interestedness of every action, interested or not in imposing this system? To improve mankind—how is this intention inspired? Where is the concept of improvement derived from? We find a species of man, the priestly, which feels itself to be the norm, the high point and the supreme expression of the type man: this species derives the concept “ improvement” from itself. It believes in its own superiority, it wills itself to be superior in fact: the origin of the holy lie is the will to power— Establishment of rule: to this end, the rule of those concepts that place a non plus ultra of power with the priesthood. Power through the lie—in the knowledge that one does not possess it physically, militarily—the lie as a supplement to power, a new concept of “ truth.” It is a mistake to suppose an unconscious and naive development here, a kind of self-deception— Fanatics do not invent such carefully thought-out systems of oppression— The most cold-blooded reflection was at work here; the same kind of reflection as a Plato applied when he imagined his “ Republic.” “ He who wills the end must will the means”—all lawgivers have been clear in their minds regarding this politician’s insight. We possess the classic model in specifically Aryan forms: we may therefore hold the best-endowed and most reflective species of man responsible for the most fundamental lie that has ever been told— That lie has been copied almost everywhere: Aryan influence has corrupted all the world— 143 (March-June 1888) A lot is said today about the Semitic spirit of the New Testament: but what is called Semitic is merely priestly—and in the racially purest Aryan law-book, in Manu, this kind of “ Semitism,” i.e., the spirit of the priest, is worse than anywhere else. The development of the Jewish priestly state is not original: they learned the pattern in Babylon: the pattern is Aryan. When, later on, the same thing became dominant in a Europe with a preponderance of Germanic blood, this was in accordance with the spirit of the ruling race: a great atavism. The Germanic Middle Ages aimed at a revival of the Aryan order of castes. Mohammedanism in turn learned from Christianity: the employment of the “ beyond” as an instrument of punishment. The pattern of an unchanging community with priests at its head—this oldest of the great cultural products of Asia in the realm of organization—was bound to invite reflection
and imitation in every respect. Again Plato: but above all the Egyptians. 144 (1885) Moralities and religions are the principal means by which one can make whatever one wishes out of man, provided one possesses a superfluity of creative forces and can assert one’s will over long periods of time—in the form of legislation, religions, and customs. 145 (1884-1888) What an affirmative Aryan religion, the product of the ruling class, looks like: the law-book of Manu. (The deification of the feeling of power in Brahma: interesting that it arose among the warrior caste and was only transferred to the priests.) What an affirmative Semitic religion, the product of the ruling class, looks like: the law-book of Mohammed, the older parts of the Old Testament. (Mohammedanism, as a religion for men, is deeply contemptuous of the sentimentality and mendaciousness of Christianity—which it feels to be a woman’s religion.) What a negative Semitic religion, the product of an oppressed class, looks like: the New Testament (—in Indian-Aryan terms: a chandala religion). What a negative Aryan religion looks like, grown up among the ruling orders: Buddhism. It is quite in order that we possess no religion of oppressed Aryan races, for that is a contradiction: a master race is either on top or it is destroyed. 151 (1885-1886) Religions are destroyed by belief in morality. The Christian moral God is not tenable: hence “ atheism”—as if there could be no other kinds of god. Similarly, culture is destroyed by belief in morality. For when one discovers the necessary conditions out of which alone it can grow, one no longer wants it (Buddhism). 2. History of Christianity 168 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) —The church is precisely that against which Jesus preached—and against which he taught his disciples to fight— 169 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) A god who died for our sins: redemption through faith; resurrection after death—all these are counterfeits of true Christianity for which that disastrous wrong-headed fellow [Paul] must be held responsible. The exemplary life consists of love and humility; in a fullness of heart that does not exclude even the lowliest; in a formal repudiation of maintaining one’s rights, of self-defense, of victory in the sense of personal triumph; in faith in blessedness here on earth, in spite of distress, opposition and death; in reconciliation; in the absence of anger; not wanting to be rewarded; not being obliged to anyone; the completest spiritual-intellectual independence; a very proud life beneath the will to a life of poverty and service. After the church had let itself be deprived of the entire Christian way of life and had quite specifically sanctioned life under the state, that form of life that Jesus had combatted and condemned, it had to find the meaning of Christianity in something else: in faith in unbelievable things, in the ceremonial of prayers, worship, feasts, etc. The concept “ sin,” “ forgiveness,” “ reward”—all quite unimportant and virtually excluded from primitive Christianity—now comes into the foreground. An appalling mishmash of Greek philosophy and Judaism; asceticism; continual judging and condemning; order of rank, etc. 191 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) Christians have never put into practice the acts Jesus prescribed for them, and the impudent chatter about “ justification by faith” and its unique and supreme significance is only the consequence of the church’s lack of courage and will to confess the works which Jesus demanded. The Buddhist acts differently from the non-Buddhist; the Christian acts as all the world does and possesses a Christianity of ceremonies and moods. The profound and contemptible mendaciousness of Christianity in Europe—: we really are becoming the contempt of the Arabs, Hindus, Chinese— Listen to the speeches of German’s first statesman on what has really occupied Europe for forty years now—listen to the language, the court-chaplain Tartuffery. 3. Christian Ideals II. Critique of Morality 1. Origin of Moral Valuations 2. The Herd 3. General Remarks on Morality 4. How Virtue is Made to Dominate 5. The Moral Ideal A. Critique of Ideals 338 (Jan.-Fall 1888) What is the counterfeiting aspect of morality?— It pretends to know something, namely what “ good and evil” is. That means wanting to know why mankind is here, its goal, its destiny. That means wanting to know that mankind has a goal, a destiny—
339 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) The very obscure and arbitrary idea that mankind has a single task to perform, that it is moving as a whole towards some goal, is still very young. Perhaps we shall be rid of it again before it becomes a “ fixed idea”— This mankind is not a whole: it is an inextricable multiplicity of ascending and descending life-processes—it does not have a youth followed by maturity and finally by old age; the strata are twisted and entwined together—and in a few millennia there may still be even younger types of man than we can show today. Decadence, on the other hand, belongs to all epochs of mankind: refuse and decaying matter are found everywhere; it is one of life’s processes to exclude the forms of decline and decay. * When Christian prejudice was a power, this question did not exist: meaning lay in the salvation of the individual soul; whether mankind could endure for a long or a short time did not come into consideration. The best Christians desired that it should end as soon as possible—concerning that which was needful to the individual there was no doubt— The task of every present individual was the same as for a future individual in any kind of future: value, meaning, domain of values were fixed, unconditional, eternal, one with God— That which deviated from this eternal type was sinful, devilish, condemned— For each soul, the gravitational center of valuation was placed within itself: salvation or damnation! The salvation of the immortal soul! Extremest form of personalization— For every soul there was only one perfecting; only one ideal; only one way to redemption— Extremest form of equality of rights, tied to an optical magnification of one’s own importance to the point of insanity— Nothing but insanely important souls, revolving about themselves with a frightful fear— No man believes now in this absurd self-inflation: and we have sifted our wisdom through a sieve of contempt. Nevertheless, the optical habit of seeking the value of man in his approach to an ideal man remains undisturbed: fundamentally, one upholds the perspective of personalization as well as equality of rights before the ideal. In summa: one believes one knows what the ultimate desideratum is with regard to the ideal man— This belief, however, is only the consequence of a dreadful deterioration through the Christian ideal: as one at once discovers with every careful examination of the “ ideal type.” One believes one knows, first that an approach to one type is desirable; secondly, that one knows what this type is like; thirdly, that every deviation from this type is a regression, an inhibition, a loss of force and power in man— To dream of conditions in which this perfect man will be in the vast majority: even our socialists, even the Utilitarians have not gone farther than this.— In this way a goal seems to have entered the development of mankind: at any rate, the belief in progress towards the ideal is the only form in which a goal in history is thought of today. In summa: one has transferred the arrival of the “ kingdom of God” into the future, on earth, in human form—but fundamentally one has held fast to the belief in the old ideal— B. Critique of the “ Good Man,” the Saint, etc. 352 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) The concept of power, whether of a god or of a man, always includes both the ability to help and the ability to harm. Thus it is with the Arabs; thus with the Hebrews. Thus with all strong races. It is a fateful step when one separates the power for the one from the power for the other into a dualism— In this way, morality becomes the poisoner of life— C. Disagreement of the So-Called Evil Qualities 377 (1883-1888) Falsity.—Every sovereign instinct has the others for its tools, retainers, flatterers: it never lets itself be called by its ugly name: and it countenances no praise in which it is not also praised indirectly. All praise and blame in general crystallizes around every sovereign instinct to form a rigorous order and etiquette. This is one of the causes of falsity. Every instinct that struggles for mastery but finds itself under a yoke requires for itself, as strengthening and as support for its self-esteem, all the beautiful names and recognized values: so, as a rule, it ventures forth under the name of the “ master” it is combatting and from whom it wants to get free (e.g., the fleshly desires or the desires for power under the dominion of Christian values).— This is the other cause of falsity. Perfect na�vete reigns in both cases: the falsity does not become conscious. It is a sign of a broken instinct when man sees the driving force and its “ expression” (“ the mask”) as separate things—a sign of self-contradiction, and victorious far less often. Absolute innocence in bearing, word, affect, a “ good conscience” in falsity, the certainty with which one grasps the greatest and most splendid words and postures—all this is necessary for victory. In the other case: when one has extreme clear-sightedness one needs the genius of the actor and tremendous training in self-control if one is to achieve victory. That is why priests are the most skillful conscious hypocrites; then princes, whom rank and ancestry have endowed with a kind of acting ability. Thirdly, men of society, diplomats. Fourthly, women. Basic idea: falsity seems so profound, so omnisided, the will so clearly opposed to direct self-knowledge and the calling of things by their right names, that it is very highly probable that truth, will to truth is really something else and only a disguise. (The need for faith is the greatest brake-shoe on truthfulness.) 380 (Spring-Fall 1887) 1. Systematic falsification of history; so that it may provide the proof of moral valuation: a. decline of a people and corruption; b. rise of a people and virtue; c. zenith of a people (“ its culture”) as a consequence of moral elevation.
2. Systematic falsification of great human beings, the great creators, the great epochs: one desires that faith should be the distinguishing mark of the great: but slackness, skepticism, “ immorality,” the right to throw off a faith, belong to greatness (Caesar, also Homer, Aristophanes, Leonardo, Goethe). One always suppresses the main thing, their “ freedom of will”— 382 (Spring-Fall 1887; rev. Spring-Fall 1888) Schopenhauer interpreted high intellectuality as liberation from the will; he did not want to see the freedom from moral prejudice which is part of the emancipation of the great spirit, the typical immorality of the genius; he artfully posited the only thing he held in honor, the moral value of “ depersonalization,” as the condition of spiritual activity, of “ objective” viewing. “ Truth,” even in art, appears after the withdrawal of the will— I see a fundamentally different valuation cutting across all the moral idiosyncrasies: I know nothing of such an absurd distinction between “ genius” and the moral and immoral world of the will. The moral man is a lower species than the immoral, a weaker species; indeed—he is a type in regard to morality, but not a type in himself; a copy, a good copy at best—the measure of his value lies outside him. I assess a man by the quantum of power and abundance of his will: not by its enfeeblement and extinction; I regard a philosophy which teaches denial of the will as a teaching of defamation and slander— I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage; I do not account the evil and painful character of existence a reproach to it, but hope rather that it will one day be more evil and painful than hitherto— The high point of the spirit imagined by Schopenhauer was to attain to the recognition that there is no meaning in anything, in short, to recognize what the good man already instinctively does— He denies the possibility of a higher kind of intellect—he took his insight for a non plus ultra. Here spirituality is placed much lower than goodness; its highest value (e.g., as art) would be to urge and prepare moral conversion: absolute domination of moral values.— Beside Schopenhauer I would characterize Kant: nothing Greek, absolutely antihistorical (his passage on the French Revolution) and a moral fanatic (Goethe’s passage on radical evil). Saintliness was in the background in his case, too. I need a critique of the saint— Hegel’s value. “ Passion.”— Shopkeeper’s philosophy of Mr. Spencer; complete absence of an ideal, except that of the mediocre man. Fundamental instinctive principle of all philosophers and historians and psychologists: everything of value in man, art, history, science, religion, technology must be proved to be of moral value, morally conditioned, in aim, means and outcome. Everything understood in the light of the supreme value: e.g., Rousseau’s question concerning civilization: “ Does man become better through it?”—an amusing question, since the reverse is obvious and is precisely that which speaks in favor of civilization. 383 (March-June 1888) Religious morality.— Affect, great desire, the passion for power, love, revenge, possessions—: moralists want to extinguish and uproot them, to “ purify” the soul of them. The logic is: the desires often produce great misfortune—consequently they are evil, reprehensible. A man must free himself from them: otherwise he cannot be a good man— This is the same logic as: “ if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out.: In the particular case in which that dangerous “ innocent from the country,” the founder of Christianity, recommended this practice to his disciples, the case of sexual excitation, the consequence is, unfortunately, not only the loss of an organ but the emasculation of a man’s character— And the same applies to the moralist’s madness that demands, instead of the restraining of the passions, their extirpation. Its conclusion is always: only the castrated man is a good man. Instead of taking into service the great sources of strength, those impetuous torrents of the soul that are so often dangerous and overwhelming, and economizing them, this most shortsighted and pernicious mode of thought, the moral mode of thought, wants to make them dry up. 384 (1885-1886) Overcoming of the affects?— No, if what is implied is their weakening and extirpation. But putting them into service: which may also mean subjecting them to a protracted tyranny (not only as an individual, but as a community, race, etc.). At last they are confidently granted freedom again: they love us as good servants and go voluntarily wherever our best interests lie. 385 (Spring-Fall 1887) Moral intolerance is an expression of weakness in a man: he is afraid of his own “ immorality,” he must deny his strongest drives because he does not yet know how to employ them. Thus the most fruitful regions of the earth remain uncultivated the longest:— the force is lacking that could here become master— 386 (Spring-Fall 1887) There are very naive people and men who believe that continual fine weather is something desirable: even today they believe, in rebus moralibus, [Moral matters.] that the “ good man,” and nothing but the “ good man,” is something desirable—and that the course of human evolution is directed toward the survival of the “ good man” only (and that one must bend all one’s efforts in that direction—). This is in the highest degree an uneconomic thought and, as stated, the acme of na�vete, nothing but the expression of the pleasing effect produced by the “ good man” (he arouses no fear, he permits one to relax, he gives what one is able to take). From a superior viewpoint one desires the contrary: the ever-increasing dominion of evil, the growing emancipation of man from the narrow and fear-ridden bonds of morality, the
increase of force, in order to press the mightiest natural powers—the affects—into service. 387 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) The whole conception of an order of rank among the passions: as if the right and normal thing were for one to be guided by reason—with the passions as abnormal, dangerous, semi-animal, and, moreover, so far as their aim is concerned, nothing other than desires for pleasure— Passion is degraded (1) as if it were only in unseemly cases, and not necessarily and always, the motive force; (2) in as much as it has for its object something of no great value, amusement— The misunderstanding of passion and reason, as if the latter were an independent entity and not rather a system of relations between various passions and desires; and as if every passion did not possess its quantum of reason— 388 (Spring-Fall 1887) How, under the impress of the ascetic morality of depersonalization, it was precisely the affects of love, goodness, pity, even those of justice, magnanimity, heroism, that were necessarily misunderstood: It is richness in personality, abundance in oneself, overflowing and bestowing, instinctive good health and affirmation of oneself, that produce great sacrifice and great love: it is strong and godlike selfhood from which these affects grow, just as surely as did the desire to become master, encroachment, the inner certainty of having a right to everything. What according to common ideas are opposite dispositions are rather one disposition; and if one is not firm and brave within oneself, one has nothing to bestow and cannot stretch our one’s hand to protect and support— How was one able so to transform these instincts that man thought valuable that which was directed against his self? when he sacrificed his self to another self. Oh the psychological wretchedness and mendaciousness that has hitherto laid down the law in the church and in church-infected philosophy! If man is sinful through and through, then he ought only to hate himself. Fundamentally, he would have to treat his fellow men on the same basis as he treats himself; charity needs to be justified—its justification lies in the fact that God has commanded it.— It follows from this, that all the natural instincts of man (the instinct of love, etc.) appear to be forbidden in themselves and only after they have been denied are they restored to their rights on the basis of obedience to God—Pascal, the admirable logician of Christianity, went so far! consider his relations to his sister. “ Not to make oneself love” seemed Christian to him. D. Critique of the Words: Improvement, Perfecting, Elevation 398 (Jan.-Fall 1888) What I want to make clear by all the means in my power: a. that there is no worse confusion than the confusion of breeding with taming: which is what has been done— Breeding, as I understand it, is a means of storing up the tremendous forces of mankind so that the generations can build upon the work of their forefathers—not only outwardly, but inwardly, organically growing out of them and becoming something stronger— b. that it is extraordinarily dangerous to believe that mankind as a whole will progress and grow stronger if individuals become flabby, equal, average— Mankind is an abstraction: the goal of breeding, even in the case of a single individual, can only be the stronger man (—the man without breeding is weak, extravagant, unstable—). 6. Further Considerations for a Critique of Morality III. Critique of Philosophy 1. General Observations 410 (1885-1886) For the Preface Deeply mistrustful of the dogmas of epistemology, I loved to look now out of this window, now out of that; I guarded against settling down with any of these dogmas, considered them harmful—and finally: is it likely that a tool is able to criticize its own fitness?— What I noticed was rather that no epistemological skepticism or dogmatism had ever arisen free from ulterior motives—that it acquires a value of the second rank as soon as one has considered what it was that compelled the adoption of this point of view. Fundamental insight: Kant as well as Hegel and Schopenhauer—the skeptical-epochistic attitude as will as the historicizing, as well as the pessimistic—have a moral origin. I saw no one who had ventured a critique of moral value feelings: and I soon turned my back one the meager attempts made to arrive at a description of the origin of these feelings (as by the English and German Darwinists). How can Spinoza’s position, his denial and rejection of moral value judgments, be explained? (It was one consequence of his theodicy!) 413 (1885) Ulterior moral motives have hitherto most obstructed the course of philosophy. 423 (March-June 1888) Theory and practice.— Fateful distinction, as if there were an actual drive for knowledge that, without regard to questions of usefulness and harm, went blindly for the truth; and then, separate from this, the whole world of practical interests—
I tried to show, on the other hand, what instincts have been active behind all these pure theoreticians—how they have all, under the spell of their instincts, gone fatalistically for something that was “ truth” for them—for them and only for them. The conflict between different systems, including that between epistemological scruples, is a conflict between quite definite instincts (forms of vitality, decline, classes, races, etc.). The so-called drive for knowledge can be traced back to a drive to appropriate and conquer: the senses, the memory, the instincts, etc. have developed as a consequence of this drive. The quickest possible reduction of the phenomena, economy, the accumulation of the spoils of knowledge (i.e., of world appropriated and made manageable)— Morality is such a curious science because it is in the highest degree practical: so that the position of pure knowledge, scientific integrity, is at once abandoned as soon as the claims of morality must be answered. Morality says: I need many answers—reasons, arguments; scruples can come afterward, or not at all—. “ How should one act?”— If one considers that one is dealing with a sovereignly developed type that has “ acted” for countless millennia, and in which everything has become instinct, expediency, automatism, fatality, then the urgency of this moral question must actually seem ridiculous. “ How should one act?”— Morality has always been a misunderstanding: in reality, a species fated to act in this or that fashion wanted to justify itself, by dictating its norm as the universal norm— “ How should one act?” is not a cause but an effect. Morality follows, the ideal comes at the end. —On the other hand, the appearance of moral scruples (in other words: the becoming-conscious of the values by which one acts) betrays a certain sickliness; strong ages and peoples do not reflect on their rights, on the principles on which they act, on their instincts and reasons. Becoming-conscious is a sign that real morality, i.e., instinctive certainty in actions, is going to the devil— Every time a new world of consciousness is created, the moralists are a sign of damage, impoverishment, disorganization.— The deeply instinctive are shy of logicizing duties: among them are found Pyrrhic opponents of dialectics and of knowability in general— A virtue is refuted with a “ for”— Thesis: the appearance of moralists belongs to an age in which morality is coming to an end. Thesis: the moralist disintegrates the moral instincts, however much he may suppose himself to be their restorer. Thesis: that which really drives the moralist is not the moral instincts but the instincts of decadence translated into the formulas of morality— (he regards it as corruption when the instincts become uncertain). Thesis: the instincts of decadence, which, through the moralists, want to become master over the instinctive morality of strong races and ages, are 1. the instincts of the weak and underprivileged; 2. the instincts of the exceptions, the solitaries, the abandoned, of the abortus [Abortion.] in what is lofty and what is petty. 3. the instincts of those habituated to suffering, who need a noble interpretation of their condition and therefore must know as little as possible about physiology. 2. Critique of Greek Philosophy 428 (March-June 1888) How far psychologists have been corrupted by the moral idiosyncrasy:—not one of the ancient philosophers had the courage for a theory of the “ unfree will” (i.e., for a theory that denies morality);—no one had the courage to define the typical element in pleasure, every sort of pleasure (“ happiness”) as the feeling of power: for to take pleasure in power was considered immoral;—no one had the courage to conceive virtue as a consequence of immorality (of a will to power) in the service of the species (or of the race or polis), for the will to power was considered immorality. In the entire evolution of morality, truth never appears: all the conceptual elements employed are fictions; all the psychologica accepted are falsifications; all the forms of logic dragged into this realm of lies are sophistries. What distinguishes moral philosophers themselves is a complete absence of cleanliness and intellectual self-discipline: they take “ beautiful feelings” for arguments: they regard their “ heaving bosom” as the bellows of divinity— Moral philosophy is the scabrous period in the history of the spirit. The first great example: in the name of morality, under the patronage of morality, an unheard-of wrong was perpetrated, in fact a piece of decadence in every respect. One cannot insist too strongly upon the fact that the great Greek philosophers represent the decadence of every kind of Greek excellence and make it contagious— “ Virtue” made completely abstract was the greatest seduction to make oneself abstract: i.e., to detach oneself. It is a very remarkable moment: the Sophists verge upon the first critique of morality, the first insight into morality:—they juxtapose the multiplicity (the geographical relativity) of the moral value judgments;—they let it be known that every morality can be dialectically justified; i.e., they divine that all attempts to give reasons for morality are necessarily sophistical—a proposition later proved on the grand scale by the ancient philosophers, from Plato onwards (down to Kant);—they postulate the first truth that a “ morality-in-itself,” a “ good-in-itself” do not exist, that it is a swindle to talk of “ truth” in this field. Where was intellectual integrity in those days? The Greek culture of the Sophists had developed out of all the Greek instincts; it belongs to the culture of the Periclean age as necessarily as Plato does not: it has its predecessors in Heraclitus, in Democritus, in the scientific types of the old philosophy; it finds expression in, e.g., the high culture of Thucydides. And—it has ultimately shown itself to be right: every advance in epistemological and moral knowledge has reinstated the Sophists— Our contemporary way of thinking is to a great extent Heraclitean, Democritean, and Protagorean: it suffices to say Protagorean, because Protagoras represented a synthesis of Heraclitus and Democritus. (Plato: a great Cagliostro—remember how Epicurus judged him; how Timon, the friend of Pyrrho, judged him– Is Plato’s integrity beyond question?— But we know at least
that he wanted to have taught as absolute truth what he himself did not regard as even conditionally true: namely, the separate existence and separate immortality of “ souls.”) 430 (March-June 1888) The great rationality of all education in morality has always been that one tried to attain to the certainty of an instinct: so that neither good intentions nor good means had to enter consciousness as such. As the soldier exercises, so should man learn to act. In fact, this unconsciousness belongs to any kind of perfection: even the mathematician employs his combinations unconsciously— What, then, is the significance of the reaction of Socrates, who recommended dialectics as the road to virtue and made mock when morality did not know how to justify itself logically?— As if this were not part of its value—without consciousness it is no good— Positing proofs as the presupposition for personal excellence in virtue signified nothing less than the disintegration of Greek instincts. They are themselves types of disintegration, all these great “ virtuous men” and word-spinners. In praxi, this means that moral judgments are torn from their conditionality, in which they have grown and alone possess any meaning, from their Greek and Greek-political ground and soil, to be denaturalized under the pretense of sublimation. The great concepts “ good” and “ just” are severed from the presuppositions to which they belong and, as liberated “ ideas,” become objects of dialectic. One looks for truth in them, one takes them for entities or signs of entities: one invents a world where they are at home, where they originate— In summa: the mischief has already reached its climax in Plato— And then one had need to invent the abstractly perfect man as well:—good, just, wise, a dialectician—in short, the scarecrow of the ancient philosopher: a plant removed from all soil; a humanity without any particular regulating instincts; a virtue that “ proves” itself with reasons. The perfectly absurd “ individuum” in itself! unnaturalness of the first water— In short, the consequence of the denaturalization of moral values was the creation of a degenerate type of man—“ the good man,” “ the happy man,” “ the wise man.”— Socrates represents a moment of the profoundest perversity in the history of values. 440 (Jan.-Fall 1888) When morality—that is to say subtlety, caution, bravery, equity—has been as it were stored up through the practice of a whole succession of generations, then the total force of this accumulated virtue radiates even into that sphere where integrity is most seldom found, into the spiritual sphere. In all becoming-conscious there is expressed a discomfiture of the organism; it has to try something new, nothing is sufficiently adapted for it, there is toil, tension, strain—all this constitutes becoming-conscious— Genius resides in instinct; goodness likewise. One acts perfectly only when one acts instinctively. Even from the viewpoint of morality, all conscious thinking is merely tentative, usually the reverse of morality. Scientific integrity is always ruptured when the thinker begins to reason: try the experiment of putting the wisest men on the most delicate scales by making them talk about morality— It could be proved that all conscious thinking would also show a far lower standard of morality than the thinking of the same man when it is directed by his instincts. 3. Truth and Error of Philosophers 456 (March-June 1888) A certain degree of faith serves us today as an objection to what is believed—even more as a question mark against the spiritual health of the believer. 4. Further Considerations for a Critique of Philosophy 462 (Spring-Fall 1887) Fundamental innovations: In place of “ moral values,” purely naturalistic values. Naturalization of morality. In place of “ sociology,” a theory of the forms of domination. In place of “ society,” the culture complex, as my chief interest (as a whole or in its parts). In place of “ epistemology,” a perspective theory of affects (to which belongs a hierarchy of the affects; the affects transfigured; their superior order, their “ spirituality”). In place of “ metaphysics,” and religion, the theory of eternal recurrence (this as a means of breeding and selection). BOOK THREE - PRINCIPLES OF A NEW EVALUATION I. THE WILL TO POWER AS KNOWLEDGE 1. Method of Inquiry 466 (Jan.-Fall 1888) It is not the victory of science that distinguishes our nineteenth century, but the victory of scientific method over science. 467 (Spring-Fall 1887) History of scientific method, considered by Auguste Comte as virtually philosophy itself. 468 (Spring-Fall 1887) The great methodologists: Aristotle, Bacon, Descartes, Auguste 469 (Jan.-Fall 1888)
The most valuable insights are arrived at last; but the most valuable insights are methods. All the methods, all the presuppositions of our contemporary science were for millennia regarded with the profoundest contempt; on their account one was excluded from the society of respectable people—one was considered as an “ enemy of God,” as a reviler of the highest ideal, as “ possessed.” We have had the whole pathos of mankind against us—our conception of what “ truth” should be, what service of truth should be, our objectivity, our method, our silent, cautious, mistrustful ways were considered perfectly contemptible— At bottom, it has been an aesthetic taste that has hindered mankind most: it believed in the picturesque effect of truth, it demanded of the man of knowledge that he should produce a powerful effect on the imagination. This looks as if an antithesis has been achieved, a leap made; in reality, the schooling through moral hyperbole prepared the way step by step for that milder of pathos that became incarnate in the scientific character— The conscientiousness in small things, the self-control of the religious man were a preparatory school for the scientific character: above all, the disposition that takes problems seriously, regardless of the personal consequences— 2. The Epistemological Starting Point 470 (1885-1886) Profound aversion to reposing once and for all in any one total view of the world. Fascination of the opposing point of view: refusal to be deprived of the stimulus of the enigmatic. 471 (1885-1886) The presupposition that things are, at bottom, ordered so morally that human reason must be justified—is an ingenuous presupposition and a piece of naivete, the after-effect of belief in God’s veracity—God understood as the creator of things.—These concepts an inheritance from a former existence in a beyond 472 (1883-1888) Contradiction of the alleged “ facts of consciousness.” Observation is a thousand times more difficult, error perhaps a condition of observation in general. 473 (1886-1887) The intellect cannot criticize itself, simply because it cannot be compared with other species of intellect and because its capacity to know would be revealed only in the presence of “ true reality,” i.e., because in order to criticize the intellect we should have to be a higher being with “ absolute knowledge.” This presupposes that, distinct from every perspective kind of outlook or sensual-spiritual appropriation, something exists, an “ in-itself.”—But the psychological derivation of the belief in things forbids us to speak of ” things-inthemselves . “ 474 (Nov.1887-March 1888) That a sort of adequate relationship subsists between subject and object, that the object is something that if seen from within would be a subject, is a well-meant invention which, I think, has had its day. The measure of that of which we are in any way conscious is totally dependent upon the coarse utility of its becoming-conscious: how could this nookperspective of consciousness permit us to assert anything of “ subject” and “ object” that touched reality!— 475 (1885-1886) Critique of modern philosophy: erroneous starting point, as if there existed “ facts of consciousness”—and no phenomenalism in introspection. 476 (1884) “ Consciousness”—to what extent the idea of an idea, the idea of will, the idea of a feeling (known to ourselves alone) are totally superficial! Our inner world, too, “ appearance”! 477 (Nov.1887-March 1888) I maintain the phenomenality of the inner world, too: everything of which we become conscious is arranged, simplified, schematized, interpreted through and through—the actual process of inner “ perception,” the causal connection between thoughts, feelings, desires, between subject and object, are absolutely hidden from us—and are perhaps purely imaginary. The “ apparent inner world” is governed by just the same forms and procedures as the “ outer” world. We never encounter “ facts”: pleasure and displeasure are subsequent and derivative intellectual phenomena— “ Causality” eludes us; to suppose a direct causal link beween thoughts, as logic does—that is the consequence of the crudest and clumsiest observation. Between two thoughts all kinds of affects play their game: but their motions are too fast, therefore we fail to recognize them, we deny them— “ Thinking,” as epistemologists conceive it, simply does not occur: it is a quite arbitrary fiction, arrived at by selecting one element from the process and eliminating all the rest, an artificial arrangement for the purpose of intelligibility— The “ spirit,” something that thinks: where possible even “ absolute, pure spirit”—this conception is a second derivative of that false introspection which believes in “ thinking”: first an act is imagined which simply does not occur, “ thinking,” and secondly a subject-substratum in which every act of thinking, and nothing else, has its origin: that is to say, both the deed and the doer are fictions. 478 (March-June 1888)
One must not look for phenomenalism in the wrong place: nothing is more phenomenal (or, more clearly:) nothing is so much deception as this inner world which we observe with the famous “ inner sense.” We have believed in the will as cause to such an extent that we have from our personal experience introduced a cause into events in general (i.e., intention a cause of events—). We believe that thoughts as they succeed one another in our minds stand in some kind of causal relation: the logician especially, who actually speaks of nothing but instances which never occur in reality, has grown accustomed to the prejudice that thoughts cause thoughts—. We believe—and even our philosopers still believe—that pleasure and pain are causes of reactions, that the purpose of pleasure and pain is to occasion reactions. For millennia, pleasure and the avoidance of displeasure have been flatly asserted as the motives for every action. Upon reflection, however, we should concede that everything would have taken the same course, according to exactly the same sequence of causes and effects, if these states of “ pleasure and displeasure” had been absent, and that one is simply deceiving oneself if one thinks they cause anything at all: they are epiphenomena with a quite different object than to evoke reactions; they are themselves effects within the instituted process of reaction. In summa: everything of which we become conscious is a terminal phenomenon, an end—and causes nothing; every successive phenomenon in consciousness is completely atomistic—And we have sought to understand the world through the reverse conception—as if nothing were real and effective but thinking, feeling, willing!— 479 (Jan.-Fall 1888) The phenomenalism of the “ inner world.” Chronological inversion, so that the cause enters consciousness later than the effect.—We have learned that pain is projected to a part of the body without being situated there—we have learned that sense impressions naively supposed to be conditioned by the outer world are, on the contrary, conditioned by the inner world; that we are always unconscious of the real activity of the outer world—The fragment of outer world of which we are conscious is born after an effect from outside has impressed itself upon us, and is subsequently projected as its “ cause”— In the phenomenalism of the “ inner world” we invert the chronological order of cause and effect. The fundamental fact of “ inner experience” is that the cause is imagined after the effect has taken place—The same applies to the succession of thoughts: —we seek the reason for a thought before we are conscious of it; and the reason enters consciousness first, and then its consequence—Our entire dream life is the interpretation of complex feelings with a view to possible causes—and in such way that we are conscious of a condition only when the supposed causal chain associated with it has entered consciousness. The whole of “ inner experience” rests upon the fact that a cause for an excitement of the nerve centers is sought and imagined —and that only a cause thus discovered enters consciousness: this cause in no way corresponds to the real cause—it is a groping on the basis of previous “ inner experiences,” i.e., of memory. But memory also maintains the habit of the old interpretations, i.e., of erroneous causality—so that the “ inner experience” has to contain within it the consequences of all previous false causal fictions. Our “ outer world” as we project it every moment is indissolubly tied to the old error of the ground: we interpret it by means of the schematism of “ things,” etc. “ Inner experience” enters our consciousness only after it has found a language the individual understands—i.e., a translation of a condition into conditions familiar to him—; “ to understand” means merely: to be able to express something new in the language of something old and familiar. E.g., “ I feel unwell”—such a judgment presupposes a great and late neutrality of the observer—; the simple man always says: this or that makes me feel unwell —he makes up his mind about his feeling unwell only when he has seen a reason for feeling unwell.—I call that a lack of philology; to be able to read off a text as a text without interposing an interpretation is the last-developed form of “ inner experience”— perhaps one that is hardly possible— 480 (March-June 1888) There exists neither “ spirit,” nor reason, nor thinking, nor consciousness, nor soul, nor will, nor truth: all are fictions that are of no use. There is no question of “ subject and object,” but of a particular species of animal that can prosper only through a certain relative rightness; above all, regularity of its perceptions (so that it can accumulate experience)— Knowledge works as a tool of power. Hence it is plain that it increases with every increase of power— The meaning of “ knowledge”: here, as in the case of “ good” or “ beautiful”, the concept is to be regarded in a strict and narrow anthropocentric and biological sense. In order for a particular species to maintain itself and increase its power, its conception of reality must comprehend enough of the calculable and constant for it to base a scheme of behavior on it. The utility of preservation —not some abstract-theoretical need not to be deceived—stands as the motive behind the development of the organs of knowledge—they develop in such a way that their observations suffice for our preservation. In other words: the measure of the desire for knowledge depends upon the measure to which the will to power grows in a species: a species grasps a certain amount of reality in order to become master of it, in order to press it into service. 3. Belief in the “ Ego.” The Subject 481 (1883-1888) Against positivism, which halts at phenomena—“ There are only facts”—I would say: No, facts is precisely what there is not, only interpretations. We cannot establish any fact “ in itself”: perhaps it is folly to want to do such a thing. “ Everything is subjective,” you say; but even this is interpretation. The “ subject” is not something given, it is something added and invented and projected behind what there is. —Finally, is it necessary to posit an interpreter behind the interpretation? Even this is invention, hypothesis. In so far as the word “ knowledge” has any meaning, the world is knowable; but it is interpretable otherwise, it has no meaning behind it, but countless meanings. —“ Perspectivism.”
It is our needs that interpret the world; our drives and their For and Against. Every drive is a kind of lust to rule; each one has its perspective that it would like to compel all the other drives to accept as a norm. 482 (1886-1887) We set up a word at the point at which our ignorance begins, at which we can see no further, e.g., the word “ I,” the word “ do,” the word “ suffer”:—these are perhaps the horizon of our knowledge, but not “ truths.” 483 (1885) Through thought the ego is posited; but hitherto one believed as ordinary people do, that in “ I think” there was something of immediate certainty, and that this “ I” was the given cause of thought, from which by analogy we understood all other causal relationships. However habitual and indispensable this fiction may have become by now—that in itself proves nothing against its imaginary origin: a belief can be a condition of life and nonetheless be false. 484 (Spring-Fall 1887) “ There is thinking: therefore there is something that thinks”: this is the upshot of all Descartes’ argumentation. But that means positing as “ true � priori” our belief in the concept of substance— that when there is thought there has to be something “ that thinks” is simply a formulation of our grammatical custom that adds a doer to every deed. In short, this is not merely the substantiation of a fact but a logical-metaphysical postulate—Along the lines followed by Descartes one does not come upon something absolutely certain but only upon the fact of a very strong belief. If one reduces the proposition to “ There is thinking, therefore there are thoughts,” one has produced a mere tautology: and precisely that which is in question, the “ reality of thought,” is not touched upon—that is, in this form the “ apparent reality” of thought cannot be denied. But what Descartes desired was that thought should have, not an apparent reality, but a reality in itself. 485 (Spring-Fall 1887) The concept of substance is a consequence of the concept of the subject: not the reverse! If we relinquish the soul, “ the subject,” the precondition for “ substance” in general disappears. One acquires degrees of being, one loses that which has being. Critique of “ reality”: where does the “ more or less real,” the gradation of being in which we believe, lead to?— The degree to which we feel life and power (logic and coherence of experience) gives us our measure of “ being”, “ reality”, not appearance. The subject: this is the term for our belief in a unity underlying all the different impulses of the highest feeling of reality: we understand this belief as the effect of one cause—we believe so firmly in our belief that for its sake we imagine “ truth”, “ reality”, substantiality in general.— “ The subject” is the fiction that many similar states in us are the effect of one substratum: but it is we who first created the “ similarity” of these states; our adjusting them and making them similar is the fact, not their similarity (—which ought rather to be denied—). 486 (1885-1886) One would have to know what being is, in order to decide whether this or that is real (e.g., “ the facts of consciousness”); in the same way, what certainty is, what knowledge is, and the like.— But since we do not know this, a critique of the faculty of knowledge is senseless: how should a tool be able to criticize itself when it can use only itself for the critique? It cannot even define itself! 487 (1883-1886) Must all philosophy not ultimately bring to light the preconditions upon which the process of reason depends?—our belief in the “ ego” as a substance, as the sole reality from which we ascribe reality to things in general? The oldest “ realism” at last comes to light: at the same time that the entire religious history of mankind is recognized as the history of the soul superstition. Here we come to a limit: our thinking itself involves this belief (with its distinction of substance, accident; deed, doer, etc.); to let it go means: being no longer able to think. But that a belief, however necessary it may be for the preservation of a species, has nothing to do with truth, one knows from the fact that, e.g., we have to believe in time, space, and motion, without feeling compelled to grant them absolute reality. 488 (Spring-Fall 1887) Psychological derivation of our belief in reason.—The concept “ reality”, “ being”, is taken from our feeling of the “ subject”. “ The subject”: interpreted from within ourselves, so that the ego counts as a substance, as the cause of all deeds, as a doer. The logical-metaphysical postulates, the belief in substance, accident, attribute, etc., derive their convincing force from our habit of regarding all our deeds as consequences of our will—so that the ego, as substance, does not vanish in the multiplicity of change.—But there is no such thing as will.— We have no categories at all that permit us to distinguish a “ world in itself” from a “ world of appearance.” All our categories of reason are of sensual origin: derived from the empirical world. “ The soul”, “ the ego”—the history of these concepts shows that here, too, the oldest distinction (“ breath”, “ life”)— If there is nothing material, there is also nothing immaterial. The concept no longer contains anything.
No subject “ atoms”. The sphere of a subject constantly growing or decreasing, the center of the system constantly shifting; in cases where it cannot organize the appropriate mass, it breaks into two parts. On the other hand, it can transform a weaker subject into its functionary without destroying it, and to a certain degree form a new unity with it. No “ substance”, rather something that in itself strives after greater strength, and that wants to “ preserve” itself only indirectly (it wants to surpass itself—). 489 (1886-1887) Everyting that enters consciousness as “ unity” is already tremendously complex: we always have only a semblance of Unity. The phenomenon of the body is the richer, clearer, more tangible phenomenon: to be discussed first, methodologically, without coming to any decision about its ultimate significance. 490 (1885) The assumption of one single subject is perhaps unnecessary; perhaps it is just as permissible to assume a multiplicity of subjects, whose interaction and struggle is the basis of our thought and our consciousness in general? A kind of aristocracy of “ cells” in which dominion resides? To be sure, an aristocracy of equals, used to ruling jointly and understanding how to command? My hypotheses: The subject as multiplicity Pain intellectual and dependent upon the judgment “ harmful”: projected. The effect always “ unconscious”: the inferred and imagined cause is projected, follows in time. Pleasure is a kind of pain. The only force that exists is of the same kind as that of the will: a commanding of other subjects, which thereupon change. The continual transitoriness and fleetingness of the subject. “ Mortal soul.” Number as perspective form. 491 (1885-1886) Belief in the body is more fundamental than belief in the soul: the latter arose from unscientific reflection on the agonies of the body (something that leaves it. Belief in the truth of dreams—). 492 (1885) The body and physiology the starting point: why?—We gain the correct idea of the nature of our subject-unity, namely as regents at the head of a communality (not as “ souls” or “ life forces”), also of the dependence of these regents upon the ruled and of an order of rank and division of labor as the conditions that make possible the whole and its parts. In the same way, how living unities continually arise and die and how the “ subject” is not eternal; in the same way, that the struggle expresses itself in obeying and commanding, and that a fluctuating assessment of the limits of power is part of life. The relative ignorance in which the regent is kept concerning individual activities and even disturbances within the communality is among the conditions under which rule can be exercised. In short, we also gain a valuation of not-knowing, of seeing things on a broad scale, of simplification and falsification, of perspectivity. The most important thing, however, is: that we understand that the ruler and his subjects are of the same kind, all feeling, willing, thinking—and that, wherever we see or divine movement in a body, we learn to conclude that there is a subjective, invisible life appertaining to it. Movement is symbolism for the eye; it indicates that something has been felt, willed, thought. The danger of the direct questioning of the subject about the subject and of all self-reflection of the spirit lies in this, that it could be useful and important for one’s activity to interpret oneself falsely. That is why we question the body and reject the evidence of the sharpened senses: we try, if you like, to see whether the inferior parts themselves cannot enter into communication with us. 4. Biology of the Drive to Knowledge. Perspectivism 493 (1885) Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live. The value for life is ultimately decisive. 494 (1885) It is improbable that our “ knowledge” should extend further than is strictly necessary for the preservation of life. Morphology shows us how the senses and the nerves, as well as the brain, develop in proportion to the difficulty of finding nourishment. 495 If the morality of “ thou shalt not lie” is rejected, the “ sense for truth” will have to legitimize itself before another tribunal:— as a means of the preservation of man, as will to power. Likewise our love of the beautiful: it also is our shaping will. The two senses stand side-by-side; the sense for the real is the means of acquiring the power to shape things according to our wish. The joy in shaping and reshaping—a primeval joy! We can comprehend only a world that we ourselves have made. 496 (1884) Of the multifariousness of knowledge. To trace one’s own relationship to many other things (or the relationship of kind)— how should that be “ knowledge” of other things! The
way of knowing and of knowledge is itself already part of the conditions of existence: so that the conclusion that there could be no other kind of intellect (for us) than that which preserves us is precipitate: this actual condition of existence is perhaps only accidental and perhaps in no way necessary. Our apparatus for acquiring knowledge is not designed for “ knowledge.” 497 (1884) The most strongly believed a priori “ truths” are for me provisional assumptions; e.g., the law of causality, a very well acquired habit of belief, so much a part of us that not to believe in it would destroy the race. But are they for that reason truths? What a conclusion! As if the preservation of man were a proof of truth! 498 (1884) To what extent even our intellect is a consequence of conditions of existence—: we would not have it if we did not need to have it, and we would not have it as it is if we did not need to have it as it is, if we could live otherwise. 499 (1885) “ Thinking” in primitive conditions (pre-organic) is the crystallization of forms, as in the case of crystal.—In our thought, the essential feature is fitting new material into old schemes (= Procrustes’ bed), making equal what is new. 500 (1885-1886) Sense perceptions projected “ outside”: “ inside” and “ outside”—does the body command here—? The same equalizing and ordering force that rules in the idioplasma, rules also in the incorporation of the outer world: our sense perceptions are already the result of this assimiliation and equalization in regard to all the past in us; they do not follow directly upon the “ impression”— 501 (1886-1887) All thought, judgment, perception, considered as comparison, has as its precondition a “ positing of equality,” and earlier still a “ making equal.” The process of making equal is the same as the process of incorporation of appropriated material in the amoeba. “ Memory” late, in so far as here the drive to make equal seems already to have been subdued: differentiation is preserved. Remembering as a process of classification and pigeonholing: who is active? 502 (1885) One must revise one’s ideas about memory: here lies the chief temptation to assume a “ soul,” which, outside time, reproduces, recognizes, etc. But that which is experienced lives on “ in the memory”; I cannot help it if it “ comes back,” the will is inactive in this case, as in the coming of any thought. Something happens of which I become conscious: now something similar comes—who called it? roused it? 503 (1884) The entire apparatus of knowledge is an apparatus for abstraction and simplification—directed not at knowledge but at taking possession of things: “ end” and “ means” are as remote from its essential nature as are “ concepts.” With “ end” and “ means” one takes possession of the process (one invents a process that can be grasped); with “ concepts,” however, of the “ things” that constitute the process. 504 (1883-1888) Consciousness—beginning quite externally, as coordination and becoming conscious of “ impressions”—at first at the furthest distance from the biological center of the individual; but a process that deepens and intensifies itself, and continually draws nearer to that center. 505 (1885-1886) Our perceptions, as we understand them: i.e., the sum of all those perceptions the becoming- conscious of which was useful and essential to us and to the entire organic process— therefore not all perceptions in general (e.g., not the electric); this means: we have senses for only a selection of perceptions—those with which we have to concern ourselves in order to preserve ourselves. Consciousness is present only to the extent that consciousness is useful. It cannot be doubted that all sense perceptions are permeated with value judgments (useful and harmful—consequently, pleasant or unpleasant). Each individual color is also for us an expression of value (although we seldom admit it, or do so only after a protracted impression of exclusively the same color; e.g., a prisoner in prison, or a lunatic). Thus insects also react differently to different colors: some like this color, some that; e.g., ants. 506 (1884) First images—to explain how images arise in the spirit. Then words, applied to images. Finally concepts, possible only when there are words—the collecting together of many images in something nonvisible but audible (word). The tiny amount of emotion to which the “ word” gives rise, as we contemplate similar images for which one word exists—this weak emotion is the common element, the basis of the concept. That weak sensations are regarded as alike, sensed as being the same, is the fundamental fact. Thus confusion of two sensations that are close neighbors, as we take note of these sensations; but who is taking note? Believing is the primal beginning even in every sense impression: a kind of affirmation the first intellectual activity! A “ holding-true” in the beginning! Therefore it is to be explained: how “ holding-true” arose! What sensation lies behind “ true”? 507 (Spring-Fall 1887)
The valuation “ I believe that this and that is so” as the essence of “ truth.” In valuations are expressed conditions of preservation and growth. All our organs of knowledge and our senses are developed only with regard to conditions of preservation and growth. Trust in reason and its categories, in dialectic, therefore the valuation of logic, proves only their usefulness for life, proved by experience—not that something is true. That a great deal of belief must be present; that judgments may be ventured; that doubt concerning all essential values is lacking—that is the precondition of every living thing and its life. Therefore, what is needed is that something must be held to be true—not that something is true. “ The real and the apparent world”—I have traced this antithesis back to value relations. We have projected the conditions of our preservation as predicates of being in general. Because we have to be stable in our beliefs if we are to prosper, we have made the “ real” world a world not of change and becoming, but one of being. 5. Origin of Reason and Logic 508 (1883-1888) Originally a chaos of ideas. The ideas that were consistent with one another remained, the greater number perished—and are perishing. 509 (1883-1888) The earthly kingdom of desires out of which logic grew: the herd instinct in the background. The assumption of similar cases presupposes “ similar souls.” For the purpose of mutual agreement and dominion. 510 (1883-1888) On the origin of logic. The fundamental inclination to posit as equal, to see things as equal, is modified, held in check, by consideration of usefulness and harmfulness, by considerations of success: it adapts itself to a milder degree in which it can be satisfied without at the same time denying and endangering life. This whole process corresponds exactly to that external, mechanical process (which is its symbol) by which protoplasm makes what it appropriates equal to itself and fits it into its own forms and files. 511 (1885-1886) Equality and similarity. 1. The coarser organ sees much apparent equality; 2. the spirit wants equality, i.e., to subsume a sense impression into an existing series: in the same way as the body assimilates inorganic matter. Toward an understanding of logic: the will to equality is the will to power—the belief that something is thus and thus (the essence of judgment) is the consequence of a will that as much as possible shall be equal. 512 (1885) Logic is bound to the condition: assume there are identical cases. In fact, to make possible logical thinking and inferences, this condition must first be treated fictitously as fulfilled. That is: the will to logical truth can be carried through only after a fundamental falsification of all events is assumed. From which it follows that a drive rules here that is capable of employing both means, firstly falsification, then the implementation of its own point of view: logic does not spring from will to truth. 513 (Fall 1886) The inventive force that invented categories labored in the service of our needs, namely of our need for security, for quick understanding on the basis of signs and sounds, for means of abbreviation:—“ substance”, “ subject”, “ object”, “ being”, “ becoming” have nothing to do with metaphysical truths.— It is the powerful who made the names of things into law, and among the powerful it is the greatest artists in abstraction who created the categories. 514 (March-June 1888) A morality, a mode of living, tried and proved by long experience and testing, at length enters consciousness as a law, as dominating—And therewith the entire group of related values and states enters into it: it becomes venerable, unassailable, holy, true; it is part of its development that its origin should be forgotten.— That is a sign it has become master— Exactly the same thing could have happened with the categories of reason: they could have prevailed, after much groping and fumbling, through their relative utility—There came a point when one collected them together, raised them to consciousness as a whole—and when one commanded them, i.e., when they had the effect of a command—From then on, they counted as � priori, as beyond experience, as irrefutable. And yet perhaps they represent nothing more than the expediency of a certain race and species —their utility alone is their “ truth”— 515 (March-June 1888) Not “ to know” but to schematize to impose upon chaos as much regularity and form as our practical needs require. In the formation of reason, logic, the categories, it was need that was authoritative: the need, not to “ know,” but to subsume, to schematize, for the purpose of intelligibility and calculation—(The development of reason is adjustment, invention, with the aim of making similar, equal—the same process that every sense impression goes through!) No preexisting “ idea” was here at work, but the utilitarian fact that only when we see things coarsely and made equal do they become calculable and usable to us—Finality in reason is an effect, not a cause: life miscarries with any other kinds of reason, to which there is a continual impulse—it becomes difficult to survey—too unequal— The categories are “ truths”’ only in the sense that they are conditions of life for us: as Euclidean space is a conditional “ truth.” (Between ourselves: since no one would maintain that there is any necessity for men to exist, reason, as well as Euclidean space, is a mere idiosyncracy of a certain species of animal, and one among many—)
The subjective compulsion not to contradict here is a biological compulsion: the instinct for the utility of inferring as we do infer is part of us, we almost are this instinct—But what naivete to extract from this a proof that we are therewith in possession of a “ truth in itself”!—Not being able to contradict is proof of an incapacity, not of “ truth.” 516 (Spring-Fall 1887; rev. Spring-Fall 1888) We are unable to affirm and to deny one and the same thing: this is a subjective empirical law, not the expression of any “ necessity” but only of an inability. If, according to Aristotle, the law of contradiction is the most certain of all principles, if it is the ultimate and most basic, upon which every demonstrative proof rests, if the principle of every axiom lies in it; then one should consider all the more rigorously what presuppositions already lie at the bottom of it. Either it asserts something about. actuality, about being, as if one already knew this from another source; that is, as if opposite attributes could not be ascribed to it. Or the proposition means: opposite attributes should not be ascribed to it. In that case, logic would be an imperative, not to know the true, but to posit and arrange a world that shall be called true by us. In short, the question remains open: are the axioms of logic adequate to reality or are they a means and measure for us to create reality, the concept “ reality,” for ourselves.?—To affirm the former one would, as already said, have to have a previous knowledge of being—which is certainly not the case. The proposition therefore contains no criterion of truth, but an imperative concerning that which should count as true. Supposing there were no self-identical “ A”, such as is presupposed by every proposition of logic (and of mathematics), and the “ A” were already mere appearance, then logic would have a merely apparent world as its condition. In fact, we believe in this proposition under the influence of ceaseless experience which seems continually to confirrn it. The “ thing”—that is the real substratum of “ A”; our belief in things is the precondition of our belief in logic. The “ A” of logic is, like the atom, a reconstruction of the thing—If we do not grasp this, but make of logic a criterion of true being, we are on the way to positing as realities all those hypostases: substance, attribute, object, subject, action, etc.; that is, to conceiving a metaphysical world, that is, a “ real world” (—this, however, is the apparent world once more—). The very first acts of thought, affirmation and denial, holding true and holding not true, are, in as much as they presuppose, not only the habit of holding things true and holding them not true, but a right to do this, already dominated by the belief that we can gain possession of knowledge, that judgments really can hit upon the truth;—in short, logic does not doubt its ability to assert something about the true-in-itself (namely, that it cannot have opposite attributes). Here reigns the coarse sensualistic prejudice that sensations teach us truths about things—that I cannot say at the same time of one and the same thing that it is hard and that it is soft. (The instinctive proof “ I cannot have two opposite sensations at the same time”—quite coarse and false.) The conceptual ban on contradiction proceeds from the belief that we are able to form concepts, that the concept not only designates the essence of a thing but comprehends it—In fact, logic (like geometry and arithmetic) applies only to fictitious entities that we have created. Logic is the attempt to comprehend the actual world by means of a scheme of being posited by ourselves; more correctly, to make it formulatable and calculable for us— 517 (Spring-Fall 1887) In order to think and infer it is necessary to assume beings: logic handles only formulas for what remains the same. That is why this assumption would not be proof of reality: “ beings” are part of our perspective. The “ ego” as a being (—not affected by becoming and development). The fictitious world of subject, substance, “ reason” etc., is needed—: there is in us a power to order, simplify, falsify, artificially distinguish. “ Truth” is the will to be master over the multiplicity of sensations:—to classify phenomena into definite categories. In this we start from a belief in the “ in-itself” of things (we take phenomena as real). The character of the world in a state of becoming as incapable of formulation, as “ false,” as “ ‘self-contradictory.” Knowledge and becoming exclude one another. Consequently, “ knowledge” must be something else: there must first of all be a will to make knowable, a kind of becoming must itself create the deception of beings. 518 (1885-1886) If our “ ego” is for us the sole being, after the model of which we fashion and understand all being: very well! Then there would be very much room to doubt whether what we have here is not a perspective illusion—an apparent unity that encloses everything like a horizon. The evidence of the body reveals a tremendous multiplicity; it is allowable, for purposes of method, to employ the more easily studied, richer phenomena as evidence for the understanding of the poorer. Finally: supposing everything is becoming, then knowledge is possible only on the basis of belief in being. 519 (1883-1888) If there “ is only one being, the ego” and all other “ being” is fashioned after its model—if, finally, belief in the “ ego” stands or falls with belief in logic, i.e., the metaphysical truth of the categories of reason; if, on the other hand, the ego proves to be something in a state of becoming: then— 520 (1885) Continual transition forbids us to speak of “ individuals,” etc; the “ number” of beings is itself in flux. We would know nothing of time and motion if we did not, in a coarse fashion, believe we see what is at “ rest” beside what is in motion. The same applies to cause and effect, and without the erroneous conception of “ empty space” we should certainly not have acquired the conception of space. The principle of identity has behind it the “ apparent fact” of things that are the same. A world in a state of becoming could not, in a strict sense, be “ comprehended” or “ known”; only to the extent that the “ comprehending” and “ knowing” intellect encounters a coarse, already-created world, fabricated out of mere appearances but become firm to the extent that this kind of appearance has preserved life—only to this extent is there anything like “ knowledge”; i.e., a measuring of earlier and later
errors by one another. 521 (Spring-Fall 1887) On “ logical semblance”— The concepts “ individual” and “ species” equally false and merely apparent. “ Species” expresses only the fact that an abundance of similar creatures appear at the same time and that the tempo of their further growth and change is for a long time slowed down, so actual small continuations and increases are not very much noticed (—a phase of evolution in which the evolution is not visible, so an equilibrium seems to have been attained, making possible the false notion that a goal has been attained—and that evolution has a goal—). The form counts as something enduring and therefore more valuable; but the form has merely been invented by us; and however often “ the same form is attained,” it does not mean that it is the same form—what appears is always something new, and it is only we, who are always comparing, who include the new, to the extent that it is similar to the old, in the unity of the “ form.” As if a type should be attained and, as it were, was intended by and inherent in the process of formation. Form, species, law, idea, purpose—in all these cases the same error is made of giving a false reality to a fiction, as if events were in some way obedient to something—an artificial distinction is made in respect of events between that which acts and that toward which the act is directed (but this “ which” and this “ toward” are only posited in obedience to our metaphysical-logical dogmatism: they are not “ facts”). One should not understand this compulsion to construct concepts, species, forms, purposes, laws (“ a world of identical cases”) as if they enabled us to fix the real world; but as a compulsion to arrange a world for ourselves in which our existence is made possible:—we thereby create a world which is calculable, simplified, comprehensible, etc., for us. This same compulsion exists in the sense activities that support reason—by simplification, coarsening, emphasizing, and elaborating, upon which all “ recognition,” all ability to make oneself intelligible rests. Our needs have made our senses so precise that the “ same apparent world” always reappears and has thus acquired the semblance of reality. Our subjective compulsion to believe in logic only reveals that, long before logic itself entered our consciousness, we did nothing but introduce its postulates into events: now we discover them in events—we can no longer do otherwise—and imagine that this compulsion guarantees something connected with “ truth.” It is we who created the “ thing,” the “ identical thing,” subject, attribute, activity, object, substance, form, after we had long pursued the process of making identical, coarse and simple. The world seems logical to us because we have made it logical. 522 (1886-1887) Ultimate solution.—We believe in reason: this, however, is the philosophy of gray concepts. Language depends on the most naive prejudices. Now we read disharmonies and problems into things because we think only in the form of language—and thus believe in the “ eternal truth” of “ reason” (e.g., subject, attribute, etc.) We cease to think when we refuse to do so under the constraint of language; we barely reach the doubt that sees this limitation as a limitation. Rational thought is interpretation according to a scheme that we cannot throw off.. 6. Consciousness 523 (March-June 1888) Nothing is more erroneous than to make of psychical and physical phenomena the two faces, the two revelations of one and the same substance. Nothing is explained thereby: the concept “ substance” is perfectly useless as an explanation. Consciousness in a subsidiary role, almost indifferent, superfluous, perhaps destined to vanish and give way to a perfect automatism— When we observe only the inner phenomena we may be compared with the deaf-and-dumb, who divine through movements of the lips the words they do not hear. From the phenomena of the inner sense we conclude the existence of invisible and other phenomena that we would apprehend if our means of observation were adequate and that one calls the nerve current. We lack any sensitive organs for this inner world, so we sense a thousandfold complexity as a unity; so we introduce causation where any reason for motion and change remains invisible to us —the sequence of thoughts and feelings is only their becoming visible in consciousness. That this sequence has anything to do with a causal chain is completely unbelievable: consciousness has never furnished us with an example of cause and effect. 524 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) The role of “ consciousness.”—It is essential that one should not make a mistake over the role of “ consciousness”: it is our relation with the “ outer world” that evolved it. On the other hand, the direction or protection and care in respect of the co-ordination of the bodily functions does not enter our consciousness; any more than spiritual accumulation: that a higher court rules over these things cannot be doubted—a kind of directing committee on which the various chief desires make their votes and power felt. “ Pleasure,” “ displeasure” are hints from this sphere; also the act of will; also ideas. In summa: That which becomes conscious is involved in causal relations which are entirely withheld from us—the sequence of thoughts, feelings, ideas in consciousness does not signify that this sequence is a causal sequence; but apparently it is so, to the highest degree. Upon this appearance we have founded our whole idea of spirit, reason, logic, etc. (— none of these exist: they are fictitious syntheses and unities), and projected these into things and behind things! Usually, one takes consciousness itself as the general sensorium and supreme court; nonetheless, it is only a means of communication: it is evolved through social intercourse and
with a view to the interests of social intercourse—“ Intercourse” here understood to include the influences of the outer world and the reactions they compel on our side; also our effect upon the outer world. It is not the directing agent, but an organ of the directing agent. 525 (1888) My proposition compressed into a formula that smells of antiquity, Christianity, scholasticism, and other muskiness: in the concept “ God as spirit,” God as perfection is negated — 526 (March-lune 1888) Where a certain unity obtains in the grouping of things, one has always posited spirit as the cause of this coordination: for which notion there is no ground whatever. Why should the idea of a complex fact be one of the conditions of this fact? or why should the notion of a complex fact have to precede it as its cause?— We shall be on our guard against explaining purposiveness in terms of spirit: there is no ground whatever for ascribing to spirit the properties of organization and systematization. The nervous system has a much more extensive domain; the world of consciousness is added to it. Consciousness plays no role in the total process of adaptation and systematization. 527 (1886-1887) Physiologists, like philosophers, believe that consciousness increases in value in proportion as it increases in clarity: the clearest consciousness, the most logical and coldest thinking, is supposed to be of the first rank. However—by what measure is this value determined?—In regard to release of will, the most superficial, most simplified thinking is the most useful—it could therefore—etc. (because it leaves few motives over). Precision in action is antagonistic to far-seeing providentiality, the judgments of which are often uncertain: the latter is led by the deeper instinct. 528 (1886-1887) Principal error of psychologists: they regard the indistinct idea as a lower kind of idea than the distinct: but that which removes itself from our consciousness and for that reason becomes obscure can on that account be perfectly clear in itself. Becoming obscure is a matter of perspective of consciousness. 529 (March-June 1888) Tremendous blunders: 1. the absurd overestimation of consciousness, the transformation of it into a unity, an entity: “ spirit”, “ soul”, something that feels, thinks, wills— 2. spirit as cause, especially wherever purposiveness, system, co-ordination appear; 3. consciousness as the highest achieveable form, as the supreme kind of being, as “ God”; 4. will introduced wherever there are effects; 5. the “ real world” as a spiritual world, as accessible through the facts of consciousness; 6. knowledge as uniquely the faculty of consciousness wherever there is knowledge at all. Consequences: every advance lies in an advance in becoming conscious; every regression in becoming unconscious; (—becoming unconscious was considered a falling back to the desires and senses —as becoming animal—) one approaches reality, “ real being”, through dialectic; one distances oneself from it through the instincts, senses, mechanism— to resolve man into spirit would mean to make him into God: spirit, will, goodness—all one; all good must proceed from spirituality, must be a fact of consciousness; any advance toward the better can only be an advance in becoming conscious 7. Judgment. True—False In the case of Kant, theological prejudice, his unconscious dogmatism, his moralistic perspective, were dominant, directing, commanding. The proton pseudos: how is the fact of knowledge possible? is knowledge a fact at all? what is knowledge? If we do not know what knowledge is, we cannot possibly answer the question whether there is knowledge.—Very well! But if I do not already “ know’ whether there is knowledge, whether there can be knowledge, I cannot reasonably put the question “ what is knowledge?” Kant believes in the fact of knowledge: what he wants is a piece of naivete: knowledge of knowledge! “ Knowledge is judgment!” But judgment is a belief that something is thus and thus! And not knowledge! “ All knowledge consists of synthetic judgments” of universal validity (the case is thus and not otherwise in every case), of necessary validity (the opposite of the assertion can never occur). The legitimacy of belief in knowledge is always presupposed: just as the legitimacy of the feelings of conscience-judgments is presupposed. Here moral ontology is the dominant prejudice. The conclusion is therefore: 1. there are assertions that we consider universally valid and necessary; 2. necessity and universal validity cannot be derived from experience; 3. consequently they must be founded, not upon experience, but upon something else, and derive from another source of knowledge! (Kant infers (1) there are assertions which are valid only under a certain condition; (2) this condition is that they derive, not from experience, but from pure reason.)
Therefore: the question is, whence do we derive our reasons for believing in the truth of such assertions? No, how our belief is caused! But the origin of a belief, of a strong conviction, is a psychological problem: and a very narrow and limited experience often produces such a belief! It already presupposes that there is not “ data � posteriori” but also data � priori, “ preceding experience.” Necessity and universal validity could never be given to us by experience: why does that mean that they are present without any experience at all? There are no isolated judgments! An isolated judgment is never “ true,” never knowledge; only in the connection and relation of many judgments is there any surety. What distinguishes the true from the false belief? What is knowledge? He “ knows” it, that is heavenly! Necessity and universality can never be given by experience! thus they are independent of experience, prior to all experience! That insight that occurs a priori, therefore independently of all experience, out of sheer reason, is “ a pure form of knowledge”! “ The basic laws of logic, the law of identity and the law of contradiction, are forms of pure knowledge, because they precede all experience.”—But these are not forms of knowledge at all! they are regulative articles of belief. To establish the � priori character (the pure rationality) of the judgments of mathematics, space must be conceived as a form of pure reason. Hume had declared: “ There are no synthetic � priori judgments.” Kant says: But there are! Those of mathematics! And if there are such judgments, perhaps there is also metaphysics, a knowledge of things by pure reason! Mathematics is possible under conditions under which metaphysics is never possible. All human knowlege is either experience or mathematics. A judgment is synthetic; i.e., it connects different ideas. It is � priori; i.e., every connection is a universally valid and necessary one, which can never be given by sense perception but only through pure reason. If there are to be synthetic a priori judgments, then reason must be in a position to make connections: connection is a form. Reason must possess the capacity of giving form. 531 (1885-1886) Judgment is our oldest belief, our most habitual holding-true or holding-untrue, an assertion or denial, a certainty that something is thus and not otherwise, a belief that here we really “ know”— what is it that is believed true in all judgments? What are attributes?—We have not regarded change in us as change but as an “ in itself” that is foreign to us, that we merely “ perceive”: and we have posited it, not as an event, but as a being, as a “ quality”—and in addition invented an entity to which it adheres; i.e., we have regarded the effect as something that effects, and this we have regarded as a being. But even in this formulation, the concept “ effect” is arbitrary: for those changes that take place in us, and that we firmly believe we have not ourselves caused, we merely infer to be effects, in accordance with the conclusion: “ every change must have an author”;—but this conclusion is already mythology: it separates that which effects from the effecting. If I say “ lightning flashes,” I have posited the flash once as an activity and a second time as a subject, and thus added to the event a being that is not one with the event but is rather fixed, “ is” and does not “ become.”—To regard an event as an “ effecting,” and this as being, that is the double error, or interpretation, of which we are guilty. 532 (1885) Judgment—this is the belief: “ This and that are so.” Thus there is in every judgment the avowal of having encountered an “ identical case”: it therefore presupposes comparison with the aid of memory. The judgment does not produce the appearance of an identical case. Rather it believes it perceives one: it works under the presupposition that identical cases exist. Now, what is that function that must be much older and must have been at work much earlier, that makes cases identical and similar which are in themselves dissimilar? What is that second function, which on the basis of the first, etc. “ Whatever arouses the same sensation is the same”: but what is it that makes sensations the same, “ accepts” them as the same? There could be no judgments at all if a kind of equalization were not practiced within sensations: memory is possible only with a continual emphasizing of what is already familiar, experienced.—Before judgment occurs, the process of assimilation must already have taken place; thus here, too, there is an intellectual activity that does not enter consciousness, as pain does as a consequence of a wound. Probably an inner event corresponds to each organic function; hence assimilation, rejection, growth, etc. Essential: to start from the body and employ it as guide. It is the much richer phenomenon, which allows of clearer observation. Belief in the body is better established than belief in the spirit. “ No matter how strongly a thing may be believed, strength of belief is no criterion of truth.” But what is truth? Perhaps a kind of belief that has become a condition of life? In that case, to be sure, strength could be a criterion; e.g., in regard to causality. 533 (Spring-Fall 1887) Logical certainty, transparency, as criterion of truth (“ omncillud verum est, quod clare et distincte percipitur.” Descartes): with that, the mechanical hypothesis concerning the world is desired and credible. But this is a crude confusion: like simplex sigillum veri. How does one know that the real nature of things stands in this relation to our intellect?—Could it not be otherwise? that it is the hypothesis that gives the intellect the greatest feeling of power and security, that is most preferred, valued and consequently characterized as true?—The intellect posits its freest and strongest capacity and capability as criterion of the most valuable, consequently of the true—
“ True”: from the standpoint of feeling—: that which excites the feeling most strongly (“ ego”); from the standpoint of thought—: that which gives thought the greatest feeling of strength; from the standpoint of touch, seeing, hearing—: that which calls for the greatest resistance. Thus it is the highest degrees of performance that awaken belief in the “ truth,” that is to say reality, of the object. The feeling of strength, of struggle, of resistance convinces us that there is something that is here being resisted. 534 (1887-1888) The criterion of truth resides in the enhancement of the feeling of power. 535 (1885) “ Truth”: this, according to my way of thinking, does not necessarily denote the antithesis of error, but in the most fundamental cases only the posture of various errors in relation to one another. Perhaps one is older, more profound than another, even ineradicable, in so far as an organic entity of our species could not live without it; while other errors do not tyrannize over us in this way as conditions of life, but on the contrary when compared with such “ tyrants” can be set aside and “ refuted.” An assumption that is irrefutable—why should it for that reason be “ true”? This proposition may perhaps outrage logicians, who posit their limitations as the limitations of things: but I long ago declared war on this optimism of logicians. 536 (Jan.-Fall 1888) Everything simple is merely imaginary, is not “ true.” But whatever is real, whatever is true, is neither one nor even reducible to one. 537 (1885-1888) What is truth?—Inertia; that hypothesis which gives rise to contentment; smallest expenditure of spiritual force, etc. 538 (1883-1888) First proposition. The easier mode of thought conquers the harder mode;—as dogma: simplex sigillum veri.— Ditto: to suppose that clarity proves anything about truth is perfect childishness— Second proposition. The doctrine of being, of things, of all sorts of fixed unities is a hundred times easier than the doctrine of becoming, of development— Third proposition. Logic was intended as facilitation; as a means of expression—not as truth—Later it acquired the effect of truth— 539 (March-June 1888) Parmenides said, “ one cannot think of what is not”,—we are at the other extreme, and say “ what can be thought of must certainly be a fiction.” 540 (1885) There are many kinds of eyes. Even the sphinx has eyes— and consequently there are many kinds of “ truths,” and consequently there is no truth. Spencer. 541 (March-June 1888) Inscriptions for the Door of a Modern Madhouse “ What is thought necessarily is morally necessary.” Herbert “ The ultimate test of the truth of a proposition is the conceivability of its negation.” Herbert Spencer. 542 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) If the character of existence should be false—which would be possible—what would truth, all our truth, be then?—An unconscionable falsification of the false? The false raised to a higher power?— 543 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) In a world that is essentially false, truthfulness would be an antinatural tendency: such a tendency could have meaning only as a means to a higher power of falsehood. In order for a world of the true, of being, to be invented, the truthful man would first have to be created (including the fact that such a man believes himself “ truthful”). Simple, transparent, not in contradiction with himself, durable, remaining always the same, without wrinkle, volt, concealment, form: a man of this kind conceives a world of being as “ God” in his own image. For truthfulness to be possible, the whole sphere of man must be very clean, small and, respectable; advantage in every sense must be with the truthful man.—Lies, deception, dissimulation must arouse astonishment— 544 (1885-1887; rev. Spring-Fall 1888) Increase in “ dissimulation” proportionate to the rising order of rank of creatures. It seems to be lacking in the inorganic world— power against power, quite crudely cunning begins in the organic world; plants are already masters of it. The highest human beings, such as Caesar, Napoleon (Stendhal’s remark on him), also the higher races (Italians), the Greeks (Odysseus); a thousandfold craftiness belongs to the essence of the enhancement of man— problem of the actor. My Dionysus ideal—The perspective of all organic functions, all the strongest instincts of life: the force in all life that wills error; error as the precondition even of thought. Before there is “ thought” there must have been “ invention”; the
construction of identical cases, of the appearance of sameness, is more primitive than the knowledge of sameness. 8. Against Causalism 545 (1885) I believe in absolute space as the substratum of force: the latter limits and forms. Time eternal. But space and time do not exist in themselves. “ Changes” are only appearances (or sense processes for us); if we posit the recurrence of these, however regular, nothing is established thereby except this simple fact, that it has always happened thus. The feeling that post hoc is propter hoc can easily be shown to be a misunderstanding; it is comprehensible. But appearances cannot be “ causes”! 546 (1885-1886) The interpretation of an event as either an act or the suffering of an act (—thus every act a becoming-other, presupposes an author and someone upon who “ change” is effected. 547 (1885-1886) Psychological history of the concept “ subject.” The body, the thing, the “ whole” construed by the eye, awaken the distinction between a deed and a doer; the doer, the cause of the deed, conceived ever more subtly, finally left behind the “ subject.” 548 (1885-1886) Our bad habit of taking a mnemonic, an abbreviative formula, to be an entity, finally as a cause, e.g., to say of lightning “ it flashes.” Or the little word “ I.” To make a kind of perspective in seeing the cause of seeing: that was what happened in the invention of the “ subject,” the “ I”! 549 (1885) “ Subject”, “ object”, “ attribute”—these distinctions are fabricated and are now imposed as a schematism upon all the apparent facts. The fundamental false observation is that I believe it is I who does something, suffer something, “ have” something, “ have” a quality. 550 (1885-1886) In every judgment there resides the entire, full, profound belief in subject and attribute, or in cause and effect (that is, as the assertion that every effect is an activity and that every activity presupposes an agent); and this latter belief is only a special case of the former, so there remains as the fundamental belief the belief that there are subjects, that everything that happens is related attributively to some subject. I notice something and seek a reason for it; this means originally: I seek an intention in it, and above all someone who has intentions, a subject, a doer: every event a deed— formerly One saw intentions in all events, this is our oldest habit. Do animals also possess it? As living beings, must they not also rely on interpretations based on themselves?— The question “ why?” is always a question after the causa finalis’ after the “ what for?” We have no “ sense for the causa efficiens”: here Hume was right; habit (but not only that of the individual!) makes us expect that a certain often-observed occurrence will follow another: nothing more! That which gives the extraordinary firmness to our belief in causality is not the great habit of seeing one occurrence following another but our inability to interpret events otherwise than as events caused by intentions. It is belief in the living and thinking as the only effective force—in will, in intention—it is belief that every event is a deed, that every deed presupposes a doer, it is belief in the “ subject.” Is this belief in the concept of subject and attribute not a great stupidity? Question: is intention the cause of an event? Or is that also illusion? Is it not the event itself? 551 (March-June 1888) Critique of the concept “ cause”.- We have absolutely no experience of a cause; psychologically considered, we derive the entire concept from the subjective conviction that we are causes, namely, that the arm moves—But that is an error. We separate ourselves, the doers, from the deed, and we make use of this pattern everywhere—we seek a doer for every event. What is it we have done? We have misunderstood the feeling of strength, tension, resistance, a muscular feeling that is already the beginning of the act, as the cause, or we have taken the will to do this or that for a cause because the action follows upon it—cause, i.e.,There is no such thing as “ cause”; some cases in which it seemed to be given us, and in which we have projected it out of ourselves in order to understand an event, have been shown to be self-deceptions. Our “ understanding of an event” has consisted in our inventing a subject which was made responsible for something that happens and for how it happens. We have combined our feeling of will, our feeling of “ freedom,” our feeling of responsibility and our intention to perform an act, into the concept “ cause”: causa efficiens and causa finalis are fundamentally one. We believed that an effect was explained when a condition was detected in which the effect was already inherent. In fact, we invent all causes after the schema of the effect: the latter is known to us—Conversely, we are not in a position to predict of any thing what it will “ effect.” The thing, the subject, will, intention—all inherent in the conception “ cause.” We search for things in order to explain why something has changed. Even the atom is this kind of super-added “ thing” and “ primitive subject”— At length we grasp that things—consequently atoms, too— effect nothing: because they do not exist at all—that the concept of causality is completely useless.— A necessary sequence of states does not imply a causal relationship between them (—that would mean making their effective capacity leap from 1 to 2, to 3, to 4, to 5). There are neither causes nor effects. Linguistically we do not know how to rid ourselves of them. But that does not matter. If I think of the muscle apart from its “ effects”, I negate it— In summa: an event is neither effected nor does it effect. Causa is a capacity to produce effects that has been super-added to the events—
Interpretation by causality a deception—A “ thing” is the sum of its effects, synthetically united by a concept, an image. In fact, science has emptied the concept causality of its content and retained it as a formula of an equation, in which it has become at bottom a matter of indifference on which side cause is placed and on which side effect. It is asserted that in two complex states (constellations of force) the quanta of force remain constant. The calculability of an event does not reside in the fact that a rule is adhered to, or that a necessity is obeyed, or that a law of causality has been projected by us into every event: it resides in the recurrence of “ identical cases”. There is no such thing as a sense of causality, as Kant thinks. One is surprised, one is disturbed, one desires something familiar to hold on to—As soon as we are shown something old in the new’ we are calmed. The supposed instinct for causality is only fear of the unfamiliar and the attempt to discover something familiar in it—a search, not for causes, but for the familiar. 552 (Spring-Fall 1887) Against determinism and teleology.— From the fact that something ensues regularly and ensues calculably, it does not follow that it ensues necessarily. That a quantum of force determines and conducts itself in every particular case in one way and manner does not make it into an “ unfree will.” “ Mechanical necessity” is not a fact: it is we who first interpreted it into events. We have interpreted the formulatable character of events as the consequence of a necessity that rules over events. But from the fact that I do a certain thing, it by no means follows that I am compelled to do it. Compulsion in things certainly cannot be demonstrated: the rule proves only that one and the same event is not another event as well. Only because we have introduced subjects, “ doers,” into things does it appear that all events are the consequences of compulsion exerted upon subjects—exerted by whom? again by a “ doer.” Cause and effect—a dangerous concept so long as one thinks of something that causes and something upon which an effect is produced. a. Necessity is not a fact but an interpretation. b. When one has grasped that the “ subject” is not something that creates effects, but only a fiction, much follows. It is only after the model of the subject that we have invented the reality of things and projected them into the medley of sensations. If we no longer believe in the effective subject, then belief also disappears in effective things, in reciprocation, cause and effect between those phenomena that we call things. There also disappears, of course, the world of effective atoms: the assumption of which always depended on the supposition that one needed subjects. At last, the “ thing-in-itself” also disappears, because this is fundamentally the conception of a “ subject-in-itself.” But we have grasped that the subject is a fiction. The antithesis “ thing-in-itself” and “ appearance” is untenable; with that, however, the concept “ appearance” also disappears. c. If we give up the effective subject, we also give up the object upon which effects are produced. Duration, identity with itself, being are inherent neither in that which is called subject nor in that which is called object: they are complexes of events apparently durable in comparison with other complexes—e.g., through the difference in tempo of the event (rest —motion, firm—loose: opposites that do not exist in themselves and that actually express only variations in degree that from a certain perspective appear to be opposites. There are no opposites: only from those of logic do we derive the concept of opposites—and falsely transfer it to things). d. If we give up the concept “ subject” and “ object,” then also the concept “ substance”—and as a consequence also the various modifications of it, e.g., “ matter,” “ spirit,” and other hypothetical entities, “ the eternity and immutability of matter,” etc. We have got rid of materiality. From the standpoint of morality, the world is false. But to the extent that morality itself is a part of this world, morality is false. Will to truth is a making firm, a making true and durable, an abolition of the false character of things, a reinterpretation of it into beings. “ Truth” is therefore not something there, that might be found or discovered—but something that must be created and that gives a name to a process, or rather to a will to overcome that has in itself no end—introducing truth, as a processus in infinitum, an active determining—not a becoming conscious of something that is in itself firm and determined. It is a word for the “ will to power.” Life is founded upon the premise of a belief in enduring and regularly recurring things; the more powerful life is, the wider must be the knowable world to which we, as it were, attribute being. Logicizing, rationalizing, systematizing as expedients of life. Man projects his drive to truth, his “ goal” in a certain sense outside himself as a world that has being, as a metaphysical world, as a “ thing-in-itself,” as a world already in existence. His needs as creator invent the world upon which he works, anticipate it; this anticipation (this “ belief” in truth) is his support. All events, all motion, all becoming, as a determination, degrees and relations of force, as a struggle— As soon as we imagine someone who is responsible for our being thus and thus, etc. (God, nature), and therefore attribute to him the intention that we should exist and be happy or wretched, we corrupt for ourselves the innocence of becoming. We then have someone who wants to achieve something through us and with us. The “ ‘welfare of the individual” is just as imaginary as the “ welfare of the species”: the former is not sacrificed to the latter, species viewed from a distance is just as transient as the individual. “ Preservation of the species” is only a consequence of the growth of the species, i.e., the. overcoming of the species on the road to a stronger type. [Theses.] That the apparent “ purposiveness” (“ that purposiveness which endlessly surpasses all the arts of man”) is merely the consequence of the will to power manifest in all events; that becoming stronger involves an ordering process which looks like a sketchy purposiveness; that apparent ends are not intentional but, as soon as dominion is established over a lesser power and the latter operates as a function of the greater power, an order of rank, of organization is bound to produce the appearance of an order of means and ends. Against apparent “ necessity”: —this is only an expression for the fact that a force is not also something else.
Against apparent “ purposiveness”: —the latter only an expression for an order of spheres of power and their interplay. 9. Thing-in-Itself and Appearance 553 (1886-1887) The sore spot of Kant’s critical philosophy has gradually become visible even to dull eyes: Kant no longer has a right to his distinction “ appearance” and “ thing-in-itself”—he had deprived himself of the right to go on distinguishing in this old familiar way, in so far as he rejected as impermissible making inferences from phenomena to a cause of phenomena —in accordance with his conception of causality and its purely intra-phenomenal validity— which conception, on the other hand, already anticipates this distinction, as if the “ thingin-itself” were not only inferred but given. 554 (1885-1886) Causalism.—It is obvious that things-in-themselves cannot be related to one another as cause and effect, nor can appearance be so related to appearance; from which it follows that in a philosophy that believes in things-in-themselves and appearances the concept “ cause and effect” cannot be applied. Kant’s mistakes In fact, the concept “ cause and effect” derives, psychologically speaking, only from a mode of thought that believes that always and everywhere will operates upon will—that believes only in living things and fundamentally only in “ souls” (and not in things). Within the mechanistic view of the world (which is logic and its application to space and time), that concept is reduced to the formulas of mathematics—with which, as one must emphasize again and again, nothing is ever comprehended, but rather designated and distorted. 555 (1885-1886) Against the scientific prejudice.—The biggest fable of all is the fable of knowledge. One would like to know what things-in-themselves are; but behold, there are no things-inthemselves! But even supposing there were an in-itself, an unconditioned thing, it would for that very reason be unknowable! Something unconditioned cannot be known; otherwise it would not be unconditioned! Coming to know, however, is always “ placing oneself in a conditional relation to something” one who seeks to know the unconditioned desires that it should not concern him, and that this same something should be of no concern to anyone. This involves a contradiction, first, between wanting to know and the desire that it not concern us (but why know at all, then?) and, secondly, because something that is of no concern to anyone IS not at all, and thus cannot be known at all.— Coming to know means “ to place oneself in a conditional relation to something”; to feel oneself conditioned by something and oneself to condition it—it is therefore under all circumstances establishing, denoting, and making-conscious of conditions (not forthcoming entities, things, what is “ in-itself”). 556 (1885-1886) A “ thing-in-itself” just as perverse as a “ sense-in-itself,” a “ meaning-in-itself.” There are no “ facts-in-themselves,” for a sense must always be projected into them before there can be “ facts.” The question “ what is that?” is an imposition of meaning from some other viewpoint. “ Essence,” the “ essential nature,” is something perspective and already presupposes a multiplicity. At the bottom of it there always lies “ what is that for me?” (for us, for all that lives, etc.) A thing would be defined once all creatures had asked “ what is that?” and had answered their question. Supposing one single creature, with its own relationships and perspectives for all things, were missing, then the thing would not yet be “ defined”. In short: the essence of a thing is only an opinion about the “ thing.” Or rather: “ it is considered” as the real “ it is,” the sole “ this is.” One may not ask: “ who then interprets?” for the interpretation itself is a form of the will to power, it exists (but not as a “ being,’ but as a process, a becoming) as an affect. The origin of “ things” is wholly the work of that which imagines, thinks, wills, feels. The concept “ thing” itself just as much as all its qualities.—Even “ the subject” is such a created entity, a “ thing” like all others: a simplification with the object of defining the force which posits, invents, thinks, as distinct from all individual positing, inventing, thinking as such. Thus a capacity as distinct from all that is individual—fundamentally, action collectively considered with respect to all anticipated actions (action and the probability of similar actions). 557 (1885-1886) The properties of a thing are effects on other “ things”: if one removes other “ things,” then a thing has no properties, i.e., there is no thing without other things, i.e., there is no “ thing-in-itself.” 558 (Spring-Fall 1887) The “ thing-in-itself” nonsensical. If I remove all the relationships, all the “ properties,” all the “ activities” of a thing, the thing does not remain over; because thingness has only been invented by us owing to the requirements of logic, thus with the aim of defining, communication (to bind together the multiplicity of relationships, properties, activities). 559 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) “ Things that have a constitution in themselves”—a dogm idea with which one must break absolutely. 560 (Spring-Fall 1887) That things possess a constitution in themselves quite apart from interpretation and subjectivity, is a quite idle hypothesis: it presupposes that interpretation and subjectivity are not essential, that a thing freed from all relationships would still be a thing. Conversely, the apparent objective character of things: could it not be merely a difference of degree within the subjective?—that perhaps that which changes slowly presents itself
to us as “ objectively” enduring, being, “ in-itself”—that the objective is only a false concept of a genus and an antithesis within the subjective? 561 (1885-1886) Suppose all unity were unity only as an organization? But the “ thing” in which we believe was only invented as a foundation for the various attributes. If the thing “ effects,” that means: we conceive all the other properties which are present and momentarily latent, as the cause of the emergence of one single property; i.e., we take the sum of its properties —“ x”—as cause of the property “ x”: which is utterly stupid and mad! All unity is unity only as organization and co-operation—just as a human community is a unity—as opposed to an atomistic anarchy, as a pattern of domination that signifies a unity but is not a unity. 562 (1883-1888) “ In the development of thought a point had to be reached at which one realized that what one called the properties of things were sensations of the feeling subject: at this point the properties ceased to belong to the thing.” The “ thing-in-itself” remained. The distinction between the thing-in-itself and the thing-for-us is based on the older, naive form of perception which granted energy to things; but analysis revealed that even force was only projected into them, and likewise—substance. “ The thing affects a subject”? Root of the idea of substance in language, not in beings outside us! The thing-in-itself is no problem at all! Beings will have to be thought of as sensations that are no longer based on something devoid of sensation. In motion, no new content is given to sensation. That which IS, cannot contain motion: therefore it is a form of being. N.B. The explanation of an event can be sought firstly: through mental images of the event that precede it (aims); secondly: through mental images that succeed it (the mathematical-physical explanation). One should not confuse the two. Thus: the physical explanation, which is a symbolization of the world by means of sensation and thought, can in itself never account for the origin of sensation and thought; rather physics must construe the world of feeling consistently as lacking feeling and aim—right up to the highest human being. And teleology is only a history of purposes and never physical! 563 (1886-1887) Our “ knowing” limits itself to establishing quantities; but we cannot help feeling these differences in quantity as qualities. Quality is a perspective truth for us; not an “ in-itself.” Our senses have a definite quantum as a mean within which they function; i.e., we sense bigness and smallness in relation to the conditions of our existence. If we sharpened or blunted our senses tenfold, we should perish; i.e., with regard to making possible our existence we sense even relations between magnitudes as qualities. 564 (1885-1886) Might all quantities not be signs of qualities? A greater power implies a different consciousness, feeling, desiring, a different perspective; growth itself is a desire to be more; the desire for an increase in quantum grows from a quale; in a purely quantitative world everything would be dead, stiff, motionless.— The reduction of all qualities to quantities is nonsense: what appears is that the one accompanies the other, an analogy— 565 (Fall 1886) Qualities are insurmountable barriers for us; we cannot help feeling that mere quantitative differences are something fundamentally distinct from quantity, namely that they are qualities which can no longer be reduced to one another. But everything for which the word “ knowledge” makes any sense refers to the domain of reckoning. weighing, measuring, to the domain of quantity; while, on the other hand, all our sensations of value (i.e., simply our sensations) adhere precisely to qualities, i.e., to our perspective “ truths” which belong to us alone and can by no means be “ known”! It is obvious that every creature different from us senses different qualities and consequently lives in a different world from that in which we live. Qualities are an idiosyncrasy peculiar to man; to demand that our human interpretations and values should be universal and perhaps constitutive values is one of the hereditary madnesses of human pride. 566 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) The “ real world,” however one has hitherto conceived it, it has always been the apparent world once again. 567 (March-June 1888) The apparent world, i.e., a world viewed according to values; ordered, selected according to values, i.e., in this case according to the viewpoint of utility in regard to the preservation and enhancement of the power of a certain species of animal. The perspective therefore decides the character of the “ appearance”! As if a world would still remain over after one deducted the perspective! By doing that one would deduct relativity! Every center of force adopts a perspective toward the entire remainder, i.e., its own particular valuation, mode of action, and mode of resistance. The “ apparent world,” therefore, is reduced to a specific mode of action on the world, emanating from a center. Now there is no other mode of action whatever; and the “ world” is only a word for the totality of these actions. Reality consists precisely in this particular action and reaction of every individual part toward the whole—
No shadow of a right remains to speak here of appearance— The specific mode of reacting is the only mode of reacting; we do not know how many and what kinds of other modes there are. But there is no “ other,” no “ true,” no essential being—for this would be the expression of a world without action and reaction— The antithesis of the apparent world and the true world reduced to the antithesis “ world” and “ nothing.”— 568 (March-June 1888) Critique of the concept “ true and apparent world.”— Of these, the first is a mere fiction, constructed of fictitious entities. “ Appearance” itself belongs to reality: it is a form of its being; i.e., in a world where there is no being, a certain calculable world of identical cases must first be created through appearance: a tempo at which observation and comparison are possible, etc. Appearance is an arranged and simplified world, at which our practical instincts have been at work; it is perfectly true for us; that is to say, we live, we are able to live in it: proof of its truth for us— The world, apart from our condition of living in it, the world that we have not reduced to our being, our logic and psychological prejudices, does not exist as a world “ in-itself”; it is essentially a world of relationships; under certain conditions it has a differing aspect from every point; its being is essentially different from every point; it presses upon every point, every point resists it—and the sum of these is in every case quite incongruent. The measure of power determines what being possesses the other measure of power; in what form, force, constraint it acts or resists. Our particular case is interesting enough: we have produced a conception in order to be able to live in a world, in order to perceive just enough to endure it— 569 (Spring-Fall 1887) Our psychological perspective is determined by the following: 1. that communication is necessary, and that for there to be communication something has to be firm, simplified, capable of precision (above all in the [so-called] identical case). For it to be communicable, however, it must be experienced as adapted, as “ recognizable.” The material of the senses adapted by the understanding, reduced to rough outlines, made similar, subsumed under related matters. Thus the fuzziness and chaos of sense impressions are, as it were, logicized; 2. the world of “ phenomena” is the adapted world which we feel to be real. The “ reality” lies in the continual recurrence of identical, familiar, related things in their logicized character, in the belief that here we are able to reckon and calculate; 3. the antithesis of this phenomenal world is not “ the true world,” but the formless unformulable world of the chaos of sensations—another kind of phenomenal world, a kind “ unknowable” for us; 4. questions, what things “ in-themselves” may be like, apart from our sense receptivity and the activity of our understanding, must be rebutted with the question: how could we know that things exist? “ Thingness” was first created by us. The question is whether there could not be many other ways of creating such an apparent world—and whether this creating, logicizing, adapting, falsifying is not itself the best-guaranteed reality; in short, whether that which “ posits things” is not the sole reality; and whether the “ effect of the external world upon us” is not also only the result of such active subjects—The other “ entities” act upon us; our adapted apparent world is an adaptation and overpowering of their actions; a kind of defensive measure. The subject alone is demonstrable; hypothesis that only subjects exist—that “ object” is only a kind of effect produced by a subject upon a subject a modus of the subject. 10. Metaphysical Need 570 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) If one is a philosopher as men have always been philosophers, one cannot see what has been and becomes—one sees only what is. But since nothing is, all that was left to the philosopher as his “ world” was the imaginary. 571 (Spring-Fall 1887; rev. Spring-Fall 1888) To assert the existence as a whole of things of which we know nothing whatever, precisely because there is an advantage in not being able to know anything of them, was a piece of naivete of Kant, resulting from needs, mainly moral-metaphysical. 572 (1883-1888) An artist cannot endure reality, he looks away from it, back: he seriously believes that the value of a thing resides in that shadowy residue one derives from colors, form, sound, ideas, he believes that the more subtilized, attenuated, transient a thing or a man is, the more valuable he becomes; the less real, the more valuable. This is Platonism, which, however, involved yet another bold reversal: Plato measured the degree of reality by the degree of value and said: The more “ Idea”, the more being. He reversed the concept “ reality” and said: “ What you take for real is an error, and the nearer we approach the ‘Idea’, the nearer we approach ‘truth’. “ —Is this understood? It was the greatest of rebaptisms; and because it has been adopted by Christianity we do not recognize how astonishing it is. Fundamentally, Plato, as the artist he was, preferred appearance to being! lie and invention to truth! the unreal to the actual! But he was so convinced of the value of appearance that he gave it the attributes “ being”,“ causality” and “ goodness”, and “ truth”, in short everything men value. The concept of value itself considered as a cause: first insight. The ideal granted all honorific attributes: second insight. 573 (Jan.-Fall 1888)
The idea of the “ true world” or of “ God” as absolutely immaterial, spiritual, good, is an emergency measure necessary while the opposite instincts are still all-powerful— The degree of moderation and humanity attained is exactly reflected in the humanization of the gods: the Greeks of the strongest epoch, who were not afraid of themselves but rejoiced in themselves, brought their gods close to all their own affects—. The spiritualization of the idea of God is therefore far from being a sign of progress: one is heartily conscious of this when considering Goethe—in his case, the vaporization of God into virtue and spirit is felt as being on a coarser level— 574 (1883-1888) Senselessness of all metaphysics as the derivation of the conditioned from the unconditioned. It is in the nature of thinking that it thinks of and invents the unconditioned as an adjunct to the conditioned; just as it thought of and invented the “ ego” as an adjunct to the multiplicity of its processes; it measures the world according to magnitudes posited by itself—such fundamental fictions as “ the unconditional”,“ ends and means”,“ things”,“ substances”, logical laws, numbers and forms. There would be nothing that could be called knowledge if thought did not first re-form the world in this way into “ things”, into what is self-identical. Only because there is thought is there untruth. Thought cannot be derived, any more than sensations can be; but that does not mean that its primordiality or “ being-in-itself” has been proved! all that is established is that we cannot get beyond it, because we have nothing but thought and sensation. 575 (1885-1886) “ Knowledge” is a referring back: in its essence a regressus in infinitum. That which comes to a standstill (at a supposed causa prima, at something unconditioned, etc.) is laziness, weariness 576 (1883-1888) Psychology of metaphysics: the influence of timidity. That which has been feared the most, the cause of the most powerful suffering (lust to rule, sex, etc.), has been treated by men with the greatest amount of hostility and eliminated from the “ true” world. Thus they have eliminated the affects one by one —posited God as the antithesis of evil, that is, placed reality in the negation of the desires and affects (i.e., in nothingness). In the same way, they have hated the irrational, the arbitrary, the accidental (as the causes of immeasurable physical suffering). As a consequence, they negated this element in being-in-itself and conceived it as absolute “ rationality” and “ purposiveness.” In the same way, they have feared change, transitoriness: this expresses a straitened soul, full of mistrust and evil experiences (the case of Spinoza: an opposite kind of man would account change a stimulus). A creature overloaded and playing with force would call precisely the affects, irrationality, and change good in a eudaemonistic sense, together with their consequences: danger, contrast, perishing, etc. 577 (Spring-Fall 1887) Against the value of that which remains eternally the same (vice Spinoza’s naivete; Descartes’ also), the values of the briefest and most transient, the seductive flash of gold on the belly of the serpent vita— 578 (Spring-Fall 1887) Moral values even in theory of knowledge: trust in reason—why not mistrust? the “ true world” is supposed to be the good world—why? appearance, change, contradiction, struggle devalued as immoral; desire for a world in which these things are missing; the transcendental world invented, in order that a place remains for “ moral freedom” (in Kant); dialectic a way to virtue (in Plato and Socrates: evidently because Sophistry counted as the way to immorality); time and space ideal: consequently “ unity” in the essence of things; consequently no “ sin,” no evil, no imperfection —a justification of God; Epicurus denied the possibility of knowledge, in order to retain moral (or hedonistic) values as the highest values. Augustine, later Pascal (“ corrupted reason”), did the same for the benefit of Christian values; Descartes’ contempt for everything that changes; also that of Spinoza 579 (1883-1888) Psychology of metaphysics.—This world is apparent: consequently there is a true world;—this world is conditional: consequently there is an unconditioned world;—this world is full of contradiction: consequently there is a world free of contradiction;— this world is a world of becoming: consequently there is a world of being:—all false conclusions (blind trust in reason: if A exists, then the opposite concept B must also exist). It is suffering that inspires these conclusions: fundamentally they are desires that such a world should exist; in the same way, to imagine another, more valuable world is an expression of hatred for a world that makes one suffer: the ressentiment of metaphysicians against actuality is here creative. Second series of questions: for what is there suffering?—and from this a conclusion is derived concerning the relation of the true world to our apparent, changing, suffering, contradictory world: (1) Suffering as a consequence of error: how is error possible? (2) Suffering as a consequence of guilt: how is guilt possible? (—experiences derived from nature or society universalized and projected to the sphere of “ in-itself”). If, however, the conditioned world is causally conditioned by the unconditioned world, then freedom to err and incur
guilt must also be conditioned by it: and again one asks, what for?—The world of appearance, becoming, contradiction, suffering, is therefore willed: what for? The error in these conclusions: two opposite concepts are constructed—because one of them corresponds to a reality, the other “ must” also correspond to a reality. “ Whence should one derive this opposite concept if this were not so?”—Reason is thus a source of revelation concerning being-in-itself. But the origin of these antitheses need not necessarily go back to a supernatural source of reason: it is sufficient to oppose to it the real genesis of the concepts. This derives from the practical sphere, the sphere of utility; hence the strength of the faith it inspires (one would perish if one did not reason according to this mode of reason; but this is no “ proof” of what it asserts). The preoccupation with suffering on the part of metaphysicians—is quite naive. “ Eternal bliss”: psychological nonsense. Brave and creative men never consider pleasure and pain as ultimate values—they are epiphenomena: one must desire both if one is to achieve anything—. That they see the problem of pleasure and pain in the foreground reveals something weary and sick in metaphysicians and religious people. Even morality is so important to them only because they see in it an essential condition for the abolition of suffering. In the same way, their preoccupation with appearance and error: cause of suffering, superstition that happiness attends truth (confusion: happiness in “ certainty”, in “ faith”). 580 (Spring-Fall 1887) To what extent the basic epistemological positions (materialism, idealism) are consequences of evaluations: the source of the supreme feelings of pleasure (“ feelings of value”) as decisive also for the problem of reality! —The measure of positive knowledge is quite subsidiary or a matter of indifference: as witness the development of India. The Buddhistic negation of reality in general (appearance = suffering) is perfectly consistent: undemonstrability, inaccessibility, lack of categories not only for a “ ‘world-in-itself,” but an insight into the erroneous procedures by means of which this whole concept is arrived at. “ Absolute reality,” “ being-in-itself” a contradiction. In a world of becoming, “ reality” is always only a simplification for practical ends, or a deception through the coarseness of organs, or a variation in the tempo of becoming. Logical world-denial and nihilation follow from the fact that we have to oppose non-being with being and that the concept “ becoming” is denied. (“ Something” becomes.) 581 (Spring-Fall 1887) Being and becoming.—“ Reason”, evolved on a sensualistic basis, on the prejudices of the senses, i.e., in the belief in the truth of the judgments of the senses. “ Being” as universalization of the concept “ life” (breathing), “ having a soul”, “ willing, effecting,” “ becoming”. The antithesis is: “ not to have a soul,” “ not to become,” “ not to will.” Therefore: “ being” is not the antithesis of non-being, appearance, nor even of the dead (for only something that can live can be dead). The “ soul,” the “ ego” posited as primeval fact, and introduced everywhere where there is any becoming. 582 (1885-1887) Being—we have no idea of it apart from the idea of “ living.”— How can anything dead “ be”? 583 (March-June 1888) (A) I observe with astonishment that science has today resigned itself to the apparent world; a real world—whatever it may be like—we certainly have no organ for knowing it. At this point we may ask: by means of what organ of knowledge can we posit even this antithesis?— That a world accessible to our organs is also understood to be dependent upon these organs, that we understand a world as being subjectively conditioned, is not to say that an objective world is at all possible. Who compels us to think that subjectivity is real, essential? The “ in-itself” is even an absurd conception; a “ constitutioning-itself” is nonsense; we possess the concept “ being,” “ thing,” only as a relational concept— The worst thing is that with the old antithesis “ apparent” and “ true” the correlative value judgment “ lacking in value” and “ absolutely valuable” has developed. The apparent world is not counted as a “ valuable” world; appearance is supposed to constitute an objection to supreme value. Only a “ true” world can be valuable in itself— Prejudice of prejudices! Firstly, it would be possible that the true constitution of things was so hostile to the presuppositions of life, so opposed to them, that we needed appearance in order to be able to live—After all, this is the case in so many situations; e.g., in marriage. Our empirical world would be determined by the instincts of self-preservation even as regards the limits of its knowledge: we would regard as true, good, valuable that which serves the preservation of the species— a. We possess no categories by which we can distinguish a true from an apparent world. (There might only be an apparent world, but not our apparent world.) b. Assuming the true world, it could still be a world less valuable for us; precisely the quantum of illusion might be of a higher rank on account of its value for our preservation. (Unless appearance as such were grounds for condemnation?) c. That a correlation exists between degrees of value and degrees of reality (so that the supreme values also possess the supreme reality) is a metaphysical postulate proceeding from the presupposition that we know the order of rank of values; namely, that this order of rank is a moral order—Only with this presupposition is truth necessarily part of the definition of all the highest values.
(B) It is of cardinal importance that one should abolish the true world. It is the great inspirer of doubt and devaluator in respect of the world we are: it has been our most dangerous attempt yet to assassinate life. War on all presuppositions on the basis of which one has invented a true world. Among these is the presupposition that moral values are the supreme values. The supremacy of moral valuation would be refuted if it could be shown to be the consequence of an immoral valuation —as a special case of actual immorality—it would thus reduce itself to an appearance, and as appearance it would cease to have any right as such to condemn appearance. (C) The “ will to truth” would then have to be investigated psychologically: it is not a moral force, but a form of the will to power. This would have to be proved by showing that it employs every immoral means: metaphysicians above all. We are today faced with testing the assertion that moral values are the supreme values. Method in investigation is attained only when all moral prejudices have been overcome:— it represents a victory over morality— 584 (March-June 1888) The aberration of philosophy is that, instead of seing in logic and the categories of reason means toward the adjustment of the world for utilitarian ends (basically, toward an expedient falsification), one believed one possessed in them the criterion of truth and reality. The “ criterion of truth” was in fact merely the biological utility of such a system of systematic falsification; and since a species of animals knows of nothing more important than its own preservation, one might indeed be permitted to speak here of “ truth.” The naivete was to take an anthropocentric idiosyncrasy as the measure of things, as the rule for determining “ real” and “ unreal”: in short, to make absolute something conditioned. And behold, suddenly the world fell apart into a “ true” world and an “ apparent” world: and precisely the world that man’s reason had devised for him to live and settle in was discredited. Instead of employing the forms as a tool for making the world manageable and calculable, the madness of philosophers divined that in these categories is presented the concept of that world to which the one in which man lives does not correspond—The means were misunderstood as measures of value, even as a condemnation of their real intention— The intention was to deceive oneself in a useful way; the means, the invention of formulas and signs by means of which one could reduce the confusing multiplicity to a purposive and manageable schema. But alas! now a moral category was brought into play: no creature wants to deceive itself, no creature may deceive—consequently there is only a will to truth. What is “ truth”? The law of contradiction provided the schema: the true world, to which one seeks the way, cannot contradict itself, cannot change, cannot become, has no beginning and no end. This is the greatest error that has ever been committed, the essential fatality of error on earth: one believed one possessed a criterion of reality in the forms of reason—while in fact one possessed them in order to become master of reality, in order to misunderstand reality in a shrewd manner— And behold: now the world became false, and precisely on account of the properties that constitute its reality: change, becoming, multiplicity, opposition, contradiction, war. And then the entire fatality was there: 1. How can one get free from the false, merely apparent world? (—it was the real, the only ) 2. how can one become oneself as much as possible the antithesis of the character of the apparent world? (Concept of the perfect creature as an antithesis to the real creature; more clearly, as the contradiction of life—) The whole tendency of values was toward slander of life; one created a confusion of idealist dogmatism and knowledge in general: so that the opposing party also was always attacking science The road to science was in this way doubly blocked: once by belief in the “ true” world, and again by the opponents of this belief. Natural science, psychology was (1) condemned with regard to its objects, (2) deprived of its innocence— In the actual world, in which everything is bound to and conditioned by everything else, to condemn and think away anything means to condemn and think away everything. The expression “ that should not be,” “ that should not have been,” is farcical— If one thinks out the consequences, one would ruin the source of life if one wanted to abolish whatever was in some respect harmful or destructive. Physiology teaches us better! —We see how morality (a) poisons the entire conception of the world, (b) cuts off the road to knowledge, to science, (c) disintegrates and undermines all actual instincts (in that it teaches that their roots are immoral). We see at work before us a dreadful tool of decadence that props itself up by the holiest names and attitudes. 585 (Spring-Fall 1887; rev. Spring-Fall 1888) Tremendous self-examination: becoming conscious of oneself, not as individuals but as mankind. Let us reflect, let us think back; let us follow the highways and byways! (A) Man seeks “ the truth”: a world that is not self-contradictory, not deceptive, does not change, a true world—a world in which one does not suffer; contradiction, deception, change —causes of suffering! He does not doubt that a world as it ought to be exists; he would like to seek out the road to it. (Indian critique: e.g. the “ ego” as apparent, as not real.)
Whence does man here derive the concept reality—Why is it that he derives suffering from change, deception, contradiction? and why not rather his happiness?— Contempt, hatred for all that perishes, changes, varies— whence comes this valuation of that which remains constant? Obviously, the will to truth is here merely the desire for a world of the constant. The senses deceive, reason corrects the errors; consequently, one concluded, reason is the road to the constant; the least sensual ideas must be closest to the “ true world.”—It is from the senses that most misfortunes come—they are deceivers, deluders, destroyers.— Happiness can be guaranteed only by being; change and happiness exclude one another. The highest desire therefore contemplates unity with what has being. This is the formula for: the road to the highest happiness. In summa: the world as it ought to be exists; this world, in which we live, is an error—this world of ours ought not to exist. Belief in what has being is only a consequence: the real primum mobile is disbelief in becoming, mistrust of becoming, the low valuation of all that becomes— What kind of man reflects in this way? An unproductive, suffering kind, a kind weary of life. If we imagine the opposite kind of man, he would not need to believe in what has being; more, he would despise it as dead, tedious, indifferent— The belief that the world as it ought to be is, really exists, is a belief of the unproductive who do not desire to create a world as it ought to be. They posit it as already available, they seek ways and means of reaching it. “ Will to truth”—as the impotence of the will to create. To know that something is thus and thus: To act so that something becomes thus and thus: Antagonism in the degree of power in different natures. The fiction of a world that corresponds to our desires: psychological trick and interpretation with the aim of associating everything we honor and find pleasant with this true world. “ Will to truth” at this stage is essentially an art of interpretation: which at least requires the power to interpret. This same species of man, grown one stage poorer, no longer possessing the strength to interpret, to create fictions, produces nihilists. A nihilist is a man who judges of the world as it is that it ought not to be, and of the world as it ought to be that it does not exist. According to this view, our existence (action, suffering, willing, feeling) has no meaning: the pathos of “ in vain” is the nihilists’ pathos—at the same time, as pathos, an inconsistency on the part of the nihilists. Whoever is incapable of laying his will into things, lacking will and strength, at least lays some meaning into them, i.e., the faith that there is a will in them already. It is a measure of the degree of strength of will to what extent one can do without meaning in things, to what extent one can endure to live in a meaningless world because one organizes a small portion of it oneself. The philosophical objective outlook can therefore be a sign that will and strength are small. For strength organizes what is close and closest; “ men of knowledge,” who desire only to ascertain what is, are those who cannot fix anything as it ought to be. Artists, an intermediary species: they at least fix an image of that which ought to be; they are productive, to the extent that they actualy alter and transform; unlike men of knowledge, who leave everything as it is. Connection between philosophers and the pessimistic religions: the same species of man (—they ascribe the highest degree of reality to the most highly valued things—). Connection between philosophers and moral men and their evaluations (—the moral interpretation of the world as meaning: after the decline of the religious meaning—). Overcoming of philosophers through the destruction of the world of being: intermediary period of nihilism: before there is yet present the strength to reverse values and to de�fy becoming and the apparent world as the only world, and to call them good. (B) Nihilism as a normal phenomenon can be a symptom of increasing strength or of increasing weakness: partly, because the strength to create, to will, has so increased that it no longer requires these total interpretations and introductions of meaning (“ present tasks,” the state, etc.); partly because even the creative strength to create meaning has declined and disappointment becomes the dominant condition. The incapability of believing in a “ meaning,” “ unbelief.” What does science mean in regard to both possibilities? 1. As a sign of strength and self-control, as being able to do without healing, comforting worlds of illusion; 2. as undermining, dissecting, disappointing, weakening. (C) Belief in truth, the need to have a hold on something believed true, psychological reduction apart from all previous value feelings. Fear, laziness. The same way, unbelief: reduction. To what extent it acquires a new value if a true world does not exist (—thus the value feelings that hitherto have been squandered on the world of being, are again set free).
586 (March-June 1888) The “ True” and the “ Apparent World” (A) The seductions that occur from this concept are of three kinds a. an unknown world:—we are adventurers, inquisitive— that which is known seems to weary us (—the danger of this Concept lies in its insinuation that “ this” world is known to us—); b. another world, where things are different; something in us calculates, our still submission, our silence, lose their value— perhaps everything will turn out well, we have not hoped in vain —the world where things are different, where we ourselves— who knows?—are different— c. a true world: this is the most amazing trick and attack that has ever been perpetrated upon us; so much has become encrusted in the word “ true,” and involuntarily we make a present of all this to the “ true world”: the true world must also be a truthful world, one that does not deceive us, does not make fools of us: to believe in it is virtually to be compelled to believe in it (—out of decency, as is the case among people worthy of confidence—). The concept “ the unknown world” insinuates that this world is “ known” to us (is tedious—); the concept “ another world” insinuates that the world could be otherwise—abolishes necessity and fate (useless to submit oneself—to adapt oneself—); the concept “ the true world” insinuates that this world is untruthful, deceptive, dishonest, inauthentic, inessential—and consequently also not a world adapted to our needs (— inadvisable to adapt oneself to it; better to resist it). We therefore elude “ this” world in three ways: a. by our inquisitiveness—as if the more interesting part were elsewhere; b. by our submission—as though it were not necessary to submit oneself—as if this world were not a necessity of the ultimate rank: c. by our sympathy and respect—as if this world did not deserve them, were impure, were not honest with us— In summa: we have revolted in three ways: we have made an “ x” into a critique of the “ known world.” (B) First step toward sobriety: to grasp to what extent we have been seduced—for things could be exactly the reverse: a. the unknown world could be a stupid and meaner form of existence—and “ this” world might be rather enjoyable by comparison; b. the other world, far from taking account of our desires which would find no fulfillment in it, could be among the mass of things that make this world possible for us: to get to know it might be a means of making us contented; c. the true world: but who is it really who tells us that the apparent world must be of less value than the true one? Does our instinct not contradict this judgment? Does man not eternally create a fictitious world for himself because he wants a better world than reality? Above all: how do we arrive at the idea that our world is not the true world?—it could be that the other world is the “ apparent” one (in fact the Greeks thought of, e.g., a shadow kingdom, an apparent existence, beside true existence). And finally: what gives us the right to posit, as it were, degrees of reality? This is something different from an unknown world— it is already a wanting to know something of the unknown— The “ other,” the “ unknown” world—very good! But to say “ true world” means “ to know something of it”—That is the opposite of the assumption of an “ x” world— In summa: the world “ x” could be in every sense more tedious, less human, and less worthy than this world. It would be another thing to assert the existence of “ x” worlds, i.e., of every possible world besides this one. But this has never been asserted— (C) Problem: why the notion of another world has always been unfavorable for, or critical of “ this” world—what does this indicate?— For a people proud of itself, whose life is ascending, always thinks of another kind of being as a lower, less valuable kind of being; it regards the strange, the unknown world as its enemy, as its opposite; it feels no inquisitiveness, it totally rejects the strange—A people would never admit that another people was the “ true people.”— It is symptomatic that such a distinction should be at all possible—that one takes this world for the “ apparent” one and the other world as “ true.” The places of origin of the notion of “ another world”: the philosopher, who invents a world of reason, where reason and the logical functions are adequate: this is the origin of the “ true” world; the religious man, who invents a “ divine world”: this is the origin of the “ denaturalized, anti- natural” world; the moral man, who invents a “ free world”: this is the origin of the “ good, perfect, just, holy” world. What the three places of origin have in common: the psycho-logical blunder, the physiological confusions. By what attributes is the “ other world,” as it actually appears in history, distinguished? By the stigmata of philosophical, religious, moral prejudice. The “ other world,” as illumined by these facts, as a synonym for nonbeing, nonliving, not wanting to live— General insight: it is the instinct of life-weariness, and not that of life, which has created the “ other world.”
Consequence: philosophy, religion, and morality are symptoms of decadence. 11. Biological Value of Knowledge 587 (1885-1886) It might seem as though I had evaded the question of “ certainty.” The opposite is true; but by inquiring after the criterion of certainty I tested the scales upon which men have weighed in general hitherto—and that the question of certainty itself is a dependent question, a question of the second rank. 588 (1883-1886) The question of values is more fundamental than the question of certainty: the latter becomes serious only by presupposing that the value question has already been answered. Being and appearance, psychologically considered, yield no “ being-in-itself,, no criterion of “ reality,” but only for grades of appearance measured by the strength of the interest we show in an appearance. There is no struggle for existence between ideas and perceptions but a struggle for dominion: the idea that is overcome is not annihilated, only driven back or subordinated. There is no annihilation in the sphere of spirit— 589 (1885-1886) “ Ends and means” “ Cause and effect” “ Subject and object” “ Acting and suffering” “ Thing-in-itself and appearance” as interpretations (not as facts) and to what extent perhaps necessary interpretations? (as required for “ preservation”)—all in the sense of a will to power. 590 (1885-1886) Our values are interpreted into things. Is there then any meaning in the in-itself? ! Is meaning not necessarily relative meaning and perspective? All meaning is will to power (all relative meaning resolves itself into it). 591 (1885) The desire for “ solid facts” epistemology: how much pessimism there is in it! 592 (1883-1888) The antagonism between the “ true world,” as revealed by pessimism, and a world possible for life—here one must test the rights of truth. It is necessary to measure the meaning of all these “ ideal drives” against life to grasp what this antagonism really is: the struggle of sickly, despairing life that cleaves to a beyond, with healthier, more stupid and mendacious, richer, less degenerate life. Therefore it is not “ truth” in struggle with life but one kind of life in struggle with another.—But it wants to be the higher kind!— Here one must demonstrate the need for an order of rank—that the first problem is the order of rank of different kinds of life, 593 (1885-1886) To transform the belief “ it is thus and thus” into the will “ it shall become thus and thus.” 12. Science 594 (1883-1888) Science—this has been hitherto a way of putting an end to the complete confusion in which things exist, by hypotheses that “ explain” everything—so it has come from the intellect’s dislike of chaos.—This same dislike seizes me when I consider myself: I should like to form an image of the inner world too, by means of some schema, and thus triumph over intellectual confusion. Morality has been a simplification of this kind: it taught that men were known, familiar.—Now we have destroyed morality—we have again become completely obscure to ourselves! I know that I know nothing of myself. Physics proves to be a boon for the heart: science (as the way to knowledge) acquires a new charm after morality has been eliminated—and because it is here alone that we find consistency, we have to construct our life so as to preserve it. This yields a sort of practical reflection on the conditions of our existence as men of knowledge. 595 (1884) Our presuppositions: no God: no purpose: finite force. Let us guard against thinking out and prescribing the mode of thought necessary to lesser men!! 596 (1886-1887) No “ moral education” of the human race: but an enforced schooling in [scientific] errors is needed, because “ truth” disgusts and makes one sick of life—unless man is already irrevocably launched upon his path and has taken his honest insight upon himself with a tragic pride. 597 (1886-1887) The presupposition of scientific work: belief in the unity and perpetuity of scientific work, so the individual may work at any part, however small, confident that his work will not be in vain. There is one great paralysis: to work in vain, to struggle in vain. The accumulative epochs, in which force and means of power are discovered that the future will one day make use of; science an intermediary station, at which the more intermediary, more multifarious, more complicated natures find their most natural discharge and satisfaction—all those who should avoid action. 598 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) A philosopher recuperates differently and with different means: he recuperates, e.g., with nihilism. Belief that there is no truth at all, the nihilistic belief, is a great relaxation for
one who, as a warrior of knowledge, is ceaselessly fighting ugly truths. For truth is ugly. 599 (1885-1886) The “ meaninglessness of events”: belief in this is the consequence of an insight into the falsity of previous interpretations, a generalization of discouragement and weakness—not a necessary belief. The immodesty of man: to deny meaning where he sees none. 600 (1885-1886) No limit to the ways in which the world can be interpreted; every interpretation a symptom of growth or of decline. Inertia needs unity (monism); plurality of interpretations a sign of strength. Not to desire to deprive the world of its disturbing and enigmatic character! 601 (1885-1886) Against peaceableness and the desire for reconciliation. The attempt at monism belongs here. 602 (1884) This perspective world, this world for the eye, tongue, and ear, is very false, even if compared for a very much more subtle sense-apparatus. But its intelligibility, comprehensibility, practicability, and beauty begin to cease if we refine our senses; just as beauty ceases when we think about historical processes; the order of purpose is already an illusion. It suffices that the more superficially and coarsely it is conceived, the more valuable, definite, beautiful, and significant the world appears. The deeper one looks, the more our valuations disappear—meaninglessness approaches! We have created the world that possesses values! Knowing this, we know, too, that reverence for truth is already the consequence of an illusion—and that one should value more than truth the force that forms, simplifies, shapes, invents. “ Everything is false! Everything is permitted!” Only with a certain obtuseness of vision, a will to simplicity, does the beautiful, the “ valuable” appear: in itself, it is I know not what. 603 (1885) That the destruction of an illusion does not produce truth— but only one more piece of ignorance, an extension of our “ empty space, an increase of our “ desert”— 604 ( 1885-1886) “ Interpretation,” the introduction of meaning not “ explanation” (in most cases a new interpretation over an old interpretation that has become incomprehensible, that is now itself only a sign). There are no facts, everything is in flux, incomprehensible, elusive; what is relatively most enduring is—our opinions. 605 (Spring-Fall 1887) The ascertaining of “ truth” and “ untruth,” the ascertaining of facts in general, is fundamentally different from creative positing, from forming, shaping, overcoming, willing, such as is of the essence of philosophy. To introduce a meaning—this task still remains to be done, assuming there is no meaning yet. Thus it is with sounds, but also with the fate of peoples: they are capable of the most different interpretations and direction toward different goals. On a yet higher level is to posit a goal and mold facts according to it; that is, active interpretation and not merely conceptual translation. 606 (1885-1886) Ultimately, man finds in things nothing but what he himself has imported into them: the finding is called science, the importing —art, religion, love, pride. Even if this should be a piece of childishness, one should carry on with both and be well disposed toward both—some should find; others—we others!—should import! 607 (Spring-Fall 1886) Science: its two sides: in regard to the individual; in regard to the cultural complex (level); —valuations from one side or the other are mutually antagonistic. 608 (1886-1887) The development of science resolves the “ familiar” more and more into the unfamiliar:—it desires, however, the reverse, and proceeds from the instinct to trace the unfamiliar back to the familiar. In summa, science is preparing a sovereign ignorance, a feeling that there is no such thing as “ knowing,” that it was a kind of arrogance to dream of it, more, that we no longer have the least notion that warrants our considering “ knowledge” even a possibility—that “ knowing” itself is a contradictory idea. We translate a primeval mythology and vanity of mankind into the hard fact: “ knowledge-in-itself” is as impermissible a concept as is “ thing-initself.” Seduction by “ number and logic,” seduction by “ laws.” “ Wisdom” as the attempt to get beyond perspective valuations (i.e., beyond the “ will to power”): a principle hostile to life and decadent, a symptom as among the Indians, etc., of the weakening of the power of appropriation. 609 (1884) It is not enough that you understand in what ignorance man and beast live; you must also have and acquire the will to ignorance. You need to grasp that without this kind of ignorance life itself would be impossible, that it is a condition under which alone the living thing can preserve itself and prosper: a great, firm dome of ignorance must encompass
you. 610 (1884) Science—the transformation of nature into concepts for the purpose of mastering nature—belongs under the rubric “ means.” But the purpose and will of man must grow in the same way, the intention in regard to the whole. 611 (1883-1888) We find that the strongest and most constantly employed faculty at all stages of life is thought—even in every act of perceiving and apparent passivity! Evidently, it thus becomes most powerful and demanding, and in the long run it tyrannizes over all other forces. Finally it becomes “ passion-in-itself.” 612 (Spring-Fall 1887) To win back for the man of knowledge the right to great affects! after self-effacement and the cult of “ objectivity” have created a false order of rank in this sphere, too. Error reached its peak when Schopenhauer taught: the only way to the “ true,” to knowledge, lies precisely in getting free from affects, from will; the intellect liberated from will cannot but see the true, real essence of things. The same error in arte as if everything were beautiful as soon as it is viewed without will. 613 (Fall 1888) Competition between affects and the dominion of one of the affects over the intellect. 614 (1884) To “ humanize” the world, i.e., to feel ourselves more and more masters within it— 615 (1884) Among a higher kind of creatures, knowledge, too, will acquire new forms that are not yet needed. 616 (1885-1886) That the value of the world lies in our interpretation (—that other interpretations than merely human ones are perhaps somewhere possible—); that previous interpretations have been perspective valuations by virtue of which we can survive in life, i.e., in the will to power, for the growth of power; that every elevation of man brings with it the overcoming of narrower interpretations; that every strengthening and increase of power opens up new perspectives and means believing in new horizons—this idea permeates my writings. The world with which we are concerned is false, i.e., is not a fact but a fable and approximation on the basis of a meager sum of observations; it is “ in flux,” as something in a state of becoming, as a falsehood always changing but never getting near the truth: for—there is no “ truth.” 617 (1883-1885) To impose upon becoming the character of being—that is the supreme will to power. Twofold falsification, on the part of the senses and of the spirit, to preserve a world of that which is, which abides, which is equivalent, etc. That everything recurs is the closest approximation of a world of becoming to a world of being:—high point of the meditation. From the values attributed to being proceed the condemnation of and discontent with becoming, after such a world of being had first been invented. The metamorphoses of what has being (body, God, ideas, laws of nature, formulas, etc.) “ Beings” as appearance; reversal of values; appearance was that which conferred value—. Knowledge-in-itself in a world of becoming is impossible; so how is knowledge possible? As error concerning oneself, as will to power, as will to deception. Becoming as invention, willing, self-denial, overcoming of oneself: no subject but an action, a positing, creative, no “ causes and effects.” Art as the will to overcome becoming, as “ eternalization,” but shortsighted, depending on the perspective: repeating in miniature, as it were, the tendency of the whole. Regarding that which all life reveals as a diminutive formula for the total tendency; hence a new definition of the concept “ life” as will to power. Instead of “ cause and effect” the mutual struggle of that which becomes, often with the absorption of one’s opponent; the number of becoming elements not constant. Uselessness of old ideals for the interpretation of the totality of events, once one knows the animal origin and utility of these ideals; all, moreover, contradictory to life. Uselessness of the mechanistic theory—it gives the impression of meaninglessness. The entire idealism of mankind hitherto is on the point of changing suddenly into nihilism—into the belief in absolute worthlessness, i.e., meaninglessness. The destruction of ideals, the new desert; new arts by means of which we can endure it, we amphibians. - Presupposition: bravery, patience, no “ turning back,” no haste to go forward. (N.B. Zarathustra adopts a parodistic attitude toward all former values as a consequence of his abundance.) BOOK IV - DISCIPLINE AND BREEDING Excerpts BOOK IV DISCIPLINE AND BREEDING
I. Order of Rank 1. The Doctrine of Order of Rank 858 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) What determines your rank is the quantum of power you are: the rest is cowardice. 862 (1884) A doctrine is needed powerful enough to work as a breeding agent: strengthening the strong, paralyzing and destructive for the world-weary. The annihilation of the decaying races. Decay of Europe.— The annihilation of slavish evaluations.— Dominion over the earth as a means of producing a higher type.— The annihilation of the tartuffery called “ morality” (Christianity as a hysterical kind of honesty in this: Augustine, Bunyan).— The annihilation of suffrage universel; i.e., the system through which the lowest natures prescribe themselves as laws for the higher.— The annihilation of mediocrity and its acceptance. (The one-sided, individuals—peoples; to strive for fullness of nature through the pairing of opposites: race mixture to this end).— The new courage—no a priori truths (such truths were sought by those accustomed to faith!), but a free subordination to a ruling idea that has its time: e.g., time as a property of space, etc. 2. The Strong and the Weak 871 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) The victorious and unbridled: their depressive influence on the value of the desires. It was the dreadful barbarism of custom that, especially in the Middle Ages, compelled the creation of a veritable “ league of virtue”—together with an equally dreadful exaggeration of that which constitutes the value of man. Struggling “ civilization” (taming) needs every kind of irons and torture to maintain itself against terribleness and beast-of-prey natures. Here a confusion is quite natural, although its influence has been fatal: that which men of power and will are able to demand of themselves also provides a measure of that which they may permit themselves. Such natures are the antithesis of the vicious and unbridled: although they may on occasion do things that would convict a lesser man of vice and immoderation. Here the concept of the “ equal value of men before God” is extraordinarily harmful; one forbade actions and attitudes that were in themselves among the prerogatives of the strongly constituted—as if they were in themselves unworthy of men. One brought the entire tendency of the strong into disrepute when one erected the protective measures of the weakest (those who were weakest also when confronting themselves) as a norm of value. Confusion went so far that one branded the very virtuosi of life (whose autonomy offered the sharpest antithesis to the vicious and unbridled) with the most opprobrious names. Even now one believes one must disapprove of a Cesare Borgia; that is simply laughable. The church has excommunicated German emperors on account of their vices: as if a monk or priest had any right to join in a discussion about what a Frederick II may demand of himself. A Don Juan is sent to hell: that is very naive. Has it been noticed that in heaven all interesting men are missing?— Just a hint to the girls as to where they can best find their salvation.— If one reflects with some consistency, and moreover with a deepened insight into what a “ great man” is, no doubt remains that the church sends all “ great men” to hell—it fights against all “ greatness of man.” 877 (Spring-Fall 1887; rev. Spring-Fall 1888) The revolution made Napoleon possible: that is its justification. For the sake of a similar prize one would have to desire the anarchical collapse of our entire civilization. Napoleon made nationalism possible: that is its excuse. The value of a man (apart from his morality or immorality, naturally; for with these concepts the value of a man is not even touched) does not reside in his utility; for it would continue to exist even if there were no one to whom he could be of any use. And why could not precisely that man who produced the most disastrous effects be the pinnacle of the whole species of man: so high, so superior that everything would perish from envy of him? 893 (Spring-Fall 1887) Hatred of mediocrity is unworthy of a philosopher: it is almost a question mark against his “ right to philosophy.” Precisely because he is an exception he has to take the rule under his protection, he has to keep the mediocre in good heart. 898 (Spring-Fall 1887) The strong of the future.— That which partly necessity, partly chance has achieved here and there, the conditions for the production of a stronger type, we are now able to comprehend and consciously will: we are able to create the conditions under which such an elevation is possible. Until now, “ education” has had in view the needs of society: not the possible needs of the future, but the needs of the society of the day. One desired to produce “ tools” for it. Assuming the wealth of force were greater, one could imagine forces being subtracted, not to serve the needs of society but some future need. Such a task would have to be posed the more it was grasped to what extent the contemporary form of society was being so powerfully transformed that at some future time it would be unable to exist for its own sake alone, but only as a tool in the hands of a stronger race. The increasing dwarfing of man is precisely the driving force that brings to mind the breeding of a stronger race—a race that would be excessive precisely where the dwarfed species was weak and growing weaker (in will, responsibility, self-assurance, ability to posit goals for oneself).
The means would be those history teaches: isolation through interests in preservation that are the reverse of those which are average today; habituation to reverse evaluations; distance as a pathos; a free conscience in those things that today are most undervalued and prohibited. The homogenizing of European man is the great process that cannot be obstructed: one should even hasten it. The necessity to create a gulf, distance, order of rank, is given eo ipso—not the necessity to retard the process. As soon as it is established, this homogenizing species requires a justification: it lies in serving a higher sovereign species that stands upon the former and can raise itself to its task only by doing this. Not merely a master race whose sole task is to rule, but a race with its own sphere of life, with an excess of strength for beauty, bravery, culture, manners to the highest peak of the spirit; an affirming race that may grant itself every great luxury—strong enough to have no need of the tyranny of the virtue-imperative, rich enough to have no need of thrift and pedantry, beyond good and evil; a hothouse for strange and choice plants. 899 (1885) Our psychologists, whose glance lingers involuntarily on symptoms of decadence alone, again and again induce us to mistrust the spirit. One always sees only those effects of the spirit that make men weak, delicate, and morbid; but now there are coming new barbarians { cynics experimenters conquerors } union of spiritual superiority with well-being and an excess of strength. 900 (1885) I point to something new: certainly for such a democratic type there exists the danger of the barbarian, but one has looked for it only in the depths. There exists also another type of barbarian, who comes from the heights: a species of conquering and ruling natures in search of material to mold. Prometheus was this kind of barbarian. 909 (Jan.-Fall 1888) The typical forms of self-formation. Or: the eight principal questions. 1. Whether one wants to be more multifarious or simpler? 2. Whether one wants to become happier or more indifferent to happiness and unhappiness? 3. Whether one wants to become more contented with oneself or more exacting and inexorable? 4. Whether one wants to become softer, more yielding, more human, or more “ inhuman”? 5. Whether one wants to become more prudent or more ruthless? 6. Whether one wants to reach a goal or to avoid all goals (as, e.g., the philosopher does who smells a boundary, a nook, a prison, a stupidity in every goal)? 7. Whether one wants to become more respected or more feared? Or more despised? 8. Whether one wants to become tyrant or seducer or shepherd or herd animal? 910 (Spring-Fall 1887) Types of my disciples.— To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities—I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not—that one endures. [The note continues in Nietzsche’s MS: “ I have not yet got to know any idealist, but many liars–”] 916 (1884; rev. Spring-Fall 1888) What has been ruined by the church’s misuse of it: 1. asceticism: one has hardly the courage so far to display its natural utility, its indispensability in the service of the education of the will. Our absurd pedagogic world, before which the “ useful civil servant” hovers as a model, thinks it can get by with “ instruction,” with brain drill; it has not the slightest idea that something else is needed first—education of will power; one devises tests for everything except for the main thing: whether one can will, whether one may promise; the young man finishes school without a single question, without any curiosity even, concerning this supreme value-problem of his nature; 2. fasting: in every sense—even as a means of preserving the delicacy of one’s ability to enjoy all good things (e.g., occasionally to stop reading, listening to music, being pleasant; one must have fast days for one’s virtues, too); 3. the “ monastery”: temporary isolation, accompanied by strict refusal, e.g., of letters; a kind of most profound self-reflection and self-recovery that desires to avoid, not “ temptations,” but “ duties”: an escape from the daily round; a detachment from they tyranny of stimuli and influences that condemns us to spend our strength in nothing but reactions and does not permit the accumulation to the point of spontaneous activity (one should observe our scholars from close up: they think only reactively; i.e., they have to read before they can think); 4. feasts: One has to be very coarse in order not to feel the presence of Christians and Christian values as an oppression beneath which all genuine festive feelings go to the devil. Feasts include: pride, exuberance, wantonness; mockery of everything serious and Philistine; a divine affirmation of oneself out of animal plenitude and perfection—one and all states which the Christian cannot honestly welcome. The feast is paganism par excellence; 5. courage confronted with one’s own nature: dressing up in “ moral costumes.— That one has no need of moral formulas in order to welcome an affect; standard: how far we can affirm what is nature in us—how much or how little we need to have recourse to morality; 6. death— One must convert the stupid physiological fact into a moral necessity. So to live that one can also will at the right time to die! 918 (Jan.-Fall 1888)
One would make a fit little boy stare if one asked him: “ Would you like to become virtuous?”— but he will open his eyes wide if asked: “ Would you like to become stronger than your friends?”— 3. The Noble Man 941 (Summer-Fall 1883) The meaning of our gardens and palaces (and to this extent also the meaning of all desire for riches) is to remove disorder and vulgarity from sight and to build a home for nobility of soul. The majority, to be sure, believe they will acquire higher natures when, those beautiful, peaceful objects have operated upon them: hence the rush to go to Italy and on travels, etc.; all reading and visits to theaters. They want to have themselves formed—that is the meaning of their cultural activity! But the strong, the mighty want to form and no longer to have anything foreign about them! Thus men also plunge into wild nature, not to find themselves but to lose and forget themselves in it. “ To be outside oneself” as the desire of all the weak and the selfdiscontented. 942 (1885) There is only nobility of birth, only nobility of blood. (I am not speaking here of the little word “ von” or of the Almanach de Gotha [Genealogy reference book of the royal families of Europe.]: parenthesis for asses.) When one speaks of “ aristocrats of the spirit,” reasons are usually not lacking for concealing something; as is well known, it is a favorite term among ambitious Jews. For spirit alone does not make noble; rather, there must be something to ennoble the spirit.— What then is required? Blood. 949 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) That one stakes one’s life, one’s health, one’s honor, is the consequence of high spirits and an overflowing, prodigal will: not from love of man but because every great danger challenges our curiosity about the degree of our strength and our courage. 4. The Masters of the Earth 958 (1884) I write for a species of man that does not yet exist: for the “ masters of the earth.” Religions, as consolations and relaxations, dangerous: man believes he has a right to take his ease. In Plato’s Theages it is written: “ Each one of us would like to be master over all men, if possible, and best of all God.” This attitude must exist again. Englishmen, Americans, and Russians– 960 (1885-1886) From now on there will be more favorable preconditions for more comprehensive forms of dominion, whose like has never yet existed. And even this is not the most important thing; the possibility has been established for the production of international racial unions whose task will be to rear a master race, the future “ masters of the earth”;—a new, tremendous aristocracy, based on the severest self-legislation, in which the will of philosophical men of power and artist-tyrants will be made to endure for millennia—a higher kind of man who, thanks to their superiority in will, knowledge, riches, and influence, employ democratic Europe as their most pliant and supple instrument for getting hold of the destinies of the earth, so as to work as artists upon “ man” himself. Enough: the time is coming when politics will have a different meaning. 5. The Great Human Being 966 (1884) In contrast to the animals, man has cultivated an abundance of contrary drives and impulses within himself: thanks to this synthesis, he is master of the earth.— Moralities are the expression of locally limited orders of rank in his multifarious world of drives, so man should not perish through their contradictions. Thus a drive as master, its opposite weakened, refined, as the impulse that provides the stimulus for the activity of the chief drive. The highest man would have the greatest multiplicity of drives, in the relatively greatest strength that can be endured. Indeed, where the plant “ man” shows himself strongest one finds instincts that conflict powerfully (e.g., in Shakespeare), but are controlled. 6. The Highest Man as Legislator of the Future 981 (Spring-Fall 1887) Not to make men “ better,” not to preach morality to them in any form, as if “ morality in itself,” or any ideal kind of man, were given; but to create conditions that require stronger men who for their part need, and consequently will have, a morality (more clearly: a physical-spiritual discipline) that makes them strong! Not to allow oneself to be misled by blue eyes or heaving bosoms: greatness of soul has nothing romantic about it. And unfortunately nothing at all amiable. 984 (1884) Greatness of soul is inseparable from greatness of spirit. For it involves independence; but in the absence of spiritual greatness, independence ought not to be allowed, it causes mischief, even through its desire to do good and practice “ justice.” Small spirits must obey—hence cannot possess greatness.
II. Dionysus 1003 (Jan.-Fall 1888) To him who has turned out well, who does my heart good, carved from wood that is hard, gentle, and fragrant—in whom even the nose takes pleasure—this book is dedicated. He enjoys the taste of what is wholesome for him; his pleasure in anything ceases when the bounds of the wholesome are crossed; he divines the remedies for partial injuries; he has illnesses as great stimulants of his life; he knows how to exploit ill chances; he grows stronger through the accidents that threaten to destroy him; he instinctively gathers from all that he sees, hears, experiences, what advances his main concern—he follows a principle of selection—he allows much to fall through; he reacts with the slowness bred by a long caution and a deliberate pride—he tests a stimulus for its origin and its intentions, he does not submit; he is always in his own company, whether he deals with books, men, or landscapes; he honors by choosing, by admitting, by trusting. 1007 (Spring-Fall 1887) To revalue values—what would that mean? All the spontaneous—new, future, stronger—movements must be there; but they still appear under false names and valuations and have not yet become conscious of themselves. A courageous becoming-conscious and affirmation of what has been achieved—a liberation from the slovenly routine of old valuations that dishonor us in the best and strongest things we have achieved. 1017 (Spring-Fall 1887) In place of the “ natural man” of Rousseau, the nineteenth century has discovered a truer image of “ man”—it has had the courage to do so.— On the whole, the Christian concept “ man” has thus been reinstated. What one has not had the courage for is to call this “ man in himself” good and to see in him the guarantee of the future. Neither has one dared to grasp that an increase in the terribleness of man is an accompaniment of every increase in culture; in this, one is still subject to the Christian ideal and takes its side against paganism, also against the Renaissance concept of virt�. But the key to culture is not to be found in this way: and in praxis one retains the falsification of history in favor of the “ good man” (as if he alone constituted the progress of man) and the socialist ideal (i.e., the residue of Christianity and of Rousseau in the de-Christianized world). The struggle against the eighteenth century: its supreme overcoming by Goethe and Napoleon. Schopenhauer, too, struggles against it; but he involuntarily steps back into the seventeenth century—he is a modern Pascal, with Pascalian value judgments without Christianity. Schopenhauer was not strong enough for a new Yes. Napoleon: insight that the higher and the terrible man necessarily belong together. The “ man” reinstated; the woman again accorded her due tribute of contempt and fear. “ Totality” as health and highest activity; the straight line, the grand style in action rediscovered; the most powerful instinct, that of life itself, the lust to rule, affirmed. 1023 (March-June 1888) Pleasure appears where there is the feeling of power. Happiness: in the triumphant consciousness of power and victory. Progress: the strengthening of the type, the ability for great willing; everything else is misunderstanding, danger. 1026 (Summer-Fall 1883) Not “ happiness follows virtue”—but the more powerful man first designates his happy state as virtue. Evil actions belong to the powerful and virtuous: bad, base ones to the subjected. The most powerful man, the creator, would have to be the most evil, in as much as he carries his ideal against the ideals of other men and remakes them in his own image. Evil here means: hard, painful, enforced. Such men as Napoleon must come again and again and confirm the belief in the autocracy of the individual: but he himself was corrupted by the means he had to employ and lost noblesse of character. If he had had to prevail among a different kind of man he could have employed other means; and it would thus not seem to be a necessity for a Caesar to become bad. 1028 (Spring-Fall 1887) Terribleness is part of greatness: let us not deceive ourselves. 1038 (March-Fall 1888) —And how many new gods are still possible! As for myself, in whom the religious, that is to say god-forming, instinct occasionally becomes active at impossible times—how differently, how variously the divine has revealed itself to me each time! So many strange things have passed before me in those timeless moments that fall into one’s life as if from the moon, when one no longer has any idea how old one is or how
young one will yet be—I should not doubt that there are many kinds of gods— There are some one cannot imagine without a certain halcyon and frivolous quality in their makeup— Perhaps light feet are even an integral part of the concept :god— Is it necessary to elaborate that a god prefers to stay beyond everything bourgeois and rational? and, between ourselves, also beyond good and evil? His prospect of free—in Goethe’s words.— And to call upon the inestimable authority of Zarathustra in this instance: Zarathustra goes so far as to confess: “ I would believe only in a God who could dance”— To repeat: how many new gods are still possible! Zarathustra himself, to be sure, is merely an old atheist: he believes neither in old nor in new gods. Zarathustra says he would; but Zarathustra will not— Do not misunderstand him. The type of God after the type of creative spirits, of “ great men.” 1049 (1885-1886) Apollo’s deception: the eternity of beautiful forms; the aristocratic legislation, “ thus shall it be for ever!” Dionysus: sensuality and cruelty. Transitoriness could be interpreted as enjoyment of productive and destructive force, as continual creation. III. The Eternal Recurrence 1053 (1884) My philosophy brings the triumphant idea of which all other modes of thought will ultimately perish. It is the great cultivating idea: the races that cannot bear it stand condemned; those who find it the greatest benefit are chosen to rule. 1054 (1885-1886) The greatest of struggles: for this a new weapon is needed. The hammer: to provoke a fearful decision, to confront Europe with the consequences: whether its will “ wills” destruction. Prevention of reduction to mediocrity. Rather destruction! 1055 (1885) A pessimistic teaching and way of thinking, an ecstatic nihilism, can under certain conditions be indispensable precisely to the philosopher—as a mighty pressure and hammer with which he breaks and removes degenerate and decaying races to make way for a new order of life, or to implant into that which is degenerate and desires to die a longing for the end. 1056 (1884) I want to teach the idea that gives many the right to erase themselves—the great cultivating idea. 1057 (1883-1888) The eternal recurrence. A prophecy. [In the MS: “ A Book of Prophecy.” In the so-called Grossoktav edition of 1911, p. 514, this section represents the plan for a book, The Eternal Recurrence.] 1. Presentation of the doctrine and its theoretical presuppositions and consequences. 2. Proof of the doctrine. 3. Probable consequences of its being believed (it makes everything break open). a) Means of enduring it; b) Means of disposing it. 4. Its place in history as a mid-point. Period of greatest danger. Foundation of an oligarchy above peoples and their interests: education to a universally human politics. Counterpart of Jesuitism. 1058 (1883-1888) The two great philosophical points of view (devised by Germans): a) that of becoming, of development. b) that according to the value of existence (but the wretched form of German pessimism must first be overcome!)—both brought together by me in a decisive way. Everything becomes and recurs eternally—escape is impossible!— Supposing we could judge value, what follows? The idea of recurrence as a selective principle, in the service of strength (and barbarism!!). Ripeness of man for this idea. 1059 (1884) 1. The idea [of the eternal recurrence]: the presuppositions that would have to be true if it were true. Its consequences. 2. As the hardest idea: its probable effect if it were not prevented, i.e., if all values were not revalued. 3. Means of enduring it: the revaluation of all values. No longer joy in certainty but uncertainty; no longer “ cause and effect” but the continually creative; no longer will to preservation but to power; no longer the humble expression, “ everything is merely subjective,” but “ it is also our work!— Let us be proud of it!” 1060 (1884) To endure the idea of the recurrence one needs: freedom from morality; new means against the fact of pain (pain conceived as a tool, as the father of pleasure; there is no cumulative
consciousness of displeasure); the enjoyment of all kinds of uncertainty, experimentalism, as a counterweight to this extreme fatalism; abolition of the concept of necessity; abolition of the “ will”; abolition of “ knowledge-in-itself.” Greatest elevation of the consciousness of strength in man, as he creates the overman. 1061 (1887-1888) The two most extreme modes of thought—the mechanistic and the Platonic—are reconciled in the eternal recurrence: both as ideals. 1062 (1885) If the world had a goal, it must have been reached. If there were for it some unintended final state, this also must have been reached. If it were in any way capable of a pausing and becoming fixed, of “ being,” then all becoming would long since have come to an end, along with all thinking, all “ spirit.” The fact of “ spirit” as a form of becoming proves that the world has no goal, no final state, and is incapable of being. The old habit, however, of associating a goal with every event and a guiding, creative God with the world, is so powerful that it requires an effort for a thinker not to fall into thinking of the very aimlessness of the world as intended. This notion—that the world intentionally avoids a goal and even knows artifices for keeping itself from entering into a circular course—must occur to all those who would like to force on the world the ability for eternal novelty, i.e., on a finite, definite, unchangeable force of constant size, such as the world is, the miraculous power of infinite novelty in its forms and states. The world, even if it is no longer a god, is still supposed to be capable of the divine power of creation, the power of infinite transformations; it is supposed to consciously prevent itself from returning to any of its old forms; it is supposed to possess not only the intention but the means of every one of its movements at every moment so as to escape goals, final states, repetitions—and whatever else may follow from such an unforgivably insane way of thinking and desiring. It is still the old religious way of thinking and desiring, a kind of longing to believe that in some way the world is after all like the old beloved, infinite, boundlessly creative God—that in some way “ the old God still lives”—that longing of Spinoza which was expressed in the words “ deus sive natura” [God or nature.] (he even felt “ natura sive deus”). What, then, is the law and belief with which the decisive change, the recently attained preponderance of the scientific spirit over the religious, God-inventing spirit, is most clearly formulated? Is it not: the world, as force, may not be thought of as unlimited, for it cannot be so thought of; we forbid ourselves the concept of an infinite force as incompatible with the concept “ force.” Thus—the world also lacks the capacity for eternal novelty. 1063 (1887-1888) The law of the conservation of energy demands eternal recurrence. 1064 (1885) That a state of equilibrium is never reached proves that it is not possible. But in an indefinite space it would have to have been reached. Likewise in a spherical space. The shape of space must be the cause of eternal movement, and ultimately of all “ imperfection.” That “ force” and “ rest,” “ remaining the same,” contradict one another. The measure of force (as magnitude) as fixed, but its essence in flux. [The MS continues: “ in tension, compelling.”] “ Timelessness” to be rejected. At any precise moment of a force, the absolute conditionality of a new distribution of all its forces is given: it cannot stand still. “ Change” belongs to the essence, therefore also temporality: with this, however, the necessity of change has only been posited once more conceptually. 1065 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) A certain emperor always bore in mind the transitoriness of all things so as not to take them too seriously and to live at peace among them. To me, on the contrary, everything seems far too valuable to be so fleeting: I seek an eternity for everything: ought one to pour the most precious salves and wines into the sea?— My consolation is that everything that has been is eternal: the sea will cast it up again. 1066 (March-June 1888) The new world-conception.— The world exists; it is not something that becomes, not something that passes away. Or rather: it becomes, it passes away, but it has never begun to become and never ceased from passing away—it maintains itself in both.— It lives on itself: its excrements are its food. We need not worry for a moment about the hypothesis of a created world. The concept “ create” is today completely indefinable [This word is illegible.], unrealizable; merely a word, a rudimentary survival from the ages of superstition; one can explain nothing with a mere word. The last attempt to conceive a world that had a beginning has lately been made several times with the aid of logical procedures—generally, as one may divine, with an ulterior theological motive. Lately one has sought several times to find a contradiction in the concept “ temporal infinity of the world in the past” (regressus in infinitum): one has even found it, although at the cost of confusing the head with the tail. Nothing can prevent me from reckoning backward from this moment and saying “ I shall never reach the end”; just as I can reckon forward from the same moment into the infinite. Only if I made the mistake—I shall guard against it—of equating this correct concept of a regressus in infinitum with an utterly unrealizable concept of a finite progressus up to this present, only if I suppose that the direction (forward or backward) is logically a matter of indifference, would I take the head—this moment— for the tail: I shall leave that to you, my dear Herr D�hring!—
I have come across this idea in earlier thinkers: every time it was determined by other ulterior considerations (—mostly theological, in favor of the creator spiritus). If the world could in any way become rigid, dry, dead, nothing, or if it could reach a state of equilibrium, or if it had any kind of goal that involved duration, immutability, the once-and-for-all (in short, speaking metaphysically: if becoming could resolve itself into being or into nothingness), then this state must have been reached: from which it follows— This is the sole certainty we have in our hands to serve as a corrective to a great host of world hypotheses possible in themselves. If, e.g., the mechanistic theory cannot avoid the consequence, drawn for it by William Thomson [First Baron Kelvin (1824-1907), British physicist and mathematician who introduced the Kelvin or Absolute Scale of temperature.], of leading to a final state, then the mechanistic theory stands refuted. If the world may be thought of as a certain definite quantity of force and as a certain definite number of centers of force—and every other representation remains indefinite and therefore useless—it follows that, in the great dice game of existence, it must pass through a calculable number of combinations. In infinite time, every possible combination would at some time or another be realized; more: it would be realized an infinite number of times. And since between every combination and its next recurrence all other possible combinations would have to take place, and each of these combinations conditions the entire sequence of combinations in the same series, a circular movement of absolutely identical series is thus demonstrated: the world as a circular movement that has already repeated itself infinitely often and plays its game in infinitum. This conception is not simply a mechanistic conception; for if it were that, it would not condition an infinite recurrence of identical cases, but a final state. Because the world has not reached this, mechanistic theory must be considered an imperfect and merely provisional hypothesis. 1067 (1885) And do you know what “ the world” is to me? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end; a firm, iron magnitude of force that does not grow bigger or smaller, that does not expend itself but only transforms itself; as a whole, of unalterable size, a household without expenses or losses, but likewise without increase or income; enclosed by “ nothingness” as by a boundary; not something blurry or wasted, not something endlessly extended, but set in a definite space as a definite force, and not a sphere that might be “ empty” here or there, but rather as force throughout, as a play of forces and waves of forces, at the same time one and many, increasing here and at the same time decreasing there; a sea of forces flowing and rushing together, eternally changing, eternally flooding back, with tremendous years of recurrence, with an ebb and a flood of its forms; out of the simplest forms striving toward the most complex, out of the stillest, most rigid, coldest forms toward the hottest, most turbulent, most selfcontradictory, and then again returning home to the simple out of this abundance, out of the play of contradictions back to the joy of concord, still affirming itself in this uniformity of its courses and its years, blessing itself as that which must return eternally, as a becoming that knows no satiety, no disgust, no weariness: this, my Dionysian world of the eternally self-creating, the eternally self-destroying, this mystery world of the twofold voluptuous delight, my “ beyond good and evil,” without goal, unless the joy of the circle is itself a goal; without will, unless a ring feels good will toward itself—do you want a name for this world? A solution for all its riddles? A light for you, too, you best-concealed, strongest, most intrepid, most midnightly men?— This world is the will to power—and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power—and nothing besides!
WE PHILOLOGISTS (POSTHUMOUS) TRANSLATED BY J. M. KENNEDY (PUBLISHED POSTHUMOUSLY) TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION The subject of education was one to which Nietzsche, especially during his residence in Basel, paid considerable attention, and his insight into it was very much deeper than that of, say, Herbert Spencer or even Johann Friedrich Herbart, the latter of whom has in late years exercised considerable influence in scholastic circles. Nietzsche clearly saw that the “ philologists” (using the word chiefly in reference to the teachers of the classics in German colleges and universities) were absolutely unfitted for their high task, since they were one and all incapable of entering into the spirit of antiquity. Although at the first reading, therefore, this book may seem to be rather fragmentary, there are two main lines of thought running through it: an incisive criticism of German professors, and a number of constructive ideas as to what classical culture really should be. These scattered aphorisms, indeed, are significant as showing how far Nietzsche had travelled along the road over which humanity had been travelling from remote ages, and how greatly he was imbued with the pagan spirit which he recognised in Goethe and valued in Burckhardt. Even at this early period of his life Nietzsche was convinced that Christianity was the real danger to culture; and not merely modern Christianity, but also the Alexandrian culture, the last gasp of Greek antiquity, which had helped to bring Christianity about. When, in the later aphorisms of “ We Philologists,” Nietzsche appears to be throwing over the Greeks, it should be remembered that he does not refer to the Greeks of the era of Homer or �schylus, or even of Aristotle, but to the much later Greeks of the era of Longinus. Classical antiquity, however, was conveyed to the public through university professors and their intellectual offspring, and these professors, influenced (quite unconsciously, of course) by religious and “ liberal” principles, presented to their scholars a kind of emasculated antiquity. It was only on these conditions that the State allowed the pagan teaching to be propagated in the schools; and if, where classical scholars were concerned, it was more tolerant than the Church had been, it must be borne in mind that the Church had already done all the rough work of emasculating its enemies, and had handed down to the State a body of very innocuous and harmless investigators. A totally erroneous conception of what
constituted classical culture was thus brought about. Where any distinction was actually made, for example, later Greek thought was enormously over-rated, and early Greek thought equally undervalued. Aphorism 44, together with the first half-dozen or so in the book, may be taken as typical specimens of Nietzsche’s protest against this state of things. It must be added, unfortunately, that Nietzsche’s observations in this book apply as much to England as to Germany. Classical teachers here may not be rated so high as they are in Germany, but their influence would appear to be equally powerful, and their theories of education and of classical antiquity equally chaotic. In England as in Germany they are “ theologians in disguise.” The danger of modern “ values” to true culture may be readily gathered from a perusal of aphorisms that follow: and, if these aphorisms enable even one scholar in a hundred to enter more thoroughly into the spirit of a great past they will not have been penned in vain. J. M. KENNEDY. LONDON, July 1911. WE PHILOLOGISTS I To what a great extent men are ruled by pure hazard, and how little reason itself enters into the question, is sufficiently shown by observing how few people have any real capacity for their professions and callings, and how many square pegs there are in round holes: happy and well chosen instances are quite exceptional, like happy marriages, and even these latter are not brought about by reason. A man chooses his calling before he is fitted to exercise his faculty of choice. He does not know the number of different callings and professions that exist; he does not know himself; and then he wastes his years of activity in this calling, applies all his mind to it, and becomes experienced and practical. When, afterwards, his understanding has become fully developed, it is generally too late to start something new; for wisdom on earth has almost always had something of the weakness of old age and lack of vigour about it. For the most part the task is to make good, and to set to rights as well as possible, that which was bungled in the beginning. Many will come to recognise that the latter part of their life shows a purpose or design which has sprung from a primary discord: it is hard to live through it. Towards the end of his life, however, the average man has become accustomed to it—then he may make a mistake in regard to the life he has lived, and praise his own stupidity: bene navigavi cum naufragium feci . he may even compose a song of thanksgiving to “ Providence.” 2 On inquiring into the origin of the philologist I find: 1. A young man cannot have the slightest conception of what the Greeks and Romans were. 2. He does not know whether he is fitted to investigate into them; 3. And, in particular, he does not know to what extent, in view of the knowledge he may actually possess, he is fitted to be a teacher. What then enables him to decide is not the knowledge of himself or his science; but (a) Imitation. (b) The convenience of carrying on the kind of work which he had begun at school. (c) His intention of earning a living. In short, ninety-nine philologists out of a hundred should not be philologists at all. 3 The more strict religions require that men shall look upon their activity simply as one means of carrying out a metaphysical scheme: an unfortunate choice of calling may then be explained as a test of the individual. Religions keep their eyes fixed only upon the salvation of the individual . whether he is a slave or a free man, a merchant or a scholar, his aim in life has nothing to do with his calling, so that a wrong choice is not such a very great piece of unhappiness. Let this serve as a crumb of comfort for philologists in general; but true philologists stand in need of a better understanding: what will result from a science which is “ gone in for” by ninety-nine such people? The thoroughly unfitted majority draw up the rules of the science in accordance with their own capacities and inclinations; and in this way they tyrannise over the hundredth, the only capable one among them. If they have the training of others in their hands they will train them consciously or unconsciously after their own image . what then becomes of the classicism of the Greeks and Romans? The points to be proved are— (a) The disparity between philologists and the ancients. (b) The inability of the philologist to train his pupils, even with the help of the ancients. (c) The falsifying of the science by the (incapacity of the) majority, the wrong requirements held in view; the renunciation of the real aim of this science. 4 All this affects the sources of our present philology: a sceptical and melancholy attitude. But how otherwise are philologists to be produced? The imitation of antiquity: is not this a principle which has been refuted by this time? The flight from actuality to the ancients: does not this tend to falsify our conception of antiquity?
