THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS

BY

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Or, How to Philosophise with the Hammer


THE ANTICHRIST

_NOTES TO ZARATHUSTRA, AND ETERNAL RECURRENCE_


TRANSLATED BY

ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI


The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche

The First Complete and Authorised English Translation

Edited by Dr Oscar Levy

Volume Sixteen

T.N. FOULIS

13 & 15 FREDERICK STREET

EDINBURGH: AND LONDON

1911




    CONTENTS

    TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS

    TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
    PREFACE
    MAXIMS AND MISSILES
    THE PROBLEM OF SOCRATES
    “REASON” IN PHILOSOPHY
    HOW THE “TRUE WORLD” ULTIMATELY BECAME A FABLE
    MORALITY AS THE ENEMY OF NATURE
    THE FOUR GREAT ERRORS
    THE “IMPROVERS” OF MANKIND
    THINGS THE GERMANS LACK
    SKIRMISHES IN A WAR WITH THE ACT
    THINGS I OWE TO THE ANCIENTS

    THE ANTICHRIST

    ETERNAL RECURRENCE

    NOTES TO ZARATHUSTRA




TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE


_The Twilight of the Idols_ was written towards the end of the summer
of 1888, its composition seems to have occupied only a few days,—so
few indeed that, in _Ecce Homo_ (p. 118), Nietzsche says he hesitates
to give their number; but, in any case, we know it was completed on the
3rd of September in Sils Maria. The manuscript which was dispatched to
the printers on the 7th of September bore the title: “_Idle Hours of a
Psychologist_”; this, however, was abandoned in favour of the present
title, while the work was going through the press. During September
and the early part of October 1888, Nietzsche added to the original
contents of the book by inserting the whole section entitled “Things
the Germans Lack,” and aphorisms 32-43 of “Skirmishes in a War with the
Age”; and the book, as it now stands, represents exactly the form in
which Nietzsche intended to publish it in the course of the year 1889.
Unfortunately its author was already stricken down with illness when
the work first appeared at the end of January 1889, and he was denied
the joy of seeing it run into nine editions, of one thousand each,
before his death in 1900.

Of _The Twilight of the Idols,_ Nietzsche says in _Ecce Homo_ (p.
118):—“If anyone should desire to obtain a rapid sketch of how
everything before my time was standing on its head, he should begin
reading me in this book. That which is called ‘Idols’ on the title-page
is simply the old truth that has been believed in hitherto. In plain
English, _The Twilight of the Idols_ means that the old truth is on its
last legs.”

Certain it is that, for a rapid survey of the whole of Nietzsche’s
doctrine, no book, save perhaps the section entitled “Of Old and New
Tables” in _Thus Spake Zarathustra,_ could be of more real value than
_The Twilight of the Idols._ Here Nietzsche is quite at his best. He
is ripe for the marvellous feat of the transvaluation of all values.
Nowhere is his language—that marvellous weapon which in his hand
became at once so supple and so murderous—more forcible and more
condensed. Nowhere are his thoughts more profound. But all this does
not by any means imply that this book is the easiest of Nietzsche’s
works. On the contrary, I very much fear that, unless the reader is
well prepared, not only in Nietzscheism, but also in the habit of
grappling with uncommon and elusive problems, a good deal of the
contents of this work will tend rather to confuse than to enlighten
him in regard to what Nietzsche actually wishes to make clear in these
pages.

How much prejudice, for instance, how many traditional and deep-seated
opinions, must be uprooted, if we are to see even so much as an
important note of interrogation in the section entitled “The Problem
of Socrates”—not to speak of such sections as “Morality as the Enemy
of Nature,” “The Four Great Errors,” &c. The errors exposed in these
sections have a tradition of two thousand years behind them; and only a
fantastic dreamer could expect them to be eradicated by a mere casual
study of these pages. Indeed, Nietzsche himself looked forward only to
a gradual change in the general view of the questions he discussed; he
knew only too well what the conversion of “light heads” was worth, and
what kind of man would probably be the first to rush into his arms;
and, grand psychologist that he was, he guarded himself beforehand
against bad company by means of his famous warning:—“The first
adherents of a creed do not prove anything against it.”

To the aspiring student of Nietzsche, however, it ought not to be
necessary to become an immediate convert in order to be interested in
the treasure of thought which Nietzsche here lavishes upon us. For
such a man it will be quite difficult enough to regard the questions
raised in this work as actual problems. Once, however, he has succeeded
in doing this, and has given his imagination time to play round these
questions _as_ problems, the particular turn or twist that Nietzsche
gives to their elucidation, may then perhaps strike him, not only as
valuable, but as absolutely necessary.

With regard to the substance of _The Twilight of the Idols,_ Nietzsche
says in _Ecce Homo_ (p. 119):—“There is the waste of an all-too-rich
autumn in this book: you trip over truths. You even crush some to
death, there are too many of them.”

And what are these truths? They are things that are not yet held to
be true. They are the utterances of a man who, as a single exception,
escaped for a while the general insanity of Europe, with its blind
idealism in the midst of squalor, with its unscrupulous praise of
so-called “Progress” while it stood knee-deep in the belittlement
of “Man,” and with its vulgar levity in the face of effeminacy and
decay;—they are the utterances of one who voiced the hopes, the
aims, and the realities of another world, not of an ideal world, not
of a world beyond, but of a real world, of _this_ world regenerated
and reorganised upon a sounder, a more virile, and a more orderly
basis,—in fact, of a perfectly _possible_ world, one that has already
existed in the past, and could exist again, if only the stupendous
revolution of a transvaluation of all values were made possible.

This then is the nature of the truths uttered by this one sane man in
the whole of Europe at the end of last century; and when, owing to his
unequal struggle against the overwhelming hostile forces of his time,
his highly sensitive personality was at last forced to surrender itself
to the enemy and become one with them—that is to say, insane!—at
least the record of his sanity had been safely stored away, beyond the
reach of time and change, in the volumes which constitute his life-work.

       *       *       *       *       *

Nietzsche must have started upon the “Antichrist,” immediately after
having dispatched the “Idle Hours of a Psychologist” to the printers,
and the work appears to have been finished at the end of September
1888. It was intended by Nietzsche to form the first book of a large
work entitled “The Transvaluation of all Values”; but, though this work
was never completed, we can form some idea from the substance of the
“Antichrist” and from the titles of the remaining three books, which
alas! were never written, of what its contents would have been. These
titles are:—Book II. The Free Spirit. A Criticism of Philosophy as a
Nihilistic Movement. Book III. The Immoralist. A Criticism of the most
Fatal Kind of Ignorance,—Morality. Book IV. Dionysus. The Philosophy
of Eternal Recurrence.

Nietzsche calls this book “An Attempted Criticism of Christianity.”
Modest as this sub-title is, it will probably seem not quite modest
enough to those who think that Nietzsche fell far short of doing
justice to their Holy Creed. Be this as it may, there is the solution
of a certain profound problem in this book, which, while it is the key
to all Nietzscheism, is also the justification and the sanctification
of Nietzsche’s cause. The problem stated quite plainly is this: “_To
what end_ did Christianity avail itself of falsehood?”

Many readers of this amazing little work, who happen to be acquainted
with Nietzsche’s doctrine of Art and of Ruling, will probably feel
slightly confused at the constant deprecation of falsehood, of
deception, and of arbitrary make-believe, which seems to run through
this book like a litany in praise of a certain Absolute Truth.

Remembering Nietzsche’s utterance in volume ii. (p. 26) of the _Will
to Power,_ to wit:—“The prerequisite of all living things and of
their lives is: that there should be a large amount of faith, that
it should be possible to pass definite judgments on things, and
that there should be no doubt at all concerning values. Thus it is
necessary that something should be assumed to be true, _not_ that it
is true;”—remembering these words, as I say, the reader may stand
somewhat aghast before all those passages in the second half of this
volume, where the very falsehoods of Christianity, its assumptions, its
unwarrantable claims to Truth, are declared to be pernicious, base and
corrupt.

Again and again, if we commit the error of supposing that Nietzsche
believed in a truth that was absolute, we shall find throughout his
works reasons for charging him with apparently the very same crimes
that he here lays at the door of Christianity. What then is the
explanation of his seeming inconsistency?

It is simple enough. Nietzsche’s charge of falsehood against
Christianity is not a moral one,—in fact it may be taken as a general
rule that Nietzsche scrupulously avoids making moral charges, and that
he emains throughout faithful to his position Beyond Good and Evil
(see, for instance Aph. 6 (Antichrist) where he repudiates all moral
prejudice in charging humanity with corruption). A man who maintained
that “truth is that form of error which enables a particular species to
prevail,” could not make a _moral_ charge of falsehood against any one,
or any institution; but he could do so from another standpoint He could
well say, for instance, “falsehood is that kind of error which causes a
particular species to degenerate and to decay.”

Thus the fact that Christianity “lied” becomes a subject of alarm
to Nietzsche, not owing to the fact that it is immoral to lie, but
because in this particular instance, the lie was harmful, hostile to
life, and dangerous to humanity; for “a belief might be false and yet
life-preserving” (_Beyond Good and Evil,_ pp. 8, 9).

Suppose, therefore, we say with Nietzsche that there is no absolute
truth, but that all that has been true in the past which has been
the means of making the “plant man flourish best”—or, since the
meaning of “best” is open to some debate, let us say, flourish in a
Nietzschean sense, that is to say, thanks to a mastery of life, and
to a preponderance of all those qualities which say yea to existence,
and which suggest no flight from this world and all its pleasure and
pain. And suppose we add that, wherever we may find the plant man
flourishing, in this sense, we should there suspect the existence of
truth?—I If we say this with Nietzsche, any sort of assumption or
arbitrary valuation which aims at a reverse order of things, becomes a
dangerous lie in a super-moral and purely physiological sense.

With these preparatory remarks we are now prepared to read aphorism
56 with a complete understanding of what Nietzsche means, and
to recognise in this particular aphorism the key to the whole of
Nietzsche’s attitude towards Christianity. It is at once a solution of
our problem, and a justification of its author’s position. Naturally,
it still remains open to Nietzsche’s opponents to argue, if they
choose, that man has flourished best under the sway of nihilistic
religions—religions which deny life,—and that consequently the
falsehoods of Christianity are not only warrantable but also in the
highest degree blessed; but, in any case, the aphorism in question
completely exonerates Nietzsche from a charge of inconsistency in the
use of the terms “truth” and “falsehood” throughout his works, and
it moreover settles once and for all the exact altitude from which
our author looked down upon the religions of the world, not only to
criticise them, but also to _place_ them in the order of their merit as
disciplinary systems aiming at the cultivation of particular types of
men.

Nietzsche says in aphorism 56:—“After all, the question is, to what
end are falsehoods perpetrated? The fact that, in Christianity, ‘holy’
ends are entirely absent, constitutes _my_ objection to the means it
employs. Its ends are only _bad_ ends: the poisoning, the calumniation
and the denial of life, the contempt of the body, the degradation and
self-pollution of man by virtue of the concept sin,—consequently its
means are bad as well.”

Thus, to repeat it once more, it is not because Christianity availed
itself of all kinds of lies that Nietzsche condemns it; for the Book
of Manu—which he admires—is just as full of falsehood as the Semitic
Book of Laws; but, in the Book of Manu the lies are calculated to
preserve and to create a strong and noble type of man, whereas in
Christianity the opposite type was the aim,—an aim which has been
achieved in a manner far exceeding even the expectations of the
faithful.

This then is the main argument of the book and its conclusion; but, in
the course of the general elaboration of this argument, many important
side-issues are touched upon and developed, wherein Nietzsche reveals
himself as something very much more valuable than a mere iconoclast.
Of course, on every page of his philosophy,—whatever his enemies may
maintain to the contrary,—he never once ceases to construct, since he
is incessantly enumerating and emphasising those qualities and types
which he fain would rear, as against those he fain would see destroyed;
but it is in aphorism 57 of this book that Nietzsche makes the
plainest and most complete statement of his actual taste in Sociology,
and it is upon this aphorism that all his followers and disciples will
ultimately have to build, if Nietzscheism is ever to become something
more than a merely intellectual movement.

ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.




PREFACE


To maintain a cheerful attitude of mind in the midst of a gloomy and
exceedingly responsible task, is no slight artistic feat. And yet, what
could be more necessary than cheerfulness? Nothing ever succeeds which
exuberant spirits have not helped to produce. Surplus power, alone,
is the proof of power.—A _transvaluation of all values,_—this note
of interrogation which is so black, so huge, that it casts a shadow
even upon him who affixes it,—is a task of such fatal import, that
he who undertakes it is compelled every now and then to rush out into
the sunlight in order to shake himself free from an earnestness that
becomes crushing, far too crushing. This end justifies every means,
every event on the road to it is a windfall. Above all _war._ War has
always been the great policy of all spirits who have penetrated too
far into themselves or who have grown too deep; a wound stimulates the
recuperative powers. For many years, a maxim, the origin of which I
withhold from learned curiosity, has been my motto:

_    increscunt animi, virescit volnere virtus._

At other times another means of recovery which is even more to my
taste, is to cross-examine idols. There are more idols than realities
in the world: this constitutes my “evil eye” for this world: it is
also my “evil ear.” To put questions in this quarter with a hammer, and
to hear perchance that well-known hollow sound which tells of blown-out
frogs,—what a joy this is for one who has ears even behind his ears,
for an old psychologist and Pied Piper like myself in whose presence
precisely that which would fain be silent, _must betray itself._

Even this treatise—as its title shows—is above all a recreation,
a ray of sunshine, a leap sideways of a psychologist in his leisure
moments. Maybe, too, a new war? And are we again cross-examining new
idols? This little work is a great declaration of war; and with regard
to the cross-examining of idols, this time it is not the idols of the
age but eternal idols which are here struck with a hammer as with
a tuning fork,—there are certainly no idols which are older, more
convinced, and more inflated. Neither are there any more hollow. This
does not alter the fact that they are believed in more than any others,
besides they are never called idols,—at least, not the most exalted
among their number.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.

TURIN, the 30th _September_ 1888.
    on the day when the first
    book of the Transvaluation
    of all Values was finished.




MAXIMS AND MISSILES


1

Idleness is the parent of all psychology. What? Is psychology then
a—vice?


2

Even the pluckiest among us has but seldom the courage of what he
really knows.


3

Aristotle says that in order to live alone, a man must be either an
animal or a god. The third alternative is lacking: a man must be
both—a _philosopher._


4

“All truth is simple.”—Is not this a double lie?


5

Once for all I wish to be blind to many things.—Wisdom sets bounds
even to knowledge.


6

A man recovers best from his exceptional nature—his
intellectuality—by giving his animal instincts a chance.


7

Which is it? Is man only a blunder of God? Or is God only a blunder of
man?


8

_From the military school of life._—That which does not kill me, makes
me stronger.


9

Help thyself, then everyone will help thee. A principle of
neighbour-love.


10

A man should not play the coward to his deeds. He should not repudiate
them once he has performed them. Pangs of conscience are indecent.


11

Can a donkey be tragic?—To perish beneath a load that one can neither
bear nor throw off? This is the case of the Philosopher.


12

If a man knows the wherefore of his existence, then the manner of it
can take care of itself. Man does not aspire to happiness; only the
Englishman does that.


13

Man created woman—out of what? Out of a rib of his god,—of his
“ideal.”


14

What? Art thou looking for something? Thou wouldst fain multiply
thyself tenfold, a hundredfold? Thou seekest followers? Seek ciphers!


15

Posthumous men, like myself, are not so well understood as men who
reflect their age, but they are heard with more respect. In plain
English: we are never understood—hence our authority.


16

_Among women._—“Truth? Oh, you do not know truth! Is it not an outrage
on all our _pudeurs?_”—


17

There is an artist after my own heart, modest in his needs: he really
wants only two things, his bread and his art—_panem et Circem._


18

He who knows not how to plant his will in things, at least endows them
with some meaning: that is to say, he believes that a will is already
present in them. (A principle of faith.)


19

What? Ye chose virtue and the heaving breast, and at the same time
ye squint covetously at the advantages of the unscrupulous.—But
with virtue ye renounce all “advantages” ... (to be nailed to an
Antisemite’s door).


20

The perfect woman perpetrates literature as if it were a petty vice: as
an experiment, _en passant,_ and looking about her all the while to
see whether anybody is noticing her, hoping that somebody _is_ noticing
her.


21

One should adopt only those situations in which one is in no need of
sham virtues, but rather, like the tight-rope dancer on his tight rope,
in which one must either fall or stand—or escape.


22

“Evil men have no songs.”[1]—How is it that the Russians have songs?


23

“German intellect”; for eighteen years this has been a _contradictio in
adjecto._


24

By seeking the beginnings of things, a man becomes a crab. The
historian looks backwards: in the end he also _believes_ backwards.


25

Contentment preserves one even from catching cold. Has a woman who knew
that she was well-dressed ever caught cold?—No, not even when she had
scarcely a rag to her back.


26

I distrust all systematisers, and avoid them. The will to a system,
shows a lack of honesty.


27

Man thinks woman profound—why? Because he can never fathom her depths.
Woman is not even shallow.


28

When woman possesses masculine virtues, she is enough to make you run
away. When she possesses no masculine virtues, she herself runs away.

29

“How often conscience had to bite in times gone by! What good teeth it
must have had! And to-day, what is amiss?”—A dentist’s question.


30

Errors of haste are seldom committed singly. The first time a man
always docs too much. And precisely on that account he commits a second
error, and then he does too little.


31

The trodden worm curls up. This testifies to its caution. It thus
reduces its chances of being trodden upon again. In the language of
morality: Humility.—


32

There is such a thing as a hatred of lies and dissimulation, which is
the outcome of a delicate sense of humour; there is also the selfsame
hatred but as the result of cowardice, in so far as falsehood is
forbidden by Divine law. Too cowardly to lie....


33

What trifles constitute happiness! The sound of a bagpipe. Without
music life would be a mistake. The German imagines even God as a
songster.


34

_On ne peut penser et écrire qu’assis_ (G. Flaubert). Here I have got
you, you nihilist! A sedentary life is the real sin against the Holy
Spirit. Only those thoughts that come by walking have any value.


35

There are times when we psychologists are like horses, and grow
fretful. We see our own shadow rise and fall before us. The
psychologist must look away from himself if he wishes to see anything
at all.


36

Do we immoralists injure virtue in any way? Just as little as the
anarchists injure royalty. Only since they have been shot at do princes
sit firmly on their thrones once more. Moral: _morality must be shot
at._


37

Thou runnest _ahead?_—Dost thou do so as a shepherd or as an
exception? A third alternative would be the fugitive.... First question
of conscience.


38

Art thou genuine or art thou only an actor? Art thou a representative
or the thing represented, itself? Finally, art thou perhaps simply a
copy of an actor? ... Second question of conscience.


39

_The disappointed man speaks:_—I sought for great men, but all I found
were the apes of their ideal.


40

Art thou one who looks on, or one who puts his own shoulder to the
wheel?—Or art thou one who looks away, or who turns aside?... Third
question of conscience.


41

Wilt thou go in company, or lead, or go by thyself?... A man should
know what he desires, and that he desires something.—Fourth question
of conscience.


42

They were but rungs in my ladder, on them I made my ascent:—to that
end I had to go beyond them. But they imagined that I wanted to lay
myself to rest upon them.


43

What matters it whether I am acknowledged to be right! I am much too
right. And he who laughs best to-day, will also laugh last.


44

The formula of my happiness: a Yea, a Nay, a straight line, _goal...._


[1] This is a reference to Seume’s poem “_Die Gesänge_,” the first verse
of which is:—

    _“Wo man singet, lass dich ruhig nieder,_
    _Ohne Furcht, was man im Lande glaubt_;
    _Wo man singet, wird kein Mensch beraubt_:
    _Bösewichter haben keine Lieder_.”

(Wherever people sing thou canst safely settle down without a qualm
as to what the general faith of the land may be Wherever people sing,
no man is ever robbed; _rascals_ have no songs.) Popular tradition,
however, renders the lines thus:—

    _“Wo man singt, da lass dich ruhig nieder;_
    _Base Menschen_ [evil men] _haben keine Lieder.”_




THE PROBLEM OF SOCRATES


1

In all ages the wisest have always agreed in their judgment of life:
_it is no good._ At all times and places the same words have been
on their lips,—words full of doubt, full of melancholy, full of
weariness of life, full of hostility to life. Even Socrates’ dying
words were:—“To live—means to be ill a long while: I owe a cock to
the god Æsculapius.” Even Socrates had had enough of it. What does that
prove? What does it point to? Formerly people would have said (—oh,
it has been said, and loudly enough too; by our Pessimists loudest of
all!): “In any case there must be some truth in this! The _consensus
sapientium_ is a proof of truth.”—Shall we say the same to-day? _May_
we do so? “In any case there must be some sickness here,” we make
reply. These great sages of all periods should first be examined more
closely! Is it possible that they were, everyone of them, a little
shaky on their legs, effete, rocky, decadent? Does wisdom perhaps
appear on earth after the manner of a crow attracted by a slight smell
of carrion?


2

This irreverent belief that the great sages were decadent types, first
occurred to me precisely in regard to that case concerning which both
learned and vulgar prejudice was most opposed to my view. I recognised
Socrates and Plato as symptoms of decline, as instruments in the
disintegration of Hellas, as pseudo-Greek, as anti-Greek (“The Birth
of Tragedy,” 1872). That _consensus sapientium,_ as I perceived ever
more and more clearly, did not in the least prove that they were right
in the matter on which they agreed. It proved rather that these sages
themselves must have been alike in some physiological particular, in
order to assume the same negative attitude towards life—in order to
be bound to assume that attitude. After all, judgments and valuations
of life, whether for or against, cannot be true: their only value lies
in the fact that they are symptoms; they can be considered only as
symptoms,—_per se_ such judgments are nonsense. You must therefore
endeavour by all means to reach out and try to grasp this astonishingly
subtle axiom, _that the value of life cannot be estimated._ A living
man cannot do so, because he is a contending party, or rather the very
object in the dispute, and not a judge; nor can a dead man estimate
it—for other reasons. For a philosopher to see a problem in the value
of life, is almost an objection against him, a note of interrogation
set against his wisdom—a lack of wisdom. What? Is it possible that all
these great sages were not only decadents, but that they were not even
wise? Let me however return to the problem of Socrates.


3

To judge from his origin, Socrates belonged to the lowest of the low:
Socrates was mob. You know, and you can still see it for yourself,
how ugly he was. But ugliness, which in itself is an objection, was
almost a refutation among the Greeks. Was Socrates really a Greek?
Ugliness is not infrequently the expression of thwarted development,
or of development arrested by crossing. In other cases it appears
as a decadent development. The anthropologists among the criminal
specialists declare that I the typical criminal is ugly: _monstrum
in fronte, monstrum in animo._ But the criminal is a decadent?[1]
Was Socrates a typical criminal?—At all events this would not clash
with that famous physiognomist’s judgment which was so repugnant to
Socrates’ friends. While on his way through Athens a certain foreigner
who was no fool at judging by looks, told Socrates to his face that
he was a monster, that his body harboured all the worst vices and
passions. And Socrates replied simply: “You know me, sir!”—


4

Not only are the acknowledged wildness and anarchy of Socrates’
instincts indicative of decadence, but also that preponderance of the
logical faculties and that malignity of the misshapen which was his
special characteristic. Neither should we forget those aural delusions
which were religiously interpreted as “the demon of Socrates.”
Everything in him is exaggerated, _buffo,_ caricature, his nature is
also full of concealment, of ulterior motives, and of underground
currents. I try to understand the idiosyncrasy from which the Socratic
equation:—Reason = Virtue = Happiness, could have arisen: the
weirdest equation ever seen, and one which was essentially opposed to
all the instincts of the older Hellenes.


5

With Socrates Greek taste veers round in favour of dialectics: what
actually occurs? In the first place a noble taste is vanquished:
with dialectics the mob comes to the top. Before Socrates’ time,
dialectical manners were avoided in good society: they were regarded
as bad manners, they were compromising. Young men were cautioned
against them. All such proffering of one’s reasons was looked upon with
suspicion. Honest things like honest men do not carry their reasons
on their sleeve in such fashion. It is not good form to make a show
of everything. That which needs to be proved cannot be worth much.
Wherever authority still belongs to good usage, wherever men do not
prove but command, the dialectician is regarded as a sort of clown.
People laugh at him, they do not take him seriously. Socrates was a
clown who succeeded in making men take him seriously: what then was the
matter?


6

A man resorts to dialectics only when he has no other means to hand.
People know that they excite suspicion with it and that it is not
very convincing. Nothing is more easily dispelled than a dialectical
effect: this is proved by the experience of every gathering in which
discussions are held. It can be only the last defence of those who have
no other weapons. One must require to extort one’s right, otherwise one
makes no use of it. That is why the Jews were dialecticians. Reynard
the Fox was a dialectician: what?—and was Socrates one as well?


7

Is the Socratic irony an expression of revolt, of mob resentment?
Does Socrates, as a creature suffering under oppression, enjoy his
innate ferocity in the knife-thrusts of the syllogism? Does he wreak
his revenge on the noblemen he fascinates?—As a dialectician a man
has a merciless instrument to wield; he can play the tyrant with it:
he compromises when he conquers with it. The dialectician leaves it to
his opponent to prove that he is no idiot: he infuriates, he likewise
paralyses. The dialectician cripples the intellect of his opponent. Can
it be that dialectics was only a form of revenge in Socrates?


8

I have given you to understand in what way Socrates was able to repel:
now it is all the more necessary to explain how he fascinated.—One
reason is that he discovered a new kind of _Agon,_ and that he was the
first fencing-master in the best circles in Athens. He fascinated by
appealing to the combative instinct of the Greeks,—he introduced a
variation into the contests between men and youths. Socrates was also a
great erotic.


9

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


10

When a man finds it necessary, as Socrates did, to create a tyrant out
of reason, there is no small danger that something else wishes to play
the tyrant. Reason was then discovered as a saviour; neither Socrates
nor his “patients” were at liberty to be rational or not, as they
pleased; at that time it was _de rigueur,_ it had become a last shift.
The fanaticism with which the whole of Greek thought plunges into
reason, betrays a critical condition of things: men were in danger;
there were only two alternatives: either perish or else be absurdly
rational. The moral bias of Greek philosophy from Plato onward, is the
outcome of a pathological condition, as is also its appreciation of
dialectics. Reason = Virtue = Happiness, simply means: we must imitate
Socrates, and confront the dark passions permanently with the light
of day—the light of reason. We must at all costs be clever, precise,
clear: all yielding to the instincts, to the unconscious, leads
downwards.


11

I have now explained how Socrates fascinated: he seemed to be a
doctor, a Saviour. Is it necessary to expose the errors which lay in
his faith in “reason at any price”?—It is a piece of self-deception
on the part of philosophers and moralists to suppose that they can
extricate themselves from degeneration by merely waging war upon it.
They cannot thus extricate themselves; that which they choose as a
means, as the road to salvation, is in itself again only an expression
of degeneration—they only modify its mode of manifesting itself:
they do not abolish it. Socrates was a misunderstanding. _The whole
of the morality of amelioration—that of Christianity as well—was
a misunderstanding._ The most blinding light of day: reason at any
price; life made clear, cold, cautious, conscious, without instincts,
opposed to the instincts, was in itself only a disease, another kind
of disease—and by no means a return to “virtue,” to “health,” and to
happiness. To be obliged to fight the instincts—this is the formula of
degeneration: as long as life is in the ascending line, happiness is
the same as instinct.


12

—Did he understand this himself, this most intelligent of
self-deceivers? Did he confess this to himself in the end, in the
wisdom of his courage before death. Socrates wished to die. Not Athens,
but his own hand gave him the draught of hemlock; he drove Athens to
the poisoned cup. “Socrates is not a doctor,” he whispered to himself,
“death alone can be a doctor here.... Socrates himself has only been ill
a long while.”


[1] It should be borne in mind that Nietzsche recognised two types of
criminals,—the criminal from strength, and the criminal from weakness.
This passage alludes to the latter, Aphorism 45, p. 103, alludes to the
former.—TR.




“REASON” IN PHILOSOPHY


1

You ask me what all idiosyncrasy is in philosophers? ... For instance
their lack of the historical sense, their hatred even of the idea of
Becoming, their Egyptianism. They imagine that they do honour to a
thing by divorcing it from history _sub specie æterni,—_when they
make a mummy of it. All the ideas that philosophers have treated for
thousands of years, have been mummied concepts; nothing real has ever
come out of their hands alive. These idolaters of concepts merely
kill and stuff things when they worship,—they threaten the life of
everything they adore. Death, change, age, as well as procreation and
growth, are in their opinion objections,—even refutations. That which
is cannot evolve; that which evolves _is_ not. Now all of them believe,
and even with desperation, in Being. But, as they cannot lay hold of
it, they try to discover reasons why this privilege is withheld from
them. “Some merely apparent quality, some deception must be the cause
of our not being able to ascertain the nature of Being: where is the
deceiver?” “We have him,” they cry rejoicing, “it is sensuality!” These
senses, _which in other things are so immoral,_ cheat us concerning the
true world. Moral: we must get rid of the deception of the senses, of
Becoming, of history, of falsehood.—History is nothing more than the
belief in the senses, the belief in falsehood. Moral: we must say “no”
to everything in which the senses believe: to all the rest of mankind:
all that belongs to the “people.” Let us be philosophers, mummies,
monotono-theists, grave-diggers!—And above all, away with the _body,_
this wretched _idée fixe_ of the senses, infected with all the faults
of logic that exist, refuted, even impossible, although it be impudent
enough to pose as if it were real!


2

With a feeling of great reverence I except the name of _Heraclitus._
If the rest of the philosophic gang rejected the evidences of the
senses, because the latter revealed a state of multifariousness and
change, he rejected the same evidence because it revealed things as if
they possessed permanence and unity. Even Heraclitus did an injustice
to the senses. The latter lie neither as the Eleatics believed them
to lie, nor as he believed them to lie,—they do not lie at all. The
interpretations we give to their evidence is what first introduces
falsehood into it; for instance the lie of unity, the lie of matter,
of substance and of permanence. Reason is the cause of our falsifying
the evidence of the senses. In so far as the senses show us a state
of Becoming, of transiency, and of change, they do not lie. But in
declaring that Being was an empty illusion, Heraclitus will remain
eternally right. The “apparent” world is the only world: the “true
world” is no more than a false adjunct thereto.


3

And what delicate instruments of observation we have in our senses!
This human nose, for instance, of which no philosopher has yet spoken
with reverence and gratitude, is, for the present, the most finely
adjusted instrument at our disposal: it is able to register even such
slight changes of movement as the spectroscope would be unable to
record. Our scientific triumphs at the present day extend precisely
so far as we have accepted the evidence of our senses,—as we have
sharpened and armed them, and learned to follow them up to the
end. What remains is abortive and not yet science—that is to say,
metaphysics, theology, psychology, epistemology, or formal science, or
a doctrine of symbols, like logic and its applied form mathematics.
In all these things reality does not come into consideration at all,
even as a problem; just as little as does the question concerning the
general value of such a convention of symbols as logic.


4

The other idiosyncrasy of philosophers is no less dangerous; it
consists in confusing the last and the first things. They place that
which makes its appearance last—unfortunately! for it ought not
to appear at all!—the “highest concept,” that is to say, the most
general, the emptiest, the last cloudy streak of evaporating reality,
at the beginning as the beginning. This again is only their manner of
expressing their veneration: the highest thing must not have grown out
of the lowest, it must not have grown at all.... Moral: everything
of the first rank must be _causa sui._ To have been derived from
something else, is as good as an objection, it sets the value of a
thing in question. All superior values are of the first rank, all the
highest concepts—that of Being, of the Absolute, of Goodness, of
Truth, and of Perfection; all these things cannot have been evolved,
they must therefore be _causa sui._ All these things cannot however be
unlike one another, they cannot be opposed to one another. Thus they
attain to their stupendous concept “God.” The last, most attenuated and
emptiest thing is postulated as the first thing, as the absolute cause,
as _ens realissimum._ Fancy humanity having to take the brain diseases
of morbid cobweb-spinners seriously!—And it has paid dearly for having
done so.


5

—Against this let us set the different manner in which we (—you
observe that I am courteous enough to say “we”) conceive the problem of
the error and deceptiveness of things. Formerly people regarded change
and evolution in general as the proof of appearance, as a sign of the
fact that something must be there that leads us astray. To-day, on
the other hand, we realise that precisely as far as the rational bias
forces us to postulate unity, identity, permanence, substance, cause,
materiality and being, we are in a measure involved in error, driven
necessarily to error; however certain we may feel, as the result of a
strict examination of the matter, that the error lies here. It is just
the same here as with the motion of the sun: In its case it was our
eyes that were wrong; in the matter of the concepts above mentioned it
is our language itself that pleads most constantly in their favour.
In its origin language belongs to an age of the most rudimentary
forms of psychology: if we try to conceive of the first conditions of
the metaphysics of language, _i.e._ in plain English, of reason, we
immediately find ourselves in the midst of a system of fetichism. For
here, the doer and his deed are seen in all circumstances, will is
believed in as a cause in general; the ego is taken for granted, the
ego as Being, and as substance, and the faith in the ego as substance
is projected into all things—in this way, alone, the concept “thing”
is created. Being is thought into and insinuated into everything as
cause; from the concept “ego,” alone, can the concept “Being” proceed.
At the beginning stands the tremendously fatal error of supposing the
will to be something that actuates,—a faculty. Now we know that it
is only a word.[1] Very much later, in a world a thousand times more
enlightened, the assurance, the subjective certitude, in the handling
of the categories of reason came into the minds of philosophers as a
surprise. They concluded that these categories could not be derived
from experience,—on the contrary, the whole of experience rather
contradicts them. _Whence do they come therefore?_ In India, as in
Greece, the same mistake was made: “we must already once have lived
in a higher world (—instead of in a much lower one, which would have
been the truth!), we must have been divine, for we possess reason!”
... Nothing indeed has exercised a more simple power of persuasion
hitherto than the error of Being, as it was formulated by the Eleatics
for instance: in its favour are every word and every sentence that we
utter!—Even the opponents of the Eleatics succumbed to the seductive
powers of their concept of Being. Among others there was Democritus in
his discovery of the atom. “Reason” in language!—oh what a deceptive
old witch it has been! I fear we shall never be rid of God, so long as
we still believe in grammar.


6

People will feel grateful to me if I condense a point of view, which
is at once so important and so new, into four theses: by this means
I shall facilitate comprehension, and shall likewise challenge
contradiction.

_Proposition One._ The reasons upon which the apparent nature of “this”
world have been based, rather tend to prove its reality,—any other
kind of reality defies demonstration.

_Proposition Two._ The characteristics with which man has endowed
the “true Being” of things, are the characteristics of non-Being, of
_nonentity._ The “true world” has been erected upon a contradiction of
the real world; and it is indeed an apparent world, seeing that it is
merely a _moralo-optical_ delusion.

_Proposition Three._ There is no sense in spinning yarns about another
world, provided, of course, that we do not possess a mighty instinct
which urges us to slander, belittle, and cast suspicion upon this life:
in this case we should be avenging ourselves on this life with the
phantasmagoria of “another,” of a “better” life.

_Proposition Four._ To divide the world into a “true” and an “apparent”
world, whether after the manner of Christianity or of Kant (after all
a Christian in disguise), is only a sign of decadence,—a symptom of
_degenerating_ life. The fact that the artist esteems the appearance
of a thing higher than reality, is no objection to this statement. For
“appearance” signifies once more reality here, but in a selected,
strengthened and corrected form. The tragic artist is no pessimist,—he
says _Yea_ to everything questionable and terrible, he is Dionysian.


[1] Nietzsche here refers to the concept “free will” of the Christians;
this does not mean that there is no such thing as will—that is to say
a powerful determining force from within.—TR.


HOW THE “TRUE WORLD” ULTIMATELY BECAME A FABLE

THE HISTORY OF AN ERROR

1. The true world, attainable to the sage, the pious man and the man of
virtue,—he lives in it, _he is it._

    (The most ancient form of the idea was relatively clever,
    simple, convincing. It was a paraphrase of the proposition
    “I, Plato, am the truth.”)


2. The true world which is unattainable for the moment, is promised to
the sage, to the pious man and to the man of virtue (“to the sinner who
repents”).

    (Progress of the idea: it becomes more subtle, more
    insidious, more evasive,—It _becomes a woman,_ it becomes
    Christian.)


3. The true world is unattainable, it cannot be proved, it cannot
promise anything; but even as a thought, alone, it is a comfort, an
obligation, a command.

    (At bottom this is still the old sun; but seen through mist
    and scepticism: the idea has become sublime, pale, northern,
    Königsbergian.)[1]


4. The true world—is it unattainable? At all events it is unattained.
And as unattained it is also _unknown._ Consequently it no longer
comforts, nor saves, nor constrains: what could something unknown
constrain us to?

    (The grey of dawn. Reason stretches itself and yawns for the
    first time. The cock-crow of positivism.)


5. The “true world”—an idea that no longer serves any purpose, that
no longer constrains one to anything,—a useless idea that has become
quite superfluous, consequently an exploded idea: let us abolish it!

    (Bright daylight; breakfast; the return of common sense
    and of cheerfulness; Plato blushes for shame and all
    free-spirits kick up a shindy.)


6. We have suppressed the true world: what world survives? the apparent
world perhaps?... Certainly not! _In abolishing the true world we have
also abolished the world of appearance!_

    (Noon; the moment of the shortest shadows; the end of the
    longest error; mankind’s zenith; _Incipit Zarathustra._)


[1] Kant was a native of Königsberg and lived there all his life. Did
Nietzsche know that Kant was simply a Scotch Puritan, whose family had
settled in Germany?