5 We are still behindhand in one type of contemplation: to understand how the greatest productions of the intellect have a dreadful and evil background . the sceptical type of contemplation. Greek antiquity is now investigated as the most beautiful example of life. As man assumes a sceptical and melancholy attitude towards his life’s calling, so we must sceptically examine the highest life’s calling of a nation: in order that we may understand what life is. 6 My words of consolation apply particularly to the single tyrannised individual out of a hundred: such exceptional ones should simply treat all the unenlightened majorities as their subordinates; and they should in the same way take advantage of the prejudice, which is still widespread, in favour of classical instruction—they need many helpers. But they must have a clear perception of what their actual goal is. 7 Philology as the science of antiquity does not, of course, endure for ever; its elements are not inexhaustible. What cannot be exhausted, however, is the ever-new adaptation of one’s age to antiquity; the comparison of the two. If we make it our task to understand our own age better by means of antiquity, then our task will be an everlasting one.—This is the antinomy of philology: people have always endeavoured to understand antiquity by means of the present—and shall the present now be understood by means of antiquity? Better: people have explained antiquity to themselves out of their own experiences; and from the amount of antiquity thus acquired they have assessed the value of their experiences. Experience, therefore, is certainly an essential prerequisite for a philologist—that is, the philologist must first of all be a man; for then only can he be productive as a philologist. It follows from this that old men are well suited to be philologists if they were not such during that portion of their life which was richest in experiences. It must be insisted, however, that it is only through a knowledge of the present that one can acquire an inclination for the study of classical antiquity. Where indeed should the impulse come from if not from this inclination? When we observe how few philologists there actually are, except those that have taken up philology as a means of livelihood, we can easily decide for ourselves what is the matter with this impulse for antiquity: it hardly exists at all, for there are no disinterested philologists. Our task then is to secure for philology the universally educative results which it should bring about. The means: the limitation of the number of those engaged in the philological profession (doubtful whether young men should be made acquainted with philology at all). Criticism of the philologist. The value of antiquity: it sinks with you: how deeply you must have sunk, since its value is now so little! 8 It is a great advantage for the true philologist that a great deal of preliminary work has been done in his science, so that he may take possession of this inheritance if he is strong enough for it—I refer to the valuation of the entire Hellenic mode of thinking. So long as philologists worked simply at details, a misunderstanding of the Greeks was the consequence. The stages of this undervaluation are � the sophists of the second century, the philologist-poets of the Renaissance, and the philologist as the teacher of the higher classes of society (Goethe, Schiller). Valuing is the most difficult of all. In what respect is one most fitted for this valuing? —Not, at all events, when one is trained for philology as one is now. It should be ascertained to what extent our present means make this last object impossible. —Thus the philologist himself is not the aim of philology. 9 Most men show clearly enough that they do not regard themselves as individuals: their lives indicate this. The Christian command that everyone shall steadfastly keep his eyes fixed upon his salvation, and his alone, has as its counterpart the general life of mankind, where every man lives merely as a point among other points—living not only as the result of earlier generations, but living also only with an eye to the future. There are only three forms of existence in which a man remains an individual as a philosopher, as a Saviour, and as an artist. But just let us consider how a scientific man bungles his life: what has the teaching of Greek particles to do with the sense of life?—Thus we can also observe how innumerable men merely live, as it were, a preparation for a man, the philologist, for example, as a preparation for the philosopher, who in his turn knows how to utilise his ant-like work to pronounce some opinion upon the value of life. When such ant-like work is not carried out under any special direction the greater part of it is simply nonsense, and quite superfluous. 10 Besides the large number of unqualified philologists there is, on the other hand, a number of what may be called born philologists, who from some reason or other are prevented from becoming such. The greatest obstacle, however, which stands in the way of these born philologists is the bad representation of philology by the unqualified philologists. Leopardi is the modern ideal of a philologist: The German philologists can do nothing. (As a proof of this Voss should be studied!) 11 Let it be considered how differently a science is propagated from the way in which any special talent in a family is transmitted. The bodily transmission of an individual science is
something very rare. Do the sons of philologists easily become philologists? Dubito. Thus there is no such accumulation of philological capacity as there was, let us say, in Beethoven’s family of musical capacity. Most philologists begin from the beginning, and even then they learn from books, and not through travels, &c. They get some training, of course. 12 Most men are obviously in the world accidentally; no necessity of a higher kind is seen in them. They work at this and that, their talents are average. How strange! The manner in which they live shows that they think very little of themselves: they merely esteem themselves in so far as they waste their energy on trifles (whether these be mean or frivolous desires, or the trashy concerns of their everyday calling). In the so-called life’s calling, which everyone must choose, we may perceive a touching modesty on the part of mankind. They practically admit in choosing thus. “ We are called upon to serve and to be of advantage to our equals—the same remark applies to our neighbour and to his neighbour, so everyone serves somebody else; no one is carrying out the duties of his calling for his own sake, but always for the sake of others and thus we are like geese which support one another by the one leaning against the other. When the aim of each one of us is centred in another, then we have all no object in existing; and this ‘existing for others’ is the most comical of comedies.” 13 Vanity is the involuntary inclination to set one’s self up for an individual while not really being one; that is to say, trying to appear independent when one is dependent. The case of wisdom is the exact contrary: it appears to be dependent while in reality it is independent. 14 The Hades of Homer—From what type of existence is it really copied? I think it is the description of the philologist: it is better to be a day-labourer than to have such an an�mic recollection of the past.—[1] 15 The attitude of the philologist towards antiquity is apologetic, or else dictated by the view that what our own age values can likewise be found in antiquity. The right attitude to take up, however, is the reverse one, viz., to start with an insight into our modern topsyturviness, and to look back from antiquity to it—and many things about antiquity which have hitherto displeased us will then be seen to have been most profound necessities. We must make it clear to ourselves that we are acting in an absurd manner when we try to defend or to beautify antiquity: who are we! 16 We are under a false impression when we say that there is always some caste which governs a nation’s culture, and that therefore savants are necessary; for savants only possess knowledge concerning culture (and even this only in exceptional cases). Among learned men themselves there might be a few, certainly not a caste, but even these would indeed be rare. 17 One very great value of antiquity consists in the fact that its writings are the only ones which modern men still read carefully. Overstraining of the memory—very common among philologists, together with a poor development of the judgment. 18 Busying ourselves with the culture-epochs of the past: is this gratitude? We should look backwards in order to explain to ourselves the present conditions of culture: we do not become too laudatory in regard to our own circumstances, but perhaps we should do so in order that we may not be too severe on ourselves. 19 He who has no sense for the symbolical has none for antiquity: let pedantic philologists bear this in mind. 20 My aim is to bring about a state of complete enmity between our present “ culture” and antiquity. Whoever wishes to serve the former must hate the latter. 21 Careful meditation upon the past leads to the impression that we are a multiplication of many pasts � so how can we be a final aim? But why not? In most instances, however, we do not wish to be this. We take up our positions again in the ranks, work in our own little corner, and hope that what we do may be of some small profit to our successors. But that is exactly the case of the cask of the Dan� � and this is useless, we must again set about doing everything for ourselves, and only for ourselves—measuring science by ourselves, for example with the question � What is science to us? not . what are we to science? People really make life too easy for themselves when they look upon themselves from such a simple historical point of view, and make humble servants of themselves. “ Your own salvation above everything”—that is what you should say; and there are no institutions which you should prize more highly than your own soul.—Now, however, man learns to know himself: he finds himself miserable, despises himself, and is pleased to find something worthy of respect outside himself. Therefore he gets rid of himself, so to speak, makes himself subservient to a cause, does his duty strictly, and atones for his existence. He knows that he does not work for himself alone; he wishes to help those who are daring enough to exist on account of themselves, like Socrates. The majority of men are
as it were suspended in the air like toy balloons; every breath of wind moves them.—As a consequence the savant must be such out of self-knowledge, that is to say, out of contempt for himself—in other words he must recognise himself to be merely the servant of some higher being who comes after him. Otherwise he is simply a sheep. 22 It is the duty of the free man to live for his own sake, and not for others. It was on this account that the Greeks looked upon handicrafts as unseemly. As a complete entity Greek antiquity has not yet been fully valued � I am convinced that if it had not been surrounded by its traditional glorification, the men of the present day would shrink from it horror stricken. This glorification, then, is spurious; gold-paper. 23 The false enthusiasm for antiquity in which many philologists live. When antiquity suddenly comes upon us in our youth, it appears to us to be composed of innumerable trivialities; in particular we believe ourselves to be above its ethics. And Homer and Walter Scott—who carries off the palm? Let us be honest! If this enthusiasm were really felt, people could scarcely seek their life’s calling in it. I mean that what we can obtain from the Greeks only begins to dawn upon us in later years: only after we have undergone many experiences, and thought a great deal. 24 People in general think that philology is at an end—while I believe that it has not yet begun. The greatest events in philology are the appearance of Goethe, Schopenhauer, and Wagner; standing on their shoulders we look far into the distance. The fifth and sixth centuries have still to be discovered. 25 Where do we see the effect of antiquity? Not in language, not in the imitation of something or other, and not in perversity and waywardness, to which uses the French have turned it. Our museums are gradually becoming filled up: I always experience a sensation of disgust when I see naked statues in the Greek style in the presence of this thoughtless philistinism which would fain devour everything. PLANS AND THOUGHTS RELATING TO A WORK ON PHILOLOGY (1875) 26 Of all sciences philology at present is the most favoured � its progress having been furthered for centuries by the greatest number of scholars in every nation who have had charge of the noblest pupils. Philology has thus had one of the best of all opportunities to be propagated from generation to generation, and to make itself respected. How has it acquired this power? Calculations of the different prejudices in its favour. How then if these were to be frankly recognised as prejudices? Would not philology be superfluous if we reckoned up the interests of a position in life or the earning of a livelihood? What if the truth were told about antiquity, and its qualifications for training people to live in the present? In order that the questions set forth above may be answered let us consider the training of the philologist, his genesis: he no longer comes into being where these interests are lacking. If the world in general came to know what an unseasonable thing for us antiquity really is, philologists would no longer be called in as the educators of our youth. Effect of antiquity on the non-philologist likewise nothing. If they showed themselves to be imperative and contradictory, oh, with what hatred would they be pursued! But they always humble themselves. Philology now derives its power only from the union between the philologists who will not, or cannot, understand antiquity and public opinion, which is misled by prejudices in regard to it. The real Greeks, and their “ watering down” through the philologists. The future commanding philologist sceptical in regard to our entire culture, and therefore also the destroyer of philology as a profession. THE PREFERENCE FOR ANTIQUITY 27 If a man approves of the investigation of the past he will also approve and even praise the fact—and will above all easily understand it—that there are scholars who are exclusively occupied with the investigation of Greek and Roman antiquity: but that these scholars are at the same time the teachers of the children of the nobility and gentry is not equally easy of comprehension—here lies a problem. Why philologists precisely? This is not altogether such a matter of course as the case of a professor of medicine, who is also a practical physician and surgeon. For, if the cases were identical, preoccupation with Greek and Roman antiquity would be identical with the “ science of education.” In short, the relationship between theory and practice in the philologist cannot be so quickly conceived. Whence comes his pretension to be a teacher in the higher sense, not only of all scientific men, but more especially of all cultured men?
This educational power must be taken by the philologist from antiquity; and in such a case people will ask with astonishment: how does it come that we attach such value to a far-off past that we can only become cultured men with the aid of its knowledge? These questions, however, are not asked as a rule: The sway of philology over our means of instruction remains practically unquestioned; and antiquity has the importance assigned to it. To this extent the position of the philologist is more favourable than that of any other follower of science. True, he has not at his disposal that great mass of men who stand in need of him—the doctor, for example, has far more than the philologist. But he can influence picked men, or youths, to be more accurate, at a time when all their mental faculties are beginning to blossom forth—people who can afford to devote both time and money to their higher development. In all those places where European culture has found its way, people have accepted secondary schools based upon a foundation of Latin and Greek as the first and highest means of instruction. In this way philology has found its best opportunity of transmitting itself, and commanding respect: no other science has been so well favoured. As a general rule all those who have passed through such institutions have afterwards borne testimony to the excellence of their organisation and curriculum, and such people are, of course, unconscious witnesses in favour of philology. If any who have not passed through these institutions should happen to utter a word in disparagement of this education, an unanimous and yet calm repudiation of the statement at once follows, as if classical education were a kind of witchcraft, blessing its followers, and demonstrating itself to them by this blessing. There is no attempt at polemics � “ We have been through it all.” “ We know it has done us good.” Now there are so many things to which men have become so accustomed that they look upon them as quite appropriate and suitable, for habit intermixes all things with sweetness; and men as a rule judge the value of a thing in accordance with their own desires. The desire for classical antiquity as it is now felt should be tested, and, as it were, taken to pieces and analysed with a view to seeing how much of this desire is due to habit, and how much to mere love of adventure—I refer to that inward and active desire, new and strange, which gives rise to a productive conviction from day to day, the desire for a higher goal, and also the means thereto � as the result of which people advance step by step from one unfamiliar thing to another, like an Alpine climber. What is the foundation on which the high value attached to antiquity at the present time is based, to such an extent indeed that our whole modern culture is founded on it? Where must we look for the origin of this delight in antiquity, and the preference shown for it? I think I have recognised in my examination of the question that all our philology—that is, all its present existence and power—is based on the same foundation as that on which our view of antiquity as the most important of all means of training is based. Philology as a means of instruction is the clear expression of a predominating conception regarding the value of antiquity, and the best methods of education. Two propositions are contained in this statement. In the first place all higher education must be a historical one, and secondly, Greek and Roman history differs from all others in that it is classical. Thus the scholar who knows this history becomes a teacher. We are not here going into the question as to whether higher education ought to be historical or not; but we may examine the second and ask: in how far is it classic? On this point there are many widespread prejudices. In the first place there is the prejudice expressed in the synonymous concept, “ The study of the humanities”: antiquity is classic because it is the school of the humane. Secondly: “ Antiquity is classic because it is enlightened–-“ 28 It is the task of all education to change certain conscious actions and habits into more or less unconscious ones; and the history of mankind is in this sense its education. The philologist now practises unconsciously a number of such occupations and habits. It is my object to ascertain how his power, that is, his instinctive methods of work, is the result of activities which were formerly conscious, but which he has gradually come to feel as such no longer: but that consciousness consisted of prejudices. The present power of philologists is based upon these prejudices, for example the value attached to the ratio as in the cases of Bentley and Hermann. Prejudices are, as Lichtenberg says, the art impulses of men. 29 It is difficult to justify the preference for antiquity since it has arisen from prejudices: 1. From ignorance of all non-classical antiquity. 2. From a false idealisation of humanitarianism, whilst Hindoos and Chinese are at all events more humane. 3. From the pretensions of school-teachers. 4. From the traditional admiration which emanated from antiquity itself. 5. From opposition to the Christian church; or as a support for this church. 6. From the impression created by the century-long work of the philologists, and the nature of this work. It must be a gold mine, thinks the spectator. 7. The acquirement of knowledge attained as the result of the study. The preparatory school of science. In short, partly from ignorance, wrong impressions, and misleading conclusions; and also from the interest which philologists have in raising their science to a high level in the estimation of laymen. Also the preference for antiquity on the part of the artists, who involuntarily assume proportion and moderation to be the property of all antiquity. Purity of form. Authors likewise.
The preference for antiquity as an abbreviation of the history of the human race, as if there were an autochthonous creation here by which all becoming might be studied. The fact actually is that the foundations of this preference are being removed one by one, and if this is not remarked by philologists themselves, it is certainly being remarked as much as it can possibly be by people outside their circle. First of all history had its effect, and then linguistics brought about the greatest diversion among philologists themselves, and even the desertion of many of them. They have still the schools in their hands: but for how long! In the form in which it has existed up to the present philology is dying out; the ground has been swept from under its feet. Whether philologists may still hope to maintain their status is doubtful; in any case they are a dying race. 30 The peculiarly significant situation of philologists: a class of people to whom we entrust our youth, and who have to investigate quite a special antiquity. The highest value is obviously attached to this antiquity. But if this antiquity has been wrongly valued, then the whole foundation upon which the high position of the philologist is based suddenly collapses. In any case this antiquity has been very differently valued, and our appreciation of the philologists has constantly been guided by it. These people have borrowed their power from the strong prejudices in favour of antiquity,—this must be made clear. Philologists now feel that when these prejudices are at last refuted, and antiquity depicted in its true colours, the favourable prejudices towards them will diminish considerably. It is thus to the interest of their profession not to let a clear impression of antiquity come to light; in particular the impression that antiquity in its highest sense renders one “ out of season?” i.e., an enemy to one’s own time. It is also to the interest of philologists as a class not to let their calling as teachers be regarded from a higher standpoint than that to which they themselves can correspond. 31 It is to be hoped that there are a few people who look upon it as a problem why philologists should be the teachers of our noblest youths. Perhaps the case will not be always so —It would be much more natural per se if our children were instructed in the elements of geography, natural science, political economy, and sociology, if they were gradually led to a consideration of life itself, and if finally, but much later, the most noteworthy events of the past were brought to their knowledge. A knowledge of antiquity should be among the last subjects which a student would take up; and would not this position of antiquity in the curriculum of a school be more honourable for it than the present one?—Antiquity is now used merely as a prop�deutic for thinking, speaking, and writing; but there was a time when it was the essence of earthly knowledge, and people at that time wished to acquire by means of practical learning what they now seek to acquire merely by means of a detailed plan of study—a plan which, corresponding to the more advanced knowledge of the age, has entirely changed. Thus the inner purpose of philological teaching has been entirely altered; it was at one time material teaching, a teaching that taught how to live, but now it is merely formal.[2] 32 If it were the task of the philologist to impart formal education, it would be necessary for him to teach walking, dancing, speaking, singing, acting, or arguing � and the so-called formal teachers did impart their instruction this way in the second and third centuries. But only the training of a scientific man is taken into account, which results in “ formal” thinking and writing, and hardly any speaking at all. 33 If the gymnasium is to train young men for science, people now say there can be no more preliminary preparation for any particular science, so comprehensive have all the sciences become. As a consequence teachers have to train their students generally, that is to say for all the sciences—for scientificality in other words; and for that classical studies are necessary! What a wonderful jump! a most despairing justification! Whatever is, is right,[3] even when it is clearly seen that the “ right” on which it has been based has turned to wrong. 34 It is accomplishments which are expected from us after a study of the ancients: formerly, for example, the ability to write and speak. But what is expected now! Thinking and deduction . but these things are not learnt from the ancients, but at best through the ancients, by means of science. Moreover, all historical deduction is very limited and unsafe, natural science should be preferred. 35 It is the same with the simplicity of antiquity as it is with the simplicity of style: it is the highest thing which we recognise and must imitate; but it is also the last. Let it be remembered that the classic prose of the Greeks is also a late result. 36 What a mockery of the study of the “ humanities” lies in the fact that they were also called “ belles lettres” (bellas litteras)! 37 Wolf’s[4] reasons why the Egyptians, Hebrews, Persians, and other Oriental nations were not to be set on the same plane with the Greeks and Romans: “ The former have either not raised themselves, or have raised themselves only to a slight extent, above that type of culture which should be called a mere civilisation and bourgeois acquirement, as opposed to the higher and true culture of the mind.” He then explains that this culture is spiritual and literary: “ In a well-organised nation this may be begun earlier than order and peacefulness
in the outward life of the people (enlightenment).” He then contrasts the inhabitants of easternmost Asia (“ like such individuals, who are not wanting in clean, decent, and comfortable dwellings, clothing, and surroundings; but who never feel the necessity for a higher enlightenment”) with the Greeks (“ in the case of the Greeks, even among the most educated inhabitants of Attica, the contrary often happens to an astonishing degree; and the people neglect as insignificant factors that which we, thanks to our love of order, are in the habit of looking upon as the foundations of mental culture itself”). 38 Our terminology already shows how prone we are to judge the ancients wrongly: the exaggerated sense of literature, for example, or, as Wolf, when speaking of the “ inner history of ancient erudition,” calls it, “ the history of learned enlightenment.” 39 According to Goethe, the ancients are “ the despair of the emulator.” Voltaire said. “ If the admirers of Homer were honest, they would acknowledge the boredom which their favourite often causes them.” 40 The position we have taken up towards classical antiquity is at bottom the profound cause of the sterility of modern culture; for we have taken all this modern conception of culture from the Hellenised Romans. We must distinguish within the domain of antiquity itself: when we come to appreciate its purely productive period, we condemn at the same time the entire Romano-Alexandrian culture. But at the same time also we condemn our own attitude towards antiquity, and likewise our philology. 41 There has been an age-long battle between the Germans and antiquity, i.e., a battle against the old culture. It is certain that precisely what is best and deepest in the German resists it. The main point, however, is that such resistance is only justifiable in the case of the Romanised culture; for this culture, even at that time, was a falling-off from something more profound and noble. It is this latter that the Germans are wrong in resisting. 42 Everything classic was thoroughly cultivated by Charles the Great, whilst he combated everything heathen with the severest possible measures of coercion. Ancient mythology was developed, but German mythology was treated as a crime. The feeling underlying all this, in my opinion, was that Christianity had already overcome the old religion � people no longer feared it, but availed themselves of the culture that rested upon it. But the old German gods were feared. A great superficiality in the conception of antiquity—little else than an appreciation of its formal accomplishments and its knowledge—must thereby have been brought about. We must find out the forces that stood in the way of increasing our insight into antiquity. First of all, the culture of antiquity is utilised as an incitement towards the acceptance of Christianity � it became, as it were, the premium for conversion, the gilt with which the poisonous pill was coated before being swallowed. Secondly, the help of ancient culture was found to be necessary as a weapon for the intellectual protection of Christianity. Even the Reformation could not dispense with classical studies for this purpose. The Renaissance, on the other hand, now begins, with a clearer sense of classical studies, which, however, are likewise looked upon from an anti-Christian standpoint: the Renaissance shows an awakening of honesty in the south, like the Reformation in the north. They could not but clash; for a sincere leaning towards antiquity renders one unchristian. On the whole, however, the Church succeeded in turning classical studies into a harmless direction . the philologist was invented, representing a type of learned man who was at the same time a priest or something similar. Even in the period of the Reformation people succeeded in emasculating scholarship. It is on this account that Friedrich August Wolf is noteworthy he freed his profession from the bonds of theology. This action of his, however, was not fully understood; for an aggressive, active element, such as was manifested by the poet-philologists of the Renaissance, was not developed. The freedom obtained benefited science, but not man. 43 It is true that both humanism and rationalism have brought antiquity into the field as an ally; and it is therefore quite comprehensible that the opponents of humanism should direct their attacks against antiquity also. Antiquity, however, has been misunderstood and falsified by humanism � it must rather be considered as a testimony against humanism, against the benign nature of man, &c. The opponents of humanism are wrong to combat antiquity as well; for in antiquity they have a strong ally. 44 It is so difficult to understand the ancients. We must wait patiently until the spirit moves us. The human element which antiquity shows us must not be confused with humanitarianism. This contrast must be strongly emphasised: philology suffers by endeavouring to substitute the humanitarian, young men are brought forward as students of philology in order that they may thereby become humanitarians. A good deal of history, in my opinion, is quite sufficient for that purpose. The brutal and self-conscious man will be humbled when he sees things and values changing to such an extent. The human element among the Greeks lies within a certain naivete, through which man himself is to be seen—state, art, society, military and civil law, sexual relations, education, party. It is precisely the human element which may be seen everywhere and among all peoples, but among the Greeks it is seen in a state of nakedness and inhumanity which cannot be dispensed with for purposes of instruction. In addition to this, the Greeks have created the greatest number of individuals, and thus they give us so much insight into
men,—a Greek cook is more of a cook than any other. 45 I deplore a system of education which does not enable people to understand Wagner, and as the result of which Schopenhauer sounds harsh and discordant in our ears . such a system of education has missed its aim. 46 THE FINAL DRAFT OF THE FIRST CHAPTER. Il faut dire la verite et s’immoler—VOLTAIRE. Let us suppose that there were freer and more superior spirits who were dissatisfied with the education now in vogue, and that they summoned it to their tribunal, what would the defendant say to them? In all probability something like this: “ Whether you have a right to summon anyone here or not, I am at all events not the proper person to be called. It is my educators to whom you should apply. It is their duty to defend me, and I have a right to keep silent. I am merely what they have made me.” These educators would now be hauled before the tribunal, and among them an entire profession would be observed � the philologists. This profession consists in the first place of those men who make use of their knowledge of Greek and Roman antiquity to bring up youths of thirteen to twenty years of age, and secondly of those men whose task it is to train specially-gifted pupils to act as future teachers—i.e., as the educators of educators. Philologists of the first type are teachers at the public schools, those of the second are professors at the universities. The first-named philologists are entrusted with the care of certain specially-chosen youths, those who, early in life, show signs of talent and a sense of what is noble, and whose parents are prepared to allow plenty of time and money for their education. If other boys, who do not fulfil these three conditions, are presented to the teachers, the teachers have the right to refuse them. Those forming the second class, the university professors, receive the young men who feel themselves fitted for the highest and most responsible of callings, that of teachers and moulders of mankind; and these professors, too, may refuse to have anything to do with young men who are not adequately equipped or gifted for the task. If, then, the educational system of a period is condemned, a heavy censure on philologists is thereby implied: either, as the consequence of their wrong-headed view, they insist on giving bad education in the belief that it is good; or they do not wish to give this bad education, but are unable to carry the day in favour of education which they recognise to be better. In other words, their fault is either due to their lack of insight or to their lack of will. In answer to the first charge they would say that they knew no better, and in answer to the second that they could do no better. As, however, these philologists bring up their pupils chiefly with the aid of Greek and Roman antiquity, their want of insight in the first case may be attributed to the fact that they do not understand antiquity, and again to the fact that they bring forward antiquity into the present age as if it were the most important of all aids to instruction, while antiquity, generally speaking, does not assist in training, or at all events no longer does so. On the other hand, if we reproach our professors with their lack of will, they would be quite right in attributing educational significance and power to antiquity; but they themselves could not be said to be the proper instruments by means of which antiquity could exhibit such power. In other words, the professors would not be real teachers and would be living under false colours, but how, then, could they have reached such an irregular position? Through a misunderstanding of themselves and their qualifications. In order, then, that we may ascribe to philologists their share in this bad educational system of the present time, we may sum up the different factors of their innocence and guilt in the following sentence: the philologist, if he wishes for a verdict of acquittal, must understand three things antiquity, the present time, and himself � his fault lies in the fact that he either does not understand antiquity, or the present time, or himself. 47 It is not true to say that we can attain culture through antiquity alone. We may learn something from it, certainly; but not culture as the word is now understood. Our present culture is based on an emasculated and mendacious study of antiquity. In order to understand how ineffectual this study is, just look at our philologists � they, trained upon antiquity, should be the most cultured men. Are they? 48 Origin of the philologist. When a great work of art is exhibited there is always some one who not only feels its influence but wishes to perpetuate it. The same remark applies to a great state—to everything, in short, that man produces. Philologists wish to perpetuate the influence of antiquity and they can set about it only as imitative artists. Why not as men who form their lives after antiquity? 49 The decline of the poet-scholars is due in great part to their own corruption: their type is continually arising again; Goethe and Leopardi, for example, belong to it. Behind them plod the philologist-savants. This type has its origin in the sophisticism of the second century. 50 Ah, it is a sad story, the story of philology! The disgusting erudition, the lazy, inactive passivity, the timid submission.—Who was ever free? 51 When we examine the history of philology it is borne in upon us how few really talented men have taken part in it. Among the most celebrated philologists are a few who ruined
their intellect by acquiring a smattering of many subjects, and among the most enlightened of them were several who could use their intellect only for childish tasks. It is a sad story � no science, I think, has ever been so poor in talented followers. Those whom we might call the intellectually crippled found a suitable hobby in all this hair-splitting. 52 The teacher of reading and writing, and the reviser, were the first types of the philologist. 53 Friedrich August Wolf reminds us how apprehensive and feeble were the first steps taken by our ancestors in moulding scholarship—how even the Latin classics, for example, had to be smuggled into the university market under all sorts of pretexts, as if they had been contraband goods. In the “ Gottingen Lexicon” of 1737, J. M. Gesner tells us of the Odes of Horace: “ ut imprimis, quid prodesse in severioribus studiis possint, ostendat.” 54 I was pleased to read of Bentley “ non tam grande pretium emendatiunculis meis statuere soleo, ut singularem aliquam gratiam inde sperem aut exigam.” Newton was surprised that men like Bentley and Hare should quarrel about a book of ancient comedies, since they were both theological dignitaries. 55 Horace was summoned by Bentley as before a judgment seat, the authority of which he would have been the first to repudiate. The admiration which a discriminating man acquires as a philologist is in proportion to the rarity of the discrimination to be found in philologists. Bentley’s treatment of Horace has something of the schoolmaster about it It would appear at first sight as if Horace himself were not the object of discussion, but rather the various scribes and commentators who have handed down the text: in reality, however, it is actually Horace who is being dealt with. It is my firm conviction that to have written a single line which is deemed worthy of being commented upon by scholars of a later time, far outweighs the merits of the greatest critic. There is a profound modesty about philologists. The improving of texts is an entertaining piece of work for scholars, it is a kind of riddle-solving; but it should not be looked upon as a very important task. It would be an argument against antiquity if it should speak less clearly to us because a million words stood in the way! 56 A school-teacher said to Bentley, “ Sir, I will make your grandchild as great a scholar as you are yourself.” “ How can you do that,” replied Bentley, “ when I have forgotten more than you ever knew?” 57 Bentley’s clever daughter Joanna once lamented to her father that he had devoted his time and talents to the criticism of the works of others instead of writing something original. Bentley remained silent for some time as if he were turning the matter over in his mind. At last he said that her remark was quite right; he himself felt that he might have directed his gifts in some other channel. Earlier in life, nevertheless, he had done something for the glory of God and the improvement of his fellow-men (referring to his “ Confutation of Atheism”), but afterwards the genius of the pagans had attracted him, and, despairing of attaining their level in any other way, he had mounted upon their shoulders so that he might thus be able to look over their heads. 58 Bentley, says Wolf, both as man of letters and individual, was misunderstood and persecuted during the greater part of his life, or else praised maliciously. Markland, towards the end of his life—as was the case with so many others like him—became imbued with a repugnance for all scholarly reputation, to such an extent, indeed, that he partly tore up and partly burnt several works which he had long had in hand. Wolf says: “ The amount of intellectual food that can be got from well-digested scholarship is a very insignificant item.” In Winckelmann’s youth there were no philological studies apart from the ordinary bread-winning branches of the science—people read and explained the ancients in order to prepare themselves for the better interpretation of the Bible and the Corpus Juris. 59 In Wolf’s estimation, a man has reached the highest point of historical research when he is able to take a wide and general view of the whole and of the profoundly conceived distinctions in the developments in art and the different styles of art. Wolf acknowledges, however, that Winckelmann was lacking in the more common talent of philological criticism, or else he could not use it properly: “ A rare mixture of a cool head and a minute and restless solicitude for hundreds of things which, insignificant in themselves, were combined in his case with a fire that swallowed up those little things, and with a gift of divination which is a vexation and an annoyance to the uninitiated.” 60 Wolf draws our attention to the fact that antiquity was acquainted only with theories of oratory and poetry which facilitated production, [Greek: technai] and artes that formed real orators and poets, “ while at the present day we shall soon have theories upon which it would be as impossible to build up a speech or a poem as it would be to form a thunderstorm upon a brontological treatise.” 61
Wolf’s judgment on the amateurs of philological knowledge is noteworthy: “ If they found themselves provided by nature with a mind corresponding to that of the ancients, or if they were capable of adapting themselves to other points of view and other circumstances of life, then, with even a nodding acquaintance with the best writers, they certainly acquired more from those vigorous natures, those splendid examples of thinking and acting, than most of those did who during their whole life merely offered themselves to them as interpreters.” 62 Says Wolf again � “ In the end, only those few ought to attain really complete knowledge who are born with artistic talent and furnished with scholarship, and who make use of the best opportunities of securing, both theoretically and practically, the necessary technical knowledge” True! 63 Instead of forming our students on the Latin models I recommend the Greek, especially Demosthenes � simplicity! This may be seen by a reference to Leopardi, who is perhaps the greatest stylist of the century. 64 “ Classical education” � what do people see in it? Something that is useless beyond rendering a period of military service unnecessary and securing a degree![5] 65 When I observe how all countries are now promoting the advancement of classical literature I say to myself, “ How harmless it must be!” and then, “ How useful it must be!” It brings these countries the reputation of promoting “ free culture.” In order that this “ freedom” may be rightly estimated, just look at the philologists! 66 Classical education! Yea, if there were only as much paganism as Goethe found and glorified in Winckelmann, even that would not be much. Now, however, that the lying Christendom of our time has taken hold of it, the thing becomes overpowering, and I cannot help expressing my disgust on the point—People firmly believe in witchcraft where this “ classical education” is concerned. They, however, who possess the greatest knowledge of antiquity should likewise possess the greatest amount of culture, viz., our philologists; but what is classical about them? 67 Classical philology is the basis of the most shallow rationalism always having been dishonestly applied, it has gradually become quite ineffective. Its effect is one more illusion of the modern man. Philologists are nothing but a guild of sky-pilots who are not known as such � this is why the State takes an interest in them. The utility of classical education is completely used up, whilst, for example, the history of Christianity still shows its power. 68 Philologists, when discussing their science, never get down to the root of the subject . they never set forth philology itself as a problem. Bad conscience? or merely thoughtlessness? 69 We learn nothing from what philologists say about philology: it is all mere tittle-tattle—for example, Jahn’s[6] “ The Meaning and Place of the Study of Antiquity in Germany.” There is no feeling for what should be protected and defended: thus speak people who have not even thought of the possibility that any one could attack them. 70 Philologists are people who exploit the vaguely-felt dissatisfaction of modern man, and his desire for “ something better,” in order that they may earn their bread and butter. I know them—I myself am one of them. 71 Our philologists stand in the same relation to true educators as the medicine-men of the wild Indians do to true physicians What astonishment will be felt by a later age! 72 What they lack is a real taste for the strong and powerful characteristics of the ancients. They turn into mere panegyrists, and thus become ridiculous. 73 They have forgotten how to address other men; and, as they cannot speak to the older people, they cannot do so to the young. 74 When we bring the Greeks to the knowledge of our young students, we are treating the latter as if they were well-informed and matured men. What, indeed, is there about the Greeks and their ways which is suitable for the young? In the end we shall find that we can do nothing for them beyond giving them isolated details. Are these observations for young people? What we actually do, however, is to introduce our young scholars to the collective wisdom of antiquity. Or do we not? The reading of the ancients is emphasised in this way. My belief is that we are forced to concern ourselves with antiquity at a wrong period of our lives. At the end of the twenties its meaning begins to dawn on one.
75 There is something disrespectful about the way in which we make our young students known to the ancients: what is worse, it is unpedagogical; or what can result from a mere acquaintance with things which a youth cannot consciously esteem! Perhaps he must learn to “ believe” and this is why I object to it. 76 There are matters regarding which antiquity instructs us, and about which I should hardly care to express myself publicly. 77 All the difficulties of historical study to be elucidated by great examples. Why our young students are not suited to the Greeks. The consequences of philology. Arrogant expectation. Culture-philistinism. Superficiality. Too high an esteem for reading and writing. Estrangement from the nation and its needs. The philologists themselves, the historians, philosophers, and jurists all end in smoke. Our young students should be brought into contact with real sciences. Likewise with real art. In consequence, when they grew older, a desire for real history would be shown. 78 Inhumanity: even in the “ Antigone,” even in Goethe’s “ Iphigenia.” The want of “ rationalism” in the Greeks. Young people cannot understand the political affairs of antiquity. The poetic element: a bad expectation. 79 Do the philologists know the present time? Their judgments on it as Periclean, their mistaken judgments when they speak of Freytag’s[7] genius as resembling that of Homer, and so on; their following in the lead of the litterateurs, their abandonment of the pagan sense, which was exactly the classical element that Goethe discovered in Winckelmann. 80 The condition of the philologists may be seen by their indifference at the appearance of Wagner. They should have learnt even more through him than through Goethe, and they did not even glance in his direction. That shows that they are not actuated by any strong need, or else they would have an instinct to tell them where their food was to be found. 81 Wagner prizes his art too highly to go and sit in a corner with it, like Schumann. He either surrenders himself to the public (“ Rienzi”) or he makes the public surrender itself to him. He educates it up to his music. Minor artists, too, want their public, but they try to get it by inartistic means, such as through the Press, Hanslick,[8] &c. 82 Wagner perfected the inner fancy of man . later generations will see a renaissance in sculpture. Poetry must precede the plastic art. 83 I observe in philologists � 1. Want of respect for antiquity. 2. Tenderness and flowery oratory; even an apologetic tone. 3. Simplicity in their historical comments. 4. Self-conceit. 5. Under-estimation of the talented philologists. 84 Philologists appear to me to be a secret society who wish to train our youth by means of the culture of antiquity � I could well understand this society and their views being criticised from all sides. A great deal would depend upon knowing what these philologists understood by the term “ culture of antiquity”—If I saw, for example, that they were training their pupils against German philosophy and German music, I should either set about combating them or combating the culture of antiquity, perhaps the former, by showing that these philologists had not understood the culture of antiquity. Now I observe: 1. A great indecision in the valuation of the culture of antiquity on the part of philologists. 2. Something very non-ancient in themselves; something non-free. 3. Want of clearness in regard to the particular type of ancient culture they mean.
4. Want of judgment in their methods of instruction, e.g., scholarship. 5. Classical education is served out mixed up with Christianity. 85 It is now no longer a matter of surprise to me that, with such teachers, the education of our time should be worthless. I can never avoid depicting this want of education in its true colours, especially in regard to those things which ought to be learnt from antiquity if possible, for example, writing, speaking, and so on. 86 The transmission of the emotions is hereditary: let that be recollected when we observe the effect of the Greeks upon philologists. 87 Even in the best of cases, philologists seek for no more than mere “ rationalism” and Alexandrian culture—not Hellenism. 88 Very little can be gained by mere diligence, if the head is dull. Philologist after philologist has swooped down on Homer in the mistaken belief that something of him can be obtained by force. Antiquity speaks to us when it feels a desire to do so, not when we do. 89 The inherited characteristic of our present-day philologists � a certain sterility of insight has resulted, for they promote the science, but not the philologist. 90 The following is one way of carrying on classical studies, and a frequent one: a man throws himself thoughtlessly, or is thrown, into some special branch or other, whence he looks to the right and left and sees a great deal that is good and new. Then, in some unguarded moment, he asks himself: “ But what the devil has all this to do with me?” In the meantime he has grown old and has become accustomed to it all; and therefore he continues in his rut—just as in the case of marriage. 91 In connection with the training of the modern philologist the influence of the science of linguistics should be mentioned and judged; a philologist should rather turn aside from it . the question of the early beginnings of the Greeks and Romans should be nothing to him . how can they spoil their own subject in such a way? 92 A morbid passion often makes its appearance from time to time in connection with the oppressive uncertainty of divination, a passion for believing and feeling sure at all costs: for example, when dealing with Aristotle, or in the discovery of magic numbers, which, in Lachmann’s case, is almost an illness. 93 The consistency which is prized in a savant is pedantry if applied to the Greeks. 94 (THE GREEKS AND THE PHILOLOGISTS.) THE GREEKS render homage to beauty, develop the body, speak clearly, are religious transfigurers , are listeners and observers, have an aptitude for the symbolical, are in full possession of their freedom as men, can look innocently out into the world, are the pessimists of thought. THE PHILOLOGISTS are babblers and triflers ugly-looking creatures, stammerers filthy pedants, of everyday occurrences quibblers and scarecrows, unfitted for the symbolical, ardent slaves of the State, Christians in disguise, philistines. 95 Bergk’s “ History of Literature”: Not a spark of Greek fire or Greek sense. 96 People really do compare our own age with that of Pericles, and congratulate themselves on the reawakening of the feeling of patriotism: I remember a parody on the funeral oration of Pericles by G. Freytag,[9] in which this prim and strait-laced “ poet” depicted the happiness now experienced by sixty-year-old men.—All pure and simple caricature! So this is the result! And sorrow and irony and seclusion are all that remain for him who has seen more of antiquity than this. 97 If we change a single word of Lord Bacon’s we may say . infimarum Gr�corum virtutum apud philologos laus est, mediarum admiratio, supremarum sensus nullus. 98 How can anyone glorify and venerate a whole people! It is the individuals that count, even in the case of the Greeks. 99 There is a great deal of caricature even about the Greeks � for example, the careful attention devoted by the Cynics to their own happiness. 100
The only thing that interests me is the relationship of the people considered as a whole to the training of the single individuals � and in the case of the Greeks there are some factors which are very favourable to the development of the individual. They do not, however, arise from the goodwill of the people, but from the struggle between the evil instincts. By means of happy inventions and discoveries, we can train the individual differently and more highly than has yet been done by mere chance and accident. There are still hopes . the breeding of superior men. 101 The Greeks are interesting and quite disproportionately important because they had such a host of great individuals. How was that possible? This point must be studied. 102 The history of Greece has hitherto always been written optimistically. 103 Selected points from antiquity: the power, fire, and swing of the feeling the ancients had for music (through the first Pythian Ode), purity in their historical sense, gratitude for the blessings of culture, the fire and corn feasts. The ennoblement of jealousy: the Greeks the most jealous nation. Suicide, hatred of old age, of penury. Empedocles on sexual love. 104 Nimble and healthy bodies, a clear and deep sense for the observation of everyday matters, manly freedom, belief in good racial descent and good upbringing, warlike virtues, jealousy in the [Greek: aristeyein], delight in the arts, respect for leisure, a sense for free individuality, for the symbolical. 105 The spiritual culture of Greece an aberration of the amazing political impulse towards [Greek: aristeyein]. The [Greek: polis] utterly opposed to new education; culture nevertheless existed. 106 When I say that, all things considered, the Greeks were more moral than modern men what do I mean by that? From what we can perceive of the activities of their soul, it is clear that they had no shame, they had no bad conscience. They were more sincere, open-hearted, and passionate, as artists are; they exhibited a kind of child-like naivete. It thus came about that even in all their evil actions they had a dash of purity about them, something approaching the holy. A remarkable number of individualities: might there not have been a higher morality in that? When we recollect that character develops slowly, what can it be that, in the long run, breeds individuality? Perhaps vanity, emulation? Possibly. Little inclination for conventional things. 107 The Greeks as the geniuses among the nations. Their childlike nature, credulousness. Passionate. Quite unconsciously they lived in such a way as to procreate genius. Enemies of shyness and dulness. Pain. Injudicious actions. The nature of their intuitive insight into misery, despite their bright and genial temperament. Profoundness in their apprehension and glorifying of everyday things (fire, agriculture). Mendacious, unhistorical. The significance of the [Greek: polis] in culture instinctively recognised, favourable as a centre and periphery for great men (the facility of surveying a community, and also the possibility of addressing it as a whole). Individuality raised to the highest power through the [Greek: polis]. Envy, jealousy, as among gifted people. 108 The Greeks were lacking in sobriety and caution. Over-sensibility, abnormally active condition of the brain and the nerves; impetuosity and fervour of the will. 109 “ Invariably to see the general in the particular is the distinguishing characteristic of genius,” says Schopenhauer. Think of Pindar, &c.—”[Greek: Sophrosynae],” according to Schopenhauer, has its roots in the clearness with which the Greeks saw into themselves and into the world at large, and thence became conscious of themselves. The “ wide separation of will and intellect” indicates the genius, and is seen in the Greeks. “ The melancholy associated with genius is due to the fact that the will to live, the more clearly it is illuminated by the contemplating intellect, appreciates all the more clearly the misery of its condition,” says Schopenhauer. Cf. the Greeks. 110 The moderation of the Greeks in their sensual luxury, eating, and drinking, and their pleasure therein; the Olympic plays and their worship . that shows what they were. In the case of the genius, “ the intellect will point out the faults which are seldom absent in an instrument that is put to a use for which it was not intended.” “ The will is often left in the lurch at an awkward moment: hence genius, where real life is concerned, is more or less unpractical—its behaviour often reminds us of madness.” 111
We contrast the Romans, with their matter-of-fact earnestness, with the genial Greeks! Schopenhauer: “ The stern, practical, earnest mode of life which the Romans called gravitas presupposes that the intellect does not forsake the service of the will in order to roam far off among things that have no connection with the will.” 112 It would have been much better if the Greeks had been conquered by the Persians instead of by the Romans. 113 The characteristics of the gifted man who is lacking in genius are to be found in the average Hellene—all the dangerous characteristics of such a disposition and character. 114 Genius makes tributaries of all partly-talented people: hence the Persians themselves sent their ambassadors to the Greek oracles. 115 The happiest lot that can fall to the genius is to exchange doing and acting for leisure; and this was something the Greeks knew how to value. The blessings of labour! Nugari was the Roman name for all the exertions and aspirations of the Greeks. No happy course of life is open to the genius, he stands in contradiction to his age and must perforce struggle with it. Thus the Greeks . they instinctively made the utmost exertions to secure a safe refuge for themselves (in the polis). Finally, everything went to pieces in politics. They were compelled to take up a stand against their enemies . this became ever more and more difficult, and at last impossible. 116 Greek culture is based on the lordship of a small class over four to nine times their number of slaves. Judged by mere numbers, Greece was a country inhabited by barbarians. How can the ancients be thought to be humane? There was a great contrast between the genius and the breadwinner, the half-beast of burden. The Greeks believed in a racial distinction. Schopenhauer wonders why Nature did not take it into her head to invent two entirely separate species of men. The Greeks bear the same relation to the barbarians “ as free-moving or winged animals do to the barnacles which cling tightly to the rocks and must await what fate chooses to send them”—Schopenhauer’s simile. 117 The Greeks as the only people of genius in the history of the world. Such they are even when considered as learners; for they understand this best of all, and can do more than merely trim and adorn themselves with what they have borrowed, as did the Romans. The constitution of the polis is a Phoenician invention, even this has been imitated by the Hellenes. For a long time they dabbled in everything, like joyful dilettanti. Aphrodite is likewise Phoenician. Neither do they disavow what has come to them through immigration and does not originally belong to their own country. 118 The happy and comfortable constitution of the politico-social position must not be sought among the Greeks . that is a goal which dazzles the eyes of our dreamers of the future! It was, on the contrary, dreadful; for this is a matter that must be judged according to the following standard: the more spirit, the more suffering (as the Greeks themselves prove). Whence it follows, the more stupidity, the more comfort. The philistine of culture is the most comfortable creature the sun has ever shone upon: and he is doubtless also in possession of the corresponding stupidity. 119 The Greek polis and the [Greek: aien aristeyein] grew up out of mutual enmity. Hellenic and philanthropic are contrary adjectives, although the ancients flattered themselves sufficiently. Homer is, in the world of the Hellenic discord, the pan-Hellenic Greek. The [Greek: “ agon”] of the Greeks is also manifested in the Symposium in the shape of witty conversation. 120 Wanton, mutual annihilation inevitable: so long as a single polis wished to exist—its envy for everything superior to itself, its cupidity, the disorder of its customs, the enslavement of the women, lack of conscience in the keeping of oaths, in murder, and in cases of violent death. Tremendous power of self-control: for example in a man like Socrates, who was capable of everything evil. 121 Its noble sense of order and systematic arrangement had rendered the Athenian state immortal—The ten strategists in Athens! Foolish! Too big a sacrifice on the altar of jealousy. 122 The recreations of the Spartans consisted of feasting, hunting, and making war � their every-day life was too hard. On the whole, however, their state is merely a caricature of the polls, a corruption of Hellas. The breeding of the complete Spartan—but what was there great about him that his breeding should have required such a brutal state! 123
The political defeat of Greece is the greatest failure of culture; for it has given rise to the atrocious theory that culture cannot be pursued unless one is at the same time armed to the teeth. The rise of Christianity was the second greatest failure: brute force on the one hand, and a dull intellect on the other, won a complete victory over the aristocratic genius among the nations. To be a Philhellenist now means to be a foe of brute force and stupid intellects. Sparta was the ruin of Athens in so far as she compelled Athens to turn her entire attention to politics and to act as a federal combination. 124 There are domains of thought where the ratio will only give rise to disorder, and the philologist, who possesses nothing more, is lost through it and is unable to see the truth � e.g. in the consideration of Greek mythology. A merely fantastic person, of course, has no claim either � one must possess Greek imagination and also a certain amount of Greek piety. Even the poet does not require to be too consistent, and consistency is the last thing Greeks would understand. 125 Almost all the Greek divinities are accumulations of divinities . we find one layer over another, soon to be hidden and smoothed down by yet a third, and so on. It scarcely seems to me to be possible to pick these various divinities to pieces in a scientific manner, for no good method of doing so can be recommended: even the poor conclusion by analogy is in this instance a very good conclusion. 126 At what a distance must one be from the Greeks to ascribe to them such a stupidly narrow autochthony as does Ottfried Muller![10] How Christian it is to assume, with Welcker, [11] that the Greeks were originally monotheistic! How philologists torment themselves by investigating the question whether Homer actually wrote, without being able to grasp the far higher tenet that Greek art long exhibited an inward enmity against writing, and did not wish to be read at all. 127 In the religious cultus an earlier degree of culture comes to light a remnant of former times. The ages that celebrate it are not those which invent it, the contrary is often the case. There are many contrasts to be found here. The Greek cultus takes us back to a pre-Homeric disposition and culture. It is almost the oldest that we know of the Greeks—older than their mythology, which their poets have considerably remoulded, so far as we know it—Can this cult really be called Greek? I doubt it: they are finishers, not inventors. They preserve by means of this beautiful completion and adornment. 128 It is exceedingly doubtful whether we should draw any conclusion in regard to nationality and relationship with other nations from languages. A victorious language is nothing but a frequent (and not always regular) indication of a successful campaign. Where could there have been autochthonous peoples! It shows a very hazy conception of things to talk about Greeks who never lived in Greece. That which is really Greek is much less the result of natural aptitude than of adapted institutions, and also of an acquired language. 129 To live on mountains, to travel a great deal, and to move quickly from one place to another . in these ways we can now begin to compare ourselves with the Greek gods. We know the past, too, and we almost know the future. What would a Greek say, if only he could see us! 130 The gods make men still more evil; this is the nature of man. If we do not like a man, we wish that he may become worse than he is, and then we are glad. This forms part of the obscure philosophy of hate—a philosophy which has never yet been written, because it is everywhere the pudendum that every one feels. 131 The pan-Hellenic Homer finds his delight in the frivolity of the gods; but it is astounding how he can also give them dignity again. This amazing ability to raise one’s self again, however, is Greek. 132 What, then, is the origin of the envy of the gods? people did not believe in a calm, quiet happiness, but only in an exuberant one. This must have caused some displeasure to the Greeks; for their soul was only too easily wounded: it embittered them to see a happy man. That is Greek. If a man of distinguished talent appeared, the flock of envious people must have become astonishingly large. If any one met with a misfortune, they would say of him: “ Ah! no wonder! he was too frivolous and too well off.” And every one of them would have behaved exuberantly if he had possessed the requisite talent, and would willingly have played the role of the god who sent the unhappiness to men. 133 The Greek gods did not demand any complete changes of character, and were, generally speaking, by no means burdensome or importunate . it was thus possible to take them seriously and to believe in them. At the time of Homer, indeed, the nature of the Greek was formed � flippancy of images and imagination was necessary to lighten the weight of its passionate disposition and to set it free. 134 Every religion has for its highest images an analogon in the spiritual condition of those who profess it. The God of Mohammed . the solitariness of the desert, the distant roar of
the lion, the vision of a formidable warrior. The God of the Christians . everything that men and women think of when they hear the word “ love”. The God of the Greeks: a beautiful apparition in a dream. 135 A great deal of intelligence must have gone to the making up of a Greek polytheism . the expenditure of intelligence is much less lavish when people have only one God. 136 Greek morality is not based on religion, but on the polis. There were only priests of the individual gods; not representatives of the whole religion . i.e., no guild of priests. Likewise no Holy Writ. 137 The “ lighthearted” gods � this is the highest adornment which has ever been bestowed upon the world—with the feeling, How difficult it is to live! 138 If the Greeks let their “ reason” speak, their life seems to them bitter and terrible. They are not deceived. But they play round life with lies: Simonides advises them to treat life as they would a play; earnestness was only too well known to them in the form of pain. The misery of men is a pleasure to the gods when they hear the poets singing of it. Well did the Greeks know that only through art could even misery itself become a source of pleasure, vide tragoediam. 139 It is quite untrue to say that the Greeks only took this life into their consideration—they suffered also from thoughts of death and Hell. But no “ repentance” or contrition. 140 The incarnate appearance of gods, as in Sappho’s invocation to Aphrodite, must not be taken as poetic licence � they are frequently hallucinations. We conceive of a great many things, including the will to die, too superficially as rhetorical. 141 The “ martyr” is Hellenic: Prometheus, Hercules. The hero-myth became pan-Hellenic: a poet must have had a hand in that! 142 How realistic the Greeks were even in the domain of pure inventions! They poetised reality, not yearning to lift themselves out of it. The raising of the present into the colossal and eternal, e.g., by Pindar. 143 What condition do the Greeks premise as the model of their life in Hades? An�mic, dreamlike, weak . it is the continuous accentuation of old age, when the memory gradually becomes weaker and weaker, and the body still more so. The senility of senility . this would be our state of life in the eyes of the Hellenes. 144 The naive character of the Greeks observed by the Egyptians. 145 The truly scientific people, the literary people, were the Egyptians and not the Greeks. That which has the appearance of science among the Greeks, originated among the Egyptians and later on returned to them to mingle again with the old current. Alexandrian culture is an amalgamation of Hellenic and Egyptian . and when our world again founds its culture upon the Alexandrian culture, then….[12] 146 The Egyptians are far more of a literary people than the Greeks. I maintain this against Wolf. The first grain in Eleusis, the first vine in Thebes, the first olive-tree and fig-tree. The Egyptians had lost a great part of their mythology. 147 The unmathematical undulation of the column in Paestum is analogous to the modification of the tempo: animation in place of a mechanical movement. 148 The desire to find something certain and fixed in �sthetic led to the worship of Aristotle: I think, however, that we may gradually come to see from his works that he understood nothing about art, and that it is merely the intellectual conversations of the Athenians, echoing in his pages, which we admire. 149 In Socrates we have as it were lying open before us a specimen of the consciousness out of which, later on, the instincts of the theoretic man originated: that one would rather die than grow old and weak in mind. 150 At the twilight of antiquity there were still wholly unchristian figures, which were more beautiful, harmonious, and pure than those of any Christians: e.g., Proclus. His
mysticism and syncretism were things that precisely Christianity cannot reproach him with. In any case, it would be my desire to live together with such people. In comparison with them Christianity looks like some crude brutalisation, organised for the benefit of the mob and the criminal classes. Proclus, who solemnly invokes the rising moon. 151 With the advent of Christianity a religion attained the mastery which corresponded to a pre-Greek condition of mankind: belief in witchcraft in connection with all and everything, bloody sacrifices, superstitious fear of demoniacal punishments, despair in one’s self, ecstatic brooding and hallucination, man’s self become the arena of good and evil spirits and their struggles. 152 All branches of history have experimented with antiquity � critical consideration alone remains. By this term I do not mean conjectural and literary-historical criticism. 153 Antiquity has been treated by all kinds of historians and their methods. We have now had enough experience, however, to turn the history of antiquity to account without being shipwrecked on antiquity itself. 154 We can now look back over a fairly long period of human existence � what will the humanity be like which is able to look back at us from an equally long distance? which finds us lying intoxicated among the debris of old culture! which finds its only consolation in “ being good” and in holding out the “ helping hand,” and turns away from all other consolations!—Does beauty, too, grow out of the ancient culture? I think that our ugliness arises from our metaphysical remnants . our confused morals, the worthlessness of our marriages, and so on, are the cause. The beautiful man, the healthy, moderate, and enterprising man, moulds the objects around him into beautiful shapes after his own image. 155 Up to the present time all history has been written from the standpoint of success, and, indeed, with the assumption of a certain reason in this success. This remark applies also to Greek history: so far we do not possess any. It is the same all round, however: where are the historians who can survey things and events without being humbugged by stupid theories? I know of only one, Burckhardt. Everywhere the widest possible optimism prevails in science. The question: “ What would have been the consequence if so and so had not happened?” is almost unanimously thrust aside, and yet it is the cardinal question. Thus everything becomes ironical. Let us only consider our own lives. If we examine history in accordance with a preconceived plan, let this plan be sought in the purposes of a great man, or perhaps in those of a sex, or of a party. Everything else is a chaos.—Even in natural science we find this deification of the necessary. Germany has become the breeding-place of this historical optimism; Hegel is perhaps to blame for this. Nothing, however, is more responsible for the fatal influence of German culture. Everything that has been kept down by success gradually rears itself up: history as the scorn of the conqueror; a servile sentiment and a kneeling down before the actual fact —“ a sense for the State,” they now call it, as if that had still to be propagated! He who does not understand how brutal and unintelligent history is will never understand the stimulus to make it intelligent. Just think how rare it is to find a man with as great an intelligent knowledge of his own life as Goethe had . what amount of rationality can we expect to find arising out of these other veiled and blind existences as they work chaotically with and in opposition to each other? And it is especially naive when Hellwald, the author of a history of culture, warns us away from all “ ideals,” simply because history has killed them off one after the other. 156 To bring to light without reserve the stupidity and the want of reason in human things � that is the aim of our brethren and colleagues. People will then have to distinguish what is essential in them, what is incorrigible, and what is still susceptible of further improvement. But “ Providence” must be kept out of the question, for it is a conception that enables people to take things too easily. I wish to breathe the breath of this purpose into science. Let us advance our knowledge of mankind! The good and rational in man is accidental or apparent, or the contrary of something very irrational. There will come a time when training will be the only thought. 157 Surrender to necessity is exactly what I do not teach—for one must first know this necessity to be necessary. There may perhaps be many necessities; but in general this inclination is simply a bed of idleness. 158 To know history now means � to recognise how all those who believed in a Providence took things too easily. There is no such thing. If human affairs are seen to go forward in a loose and disordered way, do not think that a god has any purpose in view by letting them do so or that he is neglecting them. We can now see in a general way that the history of Christianity on earth has been one of the most dreadful chapters in history, and that a stop must be put to it. True, the influence of antiquity has been observed in Christianity even in our own time, and, as it diminishes, so will our knowledge of antiquity diminish also to an even greater extent. Now is the best time to recognise it: we are no longer prejudiced in favour of Christianity, but we still understand it, and also the antiquity that forms part of it, so far as this antiquity stands in line with Christianity. 159
Philosophic heads must occupy themselves one day with the collective account of antiquity and make up its balance-sheet. If we have this, antiquity will be overcome. All the shortcomings which now vex us have their roots in antiquity, so that we cannot continue to treat this account with the mildness which has been customary up to the present. The atrocious crime of mankind which rendered Christianity possible, as it actually became possible, is the guilt of antiquity. With Christianity antiquity will also be cleared away.—At the present time it is not so very far behind us, and it is certainly not possible to do justice to it. It has been availed of in the most dreadful fashion for purposes of repression, and has acted as a support for religious oppression by disguising itself as “ culture.” It was common to hear the saying, “ Antiquity has been conquered by Christianity.” This was a historical fact, and it was thus thought that no harm could come of any dealings with antiquity. Yes, it is so plausible to say that we find Christian ethics “ deeper” than Socrates! Plato was easier to compete with! We are at the present time, so to speak, merely chewing the cud of the very battle which was fought in the first centuries of the Christian era—with the exception of the fact that now, instead of the clearly perceptible antiquity which then existed, we have merely its pale ghost; and, indeed, even Christianity itself has become rather ghostlike. It is a battle fought after the decisive battle, a post-vibration. In the end, all the forces of which antiquity consisted have reappeared in Christianity in the crudest possible form: it is nothing new, only quantitatively extraordinary. 160 What severs us for ever from the culture of antiquity is the fact that its foundations have become too shaky for us. A criticism of the Greeks is at the same time a criticism of Christianity; for the bases of the spirit of belief, the religious cult, and witchcraft, are the same in both—There are many rudimentary stages still remaining, but they are by this time almost ready to collapse. This would be a task . to characterise Greek antiquity as irretrievably lost, and with it Christianity also and the foundations upon which, up to the present time, our society and politics have been based. 161 Christianity has conquered antiquity—yes; that is easily said. In the first place, it is itself a piece of antiquity, in the second place, it has preserved antiquity, in the third place, it has never been in combat with the pure ages of antiquity. Or rather: in order that Christianity itself might remain, it had to let itself be overcome by the spirit of antiquity—for example, the idea of empire, the community, and so forth. We are suffering from the uncommon want of clearness and uncleanliness of human things; from the ingenious mendacity which Christianity has brought among men. 162 It is almost laughable to see how nearly all the sciences and arts of modern times grow from the scattered seeds which have been wafted towards us from antiquity, and how Christianity seems to us here to be merely the evil chill of a long night, a night during which one is almost inclined to believe that all is over with reason and honesty among men. The battle waged against the natural man has given rise to the unnatural man. 163 With the dissolution of Christianity a great part of antiquity has become incomprehensible to us, for instance, the entire religious basis of life. On this account an imitation of antiquity is a false tendency . the betrayers or the betrayed are the philologists who still think of such a thing. We live in a period when many different conceptions of life are to be found: hence the present age is instructive to an unusual degree; and hence also the reason why it is so ill, since it suffers from the evils of all its tendencies at once. The man of the future . the European man. 164 The German Reformation widened the gap between us and antiquity: was it necessary for it to do so? It once again introduced the old contrast of “ Paganism” and “ Christianity”; and it was at the same time a protest against the decorative culture of the Renaissance—it was a victory gained over the same culture as had formerly been conquered by early Christianity. In regard to “ worldly things,” Christianity preserved the grosser views of the ancients. All the nobler elements in marriage, slavery, and the State are unchristian. It required the distorting characteristics of worldliness to prove itself. 165 The connection between humanism and religious rationalism was emphasised as a Saxonian trait by Kochly: the type of this philologist is Gottfried Hermann.[13] 166 I understand religions as narcotics: but when they are given to such nations as the Germans, I think they are simply rank poison. 167 All religions are, in the end, based upon certain physical assumptions, which are already in existence and adapt the religions to their needs . for example, in Christianity, the contrast between body and soul, the unlimited importance of the earth as the “ world,” the marvellous occurrences in nature. If once the opposite views gain the mastery—for instance, a strict law of nature, the helplessness and superfluousness of all gods, the strict conception of the soul as a bodily process—all is over. But all Greek culture is based upon such views.
168 When we look from the character and culture of the Catholic Middle Ages back to the Greeks, we see them resplendent indeed in the rays of higher humanity; for, if we have anything to reproach these Greeks with, we must reproach the Middle Ages with it also to a much greater extent. The worship of the ancients at the time of the Renaissance was therefore quite honest and proper. We have carried matters further in one particular point, precisely in connection with that dawning ray of light. We have outstripped the Greeks in the clarifying of the world by our studies of nature and men. Our knowledge is much greater, and our judgments are more moderate and just. In addition to this, a more gentle spirit has become widespread, thanks to the period of illumination which has weakened mankind—but this weakness, when turned into morality, leads to good results and honours us. Man has now a great deal of freedom: it is his own fault if he does not make more use of it than he does; the fanaticism of opinions has become much milder. Finally, that we would much rather live in the present age than in any other is due to science, and certainly no other race in the history of mankind has had such a wide choice of noble enjoyments as ours—even if our race has not the palate and stomach to experience a great deal of joy. But one can live comfortably amid all this “ freedom” only when one merely understands it and does not wish to participate in it—that is the modern crux. The participants appear to be less attractive than ever � how stupid they must be! Thus the danger arises that knowledge may avenge itself on us, just as ignorance avenged itself on us during the Middle Ages. It is all over with those religions which place their trust in gods, Providences, rational orders of the universe, miracles, and sacraments, as is also the case with certain types of holy lives, such as ascetics; for we only too easily conclude that such people are the effects of sickness and an aberrant brain. There is no doubt that the contrast between a pure, incorporeal soul and a body has been almost set aside. Who now believes in the immortality of the soul! Everything connected with blessedness or damnation, which was based upon certain erroneous physiological assumptions, falls to the ground as soon as these assumptions are recognised to be errors. Our scientific assumptions admit just as much of an interpretation and utilisation in favour of a besotting philistinism—yea, in favour of bestiality—as also in favour of “ blessedness” and soul-inspiration. As compared with all previous ages, we are now standing on a new foundation, so that something may still be expected from the human race. As regards culture, we have hitherto been acquainted with only one complete form of it, i.e., the city-culture of the Greeks, based as it was on their mythical and social foundations; and one incomplete form, the Roman, which acted as an adornment of life, derived from the Greek. Now all these bases, the mythical and the politico-social, have changed; our alleged culture has no stability, because it has been erected upon insecure conditions and opinions which are even now almost ready to collapse.—When we thoroughly grasp Greek culture, then, we see that it is all over with it. The philologist is thus a great sceptic in the present conditions of our culture and training � that is his mission. Happy is he if, like Wagner and Schopenhauer, he has a dim presentiment of those auspicious powers amid which a new culture is stirring. 169 Those who say: “ But antiquity nevertheless remains as a subject of consideration for pure science, even though all its educational purposes may be disowned,” must be answered by the words, What is pure science here! Actions and characteristics must be judged; and those who judge them must stand above them: so you must first devote your attention to overcoming antiquity. If you do not do that, your science is not pure, but impure and limited . as may now be perceived. 170 To overcome Greek antiquity through our own deeds: this would be the right task. But before we can do this we must first know it!—There is a thoroughness which is merely an excuse for inaction. Let it be recollected how much Goethe knew of antiquity: certainly not so much as a philologist, and yet sufficient to contend with it in such a way as to bring about fruitful results. One should not even know more about a thing than one could create. Moreover, the only time when we can actually recognise something is when we endeavour to make it. Let people but attempt to live after the manner of antiquity, and they will at once come hundreds of miles nearer to antiquity than they can do with all their erudition.— Our philologists never show that they strive to emulate antiquity in any way, and thus their antiquity remains without any effect on the schools. The study of the spirit of emulation (Renaissance, Goethe), and the study of despair. The non-popular element in the new culture of the Renaissance: a frightful fact! 171 The worship of classical antiquity, as it was to be seen in Italy, may be interpreted as the only earnest, disinterested, and fecund worship which has yet fallen to the lot of antiquity. It is a splendid example of Don Quixotism; and philology at best is such Don Quixotism. Already at the time of the Alexandrian savants, as with all the sophists of the first and second centuries, the Atticists, &c., the scholars are imitating something purely and simply chimerical and pursuing a world that never existed. The same trait is seen throughout antiquity � the manner in which the Homeric heroes were copied, and all the intercourse held with the myths, show traces of it. Gradually all Greek antiquity has become an object of Don Quixotism. It is impossible to understand our modern world if we do not take into account the enormous influence of the purely fantastic. This is now confronted by the principle � there can be no imitation. Imitation, however, is merely an artistic phenomenon, i.e., it is based on appearance . we can accept manners, thoughts, and so on through imitation; but imitation can create nothing. True, the creator can borrow from all sides and nourish himself in that way. And it is only as creators that we shall be able to take anything from the Greeks. But in what respect can philologists be said to be creators! There must be a few dirty jobs, such as knackers’ men, and also text-revisers: are the philologists to carry out tasks of this nature?
172 What, then, is antiquity now, in the face of modern art, science, and philosophy? It is no longer the treasure-chamber of all knowledge; for in natural and historical science we have advanced greatly beyond it. Oppression by the church has been stopped. A pure knowledge of antiquity is now possible, but perhaps also a more ineffective and weaker knowledge.—This is right enough, if effect is known only as effect on the masses; but for the breeding of higher minds antiquity is more powerful than ever. Goethe as a German poet-philologist; Wagner as a still higher stage: his clear glance for the only worthy position of art. No ancient work has ever had so powerful an effect as the “ Orestes” had on Wagner. The objective, emasculated philologist, who is but a philistine of culture and a worker in “ pure science,” is, however, a sad spectacle. 173 Between our highest art and philosophy and that which is recognised to be truly the oldest antiquity, there is no contradiction: they support and harmonise with one another. It is in this that I place my hopes. 174 The main standpoints from which to consider the importance of antiquity: 1. There is nothing about it for young people, for it exhibits man with an entire freedom from shame. 2. It is not for direct imitation, but it teaches by which means art has hitherto been perfected in the highest degree. 3. It is accessible only to a few, and there should be a police des moeurs, in charge of it—as there should be also in charge of bad pianists who play Beethoven. 4. These few apply this antiquity to the judgment of our own time, as critics of it; and they judge antiquity by their own ideals and are thus critics of antiquity. 5. The contract between the Hellenic and the Roman should be studied, and also the contrast between the early Hellenic and the late Hellenic.—Explanation of the different types of culture. 175 The advancement of science at the expense of man is one of the most pernicious things in the world. The stunted man is a retrogression in the human race: he throws a shadow over all succeeding generations The tendencies and natural purpose of the individual science become degenerate, and science itself is finally shipwrecked: it has made progress, but has either no effect at all on life or else an immoral one. 176 Men not to be used like things! From the former very incomplete philology and knowledge of antiquity there flowed out a stream of freedom, while our own highly developed knowledge produces slaves and serves the idol of the State. 177 There will perhaps come a time when scientific work will be carried on by women, while the men will have to create, using the word in a spiritual sense: states, laws, works of art, &c. People should study typical antiquity just as they do typical men: i.e., imitating what they understand of it, and, when the pattern seems to lie far in the distance, considering ways and means and preliminary preparations, and devising stepping-stones. 178 The whole feature of study lies in this: that we should study only what we feel we should like to imitate; what we gladly take up and have the desire to multiply. What is really wanted is a progressive canon of the ideal model, suited to boys, youths, and men. 179 Goethe grasped antiquity in the right way � invariably with an emulative soul. But who else did so? One sees nothing of a well-thought-out pedagogics of this nature: who knows that there is a certain knowledge of antiquity which cannot be imparted to youths! The puerile character of philology: devised by teachers for pupils. 180 The ever more and more common form of the ideal: first men, then institutions, finally tendencies, purposes, or the want of them. The highest form: the conquest of the ideal by a backward movement from tendencies to institutions, and from institutions to men. 181 I will set down in writing what I no longer believe—and also what I do believe. Man stands in the midst of the great whirlpool of forces, and imagines that this whirlpool is rational and has a rational aim in view: error! The only rationality that we know is the small reason of man: he must exert it to the utmost, and it invariably leaves him in the lurch if he tries to place himself in the hands of “ Providence.” Our only happiness lies in reason; all the remainder of the world is dreary. The highest reason, however, is seen by me in the work of the artist, and he can feel it to be such: there
may be something which, when it can be consciously brought forward, may afford an even greater feeling of reason and happiness: for example, the course of the solar system, the breeding and education of a man. Happiness lies in rapidity of feeling and thinking: everything else is slow, gradual, and stupid. The man who could feel the progress of a ray of light would be greatly enraptured, for it is very rapid. Thinking of one’s self affords little happiness. But when we do experience happiness therein the reason is that we are not thinking of ourselves, but of our ideal. This lies far off; and only the rapid man attains it and rejoices. An amalgamation of a great centre of men for the breeding of better men is the task of the future. The individual must become familiarised with claims that, when he says Yea to his own will, he also says Yea to the will of that centre—for example, in reference to a choice, as among women for marriage, and likewise as to the manner in which his child shall be brought up. Until now no single individuality, or only the very rarest, have been free: they were influenced by these conceptions, but likewise by the bad and contradictory organisation of the individual purposes. 182 Education is in the first place instruction in what is necessary, and then in what is changing and inconstant. The youth is introduced to nature, and the sway of laws is everywhere pointed out to him; followed by an explanation of the laws of ordinary society. Even at this early stage the question will arise: was it absolutely necessary that this should have been so? He gradually comes to need history to ascertain how these things have been brought about. He learns at the same time, however, that they may be changed into something else. What is the extent of man’s power over things? This is the question in connection with all education. To show how things may become other than what they are we may, for example, point to the Greeks. We need the Romans to show how things became what they were. 183 If, then, the Romans had spurned the Greek culture, they would perhaps have gone to pieces completely. When could this culture have once again arisen? Christianity and Romans and barbarians: this would have been an onslaught: it would have entirely wiped out culture. We see the danger amid which genius lives. Cicero was one of the greatest benefactors of humanity, even in his own time. There is no “ Providence” for genius; it is only for the ordinary run of people and their wants that such a thing exists: they find their satisfaction, and later on their justification. 184 Thesis: the death of ancient culture inevitable. Greek culture must be distinguished as the archetype; and it must be shown how all culture rests upon shaky conceptions. The dangerous meaning of art: as the protectress and galvanisation of dead and dying conceptions; history, in so far as it wishes to restore to us feelings which we have overcome. To feel “ historically” or “ just” towards what is already past, is only possible when we have risen above it. But the danger in the adoption of the feelings necessary for this is very great . let the dead bury their dead, so that we ourselves may not come under the influence of the smell of the corpses. THE DEATH OF THE OLD CULTURE. 1. The signification of the studies of antiquity hitherto pursued: obscure; mendacious. 2. As soon as they recognise the goal they condemn themselves to death � for their goal is to describe ancient culture itself as one to be demolished. 3. The collection of all the conceptions out of which Hellenic culture has grown up. Criticism of religion, art, society, state, morals. 4. Christianity is likewise denied. 5. Art and history—dangerous. 6. The replacing of the study of antiquity which has become superfluous for the training of our youth. Thus the task of the science of history is completed and it itself has become superfluous, if the entire inward continuous circle of past efforts has been condemned. Its place must be taken by the science of the future. 185 “ Signs” and “ miracles” are not believed; only a “ Providence” stands in need of such things. There is no help to be found either in prayer or asceticism or in “ vision.” If all these things constitute religion, then there is no more religion for me. My religion, if I can still apply this name to something, lies in the work of breeding genius . from such training everything is to be hoped. All consolation comes from art. Education is love for the offspring; an excess of love over and beyond our self-love. Religion is “ love beyond ourselves.” The work of art is the model of such a love beyond ourselves, and a perfect model at that. 186 The stupidity of the will is Schopenhauer’s greatest thought, if thoughts be judged from the standpoint of power. We can see in Hartmann how he juggled away this thought. Nobody will ever call something stupid—God. 187
This, then, is the new feature of all the future progress of the world � men must never again be ruled over by religious conceptions. Will they be any worse? It is not my experience that they behave well and morally under the yoke of religion; I am not on the side of Demopheles[14] The fear of a beyond, and then again the fear of divine punishments will hardly have made men better. 188 Where something great makes its appearance and lasts for a relatively long time, we may premise a careful breeding, as in the case of the Greeks. How did so many men become free among them? Educate educators! But the first educators must educate themselves! And it is for these that I write. 189 The denial of life is no longer an easy matter: a man may become a hermit or a monk—and what is thereby denied! This conception has now become deeper . it is above all a discerning denial, a denial based upon the will to be just; not an indiscriminate and wholesale denial. 190 The seer must be affectionate, otherwise men will have no confidence in him � Cassandra. 191 The man who to-day wishes to be good and saintly has a more difficult task than formerly . in order to be “ good,” he must not be so unjust to knowledge as earlier saints were. He would have to be a knowledge-saint: a man who would link love with knowledge, and who would have nothing to do with gods or demigods or “ Providence,” as the Indian saints likewise had nothing to do with them. He should also be healthy, and should keep himself so, otherwise he would necessarily become distrustful of himself. And perhaps he would not bear the slightest resemblance to the ascetic saint, but would be much more like a man of the world. 192 The better the state is organised, the duller will humanity be. To make the individual uncomfortable is my task! The great pleasure experienced by the man who liberates himself by fighting. Spiritual heights have had their age in history; inherited energy belongs to them. In the ideal state all would be over with them. 193 The highest judgment on life only arising from the highest energy of life. The mind must be removed as far as possible from exhaustion. In the centre of the world-history judgment will be the most accurate; for it was there that the greatest geniuses existed. The breeding of the genius as the only man who can truly value and deny life. Save your genius! shall be shouted unto the people: set him free! Do all you can to unshackle him. The feeble and poor in spirit must not be allowed to judge life. 194 I dream of a combination of men who shall make no concessions, who shall show no consideration, and who shall be willing to be called “ destroyers”: they apply the standard of their criticism to everything and sacrifice themselves to truth. The bad and the false shall be brought to light! We will not build prematurely: we do not know, indeed, whether we shall ever be able to build, or if it would not be better not to build at all. There are lazy pessimists and resigned ones in this world—and it is to their number that we refuse to belong! NOTES: [1] No doubt a reminiscence of the “ Odyssey,” Bk. ix—TR. [2] Formal education is that which tends to develop the critical and logical faculties, as opposed to material education, which is intended to deal with the acquisition of knowledge and its valuation, e.g., history, mathematics, &c. “ Material” education, of course, has nothing to do with materialism—TR. [3] The reference is not to Pope, but to Hegel.—TR. [4] Friedrich August Wolf (1759-1824), the well-known classical scholar, now chiefly remembered by his “ Prolegomena ad Homerum.”—TR. [5] Students who pass certain examinations need only serve one year in the German Army instead of the usual two or three—TR. [6] Otto Jahn (1813-69), who is probably best remembered in philological circles by his edition of Juvenal.—TR. [7] Gustav Freytag at one time a famous German novelist—TR. [8] A well-known anti-Wagnerian musical critic of Vienna.—TR. [9] See note on p 149.—TR. [10] Karl Ottfried Muller (1797-1840), classical arch�ologist, who devoted special attention to Greece—TR. [11] Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker (1784-1868), noted for his ultra-profound comments on Greek poetry—TR.
[12] “ We shall once again be shipwrecked.” The omission is in the original—TR. [13] Johann Gottfried Jakob Hermann (1772-1848), noted for his works on metre and Greek grammar.—TR. [14] A type in Schopenhauer’s Essay “ On Religion.” See “ Parerga and Paralipomena”—TR. FINIS.
POEMS BY NIETZSCHE Translated by A.M.Ludovici Only Fool! Only Poet! In the fading light of dusk, When the dew’s solace begins To well down to the earth, Invisible, as well as unheard For the comforter dew slips on Delicate footwear as all gentle consolers Then do you remember, hot heart, remember How once you thirsted After heavenly tears and dewdrops, Scorched and weary, thirsting While on yellow paths of grass The spiteful evening glances of the sun Ran around you through black trees, Glowing sun-glances, dazzling with malicious delight. “ The suitor of truth-you?”-thus they mocked me “ No! Only a poet! A cunning, plundering, stealthy beast, That must lie, That knowingly, willingly must lie, Lusting after prey, Colorfully masked, Self-shrouded, Prey for itself This-the suitor of truth? … Only fool! Only poet! Merely speaking colorfully, From fools’ masks shouting colorfully, Climbing about on deceptive word-bridges, On misleading rainbows, Between false heavens Rambling, lurking Only fool! Only poet! This-the suitor of truth? … Not still, stiff, smooth, cold, Become an image, A pillar of God,
Not set up before temples, A god’s gatekeeper: No! hostile to all such truth statues, More at home in any desert than in temples, Fraught with cats’ mischief, Leaping through every window Swiftly! into every chance, Sniffing for every jungle, That you in jungles Among motley-shagged beasts of prey Would run sinfully sound and beautiful and colorful, With lusting animal lips, Blissfully sneering, blissfully hellish, blissfully bloodthirsty, Plundering, prowling, lying would run … Or like the eagle that, for a long time, A long time gazes with a fixed stare into abysses, Into its abysses … - Oh how they spiral downward, Down, down under, Into ever deeper depths! Then, Suddenly, Plummeting straight down Wings pulled out To pounce on lambs, Right down, hot-hungry, Lusting for lambs, Hating all lamb-souls, Grimly hating whatever looks Virtuous, sheepish, curly-wooled, Dull, with lambs’ milk-goodwill … Thus Eagle-like, panther-like, Are the poet’s longings, Are your longings under a thousand masks, You fool! You poet!… You that have looked upon man As god and as sheep Tearing to pieces the god in man As well as the sheep in man, And laughing while tearing This, this is your bliss, A panther’s and eagle’s bliss, A poet’s and fool’s bliss!” … In the fading light of dusk,
When just as the moon’s sickle In between green and crimson-reds Enviously creeps The day’s enemy, With every stealthy step At rose hammocks Scything, till they sink, Sink down pale in nightfall: Thus I myself once sank, Out of my truth-madness, Out of my day-longings, Weary of day, sick from the light Sank downward, eveningward, shadowward, By one truth Burnt and thirsty Do you still remember, hot heart, remember How you thirsted then? That I be exiled From all truth! Only fool! Only poet!… Among Daughters of the Desert 1. “ Don’t go!” said the wanderer who called himself Zarathustra’s shadow. “ Stay with us-otherwise our old dull affliction might seize us again. That old magician has already given us his worst for our benefit, and behold, that good pious pope there has tears in his eyes and has again embarked on the sea of melancholy. These kings here may still put on a pleasant countenance: but had they no witnesses, I wager that for them too the wicked game would recommenceThe wicked game of drifting clouds, of damp melancholy, of imposing skies, of stolen suns, of howling autumn windsThe wicked game of our own howling and cries of distress: Stay with us, Zarathustra! Here there is much concealed misery that wants to speak, much evening, much cloud, much musty air! You have nourished us with strong food for men and fortifying maxims: do not let the frail effeminate spirits seize us again for dessert! You alone make the air around you strong and clear! Have I ever found such good air on earth than with you in your cave? I have seen many lands, my nose has learned to test and assess many kinds of air: but with you my nostrils taste their greatest delight! Unless , unless-oh forgive an old memory! Forgive me an old after-dinner song, which I once composed among the daughters of the desert. For with them the air was equally good, clear, and oriental; never was I farther away from cloudy, damp, melancholy old Europe! At that time I loved such Oriental girls and other blue skies, over which no clouds and no thoughts hung. You would not believe how dutifully they sat there, when they were not dancing, deep, but without thoughts, like little secrets, like ribboned riddles, like after-dinner nutsColorful and strange, forsooth! but without clouds: riddles that let themselves be guessed: for such girls I then conceived an after-dinner psalm.” Thus spoke the wanderer, who called himself Zarathustra’s shadow; and before anyone answered him, he had already seized the harp of the old magician, crossed his legs and looked around, composed and wise: but with his nostrils he drew in the air slowly and inquiringly, as one tastes the new air in a foreign land. At last he began to sing with a kind of roar. 2. The desert grows: woe to him in whom deserts hide… 3. Ha! Solemn!
A worthy beginning! Solemnly African! Worthy of a lion Or of a moral screaming monkey … - But nothing for you, You most beloved maidens, At whose feet I, A European under palm trees, Am allowed to sit. Selah. Truly wonderful! Here I now sit, Near the desert and yet So far from the desert again, And in no way desolate: To wit, gulped down By this smallest oasis It just opened up yawning Its lovely mouth, The most redolent of all little mouths: Then I fell in, Down, through-among you, You most beloved maidens. Selah. Hail, hail to that whale, If he let his guest be so Well off! -you understand My learned allusion? … Hail to his belly, If it was as Lovely an oasis-belly As this: yet I cast doubt on it. For I come from Europe, Which is more doubt-addicted than any nagging old wife. May God improve it! Amen! Here I now sit, In this smallest oasis, Like a date, Brown, sweet through, gold-oozing, Lusting for the round mouth of a girl, But even more for girlish Ice-cold, snow-white, cutting Biting-teeth: for after these The hearts of all hot dates lust. Selah. Similar, all-too-similar To the aforesaid Mediterranean fruit,
I lie here, with little Winged beetles Dancing about and playing around, Just like even smaller, More foolish, more sinful Wishes and notions Surrounded by you, You silent, you ominous Girl-kittens Dudu und Suleika Ensphinxed, to cram a lot of Feelings into one word (-May God forgive me This sin of speech! …)I sit here, sniffing the best air, Verily, air of paradise, Clear, mild air, gold-striped, As good air as ever Fell down from the moon, Be it by chance Or did it happen from wantonness? As the old poets tell. Yet I, a sceptic, have my doubts, For I come From Europe, Which is more doubt-addicted than any nagging old wife. May God improve it! Amen! Drinking in this fairest air, My nostrils swollen like goblets, Without future, without memories, Thus I sit here, you Most beloved maidens, And watch the palm tree, As it, like a dancer, Bends and arches and sways at the hips One does it too, if one watches long … Like a dancer, who, as it would seem to me, Has stood too long, precariously long Always, always only on one little leg? For she has forgotten, it would seem to me, The other leg? At least in vain I sought the missing Twin-jewel
- Namely, the other leg In the holy proximity Of her most beloved, most delicate Fanned-, and flittering-, and tinseled-tutus. Yes, if you would, you fair maidens, Quite believe me, She has lost it … Oh my! oh my! oh my! oh my! oh my!… It is gone, Gone forever, The other leg! Oh what a shame about that lovely other leg! Where-whence may it be lamenting forsaken, This lonely leg? Perhaps in fear of a Grim, yellow, blond-maned Lion-monster? Or maybe even Gnawed off, nibbled off Pitiful, alas! alas! Nibbled off! Selah. Oh weep not, Soft hearts! Weep not, you Date-hearts! Milk-bosoms! You little-licoriceHeart-sacs! Be a man, Suleika! Courage! Courage! Weep no more, Pale Dudu!Or should perhaps Something fortifying, heart-fortifying Be called for here? An anointed maxim? A more solemn exhortation? … Ha! Up, dignity! Blow, blow again, Bellows of virtue! Ha! Once more roar, Roar morally, Roar like a moral lion before the daughters of the desert! - For virtuous howling, You most beloved maidens, Is more than anything European fervor, European ravenous appetite! And yet here I stand,
As a European, I cannot do else, God help me! Amen! The desert grows: woe to him in whom deserts hide! Stone grinds against stone, the desert devours and strangles, Glowing brown monstrous death stares And chews; its life is to chew … Do not forget, man, consumed by lust: you-are the stone, the desert, are death… Ultimate Will To die thus, As once I saw him die The friend who threw divine thunderbolts and Glances into my dark youth. Sportive and profound, A dancer in the battle The most cheerful among warriors, The gravest among victors, A fate standing upon his fate, Hard, reflective, calculating: Trembling because he triumphed, Rejoicing in that he triumphed dying: Commanding while he died And he commanded that one destroy … To die thus, As once I saw him die Vanquishing, destroying … Cf. Notebooks, KSA 10, 594, Fall 1883 20 [11] (Notes for Thus Spoke Zarathustra): Of the One Victory. Thus, as once I saw him conquering and dying: the friend, who threw divine moments and lightning into my dark youth sportive and profound, storming forward for joy even in the storm of battle, forward in bloody pain, and where the chosen flags of the enemy neared, among the dying the most cheerful, among the victors the gravest, reflective, calculating, standing on his fate-trembling about it, laughing about it, that he triumphed dying commanding while he died:-and he commanded that one destroy and not be sparing Oh you my will, my in-me, over-me! you my necessity! Give that I also conquer-and save me up for this one victory! Preserve and save me up and guard me from all small victories, you gift of my soul and turning point of all need, you my necessity! [Cf. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Old and New Tables 30.] Amid Birds of Prey Whoever tends to descend here, How quickly The depths swallow them! But you, Zarathustra, Still love the abyss Do you, just as the spruce? Its roots shoot down, where The rock itself tremors
Gazing into the depths It tarries at abysses, Where everything around Tends to fall: Amid the impatience Of the rough boulders and torrential streams Patiently enduring, firm, silent, Solitary … Solitary! Who would even venture To be a guest here, To be your guest? … A bird of prey perhaps: who might well hang, the steadfast patient sufferer, Gloating delightfully in its coat, With mad laughter, A bird of prey’s laughter … Why so steadfast? Cruelly, it scoffs: One must have wings, if one loves the abyss … One must not remain suspended, Like you, hanged one! Oh Zarathustra, Cruelest nimrod! Recently still a hunter of God, The snare of all virtue, The arrow of evil! Now Hunted by yourself, Your own prey, Bored into yourself … Now Alone with yourself, Paired in your own knowledge, Amid a hundred reflections Before your false self, Amid a hundred dubious Memories, Weary from every hurt, Chilled by every frost, Strangled by your own rope, Self-knower! Self-hangman! Why did you bind yourself
With the rope of your wisdom? Why did you seduce yourself Into the paradise of the ancient serpent? Why did you crawl into yourself In you-into you? An invalid now, One who is sick from snake venom; A prisoner now, One who drew the hardest lot: In your own shaft Laboring bent over, Excavating yourself, Digging into yourself, Without aid, Stiff, A corpse Overpiled by a hundred burdens, By your overburdens, One in the know! A self-knower! The wise Zarathustra! … You sought the heaviest burden Yet found yourself Cannot cast off yourself from you… Lurking, Crouching, One who no longer stands upright! You are deeply rooted in your tomb, Tangled spirit! … And yet recently so proud, Upon all your stilted pride! Recently still the godless hermit, The co-settler with the devil, The scarlet prince of all arrogance! … Now Between two voids One who is twisted, A question mark, A weary enigma An enigma for birds of prey … They’ll certainly “ dissolve” you, They no doubt hunger after your “ dissolution,” Indeed they flutter about you, their enigma, Around you, hanged man! … Oh Zarathustra! …
Self-knower! … Self-hangman! … The Beacon [“ Das Feuerzeichen,” literally: “ The Fire Signal.”] Here, where an island grew between seas, A stone altar steeply piled up, Here beneath blackened sky, Zarathustra lit his mountain fire, The beacon for mariners driven off course, The question mark for those who have answers … This flame with a white-grey belly Flickers its greedy tongue into the cold beyond, Bends its neck towards ever purer heights A raised serpent of impatience: This signal I placed before me. My soul is this flame, Insatiable for new expanses To blaze upward, upward in silent passion. Why did Zarathustra flee from animals and men? Why did he run away suddenly from all settled lands? Six solitudes he knew already But the sea itself was not lonely enough for him, The island let him rise, on the mountain he became the flame, Into a seventh solitude, Searching now, he casts a hook over his head. Lost mariners! Wreckage of ancient stars! You seas of the future! Unexplored sky! Now I cast my hook towards all solitary ones: Give an answer to the impatience of the flame, Catch me, fisherman on high mountains, My seventh ultimate solitude! - Ariadne’s Lament Who will warm me, who loves me still? Give warm hands! Give the heart’s brazier! Prone, shuddering Like one half dead, whose feet are warmed; Shaken, alas! by unknown fevers, Trembling at pointed arrows of glacial frost, Hunted by you, Thought! Nameless! Cloaked! Horrid! You hunter behind clouds! Struck down by your lightning, Your scornful eye, glaring at me out of the dark! Thus I lie,
Writhing, twisted, tormented By all the eternal afflictions, Struck By you, cruelest hunter, You unknown-god… Strike deeper! Strike one more time! Stab, break this heart! Why all this affliction With blunt-toothed arrows? How can you gaze evermore, Unweary of human agony, With the spiteful lightning eyes of gods? You do not wish to kill, Only to torment, torment? Why torment-me, You spiteful unknown god? Aha! You creep closer Around midnight?… What do you want? Speak! You push me, press upon me, Ah, already much too close! You hear me breathing, You eavesdrop on my heart, Most jealous one! What are you jealous of anyway? Away! Away! What’s the ladder for? Do you want inside, Would you get into my heart, And enter My most secret thoughts? Shameless one! Unknown! Thief! What do you wish to steal for yourself? What do you wish to hear for yourself? What will you gain by torture, You torturer! You-executioner-god! Or am I, like a dog, To wallow before you? Devoted, eager due to my Love for you-fawning over you? In vain!
It stabs again! Cruelest sting! I am not your dog, only your prey, Cruelest hunter! Your proudest prisoner, You robber behind clouds… Speak finally! You, cloaked by lightning! Unknown! Speak! What do you want, highwayman, from-me?… What? A ransom? What do you want for ransom? Demand much-so advises my pride! And talk little-my pride advises as well! Aha! Me?-you want me? Me-all of me?… Aha! And tormenting me, fool that you are, You wrack my pride? Give me love-who warms me still? Who loves me still? Give warm hands, Give the heart’s brazier, Give me, the loneliest one, Ice, alas! whom ice sevenfold Has taught to yearn for enemies, Even for my enemies Give, yes, surrender to me, Cruelest enemy Yourself!… Gone! He has fled, My only companion, My splendid enemy, My unknown, My executioner-god!… No! Come back! With all your afflictions! All my tears gush forth To you they stream And the last flames of my heart Glow for you. Oh, come back,
My unknown god! my pain! My ultimate happiness!… A lightening bolt. Dionysus becomes visible in emerald beauty. Dionysus: Be clever, Ariadne!… You have little ears; you have my ears: Put a clever word in them! Must one not first hate oneself, in order to love oneself?… I am your labyrinth… Fame and Eternity 1. How long will you sit on your misfortune? Watch out! You hatch me yet Another egg, A basilisk-egg Out of your long misery. Why did Zarathustra sneak along the mountains? Distrustful, ulcerous, gloomy, One who long lies in wait But suddenly, lightning, Bright, terrible, a blast Heavenwards out of the abyss: The mountains themselves shake from The bowels of the earth … Where hate and lightning-flash Become one, a curse Now Zarathustra’s wrath cuts across the mountains, A storm-cloud creeps along its way. Sneak off, one who has a last cover! Into bed with you, you weakling! Now rolling thunder over the vaults, Then shaking, as the beams and wall, Then flickering lightning and sulphur-yellow truths Zarathustra curses … 2. This coin, with which All the world pays, Fame I grasp this coin with gloves, With disgust I trample it under me. Who wants to be paid? Those for sale … Whoever is for sale, seizes With sticky hands
All the world’s coin-jingle-jangle fame! - You want to buy them? They’re all for sale. But offer much! Jingle with a full purse! - Otherwise you fortify them, You fortify their virtue … They are all virtuous. Fame and virtue-it rhymes. [Ruhm und Tugend-das reimt sich.”] As long as the world lives, It will pay virtue-prattling With fame-rattling The world lives on this noise … Before all the virtuous I want to be guilty, Called guilty of each great offence! Before all fame-trumpets My ambition will become a worm Among those I desire To be the lowest … This coin, with which All the world pays, Fame I grasp this coin with gloves, With disgust I trample it under me. 3. Hush! From great things-I see a great deal! One should keep silent Or speak greatly: Speak greatly, my delighted wisdom! Up there I see Rolling seas of light: - Oh night, oh silence, oh deathly silent uproar!… I see a sign From the distant beyond A glittering constellation slowly sinks towards me… 4. Supreme star of being! Tablet of eternal forms! You come towards me? Why hasn’t anyone beheld Your mute beauty Why doesn’t it escape my gaze? Sign of necessity!
Tablet of eternal forms! - But of course you know it: What everyone hates, What I alone love, That you are eternal! That you are necessary! My love is ever ignited Only through necessity. Sign of necessity! Supreme star of being! That no desire attains, That no No desecrates, Eternal Yes of being, Eternally I am your Yes: For I love you, O eternity! - On the Poverty of the Richest For ten years now No drop has reached me, No humid wind, no dew of love A rainless land Now I beseech my wisdom Not to become miserly in this drought: Pour out of me, my trickling dew, My own rain for the yellowed desert! Once I commanded the clouds To move away from my mountains Once I spoke, “ More light, for your shady places!” Today, I entice them so that they come: Give shade to me with your udders! I want to milk You cows on high! Milkwarm wisdom, sweet dew of love I pour over the land. Begone, begone, truths That gloomily watch over you! I do not want to see on my mountains Bitter impatient truths. Today the truth approaches Me with a gilded smile Sweetened by the sun, from bronzed love I break off only a ripe truth from the tree. Today I stretch out my hand To the curls of chance, Clever enough To lead chance along like a child, to outfox it.
Today I want to be hospitable To the unwelcome, I don’t even want to be sharp against destiny Zarathustra is not a hedgehog. My soul, Insatiable with its tongue, Has already licked all the good and bad things, It has dived down into every depth But ever like a cork, It always floats again to the top, It flits about like oil over brown seas: Thanks to this soul one calls me the happy one. Who are father and mother to me? Is not my father the prince of superabundance And my mother tranquil laughter? Did not these two in bond of marriage create Me, animal of enigmas, Me, unfriendly light, Me, prodigal of all wisdom, Zarathustra? Suffering today from tenderness, A thawing wind, Zarathustra waits seated, waits in his mountains In his own juice Becoming sweet and stewed, Underneath his summit, Underneath his ice, Weary and blissful, A creator on his seventh day. Hush! A truth glides over me Like a cloud It strikes me with invisible lightning. Its happiness climbs slowly Unto me by broad stairs: Come, come, beloved truth! Hush! It’s my truth! From demurring eyes, From velvet shudderings Its glance strikes at me, Charming, evil, the glance of a girl… She found the base of my happiness She found me-ha! how did she figure it out? A crimson dragon lurks Within the abyss of her girl-glance.
Hush! My truth speaks! Dear you, Zarathustra! You look like one Who has swallowed gold: One day they must slit open your belly!… You are too rich, You corruptor of many! You make too many envious, You make too many poor… I am cast into shadow by your light I shiver: go away, you rich one, Go, Zarathustra, away from your sun!… You would like to give, give away your superabundance, But you yourself are the superfluous one! Be clever, you rich one! First give away yourself, oh Zarathustra! For ten years now And no drop has reached you? No humid wind? no dew of love? But who ought to love thee as well, You over-rich-one? Your happiness creates nothing but aridity, Makes a dearth of love A rainless land… No one thanks you any longer, But you thank everyone Who takes from you: Hence, Over-rich-one, I see you as the poorest of all the rich ones! You sacrifice yourself, your wealth torments you, You give away yourself, You don’t take care of yourself, you don’t love yourself; Great agony always compels you, The agony of an overflowing barn, an overabundant heart; But no one thanks you any longer… You must become poorer, Unwise wise one! If you wish to be loved. One loves only the suffering man, One gives love only to the hungry man: First give away yourself, oh Zarathustra! -I am your truth…
ON THE FUTURE OF OUR EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS TRANSLATED BY J.M. KENNEDY PREFACE. The reader from whom I expect something must possess three qualities: he must be calm and must read without haste; he must not be ever interposing his own personality and his own special “ culture”; and he must not expect as the ultimate results of his study of these pages that he will be presented with a set of new formul�. I do not propose to furnish formul� or new plans of study for Gymnasia or other schools; and I am much more inclined to admire the extraordinary power of those who are able to cover the whole distance between the depths of empiricism and the heights of special culture-problems, and who again descend to the level of the driest rules and the most neatly expressed formul�. I shall be content if only I can ascend a tolerably lofty mountain, from the summit of which, after having recovered my breath, I may obtain a general survey of the ground; for I shall never be able, in this book, to satisfy the votaries of tabulated rules. Indeed, I see a time coming when serious men, working together in the service of a completely rejuvenated and purified culture, may again become the directors of a system of everyday instruction, calculated to promote that culture; and they will probably be compelled once more to draw up sets of rules: but how remote this time now seems! And what may not happen meanwhile! It is just possible that between now and then all Gymnasia—yea, and perhaps all universities, may be destroyed, or have become so utterly transformed that their very regulations may, in the eyes of future generations, seem to be but the relics of the cave-dwellers’ age. This book is intended for calm readers,—for men who have not yet been drawn into the mad headlong rush of our hurry-skurrying age, and who do not experience any idolatrous delight in throwing themselves beneath its chariot-wheels. It is for men, therefore, who are not accustomed to estimate the value of everything according to the amount of time it either saves or wastes. In short, it is for the few. These, we believe, “ still have time.” Without any qualms of conscience they may improve the most fruitful and vigorous hours of their day in meditating on the future of our education; they may even believe when the evening has come that they have used their day in the most dignified and useful way, namely, in the meditatio generis futuri. No one among them has yet forgotten to think while reading a book; he still understands the secret of reading between the lines, and is indeed so generous in what he himself brings to his study, that he continues to reflect upon what he has read, perhaps long after he has laid the book aside. And he does this, not because he wishes to write a criticism about it or even another book; but simply because reflection is a pleasant pastime to him. Frivolous spendthrift! Thou art a reader after my own heart; for thou wilt be patient enough to accompany an author any distance, even though he himself cannot yet see the goal at which he is aiming,—even though he himself feels only that he must at all events honestly believe in a goal, in order that a future and possibly very remote generation may come face to face with that towards which we are now blindly and instinctively groping. Should any reader demur and suggest that all that is required is prompt and bold reform; should he imagine that a new “ organisation” introduced by the State, were all that is necessary, then we fear he would have misunderstood not only the author but the very nature of the problem under consideration. The third and most important stipulation is, that he should in no case be constantly bringing himself and his own “ culture” forward, after the style of most modern men, as the correct standard and measure of all things. We would have him so highly educated that he could even think meanly of his education or despise it altogether. Only thus would he be able to trust entirely to the author’s guidance; for it is only by virtue of ignorance and his consciousness of ignorance, that the latter can dare to make himself heard. Finally, the author would wish his reader to be fully alive to the specific character of our present barbarism and of that which distinguishes us, as the barbarians of the nineteenth century, from other barbarians. Now, with this book in his hand, the writer seeks all those who may happen to be wandering, hither and thither, impelled by feelings similar to his own. Allow yourselves to be discovered—ye lonely ones in whose existence I believe! Ye unselfish ones, suffering in yourselves from the corruption of the German spirit! Ye contemplative ones who cannot, with hasty glances, turn your eyes swiftly from one surface to another! Ye lofty thinkers, of whom Aristotle said that ye wander through life vacillating and inactive so long as no great honour or glorious Cause calleth you to deeds! It is you I summon! Refrain this once from seeking refuge in your lairs of solitude and dark misgivings. Bethink you that this book was framed to be your herald. When ye shall go forth to battle in your full panoply, who among you will not rejoice in looking back upon the herald who rallied you? INTRODUCTION. The title I gave to these lectures ought, like all titles, to have been as definite, as plain, and as significant as possible; now, however, I observe that owing to a certain excess of precision, in its present form it is too short and consequently misleading. My first duty therefore will be to explain the title, together with the object of these lectures, to you, and to apologise for being obliged to do this. When I promised to speak to you concerning the future of our educational institutions, I was not thinking especially of the evolution of our particular institutions in Bale. However frequently my general observations may seem to bear particular application to our own conditions here, I personally have no desire to draw these inferences, and do not wish to be held responsible if they should be drawn, for the simple reason that I consider myself still far too much an inexperienced stranger among you, and much too superficially acquainted with your methods, to pretend to pass judgment upon any such special order of scholastic establishments, or to predict the probable course their development will follow. On the other hand, I know full well under what distinguished auspices I have to deliver these lectures—namely, in a city which is striving to educate and enlighten its inhabitants on a scale so magnificently out of proportion to its size, that it must put all larger cities to shame. This being so, I presume I am justified in assuming that in a quarter where so much is done for the things of which I wish to speak, people must also think a good deal about them. My desire—yea, my very first condition, therefore, would be to become united in spirit with those who have not only thought very deeply upon educational problems, but have also the will to promote what they think to be right by all the means in their power. And, in view of the difficulties of my task and the limited time at my disposal, to such listeners, alone, in my audience, shall I be able to make myself
understood—and even then, it will be on condition that they shall guess what I can do no more than suggest, that they shall supply what I am compelled to omit; in brief, that they shall need but to be reminded and not to be taught. Thus, while I disclaim all desire of being taken for an uninvited adviser on questions relating to the schools and the University of Bale, I repudiate even more emphatically still the r�le of a prophet standing on the horizon of civilisation and pretending to predict the future of education and of scholastic organisation. I can no more project my vision through such vast periods of time than I can rely upon its accuracy when it is brought too close to an object under examination. With my title: Our Educational Institutions, I wish to refer neither to the establishments in Bale nor to the incalculably vast number of other scholastic institutions which exist throughout the nations of the world to-day; but I wish to refer to German institutions of the kind which we rejoice in here. It is their future that will now engage our attention, i.e. the future of German elementary, secondary, and public schools (Gymnasien) and universities. While pursuing our discussion, however, we shall for once avoid all comparisons and valuations, and guard more especially against that flattering illusion that our conditions should be regarded as the standard for all others and as surpassing them. Let it suffice that they are our institutions, that they have not become a part of ourselves by mere accident, and were not laid upon us like a garment; but that they are living monuments of important steps in the progress of civilisation, in some respects even the furniture of a bygone age, and as such link us with the past of our people, and are such a sacred and venerable legacy that I can only undertake to speak of the future of our educational institutions in the sense of their being a most probable approximation to the ideal spirit which gave them birth. I am, moreover, convinced that the numerous alterations which have been introduced into these institutions within recent years, with the view of bringing them up-to-date, are for the most part but distortions and aberrations of the originally sublime tendencies given to them at their foundation. And what we dare to hope from the future, in this behalf, partakes so much of the nature of a rejuvenation, a reviviscence, and a refining of the spirit of Germany that, as a result of this very process, our educational institutions may also be indirectly remoulded and born again, so as to appear at once old and new, whereas now they only profess to be “ modern” or “ up-to-date.” Now it is only in the spirit of the hope above mentioned that I wish to speak of the future of our educational institutions: and this is the second point in regard to which I must tender an apology from the outset. The “ prophet” pose is such a presumptuous one that it seems almost ridiculous to deny that I have the intention of adopting it. No one should attempt to describe the future of our education, and the means and methods of instruction relating thereto, in a prophetic spirit, unless he can prove that the picture he draws already exists in germ to-day, and that all that is required is the extension and development of this embryo if the necessary modifications are to be produced in schools and other educational institutions. All I ask, is, like a Roman haruspex, to be allowed to steal glimpses of the future out of the very entrails of existing conditions, which, in this case, means no more than to hand the laurels of victory to any one of the many forces tending to make itself felt in our present educational system, despite the fact that the force in question may be neither a favourite, an esteemed, nor a very extensive one. I confidently assert that it will be victorious, however, because it has the strongest and mightiest of all allies in nature herself; and in this respect it were well did we not forget that scores of the very first principles of our modern educational methods are thoroughly artificial, and that the most fatal weaknesses of the present day are to be ascribed to this artificiality. He who feels in complete harmony with the present state of affairs and who acquiesces in it as something “ selbstverst�ndliches,”[1] excites our envy neither in regard to his faith nor in regard to that egregious word “ selbstverst�ndlich,” so frequently heard in fashionable circles. He, however, who holds the opposite view and is therefore in despair, does not need to fight any longer: all he requires is to give himself up to solitude in order soon to be alone. Albeit, between those who take everything for granted and these anchorites, there stand the fighters—that is to say, those who still have hope, and as the noblest and sublimest example of this class, we recognise Schiller as he is described by Goethe in his “ Epilogue to the Bell.” “ Brighter now glow’d his cheek, and still more bright With that unchanging, ever youthful glow:— That courage which o’ercomes, in hard-fought fight, Sooner or later ev’ry earthly foe,— That faith which soaring to the realms of light, Now boldly presseth on, now bendeth low, So that the good may work, wax, thrive amain, So that the day the noble may attain.”[2] I should like you to regard all I have just said as a kind of preface, the object of which is to illustrate the title of my lectures and to guard me against any possible misunderstanding and unjustified criticisms. And now, in order to give you a rough outline of the range of ideas from which I shall attempt to form a judgment concerning our educational institutions, before proceeding to disclose my views and turning from the title to the main theme, I shall lay a scheme before you which, like a coat of arms, will serve to warn all strangers who come to my door, as to the nature of the house they are about to enter, in case they may feel inclined, after having examined the device, to turn their backs on the premises that bear it. My scheme is as follows:— Two seemingly antagonistic forces, equally deleterious in their actions and ultimately combining to produce their results, are at present ruling over our educational institutions, although these were based originally upon very different principles. These forces are: a striving to achieve the greatest possible extension of education on the one hand, and a tendency to minimise and to weaken it on the other. The first-named would fain spread learning among the greatest possible number of people, the second would compel education to renounce its highest and most independent claims in order to subordinate itself to the service of the State. In the face of these two antagonistic tendencies, we could but give ourselves up to despair, did we not see the possibility of promoting the cause of two other contending factors which are fortunately as completely German as they are rich in promises for the future; I refer to the present movement towards limiting and concentrating education as the antithesis of the first of the forces above mentioned, and that other movement towards the strengthening and the independence of education as the antithesis of the second force. If we should seek a warrant for our belief in the ultimate victory of the two last-named movements, we could find it in the fact that both of the forces which we hold to be deleterious are so opposed to the eternal purpose of nature as the concentration of education for the few is in harmony with it, and is true, whereas the first two forces could succeed only in founding a culture false to the root.
FOOTNOTES: [1] Selbstverst�ndlich = “ granted or self-understood.” [2] The Poems of Goethe. Edgar Alfred Bowring’s Translation. (Ed. 1853.) FIRST LECTURE. (Delivered on the 16th of January 1872.) Ladies and Gentlemen,—The subject I now propose to consider with you is such a serious and important one, and is in a sense so disquieting, that, like you, I would gladly turn to any one who could proffer some information concerning it,—were he ever so young, were his ideas ever so improbable—provided that he were able, by the exercise of his own faculties, to furnish some satisfactory and sufficient explanation. It is just possible that he may have had the opportunity of hearing sound views expressed in reference to the vexed question of the future of our educational institutions, and that he may wish to repeat them to you; he may even have had distinguished teachers, fully qualified to foretell what is to come, and, like the haruspices of Rome, able to do so after an inspection of the entrails of the Present. Indeed, you yourselves may expect something of this kind from me. I happened once, in strange but perfectly harmless circumstances, to overhear a conversation on this subject between two remarkable men, and the more striking points of the discussion, together with their manner of handling the theme, are so indelibly imprinted on my memory that, whenever I reflect on these matters, I invariably find myself falling into their grooves of thought. I cannot, however, profess to have the same courageous confidence which they displayed, both in their daring utterance of forbidden truths, and in the still more daring conception of the hopes with which they astonished me. It therefore seemed to me to be in the highest degree important that a record of this conversation should be made, so that others might be incited to form a judgment concerning the striking views and conclusions it contains: and, to this end, I had special grounds for believing that I should do well to avail myself of the opportunity afforded by this course of lectures. I am well aware of the nature of the community to whose serious consideration I now wish to commend that conversation—I know it to be a community which is striving to educate and enlighten its members on a scale so magnificently out of proportion to its size that it must put all larger cities to shame. This being so, I presume I may take it for granted that in a quarter where so much is done for the things of which I wish to speak, people must also think a good deal about them. In my account of the conversation already mentioned, I shall be able to make myself completely understood only to those among my audience who will be able to guess what I can do no more than suggest, who will supply what I am compelled to omit, and who, above all, need but to be reminded and not taught. Listen, therefore, ladies and gentlemen, while I recount my harmless experience and the less harmless conversation between the two gentlemen whom, so far, I have not named. Let us now imagine ourselves in the position of a young student—that is to say, in a position which, in our present age of bewildering movement and feverish excitability, has become an almost impossible one. It is necessary to have lived through it in order to believe that such careless self-lulling and comfortable indifference to the moment, or to time in general, are possible. In this condition I, and a friend about my own age, spent a year at the University of Bonn on the Rhine,—it was a year which, in its complete lack of plans and projects for the future, seems almost like a dream to me now—a dream framed, as it were, by two periods of growth. We two remained quiet and peaceful, although we were surrounded by fellows who in the main were very differently disposed, and from time to time we experienced considerable difficulty in meeting and resisting the somewhat too pressing advances of the young men of our own age. Now, however, that I can look upon the stand we had to take against these opposing forces, I cannot help associating them in my mind with those checks we are wont to receive in our dreams, as, for instance, when we imagine we are able to fly and yet feel ourselves held back by some incomprehensible power. I and my friend had many reminiscences in common, and these dated from the period of our boyhood upwards. One of these I must relate to you, since it forms a sort of prelude to the harmless experience already mentioned. On the occasion of a certain journey up the Rhine, which we had made together one summer, it happened that he and I independently conceived the very same plan at the same hour and on the same spot, and we were so struck by this unwonted coincidence that we determined to carry the plan out forthwith. We resolved to found a kind of small club which would consist of ourselves and a few friends, and the object of which would be to provide us with a stable and binding organisation directing and adding interest to our creative impulses in art and literature; or, to put it more plainly: each of us would be pledged to present an original piece of work to the club once a month,—either a poem, a treatise, an architectural design, or a musical composition, upon which each of the others, in a friendly spirit, would have to pass free and unrestrained criticism. We thus hoped, by means of mutual correction, to be able both to stimulate and to chasten our creative impulses and, as a matter of fact, the success of the scheme was such that we have both always felt a sort of respectful attachment for the hour and the place at which it first took shape in our minds. This attachment was very soon transformed into a rite; for we all agreed to go, whenever it was possible to do so, once a year to that lonely spot near Rolandseck, where on that summer’s day, while sitting together, lost in meditation, we were suddenly inspired by the same thought. Frankly speaking, the rules which were drawn up on the formation of the club were never very strictly observed; but owing to the very fact that we had many sins of omission on our conscience during our student-year in Bonn, when we were once more on the banks of the Rhine, we firmly resolved not only to observe our rule, but also to gratify our feelings and our sense of gratitude by reverently visiting that spot near Rolandseck on the day appointed. It was, however, with some difficulty that we were able to carry our plans into execution; for, on the very day we had selected for our excursion, the large and lively students’ association, which always hindered us in our flights, did their utmost to put obstacles in our way and to hold us back. Our association had organised a general holiday excursion to
Rolandseck on the very day my friend and I had fixed upon, the object of the outing being to assemble all its members for the last time at the close of the half-year and to send them home with pleasant recollections of their last hours together. The day was a glorious one; the weather was of the kind which, in our climate at least, only falls to our lot in late summer: heaven and earth merged harmoniously with one another, and, glowing wondrously in the sunshine, autumn freshness blended with the blue expanse above. Arrayed in the bright fantastic garb in which, amid the gloomy fashions now reigning, students alone may indulge, we boarded a steamer which was gaily decorated in our honour, and hoisted our flag on its mast. From both banks of the river there came at intervals the sound of signal-guns, fired according to our orders, with the view of acquainting both our host in Rolandseck and the inhabitants in the neighbourhood with our approach. I shall not speak of the noisy journey from the landing-stage, through the excited and expectant little place, nor shall I refer to the esoteric jokes exchanged between ourselves; I also make no mention of a feast which became both wild and noisy, or of an extraordinary musical production in the execution of which, whether as soloists or as chorus, we all ultimately had to share, and which I, as musical adviser of our club, had not only had to rehearse, but was then forced to conduct. Towards the end of this piece, which grew ever wilder and which was sung to ever quicker time, I made a sign to my friend, and just as the last chord rang like a yell through the building, he and I vanished, leaving behind us a raging pandemonium. In a moment we were in the refreshing and breathless stillness of nature. The shadows were already lengthening, the sun still shone steadily, though it had sunk a good deal in the heavens, and from the green and glittering waves of the Rhine a cool breeze was wafted over our hot faces. Our solemn rite bound us only in so far as the latest hours of the day were concerned, and we therefore determined to employ the last moments of clear daylight by giving ourselves up to one of our many hobbies. At that time we were passionately fond of pistol-shooting, and both of us in later years found the skill we had acquired as amateurs of great use in our military career. Our club servant happened to know the somewhat distant and elevated spot which we used as a range, and had carried our pistols there in advance. The spot lay near the upper border of the wood which covered the lesser heights behind Rolandseck: it was a small uneven plateau, close to the place we had consecrated in memory of its associations. On a wooded slope alongside of our shooting-range there was a small piece of ground which had been cleared of wood, and which made an ideal halting-place; from it one could get a view of the Rhine over the tops of the trees and the brushwood, so that the beautiful, undulating lines of the Seven Mountains and above all of the Drachenfels bounded the horizon against the group of trees, while in the centre of the bow formed by the glistening Rhine itself the island of Nonnenw�rth stood out as if suspended in the river’s arms. This was the place which had become sacred to us through the dreams and plans we had had in common, and to which we intended to withdraw, later in the evening,—nay, to which we should be obliged to withdraw, if we wished to close the day in accordance with the law we had imposed on ourselves. At one end of the little uneven plateau, and not very far away, there stood the mighty trunk of an oak-tree, prominently visible against a background quite bare of trees and consisting merely of low undulating hills in the distance. Working together, we had once carved a pentagram in the side of this tree-trunk. Years of exposure to rain and storm had slightly deepened the channels we had cut, and the figure seemed a welcome target for our pistol-practice. It was already late in the afternoon when we reached our improvised range, and our oak-stump cast a long and attenuated shadow across the barren heath. All was still: thanks to the lofty trees at our feet, we were unable to catch a glimpse of the valley of the Rhine below. The peacefulness of the spot seemed only to intensify the loudness of our pistol-shots—and I had scarcely fired my second barrel at the pentagram when I felt some one lay hold of my arm and noticed that my friend had also some one beside him who had interrupted his loading. Turning sharply on my heels I found myself face to face with an astonished old gentleman, and felt what must have been a very powerful dog make a lunge at my back. My friend had been approached by a somewhat younger man than I had; but before we could give expression to our surprise the older of the two interlopers burst forth in the following threatening and heated strain: “ No! no!” he called to us, “ no duels must be fought here, but least of all must you young students fight one. Away with these pistols and compose yourselves. Be reconciled, shake hands! What?—and are you the salt of the earth, the intelligence of the future, the seed of our hopes—and are you not even able to emancipate yourselves from the insane code of honour and its violent regulations? I will not cast any aspersions on your hearts, but your heads certainly do you no credit. You, whose youth is watched over by the wisdom of Greece and Rome, and whose youthful spirits, at the cost of enormous pains, have been flooded with the light of the sages and heroes of antiquity,— can you not refrain from making the code of knightly honour—that is to say, the code of folly and brutality—the guiding principle of your conduct?—Examine it rationally once and for all, and reduce it to plain terms; lay its pitiable narrowness bare, and let it be the touchstone, not of your hearts but of your minds. If you do not regret it then, it will merely show that your head is not fitted for work in a sphere where great gifts of discrimination are needful in order to burst the bonds of prejudice, and where a well-balanced understanding is necessary for the purpose of distinguishing right from wrong, even when the difference between them lies deeply hidden and is not, as in this case, so ridiculously obvious. In that case, therefore, my lads, try to go through life in some other honourable manner; join the army or learn a handicraft that pays its way.” To this rough, though admittedly just, flood of eloquence, we replied with some irritation, interrupting each other continually in so doing: “ In the first place, you are mistaken concerning the main point; for we are not here to fight a duel at all; but rather to practise pistol-shooting. Secondly, you do not appear to know how a real duel is conducted;—do you suppose that we should have faced each other in this lonely spot, like two highwaymen, without seconds or doctors, etc. etc.? Thirdly, with regard to the question of duelling, we each have our own opinions, and do not require to be waylaid and surprised by the sort of instruction you may feel disposed to give us.” This reply, which was certainly not polite, made a bad impression upon the old man. At first, when he heard that we were not about to fight a duel, he surveyed us more kindly: but when we reached the last passage of our speech, he seemed so vexed that he growled. When, however, we began to speak of our point of view, he quickly caught hold of his
companion, turned sharply round, and cried to us in bitter tones: “ People should not have points of view, but thoughts!” And then his companion added: “ Be respectful when a man such as this even makes mistakes!” Meanwhile, my friend, who had reloaded, fired a shot at the pentagram, after having cried: “ Look out!” This sudden report behind his back made the old man savage; once more he turned round and looked sourly at my friend, after which he said to his companion in a feeble voice: “ What shall we do? These young men will be the death of me with their firing.”—“ You should know,” said the younger man, turning to us, “ that your noisy pastimes amount, as it happens on this occasion, to an attempt upon the life of philosophy. You observe this venerable man,—he is in a position to beg you to desist from firing here. And when such a man begs–-” “ Well, his request is generally granted,” the old man interjected, surveying us sternly. As a matter of fact, we did not know what to make of the whole matter; we could not understand what our noisy pastimes could have in common with philosophy; nor could we see why, out of regard for polite scruples, we should abandon our shooting-range, and at this moment we may have appeared somewhat undecided and perturbed. The companion noticing our momentary discomfiture, proceeded to explain the matter to us. “ We are compelled,” he said, “ to linger in this immediate neighbourhood for an hour or so; we have a rendezvous here. An eminent friend of this eminent man is to meet us here this evening; and we had actually selected this peaceful spot, with its few benches in the midst of the wood, for the meeting. It would really be most unpleasant if, owing to your continual pistol-practice, we were to be subjected to an unending series of shocks; surely your own feelings will tell you that it is impossible for you to continue your firing when you hear that he who has selected this quiet and isolated place for a meeting with a friend is one of our most eminent philosophers.” This explanation only succeeded in perturbing us the more; for we saw a danger threatening us which was even greater than the loss of our shooting-range, and we asked eagerly, “ Where is this quiet spot? Surely not to the left here, in the wood?” “ That is the very place.” “ But this evening that place belongs to us,” my friend interposed. “ We must have it,” we cried together. Our long-projected celebration seemed at that moment more important than all the philosophies of the world, and we gave such vehement and animated utterance to our sentiments that in view of the incomprehensible nature of our claims we must have cut a somewhat ridiculous figure. At any rate, our philosophical interlopers regarded us with expressions of amused inquiry, as if they expected us to proffer some sort of apology. But we were silent, for we wished above all to keep our secret. Thus we stood facing one another in silence, while the sunset dyed the tree-tops a ruddy gold. The philosopher contemplated the sun, his companion contemplated him, and we turned our eyes towards our nook in the woods which to-day we seemed in such great danger of losing. A feeling of sullen anger took possession of us. What is philosophy, we asked ourselves, if it prevents a man from being by himself or from enjoying the select company of a friend,—in sooth, if it prevents him from becoming a philosopher? For we regarded the celebration of our rite as a thoroughly philosophical performance. In celebrating it we wished to form plans and resolutions for the future, by means of quiet reflections we hoped to light upon an idea which would once again help us to form and gratify our spirit in the future, just as that former idea had done during our boyhood. The solemn act derived its very significance from this resolution, that nothing definite was to be done, we were only to be alone, and to sit still and meditate, as we had done five years before when we had each been inspired with the same thought. It was to be a silent solemnisation, all reminiscence and all future; the present was to be as a hyphen between the two. And fate, now unfriendly, had just stepped into our magic circle—and we knew not how to dismiss her;—the very unusual character of the circumstances filled us with mysterious excitement. Whilst we stood thus in silence for some time, divided into two hostile groups, the clouds above waxed ever redder and the evening seemed to grow more peaceful and mild; we could almost fancy we heard the regular breathing of nature as she put the final touches to her work of art—the glorious day we had just enjoyed; when, suddenly, the calm evening air was rent by a confused and boisterous cry of joy which seemed to come from the Rhine. A number of voices could be heard in the distance—they were those of our fellow-students who by that time must have taken to the Rhine in small boats. It occurred to us that we should be missed and that we should also miss something: almost simultaneously my friend and I raised our pistols: our shots were echoed back to us, and with their echo there came from the valley the sound of a well-known cry intended as a signal of identification. For our passion for shooting had brought us both repute and ill-repute in our club. At the same time we were conscious that our behaviour towards the silent philosophical couple had been exceptionally ungentlemanly; they had been quietly contemplating us for some time, and when we fired the shock made them draw close up to each other. We hurried up to them, and each in our turn cried out: “ Forgive us. That was our last shot, and it was intended for our friends on the Rhine. They have understood us, do you hear? If you insist upon having that place among the trees, grant us at least the permission to recline there also. You will find a number of benches on the spot: we shall not disturb you; we shall sit quite still and shall not utter a word: but it is now past seven o’clock and we must go there at once. “ That sounds more mysterious than it is,” I added after a pause; “ we have made a solemn vow to spend this coming hour on that ground, and there were reasons for the vow. The spot is sacred to us, owing to some pleasant associations, it must also inaugurate a good future for us. We shall therefore endeavour to leave you with no disagreeable recollections of our meeting—even though we have done much to perturb and frighten you.” The philosopher was silent; his companion, however, said: “ Our promises and plans unfortunately compel us not only to remain, but also to spend the same hour on the spot you have selected. It is left for us to decide whether fate or perhaps a spirit has been responsible for this extraordinary coincidence.” “ Besides, my friend,” said the philosopher, “ I am not half so displeased with these warlike youngsters as I was. Did you observe how quiet they were a moment ago, when we
were contemplating the sun? They neither spoke nor smoked, they stood stone still, I even believe they meditated.” Turning suddenly in our direction, he said: “ Were you meditating? Just tell me about it as we proceed in the direction of our common trysting-place.” We took a few steps together and went down the slope into the warm balmy air of the woods where it was already much darker. On the way my friend openly revealed his thoughts to the philosopher, he confessed how much he had feared that perhaps to-day for the first time a philosopher was about to stand in the way of his philosophising. The sage laughed. “ What? You were afraid a philosopher would prevent your philosophising? This might easily happen: and you have not yet experienced such a thing? Has your university life been free from experience? You surely attend lectures on philosophy?” This question discomfited us; for, as a matter of fact, there had been no element of philosophy in our education up to that time. In those days, moreover, we fondly imagined that everybody who held the post and possessed the dignity of a philosopher must perforce be one: we were inexperienced and badly informed. We frankly admitted that we had not yet belonged to any philosophical college, but that we would certainly make up for lost time. “ Then what,” he asked, “ did you mean when you spoke of philosophising?” Said I, “ We are at a loss for a definition. But to all intents and purposes we meant this, that we wished to make earnest endeavours to consider the best possible means of becoming men of culture.” “ That is a good deal and at the same time very little,” growled the philosopher; “ just you think the matter over. Here are our benches, let us discuss the question exhaustively: I shall not disturb your meditations with regard to how you are to become men of culture. I wish you success and—points of view, as in your duelling questions; brand-new, original, and enlightened points of view. The philosopher does not wish to prevent your philosophising: but refrain at least from disconcerting him with your pistol-shots. Try to imitate the Pythagoreans to-day: they, as servants of a true philosophy, had to remain silent for five years—possibly you may also be able to remain silent for five times fifteen minutes, as servants of your own future culture, about which you seem so concerned.” We had reached our destination: the solemnisation of our rite began. As on the previous occasion, five years ago, the Rhine was once more flowing beneath a light mist, the sky seemed bright and the woods exhaled the same fragrance. We took our places on the farthest corner of the most distant bench; sitting there we were almost concealed, and neither the philosopher nor his companion could see our faces. We were alone: when the sound of the philosopher’s voice reached us, it had become so blended with the rustling leaves and with the buzzing murmur of the myriads of living things inhabiting the wooded height, that it almost seemed like the music of nature; as a sound it resembled nothing more than a distant monotonous plaint. We were indeed undisturbed. Some time elapsed in this way, and while the glow of sunset grew steadily paler the recollection of our youthful undertaking in the cause of culture waxed ever more vivid. It seemed to us as if we owed the greatest debt of gratitude to that little society we had founded; for it had done more than merely supplement our public school training; it had actually been the only fruitful society we had had, and within its frame we even placed our public school life, as a purely isolated factor helping us in our general efforts to attain to culture. We knew this, that, thanks to our little society, no thought of embracing any particular career had ever entered our minds in those days. The all too frequent exploitation of youth by the State, for its own purposes—that is to say, so that it may rear useful officials as quickly as possible and guarantee their unconditional obedience to it by means of excessively severe examinations—had remained quite foreign to our education. And to show how little we had been actuated by thoughts of utility or by the prospect of speedy advancement and rapid success, on that day we were struck by the comforting consideration that, even then, we had not yet decided what we should be—we had not even troubled ourselves at all on this head. Our little society had sown the seeds of this happy indifference in our souls and for it alone we were prepared to celebrate the anniversary of its foundation with hearty gratitude. I have already pointed out, I think, that in the eyes of the present age, which is so intolerant of anything that is not useful, such purposeless enjoyment of the moment, such a lulling of one’s self in the cradle of the present, must seem almost incredible and at all events blameworthy. How useless we were! And how proud we were of being useless! We used even to quarrel with each other as to which of us should have the glory of being the more useless. We wished to attach no importance to anything, to have strong views about nothing, to aim at nothing; we wanted to take no thought for the morrow, and desired no more than to recline comfortably like good-for-nothings on the threshold of the present; and we did—bless us! —That, ladies and gentlemen, was our standpoint then!— Absorbed in these reflections, I was just about to give an answer to the question of the future of our Educational Institutions in the same self-sufficient way, when it gradually dawned upon me that the “ natural music,” coming from the philosopher’s bench had lost its original character and travelled to us in much more piercing and distinct tones than before. Suddenly I became aware that I was listening, that I was eavesdropping, and was passionately interested, with both ears keenly alive to every sound. I nudged my friend who was evidently somewhat tired, and I whispered: “ Don’t fall asleep! There is something for us to learn over there. It applies to us, even though it be not meant for us.” For instance, I heard the younger of the two men defending himself with great animation while the philosopher rebuked him with ever increasing vehemence. “ You are unchanged,” he cried to him, “ unfortunately unchanged. It is quite incomprehensible to me how you can still be the same as you were seven years ago, when I saw you for the last time and left you with so much misgiving. I fear I must once again divest you, however reluctantly, of the skin of modern culture which you have donned meanwhile;—and what do I find beneath it? The same immutable ‘intelligible’ character forsooth, according to Kant; but unfortunately the same unchanged ‘intellectual’ character, too—which may also be a necessity, though not a comforting one. I ask myself to what purpose have I lived as a philosopher, if, possessed as you are of no mean intelligence and a genuine thirst for knowledge, all the years you have spent in my company have left no deeper impression upon you. At present you are behaving as if you had not even heard the cardinal principle of all culture, which I went to such pains to inculcate upon you during our former intimacy. Tell me,—what was that principle?”
“ I remember,” replied the scolded pupil, “ you used to say no one would strive to attain to culture if he knew how incredibly small the number of really cultured people actually is, and can ever be. And even this number of really cultured people would not be possible if a prodigious multitude, from reasons opposed to their nature and only led on by an alluring delusion, did not devote themselves to education. It were therefore a mistake publicly to reveal the ridiculous disproportion between the number of really cultured people and the enormous magnitude of the educational apparatus. Here lies the whole secret of culture—namely, that an innumerable host of men struggle to achieve it and work hard to that end, ostensibly in their own interests, whereas at bottom it is only in order that it may be possible for the few to attain to it.” “ That is the principle,” said the philosopher,—“ and yet you could so far forget yourself as to believe that you are one of the few? This thought has occurred to you—I can see. That, however, is the result of the worthless character of modern education. The rights of genius are being democratised in order that people may be relieved of the labour of acquiring culture, and their need of it. Every one wants if possible to recline in the shade of the tree planted by genius, and to escape the dreadful necessity of working for him, so that his procreation may be made possible. What? Are you too proud to be a teacher? Do you despise the thronging multitude of learners? Do you speak contemptuously of the teacher’s calling? And, aping my mode of life, would you fain live in solitary seclusion, hostilely isolated from that multitude? Do you suppose that you can reach at one bound what I ultimately had to win for myself only after long and determined struggles, in order even to be able to live like a philosopher? And do you not fear that solitude will wreak its vengeance upon you? Just try living the life of a hermit of culture. One must be blessed with overflowing wealth in order to live for the good of all on one’s own resources! Extraordinary youngsters! They felt it incumbent upon them to imitate what is precisely most difficult and most high,—what is possible only to the master, when they, above all, should know how difficult and dangerous this is, and how many excellent gifts may be ruined by attempting it!” “ I will conceal nothing from you, sir,” the companion replied. “ I have heard too much from your lips at odd times and have been too long in your company to be able to surrender myself entirely to our present system of education and instruction. I am too painfully conscious of the disastrous errors and abuses to which you used to call my attention— though I very well know that I am not strong enough to hope for any success were I to struggle ever so valiantly against them. I was overcome by a feeling of general discouragement; my recourse to solitude was the result neither of pride nor arrogance. I would fain describe to you what I take to be the nature of the educational questions now attracting such enormous and pressing attention. It seemed to me that I must recognise two main directions in the forces at work—two seemingly antagonistic tendencies, equally deleterious in their action, and ultimately combining to produce their results: a striving to achieve the greatest possible expansion of education on the one hand, and a tendency to minimise and weaken it on the other. The first-named would, for various reasons, spread learning among the greatest number of people; the second would compel education to renounce its highest, noblest and sublimest claims in order to subordinate itself to some other department of life—such as the service of the State. “ I believe I have already hinted at the quarter in which the cry for the greatest possible expansion of education is most loudly raised. This expansion belongs to the most beloved of the dogmas of modern political economy. As much knowledge and education as possible; therefore the greatest possible supply and demand—hence as much happiness as possible: —that is the formula. In this case utility is made the object and goal of education,—utility in the sense of gain—the greatest possible pecuniary gain. In the quarter now under consideration culture would be defined as that point of vantage which enables one to ‘keep in the van of one’s age,’ from which one can see all the easiest and best roads to wealth, and with which one controls all the means of communication between men and nations. The purpose of education, according to this scheme, would be to rear the most ‘current’ men possible,—‘current’ being used here in the sense in which it is applied to the coins of the realm. The greater the number of such men, the happier a nation will be; and this precisely is the purpose of our modern educational institutions: to help every one, as far as his nature will allow, to become ‘current’; to develop him so that his particular degree of knowledge and science may yield him the greatest possible amount of happiness and pecuniary gain. Every one must be able to form some sort of estimate of himself; he must know how much he may reasonably expect from life. The ‘bond between intelligence and property’ which this point of view postulates has almost the force of a moral principle. In this quarter all culture is loathed which isolates, which sets goals beyond gold and gain, and which requires time: it is customary to dispose of such eccentric tendencies in education as systems of ‘Higher Egotism,’ or of ‘Immoral Culture—Epicureanism.’ According to the morality reigning here, the demands are quite different; what is required above all is ‘rapid education,’ so that a money-earning creature may be produced with all speed; there is even a desire to make this education so thorough that a creature may be reared that will be able to earn a great deal of money. Men are allowed only the precise amount of culture which is compatible with the interests of gain; but that amount, at least, is expected from them. In short: mankind has a necessary right to happiness on earth—that is why culture is necessary—but on that account alone!” “ I must just say something here,” said the philosopher. “ In the case of the view you have described so clearly, there arises the great and awful danger that at some time or other the great masses may overleap the middle classes and spring headlong into this earthly bliss. That is what is now called ‘the social question.’ It might seem to these masses that education for the greatest number of men was only a means to the earthly bliss of the few: the ‘greatest possible expansion of education’ so enfeebles education that it can no longer confer privileges or inspire respect. The most general form of culture is simply barbarism. But I do not wish to interrupt your discussion.” The companion continued: “ There are yet other reasons, besides this beloved economical dogma, for the expansion of education that is being striven after so valiantly everywhere. In some countries the fear of religious oppression is so general, and the dread of its results so marked, that people in all classes of society long for culture and eagerly absorb those elements of it which are supposed to scatter the religious instincts. Elsewhere the State, in its turn, strives here and there for its own preservation, after the greatest possible expansion of education, because it always feels strong enough to bring the most determined emancipation, resulting from culture, under its yoke, and readily approves of everything which tends to extend culture, provided that it be of service to its officials or soldiers, but in the main to itself, in its competition with other nations. In this case, the foundations of a State must
be sufficiently broad and firm to constitute a fitting counterpart to the complicated arches of culture which it supports, just as in the first case the traces of some former religious tyranny must still be felt for a people to be driven to such desperate remedies. Thus, wherever I hear the masses raise the cry for an expansion of education, I am wont to ask myself whether it is stimulated by a greedy lust of gain and property, by the memory of a former religious persecution, or by the prudent egotism of the State itself. “ On the other hand, it seemed to me that there was yet another tendency, not so clamorous, perhaps, but quite as forcible, which, hailing from various quarters, was animated by a different desire,—the desire to minimise and weaken education. “ In all cultivated circles people are in the habit of whispering to one another words something after this style: that it is a general fact that, owing to the present frantic exploitation of the scholar in the service of his science, his education becomes every day more accidental and more uncertain. For the study of science has been extended to such interminable lengths that he who, though not exceptionally gifted, yet possesses fair abilities, will need to devote himself exclusively to one branch and ignore all others if he ever wish to achieve anything in his work. Should he then elevate himself above the herd by means of his speciality, he still remains one of them in regard to all else,—that is to say, in regard to all the most important things in life. Thus, a specialist in science gets to resemble nothing so much as a factory workman who spends his whole life in turning one particular screw or handle on a certain instrument or machine, at which occupation he acquires the most consummate skill. In Germany, where we know how to drape such painful facts with the glorious garments of fancy, this narrow specialisation on the part of our learned men is even admired, and their ever greater deviation from the path of true culture is regarded as a moral phenomenon. ‘Fidelity in small things,’ ‘dogged faithfulness,’ become expressions of highest eulogy, and the lack of culture outside the speciality is flaunted abroad as a sign of noble sufficiency. “ For centuries it has been an understood thing that one alluded to scholars alone when one spoke of cultured men; but experience tells us that it would be difficult to find any necessary relation between the two classes to-day. For at present the exploitation of a man for the purpose of science is accepted everywhere without the slightest scruple. Who still ventures to ask, What may be the value of a science which consumes its minions in this vampire fashion? The division of labour in science is practically struggling towards the same goal which religions in certain parts of the world are consciously striving after,—that is to say, towards the decrease and even the destruction of learning. That, however, which, in the case of certain religions, is a perfectly justifiable aim, both in regard to their origin and their history, can only amount to self-immolation when transferred to the realm of science. In all matters of a general and serious nature, and above all, in regard to the highest philosophical problems, we have now already reached a point at which the scientific man, as such, is no longer allowed to speak. On the other hand, that adhesive and tenacious stratum which has now filled up the interstices between the sciences—Journalism—believes it has a mission to fulfil here, and this it does, according to its own particular lights—that is to say, as its name implies, after the fashion of a day-labourer. “ It is precisely in journalism that the two tendencies combine and become one. The expansion and the diminution of education here join hands. The newspaper actually steps into the place of culture, and he who, even as a scholar, wishes to voice any claim for education, must avail himself of this viscous stratum of communication which cements the seams between all forms of life, all classes, all arts, and all sciences, and which is as firm and reliable as news paper is, as a rule. In the newspaper the peculiar educational aims of the present culminate, just as the journalist, the servant of the moment, has stepped into the place of the genius, of the leader for all time, of the deliverer from the tyranny of the moment. Now, tell me, distinguished master, what hopes could I still have in a struggle against the general topsy-turvification of all genuine aims for education; with what courage can I, a single teacher, step forward, when I know that the moment any seeds of real culture are sown, they will be mercilessly crushed by the roller of this pseudo-culture? Imagine how useless the most energetic work on the part of the individual teacher must be, who would fain lead a pupil back into the distant and evasive Hellenic world and to the real home of culture, when in less than an hour, that same pupil will have recourse to a newspaper, the latest novel, or one of those learned books, the very style of which already bears the revolting impress of modern barbaric culture–-“ “ Now, silence a minute!” interjected the philosopher in a strong and sympathetic voice. “ I understand you now, and ought never to have spoken so crossly to you. You are altogether right, save in your despair. I shall now proceed to say a few words of consolation.” SECOND LECTURE. (Delivered on the 6th of February 1872.) LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,—Those among you whom I now have the pleasure of addressing for the first time and whose only knowledge of my first lecture has been derived from reports will, I hope, not mind being introduced here into the middle of a dialogue which I had begun to recount on the last occasion, and the last points of which I must now recall. The philosopher’s young companion was just pleading openly and confidentially with his distinguished tutor, and apologising for having so far renounced his calling as a teacher in order to spend his days in comfortless solitude. No suspicion of superciliousness or arrogance had induced him to form this resolve. “ I have heard too much from your lips at various times,” the straightforward pupil said, “ and have been too long in your company, to surrender myself blindly to our present systems of education and instruction. I am too painfully conscious of the disastrous errors and abuses to which you were wont to call my attention; and yet I know that I am far from possessing the requisite strength to meet with success, however valiantly I might struggle to shatter the bulwarks of this would-be culture. I was overcome by a general feeling of depression: my recourse to solitude was not arrogance or superciliousness.” Whereupon, to account for his behaviour, he described the general character of modern educational methods so vividly that the philosopher could not help interrupting him in a voice full of sympathy, and crying words of comfort to him. “ Now, silence for a minute, my poor friend,” he cried; “ I can more easily understand you now, and should not have lost my patience with you. You are altogether right, save in
your despair. I shall now proceed to say a few words of comfort to you. How long do you suppose the state of education in the schools of our time, which seems to weigh so heavily upon you, will last? I shall not conceal my views on this point from you: its time is over; its days are counted. The first who will dare to be quite straightforward in this respect will hear his honesty re-echoed back to him by thousands of courageous souls. For, at bottom, there is a tacit understanding between the more nobly gifted and more warmly disposed men of the present day. Every one of them knows what he has had to suffer from the condition of culture in schools; every one of them would fain protect his offspring from the need of enduring similar drawbacks, even though he himself was compelled to submit to them. If these feelings are never quite honestly expressed, however, it is owing to a sad want of spirit among modern pedagogues. These lack real initiative; there are too few practical men among them—that is to say, too few who happen to have good and new ideas, and who know that real genius and the real practical mind must necessarily come together in the same individuals, whilst the sober practical men have no ideas and therefore fall short in practice. “ Let any one examine the pedagogic literature of the present; he who is not shocked at its utter poverty of spirit and its ridiculously awkward antics is beyond being spoiled. Here our philosophy must not begin with wonder but with dread; he who feels no dread at this point must be asked not to meddle with pedagogic questions. The reverse, of course, has been the rule up to the present; those who were terrified ran away filled with embarrassment as you did, my poor friend, while the sober and fearless ones spread their heavy hands over the most delicate technique that has ever existed in art—over the technique of education. This, however, will not be possible much longer; at some time or other the upright man will appear, who will not only have the good ideas I speak of, but who in order to work at their realisation, will dare to break with all that exists at present: he may by means of a wonderful example achieve what the broad hands, hitherto active, could not even imitate—then people will everywhere begin to draw comparisons; then men will at least be able to perceive a contrast and will be in a position to reflect upon its causes, whereas, at present, so many still believe, in perfect good faith, that heavy hands are a necessary factor in pedagogic work.” “ My dear master,” said the younger man, “ I wish you could point to one single example which would assist me in seeing the soundness of the hopes which you so heartily raise in me. We are both acquainted with public schools; do you think, for instance, that in respect of these institutions anything may be done by means of honesty and good and new ideas to abolish the tenacious and antiquated customs now extant? In this quarter, it seems to me, the battering-rams of an attacking party will have to meet with no solid wall, but with the most fatal of stolid and slippery principles. The leader of the assault has no visible and tangible opponent to crush, but rather a creature in disguise that can transform itself into a hundred different shapes and, in each of these, slip out of his grasp, only in order to reappear and to confound its enemy by cowardly surrenders and feigned retreats. It was precisely the public schools which drove me into despair and solitude, simply because I feel that if the struggle here leads to victory all other educational institutions must give in; but that, if the reformer be forced to abandon his cause here, he may as well give up all hope in regard to every other scholastic question. Therefore, dear master, enlighten me concerning the public schools; what can we hope for in the way of their abolition or reform?” “ I also hold the question of public schools to be as important as you do,” the philosopher replied. “ All other educational institutions must fix their aims in accordance with those of the public school system; whatever errors of judgment it may suffer from, they suffer from also, and if it were ever purified and rejuvenated, they would be purified and rejuvenated too. The universities can no longer lay claim to this importance as centres of influence, seeing that, as they now stand, they are at least, in one important aspect, only a kind of annex to the public school system, as I shall shortly point out to you. For the moment, let us consider, together, what to my mind constitutes the very hopeful struggle of the two possibilities: either that the motley and evasive spirit of public schools which has hitherto been fostered, will completely vanish, or that it will have to be completely purified and rejuvenated. And in order that I may not shock you with general propositions, let us first try to recall one of those public school experiences which we have all had, and from which we have all suffered. Under severe examination what, as a matter of fact, is the present system of teaching German in public schools? “ I shall first of all tell you what it should be. Everybody speaks and writes German as thoroughly badly as it is just possible to do so in an age of newspaper German: that is why the growing youth who happens to be both noble and gifted has to be taken by force and put under the glass shade of good taste and of severe linguistic discipline. If this is not possible, I would prefer in future that Latin be spoken; for I am ashamed of a language so bungled and vitiated. “ What would be the duty of a higher educational institution, in this respect, if not this—namely, with authority and dignified severity to put youths, neglected, as far as their own language is concerned, on the right path, and to cry to them: ‘Take your own language seriously! He who does not regard this matter as a sacred duty does not possess even the germ of a higher culture. From your attitude in this matter, from your treatment of your mother-tongue, we can judge how highly or how lowly you esteem art, and to what extent you are related to it. If you notice no physical loathing in yourselves when you meet with certain words and tricks of speech in our journalistic jargon, cease from striving after culture; for here in your immediate vicinity, at every moment of your life, while you are either speaking or writing, you have a touchstone for testing how difficult, how stupendous, the task of the cultured man is, and how very improbable it must be that many of you will ever attain to culture.’ “ In accordance with the spirit of this address, the teacher of German at a public school would be forced to call his pupil’s attention to thousands of details, and with the absolute certainty of good taste, to forbid their using such words and expressions, for instance, as: ‘beanspruchen,’ ‘vereinnahmen,’ ‘einer Sache Rechnung tragen,’ ‘die Initiative ergreifen,’ ‘selbstverst�ndlich,’[3] etc., cum t�dio in infinitum. The same teacher would also have to take our classical authors and show, line for line, how carefully and with what precision every expression has to be chosen when a writer has the correct feeling in his heart and has before his eyes a perfect conception of all he is writing. He would necessarily urge his pupils, time and again, to express the same thought ever more happily; nor would he have to abate in rigour until the less gifted in his class had contracted an unholy fear of their language, and the others had developed great enthusiasm for it.
“ Here then is a task for so-called ‘formal’ education[4] [the education tending to develop the mental faculties, as opposed to ‘material’ education,[5] which is intended to deal only with the acquisition of facts, e.g. history, mathematics, etc.], and one of the utmost value: but what do we find in the public school—that is to say, in the head-quarters of formal education? He who understands how to apply what he has heard here will also know what to think of the modern public school as a so-called educational institution. He will discover, for instance, that the public school, according to its fundamental principles, does not educate for the purposes of culture, but for the purposes of scholarship; and, further, that of late it seems to have adopted a course which indicates rather that it has even discarded scholarship in favour of journalism as the object of its exertions. This can be clearly seen from the way in which German is taught. “ Instead of that purely practical method of instruction by which the teacher accustoms his pupils to severe self-discipline in their own language, we find everywhere the rudiments of a historico-scholastic method of teaching the mother-tongue: that is to say, people deal with it as if it were a dead language and as if the present and future were under no obligations to it whatsoever. The historical method has become so universal in our time, that even the living body of the language is sacrificed for the sake of anatomical study. But this is precisely where culture begins—namely, in understanding how to treat the quick as something vital, and it is here too that the mission of the cultured teacher begins: in suppressing the urgent claims of ‘historical interests’ wherever it is above all necessary to do properly and not merely to know properly. Our mother-tongue, however, is a domain in which the pupil must learn how to do properly, and to this practical end, alone, the teaching of German is essential in our scholastic establishments. The historical method may certainly be a considerably easier and more comfortable one for the teacher; it also seems to be compatible with a much lower grade of ability and, in general, with a smaller display of energy and will on his part. But we shall find that this observation holds good in every department of pedagogic life: the simpler and more comfortable method always masquerades in the disguise of grand pretensions and stately titles; the really practical side, the doing, which should belong to culture and which, at bottom, is the more difficult side, meets only with disfavour and contempt. That is why the honest man must make himself and others quite clear concerning this quid pro quo. “ Now, apart from these learned incentives to a study of the language, what is there besides which the German teacher is wont to offer? How does he reconcile the spirit of his school with the spirit of the few that Germany can claim who are really cultured,—i.e. with the spirit of its classical poets and artists? This is a dark and thorny sphere, into which one cannot even bear a light without dread; but even here we shall conceal nothing from ourselves; for sooner or later the whole of it will have to be reformed. In the public school, the repulsive impress of our �sthetic journalism is stamped upon the still unformed minds of youths. Here, too, the teacher sows the seeds of that crude and wilful misinterpretation of the classics, which later on disports itself as art-criticism, and which is nothing but bumptious barbarity. Here the pupils learn to speak of our unique Schiller with the superciliousness of prigs; here they are taught to smile at the noblest and most German of his works—at the Marquis of Posa, at Max and Thekla—at these smiles German genius becomes incensed and a worthier posterity will blush. “ The last department in which the German teacher in a public school is at all active, which is often regarded as his sphere of highest activity, and is here and there even considered the pinnacle of public school education, is the so-called German composition. Owing to the very fact that in this department it is almost always the most gifted pupils who display the greatest eagerness, it ought to have been made clear how dangerously stimulating, precisely here, the task of the teacher must be. German composition makes an appeal to the individual, and the more strongly a pupil is conscious of his various qualities, the more personally will he do his German composition. This ‘personal doing’ is urged on with yet an additional fillip in some public schools by the choice of the subject, the strongest proof of which is, in my opinion, that even in the lower classes the non-pedagogic subject is set, by means of which the pupil is led to give a description of his life and of his development. Now, one has only to read the titles of the compositions set in a large number of public schools to be convinced that probably the large majority of pupils have to suffer their whole lives, through no fault of their own, owing to this premature demand for personal work— for the unripe procreation of thoughts. And how often are not all a man’s subsequent literary performances but a sad result of this pedagogic original sin against the intellect! “ Let us only think of what takes place at such an age in the production of such work. It is the first individual creation; the still undeveloped powers tend for the first time to crystallise; the staggering sensation produced by the demand for self-reliance imparts a seductive charm to these early performances, which is not only quite new, but which never returns. All the daring of nature is hauled out of its depths; all vanities—no longer constrained by mighty barriers—are allowed for the first time to assume a literary form: the young man, from that time forward, feels as if he had reached his consummation as a being not only able, but actually invited, to speak and to converse. The subject he selects obliges him either to express his judgment upon certain poetical works, to class historical persons together in a description of character, to discuss serious ethical problems quite independently, or even to turn the searchlight inwards, to throw its rays upon his own development and to make a critical report of himself: in short, a whole world of reflection is spread out before the astonished young man who, until then, had been almost unconscious, and is delivered up to him to be judged. “ Now let us try to picture the teacher’s usual attitude towards these first highly influential examples of original composition. What does he hold to be most reprehensible in this class of work? What does he call his pupil’s attention to?—To all excess in form or thought—that is to say, to all that which, at their age, is essentially characteristic and individual. Their really independent traits which, in response to this very premature excitation, can manifest themselves only in awkwardness, crudeness, and grotesque features,—in short, their individuality is reproved and rejected by the teacher in favour of an unoriginal decent average. On the other hand, uniform mediocrity gets peevish praise; for, as a rule, it is just the class of work likely to bore the teacher thoroughly. “ There may still be men who recognise a most absurd and most dangerous element of the public school curriculum in the whole farce of this German composition. Originality is demanded here: but the only shape in which it can manifest itself is rejected, and the ‘formal’ education that the system takes for granted is attained to only by a very limited number
of men who complete it at a ripe age. Here everybody without exception is regarded as gifted for literature and considered as capable of holding opinions concerning the most important questions and people, whereas the one aim which proper education should most zealously strive to achieve would be the suppression of all ridiculous claims to independent judgment, and the inculcation upon young men of obedience to the sceptre of genius. Here a pompous form of diction is taught in an age when every spoken or written word is a piece of barbarism. Now let us consider, besides, the danger of arousing the self-complacency which is so easily awakened in youths; let us think how their vanity must be flattered when they see their literary reflection for the first time in the mirror. Who, having seen all these effects at one glance, could any longer doubt whether all the faults of our public, literary, and artistic life were not stamped upon every fresh generation by the system we are examining: hasty and vain production, the disgraceful manufacture of books; complete want of style; the crude, characterless, or sadly swaggering method of expression; the loss of every �sthetic canon; the voluptuousness of anarchy and chaos—in short, the literary peculiarities of both our journalism and our scholarship. “ None but the very fewest are aware that, among many thousands, perhaps only one is justified in describing himself as literary, and that all others who at their own risk try to be so deserve to be met with Homeric laughter by all competent men as a reward for every sentence they have ever had printed;—for it is truly a spectacle meet for the gods to see a literary Hephaistos limping forward who would pretend to help us to something. To educate men to earnest and inexorable habits and views, in this respect, should be the highest aim of all mental training, whereas the general laisser aller of the ‘fine personality’ can be nothing else than the hall-mark of barbarism. From what I have said, however, it must be clear that, at least in the teaching of German, no thought is given to culture; something quite different is in view,—namely, the production of the afore-mentioned ‘free personality.’ And so long as German public schools prepare the road for outrageous and irresponsible scribbling, so long as they do not regard the immediate and practical discipline of speaking and writing as their most holy duty, so long as they treat the mother-tongue as if it were only a necessary evil or a dead body, I shall not regard these institutions as belonging to real culture. “ In regard to the language, what is surely least noticeable is any trace of the influence of classical examples: that is why, on the strength of this consideration alone, the so-called ‘classical education’ which is supposed to be provided by our public school, strikes me as something exceedingly doubtful and confused. For how could anybody, after having cast one glance at those examples, fail to see the great earnestness with which the Greek and the Roman regarded and treated his language, from his youth onwards—how is it possible to mistake one’s example on a point like this one?—provided, of course, that the classical Hellenic and Roman world really did hover before the educational plan of our public schools as the highest and most instructive of all morals—a fact I feel very much inclined to doubt. The claim put forward by public schools concerning the ‘classical education’ they provide seems to be more an awkward evasion than anything else; it is used whenever there is any question raised as to the competency of the public schools to impart culture and to educate. Classical education, indeed! It sounds so dignified! It confounds the aggressor and staves off the assault—for who could see to the bottom of this bewildering formula all at once? And this has long been the customary strategy of the public school: from whichever side the war-cry may come, it writes upon its shield—not overloaded with honours—one of those confusing catchwords, such as: ‘classical education,’ ‘formal education,’ ‘scientific education’:—three glorious things which are, however, unhappily at loggerheads, not only with themselves but among themselves, and are such that, if they were compulsorily brought together, would perforce bring forth a culture-monster. For a ‘classical education’ is something so unheard of, difficult and rare, and exacts such complicated talent, that only ingenuousness or impudence could put it forward as an attainable goal in our public schools. The words: ‘formal education’ belong to that crude kind of unphilosophical phraseology which one should do one’s utmost to get rid of; for there is no such thing as ‘the opposite of formal education.’ And he who regards ‘scientific education’ as the object of a public school thereby sacrifices ‘classical education’ and the so-called ‘formal education,’ at one stroke, as the scientific man and the cultured man belong to two different spheres which, though coming together at times in the same individual, are never reconciled. “ If we compare all three of these would-be aims of the public school with the actual facts to be observed in the present method of teaching German, we see immediately what they really amount to in practice,—that is to say, only to subterfuges for use in the fight and struggle for existence and, often enough, mere means wherewith to bewilder an opponent. For we are unable to detect any single feature in this teaching of German which in any way recalls the example of classical antiquity and its glorious methods of training in languages. ‘Formal education,’ however, which is supposed to be achieved by this method of teaching German, has been shown to be wholly at the pleasure of the ‘free personality,’ which is as good as saying that it is barbarism and anarchy. And as for the preparation in science, which is one of the consequences of this teaching, our Germanists will have to determine, in all justice, how little these learned beginnings in public schools have contributed to the splendour of their sciences, and how much the personality of individual university professors has done so.—Put briefly: the public school has hitherto neglected its most important and most urgent duty towards the very beginning of all real culture, which is the mother-tongue; but in so doing it has lacked the natural, fertile soil for all further efforts at culture. For only by means of stern, artistic, and careful discipline and habit, in a language, can the correct feeling for the greatness of our classical writers be strengthened. Up to the present their recognition by the public schools has been owing almost solely to the doubtful �sthetic hobbies of a few teachers or to the massive effects of certain of their tragedies and novels. But everybody should, himself, be aware of the difficulties of the language: he should have learnt them from experience: after long seeking and struggling he must reach the path our great poets trod in order to be able to realise how lightly and beautifully they trod it, and how stiffly and swaggeringly the others follow at their heels. “ Only by means of such discipline can the young man acquire that physical loathing for the beloved and much-admired ‘elegance’ of style of our newspaper manufacturers and novelists, and for the ‘ornate style’ of our literary men; by it alone is he irrevocably elevated at a stroke above a whole host of absurd questions and scruples, such, for instance, as whether Auerbach and Gutzkow are really poets, for his disgust at both will be so great that he will be unable to read them any longer, and thus the problem will be solved for him.