MORALITY AS THE ENEMY OF NATURE


1

There is a time when all passions are simply fatal in their action,
when they wreck their victims with the weight of their folly,—and
there is a later period, a very much later period, when they marry with
the spirit, when they “spiritualise” themselves. Formerly, owing to the
stupidity inherent in passion, men waged war against passion itself:
men pledged themselves to annihilate it,—all ancient moral-mongers
were unanimous on this point, “_il faut tuer les passions._” The
most famous formula for this stands in the New Testament, in that
Sermon on the Mount, where, let it be said incidentally, things are
by no means regarded _from a height._ It is said there, for instance,
with an application to sexuality: “if thy eye offend thee, pluck it
out”: fortunately no Christian acts in obedience to this precept.
To annihilate the passions and desires, simply on account of their
stupidity, and to obviate the unpleasant consequences of their
stupidity, seems to us to-day merely an aggravated form of stupidity.
We no longer admire those dentists who extract teeth simply in order
that they may not ache again. On the other hand, it will be admitted
with some reason, that on the soil from which Christianity grew, the
idea of the “spiritualisation of passion” could not possibly have been
conceived. The early Church, as everyone knows, certainly did wage war
against the “intelligent,” in favour of the “poor in spirit” In these
circumstances how could the passions be combated intelligently? The
Church combats passion by means of excision of all kinds: its practice,
its “remedy,” is _castration._ It never inquires “how can a desire
be spiritualised, beautified, deified?”—In all ages it has laid the
weight of discipline in the process of extirpation (the extirpation
of sensuality, pride, lust of dominion, lust of property, and
revenge).—But to attack the passions at their roots, means attacking
life itself at its source: the method of the Church is hostile to life.


2

The same means, castration and extirpation, are instinctively chosen
for waging war against a passion, by those who are too weak of will,
too degenerate, to impose some sort of moderation upon it; by those
natures who, to speak in metaphor (—and without metaphor), need
_la Trappe,_ or some kind of ultimatum of war, a _gulf_ set between
themselves and a passion. Only degenerates find radical methods
indispensable: weakness of will, or more strictly speaking, the
inability not to react to a stimulus, is in itself simply another form
of degeneracy. Radical and mortal hostility to sensuality, remains a
suspicious symptom: it justifies one in being suspicious of the general
state of one who goes to such extremes. Moreover, that hostility and
hatred reach their height only when such natures no longer possess
enough strength of character to adopt the radical remedy, to renounce
their inner “Satan.” Look at the whole history of the priests, the
philosophers, and the artists as well: the most poisonous diatribes
against the senses have not been said by the impotent, nor by the
ascetics; but by those impossible ascetics, by those who found it
necessary to be ascetics.


3

The spiritualisation of sensuality is called _love:_ it is a great
triumph over Christianity. Another triumph is our spiritualisation of
hostility. It consists in the fact that we are beginning to realise
very profoundly the value of having enemies: in short that with them
we are forced to do and to conclude precisely the reverse of what
we previously did and concluded. In all ages the Church wished to
annihilate its enemies: we, the immoralists and Antichrists, see our
advantage in the survival of the Church. Even in political life,
hostility has now become more spiritual,—much more cautious, much
more thoughtful, and much more moderate. Almost every party sees its
self-preservative interests in preventing the Opposition from going
to pieces; and the same applies to politics on a grand scale. A new
creation, more particularly, like the new Empire, has more need
of enemies than friends: only as a contrast does it begin to feel
necessary, only as a contrast does it _become_ necessary. And we behave
in precisely the same way to the “inner enemy”: in this quarter too we
have spiritualised enmity, in this quarter too we have understood its
value. A man is productive only in so far as he is rich in contrasted
instincts; he can remain young only on condition that his soul does
not begin to take things easy and to yearn for peace. Nothing has
grown more alien to us than that old desire—the “peace of the soul,”
which is the aim of Christianity. Nothing could make us less envious
than the moral cow and the plump happiness of a clean conscience. The
man who has renounced war has renounced a grand life. In many cases,
of course, “peace of the soul” is merely a misunderstanding,—it is
something _very different_ which has failed to find a more honest name
for itself. Without either circumlocution or prejudice I will suggest a
few cases. “Peace of the soul” may for instance be the sweet effulgence
of rich animality in the realm of morality (or religion). Or the first
presage of weariness, the first shadow that evening, every kind of
evening, is wont to cast. Or a sign that the air is moist, and that
winds are blowing up from the south. Or unconscious gratitude for a
good digestion (sometimes called “brotherly love”). Or the serenity
of the convalescent, on whose lips all things have a new taste, and
who bides his time. Or the condition which follows upon a thorough
gratification of our strongest passion, the well-being of unaccustomed
satiety. Or the senility of our will, of our desires, and of our vices.
Or laziness, coaxed by vanity into togging itself out in a moral garb.
Or the ending of a state of long suspense and of agonising uncertainty,
by a state of certainty, of even terrible certainty. Or the expression
of ripeness and mastery in the midst of a task, of a creative work, of
a production, of a thing willed, the calm breathing that denotes that
“freedom of will” has been attained. Who knows?—maybe _The Twilight
of the Idols_ is only a sort of “peace of the soul.”


4

I will formulate a principle. All naturalism in morality—that is to
say, every sound morality is ruled by a life instinct,—any one of
the laws of life is fulfilled by the definite canon “thou shalt,”
“thou shalt not,” and any sort of obstacle or hostile element in the
road of life is thus cleared away. Conversely, the morality which is
antagonistic to nature—that is to say, almost every morality that has
been taught, honoured and preached hitherto, is directed precisely
against the life-instincts,—it is a condemnation, now secret, now
blatant and impudent, of these very instincts. Inasmuch as it says “God
sees into the heart of man,” it says Nay to the profoundest and most
superior desires of life and takes God as the enemy of life. The saint
in whom God is well pleased, is the ideal eunuch. Life terminates where
the “Kingdom of God” begins.


5

Admitting that you have understood the villainy of such a mutiny
against life as that which has become almost sacrosanct in Christian
morality, you have fortunately understood something besides; and that
is the futility, the fictitiousness, the absurdity and the falseness
of such a mutiny. For the condemnation of life by a living creature is
after all but the symptom of a definite kind of life: the question as
to whether the condemnation is justified or the reverse is not even
raised. In order even to approach the problem of the value of life,
a man would need to be placed outside life, and moreover know it as
well as one, as many, as all in fact, who have lived it These are
reasons enough to prove to us that this problem is an inaccessible one
to us. When we speak of values, we speak under the inspiration, and
through the optics of life: life itself urges us to determine values:
life itself values through us when we determine values. From which it
follows that even that morality which is antagonistic to life, and
which conceives God as the opposite and the condemnation of life, is
only a valuation of life—of what life? of what kind of life? But I
have already answered this question: it is the valuation of declining,
of enfeebled, of exhausted and of condemned life. Morality, as it has
been understood hitherto—as it was finally formulated by Schopenhauer
in the words “The Denial of the Will to Life,” is the instinct of
degeneration itself, which converts itself into an imperative: it says:
“Perish!” It is the death sentence of men who are already doomed.


6

Let us at last consider how exceedingly simple it is on our part to
say: “Man should be thus and thus!” Reality shows us a marvellous
wealth of types, and a luxuriant variety of forms and changes: and yet
the first wretch of a moral loafer that comes along cries “No! Man
should be different!” He even knows what man should be like, does this
sanctimonious prig: he draws his own face on the wall and declares:
“_ecce homo!_” But even when the moralist addresses himself only to the
individual and says “thus and thus shouldst thou be!” he still makes
an ass of himself. The individual in his past and future is a piece of
fate, one law the more, one necessity the more for all that is to come
and is to be. To say to him “change thyself,” is tantamount to saying
that everything should change, even backwards as well. Truly these have
been consistent moralists, they wished man to be different, _i.e._,
virtuous; they wished him to be after their own image,—that is to say
sanctimonious humbugs. And to this end they denied the world! No slight
form of insanity! No modest form of immodesty! Morality, in so far it
condemns _per se,_ and _not_ out of any aim, consideration or motive of
life, is a specific error, for which no one should feel any mercy, a
degenerate idiosyncrasy, that has done an unutterable amount of harm.
We others, we immoralists, on the contrary, have opened our hearts
wide to all kinds of comprehension, understanding and approbation.[1]
We do not deny readily, we glory in saying yea to things. Our eyes
have opened ever wider and wider to that economy which still employs
and knows how to use to its own advantage all that which the sacred
craziness of priests and the morbid reason in priests, rejects; to
that economy in the law of life which draws its own advantage even out
of the repulsive race of bigots, the priests and the virtuous,—what
advantage?—But we ourselves, we immoralists, are the reply to this
question.

[1] _Cf._ Spinoza, who says in the _Tractatus politico_ (1677), Chap.
I, § 4: _“Sedulo curavi, humanas actiones non ridere, non tugert,
negue detestari, sed intelligere”_ (“I have carefully endeavoured not
to deride, or deplore, or detest human actions, but to understand
them.”).—TR.




THE FOUR GREAT ERRORS


1

_The error of the confusion of cause and effect.—_There is no more
dangerous error than to confound the effect with the cause: I call
this error the intrinsic perversion of reason. Nevertheless this error
is one of the most ancient and most recent habits of mankind. In one
part of the world it has even been canonised; and it bears the name of
“Religion” and “Morality.” Every postulate formulated by religion and
morality contains it. Priests and the promulgators of moral laws are the
promoters of this perversion of reason.—Let me give you an example.
Everybody knows the book of the famous Cornaro, in which he recommends
his slender diet as the recipe for a long, happy and also virtuous
life. Few books have been so widely read, and to this day many thousand
copies of it are still printed annually in England. I do not doubt that
there is scarcely a single book (the Bible of course excepted) that
has worked more mischief, shortened more lives, than this well-meant
curiosity. The reason of this is the confusion of effect and cause.
This worthy Italian saw the cause of his long life in his diet: whereas
the prerequisites of long life, which are exceptional slowness of
molecular change, and a low rate of expenditure in energy, were the
cause of his meagre diet He was not at liberty to eat a small or a
great amount. His frugality was not the result of free choice, he would
have been ill had he eaten more. He who does not happen to be a carp,
however, is not only wise to eat well, but is also compelled to do so.
A scholar of the present day, with his rapid consumption of nervous
energy, would soon go to the dogs on Cornaro’s diet. _Crede experto._—


2

The most general principle lying at the root of every religion and
morality, is this: “Do this and that and avoid this and that—and
thou wilt be happy. Otherwise——.” Every morality and every
religion is this Imperative—I call it the great original sin of
reason,—_immortal unreason._ In my mouth this principle is converted
into its opposite—first example of my “Transvaluation of all Values”:
a well-constituted man, a man who is one of “Nature’s lucky strokes,”
_must_ perform certain actions and instinctively fear other actions;
he introduces the element of order, of which he is the physiological
manifestation, into his relations with men and things. In a formula:
his virtue is the consequence of his good constitution. Longevity
and plentiful offspring are not the reward of virtue, virtue itself
is on the contrary that retardation of the metabolic process which,
among other things, results in a long life and in plentiful offspring,
in short in _Cornarism._ The Church and morality say: “A race, a
people perish through vice and luxury.” My reinstated reason says:
when a people are going to the dogs, when they are degenerating
physiologically, vice and luxury (that is to say, the need of ever
stronger and more frequent stimuli such as all exhausted natures are
acquainted with) are bound to result. Such and such a young man grows
pale and withered prematurely. His friends say this or that illness
is the cause of it I say: the fact that he became ill, the fact that
he did not resist illness, was in itself already the outcome of
impoverished life, of hereditary exhaustion. The newspaper reader says:
such and such a party by committing such an error will meet its death.
My superior politics say: a party that can make such mistakes, is in
its last agony—it no longer possesses any certainty of instinct. Every
mistake is in every sense the sequel to degeneration of the instincts,
to disintegration of the will. This is almost the definition of evil,
Everything valuable is instinct—and consequently easy, necessary,
free. Exertion is an objection, the god is characteristically different
from the hero (in my language: light feet are the first attribute of
divinity).


3

_The error of false causality._ In all ages men have believed that
they knew what a cause was: but whence did we derive this knowledge,
or more accurately, this faith in the fact that we know? Out of the
realm of the famous “inner facts of consciousness,” not one of which
has yet proved itself to be a fact We believed ourselves to be causes
even in the action of the will; we thought that in this matter at
least we caught causality red-handed. No one doubted that all the
_antecedentia_ of an action were to be sought in consciousness, and
could be discovered there—as “motive”—if only they were sought.
Otherwise we should not be free to perform them, we should not have
been responsible for them. Finally who would have questioned that a
thought is caused? that the ego causes the thought? Of these three
“facts of inner consciousness” by means of which causality seemed to
be guaranteed, the first and most convincing is that of the will as
cause; the conception of consciousness (“spirit”) as a cause, and
subsequently that of the ego (the “subject”) as a cause, were merely
born afterwards, once the causality of the will stood established
as “given,” as a fact of experience. Meanwhile we have come to our
senses. To-day we no longer believe a word of all this. The “inner
world” is full of phantoms and will-o’-the-wisps: the will is one of
these. The will no longer actuates, consequently it no longer explains
anything—all it does is to accompany processes; it may even be absent.
The so-called “motive” is another error. It is merely a ripple on
the surface of consciousness, a side issue of the action, which is
much more likely to conceal than to reveal the _antecedentia_ of the
latter. And as for the ego! It has become legendary, fictional, a
play upon words: it has ceased utterly and completely from thinking,
feeling, and willing! What is the result of it all? There are no such
things as spiritual causes. The whole of popular experience on this
subject went to the devil! That is the result of it all. For we had
blissfully abused that experience, we had built the world upon it as a
world of causes, as a world of will, as a world of spirit. The most
antiquated and most traditional psychology has been at work here, it
has done nothing else: all phenomena were deeds in the light of this
psychology, and all deeds were the result of will; according to it the
world was a complex mechanism of agents, an agent (a “subject”) lay
at the root of all things. Man projected his three “inner facts of
consciousness,” the will, the spirit, and the ego in which he believed
most firmly, outside himself. He first deduced the concept Being out
of the concept Ego, he supposed “things” to exist as he did himself,
according to his notion of the ego as cause. Was it to be wondered at
that later on he always found in things only that which he had laid
in them?—The thing itself, I repeat, the concept thing was merely a
reflex of the belief in the ego as cause. And even your atom, my dear
good Mechanists and Physicists, what an amount of error, of rudimentary
psychology still adheres to it!—Not to speak of the “thing-in-itself,”
of the _horrendum pudendum_ of the metaphysicians! The error of spirit
regarded as a cause, confounded with reality! And made the measure of
reality! And called _God!_


4

_The Error of imaginary Causes._ Starting out from dreamland, we
find that to any definite sensation, like that produced by a distant
cannon shot for instance, we are wont to ascribe a cause after the
fact (very often quite a little romance in which the dreamer himself
is, of course, the hero). Meanwhile the sensation becomes protracted
like a sort of continuous echo, until, as it were, the instinct of
causality allows it to come to the front rank, no longer however as a
chance occurrence, but as a thing which has some meaning. The cannon
shot presents itself in a _causal_ manner, by means of an apparent
reversal in the order of time. That which occurs last, the motivation,
is experienced first, often with a hundred details which flash past
like lightning, and the shot is the _result._ What has happened? The
ideas suggested by a particular state of our senses, are misinterpreted
as the cause of that state. As a matter of fact we proceed in precisely
the same manner when we are awake. The greater number of our general
sensations—every kind of obstacle, pressure, tension, explosion in
the interplay of the organs, and more particularly the condition of
the _nervus sympathies_—stimulate our instinct of causality: we will
have a reason which will account for our feeling thus or thus,—for
feeling ill or well. We are never satisfied by merely ascertaining
the fact that we feel thus or thus: we admit this fact—we become
conscious of it—only when we have attributed it to some kind of
motivation. Memory, which, in such circumstances unconsciously becomes
active, adduces former conditions of a like kind, together with the
causal interpretations with which they are associated,—but not their
real cause. The belief that the ideas, the accompanying processes
of consciousness, have been the causes, is certainly produced by
the agency of memory. And in this way we become _accustomed_ to a
particular interpretation of causes which, truth to tell, actually
hinders and even utterly prevents the investigation of the proper
cause.


5

_The Psychological Explanation of the above Fact._ To trace something
unfamiliar back to something familiar, is at once a relief, a comfort
and a satisfaction, while it also produces a feeling of power. The
unfamiliar involves danger, anxiety and care,—the fundamental instinct
is to get rid of these painful circumstances. First principle: any
explanation is better than none at all. Since, at bottom, it is
only a question of shaking one’s self free from certain oppressive
ideas, the means employed to this end are not selected with overmuch
punctiliousness: the first idea by means of which the unfamiliar is
revealed as familiar, produces a feeling of such comfort that it is
“held to be true.” The proof of happiness (“of power”) as the criterion
of truth. The instinct of causality is therefore conditioned and
stimulated by the feeling of fear. Whenever possible, the question
“why?” should not only educe the cause as cause, but rather a certain
kind of cause—a comforting, liberating and reassuring cause. The first
result of this need is that something known or already experienced, and
recorded in the memory, is posited as the cause. The new factor, that
which has not been experienced and which is unfamiliar, is excluded
from the sphere of causes. Not only do we try to find a certain kind
of explanation as the cause, but those kinds of explanations are
selected and preferred which dissipate most rapidly the sensation of
strangeness, novelty and unfamiliarity,—in fact the most ordinary
explanations. And the result is that a certain manner of postulating
causes tends to predominate ever more and more, becomes concentrated
into a system, and finally reigns supreme, to the complete exclusion
of all other causes and explanations. The banker thinks immediately of
business, the Christian of “sin,” and the girl of her love affair.


6

_The whole Domain of Morality and Religion may be classified under the
Rubric “Imaginary Causes.”_ The “explanation” of general unpleasant
sensations. These sensations are dependent upon certain creatures who
are hostile to us (evil spirits: the most famous example of this—the
mistaking of hysterical women for witches). These sensations are
dependent upon actions which are reprehensible (the feeling of “sin,”
“sinfulness” is a manner of accounting for a certain physiological
disorder—people always find reasons for being dissatisfied with
themselves). These sensations depend upon punishment, upon compensation
for something which we ought not to have done, which we ought not
to have been (this idea was generalised in a more impudent form by
Schopenhauer, into that principle in which morality appears in its real
colours,—that is to say, as a veritable poisoner and slanderer of
life: “all great suffering, whether mental or physical, reveals what
we deserve: for it could not visit us if we did not deserve it,” “The
World as Will and Idea,” vol. 2, p. 666). These sensations are the
outcome of ill-considered actions, having evil consequences, (—the
passions, the senses, postulated as causes, as guilty. By means of
other calamities distressing physiological conditions are interpreted
as “merited”).—The “explanation” of pleasant sensations. These
sensations are dependent upon a trust in God. They may depend upon
our consciousness of having done one or two good actions (a so-called
“good conscience” is a physiological condition, which may be the
outcome of good digestion). They may depend upon the happy issue of
certain undertakings (—an ingenuous mistake: the happy issue of an
undertaking certainly does not give a hypochondriac or a Pascal any
general sensation of pleasure). They may depend upon faith, love and
hope,—the Christian virtues. As a matter of fact all these pretended
explanations are but the results of certain states, and as it were
translations of feelings of pleasure and pain into a false dialect: a
man is in a condition of hopefulness because the dominant physiological
sensation of his being is again one of strength and wealth; he trusts
in God because the feeling of abundance and power gives him a peaceful
state of mind. Morality and religion are completely and utterly parts
of the psychology of error: in every particular case cause and effect
are confounded; as truth is confounded with the effect of that which is
believed to be true; or a certain state of consciousness is confounded
with the chain of causes which brought it about.


7

_The Error of Free-Will._ At present we no longer have any mercy upon
the concept “free-will”: we know only too well what it is—the most
egregious theological trick that has ever existed for the purpose of
making mankind “responsible” in a theological manner,—that is to
say, to make mankind dependent upon theologians. I will now explain
to you only the psychology of the whole process of inculcating the
sense of responsibility. Wherever men try to trace responsibility
home to anyone, it is the instinct of punishment and of the desire
to judge which is active. Becoming is robbed of its innocence when
any particular condition of things is traced to a will, to intentions
and to responsible actions. The doctrine of the will was invented
principally for the purpose of punishment,—that is to say, with
the intention of tracing guilt. The whole of ancient psychology,
or the psychology of the will, is the outcome of the fact that its
originators, who were the priests at the head of ancient communities,
wanted to create for themselves a right to administer punishments—or
the right for God to do so. Men were thought of as “free” in order that
they might be judged and punished—in order that they might be held
guilty: consequently every action had to be regarded as voluntary,
and the origin of every action had to be imagined as lying in
consciousness(—in this way the most fundamentally fraudulent character
of psychology was established as the very principle of psychology
itself). Now that we have entered upon the opposite movement, now that
we immoralists are trying with all our power to eliminate the concepts
of guilt and punishment from the world once more, and to cleanse
psychology, history, nature and all social institutions and customs
of all signs of those two concepts, we recognise no more radical
opponents than the theologians, who with their notion of “a moral order
of things,” still continue to pollute the innocence of Becoming with
punishment and guilt Christianity is the metaphysics of the hangman.


8

What then, alone, can our teaching be?—That no one gives man his
qualities, neither God, society, his parents, his ancestors, nor
himself (—this nonsensical idea which is at last refuted here, was
taught as “intelligible freedom” by Kant, and perhaps even as early
as Plato himself). No one is responsible for the fact that he exists
at all, that he is constituted as he is, and that he happens to be in
certain circumstances and in a particular environment. The fatality of
his being cannot be divorced from the fatality of all that which has
been and will be. This is not the result of an individual intention,
of a will, of an aim, there is no attempt at attaining to any “ideal
man,” or “ideal happiness” or “ideal morality” with him,—it is absurd
to wish him to be careering towards some sort of purpose. _We_ invented
the concept “purpose”; in reality purpose is altogether lacking. One
is necessary, one is a piece of fate, one belongs to the whole, one is
in the whole,—there is nothing that could judge, measure, compare,
and condemn our existence, for that would mean judging, measuring,
comparing and condemning the whole. _But there is nothing outside the
whole!_ The fact that no one shall any longer be made responsible, that
the nature of existence may not be traced to a _causa prima_, that the
world is an entity neither as a sensorium nor as a spirit—_this alone
is the great deliverance_,—thus alone is the innocence of Becoming
restored.... The concept “God” has been the greatest objection to
existence hitherto.... We deny God, we deny responsibility in God: thus
alone do we save the world.—




THE “IMPROVERS” OF MANKIND


1

You are aware of my demand upon philosophers, that they should take
up a stand Beyond Good and Evil,—that they should have the illusion
of the moral judgment beneath them. This demand is the result of a
point of view which I was the first to formulate: _that there are no
such things as moral facts._ Moral judgment has this in common with
the religious one, that it believes in realities which are not real.
Morality is only an interpretation of certain phenomena: or, more
strictly speaking, a misinterpretation of them. Moral judgment, like
the religious one, belongs to a stage of ignorance in which even the
concept of reality, the distinction between real and imagined things,
is still lacking: so that truth, at such a stage, is applied to a host
of things which to-day we call “imaginary.” That is why the moral
judgment must never be taken quite literally: as such it is sheer
nonsense. As a sign code, however, it is invaluable: to him at least
who knows, it reveals the most valuable facts concerning cultures and
inner conditions, which did not know enough to “understand” themselves.
Morality is merely a sign-language, simply symptomatology: one must
already know what it is all about in order to turn it to any use.


2

Let me give you one example, quite provisionally. In all ages there
have been people who wished to “improve” mankind: this above all
is what was called morality. But the most different tendencies
are concealed beneath the same word. Both the taming of the beast
man, and the rearing of a particular type of man, have been called
“improvement”: these zoological _termini,_ alone, represent real
things—real things of which the typical “improver,” the priest,
naturally knows nothing, and will know nothing. To call the taming
of an animal “improving” it, sounds to our ears almost like a joke.
He who knows what goes on in menageries, doubts very much whether an
animal is improved in such places. It is certainly weakened, it is
made less dangerous, and by means of the depressing influence of fear,
pain, wounds, and hunger, it is converted into a sick animal. And the
same holds good of the tamed man whom the priest has “improved.” In
the early years of the Middle Ages, during which the Church was most
distinctly and above all a menagerie, the most beautiful examples of
the “blond beast” were hunted down in all directions,—the noble
Germans, for instance, were “improved.” But what did this “improved”
German, who had been lured to the monastery look like after the
process? He looked like a caricature of man, like an abortion: he had
become a “sinner,” he was caged up, he had been imprisoned behind a
host of apparling notions. He now lay there, sick, wretched, malevolent
even toward himself: full of hate for the instincts of life, full of
suspicion in regard to all that is still strong and happy. In short a
“Christian.” In physiological terms: in a fight with an animal, the
only way of making it weak may be to make it sick. The Church undersood
this: it ruined man, it made him weak,—but it laid claim to having
“improved” him.


3

Now let us consider the other case which is called morality, the
case of the rearing of a particular race and species. The most
magnificent example of this is offered by Indian morality, and is
sanctioned religiously as the “Law of Manu.” In this book the task
is set of rearing no less than four races at once: a priestly race,
a warrior race, a merchant and agricultural race, and finally a race
of servants—the Sudras. It is quite obvious that we are no longer
in a circus watching tamers of wild animals in this book. To have
conceived even the plan of such a breeding scheme, presupposes the
existence of a man who is a hundred times milder and more reasonable
than the mere lion-tamer. One breathes more freely, after stepping out
of the Christian atmosphere of hospitals and prisons, into this more
salubrious, loftier and more spacious world. What a wretched thing the
New Testament is beside Manu, what an evil odour hangs around it!—But
even this organisation found it necessary to be terrible,—not this
time in a struggle with the animal-man, but with his opposite, the
non-caste man, the hotch-potch man, the Chandala. And once again it
had no other means of making him weak and harmless, than by making
him sick,—it was the struggle with the greatest “number.” Nothing
perhaps is more offensive to our feelings than these measures of
security on the part of Indian morality. The third edict, for instance
(Avadana-Sastra I.), which treats “of impure vegetables,” ordains that
the only nourishment that the Chandala should be allowed must consist
of garlic and onions, as the holy scriptures forbid their being given
corn or grain-bearing fruit, water and fire. The same edict declares
that the water which they need must be drawn neither out of rivers,
wells or ponds, but only out of the ditches leading to swamps and out
of the holes left by the footprints of animals. They are likewise
forbidden to wash either their linen or themselves since the water
which is graciously granted to them must only be used for quenching
their thirst. Finally Sudra women are forbidden to assist Chandala
women at their confinements, while Chandala women are also forbidden to
assist each other at such times. The results of sanitary regulations of
this kind could not fail to make themselves felt; deadly epidemics and
the most ghastly venereal diseases soon appeared, and in consequence
of these again “the Law of the Knife,”—that is to say circumcision,
was prescribed for male children and the removal of the small labia
from the females. Manu himself says: “the Chandala are the fruit of
adultery, incest, and crime (—this is the necessary consequence of the
idea of breeding). Their clothes shall consist only of the rags torn
from corpses, their vessels shall be the fragments of broken pottery,
their ornaments shall be made of old iron, and their religion shall be
the worship of evil spirits; without rest they shall wander from place
to place. They are forbidden to write from left to right or to use
their right hand in writing: the use of the right hand and writing from
left to right are reserved to people of virtue, to people of race.”


4

These regulations are instructive enough: we can see in them the
absolutely pure and primeval humanity of the Aryans,—we learn that
the notion “pure blood,” is the reverse of harmless. On the other hand
it becomes clear among which people the hatred, the Chandala hatred
of this humanity has been immortalised, among which people it has
become religion and genius. From this point of view the gospels are
documents of the highest value; and the Book of Enoch is still more
so. Christianity as sprung from Jewish roots and comprehensible only
as grown upon this soil, represents the counter-movement against that
morality of breeding, of race and of privilege:—it is essentially an
anti-Aryan religion: Christianity is the transvaluation of all Aryan
values, the triumph of Chandala values, the proclaimed gospel of the
poor and of the low, the general insurrection of all the down-trodden,
the wretched, the bungled and the botched, against the “race,”—the
immortal revenge of the Chandala as the _religion of love._


5

The morality of breeding and the morality of taming, in the means which
they adopt in order to prevail, are quite worthy of each other: we may
lay down as a leading principle that in order to create morality a
man must have the absolute will to immorality. This is the great and
strange problem with which I have so long been occupied: the psychology
of the “Improvers” of mankind. A small, and at bottom perfectly
insignificant fact, known as the “_pia fraus_,” first gave me access
to this problem: the _pia fraus_, the heirloom of all philosophers and
priests who “improve” mankind. Neither Manu, nor Plato, nor Confucius,
nor the teachers of Judaism and Christianity, have ever doubted their
right to falsehood. They have never doubted their right to quite a
number of other things To express oneself in a formula, one might
say:—all means which have been used heretofore with the object of
making man moral, were through and through immoral.




THINGS THE GERMANS LACK


1

Among Germans at the present day it does not suffice to have intellect;
one is actually forced to appropriate it, to lay claim to it.

Maybe I know the Germans, perhaps I may tell them a few home-truths.
Modern Germany represents such an enormous store of inherited and
acquired capacity, that for some time it might spend this accumulated
treasure even with some prodigality. It is no superior culture that has
ultimately become prevalent with this modern tendency, nor is it by any
means delicate taste, or noble beauty of the instincts; but rather a
number of virtues more manly than any that other European countries can
show. An amount of good spirits and self-respect, plenty of firmness
in human relations and in the reciprocity of duties; much industry and
much perseverance—and a certain inherited soberness which is much more
in need of a spur than of a brake. Let me add that in this country
people still obey without feeling that obedience humiliates. And no one
despises his opponent.

You observe that it is my desire to be fair to the Germans: and in this
respect I should not like to be untrue to myself,—I must therefore
also state my objections to them. It costs a good deal to attain to a
position of power; for power _stultifies._ The Germans—they were once
called a people of thinkers: do they really think at all at present?
Nowadays the Germans are bored by intellect, they mistrust intellect;
politics have swallowed up all earnestness for really intellectual
things—“Germany, Germany above all.”[1] I fear this was the death-blow
to German philosophy. “Are there any German philosophers? Are there any
German poets? Are there any good German books?” people ask me abroad. I
blush; but with that pluck which is peculiar to me, even in moments of
desperation, I reply: “Yes, Bismarck!”—Could I have dared to confess
what books _are_ read to-day? Cursed instinct of mediocrity!—


2

What might not German intellect have been!—who has not thought sadly
upon this question! But this nation has deliberately stultified itself
for almost a thousand years: nowhere else have the two great European
narcotics, alcohol and Christianity, been so viciously abused as in
Germany. Recently a third opiate was added to the list, one which in
itself alone would have sufficed to complete the ruin of all subtle
and daring intellectual animation, I speak of music, our costive and
constipating German music. How much peevish ponderousness, paralysis,
dampness, dressing-gown languor, and beer is there not in German
intelligence!

How is it really possible that young men who consecrate their whole
lives to the pursuit of intellectual ends, should not feel within them
the first instinct of intellectuality, the _self-preservative instinct
of the intellect_—and should drink beer? The alcoholism of learned
youths does not incapacitate them for becoming scholars—a man quite
devoid of intellect may be a great scholar,—but it is a problem in
every other respect. Where can that soft degeneracy not be found, which
is produced in the intellect by beer! I once laid my finger upon a case
of this sort, which became almost famous,—the degeneration of our
leading German free-spirit, the _clever_ David Strauss, into the author
of a suburban gospel and New Faith. Not in vain had he sung the praises
of “the dear old brown liquor” in verse—true unto death.


3

I have spoken of German intellect. I have said that it is becoming
coarser and shallower. Is that enough?—In reality something very
different frightens me, and that is the ever steady decline of
German earnestness, German profundity, and German passion in things
intellectual. Not only intellectuality, but also pathos has altered.
From time to time I come in touch with German universities; what
an extraordinary atmosphere prevails among their scholars! what
barrenness! and what self-satisfied and lukewarm intellectuality! For
any one to point to German science as an argument against me would show
that he grossly misunderstood my meaning, while it would also prove
that he had not read a word of my writings. For seventeen years I
have done little else than expose the de-intellectualising influence
of our modern scientific studies. The severe slavery to which every
individual nowadays is condemned by the enormous range covered by the
sciences, is the chief reason why fuller, richer and profounder natures
can find no education or educators that are fit for them. Nothing
is more deleterious to this age than the superfluity of pretentious
loafers and fragmentary human beings; our universities are really
the involuntary forcing houses for this kind of withering-up of the
instincts of intellectuality. And the whole of Europe is beginning
to know this—politics on a large scale deceive no one. Germany is
becoming ever more and more the Flat-land of Europe. I am still in
search of a German with whom I could be serious after my own fashion.
And how much more am I in search of one with whom I could be cheerful
_—The Twilight of the Idols:_ ah! what man to-day would be capable
of understanding the kind of seriousness from which a philosopher is
recovering in this work! It is our cheerfulness that people understand
least.


4

Let us examine another aspect of the question: it is not only obvious
that German culture is declining, but adequate reasons for this decline
are not lacking. After all, nobody can spend more than he has:—this
is true of individuals, it is also true of nations. If you spend
your strength in acquiring power, or in politics on a large scale,
or in economy, or in universal commerce, or in parliamentarism, or
in military interests—if you dissipate the modicum of reason, of
earnestness, of will, and of self-control that constitutes your nature
in one particular fashion, you cannot dissipate it in another. Culture
and the state—let no one be deceived on this point—are antagonists:
A “culture-state”[2] is merely a modern idea. The one lives upon
the other, the one flourishes at the expense of the other. All great
periods of culture have been periods of political decline; that which
is great from the standpoint of culture, was always unpolitical—even
anti-political. Goethe’s heart opened at the coming of Napoleon—it
closed at the thought of the “Wars of Liberation.” At the very moment
when Germany arose as a great power in the world of politics, France
won new importance as a force in the world of culture. Even at this
moment a large amount of fresh intellectual earnestness and passion
has emigrated to Paris; the question of pessimism, for instance,
and the question of Wagner; in France almost all psychological and
artistic questions are considered with incomparably more subtlety and
thoroughness than they are in Germany,—the Germans are even incapable
of this kind of earnestness. In the history of European culture the
rise of the Empire signifies, above all, a displacement of the centre
of gravity. Everywhere people are already aware of this: in things that
really matter—and these after all constitute culture,—the Germans
are no longer worth considering. I ask you, can you show me one single
man of brains who could be mentioned in the same breath with other
European thinkers, like your Goethe, your Hegel, your Heinrich Heine,
and your Schopenhauer?—The fact that there is no longer a single
German philosopher worth mentioning is an increasing wonder.


5

Everything that matters has been lost sight of by the whole of the
higher educational system of Germany: the end quite as much as the
means to that end. People forget that education, the process of
cultivation itself, is the end—and not “the Empire”—they forget that
the _educator_ is required for this end—and not the public-school
teacher and university scholar. Educators are needed who are themselves
educated, superior and noble intellects, who can prove that they are
thus qualified, that they are ripe and mellow products of culture
at every moment of their lives, in word and in gesture;—not the
learned louts who, like “superior wet-nurses,” are now thrust upon the
youth of the land by public schools and universities. With but rare
exceptions, that which is lacking in Germany is the first prerequisite
of education—that is to say, the educators; hence the decline of
German culture. One of those rarest exceptions is my highly respected
friend Jacob Burckhardt of Bâle: to him above all is Bâle indebted
for its foremost position in human culture What the higher schools
of Germany really do accomplish is this, they brutally train a vast
crowd of young men, in the smallest amount of time possible, to become
useful and exploitable servants of the state. “Higher education”
and a vast crowd—these terms contradict each other from the start.
All superior education can only concern the exception: a man must be
privileged in order to have a right to such a great privilege. All
great and beautiful things cannot be a common possession: _pulchrum
est paucorum hominum._—What is it that brings about the decline of
German culture? The fact that “higher education” is no longer a special
privilege—the democracy of a process of cultivation that has become
“general,” _common._ Nor must it be forgotten that the privileges of
the military profession by urging many too many to attend the higher
schools, involve the downfall of the latter. In modern Germany nobody
is at liberty to give his children a noble education: in regard to
their teachers, their curricula, and their educational aims, our higher
schools are one and all established upon a fundamentally doubtful
mediocre basis. Everywhere, too, a hastiness which is unbecoming rules
supreme; just as if something would be forfeited if the young man were
not “finished” at the age of twenty-three, or did not know how to
reply to the most essential question, “which calling to choose?”—The
superior kind of man, if you please, does not like “callings,”
precisely because he knows himself to be called. He has time, he takes
time, he cannot possibly think of becoming “finished,”—in the matter
of higher culture, a man of thirty years is a beginner, a child. Our
overcrowded public-schools, our accumulation of foolishly manufactured
public-school masters, are a scandal: maybe there are very serious
_motives_ for defending this state of affairs, as was shown quite
recently by the professors of Heidelberg; but there can be no reasons
for doing so.


6

In order to be true to my nature, which is affirmative and which
concerns itself with contradictions and criticism only indirectly
and with reluctance, let me state at once what the three objects
are for which we need educators. People must learn to see; they
must learn to think, and they must learn to speak and to write: the
object of all three of these pursuits is a noble culture. To learn
to see—to accustom the eye to calmness, to patience, and to allow
things to come up to it; to defer judgment, and to acquire the habit
of approaching and grasping an individual case from all sides. This
is the first preparatory schooling of intellectuality. One must not
respond immediately to a stimulus; one must acquire a command of the
obstructing and isolating instincts. To learn to see, as I understand
this matter, amounts almost to that which in popular language is
called “strength of will”: its essential feature is precisely _not_
to _wish_ to see, to be able to postpone one’s decision. All lack of
intellectuality, all vulgarity, arises out of the inability to resist
a stimulus:—one must respond or react, every impulse is indulged. In
many cases such necessary action is already a sign of morbidity, of
decline, and a symptom of exhaustion. Almost everything that coarse
popular language characterises as vicious, is merely that physiological
inability to refrain from reacting.—As an instance of what it means
to have learnt to see, let me state that a man thus trained will as a
learner have become generally slow, suspicious, and refractory. With
hostile calm he will first allow every kind of strange and _new_ thing
to come right up to him,—he will draw back his hand at its approach.
To stand with all the doors of one’s soul wide open, to lie slavishly
in the dust before every trivial fact, at all times of the day to be
strained ready for the leap, in order to deposit one’s self, to plunge
one’s self, into other souls and other things, in short, the famous
“objectivity” of modern times, is bad taste, it is essentially vulgar
and cheap.


7

As to learning how to think—our schools no longer have any notion
of such a thing. Even at the universities, among the actual scholars
in philosophy, logic as a theory, as a practical pursuit, and as a
business, is beginning to die out. Turn to any German book: you will
not find the remotest trace of a realisation that there is such a
thing as a technique, a plan of study, a will to mastery, in the
matter of thinking,—that thinking insists upon being learnt, just
as dancing insists upon being learnt, and that thinking insists upon
being learnt as a form of dancing. What single German can still say he
knows from experience that delicate shudder which _light footfalls_
in matters intellectual cause to pervade his whole body and limbs!
Stiff awkwardness in intellectual attitudes, and the clumsy fist in
grasping—these things are so essentially German, that outside Germany
they are absolutely confounded with the German spirit. The German
has no fingers for delicate _nuances. _ The fact that the people of
Germany have actually tolerated their philosophers, more particularly
that most deformed cripple of ideas that has ever existed—the great
Kant, gives one no inadequate notion of their native elegance. For,
truth to tell, dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the
curriculum of all noble education: dancing with the feet, with ideas,
with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with
the pen—that one must learn how to write?—But at this stage I should
become utterly enigmatical to German readers.


[1] The German national hymn: “_Deutschland, Deutschland über
alles.—_” TR.

[2] The word _Kultur-Staat_ “culture-state” has become a standard
expression in the German language, and is applied to the leading
European States.—TR.




SKIRMISHES IN A WAR WITH THE AGE


1

_My Impossible People._—Seneca, or the toreador of virtue—-Rousseau,
or the return to nature, _in impuris naturalibus._—Schiller, or the
Moral-Trumpeter of Sackingen.—Dante, or the hyæna that writes poetry
in tombs.—Kant, or _cant_ as an intelligible character.—Victor
Hugo, or the lighthouse on the sea of nonsense.—Liszt, or the
school of racing—after women.—George Sand, or _lactea ubertas,_
in plain English: the cow with plenty of beautiful milk.—Michelet,
or enthusiasm in its shirt sleeves.—Carlyle, or Pessimism after
undigested meals.—John Stuart Mill, or offensive lucidity.—The
brothers Goncourt, or the two Ajaxes fighting with Homer. Music by
Offenbach.—Zola, or the love of stinking.


2

_Renan._—Theology, or the corruption of reason by original sin
(Christianity). Proof of this,—Renan who, even in those rare cases
where he ventures to say either Yes or No on a general question,
invariably misses the point with painful regularity. For instance,
he would fain associate science and nobility: but surely it must be
obvious that science is democratic. He seems to be actuated by a
strong desire to represent an aristocracy of intellect: but, at the
same time he grovels on his knees, and not only on his knees, before
the opposite doctrine, the gospel of the humble. What is the good of
all free-spiritedness, modernity, mockery and acrobatic suppleness,
if in one’s belly one is still a Christian, a Catholic, and even a
priest! Renan’s forte, precisely like that of a Jesuit and Father
Confessor, lies in his seductiveness. His intellectuality is not
devoid of that unctuous complacency of a parson,—like all priests, he
becomes dangerous only when he loves. He is second to none in the art
of skilfully worshipping a dangerous thing. This intellect of Renan’s,
which in its action is enervating, is one calamity the more, for poor,
sick France with her will-power all going to pieces.


3

_Sainte-Beuve._—There is naught of man in him; he is full of petty
spite towards all virile spirits. He wanders erratically; he is subtle,
inquisitive, a little bored, for ever with his ear to key-holes,—at
bottom a woman, with all woman’s revengefulness and sensuality. As a
psychologist he is a genius of slander; inexhaustively rich in means
to this end; no one understands better than he how to introduce a
little poison into praise. In his fundamental instincts he is plebeian
and next of kin to Rousseau’s resentful spirit: consequently he is
a Romanticist—for beneath all romanticism Rousseau’s instinct for
revenge grunts and frets. He is a revolutionary, but kept within
bounds by “funk.” He is embarrassed in the face of everything that is
strong (public opinion, the Academy, the court, even Port Royal). He
is embittered against everything great in men and things, against
everything that believes in itself. Enough of a poet and of a female to
be able to feel greatness as power; he is always turning and twisting,
because, like the proverbial worm, he constantly feels that he is
being trodden upon. As a critic he has no standard of judgment, no
guiding principle, no backbone. Although he possesses the tongue of
the Cosmopolitan libertine which can chatter about a thousand things,
he has not the courage even to acknowledge his _libertinage._ As a
historian he has no philosophy, and lacks the power of philosophical
vision,—hence his refusal to act the part of a judge, and his adoption
of the mask of “objectivity” in all important matters. His attitude
is better in regard to all those things in which subtle and effete
taste is the highest tribunal: in these things he really does have
the courage of his own personality—he really does enjoy his own
nature—he actually is a _master,_—In some respects he is a prototype
of Baudelaire.


4

“_The Imitation of Christ_” is one of those books which I cannot even
take hold of without physical loathing: it exhales a perfume of the
eternally feminine, which to appreciate fully one must be a Frenchman
or a Wagnerite. This saint has a way of speaking about love which
makes even Parisiennes feel a little curious.—I am told that that
_most intelligent_ of Jesuits, Auguste Comte, who wished to lead his
compatriots back to Rome by the circuitous route of science, drew his
inspiration from this book. And I believe it: “The religion of the
heart.”


5

_G. Eliot._—They are rid of the Christian God and therefore
think it all the more incumbent upon them to hold tight to Christian
morality: this is an English way of reasoning; but let us not take it
ill in moral females _à la_ Eliot. In England, every man who indulges
in any trifling emancipation from theology, must retrieve his honour
in the most terrifying manner by becoming a moral fanatic. That is how
they do penance in that country.—As for us, we act differently. When
we renounce the Christian faith, we abandon all right to Christian
morality. This is not by any means self-evident and in defiance of
English shallow-pates the point must be made ever more and more plain.
Christianity is a system, a complete outlook upon the world, conceived
as a whole. If its leading concept, the belief in God, is wrenched
from it, the whole is destroyed; nothing vital remains in our grasp.
Christianity presupposes that man does not and cannot know what is
good or bad for him: the Christian believes in God who, alone, can
know these things. Christian morality is a command, its origin is
transcendental. It is beyond all criticism, all right to criticism;
it is true only on condition that God is truth,—it stands or falls
with the belief in God. If the English really believe that they know
intuitively, and of their own accord, what is good and evil; if,
therefore, they assert that they no longer need Christianity as a
guarantee of morality, this in itself is simply the outcome of the
dominion of Christian valuations, and a proof of the strength and
profundity of this dominion. It only shows that the origin of English
morality has been forgotten, and that its exceedingly relative right to
exist is no longer felt. For Englishmen morality is not yet a problem.


6

_George Sand._—I have been reading the first “_Lettres d’un
Voyageur_:” like everything that springs from Rousseau’s influence
it is false, made-up, blown out, and exaggerated! I cannot endure
this bright wall-paper style, any more than I can bear the vulgar
striving after generous feelings. The worst feature about it is
certainly the coquettish adoption of male attributes by this female,
after the manner of ill-bred schoolboys. And how cold she must have
been inwardly all the while, this insufferable artist! She wound
herself up like a clock—and wrote. As cold as Hugo and Balzac, as
cold as all Romanticists are as soon as they begin to write! And how
self-complacently she must have lain there, this prolific ink-yielding
cow. For she had something German in her (German in the bad sense),
just as Rousseau, her master, had;—something which could only have
been possible when French taste was declining!—and Renan adores her!...


7

_A Moral for Psychologists._ Do not go in for any note-book psychology!
Never observe for the sake of observing! Such things lead to a false
point of view, to a squint, to something forced and exaggerated.
To experience things on purpose—this is not a bit of good. In the
midst of an experience a man should not turn his eyes upon himself;
in such cases any eye becomes the “evil eye.” A born psychologist
instinctively avoids seeing for the sake of seeing. And the same holds
good of the born painter. Such a man never works “from nature,”—he
leaves it to his instinct, to his _camera obscura_ to sift and to
define the “fact,” “nature,” the “experience.” The general idea,
the conclusion, the result, is the only thing that reaches his
consciousness. He knows nothing of that wilful process of deducing
from particular cases. What is the result when a man sets about this
matter differently?—when, for instance, after the manner of Parisian
novelists, he goes in for note-book psychology on a large and small
scale? Such a man is constantly spying on reality, and every evening
he bears home a handful of fresh curios.... But look at the result!—a
mass of daubs, at best a piece of mosaic, in any case something heaped
together, restless and garish. The Goncourts are the greatest sinners
in this respect: they cannot put three sentences together which are not
absolutely painful to the eye—the eye of the psychologist. From an
artistic standpoint, nature is no model. It exaggerates, distorts, and
leaves gaps. Nature is the _accident._ To study “from nature” seems to
me a bad sign: it betrays submission, weakness, fatalism—this lying
in the dust before trivial facts is unworthy of a thorough artist. To
see _what is_—is the function of another order of intellects, the
_anti-artistic,_ the matter-of-fact. One must know _who_ one is.


8

_Concerning the psychology of the artist_ For art to be possible at
all—that is to say, in order that an æsthetic mode of action and of
observation may exist, a certain preliminary physiological state is
indispensable _ecstasy._[1] This state of ecstasy must first have
intensified the susceptibility of the whole machine: otherwise, no art
is possible. All kinds of ecstasy, however differently produced, have
this power to create art, and above all the state dependent upon sexual
excitement—this most venerable and primitive form of ecstasy. The same
applies to that ecstasy which is the outcome of all great desires,
all strong passions; the ecstasy of the feast, of the arena, of the
act of bravery, of victory, of all extreme action; the ecstasy of
cruelty; the ecstasy of destruction; the ecstasy following upon certain
meteorological influences, as for instance that of spring-time, or upon
the use of narcotics; and finally the ecstasy of will, that ecstasy
which results from accumulated and surging will-power.—The essential
feature of ecstasy is the feeling of increased strength and abundance.
Actuated by this feeling a man gives of himself to things, _he
forces_ them to partake of his riches, he does violence to them—this
proceeding is called _idealising._ Let us rid ourselves of a prejudice
here: idealising does not consist, as is generally believed, in a
suppression or an elimination of detail or of unessential features.
A stupendous _accentuation_ of the principal characteristics is by
far the most decisive factor at work, and in consequence the minor
characteristics vanish.


9

In this state a man enriches everything from out his own abundance:
what he sees, what he wills, he sees distended, compressed, strong,
overladen with power. He transfigures things until they reflect his
power,—until they are stamped with his perfection. This compulsion
to transfigure into the beautiful is—Art. Everything—even that which
he is not,—is nevertheless to such a man a means of rejoicing over
himself; in Art man rejoices over himself as perfection.—It is
possible to imagine a contrary state, a specifically anti-artistic
state of the instincts,—a state in which a man impoverishes,
attenuates, and draws the blood from everything. And, truth to tell,
history is full of such anti-artists, of such creatures of low
vitality who have no choice but to appropriate everything they see
and to suck its blood and make it thinner. This is the case with the
genuine Christian, Pascal for instance. There is no such thing as a
Christian who is also an artist ... Let no one be so childish as to
suggest Raphael or any homeopathic Christian of the nineteenth century
as an objection to this statement: Raphael said Yea, Raphael _did_
Yea,—consequently Raphael was no Christian.


10

What is the meaning of the antithetical concepts _Apollonian_ and
_Dionysian_ which I have introduced into the vocabulary of Æsthetic, as
representing two distinct modes of ecstasy?—Apollonian ecstasy acts
above all as a force stimulating the eye, so that it acquires the power
of vision. The painter, the sculptor, the epic poet are essentially
visionaries. In the Dionysian state, on the other hand, the whole
system of passions is stimulated and intensified, so that it discharges
itself by all the means of expression at once, and vents all its power
of representation, of imitation, of transfiguration, of transformation,
together with every kind of mimicry and histrionic display at the same
time. The essential feature remains the facility in transforming,
the inability to refrain from reaction (—a similar state to that of
certain hysterical patients, who at the slightest hint assume any
rôle). It is impossible for the Dionysian artist not to understand any
suggestion; no outward sign of emotion escapes him, he possesses the
instinct of comprehension and of divination in the highest degree,
just as he is capable of the most perfect art of communication. He
enters into every skin, into every passion: he is continually changing
himself. Music as we understand it to-day is likewise a general
excitation and discharge of the emotions; but, notwithstanding this, it
is only the remnant of a much richer world of emotional expression, a
mere residuum of Dionysian histrionism. For music to be made possible
as a special art, quite a number of senses, and particularly the
muscular sense, had to be paralysed (at least relatively: for all
rhythm still appeals to our muscles to a certain extent): and thus man
no longer imitates and represents physically everything he feels, as
soon as he feels it. Nevertheless that is the normal Dionysian state,
and in any case its primitive state. Music is the slowly attained
specialisation of this state at the cost of kindred capacities.


11

The actor, the mime, the dancer, the musician, and the lyricist, are
in their instincts fundamentally related; but they have gradually
specialised in their particular branch, and become separated—even
to the point of contradiction. The lyricist remained united with the
musician for the longest period of time; and the actor with the dancer.
The architect manifests neither a Dionysian nor an Apollonian state: In
his case it is the great act of will, the will that moveth mountains,
the ecstasy of the great will which aspires to art. The most powerful
men have always inspired architects; the architect has always been
under the suggestion of power. In the architectural structure, man’s
pride, man’s triumph over gravitation, man’s will to power, assume
a visible form. Architecture is a sort of oratory of power by means
of forms. Now it is persuasive, even flattering, and at other times
merely commanding. The highest sensation of power and security finds
expression in grandeur of style. That power which no longer requires to
be proved, which scorns to please; which responds only with difficulty;
which feels no witnesses around it; which is oblivious of the fact
that it is being opposed; which relies on itself fatalistically, and
is a law among laws:—such power expresses itself quite naturally in
grandeur of style.


12

I have been reading the life of Thomas Carlyle, that unconscious and
involuntary farce, that heroico-moral interpretation of dyspeptic
moods.—Carlyle, a man of strong words and attitudes, a rhetorician by
necessity, who seems ever to be tormented by the desire of finding some
kind of strong faith, and by his inability to do so (—in this respect
a typical Romanticist!). To yearn for a strong faith is not the proof
of a strong faith, but rather the reverse. If a man have a strong faith
he can indulge in the luxury of scepticism; he is strong enough, firm
enough, well-knit enough for such a luxury. Carlyle stupefies something
in himself by means of the _fortissimo_ of his reverence for men of a
strong faith, and his rage over those who are less foolish: he is in
sore need of noise. An attitude of constant and passionate dishonesty
towards himself—this is his _proprium;_ by virtue of this he is and
remains interesting.—Of course, in England he is admired precisely
on account of his honesty. Well, that is English; and in view of the
fact that the English are the nation of consummate cant, it is not only
comprehensible but also very natural. At bottom, Carlyle is an English
atheist who makes it a point of honour not to be one.


13

_Emerson._—He is much more enlightened, much broader, more versatile,
and more subtle than Carlyle; but above all, he is happier. He is one
who instinctively lives on ambrosia and who leaves the indigestible
parts of things on his plate. Compared with Carlyle he is a man of
taste.—Carlyle, who was very fond of him, nevertheless declared that
“he does not give us enough to chew.” This is perfectly true but
it is not unfavourable to Emerson.—Emerson possesses that kindly
intellectual cheerfulness which deprecates overmuch seriousness; he
has absolutely no idea of how old he is already, and how young he will
yet be,—he could have said of himself, in Lope de Vega’s words: “_yo
me sucedo a mi mismo._” His mind is always finding reasons for being
contented and even thankful; and at times he gets preciously near to
that serene superiority of the worthy bourgeois who returning from an
amorous rendezvous _tamquam re bene gesta,_ said gratefully “_Ut desint
vires, tamen est laudanda voluptas._”—


14

_Anti-Darwin._—As to the famous “struggle for existence,” it seems to
me, for the present, to be more of an assumption than a fact. It does
occur, but as an exception. The general condition of life is not one
of want or famine, but rather of riches, of lavish luxuriance, and even
of absurd prodigality,—where there is a struggle, it is a struggle
for power. We should not confound Malthus with nature.—Supposing,
however, that this struggle exists,—and it does indeed occur,—its
result is unfortunately the very reverse of that which the Darwinian
school seems to desire, and of that which in agreement with them we
also might desire: that is to say, it is always to the disadvantage
of the strong, the privileged, and the happy exceptions. Species
do not evolve towards perfection: the weak always prevail over the
strong—simply because they are the majority, and because they are also
the more crafty. Darwin forgot the intellect (—that is English!), the
weak have more intellect. In order to acquire intellect, one must be in
need of it. One loses it when one no longer needs it. He who possesses
strength flings intellect to the deuce (—“let it go hence!”[2]
say the Germans of the present day, “the _Empire_ will remain”).
As you perceive, intellect to me means caution, patience, craft,
dissimulation, great self-control, and everything related to mimicry
(what is praised nowadays as virtue is very closely related the latter).


15

_Casuistry of a Psychologist._—This man knows mankind: to what purpose
does he study his fellows? He wants to derive some small or even
great advantages from them,—he is a politician!... That man yonder
is also well versed in human nature: and ye tell me that he wishes to
draw no personal profit from his knowledge, that he is a thoroughly
disinterested person? Examine him a little more closely! Maybe he
wishes to derive a more wicked advantage from his possession; namely,
to feel superior to men, to be able to look down upon them, no longer
to feel one of them. This “disinterested person” is a despiser of
mankind; and the former is of a more humane type, whatever appearances
may seem to say to the contrary. At least he considers himself the
equal of those about him, at least he classifies himself with them.


16

_The psychological tact_ of Germans seems to me to have been set in
doubt by a whole series of cases which my modesty forbids me to
enumerate. In one case at least I shall not let the occasion slip
for substantiating my contention: I bear the Germans a grudge for
having made a mistake about Kant and his “backstairs philosophy,” as
I call it. Such a man was not the type of intellectual uprightness.
Another thing I hate to hear is a certain infamous “and”: the Germans
say, “Goethe _and_ Schiller,”—I even fear that they say, “Schiller
and Goethe.” ... Has nobody found Schiller out yet?—But there are
other “ands” which are even more egregious. With my own ears I have
heard—only among University professors, it is true!—men speak of
“Schopenhauer _and_ Hartmann.” ...[3]


17

The most intellectual men, provided they are also the most courageous,
experience the most excruciating tragedies: but on that very account
they honour life, because it confronts them with its most formidable
antagonism.


18

Concerning “_the Conscience of the Intellect_” Nothing seems to me
more uncommon to-day than genuine hypocrisy. I strongly suspect that
this growth is unable to flourish in the mild climate of our culture.
Hypocrisy belongs to an age of strong faith,—one in which one does
not lose one’s own faith in spite of the fact that one has to make
an outward show of holding another faith. Nowadays a man gives it
up; or, what is still more common, he acquires a second faith,—in
any case, however, he remains honest. Without a doubt it is possible
to have a much larger number of convictions at present, than it was
formerly: _possible_—that is to say, allowable,—that is to say,
_harmless._ From this there arises an attitude of toleration towards
one’s self. Toleration towards one’s self allows of a greater number
of convictions: the latter live comfortably side by side, and they
take jolly good care, as all the world does to-day, not to compromise
themselves. How does a man compromise himself to-day? When he is
consistent; when he pursues a straight course; when he has anything
less than five faces; when he is genuine.... I very greatly fear that
modern man is much too fond of comfort for certain vices; and the
consequence is that the latter are dying out. Everything evil which
is the outcome of strength of will—and maybe there is nothing evil
without the strengh of will,—degenerates, in our muggy atmosphere,
into virtue. The few hypocrites I have known only imitated hypocrisy:
like almost every tenth man to-day, they were actors.—


19

_Beautiful and Ugly:_—Nothing is more relative, let us say, more
restricted, than our sense of the beautiful. He who would try to
divorce it from the delight man finds in his fellows, would immediately
lose his footing. “Beauty in itself,” is simply a word, it is not even
a concept. In the beautiful, man postulates himself as the standard of
perfection; in exceptional cases he worships himself as that standard.
A species has no other alternative than to say “yea” to itself alone,
in this way. Its lowest instinct, the instinct of self-preservation and
self-expansion, still radiates in such sublimities. Man imagines the
world itself to be overflowing with beauty,—he forgets that he is the
cause of it all. He alone has endowed it with beauty. Alas! and only
with human all-too-human beauty! Truth to tell man reflects himself in
things, he thinks everything beautiful that throws his own image back
at him. The judgment “beautiful” is the “vanity of his species.” ...
A little demon of suspicion may well whisper into the sceptic’s ear:
is the world really beautified simply because man thinks it beautiful?
He has only humanised it—that is all. But nothing, absolutely nothing
proves to us that it is precisely man who is the proper model of
beauty. Who knows what sort of figure he would cut in the eyes of a
higher judge of taste? He might seem a little _outré_? perhaps even
somewhat amusing? perhaps a trifle arbitrary? “O Dionysus, thou divine
one, why dost thou pull mine ears?” Ariadne asks on one occasion of
her philosophic lover, during one of those famous conversations on the
island of Naxos. “I find a sort of humour in thine ears, Ariadne: why
are they not a little longer?”


20

Nothing is beautiful; man alone is beautiful: all æsthetic rests on
this piece of ingenuousness, it is the first axiom of this science.
And now let us straightway add the second to it: nothing is ugly save
the degenerate man,—within these two first principles the realm of
æsthetic judgments is confined. From the physiological standpoint,
everything ugly weakens and depresses man. It reminds him of decay,
danger, impotence; he literally loses strength in its presence. The
effect of ugliness may be gauged by the dynamometer. Whenever man’s
spirits are downcast, it is a sign that he scents the proximity of
something “ugly.” His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage
and his pride—these things collapse at the sight of what is ugly, and
rise at the sight of what is beautiful. In both cases an inference is
drawn; the premises to which are stored with extra ordinary abundance
in the instincts. Ugliness is understood to signify a hint and a
symptom of degeneration: that which reminds us however remotely of
degeneracy, impels us to the judgment “ugly.” Every sign of exhaustion,
of gravity, of age, of fatigue; every kind of constraint, such as
cramp, or paralysis; and above all the smells, colours and forms
associated with decomposition and putrefaction, however much they may
have been attenuated into symbols,—all these things provoke the same
reaction which is the judgment “ugly.” A certain hatred expresses
itself here: what is it that man hates? Without a doubt it is the
_decline of his type._ In this regard his hatred springs from the
deepest instincts of the race: there is horror, caution, profundity and
far-reaching vision in this hatred,—it is the most profound hatred
that exists. On its account alone Art is profound.


21

_Schopenhauer._—Schopenhauer, the last German who is to be reckoned
with (—who is a European event like Goethe, Hegel, or Heinrich Heine,
and who is not merely local, national), is for a psychologist a case
of the first rank: I mean as a malicious though masterly attempt to
enlist on the side of a general nihilistic depreciation of life, the
very forces which are opposed to such a movement,—that is to say, the
great self-affirming powers of the “will to live,” the exuberant forms
of life itself. He interpreted Art, heroism, genius, beauty, great
sympathy, knowledge, the will to truth, and tragedy, one after the
other, as the results of the denial, or of the need of the denial, of
the “will”—the greatest forgery, Christianity always excepted, which
history has to show. Examined more carefully, he is in this respect
simply the heir of the Christian interpretation; except that he knew
how to approve in a Christian fashion (_i.e._, nihilistically) even
of the great facts of human culture, which Christianity completely
repudiates. (He approved of them as paths to “salvation,” as
preliminary stages to “salvation,” as _appetisers_ calculated to arouse
the desire for “salvation.”)


22

Let me point to one single instance. Schopenhauer speaks of beauty with
melancholy ardour,—why in sooth does he do this? Because in beauty
he sees a bridge on which one can travel further, or which stimulates
one’s desire to travel further. According to him it constitutes a
momentary emancipation from the “will”—it lures to eternal salvation.
He values it more particularly as a deliverance from the “burning core
of the will” which is sexuality,—in beauty he recognises the negation
of the procreative instinct. Singular Saint! Some one contradicts thee;
I fear it is Nature. Why is there beauty of tone, colour, aroma, and
of rhythmic movement in Nature at all? What is it forces beauty to the
fore? Fortunately, too, a certain philosopher contradicts him. No less
an authority than the divine Plato himself (thus does Schopenhauer
call him), upholds another proposition: that all beauty lures to
procreation,—that this precisely is the chief characteristic of its
effect, from the lowest sensuality to the highest spirituality.


23

Plato goes further. With an innocence for which a man must be Greek
and not “Christian,” he says that there would be no such thing as
Platonic philosophy if there were not such beautiful boys in Athens:
it was the sight of them alone that set the soul of the philosopher
reeling with erotic passion, and allowed it no rest until it had
planted the seeds of all lofty things in a soil so beautiful. He
was also a singular saint!—One scarcely believes one’s ears, even
supposing one believes Plato. At least one realises that philosophy was
pursued differently in Athens; above all, publicly. Nothing is less
Greek than the cobweb-spinning with concepts by an anchorite, _amor
intellectualis dei_ after the fashion of Spinoza. Philosophy according
to Plato’s style might be defined rather as an erotic competition, as a
continuation and a spiritualisation of the old agonal gymnastics and
the conditions on which they depend.... What was the ultimate outcome
of this philosophic eroticism of Plato’s? A new art-form of the Greek
_Agon,_ dialectics.—In opposition to Schopenhauer and to the honour of
Plato, I would remind you that all the higher culture and literature of
classical France, as well, grew up on the soil of sexual interests. In
all its manifestations you may look for gallantry, the senses, sexual
competition, and “woman,” and you will not look in vain.


24

_L’Art pour l’Art._—The struggle against a purpose in art is always a
struggle against the moral tendency in art, against its subordination
to morality. _L’art pour l’art_ means, “let morality go to the devil!”
—But even this hostility betrays the preponderating power of the moral
prejudice. If art is deprived of the purpose of preaching morality
and of improving mankind, it does not by any means follow that art is
absolutely pointless, purposeless, senseless, in short _l’art pour
l’art_—a snake which bites its own tail. “No purpose at all is better
than a moral purpose!”—thus does pure passion speak. A psychologist,
on the other hand, puts the question: what does all art do? does it
not praise? does it not glorify? does it not select? does it not
bring things into prominence? In all this it strengthens or weakens
certain valuations. Is this only a secondary matter? an accident?
something in which the artist’s instinct has no share? Or is it not
rather the very prerequisite which enables the artist to accomplish
something?... Is his most fundamental instinct concerned with art?
Is it not rather concerned with the purpose of art, with life? with
a certain desirable kind of life? Art is the great stimulus to life;
how can it be regarded as purpose less, as pointless, as _l’art pour
l’art?_—There still remains one question to be answered: Art also
reveals much that is ugly, hard and questionable in life,—does it
not thus seem to make life intolerable?—And, as a matter of fact,
there have been philosophers who have ascribed this function to art.
According to Schopenhauer’s doctrine, the general object of art was to
“free one from the Will”; and what he honoured as the great utility
of tragedy, was that it “made people more resigned.”—But this, as
I have already shown, is a pessimistic standpoint; it is the “evil
eye”: the artist himself must be appealed to. What is it that the soul
of the tragic artist communicates to others? Is it not precisely his
fearless attitude towards that which is terrible and questionable?
This attitude is in itself a highly desirable one; he who has once,
experienced it honours it above everything else. He communicates it. He
must communicate, provided he is an artist and a genius in the art of
communication. A courageous and free spirit, in the presence of a mighty
foe, in the presence of a sublime misfortune, and face to face with a
problem that inspires horror—this is the triumphant attitude which
the tragic artist selects and which he glorifies. The martial elements
in our soul celebrate their Saturnalia in tragedy; he who is used to
suffering, he who looks out for suffering, the heroic man, extols his
existence by means of tragedy,—to him alone does the tragic artist
offer this cup of sweetest cruelty.—


25

To associate in an amiable fashion with anybody; to keep the house of
one’s heart open to all, is certainly liberal: but it is nothing else.
One can recognise the hearts that are capable of noble hospitality, by
their wealth of screened windows and closed shutters: they keep their
best rooms empty. Whatever for?—Because they are expecting guests who
are somebodies.


26

We no longer value ourselves sufficiently highly when we communicate
our soul’s content. Our real experiences are not at all garrulous. They
could not communicate themselves even if they wished to. They are at a
loss to find words for such confidences. Those things for which we find
words, are things wehave already overcome. In all speech there lies
an element of contempt. Speech, it would seem, was only invented for
average, mediocre and communicable things.—Every spoken word proclaims
the speaker vulgarised—(Extract from a moral code for deaf-and-dumb
people and other philosophers.)


27

“This picture is perfectly beautiful!”[4] The dissatisfied and
exasperated literary woman with a desert in her heart and in her belly,
listening with agonised curiosity every instant to the imperative
which whispers to her from the very depths of her being: _aut liberi,
aut libri:_ the literary woman, sufficiently educated to understand the
voice of nature, even when nature speaks Latin, and moreover enough
of a peacock and a goose to speak even French with herself in secret
“_Je me verrai, je me lirai, je m’extasierai et je dirai: Possible, que
j’aie eu tant d’esprit?_” ...


28

The objective ones speak.—“Nothing comes more easily to us, than to
be wise, patient, superior. We are soaked in the oil of indulgence and
of sympathy, we are absurdly just, we forgive everything. Precisely on
that account we should be severe with ourselves; for that very reason
we ought from time to time to go in for a little emotion, a little
emotional vice. It may seem bitter to us; and between ourselves we may
even laugh at the figure which it makes us cut But what does it matter?
We have no other kind of self-control left. This is our asceticism, our
manner of performing penance.” _To become personal_—the virtues of the
“impersonal and objective one.”


29

_Extract from a doctor’s examination paper._—“What is the task of all
higher schooling?”—To make man into a machine. “What are the means
employed?”—He must learn how to be bored. “How is this achieved?”—By
means of the concept duty. “What example of duty has he before his
eyes?”—The philologist: it is he who teaches people how to swat.
“Who is the perfect man?”—The Government official. “Which philosophy
furnishes the highest formula for the Government official?”—Kant’s
philosophy: the Government official as thing-in-itself made judge over
the Government official as appearance.


30

_The right to Stupidity._—The worn-out worker, whose breath is
slow, whose look is good-natured, and who lets things slide just as
they please: this typical figure which in this age of labour (and
of “Empire!”) is to be met with in all classes of society, has now
begun to appropriate even Art, including the book, above all the
newspaper,—and how much more so beautiful nature, Italy! This man
of the evening, with his “savage instincts lulled,” as Faust has it;
needs his summer holiday, his sea-baths, his glacier, his Bayreuth.
In such ages Art has the right to be _purely foolish,_—as a sort of
vacation for spirit, wit and sentiment. Wagner understood this. Pure
foolishness[5] is a pick-me-up....


31

_Yet another problem of diet._—The means with which Julius Cæsar
preserved himself against sickness and headaches: heavy marches,
the simplest mode of living, uninterrupted sojourns in the open
air, continual hardships,—generally speaking these are the
self-preservative and self-defensive measures against the extreme
vulnerability of those subtle machines working at the highest
pressure, which are called geniuses.


32

_The Immoralist speaks._—Nothing is more distasteful to true
philosophers than man when he begins to wish.... If they see man only
at his deeds; if they see this bravest, craftiest and most enduring
of animals even inextricably entangled in disaster, how admirable he
then appears to them! They even encourage him.... But true philosophers
despise the man who wishes, as also the “desirable” man—and all the
desiderata and _ideals_ of man in general. If a philosopher could be a
nihilist, he would be one; for he finds only nonentity behind all human
ideals. Or, not even nonentity, but vileness, absurdity, sickness,
cowardice, fatigue and all sorts of dregs from out the quaffed goblets
of his life.... How is it that man, who as a reality is so estimable,
ceases from deserving respect the moment he begins to desire? Must he
pay for being so perfect as a reality? Must he make up for his deeds,
for the tension of spirit and will which underlies all his deeds, by an
eclipse of his powers in matters of the imagination and in absurdity?
Hitherto the history of his desires has been the _partie honteuse_ of
mankind: one should take care not to read too deeply in this history.
That which justifies man is his reality,—it will justify him to all
eternity. How much more valuable is a real man than any other man
who is merely the phantom of desires, of dreams of stinks and of
lies?—than any kind of ideal man? ... And the ideal man, alone, is
what the philosopher cannot abide.


33

_The Natural Value of Egoism._—Selfishness has as much value as the
physiological value of him who practises it: its worth may be great,
or it may be worthless and contemptible. Every individual may be
classified according to whether he represents the ascending or the
descending line of life. When this is decided, a canon is obtained
by means of which the value of his selfishness may be determined.
If he represent the ascending line of life, his value is of course
extraordinary—and for the sake of the collective life which in him
makes one step _forward,_ the concern about his maintenance, about
procuring his _optimum_ of conditions may even be extreme. The human
unit, the “individual,” as the people and the philosopher have always
understood him, is certainly an error: he is nothing in himself, no
atom, no “link in the chain,” no mere heritage from the past,—he
represents the whole direct line of mankind up to his own life....
If he represent declining development, decay, chronic degeneration,
sickness (—illnesses are on the whole already the outcome of decline,
and not the cause thereof), he is of little worth, and the purest
equity would have him _take away_ as little as possible from those who
are lucky strokes of nature. He is then only a parasite upon them....


34

_The Christian and the Anarchist._—When the anarchist, as the
mouthpiece of the decaying strata of society, raises his voice in
splendid indignation for “right,” “justice,” “equal rights,” he
is only groaning under the burden of his ignorance, which cannot
understand _why_ he actually suffers,—what his poverty consists
of—the poverty of life. An instinct of causality is active in
him: someone must be responsible for his being so ill at ease. His
“splendid indignation” alone relieves him somewhat, it is a pleasure
for all poor devils to grumble—it gives them a little intoxicating
sensation of power. The very act of complaining, the mere fact that one
bewails one’s lot, may lend such a charm to life that on that account
alone, one is ready to endure it. There is a small dose of revenge in
every lamentation. One casts one’s afflictions, and, under certain
circumstances, even one’s baseness, in the teeth of those who are
different, as if their condition were an injustice, an _iniquitous_
privilege. “Since I am _a blackguard_ you ought to be one too.” It is
upon such reasoning that revolutions are based.—To bewail one’s lot
is always despicable: it is always the outcome of weakness. Whether
one ascribes one’s afflictions to others or to _one’s self,_ it is all
the same. The socialist does the former, the Christian, for instance,
does the latter. That which is common to both attitudes, or rather
that which is equally ignoble in them both, is the fact that somebody
must be to _blame_ if one suffers—in short that the sufferer drugs
himself with the honey of revenge to allay his anguish. The objects
towards which this lust of vengeance, like a lust of pleasure, are
directed, are purely accidental causes. In all directions the sufferer
finds reasons for cooling his petty passion for revenge. If he is a
Christian, I repeat, he finds these reasons in himself. The Christian
and the Anarchist—both are decadents. But even when the Christian
condemns, slanders, and sullies the world, he is actuated by precisely
the same instinct as that which leads the socialistic workman to curse,
calumniate and cast dirt at society. The last “Judgment” itself is
still the sweetest solace to revenge—revolution, as the socialistic
workman expects it, only thought of as a little more remote.... The
notion of a “Beyond,” as well—why a Beyond, if it be not a means of
splashing mud over a “Here,” over this world? ...


35

_A Criticism of the Morality of Decadence._—An “altruistic”
morality, a morality under which selfishness withers, is in all
circumstances a bad sign. This is true of individuals and above
all of nations. The best are lacking when selfishness begins to be
lacking. Instinctively to select that which is harmful to one, to be
_lured_ by “disinterested” motives,—these things almost provide the
formula for decadence. “Not to have one’s own interests at heart”
—this is simply a moral fig-leaf concealing a very different fact, a
physiological one, to wit:—“I no longer know how to find what is to my
interest.”... Disintegration of the instincts!—All is up with man when
he becomes altruistic.—Instead of saying ingenuously “I am no longer
any good,” the lie of morality in the decadent’s mouth says: “Nothing
is any good,—life is no good.”—A judgment of this kind ultimately
becomes a great danger; for it is infectious, and it soon flourishes
on the polluted soil of society with tropical luxuriance, now as a
religion (Christianity), anon as a philosophy (Schopenhauerism). In
certain circumstances the mere effluvia of such a venomous vegetation,
springing as it does out of the very heart of putrefaction, can poison
life for thousands and thousands of years.