Let no one imagine that it is an easy matter to develop this feeling to the extent necessary in order to have this physical loathing; but let no one hope to reach sound �sthetic judgments along any other road than the thorny one of language, and by this I do not mean philological research, but self-discipline in one’s mother-tongue. “ Everybody who is in earnest in this matter will have the same sort of experience as the recruit in the army who is compelled to learn walking after having walked almost all his life as a dilettante or empiricist. It is a hard time: one almost fears that the tendons are going to snap and one ceases to hope that the artificial and consciously acquired movements and positions of the feet will ever be carried out with ease and comfort. It is painful to see how awkwardly and heavily one foot is set before the other, and one dreads that one may not only be unable to learn the new way of walking, but that one will forget how to walk at all. Then it suddenly become noticeable that a new habit and a second nature have been born of the practised movements, and that the assurance and strength of the old manner of walking returns with a little more grace: at this point one begins to realise how difficult walking is, and one feels in a position to laugh at the untrained empiricist or the elegant dilettante. Our ‘elegant’ writers, as their style shows, have never learnt ‘walking’ in this sense, and in our public schools, as our other writers show, no one learns walking either. Culture begins, however, with the correct movement of the language: and once it has properly begun, it begets that physical sensation in the presence of ‘elegant’ writers which is known by the name of ‘loathing.’ “ We recognise the fatal consequences of our present public schools, in that they are unable to inculcate severe and genuine culture, which should consist above all in obedience and habituation; and that, at their best, they much more often achieve a result by stimulating and kindling scientific tendencies, is shown by the hand which is so frequently seen uniting scholarship and barbarous taste, science and journalism. In a very large majority of cases to-day we can observe how sadly our scholars fall short of the standard of culture which the efforts of Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, and Winckelmann established; and this falling short shows itself precisely in the egregious errors which the men we speak of are exposed to, equally among literary historians—whether Gervinus or Julian Schmidt—as in any other company; everywhere, indeed, where men and women converse. It shows itself most frequently and painfully, however, in pedagogic spheres, in the literature of public schools. It can be proved that the only value that these men have in a real educational establishment has not been mentioned, much less generally recognised for half a century: their value as preparatory leaders and mystogogues of classical culture, guided by whose hands alone can the correct road leading to antiquity be found. “ Every so-called classical education can have but one natural starting-point—an artistic, earnest, and exact familiarity with the use of the mother-tongue: this, together with the secret of form, however, one can seldom attain to of one’s own accord, almost everybody requires those great leaders and tutors and must place himself in their hands. There is, however, no such thing as a classical education that could grow without this inferred love of form. Here, where the power of discerning form and barbarity gradually awakens, there appear the pinions which bear one to the only real home of culture—ancient Greece. If with the solitary help of those pinions we sought to reach those far-distant and diamond-studded walls encircling the stronghold of Hellenism, we should certainly not get very far; once more, therefore, we need the same leaders and tutors, our German classical writers, that we may be borne up, too, by the wing-strokes of their past endeavours—to the land of yearning, to Greece. “ Not a suspicion of this possible relationship between our classics and classical education seems to have pierced the antique walls of public schools. Philologists seem much more eagerly engaged in introducing Homer and Sophocles to the young souls of their pupils, in their own style, calling the result simply by the unchallenged euphemism: ‘classical education.’ Let every one’s own experience tell him what he had of Homer and Sophocles at the hands of such eager teachers. It is in this department that the greatest number of deepest deceptions occur, and whence misunderstandings are inadvertently spread. In German public schools I have never yet found a trace of what might really be called ‘classical education,’ and there is nothing surprising in this when one thinks of the way in which these institutions have emancipated themselves from German classical writers and the discipline of the German language. Nobody reaches antiquity by means of a leap into the dark, and yet the whole method of treating ancient writers in schools, the plain commentating and paraphrasing of our philological teachers, amounts to nothing more than a leap into the dark. “ The feeling for classical Hellenism is, as a matter of fact, such an exceptional outcome of the most energetic fight for culture and artistic talent that the public school could only have professed to awaken this feeling owing to a very crude misunderstanding. In what age? In an age which is led about blindly by the most sensational desires of the day, and which is not aware of the fact that, once that feeling for Hellenism is roused, it immediately becomes aggressive and must express itself by indulging in an incessant war with the so-called culture of the present. For the public school boy of to-day, the Hellenes as Hellenes are dead: yes, he gets some enjoyment out of Homer, but a novel by Spielhagen interests him much more: yes, he swallows Greek tragedy and comedy with a certain relish, but a thoroughly modern drama, like Freitag’s ‘Journalists,’ moves him in quite another fashion. In regard to all ancient authors he is rather inclined to speak after the manner of the �sthete, Hermann Grimm, who, on one occasion, at the end of a tortuous essay on the Venus of Milo, asks himself: ‘What does this goddess’s form mean to me? Of what use are the thoughts she suggests to me? Orestes and �dipus, Iphigenia and Antigone, what have they in common with my heart?’—No, my dear public school boy, the Venus of Milo does not concern you in any way, and concerns your teacher just as little—and that is the misfortune, that is the secret of the modern public school. Who will conduct you to the land of culture, if your leaders are blind and assume the position of seers notwithstanding? Which of you will ever attain to a true feeling for the sacred seriousness of art, if you are systematically spoiled, and taught to stutter independently instead of being taught to speak; to �stheticise on your own account, when you ought to be taught to approach works of art almost piously; to philosophise without assistance, while you ought to be compelled to listen to great thinkers. All this with the result that you remain eternally at a distance from antiquity and become the servants of the day. “ At all events, the most wholesome feature of our modern institutions is to be found in the earnestness with which the Latin and Greek languages are studied over a long course of years. In this way boys learn to respect a grammar, lexicons, and a language that conforms to fixed rules; in this department of public school work there is an exact knowledge of what
constitutes a fault, and no one is troubled with any thought of justifying himself every minute by appealing (as in the case of modern German) to various grammatical and orthographical vagaries and vicious forms. If only this respect for language did not hang in the air so, like a theoretical burden which one is pleased to throw off the moment one turns to one’s mother-tongue! More often than not, the classical master makes pretty short work of the mother-tongue; from the outset he treats it as a department of knowledge in which one is allowed that indolent ease with which the German treats everything that belongs to his native soil. The splendid practice afforded by translating from one language into another, which so improves and fertilises one’s artistic feeling for one’s own tongue, is, in the case of German, never conducted with that fitting categorical strictness and dignity which would be above all necessary in dealing with an undisciplined language. Of late, exercises of this kind have tended to decrease ever more and more: people are satisfied to know the foreign classical tongues, they would scorn being able to apply them. “ Here one gets another glimpse of the scholarly tendency of public schools: a phenomenon which throws much light upon the object which once animated them,—that is to say, the serious desire to cultivate the pupil. This belonged to the time of our great poets, those few really cultured Germans,—the time when the magnificent Friedrich August Wolf directed the new stream of classical thought, introduced from Greece and Rome by those men, into the heart of the public schools. Thanks to his bold start, a new order of public schools was established, which thenceforward was not to be merely a nursery for science, but, above all, the actual consecrated home of all higher and nobler culture. “ Of the many necessary measures which this change called into being, some of the most important have been transferred with lasting success to the modern regulations of public schools: the most important of all, however, did not succeed—the one demanding that the teacher, also, should be consecrated to the new spirit, so that the aim of the public school has meanwhile considerably departed from the original plan laid down by Wolf, which was the cultivation of the pupil. The old estimate of scholarship and scholarly culture, as an absolute, which Wolf overcame, seems after a slow and spiritless struggle rather to have taken the place of the culture-principle of more recent introduction, and now claims its former exclusive rights, though not with the same frankness, but disguised and with features veiled. And the reason why it was impossible to make public schools fall in with the magnificent plan of classical culture lay in the un-German, almost foreign or cosmopolitan nature of these efforts in the cause of education: in the belief that it was possible to remove the native soil from under a man’s feet and that he should still remain standing; in the illusion that people can spring direct, without bridges, into the strange Hellenic world, by abjuring German and the German mind in general. “ Of course one must know how to trace this Germanic spirit to its lair beneath its many modern dressings, or even beneath heaps of ruins; one must love it so that one is not ashamed of it in its stunted form, and one must above all be on one’s guard against confounding it with what now disports itself proudly as ‘Up-to-date German culture.’ The German spirit is very far from being on friendly times with this up-to-date culture: and precisely in those spheres where the latter complains of a lack of culture the real German spirit has survived, though perhaps not always with a graceful, but more often an ungraceful, exterior. On the other hand, that which now grandiloquently assumes the title of ‘German culture’ is a sort of cosmopolitan aggregate, which bears the same relation to the German spirit as Journalism does to Schiller or Meyerbeer to Beethoven: here the strongest influence at work is the fundamentally and thoroughly un-German civilisation of France, which is aped neither with talent nor with taste, and the imitation of which gives the society, the press, the art, and the literary style of Germany their pharisaical character. Naturally the copy nowhere produces the really artistic effect which the original, grown out of the heart of Roman civilisation, is able to produce almost to this day in France. Let any one who wishes to see the full force of this contrast compare our most noted novelists with the less noted ones of France or Italy: he will recognise in both the same doubtful tendencies and aims, as also the same still more doubtful means, but in France he will find them coupled with artistic earnestness, at least with grammatical purity, and often with beauty, while in their every feature he will recognise the echo of a corresponding social culture. In Germany, on the other hand, they will strike him as unoriginal, flabby, filled with dressing-gown thoughts and expressions, unpleasantly spread out, and therewithal possessing no background of social form. At the most, owing to their scholarly mannerisms and display of knowledge, he will be reminded of the fact that in Latin countries it is the artistically-trained man, and that in Germany it is the abortive scholar, who becomes a journalist. With this would-be German and thoroughly unoriginal culture, the German can nowhere reckon upon victory: the Frenchman and the Italian will always get the better of him in this respect, while, in regard to the clever imitation of a foreign culture, the Russian, above all, will always be his superior. “ We are therefore all the more anxious to hold fast to that German spirit which revealed itself in the German Reformation, and in German music, and which has shown its enduring and genuine strength in the enormous courage and severity of German philosophy and in the loyalty of the German soldier, which has been tested quite recently. From it we expect a victory over that ‘up-to-date’ pseudo-culture which is now the fashion. What we should hope for the future is that schools may draw the real school of culture into this struggle, and kindle the flame of enthusiasm in the younger generation, more particularly in public schools, for that which is truly German; and in this way so-called classical education will resume its natural place and recover its one possible starting-point. “ A thorough reformation and purification of the public school can only be the outcome of a profound and powerful reformation and purification of the German spirit. It is a very complex and difficult task to find the border-line which joins the heart of the Germanic spirit with the genius of Greece. Not, however, before the noblest needs of genuine German genius snatch at the hand of this genius of Greece as at a firm post in the torrent of barbarity, not before a devouring yearning for this genius of Greece takes possession of German genius, and not before that view of the Greek home, on which Schiller and Goethe, after enormous exertions, were able to feast their eyes, has become the Mecca of the best and most gifted men, will the aim of classical education in public schools acquire any definition; and they at least will not be to blame who teach ever so little science and learning in public schools, in order to keep a definite and at the same time ideal aim in their eyes, and to rescue their pupils from that glistening phantom which now allows itself to be called ‘culture’
and ‘education.’ This is the sad plight of the public school of to-day: the narrowest views remain in a certain measure right, because no one seems able to reach or, at least, to indicate the spot where all these views culminate in error.” “ No one?” the philosopher’s pupil inquired with a slight quaver in his voice; and both men were silent. FOOTNOTES: [3] It is not practicable to translate these German solecisms by similar instances of English solecisms. The reader who is interested in the subject will find plenty of material in a book like the Oxford King’s English. [4] German: Formelle Bildung. [5] German: Materielle Bildung. THIRD LECTURE. (Delivered on the 27th of February 1872.) Ladies and Gentlemen,—At the close of my last lecture, the conversation to which I was a listener, and the outlines of which, as I clearly recollect them, I am now trying to lay before you, was interrupted by a long and solemn pause. Both the philosopher and his companion sat silent, sunk in deep dejection: the peculiarly critical state of that important educational institution, the German public school, lay upon their souls like a heavy burden, which one single, well-meaning individual is not strong enough to remove, and the multitude, though strong, not well meaning enough. Our solitary thinkers were perturbed by two facts: by clearly perceiving on the one hand that what might rightly be called “ classical education” was now only a far-off ideal, a castle in the air, which could not possibly be built as a reality on the foundations of our present educational system, and that, on the other hand, what was now, with customary and unopposed euphemism, pointed to as “ classical education” could only claim the value of a pretentious illusion, the best effect of which was that the expression “ classical education” still lived on and had not yet lost its pathetic sound. These two worthy men saw clearly, by the system of instruction in vogue, that the time was not yet ripe for a higher culture, a culture founded upon that of the ancients: the neglected state of linguistic instruction; the forcing of students into learned historical paths, instead of giving them a practical training; the connection of certain practices, encouraged in the public schools, with the objectionable spirit of our journalistic publicity—all these easily perceptible phenomena of the teaching of German led to the painful certainty that the most beneficial of those forces which have come down to us from classical antiquity are not yet known in our public schools: forces which would train students for the struggle against the barbarism of the present age, and which will perhaps once more transform the public schools into the arsenals and workshops of this struggle. On the other hand, it would seem in the meantime as if the spirit of antiquity, in its fundamental principles, had already been driven away from the portals of the public schools, and as if here also the gates were thrown open as widely as possible to the be-flattered and pampered type of our present self-styled “ German culture.” And if the solitary talkers caught a glimpse of a single ray of hope, it was that things would have to become still worse, that what was as yet divined only by the few would soon be clearly perceived by the many, and that then the time for honest and resolute men for the earnest consideration of the scope of the education of the masses would not be far distant. After a few minutes’ silent reflection, the philosopher’s companion turned to him and said: “ You used to hold out hopes to me, but now you have done more: you have widened my intelligence, and with it my strength and courage: now indeed can I look on the field of battle with more hardihood, now indeed do I repent of my too hasty flight. We want nothing for ourselves, and it should be nothing to us how many individuals may fall in this battle, or whether we ourselves may be among the first. Just because we take this matter so seriously, we should not take our own poor selves so seriously: at the very moment we are falling some one else will grasp the banner of our faith. I will not even consider whether I am strong enough for such a fight, whether I can offer sufficient resistance; it may even be an honourable death to fall to the accompaniment of the mocking laughter of such enemies, whose seriousness has frequently seemed to us to be something ridiculous. When I think how my contemporaries prepared themselves for the highest posts in the scholastic profession, as I myself have done, then I know how we often laughed at the exact contrary, and grew serious over something quite different–-“ “ Now, my friend,” interrupted the philosopher, laughingly, “ you speak as one who would fain dive into the water without being able to swim, and who fears something even more than the mere drowning; not being drowned, but laughed at. But being laughed at should be the very last thing for us to dread; for we are in a sphere where there are too many truths to tell, too many formidable, painful, unpardonable truths, for us to escape hatred, and only fury here and there will give rise to some sort of embarrassed laughter. Just think of the innumerable crowd of teachers, who, in all good faith, have assimilated the system of education which has prevailed up to the present, that they may cheerfully and without overmuch deliberation carry it further on. What do you think it will seem like to these men when they hear of projects from which they are excluded beneficio natur�; of commands which their mediocre abilities are totally unable to carry out; of hopes which find no echo in them; of battles the war-cries of which they do not understand, and in the fighting of which they can take part only as dull and obtuse rank and file? But, without exaggeration, that must necessarily be the position of practically all the teachers in our higher educational establishments: and indeed we cannot wonder at this when we consider how such a teacher originates, how he becomes a teacher of such high status. Such a large number of higher educational establishments are now to be found everywhere that far more teachers will continue to be required for them than the nature of even a highly-gifted people can produce; and thus an inordinate stream of undesirables flows into these institutions, who, however, by their preponderating numbers and their instinct of ‘similis simile gaudet’ gradually come to determine the nature of these institutions. There may be a few people, hopelessly unfamiliar with pedagogical matters, who believe that our present profusion of public schools and
teachers, which is manifestly out of all proportion, can be changed into a real profusion, an ubertas ingenii, merely by a few rules and regulations, and without any reduction in the number of these institutions. But we may surely be unanimous in recognising that by the very nature of things only an exceedingly small number of people are destined for a true course of education, and that a much smaller number of higher educational establishments would suffice for their further development, but that, in view of the present large numbers of educational institutions, those for whom in general such institutions ought only to be established must feel themselves to be the least facilitated in their progress. “ The same holds good in regard to teachers. It is precisely the best teachers—those who, generally speaking, judged by a high standard, are worthy of this honourable name— who are now perhaps the least fitted, in view of the present standing of our public schools, for the education of these unselected youths, huddled together in a confused heap; but who must rather, to a certain extent, keep hidden from them the best they could give: and, on the other hand, by far the larger number of these teachers feel themselves quite at home in these institutions, as their moderate abilities stand in a kind of harmonious relationship to the dullness of their pupils. It is from this majority that we hear the ever-resounding call for the establishment of new public schools and higher educational institutions: we are living in an age which, by ringing the changes on its deafening and continual cry, would certainly give one the impression that there was an unprecedented thirst for culture which eagerly sought to be quenched. But it is just at this point that one should learn to hear aright: it is here, without being disconcerted by the thundering noise of the education-mongers, that we must confront those who talk so tirelessly about the educational necessities of their time. Then we should meet with a strange disillusionment, one which we, my good friend, have often met with: those blatant heralds of educational needs, when examined at close quarters, are suddenly seen to be transformed into zealous, yea, fanatical opponents of true culture, i.e. all those who hold fast to the aristocratic nature of the mind; for, at bottom, they regard as their goal the emancipation of the masses from the mastery of the great few; they seek to overthrow the most sacred hierarchy in the kingdom of the intellect—the servitude of the masses, their submissive obedience, their instinct of loyalty to the rule of genius. “ I have long accustomed myself to look with caution upon those who are ardent in the cause of the so-called ‘education of the people’ in the common meaning of the phrase; since for the most part they desire for themselves, consciously or unconsciously, absolutely unlimited freedom, which must inevitably degenerate into something resembling the saturnalia of barbaric times, and which the sacred hierarchy of nature will never grant them. They were born to serve and to obey; and every moment in which their limping or crawling or broken-winded thoughts are at work shows us clearly out of which clay nature moulded them, and what trade mark she branded thereon. The education of the masses cannot, therefore, be our aim; but rather the education of a few picked men for great and lasting works. We well know that a just posterity judges the collective intellectual state of a time only by those few great and lonely figures of the period, and gives its decision in accordance with the manner in which they are recognised, encouraged, and honoured, or, on the other hand, in which they are snubbed, elbowed aside, and kept down. What is called the ‘education of the masses’ cannot be accomplished except with difficulty; and even if a system of universal compulsory education be applied, they can only be reached outwardly: those individual lower levels where, generally speaking, the masses come into contact with culture, where the people nourishes its religious instinct, where it poetises its mythological images, where it keeps up its faith in its customs, privileges, native soil, and language—all these levels can scarcely be reached by direct means, and in any case only by violent demolition. And, in serious matters of this kind, to hasten forward the progress of the education of the people means simply the postponement of this violent demolition, and the maintenance of that wholesome unconsciousness, that sound sleep, of the people, without which counter-action and remedy no culture, with the exhausting strain and excitement of its own actions, can make any headway. “ We know, however, what the aspiration is of those who would disturb the healthy slumber of the people, and continually call out to them: ‘Keep your eyes open! Be sensible! Be wise!’ we know the aim of those who profess to satisfy excessive educational requirements by means of an extraordinary increase in the number of educational institutions and the conceited tribe of teachers originated thereby. These very people, using these very means, are fighting against the natural hierarchy in the realm of the intellect, and destroying the roots of all those noble and sublime plastic forces which have their material origin in the unconsciousness of the people, and which fittingly terminate in the procreation of genius and its due guidance and proper training. It is only in the simile of the mother that we can grasp the meaning and the responsibility of the true education of the people in respect to genius: its real origin is not to be found in such education; it has, so to speak, only a metaphysical source, a metaphysical home. But for the genius to make his appearance; for him to emerge from among the people; to portray the reflected picture, as it were, the dazzling brilliancy of the peculiar colours of this people; to depict the noble destiny of a people in the similitude of an individual in a work which will last for all time, thereby making his nation itself eternal, and redeeming it from the ever-shifting element of transient things: all this is possible for the genius only when he has been brought up and come to maturity in the tender care of the culture of a people; whilst, on the other hand, without this sheltering home, the genius will not, generally speaking, be able to rise to the height of his eternal flight, but will at an early moment, like a stranger weather-driven upon a bleak, snow-covered desert, slink away from the inhospitable land.” “ You astonish me with such a metaphysics of genius,” said the teacher’s companion, “ and I have only a hazy conception of the accuracy of your similitude. On the other hand, I fully understand what you have said about the surplus of public schools and the corresponding surplus of higher grade teachers; and in this regard I myself have collected some information which assures me that the educational tendency of the public school must right itself by this very surplus of teachers who have really nothing at all to do with education, and who are called into existence and pursue this path solely because there is a demand for them. Every man who, in an unexpected moment of enlightenment, has convinced himself of the singularity and inaccessibility of Hellenic antiquity, and has warded off this conviction after an exhausting struggle—every such man knows that the door leading to this enlightenment will never remain open to all comers; and he deems it absurd, yea disgraceful, to use the Greeks as he would any other tool he employs when following his profession or earning his living, shamelessly fumbling with coarse hands amidst the relics of these holy men. This brazen and vulgar feeling is, however, most common in the profession from
which the largest numbers of teachers for the public schools are drawn, the philological profession, wherefore the reproduction and continuation of such a feeling in the public school will not surprise us. “ Just look at the younger generation of philologists: how seldom we see in them that humble feeling that we, when compared with such a world as it was, have no right to exist at all: how coolly and fearlessly, as compared with us, did that young brood build its miserable nests in the midst of the magnificent temples! A powerful voice from every nook and cranny should ring in the ears of those who, from the day they begin their connection with the university, roam at will with such self-complacency and shamelessness among the aweinspiring relics of that noble civilisation: ‘Hence, ye uninitiated, who will never be initiated; fly away in silence and shame from these sacred chambers!’ But this voice speaks in vain; for one must to some extent be a Greek to understand a Greek curse of excommunication. But these people I am speaking of are so barbaric that they dispose of these relics to suit themselves: all their modern conveniences and fancies are brought with them and concealed among those ancient pillars and tombstones, and it gives rise to great rejoicing when somebody finds, among the dust and cobwebs of antiquity, something that he himself had slyly hidden there not so very long before. One of them makes verses and takes care to consult Hesychius’ Lexicon. Something there immediately assures him that he is destined to be an imitator of �schylus, and leads him to believe, indeed, that he ‘has something in common with’ �schylus: the miserable poetaster! Yet another peers with the suspicious eye of a policeman into every contradiction, even into the shadow of every contradiction, of which Homer was guilty: he fritters away his life in tearing Homeric rags to tatters and sewing them together again, rags that he himself was the first to filch from the poet’s kingly robe. A third feels ill at ease when examining all the mysterious and orgiastic sides of antiquity: he makes up his mind once and for all to let the enlightened Apollo alone pass without dispute, and to see in the Athenian a gay and intelligent but nevertheless somewhat immoral Apollonian. What a deep breath he draws when he succeeds in raising yet another dark corner of antiquity to the level of his own intelligence!—when, for example, he discovers in Pythagoras a colleague who is as enthusiastic as himself in arguing about politics. Another racks his brains as to why �dipus was condemned by fate to perform such abominable deeds—killing his father, marrying his mother. Where lies the blame! Where the poetic justice! Suddenly it occurs to him: �dipus was a passionate fellow, lacking all Christian gentleness—he even fell into an unbecoming rage when Tiresias called him a monster and the curse of the whole country. Be humble and meek! was what Sophocles tried to teach, otherwise you will have to marry your mothers and kill your fathers! Others, again, pass their lives in counting the number of verses written by Greek and Roman poets, and are delighted with the proportions 7:13 = 14:26. Finally, one of them brings forward his solution of a question, such as the Homeric poems considered from the standpoint of prepositions, and thinks he has drawn the truth from the bottom of the well with ??? and ? at?. All of them, however, with the most widely separated aims in view, dig and burrow in Greek soil with a restlessness and a blundering awkwardness that must surely be painful to a true friend of antiquity: and thus it comes to pass that I should like to take by the hand every talented or talentless man who feels a certain professional inclination urging him on to the study of antiquity, and harangue him as follows: ‘Young sir, do you know what perils threaten you, with your little stock of school learning, before you become a man in the full sense of the word? Have you heard that, according to Aristotle, it is by no means a tragic death to be slain by a statue? Does that surprise you? Know, then, that for centuries philologists have been trying, with ever-failing strength, to re-erect the fallen statue of Greek antiquity, but without success; for it is a colossus around which single individual men crawl like pygmies. The leverage of the united representatives of modern culture is utilised for the purpose; but it invariably happens that the huge column is scarcely more than lifted from the ground when it falls down again, crushing beneath its weight the luckless wights under it. That, however, may be tolerated, for every being must perish by some means or other; but who is there to guarantee that during all these attempts the statue itself will not break in pieces! The philologists are being crushed by the Greeks—perhaps we can put up with this—but antiquity itself threatens to be crushed by these philologists! Think that over, you easy-going young man; and turn back, lest you too should not be an iconoclast!’” “ Indeed,” said the philosopher, laughing, “ there are many philologists who have turned back as you so much desire, and I notice a great contrast with my own youthful experience. Consciously or unconsciously, large numbers of them have concluded that it is hopeless and useless for them to come into direct contact with classical antiquity, hence they are inclined to look upon this study as barren, superseded, out-of-date. This herd has turned with much greater zest to the science of language: here in this wide expanse of virgin soil, where even the most mediocre gifts can be turned to account, and where a kind of insipidity and dullness is even looked upon as decided talent, with the novelty and uncertainty of methods and the constant danger of making fantastic mistakes—here, where dull regimental routine and discipline are desiderata—here the newcomer is no longer frightened by the majestic and warning voice that rises from the ruins of antiquity: here every one is welcomed with open arms, including even him who never arrived at any uncommon impression or noteworthy thought after a perusal of Sophocles and Aristophanes, with the result that they end in an etymological tangle, or are seduced into collecting the fragments of out-of-theway dialects—and their time is spent in associating and dissociating, collecting and scattering, and running hither and thither consulting books. And such a usefully employed philologist would now fain be a teacher! He now undertakes to teach the youth of the public schools something about the ancient writers, although he himself has read them without any particular impression, much less with insight! What a dilemma! Antiquity has said nothing to him, consequently he has nothing to say about antiquity. A sudden thought strikes him: why is he a skilled philologist at all! Why did these authors write Latin and Greek! And with a light heart he immediately begins to etymologise with Homer, calling Lithuanian or Ecclesiastical Slavonic, or, above all, the sacred Sanskrit, to his assistance: as if Greek lessons were merely the excuse for a general introduction to the study of languages, and as if Homer were lacking in only one respect, namely, not being written in pre-Indogermanic. Whoever is acquainted with our present public schools well knows what a wide gulf separates their teachers from classicism, and how, from a feeling of this want, comparative philology and allied professions have increased their numbers to such an unheard-of degree.” “ What I mean is,” said the other, “ it would depend upon whether a teacher of classical culture did not confuse his Greeks and Romans with the other peoples, the barbarians,
whether he could never put Greek and Latin on a level with other languages: so far as his classicalism is concerned, it is a matter of indifference whether the framework of these languages concurs with or is in any way related to the other languages: such a concurrence does not interest him at all; his real concern is with what is not common to both, with what shows him that those two peoples were not barbarians as compared with the others—in so far, of course, as he is a true teacher of culture and models himself after the majestic patterns of the classics.” “ I may be wrong,” said the philosopher, “ but I suspect that, owing to the way in which Latin and Greek are now taught in schools, the accurate grasp of these languages, the ability to speak and write them with ease, is lost, and that is something in which my own generation distinguished itself—a generation, indeed, whose few survivers have by this time grown old; whilst, on the other hand, the present teachers seem to impress their pupils with the genetic and historical importance of the subject to such an extent that, at best, their scholars ultimately turn into little Sanskritists, etymological spitfires, or reckless conjecturers; but not one of them can read his Plato or Tacitus with pleasure, as we old folk can. The public schools may still be seats of learning: not, however of the learning which, as it were, is only the natural and involuntary auxiliary of a culture that is directed towards the noblest ends; but rather of that culture which might be compared to the hypertrophical swelling of an unhealthy body. The public schools are certainly the seats of this obesity, if, indeed, they have not degenerated into the abodes of that elegant barbarism which is boasted of as being ‘German culture of the present!’” “ But,” asked the other, “ what is to become of that large body of teachers who have not been endowed with a true gift for culture, and who set up as teachers merely to gain a livelihood from the profession, because there is a demand for them, because a superfluity of schools brings with it a superfluity of teachers? Where shall they go when antiquity peremptorily orders them to withdraw? Must they not be sacrificed to those powers of the present who, day after day, call out to them from the never-ending columns of the press ‘We are culture! We are education! We are at the zenith! We are the apexes of the pyramids! We are the aims of universal history!’—when they hear the seductive promises, when the shameful signs of non-culture, the plebeian publicity of the so-called ‘interests of culture’ are extolled for their benefit in magazines and newspapers as an entirely new and the best possible, full-grown form of culture! Whither shall the poor fellows fly when they feel the presentiment that these promises are not true—where but to the most obtuse, sterile scientificality, that here the shriek of culture may no longer be audible to them? Pursued in this way, must they not end, like the ostrich, by burying their heads in the sand? Is it not a real happiness for them, buried as they are among dialects, etymologies, and conjectures, to lead a life like that of the ants, even though they are miles removed from true culture, if only they can close their ears tightly and be deaf to the voice of the ‘elegant’ culture of the time.” “ You are right, my friend,” said the philosopher, “ but whence comes the urgent necessity for a surplus of schools for culture, which further gives rise to the necessity for a surplus of teachers?—when we so clearly see that the demand for a surplus springs from a sphere which is hostile to culture, and that the consequences of this surplus only lead to non-culture. Indeed, we can discuss this dire necessity only in so far as the modern State is willing to discuss these things with us, and is prepared to follow up its demands by force: which phenomenon certainly makes the same impression upon most people as if they were addressed by the eternal law of things. For the rest, a ‘Culture-State,’ to use the current expression, which makes such demands, is rather a novelty, and has only come to a ‘self-understanding’ within the last half century, i.e. in a period when (to use the favourite popular word) so many ‘self-understood’ things came into being, but which are in themselves not ‘self-understood’ at all. This right to higher education has been taken so seriously by the most powerful of modern States—Prussia—that the objectionable principle it has adopted, taken in connection with the well-known daring and hardihood of this State, is seen to have a menacing and dangerous consequence for the true German spirit; for we see endeavours being made in this quarter to raise the public school, formally systematised, up to the socalled ‘level of the time.’ Here is to be found all that mechanism by means of which as many scholars as possible are urged on to take up courses of public school training: here, indeed, the State has its most powerful inducement—the concession of certain privileges respecting military service, with the natural consequence that, according to the unprejudiced evidence of statistical officials, by this, and by this only, can we explain the universal congestion of all Prussian public schools, and the urgent and continual need for new ones. What more can the State do for a surplus of educational institutions than bring all the higher and the majority of the lower civil service appointments, the right of entry to the universities, and even the most influential military posts into close connection with the public school: and all this in a country where both universal military service and the highest offices of the State unconsciously attract all gifted natures to them. The public school is here looked upon as an honourable aim, and every one who feels himself urged on to the sphere of government will be found on his way to it. This is a new and quite original occurrence: the State assumes the attitude of a mystogogue of culture, and, whilst it promotes its own ends, it obliges every one of its servants not to appear in its presence without the torch of universal State education in their hands, by the flickering light of which they may again recognise the State as the highest goal, as the reward of all their strivings after education. “ Now this last phenomenon should indeed surprise them; it should remind them of that allied, slowly understood tendency of a philosophy which was formerly promoted for reasons of State, namely, the tendency of the Hegelian philosophy: yea, it would perhaps be no exaggeration to say that, in the subordination of all strivings after education to reasons of State, Prussia has appropriated, with success, the principle and the useful heirloom of the Hegelian philosophy, whose apotheosis of the State in this subordination certainly reaches its height.” “ But,” said the philosopher’s companion, “ what purposes can the State have in view with such a strange aim? For that it has some State objects in view is seen in the manner in which the conditions of Prussian schools are admired by, meditated upon, and occasionally imitated by other States. These other States obviously presuppose something here that, if adopted, would tend towards the maintenance and power of the State, like our well-known and popular conscription. Where everyone proudly wears his soldier’s uniform at regular intervals, where almost every one has absorbed a uniform type of national culture through the public schools, enthusiastic hyperboles may well be uttered concerning the systems
employed in former times, and a form of State omnipotence which was attained only in antiquity, and which almost every young man, by both instinct and training, thinks it is the crowning glory and highest aim of human beings to reach.” “ Such a comparison,” said the philosopher, “ would be quite hyperbolical, and would not hobble along on one leg only. For, indeed, the ancient State emphatically did not share the utilitarian point of view of recognising as culture only what was directly useful to the State itself, and was far from wishing to destroy those impulses which did not seem to be immediately applicable. For this very reason the profound Greek had for the State that strong feeling of admiration and thankfulness which is so distasteful to modern men; because he clearly recognised not only that without such State protection the germs of his culture could not develop, but also that all his inimitable and perennial culture had flourished so luxuriantly under the wise and careful guardianship of the protection afforded by the State. The State was for his culture not a supervisor, regulator, and watchman, but a vigorous and muscular companion and friend, ready for war, who accompanied his noble, admired, and, as it were, ethereal friend through disagreeable reality, earning his thanks therefor. This, however, does not happen when a modern State lays claim to such hearty gratitude because it renders such chivalrous service to German culture and art: for in this regard its past is as ignominious as its present, as a proof of which we have but to think of the manner in which the memory of our great poets and artists is celebrated in German cities, and how the highest objects of these German masters are supported on the part of the State. “ There must therefore be peculiar circumstances surrounding both this purpose towards which the State is tending, and which always promotes what is here called ‘education’; and surrounding likewise the culture thus promoted, which subordinates itself to this purpose of the State. With the real German spirit and the education derived therefrom, such as I have slowly outlined for you, this purpose of the State is at war, hiddenly or openly: the spirit of education, which is welcomed and encouraged with such interest by the State, and owing to which the schools of this country are so much admired abroad, must accordingly originate in a sphere that never comes into contact with this true German spirit: with that spirit which speaks to us so wondrously from the inner heart of the German Reformation, German music, and German philosophy, and which, like a noble exile, is regarded with such indifference and scorn by the luxurious education afforded by the State. This spirit is a stranger: it passes by in solitary sadness, and far away from it the censer of pseudo-culture is swung backwards and forwards, which, amidst the acclamations of ‘educated’ teachers and journalists, arrogates to itself its name and privileges, and metes out insulting treatment to the word ‘German.’ Why does the State require that surplus of educational institutions, of teachers? Why this education of the masses on such an extended scale? Because the true German spirit is hated, because the aristocratic nature of true culture is feared, because the people endeavour in this way to drive single great individuals into self-exile, so that the claims of the masses to education may be, so to speak, planted down and carefully tended, in order that the many may in this way endeavour to escape the rigid and strict discipline of the few great leaders, so that the masses may be persuaded that they can easily find the path for themselves—following the guiding star of the State! “ A new phenomenon! The State as the guiding star of culture! In the meantime one thing consoles me: this German spirit, which people are combating so much, and for which they have substituted a gaudily attired locum tenens, this spirit is brave: it will fight and redeem itself into a purer age; noble, as it is now, and victorious, as it one day will be, it will always preserve in its mind a certain pitiful toleration of the State, if the latter, hard-pressed in the hour of extremity, secures such a pseudo-culture as its associate. For what, after all, do we know about the difficult task of governing men, i.e. to keep law, order, quietness, and peace among millions of boundlessly egoistical, unjust, unreasonable, dishonourable, envious, malignant, and hence very narrow-minded and perverse human beings; and thus to protect the few things that the State has conquered for itself against covetous neighbours and jealous robbers? Such a hard-pressed State holds out its arms to any associate, grasps at any straw; and when such an associate does introduce himself with flowery eloquence, when he adjudges the State, as Hegel did, to be an ‘absolutely complete ethical organism,’ the be-all and end-all of every one’s education, and goes on to indicate how he himself can best promote the interests of the State—who will be surprised if, without further parley, the State falls upon his neck and cries aloud in a barbaric voice of full conviction: ‘Yes! Thou art education! Thou art indeed culture!’” FOURTH LECTURE. (Delivered on the 5th of March 1872.) LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,—Now that you have followed my tale up to this point, and that we have made ourselves joint masters of the solitary, remote, and at times abusive duologue of the philosopher and his companion, I sincerely hope that you, like strong swimmers, are ready to proceed on the second half of our journey, especially as I can promise you that a few other marionettes will appear in the puppet-play of my adventure, and that if up to the present you have only been able to do little more than endure what I have been telling you, the waves of my story will now bear you more quickly and easily towards the end. In other words we have now come to a turning, and it would be advisable for us to take a short glance backwards to see what we think we have gained from such a varied conversation. “ Remain in your present position,” the philosopher seemed to say to his companion, “ for you may cherish hopes. It is more and more clearly evident that we have no educational institutions at all; but that we ought to have them. Our public schools—established, it would seem, for this high object—have either become the nurseries of a reprehensible culture which repels the true culture with profound hatred—i.e. a true, aristocratic culture, founded upon a few carefully chosen minds; or they foster a micrological and sterile learning which, while it is far removed from culture, has at least this merit, that it avoids that reprehensible culture as well as the true culture.” The philosopher had particularly drawn his companion’s attention to the strange corruption which must have entered into the heart of culture when the State thought itself capable of tyrannising over it and of attaining its ends through it; and further when the State, in conjunction with this culture, struggled against other hostile forces as well as against the spirit which the philosopher ventured to call the “ true German spirit.” This spirit, linked to the Greeks by the noblest ties, and shown by its past history to have been steadfast and courageous, pure and lofty in its aims, its faculties
qualifying it for the high task of freeing modern man from the curse of modernity—this spirit is condemned to live apart, banished from its inheritance. But when its slow, painful tones of woe resound through the desert of the present, then the overladen and gaily-decked caravan of culture is pulled up short, horror-stricken. We must not only astonish, but terrify—such was the philosopher’s opinion: not to fly shamefully away, but to take the offensive, was his advice; but he especially counselled his companion not to ponder too anxiously over the individual from whom, through a higher instinct, this aversion for the present barbarism proceeded, “ Let it perish: the Pythian god had no difficulty in finding a new tripod, a second Pythia, so long, at least, as the mystic cold vapours rose from the earth.” The philosopher once more began to speak: “ Be careful to remember, my friend,” said he, “ there are two things you must not confuse. A man must learn a great deal that he may live and take part in the struggle for existence; but everything that he as an individual learns and does with this end in view has nothing whatever to do with culture. This latter only takes its beginning in a sphere that lies far above the world of necessity, indigence, and struggle for existence. The question now is to what extent a man values his ego in comparison with other egos, how much of his strength he uses up in the endeavour to earn his living. Many a one, by stoically confining his needs within a narrow compass, will shortly and easily reach the sphere in which he may forget, and, as it were, shake off his ego, so that he can enjoy perpetual youth in a solar system of timeless and impersonal things. Another widens the scope and needs of his ego as much as possible, and builds the mausoleum of this ego in vast proportions, as if he were prepared to fight and conquer that terrible adversary, Time. In this instinct also we may see a longing for immortality: wealth and power, wisdom, presence of mind, eloquence, a flourishing outward aspect, a renowned name —all these are merely turned into the means by which an insatiable, personal will to live craves for new life, with which, again, it hankers after an eternity that is at last seen to be illusory. “ But even in this highest form of the ego, in the enhanced needs of such a distended and, as it were, collective individual, true culture is never touched upon; and if, for example, art is sought after, only its disseminating and stimulating actions come into prominence, i.e. those which least give rise to pure and noble art, and most of all to low and degraded forms of it. For in all his efforts, however great and exceptional they seem to the onlooker, he never succeeds in freeing himself from his own hankering and restless personality: that illuminated, ethereal sphere where one may contemplate without the obstruction of one’s own personality continually recedes from him—and thus, let him learn, travel, and collect as he may, he must always live an exiled life at a remote distance from a higher life and from true culture. For true culture would scorn to contaminate itself with the needy and covetous individual; it well knows how to give the slip to the man who would fain employ it as a means of attaining to egoistic ends; and if any one cherishes the belief that he has firmly secured it as a means of livelihood, and that he can procure the necessities of life by its sedulous cultivation, then it suddenly steals away with noiseless steps and an air of derisive mockery.[6] “ I will thus ask you, my friend, not to confound this culture, this sensitive, fastidious, ethereal goddess, with that useful maid-of-all-work which is also called ‘culture,’ but which is only the intellectual servant and counsellor of one’s practical necessities, wants, and means of livelihood Every kind of training, however, which holds out the prospect of bread-winning as its end and aim, is not a training for culture as we understand the word; but merely a collection of precepts and directions to show how, in the struggle for existence, a man may preserve and protect his own person. It may be freely admitted that for the great majority of men such a course of instruction is of the highest importance; and the more arduous the struggle is the more intensely must the young man strain every nerve to utilise his strength to the best advantage. “ But—let no one think for a moment that the schools which urge him on to this struggle and prepare him for it are in any way seriously to be considered as establishments of culture. They are institutions which teach one how to take part in the battle of life; whether they promise to turn out civil servants, or merchants, or officers, or wholesale dealers, or farmers, or physicians, or men with a technical training. The regulations and standards prevailing at such institutions differ from those in a true educational institution; and what in the latter is permitted, and even freely held out as often as possible, ought to be considered as a criminal offence in the former. “ Let me give you an example. If you wish to guide a young man on the path of true culture, beware of interrupting his naive, confident, and, as it were, immediate and personal relationship with nature. The woods, the rocks, the winds, the vulture, the flowers, the butterfly, the meads, the mountain slopes, must all speak to him in their own language; in them he must, as it were, come to know himself again in countless reflections and images, in a variegated round of changing visions; and in this way he will unconsciously and gradually feel the metaphysical unity of all things in the great image of nature, and at the same time tranquillise his soul in the contemplation of her eternal endurance and necessity. But how many young men should be permitted to grow up in such close and almost personal proximity to nature! The others must learn another truth betimes: how to subdue nature to themselves. Here is an end of this naive metaphysics; and the physiology of plants and animals, geology, inorganic chemistry, force their devotees to view nature from an altogether different standpoint. What is lost by this new point of view is not only a poetical phantasmagoria, but the instinctive, true, and unique point of view, instead of which we have shrewd and clever calculations, and, so to speak, overreachings of nature. Thus to the truly cultured man is vouchsafed the inestimable benefit of being able to remain faithful, without a break, to the contemplative instincts of his childhood, and so to attain to a calmness, unity, consistency, and harmony which can never be even thought of by a man who is compelled to fight in the struggle for existence. “ You must not think, however, that I wish to withhold all praise from our primary and secondary schools: I honour the seminaries where boys learn arithmetic and master modern languages, and study geography and the marvellous discoveries made in natural science. I am quite prepared to say further that those youths who pass through the better class of secondary schools are well entitled to make the claims put forward by the fully-fledged public school boy; and the time is certainly not far distant when such pupils will be everywhere freely admitted to the universities and positions under the government, which has hitherto been the case only with scholars from the public schools—of our present public schools, be
it noted![7] I cannot, however, refrain from adding the melancholy reflection: if it be true that secondary and public schools are, on the whole, working so heartily in common towards the same ends, and differ from each other only in such a slight degree, that they may take equal rank before the tribunal of the State, then we completely lack another kind of educational institutions: those for the development of culture! To say the least, the secondary schools cannot be reproached with this; for they have up to the present propitiously and honourably followed up tendencies of a lower order, but one nevertheless highly necessary. In the public schools, however, there is very much less honesty and very much less ability too; for in them we find an instinctive feeling of shame, the unconscious perception of the fact that the whole institution has been ignominiously degraded, and that the sonorous words of wise and apathetic teachers are contradictory to the dreary, barbaric, and sterile reality. So there are no true cultural institutions! And in those very places where a pretence to culture is still kept up, we find the people more hopeless, atrophied, and discontented than in the secondary schools, where the so-called ‘realistic’ subjects are taught! Besides this, only think how immature and uninformed one must be in the company of such teachers when one actually misunderstands the rigorously defined philosophical expressions ‘real’ and ‘realism’ to such a degree as to think them the contraries of mind and matter, and to interpret ‘realism’ as ‘the road to knowledge, formation, and mastery of reality.’ “ I for my own part know of only two exact contraries: institutions for teaching culture and institutions for teaching how to succeed in life. All our present institutions belong to the second class; but I am speaking only of the first.” About two hours went by while the philosophically-minded couple chatted about such startling questions. Night slowly fell in the meantime; and when in the twilight the philosopher’s voice had sounded like natural music through the woods, it now rang out in the profound darkness of the night when he was speaking with excitement or even passionately; his tones hissing and thundering far down the valley, and reverberating among the trees and rocks. Suddenly he was silent: he had just repeated, almost pathetically, the words, “ we have no true educational institutions; we have no true educational institutions!” when something fell down just in front of him—it might have been a fir-cone—and his dog barked and ran towards it. Thus interrupted, the philosopher raised his head, and suddenly became aware of the darkness, the cool air, and the lonely situation of himself and his companion. “ Well! What are we about!” he ejaculated, “ it’s dark. You know whom we were expecting here; but he hasn’t come. We have waited in vain; let us go.” ***** I must now, ladies and gentlemen, convey to you the impressions experienced by my friend and myself as we eagerly listened to this conversation, which we heard distinctly in our hiding-place. I have already told you that at that place and at that hour we had intended to hold a festival in commemoration of something: and this something had to do with nothing else than matters concerning educational training, of which we, in our own youthful opinions, had garnered a plentiful harvest during our past life. We were thus disposed to remember with gratitude the institution which we had at one time thought out for ourselves at that very spot in order, as I have already mentioned, that we might reciprocally encourage and watch over one another’s educational impulses. But a sudden and unexpected light was thrown on all that past life as we silently gave ourselves up to the vehement words of the philosopher. As when a traveller, walking heedlessly across unknown ground, suddenly puts his foot over the edge of a cliff, so it now seemed to us that we had hastened to meet the great danger rather than run away from it. Here at this spot, so memorable to us, we heard the warning: “ Back! Not another step! Know you not whither your footsteps tend, whither this deceitful path is luring you?” It seemed to us that we now knew, and our feeling of overflowing thankfulness impelled us so irresistibly towards our earnest counsellor and trusty Eckart, that both of us sprang up at the same moment and rushed towards the philosopher to embrace him. He was just about to move off, and had already turned sideways when we rushed up to him. The dog turned sharply round and barked, thinking doubtless, like the philosopher’s companion, of an attempt at robbery rather than an enraptured embrace. It was plain that he had forgotten us. In a word, he ran away. Our embrace was a miserable failure when we did overtake him; for my friend gave a loud yell as the dog bit him, and the philosopher himself sprang away from me with such force that we both fell. What with the dog and the men there was a scramble that lasted a few minutes, until my friend began to call out loudly, parodying the philosopher’s own words: “ In the name of all culture and pseudo-culture, what does the silly dog want with us? Hence, you confounded dog; you uninitiated, never to be initiated; hasten away from us, silent and ashamed!” After this outburst matters were cleared up to some extent, at any rate so far as they could be cleared up in the darkness of the wood. “ Oh, it’s you!” ejaculated the philosopher, “ our duellists! How you startled us! What on earth drives you to jump out upon us like this at such a time of the night?” “ Joy, thankfulness, and reverence,” said we, shaking the old man by the hand, whilst the dog barked as if he understood, “ we can’t let you go without telling you this. And if you are to understand everything you must not go away just yet; we want to ask you about so many things that lie heavily on our hearts. Stay yet awhile; we know every foot of the way and can accompany you afterwards. The gentleman you expect may yet turn up. Look over yonder on the Rhine: what is that we see so clearly floating on the surface of the water as if surrounded by the light of many torches? It is there that we may look for your friend, I would even venture to say that it is he who is coming towards you with all those lights.” And so much did we assail the surprised old man with our entreaties, promises, and fantastic delusions, that we persuaded the philosopher to walk to and fro with us on the little plateau, “ by learned lumber undisturbed,” as my friend added. “ Shame on you!” said the philosopher, “ if you really want to quote something, why choose Faust? However, I will give in to you, quotation or no quotation, if only our young companions will keep still and not run away as suddenly as they made their appearance, for they are like will-o’-the-wisps; we are amazed when they are there and again when they are not there.” My friend immediately recited— Respect, I hope, will teach us how we may Our lighter disposition keep at bay. Our course is only zig-zag as a rule.
The philosopher was surprised, and stood still. “ You astonish me, you will-o’-the-wisps,” he said; “ this is no quagmire we are on now. Of what use is this ground to you? What does the proximity of a philosopher mean to you? For around him the air is sharp and clear, the ground dry and hard. You must find out a more fantastic region for your zigzagging inclinations.” “ I think,” interrupted the philosopher’s companion at this point, “ the gentlemen have already told us that they promised to meet some one here at this hour; but it seems to me that they listened to our comedy of education like a chorus, and truly ‘idealistic spectators’—for they did not disturb us; we thought we were alone with each other.” “ Yes, that is true,” said the philosopher, “ that praise must not be withheld from them, but it seems to me that they deserve still higher praise–-“ Here I seized the philosopher’s hand and said: “ That man must be as obtuse as a reptile, with his stomach on the ground and his head buried in mud, who can listen to such a discourse as yours without becoming earnest and thoughtful, or even excited and indignant. Self-accusation and annoyance might perhaps cause a few to get angry; but our impression was quite different: the only thing I do not know is how exactly to describe it. This hour was so well-timed for us, and our minds were so well prepared, that we sat there like empty vessels, and now it seems as if we were filled to overflowing with this new wisdom: for I no longer know how to help myself, and if some one asked me what I am thinking of doing to-morrow, or what I have made up my mind to do with myself from now on, I should not know what to answer. For it is easy to see that we have up to the present been living and educating ourselves in the wrong way—but what can we do to cross over the chasm between to-day and to-morrow?” “ Yes,” acknowledged my friend, “ I have a similar feeling, and I ask the same question: but besides that I feel as if I were frightened away from German culture by entertaining such high and ideal views of its task; yea, as if I were unworthy to co-operate with it in carrying out its aims. I only see a resplendent file of the highest natures moving towards this goal; I can imagine over what abysses and through what temptations this procession travels. Who would dare to be so bold as to join in it?” At this point the philosopher’s companion again turned to him and said: “ Don’t be angry with me when I tell you that I too have a somewhat similar feeling, which I have not mentioned to you before. When talking to you I often felt drawn out of myself, as it were, and inspired with your ardour and hopes till I almost forgot myself. Then a calmer moment arrives; a piercing wind of reality brings me back to earth—and then I see the wide gulf between us, over which you yourself, as in a dream, draw me back again. Then what you call ‘culture’ merely totters meaninglessly around me or lies heavily on my breast: it is like a shirt of mail that weighs me down, or a sword that I cannot wield.” Our minds, as we thus argued with the philosopher, were unanimous, and, mutually encouraging and stimulating one another, we slowly walked with him backwards and forwards along the unencumbered space which had earlier in the day served us as a shooting range. And then, in the still night, under the peaceful light of hundreds of stars, we all broke out into a tirade which ran somewhat as follows:— “ You have told us so much about the genius,” we began, “ about his lonely and wearisome journey through the world, as if nature never exhibited anything but the most diametrical contraries: in one place the stupid, dull masses, acting by instinct, and then, on a far higher and more remote plane, the great contemplating few, destined for the production of immortal works. But now you call these the apexes of the intellectual pyramid: it would, however, seem that between the broad, heavily burdened foundation up to the highest of the free and unencumbered peaks there must be countless intermediate degrees, and that here we must apply the saying natura non facit saltus. Where then are we to look for the beginning of what you call culture; where is the line of demarcation to be drawn between the spheres which are ruled from below upwards and those which are ruled from above downwards? And if it be only in connection with these exalted beings that true culture may be spoken of, how are institutions to be founded for the uncertain existence of such natures, how can we devise educational establishments which shall be of benefit only to these select few? It rather seems to us that such persons know how to find their own way, and that their full strength is shown in their being able to walk without the educational crutches necessary for other people, and thus undisturbed to make their way through the storm and stress of this rough world just like a phantom.” We kept on arguing in this fashion, speaking without any great ability and not putting our thoughts in any special form: but the philosopher’s companion went even further, and said to him: “ Just think of all these great geniuses of whom we are wont to be so proud, looking upon them as tried and true leaders and guides of this real German spirit, whose names we commemorate by statues and festivals, and whose works we hold up with feelings of pride for the admiration of foreign lands—how did they obtain the education you demand for them, to what degree do they show that they have been nourished and matured by basking in the sun of national education? And yet they are seen to be possible, they have nevertheless become men whom we must honour: yea, their works themselves justify the form of the development of these noble spirits; they justify even a certain want of education for which we must make allowance owing to their country and the age in which they lived. How could Lessing and Winckelmann benefit by the German culture of their time? Even less than, or at all events just as little as Beethoven, Schiller, Goethe, or every one of our great poets and artists. It may perhaps be a law of nature that only the later generations are destined to know by what divine gifts an earlier generation was favoured.” At this point the old philosopher could not control his anger, and shouted to his companion: “ Oh, you innocent lamb of knowledge! You gentle sucking doves, all of you! And would you give the name of arguments to those distorted, clumsy, narrow-minded, ungainly, crippled things? Yes, I have just now been listening to the fruits of some of this presentday culture, and my ears are still ringing with the sound of historical ‘self-understood’ things, of over-wise and pitiless historical reasonings! Mark this, thou unprofaned Nature: thou hast grown old, and for thousands of years this starry sky has spanned the space above thee—but thou hast never yet heard such conceited and, at bottom, mischievous chatter as the talk of the present day! So you are proud of your poets and artists, my good Teutons? You point to them and brag about them to foreign countries, do you? And because it has given you no trouble to have them amongst you, you have formed the pleasant theory that you need not concern yourselves further with them? Isn’t that so, my inexperienced children: they
come of their own free will, the stork brings them to you! Who would dare to mention a midwife! You deserve an earnest teaching, eh? You should be proud of the fact that all the noble and brilliant men we have mentioned were prematurely suffocated, worn out, and crushed through you, through your barbarism? You think without shame of Lessing, who, on account of your stupidity, perished in battle against your ludicrous gods and idols, the evils of your theatres, your learned men, and your theologians, without once daring to lift himself to the height of that immortal flight for which he was brought into the world. And what are your impressions when you think of Winckelmann, who, that he might rid his eyes of your grotesque fatuousness, went to beg help from the Jesuits, and whose disgraceful religious conversion recoils upon you and will always remain an ineffaceable blemish upon you? You can even name Schiller without blushing! Just look at his picture! The fiery, sparkling eyes, looking at you with disdain, those flushed, death-like cheeks: can you learn nothing from all that? In him you had a beautiful and divine plaything, and through it was destroyed. And if it had been possible for you to take Goethe’s friendship away from this melancholy, hasty life, hunted to premature death, then you would have crushed him even sooner than you did. You have not rendered assistance to a single one of our great geniuses—and now upon that fact you wish to build up the theory that none of them shall ever be helped in future? For each of them, however, up to this very moment, you have always been the ‘resistance of the stupid world’ that Goethe speaks of in his “ Epilogue to the Bell”; towards each of them you acted the part of apathetic dullards or jealous narrowhearts or malignant egotists. In spite of you they created their immortal works, against you they directed their attacks, and thanks to you they died so prematurely, their tasks only half accomplished, blunted and dulled and shattered in the battle. Who can tell to what these heroic men were destined to attain if only that true German spirit had gathered them together within the protecting walls of a powerful institution?—that spirit which, without the help of some such institution, drags out an isolated, debased, and degraded existence. All those great men were utterly ruined; and it is only an insane belief in the Hegelian ‘reasonableness of all happenings’ which would absolve you of any responsibility in the matter. And not those men alone! Indictments are pouring forth against you from every intellectual province: whether I look at the talents of our poets, philosophers, painters, or sculptors— and not only in the case of gifts of the highest order—I everywhere see immaturity, overstrained nerves, or prematurely exhausted energies, abilities wasted and nipped in the bud; I everywhere feel that ‘resistance of the stupid world,’ in other words, your guiltiness. That is what I am talking about when I speak of lacking educational establishments, and why I think those which at present claim the name in such a pitiful condition. Whoever is pleased to call this an ‘ideal desire,’ and refers to it as ‘ideal’ as if he were trying to get rid of it by praising me, deserves the answer that the present system is a scandal and a disgrace, and that the man who asks for warmth in the midst of ice and snow must indeed get angry if he hears this referred to as an ‘ideal desire.’ The matter we are now discussing is concerned with clear, urgent, and palpably evident realities: a man who knows anything of the question feels that there is a need which must be seen to, just like cold and hunger. But the man who is not affected at all by this matter most certainly has a standard by which to measure the extent of his own culture, and thus to know what I call ‘culture,’ and where the line should be drawn between that which is ruled from below upwards and that which is ruled from above downwards.” The philosopher seemed to be speaking very heatedly. We begged him to walk round with us again, since he had uttered the latter part of his discourse standing near the treestump which had served us as a target. For a few minutes not a word more was spoken. Slowly and thoughtfully we walked to and fro. We did not so much feel ashamed of having brought forward such foolish arguments as we felt a kind of restitution of our personality. After the heated and, so far as we were concerned, very unflattering utterance of the philosopher, we seemed to feel ourselves nearer to him—that we even stood in a personal relationship to him. For so wretched is man that he never feels himself brought into such close contact with a stranger as when the latter shows some sign of weakness, some defect. That our philosopher had lost his temper and made use of abusive language helped to bridge over the gulf created between us by our timid respect for him: and for the sake of the reader who feels his indignation rising at this suggestion let it be added that this bridge often leads from distant hero-worship to personal love and pity. And, after the feeling that our personality had been restored to us, this pity gradually became stronger and stronger. Why were we making this old man walk up and down with us between the rocks and trees at that time of the night? And, since he had yielded to our entreaties, why could we not have thought of a more modest and unassuming manner of having ourselves instructed, why should the three of us have contradicted him in such clumsy terms? For now we saw how thoughtless, unprepared, and baseless were all the objections we had made, and how greatly the echo of the present was heard in them, the voice of which, in the province of culture, the old man would fain not have heard. Our objections, however, were not purely intellectual ones: our reasons for protesting against the philosopher’s statements seemed to lie elsewhere. They arose perhaps from the instinctive anxiety to know whether, if the philosopher’s views were carried into effect, our own personalities would find a place in the higher or lower division; and this made it necessary for us to find some arguments against the mode of thinking which robbed us of our self-styled claims to culture. People, however, should not argue with companions who feel the weight of an argument so personally; or, as the moral in our case would have been: such companions should not argue, should not contradict at all. So we walked on beside the philosopher, ashamed, compassionate, dissatisfied with ourselves, and more than ever convinced that the old man was right and that we had done him wrong. How remote now seemed the youthful dream of our educational institution; how clearly we saw the danger which we had hitherto escaped merely by good luck, namely, giving ourselves up body and soul to the educational system which forced itself upon our notice so enticingly, from the time when we entered the public schools up to that moment. How then had it come about that we had not taken our places in the chorus of its admirers? Perhaps merely because we were real students, and could still draw back from the roughand-tumble, the pushing and struggling, the restless, ever-breaking waves of publicity, to seek refuge in our own little educational establishment; which, however, time would have soon swallowed up also. Overcome by such reflections, we were about to address the philosopher again, when he suddenly turned towards us, and said in a softer tone—
“ I cannot be surprised if you young men behave rashly and thoughtlessly; for it is hardly likely that you have ever seriously considered what I have just said to you. Don’t be in a hurry; carry this question about with you, but do at any rate consider it day and night. For you are now at the parting of the ways, and now you know where each path leads. If you take the one, your age will receive you with open arms, you will not find it wanting in honours and decorations: you will form units of an enormous rank and file; and there will be as many people like-minded standing behind you as in front of you. And when the leader gives the word it will be re-echoed from rank to rank. For here your first duty is this: to fight in rank and file; and your second: to annihilate all those who refuse to form part of the rank and file. On the other path you will have but few fellow-travellers: it is more arduous, winding and precipitous; and those who take the first path will mock you, for your progress is more wearisome, and they will try to lure you over into their own ranks. When the two paths happen to cross, however, you will be roughly handled and thrust aside, or else shunned and isolated. “ Now, take these two parties, so different from each other in every respect, and tell me what meaning an educational establishment would have for them. That enormous horde, crowding onwards on the first path towards its goal, would take the term to mean an institution by which each of its members would become duly qualified to take his place in the rank and file, and would be purged of everything which might tend to make him strive after higher and more remote aims. I don’t deny, of course, that they can find pompous words with which to describe their aims: for example, they speak of the ‘universal development of free personality upon a firm social, national, and human basis,’ or they announce as their goal: ‘The founding of the peaceful sovereignty of the people upon reason, education, and justice.’ “ An educational establishment for the other and smaller company, however, would be something vastly different. They would employ it to prevent themselves from being separated from one another and overwhelmed by the first huge crowd, to prevent their few select spirits from losing sight of their splendid and noble task through premature weariness, or from being turned aside from the true path, corrupted, or subverted. These select spirits must complete their work: that is the raison d’�tre of their common institution—a work, indeed, which, as it were, must be free from subjective traces, and must further rise above the transient events of future times as the pure reflection of the eternal and immutable essence of things. And all those who occupy places in that institution must co-operate in the endeavour to engender men of genius by this purification from subjectiveness and the creation of the works of genius. Not a few, even of those whose talents may be of the second or third order, are suited to such co-operation, and only when serving in such an educational establishment as this do they feel that they are truly carrying out their life’s task. But now it is just these talents I speak of which are drawn away from the true path, and their instincts estranged, by the continual seductions of that modern ‘culture.’ “ The egotistic emotions, weaknesses, and vanities of these few select minds are continually assailed by the temptations unceasingly murmured into their ears by the spirit of the age: ‘Come with me! There you are servants, retainers, tools, eclipsed by higher natures; your own peculiar characteristics never have free play; you are tied down, chained down, like slaves; yea, like automata: here, with me, you will enjoy the freedom of your own personalities, as masters should, your talents will cast their lustre on yourselves alone, with their aid you may come to the very front rank; an innumerable train of followers will accompany you, and the applause of public opinion will yield you more pleasure than a noblybestowed commendation from the height of genius.’ Even the very best of men now yield to these temptations: and it cannot be said that the deciding factor here is the degree of talent, or whether a man is accessible to these voices or not; but rather the degree and the height of a certain moral sublimity, the instinct towards heroism, towards sacrifice—and finally a positive, habitual need of culture, prepared by a proper kind of education, which education, as I have previously said, is first and foremost obedience and submission to the discipline of genius. Of this discipline and submission, however, the present institutions called by courtesy ‘educational establishments’ know nothing whatever, although I have no doubt that the public school was originally intended to be an institution for sowing the seeds of true culture, or at least as a preparation for it. I have no doubt, either, that they took the first bold steps in the wonderful and stirring times of the Reformation, and that afterwards, in the era which gave birth to Schiller and Goethe, there was again a growing demand for culture, like the first protuberance of that wing spoken of by Plato in the Phaedrus, which, at every contact with the beautiful, bears the soul aloft into the upper regions, the habitations of the gods.” “ Ah,” began the philosopher’s companion, “ when you quote the divine Plato and the world of ideas, I do not think you are angry with me, however much my previous utterance may have merited your disapproval and wrath. As soon as you speak of it, I feel that Platonic wing rising within me; and it is only at intervals, when I act as the charioteer of my soul, that I have any difficulty with the resisting and unwilling horse that Plato has also described to us, the ‘crooked, lumbering animal, put together anyhow, with a short, thick neck; flat-faced, and of a dark colour, with grey eyes and blood-red complexion; the mate of insolence and pride, shag-eared and deaf, hardly yielding to whip or spur.’[8] Just think how long I have lived at a distance from you, and how all those temptations you speak of have endeavoured to lure me away, not perhaps without some success, even though I myself may not have observed it. I now see more clearly than ever the necessity for an institution which will enable us to live and mix freely with the few men of true culture, so that we may have them as our leaders and guiding stars. How greatly I feel the danger of travelling alone! And when it occurred to me that I could save myself by flight from all contact with the spirit of the time, I found that this flight itself was a mere delusion. Continuously, with every breath we take, some amount of that atmosphere circulates through every vein and artery, and no solitude is lonesome or distant enough for us to be out of reach of its fogs and clouds. Whether in the guise of hope, doubt, profit, or virtue, the shades of that culture hover about us; and we have been deceived by that jugglery even here in the presence of a true hermit of culture. How steadfastly and faithfully must the few followers of that culture— which might almost be called sectarian—be ever on the alert! How they must strengthen and uphold one another! How adversely would any errors be criticised here, and how sympathetically excused! And thus, teacher, I ask you to pardon me, after you have laboured so earnestly to set me in the right path!” “ You use a language which I do not care for, my friend,” said the philosopher, “ and one which reminds me of a diocesan conference. With that I have nothing to do. But your
Platonic horse pleases me, and on its account you shall be forgiven. I am willing to exchange my own animal for yours. But it is getting chilly, and I don’t feel inclined to walk about any more just now. The friend I was waiting for is indeed foolish enough to come up here even at midnight if he promised to do so. But I have waited in vain for the signal agreed upon; and I cannot guess what has delayed him. For as a rule he is punctual, as we old men are wont, to be, something that you young men nowadays look upon as oldfashioned. But he has left me in the lurch for once: how annoying it is! Come away with me! It’s time to go!” At this moment something happened. FOOTNOTES: [6] It will be apparent from these words that Nietzsche is still under the influence of Schopenhauer.—TR. [7] This prophecy has come true.—TR. [8] Phaedrus; Jowett’s translation. FIFTH LECTURE. (Delivered on the 23rd of March 1872.) LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,—If you have lent a sympathetic ear to what I have told you about the heated argument of our philosopher in the stillness of that memorable night, you must have felt as disappointed as we did when he announced his peevish intention. You will remember that he had suddenly told us he wished to go; for, having been left in the lurch by his friend in the first place, and, in the second, having been bored rather than animated by the remarks addressed to him by his companion and ourselves when walking backwards and forwards on the hillside, he now apparently wanted to put an end to what appeared to him to be a useless discussion. It must have seemed to him that his day had been lost, and he would have liked to blot it out of his memory, together with the recollection of ever having made our acquaintance. And we were thus rather unwillingly preparing to depart when something else suddenly brought him to a standstill, and the foot he had just raised sank hesitatingly to the ground again. A coloured flame, making a crackling noise for a few seconds, attracted our attention from the direction of the Rhine; and immediately following upon this we heard a slow, harmonious call, quite in tune, although plainly the cry of numerous youthful voices. “ That’s his signal,” exclaimed the philosopher, “ so my friend is really coming, and I haven’t waited for nothing, after all. It will be a midnight meeting indeed—but how am I to let him know that I am still here? Come! Your pistols; let us see your talent once again! Did you hear the severe rhythm of that melody saluting us? Mark it well, and answer it in the same rhythm by a series of shots.” This was a task well suited to our tastes and abilities; so we loaded up as quickly as we could and pointed our weapons at the brilliant stars in the heavens, whilst the echo of that piercing cry died away in the distance. The reports of the first, second, and third shots sounded sharply in the stillness; and then the philosopher cried “ False time!” as our rhythm was suddenly interrupted: for, like a lightning flash, a shooting star tore its way across the clouds after the third report, and almost involuntarily our fourth and fifth shots were sent after it in the direction it had taken. “ False time!” said the philosopher again, “ who told you to shoot stars! They can fall well enough without you! People should know what they want before they begin to handle weapons.” And then we once more heard that loud melody from the waters of the Rhine, intoned by numerous and strong voices. “ They understand us,” said the philosopher, laughing, “ and who indeed could resist when such a dazzling phantom comes within range?” “ Hush!” interrupted his friend, “ what sort of a company can it be that returns the signal to us in such a way? I should say they were between twenty and forty strong, manly voices in that crowd—and where would such a number come from to greet us? They don’t appear to have left the opposite bank of the Rhine yet; but at any rate we must have a look at them from our own side of the river. Come along, quickly!” We were then standing near the top of the hill, you may remember, and our view of the river was interrupted by a dark, thick wood. On the other hand, as I have told you, from the quiet little spot which we had left we could have a better view than from the little plateau on the hillside; and the Rhine, with the island of Nonnenw�rth in the middle, was just visible to the beholder who peered over the tree-tops. We therefore set off hastily towards this little spot, taking care, however, not to go too quickly for the philosopher’s comfort. The night was pitch dark, and we seemed to find our way by instinct rather than by clearly distinguishing the path, as we walked down with the philosopher in the middle. We had scarcely reached our side of the river when a broad and fiery, yet dull and uncertain light shot up, which plainly came from the opposite side of the Rhine. “ Those are torches,” I cried, “ there is nothing surer than that my comrades from Bonn are over yonder, and that your friend must be with them. It is they who sang that peculiar song, and they have doubtless accompanied your friend here. See! Listen! They are putting off in little boats. The whole torchlight procession will have arrived here in less than half an hour.” The philosopher jumped back. “ What do you say?” he ejaculated, “ your comrades from Bonn—students—can my friend have come here with students?” This question, uttered almost wrathfully, provoked us. “ What’s your objection to students?” we demanded; but there was no answer. It was only after a pause that the philosopher slowly began to speak, not addressing us directly, as it were, but rather some one in the distance: “ So, my friend, even at midnight, even on the top of a lonely mountain, we shall not be alone; and you yourself are bringing a pack of mischief-making students along with you, although you well know that I am only too glad to get out of the way of hoc genus omne. I don’t quite understand you, my friend: it must mean something when we arrange to meet after a long separation at such an out-of-the-way place and at such an unusual hour. Why should we want a crowd of witnesses—and such witnesses! What calls us together to-day is least of all a sentimental, soft-hearted necessity; for both of us learnt early in life to live alone in dignified isolation. It was not for our own sakes, not to show our tender feelings towards each other, or to perform an unrehearsed act of friendship,
that we decided to meet here; but that here, where I once came suddenly upon you as you sat in majestic solitude, we might earnestly deliberate with each other like knights of a new order. Let them listen to us who can understand us; but why should you bring with you a throng of people who don’t understand us! I don’t know what you mean by such a thing, my friend!” We did not think it proper to interrupt the dissatisfied old grumbler; and as he came to a melancholy close we did not dare to tell him how greatly this distrustful repudiation of students vexed us. At last the philosopher’s companion turned to him and said: “ I am reminded of the fact that even you at one time, before I made your acquaintance, occupied posts in several universities, and that reports concerning your intercourse with the students and your methods of instruction at the time are still in circulation. From the tone of resignation in which you have just referred to students many would be inclined to think that you had some peculiar experiences which were not at all to your liking; but personally I rather believe that you saw and experienced in such places just what every one else saw and experienced in them, but that you judged what you saw and felt more justly and severely than any one else. For, during the time I have known you, I have learnt that the most noteworthy, instructive, and decisive experiences and events in one’s life are those which are of daily occurrence; that the greatest riddle, displayed in full view of all, is seen by the fewest to be the greatest riddle, and that these problems are spread about in every direction, under the very feet of the passers-by, for the few real philosophers to lift up carefully, thenceforth to shine as diamonds of wisdom. Perhaps, in the short time now left us before the arrival of your friend, you will be good enough to tell us something of your experiences of university life, so as to close the circle of observations, to which we were involuntarily urged, respecting our educational institutions. We may also be allowed to remind you that you, at an earlier stage of your remarks, gave me the promise that you would do so. Starting with the public school, you claimed for it an extraordinary importance: all other institutions must be judged by its standard, according as its aim has been proposed; and, if its aim happens to be wrong, all the others have to suffer. Such an importance cannot now be adopted by the universities as a standard; for, by their present system of grouping, they would be nothing more than institutions where public school students might go through finishing courses. You promised me that you would explain this in greater detail later on: perhaps our student friends can bear witness to that, if they chanced to overhear that part of our conversation.” “ We can testify to that,” I put in. The philosopher then turned to us and said: “ Well, if you really did listen attentively, perhaps you can now tell me what you understand by the expression ‘the present aim of our public schools.’ Besides, you are still near enough to this sphere to judge my opinions by the standard of your own impressions and experiences.” My friend instantly answered, quickly and smartly, as was his habit, in the following words: “ Until now we had always thought that the sole object of the public school was to prepare students for the universities. This preparation, however, should tend to make us independent enough for the extraordinarily free position of a university student;[9] for it seems to me that a student, to a greater extent than any other individual, has more to decide and settle for himself. He must guide himself on a wide, utterly unknown path for many years, so the public school must do its best to render him independent.” I continued the argument where my friend left off. “ It even seems to me,” I said, “ that everything for which you have justly blamed the public school is only a necessary means employed to imbue the youthful student with some kind of independence, or at all events with the belief that there is such a thing. The teaching of German composition must be at the service of this independence: the individual must enjoy his opinions and carry out his designs early, so that he may be able to travel alone and without crutches. In this way he will soon be encouraged to produce original work, and still sooner to take up criticism and analysis. If Latin and Greek studies prove insufficient to make a student an enthusiastic admirer of antiquity, the methods with which such studies are pursued are at all events sufficient to awaken the scientific sense, the desire for a more strict causality of knowledge, the passion for finding out and inventing. Only think how many young men may be lured away for ever to the attractions of science by a new reading of some sort which they have snatched up with youthful hands at the public school! The public school boy must learn and collect a great deal of varied information: hence an impulse will gradually be created, accompanied with which he will continue to learn and collect independently at the university. We believe, in short, that the aim of the public school is to prepare and accustom the student always to live and learn independently afterwards, just as beforehand he must live and learn dependently at the public school.” The philosopher laughed, not altogether good-naturedly, and said: “ You have just given me a fine example of that independence. And it is this very independence that shocks me so much, and makes any place in the neighbourhood of present-day students so disagreeable to me. Yes, my good friends, you are perfect, you are mature; nature has cast you and broken up the moulds, and your teachers must surely gloat over you. What liberty, certitude, and independence of judgment; what novelty and freshness of insight! You sit in judgment—and the cultures of all ages run away. The scientific sense is kindled, and rises out of you like a flame—let people be careful, lest you set them alight! If I go further into the question and look at your professors, I again find the same independence in a greater and even more charming degree: never was there a time so full of the most sublime independent folk, never was slavery more detested, the slavery of education and culture included. “ Permit me, however, to measure this independence of yours by the standard of this culture, and to consider your university as an educational institution and nothing else. If a foreigner desires to know something of the methods of our universities, he asks first of all with emphasis: ‘How is the student connected with the university?’ We answer: ‘By the ear, as a hearer.’ The foreigner is astonished. ‘Only by the ear?’ he repeats. ‘Only by the ear,’ we again reply. The student hears. When he speaks, when he sees, when he is in the company of his companions when he takes up some branch of art: in short, when he lives he is independent, i.e. not dependent upon the educational institution. The student very often writes down something while he hears; and it is only at these rare moments that he hangs to the umbilical cord of his alma mater. He himself may choose what he is to listen to; he is not bound to believe what is said; he may close his ears if he does not care to hear. This is the ‘acroamatic’ method of teaching.
“ The teacher, however, speaks to these listening students. Whatever else he may think and do is cut off from the student’s perception by an immense gap. The professor often reads when he is speaking. As a rule he wishes to have as many hearers as possible; he is not content to have a few, and he is never satisfied with one only. One speaking mouth, with many ears, and half as many writing hands—there you have to all appearances, the external academical apparatus; the university engine of culture set in motion. Moreover, the proprietor of this one mouth is severed from and independent of the owners of the many ears; and this double independence is enthusiastically designated as ‘academical freedom.’ And again, that this freedom may be broadened still more, the one may speak what he likes and the other may hear what he likes; except that, behind both of them, at a modest distance, stands the State, with all the intentness of a supervisor, to remind the professors and students from time to time that it is the aim, the goal, the be-all and end-all, of this curious speaking and hearing procedure. “ We, who must be permitted to regard this phenomenon merely as an educational institution, will then inform the inquiring foreigner that what is called ‘culture’ in our universities merely proceeds from the mouth to the ear, and that every kind of training for culture is, as I said before, merely ‘acroamatic.’ Since, however, not only the hearing, but also the choice of what to hear is left to the independent decision of the liberal-minded and unprejudiced student, and since, again, he can withhold all belief and authority from what he hears, all training for culture, in the true sense of the term, reverts to himself; and the independence it was thought desirable to aim at in the public school now presents itself with the highest possible pride as ‘academical self-training for culture,’ and struts about in its brilliant plumage. “ Happy times, when youths are clever and cultured enough to teach themselves how to walk! Unsurpassable public schools, which succeed in implanting independence in the place of the dependence, discipline, subordination, and obedience implanted by former generations that thought it their duty to drive away all the bumptiousness of independence! Do you clearly see, my good friends, why I, from the standpoint of culture, regard the present type of university as a mere appendage to the public school? The culture instilled by the public school passes through the gates of the university as something ready and entire, and with its own particular claims: it demands, it gives laws, it sits in judgment. Do not, then, let yourselves be deceived in regard to the cultured student; for he, in so far as he thinks he has absorbed the blessings of education, is merely the public school boy as moulded by the hands of his teacher: one who, since his academical isolation, and after he has left the public school, has therefore been deprived of all further guidance to culture, that from now on he may begin to live by himself and be free. “ Free! Examine this freedom, ye observers of human nature! Erected upon the sandy, crumbling foundation of our present public school culture, its building slants to one side, trembling before the whirlwind’s blast. Look at the free student, the herald of self-culture: guess what his instincts are; explain him from his needs! How does his culture appear to you when you measure it by three graduated scales: first, by his need for philosophy; second, by his instinct for art; and third, by Greek and Roman antiquity as the incarnate categorical imperative of all culture? “ Man is so much encompassed about by the most serious and difficult problems that, when they are brought to his attention in the right way, he is impelled betimes towards a lasting kind of philosophical wonder, from which alone, as a fruitful soil, a deep and noble culture can grow forth. His own experiences lead him most frequently to the consideration of these problems; and it is especially in the tempestuous period of youth that every personal event shines with a double gleam, both as the exemplification of a triviality and, at the same time, of an eternally surprising problem, deserving of explanation. At this age, which, as it were, sees his experiences encircled with metaphysical rainbows, man is, in the highest degree, in need of a guiding hand, because he has suddenly and almost instinctively convinced himself of the ambiguity of existence, and has lost the firm support of the beliefs he has hitherto held. “ This natural state of great need must of course be looked upon as the worst enemy of that beloved independence for which the cultured youth of the present day should be trained. All these sons of the present, who have raised the banner of the ‘self-understood,’ are therefore straining every nerve to crush down these feelings of youth, to cripple them, to mislead them, or to stop their growth altogether; and the favourite means employed is to paralyse that natural philosophic impulse by the so-called “ historical culture.” A still recent system, [10] which has won for itself a world-wide scandalous reputation, has discovered the formula for this self-destruction of philosophy; and now, wherever the historical view of things is found, we can see such a naive recklessness in bringing the irrational to ‘rationality’ and ‘reason’ and making black look like white, that one is even inclined to parody Hegel’s phrase and ask: ‘Is all this irrationality real?’ Ah, it is only the irrational that now seems to be ‘real,’ i.e. really doing something; and to bring this kind of reality forward for the elucidation of history is reckoned as true ‘historical culture.’ It is into this that the philosophical impulse of our time has pupated itself; and the peculiar philosophers of our universities seem to have conspired to fortify and confirm the young academicians in it. “ It has thus come to pass that, in place of a profound interpretation of the eternally recurring problems, a historical—yea, even philological—balancing and questioning has entered into the educational arena: what this or that philosopher has or has not thought; whether this or that essay or dialogue is to be ascribed to him or not; or even whether this particular reading of a classical text is to be preferred to that. It is to neutral preoccupations with philosophy like these that our students in philosophical seminaries are stimulated; whence I have long accustomed myself to regard such science as a mere ramification of philology, and to value its representatives in proportion as they are good or bad philologists. So it has come about that philosophy itself is banished from the universities: wherewith our first question as to the value of our universities from the standpoint of culture is answered. “ In what relationship these universities stand to art cannot be acknowledged without shame: in none at all. Of artistic thinking, learning, striving, and comparison, we do not find in them a single trace; and no one would seriously think that the voice of the universities would ever be raised to help the advancement of the higher national schemes of art. Whether an individual teacher feels himself to be personally qualified for art, or whether a professorial chair has been established for the training of �stheticising literary historians, does not
enter into the question at all: the fact remains that the university is not in a position to control the young academician by severe artistic discipline, and that it must let happen what happens, willy-nilly—and this is the cutting answer to the immodest pretensions of the universities to represent themselves as the highest educational institutions. “ We find our academical ‘independents’ growing up without philosophy and without art; and how can they then have any need to ‘go in for’ the Greeks and Romans?—for we need now no longer pretend, like our forefathers, to have any great regard for Greece and Rome, which, besides, sit enthroned in almost inaccessible loneliness and majestic alienation. The universities of the present time consequently give no heed to almost extinct educational predilections like these, and found their philological chairs for the training of new and exclusive generations of philologists, who on their part give similar philological preparation in the public schools—a vicious circle which is useful neither to philologists nor to public schools, but which above all accuses the university for the third time of not being what it so pompously proclaims itself to be—a training ground for culture. Take away the Greeks, together with philosophy and art, and what ladder have you still remaining by which to ascend to culture? For, if you attempt to clamber up the ladder without these helps, you must permit me to inform you that all your learning will lie like a heavy burden on your shoulders rather than furnishing you with wings and bearing you aloft. “ If you honest thinkers have honourably remained in these three stages of intelligence, and have perceived that, in comparison with the Greeks, the modern student is unsuited to and unprepared for philosophy, that he has no truly artistic instincts, and is merely a barbarian believing himself to be free, you will not on this account turn away from him in disgust, although you will, of course, avoid coming into too close proximity with him. For, as he now is, he is not to blame: as you have perceived him he is the dumb but terrible accuser of those who are to blame. “ You should understand the secret language spoken by this guilty innocent, and then you, too, would learn to understand the inward state of that independence which is paraded outwardly with so much ostentation. Not one of these noble, well-qualified youths has remained a stranger to that restless, tiring, perplexing, and debilitating need of culture: during his university term, when he is apparently the only free man in a crowd of servants and officials, he atones for this huge illusion of freedom by ever-growing inner doubts and convictions. He feels that he can neither lead nor help himself; and then he plunges hopelessly into the workaday world and endeavours to ward off such feelings by study. The most trivial bustle fastens itself upon him; he sinks under his heavy burden. Then he suddenly pulls himself together; he still feels some of that power within him which would have enabled him to keep his head above water. Pride and noble resolutions assert themselves and grow in him. He is afraid of sinking at this early stage into the limits of a narrow profession; and now he grasps at pillars and railings alongside the stream that he may not be swept away by the current. In vain! for these supports give way, and he finds he has clutched at broken reeds. In low and despondent spirits he sees his plans vanish away in smoke. His condition is undignified, even dreadful: he keeps between the two extremes of work at high pressure and a state of melancholy enervation. Then he becomes tired, lazy, afraid of work, fearful of everything great; and hating himself. He looks into his own breast, analyses his faculties, and finds he is only peering into hollow and chaotic vacuity. And then he once more falls from the heights of his eagerly-desired self-knowledge into an ironical scepticism. He divests his struggles of their real importance, and feels himself ready to undertake any class of useful work, however degrading. He now seeks consolation in hasty and incessant action so as to hide himself from himself. And thus his helplessness and the want of a leader towards culture drive him from one form of life into another: but doubt, elevation, worry, hope, despair—everything flings him hither and thither as a proof that all the stars above him by which he could have guided his ship have set. “ There you have the picture of this glorious independence of yours, of that academical freedom, reflected in the highest minds—those which are truly in need of culture, compared with whom that other crowd of indifferent natures does not count at all, natures that delight in their freedom in a purely barbaric sense. For these latter show by their base smugness and their narrow professional limitations that this is the right element for them: against which there is nothing to be said. Their comfort, however, does not counter-balance the suffering of one single young man who has an inclination for culture and feels the need of a guiding hand, and who at last, in a moment of discontent, throws down the reins and begins to despise himself. This is the guiltless innocent; for who has saddled him with the unbearable burden of standing alone? Who has urged him on to independence at an age when one of the most natural and peremptory needs of youth is, so to speak, a self-surrendering to great leaders and an enthusiastic following in the footsteps of the masters? “ It is repulsive to consider the effects to which the violent suppression of such noble natures may lead. He who surveys the greatest supporters and friends of that pseudo-culture of the present time, which I so greatly detest, will only too frequently find among them such degenerate and shipwrecked men of culture, driven by inward despair to violent enmity against culture, when, in a moment of desperation, there was no one at hand to show them how to attain it. It is not the worst and most insignificant people whom we afterwards find acting as journalists and writers for the press in the metamorphosis of despair: the spirit of some well-known men of letters might even be described, and justly, as degenerate studentdom. How else, for example, can we reconcile that once well-known ‘young Germany’ with its present degenerate successors? Here we discover a need of culture which, so to speak, has grown mutinous, and which finally breaks out into the passionate cry: I am culture! There, before the gates of the public schools and universities, we can see the culture which has been driven like a fugitive away from these institutions. True, this culture is without the erudition of those establishments, but assumes nevertheless the mien of a sovereign; so that, for example, Gutzkow the novelist might be pointed to as the best example of a modern public school boy turned �sthete. Such a degenerate man of culture is a serious matter, and it is a horrifying spectacle for us to see that all our scholarly and journalistic publicity bears the stigma of this degeneracy upon it. How else can we do justice to our learned men, who pay untiring attention to, and even co-operate in the journalistic corruption of the people, how else than by the acknowledgment that their learning must fill a want of their own similar to that filled by novel-writing in the case of others: i.e. a flight from one’s self, an ascetic extirpation of their cultural impulses, a desperate attempt to annihilate their own individuality. From our degenerate literary art, as also from that itch for scribbling of our learned men which has now reached such alarming proportions, wells forth the same sigh: Oh that we could forget ourselves! The attempt fails: memory, not yet suffocated by the mountains of printed paper under which it is buried, keeps on repeating
from time to time: ‘A degenerate man of culture! Born for culture and brought up to non-culture! Helpless barbarian, slave of the day, chained to the present moment, and thirsting for something—ever thirsting!’ “ Oh, the miserable guilty innocents! For they lack something, a need that every one of them must have felt: a real educational institution, which could give them goals, masters, methods, companions; and from the midst of which the invigorating and uplifting breath of the true German spirit would inspire them. Thus they perish in the wilderness; thus they degenerate into enemies of that spirit which is at bottom closely allied to their own; thus they pile fault upon fault higher than any former generation ever did, soiling the clean, desecrating the holy, canonising the false and spurious. It is by them that you can judge the educational strength of our universities, asking yourselves, in all seriousness, the question: What cause did you promote through them? The German power of invention, the noble German desire for knowledge, the qualifying of the German for diligence and selfsacrifice—splendid and beautiful things, which other nations envy you; yea, the finest and most magnificent things in the world, if only that true German spirit overspread them like a dark thundercloud, pregnant with the blessing of forthcoming rain. But you are afraid of this spirit, and it has therefore come to pass that a cloud of another sort has thrown a heavy and oppressive atmosphere around your universities, in which your noble-minded scholars breathe wearily and with difficulty. “ A tragic, earnest, and instructive attempt was made in the present century to destroy the cloud I have last referred to, and also to turn the people’s looks in the direction of the high welkin of the German spirit. In all the annals of our universities we cannot find any trace of a second attempt, and he who would impressively demonstrate what is now necessary for us will never find a better example. I refer to the old, primitive Burschenschaft.[11] “ When the war of liberation was over, the young student brought back home the unlooked-for and worthiest trophy of battle—the freedom of his fatherland. Crowned with this laurel he thought of something still nobler. On returning to the university, and finding that he was breathing heavily, he became conscious of that oppressive and contaminated air which overhung the culture of the university. He suddenly saw, with horror-struck, wide-open eyes, the non-German barbarism, hiding itself in the guise of all kinds of scholasticism; he suddenly discovered that his own leaderless comrades were abandoned to a repulsive kind of youthful intoxication. And he was exasperated. He rose with the same aspect of proud indignation as Schiller may have had when reciting the Robbers to his companions: and if he had prefaced his drama with the picture of a lion, and the motto, ‘in tyrannos,’ his follower himself was that very lion preparing to spring; and every ‘tyrant’ began to tremble. Yes, if these indignant youths were looked at superficially and timorously, they would seem to be little else than Schiller’s robbers: their talk sounded so wild to the anxious listener that Rome and Sparta seemed mere nunneries compared with these new spirits. The consternation raised by these young men was indeed far more general than had ever been caused by those other ‘robbers’ in court circles, of which a German prince, according to Goethe, is said to have expressed the opinion: ‘If he had been God, and had foreseen the appearance of the Robbers, he would not have created the world.’ “ Whence came the incomprehensible intensity of this alarm? For those young men were the bravest, purest, and most talented of the band both in dress and habits: they were distinguished by a magnanimous recklessness and a noble simplicity. A divine command bound them together to seek harder and more pious superiority: what could be feared from them? To what extent this fear was merely deceptive or simulated or really true is something that will probably never be exactly known; but a strong instinct spoke out of this fear and out of its disgraceful and senseless persecution. This instinct hated the Burschenschaft with an intense hatred for two reasons: first of all on account of its organisation, as being the first attempt to construct a true educational institution, and, secondly, on account of the spirit of this institution, that earnest, manly, stern, and daring German spirit; that spirit of the miner’s son, Luther, which has come down to us unbroken from the time of the Reformation. “ Think of the fate of the Burschenschaft when I ask you, Did the German university then understand that spirit, as even the German princes in their hatred appear to have understood it? Did the alma mater boldly and resolutely throw her protecting arms round her noble sons and say: ‘You must kill me first, before you touch my children?’ I hear your answer—by it you may judge whether the German university is an educational institution or not. “ The student knew at that time at what depth a true educational institution must take root, namely, in an inward renovation and inspiration of the purest moral faculties. And this must always be repeated to the student’s credit. He may have learnt on the field of battle what he could learn least of all in the sphere of ‘academical freedom’: that great leaders are necessary, and that all culture begins with obedience. And in the midst of victory, with his thoughts turned to his liberated fatherland, he made the vow that he would remain German. German! Now he learnt to understand his Tacitus; now he grasped the signification of Kant’s categorical imperative; now he was enraptured by Weber’s “ Lyre and Sword” songs.[12] The gates of philosophy, of art, yea, even of antiquity, opened unto him; and in one of the most memorable of bloody acts, the murder of Kotzebue, he revenged—with penetrating insight and enthusiastic short-sightedness—his one and only Schiller, prematurely consumed by the opposition of the stupid world: Schiller, who could have been his leader, master, and organiser, and whose loss he now bewailed with such heartfelt resentment. “ For that was the doom of those promising students: they did not find the leaders they wanted. They gradually became uncertain, discontented, and at variance among themselves; unlucky indiscretions showed only too soon that the one indispensability of powerful minds was lacking in the midst of them: and, while that mysterious murder gave evidence of astonishing strength, it gave no less evidence of the grave danger arising from the want of a leader. They were leaderless—therefore they perished. “ For I repeat it, my friends! All culture begins with the very opposite of that which is now so highly esteemed as ‘academical freedom’: with obedience, with subordination, with discipline, with subjection. And as leaders must have followers so also must the followers have a leader—here a certain reciprocal predisposition prevails in the hierarchy of spirits: yea, a kind of pre-established harmony. This eternal hierarchy, towards which all things naturally tend, is always threatened by that pseudo-culture which now sits on the throne of the present. It endeavours either to bring the leaders down to the level of its own servitude or else to cast them out altogether. It seduces the followers when they are seeking their
predestined leader, and overcomes them by the fumes of its narcotics. When, however, in spite of all this, leader and followers have at last met, wounded and sore, there is an impassioned feeling of rapture, like the echo of an ever-sounding lyre, a feeling which I can let you divine only by means of a simile. “ Have you ever, at a musical rehearsal, looked at the strange, shrivelled-up, good-natured species of men who usually form the German orchestra? What changes and fluctuations we see in that capricious goddess ‘form’! What noses and ears, what clumsy, danse macabre movements! Just imagine for a moment that you were deaf, and had never dreamed of the existence of sound or music, and that you were looking upon the orchestra as a company of actors, and trying to enjoy their performance as a drama and nothing more. Undisturbed by the idealising effect of the sound, you could never see enough of the stern, medieval, wood-cutting movement of this comical spectacle, this harmonious parody on the homo sapiens. “ Now, on the other hand, assume that your musical sense has returned, and that your ears are opened. Look at the honest conductor at the head of the orchestra performing his duties in a dull, spiritless fashion: you no longer think of the comical aspect of the whole scene, you listen—but it seems to you that the spirit of tediousness spreads out from the honest conductor over all his companions. Now you see only torpidity and flabbiness, you hear only the trivial, the rhythmically inaccurate, and the melodiously trite. You see the orchestra only as an indifferent, ill-humoured, and even wearisome crowd of players. “ But set a genius—a real genius—in the midst of this crowd; and you instantly perceive something almost incredible. It is as if this genius, in his lightning transmigration, had entered into these mechanical, lifeless bodies, and as if only one demoniacal eye gleamed forth out of them all. Now look and listen—you can never listen enough! When you again observe the orchestra, now loftily storming, now fervently wailing, when you notice the quick tightening of every muscle and the rhythmical necessity of every gesture, then you too will feel what a pre-established harmony there is between leader and followers, and how in the hierarchy of spirits everything impels us towards the establishment of a like organisation. You can divine from my simile what I would understand by a true educational institution, and why I am very far from recognising one in the present type of university.” [From a few MS. notes written down by Nietzsche in the spring and autumn of 1872, and still preserved in the Nietzsche Archives at Weimar, it is evident that he at one time intended to add a sixth and seventh lecture to the five just given. These notes, although included in the latest edition of Nietzsche’s works, are utterly lacking in interest and continuity, being merely headings and sub-headings of sections in the proposed lectures. They do not, indeed, occupy more than two printed pages, and were deemed too fragmentary for translation in this edition.] FOOTNOTES: [9] The reader may be reminded that a German university student is subject to very few restrictions, and that much greater liberty is allowed him than is permitted to English students. Nietzsche did not approve of this extraordinary freedom, which, in his opinion, led to intellectual lawlessness.—TR. [10] Hegel’s.—TR. [11] A German students’ association, of liberal principles, founded for patriotic purposes at Jena in 1813. [12] Weber set one or two of K�rner’s “ Lyre and Sword” songs to music. The reader will remember that these lectures were delivered when Nietzsche was only in his twentyeighth year. Like Goethe, he afterwards freed himself from all patriotic trammels and prejudices, and aimed at a general European culture. Luther, Schiller, Kant, K�rner, and Weber did not continue to be the objects of his veneration for long, indeed, they were afterwards violently attacked by him, and the superficial student who speaks of inconsistency may be reminded of Nietzsche’s phrase in stanza 12 of the epilogue to Beyond Good and Evil: “ Nur wer sich wandelt, bleibt mit mir verwandt”; i.e. only the changing ones have anything in common with me.—TR.
SELECTED LETTERS Translated by Anthony M. Ludovici PREFACE THIS volume of Friedrich Nietzsche’s private correspondence consists of a selection from the five-volume edition published in Germany between the years 1900-1909. Private letters are now recognized all the world over as a most important supplementary trait to a literary man’s portrait, revealing as they do the more homely and intimate side of an author’s mind and character. The special and additional value of Nietzsche’s private correspondence consists in this, that here we have a writer of the most forbidding aspect, a prophet of almost superhuman inspiration, a hermit inhabiting a desert of icy glaciers, coming down, so to say, to the inhabited valley, to the familiar plain, where he assumes a human form and a human speech, where he exhibits a human heart and a human sympathy. He who still doubted that behind Nietzsche’s violent denunciation of his age there was an ardent love of humanity and an eagerness to promote it to a nobler Destiny; he who still looked askance at a thinker whose ideas were thrown out hotly and abruptly like stones and lava out of an active volcano-all the skeptics, in short, about Nietzsche, as well as all his enemies, will be interested to see from these letters that there was another Nietzsche, a Nietzsche who was a good friend, a devoted son, an affectionate brother, and a generous enemy, such as the literary history of the world with its quarrels and jealousies has not had the good luck to encounter for a long time. The friends of Nietzsche-and Nietzsche has many friends in all climes and amongst all races-will be delighted to see their hero in the light of their own wishes and imaginations, while the enemies of Nietzsche-and he still has many and by no means unworthy enemies-will be bound to confess what the Lutheran Pastor Colerus confessed in his Life of the Philosopher Spinoza: “ He may have been a man of no strict orthodoxy and an atheist into the bargain, but in the conduct of his life he was wise and
good.” There are two other legends which the publication of these letters will successfully destroy. One concerns the great and often ventilated question of Nietzsche’s mental condition and responsibility. It has been frequently stated that his final breakdown, which occurred in 1888, and which lasted till his death in 1900, was foreshadowed in his writings long ago, and that his “ insanity” was the actual and only excuse for the philosopher’s haughty contempt for and bilious criticism of his contemporaries. But where, in the light of these letters, is the insanity? That Nietzsche’s nervous system was not as perfectly balanced as that of a boxer or cricketer may be truly conceded; what great writer was exempt from failings of the flesh? What great author has not paid with his nerves for those moments of happy inspiration and intoxication which gave his best work to posterity? “ La Nevrose est la rangon du genie” (“ Nervousness is the penalty of genius.”) But throughout these letters, which start in early youth and go to the last moment of his spiritual life, there is not the slightest trace of any lack of judgment, and only once, towards the end, a sign of the threatening doom: everything, apart from this, is perfectly healthy and lucid, and even the curious last letter to Georg Brandes still gives a perfect sense. Why the cry of insanity should ever have been raised against Nietzsche is hard to understand, all the more so as a similar reproach has never been thought sufficient to discredit the work of other famous authors or philosophers who happened to be visited by the same affliction. No one has ever doubted Swift’s genius because his brain became clouded towards the end of his life, and August Comte, who actually published his principal books after a confinement in a lunatic asylum and an attempted suicide in the Seine, is still a highly esteemed philosopher. But there is another and still more serious legend which should be destroyed by this publication. It is Nietzsche’s reputed responsibility for the World War. We all remember that he-together with some minor authors-was accused of being the poisoner of the modern German mind whose former “ idealism” and “ romanticism” Nietzsche was said to have entirely perverted and led into unwholesome materialistic channels. Now it will be seen from these letters that there was no more outspoken critic of the German Empire and its crude and superficial “ Kultur” than Friedrich Nietzsche. Throughout his whole life this lonely man fought against his Fatherland and for true enlightenment: for harmony between body and soul, between peoples and races, between authorities and subjects. It will be a revelation to many who are still under the influence of the singular misunderstanding that nowhere was pre-war Germany more fiercely denounced than in the writings of this German (who was, by the way, half a Pole), and who was, in fact, the first good European. The anti-Prussian, anti-German, anti-nationalistic current runs throughout the whole of Nietzsche’s correspondence. At the height of Germany’s victory in 1870 Nietzsche wrote from Bale (Nov. 7, 1870): “ As regards the conditions of culture in the immediate future I feel the deepest misgivings. If only we are not forced to pay too dearly for this huge national success in a quarter where I at least refuse to suffer any loss. Between ourselves: I regard the Prussia of to-day as a power full of the greatest danger for culture.” Nietzsche never wavered in his deep distrust and his fierce denial of Imperial Germany; when near the end of his spiritual life we still find him writing from Nice under date of February 24, 1887: “ German politics are only another form of permanent winter and bad weather. It seems to me that Germany for the last 15 years has become a regular school of besotment. Water, rubbish and filth, far and wide that is what it looks like from a distance. I beg a thousand pardons, if I have hurt your nobler feelings by stating this, but for me present-day Germany, however much it may bristle, hedgehog-like with arms, I have no longer any respect. It represents the stupidest, most depraved and most mendacious form of the German spirit that has ever existed. I forgive no one for compromising with it in any way, even if his name be Richard Wagner,” etc. And this is the man who is said to have incited his countrymen to another war of conquest! But truth will out, even in literature. It does come out in this correspondence, which, it may be safely predicted, will mark the end of the “ moral” crusade against one of the world’s purest spirits. It will further more act as a stimulant to the Nietzsche controversy in England and America, just as in France Prof. Andler’s [1] book has revived the interest in the German philosopher. This last publication, which is meant to be a monumental achievement in six volumes, is praised in the Literary Times of August 11, 1921, as “ the recognition by an eminent French professorial writer of the genius of Germany.” There is, however, a slight inaccuracy in this remark. The genius of Germany has made for barbarism, the genius of Nietzsche should make for culture. It is in this hope that this publication goes forth into an unsettled world. OSCAR LEVY ROYAL SOCIETIES CLUB, NOTES ON NIETZSCHE’S CORRESPONDENTS Baumgarten, Frau Marie. Wife of a well-known manufacturer in Lorrach in Baden. She translated “ Thoughts Out of Season” parts 3 and 4, into French, but only “ Richard Wagner � Bayreuth” actually appeared. She died in 1897. Brandes, Georg, Danish author and critic of European and American reputation. He was born in 1842 and is still living. Billow, Hans von, 1830-94, famous conductor and composer belonging to the Wagner-Liszt circle. First husband of Cosima Liszt, who afterwards married Richard Wagner. Burckhardt, Jacob, 1819-1897, the well-known art critic and historian, Professor at Bale University, author of “ The Civilization of the Renaissance,” the “ Cicerone,” etc. Deussen, Paul, one of Nietzsche’s school-fellows at Pforta. He was born in 1845. He was an admirer of Schopenhauer and a student of Indian philosophy. He taught at Kiel University and died during the great war. Fuchs, Dr. Karl, a musician whose acquaintance with Nietzsche dates back to 1872. He lectured on “ The Birth of Tragedy.” Gast, Peter, whose real name was Heinrich Koselitz. A composer whose acquaintance with Nietzsche dates back to the publication of the “ Birth of Tragedy.” He was the most, nay the only, faithful of Nietzsche’s friends. He died a few years ago in Weimar. For exact details of this friendship see the preface which Peter Gast wrote to his edition of Nietzsche’s letters (volume 4 of German edition, Insel Verlag, 1908). Gersdorff, Freiherr Karl von. One of Nietzsche’s school-fellows at Pforta and a member of the landed aristocracy. He became later on a Royal Chamberlain. Knortz, Karl, Professor in Evansville (Indiana, U. S. A.), who tried to transmit to Americans the latest publications of German literature including the Nietzschean philosophy. Krug, Gustav, one of the earliest intimates of Nietzsche, a member of a distinguished Naumburg family. He became a high government official and died in Freiburg in Breisgau in
1902. Meysenbug, Malvida von, born 1816, sister of the Badenian statesman, Freiherr von Meysenbug. She lived since 1848 in London and was governess in the house of Alexander Herzen. She was acquainted with Garibaldi, Richard and Cosima Wagner, Nietzsche, Liszt, Princess Wittgenstein, etc. Her principal book is “ Memoiren einer Idealistin.” She died in Rome, 1903. Luise 0., Madame. A young and very beautiful Alsatian woman, who was married and lived in Paris. “ My brother’s letters to her are couched in a warmer language than those of mere friendship,” says Frau Forster Nietzsche, “ but they are nevertheless full of delicacy and chivalrous tenderness.” Ritschl, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1806-1876, famous philologist, Professor at Bonn and Leipzig, whose pupil Nietzsche was at the latter university. It was Ritschl who recommended the young Nietzsche to the University of Bale, where he became a professor at the early age of 24. Seydlitz, R. Freiherr von. His friendship with Nietzsche dates from July, 1876, when they met at Bayreuth. For further details of this friendship see Seidlitz’s article in the “ Neue Deutsche Rundschau,” June, 1899. Strindberg, August, born 1849, the famous Swedish author, scholar and playwright. He died in 1912. Taine, Hippolyte, 1821-1893. French critic and historian, best known to English readers by his history of English literature and “ Les Origines de la France contemporaine.” TOCTHE LETTERS Nietzsche To His Sister - March, 1856 Naumburg, March 30, 1856 DEAR ELIZETH: As mother is writing to you to-day I am sending you a short note to put with hers. First of all, let me describe our journey. On the way to Weissenfels there was nothing I objected to more than the piercing wind, and in this respect my two coats served me in good stead. We reached the station almost an hour before the train came in. In the station buffet I read the Vossische Zeitung, which had a good deal to say about the Imperial baby.[2] It is said to have three nurses and three governesses, one of the former having allowed him to fall. The nurse in question fainted immediately, but the child is supposed to have given vent to a shriek loud enough for a child a year old. He has already received two orders: the Cross of the Legion of Honour, and one other military order. Mother asked for a glass of sugared water just as the train entered the station. We quickly ate the sugar and wanted to get away to our train, but were stopped by the waiter who wanted change. We could not settle with him until at length he gave me one more sugar cake. We could scarcely find any room in the train, but at last found two seats. On reaching Naumburg we drove in with Bocher. When we reached the door of the house, little Eosa, Mine, and Ottos were standing there and were very glad to see us back; but grandmamma said she would have been ever so pleased if you had been with us. You will certainly be delighted with Pobles, for it is a very pretty place. I suppose you often play at ball and will be able to hit it better than I can when you come back. I have just heard that William is very ill; he has rheumatic fever. I wanted to take him an orange, but was not allowed to see him. So I went to Gustav, who was very much delighted with the paper for the walls of the forts. He thanks you very much indeed and greatly admires the cheapness of things in Magdeburg. My school time-table has been changed a good deal, for my lessons start at 7. I have not yet played with the soldiers, but will do so soon. I often wish I were at Pobles, too, and thank our grandparents very heartily for the nice stay I had there. Remember me most affectionately to them and also to Uncles Edmund, Theobald, Oscar, and to our aunts. Keep well and write frequent letters to your brother, FRIEDRICH WILHELM NIETZSCHE. Nietzsche To His Mother - November, 1859 Pforta,[3]November 11, 1859. DEAR MAMMA: At last I have time to answer your nice letter. I also have something to tell you to-day that will interest you, and that is how our Schiller festival went off. Wednesday, November 9, was “ Lie-a’bed day”[4] as usual, but in the afternoon at 4 o’clock there was a fine celebration, for which preparations had been going on for some time. First of all, at 3.30 p.m. all the Pforta teachers and their wives, at 3.45 the whole coetus, and at 4 p.m. all the people of Naumburg, who flocked in greater numbers than ever before, arrived in the gymnasium, which was decorated quite festively. The boys of the Sixth Form opened the performance with a reading of the Piccolomini. Professor Koberstein chose the part of Wallenstein himself and read it magnificently. Then “ The Bell,” composed by Romberg, was sung with piano and violin accompaniment. It was wonderfully successful, and everybody was very much moved, particularly by the fine chorus, in “ Freedom and Equality it is heard to toll,” etc. (I have been in the ladies choir some time now, and had the joy of rehearsing this peace with them.) The following day was also “ Lie-a bed day,” with lessons until 9.30 a.m.; then followed another celebration in the gymnasium, beginning with the choir, Frisch auf Kameraden. Then came the recitation of original poems written by Upper School boys about various incidents in Schiller’s life. Herzog and von Gohring then sang, “ Before His Lion-garden”; and “ Oh, From Out This Valley’s Grounds,” with piano accompaniment, and then Professor Koberstein stepped on to the platform. He gave an excellent address, in which he laid particular stress upon the fact that it was a hopeful sign for Germany that the birthdays of her great men were becoming ever more and more the occasions for national festivities which, in spite of the political disunion of the country, were welding her into a single whole. Then followed a good feed with roast goose and cakes, after which we were allowed to go out for a walk until 3 o’clock. I called on Aunt Rosalie, who gave me a cup of chocolate. In the evening the Sixth Form had a dance, but the rest of us had music in the
ballroom. Now, wasn’t that a fine festival? I am delighted with your idea of returning to Naumburg at Christinas and am much looking forward to that lovely time. Your FR. W. NIETZSCHE. Nietzsche To His Mother - February, 1862 Pforta, February, 1862. DEAR MAMMA: So you have sent dear Lizzie right away for some considerable time, and she will certainly wish to be back and will not feel very much at home in the great city of Dresden. You yourself must have spent some beautiful days there, particularly owing to your recollections of bygone times; for, as the years roll by, everything that once caused us pleasure or surprise becomes a precious memory. And it must have cost you something to say good-bye to Lizzie and to Dresden of that I am well aware. As to how she is settled there, I know nothing; write me a long and exhaustive letter. Indeed, we might both of us write more exhaustively to each other, as there is no need now for you to spend so much of your time over your house duties. I only hope she has been sent to a thoroughly good school. I cannot say I like Dresden very much; it is not grand enough, and in detail, even in its language, it is too Thuringian in character. If she had gone to Hanover, for instance, she would have become acquainted with customs, peculiarities, and a language of an absolutely different order. It is always a good thing, if one does not wish to become too one-sided, to be educated in different places. Otherwise, as a city of art, as the seat of a small court, and generally for the purpose of completing E.‘s education, Dresden will be quite suitable, and to some extent I envy her. Still, I believe that in my life I shall have opportunities enough of enjoying experiences of the kind she is having. Altogether I am very anxious to hear how Elizabeth gets on in her new surroundings. There is always a certain element of risk in such schools. But I have thorough confidence in Elizabeth. If only she could learn to write a little better! When she is describing anything, too, she must try and avoid all those “ Ahs!’ and “ Ohs!” “ You cannot imagine how magnificent, how marvellous, how bewitching, etc., it was,” etc.-she must drop this sort of thing, and very much more that she will, I hope, forget in refined company and by keeping a sharp lookout on herself. Now, dear Mamma, on Monday you will come out here, won’t you? The performance is from 4 to 7 p.m. I have asked Dr. Heinze for a ticket. I should be awfully glad if you would send me half a mandala each of sugar and eggs, because for our rehearsals, which are held twice a day and three times on the day of the performance, some such treatment for the voice is absolutely necessary. Farewell, dear Mamma! Your FRITZ. ( Marginal note. ) As you will have plenty of time for reading now, I would recommend Auerbach’s “ Barf�ssele.” I was highly delighted with it. Nietzsche To His Mother - November, 1862 Pforta, November 10, 1862. DEAR MAMMA: I am very sorry that I was not able to meet you at Almrich yesterday, but I was prevented from coming by being kept in. And thereby hangs a tale which I will tell you. Every week one of the newest Sixth Form boys has to undertake the duties of schoolhouse prefect that is to say, he has to make a note of everything in the rooms, cupboards, and lecture rooms that requires repair, and to send up a list of his observations to the inspection office. Last week I had to perform this duty, and it occurred to me that its somewhat tedious nature might be slightly relieved by the exercise of a little humour, and I wrote out a list in which all my observations were couched in the form of jokes.[5] The stern masters, who were very much surprised that anyone should introduce humour into so solemn an undertaking, summoned me to attend the Synod on Saturday and pronounced the following extraordinary sentence: Three hours detention and the loss of one or two walks. If I could accuse myself of any other fault than that of thoughtlessness, I should be angry about it; but as it is I have not troubled myself for one moment about the matter, and have only drawn this moral from it: To be more careful in future what I joke about. To-day is Martinmas Day,[6] and we have had the usual Martinmas goose for dinner (in twelve parts, of course). St. Nicholas Day, too, will soon be here. This period of transition from autumn to winter is a pleasant time; it is the preparation for Christmas which I enjoy so much. Let us thoroughly enjoy it together. Write to me soon. My love to dear uncle and Lizzie. FRITZ. Nietzsche To His Mother - April, 1863 Thursday Morning, Pforta, April, 1863. DEAR MOTHER: If I write to you to-day it is certainly about the saddest and most unpleasant business that it has ever been my lot to relate. For I have been very wicked and do not know whether you will or can forgive me. It is with a heavy heart and most unwillingly that I take up my pen to write to you, more particularly when I think of our pleasant and absolutely unruffled time together during the Easter holidays. Well, last Sunday I got drunk and have no excuse but this, that I did not know how much I could stand and that I happened to be somewhat excited that afternoon. When I returned, Herr Kern, one of the masters, came across me in that condition. He had me called before the Synod on Tuesday, when I was degraded to third of my division and one hour of my Sunday walk was cancelled. You can imagine how depressed and miserable I feel about it, and especially at having to cause you so much
sorrow over such a disgraceful affair, the like of which has never occurred in my life before. It also makes me feel very sorry on the Rev. Kletschke’s account, who had only just shown me such unexpected confidence.[7] Through this one lapse I have completely spoilt the fairly good position I succeeded in winning for myself last term. I am so much annoyed with myself that I can’t even get on with my work or settle down at all. Write to me soon and write severely, for I deserve it; and no one knows better than I do how much I deserve it. There is no need for me to give you any further assurances as to how seriously I shall pull myself together, for now a great deal depends upon it. I had once again grown too cocksure of myself, and this self confidence has now, at all events, been completely shaken, and in a very unpleasant manner. I shall go and see the Rev. Kletschke to-day and have a talk with him. By-the-bye, do not tell anyone anything about it if it is not already known. Also, please send me my muffler as soon as possible, for I am constantly suffering from hoarseness and pains in my chest. Send me the comb too that I have spoken about. Now, good-bye and write to me very soon, and do not be too cross with me, mother dear. Your very sorrowful FRITZ. Nietzsche To His Mother - May, 1863 Pforta, May, 1863. DEAR MOTHER: As regards my future, it is precisely my practical doubts about it that trouble me. The decision as to what subject I shall specialize in will not come of its own accord. I must, therefore, consider the question and make my choice, and it is precisely this choice which causes me so many difficulties. Of course, it will be my endeavour to study thoroughly anything that I decide to take up, but it is precisely on this account that the choice is so difficult; for one feels constrained to choose that branch of study in which one can hope to do something complete. And how illusory such hopes often are; how often does one not allow oneself to be transported by a momentary prepossession, or by an old family tradition, or by one’s own personal wishes, so that the choice of a calling seems like a lottery in which there are a large number of blanks and very few winning numbers. Now, I happen to be in the particularly unfortunate position of possessing a whole host of interests connected with the most different branches of learning, and, though the general gratification of these interests may make a learned man of me, they will scarcely convert me into a creature with a vocation. The fact, therefore, that I must destroy some of these interests is perfectly clear to me, as well as the fact that I must allow some new ones to find a home in my brain. But which of them will be so unfortunate as to be cast overboard? Perhaps just the children of my heart! I cannot express myself more plainly; it is evident that the position is critical and I must have come to a decision by this time next year. It certainly won’t come of its own accord, and I know too little about the various subjects. Best wishes to you all. FRITZ. Nietzsche To His Mother and Sister - Sept., 1864 Elberfeld, Sept. 27, 1864. DEAR MAMMA AND LIZZIE: From the look of my handwriting you are to gather that I am writing to you from a business house. I am thinking how glad you will be to have news of me so soon, particularly as I have only good and pleasant things to tell you. Of course, what I should have liked most of all would have been to tell you everything by word of mouth, but the time seems long past when this wish might have been gratified. There was nothing very beautiful or interesting about the journey; first of all, a number of sleepy and snoring travelling companions, then some very talkative, noisy and common ones, followed by factory hands and business men or very exacting old ladies; I could tell a funny story about each one of these varieties. We arrived at about 11 o clock at night feeling sleepy and somewhat peevish. Believe me, one feels amazingly tired after such a long day’s journey. We put up at Br�nning’s, at the house of two ladies who were not so very old and their brother, who was in bed with gastric fever. We refreshed ourselves with bread and wine, went to bed, slept splendidly, got up late, had our breakfast-consisting here, as every where, of fine rolls and slices of Pumpernickel bread-and then we called on the Rohrs and found Johanna and Marie at home both nice girls but not quite my style; they were a little tasteless in their dress. Of course, one must not forget that they are under the care of a very pious old lady, with whom on the following day I became involved in a long discussion about the theatre, “ the work of the Devil,” and held my ground very well, but only succeeded in earning her compassion for one who held such views as mine. We have been invited to coffee there to-day. Well, on Sunday I made the acquaintance of Ernest Schnabel, an exceedingly attractive young business man; as you know, he is Deussen’s well-known and more favoured rival; and I also met Friedrich Deussen, who has a post in a business firm here. In the afternoon we went up together into the hills that encircle Elberfeld. Imagine a beautiful long valley, the valley of the Wupper, through which a number of ill-defined straggling towns, one of which is Elberfeld, extend like a mighty chain of factories, and you have a picture of these parts. The town is commercial in the extreme, and most of the houses are slate roofed. I notice that the women here have a particular predilection for drooping their heads in a pious way. The girls dress very smartly in little coats very tight at the waist, like that Polish girl from Kosen. The men all display a fondness for light brown, their hats, trousers, etc., all being of that colour. After we had been to several restaurants on Sunday, we spent the evening
most congenially at Ernest Schnabel’s, where we stayed till 11 p. m. He gave us an extremely fine Moselle to drink-“ Pastor’s Moselle Drink,” as Ernest called it. My improvising at the piano had a great success, and my health was most solemnly drunk. As Lizzie would say, Ernest is “ perfectly enchanted.” Wherever I am, I have to play and everybody cries “ Bravo!” It is ludicrous. Yesterday we drove to Schwelm, a neighbouring watering place; we visited the red hills, a famous site of the ancient Westphalian Vehme court, and we had a drink everywhere. In the evening, at the inn, I played without knowing it in the presence of a famous orchestra conductor, who stood there afterwards gasping with wonder and said all sorts of nice things to me. He also begged me to join his choral society that evening-a thing I did not do. Instead I drove back and was invited to dine with the Schnabel family. They are nice, good people. Mrs. Schnabel is delightful, and her husband is a decent, pious, conservative business man. They have the most excellent food, and the drinks are even better, but their dishes are different from ours. They eat Gruy�re cheese and Pumpernickel bread three times a day. … Now, good-bye, good-bye! Hearty remembrances to Aunt Rosalie. Your FRITZ. Nietzsche To His Mother and Sister - November, 1864 Bonn, November 10, 1864. DEAR MAMMA AND LIZZIE: On Sunday we were en masse in Sieburg, where we marched through the streets cheering, danced, and returned rather late. An hour ago I was at an exceedingly distinguished concert; it was an extraordinary display of wealth. All the ladies were dressed in bright red,[8] and English was spoken all over the hall; I don’t speak English.[9] Admittance cost three marks, but as I am one of the performers it cost me nothing. But to make up for things I went there dressed as smartly as possible, with a white waistcoat and kid gloves. I seem to write an inordinate number of letters, and yet I get none except from you. Have Gersdorff and Kuttig been to see you? Remember me to them and also to the dear Naumburg aunts. Ever with devotion and love. Your FRITZ. Nietzsche To His Mother and Sister - February, 1865 Bonn, End of February, 1865. Saturday. MY DEAR MAMMA AND LIZZIE: The lovely time of the holidays draws ever nearer, and I must confess that my longing to see you again grows keener every day. You might shortly start making the preparations for my arrival, for I shall be with you soon after the middle of next month. The more disagreeable the weather is now, the more do I like to dwell upon the beautiful days at Easter, and naturally I have never felt so happy at the thought of the holidays as I feel now. How delightful life will seem for me in your dear company, compared with the life I lead here, so destitute of all family associations! In addition to that, I shall be near so many dear friends, and to dear old Pforta, to which we old Pforta boys are so absurdly attached. I imagine the whole of this passage will make you feel a little wistful; but unfortunately I must dissipate this mood for you by referring to the inevitable and irksome question of money. Among other things now I am going to the most desperate efforts to make two ends meet, and, like the Treasury, on drawing up my budget for the year I arrive only at the most hopeless results. Among the financial coups I have in view is the plan of moving out of my present lodgings next term, giving up the hire of a piano in order-to put it quite plainly-to cut down expenses. One learns a tremendous lot in one term, even in the realm of material things; but it is a pity that one has to pay so dearly for these lessons. But now I will close these pathetic and bathetic details by begging you, dear Mamma, to send me the money for the next two months in a lump sum of not less than 240 marks, to include my railway fare. Altogether I am not in favour of monthly instalments; they inevitably lead one into debt. Up to the present I have only been in a position to settle the most pressing debts of the previous month by means of these monthly instalments and have scarcely ever had any cash in hand. Generally speaking, it is quite out of the question for me to hope to get on at Bonn on less than 1,200 marks, and that was the amount my guardian promised me at the beginning of my university life. If you only knew how we live here you would understand this. It is the minimum amount possible in the circumstances. So now I have said all I had to say on this matter, although I know perfectly well that it will not please you any more than it pleases me. Why can’t I settle all this direct with my guardian? These things spoil my beautiful letters! And now let me beg of you once more not to fail me and thus plunge me into difficulties from which I could and should have to extricate myself only by borrowing the money in some way. And now let us banish all care from our brow and chat pleasantly for a while. The things I have to tell you naturally accumulate more and more every day… . I pass here among the students, etc., as something of an authority on music, and as a queer customer into the bargain, like all old Pforta boys in the Franconia.[10] I am not disliked at all, although I am apt to scoff a little and am considered as somewhat ironical. This estimate of my character, according to the opinions of other people, will not be without interest to you. For my part I must add that I do not agree to the first particular, that I am frequently unhappy and that I have too many moods and am rather inclined to be a nagging spirit (Qutilgeist) not only to myself, but also to others. And now good-bye! For Heaven’s sake send me the money in good time, and remember me to our dear relatives. With hearty thanks for your nice letters and begging you still to
think kindly of me in spite of this one, FRIEDBICH WILHELM NIETZSCHE. To Freiherr Karl Von Gersdorff - May, 1865 Bonn, May 25, 1865. DEAR FRIEND: To begin with, I must own that I have been simply longing for your first letter from G�ttingen, not only out of friendship, but also because of its psychological interest. I was hoping that it might reflect the impression just made upon you by the life led in the Students Corps, and I felt certain that you would speak out quite frankly on the subject. Now, this is precisely what you have done, and I thank you most heartily. At present, therefore, I share your excellent brother’s views on this matter; I can only admire the moral strength with which you have plunged into dirty muddy water and even exercised your limbs in it, in order to learn to swim in the stream of life. Pardon the cruelty of the metaphor, but I think it meets the case. Besides, there is this important point to remember: if a man wishes to understand his age and his contemporaries, he must be something of a colour student. Societies and associations, together with the tendencies they represent, generally reveal with almost perfect exactitude the type of the next generation of men. Moreover, the question of the reorganization of the circumstances of student life is urgent enough to deter the individual from investigating and judging the conditions from his own particular experience. Of course, we must take care that we ourselves do not become too deeply influenced during the process of our research; for habit exercises a prodigious power. A man has already lost a good deal when he can no longer feel any moral indignation at the reprehensible actions daily perpetrated in his circle. This is true, for instance, of drink and drunkenness, and also of the disrespect and scorn with which other men and other opinions are treated. I readily admit that, up to a point, I had very much the same experiences as yourself, that the spirit of conviviality on drinking evenings often discomfited me exceedingly, that there were fellows whose “ beer materialism” made them utterly repulsive to me; whilst the appalling arrogance with which in a twinkling men and opinions were disposed of en masse used to irritate me beyond endurance. Nevertheless I was content to bear with the Association, not only because it taught me a good deal, but also because I was, on the whole, compelled to acknowledge the intellectual life which formed a part of it. On the whole, though, a more intimate relationship with one or two friends is a necessity, and, provided one can enjoy this, the rest can be reckoned as a sort of seasoning included in the fare-some as salt and pepper, others as sugar, and yet others as nothing at all. Once again let me assure you that all you have told me about your struggles and anxieties only enhances my esteem and love for you. This term I have to prepare our archaeological work for the college. Then I also have a bigger piece of work to do for the Science evening of our Burschenschaft [Corps] about the political poets of Germany. I hope to learn a good deal from this, but I shall also have to do a tremendous amount of reading and collect plenty of material. Above all, however, I must set about preparing a more important philological work, the subject of which I have not yet decided, in order to qualify for admittance to the college at Leipzig. Incidentally I am now studying Beethoven’s Life in the biography by Marx. I shall also perhaps do a little composing again, a thing which this year I have so far strenuously avoided. I have also stopped versifying. The Rhineland Musical Festival takes place this Whitsun at Cologne. Do come over from G�ttingen for it! The principal items on the programme are: Israel in Egypt, by Handel; Faust Music, by Schumann; The Seasons, by Haydn, etc., etc. I am taking part in it. Immediately after it the Cologne International Exhibit will be opened. You will find all further details in the papers. Well, old man, fare thee well! I rejoice at the thought of our next meeting. I wish you plenty of good cheer and bright spirits, and, above all, a man who can be something to you. Excuse my execrable writing and my ill humour about it. You know how wild I get over it and how my thoughts then come to a standstill. Your devoted friend, FR. NIETZSCHE. Bonn, Ascension Day, 1865. Nietzsche To His Mother - June, 1865 Bonn, June 30, 1865. Friday Morning. DEAR MAMMA: I am very much disgusted by the bigoted Roman Catholic population here. Often I can scarcely believe that we are in the nineteenth century. Not long ago it was Corpus Christi Day. Processions after the style of that of the Church Festival; everybody very finely got up and therefore full of vanity, and yet going into all kinds of pious contortions, croaking and groaning old women, tremendous squandering of incense, wax candles, and festoons of flowers. On the afternoon of the same day a genuine Tyrolean company gave a concert with the usual affected naturalness and the stereotyped emotions in the rendering of the Andreas Hofer[11] song. You will have read in the papers about the Rhineland festival. As everybody knows, the Rhineland was annexed to Prussia fifty years ago. The King, the General Staff, and several Ministers attended the ceremony. The papers speak of the enthusiasm and rejoicing of the people. As I was in Cologne at the time, I can form my own estimate of these rejoicings. I
was amazed by such coldness on the part of the masses. But I really cannot see where the enthusiasm for the King and his Ministers should come from at this particular juncture. All the same, externally the ceremony was extremely imposing. The Rhine, the bridge over it, the innumerable hotels on the banks, the towers, and the mighty cathedral all ablaze with illuminations, a continuous deafening boom of guns and muskets, myriads of fireworks all let off at the same time at various points all these seen from the opposite bank produced an almost magical impression. It would be impossible to imagine a finer effect for an opera. The King in a steamer sailed up and down stream in the midst of it all; the youth of Cologne created enthusiasm by singing the D�ppel march[12]; the masses cheered at the sight of such fine things, and the monarch was well pleased. I saw some fine uniforms there, my dear Lizzie. But the old generals who wore these beautiful clothes strolled through the streets smiling good-naturedly; for they had happily survived the D�ppel engagement of a copious dinner and were all very drunk with victory. Not long ago we-that is to say, the Franconians-had a Commers[13] with two other student associations, the Helvetia and the Marchia. Oh! what bliss! Oh! the marvellous exploits of the Students Association! Do we represent the future of Germany? Are we not the nursery of German parliaments? “ It is some times difficult,” says Juvenal, “ to refrain from writing a satire.” I think I have already told you that we have changed the colours in our caps. We now wear fine red south-westers, with gold braid and broad black chin straps. Remember me to dear Lizzie and all our relatives and friends. Your affectionate FRITZ. To Freiherr Karl Von Gersdorff - April, 1866 Naumburg, April 7, 1866. DEAR FRIEND: Now and again one enjoys hours of peaceful reflection when, with mingled gladness and sorrow, one seems to hover over one’s life just as those lovely summer days, so exquisitely described by Emerson, seem to lie stretched out at ease above the hilltops. It is then, as he says, that Nature is perfect, and we feel the same; then we are free from the spell of the ever vigilant will; then we are nothing but a pure, contemplative and dispassionate eye.[14] It is in a mood such as this-a mood desirable above all others-that I take up my pen to reply to your kind and thoughtful letter. The interests we share have become welded together to the smallest particle; once again we have realized that mere strokes of the pen in fact, even the most unexpected whims in the past of a few individuals determine the history of countless numbers of others; and we readily leave it to the pious to thank their God for these accidents. We may perhaps laugh at this thought when we meet again in Leipzig. I had already made myself familiar with the thought of being a soldier. I often wished that I might be snatched from my monotonous labours; I yearned for the opposite extreme to my excitement, to the tempestuous stress of my life and to the raptures of my enthusiasm. For, despite all my efforts, it has been brought home to me more clearly every day that it is impossible to shuffle such work out of one’s coat sleeve. During the holidays I have learnt, relatively speaking, a good deal, and now they are at an end. My Theognis finds itself at least one term further forward. I have, moreover, made many illuminating discoveries which will considerably enrich my quaestiones Theognideae.[15] For recreation I turn to three things, and a wonderful recreation they provide! my Schopenhauer, Schumann’s music, and, finally, solitary walks. Yesterday a heavy storm hung in the sky, and I hastened up a neighbouring hill, called Leusch (perhaps you can explain the word to me?). On the summit I found a hut and a man killing two kids, with his son looking on. The storm broke with a mighty crash, discharging thunder and hail, and I felt inexpressibly well and full of zest, and realized with singular clearness that to understand Nature one must go to her as I had just done, as a refuge from all worries and oppressions. What did man with his restless will matter to me then? What did I care for the eternal “ Thou shalt” and “ Thou shalt not”? How different are lightning, storm and hail-free powers without ethics! How happy, how strong they are-pure will untrammeled by the muddling influence of the intellect! For have I not seen examples enough of how muddling a man’s intellect frequently is? Not long ago I had occasion to speak to a man who was on the point of going out to India as a missionary. I put a few questions to him and learned that he had not read a single Indian work, knew nothing about the Upanishads-not even their name-and had resolved to have nothing to do with the Brahmans because they had philosophical training. Holy Ganges! To-day I listened to a profoundly clever sermon of –s on Christianity-the Faith that has conquered the world. It was intolerably haughty in its attitude towards all nations that were not Christian, and yet it was exceedingly ingenious. For instance, every now and then he would describe as Christian something else, which always gave an appropriate sense even according to our lights. If the sentence, “ Christianity has conquered the world,” be changed to “ the feeling of sin,” or briefly “ a metaphysical need has conquered the world,” we can raise no reasonable objection; but then one ought to be consistent and say, “ All true Hindus are Christians,” and also “ All true Christians are Hindus.” As a matter of fact, how ever, the interchange of such words and concepts as these, which have a fixed meaning, is not altogether honest; it lands the poor in spirit in total confusion. If by Christianity is meant “ Faith in an historical event, or in an historical personage,” I have nothing to do with it. If, however, it is said to signify briefly a craving for salvation or redemption, then I can set a high value upon it, and do not even object to its endeavouring to discipline the philosophers. For how very few these are compared to the vast masses of men who are in need of salvation! How many of them are not actually made of the same stuff as these masses! If only all those who dabble in philosophy were followers of Schopenhauer! But only too often behind the mask of philosopher stands the exalted majesty of the “ Will,” which is trying to achieve its own self-glorification. If the philosophers ruled ???�?? f?[16] would be
lost; were the masses to prevail, as they do at present, the philosophers rari in gurgite rasto[17] would still be able, like Aeschylus, d??a ????? f????e??.[18] Apart from this, it is certainly extremely irksome to restrain our Schopenhauerian ideas, still so young, vigorous and half expressed; and to have weighing forever upon our hearts this unfortunate disparity between theory and practice. And for this I can think of no consolation; on the contrary, I am in need of it myself. And now farewell, old man! Remember me to all your family. Mine wish to be remembered to you; let us leave it at that. When we meet again we shall probably smile, and rightly too! Yours, FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. To Freiherr Karl Von Gersdorff - January, 1867 Leipzig, End of January, 1867. MY DEAR FRIEND: At the beginning of January at Naumburg I too stood at the deathbed of a near relative. Next to my mother and sister, this dear lady had the greatest claim on my love and veneration. She had always displayed the most devoted interest in my career, and with her I seem to have lost a whole piece of my past and especially of my childhood. And yet, when I received your letter, my poor dear afflicted friend, I was overcome by a much deeper grief. The difference between the two deaths seemed so enormous. There, in Naumburg, a life replete with good deeds had at last been consummated, and despite a weakly constitution had at least lasted well into old age. We all had the feeling that the strength both of her mind and her body was exhausted, and that only for our love had death come too soon. But what have we not lost by the death of your brother, before whom I too stood in such constant admiration and respect! We have lost one of those rare noble Roman natures about whom Rome at her zenith would have boasted and of whom you, as his brother, have an even greater right to be proud. For how seldom does our wretched age produce such heroic figures! But you know what the ancients thought on the subject: “ Those whom the gods love die young.” What wonders such a power might have achieved! As a pattern of self-reliant and glorious endeavour, as an example of a decided character true to himself and indifferent to the world and its opinion, what strength and comfort he might have afforded to thousands caught in life’s wild vortex! I am well aware that this vir bonus in the best sense meant even more to you; that, as you often used to tell me in the past, he constituted the ideal to which you aspired, your fixed guiding star amid all the tortuous and difficult highways and byways of life. His death has probably been the severest blow that could possibly have overtaken you. Now, dear old man, you have realized-so I gather from the tone of your letter-through your own bitter experience, why our Schopenhauer extols suffering and affliction as indispensable to a splendid destiny, as the de?te??? p????;[19]to the denial of the Will. You have also felt and experienced the chastening, inwardly becalming, and bracing power of pain. This has been a time during which you have yourself tested the truth of Schopenhauer’s doctrine. If the fourth book of his principal work now makes a disagreeable, gloomy, and tedious impression upon you; if it has not the power to bear you triumphantly beyond all the terrible outward pain into that sweetly melancholy but happy mood which possesses us at the sound of lofty music, into that mood in which one sees one’s earthly shell fall from one, then it is possible that even I, too, may have nothing more to do with his philosophy. Only he who is brimful of anguish can pronounce the decisive judgment on such matters. We others, standing in the middle of the stream of life and things, and longing for the Denial of the Will merely as for the island of the blest, cannot judge whether the consolations of such a philosophy are adequate for times of deep sorrow. I conclude with a hearty farewell and a quotation from Aristotle: t? ??? ?st?? ?????p??; ?s?e?e?a? ?p?de??�a ?a???? ??f????, t???? pa??????, �etapp?se?? e????, f????? ?a? s?�f???? p??st??e[20] Your devoted and likewise stricken friend, FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. To Freiherr Karl Von Gersdorff - February, 1867 Leipzig, February, 1867. DEAR FRIEND: If you are not in a mood to listen to a host of weird things, just put this letter aside and reserve it for another occasion. Pious people believe that all the suffering and mishaps that come their way have been sent to them with the most careful premeditation, in order that this or that thought, such and such a resolution or understanding might be kindled in them. We lack the very first principles on which such a faith is based. It does lie in our power, however, to suck every event, every trivial or serious mishap, dry and to turn it to account for our improvement and discipline. The predestined character of every individual’s fate is no myth if we understand it in this sense. What we have to do is intentionally to turn our fate to account, for events are, in themselves, but insignificant accessories to this end. It all turns upon our personal attitude. An event has no more value than we choose to invest it with. Thoughtless and unmoral people know nothing of this purposefulness of fate. Events make no lasting impression upon them. We, however, wish to learn something from them, and the more our knowledge of moral affairs increases and the more complete it becomes, the more surely will the events of our life link themselves up into a fast-bound ring, or will at least seem to do so. You know, old man, what I mean by these remarks. And now, with the expression of my mother’s, my cousin’s and my own sincere sympathy, I will take my leave of you for today.
Yours affectionately, F. N. To Freiherr Karl Von Gersdorff - April, 1867 Naumburg, April 6, 1867. MY DEAR FRIEND: Heaven alone knows the cause of my long silence, for I am never more thankful or more happy than when your letters arrive to give me news of your doings and your spirits. During the holidays I intend to make a written record of my work on the sources of Diogenes Laertius, though I am anything but far advanced. For your amusement let me confess what it is that gives me the most pain and trouble my German style (not to mention my Latin). But I have come to an understanding with my mother tongue, so foreign languages cannot fail to follow suit. The scales have fallen from my eyes; too long had I lived in stylistic innocence. The categorical imperative, “ Thou shalt and must write,” has called me to my senses. Truth to tell, I made an attempt I had never made since my Gymnasium days namely, to write well and suddenly my pen seemed to become paralyzed in my hand. I could do nothing and felt very angry. Meanwhile my ears rang with Lessing’s, Lichtenberg’s, and Schopenhauer’s precepts on style. It was a constant comfort to me to know that these authorities were unanimous in declaring that to write well was a difficult matter, that no man was born with a good style, and that in order to acquire the capacity one had to work hard and keep one’s nose to the grindstone. God forbid that I should write again in such a wooden, dry style and with so much logical tightlacing as I did in my Theognis essay, for instance, on the cradle of which none of the Graces ever lighted (on the contrary, it was more like the distant booming of the cannon at Koniggratz).[21] It would be hard indeed not to be able to write better than this when one longs so ardently to do so. The first thing to do is to let a number of bright and lively spirits loose upon one’s style; I must play upon it as if it were a keyboard. But I must not play the things I have learnt, but improvise freely, as freely as possible, and yet with logic and beauty. Secondly, I am disturbed by another wish. One of my oldest Naumburg friends, Wilhelm Finder, is just going in for his first Law examination you and I know the qualms inseparable from such a time. But what attracts me and even tempts me to follow suit is not the examination itself, but the preparation for it. How valuable and uplifting it must be to let all the disciplined elements of one’s science march past one in the space of about six months, and thus obtain for once a general view of the whole! Is it not exactly as if an officer, accustomed always to the mere drilling of his company, were suddenly to behold in battle the magnificent fruit his small efforts could bear? For it cannot be denied that the uplifting general view of antiquity is altogether lacking in most philosophers because they stand too close to the picture and examine a spot of oil instead of admiring and, what is more, enjoying the broad and bold outlines of the composition as a whole. When, I ask you, shall we at last realize that pure enjoyment in our studies of antiquity about which, alas! we have so often talked? Thirdly, the whole of our method of working is horrible. The hundred and one books lying on the table before me are only so many pincers consuming all the vitality out of the nerve of independent thought. I verily believe, old man, that with a bold hand you have selected the best possible lot-that is to say, an active contrast, a reversed standpoint, an absolutely different attitude towards life, mankind, work, and duty. By this I do not mean to praise your present calling, as such, but only in so far as it constitutes the negation of your former life, together with its object and its point of view. Amid such contrasts body and soul keep healthy, and none of those inevitable morbid symptoms appear which in the scholar are caused by a preponderance of intellectual, and, in the clodhopper, by a preponderance of bodily exercise. Of course, the morbidity manifests itself differently in each. The Greeks were no scholars, but neither were they brainless athletes. Are we, therefore, necessarily bound to exercise a choice between the one or the other way of living? Is it not possible that with Christianity a division was made in this realm of man’s nature also, which the nation of harmony knew nothing about? Ought not every scholar to blush at the thought of Sophocles, who, distinguished as he was in the domain of the spirit, was yet able to dance with grace and understood the art of playing at ball? But we stand towards these things as we stand towards life in general; we readily recognize an evil condition, but we do not raise a finger to get rid of it. And here I might easily begin a fourth lamentation, but in the presence of my martial friend I will refrain. For a warrior must be much more nauseated by these jeremiads than a home-bird like myself. Incidentally I have just called to mind a recent experience that offers a very good illustration of the scholar’s morbid symptoms. As such it might perhaps be hushed up, but it will amuse you because it is nothing more than the translation of Schopenhauer’s essay “ On Professors of Philosophy” into real life. In a certain town a young man endowed with quite extraordinary intellectual gifts, particularly in the direction of philosophical speculation, made up his mind to obtain a Doctor’s degree. With this object in view, he gathered together the threads of his system “ Concerning the Fundamental Delusion of Representation,” which he had laboriously thought out for years, and was very happy and proud at the result. With these feelings surging in his breast, he submitted the work to the Philosophical Faculty of the place, which happened to be a university town. Two professors of philosophy had to give their opinion on his production, and this is how they acquitted themselves of the task: The first said that, though the work showed undoubted intellectual power, it did not advocate the doctrines taught at his institution; and the second declared that not only did the views not correspond with the common understanding of mankind, but they were also paradoxical. The work was consequently rejected, and its author did not receive his Doctor’s degree. Fortunately the rejected candidate was not humble enough to recognize the voice of wisdom in this verdict nay, he was sufficiently presumptuous to maintain that this particular Philosophical Faculty was lacking in the philosophical facultas. In short, old man, one cannot pursue one’s path too independently. Truth seldom resides in the temple men have built in her honour, or where priests have been ordained to her service. The good work or the rubbish we produce we alone have to pay for, not those who have given us their good or their foolish advice. Let us at least have the pleasure of scoring
our blunders off our own bat. There is no such thing as a general recipe for the assistance of all men. One must be one’s own doctor and gather one’s medical experience on one’s own body. As a matter of fact, we give too little thought to our own welfare; our egoism is not shrewd enough, our reason not selfish enough. With this, old man, let me now take my leave of you. Unfortunately I have nothing “ solid” or “ real,” or whatever the current phrase among young business men is, to report; but you will certainly not regret that. Your devoted friend, FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE To Freiherr Karl Von Gersdorff - December, 1867 Naumburg, December 1, 1867. DEAR FRIEND: I am a bombardier in the second mounted division of the Fourth Horse Artillery. You may well imagine how astonished I was by this revolution in my affairs, and what a violent upheaval it has made in my everyday humdrum existence. Nevertheless I have borne the change with determination and courage, and even derive a certain pleasure from this turn of fortune. Now that I have an opportunity of doing a little ????s??[22] I am more than ever thankful to our Schopenhauer. For the first five weeks I had to be in the stables. At 5:30 in the morning I had to be among the horses, removing the manure and grooming the animals down with the currycomb and horse brush. For the present my work lasts on an average from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. and from 11.30 a.m. to 6 p.m., the greater part of which I spend in parade drill. Four times a week we two soldiers who are to serve for a year have to attend a lecture given by a lieutenant, to prepare us for the reserve officers examination. You must know that in the horse artillery there is a tremendous amount to learn. We get most fun out of the riding lessons. My horse is a very fine animal, and I am supposed to have some talent for riding. When I and my steed gallop round the large parade ground, I feel very contented with my lot. On the whole, too, I am very well treated. Above all, we have a very nice captain. I have now told you all about my life as a soldier. This is the reason why I have kept you waiting so long for news and for an answer to your last letter. Meanwhile, if I am not mistaken, you will probably have been freed from your military fetters; that is why I thought it would be best to address this letter to Spandau. But my time is already up; a business letter to Volkmann and another to Ritschl have robbed me of much of it. So I must stop in order to get ready for the parade in full kit. Well, old man, forgive my long neglect, and hold the god of War responsible for most of it. Your devoted friend, FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Bombardier. To Rohde - February, 1868 Naumburg, February 1-3, 1868. MY DEAR FRIEND: It is Saturday, and the day too is drawing to a close. For a soldier the word “ Saturday” is full of magic charm and of a feeling of quiet and peace of which as a student I had no idea. To be able to sleep and dream peacefully, without one’s soul being taunted by the terrifying picture of the morrow; to have overcome and done with another seven days of that excitement in uniform which is called a year’s soldiering-what simple and at the same time deep joys such things awaken-joys worthy of a cynic and attained by us almost too cheaply and easily. I now understand that first and greatest Saturday afternoon mood, in which that easy and satisfied phrase p??ta ??a? ?a??[23] was pronounced; in which coffee and a pipe were invented, and the first optimist stepped into life. In any case, the Hebrews who concocted and believed this beautiful story were warriors or factory hands; they were certainly not students; for the latter would have proposed six days holiday and one workday in the week, and in practice would have converted even this into a holiday like the rest. At all events, that was my practice; and at the present moment I feel the contrast between my present life and my former scientific loafing very strongly indeed. If it were only possible to muster all the philologists of ten years together and drill them army fashion into the service of science, at the end of ten years the science of philology would no longer be necessary, because all the principal work would have been done. And, moreover, it would no longer be possible, because no man would join these colours voluntarily, colours with which the idea of the “ one-year volunteer” cannot be associated at all. As you see, a Saturday makes one talkative, because we have to be silent all the rest of the week and are accustomed to regulate the capacities of our souls according to our superior officer’s word of command. That is why on Saturdays, when the eye of the master is removed, words gush forth from our lips and sentences pour out of the ink-pot-especially when the fire is crackling in the grate and outside you hear the roar of a February storm, heavy with the promise of Spring. Saturday, a storm, and a warm room-these are the best ingredients with which to brew the punch of a “ letter-writing mood.” … My present life, my dear friend, is really very lonely and friendless. It offers me no stimulation that I do not myself provide; none of that harmonious concord of souls which many a happy hour in Leipzig used to afford; but rather, enstrangement of the soul from itself, preponderance of obsessional influences, which draw the soul up tightly with a sense of fear, and teach it to regard things with an earnestness that they do not deserve. This is the seamy side of my present existence, and you will certainly be able to enter into my feelings
about it. Let us, however, turn it round the other way. This life is certainly uncomfortable, but enjoyed as an entremets, absolutely useful. It makes a constant call on a man’s energy and is relished particularly as an ??t?d?t??[24] against paralyzing scepticism, concerning the effects of which we have observed a good deal together. Moreover, it helps one to become acquainted with one’s own nature, as it reveals itself among strange and generally rough people, without any assistance from science and without that traditional goddess Fame which determines our worth for our friends and for society. Up to the present I have remarked that people are well disposed toward me, whether they happen to be captains or plain gunners; for the rest I do my duty with zeal and interest. Is it not something to be proud of, to be regarded as the best rider among thirty recruits? Verily, dear friend, that is more than a philological prize, although I am not insensible even to the kind of encomiums that the Faculty of Leipzig thought fit to bestow upon me… . Ah, my dear friend, what a child of misfortune is a field artilleryman when he has literary tastes into the bargain. Our old god of War loved young women, not shrivelled old Muses. A gunner who often enough in his barrack room sits upon a dirty stool meditating upon Democritean problems, while his boots are being polished for him, is really a paradox on whom the gods must look with scorn… . When I tell you that I am on duty every day from 7 in the morning to 5 in the evening, and that in addition I have to attend lectures given by a lieutenant and a vet respectively, you can imagine what a sorry plight I am in. At night the body is limp and tired and seeks its couch in good time. And so it goes on without respite or rest, day after day. What becomes of the reflection and contemplation necessary for scientific cogitation in the midst of it all? Even for things which are still more dear to me than my literary needs, for the delights of a friendly correspondence and for art, I so seldom have a free moment. Just let me be once more in full enjoyment of my time and my strengthSi male nunc, non olim sic erit.[25] And next year I go to Paris. Your devoted friend, FR. NIETZSCHE. To Freiherr Karl Von Gersdorff - February, 1868 Naumburg, February 16, 1868. DEAR FRIEND: As I have already told you my military duties take up much of my time, but they are on the whole tolerable. I am still particularly fond of riding, and my zeal for it is kept alive by the praise I receive on all sides. From the officers I hear that I have a good seat and thus make a good display. Believe me, old man, I never thought I should have an opportunity of growing vain about this sort of thing. Suffice it to say that my desire to perfect myself in this fine but difficult art is very strong indeed. If you should happen to come to Naumburg for the Pforta School Festival, you will be able to appreciate my achievements. I am afraid you will have a good laugh when you see me shouting my orders. But I still have a good deal to learn before I can pass the officers exam. Yours, FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. To Freiherr Karl Von Gersdorff - June, 1868 Naumburg, June 22, 1868. MY DEAR FRIEND: Today all my comrades in arms have left me. They are on the way to Magdeburg for gun practice. So I am about the only gay-coated creature within the walls of Naumburg-an abandoned broken-winged stork that with envy in its heart has seen all its more powerful fellows fly right away. Yes, old man, the rumour that has already reached you by many a tortuous path is for the best (i.e., the worst) part true: I did not end my military career quite happily. I had survived the winter and also the most difficult and unpleasant half of my year’s service; they had made me a bombardier and were well pleased with my behaviour. When the fine weather came and I was able to ride my horse round the huge parade ground I too was beginning to breathe more freely. Towards the end I was riding the most restive and fiery animal in the battery. One day I failed in attempting a smart spring into the saddle; I gave my chest a blow on the pommel and felt a sharp rend in my left side. But I quietly went on riding, and endured the increasing pain for a day and a half. On the evening of the second day, however, I had two fainting fits, and on the third day I lay as if nailed to my bed, suffering the most terrible agony and with a high temperature. The doctors declared that I had torn two of the muscles of my chest. In consequence of this the whole system of chest muscles and ligaments was inflamed, and severe suppuration had supervened owing to the bleeding of the torn tissues. A week later, when my chest was lanced, several cupfuls of matter were removed. From that time onward, three whole months, the suppuration has never ceased, and when at last I left my bed, I was naturally so exhausted that I had to learn to walk again. My condition was lamentable; I had to be helped in standing, walking and lying down, and could not even write. Gradually my health improved, I enjoyed an invigorating diet, took plenty of exercise and recovered my strength. But the wound still remained open and the suppuration scarcely abated. At last it was discovered that the sternum itself had been grazed and this was the obstacle to recovery. One evening I got an undeniable proof of this, in the form of a little piece of bone which came out of the wound with the matter. This has happened frequently since, and the doctor says it is like to occur frequently again. Should a large piece of bone be detached a slight operation would be imperative. The trouble is by no means dangerous, but it is exceedingly slow. The doctors can do nothing but help nature in her work of elimination and fresh growth. In addition to
this I make frequent injections of camomile tea and silver nitrate every day and take a warm bath. Our staff doctor will shortly pronounce me “ temporarily disabled,” and it is not improbable that I may always suffer from some weakness round about the wound. As soon as I was able to wield a pen again I plunged once more into my studies, of which I send you a sample in the enclosed little Dance Song. Yours, F. N. To Frau Ritschl - July, 1868 Wittekind, Beginning of July, 1868. DEAR FRAU RITSCHL: … The day before yesterday at noon I reached the pretentious little village spa called Wittekind. It was raining hard and the flags that had been hung out for the spa festival were looking limp and dirty. My host, an unmistakable rogue with opaque blue spectacles, came forward to meet me and conducted me to the apartment I had engaged six days before. Everything about this room, including an absolutely mouldy sofa, was as desolate as a prison. I very soon realized too that this same host employed only one servant maid for two houses full of visitors which probably means from twenty to forty people. Before the first hour had elapsed I had a visit, but so disagreeable a one that I was only able to shake it off by means of the most energetic courtesy. In short the whole atmosphere of the place I had just entered was chilly, damp and disagreeable. Yesterday I took stock a bit of the place and its in habitants. At table I had the good fortune to sit near a deaf-and-dumb man and a number of extraordinary-shaped females. The place does not seem bad, but one can go nowhere and see nothing owing to the rain and the damp. Volkmann called and prescribed the local baths for me. He also spoke of an operation in the near future. How grateful I am to you for having given me Ehlert’s book.[26] I read it on the first evening of my stay reclining on the mouldy sofa in my wretchedly lighted room, but it gave me much pleasure and inner warmth. Unkind tongues might say the book is written in an agitated and inferior style. But the who uses his eyes in art. At bottom it is music though it happens to be written not in notes but in words. A painter must experience the most painful sensations on beholding all this confusion of images crowded together without any method. But unfortunately I have a weakness for the Paris feuilleton, for Heine’s Reisebilder, etc., and prefer a stew to roast-beef. What pains it has cost me to pull a scientific face in order to write down a jejune train of thought with the requisite decency and alia breve. Your husband can even sing a song about this (not to the tune it is true of “ Ach lieber Franz, noch”[27], etc.), for he was very much surprised at the lack of “ style.” In the end I felt like the sailor who feels less secure on land than in a rocking ship. But perhaps I shall one day discover a philological theme that will permit of musical treatment, and then I shall splutter like a suckling and heap up images like a barbarian who has fallen asleep before an antique head of Venus, and still be in the right in spite of the “ flourishing speed”[28] of the exposition. And Ehlert is almost always right. But to many men truth is irrecognizable in this harlequin garb. To us who hold no page of life too serious to allow of our sketching some joke in fleeting arabesque upon it, this is not so. And which of the gods can feel any surprise if we occasionally behave like satyrs and parody a life that always looks so serious and pathetic and wears buskins? If only I could manage to conceal my weakness for dissonance from you! Answer me frankly have you not already a terrible sample of it? Here you have a second. Wagner’s and Schopenhauer’s club feet are difficult to conceal. But I shall improve. And if ever you should allow me to play you something again, I shall embody my memory of that beautiful Sunday in tones, and then you will hear what you only read today, to wit, what a tremendous deal that memory means to a bad musician, etc. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. To Freiherr Karl Von Gersdorff - August, 1868 Nauniburg, August 8, 1868. DEAR FRIEND: At last I can give you absolutely reliable news of my health and quite the best you could wish to hear. A few days ago I returned quite recovered from the baths at Wittekind, where I went in order to place myself in the able and experienced hands of Prof. Volkmann, the distinguished Halle surgeon. My regimental doctors were good and candid enough to advise me to consult this specialist, and after three weeks of the Wittekind cure, the somewhat painful healing process developed so favourably that Volkmann congratulated me and said I should now recover very quickly. In the end an operation was not necessary, although for a long while it had threatened to be so. Just think, old man! five months illness, much tedious pain, profound bodily and spiritual depression, and desperate prospects for the future-all this has been overcome! All that remains to remind me of my dangerous condition is a single deep scar over the bone in the middle of my chest. Volkmann told me that if the suppuration had lasted much longer-as it was it lasted three months-my heart or my lungs would probably have been affected. It is obvious that I cannot resume my military duties. I am pronounced “ temporarily disabled,” and I hope, as I have been prevented from becoming an officer of the Reserve, I shall contrive slowy and gradually to vanish from the list of those liable to serve. Your devoted friend, FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. To Rohde - October, 1868
Naumburg, October 8, 1868. MY DEAR FRIEND: … Not long ago I was reading (and that at first hand) Jahn’s Essays on Music, as well as his essays on Wagner. A certain amount of enthusiasm is required to do justice to such a man, but Jahn shows instinctive repugnance and listens with his ears half closed. Nevertheless I agree with him in many respects, particularly when he says he regards Wagner as the representative of a modern dilettantism which is sucking up and digesting all art interests. But it is precisely from this point of view that one cannot cease wondering at the magnitude of each artistic gift in this man and his inexhaustible energy coupled with such a versatility of artistic talent. For as to “ culture”, the more variegated and extensive it happens to be, the more lifeless is usually the eye, the weaker are the legs and the more effete are the brains that bear it. Wagner has, moreover, a range of feeling which lies far beyond Jahn’s reach. Jahn remains a “ Grenzbote”[29] hero, a healthy man, to whom the Tannhauser saga and the atmosphere of Lohengrin are a closed book. My pleasure in Wagner is much the same as my pleasure in Schopenhauer-the ethical air, the redolence of Faust, and also of the Crossdeath and the tomb… . Your old friend, FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Prussian Gunner. To Rohde - November, 1868 Leipzig, November 9, 1868. MY DEAR FRIEND: Today I intend to relate a whole host of sprightly experiences, to look merrily into the future and to conduct myself in such idyllic and easy fashion that your sinister guest-that feline fever-will arch its back and retire spitting and swearing. And in order that all discordant notes may be avoided I shall discuss the famous res severa[30] which is responsible for your second letter on a special sheet of paper, so that you will be able to read it when you are in the right mood and place for it. The acts of my comedy are: (1) A Club-night or the Assistant Professor; (2) The Ejected Tailor; (3) A Rendezvous with X. Some old women take part in the performance… . At home I found two letters, yours and an invitation from Curtius, whom I am glad to get to know better. When two friends like us write letters to each other, it is well known that the angels rejoice. And they rejoiced as I read your letter-aye, they even giggled… . When I reached home yesterday I found a card addressed to me with this note upon it: “ If you would like to meet Richard Wagner, come to the Theatre Cafe at a quarter to four. Windisch”. Forgive me, but this news so turned my head that I quite forgot what I was doing before it came, and was thoroughly bewildered. I naturally ran there and found our loyal friend, who gave me a lot of fresh information. Wagner was staying in Leipzig with his relations in the strictest incognito. The press had no inkling of his visit and all Brockhaus’s servants were as dumb as graves in livery. Now Wagner’s sister, Frau Brockhaus, that determined and clever woman, had introduced her friend Frau Ritschl to her brother, and on this occasion was able proudly to boast of the friend to the brother and of the brother to the friend, the lucky creature! Wagner played the Meisterlied, which you must know, in Frau Ritschl’s presence, and this good lady told him that she already knew the song very well, mea opera.[31] Imagine Wagner’s joy and surprise! And with the utmost readiness in the world he graciously declared his willingness to meet me incognito. I was to be invited on Friday evening. Windisch, however, pointed out that I should be prevented from coming by my official post and duties, Saturday afternoon was accordingly proposed. On that day Windisch and I ran to the Brockhaus’s, found the Professor’s family but no Wagner. He had just gone out with an enormous hat on his huge head. It was thus that I made the acquaintance of the excellent family and received a kind invitation for Sunday evening. On these days I felt as though I was living in a novel, and you must allow that in view of the inaccessibility of the exceptional man, the circumstances leading up to this acquaintance were somewhat romantic. As I was under the impression that a large company of guests had been invited, I decided to dress very ceremoniously, and was glad that my tailor had promised to deliver a new dress suit for this very evening. It was a horrid day with constant showers of rain and snow. One shuddered at the thought of leaving the house, and I was therefore very pleased when little Roscher paid me a visit in the afternoon to tell me something about the Eleatics and about God in philosophy-for, as candidandus he is working up the material collected by Ahrens in his “ Development of the Idea of God up to the Time of Aristotle” while Romundt is trying for the prize essay of the University, the subject of which is “ On the Will”. It was getting dark, the tailor did not turn up, and Roscher left me. I accompanied him, called on the tailor myself, and found his minions busily engaged on my clothes, which they promised to send round in three-quarters of an hour. I went on my way in a jolly mood, looked in at Kintschy’s, read the Kladderadatsch, and was amused to find a paragraph saying that Wagner was in Switzerland and that a fine house was being built for him in Munich, while I knew all the time that I was going to see him that evening and that the day before he had received a letter from the little monarch[32] addressed to “ The Great German Tone-poet, Richard Wagner.” But at home there was no tailor awaiting me, so I sat down and read the treatise on the Eudokia at my ease, but was constantly disturbed by the sound of a shrill bell that seemed
to be ringing some distance away. At last I felt certain that someone was stand ing at the old iron gate; it was shut, as was also the door of the house. I shouted across the garden to the man to enter the house; but it was impossible to make oneself understood through the pouring rain. The whole house was disturbed, the door was ultimately opened, and a little old man bearing a parcel came up to me. It was half-past 6, time for me to dress and get ready, as I lived a long way off. It was all right, the man had my things. I tried them on and they fitted. But what was this suspicious development? He actually presented me with a bill. I took it politely, but he declared he must be paid on delivery. I was surprised, and explained that I had nothing to do with him as the servant of my tailor, but that my dealings were with his master to whom I had given the order. The man grew more pressing, as did also the time. I snatched at the things and began to put them on. He snatched them too and did all he could to prevent me from dressing. What with violence on my part and violence on his, there was soon a scene, and all the time I was fighting in my shirt, as I wished to get the new trousers. At last, after a display of dignity, solemn threats, the utterance of curses on my tailor and his accomplice, and vows of vengeance, the little man vanished with my clothes. End of the First Act. I sat on my sofa and meditated while I examined a black coat and wondered whether it was good enough for Richard. Outside the rain continued to pour. It was a quarter past 7. I had promised to meet Windisch at half-past 7 at the Theatre Cafe. I plunged into the dark and rainy night, also a little man in black and without evening dress, yet in a beatific mood, for chance was in my favour-even the scene with the tailor’s man had something tremendously unusual about it. At last we entered Frau Brockhaus’s exceedingly comfortable drawing-room. There was nobody there except the most intimate members of the family, Richard and us two. I was introduced to Wagner and muttered a few respectful words to him. He questioned me closely as to how I had become so well acquainted with his music, complained bitterly about the way his operas were produced with the exception of the famous Munich performances, and made great fun of the conductors who tried to encourage their orchestra in friendly tones as follows: “ Now, gentlemen, let’s have some passion! My good people, still a little more passion if you please!” Wagner enjoys imitating the Leipzig dialect. Now let me give you a brief account of all that happened that evening. Really the joys were of such a rare and stimulating kind that even today I am not back in the old groove, but can think of nothing better to do than come to you, my dear friend, to tell you these wonderful tidings. Wagner played to us before and after supper, and went through every one of the more important passages of the Meistersinger. He imitated all the voices and was in very high spirits. He is, by the bye, an extraordinarily energetic and fiery man. He speaks very quickly and wittily, and can keep a private company of the sort assembled on that evening very jolly. I managed to have quite a long talk with him about Schopenhauer. Oh, and you can imagine what a joy it was for me to hear him speak with such indescribable warmth of our master-what a lot we owed to him, how he was the only philosopher who had understood the essence of music! Then he inquired as to how the professors were disposed toward him; laughed a good deal about the Philosophers Congress at Prague, and spoke of them as philosophical footmen. Later on he read me a piece out of the autobiography he is now writing, a thoroughly amusing scene from his Leipzig student days which I still cannot recall without a laugh. He writes extraordinarily cleverly and intellectually. At the close of the evening, when we were both ready to go, he shook my hand very warmly and kindly asked me to come and see him so that we might have some music and philosophy together. He also entrusted me with the task of making his music known to his sister and his relations, a duty which I undertook very solemnly to fulfil. You will hear more about it when I have succeeded in looking at this evening more objectively and from a greater distance. For the time being a hearty farewell and best wishes for your health from yours, F. N. To Rohde - November, 1868 Leipzig on the Day of Penance, November 20, 1868. MY DEAR FRIEND: Now that I can once more contemplate the teeming brood of philologists of our day at close quarters; now that I am obliged daily to observe the whole of their mole-hill activity, their swollen cheek pouches, their blind eyes, their rejoicing over the captured worm and their indifference towards the true-nay, the obvious-problems of life, and remember that I notice these characteristics not only in the young brood, but also in their venerable elders, I grow ever more clearly convinced that we two, if we wish to remain true to our genius, will not be able to pursue our life task without causing much offence, and being constantly thwarted and crossed in our purpose. When the philologist and the man are not of one piece, the whole tribe above mentioned gapes in astonishment at the miracle; it grows angry and finally scratches, growls, and bites. You have just experienced an example of this. For of this I am quite certain, that the trick you have been played was not directed at your work in particular, but at your individuality. And I, too, live in hope of having very soon a foretaste of what awaits me in this infernal atmosphere. But, my good man, what have the judgments of other people concerning our personalities to do with our achievements? Let us remember Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner, and the inexhaustible energy with which they maintained their belief in themselves in the face of protests from the whole of the “ cultured” world, and even if we are not allowed to refer them to deos maximos[33] we still have the consolation of knowing that however odd one is one cannot be denied the right to existence, and that two such odd creatures as ourselves who understand each other so well and are so deeply united must be a delightful spectacle for the gods. Finally, nothing could be more regrettable than the fact that precisely at this moment, when we have just begun to put our views of life to a practical test, and explore all things and all circumstances in turn-men, states, studies, world histories, churches, schools, etc.-with our antennae, we should be separated by miles of territory, and each should be left alone with the semi-enjoyable and semi-painful feeling of having to digest his outlook on the world in solitude. As a matter of fact nothing would have been more exhilarating than to
sit down together now, as we used to do, to digest our bodily meals together at Kintschy’s, and symbolically drink our afternoon coffee in company, and, from this midday of our lives, glance backwards into the past and forwards into the future. However, it will not be too late to do this even in Paris, where the great ??a???f?s??[34] of our comedy takes place, and upon the most beautiful scene in the world, too, between the most brilliant wings and in numerable glittering supers. Oh, how lovely this image is! Therefore avaunt unadorned reality, shamefully vulgar empiricism, credit and debit, and “ Grenzboten” sobriety!-no, let the whole of this letter be presented to my friend, with all my soul, as a solemn and lofty greeting! (He drinks the contents of the ink bottle.) Chorus of the Ascetics: Selig der Liebende, Der die betr�bende, Heilsam’ �nd ubende Pr�fung bestanden.[35] To Freiherr Karl Von Gersdorff - April, 1869 Naumburg, April 13, 1869. MY DEAR FRIEND: My hour has come and this is the last evening I shall spend at home for some time. Early tomorrow morning I go out into the wide, wide world, to enter a new and untried profession, in an atmosphere heavy and oppressive with duty and work. Once more I must take leave of everything, the golden time of free and unconstrained activity, in which every instant is sovereign, in which the joys of art and the world are spread out before us as a mere spectacle in which we scarcely participate. This time is now for ever in the past for me. Now the inexorable goddess “ Daily Duty” rules supreme. “ Bemooster Bursche zieh? ich aus!” [36] [As a moss-grown student I go out into the world.] But you know that touching student song of course! “ Muss selber nun Philister sein!” [37] [I too must be a Philistine now.] In one way or another this line always comes true. One cannot take up posts and honours with impunity the only question is, are the fetters of iron or of thread? For I have the pluck which will one day perhaps enable me to burst my bonds and venture into this precarious life from a different direction and in a different way. As yet I see no sign of the inevitable humpback of the professor. May Zeus and all the Muses preserve me from ever becoming a Philistine, an ??df?p??[38], a man of the herd. But I do not know how I could become one, seeing that I am not one. It is true I stand a little nearer to another kind of Philistine-the Philistine of the “ specialist” species; for it is only natural that the daily task, and the unremitting concentration of the mind upon certain specified subjects and problems, should tend to abate the free receptivity of the mind and undermine the philosophic sense. But I flatter myself that I shall be able to meet this danger with more calm and assurance than the majority of philologists. Philosophical seriousness is already too deeply rooted in me; the true and essential problems of life and thought have been too clearly revealed to me by that great mystagogue, Schopenhauer, to allow of my ever being obliged to dread such a disgraceful defection from the “ Idea”. To infuse this new blood into my science, to communicate to my pupils that Schopenhauerian earnestness which is stamped on the brow of the sublime man-such is my desire, such is my undaunted hope. I should like to be something more than a mere trainer of efficient philologists. The present generation of teachers, the care of the coming generation-all this is in my mind. If we must live our lives out to the bitter end let us at least do so in such wise that others may bless our life as a priceless treasure, once we have been happily released from its tolls. As for you, old man, with whom I agree on such a number of vital and fundamental questions, I wish you the luck you deserve and myself your old and tried friendship. Fare thee well! FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, DR. To Rohde - August, 1869 Badenweiler, August 17, 1869. MY DEAR FRIEND: This is the last day of the holidays. Feelings long since dead and buried seem to wake again. I feel just like a fourth-form boy who waxes sentimental and writes poems about the ephemeral character of earthly happiness when he hears the clock strike on the last day of the holidays. Oh, dear friend, what a small amount of joy is mine and what a lot of my own smoke I have to consume! Aye, I wouldn’t fear even an attack of that dreadful dysentery if by means of it I could purchase a talk with you every evening. How unsatisfactory letters are! Incidentally I discovered the following beautiful passage in old Goethe yesterday: “ How precious is the dear and certain speech Of the present friend! The Solitary, Robbed of its power benign, sinks into gloom; Too slowly ripens, then locked in his breast, Thought and each firm resolve ; but in the presence
Of the beloved friend they leap to life!”[39] You see, that’s the whole thing: we are in eternal need of midwives, and with the view of being confined most men go into the public house or to a “ colleague,” and then the little thoughts and little plans romp out like kittens. When, however, we are pregnant and there is no one at hand to assist us in our difficult delivery, then darkly and gloomily we lay our rude, unformed, newborn thought in the murky recess of some cave; the sunny rays of friendship are denied it. But with my incessant talk about solitude, I shall soon develop into a regular Joseph, the carpenter, and then no kind Mary will wish to join her lot with mine. “ The calf and the baby ass, men say, do praise the Lord most perfectly.” There s the whole thing! A little cattle makes the whole world kin, the edifice is crowned. Remember it was the shepherds and the sheep who saw the stars; to people like us everything is dark… . Now let me tell you something about my Jupiter, Richard Wagner, to whom I go from time to time for a breath of air, and receive more refreshment by so doing than any of my colleagues could possibly imagine. The fellow has not received a single honour yet, and has only just had the distinction of being elected honorary member of the Berlin Academy of Arts. A fruitful, rich and convulsive life, distinctly unheard of and deviating from the average standard of morals. But that is precisely why he stands there, firmly rooted in his own power, with his eyes always scanning a distance beyond everything ephemeral, and beyond his age in the finest sense. Not long ago he handed me the MS. of “ State and Religion,” intended as a memoire for the young King of Bavaria. It is conceived on such a high plane, is so independent of time, and so full of nobility and Schopenhauerian earnestness that it made me feel I should like to be a king in order to receive such exhortations. By-the-bye, a little while ago I sent him one or two passages out of your letters for Frau von B�low, who had often asked me for them. On my last visit but one a baby boy was born during the night and was called “ Siegfried.” The last time I was there Wagner had just completed the composition of his Siegfried, and was full of the exuberance of his power. Aren’t you going to write to him? Perhaps you think he has more than enough lay admirers. But do not write as a musician; write as a man who is in sympathy with his thoughts and is as earnest as he is. He very rarely gets a sign of this sort, and every time he does happen to he is as delighted as if he had had a windfall… . Farewell, my dear, true friend. FRIED. NIETZSCHE. Nietzsche To His Mother - August, 1869 Bale, Monday Evening, August 30, 1869. DEAR MOTHER: I have just returned from an exceedingly enjoyable and harmonically happy visit of two days to my friend Wagner and am reminded that I owe you an answer as well as thanks for two letters. Above all I am delighted to hear that you are sure to come in the autumn, but you have formed an exaggerated opinion of the all too modest space at my disposal in my new quarters if you think I shall be able to put you both up. I shall however do my best to make arrangements for you to live quite close to me, perhaps even in the same house. This would be quite possible if my colleague Sch�nberg moves, as he intends to do, at the right time. Then his rooms would be free. We are now very busy again and regularly so. As soon as the term is over and I am quite free, I think we shall make our way together to the charming Lake of Geneva and eat as many grapes as we like, but not medicinally like the Grand-duchess.[40] As you seem to be interested in her meeting with me, I must add that it made quite a favourable impression upon me. She seems to have received a sound and liberal education; she shows marked signs of having a good intellect and an earnest grasp of life, which is certainly not rare in royal personages and is quite comprehensible in view of the burdens of their position. She has moreover a friendly, accessible and engaging manner, and does not suffer from a desire to be constantly standing on ceremony. I received her as you suggested. I met her at the railway station with a bouquet, escorted her on foot across the Rhine bridge and then as far as her hotel in a carriage. I then had dinner with her and her suite-she has engaged 21 rooms. So I was in her company in all about two or three hours and for a good part of that time alone with her. During that time she told me a good deal about old days and recent ones as well; for instance, a lot about you, how Lizzie had grown so thin at Leipzig, and whether she drank cow’s milk now, etc., etc. The ladies in waiting were also quite attentive to me and proved kind and cheerful creatures. One is at a great advantage when one’s attitude towards royal personages is quite independent and one has no requests or appeals to lay before them. Why did Lizzie tremble so on the occasion of her first visit and behave in such a nervous way? I would not say that I had been embarrassed by the whole affair, but I regretted the time lost. The Grand-duchess revealed a strong taste for music and thought over the proximity of Tribschen and Richard Wagner a good deal. She asked me to convey to him her deep regard for his work. Never have I been happier than during the last few days. The warm, hearty and increasing intimacy with Wagner and Fran von Billow, the complete agreement between us on all the questions that chiefly interest us, Wagner absolutely in the prime of his genius and marvellous creations only just come into being, glorious Tribschen arranged on such a regal and ingenious scale-many things conspire to exhilarate me and strengthen me in my calling. Good-bye! F. N. To Rohde - February, 1870
Bale, End of January to February 15, 1870. MY DEAR FRIEND: I suddenly began to feel anxious the other day. I am wondering how you are getting on in Rome, and thinking how remote from the world and isolated your life there must be. You may even be ill and are receiving no proper care and no friendly support. Set my fears at rest and dispel my pessimistic fancies. I always imagine Rome of the Christian Councils as a terribly poisonous place-no, I shall not write any more; for I have a feeling that the secrecy of a letter is not sufficiently secure for the discussion of ecclesiastical and Jesuitical matters. They might scent what the contents of the letter were, and pay you out for it. You are studying antiquity and leading the life of the Middle Ages. Now let me impress this upon you most emphatically-don’t forget on your return journey to come and spend some time with me. Perhaps, you know, it might be the last time for many years. I miss you terribly, so give me the comfort of your presence and try to make your stay not too short a one. For it is indeed a new experience for me to have no one on the spot to whom I can tell all the best and the worst that life brings me-not even a really sympathetic colleague. In such anchoritic conditions and with such difficult years in a young life, my friendship is actually becoming something pathological. I beg you, as an invalid begs : “ Come to Bale!” My real refuge, which cannot be valued too highly, is still Triebschen, near Lucerne. The only thing is I can but seldom have recourse to it. I spent my Christmas holidays there, most beautiful and uplifting memory! It is absolutely necessary that you too should be initiated into this magic. When once you are my guest we shall go and visit our friend Wagner together. Can’t you tell me anything about Franz Liszt? If you could possibly manage to come home via Lake Como you would have a fine opportunity of giving us all great pleasure. We, i.e., we Triebschen folk, have our eye on a villa on the lake near Fiume Latte. It is called “ Valla Capuana,” and consists of two houses. Could you manage to inspect this villa and give us the benefit of your opinion? … I have delivered a lecture on “ The Ancient Musical Drama” before a mixed audience, and on Feb. 1st. I shall deliver a second on “ Socrates and Tragedy.” Every day I get to like the Hellenic world more and more. There is no better way of approaching close to it than that of indefatigably cultivating one’s own little self. The degree of culture I have attained consists in a most mortifying admission of my own ignorance. The life of a philologist striving in every direction of criticism and yet a thousand miles away from Greek antiquity becomes every day more impossible to me. I even doubt whether I shall ever succeed in becoming a proper philologist. If I cannot succeed incidentally, as it were, I shall never succeed. The trouble of it is that I have no example and am in the dangerous position of the fool who acts on his own responsibility. My plan for the immediate future is four years of work in cultivating myself and then a year of travel, in your company perhaps. Our life is really a very difficult one. Sweet ignorance led by teachers and traditions was so blissfully secure. Moreover you will be well-advised not to choose a small University in which to settle down. One is isolated even in one’s science. What would I not give for you and me to be able to live together! I am almost forgetting how to speak. But the most irksome feature of my life is that I must always be impersonating or representing somebody, either the teacher, the philologist, or the man, and that I have always to begin by proving my mettle to all whom I frequent. I am, however, a very bad hand at this, and get steadily worse as time goes on. I either remain dumb or intentionally only say as much as a polite man of the world is expected to say. In short, I am more dissatisfied with myself than with the world, and feel therefore all the more attached to the dearest of friends. Farewell! Farewell! Nietzsche To His Mother - August, 1870 Sulz, near Weissenburg, in the Neighbourhood of Worth, August 28, 1870. TO BEGIN WITH, HEARTY GREETINGS: We have already been two days on the journey from Erlangen: it takes longer than one thinks, although we lay claim to every means of conveyance to hand, and entered France, for instance, sitting on the breaks of an enormous supply train. Yesterday, on a march lasting eleven hours, we performed our errands at Gorsdorf and Langensulzbach, and on the battlefield of Worth. Under separate cover I am sending you a souvenir of the terribly devastated battlefield, strewn with countless sad remains and smelling strongly of corpses. Today we want to go to Hagenau, tomorrow to Nancy, and so on, in the direction of the Southern Army. Mosengel and I are travelling alone and shall only rejoin Ziemssen, our Erlangen colleague, at Pont-�-Mousson. No letters from you can possibly reach me for the next few weeks, as we are constantly changing our position, and the letter post is exceedingly slow. Nothing can be gleaned here of the progress of our army, all papers having completely ceased. The enemy population here seems to be growing used to the new state of affairs. But of course it should be remembered that they are threatened with death for the smallest offence. In all the villages through which we have passed one sees hospital after hospital. I shall soon send you further news. Don’t be in the least anxious on my account. YOUR FRITZ. Nietzsche To His Mother Erlangen, September 11, 1870. Hotel Walfisch.