36

_A moral for doctors._—The sick man is a parasite of society. In
certain cases it is indecent to go on living. To continue to vegetate
in a state of cowardly dependence upon doctors and special treatments,
once the meaning of life, the right to life, has been lost, ought to
be regarded with the greatest contempt by society. The doctors, for
their part, should be the agents for imparting this contempt,—they
should no longer prepare prescriptions, but should every day administer
a fresh dose of _disgust_ to their patients. A new responsibility
should be created, that of the doctor—the responsibility of ruthlessly
suppressing and eliminating _degenerate_ life, in all cases in which
the highest interests of life itself, of ascending life, demand such
a course—for instance in favour of the right of procreation, in
favour of the right of being born, in favour of the right to live.
One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.
Death should be chosen freely,—death at the right time, faced clearly
and joyfully and embraced while one is surrounded by one’s children
and other witnesses. It should be affected in such a way that a proper
farewell is still possible, that he who is about to take leave of us
is still _himself,_ and really capable not only of valuing what he
has achieved and willed in life, but also of _summing-up_ the value
of life itself. Everything precisely the opposite of the ghastly
comedy which Christianity has made of the hour of death. We should
never forgive Christianity for having so abused the weakness of the
dying man as to do violence to his conscience, or for having used
his manner of dying as a means of valuing both man and his past—In
spite of all cowardly prejudices, it is our duty, in this respect,
above all to reinstate the proper—that is to say, the physiological,
aspect of so-called _natural_ death, which after all is perfectly
“unnatural” and nothing else than suicide. One never perishes through
anybody’s fault but one’s own. The only thing is that the death which
takes place in the most contemptible circumstances, the death that
is not free, the death which occurs at the wrong time, is the death
of a coward. Out of the very love one bears to life, one should wish
death to be different from this—that is to say, free, deliberate, and
neither a matter of chance nor of surprise. Finally let me whisper a
word of advice to our friends the pessimists and all other decadents.
We have not the power to prevent ourselves from being born: but this
error—for sometimes it is an error—can be rectified if we choose. The
man who does away with himself, performs the most estimable of deeds:
he almost deserves to live for having done so. Society—nay, life
itself, derives more profit from such a deed than from any sort of life
spent in renunciation, anæmia and other virtues,—at least the suicide
frees others from the sight of him, at least he removes one objection
against life. Pessimism _pur et vert,_ can _be proved only_ by the
self-refutation of the pessimists themselves: one should go a step
further in one’s consistency; one should not merely deny life with
“The World as Will and Idea,” as Schopenhauer did; one should in the
first place _deny Schopenhauer._ ... Incidentally, Pessimism, however
infectious it may be, does not increase the morbidness of an age or of
a whole species; it is rather the expression of that morbidness. One
falls a victim to it in the same way as one falls a victim to cholera;
one must already be predisposed to the disease. Pessimism in itself
does not increase the number of the world’s _decadents_ by a single
unit. Let me remind you of the statistical fact that in those years in
which cholera rages, the total number of deaths does not exceed that of
other years.


37

_Have we become more moral?_—As might have been expected, the whole
_ferocity_ of moral stultification, which, as is well known, passes
for morality itself in Germany, hurled itself against my concept
“Beyond Good and Evil.” I could tell you some nice tales about this.
Above all, people tried to make me see the “incontestable superiority”
of our age in regard to moral sentiment, and the _progress_ we had
made in these matters. Compared with us, a Cæsar Borgia was by no
means to be represented as “higher man,” the sort of _Superman,_
which I declared him to be. The editor of the Swiss paper the _Bund_
went so far as not only to express his admiration for the courage
displayed by my enterprise, but also to pretend to “understand” that
the intended purpose of my work was to abolish all decent feeling.
Much obliged!—In reply, I venture to raise the following question:
_have we really become more moral?_ The fact that everybody believes
that we have is already an objection to the belief. We modern men,
so extremely delicate and susceptible, full of consideration one for
the other, actually dare to suppose that the pampering fellow-feeling
which we all display, this unanimity which we have at last acquired
in sparing and helping and trusting one another marks a definite step
forward, and shows us to be far ahead of the man of the Renaissance.
But every age thinks the same, it is _bound_ to think the same. This
at least, is certain, that we should not dare to stand amid the
conditions which prevailed at the Renaissance, we should not even dare
to imagine ourselves in those conditions: our nerves could not endure
that reality, not to speak of our muscles. The inability to do this
however does not denote any progress; but simply the different and
more senile quality of our particular nature, its greater weakness,
delicateness, and susceptibility, out of which a morality _more rich
in consideration_ was bound to arise. If we imagine our delicateness
and senility, our physiological decrepitude as non-existent, our
morality of “humanisation” would immediately lose all value—no
morality has any value _per se_—it would even fill us with scorn. On
the other hand, do not let us doubt that we moderns, wrapped as we are
in the thick cotton wool of our humanitarianism which would shrink
even from grazing a stone, would present a comedy to Cæsar Borgia’s
contemporaries which would literally make them die of laughter. We are
indeed, without knowing it, exceedingly ridiculous with our modern
“virtues.” ... The decline of the instincts of hostility and of
those instincts that arouse suspicion,—for this if anything is what
constitutes our progress—is only one of the results manifested by
the general decline in _vitality_: it requires a hundred times more
trouble and caution to live such a dependent and senile existence.
In such circumstances everybody gives everybody else a helping hand,
and, to a certain extent, everybody is either an invalid or an
invalid’s attendant. This is then called “virtue”: among those men
who knew a different life—that is to say, a fuller, more prodigal,
more superabundant sort of life, it might have been called by another
name,—possibly “cowardice,” or “vileness,” or “old woman’s morality.”
... Our mollification of morals—this is my cry; this it you will is
my _innovation_—is the outcome of our decline; conversely hardness
and terribleness in morals may be the result of a surplus of life.
When the latter state prevails, much is dared, much is challenged,
and much is also _squandered_. That which formerly was simply the
salt of life, would now be our _poison_. To be indifferent—even this
is a form of strength—for that, likewise, we are too senile, too
decrepit: our morality of fellow-feeling, against which I was the
first to raise a finger of warning, that which might be called _moral
impressionism_, is one symptom the more of the excessive physiological
irritability which is peculiar to everything decadent. That movement
which attempted to introduce itself in a scientific manner on the
shoulders of Schopenhauer’s morality of pity—a very sad attempt!—is
in its essence the movement of decadence in morality, and as such
it is intimately related to Christian morality. Strong ages and
noble cultures see something contemptible in pity, in the “love of
one’s neighbour,” and in a lack of egoism and of self-esteem.—Ages
should be measured according to their _positive forces_;—valued
by this standard that prodigal and fateful age of the Renaissance,
appears as the last _great_ age, while we moderns with our anxious
care of ourselves and love of our neighbours, with all our unassuming
virtues of industry, equity, and scientific method—with our lust of
collection, of economy and of mechanism—represent a _weak_ age....
Our virtues are necessarily determined, and are even stimulated, by our
weakness. “Equality,” a certain definite process of making everybody
uniform, which only finds its expression in the theory of equal rights,
is essentially bound up with a declining culture: the chasm between
man and man, class and class, the multiplicity of types, the will to
be one’s self, and to distinguish one’s self—that, in fact, which I
call the _pathos of distance_ is proper to all _strong_ ages. The force
of tension,—nay, the tension itself, between extremes grows slighter
every day,—the extremes themselves are tending to become obliterated
to the point of becoming identical. All our political theories and
state constitutions, not by any means excepting “The German Empire,”
are the logical consequences, the necessary consequences of decline;
the unconscious effect of _decadence_ has begun to dominate even the
ideals of the various sciences. My objection to the whole of English
and French sociology still continues to be this, that it knows only
the _decadent form_ of society from experience, and with perfectly
childlike innocence takes the instincts of decline as the norm, the
standard, of sociological valuations. _Descending_ life, the decay
of all organising power—that is to say, of all that power which
separates, cleaves gulfs, and establishes rank above and below,
formulated itself in modern sociology as _the_ ideal. Our socialists
are decadents: but Herbert Spencer was also a _decadent,_—he saw
something to be desired in the triumph of altruism!...


38

_My Concept of Freedom._—Sometimes the value of a thing does not lie
in that which it helps us to achieve, but in the amount we have to
pay for it,—what it _costs_ us. For instance, liberal institutions
straightway cease from being liberal, the moment they are soundly
established: once this is attained no more grievous and more thorough
enemies of freedom exist than liberal institutions! One knows, of
course, what they bring about: they undermine the Will to Power,
they are the levelling of mountain and valley exalted to a morality,
they make people small, cowardly and pleasure-loving,—by means of
them the gregarious animal invariably triumphs. Liberalism, or, in
plain English, the _transformation of mankind into cattle._ The
same institutions, so long as they are fought for, produce quite
other results; then indeed they promote the cause of freedom quite
powerfully. Regarded more closely, it is war which produces these
results, war in favour of liberal institutions, which, as war, allows
the illiberal instincts to subsist. For war trains men to be free.
What in sooth is freedom? Freedom is the will to be responsible
for ourselves. It is to preserve the distance which separates us
from other men. To grow more indifferent to hardship, to severity,
to privation, and even to life itself. To be ready to sacrifice
men for one’s cause, one’s self included. Freedom denotes that the
virile instincts which rejoice in war and in victory, prevail over
other instincts; for instance, over the instincts of “happiness.”
The man who has won his freedom, and how much more so, therefore,
the spirit that has won its freedom, tramples ruthlessly upon that
contemptible kind of comfort which tea-grocers, Christians, cows,
women, Englishmen and other democrats worship in their dreams. The
free man is a _warrior._—How is freedom measured in individuals
as well as in nations? According to the resistance which has to be
overcome, according to the pains which it costs to remain _uppermost._
The highest type of free man would have to be sought where the
greatest resistance has continually to be overcome: five paces away
from tyranny, on the very threshold of the danger of thraldom. This
is psychologically true if, by the word “Tyrants” we mean inexorable
and terrible instincts which challenge the _maximum_ amount of
authority and discipline to oppose them—the finest example of this
is Julius Cæsar; it is also true politically: just examine the course
of history. The nations which were worth anything, which _got to
be_ worth anything, never attained to that condition under liberal
institutions: _great danger_ made out of them something which deserves
reverence, that danger which alone can make us aware of our resources,
our virtues, our means of defence, our weapons, our _genius,_—which
_compels_ us to be strong. _First_ principle: a man must need to be
strong, otherwise he will never attain it.—Those great forcing-houses
of the strong, of the strongest kind of men that have ever existed on
earth, the aristocratic communities like those of Rome and Venice,
understood freedom precisely as I understand the word: as something
that one has and that one has _not,_ as something that one _will_ have
and that one _seizes by force._


39

_A Criticism of Modernity._—Our institutions are no longer any good;
on this point we are all agreed. But the fault does not lie with
them; but with _us._ Now that we have lost all the instincts out
of which institutions grow, the latter on their part are beginning
to disappear from our midst because we are no longer fit for them.
Democracy has always been the death agony of the power of organisation:
already in “Human All-too-Human,” Part I., Aph. 472, I pointed out
that modern democracy, together with its half-measures, of which the
“German Empire” is an example, was a decaying form of the State. For
institutions to be possible there must exist a sort of will, instinct,
imperative, which cannot be otherwise than antiliberal to the point of
wickedness: the will to tradition, to authority, to responsibility
for centuries to come, to _solidarity_ in long family lines forwards
and backwards _in infinitum._ If this will is present, something is
founded which resembles the _imperium Romanum;_ or Russia, the _only_
great nation to-day that has some lasting power and grit in her, that
can bide her time, that can still promise something.—Russia the
opposite of all wretched European petty-statism and neurasthenia,
which the foundation of the German Empire has brought to a crisis. The
whole of the Occident no longer possesses those instincts from which
institutions spring, out of which a _future_ grows: maybe nothing is
more opposed to its “modern spirit” than these things. People live
for the present, the live at top speed,—they certainly live without
any sense of responsibility; and this is precisely what they call
“freedom.” Everything in institutions which makes them institutions,
is scorned, loathed and repudiated: everybody is in mortal fear of a
new slavery, wherever the word “authority” is so much as whispered.
The decadence of the valuing instinct, both in our politicians and in
our political parties, goes so far, that they instinctively prefer
that which acts as a solvent, that which precipitates the final
catastrophe.... As an example of this behold _modern_ marriage. All
reason has obviously been divorced from modern marriage: but this is
no objection to matrimony itself but to modernity. The rational basis
of marriage—it lay in the exclusive legal responsibility of the man:
by this means some ballast was laid in the ship of matrimony, whereas
nowadays it has a list, now on this side, now on that. The rational
basis of marriage—it lay in its absolute indissolubleness: in this way
it was given a gravity which knew how to make its influence felt, in
the face of the accident of sentiment, passion and momentary impulse:
it lay also in the fact that the responsibility of choosing the parties
to the contract, lay with the families. By showing ever more and more
favour to love-marriages, the very foundation of matrimony, that which
alone makes it an institution, has been undermined. No institution
ever has been nor ever will be built upon an idiosyncrasy; as I say,
marriage cannot be based upon “love.” It can be based upon sexual
desire; upon the instinct of property (wife and child as possessions);
upon the instinct of dominion, which constantly organises for itself
the smallest form of dominion,—the family which _requires_ children
and heirs in order to hold fast, also in the physiological sense, to
a certain quantum of acquired power, influence and wealth, so as to
prepare for lasting tasks, and for solidarity in the instincts from
one century to another. Marriage as an institution presupposes the
affirmation of the greatest and most permanent form of organisation; if
society cannot as a whole _stand security_ for itself into the remotest
generations, marriage has no meaning whatsoever.—Modern marriage _has
lost_ its meaning; consequently it is being abolished.


40

_The question of the Working-man._—The mere fact that there is such
a thing as the question of the working-man is due to stupidity, or at
bottom to degenerate instincts which are the cause of all the stupidity
of modern times. Concerning certain things _no questions ought to be
put:_ the first imperative principle of instinct. For the life of me
I cannot see what people want to do with the working-man of Europe,
now that they have made a question of him. He is far too comfortable
to cease from questioning ever more and more, and with ever less
modesty. After all, he has the majority on his side. There is now
not the slightest hope that an unassuming and contented sort of man,
after the style of the Chinaman, will come into being in this quarter:
and this would have been the reasonable course, it was even a dire
necessity. What has been done? Everything has been done with the view
of nipping the very pre-requisite of this accomplishment in the bud,
—with the most frivolous thoughtlessness those selfsame instincts by
means of which a working-class becomes possible, and _tolerable even_
to its members themselves, have been destroyed root and branch. The
working-man has been declared fit for military service; he has been
granted the right of combination, and of voting: can it be wondered at
that he already regards his condition as one of distress (expressed
morally, as an injustice)? But, again I ask, what do people want? If
they desire a certain end, then they should desire the means thereto.
If they will have slaves, then it is madness to educate them to be
masters.


41

“The kind of freedom I do _not_ mean....”[6]—In an age like the
present, it simply adds to one’s perils to be left to one’s instincts.
The instincts contradict, disturb, and destroy each other; I have
already defined modernism as physiological self-contradiction. A
reasonable system of education would insist upon at least one of
these instinct-systems being _paralysed_ beneath an iron pressure, in
order to allow others to assert their power, to grow strong, and to
dominate. At present, the only conceivable way of making the individual
possible would be to _prune_ him:—of making him possible—that is to
say, _whole._ The very reverse occurs. Independence, free development,
and _laisser aller_ are clamoured for most violently precisely by
those for whom no restraint _could be too severe_—this is true _in
politics,_ it is true in Art. But this is a symptom of decadence: our
modern notion of “freedom” is one proof the more of the degeneration of
instinct.


42

_Where faith is necessary._—Nothing is more rare among moralists and
saints than uprightness; maybe they say the reverse is true, maybe
they even believe it. For, when faith is more useful, more effective,
more convincing than _conscious_ hypocrisy, by instinct that hypocrisy
forthwith becomes _innocent:_ first principle towards the understanding
of great saints. The same holds good of philosophers, that other order
of saints; their whole business compels them to concede only certain
truths—that is to say, those by means of which their particular trade
receives the _public_ sanction,—to speak “Kantingly”: the truths of
_practical_ reason. They know what they _must_ prove; in this respect
they are practical,—they recognise each other by the fact that
they agree upon “certain truths.”—“Thou shalt not lie”—in plain
English:—_Beware,_ Mr Philosopher, of speaking the truth....


43

_A quiet hint to Conservatives._—That which we did not know
formerly, and know now, or might know if we chose,—is the fact that
a _retrograde formation,_ a reversion in any sense or degree, is
absolutely impossible. We physiologists, at least, are aware of this.
But all priests and moralists have believed in it,—they wished to
drag and screw man back to a former standard of virtue. Morality has
always been a Procrustean bed. Even the politicians have imitated
the preachers of virtue in this matter. There are parties at the
present day whose one aim and dream is to make all things adopt the
_crab-march._ But not everyone can be a crab. It cannot be helped: we
must go forward,—that is to say step by step further and further into
decadence (—this is my definition of modern “progress”). We can hinder
this development, and by so doing dam up and accumulate degeneration
itself and render it more convulsive, more _volcanic:_ we cannot do
more.


44

_My concept of Genius._—Great men, like great ages, are explosive
material, in which a stupendous amount of power is accumulated;
the first conditions of their existence are always historical and
physiological; they are the outcome of the fact that for long ages
energy has been collected, hoarded up, saved up and preserved for their
use, and that no explosion has taken place. When, the tension in the
bulk has become sufficiently excessive, the most fortuitous stimulus
suffices in order to call “genius,” “great deeds,” and momentous
fate into the world. What then is the good of all environment,
historical periods, “_Zeitgeist_” (Spirit of the age) and “public
opinion”?—Take the case of Napoleon. France of the Revolution,
and still more of the period preceding the Revolution, would have
brought forward a type which was the very reverse of Napoleon: it
actually _did_ produce such a type. And because Napoleon was something
different, the heir of a stronger, more lasting and older civilisation
than that which in France was being smashed to atoms he became master
there, he was the only master there. Great men are necessary, the age
in which they appear is a matter of chance; the fact that they almost
invariably master their age is accounted for simply by the fact that
they are stronger, that they are older, and that power has been stored
longer for them. The relation of a genius to his age is that which
exists between strength and weakness and between maturity and youth:
the age is relatively always very much younger, thinner, less mature,
less resolute and more childish. The fact that the general opinion in
France at the present day, is utterly different on this very point (in
Germany too, but that is of no consequence); the fact that in that
country the theory of environment—a regular neuropathic notion—has
become sacrosanct and almost scientific, and finds acceptance even
among the physiologists, is a very bad, and exceedingly depressing
sign. In England too the same belief prevails: but nobody will be
surprised at that. The Englishman knows only two ways of understanding
the genius and the “great man”: either _democratically_ in the style
of Buckle, or religiously after the manner of Carlyle.—The danger
which great men and great ages represent, is simply extraordinary;
every kind of exhaustion and of sterility follows in their wake. The
great man is an end; the great age—the Renaissance for instance,—is
an end. The genius—in work and in deed,—is necessarily a squanderer:
the fact that he spends himself constitutes his greatness. The instinct
of self-preservation is as it were suspended in him; the overpowering
pressure of out-flowing energy in him forbids any such protection and
prudence. People call this “self-sacrifice,” they praise his “heroism,”
his indifference to his own well-being, his utter devotion to an idea,
a great cause, a father-land: All misunderstandings.... He flows out,
he flows over, he consumes himself, he does not spare himself,—and
does all this with fateful necessity, irrevocably, involuntarily, just
as a river involuntarily bursts its dams. But, owing to the fact that
humanity has been much indebted to such explosives, it has endowed them
with many things, for instance, with a kind of _higher morality_....
This is indeed the sort of gratitude that humanity is capable of: it
_misunderstands_ its benefactors.


45

_The criminal and his like._—The criminal type is the type of the
strong man amid unfavourable conditions, a strong man made sick. He
lacks the wild and savage state, a form of nature and existence which
is freer and more dangerous, in which everything that constitutes
the shield and the sword in the instinct of the strong man, takes
a place by right. Society puts a ban upon his virtues; the most
spirited instincts inherent in him immediately become involved with
the depressing passions, with suspicion, fear and dishonour. But this
is almost the recipe for physiological degeneration. When a man has
to do that which he is best suited to do, which he is most fond of
doing, not only clandestinely, but also with long suspense, caution and
ruse, he becomes anæmic; and inasmuch as he is always having to pay
for his instincts in the form of danger, persecution and fatalities,
even his feelings begin to turn against these instincts—he begins to
regard them as fatal. It is society, our tame, mediocre, castrated
society, in which an untutored son of nature who comes to us from his
mountains or from his adventures at sea, must necessarily degenerate
into a criminal. Or almost necessarily: for there are cases in which
such a man shows himself to be stronger than society: the Corsican
Napoleon is the most celebrated case of this. Concerning the problem
before us, Dostoiewsky’s testimony is of importance—Dostoiewsky who,
incidentally, was the only psychologist from whom I had anything
to learn: he belongs to the happiest windfalls of my life, happier
even than the discovery of Stendhal. This profound man, who was
right ten times over in esteeming the superficial Germans low, found
the Siberian convicts among whom he lived for many years,—those
thoroughly hopeless criminals for whom no road back to society stood
open—very different from what even he had expected,—that is to say
carved from about the best, hardest and most valuable material that
grows on Russian soil.[7] Let us generalise the case of the criminal;
let us imagine creatures who for some reason or other fail to meet
with public approval, who know that they are regarded neither as
beneficent nor useful,—the feeling of the Chandala, who are aware
that they are not looked upon as equal, but as proscribed, unworthy,
polluted. The thoughts and actions of all such natures are tainted
with a subterranean mouldiness; everything in them is of a paler hue
than in those on whose existence the sun shines. But almost all those
creatures whom, nowadays, we honour and respect, formerly lived in this
semi-sepulchral atmosphere: the man of science, the artist, the genius,
the free spirit, the actor, the business man, and the great explorer.
As long as the _priest_ represented the highest type of man, every
valuable kind of man was depreciated.... The time is coming—this I
guarantee—when he will pass as the _lowest_ type, as our Chandala, as
the falsest and most disreputable kind of man.... I call your attention
to the fact that even now, under the sway of the mildest customs and
usages which have ever ruled on earth or at least in Europe, every
form of standing aside, every kind of prolonged, excessively prolonged
concealment, every unaccustomed and obscure form of existence tends to
approximate to that type which the criminal exemplifies to perfection.
All pioneers of the spirit have, for a while, the grey and fatalistic
mark of the Chandala on their brows: _not_ because they are regarded as
Chandala, but because they themselves feel the terrible chasm which
separates them from all that is traditional and honourable. Almost
every genius knows the “Catilinarian life” as one of the stages in his
development, a feeling of hate, revenge and revolt against everything
that exists, that has ceased to evolve.... Catiline—the early stage of
every Cæsar.


46

_Here the outlook is free._—When a philosopher holds his tongue it may
be the sign of the loftiness of his soul: when he contradicts himself
it may be love; and the very courtesy of a knight of knowledge may
force him to lie. It has been said, and not without subtlety:—_il
est indigne des grands cœurs de répandre le trouble qu’ils
ressentent[8]:_ but it is necessary to add that there may also be
_grandeur de cœur_ in not shrinking _from the most undignified
proceeding._ A woman who loves sacrifices her honour; a knight of
knowledge who “loves,” sacrifices perhaps his humanity; a God who
loved, became a Jew....


47

_Beauty no accident_—Even the beauty of a race or of a family,
the charm and perfection of all its movements, is attained with
pains: like genius it is the final result of the accumulated work
of generations. Great sacrifices must have been made on the altar
ol good taste, for its sake many things must have been done, and
much must have been left undone—the seventeenth century in France
is admirable for both of these things,—in this century there must
have been a principle of selection in respect to company, locality,
clothing, the gratification of the instinct of sex; beauty must have
been preferred to profit, to habit, to opinion and to indolence. The
first rule of all:—nobody must “let himself go,” not even when he is
alone.—Good things are exceedingly costly:; and in all cases the law
obtains that he who possesses them is a different person from him who
is _acquiring_ them. Everything good is an inheritance: that which is
not inherited is imperfect, it is simply a beginning. In Athens at
the time of Cicero—who expresses his surprise at the fact—the men
and youths were by far superior in beauty to the women: but what hard
work and exertions the male sex had for centuries imposed upon itself
in the service of beauty! We must not be mistaken in regard to the
method employed here: the mere discipline of feelings and thoughts
is little better than nil (—it is in this that the great error of
German culture, which is quite illusory, lies): the _body_ must be
persuaded first. The strict maintenance of a distinguished and tasteful
demeanour, the obligation of frequenting only those who do not “let
themselves go,” is amply sufficient to render one distinguished and
tasteful: in two or three generations everything has already _taken
deep root._ The fate of a people and of humanity is decided according
to whether they begin culture at the _right place—not_ at the “soul”
(as the fatal superstition of the priests and half-priests would have
it): the right place is the body, demeanour, diet, physiology—the rest
follows as the night the day.... That is why the Greeks remain the
_first event in culture_—they knew and they _did_ what was needful.
Christianity with its contempt of the body is the greatest mishap that
has ever befallen mankind.


48

_Progress in my sense._—I also speak of a “return to nature,” although
it is not a process of going back but of going up—up into lofty, free
and even terrible nature and naturalness; such a nature as can play
with great tasks and _may_ play with them.... To speak in a _parable._
Napoleon was an example of a “return to nature,” as I understand it
(for instance _in rebus tacticis,_ and still more, as military experts
know, in strategy). But Rousseau—whither did he want to return?
Rousseau this first modern man, idealist and _canaille_ in one person;
who was in need of moral “dignity,” in order even to endure the sight
of his own person,—ill with unbridled vanity and wanton self-contempt;
this abortion, who planted his tent on the threshold of modernity,
also wanted a “return to nature”; but, I ask once more, whither did
he wish to return? I hate Rousseau, even _in_ the Revolution itself:
the latter was the historical expression of this hybrid of idealist
and _canaille._ The bloody farce which this Revolution ultimately
became, its “immorality,” concerns me but slightly; what I loathe
however is its Rousseauesque _morality_—the so-called “truths” of the
Revolution, by means of which it still exercises power and draws all
flat and mediocre things over to its side. The doctrine of equality!
... But there is no more deadly poison than this; for it _seems_ to
proceed from the very lips of justice, whereas in reality it draws
the curtain down on all justice.... “To equals equality, to unequals
inequality”—that would be the real speech of justice and that which
follows from it “Never make unequal things equal.” The fact that so
much horror and blood are associated with this doctrine of equality,
has lent this “modern idea” _par excellence_ such a halo of fire and
glory, that the Revolution as a drama has misled even the most noble
minds.—That after all is no reason for honouring it the more.—I can
see only one who regarded it as it should be regarded—that is to say,
with _loathing;_ I speak of Goethe.


49

_Goethe_.—No mere German, but a European event: a magnificent attempt
to overcome the eighteenth century by means of a return to nature, by
means of an ascent to the naturalness of the Renaissance, a kind of
self-overcoming on the part of the century in question.—He bore the
strongest instincts of this century in his breast: its sentimentality,
and idolatry of nature, its anti-historic, idealistic, unreal, and
revolutionary spirit (—the latter is only a form of the unreal). He
enlisted history, natural science, antiquity, as well as Spinoza, and
above all practical activity, in his service. He drew a host of very
definite horizons around him; far from liberating himself from life, he
plunged right into it; he did not give in; he took as much as he could
on his own shoulders, and into his heart. That to which he aspired was
_totality_; he was opposed to the sundering of reason, sensuality,
feeling and will (as preached with most repulsive scholasticism
by Kant, the antipodes of Goethe); he disciplined himself into a
harmonious whole, he _created_ himself. Goethe in the midst of an age
of unreal sentiment, was a convinced realist: he said yea to everything
that was like him in this regard,—there was no greater event in his
life than that _ens realissimum_, surnamed Napoleon. Goethe conceived
a strong, highly-cultured man, skilful in all bodily accomplishments,
able to keep himself in check, having a feeling of reverence for
himself, and so constituted as to be able to risk the full enjoyment
of naturalness in all its rich profusion and be strong enough for this
freedom; a man of tolerance, not out of weakness but out of strength,
because he knows how to turn to his own profit that which would ruin
the mediocre nature; a man unto whom nothing is any longer forbidden,
unless it be weakness either as a vice or as a virtue. Such a spirit,
_become free_, appears in the middle of the universe with a feeling
of cheerful and confident fatalism; he believes that only individual
things are bad, and that as a whole the universe justifies and, affirms
itself—_He no longer denies_.... But such a faith is the highest Of
all faiths: I christened it with the name of Dionysus.


50

It might be said that, in a certain sense, the nineteenth century
also strove after all that Goethe himself aspired to: catholicity in
understanding, in approving; a certain reserve towards everything,
daring realism, and a reverence for every fact. How is it that
the total result of this is not a Goethe, but a state of chaos, a
nihilistic groan, an inability to discover where one is, an instinct
of fatigue which _in praxi_ is persistently driving Europe _to hark
back to the eighteenth century_? (—For instance in the form of maudlin
romanticism, altruism, hyper-sentimentality, pessimism in taste,
and socialism in politics). Is not the nineteenth century, at least
in its closing years, merely an accentuated, brutalised eighteenth
century,—that is to say a century of decadence? And has not Goethe
been—not alone for Germany, but also for the whole of Europe,—merely
an episode, a beautiful “in vain”? But great men are misunderstood when
they are regarded from the wretched standpoint of public utility. The
fact that no advantage can be derived from them—_this in itself may
perhaps be peculiar to greatness._


51

Goethe is the last German whom I respect: he had understood three
things as I understand them. We also agree as to the “cross.”[9] People
often ask me why on earth I write in _German:_ nowhere am I less read
than in the Fatherland. But who knows whether I even _desire_ to be
read at present?—To create things on which time may try its teeth in
vain; to be concerned both in the form and the substance of my writing,
about a certain degree of immortality—never have I been modest enough
to demand less of myself. The aphorism, the sentence, in both of
which I, as the first among Germans, am a master, are the forms of
“eternity”; it is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone
else says in a whole book,—what everyone else does _not_ say in a
whole book.

I have given mankind the deepest book it possesses, my _Zarathustra;_
before long I shall give it the most independent one.


[1] The German word _Rausch_ as used by Nietzsche here, suggests a
blend of our two English words “intoxication” and “elation.”—TR.

[2] An allusion to a verse in Luther’s hymn: “_Lass fahren dahin_ ...
_das Reich muss uns doch bleiben,_” which Nietzsche applies to the
German Empire.—TR.

[3] A disciple of Schopenhauer who blunted the sharpness of his
master’s Pessimism and who watered it down for modern requirements.—TR.

[4] Quotation from the Libretto of Mozart’s “Magic Flute” Act I, Sc.
3.—TR.

[5] This alludes to Parsifal. See my note on p. 96, vol. i., “The Will
to Power.”—TR.

[6] This is a playful adaptation of Max von Schenkendorfs poem
“_Freiheit_” The proper line reads: “_Freiheit die ich meine_” (The
freedom that I do mean).—TR.

[7] See “Memoirs of a House of the Dead,” by Dostoiewsky (translation
by Marie von Thilo: “Buried Alive”).—TR.

[8] Clothilde de Veaux.—TR.

[9] See my note on p. 147 of Vol. I. of the _Will to Power._—TR.




THINGS I OWE TO THE ANCIENTS


1

In conclusion I will just say a word concerning that world to which I
have sought new means of access, to which I may perhaps have found a
new passage—the ancient world. My taste, which is perhaps the reverse
of tolerant, is very far from saying yea through and through even to
this world: on the whole it is not over eager to say _Yea,_ it would
prefer to say _Nay,_ and better still nothing whatever.... This is true
of whole cultures; it is true of books,—it is also true of places
and of landscapes. Truth to tell, the number of ancient books that
count for something in my life is but small; and the most famous are
not of that number. My sense of style, for the epigram as style, was
awakened almost spontaneously upon my acquaintance with Sallust. I have
not forgotten the astonishment of my respected teacher Corssen, when
he was forced to give his worst Latin pupil the highest marks,—at one
stroke I had learned all there was to learn. Condensed, severe, with as
much substance as possible in the background, and with cold but roguish
hostility towards all “beautiful words” and “beautiful feelings”—in
these things I found my own particular bent. In my writings up to my
“Zarathustra,” there will be found a very earnest ambition to attain
to the _Roman_ style, to the “_ære perennius_” in style.—The same
thing happened on my first acquaintance with Horace. Up to the present
no poet has given me the same artistic raptures as those which from
the first I received from an Horatian ode. In certain languages it
would be absurd even to aspire to what is accomplished by this poet.
This mosaic of words, in which every unit spreads its power to the
left and to the right over the whole, by its sound, by its place in
the sentence, and by its meaning, this _minimum_ in the compass and
number of the signs, and the _maximum_ of energy in the signs which is
thereby achieved—all this is Roman, and, if you will believe me, noble
_par excellence._ By the side of this all the rest of poetry becomes
something popular,—nothing more than senseless sentimental twaddle.


2

I am not indebted to the Greeks for anything like such strong
impressions; and, to speak frankly, they cannot be to us what the
Romans are. One cannot _learn_ from the Greeks—their style is too
strange, it is also too fluid, to be imperative or to have the effect
of a classic. Who would ever have learnt writing from a Greek! Who
would ever have learned it without the Romans!... Do not let anyone
suggest Plato to me. In regard to Plato I am a thorough sceptic, and
have never been able to agree to the admiration of Plato the _artist,_
which is traditional among scholars. And after all, in this matter,
the most refined judges of taste in antiquity are on my side. In my
opinion Plato bundles all the forms of style pell-mell together,
in this respect he is one of the first decadents of style: he has
something similar on his conscience to that which the Cynics had
who invented the _satura Menippea._ For the Platonic dialogue—this
revoltingly self-complacent and childish kind of dialectics—to
exercise any charm over you, you must never have read any good French
authors,—Fontenelle for instance. Plato is boring. In reality my
distrust of Plato is fundamental. I find him so very much astray
from all the deepest instincts of the Hellenes, so steeped in moral
prejudices, so pre-existently Christian—the concept “good” is already
the highest value with him,—that rather than use any other expression
I would prefer to designate the whole phenomenon Plato with the hard
word “superior bunkum,” or, if you would like it better, “idealism.”
Humanity has had to pay dearly for this Athenian having gone to school
among the Egyptians (—or among the Jews in Egypt?...) In the great
fatality of Christianity, Plato is that double-faced fascination
called the “ideal,” which made it possible for the more noble natures
of antiquity to misunderstand themselves and to tread the _bridge_
which led to the “cross.” And what an amount of Plato is still to be
found in the concept “church,” and in the construction, the system
and the practice of the church!—My recreation, my predilection, my
cure, after all Platonism, has always been Thucydides. Thucydides and
perhaps Machiavelli’s _principe_ are most closely related to me owing
to the absolute determination which they show of refusing to deceive
themselves and of seeing reason in _reality,_—not in “rationality,”
and still less in “morality.” There is no more radical cure than
Thucydides for the lamentably rose-coloured idealisation of the
Greeks which the “classically-cultured” stripling bears with him into
life, as a reward for his public school training. His writings must be
carefully studied line by line, and his unuttered thoughts must be read
as distinctly as what he actually says. There are few thinkers so rich
in unuttered thoughts. In him the culture “of the Sophists”—that is to
say, the culture of realism, receives its most perfect expression: this
inestimable movement in the midst of the moral and idealistic knavery
of the Socratic Schools which was then breaking out in all directions.
Greek philosophy is the decadence of the Greek instinct: Thucydides is
the great summing up, the final manifestation of that strong, severe
positivism which lay in the instincts of the ancient Hellene. After
all, it is courage in the face of reality that distinguishes such
natures as Thucydides from Plato: Plato is a coward in the face of
reality—consequently he takes refuge in the ideal: Thucydides is
master of himself,—consequently he is able to master life.


3

To rout up cases of “beautiful souls,” “golden means” and other
perfections among the Greeks, to admire, say, their calm grandeur,
their ideal attitude of mind, their exalted simplicity—from this
“exalted simplicity,” which after all is a piece of _niaiserie
allemande,_ I was preserved by the psychologist within me. I saw their
strongest instinct, the Will to Power, I saw them quivering with the
fierce violence of this instinct,—I saw all their institutions grow
out of measures of security calculated to preserve each member of
their society from the inner _explosive material_ that lay in his
neighbour’s breast This enormous internal tension thus discharged
itself in terrible and reckless hostility outside the state: the
various states mutually tore each other to bits, in order that each
individual state could remain at peace with itself. It was then
necessary to be strong; for danger lay close at hand,—it lurked in
ambush everywhere. The superb suppleness of their bodies, the daring
realism and immorality which is peculiar to the Hellenes, was a
necessity not an inherent quality. It was a result, it had not been
there from the beginning. Even their festivals and their arts were but
means in producing a feeling of superiority, and of showing it: they
are measures of self-glorification; and in certain circumstances of
making one’s self terrible.... Fancy judging the Greeks in the German
style, from their philosophers; fancy using the suburban respectability
of the Socratic schools as a key to what is fundamentally Hellenic!...
The philosophers are of course the decadents of Hellas, the
counter-movement directed against the old and noble taste—(against the
agonal instinct, against the _Polls,_ against the value of the race,
against the authority of tradition), Socratic virtues were preached to
the Greeks, _because_ the Greeks had lost virtue: irritable, cowardly,
unsteady, and all turned to play-actors, they had more than sufficient
reason to submit to having morality preached to them. Not that it
helped them in any way; but great words and attitudes are so becoming
to decadents.


4

I was the first who, in order to understand the ancient, still rich and
even superabundant Hellenic instinct, took that marvellous phenomenon,
which bears the name of Dionysus, seriously: it can be explained only
as a manifestation of excessive energy. Whoever had studied the Greeks,
as that most profound of modern connoisseurs of their culture, Jakob
Burckhardt of Bâle, had done, knew at once that something had been
achieved by means of this interpretation. And in his “_Cultur der
Griechen_” Burckhardt inserted a special chapter on the phenomenon
in question. If you would like a glimpse of the other side, you have
only to refer to the almost laughable poverty of instinct among German
philologists when they approach the Dionysian question. The celebrated
Lobeck, especially, who with the venerable assurance of a worm dried up
between books, crawled into this world of mysterious states, succeeded
inconvincing himself that he was scientific, whereas he was simply
revoltingly superficial and childish,—Lobeck, with all the pomp of
profound erudition, gave us to understand that, as a matter of fact,
there was nothing at all in all these curiosities. Truth to tell, the
priests may well have communicated not a few things of value to the
participators in such orgies; for instance, the fact that wine provokes
desire, that man in certain circumstances lives on fruit, that plants
bloom in the spring and fade in the autumn. As regards the astounding
wealth of rites, symbols and myths which take their origin in the orgy,
and with which the world of antiquity is literally smothered, Lobeck
finds that it prompts him to a feat of even greater ingenuity than
the foregoing phenomenon did. “The Greeks,” he says, (_Aglaophamus,_
I. p. 672), “when they had nothing better to do, laughed, sprang and
romped about, or, inasmuch as men also like a change at times, they
would sit down, weep and bewail their lot Others then came up who tried
to discover some reason for this strange behaviour; and thus, as an
explanation of these habits, there arose an incalculable number of
festivals, legends, and myths. On the other hand it was believed that
the _farcical performances_ which then perchance began to take place
on festival days, necessarily formed part of the celebrations, and
they were retained as an indispensable part of the ritual.”—This is
contemptible nonsense, and no one will take a man like Lobeck seriously
for a moment We are very differently affected when we examine the
notion “Hellenic,” as Winckelmann and Goethe conceived it, and find it
incompatible with that element out of which Dionysian art springs—I
speak of orgiasm. In reality I do not doubt that Goethe would have
completely excluded any such thing from the potentialities of the Greek
soul. _Consequently Goethe did not understand the Greeks._ For it is
only in the Dionysian mysteries, in the psychology of the Dionysian
state, that the _fundamental fact_ of the Hellenic instinct—its “will
to life”—is expressed. What did the Hellene secure himself with these
mysteries? _Eternal_ life, the eternal recurrence of life; the future
promised and hallowed in the past; the triumphant Yea to life despite
death and change; real life conceived as the collective prolongation
of life through procreation, through the mysteries of sexuality.
To the Greeks, the symbol of sex was the most venerated of symbols,
the really deep significance of all the piety of antiquity. All the
details of the act of procreation, pregnancy and birth gave rise to
the loftiest and most solemn feelings. In the doctrine of mysteries,
_pain_ was pronounced holy: the “pains of childbirth” sanctify pain in
general,—all becoming and all growth, everything that guarantees the
future _involves_ pain.... In order that there may be eternal joy in
creating, in order that the will to life may say Yea to itself in all
eternity, the “pains of childbirth” must also be eternal. All this is
what the word Dionysus signifies: I know of no higher symbolism than
this Greek symbolism, this symbolism of the Dionysian phenomenon. In
it the profoundest instinct of life, the instinct that guarantees the
future of life and life eternal, is understood religiously,—the road
to life itself, procreation, is pronounced _holy,_ ... It was only
Christianity which, with its fundamental resentment against life, made
something impure out of sexuality: it flung _filth_ at the very basis,
the very first condition of our life.


5

The psychology of orgiasm conceived as the feeling of a superabundance
of vitality and strength, within the scope of which even pain _acts
as a stimulus,_ gave me the key to the concept _tragic_ feeling,
which has been misunderstood not only by Aristotle, but also even
more by our pessimists. Tragedy is so far from proving anything in
regard to the pessimism of the Greeks, as Schopenhauer maintains,
that it ought rather to be considered as the categorical repudiation
and _condemnation_ thereof. The saying of Yea to life, including
even its most strange and most terrible problems, the will to life
rejoicing over its own inexhaustibleness in the _sacrifice_ of its
highest types—this is what I called Dionysian, this is what I
divined as the bridge leading to the psychology of the _tragic_ poet.
Not in order to escape from terror and pity, not to purify one’s self
of a dangerous passion by discharging it with vehemence—this is how
Aristotle understood it—but to be far beyond terror and pity and to
be the eternal lust of Becoming itself—that lust which also involves
the _lust of destruction._ And with this I once more come into touch
with the spot from which I once set out—-the “Birth of Tragedy” was
my first transvaluation of all values: with this I again take my stand
upon the soil from out of which my will and my capacity spring—I, the
last disciple of the philosopher Dionysus,—I, the prophet of eternal
recurrence.


THE END.




THE HAMMER SPEAKETH


“Why so hard!”—said the diamond once unto the charcoal; “are we then
not next of kin?”

“Why so soft? O my brethren; this is my question to you. For are ye
not—my brothers?

“Why so soft, so servile and yielding? Why are your hearts so fond of
denial and self-denial? How is it that so little fate looketh out from
your eyes?

“And if ye will not be men of fate and inexorable, how can ye hope one
day to conquer with me?

“And if your hardness will not sparkle, cut and divide, how can ye hope
one day to create with me?

“For all creators are hard. And it must seem to you blessed to stamp
your hand upon millenniums as upon wax,—

—Blessed to write upon the will of millenniums as upon brass,—harder
than brass, nobler than brass.—Hard through and through is only the
noblest.

This new table of values, O my brethren, I set over your heads: Become
hard.”

—“Thus Spake Zarathustra,”

III., 29.




THE ANTICHRIST

An Attempted Criticism of Christianity




PREFACE


This book belongs to the very few. Maybe not one of them is yet alive;
unless he be of those who understand my Zarathustra. How _can_ I
confound myself with those who to-day already find a hearing?—Only the
day after to-morrow belongs to me. Some are born posthumously.

I am only too well aware of the conditions under which a man
understands me, and then _necessarily_ understands. He must be
intellectually upright to the point of hardness, in order even to
endure my seriousness and my passion. He must be used to living on
mountain-tops,—and to feeling the wretched gabble of politics and
national egotism _beneath_ him. He must have become indifferent; he
must never inquire whether truth is profitable or whether it may
prove fatal.... Possessing from strength a predilection for questions
for which no one has enough courage nowadays; the courage for the
_forbidden;_ his predestination must be the labyrinth. The experience
of seven solitudes. New ears for new music. New eyes for the most
remote things. A new conscience for truths which hitherto have
remained dumb. And the will to economy on a large scale: to husband
his strength and his enthusiasm.... He must honour himself, he must
love himself; he must be absolutely free with regard to himself....
Very well then! Such men alone are my readers, my proper readers,
my preordained readers: of what account are the rest?—the rest are
simply—humanity.—One must be superior to humanity in power, in
loftiness of soul,—in contempt.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.


1

Let us look each other in the face. We are hyperboreans,—we know
well enough how far outside the crowd we stand. “Thou wilt find the
way to the Hyperboreans neither by land nor by water”: Pindar already
knew this much about us. Beyond the north, the ice, and death—_our
life, our happiness...._ We discovered happiness; we know the way; we
found the way out of thousands of years of labyrinth. Who _else_ would
have found it?—Not the modern man, surely?—“I do not know where I
am or what I am to do; I am everything that knows not where it is or
what to do,”—sighs the modern man. We were made quite ill by _this_
modernity,—with its indolent peace, its cowardly compromise, and the
whole of the virtuous filth of its Yea and Nay. This tolerance and
_largeur de cœur_ which “forgives” everything because it “understands”
everything, is a Sirocco for us. We prefer to live amid ice than to
be breathed upon by modern virtues and other southerly winds!... We
were brave enough; we spared neither ourselves nor others: but we
were very far from knowing whither to direct our bravery. We were
becoming gloomy; people called us fatalists. _Our_ fate—it was the
abundance, the tension and the storing up of power. We thirsted for
thunderbolts and great deeds; we kept at the most respectful distance
from the joy of the weakling, from “resignation.” ... Thunder was in
our air, that part of nature which we are, became overcast—_for we had
no direction._ The formula of our happiness: a Yea, a Nay, a straight
line, a goal.


2

What is good? All that enhances the feeling of power, the Will to
Power, and power itself in man. What is bad?—All that proceeds
from weakness. What is happiness?—The feeling that power is
_increasing,_—that resistance has been overcome.

Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not
virtue, but efficiency[1] (virtue in the Renaissance sense, _virtu,_
free from all moralic acid). The weak and the botched shall perish:
first principle of our humanity. And they ought even to be helped to
perish.

What is more harmful than any vice?—Practical sympathy with all the
botched and the weak—Christianity.


3

The problem I set in this work is not what will replace mankind in the
order of living being! (—Man is an _end_—); but, what type of man
must be _reared,_ must be _willed,_ as having the higher value, as
being the most worthy of life and the surest guarantee of the future.

This more valuable type has appeared often enough already: but as a
happy accident, as an exception, never as _willed._ He has rather been
precisely the most feared; hitherto he has been almost the terrible in
itself;—and from out the very fear he provoked there arose the will
to rear the type which has how been reared, _attained:_ the domestic
animal, the gregarious animal, the sick animal man,—the Christian.


4

Mankind does _not_ represent a development towards a better, stronger
or higher type, in the sense in which this is supposed to occur to-day.
“Progress” is merely a modern idea—that is to say, a false idea.[2]
The modern European is still far below the European of the Renaissance
in value. The process of evolution does not by any means imply
elevation, enhancement and increasing strength.

On the other hand isolated and individual cases are continually
succeeding in different places on earth, as the outcome of the most
different cultures, and in these a _higher type_ certainly manifests
itself: something which by the side of mankind in general, represents a
kind of superman. Such lucky strokes of great success have always been
possible and will perhaps always be possible. And even whole races,
tribes and nations may in certain circumstances represent such _lucky
strokes._


5

We must not deck out and adorn Christianity: it has waged a deadly
war upon this _higher_ type of man, it has set a ban upon all the
fundamental instincts of this type, and has distilled evil and the
devil himself out of these instincts:—the strong man as the typical
pariah, the villain. Christianity has sided with everything weak, low,
and botched; it has made an ideal out of _antagonism_ towards all the
self-preservative instincts of strong life: it has corrupted even the
reason of the strongest intellects, by teaching that the highest values
of intellectuality are sinful, misleading and full of temptations.
The most lamentable example of this was the corruption of Pascal, who
believed in the perversion of his reason through original sin, whereas
it had only been perverted by his Christianity.


6

A painful and ghastly spectacle has just risen before my eyes. I tore
down the curtain which concealed mankind’s _corruption._ This word in
my mouth is at least secure from the suspicion that it contains a moral
charge against mankind. It is—I would fain emphasise this again—free
from moralic acid: to such an extent is this so, that I am most
thoroughly conscious of the corruption in question precisely in those
quarters in which hitherto people have aspired with most determination
to “virtue” and to “godliness.” As you have already surmised, I
understand corruption in the sense of _decadence._ What I maintain is
this, that all the values upon which mankind builds its highest hopes
and desires are _decadent_ values.

I call an animal, a species, an individual corrupt, when it loses its
instincts, when it selects and _prefers_ that which is detrimental to
it. A history of the “higher feelings,” of “human ideals”—and it is
not impossible that I shall have to write it—would almost explain why
man is so corrupt. Life itself, to my mind, is nothing more nor less
than the instinct of growth, of permanence, of accumulating forces,
of power: where the will to power is lacking, degeneration sets in.
My contention is that all the highest values of mankind _lack_ this
will,—that the values of decline and of _nihilism_ are exercising the
sovereign power under the cover of the holiest names.


7

Christianity is called the religion of _pity._—Pity is opposed to
the tonic passions which enhance the energy of the feeling of life:
its action is depressing. A man loses power when he pities. By
means of pity the drain on strength which suffering itself already
introduces into the world is multiplied a thousandfold. Through pity,
suffering itself becomes infectious; in certain circumstances it may
lead to a total loss of life and vital energy, which is absurdly
put of proportion to the magnitude of the cause (—the case of the
death of the Nazarene). This is the first standpoint; but there is a
still more important one. Supposing one measures pity according to
the value of the reactions it usually stimulates, its danger to life
appears in a much more telling light On the whole, pity thwarts the
law of development which is the law of selection. It preserves that
which is ripe for death, it fights in favour of the disinherited and
the condemned of life; thanks to the multitude of abortions of all
kinds which it maintains in life, it lends life itself a sombre and
questionable aspect. People have dared to call pity a virtue (—in
every _noble_ culture it is considered as a weakness—); people went
still further, they exalted it to _the_ virtue, the root and origin
of all virtues,—but, of course, what must never be forgotten is the
fact that this was done from the standpoint of a philosophy which
was nihilistic, and on whose shield the device _The Denial of Life_
was inscribed. Schopenhauer was right in this respect: by means of
pity, life is denied and made _more worthy of denial,_—pity is
the _praxis_ of Nihilism. I repeat, this depressing and infectious
instinct thwarts those instincts which aim at the preservation and
enhancement of the value life: by _multiplying_ misery quite as much
as by preserving all that is miserable, it is the principal agent in
promoting decadence,—pity exhorts people to nothing, to _nonentity!_
But they do not say “_nonentity_” they say “Beyond,” or “God,” or “the
true life”; or Nirvana, or Salvation, or Blessedness, instead. This
innocent rhetoric, which belongs to the realm of the religio-moral
idiosyncrasy, immediately appears to be _very much less innocent_ if
one realises what the tendency is which here tries to drape itself in
the mantle of sublime expressions—the tendency of hostility to life.
Schopenhauer was hostile to life: that is why he elevated pity to a
virtue.... Aristotle, as you know, recognised in pity a morbid and
dangerous state, of which it was wise to rid one’s self from time to
time by a purgative: he regarded tragedy as a purgative. For the sake
of the instinct of life, it would certainly seem necessary to find some
means of lancing any such morbid and dangerous accumulation of pity, as
that which possessed Schopenhauer (and unfortunately the whole of our
literary and artistic decadence as well, from St Petersburg to Paris,
from Tolstoi to Wagner), if only to make it _burst...._ Nothing is
more unhealthy in the midst of our unhealthy modernity, than Christian
pity. To be doctors _here,_ to be inexorable _here,_ to wield the knife
effectively _here,—_ all this is our business, all this is _our_
kind of love to our fellows, this is what makes _us_ philosophers, us
hyperboreans!—


8

It is necessary to state whom we regard as our antithesis:—the
theologians, and all those who have the blood of theologians in their
veins—the whole of our philosophy.... A man must have had his very
nose upon this fatality, or better still he must have experienced it
in his own soul; he must almost have perished through it, in order
to be unable to treat this matter lightly (—the free-spiritedness
of our friends the naturalists and physiologists is, in my opinion,
a _joke,_—what they lack in these questions is passion, what they
lack is having suffered from these questions—). This poisoning
extends much further than people think: I unearthed the “arrogant”
instinct of the theologian, wherever nowadays people feel themselves
idealists,—wherever, thanks to superior antecedents, they claim the
right to rise above reality and to regard it with suspicion.... Like
the priest the idealist has every grandiloquent concept in his hand
(—and not only in his hand!), he wields them all with kindly contempt
against the “understanding,” the “senses,” “honours,” “decent living,”
“science”; he regards such things as _beneath_ him, as detrimental and
seductive forces, upon the face of which, “the Spirit” moves in pure
absoluteness:—as if humility, chastity, poverty, in a word _holiness,_
had not done incalculably more harm to life hitherto, than any sort of
horror and vice.... Pure spirit is pure falsehood.... As long as the
priest, the _professional_ denier, calumniator and poisoner of life, is
considered as the _highest_ kind of man, there can be no answer to the
question, what _is_ truth? Truth has already been turned topsy-turvy,
when the conscious advocate of nonentity and of denial passes as the
representative of “truth.”


9

It is upon this theological instinct that I wage war. I find traces
of it everywhere. Whoever has the blood of theologians in his veins,
stands from the start in a false and dishonest position to all things.
The pathos which grows out of this state, is called _Faith:_ that is
to say, to shut one’s eyes once and for all, in order not to suffer
at the sight of incurable falsity. People convert this faulty view of
all things into a moral, a virtue, a thing of holiness. They endow
their distorted vision with a good conscience,—they claim that no
_other_ point of view is any longer of value, once theirs has been
made sacrosanct with the names “God,” “Salvation,” “Eternity.” I
unearthed the instinct of the theologian everywhere: it is the most
universal, and actually the most subterranean form of falsity on earth.
That which a theologian considers true, _must_ of necessity be false:
this furnishes almost the criterion of truth. It is his most profound
self-preservative instinct which forbids reality ever to attain to
honour in any way, or even to raise its voice. Whithersoever the
influence of the theologian extends, _valuations_ are topsy-turvy,
and the concepts “true” and “false” have necessarily changed places:
that which is most deleterious to life, is here called “true,” that
which enhances it, elevates it, says Yea to it, justifies it and
renders it triumphant, is called “false.” ... If it should happen that
theologians, _via_ the “conscience” either of princes or of the people,
stretch out their hand for power, let us not be in any doubt as to
what results therefrom each time, namely:—the will to the end, the
_nihilistic_ will to power....


10

Among Germans I am immediately understood when I say, that philosophy
is ruined by the blood of theologians. The Protestant minister is
the grand-father of German philosophy, Protestantism itself is the
latter’s _peccatum originale._ Definition of Protestantism: the
partial paralysis of Christianity—and of reason.... One needs only to
pronounce the words “Tübingen Seminary,” in order to understand what
German philosophy really is at bottom, theology _in disguise_.... The
Swabians are the best liars in Germany, they lie innocently.... Whence
came all the rejoicing with which the appearance of Kant was greeted
by the scholastic world of Germany, three-quarters of which consist of
clergymen’s and schoolmasters’ sons? Whence came the German conviction,
which finds an echo even now, that Kant inaugurated a change for the
_better?_ The theologian’s instinct in the German scholar divined what
had once again been made possible.... A back-staircase leading into
the old ideal was discovered, the concept “true world,” the concept
morality as the _essence_ of the world (—those two most vicious errors
that have ever existed!), were, thanks to a subtle and wily scepticism,
once again, if not demonstrable, at least no longer _refutable...._
Reason, the _prerogative_ of reason, does not extend so far.... Out of
reality they had made “appearance”; and an absolutely false world—that
of being—had been declared to be reality. Kant’s success is merely a
theologian’s success. Like Luther, and like Leibniz, Kant was one brake
the more upon the already squeaky wheel of German uprightness.


11

One word more against Kant as a _moralist._ A virtue _must_ be _our_
invention, our most personal defence and need: in every other sense it
is merely a danger. That which does not constitute a condition of our
life, is merely harmful to it: to possess a virtue merely because one
happens to respect the concept “virtue,” as Kant would have us do, is
pernicious. “Virtue,” “Duty,” “Goodness in itself,” goodness stamped
with the character of impersonality and universal validity—these
things are mere mental hallucinations, in which decline the final
devitalisation of life and Königsbergian Chinadom find expression. The
most fundamental laws of preservation and growth, demand precisely the
reverse, namely:—that each should discover _his_ own virtue, his own
Categorical Imperative. A nation goes to the dogs when it confounds
its concept of duty with the general concept of duty. Nothing is more
profoundly, more thoroughly pernicious, than every impersonal feeling
of duty, than every sacrifice to the Moloch of abstraction.—Fancy no
one’s having thought Kant’s Categorical Imperative _dangerous to life!_
... The instinct of the theologist alone took it under its wing!—An
action stimulated by the instinct of life, is proved to be a proper
action by the happiness that accompanies it: and that nihilist with the
bowels of a Christian dogmatist regarded happiness as an _objection
..._. What is there that destroys a man more speedily than to work,
think, feel, as an automaton of “duty,” without internal promptings,
without a profound personal predilection, without joy? This is the
recipe _par excellence_ of decadence and even of idiocy.... Kant became
an idiot—And he was the contemporary of Goethe! This fatal spider was
regarded as _the_ German philosopher,—is still regarded as such!... I
refrain from saying what I think of the Germans.... Did Kant not see in
the French Revolution the transition of the State from the inorganic to
the _organic_ form? Did he not ask himself whether there was a single
event on record which could be explained otherwise than as a moral
faculty of mankind; so that by means of it, “mankind’s tendency towards
good,” might be _proved_ once and for all? Kant’s reply: “that is the
Revolution.” Instinct at fault in anything and everything, hostility to
nature as an instinct, German decadence made into philosophy_—that is
Kant!_


12

Except for a few sceptics, the respectable type in the history of
philosophy, the rest do not know the very first pre-requisite of
intellectual uprightness. They all behave like females, do these great
enthusiasts and animal prodigies,—they regard “beautiful feelings”
themselves as arguments, the “heaving breast” as the bellows of
divinity, and conviction as the _criterion_ of truth. In the end,
even Kant, with “Teutonic” innocence, tried to dress this lack of
intellectual conscience up in a scientific garb by means of the concept
“practical reason.” He deliberately invented a kind of reason which
at times would allow one to dispense with reason, that is to say when
“morality,” when the sublime command “thou shalt,” makes itself heard.
When one remembers that in almost all nations the philosopher is only a
further development of the priestly type, this heirloom of priesthood,
this _fraud towards one’s self,_ no longer surprises one. When a man
has a holy life-task, as for instance to improve, save, or deliver
mankind, when a man bears God in his breast, and is the mouthpiece of
imperatives from another world,—with such a mission he stands beyond
the pale of all merely reasonable valuations. He is even sanctified by
such a taste, and is already the type of a higher order! What does a
priest care about science! He stands too high for that!—And until now
the priest has _ruled!_—He it was who determined the concept “true
and false.”


13

Do not let us undervalue the fact that we _ourselves,_ we free spirits,
are already a “transvaluation of all values,” an incarnate declaration
of war against all the old concepts “true” and “untrue” and of a
triumph over them. The most valuable standpoints are always the last
to be found: but the most valuable standpoints are the methods. AH the
methods and the first principles of our modern scientific procedure,
had for years to encounter the profoundest contempt: association
with them meant exclusion from the society of decent people—one was
regarded as an “enemy of God,” as a scoffer at truth and as “one
possessed.” With one’s scientific nature, one belonged to the Chandala.
We have had the whole feeling of mankind against us; hitherto their
notion of that which ought to be truth, of that which ought to serve
the purpose of truth: every “thou shalt,” has been directed against
us.... Our objects, our practices, our calm, cautious distrustful
manner—everything about us seemed to them absolutely despicable and
beneath contempt After all, it might be asked with some justice,
whether the thing which kept mankind blindfold so long, were not an
æsthetic taste: what they demanded of truth was a _picturesque_ effect,
and from the man of science what they expected was that he should make
a forcible appeal to their senses. It was our _modesty_ which ran
counter to their taste so long ... And oh! how well they guessed this,
did these divine turkey-cocks!—


14

We have altered our standpoint. In every respect we have become
more modest We no longer derive man from the “spirit,” and from the
“godhead”; we have thrust him back among the beasts. We regard him as
the strongest animal, because he is the craftiest: one of the results
thereof is his intellectuality. On the other hand we guard against the
vain pretension, which even here would fain assert itself: that man is
the great _arrière pensée_ of organic evolution! He is by no means the
crown of creation, beside him, every other creature stands at the same
stage of perfection.... And even in asserting this we go a little too
far; for, relatively speaking, man is the most botched and diseased
of animals, and he has wandered furthest from his instincts. Be all
this as it may, he is certainly the most _interesting!_ As regards
animals, Descartes was the first, with really admirable daring, to
venture the thought that the beast was _machina,_ and the whole of
our physiology is endeavouring to prove this proposition. Moreover,
logically we do not set man apart, as Descartes did: the extent
to which man is understood to-day goes only so far as he has been
understood mechanistically. Formerly man was given “free will,” as his
dowry from a higher sphere; nowadays we have robbed him even of will,
in view of the fact that no such faculty is any longer known. The only
purpose served by the old word “will,” is to designate a result, a
sort of individual reaction which necessarily follows upon a host of
partly discordant and partly harmonious stimuli:—the will no longer
“effects” or “moves” anything.... Formerly people thought that man’s
consciousness, his “spirit,” was a proof of his lofty origin, of his
divinity. With the idea of perfecting man, he was conjured to draw his
senses inside himself, after the manner of the tortoise, to cut off all
relations with terrestrial things, and to divest himself of his mortal
shell. Then the most important thing about him, the “pure spirit,”
would remain over. Even concerning these things we have improved our
standpoint Consciousness, “spirit,” now seems to us rather a symptom of
relative imperfection in the organism, as an experiment, a groping, a
misapprehension, an affliction which absorbs an unnecessary quantity of
nervous energy. We deny that anything can be done perfectly so long as
it is done consciously. “Pure spirit” is a piece of “pure stupidity”:
if we discount the nervous system, the senses and the “mortal shell,”
we have miscalculated—that it is all!...


15

In Christianity neither morality nor religion comes in touch at all
with reality. Nothing but imaginary _causes_ (God, the soul, the ego,
spirit, free will—or even non-free will); nothing but imaginary
_effects_ (sin, salvation, grace, punishment, forgiveness of sins).
Imaginary beings are supposed to have intercourse (God, spirits,
souls); imaginary Natural History (anthropocentric: total lack of
the notion “natural causes”); an imaginary _psychology_ (nothing
but misunderstandings of self, interpretations of pleasant or
unpleasant general feelings; for instance of the states of the _nervus
sympathicus,_ with the help of the sign language of a religio-moral
idiosyncrasy,—repentance, pangs of conscience, the temptation of
the devil, the presence of God); an imaginary teleology (the Kingdom
of God, the Last Judgment, Everlasting Life).—This purely fictitious
world distinguishes itself very unfavourably from the world of
dreams: the latter _reflects_ reality, whereas the former falsifies,
depreciates and denies it Once the concept “nature” was taken to mean
the opposite of the concept God, the word “natural” had to acquire the
meaning of abominable,—the whole of that fictitious world takes its
root in the hatred of nature (—reality!—), it is the expression of
profound discomfiture in the presence of reality.... _But this explains
everything._ What is the only kind of man who has reasons for wriggling
out of reality by lies? The man who suffers from reality. But in
order to suffer from reality one must be a bungled portion of it. The
preponderance of pain over pleasure is the _cause_ of that fictitious
morality and religion: but any such preponderance furnishes the formula
for decadence.


16

A criticism of the Christian concept of God inevitably leads to the
same conclusion.—A nation that still believes in itself, also has
its own God. In him it honours the conditions which enable it to
remain uppermost,—that is to say, its virtues. It projects its joy
over itself, its feeling of power, into a being, to whom it can be
thankful for such things. He who is rich, will give of his riches: a
proud people requires a God, unto whom it can _sacrifice_ things....
Religion, when restricted to these principles, is a form of gratitude.
A man is grateful for his own existence; for this he must have a
God.—Such a God must be able to benefit and to injure him, he must be
able to act the friend and the foe. He must be esteemed for his good
as well as for his evil qualities. The monstrous castration of a God
by making him a God only of goodness, would lie beyond the pale of the
desires of such a community. The evil God is just as urgently needed
as the good God: for a people in such a form of society certainly does
not owe its existence to toleration and humaneness.... What would be
the good of a God who knew nothing of anger, revenge, envy, scorn,
craft, and violence?—who had perhaps never experienced the rapturous
_ardeurs_ of victory and of annihilation? No one would understand such
a God: why should one possess him?—Of course, when a people is on
the road to ruin; when it feels its belief in a future, its hope of
freedom vanishing for ever; when it becomes conscious of submission
as the most useful quality, and of the virtues of the submissive as
self-preservative measures, then its God must also modify himself.
He then becomes a tremulous and unassuming sneak; he counsels “peace
of the soul,” the cessation of all hatred, leniency and “love” even
towards friend and foe. He is for ever moralising, he crawls into
the heart of every private virtue, becomes a God for everybody, he
retires from active service and becomes a Cosmopolitan.... Formerly
he represented a people, the strength of a people, everything
aggressive and desirous of power lying concealed in the heart of a
nation: now he is merely the good God.... In very truth Gods have no
other alternative, they are _either_ the Will to Power—in which case
they are always the Gods of whole nations,—or, on the other hand, the
incapacity for power—in which case they necessarily become good.


17

Wherever the Will to Power, no matter in what form, begins to decline,
a physiological retrogression, decadence, always supervenes. The
godhead of _decadence,_ shorn of its masculine virtues and passions
is perforce converted into the God of the physiologically degraded,
of the weak. Of course they do not call themselves the weak, they
call themselves “the good.” ... No hint will be necessary to help you
to understand at what moment in history the dualistic fiction of a
good and an evil God first became possible. With the same instinct by
which the subjugated reduce their God to “Goodness in itself,” they
also cancel the good qualities from their conqueror’s God; they avenge
themselves on their masters by diabolising the latter’s God.—The _good
God_ and the devil as well:—both the abortions of decadence.—How
is it possible that we are still so indulgent towards the simplicity
of Christian theologians to-day, as to declare with them that the
evolution of the concept God, from the “God of Israel,” the God of
a people, to the Christian God, the quintessence of all goodness,
marks a _step forward?_—But even Renan does this. As if Renan had
a right to simplicity! Why the very contrary stares one in the face.
When the pre-requisites of _ascending_ life, when everything strong,
plucky, masterful and proud has been eliminated from the concept
of God, and step by step he has sunk down to the symbol of a staff
for the weary, of a last straw for all those who are drowning; when
he becomes the pauper’s God, the sinner’s God, the sick man’s God
_par excellence,_ and the attribute “Saviour,” “Redeemer,” remains
_over_ as the one essential attribute of divinity: what does such a
metamorphosis, such an abasement of the godhead imply?—Undoubtedly,
“the kingdom of God” has thus become larger. Formerly all he had was
his people, his “chosen” people. Since then he has gone travelling
over foreign lands, just as his people have done; since then he has
never rested anywhere: until one day he felt at home everywhere, the
Great Cosmopolitan,—until he got the “greatest number,” and half the
world on his side. But the God of the “greatest number,” the democrat
among gods, did not become a proud heathen god notwithstanding: he
remained a Jew, he remained the God of the back streets, the God of
all dark corners and hovels, of all the unwholesome quarters of the
world!... His universal empire is now as ever a netherworld empire,
an infirmary, a subterranean empire, a ghetto-empire.... And he
himself is so pale, so weak, so decadent ... Even the palest of the
pale were able to master him—our friends the metaphysicians, those
albinos of thought. They spun their webs around him so long that
ultimately he was hypnotised by their movements and himself became a
spider, a metaphysician. Thenceforward he once more began spinning the
world out of his inner being—_sub specie Spinozæ,_—thenceforward
he transfigured himself into something ever thinner and ever more
anæmic, became “ideal,” became “pure spirit,” became _“absotutum”_ and
“thing-in-itself.” ... _The decline and fall of a god:_ God became the
“thing-in-itself.”


18

The Christian concept of God—God as the deity of the sick, God as a
spider, God as spirit—is one of the most corrupt concepts of God that
has ever been attained on earth. Maybe it represents the low-water
mark in the evolutionary ebb of the godlike type God degenerated into
the _contradiction of life,_ instead of being its transfiguration and
eternal Yea! With God war is declared on life, nature, and the will to
life! God is the formula for every calumny of this world and for every
lie concerning a beyond! In God, nonentity is deified, and the will to
nonentity is declared holy!


19

The fact that the strong races of Northern Europe did not repudiate
the Christian God, certainly does not do any credit to their religious
power, not to speak of their taste They ought to have been able
successfully to cope with such a morbid and decrepit offshoot of
decadence. And a curse lies on their heads; because they were unable to
cope with him: they made illness, decrepitude and contradiction a part
of all their instincts,—since then they have not _created_ any other
God! Two thousand years have passed and not a single new God! But still
there exists, and as if by right,—like an _ultimum_ and _maximum_ of
god-creating power,—the _creator spiritus_ in man, this miserable God
of Christian monotono-theism! This hybrid creature of decay, nonentity,
concept and contradiction, in which all the instincts of decadence, all
the cowardices and languors of the soul find their sanction!——


20

With my condemnation of Christianity I should not like to have done
an injustice to a religion which is related to it and the number of
whose followers is even greater; I refer to Buddhism. As nihilistic
religions, they are akin,—they are religions of decadence,—while
each is separated from the other in the most extraordinary fashion.
For being able to compare them at all, the critic of Christianity is
profoundly grateful to Indian scholars.—Buddhism is a hundred times
more realistic than Christianity,—it is part of its constitutional
heritage to be able to face problems objectively and coolly, it is
the outcome of centuries of lasting philosophical activity. The
concept “God” was already exploded when it appeared. Buddhism is
the only really _positive_ religion to be found in history, even
in its epistemology (which is strict phenomenalism)—it no longer
speaks of the “struggle with _sin_” but fully recognising the true
nature of reality it speaks of the “struggle with _pain._” It already
has—and this distinguishes it fundamentally from Christianity,—the
self-deception of moral concepts beneath it,—to use my own
phraseology, it stands _Beyond Good and Evil._ The two physiological
facts upon which it rests and upon which it bestows its attention
are: in the first place excessive irritability of feeling, which
manifests itself as a refined susceptibility to pain, _and also_ as
super-spiritualisation, an all-too-lengthy sojourn amid concepts and
logical procedures, under the influence of which the personal instinct
has suffered in favour of the “impersonal.” (—Both of these states
will be known to a few of my readers, the objective ones, who, like
myself, will know them from experience.) Thanks to these physiological
conditions, a state of depression set in, which Buddha sought to combat
by means of hygiene. Against it, he prescribes life in the open, a life
of travel; moderation and careful choice in food; caution in regard to
all intoxicating liquor, as also in regard to all the passions which
tend to create bile and to heat the blood; and he deprecates care
either on one’s own or on other people’s account He recommends ideas
that bring one either peace or good cheer,—he invents means whereby
the habit of contrary ideas may be lost He understands goodness—being
good—as promoting health. _Prayer_ is out of the question, as is
also _asceticism;_ there is neither a Categorical Imperative nor any
discipline whatsoever, even within the walls of a monastery (—it is
always possible to leave it if one wants to). All these things would
have been only a means of accentuating the excessive irritability
already referred to. Precisely on this account he does not exhort his
followers to wage war upon those who do not share their views; nothing
is more abhorred in his doctrine than the feeling of revenge, of
aversion, and of resentment (—“not through hostility doth hostility
end”: the touching refrain of the whole of Buddhism....) And in this
he was right; for it is precisely these passions which are thoroughly
unhealthy in view of the principal dietetic object The mental fatigue
which he finds already existent and which expresses itself in
excessive “objectivity” (_i.e._, the enfeeblement of the individual’s
interest—loss of ballast and of “egoism”), he combats by leading
the spiritual interests as well imperatively back to the individual
In Buddha’s doctrine egoism is a duty: the thing which is above all
necessary, _i.e.,_ “how canst thou be rid of suffering” regulates
and defines the whole of the spiritual diet (—let anyone but think
of that Athenian who also declared war upon pure “scientificality,”
Socrates, who made a morality out of personal egoism even in the realm
of problems).


21

The pre-requisites for Buddhism are a very mild climate, great
gentleness and liberality in the customs of a people and _no_
militarism. The movement must also originate among the higher and
even learned classes. Cheerfulness, peace and absence of desire, are
the highest of inspirations, and they are _realised._ Buddhism is not
a religion in which perfection is merely aspired to: perfection is
the normal case. In Christianity all the instincts of the subjugated
and oppressed come to the fore: it is the lowest classes who seek
their salvation in this religion. Here the pastime, the manner of
killing time is to practise the casuistry of sin, self-criticism, and
conscience inquisition. Here the ecstasy in the presence of a _powerful
being,_ called “god,” is constantly maintained by means of prayer;
while the highest thing is regarded as unattainable, as a gift, as an
act of “grace” Here plain dealing is also entirely lacking: concealment
and the darkened room are Christian. Here the body is despised, hygiene
is repudiated as sensual; the church repudiates even cleanliness (—the
first Christian measure after the banishment of the Moors was the
closing of the public baths, of which Cordova alone possessed 270).
A certain spirit of cruelty towards one’s self and others is also
Christian: hatred of all those who do not share one’s views; the will
to persecute Sombre and exciting ideas are in the foreground; the most
coveted states and those which are endowed with the finest names, are
really epileptic in their nature; diet is selected in such a way as
to favour morbid symptoms and to over-excite the nerves. Christian,
too, is the mortal hatred of the earth’s rulers,—the “noble,”—and
at the same time a sort of concealed and secret competition with them
(the subjugated leave the “body” to their master—all they want is
the “soul”). Christian is the hatred of the intellect, of pride, of
courage, freedom, intellectual _libertinage;_ Christian is the hatred
of the _senses,_ of the joys of the senses, of joy in general.


22

When Christianity departed from its native soil, which consisted of the
lowest classes, the _submerged masses_ of the ancient world, and set
forth in quest of power among barbaric nations, it no longer met with
exhausted men but inwardly savage and self-lacerating men—the strong
but bungled men. Here, dissatisfaction with one’s self, suffering
through one’s self, is not as in the case of Buddhism, excessive
irritability and susceptibility to pain, but rather, conversely, it
is an inordinate desire for inflicting pain, for a discharge of the
inner tension in hostile deeds and ideas. Christianity was in need of
_barbaric_ ideas and values, in order to be able to master barbarians:
such are for instance, the sacrifice of the first-born, the drinking
of blood at communion, the contempt of the intellect and of culture;
torture in all its forms, sensual and non-sensual; the great pomp of
the cult Buddhism is a religion for _senile_ men, for races which
have become kind, gentle, and over-spiritual, and which feel pain too
easily (—Europe is not nearly ripe for it yet—); it calls them back
to peace and cheerfulness, to a regimen for the intellect, to a certain
hardening of the body. Christianity aims at mastering _beasts of prey_;
its expedient is to make them _ill,_—to render feeble is the Christian
recipe for taming, for “civilisation.” Buddhism is a religion for the
close and exhaustion of civilisation; Christianity does not even find
civilisation at hand when it appears, in certain circumstances it lays
the foundation of civilisation.