DEAREST MOTHER: Just think-until now I have had no news of you, but my campaign has already come to an end without mishap. Not quite without mishap, perhaps, for I am lying here suffering from severe dysentery: but the worst symptoms are over[41] and on Tuesday or Wednesday I shall be able to travel to Naumburg to be nursed back to health again. And now as regards this, I should like you and Lizzie, if you possibly can, to return to Naumburg. What with my longing for peace and quiet and the exhausted state I am in, there is no other place to which I should like to go. I went as far as the outskirts of Metz and conducted a transport of wounded from there to Carlsruhe. And as the result of this, the terrible state of all the wounded in my hands, the constant bandaging of their septic wounds, and sleeping in a cattle truck in which six severely wounded men lay on straw, I contracted the germ of dysentery. The doctor discovered that I was suffering from diphtheria as well, which is also the outcome of this journey. This is another of the evils we are combating with the utmost vigour. In spite of it all I am glad at least to have been able to help a little in the midst of all the incredible misery. And I should have returned to my duties immediately if illness had not made this impossible. With heartiest greetings and wishes, YOUR SON. F. N. To Ritschl - September, 1870 Naumburg, September 21, 1870. DEAR SIR: Who can tell whether you have received my last letters! This is the secret qualm which at such times as these seizes every letter writer. That is why I will tell you once again that in the service of the voluntary ambulance corps I went from Erlangen to the seat of war as far as Ars-sur-Moselle (quite close to Metz), and that I brought a transport of wounded from there to Carlsruhe. The strain of the whole undertaking was considerable and I am still struggling against the recollection of all I saw during those weeks, as well as against an incessant wail of which I cannot rid my mind’s ear. On my return I was laid up with two dangerous diseases caught from the seriously wounded men I had nursed unremittingly for all those days and nights diphtheria and dysentery alas! nobile par fratrum![42] However, I have got over the worst of both these maladies. A few days ago I arrived here in Naumburg with the view of recuperating thoroughly and of recovering by means of peaceful work from the stress and fatigue I had undergone. It is a funny thing that in spite of one’s best intentions for the general weal one’s own paltry personality with all its wretchedness and weakness comes and trips one up. Once more, alas! I hope shortly to be able to give you an account of my experiences in person, and I am also bringing you one or two chassepot bullets picked up on the battlefields. All my martial passions have been kindled once more and I have been unable to gratify them. Had I joined my battery I might have been an active or passive witness of the events at Rezonville, Sedan and Laon. But the neutrality of Switzerland tied my hands. … But when have we been able to walk more proudly than at present? Surely when German meets German now they can laugh as well as cry together like two augurs! And this we shall do together next week. Au revoir! Your devoted, FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. To Freiherr Karl Von Gersdorff - October, 1870 Naumburg, October 20, 1870. MY DEAR FRIEND: This morning I had a most pleasant surprise and release from much anxiety and uneasiness-your letter. Only the day before yesterday I received the most terrible shock on hearing your name pronounced in faltering accents at Pforta. You know what these faltering accents mean just now. I immediately begged the Rector to give me the list of old Pforta boys who had fallen in the war, and this document reached me yesterday evening. In one important respect it reassured me. Otherwise it was a sad record. In addition to the names you have already mentioned, I find at the head of the list Stockert, then Von Oertzen (though his name has a question mark against it), then Von Riedesel, etc., sixteen in all. I was deeply moved by all you told me, above all by the sincerity and gravity with which you speak of the trial by fire to which the philosophy we hold in common has been subjected. I, too, have had a similar experience, and in my case, as well, these months have been a period during which I have been able to prove how deep and firm are the roots our fundamental doctrine has struck in me. One can die with it-this is much more than saying that one can live with it. For I have not been so securely removed from the dangers of the war as you might imagine. As soon as it was declared I applied to my Governing Board for leave to discharge my duty as a German soldier. They granted me leave but stipulated that in view of Switzerland’s neutrality I was on no account to bear arms. (Since 1869 I have ceased to be a Prussian citizen.) With out delay, therefore, I set out with an excellent friend with the object of offering myself as a volunteer ambulance attendant. This friend, who shared all my experiences for seven weeks, is the painter Mosengel of Hamburg, a man whom I must introduce to you as soon as peace is restored. Without his hearty assistance I should probably not have survived the events of this period. At Erlangen I attended the University
lectures in order to be trained in medicine and surgery; we had 200 wounded there. In a very few days I was given charge of two Prussians and two Turcos. Two of these very soon contracted hospital gangrene, and I had to do a lot of painting. At the end of a fortnight Mosengel and I were sent out by a Red Cross Society there. We were intrusted with a host of personal messages and also with large sums of money to be handed to about eighty field chaplains already dispatched to the seat of war. Our plan was to join my colleague Ziemssen at Pont-�-Mousson, and to throw in our lot with his band of fifteen young men. As a matter of fact, however, this plan was not realized. We met with great difficulties in discharging our various commissions, for, as we had no addresses, we were obliged, at considerable pains and with only the most inadequate directions to guide us, to go from battlefield to battlefield and scour the hospitals of Weissenburg and the field hospitals of Worth, Hagenau, Luneville, and Nancy, all the way to Metz. At Ars-sur-Moselle a number of wounded soldiers were placed in our care, and as they had to be conveyed to Carlsruhe, we returned with them. I had charge of six very seriously wounded men singlehanded for three days and three nights; Mosengel had five. The weather was atrocious and the goods trucks we were in had to be almost closed up to prevent the poor invalids from getting soaked through. The air in these trucks was simply unspeakable and to make matters worse two of my patients had dysentery and two others diphtheria. In short I had an incredible amount to do and spent three hours in the morning and three at night dressing wounds alone. In addition to that, I could get no rest at night owing to my patients continual need of me. After I had delivered up my charges to a stationary hospital I fell very ill myself and quickly developed a severe attack of dysentery and diphtheria. I reached Erlangen with great difficulty and there I laid up. Mosengel was self-sacrificing enough to nurse me there-a no small under taking considering the nature of my malady. After I had been dosed with opium and injections of tannin and silver nitrate for several days, the worst danger was over. In a week I was able to travel to Naumburg, but I am not right yet. Besides, the atmosphere of my experiences had spread like a gloomy mist all about me, and for some time I never ceased to hear the plaintive cries of the wounded. It was therefore quite impossible to pursue my plan of returning to the seat of war, and now I must be content with watching and pitying from a distance. Oh, my dear friend, what good wishes can I send you! We both know what we have to expect from life. But we must not live for ourselves alone. So live on! live on! dearest friend, and fare you well! I know your heroic nature. Oh, if only you could be spared to me! Your devoted friend, in Bale for good). To Freiherr Karl Von Gersdorff - November, 1870 Bale, November 7, 1870. MY DEAR FRIEND: Yesterday I had a treat which I should have liked you of all people to share. Jacob Burckhardt[43] gave a free lecture on “ Historical Greatness,” which was quite in keeping with our thought and feeling. This exceedingly original old man, although not given to distortion, is yet inclined to hush up the truth. But on our confidential walks he calls Schopenhauer “ our philosopher.” Every week I attend one of his lectures on the Study of History, and I believe I am the only one of his sixty listeners who grasps the profundity of his line of thought with its curious breaks and twists at any point where the subject threatens to be come dangerous. For the first time in my life I have enjoyed a lecture, but then it was the sort of one I myself might give when I am older. This summer I wrote an essay on the “ Dionysian Weltanschauung” dealing with an aspect of Greek antiquity of which, thanks to our philosopher, we are now able to get a much closer view. But these are studies which, for the time being only, concern me. I have no greater wish than to be allowed sufficient time to mature properly and then out of my plenitude produce something. As regards the conditions of culture in the immediate future, I feel the deepest misgivings. If only we are not forced to pay too dearly for this huge national success in a quarter where I at least refuse to suffer any loss. Between ourselves, I regard the Prussia of today as a power full of the greatest dangers for culture. One day I shall myself publicly expose our scholastic organization; as to the religious intrigues which are once more spreading from Berlin to the advantage of the Catholic Church I leave that to others! At times it is very hard, but we must be philosophical enough to keep our presence of mind in the midst of all this intoxication, so that no thief may come to rob or steal from us-what the greatest military feats or the highest national exaltation would in my opinion never replace. Much fighting will be necessary for the coming period of culture, and for this work we must keep our selves in readiness. Dear friend, I always think of you with the deepest apprehension. May the genius of the future guide and guard you in the way we desire. Your devoted friend, FR. NIETZSCHE. To His Mother And Sister - December, 1870 Bale, December 12, 1870. DEAR MAMMA AND LIZZIE: … I am gradually losing all sympathy for Germany’s present war of conquest. The future of German culture seems to me now more in danger than it ever was… . With heartiest greetings, YOUR FRITZ.
To Rohde - December, 1870 Bale, December 15, 1870. MY DEAR FRIEND: I have not allowed a minute to elapse since reading your letter but am replying at once. I simply wanted to tell you that I felt just as you do and would regard it as a disgrace if we could not get out of this state of longing thirst by means of some energetic deed. Now listen to what I have been turning over in my soul! Let us drag on for another year or two in this University life! Let us accept it as an instructive burden of sorrow which we are obliged to bear earnestly and with surprise. Among other things it will be a period of probation for the art of teaching, by means of which I regard it as my mission to perfect myself. The only thing is I have set my goal a little higher. In the long run I have become aware of the importance of Schopenhauer’s teaching about the wisdom of the Universities. A thoroughly radically truthful existence is impossible here. But what is specially important is that nothing truly subversive can ever emerge from this quarter. And then we can only become genuine teachers by straining every nerve to raise ourselves out of the atmosphere of these times and by being not only wiser but above all better men. Here also I feel that the very first prerequisite is to be true. And that is why, I repeat, I cannot endure this academic atmosphere too long. So it comes to this, we shall sooner or later cast off this yoke-upon this I am firmly resolved. And then we shall form a new Greek Academy-Romundt will certainly join us in that. Thanks to your visits to Triebschen you must also know Wagner’s Bayreuth plan. I have been considering quite privately whether we on our part should not simultaneously effect a breach with philology as it has been practised hitherto and its aspect of culture. I am preparing an important adhortatio[44] to all those natures that have not been completely stifled and entangled in the present age. What a deplorable thing it is that I should have to write to you about these matters and that each individual thought should not have been discussed with you long ago! For, since you do not know the whole apparatus as it already exists, my plan will seem to you like an eccentric whim. But this it is not-it is a need. A book of Wagner’s about Beethoven that has just been published you will find full of suggestions about what I desire for the future. Read it; it is a revelation of the spirit in which we-we!-shall live in the future. Even supposing we get but few adherents, I believe, nevertheless, that we shall be able to extricate our selves pretty well-not without some injuries, it is true-from this current, and that we shall reach some islet upon which we shall no longer require to stop up our ears with wax. We shall then be our own mutual teachers and our books will only be so much bait wherewith to lure others to our monastic and artistic association. Our lives, our work, and our enjoyment will then be for one another; possibly this is the only way in which we can work for the world as a whole. In order to prove to you how deeply in earnest I am in this matter, I have already begun to limit my requirements in order to be able to preserve a small vestige of private means. We shall also try our luck in lotteries; and, if we write books, I shall for the immediate future demand the highest possible fees. In short, we shall make use of every legitimate means in order to establish our monastery upon a secure material basis thus, even for the next few years, we have our appointed tasks. If only this plan would strike you as being at least worthy of consideration! That it was high time to lay it before you is proved by the really stirring letter I have just received from you. Ought we not to be able to introduce a new form of the Academy life into the world“ And would my powerful longings, all in vain Charm into life that deathless form again-“ [45] -as Faust says of Helen? Nobody knows anything about this project, and whether we shall now send a preliminary communication about it to Romundt will depend upon you. Our school of philosophy is surely not an historical reminiscence or a deliberate whim-does not dire necessity impel us in this direction? Apparently the plan we made as students to travel together has returned in a new and symbolically grander form. I will not again be the culprit who, as on that occasion, left you in the lurch. I have not yet ceased to be vexed about that. With the best of hopes, Your devoted FRATER FRIDERICUS. To Rohde - January, 1872 Bale, January 28, 1872. MY VERY DEAR FRIEND: The other day I was approached, through Susemihl, and asked whether I would accept a professorship at Greifswald. But I refused it immediately in your favour and recommended you for the post. Has the matter developed any further? I referred it to Ribbeck. Of course, the thing got to be known here and was the means of my earning much sympathy from the good folk of Bale. Although I protested that it was not actually the offer of an appointment, but only a provisional inquiry, all the students decided to have a torchlight procession in my honour, declaring that they wished to express how much they valued and esteemed my past work in Bale. But I declined to accept this demonstration. I am now holding a course of lectures here on “ The Future of our Educational Institutions,”[46] and am making quite a sensation and even at times provoking genuine enthusiasm. Why do we not live together,
for all that now surges in my breast and that I am preparing for the future cannot even be touched upon in letters? I have concluded an alliance with Wagner. You cannot think how near we stand to each other now and how closely related our schemes are. What I have had to hear about my book is incredible, but that is the reason why I do not write anything about it. What is your opinion on the subject? Everything I hear about it makes me uncommonly serious, for it is out of voices such as these that I divine the future of my schemes. This life is going to be very hard still. In Leipzig irritation seems to prevail again. Nobody there writes me a line about it, not even Ritschl. My dear friend, some time or other we absolutely must live together; it is a sacred necessity. For some while I have been living in a tremendous current; nearly every day something astounding happens, while my aspirations and intentions continue to rise. Let me tell you as a great secret, and begging you to keep it to yourself, that among other things I am preparing a Promemoria about the University of Strasburg in the form of an interpellation for the Reichstag, to be delivered to Bismarck. In it I wish to show how shamefully a great opportunity was lost of making a truly German Educational Institute for the regeneration of the German spirit and for the total extermination of what has hitherto been called “ culture.” War to the knife! or, rather, to the cannon! Your friend, THE MOUNTED ARTILLERYMAN WITH THE HEAVIEST GUNS. To Rohde - June, 1872 Bale, June 18, 1872. MY DEAR FRIEND: As the result of stomach and intestinal trouble I have been in bed for a few days and am still feeling rather seedy today. So do not expect anything exceptionally rational if I now answer your letter after having all sorts of conflicting thoughts and ideas about it. Ah, my dear friend, in such cases the wisest course cannot be discovered by cunning; it is only afterward that one realizes whether one has seized upon the right thing or not. For the case is exceptional, and I do not know by what analogy to decide it. For my part I lay very great stress upon the fact that the philologists will receive a wholesome surprise when you suddenly stand up for me as a philologist. What Wagner in his love for me has written I do not know. In view of the coarse rudeness of our fellow philologist, it will in any case have a different effect from what he expects. It is on occasions like these that the invisible conspiracy against the spirit becomes visible. But what they will least expect, the most terrible feature of it all, will be that a qualified philologist should come to my support. The confidence that this could never happen explains the superlatively impudent tone of this Berlin youth.[47] I am moreover perfectly satisfied in my own mind that, to do him justice, he is only the echo of the “ superiors” who inspire him. As a wholesome warning and to avoid having to deal with these disgusting Berlin Gesundbrunn people,[48] every time we produce something new you would, according to Wagner’s letter, do something eminently salutary if you described to philologists what in all its earnestness and rigour our position toward antiquity actually is, and above all if you could lay stress upon the fact that it is not open to every potty little philologist-whoever he may be-to have his say in these matters, much less, therefore, to criticise them. Dear friend, I imagine your essay starting off with general observations about our philological work; the more general and more earnest these observations are, the easier will it be to address the whole to Wagner. In your opening you might perhaps explain why you turn precisely to Wagner and why you do not address yourself to some philological body, for instance. You might point out that at present we entirely lack any supreme forum for the most ideal results of our studies of antiquity. Then you might make some mention of our experiences and hopes in Bayreuth and thus justify us in connecting our aspirations in regard to antiquity with this cry of “ Awake! for the day is at hand!”[49] And then you might proceed to deal with my book, etc. Ah, my dear friend, it is ridiculous for me, in this seedy mood, to go and write all this to you. But the principal thing seems to be that we should not forego our intention of addressing Wagner, because it is precisely this direct relationship to Wagner that most terrifies the philologists and compels them most forcibly to reflect. At the same time the slaughter of Willamowitz must be done on purely philological lines. Perhaps after a somewhat lengthy introduction dealing with generalities and addressed to Wagner, you might draw a line, and then with some apologies turn to the execution. In any case, toward the end of the essay your tone must once more become so general and earnest that the reader will forget Willamowitz and remember only that we are not to be trifled with-which will mean a good deal where philologists are concerned. For up to the present day they have always regarded me as a sort of philological joker, or, as I heard a little while ago, a writer on music. As the essay will in any case be read by many who are not philologists, remember, dear friend, not to be too “ noble” in the matter of your quotations, so that the non-philological friends of antiquity may find out where they have something to learn. Unfortunately the tone of my own essay did not allow of any instruction of this sort. If possible, try to wipe out the impression that it deals with creatures in the moon and not with the Greeks. Will your pamphlet cover as many as thirty or forty pages? And are you agreeable to its being published by Fritzsch, or should Tr�bner have it? Ritschl would be sure to manage that for me. (Ritschl is extraordinarily kind and well disposed to me.) Forgive this foolish letter, dear friend, and do exactly as you feel inclined in the matter. But rest assured that if you do it I shall thoroughly appreciate it. In my present isolated position I may be ignored as a visionary or an ass. But if we stand together, both united by our love for Wagner, we shall arouse a frantic, an egregious amount of attention among the army of philological duffers and rogues. Your affectionate and devoted friend, F. N. Nietzsche To His Mother - October, 1872
Spl�gen, Hotel Bodenhaus. Beginning of October, 1872. MY DARLING MOTHER: This time you are going to laugh, for this long letter is all about a journey and lots of funny things. Half against my will I decided to go to Italy; though it lay heavily on my conscience that I had already written you a letter accepting. But who can resist the capricious manner in which the weather has suddenly become the reverse of what it was! Now it is beautifully and purely autumnal, just the very weather for a walking tour. Or, to be nearer the truth, I felt the most burning desire for once to be quite alone with my thoughts for a little while. You can guess from the address of the hotel printed above that I have been unexpectedly successful. … I had almost reached Zurich when I discovered that my companion in the compartment was a man who was well known to me and had been even better recommended the musician Goetz (a pupil of Billow’s)-and he told me how much his musical work had increased in Zurich since Kirclmer’s departure. But what seemed to agitate him most of all was the prospect of seeing his opera accepted by the Hanover Theatre and produced for the first time. After leaving Zurich, in spite of the nice unobtrusive company, I gradually grew so cold and ill that I had not the courage to go as far as Chur. With great difficulty-that is to say, with a splitting headache-I reached Weesen and the Lake of Wallenstatt in the dead of night. I found the Schwert Hotel bus and got into it, and it set me down at a fine, comfortable, though completely empty, hotel. On the following morning I rose with a headache. My window looked on to the Lake of Wallenstatt, which you can imagine as being like the Lake of Lucerne, but much simpler and not so sublime. Then I went on to Chur, feeling unfortunately ever more and more ill at ease-so much so that I went through Ragaz, etc., almost without feeling the slightest interest. I was very glad to be able to leave the train at Chur, refused the post official’s offer to drive with him-which after all was the plan-and, putting up at the Hotel Lukmanier, I went straight to bed. It was 10 a.m. I slept well until 2 p.m., felt better and ate a little. A smart and well informed waiter recommended me to walk as far as Pessug, a place that was imprinted on my memory by a picture I had seen of it in an illustrated paper. Sabbath peace and an afternoon mood prevailed in the town of Chur. I walked up the main road at a leisurely pace; as on the previous day, everything lay before me transfigured by the glow of autumn. The scenery behind me was magnificent, while the view constantly changed and widened. After about half an hour’s walk I came to a little side path which was beautifully shaded; until then the road had been rather hot. Then I reached the gorge through which the Rabiusa pours; its beauty defies description. I pressed on over bridges and paths winding round the side of the rock for about half an hour, and at last discovered Bad Passug indicated by a flag. At first it disappointed me, for I had expected a Pension and saw only a second-rate inn, full of Sunday excursionists from Chur-a crowd of comfortably feasting and coffee-sipping families. The first thing I did was to drink three glassfuls of the saline-soda spring; then the improved state of my head soon allowed me to add a bottle of white Asti Spumante you remember it! together with the softest of goat’s milk cheese. A man with Chinese eyes, who sat at my table, also had some of the Asti to drink; he thanked me, drank and was much gratified. Then the proprietess handed me a number of analyses of the water, etc. Finally, Sprecher, the proprietor of the watering place, an excitable sort of man, showed me all over his property, the incredibly fantastic position of which I was obliged to acknowledge. Again I drank copious draughts of water from three entirely different springs. The proprietor promised the opening of important new springs, and noticing my interest in the matter offered to make me his partner in the founding of a hotel, etc., etc.-irony! The valley is extremely fascinating for a geologist of unfathomable versatility-aye, and even whimsicality. There are seams of graphite and there is also quartz with ochre. The proprietor even hinted at gold. You can see the most different kinds of stone strata and varieties of stone, bending hither and thither and cracked as in the Axenstein on the Lake of Lucerne, but here they are much smaller and less rugged. Late in the evening, just as it was getting dusk, I returned delighted with my afternoon, although my mind often wandered back to the reception I ought to have been enjoying at Naumburg.[50] A little child with flaxen hair was looking about for nuts, and was very amusing. At last an aged couple came towards me, father and daughter. They had a few words to say, and listened in turn. He was a very old, hoary cabinet maker, had been in Naumburg fifty-two years ago while on his wanderings, and remembered a very hot day there. His son has been a missionary in India since 1858, and is expected to come to Chur next year in order to see his father once more. The daughter said she had often been to Egypt, and spoke of B�le as an unpleasant, hot, and stuffy town. I accompanied the good old hobbling couple a little further. Then I returned to dinner at my hotel, where I found one or two companions ready for the Spl�gen tour on the morrow. On Monday I rose at 4 a.m., the diligence being timed to leave just after 5. Before we left we had to sit in an evil-smelling waiting room, among a number of peasants from Graubtinden and Tessin. But at this early hour man is in any case a disagreeable creature. I was released by the departure of the diligence, for I had arranged with the conductor to occupy his seat high up on the top of the conveyance. There I was alone, and it was the finest diligence drive I have ever had. I cannot write about the tremendous grandeur of the Via mala; it made me feel as if I did not yet know Switzerland at all. This is my Nature, and when we got near to Spl�gen I was overcome by the wish to stay there. I found a good hotel and a little room that was quite touching in its simplicity. And yet it has a balcony from which one can enjoy a most beautiful view. This high Alpine valley (about 5,000 feet) is exactly to my taste-pure and bracing air, hills and rocks of every shape and size, and mighty snow mountains all around. But what I like most of all are the magnificent high roads along which I walk for hours at a time, sometimes in the direction of Bernaclino and sometimes along the heights of the Pass of Spl�gen, without heeding the road in the least. But as often as I look about me I am certain to see something gorgeous and unexpected. Tomorrow it is almost sure to snow, and I am heartily looking forward to it. In the afternoon, if the diligence arrives, I take my meal with the new arrivals. There is no need for me to speak to anyone; no one knows me; I am absolutely alone and could stay here for weeks, sitting and walking about. In my little room I work with renewed vigour-that is to say, I make notes and collect ideas for the theme that is chiefly occupying me at present: “ The Future of Our Educational Institutions.” You do not know how pleased I am with this place. Since I have come to know it, Switzerland has acquired quite a new charm for me. Now I know of a nook where I can gain
strength, work with fresh energy, and live without any company. In this place human beings seem to be like phantoms. Now I have described everything to you. The days that follow will all be like the first. Thank God, those damnations known as “ change” and “ distraction” are lacking here. Here I am together with my pen, ink, and paper. All of us send our heartiest wishes. Your devoted son, FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. To Rohde - November, 1872 Bale, November, 1872. MY VERY DEAR FRIEND: I think we shall be able to survive it. But something has happened here that somewhat depresses me. In our University the philologists hare kept away this winter term. A perfectly unique occurrence which you will interpret in the same way as I do. In one particular case I know for a fact that a certain student who wished to study philology here was prevented from doing so in Bonn, and that he joyfully wrote to his relations saying he thanked God he was not going to a University where I was a teacher. In short, the Vehmic Court[51] has done its duty, but we must not take any notice of it. It is jolly hard though for me to know that the little University should have suffered on my account. We are twenty men short of what we were last term. With the utmost pains I was only able to muster two students to attend a lecture on the rhetoric of the Greeks and Romans-that is to say, one Germanic and one Law student. Jacob Burckhardt and Ratsherr Vischer enjoyed your essay immensely. I informed each of them of the fine copies you sent me, and I also told Overbeck, Ritschl and the Florentine ladies, Olga Herzen and Fr�ulein von Meysenbug, of them. I even have two of them in an Edition de Luxe. I wonder whether these copies are as you pictured them in your dream. They bear the title E. Rohde on The Birth of Tragedy and include your two essays. To me these essays constitute a veritable treasure which every author of the past and future will have to envy me. My friend Immerman, here, always says that your stuff is at least as good as mine. In short, they have noticed our Orestes and Pylades relationship ?a?ep??s?? ??? ?e????s?[52] and they rejoice over it. What I only mention, because neither of us doubts it, is that many more are angry about it… . … Have you heard of the Zollner scandal in Leipzig? Just have a look at his book on the nature of comets. There is a tremendous deal on our side in it. Since this production the honest man has been as good as excommunicated in the most shabby manner from the whole of the republic of letters. His nearest friends are renouncing him and he is proclaimed “ mad” to all the world! He is seriously declared “ deranged,” simply because he refuses to blow into the Tantara trumpet of the clique. Such is the spirit of Leipzig’s scholastic ochlocracy! Are you aware, too, that a certain alienist has proved in the most “ dignified language” that Wagner is demented? And you are probably aware of the fact that the same thing has been done for Schopenhauer by another alienist. You see to what measures these “ ;healthy people” resort. True, they do not decree the scaffold for the discomfiting ingenia, but this sort of sneaking and malevolent creation of suspicion answers their purpose much better than the sudden removal of their enemies; they undermine the confidence of the rising generation. Schopenhauer forgot this dodge! It is singularly worthy of the vulgarity of the vulgarest age… . Yours affectionately, F. Nietzsche To Malvida Von Meysenbug - April, 1873 Bale, April 6, 1873. DEAREST FRAULEIN: … At Bayreuth I hope to find courage and good cheer once more and to fortify myself in all that is right. I dreamt last night that I had my Gradus ad Parnassum rarely and beautifully bound; the symbolism attached to the binding of a book is comprehensible enough, even if deficient in taste. This is a truth! From time to time one ought to have oneself newly bound, so to speak, by intercourse with good and robust men; otherwise one loses isolated leaves and falls ever more and more to pieces. And that our life ought to be a Gradus ad Parnassum is also a truth which one ought often to repeat to oneself. My Parnassus of the future is-provided I take great pains and have decent luck as well as plenty of time-to become perhaps a tolerable writer, but above all to become ever more moderate in the production of literature. From time to time I feel a childish repulsion toward printed paper, which at such times seems to me simply soiled paper. And I can picture a time when men will prefer reading little and writing less, while thinking much and doing even more. For the whole world is now waiting for the man of deeds, who strips the habits of centuries from himself and others, and who sets a better example for posterity to follow. Under my own roof something very fine is in process of completion, a description of our present day theology, bearing particularly upon the spirit of Christianity. My friend and brother in thought, Professor Overbeck, to my own knowledge the freest theologist now living, and in any case one of the greatest authorities on Church history, is now at work on this description, and will, if I am not mistaken-and we are quite agreed on this point-make known a few terrible truths to the world. Bale looks well on the road to becoming the most suspected of places! … Your devoted friend,
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. Nietzsche To His Mother - September, 1873 Bale, September 21, 1873. MY DARLING MOTHER: And so our dear aunt has passed away and we are becoming more and more lonely. To grow old and to grow solitary seem to be synonymous, and at last a man is all alone and makes others feel lonely by his death. It was precisely because I knew so little of my father, and had to form a picture of him from the materials supplied by chance conversations, that his nearest relatives were more to me than aunts usually are. When I think of Aunt Rickchen and the Plauen relatives, etc., I rejoice over the fact that they all remained true to their exceptional nature until they attained to a great age, and were sufficiently self reliant to be less than usually dependent upon external influences and upon the doubtful good will of their fellow creatures. I rejoice over this fact because in it I find the racial peculiarity of those who call themselves Nietzsche, and I possess it myself. And that is why our good aunt was always so kindly disposed towards me, because she realized how akin we were in one important particular, namely, in this important Nietzschean trait. For this reason I honour their memory by wishing with all my might that when I grow old I may not desert myself-that is to say, the spirit of my forebears. Do not expect any more from me for the moment, dear mother you who are so very much worried because you always will be so helpful and think kindly of your son, FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. To Freiherr Karl Von Gersdorff - October, 1873 Bale, October 27, 1873. MY DEAR FRIEND: … The green numbers of the Grenzboten have just published a Non plus ultra under the title of “ Herr Friedrich Nietzsche and German Culture.” All the powers are mobilized against me-the police, the authorities, and the colleagues. It is emphatically declared that I shall be ostracized from every German university, and that Bale will probably do likewise. It proceeds to inform the reader that owing to a trick of Ritschls and the stupidity of the people of Bale I was transformed from a mere student into a University professor. Bale then came in for some abuse as an obscure little University. I am denounced as an enemy of the German Empire and the ally of the Internationalists, etc. in short, a commendable and cheerful Documentum. What a pity I cannot send it to you! Even Fritszch gets a kick or two; they think it scandalous that a German publisher should ever have accepted my work. So you see, dearest friend, our No. 1 has-as Fritzsch would say-“ found favour with the public.” Nine Bale newspapers have now referred to me in all manner of ways, but on the whole much more seriously than that truculent Grenzboten reviewer and humbug. Your ever devoted and affectionate friend, F. N. To Rohde - December, 1873 Naumburg, December 31, 1873. MY DEAR FRIEND: What a lot of good you have done me with your letter, particularly as I was lying in bed feeling ill after the journey and full of resentment towards life. Really, if I had not my friends, I wonder whether I should not myself begin to believe that I am demented. As it is, however, by my adherence to you I adhere to myself, and if we stand security for each other, some thing must ultimately result from our way of thinking-a possibility which until now the whole world has doubted. And to this whole world belong even the Ritschls, to whom I paid a short visit and who in half an hour fired a rapid volley of words at me and against me, under which I remained unscathed and, moreover, felt it. Finally they came to the conclusion that I was arrogant and despised them. The general impression was hopeless. At one moment old Ritschl simply raved with indignation about Wagner as a poet, and then again about the French (by-the-bye, I am understood to be an admirer of the French); finally he argued from hearsay, but in the most atrocious manner, about Overbeck’s book. I learnt that Germany was still in its ‘teens, and therefore I too claimed the right of being something of a boy in his teens (for they also censured my lack of moderation and my brutality towards Strauss). On the other hand, Strauss as a classical writer of prose is completely annihilated, for old Ritschl and his wife say so, and have long since come to the conclusion that even “ Voltaire”[53] was written in abominably bad style. I lived at Fritzsch’s and was really delighted with that good man. Things are going well with him, his health included. My second “ Thoughts Out of Season” (or over-seasoned thoughts) is now in the press. You will receive the first proofs in a few days, for, my dear friend, I am going to avail myself of your willing kindness and beg you to help me with your advice here and there, and moral and intellectual correction. After all, we must not lose much time, for it will be printed quickly and must be quite ready at the end of January. Therefore, my dear good friend, send your corrected proofs every time as soon as possible to me here in Bale, for the long distances make things a little complicated and we must try to avoid any hitch in the printing… . Karl Hillebrand’s anonymous book, “ Twelve Letters By An Aesthetic Heretic” (Berlin, Oppenheiin, 1874), has given me the most unbounded joy. How refreshing it is! Read and wonder; he is one of us, one of the “ Company of the Hopeful.”
May this company flourish in the new year and may we remain good comrades! Ah, my dear fellow, we have no choice; we must either be hopeful or desperate. Once and for all, I have resolved to hope. I was very vexed at the horribly cautious academic Confratres in Kiel. Fancy such fear of “ Youth”! … So may we remain faithful friends in 1874 and continue so until the last day. Yours, FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. To Rohde - February, 1874 Bale, February 15, 1874. DEAREST FRIEND: First of all, my best Sunday greeting to you. Are you living in the gray north? We are having such fine warm days with plenty of sunshine and even deep coloured sunsets already. We have only had one day’s snow the whole winter. Since the new year, too, I have been living more carefully and rationally, and am feeling fit in consequence. My eyes are the only trouble. I sorely need an amanuensis. I must tell you though that for the last six months a most sympathetic and talented pupil has come under my notice, one who already belongs to our party heart and soul. His name is Baumgartner, an Alsatian, and the son of a manufacturer of M�lhausen. He comes to me every Wednesday afternoon and stops the evening, and then I dictate to him or he reads aloud to me, or letters are written. In short, he is a godsend to me, and, I assure you, will be for all of us one day. At Easter I shall go back to Naumburg again in order to try a systematic course of rest and wholesome living, and then I shall ultimately be able to bear things a little better. I have thought out a good deal since Christmas, and have had to roam so far afield that often when my proofs arrive I wonder when I could have written the stuff, and whether it can all be my work. I am feeling very hostile just now towards all political and smug bourgeois virtues and duties, and occasionally I even soar far above “ national” feeling. May God mend this and me! In addition to all your trouble, dear faithful friend, you have also had that of proof-reading. The smallest hint is gratefully turned to account, and many a blemish has been removed by your hand. By-the-bye, a whole number of strange errors had nothing to do with me, but arose out of the copying of my illegible MS. Unfortunately I was unable to avail myself of your help for the last sheet. For many reasons I thought they had forgotten to send it to you and time was pressing. Luckily I was able to remove the worst stumbling block myself, and have made the text of the conclusion a little lighter by cutting out about a page. A certain generality of treatment was, however, necessary, as I had to take into account the elaboration of some of the special arguments in subsequent “ Thoughts Out of Season.” So let the monster go its way. I wonder who will find any pleasure in it! Who will even read it? I believe people will think it a piece of great foolishness on my part-and they will be right! But I am really heartily tired of all this cleverness and must become absorbed in myself. On my honour, I cannot help it. But promise me you will not immediately despise me on that account. For I really believe that you understand me in these things and have a right to it, dear friend. When I think of my fellow philologists I sometimes feel something like shame. Still, I do not believe I can be so easily driven off my appointed path-and before that I mean to say for once all I have to say; one cannot do oneself a greater kindness than that. When you get your copy (which I hope will be within a fortnight), I beg you to do me just this one favour: tell me as severely and briefly as you like all about my faults, my mannerisms, and the dangers of my method of exposition, for I am not satisfied with it and aspire to something quite different. Help me, therefore, with a few little hints, I shall be most grateful… . Good-bye, dear friend. Yours, FRIEDRICH N. To Freiherr Karl Von Gersdorff - April, 1874 Bale, April 1, 1874. MY DEAR FRIEND: If only you had not such an exaggeratedly high opinion of me! I am afraid that one day you will be somewhat disappointed in me, and I will inaugurate this change in you at once by declaring from the bottom of my heart that I deserve not one word of the praise you have lavished upon me. If only you knew how disheartened and melancholy I really feel about myself as a productive being! All I long for is a little freedom, a taste of the real breath of life; and I kick, I revolt against the many, the unutterably many constraints to which my mind is still subject. And of real productive work there can be no thought so long as one is not freed, however slightly, from one’s trammels and the pain or oppression arising from one’s limited outlook. Shall I ever attain to inner freedom? It is very doubtful. The goal is too remote, and even if one gets within measurable distance of it, one has by that time consumed all one’s strength in a long search and struggle. When freedom is at last attained, one is as lifeless and feeble as a day-fly by night. That is what I dread so much. It is a misfortune to be so conscious of one’s struggle and so early in life! And unlike the artist or the ascetic, I cannot balance my doubts by means of great deeds. How wretched and loathsome it is to me to be continually wailing like a mire-drum. For the moment I am really very, very tired of everything-more than tired. My health, by-the-bye, is excellent; you need have no fears about that. But I am not quite satisfied with Nature, who ought to have given me a little more intellect as well as a warmer heart. I always fall short of the best. To know this, is the greatest torture a man can have. Regular work in an official post is so good because it leads to a certain obtuseness and then one suffers less. … Accept my best wishes for yourself and your dear parents. Think what life would be like without a friend! Could one bear it? Would one have borne it? Dubito. FRIDERICUS.
To Rohde - October, 1874 Bale, October 7, 1874. MY DEAR FRIEND: Last night I returned from the mountains, and this morning I mean to set to and consecrate the work of the winter term by means of a birthday letter to you. I do not lack either courage or confidence; I have brought back both of these with me from the mountains and the lakes, where I discovered what it was that one lacked most, or rather what it was that one has too much of. That is to say, egoism; and this is the result of one’s eternal lonely brooding and lonely suffering. In the end, one begins to feel constantly as if one were covered with a hundred scars and every movement were painful. But, joking apart, I shall very soon be thirty and things must change somewhat; they must become more virile, more even in tenour, and no longer so damned unstable. To continue one’s work and to think of oneself as little as possible-that must be the first necessity. After some reflection it has struck me that I am very ungrateful and childish with my irritating despair, for I have been thinking how incomparably lucky I have been during the last seven years and how little I can gauge how rich I am in my friends. Truth to tell, I live through you; I advance by leaning upon your shoulders, for my self-esteem is wretchedly weak and you have to assure me of my own value again and again. In addition to that, you are my best examples, for both you and Overbeck bear life’s lot with more dignity and less wailing, although in many respects things are more and more difficult for you than for me. But what I feel most is the way you outstrip me in loving solicitude and unselfishness. I have thought much about these facts of late, and I may surely be allowed to mention them to you in a birthday letter. Farewell, my dear friend, and remain as affectionate to me as you have been hitherto-then we shall easily be able to endure life yet a while longer. Your devoted friend, FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. Nietzsche To Malvida Von Meysenbug - October, 1874 Bale, October 25, 1874. DEAREST FRAULEIN: At last I am able once again to let you have some news of me by sending you another work of mine.[54]From the contents of this last essay you will be able to form some idea of all that I have experienced in the interval. Also, that with the lapse of years I am, among other things, in a much more serious and precarious position than you might gather from the mere reading of the book itself. In summa, however, you will surmise that things are going well with me, and going onwards, too, and that all I lack, alas! is just a little of the sunshine of life. Otherwise I should be compelled to acknowledge that things could not be going better with me than they are. For it is indeed a piece of great good fortune for me to progress step by step towards the accomplishment of my mission. And now I have written three of the thirteen “ Thoughts Out of Season,” and the fourth is already taking shape in my mind. How happy I shall feel when I have at last unburdened my heart of all its negative hates and all its indignation, and yet I dare hope that in five years I shall be within sight of this glorious goal! Already at the present moment I am thankful to feel how very much more clearly and sharply I am learning to see things-spiritually (not bodily, alas!) and how very much more definitely and intelligibly I can express myself. Provided that I am not led entirely astray in my course, or that my health does not break down, something must certainly come of all this. Just imagine a series of fifty such essays as the four I have already written-all the product of a soul’s experience forced into the light of day! With such matter one could not help but produce some effect; for the tongues of many would have been unloosed and enough would have been put into words that could not be so quickly forgotten, much that today is almost as good as forgotten yea, that is scarcely to hand. And what should divert me in my course? Even hostile attacks I can now turn to account and to pleasure, for they often enlighten me more quickly than friendly sympathy, and I desire nothing more than to be enlightened about the highly complex system of conflicting elements that constitutes the “ modern world.” Fortunately, I am quite devoid of all political and social ambition, so that I need fear no dangers in that direction-no loadstones to draw me aside, no compulsion to compromise or to consider consequences; in short, I can say all I think, and what I want to do is to test once and for all to what extent modern mankind-so proud of its freedom of thought-can endure free thought. I do not ask anything either excessive or fantastic from life; besides, in the course of the next few years we shall experience something for which all the world of the past and the future may envy us. Moreover, I am blessed beyond all deserts with the most excellent of friends; and now, quite between ourselves, the only thing I want, and that quite soon, is a good wife, and then I shall regard all my worldly wishes as fulfilled. All the rest depends upon myself… . Meanwhile, my heartiest wishes for your health, and may you continue to think kindly of Your most devoted servant, FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. Nietzsche To His Sister - January, 1875 Bale, January 22, 1875. MY DEAR SISTER: It was a good thing that you wrote me a letter close on the heels of the one mother wrote, for I was beside myself and had already written down some bitter words. I now see that I misunderstood her. But how is it that she was able to misunderstand me so, and all this time to conceal from me this incomprehensible hostility to the two Wagners? Am I so difficult to understand
and so easy to misunderstand in all my intentions, plans, and friendships? Ah, we lonely ones and free spirits-it is borne home to us that in some way or other we constantly appear different from what we think. Whereas we wish for nothing more than truth and straightforwardness, we are surrounded by a net of misunderstanding, and despite our most ardent wishes we cannot help our actions being smothered in a cloud of false opinion, attempted compromises, semi-concessions, charitable silence, and erroneous interpretations. Such things gather a weight of melancholy on our brow; for we hate more than death the thought that pretence should be necessary, and such incessant chafing against these things makes us volcanic and menacing. From time to time we avenge ourselves for all our enforced concealment and compulsory self-restraint. We emerge from our cells with terrible faces, our words and deeds are then explosions, and it is not beyond the verge of possibility that we perish through ourselves. Thus dangerously do I live! It is precisely we solitary ones that require love and companions in whose presence we may be open and simple, and the eternal struggle of silence and dissimulation can cease. Yes, I am glad that I can be myself, openly and honestly with you, for you are such a good friend and companion, and the older you grow and the more you free yourself from the Naumburg atmosphere, the more will you certainly adapt yourself to all my views and aspirations. With love and devotion, YOUR BROTHER. (Marginal note by Nietzsche in the foregoing letter): You can read all this in print in my Schopenhauer; but they are at the same time my own experiences and feelings that always visit me-as at the present moment, for instance. To Rohde - February, 1875 Bale, February 28, 1875. DEAREST FRIEND: … . Now, let me tell you something you do not yet know-something which you, as my most intimate and most sympathetic friend, have a right to know. We two, Overbeck and I, have a domestic trouble, a domestic ghost. Please don’t have a fit when you hear that X- is contemplating going over to the Holy Catholic Church and wants to become a Catholic priest in Germany. This has only just come to light, but as we afterwards heard, to our dismay, he has been thinking over it for years, though his resolution has never been so mature as it is now. I cannot help feeling hurt over it, and at times it seems to me the worst possible slight that could be given me. Of course, he does not mean it in that way, for up to the present he has not for one moment thought of anyone but himself, and the confounded stress our religion lays on the “ salvation of one’s own soul” leaves him utterly indifferent to anything else, friend ship included… . At last, he confessed what his attitude was, and now every three days, almost, there is an explosion. The poor man is in a desperate condition and no longer accessible to words of counsel; that is to say, he is so entirely led by vague aspirations that he seems to us like a wandering valleity. Oh, our excellent, pure Protestant air! I have never in my life before felt my dependence upon the spirit of Luther so strongly as I do now, and this wretched man wants to turn his back on all these liberating geniuses! It is so very hard for me to understand how, after eight years of intimate association with me, this spectre should arise at my elbow, that I often wonder whether he can be in his right senses, and whether he ought not to undergo a cold-water cure. And, after all, I am the man on whom the blame of this conversion will rest. God knows I do not say that out of egoistic solicitude. But I, too, believe that I stand for something holy, and I should blush for shame if I were suspected of having had anything to do with Catholicism, for there is nothing I hate with a more deadly hatred. Interpret this ghastly story in as friendly a manner as possible and send me a few words of comfort. I have been wounded precisely in my friendship, and hate the dishonest, sneaking nature of many friendships more than ever, and shall have to be more cautious in future. X- himself will doubtless be quite at home in some sort of conventicle, but in our company he seems to me now to be suffering incessantly. Your disconsolate friend, FRIEDRICH N. For Overbeck also. Please burn this letter if you think fit. To Rohde - December, 1875 Bale, December 8, 1875. Ah, dear friend, I did not know what to say to you, so I held my peace and was full of fear and anxiety on your account. I did not even like to ask how things were going, but how often, how very often my heartfelt sympathy sped your way! Everything has turned out as badly as possible, and I can think of only one way in which it could have been worse-to wit, if the matter were less appallingly plain than it actually is. The most intolerable thing of all is surely doubt, ghostlike semi-certainty-and you have at least been relieved of this, which was such a torment to you here. I am now racking my brain in trying to discover how you can possibly be helped. For a long while I thought that they were going to transfer you and that they would give you an appointment at Freiburg in Breisgau. But afterwards it struck me that such an idea had never even entered their minds. Certainly the publication of your work will prove the best remedy in your case. One cannot help deriving some pleasure from that, and at all events it will force you to think of other matters. This promises to be a steady pursuit and will perhaps help you over this terrible winter. Let me tell you how I am faring. As far as my health is concerned, things are not so good as I really supposed they would be when I effected the complete change in my mode of
life here. Every two or three weeks I have to lie in bed for about thirty-six hours in great pain with the usual trouble you know so well. Perhaps it will gradually get better, but I feel as if I had never had such a hard winter. What with new lectures, etc., the day drags so wearily that in the evening I am always more and more glad to have finished, and actually marvel at the hardness of existence. The whole exasperating business does not seem worth while; the pain you inflict on yourself and others is out of all proportion to the benefit either they or you yourself derive from your efforts. This is the opinion of a man who does not happen to be troubled by his passions, though he is certainly not made happy by them either. During the hours that I rest my eyes, my sister reads aloud to me, almost always Walter Scott, whom I would readily agree with Schopenhauer in calling “ immortal.” What pleases me so much in him is his artistic calm, his Andante. I should like to recommend him to you, but there are some things which, though they benefit me, can get no hold of your spirit, because you think more quickly and more sharply than I do. As to the use of novels for the treatment of one’s soul, I will say nothing more particularly as you are already forced to help yourself with your own “ novel.” Nay, I advise you to read “ Don Quixote” again-not because it is the most cheerful but because it is the most austere reading I know. I took it up during the summer holidays, and all personal troubles seemed to shrink to nothing and appear simply laughable, not even worthy of a wry face. All earnestness, all passion, and everything men take to heart is Quixotism-for some things it is good to know this; otherwise it is better not to know it… . Your friend, F. N. To Freiherr Karl Von Gersdorff - December, 1875 Bale, December 13, 1875. MY DEAR FRIEND: I received your letter yesterday, and this morning, just at the beginning of a week of hard work, your books arrived. A man certainly ought to feel cheerful when he has such sympathetic and affectionate friends! Believe me, I admire the fine instinct of your friendship-I trust the expression does not sound too biological-which made you light upon these Indian maxims, just as I, with a sort of waxing thirst, have been turning longing eyes to India for the last two months. From Schmeitzner’s friend, Herr Widemann, I borrowed the English translation of the Sutra Nipata, a portion of the sacred books of the Buddhists, and I have already made a household word of a strong closing sentence from one of the Sutras-“ and thus I wander alone like a rhinoceros.” My conviction about the worthlessness of life and the delusiveness of all aims frequently oppresses me so keenly, particularly when I lie in bed feeling ill, that I long to hear more of this Indian wisdom, provided it is not permeated with Judaeo-Christian phraseology. For, some time or other, I learnt to feel such a loathing for this phraseology that I literally have to be on my guard against dealing unjustly with it. As to how the world wags-this you can tell from the enclosed letter from that terrible sufferer Z-. Of course one ought not to cling to it, and yet what can help one to endure life, when one no longer really wills anything! I am of opinion that the will to knowledge is the last remaining vestige of the will to life; it is an intermediary region between willing and no longer willing, a piece of purgatory, in so far as we look discontentedly and contemptuously on life, and a piece of Nirvana, in so far as, through it, the soul approaches the state of pure disinterested contemplation. I am training myself to unlearn the eager hurry of the will to knowledge. This is what all scholars suffer from, and that is why they all lack the glorious serenity derived from acquired enlightenment, insight. For the present I am too heavily burdened by the various claims of my official post to help falling all too frequently though reluctantly into that eager hurry, but by degrees I shall put all this right. And then my health will be more settled-a condition I shall not attain before I thoroughly deserve it, before, that is to say, I have discovered that state of my soul which is, as it were, my destiny, that healthy state in which it has retained but one of all its instincts-the will to know. A simple home, a perfectly regular daily routine, no enervating hankering after honours or society, my sister’s company (which makes everything about me Nietzschean and strangeful restful), the consciousness of having 40 excellent books of all times and climes (and many more which are not altogether bad), the constant joy of having found educators in Schopenhauer and Wagner, and the Greeks as the object of my daily work, the belief that henceforward I shall no longer lack pupils[55]-all these things now for the time being make up my life. Unfortunately my chronic physical troubles, which at fortnightly intervals seize me for about two days at a time and sometimes longer, must be added to the reckoning. But they must end some day. Later on, when you are securely settled down in your own home, you will be able to reckon upon me as a holiday guest who will be likely to spend some considerable time with you. It is often a solace to me to exercise my imagination anticipating these later years of your life, and I often think I may one day be of service to you in your sons. Yes, dear old devoted Gersdorff, we have now shared a goodly portion of youth, experience, education, inclination, hatred, striving, and hope in common; we know that we can thoroughly enjoy even sitting beside each other in silence. I don’t think we need to give each other any pledges or promises, because we thoroughly believe in each other. I know from experience that you help me where you can, and whenever I have reason to rejoice I always think, “ How pleased Gersdorff will be!” For, I must tell you, you have the magnificent gift of sympathizing with another’s joy and this is a rarer and nobler capacity than pity. And now farewell, and may you cross the threshold of your new year of life the same man as you have always been. I cannot wish you more. It was as this man that you won your friends, and if there are still a few sensible women knocking around you will not have much longer “ To wander alone like a rhinoceros.” Your devoted friend, FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
To Freiherr R. v. Seydlitz - September, 1876 Bale, September 24, 1876. DEAR SIR: After a letter such as yours, containing so stirring a testimony of the depth of your soul and intellect, I can say nothing but this: let us keep in close touch with each other, let us see to it that we do not lose each other again now we have found each other! I rejoice in the certainty of having won another genuine friend. And if you only knew what this means to me! For am I not as constantly engaged in the kidnapping of men as any pirate not, however, with the object of selling them into bondage, but rather in order to sell them, with myself, into freedom. Your sincere and devoted friend, FRIEDR. NIETZSCHE. To Freiherr Karl Von Gersdorff - May, 1876 Bale, May 26, 1876. DEAR FRIEND: … I must tell you something, which, so far as other people are concerned, is still a secret, and must remain so for the present: following upon an invitation of the best friend in the world, Fr�ulein von Meysenbug, I intend in October to spend a whole year in Italy. I have not yet been granted leave by the authorities, but I think it will come, more particularly as, with the view of sparing so small a corporation the burden of my pay, I have volunteered to forfeit my salary for the whole period. Freedom! You cannot imagine how deeply I breathe when I think of it! We shall live in the simplest manner possible at Fano (on the Adriatic). This is my news. All my hopes and plans regarding my ultimate spiritual emancipation and untiring advancement are once more in full bloom. My confidence in myself, I mean in my better self, fills me with courage. Even the state of my eyes does not affect this. (Schiess thinks they are worse than they were some time ago. The long and short of it is I want a secretary). My lectures are very well attended. In one of them I have about 20 scholars, in the other about 10, and the same numbers at the school. I shall certainly not marry; on the whole, I hate the limitations and obligations of the whole civilized order of things so very much that it would be difficult to find a woman free-spirited enough to follow my lead. The Greek philosophers seem to me ever more and more to represent the paragon of what one should aim at in our mode of life. I read Xenophon s Memorabilia with the deepest personal in terest. Philologists regard them as hopelessly tedious. You see how little of a philologist I am. F. N. To Madame Louise O. - September, 1876 Bale, September, 1876. DEAR, KIND FRIEND: In the first place I was unable to write, for I underwent an eye-cure, and now I ought not to write for a long long time to come! Nevertheless I read your two letters again and again; I almost believe I read them too often. But this new friendship is like new wine-very agreeable though perhaps a trifle dangerous. At least for me. But for you also, especially when I think of the sort of free spirit you have lighted upon!-a man who longs for nothing more than daily to be rid of some comforting belief, and who seeks and finds his happiness in this daily increase in the emancipation of his spirit. It is possible I wish to become more of a free spirit than I am capable of becoming. So what is to be done? An “ Abduction from the Harem”[56] of Faith, without Mozart’s music? Do you know Fraulein von Meysenbug’s autobiography published under the title of “ Memoirs of an Idealist? What is poor little Marcel doing with his little teeth? We all have to suffer before we really learn to bite, physically and morally-biting in order to nourish ourselves, of course, not simply for the sake of biting! Is there no good portrait in existence of a certain blond and beautiful woman? Sunday week I shall go to Italy for a long stay. You will hear from me when I get there. In any case a letter sent to my address in Bale (45 Sch�tzengraben) will reach me. In brotherly affection, Yours DR. FRIEDR. NIETZSCHE. To Rohde - August, 1877 Rosenlauibad, August 28, 1877. DEAR OLD FRIEND: How can I express it? But every time I think of you I am overcome by a sort of deep emotion; and when, a day or two ago, someone wrote to me “ Rohde’s young wife is an exceedingly sweet woman whose every feature is illumined by her noble soul,” I actually wept. And I can give you absolutely no plausible reason for having done so. We might ask
the psychologists for an explanation. Ultimately they would declare it was envy and that I grudged you your happiness, or that it was my vexation at someone having run away with my friend and having concealed him Heaven alone knows where, on the Rhine or in Paris, and refused to give him up again. When I was humming my “ Hymn to Solitude” to myself a few days ago, I suddenly had the feeling that you could not abide my music at all and that you would much have preferred a song on Dual Bliss. The same evening I played a song of this sort, as well as I was able, and it was so successful that all the angels might have listened to it with joy, particularly the human ones. But it was in a dark room and no one heard it. Thus I am forced to consume my own happiness, tears, and everything in private. Shall I tell you all about myself-how every day I set out two hours before the sun rises on the hills and after that take my walks only among the lengthening shadows of the afternoon and evening? How many things I have thought out, and how rich I feel now that this year I have at last been allowed to strip off the old moss growth of the daily routine of teaching and thinking! As to my life here, I can only say that it is tolerable, in spite of all my ailments which have certainly followed me even up to the heights-but I have so many intervals of happy exultation both of thought and feeling. A little while ago I had a genuinely sacred day, thanks to “ Prometheus Unbound.” If the poet[57] be not a true genius then I do not know what genius means. The whole thing is wonderful, and I felt as if I had met my own transfigured and exalted self in the work. I bow low before a man who is capable of having and expressing such thoughts. In three days I shall return to Bale. My sister is already there and busy preparing the place for my arrival. The faithful musician P. Gast is going to join our household, and is going to undertake the duties of a friendly amanuensis. I am rather dreading the coming winter. Things must change. The man who only has a few moments a day for what he regards as most important, and who has to spend the rest of his time and energy performing duties which others could carry out equally well-such a man is not a harmonious whole; he must be in conflict with himself and must ultimately fall ill. If I exercise any influence over youth at all, I owe it to my writings, and for these I have to thank my leisure moments-yes, the intervals I have won for myself, in the midst of professional duties by means of illness. Well, things must change: si male nunc non olim sic erit.[58] Meanwhile may the happiness of my friends increase and flourish. It is always a great solace to me to think of you, my dear friend (just now I have a vision of you on the bank of a lake surrounded by roses and with a beautiful white swan swimming towards you). With brotherly affection, Yours F. To Madame Louise O. - August, 1877 Rosenlauibad, August 29, 1877. DEAR FRIEND: I shall not forsake my mountain loneliness without once more writing to tell you how fond I am of you. How superfluous it is to say this, or to write it, isn’t it? But my affection for anyone sticks to them like a thorn, and at times is as troublesome as a thorn; it is not so easy to get rid of it. So be good enough to receive this small, superfluous, and troublesome letter. I have been told that-well, that you are expecting, hoping, wishing. I deeply sympathized with you when I heard the news, and, believe me, your wishes are mine. A fresh, good, and beautiful human being on earth!-that is something, it is a great deal! As you absolutely refuse to immortalize yourself in novels, you do so in this way. And we must all feel most grateful to you (more particularly as I hear it is a much more trying affair even than the writing of novels). A day or two ago, quite suddenly, I saw your eyes in the dark. Why does no one ever look at me with such eyes? I exclaimed irritably. Oh, it is ghastly! Do you know that no woman’s voice has ever made a deep impression on me, although I have met all kinds of famous women? But I firmly believe there is a voice for me somewhere on earth, and I am seeking it. Where on earth is it? Fare you well. May all the good fairies be constantly about you. Your devoted friend, FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. To Seydlitz - January, 1878 Bale, January 4, 1878. MY DEAR FRIEND: … Yesterday Wagner sent me his Parsifal. My impression after the first perusal was that it is more Liszt than Wagner; it is in the spirit of the Counter-Reformation. To me, accustomed as I am to the Greek and generally human concept of things, it is all too Christian, too limited in its duration. It is one mass of fantastic psychology, has no flesh and too much blood (especially at the Last Supper, which was far too full-blooded for my taste.) And then I cannot abide hysterical females. Much that can be tolerated by the inner eye will scarcely be endured when it is produced on the stage. Imagine our actors praying and quivering with distorted necks! Even the inside of the Gralsberg cannot be effective on the stage, and the same applies to the wounded swan. All these beautiful devices belong to the epic and are, as I have said, for the inner eye of the imagination. The German sounds as if it were a translation from a foreign tongue. But as for the situations and their succession are they not in the highest sense poetical? Do they not constitute a last challenge to music?
Please be content with this for today, and with kindest regards to your dear wife and yourself, I am, yours affectionately, NIETZSCHE. Nietzsche To Malvida Von Meysenbug - June, 1878 Bale, June 11, 1878. Who was it who thought of me on May 30?[59] I received two very fine letters (from Gast and Ree)-and then something still finer: I was quite moved-the fate of the man about whom for the last hundred years there have existed only party prejudices loomed as a terrible symbol before my eyes. Towards the emancipators of the spirit mankind is most irreconcilable in its hate, and most unjust in its love. Albeit I shall go on my way in peace, and renounce everything that might stand in my way. This is the decisive element in life: were I not conscious of the superlative fruitfulness of my new philosophy, I should certainly feel frightfully isolated and alone. But I am at one with myself. Your heartily devoted friend, F. N. Nietzsche To Peter Gast - March, 1879 Bale, March 1, 1879. DEAR, KIND, HELPFUL FRIEND: There is now only one thing left to be done, and that is to try to get well in Venice[60] My condition has again been simply appalling, next door to intolerable. “ Am I fit to travel?” The question I kept asking myself was whether I should be alive by then. Provisional programme: On Tuesday evening, March 25, at about 7.45 I shall reach Venice, and there you will take me on board. Is that right? You will hire a private apartment for me (a room with a nice warm bed) which must be peaceful. If possible secure a terrace or flat roof, either at your lodgings or mine, where you and I will be able to sit out together, etc. I do not wish to see any sights, except by accident. All I want to do is to sit on the Piazza San Marco in the sunshine and listen to the military band. I always attend Mass at San Marco on f�te days. I shall silently roam about the public gardens. I want to eat good figs and oysters, too, and follow the example of the man of experience-yourself. I shall take no meals at the hotel. I require the utmost calm. I shall bring a few books with me. Warm baths are to be had at Barbese (I have the address). You will receive the first complete copy of the book. Read it right through again so that in it you may recognize yourself as retoucheur (as well as myself; for, after all, I too, went to some pains in producing it). Good Heavens!-it is perhaps my last production. To my mind it is full of intrepid repose. If you only knew how well and with what gratitude I always speak of you! And what hopes I cherish about you! Now, for a while, be my good shepherd and medical adviser in Venice. But it pains me to think that I am once more going to give you a lot of trouble. I promise you, though, that I shall take up as little of your time as possible. With hearty thanks, I am your friend, NIETZSCHE. Nietzsche To His Mother And Sister - April, 1879 Bale, April 25, 1879. Since my last card things have gone from bad to worse, in Geneva as in Bale, whither I returned last Monday. I had attack after attack both there and here. Until now I have been quite unable to give lectures. Yesterday Schiess informed me that my eyesight had deteriorated considerably since he last examined it. Your letters, full of news and encouragement, reached me while I was still in Geneva. My heartiest thanks! F.[61] Nietzsche To The President Of The Educational Council - May, 1879 Bale, May 2, 1879. DEAR SIR: The state of my health, which has forced me to address so many appeals to you in the past, now urges me to take this last step and beg you to be so good as to allow me to resign the post of Professor at the University which I have held hitherto. All this time my headaches have increased so much that they are now scarcely endurable; there is also the increasing loss of time occasioned by my attacks of illness which last from two to six days, while I have once more been told by Herr Schiess that my eyesight has again deteriorated so much so that at present I am scarcely able to read or write for twenty minutes at a time without pain. All these considerations force me to recognize that I am no longer fit for my academic duties-nay, that I am no longer equal to them and this after having been obliged during the last few years to allow myself, always much to my regret, many an irregularity in
the discharge of these duties. It would redound to the disadvantage of our University, and to the philological studies pursued therein, were I any longer to fill a post for which I have ceased to be suited. Nor can I say that I can any longer entertain any hope of improvement in the state of my head, which seems to have become chronically bad; as for years I have made attempt after attempt to get rid of the trouble, and have led the most severely ordered life, undergoing privations of all kinds-all in vain! This I am bound to admit today, at a time when I have ceased to believe that I shall be able to resist my suffering much longer. I have no other alternative therefore than, in accordance with paragraph 20 of the University Statutes, with deep regret to express the desire to be released from my duties, and also tender my thanks to the University authorities for the many signs of kind indulgence they have shown me from the first hour of my appointment to the present day. Begging you, Sir, kindly to convey my desire to the Board, I am and remain, Your obedient servant, DR. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Prof. o. p. Nietzsche To His Publisher - May, 1879 Bale, Beginning of May, 1879. DEAR SIR: I have resigned my professorship and am going into the mountains. I am on the verge of desperation and have scarcely any hope left. My sufferings have been too great, too persistent. A HALF-BLIND MAN. Ruling of the Governing Body of Bale University - June, 1879 June 14, 1879. Professor Dr. Friedrich Nietzsche is to be given leave to resign his post on June 30, 1879, with the deep thanks of the Governing Board for his excellent services, together with the grant of a yearly pension of 1,000 francs for the period of six years. N. B.-The Governors have decided to allow him in addition for a period of six years a yearly pension of 1,000 francs from the Hensler Fund, while the Academic Society has, in the name of a few friends, guaranteed an additional allowance of from 500 to 1,000 francs for the same period of time.[62] Nietzsche To Peter Gast - September, 1879 Address, St. Moriz-Dorf, Poste Restante. September 11, 1879. DEAR, DEAR FRIEND: When you read these lines my MS. will already have reached you; it may deliver its own request to you; I have not the courage to do so. But you must share a few of the moments of joy that I now feel over my completed work. I am at the end of my thirty-fifth year-“ the middle of life,” as people for a century and a half used to say of this age. It was at this age that Dante had his vision, and in the opening lines of his poem he mentions the fact. Now I am in the middle of life and so “ encircled by death” that at any minute it can lay hold of me. From the nature of my sufferings I must reckon upon a sudden death through convulsions (although I should prefer a hundred times a slow, lucid death, before which I should be able to converse with my friends, even if it were more painful). In this way I feel like the oldest of men, even from the standpoint of having completed my life-task. I have poured out a salutary drop of oil; this I know, and I shall not be forgotten for it. At bottom I have already undergone the test of my own view of life: many more will have to undergo it after me. Up to the present my spirit has not been depressed by the unremitting suffering that my ailments have caused me; at times I even feel more cheerful and more benevolent than I ever felt in my life before; to what do I owe this invigorating and ameliorating effect? Certainly not to my fellow men; for, with but few exceptions, they have all during the last few years shown themselves “ offended” by me;[63] nor have they shrunk from letting me know it. Just read this last MS. through, my dear friend, and ask yourself whether there are any traces of suffering or depression to be found in it. I don t believe there are, and this very belief is a sign that there must be powers concealed in these views, and not the proofs of impotence and lassitude after which my enemies will seek. Now I shall not rest until I have sent those pages, transcribed by my self-sacrificing friend and revised by me, to my printers in Chemnitz. I shall not come to you myself-however urgently the Overbecks and my sister may press me to do so; there are states in which it seems to me more fitting to return to the neighbourhood of one’s mother, one’s home, and the memories of one’s childhood. But do not take all this as final and irrevocable. According as his hopes rise or fall, an invalid should be allowed to make or unmake his plans. My programme for the summer is complete: three weeks at a moderate altitude (in Wiesen), three months in the Engadine, and the last month in taking the real St. Moritz drink-cure, the best effect of which is not supposed to be felt before the winter. This working out of a programme was a pleasure to me, but it was not easy! Self-denial in everything (I had no friends, no company; I could read no books; all art was far removed from me; a small bedroom with a bed, the food of an ascetic-which by the bye suited me excellently, for I have had no indigestion the whole of the summer) this self-denial was complete except for one point I gave myself up to my thoughts what else could I do! Of course, this was the very worst thing for my head, but I still do not see how I could have avoided it. But enough; this winter my programme will be to recover from myself, to rest myself away from my thoughtsfor years I have not had this experience. Perhaps in Naumburg I shall be able so to arrange my day as to profit by this repose. But first of all the “ sequel”-The Wanderer and his
Shadow! Your last letter full of ideas pleased Overbeck and me so much that I allowed him to take it with him to Zurich to read to his womenfolk there. Forgive me for having done this. And forgive me for more important things! Your friend, N. Nietzsche To Peter Gast - October, 1879 Naumburg, October 5, 1879. DEAR FRIEND: Yesterday morning I posted my card to you; and three hours later I received fresh proof of your indefatigable kindness towards me. If only I could fulfill your wishes! “ But thoughts are too remote,” as Tieck sings. You would scarcely believe how faithfully I have carried out the programme of thoughtlessness; and I have reasons for being faithful in this respect; for “ behind thought stands the devil” [64] of a frantic attack of pain. The MS. that reached you at St. Moritz was produced at such a very heavy price that probably no one who could have helped it would ever have written it at such cost. I am now often filled with horror when reading my own MSS., especially the more lengthy portions owing to the odious memories they awaken. The whole of it, with the exception of a few lines, was thought out while walking and scribbled down in pencil in six small note books; almost every time I tried to re-write a passage, I failed. I was forced to omit about twenty somewhat lengthy lines of thought. Unfortunately they were most important; but I had not the time to decipher my most illegible pencil scrawl. The same thing happened to me last summer. I cannot after wards recall the slender connection of thought. For, in order to steal away those minutes and quarters of an hour of “ cerebral energy” of which you speak, I have to rob them from a suffering brain. At present I feel as if I could never do it again. I read your transcript, and have all the difficulty in the world in understanding myself-my head is so tired. The Sorrento MS. has gone to the deuce; my removal and final farewell to Bale made many a radical change in my affairs and it was a good thing for me, because old MSS. such as those always frown at me like debtors. Dear friend, as to Luther, it is a long time since I have been able with honesty to say anything to his credit; this is the outcome of a mass of material about him to which Jacob Burckhardt called my attention. I refer to Janssen’s “ History of the German People” (Vol. II) that appeared this year (I have it). The voice in this book is, for once, not that of a Protestant falsification of history, which is the one we have been taught to believe. At present, the fact that we prefer Luther as a man to Ignatius Loyola strikes me as being no more than our national taste in north and south! That odious, arrogant, and biliously-envious diabolical wrangling affected by Luther-who was never happy unless he was able to spit on someone in his wrath-nauseated me beyond endurance. Certainly you are right when you speak of “ the promotion of European democratization” through Luther, but this raving enemy of the peasant (who ordered them to be slaughtered like mad dogs, and himself assured the princes that the kingdom of Heaven could be won by the killing and strangling of peasant cattle) was certainly one of its most unwilling promo ters. Yours is, by-the-bye, the fairer attitude towards the man. But just give me time! Many thanks to you also for the other lacunae you pointed out to me. This is most impotent gratitude, I’m afraid. Here again my “ wish of wishes” occurs to me. Well, I have been thinking lately of my friend Gast, not actually as an author-there are so many ways of testifying to an inward condition of maturity and health attained. In the first place of you as an artist! After Aeschylus came Sophocles! I would rather not tell you more plainly what I hope. And now for a word of truth about you as a creature of brains and heart: what a start you have of me, making allowance for the difference of years, and that which years bring with them! Once more let me tell you a home-truth: I consider you a better and more gifted man than I am, and consequently a man with greater obligations… . With sincere affection, Your friend whose hopes are in you, N. Nietzsche To Peter Gast - July, 1880 Marienbad, July 18, 1880. MY DEAR FRIEND: I still cannot help thinking several times a day of the delightful pampering I had in Venice and of the still more delightful pamperer, and all I can say is that one cannot have such good times for long and that it is only right I should once more be an anchorite and as such go walking for ten hours a day, drink fateful doses of water and await their effect. Meanwhile I burrow eagerly inside my moral mines and at times feel quite subterranean in the process-at present I seem to feel as if I had now discovered the principal artery and outlet. But this is the sort of belief that may return a hundred times only to be rejected. Now and again an echo of Chopin’s music rings in my ears, and this much you have achieved, that at such moments I always think of you and lose myself in meditating about possibilities. My trust in you has grown very great; you are built much more soundly than I suspected, and apart from the evil influence that Herr Nietzsche has exercised over you from time to time, you are in every respect well conditioned. Ceterum censeo mountains and woods are better than towns and Paris is better than Vienna. On the way I made friends with a high dignitary of the Church, who was apparently one of the earliest promoters of old Catholic music; he was up to every question of detail. I
found he was much interested in the work Wagner did in regard to Palestrina’s music. He said that dramatic recitative (in the liturgy) was the core of Church music, and accordingly wished the interpretation of such music to be as dramatic as possible. In his opinion Regensburg was the only place on earth where old music could be studied and above all heard (particularly in Passion week). Have you heard about the fire at Mommsen’s[65] house and that his notes have all been destroyed-perhaps the most extensive collection of documents ever made by a living scholar? It appears that he dashed into the flames again and again, and that at last, covered with burns as he was, they were obliged to restrain him by force. Such tasks as the one Mommsen had undertaken must be very rare; for the colossal memory and corresponding acumen in criticism and arrangement necessary for dealing with such a mass of material are seldom united in one man; they are more often in conflict. When I heard of the affair my heart was in my mouth with horror, and even now I feel genuine physical anguish when I think of it. Is that pity? But what is Mommsen to me? I am in no way favorably inclined towards him. Here in the lonely sylvan hermitage of which I am the hermit, there has been a good deal of trouble ever since yesterday. I do not know exactly what has happened, but the shadow of a crime seems to lie on the house. Someone buried something; others discovered it; a good deal of lamentation was heard; a number of gendarmes appeared on the scene; the house was searched and during the night in the room next door to mine I heard someone sighing heavily, as if in great pain, and I could not sleep. Then in the middle of the night I heard sounds as if something were being buried in the wood, but whoever was engaged in the work was surprised, and once more there were tears and cries. An official told me that it was a “ banknote” affair-I am not sufficiently inquisitive to know as much about my surroundings as all the world probably knows about me. Suffice it to say that the solitude of the woods is uncanny. I have been reading a story by Merimee, in which Henry Beyle’s character is said to be described. It is called “ The Etruscan Vase”; if this is true, Stendhal is St. Clair. The whole thing is ironical, distinguished and deeply melancholic. In conclusion listen to an idea I have had: one ceases from loving oneself properly when one ceases from exercising oneself in love towards others, wherefore the latter (the ceasing from exercising, etc.) ought to be strongly deprecated. (This is from my own experience.) Fare you well, my beloved and much valued friend. May things go well with you night and day. Your devoted, F. N. Nietzsche To Peter Gast - August, 1880 Marienbad, August 20, 1880. MY DEAR FRIEND GAST: Your letter chimed in with my harvest-, or rather harvest-festival mood, a little dismally, it is true, but so well and powerfully that today I once more, as usual, end my meditations about you with the chorale “ What Gast achieved is well achieved, For just are his intentions. Amen.”[66] You are built of stouter material than I am and you are entitled to set yourself higher ideals. For my part I suffer terribly when I lack sympathy; nothing can compensate me, for instance, for the fact that for the last few years I have lost Wagner’s friendly interest in my fate. How often do I not dream of him, and always in the spirit of our former intimate companionship! No words of anger have ever passed between us, not even in my dreams-on the contrary, only words of encouragement and good cheer, and with no one have I ever laughed so much as with him. All this is now a thing of the past-and what does it avail that in many respects I am right and he is wrong? As if our lost friendship could be forgotten on that account! And to think that I had already suffered similar experiences before, and am likely to suffer them again! They constitute the cruellest sacrifices that my path in life and thought has exacted from me-and even now the whole of my philosophy totters after one hour’s sympathetic intercourse even with total strangers! It seems to me so foolish to insist on being in the right at the expense of love, and not to be able to impart one’s best for fear of destroying sympathy. Hinc meae lacrimae.[67] I am still in Marienbad: the “ Austrian weather” held me fast to the spot! Fancy, it has rained every day since July 24, and sometimes the whole day long. A rainy sky and rainy atmosphere, but fine walks in the woods. My health lost ground withal; but, in summa I was well satisfied with Venice and Marienbad. Certainly, never has so much been thought out here since the days of Goethe,[68] and even Goethe cannot have let so many fundamental things pass through his head-I surpassed myself by a long way. Once in the wood a man stared fixedly at me as he passed me by, and at that moment I felt that my expression must have been one of radiant joy, and that I had already worn it for two hours. Like the most modest of the visitors here, I live incognito; in the visitors list I appear as “ Schoolmaster Nietzsche.” There are a great many Poles here, and, strange to say, they insist upon it that I must be a Pole; they actually come up to me to greet me in the Polish tongue, and will not believe me when I tell them that I am a Swiss. “ Your race is Polish, but your heart has turned Heaven knows whither”-thus did one of them mournfully take leave of me. Your devoted, F. N. To Herr Ob. Rer. R. Krug - November, 1880
Genoa, November 16, 1880. MY DEAR GUSTAV: Here in Genoa I received the news of your bereavement, and I am just writing a few lines in haste and unprepared, as the circumstances of travel permit. But you must regard them more as a sign than an expression of sympathy. By-the-bye, I see from the calendar that it is also your birthday. With what wistful eyes you will look back upon your life today. We grow older and therefore lonelier; the love that leaves us is precisely that love which was lavished upon us like an unconscious necessity-not owing to our particular qualities, but often in spite of them. The curtain falls on our past when our mother dies; it is then for the first time that our childhood and youth be come nothing more than a memory. And then the same process extends; the friends of our youth, our teachers, our ideals of those days, all die, and every day we grow more lonely, and ever colder breezes blow about us. You were right to plant another garden of love around you, dear friend! I should think that to-day you are particularly grateful for your lot. Moreover you have remained true to your art, and it was with the deepest satisfaction that I heard all you had to tell me on that score. A period may be dawn ing which may be better suited to my constitution than the present one-a period in which we shall once again sit side by side and see the past rise up afresh out of your music, just as in our youth we used to dream together of our future in the music we both loved. I may not say more. My ailments (which still continue, as in the past, to have their own daily history) have laid their tyrannical hand upon me. Whenever you think of me (as you did for instance on my birth day, which, this year, I had completely forgotten), please believe that I do not lack either courage or patience, and that, even as things are at present, I aspire to high, very high goals. You may also believe with equal certainty that I am and remain your friend, With sincere affection and devotion, FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. To Rohde - March, 1881 Genoa, March 24, 1881. Thus the sands of life run out and the best of friends hear and see nothing of each other! Aye, the trick is no easy one-to live and yet not to be discontented. How often do I not feel as if I should like to beg a loan from my robust, flourishing and brave old friend Rohde, when I am in sore need of a “ transfusion” of strength, not of lamb’s[69] but of lion’s blood. But there he dwells away in T�bingen, immersed in books and married life, and in every respect inaccessible to me. Ah, dear friend, to live for ever on my own fat seems to be my lot, or, as every one knows who has tried it, to drink my own blood! Life then becomes a matter of not losing one’s thirst for oneself and also of not drinking oneself dry. On the whole, however, I am, to tell the truth, astonished at the number of springs a man can set flowing in himself-even a man like myself who am not one of the richest. I believe that if I possessed all the qualities in which you excel me I should be puffed up with pride and insufferable. Even now there are moments when I wander over the heights above Genoa here with glances and hopes like those which dear old Columbus may perhaps have cast from this very spot out over the sea and the whole of the future. Well, it is with these moments of courage and of foolishness too, perhaps, that I have to adjust the equilibrium of my life’s vessel-for you have no idea how many days, and how many hours, even on endurable days, I have to overcome, to say the least. As far as it is possible to alleviate and mitigate a bad state of health by means of wise living I think I probably do all that can be done in my case-in that respect I am neither thoughtless nor devoid of ideas. But I wish no one the lot to which I am growing accustomed, because I am beginning to understand that I am equal to it. But you, my dear good friend, are not in such a tight corner as to be forced to grow thin in order to squeeze out of it; neither is Overbeck. You both do your good work and, without saying overmuch about it, perhaps without even being conscious of it, derive all that is good from the midday of life-with some sweat of your brow, too, I suppose. How glad I should be to have a word or two from you about your plans, your great plans-for with a head and a heart like yours, behind all the daily routine of work, petty enough perhaps, a man always carries something bulky and very big about with him-how happy you would make me if you held me not unworthy of such confidence! Friends like yourself must help me to sustain my belief in myself, and this you do when you confide in me about your highest aims and hopes. Beneath these words does there lurk the request for a letter from you? Well, yes, dearest friend, I should rejoice at receiving something really personal from you once more if only not always to have the Rohde of the past in my heart, but also the Rohde of the present and, what is more, the Rohde who is developing and willing-yes, the Rohde of the future. Affectionately yours, N. Nietzsche To Peter Gast - April, 1881 Genoa, 10-4-81. When I read your letter yesterday “ my heart leaped” as the hymn says-it would have been quite impossible, at the present moment, to have given me more pleasant news! (The book, for which I have gradually developed quite a decent appetite, will certainly be in my hands today.) Very well, so be it! We two shall once more come together upon this ledge of life commanding such a vast prospect, and we shall be able to look backwards and forwards together and hold each other’s hand the while to show how many, many good things we have in common-many more than words can tell. You can scarcely imagine how exhilarating the prospect of this meeting is to me-for a man alone with his thoughts passes for a fool, and often enough seems a fool to himself into the bargain; when two come together, however, “ wisdom” begins, as well as trust, courage, and mental health. Fare thee well!
With my best thanks, Your friend, F. N. Nietzsche To His Sister - June, 1881 Recoaro, June 19, 1881. Oh, my darling sister, you imagine that it is all about a book? Do you too still think that I am an author! My hour is at hand! I should like to spare you all this; for surely you cannot bear my burden (it is enough of a fatality to be so closely related to me). I should like you to be able to say with a clean conscience, to each and everyone, “ I do not know my brothers latest views.” (People will be only too ready to acquaint you with the fact that they are “ immoral” and “ shameless”.) Meanwhile, courage and pluck; to each his appointed task, and the same old love! YOUR F. Nietzsche To Peter Gast - August, 1881 Sils-Maria, August 14, 1881. Well, my dear friend! The August sun is above us, the year is slipping by, the hills and the woods are growing more calm and more peaceful. Thoughts have loomed upon my horizon the like of which I have not known before-I shall not divulge anything about them, but shall remain imperturbably calm. I shall have to live a few years longer ! Ah, my friend, sometimes I have a feeling that I am leading a most dangerous life, for I belong to the kind of machine that can fly to pieces. The intensity of my feelings makes me shudder and laugh once or twice already I have been unable to leave my room for the absurd reason that my eyes were inflamed-by what? On each occasion I had wept too much on my wanderings the day before and not sentimental tears by any means, but tears of joy and exaltation. At such moments I sang and uttered nonsense, filled with a new vision which I had seen in advance of the rest of mankind. After all-if I could not draw my strength from myself; if I had to wait for words of good cheer, of encouragement, and of comfort from outside, where should I be, what should I be! There have indeed been moments-nay, whole periods in my life (the year 1878, for instance)-when I should have regarded a strong cheering word, a sympathetic handshake, as the comfort of comforts-and it was precisely then that every one on whom I thought I could rely, and who could have done me this act of kindness, left me in the lurch. Now I no longer expect it, and all I feel is a certain gloomy astonishment when, for instance, I think of the letters that reach me nowadays-they are all so insignificant! No one seems to have gained the smallest experience through me, or to have thought about me-all that people say to me is decent and benevolent, but so far, far away. Even our dear old Jacob Burchkardt wrote me a faint hearted little letter of this sort. On the other hand I regard it as my reward that this year has shown me two things that belong to me and that are intimately related to me-I refer to your music and the landscape before me. This is neither Switzerland nor Recoaro, but something quite different; in any case something much more southern- I should have to go to the Mexican plateau on the calm ocean, to find anything like it (Oaxaca, for instance); and then, of course, it would be covered with tropical vegetation. Well, I shall try to keep this Sils-Maria for myself. And I feel just the same about your music, but I am quite at a loss to know how to catch hold of it! I have been obliged to rule the reading of music and the playing of the piano out of my occupations once and for all. I have been thinking of buying a typewriter and am now in correspondence with the inventor, a Dane of Copenhagen. What are you going to do next winter? I suppose you will be in Vienna. But we must try to arrange a meeting for the following winter, if only a short one-for now I am well aware that I am not fit to be your companion, and that your spirit is more free and more fruitful when I have vanished from your side. On the other hand, the ever-increasing emancipation of your feelings and your acquisition of a deep and proud understanding, in summa your joyful, most joyful industry and development, means so indescribably much to me, that I would readily adapt myself to any situation created by the needs of your nature. Never do I have any unpleasant feelings about you-of this you may be quite sure, dear friend! … With hearty affection and gratitude, YOUR F. N. (I have often been ill of late.) Nietzsche To His Mother - August, 1881 MY DEAR MOTHER: Sils-Maria, August 24, 1881. … I am very well satisfied with my food: Mid day (11.30 a.m.) every day a dish of meat with macaroni; morning (6.30 a.m.) the yolk of a raw egg, tea, and aniseed biscuit (bucolic and nourishing). Evening (6.30 p. m.), the yolks of two raw eggs, a piece of Polenta[70] (as it is eaten by all shepherds and peasants), tea (second infusion) and aniseed biscuit. (In Genoa I live much more in conformity with the customs of the inhabitants, in fact as the work people live.) Every morning at 5, general ablutions in cold water, and 5 to 7 hours exercise every day. Between 7 and 9 in the evening I sit still in the dark (I also did this at Genoa, where, without exception, I stayed at home every evening from 6 in the evening onwards; never went to a theatre or a concert). You cannot imagine with what miserly care I have to husband my intellectual strength and my time, in order that such a
suffering and imperfect creature may yet be able to bear ripe fruit. Do not think ill of me for leading this difficult sort of life; every hour of the day I have to be hard towards myself. With love, Your F. Nietzsche To Peter Gast - August, 1881 Sils-Maria, end of August, 1881. But this is splendid news, my dear friend! Above all that you should have finished! At the thought of this first great achievement of your life, I feel indescribably happy and solemn; I shall not fail to remember August 24, 1881! How things are progressing! But as soon as I think of your work I am overcome by a feeling of satisfaction and a sort of emotion which I never experience in connection with my own “ works.” There is something in these that always fills me with a sense of shame; they are counterfeits of a suffering, imperfect nature, but inadequately equipped with the most essential organs-to myself, I, as a whole, often seem little more than the scratching upon a piece of paper made by an unknown power with the object of trying a new pen? (Our friend Schmeitzner has understood very well how to make me feel this, for in every one of his letters of late he has laid stress on the fact that “ my readers do not wish to read any more of my aphorisms.”) As for you, my dear friend, you were not intended to be such a creature of aphorisms; your aim is a lofty one; unlike me you do not feel obliged to let people guess at the interdependence and at the need of interdependence in your work. Your mission it is once more to make known the higher laws of style in your art-those laws the setting aside of which the weakness of modern artists has elevated almost to a principle: your mission it is to reveal your art once more quite complete! This is what I feel when I think of you, and in this prospect I seem to enjoy the fullest bloom of my own nature as in a mirage. You alone have afforded me this joy up to the present, and it is only since I learnt to know your music that this has been so between us. And now for the second piece of news: Vienna is coming to Venice and the mountain to Mohammed! What a weight this takes off my mind! Now I see quite clearly the course things will take, your first ceremonious introduction-I presume you will have the courage to make known to the world your new will in aesthetics by means of one or two eloquent essays, and thus obviate misunderstanding concerning the only admissible interpretation of your work. Do not be afraid of confessing yourself vowed to the loftiest motives! Men like yourself must cast their words ahead and must know how to overtake them by their deeds (even I have allowed myself to act on this principle until now). Avail yourself of all those liberties which are still granted to the artist alone, and do not fail to remember that our task is in all circumstances to urge people on, to urge them hence-almost irrespective of whether we ourselves get there! (To my surprise I often find the exhortatio indirecta in my last book;[71] for instance in the 542nd Aphorism “ The Philosopher and Old Age”-the direct form of exhortation and instigation, on the other hand, savours somewhat of priggishness.) So much for today-it is not at all necessary for you to answer this, dear friend. When we meet again you will play me some of your music as an answer (during the last few months it has percolated right into my heart, and, honestly, I know nothing I would like to hear better … ) . Your friend, NIETZSCHE. Nietzsche To Peter Gast - November, 1881 Genoa, November 28, 1881. Hurrah! Friend! I have made the acquaintance of one more good thing, an opera by Georges Bizet (who is he?): Carmen. It sounded like a story by Merimee; ingenious, strong, and here and there staggering. A real French talent for comic opera, absolutely uncorrupted by Wagner, on the other hand a true pupil of Hector Berlioz. I thought something of the kind might be possible. It looks as if the French were on the road to better things in dramatic music; and they are far ahead of the Germans in one important point; passion with them is not such a very far-fetched affair (as all passion is in Wagner’s works). Today I am not very well, but that is owing to bad weather and not to the music ; maybe I should be even worse than I am if I had not heard it. Good things are my medicine. Hence my love of you! Nietzsche To Peter Gast - December, 1881 Genoa, December 5, 1881. DEAR GOOD FRIEND: From time to time (how is this?) it is almost a need for me to hear something general and absolute about Wagner, and I like to hear it best of all from you! To feel alike about Chamfort too ought to be a point of honour for us both; he was a man of the stamp of Mirabeau in character, heart, and magnanimity; this was Mirabeau’s own opinion of his friend. It was a great blow to me to hear that Bizet is dead. I have heard “ Carmen” for the second time-and once more I had the impression of a first-class story by Merimee, for instance. Such a passionate and fascinating soul! In my opinion this work is worth a whole journey to Spain-a southern work in the highest degree! Do not laugh, old friend, I do not so easily make an utter mistake in “ taste.” With hearty gratitude, yours, N. Meanwhile I have been very ill, but am well, thanks to Carmen. Nietzsche To Peter Gast - January, 1882
Genoa, January 29, 1882. DEAR FRIEND: Herr von B�low has the ill-breeding of Prussian officers in his constitution;[72] he is, however, an “ honest man”-the fact that he will no longer have anything to do with German opera music is accounted for by all kinds of secret reasons. I remember his once saying to me: “ I do not know Wagner’s later music.” Go to Bayreuth in the summer and you will find the whole theatrical world of Germany assembled there, even Prince Lichtenstein, etc., etc., Levi,[73] too. I suppose all my friends will be there, my sister as well, after your letter of yesterday (and I am very glad of it). If I were with you I should introduce Horace’s satires and letters to you-I feel that we are both ripe and ready for them. When I glanced into them today, I thought all the expressions were charming, as charming as a warm winter’s day. My last letter struck you as being “ frivolous,” didn’t it? Have patience! In respect of my “ thoughts,” it is nothing to me to have them-but to get rid of them when I should like to do so is always infernally difficult for me! Oh, what days we are having! Oh, the wonder of this beautiful January! Let us be of good cheer, dearest friend! To Herr. Ob. Reg. R. Krug - February, 1882 Genoa, February, 1882. DEAR FRIEND: Your songs affected me strangely. One fine afternoon I happened to think of all your music and musical talent and at last I asked myself why on earth you did not get something printed. And then my ears rang with a line from Jung Niklas. The following morning my friend Ree arrived at Genoa and handed me your first book, and when I opened it, what was the first thing I saw but Jung Niklas! This would be a good anecdote for the Spiritualists! Your music has qualities which are rare nowadays. In my opinion all modern music seems to be suffering from an ever increasing atrophy of the sense of melody. Melody, as the last and most sublime art of arts, is ruled by logical laws which our anarchists would like to decry as tyranny! But the one thing I am certain about is that they are unable to reach up to these sweetest and ripest of fruits. I recommend all composers the following most delightful ascetic regimen-for a while to regard harmony as undiscovered, and to collect a store of pure melodies from Beethoven and Chopin, for instance. Much of the excellent past reaches my ears through your music and, as you perceive, some of the future as well. I thank you most heartily. Yours, F. N. Nietzsche To His Sister - February, 1882 Genoa, February 3, 1882. Just a few lines, my darling sister, to thank you for your kind words about Wagner and Bayreuth. Certainly the time I spent with him in Triebschen and enjoyed through him at Bayreuth (in 1872, not in 1876) is the happiest I have had in my whole life. But the omnipotent violence of our tasks drove us asunder and now we can never more be united; we have grown too strange to each other. The day I found Wagner I was happy beyond description. So long had I been seeking for the man who stood on a higher plane than I did, and who really comprised me. I believed I had found this man in Wagner. It was a mistake. And now it would not even be right to compare myself with him-I be long to another order of beings. In any case I have had to pay dearly for my craze for Wagner. Has not the nerve-destroying power of his music ruined my health-was it not dangerous to life? Has it not taken me almost six years to recover from this pain? No, Bayreuth is impossible for me! What I wrote a day or two ago was only a joke. But you at all events must go to Bayreuth. Your going would be of the greatest value to me. YOUR DEVOTED BROTHER. To Rohde - July, 1882 Tantenberg, July 15, 1882. MY DEAR OLD FRIEND: It cannot be helped; today I must prepare you for a new book from my pen; you have at most another month’s peace before it will reach you. There is this extenuating circumstance, that it will be the last for many a long year-for in the autumn I am going to the University of Vienna to begin student life afresh, after having made somewhat of a failure of the old life, thanks to a too one-sided study of philology. Now I have my own plan of study and behind it my own secret goal to which the remaining years of my life are consecrated. I find it too hard to live if I cannot do so in the grand style-this in confidence to you, my old comrade! Without a goal that I could regard as inexpressibly important I should not have been able to hold myself aloft in the light above the black floods. This is really my only excuse for the sort of literature I have been producing ever since 1875; it is my recipe, my self-concocted medicine against the disgust of life. What years they have been! What lingering agony! What inward strife, upheavals, and isolation! Who has ever endured as much as I? Certainly not Leopardi. And if today I stand above it all with the courage of a conqueror and laden with weighty new plans-and, if I know myself, with the
prospect of even harder and more secret sorrows and tragedies, and with the courage to meet them-then no one has the right to blame me if I think well of my medicine. Mihi ipsi scripsi[74]-that settles it. And so let everyone do the best he can for himself-that is my moral-the only one I have left. Even if my bodily health returns, to whom do I owe this change? In every respect I have been my own doctor, and as everything in me is one I was obliged to treat my soul, my mind, and my body all at once and with the same remedies. I admit that others would have perished from my treatment, but that is why I am so eager in warning people against myself. This last book, which bears the title of “ The Joyful Wisdom,” will act as a special danger signal to many, even to you perhaps, dear old friend Rohde! It contains a portrait of myself and I am convinced it is not the portrait of me which you carry in your heart. Well, then, have patience even if only because you must realize that with me it is “ aut mori aut ita vivere”[75] Yours very affectionately, NIETZSCHE. To Madame Louise O. - September, 1882 Naumburg, September, 1882. VERY DEAR FRIEND: Or am I not allowed to use this word after six years? Meanwhile I have been living nearer to death than to life, and have consequently become a little too much of a “ sage” or almost a “ saint.” … Still, such things may perhaps be cured! For once again I believe in life, in men, in Paris, and even in myself; and very shortly I shall see you again. My last book is called “ The Joyful Wisdom.” Are the skies bright and cheerful in Paris? Do you happen to know of any room that would suit my requirements? It would have to be an apartment silent as death and very simply furnished-and not too far away from you, my dear Madame… . Or do you advise me not to come to Paris? Perhaps it is not the place for anchorites and men who wish to go silently about their life-work, caring nothing for politics and the present? You have no idea what a charming memory you are to me. Cordially yours, PROFESSOR DR. F. NIETZSCHE. Nietzsche To Peter Gast - February, 1883 Rapallo, February 1, 1883. DEAR FRIEND: … But perhaps it would please you to hear what there is to be finished and printed. It is a question of a very small book-of about one hundred printed pages only. But it is my best work, and with it I have removed a heavy stone from my soul. I have never done anything more serious or more cheerful; it is my hearty desire that this colour-which does not even need to be a mixed colour-should become ever more and more my “ natural” colour. The book, is to be called : THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA A Book for All and None by F. N. With this work I have entered a new “ Ring”-henceforward I shall be regarded as a madman in Germany. It is a wonderful kind of “ moral lecture.” My sojourn in Germany has forced me to exactly the same point of view as yours did, dear friend-that is to say, that I no longer form part of her. And now, at least, after my Zarathustra, I also feel as you feel: this insight and the establishing of one’s attitude have given me courage. Where do we now belong? Let us rejoice that we should be allowed to ask ourselves this question at all! Our experiences have been somewhat similar; but you have this advantage over me-a better temperament, a better, calmer, and more lonely past-and better health than I have. Well, then, I shall remain here until the 10th. After that my address will be Roma, poste restante. Ever with you in thought and wish, F.N. You have delighted the Overbecks and myself as well! Nietzsche To Peter Gast - February, 1883 Kapallo, February 19, 1883. DEAR FRIEND: Every one of your last letters was a boon to me; I thank you for them from the bottom of my heart. This winter has been the worst I have ever had in my life, and I regard myself
as a victim of a meteorological disturbance. The old flood for the sins of Europe is still too much for me; but perhaps some one may yet come to my rescue and help me up to the highlands of Mexico. The only thing is that I cannot undertake such journeys; my eyes and one or two other things forbid it. The appalling burden which, thanks to the weather, is now weighing me down (even old Etna has now begun to rage!) has transformed itself into thoughts and feelings the pressure of which is frightful; and from the sudden detachment of this burden, as the result of the ten absolutely cheerful and bracing days we had in January, my Zarathustra was born, the most detached of all my productions. Tr�bner is already printing it, and I myself prepared the copy for press. Moreover Schmeitzner writes to say that during the last few years all my works have had a better sale, and I have received many other tokens of increasing sympathy. Even a member of the Reichstag, a follower of Bismarck (Delbr�ck[76]) is said to have expressed himself in terms of the utmost vexation over the fact that I lived not in Berlin but in Santa Margherita! Forgive this chatter; you know what else I now have in my mind and next my heart. I was very ill indeed for a day or two, and made my hosts quite anxious. I am better now and I even believe that Wagner’s death was the most substantial relief that could have been given me just now. It was hard for six years to have to be the opponent of the man one had most reverenced on earth, and my constitution is not sufficiently coarse for such a position. After all it was Wagner grown senile whom I was forced to resist; as to the genuine Wagner, I shall yet attempt to become in a great measure his heir (as I have often assured Fr�ulein Malvida, though she would not believe it). Last summer I felt that he had alienated all those men from me who were the only ones in Germany I might have influenced to some purpose, and had inveigled them into the confused and wild hostility of his last years. I need hardly say that I have of course written to Cosima. As to what you say about Lou, I could not help having a good laugh. Do you really believe that in this matter my taste differs from your own? No, certainly not! But in the case in point there was damned little question of “ the attraction of loveliness or the reverse,” but only whether a highly gifted human being was to be brought to naught or not. So the proofs may once more be sent to you for correction, my old and helpful friend? My heartiest thanks for it all. F. N. Nietzsche To Peter Gast - March, 1883 Genoa, March 22, 1883. MY DEAR FRIEND: I saw “ Carmen” again last night-it was perhaps the twentieth performance this year; the house was packed to overflowing as usual; it is the opera of operas here. You ought to hear the death-like silence that reigns when the Genoese listen to their favourite piece-the prelude to the fourth act, and the yells for an encore that follow. They are also very fond of the “ Tarantella.” Well, dear old friend, I too was very happy once again; when this music is played some very deep stratum seems to be stirred in me, and while listening to it I always feel resolved to hold out to the end and to unburden my heart of its supremest malice rather than perish beneath the weight of my own thoughts. During the performance I did little else than compose Dionysian songs, in which I made so bold as to say the most terrible things in the most terrible and laughable manner. This is the latest form my madness has taken. Forgive me for writing so often. I have so few people to confide in now. Your devoted F. N. Nietzsche To Peter Gast - April, 1883 Genoa, April 27, 1883. DEAR FRIEND: … And last of all came Wagner’s death. What recollections did not this news bring back to me! The whole of this relationship and broken relationship with Wagner has proved my severest trial in connection with my justice toward people in general, and of late I had at last succeeded in practising that “ indolence” in this matter of which you write. And what on earth could be more melancholy than indolence, when I think of those times in which the latter part of “ Siegfried” was written! Then we loved each other and hoped everything for each other -it was truly a profound love, free from all arri�repensee… . Your friend, NIETZSCHE. To Freiherr Karl Von Gersdorff - June, 1883 Sils-Maria, June 28, 1883. MY DEAR OLD FRIEND GERSDORFF: I have just heard of the terrible blow that has befallen you in the loss of your mother. When I learnt it, I derived genuine comfort from the thought that at least you are not alone in life, and called to mind the cordial and grateful words with which you spoke to me of your life companion in your last letter. You and I have been through some rough times in our youth-rough for many reasons-and it would be only just and proper for our manhood to be blessed with milder, more comforting and encouraging experiences.
As for myself, a long and arduous asceticism of the spirit lies behind me, which I undertook quite voluntarily, though it would not be right for every body to expect it of himself. The last six years have, in this respect, been the years of my severest efforts in self-control, and this is leaving out of all reckoning what I have had to overcome in the way of illhealth, solitude, misunderstanding, and persecution. Suffice it to say that I have overcome this stage in my life-and I shall use all that remains of life (not much, I imagine) in giving full and complete expression to the object for which I have so far endured life at all. The period of silence is over. My Zarathustra, which will be sent to you in a week or so, will perhaps show you to what lofty heights my will has soared. Do not be deceived by the legendary character of this little book. Beneath all these simple but outlandish words lie my whole philosophy and the things about which I am most in earnest. It is my first step in making myself known-nothing more! I know perfectly well that there is no one alive who could create anything like this Zarathustra. Well, my dear old friend, I am once more in the Ober-Engadine. This is my third visit to the place and once again I feel that my proper lair and home is here and nowhere else. Oh, how much that wishes to become word and form still lies concealed within me! I cannot be too quiet, I cannot stand sufficiently high up, I cannot be too much alone, if I wish to hear the voices that are buried deepest within me. I should like to have enough money to build myself a sort of ideal dog-kennel-I mean, a wooden hut with two rooms, on a peninsula jutting out into the Silser Lake, where a Roman castle once stood. Living in these peasants cottages, as I have done hitherto, has in the end become unendurable. The rooms are low and confined, and there is always a good deal of noise. Otherwise the people of Sils-Maria are very kindly disposed to me and I think well of them. I board at the Edelweiss Hotel, an excellent hostelry. Of course I take my meals alone there at a price which is not altogether out of keeping with my slender means. I brought a large basketful of books with me to this place, so I am once more fixed up for a spell of three months. My Muses live here; in the Wanderer and his Shadow I have already said that this region is “ related to me by blood and something more.” … Yours, FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. Nietzsche To Peter Gast - July, 1883 Sils-Maria (The Engadine), July 1, 1883. DEAR FRIEND GAST: How is it that I have not written to you for such an age? I have just asked myself this question. But all this time I have felt so uncertain and irresolute. A breath of illness still hung about me, and so I did not wish to write (unfortunately I have written far too many letters this winter that are full of illness). Besides which a number of things have gone wrong with me, for instance, my attempt to find a summer abode for myself in Italy. I tried first in the Volscian mountains, and again in the Abruzzi (in Aquila). What I wonder at now is why, every year about spring time, I feel such a violent impulse to go ever further south; this year to Rome, last year to Messina, and two years ago I was on the very point of embarking for Tunis-when the war broke out. The explanation must be this, that throughout every winter I suffer so terribly from the cold (three winters without a fire!) that with the coming of the warmer weather a veritable craving for warmth takes possession of me. This year I felt in addition a craving for the society of my fellow men. I mean a human kind of relationship, and particularly for a more human kind of society than I enjoyed last spring. Truth to tell, now that I can look back on it all, my lot during the whole of last year and this winter has been of the most horrible and forbidding kind; and I marvel at the fact that I have escaped it all with my life-I marvel and I shudder, too. In Rome people showed me plenty of kindness and good nature, and those who have been good to me are more than ever so now. As to Zarathustra, I have just heard that it is still “ awaiting dispatch” in Leipzig; even the complimentary copies. This is owing to the “ very important conferences” and constant journeyings of the chief of the Alliance Antijuive, Heir Schmeitzner. On that account “ the publishing business must for once mark time for a bit,” he writes. It really is too ludicrous; first the Christian obstruction, the 500,000 hymn books, and now the anti-Semitic obstruction these are truly experiences for the founder of a religion. Malvida and my sister were astonished to find Zarathustra so bitter (so embittered); I-how sweet. De gustibus, etc.[77] Now I am once again in my beloved Sils-Maria in the Engadine, the spot where I hope one day to die; meanwhile it offers me the best incentive to live on. On the whole I am remarkably undecided, shaken, and full of questionings; up here it is cold, and that holds me together and braces me… . I shall be here three months, but after that what? Oh the future! Nearly every day I wonder how I shall ever come to hear your music again. I miss it. I know of so few things that thoroughly refresh me. But Sils-Maria and your music are among them. Your last letter contains a number of very fine thoughts, for which I truly thank myself. Afterward I had another look at Epicurus’s bust. Will power and intellectuality are its most salient characteristics. Your ever heartily devoted, F. N. To Peter Gast - July, 1883 Sils-Maria, 13 July, 1883. DEAR FRIEND: Since my last letter I have been better, my spirits have improved, and all of a sudden I have conceived the second part of “ Thus Spake Zarathustra.” The birth followed upon the
conception; the whole thing was worked out with the greatest vehemence. (While working upon it, the thought struck me that one day I should probably die from an outburst and overflow of emotion like this: the devil take me!) The MS. will be ready for press the day after tomorrow morning, and my eyes describe limits to my industry. If you read the last page of Zarathustra, Part I, you will find the words: “ -and only when ye have all denied me will I return unto you.” “ Verily, with other eyes, my brethren, shall I then seek my lost ones, with another love shall I then love you.”[78] This is the motto to the Second Part: out of it-as it would be almost foolish to tell a musician, I evolve different harmonies and modulations from those in Part I. It was chiefly a matter of climbing on to the second rung, in order from this position, to reach the third (the title of which is “ Midday and Eternity.” I have already told you this; but I beg you most earnestly not to speak about it to anyone. As for the third part, I’ll allow myself some time, and for the fourth, perhaps years-) If, now, I ask you again kindly to help me with the correction of my proofs-this request exceeds the bounds of all friendship and decency, and if you cannot contrive to justify me in my request I cannot contrive to make it! Your devoted friend, NIETZSCHE. To Peter Gast - August, 1883 Sils-Maria, 3rd August, 1883. MY DEAR FRIEND: Epicurus is precisely the best negative argument in favour of my challenge to all rare spirits to isolate themselves from the mass of their fellows; up to the present the world has made him pay, as it did even in his own day, for the fact that he allowed himself to be confused with others, and that he treated the question of public opinion about himself with levity, with godlike levity. Already in the last days of his fame, the swine broke into his garden, and it is one of the ironies of fate, that we have to believe a Seneca in favour of Epicurean manliness and loftiness of soul-Seneca, a man to whom one should, on the whole, always lend an ear, but never give one’s faith and trust. In Corsica people say: Seneca � un birbone.[79] Your friend, NIETZSCHE. Nietzsche To His Mother - August, 1883 Sils-Maria, August, 1883. MY DEAR MOTHER: I have received everything in the way of food and the necessaries of life-unfortunately, too, your letter, which made me feel very wretched. Really, these dissertations on Christianity and on the opinions of this man and that as to what I should do and ought to think on the subject should no longer be directed to my address. My patience won’t stand it! The atmosphere in which you live, among these “ good Christians,” with their one-sided and often presumptuous judgments, is as opposed as it possibly can be to my own feelings and most remote aims. I do not say anything about it, but I know that if people of this kind, even including my mother and sister, had an inkling of what I am aiming at, they would have no alternative but to become my natural enemies. This cannot be helped; the reasons for it lie in the nature of things. It spoils my love of life to live among such people, and I have to exercise considerable self-control in order not to react constantly against this sanctimonious atmosphere of Naumburg (in which I include many uncles and aunts who do not live in Naumburg). Let us, my dear mother, do as we have done hither to, and avoid all these serious questions in our letters. Moreover, I doubt whether our Lizzie could have read your letter. My spirits and health have once more been very much impaired by the fact that the ghastly affair of last year is once more abroad and adding woe to woe. As to the ultimate outcome of it all, as far as I am concerned, ever since last August I have had the most gloomy forebodings. I am now working like a man who is “ putting his house in order before departing.” Don’t say any more about it. I shall not either, and forgive me if this letter has turned out to be such a melancholy effusion. Your son, FRITZ. Nietzsche To Peter Gast - August, 1883 Sils-Maria, August 16, 1883. DEAR FRIEND: Where do you get all these delightful Epicurea? I mean not only your Epicurea epigrams but everything reminiscent of the air and fragrance of Epicurus’s garden that has emanated from all your letters of late. Oh, I am so badly in need of such things including that divine feat “ eluding the masses.” For, truth to tell, I am well nigh crushed to death. But let me change the subject. The fate of the Island of Ischia[80] makes me more and more miserable, for apart from those features about it that concern all men, there is something in the event that hits very
near home where I am concerned and in a peculiarly terrible way. This island was so dear to me; if you have finished the second part of Zarathustra, where I speak of seeking my “ Happy Isles,” this will be clear to you. “ Cupid dancing with the maidens” can only be grasped immediately in Ischia (the girls of Ischia speak of “ Cupido”.) Scarcely have I finished my poem than the island goes to bits. You remember that the very hour I passed the first part of Zarathustra for press Wagner died. On this occasion, at the corresponding hour, I received news that made me so indignant that there will in all probability be a duel with pistols this autumn.[81] Silentium! Dear friend! Meanwhile I have drafted out a plan of a “ morality for Moralists,” and readjusted and rectified my views in many ways. The unconscious and involuntary congruity of thought and coherence prevalent in the multifarious mass of my later books has astonished me; one cannot escape from oneself; that is why one should dare to let oneself go ever further in one’s own personality. I confess that what I should most like at present would be for some one else to compile a sort of digest of the results of all my thought, and thereby draw a comparison between me and all other thinkers up to my time. Out of a veritable abyss of the most undeserved and most enduring contempt in which the whole of my work and endeavour has lain since the year 1876, I long for a word of wisdom concerning myself. Yours, NIETZSCHE. Nietzsche To Peter Gast - August, 1883 Sils-Maria, August 26, 1883. How your letter overjoyed me once again, my Venetian friend! That is what I call “ Lectures on Greek Culture” to one who needs them and not to an audience of Leipzig students et hoc genus omne![82] For a whole year I have been goaded on to a class of feelings which with the best will in the world I had abjured, and which at least in their more gross manifestations-I really thought I had mastered; I refer to the feelings of revenge and “ resentment.” The idea of delivering lectures in Leipzig partook of the nature of despair-I wished to find distraction in the hardest daily toil without being thrown back on my ultimate tasks. But the idea has already been abandoned, and Heinze, the present Hector of the University, has made it clear to me that my attempt at Leipzig would have been a failure (just as it would be at all German Universities) owing to the fact that the Faculty would never dare to recommend me to the Board of Education in view of my attitude towards Christianity and the concept of God. Bravo! This expression of opinion restored my courage to me.[83] Even the first criticism of the first part of Zarathustra that I have received (written by a Christian and anti-Semite to boot, and strangely enough produced in a prison) gives me courage, seeing that in it the popular attitude, which is the only one in me that can be grasped to wit, my attitude towards Christianity-was immediately, distinctly and well understood. “ Aut Christ us aut Zarathustra![84] Or, to put it plainly, the old long-promised Anti-Christ has come to the fore-that is what my readers feel. And so all the defenders “ of our creed and of the Saviour of Mankind” are solemnly mustered (“ gird up your loins with the sword of the Holy Ghost”!!) against Zarathustra, and then it goes on: “ If he conquers you, he will be yours and he will be true, for in him is there nothing false; if he conquers you, you will have forfeited your faith; that is the penance you will have to pay the Victor!” Ludicrous as it may perhaps sound to you, dear friend, at this point I heard for the first time from outside that which I have heard from within and have known for ever so long, namely, that I am the most terrible opponent of Christianity, and have discovered a mode of attack of which even Voltaire had not an inkling.[85] But what does all this “ thank God!” matter to you? What I envy in Epicurus are the disciples in his garden, aye, in such circumstances one could certainly forget noble Greece and more certainly still ignoble Germany! And hence my rage since I have grasped in the broadest possible sense what wretched means (the depreciation of my good name, my character and my aims) suffice to take from me the trust of, and therewith the possibility of obtaining, pupils. You will believe me when I say that I have not written a single line “ for the sake of fame”; but I fancied that my writings might prove a good bait. For, after all, the impulse to teach is strong in me. And to this extent I require fame, so that I may get disciples-particularly in view of the fact that, to judge from recent experiences, a University post is impossible. Yours, F. N. Nietzsche To His Sister - August, 1883 Sils-Maria, End of August, 1883. MY DEAR SISTER: To-day, just as it was three days ago, the weather is perfectly bright and clear and I can survey with cheerfulness and confidence that which I have and have not achieved up to the present, and that which I still expect from myself. You do not know this, and that is why I cannot take it amiss that you should wish to see me on other ground, more secure and more protected. Your letter to made me think a good deal, and the chance remark you made about my condition in Bale having certainly been the best hitherto, made me think even more. I, on the other hand, judge the matter as follows: the whole meaning of the terrible physical suffering to which I was exposed lies in the fact that, thanks to it alone, I was torn away from an estimate of my life-task which was not only false but a hundred times too low. And as by nature I belong to the modest among men, some violent means were necessary
in order to recall me to myself. Even the teachers I had as a young man are probably, in relation to what I have to do, only minor and transitory forces. The fact that I stood above them and contemplated their ideals over their heads-above all these Schopenhauers and Wagners-this is what prevented them from being quite indispensable to me, and now I could not do myself a greater injustice than to judge myself according to these contemporaries whom I have in every sense overcome. Every word in my Zarathustra is simply so much triumphant scorn and more than scorn, flung at the ideals of this period, and behind almost every word there stands a personal experience, an act of self-overcoming of the highest order. It is absolutely necessary that I should be misunderstood; nay, I would go even further and say that I must succeed in being understood in the worst possible way and despised. The fact that those “ nearest to me” should be the first to do this was what I understood last summer and the following autumn, and by that alone I became filled with the glorious consciousness of being on the right road. This feeling may be read everywhere in Zarathustra. The dreadful winter, together with my bad health, made me forget it, and sapped my courage, just as the things which have happened to me during the last few weeks have brought me into the greatest danger-the danger of departing from my appointed path. The moment I am now forced to say: “ I cannot endure loneliness any longer,” I am conscious of having fallen to untold depths in my own estimation-of having deserted the highest that is in me. What do these Rees and Lous matter! How can I be their enemy? And even if they have harmed me, I have surely derived enough profit from them, if only from the fact that they are people of such a different order from myself; in this I find complete compensation-aye, even a reason for feeling grateful to them both. They both seemed to be original people and not copies, and that is why I suffered their company, however distasteful they were to me. As regards “ friendship”-until now I have practised the most severe abstinence (Schmeitzner declares that I have no friends, that I “ have been left absolutely in the lurch for ten years!”) In so far as the general trend of my nature is concerned, I have no comrades; nobody has any idea when I most need comfort, encouragement, or a shake of the hand. An extreme instance of this occurred last year, after my stay at Tantenburg and Leipzig. And if ever I complain the whole world thinks it is entitled to exercise its modicum of power over me as a sufferer-they call it consolation, pity, good advice, etc. But men like myself have always had to put up with the same sort of thing; my purely personal trouble is my declining health, which makes itself felt by a depreciation of my feeling of power and by a lack of confidence in myself. And as, under this European sky, I suffer and am low-spirited for at least eight months in the year, it is a stroke of exceptional luck that I am able to bear it any longer. What I mean by luck in this connection is no more than the absence of such strokes of ill fortune as that of last year-that is to say, that no other stones should enter the works of my watch. For I might perish from the effects of small stones, because at present the watch is most highly complicated and the responsibility for all the most exalted questions of knowledge rests on my shoulders. In summa, to draw some practical conclusions from these generalities, remember, my dear sister, never to remind me either by word of mouth or in writing, of those matters that would deprive me of my self-confidence, aye, almost of the whole point of my existence hitherto. If these things affect and have affected me so much, ascribe it to my health! Cultivate forgetfulness and anything else new and quite different from these things, in order that I may learn to laugh at the loss of such friends! And remember that his contemporaries can never be just to a man like myself, and that every compromise for the sake of “ a good name” is unworthy of me. Written under a bright clear sky, with a clear mind, a good digestion, and the time-early morning. Your Brother. Nietzsche To Peter Gast - September, 1883 Sils-Maria, Monday, September 3, 1883. MY DEAR FRIEND: Once again my stay in the Engadine has come to an end, and I shall leave here on Wednesday-for Germany, where there is much for me to do and to settle. If you should wish to write to me, direct the letter to Naumburg; there in my most natural frame of mind I will rest awhile and recuperate, in addition to eating a good deal of fine fruit. What I shall miss there, as everywhere, is your music. I believe that just as my work makes a stronger and more discomfiting impression upon you than upon anyone else, so everything that proceeds from you has a more soothing effect upon me than upon anyone else. This is indeed a fine relationship between us! May be it is the sort of relationship that might exist between a writer of comedy and a writer of tragedy (I remember telling you that Wagner saw in me a writer of tragedy in disguise); it is certainly true that on the whole I come out of it in a more Epicurean fashion than you do; for thus is the “ law of things.” The writer of comedy is of the higher species, and must do more good than the other, whether he wants to or not. This Engadine is the birthplace of my Zarathustra. Only a moment ago I found the first draft of the thoughts incorporated in it. And one of the notes reads as follows: “ The beginning of August 1881 in Sils-Maria, 6,000 feet above the sea, and at a much higher altitude above all human affairs.” I wonder how the pain and confusion of my spirit affected the tone of the first two parts! (for the thoughts and the aims were already fixed). How strange dear old friend! Quite seriously, I believe, that Zarathustra turned out to be more cheerful and happier than he would otherwise have been. I could prove this almost “ documentarily.” On the other hand: I should not have suffered, nor should I suffer still a quarter as much as I have done, if during the last two years I had not fifty times over applied the themes of my hermit theories to practical life, and owing to the evil-yea! terrible results of this exercise-driven myself to doubts concerning my very self. To this extent did Zarathustra wax cheerful at my expense, and at his expense did I grow overcast with gloom. By-the-bye, I must inform you, not without regret, that now with the third part, poor Zarathustra is really going to be plunged in gloom-so much so, that Schopenhauer and Leopardi will seem like children and beginners beside his “ pessimism.” But the plan of the work requires it. In order, however, to be able to write this part, what I shall need, in the first place, is profound Heavenly cheerfulness for I shall succeed with the pathos of the highest kind, only if I treat it as play. (In the end everything becomes bright.)
Perhaps I shall work at something theoretical meanwhile; my notes for this work bear the heading: the innocence of becoming A finger-post pointing to the deliverance from Morality… . Remain ever true to your friend, NIETZSCHE. Nietzsche To His Sister - November, 1883 Genoa, November, 1883. MY DEAR LAMA: The thought of being reckoned among the authors! that belongs to the things that make me tremble with disgust. But, my dear sister, just study “ Dawn of Day” and “ Joyful Wisdom” books whose contents and whose future are the richest on earth! In your last letters there was a good deal about “ egoistic” and “ unegoistic,” that ought no longer to be written by my sister. I draw above all a sharp line be tween strong and weak men-those who are destined to rulership, and those who are destined to service, obedience, and devotion. That which turns my stomach in this age is the untold amount of weakness, unmanliness, impersonality, changeableness, and good-nature-in short weakness in the matter of “ self”seeking, which would fain masquerade as “ virtue.” That which has given me pleasure up to the present has been the sight of men with a long will-who can hold their peace for years and who do not simply on that account deck themselves out with pompous moral phraseology, and parade as “ heroes” or “ noblemen,” but who are honest enough to believe in nothing but themselves and their will, in order to stamp it upon mankind for all time. Excuse me. That which drew me to Richard Wagner was this; Schopenhauer, too, had the same feeling all his life… . I know perhaps better than anyone else how to recognize an order of rank even among strong men, according to their virtue, and on the same principle there are certainly hundreds of sorts of very decent and lovable people among the weak-in keeping with the virtues peculiar to the weak. There are some strong “ selves” whose selfishness one might call divine (for instance Zarathustra’s) but any kind of strength is in itself alone a refreshing and blessed spectacle. Read Shakespeare! He is full of such strong men, raw, hard, and mighty men of granite. Our age is so poor in these men and even in strong men who have enough brains for my thoughts! Do not form too low an estimate of the disappointment and loss I have suffered this year. You cannot think how lonely and “ out of it” I always feel when I am in the midst of all the kindly Tartufferie of those people whom you call “ good,” and how intensely I yearn at times for a man who is honest and who can talk even if he were a monster [… . . ] , but of course I should prefer discourse with demi-gods. But once again, forgive me! I am writing you all this out of the heartiest depths of my heart, and know very well how very good your intentions are where I am concerned. Oh, this infernal solitude! F. N. P. S.-Stein is still too young for me. I should spoil him. I almost spoilt Gast-I have to be most awfully careful of my Ps and Qs with him. To Rohde - February, 1884 Nice, February 22, 1884. MY DEAR OLD FRIEND: I know not how it was, but when I read your last letter and especially when I saw the charming photograph of your child, I felt as if you were shaking me by the hand gazing at me sadly the while-sadly, as if you meant to say: “ How is it possible that we should have so little in common now, and that we should be living as if in different worlds! And there was a time when-” The same thing, dear friend, has happened in regard to all the people I love; everything is over, it all belongs to the past, it is all merely merciful indulgence now. We see each other still, we talk in order to avoid being silent-we still write each other letters in order to avoid being silent. Truth, however glances from their eyes, and these tell me (I hear it well enough): “ Friend Nietzsche, you are now quite alone!” That’s what I have lived and fought for! Meanwhile I continue along my road; as a matter of fact it is a journey, a sea-journey-and it is not in vain that I sojourned for so many years in Columbus’ town. My Zarathustra has come to an end in its three acts. You have the first, and the two others I hope to be able to send you within a month or six weeks. There is a sort of abyss of the future, something uncanny, particularly in his supreme happiness. Everything in it is my own, independent of all example, parallel, or predecessor. He who has once lived in its atmosphere returns to this world with another face. But of this one should not speak. From you, however, as a homo literatus I shall not withold a confession: I have the idea that with this Zarathustra I have brought the German language to its acme of perfection. After Luther and Goethe there still remained a third step to be taken-just ask yourself, dear old comrade, whether power, suppleness, and euphony have ever before been united in this way in our language. Read Goethe after having read a page of my book and you will find that that “ undulating quality,” which Goethe as a draughtsman possessed, was not unknown even to the word-painter. It is in my more severe and more manly line that I excel him, without, however, descending to the coarse mob
with Luther. My style is a dance, a play of all kinds of symmetries, and a vaulting and mocking of these symmetries. And this even extends to the choice of vowels. Forgive me! I shall take care not to make this confession to anyone else, but once, I believe, you alone expressed the pleasure my style had given you. Moreover I have remained a poet to the utmost limits of this concept, although I have already tyrannized over myself thoroughly with the reverse of everything that could be called poetry. Ah, dear friend, what an absurdly silent life I lead! So much alone, so much alone! So “ childless”! Remain fond of me; I am truly fond of you. Yours, F. N. Nietzsche To Peter Gast - December, 1885 [December 10, 1885] Nice (France) Rue St. Frangoisde Paule, II, 26. DEAR FRIEND: You may perhaps receive a letter that I addressed to you in Vienna (provided that you left, or intended to leave, your Annaberg address with the poste restante of the principal post office there.) After all, I marvel at the sort of “ parallelism” that has characterized our experiences and zig-zag journeys this year-so much indeed that I almost rejoice at the thought, for, as the result of it all, I feel imbued with a general feeling of peace and gentle indifference, which I hope may be your reward also. At present there is not a soul in Germany who has an inkling of what I want, or of the fact that I want anything at all, or even that I have already attained a not insignificant portion thereof. There is not a soul who at heart is either well pleased, or anxious, or distressed, or anything whatsoever, about the “ things” that I hold dear. But, after all, perhaps to be aware of this alone is an invaluable piece of insight, and with it one has approached quite near to Epicurus’s garden, and above all to oneself-after it, one jumps with a mighty spring back to oneself. Let us continue to do that which we enjoy doing-that which gives us a clean conscience about ourselves; for the rest, silence or gloria, “ as God may please.” Something must be discovered and thought out by means of which the next few years may be made secure and no longer full of dangerous accidents. In saying this it is you I have in mind, dear friend. It is quite proper that you should first try Carlsruhe. Whether you succeed there or not, you ought immediately afterwards again to look about you for a quiet haunt. I have come to the sad though obvious conclusion that the depression that would overtake you in the event of another failure ought to drive you to Venice as the only spot on earth that suits you. Although I allowed myself to recommend Nice to you in my last letter, I was quite well aware of the principal obstacle in the way of your coming, and of your reasons for fearing that you would not be enough of a hermit here. Bear in mind, however, that the four months that I probably spend here every year, only make up a third of the year, and, secondly, that for me these four months are precisely my working period, during which I keep out of the way of “ mankind,” and perhaps of friends as well; above all, consider that the friend you would find here is one with whom one can conclude a strict arrangement, and who takes an almost personal interest in all the conditions, whether of your work or your life. Besides there is this to be said for Nice: it is a place in which one can live the whole year round-you will find it much more exhilarating than Venice in summer, thanks to the cool sea-breezes at night. Nice is, moreover, from an aesthetic point of view, the reverse of Venice, as southern cities go; it seems to me to be worth your while to try it, just to see what the Muses, or the mistral, or the luminous heavens would have to tell you here. Thirdly, you can live more cheaply here than at any other place on the Riviera; Nice is a large open-hearted place, with attractions for all. Prices are naturally higher during the winter; they tell me that during the summer they fall 50 per cent. Nevertheless, even in the winter, I could recommend you some respectable restaurants, where your food would be such as you are used to having in Venice, but if anything cheaper and better. It is a heavenly blessing that you have not got the luxurious tastes of the majority of artists, and that your most estimable life also reveals the virtues of simplicity and thriftiness. Later on, of course, you will be a rich man, but the thing which is all important now is that you should be spared the care of this “ later on.” Your art requires that you should be free from worry; is that not so, my dear friend? Yours, N. Nietzsche To His Sister and Brother-in-Law - December, 1885 Nice, After Christmas, 1885. MY DEAR BROTHER AND SISTER: The weather is perfect, and so your “ famous animal”[86] must also assume a pleasant countenance, although it has had many a sad day and night. Christmas, however, was a regular day of rejoicing for me. At midday I received your kind presents, and lost no time in putting the chain round my neck; while the nice little calendar found its way into my waistcoat pocket. But the money must certainly have slipped out, if there really were money in the letter (and mother says there was.) Forgive your blind animal for this! I unpacked my treasure in the street, and something may certainly have fallen out, for I fumbled very eagerly for the letter. Let us hope that some poor old woman was not far off, and that she thus found her “ Christimas stocking” filled in the street. I then drove to my peninsula St. Jean, ran a long way along the coast, and at last sat down among some young soldiers who were playing skittles. Fresh roses and geraniums adorned the hedges and everything was green and warm; nothing northern! Then your famous animal drank three quite large glasses of a sweet local wine, and was just the slightest bit top-heavy; at least, not long afterwards, when the breakers drew near to me, I said to them as one says to a bevy of farmyard fowls,
“ Shsh! Shsh! Shsh!” Then I drove back to Nice, and regaled myself in princely fashion at dinner in my pension. A large Christmas tree was also lighted up. Just think, I have discovered a boulanger de luxe who understands what cheesecakes are. He said that the King of W�rtemberg had ordered one of these cakes for his birthday. It was the word “ princely” that brought this to my mind. Ever your loving, F. Nietzsche To His Sister - February, 1886 Nice, February, 1886. MY DEAR OLD LAMA: Your kind and cheerful proposition has just reached me. If by any chance it could serve the purpose of giving your husband a good opinion of the incorrigible European and antiantisemite, your utterly heterodox brother and “ Jack-in-the-Corner”-Fritz (although Dr. Forster had certainly other things to think of without troubling about me), I would willingly tread in Fraulein Alwinchen Forster’s footsteps, and beseech you to convert me into a South American landowner on the same lines and conditions. I must, however, stipulate most emphatically that the plot of land be called not Frederickland or Frederickwood (for, to begin with, I do not wish to die yet and be buried there) but, in memory of the name I have given you-Lamaland. Joking apart, I would send you everything I possess if it would help to get you back here soon. Generally speaking, everybody who knows you and loves you is of opinion that it would have been a thousand times better for you to have been spared this experiment. Even if that country were found to be ever so well suited to German colonization, no one would admit that precisely you two ought to be the colonizers. The fact that you should be seems to be the result of an absolutely arbitrary choice-excuse the expression!-it is moreover dangerous, particularly for a lama who is accustomed to a gentle culture and prospers and capers about best in such an environment. The whole of this heating up of feelings, constituting as it does the cause of the whole affair, is too tropical and, in my opinion, not even wholesome for a Lama (or to speak more accurately, for the whole of our real family type, whose art lies in the reconciliation of contrasts.) One keeps one’s beauty and youth longer when one neither hates nor feels mistrustful. After all, I cannot help thinking that your nature would prove itself more useful in a truly German cause, here in Europe, than over there particularly as the wife of Dr. Forster, who, as I thought once more on reading his Essay on Education, would really find his natural mission as a Director of Education at a place like Schnepfenthal[87]-and not (forgive your brother for saying so) as an agitator in that antiSemitic movement which is three-quarters rotten. The things most urgently needed in Germany at present are precisely independent Educational Institutions, which would actively compete with the slave-drilling education of the State. The confidence that Dr. Forster enjoys vis-a-vis the nobility of northern Germany, would seem to be a sufficient guarantee that a sort of Schnepfenthal or Hofwyl (do you remember?-the place where Vischer was educated), would succeed under his direction. But right out there, among peasants, in close proximity to Germans, who have become impossible, and are probably embittered and poisoned at heart-enough, what a wide field this provides for worry and anxiety! The big stupid ocean between us! and whenever, here, we get news of a hurricane, your brother grows angry and agitated, and cudgels his brains to discover how on earth it ever occurred to the Lama to embark upon such an adventure. I do the best I can to bear up, but every day, and more particularly at night, I am overcome by incomparable sadness-always, simply owing to the fact that the Lama has run away and has completely broken with her brother’s tradition. I have just heard from the Court Orchestra Conductor of Carlsruhe (to whom I had written a line to please poor G.) that my recommendation (“ the recommendation of a man whom I admire enthusiastically”) had prepossessed him most favourably towards the work, and while I am rejoicing over this news, it occurs to me that you will say, “ He is of course a Jew!”[88] This, in my opinion, proves how the Lama has leaped aside from her brother’s tradition: we no longer rejoice about the same things. Meanwhile it cannot be helped. Life is an experiment; one can do what one likes, and one has to pay too dearly for everything. Onward, my dear old Lama! And may you face what you have resolved to face, with courage! YOUR F. Nietzsche To His Sister - July, 1886 Sils-Maria, July 8, 1886. MY DARLING LAMA: I have ceased to be in favour of the idea of living for good in Leipzig or Munich; life in such circles demands too heavy a toll on my pride; and after all, however much I “ belittle” myself, I still do not attain to that cheerful and comforting courage and self-reliance which are necessary for the continued pursuit of my path in life-attributes which at all events spring into existence more readily in Sils and in Nice than in the places above mentioned. How many humiliations and acts of foolishness did I not have to swallow down during my last stay in Germany, and without my friends ever dreaming of anything of the sort! No-they one and all “ mean well” by me. I endured hours of spiritual depression that I can remember only with a shudder. The humiliating experiences of the autumn of 1882, which I had almost for gotten, came back to my mind, and I recollected with shame the type of humanity I had already treated as my equal! Wherever I turned I was confronted by opinions utterly opposed to my own-to my great astonishment, however, not about Wagner. Even Kohde has refused to have anything to do with Parsifal. Where are those old friends with whom in years gone by I felt so closely united? Now it seems as if we belonged to different worlds, and no longer spoke the same language! Like
a stranger and an outcast, I move among them not one of their words or looks reaches me any longer. I am dumb for no one understands my speech ah, but they never did understand me! or does the same fate bear the same burden on its soul? It is terrible to be condemned to silence when one has so much to say [ … ] Was I made for solitude or for a life in which there was no one to whom I could speak? The inability to communicate one’s thoughts is in very truth the most terrible of all kinds of loneliness. Difference is a mask-which is more ironbound than any iron mask and perfect friendship is possible only inter pares! Inter pares![89]-an intoxicating word; it contains so much comfort, hope, savour, and blessedness for him who is necessarily always alone; for him who is “ different”; who has never met anyone who precisely belonged to him, although he has sought well on all sorts of roads; who in his relationship to his fellows always had to practise a sort of considerate and cheerful dissimulation in the hope of assimilating himself to them, often with success, who from all too long experience knows how to show that bright face to adversity which is called sociability-and some times, too, to give vent to those dangerous, heart rending outbursts of all his concealed misery, of all the longings he has not yet stifled, of all his surging and tumultuous streams of love-the sudden madness of those moments when the lonely man embraces one that seems to his taste and treats him as a friend, as a Heaven-sent blessing and precious gift, only to thrust him from him with loathing an hour later, and with loathing too for himself, as if he had been contaminated and abased, as if he had grown strange even to himself, as if he had fallen from his own company. A deep man needs friends. All else failing, he has at least his god. But I have neither god nor friends! Ah, my dear sister, those you call by that name were certainly friends once but now? For instance [ … ]. … Now I ought once more to give myself a little rest, for the spiritual and intellectual tension of the last few years has been too severe, and my temper has grown sharper and more gloomy. My health is really quite normal-but my poor soul is so sensitive to injury and so full of longing for good friends, for people “ who are my life.” Get me a small circle of men who will listen to me and understand me-and I shall be cured! Your FRITZ. Nietzsche To Peter Gast - July, 1886 Sils-Maria, Tuesday, July 20, 1886. DEAR FRIEND: … Assuming that you prefer a solitary visit to the places in question, allow me to send a few addresses where you can find cheap quarters. In Rapallo, for instance (whence you will be able to explore Santa Margherita and Portofino) I would recommend the cheap little Albergo della Posta, right on the sea-front, in which the first part of Zarathustra was written. Oh what a joy it would be for me to be allowed to act as cicerone to you there and in Genoa-and you would have to try all my modest trattorias! And we would climb about the gloomy bastions together and drink a glass of Monteferrato on my Belvedere in Sampierdorena! Honestly, I can think of nothing that would give me so much pleasure. This bit of Genoa is a piece of my past towards which I feel respect- … it was terribly solitary and severe… . I have not quite settled down yet here in Sils; these sudden transitions do not suit my health. The printing of my book is oppressing me to the extent of becoming irksome. I shall have complete freedom (and leave to think of something new) only when I see the first finished copy-that is to say, in three weeks per haps. I had to make fresh plans for the fourth page of the wrapper (-I trust the agreement between Schmeitzner and Fritzsch will soon be concluded, provided that Schmeitzner never hears to what extent I am informed as to Fritzsch’s intentions.) How funny! However well one tries to beware of the emancipation of women-it is of no use! I have encountered another classical specimen of the literary female, Miss Helen Zimmern (the woman who introduced Schopenhauer to the English.) I believe she has even translated “ Schopenhauer as an Educator.” Of course she is a Jewess; it is amazing to see the extent to which this race now has the spirituality of Europe in its hands (to-day she talked to me for a long time about her race)… . Your friend, N. Nietzsche To Peter Gast - October, 1886 About 400 metres above the sea, overlooking the street leading across the arch of Portofino. Ruta Ligure, October 10, 1886, DEAR FRIEND: Just a line from this wonderful corner of the globe, where I should prefer to see you rather than in your present quarters in Munich. Imagine an island of the Greek Archipelago, arbitrarily covered with woods and hills, which owing to some accident one day swam close up to the mainland and was unable to swim back again. There is certainly something Greek about it; while it is also somewhat piratical, unexpected, covert, and dangerous in character. Finally when at a bend in the road one comes upon a little tropical forest of palms, which makes one feel very far from Europe, it is a little reminiscent of Brazil-at least, that is what my table-companion says, and he has been round the world several times. I have never lived so long in genuine Robinson Crusoe insularity and oblivion. Frequently too I have set great fires burning in front of me. To watch the pure restless flame, with its whitegrey belly, rear itself against the cloudless sky with heather growing all round, and the whole steeped in that October blissfulness which is such a master in the matter of yellows. Oh, dear friend, such early autumn happiness would be just the thing for you, as much if not more than it is for me! … Your devoted friend, NIETZSCHE.
Nietzsche To Peter Gast - January, 1887 Nice (France), January 21, 1887, Rue des Poncbettes 29. Au premier. DEAR FRIEND: … Ever since the spring of last year, Levi[90] has made the best impression upon me. What I have since heard from another quarter, in Munich, has confirmed the fact that he has neither lost nor wishes to lose a kind of relationship with me (he calls it gratitude); and this holds good of all Wagnerians (although I cannot quite explain it). Seydlitz (now President of the Wagner Society) informs me that they waited for me in Munich last autumn with “ feverish tension.” Incidentally, in the Engadine, my neighbour at table was the sister of the Barber of Bagdad; do you understand this abbreviated expression? To conclude-I have just heard the Overture to Parsifal for the first time (and in Monte Carlo!). When I see you again I will tell you exactly what it conveyed to me. Moreover, apart from all irrelevant questions (as to what the use of this music can or ought to be) and on purely aesthetic grounds; has Wagner ever done anything better? This music reveals the very highest psychological consciousness and certainty with regard to what it intended to say, express, convey; it selects the shortest and most direct means to this end, every nuance of feeling being carried to the point of epigram. As descriptive music it is so lucid, that to listen to it is to be forcibly reminded of a shield wrought all over with noble devices, and finally it is full of such a sublimity and rarity of feeling, of experience and of spiritual events at the very basis of music, that it does Wagner the greatest credit; it contains a synthesis of states which to many men, even “ higher men,” it would seem impossible to unite, and is of a commanding severity, of a “ loftiness” in the most terrifying sense of the word, and of an omniscience and penetration that seem to transpierce one’s soul with knives-and withal it is full of pity for that which it sees and orders there. This sort of thing is to be found in Dante, but nowhere else. I wonder whether any painter has ever depicted such a sad look of love as Wagner has given us in the last accents of his overture? Your devoted friend, NIETZSCHE. To Seydlitz - February, 1887 Nice, Thursday, February 24, 1887. Rue des Ponchettes 29. 1st floor. DEAR FRIEND: Fortunately your letter, as far as your own case is concerned, did not by any means prove quod erat demonstrandum; otherwise, however, I admit all you say, the disastrous effects of a grey sky, the prolonged damp cold, the proximity of Bavarians and of Bavarian beer-I admire every artist who turns to face these foes-not to speak of German politics, which are only another form of permanent winter and bad weather. It seems to me that Germany for the last fifteen years has become a regular school of besotment. Water, rubbish and filth, far and wide-that is what it looks like from a distance. I beg a thousand pardons if I have hurt your more noble feelings in speaking in this way, but for present-day Germany, however much it may bristle, hedgehoglike, with arms, I no longer have any respect. It represents the stupidest, most depraved and most mendacious form of the German spirit that has ever existed and what absurdities has not this spirit dared to perpetrate! I forgive no one for compromising with it in any way, even if his name be Richard Wagner, particularly when this compromise is effected in the shamefully equivocal and cautious manner in which this shrewd, all-too-shrewd glorifier of “ reine Thorheit”[91] has effected it in the latter years of his life. Here in our land of sunshine what different things we have in mind! Only a moment ago Nice was in the middle of her long international carnival (incidentally with a preponderance of Spanish women) and immediately after it was over, six hours after the last Girandola, there followed some more new and rarely tasted charms of existence. For we are all living in the interesting expectation of being swallowed up-thanks to a well-meaning earthquake, which caused howling far and wide not only among dogs. You can imagine what fun it is to hear the houses rattling over one’s head like coffee-mills, to watch the inkstands beginning to show signs of free will, while the streets fill with horrified half-dressed figures and unhinged nervous systems. This morning, from about two to three o clock, like the gaillard I am, I made a round of inspection in the various quarters of the town, in order to ascertain where the fear was greatest. For the inhabitants camp out in the open night and day, and it looks delightfully martial. In the hotels where there is much damage, panic of course reigns supreme. I found all my friends, male and female, lying pitifully beneath the green trees, well swathed in flannels, for it was very cold, and, at the slightest sign of a vibration, thinking gloomily of the end. I should not be surprised if this brought the season to a sudden conclusion. Everyone is thinking of leaving (provided of course they can get away and the railways are not all torn up). Already yesterday evening the visitors at the hotel where I board could not be induced to partake of their table-d’hote inside the house, but ate and drank in the open, and but for an exceedingly pious old woman who is convinced that the Almighty has absolutely no right to injure her, I was “ the only cheerful being among a host of masks.”[92] I have just got hold of a newspaper containing a description of this awful night, which is far more picturesque than the one your humble friend has been able to give you. I am enclosing it in this letter. Please read it to your dear wife, and bear me in mind. Your devoted NIETZSCHE.