23

Buddhism, I repeat, is a hundred times colder, more truthful,
more objective. It no longer requires to justify pain and its
susceptibility to suffering by the interpretation of sin,—it simply
says what it thinks, “I suffer.” To the barbarian, on the other hand,
suffering in itself is not a respectable thing: in order to acknowledge
to himself that he suffers, what he requires, in the first place, is
an explanation (his instinct directs him more readily to deny his
suffering, or to endure it in silence). In his case, the word “devil”
was a blessing: man had an almighty and terrible enemy,—he had no
reason to be ashamed of suffering at the hands of such an enemy.—

At bottom there are in Christianity one or two subtleties which belong
to the Orient In the first place it knows that it is a matter of
indifference whether a thing be true or not; but that it is of the
highest importance that it should be believed to be true. Truth and
the belief that something is true: two totally separate worlds of
interest, almost _opposite worlds,_ the road to the one and the road to
the other lie absolutely apart To be initiated into this fact almost
constitutes one a sage in the Orient: the Brahmins understood it thus,
so did Plato, and so does every disciple of esoteric wisdom. If for
example it give anyone pleasure to believe himself delivered from sin,
it is _not_ a necessary prerequisite thereto that he should be sinful,
but only that he should _feel_ sinful. If, however, _faith_ is above
all necessary, then reason, knowledge, and scientific research must be
brought into evil repute: the road to truth becomes the _forbidden_
road.—Strong _hope_ is a much greater stimulant of life than any
single realised joy could be. Sufferers must be sustained by a hope
which no actuality can contradict,—and which cannot ever be realised:
the hope of another world. (Precisely on account of this power that
hope has of making the unhappy linger on, the Greeks regarded it as
the evil of evils, as the most _mischievous_ evil: it remained behind
in Pandora’s box.) In order that _love_ may be possible, God must be a
person. In order that the lowest instincts may also make their voices
heard God must be young. For the ardour of the women a beautiful saint,
and for the ardour of the men a Virgin Mary has to be pressed into the
foreground. All this on condition that Christianity wishes to rule
over a certain soil, on which Aphrodisiac or Adonis cults had already
determined the _notion_ of a cult. To insist upon _chastity_ only
intensifies the vehemence and profundity of the religious instinct—it
makes the cult warmer, more enthusiastic, more soulful.—Love is the
state in which man sees things most widely different from what they
are. The force of illusion reaches its zenith here, as likewise the
sweetening and transfiguring power. When a man is in love he endures
more than at other times; he submits to everything. The thing was to
discover a religion in which it was possible to love: by this means
the worst in life is overcome—it is no longer even seen.—So much
for three Christian virtues Faith, Hope, and Charity: I call them the
three Christian _precautionary measures._—Buddhism is too full of aged
wisdom, too positivistic to be shrewd in this way.


24

Here I only touch upon the problem of the origin of Christianity.
The first principle of its solution reads: Christianity can be
understood only in relation to the soil out of which it grew,—it is
not a counter-movement against the Jewish instinct, it is the rational
outcome of the latter, one step further in its appalling logic. In
the formula of the Saviour: “for Salvation is of the Jews.”—The
second principle is: the psychological type of the Galilean is still
recognisable, but it was only in a state of utter degeneration (which
is at once a distortion and an overloading with foreign features) that
he was able to serve the purpose for which he has been used,—namely,
as the type of a Redeemer of mankind.

The Jews are the most remarkable people in the history of the world,
because when they were confronted with the question of Being or
non-Being, with simply uncanny deliberateness, they preferred Being
_at any price:_ this price was the fundamental _falsification_ of all
Nature, all the naturalness and all the reality, of the inner quite
as much as of the outer world. They hedged themselves in behind all
those conditions under which hitherto a people has been able to live,
has been allowed to live; of themselves they created an idea which was
the reverse of _natural_ conditions,—each in turn, they twisted first
religion, then the cult, then morality, history and psychology, about
in a manner so perfectly hopeless that they were made _to contradict
their natural value._ We meet with the same phenomena again, and
exaggerated to an incalculable degree, although only as a copy:—the
Christian Church as compared with the “chosen people,” lacks all
claim to originality. Precisely on this account the Jews are the most
_fatal_ people in the history of the world: their ultimate influence
has falsified mankind to such an extent, that even to this day the
Christian can be anti-Semitic in spirit, without comprehending that he
himself is the _final consequence of Judaism._

It was in my “Genealogy of Morals” that I first gave a
psychological exposition of the idea of the antithesis noble and
_resentment-morality,_ the latter having arisen out of an attitude
of negation to the former: but this is Judæo-Christian morality
heart and soul. In order to be able to say Nay to everything that
represents the ascending movement of life, prosperity, power,
beauty, and self-affirmation on earth, the instinct of resentment,
become genius, bad to invent _another_ world, from the standpoint
of which that _Yea-saying_ to life appeared as _the_ most evil and
most abominable thing. From the psychological standpoint the Jewish
people are possessed of the toughest vitality. Transplanted amid
impossible conditions, with profound self-preservative intelligence,
it voluntarily took the side of all the instincts of decadence,—_not_
as though dominated by them, but because it detected a power in them
by means of which it could assert itself _against_ “the world.” The
Jews are the opposite of all _decadents_: they have been forced to
represent them to the point of illusion, and with a _non plus ultra_ of
histrionic genius, they have known how to set themselves at the head
of all decadent movements (St Paul and Christianity for instance), in
order to create something from them which is stronger than every party
_saying Yea to life._ For the category of men which aspires to power in
Judaism and Christianity,—that is to say, for the sacerdotal class,
decadence is but a _means;_ this category of men has a vital interest
in making men sick, and in turning the notions “good” and “bad,” “true”
and “false,” upside down in a manner which is not only dangerous to
life, but also slanders it.


25

The history of Israel is invaluable as the typical history of every
_denaturalization_ of natural values: let me point to five facts
which relate thereto. Originally, and above all in the period of
the kings, even Israel’s attitude to all things was the _right_ one
—that is to say, the natural one. Its Jehovah was the expression of
its consciousness of power, of its joy over itself, of its hope for
itself: victory and salvation were expected from him, through him it
was confident that Nature would give what a people requires—above
all rain. Jehovah is the God of Israel, and _consequently_ the God
of justice: this is the reasoning of every people which is in the
position of power, and which has a good conscience in that position. In
the solemn cult both sides of this self-affirmation of a people find
expression: it is grateful for the great strokes of fate by means of
which it became uppermost; it is grateful for the regularity in the
succession of the seasons and for all good fortune in the rearing of
cattle and in the tilling of the soil.—This state of affairs remained
the ideal for some considerable time, even after it had been swept away
in a deplorable manner by anarchy from within and the Assyrians from
without But the people still retained, as their highest desideratum,
that vision of a king who was a good soldier and a severe judge;
and he who retained it most of all was that typical prophet (—that
is to say, critic and satirist of the age), Isaiah.—But all hopes
remained unrealised. The old God was no longer able to do what he had
done formerly. He ought to have been dropped. What happened? The idea
of him was changed,—the idea of him was denaturalised: this was the
price they paid for retaining him.—Jehovah, the God of “Justice,”—is
no longer one with Israel, no longer the expression of a people’s
sense of dignity: he is only a god on certain conditions.... The
idea of him becomes a weapon in the hands of priestly agitators who
henceforth interpret all happiness as a reward, all unhappiness as a
punishment for disobedience to God, for “sin”: that most fraudulent
method of interpretation which arrives at a so-called “moral order
of the Universe,” by means of which the concept “cause” and “effect”
is turned upside down. Once natural causation has been swept out of
the world by reward and punishment, a causation _hostile to nature_
becomes necessary; whereupon all the forms of unnaturalness follow.
A God who _demands,_—in the place of a God who helps, who advises,
who is at bottom only a name for every happy inspiration of courage
and of self-reliance.... Morality is no longer the expression of the
conditions of life and growth, no longer the most fundamental instinct
of life, but it has become abstract, it has become the opposite of
life,—Morality as the fundamental perversion of the imagination,
as the “evil eye” for all things. What is Jewish morality, what is
Christian morality? Chance robbed of its innocence; unhappiness
polluted with the idea of “sin”; well-being interpreted as a danger, as
a “temptation”; physiological indisposition poisoned by means of the
canker-worm of conscience....


26

The concept of God falsified; the concept of morality falsified: but
the Jewish priesthood did not stop at this. No use could be made of
the whole _history_ of Israel, therefore it must go! These priests
accomplished that miracle of falsification, of which the greater part
of the Bible is the document: with unparalleled contempt and in the
teeth of all tradition and historical facts, they interpreted their own
people’s past in a religious manner,—that is to say, they converted
it into a ridiculous mechanical process of salvation, on the principle
that all sin against Jehovah led to punishment, and that all pious
worship of Jehovah led to reward. We would feel this shameful act of
historical falsification far more poignantly if the ecclesiastical
interpretation of history through millenniums had not blunted almost
all our sense for the demands of uprightness _in historicis._ And
the church is seconded by the philosophers: _the_ of “a moral order
of the universe” permeates the whole development even of more modern
philosophy. What does a “moral order of the universe” mean? That once
and for all there is such a thing as a will of God which determines
what man has to do and what he has to leave undone; that the value
of a people or of an individual is measured according to how much or
how little the one or the other obeys the will of God; that in the
destinies of a people or of an individual, the will of God shows
itself dominant, that is to say it punishes or rewards according to
the degree of obedience. In the place of this miserable falsehood,
_reality_ says: a parasitical type of man, who can flourish only at the
cost of all the healthy elements of life, the priest abuses the name
of God: he calls that state of affairs in which the priest determines
the value of things “the Kingdom of God”; he calls the means whereby
such a state of affairs is attained or maintained, “the Will of God”;
with cold-blooded cynicism he measures peoples, ages and individuals
according to whether they favour or oppose the ascendancy of the
priesthood. Watch him at work: in the hands of the Jewish priesthood
the Augustan Age in the history of Israel became an age of decline;
the exile, the protracted misfortune transformed itself into eternal
_punishment_ for the Augustan Age—that age in which the priest did not
yet exist Out of the mighty and thoroughly free-born figures of the
history of Israel, they made, according to their requirements, either
wretched bigots and hypocrites, or “godless ones”: they simplified
the psychology of every great event to the idiotic formula “obedient
or disobedient to God.”—A step further: the “Will of God,” that is
to say the self-preservative measures of the priesthood, must be
known—to this end a “revelation” is necessary. In plain English: a
stupendous literary fraud becomes necessary, “holy scriptures” are
discovered,—and they are published abroad with all hieratic pomp,
with days of penance and lamentations over the long state Of “sin.”
The “Will of God” has long stood firm: the whole of the trouble
lies in the fact that the “Holy Scriptures” have been discarded....
Moses was already the “Will of God” revealed.... What had happened?
With severity and pedantry, the priest had formulated once and for
all—even to the largest and smallest contributions that were to be
paid to him (—not forgetting the daintiest portions of meat; for the
priest is a consumer of beef-steaks)—_what he wanted,_ “what the Will
of God was.” ... Hence-forward everything became so arranged that the
priests were _indispensable everywhere._ At all the natural events of
life, at birth, at marriage, at the sick-bed, at death,—not to speak
of the sacrifice (“the meal”),—the holy parasite appears in order
to denaturalise, or in his language, to “sanctify,” everything....
For this should be understood: every natural custom, every natural
institution (the State, the administration of justice, marriage, the
care of the sick and the poor), every demand inspired by the instinct
of life, in short everything that has a value in itself, is rendered
absolutely worthless and even dangerous through the parasitism of the
priest (or of the “moral order of the universe”): a sanction after
the fact is required,—a _power which imparts value_ is necessary,
which in so doing says, Nay to nature, and which by this means alone
_creates_ a valuation.... The priest depreciates and desecrates nature:
it is only at this price that he exists at all.—Disobedience to God,
that is to say, to the priest, to the “law,” now receives the name of
“sin”; the means of “reconciling one’s self with God” are of course
of a nature which render subordination to the priesthood all the
more fundamental: the priest alone is able to “save.” ... From the
psychological standpoint, in every society organised upon a hieratic
basis, “sins” are indispensable: they are the actual weapons of power,
the priest _lives_ upon sins, it is necessary for him that people
should “sin.” ... Supreme axiom: “God forgiveth him that repenteth”—in
plain English: _him that submitteth himself to the priest._


27

Christianity grew out of an utterly _false_ soil, in which all nature,
every natural value, every _reality_ had the deepest instincts of the
ruling class against it; it was a form of deadly hostility to reality
which has never been surpassed. The “holy people” which had retained
only priestly values and priestly names for all things, and which, with
a logical consistency that is terrifying, had divorced itself from
everything still powerful on earth as if it were “unholy,” “worldly,”
“sinful,”—this people created a final formula for its instinct which
was consistent to the point of self-suppression; as _Christianity_ it
denied even the last form of reality, the “holy people,” the “chosen
people,” _Jewish_ reality itself. The case is of supreme interest:
the small insurrectionary movement christened with the name of Jesus
of Nazareth, is the Jewish instinct _over again,_—in other words,
it is the sacerdotal instinct which can no longer endure the priest
as a fact; it is the discovery of a kind of life even more fantastic
than the one previously conceived, a vision of life which is even
more unreal than that which the organisation of a church stipulates.
Christianity denies the church.[3]

I fail to see against whom was directed the insurrection of which
rightly or _wrongly_ Jesus is understood to have been the promoter,
if it were not directed against the Jewish church,—the word “church”
being used here in precisely the same sense in which it is used to-day.
It was an insurrection against the “good and the just,” against
the “prophets of Israel,” against the hierarchy of society—not
against the latter’s corruption, but against caste, privilege, order,
formality. It was the lack of faith in “higher men,” it was a “Nay”
uttered against everything that was tinctured with the blood of priests
and theologians. But the hierarchy which was set in question if only
temporarily by this movement, formed the construction of piles upon
which, alone, the Jewish people was able to subsist in the midst of the
“waters”; it was that people’s _last_ chance of survival wrested from
the world at enormous pains, the _residuum_ of its political autonomy:
to attack this construction was tantamount to attacking the most
profound popular instinct, the most tenacious national will to live
that has ever existed on earth. This saintly anarchist who called the
lowest of the low, the outcasts and “sinners,” the Chandala of Judaism,
to revolt against the established order of things (and in language
which, if the gospels are to be trusted, would get one sent to Siberia
even to-day)—this man was a political criminal in so far as political
criminals were possible in a community so absurdly non-political. This
brought him to the cross: the proof of this is the inscription found
thereon. He died for _his_ sins—and no matter how often the contrary
has been asserted there is absolutely nothing to show that he died for
the sins of others.


28

As to whether he was conscious of this contrast, or whether he was
merely _regarded_ as such, is quite another question. And here, alone,
do I touch upon the problem of the psychology of the Saviour.—I
confess there are few books which I have as much difficulty in reading
as the gospels. These difficulties are quite different from those which
allowed the learned curiosity of the German, mind to celebrate one
of its most memorable triumphs. Many years have now elapsed since I,
like every young scholar, with the sage conscientiousness of a refined
philologist, relished the work of the incomparable Strauss. I was then
twenty years of age; now I am too serious for that sort of thing. What
do I care about the contradictions of “tradition”? How can saintly
legends be called “tradition” at all! The stories of saints constitute
the most ambiguous literature on earth: to apply the scientific method
to them, _when there are no other documents to hand,_ seems to me to be
a fatal procedure from the start—simply learned fooling.


29

The point that concerns me is the psychological type of the Saviour.
This type might be contained in the gospels, in spite of the gospels,
and however much it may have been mutilated, or overladen with
foreign features: just as that of Francis of Assisi is contained
in his legends in spite of his legends. It is _not_ a question of
the truth concerning what he has done, what he has said, and how he
actually died; but whether his type may still be conceived in any way,
whether it has been handed down to us at all?—The attempts which
to my knowledge have been made to read the _history_ of a “soul” out
of the gospels, seem to me to point only to disreputable levity in
psychological matters. M. Renan, that buffoon _in psychologies,_ has
contributed the two most monstrous ideas imaginable to the explanation
of the type of Jesus: the idea of the _genius_ and the idea of the
_hero_ (“_héros_”). But if there is anything thoroughly unevangelical
surely it is the idea of the hero. It is precisely the reverse of all
struggle, of all consciousness of taking part in the fight, that has
become instinctive here: the inability to resist is here converted into
a morality (“resist not evil,” the profoundest sentence in the whole of
the gospels, their key in a certain sense), the blessedness of peace,
of gentleness, of not _being able_ to be an enemy. What is the meaning
of “glad tidings”?—True life, eternal life has been found—it is not
promised, it is actually here, it is in _you;_ it is life in love, in
love free from all selection or exclusion, free from all distance.
Everybody is the child of God—Jesus does not by any means claim
anything for himself alone,—as the child of God everybody is equal to
everybody else.... Fancy making Jesus a _hero!_—And what a tremendous
misunderstanding the word “genius” is! Our whole idea of “spirit,”
which is a civilised idea, could have had no meaning whatever in the
world in which Jesus lived. In the strict terms of the physiologist, a
very different word ought to be used here.... We know of a condition of
morbid irritability of the sense of _touch,_ which recoils shuddering
from every kind of contact, and from every attempt at grasping a solid
object. Any such physiological _habitus_ reduced to its ultimate
logical conclusion, becomes an instinctive hatred of all reality, a
flight into the “intangible,” into the “incomprehensible”; a repugnance
to all formulæ, to every notion of time and space, to everything that
is established such as customs, institutions, the church; a feeling
at one’s ease in a world in which no sign of reality is any longer
visible, a merely “inner” world, a “true” world, an “eternal” world....
“The Kingdom of God is within you”...


30

_The instinctive hatred of reality_ is the outcome of an extreme
susceptibility to pain and to irritation, which can no longer endure to
be “touched” at all, because every sensation strikes too deep.

_The instinctive exclusion of all aversion, of all hostility, of all
boundaries and distances in feeling,_ is the outcome of an extreme
susceptibility to pain and to irritation, which regards all resistance,
all compulsory resistance as insufferable _anguish_(—that is to say,
as harmful, as _deprecated_ by the self-preservative instinct), and
which knows blessedness (happiness) only when it is no longer obliged
to offer resistance to anybody, either evil or detrimental,—love as
the Only ultimate possibility of life....

These are the two _physiological realities_ upon which and out of which
the doctrine of salvation has grown. I call them a sublime further
development of hedonism, upon a thoroughly morbid soil. Epicureanism,
the pagan theory of salvation, even though it possessed a large
proportion of Greek vitality and nervous energy, remains the most
closely related to the above. Epicurus was a _typical_ decadent: and I
was the first to recognise him as such.—The terror of pain, even of
infinitely slight pain—such a state cannot possibly help culminating
in a _religion_ of love....


31

I have given my reply to the problem in advance. The prerequisite
thereto was the admission of the fact that the type of the Saviour has
reached us only in a very distorted form. This distortion in itself
is extremely feasible: for many reasons a type of that kind could not
be pure, whole, and free from additions. The environment in which
this strange figure moved, must have left its mark upon him, and the
history, the _destiny_ of the first Christian communities must have
done so to a still greater degree. Thanks to that destiny, the type
must have been enriched retrospectively with features which can be
interpreted only as serving the purposes of war and of propaganda
That strange and morbid world into which the gospels lead us—a
world which seems to have been drawn from a Russian novel, where
the scum and dross of society, diseases of the nerves and “childish”
imbecility seem to have given each other rendezvous—must in any case
have _coarsened_ the type: the first disciples especially must have
translated an existence conceived entirely in symbols and abstractions
into their own crudities, in order at least to be able to understand
something about it,—for them the type existed only after it had
been cast in a more familiar mould.... The prophet, the Messiah, the
future judge, the teacher of morals, the thaumaturgist, John the
Baptist—all these were but so many opportunities of misunderstanding
the type.... Finally, let us not under-rate the _proprium_ of all great
and especially sectarian veneration: very often it effaces from the
venerated object, all the original and frequently painfully un-familiar
traits and idiosyncrasies—_it does not even see them._ It is greatly
to be deplored that no Dostoiewsky lived in the neighbourhood of this
most interesting decadent,—I mean someone who would have known how to
feel the poignant charm of such a mixture of the sublime, the morbid,
and the childlike. Finally, the type, as an example of decadence, may
actually have been extraordinarily multifarious and contradictory:
this, as a possible alternative, is not to be altogether ignored.
Albeit, everything seems to point away from it; for, precisely in this
case, tradition would necessarily have been particularly true and
objective: whereas we have reasons for assuming the reverse. Meanwhile
a yawning chasm of contradiction separates the mountain, lake, and
pastoral preacher, who strikes us as a Buddha on a soil only very
slightly Hindu, from that combative fanatic, the mortal enemy of
theologians and priests, whom Renan’s malice has glorified as “_le
grand maître en ironie._” For my part, I do not doubt but what the
greater part of this venom (and even of _esprit_) was inoculated into
the type of the Master only as the outcome of the agitated condition
of Christian propaganda. For we have ample reasons for knowing the
unscrupulousness of all sectarians when they wish to contrive their own
_apology_ out of the person of their master. When the first Christian
community required a discerning, wrangling, quarrelsome, malicious and
hair-splitting theologian, to oppose other theologians, it created its
“God” according to its needs; just as it did not hesitate to put upon
his lips those utterly unevangelical ideas of “his second coming,” the
“last judgment,”—ideas with which it could not then dispense,—and
every kind of expectation and promise which happened to be current.


32

I can only repeat that I am opposed to the importation of the fanatic
into the type of the Saviour: the word “_impérieux,_” which Renan
uses, in itself annuls the type. The “glad tidings” are simply that
there are no longer any contradictions, that the Kingdom of Heaven is
for the _children;_ the faith which raises its voice here is not a
faith that has been won by a struggle,—it is to hand, it was there
from the beginning, it is a sort of spiritual return to childishness.
The case of delayed and undeveloped puberty in the organism, as the
result of degeneration is at least familiar to physiologists. A faith
of this sort does not show anger, it does not blame, neither does it
defend itself: it does not bring “the sword,”—it has no inkling of
how it will one day establish feuds between man and man. It does not
demonstrate itself, either by miracles, or by reward and promises, or
yet “through the scriptures”: it is in itself at every moment its own
miracle, its own reward, its own proof, its own “Kingdom of God.” This
faith cannot be formulated—it lives, it guards against formulas. The
accident of environment, of speech, of preparatory culture, certainly
determines a particular series of conceptions: early Christianity deals
only in Judæo-Semitic conceptions (—the eating and drinking at the
last supper form part of these,—this idea which like everything Jewish
has been abused so maliciously by the church). But one should guard
against seeing anything more than a language of signs, semiotics, an
opportunity for parables in all this. The very fact that no word is to
be taken literally, is the only condition on which this Anti-realist
is able to speak at all. Among Indians he would have made use of the
ideas of Sankhyara, among Chinese, those of Lao-tze—and would not
have been aware of any difference. With a little terminological laxity
Jesus might be called a “free spirit”—he cares not a jot for anything
that is established: the word _killeth,_ everything fixed _killtth._
The idea, _experience,_ “life” as he alone knows it, is, according to
him, opposed to every kind of word, formula, law, faith and dogma. He
speaks only of the innermost things: “life” or “truth,” or “light,” is
his expression for the innermost thing,—everything else, the whole of
reality, the whole of nature, language even, has only the value of a
sign, of a simile for him.—It is of paramount importance not to make
any mistake at this point, however great may be the temptation thereto
that lies in Christian—I mean to say, ecclesiastical prejudice. Any
such essential symbolism stands beyond the pale of all religion, all
notions of cult, all history, all natural science, all experience of
the world, all knowledge, all politics, all psychology, all books and
all Art—for his “wisdom” is precisely the complete ignorance[4] of the
existence of such things. He has not even heard speak of _culture,_ he
does not require to oppose it,—he does not deny it.... The same holds
good of the state, of the whole of civil and social order, of work
and of war—he never had any reason to deny the world, he had not the
vaguest notion of the ecclesiastical concept “the world.” ... Denying
is precisely what was quite impossible to him.—Dialectic is also
quite absent, as likewise the idea that any faith, any “truth” can be
proved by argument (—his proofs are inner “lights,” inward feelings of
happiness and self-affirmation, a host of “proofs of power”—). Neither
can such a doctrine contradict, it does not even realise the fact that
there are or can be other doctrines, it is absolutely incapable of
imagining a contrary judgment.... Wherever it encounters such things,
from a feeling of profound sympathy it bemoans such “blindness,”—for
it sees the “light,”—but it raises no objections.


33

The whole psychology of the “gospels” lacks the concept of guilt and
punishment, as also that of reward. “Sin,” any sort of aloofness
between God and man, is done away with,—_this is precisely what
constitutes the “glad tidings”._ Eternal bliss is not promised, it is
not bound up with certain conditions; it is the only reality—the rest
consists only of signs wherewith to speak about it....

The results of such a state project themselves into a new practice
of life, the actual evangelical practice. It is not a “faith” which
distinguishes the Christians: the Christian acts, he distinguishes
himself by means of a _different_ mode of action. He does not resist
his enemy either by words or in his heart He draws no distinction
between foreigners and natives, between Jews and Gentiles (“the
neighbour” really means the co-religionist, the Jew). He is angry with
no one, he despises no one. He neither shows himself at the tribunals
nor does he acknowledge any of their claims (“Swear not at all”).
He never under any circumstances divorces his wife, even when her
infidelity has been proved.—All this is at bottom one principle, it is
all the outcome of one instinct—

The life of the Saviour was naught else than this practice,—neither
was his death. He no longer required any formulæ, any rites for his
relations with God—not even prayer. He has done with all the Jewish
teaching of repentance and of atonement; he alone knows the _mode_
of life which makes one feel “divine,” “saved,” “evangelical,” and
at all times a “child of God.” _Not_ “repentance,” _not_ “prayer and
forgiveness” are the roads to God: the _evangelical mode of life
alone_ leads to God, it _is_ “God.”—That which the gospels abolished
was the Judaism of the concepts “sin,” “forgiveness of sin,” “faith,”
“salvation through faith,”—the whole doctrine of the Jewish church was
denied by the “glad tidings.”

The profound instinct of how one must live in order to feel “in
Heaven,” in order to feel “eternal,” while in every other respect
one feels by _no_ means “in Heaven”: this alone is the psychological
reality of “Salvation.”—A new life and _not_ a new faith....


34

If I understand anything at all about this great symbolist, it is
this that he regarded only _inner_ facts as facts, as “truths,”—that
he understood the rest, everything natural, temporal, material
and historical, only as signs, as opportunities for parables. The
concept “the Son of Man,” is not a concrete personality belonging to
history, anything individual and isolated, but an “eternal” fact,
a psychological symbol divorced from the concept of time. The same
is true, and in the highest degree, of the _God_ of this typical
symbolist, of the “Kingdom of God,” of the “Kingdom of Heaven,” and
of the “Sonship of God.” Nothing is more un-Christlike than the
_ecclesiastical crudity_ of a personal God, of a Kingdom of God that
is coming, of a “Kingdom of Heaven” beyond, of a “Son of God” as the
second person of the Trinity. All this, if I may be forgiven the
expression, is as fitting as a square peg in a round hole—and oh!
what a hole!—the gospels: a _world-historic_ cynicism in the scorn
of symbols.... But what is meant by the signs “Father” and “Son,” is
of course obvious—not to everybody, I admit: with the word “Son,”
_entrance_ into the feeling of the general transfiguration of all
things (beatitude) is expressed, with the word “Father,” _this feeling
itself_ the feeling of eternity and of perfection.—I blush to have to
remind you of what the Church has done with this symbolism: has it not
set an Amphitryon story at the threshold of the Christian “faith”? And
a dogma of immaculate conception into the bargain?... _But by so doing
it defiled conception._——

The “Kingdom of Heaven” is a state of the heart—not something
which exists “beyond this earth” or comes to you “after death.” The
whole idea of natural death is lacking in the gospels. Death is not
a bridge, not a means of access: it is absent because it belongs to
quite a different and merely apparent world the only use of which is
to furnish signs, similes. The “hour of death” is not a Christian
idea—the “hour,” time in general, physical life and its crises do not
exist for the messenger of “glad tidings.” ... The “Kingdom of God” is
not some thing that is expected; it has no yesterday nor any day after
to-morrow, it is not going to come in a “thousand years”—it is an
experience of a human heart; it is everywhere, it is nowhere....


35

This “messenger of glad tidings” died as he lived and as he
taught—_not_ in order “to save mankind,” but in order to show how one
ought to live. It was a mode of life that he bequeathed to mankind: his
behaviour before his judges, his attitude towards his executioners,
his accusers, and all kinds of calumny and scorn,—his demeanour on
the _cross._ He offers no resistance; he does not defend his rights;
he takes no step to ward off the most extreme consequences, he does
more,—he provokes them. And he prays, suffers and loves with those, in
those, who treat him ill.... _Not_ to defend one’s self, _not_ to show
anger, not to hold anyone responsible.... But to refrain from resisting
even the evil one,—to _love_ him....


36

—Only we spirits that have _become free,_ possess the necessary
condition for understanding something which nineteen centuries have
misunderstood,—that honesty which has become an instinct and a passion
in us, and which wages war upon the “holy lie” with even more vigour
than upon every other lie.... Mankind was unspeakably far from our
beneficent and cautious neutrality, from that discipline of the mind,
which, alone, renders the solution of such strange and subtle things
possible: at all times, with shameless egoism, all that people sought
was their _own_ advantage in these matters, the Church was built up out
of contradiction to the gospel....

Whoever might seek for signs pointing to the guiding fingers of an
ironical deity behind the great comedy of existence, would find no
small argument in the _huge note of interrogation_ that is called
Christianity. The fact that mankind is on its knees before the reverse
of that which formed the origin, the meaning and the _rights_ of
the gospel; the fact that, in the idea “Church,” precisely that is
pronounced holy which the “messenger of glad tidings” regarded as
_beneath_ him, as _behind_ him—one might seek in vain for a more
egregious example _of world-historic_ irony—-


37

—Our age is proud of its historical sense: how could it allow
itself to be convinced of the nonsensical idea that at the beginning
Christianity consisted only of the _clumsy fable of the thaumaturgist
and of the Saviour,_ and that all its spiritual and symbolic
side was only developed later? On the contrary: the history of
Christianity—from the death on the cross onwards—is the history of
a gradual and ever coarser misunderstanding of an original symbolism.
With every extension of Christianity over ever larger and ruder
masses, who were ever less able to grasp its first principles, the
need of _vulgarising and barbarising it_ increased proportionately—it
absorbed the teachings and rites of all the _subterranean_ cults of the
_imperium Romanum,_ as well as the nonsense of every kind of morbid
reasoning. The fatal feature of Christianity lies in the necessary
fact that its faith had to become as morbid, base and vulgar as the
needs to which it had to minister were morbid, base and vulgar. _Morbid
barbarism_ at last braces itself together for power in the form of the
Church—the Church, this deadly hostility to all honesty, to all
loftiness of the soul, to all discipline of the mind, to all frank and
kindly humanity.—_Christian_ and _noble_ values: only we spirits _who
have become free have_ re-established this contrast in values which is
the greatest that has ever existed on earth!—


38

—I cannot, at this point, stifle a sigh. There are days when I
am visited by a feeling blacker than the blackest melancholy—the
_contempt of man._ And in order that I may leave you in no doubt as
to what I despise, _whom_ I despise: I declare that it is the man of
to-day, the man with whom I am fatally contemporaneous. The man of
to-day, I am asphyxiated by his foul breath.... Towards the past, like
all knights of knowledge, I am profoundly tolerant,—that is to say,
I exercise a sort of _generous_ self-control: with gloomy caution I
pass through whole millennia of this mad-house world, and whether it
be called “Christianity,” “Christian Faith,” or “Christian Church,” I
take care not to hold mankind responsible for its mental disorders.
But my feeling suddenly changes, and vents itself the moment I enter
the modern age, _our_ age. Our age _knows...._ That which formerly
was merely morbid, is now positively indecent It is indecent nowadays
to be a Christian. _And it is here that my loathing begins._ I look
about me: not a word of what was formerly known as “truth” has remained
standing; we can no longer endure to hear a priest even pronounce the
word “truth.” Even he who makes but the most modest claims upon truth,
_must_ know at present, that a theologian, a priest, or a pope, not
only errs but actually _ties,_ with every word that he utters,—and
that he is no longer able to lie from “innocence,” from “ignorance.”
Even the priest knows quite as well as everybody else does that there
is no longer any “God,” any “sinner” or any “Saviour,” and that “free
will,” and “a moral order of the universe” are _lies._ Seriousness,
the profound self-conquest of the spirit no longer allows anyone to
be _ignorant_ about this.... All the concepts of the Church have been
revealed in their true colours—that is to say, as the most vicious
frauds on earth, calculated to _depreciate_ nature and all natural
values. The priest himself has been recognised as what he is—that is
to say, as the most dangerous kind of parasite, as the actual venomous
spider of existence.... At present we know, our _conscience_ knows,
the real value of the gruesome inventions which the priests and the
Church have made, _and what end they served._ By means of them that
state of self-profanation on the part of man has been attained, the
sight of which makes one heave. The concepts “Beyond,” “Last Judgment,”
“Immortality of the Soul,” the “soul” itself, are merely so many
instruments of torture, so many systems of cruelty, on the strength
of which the priest became and remained master.... Everybody knows
this, _and nevertheless everything remains as it was._ Whither has
the last shred of decency, of self-respect gone, if nowadays even
our statesmen—a body of men who are otherwise so unembarrassed, and
such thorough anti-Christians in deed—still declare themselves
Christians and still flock to communion?[5].... Fancy a prince at the
head of his legions, magnificent as the expression of the egoism and
self-exaltation of his people,—but _shameless_ enough to acknowledge
himself a Christian!... What then does Christianity deny? What does
it call “world”? “The world” to Christianity means that a man is a
soldier, a judge, a patriot, that he defends himself, that he values
his honour, that he desires his own advantage, that he is _proud._
... The conduct of every moment, every instinct, every valuation that
leads to a deed, is at present anti-Christian: what an _abortion of
falsehood_ modern man must be, in order to be able _without a blush_
still to call himself a Christian!——


39

—I will retrace my steps, and will tell you the _genuine_
history of Christianity.—The very word “Christianity” is a
misunderstanding,—truth to tell, there never was more than one
Christian, and he _died_ on the Cross. The “gospel” _died_ on the
cross. That which thenceforward was called “gospel” was the reverse
of that “gospel” that Christ had lived: it was “evil tidings,” a
_dysangel_ It is false to the point of nonsense to see in “faith,”
in the faith in salvation through Christ, the distinguishing trait
of the Christian: the only thing that is Christian is the Christian
mode of existence, a life such as he led who died on the Cross.... To
this day a life of this kind is still possible; for certain men, it
is even necessary: genuine, primitive Christianity will be possible
in all ages.... _Not_ a faith, but a course of action, above all a
course of inaction, non-interference, and a different life.... States
of consciousness, any sort of faith, a holding of certain things
for true, as every psychologist knows, are indeed of absolutely no
consequence, and are only of fifth-rate importance compared with the
value of the instincts: more exactly, the whole concept of intellectual
causality is false. To reduce the fact of being a Christian, or of
Christianity, to a holding of something for true, to a mere phenomenon
of consciousness, is tantamount to denying Christianity. _In fact
there have never been any Christians._ The “Christian,” he who for two
thousand years has been called a Christian, is merely a psychological
misunderstanding of self. Looked at more closely, there ruled in
him, _notwithstanding_ all his faith, only instincts—and _what
instincts!_—“Faith” in all ages, as for instance in the case of
Luther, has always been merely a cloak, a pretext, a _screen,_ behind
which the instincts played their game,—a prudent form of _blindness_
in regard to the dominion of _certain_ instincts. “Faith” I have
already characterised as a piece of really Christian cleverness; for
people have always spoken of “faith” and acted according to their
instincts.... In the Christian’s world of ideas there is nothing which
even touches reality: but I have already recognised in the instinctive
hatred of reality the actual motive force, the only driving power at
the root of Christianity. What follows therefrom? That here, even
_in psychologicis_, error is fundamental,—that is to say capable
of determining the spirit of things,—that is to say, _substance._
Take one idea away from the whole, and put one realistic fact in its
stead,—and the whole of Christianity tumbles into nonentity!—Surveyed
from above, this strangest of all facts,-a religion not only dependent
upon error, but inventive and showing signs of genius only in those
errors which are dangerous and which poison life and the human
heart—remains a _spectacle for gods,_ for those gods who are at the
same time philosophers and whom I met for instance in those celebrated
dialogues on the island of Naxos. At the moment when they get rid
of their _loathing (—and we do as well!_), they will be thankful
for the spectacle the Christians have offered: the wretched little
planet called Earth perhaps deserves on account of _this_ curious
case alone, a divine glance, and divine interest.... Let us not
therefore underestimate the Christians: the Christian, false _to the
point of innocence in falsity,_ is far above the apes,—in regard to
the Christians a certain well-known theory of Descent becomes a mere
good-natured compliment.