Nietzsche To Peter Gast - March, 1887 Nice, Monday, March 7, 1887. DEAR FRIEND: I have just had a visit from a philologist whose previous history has not been unlike my own-a Dr. A., brought up in the school of Rohde and von Gutschmidt and very much esteemed by his teachers-but passionately disgusted with and opposed to all philology. He fled to me “ his master”-for he is determined to devote himself absolutely to philosophy, and now I am urging him to go slowly, quite slowly, to make no blunders, and not to allow himself to be carried away by any false examples. I believe I am succeeding in “ disappointing” him. I heard incidentally from him, how even in the University of Tubingen, where I pass for the most negative of spirits, my works are eagerly devoured in secret. Dr. A. is half American, half Swabian. The same thing happened to me with Dostoyevsky as with Stendhal; the most haphazard encounter, a book that one opens casually on a book stall, and the very title of which is unknown to one-and then suddenly one’s instinct speaks and one knows one has met a kinsman.[93] Up to the present I have learnt little concerning his position, his reputation and his history; he died in 1881. In his youth things were pretty bad with him; he was delicate and poor, although he came of distinguished stock. At the age of twenty-seven he was sentenced to death, but was reprieved on the very steps of the scaffold, whereupon he spent four years in chains in Siberia amid criminals of the worst type. This formed the decisive period in his life. It was then that he discovered the power of his psychological intuition; nay more, his heart was mellowed and deepened by the experience. His reminiscences of this period “ La maison des Morts,” is one of the most human books in existence. The first of his works that I read was a French translation entitled “ L’esprit souterrain,” consisting of two stories: the first a kind of unknown music, and the second a real stroke of genius in psychology-a terrible and cruel piece of mockery levelled at ????? sa?t??,[94] but done with such a light and daring hand, and with so much of the rapture of superior strength, that I was almost intoxicated with joy. Meanwhile, on the recommendation of Overbeck, whom I asked about the matter, I have read “ Humilies et offenses” (the only one that O. knew) with the greatest respect for the artist Dostoyevsky. I have also observed how completely the youngest generation of Parisian novelists are tyrannized over by the influence of Dostoyevsky, and by their jealousy of him (Paul Bourget, for instance). I shall stay here until April 3, without, I trust, seeing any more of the earthquake. For Dr. Falb is warning people to beware of March 9, when he expects a renewal of the phenomena in our district; he also mentions March 22 and 23. Up till now I have remained fairly cool, and have lived with a feeling of irony and cold curiosity among thousands of people grown crazy with fear. But one cannot stand security for oneself and perhaps in a few days I shall be less rational than anyone. The element of suddenness, l’imprevu, has its charm… . How are you? You cannot think what a lot of good your last letter did me! You are so brave! Your devoted friend, N. Nietzsche To His Sister - March, 1887 Nice, Wednesday, March 23, 1887. MY DEAR LAMA: It is now difficult to help me. When one has been at great pains for half one’s life to secure independence for one’s self, as I found it necessary to do, one has to accept the disadvantages of the situation as well. One cannot have the one without the other. Among these disadvantages is the fact that no one can tell from appearances what are the things I lack. I should like to have a little more money in order, for instance, that in the interests of my declining health, alone, and with the view of avoiding innumerable mistakes in dieting that I am exposed to in restaurants and hotels, I might have my own kitchen. It is also a question of pride; I should like to lead a life that really is suitable to me, and does not look so conventional as that of “ a scholar on his travels.” But even the five conditions that might make life endurable, and are really not pretentious, seem to me impracticable. I require (1) Some one to superintend my digestion, (2) Somebody who can laugh with me and who has cheerful spirits, (3) Some one who is proud of my company and who constrains others to treat me with becoming respect, (4) Some one who can read aloud to me without making a book sound idiotic. There is yet a fifth condition; but I will say nothing about it. To marry now would perhaps be simply an act of folly, which would immediately deprive me of the independence that I have won with such bloody strife. And then I should also have to choose some European State, to belong to and become a citizen of it. I should have to consider my wife, my child, my wife’s family, the place I lived in, and the people we associated with, but to forbid myself the free expression of my ideas would kill me. I should prefer to be miserable, ill, and feared, and live in some out of the way corner, than to be “ settled” and given my place in modern mediocrity! I lack neither courage nor good spirits. Both have remained with me because I have no acts of cowardice or false compromise on my conscience. Incidentally I may say that I have not yet found a woman who would be suited to associate with me, and whose presence would not bore me and make me nervous. (The Lama was a good housemate for whom I can find no substitute, but it wanted to vent its energy and to sacrifice itself. For whom? For a miserable foreign race of men, who will not even thank her-and not for me. And I would be such a grateful animal, and always ready for merry laughter. Are you still able to laugh at all? I am afraid that you will quite forget how to do it among these embittered people.) Moreover I know the women folk of half Europe, and wherever I have observed the influence of women on men, I have noticed a sort of gradual decline as the result; for instance in the case of poor . Not very encouraging is it? I shall leave Nice at the beginning of next month in order to seek peaceful retirement on Lake
Maggiore, where there are woods and shaded groves, and not this blindingly white incessant sunshine of Nice in the spring! The address is: Villa Badia, Cannobio (Lago Maggiore), but before this letter reaches you who knows where I shall be? With love, Your F. Nietzsche To His Sister - April, 1887 Cannobio, Lago Maggiore, Villa Badia, April 20, 1887. MY DEAR LAMA: Here I am in a magnificent spot, and every morning I marvel at the glory of the colouring. The noble cloisterly nature of the situation and the arrangements also pleases me-and yet I am so out of sorts that I feel as if I could no longer be heartily glad about anything. Nothing comes to me from the outside world to give me courage or strength. My fellowboarders are incomparably tedious! In that respect I was better off in Nice this winter. There were a few people there who interested me. Our dear mother will have written to you all about it. And now about yourself, my dear Lama! I was very much impressed by the purchase of this huge piece of land, “ larger than many a German principality.” But I must confess that I am absolutely at sea about the whole affair. If I understand anything at all, it is that the real owner of that vast complex of territory is that rich Paraguayan who is so friendly with F�rster. This would not prevent him from wishing to serve his own interests by means of this “ German colony.” He is certainly bent on turning it to his own profit. Now the principal thing to me seems to be, not that the colony should be inhabited, but that it should do some business, sell wood, etc. For without that I absolutely cannot see how such a great outlay of capital can get its proper return. F�rster promised to invest a portion of your money securely either in Germany or in Paraguay; but, if know my sister well, this last portion will certainly find its way before long into the pockets of those numerous paupers.[95] I confess that they are my one bugbear; remember that if anything goes wrong they constitute a most unpleasant element with which to deal. Then they always believe that one has unjustly led them into trouble; whereas success and failure often depend on accidents. To tell you the truth, my dear Lama, your letters do not comfort me in the least. If we were situated as you are we should all write such contented and hopeful letters home-particularly to relatives. I have not written to you about it yet; but I am not edified by the whole affair. In my mind’s eye, I can see these paupers, dependent upon your pity, pressing themselves covetously upon you in order to exploit your all too ready liberality. No colony can prosper with such elements; do not deceive yourself on that point. If they were peasants it would be quite a different thing. Also please allow me to question whether you are so well fitted for colonizing as my brother-in-law so often affirms. Not long ago I was talking to one of your former friends and he declared that we did not even know what colonizing meant. It was an incessant struggle with the elements … and you were as well fitted for it as “ lily and rose-branches would be for sweeping a chimney.” A fine simile! but very sad for the Lama. Forgive this sad letter, but mother’s anxiety on your account has infected me also. I believe she is feeling ill as the result of bad German weather; but the Lama in the atmosphere and the sun of the South holds her head up. With love and solicitude, YOUR BROTHER. Nietzsche To Malvida Von Meysenbug - May, 1887 [May 12, 1887] Address: Chur (Schweiz) Rosenhtigel Until June 10 afterwards : Celerina, Oberengadine. DEAREST FRA�LEIN: How strange it is! With regard to what you so kindly said to me at the last moment, I wonder whether it might not prove both refreshing and fruitful for us both once more to join our two solitudes in closest and heartiest proximity! I have frequently thought about this of late, and asked myself searching questions about it. To spend one more winter with you and to be looked after and waited upon perhaps by Trina[96] herself that is indeed an extremely alluring prospect for which I cannot thank you sufficiently! I should prefer above all to return to Sorrento once more (d?? ?a? t??? t? ?a??? say the Greeks: “ all good things twice or thrice!”) Or to Capri-where I shall play the piano to you again but better than I did before Or to Amalfl or Castellamare. Finally even to Rome (although my suspicion of the Roman climate and of large towns in general is based on good reasons and is not to be over thrown so easily). Solitude in the midst of solitary nature has hitherto been my chief refreshment, my means of recovery; such cities of modern traffic as Nice or even Zurich (which I have just left) in the end always make me feel irritable, sad, uncertain, desperate, unproductive, and ill. I have retained a sort of longing and superstition with regard to that peaceful sojourn down there, as if there I had breathed more deeply, if only for a few moments, than anywhere else in my life. For instance, on the occasion of that very first drive we took together in Naples when we went to Posilippo. Taking everything into consideration, you are the only person on earth about whom I could cherish such a wish; besides, I feel that I am condemned to my solitude and my
citadel. There is no longer any alternative. That which bids me live, my exceptional and weighty task, bids me also keep out of the way of men and no longer attach myself to anyone. Perhaps it is the pure element in which this task has placed me that explains why it is that I have gradually grown unable even to bear the smell of men and least of all “ young men,” with whom I am not infrequently afflicted (-oh, how obtrusively clumsy they are, just like puppies!) In the old days, in our solitude in Sorrento, B. and R. were too much for me; I fancy that at that time I was very reticent with you-even about things of which there is no one I should have spoken to more readily than yourself. On my table there lies the new edition (in two volumes) of “ Human-all-too-Human,” the first part of which I worked out then-how strange! Strange that it should have been in your respected neighbourhood. In the long “ address” which I found a necessary preface for the new edition of my complete works there are a number of curious things about myself which are quite uncompromising in their honesty. By this means I shall hold “ the many” once and for all at arm’s length; for nothing annoys men more than to show them some of the severity and hardness with which, under the discipline of one’s own ideal, one deals and has dealt out to oneself. That is why I have cast my line out for “ the few,” and this after all I did without impatience, for it is in the nature of the indescribable strangeness and dangerousness of my thoughts that ears should not be opened for them until very late-certainly not before 1901. You ask me to come to Versailles-oh, if only it were possible! For I esteem the circle of men that you meet there (a curious admission for a German, but in present-day Europe I feel related only to the most intellectual among the French and Russians, and in no way whatever to my countrymen who judge all things on the principle of “ Germany, Germany above all”). But I must return to the cold air of the Engadine; spring attacks me unconsciously; I dare not tell you into what abysses of despair I sink under its influence. My body (and my philosophy, too, for that matter), feels the cold to be its appointed preservative element-that sounds paradoxical and negative, but it is the most thoroughly demonstrated fact of my life. This is by no means a sign of a “ cold nature”: but you, of course, understand that, my most dear and faithful friend! Always your affectionate and grateful friend, NIETZSCHE. P.S.-Fr�ulein Salome has also informed me of her engagement, but I did not answer her either, however much happiness and prosperity I may honestly wish her. One must keep out of the way of the kind of creature who does not understand awe and respect. To Rohde - May, 1887 Chur, May 21, 1887. No, my old friend Rohde, I allow no one to speak so disrespectfully of Monsieur Taine as you do in your letter and you least of all, because it is contrary to all decency to treat any man in the way you do, when you know I think highly of him. If you choose to do so you may, if you like, talk nonsense about me to your heart’s content-that lies in the natura verum[97]; I have never complained about it or ever expected anything else. But in regard to a scholar like Taine who is more akin to your own species, you ought to have eyes in your head. To call him “ jejune” is, to return to our student’s jargon, simply frantically stupid-for he happens to be the most substantial thinker in present-day France; and in this connection it would not be inopportune to remark that where a man can detect no substance it does not necessarily follow there is none, but simply that there is none for him. In the harrowing history of the modern soul, which is in many respects a tragic history, Taine takes his place as a well-constituted and venerable type possessing many of the noblest qualities of this soul-its reckless courage, its absolutely sincere intellectual conscience, its stirring and modest stoicism amid acute privations and isolation. With such qualities a thinker deserves respect; he belongs to the few who immortalize their age. I enjoy the sight of such a brave pessimist who does his duty patiently and resolutely without any need of noise or stage effect-aye, and who can honestly say of himself: satis sunt mihi pauci, satis est unus, satis est nullus.[98] In this way, whether he wishes it or no, his life becomes a mission, his attitude to all his problems is an inevitable one (and not the optional or accidental one that your own and most philologists are to philology). No offence, I hope. But if I knew you only by this one remark of yours about Taine I believe that, owing to the lack of instinct and tact it reveals, I should thoroughly despise you. Fortunately, however, as far as I am concerned, you have proved your self a man in other ways. But you really ought to hear Burckhardt speak about Taine. Your friend, N. To Rohde - May, 1887 Chur, May 23, 1887. DEAR FRIEND: It was not nice of me to have yielded suddenly as I did yesterday to a fit of anger against you, but it is at least a good thing that it has all come out, for it has brought me something valuable in the form of your letter. This has relieved me immensely and given a different direction to my feelings against you. Your remark about Taine seemed to me extravagantly contemptuous and ironical, and the part of me that revolted against it was the anchorite. For this part in me knows from an all too rich experience with what unrelenting coldness all those who live off the beaten track are dismissed and even dispatched. In addition to this, with the exception of Burckhardt, Taine is the only man who for many a long year has sent me a word of encouragement and sympathy about my writings. For the moment I even think of him and Burckhardt as my
only readers. As three fundamental nihilists we are indeed irrevocably bound one to another, although, as you may perhaps suspect, I have not yet abandoned all hope of finding a way out of the abyss by means of which we can arrive at “ something.” When a man keeps digging deep down in his own mine, he becomes “ subterranean” or perhaps suspicious. It spoils his character-hence my last letter. Take me as I am. Yours, N. Nietzsche To Peter Gast - November 3, 1887 Nice, Thursday. [November 3, 1887.] DEAR FRIEND: Huge rejoicing over the newly published, revised, and amplified dressing gown! Oh, but how ashamed you make me feel! For every day I felt the need of this article of clothing, especially in view of the wintry weather we have been having this autumn, which is intensified by the northerly situation of my room which looks out on to the garden and is on the ground floor. Nevertheless, I did not dare to have my dressing-gown sent here, because I remembered its dilapidated condition much more out of keeping with Nice perhaps than with your more philosophical Venice. And I am not yet modest enough to show my pride by exhibiting my rags! Ecco! … . And now suddenly to sit so much embellished and so eminently respectable, in one’s own room-what a surprise! Everything seems to conspire to make this winter more acceptable to me than previous winters have been. For during previous winters I have been driven off my head not only from time to time, but constantly, habitually (and into Heaven knows what-possibly into the damnable writing of books and literature). I have just been to inspect the room that I shall occupy for the next six months; it is just over the one I have had up till now, and yesterday it was freshly papered in accordance with my bad taste-a reddish brown with stripes and speckles. Opposite to it at a sufficient distance away stands a building painted dark yellow, and above that, to exhilarate me even more, half the sky (which is blue, blue, blue!) Below me lies a beautiful garden which is always green and which I can survey as I sit at my table. The floor of the room is covered with straw; upon the straw lies an old carpet, and over that a beautiful new one. There are besides, a large round table, a well-upholstered settee, a book-case, the bed, covered with a dark blue counterpane, heavy brown curtains over the door, and one or two other things covered with bright red cloth (the wash-hand-stand and the coat-rack)-in short a nice multi-coloured mixture, but on the whole warm and subdued. A stove is coming from Naumburg, of the kind I have described to you… . Even my brother-in-law has been good enough to write to me; we both do our utmost to mitigate the somewhat strained relationship (-he writes about “ Beyond Good and Evil”, which he had had sent out to him; I did not send it to him-for very special reasons)… . Your devoted and grateful friend, NIETZSCHE. To Rohde - November, 1887 Nice, November 11, 1887. DEAR FRIEND: I seem to feel as if I still had to make amends to you for something that happened last Spring. And to show you how perfectly willing I am to do all I can, I send you herewith a copy of a work I have just published (but, perhaps, I owe you this book anyhow, because it belongs inseparably to the one I sent last-). No, do not let yourself be estranged from me too easily! At my age, and lonely as I am, I do not feel any too eager to lose the few men who had my confidence in the past. Yours, N. N. B.-About Monsieur Taine, let me beg you to recover your senses. The coarse things you say and think about him annoy me extremely. I would forgive such behavior on the part of Prince Napoleon[99] but not on the part of my friend Rohde. It would be difficult for me to believe that the man who misunderstands such severe and magnanimous spirits as Taine (who is the educator of all the serious scientific character in France today) could understand anything about my own mission. Honestly, you have never breathed a word to me that might lead me to suppose that you knew anything of the destiny that hangs over me. But have I ever reproached you for this? Not once, even in my own heart, if only for the simple reason that I am not accustomed to any different treatment from anyone. Who has ever approached me with even a thousandth part of my passion and my suffering! Has anyone even an inkling of the real cause of my prolonged ill health over which I may even yet prevail? I am now forty-three and am just as much alone now as I was as a child. Nietzsche To Peter Gast - November, 1887 Nice, November 24, 1887. DEAR FRIEND: I am enjoying a great blessing this morning: for the first time a “ fire-idol” stands in my room: a small stove-and I confess that I have already pranced round it once or twice like a good heathen. Until today my life has been a blue-fingered frosty affair, on the basis of which not even my philosophy stood firmly on its legs. Things are pretty insufferable when in
one’s own room one can feel the frigid breath of death when one withdraws to one’s room not as to a fastness, so to speak, but as if one were drawn back to prison. For the last ten days it has been simply pouring: the rainfall per square metre has been reckoned at 208 litres. This October was the coldest I have ever had here, and this November the rainiest. Nice is still rather empty and yet twenty-five of us sit down to dinner every evening-all of them kindly and wellmeaning people, to whom no objection can be made… . … The fact that Rousseau was one of the first followers of Gluck gives me cause for reflection; for, as far as I at least am concerned, everything the former prized is a little suspicious, as are also all those who prized him (there is a whole family of Rousseau-Schiller belongs to it, and so in part does Kant; in France, George Sand, and also Sainte-Beuve; in England, George Eliot, etc., etc.). All those who have been in need of “ moral dignity” fautede mieux have been among the admirers of Rousseau, even down to our darling D�hring, who had the good taste to represent himself in his autobiography as the Rousseau of the 19th century. (Just observe how a man stands towards Voltaire and Rousseau: it makes all the difference in the world whether he says yea to the former or to the latter: Voltaire’s enemies-as, for instance, Victor Hugo, all romanticists, even the subtler latter-day sort such as the brothers Goncourt-are all favourably disposed to that masked plebeian Rousseau. And I suspect that there is something of the resentment of the mob to be found at the bottom of all Romanticism.) Voltaire is magnificently intellectual canaille; but I agree with Galiani that Un monstre gai vaut mieux qu un sentimental ennuyeux. Voltaire was only possible and tolerable on the soil of a noble culture that can allow itself the luxury of intellectual canaillerie. Observe with what warm feelings, what tolerance, my stove has already begun to permeate me! I beseech you, dear friend, to be constantly mindful of this one duty; you cannot avoid it: you must once more by word and deed elevate severer principles to a place of honour in rebus muxicis et musicantibus, and seduce the Germans to the paradox, which is a paradox only at the present day: that the severer principles and more cheerful music are inseparable. Your devoted and grateful friend, N. Nietzsche To Peter Gast - December, 1887 Nice. Pension de Geneve. December 20, 1887. DEAR FRIEND: … On all sides the chasm has become too great, and I have to have recourse to every possible kind of chastening influence in order not to descend among the men of resentment myself. The sort of defensive attitude towards me taken up by all those people who were once my friends has something annoying about it which is much more mortifying than an attack. “ Not to hear and not to see” that seems to be the motto. No one made any response to the Hymn, except Brahms, and he wrote: “ J. B. begs to present his sincerest thanks to you for what you have sent him, as also for the honour which he esteems it to be, and the great stimulus he derived from it. With his most respectful compliments, etc.” Only two letters came about the book; but they at least were very fine. One was from Dr. Fuchs, and the other from Dr. George Brandes (the most intellectual Dane of the day-that is to say, a Jew). The latter seems inclined to take me up pretty thoroughly; he marvels at the “ original spirit” that is exhaled by my works, and sums up their teaching in the term “ aristocratic radicalism.” That is well said and well conceived. Oh these Jews! A few criticisms of my “ Beyond Good and Evil,” sent me by Nauman, show only ill-will: the words “ ripe for the psychiater and pathologist” are meant to explain and censure my work at the same time. (Between ourselves, the undertaking I have in hand is so huge and so monstrous that I cannot take it amiss if people on reading my books should at times feel some doubt as to whether I am quite “ sane.”) … … I am industrious but melancholy, and I have not yet recovered from the state of vehement irritation into which the last few years have thrown me. I am not yet “ sufficiently impersonalized.” Nevertheless, I know what has been done, and done away with: all my previous life has been ruled off at this point-that has been the meaning of the last few years. True, my existence hitherto has thus shown itself to be what it actually is-a mere promise. The passion of my last work has something terrible about it. Yesterday I read it with the most profound astonishment as though it were something new. Write to me, dear friend, and let me hear nothing but good news. Your devoted, N. To Karl Fuchs - December, 1887 Nice (France), December 14, 1887. Pension de Geneve. MY DEAR FRIEND: It was a happy thought on your part to write me such a letter. For almost involuntarily and in pursuance of an inexorable necessity, I am just in the midst of calculating how I stand with men and things, and laying the whole of my past ad acta. Almost everything I am now doing amounts to an underlining of what has gone before. During the last few years the vehemence of my inner vibrations has been terrific; and now that I must ascend to a new and higher form, what I most of all need is a new estrangement, a still higher form of impersonalization. At the same time it is essential for me to know what and whom I can still regard as mine.
How old am I already? I do not know, any more than I know how young I shall yet be. I look at your portrait with pleasure. It seems full of youth and courage, mingled, as is only becoming, with incipient wisdom (and white hair?). In Germany they are crying out aloud against my eccentricities. But, as they do not know where my centrum is, it is not easy for them to hit the nail on the head in their efforts to determine where and when I have been “ eccentric” in the past. For instance in being a philologist I was out of my centrum (fortunately this does not by any means signify that I was a bad philologist). On the same principle, it now seems to me an eccentricity that I should ever have been a Wagnerite. It was an extremely dangerous experiment, and now that I know I have not been ruined by it I also realize what it has meant for me-it was the severest test of character I could have had. It is certain that one’s inmost nature gradually disciplines one’s whole being into unity; that passion for which for ages one can find no name saves us from all digressions and dispersions, that mission whose involuntary custodian we are. It is very difficult to understand such things from afar. And that is why the last ten years of my life have been extremely painful and violent. In the event of your being inclined to hear anything more about this ungodly and problematic history, let me recommend to your friendly sympathy the new editions of my earlier works, particularly their introductions. (Incidentally, let me tell you that my publisher, the excellent E. W. Fritzsch of Leipzig, who has good reason for feeling desperate, is prepared to send copies of these new editions to anyone who promises to write a long article about “ Nietzsche en bloc.” The more important literary journals, such as Lindau’s North and South are ripe for such an article, as a genuine feeling of anxiety and excitement is beginning to prevail concerning the importance of my literature. Up to the present no one has had the courage and inintelligence to reveal me to the dear Germans. My problems are new, the range of my psychological horizon is terrific, my language is bold and German. Possibly there are no books in the German language richer in ideas or more independent than mine.) The hymn also belongs to this “ underlining process.” Could you not get someone to sing it to you? I have already been promised its production in many quarters (for instance, Mottl in Karlsruhe). It is really intended to be sung “ to my memory” one day. It will survive as a souvenir of me, provided, of course, that I survive. Do not forget me, dear doctor. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for wishing to remain my friend even in the second half of your century. Yours, NIETZSCHE. Nietzsche To His Sister - January, 1888 Nice, January 25, 1888. MY DEAR OLD LAMA: It was with great pleasure that I read my brother-in-law’s p�an on his “ incomparable wife.” I am proud of having brought you up-only very few women would have overcome those extraordinary difficulties with such bravery and unassuming cheerfulness. But please let us have a little less modesty! Do not forget that the herd insists on having picturesque people-that is to say, people who draw pictures of their gifts, aspirations, and successes in such bold and obtrusive strokes that they can be grasped even by the dullest eyes. The herd honours everything in the nature of a pose, any solemn attitude,-things from which we two are averse. Only subtle spirits understand the shame of the noble mind, that conceals its highest and its best beneath a plain surface. I feel certain that among all those people over there, only a few have any idea with what little regard for yourself and with what passionate resolution you try to realize your ideals. The only question I ask myself is-are these ideals worthy of so much self-sacrifice? I very much fear you will yet have to overcome many bitter disappointments in your life. Ultimately you will be come a sceptical old woman-without having lost your bravery; and you will be well suited to your sceptical brother. How we shall laugh then over the idealism of our youth-possibly with tears. Now let me tell you a little experience I have had. As I was taking my usual walk yesterday, I suddenly heard some one talking and laughing heartily along a side path (it sounded almost as if it might have been you); and when this some one appeared before me, it turned out to be a charming brown-eyed girl, whose soft gaze, as she surveyed me, reminded me of a roe. Then, lonely philosopher though I am, my heart grew quite warm-I thought of your marriage schemes, and for the whole of the rest of the walk I could not help thinking of the charming young girl. Certainly it would do me good to have something so graceful about me-but would it do her good? Would my views not make her unhappy, and would it not break my heart (provided that I loved her) to make such a delightful creature suffer? No, let us not speak of marrying! But what you were thinking of was rather a good comrade [ … ]. Do you really think that an emancipated woman of this sort, with all her femininity vanished, could be a good comrade, or could be tolerable as a wife at all? You forget that, in spite of my bad eyesight, I have a very highly developed sense of beauty; and this, quite apart from the fact that such embittered women are repugnant to me and spoil my spirits and my whole atmosphere. Much intellect in a woman amounts to very little as far as I am concerned, for this so-called intellect, by which only the most superficial men are deceived, is nothing more than the most absurd pretentiousness. There is nothing more tiring than such an intellectual goose, who does not even know how tedious she is. Think of Frau O.! But in this respect I must admit that Fraulein X. is incomparably more pleasant-but, nevertheless! You think that love would change her; but I do not believe in any such change through “ love.” Besides, you have not seen her for many years it is obvious that she must have changed in the direction of ugliness and loss of womanliness. Believe me, if you were to see her now-at her very appearance the thought of love and marriage would strike you, as it does me, as absurd. You can take my word for it, that for men like me, a marriage after the type of Goethe’s would be the best of all-that is to say, a marriage with a good housekeeper! But even this idea is repellent to me. A young and cheerful daughter to whom I would be an object of reverence would be much more to the point. The best of all, however, would be to have my good old Lama again. For a philosopher, a sister is an excellent philanthropic institution, particularly when she is bright, brave, and loving (no old vinegar flask like G.
Keller’s[100] sister), but as a rule one only recognizes such truths when it is too late. Well, this has been a nice chat on marriage with the Lama. With many hearty wishes and greetings to you and your Bernhard, Your devoted F. Nietzsche To Peter Gast - February, 1888 Nice, February 1, 1888. DEAR FRIEND: How close you have been to me all this time! What a tremendous deal I have thought out-both trash and wisdom-with you always as the principal figure in my mind! There has been a fine opportunity: the last drawing in the Nice Lottery. For at least half an hour I allowed myself the small and foolish luxury of taking it for granted that I should win the first prize. With half a million it would be possible to reinstate a number of reasonable things on earth. At least you and I would regard the irrational character of our existence with more irony, with more detachment-for, in order to do the things you and I do, and to do them quite well and divinely, one thing is fundamentally necessary, Irony (well, then, for this is the way the world reasons-half a million is the first premise of irony… . ) . To lack not only health, but also money, recognition, love, and protection-and not to become a tragic grumbler: this constitutes the paradoxical character of our present condition, its problem. As for myself, I have got into a state of chronic vulnerability, against which, when my condition is slightly improved, I take a sort of revenge which is not of the nicest description that is to say, I adopt an attitude of excessive hardness. For a proof of this, look at my last work! Still, I put up with all this with the sagacity of an old psychologist and without the smallest moral indignation. Oh, how instructive it is to live in such an extreme state as mine! Only now do I understand history; never has my vision been more profound than during the last few months. Dear friend, your physiological computation about the influence of Venice is perfectly right. In this place, where one is constantly hearing so many visitors and invalids discuss the idiosyncrasies of the effects of particular climates, I have gradually learned to grasp the cardinal truth of this question. In regard to the optimum, the realization of our most intimate wishes (our “ works”), one must hearken to this voice of Nature; certain kinds of music can flourish no better under a wet sky than can certain plants. The lady who is my neighbour at table has just told me that until two weeks ago she had been lying ill in Berlin, that she had caused the doctors there a great deal of anxiety, and that she was unable to walk from one corner of the street to the other. Now-and she cannot account for the change in her she runs,-she eats, she is cheerful and can no longer believe-that she has been ill. As the same thing has happened to her three times in her life, she now swears by a “ dry climate” as a recipe for all spiritual ailments (-for she had suffered from a sort of desperate melancholia). The fact that for years you should have found the effect of the climate of Venice (as a contrast to the climate in which you were brought up) very good for you and a sort of balm oil that calmed you down, is quite correct: I have discussed this vital question with doctors in the Engadine: namely, that a climate when tried as a contrast for its stimulating effect-that is to say when it is ordered only for a given period of time-has exactly the opposite effect when it is lived in for good; and that the inhabitant of the Engadine, under the constant influence of this particular climate, becomes serious, phlegmatic, and a little anaemic, while the visitor to this part of the world leaves it feeling braced and strengthened in all his bodily functions. Moral: You ought, therefore, to be (or have been) only a visitor to Venice. I am really sorry to have to say this and even to see it in the way I do; for so much there is arranged and ordered in such a splendid and suitable way for you that you could not find the same anywhere else. You might try Corsica? I have been told that one can find board and lodging in the small hotels at Bastia for three to four francs a day. So many fugitives from all lands have lived in Corsica (particularly Italian scholars, etc.). The railway line from Bastia to Corte has just been opened (February 1, 1888). The great frugality of the Corsican mode of life and the simplicity of their customs would make people like ourselves feel quite at home there. And how far away from modernity one would feel there! Maybe the soul would grow stronger, purer, and prouder there … (-I can see quite clearly now that one would suffer less if one were prouder: you and I are not proud enough… .). Your affectionate and devoted friend, N. To Seydlitz - February, 1888 Nice, Pension de Geneve. February 12, 1888. DEAR FRIEND: It has not been a “ proud silence” that has sealed my lips to everyone all this time, but rather the humble silence of a sufferer who was ashamed of betraying the extent of his pain. When an animal is ill it crawls into its cave-so does la bete philosophe. So seldom does a friendly voice come my way. I am now alone, absurdly alone, and in my unrelenting subterranean war against all that mankind has hitherto honoured and loved (-my formula for this is “ the Transvaluation of all Values”) I myself seem unwittingly to have become something of a cave, something concealed that can no longer be found even when it is a definite object of search. But no one goes in search of it. Between us three, it is not beyond the limits of possibility that I am the leading philosopher of the age-aye, maybe a little more than that, something decisive and fateful that stands between two epochs. But a man is constantly paying for holding such an isolated position by an isolation which becomes every day more complete, more icy, and more cutting. And look at our dear Germans! … Although I am in my forty-fifth year and have published about fifteen books ( among them that non plus ultra “ Zarathustra”) no one in Germany has yet succeeded in producing even a
moderately good review of a single one of my works. They are now getting out of the difficulty with such words as “ eccentric,” “ pathological,” “ psychiatric.” There have been evil and slanderous hints enough about me, and in the papers both scholarly and unscholarly, the prevailing attitude is one of ungoverned animosity;-but how is it that no one protests against this? How is it that no one feels insulted when I am abused? And all these years no comfort, no drop of human sympathy, not a breath of love. In these circumstances one has to live at Nice. This season it is again full of idlers, grecs and other philosophers-it is full of my like. And, with his own peculiar cynicism, God allows his sun to shine more brightly on us than on the more respectable Europe of Herr von Bismarck (-which with feverish virtue is working at its armaments, and looks for all the world like a heroic hedgehog). The days seem to dawn here with unblushing beauty; never have we had a more beautiful winter. How I should like to send you some of the colouring of Nice! It is all besprinkled with a glittering silver grey; intellectual, highly intellectual colouring; free from every vestige of the brutal ground tone. The advantage of this small stretch of coast between Alassio and Nice is the suggestion of Africa in the colouring, the vegetation, and the dryness of the air. This is not to be found in other parts of Europe. Oh, how gladly would I not sit with you and your dear wife beneath some Homeric Ph�acien sky! But I must not go further south (-my eyes will soon drive me to more northern and more stupid landscapes). Please let me know when you will be in Munich again and forgive this gloomy letter. Your devoted friend, NlETZSCHE. Nietzsche To Peter Gast - February, 1888 Nice, Pension de Geneve, February 26, 1888. DEAR FRIEND: The weather is sultry, it is Sunday afternoon, and I am very lonely. I can think of nothing more pleasant to do than to sit down and have a chat with you. I have just noticed that my fingers are blue, so my writing will be legible only to him who can guess my thoughts… . What you say in your letter about Wagner’s style reminds me of an effusion of my own on the subject that I wrote somewhere, in which I say that his “ dramatic style” is nothing more than a species of bad style, or rather, no style in music. But our musicians call this progress… . As a matter of fact, in this domain of truth, everything still remains to be saidaye! I very much suspect that everything still remains to be thought. Wagner himself, as a man, an animal, a god, and an artist rises a thousand miles above the understanding and the lack of understanding of our Germans. Whether it is the same with the French I do not know. Today I had the pleasure of being proved in the right over a question, which, in itself, might seem extraordinarily daring: to wit-what man up to the present has been the best prepared for Wagner? Which of us was most adapted to Wagner and most Wagnerian inwardly in spite of and without Wagner? To this question I had for some considerable time replied by pointing to that odd three-quarter imbecile of a Baudelaire, the poet of Les Fleurs du Mal. I had deplored the fact that, during his lifetime, this man was so fundamentally related to Wagner in spirit; I had marked the lines in his poems that were in any way redolent of Wagner’s sensibility, to which no form has been given in the poetry of any other man (Baudelaire is a libertine, mystic, and satanic to boot; but above all Wagnerian). And what do I find today? On turning over the leaves of the recently published (�uvres Posthumes of this author so highly esteemed and even beloved in France, lo and behold, in the midst of invaluable Psychologicis of decadence (mon coeur mis a nu, after the manner of those introspective writings of Schopenhauer and Byron[101] that were burnt) what should I find but a hitherto unpublished letter of Wagner’s relating to one of Baudelaire’s essays in the Revue Europeenne, April, 1861. Here is a copy of it: “ My dear Monsieur Baudelaire, I have called upon you several times without finding you in. You will readily understand how anxious I am to tell you what a tremendous pleasure you gave me by your article that does me so much honour and gives me more encouragement than anything anyone else has said as yet about my poor talent. Would it not be possible for me before long to tell you in person how elated I felt at reading those beautiful pages that described to me-after the manner of the finest poem-the impression I may boast of having made upon a mind so superior as yours? Thank you a thousand times for the kindness you have shown me, and, believe me, I am proud to be able to think of you as a friend. May we soon meet! Yours, Richard Wagner.” [Wagner was then forty-eight years old and Baudelaire was forty. The letter is touching, although it is in such wretchedly bad French.] In the same book there are a few sketches by Baudelaire in which in a most passionate manner he defends Heinrich Heine against French criticism (Jules Janin). During the latter part of his life, when he was half mad and slowly declining, Wagner’s music used to be played to him as a form of medicine: and even when Wagner’s name was mentioned to him, “ he smiled with joy”. (If I am not mistaken, Wagner only wrote one other letter expressive of such gratitude and enthusiasm, and that was after the receipt of The Birth of Tragedy.) (Extract from one of Baudelaire’s letters: “ I dare not write any more about Wagner: people have made too much fun of me. This music has been one of the greatest joys of my life: for full fifteen years I have not experienced such feelings of elation, or rather ecstasy”). How are you now, dear friend? I have vowed to take nothing seriously for a while. Even you are not to believe that I have once again written “ literature”: this essay was for
myself. Every winter now I intend to write just such an essay for myself,-the thought of getting it published is practically out of the question… . The Fritzsch has been settled by wire. Spitteler has written. It is not a bad letter. and in it he apologises for his “ impudence” (his own word).[102]
THE YOUNG NIETZSCHE BY ELISABETH FORSTER-NIETZSCHE TRANSLATED BY ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI FRIENDS at home and abroad have often asked me whether I could not relate the story of my brother Friedrich Nietzsche’s life in an abridged form. They pointed out that the large biography in three volumes was chiefly intended for the student who could find the time necessary to read it, and calling my attention to the number of falsehoods which, within recent years, have been circulated both in Germany and France concerning Nietzsche’s life, declared that it was high time that the authentic facts should be made accessible to wider circles in the form of a small and handy volume that would likewise be suitable for translation into a foreign language. As I was not able to undertake a fresh narrative of my brother’s life immediately, I appealed to Professor Ernst Holzer of Ulm, and asked him whether he would do it. He assured me that there was nothing he was more desirous of doing than to relate afresh at least a portion of my brother’s life. The young Nietzsche and his works seemed to have been buried and forgotten. All the fuss had been made in connection with the older solitary Nietzsche. The latter, however, could be properly understood only on condition that the image of the young Nietzsche was already impressed in sharp outline on the mind of the reader. I therefore laid at Professor Holzer’s disposal all the fresh material that had been deciphered and collected from letters and note-books since the publication of my first biography. Professor Holzer’s aim was more particularly to describe the young scholar who had done such surprisingly good and learned work, even at Pforta and later in Leipzig, and to reveal him as a University Professor, in the light of his philological essays and lectures. According to Professor Holzer, the first volume of the Philologica scarcely gives an adequate idea of the importance of these performances, although the second and third, which are not yet published, certainly will. In the autumn of 1909 Holzer spoke to me of his projected work with the utmost enthusiasm, and said that although it was his intention to lay particular stress on Nietzsche the University Professor, of whom everybody knew so little, he also wished more particularly to show the importance of the Young Nietzsche, the author of those essays which had appeared in the early ‘seventies, to whom he felt particularly sympathetic. ” The man who speaks here is the ‘ first Nietzsche,’ the friend of Richard Wagner the Nietzsche whom Erwin Rohde loved so enthusiastically, the young, hopeful and trustful Nietzsche, who, with a colossal faith in his ideals and friends, marched courageously towards the future the gladiator who, in the early ‘seventies, felt himself to be in possession of his greatest power, and who seemed to a friend who once visited him in Bale, ‘ full of fire and buoyancy, and as selfreliant as a young lion ! ‘ But only a very few months after our meeting, death suddenly put an end to Professor Holzer’s career, and this intellectual and devoted friend, from whom we expected such great things, was taken from us. Thus I was obliged to reconcile myself to the thought of telling the tale of my brother’s life afresh and of repeating much that I had already published. And I resolved to carry out the work in the first place for the benefit of the foreigner, from whom the first suggestion of the scheme had come, and secondly for Germany. It is only natural that my little book should have developed into something very different from that which Professor Holzer had contemplated. Truth to tell, the only point of resemblance between the two lies in the fact that in the following pages I have endeavoured to depict the young and happy Nietzsche, not only during a given well-defined period, but throughout the whole of the thirty-two happy years of his youth, from 1844 to 1876. I, alone, can speak with any real knowledge of these years, for, as Baron von Gersdorff and Rohde once said to me : ” We are acquainted only with small portions of his life ; but you know everything that links those isolated portions together.” Thus I have tried to gather together everything that has been said and written about my brother during the period above described, and it has been my constant endeavour to lay bare even those facts which might shed a less favourable light upon him. But I had already done this with very little success before the composition of the large biography. When Baron von Gersdorff came to Weimar in August, 1898, in order to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Goethe’s birthday, I asked him whether he could not tell me anything unfavourable concerning my brother, whose bosom friend he had been and in whom my brother had certainly confided more than in all his other friends. For I told him that there was too little shadow in the bright picture I had drawn of my brother’s life. Gersdorff replied to me a little wistfully : ” I can remember nothing ; he was all light. It was we, his friends, who did not understand him, who contributed the shade to his life.” Maybe this life-history is important chiefly in this respect, that it presents us with one great problem. For it is a problem that Friedrich Nietzsche, who denied our present moral values, or at least traced them to sources absolutely unsuspected hitherto this Transvaluer of all Values should himself have fulfilled all the loftiest and most subtle demands made by the morality now preached among us. And he did not do this because of any moral imperative, but from a perfectly cheerful inability to act otherwise. I leave it to others to solve this problem. I have not the slightest intention of advancing any of my own views, or of attempting in any way to prove my brother’s doctrines. Quite a number of distinguished scholars and literary men have written excellent works with the latter object in view, and many more will probably do so in the future. In the pages before us, all I wish to do is to describe the Young and Happy Nietzsche, while in a volume which is to follow this one, under the title of The Lonely Nietzsche, I shall speak of the later tragic years of solitude, during which no word either of love or friendship any longer reached him, but in which he climbed the steep path to his highest and most exalted aims.
PART I CHILDHOOD CHAPTER I OUR ANCESTORS MY brother attached great importance to good descent and even declared that all bodily and spiritual virtue and excellence are acquired only with great pains and the exercise of peculiar diligence, self-mastery and frugality, and through the indefatigable and faithful repetition of the same tasks. The gratitude and reverence with which he looked back upon our ancestors and their treasures of virtue, and the modesty with which he was able to regard himself, with all his superior qualities, only as their heir, will therefore readily be understood. As late as the year 1883 he wrote in Zarathustra : ” Ever am I your love’s heir and heritage, blooming to your memory of many gorgeous native virtues, ye dearest ones ! ” Our father, Karl Ludwig Nietzsche, was born at Eilenburg, at a time of considerable unrest and danger, on the 10th October, 1813, only a few days before the great Battle of the Nations at Leipzig, and was the son of the Doctor of Divinity and Superintendent, Friedrich August Ludwig Nietzsche. Eilenburg, which is situated not far from Leipzig, was, owing to the passage of the troops, and later on account of the crowds of military refugees and fugitives, much involved in the course of events. Our grandmother Nietzsche was never able to speak without emotion of the terrors of that appalling autumn : numberless troops had swarmed over the whole district ; throughout every one of those gloomy nights the hurried monotonous tramping of the regiments had been heard, and friend and foe alike had knocked at the door of the Superintendent’s house, with a thousand and one entreaties and requests. How much advice and help was not expected of the worthy shepherd of souls ! To how many dying creatures was he not called in order to give them the last solace of religion ! Our grandmother used to say that for years in her dreams she was frightened by hearing the gruesome tapping on the shutters which was reminiscent of those days. It must, however, be remembered that Eilenburg at this time belonged to Saxony and that Saxony was Napoleon’s ally After the battle, the tumultuous rejoicings over the victory, which were borne from town to town by the pealing of bells, were therefore received with somewhat mixed feelings at Eilenburg. We never knew our grandfather Nietzsche personally ; according to all accounts, however, he must have been a very worthy, kindly and scholarly man. The degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred upon him in honour of a number of excellent treatises he had written, the most important of which, on account of the posthumous fame they enjoyed, being : ” Gamaliel, or the Everlasting Duration of Christianity, Calculated to Instruct and Tranquillize the Public Mind in Face of the Present Ferment in the Theological World ” (Published by Supperian, Leipzig, 1796), and “ Contributions Towards the Promotion of a Seasonable Attitude regarding Religion, Education, the Duty of the Subject, and Human Life ” (Published by Gadike, Weimar, 1804). Our grandfather Nietzsche married twice and had twelve children, of whom two died in early infancy. (Our dear grandmother was his second wife.) In his seventieth year he caught a severe cold, and, after four days’ illness, on the 16th March, 1806, he died. In a short essay, which a friend of his youth wrote in honour of his memory, the writer with the profoundest reverence for his character says : ” All who had the good fortune to look into his mind and to witness his mode of life, could not but praise the delightful qualities of his heart and soul. They admired above all the pious feeling which transfigured the whole of life for him, and rendered every duty holy in his eyes, inspired him in every moment of joy, and hallowed every affliction as a dispensation from God and Heaven. The hearty benevolence and friendliness with which he met all men and offered his love to every burdened soul whom he could help, and which made him pray to the God of Love even for those who had done him harm; the uprightness, loyalty and honesty with which he always clung to the good and defended the cause of righteousness, and which made his outward acts the faithful reflection of his inner spirit ; the noble dignity, coupled with friendliness and modesty with which he won both our love and our esteem, were felt by everyone who came into contact with him.” Our dear grandmother Nietzsche was born on the 11th December, 1778. She came of a family of pastors of the name of Krause, but I know little about these ancestors, save that they were cheerful, active people, and that our great-grandmother was famous for the excellence of her cooking. To this day recipes which she favoured are used in my household. She was no longer living when our grandmother at the age of thirty-one took as her second husband our grandfather ; and that is the reason why the ceremony took place at Naumburg, where our grandmother’s favourite brother was a preacher at the Cathedral. Our grandmother had three brothers and one sister, a very beautiful girl, whose portrait is still a source of pleasure to every visitor to the Nietzsche archives. All the brothers and sisters, however, must have been good-looking men and women, for our great-grandmother writes: ” God has given me five good-looking and well-behaved children.” Both claims were true, for every one of her children lived to do her credit and give her joy. One of the sons was ” the founder of the needlework and embroidery industry in the Saxon Voigtland “ a benefactor to the Voigt land,” as a local inscription to his honour gratefully attests ; the second was Dr. Krause, General Superintendent, Professor and Doctor of Divinity, first in Konigsberg and afterwards in “ Weimar, as successor to Herder, and was held in high esteem, thanks to his intellect and scholarship. The third son was a worthy country clergyman, who even in those days endeavoured to be not only a parson and shepherd of souls, but also an adviser in all worldly matters to his parishioners. Our dear grandmother Nietzsche was remarkable for her great mental vivacity, cleverness and really delightful kindliness of heart. Her first husband, a relative of August von Kozebue, was a man called Kriiger, a lawyer to the Court at Weimar, but he lived for only a few years after their marriage. Even in these early days she passed through troubled and warlike times, for owing to the battle of Jena and its consequences, “ Weimar was called upon to suffer many vicissitudes. Her only little boy died, and her husband, who was already infirm, fell so seriously ill as a result of the events of October, 1806, that he was never able to rally, and died in 1807. After his death she went to live with her favourite brother, Dr. Krause, who subsequently became General Superintendent, and in 1809 she married again, to become, as I have already stated, the wife of our grandfather Nietzsche. In addition to her seven stepchildren, she also had three children of her own. All the brothers and sisters, whether by the first or second marriage, in spite of the great difference of age which separated
them, lived on unusually affectionate terms. When our father was born the eldest step -brother was twenty-nine. The modest comfort which reigned in the Nietzsche family was founded on a legacy from another half-brother of our father’s, who had amassed a handsome fortune in England ; he had died a bachelor, and had left all his money to his relatives. The whole of our father’s family, whom I learnt to know only when they were far advanced in years, were remarkable for their great powers of self-control, their lively interest in intellectual matters, and their strong sense of family unity, which manifested itself alike in their splendid readiness to help one another, and in the cordial relations which subsisted between them. My brother often refers to his Polish descent, and in later years he instituted researches with a view to establishing it, which met with some success. I know nothing definite concerning these investigations, as a large number of my brother’s documents were lost after his breakdown in health in Turin. The family tradition was that a certain minor Polish nobleman named Nicki (pronounced Nietzky) had obtained the special favour of Augustus the Strong, King of Poland, and had received the title of Count from him. When, however, Stanislaus Leszcynski, the Pole, was made King, our supposed ancestor became involved in a conspiracy in favour of Saxony and the Protestants. He was sentenced to death; but taking flight with his wife, who had just given birth to a son, he wandered about with her for two or three years as a fugitive through the small States of Germany, during which time our great-grandmother nursed and suckled her little boy herself. So the legend runs, and our great-grandfather Nietzsche, who at the age of ninety could still ride a horse at a gallop, is said to have ascribed his hardiness to these circumstances. Unfortunately the dates do not seem to tally quite accurately ; in any case, nothing definite can be said, as the first certain date which is known about our great-great -grandfather Nietzsche and his family belongs to the year 1709. From his childhood onwards my brother always attached a certain importance to this somewhat mythical Polish descent. He writes in the year 1883 : ” I have been taught to trace my descent and name to a noble Polish family called Nietzky, who, yielding to insufferable religious oppression, gave up their homes and their title over a hundred years ago ; for they were Protestants. I will not deny that as a boy I was rather proud of my Polish descent. Whatever German blood I have in my veins comes solely from my mother’s family, the Oehlers, and from my paternal grandmother’s family, the Krauses, but it seems to me that in all essentials I have remained a Pole, notwithstanding. The fact that my appearance has always been characteristic of the Polish type, has often enough been brought home to me. Outside my own country, in Switzerland and in Italy, for instance, I have often been accosted as a Pole. In Sorrento, where I spent my winters, the people used to call me il Polacco, whilst during a summer holiday, in Marienbad especially, I was often reminded of my Polish nature in a striking manner. Poles would come up to me and, mistaking me for one of their acquaintances, would greet me in Polish ; and one, to whom I said I was no Pole, and to whom I introduced myself as a Swiss, looked at me sadly for some time, and then said : ‘ It is still the old race, but the heart has vanished, God knows whither.’ A small album of mazurkas which I composed as a boy bore the inscription, ‘ In memory of our ancient forebears ! ‘ and I reflected them in many a judgment and in many a prejudice.” Occasionally our aged aunts would speak of the enthusiasm of our great-grandfather Nietzsche whom they had known, and whose handsome appearance and noble dignity in his hoary old age they could not praise too highly. Our ancestors both on the Nietzsche and the Oehler side were very long lived. Of the four pairs of great-grandparents, the greatgrandfather above mentioned reached the age of ninety, five great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers died between seventy-five and eighty-six, and two only failed to reach old age. The two grandfathers attained their seventieth year, the maternal grandmother died at eighty-two, and grandmother Nietzsche at seventy-seven. Our father was the youngest child, and as such the favourite of his parents and of his nine elder brothers and sisters. From his earliest youth he must have been an unusually lovable and gifted boy. He was educated first at the seminary at Rossleben, and afterwards became a student at Halle. The teachers at Rossleben and the professors at Halle all unite in praising his gifts, his industry, his exemplary love of order, and his indefatigable devotion to duty. He had an extraordinary talent for music, and small tickets belonging to the Rossleben days are still in existence, which he used for inviting his friends on Sundays, between the hours of church and the midday meal, to a concert at which he was the sole performer. Later his excellent impromptu playing on the piano created a great impression, while compositions from his pen are also said to have existed, albeit I was unable to find any trace of these among our mother’s papers after her death. He was sound to the core, and a great votary of physical exercise, such as skating and long walks. A relative who was with him at Rossleben recalled, even in his eighty -third year, the great walking tours they used to take together. After passing his examinations with distinction he was engaged for a short time as a tutor at Captain Baumbach’s in Altenburg, and subsequently held a similar post at the Ducal Court there. His three pupils were Princess Theresa (who died unmarried), Princess Elizabeth (Grand Duchess of Oldenburg), and Princess Alexandra (Grand Duchess Constantine of Russia). Between the tutor and his august pupils there subsisted for many years afterwards an extremely friendly relationship which does honour to both parties. In 1841, at the special instance of Friedrich Wilhelm IV., he received the living of Rocken. Our father had had a personal interview with this pious and kindly monarch, and this meeting seems to have aroused the warmest feelings on both sides, for surprisingly soon after this event he received his living “ by Royal Command,” and great things were hoped for him that is to say, people expected him to be summoned to Berlin to fill the post of Court Chaplain. A friend of his youth describes his appearance at that time as follows : ” He was tall and slender, with a noble and poetic personality and a peculiar talent for music ; he was endowed with delicate feeling, was full of reverence for his family, and possessed the most distinguished manners.” He had beautiful large dark-brown eyes, but was unfortunately very short-sighted. In the spring of 1843 our father made the acquaintance of our mother, who had then only just reached her seventeenth year, and who but a twelvemonth before had still been playing in secret with her dolls. As she had three sisters older than herself and came between five brothers, in whose games she still occasionally joined, it was only quite recently that she had been regarded as grown up. In later years her brothers always chaffed her about the wonderful way in which she used to toboggan. Not very far from the parsonage there must have been an ideal toboggan run, and near the end of it there was a dip over which our mother must have steered her toboggan with particular daring and sureness, for none of the younger members of the family would mount the toboggan unless she steered. During this spring our father visited our grandparents in the company of an elderly colleague, the
godfather of the girl who was to be our mother and who was called Fransziska. It chanced that on this occasion Fransziska, now grown into a charming young woman, came in with a pot of pinks to ask her godfather what she should do to make them bloom as nicely as his plants. The sight of this dark young beauty so greatly delighted our father, that, with the help of the old godfather, he afterwards managed to see her frequently, and finally became engaged to her in July, 1843 to the intense dismay of many a pretty girl among the various estates and parsonages of the district, who believed they had found their “ ideal” in the noble young parson of Eocken. Our mother Fransziska, who was called Franzchen, was both beautiful and healthy and full of a charming roguishness. The daughter of a parson, she was one of a very large family. Her parents, our dear grandparents, Pastor Oehler and his wife, were typically healthy people, and strength, robustness, lively dispositions, and a cheerful outlook on life were among the qualities which were the delight of all who knew them. Our grandfather was a parson at Pohles, a small village two hours’ journey from Weissenfels. He was a bright, clever man, a typical example of the old school of comfortable country parson, who thought it no sin to go hunting (with a groom carrying his guns behind him), or to play a friendly little game of skat. He loved music and poetry but was no adept in them himself, and many a musical performance of such compositions as Haydn’s Creation was given in the parsonage of Pobles by friends and members of the family to the joy of all concerned. One evening a week was devoted to the children, when they recited poems ; and theatricals were often arranged chiefly by the children themselves, who were so numerous that there was never any dearth of actors. Moreover, our grandfather’s house was nearly always full of guests, for he was very fond of company. He was scarcely ever ill, and would not have died even when he did, in his seventieth year, from a severe cold, had he not been so incredibly imprudent in regard to his health. As to our grandmother Oehler, who died in her eighty-second year, all that can be said is, that if all German women were possessed of the health she enjoyed, our nation would excel all others in vitality. She bore our grandfather eleven children, and not only gave each of them the breast for nearly the whole of the first year, but also lost not a single one of them, and reared them all to maturity. It is said that the sight of these eleven children of very different ages (the eldest was nineteen when the youngest was born), with their powerful build, rosy cheeks, beaming eyes and wealth of curly locks excited the admiration of every visitor. In spite of their magnificent health, the life of this family, of course, was not all sunshine. Every one of the eleven children was exceedingly spirited, wilful and headstrong, and it was therefore no simple matter to manage them. Moreover, though they always showed the utmost respect and most implicit obedience to their parents even as middle-aged men and women misunderstandings between them were of constant occurrence. Our Oehler grandparents were fairly well to do, for our grandmother hailed from a very old family who had been large landowners in the neighbourhood of Zeitz for centuries, and her father, Counsellor Hahn, owned the baronial estate of Wehlits and was the tenant of magnificent crown land near Zeitz. When she married, her father gave her a carriage and horses, a coachman, a cook, and kitchen-maid as part of her dowry, which for the wife of a German parson was then, and is still, something quite exceptional. The eldest grandchildren also received a charming pony-chaise, with a pony to draw it, and this vehicle was often used by the great-great-grandchildren, my brother and myself, though we harnessed it to a goat. Unfortunately, as a result of the Avars of 1806 15, and of his exceptional good nature and readiness to help others, our great-grandfather lost most of his property. The families of Nietzsche and Oehler, though so different from each other, proved, as we now see, most felicitous complements. Meanwhile, however, our grandfather Oehler was not free from care. It is true that much was done for the education of the children, and there was always a good scholar in the house to act as tutor. Music was studied, and at table it was the rule that French should be spoken. But the education was planned principally with a view to the requirements of the sons, rather than the daughters, and the latter learnt only as much as it was possible for them to pick up in addition to those feminine accomplishments, such as sewing, embroidery, etc., which were their special domain. Our mother, it is true, had learnt Latin with the boys, but in other departments of knowledge her education was certainly very deficient, and thanks to her continual association with her brothers she must have assimilated much of their habits and manners. It was now her lot to enter a very cultured and, as far as formalities were concerned, an exceedingly punctilious family. When on one occasion her mother-in-law Nietzsche unexpectedly paid her a visit, she burst violently into the room and embraced the caller so vigorously that she almost knocked her down. Her father Oehler watched the scene thoughtfully and then said to my grandmother Nietzsche : ” Our Franzchen is still a bit of a tomboy, and allow me to tell you as a grower of trees that you are taking a wild shoot into your family, from which you must rear a noble tree.” Our grandmother Oehler listened to this remark with some disapproval, to which she gave expression, but grandmother Nietzsche exclaimed cheerfully and affectionately, ” Franzchen is a gorgeous savage, and her vigour and roughness are perfectly delightful.” On the 10th October, 1843, on my father’s thirtieth birthday, our parents were married. When the young couple had passed through all the triumphal arches, amid the greetings of the chief members of the parish, the teachers and the school children, and had at last reached the steps of the parsonage, our father’s eldest step-sister a very stately and noble figure stood above them in the decorated doorway, and stretching out her arms, called to the seventeen-year-old bride in solemn tones, ” Welcome to the loyal hearts of your sisters ! ” CHAPTER II EARLIEST CHILDHOOD OUR parents’ eldest son, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, was born at Rocken on the 15th October, 1844, at ten o’clock in the morning, to the sound of the peals of bells rung by the parish in honour of the birthday of our reigning monarch King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. of Prussia. Our father’s intense joy that his first son should be born precisely on his beloved sovereign’s birthday will readily be understood. At the christening ceremony after the baptism he said : ” Thou blessed month of October, for many years the most decisive events of my life have occurred within thy thirty-one days, but my experience this day is the greatest and the most glorious of them all, the christening of my little child ! blissful moment ! exquisite festival ! unspeakably holy duty ! In the name of the Lord I bless thee ! From the bottom of my heart do I utter these words : Bring me, then, this my beloved child, that I may consecrate him unto the Lord ! My BOH, Friedrich Wilhelm, thus shalt thou be named on earth, in honour of my royal benefactor on whose birthday thou wast born.” From his earliest days my brother was always a very healthy child. He gave little trouble either to his mother or his nurse, and though he did not learn to speak until he was two and a half, he did so then comparatively correctly. He was exceedingly strong, and, as a child, very hot tempered a characteristic which he did not like to hear mentioned in later
years, because, in accordance with the family tradition of the Nietzsches, he soon learnt to control himself. When he was older, if ever he did anything awkward, or broke something, for which he had to he scolded, he would grow very red, say nothing, and withdraw silently into solitude. After a while he would reappear with modest dignity, and would either beg for forgiveness, if he had convinced himself of his fault, or else say nothing. My brother declared that his appearance throughout his childhood was that of a typical peasant boy, plump, brown and rosy. The thick fair hair which fell picturesquely over his shoulders had the effect of somewhat modifying his robust appearance. But for his wonderfully beautiful, large and expressive eyes, however, and his extraordinarily decorous manner, neither his teachers nor his relatives would have recognised in him the highly gifted and remarkable child he really was, for he was both modest and reserved. He describes his first youthful impressions in a small book written in the year 1858, when he was not yet fourteen years of age, entitled “ Leaves from my Life,” and in which he relates his experiences up to that time : ” The village of Rocken lies half an hour’s journey from Liitzen, close on the main road. Every traveller who passes along this road must cast a kindly glance at it, for it is so prettily tucked away amidst the trees and ponds that surround it. The first object to catch the eye is the moss-clad church steeple. I have a distinct recollection of how on one occasion, when I was walking with my dear father from Liitzen to Rocken, when we were about halfway home the bells began to ring out merrily in celebration of Eastertide. The sound of these bells often recurs to my mind, and then sad thoughts carry me back to the dear old parsonage. How vividly can I still see the neighbouring churchyard ! How often, when the old mortuary chapel was opened, did I not ask what the biers and the black crape and the inscriptions on the tombstones and monuments meant ! But when every other image has vanished from my soul I shall never forget the old parsonage itself, for it is engraved on my memory in mighty letters. The actual house was built in the year 1820, and was therefore very comfortably arranged. A flight of steps led up to the ground floor. I can still remember the study on the first storey and the rows of books, where many an illustrated volume made this place a favourite resort of mine. Behind the house there stretched the orchard and the lawn, a part of which was generally under water in the spring, which meant that the cellar was also flooded. In front of the house there was a courtyard with a barn and a stable, and this led to the flower garden, in the bowers or on the seats of which I was almost always to be found. Behind the green hedge lay the ponds, surrounded by willow trees. To saunter between these ponds, to gaze at the rays of the sun playing upon their surface, and to watch the sportive little fishes darting hither and thither was my greatest joy. There is one other thing which I must mention, which always filled me with a secret shudder. On one side of the gloomy vestry there stood a colossal stone figure of St. George carved by a skilful hand. The mighty form, the terrible weapons, and the dim, mysterious light all combined to make me regard the saint with a certain awe. Once, so the legend went, his eyes gleamed in such a terrible manner that all who saw him were filled with horror.” The parsonage of Kocken, with all its inmates, still remains in the minds of those who knew it one of the happiest of memories ; it was called the ” ideal parsonage.” As a matter of fact, it was not only ideal, it was a really happy home, which, thanks to our father’s magnificent piano-playing, his rich intellectual gifts, and his delightful cheerfulness, was always radiant with joy. Our grandmother Nietzsche formed one of the household during the greater part of the year, and was held in universal respect in the place, while one of my father’s sisters undertook the housekeeping, and with the help of excellent servants fulfilled the task in a really exemplary way. Our mother, who, by-the-bye, soon adapted herself to the ways of the Nietzsche family, had plenty of spare time, and our father was accordingly often able to take her away and show her the world. The dear soul remembered with joy until the end of her life a certain tour they took in Saxon Switzerland, ending up with a sojourn of several weeks in Dresden, with all its art collections and incomparable operatic and theatrical performances. In later life her brothers still referred to the interesting account their sister had given of this visit, although in other respects they were very much distressed at the change which had taken place in their Franzchen, as she showed little interest in their harmless though, perhaps, somewhat coarse jokes, and had grown so “ intolerably refined and cultured.” The fact that our mother found it an easy matter to adapt herself to her new surroundings she herself afterwards stoutly contested. Her rebellious spirit was more particularly aroused by the admonitions of her sister-in-law, our aunt Rosalie, of whom we, as children, were all very fond. In our father’s presence, however, little of all this was allowed to appear, for he was an extraordinarily sensitive man, or, as was said of him at the time, he took everything so much to heart. Any sign of discord either in the parish or in his own family was so painful to him that he would withdraw to his study and refuse to eat or drink, or speak with anybody. If any trifling dispute chanced to occur in his presence between the sister-in-law in question and our fiery young mother, he would lean back in his chair, close his eyes, and become absorbed in very different thoughts, so that he might hear and see nothing of the quarrel. The revolution of 1848 was an unspeakable sorrow to him; when he read in the paper that his beloved King, Friedrich Wilhelm, had driven round Berlin with a cockade in his hat l he burst into passionate tears, left the room, and could only return to his family after having spent several hours alone ; and no one was allowed to mention the event to him again. His three little children were a source of great joy to him. I was born in July, 1846, and our little brother Joseph in February, 1848. Our father used to spend much of his time with us, but more especially with his eldest son, Fritz, whom he called his “ little friend,” and whom he allowed to be with him even when he was busy, as he knew how to sit still and would thoughtfully watch his father at work. Even when Fritz was only a year old he was so delighted by his father’s music that whenever he cried for no apparent reason our father was begged to play the piano to him. Then the child would sit upright in his little carriage, as still as a mouse, and would not take his eyes off the musician. At the end of August, 1848, a terrible misfortune overtook us. Our father was accompanying a friend home one evening, and on his return to the parsonage our little clog, which he did not see owing to his short-sightedness, ran between his legs just as he reached the door. He stumbled and fell backwards down a flight of seven stone steps on to the paving stones of the courtyard, and as a result of his fall was laid up with concussion of the brain. At first it was taken for granted that after a week’s rest in bed no evil consequences would remain j after a few weeks, however, he began to get ill. In the meantime a fire had occurred in Eocken, in the extinguishing of which he played such an extremely prominent part that
his subsequent illness was always falsely ascribed by his parishioners to the fact that he had injured his health at that time by standing for a night and a day knee-deep in the water of a pond in order to conduct the operations. The trouble began with a loss of appetite and severe headaches, which he had never had in his life before. Neither his sisters nor his parents had ever suffered in this way, for the delicate organ in the Nietzsche family was the stomach. When in spite of the doctors and the homoeopathic treatment in which the Nietzsche family firmly believed, the headaches continued to return, the famous physician Professor Oppolzer, of Leipzig, was summoned. He realised at once that the trouble was cerebral and not gastric, as the family maintained. At first Professor Oppolzer gave us good ground for hope, as neither the patient’s intellect nor his consciousness were affected, and the doctor believed that the injured spot in the brain would heal, ” and leave a cicatrice there,” as he told us. And as a matter of fact there were periods of improvement that is to say, days on which my father suffered no pain, and was able to write his sermons and take the confirmation classes. In the spring of 1849 he began to give Fritz a few lessons, as the boy showed exceptional interest in books, reading and writing. In June, 1849, however, my father’s trouble became steadily worse, and, in his heart of hearts, he was convinced that his end was at hand. He certainly did not fear death, but the thought of leaving behind him without protection the young wife he loved so dearly and her three children, filled him with anguish. He made his will, appointed a certain relative, named Dachsel, who was afterwards a Counsellor of Justice, the guardian of his children, and begged his mother, our beloved grandmother Nietzsche, in the most touching terms, to take his dear Franzchen and his children under her care. His last words were, ” Mother, remember Franzchen.” He died on the 30th July, 1849, eleven months after his terrible fall, and was deeply mourned, not only by his family and his nearest friends, but, above all, by his parishioners, who during his illness had not been able to do enough to show the love and reverence they felt for him. One of the favourite friends of his youth wrote to me in 1895 : ” In Rocken, by his warm sympathy and his inspiring sermons, he won the hearts of his parishioners, and set them a shining example in his personal and family life. His early death after a long period of suffering was the cause of profound and universal grief. The sight of the whole parish in mourning on the occasion of his burial still remains vividly imprinted on my memory.” But the most reverent words that have ever been said in memory of our dear father were uttered by his son Friedrich in Ecce Homo, nearly forty years after his death : ” I regard it as a great privilege to have had such a father ; it even seems to me that this is all I can claim in the matter of privileges, life, the great yea to life, excepted. What I owe to him above all is this, that I do not need any special intention but merely a little patience in order involuntarily to enter a world of higher and more delicate things. There I am at home, there alone does my inmost passion become free.” We remained in the dear old parsonage eight months after our father’s death. Meanwhile another fatal calamity befell our poor mother. Her lovely youngest child, our little brother Joseph, fell ill a few days after his second birthday owing to his cutting several teeth all at once. He died suddenly, as the doctor explained, from teething convulsions. A dream which my brother Fritz had and which he relates in the little biography above mentioned, was very remarkable : ” On this occasion I dreamt I heard the sound of the church organ playing a requiem. When I looked to see what the cause of it was, a grave suddenly opened and my father in his shroud arose out of it. He hurried into the church and in a moment or two reappeared with a small child in his arms. The grave opened, he stepped into it and the gravestone fell once more over the opening. The sound of the organ immediately ceased and I awoke. In the morning I related the dream to my dear mother ; very shortly afterwards little Joseph became unwell, fell into convulsions, and died in a few hours. Our sorrow was indescribable. My dream had been completely fulfilled.” Our little brother’s tiny coffin was laid beside my father’s in the family vault. The death of this small brother so soon after the great misfortune that had robbed us of our father, filled us with such overwhelming sorrow that the parsonage, once so happy, seemed to be enveloped ever more deeply in sorrow and gloom. Towards the beginning of April we left Kocken ; the day of our departure and our journey made an ineffaceable impression upon Fritz. He got up in the night, dressed himself, and went into the courtyard where the heavily laden carriage stood waiting with its shining red lamps. The wind set up a sorrowful dirge, the faithful dog howled in heartrending and gruesome tones, and the moon, pallid and cold, shot her rays over the low roofs of the neighbouring buildings into the great courtyard with its ghostly lights and all its mournful echoes. In Zarathustra these early impressions and the memory of this melancholy night recur : ” Thus did I speak and ever more softly, for I was afraid of mine own thoughts, and the thoughts behind them. Then suddenly did I hear a dog howl near me. ” Had I ever heard a dog howl thus ? My thoughts ran back. Yea ! When I was a child, in my most distant childhood. ” Then did I hear a dog howl thus. And I saw it also with hair bristling, and head uplifted, trembling in the silent midnight when even dogs believe in ghosts. ” Thus did it excite my pity. For just then did the full moon sail silent as death over the house, and stand, as it were, a glowing globe at rest on the flat roof, as if on someone’s property ” In the grey hours of the morning, our eyes full of burning tears, we left our native home of Eocken, which remained all our lives “ the dear abode of our loved ones.” For us the peaceful graveyard with the graves of our father and our little brother was the ” grave-island, the silent isle,” whither we bore our evergreen wreath of happy and sorrowful memories. Our family vault in Eocken lies sheer against the ancient church, which is one of the oldest in the province of Saxony. The wall, overgrown with roses and wild vine, forms the end wall of the burial ground. A few paces away stands the old school-house where little Fritz, when he was only five years old, used to be taught after his father’s death. On one occasion, when my brother and myself as man and woman were in Eocken, the little village children, their wooden shoes ringing on the hard road, happened to be going to afternoon school, and it was with deep emotion that my brother contemplated the small fair heads, for he himself had once sat among them. True, they were now the children of another generation, who were hurrying so eagerly to school, but they were to sit on the same uncomfortable old benches which had been in existence in my brother’s earliest childhood.
My brother touchingly expresses his feelings about the repeated visits he made to the old home as follows : ” The sight of the surroundings of our childhood deeply stirs us ; the summer house, the church with the graves, the pond and the wood these things we can never see save with the eyes of sufferers. Pity for ourselves overcomes us ; for, since then, what have we not endured ? And here, everything still stands so calm and unchanged.” CHAPTER III TOWN AND SCHOOL LIFE IN the spring of 1850 we went to Naumburg, which was to be our new home. Our grandmother Nietzsche, in her youth, had paid a long visit to her favourite brother, Dr. Krause (afterwards General Superintendent) in Kaumburg, when he was a preacher at the Cathedral there. In those days she had made friendships which had survived in spite of the long interval of separation. It was for this reason that our grandmother chose Naumburg as her home, and our mother, who was very fond of her, readily followed ; for she said, in the words of Ruth to Naomi, ” Whither thou goest I will go.” Old Frau Lepsius, a friend of my grandmother Nietzsche’s youth, used often afterwards to give me a most moving description of the affecting impression we made upon everyone at that time. Our grandmother, our two aunts, our dear mother, then a beautiful young widow of twenty-four, my brother and I were all in the deepest mourning and looked out upon the world with eyes so unusually large and melancholy, that everyone felt a splendid man must have departed from us for him to be so deeply and so genuinely mourned by his family. Some time elapsed before our mother, my brother and I grew accustomed to the restricted town life. In those days Naumburg on the Saale was not ‘j the pleasant city encircled by streets of villas that it is now ; it was surrounded by fortifications, and from ten o’clock at night to five o’clock in the morning five heavy gates closed it in on all sides from the outer world. It was only by dint of loud ringing, and the gift of a small dole, that the gatekeeper could be induced, often after a prolonged wait, to allow those standing outside to enter, so that anyone who spent his evenings outside the city in the vineyards on the hills, or in the country houses, would hasten his footsteps when he heard the little bell ring from the tower of the Town Hall giving warning a few minutes beforehand of the closing of the gates. All round the town there was a deep moat, bounded on the other side by a fine avenue of elms, which in its turn was surrounded by gardens, fields, and vine clad hills. Naumburg of those days remains in my memory as a thoroughly Christian, Conservative city, loyal to the King and a pillar of the Throne and of the Church ; at least this is strictly true of those circles with which, thanks to our grandmother’s useful friendships, we came into touch. Just listen to the enthusiastic account my brother gives of the presence of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. within the city walls : ” Our dear King honoured Naumburg (1854) with a visit. Great preparations were made for the occasion. All the school children were decked with black-and-white favours and stood in the market place from eleven o’clock in the morning awaiting the arrival of the Father of his People. Gradually the sky became overcast, rain poured down upon us all the King would not come ! Twelve o’clock; struck the King did not come. Many of the children began to feel hungry. A fresh downpour occurred, all the streets were covered with mud ; one o’clock struck the impatience grew intense. Suddenly, about two o’clock, the bells began to ring and the sky smiled through its tears upon the joyously swaying crowd. Then we heard the rattle of the carriage; a boisterous cheer burst through the city ; we waved our caps in exultation and roared at the tops of our voices. A fresh breeze set flying the myriad flags which hung from the roofs, all the bells of the town rang out, and the vast crowd shouted, raved, and literally pushed the carriage in the direction of the cathedral. In the recesses of the sacred edifice a bevy of little girls in white dresses with garlands of flowers on their heads were arranged in the form of a pyramid. Here the King alighted and casting a glance at the little girls declared that ” he felt like Prokop.” He praised the preparations, and then betook himself to the apartments that had been prepared for him at the Deanery. In the evening the whole city was illuminated, and immense crowds thronged the streets. The pyramids of wreaths on the Town Hall and the Cathedral, were lighted from top to bottom with tiny lamps; thousands of fairy lights decorated the houses, and in the square before the Cathedral there was a display of fireworks which from time to time lit up the dark pile with a lurid light.” If my brother seems to speak of this royal visit with unusual enthusiasm it must not be forgotten that he considered he had a special right to do so. As already pointed out, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. had been particularly kind to our father, and Fritz had received that monarch’s Christian names, chiefly because he had been born on his birthday. This was always a source of pleasure to my brother ; for, on account of it, his birthday, during the whole of his childhood, was a school holiday and was always set apart as a special festival in our house in honour of our King and our beloved Fritz. The circle in which we moved in Naumburg was not ecclesiastical but associated rather with the Justices of the High Court, who at that time reigned over the social life of the city. The friends of our grandmother’s youth were connected either directly or indirectly with this circle, and a certain Frau Finder was one of the leading spirits among them. She was a highly intelligent and lovable woman, who was closely attached to my grandmother, and they were, therefore, very anxious that their respective grandchildren should be friends, a wish which was realised ever more and more fully as time went on. Frau Finder had two grandchildren of the same age as our Fritz Wilhelm Pinder and Gustav Krug. The deep impression their new friend made upon them is described by the eldest of these two young people in the biography which he wrote at the same time as my brother composed his, in his fourteenth year: ” Here I must first refer to one of the most important events of my life. I chanced one day in my grandmother’s garden to make the acquaintance of a boy who thenceforth became the best and the most faithful friend of my life, and will certainly remain so. This boy, whose name is Friedrich Nietzsche, has since had an exceedingly good influence on my whole life and upon every one of my occupations and opinions.” Very shortly after our arrival at Naumburg, Fritz was sent to school there. Our grandmother had very peculiar convictions on this matter, which to my surprise only seem to be becoming general at the present day, and are regarded as quite modern. Her idea was that up to the age of eight or ten all children, even of very different social positions, should be taught together ; the children who came from the higher classes would thus acquire a better understanding of the attitude of mind peculiar to the lower orders. In accordance with this theory with which oui’ guardian, the Counsellor of Justice Dachsel also agreed, my brother, when he was not quite six years of age, was sent to the local Municipal Boys’ School.
But theories when carried into practice do not always yield the desired result, more particularly when applied to original natures. Even in these early days Fritz was very different from the average boy of his own age, with the consequence that in the Municipal School, where the tone, though quite tolerable, was somewhat coarser and rowdier than elsewhere, he found himself quite isolated. The serious, thoughtful child, with the dignified and courtly manners, was such an unfamiliar figure to the other boys, that neither side made any overtures of friendship, and the nearest approach that occurred took the shape of an interchange of chaff. Be this as it may, even if the pupils of the Municipal School did tease him a little, it was always in a very friendly spirit, entirely free from malice. For they would take home amazing stories of young Nietzsche; describing how “ he could recite Bible texts and hymns with such feeling that he almost made one cry.” They always called him ” the little Minister,” and there certainly was a dash of the parson in his manner of expressing himself throughout the whole of his childhood, as is proved by the biography which he wrote at that time. A little incident which occurred at this period and which was a standing joke among us for long afterwards ought to be mentioned here. The Municipal School for Boys was situated at that time in the Topfmarkt, not very far from our house. One day, just as school was over, there was a heavy downpour of rain, and we looked out along the Priestergasse for our Fritz. All the boys were running like mad to their homes at last little Fritz also appeared, walking slowly along, with his cap covering his slate and his little handkerchief spread over the whole. Mamma waved and called out to him when he was some way off : ” Bun, child, run ! ” The sheets of rain prevented us from catching his reply. When our mother remonstrated with him for coming home soaked to the skin, he replied seriously : ” But, Mamma, in the rules of the school it is written : on leaving school, boys are forbidden to jump and run about in the street, but must walk quietly and decorously to their homes.” Fritz had obeyed this rule under the most adverse circumstances. My brother stayed barely a year at the Municipal School, and was then sent to a private educational establishment kept by a young schoolmaster called Weber, whose institution was preparatory for the Cathedral Grammar School. Fritz remained there with his two young friends Wilhelm Finder and Gustav Krug till the year 1854, when he entered the abovementioned Grammar School and was placed in the Second Form, a fact which he describes with great pomp and circumstance in his childish biography. ” I became a Grammar School Boy ! ! We were taken before the Headmaster, Fortsch, a kind and good man, and had to undergo a short examination, after which we were placed in the Second Form. 0! how my heart sank within me when I crossed the threshold of the school door for the first time, for we had pictured everything to ourselves very much worse than it actually was ; the pleasant surprise, however, had a good effect. Our form master’s one ambition seemed to be to add to our knowledge, and he was certainly an exceedingly well-read man. He did not, however, possess the gift of making things clear to his pupils ; though I ought to add that as soon as I became a pupil in the Second Form, I developed the usual pride a boy in that position always feels.” I remember perfectly well the high opinion my brother now had of himself, for from that time forward he always laid stress upon his being much older than I was and used to call me ” a little girl,” although there was only two years’ difference between us. I ought to point out that Fritz was a big and strong child, while I was small and delicate a ‘fact which would account for his always having been taken for much the elder. From the time he became a Second Form boy he would no longer allow the servant to fetch him from friends’ houses at night. If we were both invited, and our good Minna in the natural course of events came to fetch me, Fritz would leave us womenfolk and always walk five paces ahead, and pretend not to belong to us. On the other hand he was always very kind to me when, during the summer, the days being longer, I was allowed to go home alone under his protection, as it was still light. He guarded me from every accident and all such “ monsters” as horses and dogs, of which I was very frightened in those days. When we were a little older, he, my mother and myself, and sometimes a few friends, used to take long excursions into the beautiful country round Naumburg, of which he was always particularly fond, especially during the golden months of autumn. In after life, it is true, he did not speak very kindly of Naumburg, as its narrowness and provinciality oppressed him. But as long as he lived he never forgot one feature of the good old town, which had from the first made a favourable impression upon him, and this was the deep tone of the old bells in the parish church, which had been consecrated to St. Wenceslaus, in the days when Naumburg was a Catholic city. Long afterwards he declared that he had never heard such beautiful bells anywhere else. The ringing of the midnight bell in Zarathustra, the bell ” which has seen more than any man, which counted the painful heartbeats of our fathers,” and speaks with its ceaseless clang of the happiness of the old days, always sounded in his ears with the deep rumbling boom of the dear old parish church bells of Naumburg. CHAPTER IV HOME AND EDUCATION OUR family party consisted of our grandmother Nietzsche, her two daughters, Aunt Augusta and Aunt Rosalie, our mother and us two children. At the head stood our beloved grandmother, Frau Erdmuthe Nietzsche, who was really an ideal woman, or, as we children thought, an ideal grandmother. She had a beautiful pale face out of which shone forth lovely dark eyes, full of intelligence and kindliness. In the fashion of the day a little cap, trimmed with thick frills of lace, fitted tightly round her face and only two solitary locks of silky coal-black hair were allowed to slip out over her temples from beneath the lace. Grandma, as we called her, did not have a single white hair till the day of her death. Her sweet, kindly and dignified spirit, her tender and profound sympathy for the pain and suffering of others, made her the object of everyone’s love and reverence. As she scarcely ever went out, she used to have an extraordinary number of visitors to the house, whom she was always glad to see. Our grandmother’s greatest joy was to please others. She could never give enough, and I know that she often had to be forcibly restrained from delighting us with a share of the beautiful choice fruits which used to be sent for her special consumption. Nevertheless, she frequently gave us some on the sly. On these occasions, however, Fritz could never be induced to accept the delicacies : “ No, dear Grandma,” he would say firmly, ” we must not take these things away from you.” It was sometimes possible, however, to effect a compromise : the fruit was divided and we all enjoyed it very much.
Aunt Augusta was the image of our grandmother in character and in kindness of heart. For years she suffered from exceedingly painful gastric troubles, which she bore, however, with great sweetness and patience ; and in spite of her affliction, she did not cease from conducting the affairs of the household in a truly admirable manner. ” Leave me this one solace,” she would say, when she was entreated to spare herself. Aunt Rosalie, on the other hand, devoted herself to ” the affairs of the spirit ” as we used to call them in fun ; that is to say, she was most assiduous in helping Christian benevolent institutions, and showed an active and lively interest in everything connected with the Church. She was well versed in Christian dogma, but interested herself in science and politics into the bargain. She read a good deal and regularly perused the papers, a custom which was not common among women in those days. My brother and I were the objects of the general interest of the household, especially as regards our education, between the years 1850 and 1856. We were, however, principally left to the care of our dear mother, who brought us up with the same Spartan severity and simplicity which was not only customary at that time, but which had always obtained in the bosom of her family. In the background of it all, however, stood the figure of our grandfather Oehler, who, despite his good nature, was a very astute observer of men and things, and also, as I realised later in life, an exceedingly sceptical critic of la comedie humaine, more particularly when it assumed pathetic airs. Every kind of cant ” Getue,” as he called it was odious to him. He saw things as they really were, although his mind was tinged with a certain benevolence a quality which was afterwards displayed by our mother. My brother, therefore, might be said to have inherited his poetical vein from his father, and his sense of reality and a certain scepticism regarding human affairs from his maternal ancestors. He felt this himself, and if he did not express it in words it was merely lest our dear mother should misunderstand him. Our grandfather Oehler was the first to recognise the extraordinary gifts of his eldest grandchild. A certain conversation which was obviously not meant for my ears has remained indelibly stamped on my memory. Our mother was complaining to her father that her Fritz was so very different from other boys and had such difficulty in making friends. Otherwise, she said, he was good and obedient ; but in everything he had his own opinions, which did not always coincide with those of other people. Both of my elders had forgotten that I was in a far corner of the room playing with my dolls, and my grandfather replied somewhat hotly as follows: ” My dear child, you don’t know what you possess in this boy of yours ! He is the most extraordinary and the most talented child that I have ever seen in my life. All my six sons together have not the gifts of your Fritz. Leave him to his own devices!” In accordance with her father’s counsel our mother let the child develop in his own way. At all events, my brother certainly acknowledged in later years that nobody ever tried to coerce him by a peremptory “ Thou shalt,” and that a healthy development from within was accordingly made possible for him. If, however, no ” Thou shalt ” ever influenced my brother, the nature of the environment in which he lived must have done so. The comfort, the kindly consideration which was shown to everybody, the love of inward and outward cleanliness and order, the respect for old age all these qualities were so much in evidence in our household that even those that were not innate in my brother himself, must have exercised a profound influence over the formation of his character and tastes. In addition to this, there was the environment provided by his friends Wilhelm Pinder and Gustav Krug, whose fathers were both distinguished men, possessed of intellectual and artistic aspirations, which, as my brother himself describes, made a great impression upon him. I refer here more particularly to Herr Finder, the judge, under whose paternal eye his young son Wilhelm and Fritz used to do their homework, and who would often enter in an affectionate and sympathetic way into their wishes and aims. My brother writes of this man with much reverence as follows : ” He is very intellectual and does more through his active love than many a parson. He is, moreover, always busy devising some improvement for Naumburg and is accordingly recognised and respected everywhere. In his own home he was ever a faithful father, while he performed the duties of his official post in an exemplary and conscientious way. In his leisure moments he always endeavoured to introduce his family and himself to the creations of the most brilliant intellects in literature and art, and the profound comments which his extraordinary insight suggested were the means of drawing many a beauty from their works into a truer light.” I well remember how Herr Finder in order to accustom the youthful ears of his children as early as possible to the melodious sounds of the best language, would read selections from Goethe to his family even when the boys and girls were still very young. And Fritz was often allowed to form one of the audience. I have a vivid recollection of the Lowennovelle, which was a particular delight to us children. Thirty years later my brother gratefully acknowledged the fact that it was the father of his friend Wilhelm who had first introduced him to Goethe. It is true that our grandmother Nietzsche was a great admirer of Goethe, for she had spent her youth in Weimar ; yet in her opinion his works were not fit for little boys. Although he himself was not aware of it, Herr Krug, the Privy Councillor, the father of the other friend, also exercised a considerable influence over my brother, more particularly in the domain of music. Fritz describes him in his early biography as follows : ” He is a great connoisseur of music, and a virtuoso, and has even composed some excellent pieces, among others a few sonatas and quartets which have won prizes. His tall imposing figure, his serious intellectual features and his conspicuous ability all these qualities made a profound impression upon me. He had a wonderful grand-piano, which had so great an attraction for me, that I would often stand still outside his house to catch the stately melodies of some work by Beethoven. He was a great friend of Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, and also of the brothers Muller, the famous violinists, whom I once had the good fortune to hear. An exceedingly select circle of music lovers used often to assemble at his house, and almost every great musician who wished to appear before the Naumburg public tried to be introduced by him.” At all events my brother had the chance of hearing good music at his house when he was very young, and thus from early youth his taste was above the average. The environment in which we lived must have had a strong influence over my brother, more particularly owing to the profoundly religious spirit which pervaded it. Although my grandmother Nietzsche had grown up at a period of dry rationalism full of simple ideas about God, virtue and immortality, and consequently felt ill at ease during the orthodox revival
of the fifties, when people were beginning to be ” born again ” and to denounce themselves in public as desperate sinners, her whole life and spirit was permeated by a delicate and touching piety. She entirely agreed with our grandfather Oehler, that everyone should decide his own attitude towards God, and that every interference with such delicate questions, as well as the advocacy of any particular dogma, should be ruthlessly discountenanced. It was for this reason that throughout our childhood Christianity and religion never seemed to us to contain any element of constraint, but we had examples of both constantly before us in the most sublime manifestations of natural submission. And thus many years afterwards my brother was able to write : “ At twelve years of age I saw God in His glory.” And later still, some weeks before his final breakdown, he wrote : ” If I wage war against Christianity, I feel justified in doing so, because in that quarter I have met with no fatal experiences or difficulties the most earnest Christians have always been kindly disposed to me.” As may be gathered from his own notes and the opinions of his friends, my brother was a very pious child ; he pondered deeply over religious questions and always endeavoured to convert his thoughts into deeds. Once when we went to a missionary meeting, and the foreign missionary made a special appeal to the children present, my brother and I at once wondered what we could do. Naturally our first thought was to read as much as possible about missionary work and get plenty of information on the subject, after which he thought it would be a good thing to send the heathen children something for Christmas. A Sister belonging to the Community at Herrnhut was ready to receive presents for the heathen, whether children or grown-ups, and we accordingly chose out something suitable from among our toys. Fritz thought a picture book and a box of soldiers would do, and I a doll, and the first pair of stockings I had knitted myself (they were as stiff as cardboard, as such first attempts always are). The Sister lived close by and we were allowed to call upon her by ourselves. When we had presented her with our parcel, I suddenly felt desire to see and kiss my doll once more before it went to the black little heathens. This desire led Sister Jenny to suppose that we had brought our most treasured toys, and, moved by the thought, she proceeded to make us a touching little speech, saying how gratified and pleased the Lord would be, that with a cheerful heart we had voluntarily sacrificed the things we most prized and loved ; this was often difficult, but it was precisely the sacrifice which cost a great effort that was most pleasing to the Lord. He did not want half measures, etc. We both blushed, for, young as we were, we were well versed in our religion, and all the accounts of sacrifices in the Old and New Testaments, that of Isaac and of Ananias and Sapphira, were familiar to us, and the thought of them lay heavy on our hearts. Alas, we had not by any means sacrificed our most treasured toys ! Full of the profoundest shame, we went our way and in one of the dark corners of the staircase Fritz said to me in dismay : ” Lizzie, I wish I had given my box of cavalry.” These were his finest and favourite soldiers. But I had still enough of the serpent and of Eve in me to answer with some hesitation : ” Ought God really to demand the very best of our toys from us, Fritz ? ” (The idea of sending my best loved dolls to black and probably exceedingly savage cannibals seemed utterly impossible to me.) But Fritz whispered in reply : ” Yes, indeed, Lizzie.” We clasped each other’s hands tightly, drew closer together and walked along the street, both of us in the bottom of our hearts expecting the lightning to come from heaven to punish us sinners, and smite us down for the half measures of which we had been guilty. The relations which existed between our grandfather Oehler and his grandson Fritz were exceedingly friendly, and it is possible that our grandfather had not nearly as much in common with any one of his own sons as with his eldest grandchild. I remember in particular some lovely walks we had in the summer of 1858, when he had the most interesting conversations with the boy. I was allowed to accompany them on these occasions. But as I had a little lamb which was passionately devoted to me and would not stir from my side, it was obliged to come also and the two of us followed modestly behind. From time to time our grandfather would turn round and smile at the little escort, and Fritz showed kind attentions not only to me but also to the fourth member of the party. When a stretch of grass seemed to offer a good mouthful of food Fritz would say : ” Grandpa, may not Lizzie’s lamb graze a little here ? ” Then all three of us would halt, for the lamb would only feed when it was quite sure I was standing by. The country about Pobles is very flat, and when the corn was young one could see across vast distances to the horizon. From that time onwards one of my brother’s favourite pastimes was to wander over the meadows between the cornfields. We were always delighted to pay a visit to our grandparents at Pobles. The parsonage stood on a hill at some distance from the village and was surrounded by large gardens and orchards in which grew the finest of fruit. It seems to me as I look back upon it now that every kind of berry, cherry, plum, apple, pear and medlar in short everything that children love must have grown there in abundance. It was bliss to us to spend the Easter and Whitsuntide holidays there ; all the meadows were full of flowers, the garden full of strawberries, the air laden with the fragrance of spring a rare combination of the scent of freshly tilled soil with that of honeysuckle, elder and lime-blossom. Flocks of sheep followed by the sweetest of lambs browsed over stretches of meadow land. The shepherds blew real shawms made of soft bark, and all the village children piped on little flutes cut out of elder wood. The bleating of the lambs, the sound of the shawms, the piping and laughter of the children, all these things blended in one harmonious voice the joyous cry of the spring ! Then the summer holidays would come round, and profound silence would lie like a cowl over the whole village for everybody and everything that could work was busy in the harvest field. We two spent most of our time either in the gardens or woods, and only passed rainy days indoors. To lie in the shade of a tree listening to the warbling of the birds and the chirping of the grasshoppers, with a beautiful book to read, and by our side a basket of fruit this was our dream of summer bliss, and we enjoyed it in all its changing aspects when we stayed with our beloved grandparents. We also made many other journeys and holiday visits. We stayed some time, for instance, in the Voigtland with our good old aunts, and also in a parsonage on the Bohemian frontier. In later years Fritz always recalled an incident that had happened there in his childhood. The hill upon which the church stood had once been the site of an old sacrificial altar. We found some stones and bones, built an altar, laid the bones and some wood upon it, and set the whole alight. When the peculiar smell attracted the worthy parson to the scene, he
found us solemnly parading round the altar, bearing burning torches of pinewood and muttering a sort of mysterious hymn : ” ! Odin hear us ! ” in the most sepulchral tones. He was not altogether pleased, and put a stop to the impromptu sacrificial ceremony. We also spent a summer with relations on a large country estate, where Fritz learnt to ride and drive ; and on another occasion we went to the country house of some Leipzig relatives who spent the summer in the neighbourhood of that city. From here Fritz made several expeditions to the bookshops of the city of Leipzig, which interested him immensely. Thus every summer provided us with new experiences and new joys. But we were happiest with our dear grandparents in Pobles, where it was so delightful, for instance, to be able to wear old clothes which did not matter and which we could make as dirty as we liked. We revelled in freedom and independence and even ran a little wild, although this was not really characteristic of us, for we Nietzsches were bred to good manners and liked them. Our grandmother Oehler at the head of her household was a model of forethought, dignity and economy. As I have already said, she was one of those women who, having sprung from a family that had spent two hundred years upon their own land, had the country in her bones. She used curious primitive German expressions, and there was much in her speech which recurs again in Zarathustra. How often have I not heard her say : ” One thing is more needful than another ! ” In the presence of her own children she was rather reserved, but she showed the greatest tenderness to us grandchildren and tried in an unostentatious way to fulfil our every wish, and would even conjure our beloved mother to do the same. Whereupon the latter once replied rather shortly : ” Did you act like that with your eleven children ? ” to which our grandmother answered just as tartly : ” Ah, but you were not half so wellbehaved ! ” Our dear mother in later years was often highly amused at the thought of the lenience our grandparents had shown to their grandchildren after having brought up their own offspring with such severity. Truth compels me to admit that we were extraordinarily good children, perfect little models. As our grandfather once said to our mother in terms of the highest praise, we not only obeyed a word but even a look. I should be glad if I were able to describe any mad pranks or misbehaviour of any sort. But I can remember nothing. In fact, once when we were at Pobles, a brother of my mother’s wanted us to break a window or do something equally naughty so that we might get a thorough good scolding for once. For we were too good for him. However this may have been, nobody could have called us little machines quite the contrary ! From morning to night our minds were full of our own queer plans and ideas ; but in carrying them out we always chose ways and means of which our mother and relatives could not disapprove. Our lively imaginations transfigured all that crossed our path, even the quaint old songs and verses which must have been in vogue about the end of the eighteenth century when grandmamma Nietzsche was still young and which were found good enough for us sixty years later. But an even greater joy to us were the tales grandmamma would tell us of her own life. We loved best to hear about Napoleon, for whom she, as a daughter of Saxony, always retained a certain affection. So vivid were her descriptions of him that we always thought she must have been present at the scenes she depicted, such as Napoleon’s meeting with the Duchess Louise of Weimar, or of his being roused from his sleep by the camp fire, tired out after his defeat at Leipzig, by the peals of bells which announced the triumph of his adversaries. In one of my brother’s poems, ” Fifty Years Ago,” we can find again in a transfigured form these tales which our grandmother Nietzsche used to tell us. All unwittingly our admiration for Napoleon’s greatness was instilled into us from our earliest childhood, a fact which fills me with surprise to this day, for at that time the children in school were always taught to regard him as the Beast of the Apocalypse. Our mother also had a share in making the figure of Napoleon, even when he was a captive, sympathetic to us. She knew an extraordinarily pathetic play called ” Napoleon in St. Helena,” which she had once acted with her brothers and sisters at Pobles, and which she could repeat almost entirely by heart, particularly one moving scene in which she had taken part and which opens with a long soliloquy by Napoleon. I can still remember one passage from it : ” All the thrones of Europe tottered, had I cast them down mine own throne would be standing to this day.” Here a little daughter of one of Napoleon’s marshals came in and said : ” Oh, mighty Emperor ! Give me a lamb to play with, I pray thee,” and Napoleon turning gloomily towards his scanty retinue replied : “ I cannot even grant the wish of a child.” Our dear mother knew numberless interesting poems by heart, and she would often delight us in the twilight hours by her recitations. But as she did not know who the authors of these poems were, it was impossible for me to trace them afterwards, with the exception of Gellert’s Fables. Thus the poetical instruction we received from our family when we were children was of a somewhat old-fashioned kind, and in music we were not much better off. We danced, for instance, with enthusiasm to slow waltzes or gavottes, which must certainly have been in use as lullabies as early as the Great Revolution. We delighted in singing a comic duet which may very well have pleased the hearts of German provincials in the year 17 90. In this a sage old Hodge and a foolish little Phoebe have a harmless discussion about a broken pitcher. The comical point of the whole thing was that when the questions and answers had been satisfactorily concluded, the final reply of all was so worded as to start the whole controversy afresh, whereupon our old friends, who were grand mamma’s contemporaries, and for whose benefit we used to perform this duet, always displayed a certain mild amusement. As soon, however, as Fritz became a Second Form boy he declared that such performances were beneath his dignity, and announced his intention of composing something himself, which he accordingly did. At Christmas he presented grandmamma with a little motet, which he himself had composed. We two had rehearsed it secretly in the nursery, and performed it as a surprise for our elders on Christmas Eve. The text on which this composition was based, was the Bible verse: “ Lift up your heads, ye gates of the earth; and the King of Glory shall come in.” The words, music and execution of this work moved the whole family to tears. Strange to say, not one member of the Nietzsche family seemed in any way surprised that our ten-year-old Fritz should be able to compose motets and write verses and plays. Of course everyone knew that our grandfather in his earliest youth had indulged in writing poetry and music. So it seemed quite natural for Fritz to take after his father, and grandpapa Oehler was much too shrewd a teacher of the young to make Fritz suspect that his unusual gifts were anything remarkable. Fritz accordingly remained very modest. Moreover, he did not find his school work as easy as might have been expected, and Greek especially gave him a great deal of trouble at first, although it was a source of great joy to him afterwards.
The only female relative who, from her earliest days, saw something unique about Fritz, and who gave expression to her convictions, was myself, his little sister. Everything he asserted was right, whatever the grown-ups might say to the contrary. On one occasion only, when I was barely seven years old and received all my information from a governess, did I fail to accept his opinion. ” Lizzie,” Fritz said to me one day, in a very superior tone of voice, ” don’t talk such rubbish about the stork. Man is a mammal, and brings his young into the world alive.” ” Fritz,” I exclaimed in surprise, ” did you find that in the old ‘ Natural History ‘ ? Herr Bettner says that it is a very old-fashioned book, and that many discoveries have been made since it was written.” As a matter of fact, Fritz’s piece of wisdom had been gleaned from this old-fashioned ” Natural History,” and as he had a great respect for the utterances of his teacher the problem remained unsolved, and there was yet hope that new discoveries might be made which would turn in favour of the stork theory. It is to this old ” Natural History,” by-the-bye, that I am indebted for the nickname ” Llama,” by which my brother used good-naturedly to call me all his life. The old book gave the following account of this creature : ” The llama is a remarkable animal ; it willingly carries the heaviest burdens, but if coerced or treated badly, it refuses to take any nourishment and lies down in the dust to die.” My brother thought that the description fitted me so exactly that, especially in moments of difficulty when he required my help, he always called me by this name. No one else ever used it. From the days of my earliest childhood I always regarded my brother as the highest possible authority, and when, later on, his friends declared that, like the famous pupil of Heraclitus, I looked upon every discussion as concluded and decided by the words (translated by me into ” Fritz says so “ ), they were perfectly right. But the reverence and admiration which I showed for Fritz, and which throughout my childhood and youth brought me a lot of teasing and chaffing for at heart I am not a believer in authority certainly had one excellent practical result in the shape of the Nietzsche archives. This extraordinarily rich collection was made by myself alone. From a very early age I always kept a treasure drawer, where I preserved everything from my brother’s pen that I could lay hands on when it had been discarded by him ; and if from the very first he had not been so fond of burning things and had not occasionally taken away the treasures from my hoard on the sly, not one of his compositions from the time he was eight onwards would now be missing. For when I was only six, though I attached but slight importance to my own things, I had already started this collection of my brother’s productions. His friends, too, had the greatest admiration for his poetical and musical compositions, a matter of some weight with him, for all through his life friendship played an extraordinarily important part. He always saw his friends in the best light, as passages in his childish biography dealing with his companions are still with us to show. He used the most loving and laudatory terms about them ; and it must be confessed that they returned the compliment. I must quote the description which his friend Wilhelm gave of him in the biography which, following my brother’s example, he, too, wrote as a child of fourteen. He gives a striking picture of Fritz in those days : ” Fritz Nietzsche had had many sad experiences in his life ; he had lost his father very early, the father whom he loved, and of whom he always spoke with the greatest reverence. He also lost his little brother Joseph, who died as a tiny child shortly after his father’s death. Consequently the fundamental trait of his character was a certain melancholy, which manifested itself in his whole being. From his earliest childhood he loved solitude in which he could give himself up to his own thoughts. To a certain extent he avoided company, and would search out the spots where Nature displayed her sublimest beauty. He had an exceedingly pious and deep soul, and even as a child thought of many things about which other boys of his age did not bother. It thus happened that his mind developed early. As a little boy he used to amuse himself with all kinds of toys which he had made himself, and all of which bore witness to an extraordinarily inventive and self-reliant mind. He was leader in our games, introduced new methods into them, and thus made them attractive and full of novelty. He was, in fact, in every respect a highly gifted boy. In addition to this, he was capable of a persevering industry which was very creditable to him and by which he once more served as an example to me. Many of my tastes were initiated and encouraged by him, more particularly in the case of music and literature. ” He always exercised the greatest influence over me and even became indispensable to me. From his earliest youth he began preparing himself for the calling which he then wished to adopt that of the Church. He always had a very serious though kindly disposition, and has remained to this day an exceedingly dear and loving friend to me, a fact for which I shall always remember him and which I cannot rate too highly. He never acted without reflection, and all his actions were founded on a definite and sound reason. This was particularly noticeable in those tasks which we did together, and if ever he wrote anything with which I did not immediately agree he was always ready to give a lucid and concise explanation of his meaning. His principal virtues were modesty and gratitude, which he displayed in the most unmistakable manner on every occasion. As a result of this modesty he was rather shy, especially among strangers, with whom he never felt at his ease a quality which I, too, have in common with him.” I ought to add to this description of my brother that his friend Wilhelm was also exceptionally modest and speaks of himself in a perfectly unassuming manner. But what is clearly to be gathered from his description is the influence which my brother exercised over him. This is not the only evidence of it, for a school friend of the time, who is now Professor Pitzker of Nordhausen, tells us in his Memoirs, that the exalted opinion my brother’s school friends had of him amounted almost to worship, ” for his gifts were selfevident, his manner affectionate, and there was something peculiar in his voice and tone, as also in his choice of language, which distinguished him from the other boys of his own age.” It would seem that my brother at this time was not only being educated but was also an educator himself. I can well remember a story told me by a cynical law student, who, when my brother was in the Second or Third Form, was already in the Sixth at the Naumburg Grammar School, and who in virtue of his position had to superintend the “ preparation ” of the smaller boys. He declared that in those days he had often noticed my brother’s large wistful eyes, and wondered what influence he exercised over his schoolfellows. They never dared to utter any coarse word or indecent remark in his presence. Once one of the small boys clapped his hand to his mouth and cried : ” No, I cannot say that before Nietzsche ! ” ” What is it he does to you ? ” inquired the Sixth Form boy. ” Oh ! He looks at one in a way that makes the words stick in one’s throat.” The otherwise very rationalistic law
student continued thoughtfully by saying that Fritz reminded him of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple, and that he felt perfectly certain that sooner or later he would do something great. My brother has so often asserted that he was my educator that I feel it incumbent upon me to refer to it here. He gave me books which he thought I might read, supervised my school work, and took a great interest in the formation of my mind and character. In all this he showed considerable native tact ; and I often laugh when I think of how accurately he found precisely the right thing for a little girl. Once when I was ten years old I had secretly made up my mind to recite Soliman’s soliloquy for an examination. The soliloquy begins: ” Should I spare myself ? Should I look on dumbly until the last spark of strength which lies hid in the old hero’s bones dieth little by little in a life of ease,” etc., etc. My brother burst out laughing when I told him of my intention. Naturally he did not allow me to carry it out, and in later life he often used to say : ” Even as a child my sister had a weakness for the heroic, but often she made it quite ridiculous, as her appearance was not at all in keeping with the part.” I was often asked in later years upon what points my brother laid most stress in the educational programme he mapped out for me as a boy, a task in which instinct was his principal guide. If I remember rightly, his admonitions were chiefly directed towards inculcating self-control upon me and teaching me to endure pain, sorrow and injustice in silence, with a smiling face and cheerful words. Oh ! how often afterwards, in the most difficult moments of my life, did I remember the unchildlike words which my brother had probably culled from one of the old philosophers : ” Lizzie, whoever can master himself can also master others.” He also laid great stress upon truthfulness, though the older I grew the more passionately did I love this virtue ; indeed, so great was my partiality for it that my brother even found it necessary in later years to put some check on my ardour in this respect. I had many a lesson calculated to show me how absolutely truthful one could be without necessarily hurting other people’s feelings, an accomplishment which I sometimes found very difficult. Moreover, truth and falsehood were the only matters in which both of us (I through Fritz’s influence) when in our own company showed a certain consciousness of a pride of caste : we did not lie, because for us, the noble Nietzkys, it was infra dig. Others might lie as much as they chose ; for us two truthfulness was the proper thing. Only now do I begin to wonder how my brother got hold of this peculiar idea, for there was nothing in the whole of our environment to suggest it. I must point out most emphatically that no member of the Nietzsche family attached the slightest importance to the story of our noble ancestry. Grandmamma Nietzsche, who at the time of the Revolution had learnt to acquire a wide and lofty outlook on life in the intellectual circles of Weimar, valued individual capacity only, and if she were possessed of any pride at all it was undoubtedly civic pride, for at that period the middle classes were regarded as the chief representatives of virtue, capacity, uprightness, and spotless lives. It is possible, however, that a family characteristic of the Nietzsches manifested itself in us as a consciousness of caste ; for I remember that one of our aunts once said with calm pride : “ We Nietzsches scorn to lie.” CHAPTER V OUR GAMES AND TASTES WHEN my brother and I were still quite young we created an imaginary world of our own in which tiny china figures of men and animals, lead soldiers, etc., all revolved round one central personality in the shape of a little porcelain squirrel about an inch and a half high whom we called King Squirrel I. I cannot remember how this little animal obtained his kingly dignity ; we may have been led into giving him this rank on account of the red colour of his coat which we regarded as his royal robe. It never once entered our minds that there is nothing regal about a squirrel ; on the contrary, we considered that it had a most majestic presence, and thought the little golden crown I had made for it with gold beads suited it to perfection. This small king gave rise to all sorts of joyous little ceremonies. Everything that my brother made was in honour of King Squirrel ; all his musical productions were to glorify His Majesty ; on his birthday performances took place ; poems were recited and plays acted, all of which were written by my brother. King Squirrel was a patron of art ; he must have a picture gallery. Fritz painted one hung round with Madonna’s, landscapes, etc., etc. A particularly beautiful picture represented a room in an old monastery in which an old-fashioned lamp burnt in a niche and filled the whole apartment with a quaint red glow. The effect was so splendid that a friend of my brother’s offered him a halfpenny for the picture. Grandmamma, however, outbid this young connoisseur and paid a penny for the work of art, which thus remained in the family ; unfortunately, however, it got lost after all. The inspiration for this painting came from an exhibition of pictures sent from Berlin to the provinces, which was visited by crowds of people, as there was little travelling done in those days. There were special reasons for us children to be taken to the show. The artist Gustav Richter had painted a picture called ” The Daughter of Jairus,” and some friend of ours thought that the girl in this picture was like our mother. We were therefore taken to the exhibition to act as impartial judges, but I cannot say now whether our verdict corresponded with the wishes of our family. The pictures which my brother painted in response to this stimulus were all proportionate to the one-and-a-half inch stature of their exalted royal patron, and with the help of some toy bricks Fritz built galleries in a beautiful classic style to hold them. It was from one of these galleries that King Squirrel would witness the parade of the troops. The lead soldiers were quickly and carefully drawn in front of His Majesty on long pieces of wood, and if any of them toppled over, relentless criticism was passed, as the parade was then regarded as a failure. These military games were soon, however, to take a very different turn. My brother himself describes this in the little biography I have already quoted so often : ” about this time (1854) the eyes of all Europe were turned in terror upon the complications between Turkey and Russia. The Russians had suddenly occupied Moldavia and Walachia, the Turkish Principalities on the. Danube, and stood threateningly before the Porte. In order to maintain the balance of power in Europe, the integrity of the Turkish Empire seemed absolutely necessary, and for this reason Austria and Prussia and the Western Powers intervened in her favour. But all the mediation of these four first-class states did not have the desired effect upon the Emperor Nicholas. The war between Russia and
Turkey continued unabated, and at last France and England armed their fleets and their armies and sent them to the assistance of the Porte. The seat of war was the Crimea, and the great armies surrounded Sebastopol, where the Russian host under Menschikoff was quartered. ” This afforded a pleasant diversion for us. We immediately sided with the Russians, and hotly challenged every friend of Turkey to fight.” (I ought to add here that the we and the us in these notes of my brother refer to himself and his friends, Wilhelm and Gustav. In this al fresco fighting I was not allowed to take part, to my bitter disappointment, as it was considered unsuitable for a little girl.) ” As we possessed some lead soldiers we never grew tired of reproducing the various sieges and battles. Earthworks were thrown up and each of us discovered some new means of making them lasting. We each wrote our own little book which was a sort of ‘ Guide to the War.’ We had lead shot cast and increased our armies by fresh purchases. We often used to dig a little pool copied from the map of the harbour of Sebastopol, and also carried out the fortifications marked in it quite accurately, and then filled up the trenches with water. We made a number of pellets out of wax and saltpetre, set them alight, and threw them on to paper boats ; soon bright flames would rise into the air, and, if our game lasted into the evening, it was really a beautiful sight to see the fiery balls whizz through the darkness. At the end the whole fleet, together with the remaining bombs, was set alight, and the flames from this conflagration often used to rise two feet into the air. Thus did I spend many a happy moment, not alone but in the company of my friends and at home with my sister. We also built fortifications with our toy bricks, and with practice I learnt all sorts of tricks of construction.” As a matter of fact my brother took a passionate interest in this science of war, and I naturally followed suit. The Crimean War absorbed our whole attention, and in our play we invented all kinds of wonderful divinations by which we hoped to discover the result of the hostilities, and every day we used to look out with burning eagerness for the news the paper might bring. In his little biography my brother describes the warm interest he took in the events of the war and its ultimate result as follows : ” Everything that we could discover about the science of war in those days was simply taken possession of, so that I acquired quite a respectable knowledge of these things. Not only lexicons, but perfectly new books on military science used to enrich our collection, and my friends and I were anxious to compile a dictionary of military terms, and had already made great plans to do so, when, suddenly, one day, Gustav, with a very pale face came and told me in a voice full of emotion, that Sebastopol had fallen. As soon as every doubt on the subject had been removed, we gave vent to our rage in a momentary outburst of passion against the Russians for not having defended the fort of Malakoff more successfully ; we were, in fact, exceedingly angry.” My brother took the fall of Sebastopol very much to heart ; when Gustav brought him the news he was so much upset that he could not eat his lunch, whereupon I felt it incumbent upon me to abstain likewise. We were both genuinely sorry. Fritz poured out his woes in a number of verses, of which unfortunately only the first rough draft has been preserved. If the Russians had left the defence of Sebastopol to our three little strategists, they would certainly have been spared this defeat, or they would at least have made good their losses by a glorious victory. But the Russians submitted to their fate, and we lost interest in the vanquished nation. The oracle was no longer questioned ; the little books on fort construction and other military matters, and the whole paraphernalia of the science of war were either burnt or vanished into the far corners of cupboards, ultimately to be relegated to my treasure drawer. The model of the harbour of Sebastopol was deserted, the strong bastions crumbled away all this belonged to the past ! My brother now turned his attention to wars which were more remotely buried in the past. Homer and all Troy ringing with the clash of arms now acted as an inspiration for all kinds of surprising compositions, and at last he decided to write a play with his friend Wilhelm in which we could all act. This time even the feminine element of the family, including Wilhelm’s two sisters and myself, was graciously allowed to take part in the proceedings. The piece was called ” The Gods on Olympus.” Half of it took place on earth, the other half in the abovementioned home of the gods. Of course, the two dramatists had arranged things in such a way that they themselves and Gustav had the principal parts and all the speeches to recite, while we little goddesses, who ranged from the ages of six to eight, had but little to say. We were, however, quite overcome by the importance of our project and the beauty of our costumes. At last the day arrived for the performance to take place, in the presence of a few intimate friends, at the house of Herr Finder, the Judge. Unfortunately everything did not go off as it should have done. In the first place, just as we were all ready to begin the play, Gustav was missing, and it turned out that he had suddenly imagined he had been slighted and had completely vanished. But in him we lost our principal hero for the scene on earth, and Jupiter for the scene on Olympus. The consternation was general. Herr Finder himself thereupon offered to play the parts, and, as he had rehearsed the play with us, he knew them all by heart. It is true that he was twice as tall as any of us other little actors, but in the part of Jupiter this was not incongruous. The missing Gustav, however, also had the part of a mortal to play, in which he represented a vanquished warrior laid low under the courageous onslaught of my brother, the triumphant hero. It seemed, of course, preposterously absurd for the tall Herr Finder to be irrevocably overthrown by such a small hero. Nevertheless, he adapted himself wonderfully to the part, and died in accordance with all the laws of stagecraft. Lt cannot be said, however, that the audience were either very much moved or even very attentive, especially when Hen Finder, while in the act of dying, suddenly remembered his duties as stage manager, and began to push the screen in front of our improvised stage with his foot, and cried in a weak voice : ” Ladies and gentlemen, the first act is over.” The piece progressed fairly well until the last scene, in which there was a grand assembly of the gods awaiting the arrival of the hero who had been promoted to their ranks. The scene had been well rehearsed, and is said to have looked very well. A friend of ours, who had witnessed the play on this evening, told me afterwards how extremely pretty we miniature goddesses looked in our Greek costumes, with our rosy children’s faces, and our plump little white arms and necks. Juno in a light blue silk dress with gold spangles ; Diana in white, trimmed with silver-embroidered green satin, and I as Minerva in white satin with a shining breastplate and helmet.
We had all learnt our parts very well and did not falter once, except at the juncture when nectar and ambrosia, represented by blancmange and raspberry syrup, were brought upon the scene. The two dramatists had thought it absolutely necessary for something to be eaten during the play, for the hero himself, who had been promoted to the rank of a god, certainly needed something to sustain him. Unfortunately we had forgotten to rehearse the eating scene beforehand none of us ever dreamt it would be necessary ! Eating, we thought, would come naturally, especially when it was something we all liked so much. And, indeed, the eating did go off of its own accord, but to have to speak and act while we were eating seemed impossible, for, like well-behaved children, we were not accustomed to talk while we ate. And thus the whole assembly of the gods gave itself up quite naturally to feasting, and the plates and spoons clattered as the small mouths were filled and filled again. The audience burst into uncontrollable fits of laughter; even Jupiter joined in the general merriment, and only the two dramatists, who felt with some alarm that all was not right, laid down their plates, and with dark frowns and covert signals bade us do likewise. We were so bewildered with, fright that we all forgot our cues, spoke out of turn, put on the wrong emphasis, and, in short, the piece limped lamely to its close. Juno and I, Minerva, took the matter so much to heart, that we sat down on a footstool and cried ; the dramatists stood gloomily in a corner and seemed to be thinking that this was the result of letting girls play with them. Finally, however, we were all consoled by the assurance that in a fortnight the piece would be acted again before our grandmother, who, though she never went out, must certainly see it, so that we would have to act it again from beginning to end without a hitch. The piece, however, was never played a second time, for in the meanwhile we became such passionate little Greeks, that whenever we met, or even when Fritz and I were alone at home, we played Greek games together, we wrestled, threw lances and discs (wooden plates), practised the high jump, and ran races. Now these pastimes were the cause of a dreadful accident, in which Fritz wounded little Gretchen by hurling his lance at her. The point of the weapon went right through her shoe and pierced her foot, and it was a long time before the wound healed. All Greek games were forbidden after this, but I must confess that we children regarded this wound in the heel, precisely in the spot where Achilles was vulnerable, as a most remarkable and mysterious phenomenon, quite classical, as it were ; in our eyes it was a warning from the gods, and we thought it perfectly right and proper that we should suddenly give up our games when it happened. For a long while we also introduced Greek names and allusions into our conversations, even into such good old German games as hide-and-seek, and robbers and policemen ; Graecomania was indeed peculiar to the age, and everything was given a Greek name in those days. I remember once, when my brother was at Weber’s school, two little horses appeared in an extremely primitive circus (which used to delight Naumburg with its presence at Easter and Midsummer) ; they were called Orestes and Pylades, and made a strong appeal to our childish hearts, and with very good reason, too. The circus, which as a matter of fact was only a circle covered with sand, over which a canvas tent was stretched, once gave a children’s performance to which my brother and myself were sent in the care of our maid. All the children, the majority of whom were pupils at Weber’s school, sat round in a circle. The performing horses were really ponies, and the manager of the circus, a homely sort of man, remained in touch with his youthful audience by keeping up a running conversation. Both these ponies delighted us by their extraordinary cleverness ; we were allowed to give them sugar and to encore any particularly favourite trick. At the end the manager of the circus thought he would have a joke : he said that Orestes and Pylades were such extremely clever little ponies that they could see into everyone’s heart, and would now point out the laziest and most cunning as well as the cleverest and most industrious boy present. In an instant Orestes went up to a small boy, whom we all knew to be a notorious little pickle, and pawed the ground before him in a most contemptuous manner, while Pylades stood perfectly still in front of Fritz and bowed most reverently three times. A yell of joy filled the small circus tent; all my brother’s little schoolfellows shouted gleefully: “ That is quite true!” and our maid, the faithful Minna, moved by the greatness of the moment, cried out again and again with sobs : ” He is the best boy in the world.” The close of the performance took the shape of a little ovation in which Fritz and the two small ponies had to play their part. It was extremely painful to my brother to be the object of public attention ; but the tenderness and admiration with which I was filled for Pylades defy description. It naturally never even entered my head that the manager of the circus had probably received his inspiration from Herr Weber himself, and had made the necessary signs to the ponies. Tight-rope dancers, such as Kolter and Weizmann, also paid frequent visits to Naumburg, and one of their performances made a great impression on my brother. A rope was stretched from the tower of the parish church across the market-place, and high up in the air old Weizmann walked with perfect equanimity. Whether it was on this occasion that the famous feat was performed in which the elder Weizmann, coming from the church tower, is met by the other one coming in the opposite direction, and the former kneels down on the rope to allow the latter to jump over him and continue his way ; or whether this was merely described to my brother, I cannot now remember. In any case the profound impression of the picture he saw, either in real life or in his own mind’s eye, must have remained very deeply imprinted on his memory, as we can see from the Prologue to Zarathustra. Thus the year brought us a thousand and one joys in its train ; but as my brother writes in 1856 : ” The Christmas festival was certainly the most beautiful evening of the year. I had been waiting for it for many a long day with real exaltation, but as the time drew nearer and nearer I could scarcely curb my impatience. Minute after minute crawled slowly by and never in the whole year had the days seemed longer. Strange to say, when my yearning surpassed all bounds, I would sit down and write a Christmas greeting, and by this means would succeed in transplanting myself for an instant to the longed for moment, when the door would open and the lighted Christmas tree would shine before our eyes.” From his eleventh year music and books formed the objects of my brother’s most ardent desire, but practical things like sweets were also thankfully received. We always received a quantity of presents, as we were the only children in the whole Nietzsche family ; for the children of our father’s eldest stepbrother had grown up long ago. Thus the sacred evening on which we used to give each other presents not only satisfied all our wishes but also brought many a surprise in its train. To sit on Christmas Day, with our very best clothes on,
before a table holding all these wonderful things and to gloat over them this was an indescribably joyful and festive feeling, and my brother in after years used to declare that life brought nothing to compare with it later on. On Christmas Day there was always a beautiful party at Herr Finder’s house also, to which the Krug family were invited as well, and thus the three young friends, Wilhelm, Fritz and Gustav came together. Any festival that occurred in my brother’s early life had always in some way to be connected with his two friends ; otherwise it lost its glamour. This applied to his artistic tastes, which were also shared by his friends. The particular bond of union between him and Wilhelm Finder was their love of poetry. I have already described how he collaborated with this boy in writing the piece called ” The Gods on Olympus,” but he also produced two other pieces in the same way, one called ” The Orkadal,” and the other ” The Taking of Troy.” The intimate relationship with his friend, to which these poetical productions led, he describes as follows : ” Later on, as our interest in poetry increased, we became quite indispensable to each other, and were never at a loss for subjects of conversation. We used to exchange ideas about poets and prose writers, books we had read, and new publications in the domain of literature; we would think out our life-plans together, give each other verses, and would not rest until we had emptied our hearts to each other.” On the other hand his chief link with his friend Gustav was his passionate love for music and his desire to compose on his own account. When my brother had reached a point at which he was capable not only of enjoying music but of taking an active part in its production, that is to say, in the year 1858, he wrote as follows : ” On Ascension Day (1854) I went to the parish church and heard the stately Hallelujah Chorus from the Messiah ; I felt as if I ought to sing with the music, for it occurred to me that it was the angels’ song of rejoicing to the sound of which Jesus ascends to Heaven. I thereupon formed the earnest resolution to compose something similar. As soon as the service was over, I set to work, and rejoiced in a childlike way over every new chord that I struck. Inasmuch, however, as for years I never ceased from composing, by the mere knowledge thus acquired of the construction of tone I found myself at a great advantage when reading music at sight.” Gustav’s love of music and his discovery of a kindred spirit in Fritz is revealed by the following words in the little biography. ” From his earliest childhood Gustav was attracted to the joys of music. He soon learnt to play the violin, because he spared himself no pains to become proficient in the art. Later on music became such a necessity to him that I believe if he had been snatched away from it he would have been robbed of half his soul as well. How often did we not look through pieces of music together, exchange ideas on them, and try to play one thing or another.” Fritz began to write poetry very early in life : I can recollect that even in the years 1854 to 1855 he used to read me some of his productions in this line which I, as an obedient little sister, was constrained to admire. They were not, however, very beautiful. My brother himself, in the year 1858, criticises his first three periods of poetical composition in the following words : ” In the year 1854 I composed fifty-five poems and among them were the first verses I ever wrote. The subjects I attempted to portray in these early efforts were as a rule scenes from Nature. Every young heart is inspired by magnificent pictures, and always wishes to give them shape if possible in poetical form. Weird seascapes, storms and fires, were the first material from which I drew my inspiration. I had no models before me, nor could I understand very well how one could copy a poet, so I wrote these verses as my spirit moved me. Of course the result was a series of very clumsy poems, and almost every verse contained some roughness of language. But this first period, nevertheless, was much more to my taste than the second … for whereas my first poems were clumsy and ponderous, in those of the second period I tried to express myself in more ornate and striking language. Unfortunately this attempt at gracefulness degenerated into affectation, and the iridescent language into sententious obscurity, while every one of them lacked the chief thing of all ideas. At all events the first period for this reason soars high above the second. All this proves that when one does not stand firmly on one’s legs one wavers between two extremes and can only find rest in the golden mean. ” In the third period of my poetical productions I sought to combine the two first periods that is to say, to unite charm with power. How far I succeeded I cannot say even now. This third period began on the second of February, 1858. My dear mother’s birthday falls on this day, and it was my custom to give her a little collection of my poems. From that time onwards I resolved to devote a little more practice to the writing of poetry, and if possible to produce a poem every evening. I carried this project out for a week or so, and was always overjoyed when I saw a new creation of my brain lying before me. On one occasion, too, I sought to express myself as simply as possible, but I soon gave this up. For any poem which would aspire to being perfect must certainly be as simple as possible, but in that case every word must be instinct with poetic feeling. A poem which is empty of ideas and which is over laden with phrases and metaphors is like a rosy apple in the core of which a maggot lies hid. Stock phrases must as far as possible be eliminated from a poem, for the excessive use of such phrases denotes a mind which is not capable of creating its own sentences. In the writing of any work, one must pay the greatest attention to the ideas themselves. One can forgive any faults of style, but not a fault of thought. The best example of this is provided by Goethe’s poems with all their beautiful, clear and profound thoughts. Youth which lacks original ideas naturally seeks to conceal this void beneath a brilliant and iridescent style ; but does not poetry resemble modern music in this respect ? It is on these lines that the poetry of the future will soon develop. Poets will express themselves in the strangest imagery, confused thoughts will be propounded with obscure but exceedingly high-falutin and euphonious arguments. In short, works after the style of the Second Part of Faust will be written, save that the ideas of this production will be entirely lacking. Dixi.” From this note we may see that he exercised a very severe censorship upon his own work. This habit of holding himself under the microscope he retained till the end of his life. Thus it is clear that even at this time he was not deeply enamoured of modern music. “ Another rather sad aspect of the age is the fact that a large number of our more modern composers strain themselves to write obscurely. But it is precisely the artistic productions which please the ears of connoisseurs most that leave the healthy listener unmoved. I refer more particularly to such music of the future as Liszt and Berlioz write, in which it is sought to make certain passages as weird and as strange as possible.”
Fritz often tried to compose. He himself tells us that he never regretted the quantity of scored paper over which he scribbled, as it taught him a good deal. In his little biography there is a rather pathetic passage about his musical tastes, studies and efforts : ” In the course of my work I began to feel an indomitable hatred for all modern music and everything that was not classical. Mozart and Haydn, Schubert and Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Bach these are the pillars upon which I and German music stand. I also heard several oratorios at this time ; the profoundly moving Requiem was the first of these ; and oh ! how the words Dies irae, dies ilia reached the very marrow of my bones, as also did the heavenly Benedictus ! I often used to attend the rehearsals. As the Mass for the Dead was usually sung on All Souls’ Day, these performances always took place on misty autumn days, and in the dim, religious light of the Cathedral I would sit and listen to the sublime melodies.” Thus the three principal delights of my brother’s life, music, poetry and friendship, already beautified his schooldays. It is really remarkable how much he learned at that time through these three tastes. And -when in later years people could not find words to express their astonishment at the extraordinary range of his knowledge and inner artistic experiences, my invariable reply was that he had begun his training in these matters and had made himself familiar with these most noble of all feelings, in his earliest youth. CHAPTER VI DEPARTURE AND LEAVETAKING GREAT changes now gradually appeared in our household. In the summer of 1855 our dear Aunt Augusta, who had always taken such loving care of us, departed this life a loss which was a great blow to our grandmother Nietzsche. Until that day she had enjoyed very tolerable health, and, even on her seventy-sixth birthday, had felt no evil results from the large influx of visitors who came to congratulate her. But after the death of the daughter she loved so well, she grew weaker and weaker and often spoke of her own death, especially on her seventy-seventh birthday. She could not bear to have us two grandchildren out of her sight, and when in 1856 we wished to go to Pobles as usual for the Easter holidays, for the first time in her life she raised an objection. In the end, however, she insisted on our going, as we had no garden in the town, and she thought a stay in the country would be very good for our health. She awaited our return very anxiously, and was exceedingly upset because our grandparents at Pobles were obliged to keep me, at any rate, with them a little longer to recover from some trifling childish illness. Fritz was very deeply affected by the fact that two days after dear grandmamma was taken ill, her last scarcely audible wish was : ” Do try and bring my little Lizzie to me ” ; and that, although a messenger was immediately sent for us, my grandfather and I arrived too late to see her alive. Fritz and I felt this unfortunate delay very much indeed, and very often in later life he would refer to our inability to fulfil the last wish of the dear departed. The death of our beloved grandmother Nietzsche, who had been so intimately bound up with our whole life, and from whom we had daily received so many marks of love, made an indescribable impression upon Fritz and myself, and we could not console ourselves. “ We often used to sit together in the dark, talking of our beloved grandmother, recalling her wonderful stories and the innumerable tokens of affection she had given us, and would then burst into violent fits of tears. All those who had known the splendid woman, all her relatives, friends and acquaintances, mourned her loss most genuinely; for to everyone she had been a “ beautiful example” of all the womanly virtues, and they honoured her from the bottom of their hearts. Her death brought about great changes in our household and our mode of life. Aunt Rosalie found a home of her own, as our dear mother, now in her thirtieth year, showed a determined wish to be left to her own resources at last, and to dispense with the exceedingly kind and well-meant guardianship of her eldest sister-in-law. To us children it was a great sorrow that Aunt Rosalie should leave the home, as a great affection existed between us. Our mother found a small but charming little apartment in a friend’s house, surrounded by a large old-fashioned and really romantic garden, which forms one of our most delightful memories. Fritz and I lived in it from morning to night, swung in our swing, right up into the very tops of the trees, played the finest games, ate, drank and learnt our lessons beneath the shady branches, and told each other gruesome stories in the shadow of the ancient, oldworld box trees. The owner of the house was a certain Frau Harem, the widow of a clergyman, an excellent woman, possessed of extraordinary strength of character. In spite of being obliged to work hard, she had retained a warm interest in science and philosophy ; she read a good deal and proved in all she did that she had a superior mind and remarkable independence of judgment. In the year 1886 my brother said that she was the only woman he had known in his boyhood who would have been capable of an heroic deed. From the point of view of health the change was certainly beneficial, for we were now able to spend a great deal of our time in the open air, and Fritz had a bright workroom all to himself. Our old nursery in the house we had left had really not been healthy and it was certainly the cause of my brother’s and my own acute short-sightedness, although this was perhaps to some extent hereditary. Meanwhile Fritz had been moved into a higher class and was very busy indeed ; with the winter, however, his work grew heavier still, and he writes : ” At this time I was promoted to the Third Form. Here our form master was a certain Dr. Silber, a man who, as a teacher, I learnt to love very much. His highly intelligent and eloquent discourses, the wealth of information with which he illuminated everything he treated, and which was the outcome of a very thorough mastery of every branch of human knowledge, made him a pleasant contrast to other men of his profession. He also had the gift of chaining the attention of his pupils. It was with him that we had our first lessons in Greek, which, in any case, we found very difficult. Verses also gave me great trouble and difficulty, although I liked writing them very much indeed. Certainly, during our first winter, we had a great deal to do, and I can remember that I often used to work till 11 or 12 o’clock at night and had to rise at five in the morning.” Fritz was a model schoolboy and invariably had the best reports in his class, and yet he was free from all conceit, for he always had his own peculiar, humble explanation of these things. In the spring of 1857 two school inspectors came, one after the other, to Naumburg one to examine the Girls’ School and the other the Boys’. The inspector who went to my brother’s school showed a great interest in Fritz after the examination ; he asked his name several times and finally wrote it down ; Fritz must have given extraordinarily clever
answers to his questions. But, oddly, enough, the inspector of the Girls’ School took a great interest in me and also inquired my name. When our dear mother heard both our stories she was very proud, while Fritz, on the other hand, merely grew thoughtful and meditative. When he and I were alone that afternoon, however, he said to me : ” Isn’t it funny that both of us learn so well and know so many things that other children don’t know ? ” After we had discussed the matter for a little while the secret motive for his question at last became apparent. ” I always wonder,” he said in a low voice, ” whether it is not possible that our dear Papa in Heaven is the cause of it, and whether he does not give us our good thoughts. Only a little while ago Aunt Rosalie gave me a letter to read from our aunts in Plauen, and in it I found this passage : ‘ Clearly their father’s blessing lies on both the children’s heads; it is possible that God in his grace allows our noble Ludwig more influence over his fatherless children than other dead parents usually have.’ ‘ The idea that everything excellent and unusual in his character, which distinguished him from others, was a heritage from the father we had lost so young, remained his conviction throughout his life. The great yea to life, however, he had inherited from our dear, high-spirited mother. Unfortunately, as the result of the tiring winter of 1856 1857, my brother for the first time showed signs of eye trouble, which at the start took the form of headaches. The dark nursery which I have already mentioned had gone far towards emphasising his inherent disposition to short-sightedness, and in spite of the superiority of his present workroom, the excessive industry of this winter resulted in an overstrain of his optic nerves. Our grandmother Oehler, who as a child had lost the sight of one eye, paid particular attention to the eyesight of her grandchild. She discovered that my brother saw less with one eye than with the other, and that his pupils were not always the same size. Professor Schillbach of Jena was consulted and declared that one eye really was weaker than the other and left the other all the work to do. In order to make Fritz understand, he explained it to him in simple words by saying that one eye was industrious and the other lazy. As a result of all this my brother was obliged to prolong his summer holiday by a few weeks in order to recover from the strain to his eyesight. As a matter of fact there was in those days remarkably little general knowledge about the needs of the eye. Even our mother was ignorant on this subject, despite the fact that like her parents she had very sound ideas on hygiene. As a rule she favoured natural cures and homoeopathy. “ We were never given medicine, and when we were ill, from whatever cause, compresses, cold douches and walks were the remedies employed. Our food was also very sensibly arranged ; we ate a great deal of vegetables, fruit, and farinaceous substances, very little meat, and drank no wine or beer a system which was directly opposed to the strengthening methods then in vogue for children. Fortunately, our lessons were considerably lighter during the following autumn and winter, and thus Fritz, with the help of all kinds of open-air sports, was able to recover from the strain of his work. He was a passionate lover of skating : ” There is something positively ethereal in gliding with winged feet over the crystal surface of frozen water, and when, in addition, the moon shoots down her silver rays, evenings on the ice are really like moments in fairyland. Around you there is perfect stillness broken only by the scraping of the ice and the rumbling sound of the skaters. There is something majestic about this which is not to be found on summer nights.” Following our mother’s example, we also did a great deal of tobogganing, more especially at our grandparents’ during the Christmas holidays. But when the summer came round Fritz also found much to delight him : ” Oh how glorious it is to plunge into the tepid water on a summer’s day ; and how keenly I felt this when I learned to swim ! To give oneself up to the stream and float downwards in its soft embrace without any trouble is it possible to imagine anything more delightful ? Moreover, I consider that swimming is not only a glorious pastime, strengthening and refreshing to the body, but that it may also be very useful in moments of danger. It cannot be too highly recommended for boys.” A letter addressed to my Aunt Rosalie still exists which brought him much teasing, as he filled two whole pages of it in expressing his joy in bathing and swimming. My memory seems to tell me that in the beautiful romantic garden, with its peaceful trees, his poet’s instinct and his eagerness to compose received a special stimulus. It is to these years, 1856 to 1858, that my brother’s first really interesting compositions belong compositions which still possess a good deal of charm. Among them, for instance, we find a fantasia for the piano, ” Moonlight on the Pussta,” which he afterwards touched up and which finally found its place in the large edition of my biography of him. I was simply delighted with it, and my pride passed all bounds when one evening I discovered that the night-watchman had halted beneath our windows in order to catch the sweet tones that were proceeding from Fritz and his piano. As a matter of fact, it appeared that this same watchman had told the neighbours that ” Up the street, in the little house, someone played so beautifully that you could not help stopping to listen.” My brother had inherited from his father his gift of impromptu playing, and this talent enabled him all through his life to exercise an extraordinary influence over the people about him. Malvida von Meysenbug mentions this in her “ Memoirs of Capri.” The Emperor and Empress of Brazil, when they were staying incognito in Rosenlaui-Bad in the year 1877, could not tear themselves away from my brother’s impromptu playing ; and even Frau Cosima Wagner still speaks of the wonderful effect of his music. At Easter, 1858, when he was thirteen and a half, Fritz became a Fourth Form boy, but nevertheless he certainly remained very childlike. Even he himself felt this, and the other boys, who upon their promotion suddenly gave themselves the airs of grown-ups, smoked cigars, and carried walking-sticks about with them, seemed ludicrous to him. Yet upon being moved up into a higher class he realised that another period of his life had come to a close, for it was during this summer that, with a kind of premonition that still greater changes were in preparation, he wrote the little biography from which I have quoted so much. During the summer holidays at Pobles, we had already discussed very exhaustively the plan of writing the story of his life. When, therefore, leaving me behind, he returned after the holidays with our mother to Naumburg, he immediately set to work to write this little book. He closed it with the following words : ” Thus have I concluded my first work and I look back upon it with joy. I wrote it with great pleasure and did not grow tired in the process. After one has attained a certain age it is exceedingly delightful to pass one’s earlier years in procession before one’s soul and to study one’s spiritual development in this way. I have told the whole truth without either poetical invention or poetical adornment. The fact that I may occasionally have had to make additions and may still require to do so,
will be forgiven me in a work of this size. Oh ! if only I could write many such books ! ” For our life here below is a mirror, And within it ourselves to perceive As we are, without bias or error, Is the highest thing I can conceive t ” Written between 18th August and 11th September, 1858. A few days after the completion of this first biography our mother was surprised by a letter from the Hector of the Public School at Pforta, in which she was offered a vacancy in this excellent institution for my brother. Pforta is a place which from very early times has fostered and promoted the study of science. It is said to have been founded about the middle of the twelfth century by some Cistercian monks who were driven out of Pleissnerland by heathen Slavs and hospitably received by Bishop Udo of Naumburg. For many centuries they fulfilled their mission of culture, but old methods were bound to make way before new thoughts and aspirations. Thanks to Duke Moritz of Saxony, the monastery with all that belonged to it was assigned to the purposes of secular education in 1543, a time when, owing to the changes and the general state of unrest throughout Germany, on account of the Reformation and the Thirty Years War, the Saxon Princes were particularly eager to re-establish solid centres of culture. ” One must begin with the young,” was a precept of the excellent George Komerstadt, the Duke’s particular counsellor, and Duke Moritz himself laid down in the Act of 16th January, 1840, that ” The boys shall be educated to a godly life, in the learning of languages, discipline, and virtue, and shall be instructed for six years ” ; and in the new Act of 21st May of the same year we find : ” The scholars shall be provided with superintendents, servants, teachers, board, and other needs, free of charge. When they enter the school they shall be kept for six years and taught free of charge, provided that they prove themselves fit for study.” As a matter of fact, the Rector who wrote to my mother seems to have taken the last sentence of this script more particularly to heart in regard to my brother, for my mother owed this offer of a vacancy simply to the fact that relatives of the Rector had spoken to him about the extraordinarily gifted child, Fritz Nietzsche. Moreover, the pressure of candidates for Pforta was not by any means so great in those days as it is now, for much greater demands were then made upon the capacities of the pupils than is the case at present. After some hesitation our dear mother decided to face the terrible parting. The news struck the three friends like a thunderbolt, although my brother had always had a particular admiration for Pforta, to which he often gave expression in poetry. Even as a boy of ten he had written verses about Pforta which were more touching than original, and of which I still remember a few lines: ” There, where through her narrow door, Pforta’s pupils evermore Pass out into life so free, There in Pforta would I be ! ” Now at last things had so turned out that he really was going there, and he was exceedingly delighted, as Pforta had always exercised a singularly romantic charm over him. But the parting from his family and friends was a hard blow. Only a short time before he had written : ” There is something great and noble in having true friends, and our lives have been exceptionally blessed by God, inasmuch as He has given us companions on our road who strive with us after the same goal. I must praise God in Heaven above for all this, for without it I should never have grown used to Naumburg. But as I have been able to make friends here, my stay in the city has been very pleasant, and I should suffer a good deal had I to leave it. For we three have, as a matter of fact, never been separated except during the holidays which I have usually spent with my mother and sister.” From these words some idea can be formed of the gloom which prevailed among the friends at the thought of the forthcoming separation. Only one person was even more hardly hit by this change, and that was I, his little sister. Our mother seems to have guessed what my feelings would be. In the letter containing the great news, which she sent to our grandparents, with whom I was spending the whole summer.’, she begged them to break it gently to me. One morning after the postman had come I noticed that all kinds of whispers and covert glances passed between them, and gathered that something was wrong. At last grandpapa came to me armed with a beautiful new book for me to read (for reading was known to be the one delight of my heart, which made me forget every trouble) and asked me to take a turn in the garden with him the lamb following behind. ” Now Lizzie,” my grandfather began with apparent good cheer, ” think of it, Fritz is going to Pforta, where he has always longed to go so much.” ” To Pforta,” I repeated in a low voice and stopped short in my walk. “ Yes,” said grandpapa, “ think of the pretty little poems he has written about Pforta ! He will certainly be delighted to go there. And of course you will not cry,” he continued, ” even though this may be a great sorrow for you ; for is not what Fritz said a little while ago perfectly true, that it is silly not to be able to overcome one’s grief ? Don’t you remember what Fritz told us about the ancient Spartan women, how they were able with a cheerful smile on their faces to watch their brothers and sons march to deadly combat, and did not even cry if the warriors died or were brought home covered with glory on a shield, but only bewailed their fate if they had fled shamefully before the enemy ? Now you must understand that it is a great honour for Fritz to go to Pforta ; you must bear this in mind and then you won’t want to cry.” ” No, grandpa,” I said in a low voice. ” And here,” continued the dear old diplomatist, ” is a beautiful book for you to read ; go and find one of your favourite haunts and give yourself up to its pages.” I thanked and kissed grandpapa and retreated with the book and the lamb. I believe that grandpapa was thoroughly satisfied with his diplomacy. But, after an hour or two had elapsed and lunch time came round, and no one had heard or seen the slightest sign of me, he grew rather anxious and set out to find me. All my favourite spots, however, the crooked apple tree whose branches formed such a delightful natural seat, the grassy bank under the elder bush, all were empty and deserted. Suddenly he heard the bleating of the lamb in the distance, and went in the direction of the sound. In the remotest corner of the large garden where, beyond the hedge, the ground fell away in a sharp declivity, there was a gloomy, barren spot which was supposed to be haunted. Giant elms grew there and made a mournful moan in the wind, and numberless crows built their nests in the branches, while their hoarse cawing combined with the solitude of the gloomy secluded spot produced a very uncanny impression. Here grandpapa found me lying on the ground, with my face buried in the grass, and crying fit to break my heart. Alas, I was no Spartan, at least
not when I thought no one was looking. Fritz was going to Pforta, we should no longer be able to play together, all our games would cease, our happy hours of conversation were at an end, we should no longer be able to exchange views on the books we had read, and there would be no more fairy tales or music it was awful ! I, the poor Llama, felt myself exceedingly badly used by fate ; I refused to take any food, and laid myself down in the dust to die. ” Come, Lizzie,” said my grandpapa softly, ” stand up ! ” He dried my tears, took me by the hand and walked silently to the house the lamb followed, bleating mournfully. ” Grandpa, you won’t tell anybody,” I cried imploringly. ” No, of course not,” he replied almost solemnly ; and I don’t believe he did. But he was certainly rather frightened by the passionate sorrow which sought to conceal itself. He took me into the sacred precincts of his study and laid me on the sofa. Despite my misery, I felt that it was a great honour to be laid on grand papa’s sofa, although the room smelt so strongly of tobacco that it almost took my breath away. Later on I was put to bed and declared to be ill. When grandpapa came in the evening to say good-night to me he took both my bands in his and said suddenly, ” Just think of it, Lizzie, we shall have to kill your little lamb.” “ Oh no, grandpapa ! ” I cried, so horrified that I was awakened from my apathy. ” Yes, indeed,” he replied, “ the little lamb has not eaten anything since the morning, and if you are going to be ill it will certainly die; surely it would be better to kill it.” “ But I won’t be ill, grandpa,” I said eagerly. When it was morning I got up very early and opened the door of my lamb’s little stable ; it romped out so joyfully to me, almost knocking me down with its tender attention, that grandpapa and the others were obliged to shriek with laughter at the queer capers we both cut ; for it seemed to me that life still possessed a few charms even though Fritz was going to Pforta. But perhaps it was not quite true to say that I, the little sister, suffered most under the blow of my brother’s departure. My mother often used to relate how she frequently found our Fritz’s pillow wet in the morning, from tears shed secretly in the night. But during the day he controlled himself, as became a man, and tried to paint his future life in Pforta in as glowing colours as possible. Now let us pause a moment and glance back at his childhood, that childhood which with his departure from the maternal roof had reached its end, and from which the boy, bred and strengthened in character by the influences of the home, now ventured out in a new environment with such self-reliance. This thoroughly healthy boy, who, with the exception of one or two childish ailments, had suffered only from trouble with his eyes, we can see in our mind’s eye, with his red cheeks, his tanned skin, his large brown eyes and long chestnut hair. He was not a beautiful boy in the ordinary sense of the word, but he was attractive on account of his thoughtful glance and expression of intelligence, purity and innocence. He was deeply religious, and a certain earnestness and profound reserve completely isolated him from all that was alien to, or unworthy of, his nature. But for this reason alone his heart was opened all the more freely to such friends as Wilhelm and Gustav, who resembled him, and with whom he revelled in poetry and music and the interchange of philosophic thoughts, In addition to this he pursued his studies at school in the most conscientious way and interested himself in all branches of knowledge. He was a tender, obedient son, reverent toward all his elders, and the best of friends to his little sister. Now he set out, well protected in body and soul, towards the new future, though his heart was heavy, for he was indescribably sad at having to leave us all. But in accordance with his natural reserve he showed no one his deep sorrow, nor did he reveal the hot tears which the parting cost him. Is not this affectionate and good-natured boy, who knew so well how to master himself, with all his varied gifts, his taste for art, science and philosophy, who prized friendship above everything and was the leader of his friends is not this boy the prototype of the future Nietzsche, even though it be but in childish form ? PART II SCHOOLDAYS AND BOYHOOD CHAPTER VII PFORTA AFTER passing an examination, my brother entered Pforta at the beginning of October, 1858, and was placed in the second division of the Lower Fourth Form, thus losing six months seniority in his school career. Owing to the high standard of proficiency which this institution demanded of the boys, it was in the habit of putting pupils from other public schools, even when they were well up in their subjects, a class or division lower than their proper one. As a general rule, it was found more satisfactory for boys to enter young enough to allow them to go right through the school from bottom to top, as by this means they could be certain that the instruction and knowledge acquired were completely in accord with the general plan of study. Fritz writes to our mother on the first day of his life at Pforta ” Up to the present have been perfectly comfortable ; but what is the use of being perfectly comfortable in a strange place?” To this ” strange place,” however, he soon became accustomed, in spite of severe attacks of homesickness; for the romantic situation and the monastic isolation of Pforta exercised a great charm over him. The present Royal School of Pforta, which was formerly a Cistercian abbey, lies in a completely isolated position, in a very charming and fertile valley ; for the old monks always built their monasteries in spots where they found the three “ W’s Wiese, Wolder, Wasser (meadows, woods, and water). The old monastery walls, twelve feet high and two and a half feet thick, surrounded a total area of seventy-three acres. In addition to the farm-houses, the beautiful old church, the school-house with its cloisters, and general accommodation for the instruction, board, lodging, bathing, gymnastics and games, etc., of the pupils, these walls enclosed a beautiful garden of extraordinarily large dimensions, houses for twelve masters and twenty additional pupils, who were called out-boys. These twenty youths were under the special supervision of their respective house-masters, and had the advantages of family life, board, and lodging. The public school of Pforta had no day-boys, and owing to its isolated position it was from the first destined to accommodate only the limited number of 200 pupils. In an essay by the Rector Kirschner, written in celebration of one of the school anniversaries in 1843, the author describes the aims and objects of the institution as follows : ” It is an establishment for the instruction and education of boys, in which a definite number of pupils, within a prescribed and fixed period of six years, are prepared for a career to be
devoted to the higher branches of science or for the calling of scholars. The characteristic which distinguishes Pforta from other schools is that it is a self-contained scholastic State, in which the life of the individual boy is developed on every side. Under the care of guardians, to whom all parental rights are handed over, the boys’ parents entrust them to the Alma Mater, not only for instruction, as in a Municipal School, but also for education ; not only for the development of their minds, but also for the formation of their morals and character ; and thus they here find for the development of every side of their nature even more opportunity than they would get in a second paternal home. The time they spend in the institution covers the most important years of their educational life, from adolescence to the period when they must enter the University. For this reason every Pforta boy, as a rule, leaves the institution with the definite stamp of a certain sound efficiency which lasts him throughout his life. This is not the result of any deliberate aim in the educational programme, but springs necessarily from the virile, severe, and powerful spirit of discipline, from the inspiring community of purpose among the various forms all striving towards one object, from the serious study of classics and other kindred subjects divorced from all association with the distractions of town life, and from the method applied to those studies themselves. This stamp, of which they are rightly proud, is acquired only as the result of an inner struggle and great individual effort. It is a mistake, therefore, to ascribe the great value of Pforta, as many do, mainly to its scientific training. Its pupils become complete men ; they are taught to obey the command and the will of their superiors, and are used to the severe and punctual fulfilment of duty, to self-control, to earnest work, to original personal initiative, as a result of individual choice in their work and their love of it. They are accustomed to thoroughness and method in their studies, to rules in the division of the time at their disposal, and to a certain self-confident tact and fairness in intercourse with their equals. And all these things are the fruits of the discipline and education peculiar to the school” My brother describes the daily life at Pforta in the summer of 1859 in his diary as follows : ” I will now attempt to give a picture of the ordinary life in Pforta. As early as four o’clock in the morning the dormitory doors are thrown open, and from that time onwards any one is free to rise who wishes to do so. But at five o’clock (in winter at six) everybody must be out of the room ; the usual school bell rings, the dormitory prefects shout peremptorily, ‘ Get up, get up ; make haste and turn out ! ‘ and punish all those who do not find it so easy to drag themselves from their beds. Then all the boys scramble into a few light garments as quickly as possible, and hurry to the lavatories to secure a place before they get too crowded. The process of rising and washing occupies the short space of ten minutes, after which they all return to their rooms, where they dress properly. Five minutes to the halfhour the first prayer bell goes, and at the second bell they all have to be in the hall for prayers. Here the prefects keep order until the master comes, stop all talking, and urge the Sixth Form boys, who are generally late, to take their places. In due course the master appears, accompanied by his assistant, and the prefects then report whether their forms have their full numbers complete. The organ begins to play, and after a short overture the morning hymn is sung. The master reads a passage from the New Testament, sometimes a psalm, and recites the Lord’s Prayer ; a final text concludes the ceremony. After this all the boys go to their rooms, where cups of milk with small wheaten rolls await them. Punctually at six o’clock (hi the winter at seven) the bell rings for all the boys to go to their form rooms. Each boy takes his books, goes to his form room, and remains there till seven o’clock. Then comes one hour of preparation, as it is called. Lessons follow until ten, when there is another hour for preparation, and, finally, class until twelve. At the close of each lesson and hour of preparation a bell rings. Punctually at twelve every boy carries his books to his room and hurries back to the cloisters. Here we all fall in, in the order of our tables, so as to form groups of twelve in double files of six, and the prefects call for silence. As soon as the master is in the Refectory the fifteenth table marches first into the room and is followed by the rest. All absentees are noted down. Then one of the prefects recites the following Grace : ‘ Almighty God and Heavenly Father, we pray Thee bless these Thy bounteous gifts, which through Thy grace we now take unto us, in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.’ “ Here the whole assembly sings the old Latin hymn which the monks used to chant when Pforta was a monastery. ” Then everybody sits down and the meal begins. ” The menu for the week is as follows : Monday : Soup, meat, vegetables, fruit. Tuesday : Soup, meat, vegetables, bread-andbutter. Wednesday : Soup, meat, vegetables, fruit. Thursday : Soup, boiled beef, vegetables, grilled kidneys and salad. Friday : Soup, roast pork, vegetables, bread-and-butter ; or soup, dumplings and roast pork, fruit ; or soup, lentils, sausage and bread-and-butter. Saturday : Soup, meat, vegetables, fruit. “ Every boy gets about six ounces of bread at each meal. The meal is closed by Grace. ” Directly after meals the boys hurry into the garden. No boy must be found indoors before half-past one, otherwise he is severely punished by the weekly prefect. First of all we go and see whether a parcel or a letter has not been brought by the messenger who comes every day to Pforta ; or with our pocket-money we buy fruit from a fruit-woman. Then ninepins are played in the garden or walks are taken. In summer we play a great deal at ball. At 1.45 the bell rings for class, and in five minutes every boy must be seated. The lessons now last until ten minutes to four, immediately upon which follow vespers, when small rolls with butter, fruit or plum jam are distributed all round. After this the Head gives a lesson in which Greek, Latin or mathematical tests are written. At five o’clock there is a short recess ; after which preparation lasts till seven o’clock. Supper follows, which usually resembles the midday meal. ” The menu for the week is as follows : Monday and Friday : Soup, bread-and-butter and cheese. Tuesday and Saturday: Soup, potatoes, herring and butter. Wednesday : Soup, sausage, mashed potatoes or pickled cucumber. Thursday: Soup, pancakes, plum sauce, bread-and butter. Sunday : Soup, rice boiled in milk, bread-and-butter ; or, herring, salad, sausage, bread-and-butter ; or, eggs, salad and bread-and-butter. ” After this we all go into the school garden until half -past eight. Then evening prayer is said, and at nine o’clock we go to bed. All the monitors, who owing to the hour of preparation are an hour behind time, remain up until ten o’clock. Such is the daily routine at Pforta as a rule.
” In summer Sunday is spent as follows : We all get up at six, at quarter to seven we have prayers, after which we are all free to go into the school garden until eight o’clock. Then we have an hour’s preparation, which comes to an end at the sound of the church bell. We all get into line in the cloisters and march to church, where the weekly prefect holds an inspection. After this we are free until twelve o’clock to wander about the garden, and we are also at liberty after the midday meal (consisting of soup, fricassee, roast meat, stewed fruit and salad), until prayer time, which begins at half-past one. We then have to work until three o’clock, whereupon we have another hour of freedom in the school garden ; but directly after vespers the walk, to which we have looked forward with such great longing, is taken until six o’clock. Preparation occupies the hour from six to seven, and then the day closes as usual with the evening meal, recreation in the garden and prayers.” On Sundays and general holidays the pupils were also given a certain quantity of wine, which was produced by the school in its own vineyards lying in the Saale Valley. I believe this wine was very sour ; at any rate, it is owing to this Pforta wine, which as a rule is called ” Naumburger,” that my brother had his peculiar aversion from this drink. As a matter of fact Naumburger wine is much better than its reputation. As we see, the pupils at Pforta were excellently cared for both in body and mind. Even at that period much more stress was laid upon physical exercise in the open air than in other educational institutions of the day. Only in one respect did my brother find ground for complaint, and that was on account of the scant attention paid to the pupils’ eyesight. During the day the rooms were not sufficiently lighted for all the boys to see equally well, an evil which was aggravated in the evening by the more or less indifferent petroleum lamps. My brother was sent a second time to Schillbach, of Jena, who gave him a letter addressed to Dr. Zimmermann, the medical officer of the school, in which he said that more attention should be paid to my brother’s eyes. Unfortunately, however, this letter did not have the desired result, but rather the contrary. Dr. Zimmermann took it as an unjustifiable criticism of the hygienic conditions at Pforta, and to some extent a reproach against himself for not having seen that the bad conditions were altered. My brother accordingly lost the goodwill of this otherwise excellent person, and during the whole of his stay at Pforta every one of his indispositions, more particularly when they were connected with his eyes, were falsely diagnosed by Zimmermann. Indeed, things reached such a pitch that one of our aunts, who had known Zimmermann in her youth, had a quarrel with him, and the situation was not improved when my brother, who was otherwise very respectful towards his elders, in a moment of impatience once called Dr. Zimmermann ” an old woman ” a remark which that worthy accidentally overheard. These, however, were mere details, and Dr. Zimmermann was perfectly right when he pointed persistently to my brother’s excellent bodily and mental development, for, as a matter of fact, Fritz’s life in Pforta suited him splendidly. Although my brother, to all outward appearance, soon got used to the regulations at Pforta, he did not do so without great difficulty. For the first few years he missed his friends, Wilhelm and Gustav, of Naumburg, and their places were not filled by anyone else. He also felt the loss of that freedom of communication on every subject, which impelled him to come to me, his little sister, and confide to her, before anyone else heard them, all his secret productions, his poems and dramas. It is true that we used to see each other almost every week on Sundays in a beautifully situated inn at Almrich, half-way between Naumburg and Pforta. But our interviews were always very short, for the boys in the lower school were only free to take a walk of two or three hours. In order that as little as possible of these few hours should be wasted in the journey we met at the above-mentioned place, but even so we had not sufficient time at our disposal to allow of any confidential conversation. Nevertheless all through the week Fritz looked forward to this Sunday meeting, and was very disappointed when it could not take place. But above all he loved the holidays, which he describes in his diary and letters in the most glowing terms, and many weeks before they began he used to buoy up his courage with the thought of them. He suffered a great deal from homesickness, but did not yield to this feeling in a weak spirit, but sought rather to conceal it, an effort which the severe and virile education at Pforta encouraged every boy to make. Nevertheless Professor Buddensieg, his tutor, who was also the chaplain, must have had occasion to comfort the boys on their return from the holidays by one of his warm-hearted addresses. In my brother’s diary of August, 1859, we find the following touching note : ” ‘ Cure for Home Sickness ‘ (according to Professor Buddensieg) : ” 1. If we wish to learn anything valuable, we cannot always remain at home. ” 2. Our dear parents do not wish us to remain at home ; we therefore fulfil our parents’ wishes. ” 8. Our loved ones are in God’s hands. We are continually accompanied by their thoughts. ” 4. If we work diligently our sad thoughts will vanish. ” 5. If all this is of no avail, pray to God Almighty.” Later on my brother always said that the only thing that made his life at Pforta so difficult to bear was the fact that for the whole day, from early in the morning till late in the evening, one always had to think of particular things at particular moments. With the rich, inner life my brother led, which very often had little to do with the studies the school prescribed, it must have been very hard for him not to have a moment for meditation. But Pforta has one excellent rule : every week there is a day of study which according to an old custom is called the ” Sluggards’ Day ” (Ausschlafetag), because upon it the boys are allowed an extra hour in bed. No classes are held, but only so-called ” preparation,” during which the pupils try to polish up all they have learnt in the week and are allowed to devote themselves without restraint to their own pet subjects. Fritz writes enthusiastically : ” Such days are particularly suitable for some great private work.” I believe that without these ” Sluggards’ Days ” Fritz would never have endured the life at Pforta. In any case he found the cut-and-dried arrangement of the life at Pforta somewhat narrowing and oppressive. It was particularly irksome for a boy who did not make friends easily and who met with some difficulty in discovering a comrade who shared his views. Every room in the institution has from twelve to sixteen inmates, and is divided again into three or four tables ; at each of these there is a monitor (a Sixth Form boy), a sub-monitor (or Lower Fifth boy), and two lower school boys (from the Fourth Form). The younger boys are left in charge of the monitor, who supervises their behaviour and their lessons ; and during the hour of preparation already mentioned, which takes place between four and five in the
afternoon, he is responsible for their learning the grammar of the dead languages and has to give them exercises in Latin prose and in the art of Latin verse. In addition to this every pupil has one of the masters of the school as a tutor, to whom he may appeal on any question concerning his mind or body. My brother’s monitors and sub-monitors were always very kind to him, but found him somewhat serious and reserved for his years. At times he would surprise them by the sudden performance of some heroic deed, which he would carry out without any bragging or preliminaries of any soil. I remember that on one occasion he greatly alarmed a boy called Kramer, who was his monitor, and who as a lieutenant was killed in the battle of Sadowa in 1866. The younger boys were talking of Mucius Scsevola, and some rather tender-hearted boy must have remarked that calmly to allow one’s hand to be burnt away was really too dreadful and almost impossible. “ Why?” Fritz demanded quietly ; and taking a bundle of matches held them out in the palm of his hand, set light to them, and without flinching thrust his hand straight out before him. The other boys were struck dumb with amazement and admiration. Suddenly the monitor, seeing what had happened, rushed forward, and with one blow flung the matches out of Fritz’s hand, though not before they had caused some rather severe burns. The story was hushed up, because the monitor felt to a large extent responsible to Fritz’s tutor and to my mother. But he confided the story to me and begged me to try and induce my brother not to go in for such dreadful experiments again. As regards physical exercise, my brother preferred swimming and skating, as I have already pointed out. But he also liked the old-fashioned German game of ball, which we used to play with great zest when we were children at Pobles. He did not care for gymnastics, nor was he ever very good at them. Deussen remarks, quite rightly, that his short-sightedness spoilt this form of exercise for him, but in addition to this his blood rushed very quickly to his head. This was a characteristic he inherited from our thoroughly healthy mother, for if ever the three of us went up to the mountains when the weather was at all hot, we always remarked on each other’s red faces. I cannot remember that my brother was particularly fat in those days as Deussen declares he was. He was certainly strongly built and far from thin, but he was not corpulent, as his photographs are with us to show. I must also point out another error in Deussen’ s description of his friend. The good manners, which he had possessed from his earliest childhood and which struck his schoolmates so forcibly, were not due to his associates in Naumburg. It was simply a characteristic of the Metzsches, as I have explained exhaustively in a former chapter. It was this innate and respectful dignity which prevented his being party to those little classroom revolts, signified by the stamping of feet and the singing of glorias, which took place at Pforta whenever a master had made himself unpopular in any way. The fact that this reserve met with quite a false interpretation and was regarded as a form of currying favour with the masters, I first learnt from the memoirs of Deussen, the Privy Councillor ; but this was very far indeed from being Fritz’s object. Taken all in all, my brother must have been a perfect model of a pupil in those days. His reports were brilliant; he always had the highest marks for industry and good conduct ; and in such subjects as Latin and German he also often came out top. I remember that the only reproach which his tutor had to make against him in those days was that Fritz held himself too much aloof from the other boys. It is true that with the greatest fidelity he still remained loyal to his two friends Gustav and Wilhelm of Naumburg, and that many years passed by before he contracted a hearty friendship with Deussen and later on with young Baron von Gersdorff . The unusual mixture of childishness and profound seriousness which we find in his letters and other writings of this period is extraordinary. For instance, on the 15th August, 1859, when he was full of one of those little class revolts against a certain master, he describes the matter with childish importance, but adds a host of philosophical remarks which seem more suited to an older boy and which, perhaps, are the result of much that he had heard and read. about the use of school time he writes as follows: “ It is a common thing to hear school days spoken of as solemn days ; they are indeed days which may have the most profound influence on one’s whole life, but they are also extremely difficult years for the boys who have to go through them, because their fresh young minds have to squeeze into such narrow limits. But even for those to whom this period is one of great difficulty it is also often very barren. For this reason it is very important that school life should be used to the best advantage. The chief object should be to become equally proficient in all the sciences, arts and other faculties, and that body and mind should go hand in hand. One should guard against specialising in one’s studies. All authors who are read should be studied for more than one reason and not merely for grammar, syntax or style, but also for their historical contents and the particular point of view which they reveal. Indeed, the writings of Greek and Latin poets should be studied side by side with the German classical writers, and their respective points of view compared. In the same way history should only be learnt in conjunction with geography, mathematics with physics and music : then magnificent fruit will grow on the tree of truth, permeated with the same spirit and illuminated by the same sun.” Other remarks, as, for instance, how Schiller embodies earlier poetical attempts in his play ” The Robbers,” or the wishes which my brother expressed on his fifteenth birthday, when he said he would like us to give him Don Quixote, Kleist’s works, Platen’s Biography, or Tristram Shandy (about which he jotted down many an aphorism) all these things are surprising, and, when taken in conjunction with the childish remarks of an exemplary son and pupil, seem rather precocious. But his psychological retrospect of his own development is particularly remarkable. He writes on October 25th, 1859 : ” I am now possessed by an extraordinary desire for knowledge and universal culture : Humboldt has awakened this feeling in me, and I only hope it may remain as constant in me as my predilection for poetry.” He then proceeds to describe himself and his life up to his fifteenth year, and all his various hobbies ; in the first place, his interest in flowers and plants, then in architecture, then in military matters (awakened by the Crimean War), and afterwards his interest in the stage, which was revealed by his production of the play, ” The Gods on Olympus.” Finally he calls attention to his love of poetry, which began in his ninth year, and above all to his passion for music, which in his eleventh year found its origin in his admiration of sacred melodies. He also refers to his love of painting, and then proceeds to say : ” It must not be thought that these tendencies came directly one upon another; they were so interwoven that it is impossible to discover a beginning or an end to them. After this there followed my later love of literature, geology, mythology, and the German language (including Old High
German) of which the following classification may be made : ” 1. Love of Nature : (a) Geology ; (b) Botany ; (c) Astronomy. ” 2. Love of Art : (a) Music ; (b) Poetry ; (c) Painting ; (d) Theatricals. ” 8. Imitative performances and interests : (a) Military matters ; (b) Architecture ; (c) Naval matters. “ 4. My favourite aims in scholarship : (a) A good Latin style ; (b) Mythology ; (c) Literature ; (d) The German language. ” 5. My inward desire for universal culture embraces everything else and includes much that is new : (A) Languages (a) Hebrew ; (b) Greek ; (c) Latin ; (d) German ; (c) English ; (/) French, etc. ” (B) Arts : (a) Mathematics ; (b) Music ; (c) Poetry ; (d) Painting; (e) Modelling; (/) Chemistry; (g) Architecture, etc. ” (C) Imitative pastimes : (a) Military science ; (b) Naval science ; (c) The knowledge of the various trades, etc. ” (D) The Sciences : (a) Geography ; (b) History ; (c) Literature ; (d) Geology ; (e) Natural History ; (/) Antiquity, etc., and above all, Religion, the foundation of all knowledge. ” Great is the domain of knowledge, eternal is the search for Truth ! ” Apart from the somewhat precocious wisdom of these remarks, Fritz was still, in many respects, very boyish, especially, for instance, in his joy over the holidays. The mere planning of these holidays, and the picturing of them beforehand, were a source of enormous pleasure to him, though this was always cast into the shade by the reality. His gladness over the summer holidays becomes almost dithyrambic ; he writes : ” The summer holidays ! These are magic words for every alumnus languishing for freedom, an Eldorado which gives us the courage to sail with good cheer across the great ocean of the school term. What ecstasy when at last the cry, ‘ Land ! Land ! ‘ is heard. With great rejoicings everyone decks his ship of life with wreaths, and the old familiar rooms of the boarding school are hung with garlands which bear the word ‘ Hope ‘ on every leaf. Who could describe the overflowing feelings and the proud consciousness which waft up to the stars ? We utter no sigh or plaint when we tear ourselves from the arms of the Alma Mater ; no, on the contrary, we feel as free and as happy as larks that soar into the blazing firmament and plunge their wings into the surging flood of purple. But is this really freedom ? For five weeks only may we soar through eternal distance over mountain and valley ; but then a peremptory cry calls us back to the gloomy old walls.” Not only the summer holidays, however, but every holiday was eagerly expected and made the opportunity of some excursion or tour. But some of the time was always spent at home, where he was really “ happiest.” The notes he made upon his travels and visits to various places are exceedingly amusing. For instance, a visit paid to a relative in Jena, a Dr. Schenk, who was a senior alderman of that city, gave him occasion to write the most enthusiastic descriptions ; for, not only his dear relatives, but the students as well, were particularly kind to the fourteen year-old boy who was the nephew of their senior alderman. A journey to the Hartz mountains, in the summer of 1861, which he made in connection with a visit to another uncle, is exhaustively and enthusiastically described in one of the diaries of his travels. At Easter, 1862, he was allowed to visit me in Dresden, where I was staying with a charming family (the von Mosch’s) to finish my education. A tender, brotherly letter records a loving retrospect of this meeting, and in it he does not omit to forward my education with a host of paternal admonitions, and to chaff me about the tearful farewell I gave him, and the excess of gushing expressions in my speech. ” I am writing this at my standing desk ; my standing desk is against the window, and the window offers a pleasant prospect over the lime trees and the sun-bathed Saale hills. The delightful natural scenery reminds me very much of Dresden, and the enjoyable days we spent there together. In order to think of you, my dear Lizzie, do not imagine that I first require such a vast jog to my memory as all this ; on the contrary, I think of you so often without provocation, that I keep you almost constantly in my mind even when I am asleep, for I dream fairly often of you and our times together. ” Didn’t everything go off splendidly ? Until I had actually started, I scarcely believed that I should make the journey. But what beautiful days I spent in Dresden, and what nice long talks we often had together. As a matter of fact, you have been away barely seven weeks. Heavens, it seems quite a century to me ! And now my stay in Dresden furnishes a richly coloured and poetical background to my prosaic and humdrum life here. I trust that you were not in any way disappointed that I could not stay longer in Dresden. Heavens, the Michaelmas holidays are scarcely six months ahead, and we shall see each other again then ! Do you regard that as poor comfort ? ” Dresden is much too comfortable ; you will be able to bear the remaining months there perfectly well ! above all try hard to know all the art treasures of that city very well, so that you may derive profit in that direction also ! You must go through the picture galleries at least twice a week, even if you only have time to take in one or two pictures thoroughly enough to be able to give me a detailed account of them (in writing, of course). Very selfish, eh ? ” During the summer holidays of 1862 he again went to the lower Hartz mountains ; in the summer of 1863 he went to the Voigtland and across the frontier into Bohemia, where he made a very pleasant tour, alone, from one watering place to another in that province. The most cheerful descriptions exist of these wanderings, which show what a regular highspirited schoolboy he was, and how little of the dreamer and brooder he revealed at that time. But the most beautiful summer resort of our childhood, the home of our beloved grandparents at Pobles, came to an end in the summer of 1859. On the 2nd August, 1859, we celebrated grandpapa Oehler’s seventieth birthday. Children, stepchildren and grandchildren all came together in great numbers. When, on the following morning, I left my room rather early, Fritz, who was already in the garden, came to meet me, and told me that he had awakened very early because he had had an extraordinary dream. He had seen the whole parsonage of Pobles lying in ruins, and our dear grandmother sitting alone beneath its shattered framework amid the debris. This dream had made him give vent to such, heartbreaking tears and sobs that he had not been able to go to sleep again. Our mother forbade us to mention this dream. Besides, our dear grandfather was so fresh and vigorous that anyone would have given him another twenty years to live. Late in the summer, however, he caught such a violent cold that he fell seriously ill. He who had never had the doctor,
save as a visitor to the house, was now compelled to call in his help. The illness was declared to be influenza, and towards the middle of the winter, the man we all loved so deeply departed this world and left an irreparable breach in our midst. He had worked as the parson of his parish for forty years, and had laid the foundations of the most friendly patriarchal relations between all. Through his death my brother lost a faithful fatherly friend, and a most affectionate adviser. CHAPTER VIII CHANGES AT Easter, 1861, my brother was confirmed at Pforta. In his Memoirs, Privy Councillor Deussen gives the following account of the beginning of the friendship between himself and Fritz : ” A new bond was formed on the Sunday of Mid-Lent, 1861, through our both being confirmed together. When the candidates for confirmation went up to the altar in couples in order to receive the sacrament on their knees, Nietzsche and I, as the closest friends, knelt side by side. I still have a vivid recollection of the holy and transcendental mood which filled us during the weeks before and after confirmation. We were prepared to leave this world at once and find ourselves by the side of Christ, and all our thoughts, feelings and aspirations were bathed in a celestial cheerfulness which, like a forced plant, could not live long, and withered away as quickly as it had sprung up, beneath the impressions of everyday life and learning. Yet a certain faith remained within us until after our leaving examination, although it was really unconsciously stifled by the excellent methods of historical criticism with which the ancients were treated at Pforta, and which in those days was extended quite naturally to the domain of Biblical literature. For instance, Steinhart, the Professor of Hebrew, explained the 45th Psalm to the Sixth Form as an earthly marriage song.” This description given by Deussen of the religious changes which both friends underwent is certainly on the whole correct. In his utterances about Christianity and religion in those days my brother was extremely cautious, especially as he had once roused my mother and Aunt Rosalie (who was an authority on dogma) to a positive storm of indignation when he recommended The Life of Jesus (Strauss) and The History of the Church, by Professor von Haase, as Christmas presents for myself. We should know little of the religious feelings of my brother at this time if a certain note about ” Fate and History,” written in the spring of 1862, when he was not yet eighteen years of age, did not give us a certain insight into his inner experiences. ” If we could examine Christian doctrine and Church History with a perfectly impartial eye, we should be compelled to admit much which would be opposed to generally accepted ideas. But, weighed down as we are from the very first years of our life by the yoke of habit and prejudice, hindered in the natural development of our mind and the formation of our character by the impressions of our childhood, we feel bound to regard it almost as a sin to adopt a more liberal standpoint, and from that position to give an impartial verdict on religion and Christianity, in keeping with the age in which we live. Such a task is not the matter of a few weeks but of a lifetime. For how, armed with the results of mere youthful broodings, could one dare to annihilate the authority of two thousand years and the testimony of the greatest intellects of all ages ? How, by means of fanciful ideas and unripe opinions alone, could one form a correct idea of all the deep consequences and the sorrows and blessings of a religious development in the history of the world ? It is sheer arrogance to try to solve philosophical problems about which there has been a conflict of opinions for two thousand years, or to overthrow beliefs which according to the convictions of the highest intellects are alone capable of elevating the animal man into a true man, or to unite natural science and philosophy without knowing the principal results of either ; or finally, to construct a system of reality out of natural science and history, while the unity of universal history and the fundamental principles thereof have not yet been revealed to the human mind… . ” How often have I not thought that all our philosophy is like the Tower of Babel ; to storm the heavens is the aim of all great aspirations ; the Kingdom of Heaven on earth means practically the same thing. An infinite confusion of ideas among the people is the discomforting result ; great revolutions will occur in the future, when once the great mass of mankind is convinced that the whole fabric of Christianity rests upon assumptions ; the existence of God, immortality, the authority of the Bible, inspiration, and other things will always remain problems. I have attempted to deny everything : Oh ! destruction is easy, but construction ! and even destruction seems a lighter task than it really is. We are so influenced in our innermost being by the impressions of our childhood and the influence of our parents and education, that these deeply imbedded prejudices are not so easily uprooted by means of rational arguments or a mere effort of the will. Force of habit, the need of striving after a lofty goal, the breach with every existing institution, the dissolution of every form of society, the suspicion as to the possibility of having been misled for two thousand years by a mirage, the sense of one’s own arrogance and audacity all these considerations fight a determined battle within us, until at last painful experiences and sad occurrences lead our hearts back to the old beliefs of our childhood.” This explanation, which reveals so much of my brother’s inner feelings about Christianity, we owe to a lecture which he delivered before a little literary society called Germania. Once on a holiday tour with Wilhelm Finder he had hit upon the idea of this literary society, and on their return, in conjunction with Gustav Krug, it was founded with the utmost solemnity on the 25th July, 1860. The friends bought a nine penny bottle of red Naumburg wine and set forth in earnest and dignified procession to the ruin of Schonburg, at an hour’s distance from the city. By means of an extremely rickety ladder they climbed to the highest ledge of the watch tower, from which there was a magnificent view over the picturesque Saale valley, and from this position, far removed from the misty regions of the plain, they discussed their plan for fulfilling their highest aspirations for culture. My brother recalled this experience in later years in his lectures on The Future of our Educational Institutions : “ We resolved to found a kind of small club which would consist of ourselves and a few friends, and the object of which would be to provide us with a stable and binding organisation, directing and adding interest to our creative impulses in art and literature ; or to put it more plainly, each of us would be pledged to present an original piece of work to the club once a month, either a poem, a treatise, an architectural design, or a musical composition, upon which each of the others, in a friendly spirit, would have to pass free and unrestricted criticism. We thus hoped by means of mutual correction to be able both to stimulate and to chasten our creative impulses. And, as a matter of fact, the success of the scheme was such, that we have always felt a sort of respectful attachment both to the hour
and the place at which it first took shape in our minds.” At the end of the ceremony the youths pledged themselves to the bond of friendship and community of ideas, baptised the society “ Germania,” and hurled the empty bottle into the abyss. The Gernania experienced many vicissitudes. At one period, for instance, contributions poured in with the greatest activity and regularity, and the meetings were held in the holidays, but afterwards various other demands took precedence, and the members did not remain true to their obligations either in the matter of pecuniary or literary contributions. We were always very much amused at the solemn and courtly tone which the friends constantly observed between themselves (save in the matter of mutual literary criticism, when each was more or less driven to discourtesy), a tone which prevailed not only at their meetings but also in their private intercourse. An unvarnished account of the ups and downs in the literary life of this society is contained in the minutes of the association written by my brother and dated 22nd September, 1862 : ” Last term showed great activity on the part of the members of the society and was concluded by a highly interesting meeting. Accordingly on the 14th April of this year we felt ourselves justified in expressing the hope that in view of the eager activity, or better still the active eagerness, with which we sought to strengthen and develop our Germania, we might be able gradually to extend the narrow limits of our performances, more particularly with regard to politics and modern history, but above all in the domain of those arts which had not yet been touched upon. ” Since April, five months have elapsed which have produced results thoroughly unfavourable for the Germania. This may, perhaps, be accounted for by the fact that circumstances were adverse one knows how easily school-work, dancing lessons, love affairs, political excitement, etc., can overthrow the meagre defences of our Germania statutes. Or maybe we are merely the victims of the law of historical necessity, the inevitable reaction that follows upon any violent state of activity (I make an exception in favour of friend P. who regards this as un-Christian and lays everything on the shoulders of excessive school-work). At all events, whatever the reason may be, the fact remains that a violation of our constitution has taken place, the sanctity of the statutes has been assailed, and the Germania has almost gone to the dogs through inner dissolution, dissension and apathy. Financial carelessness and illegality characterise the beginning of this period, just as all great breaches with the past, all revolutions and reformations, are inaugurated .by a financial swindle. One sign, however, that our Germania is still sound at heart seems to be that its members are on the whole awakening to the consciousness that they have all sinned and that we now feel it incumbent upon us to show a double degree of activity and energy. May this consciousness guide us in the regeneration of our Germania and lay the proper means in our hands for its thorough reconstruction. Our energies for the present must accordingly be concentrated principally upon the following points : ” 1. How shall each member send in his over-due contributions and how much grace shall he be given for this purpose ? ” 2. How can we redress our state of financial distress and how shall we regulate our statutes of purchase ? “ 3. How shall we so reform our statutes in general as to render such discrepancies as those described above impossible in future ? ” 4. By what means may we be spurred to eager activity ? ” The secretary goes on. to examine each point in. turn, after which he is in a position to declare that for his part the twenty-five contributions such as poems, compositions and essays due for the twenty-five months that the Germania had been in existence had been regularly sent in. The same test applied to the friends did not yield such favourable results and his report continues : ” Our financial difficulties are to be ascribed chiefly to the purchase of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, made on the motion of Gustav Krug. As he has declared himself unready to meet any of the claims of the next new purchase, I beg him to state his views accurately in writing. In addition to this the subscriptions of one or two members, among whom the writer confesses himself a culprit, have also been failing for some time. Gustav Krug should be honourably mentioned for the general punctuality of his payments. I leave it to the members to determine the limit of time within which all overdue contributions, whether literary or pecuniary, should be sent in. Finally I would entreat the treasurer to draw up an account of the financial position of the Germania for these minutes and to make an exact estimate of the debit and credit. ” As regards the third point, that of an alteration in the statutes, I expect a motion from one of the members which will lead to a discussion on the subject. ” There remains the proposal already moved by me with regard to a prize for the best essay, to be given as a stimulus to enthusiasm. This proposal can only be passed with the consent of the various members ; and the prescribed limit of time must be stated in writing. ” Finally, I venture to ask to be allowed to retain the post of secretary until next Christmas, as hitherto I have not bad sufficient scope for activity in this respect. At Christmas I shall once more refer to our Easter synod in my summing up of the events of the year, and will also discuss any overdue contributions which happen to reach the society before that time. ” I conclude with the hope that our present irregular synod may not prove only a bubble blown out with gases from the decomposing body of our Germania, but rather a decisive process of purification and amputation of everything rotten and corrupted, and a refining of the pure and noble conceptions upon which our society is founded. Ten additions were then made to the statutes and altogether the very best resolutions were formed for the future ; but in spite of every effort the literary life and vigorous prosperity which the Germania had enjoyed, more particularly in the winter of 1861-62, could not be revived. In the summer holidays of 1863 the last synod of the Germania took place. The approach of the leaving examination, which for the friends Wilhelm and Gustav was to take place as early as the Easter of 1864, demanded the application of all their intellectual powers. Only Fritz, who on account of his having been transferred to Pforta had been put six months back in the school year, had a little more time at his disposal, and was therefore able, as we may see from the following list, to send his contributions regularly to the society until July, 1863. But he soon got tired of this one-sided arrangement, and at the abovementioned meeting of the synod it was decided that the Germania should be laid to rest and not be resuscitated until the gay undergraduate life began. LIST OF NIETZSCHE’S CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GERMANIA FROM AUGUST, 1860 TO SEPTEMBER, 1862. August, 1860: Overture and Chorus to the Christmas Oratorio. September, 1860 : Journey in the Hartz Mountains. October, 1860 : Two Shepherd Choruses for the Christmas Oratorio. November, 1860 : Two Choruses of the Prophets for the Christmas Oratorio.
January, 1861 : Seven poems (overdue). February, 1861 : The Annunciation for the Christmas Oratorio. March, 1861 : ” The Childhood of Nations ” (lecture before the synod). April, 1861 : Translation of Servian folk songs. May, 1861 : The Annunciation with fugue. June, 1861 : Chorus of Shepherds, Song of the Moors. July, 1861 : Ermanarich, literary historical sketch (lecture before the synod). August, 1861 : ” Pain is the Fundamental Feature of Nature,” a piece of music. September, 1861 : Concerning the Dante Symphony (lecture before the synod). October, 1861 : Autumn songs. November, 1861 : Servia (symphonic poem, Parts I. and II.). December, 1861 : Concerning Byron’s dramatic works (lecture before the synod). January, 1862 : Napoleon III. as a President. February, 1862 : Three Hungarian sketches, musical pieces. March, 1862 : Siegfried, a poem. April, 1862 : Dates and history (lecture before the synod). May, 1862 : Ermanarich’s death, poem. June, 1862 : Hungarian March, ” A Hero’s Plaint.” July, 1862 : ” The Days of Youth,” a song. August, 1862 : ” Be Still, my Heart,” Hungarian sketch. September, 1862 : New poems. October, 1862 : ” A Streamlet runneth through the Vale,” a song. November, 1862 : ” Kriemhild’s Character according to the Nibelungen.” December, 1862 : ” Oh ! the Peal of the Bells on a Winter’s Night,” song. January, 1868 : ” Faithless Love,” song. February, 1863 : ” Characteristic National Proverbs, etc.,” treatise. March, 1863 : ” On the Sea,” poem. April, 1863 : “ Concerning the Demoniacal Element in Music,” Part I. (lecture before the synod). May, 1863 : Ditto, Part II. June, 1863 : ” Two pages of criticism ” (as secretary). In this list I miss the mention of a certain lecture my brother gave before the synod about Holderlin ; though it is possible that I am only thinking of a letter from Wilhelm Finder, written with the object of recommending the purchase of Holderlin’s poems for the Germania, and which was therefore read aloud before the synod. My brother wrote an essay in the form of a letter based upon this communication of Finder’s, which in the autumn of 1861 he presented at Pforta as a piece of German composition. It is impossible to read this letter, which stands in the first Appendix to Vol. I of the large edition of this biography, without some emotion ; for a good deal in it is very similar to what was said about my beloved brother in later years. It is true that his form master gave him fair second-class marks, but he added, ” I should like to advise the author in a friendly way to turn his attention to a more healthy, a more lucid, and a more German poet.” The literary society, the Germania, had a very valuable influence over my brother’s development. It was in this society that he was able to give expression to his deepest feelings without restraint, and for this reason nothing teaches us so much about his intellectual evolution as his essays and reports written for the Germania. Observe, for instance, the change in his views on music. How solemnly had not he expressed himself in favour of classical music as late as 1858. He himself, however, already sets important notes of interrogation to these remarks in 1860 ; the great revolution in his views must therefore have taken place in the interval. When the Germania was founded in July, 1860, it was decided that ” the musical magazine Die Zeitschrift fur Musik ” should be taken in ; this was the only paper which at that time was an enthusiastic champion of Wagner and his work. A resolution was also passed to buy Wagner’s Tristan. In the autumn of 1888 my brother writes in the memoirs of his youth, ” From the moment that Tristan was arranged for the piano I was a Wagnerite.” My own belief, however, is that my brother was a Wagnerite before this and that Tristan only brought his feelings to boiling point. I remember that the autumn holidays of 1862 were employed by my brother and his friend Gustav from morning till night in playing this arrangement for the piano. But as Gustav’s father was entirely in favour of classical music these Wagner orgies were celebrated at our house. When Fritz asked me whether it was not ” wonderfully beautiful,” I bad to acknowledge that much to my regret the music did not appeal to me. I very much doubt, by-the-bye, whether the performance of these two youths would at this period have pleased anybody at all, for neither of them had as yet heard the opera, and therefore did not know how to bring out the melody properly from the superabundance of tone. They both made ail incredible noise, and the sound of their powerful voices occasionally reminded one of the howling of wolves. The story goes that a certain deaf woman who lived opposite us anxiously rushed to her window, when she heard the fearful noises that seemed to have penetrated even her ears, because she thought there must be a fire somewhere. It must not be thought, however, that the Germania list includes all my brother’s private works and studies during his stay at Pforta by no means. There were in addition innumerable poems, compositions and private essays of all sorts, which were written at this time. Unfortunately he destroyed a good many of these, but those that have survived prove very distinctly a point to which Raoul Richter calls attention in his lectures on Nietzsche, when he says that ” many of the characteristic features of the later Nietzsche already existed in the germ in the Pforta days. This applies more particularly to his most original trait of always having moods, of watching them, and of being able to grasp and describe them, as the following sentences from an essay he wrote as a Sixth Form boy about moods (who in those days wrote about moods ?) certainly proves : ‘ When I examine my own thoughts and feelings and hearken unto my own soul in dumb attention, I often feel as if I heard the buzzing and roaring of wild contending parties, as if there were a rustling in the air as when a thought or an eagle flies towards the sun ‘ (Vol. L, p. 824), and these passionate or imaginary moods, the children of his will and temperament, already stand in opposition to those bright flashes of insight which are the offspring of a clear understanding. The discord between will and intellect, which Nietzsche persistently attempted to harmonise, finds touching expression in one of the letters written to his sister : ‘ When for any length of time I am allowed to think what I choose, I seek words for a melody I possess, and a melody for words I possess, but the two together will not harmonise, despite the fact that they both come from one soul. But that is my fate ! ‘ ” I must now refer to other changes in this period which are also very characteristic of my brother. Until he reached the Upper Fifth Form he was, as I have already stated, an exemplary pupil, as can be proved by his report of the autumn of 1861, when he came out top of the first division of the Lower Fifth Form : ” Behaviour : Very good.
” Industry : Very good. ” Marks attained : Religion, very satisfactory ; Latin, excellent ; Greek, very satisfactory ; Hebrew, satisfactory ; German, very satisfactory ; French, very satisfactory ; Mathematics, satisfactory; History, very satisfactory. The cause which turned this exemplary boy into a somewhat slack scholar it is now difficult to determine. It may have been due simply to the fact of his having reached a rather critical age in his development. The school was beginning to bore him. He was fostering the idea of devoting himself entirely to music ; but in the meanwhile his mind was full of virgin forests and woodcutting, and constantly bewailed the steady jog-trot and the oppressive narrowness of his life at that time. The extraordinary dissatisfaction with his surroundings which my brother now began to feel, first manifested itself towards the beginning of the year 1862. A rather amusing feature connected with it was the fact that our keen-sighted Aunt Rosalie associated this change in my brother with his passionate study of Shakespeare’s works, which he had received for Christmas, 1861 ; but Byron might also have had something to do with it. Though we thought this idea rather far-fetched at the time, I must say H that I have often wondered since whether there was not a good deal of truth in it. Until that time he had read only one or two things from either of these authors. Now, however, these two spirits worked upon him with the whole power of their art, and maybe it was as early as this period that he began to feel that admiration for strong and free men about which he wrote to me twenty-two years later as follows : ” Every form of strength is in itself refreshing and delightful to behold. Read Shakespeare: he presents you with a crowd of such strong men rough, hard, mighty man of granite. It is precisely in these men that our age is so poor.” The narrow limits of the school of Pforta were certainly not fitted to Shakespeare’s broad outlook. At all events, Shakespeare and Byron, whom he read with a schoolfellow called Granier, who had a turn for poetry, exercised a great influence over his own productions. Under the influence of these studies, both boys declared that their former literary productions were ” milk-and watery sentimentality.” They now resolved, therefore, to write poetry and prose with more irony, strength and realism, and mutually to criticise each other’s efforts. This period was but a short one and my brother used afterwards to declare with great cheerfulness that their compositions were very far from possessing any of the above qualities, but had been only puerile, coarse, and indecent. But, as he added with a laugh, they only possessed that innocent indecency which was modelled on the strongest expressions they could find in Shakespeare and Schiller. Granier seems to have gone to the greatest extremes in this respect ; at least, when some time afterwards we were putting some old documents in order, my brother, with cheerful indignation, thrust all this youth’s productions into the fire. But Fritz, too, made an effort to surpass himself in this direction, as the beginning of a story proves, which, in later years, his old schoolfellow Granier published without either explanation or permission. This period cannot be said to have survived its earliest stage, for Fritz was quickly disgusted with this immature emulation of Shakespeare and soon characterised it as ” loathsome and childish.” He plunged with passionate ardour, in those days, into interests which lay outside the school curriculum, more particularly music. He also sent a great many contributions to his literary society, the Germania, and his schoolwork naturally suffered in consequence. Throughout my brother’s life there was a struggle between his private scientific tastes and the technical demands made upon him, first by his school, then by his University and the special course of study pursued there, and lastly by his Professorship. This inner conflict is sometimes very strikingly apparent, while occasionally it seems entirely to disappear ; for at all times he endeavoured to search so deeply into the branches of knowledge which his various positions imposed upon him, and so to extend their application, that he was able in the end to find, in some degree, a lively and warm satisfaction even in those studies which his duties entailed, and to convert them into a means of promoting and assisting his chief interests. Naturally such a dual task the task of promoting his own most secret and private aspirations without neglecting his actual duties exacted much strength and health. Now, whether he felt that his private studies were suffering through his efforts to overcome and adjust the foreign material he had absorbed, or whether he thought that his strength was not equal to the strenuous dual task, at any rate, he became possessed by a profound resentment towards that which was imposed upon him from outside. This period of dissatisfaction covers the months between the January and the autumn of 1862. Healthy and strong as he looked, he suffered a good deal during this time from colds, hoarseness and repeated attacks of eye-trouble and headaches. Of course with all these disturbances he was not able to work as well as usual, and this turned his heart against everything connected with the school. The Fifth Form is proverbially the one in which the majority of boys begin to think themselves misunderstood. In my brother’s case this feeling may have been even more acute than usual because, just at this time, his tutor in Pforta, Professor Buddensieg, to whom he had grown very much attached, fell ill and died. During his boyhood and youth my brother found it very difficult to make new friends, and, even when he succeeded, he only opened his heart and gave expression to the flood of thoughts that filled his mind, when his whole soul was possessed with love and he felt confident that his master was full of the best of goodwill towards him. But it took some time for him to reach this point, as he was far from being easily pleased. Before he would believe that any master was honestly well disposed towards him and recognised his gifts, the appreciation had to be shown very plainly indeed ; but in a school like Pforta such an attitude on the part of a master was quite at variance with the educational principles of the establishment. I believe that my brother was often falsely judged by his masters, although they were always very friendly to him ; I was once told that they suspected him of some irony towards them but this was quite a mistake. He was filled with the most enthusiastic admiration for their scientific researches, set great store by the severity and honesty of their methods, and spoke of them only in terms of deep reverence, especially of Corssen, Steinhardt, Keil, Koberstein, and Peter. He did not even attempt to pass judgment upon their weaknesses, whether great or small, but always let them pass ; and it was obviously painful to him to discuss them at all. His deferential mind recoiled from coarse jokes about them ; for as he says himself in The Joyful Wisdom, he was ” a reverent animal.”
Now this misunderstanding on the part of the masters makes a certain incident, which in itself was quite harmless, perfectly comprehensible. My brother relates the whole affair in a letter to our dear mother : “ Dear Mamma I am very sorry that I was unable to meet you at Almrich yesterday ; but I was prevented from coming by being kept in. I will tell you the little story connected with it. ” Every week one of the newest Sixth Form boys has to undertake the duties of school-house prefect that is to say, he has to make a note of everything in the rooms, cupboards and lecture-rooms, which requires repair, and to send up the list of observations to the inspection office. Last week I had this duty ; but it occurred to me that I might make this rather boring task slightly less distasteful by the exercise of a little humour, and I wrote out a list, in which all my observations were clothed in the form of jokes. The stern masters who were very much surprised that any one should introduce humour into so serious a matter, summoned me to attend the synod on Saturday, and pronounced the following sentence : Three hours detention and the loss of one or two walks. If I could accuse myself of any other fault than that of thoughtlessness, I should be angry about it ; but, as it is, I have not troubled for one moment about the matter, and have only drawn this moral from it : to be more careful in future what I joke about At first our mother took the matter quite lightly ; later on, however, she seemed more serious about it, and gave expression to her second thoughts in a letter. Fritz replied with some irritation as follows : ” I cannot understand how you can for one moment worry yourself about the consequences of that incident, for you understood it perfectly well, as your letters to me have shown. Of course, I shall beware of such thoughtless behaviour in future ; but it is useless to expect me to be miserable about the affair one moment longer. Let others see what they like in it. I know what was at the bottom of it, and I am perfectly satisfied. As I say, I have seldom felt in better spirits than at present, and my work advances splendidly. I have very varied and pleasant surroundings, and there is no question of anybody exercising any influence over me, for in order for that to happen I must first of all get to know people whom I feel to be my superiors. Even the cold weather is quite pleasant to me in fact, I feel very well, and nurture no bitter feeling against anybody, not even against the masters. Maybe, as masters, it was impossible for them to regard the matter in any other light, etc, etc.” This humorous weekly report was afterwards read in Berlin before the Pforta Old Boys’ Club, to the general amusement of everyone present. I can myself remember some of the remarks to which exception had been taken, and they were extremely harmless ; for instance : “ In such and such a lecture-room the lamps burn so dimly that the boys are tempted to let their own brilliance shine.” ” The forms of the Fifth Form room have recently been painted and manifest an undesirable attachment for those who sit upon them,” etc. The part of his letter in which my brother denies that his schoolfellows exercised any influence over him, was a mistake ; for his companions did so in many, though, perhaps, superficial ways. My brother had a tendency to overestimate the value of his school friends and spoke of their gifts with extraordinary admiration. I know that in those days I used to feel that with these eminently superior youths, of whom my brother was able to say in terms of enthusiasm : “ If only I were as gifted as so-and-so is, what should I not do ! ” an absolutely new order of the universe ought to begin. It was for this reason that his appreciation of himself came to consciousness, only when he was accused, as I have described above, of letting himself be influenced by one or other of his friends ; then he would rebel, discover to his own surprise that in spite of everything he remained very much himself, and expressed in vigorous language how fundamentally untouched he really was. Much more painful and much more detrimental to his school career was the following incident, which struck him very deeply. In April, 1863, he wrote to our mother as follows : ” DEAR MOTHER, ” If I write to you to-day it certainly is about one of the saddest and most unpleasant incidents that it has ever been my lot to relate. For I have been very wicked, and do not even know whether you will or can forgive me. It is with a heavy heart and most unwillingly that I take up my pen to write to you, more particularly when I think of our pleasant and absolutely peaceful time together during the Easter holidays. Well, last Sunday I got drunk, and have no other excuse than this, that I did not know how much I could bear, and was rather excited that afternoon. When I returned I was taxed about the matter by Mr. Kern, one of the senior masters. He had me called before the synod on Tuesday, when I was degraded to the third division, and one hour of my Sunday walk was cancelled. You can imagine how depressed and miserable I feel about it, and especially at having to cause you so much sorrow for such a disgraceful affair, the like of which has never occurred in my life before. It also makes me feel very sorry on the Rev. Kletschke’s account, who had only just shown me such unexpected confidence [he had just made Fritz his assistant]. Through this affair I have spoilt the fairly good position I succeeded in winning for myself last term. I am so annoyed with myself that I can’t even get on with my work or settle down at all. Write to me soon and write severely, for I deserve it; and no one knows better than I, how much I deserve it. ” I do not need to give you any further assurances as to how seriously I have pulled myself together, for now a lot depends upon it. ” I had once again grown too cocksure of myself, and this self-confidence has now, at all events, been very unpleasantly disturbed. ” To-day I will go to the Rev. Kletschke and will have a talk with him. By-the-bye, do not tell anyone anything about it if it is not already known. Also please send me my muffler as soon as possible, for I am constantly suffering from hoarseness and pains in the chest. Now goodbye, and write to me very soon, and do not be too cross with me, dear mother. ” Your very sorrowful ” FRITZ.” It is true that Fritz was very unhappy over what had happened. Certainly he had done nothing disgraceful during his drunkenness, and had only talked a little excited nonsense, stumbled about and fallen down ; but the condition of a drunkard who loses all mastery over himself was repulsive to him. This experience was followed by a severe cold, and he had to spend a long time in the sickroom, during which he had more than enough leisure to think over the unfortunate affair. He writes in his next letter to our mother as follows : “ I need
not assure you any more that I have made the best resolutions for the future, that this last incident has set me thinking about many things, and that I have pondered more particularly over all that you have written to me, and allowed it to work upon my mind. I trust that my future behaviour will prove all this to you.” He eventually recovered his old spirit, looked courageously and confidently into the future, and began to concern himself about plans for his University career. In May, 1863, he writes: “ Now, more than ever before, do I frequently think about my future ; external and internal reasons seem to make it very vague and uncertain. I feel I might specialise in any subject if only I had the strength to cast all other interests from me. “ Write and tell me your views about this ; I am pretty certain that I shall study hard ; Oh ! but if only bread-andbutter study were not everywhere in demand ! ” Our mother seems to have written to tell him to worry less about the future than the present, but at the same time to bear practical ideas about the future in mind. To this Fritz replied: ” As regards my future, it is precisely my practical doubts about it that concern me. The decision as to what subject I shall specialise in will not come of its own accord. I must, therefore, consider the question and choose, and it is precisely this choice which causes me so many difficulties. Of course it will be my endeavour to study thoroughly anything that I decide to take up, but it is precisely on this account that the choice is so difficult ; for one feels constrained to choose that branch of study in which one can hope to do something complete. And how illusory such hopes often are : how often does one not allow oneself to be transported by a momentary prepossession, or by an old family tradition, or by one’s own personal wishes, so that the choice of a calling seems like a lottery in which there are a large number of blanks and very few prize numbers. Now I happen to be in the particularly unfortunate position of possessing a whole host of interests connected with the most different branches of learning, and though the general satisfaction of these interests may make a learned man of me, they will scarcely convert me into a creature with a vocation. The fact, therefore, that I must destroy some of these interests is perfectly clear to me, as well as the fact that I must allow some new ones to find a home in my brain. But which of them will be so unfortunate as to be cast overboard by me perhaps just the children of my heart!” In view of all this he once more resumed his general work and studies with particular eagerness. He again became the exemplary scholar of former days, and very soon regained the goodwill of his masters, which was expressed in excellent reports. Privy Councillor Yolkmann, who was afterwards Rector of Pforta, but who in those days was only a junior master there, told me later that at this time the masters used to express their admiration of my brother’s work among themselves. But Fritz was never allowed to suspect a word of all this, for Pforta was not a school for softness, and under no circumstances nattered its gifted scholars. If my brother was afterwards able to speak with such whole-hearted appreciation of the beneficial effect of a hard school upon young men, he always thought gratefully of good old Pforta in so doing. Twenty -four years later he wrote : ” The most desirable thing of all, however, is under all circumstances to have severe discipline at the right time, i.e., at the age when it makes us proud that people should expect great things from us. For this is what distinguishes hard schooling from every other schooling, namely, that a good deal is demanded ; that goodness, nay, even excellence itself, is required as if it were normal; that praise is scanty, that leniency is non-existent ; that blame is sharp, practical, and has no regard to talent and antecedents. We are in every way in need of such a school ; and this holds good of physical as well as of spiritual things ; it would be fatal to draw distinctions here ! The same discipline makes the soldier and the scholar efficient ; and, looked at more closely, there is no true scholar who has not the instincts of a true soldier in his veins.” CHAPTER IX LAST YEARS AT SCHOOL AFTER all we have said and described, it may well be asked whether ray brother in those days gave one the impression that he would one day develop into the man of worldwide renown he afterwards became. One or two of his friends have declared that he did, but I am always a little suspicious about these recollections of remote days, as one involuntarily judges early experiences by a much later standard. My mistrust of these testimonies, written in later years by intimate friends, was to some extent confirmed by the Memoirs of that schoolfellow of Fritz’s named Gamier, to whom I referred in the last chapter. This boy ultimately became a doctor in Berlin, and lost sight of my brother from the time that he left Pforta until, as he himself declared ten years ago, he ” saw him again in unexpected glory.” Gamier then proceeds to give an account of his recollections of my brother : ” In Pforta, Nietzsche, as is well known, was an exceptionally good pupil. Mathematics, if I remember rightly, was the only subject in which he did not shine. He took no prominent position among his schoolfellows, because he was always so engrossed by his school-work, more particularly by classics, and his own particular studies. Among those who showed great intellectual activity he cannot be said to have played a leading part. This role fell to two other boys who died long before Nietzsche did. He showed no inclination to share in the noisy games that used to be played in the school garden, but with the rest of us he, as a Sixth Form boy, would readily walk to the village of Attenburg (Almrich) close by ; he would not drink beer there, however, but greatly preferred chocolate. Even during his schooldays he was extremely short-sighted, and his deep-set eyes had a peculiar gleam. His voice was at times very deep, but as a rule it was like his whole being, very gentle. The fact that he would one day accomplish the Transvaluation of all Values could not have been foreseen at that time.” Somewhat different is the evidence given by young Baron von Gersdorff, whom my brother afterwards described as ” the friend of his heart ” ; and with whom he remained on intimate terms until his death. Gersdorff writes about his Pforta reminiscences as follows : ” I have unfortunately no written notes concerning my life at Pforta ; nevertheless I still have the most vivid recollection of how very much Nietzsche attracted my attention as early as my days in the Lower Fifth Form, to which I was promoted at Easter, 1861. He was half a year ahead of me, so that we were never able to spend more than six months together in any one class. As an out-boy I lived with an old Professor, August Koberstein, the wellknown literary historian, who also taught German in the Lower Fifth. On one occasion Nietzsche had quite of his own accord written a critico-historical essay on the Ermanarich saga, and had presented it to Koberstein. The latter was highly delighted with it, and was full of praise for the scholarship, the gift of construction, the penetration, and the excellent style of
his pupil. As a rule, Koberstein did not talk much at meals ; as, however, on this occasion, he expressed himself in such a delighted manner to me, I seized the opportunity of communicating what l had heard to Nietzsche. I did this the more readily, seeing that, as I have already pointed out, I had felt the very moment I entered the Lower Fifth that this schoolmate of mine was infinitely superior to the other boys in intellect and general bearing, and that one day he would do something great. This incident about Koberstein did not, however, lead at once to any intimacy between us ; we only began to see and talk to each other frequently when we were both in the Sixth, and music played no small part in bringing us together. Every evening between 7 and 7.30 we used to meet in the music room. Never in my life shall I forget his impromptu playing. I should have no difficulty in believing that even Beethoven did not play extempore in a more moving manner than Nietzsche, more particularly when a storm was threatening.” Privy Councillor Paul Deussen notes in his Memoirs of Nietzsche : ” What would have become of me if I had not had him it is difficult to say. It is true that it was in my nature to value nay, to overvalue everything great and beautiful, as well as to feel a corresponding contempt for everything which served only material ends. But the glowing spark was fanned into a flame of wholehearted enthusiasm for everything ideal by my daily intercourse with Nietzsche, and was never to be extinguished even after my own road and that of my friend had diverged.” From these and other descriptions, this at least may be taken for granted, that my brother, even at this time, was the leader who conducted his friends to a whole host of interests of the most exalted kind. But I doubt whether even these companions ever dreamt of the power and force that the name of Nietzsche would one day have at the beginning of the twentieth century. This boy who was usually so correct and reserved, so tenderly and childishly subject to his mother, and so honestly depressed when he caused her sorrow, did not give one at all the impression of being an infant prodigy. Had I not preserved the greater part of the things he wrote in secret, a habit of mine which led to many a playful struggle between us, we too would now have to ask with surprise : where are the germs out of which the great philosopher and poet was afterwards to develop ? But these writings, of which a small selection has been printed in the Appendix to the large edition of my biography of him, give far too eloquent a testimony. Nevertheless, the writings we actually possess constitute only a portion of all his compositions, as his notes prove. He often felt the wish to set down some sort of accurate statement about his private intellectual activities. Thus, for instance, we find him writing : ” My musical efforts in the year 1863. In the first part of the year I played many of Beethoven’s Sonatas and twelve of Haydn’s Symphonies. Later : Schubert’s Fantasia, Divertissement a I’Hongroise, Lebenstiirme, the Pastoral Symphony, and above all, the Ninth Symphony. ” In January I composed ‘In a Shady Nook ‘ (melodramatic). ” In the summer holidays I wrote ‘ ! Laugh for Once.’ ” In my mind I thought out the Allegro of a sonata to be played as a duet ; this I forgot ; also the Adagio of this piece, which I did not forget. ” In the Christmas holidays I composed ‘ A New Year’s Eve,’ for violin and piano. ” Wrote the following verses : ‘ Faithless Love,’ ‘ Before the Crucifix,’ ‘ On the Shore,’ ‘ Sounds from Afar,’ ‘ above the Graves,’ ‘ Now and Yesterday,’ ‘ Now and Long Ago,’ ‘ Rhapsody,’ ‘ Homeward Bound,’ five songs, ‘ An overture on a Rose Petal,’ ‘The Old Hungarian/ ‘Fifty Years Ago,’ ‘Beethoven’s Death.’ ” In the Easter holidays I wrote : ‘ Concerning the Demoniacal Element in Music,’ I. and II. ” In the summer holidays : Annotations to the ‘ Nibelungenlied.’ ” In the Michaelmas holidays : Annotations to the ‘ Hildebrandslied.’ ” Autumn, 1863 : Essay on ‘ Ermanarich.’ ” Eead chiefly : Emerson, Bernhardy, ‘ A History of Literature,’ Gervinus, Shakespeare, ‘ The Edda,’ ‘ The Symposium,’ ‘ The Technique of Drama,’ ‘ The Nibelungen,’ Lachmann, Tacitus’ ‘ Tiberius,’ ‘ The Clouds,’ ‘ Plutus,’ .Eschylus, and works on him.” Two very amusing and rather surprising poems, called ” Faithless Love,” are to be found among these notes. From these poems one might suppose that my brother had some kind of love trouble at this period. But, as a matter of fact, these verses were composed, so to speak, through the soul of his friend, Paul Deussen. He took the most lively interest in a touching love affair of his friend’s, and when the object of Deussen’s passionate devotion was not able to wait for the Sixth Form boy, and got engaged to someone else, my brother was so strongly moved by his friend’s sorrow (perhaps as a Sixth Form boy himself he felt that in his friend the dignity of the Sixth had been assailed), that he wrote the two poems “ Faithless Love.” But Fritz seems to have come to the conclusion, not merely by means of similar experiences on the part of his friends, that the emotions which constitute the passion of love in addition to their bitterness, also include a good deal of sweetness. For instance, when the sister of one of his juniors, Anna Redtel, came to pay a visit to her grandparents the Backs, in Kosen, Fritz also lost his heart. She was a small, charming, ethereal girl from Berlin, very good-natured, cultured and musical. By the side of her my brother appeared a very big, broad-shouldered, vigorous, and rather solemn, stiff young man. His idea that we women are really delicate birds, very highly organised, and fragile creatures, may perhaps be traced to this first youthful love affair. Fritz played duets with Anna, dedicated verses and a musical rhapsody to her, and considered himself, I believe, very lucky to have fallen a victim for once to those feelings about which his schoolfellows made such a fuss. Fritz was, moreover, very gratified that I should take the affairs of his heart and the moods that resulted from them so seriously. His love, however, never exceeded a rather moderate and poetical attachment. This was thoroughly in keeping with the fact that throughout his life he never once fell into the clutches of a great passion or of a vulgar love. His whole heart was absorbed by the world of knowledge, and for this reason everything else only aroused temperate feelings. Later in life, he was really sorry never to be able to reach the heights of a regular amour-passion ; but any feelings he ever had for a woman were very soon transformed into a delicate and warm friendship, however bewilderingly beautiful the object of his attraction might be. It was with great surprise that he watched the passionate joy and the upheavals and ravages love caused among his friends. He was particularly sympathetic with unlucky lovers, whom he used to comfort in their moments of misfortune. When his friend Paul’s affair took place, for instance, he tried to console him with every
kind of philosophical argument, and Deussen remembers to this day how they would walk together of an evening through Pforta’s shadowy cloisters, while Fritz would seek to strengthen his friend by quoting all the comforting arguments which lay hidden in the dust of books and in the scholastic wisdom of the ancient Greeks and Romans. But he was never able completely to conceal his astonishment that love should be taken so seriously, and with a grave shake of the head he would always ask his friends, ” Why all this for a little girl ? ” The year 1864, at least until the autumn, was not so prolific in private work as former years had been, because Fritz’s spare time was chiefly filled in preparing for his examination, and in getting together the material for the great work it was customary at Pforta, in those days, to produce on leaving the school. At the suggestion of Dr. Volkmann, who took a very friendly interest in my brother, for which the latter was very grateful, Fritz chose Theognis of Megara as the subject of his great Latin essay : De Theognide Megarensi. The treatment of this material was full of significance for my brother. Theognis, the moralist and aristocrat, who describes mob rule with contempt and spurns it from him, had interested and attracted him for many years, and was certainly the foundation upon which he afterwards built up his daring, original and proud edifice : the description of Greek culture as he understood it. The last long school holidays arrived, and were to be devoted to preparing for the examination, and to the composition of the above-mentioned Latin essay ; but it must not be supposed that they were entirely occupied in this way. Imagination does not allow itself to be chained by arbitrary fetters. Fritz describes his daily programme to Deussen as follows : ” On Monday, with much misgiving, I began my work, and on this day wrote seven large sheets. On the second day by the evening I had written sixteen, on the third, twenty-seven. Is there not a fine progression in these figures : I. 7, II. 8, III. 9 ? Thursday and to-day I wrote the rest : altogether there are forty-two large narrow pages, which, when copied out, would easily make sixty or probably more. There is an introduction covering one page, and three chapters : ” I. De Megarensium Theog. estate rebus. De Theog. rite. ” II. De Theog. scriptis. ” III. Theog. de deis, de moribus, de rebus publicis opiniones examinantur. ” Then follows a short conclusion. As to whether I am satisfied with it all No ! no ! But I could hardly have done better, even if I had taken very much more trouble. One or two portions are tedious. Others are clumsy from the point of view of style. Here and there are passages which are farfetched, as for instance, when I compare Theognis with the Marquis Posa. All my previous notes about Theognis I have to a large extent copied out. I was awfully annoyed at having to copy out so much. I have given so many quotations from Theognis that certainly the greater part of the fragments are introduced into my work. ” Now hear how I spend my day. Early, but not too early, I get up and take coffee. Then I go to my room. A table stands there completely covered with books, for the most part lying open ; there is also a comfortable grandfather chair, and I am dressed in my beautiful dressing-gown. I now proceed to write. At about one o’clock I join my mother and sister at table, drink hot water, play the piano a little, and have coffee. Then I write again. At six o’clock my tea and supper are taken to my room. I drink, eat and write. It gets dark. I get up and look at the clock ; it is half-past eight. I dress quickly, and, leaving my room, hurry in the gathering gloom of the falling night into the Saale. This is cool and cold, and therefore refreshing : the river rushes on, everything else is still, while the mist and I lie on the water. The wind blows and I return ; I am in thoroughly good spirits ; up to the present I am not showing any evil results from my somewhat strained manner of life … ” My musical activity is confined to practising ‘ Gretchen,” the second part of the Faust Symphony (by Liszt of course). Amazingly good and refreshing is this Gretchen. On the other hand Faust is too bombastic for me and Mephisto too grotesque and cranky. ” Melodies enter my head and vanish, for I have no time to work them out. I have also tried to write some verses, but nothing came of them. Now and again my sister sings a nice song to me. ” Moreover I am so peaceful and well looked after and so entirely master of my own time, that I have relegated my desire to be alone to the lumber-room of old fads. Much that is pleasant and cheerful occurs in life. These things broaden the spirit incalculably, much more than brooding isolation does.” Soon after this, when the great Latin work was finished, all kinds of poetically productive moods forced themselves to the top in spite of every obstacle, and discharged themselves in verses, poetical notes, and compositions. These holidays were on the whole very enjoyable, for Fritz and I eagerly studied music together and read good books, such as Emerson, with each other. But it would have been better if, instead of occupying himself with music and literature, Fritz had given more attention and industry during these weeks of freedom to the subject of mathematics. Yet even at this eleventh hour, when so much depended upon it, he could not bring himself to give any serious thought to this science, which he had neglected throughout almost the whole of his school career. His indifference in this respect only vanished when he had done his written work. As it was, if Fritz had not done extraordinarily well in three of the principal subjects upon which he was examined, he would have failed in his leaving examination, owing to his total indifference to and dislike for mathematics. I was afterwards told of painful scenes which occurred in the master’s synod, when the mathematical master, Professor Buchbinder, gave vent to a long and bitter complaint over Nietzsche’s indifference to mathematics. He was, however, interrupted by the famous Corssen, with the following sarcastic question : “ Perhaps you would like us to plough the most gifted pupil that Pforta has ever had as long as I can remember ? ” “ Whereupon the mathematical master ceased his plaint, as Corssen’s question was supported by a murmur of indignation from the most important members of the staff. My brother however, could not be excused the oral examination. But at last even that was over, and on the 4th of September in a state of blissful joy he fell suddenly into our arms with the words : ” Got happily through. Oh, the glorious days of freedom have come ! ”
It is the custom in Pforta for a pupil before leaving the institution, once more to give an account of his life, and to leave this written statement behind him. Accordingly Fritz, before quitting the narrow walls of Pforta to enter the new and strange world, looked back again upon the experiences through which he had passed. For us as well it is a recapitulation of everything we have already described. We have seen upon what things he laid the greatest stress, but we are forced at the same time to feel some surprise at the somewhat superior tone he allows himself in this essay. It reveals that in Pforta he suffered more, inwardly, from many an incident than appearances led us to suppose : ” MY LIFE.” The objects of a description of one’s life are exceedingly multifarious, and therefore demand very different kinds of treatment. In the present case it is a matter of bequeathing to a school, to whose influence I owe the greatest and most characteristic part of my intellectual growth, a picture of precisely this intellectual evolution. And this I have to do at a moment when I am on the point of giving my mind a new direction, and am on the eve of a fresh development, through leaving behind me a method of existence to which I have grown accustomed, in order to enter a new life in broader and higher spheres of culture. ” Of the turning points in my life, which divide it into definite parts, I must refer more particularly to two : the death of my father, the country parson of Rocken near Liitzen, and the consequent removal of our family to Naumburg, an event which closes my first five years of life ; and secondly my transfer from Naumburg Grammar School to Pforta, which took place in my fourteenth year. Of my earliest childhood I know little, and what I have been told about it I do not feel inclined to repeat. In any case I certainly had excellent parents, and I am convinced that precisely the death of such a splendid father, whereas on the one hand, it deprived me of paternal help and guidance, on the other laid the germ of seriousness and contemplation in my soul. It is possible that it was a misfortune for me that my whole development was not superintended by a manly eye, and that curiosity and perhaps, too, the thirst for knowledge led me into the most confusing variety of paths to culture. This was what might have been expected in the case of a youthful mind which had scarcely left the parental nest, and whose spirit was confused by manifold interests which jeopardised the foundations of sound learning. Thus the whole period of my life between my ninth and fifteenth year is characterised by a thirst for general knowledge, as I used to call it ; on the other hand childish games were not neglected but pursued with such doctrinaire eagerness that I used to write little books about almost every one of my games, and would lay them before my friends for their edification. Through an accidental inspiration I began, when I was nine years old, to take a passionate interest in music, and started composing as well almost immediately, if one may be allowed to call the efforts of an excited child to transfer chords and sequences of tones to paper, and to sing Biblical texts with a fanciful pianoforte accompaniment, ” composing.” I also wrote dreadful poems, but always with the greatest zeal. Nay, I even drew and painted. ” When I reached Pforta I had dabbled to some extent in every science and art, and felt an interest in almost every subject, except perhaps such sciences as were a little too exact, and tedious mathematics. In the course of time, however, I began to feel a certain repulsion to this erratic wandering over all the departments of knowledge ; I wished to force upon myself some definite limits, in order to be able to probe individual subjects more deeply and thoroughly. I was able to carry this desire into effect by means of a little scientific club which I formed with two friends who shared my views, for the purpose of promoting our development. The monthly contribution of essays and compositions, and the criticism passed upon them, as well as the quarterly meetings, forced our minds to consider smaller but more stimulating branches of knowledge, and also helped us to combat the detrimental effect of mere impromptu playing by the thorough study of harmony and counterpoint. ” At the same time my devotion to classical studies grew by leaps and bounds. I have the most delightful recollections of my first impressions of Sophocles, Aeschylus and Plato, more particularly in my favourite dialogue, ‘ The Symposium,’ and also of Greek lyricists. In this striving to attain to a greater profundity of knowledge I still find myself engaged to-day, and it is quite natural that I should think as little of my own productions as of those of others, because, in almost every subject to be treated, I always find either a background which defies investigation or one which it is very difficult to investigate. If I might mention the only work written during my schooldays with which I was almost satisfied, it would be my essay on the Ermanarich Saga. Now that I am on the point of going to the University I regard the following law for my further advance in knowledge as absolutely binding : to combat my tendency towards the detrimental acquirement of many subjects, and also to encourage and promote my taste for probing a matter to its uttermost depths, and for tracing it to its remotest causes. Should these tendencies seem to cancel one another, this would certainly be no objection in some cases, and I sometimes see in myself some such phenomenon. In my fight with the former and my hope to promote the latter I trust I may triumph.” His leaving certificate gives a general survey of all his achievements ; the attention of the reader is called more particularly to the galaxy of famous and scholarly names which are written beneath it. CERTIFICATE OF PROFICIENCY for the scholar of the Royal School of Pforta, FRIEDRICH WILHELM NIETZSCHE, Born in Rocken on the 10th of Oct., 1844. Religion : Protestant (Evangelical). Son of the late Pastor Nietzsche, under the guardianship of the lawyer Diichsel, of Sangerhausen. He was six years in the Boyal School, of which he spent two in the Sixth Form. I. GENERAL BEHAVIOUR AND INDUSTRY. After having during the middle of his career at the school roused some indignation by various breaches of the school rules, he has kept himself free from reproach throughout the latter part of his stay at Pforta, and earned the universal commendation of his masters by his seriousness and intelligence. He has also succeeded in maintaining a very praiseworthy attitude toward his schoolfellows. In addition to this he has always shown a particularly active and lively desire to increase his scientific knowledge, more especially in the study of languages. In mathematics, on the other hand, it must be confessed that he was often deficient in application and regular industry. II. His KNOWLEDGE AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS.
(a) Religion. In class he showed an active and lively interest in the Christian doctrine of Salvation ; in this subject he acquired knowledge with ease and certainty, and united it with a good understanding of the original text of the New Testament, which he could, moreover, discuss with clearness. He is therefore given excellent ; for, even in the oral examination, he gave excellent answers. (b) German Language. The work he did for examination, both in thought and style, was very successful, and his school compositions during the last few years were of a quality that permits us to characterise his proficiency in style as excellent. In the history of literature and in the Introduction to Philosophy he has acquired good knowledge. (c) Latin. He shows wonderful skill in the translation of the classics, and his Latin composition is correct, clear, and good; so that although his oral examination left something to be desired he is nevertheless given excellent in this subject. In Latin conversation he also shows considerable proficiency. (d) Greek. Seeing that he always showed a very praiseworthy interest in the subject in class, to which an extraordinary essay, written for examination, on a Platonic theme, bears witness, both in his written and oral examination he was accorded the comment of having good knowledge. (e) French. Satisfactory on the whole. (f) Hebrew. Owing to his deficient knowledge of the grammar he is at present not very proficient in this language. (g) Mathematics. As he has never shown any regular industry in mathematics, he has always gone backwards, so to speak, both in his written and in his oral work in this connection ; so that he cannot even be called satisfactory in this subject, and this deficiency on his part was only balanced by his excellent results in German and Latin. (h) History and Geography. He showed great interest in class for these subjects, but his knowledge is not very thorough. Satisfactory. (i) Natural Sciences. Satisfactory. (k) Drawing. He attended the drawing class for a short time only. He did nothing satisfactory there. As he is now on the point of leaving the Royal School of Pforta in order to enter the University of Bonn for the study of Philology and Theology we grant him the certificate of Proficiency and wish him farewell with the hope that by the aid of serious and thorough industry he will one day achieve something really creditable in his calling. On the 7th. September Fritz, together with eight of his schoolfellows, left Pforta for good. In accordance with an old custom, he addressed a few solemn words to those whom the inmate of Pforta had to thank for his sojourn in that excellent institution, namely, God, the King, Pforta, and the respected Masters ; finally he took his leave of his schoolmates : ” What can I say to you, my dear schoolfellows, and to you particularly, my dear friends, now that I am going to leave ? You can understand that the plant which is torn from its native soil can strike new roots only with great difficulty and very slowly in a strange soil : shall I be able to tear myself from you ? Shall I ever be able to accustom myself to another environment ? ” Think of me : be sure that I shall know when you think of me. Fare ye well ! ” At the door, the carriage covered with garlands and with its gaily-clothed postillions was waiting, surrounded by a crowd of school friends. Every detail was just as Fritz had described it five years previously, in his diary, but this time he himself was one of those who with tear-stained eyes bade farewell to the old familiar scene. His heart beating with emotion, he stands on the threshold which is to lead from narrowness and confinement to self-reliant freedom. PART III STUDENT LIFE, 1864-1869 CHAPTER X BONN MY brother spent the first part of the happy time following his departure from Pforta in the company of his friend Paul Deussen, with us at Naumburg. These weeks were one long spell of cheerfulness and high spirits, and even the grief we felt at parting with our Fritz, and at letting him go to Bonn so far away from us, really found expression only when he had gone. Feeling that he was somewhat of a stranger to the practical world, my brother resolved to keep his eyes open, and to note everything of importance even down to the matters of eating and drinking. And in this resolve he was keenly supported by our mother. His letters show that he carried out this plan. In pious Elberfeld, for instance, he observes that the devout girls are less beautiful than the smart young women ; he also comments upon the differences of diet, and when finally he reached the house of his friend’s parents, in the village of Oberdreis (Westerwald), he declares that his knowledge of the life and customs of the people is growing richer and that he is observing everything, their peculiarities, their occupations, their husbandry, etc. He describes the people whom he has met, and writes with particular warmth about Deussen’s mother : “ I should like you more especially to know Frau Deussen ; she is a woman of such culture, refinement of feeling and speech, and of such activity, as is seldom met with. People of the most different natures are unanimous in their praise of this woman.” After leaving us at Naumburg, and before going to Oberdreis, the two friends made a very enjoyable tour down the Rhine, which Deussen describes so
brightly in his Memoirs. A third person, a distant relative of Deussen’s, called Ernst Schnabel, had joined the couple on this tour. ” Witty, highly intellectual, and lively to excess,” thus does Deussen describe him ; ” but also frivolous to the tips of his fingers this was the Ernst Schnabel who joined our touring party, and he knew how to lead us into many a mad adventure. The three of us went to Konigswinter, and, drunk with wine and friendship, we allowed ourselves, despite our limited means, to be persuaded to hire horses and to ascend the Drachenfels. It was the only time I ever saw Nietzsche on horseback. He was in the sort of mood in which a man takes more interest in the ears of his mount than in the beauty of the scenery. He would persist in measuring them, and declared that he could not be quite certain whether he was riding a horse or a donkey. We behaved more madly, however, late in the evening. The three of us strolled through the streets of the little town, in order to serenade the girls whose presence we suspected behind the windows. Nietzsche was whistling and cooing, ‘ Pretty darling, pretty darling,’ Schnabel was talking all sorts of nonsense to a poor Rhenish lad who begged for a night’s shelter, and I stood by absolutely at a loss to make head or tail of the new situation ; when, suddenly, a man burst out into the street from a neighbouring door, and drove us away with a volley of abuse and threats. As if in expiation of this event, which, by-the-bye, was quite exceptional, on the following day we gathered in the music-room of the ‘ Berliner Hof,’ ordered a bottle of wine, and purified our souls with Nietzsche’s wonderful improvisations. At last we all reached my parents’ house in Oberdreis, and here, for weeks, we enjoyed the simple life in the pure mountain air of the Westerwald, surrounded by my parents, brothers and sisters, friends and acquaintances, who kept coming and going, and filling the country parsonage with animation. On the 15th October we celebrated my mother’s and Nietzsche’s birthday, and then crossed over the hills of the Westerwald into the valley of the Rhine to Neuwied, where a steamer took us to Bonn in a few hours.” On the following day my brother writes : a It is from Bonn, from my rooms in Bonn, that you have news of me for the first time ; and I send it to you full of good cheer and bright hopes, as well as with the deepest gratitude ; for it was your hands which, in the most charming way imaginable, delighted my first hours in my new world, it was your dear wishes and prayers which consecrated my entry into a life of greater independence.” He then describes the last days of his stay at the friendly parsonage, as also the journey to Bonn, and finally makes a statement of the absolutely necessary expenses which awaited him. The most indispensable and ordinary things, such as rent, hire of piano, breakfast, lunch and supper, washing and boot cleaning, amounted to 75 marks a month ; my brother’s guardian had, however, fixed 90 marks as the total of expenses for the month a sum with which it would have been impossible for my brother to manage. My brother’s guardian ultimately granted him 120 marks, which, in those days, was a very decent allowance for monthly expenses ; but although Fritz certainly spent less in eating and drinking than other students, the satisfaction of his artistic tastes, his little journeys, his music and his visits to the theatre, must have cost him more than most of the men. In his early days, too, he was very unpractical, and thus it happened that in the end he spent half as much again as he was allowed. At last, towards the end of the first Session, there was a deal of grumbling on both sides, and in his letters he complained that all correspondence was quite spoilt for him by these money troubles. His desire was to write us only pleasant and stimulating letters. Later on his chief cause of annoyance was the expense into which he was dragged in connection with a certain club he had joined. It was with joy and deliberation that he first took this step which, subsequently, was to cause him such deep regret ; and on the whole he was very satisfied with the first six months of it. At the end of October he wrote to us about it for the first time, as follows : After bowing in all directions in the most courteous way possible, I introduce myself to you as a member of the German Students’ Association, the Franconia. ” I can see you already shaking your heads in the most curious manner, and giving vent to exclamations of astonishment. As a matter of fact, there is a good deal of an extraordinary nature involved in this step, and I cannot therefore take this attitude amiss in you. For instance, at about the same time as I joined the Franconia, seven Pforta fellows became members as well ; indeed, but for two men, the whole association consists exclusively of Pforta men, who came together in Bonn; and among them there are several who are in their fourth year. Let me name a few whom you will know : Deussen, Stockert, Haushalter, Topelmann, Stedtefeld, Schleussner, Michael, and myself. ” Of course I have given the step careful thought, and, taking my tastes into consideration, have concluded that it is almost a necessity for me. We are, for the most part, all philologists as well as lovers of music. A generally interesting tone prevails in the Franconia, and the older members have pleased me mightily. ” My experiences on all sides have until now been of a particularly gratifying and delightful nature. A few days ago I paid a visit to the Musical Director Brambach, with the view of becoming a member of the local Choral Society. I have made an excursion to Rolandseck. It is a beautiful part of the country, and we spent a few lovely days there. Yesterday the Franconians went to Plittersdorf, where a fair was in full swing ; there was plenty of dancing and new wine was drunk at a peasant’s house. In the evening, in the company of a Franconian of whom I am particularly fond my special chum I walked back along the Rhine to Bonn. The hills sparkled with the lights of the vintagers. You cannot imagine how beautiful everything is.” Whether the step of joining the Students’ Association was really deeply considered or not may be to some extent doubted ; but I cannot admit that it was a sudden inspiration, as Deussen says it was. Even before he left for Bonn, Fritz had discussed with his guardian the pros and cons in regard to joining an association of the kind in question. And on this occasion he referred to the very same reasons in favour of the step as occur in the letter quoted above. For what he wanted was to know life, and not only life as he found it within the narrow circle of his friends, but the life of the world. To this end he thought that the Students’ Association, with the variety of young men it contained, hailing from all the four corners of Germany, would surely help him. And, as we see from all the letters he sent us during this period, at first he entered into the student life in a thoroughly ingenuous manner. It is true that the gorgeous months of autumn, with all the festivities they entailed, were particularly fitted to shed a certain poetical glamour over the life of the association, and somewhat to dazzle a romantic young nature for a while. This is the description he sent me of ” the incomparable days “ of an inaugural festival : ” I write this the first thing in the
morning after having just torn myself from bed, thus flatly disproving the notion that I may have a thick head. Maybe the expression ‘ thick head ‘ conveys nothing to your mind. Yesterday we had a great drinking bout and sang the solemn Landesrater, and there were endless torrents of punch ; guests from Heidelberg and Gottingen ; several professors were invited, among whom Schaarschmidt was one, and they all made very nice speeches. Deussen made an excellent freshman’s speech, and innumerable telegrams were received from all corners of the globe and all the Students’ Associations, Vienna, Berlin, etc. We numbered over forty men ; the public-house was beautifully decorated. I made a very pleasant acquaintance in Dr. Deiters, who is a passionate friend of Schumann. We promised to visit each other; so I have at last found a thorough connoisseur of music. The festival yesterday was of a very splendid and elevating nature. On such evenings, believe me, there is a general spirit of enthusiasm which has little in common with the mere conviviality of the beertable. This afternoon we are all going to march through the High Street in parade garb, and there will be a good deal of shouting and singing. Then we go by steamer to Rolandseck, where we have a big dinner in the Hotel Croyen ; but what will come after that is left to our own free choice. The bout began on the evening of the day before yesterday ; we drank until two o’clock in the morning, assembled yesterday at 11 a.m. for a morning pint, then went on the spree in the market-place, and had lunch and coffee together at Kley’s. You observe that the activity and the strain is great and I am quite right in saying with lofty consciousness that I have not got a thick head… . ” This morning I continue the letter, and you will thus have a complete description of our drinking bout. The weather has been beautiful ; our march out, headed by a fine hussar band, attracted great attention ; the Rhine was a beautiful blue, and we took wine with us on board. As we reached Rolandseck a salute of guns was fired in our honour. We then feasted until about six o’clock ; we were extraordinarily merry, and sang many an original and ingenious song. Outside twilight had come ; the moon lay on the Rhine and illuminated the peaks of the Siebengebirge, which loomed hazily through the blue mist. After the meal I sat by Gassmann, who is the editor of the Beer Journal and the head of the commissariat, and is probably the most interesting man in the Franconia ; we remained faithful to the good old Rhine wine while the others drank champagne punch. The neighbourhood round about is really worthy of three notes of exclamation, more particularly the little island of Nonnenworth, on which there is a girls’ school ; and behind towers the Drachenfels, that great perpendicular wall of rock. The spot gives me the impression of profound repose.” As a matter of fact the whole of student life was somewhat foreign to my brother’s tastes, and in his lectures on The Future of our Educational Institutions he admirably described the extraordinary state in which he spent the year 1864 1865: ” Let us now imagine ourselves in the position of a young student that is to say, in a position which, in our present age of bewildering movement and feverish excitability, has become an almost impossible one. It is necessary to have lived through it in order to believe that such careless self petting and comfortable indifference to the moment, or to time in general, are possible. In this condition I, and a friend of about my own age, spent a year at the University of Bonn on the Rhine it was a year which, in its complete lack of plans and projects for the future, seems almost like a dream to me now a dream framed, as it were, by two periods of growth. We two remained quiet and peaceful, although we were surrounded by fellows who in the main were very differently disposed, and from time to time we experienced considerable difficulty in meeting and resisting the somewhat too pressing advances of the young men of our own age. Now, however, that I can look upon the stand we had to take against these opposing forces, I cannot help associating them in my mind with those checks we are wont to receive in our dreams, as, for instance, when we imagine we are able to fly and yet feel ourselves held back by some incomprehensible power.” My brother’s time in Bonn did indeed resemble that state of sleep and dreaminess in which one is continually asking how one can possibly have entered this strange imbroglio, though one does not cease from striving to adapt oneself to one’s conditions. I do not think my brother gave people the impression at that time of a man who was some day to rise so very much above his contemporaries. No, he was a student like the rest, whose ambition was to be a full-fledged member of his class, as his letters of the period prove. But as our best powers are said to develop unconsciously in sleep, it may be that this year, in which his real personality was to some extent slumbering, was very beneficial to him. It is true that later on he thought differently about his ” lost year ” as he called it. Fritz originally matriculated in theology and philology ; he himself was from the first quite resolved to devote himself to philology alone, and it was only to please our mother that he also entered for the Divinity Degree, in order to attend lectures on that subject. But he gratified his deepest tastes at Ritschl’s and Jahn’s lectures ; and in addition to this he attended Springer’s discourses on the History of Art, Sybel on History, and Schaarschmidt on Philosophy. As he had, with the view of entertaining us, sent us many details about his eventful and enjoyable life as a student, our good mother began to think it necessary to write to him some words of admonition, in which she counselled him to attend to his studies. He sent a very indignant reply to this letter, and expressed surprise that we could possibly have suspected him of neglecting his work under the stress of the gay student life, which was already beginning to prove irksome to him. It was certainly not his intention that the Students’ Association should hinder him from pursuing his principal studies; but that it ultimately did so cannot be doubted. In any case he took advantage of his stay in Bonn to attend as many concerts and theatres there and at Cologne as he could possibly afford. And he was very lucky, for he heard the most famous singers and actresses of the period. For instance, he heard Patti in a wonderful concert, then Birde-Ney in her principal parts in The Huguenots and Oberon, etc. He also saw Seebach in a series of her most beautiful parts, and finally Friederike Grossmann in several little comedies. “ We Franconians,” he writes, ” were naturally in love with her to a man, shouted her songs of an evening at the beer table, and would drink general toasts in her honour.” During this winter he gave a good deal of his time, privately, to the study of Schumann, whose Manfred he had received as a Christmas present from our Aunt Rosalie. This conduced greatly to cheering his lonely Christmas holidays, as he suffered rather severely from homesickness. In addition to sharing the general appreciation of Schumann, Bonn, where the musician lies buried, showed a particular local enthusiasm for this magnificent composer, and thus my brother heard a good deal of excellent Schumann music this winter ;
and, as the spirit of his compositions of this period shows, it seems to have influenced him. For instance, he sent us as a Christmas present eight charming musical settings to poems by Petofi and Chamisso, which are all stamped with the character of Schumann’s music : ” Glad and Gladder,” by Chamisso. ” The Tempest,” by Chamisso. ” To all Eternity,” by Petofi. ” Faded,” by Petofi. ” She Beckons and Bows,” by Petofi. ” The Child with the Extinguished Candle,” by Chamisso. “ A Serenade,” by Petofi. ” An Epilogue,” by Petofi. In the letter accompanying this present on the 20th December, 1864, he wrote: ” MY DEAR MAMMA AND LIZZIE, ” I should like you not to open the parcel until Christmas Eve, so that you may have a little surprise, maybe only a disappointment. All I ask you to do, is not to expect too much. I give you the best I am capable of, but that is not much. You will be able to appreciate at least the pains and industry expended on the work. During its production I thought continually of you, and wished only that I might be with you to witness your joy over it. ” ‘ But these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labours, Most busy least, when I do it.” Thus saith Ferdinand in Shakespeare’s Tempest, and thus say I : refreshing labours and laborious refreshment ! ” What should I give you, if not a part of myself something in which I see myself reflected ? That is why I have stuck the silhouette of my present self on the outside of the gift, so that you may want to hold it in your hands, and to do so frequently. You already perceive that I speak with a certain touch of vanity about my little work, and yet it will have completely failed of its object if it does not please you.” This present, which he had written out most carefully, and which he had had bound in lilac-coloured morocco, K pleased us beyond bounds, and on Christmas Eve I played and sang one or two of the songs. Fritz thought that I would practice them in order to be able to sing them to him in the Easter holidays, and with the manuscript he therefore sent a few directions in regard to expression. ” The easiest to sing is ‘ The Child with the Extinguished Candle.’ It should be sung as tenderly, as simply, and ingenuously as possible. The same applies to the last song, which must also be sung simply, and with much lofty resignation. It ought to please you. Do not forget that the passages ‘ in a beautiful, wild and secluded spot of the woods ‘ and ‘ and finally to perish with her,’ should be sung full, loftily and grandly. The ‘ Serenade ‘ is low in compass, the accompaniment is a little more difficult, the melody is easily sung. The ‘ Tempest,’ by Chamisso, will please you ; play and sing it seriously, mournfully, and with determination until the middle verse, which presents a contrast to that which precedes and follows it. ‘ She Beckons and Bows ‘ allows of full crescendo chords being struck, and of giving the voice endless modulation. ‘ Faded ! ‘ is similar but easier. The conclusion is frigid ; I wonder whether you will notice that. The best and also the most difficult songs are ‘ Glad and Gladder ‘ and ‘ To all Eternity ! ‘ The first must be sung with energy, a little nourish, and some grace, the other with great passion. Take the middle verse more slowly. For the song to please, the accompaniment must be played to perfection.” Later on these directions were the occasion for many a joke, more particularly when I sang “ The Tempest” to him ” seriously, mournfully, and with determination,” until we both cried with laughing. As a matter of fact my delicate, fair, rosy, and smiling appearance, in those days, was ill-suited to such a mood. After all our joking, however, Fritz always insisted, ” but your inner being, your soul, could easily sing seriously and with determination, even if it could not do so mournfully.” In the winter of 1864 1865 his life as a student bore a marked musical stamp, and music was to some extent a counterpoise to a good many coarse and unsympathetic features of which he soon began to be conscious in the life of the Association. His nickname at his club was “ Bitter Gluck” and he was entrusted with the direction of many a little musical performance organised by the Franconia. Thus he writes to us : ” I pass here among the students, etc., for something of a musical authority, and as a queer customer besides, as, bythe bye, all Pforta old boys in the Franconia are. I am not disliked at all, even though I am thought a little scornful and ironical. This estimate of my character according to the opinions of other people will not be without interest to you. For my part I must add that I do not agree to the first particular, that I am frequently unhappy, and that I have too many moods and am rather inclined to be a nagging spirit (Qualgeist), not only to myself but also to others.” I have often been asked what my brother could have meant by this word ” Qualgeist,” and it was only long afterwards that I realised what he wished to imply by this expression namely, that he had been somewhat of a thorn in the side to his friends. He always urged them to demand the highest of themselves, and to attain it. To be content with oneself, and to fold one’s arms complacently in the midst of one’s strivings, was an abomination to him ; or rather, it was incomprehensible to him, and made him impatient and, at times, unjust. He was always seeking out that speciality in which he thought they would be able to distinguish themselves best, and thus he tormented both them and himself. Let anyone read his letters to Deussen during the period of student life, and see how discomforting he could be as a friend or at least, as long as he thought his fellow-student was on the wrong road. At Easter Fritz came to Naumburg for the first time as a student. I can still see him vividly as he stood there, a picture of health and strength. He was broad-shouldered and brownskinned, with very thick chestnut hair, and exactly the same height as Goethe a fact which we proved by the measurements in the Goethe house at Frankfort ; but his body was perfectly proportioned, whereas Goethe’s trunk was too long in comparison with his legs. Like Goethe, Fritz also possessed the quality of appearing taller than he really was. His
dignified and erect bearing was the cause of this illusion. The holidays were long and enjoyable, but their tenor was not as even as it had been of old. In the interval Fritz had developed extraordinary self-reliance ; in his inmost soul, of course, he had always been self-reliant, much more so than one would have thought from his kindly and courteous nature. Now, however, his independence of spirit came prominently to the fore, and this led to many differences of opinion with our good mother. (The differences of opinion were chiefly in the sphere of religion, of which more details will be given later.) From that time forward she was continually beset by the fear that we were both too independent and too inclined to be idealistic, and she did all in her power to bring our minds back to the practical aspect of things, and to make us respect the opinions of other people. After the holidays Fritz apologised for the fact that he had often asserted his convictions with too much warmth. This may perhaps have been so from time to time, in spite of his excellent and courteous manners, but he had much too much humour not to give a cheerful tone even to these differences of opinion. I can still remember one of Fritz’s jokes at this period. In Naumburg a sort of fair was being held, which had played a prominent part in our childhood, and for the sake of old times we went to have a look at it for a little while. There was a man in a certain corner selling red and green balloons ; a gust of wind came, and the man did his utmost to keep his light-winged goods from flying away. ” Our dear mother,” Fritz whispered to me with a smile. At this moment the wind wrenched many of the strings out of the man’s hands, and one or two of the red balloons soared high into the air and vanished. “ That which would fly, flies indeed!” Fritz cried, delighted at the happy omen. Until Easter, 1856, my brother was studying theology and philology at Bonn ; but during the following summer term, he studied only the latter subject. As his tastes, even in the late Pforta days, had been always on the side of philology, he had paid attention to theology only in so far as he felt drawn to it by its philological interest. Towards the beginning of 1869, he writes : “ My studies, in which I often used to take refuge with all my heart, were strenuously directed towards the philological side of Gospel criticism and to the investigation of the sources of the New Testament ; for at that time I imagined that history and its researchers were able to return a direct answer to certain religious and philosophical questions.” It was at this period, as he said later, that ” like every young scholar, with the cautious slowness of a cunning philologist,” he ” ruminated over The Life of Jesus, the work of the incomparable Strauss.” It will readily be understood that, by means of these critical studies, he soon left our mother’s Christian standpoint far behind, and that he consequently declined to go with us to Communion during the Easter Festival. There was a stormy discussion, which reduced our dear mother to tears, but to which an end was soon put by our dogmatic and wellinformed Aunt Rosalie. She explained that in the life of every great theologian there had been moments of doubt, and that it was much better at such moments to avoid anything in the way of a discussion. This made things quite clear to our mother, and she therefore expressed the wish that no further mention should be made of all these spiritual difficulties, and also promised that Fritz should not be compelled to do anything to which he could not persuade his conscience. The religious and philosophical views which my brother had expressed during these Easter holidays began, however, after a while to trouble me a good deal. I therefore resolved to pay a visit to two of my pious uncles who were parsons, in order ” to allow myself to be re-confirmed in my faith ” as I said somewhat childishly. I informed my brother of my troubles ; for I was too modest to take it for granted that views which in his opinion were great, fine and glorious, must be the same for me. Fritz’s estimate of me was not so modest ; but what he was least able to grasp was, how extremely difficult it was for me to differ in opinion from the brother whom I respected above everything. He writes : “ DEAR LIZZIE, ” After such a charming letter, full of girlish poetry, as your last to me, it would be wrong and ungrateful to keep you waiting any longer for a reply. ” In the first place, however, I must refer to a passage in your letter which was written with as great a dash of the parson as of the Lama’s heart. Do not worry yourself, dear Lizzie. If your will is as good and as decided as you say it is our dear uncles will not have much trouble. As to your fundamental principle that the truth is always on the side of the most difficult things, I may say that I more or less agree with you. By-the bye, it is difficult to believe that twice two are not four ; but is it therefore truer ? ” On the other hand is it really so difficult simply to accept everything to which one has been brought up, everything which has gradually struck deep roots into one’s being, which passes for truth not only amongst one’s relatives but also in the minds of many good men, and in addition to this, really comforts and elevates man? Is it more difficult to do this than to fight with habit and custom, to face the insecurity of an independent direction, and amid all kinds of spiritual qualms and even pricks of conscience, to keep the goal which is truth, beauty and goodness always in one’s eye, and often with despair in one’s heart to open up a new road ? ” Should it then be our endeavour to get that standpoint concerning God, the World, and ^Redemption, which makes us feel comfortable? For the genuine investigator, is not the result of his investigation rather a matter of indifference ? Is then the object of our investigation, repose, peace, happiness ? No, but the truth however frightful and ugly it might be. ” A last question : If from our childhood onwards we had believed that all our spiritual life proceeded from another than Jesus, let us say, Muhammed ; is it not quite certain that we should have become equally attached to the blessings of Muhammed ? Certainly faith alone saveth, not, however, the thing behind the faith. I write this to you, my dear Lizzie, simply with the view of meeting the line of proof usually adopted by religious people, who appeal to their inner experiences, and demonstrate the reality of their faith there from. Every true faith is real if it accomplishes that which the person adopting it hopes to find ; it does not offer the smallest grounds, however, for the demonstration of an objective truth. ” It is here then that man comes to the cross-roads. Do you desire spiritual peace and happiness ? very well, then, believe ! Do you wish to be a disciple of truth ? so be it ; investigate ! But between the two main-roads there are a host of turnings. What counts, however, is the principal object of your desire.” This letter made a profound impression upon me, more particularly as my clergymen uncles already mentioned told me nothing which could in any way meet the clarity and seriousness of this argument. As, however, our mother forbade all written or spoken discussions on religious questions, my brother and I could refer to these matters only in secret. I
have often thought since that it is more proper for a mother to try and share the religious doubts of her children, and not to separate herself from them ; for it was in this way that my brother’s and mother’s spiritual lives gradually fell asunder. Fritz moreover regarded it as rather a relief not to speak to her of his profoundly moving changes of opinion ; for he was always afraid of being rude. I was also afraid of his being rude, and besought him always to be as good and as kind to our dear, respected mother as possible. From our earliest childhood, we had had it impressed upon us that to be at all disrespectful towards our parents and grandparents was something execrable. From that time onward the most difficult task of my life began, the task which, as my brother said, characterised my type i.e., ” to reconcile opposites.” The summer of 1865 brought my brother another crop of great musical joys, among which there was a great Lower Rhineland Musical Festival at Cologne, of which he gave me the following exhaustive description : ” On Friday, the 2nd of June, I went to Cologne in order to attend the Lower Rhineland Musical Festival. The International Exhibition was opened there on the same day and Cologne really looked like a world metropolis. There was an unspeakable confusion of languages and costumes, a huge number of pickpockets and sharpers ; all the hotels were full to the attics, and the whole town was gaily decorated with flags so much for the external impression. As a singer I was given a red and white striped silk ribbon to wear on my breast, and I went to the rehearsal. Unfortunately you do not know the Girzenich Hall ; but during our last holidays I gave you an excellent idea of what it was like by comparing it with the Exchange at Hamburg. Our choir consisted of 180 sopranos, 154 altos, 113 tenors, and 172 bass singers. In addition to this our orchestra was composed of 160 players, among whom there were 52 violins, 20 violas, 21 cellos, and 14 contrabasses. Seven of the best soloists and female singers had been engaged for the Festival. Hiller conducted the whole performance. Among the ladies several were conspicuous for their youth and beauty. At the three principal concerts they all appeared in white, with blue scarves over their shoulders, and natural or artificial flowers in their hair. Each of them held a lovely bouquet in her hand. We men were all in evening dress and white waistcoats. On the first evening we remained together until very late into the night, and in the end I slept in an armchair at the house of an old Franconian. In the morning, I was as well folded up as a pocket knife. In addition to this, let me tell you incidentally, that since the last holidays, I have been suffering greatly from rheumatism in the left arm. On the following night I slept in Bonn. On Sunday the first great concert took place. Handel’s Israel in Egypt was performed. We sang with inimitable enthusiasm when the temperature was 100 Fahrenheit. For all three days every seat in the Girzenich was booked. The ticket of admission to each concert cost from six to nine marks. The general opinion was that the performance was a perfect one. There were some scenes which I shall never forget. When Staegemann and Julius Stockhausen ‘ the king of all bass-singers ‘ sang their famous heroic duet, an extraordinary storm of applause burst forth ; the singers were recalled eight times, there was a flourish of trumpets, encore was cried from every corner of the hall, the whole of the 300 ladies hurled their 300 bouquets into the faces of the singers ; and they were, so to speak, enveloped in a cloud of flowers. This scene was repeated when the singers gave their encore. “ In the evening we men from Bonn began to carouse together, but we were invited by the members of the Cologne Men’s Choral Society to join them in the Girzenich restaurant ; and we remained there drinking Carnival toasts and singing songs which the people of Cologne do to perfection and quartets amid waxing enthusiasm. At three o’clock in the morning, I and two friends left the company, walked through the town and rang at all the doors, but we could find no shelter ; even the Post Office would not take us in we wanted to sleep in the mail cart until at last at the end of an hour and a half a night-watchman opened the Dorn Hotel to us. We fell like logs on to the benches in the dining-room, and in two seconds we were fast asleep. Outside the day was dawning. “ At the end of an hour and a half, the house servant came along and said that the room had to be cleaned. We, therefore, decamped in a desperate mood; went by way of the station to Deutz, where we had breakfast, and then, with very weakened voices, we went to the rehearsal, where I fell asleep with great enthusiasm to an obligato of trombones and kettledrums. But thanks to this little rest I was all the more awake during the performance in the evening, between six and eleven o’clock, in which my favourite pieces, Schumann’s Faust music and Beethoven’s Symphony in A major, were played. That night I was exceedingly anxious to get to bed, and called at about thirteen hotels, all of which were full to overflowing. At last in the fourteenth, after the host had assured me that there was no room, I coolly exclaimed that in any case I should stop there, and asked him kindly to find me a bed. This he did in one of the dining-rooms, where a camp-bed was made, and for two marks I spent the night there. ” At last on the third day, the final concert took place, in which a large number of smaller things were performed. The finest moment of the whole day occurred when Hiller’s Symphony, entitled Spring must surely be here soon, was produced. The musicians were all extraordinarily enthusiastic, for all of us admired Hiller immensely. At the end of every part there was unheard-of applause, and, after the conclusion, there was a similar scene, only ‘ more so,’ as it were. His throne was covered with wreaths and bouquets, one of the musicians put a crown of laurel on his head, the orchestra played a fanfare in his honour, and the old man covered his face and wept at which the ladies were deeply moved.” The following fragments from letters written between the 10th and the 12th of July, 1865, bear witness to his good-natured disposition and to many of his feelings as a brother and a musician. ” MY DEAR LIZZIE, ” What I wrote to Wilhelm Finder a few days ago is also true of your birthday : once it was a day of general rejoicing, and of the happiest and most cheerful moments together. Now it is a day of memories, of the most lovely memories of that beautiful past. ” It is at times such as these that girls grow sentimental and that I feel stimulated to compose, and rummage among old papers, old poems and writings. ” In the midst of all this there came into my hand your dear letter in which I find two nice verses from a Mendelssohn song ; I cannot do better than point to those lovely words : ‘ We have remained the same in spite of all.’ ” But, in order, notwithstanding, to wish you something on your birthday something which has not already been included in the wellknown doggerel verse : ‘ I hope that each of us may be as good and as happy as the other could wish, and that the picture, the delightful picture which each of us bears in his breast of the other, may be as like the truth as possible.’ ” For this is only as it should be. I do so hope you do not think of me as an ideal personage, for this would be a shocking error,
though I know my name must be written in your heart with pretty lines and tender colouring. You may be sure that your name holds the same place in my heart, though my talents as a painter are not so great, and I am very often inclined to use black ink, and, in certain unfortunate moments to paint everything that I see before me persons, angels, men and devils rather dark and unattractive. It still remains a fact that nobody is so good as he appears in the eyes of those who love him. But it is precisely on this account that goodness may act as a spur ; for we do not wish those who like us most to be disappointed in us. “ But there is another reason for this loving deception, and that is our great distance from each other. You get only fragments of my life before you, and these fragments are my letters. And letters, as evidence of an exalted moment, are prone to throw a transfiguring light upon him who writes them that is to say, when they do not deal with money matters. And that is the reason why in the holidays you express your astonishment that I am not nearly so good and kind as you had pictured me. This is indeed sad, but I have explained it to you psychologically. “ Now as to the practical application of these wearisome words of mine : my dear Lizzie, I feel particularly fond of you to-day, and my one wish is that neither you should be deceived in me nor I in you. We are somewhat severe judges of each other, for everything unpleasant that either of us hears about the other tends to spoil the picture each bears in his soul.” … ” 12th July. On the afternoon of your birthday, which you must have celebrated by a large girls’ party, I composed for the first time this year. And I did so with such energetic vigour that I soon finished the work. As your birthday must have been the stimulus for this composition it follows very naturally that it should be dedicated to you. It is a song conceived in the most extreme Futurist style. It contains a natural cry and other ingredients of latent foolishness. It is based upon a poem that I wrote as a Lower Fifth Form boy, in Girenzen of all places in the world. A fisher maid yearning for her lover voila le sujet ? ” The half year, from the April to the autumn of 1865, was a most remarkable one for my brother’s inner development. During this period, he freed himself from many ideas and points of view which had formerly governed him, and to his joyful surprise discovered in himself a great critical faculty which he thought would be best employed in philology. about this he writes as follows : ” What I longed for was a counterweight to the changeful and unrestful nature of my tastes hitherto ; I yearned for a science which could be pursued with cold reflection, with logical coolness and steady work, and with results that would not touch one’s soul. All this I thought I should find in philology, and the first prerequisites to its study are the very things which a pupil of Pforta has ready to hand. In this school philological exercises are periodically set, such, for instance, as critical commentaries of certain choruses in Sophocles or Aeschylus. In addition to this, one of the special advantages of Pforta, which is of particular value to the future philologist, is that among the pupils themselves a wide and strenuous reading of Greek and Roman classics is considered the thing ; but the most fortunate point of all is the fact that I there came in contact with teachers of philology from whose personality I was able to form some opinion of their science. If at that time I had had masters of the type which is met with in Grammar Schools, narrowsouled, cold-blooded precisians, who know nothing of science save its learned dust, I should have thrust far from me the thought of ever belonging to a scientific body served by such hopeless wretches. In Pforta, however, I had before my eyes such philologists as Steinhart, Keil, Corssen, Peter, men whose outlook was free, who had a breeziness about them, and who to a certain extent imparted even their tastes to me. Thus it came about that even during my last two years at Pforta I was busily engaged on two original philological works. In the first I wished to examine the sagas on the Ostrogoth King, Ermanarich, in all their ramifications and from their various sources (Jordanes, Edda, etc.). In the other I tried to give an account of a particular form of Greek tyranny that which existed in Megara. It is the custom on leaving Pforta to present the school with some kind of written memento ; it was with this end in view that I prepared the second essay, which in my hands soon became a psychological study of Theognis of Megara. ” When after six years’ study at Pforta I had bidden that severe but useful instructress farewell I went to Bonn. It was here that I first realised to my great surprise how exceedingly well instructed, yet how badly educated, a pupil of such a royal school is when he goes to the University. He has thought out a good deal for himself and yet he lacks the skill to express these thoughts. He has not yet experienced any of the cultivating influences of woman’s society ; he fancies he knows life from books and from traditional hearsay, and yet everything appears to him strange and unpleasant. This is what I felt at Bonn. The means to which I had recourse in order to mitigate this evil state of affairs were not perhaps all of them carefully chosen ; and vexations, unpleasant intercourse, and obligations carelessly undertaken made this first year of University life very burdensome to me.” Professor Raoul Richter gives a very happy and concise account of the reasons which really made student life ever more and more difficult for Fritz : ” At first Nietzsche joyfully entered into all the students’ ways. He joined their conviviality’s and took part in their duels. But the man whose heart even in those days lay solely in spiritual things, who would have loved above all to read Greek Tragedies with his friend Deussen or to listen to Schumann’s Faust music, who carried a wreath to the composer’s grave and himself wrote some Manfred music, and was in consequence of all this regarded as a freak by the rest of the students, could not fail in the course of time to feel himself a stranger among his comrades (Letters, V., 98). It was in this spirit that he wrote to Gersdorff, who just at this time was going through the same conflict at Gottingen : ‘ One has already lost a good deal when one has lost one’s moral indignation at the bad things which daily occur in one’s circle. This is more particularly true of drink and drunkenness, and also of disrespect and scorn of other men and other opinions ‘ (Letters, L, 12). And how deep was the gulf which separated him from those who were inferior to him in character, but unfortunately not in numbers and other advantages his fellow students the following account given by Deussen in his Memoirs will prove. Nietzsche once paid a visit to Cologne by himself and was shown over the city by a servant. He asked the man to take him to a restaurant ; his guide, however, misunderstanding his request, took him to a house of ill fame. ‘ Suddenly,’ said Nietzsche to Deussen, ‘ I found myself surrounded by half a dozen creatures in tinsel and gauze who gazed at me expectantly. For a moment I stood absolutely dumbfounded in front of them ; then, as if driven by instinct, I went to the piano as to the only thing with a soul in the whole company and struck one or two chords. The music quickened my limbs and in an
instant I was out in the open ‘ (Deussen’s Erinnerungen p. 24) . The fact that such sensitiveness of soul and singleness of aim and interest must have led to a breach with a Students’ Association, in which, as in all such bodies, baser elements were mingled with those of a higher nature, is obvious enough.” My brother urged reform and, in so doing, set such a high and severe standard of moral demands, that the majority of his fellow students revolted against this arrogant and disconcerting young comrade. It must not be thought, however, that the Franconia was particularly wild. On the contrary, its high moral tone had been praised by others ; but my brother really expected too much. It was not to the fighting and fencing that he objected ; on the contrary, he rather favoured these pastimes, as he did all the arts of chivalry. To this day his acquaintances still speak of the amusing and unconventional way in \which he involved himself in his first duel. When he felt that he had grown sufficiently dexterous in the use of the sword to challenge someone to fight with him, he went one day for a walk with a certain Herr D., who belonged to an association which was on duelling terms with the Franconia. It suddenly struck Fritz what a clever and pleasant adversary this man would be, and turning to him in a friendly and courteous manner he said : ” You are a man after my own heart, could we not have a duel together ? Let us waive all the usual preliminaries.” The other fellow agreed in the most obliging way, but is said to have afterwards given to his friends a very comical description of his surprise at this incident. The circumstance which above all aroused my brother’s wrath was the detestable ” beer materialism ” with which he met on all sides, and owing to these early experiences in Bonn he forever retained a very deep dislike to smoking, drinking, and the whole of so-called ” beer conviviality.” He gave expression to the bitterness of his feelings in a retrospect of his first year as a student, which he wrote at the end of August, 1865, from Naumburg to his new friend Mushacke in Bonn : ” You will, perhaps, be able to understand that I cannot think of Bonn save with unpleasant feelings. The vicissitudes and experiences I had there are still, it is true, too fresh in my mind, and the bitter husk of the present and of reality forbids me to have any joy in the kernel. I hope that some day at any rate I shall be able to look back upon this year from the standpoint of memory cheerfully, as a necessary link in the chain of my development. For the moment this is not possible. I feel that in many respects I have squandered this period most shamefully, and my membership of the Association, to tell the honest truth, strikes me as a faux pas, especially as regards the last summer term. It made me transgress my principle, not to conform to institutions or individuals longer than it took me to learn what they were like. ” Such things bring their own punishment with them. I am very cross with myself, and this feeling has somewhat spoilt my summer for me, and even disturbed my objective judgment of the Association. I am not a heart-and-soul supporter of the Franconia, and I can well imagine a more attractive body. I regard its political judgment as very inferior, and depending merely on a few heads. With respect to its attitude to the outside world, I consider it both plebeian and revolting. As I have not held my tongue concerning my unfavourable opinions about it, I have somewhat spoiled my position among its members. ” At this point, my dear friend, I must think gratefully of you. How often have I not lost in your company, and in your company alone, that vexatious spirit which was so habitual to me at Bonn ! That is why the pleasant pictures of my happy times there will always be associated in my mind with you. ” At bottom, too, I must also express myself dissatisfied with my studies, although I hold the Association largely responsible for this, because it thwarted my beautiful plans. I have only just learnt how restful and uplifting it is for a man to be continually at work on some profound task. I so seldom experienced this pleasure at Bonn. I cannot help looking with scorn upon the work I did in the Bonn days. There was a composition for the Gustavus Adolfus Club, another for an Association evening, and yet another for the Professor. Atrocious ! I blush when I think of the drivel ! Every one of the things I wrote in my Grammar School days was better than these. ” As regards lectures, with the exception of one or two things, I learnt nothing. I am thankful to Springer for certain joys he gave me, and I might also be grateful to Ritschl, if I had used him industriously. But on the whole I am not dissatisfied in this respect. I believe a good deal in self-development and how easy it is to be fixed for ever by men like Ritschl, or actually uprooted and planted, perhaps, precisely on roads which lie at some distance from one’s real nature. ” The fact that I have gone a long way towards understanding myself I regard as the greatest blessing of this year. And also the gaining of one friend who is heartily sympathetic to me is not to be underrated.” The vexation which he felt about this wasted year was not mitigated till long afterwards ; for, two years later, he describes his departure from Bonn in very gloomy language : ” I left Bonn like a fugitive ; and when at midnight I stood on the quay of the Rhine, accompanied by my friend Mushacke, and waited for the steamer from Cologne, I did not feel the slightest twinge at leaving a place so beautiful, a countryside so flourishing, and a band of young companions. On the contrary, it was precisely they who were driving me thence. I do not wish to begin to judge them unjustly, as I have often done. I was still too timidly wrapped up in myself, and I had not the strength to play an independent part amid all the influences which surrounded me then. Everything obtruded itself upon me, and I could not succeed in dominating my environment. At first I tried to conform to the conventions, and to become what is called a full-fledged student. As, however, I failed ever more and more in this endeavour, and as the touch of poetry which seemed to hang over this life had vanished as far as I was concerned, and I realised clearly the course, Philistine spirit, reared in this excess of drinking, of rowdyism and running into debt, whispers of revolt began to sound in my heart. I withdrew from these empty pleasures, and with ever greater affection turned to those peaceful joys to be found in Nature or in the study of Art, with some sympathetic companion ; for every day I felt a greater stranger in these circles, although to escape them was not yet possible. In addition to all this I began to feel persistent rheumatic pains, and I was also weighed down by the realisation that I had done nothing for science, little for life, and had only acquired a host of debts. The steamer came and bore me away. I remained on the bridge in the damp wet night, and as I watched the little lights which lined the river bank at Bonn slowly disappear, everything conduced to give me the impression
of flight.” In spite of his irregularities the Franconia had given him an honourable send off with a band. But Fritz regarded it as his duty not to conceal from his old Association his real opinion of it. On the 20th October, 1865, he sent back his sash, with the accompanying note : ” To THE STUDENTS’ ASSOCIATION, THE FRANCONIA. “ I beg to inform the Association, the Franconia, that I herewith return it my sash, and in so doing send in my resignation. By this I do not mean to imply that I cease from valuing the principle of the Association. All I would frankly declare is that its present features are not very pleasing to me. This may be in part my own fault ; in any case it has proved a great effort for me to endure my membership over the year. Nevertheless I regarded it as a duty to become acquainted with the Society, and now that no narrow bonds unite me with it I bid it a hearty farewell. ” May the Franconia soon grow out of that stage of development at which it now stands, and may it ever claim high-minded moral men for its members. The Association was indignant at this letter, and crossed my brother’s name from its annals. And thus his first year as a student ended in a somewhat melancholy fashion. CHAPTER XI LEIPZIG MY brother spent his long vacation from the University with us at Naumburg. He cured the rheumatism contracted at Bonn, and gradually developed a better frame of mind, so that he was able to look forward to his new academic life with a cheerful and hopeful spirit. As he had suffered so much in Bonn from the effects of uncomfortable lodgings, I proposed at first that we should all move to Leipzig. Fritz was delighted at the idea, but our dear mother not only feared the move and all the difficulties it involved, but also thought that it was better for a son to get accustomed to depending on himself. It was of course Ritschl’s transfer from Bonn to Leipzig that led Fritz to choose this University. During the great dispute between the two Professors, Ritschl and Jahn, at Bonn, Fritz had not shown himself in the least a blind partisan ; for he had a great personal respect for Jahn, who had been very friendly to him ; but, whether Ritschl was right or wrong in this quarrel, my brother considered him by far the more distinguished man of the two. Before he went to Leipzig he spent a fortnight in Berlin with the parents of his excellent friend Mushacke, and in later years he often thought of the beautiful excursions he made from this city, especially to such places as Potsdam and Sans Souci. Thus his sojourn in Leipzig began under very different auspices from those of his last days in Bonn, and if his acquaintance with Schopenhauer’s principal work at first seduced him to the cause of pessimism, it was, in his case, after all only that kind of youthful pessimism which my brother afterwards declared one might well allow oneself if one were young and full of courage and strength. He wrote an exhaustive description of the two Leipzig years 18651867 in the autumn of the latter year, and the small book which contained this account was only saved from the flames by earnest entreaty on my part. ” I reached the Berlin station at Leipzig with my friend Mushacke on the 17th October, 1865. We first of all wandered about in the centre of the city quite aimlessly, and rejoiced at the sight of the lofty houses, the lively streets and the activity everywhere. Then we adjourned for a little rest about midday to the Reisse Restaurant (in the Kloster Gasse) and thought things quite tolerable, although the atmosphere was not free from black-red-and-gold youths. It was on this occasion that I first read the newspaper at midday, which became a custom with me from that time forward. But that morning all we did was to note down the various advertisements of respectable or comfortable rooms with bedchambers, etc. Then we set out, up and down streets and stairs, to view the commodious apartments advertised, and found them generally extremely uninviting. What smells would meet us, and what opinions some people held of our standard of cleanliness ! Suffice it to say that we very soon became annoyed and suspicious, and that it was only with some hesitation that we followed an old curiosity shop man who had rooms to let which seemed likely to suit us. We were already beginning to think the way too long and complained of feeling tired, when he led us into a small side street called the Blumen Gasse, where he stopped, took us through a house into a small garden, and from there into a neighbouring building, where he showed us a small room adjoining a little sleeping box, which gave one a pleasant impression of retirement and seemed admirably suited for the shelter of a scholar. We agreed to terms, and my address became No. 4, Blumen Gasse, c/o the antiquarian, Herr Rohn. My friend Mushacke found diggings in the house next door. As we remarked later, T certainly had the best of the bargain over the choice of the rooms. After our business had been despatched on that day we went to a neighbouring cafe and, in spite of the inclement autumnal weather, we sat in the open and drank our afternoon cup of chocolate, while our hearts beat expectantly at the thought of all that would enter our lives in this new home. ” On the following day I announced myself to the Academic Board. It happened to be a day on which the University was holding some sort of celebration and conferring Doctor’s Degrees the day on which, one hundred years previously, Goethe had entered his name in the register. I cannot say how delightfully stimulated I felt by this coincidence ; it was clearly a good omen for my year in Leipzig, and the future certainly saw to it that its promise should be fulfilled. Kahnis, who was then Rector, tried hard to make us freshmen, who formed a considerable number, understand that a genius often chooses extraordinary paths to his goal, and that Goethe’s life as a student should not in any way be regarded by us as an example. We replied to this address of the rotund and active little man with covert smiles, and each of us as we passed his black-robed form extended our hands for the customary hand-shake. Later in the day we received our papers. ” The first pleasant event so far as I was concerned was the arrival of Ritschl, who landed safely at his destination. Academic etiquette required him to give an inaugural public lecture in the great hall. Everybody was in a tremendous state of excitement at the appearance of the famous man whose behaviour in the affair at Bonn had brought his name into every paper and every home. The hall was therefore packed to overflowing with members of the University, but large numbers of the townspeople, who were not in any way attached to the academic body, stood in the background. Suddenly Ritschl made his way into the hall in his large felt slippers, though otherwise he was faultlessly attired in evening dress, with a white tie. He looked good humouredly and cheerfully into the new world before him, and soon discovered faces which were not strange. While going from group to group in
the back of the hall he suddenly cried : ‘ Hullo ! There is Herr Nietzsche too ! ‘ And he waved his hand gleefully at me. He soon had the whole circle of Bonn pupils around him, with whom he talked in the most animated way, and all the while the hall grew more and more crowded until at last the dignitaries of the University entered. As soon as he saw this he cheerfully and unceremoniously ascended the platform and delivered his beautiful Latin address on the value and use of philology, while his independent look, the energetic youthfulness of his language, the playful fire of his facial expression provoked general astonishment. I heard a friendly old Saxon say afterwards : ‘ Bless me, what a ” fire ” the old man had ! ‘ When he delivered his first lecture in Lecture Room No. the crowd was also oppressively great. He began his course by a lecture on Aeschylus’s Tragedy The Seven against Thebes, the most important part of which I heard and wrote down. ” I will now say a word about my attendance of lectures. A significant circumstance in this connection is that I do not possess one single complete lecture note-book, but only sad fragments. For this irregularity on my part I sometimes felt some anxiety and distress, but very soon I was able to find a satisfactory explanation of it all. As a matter of fact what happened was this. I was not in the least attracted by the matter of the greater part of the lectures. All that interested me was the form in which the Professor conveyed his wisdom. It was the method which fired my enthusiasm ; for I realised how very little substantial knowledge is acquired at Universities, and how these studies have, nevertheless, the highest importance attached to them everywhere. It thus became clear to me that the principal and only effective point was the method employed in treating a text, etc. Thus I limited myself to the observation of how men taught, and what method they employed to convey a science to young minds. I persistently imagined myself in the position of a don, and from this standpoint conferred either my approval or my disapproval upon the efforts of well-known lecturers. Thus I devoted my energies far more to discovering how one should teach, than to learning what is usually taught, at Universities. Meanwhile I was fortified by the consciousness that in the end I should not lack the knowledge I required, and which was demanded of a qualified scholar ; for I depended for the acquisition of this matter upon my own particular nature, which knew by means of individual work and a system of its own, how to garner all that was worth knowing. And hitherto my experience’ had only endorsed this self-confidence. The aim that lies before me is to become a really practical teacher and to be able to awaken the necessary reflection and self-examination in young people which enables them always to keep the why, the what, and the how, of their science ever before their eyes. ” No one can fail to see that there is a philosophical strain in this way of looking at things. The young man should first of all fall into the state of surprise. Once he has seen that life is a host of riddles he should consciously, and with a resigned severity, confine himself to that which is knowable and, according to his faculties, select his own subject from this vast field. I shall now relate how I reached this standpoint. It is in this connection that the name of Schopenhauer will appear for the first time in these pages. Bad spirits and vexations of a personal kind easily assume a general character with young men. At that time I stood absolutely alone, full of the most painful experiences and disappointments, without either help, fundamental principles, hopes, or even pleasant memories. From morning to night my one aim was to make a fitting road for myself in life. To achieve this end I severed the last links that chained me to my past at Bonn ; I tore the bond asunder which united me with the Association. In the delightful seclusion of my lodgings it became possible for me to gather myself together and, if I did happen to meet friends, they were always Mushacke and von Gersdorff, who for their part lived with similar ideas in their minds. Now let anyone try to imagine how the reading of Schopenhauer’s masterpiece must have affected me in such circumstances. One day I came across this book at old Rohn’s curiosity shop, and taking it up very gingerly I turned over its pages. I know not what demon whispered to me: ‘Take this book home with thee.’ At all events, contrary to my habit not to be hasty in my purchase of books, I took it home. Once in my room I threw myself into the corner of the sofa with my booty, and began to allow that energetic and gloomy genius to work upon my mind. In this book, in which every line cried out renunciation, denial, and resignation, I saw a mirror in which I espied the whole world, life and my own mind depicted in frightful grandeur. In this volume the full celestial eye of art gazed at me ; here I saw illness and recovery, banishment and refuge, hell and heaven. The need of knowing myself, yea, even of gnawing at myself, forcibly seized me. Evidences of this sudden change are still to be found in the restless melancholy of the leaves of my diary at that period, with all their useless self-reproach and their desperate gazing upwards for recovery and for the transformation of the whole spirit of mankind. By drawing all my qualities and my aspirations before the forum of gloomy self-contempt I became bitter, unjust, and unbridled in my hatred of myself. I even practised bodily penance ; for instance, I forced myself for a fortnight at a stretch to go to bed at o’clock in the morning and to rise punctually at six. I became the victim of nervous irritability, and who knows to what degree my foolishness would have taken me, if the very allurements of life itself, of vanity, and the discipline of regular studies, had not stood in my way. “ It was at this period that the Philological Club was formed. One evening several of the old Bonn students, of whom I was one, were invited to Ritschl’s house. After dinner our host urged us warmly to consider the idea of founding a Philological Club. The ladies had just retired to the adjoining room. Nothing therefore remained to disturb the outpourings of the vivacious little man, who had a good deal to say from experience about the effectiveness and the influence of such clubs. The thought took root in four of us that is to say, Wisser, Koscher, Arnold and myself. We discussed the matter among our friends and invited those we selected to meet us one evening at the ‘ Deutsche Bierstube ‘ to consider the foundation of the Club. A week later we held our first regular meeting. We got through the first year without a President, and always elected a chairman at the beginning of each meeting. Oh, what excited, uncontrolled debates we used to have ! In the midst of the general uproar, how difficult it was to rescue anything which might be called the opinion of the assembly ! It was on the 18th January, 1866, that I gave my first lecture there, and that in a way I made my debut in the philological world. I had announced that I would speak in the Lion Restaurant in the Nikolai Strasse on the last edition of the Poems of Theognis. There in the vaulted room, once I had overcome my first feelings of shyness, I was able to let myself go with force and emphasis, and succeeded so far that my friends expressed the greatest respect for what they had heard. Wonderfully refreshed, I returned home very late to write bitter words in my diary, and do as much as I could to wipe my gratified vanity from the tablet of my consciousness.
” This success gave me courage to take my work just as it was, in folio, and written over in the margin with endless notes, to Ritschl one afternoon, and in the presence of Wilhelm Dindorf, I shyly handed him the manuscript. I afterwards learnt how unpleasant and disagreeable such unsolicited contributions were to Ritschl. Suffice it to say, he accepted the work, probably because Dindorf was present ; and a few days later he summoned me. He looked at me thoughtfully for a while and asked me to be seated. ‘ For what purpose,’ he asked, ‘ have you done this work ? ‘ I replied with the first thought that came into my head that, as the basis of a lecture delivered at our Club, it had already fulfilled its object. He then enquired my age, how long I had been a University student, etc., and when I had answered all these questions, he declared that never before had he had any similar work so severe in method and sure in construction handed to him by a student of the third term. Thereupon he urged me most strongly to re-write the lecture in the form of a small book and promised me his help in providing me with some material. After this my self-esteem soared with me into the clouds. In the afternoon I took a walk with my friends to Gohlis ; the weather was beautiful and sunny and my heart overflowed with happiness. At last, when we were in the inn drinking our coffee and eating our cakes, I could no longer restrain myself, and told my astonished, but absolutely unenvious friends, what had happened to me. For some time I went about quite bewildered ; this was the period in which I was born again to the calling of a philologist, for I anticipated the glory which was to be won by me in this walk of life. ” From the day on which Ritschl formed such a favourable opinion of my papers, I became much more closely related with him. I went twice almost every week to see him at lunchtime, and on every occasion found him ready to indulge in serious or frivolous conversation. As a rule he sat in his arm-chair and had the Kolnische Zeitmig before him, which, together with the Banner Zeitung, he had long been accustomed to read. As a rule, amid the vast medley of papers there stood a glass of red wine. When he was at work, he always used a seat which he had upholstered himself by cutting off the embroidery from a cushion he had had given him, and nailing it on to a wooden stool that had no back to it. In his talks he showed no restraint ; his anger with his friends, his discontentedness with existing conditions, the faults of the University and the eccentricities of the Professors everything fell from his lips ; so that in this respect, at least, his nature was certainly the reverse of a diplomatist’s. He likewise poked fun at himself, at his elementary idea of managing his affairs, and would tell, for instance, how formerly he had been in the habit of concealing the money he received, in notes of ten, twenty, fifty or a hundred thalers, in books, so as to be able to enjoy the surprise of their discovery later on. The fact that at times extraordinary complications would arise through the loan of books, and that many a poor student was astonished by what he thought to be a gift, for which it would be scarcely tactful to offer any thanks all this we were told by Frau Ritschl, while Ritschl himself, with a shamefaced expression, would be obliged to confirm all she said. As a matter of fact his eagerness to help others was simply splendid ; and for this reason many young philologists, in addition to being indebted to him for their advance in scientific knowledge, also felt themselves bound to him intimately and personally by a debt of gratitude. It is true that he greatly overestimated his special subject, and therefore showed some disapproval of philologists approaching philosophy too closely. On the other hand he tried to make his pupils do useful work as soon as possible, and thereby often went very near to over-stimulating the productive talents of one or two of them. In addition to this he was absolutely free from any scientific dogma, and was never more upset than when people showed an unqualified and uncritical adherence to his results.” In spite of Schopenhauer’s influence there is a very cheerful spirit prevalent in these notes, which was certainly the principal result of my brother’s sojourn at Leipzig. Still it must not be forgotten that this description of his experiences was only written down after the close of his time at Leipzig, when the feelings of his first period of Schopenhauer discipleship had perhaps somewhat toned down. I remember that in the autumn of 1865 he had behaved in a most tragic manner, and it is greatly to be regretted that his diary, The Book of Contemplations, which has already been mentioned, was destroyed by him when he wrote the above descriptions in 1867. The cover of the book alone survived. In November and December 1865, his letters were full of Schopenhauerian pessimism, and he even sought to convert us to the doctrine ; for instance, he wrote in a letter of 5th November, 1865, as follows : ” We have once more fallen into the rut of our daily tasks, thoughts, troubles and recreations ; how important the day seems to me now and what a number of things are decided or have to be decided in the narrow chamber of the brain ! Do you really take so light-heartedly this contradictory existence, in which nothing is clear save the fact that all is obscure ? It always seems to me that you get over all this by joking about it. Or am I mistaken ? How happy you must be if I see aright. ‘ Do thy duty ! ‘ Very well, my friends, I do perform my duty, or I strive to do so, but whither does it lead ? And supposing I fulfil my duty satisfactorily in every way, is the beast of burden higher than man because it performs more dutifully that which is demanded of it ? Has one paid enough attention to one’s manhood if one satisfies the demands which are made upon it by the circumstances in which one is born ? What power is it, pray, that bids us be determined by our environment ? ” But what if we refuse to do this, what if we are resolved to consider ourselves and to force men to acknowledge us just as we are what then ? What is it that we desire now ? Were it the thing to carve for oneself the most tolerable form of existence possible ? Dear friends, there are two roads : either we accustom ourselves to be as narrow as may be, and to turn the light of our wits as low as possible, and then seek riches and to live on the pleasures of the world ; or we know that life is miserable, we know that we are the slaves of life the more we enjoy it, and so we discard the goods of this world, practise abstinence, are mean towards ourselves and loving to all others simply because we pity our comrades in misery in short we live according to the strict precepts of primitive Christianity, not of the modern sugary and formless Christianity. Christianity does not allow itself to be ‘ taken up,’ either en passant or because it happens to be the fashion. ” And does life then become bearable ? Certainly, because its burden every day becomes less heavy and because no fetters bind us any longer to it. It is endurable because it may be renounced without any pain.” At first we gathered from this letter that his gloomy mood had been induced by the disappearance of his box of books and manuscripts, for we knew nothing then of his reading of Schopenhauer. But the mood persisted even after the recovery of the important box, and therefore our mother forbade any such gloomy epistolary discussions in the future, and told him that it would be better if he related some of his experiences. For our dear mother could write the most beautiful letters about all she did, and wished us to do the same. In Bonn,
Fritz had certainly complied with this wish of hers, but during his time in Leipzig, when he used to see us very often, he thought such letters were superfluous. My French governess always used to say that I was a little espiegle, and when Fritz came for his Christmas holidays I maintained a sombre mien, and indulged in all sorts of profound observations concerning the difficulties and obscurities of existence. Fritz did not know what to make of this, and racked his brain to try to discover what had really taken place. When, however, he learnt that it was all the result of his admonitions to take life seriously, he confessed to me that he would be ever so much better pleased if I would stay as I used to be as ” our laughs together were such a boon to him.” After that we really had very enjoyable Christmas holidays. Indeed Fritz’s clouds almost disappeared, and he really had ample grounds for being happy and contented as he himself shows in his diary. Of course at intervals there were always less cheerful moments when philological work did not go smoothly, and when he believed that Ritschl, on whose good will he relied so much, was a little vexed by his refusal to enter his class, or when his friend Deussen caused him annoyance by deciding in accordance with his parents’ wishes to study theology instead of philology, a science for which Fritz thought him better fitted. His sensitiveness made him susceptible to any attacks on his ideals, and made him feel it very deeply when he had offended worthy people by his tactlessness. Speaking of his friends, he says : ” I immediately think of Hiffer, who continually tormented and teased our two acquaintances Romundt and Wisser so much so that he won the hostility of the one and the friendship of the other. He was a talented man from whom Nature had withheld all sense of proportion ; he pursued the liberal arts, more particularly music, with eagerness, was a skilful translator of French, and as he was very wealthy, calmly foresaw the time when he would swim up the stream of literary life. We were always at loggerheads about musical matters, especially concerning Wagner, about whom we never ceased disputing and pouring forth our venom on each other. Now, somewhat late in the day, I must admit that his musical tastes were much more healthily developed than my own. But, at that time, I was unable to see this and very often suffered by the flatness of his contradictions. In fact he easily hurt people’s feelings by his unceremonious manner. Once, for instance, when we were visiting some mutual friends, Hiffer, who had thrown his heavy person into a chair, exclaimed when the legs of it cracked beneath the unusual weight, ‘ Oh ! this chair is not kosher ‘ a remark which was obviously very offensive to our hostess, who was a converted Jewess. Very much the same thing happened on one occasion when we were in the dress circle of the Leipzig Theatre, and were talking gaily about a singer who had made her first appearance the day before. We praised her singing and deplored her extraordinarily ugly features all the more, and Hiffer in loud and forcible tones described the latter with all manner of imagery. What were our feelings, however, when a lady three feet in front of us turned quietly round and showed her face that same extraordinarily ugly face to its public decriers ! Grieved at having gratuitously wounded anybody, we did not improve matters when, after the performance, we sent her a bouquet with the inscription ‘ These roses to the nightingale ! ‘ My brother’s inmost nature developed in the freest way possible during his stay in Leipzig. He no longer felt, as he had in Bonn, the desire to be a thorough-going student a thing for which, he had small aptitude ; he was not obliged now to conform to the regulations of any association regulations which seemed to him both unpleasant and plebeian ; nor was he required to defend his severe moral principles against his scornful fellow students, nor shyly to conceal his real nature ; but could at last exercise that influence over his environment which he had always desired to have, but for which he had been unable to find an opportunity in Bonn. Although he often came over to us from Leipzig, either alone or with friends, each time that he spent his holidays with us in Naumburg we had more or less of a surprise at the remarkable manner in which he had developed meanwhile, and at the great plans concerning his work with which he returned every time to his home. For instance, at Easter, 1866, he was assiduously engaged upon turning his studies of Theognis into a small book. During these holidays, which were full of occupation, he wrote to Baron von Gersdorff : ” Three things are my consolations rare consolations ! my Schopenhauer, Schumann’s music, and, lastly, solitary walks. Yesterday a heavy storm hung in the sky, and I hastened towards a neighbouring hill, called Leusch (maybe you can explain the word to me). At the summit I found a hut and a man, who, watched by his son, was killing two kids. The storm broke in all its power, discharging thunder and hail, and I felt inexpressibly well and full of zest, and realised with wonderful clearness that to understand Nature one must go to her as I had just done, as a refuge from all worries and oppressions. What was man to me then with his restless will ? What mattered to me the eternal ‘ Thou shalt ‘ and ‘ Thou shalt not ‘ ? How different are lightning, storm and hail ; free powers without ethics ! How happy they are, how strong they are pure will without the troubles of the intellect.” The autumn of 1865 was one of very great interest to him, owing to all kinds of literary, musical, and political events, foremost among which was the war between Prussia and Austria, which drew him into the atmosphere of politics and made him once more an enthusiastic Prussian. ” Who would not be proud to be a Prussian in these days ? ” As may well be imagined, the student associations were on the side of the Liberals during the hostilities, but this attitude was more or less disavowed owing to the extraordinary turn of events in the war of 1866. As a matter of fact Fritz might at that time very easily have done more than remain a ” mere dummy,” as he called it, in all these great movements. Twice he offered himself to the authorities, and although, when examined, he was declared to be thoroughly healthy, he was refused with regret owing to his excessive short-sightedness. He would, however, have been quite ready to serve as a soldier and to proceed to the seat of war. In May, 1866, he concludes a letter to us as follows : ” Greet all our friends most heartily For me, alone out here ; And if our dear old aunts you see, Tell them that I may shortly be A Prussian Grenadier.” ” ONE WHO is READY FOR WAR.” Nevertheless it would have been very painful for him to be wrenched from his studies. It was precisely in the week of Sadowa that he wrote his work on Theognis for the Rheinisches Museum. Leipzig was occupied by the Prussians, and my brother gave the most amusing description of the town in its Prussian garb, and of the secret opposition of the Saxon Philistine. Despite these warlike events, music and science, but above all the stage, played, as they always did, a great part in Leipzig affairs. Fritz was a member of the Riedel Choral Society, which in those days used to give wonderfully beautiful concerts. During the anxious week of war, in which Dresden closed the doors of all its theatres owing to the lack of
audiences, Hedwig Raabe was cheered in the most enthusiastic manner by full houses at Leipzig, and that city forgot all about the gravity of the present beneath the spell of this enchanting artiste. My brother simply raved about her, and wrote a beautiful little album of original poems and compositions in her honour. This volume has, unfortunately, not been recovered to this day. Much to his regret, he had only a very slight personal acquaintance with her, and this fact he deplored, more particularly as it would have been very easy for him to have seen her frequently, since she was staying with a family, the members of which we called uncle, aunt and cousins, though we were not related to them in any way. Fritz, however, had not called on them at the proper time, and had thus failed to make himself at home with them as a sort of relative. It now pained him deeply that the most he could do was to pay a hasty visit there in order to secure an invitation whilst this charming creature was still in the house. Fritz was honestly in love with Hedwig Raabe, and Maximillian Harden is quite right when he says that she fulfilled the ideal of womanhood which my brother admired throughout the whole of his life. It was only necessary to hear him describe the piece “ She has discovered her heart” and to see how he represented her in it with ravished eyes in order to know how he also had discovered his heart. Leipzig enjoyed other and even higher theatrical amusements in the summer of 1866. My brother saw the artiste Seebach once more in a series of her best parts, and was deeply moved by her great art. It was hard for him to tear himself away from Leipzig, and not by any means only on account of the libraries there, which were essential to him in his philological work. At last, however, a gruesome guest made its home for a while in the city. Cholera, which had spread over the other parts of Saxony and Thuringia and reached even Naumburg, entered Leipzig. Only a few watering places, such as Kosen, remained untainted, and my mother and brother therefore went thither for the midsummer holidays, while I paid a visit to relatives in the Voigtland. My brother retained dreadful memories of the cholera. He declared that he had twice been attacked by the epidemic, and that on both occasions he had cured himself only by continually drinking hot water and inducing heavy perspiration. One night which he spent in the same house with a cholera corpse remained indelibly and gruesomely stamped upon his memory. He employed his stay during the autumn in Kosen in active work, in which he found the library at Pforta of great use. The Leipzig University opened its doors rather late, for the authorities had thought it desirable to wait for the cholera epidemic to subside. Fritz looked forward to his lovely plans for the new term with a cheerful heart, and wrote to Mushacke as follows : ” This winter (1866 1867) we shall do all we possibly can. Above all, we are thinking of giving a special impetus to our Philological Club, so that, like a ball, it may roll forward over other terms, through which we, its founders, will not be able to accompany it. Our aim will be to form a union of all the really strenuous philologists of Leipzig. With this object in view we have decided to elect twelve extraordinary members, and I, for my part, have a large number of Pforta fellows particularly in view. My next lecture will treat of ‘ A Theory Concerning Interpolations in the Tragedians.’ I have also arranged an evening with Romundt and two Pforta fellows, who are all three in the philological moulting stage, on which we shall read .Aeschylus’ Choephora together. We know from personal experience how hard it is to endure this period, when we become aware of the endlessness of our study and the momentary lack of success attending our labours. Maybe we shall be able to give each other mutual support. “ Finally, I may tell you that, with the majority of the more serious members of our club, I am also a member of Ritschl’s society, so that these two institutions now go almost hand-in-hand together. In Ritschl’s society we shall read more, to which I am looking forward with great joy.” The month of January, 1867, brought us a sad loss. Our dear Aunt Rosalie, who, as my brother had often said, came next to his mother and sister in his affections and reverence, was taken from us. She was always most devotedly concerned about our welfare, and had to some extent sought to replace our father, her beloved brother Ludwig, in our midst. But what she did above all was to keep alive and to maintain the family tradition, so that in this respect, as my brother rightly declared, her loss was irreparable. This was the first time that we experienced, with our full consciousness developed, the days of sorrow at the death of a beloved and intimate relative, and this loss therefore made the most profound impression on us both. She was quite ready to die, and it was truly touching to see how happy she was until the last in the thought that, as we were her next- of -kin, we should be the gainers. “ Now Fritz can pursue his academic career,” she said at last, with an affecting brightness in her eyes, after a prolonged silence, just before she died. ” Oh, auntie dear ! ” I cried, with deep affection, ” Fritz would not mind being an ordinary school teacher if only you could remain with us ! ” ” Ah. ! You are good children,” she said lovingly, ” but God knows best.” She was very much concerned about my brother’s religious and philosophical views, but always confidently declared that he would be certain to find the right road soon. She made him promise, however, never to impart his philosophical views to me, or at least only when I was older and more capable of judging for myself. Fritz kept this promise, but suffered a good deal from not being able to pour the whole torrent of his enthusiasm for Schopenhauer into my breast, and particularly during the year 1867 1868, which he spent in Naumburg, he complained very often that he had no one with whom he could discuss his most important affairs. He gave four important lectures in his Philological Club: 1. The latest edition of the Poems of Theognis. 2. The biographical sources of Suidas. 3. The source of Aristotle’s works. 4. The poetical contests. M In connection with this he writes : ” These themes constitute approximately my principal subjects of study. Incidentally I must point out that I wrote the Fontes Laertii as a background to the third lecture. From the first I began the study of this subject purely from inclination, and as early as my first term in Leipzig I began collecting a fair amount of material for it. I also talked a good deal to Ritschl about it, with the result that one day he asked me very mysteriously whether I would undertake an inquiry into the Fontes Laertii
provided I received a certain stimulus from another direction. For a long time I puzzled over the meaning of these words, until by a sudden inspiration I began to feel certain that the next theme to be proposed by the University for a prize essay would be this very subject. On the morning when the subject of the theme was published, I hurried to Kintschy and eagerly snatched at a copy of the Leipziger Nachrichten : as I expected, my eye fell on the words ‘ De Fontibus Laertii.’ During the time that followed, I was occupied almost day and night with the problems appertaining to this subject ; combination followed combination, until finally, in the Christmas holidays, which I employed to make a recapitulation of all the results I had attained hitherto, I suddenly realised that a certain relation existed between the question of Suidas and Laertius. The evening on which this idea occurred to me, I marvelled at the curious fact that I should have been led, as it were by some sure instinct, to make my way as an investigator first through the sources of Suidas and then through those of Laertius, so as suddenly to get the key to both questions in my hand. The more quickly and energetically I pressed my scheme forward from day to day, the more difficult it became for me to make up my mind to work out my results. Time pressed ever more threateningly, and yet the lovely months of the summer passed away in the most pleasant enjoyment in the company of my friend Rohde ; indeed, fresh scientific interests even began to occupy my mind and force me to prolonged reflection. The most important of these was the question of Homer, towards which I had sailed under full canvas in my last lecture to my Club. Finally, when I had not an hour to spare, I sat down to my Laertius essay, and wrote my results down as simply and as clearly as possible. The terrible 31st of July, 1867, dawned ; I drove my spurs into my steed with all my might, and got so far that on the evening of that day, at ten o’clock, I was able to run round to Rohde in the dark and rainy night with my completed manuscript. I found my friend ready, waiting for me, and with wine and glasses prepared for my refreshment.” His last year (1866 1867) in Leipzig was certainly the most enjoyable of all for my brother. How often has he not told me of wonderful fairy-like rowing parties up the river to Connewitz, of splendid evenings at the Club with his companions Roscher, Romundt, Windisch, and Kleinpaul ; but above all of his intercourse with Rohde, with whom in his last year in Leipzig he had contracted a deep friendship. On many points they did not agree at all : ” As soon, however, as the conversation sunk into the depths, their discordant opinions subsided and complete and quiet harmony resounded.” It was delightful to hear my brother and Rohde speak of their Leipzig reminiscences in later years. Rohde could imitate the Leipzig dialect so comically in the midst of his poetical descriptions that he made us die of laughter. The two friends did a lot of riding and pistol shooting in those days. They had taken riding lessons at Herr Bieler’s School, which stood exactly opposite Ritschl’s College. In later years a young scholar told me how profoundly Nietzsche and Rohde had impressed their fellow-students in those days. When they entered Ritschl’s College, beaming with intellect, health and youthful spirits, dressed for riding and with their stocks in their hands, they were stared at with open-eyed wonder ” as two young gods.” All who remember this period recollect Nietzsche as a wonderful young man, and do not fail to refer to a certain austere chastity about him which always made Rohde compare him with the magnificent youths whom Adalbert Stifter depicts so sympathetically. Twenty-three years later, in a letter to Overbeck, Rohde said that Nietzsche at that time seemed to him ” a splendid man and a new revelation of humanity ! ” As soon as the prize essay was delivered, my brother arranged a holiday tour with Rohde into the Bohmer Wald, where they had all kinds of romantic and amusing experiences. One or two notes about the journey are still extant, as well as all kinds of comic quotations from the Visitors’ Books at the various places of interest. I shall only give one example of these, which Rohde said afterwards had been written by my brother and which was aimed at him (Rohde), because he had felt a great admiration for two charming young ladies belonging to a party of extremely unsympathetic fellow-travellers : ” In the Bible stands the order That we all must love our neighbour. Yet you Holy Book distorters Only love your neighbours’ daughters ! ” He concluded the tour by a visit to Meiningen, where the ” Musicians of the Future ” were holding a musical festival for four days. ” The abbe Liszt presided ; this school has plunged passionately into Schopenhauer ; a symphonic composition by Hans von Billow, called Nirvana, was provided with a programme containing a number of quotations from Schopenhauer. The music, however, was horrible. On the other hand, Liszt, in one of his own sacred compositions, had struck the character of the Indian Nirvana to perfection, more particularly in his Beatitudes.” When he returned to Naumburg we spent an extraordinarily jolly time during the last weeks of the summer, at the end of which my brother straightway threw himself into a new philosophical theme ” Concerning the apocryphal writings of Democritus.” This essay was intended to form one of a cycle of compositions by Ritschl’s special Leipzig pupils, which was to be presented to him as a testimonial ; but, as Fritz wrote to Baron von Gersdorff, “ Fate intervened.” CHAPTER XII A YEAR’S SOLDIERING As I have already said, my brother had frequently applied to the army officials to serve, and on each occasion he had been found strong, healthy, and fit, though he had been rejected owing to his extreme short-sightedness. He accordingly began to think that he would be exempt from military service. When, however, on the 30th September, 1867, he set out in good spirits to the Philological Congress at Halle, on the Saale, he met Colonel von Jagemann on the platform at the station. This officer, who was commanding a division of the Fourth Horse Artillery, then stationed at Naumburg, informed him that a new regulation had just been passed, according to which young men who were both healthy, and otherwise fit for service, would be compelled to enter the army if the number of their glasses did not exceed 8. Now it happened that on the occasion of his last application in Naumburg, on the 26th September, Fritz had worn No. 8 glasses. This number was much too weak for his eyes, but the authorities had not examined his sight at all, but only his pince-nez. And thus Fate intervened. He was suddenly declared fit for service, and was obliged to make up his mind to enter the army as soon as possible. He naturally wanted to serve in a University town. Von Jagemann accordingly advised him to proceed quietly on his journey to Halle, and promised him that he would in the meanwhile prepare a form, in which he would state that Fritz desired to serve in Berlin, owing to the nature of his studies, and that there was nothing to prevent him from doing so. With this certificate in his
possession my brother went to Berlin on 4th October, in order to present himself to one of the Guard Regiments. Unfortunately all these were full to overflowing with volunteers, and it had been decided not to accept any more. He was therefore obliged to return to Naumburg in order to serve there, despite the fact that service in the Horse Artillery was very arduous. The only thing that induced him to take the step was the riding, which he had already practised in Leipzig, and enjoyed very much. The contrast between his time in Leipzig, with its scientific and artistic joys, and its happy companionship with the friends whose leader he was, and the hard period of service in the Artillery, was terrible. I must confess that when in the early dawn I saw my brother, dressed in his drill clothes, go to his horse in the Artillery Barracks, I felt positively humiliated. As a matter of fact he only had to see to his horse himself for the first six weeks, after which he was able to keep a servant, who saved him the most unpleasant side of his duties. My brother, however, managed the change and the difficulties of the situation with courage and humour, a fact which is brought out very vividly in a letter to Rohde. After having described his visit to the Philological Congress of Halle, he continues : “ Daily, yea, hourly, we waited in Halle for good old Ritschl’s arrival. He had promised to come, but was prevented by the bad weather. How we longed for his presence, more particularly I who owed him so much ! It is thanks to him that I am now in possession of the whole of the Rhinisches Museum, without having done anything for it as yet, and constrained, moreover, to the absolute impossibility of doing anything for its Index for many a day to come. I did not apply the first few weeks after our return to this labour of duty, but worked in the most cheerful manner upon my essay on Democritus, which was destined to be written in honorem. Thus the draft, at all events, is ready, although in order to demonstrate carefully all my mad assertions, and to complete the construction of the whole, a lot still remains to be done far too much, indeed, for one who in other directions is extremely busy. ” Now you will naturally enquire : if he does not smoke, if he does not play, if he neither compiles an index, nor completes his essay on Democritus, nor makes researches about Laertius and Suidas, what is he doing ? “ He is drilling. ” Yes, my dear friend, if ever the spirit leads you early one morning somewhere between five and six o’clock, to Naumburg, and accidentally guides your steps to me: do not be overcome by the spectacle which will present itself to your senses. Suddenly you will breathe the air of stables. In the dim light of a lantern you will perceive a few forms. Scraping, neighing and brushing will go on all round you, and in the midst of it all, in the habit of a stable boy, actively engaged in removing unmentionable and undesirable matter from the place, or busy grooming a horse with a curry-comb I shudder at the sight of this instrument you will, upon my word, see myself. A few hours later you will perceive two horses galloping round the ring, not without riders, and one of these will look remarkably like your friend. He rides his fiery prancing steed, and hopes one day to be able to ride well, although, or rather precisely because, he rides for the present on a rug, with spurs and without stirrups, but without a riding whip. He was also compelled quickly to forget all he had learnt in the Leipzig Biding School, and above all to acquire with all possible despatch a more certain and more regimental seat. At other times he stands diligently and attentively beside a large gun, and fetches shells from the limber, or cleans out the barrel with a cleaning rod, or carries out minute calculations. But above all he has a good deal to learn. ” I assure you that my philosophy now has ample opportunities of being of practical service to me. I have not for a moment felt depressed, but on the contrary I have often smiled as though I were living in a fairy tale. At times too when I am concealed beneath the belly of my steed I whisper, ‘ Schopenhauer, help! ‘ and when, exhausted and covered with perspiration, I return home, I am refreshed by the sight of the picture which stands on my writing table, or I throw open the Parerga, which, together with Byron, is more sympathetic than ever to me.” Meanwhile a great joy. about which he writes to Gersdorff, was awaiting the young warrior : ” This summer, the last that is to say, the second which I have spent in Leipzig, kept me very busy. You know that I worked hard at the prize essay, De Fontibus Laertii Diogenes. I have succeeded every bit as well as I hoped ; quite a number of excellent, and to some extent important that is to say, important in our opinion results have come of it, and finally the longed-for verdict of the Faculty has been pronounced. Will you allow me to quote you a few lines out of Ritschl’s judicium concerning it ? I am very pleased about it, because it will encourage me to continue along a road from which scepticism at times sorely tempted me to diverge. Well, then, after the mention of my name and my motto and this judgment was pronounced before the crowded hall. Unfortunately, I was not able to be present, and this was particularly painful to me because the Philological Club wished to give me, their Founder and Ex-President, a symposium, at Simmer’s, to which dear old Ritschl had promised to come. Throughout the whole of the winter Fritz endeavoured to combine his military service with his scientific work, but he gradually perceived that the double task was almost impossible. To his friend Rohde he complains : ” Miserable man, I say to myself, you have not two hours to spare in the whole day and even these you must sacrifice to Mars, who otherwise refuses to grant you your lieutenant’s commission. Ah, my dear friend, what a child of misfortune is a horse-artillery man when he has literary tastes into the bargain. Our old god of War loved young women, not shrivelled old Muses. A bombardier, who often enough in his barrack room sits upon a dirty stool meditating upon Deruocritean problems, while his boots are being polished for him, is really a paradox, on whom the gods must look with scorn.” The work which he tried to do in spite of all this did not satisfy him. From the end of January to the end of February I was away from Naumburg, and when I returned I found my brother in a thoroughly miserable mood. He greatly missed the friends with whom he used to share his philosophical and philological studies ; for in accordance with the promise he had made to our deceased Aunt Rosalie, he could not discuss Schopenhauer with me. We therefore arranged that his friends should visit him either at Easter or Whitsuntide. ” If only the spring would come round ! ” he exclaimed with a sigh. In winter, service in the Horse Artillery is very arduous. Fritz fulfilled his duties, however, with great zeal, and on all sides, from the captain and lieutenant down to the noncommissioned officers, one heard only praise of him. I would not dare swear that the praise of the non-commissioned officers was quite impartial. Fritz always treated them to
breakfast, a thing which very much warmed their hearts and prompted them to pay the gentleman volunteer many a compliment, though sometimes in a rather comical manner. When, for instance, one of them was explaining for the hundredth time the construction of the gun to a bombardier, who had already served two years, he concluded with the following words : ” You blockhead, you are really too stupid for words, even the volunteer Nietzsche has already understood it.” As the non-commissioned officer added quickly, ” to whom I only explained it once,” it was rather a left-handed compliment. One evening, while my mother and I were at a friend’s house, the lieutenant of my brother’s company came to us in a rather agitated frame of mind, and told us that Fritz had fainted twice during the hour of instruction. We hurried home and found him very ill and weak. Two days previously he had failed in attempting to mount his horse (one of the most restive and fiery animals in the battery). He had given his chest a severe blow on the pommel of the saddle, and had felt a sharp twitching pain in his left side. Nevertheless he had quietly gone on riding, and had endured the increasing agony for two whole days. On the evening of the second day, however, he had fallen down in those fainting fits, and on the following day he lay tortured with the most terrible pains, with a high temperature, and could not even move. The doctors declared that he had torn two muscles in his chest by the blow on the saddle. In consequence of this the whole system of muscles and tissues was inflamed, and serious suppuration set in through the bleeding of the severed muscles. My brother suffered incredible torture, had to he helped in rising and in lying down, and grew so weak that, when at last he did get up, he had to learn to walk again. Gradually his condition improved, his youthful strength overcame the illness, and with great eagerness he plunged once more into his manifold philological and other studies. He felt so happy and strong that he forgot the suppurating wound which the accident had left behind. Finally, however, it was discovered that the wound would not close because the ribs themselves had been grazed by the blow against the saddle. His military doctors began to feel rather uneasy, and had fears of an operation. They therefore advised my brother to go to the famous surgeon, Volkmann, of Halle, who, as a matter of fact, at first made a very unfavourable diagnosis of the wound. My brother then went to the brine baths of Wittekind, close to Halle, in order to place himself in Volkmann’s hands. The healing process was somewhat painful, but after three weeks of applications of iodine and of taking the waters, etc., the wound was healed without an operation becoming necessary. All that remained was a deep scar above the bone, where the wound had been, which for five months had given my brother such endless pain and us such great trouble. It was only afterwards that Volkmann informed us that the suppuration had gone so far that he had at first feared it had attacked the lungs, in which case a recovery would have been out of the question. He congratulated my brother very heartily upon his thorough good health, and upon the excellence and purity of his blood. It was only thanks to this that his dangerous wound had healed so well. His stay at the brine baths of Wittekind had, even in respect of the people he met there, turned out exceedingly pleasant, and he returned very much refreshed from his visit. In the midst of his philological studies my brother was busy throughout the spring with plans for the future. As the next step to be taken was to get his Doctor’s Degree, he thought of using his work on Democritus for this purpose, as the testimonial to Ritschl had fallen through. Those who were to join with him in this testimonial had devoted their work to other ends also. With regard to his Doctor’s thesis he writes to Erwin Rohde : ” As a matter of fact both my essay on Democritus and that on Homer are too good for this purpose ; that is to say, I should like to lay them by, so as to be able to work them out at my leisure, a thing that I shall be able to do perhaps in the Quartier Latin ; but I should not care to spoil this beautiful material by tearing it to bits. Both these themes, moreover, are too long-winded and too German for a thesis. Now it happens that for some time I have had a philosophical scheme (i.e., to write on the concept of the organic since the time of Kant), and I have indeed collected enough material for the task. On the whole, however, this theme does not suit the object in view, more particularly if one does not want to set to work in a more frivolous spirit than a butterfly. In the end, therefore, I shall have to treat a narrower, more definite, philological question.” The first notes of the philosophical essay, ” Teleology since Kant,” with which my brother had been busy during the March and April after his illness, are still in existence. It is possible that the stimulus to this work was derived by him from Albert Lange’s History of Materialism, which he read as it appeared in 1866, and studied afresh in February, 1868. At that time he thought very highly of the work, and wrote to Gersdorff about it as follows : “ It is a book which gives very much more than its title promises, and one can read it through again and again as a real treasure.” After taking his Doctor’s Degree, his idea was to become a Privat Dozent (fellow), a plan to which he sought to persuade even Erwin Rohde: ” By-the-bye, dear friend, let me implore you sincerely to keep your eyes fixed upon the thought of entering an academic career ; for some day, at all events, you will have to come to a sound resolution on this matter. It is not needful in our case to indulge in any anxious self-examination on this point. We must do it simply because we cannot do anything else, because we have no other fitting career before us, because, moreover, we have left the paths which might have led to other more useful posts, and because, finally, we have no other means of applying our accumulation of powers and opinions usefully to our fellow-creatures, save by this road. Lastly, we should not live only for ourselves. Let us, in our own way, see to it that young philologists are reared with the necessary scepticism, free from pedantry, and the over-valuation of their profession, and behave as genuine promoters of classical studies. Soyons de noire siecle, as the French say a standpoint which no one forgets more easily than the skilled philologist.” My brother had a horror of ” those notorious State Examinations that jading of the memory, of the powers of production, of individual development, that instrument of a superannuated Government which ordains that everything should be levelled.” “ I am quite convinced,” he writes in a letter to Rohde, ‘ ‘ that I shall never pass this examination, because I shall never be able to do it. Therefore let us strike this also out of the programme of our ‘ music of the future ‘ : surely it is not essential to our University career.” At the beginning of August he writes with the high spirits of a convalescent : ” To-day I am able to congratulate both yourself and myself you as the happy and much admired winner in the academic race, myself as one who is at last convalescent and of whom the angels sing : ” ‘ Quite rescued is that noble bone His rib from evil’s way ; No longer does it
strive alone To suppurate away.’ ” He then tells his friend that they are both marked out by Dame Fortune to be Privat Dozenten in Kiel and Leipzig respectively, and are awaited in those cities ; then he continues jokingly : ” But nothing must prevent us from spending a year together in Paris : after which each of us will be allowed to disseminate optional false doctrines, at optional Universities, to optional suckling souls.” He regarded his student life as ended. Perhaps it would be as well at this point to look back at my brother’s University studies. From the evidence of his lecture note-books during the six terms constituting his life as a student, he attended the following lectures : In Bonn, winter 18641865 : Politics by Sybel, History of German Art by Springer, Michael Angelo’s Life and Works by Springer, Plautus’ Miles Gloriosus by Ritschl, Church History by Kraft, The Gospel of St. John by Schlottmann. Summer, 1865 : General History of Philosophy by Schaarschmidt, Archaeology by Jahn, Latin Grammar by Ritschl, History of German Literature by Springer. In addition to these he attended Ritschl’ s courses on Philology, Jahn’s on Archaeology, and Springer’s on The History of Art. In Leipzig, winter 1865 1866 : Latin Epigraphy by Ritschl, History of Greek Tragedy and Introduction to Aeschylus, The Seven Against Thebes by Ritschl, History of Greek Literature by Curtius, First Principles of Practical Politics as an Introduction to the Science of Statecraft and Law by Eoscher. Winter, 1866 1867 : Greek Grammar by Curtius, Interpretation of the Fragments of the Greek Lyricists by Curtius, Greek Palseography by Tischendorff, Latin Grammar by Ritschl. Summer, 1867 : Latin Grammar by Ritschl. From the beginning of his second term at Leipzig he was a member of the Philological Class. It is quite possible that in addition to the above he attended other lectures, ‘as some of his lecture note-books may have gone astray. This at least is certain, that the most important part of his studies from the period of his Leipzig student days did not consist in his attendance at lecture but rather in his private work at home work which he continued during his military service and more particularly during his illness after his severe accident. Fritz still had to take great care of himself and could not think of resuming his military duties. Although he had really only completed five months training he was entered as having done his military service on the 1st of April, and also received the rank of Lieutenant of Reserve on condition that he served one month in the spring in order to acquire the necessary knowledge for commanding a battery. At the close of his military year he allowed himself to be photographed in a more or less burlesque military attitude with a drawn sword in his hand, an act which was later to lead to many a joke and many a misunderstanding. August, 1868, brought the long expected visit of his friend Erwin Rohde. On the 8th October, looking back upon the whole year and especially this visit, my brother writes : ” Now that I have to look back upon a whole year so full of changes, a year packed with pleasant and unpleasant emotions, ascetic and eudaemonistic experiences, a year begun in the stable, continued on the sick bed, and completed with the servile work of an index ; now that I can count up the good moments, the beautiful hopes and the peaceful hours of reflection this year has brought, I think again with profound delight of the sensations of those refreshing days during which we were together in August.” During the whole of September Fritz was busily engaged upon the Index, which I have already mentioned often enough, and which was to be made for the Rheinisches Museum, after twenty-four years of publication a work which had been handed over to him through Ritschl’s recommendation and in which he allowed me to have a share. We used to grow so cheerful over the task, that people passing by our veranda can certainly never have imagined that we were engaged upon such scholarly and tedious work. Thus Fritz was able to bring this year of military service cheerfully, energetically and courageously to a close, though it had been a heavy twelve months during which his life had at one moment hung by a single hair. But strangely enough this serious illness, despite its danger, had brought my brother a valuable present : six whole months of perfect liberty, during which he was thrown entirely upon his own resources without being influenced either by the University, its teachers, or its lectures, free from being obliged to squander his time either on studies or in intercourse which was of no use to him, and unencumbered by the oppressive military service, able to live for himself alone and his own special aspirations. How eagerly did he now turn to philosophical problems and how soon was even his philological work involuntarily given a philosophical background ! Can it be that a man always has the experience which is typical of himself ? For, once again in my brother’s life, illness appears as the great liberator from an oppressive yoke, as the cruel and dangerous guide to ” Nietzsche with himself alone.” CHAPTER XIII INFLUENCES AN important question which recurs under the most different forms and in connection with the most different men and books, in all that has been written about my brother, is that concerning the personalities and literature which exercised an influence over him during his youth, and later in life. This is certainly a question of the utmost subtlety, which it is extremely difficult to answer, and which cannot be dealt with exhaustively here. Who can tell accurately all that has ever exercised any influence or made an impression upon a young soul ? It is like trying to analyse the human body into parts in order to discover accurately what was the result of atmospheric, solar, or nutritive influences in it, and to deduce there from the exact extent of the individual energy for growth ; for it is all these things together that have conduced to the development, the bloom, and the prosperity of the human body. For a whole surging world of spiritual influences storms upon the fiery young spirit, more particularly when it is animated by a profound thirst for knowledge, as was that of my brother, who hastened towards these influences with open arms. He did not, however, allow them to overpower him without showing some resistance ; he tested the spiritual tendencies of his age, and those he selected and rejected are certainly characteristic, as is also the time during which he allowed them to rule him, the strength with which they did so, and the precise period at which the mature spirit threw off these trammels in order to seek its own individual path. Those who study my brother’s life carefully will be surprised at the number of writers of the past and present of whom he already had a very sound knowledge before his twentieth year, when he became a University student. Professor Max Heinze once expressed his astonishment at the really extraordinary range of his information at that time. ” Where on earth did he find time to acquire it ? ” he cried, and we both came to the conclusion that it was Pforta, with its strict division of time, and the use of it, which had given him the chance of
plunging so deeply into these multifarious interests. But this left unexplained his perspicacity, and his judgment with regard to the most remarkable and generally unknown books which he found entirely of his own accord. It would be an interesting task to make a collection of the works for which my brother so early in life felt the warmest interest and read with passionate love. These books were my brother’s teachers and educators, and out of all these elements he derived the strength which helped the great proud tree to grow, that to-day we recognise as his personality. My brother was very fond of talking about all those men and works that had had an influence upon him. He was quite at one with Goethe on this point. ” People are always talking about originality. But what does that mean ? If I could only say how much I was indebted to my great predecessors and contemporaries, there would be little left over.” If in later years my brother laid stress with a certain pride upon his own importance and the originality of his treatment of certain problems, it was only in self-defence against the malevolent misunderstandings of his fellow-countrymen. Moreover, from the results of his philosophy we gather that it is not the novelty of the thought upon which he insists so much as upon the effects of the union of an original personality with this thought. The strongest influences which came into his life sprang from three different sources : first, the study of antiquity, in which connection the important part played by classical history and archaeology in my brother’s development cannot be overrated ; secondly, Schopenhauer, of whom we have already heard ; and finally Richard Wagner, whom we shall mention for the first time in this chapter. The influence of antiquity that is to say, of Hellenism was the first to affect him, and lasted the longest, and even when the values of ancient Home took the front rank, his old yearning “ which with the power of an instinct leads our senses and our desires like a charming fairy conductress to the Greeks ” remained with him. Certainly one of the most important starting points for my brother’s interest in psychological and scientific problems was his admiration for this wonderful people, the Greeks, who though so small in numbers were able to win the most prominent place in the history of intellect and of art. He tried to find the roots of the power which gave birth to Hellenism, and made it the ruler of our culture. In any case it was the love of Grecian antiquity which led him to philology, though he was able to adduce other subtle and convincing reasons for the choice of this study. The most profound reason of all, however, was (as I know from many an intimate conversation with him) that philology was precisely the science which allowed him the most profound intercourse with the spirit of antiquity. But his sole object was the hope of ultimately obtaining a general view of the whole of it, and philology, with its excellent method, was to him only a means to an end. Thus it was always a painful experience to him to meet among his fellow students with any philological pedantry. In the spring of 1867 he writes to Baron von Gersdorff : “ It cannot be denied that the inspiring general view of antiquity is entirely absent in the majority of philologists because they stand too near the picture and examine a mere spot of paint instead of admiring, and, what is more, enjoying, the great outstanding features of the whole canvas. When, I ask, have we ever had, even for one moment, that pure joy in our studies of antiquity of which we unfortunately so often talk ? ” In his attitude towards philology he very early showed independence. Encouraged by Ritschl, by his success in philological work, and by his lectures before his Philological Club, and spurred on by the general recognition he received, my brother, as we gather from all his notes on the subject, threw himself with tremendous zeal into the study of philology. Nevertheless, from the beginning of the year 1866 to the autumn of 1868 we find a host of notes which prove how sceptical was his attitude towards the whole of philogical study as it was then pursued ; and we see how again and again he puts this question to himself in his solitude : “ Are the present objects of philology worth all the lives and intellectual strength which are being applied to their pursuit ? ” The only answer all my brother’s capacities and aspirations could have given to this question would have been a flat negative. It is therefore almost touching to see what he made out of this dry science, how he extended it, how he deepened it and brought it into relation with infinitely lofty and great missions, in order to elevate it to some vital object, so that he himself could endure its study. For instance, he writes : “ In what does the fruitfulness of philology lie, which can reconcile us to some extent to yield to it and become reconciled with the study of it ? Some seeds must certainly have sprouted from all the infinite industry and pains expended in its service ! It is fruitful wherever its study is concerned with general human problems. Thus its most glorious triumph is in the critical comparison of languages, if viewed from a philosophical point of view.” One might ask how my brother ever lighted upon philology at all, and why, despite all his doubts on the subject, he remained faithful to this study. I have already suggested that the deepest reason was certainly his prepossession in favour of antiquity, while, as former chapters have shown, the exceptionally perfect philological schooling provided by Pforta taught him so soon to master the instrument that philology lays in one’s hand, that he came to regard this science as a counter-agent to his thirst for universal knowledge. Henri Lichtenherger l very rightly says that : ” The chief one was beyond doubt the desire to be ‘ Master ‘ of a well-defined speciality. Nietzsche was well aware of the amount of danger that lay in the desire for universal culture He came to understand early in life that if he acquired a superficial knowledge of every science without having the courage to limit his curiosity, he would infallibly become a dilettante. Now, his scrupulous and conscientious nature could never be satisfied with a heap of incomplete and badly digested knowledge. From his early youth he felt an aversion which continued to increase from ‘ the representative of modern education,’ the journalist, ‘ the literary man who is nothing, but represents almost everything, who plays the part of connoisseur, and who, in all modesty, sees that he gets all that money, glory, and honour that belong to the real connoisseur.’ The knowledge he wished to acquire was the real, solid knowledge of the ‘ master ‘ who, in a restricted sphere, arrives at definite results ; it was his ambition to become a good workman in some corner of the vast field of science. From this point of view philology attracted him by the rigour of its method, by the minuteness of its detailed researches, by that dryness and sterility which made it an unpopular subject with the great public. “ What further pleased him in philology was that it was ‘ out of season,’ ‘ un-present ‘ (unzeitgemdss) to use the expression which he himself popularised. The vulgar mob usually reproaches the antiquary with losing his time in studying far-off things, something dead and useless, instead of giving his attention to questions of the day. Now, Nietzsche is