40

—The fate of the gospel was decided at the moment of the death,—it
hung on the “cross.” ... It was only death, this unexpected and
ignominious death; it was only the cross which as a rule was reserved
simply for the _canaille,_—only this appalling paradox which
confronted the disciples with the actual riddle: _Who was that? what
was that?_—The state produced by the excited and profoundly wounded
feelings of these men, the suspicion that such a death might imply the
_refutation_ of their cause, and the terrible note of interrogation:
“why precisely thus?” will be understood only too well. In this case
everything _must_ be necessary, everything must have meaning, a reason,
the highest reason. The love of a disciple admits of no such thing as
accident. Only then did the chasm yawn: “who has killed him?” “who was
his natural enemy?”—this question rent the firmament like a flash of
lightning. Reply: _dominant_ Judaism, its ruling class. Thenceforward
the disciple felt himself in revolt _against_ established order; he
understood Jesus, after the fact, as one in _revolt against established
order._ Heretofore this warlike, this nay-saying and nay-doing feature
in Christ had been lacking; nay more, he was its contradiction. The
small primitive community had obviously understood _nothing_ of the
principal factor of all, which was the example of freedom and of
superiority to every form of _resentment_ which lay in this way of
dying. And this shows how little they understood him altogether! At
bottom Jesus could not have desired anything else by his death than to
give the strongest public _example_ and _proof_ of his doctrine....
But his disciples were very far from _forgiving this_ death—though if
they had done so it would have been in the highest sense evangelical
on their part,—neither were they prepared, with a gentle and serene
calmness of heart, to _offer_ themselves for a similar death....
Precisely the most unevangelical feeling, _revenge,_ became once more
ascendant. It was impossible for the cause to end with this death:
“compensation” and “judgment” were required (—and forsooth, what could
be more unevangelical than “compensation,” “punishment,” “judgment”!)
The popular expectation of a Messiah once more became prominent;
attention was fixed upon one historical moment: the “Kingdom of God”
descends to sit in judgment upon his enemies. But this proves that
everything was misunderstood: the “Kingdom of God” regarded as the last
scene of the last act, as a promise! But the Gospel had clearly been
the living, the fulfilment, the _reality_ of this “Kingdom of God.”
It was precisely a death such as Christ’s that was this “Kingdom of
God.” It was only now that all the contempt for the Pharisees and the
theologians, and all bitter feelings towards them, were introduced
into the character of the Master,—and by this means he himself was
converted into a Pharisee and a theologian! On the other hand, the
savage veneration of these completely unhinged souls could no longer
endure that evangelical right of every man to be the child of God,
which Jesus had taught: their revenge consisted in _elevating_ Jesus in
a manner devoid of all reason, and in separating him from themselves:
just as, formerly, the Jews, with the view of revenging themselves on
their enemies, separated themselves from their God, and placed him high
above them. The Only God, and the Only Son of God:—both were products
of resentment.


41

—And from this time forward an absurd problem rose into prominence:
“how _could_ God allow it to happen?” To this question the disordered
minds of the small community found a reply which in its absurdity
was literally terrifying: God gave his Son as a _sacrifice_ for the
forgiveness of sins. Alas! how prompt and sudden was the end of
the gospel! Expiatory sacrifice for guilt, and indeed in its most
repulsive and barbaric form,—the sacrifice of the _innocent_ for
the sins of the guilty! What appalling Paganism!—For Jesus himself
had done away with the concept “guilt,”—he denied any gulf between
God and man, he _lived_ this unity between God and man, it was this
that constituted _his_ “glad tidings.” ... And he did _not_ teach it
as a privilege!—Thenceforward there was gradually imported into the
type of the Saviour the doctrine of the Last Judgment, and of the
“second coming,” the doctrine of sacrificial death, and the doctrine
of _Resurrection,_ by means of which the whole concept “blessedness,”
the entire and only reality of the gospel, is conjured away—in favour
of a state _after_ death!... St Paul, with that rabbinic impudence
which characterises all his doings, rationalised this conception, this
prostitution of a conception, as follows: “if Christ did not rise from
the dead, our faith is vain.”—And, in a trice, the most contemptible
of all unrealisable promises, the _impudent_ doctrine of personal
immortality, was woven out of the gospel.... St Paul even preached this
immortality as a reward.


42

You now realise what it was that came to an end with the death on the
cross: a new and thoroughly original effort towards a Buddhistic
movement of peace, towards real and _not_ merely promised _happiness
on earth._ For, as I have already pointed out, this remains the
fundamental difference between the two religions _of decadence:_
Buddhism promises little but fulfils more, Christianity promises
everything but fulfils nothing.—The “glad tidings” were followed
closely by the absolutely _worst_ tidings—those of St Paul. Paul is
the incarnation of a type which is the reverse of that of the Saviour;
he is the genius in hatred, in the standpoint of hatred, and in the
relentless logic of hatred. And alas what did this dysangelist not
sacrifice to his hatred! Above all the Saviour himself: he nailed him
to _his_ cross. Christ’s life, his example, his doctrine and death,
the sense and the right of the gospel—not a vestige of alt this
was left, once this forger, prompted by his hatred, had understood
in it only that which could serve his purpose. _Not_ reality: _not_
historical truth! ... And once more, the sacerdotal instinct of
the Jew, perpetrated the same great crime against history,—he
simply cancelled the yesterday, and the day before that, out of
Christianity; he _contrived of his own accord a history of the birth
of Christianity._ He did more: he once more falsified the history of
Israel, so as to make it appear as a prologue to _his_ mission: all the
prophets had referred to _his_ “Saviour.” ... Later on the Church even
distorted the history of mankind so as to convert it into a prelude to
Christianity.... The type of the Saviour, his teaching, his life, his
death, the meaning of his death, even the sequel to his death—nothing
remained untouched, nothing was left which even remotely resembled
reality. St Paul simply transferred the centre of gravity of the whole
of that great life, to a place _behind_ this life,—in the _lie_ of
the “resuscitated” Christ. At bottom, he had no possible use for the
life of the Saviour,—he needed the death on the cross, _and_ something
more. To regard as honest a man like St Paul (a man whose home was the
very headquarters of Stoical enlightenment) when he devises a proof
of the continued existence of the Saviour out of a hallucination; or
even to believe him when he declares that he had this hallucination,
would amount to foolishness on the part of a psychologist: St Paul
desired the end, consequently he also desired the means.... Even what
he himself did not believe, was believed in by the idiots among whom
he spread _his_ doctrine.—What he wanted was power; with St Paul the
priest again aspired to power,—he could make use only of concepts,
doctrines, symbols with which masses may be tyrannised over, and
with which herds are formed. What was the only part of Christianity
which was subsequently borrowed by Muhamed? St Paul’s invention, his
expedient for priestly tyranny and to the formation of herds: the
belief in immortality—_that is to say, the doctrine of the “Last
Judgment.” ..._


43

When the centre of gravity of life is laid, _not_ in life, but in a
beyond—_in nonentity,_—life is utterly robbed of its balance. The
great lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all nature in
the instincts,—everything in the instincts that is beneficent, that
promotes life and that is a guarantee of the future, henceforward
aroused suspicion. The very meaning of life is now construed as the
effort to live in such a way that life no longer has any point.... Why
show any public spirit? Why be grateful for one’s origin and one’s
forebears? Why collaborate with one’s fellows, and be confident? Why
be concerned about the general weal or strive after it?... All these
things are merely so many “temptations,” so many deviations from the
“straight path.” “One thing only is necessary.” ... That everybody, as
an “immortal soul,” should have equal rank, that in the totality of
beings, the “salvation” of each individual may lay claim to eternal
importance, that insignificant bigots and three-quarter-lunatics may
have the right to suppose that the laws of nature may be persistently
_broken_ on their account,—any such magnification of every kind
of selfishness to infinity, to _insolence,_ cannot be branded with
sufficient contempt And yet it is to this miserable flattery of
personal vanity that Christianity owes its _triumph,_—by this means
it lured all the bungled and the botched, all revolting and revolted
people, all abortions, the whole of the refuse and offal of humanity,
over to its side. The “salvation of the soul”—in plain English: “the
world revolves around me” ... The poison of the doctrine “_equal_
rights for all”—has been dispensed with the greatest thoroughness by
Christianity: Christianity, prompted by the most secret recesses of
bad instincts, has waged a deadly war upon all feeling of reverence
and distance between man and man—that is to say, the _prerequisite_
of all elevation, of every growth in culture; out of the resentment
of the masses it wrought its _principal weapons_ against us, against
everything noble, joyful, exalted on earth, against our happiness on
earth.... To grant “immortality” to every St Peter and St Paul, was
the greatest, the most vicious outrage upon _noble_ humanity that has
ever been perpetrated.—And do not let us underestimate the fatal
influence which, springing from Christianity, has insinuated itself
even into politics! Nowadays no one has the courage of special rights,
of rights of t dominion, of a feeling of self-respect and of respect
for his equals,—of _pathos of distance._ Our politics are diseased
with this lack of courage!—The aristocratic attitude of mind has been
most thoroughly undermined by the lie of the equality of souls; and if
the belief in the “privilege of the greatest number” creates and will
continue _to create revolutions,_—it is Christianity, let there be no
doubt about it, and Christian values, which convert every revolution
into blood and crime! Christianity is the revolt of all things that
crawl on their bellies against everything that is lofty: the gospel of
the “lowly” _lowers...._


44

—The Gospels are invaluable as a testimony of the corruption which
was already persistent _within_ the first Christian communities. That
which St Paul, with the logician’s cynicism of a Rabbi, carried to its
logical conclusion, was nevertheless merely the process of decay which
began with the death of the Saviour.—These gospels cannot be read
too cautiously; difficulties lurk behind every word they contain. I
confess, and people will not take this amiss, that they are precisely
on that account a joy of the first rank for a psychologist,—as the
reverse of all naive perversity, as refinement _par excellence,_ as
a masterpiece of art in psychological corruption. The gospels stand
alone. Altogether the Bible allows of no comparison. The _first_ thing
to be remembered if we do not wish to lose the scent here, is, that
we are among Jews. The dissembling of holiness which, here, literally
amounts to genius, and which has never been even approximately achieved
elsewhere either by books or by men, this fraud in word and pose
which in this book is elevated to an _Art,_ is not the accident of
any individual gift, of any exceptional nature. These qualities are
a matter of _race._ With Christianity, the art of telling holy lies,
which constitutes the whole of Judaism, reaches its final mastership,
thanks to many centuries of Jewish and most thoroughly serious training
and practice. The Christian, this _ultima ratio_ of falsehood, is the
Jew over again—he is even three times a Jew.... The fundamental will
only to make use of concepts, symbols and poses, which are demonstrated
by the practice of the priests, the instinctive repudiation of every
other kind of practice, every other standpoint of valuation and of
utility—all this is not only tradition, it is _hereditary;_ only as
an inheritance is it able to work like nature. The whole of mankind,
the best brains, and even the best ages—(one man only excepted who
is perhaps only a monster)—have allowed themselves to be deceived.
The gospels were read as the _book of innocence ..._ this is no
insignificant sign of the virtuosity with which deception has been
practised here.—Of course, if we could only succeed in seeing all
these amazing bigots and pretended saints, even for a moment, all
would be at an end—and it is precisely because _I_ can read no
single word of theirs, without seeing their pretentious poses, _that
I have made an end of them_.... I cannot endure a certain way they
have of casting their eyes heavenwards.—Fortunately for Christianity,
books are for the greatest number, merely literature. We must not let
ourselves be led away: “judge not!” they say, but they dispatch all
those to hell who stand in their way. Inasmuch as they let God do the
judging, they themselves, judge; inasmuch as they glorify God, they
glorify themselves; inasmuch as they exact those virtues of which
they themselves happen to be capable—nay more, of which they are in
need in order to be able to remain on top at all;—they assume the
grand airs of struggling for virtue, of struggling for the dominion of
virtue. “We live, we die, we sacrifice ourselves for the good” (—“the
Truth,” “the Light,” “the Kingdom of God”): as a matter of fact they
do only what they cannot help doing. Like sneaks they have to play a
humble part; sit away in corners, and remain obscurely in the shade,
and they make all this appear a duty; their humble life now appears as
a duty, and their humility is one proof the more of their piety!...
Oh, what a humble, chaste and compassionate kind of falsity! “Virtue
itself shall bear us testimony.” ... Only read the gospels as books
calculated to seduce by means of morality: morality is appropriated by
these petty people,—they know what morality can do! The best way of
leading mankind by the nose is with morality! The fact is that the most
conscious _conceit_ of people who believe themselves to be _chosen,_
here simulates modesty: in this way they, the Christian community, the
“good and the just” place themselves once and for all on a certain
side, the side “of Truth”—and the rest of mankind, “the world” on
the other.... This was the most fatal kind of megalomania that had
ever yet existed on earth: insignificant little abortions of bigots
and liars began to lay sole claim to the concepts “God,” “Truth,”
“Light,” “Spirit,” “Love,” “Wisdom,” “Life,” as if these things were,
so to speak, synonyms of themselves, in order to fence themselves off
from “the world”; little ultra-Jews, ripe for every kind of madhouse,
twisted values round in order to suit themselves, just as if the
Christian, alone, were the meaning, the salt, the standard and even the
“_ultimate tribunal_” of all the rest of mankind.... The whole fatality
was rendered possible only because a kind of megalomania, akin to this
one and allied to it in race,—the Jewish kind—was already to hand in
the world: the very moment the gulf between Jews and Judæo-Christians
was opened, the latter had no alternative left, but to adopt the same
self-preservative measures as the Jewish instinct suggested, even
_against_ the Jews themselves, whereas the Jews, theretofore, had
employed these same measures only against the Gentiles. The Christian
is nothing more than an anarchical Jew.


45

—Let me give you a few examples of what these paltry people have
stuffed into their heads, what they have laid _on the lips of their
Master_: quite a host of confessions from “beautiful souls.”—

“And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart
thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against
them. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom
and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city.” (Mark vi.
11.)—_How evangelical!..._

“And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in
me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck,
and he were cast into the sea.” (Mark ix. 42.)—How _evangelical!..._

“And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it fa better for thee to
enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be
cast into hell fire: where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not
quenched.” (Mark ix. 47, 48.)—The eye is not precisely what is meant
in this passage....

“Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here,
which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God
come with power.” (Mark ix. 1.)—Well _lied,_ lion![6] ...

“Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his
cross, and follow me. _For_ ...” (_A psychologist’s comment._ Christian
morality is refuted by its “For’s”: its “reasons” refute,—this is
Christian.) (Mark viii. 34.)

“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge,
ye shall be judged.” (Matthew vii. I, 2.)—What a strange notion of
justice on the part of a “just” judge!...

“For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even
the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye
more _than others?_ do not even the publicans so?” (Matthew v. 46, 47.)
The principle of “Christian love”: it insists upon being _well paid_....

“But if ye forgive not men their trespasses neither will your Father
forgive your trespasses.” (Matthew vi. 15.)—Very compromising for the
“Father” in question.

“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all
these things shall be added unto you.” (Matthew vi. 33)—“All these
things”—that is to say, food, clothing, all the necessities of life.
To use a moderate expression, this is an _error ..._. Shortly before
this God appears as a tailor, at least in certain cases....

“Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward
_is_ great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto
the prophets.” (Luke vi. 23.)—_Impudent_ rabble! They dare to compare
themselves with the prophets....

“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God and _that_ the Spirit of God
dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, _him shall God
destroy;_ for the temple of God is holy, which _temple ye are._” (St
Paul, I Corinthians iii. 16, 17.)—One cannot have too much contempt
for this sort of thing....

“Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world
shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?”
(St Paul, I Corinthians vi. 2.)—Unfortunately this is not merely the
speech of a lunatic.... This _appalling impostor_ proceeds thus: “Know
ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to
this life?”

“Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in
the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by
the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe ... not many
wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble _are called;_
But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the
wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound
the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things
which are despised, hath God chosen; _yea,_ and things which are not,
to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in
his presence.” (St Paul, I Corinthians i. 20 _et seq._)—In order to
_understand_ this passage, which is of the highest importance as an
example of the psychology of every Chandala morality, the reader should
refer to my _Genealogy of Morals:_ in this book, the contrast between
a _noble_ and a Chandala morality born of _resentment_ and impotent
revengefulness, is brought to light for the first time. St Paul was the
greatest of all the apostles of revenge....


46

_What follows from this?_ That one does well to put on one’s gloves
when reading the New Testament The proximity of so much pitch almost
defiles one. We should feel just as little inclined to hobnob with
“the first Christians” as with Polish Jews: not that we need explain
our objections.... They simply smell bad.—In vain have I sought for a
single sympathetic feature in the New Testament; there is not a trace
of freedom, kindliness, open-heartedness and honesty to be found in
it. Humaneness has not even made a start in this book, while _cleanly_
instincts are entirely absent from it.... Only evil instincts are to be
found in the New Testament, it shows no sign of courage, these people
lack even the courage of their evil instincts. All is cowardice, all is
a closing of one’s eyes and self-deception. Every book becomes clean,
after one has just read the New Testament: for instance, immediately
after laying down St Paul, I read with particular delight that most
charming and most wanton of scoffers, Petronius, of whom someone might
say what Domenico Boccaccio wrote to the Duke of Parma about Cæsar
Borgia: “_è tutto festo_”—immortally healthy, immortally cheerful
and well-constituted. ... These petty bigots err in their calculations
and in the most important thing of all. They certainly attack; but
everything they assail is, by that very fact alone, _distinguished._
He whom a “primitive Christian” attacks, is _not_ thereby sullied....
Conversely it is an honour to be opposed by “primitive Christians.”
One cannot read the New Testament without feeling a preference for
everything in it which is the subject of abuse—not to speak of the
“wisdom of this world,” which an impudent windbag tries in vain to
confound “by the foolishness of preaching.” Even the Pharisees and the
Scribes derive advantage from such opposition: they must certainly
have been worth something in order to have been hated in such a
disreputable way. Hypocrisy—as if this were a reproach which the
“first Christians” _were at liberty_ to make!—After all the Scribes
and Pharisees were the _privileged ones;_ this was quite enough, the
hatred of the Chandala requires no other reasons. I very much fear
that the “first Christian”—as also the “_last Christian” whom I may
yet be able to meet,—_ is in his deepest instincts a rebel against
everything privileged; he lives and struggles unremittingly for “equal
rights”!... Regarded more closely, he has no alternative.... If one’s
desire be personally to represent “one of the chosen of God”—or a
“temple of God,” or “a judge of angels,”—then every _other_ principle
of selection, for instance that based upon a standard of honesty,
intellect, manliness and pride, or upon beauty and freedom of heart,
becomes the “world,”—_evil in itself._ Moral: every word on the lips
of a “first Christian” is a lie, every action he does is an instinctive
falsehood,—all his values, all his aims are pernicious; but the man
he, hates, _the thing_ he hates, _has value._ ... The Christian, more
particularly the Christian priest, is a _criterion of values_—Do I
require to add that in the whole of the New Testament only _one_ figure
appears which we cannot help respecting? Pilate, the Roman Governor. To
take a Jewish quarrel _seriously_ was a thing he could not get himself
to do. One Jew more or less—what did it matter?... The noble scorn
of a Roman, in whose presence the word “truth” had been shamelessly
abused, has enriched the New Testament with the only saying which _is
of value,_—and this saying is not only the criticism, but actually the
shattering of that Testament: “What is truth!”...


47

—That which separates us from other people is not the fact that
we can discover no God, either in history, or in nature, or behind
nature,—but that we regard what has been revered as “God,” not as
“divine,” but as wretched, absurd, pernicious; not as an error, but as
a _crime against life._ ... We deny God as God.... If the existence
of this Christian God were _proved_ to us, we should feel even less
able to believe in him.—In a formula: _deus qualem Paulus creavit,
dei negatio._—A religion such as Christianity which never once comes
in touch with reality, and which collapses the very moment reality
asserts its rights even on one single point, must naturally be a mortal
enemy of the “wisdom of this world”—that is to say, _science._ It
will call all those means good with which mental discipline, lucidity
and severity in intellectual matters, nobility and freedom of the
intellect may be poisoned, calumniated and _decried_. “Faith” as an
imperative is a _veto_ against science,—_in praxi,_ it means lies
at any price. St Paul _understood_ that falsehood—that “faith” was
necessary; subsequently the Church understood St Paul.—That “God”
which St Paul invented for himself, a God who “confounds” the “wisdom
of this world” (in a narrower sense, the two great opponents of all
superstition, philology and medicine), means, in very truth, simply St
Paul’s firm _resolve_ to do so: to call his own will “God”, _thora,_
that is arch-Jewish. St Paul insists upon confounding the “wisdom of
this world”: his enemies are the _good old_ philologists and doctors of
the Alexandrine schools; it is on them that he wages war. As a matter
of fact no one is either a philologist or a doctor, who is not also an
_Antichrist._ As a philologist, for instance, a man sees _behind_ the
“holy books,” as a doctor he sees _behind_ the physiological rottenness
of the typical Christian. The doctor says “incurable,” the philologist
says “forgery.”


48

—Has anybody ever really understood the celebrated story which stands
at the beginning of the Bible,—concerning God’s deadly panic over
_science?_ ... Nobody has understood it This essentially sacerdotal
book naturally begins with the great inner difficulty of the priest:
_he_ knows only one great danger, _consequently_ “God” has only one
great danger.—

The old God, entirely “spirit,” a high-priest through and through, and
wholly perfect, is wandering in a leisurely fashion round his garden;
but he is bored. Against boredom even the gods themselves struggle in
vain.[7] What does he do? He invents man,—man is entertaining.... But,
behold, even man begins to be bored. God’s compassion for the only
form of misery which is peculiar to all paradises, exceeds all bounds:
so forthwith he creates yet other animals. God’s _first_ mistake: man
did not think animals entertaining,—he dominated them, he did not even
wish to be an “animal.” Consequently God created woman. And boredom did
indeed cease from that moment,—but many other things ceased as well!
Woman was God’s _second_ mistake.—“Woman in her innermost nature is a
serpent, Heva”—every priest knows this: “all evil came into this world
through woman,”—every priest knows this too. “_Consequently science_
also comes from woman.” ... Only through woman did man learn to taste
of the tree of knowledge.—What had happened? Panic had seized the
old God Man himself had been his _greatest_ mistake, he had created
a rival for himself, science makes you _equal to God,_—it is all up
with priests and gods when man becomes scientific!—Moral: science is
the most prohibited thing of all,—it alone, is forbidden. Science is
the _first,_ the germ of all sins, the original sin. _This alone is
morality._—“Thou shalt _not_ know”:—the rest follows as a matter of
course, God’s panic did not deprive him of his intelligence. How can
one _guard_ against science? For ages this was his principal problem.
Reply: man must be kicked out of paradise! Happiness, leisure leads to
thinking,—all thoughts are bad thoughts.... Man _must_ not think.—And
the “priest-per-se” proceeds to invent distress, death, the vital
danger of pregnancy, every kind of misery, decrepitude, and affliction,
and above all _disease,_—all these are but weapons employed in the
struggle with science! Trouble prevents man from thinking.... And
notwithstanding all these precautions! Oh, horror! the work of science
towers aloft, it storms heaven itself, it rings the death-knell of the
gods,—what’s to be done?—The old God invents _war;_ he separates the
nations, and contrives to make men destroy each other mutually (—the
priests have always been in need of war....) War, among other things,
is a great disturber of science!—Incredible! Knowledge, _the rejection
of the sacerdotal yoke,_ nevertheless increases.—So the old God
arrives at this final decision: “Man has become scientific,—_there is
no help for it, he must be drowned!_” ...


49

You have understood me The beginning of the Bible contains the whole
psychology of the priest—The priest knows only one great danger, and
that is science,—the healthy concept of cause and effect But, on the
whole, science flourishes onlyunder happy conditions,—a man must
have time, he must also have superfluous mental energy in order to
“pursue knowledge” ... “_Consequently_ man must be made unhappy,”—this
has been the argument of the priest of all ages.—You have already
divined what, in accordance with such a manner of arguing, must
first have come into the world:—“sin.” ... The notion of guilt and
punishment, the whole “moral order of the universe,” was invented
against science,—against the deliverance of man from the priest....
Man must _not_ cast his glance upon the outer world, he must turn it
inwards into himself; he must not as a learner look cleverly and
cautiously _into_ things; he must not see at all: he must _suffer._
... And he must suffer, so that he may be in need of the priest every
minute.—Away with doctors! What is needed is a Saviour!—The notion of
guilt and punishment, including the doctrine of “grace,” of “salvation”
and of “forgiveness”—all _lies_ through and through without a shred
of psychological reality—were invented in order to destroy man’s
_sense of causality:_ they are an attack on the concept of cause and
effect!—And _not_ an attack with the fist, with the knife, with
honesty in hate and love! But one actuated by the most cowardly, most
crafty, and most ignoble instincts! A _priests_ attack! A _parasite’s_
attack! A vampyrism of pale subterranean leeches!—... When the natural
consequences of an act are no longer “natural,” but are thought to
be conjured up by phantom concepts of superstition, by “God,” by
“spirits,” and by “souls,” as merely moral consequences, in the form
of rewards, punishments, hints, and educational means,—then the whole
basis of knowledge is destroyed,—_then the greatest crime against man
has been perpetrated._—Sin, I repeat, this form of self-pollution _par
excellence_ on the part of man, was invented in order to make science,
culture and every elevation and noble trait in man quite impossible; by
means of the invention of sin the priest is able to _rule._


50

—I cannot here dispense with a psychology of “faith” and of the
“faithful,” which will naturally be to the advantage of the “faithful.”
If to-day there are still many who do not know how very _indecent_ it
is to be a “believer”—_or_ to what extent such a state is the sign
of decadence, and of the broken will to Life,—they will know it no
later than to-morrow. My voice can make even those hear who are hard
of hearing.—If perchance my ears have not deceived me, it seems that
among Christians there is such a thing as a kind of criterion of truth,
which is called “the proof of power.” “Faith saveth; _therefore_ it
is true.”—It might be objected here that it is precisely salvation
which is not proved but only _promised:_ salvation is bound up with
the condition “faith,”—one _shall_ be saved, _because_ one has
faith.... But how prove _that_ that which the priest promises to the
faithful really will take place, to wit: the “Beyond” which defies
all demonstration?—The assumed “proof of power” is at bottom once
again only a belief in the fact that the effect which faith promises
will not fail to take place. In a formula: “I believe that faith
saveth;—_consequently_ it is true.”—But with this we are at the end
of our tether. This “consequently” would be the _absurdum_ itself as
a criterion of truth.—Let us be indulgent enough to assume, however,
that salvation is proved by faith (—_not_ only desired, and _not_
merely promised by the somewhat suspicious lips of a priest): could
salvation—or, in technical terminology, _happiness_—ever be a proof
of truth? So little is it so that, when pleasurable sensations make
their influence felt in replying to the question “what is true,” they
furnish almost the contradiction of truth, or at any rate they make
it in the highest degree suspicious. The proof through “happiness,”
is a proof of happiness—and nothing else; why in the world should
we take it for granted that _true_ judgments cause more pleasure than
false ones, and that in accordance with a pre-established harmony, they
necessarily bring pleasant feelings in their wake?—The experience of
all strict and profound minds teaches the _reverse._ Every inch of
truth has been conquered only after a struggle, almost everything to
which our heart, our love and our trust in life cleaves, has had to be
sacrificed for it Greatness of soul is necessary for this: the service
of truth is the hardest of all services.—What then is meant by honesty
in things intellectual? It means that a man is severe towards his own
heart, that he scorns “beautiful feelings,” and that he makes a matter
of conscience out of every Yea and Nay!—-Faith saveth: _consequently_
it lies....


51

The fact that faith may in certain circumstances save, the fact that
salvation as the result of an _idée fixe_ does not constitute a true
idea, the fact that faith moves _no_ mountains, but may very readily
raise them where previously they did not exist—all these things are
made sufficiently clear by a mere casual stroll through a _lunatic
asylum._ Of course _no_ priest would find this sufficient: for he
instinctively denies that illness is illness or that lunatic asylums
are lunatic asylums. Christianity is in _need_ of illness, just as
Ancient Greece was in need of a superabundance of health. The actual
ulterior motive of the whole of the Church’s system of salvation
is to _make people ill._ And is not the Church itself the Catholic
madhouse as an ultimate ideal?—The earth as a whole converted into a
madhouse?—The kind of religious man which the Church aims at producing
is a typical _decadent_ The moment of time at which a religious crisis
attains the ascendancy over a people, is always characterised by
nerve-epidemics; the “inner world” of the religious man is ridiculously
like the “inner world” of over-irritable and exhausted people; the
“highest” states which Christianity holds up to mankind as the value
of values, are epileptic in character,—the Church has pronounced only
madmen _or_ great swindlers _in majorem dei honorem_ holy. Once I
ventured to characterise the whole of the Christian training of penance
and salvation (which nowadays is best studied in England) as a _folie
circulaire_ methodically generated upon a soil which, of course, is
already prepared for it,—that is to say, which is thoroughly morbid.
Not every one who likes can be a Christian: no man is “converted”
to Christianity,—he must be sick enough for it ... We others who
possess enough courage both for health and for contempt, how rightly
_we_ may despise a religion which taught men to misunderstand the
body I which would not rid itself of the superstitions of the soul!
which made a virtue of taking inadequate nourishment! which in health
combats a sort of enemy, devil, temptation! which persuaded itself that
it was possible to bear a perfect soul about in a cadaverous body,
and which, to this end, had to make up for itself a new concept of
“perfection,” a pale, sickly, idiotically gushing ideal,—so-called
“holiness,”—holiness, which in itself is simply a symptom of an
impoverished, enervated and incurably deteriorated body!... The
movement of Christianity, as a European movement, was from first to
last, a general accumulation of the ruck and scum of all sorts and
kinds (—and these, by means of Christianity, aspire to power). It
does _not_ express the downfall of a race, it is rather a conglomerate
assembly of all the decadent elements from everywhere which seek each
other and crowd together. It was not, as some believe, the corruption
of antiquity, of _noble_ antiquity, which made Christianity possible:
the learned idiocy which nowadays tries to support such a notion cannot
be too severely contradicted. At the time when the morbid and corrupted
Chandala classes became Christianised in the whole of the _imperium,_
the very _contrary type,_ nobility, was extant in its finest and
maturest forms. The greatest number became master; the democracy of
Christian instincts triumphed.... Christianity was not “national,” it
was not determined by race,—it appealed to all the disinherited forms
of life, it had its allies everywhere. Christianity is built upon the
rancour of the sick; its instinct is directed _against_ the sound,
against health. Everything well-constituted, proud, high-spirited,
and beautiful is offensive to its ears and eyes. Again I remind you
of St Paul’s priceless words: “And God hath chosen the _weak_ things
of the world, the _foolish_ things of the world; and _base_ things of
the world, and things which are _despised”_: this was the formula, _in
hoc signo_ decadence triumphed.—_God on the Cross_—does no one yet
understand the terrible ulterior motive of this symbol?—Everything
that suffers, everything that hangs on the cross, is _divine...._ All
of us hang on the cross, consequently we are _divine ..._. We alone are
divine.... Christianity was a victory; a _nobler_ type of character
perished through it,—Christianity has been humanity’s greatest
misfortune hitherto.——


52

Christianity also stands opposed to everything happily constituted
in the _mind,_—it can make use only of morbid reason as Christian
reason; it takes the side of everything idiotic, it utters a curse
upon “intellect,” upon the _superbia_ of the healthy intellect. Since
illness belongs to the essence of Christianity, the typically Christian
state, “faith,” _must_ also be a form of illness, and all straight,
honest and scientific roads to knowledge must be repudiated by the
Church as forbidden.... Doubt in itself is already a sin.... The total
lack of psychological cleanliness in the priest, which reveals itself
in his look, is a _result_ of decadence. Hysterical women, as also
children with scrofulous constitutions, should be observed as a proof
of how invariably instinctive falsity, the love of lying for the sake
of lying, and the in ability either to look or to walk straight, are
the expression of decadence. “Faith” simply means the refusal to know
what is true. The pious person, the priest of both sexes, is false
because he is ill: his instinct _demands_ that truth should not assert
its right anywhere. “That which makes ill is good: that which proceeds
from abundance, from superabundance and from power, is evil”: that
is the view of the faithful. The _constraint to lie_—that is the
sign by which I recognise every predetermined theologian.—Another
characteristic of the theologian is his lack of _capacity_ for
_philology._ What I mean here by the word philology is, in a general
sense to be understood as the art of reading well, of being able to
take account of facts _without_ falsifying them by interpretation,
without losing either caution, patience or subtlety owing to one’s
desire to understand. Philology as _ephexis_[8] in interpretation,
whether one be dealing with books, newspaper reports, human destinies
or meteorological records,—not to speak of the “salvation of the
soul.” ... The manner in which a theologian, whether in Berlin or in
Rome, interprets a verse from the “Scriptures,” or an experience, or
the triumph of his nation’s army for instance, under the superior
guiding light of David’s Psalms, is always so exceedingly _daring,_
that it is enough to make a philologist’s hair stand on end. And what
is he to do, when pietists and other cows from Swabia explain their
miserable every-day lives in their smoky hovels by means of the “Finger
of God,” a miracle of “grace,” of “Providence,” of experiences of
“salvation”! The most modest effort of the intellect, not to speak of
decent feeling, ought at least to lead these interpreters to convince
themselves of the absolute childishness and unworthiness of any such
abuse of the dexterity of God’s fingers. However small an amount of
loving piety we might possess, a god who cured us in time of a cold in
the nose, or who arranged for us to enter a carriage just at the moment
when a cloud burst over our heads, would be such an absurd God, that he
would have to be abolished, even if he existed.[9] God as a domestic
servant, as a postman, as a general provider,—in short, merely a word
for the most foolish kind of accidents.... “Divine Providence,” as it
is believed in to-day by almost every third man in “cultured Germany,”
would be an argument against God, in fact it would be the strongest
argument against God that could be Imagined. And in any case it is an
argument against the Germans.


53

—The notion that martyrs prove anything at all in favour of a thing,
is so exceedingly doubtful, that I would fain deny that there has ever
yet existed a martyr who had anything to do with truth. In the very
manner in which a martyr flings his little parcel of truth at the
head of the world, such a low degree of intellectual honesty and such
obtuseness in regard to the question “truth” makes itself felt, that
one never requires to refute a martyr. Truth is not a thing which one
might have and another be without: only peasants or peasant-apostles,
after the style of Luther, can think like this about truth. You may be
quite sure, that the greater a man’s degree of conscientiousness may
be in matters intellectual, the more modest he will show himself on
this point To _know_ about five things, and with a subtle wave of the
hand to refuse to know _others._ ... “Truth” as it is understood by
every prophet, every sectarian, every free thinker, every socialist and
every church-man, is an absolute proof of the fact that these people
haven’t even begun that discipline of the mind and that process of
self-mastery, which is necessary for the discovery of any small, even
exceedingly small truth.—Incidentally, the deaths of martyrs have
been a great misfortune in the history of the world: they led people
astray.... The conclusion which all idiots, women and common people
come to, that there must be something in a cause for which someone lays
down his life (or which, as in the case of primitive Christianity,
provokes an epidemic of sacrifices),—this conclusion put a tremendous
check upon all investigation, upon the spirit of investigation and of
caution. Martyrs have _harmed_ the cause of truth. ... Even to this day
it only requires the crude fact of persecution, in order to create an
honourable name for any obscure sect who does not matter in the least
What? is a cause actually changed in any way by the fact that some
one has laid down his life for it? An error which becomes honourable,
is simply an error that possesses one seductive charm the more: do
you suppose, dear theologians, that we shall give you the chance of
acting the martyrs for your lies?—A thing is refuted by being laid
respectfully on ice, and theologians are refuted in the same way. This
was precisely the world-historic foolishness of all persecutors; they
lent the thing they combated a semblance of honour by conferring the
fascination of martyrdom upon it.... Women still lie prostrate before
an error to-day, because they have been told that some one died on the
cross for it _Is the cross then an argument?_—But concerning all these
things, one person alone has said what mankind has been in need of for
thousands of years,—_Zarathustra._

“Letters of blood did they write on the way they went, and their folly
taught that truth is proved by blood.

“But blood is the very worst testimony of truth; blood poisoneth even
the purest teaching, and turneth it into delusion and into blood feuds.

“And when a man goeth through fire for his teaching—what does that
prove? Verily, it is more when out of one’s own burning springeth one’s
own teaching.”[10]


54

Do not allow yourselves to be deceived: great minds are sceptical.
Zarathustra is a sceptic. Strength and the _freedom_ which proceeds
from the power and excessive power of the mind, _manifests_ itself
through scepticism. Men of conviction are of no account whatever
in regard to any principles of value or of non-value. Convictions
are prisons. They never see far enough, they do not look down from
a sufficient height: but in order to have any say in questions of
value and non-value, a man must see five hundred convictions _beneath_
him,—_behind_ him.... A spirit who desires great things, and who also
desires the means thereto, is necessarily a sceptic. Freedom from every
kind of conviction _belongs_ to strength, to the _ability_ to open
one’s eyes freely.... The great passion of a sceptic, the basis and
power of his being, which is more enlightened and more despotic than he
is himself, enlists all his intellect into its service; it makes him
unscrupulous; it even gives him the courage to employ unholy means;
in certain circumstances it even allows him convictions. Conviction
as a _means:_ much is achieved merely by means of a conviction. Great
passion makes use of and consumes convictions, it does not submit to
them—it knows that it is a sovereign power. Conversely; the need of
faith, of anything either absolutely affirmative or negative, Carlylism
(if I may be allowed this expression), is the need of _weakness._
The man of beliefs, the “believer” of every sort and condition, is
necessarily a dependent man;—he is one who cannot regard _himself_ as
an aim, who cannot postulate aims from the promptings of his own heart
The “believer” does not belong to himself, he can be only a means,
he must be _used up,_ he is in need of someone who uses him up. His
instinct accords the highest honour to a morality of self-abnegation:
everything in him, his prudence, his experience, his vanity, persuade
him to adopt this morality. Every sort of belief is in itself an
expression of self-denial, of self-estrangement. ... If one considers
how necessary a regulating code of conduct is to the majority of
people, a code of conduct which constrains them and fixes them from
outside; and how control, or in a higher sense, _slavery,_ is the only
and ultimate condition under which the weak-willed man, and especially
woman, flourish; one also understands conviction, “faith.” The man
of conviction finds in the latter his _backbone._ To be _blind_ to
many things, to be impartial about nothing, to belong always to a
particular side, to hold a strict and necessary point of view in all
matters of values—these are the only conditions under which such a man
can survive at all. But all this is the reverse of, the _antagonist_
of, the truthful man,—of truth.... The believer is not at liberty to
have a conscience for the question “true” and “untrue”: to be upright
on _this_ point would mean his immediate downfall. The pathological
limitations of his standpoint convert the convinced man into the
fanatic—Savonarola, Luther Rousseau, Robespierre, Saint-Simon,—these
are the reverse type of the strong spirit that has become _free._ But
the grandiose poses of these _morbid_ spirits, of these epileptics
of ideas, exercise an influence over the masses,—fanatics are
picturesque, mankind prefers to look at poses than to listen to reason.