grateful to philology, just because it is not a utilitarian science, but rather an occupation for aristocrats, mandarins of the spirit ; he is grateful to it because it exacts from its followers meditation, silence, judicious and patient slowness : all of which are unknown to the busy, hustling, superficial man of the present day.” Many years later when my brother had long given up his Philological Professorship he writes of it in warm acknowledgment : ” Philology is that venerable art which exacts from its followers one thing above all to step to one side, to leave themselves spare moments, to grow silent, to become slow the leisurely art of the goldsmith and of the connoisseur applied to language : an art which has nothing to do but carry out fine careful work, and attains nothing if not lento. For this very reason philology is now more desirable than ever before ; for this very reason it is the highest attraction and incitement in an age of ‘ work ‘ : that is to say, of haste, of unseemly and immoderate hurry-scurry, which is intent upon ‘ getting things done ‘ at once, even every book, whether old or new. Philology itself, perhaps, will not get things done so hurriedly : it teaches how to read well : i.e., slowly, profoundly, with consideration for that which is to follow, and that which is past, the mental doors ajar, with delicate fingers and eyes.” I believe that my brother was most attached to philology when he was a soldier in Naumburg, when it must to some extent have been a comfort to him in the midst of duties which lay so remote from his intellect. And when the joyful feeling of convalescence was combined with his return to philological study, my brother certainly believed himself that he was a philologist heart and soul. When, however, in the autumn of 1868 he returned to Leipzig, which was then in the very vortex of philological activity, and found his friend Rohde very shabbily attacked, philologists and philology struck him in a somewhat different light. Any disrespectful treatment of his friends or of their intellectual work was more painful to him than if the attack had been levelled at him personally. In a letter to Rohde he says : “ Now that I have once more seen the teeming brood of philologists of our day at close quarters, now that I have observed daily the whole of the mole-hill activity, and the animals with their cheek-pouches full, their eyes blinded, rejoicing over the captured worm and showing absolute indifference to the true and the pressing problems of life ; now that I have seen these things not only in the young brood but in their elders as well, I become ever more clearly convinced that we two, if we wish to remain true to our genius, will not be able to pursue our life task without many a conflict and many an obstacle. When the philologist and the man cannot be completely one, the whole tribe above mentioned gapes in wonder at the miracle ; it grows angry and finally scratches, growls and bites. You have an example of this in yourself. For I am quite certain on this point, that the trick you have been played was not directed particularly at your work but at your person ; and I also foster the definite hope very soon to have a foretaste of that which awaits me in this infernal atmosphere.” Tip to that time, however, his superiors and fellow students at Leipzig had been very friendly to him. According to the testimony of Hitachi’s wife he had the general reputation of being as genial as he was clever, and in addition to this was regarded as an extraordinarily gifted philologist. His attitude to Schopenhauer was just as independent as his attitude to philology, although in the case of this philosopher there was an extra element of personal feeling and admiration. Schopenhauer was not a book for him, but a friend. He was already dead when my brother first learnt to know his work, otherwise he would have gone to him immediately to greet him as a friend and father ; for during the whole of his childhood and youth he had yearned for the paternal friend he had missed so bitterly through our father’s all too early death, and whose place our grandfather was only temporarily able to fill in his early years. And it was for this reason that he always sought to form a mental image of Schopenhauer the man, which was very different from the one his disciples had of him. “ How can these shallow-pates, these watery intellects, know anything of Schopenhauer the man ! ” he often cried in indignation. Even during the period of his most whole-hearted enthusiasm for Schopenhauer, he did not accept all his views without criticism. A fragment of a “ criticism of Schopenhauer’s philosophy” is very important in this respect. As early as the autumn of the year 1867 his critical faculty was already secretly at work upon the doctrines of the revered philosopher, even though his respect forbade him to speak his views aloud. If the time at which these notes were written were not fixed beyond a doubt, nobody would ever have dreamt of attributing them to this early period during which he was apparently such an uncritical believer in his master ; but from internal evidence they would be placed in a later period, when he was beginning to grow estranged from Schopenhauer. In after years, when he wrote fresh prefaces to previously published works, my brother frequently referred to these fundamental views and feelings which were only expressed later, and by so doing incurred the superficial reproach of ignorant critics that he ante-dated opinions of his later period by reading them into earlier works. His manuscripts in this and many other cases prove the reverse. It is characteristic of my brother’s development, that almost all his ideas began to be formed exceedingly early in life, though they found expression in his works only very much later, after they had for a long while lain concealed beneath floods of other interests or beneath delicate scruples. In order to understand my brother in this respect it must be remembered that two natural bents, which generally stand opposed to each other, were united in him to form a beautiful harmony, namely, a warm poetical sensitive heart, inclined to reverence, and a sharp, critical ruthless understanding ploughing only towards truth. But his warmness of heart preponderated and his almost painful scruples urged him in many respects to the most extreme reserve. In order to understand my brother and his relations with his friends it is necessary to bear these two tendencies of his in mind. He was not blind to the qualities of his friends - the word ” Friend ” was so holy in his eyes that in his letters to them, and in his attitude towards the outer world, the only thing he revealed was his transfiguring love ; for he would completely stifle all criticism, and only allow this to find expression when it was no longer possible to conceal his inner change. But, oh! what pain his warm, reverent heart had to suffer when his relentless love of Truth lifted the veil from his friends or his ideals then his friendships often came to a sad end. On his return to Leipzig my brother absolutely refused to resume any of the ties of student life. The most dreadful feature of his existence there was the hotel cooking, which in those days must have been really shocking. Even in the year 1888 he writes : “ It was through the cooking in vogue at Leipzig, for instance, together with my first study of
Schopenhauer (1865) that I earnestly renounced my ‘ “ Will to Live.’ To spoil one’s stomach by absorbing . insufficient nourishment this problem seemed to my mind solved with admirable felicity by the above-mentioned cookery.” In the holidays he always used to bring home fresh complaints about the uninviting food. After having spent a whole year in Naumburg with our dear mother (this was the longest period he had ever spent with us at home since his childhood) he felt he had become too pampered ever again to be able to endure hotel food. He therefore engaged some rather luxurious rooms in the Lessing Strasse and boarded with the family of one of the Professors. At the end of October, 1868, he wrote to Erwin Rohde as follows : “ I have come back to Leipzig with utterly different views and have completely doffed the garb of the student and all the life connected with it. A friendly spirit, through the medium of the excellent Windisch, helped me to find a home which, up to the present, satisfies my needs and prevents a relapse into student unrest, together with all the restaurant and theatre fever which it involves. My rooms are at the entrance of the Lessing Strasse in a garden there ; they have a really charming and varied prospect and give me the pleasure of being able to sit within my own four walls of an evening and to warm myself at the brazier of philology.” This was indeed a great thing for Fritz, who formerly felt the desire of frittering away all his evenings at the theatre. Moreover, this winter he wished more than ever before to be a ” society man,” and therefore paid a number of calls. above all, however, he concentrated his attention upon preparing for his academic career, and tried to find out whether he really was suited to become a University lecturer. He describes one of these attempts to his friend Rohde as follows : ” The first lecture of our Philological Club this term was fixed to take place in the evening and I was courteously approached and asked whether I would undertake it. I who stand in need of opportunities for practice in academic work was only too glad to accept on the spot and was delighted on entering Zaspel’s to see a black mass of about forty people. I had charged Romundt to keep an eye upon me so as to be able to tell me afterwards how the theatrical side, i.e., the delivery, voice, style and arrangement went, and what effect they had upon the audience. I spoke quite extempore, and had only a very diminutive slip of paper to assist me, and my subject, you must remember, was The Satires of Varro and Menippus the Cynic : and behold everything was good! I shall be able to enter an academic career after all ! ” I ought to tell you that until Easter I intend to go through with all the annoyances of habilitation and at the same time to take my Doctor’s Degree. I shall be allowed to do this, all that is required being a special permit, as I have not the usual five years course behind me. Now the formality of habilitation and the work it entails are quite distinct ; but I think it only right that when I have thrown the fetters from my hands I should do some travelling about the world for the last time as a private person ! Oh, dear friend, my feelings will be those of a bridegroom, joy and vexation mixed, humour, Menippus.” As a matter of fact, although he does not admit it to Rohde, he often went to the theatre and to concerts, subscribed to many entertainments and at times wrote criticisms of concerts and lectures for the Deutsche AUgemeine Zeitung. about one of these concerts he wrote to Rohde at the end of October : ” This evening I was at the Ruterpe Society, which has started its winter concerts, and I refreshed myself with the prelude to Tristan und Isolde as well as the overture to the Meistersinyer. I cannot get myself to regard this music coldly and critically ; every tissue and every nerve vibrates in me, and for a long time I have not had such an enduring feeling of rapture as when listening to the last-mentioned overture. My permanent seat as a subscriber is surrounded by critical spirits : immediately in front of me there sits Gernsdorff, the abomination I have spoken to you about ; on my left Dr. Paul, the present hero of the Tageblatt ; two places to the right of me is my friend Stede, who turns out critical opinions for the Musical Journal ; it is a thorny corner, and when we four all shake our heads together, it means disaster.” It will readily be understood that my brother, with his profound admiration for Richard Wagner, was very keen to become acquainted with the latter ‘s relatives in Leipzig. As early as the beginning of October he had written to Rohde from Naumburg : ” I have one woman more particularly in view, of whom wonderful things have been told me ; she is the wife of Professor Brockhaus and a sister of Richard “ Wagner’s, and my friend Windisch, who has just called upon me, gave me a surprising account of her capacities. What pleases me about all this is that it confirms Schopenhauer’s theory of heredity. Wagner’s other sister, who was formerly an actress in Dresden, is also said to have been a very distinguished woman.” The circumstances of his first visit to the Brockhaus’s and the feeling he had on that occasion are described in a letter to his dear friend Rohde on the 9th of November, 1868 : ” When I reached home yesterday I found a card addressed to me with this note upon it : ‘Do you wish to make the acquaintance of Richard Wagner ? If so meet me at a quarter to four in the Theatre Cafe, Windisch.’ This news I can assure you so turned my head, that I quite forgot what I was doing before it came, and was thoroughly bewildered. ” I naturally ran thither and found my friend, who gave me a lot of fresh information. Wagner had come to Leipzig to his relatives in the strictest incognito ; the press had no inkling of his visit, and all Brockhaus’s servants were as dumb as graves in livery. Now Wagner’s sister Frau Brockhaus, that well informed and clever woman, had introduced her brother to her friend Frau Ritschl, and on this occasion she was able proudly to boast of the friend to the brother and of the brother to the friend, the lucky creature ! Wagner played the Meisterlied, which you must know, to Frau Ritschl, and this good lady told him that she already knew the song very well, mea opera. Imagine Wagner’s joy and surprise ! And with the utmost readiness in the world he declared his willingness to meet me incognito. I was to be invited on Friday evening. Windisch, however, explained that I was engaged by my official duties and obligations ; Saturday afternoon was accordingly fixed. Windisch and I ran to the Brockhaus’s, found the Professor’s family, but no Wagner. He had just gone out with an enormous hat on his huge head. It was thus that I made the acquaintance of the excellent family and received a kind invitation for Sunday evening. ” On this day I felt as though I were in fairyland, and you must allow that in view of the inaccessibility of the great man, the circumstances leading up to this acquaintance were somewhat extraordinary. ” As I was under the impression that a large company of guests were likely to be there, I decided to dress very ceremoniously, and was glad that my tailor had promised me a new dress suit precisely for the Sunday in question. It was a beastly day with continual showers of ram and snow ; one shuddered at the thought of going out into the open, and I was
therefore very glad when little Roscher paid me a visit in the afternoon to tell me something about the Eleatics …. It was getting dark, the tailor did not turn up, and Roscher left me. I accompanied him, called on the tailor myself and found his minions busily engaged on my clothes, which they promised to send round in three-quarters of an hour. ” I went home in a jolly mood, looked in at Kintschy’s on the way, read the Kladderadatsch, and was particularly amused to find a paragraph saying that Wagner was in Switzerland and that a fine house was being built for him in Munich, while I knew all the while that I was going to see him that evening and that the day before he had received a letter from the little monarch addressed to ‘ The Great German Tone-poet, Richard Wagner.’ ” But at home there was no tailor awaiting me, so I sat down to read the report of the Eudokia at my ease, but kept on being disturbed at intervals by a shrill sound which seemed to come from the distance. At last I felt certain that someone was standing at the old iron gate ; it was shut, as was also the door of the house. I shouted across the garden to the man to enter : but it was impossible to make oneself heard through the pouring rain. The whole house was disturbed, the door was ultimately opened for him, and an old man bearing a parcel was ushered in. It was half -past six ; time for me to dress and make ready, as I lived rather far from the centre of the town. It was all right, the man had my things. I tried them on, and they fitted. But what was this strange development ? The man actually presented me with a bill ! I took it politely ; but he declared that he must be paid on delivery. I was surprised, and explained that I had nothing to do with him as the mere servant of my tailor, but that my dealings were with his master to whom I had given the order. The man grew ever more pressing as did also the time ; I snatched at the things and began to put them on. He snatched them too and did all he could to prevent me from dressing. What with violence on my part and violence on his there was soon a scene, and all the time I was fighting in my shirt, as I wished to get the new trousers on. ” At last, after a display of dignity, solemn threats, the utterance of curses on my tailor and his minions’ minion, and vows of vengeance, the little man vanishes with my clothes. End of the Second Act. I sat on my sofa and meditated while I contemplated a black coat and wondered whether it would be good enough for Richard. ” Outside the rain was pouring. ” It was a quarter past seven : I had promised to meet Windisch at half-past seven at the Theatre Cafe. I plunged into the dark and rainy night, in a beatific mood ; for happiness is favourable to everything, even the scene with the tailor’s man had something tremendous, something out of the way about it. ” At last we entered Frau Brockhaus’s exceedingly comfortable drawing room. There was nobody there save the most intimate members of the family, Richard and us two I was introduced to Wagner and muttered a few respectful words to him ; he asked minute questions as to how I had become so well acquainted with his music, complained bitterly about the way all his operas were produced with the exception of the famous Munich performances, and made considerable fun of the conductors, who tried to encourage their orchestras in friendly tones as follows : ‘ Gentlemen, now let it be a little more passionate ! Dear friends, just a trifle more passion, please ! ‘ Wagner was very fond of imitating the Leipzig dialect. ” Now let me give you a brief account of what happened that evening ; really the joys experienced were of such a rare and stimulating nature that even to-day I am not back in my old humdrum existence again, but can think of nothing better to do than to come to you, my dear friend, and tell you these wonderful tidings. Wagner played to us before and after supper, and got through every one of the more important passages of the Meistcrsinger. He imitated all the voices and was in very high spirits. He is, by-the-bye, an extraordinarily active and fiery man. He speaks very quickly, shows considerable wit, and can make a private company of the sort assembled on that evening quite jolly. I managed to have a somewhat lengthy talk with him about Schopenhauer. Oh, you will understand what a joy it was for me to hear him speak with such indescribable warmth of our master, what a lot he owed to him, how he was the only philosopher who had recognised the essence of music ! Then he inquired as to how the Professors were disposed towards him ; laughed a good deal at the Philosophers’ Congress at Prague, and spoke of the ‘ philosophical journeymen.’ Later on he read me a piece out of the autobiography he is now writing, a thoroughly amusing scene from his Leipzig student days which I still cannot think of without a laugh. He writes extraordinarily well and intellectually. At the close of the evening when we were both ready to go he shook my hand very warmly, and kindly asked me to visit him in order that we might have some music and philosophy together. He also left it to me to make his music known to his sister and his relations, a duty which I undertook very solemnly to fulfil. You will hear more about this when I have succeeded in looking at this evening more objectively and from a greater distance. For the time being, a hearty farewell and best wishes for your health.” In his personal acquaintance with Richard Wagner my brother came under the strongest influence which was ever exercised over him. Ever since the publication of Billow’s piano arrangement of Tristan und Isolde, many years previously, he had been a passionate admirer of Wagner’s music, even though he rejected TannMuser, Lohengrin, and Die Walkire. But when Wagner, the man, came before him with all the fascination of his strong will, he felt at once that he was in the presence of a person who in his volitional power was of all his contemporaries most like himself. My brother was the first person who, with one enthusiastic impulse, loved both Schopenhauer and Wagner, and he was the first of that band of young men, who now number so many, who write the two names side by side upon their banner. CHAPTER XIV THE CALLING WHEN my brother had returned to Leipzig in the autumn of 1868 I began to read Schopenhauer’s works in secret, as I felt that I was old enough to do so. Although Fritz may not have intended it he had already indirectly prepared me for this study; nevertheless the great philosopher exercised an enormous power over my inmost spiritual life. In him I found a philosophical confirmation of the ideal which in my early youth I had with passionate religious feeling already conceived as my goal, i.e., personal salvation through renunciation and sacrifice for others. Now my feelings were stronger than ever, and I could not go far enough in this direction. When my brother paid us a short visit between autumn and Christmas, it struck him that my opinions on many subjects were very different from what they had been ; but he was positively moved, when, in the days preceding Christmas, our
dear mother being busy with preparations for the festival, I confided my inmost feelings to him, as they reminded him so much of his own profound emotions when he had first learned to know Schopenhauer three years before. Of these sensations of his, however, I knew nothing then, for at that time I had not seen his Leipzig Memoirs of the years 1865 1867. His subsequent experience, however, led him to warn me against an excess of feeling in this matter, and to try and revive in me the happy mood which was in keeping with our youth. But this fresh basis to the feelings we had in common was a new bond which united us, although my brother understood perfectly well that, as a Christian, my understanding of Schopenhauer was very different from his ; for instance, I scarcely realised Schopenhauer’s atheism at all. Thus in spite of Schopenhauer these holidays were as pleasant and as happy as ever. Fritz’s visit to France gave rise to endless jokes and chaff. But suddenly, at the end of the Christmas holidays, he was called to Leipzig. His departure was clothed in unusual mystery. He set off in great haste and came back in the evening with an extraordinary light in his eyes. He was quite changed after this excursion ; references to his Paris trip were no longer met with a cheerful smile, but at most with a deep sigh : ” Oh, Lizzie, life is really hard ! ” I did not understand the reason of this, as only just lately he had confided to me his happier view of life as compared with Schopenhauer’s pessimism. What then had happened ? Was Fritz hopelessly in love, and had he met with difficulties about the betrothal ? ” What did you do in Leipzig ? ” I asked him one day with some caution. “ I went for a walk,” he replied. “ Alone?” I inquired. ” Oh, Lizzie ! ” cried Fritz. ” What a poor joke ! Do you imagine I am going to get engaged ? God forbid ! ” No, in this direction there was little hope ; since Fritz had learnt to know and honour Schopenhauer he had often expressed most dreadful views against women, views which left me utterly amazed. As a matter of fact he did keep rather aloof from women, though he was full of the tenderest regard for them. These extraordinary views of his, therefore, seemed to be directed at a perfectly abstract being who had nothing whatever to do with us as a sex. The fact that he spoke of his highly honoured friend, Frau Ritschl, in terms of the highest admiration was perfectly conceivable in connection with such a distinguished woman ; but even in other respects his really fervent reverence for women was not at all in keeping with a disciple of Schopenhauer. I well remember his anger when on one occasion some one dared to express a doubt as to whether Hedwig Raabe, who was worshipped by the people of Leipzig, and whom he himself adored at a distance as a ” fair angel,” was really and truly an angel in character and manner of life. At the beginning of January my brother returned to Leipzig and wrote to us in his usual strain, save for one wonderful letter in which he sent us his New Year’s wishes, despite the fact that we had spent New Year’s Eve and the beginning of the New Year together. In this letter he even referred once or twice to his Paris trip. On the 2nd of February he came to Naumburg for our mother’s birthday. When the crowd of visitors began to arrive he called me secretly into the dining-room. ” Lizzie, you can keep a secret, can’t you ? ” he began rather excitedly. ” Of course, you know I can,” I replied, somewhat hurt, for indeed, rather than divulge one word of any confidence of his I should have allowed myself to be torn in pieces. ” “ Well, then, listen, I am to be made a Professor of Bale University.’ ” Oh, Fritz, you must be joking ! ” I cried breathlessly, ” that is impossible ! ” But no, it was quite possible. It was really true. I was bound to believe it. Fritz described the whole affair to me later on. Dr. Wilhelm Vischer, the President of the Board at Bale, and the Head of the Education Department there, had read several articles written by Fritz and had formed a very favourable opinion of him. Of my brother’s works the following had been printed in the Rheinisches Museum : ” Concerning the history of the collected fragments of Theognis,” ” Simonides’ Ode on Danae ” and the long essay “ De Laertii Diogenis fontibus,” which ran through several numbers. When, therefore, a Professorship for Classical Philology became vacant in Bale, Tischer applied to Ritschl and inquired whether Herr Fr. Nietzsche, who impressed him as being the product of a very good school, would not be fit for the post. Ritschl summoned my o brother to Leipzig, discussed the matter with him, and then wrote a very enthusiastic letter to Bale in which he did not conceal the fact that my brother had not yet taken his Doctor’s Degree, much less had he been ” habilitated,” and added that he was at that very moment busy with both. Prom a later letter of Ritschl’s dated 11th January, 1869, the following passage has kindly been put at my disposal : ” What more can I say ? The bulk of his studies lay in the direction of the history of Greek literature (the exegetic and critical treatment of authors naturally included), with perhaps special attention, as it seems to me, to the history of Greek philosophy. But I have not the slightest doubt that if practical demands had to be met, he would, with his great gifts, be able to work up other departments of knowledge with conspicuous success. For he will always be able to do anything he wants to do.” As others were applying for the post and had found supporters in Bale, the matter lay in abeyance, and there was considerable doubt for some time as to whether he would be appointed. On the day previous to my brother’s visit to us, he had received a letter in which everything seemed to be turning in his favour, but he wished to announce the news of the negotiations to our mother only when the definite engagement had been made, and that is why he first confided in me alone. It seems to me, when I look back, as if in the year preceding 1870 a University Professor was a much more glorious being than he is to-day. All matters connected with the University and the quarrels between Professors then excited quite a different interest from what they do now, and were regarded even by the non-academic world as very important. A young University Professor was one of the favourite figures in novels : he was always noble and knew an infinite number of things, while he was always loved and worshipped in secret by the high-born heroine. Of course I had never doubted for an instant that my brother was an ideal man, but that he should now, before the whole world, have turned into one of the favourite figures of romance, and this at the age of twenty-four, struck me as rather marvellous. The most incredible part of it all was, however, that Fritz seemed actually on the road to a brilliant career. None of us had dreamt of this being possible. In this respect he was always cheerfully indifferent, and this spirit was naturally infectious. Indeed, to be quite honest, Fritz and I regarded the making of a career as something not quite respectable, as it seemed to us to be associated with a certain modicum of back-bone-lessness ; and now this kind of good fortune had come without Fritz’s having made the slightest effort to obtain it. The 2nd of February was always a particularly pleasant memory to all three of us. Our dear mother had not the remotest idea what to make of us. As they say in the old German children’s game ” We ate not, neither did we drink,” and we gave the most confused and cryptic
replies to all questions. Fortunately, at the end of two days the solution of the problem arrived and Fritz sent us a visiting card : FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Professor of Classical Philology in the University of Bale. (Stipend 3,000 francs.) Our dear mother’s joy and surprise defy description, and the fairy story grew more and more wonderful. Everybody (even the papers) were astonished at this Professor of twenty-four . From al sides praise, honour, and appreciation resounded over Fritz, to such an extent indeed that he felt it was really too much of a good thing, and he wrote quite angrily once : ” What, pray, is this marvel that has happened ? Why, there is only one Professor more in the world, that’s all.” From the very first, in this matter of his calling, my brother had shown no vain joy and contentedness. ” A great trick has been played upon me,” he wrote to Rohde, “ and our plans for Paris have been blown into thin air. With them too have gone my fairest hopes.” And later on he writes : ” I have not told you anything of the first production of the Meistersinger in Dresden, of this great artistic orgy which the winter brought me. God knows I must have a great deal of the musician about me, for during the whole of that time I was deeply conscious of being suddenly at home, and in my element, and regarded my other occupations as a distant mist from which I had been delivered. Now a deep heavy mist of this nature once more looms before me. I have announced two lectures for the summer term ; private : ‘ The History of Greek Lyric Poetry, with the interpretation of selected passages ‘ ; public : ‘ Method and Sources of the History of Greek Literature.’ In addition to this I have to give the whole of the Greek instruction to the Sixth Form here, while the philological classes will take up a lot of my time and give me a great deal of trouble. But above all I dread that solitude. At the present moment I am living a very distracted life, ay, seeking for pleasure in a desperate Carnival before the Ash Wednesday of my calling of Philistinism. I feel it deeply, but none of my acquaintances here notice anything. They allow themselves to be bewildered by the title Professor, and imagine that I am the happiest man under the sun.” This premature call to his profession threw an enormous burden of work upon my poor brother’s shoulders. Fortunately he did not need to prepare his Doctor’s thesis, for at a sitting of the Faculty of Leipzig University it was decided that the essays which he had already written, and which had been published in the Rheinisches Museum, were ample qualifications for granting him the Doctor’s Degree, and that an oral examination would not be necessary. One of the Professors had remarked jokingly, ” We cannot, indeed, examine one of our colleagues.” All this was brought to his knowledge, with a good deal besides, by Ritschl. On the 23rd March, 1869, my brother was unanimously granted the degree of Doctor without examination. (Rector : B. B. Bruckner, Professor of Theology. Vice- Chancellor : O. L. Erdmann, Professor of Chemistry. Dean : G. Hankel, Professor of Physics.) Instead of the usual wording of the Doctor’s Degree the concluding lines read differently If, however, he had been spared his Doctor’s thesis, the dreadful Index to the twenty-four volumes of the Rheinisches Museum remained to be completed. I offered my services as I had done in the previous autumn, and this time was eagerly given a share in the heavy work. Fritz worked out the whole, I cut up the strips and distributed the various references among the different divisions, arranged them in alphabetical order, and stuck them in their proper sequence. Fritz praised me very highly, and declared that I did the thing as well as a student who had already studied philology for several terms, a compliment which made me feel very proud and happy. We often laughed to tears over the work, and I still wonder what there was that was really funny in it. Fritz had the most delightful and most infectious laugh of anybody I have ever known, and since he had grown to manhood he was very fond of laughing. He declared that in this respect he had a great deal of lost ground to recover, because as a child and as a boy he had laughed so little. And what extremely childish jokes would provoke his mirth my translations from the Latin, for instance ! I only knew a very little Latin, and used to help myself out of any difficulties through the very often deceptive similarity of sound with the French. When, therefore, in our collaboration, I translated either a sentence or a longer passage, and imposed some sort of sense upon the whole a meaning which was often very far removed from the right one, Fritz would laugh in the most hearty manner, and declare that I read Latin as though it were a cuneiform inscription out of which scholars were able to decipher the most contradictory meanings. Or, amid constant interruptions of boisterous laughter, we would rehearse together the scene of the first student presenting himself at my brother’s lectures. On these occasions I would pronounce the most idiotic Latin speeches, introducing every time a new variation ; and Fritz assured me that later on, when the students at Bale really did present themselves, he had had the greatest difficulty in keeping serious, because he could not help thinking of my nonsensical Latin speeches. Now and again he would play a little trick upon me, For instance, I remember how one day when I was particularly busy he called out to me, ” Bring me the references to Bellum Civile!” I made a hasty search for this particular division, but could not find the small reference strips. “ You must have got them yourself,” I said. ” No. I am sure you still have them.” I returned to the search feverishly but they had vanished absolutely vanished ! ” You must have them ! ” Fritz cried, with imperturbable calm. At last by chance I happened to pass a mirror, and to my surprise saw myself decorated with a sort of Red Indian coiffure of strips of paper. While I had been doubled up over my work Fritz had stuck the strips of paper like rays round my head, on to the ribbon in my hair. ” Fritz ! ” I exclaimed indignantly, ” how can you expect your students to respect you if you are capable of such babyish tricks as this ! ” He laughed heartily at my indignation. He had no fear of not being respected and in this he was right, for from his childhood onwards he had possessed a certain graceful and natural dignity which impressed even the coarsest and most uneducated mind. But a very different fear oppressed his young heart, and that was the thought of the uncompromising, predestined path which lay before him, and which, however brilliant it might appear, he could not face without a certain painful feeling of resignation. The following notes, written in March, 1869, clearly show us what his feelings were : “ It has always seemed to me worthwhile to consider the particular way in which anyone is led nowadays to the study of classical philology. For it appears to me that I am only uttering a truism when I say that one or two other sciences, in their blooming youthfulness and extraordinary productive powers, have a greater right to the fresh vigour of striving talent than our science of philology, which, though it does indeed stride forward very gallantly, does as a matter of fact reveal a good deal of the faded features of antiquity. Of course I do not speak of those natures who are attracted to this calling by mere material interests, while even those others who are drawn into it like passive instruments in the hand of the philological teacher have
very little in them which pleases me. Many among them go to philology merely to exercise a pedagogic gift which is inborn in them ; but, even to these, science is no more than an effective instrument, and not the serious aim of their lives, pursued with ardour and devotion. There is a small community which delights with artistic satisfaction in the beauty of the Hellenic world of form, and a still smaller body of men for whom the thinkers of antiquity are still problems, and are not by any means the final word on all problems. I have no right to associate myself exclusively with any one of these classes ; for, the path which led me to philology is just as far removed from that of practical prudence and low egoism, as it is from that along which the enthusiastic love of antiquity marches torch in hand. To say this is no easy matter ; but it is honest. ” Maybe I do not belong in any way at all to that specific type of philologist on whose brows Nature has written in letters of brass that they are philologists, and who, with the ingenuousness of children, unhesitatingly pursue their appointed path. Now and again one meets with such philological demi-gods, and then one perceives how fundamentally different everything is which is created by instinct and natural forces, from that which is the outcome of instruction, reflection and perhaps also of resignation. “ I will not say that I belong merely and solely to these ‘ resigned ‘ philologists ; but when I remember how I was led from art to philosophy, from philosophy to science, and then again to this much narrower domain, it almost seems to be an act of deliberate renunciation. ” I ought to bear in mind that a man of twenty-four already has the most important things of his life behind him, even though he may bring forth only in later years that which makes his life worth living. For it is within this period of years more or less that the young soul appropriates everything typical from out all the events and experiences, whether of life or of thought which come its way ; and it can never again emerge from the world of these typical experiences. When in later years this idealising glance has vanished from our eyes, we stand in the fetters of that world of typical experiences which we received as the legacy of our youth.” If I look back upon that month of March, 1869, and ask myself and all his friends what the general opinion on my brother was when as a man of twenty-four he responded to the summons to become Professor of Classical Philology at Bale University, every one replies : first and foremost, that he was looked upon as one of Ritschl’s best pupils, as one of the most distinguished exponents of classical antiquity with a brilliant career before him, and, secondly, as an ardent votary of both “ Wagner and Schopenhauer. No one suspected how independent my brother’s attitude was towards his chosen science and towards his educators and his ideals. And he deceived both himself and us, when he let himself pass as a ” follower ” of anybody as this naturally led one to suppose that he shared all the views of the ideals he worshipped. And thus, what with work and preparations for his new post, the end of the winter and the hour of his departure came all too soon. The last days were very grave ones for Fritz and myself. Sadly we looked back upon the sunny days of our childhood ; we recalled the innumerable happy hours we had spent together, we thought of my brother’s boyhood and of all the many aspirations that had animated it. And then we remembered the delightful freedom of his student life, of the faithful friends who had worked shoulder to shoulder with him, and of those lofty ideals to which hitherto he had been able to aspire with absolute freedom of spirit and with all the impetuosity of youth. Everything that I have recorded in the preceding pages passed in procession before our minds but now the glorious dream of youth was over. Farewell to Freedom ! Solemnly and seriously the official duties drew near with all their honours and heavy responsibilities. How much freedom of choice had he not to give up in his twenty-fourth year ! Tremulously we looked into the future, which lay before us like a mysterious shadow of gigantic dimensions, and our warm young hearts shuddered. On the last evening before his departure he wrote to Baron Carl von Gersdorff ; and with this letter we also must take leave of my brother’s cloudless and sunny youth. ” My dear friend, the last hour has come, the last evening which for a while I shall spend at home. To-morrow morning early I go out into the great world, to enter a new and untried profession in an atmosphere heavy and oppressive with duty and work. Once more I must take leave of everyone; the golden time of free and unconstrained activity, in which every instant is sovereign, in which the joys of art and the world are spread out before us as a mere spectacle in which we scarcely participate this time is irrevocably over for me ; now the inexorable goddess ‘ Daily Duty ‘ rules supreme. ‘ Bemooster Bursclie zieh’ ich aus ! ‘ (‘ As a moss-grown student I go out into the world’). But you know the poignant Student Song! Yes, Yes ! ‘ Muss selber nun Philistersein ! ‘ (‘ I, too, must be a Philistine now ! ‘)- Someday or another this line always comes true. One cannot with impunity take up posts and honours the only question is, are the fetters of iron or of thread ? And there is that pluck in me which one day, perhaps, will enable me to burst my bonds, and venture into this precarious life from a different direction, and in a different way. As yet I see no sign of the inevitable humpback of the professor. May Zeus and all the Muses preserve me from becoming a Philistine, a man of the herd. But I can hardly see how I should be able to become one, seeing that I am not one. It is true I stand in greater danger of becoming another kind of Philistine, a Philistine of the ‘ Specialist ‘ species ; for it is only too natural that the daily task, and the unremitting concentration of one’s thought upon certain subjects and problems, should somewhat blunt the free receptivity of the mind, and undermine the philosophical sense. But I flatter myself that I shall be able to confront this peril with more calm and security than the majority of philologists; philosophical seriousness is already too deeply-rooted in me ; the true and essential problems of life and thought have been too clearly revealed to me by that great mystagogue, Schopenhauer, to allow of my ever being obliged to dread such a disgraceful defection from the ‘ idea.’ To infuse this new blood into my science, to communicate to my pupils that Schopenhauerian earnestness which is stamped on the brow of the sublime man such is my desire, such is my proud hope. I should like to be something more than a mere trainer of capable philologists : the present generation of teachers, the care of the growing younger generation all this is in my mind. If we must live, let us at least do so in such wise that others may bless our life as a priceless treasure, once we have been happily delivered from its toils.” PART IV THE UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR 1869-1876 CHAPTER XV BALE EARLY on the morning of the 13th April, 1869, my brother left Naumburg for Bale, his future home. It was a fresh and pleasant morning, and through our surging tears, which
our pride alone helped us to restrain, we watched his powerful young form vanish in the old-fashioned fly that bore him thence. Even the coachman, who had once driven our parents to their wedding, smiled feelingly at the stately young Professor, and seemed to regard it as an honour to be allowed to drive him to the station. The fact that our Fritz had such a dignified mien, and that his professorial gravity became him so naturally despite his youth, atoned for a good deal as far as I and my mother were concerned. At all events, he had taken great pains in choosing his new outfit, to select only those styles and materials which would give him an elderly appearance ; he absolutely repudiated anything in the way of a youthful or smart cut, and he approved only of those clothes, fashions and hats which were patronised by elderly men. These clothes suited him admirably, in spite of his twenty four years, and they must certainly have been in keeping with the conditions at Bale. He reached Bale on the 20th April in order to assume his position as a Professor there. On the following day he sent us a short account of his journey : ” A week ago yesterday I left Naumburg, and reached Bale yesterday. I arrived at Cologne at about 11 p.m. on the first day, which was by far the most insufferable that I have ever spent. On Tuesday evening I left for Bonn, and spent Wednesday there in the most agreeable fashion, looking up old associations and meeting new acquaintances. I spent the whole of Thursday on the steamer in beautiful spring weather, and landed late in the evening at Biebrich, not far from Mayence, whence I travelled by train to Wiesbaden. I explored this place on the following day, and cannot say that it attracted me much. In the afternoon I left for Heidelberg. And in the evening, when the light was at its best, I visited the famous castle ruin with its lovely surroundings. I met a few Leipzig acquaintances here, and spent Saturday at a simple but good local inn, where I worked at my inaugural address. My intention was to travel direct to Bale on Sunday ; a quarter of an hour before reaching Karlsruhe, however, I changed my mind ; for a number of young men who were going to hear the Meistcrsinger at Karlsruhe had entered my compartment, and as I could not resist this temptation, I alighted at the next station, had my ticket extended over the next day, and refreshed myself in the evening by hearing an excellent performance of my favourite opera. Thus I took leave of German soil. On Monday, at p.m., I reached Bale, and put up at the ‘ Krone.’ ” At present I am installed in the temporary lodgings of which I can give you no better description than the one you have already had from Vischer. They are somewhat uninviting, but rejoice in the advantage of being only about twenty paces away from the place where I shall ultimately live.” Later on he called these first lodgings either the ” Cave ” or the ” servants’ hall.” For he had once intended to engage a servant, as at that time he did not like to perform certain trifling domestic duties himself. Indeed, his short-sightedness may have made him essentially unfit for such things. Very shortly after he had been elected to Bale, he wrote to us from Leipzig : ” Meanwhile you can do me a great service, by looking out for a servant whom I might take with me to Bale. My wants and special conditions are as follows : The man must not be too young, and he must be clean and honest. If he has been a soldier, all the better. I loathe the vulgar dialect of Naumburg. Anything in the way of crass imbecility I could not abide. There is nothing to prevent him from practising his trade while he is with me, provided it be a clean and fragrant one.” After considering the matter more carefully, however, it was thought that a servant would only prove to be an extra source of annoyance, and thus all that remained of the whole plan, as my brother humorously remarked, was the servant’s room which Fritz was obliged to use as his own quarters for two months. In those days it was extremely difficult to find pleasant furnished rooms in Bale. Everyone seemed disinclined to admit strangers into their homes ; every family seemed to be actuated by the one wish to be left alone. It was for this reason that the town was in those days an extraordinary large one in proportion to the numbers of its inhabitants. In the spring of 1869 the authorities were engaged upon demolishing the city wall, laying out gardens, and throwing gate and door open to the new age. My brother always expressed his delight at having known good old Bale ; he declared that by this means he had been allowed a deeper insight into the Middle Ages. The whole community at Bale, with its deeply -rooted customs and usages, was particularly pleasing to us Prussians, used as we were to seeing the cultured classes among us move from place to place, and easily adapt themselves to different habits. Bale’s magnificent ancient houses, with their quaint ghost stories, reminiscent of old myths forgotten long ago ; its staunchly united families who all paraded to church on the best of terms on Sundays ; its old servants who worked in the same families from one generation to another ; the old fashioned way in which its inhabitants greeted one another in their low- German dialect all this struck us as belonging to an age long since buried in oblivion. From the earliest times, Bale has been both a rich and beneficent city, striving in every possible way to improve its excellent public institutions, and to promote art and science. My brother always thought that the extraordinarily large sums spent by this little town on educational work were deserving of the highest credit. That is why he says in one of his unpublished notes : “ I am quite well aware of what kind of place this is in which I am to hold these lectures i.e., a city which, in a manner so lavish as to be quite out of proportion to its size, and by comparison, a shameful rebuke to much larger cities, endeavours to promote the culture and education of its citizens. Thus, I certainly am not at fault when I assume that in a place where so much more is done for these things than elsewhere, they will also be much more thought about.” On all sides my brother aroused the deepest interest. A letter sent from Leipzig by Privy Councillor Ritschl which culminated in the sentence, ” In a word, Nietzsche is a genius,” had roused the most extraordinary expectations, and, like all strong praise, also provoked some suspicion. On the 28th of May he delivered his inaugural address, and concluded with a small tribute to philology, in which he invoked his listeners to show some gratitude to this science, and with a few personal remarks introducing himself to his new fellow-citizens of Bale. His listeners attended to his discourse with the greatest interest. His melodious voice, the graceful movements of his powerful frame, his noble features, his gleaming eyes all this together exercised a peculiar spell over the assembled audience. Musing deeply, the worthy councillors and professors walked homeward. What had they just heard? A young scholar discussing the very justification of his own science in a cool and philosophically critical spirit! A man able to impart so much artistic glamour to his subject, that philology, that once stale and arid study, suddenly struck them and they were certainly not impressionable men as the messenger of the gods : ” and just as the Muses descended upon the dull and tormented Bosotian peasants, so philology comes into a world full of gloomy colours and
pictures, full of the deepest, most incurable woes, and speaks to men comfortingly of the beautiful and brilliant godlike figures of a distant, blue, and happy fairyland.” ” We have indeed got hold of a rare bird, Herr Ratsherr,” said one of these gentlemen to his companion, and the latter heartily agreed, for my brother’s appointment had been chiefly his doing. Even in Leipzig it was reported that Fritz’s inaugural address had created an extraordinary impression. Jacob Burchhardt had said : ” Nietzsche is as much an artist as a scholar.” Privy Councillor Ritschl told me of this himself, and then he added with a smile : “ I always said so; he can make his scientific discourses as palpitatingly interesting as a Frenchman does his novels.” After this start, he wrote to us : ” In addition to this the people are well-disposed towards me, and whoever had any misgivings on my assuming my post at this place, has either had to bow to the inevitable, or has felt the grounds for these misgivings vanish upon becoming better acquainted with me. In this respect my inaugural address was very important. I delivered it before an exceptionally crowded hall only a day or two ago, and chose Homer’s personality as my subject. The people here were convinced of a good many things, thanks to this inaugural address, and I see clearly now that my position has been rendered secure by means of it. … I have fixed my lecture-hour in the morning, every week-day between seven and eight, and am well satisfied with this kind of work. One also becomes inured to the drawback of having only eight people in one’s audience, seeing that they, together with one Divinity student, make up the whole number of those who have entered for the philological course. In the school I rejoice in the possession of an intelligent class, and natter myself that, though I may not be a good schoolmaster, I am at any rate not a bad one either.” My brother had his Homer address printed for private presentation at Christmas, 1869, and sent it to me with the following lines : ” Devoid of dress and cover, see ! This brandnew booklet comes to thee. But let Jakobi once bestow His skill upon it till it glow In splendid bindings I surmise ‘Twill win some favour in thine eyes. Upon the polished tabletop To place it, and when questions pop Then, with a proud indifference you’ll confess : ‘Twas dedicate to me, the Index-scribleress ! ” ‘ The little book itself contained the following hearty dedication in print : ” To my dear and only sister Elizabeth, the industrious helpmate on the stubble-field of philology.” Over leaf, at the back of this printed dedication, stood the following verses addressed to my brother’s friends : ” In Bale I stand, nor fear, nor faint, But lonely God may hear my plaint And Homer, Homer ! crying loud, I ceaselessly annoy the crowd. To church or home their way they win And drown with laughter all my din. Such things no longer damp my mood : The public, always kind and good, Listens to my Homeric roar, Yet keeps as patient as before. For this surpassing graciousness My thanks in print I here express.” a In his references to my help, my brother meant the work I had done with him on the compilation of the index to the twenty-two volumes of the Rheinisches Museum, which I had to complete, as it was unfinished when my brother went to Bale. Later on, Fritz himself did some work on the indices to volumes 23 to 25. This dedication is an example of how intensely grateful my brother was for any help he received. Gratitude, of which his friend Wilhelm had already made special mention in referring to him, remained throughout his life his chief characteristic. His friends must certainly feel the same as I do about this matter. When, now, we go through the old letters and book-dedications, we ask ourselves, what were the services for which so much gratitude is expressed ? Very often they consisted of quite insignificant trifles, or, as a rule, little acts of assistance which were the greatest joy to one. But my brother transfigured all such things into deeds of personal self-sacrifice. I must therefore warn the reader against drawing any conclusions whatever from such excessive expressions of thanks and praise. Although, as the result of my brother’s encomiums, I was for a long time supposed to be the only compiler of the index, the work I did, despite the fact that it was arduous and took up a good deal of my time, entailed only a small amount of individual talent or knowledge. Contrary to my desire, this private impression of the Homer address, with its dedication to me, fell into the hands of the University circles of Leipzig, and somewhat scandalised them. Probably, however, it was not the dedication alone which roused the narrow hearts of these philologists to suspicion ; for the regular, common or garden philologist must have felt an ominous shudder on reading one or two of the passages in the address itself. Must not the following words have sounded rather discordant to their ears ? : ” It is becoming even in a philologist to formulate the object of his ambition and the road thither in a short and condensed article of faith ; and I suggest that this be done by transforming a saying of Seneca’s as follows : These words should imply that all philological work should be embraced and bounded in by a philosophical outlook, in which everything isolated and particular is got rid of as something reprehensible, and only that which is whole and unified remains.” Some time elapsed before my brother felt quite at home in Bale. Much as the exclusive and soundly established life of the community pleased him, and high as his esteem was for the men and women of Bale (” they all have the courage still to be original characters,” he said), it was just as difficult for him as for them to make new friends. He met with much kindness in Bale, and always acknowledged it with the utmost gratitude ; but, during the first year of his Professorship, he suffered greatly from solitude. What he lacked was the familiar mate with whom he could daily exchange the most personal thoughts. Even his journeys through the glorious country of Switzerland did not comfort him then ; they only succeeded in making him yearn the more for the old friends. Towards the middle of July, 1869, he wrote to Erwin Rohde: “ My dear friend, do you know what ‘ Bindlitag ‘ (Travelling-bag day) means at Bale? Everybody straps up his bag and runs to the railway station ; for four weeks the University and all the schools have a holiday, and the meteorologists of Bale declare that during this period it is physically impossible to remain in Bale. The cry is therefore, ‘ Out into the wide world ! ‘ But whither ? To my surprise I observe that the great ice-clad mountains do not attract me so much after all ; and I should love to visit the delightful hill-country of Bavaria and Bohemia again, if only I could do so in your company, dear friend.” And, at the end of the holidays, on the 18th August, he writes : ” The last day of the holidays. Dead and buried old feelings come to life again. I feel just like a fourth-form boy who becomes sentimental and writes poems about the ephemeral character of earthly bliss, when he hears the clock strike the last hour of the last day of the holidays. Oh, dear friend, what a small amount of joy I have in this world, and what a lot of my own smoke I have to consume ! How unsatisfactory letters are ! Incidentally, I discovered the following
beautiful passage in old Goethe yesterday : ‘ How precious is the dear and certain speech Of the immediate friend ! The Solitary, Bobbed of its power benign, sinks into gloom ; Too slowly ripen, then locked in his breast, Thought and each firm resolve ; but in the presence Of the beloved friend they leap to life.’ ” l And, to his friend Baron von Gersdorff, he writes : ” Oh, and how much one needs the consciousness of having real friends ! At times solitude is far too dreadful.” Still fate offered him a splendid substitute : it had led him into the neighbourhood of that sublime genius, to whom, henceforward, he was going to erect altars in his heart, which he was to adorn with all the most glorious blooms of his intellect, and honour with the sacrificial offerings of self-denial. TOCFCHAPTER XVI TRIBSCHEN ” IN addition to this I have found a man who has revealed to me, as no other man could, the image of that which Schopenhauer calls ‘ the genius,’ and who is thoroughly permeated by that wonderfully profound philosophy. This man is no other than Richard Wagner, about whom you need not take for granted any opinion which you may find in the press or in the writings of musical experts, etc. No one can know him or judge him, because the whole world stands upon a basis different from his, and is not familiar with his atmosphere. He is ruled by such an absolute kind of ideality, by such profound and touching humanity, and by such a lofty and serious interest in life, that at his side I feel in the presence of the divine.” Thus does my brother describe his impressions and feelings after his first visit to Richard Wagner, in a letter written in August, 1869, to Baron von Gersdorff. On the Saturday before Whitsuntide, the 15th of May, 1869, he went for the first time to the Lake of Lucerne, in order to spend a few days at Tell’s Chapel. At Lucerne he wondered for some time whether he might dare to respond to an invitation given him in the previous autumn, and visit Richard Wagner at his country house, Tribschen. It was a beautiful spring morning ; full of hesitation he walked along romantic paths to the pretty house of Tribschen, which stands in a beautifully isolated position between the water and the mountains, at the foot of Mount Pilatus, near the Lake of Lucerne. When he reached the country house he stood for some while quite still in front of it, and heard sounds coming from it as of a sad chord repeated again and again. At last a servant came out of the garden and said to him that Herr Wagner would be at work until p.m., and no one was allowed to disturb him. My brother then resolved at least to send up his card. Whereupon Wagner quickly sent the servant to inquire whether the Professor was the same Herr Nietzsche whom Wagner had met at his sister’s, the wife of Professor Brockhaus, in Leipzig. On receiving a reply in the affirmative, Wagner invited my brother to lunch. Unfortunately he had to decline the invitation, as he already had an engagement which he felt compelled to keep at Tell’s Chapel. He was therefore asked to spend the following Monday at Tribschen. He writes in his notes, “ Meanwhile spent a jolly time with Ofenbriggen, Loretius, Exner and his sister, at the Pension Imhof.” On Whit-Monday he drove to Lucerne, went to Tribschen, and there, in the company of Richard Wagner and Frau Cosima Wagner, spent the first of those lovely days which later were to prove the joy of his soul and a solace in his loneliness. Wagner presented him with his photograph, accompanied him back as far as his inn, and begged him most warmly to repeat his visit. Concerning all this my brother wrote to Erwin Rohde : ” Wagner is really all that we hoped he would be : a lavish, rich, and great mind, an energetic character, and a wonderfully charming personality, possessed of the strongest will-power, etc. I must close, otherwise I should sing a pa3an.” Very shortly afterwards, Frau Cosima invited him to Tribschen on the occasion of Wagner’s birthday, but he did violence to his heart and declined the invitation “ as a virtuous and dutiful University Professor,” as he wrote at the time. But he moaned : ” An official post is indeed an extraordinary thing ! ” and ” I see very clearly how even the most desirable of occupations may become a fetter at which spirits like us tug impatiently.” Instead of going to Tribschen, he wrote Wagner a letter of respectful congratulations, to which he received a most hearty reply, and an invitation to spend the following week-end at the composer’s house. My brother naturally accepted this second invitation for the 5th and 6th June, 1869, with great eagerness ; and wrote to us as follows concerning it : ” One is supremely comfortable at Tribschen ; we have the most lively and entertaining time together there a delightful family circle, quite removed from the ordinary trivialities of society.” Out of consideration for his colleagues he returned to Bale very early on the Monday morning ; and sometime later he heard that during that night a son had been born to Wagner an event which both regarded as a very fortunate omen for their friendship. After the summer holidays, “ Wagner and my brother saw a great deal of each other and were always corresponding ; and, now, if my brother ever felt oppressed by his loneliness, the thought of a coming visit to Tribschen always cheered him. At the beginning of September, he writes to Erwin Rohde : “ By-the-bye, I also have my Italy, just as you have; the one difference being that the only time I can keep for enjoying it, consists of my Saturdays and Sundays. This Italy is called Tribschen, and I am already quite at home there. Just recently I have paid four visits there in quick succession, and a letter takes wing in the same direction almost every week. During my first night at Tribschen, a little boy called Siegfried was born. On the occasion of my last visit there, Wagner had just completed his composition of Siegfried, and was full of the most exuberant sense of his artistic strength.” In all his letters my brother urged his friends to study Wagner’s writings ; he assisted them with his own knowledge of the matter wherever he could, and endeavoured to awaken their warmest feelings for Wagner. His reverent heart soon led them to an attitude of reverence as well. Still he did not limit his propaganda to the narrow circle of his friends alone, and to this day I cannot help smiling at the thought that in his passionate admiration for his hero, he almost succeeded in inducing the Grand-Duchess Constantine to pay a visit to Tribschen. At that time, this would have been considered an altogether unprecedented act ; for, although Wagner enjoyed the patronage of King Ludwig II., he was not yet received at the Courts of the Princes and Princesses. The Grand-Duchess (a former pupil of our father’s) spent one day in Bale in July, 1869 ; my brother, notified beforehand, had met her at the railway station, accompanied her through the city, and spent a most pleasant evening with her at her hotel. She was unusually musical and therefore understood more about Wagner’s greatness than did the public of the time. Wagner lived a very lonely life with his family in Tribschen ; for he was greatly misunderstood, and kept very isolated from the world. I do not believe that anyone in Lucerne
had a notion of his fame, save perhaps an amiable couple, Count B. and his wife, who, owing to family business, were obliged to stay there for a while. Apart from these, the various hotel-keepers alone had some sort of dim idea that this Herr Wagner must be someone remarkable ; for, once, a king had remained incognito at Lucerne, evidently only for the purpose of visiting the mysterious man, and again and again gentlemen of very distinguished appearance had visited Tribschen, of whom it had been whispered afterwards that they were princes and high dignitaries. Taking everything into consideration, it seemed advisable to treat a man who could receive such guests, with respect. Even Wagner used to complain bitterly at times about his isolation, and referred my brother to the Unique as his greatest consolation. My brother’s friends, Professor Rohde and Baron von Gersdorff, were received in a very friendly manner. Later on, Wagner said to me : ” Your brother is a member of the Tribschen household, and his friends are my friends,” and on another occasion : “ Your brother and his friends belong to an absolutely new and wonderful order of men, in the possibility of whose existence I never believed before.” Thanks to all the delightful hours and days they spent together far removed from the outer world, a very deep and strong friendship had gradually grown up between Wagner, Frau Cosima, and my brother. They all shared each other’s experiences, pleasant or unpleasant, great or small, and they all suffered together through the premature productions of the Rheingold, and the Walkure at Munich, and through all the indiscreet publications and malicious attacks on the master. But they rejoiced, too, with all their hearts, at the progress of his great works, the Gotterdammerung and the ” Autobiography.” Both “ Wagner and his wife manifested the greatest interest in my brother’s inaugural address, and in two lectures which he delivered in Bale before mixed audiences, and which had caused somewhat of a sensation. The three addresses: ” Homer and Classical Philology,” ” Greek Musical Drama,” and “ Socrates and Tragedy,” were most eagerly read and discussed at Tribschen. Then there were also stories told about the simple daily events in the life at Tribschen, particularly of the delightful pranks played by the dear little rascals who constituted the junior portion of the establishment, and who were always a source of great joy to their elders. Fritz became a thorough lover of children an accomplishment for which he had never before had either the opportunity or the talent. When Christmas, 1869, came round, he undertook to purchase in Bale the greater part of the presents for Tribschen not only Direr etchings, antique treasures and costly art- works for the household, but also dolls and model theatres and other toys. Frau Cosima was always very shamefaced when she approached my brother with fresh requests, and used to declare that the master would have been quite indignant if he had known she bothered my brother with such matters. She said that she found the courage for demanding these favours only in trying to forget that my brother was a Professor, a Doctor, and a Philologist, and in remembering that he was twenty -five. Moreover, in view of his unpractical nature, she tried to make things as easy as possible for him, and told him to present little tickets in the shops, containing the most exhaustive descriptions of what was required. But Fritz did not take his task too lightly ; he not only inspected the art-works, books and other things which he understood, very critically, but he proceeded in the same fashion with the toys of which his knowledge was much less complete. For instance, in regard to the actors for the toy-theatre, he protested that the king’s appearance was not sufficiently realistic, and that the devil was not as black as he ought to be ; he also formed his own opinion as to the dress of a certain Christmas angel, which he could nowhere discover in Bale, decked in the orthodox heavenly way, and which he was therefore obliged to order from Paris. He spent the most enjoyable holidays at Tribschen during Christmas, 1869 and 1870. During the Christmas festival the good old country house was always transformed into a lovely fairy palace in which the happy children joyfully, and the adults somewhat sadly, forgot both space and time. Presents were given and taken all round, and objects of beauty, of interest, and even more substantial tokens of friendship then exchanged hands. For instance, my brother received a beautiful large octavo edition of Montaigne from Frau Cosima. For years he had had an excellent German edition in his possession ; and, as he had already received La Kochefoucauld, Yauvenargues and La Bruyere from me, he then had the greater number of his favourite novelists in good editions on his shelves. Stendhal’s Promenades dans Rome was only added to his collection later on, and he came across this book quite accidentally at an antiquary’s. Strange to say, this author was not known to Wagner and his circle. But Fritz was entrusted with tasks of a very varied character by the master ; for Wagner was then engaged upon the writing of his ” Autobiography,” of which only twelve copies were to be printed for private circulation. He laid the whole matter confidently in my brother’s hands, and Fritz saw to the printing in Bale. At the beginning, Fritz took charge of all the proof-corrections. Wagner soon found, however, that this was too much for his friend, with all his official duties, and undertook the task himself. But my brother was still allowed to inspect both the manuscript and the proofs. At Christmas, 1869, the ” Homer ” address was printed for private circulation at the same printers, and later on, in 1871, the lecture on ” Socrates and Greek Tragedy,” already referred to, was also printed there. The manuscript of this lecture had already been sent to Tribschen in February, 1870, and it caused somewhat of a sensation in the Wagner household. In it my brother for the first time elaborated ” in a manner a little more precise ” the substance of the original discourse, which consisted of his thoughts on the destruction of the ancient Dionysian tragedy through the rationalistic spirit of Socrates and Euripides. The master informed him that, after he had read it aloud, it took him some time to calm down his wife. ” I, for my part, cry out to you : ‘ It is as you say ! ‘ You have hit the right nail on the head ; you have called attention to the exact point with perfect accuracy, and I cannot help looking forward with admiration to the further development of your ideas with which you will confute the prejudices of vulgar dogmatism. Nevertheless, I am somewhat anxious about you ; and from the bottom of my heart I trust that you will not come to grief. That is why I would fain advise you not to expound your unacceptable views any longer in short treatises which, owing to unfortunate scruples, are, I think, calculated to produce a superficial effect. But if, as I believe, you are so deeply steeped in your ideas, gather them together in a much more extensive work. Then you will most certainly find the proper expressions for Socrates’ and Plato’s divine errors, which were of so overwhelmingly creative a nature,
as to force us to worship even when we are in the very act of turning our backs on them. Oh, friend ! where can we find the sacred words to express what we feel when we contemplate those incomprehensibly harmonious creatures from the standpoint of our world ! And how high our hopes and thoughts of ourselves should be when we realise deeply and clearly that we are able to do things nay, that we shall and must do things that were denied to them ! ” With all due reverence, my brother must certainly have smiled a little on receiving the above advice ; for, for many years, a whole host of aesthetic problems and replies to problems had been fermenting in his mind, and he had availed himself of public lectures only in order to elaborate small portions of the general outlook which was to be expounded in a large work dealing with the Greeks. But one is pleased to be influenced a little, one is pleased to be criticised a little, by others, when one stands still hesitatingly before the accomplishment of a great work. It is very characteristic that Wagner, despite his intimate intercourse with my brother, could have fallen into the error of supposing that these short lectures were to a certain extent merely preliminary surveys of the ground, and that he did not realise that they might be only a small portion of a general conclusion, which had been arrived at by years of study and much silent thought. Similar errors were subsequently made by other people, for communicative as my brother was in his daily intercourse with his friends, he spoke of his great new thoughts and plans, even to his friends, only when they had grown ripe in solitude. Whether he ever discussed his private plans in response to Wagner’s suggestion to collect all his new ideas together in a book, or whether he still thought it was too early to do so, I cannot now ascertain, as the majority of his letters to Wagner seem to have been lost. Probably, in keeping with the friendly relations of those days, he wrote expressing in the warmest manner his gratitude to Wagner for his kind advice. In addition to this, the surprise and joy over the novelty and audacity of my brother’s writings produced an agreeable result. Frau Cosima wrote : ” The work you sent, and our discussion of it, marked a turning-point in the general spirit prevailing at Tribschen. “ We were so doleful that we even ceased from reading of an evening ; the pilgrimage which you induced us to take into the most beautiful age of man had such a beneficial effect upon us that, on the following morning, the master created the bright theme of Siegfried, to an accompaniment of the boldest and most frivolous violin virtuoso on the Rhine, and listening to which, the Rhine Daughters, with joyful hope, let their motif resound far and wide. (The overture to the Gotterdammerung after Brunnhilde’s and Siegfried’s departure).” This mutually refreshing influence, this reciprocal effect of two great spirits one upon the other, which filled each with such lofty hopes for the future, is certainly the most exalting and most stirring testimony of the profound friendship that prevailed between them during the days at Tribschen. The Wagners found Tribschen almost more cosy in winter than in summer. I, for my part, saw it only when it was decked in its most beautiful spring or summer garb. The first time I went there was at the end of July, 1870. I was staying with some Bale friends at their country house in Lucerne, on the other side of the lake immediately opposite Tribschen, and, with the view of being introduced to “ Wagner, I was fetched by my brother and Hans Richter in a small boat and rowed across the lake. On the second occasion, which was in the spring of 1871, I got to know more of Tribschen, as I stayed there for many days with my brother. The whole of Tribschen, together with its inmates, was a charming idyll; at the head, the ideal couple, then the beautiful children with all their wealth of imagination and resource in queer ideas and games ; the worthy servant Jacob, who at every fresh leave-taking would withdraw his hand for an instant and pretend to decline the proffered tip, saying as he did so, “ But, Professor, you are welcome to all my services”; and the old angular house which, with its simple garden and grounds, took its place so unpretentiously and naturally in the glorious landscape everything was so harmonious and yet so rare. The house itself was not arranged and furnished in a manner befitting its style, hut in accordance with the taste of a Paris furnishing firm, who had been somewhat lavish in their use of pink satin and little Cupids. Thus, I have retained the most unpleasant remembrance of the inside of the simple old house. But its inmates and the surrounding country reconciled me to the amazing style indoors and made the latter seem almost picturesque. I can still remember the last evening I spent there ; the sun was just setting, but the moon already stood full and bright over the luminous snowfields of Mount Titus. And, as the light of the sun gradually waned and surrendered the earth to the pallid glow of the moon, and the lake and the picturesquely shaped and sharply outlined mountains grew ever more delicate, more diaphanous and more transparent, and seemed as it were to grow every minute more ghost-like, our animated conversation gradually subsided, and we all sank into dreamy silence. We four (really five) were wandering along the so called Rauberweg close to the lake. In front walked Frau Cosima and my brother the former dressed in a pink cashmere gown with broad revers of real lace which reached down to the hem of the garment ; on her arm there hung a large Tuscan hat trimmed with a crown of pink roses, and behind her paced a dignified, heavy and gigantic, coal-black Newfoundland dog, “ Kuss.” Then followed Wagner and myself Wagner being attired in a Flemish painter’s costume, consisting of a black velvet coat, black satin knickers, black silk stockings, a light blue satin cravat tied in a rich bow, with a piece of his fine linen and lace shirt showing below, and a painter’s tam-o’shanter on his head, which at that time was covered with luxuriant brown hair. I can still remember quite vividly how the shafts of light coming through the trees caught each of us in turn, as we walked silently along, looking out across the silvery lake. “ We listened to the soft murmur of the water as the diminutive breakers lapped against the bank, and every one of us must have heard the song of his own thoughts out of the sweet monotonous melody, as out of the sound of a magic horn. The aim of our walk was to reach the “ Hermitage,” a house built of bark, which stood on the highest point in the property, and from which one could get a delightful view, in the almost daylight brilliance of the moon, across the lake and the chain of mountains encircling it. Gradually the spell of silence was broken ; Wagner, Cosima and my brother began to speak of the tragedy of human life, of the Greeks, the Germans, of plans and aspirations. Never either before or afterwards have I heard such wonderful harmony in the conversation of three such different people. Everyone had his own “ colour,” his own theme, and brought it forward with all his power and yet what a perfect harmony the whole produced ! Each of these original natures was at its best, glowed with its own inner light, and yet threw no shadow upon the others. about this time Cosima wrote to my brother : ” and when I
contemplate our peaceful existence which, in view of the Master’s genius, may well be called sublime, and feel at the same time that the sufferings we have previously endured are indelibly stamped on our souls, I say to myself that the greatest joy on earth is a vision, and that this vision has fallen to the lot of us poor creatures.” Yes, Tribschen was a blessed isle, and whoever has known it, thinks of it with a profound regret. In the year 1888, shortly before his breakdown, my brother wrote in Ecce Homo : ” As I am speaking here of the recreations of my life, I feel I must express a word or two of gratitude for that which has refreshed me by far the most heartily and most profoundly. This, without the slightest doubt, was my intimate relationship with Richard Wagner. All my other relationships with men I treat quite lightly : but I would not have the days I spent at Tribschen those days of confidence, of cheerfulness, of sublime flashes, and of profound moments blotted from my life at any price. I know not what Wagner may have been for others ; but no cloud ever darkened our sky.” CHAPTER XVII OFFICIAL DUTIES AND THE WAR MY brother’s official work kept him very busy ; for he did not take things easily ; he even offered to replace those teachers who at times happened to be too indisposed to attend to their duties, and gave endless private instruction to impecunious students who were not sufficiently prepared for examinations. Professor E. Eucken, who was his colleague at this time, describes my brother as the most amiable examiner he had ever met. He was most zealously intent on turning his lectures and class-hoars to account, both for his pupils’ sake and his own. At the beginning of June, 1869, my brother wrote to Rohde as follows: “ Here in Bale everything is going splendidly. Lectures every morning at 7 a.m. (treating of AEschylus’s Choephorie, and the history of Greek lyrics, and every Monday I hold a Philological class.” And later on he writes : ” I am well satisfied with my academic post. The students have faith in me, and I do my best to advise them, not only in philologicis. Moreover, I already have the pleasure of knowing that at Michaelmas three of my pupils will, in accordance with my advice, go to Leipzig ; and they are the three best. As to my lectures for the next few years, I have resolved upon the plan of reading all that which I want to learn more thoroughly and must learn. Obviously it will be I who will draw the greatest profit from the arrangement. My Choephorce and my classes on the Lyricists are, much to my delight, leading to very good work, in any case very much better than I could have expected. Next term I shall lecture on the history of pre-Platonic philosophy and Latin grammar, and my classes will be on Hesiod’s Erga.” Concerning his teaching of Greek he writes : ” I am now doing Plato with an intelligent class, and I lead the happy youths through the tangle of philosophical questions with a gentle hand that is to say, just sufficiently profoundly to whet their appetite. I have also gone to the trouble of instituting extempore exercises in Greek for the sake of improving the students’ grammatical knowledge.” And this he continued until the end of 1875. Whether my brother was a good teacher or not, I cannot say. Not long ago, however, the Frankfurter Zeitung published the following very fine description of his Greek classes, written by one of his pupils at Bale : ” Nietzsche was reading the lyrical anthology and the philosophers with us Lower Sixth Form boys. The inner freedom and superiority of his nature, his intercourse with the older students, as well as his own education at Pforta, resulted in the young Professor’s extending his school programme unusually far beyond its limits. He always expected us to be capable of an independent treatment and mastery of the material he set before us. At times, we boys who were quite untrained in philosophy were unable to follow the line of thought in the laboriously translated text and in the mind of its congenial interpreter, especially as our class, owing to a previous provisional arrangement, had remained backward in Greek. But the powerful and sterling personality of our teacher, of whose commanding intellectual gifts we were thoroughly aware, never allowed us to lose courage. His severe sense of justice was always able to distinguish accurately between the limits of goodwill and idle carelessness, and not one of our favourite schoolboy tricks passed undetected by him. I remember, for instance, that on one occasion one of us (he is now discharging his duties as a highly-respected principal of a training college), who had not prepared his work well, was called upon shortly before the end of the lesson to construe a certain sentence. Standing up, and with apparent eagerness for the task, he recited the Greek text which he had to construe, as slowly as he could until the bell rang. With a view to making assurance double sure, be read yet one more sentence, and tben confidently stopped. Nietzsche did not move. Our schoolfellow’s brow grew wet with perspiration. ‘ Professor,’ he stammered, ‘have you not perhaps overlooked the bell that has just rung ? ‘ Nietzsche looked straight at him for a moment, and then, without moving a muscle, corrected him by saying : ‘ You mean to say, I did not hear it,’ and then left the room. On the following day he began his lesson by turning to the same pupil and saying smartly, ‘Now, Sir, you construe.’ The most exemplary discipline always prevailed in Nietzsche’s classes, and this even extended over the preceding and subsequent intervals. Although no word of blame or ill-humour ever fell from our teacher’s lips, we had the greatest respect for him. He had an incredibly painful and mortifying way of dealing with a guilty pupil. With stony silence he would leave the lad who had not prepared his lesson well to stammer forth his own public exposure, and, after a short palpitating pause, he would conclude the matter with a sharp ironical ‘ Keally ! ‘ or ‘ Indeed ! ‘ That was the extremest form of reproof with him just as his praise never exceeded a short semi-audible ‘ Good.’ But what would many of us even the least industrious of our number not have given for these four letters ! Difficult as were the lessons we used to have with Nietzsche, we regarded it as a distinction that he left so much to our own intelligence, and like most youths our sensitiveness was sufficiently strong to make us conscious of the violence he was forced to do to his high-soaring intellect on our account. We shared the students’ enthusiastic admiration of their Professor, who was only a little older than they were themselves. We read everything he published, and were infected with his wild enthusiasm for Wagner, which at that time was being applied to the creation of The Birth of Tragedy. This young Hotspur, who, thanks to his noble appearance, was a conspicuous figure, who attracted one through the charm of his manner, and was intimate with the best of men, Jacob Burckhardt and Richard Wagner (who lived in Tribschen), reached his zenith very early in life.” Scarcely a year after his call to Bale, i.e., in March, 1870, he was made a regular Professor. All his friends and relatives thought he was making his way uncommonly quickly, to be a regular University Professor at twenty-five and a half. It was really amazing ! Gradually, too, he began to feel more at home at Bale, his complaints about his solitude ceased, and
Bale was spoken of with all manner of friendly praise. Everybody, moreover, was very kind to him, and his colleagues especially, all of whom were so much older than he, constantly gave proofs of their recognition and esteem for his gifts. This was very gratifying to the youthful Professor, and he gratefully returned their consideration and respect. He always spoke of them as his ” distinguished colleagues,” and was overjoyed at their acumen. He laid particular stress upon his intercourse with the art-historian Jacob Burckhardt, and regarded it as a piece of extraordinary good fortune to have made his acquaintance and to have become his friend. After having been in Bale only eight weeks, the young Professor was able to write : ” From the start I got into close touch with that intellectual oddity Jacob Burckhardt, and I am delighted about it, for we have discovered a marvellous similarity in our assthetic paradoxes.” Their close relationship was occasioned to some extent by the peculiar circumstance that both of them, in accordance with their duties, had not only to deliver lectures at the University, but also to give lessons lasting altogether six hours a week to the Sixth Form of the school an arrangement that dated from the time when this form constituted an actual part of Bale University. During the intervals between the classes held at the school, and the lectures delivered at the University, both of them liked to retire to the beautiful cloisters of the cathedral, which stands quite close to the two institutions. While they walked to and fro together, they would often indulge in the most animated conversations, now serious, and now frivolous (for often a loud laugh would be heard coming from their direction), and it was in this confidential exchange of opinions that they gradually realised, ever more vividly, that ”wonderful similarity,” not only in their aesthetic, but also in their scientific and educational views, which sometimes revealed itself even in the discussion of the most exalted problems. My brother was among the most enthusiastic followers of Burckhardt’s course on the history of Greek culture ; for a whole term he tried to attend these lectures, at which a number of elderly Bale gentlemen used to be present, although he was unfortunately not able to do so regularly. Concerning the effect of these and other lectures of Burckhardt’s, my brother said : ” One could see in every cultured citizen of Bale the fact that he had been born in Jacob Burckhardt’s city.” With regard to his friendly relations with Burckhardt it should not, however, be forgotten that my brother was 26 years Burckhardt’s junior, and that he therefore regarded him more in the light of a respected teacher than of a friend on an equal footing. In spite of everything, therefore, he still lacked the opportunity for quiet confidential chats in which he could express his private feelings even about Bale and its inhabitants. That is why he looked forward so anxiously to my mother’s and my visit to Bale in the spring of 1870. At Easter, 1870, the three of us went to the Lake of Geneva, where we spent a lovely time at the Pension Ketterer in Clarens-au-Basset. My mother and I then stayed a few weeks in Bale with the view of spending our Whitsun holidays in the Bernese Oberland and on the Lake of Lucerne, with Fritz and his friend Erwin. It was a real pleasure-trip, for we had fine weather and were all in the best of spirits, as may be seen from the hilarious mood reflected in the doggerel verses my brother wrote at the time. In the middle of June, our mother went back to Germany in order to be at the bedside of one of her sisters, who had fallen ill. In accordance with my brother’s pressing entreaty, I remained behind in Bale, little dreaming of what great events were going to upset the beautiful tours we had planned for the summer holidays. On the 19th of July, war was declared between France and Germany, and from that day onwards the most incredible confusion prevailed in Bale. German and French travellers poured in from all sides, on their way to join their regiments at home. For a whole week it seemed almost impossible for the incoming crowds to get even a night’s shelter in Bale. The railway stations were chock-full night after night, and those people who were unable to endure the suffocating air, would hire flies for the whole night. My brother concludes a letter to our mother in the following sorrowful terms: “ We were living so happily in the evening glow of peace ! Now the ghastly storm-cloud has burst … (After all, I am very sorry to be a Swiss ! For our culture is involved. And to this end, no sacrifice can be too great. Confound this ill-omened French Tiger !).” Yes, he was very sad about it ; but it was no good, he could not join his native country’s troops ; for previous to accepting his Professorship at Bale, he had been obliged to become a naturalised Swiss subject. In order to console himself, and also with the view of recovering from the results of a severe sprain in his ankle, he resolved to go to Mt. Axenstein, and he asked me to accompany him. It was almost impossible at that time to send a girl alone amid the confusion on the German railway lines. All the trains were requisitioned for troops, and it was only by a stroke of good fortune that one was conveyed any distance at all. After leaving beautiful Mt. Axenstein, in the company of a landscape painter called Mosengel we went to the Maderaner Thai, which had been recommended to us on all sides as being very lovely. Meanwhile my brother had quite recovered from his sprained ankle. In this beautifully secluded valley my brother wrote an essay on “ The Dionysian Outlook on the World,” and I remember that, while he was reading it aloud to me, he was interrupted by the firing of a gun. “ What’s the matter?” cried the tourists in all directions. The proprietor of our pension, a doctor, who had studied in Germany, was the cause of the noise. Out of sympathy for the Germans among his guests he had had a salute fired, and a flag hoisted above his roof, whereupon he cried : ” A great and magnificent victory to Germany ! ” A German telegram had at last penetrated even into our solitary part of the world, and it bore the news of ” Weissenburg and Worth,” although it also mentioned ” terrible losses.” My brother grew very pale. For a long while he walked to and fro with the painter Mosengel, who was a native of Hamburg, and then came to me very solemnly. I guessed what he was going to say, and tears had already gathered in my eyes. “ What would you do, now, Lizzie, if you were a man ? ‘ ‘ ‘ Naturally, I should go to the war, neither would it matter for me, Fritz ; but you ! ” and I sobbed with all my heart. He then proceeded to point out to me that, at any rate, it was his bounden duty to try at least to go to the war as a soldier ; and in the event of his not being allowed to do this by the Swiss authorities, for Switzerland was neutral, he and Mosengel would go to the seat of war as ambulance attendants. Thereupon we immediately returned to Bale, for my brother, through the agency of Privy Councillor Yischer, had already addressed his request to the Board of Education at Bale, and a rough draft of this letter to Vischer is still extant. It reads as follows : ” In view of the present state of affairs in Germany, you will not be surprised at my request to be allowed to discharge my duty towards my native land. It is with this object that I appeal to you in order through your kind mediation to solicit a leave of absence, for the last weeks of the summer term, from the honourable Board of Education at Bale. My health has now so far improved that I could without any fear of the consequences help my fellow-countrymen either as a soldier or as an ambulance attendant. The fact that I too should desire to throw
my small mite of personal capacity into the alms box of my Fatherland will appear to no one so natural and just as to a Swiss Board of Education. Although I am not unaware of the exalted nature of the duties I have to perform at Bale, in the face of Germany’s awful cry that each should do his German duty, I confess that I could allow myself to be bound by my obligation to Bale University only through painful compulsion, and, even so, I should feel that my work would be of little value. And I should like to see the Swiss who would consent to being kept to his post under similar circumstances …” (This last sentence was crossed through in the draft). He was duly granted the leave hie asked for, but only to serve as an ambulance attendant ; he would have much preferred to go as a combatant. On the 12th August, we went to Lindau, met our friend Mosengel, the painter, there, and on the following day proceeded to Erlangen, where both my brother and his friend proposed to train for ambulance service. A paragraph in the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung had brought Erlangen to their notice. Our journey from Lindau to this town has remained indelibly stamped upon my memory. Fritz was in splendid condition, radiant with health, and overflowing with life and the lust of action. As a matter of fact, he was full of that spirit peculiar to the recruit, and in him it was all the more delightful as it was beautified by his intellect. We even sang ; none of the ordinary war-songs, but one which my brother had only just come across while reading the paper in the railway carriage, and which he had immediately set to music. Finally we all grew so excited and exultant that we laughed until we cried. Of course, we were very much ashamed of ourselves, and thought our behaviour quite unsuited to the occasion and to the serious state of affairs. Every time the train stopped, and this happened again and again, for we were travelling in the most erratic fashion, one of us would cry “ Order ! ” whereupon we would all sit as stiff and as solemn as idols; but as soon as the train started off again, the fun was renewed. Ah ! youth, health, the lust of action and the consciousness of coming dangers all these things are quick to create an exultant mood, more particularly when circumstances make such a mood unbecoming. Meanwhile, however, something happened which made us very anxious and at which we were deeply moved. The train stopped for some time outside Ulm, and we saw a company of soldiers, obviously men of the reserve, marching towards the city. Solemnly and determinedly they strode along, singing as they went, with deep manly voices, the famous Lutheran hymn: ” Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott.” And we felt distinctly that, despite the distress and even death which stood before them they hore in their breasts the firm conviction that ” Das Ecich muss uns dock bleiben.” In Erlangen, however, the really serious and painful side of life began. Already, some sixty miles down the line, at Nordlingen, we had seen that a number of carriages full of wounded soldiers had been added to our train. When therefore, in Erlangen, we saw the wounded and even the dying being borne from the carriages in litters and stretchers, we felt quite crushed at the thought of having been led but a little while previously to such childish frivolity through our exuberant spirits. In Erlangen my brother entered for a course of medicine and surgery at the Eed Cross Society there. He showed great ability for the work, and was just as eager at it as he was conscientious, so much so, indeed, that at the end of three days he was already entrusted with the special care of two Prussians and two Turcos. In his lectures on Nietzsche a certain Professor of Philosophy at Freiburg said very aptly : ” Of course, he did the work excellently ; for he was much too proud to do anything at all unless he did it really well.” After he had been trained as a nurse, he was sent by the above-mentioned society, as a person to be trusted, at the head of an ambulance-corps to the seat of war. He was entrusted with large sums of money and a whole host of personal messages, and thus he had to find his way across the battle-fields from hospital to hospital and from ambulance to ambulance, in order to succour the wounded and the dying, and to take the last words of farewell and of remembrance from dying lips. What my brother with his sympathetic heart must have suffered in those days beggars description ; for many months afterwards he used to think he heard the groans and the plaintive cries of pain of the poor wounded men of whom he had seen such numbers. During the first two or three years that followed the war, he was scarcely able to speak about it, and once when Rohde complained in Fritz’s presence that he had heard so little of his friend’s experiences as an ambulance nurse, my brother ejaculated painfully: ” I cannot speak of such things, it is impossible ; one must endeavour to banish such memories from one’s mind ! ” And it was only many years later, while on a walk in the neighbourhood of Naumburg, when he had changed some of his views, that he told me of the following incident : On a certain evening at the close of a very heavy day with the wounded, and ” with his heart well-nigh broken with pity,” he happened to enter a small town which lay on one of the chief military roads. As he turned the corner of a large stone wall and continued his way for a second or two, he suddenly heard a roaring noise as of thunder, and a magnificent cavalry regiment gloriously expressive of the courage and exuberant strength of a people flew by him like a luminous stormcloud. The thundering din waxed louder and louder, and behold! his ” own beloved regiment of horse-artillery dashed forward at full speed, oh, how he ached at not being able to jump on a horse, and at being obliged to remain inactive by the stone wall ! At last came the infantry, advancing at the double ! The men’s eyes were aflame, and their feet struck the hard road like mighty hammer-strokes. And while this procession passed before him, on its way to war and perhaps to death, so wonderful in its vital strength and formidable courage, and so perfectly symbolic of a race that will conquer and prevail, or perish in the attempt ” then,” said he, “ I felt for the first time, dear sister, that the strongest and highest Will to Life does not find expression in a miserable struggle for existence, but in a Will to War, a Will to Power, a Will to Overpower ! But,” he continued after a while, ” I also felt what a good thing it is that Woden lays a hard heart in the breasts of commanding generals, otherwise how could they bear the awful responsibility of sending thousands to death in order to raise their people and themselves to dominion.” “ Woden had not, however, laid a hard heart in my brother’s breast, and that is why Richard Wagner had already done his utmost to restrain him from any participation in the war. He declared that my brother’s profoundly sensitive nature would be ill able to endure the sight of such horrors. On the 13th September, my brother tells ” the dear and honoured master ” why he was so quickly driven away from his Samaritan duties on the battle-field after only four weeks’ service.
” My activities have met with a temporary check, and unfortunately through illness. My multifarious messages and duties led me as far as the neighbourhood of Metz ; I and my very worthy friend Mosengel found it possible to deliver the greater part of the messages and gifts entrusted to us into the hands or ears of their proper recipients quite nicely. At Arssur-Moselle, we undertook the cure of the wounded, and returned with a batch of these to Germany. With these, three days and three nights in the midst of seriously wounded men, we reached the uttermost limit of our exertions. I had a ghastly cattletruck in which there lay six severely wounded men, and I was the only person there to give them their food, to bandage their wounds, and to see to them generally. All of them had bones broken, many had four wounds, and in addition to that I observed that two had hospital gangrene. The fact that I was able to endure these pestilential vapours, and could even sleep and eat, now seems to me quite miraculous. But, scarcely had I delivered my batch of charges up to the hospital at Karlsruhe, when I too began to show signs of serious illness. With great difficulty I was able to reach Erlangen in order to report upon various matters to my society there ; then I went to bed, where I lie to this day. A very capable doctor declared my case to be one of severe dysentery and diphtheria. But strong measures were used against both of these infectious diseases, and I am now able to report good progress. I have thus made the acquaintance of the two ill-famed lazaretto epidemics, and they have both done so much to weaken and to reduce me in a short time, that for a while I must give up all thought of continuing my duties at the front, and must think only of my health. And thus, after having tried for the short space of four weeks to work for the general good, I am already thrown hack upon myself, and am utterly wretched ! As to Germany’s victories, I would prefer not to speak of them ; they are merely inscriptions of fire on the wall, understanded of all peoples.” This illness gravely undermined my brother’s health, and is the first cause of his subsequent terrible condition. Until that time, as he himself declared, he had had the constitution of a bear, and even his short-sightedness, which he had inherited from our father, had not been the cause of any special trouble. Still, the accidents which he had in his youth the blow against the saddle-pommel when he was a trooper in an artillery regiment, and the number of sprains he sustained in his ankles, are all to be ascribed only to his extreme shortsightedness. He could not measure distances. But what he rejoiced in above all, until this time, was the possession of a thoroughly sound stomach; though, thanks to the extraordinarily severe drugs which he took for the treatment of his diphtheria and dysentery at Erlangen, this organ was sadly deteriorated. In order, however, to be able to carry out his incredibly profuse and profoundly intellectual productions without fatigue, and to be able to overcome his sensitive nature, his body, and particularly his brain, required to be well nourished. Owing to his bad digestion, which was the result of the strong drugs he had taken, the nutritive process was no longer as perfect as it used to be. Our mother used to say in later years that she was only surprised that he did not die from the effects of the strong medicines he had taken. In addition to all this, it should be observed that my brother, as the result of the training he had received in the use of drugs for his work in the field ambulance, now took to administering ” cures ” to himself a habit which did not tend to improve his debilitated stomach. Nevertheless, his constitution was so sound that, if only at this juncture he had resolved to take a complete rest for a year, and had made a long sojourn somewhere in the south where he would have abjured all drugs, there can be no doubt that he would have entirely recovered from the violent physical and spiritual shock which he had sustained during the war. As it was, however, his stern sense of duty in regard to his profession, and his love of the science he practised, made him hurry to his post when he had but half recovered ; for, trusting to his powerful constitution, he was already back in Bale at the end of October, and seeking recovery from all his ills in study. How much he then expected of himself may be gathered from a letter which he wrote to Gersdorff : ” With genuine eagerness I have plunged into the sciences ; and now my regular professional work has begun afresh. My only wish is that my health may improve. But my whole body has suffered terrifically from the attack of dysentery and has not by any means recovered what it lost. I was welcomed back to Bale with great friendliness… . The new term began as usual with an inundation of work which was enough to make one lose one’s head. This term I shall give two new courses of lectures treating respectively of Greek metre and rhythm (according to my own system), and of Hesiod. In addition to this I have my philological classes, and also the Greek classes to be held at the school, where I propose to study .Aeschylus’s Orestean Tetralogy. Besides these duties I also have Council, Faculty, and Library meetings to attend, together with many functions of a more social nature. …” Other work had also been left seriously in arrears through the interruption of the war-god, and thus he was simply overwhelmed by all be had to do. But what harassed him most of all, were his painful recollections of all he had seen. On the 12th of December he wrote to Gersdorff : ” If one would avoid losing all courage, one must not think of these horrible things any longer. I will, however, write to you now, in the hope aye even under the assumption that you have bravely and happily escaped all these terrible dangers like a favourite of Mars though not with any fresh love for him.” My brother did not seem to be a favourite of the god of war ; for on every occasion when, either directly or indirectly, he plunged into the service of the sword-clashing deity, the latter, by means of a severe illness, scared him back to the sciences. CHAPTER XVIII THE GENESIS OF ” THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY ” As I have already said, my brother spent the Christmas of 1870 with the Wagners at Tribschen. He presented Wagner with that favourite old etching of Direr’s, ” The Knight, the Devil and Death,” and Frau Cosima with the essay ” Concerning the Dionysian Outlook on the World,” written in the Maderaner Thai. The three essays, ” Greek Musical Drama,” ” Socrates and Tragedy,” and ” Concerning the Dionysian Outlook on the World,” which during the year 1870 were presented to his friends in a private edition, are the first outward signs of his new conception of Greek antiquity and of that abundance of aesthetic problems ” which for years already had been fermenting in his mind,” and the wealth of which made him hesitate to publish them. In the spring of 1870 he writes to his friend Erwin about it as follows : “ I now have the best hopes for my philology ; but I must allow myself plenty of time. Step by step, and almost faint-hearted with surprise, I am nearing a general conception of Greek antiquity.” Very shortly afterwards, he writes to say that he is completing the programme of the work on
Laertius for the school, that he has just written a Latin address in honour of Professor Gerlach’s fiftieth anniversary as a teacher, and that he intends to finish certain other philological work in May. He then continues : ” If I can get any more short essays ready (dealing with old material), I shall collect them all into the form of a book, in regard to which fresh ideas are continually coming to me. I fear that it will not give one the impression of being a philological work ; but who can contradict his own nature ? Now begins for me a period of attack, after I have for some time evoked moderate approbation through going about in the old familiar carpet slippers. The theme and title of the coming book is ‘ Socrates and Instinct.’ ” In July and August, 1870, before and after the outbreak of the war, he was deeply absorbed in his new problems. It is true that his departure for the seat of war interrupted the actual elaboration of his views in writing, but it did not interfere with the work going on in his mind, and directly after his return from the front, when he had scarcely recovered from his illness, he was once more most deeply immersed in these thoughts. The fact that his first plan was to write a much more exhaustive book may be seen from the abundance of halfand fully-completed notes on the subject which have been published since his death. If, however, in the end this small book, this torso of a great art-work, was all that was published, it showed what a great sacrificial offering of self-abnegation my brother made to his friend Richard Wagner. It had always been his deepest wish to be able to do something decisive for Wagner ; his object was to elevate the whole of the “ Wagnerian movement to a higher plane, and he thought there was no better way of attaining this end than by associating “ Wagner’s art with the highest and best form of all art Hellenic art. A start which was as bold as it was strange ! Neither his artistic instinct, nor his philologist’s conscience allowed him to do this in a large book on Greece ; but inasmuch as he limited himself to fundamental artistic problems, which were to be elucidated by an appeal to the Greek spirit, it was possible to associate the Greeks with the new art. It is only now, after the publication of his writings of that period, that we can see how absolutely the conclusions he arrived at through his general conception of Hellenism, disagreed with those of Wagner’s art. I can well imagine, how often, in those days, he must have laid exhaustive and magnificent passages reluctantly aside passages which, now reveal so clearly to us Nietzsche as he really was, unalloyed and true. It was these conflicting feelings that rendered the conclusion of his work and its publication so difficult to him. After having finished the book he wrote to Erwin Rohde, towards the beginning of 1872, as follows : ” No one has any idea of the way in which such a book comes into being, of the trouble and care to which one is put in order to keep one’s self to this extent free from all the other ideas and notions that press in upon one from all sides, and of the courage of the conception and the boldness of its development ; but what people will perhaps suspect least of all is the colossal mission I felt I had to fulfil in regard to Wagner, and which, as a matter of fact, has caused me the deepest qualms.” In any case, thanks to his self-sacrifice and self restraint, he attained that to which he aspired ; for owing to The Birth of Tragedy, a much deeper conception of Wagnerian art, as resuscitated Dionysian art, was called into existence. From that time forward new hopes were connected with the name of Wagner hopes that gazed into new distances, and which in the early ‘seventies animated and enraptured vast numbers of the cultured youths of Germany. But the most delighted of all over the whole affair was Richard Wagner himself. Before my brother led him to regard the matter in this light, it had never occurred to him to consider the Apollonian and Dionysian problem as a principle of art. Leo Berg in his Charakteristiken gives a very apt description of Nietzsche as he was at this time. ” In those days he was the finest type of a young German, full of gratitude and pious feeling, full of ardent passion for his gods and heroes ; an artist through and through, who could not show his reverence for a thing otherwise than by beautifying and transfiguring it that is, by idealising it. He was also full of that artist’s irony which secretly converts everyone from whom it takes a gift into one who receives a gift, and which, in the act of fervently kissing the right hand from which it has taken a silver piece, presses a gold piece into the left hand ! ” It is possible to follow the genesis of The Birth of Tragedy quite clearly from his notes written between the autumn of 1869 to November, 1871. He meditated upon the problems of this enigmatical book amid the most varied circumstances, even in the midst of war, ” beneath the walls of Metz.” In January, 1871, he collected the ideas together almost exactly in the form in which they now stand; but in the middle of his work he was suddenly interrupted. His health, which had been very unsteady since his return to Bale, began to decline visibly. His premature return to his post was beginning to pay him out. He got jaundice, inflammation of the bowels followed, and in addition to this he was terribly tormented by insomnia. Professor Liebermeister, who had already shown some displeasure when he had resumed work so prematurely at the University, now insisted upon his availing himself of a long leave to go to the Italian lakes, and prescribed ” the cheerful young sister ” as a nurse and as a travelling companion. At first Fritz had not written with any anxiety about his health ; he was, however, so weak that when, owing to some reason or other, he was told that I could not come and another plan was laid before him, he fainted. The doctor wrote a second time, and then only did we begin to think that his indisposition must be of a serious nature. I therefore set out from Naumburg in the middle of the night to join him, when the thermometer registered several degrees below freezing point. The first day we only reached Fliielen, because the stage-coach, the running of which the heavy falls of snow had interrupted for a whole fortnight, could resume its regular service only on the following morning. In our hotel we came across Mazzini, who, under the assumed name of Mr. Brown, was travelling in the company of a young man. My brother was too unwell to care to strike up any acquaintance and to speak French on his journey. I, however, was only too ready to do so, more particularly as this noble fugitive, bowed down with age and sorrow, who could enter the fatherland he loved so deeply only in secret and under an assumed name, struck me as an extraordinarily stirring figure. The whole of this journey across St. Gothard in tiny little sleighs built to carry only two persons, was undertaken in such beautiful weather that the gloomy scenery as well as the winter landscape of gold, blue and white, struck us as indescribably beautiful. The intellectual companionship of Mazzini, who graciously joined the two of us at all the stations, and an accident which terrified us while we were descending the zig-zag road leading from the dizzy heights of the St. Gothard into the valley of Tremola, as if on wings (a small sleigh immediately in front of us fell with its
passengers, coachman and horse, more than 200 feet into the depths ; fortunately no one was hurt, thanks to the soft snow) all these things combined lent this journey a peculiar and never-to-be-forgotten charm. The following phrase of Goethe’s, which Mazzini repeatedly quoted in his foreign accent to the young man who accompanied him, became thenceforward a favourite life maxim with my brother and myself : ” Get rid of compromise and live resolutely in that which is whole, full and beautiful.” Mazzini’s farewell words were very touching. He asked me whither we were bound. I replied, ” For Lugano, which from all accounts is a sort of Paradise.” He smiled, sighed a little and said : ” For youth Paradise is everywhere.” We reached Lugano on the 12th of February, and we had good weather and pleasant company. I would refer more especially to the brother of the great Field Marshal Moltke, his wife, and his two delightful young daughters. “ We saw a good deal of this distinguished family, and my brother showed the most lively interest in talking with, the clever couple. At times, too, he would read them some of his manuscripts, for instance, ” Concerning the Greek State,” a part of The Birth of Tragedy, which was only published twenty-five years later. I remember how pleased Fritz was at the time with the shrewd comments of Herr von Moltke. Thanks to him we also heard a good deal about the events of the war, as well as about what was going on behind the scenes. The whole of this holiday proved very beneficial to my brother. Owing to the continual fine weather, we spent a great deal of our time in the open, and as the company present, though large, was made up of people who were tolerably well suited to each other, the evenings were very pleasant too. There was a good deal of music ; performances were given, and drawing-room games were played. Fritz entered into it all quite heartily, and was so amused and amusing, particularly in the games, that an elderly lady who had often expressed her astonishment at this full-fledged Professor of not quite twenty-seven, once exclaimed admiringly: “ To-day, Herr Professor, you are not even twenty-six, but only fourteen years of age ! ” Fritz, however, merely replied as he had often done before, that he had been a much too serious child, and that in the matter of laughing and merriment he had to recover a deal of lost time. I can still remember several pleasant excursions we made, and one which we undertook to Mt. Ere” remains quite vividly impressed upon my mind. about ten or twelve of us had laid ourselves down on the summit, and my brother, who was in the centre of the party, a little higher than the rest of us, drew a copy of Faust from his pocket, and read a few scenes as for instance: “ Released from ice are brooks and rivers)” while our eyes wandered over the magnificent spring landscape, and grew intoxicated with the overflowing riches of the world. At last he let the book drop, and with his melodious voice began to discourse upon what he had just read and upon the things around us, just as if we had shed all our empty northern narrowness and pettiness, had grown worthy of higher feelings and higher aims, and with greater courage and lighter wings, could now, with all our energy, ascend to the highest pinnacle to meet the sun. “ We all felt in a very exalted mood, and one of the ladies afterwards said to me with some emotion : “ I shall never forget that ; it was indeed a real Sermon on the Mount.” What happy and cloudless days were these three weeks in Lugano all around us we had the scent of violets, the sunshine, and the beautiful air of the mountains and of spring ! I can still remember how we joked and laughed; with wanton spirits we participated even in the fun of the carnival. At Mid-Lent we were invited by an Italian nobleman to Ponte Tresa. When I now recollect how we Germans from the Hotel du Pare danced together and with the Italians on the open market-place there (I can still see Fritz quite vividly in my mind’s eye, merrily dancing around dance), the whole thing strikes me as a real carnival dream. But, as had too often been the case already, this happy time ended in sadness : Herr von Moltke, who had been held in such high esteem by everybody, caught cold while taking a trip on the lake, developed inflammation of the lungs and, to the general dismay of all our party, died. During the whole sojourn, my brother wrote a good deal of The Birth of Tragedy, and read me several passages of it aloud. On the 10th of April we returned to Bale, and here the writing continued, and also, to a still greater degree, the process of weeding out. On the 2Gth the manuscript was sent to a publisher. When quite a young Professor in Leipzig, Fritz had made the acquaintance of the head of the firm of Engelmann, who had shown himself well pleased with the young scholar and had rashly offered to publish his first book for him, little dreaming that this amiable young man, who seemed so certain to become a credit to his calling, would one day present him with a questionable monster of a book. “ We called the new book ” The Centaurs,” in accordance with a suggestion my brother made in the following remark : ” Science, Art and Philosophy are now growing so closely side by side in me that one day I shall certainly bring forth centaurs.” The rough draft of my brother’s letter to Herr Engelmann is still in existence ; it reads : ” You were once kind enough to offer to become my publisher, and I should like to know whether the book I am sending you to-day does not meet with your approval. I have written a pamphlet which ought to represent about 90 pages of letterpress, to which I have given the title “ Music and Tragedy “ ; and I now send you the MS. of the beginning of it. As you will see, I have attempted to explain the phenomenon of Greek Tragedy in a completely novel way, and have disregarded altogether its philological aspect in order to keep in view only the aesthetic questions involved. The real object of the book is, however, to throw light upon Richard Wagner, the extraordinary enigma of our age, in his relation to Greek Tragedy. I venture to predict that all the last part cannot fail to create somewhat of a stir among the whole of our musical public, and if I compare it with what has been said recently about the same problem by -such men as Hanslick and others, and may be allowed to draw any conclusion from the effect which certain of its passages have made upon my friends, I cannot help believing that the more profound among the reading public will be interested in the work. In order to make myself quite clear to the general reader I have taken particular pains that the explanation should be as lucid and as good in style as it can be made. ” I should like the work to be produced as nearly as possible in the form of an elegant scientific pamphlet, and in the event of your accepting it from me, I would request you kindly to publish it in accordance with this desire. To enter into detail, for the purpose of such a pamphlet, I may say that I prefer German type, and even large German type. I also
like a large octavo page, which must on no account contain more than 28 to 32 lines, and the paper must be good. If by any chance you would be prepared to undertake this publication for me, I should be glad if you would send me a sample of the type and paper chosen, as also your suggestions as to terms.” My brother had to wait a long time for a reply, and then he heard from a friend that Herr Engelmann, somewhat perplexed by the whole affair, had asked the advice of an expert, and that both had spoken about the pamphlet rather doubtfully. Fritz then demanded back the manuscript, which at that time bore the title, ” Music and Tragedy,” although, in the end, Engelmann declared himself ready to publish it. My brother wanted, however, to let the matter of the publication stand over for a while ; for new ideas were already filling his head ideas which were afterwards to find expression in The Future of our Educational Institutions. In accordance with my brother’s pressing wish, I remained in Bale throughout the spring, and also joined him in the summer holidays, which we spent together in the Bernese Oberland. During the whole of this period, Fritz spoke with great animation about the abundance of new ideas which were forming in his mind in regard to our present civilisation, and a struggle he wished to begin against it with the view of establishing a new standpoint in culture. ” Fritz,” I said one day, ” you are preaching very wonderful sermons to the German nation.” He laughed and replied : ” “ Well, yes, something of the sort is what I shall ultimately do.” The Commune and the burning of the Louvre upset him terribly, and may have called into being many of these new ideas about the strange symptoms of our culture. Overcome by the news of it, Jacob Burckhardt and my brother hastened to each other, missed each other, and when finally they did meet, could only shake hands and were not able to speak for tears. In June, 1871, Fritz writes to Baron von Gersdorff : ” In addition to the war of nations, we have been terrified by that international hydra which suddenly showed its frightful head, as the harbinger of very different wars in the future. If we could only talk things over together, we should agree as to how clearly that terrible apparition betrays the appalling infirmity which lies at the root of our modern life yea, as a matter of fact, at the root of the whole of ancient Christian Europe and its social organisation, and above all of the whole of Latin civilisation, and realise how each one of us, with all our past, is responsible for such horrors coming into being. We should therefore be very far from imputing the crime of this struggle against culture, with a lofty sense of self-esteem, to those unhappy wretches alone. I know what it means, the war against culture. For some time after I heard of the burning of the Louvre, I felt absolutely crushed, and was overcome with sorrow and doubt. The whole of our scientific and philosopho-artistic existence struck me as an absurdity, if one single day sufficed to exterminate the magnificent treasures of art yea, whole periods of art. With fervent conviction I clung to the metaphysical value of art, which cannot be with us for the sake of wretched man, but which has a higher mission to fulfil. But even in the greatest paroxysm of my grief I could not get myself to throw a single stone at those sacrilegious knaves who, to my mind, are simply active bearers of a burden of guilt which is universal and which gives one much food for thought.” He concludes his letter by asking Gersdorff to visit him, which the latter did in July, 1871. We spent a lovely time with him in Gimmelwald near Mirren. Fritz was very happy to have his friend with him again after almost five years of separation, and to feel himself just as closely bound to him as before, and just as united in regard to all the great aims of life. It seems to me characteristically ” German ” on the part of Fritz, that all the time he was really so happy at heart, he composed two poems on ” Melancholy.” On the 18th September he wrote to his friend, who had then returned home : ” I thank you once more for your visit ; nothing more delightful and more comforting could have happened to me this summer. Once again we have drawn the net of culture over both our heads, and it will be difficult to disturb the united course of our best aspirations. You have left a most favourable impression upon all. Frau Wagner has written to me about you, and she expressed herself as very pleased and grateful ; Burckhardt and Vischer send you their kindest regards. In short Bale is a place after my own heart, my friends are content with Bale, and Bale is content with my friends.” In October, 1871, my brother had two exceedingly pleasant meetings with Rohde and Gersdorff, first in Leipzig and then in Naumburg ; and a very comical photograph taken in a booth at the Leipzig fair has immortalised these happy days. On my brother’s birthday, the 15th of October, the two friends came to Naumburg with all kinds of presents, both comic and serious. Fritz was delighted. With these merry youthful spirits, that transfigured even the most sober and abstract things, one could allow oneself a fairly strong dose of Schopenhauerian Pessimism. The three friends jokingly remarked that some good-natured demons, who were favourable to friendship, had made their time together particularly happy and cheerful that autumn. When he returned to Bale my brother therefore suggested to them that, out of consideration for the kind endeavours of these demons, each of the friends should, in his respective quarters, present a thank-offering to them : ” On the evening of Monday next at 10 p.m. we shall perform the rite as follows : Each one of us shall take a glass of dark red wine, empty half of it out into the street while pronouncing Latin words and shall then drink the remaining half ! ” This thank-offering, which was intended far more as a tribute to friendship than as a mark of attention to the hypothetical demons, and which was to unite the friends, so grateful for the bond that joined them, for one moment in one thought, has always seemed to me profoundly affecting. My brother’s share in the ceremony was performed in Jacob Burckhardt’s study ; and it struck me as very amusing that this lonely oddity should join in this ultra- juvenile ceremony of consecration. They poured two large tumblers of deep red wine into the street ; and Fritz declared afterwards that if they had done this in the Middle Ages, they would certainly have been arraigned for practising black magic. During their stay in Leipzig, the two friends, Rohde and Gersdorff, took my brother to Fritzsch the bookseller, who was Wagner’s publisher, in order to offer him the manuscript of The Birth of Tragedy. At last, in November, Fritzsch accepted the work, and my brother wrote very joyfully to Gersdorff as follows: ” I was reminded most vividly of our stay in Leipzig today, and in some respects I feel able to say in the words of the old song that I now add the happy beginning to the happy end. To-day, only to-day, Fritzsch the worthy
publisher, answered the request which I put to him when we were in Leipzig together ! And that is why I feel I must send you the news to-day. For it was you and Rohde who took me in body and spirit to the worthy Fritzsch : a deed which I have not ceased to extol to this moment. It was not his fault that his reply took such a long time to reach me. He sent the manuscript to an expert as soon as he received it, and the gentleman in question dawdled over it until the 16th November… . Well, they have decided to produce it in exactly the same style as Wagner’s Bestimmung der Oper. Rejoice with me ! There will be a nice space available for a beautiful vignette. Let your artistic friend (Eau) know this, and give him my kindest regards into the bargain.” Before the work had begun printing, my brother wrote and added the present final section, in which he directly refers to Wagnerian art. In December, 1871, he wrote to Rohde about it as follows : ” The whole of the last section, which you have not yet read, will certainly surprise you ; I have dared much, and may be allowed with great point to cry aloud to myself : animam salvavi. And that is why I think only with great satisfaction of the work, and do not feel concerned at its having turned out to be as provocative as possible, nor have any qualms as to the cry of indignation which will be raised in some quarters when it is published.” In the last days of the year 1871 The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music appeared and copies were sent to all my brother’s friends. All of them greeted the firstborn with the most solemn feelings. Gersdorff resolved to celebrate its baptism, but his plan was never carried out. “ With his heart full of emotion my brother wrote in his own copy : “ Bale, New Year’s Day, 1872. Schaff, das Tagwerk meiner Hcinde Grosser Geist, dass ich’s vollende ! ” l CHAPTER XIX THE FIRST BOOK MY brother called The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music a youthful work, ” full of youthful courage and melancholy.” In it he described the interaction of the Apollonian and Dionysian spirits with which the whole of the future development of Art is bound up, and which is to be regarded as the cause of the tragic wisdom of the Greeks and of its imperishable monument, Greek tragedy. It is very significant that my brother should have tried to connect his Schopenhauerian and Wagnerian views with the Hellenic world ; for the contemplation of this sublime world, the height of whose culture and beauty has never been attained since, remained throughout his life the one confirmation of his loftiest hopes that a superior culture an ideal state of mankind consisting of a union of culture and nature was no empty dream, but a possibility which had yet to be realised. My brother certainly understood the Greeks in a manner very different from that in which even Goethe and Winckelmann had depicted them. Only through the discovery of the real import of the Dionysian spirit were we vouchsafed that profound insight into the most subterranean depths of the Greek soul, and that is why my brother might well be allowed to write with justifiable assurance in The Twilight of the Idols (1888) : ” I was the first who, in order to understand the ancient, still rich and even superabundant Hellenic instinct, took that marvellous phenomenon, which bears the name of Dionysus, seriously : it can be explained only as a manifestation of excessive energy. Anyone who has studied the Greeks, as that most profound of modern connoisseurs of their culture, Jacob Burckhardt of Bale, had done, must have realised at once that something had been achieved by means of this interpretation. And in his ‘ Cultur der Griechen ‘ Burckhardt inserted a special chapter on the phenomenon in question. If you would like a glimpse of the other side, you have only to refer to the almost laughable poverty of instinct among German philologists when they approach the Dionysian question. The celebrated Lobeck, especially who, with the venerable assurance of a worm dried up between books, crawled into this world of mysterious states, and succeeded in convincing himself that he was scientific, whereas he was simply revoltingly superficial and childish Lobeck, with all the pomp of profound erudition, gave us to understand that, as a matter of fact, there was nothing at all in all these curiosities.” Whereas, theretofore, we had been taught to regard the Greeks to some extent as a people of unceasing cheerfulness, the author of The Birth of Tragedy now suddenly vouchsafed us a view of appalling depth into the Hellenic soul which, quivering from extreme tension and from its excess of power, and full of political and artistic passion and jealousy, sought to transfigure the Dionysian by means of the Apollonian element. ” To become Apollonian means, to break one’s will to immensity, to multifariousness, to uncertainty and to the horrible by a will to moderation, simplicity, order, rule and concept. Intemperance, wildness, the Asiatic spirit, lie at the base of the Greek soul. The courage of the Greek consists in his struggle with his Asiatic nature. Beauty was not given him, any more than logic and the naturalness of his morals were it was conquered, willed, fought for it constitutes his triumph.” My brother describes this triumph even over suffering more clearly still in 1886, and showed to what extent the Greeks understood “ how to explain suffering as a blessing, and poison as a food… . They suffer as severely as they possibly can ; but they react against this suffering only by manifesting all the more pleasure in the creation and discussion of things which do man good. They are a people most sensitive to suffering, but their plastic power in the use of pain is extraordinary. To this power also belongs moderation in the feeling of resentment under pain, and in wallowing in pain : hence they felt impelled to a triumphant attitude as a remedy.” I do not think that the Greeks were ever before understood as sufferers in this way as sufferers despite their superabundant energy in all walks of life. In any case, it was on this account that the conclusion of The Birth of Tragedy, as I can well remember, caused such a profound impression. In the passage in question my brother depicts a stranger who, on entering Athens, is intoxicated by the uninterrupted flow of beauty on all sides, and cries out: “ Blessed race of Hellenes! How great Dionysus must be among you, when the Delian god deems such charms necessary to cure you of your dithyrambic madness ! ” A hoary old Athenian, ” looking up to him with the sublime eye of Aeschylus, replies : ‘ Say also this, thou curious stranger : what sufferings this people must have undergone, in order to be able to become so beautiful ! But now follow me to a tragic play, and sacrifice with me in the temple of both deities ! ‘ ‘ Thus early did my brother have the thought that suffering may be both the obstacle and impulse to, as well as the source of, the highest development of
power, and that we should therefore conceive it as a necessity. And this he wrote at a time when his strong frame had only just recently been convulsed with pain ; but his deeply sensitive nature was already suffering, merely as the result of the fierce development of his mind. To him a conviction was not a mere garment which may be exchanged at will for a new one; it was something which involved the deepest feelings and thoughts. His spirit, however, on its road to freedom and to truth, forced him to newer views ; and how much pain it cost him to part from this old stage of knowledge, so intimately bound up with his warmest feelings ! On the whole, those of my brother’s friends and acquaintances who had not witnessed the gradual development of his first book felt very much like the worthy Herr Engelmann. They were full of boundless admiration not unmixed with consternation before this unclassifiable little book. The more elderly of his protectors, Privy Councillor Ritschl of Leipzig, and Vischer of Bale, felt in their heart of hearts that they were a little compromised by the book, even though its fine youthful enthusiasm somewhat stirred their old spirits and reconciled them to it. For what would genius be if it had not the power to reconcile its opponents to its views and to seduce whole generations to its ideas and even to its errors ? My brother was ingenuous enough to ask his beloved teacher Ritschl what he really honestly felt in his inmost heart about the book. And the wisdom and moderation with which that scholar responded to the demand of this youthful Hotspur has always seemed to me extremely kind and noble. Looked at closely, The Birth of Tragedy was as a matter of fact an attack upon many of Ritschl’s most valued convictions. At this time, shortly after the publication of The Birth of Tragedy, my brother was offered a post at Greifswald, while he also received the proposal of a Professorship at Dorpat. But in those days he was offered these things on the score of his former excellent reputation as a philologist, before his colleagues had got wind of The Birth of Tragedy. As soon as this book became known in philological circles, estrangement was general and widespread. All around him there reigned the most oppressive and uneasy silence, and not one of the periodicals dared to review it. But the letters and descriptions dealing with the impression the book had’ made upon the family at Tribschen, consoled my brother for all the silence he encountered in other quarters. Richard “ Wagner wrote by return of post : ” DEAR FRIEND, I have never yet read a finer book than yours ! It is all magnificent ! I now write to you in haste, because the reading of your work has stirred me most extraordinarily, and I must first wait for a more sober mood, before I can read it properly. I told Cosima that, after her, it is you who come next in my heart, and then, for a long distance, no one else until Lenbach, who has made such a strikingly lifelike portrait of me ! Adieu ! Come very soon to see us and then there will be Dionysian merriment ! ” After the publication of the book, my brother received many other curious letters which pleased him greatly. He himself speaks of the communications from Liszt, Billow, Baroness von Schleinitz, Professor Hagen of Berne, Baron von Balligand of Munich and Edward Schure”. Billow’s letter, in which he expressed himself rapturously about the book, is unfortunately not to be found, but my brother wrote concerning his visit as follows : “ Hans von Billow, whom I had not yet met, called upon me here, and inquired whether he might dedicate his translation of Leopardi (the outcome of his leisure time in Italy) to me. He is so enthusiastic over my book, that he travels about with a number of copies of it, and he gives these away right and left.” It will readily be understood that this visit of Billow’s (Frau Cosima’s first husband), coming as it did at a time when the friendship between Wagner and my brother was at its height, caused the latter to feel somewhat embarrassed. After having discussed The Birth of Tragedy, Billow tried to dispel my brother’s uneasiness by himself referring to his former relationship with Wagner and Frau Wagner, which he described in the following image : Cosima was Ariadne, he (Billow) was Theseus, and Wagner was Dionysus. Like all similes, this one, too, was somewhat lame; for in the present instance it was not Theseus who had abandoned Ariadne, but just the reverse. But all Billow wished to imply was that, after him the higher man a god had come. My brother was very pleased that Billow should raise his experiences to some extent into an impersonal and mythological sphere, even T.N. S though he had to put up with many bitter remarks about his dear friend Cosima, which, though they cut him deeply, Billow was not able to suppress. From that time forward we always in private referred to Cosima as Ariadne. Strange to say, in my brother’s rough draft of his ” Conversations on the Isle of Naxos,” which were obviously written in the late autumn of 1885, the three characters, Dionysus, Theseus and Ariadne reappear, and utter almost the same words as were actually said by Cosima, “ Wagner and Bilow in the years 1871 and 1872. Dionysus repeats precisely the same words as were used by Wagner in regard to his absence of jealousy where Cosima was concerned, to wit : ” How could another love what I love in her ? ” while Ariadne herself pronounces the hard words Bilow had used on the occasion of his first meeting with my brother, which had so hurt the latter, i.e., “ All heroes shall perish through me.” Suffering from the injury done to him, Bilow had said to my brother : ” Cosima has ruined me, and she will also ruin Wagner.” Later on, when my brother observed that, owing to Cosima’ s influence Wagner had grown to be ” more Liszt than Wagner ” so much so that he wrote ” a parody to his Siegfried and called it Parsifal ” Billow’s words often came back to him, even in those ” Conversations on the Isle of Naxos ” which he had in view. But everything in these conversations is raised to the sphere of the symbolic, and has nothing to do with the persons above mentioned. Owing to its connection with Wagner, The Birth of Tragedy penetrated circles which, at bottom, were somewhat widely removed from the ideas it contained. Nowadays the fact must seem rather amusing that it was ladies of rank, and moreover of intellect, who were among the first to rave about this book, which in every respect was so difficult to understand. And through them there was formed a small but enthusiastic band of disciples whose members were scattered throughout Europe from Moscow, Berlin and Munich, to Paris, Geneva and Florence. In Berlin the book was read by Baroness von Schleinitz and her friends ; in Munich by Baroness von Muchanoff and Baron Balligand, in Geneva by Countess Diodati, Herr von Senger and numerous acquaintances. Indeed this enthusiastic lady even began a French translation which was unfortunately never completed ; but which, to judge from passages of it I have read, would have been very good. Fraulein von Meysenbug describes her first acquaintance with the book exhaustively in the Neue Freie Presse.
“ In 1872, when I was living in Florence, Frau Cosima Wagner called my attention to a certain pamphlet which had just been published and which was written by a young professor of Bale who was on terms of intimate friendship with the Wagner family then residing near the Lake of Lucerne. The work bore the title, The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music, and the name of its author was Friedrich Nietzsche. As it happened, there were quite a number of men of note in my circle at the time ; we therefore read the work together and were immediately delighted with it. The light thrown upon the two fundamental elements of Greek life, to which the author gives the names of Dionysian and Apollonian, opened up a whole treasure of thoughts as to how the essence of the world “ per se,” the Dionysian element, whose primitive language is music, produces the art work of tragedy out of the beauty of the Apollonian phenomenon. We also heard that Nietzsche was a thoroughly scholarly philologist, and that while still a very young man he had been recommended as a regular Professor to Bale University by the famous Professor Ritschl, who esteemed him greatly. That which attracted us in the work, however, more even than its scholarship and its intimate knowledge of antiquity, was the wealth of intellect and poetry in the point of view the divining eye of the poetical man who with the glance of a seer grasps the inner truth of things where the pedantic dry-as-dust scholar sees only the shell which he takes to be the essential thing. It is really a great joy to think that there stands such a splendid and highly-gifted young personality, both in the scientific and creative sense, behind this work, which was prepared in Bayreuth, where Richard Wagner went to live directly after the war.” s A philologist who conceived of Greek antiquity in a spirited and enthusiastic manner also wrote in very complimentary terms. He concluded his private letter as follows : ” You are right for that is how I understand you, and that is what I think too the true scholar educates himself through intuition, through a living grasp of life itself.” At last Rohde came forward with his opinion, and published a sympathetic review in the Sunday supplement of the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung shortly after the glorious days of the laying of the foundation stone of the theatre at Bayreuth. On the 27th May, 1872, my brother wrote to him with great joy : ” Friend, friend, friend ! What have you done ! One can only meet with such an E. E. once in a lifetime. Without having seen these letters I plunged into the abyss of Bayreuth feeling, and read slowly on and on to a crescendo of surprise, until at last I recognised that the voice that rang so solemn and so deep was that of my friend. Oh, dearest friend, fancy your having done that for me ! ” Erwin Rohde had been made a Professor at Kiel in April. He telegraphed : Salve Friderice care amice professor te salutat. Erwin. My brother’s joy was indescribable, for he had had the gravest fears as to whether the loyal brotherhood-in-arms of which Rohde had shown himself capable, had not perhaps harmed him professionally. My brother wrote full of joy and high spirits : ” Now, however, that we stand in the midst of the body academic, like two companions of the sword, armed to the teeth, and now that all anxiety as to our livelihood is at an end, we may still be allowed to dare many things, in order to terrify people on the principle of the old riddle : ‘ What is more terrible than a flute? Two flutes.’ ” Meanwhile Wagner’s star had risen over Bayreuth. The Master went there in January, in order to prepare the ground for his plans, and met with hearty understanding and sympathy. On the 18th of January, Frau Cosima wrote to my brother : ” Yes, Bayreuth ! now we shall be tragic human creatures ! God knows whether this new idea will succeed ; but that is almost immaterial ; we cannot do more than stand for what we want. If, however, it succeed, we shall experience in Wilhelmina’s city that to which you summon us. Did the Master tell you that the Burgomaster and Town- Councillor of Bayreuth have been here? They suddenly appeared with building plans, and the day at Tribschen was sufficiently remarkable. In April we shall probably have to go to Vienna, and then farewell to lovely Tribschen, in which even The Birth of Tragedy was born, and so many other things which may never return.” The departure from Tribschen was a terribly hard experience for my brother, and he could not even speak about it without a break in his voice. When, towards the end of April, on a day in early spring, he went to Tribschen to wish everyone good-bye, he found Frau Wagner in the middle of packing. While she went hither and thither, my brother began to extemporise at the grand piano. All his SOITOW, his inexpressible hopes and fears, his sweet memories, and the feeling that just then something irretrievable was about to be lost, resounded in the wonderful melodies which rang now joyously and now mournfully through the empty rooms. And even now, after so many years, when all the old friendly feelings have changed, Frau Cosima still remembers that strangely fascinating fantasia, my brother’s song of parting from Tribschen that Blessed Isle ! Very distressed, he wrote to Gersdorff : ” Last Saturday we bade a sad and stirring farewell to Tribschen. Tribschen has now ceased to exist : we walked about as amid ruins of the past, tears hung heavily in the air, and in the clouds ; the dog would not eat, and whenever one spoke to any of the servants of the household one was met with sobs. We packed the manuscripts, letters and books together ah ! it was desperate ! These three years that I have spent in close relationship with Tribschen, and during which I have made twenty-three visits to the place what do they not mean to me ! If I had not had them, what should I now be ! I am glad that I have petrified that Tribschen world for myself in my book… .” Then came the perfect days of the laying of the foundation stone of the Bayreuth Theatre (May, 1872). Later on, when he compared these days with those of the production of the Nibelungen (1876), he cried with a sigh : ” The incomparable days devoted to the laying of the first stone, the small group of the initiated who celebrated them, and who were far from lacking fingers for the handling of delicate things not the shadow of a resemblance ! ” And it was indeed quite a select company that was assembled in the Margravine’s great box at the old Rococo Theatre at Bayreuth, to hear the rehearsals and the performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. A strange world ! All those present were full of genuine and real enthusiasm for the artist and his work ; all were moved by the same hope, as if they were witnessing the dawn of a glorious day, which seemed to promise the bliss and the triumph of a new German culture. Besides this, vague memories of the past hung in the air ; but I believe Richard Wagner himself gives the best description of the strangely mixed feelings of the company assembled at this Festival on that spring evening at Bayreuth : “ Who could have helped having the strangest thoughts when, on the 22nd May, 1872, he found himself on the same spot whereon the Margravine’s court and guests, presided over by the great Frederick, once used to stand to witness either a ballet, an Italian opera, or a French comedy, while now from the same stage there resounded the powerful strains of the wonderful Ninth Symphony, produced
by German musicians from all parts of the Fatherland ? And who could then have helped seeing a vision, intensified by sound, which made him recognise the triumph of the German spirit, when, at last from the very gallery from which at one time trumpeters in court livery played the trivial fanfare at receptions given to their Royal Highnesses by the humble court, enthusiastic German singers called to the assembled throng: Seid umschlungen Millionen (‘ Oh ye millions, I embrace ye ! ‘).” A year later, still much affected by the memory of that occasion, my brother wrote, ” I believe they were the happiest days I have ever had in my life. There was that something in the air which I have never detected elsewhere, something unutterable and full of the greatest hopes.” It was at Bayreuth that my brother made the acquaintance of all the most charming of the patronesses of Wagner’s art, the Baroness von Schleinitz, Countess Donhoff , and also that sterling friend of Wagner’s, Fraulein von Meysenbug, who had stuck to him through so many struggles. Later on Fritz became very friendly with her. She writes about her first meeting with my brother as follows : ” During an interval in the final rehearsal of Wagner’s production of the Ninth Symphony, Frau Wagner came to me with a young man and said that she wished to introduce Hen Nietzsche to me. ‘What? the Nietzsche?’ I cried joyfully. Both of them laughed, and Frau Wagner replied, ‘Yes, the Nietzsche ! ‘ And now, to the already exalted idea one had formed of the young author, there was added the picture of a youthful, good-looking, and delightful personality with whom one quickly found one’s self in hearty sympathy.” He also made many other acquaintances in those days, for all the noble, self-denying men who had put themselves wholly at the service of Wagner’s Art and of the great idea of Bayreuth, were assembled there. Of course, the two friends Rohde and Gersdorff were also there, and I, alone, who in a moment of mad magnanimity had yielded up my place to someone else, was not there, despite the fact that great pains had been taken to reserve a seat for me. Later on, my brother wrote to Gersdorff : ” Ah, dear friend, we know what we have experienced ! Nobody will be able to rob us of these sacred and solemn memories. Under their charm, and fighting for them, we must now go through life, and strive above all to be so earnest and energetic in all the principal acts of our existence, as to show ourselves worthy of such great experiences and distinctions.” With the summer came other joys; for instance, a performance of Tristan und Isolde at Munich, conducted by Hans von Billow. My brother went thither to enjoy the performance in the company of Gersdorff and Fraulein von Meysenbug, as Bitlow himself had invited him to come. But even the strain of a tiring journey seems to have been worthwhile, for the performance must indeed have been excellent. My brother returned radiant from Munich. ” You can have no idea what a lot of good such a performance of Tristan does to me,” he declared again and again; and as a matter of fact, he had borne the two night journeys, the two performances of Tristan, and the whole day in the company of friends, exceedingly well. In the year 1872 my brother had recovered the good health he had enjoyed in the past ; whoever saw him and spent much time with him at this period could not speak too highly of his condition. My recollections of the period, also, are of the happiest nature. I can still see us both taking our walks in the outlying districts of Bale, always talking animatedly, and interrupted only by our surging love of song. At that time, however, we sang only “ Wagnerian music, for instance, the Kaisermarsch or the Preislied which we managed particularly well. The year 1872 marked the zenith of that period which the late Professor Holzer intended to describe exhaustively, to wit the period from the end of the sixties to the middle of the seventies of the ” first Nietzsche, the friend of Richard Wagner the Nietzsche whom Erwin Rohde loved so enthusiastically, the young, hopeful and trustful Nietzsche who, with a colossal faith in his ideals and friends, marched courageously towards the future the gladiator who, in the early ‘seventies, felt in possession of his greatest power, and who seemed to Deussen, on the occasion of one of the latter’s visits to Bale, full of fire and buoyancy, and as self-reliant as a young lion.” CHAPTER XX FRIEND AND FOE THE wonderful health to which I referred in the previous chapter was sorely needed by my brother in the year 1872. In June he received a shock which was singularly well calculated to wound very deeply indeed a sensitive nature such as his. Philology, mortified by my brother’s misdeeds, dared to level an attack which was not altogether in the best of taste. At the beginning of June, the faithful Gersdorff, quite beside himself with passion, wrote that the philologist von Wilamowitz, a former school-friend of his at Pforta, had just published a small pamphlet entitled, “ The Philology of the Future: A reply to The Birth of Tragedy, by Friedrich Nietzsche, Professor of Classical Philology at Bale.” In this essay my brother was attacked with great spite and little wit, but also with much apparent learning. Gersdorff was most bitterly offended, for this man Wilamowitz, who now seemed to him no better than a monster fit only to be immediately swallowed up by the earth, had once been his great friend. Later, we all came to regard this essay as a piece of excusable youthful folly ; but at the time of its appearance we certainly felt differently about it. As soon as Rohde, that excellent brother in arms, had read the pamphlet, he came forward full of indignation and offered his services in the task of defending his friend and refuting his assailant. On the 8th of June my brother replied as follows : “ Do you see, my dear, dear friend, how offensive we are! We shall soon learn, too, how lonely we are. Now we must stand decently at our posts. Still we must console each other mutually about that. May everything that you undertake to do be blessed with my love ! We shall stand loyally together, dear friend, even in calamities more serious than the present. For this is only an impudent prelude played by an untrained boyish hand ; but it can give us an idea of the ‘ manner ‘ in which opposition will one day come to us from the quarter of the ‘ great guns.’ ” Rohde began to feel a little anxious concerning my brother’s health, but Fritz wrote to him quite cheerfully on the 11th of June : “ I write to you to-day, dear friend, only in order to set your mind quite at rest as far as I am concerned. I am really in the place which you wished me to be in ; indeed, I even feel in the very best of spirits. I have the pleasure of
having my sister with me ; we live the simplest of lives together. In my solitary moments those ideas haunt me which I shall try to expound in my next book. In addition to this I find a certain pleasure in my lectures, especially in those on pre-Platonic philosophy… .” At that time, while my brother’s enemies certainly believed him to be brooding with feelings of revenge over Wilamowitz’s pamphlet, he had plunged wholly into that remote world of his beloved Greek philosophers of the tragic age. He felt an almost personal attachment for them, especially for Heraclitus, and it seemed as if he were able to derive more than others can from that which has been handed down to us of this ancient wisdom. In the year 1878, he wrote as follows : “ If I listened with attention to the collective sound of ancient Greek philosophy, I thought I should be able to hear notes which I was used to hearing in Greek art and particularly in Greek tragedy. To what extent this lay with the Greeks, or only with my own ears so starved of art I cannot at present say with certainty.” But, although my brother, far removed from the present, lived in thought in the tragic age of the Greeks, he was very hard hit by Wilamowitz’s attack more particularly because, despite the man’s youth, he had thought him promising. He, himself, said very little about the affair, but when I ventured to express myself with some indignation concerning it, he would only reply : “ The whole attack is false and unjust, but you would not have me defend myself ! ” This would have been an impossible thing in his opinion. Nor was it necessary, for his friends were equipping themselves to fight the pamphlet. Richard Wagner opened the war against young Wilamowitz with a ” Letter to Friedrich Nietzsche,” which was published on the 23rd of June, 1872, and which can be found in Vol. IX., p. 330, of Wagner’s Prose Works. As will be readily understood, and as we have seen from his letter to Gersdorff, my brother was full of the most hearty gratitude for the loyal stand Wagner made for his ideas. With these feelings in his heart, he wrote to Wagner, and received the following affecting lines in reply : ” friend ! Now, as a matter of fact, I feel just a little anxious about you, and simply because I attach so much value to you. To tell the truth, after my wife, you are the only windfall life has ever brought me : now, fortunately, Fidi must also be included ; but between him and me, there is a missing link, the place of which you alone can fill as the son to the grandson, so to speak. I feel no anxiety about Fidi ; but I do about you, and in so far as I feel it about you I feel it about Fidi. And this anxiety is quite of the common bourgeois kind. I should like to see your common or garden welfare certain ; for, as to the rest, it seems to me in your case to be thoroughly assured. Just recently, of a morning, I have been reading through your Birth again very attentively, and I have been constantly repeating to myself : ‘ If only he can get thoroughly healthy and remain so, and, if in other respects his circumstances continue to be satisfactory, then things cannot go very far wrong with him.’ ” The whole letter shows Wagner’s kindness of heart, and general good nature, and is an excellent proof of the mutual solicitude and veneration which a true friendship always stimulates. Nevertheless, the philologists still sneered as they had done before. Professor U., of Bonn, replied to his pupils’ questions concerning The Birth of Tragedy, by saying that it was pure nonsense. On the other hand, Ritschl remained very attached to my brother, and when the latter sent him, for the Rheinisches Museum, a continuation of his article dealing with the Florentine tract concerning the Contest of Homer and Hesiod, Ritschl, heartily pleased, wrote that Fritz had come back ” to the old familiar and sympathetic channel.” Yet the fact that the old scholar was still only able to condone The Birth of Tragedy was somewhat humiliating for my brother, although he may have been convinced that it contained the first statement of great ideas which would continue to exercise their influence for centuries. Fritz arranged to make a short trip to Italy during the autumn holidays, and I was to accompany him. But as pressing invitations forced me to travel northward once more, he decided to go with me as far as Naumburg. An autumn day of heavenly beauty made him change his mind again and led him to Italy after all. He promised me, however, to keep a diary of his journey, so that I might enjoy it as well when he returned. But he only kept his promise for the first few days. Nevertheless, I shall quote these short notes here, as they show so plainly how kind and sympathetic he could be, even to the simplest people. He met only ” good, pleasant and kind people ” on his journeys that is to say, he made them so ; charmed by the gentle sweetness of his nature, they were tempted to show him their best side, and even to confide in him concerning all their troubles and aspirations. The notes out of which, he concocted a letter to our dear mother (who, by the bye, had counted most certainly upon a visit from him) begin on the evening of the 28th of September, 1872 : “ Saturday. I am with a married couple from Bale. I did not know them, but had to pretend I did. I telegraphed to Lizzie from Baden (the telegram read : ‘ First hearty greetings. To-day glorious autumn weather. Am in for a grand time. Thy Brother ‘). Courtesy on the part of Herr Haller from Berne, who has given me his card. ” When I had almost reached Zurich I discovered that I had good old Gotz as a travelling companion. He told me that owing to Kirchner’s departure his musical work at Zurich has greatly increased. He also informed me about his opera which is to be performed in Hanover. ” I travelled from Zurich to Rapperswyl with nice simple people in a third-class carriage. But it was cold, and I scarcely felt the courage to go as far as Chur. At Rapperswyl I took a second-class ticket to Wesen, where I found the ‘bus of the Hotel Schwert, into which I mounted. The hotel is very fine and comfortable, but very empty. I have my meals all alone in the dining-room. ” Throughout the afternoon I had clear autumn weather, the remotest snow mountains were visible. In the evening the whole range appeared in magnificent steely grey. I have a slight headache for the moment. I had rather a bad night with violent dreams. ” Sunday. I awoke with a headache. My window looks out on the Lake of Walenstadt. The sun rises over peaks partly covered with snow. I had my breakfast and then walked for a while along the banks of the lake. Then I went to the railway station, after first having had a look at the Pension Speer, which stands at a higher altitude than my hotel, and looks
newer. The morning was very fine. I travelled second class to Chur, but grew ever more and more ill at ease, in spite of the lovely country, Lake Ragatz, etc. At Chur I felt that I could not go a step further; I paid no attention to the inquiries of the diligence officials and quickly retired to the Hotel Lukmainer. There they gave me a room with a good prospect, but I got into bed at once. I slept for three hours, after which I felt better and ate something. A particularly obliging and intelligent waiter called my attention to Bad Passug : I took my bearings. In the town of Chur the quiet of the Sabbath prevailed, and the mood was that of the afternoon. I walked along the high road quite easily; the view looking back on the town was magnificent, the scene was constantly changing and widening. After about fifteen minutes’ walk along a small side-path, I reached some pinewoods and a lovely shaded spot for up to that point it had been rather warm. I cannot say how delighted I was with the ravine through which the Kabiusa rushes. The road lies now on this bank, now on that, a number of bridges link it together, and it leads across waterfalls to the heights. I expected to find a pension on this spot, but this was a mistake on my part ; for I only came across a country inn, thronged with Sunday visitors and feasting and coffee-drinking families. First of all I drank three glasses at the soda spring ; then higher up, installed upon a balcony, I drank a bottle of Asti with some more of the soda water, and feeling much better in the head, I also had some goat’s milk cheese, which I ate with a fair appetite. A man with Chinese eyes, who was sitting at my table, also had a glass of Asti with me : he thanked me and drank with much apparent satisfaction. Then the landlady of the place handed me a number of reports and small pamphlets, and finally the landlord Sprecher conducted me over the place, let me drink at the springs, showed me the wealth of springs that had not yet been tapped, and, taking it for granted that I was interested, offered me a share in the foundation of a hotel, etc. The valley is extremely attractive and full of inexhaustible interest and wonder for the geologist. Graphite, ochre and quartz are to be found, and there is also a likelihood of gold, etc. The stone strata are twisted, turned about and broken up in the most extraordinary way, as they are at Axenstein on the Lake of Constance, but it is all much wilder, though on a smaller scale. I returned home late, when the sun was setting and the distant peaks were all aglow. At last happiness and inward content came on the scene. A child with flaxen hair was trying to find one or two nuts and was very funny. And then an old couple fetched me in, and we had a lively conversation. The man was an old grey headed fellow, a master cabinet-maker, who once when he was on the tramp fifty years ago entered Naumburg one very hot day. His son has been a missionary in India since 1858, and is expected in Chur next year, in order to see his father again. The daughter has been to Egypt several times and was a friend of Pastor Biggenbach’s. When I reached the hotel I did a little writing and had something to eat. An Italian who sat opposite me tried to talk to me ; but we understood each other with difficulty as he could not speak German.” In addition to this fragment of a diary, my brother, in a letter addressed to Gersdorff early in October, 1872, writes as follows concerning this journey : ” I have retired to this place the ‘ Hotel Bodenhaus,’ Spligen, on the frontier of Switzerland and Italy. I am satisfied beyond all expectation, even as you perceive with the ink and the pens, and am very happy. The solitude is rich and wonderful, and there are the most beautiful roads, along which I can walk for hours, absorbed in my own thoughts, without ever falling over a precipice ; but as soon as I look about me, there is something new and great to see. The only people I meet are the travellers who pass through by coach. I take my meals with them this is all I have to do with them they pass like Platonic shadows before my cave. … If I should travel any further, I shall go to Brescia, to take another holiday there that is to say, I shall travel as one really ought to travel, for refreshment. When I get there I shall study the paintings of a great Venetian master, Moretto, and only his : and in this way I shall ruin neither my stomach, my eyes, nor my holidays.” With the help of Burckhardt and the latter’s Cicerone he had thoroughly prepared himself for this painter, but the joys of art and Italy could not compare with the air of the mountains. When he had been a week at Bergamo he returned to Spligen. After the holidays he wrote to me from Bale as follows: ” My dear Lizzie, now you know what the air of the mountains is in it one is cheerful and full of love for mankind ; very often, too, one feels in a sublime and daring mood. ” What I mean by this I have really forgotten maybe only that I am not writing in mountain air, but that you are at liberty to receive and transfigure this product of the plains with the feelings generally roused by mountain air, ” From a traveller’s point of view my journey was a very unfortunate one; from a higher standpoint, however, it was an incomparably happy one. It sounds a trifle as I describe it the air of the heights, the air of the High Alps, the air of the Central High Alps ! My attempted journey into Italy was a failure the air was loathsomely mild, and there was no light and shade ! I got as far as Bergamo (half way to Venice), and from there I returned post haste, ventre-a-terre, to the Spligen Pass. Think of it ! Three days and two nights on the road the first day thither, the third back at Spligen ! This was, at least, energetic, brief and expensive ! In the last twenty-four hours of my holiday I spent a heavenly autumn day at Kagatz.” As far as I can remember, and judging from the handwriting and the ink, it was during those raw autumn days at Spligen that my brother wrote ” The Relation of Schopenhauerian Philosophy to a German Culture.” In November my brother met the Wagners in Strassburg, and delighted them with his cheerfulness and endurance under the stress of the general hostility towards him, the onerous duties of his post, music and travelling. Frau Cosima afterwards wrote : “ How pleased we were, dear good friend, to see you as you were when we last met you ! You really do fulfil the Goethe-Mazzini maxim, and you are so resolute and healthy that it is a joy to look upon you.” Meanwhile, his friend Erwin had equipped himself for war and triumph; in the autumn of 1872 there appeared a pamphlet : AFTER PHILOLOGIE . An attempt at throwing some light upon a pamphlet published by Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Mollendorff, Dr. Phil., entitled Zukunftsphilologie. A PHILOLOGIST’S COMMUNICATION TO RICHARD WAGNER. I had been reminded of angry Achilles, marching, magnificent in his triumph, and mercilessly dragging Hector, his friend’s foe, round the wailing city of Troy. The whole
pamphlet is a sharp and cutting refutation of all the errors of the youthful Herr von Wilamowitz. One can understand the ruthless tone of this reply only when one has read the essay that provoked it ; for the latter is written in an uncommonly insulting manner, and, like Wagner, one wonders that such coarse procedure could be possible in the service of the Muses. The crushing conclusion, in which Rohde braces up all his indignation for a final blow, caused the most wholehearted amusement among my brother’s friends. Even my brother, who, on the whole, was not much in favour of violent polemics, often used to laugh heartily over this conclusion. We may therefore quote it here : “ Now, however, enough, and more than enough, of this unedifying confutation of a libeller. While vindicating our friend I had to ascribe the arrogant claims of this Doctor of Philology to sounder knowledge than that upon which they are really based. His pamphlet was the work of thoughtlessness, ignorance and dishonesty not of a competent, methodical philologist. It was an utter travesty of the critical method, in fact the performance of a real Afterphilologen (pseudophilologist). If in doing this I have scarcely touched upon half of the misunderstandings, intentional misinterpretations and disfiguring innuendoes which this man splutters forth in an unbroken stream throughout his libellous pages, side by side with the actual ‘ replies ‘ which I have proved to be worthless; I shall not in conclusion halt very long to wonder what may have induced this Doctor of Philology to have given us this voluntary exhibition of his own incompetence and ignorance when there was absolutely no need for him to do so. In addition to the ingenuous vanity of confident ignorance, there seems to have been another special incentive which is revealed to us by his final request to our friend kindly to step down from the Professor’s Chair entrusted to him, after he has so foolishly forfeited the approval of Ulrich von Wilamowitz, Doctor of Philology. I leave it to the reader to qualify this very friendly and extraordinary demand from the moral standpoint. We, the friends, can certainly do no more than smile at the ingenuousness with which the actual motive itself of the denunciatory zeal of this ambitious Doctor of Philology is thus revealed. In return, however, we also shall take the liberty of giving him a little good counsel. It seems to us probable that his essay would never have been written had it not been for the advice and incitement of certain good friends. Now, in the event of his feeling himself once more called upon to rescue genuine science by means of an exhibition of his historico-critical ignorance, it would be an excellent thing if, before the publication of such ‘ rescue-work,’ he would carefully consult any one of those afore-mentioned friends who happened at least to have got beyond the swaddling-clothes stage of philological knowledge provided, of course, that, in one of his lucid moments, he should feel prone to accept that advice of Heraclitus which seems to be most perfectly suited to his particular case, to wit : ‘ It is better to conceal one’s ignorance than to display it ostentatiously before the eyes of all.’ ” An indignant friend is indeed a terrible and destructive fighter ! For a while, after this act of slaughter, no philologist felt inclined to venture to wage war upon The Birth of Tragedy. It is true that Herr von “ Wilamowitz tried to justify himself in a further pamphlet ; but it was love’s labour lost the victory remained on the side of the two brothers in arms, Nietzsche and Rohde. We can gather what my brother’s own feelings were in regard to the essay from the following words : ” Just fancy your pamphlet, with all its magnanimity and daring warlike fellowship, falling in the midst of all that cackling throng what a spectacle ! Romundt and Overbeck, the only two people to whom I have been able to read it, are overjoyed at your successful feat ! They never weary of pointing in praise to this in particular and to that in general. They call the polemic ‘ Lessingesque ‘ ; now you know what good Germans imply by this predicate. What pleases me most of all in your work is to hearken to the deep, threatening tone, as of a thundering waterfall, which seems to rise from its foundations, and without which no polemic can be hallowed and given the stamp of strength that rumbling tone in which love, trustfulness, courage, power, pain, triumph and hope all resound together. Dear friend, I was overcome ; and when you spoke of the ‘ friends ‘ it was some time before I could sufficiently regain my composure to go on reading. What splendid experiences I have had this year ! And how every calamity coming to me from other quarters, seems to vanish in the face of them ! I am also proud and happy on Wagner’s account for your pamphlet marks an extraordinary turning-point in his position, relative to the scientific circles of Germany. Not long ago, the Nationalzeitung was sufficiently insolent to reckon me among ‘ Wagner’s literary lackeys.’ How surprised everyone must have been to see you go over to his side ! That is certainly something more important than the mere fact that you should have come over to me ! Is that not so, dear old friend ? And it is this precisely this, which makes to-day the happiest day I have had for many a year ; for I see what you, in your act of friendship, have done for me and for Wagner ! ” Later on, he wrote in the same connection to Fraulein von Meysenbug as follows : ” You have certainly not yet read the Apology which Professor Rohde of Kiel has written, as much with the sword as with the pen, and in which he shows such great superiority to his opponents. By means of my Birth of Tragedy have succeeded in becoming the most obnoxious philologist of the day, to stand up for whom constitutes a genuine miracle of audacity, because everyone seems unanimous in wishing to pass sentence of death upon me. Apart from the polemic, with which I would not harass you, Rohde’s pamphlet contains many good things concerning the philosophical basis of my work, and will therefore meet with some sympathy from you. If only I did not fear that this courageous step on Rohde’s part would land him in a veritable labyrinth of disapprobation and malice ! Now we are both on the Index ! ” At bottom, it is a misunderstanding ; for I did not write for philologists, although, if the latter were only able to do BO, they might even learn much that is purely philological in my essay. Now they turn somewhat bitterly upon me, and it looks as if they thought I had committed a crime simply because I did not give them and their understanding the first consideration. Even Rohde’s deed will not lead to anything ; for nothing can bridge the yawning gulf. Now I shall quietly pursue my way, and shall take good care not to suffer from that loathing, reasons for which one encounters at every turn and step.” Rohde’s really self-sacrificing behaviour filled my brother with everlasting gratitude. It should not be forgotten that it was a really hazardous enterprise on the part of this friend, for he ran the danger of ruining his University career. Later on, during the period of my brother’s most terrible isolation, when both the friends of his youth had, thanks to misunderstandings, grown almost strangers to him, how often did he not most ardently wish that the few who had stood so near to him formerly might defend him in public with the
same hearty and loyal passion ! Oh, how bitterly he felt this ! But then there was no one who dared to do so. In spite of Rohde’s brilliant defence, however, my brother was absolutely banned by philologists. Students were earnestly advised not to study at Bale, and as the result of this there were no philological students there during the winter term of 1872 to 1873. This vexed my brother very much indeed. Those philologists who were well disposed towards him spoke of him only in the most plaintive tones. He had, indeed, done some really good work in philology what a pity that he should have chosen to enter upon such curious paths ! Still, they did not absolutely abandon all hope. One of the critics closed his review of my brother’s essay on the Florentine Tract with the following words : ” Here we take leave of this essay, which must occupy an important position in Hesiodic literature, and express the hope that its gifted author will promptly give effect to the plan of which he speaks at the end of his treatise, concerning an analysis of the relation of Hesiod to Homer, and will turn his back upon his present ‘ Music and Philology of the Future.’ ” My brother had expected a very different reception, both from scholars and laymen. He could not understand why this ” enthusiastic and good-natured ” book was so badly understood and provoked so much unnecessary animosity. He wrote to Gersdorff expressing great disappointment in regard to the present and great hopes about the future : ” It will be difficult for my book to spread ! … Now I expect nothing save malice and stupidity. But I reckon upon its quiet, though slow career through the centuries, and I say this to you with the utmost conviction. For certain eternal truths are here told for the first time, and these must resound through the ages.” In his heart of hearts he felt already in those days that he had increased the obscurity of his book by introducing Wagnerian music into it ; but he was also very strongly conscious of the fact that a friendship as profound as that which he felt for Richard “ Wagner involved serious duties, and that he should find satisfaction and compensation in this feeling he even felt that a friendship of this sort might also in some respects demand his intelligence. He writes : ” On the whole, I believe that we were not born to be happy, but to do our duty ; and we ought to think ourselves lucky if we know where our duty lies.” At that time he had no doubts about this ; but later on, after 1876, a considerable change came over him : then he no longer applauded either himself or the cause of duty which had led him to confound Wagner with Greek Art, and for a while he did not like to speak about the book at all. Still, in his notes of the year 1878, he recalls his attitude of mind during the period in which The Birth of Tragedy appeared, and without any ill-humour : ” I thought how unsound and deteriorated human existence actually was, how entirely it is built upon deception and imagination, and how everything elevating in it, all its illusions, and all love of life, were the outcome of error. Consequently, I thought, the origin of such a world was not to be sought in a moral being, but perhaps in an artist-creator. By this I meant that such a being was absolutely undeserving of reverence in the Christian sense (which postulates a God of Goodness and of Love), and I did not even scout the idea that however deeply this notion may have penetrated into the German spirit, it might yet be forcibly eradicated from it again. It was thus that I thought I had found a way back to German Paganism through Wagner’s art, or, at least, a bridge back to a specifically unChristian attitude towards the world and man. ‘ The gods are evil and wise ; they deserve to go under. Man is good and stupid he has a more beautiful future and can attain to it only when the gods have at last entered the twilight of their days ‘ thus would I have formulated my credo in those days. For I then believed that the world, from the aesthetic standpoint, was intended to be a spectacle by its poet-creator ; but that as a moral phenomenon it was a deception. That is why I came to the conclusion that the world could be justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon.” Later on he felt almost a dislike for his first book, and in a preface, or rather an epilogue, which he called ” An attempt at Self -Criticism,” written for it in the year 1886, when a second edition of it was published, he spoke about it very bitterly. (See English Ed. Birth of Tragedy, p. XXV). He could not understand the violent manner in which he had united the Hellenic world with “ Wagnerian music more particularly with that philosophical and metaphysical point of view which exists in Bayreuth even to this day. But, as he very rightly said later, “ The transference of music into metaphysics was an act of reverence and gratitude ; as a matter of fact all religious men hitherto have done the same thing with their experiences.” But what he then sacrificed to Wagner the latter never really understood. I do not wish to lay any particular stress here upon the fact that through standing by Wagner during this period he spoiled his whole philosophical career and his reputation as a thoroughly scientific scholar. What was still worse was that, by acting as he did, he became involved in a struggle which for the first time shattered his ingenuous faith in the good-will of mankind and the world. Up to that time, everything had gone remarkably well with him, and he often used to refer to himself as a ” Happy Prince.” But had it not been for his association with Wagner, he could not possibly have been attacked in such an unprecedented manner after the appearance of The Birth of Tragedy. One can understand his plaint : ” What a pity it was that I did not dare to say all I had to say at that time as a poet. I might perhaps have been able to do it ! Or at least as a philologist : for to this day almost everything still remains to be discovered and unearthed by philologists in this department ! And above all, the problem that there actually is a problem to be solved here and that the Greeks will continue to remain just as completely unrealisable as they have ever been, so long as we can find no answer to the question ‘ what is Dionysian ?’…. But there is something much more detestable about the book than the mere fact that I obscured and impaired my notions of the Dionysian element, by clothing them in Schopenhauerian formulae, and that is, that I should ever have ruined the prodigious Problem of Hellenism, as I conceived it, by mixing it up with the most modern things ! ” In this passage ill-humour is certainly the ruling note ; but only two years later he is able, in The Twilight of the Idols, to contemplate even The Birth of Tragedy, with that amor fati which was peculiar to him, and the pure joy that proceeded from it ; and quite the last and most concise remarks that have ever been written about this first book were written during the autumn of 1888 in Ecce Homo, where he turns with love and passion to this work of his youth, and recognises quite rightly how unmistakably it already heralds the whole of his life-work in the stupendous hopes to which it gives utterance. In summing up all I have said above concerning The Birth of Tragedy, I cannot help feeling most deeply how justified my brother was when he wrote in January, 1872 : ” I am filled with a terrible earnestness in regard to all that I hear about this book ; for it is in such signs that I divine the future which lies before me. This life is still full of enormous
difficulties for me.” The reason why I have given such an exhaustive account of the experiences which my brother’s first book brought him, is because they are to some extent typical At every fresh energetic step along the road of his development, and of his literary activity, the same experiences recurred. Those who had hitherto regarded him as belonging entirely to them, became extraordinarily estranged. A particular personality was discovered on whose shoulders was thrown the whole of the responsibility for the change, and who was regarded as the seducer. Some among his former sympathisers became his determined enemies. Others who were particularly fond of him tried by hook or by crook to understand him. One or two loyal friends stuck to him through thick and thin and a number of new enthusiasts stepped to his side who for the most part misunderstood him. Only a very few no, no one could boast of having an inkling of his real greatness. Taking everything into consideration, every great step forward which he happened to take was attended by the greatest sufferings and disappointments ; and these reached such a terrible pitch towards the close of his life’s work that, owing to his great sensitiveness, his feelings were sometimes rendered intolerably bitter. In the midst of his work he once wrote in tones of woe : ” One has only to accomplish something good and new, in order to experience among one’s friends what it means to ‘ put an anxious face on a happy event.’ CHAPTER XXI EDUCATION AND CULTURE EVER since his student days my brother had put himself the questions, “ What is German education, what is German culture ? ” Many notes written in those early years bear witness to this fact. And now from all sides he began to receive fresh incentives for asking himself the questions anew. Events in his life which had stirred him deeply his friendship with Wagner and the years of war had confirmed his old doubt, and had given him new replies to the old questions. ” What is education, what is the object of education?” he asked himself “ The understanding and the encouragement of one’s noblest contemporaries ; the preparation of that which is growing and coming.” “ What is the mission of education?” ” To live in the noblest aspirations of one’s nation and to exercise influence thereby. Not only, therefore, to receive and to learn, but to live. To liberate one’s age and one’s nation from all distorted conceptions, and to keep the image of one’s ideal before one’s eyes.” For all that, my brother was not oblivious to the fact that, as far as the culture of the Germans was concerned, they lacked the proper examples ; for, ” the education of a nation with a view to culture is essentially a matter of becoming used to good models.” My brother set all his hope upon the teachers and educators of the people : ” Educators must be educated ! But the first must educate themselves ; and it is for these that I am writing.” Now the occasion arose for him to speak on this subject. At the beginning of the winter 1871-72 he was invited by the ” Academical Society ” of Bale to deliver some lectures, and in response to this invitation, during the Christmas holidays of 1871, which he spent in Bale in consequence, he composed his lectures, On the Future of Our Educational Institutions, based upon a series of earlier notes. They were received with great enthusiasm, which increased with each lecture. Altogether at the beginning of the year 1872 my brother was the subject of much discussion in Bale. The publication of The Birth of Tragedy, and the wonderful lectures, provoked the most varied interest, and caused general surprise. These lectures contained the most striking heresies against those old-established institutions of which people thought they had a right to be proud ; and as a matter of fact my brother’s attacks ought to have roused general indignation. They were, however, couched in such kindly terms that the heresies were scarcely noticed. In these lectures my brother looks back seven years, speaks again as a student, and describes the private struggles and serious questionings which he had to face in those days. Many of the incidents he mentions, even though later on he may not have remembered them accurately himself, were, as we can see from his notes at the time, drawn from his own experiences, and not his experiences in Bonn alone, but also in Leipzig, Naumburg, and at Pforta. As he did not think it was seemly for a professor of twenty-seven to utter such exceptionally bitter truths concerning old-established and highly-respected institutions, in the presence of the dignified councillors, and of his own colleagues of the University of Bale, he clothed his thoughts in a poetical garb, and invented the figure of a hoary old sage (Schopenhauer) in whose mouth he put all his sharp criticisms and the passionate outpourings of his heart. This artifice, by means of which age and not youth uttered its judgments, removed all sharpness from the lectures. Unfortunately my brother was unable to give the last lecture, for on leaving the overheated hall at the end of the fifth, he caught cold. Before he could recover, the end of the term had come round, and prevented him from delivering the last lecture. But the plan he had made for the whole course gives us a good idea of the optimistic tone in which these lectures were to he brought to a close in March, 1872. In his description of a brotherhood of philosophers and artists he outlines his picture of the German culture which was to blossom forth from the union of Schopenhauerian philosophy with Wagnerian art. These two masters, Schopenhauer and Wagner, meet each other one beautiful summer’s night in the presence of crowds of their youthful admirers, and the meeting takes the form of a ceremony which provides a momentary realisation of the glorious future of their dreams. After the attacks to which my brother was subjected during the summer of 1872, as the result of The Birth of Tragedy, he felt too poignantly how far removed his age was from such ideals. It therefore seemed quite proper to him, in the revised plan which he prepared later, to make the representative of that age, the man of letters and the young students who sympathised with him, emphatically reject the old ideals. And thus in the boisterous closing scene of the second plan, which he had drawn up in the autumn of 1872, he formulates for the first time the hostile opposition between his unseasonable hopes and the whole of the culture of the age. The conclusion strikes one almost as a painful renunciation of his dreams of the future. If the revised plan had been carried out, one evening would not have sufficed for dealing with the material it involved. My brother therefore had the intention of delivering two more lectures : ” The Degenerate Man of Culture” and “ The School of the Future.” But he found no opportunity for delivering these at Bale in the summer, and in the following
winter he progressed so far in his development and in the elaboration of his ideas that the form of the lectures displeased him greatly, and he was unable to build further upon such a foundation. The people of Bale were sincerely sorry to be deprived of the conclusion of the lectures ; for they had provoked a host of interesting questions, and there was no little excitement over the solution of the problem. How often did they not express their regret to me that they had never had the educational institutions of the future described to them. I always comforted them by saying that my brother would shortly have these lectures printed. In the spring of 1872 he had had this intention, and it was his desire to dedicate them, with some touch of irony, as a solemn exhortation, to the Philological Congress to take place at Leipzig in May. But he could never find the time either to prepare them carefully for the Press, or to write the conclusion which was still required. Then he resolved to recast the whole of the lectures and to make them more artistic, especially the dialogue parts, and therefore postponed publication to a later date ; but the tide of his development washed far over the whole matter. In the summer of 1873 vigorous steps were taken towards the realisation of the educational institution of the future, for the education of the educator. My brother and I were in Graubinden, in the charming region of Flims ; and there a beautiful though rather diminutive old castle, which was supposed to be haunted, was offered to us for sale at an exceptionally low price, 800 to 1,000. I had always been animated by the desire of devoting my whole life to a great cause, and was then quite determined to purchase this little castle for the purpose of the educational institution. It contained fine old-fashioned rooms, one of which was covered with beautiful Renaissance panelling, embellished with magnificent carvings. There would certainly not have been enough room for many inmates ; but its very purpose excluded the ” many too many.” In front of the castle there lay gardens in the form of an extended oblong. Cloisters were to be erected along the walls; for all teaching and exhortation were to be given as little as possible indoors, but chiefly peripatetically. The long lawn between the cloisters was to be reserved for physical exercise. At first the little castle would not be used as an educational establishment, but as a sort of lay-monastery, where teachers and educators should come together. Here life, thought and good counsel would be shared in common, and there would be occasional interruptions in the form of excursions to places of artistic interest within easy reach a plan which would have been facilitated by the close proximity of the place to Italy. My brother wrote a stirring invitation to his nearest friends to join him in this brotherhood, but though Baron von Gersdorff retained a vivid recollection of this document, a copy of it has never been found. Nevertheless, in one of my brother’s notes of the spring of 1874, Gersdorff believed he recognised a retrospect of Fritz’s scheme, and a reminiscence of the invitation in question. It reads as follows : ” I dreamt of an association of men, who would be free from all compromise, who would repudiate all tender forbearance, and would call themselves Destroyers. They were to measure everything according to the standard of their own criticism, and to sacrifice themselves to truth. Everything bad and false was to be brought to light. We do not wish to construct prematurely ; we do not know whether we shall ever be able to construct, and whether it were not better to refrain from construction. There are such people as lazy pessimists and creatures of resignation we decline to belong to their party.” Throughout his whole life, and in the most varied forms, my brother pursued one and the same scheme that of forming a community of deep-thinking and genuinely free men, chosen from all spheres of society, whose business it would be to try together to fathom the most recondite problems of this enigmatical existence, attempt to clear them up, and give each other mutual instruction. The fact that the realisation of this fell through at the time is to be ascribed entirely to the influence of external circumstances. The good-natured and honest vendors of the above-mentioned property believed me to be younger than I really was, and, fearing apparently that they might exploit my inexperience and enthusiasm, offered to allow me four weeks in which to think over the purchase. By this means I obtained sufficient time to think the matter over and to give it serious consideration, and in the end we arrived at the conclusion that the scheme was too youthful and fantastic. Moreover, my brother began to feel ever less inclined to sever himself from Bale. As early as January, 1872, when he received the offer of a post at Greifswald (on the score of his old reputation as a sound philologist, before the authorities at that place had heard of The Birth of Tragedy), he was feeling so happy at Bale, that he gave the matter only a moment’s consideration and forthwith declined the offer. Concerning this incident he said : ” Why change so soon ? why dip your hand into the lucky bag, when there are so many blanks ? ” Of course my brother knew perfectly well that it was customary for a man to use such an offer from another institution as a means of bringing pressure to bear upon his present employers, in order to extract some advantage from them ; he, however, never dreamed of making any such use of the occasion. He even gratefully declined a torchlight procession in his honour, which the students proposed to organise ; he did not wish to be feted for an action which had cost him no self-sacrifice. Later on I heard how the Education Board of Bale had marvelled in silence over his childish disinterestedness in regard to money matters. But they behaved quite in the noble Bale manner, by increasing his salary very shortly after this incident, without having received the slightest word or hint from him that he expected it. It was with the following kind words that the trustees of the University acquainted him with their decision, on the 24th January, 1872 : ” DEAR PROFESSOR NIETZSCHE, ” It is our pleasant duty to have to tender you our very best thanks for the way in which you declined the flattering offer from Greifswald, simply out of love for the post you hold here and the good work you are doing ; and we do not doubt that you will continue to be satisfied with the honoured position you fill at the University and the School for some time to come. In recognition of your excellent work, the supreme governing body have, in accordance with our suggestion, resolved to increase your salary, from the beginning of this year, to the sum of 4,000 francs per annum.” The considerations which in those days were particularly instrumental in binding Fritz to Bale were, in the first place, the great personal freedom he was allowed by the authorities and his colleagues, the great friendliness which was shown to him by both, and, above all, the extraordinary reverence he felt for Jacob Burckhardt. Even Frau Wagner, when she had heard from my brother about his refusal of the Greifswald offer, wrote to him : ” Burckhardt was all that mattered to you at Bale.” But my brother had every reason to feel happy at Bale. Everybody treated him in the most friendly fashion, and even the haute volee, who were known as a rule to stand so
severely aloof from everything new and strange, made an exception in his favour. He was constantly invited to the balls and receptions of this class of the community, and was often the only German present at these functions. He danced so much during the winter of 1872, that in the following spring he wrote requesting us to order new evening clothes for him at his tailor’s in Naumburg. “ Those I am now using are quite worn out with the exertions of this winter.” Privy Councillor Gelzer, of Jena, told me once that on one occasion during this period a few old patricians of Bale, who were assembled at some social function, jokingly discussed which member of their own class was in his manners and bearing the most distinguished of Bale society ; whereupon old Peter Merian exclaimed in reply : ” Not one of us; the most distinguished is Professor Nietzsche.” Even my brother’s home-life, however, had grown more pleasant; for, since the autumn of 1872 his friend Dr. Romundt had come to live with him, and he had also become friendly with Professor Overbeck. True, he had lived in the same house with this man for two-and-a-half years, but without ever having grown intimate with him a fact which is best proved when we remember that my brother never dreamed of taking Overbeck with him to Richard “ Wagner at Tribschen, whereas Rohde and Gersdorff were immediately invited and taken there, even if he was only paying a flying visit. In fact, he also performed the ceremony in honour of his friendship with Rohde and Gersdorff the rite of the beneficent demons at Jacob Burckhardt’s house, which was at the opposite end of the town to that in which my brother lived ; and it never occurred to him to perform this ceremony with Overbeck. Fritz may have kept aloof from Overbeck all this time because Burckhardt disliked the man ; but what ultimately drew them together was the circumstance that Overbeck stood up so enthusiastically for my brother after Wilamowitz’s attack an attitude about which Fritz afterwards spoke to me with as much surprise as gratefulness. But other people as well stood by him in Bale over the Wilamowitz episode ; for his work was well known to them. My brother was considered a distinguished teacher at the University and the School ; it was often said that his most prominent colleagues at Bale, as for instance Jacob Burckhardt, had declared that Bale would not get another teacher so powerful as he for a very long while. He, for his part, was not wholly content with his work, and was constantly wishing that his pupils were older. He was held in the highest esteem by the students. Many entered Bale University merely on his account, swore by him and lavished the most gentle attentions on him ; while those among their number who were inclined to be poetical would lay a few flowers in his room as a token of their admiration. From a work of Ludwig Stein’s, I take the following passages as throwing further light upon my brother’s life at Bale. Professor Stein, in describing Fritz’s outward appearance while at Bale, begins by saying that his smart and tasteful dress was certainly to be explained as a mark of attention to the fair sex. I must, however, deny this most emphatically ; and, at the risk of being accused of rudeness towards my own sex, assure the reader that my brother never took the slightest trouble with his dress on our account. After his first early-morning toilet he was always dressed ready to receive any visitor ; his inborn and thorough cleanliness and dignified grace made him seem elegantly attired even in the simplest clothes. In those days he never would wear a dressing-gown and slippers ; in fact, he had contracted a positive repugnance for such articles of apparel. Stein proceeds as follows in the work referred to above : ” Thus, in Bale, as one of his most grateful pupils informed me, he always appeared carefully and elegantly dressed ; in summer he wore a white top hat (silver grey felt) ; and if the weather permitted it, his clothes were always of a light colour. As a University Professor his strength lay more in the depth than in the range of his influence. His one object was to discover the most intelligent pupils from among the crowd of the mediocre, and to lavish particular care upon the former. His favoured pupils looked up to him with grateful reverence. One of them, who is now a very highly esteemed University don, and who in the years 1873-4 attended Nietzsche’s lectures on pre-Platonic Philosophy, and Plato’s Life and Works, gave me the following description of his impressions : ‘ Nietzsche was then twentyeight years old, and the fact that in his mariner he manifested the philosophical objectivity of an older man therefore seemed all the more peculiar to us. His delivery was slow, gentle and never pathetic, and it was frequently interrupted by thoughtful ” artistic pauses,” as our terminus technicus had it. He read his lectures, and always out of fine large books bound in red leather. He began his Greek classes with us at the School (where, together with Jacob Burckhardt and Moritz Heyne, he was obliged to teach, in his capacity as a University Professor), with the very hardest of Greek plays, Aeschylus’s Eumenides. Often, in the school, he would treat us to lectures about Greek tragedy (his pet subject at that time), about the earliest Greek philosophy, concerning the philosophy of language, etc., and at times would even make us deliver extempore lectures or read Grote’s History of Greece aloud.’ ” The highest class in the Bale University School, which during the years 1869-1877 consisted only of a few pupils nine to sixteen at the outside had been somewhat closely united with the University in the old days, and on leaving it every pupil had been entitled to the matriculation certificate. From this time onwards it had enjoyed various privileges and a much larger amount of freedom than falls to the lot of the sixth form of a German public school. For instance, the pupils belonging to it had clubs exactly similar in style to the student-clubs. The great amount of freedom it enjoyed was shown by the fact that at times it would play harmless practical jokes upon the masters. When one of my brother’s pupils once told his mother of these things, she exclaimed : ” And do you play such practical jokes upon Professor Nietzsche too?” “ No, of course not,” the young man replied indignantly, ” for he would simply despise us if we did.” Looking back upon his work as a teacher at Bale, Fritz wrote in the year 1888 as follows : ” During the seven years in which I taught Greek to the sixth form of the University School at Bale, I never had occasion to administer a punishment : the laziest youths were diligent in my class.” My brother’s whole personality seemed to act as an exhortation to his pupils to exercise their power to the utmost. The fact that he paid attention only to the most efficient and most gifted among them, while he merely treated the others with a gentle and kind tolerance, acted as a spur to all those who possessed the smallest spark of self-esteem, and made them strive to do the very best they could. And he was able to show genuine pleasure when a youth of inferior capacity suddenly brought him good work. The charm of his personality lay in its absolute lack of all ” side ” and affectation ; with perfect and noble naturalness he gave himself just as he was. He had the right to do this others have not. A distinguished old member of Bale society, Dr. Thurneysen, said to me in the autumn of 1896 : ” Your brother always struck me as a being who had come direct from God’s hands, and was not yet soiled by the dust of the world.”
Although later on, he judged them unfavourably, his lectures on our educational institutions afforded my brother much pleasure while he was delivering them. This was something very different from teaching young men to whom one was not allowed to say the best things. In the spring of 1872 he resolved upon the plan of interrupting his academical duties in order to deliver lectures upon the Ring before the Wagner Societies of the larger cities. These lectures were intended principally to assist the Bayreuth scheme, and also as a means of rousing the German Philistine from his smug self-sufficiency, and of showing the German scholar clearly what his highest aims should be as an educator and an imparter of culture to the people. Nevertheless, on practical and other grounds, this lecturing tour was abandoned, as was likewise a literary plan which he had formed soon after his return from the foundation ceremony of “ Wagner’s Festival Playhouse at Bayreuth. The new work was to be called “ Reflections of a Hopeful Man”, and later on “ Thoughts about the Future and Bayreuth “ . All these plans were abandoned, because they did not seem likely to promote the undertaking at Bayreuth. In his sorrow at the spurious culture of the Germans and their obtuseness in art matters, my brother turned in the summer of 1872 to the more remote age of Hellenic culture, and particularly to the sublime figures of the pre-Platonic philosophers, on whom he gave a course of lectures. He wrote to Rohde : “ At present all sorts of plans fill my brain, and yet I still feel that I am on one single path I am not really confused. And if only I can find the time I shall bring my thoughts to light. My study of the pre-Platonic philosophers this summer has been particularly fruitful.” As the result of these lectures there was written in the winter of 1872-73 the MS. of a new work. At the beginning of February, 1873, my brother wrote to me that he was very busy with a new book, the title of which would probably be, ” Greek Philosophy of the Tragic Age,” and in a subsequent letter he wrote in his usual kind way : ” Dear Lizzie, let me thank you very much for your letter. Your joy over the growing book, and your promise to be here in the summer, have each made an equal claim upon my gratitude, and I am looking forward to Whitsuntide, when you will be here, and when I also hope my book will be finished.” Concerning the same subject he wrote to Gersdorff as follows : ” I am bringing a new MS. with me to read aloud at Bayreuth : ‘ Greek Philosophy of the Tragic Age.’ The whole is, however, still very far from being a proper book. I become every day more critical towards myself, and must wait another long spell yet, before attempting a further elaboration of my theme. [This constituted the fourth attempt at the same theme.] I was obliged to pursue the very queerest studies for this work. Even mathematics were touched upon without causing any terrors, as well as mechanics and the atomic theory in chemistry, etc. I have once more convinced myself in the most splendid manner as to what the Greeks are and were. The ground covered between Thales and Socrates is enormous.” My brother had the intention at some future date of writing an independent work on the pre-Platonic philosophers, out of these notes, which in the first place were planned to serve the purpose only of a short historical summary of the Greek philosophers before Socrates, to form part of a great philosophical work. Professor E. Holzer speaks as follows concerning this question : ” From the very start, however, the historical summary was not an end in itself ; originally what he [Nietzsche] wished to do was rather to make this monograph take its place in a great whole, and to develop and expound his views on philosophy in general, on its relation to science and art, on its teleology, and finally on the fundamental problems of epistemology, in connection with these selected philosophical personages. For he thought he could recognise a perfectly distinct type in these more ancient Hellenic philosophers, compared with which those that came later, and whom tradition regarded as forming the zenith of the development of Hellenic thought, were, in his opinion, only half-castes, or, to use one of his later expressions, decadents. If, in tragedy, the art of the fifth and sixth centuries appeared to him in a new light, the question was, What kind of philosophy did the Greeks of this age expound ? What was philosophy to them in that age ; what can it mean to us, and can it mean anything to us at all ? Thus the book was to be a sequel to The Birth of Tragedy, and from among the many titles that were thought of for it, none expresses the subject of the contents so briefly and perfectly as, ‘ The Justification of Philosophy through the Greeks.’ ” CHAPTER XXII “ THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON” AT Easter, 1873, my brother went to Bayreuth. His friend Rohde had written to him from Kiel suggesting to him that they should spend the week before Easter together somewhere in central Germany. With great delight my brother wrote back proposing that Rohde should join him on a visit to Bayreuth. At that time the Bayreuth scheme seemed to be in very low water, and there were fears that the whole plan would fall to the ground, for in spite of all the efforts that had been made, scarcely two hundred certificates of patronage had been allotted (my brother had been a patron since 1872). But one thousand certificates of patronage (at 300 talers apiece), or, better still, thirteen hundred, were necessary in order to put the undertaking securely on its legs. Even in Wagner’s own house, therefore, the friends encountered somewhat serious and gloomy spirits, and this made such a deep impression upon my brother that, on the return journey to Bale, he was in the saddest of moods. He wrote as follows concerning this journey : ” I spent the second day of Easter in Nuremberg, and felt just as well, bodily, as I was thoroughly depressed spiritually. Everybody seemed to be out in his best, and the sun was so beautifully autumnal and mild ! In the night I made a dash for Lindau, and at five in the morning, while the stars and the rising sun were at war in the heavens, I crossed the Lake of Constance, reached the falls of the Rhine near Schaffhausen in good tune, and had lunch there. I was seized with fresh melancholy, and in this mood journeyed home.” He grew very sad at heart indeed, and reproached himself deeply. His friends were suffering, the great work was threatening to fall to pieces, and all the while he had been breathing the air of the remote heights -of ancient Greek philosophy, very far removed from the struggles and disappointments of the community at Bayreuth. Almost shamefaced, he laid aside the book upon which he was at work, ” Greek Philosophy in the Tragic Age,” and felt distinctly that it was his duty to play his part in the struggle of the day. Full of indignation, he asked himself what could account for the fact that such a great thought should not be understood by the Germans, and the reply seemed to him to be that the German Philistine of Culture in his smug content was satisfied with the paltriness of his age, and had lost the sense of everything truly great. The fact that his concern about Bayreuth led him to write
these Thoughts out of Season can be gathered from a number of his private notes written at the time (” … my despair about Bayreuth ; I can see nothing which is not full of shame ; profound meditation has led me to discover that I have lighted upon the most fundamental problem of all culture “ ). From these same notes we can also see the reason why he chose precisely David Strauss as the type of a Philistine of Culture who in those materialistic days, after the war, made the German almost incapable of a higher culture : ” Tension of feeling over the production of the first of the Thoughts out of Season. Anxiety about the genius and his work, and in addition the spectacle of Strauss’s self-complacency ! The falsity of all spiritual diet. The paralysis of all knights of knowledge ! Morality tottering, both in its sense of right and in its sense of wrong, and the indomitable lust of low pleasures ! Sham happiness ! ” It seemed to him as if the German had grown a degree more dishonest, more greedy of favours, more grasping and more thoughtless since t the war, and it depressed him to see that the free-thinking, venerable theologian should glorify this state of affairs and be the herald of public self-sufficiency. In no direction did he see anyone calling attention to the dangers that the military triumph might mean to German culture. The triumphant German, and the non-combatants in particular who had not, by means of severe military discipline, converted their coarseness into strength and courage, and who now, sitting at the tables of their beer houses, boasted of their victories and declared that German culture had conquered, were really a disagreeable sight. Germany had triumphed, because in our country men are still to be found who can command and who can obey ; but neither German education, and still less German culture, had been in any way victorious in the recent war. My brother did France the honour of fully acknowledging her possession of a real culture that had been forming for centuries; for “ Culture is before all things, the unity of artistic style, in every expression of the life of a people.” This might certainly be said of the French, but not of the Germans of the period, although Fritz showed quite conclusively that the German people knew more and had learned more than the French. He writes : “ It was simply to the more extensive knowledge of German officers, to the superior training of their soldiers, and to their more scientific military strategy, that all impartial judges, and even the French nation, in the end, ascribed the victory. Hence, if it be intended to regard German erudition as a thing apart, in what sense can German culture be said to have conquered ? In none whatsoever ; for the moral qualities of severe discipline, of placid obedience, have nothing in common with culture. Such virtues were characteristic of the Macedonian army, for instance, despite the fact that the Greek soldiers were infinitely more cultivated.” These questions, concerning the relation of education to culture and to national vitality, which had not yet been solved, pressed upon my brother with extraordinary force. No one could have been more earnest or more serious about them than he, for, whatever people may say, he loved his German Fatherland. All his passionate reproaches are only the utterances of his loving heart. He wished to see the Germans really great, filled with and transfigured by a genuine culture ; it was his ambition to conjure up a German culture. The German must not deceive himself ; he must look truth bravely in the face, recognise his own imperfections, and not shun a struggle with his weaknesses and perversities. And this the German can do because he is brave. And how delighted my brother was to unite his highest hopes for the Germans with this virtue of theirs is shown by the deep pride with which he wrote to his friend Gersdorff, who had returned home from the war : ” Now new duties beckon to us, and if there is one thing that will remain with us in time of peace from out those wild days of war, it will be the heroic and at the same time sober mind, which, to my surprise, I found with all the joy of a beautiful unexpected discovery, still fresh and powerful and with all its old Germanic vigour in our army. On such a foundation things can be built. We may begin to hope afresh. Our German mission is not yet over ! I feel more full of courage than ever 1^’ Was this bravery now going to lead the Germans to an independent culture ? Even in those days he was confronted with the profound problem that high culture and warlike vigour are but rarely found together in a nation, though they are often found opposed to each other. Thus he thought that the daily life of the German, who was so brave in war, was both petty and wretched in its inartistic dullness, and he therefore declared : ” The German is magnificent in war ; he is admirable as an astute investigator and scholar, removed from the world ; but otherwise he is hardly a pleasing person.” Now one can imagine how David Strauss’ s transfiguration of the German Culture Philistine’s self-complacency must have affected him. The greater part of the first of the Thoughts out of Season, “ David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer,” was composed with extraordinary rapidity ; then, however, the completion of the work met with all kinds of difficulties. During the year 1872 his health had been excellent. Despite the severe shock his constitution had received through the campaign and through illness, he believed he had quite recovered the “ bear-like ” health of his youth. But the year 1873 proved this to be an error. The trouble began with a bad attack of influenza which tormented him for over a month. In those days the illness was called ” la grippe.” After this, his short-sightedness considerably increased in the spring, and was accompanied by pains in the eyes and in the head. Baron von Gersdorff, who, owing to an attack of malaria, and also, as he himself said, ” in order to fulfil a serious friendly duty,” had returned from Italy much earlier than he had intended, describes my brother’s condition exhaustively in a letter to Rohde dated the 24th of May, 1873 : ” Nietzsche worked so hard, wrote and read so much last term, more particularly for his pre-Platonic philosophy, and also for the Strauss essay, written in a diminutive scrawl, that now severe pain in his eyes prevents him from continuing his work after he has been at it only an hour and a half. On Wagner’s birthday (May 22nd) I went with him to the oculist. The latter declared that the right eye was so weak that it could do no work at all, while the left eye, which had to do all the work alone, was excessively short-sighted. He earnestly entreated Nietzsche to abstain absolutely from all reading and writing for a fortnight, and to bathe his eyes. But Nietzsche will not interrupt his work at the University School ; nor will he cease lecturing. He can manage the School quite well; but a new mode of procedure had to be thought out for the University. And we have now discovered it. I play the part of assistant, and secretary, and I read aloud. I read the necessary passages for the lecture aloud to him ; the customary slip of paper containing the quotations is done away with altogether, and all indispensable quotations are learnt by heart. Yesterday he made the first experiment on the new
plan, and in my opinion it succeeded brilliantly. With his eyes concealed behind grey opaque glasses, and his short-sighted vision thus almost entirely cut off from the visible world, while I take possession of his note-book so that the doctor’s prescription may be followed to the letter, Nietzsche is thrown entirely upon himself ; and we found that he spoke more clearly, more eloquently, and with more concentration upon his theme, than when he has to refer from time to time to his note-book for quotations. He will probably have to go on like this for a fortnight or more.” This oculist, then, Professor Schiess, expressed the same opinion about him as Professor Schillbach of Jena had formerly done when, as a twelve-year-old schoolboy, Fritz had been sent to him from Pforta ; one of his eyes was weak, and the other was overstrained through doing all the work. The oculists who examined him later also maintained that the cause of his eye trouble was to be ascribed to excessive strain. This excessive strain, however, began to affect his general condition only after his strong constitution, and particularly his excellent digestive system, had been weakened by the results of his severe illness after the campaign ; for then his optic nerves and his brain were no longer sufficiently nourished for the heavy work and pressure imposed upon them. On the 26th of June, Gersdorff continued his report of my brother’s trouble as follows : ” When the fortnight was over, Nietzsche tried to write ; but it was no good, and exasperating pain drove him once more to the oculist who, this time, prescribed a complete rest, until the summer vacation, and eye-drops of atropine. This drug is a clear vegetable juice. It is dropped delicately into the eye, over which it spreads, and it immediately enlarges the pupil to double its size an almost terrifying sight ! It is said that vain people use this drug as a means of beautifying their eyes. In Nietzsche’s case it serves the purpose of paralysing the muscles of the eye, in order to give them rest and time to recoup. He now wears the blackest of sun glasses to shield his eyes from the light. Nevertheless, he suffers from the intensity of the light in this place, which seems to me positively tropical. Meanwhile, thanks to the rest and to the atropine treatment, his sight has much improved, and he can now wear No. glasses for work for which six weeks ago No. glasses were inadequate. His sister is here to console him. We do our utmost to make the time seem short on his hands.” Since the 5th of May I had been in Bale, where I usually stayed for some time in the summer, and did my best to keep my brother from his studies. We took long walks together, and on two of these we were joined by Jacob Burckhardt. This old friend made these excursions particularly festive, for on both occasions he was extraordinarily cheerful and in the highest spirits. Once, for instance, we went to Pratteln ; partook of food, drank beer and Burckhardt told us a fairy tale he had composed himself, called ” The Trout Queen.” It was our intention to order trout for our meal that led to this story ; but unfortunately there was no trout to be had. Baron von Gersdorff, who accompanied us on this excursion, wrote in 1897 to ask me why I had not referred to this splendid walk in the biography of my brother, as he still remembered a host of most amusing incidents in connection with it. Our walks with Burckhardt, however, came to an end, for he assumed as it happened quite mistakenly that Overbeck was going to take Gersdorff’s place on our excursions. At Whitsun my brother and I went to Strassburg, of whose cathedral he was particularly fond ; and later on we spent a few weeks together at Flims in Graubimden, whither he had gone in advance of me with Baron von Gersdorff and Romundt. On the 9th August, Gersdorff wrote to Rohde as follows concerning this journey : ” The fears which you expressed in your last letter that our friend could not continue to fulfil his fatiguing duties were at last shared by the oculist, who quickly ordered him to anticipate his holidays. So your letter, for which I now send you my belated thanks, reached me only when we were already breathing the glorious air of the woods at our house near Flims, and were convinced that we had taken the proper course. Now a month has almost elapsed without our having felt in the slightest degree discontented with our lot, and I hope that the peace and quiet, the regular mode of life, the breathing of the splendid air of the woods, daily baths in the beautiful shaded lake of Cauma, wholesome food, company which is not too exacting, and finally intercourse with the works of the greatest and best writers, Wagner, Goethe, and Plutarch, together with interesting conversation, will have a salutary effect upon our friend’s eyes and nerves. It is true that there recur from time to time attacks of so-called ‘accommodation cramp’ of the muscles of the eye; but the eyes are considerably stronger, and with continued care the pain will certainly disappear altogether. Romundt has been here for about three weeks, and is enjoying the ‘ pointless ‘ existence with us very much indeed. To-morrow he is going to leave us, because his eagerness to get to work no longer allows him any peace.” Films, on Lake Cauma, in Graubinden, is the beautiful spot with, the little old castle, already mentioned in the last chapter in connection with the plan which we formed at one time to establish a lay monastery of free spirits. With the assistance of his excellent friend Gersdorff , my brother was able to get the MS. of the essay “ David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer ” ready for the press, and in July and August it was already printed. The two friends, Gersdorff and Romundt, read the proofs very carefully, and were subsequently very cross, because in spite of their pains, some faults had escaped their notice. At last on the 8th of August, the first advance copy of the book reached Flims an event which led to a ceremony organised by Gersdorff. In a letter to Rohde on the 9th August, he describes it very charmingly : ” At half-past three we set out upon the green Lake of Cauma ; we engraved the initials ‘ U. B. I. F. N. 8/8 1873 ‘ on some marble, whereupon we swam to a rock which rose up out of the green water in the middle of the lake. There we quickly engraved the initials of our names, and then remained for a while on the delightful Rheingold rock. The smile of the rising sun was mirrored in the dark depths out of which the rock rises. After the bath we poured a libation of wine over the first stone and its inscription, and read Leopardi’s Ricordanze and ad un vincitore net pallone. The evening was heavenly in its clearness and purity. It was a day we shall never forget. Thus we commemorated the Antistraussiad. Now let the adversaries advance. Let them all go to the devil ! ” These adversaries soon appeared in surprising numbers ; there were more of them than my brother and his friends had expected. In later years, however, he liked to recall this first passage of arms. In the year 1888 he described the whole course of events in the most exhaustive manner in Ecce Homo, though in much more trenchant language than he used in 1873 : ” The four essays composing the Thoughts out of Season are thoroughly warlike in tone. They prove that I was no mere dreamer, that I delight in drawing the sword and perhaps, also, that my wrist is dangerously supple. The first onslaught (1873) was directed against German culture, upon which I looked down even at that time with unmitigated
contempt. Without either sense, substance, or goal, it was simply ‘ public opinion.’ There could be no more dangerous misunderstanding than to suppose that Germany’s success at arms proved anything in favour of German culture and still less the triumph of this culture over that of France… . ” Of these four attacks, the first met with extraordinary success. The stir which it created was in every way gorgeous. I had put my finger on the vulnerable spot of a triumphant nation I had told it that its victory was not a red-letter day for culture, but, perhaps, something very different. The reply rang out from all sides, and certainly not only from old friends of David Strauss, whom I had made ridiculous as the type of a German Philistine of Culture and a man of smug self-content in short, as the author of that suburban gospel of his, called The Old and the New Faith (the term Philistine of Culture passed into the current language of Germany after the appearance of my book). These old friends, whose vanity as Wurtemburgians and Swabians I had deeply wounded in regarding their unique animal, their bird of Paradise, as a trifle comic, replied to me as ingenuously and as grossly as I could have wished. The Prussian replies were smarter ; they contained more Prussian blue. The most disreputable attitude was assumed by a Leipzig paper, the egregious Grenzboten ; and it cost me some pains to prevent my indignant friends in Bale from taking action against it. Only a few old gentlemen decided in my favour, and for very diverse and sometimes unaccountable reasons. Among them was one, Ewald of Gottingen, who made it clear that my attack on Strauss had been deadly. There was also the Hegelian, Bruno Bauer, who from that time became one of my most attentive readers. In his later years he liked to refer to me, when, for instance, he wanted to give Herr von Treitschke, the Prussian historiographer, a hint as to where he could obtain information about the notion ‘ Culture,’ of which he (Herr von T ) had completely lost sight. The weightiest and longest notice of my book and its author appeared in Wurzburg, and was written by Professor Hoffman, an old pupil of the philosopher von Baader. The essays made him foresee a great future for me, namely, that of bringing about a sort of crisis and decisive turning-point in the problem of atheism, of which he recognised in me the most instinctive and most radical advocate. It was atheism that had drawn me to Schopenhauer. The review which received by far the most attention, and which excited the most bitterness, was an extraordinarily powerful and plucky appreciation of my work by Carl Hillebrand, a man who was usually so mild, and the last humane German who knew how to wield a pen. The article appeared in the Augsburg Gazette, and it can be read to-day couched in rather more cautious language, among his collected essays. In it my work was referred to as an event, as a decisive turningpoint, as the first sign of an awakening, as an excellent symptom, and as an actual revival of German earnestness and of German passion in things spiritual. Hillebrand could speak only in terms of the highest respect of the form of my book, of its consummate taste, of its perfect tact in discriminating between persons and causes ; he characterised it as the best polemical work in the German language the best performance in the art of polemics, which for Germans is so dangerous and so strongly to be deprecated. Besides confirming my standpoint, he laid even greater stress upon what I had dared to say about the deterioration of language in Germany (nowadays writers assume the airs of purists and can no longer even construct a sentence) ; sharing my contempt for the literary stars of this nation, he concluded by expressing his admiration for my courage that greatest courage of all which places the very favourites of the people in the dock… . The aftereffects of this essay of mine proved invaluable to me in my life. No one has ever tried to meddle with me since. People are silent. In Germany I am treated with gloomy caution : for years I have rejoiced in the privilege of such absolute freedom of speech, as no one nowadays, least of all in the Empire, has enough liberty to claim. My paradise is in the shadow of my sword. At bottom all I had done was to put one of Stendhal’s maxims into practice : he advises one to make one’s entrance into society by means of a duel.” In the above memoir my brother forgets only one fact, which is that there was a time when he was very sorry that he had written the book. David Strauss died at the beginning of the year 1874, and owing to some casual remark made in my brother’s presence, the latter somehow got it into his head that the old theologian fretted himself to death over his attack. It is true that everybody, and I in particular, contradicted this notion most emphatically : I assured him that as the old man had been suffering for some time, his friends would certainly have kept all knowledge of the book from him ; but though this appeased my brother somewhat, the most grievous doubts remained in his mind on the subject, and he wrote to Gersdorff : ” Yesterday David Strauss was buried at Ludwigsburg. I sincerely hope that I did not darken his last days, and that he died without knowing anything about me. I feel deeply concerned about it.” But no ! David Strauss did not die of a broken heart ! I wish my brother had been able to read some passages out of Strauss’s letters, which were published posthumously, and then he would have seen what small reason there was to have been distressed, and how little Strauss and others understood the fight he was making and his whole manner of setting about it. For my brother was able to attack a man publicly only when there was not the slightest personal difference between him and the man he assailed, and precisely in regard to this first essay of the Thoughts out of Season he writes concerning this peculiar trait in his nature as follows : ” My war tactics can be reduced to four principles : First, I attack only things that are triumphant if necessary I wait until they are triumphant. Secondly, I attack only those things against which I find no allies, against which I stand alone against which I compromise nobody but myself… . I have not yet taken one single step before the public eye, which did not compromise me : that is my criterion of a proper mode of action. Thirdly, I never make personal attacks I use a personality merely as a magnifying-glass, by means of which I render a general, but elusive and scarcely noticeable, evil more apparent. In this way I attacked David Strauss, or rather the success given to a senile book by the cultured classes of Germany by this means I caught German culture red-handed.” Despite all these warlike words and sentiments, I must admit that my brother was not at all suited to the role of a warrior ” whose paradise is in the shadow of his sword.” So long as the type he was fighting remained to some extent an impersonal phantom, he was full of the most cheerful lust of battle. But if any word, or any kind of description, suddenly made this type appear before him as a man with a sensitive heart, surrounded by admiring friends then his sympathetic nature felt only pity for the type become flesh and blood, and he suffered beneath the heavy blows of his own sword much more than the enemy he had assailed. At such times he would exclaim : “ I was not made to hate and to be an enemy.” The year 1873 was very fruitful : in addition to the essay already mentioned, ” Greek philosophy of the Tragic Age,” and the first of the Thoughts out of Season, a number of notes
show how full of new ideas his mind was at this period. The short essay ” On Truth and Falsity in their Ultra moral Sense” was written in the summer of 1873, and, as the proofs show, it was also intended to form an integral part of the book on the philosophers. Later on, it is true, he thought of making an independent essay out of it which might possibly have been introduced into the frame of the Thoughts out of Season. What his reasons were for changing his mind on this point cannot now be ascertained. At any rate, it is a great pity that it was never elaborated and published at that period, the later Nietzsche would then have been more easily understood, and the misunderstanding of a ” development by fits and starts ” to which superficial writers gave rise, would have been avoided. From all this it may be gathered how little my brother spared his eyes, once they had slightly recovered their strength. The oculist ought to have told him to be much more careful ; but the real cause of his trouble was not known then, and the other doctors always treated him for stomach trouble, nerves, and brain fag, when all the time it was the overstraining of his eyes that produced those terrible headaches which from this time forward began to torment him, and continued to do so, at intervals of three to four weeks, and even oftener still when he was feeling low. I always advised him most earnestly to train somebody to write from his dictation; but he could not get himself to do this. He declared that any other man than Gersdorff, who, however, was but seldom at his disposal, would disturb him in his dictating and alter his style. That ” undulating quality ” in the style of Goethe’s latter days he believed to have been caused by dictating. And now other claims were made upon him. At Wagner’s suggestion, the Wagner Societies approached’ my brother with the request that he should compose an Appeal to the German Nation on behalf of Bayreuth ; but I shall refer to this later. In the autumn he wrote the second essay of the Thoughts out of Season, and at Christmas brought the MS. almost finished to Naumburg with the view of reading it to me. My brother attached particular importance to my hearing his work before it went to press. Once Overbeck asked him why this was. He said that I discovered certain things : <( My sister listens not only with her ears and with her understanding, but also with her heart.” In Naumburg he wrote the conclusion of the second essay. The last months of the year 1873 were, once more not very favourable as far as his health went ; but the Christmas holidays considerably improved his condition. He wrote as follows concerning them : ” They were pleasant and peaceful days, and I am quite sure that my health improved while I was with you, particularly my nerves.” The change from his usual mode of life, the rest and cure given to his eyes, the altered climate, pleasant and cheerful company, and our mother’s good cooking, all had a share in improving his health maybe, too, his joy at having finished the second essay of the Thoughts out of Season so happily. For after having read it aloud he was convinced that it was a success. The attention roused by the second essay, ” The Use and Abuse of History,” was just as small as the stir caused by the first had been great. And it was precisely this essay which later on became, and continued to be the most unseasonable of them all, that has been most highly valued generally, and has certainly exercised the greatest influence. This is an example of how differently contemporary readers and posterity often judge things. It is precisely this second essay which penetrates most deeply into the aspirations of modern science and reveals its advantages and its great disadvantages. Fifteen years later in Ecce Homo, my brother wrote as follows concerning this essay, and it will be observed that, in comparison with what he says about his other works, this reference to the “ Use and abuse of History ” is very short : ” The second essay (1874) brings to light that which is dangerous, that which corrodes and poisons life in our manner of pursuing scientific study. Life is diseased, thanks to this dehumanised piece of clockwork and mechanism, thanks to the ‘ impersonally ‘ of the workman, and the false economy of the ‘ division of labour.’ The object, which is culture, is lost sight of ; modern scientific activity as a means thereto simply produces barbarism. In this treatise, the ‘ historical sense,’ of which this century is so proud, is for the first time recognised as sickness, as a typical symptom of decay.” The essay was published in February, 1874, and was received coldly even, by his own friends especially those at Bayreuth. I believe that even at that time Wagner felt somewhat bitterly ” how very much Nietzsche went his own sweet way,” and that he had absolutely no intention of being merely the herald of “ Wagner’s fame and intentions, as the latter would have liked. Considered superficially, the first two essays give one rather the impression of negation ; but a deeper reading of them soon proves the error of this view. Professor Holzer therefore shows a good understanding of the spirit lying at the bottom of these two essays when he says : ” He [Nietzsche] had to give vent to his feelings : the loathing of the culture peculiar to the age of bubble companies, distressed him. But, as he himself says in Zarathustra (Part 3, p. 250), ‘ loathing itself createth wings and fountain- divining powers.’ ” The essence of these essays is not really negation. Despite his own remarks in the second volume of his Letters (p. 445), the author feels that his power and his courage give him a right to enter the lists and to fight spiritedly for a higher German culture. A tremendously powerful kind of optimism is breathed from these first essays ; how can anybody help but recognise the ” Yeasayer,” the fierce love of the German nation, and the profound belief in their future, in these pages? Nietzsche himself still believes in friends and comrades in this war ; he dreams of a ” society of strangers to the age,” and drafts out its regulations ; he still believes that with Schopenhauer, Wagner and Neo-Hellenism, he will be able to stir the waters of Acheron. CHAPTER XXIII SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR SINCE the summer of 1870 my brother and I had made it a habit always to spend the summer months together. In the year 1871, however, we not only spent the summer, but also the winter together, because he was so ill after his experiences in the campaign, that he took me to Italy with him. In that year he recovered comparatively quickly, and was pleased to see how well I adapted myself to his life in Bale. And thus he took it for granted that I ought to spend every summer with him, as my presence was, to use his own expression, ” in every way conducive to his happiness.” Henceforward, therefore, he always requested our mother to allow me to go to Bale for the summer. The negotiations about this matter were generally carried on during the Christmas holidays, and I must say that, as far as my brother was concerned, they were conducted very diplomatically ; for our mother
was very easily offended and was also exceedingly jealous that Fritz should be so keen to have me with him, and that I should leave her alone for six months at home, in order to go to him. In spite of all his diplomacy, it actually did come to quarrels at times between mother and son, and in order to throw a cheerful light on the whole affair, Fritz used to call these differences of opinion ” The fight between the Trojans and Danaans for Helen.” It is true that she persistently declared that I might do as I liked, but until the very last minute she would put difficulties in the way of my going. This is what happened once more in the spring of 1874, until Fritz wrote that my presence was absolutely essential if he were to derive any benefit from his holidays. He was not in any way indisposed on the contrary ; for during the first quarter of the year he had written saying that his health was excellent ; but he was not pleased with himself. When at last I reached Bale on the 24th April, I found him rather depressed in spirits. He spoke with real concern about his great plans for the future and about works which he had in mind but for which his spiritual gifts were inadequate. Thus, before my arrival at Bale, he had written to Gersdorff on the 1st of April : ” DEAR OLD FRIEND, If only you did not have a much too high opinion of me ! I almost fancy that one day you will be disappointed in me; and I will straightway begin to effect this change in you, by telling you from the bottom of my heart that I do not deserve a single word of the praise you have lavished upon me. If only you knew how despondent and how melancholy I feel about myself as a productive creature ! I desire nothing more than a little freedom, a little genuine breath of life, and I am on my guard, I am in revolt, against the host, the countless host, of constraints that I am not yet rid of. It is useless to think of genuine production so long as one is not freed, however slightly, from one’s trammels, from the pain and oppression of embarrassment. Shall I ever attain to that freedom ? It is extremely doubtful. The goal is too far away and even if one reaches it in the end, it is generally at the cost of one’s strength, spent in long seeking and struggling. Then one attains to freedom with one’s spirits as flat as those of a short-lived butterfly at evening. I am terrified at this. It is a misfortune to be so conscious of one’s struggle so early in life ! I cannot, like the artist or the ascetic, balance my doubts by means of great deeds. How wretched and loathsome this monotonous wailing is to me ! For the moment I am really very, very tired of everything more than tired. ” My health, by-the-bye, is excellent : do not be anxious on that account. But I am not quite satisfied with Nature, who ought to have given me a little more intellect as well as a more overflowing heart. I am keenly aware of this, and to know it is the greatest torture a man can have. Regular work in an official post is so good, because it leads to a certain obtuseness, and then one suffers less.” Shortly after my arrival, however, he recovered his pride and good spirits, declaring that I had such a splendid way of infusing him with cheerful confidence. But how could this confidence have helped coming to him, after he had read me the MS. of his third essay for the Thoughts out of Season, and had himself felt in the reading of it how magnificent was its promise. After this he could not even remember the period of discouragement through which he had gone, and therefore wrote to Gersdorff on the 8th May, in reply to an anxious letter from his old friend : ” I must have created a false impression by my last letter : as you know, that was not the language of depression, but, at most, of a kind of resignation which as yet is not devoid of desire and of phantasy.” And then he proceeded : ” My sister is staying with me at present, and together we dream of the most beautiful plans for an idyllic, industrious and simple life in the future.” When, however, his friend still refused to believe that he was quite well, he wrote to him on the 1st of June that he was really cross because Gersdorff would not credit the fact that he was “ well,” ” normal,” and ” quite fit.” But in his letter of the 8th of May he already revealed the true reason of his cheerful spirits as follows : ” Meanwhile I have got so far with my third essay for the Thoughts out of Season, that if you were here, the final casting might be begun ; the summer term, however, keeps me busy now, and that is why, as there is no hurry, I have laid this MS. aside for a while. The title (between ourselves !) is, ‘ Schopenhauer among the Germans.’ It will be fine, I can tell you ! ” With all the fluctuations of spirit which mark this period, it seems to me that it might be regarded as a kind of turning-point in my brother’s development. As the letter to Gersdorff shows, he had the most modest opinion of his gifts, despite the enormous demands he made upon himself; and graphologists declare that this is revealed even by his handwriting of the period. But his modesty was particularly touching when he compared himself with people he loved and honoured ; he transfigured these into perfectly marvellous prodigies, while he was ruthlessly critical towards himself. The result was perforce a lack of proportion. In 1878 he poked fun at himself by writing that such gifted creatures as he had imagined geniuses to be, have never existed. He had been busy with the essay on Schopenhauer since the beginning of the year 1874, and the greater the scale of the work became, the more despondent he felt about it. But, strange to say, just when he had reached, so to speak, the lowest ebb of self-contempt, he unconsciously attained other results. The following notes and aphorisms will show what his inner experiences of this period were, as also the course taken by his inquiring mind on the way to self-emancipation : ” First we believe a particular philosopher ; then we say that however wrong he may be in the proof of his propositions, the propositions themselves are true. Finally we say that it does not matter what his propositions are, the nature of the man himself is as good as a hundred systems. As a teacher he may have been wrong over and over again ; but the essence of his doctrine is right, and we shall hold by that. There is something about a philosopher which can never belong to a philosophy, i.e., the cause of many philosophies the great man. ” I reached the highest point in pathos when I depicted the Schopenhauerian man the destructive genius opposed to all learning. In compensation I needed the constructive metaphysical artist who causes one to dream beautiful dreams in the midst of such a sinister occupation. Dissatisfaction with the tragic mode of thought increased.” In these notes he suggests repeatedly how Schopenhauer hampered him, despite the reverence he felt for him, or precisely on that account ; and yet Schopenhauer was not only an educator to him, but also an emancipator; for while my brother wrote about the philosopher, his idea of the latter was changed. He put his own distress and salvation into ardent language, and read them into the character of the philosopher. Hence he was able to say with gratitude: ” I am far from supposing that I ever thoroughly understood Schopenhauer ; but through him I was enabled to understand myself, alone, a little better; that is why I feel so deeply indebted to him.”
The memory of one of our most cheerful holiday trips is associated with the production of the third essay of the Thoughts out of Season. We had arranged to make a pleasant excursion, during the Whitsuntide holidays, to Schaffhausen, the Falls of the Rhine, the Lake of Constance, and Uberlingen and Heiligenberg, but we only got as far as the Falls of the Rhine, for we were exceptionally pleased by the hotel opposite the Falls which is so beautifully situated. We discovered some lovely walks, explored the whole neighbourhood, and had an extraordinary amount of harmless amusement. Anyone who did not frequent my brother’s company for a long period could scarcely imagine how much childlike good cheer and guileless fun lay in his nature. Yet I must admit that he laughed with no one so much as with me, and that is why he found my company so refreshing and so helpful in re-establishing the equilibrium between reality and concentrated thinking. The conclusion of this little tour afforded another example of our guilelessness even in other directions. We had arranged our day, our time-table and our menus according to our own taste ; and in Switzerland, where it is customary to arrange for inclusive terms, this was the most unpractical thing we could possibly have done. We knew this from hard experience ; but Fritz had a great aversion from every kind of table d’hote (he called it the browsing of herds), and therefore did not readily acquiesce in such arrangements. The hotel in which we lived was a first-class hotel-de-luxe, and the bill which was presented to us for all the lunches and dinners we had taken a part can therefore readily be imagined. We stared in astonishment at the account that was laid before us ; we were most surprised that our simple holiday should have cost us so much money. “ Lizzie,” Fritz said to me, in mock solemnity, ” one always has to pay dearly for grazing away from the herd.” We had to abandon the continuation of our tour to the Lake of Constance, as we had not brought enough money with us, and feeling very crestfallen we were forced to return home earlier than we expected. Now, does it not seem extraordinary that throughout this extremely jolly time my brother completed the greater part of a book in which, almost unconsciously, he wrote down his whole self and all his inmost experiences with his heart’s blood ? It was by means of all his guileless fun that he recovered from the terrible seriousness of his own personal tragedy for the fate of genius is always tragic. But one could tell that great things were taking place in his soul, for a wonderful light shone in his eyes the joy of the creator, the triumph of the victor. Often we would sit for hours at a time at our favourite spot on the Rhine, and neither of us would utter a word ; we could hear the rumbling sound of the falls in the distance, and we could see the torrent, wildly agitated by its passage over all kinds of obstructions, dashing by us with angry violence headlong towards its goal the sea and infinity. The bank vibrated, the sound as of a mighty symphony rang out of the depths ; the stream sang the heroic song of its road to Freedom, and this was re-echoed in my brother’s soul. Fritz finished the rough draft of ” Schopenhauer as Educator” in June, 1874; in the following month, the several parts were elaborated, and then, in September, the last portion was completely re-cast and re-written. As his work progressed, he grew ever more bright, more cheerful and more happy. On the 1st of June, he wrote to Rohde : “ DEAR FRIEND, I have just heard from Gersdorff and our friends at Bayreuth that great anxiety once more prevails concerning me, and that my attitude is considered dangerous, grimly humorous, etc. Well, I cannot help it ; some men see better at a distance than I can see quite close consequently the anxiety may not be entirely without foundation. The only thing is that physically I am quite well : my stomach, my digestion, and my complexion are all healthy ; and in addition I am once more in a tolerably productive frame of mind that is to say, cheerful. And I have my sister with me ; in fact I resemble a happy man as far as it is possible for me to know what happiness is for, that something of the kind exists cannot be doubted … Are you also having magnificent moonlight nights ? It is impossible to stay indoors, and often I really believe that the air sings. I have just written the preface to my third essay for the Thoughts out of Season.” But the song and sounds he heard at that time came from the voice of his own secret happiness of heart : the vague premonition of his own greatness. And for how many years did not this vague premonition remain his only feeling on this point ! Only in the year 1888, when his spirit saw quite clearly, and when his body, his ego, vanished in order to become one with the sublime figure of Zarathustra, was he able to look back upon his own life as upon an outside spectacle. Only then did he become conscious of what he himself was. In Ecce Homo he applauds the fate which kept him for so many years enveloped in unconsciousness about himself, while it led him onwards to individual perfection and to the highest goals. In that summer of 1874, he was really very happy. He felt that he was in every respect so rich, especially in friends. And this meant an enormous amount to him ; for, from his earliest childhood onwards, friendship played quite an unusually important part in his life. Without friends life seemed to him a wilderness. From his sixth to his eighteenth year, Wilhelm Pinder (later on a high Government official in Cassel) and Gustav Krug (also a high Government official in Freiburg, in Breisgau, where lie died in 1902) had been his greatest intimates. After that began his friendship -with Paul Deussen (Professor at Kiel), and Baron von Gersdorff. In Leipzig, Erwin Rohde and Heinrich Romundt were added to his circle of friends, and in Bale, Professor Franz Overbeck, then Malvida von Meysenbug; later on for a few years only, Dr. Paul Ree, and finally Baron von Seidlitz and Dr. Rifer. But what he prized above all these was his intimacy with Richard Wagner. Anyone who has studied these various friendships of my brother will agree with the following remarks of Henri Lichtenberger : ” Nietzsche’s moral energy, like that of many other heroic natures, was tempered by a great need of friendship, admiration and tenderness. His heart felt the necessity for a sympathetic circle where it could beat freely. Hence at every period of his life he had friends whom he loved passionately. It must be added that some of these friendships had a sad ending. Nietzsche, indeed, had the dangerous habit of seeing all his friends through rose-coloured spectacles. Free from every trace of envy, and deeply impressed at first sight by everything remarkable in those around him, he pleased himself by transforming, or rather retouching, in his imagination the physiognomies of those around him ; he saw in them more beauty, greatness, and style than they really had. In the frenzy of his enthusiastic love, he closed his eyes to their defects, their human weakness, so that he might see only their perfections, and he finally made for himself an exact and striking likeness of his friends, but one which was as ideal as the portrait of a master … But if this faculty of thus
embellishing his friends permitted him to feel greater and more perfect pleasure in their company than that experienced by the realistic psychologist, he also found it a source of cruel disappointments.” But at that time there was no question of disappointments in friendship, and my brother would never have believed then that such things were possible. He himself was the best and most self-sacrificing friend that could be imagined ; he was incessantly trying to show others some kindness. When for instance Rohde had to wait too long for the offer of a University Professorship, my brother, in perfect earnest, offered him his own post at Bale. He himself was ready to get on without one. One has only to hear Deussen’s and Romundt’s accounts, to know how ready he was to help. If a friend asked to borrow 50 francs from him, he would reply considerately, ” Would you not prefer 100 ?” He spent his summer holidays of 1874 with Romundt, at Bergin, in the Albulastrasse, in order to work hard at his “ Schopenhauer as Educator.” Towards the end of July, 1874, he wrote ; ” MY DEAR MOTHER, Here I am among the hills, and I will write you another little letter, because Lizzie is far away from both of us and cannot tell you about me and me about you, as she usually does in the summer. We have had bleak rainy weather for the last few days, and everyone is peevish this is the prevailing mood here in the solitude, and I alone do not share it, because I am busy with the thinking-out and perfecting of a new essay. When I am thus occupied, I live in another world, where the rain cannot get at me. Moreover, without thinking about it, I enjoy the benefit of the invigorating Alpine air, and when I am out of every-day town life, I think of many things that are not to be found in the vortex and sweltering heat of cities.” At the end of the summer term my brother finished his work on the third essay for the Thoughts out of Season. Things came in somewhat of a rush at the last, and in a letter to Gersdorff at the end of September he bewails his lot as follows : ” MY DEAR FRIEND, The closing weeks of our half-year have been a hard time for me, and I am greatly relieved now that it is over. For, in addition to all my other duties, I was obliged completely to recast a rather long portion of my third essay, and the inevitable nervous strain and spiritual agitation that such thinking and burrowing in the depths involved often threatened to knock me up ; even now I have not quite recovered from my puerperal fever. Nevertheless something good has come forth from all this labour, and I rejoice at the thought that you will be pleased by it. The printing, which is being pressed along very rapidly, and which is consequently one burden the more on my shoulders, is almost completed, and when you arrive I shall most probably have a finished copy to lay before you.” “ What he felt, and what his resolutions for the future were, when he had finished his book, may best be judged from a letter written to Fraulein von Meysenbug : ” It is certainly a great joy to accomplish one’s mission step by step and now I have three of the thirteen essays ready, and a fourth is already taking shape in my brain. How shall I feel when I have rid my breast of all the negative and indignant feelings that are surging in it ? and yet I may hope to have achieved this magnificent end in about five years. Already I feel, with genuine gratitude, that I am beginning to see ever more clearly and more sharply in an intellectual sense ! (Unfortunately this is not so physically) and I am also beginning to express myself with ever greater definiteness and lucidity. If I am not utterly diverted from my purpose, and provided that I do not break down, something must come of it all. Just think of a whole series of fifty essays such as the four I have already written, in which everything that lies stored in my inner experience, is forced out into the light of day. One ought certainly to produce some effect with such work, for by means of it one would have loosed the tongues of men, and much would have been expressed that humanity could not forget so easily, much that to-day seems as if it were forgotten or as if it did not exist. But what could divert me from my purpose ? Even hostile influences I now turn to my own advantage ; for they often give me more light than friendly sympathy. And I desire nothing more than to be enlightened concerning the extremely intricate system of antagonistic elements of which the ‘ modern world ‘ is composed. Fortunately I am absolutely devoid of all political and social ambition, so that I have nothing to fear in that quarter nothing in the way of a deviation, no constraints, no scruples. In short, I may say just what I think, and I will thus test to what extent our fellow-men who are so proud of free thought can endure free thoughts. My demands upon life are neither excessive nor extravagant ; on the other hand, we shall all experience something soon for which former generations and posterity may well envy us. In addition to this I am blessed beyond my deserts with a number of excellent friends, and all that I now desire, between ourselves, is a good wife ; if I had her I should consider that all the wishes of my life were fulfilled. Everything else would then depend upon me.” The third essay of the Thoughts out of Season was greeted by all his friends with, genuine enthusiasm aye, even with delight and solemn rejoicing and, at any rate quite differently from the second essay. Letters of praise and of agreement poured in from all sides, and Frau Cosima, who was deeply moved, wrote that she could feel right well that in this essay the author had described the inmost sufferings of a genius sufferings which are often concealed from his contemporaries. Her letter was couched in much the same terms as Wagner’s, and it expressed what both of them had felt when they had read this essay together. She began her letter with the words, “ This is my essay of the Thoughts out of Season,” and all those who had spent their lives struggling and suffering for a great idea, felt that ” Schopenhauer as Educator ” was their gospel. Again and again Fraulein von Meysenbug expressed herself in the warmest terms about the essay, and on one occasion she wrote : ” The third essay of the Thoughts out of Season is always with me ; it has become my Bible, and I often find comfort by reading passages of it. Never has anyone defined the object of all culture more beautifully, and I really cannot think what more one may want to know.” I, too, from the very beginning, had felt the warmest personal attachment to this essay ; it moved me deeply, for it seemed to me like a rare vision of my brother’s own life, his thought and his future. Even at that time I said to him : ” I do not know enough about Schopenhauer’s personality to feel quite sure whether he is really such an educator as you make him out to be ; but of this I am certain, that you yourself are the educating philosopher who is described in that essay.” ” Nonsense ! ” Fritz cried. ” Or that you will be,” I added. And then he replied thoughtfully : ” Who can tell, Lizzie ? ” Throughout his life my brother regarded this third essay of the Thoughts out of Season as the token of his most profound gratitude for all that Schopenhauer had done for him as a
teacher and educator. He always declared that this treatise had nothing to do with Schopenhauer’s philosophical doctrines, and that it dealt only with the effect of the great philosopher’s personality upon himself. In the year 1880 he wrote: ” When I honoured Schopenhauer as my educator, I forgot that already for some time not one of his dogmas had succeeded in resisting my suspicion ; but I did not care how often I might have written ‘ inadequately proved,’ or ‘ cannot be proved,’ or ‘overdrawn’ under his utterances ; for I gratefully enjoyed the mighty impression that Schopenhauer himself had made upon me for the last ten years by his free and plucky attitude towards things in general.” Even in later years he always regarded this essay as the touchstone whereby he could tell whether a person belonged to him or not. For instance, in the autumn of 1882 he wrote to Fraulein Lou Salome” (now Frau Lou Andreas), with whom he broke off all relations after having been friendly with her for the short period of only five months : “ In Lucerne I gave you my essay on Schopenhauer. I told you at the time that in it you would find my fundamental views, and that I believed they would be yours also : you ought to have read it then and said ‘ No ! ‘ for then I should have been spared a good deal ! In such matters I detest superficiality ! ” There is very little in “ Schopenhauer as Educator” which, if the names were changed, would not apply equally well to my brother, and describe one or another of his experiences. Take, for instance, the following passage : ” But Schopenhauer had the extraordinary good fortune to see genius not only at close quarters, that is to say, in T.N. y himself, but also at a distance in Goethe : owing to this twofold reflection he was thoroughly well informed and wise concerning all the aims and the culture of the learned. By means of this experience he knew how the free and strong man, who constitutes the aim of every artistic culture, should be constituted.” Now, if one writes Nietzsche instead of Schopenhauer, and Wagner (as my brother saw him then) instead of Goethe, in this passage, would not every word apply to my brother’s most secret experiences ? At times he himself would use whole pages of this essay in order to describe his own state of mind, and would then always write “ I” in place of “ Schopenhauer.” For instance, in the month of January, 1875, just after he had had a certain painful experience, he wrote me a letter, at the conclusion of which he said : ” You can find all these things printed in my Schopenhauer essay but they are all my own experiences and feelings and they constantly recur to me, as at present, for instance.” The passage in the letter which is referred to here reads as follows : ” Ah ! we free and lonely spirits we know that we perpetually seem other than we are. While we wish for nothing but truth and honesty, we are caught up in a net of misunderstandings ; and our ardent desires cannot prevent a mist of false opinions, of adaptations and wrong conclusions, protective reticence’s and erroneous interpretations from gathering round our actions. And there settles a cloud of melancholy on our brows, for we hate the necessity of pretence worse than death ; and the persistent feeling of bitterness that this hate provokes gives us a threatening and volcanic temper. We take revenge from time to time for our forced concealment and self-restraint : we issue from our dens with lowering looks : our words and deeds are explosive, and may even lead to our own destruction. I live amid dangers of this sort. It is precisely such lonely men as we that need love and friends, to whom we can be as open and sincere as to ourselves, and in whose presence the struggle for silence and dissimulation may cease.” In this letter my brother also told me that I, too, was a comrade and a friend to him, and one before whom he could be unconstrained and honest. This seemed the highest praise to me ! In spite of all that I experienced subsequently, I yet made the surprising discovery that he used not to speak so openly or so confidentially to any one of his friends as he did to me. It was Baron von Gersdorff who called my attention to this after the publication of my first biography of my brother, and who pointed out that I had not made this sufficiently plain. He had always known that this was so, and Fraulein von Meysenbug will certainly remember his having said to her on one occasion that if one really wished to know exactly what Nietzsche thought and felt, one should ask his sister. But I never knew this, or I was not clear about it, and I always suspected that my brother said more to his friends than to me concerning all that went on in his soul. Many an error arose from this. Now, to sum up the contents of the third essay for the Thoughts out of Season, I cannot do better than quote the following words of the late Dr. Fritz Kogel : ” The whole of the essay on Schopenhauer is an undeniable example of Nietzsche’s undogmatic and purely personal style ; never was there a panegyric written about a philosopher, in which less attention is paid to his philosophy. Not a word is said concerning the Schopenhauerian doctrine ; Nietzsche considers only Schopenhauer’s personality, his ethos, the conditions and dangers of his development, and his direct personal influence ; and to this he attaches thoughts upon the possibility of a culture of the future, and the rearing of philosophers of the future. At bottom the whole of this essay is simply a confession on Nietzsche’s part concerning his own spiritual experience of Schopenhauer, and the ideals that were born of it : thus in its essence it is a purely personal document. And it was precisely because he preserved his own spiritual freedom in the presence even of the most revered of men that he was able in the essays of those days to write so enthusiastically about them, to yield to the forces they represented and to speak in those inspired and inspiring tones which were to seduce his listeners. He was thoroughly convinced at that time that no one could dispense with these experiences, and that everyone who felt called upon to bear his share of the duties of the future must perforce go through them an opinion which he held unto the last.” After the publication of the Schopenhauer essay, my brother received a mysterious telegram, which, if I remember rightly, had been dispatched from a post office at Lindau, on Lake Constance ; it ran thus : ” You are like the spirit that you can understand, but you are not like me. Schopenhauer.” We were never able to discover who it was that had sent him this communication CHAPTER XXIV MISCELLANEOUS EVENTS HOWEVER serious and full of work we may imagine the last weeks of the autumn of 1874 to have been if we are to judge from my brother’s own account of them the following term (1874-5) was in any case a very happy one for him. In a biography which Frau von Miaskowski, the wife of Privy Councillor August von Miaskowski, wrote of her late husband, for her children’s benefit, there are some very delightful passages about her stay in Bale. August von Miaskowski was for some time one of my brother’s colleagues at the University. Now, anybody who reads the passages in question, so brightly written by Frau von Miaskowski, cannot help having the impression that, during the winters of 1871 to
1872 and 1872 to 1873, Nietzsche must not only have danced a good deal, but must also have been regarded at Bale as a brilliant ” society man” and even something of a lady-killer. In any case, he certainly received a number of anonymous letters which were intended to call his attention to certain young lady admirers in his circle of friends. He could, however, never discover who they were. ” I am short-sighted,” he would sigh. Frau von Miaskowski writes as follows : ” In the winter 1874 5, with the help of two other young German professors and their wives, and of Professors Nietzsche, Overbeck and Romundt, we formed a small social union, which met every Tuesday evening at each of the three married men’s houses in turn. The hosts for the evening had to undertake to provide some special sort of entertainment, in which the unmarried men had, however, to give a helping hand. Among some letters written by me to my mother I came across one which contained a detailed account of a little performance of this kind that was once organised at our house. We had arranged to give a most carefully prepared tableau vivant out of Richard Wagner’s Meister singer, in which our two sons of five and three years respectively, and a little girl very close to them in age, were to take part. The whole thing was got up to please Professor Nietzsche, whose friendship with Wagner was then at its height. ” When all our guests were assembled, I asked Nietzsche kindly to play Walther’s Meisterlied. Then I opened the door leading into the adjoining room, in which the tableau arranged by my husband was ready to be viewed. Each of the children was very characteristically dressed up, and all were all the more charming owing to their very tender years. Little Eva was in a light-blue Gretchen costume, and was holding out her foot to be measured by the tiny three-year-old Hans Sachs, clad in a leather apron and cap ; while from a slight elevation the little Walther von Stolzing, attired in a beautiful red doublet with big white sleeves, lace, and a heavy gold chain, gazed down upon the lovely picture. ‘ Everyone was delighted,’ so runs my report to my mother, ‘ and Nietzsche was quite moved. He took both my hands and pressed them again and again, while he thanked me for the charming surprise. … At the end of the evening we had some music, and Nietzsche once more played extemporarily with beautiful effect.’ ” On one of our evenings, at the house of another of the members of the little social union, we were joined by a young girl friend who was staying with us at the time ; and when we returned home, as I wrote to my mother, ‘ this young lady declared that she had never been in such merry and at the same time ingenuous company. The curious feature of it was that two of the chief merry-makers among us, Overbeck and Nietzsche, were known all over Germany as thorough-going pessimists and Schopenhauerians.’ ” Another proof of the cheerful and ingenuous spirits that prevailed in that little circle seems to me to be the fact that the humorous works of Mark Twain used to provoke endless laughter there a thing that other scholars could not understand at all. But all this merry-making did not prevent my brother from proceeding with his Thoughts out of Season. At the beginning of the year 1875 Baron von Gersdorff came to Bale in order to write the draft my brother had prepared of the new essay ” We Philologists.” As might be expected, this essay shows us particularly plainly the relation between my brother’s educational plans and Hellenism ; but no one would guess from the title that it is the one which is most profoundly related in ideas to Thus Spake Zarathustra. It is greatly to be regretted that it was never finished ; because it would probably have proved the most important of all the Thoughts out of Season. But it was only my brother’s devotion to duty that prevented him from finishing it. On May the 8th, 1875, he wrote to Gersdorff as follows, concerning it (“ We Philologists”) : ” As a matter of fact I have about forty pages more of notes similar to those you wrote out for me. But the necessary flow, ardour and courage are still wanting to complete the whole.” Finally, as we see from a letter to Gersdorff dated May the 21st, he laid it altogether aside : ” Not a line more have I written of the fourth essay for the Thoughts. I have laid it aside for the term ; for my daily work and all the lectures it involves (thirteen hours) are pressing, and I have no time.” This is an example of how conscientiousness, when it is lavished upon a thing of minor importance (in this case, my brother’s Professorship), may prejudice the highest of life’s missions. Thanks to the demands of daily drudgery, something immortal has been lost to us. My brother must often have felt this before, and very bitterly, too ; and the severe judgment passed upon the scholar in ” Schopenhauer as Educator ” may be understood as a kind of slight momentary revolt against himself and his devotion to duty. For men of smaller gifts, of course, the matter is quite different. Nothing could be more deplorable than the contempt of the minor task in those who are unable to do anything better. But there were other reasons for his having been disturbed in his work at the end of the winter term. As I have already stated, he lived in a house with his two friends Professor Overbeck and Dr. Romundt. The latter had been admitted as an academical teacher into the Faculty of Philosophy at Bale, and in his lectures had devoted himself specially to Schopenhauer. Now, strange to say, his profound study of Schopenhauer had made Dr. Romundt decide to become a Catholic priest. My brother was beside himself with anger, for he was very fond of Dr. Romundt. He could not in the least understand how a philosopher who had learnt to value freedom of thought could possibly intend to take up a position which, from an intellectual standpoint, was so terribly confined on all sides. And the fact that a friend, after having frequented his company for eight years, could thus secretly have planned such a coup against the freedom of his own spirit made him thoroughly unhappy. In a very depressed mood he wrote to Rohde as follows : ” With your ideas of what a friendship with me means, tell me what you make of this story, and send me a few words of comfort. It is precisely in my friendship that I am wounded.” After lengthy discussions, however, Dr. Romundt did at last decide to return to his earlier calling as a teacher. My brother wrote concerning Romundt’s departure as follows : ” It was exceedingly sad, and Romundt kept repeating that all that was best and most beautiful in his experience had now come to an end ; with copious tears he begged for forgiveness, and did not know what to do, he was so wretched. An extraordinarily weird thing occurred at the last moment. A porter at the railway station closed the door of the carriage just before the train began to move, and Romundt, wishing to say something to us, tried to pull down the window. But in vain ! He strained and strained, and, while he was struggling thus in order to let us hear what he wanted to say the train rolled slowly out of the station, and all we could do was to exchange signs. The ghastly symbolism of the whole scene depressed me exceedingly, as it did Overbeck (a fact he confessed to me later). I could scarcely endure it.” From this description of his sorrow over the first painful experience he had ever had with a friend, we can gather how pleased he was when Dr. Romundt afterwards returned to his
sound philosophical studies, and wrote books over which my brother could heartily rejoice. Concerning Antdus, he wrote to me as follows : ” Romundt’s book is a genial production ; personally I think it is very refreshing. I am to some extent aware of the inner obstacles which he had to overcome. What a price has to be paid in blood for every step towards selfreliance ! ” In addition to having taken Dr. Romundt’s affair a little too much to heart during the winter of 1875, my brother worked and wrote far too much, and the result of it was that another spell of indisposition supervened. In order to recover, he went for a few days at Easter to Berne, where he was the only guest at the Hotel Victoria, on the Schanzli, and made many excursions into the mountains and the woods, ” always alone, and meditating a good deal.” But even this change did not do him much good, and at Whitsuntide, when we met at Baden-Baden, I thought at first he looked very ill. In a few days, however, his buoyant nature quickly recuperated, and Dr. Richard Pohl, whom we happened to meet there, declared that he looked the ” picture of health.” During our stay in Baden-Baden Wagner and Bayreuth formed the subject of almost all our conversation. For, at the beginning of the year 1875, Frau Cosima had begged me to come to Bayreuth for a fairly long stay in order to take her place at the head of the household of Wahnfried while she was away. She wished to join Wagner on his concert-tour to Vienna. My brother had agreed to this somewhat hastily, because, as he explained to me later, he thought it was of paramount importance that I should become initiated as far as possible into the circumstances of the Wagners’ private life. It was about this time that Wagner, while temporarily indisposed, had told my brother that in the event of his (Wagner’s) death, he wished to make him guardian and educator of his son Siegfried. My brother’s assumption that our mother would hail the “ Wagners’ invitation gladly, as also his hasty acceptance of it on my behalf, annoyed her exceedingly. As I have already stated, slight and also more or less serious differences of opinion had been of constant occurrence between mother and son, owing to the fact that he claimed me for the whole of every summer. Now, however, she was asked to do without me in the winter as well, and this struck her as excessive. In addition to this she adduced all kinds of reasons against my making a stay at Wahnfried. The upshot of it was that, in her anger, she wrote an indignant letter to my brother, in which she expressed her aversion from Wagner’s art and his whole mode of life, and all this in a much severer strain than her real feelings on the matter warranted. This letter threatened to lead to a serious breach between mother and son, but I quickly wrote another letter to my brother, on the heels of the one my mother had sent, in which I explained that she was already taking a much milder view of the whole plan. At last she granted me permission to go, or, rather, left it to me to decide one way or the other. Fritz knew only too well how characteristic it was of all three of us, in the first flush of our indignation, to say and write sharp and unpleasant things which a day or two later we scarcely remembered having thought or written. Thus, I really went to Bayreuth, and had all kinds of delightful and exciting experiences. Fritz could scarcely expect me to go to him in order to have long talks about Wagner and Bayreuth, for as my mother had consented to my going to Bayreuth only on condition that I should spend the summer with her, it certainly seemed at first as if I should be unable to go to Bale. When, however, Fritz wrote that he was quite alone in the house formerly shared with him by Overbeck and Romundt, my mother thought it right to let me go to him. Overbeck had obtained six months’ leave in order to go to Karlsbad to cure some severe stomach trouble, while Romundt, as we have already seen, had left Bale for good. Fritz was highly delighted to join me at Baden-Baden, nor could he cease from asking me questions about my experiences at Bayreuth, and I for my part talked inexhaustibly about all that the Wagners had done and said. It was only later that I understood what deep anxiety lay at the bottom of all his questioning. But at that time all I could do was to give an account of the hearty feelings of friendship to which they had given expression. It was in Baden-Baden that I realised for the first time that despite his admiration for Wagner and Frau Cosima, my brother differed very distinctly from them on certain concepts of art. On one occasion when we were sitting in the park, and Fritz was giving vent to opinions in this strain, I suddenly noticed that on the .other side of the shrubbery a man was sitting who, with his face turned in our direction and his elbow resting on the arm of his chair, was listening very intently to our conversation. It was Turgenieff, whose photograph I had seen and examined closely only that very morning in a shop window. When he saw that he had been caught listening to us, he stood up, politely raised his hat, and walked away. “ It is a good thing that he does not know who we are,” said Fritz, ” otherwise Wagner would ultimately get to hear of our conversation and that would lead to endless annoyance.” “ But Fritz,” I said eagerly, “ Wagner surely cannot expect his friends to share all his opinions ? ” ” He does indeed, Lizzie,” my brother replied thoughtfully ; and then I remembered an incident which proved this very point. In the spring of 1874 my brother and I had heard Brahms’ Triumphlied at the Cathedral of Bale. It was magnificently rendered, and Fritz was exceedingly pleased with it ; and when in August, 1874, he went to Bayreuth, he took the piano arrangement of the piece with him, prompted apparently by the ingenuous belief that it would please Wagner. I say ” apparently,” for since then it has occurred to me that this Triumphlied, bound in red, was a kind of experimental test, and that Wagner’s terrible anger was therefore not quite without foundation. But I shall let Wagner himself tell the tale, for he had a most delightful way of poking fun at himself. ” Your brother,” he said to me, ” laid the red book on the grand piano, and whenever I came down to the drawing-room this red object stared right at me it literally inflamed me, just as a red rag does a bull. I could very well see that by means of it Nietzsche wished tacitly to say, ‘ Just look ! here is also someone who has done good work ! ‘ Well, the end of it was that one evening I simply fell into a passion, and fell almost to bits as well ! ” Wagner laughed heartily over the thought of it. ” But what did my brother say ? ” I demanded anxiously. ” He said nothing,” Wagner replied, ” he simply blushed and gazed at me with mingled surprise and calm dignity. I would give a hundred thousand marks this minute for a bearing such as Nietzsche’s always distinguished, always dignified ! That sort of thing is invaluable in this world.” As I say, it was this incident which occurred to me while sitting with Fritz in the park at Baden-Baden. ” Fritz,” I said, ” why have you never told me the story about Brahms’ Triumphlied ? Wagner told me the whole thing himself ! ” Fritz stared into the distance and was silent; at last he said quietly : ” Lizzie, on that occasion, Wagner was not great.”
And this is the story which has been transformed by some Wagnerites into the following fiction : One day, my brother is said to have handed Wagner an opera which he himself had composed, and Wagner, very indignant, had declared that it was worthless. Profoundly hurt by this, my brother had given Wagner up. The truth, as we have seen, was very different indeed. La bttise humaine is aware only of wounded vanity as a cause of all changes in a man’s attitude towards his friends, and invents its improbable stories accordingly. After our enjoyable stay at Baden-Baden, we travelled in high spirits to Bale, where, however, my brother’s good health unfortunately did not last. In any case, Fritz took an extraordinary quantity of medicine during that spring. When, however, he felt better, and had an appetite for lunch, we had to go in the heat of the summer sun at midday all the way to an hotel, only to be served with dishes which he could hardly digest. When I said to him, ‘ ‘ If only we had our own household, how much more care we could take of your digestion ! ” he replied eagerly, “ Yes, that would be splendid ! ” and he admitted to me that of all his plans to make himself independent, the only one that he still cherished was that of having a household of his own, a thing that could be done much more comfortably in Bale than elsewhere. ” But it would involve tremendous self-sacrifice on your part,” he added. I was, however, sincerely desirous of doing it. To spend six months in Switzerland and six months in Naumburg, of which I was very fond, and where I had my dearest friends, seemed quite an enjoyable manner of passing my life ; for I did not crave for enjoyment, but for real occupation, and to do my brother a service seemed to me to be the greatest joy of all. But in spite of all assurances to the contrary, my brother could not get rid of the idea of self denial, and at last I had to beg Frau Cosima to tell him how willing and ready I was to do it and that it entailed no sacrifice on my part. And in all my brother’s letters of this period one can see how delighted he was at this happy turn of events. He wrote to Rohde as follows : “ My DEAR FRIEND, I have not written; but you will certainly have guessed already why I have been silent ; because I have not been well. I have been suffering with my digestion and my eyes. But all I wish to do to-day is to please you with the news that I am on the point of making a radical change in my mode of life. ‘ Please,’ I say. God knows ! Radicalism has at least its well-known flaw even here. Well, my sister and I are just in the throes of finding a flat, and of buying furniture, in’ order that from the middle of this year I may begin to lead a life which, from the standpoint of hygiene and diet, will be adapted and beneficial to my physical afflictions. I shall certainly not be able to go to Bayreuth during the summer holidays this is the flaw but I shall have to go to a watering-place, probably Pfaffers. The whole plan is very necessary, and the prospect of this beautiful change fills me with a sense of relief.” He wrote to Gersdorff as follows : “ I am very happy over this alteration in my mode of life, and look very confidently into the future. My grand plan for the next seven years was only possible provided my daily life became ordered and regulated in this way. Now, at last, I have a thoroughly intimate and helpful soul about me. I have not used a word of persuasion with her ; she came to the decision quite voluntarily.” This ” grand plan for the next seven years ” consisted of the most extensive studies of Hellenism, which he wished ultimately to incorporate in the large book on Greece already mentioned. He wanted to combine all these studies with his official work at the University, and in accordance with this idea, arranged the following cycle of lectures on Hellenism to be delivered during the coming seven years : 1, 2, 3. The History of Literature. 4. Religious Antiquities. 5. Private Antiquities. 6. State Antiquities. 7. Mythology. 8, 9. Political History. 10. Rhetoric and Style. 11. Rhythmic and Metrics (with Music). 12, 13. History and Philosophy. 14, 15. Ethics of the Hellenes. (Of these fifteen lectures, my brother delivered only eight, and they were : The History of Literature, Religious Antiquities, Rhetoric, Rhythmics and the History of Philosophy up to Plato inclusive.) It is greatly to be deplored that he never carried out the plan of this book on Greece. By means of it alone would people have been able to obtain a complete idea of what the Greeks meant to my brother, i.e., the starting point to many of the psychological and scientific problems of his life. He gazed upon this wonderful Hellenic world and upon this highly superior people with astonished eyes ; and this led him to the question, What is the power that made the Greek spirit the pioneer of all culture, what physical conditions, what religious concepts, what economical and political institutions, what racial gifts, what climatic and geographical influences, what mode of life, etc., etc. ? A large proportion of the results of his study and reflection can be found in his works ; but it appears only here and there, and is scattered over the whole. What a great pity it is that we do not possess the complete work in its full range In the summer of 1875 he was particularly busy with this great plan, and believed that he would best be able to accomplish it with ” a perfectly regular and self centred mode of life.” Every new state of things was pictured in the warmest colours by his vivid imagination, but always with the one object of promoting and completing his great life-task. And even if here and there he speaks of the future in emotional and personal terms, one is still conscious that his eyes are scanning the distance in search of what is great. For instance, he wrote to his friend Frau Marie Baumgartner, expressing his joy over the establishment of his own household, as follows : ” You have no idea how gladly and confidently I look forward to the winter that will be with us in a few months. For the first time I feel, so to speak, secure. I have a great increase of love about me, and on that account feel more protected and no longer so vulnerable and forsaken as I have been hitherto as an exile in Bale … Now things are beginning to bloom within me, from month to month I see the outlines of my life-task ever more clearly, without feeling the courage to impart the knowledge to anyone. A steady but very resolute pace leading from stage to
stage this is what will assure my covering some distance. I feel as if I were a born mountain climber. See how proudly I can talk ! ” As will readily be understood, our mother was very unhappy about the whole of this arrangement, and I had to write her a number of long letters in order to reconcile her to it. Finally Fritz wrote as follows : ” The resolution that I and my helpmeet Lizzie have made, and concerning which she has written to you, is the result of dire necessity ; I can no longer go on in any other way. If it cannot be carried out I shall be compelled to give up my Professorship almost immediately.” The thought of this alternative turned the scales, and our dear mother then helped us in every possible way. She assisted me in packing the household effects of our late aunt Rosalie, which were our property, and gave us all kinds of good advice. I have had to refer once or twice to certain differences of opinion between mother and son. It would be wrong to conceal the fact that these occurred, and yet in my endeavours to settle them, I suffered much more than my brother did ; for he was so seldom with my mother. Dr. Richard Oehler describes their relationship very accurately when he says : ” The contrast of their religious convictions must gradually have led to an estrangement between mother and son. But nothing in the way of an actual breach ever occurred, nor were serious discussions at all frequent ; for Nietzsche was too considerate and tactful in practical life to oppose views which were unalterable and determined by circumstances. His letters to his mother are sufficient proof of the delicacy and profound nobility with which he could spare other people’s feelings. They also show the manner in which, by carefully avoiding all useless reference to doubtful questions, he always knew how to speak of matters of common interest in the sphere of simple and practical life, and until the last to find a hearty and sympathetic way of expressing his natural filial affection. Still, in spite of this, there was always a feeling of something suppressed, of a division of thought between mother and son, and never were their relations so intimate as those that obtained between him and his sister.” It was just this last circumstance that made my life with her so hard at times. It was, however, quite natural that my brother and I should hold together ; for in our mother we always met with the most severe critic of our works and deeds. ” Who would tell you, if I did not ? ” she was wont to say. We were never spoilt by blind maternal love this we learnt to value only in later years though at that time a little uncritical tenderness would have made us very happy. Later on we heard that she always spoke of us in terms of the most affectionate esteem ; but for fear lest she should spoil us, she never let us suspect that she thought well of us. With others for whom she did not feel responsible, she gave free play to all the charm and gaiety of her nature, and Paul Deussen very rightly compares her ” in her activity and constant good cheer to Frau Aja.” She had a great number of excellent friends, and Dr. Richard Oehler says plainly, ” that her little house in Naumburg was the constant resort of refined and interesting men. There was a peculiar attraction about her home, which was not easily found elsewhere. She was above all fond of the company of merry, laughing and high-spirited girls and boys ; for, outwardly as well as at heart, this woman seemed destined to enjoy eternal and irrepressible youth.” After forming our resolution to establish our own little household in Bale, I went for a few weeks to Naumburg, and Fritz went to Steinabad in the Schwarzwald with the view of undergoing the treatment of a certain Doctor Wiel, who had won a great reputation as a specialist for diseases of the stomach. For all details concerning his stay there, the treatment which he underwent, his fluctuations of opinion in regard to the nature of his trouble, and his sorrow at not being able to join his friends at the rehearsals at Bayreuth, the reader is begged to refer to his letters to Gersdorff and Rohde, which are to be found in the various volumes of letters published. Still, to be strictly truthful, I must state it as a fact already here, that Fritz felt positively relieved at being prevented from going to Bayreuth. He patiently endured every obstacle and all his sufferings during this summer, because he felt vaguely that, thanks to them, something threatening in the distance, a definite decision concerning Bayreuth and Richard Wagner, was postponed. But it would have given him untold joy to be able to exchange all kinds of confidences with his friends. He wrote to Gersdorff concerning his state of health as follows : ” My trouble has been diagnosed as chronic gastric catarrh, accompanied by great dilatation of the stomach. This dilatation causes vascular engorgements, and results in the brain being insufficiently supplied with blood. In the first place, then, the stomach is to be reduced to its normal size, by means of an extraordinary diet consisting of the most nourishing substances, provided that they be not bulky, i.e., almost exclusively meat. In addition I am to take Carlsbad salts, and am to have leeches applied to my head.” Then in later letters to his friends he goes on to say : ” In my last letter I told you how I felt ; meanwhile, however, the diet has been changed. At my request I am now eating much less ; I am weary of eating so much meat. I have been enjoying a lovely swimming-bath since yesterday. It adjoins the gardens of the hotel ; but I am the only person here who uses it, for the others find it too cold. Early in the morning, at six o’clock, I take my plunge, and shortly afterwards I go for a two hours’ walk all this before breakfast. Yesterday for about three hours, late in the afternoon, I roamed about the exceptionally lovely woods and secluded valleys, and as I went along I mused over all that seemed hopeful in the future such a vista of happiness has not fallen to my lot for a very long time. Why, in sooth, is one spared ? I have a nice armful of work awaiting me for the next seven years, and whenever I think of it I can only feel happy. I have not a single soul for company here, and I am leading a perfectly independent and aristocratic sort of life. To-morrow, in order to amuse and instruct me, Dr.Wiel is going to do some cooking with me ; he is a famous and thoughtful culinary artist, and is the author of a very popular dietary cookery book that has been translated into every language. Yesterday he gave me a little lecture on enamelled ware, and the new meat-mincing machine, and in this way I am learning a few things for my new home.” In his letters to his friends, written from Bonndorf , there is, in spite of all, a feeling of great content. ” Everywhere I see despair ! ” he says, ” and yet I do not feel it myself, although I am not in Bayreuth ! Do you understand how this can be ? I hardly can. And yet I am there in spirit for over three-quarters of the day, and like a ghost I am perpetually hovering round it. Do not have any qualms about making my soul die of longing, but just tell me all about
it, dear friend. On my walks, I conduct whole passages of the music which I know by heart, and hum to myself. Remember me most kindly to the Wagners ! Good-bye, dear friends for here and there my letter is addressed to you all your loving comrade, Fritz.” My brother returned to Bale in the middle of August, and was full of admiration and childlike joy at the sight of his new home, which I had been arranging in the meantime. Everything was pleasant and comfortable ; but it was far from being ” sybaritic in its luxury,” as a certain critic declared our simple and somewhat old-fashioned establishment to be. During the whole of this period, from the middle of August to the end of November, my brother’s health was really excellent. From early in the morning till late in the evening he was radiant and cheerful, and declared himself exceptionally pleased with everything. He started the day very early, even in winter. In Zarathustra he describes his early hours : ” With a wickedness do I begin every day : I mock at the winter with a cold bath on that account grumbleth my stern house-mate. Also do I tickle him with a wax-taper, that he may finally let the heavens emerge from ashen-grey twilight,” Then there would follow an hour’s meditation, breakfast, and intellectual work. Fritz was entirely a morning worker. He declared that the intellect was freshest and most exuberant in the morning. To use the morning for his favourite literary work was his constant endeavour, and that is why he never read a book early in the day. ” To set too early in the morning, at break of day, in all the fullness and dawn of one’s strength, and to read a book that I call positively vicious ! ” He had fixed his lectures and Greek lessons for the afternoon, and the remainder of the day he spent walking. For the most part he went alone, for my household duties took up the greater part of my time, but on occasion I would be able to join him, and then we would find all kinds of things to amuse us. For instance, we would sing scenes out of the Gotterdammerung together, the piano arrangements of which had appeared during the spring. My brother, in a letter to me, had described them as heaven on earth (the scene between Siegfried and the Shine-Daughters was a particularly successful one with us). We enjoyed watching the strange formations of the clouds, the effects of light, and the flight of birds over the bare fields. We loved to walk on green fields and along country lanes, and to stop and look at the most simple things : now we would be amused at a dog that sprang to catch a partridge and slunk away with a most comical expression of shame when it missed its prey, and anon at a cat which would fawn upon my brother, purring affectionately the while, and rubbing its arched back against his leg. We rejoiced over the children who brought us flowers or played their games with, zest, and in doing so revealed human nature free from all artificiality. And often we would laugh and reflect at the sight of a little rascal of a boy making himself master of the situation, and the joy with which the others, and especially the little girls, obeyed him. But what particularly delighted us was the sight of the villages on Saturdays, with everybody so gaily and busily preparing for Sunday. They seemed often to have little fetes in those parts, but I do not know whether they were connected with gymnastic or rifle-shooting exhibitions or what not. On one occasion, when we saw the inhabitants of a certain village particularly busy hanging garlands and festoons about their streets, and heard them expressing their fears about the weather, Fritz good-naturedly indulged in a little prophecy, and assured them that they would have the most beautiful weather possible. The people believed it and were very happy, for a man of his learning from the town must be sure to know. On the following day, however, it simply poured with rain, and Fritz made all sorts of funny comments about himself as a weather prophet. Nevertheless, we did not care to walk into that village again ; false prophets do not like to be seen. Thus our amusements were all very simple. But what indeed does Zarathustra say on this subject? ” ‘For happiness, what little sufticeth for happiness ! ‘ Thus spake I once and thought myself wise. But it was a blasphemy : that have I now learned. Wise fools speak better. ” The least thing precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a lizard’s rustling, a breath, a whisk, an eye-gleam little maketh up the best happiness.” Taking it all in all, Fritz was exceptionally happy and content during these three months. On the 26th of September, 1875, he wrote to Gersdorff as follows : ” Meanwhile, then, with the help of my sister I have established ray own household, and it is quite successful. Thus at last, after having been without a home since my thirteenth year, I am once more in familiar surroundings. The more we exile ourselves from the things that please others, the more necessary it becomes for people like ourselves to have our own citadel from which we can look on, and in which we no longer feel so harassed by life. Thanks to the fact that I have a sister whose nature is admirably suited to mine, I have perhaps succeeded better than many others. Our Nietzschean style, which I rejoiced to find even among my father’s brothers and sisters, finds its pleasure in its own resources ; it knows how to entertain itself, and prefers to give to other people rather than to demand of them. In such circumstances one can bear to live as a thinker and a teacher for one feels one is condemned to live as both.” Fritz was so well at this time, even as far as his eyes were concerned, that every evening he used to read his own unfinished works, or essays upon which he was still engaged, aloud to me. Thus I heard ” Greek Philosophy of the Tragic Age,” and the first five sections of ” Richard Wagner in Bayreuth.” We spent the most lovely evenings in this way, full of a lofty and solemn kind of happiness. And what delightful conversations we used to have ! Later on he recited passages from translations of Greek tragedies, and would often quote even the Greek itself to show me how beautiful it sounded. I thought Philoctetes particularly fine and stirring. But in reading it aloud he sighed and cried so dolefully that our servant, who was obviously impelled by curiosity, brought the tea an hour earlier than usual. I sought an explanation. ” Caroline,” I said, “ you are surprised at something?” “ Oh, no,” she replied with a superior smile, ” I knew at once that the professor was play-acting ! ” Caroline was, to use a Bale expression, ” a steady girl m ; she had served in the best Bale families, and certainly did not find our way of living in keeping with the traditions of Bale for the last hundred years. Her superiority sometimes oppressed me, though it was always the cause of much silent amusement to Fritz. What in my opinion contributed the most delightful feature of those days, however, was Fritz’s piano-playing. It seems to me that he never played extemporarily with more effect than on those evenings we spent together : it was as if his soul were relating the happiness and the fate of his whole life. We did not dream then that this was the last year in which Fritz was going to devote himself to music and to enjoy it to the full. How strange it seems that the last piece of music which he composed, the improvisation which he played
almost every evening, was the “ Hymn to Solitude”! He had already written to Rohde during the previous winter as follows : “ In my rarest moments I now work at a ‘ Hymn to Solitude.’ I wish to realise it in all its terrible beauty.” It is deeply to be deplored that these notes seem to have been lost. From the end of November his good health gradually declined; still he wrote to Gersdorff on the 1st December : ” Gradually I shall have everything properly placed in my mind. And then even my health will be more steady a state to which I shall not attain until I deserve it, that is to say, until I have reached that spiritual condition which seems to be the promised one to me, that healthy condition of mind in which only one instinct, the will to knowledge, has remained over, and in which the spirit has become free from all other instincts and desires. A simple home, a perfectly regular daily routine, no enervating desire for honours, or for society, my sister’s company (through which everything about me is quite Nietzschean and strangely restful), the consciousness of having excellent and affectionate friends, the possession of forty good books of all times and climes (and of many more which are not altogether bad), the constant joy of having found educators in Schopenhauer and Wagner, and the subject of my daily work in the Greeks, the belief that henceforward I shall no longer lack good pupils all these things now constitute my life. Unfortunately my chronic physical troubles which seize me for about two days, and sometimes longer, at intervals of two weeks, should also be added to the reckoning; but they must one day cease.” But, on the whole, it was not surprising that my brother’s health gradually declined, for during this period he did an incredible amount of work and seriously overstrained his eyes. I ought to point out here that it was not reading, but writing, that proved most trying to his sight. His acute short-sightedness made him bend so low over his work that it constantly led to his head becoming congested with blood, and to the muscles of his neck getting over-tired. Now it happened that on his return from Steinabad, in the first flush of his recovered health and his joy over his new home, he could not do enough in the way of productive work and study ; for instance, he wrote the greater part of ” Richard Wagner in Bayreuth,” he began to recast his ” Greek Philosophy of the Tragic Age ” again from a new standpoint ; he once more took up his notes on the subject of ” We Philologists,” which was now to be the fifth essay of the Thoughts out of Season, although he had previously thought of making it the fourth. Concerning my brother’s plans and programme of study at this time, Dr. Koegel writes as follows : ” Having returned from Steinabad with the brightest hopes as to his recovered health, he spread his ‘ armful of work ‘ out before him. These plans of all kinds, besides including the gradual continuation of his Thoughts out of Season, and the conclusion at last of certain old philosophical essays, also involved extensive research work and study for future creations. In addition to historical, mathematical, physical and natural science and economical studies, he conceived the plan of an ‘ Enormous Collection of Psychological Details and Human Documents.’ In addition to this there were historical works and novels to be read, and letters to be written. He also wished to revise his fundamental philosophical opinions, and with this object in view he resolved to study Duhring as an attempt at doing away with Schopenhauer, and in order to see what there was for and against him in Schopenhauer. He also had the intention of studying Schopenhauer again; while among the authors set down to be read over a period of eight years are ‘ Schopenhauer, Duhring, Aristotle, Goethe and Plato.’ He began this plan by reading Duhring’s The Value of lge, from which he made thirty pages of extracts, consisting of the principal thoughts of the book, and a general outline of Duhring’s argument, and these extracts he interspersed with a hort of short remarks and more lengthy observations of his After Fritz’s health had begun to decline, I used to read to him aloud, of an evening, after the moil and toil of the day ; and for this purpose we chose Walter Scott’s novels, of which I believe I must have read sixteen, one after the other for we liked him, we liked his heroes, and we liked even his long-winded descriptions. When, for instance he described a meal in detail, Fritz would be amused at the quantities which people in those days could absorb, What stomachs the fellows must have had!” he would exclaim From the beginning of December, however, I began to 31 really concerned. Much as I deplored the fact, I could not help feeling that our idea of having a home of our own in Bale was anything but beneficial to my brother’s health. The very fact that he felt quite comfortable indoors, and therefore went out so rarely. Long before any that his digestion was not the only cause Of his trouble; that over-work, and above all the excessive straining. l also realised that be only cure for all this would be frequent change of air and scene, leading naturally to more walking exercise. But the worst feature of those days was the fact that as n as Fritz began to feel a little low, he immediately had recourse to the old remedies. If only I had had more courage to express my honest opinion, or if I had only possessed more authority over him, how much better everything would probably have turned out ! I was, however, so accustomed to think everything that Fritz did was right, that I did not dare to oppose even his most unreasonable whim. Shortly after Christmas his steadily declining health broke down altogether. He suffered from terrible headaches and violent nausea for almost four days, and these attacks would recur repeatedly with only short intervals of relief in between. During these intervals he was weak and exhausted. His doctor, Professor Immermann, expressed grave fears, and all of us who loved him deeply were very unhappy. Gradually I tried to make it clear to him that he ought to leave Bale as quickly as possible ; all his friends also tried to urge him to take this step, but he would not be convinced. On the 23rd of January, 1876, he wrote to Gersdorff as follows: ” Up to the present I have had no fresh attack ; but I am still in the same state, and I have the greatest fears. I still do my work at the University, however, and live with the greatest care and regularity. Under these circumstances I surely ought to get better. The complete rest which you advise is not so easily carried out, and it seems to me that to go on living in the usual way, while duly observing every precaution, is the most practical thing to do, and will probably lead to the best results. And then my sister’s presence is helpful, as is also Overbeck’s happy Overbeck, by the bye what should I do with myself in exile ! ” Professor Overbeck had meanwhile become engaged, and this change in his life improved his rather peevish temper. In spite of all his suffering, Fritz was heartily delighted at the news, for, on the whole, it cannot be said that my brother was ever indifferent or apathetic, on the contrary, he remained throughout all his sufferings full of consideration and solicitude for those about him. Despite the fact that his illness was an intolerable torment to him, for he feared that it might prevent him from fulfilling his life’s task, he never once assumed a tragic attitude
about it. He detested every kind of pose. Even when he was in the midst of the loftiest intellectual creations, he maintained his usual amiable, gentle and dignified demeanour towards his surroundings. Some people declare that he was nervous in his manner ; this, however, was only a sign that he did not feel at ease in their presence. When he was in the company of people to whom in his heart of hearts he objected, he grew silent, reserved, and almost oppressed. He could not bear anything in the way of dishonesty, cowardice, affectation, or ostentation. In 1888 he wrote in Ecce Homo : ” It is my privilege to have the very sharpest discernment for every sign of healthy instincts. There is no such thing as a morbid trait in me ; even in times of serious illness I have never grown morbid, and you might seek in vain for a trace of fanaticism in my nature. No one can point to any moment of my life in which I have assumed either an arrogant or a pathetic attitude. Pathetic attitudes are not in keeping with greatness ; he who needs attitudes is false … Beware of all picturesque men ! Life was easy in fact easiest to me, in those periods when it exacted the heaviest duties from me.” Gradually his health began slightly to improve, and he therefore resolved to go with Gersdorff to Montreux at the beginning of March. He wrote : ” I can at last say that my health is improving, after a very long and painful indisposition. Nevertheless, I had to discontinue all my lectures, and it is since then that I have begun to feel better.” Meanwhile, our dear mother had come to Bale and was able to keep me company in his absence. On the 7th of March, therefore, Fritz set off with his friend. Unfortunately, the weather was not favourable, while Baron von Gersdorff also had very soon to return to Germany, as he was extremely busy and had only undertaken the journey to oblige my brother. The good effects of the change became visible only at the end of the holiday, or as a matter of fact only when Fritz was back in Bale. After his return he wrote to his faithful travelling companion somewhat discontentedly about their rather wretched trip together: ” Another time it will be jollier and more successful, for this time I was really ill and especially morally ill. One should not say too much about the wickedness of the world, but about the victory and accomplishment of the good and the right; in this way one banishes moroseness and every muscle braces itself.” We were exceedingly delighted to have him safely back, and even our laughter, which had vanished for so long, began to return. Fritz said : ” Lizzie, you ought to have come with us, then we should certainly have been more cheerful in Montreux.” “ Nonsense, Fritz!” I said, ” cheerfulness comes to you quite naturally when you get better.” As a matter of fact, it was quite touching to see how quickly he was up to all kinds of fun the moment he felt a little better ; for instance, he would say all he had to say for hours in doggerel verses. I was somewhat surprised to see my brother in such good spirits during the spring of this year ; for as a matter of fact he had only just been refused, after proposing to a young Dutch girl, Fraulein Tr., whom he had known only for a very short time, and with whom he had taken a four hours’ walk in Geneva. She was a charming girl who really aspired to good and lofty things, and who found the epitome of her life’s philosophy in Longfellow’s Excelsior. While she was making a copy of her translation of this poem my brother sent her the following letter. I ought, however, to add that a certain newly-made acquaintance had been chiefly instrumental in inducing him to take this step, a man who had known the girl a long while, who raved about her, and who subsequently married her. All other particulars appear in the letter. ” MY DEAR YOUNG LADY, ” This evening you are writing something for me and I will write something for you as well. Take your courage in both hands so as not to be too overcome by the question which I am now going to put to you : will you be my wife ? I love you, and it seems to me as if you already belonged to me. Not a word about the suddenness of my affection ! In any case it is no sin, and therefore does not require to be pardoned. But what I should like to know is whether you feel as I do and that we have never been strangers at all, not for one moment ! Do you not also believe that, joined together, each of us would be freer and better than we could be apart therefore Excelsior ! Would you dare to walk shoulder to shoulder with me as with one who strives heartily after emancipation and improvement, along all the paths of life and of thought ? ” Now be frank and conceal nothing. No one knows anything about this letter and my proposal save our common friend, Herr v. S. Tomorrow morning at 11 a.m. I shall take the express back to Bale ; I must get back ; I therefore send you my address there. If you find you can accept my proposal, I shall write to your mother immediately, in which case I must beg you to give me her address. If you are able to come to a prompt decision one way or the other, a note from you will find me at the Hotel de la Poste until ten. Wishing you every joy and blessing for ever, ” FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. ” Geneva, 11th April, 1876.” But the young lady’s heart was no longer fancy free, and she was somewhat startled by this sudden offer of marriage. Upon hearing this, my brother wrote her the following letter from Bale on the 15th of April. ” DEAR MADAM, ” You are good enough to forgive me this I feel from your very kind letter which I really did not deserve. I have suffered so much at the thought of my cruel behaviour that I cannot be sufficiently grateful to you for your gentle kindness. I shall explain nothing, nor do I know how to justify myself. I can only express this last wish, that if ever you should read my name, or meet me again, you will not think of the shock I have given you; I beg you ever to believe that I would fain make amends where I have erred. ” With great respect, ” I am yours sincerely, ” FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.” I almost believe now that my brother was somewhat glad that his hasty proposal did not lead to marriage. After we had spent one or two gloomy days together for we were all very grieved that my brother’s first attempt at a betrothal had failed we could not help looking back on the whole matter with a smile. ” Fritz,” I said, ” your affair with Fraulein Tr. was like that affair of your duel. You always do things differently from other people so suddenly.” ” Yes” my brother replied, ” I ought to be thankful for the way these things turn out. A sudden, ill-advised marriage would in the end have been no better than a manage de convenance, and from that may heaven preserve everyone.” My brother’s intellectual plans and aspirations played by far the most important part in his life. It was impossible for him to regard love affairs as seriously as poets do, or to realise the part they played in other men’s lives. At about this time Gersdorff wrote me a private letter in which he said that he had heard accidentally that a beautiful young woman loved and revered Nietzsche, and that, as she was very wealthy and much in demand, she had already refused many offers for Nietzsche’s sake. The news came at the wrong time, for my brother was far too busily engaged just then in pondering over the difficulties of marriage. On the 26th of May he answered Gersdorff’s letter very emphatically as follows : ” I am not going to be married ; as a matter of fact
I so detest restrictions of any sort, and the thought of adapting myself to the * civilised ‘ order of things, that the woman could hardly be found who would be liberal-minded enough to follow me. I begin to regard Greek philosophers and their mode of life ever more and more as the proper examples to be followed.” The new term began happily in every way. Fritz was fresh and eager for work ; his lectures were attended by a number of students, which for Bale was quite exceptional, and he was full of hopes for his health. He wrote to Gersdorff : ” It really seems as if the gruesomeness of my condition during the winter has vanished like a spectre. I feel happy and comfortable once more.” As for me, however, the experiences of the winter had left me with all kinds of vague fears, which I may well have expressed in many a letter of the period ; but however this may be, ” his best friend,” as Fritz called Fraulein von Meysenbug suggested to my brother that he should spend the following winter with her somewhere at a Southern seaside resort, either Fano, Capri, or Sorrento. We were all delighted ! This was an offer at the right time. We literally feasted on new plans. Building castles in the air was a favourite occupation of my brother’s, whether he was well or ill. I can still see his joyful expression when he used to say : ” Lizzie, let us think of something !” I urged Fritz to try by all means in his power to obtain a whole year’s leave. He wrote to Gersdorff that he wished to tell him privately that he thought of going to Italy for a year. ” I have not yet obtained the definite consent of the authorities,” he said, ” but it will no doubt be granted to me, more particularly as I have of my own accord declared myself willing to forego my salary for the whole period so as not to place an undue burden upon such a small community. Freedom ! You cannot believe how full I fill my lungs whenever I think of it! … All my hopes and plans for ultimate spiritual emancipation and for further untiring progress along my own road once more fill my blood. Confidence in myself I mean in my better self, fills me with courage. Even the state of my eyes does not modify this feeling.” At about this time Professor Schiess had just made the most unfavourable report concerning his short-sightedness and the weakness of his eyes, and it was greatly to be deplored that my brother was not made to understand perfectly seriously that the state of his sight was not the result but the cause of his sufferings. Ever since 1869, when his unexpected call to Bale had disturbed all my brother’s fine plans for travelling in France, Italy, and Greece, he had retained a deep longing for freedom and meditation beneath blue skies in a southern clime. Now, at last, after all this long time, he saw with delight the possibility of fulfilling all his wishes. A wonderful year in the South, free from all official duties and other fetters, devoted to the purpose of carrying out new, magnificent, and far-reaching plans ! But the year would certainly have needed to be endless in order to carry out all his wishes. In the first place, however, that festival in Bayreuth was drawing near, for which my brother had so long been yearning, and his grateful heart made him recall the long period of happiness which he had spent with Wagner’s music and with Wagner himself However much many of his views might have changed, his gratitude for the most profound experience of his soul remained unshaken. He therefore took up the unfinished MS. of ” Wagner in Bayreuth ” in order to rewrite it as a solemn essay in honour of the Bayreuth Festival. CHAPTER XXV RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH IN order to assume the proper attitude towards this essay of the Thoughts out of Season, it is necessary to look back upon the whole period, beginning with my brother’s first acquaintance with Wagner’s music, to his ultimate friendship with the composer. My brother was certainly qualified to say in 1888, ” I have seen three generations of Wagnerites ; ” for in 1860, when he was scarcely more than a child, he was one of the most enthusiastic of them, and he himself experienced the transformations of this peculiar species for almost thirty years. It ought, however, to be definitely stated here that, previous to his meeting with Wagner in the autumn of 1868, he really admired and revered only two of the Master’s works, the Meistersinger and Tristan und Isolde; his attitude to the other works was cold, and to some extent hostile. Before he got to know Wagner, he even thought there were some things in these works which were unpleasant and trivial. The fact that he became a complete Wagnerite after he had become personally acquainted with Wagner in Leipzig, and had during the Tribschen days been regarded by the Master himself as his best friend, is perfectly comprehensible ; and in this connection we may recall Wagner’s own words : ” I told Cosima that you come next after her in my affections, and then nobody else for a great distance… .” It is also easy to understand that when he was under the influence of Wagner’s personal charm, by means of which the latter exercised the most extraordinary fascination over all those surrounding him, he either partly suppressed his most heartfelt convictions in regard to Wagner’s art, or transfigured it by means of them, or else (and this is by far the most likely) he forgot “ to say, concerning the picture of this life, of this mighty independent torrent of a life, flowing as it were up the mountain, what he truthfully thought of Wagner.” The most beautiful period of this friendship consisted of the three years at Tribschen, from Whitsuntide, 1869, to 1872, and the friendship was at its height during the winter of 1871 to 1872, before and after the appearance of The Birth of Tragedy, up to the time of the laying of the foundation stone at Bayreuth in May, 1872. In November, 1871, the Wagners induced my brother to go with them to Mannheim to attend a great Wagner concert. The ” Siegfried Idyll,” was also performed for the first time, before a circle of friends, and in December, 1871, Fritz wrote a most enthusiastic letter to Rohde about it : “ Moreover, I feel I have had my views on music wonderfully confirmed, and am convinced they are right thanks to what I have experienced this week with Wagner in Mannheim. Ah ! my dear friend ! If only you could have been with us ! I felt like one whose presentiment has at last come true. For this is precisely what music is, and nothing else. And this is just what I meant by the word ‘ music,’ when I described the Dionysian form of it, and nothing else ! But when I realise that only a few hundred people of the next generation will find that in music which I find in it, I expect a totally new culture ! ” Recalling these impressions he wrote in the year 1888 : “ A psychologist might add that what I heard in Wagnerian music in my youth and early manhood had nothing whatsoever to do with Wagner ; that when I described Dionysian music, I merely depicted what I personally had heard, that I was compelled instinctively to translate and transfigure everything into the new spirit which filled my breast.”
But at that time my brother did not yet hear himself, but only Wagner, in all these delicious tones; or, better still, he felt himself completely one with Wagner. In January, 1872, he wrote to Rohde : ” I have concluded an alliance with Wagner. You have no idea how close we stand together now, and how our plans agree.” And, truth to tell, no one can imagine how thoroughly intimate the two were at this time. All my brother’s plans in those days were conceived in connection with Wagner ; in regard to everything he did, he asked himself the question, ” Will this do Wagner any good ? ” He was prepared to make any sacrifice. Of course, my brother never once allowed Wagner to suspect in what way he sacrificed himself for him. But what cost him the greatest effort was that, for Wagner’s sake, he had to suppress his own convictions. He treated the fact that he had spoilt the whole of his University career as a philologist, by fighting for Wagner, much more lightly. And in other directions I can remember many a pleasure that he declined out of consideration for Wagner. As a single instance of this, I recall a certain trip to the south. Felix Mendelssohn’s son, a professor at Freiburg, in Breisgau, who was a very sympathetic person, invited Fritz to join him on a tour through Italy and Greece an offer which pleased my brother immensely. But, as Wagner had not been a friend of Mendelssohn’s, and the latter’s son could not help but think reverently of his father (and, as we know, my brother had been a hearty admirer of Mendelssohn’s in his youth, and, even in 1872, still had a particular fondness for some of his compositions), for fear lest he might rouse the Master’s suspicions as to his loyalty, Fritz declined the kind invitation, and, as far as I can remember, honestly stated his reasons for so doing. But, as we have already seen, my brother was ready to make even greater sacrifices. For Wagner’s sake he was willing to resign his University post in order to travel about Germany, propagating the cause of Bayreuth. He also gave up his precious time to the work of founding Wagner societies, and availed himself of every opportunity of selling certificates of patronage for Bayreuth. For instance, it was through him that the German Musical Society of Leipzig paid for an essay on Wagner by purchasing one of the certificates of patronage, to which my brother himself added a further sum of 50 thalers. These are all signs of his sincere desire to be a true and helpful friend of Wagner. It is strange that, in spite of my brother’s love and reverence, of which he was ever giving visible and active signs, Wagner was never able to suppress certain qualms and fears that ” this Nietzsche will go his own way.” I have already spoken of the delightfully successful visit he paid to Strassburg with the Wagners, in the autumn of 1872. Frau Cosima afterwards declared in many letters how enjoyable it had been, and that henceforward no such things as misunderstandings could occur between them. But this assurance is in itself simply evidence of the fact that misunderstandings had occurred. The year 1873 began with another act of unwarranted suspicion on Wagner’s part. My brother spent the Christmas of 1872 in Naumburg, and he received an invitation from Wagner to make a stay at Bayreuth on his way back to Bale, as his friend Gersdorff would also be there at that time. Now it happened that Fritz’s Christmas holidays were in any case very short, and if he had been obliged to go back to Bale via Bayreuth, he would have been left no time for rest, and, in the middle of the term, this is precisely what he needed most. On account of this he declined Wagner’s invitation, and then, in his innocence, was surprised to be left without news from Bayreuth for many weeks. Only sometime after Christmas, to his great astonishment, he heard how vexed Wagner had been over his refusal ; but thanks to a cordial and perfectly unsuspecting letter from my brother, Wagner himself was soon convinced that he had misinterpreted his friend’s action. In February, 1873, Fritz wrote to Gersdorff as follows : “ I have received two splendid letters from the Master and Frau Wagner respectively, and in them I learned for the first time that Wagner had been very hurt by my absence at the New Year. You knew this, my dearest friend, and concealed it from me. But all clouds have now been dissipated, and it was a good thing I did not know anything about it ; for very often in such cases one cannot improve matters and one only makes them worse. Heaven knows, by-the-bye, how often I have given the Master offence : every time it happens I am more surprised than ever, and cannot make it out, or think what the reason can be. I am therefore all the more pleased that peace has been established once more. Do please give me your own view about the persistent manner in which I seem to give the Master offence. I absolutely fail to see how anyone can be more loyal and more thoroughly devoted to Wagner in all things that really matter, than I am. If I could see this I should do my utmost to improve. But, in small and secondary matters of minor importance, and in abstaining from living under the same roof with him, which in my case might be regarded as necessary to my health. I am obliged to preserve my freedom, simply in order that I may continue to be loyal in a higher sense. Of course, not a word of this should be mentioned ; but it is hard notwithstanding and it becomes desperate when life leads to all kinds of unpleasantness, suspicion and silence. On this occasion, for instance, I had not the smallest notion that I had caused such deep offence; and my one fear is that such experiences will only make me more timid than I already am.” But his friend found kind words with which to console him, and, as it so happened that my brother and Rohde were able to go together to Bayreuth at Easter, everything appeared to take a satisfactory turn without further complications. When I spoke of the first essay of the Thoughts out of Season, I had occasion to refer to the temper of those days. It was a serious meeting ; for the Bayreuth undertaking had made no progress and gave rise to much anxiety. The smaller personal differences vanished in the face of these greater troubles ; moreover it was precisely at serious and painful moments that Wagner’s greatness was most plainly felt. My brother loved good cheer, but the Wagner who was full of fun and indifferent jokes, and who could tell more or less unpalatable Saxon anecdotes, was not altogether to his liking. Wagner felt this, and often it goaded him on to even less pleasant stories, and finally he would grow cross with himself. Wagner once said to me : ” Your brother is often very discomfiting in his delicate refinement, and to make matters worse one can read all he feels ; sometimes he literally blushes at my jokes and then I crack still more shocking ones. Your brother is just like Liszt, he also did not like my jokes and jests.” The summer of 1873 was spent amid grave qualms for Bayreuth. At this time something strange occurred which showed my brother’s love for Wagner in a remarkable manner. “ Unfortunately Professor Overbeck gives quite a distorted account of it in his regrettable ” Recollections of Nietzsche,” l because he omits the most important points. When I was in
Bale during the summer of 1873 I one day met on the stairs an old and somewhat odd-looking woman who had paid a visit to my brother. When I asked him who this extraordinary apparition might be, he replied in his humorous way : ” Lizzie, she is a spirit who visits me from time to time, and who is wont to have private talks with me, just as spirits always do.” It transpired that this lady, whose name was Rosalie Nielsen, had twice visited him, and had made him feel a little anxious about the publisher of his works. She had hinted that the firm of E. W. Fritzsch was really bankrupt, and that it could only hold together with the help of others. Then she had made mysterious references to an International Society which, in the event of its purchasing the business of E. W. Fritzsch, would lay great stress upon retaining the publication of my brother’s works. Now, as Overbeck had only just published Ms “ The Christianity of Modern Theology,” through Fritzsch, these hints dropped by the mysterious lady interested him as well. When she appeared again, therefore, my brother asked Overbeck’s permission for the interview to take place in the latter’s own room. On this occasion, the following facts were elicited: the International Society already mentioned, which was in possession of large funds, desired to purchase the business of E. W. Fritzsch (the owners of Wagner’s prose works) only in order to be able to get Wagner into their power so to speak. Wagner was at that moment in great financial straits ; he had used the funds subscribed for the building of his theatre for the purpose of building his own private house ; and now, it appeared, this International Society wished utterly to ruin all his work. At this point my brother’s courtesy and amiability suddenly vanished. His anger positively choked him, and he could not even speak. He took a chair, opened the door, stood the chair outside, and made a sign to the lady to leave the room. Later on, although he still felt alarmed for Wagner’s safety, he could not help seeing the thing in a humorous light. On the 18th of October, 1873, he wrote a letter to Rohde which gives an accurate account of the mingled feelings of gravity and amusement roused by this mysterious intrigue : ” Does not your manly heart beat against your ribs ? After such adventures I scarcely dare sign my name to this letter. We are living Samarow- we can think only of poses and counter-poses (Minen und Gegenminen), we sign only pseudonyms, and we wear false beards. ” Hist ! Hist ! how the wind whistles ! In the name of my co-conspirators, yours truly, Hugo of the hoarse ghost’s voice. Rohde, who hazarded the guess that the grim conspiracy existed only in the head of the extraordinary lady herself, ultimately proved to be right. He also informed his friend that the publisher E. W. Fritzsch had also turned the lady in question (Rohde referred to her as the ” ghost “ ) out of doors. In the autumn of 1873 great things were expected to come of a general assembly of the patrons of the undertaking at Bayreuth. At first it was arranged that this should take place in August, but it was afterwards postponed to the end of October. Now, in pursuance of Wagner’s wish, the executive council of the Wagner Societies came to my brother with the request that he should write the ” Appeal to the German Nation ” already referred to, for the purpose of promoting the Bayreuth scheme. After much hesitation Fritz drafted it out between the 18th and 20th of October, 1873 ; finished it, and had many proofs of it printed, which he proposed to take with him to Bayreuth at the end of October. The fate of the ” Appeal,” the meetings of the delegates, and their plans and proposals, are all described by my brother in a long dictated letter addressed to Gersdorff, who was unfortunately prevented from coming. ” Thus,” the letter says, ” I was travelling from Wednesday evening to Monday morning. In going I was alone, but Heckel was with me on the return journey. In Bayreuth about a dozen men had gathered together, all delegates from the Wagner Societies, and I was the only patron per se. Among our acquaintances there, I may mention Davidson, the editor of the Borsencourier, the worthy pair Batz and Woltz, Baligand, and to refer to the best of the lot, Stern from Dresden and Count Dumoulin from Kegensburg. ” But who failed to attend despite all his promises to do so ? Fritzsch ! Fritzsch who is once more concealing himself behind clouds, and whose reassuring letters tend only to disquiet us the more. On the actual day of the ceremony we had the same filthy weather which, as you remember, we had on the occasion of the inauguration ; so that for a second time on reaching the headquarters of our league, the splendidly attired patron was obliged to sacrifice a new hat. Of course the weather on the previous and on the following day was beautifully clear and sunny. After the inspection in mud, fog and blackness, the principal meeting took place in the town-hall, where my ‘ Appeal ‘ was kindly but resolutely rejected by the delegates. I refused to recast the thing, and recommended Professor Stern as a person who would quickly be able to compose a fresh one. Then Heckel’s excellent proposal that collection-boxes should be placed with every German bookseller was approved. The whole sitting was very wonderful, half-sublime and half realistic, but strong enough in its influence to suppress all projects relating to raffles and such things which were very much in the air at the meeting. In the evening the day’s business was brought to a close with a very successful, congenial and simple banquet at the ‘ Sonne,’ at which Frau Wagner and Fraulein von Meysenbug were the only ladies present. I had the place of honour between the two, and therefore received the name ‘ Sargino,’ after ‘ Sargino, The Apprentice of Love,’ the title of an Italian opera. Batz made an after-dinner speech, proposing the toast of Frau Wagner, in which he managed in the most extraordinary manner to drag in allusions to a snuff-box and even to copyright, into his panegyric of her. Early on Saturday we held our final meeting at Feustel’s at which Stern’s draft was accepted. You must read it, for it will have a large circulation. ” My Appeal, which the Wagners like very much indeed, once it has been signed by a number of great names, may also play an important role in the event of the present, more optimistic one, failing in its object. In the afternoon, we had one more look at the theatre in the glory of the late sunshine ; the children were also with us, and I climbed to the centre of the royal box. The building looks much more beautiful and much better proportioned than the plans led one to expect. It is quite impossible to contemplate it on a clear autumn day without emotion. Now we have a house and it is our emblem.” I must add one or two facts myself to the story my brother has given of his ” Appeal ” facts, I mean, elicited from the other side. It appears that Wagner was quite beside himself with anger when he heard that my brother’s “ Appeal” had been rejected by the delegates as too serious and pessimistic in tone ; indeed, he had got into a towering passion and had raved and stamped his feet. Nevertheless, my brother quietly persuaded him in the end that an appeal written by Professor Stern would be certain to meet with greater success, and that
if the worst came to the worst there would still be his own to fall back upon. And this consoled Wagner. Be this as it may, my brother’s “ Appeal” was never mentioned again. As to whether the delegates had made a mistake in rejecting it, nothing can now be said ; but, in any case, the good-humoured and optimistic appeal written by Professor Stern could not boast of a glorious success either. Chamberlain writes in his Biography of Wagner : ” One incident may be mentioned to show the extent of the indifference with which Wagner’s work glorious as it has since proved to the German name had to contend throughout the Empire. Dr. A. Stern was commissioned by the Wagner Societies to draw up a ‘ Report and Appeal for Aid ‘ at the end of 1873 ; four thousand copies of this were distributed to various booksellers and musical dealers, with forms for subscription. Not one of the four thousand took the slightest notice of the document ! In Gottingen alone some students put down their names for a few thalers.” l At Easter, 1874, my brother wrote to Fraulein von Meysenbug : ” With regard to my health, I must say that, since the New Year, thanks to a new mode of life, it has been very good, and has caused me no anxiety at all ; but I must be careful of my eyes. Yet as you must be aware there is such a thing as a state of physical suffering which comes as a blessing ; for with it one forgets one’s other sufferings, or, better still, one imagines that these can be cured just as the body’s sufferings can. This is my philosophy of illness, it gives hope to the soul. And is it not a feat to be able to go on hoping ? ” The last portion of the letter refers to the distressing condition of affairs at Bayreuth; for the year 1874 began very badly. There seemed to be no longer any doubt that the Bayreuth scheme, in the form in which the Master had conceived it and in which it had found expression in the society of patrons, was wrecked. Funds were lacking for the completion of the theatre-building and for other undertakings, so that all work had to be stopped. My brother suffered terribly ! But it was precisely in his hours of deepest depression that the whole bravery of his nature was shown; he did not give way to endless plaints and lamentations, but tested the basis of the things for the sake of which he was suffering. He, whose eyes were so prone to overlook everything petty and unpleasant, and even to close completely at the right time wherever he had given his reverence and his love, now forced himself to examine those very petty and unpleasant details he had hitherto passed unheeded, and to judge them soberly and coolly. He now compelled himself to face and to test everything which he himself had recognised as false, in order to discover whether a great deal of that which he had deliberately disregarded, out of respect for the Master, were not necessarily the cause of the present failure. This is one of the instances which prove most strongly how little his severe sense of intellectual truthfulness scouted a struggle, even of the hardest kind, with himself, with his own loving and reverent heart. The fact that my brother had already fostered different views from Wagner, concerning a number of artistic questions, may be seen from the appendix to The Birth of Tragedy ; l but in any case, he had never felt directly antagonistic to Wagner’s art before 1874. It seems as if he became conscious of the conflict between his own convictions and his admiration for Wagner only from this time onward. But these repeated attempts to reconcile his opinions with Wagner’s, or rather to be able to find in Wagner what he felt he could admire and respect, in spite of the many points on which he differed from the Master must have provided a magnificent object-lesson in genius itself. What great experiences sprang from it, and to what a subtle training in psychological matters it must have led ! But a lucky star seemed after all to shine over Bayreuth. Wagner’s greatest benefactor, King Ludwig of Bavaria, intervened in the unhappy state of affairs, and lent his help. On the 15th of February, 1874, my brother wrote to Rohde concerning all these events as follows : ” As to Bayreuth there is good news ; if only it is true ! In a very explicit article in the Mannheim Gazette (Heckel’s organ), the writer declares that he has heard from an authoritative source (i.e. Frau Wagner), that the completion of the building is now ensured. Thus the longed-for miracle has occurred ! Let us at least hope it has ! The state of affairs since the New Year has been indeed distressing, and in the end I could hope only for the unexpected to get us out of the difficulty. With the most absolute coolness of perception, I began to ask myself why the undertaking had failed ; in this way I learnt a good deal, and I believe that I now understand Wagner much better than before. Even if the ‘ miracle ‘ is true it does not in the least interfere with the result of my meditations ! But if it is true we shall be very happy and celebrate a Feast.” In March he wrote further, as follows : ” As to Bayreuth ! Through Frau Wagner we know and the fact is to remain a secret among Wagner’s friends that the King of Bavaria has subsidised the undertaking by advancing sums to the amount of 100,000 thalers (15,000), so that the work (machinery and decorations) is now being pressed forward vigorously. Wagner himself has written saying that he expects everything to be completed by the year 1876. He is full of courage, and believes that the undertaking will now be plain sailing. Well, may God grant that it will be so ! It is difficult to get over all this waiting and uneasiness ; sometimes I really lost all hope.” When in the autumn of 1874, it became clear that the undertaking was perfectly secure, my brother gave vent to a real cry of joy in a letter to Gersdorff, ” By-the-bye,” he says, ” the news from Bayreuth is magnificent and incredible ; who could be more delighted to hear it than you?” And later on he writes: “ Hearty thanks for your letter, and for details about the letter from Bayreuth ; every one of us will thank Heaven and Hades, and wherever else gods are wont to reside, for the fact that the work of the Nibelungen is done.” But what was “ Wagner’s attitude towards my brother during all these years ? His letters always reveal the same affectionate tone of warm friendship and loyal solicitude, mingled with a certain fatherliness which suits him particularly well. When his letters to my brother are published, people will certainly agree with me in thinking that there are scarcely any in which Wagner appears in a more thoroughly attractive and lovable light. The hearty affectionate tone of voice in which Wagner used to say “ my Nietzsche,” still rings in my ears, and although I cannot very well reproduce it in a book, I can nevertheless quote a few dedicatory verses in which the words occur, and which Wagner composed for my brother at the time when he presented him with his complete works. The verses are as follows : ” Was ich, mit Not gesammdt, Neun Bdnden eingerammelt, Was darin spricht und stammelt, Was geht, steht oder bammelt, Schwert, Stock, und Pritzsche, Kurz, was im Verlag von Fritzsche, Schref, Idrm’ oder quietzsche, Das schenW ich meinem Nietzsche, War’s ihm eu ‘was nutze ! ” Maybe, if they had been together more often, and had had more leisure, the conflict between their deepest thoughts would have been revealed much sooner ; but it was during those very years in which they were drifting ever further and further apart from each other in their convictions, that each was thoroughly absorbed in his own work. This was especially
so with Wagner, who was called upon to exercise all his faculties of mind and body to the most extraordinary degree in order to carry through his great work of the Nibelungen. In these circumstances he had but little time to spare for reflection. But he still continued to invite my brother in the most friendly manner to stay with him. For instance, in June, 1874, he pressed Fritz most eagerly to come and spend his summer holidays in Bayreuth, and the letter of invitation contained the following appeal : ” O dear Friend ! Why do you not come to us ? Do not let us remain so far apart ; for as things are I can be nothing to you.” But, as Fritz had to finish his third essay for the Thoughts out of Season during the holidays, he told Wagner that he could come only at the end of the summer. This led to more unpleasantness. To all outward appearance my brother’s stay in Bayreuth in August, 1874, certainly revealed the same old friendliness ; but little scenes such as the one over Brahms’ s Triumphlied made Fritz feel only too plainly how little his personal independence was considered. I have already spoken of how depressed he had been at Easter, 1874, by Wagner’s lukewarm appreciation of ” The Use and abuse of History,” and now he said to himself very sorrowfully ” so my only value consists in my being a writer on Wagner ; I must not be anything more, I may admire and honour only that which is approved of in Bayreuth.” What free spirit would have liked to have his path mapped out for him in this way by another, more particularly when it was such a narrow one ? The torrent of my brother’s development in those days was growing ever broader and mightier ; was he to be caged up and confined in a corner ? He was tormented by this idea and still his thoughts drove him ever nearer to freedom. When in June, 1874, I happened to speak of some hidden trouble, Fritz cried emphatically : ” O Lizzie, we all have our gnawing trouble in our breast I have one too ! ” And on the 9th of July he wrote to Gersdorff : “ A number of thoughts are fermenting in my mind, and among them many which are both extreme and daring. I should like to know to what extent I might be allowed to communicate such thoughts to my friend. In a letter, of course, it is impossible to do so at all.” Cold, superficial people cannot understand the inner conflict which raged in my brother’s heart for four years. What do they know of a friendship so passionate as that which existed between him and Richard Wagner; what do they know of the iron severity of a truthful and emancipated spirit ; how can they understand the hesitation of the loving heart that quivers at the thought of the pain which the last heart-breaking hours of the farewell parting will cause ? And Fritz trembled, not only at the thought of his own pain ; but, oh, how much more at the thought of the suffering he was going to impose on another ! Be this as it may, from the middle of the year 1874, that wonderful new melody rang in his heart to which he scarcely dared listen, though it swelled ever louder and louder. Sorrow and rejoicing were mingled in its stirring tones, they lured the disciple on to new paths, away from the Master whom he had outgrown and he equipped himself for a still greater advance ! A farewell letter full of the deepest gratitude, ” Schopenhauer as Educator,” had already been written ; and his loving heart at that time was still convinced that there was no need to write another. He hoped that even yet Wagner would not only concede him the right of new convictions, but would also share them. My brother trusted in his love, and perhaps also, unconsciously, in the charm and power of his own personality. For he was well aware that changes had occurred in Wagner’s views, as for instance the Master’s conversion from Feuerbach’s sensualism to Schopenhauer’s pessimism. Why should he not cherish the belief that through him and with him Wagner might make still further changes ? This, however, would have been possible only in the Tribschen days, during which Wagner had the time to meditate. In Bayreuth it was out of the question. My brother and Wagner saw nothing of each other from August, 1874, to July, 1876. True, invitations came often enough from Wagner, and my brother, delighted at his kindness, certainly answered in the most hearty fashion, and even suggested all kinds of plans whereby they might meet ; but it cannot be denied that my brother was only too glad to avail himself of any excuse to delay or completely to prevent such a meeting, and of this Wagner was fully conscious. I have already mentioned the fact that in the summer of 1875 my brother was compelled for reasons of health to visit a watering-place instead of going to Bayreuth for the rehearsals. All Wagner’s and my brother’s friends had assembled in Bayreuth at the time, and my brother’s letters were once more full of the old expressions of longing. And yet anyone who reads these communications from Steinabad carefully will find much between the lines. When, however, faithful friends wrote such loving, admiring and reverent letters from Bayreuth, all the happiness that Wagner’s works had given him for so many long years surged in his heart once more. Thoughts of all the blessed hours of friendship and intimate association filled his memory, and he asked himself, almost with terror, what his life would have been without Wagner and his Art ! Over-flowing with the deepest gratitude, he summoned up all the feelings he had had in this connection for the last sixteen years, or thereabouts ; and thus the sorrowing disciple, who was a disciple no longer, wrote his second letter of farewell, ” Richard Wagner in Bayreuth.” He worked at the essay from August to October ; but he was dissatisfied with it, and laid it aside. The element of conflict in his own feelings on the question, which was usually absent from his creative moments, is betrayed in one or two of his admissions at the time. In the autumn of 1875, for instance, he regards the essay as ” unpublishable,” and at the beginning of October he writes: “ My essay, ‘ Richard Wagner in Bayreuth,’ will not be printed. It is almost ready, but in it I am far behind the standard I demand of myself ; thus its only value to me is that it is a new inquiry into the most difficult question relating to the experiences we have had hitherto. I do not stand above the thing, and I realise full well that I have not been quite successful in the inquiry how could I then be helpful to others ? ” As I have already said, the state of my brother’s health at the beginning of 1876 was very serious and alarming, and throughout this period, all correspondence between Bale and Bayreuth was carried on only by myself and Wagner. With the spring, however, came also recovery and a glad love of life, and on Wagner’s birthday my brother wrote his first letter to Bayreuth since his return to health. Wagner answered in the most friendly manner on the following day : ” Friend, now at last you are up and well ! ” In this letter he once more made protestations of friendship, and expressed his regret at having seen so little of my brother in recent years, with such warmth and emphasis, even going to the extent of saying that it was the greatest calamity that had befallen him during the last seven years, that my brother was most deeply moved. Wagner’s words recalled all the happy years of their deepest friendship to my brother’s mind, and he decided that he could not remain dumb at the moment of Wagner’s greatest triumph his gratitude would not allow it. He must
summon others to yield to these forces which had made him so happy for years, and which had brought so many thoughts and feelings to maturity in him. He therefore sent part of the Wagner essay to be printed, and in June, 1876, went to Badenweiler for a few days to write the conclusion. But during the whole time that the work was in the press my brother was tormented by the question whether it would not be possible to read many things between the lines of this most loving and reverent essay, which would betray Wagner. It is a very difficult thing to return successfully to feelings which one has long ago overcome, however strenuously one may try, with all the love and melancholy of a seceding disciple, to revive one’s former faith and to recall all its beauty. This effort on my brother’s part sometimes gives a stilted and exaggerated quality to ” Richard Wagner in Bayreuth.” His qualms are plainly expressed in the letters that he sent with the two copies of the essay which he presented to Wagner and Frau Cosima respectively. As these letters were drafted in one of his note-books, they are still preserved. “ Here, dearest Master,” he wrote to Wagner, “ is a kind of Bayreuth festal address ! I could not hold my peace, and was constrained to speak out on many points. Those who are now rejoicing, will, I trust, find themselves doing so all the more after reading my essay this to-day is my pride and my hope. I cannot even venture to guess how you yourself will receive these confessions this time. My writing has this unfortunate consequence, that every time I publish a work something in my personal relations comes into question, which can afterwards be restored to its proper place only with the help of a little humour. I cannot say more distinctly than I have done, the extent to which I feel this particularly now. When I think of what I have dared to accomplish this time, I grow giddy and embarrassed, and I feel like The Eider on Lake Constance. But once, in your very first letter to me, you said something about faith in German Freedom. It is to this faith that I turn to-day ; for it was only in it that I found the necessary courage to do what I have done. ” Yours heart and soul ” F. N.” To Frau Cosima he wrote : ” You must surely know what all friends of Bayreuth now think of you ; and which of us this summer does not desire to give you some token of his great gratitude ? Be so kind therefore as to help me in this small attempt at giving you a little pleasure, by accepting one of the two special copies of my latest work which I am sending to you and to the Master. (Busy as you are with all that you have charge of and all that you care for, you will, however, have neither the time nor the inclination to read it until after the summer). You will learn from my essay that I could not endure to prepare myself for the great and wonderful event of this summer all alone and at such a distance from you I had to communicate my joy to others. If only I might hope that here and there I have divined a note of your joy and that I have expressed it with you ! I can think of no more beautiful desire.” Frau Wagner spent half the night reading the essay, and on the 11th of July, 1876, sent the following telegram : ” Dear Friend I thank you for the only refreshment and joy I have had recently besides that given to me by husband’s art. May this suffice for my thanks to you. Cosima.” On the 12th of July, 1876, Wagner wrote : ” Friend ! Your book is prodigious ! ” How did you learn to know me so well ? Come quickly, and get accustomed to the new impressions by attending the rehearsals. Yours, E. W.” This is the last letter Wagner ever wrote to my brother. Once when the conversation turned upon modern literature, my brother, who was somewhat of a stranger to everything erotic, asked one of his pupils, who by-the-bye died young, why the same theme the love between man and woman which was becoming extremely boring, always formed the principal subject of all novels. ” Yes,” replied the pupil thoughtfully, ” but what other feelings would be able to give rise to such conflicts ? ” ” Well, friendship,” my brother replied warmly, ” it gives rise to absolutely similar conflicts, but on a much higher plane. In the first place there is mutual attraction on the ground of convictions and opinions in common, then there follows the joy of perfect unity, mutual admiration and glorification. Later on there arose on one side suspicion, and on the other doubt as to the excellence of the friend and his views. The necessity of separation, and the difficulty of being able to do without each other quickly follow. All these and other unspeakable sufferings sometimes affect two friends.” The pupil looked up incredulously, he had never experienced such a passionate kind of friendship. This chapter is thus the story of a friendship, with all its sorrows and its delights ; the romance of two geniuses who were able for a while to walk side by side along cheerful and sunny highways. One of them, however, is now already turning, ready to say farewell. Hesitatingly he stands at the crossways. Full of love and melancholy he looks back upon the road along which they have come together will the other be able to keep him at his side ? CHAPTER XXVI ” DEE RING DES NIBELUNGEN.” IF a merciful Providence had watched over my brother’s friendship with Wagner, it would have prevented him from going to Bayreuth. Very much in the same way as Luther went to Rome, my brother went to Bayreuth, simply to find his waning faith in Wagnerian Art still further shaken, but we know how Luther’s visit to Rome turned out. Still with the name of Bayreuth my brother associated the hope that there “ Wagner’s Art would reveal itself to him in a new and overwhelming manner. The vision of a festival in which the actors in the spectacle and the spectators would be equally remarkable and admirable, and in which both, united by the depth of their feelings, must produce a positively prodigious effect all this moved him deeply, and filled him with great and undefined hopes. In the middle of July, therefore, with a feeling of real joy, he went to Bayreuth for the rehearsals, although he had not yet recovered from the fatigue brought about by his completion of the fourth essay for the Thoughts out of Season. But the first news from Bayreuth was very depressing : “ I almost regret having come ! For, up to the present, everything has been pitiable. On Monday I attended the rehearsal ; it did not please me at all ; and I had to leave.” He concluded his letter with the words : ” Everybody is anxiously expecting you ; make haste, make haste, dear Lama ! ” For, meanwhile, I was still busy in Bale, packing up all the furniture and putting it away, as we intended giving up the flat during my brother’s tour in Italy.
The second letter from Bayreuth seemed much more hopeful : ” MY DEAR GOOD SISTEK, I feel better now. For the last three days my health has been excellent ; but you must remember that I am staying with Fraulein von Meysenbug. I am in the garden from the first thing in the morning ; I drink milk, bathe in the river, and eat only food that agrees with me. Meanwhile I have seen and heard the Twilight of the Gods ; it is a good thing to grow used to it. I am now in my element. ” Incidentally (but this is between ourselves !) only half of the seats have been sold for the second cycle, and scarcely a third have been sold for the third cycle. To-night the King is coming. He has wired that he is delighted with my essay. The Schur6s are also coming to-day. The Wagners and their children have often asked after you. ” As to my Italian tour, everything seems to be turning out better than I could have desired. Sea, woods and the neighbourhood of Naples maybe in the end it will only come to this. One can only hope. My health has made such good progress that I am much more cheerful. I must, however, be careful, and I decline all invitations, even Wagner’s. Wagner thinks that I make myself scarce.” Later on he explained this spirited letter by saying that in order to write it he had forcibly summoned up all his spiritual strength, and had tried to place himself in his former attitude of mind. This had given him a certain wanton feeling of struggle and triumph, and the only thing he had not been able to endure was conversation of a very intimate nature. This more lively communication also terminated with the words : ” Make haste, good Lama ! ” I now pressed on my domestic duties as quickly as possible ; albeit, on the morning of my departure I received the news that Fritz no longer wished to remain in Bayreuth. His violent effort to be his old self in regard to Wagner’s work had thus only lasted a few days. He wrote : “ I long to leave, it is absurd for me to stay here. I shudder at the thought of every one of these long musical evenings, and yet I do not stay away. … I am quite sick of it. I refuse to be here even for the first performance. I prefer to go anywhere rather than remain here where everything is a torment to me.” These tidings frightened me very much, indeed ; for all the practical arrangements had been made for us to make a stay of four weeks ; we were both patrons, and had had the intention of hearing the three cycles as well as the full rehearsals. Then, we had hired a large apartment for the whole of the time, which, in addition to two bedrooms, contained a drawing-room and a study for my brother. As a matter of fact, it was exceedingly rash on our part to have let my brother decide upon this sojourn in Bayreuth, seeing that it entailed at least twelve evenings at the theatre. Even now I cannot imagine how it was that the oculist did not most strictly forbid the whole thing. But, as I have already said, my brother’s ailments were wrongly diagnosed at this time, and cause and effect were confounded. In those days we assumed that the eye-trouble was the outcome of indeterminable trouble elsewhere, whereas, now, we know that the former was the chief agent in bringing about the general decline of his health. Still it should not be forgotten that, with a nature as sensitive as my brother’s, spiritual suffering, and such shocks as those which his changed relations to his best friend and the alteration in his convictions and ideals involved, proved much more painful and difficult to endure than bodily indisposition. When I reached Bayreuth on the day before the first full rehearsal, Fritz had already left. I was very much upset, for I felt certain that something great and grievous had made him leave ; and I can well remember having spent a whole morning at Fraulein von Meysenbug’s, where I cried bitterly all the time ; but she did not understand why I was so unhappy. On the following day I received a letter from my brother, who was at Klingenbrunn, near Regen, in the Bavarian Forest : ” DEAREST SISTER, I trust you are in Bayreuth, and have found nice people there to look after you, now that I have gone. I know perfectly well that I could not endure to stay there ; as a matter of fact, we ought to have known this before ! Just think how carefully I have had to live during the last few years. I feel so tired and exhausted after my short stay there, that I cannot recover my old spirits. This place is very delightful ; there are large woods here, and the air of the heights is like that in the Jura. I shall stay here about ten days, but I shall not return via Bayreuth. So we may not see each other again this year ! How things change ! I have to summon all my self-control to endure the unutterable disappointment I have had this summer. I cannot even see my friends ; for the time being everything is poison and injury to me.” Fritz spent about ten days wandering about the woods of Klingenbrunn, busily writing all the while. And it was during this time that the first notes for the ” Ploughshare ” were written, many thoughts of which ultimately found their way into Human, All too Human. The ” Ploughshare ” contained the fundamental ideas of my brother’s new line of thought. Here for the first time, he expresses in clear, plain words what had long been taking shape within him, namely, a complete revolution in the opinions he had held hitherto. What, then, induced him as a new and changed personality to return to Bayreuth on the day before the beginning of the first cycle, is now simply impossible to discover. If I remember rightly, it seemed as if even in Klingenbrunn he had been unable to convince himself that everything was at an end for him in Bayreuth. It was longing that drove him back, his longing for the Dionysian music which, in the past, he had heard in Wagner’s creations. He would so willingly have yielded to the influence of the old charms ! Our likes and dislikes do not develop at the same speed as our knowledge, very often they hasten in advance of the latter, but more frequently they are unable to keep pace with its rapid stride. My brother once said of himself metaphorically that ” the silkworm, drags its old prison for some time along with it after first emerging from the chrysalis,” and in the same way he was able to rid himself of his old love and preference for Wagner’s music, only by degrees. Whatever the reasons of his return may have been, however, he at all events suddenly came back to Bayreuth, and listened with the greatest interest and some surprise to my account of all I had experienced. During the time that I had been alone in Bayreuth, in the care of friends of course, I had indeed had many wonderful experiences, and they were wonderful because everything happened so differently from what one might have expected. King Ludwig of Bavaria had declared his intention of being present at the full rehearsals ; in fact, they were to be performed for him alone, as he was staying quite incognito at the Hermitage Castle, and would see nobody but Wagner. Finally a very small number of people were allowed to take their places in the first two rows of the amphitheatre, which could scarcely be seen from the royal box, in order to witness the performance of the Rheingold ; and I was one of this very small number. We waited for two hours in pitch darkness for the arrival of the exalted visitor. King Ludwig, who turned night into day, and day into night, had slept so well
that no one dared to wake him. He had reached Bayreuth early that morning (at A.M.) ; had left the train at a railway watchman’s hut, where Wagner, who had been commanded to meet him there, received him, and the two had then gone to the Hermitage together. On reaching the Castle, the King had detained the Master for another two hours in friendly conversation in the Castle grounds, an experience which we thought very unsuited to Wagner’s sixty-three years. The full rehearsals went off splendidly ; if I remember rightly, those who could speak with authority on the subject declared that they were among the best performances of the Ring that were ever given. I have a particularly vivid recollection of the beauty of Siegfried. It was such a relief that the poor deformed dragon never appeared in person on the stage, and that its fight with Siegfried took place in the cave. The whole scene thus made an extraordinarily beautiful and mysterious impression. King Ludwig also expressed himself very well pleased with the performance of the Rheingold on the first evening, and the only criticism he made was that the music had sounded rather hollow in the empty theatre. He therefore expressed the wish that a company of soldiers should he sent to fill up the theatre. But this was really too hard on the people of Bayreuth, and the executive council of the festival performances sallied forth to have an audience of the King. In the most moving language these gentlemen showed how deserving the people of Bayreuth had been not only in receiving and sheltering artists but in other ways ; they also pointed out that the town was full of enthusiastic visitors, and they begged the King graciously to allow the inhabitants of Bayreuth, together with their guests, to fill the theatre during the full rehearsals, instead of the soldiers. It was said that the King was extremely kind at the audience, and graciously granted the request of the executive council ; but these worthy gentlemen were duly informed that they must not on any account forget that the King was incognito on this visit to Bayreuth, and that anything in the way of an ovation, and all staring at the Royal Box, should be avoided. Thus the Walkure was performed before the most motley audience I have ever seen in my life. People of all classes sat shoulder to shoulder, who as a rule were distributed according to fashion, wealth, and, above all, culture. There must undoubtedly have been many an enthusiastic spectator in the crowded assembly ; but, on the whole, when one contemplated the masses of Philistines and housewives, and heard them speak, one could not suppress a feeling of anxiety. One consoled one’s self by thinking that these were not the proper spectators. From time to time a member of the executive committee would stand up, and in forcible language would exhort the noisy throng not to look in the direction of the Royal Box, but to keep their eyes on the stage. When, however, the theatre darkened and the music began, the words ” The King is coming” ran like a sort of electric current all through the auditorium, and almost every head was turned towards the forbidden spot. It was said that the sensitive King drew back as though painfully conscious of being the centre of attention, but in any case the whole theatre suddenly grew so absolutely dark, that even the most inquisitive spectator present could have seen nothing in the forbidden spot, and then only were all eyes turned upon the stage. As regards external decorum the following evening showed an improvement. Gradually, the type of the enthusiastic visitor began to preponderate among the audience, and we respected the King’s incognito, despite the fact that we were all filled with the most ardent wish to show Wagner’s greatest benefactor our homage and our gratitude. We were consoled by the fact that King Ludwig promised to return for the third cycle of the Ring not as a private individual, but as a monarch, and that we should therefore be able to rejoice at the sight of him. Our dear old Kaiser Wilhelm attended the first cycle. Dressed in civilian clothes, he drove into Bayreuth, bowing graciously in all directions ; his kind and dignified appearance won the hearts of all the Bavarians, and we Prussians were really proud. Even my brother was inspired with the most hearty patriotic feeling. The Kaiser was given an extraordinarily enthusiastic and spirited reception, even by the Bavarians. The letter W was displayed everywhere ; but uninitiated, fanatical Wagnerites believed that this was in Wagner’s honour, and thought it in every way quite natural. Owing to the Kaiser’s presence, famine soon broke out in Bayreuth ; for the whole of the population even from the remoter districts came to the town to see the venerable hero. On one occasion, it was literally impossible for us and our friends to get anything to eat for lunch; and later on Baroness E. v. W. told me that when she had visited Countess Schleinitz during the Kaiser’s visit to Bayreuth, all she had been offered was some black bread and black-pudding which were the only edibles the servants had been able to scrape together. During the long intervals of the Ring, scenes took place in the Restaurant “ Albert,” which showed only too plainly how closely related man is to the beast for the crowd positively surged to the buffet, their eyes startling out of their heads with eagerness. In the theatre, too, Kaiser Wilhelm was the object of the most enthusiastic demonstrations. He arrived punctually, and manifested his appreciation by good-natured applause ; but there were universal doubts as to whether he really enjoyed the performances. No, Wagner’s operas were not to his liking ; Carmen pleased him much more, and this was perhaps not such bad taste after all. Moreover, he had only consented to come in response to the most pressing persuasion on the part of Countess Schleinitz. This excellent lady had succeeded in convincing him that the Bayreuth Festival was a national festival ; thus he thought it his duty to attend it. He came on the 12th August and left in the evening of the 14th in order to join the mano3uvres. Unfortunately the performances he witnessed were the least successful of all. They were full of hitches and a number of transformations entirely failed. For instance, once, if I am not mistaken, Walhalla was supposed to rise miraculously in the background ; but instead of that, all one could see was a dark space in the middle of which was standing a foreman scene-shifter in his shirt-sleeves (the heat was appalling). This was not a beautiful spectacle. It was generally rumoured at the time that, in response to a command to go to the Imperial Box, Wagner had replied : ” I beg His Imperial Majesty to excuse me ; but I am tired.” The Chamberlain had then bowed and retired ; but had soon returned. ” His Imperial Majesty requests Herr Wagner to come,” he said. “ Is it a command?” “ Wagner demanded. The Chamberlain said that it was. ” I obey the command,” said Wagner. It has been asserted that this scene was an example of Richard Wagner’s extravagant pride and arrogance but this is absolutely false! On that evening Wagner really was very unhappy and extremely annoyed at the failure of the performance (at least that is what my brother said), and while in this mood it was certainly hard to be called before His Imperial
Majesty in order to receive praise. Wagner knew perfectly well that in his Festival speech of the 28th May, 1872, he had promised that : ” so far as the artistic means at our disposal at present are able to do so, you will be given the best that is to be had in acting, singing and scenic effect.” And this promise was not fulfilled in those first evenings of the Festival performances, at least as far as the transformations and many other things were concerned. The fact that, generally speaking, this was not painfully apparent was due to the wonderful and really ideal orchestra, and to the peculiar spirit of the greater part of the spectators, who seemed to be more impressed by the flattering presence of the Kaiser, than by the perfection of the performances. And now let me describe the spectator at Bayreuth of whom my brother had formed such an ideal image beforehand. He writes in the fourth essay of the Thoughts out of Season : ” It is certain that in Bayreuth even the spectator is a spectacle worth seeing. If the spirit of some observant sage were to return, after the absence of a century, and were to compare the most remarkable movements in the present world of culture, he would find much to interest him there. Like one swimming in a lake, who encounters a current of warm water issuing from a hot spring, in Bayreuth he would certainly feel as if he had suddenly plunged into a more temperate element, and would say to himself that this must rise out of a distant and deeper source : the surrounding mass of water, which at all events is more common in origin, does not account for it. In this way, all those who assist at the Bayreuth Festival will seem like men out of season; their raison d’etre and the forces which would seem to account for them are elsewhere, and their home is not in the present age.” But oh ! Where were these spectators ? It is possible that the exceptional men in the herd become one with the herd, and are thus invisible ! It was precisely at the first cycle that the most enthusiastic Wagnerites were supposed to be present ; but one felt with horror that those who had come together on that occasion were principally people who were able to pay 900 marks for twelve seats at the theatre. Of course there were some idealists like ourselves in the number, but these few were certainly utterly lost in the crowd. One could see men and women of high birth among the audience ; for the presence of the Kaiser had attracted quite a large court to Bayreuth. One could also admire the most beautiful dresses ; and Marienbad seemed to have sent over quite a number of corpulent persons, bankers and people of means, together with their wives ; the most luxurious jewels blazed on the opulent bosoms of the women, and heavy gold chains hung in half hoops on the rotund waists of the men alas ! and these were the spectators who were supposed to be strangers to their age ! It was the same crowd that one can see at any first night at the theatre. Of course here and there one was glad to see one or two exceptional individuals, such, for instance, as the distinguished painters, Menzel, Lenbach, Meyerheim, Makart, Angely ; or the interesting musicians, Wilhelmi, Richter, Levy and others ; while an absolutely special circle with an atmosphere of its own was formed by Franz Liszt, surrounded by a bevy of admiring and languishing females. But even these did not present a spectacle which might be said to have been in keeping with the vigorous type of Wagner’s genius, or which might in any way have been called “ inopportune.” Moreover it was whispered that, owing to Wagner, Liszt had quarrelled with his friend Princess Wittgenstein ; for she was ill-disposed to Wagner, and was consequently not present. She had not wished Liszt to be present at the Festival performances, because he only played the ” part of a supernumerary there.” But Liszt was not to be led astray ; he came notwithstanding, and everybody thought all the more of him for it. Only once did I have the impression that a kind of people different from the rest of the ordinary public was assembled at Bayreuth. One morning I paid a call at Wahnfried, but had to wait awhile in the small ante-chamber before I could be received, as the great hall was packed with visitors. I peeped into the room and saw that at least forty orchestra-conductors, young artists and authors, were waiting there for an audience of Wagner. (Wagner was compelled to receive people in groups, as the throng of visitors was so great. On the first day of the Festival performance five hundred people presented their cards at Wahnfried.) In that rapid glance I saw only interesting, artistic heads and fine intellectual faces ; the more elderly men in the crowd spoke in gentle undertones, and the younger men listened with becoming reverence. Indeed, a serious, reverent and devout spirit seemed to prevail among the small throng of men waiting to see the Master. It was only before such really artistic men as these that der Ring des Nibelungen, should have been performed, and afterwards the spectators should have been given the right of freely expressing their opinions ! Of course, these special spectators should not have consisted merely of infatuated Wagnerites, for there would have been little to learn from such severely disciplined partisans, despite the fact that this type was at one time regarded as the “ ideal spectator ” by Wagner and my brother. Now it happened that fate brought us into close relationship with an example of a spectator such as this a man who was absolutely devoted to Wagner and his works ; and we learnt to know this type in its strangest form. In the extravagance of his manner he was quite comical. If my brother spoke at table, this man would forget meat and drink, and would sink into abysmal reflection ; he understood little of what Fritz said, and even that badly. If I gently reminded him of the present, lost in thought, and in a voice that was not of this world, he would reply : ” Your brother has uttered words of the most profound wisdom, and I have lost all notion of Time and Space.” Meanwhile, however, the hasty waiters had removed the plate which he had not yet touched, and I felt constrained to entreat him to ask for another helping, for fear lest he should go out to face intellectual enjoyment on an empty stomach. Then he would say : ” You are right, one must summon all one’s individuality here, in order that one may not perish in the cosmos.” He always spoke in this strain ! ” And he was a Wagnerite par excellence,” Fritz said with a look of sorrow. My brother also went to Angermann’s one evening, but he returned with a very sad smile. It was here that the chief assembly rooms of the members of the Wagner Societies were situated, and at that time these people were of that particular type who thumped the tables uproariously with their fists, raised their pint jars of beer threateningly and seemed ready for any kind of ” knockdown ” argument if another ventured to deviate in the slightest from the strictest Wagner code. In a description of the Festival plays of 1896, Houston Chamberlain writes : ” I have often read of the out-and-out votary of Bayreuth ; but I have never yet been able to find this kind of man ; no one speaks so much, so pettily, and with so little understanding concerning all that is done in Bayreuth, as these so called out-and-out votaries of Bayreuth. The stranger and the enemy almost always feel more or less clearly how great the project is, even if they do nothing else ; he, however, who by paying the annual subscription of four marks, has become a member of the General Wagner Society,
seems to feel as much at home at Bayreuth as a fish in a pond. For the small sum of money he pays, he seems to have acquired not only the right of membership, but also an absolutely infallible understanding of one of the most prodigious artistic undertakings ever known in history and it is well known that the first proof of genuine connoisseurship is to find fault with anything and everything.” In. 1876 things were very different ! When the member of the Wagner Societies of those days paid his subscription he seemed to acquire the right to storm like a savage at everyone who did not consider every note and every word of the Master’s to be as sacred as the gospel. These people seemed to my brother like a parody of himself. But even we ourselves, members of “ Wagner’s circle of intimate friends, had very different sensations from those we had expected. It is true that, at times, we received the most stirring impressions, we were charmed by the orchestra, and many a scene in Siegfried and in the Gotterdammerung, as for instance that of the Rhine Daughters and others, will in their unparalleled beauty continue to live to all eternity in our souls. But, in spite of all this, owing perhaps to our great and over-sanguine expectations, we were disappointed. With some misgivings we felt that this was not the dawn of a new art, but, to put it briefly, Grand Opera and nothing else. Gradually our feelings dropped to the level of an ordinary music festival : but an uncomfortable sensation was left behind which was vented by the friends in all kinds of jokes and jests. And there were opportunities enough for the exercise of malicious humour ! It would have been better if we had heard less of what was going on behind the scenes and of what was going on higher up, in the clouds of great aspirations. Unfortunately, however, our flat was in the very centre of the town, and we were lucky enough to possess a drawing- room, whereas other people were able to obtain only sleeping accommodation. Thus, a throng of talkative visitors was almost constantly assembled under our roof. In this way we heard far too much of the intrigues and dissensions, and of the quarrels of the artists between themselves. Our attention was also called to far too many more or less admirable love affairs which, as a matter of fact, must have met with exceptionally favourable conditions during that summer at Bayreuth, for they sprung up as luxuriantly as mushrooms after rain. But even more luxuriant in their abundance were the excesses which were prompted on all sides by vanity, and one was compelled continually to recall the expression ” Vanity Fair ! Vanity Fair ! ” For hosts of people had come to Bayreuth on this occasion with the object of receiving some special mark of honour from Wagner, in return for something they had done for Wagnerian Art. And even if the Master and Cosima had been the embodiment of justice (a virtue to which they did not in the least aspire) they would have found it quite impossible to do special honour to such a Tast concourse of people that is to say, to honour each one more conspicuously than the last. Thus all Bayreuth was seething with injured vanity, and the air was heavy and oppressive in consequence a very amusing state of affairs for the detached spectator ! Frequently Frau Cosima had to spend whole mornings in driving round and soothing people’s mortified feelings by means of kind and comforting little speeches. But here I should like to emphasise the fact that my brother had not the smallest reasons whatever for feeling hurt. In fact, Wagner never lost an opportunity of honouring and distinguishing him; but Fritz escaped these flattering attentions whenever he could, for he disliked Wagner’s blatant and boisterous praise. Moreover, both of them felt that much that was unexpressed lay between them, they had had none of those great moments together which might have bound my brother afresh to his friend. “ Was such, a moment after all within an ace of them all the time ? I remember one morning my brother and I went to pay a call at Wahnfried, and we found the Master in the garden on the point of going out. I cannot recall precisely what Wagner said, but suddenly my brother’s countenance lighted up, and with an expression of tense expectation he seemed to await what was to follow. Did he believe that the Master was going to say : ” Ah, dear Friend, the whole Festival is nothing more or less than a farce, it is not what we two had dreamed it would be ; even my music ought to have been quite different. I will return to simplicity and melody ! ” Did my brother cherish the hope that Wagner was going to say something of the sort ? Whatever his first words may have led my brother to expect, however, that which followed soon showed him his mistake, and the gleam of gladness vanished from my brother’s eyes. No ! Wagner was no longer young enough to oppose himself. I shall never be able to satisfy myself, however, that Wagner, in his heart of hearts, was really pleased with this Festival at Bayreuth. He simply pretended to be, just as we all did ! We behaved as if we were delighted, and yet what a host of disappointments we had to overcome in our souls. I fancy that by far the greater number of us Wagnerites must have felt then pretty much as many a German peasant did at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when he was obliged to serve as a soldier under the Great Corsican. We were under the yoke of a mighty genius we were intoxicated by the power of an exceedingly strong will which conquered even the most hostile of its opponents, and finally compelled them to admire but at bottom we all felt that there was something artificial about this intoxication. Nevertheless we had sworn allegiance to the great leader, and we therefore allowed ourselves neither to criticise nor to be honest towards ourselves. Fritz was the only honest person present. He felt profoundly disappointed, and he did not conceal his feelings. To Wagner my brother seemed like the embodiment of conscience, or like one of those genii who point solemnly and admonishingly to Heaven. Wagner felt only too clearly that my brother had formed an ideal image of him and the Festival which neither had attained, and which soared high up above both a bitter reproach against the Festival itself. Wagner, too, was embarrassed in my brother’s presence, but his embarrassment manifested itself differently. He was boisterous and high-spirited, whilst Fritz was silent. What then did my brother really feel at that time ? In his heart he felt the profoundest disappointment this a perfect stranger could have noticed. It seems surprising that his disappointment should have been so marked, seeing that, as I have shown in the preceding chapter, he had felt for some time in the position of a disciple who was prepared to part from his master. But, owing to his great love for Wagner, the actual parting from him was hard, and he would have given much to be able to wait a little longer, if only he could have felt a little hope remained (as he trusted it would have done before the Bayreuth Festival) that Wagnerian Art contained a great life-enhancing force. Now, however, he began to feel, with unspeakable pain, not only the suspicion, but also the certainty, that in this Art there was not the quality which his gift of transfiguration had led him to suppose. It has been said that my brother’s great disappointment was caused partly by the imperfect working of the stage machinery, and the failure of one or two scenes and tableaux. It| is
true that a good many of these faults led to comical effects, as for instance the scene between Alberich and the Rhine Daughters, in which the latter turned round and round like wooden horses at a fair. And the dragon, the centrepiece of whose neck was missing, and whose head seemed, therefore, to spring direct from his trunk, was still funnier. If I remember rightly this disagreeable beast was made in London. Now, as ill-luck would have it, the missing piece, which left the London makers late, was sent to Beirut instead of Bayreuth, and the consequence was that it never reached its proper destination in time for the Festival plays. But all this either did not affect my brother, or else it simply increased his suspicion. On this very point he writes : ” I utterly disagree with those who were dissatisfied with the decorations, the scenery and the mechanical contrivances at Bayreuth. Far too much industry and ingenuity were applied to the task of chaining the imagination to matters which did not belie their epic origin. But as to the naturalism of the attitudes, of the singing, compared with the orchestra ! What affected, artificial and depraved tones, what a distortion of nature, were we made to hear ! ” As to some tones which were of an incredibly natural quality I would fain never hear them again aye, I would fain forget them for ever (Materna) ! ” No, this Bayreuth Festival resembled in no respect whatever the stupendous vision which had hovered before my brother’s eyes, just as little as the Ring des Nibelungen resembled those bewitching Dionysian strains which he had hoped to hear. In explanation of the fact that this disappointment was to some extent sudden, it should be remembered that my brother had not been with Wagner for two years, and had actually not heard any of the Master’s works performed for four years. He had zealously studied the King des Nibelungen on the piano, but by this means he obtained only a false and far too subtilised idea of the real thing. In addition to this, since January, 1874, he had not ceased from pondering in private over Wagner’s ” terrible tendencies ” ; now, however, these appeared before him in all their brutal reality. He felt that this was no music of the future ; it was not a sign of ascent but of decline ! It was simply exalted intoxication, enervating hashish, and possessed not the smallest suggestion of exuberant Dionysian vitality. But Fritz’s pain over all this was too deep for him to be able to speak about it, and thus he obeyed the serious admonition which he himself had pronounced to his readers at the beginning of the fourth essay of the Thoughts out of Season, he wrapped himself in profound “ Pythagorean Silence.” The only thing he did mention at times, and in terms of the highest admiration, was the orchestra. “ You will never hear its like again, Lizzie,” he would often repeat. He was obviously pained when the Master’s admirers desired to speak to him about the last of the Thoughts out of Season, ” Richard Wagner in Bayreuth.” A very astute lady in Bayreuth once asked me : ” Why does your brother so dislike to hear his last essay spoken about ? ” When I told him I had been asked this question he exclaimed : ” Ah, Lizzie, people should let bygones be bygones ! ” “ But,” I said, somewhat annoyed, “ it only appeared five weeks ago ! ” “ It seems to me like five years ! ” he replied. He did not say any more about it, but a few notes written in 1878 reveal what his feelings were at the time. ” The Schopenhauerian man drove me to scepticism concerning everything that had been respected, held in high esteem, and preached hitherto (also concerning the Greeks, Schopenhauer and Wagner), i.e., genius, holiness and the pessimism of knowledge. Along this circuitous path I reached the height with the freshest of breezes. The essay on Bayreuth was simply a pause, a recapitulation, a rest. In it the uselessness of Bayreuth was revealed to me. ” My picture of Wagner completely surpassed him ; I had depicted an ideal monster one, however, which was perhaps quite capable of kindling the enthusiasm of artists. The real Wagner, Bayreuth as it actually is, was only like a bad, final proof, pulled on inferior paper from the engraving which was my creation. My longing to see real men and their motives received an extraordinary impetus from this humiliating experience.” We had given up our seats for the second cycle of Festival plays to relatives, as the performances were extraordinarily fatiguing, and I can well remember on the evening when Das Rheingold was performed, after all our guests had left us, and the crowds had surged noisily to the Festival Play House to the accompanying sounds of carriages coming and going, how a profound silence gradually fell over the whole of Bayreuth. We talked of my brother’s stay in Italy, we said that on his return we should not take up our abode in Bale itself, but in Arlesheim, and we spoke of many things ; but we did not mention a word about “ Wagner and the Festival plays. Over tea, when the silence outside became strangely noticeable, I could not help exclaiming : ” How odd it seems, that we should remain at home all alone on a Festival evening at Bayreuth ! ” ” This is the first pleasant hour I have spent here,” Fritz replied with an extraordinary expression on his face. ” Fritz,” I said, hesitatingly, ” it was much more beautiful when you played these things on the piano, and we used to imagine all the accompanying scenes in such glowing colours.” “ Of course it was more beautiful,” Fritz replied sadly, and then was silent a long, long time. I cannot say that Fritz suffered from any bodily indisposition during these weeks in Bayreuth, and he even had very few headaches ; but, in order to excuse the fact that he so seldom went to the Wagners, we often made use of the plea of illness. It is true that he suffered profoundly and acutely, but in an utterly different way, and one about which we could not speak. All this untruthfulness and obscurity upset him. He absolutely refused to remain any longer in the place, and this despite the fact that he had fallen in love with an exceptionally fascinating and charming Parisienne, who, unfortunately, however, was already married. But by this time, even this could not retain him any longer in Bayreuth, and so one day, with his wistful and melancholy smile, he bade a last farewell to that Upper Franconian town in which he had had such painful experiences. ” Oh, Lizzie ! So that was Bayreuth ! ” he exclaimed sorrowfully as he said good-bye, and his eyes were full of tears. One can well imagine his feelings when one reads the following note : ” My blunder was this, I went to Bayreuth with an ideal in my breast, and was thus doomed to experience the bitterest disappointment. The preponderance of ugliness, grotesqueness and strong pepper thoroughly repelled me. I had imagined tragedy with music in a way which far surpassed Wagner, and I had heard music in the tragedy of existence in a manner which was far beyond Schopenhauer.” Now, to conclude this volume, let us once more look back upon the great span of years, from 1844 to 1876, which we have depicted in its pages. If one wished to describe it
generally by a single adjective, no better one than the word “ happy” could be found. In 1878 my brother spoke about himself to Malvida von Meysenbug and others as a ” Happy Prince,” and in 1874 he wrote to Rohde as follows : “ I resemble a happy man as far as it is possible for me to know what happiness is.” In a letter written in August, 1875, to Dr. Karl Fuchs, who had complained to him about a series of misfortunes, he gives a very excellent account of his own experiences, and shows how happy accidents had come to him quite unexpectedly always at the right time : ” It seems to me as if a certain fiery haste, a kind of refusal to wait, has robbed you of many a success. One should not let Fate know what one desires ; and five minutes later it is quite willing of its own accord to make an offer. I think it is Shakespeare who says : ‘ To be ready is everything.’ It may be, however, that what I am saying with so much apparent worldly wisdom, is nothing but a theory deduced from a life which has been sown somewhat plentifully with happy accidents. But you can believe me when I say that it is absolutely in keeping with my most profound convictions, to cherish a thing for years without even allowing myself to notice that I am doing so, and then to hold it tight when it comes within my grasp, because I was ‘ ready.’ In this process of ‘ cherishing,’ I never reached the point of desiring, and in this respect I lack your fire. All I feel is a kind of conditional idea. ‘It would be a nice thing for thee if, … You have no notion what great and magnificent ideas of this kind I carry about with me, for which I shall suddenly be ready.” All the events of this book confirm his words concerning ” a life which has been sown somewhat plentifully with happy accidents.” From his childhood onwards we have seen him surrounded by solicitous love, by admiring friends and by benevolent teachers and masters. We found that quite early in life his gifts were acknowledged by the most distinguished people, and that many a rare windfall came his way. And in all the incidents of his life, even in his periods of illness, there is no element of bitterness, but always some kind of beneficent compensation. Thus his attitude towards Life was one of almost trustful love ; for she had always fulfilled his silent wishes at the right time. But of all the events of his life, the greatest and most valuable was his deep friendship for Richard Wagner. In his love and reverence for this man he spent the most beautiful years of his existence, and all his loftiest hopes for the future were associated with the Master’s name. We can therefore understand with what bitter feelings he left Bayreuth ; he had lost his faith in Wagner’s Art, and all the glorious dreams and hopes of his youth faded through this heartrending experience. He thus bids farewell to the years of his youth, in which he had followed his two ideals, Schopenhauer and Wagner, so reverently as to draw even his friends along with him ; and now he must walk unaccompanied along the hard solitary road of his manhood, which he was condemned to pursue for his own perfection alone, without any followers, and even without any hearty sympathy from his friends. Thus there fell upon this life, so happy and sunny hitherto, a mist which grew ever more dense a mist in which it was hard for him to find his own way, and harder still to remain firm against all the demands of a heart which yearned so passionately for friendship. It is the hard and stony road to greatness which lies before him.