55

One step further in the psychology of conviction of “faith.” It
is already some time since I first thought of considering whether
convictions were not perhaps more dangerous enemies of truth than lies
(“Human All-too-Human,” Part I, Aphs. 54 and 483). Now I would fain put
the decisive question: is there any difference at all between a lie
and a conviction?—All the world believes that there is, but what in
Heaven’s name does not all the world believe! Every conviction has its
history, its preliminary stages, its period of groping and of mistakes:
it becomes a conviction only after it has _not_ been one for a long
time, only after it has _scarcely_ been one for a long time. What?
might not falsehood be the embryonic form of conviction?—At times
all that is required is a change of personality: very often what was
a lie in the father becomes a conviction in the son.—I call a lie,
to refuse to see something that one sees, to refuse to see it exactly
_as_ one sees it: whether a lie is perpetrated before witnesses or not
is beside the point.—The most common sort of lie is the one uttered
to one’s self; to lie to others is relatively exceptional. Now this
refusal to see what one sees, this refusal to see a thing exactly as
one sees it, is almost the first condition for all those who belong
to a _party_ in any sense whatsoever: the man who belongs to a party
perforce becomes a liar. German historians, for instance, are convinced
that Rome stood for despotism, whereas the Teutons introduced the
spirit of freedom into the world: what difference is there between
this conviction and a lie? After this is it to be wondered at, that
all parties, including German historians, instinctively adopt the
grandiloquent phraseology of morality,—that morality almost owes
its _survival_ to the fact that the man who belongs to a party, no
matter what it may be, is in need of morality every moment?—“This
is our conviction: we confess it to the whole world, we live and die
for it,—let us respect every thing that has a conviction!”—I have
actually heard antisemites speak in this way. On the contrary, my dear
sirs! An antisemite does not become the least bit more respectable
because he lies on principle.... Priests, who in such matters are
more subtle, and who perfectly understand the objection to which the
idea of a conviction lies open—that is to say of a falsehood which
is perpetrated on principle _because_ it serves a purpose, borrowed
from the Jews the prudent measure of setting the concept “God,” “Will
of God,” “Revelation of God,” at this place. Kant, too, with his
categorical imperative, was on the same road: this was his _practical_
reason.—There are some questions in which it is _not_ given to man
to decide between true and false; all the principal questions, all
the principal problems of value, stand beyond human reason.... To
comprehend the limits of reason—this alone is genuine philosophy. For
what purpose did God give man revelation? Would God have done anything
superfluous? Man cannot of his own accord know what is good and what is
evil, that is why God taught man his will.... Moral: the priest does
_not_ lie, such questions as “truth” or “falseness” have nothing to do
with the things concerning which the priest speaks; such things do not
allow of lying. For, in order to lie, it would be necessary to know
_what_ is true in this respect. But that is precisely what man cannot
know: hence the priest is only the mouthpiece of God.—This sort of
sacerdotal syllogism is by no means exclusively Judaic or Christian;
the right to lie and the _prudent measure_ of “revelation” belongs
to the priestly type, whether of decadent periods or of Pagan times
(—Pagans are all those who say yea to life, and to whom “God” is the
word for the great yea to all things). The “law,” the “will of God,”
the “holy book,” and inspiration.—All these things are merely words
for the conditions under which the priest attains to power, and with
which he maintains his power,—these concepts are to be found at the
base of all sacerdotal organisations, of all priestly or philosophical
and ecclesiastical governments. The “holy lie,” which is common to
Confucius, to the law-book of Manu, to Muhamed, and to the Christian
church, is not even absent in Plato. “Truth is here”; this phrase
means, wherever it is uttered: _the priest lies...._


56

After all, the question is, to what _end_ are falsehoods perpetrated?
The fact that, in Christianity, “holy” ends are entirely absent,
constitutes _my_ objection to the means it employs. Its ends are only
_bad_ ends: the poisoning, the calumniation and the denial of life,
the contempt of the body, the degradation and self-pollution of man by
virtue of the concept sin,—consequently its means are bad as well.—My
feelings are quite the reverse when I read the law-book of _Manu, an_
incomparably superior and more intellectual work, which it would be
a sin against the _spirit_ even to _mention_ in the same breath with
the Bible. You will guess immediately why: it has a genuine philosophy
behind it, _in_ it, not merely an evil-smelling Jewish distillation
of Rabbinism and superstition,—it gives something to chew even
to the most fastidious psychologist. And, _not_ to forget the most
important point of all, it is fundamentally different from every kind
of Bible: by means of it the _noble classes,_ the philosophers and the
warriors guard and guide the masses; it is replete with noble values,
it is filled with a feeling of perfection, with a saying of yea to
life, and a triumphant sense of well-being in regard to itself and to
life,—the sun shines upon the whole book.—All those things which
Christianity smothers with its bottomless vulgarity: procreation,
woman, marriage, are here treated with earnestness, with revere nee,
with love and confidence. How can one possibly place in the hands of
children and women, a book that contains those vile words: “to avoid
fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman
have her own husband ... it is better to marry than to burn.”[11]
And is it decent to be a Christian so long as the very origin of
man is Christianised,—that is to say, befouled, by the idea of the
_immaculata conceptio?_ ... I know of no book in which so many delicate
and kindly things are said to woman, as in the Law-Rook of Manu; these
old grey-beards and saints have a manner of being gallant to women
which, perhaps, cannot be surpassed. “The mouth of a woman,” says Manu
on one occasion, “the breast of a maiden, the prayer of a child, and
the smoke of the sacrifice, are always pure.” Elsewhere he says: “there
is nothing purer than the light of the sun, the shadow cast by a cow,
air, water, fire and the breath of a maiden.” And finally—perhaps this
is also a holy lie:—“all the openings of the body above the navel are
pure, all those below the navel are impure. Only in a maiden is the
whole body pure.”


57

The unholiness of Christian means is caught _in flagranti,_ if only
the end aspired to by Christianity be compared with that of the
Law-Book of Manu; if only these two utterly opposed aims be put under
a strong light The critic of Christianity simply cannot avoid making
Christianity _contemptible._—A Law-Book like that of Manu comes into
being like every good law-book: it epitomises the experience, the
precautionary measures, and the experimental morality of long ages,
it settles things definitely, it no longer creates. The prerequisite
for a codification of this kind, is the recognition of the fact that
the means which procure authority for a _truth_ to which it has cost
both time and great pains to attain, are fundamentally different from
those with which that same truth would be proved. A law-book never
relates the utility, the reasons, the preliminary casuistry, of a
law: for it would be precisely in this way that it would forfeit its
imperative tone, the “thou shalt,” the first condition of its being
obeyed. The problem lies exactly in this.—At a certain stage in the
development of a people, the most far-seeing class within it (that is
to say, the class that sees farthest backwards and forwards), declares
the experience of how its fellow-creatures ought to live—_can_
live—to be finally settled. Its object is, to reap as rich and as
complete a harvest as possible, in return for the ages of experiment
and _terrible_ experience it has traversed. Consequently, that which
has to be avoided, above all, is any further experimentation, the
continuation of the state when values are still fluid, the testing,
choosing, and criticising of values _in infinitum. _ Against all this a
double wall is built up: in the first place, _Revelation,_ which is the
assumption that the rationale of every law is not human in its origin,
that it was not sought and found after ages of error, but that it is
divine in its origin, completely and utterly without a history, gift, a
miracle, a mere communication.... And secondly, _tradition,_ which is
the assumption that the law has obtained since the most primeval times,
that it is impious and a crime against one’s ancestors to attempt to
doubt it. The authority of law is established on the principles: God
_gave_ it, the ancestors _lived_ it.—The superior reason of such a
procedure lies in the intention to draw consciousness off step by step
from that mode of life which has been recognised as correct (_i.e.,
proved_ after enormous and carefully examined experience), so that
perfect automatism of the instincts may be attained,—this being the
only possible basis of all mastery of every kind of perfection in
the Art of Life. To draw up a law-book like Manu’s, is tantamount
to granting a people mastership for the future, perfection for the
future,—the right to aspire to the highest Art of Life. _To that
end it must be made unconscious;_ this is the object of every holy
lie.—_The order of castes,_ the highest, the dominating law, is only
the sanction of a _natural order,_ of a natural legislation of the
first rank, over which no arbitrary innovation, no “modern idea” has
any power. Every healthy society falls into three distinct types, which
reciprocally condition one another and which gravitate differently in
the physiological sense; and each of these has its own hygiene, its
own sphere of work, its own special feeling of perfection, and its
own mastership. It is Nature, not Manu, that separates from the rest,
those individuals preponderating in intellectual power, those excelling
in muscular strength and temperament, and the third class which is
distinguished neither in one way nor the other, the mediocre,—the
latter as the greatest number, the former as the _élite._ The superior
caste—I call them the _fewest,_—has, as the perfect caste, the
privileges of the fewest: it devolves upon them to represent happiness,
beauty and goodness on earth. Only the most intellectual men have
the right to beauty, to the beautiful: only in them is goodness not
weakness. _Pulchrum est paucorum hominum:_ goodness is a privilege.
On the other hand there is nothing which they should be more strictly
forbidden than repulsive manners or a pessimistic look, a look that
makes everything _seem ugly,_—or even indignation at the general
aspect of things. Indignation is the privilege of the Chandala, and so
is pessimism. “_The world is perfect_”—that is what the instinct of
the most intellectual says, the yea-saying instinct; “imperfection,
every kind of _inferiority_ to us, distance, the pathos of distance,
even the Chandala belongs to this perfection.” The most intellectual
men, as the _strongest_ find their happiness where others meet
with their ruin: in the labyrinth, in hardness towards themselves
and others, in endeavour; their delight is self-mastery: with them
asceticism becomes a second nature, a need, an instinct They regard
a difficult task as their privilege; to play with burdens which crush
their fellows is to them a _recreation...._ Knowledge, a form of
asceticism.—They are the most honourable kind of men: but that does
not prevent them from being the most cheerful and most gracious. They
rule, not because they will, but because they _are;_ they are not at
liberty to take a second place.—The second in rank are the guardians
of the law, the custodians of order and of security, the noble
warriors, the king, above all, as the highest formula of the warrior,
the judge, and keeper of the law. The second in rank are the executive
of the most intellectual, the nearest to them in duty, relieving them
of all that is _coarse_ in the work of ruling,—their retinue, their
right hand, their best disciples. In all this, I repeat, there is
nothing arbitrary, nothing “artificial,” that which is _otherwise_ is
artificial,—by that which is otherwise, nature is put to shame.... The
order of castes, and the order of rank merely formulates the supreme
law of life itself; the differentiation of the three types is necessary
for the maintenance of society, and for enabling higher and highest
types to be reared,—the _inequality_ of rights is the only condition
of there being rights at all.—A right is a privilege. And in his
way, each has his privilege. Let us not underestimate the privileges
of the _mediocre._ Life always gets harder towards the summit,—the
cold increases, responsibility increases. A high civilisation is a
pyramid: it can stand only upon a broad base, its first prerequisite is
a strongly and soundly consolidated mediocrity. Handicraft, commerce,
agriculture, science, the greater part of art,—in a word, the whole
range of professional and business callings, is compatible only with
mediocre ability and ambition; such pursuits would be out of place
among exceptions, the instinct pertaining thereto would oppose not
only aristocracy but anarchy as well. The fact that one is publicly
useful, a wheel, a function, presupposes a certain natural destiny: it
is not _society,_ but the only kind of _happiness_ of which the great
majority are capable, that makes them intelligent machines. For the
mediocre it is a joy to be mediocre; in them mastery in one thing, a
speciality, is a natural instinct. It would be absolutely unworthy of
a profound thinker to see any objection in mediocrity _per se._ For
in itself it is the first essential condition under which exceptions
are possible; a high culture is determined by it. When the exceptional
man treats the mediocre with more tender care than he does himself or
his equals, this is not mere courtesy of heart on his part—but simply
his _duty._ ... Whom do I hate most among the rabble of the present
day? The socialistic rabble, the Chandala apostles, who undermine the
working man’s instinct, his happiness and his feeling of contentedness
with his insignificant existence,—who make him envious, and who teach
him revenge. ... The wrong never lies in unequal rights; it lies in the
claim to equal rights. What is _bad?_ But I have already replied to
this: Everything that proceeds from weakness, envy and _revenge._—The
anarchist and the Christian are offspring of the same womb....


58

In point of fact, it matters greatly to what end one lies: whether one
preserves or _destroys_ by means of falsehood. It is quite justifiable
to bracket the _Christian_ and the _Anarchist_ together: their object,
their instinct, is concerned only with destruction. The proof of this
proposition can be read quite plainly from history: history spells it
with appalling distinctness. Whereas we have just seen a religious
legislation, whose object was to render the highest possible means of
making life _flourish,_ and of making a grand organisation of society,
eternal,—Christianity found its mission in putting an end to such an
organisation, _precisely because life flourishes through it._ In the
one case, the net profit to the credit of reason, acquired through
long ages of experiment and of insecurity, is applied usefully to the
most remote ends, and the harvest, which is as large, as rich and
as complete as possible, is reaped and garnered: in the other case,
on the contrary, the harvest is _blighted_ in a single night That
which stood there, _ære perennius,_ the _imperium Romanum,_ the most
magnificent form of organisation, under difficult conditions, that has
ever been achieved, and compared with which everything that preceded,
and everything which followed it, is mere patchwork, gimcrackery,
and dilettantism,—those holy anarchists made it their “piety,” to
destroy “the world”—that is to say, the _imperium Romanum,_ until
no two stones were left standing one on the other,—until even the
Teutons and other clodhoppers were able to become master of it The
Christian and the anarchist are both decadents; they are both incapable
of acting in any other way than disintegratingly, poisonously and
witheringly, like _blood-suckers;_ they are both actuated by an
instinct of _mortal hatred_ of everything that stands erect, that is
great, that is lasting, and that is a guarantee of the future....
Christianity was the vampire of the _imperium Romanum,_—in a night
it shattered the stupendous achievement of the Romans, which was to
acquire the territory for a vast civilisation which could _bide its
time._—Does no one understand this yet? The _imperium Romanum_ that
we know, and which the history of the Roman province teaches us to
know ever more thoroughly, this most admirable work of art on a grand
scale, was the beginning, its construction was calculated _to prove_
its worth by millenniums,—unto this day nothing has ever again been
built in this fashion, nor have men even dreamt since of building on
this scale _sub specie aterni!_—This organisation was sufficiently
firm to withstand bad emperors: the accident of personalities must
have nothing to do with such matters—the _first_ principle of all
great architecture. But it was not sufficiently firm to resist the
_corruptest_ form of corruption, to resist the Christians.... These
stealthy canker-worms, which under the shadow of night, mist and
duplicity, insinuated themselves into the company of every individual,
and proceeded to drain him of all seriousness for _real_ things,
of all his instinct for _realities;_ this cowardly, effeminate and
sugary gang have step by step alienated all “souls” from this colossal
edifice,—those valuable, virile and noble natures who felt that
the cause of Rome was their own personal cause, their own personal
seriousness, their own personal _pride._ The stealth of the bigot,
the secrecy of the conventicle, concepts as black as hell such as
the sacrifice of the innocent, the _unto mystica_ in the drinking
of blood, above all the slowly kindled fire of revenge, of Chandala
revenge—such things became master of Rome, the same kind of religion
on the pre-existent form of which Epicurus had waged war. One has
only to read Lucretius in order to understand what Epicurus combated,
_not_ Paganism, but “Christianity,” that is to say the corruption of
souls through the concept of guilt, through the concept of punishment
and immortality. He combated the _subterranean_ cults, the whole of
latent Christianity—to deny immortality was at that time a genuine
_deliverance._—And Epicurus had triumphed, every respectable thinker
in the Roman Empire was an Epicurean: _then St Paul appeared_ ... St
Paul, the Chandala hatred against Rome, against “the world,” the Jew,
the eternal Jew _par excellence,_ become flesh and genius. ... What
he divined was, how, by the help of the small sectarian Christian
movement, independent of Judaism, a universal conflagration could be
kindled; how, with the symbol of the “God on the Cross,” everything
submerged, everything secretly insurrectionary, the whole offspring
of anarchical intrigues could be gathered together to constitute an
enormous power. “For salvation is of the Jews.”—Christianity is
the formula for the supersession, _and_ epitomising of all kinds of
subterranean cults, that of Osiris, of the Great Mother, of Mithras for
example: St Paul’s genius consisted in his discovery of this. In this
matter his instinct was so certain, that, regardless of doing violence
to truth, he laid the ideas by means of which those Chandala religions
fascinated, upon the very lips of the “Saviour” he had invented, and
not only upon his lips,—that he _made_ out of him something which even
a Mithras priest could understand.... This was his moment of Damascus:
he saw that he had _need of_ the belief in immortality in order to
depreciate “the world,” that the notion of “hell” would become master
of Rome, that with a “Beyond” _this life_ can be killed. ... Nihilist
and Christian,—they rhyme in German, and they do not only rhyme.


59

The whole labour of the ancient world _in vain:_ I am at a loss for a
word which could express my feelings at something so atrocious.—And
in view of the fact that its labour was only preparatory, that with
adamantine self-consciousness it laid the substructure, alone, to
a work which was to last millenniums, the whole _significance_ of
the ancient world was certainly in vain!... What was the use of the
Greeks? what was the use of the Romans?—All the prerequisites of a
learned culture, all the scientific methods already existed, the great
and peerless art of reading well had already been established—that
indispensable condition to tradition, to culture and to scientific
unity; natural science hand in hand with mathematics and mechanics
was on the best possible road,—the sense for facts, the last and
most valuable of all senses, had its schools, and its tradition was
already centuries old! Is this understood? Everything _essential_ had
been discovered to make it possible for work to be begun:—methods,
and this cannot be said too often, are the essential thing, also the
most difficult thing, while they moreover have to wage the longest war
against custom and indolence. That which to-day we have successfully
reconquered for ourselves, by dint of unspeakable self-discipline—for
in some way or other all of us still have the bad instincts, the
Christian instincts, in our body,—the impartial eye for reality,
the cautious hand, patience and seriousness in the smallest details,
complete _uprightness_ in knowledge,—all this was already there; it
had been there over two thousand years before! And in addition to this
there was also that excellent and subtle tact and taste! _Not_ in the
form of brain drilling! _Not_ in the form of “German” culture with the
manners of a boor! But incarnate, manifesting itself in men’s bearing
and in their instinct,—in short constituting reality.... _All this
in vain!_ In one night it became merely a memory!—The Greeks! The
Romans! Instinctive nobility, instinctive taste, methodic research,
the genius of organisation and administration, faith, the _will_ to
the future of mankind, the great _yea_ to all things materialised
in the _imperium Romanum,_ become visible to all the senses, grand
style no longer manifested in mere art, but in reality, in truth,
in _life._—And buried in a night, not by a natural catastrophe!
Not stamped to death by Teutons and other heavy-footed vandals!
But destroyed by crafty, stealthy, invisible anæmic vampires! Not
conquered,—but only drained of blood!... The concealed lust of
revenge, miserable envy become _master!_ Everything wretched, inwardly
ailing, and full of ignoble feelings, the whole Ghetto-world of souls,
was in a trice _uppermost!_—One only needs to read any one of the
Christian agitators—St Augustine, for instance,—in order to realise,
in order to _smell,_ what filthy fellows came to the top in this
movement. You would deceive yourselves utterly if you supposed that the
leaders of the Christian agitation showed any lack of understanding
—Ah! they were shrewd, shrewd to the point of holiness were these
dear old Fathers of the Church I What they lack is something quite
different. Nature neglected them,—it forgot to give them a modest
dowry of decent, of respectable and of _cleanly_ instincts.... Between
ourselves, they are not even men. If Islam despises Christianity, it is
justified a thousand times over; for Islam presupposes men.


60

Christianity destroyed the harvest we might have reaped from the
culture of antiquity, later it also destroyed our harvest of the
culture of Islam. The wonderful Moorish world of Spanish culture, which
in its essence is more closely related to _us,_ and which appeals
more to our sense and taste than Rome and Greece, was _trampled to
death_(—I do not say by what kind of feet), why?—because it owed
its origin to noble, to manly instincts, because it said yea to life,
even that life so full of the rare and refined luxuries of the Moors!
... Later on the Crusaders waged war upon something before which it
would have been more seemly in them to grovel in the dust,—a culture,
beside which even our Nineteenth Century would seem very poor and
very “senile.”—Of course they wanted booty: the Orient was rich....
For goodness’ sake let us forget our prejudices! Crusades—superior
piracy, that is all! German nobility—that is to say, a Viking nobility
at bottom, was in its element in such wars: the Church was only too
well aware of how German nobility is to be won.... German nobility
was always the “Swiss Guard” of the Church, always at the service of
all the bad instincts of the Church; but it was _well paid for it
all...._ Fancy the Church having waged its deadly war upon everything
noble on earth, precisely with the help of German swords, German blood
and courage! A host of painful _questions_ might be raised on this
point German nobility scarcely takes a place in the history of higher
culture: the reason of this is obvious; Christianity, alcohol—the two
_great_ means of corruption. As a matter of fact choice ought to be
just as much out of the question between Islam and Christianity, as
between an Arab and a Jew. The decision is already self-evident; nobody
is at liberty to exercise a choice in this matter. A man is either of
the Chandala or he is _not ..._ “War with Rome to the knife! Peace
and friendship with Islam”: this is what that great free spirit, that
genius among German emperors,—Frederick the Second, not only felt
but also _did._ What? Must a German in the first place be a genius, a
free-spirit, in order to have _decent_ feelings? I cannot understand
how a German was ever able to have _Christian_ feelings.

Here it is necessary to revive a memory which will be a hundred times
more painful to Germans. The Germans have destroyed the last great
harvest of culture which was to be garnered for Europe,—it destroyed
the _Renaissance._ Does anybody at last understand, _will_ anybody
understand what the Renaissance was? _The transvaluation of Christian
values,_ the attempt undertaken with all means, all instincts and all
genius to make the _opposite_ values, the _noble_ values triumph,...
Hitherto there has been only _this_ great war: there has never yet
been a more decisive question than the Renaissance,—_my_ question
is the question of the Renaissance:—there has never been a more
fundamental, a more direct and a more severe _attack,_ delivered with
a whole front upon the centre of the foe. To attack at the decisive
quarter, at the very seat of Christianity, and there to place _noble_
values on the throne,—that is to say, to _introduce_ them into the
instincts, into the most fundamental needs and desires of those
sitting there.... I see before me a possibility perfectly magic in
its charm and glorious colouring—it seems to me to scintillate
with all the quivering grandeur of refined beauty, that there is
an art at work within it which is so divine, so infernally divine,
that one might seek through millenniums in vain for another such
possibility; I see a spectacle so rich in meaning and so wonderfully
paradoxical to boot, that it would be enough to make all the gods of
Olympus rock with immortal laughter,—_Cæsar Borgia as Pope._ ...
Do you understand me? ... Very well then, this would have been the
triumph which I alone am longing for to-day:—this would have _swept_
Christianity _away!_—What happened? A German monk, Luther, came to
Rome. This monk, with all the vindictive instincts of an abortive
priest in his body, foamed with rage over the Renaissance in Rome....
Instead of, with the profoundest gratitude, understanding the vast
miracle that had taken place, the overcoming of Christianity at its
_headquarters,_—the fire of his hate knew only how to draw fresh fuel
from this spectacle. A religious man thinks only of himself.—Luther
saw the corruption of the Papacy when the very reverse stared him in
the face: the old corruption, the _peceatum originate,_ Christianity
_no_ longer sat upon the Papal chair! But Life! The triumph of
Life! The great yea to all lofty, beautiful and daring things!...
And Luther reinstated the Church; he attacked it The Renaissance
thus became an event without meaning, a great _in vain!_—Ah these
Germans, what have they not cost us already! In vain—this has always
been the achievement of the Germans.—The Reformation, Leibniz,
Kant and so-called German philosophy, the Wars of Liberation, the
Empire—in each case are in vain for something which had already
existed, for something which _cannot be recovered._ ... I confess it,
these Germans are my enemies: I despise every sort of uncleanliness
in concepts and valuations in them, every kind of cowardice in the
face of every honest yea or nay. For almost one thousand years, now,
they have tangled and confused everything they have laid their hands
on; they have on their conscience all the half-measures, all the
three-eighth measures of which Europe is sick; they also have the
most unclean, the most incurable, and the most irrefutable kind of
Christianity—Protestantism—on their conscience.... If we shall never
be able to get rid of Christianity, the _Germans_ will be to blame.


62

—With this I will now conclude and pronounce my judgment. I _condemn_
Christianity and confront it with the most terrible accusation that
an accuser has ever had in his mouth. To my mind it is the greatest
of all conceivable corruptions, it has had the will to the last
imaginable corruption. The Christian Church allowed nothing to escape
from its corruption; it converted every value into its opposite, every
truth into a He, and every honest impulse into an ignominy of the
soul. Let anyone dare to speak to me of its humanitarian blessings!
To _abolish_ any sort of distress was opposed to its profoundest
interests; its very existence depended on states of distress; it
created states of distress in order to make itself immortal.... The
cancer germ of sin, for instance: the Church was the first to enrich
mankind with this misery!—The “equality of souls before God,” this
falsehood, this _pretext_ for the _rancunes_ of all the base-minded,
this anarchist bomb of a concept, which has ultimately become the
revolution, the modern idea, the principle of decay of the whole of
social order,—this is _Christian_ dynamite ... The “humanitarian”
blessings of Christianity! To breed a self-contradiction, an art of
self-profanation, a will to lie at any price, an aversion, a contempt
of all good and honest instincts out of _humanitas!_ Is this what you
call the blessings of Christianity?—Parasitism as the only method of
the Church; sucking all the blood, all the love, all the hope of life
out of mankind with anæmic and sacred ideals. A “Beyond” as the will to
deny all reality; the cross as the trade-mark of the most subterranean
form of conspiracy that has ever existed,—against health, beauty,
well-constitutedness, bravery, intellect, kindliness of soul, _against
Life itself...._

This eternal accusation against Christianity I would fain write on all
walls, wherever there are walls,—I have letters with which I can make
even the blind see.... I call Christianity the one great curse, the one
enormous and innermost perversion, the one great instinct of revenge,
for which no means are too venomous, too underhand, too underground and
too _petty,_—I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind....

And _time_ is reckoned from the _dies nefastus_ upon which this
fatality came into being—from the first day of Christianity!—_why
not rather from its last day?—From to-day?_—Transvaluation of all
Values!...


[1] The German “_Tüchtigkeit_” has a nobler ring than our word
“efficiency.”—TR.

[2] _Cf._ Disraeli: “But enlightened Europe is not happy. Its existence
is a fever which it calls progress. Progress to what?” (“Tancred,” Book
III., Chap, vii.).—TR.

[3] It will be seen from this that in spite of Nietzsche’s ruthless
criticism of the priests, he draws a sharp distinction between
Christianity and the Church. As the latter still contained elements
of order, it was more to his taste than the denial of authority
characteristic of real Christianity.—TR.

[4] “_reine Thorheit_” in the German text, referring once again to
Parsifal.—Tr.

[5] This applies apparently to Bismarck, the forger of the Ems telegram
and a sincere Christian.—Tr.

[6] An adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Well roared, lion” (_Mid. N. D.,_
Act 5, Sc. i.), the lion, as is well known, being the symbol for St
Mark in Christian literature and Art—TR.

[7] A parody on a line in Schiller’s “_Jungfrau von Orleans_” (Act 3,
Sc. vi.): “_Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens._” (With
stupidity even the gods themselves struggle in vain).—TR.

[8] ἒφεξις = Lat. Retentio, Inhibitio (Stephanus, Thesaurus Græcæ
Linguæ); therefore: reserve, caution. The Greek Sceptics were also
called Ephectics owing to their caution in judging and in concluding
from facts.—TR.

[9] The following passage from Multatuti will throw light on this
passage:—

“Father:—‘Behold, my son, how wisely Providence has arranged
everything! This bird lays its eggs in its nest and the young will be
hatched just about the time when there will be worms and flies with
which to feed them. Then they will sing a song of praise in honour of
the Creator who overwhelms his creatures with blessings.’—

“Son:—‘Will the worms join in the song, Dad?’”.—TR.

[10] “Thus Spake Zarathustra.” The Priests.—TR.

[11] I Corinthians vii. 2, 9.—TR.




THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE

AND

EXPLANATORY NOTES TO “THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA.”


TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

The notes concerning the Eternal Recurrence, in this volume, are said
by Mrs Foerster-Nietzsche to have been the first that Nietzsche ever
wrote on the subject of his great doctrine. This being so, they must
have been composed towards the autumn of the year 1881.

I have already pointed out elsewhere (_Will to Power,_ vol. ii.,
Translator’s Preface) how much importance Nietzsche himself ascribed
to this doctrine, and how, until the end, he regarded it as the
inspiration which had led to his chief work, _Thus Spake Zarathustra._
For the details relating to its inception, however, I would refer the
reader to Mrs Foerster-Nietzsche’s Introduction to her brother’s chief
work, which was translated for the eleventh volume of this Edition of
the Complete Works.

In reading these notes it would be well to refer to Nietzsche’s other
utterances on the subject which are to be found at the end of vol.
ii. of the _Will to Power,_ and also, if possible, to have recourse
to the original German text. Despite the greatest care, I confess
that in some instances, I have felt a little doubt as to the precise
English equivalent for the thoughts expressed under the heading
_Eternal Recurrence;_ and, though I have attributed this difficulty to
the extreme novelty of the manner in which the subject is presented,
it is well that the reader should be aware that such doubt has been
entertained. For I disbelieve utterly in mere verbal translation,
however accurate, and would question anybody’s right to convert a
German sentence into English—even though he were so perfect in
both languages as to be almost absolutely bilingual,—if he did not
completely grasp the thought behind the sentence.

The writing of the collected Explanatory Notes to _Thus Spake
Zarathustra_, cannot be given any exact date. Some of them consist of
comments, written down by Nietzsche after the completion of the book,
and kept as the nucleus of an actual commentary to Zarathustra, which
it seems to have been his intention, one day, to write; while others
are merely memoranda and rough sketches, probably written before the
completion of the work, and which served the purpose of a draft of his
original plan. The reader who knows _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ will be
able to tell wherein the book ultimately differed from the plan visible
in these preliminary notes.

As an authoritative, though alas! all too fragmentary elucidation of a
few of the more obscure passages of Zarathustra, some of these notes
are of the greatest value; and, in paragraph 73, for instance, there
is an interpretation of the Fourth and Last Part, which I myself would
have welcomed with great enthusiasm, at the time when I was having my
first struggles with the spirit of this great German sage’s life work.

ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.




I. ETERNAL RECURRENCE


1. THE DOCTRINE EXPOUNDED AND SUBSTANTIATED.


1.

The extent of universal energy is limited; it is not “infinite”: we
should beware of such excesses in our concepts! Consequently the number
of states, changes, combinations, and evolutions of this energy,
although it may be enormous and practically incalculable, is at any
rate definite and not unlimited. The time, however, in which this
universal energy works its changes is infinite—that is to say, energy
remains eternally the same and is eternally active:—at this moment an
infinity has already elapsed, that is to say, every possible evolution
must already have taken place. Consequently the present process of
evolution must be a repetition, as was also the one before it, as will
also be the one which will follow. And so on forwards and backwards!
Inasmuch as the entire state of all forces continually returns,
everything has existed an infinite number of times. Whether, apart from
this, anything exactly like something that formerly existed has ever
appeared, is completely beyond proof. It would seem that each complete
state of energy forms all qualities afresh even to the smallest
degree, so that two different complete states could have nothing in
common. Is it to be supposed that in one and the same complete states
two precisely similar things could appear—for instance two leaves?
I doubt it: it would take for granted that they had both had an
absolutely similar origin, and in that case we should have to assume
that right back in infinity two similar things had also existed despite
all the changes in the complete states and their creation of new
qualities—an impossible assumption.


2

Formerly it was thought that unlimited energy was a necessary corollary
to unlimited activity in time, and that this energy could be exhausted
by no form of consumption. Now it is thought that energy remains
constant and docs not require to be infinite. It is eternally active
but it is no longer able eternally to create new forms, it must repeat
itself: that is my conclusion.


3

An incalculable number of complete states of energy have existed,
but these have not been infinitely different: for if they had been,
unlimited energy would have been necessary. The energy of the universe
can only have a given number of possible qualities.


4

The endless evolution of new forms is a contradiction, for it would
imply eternally increasing energy. But whence would it grow? Whence
would it derive its nourishment and its surplus of nourishment? The
assumption that the universe is an organism contradicts the very
essence of the organic.


5

In what principle and belief is that decisive turning point in
philosophical thought best expressed which has come into being thanks
to the preponderance of the scientific spirit over the religious and
God-creating one? We insist upon the fact that the world as a sum of
energy must not be regarded as unlimited—we forbid ourselves the
concept infinite energy, because it seems incompatible with the concept
energy.


6

An unlimited number of new changes and states on the part of limited
energy is a contradiction, however extensive one may imagine it to be,
and however economical the changes may be, provided it is infinite.
We are therefore forced to conclude: (1) either that the universe
began its activity at a given moment of time and will end in a similar
fashion,—but the beginning of activity is absurd; if a state of
equilibrium had been reached it would have persisted to all eternity;
(2) Or there is no such thing as an endless number of changes, but
a circle consisting of a definite number of them which continually
recurs: activity is eternal, the number of the products and states of
energy is limited.


7

If all the possible combinations and relations of forces had not
already been exhausted, then an infinity would not yet lie behind
us. Now since infinite time must be assumed, no fresh possibility
can exist and everything must have appeared already, and moreover an
infinite number of times.


8

The present world of forces leads back to a state of greatest
simplicity in these forces: it likewise leads forwards to such a
state,—cannot and must not _both_ states be identical? No incalculable
number of states can evolve out of a system of limited forces, that
is to say, out of a given quantity of energy which may be precisely
measured. Only when we falsely assume that space is unlimited, and that
therefore energy gradually becomes dissipated, can the final state be
an unproductive and lifeless one.


9

First principles.—The last physical state of energy which we can
imagine must necessarily be the first also. The absorption of energy
in latent energy must be the cause of the production of the most vital
energy. For a highly positive state must follow a negative state Space
like matter is a subjective form, time is not. The notion of space
first arose from the assumption that space could be empty. But there is
no such thing as empty space. Everything is energy.

We cannot think of that which moves and that which is moved together,
but both these things constitute matter and space. We isolate.


10

Concerning the resurrection of the world.—Out of two negatives, when
they are forces, a positive arises. (Darkness comes of light opposed to
light, cold arises from warmth opposed to warmth, &c, &c.)


11

An uncertain state of equilibrium occurs just as seldom in nature as
two absolutely equal triangles. Consequently anything like a static
state of energy in general is impossible. If stability were possible it
would already have been reached.


12

Either complete equilibrium must in itself be an impossibility, or
the changes of energy introduce themselves in the circular process
before that equilibrium which is in itself possible has appeared.—But
it would be madness to ascribe a feeling of self-preservation to
existence! And the same applies to the conception of a contest of pain
and pleasure among atoms.


13

Physics supposes that energy may be divided up: but every one of its
possibilities must first be adjusted to reality. There can therefore
be no question of dividing energy into equal parts; in every one of
its states it manifests a certain quality, and qualities cannot be
subdivided: hence a state of equilibrium in energy is impossible.


14

If energy had ever reached a stage of equilibrium that stage would
have persisted: it has therefore never reached such a stage. The
present condition of things contradicts this assumption. If we assume
that there has ever been a state absolutely like the present one this
assumption is in no wise refuted by the present state. For, among
all the endless possibilities, this case must already have occurred,
as an infinity is already behind us. If equilibrium were possible it
would already have been reached.—And if this momentary state has
already existed then that which bore it and the previous one also would
likewise have existed and so on backwards,—and from this it follows
that it has already existed not only twice but three times,—just as it
will exist again not only twice but three times,—in fact an infinite
number of times backwards and forwards. That is to say, the whole
process of Becoming consists of a repetition of a definite number of
precisely similar states.—Clearly the human brain cannot be left to
imagine the whole series of possibilities: but in any case, quite apart
from our ability to judge or our inability to conceive the whole range
of possibilities, the present state at least is a possible one—because
it is a real one. We should therefore say: in the event of the number
of possibilities not being infinite, and assuming that in the course of
unlimited time a limited number of these must appear, all real states
must have been preceded by similar states? Because from every given
moment a whole infinity is to be calculated backwards? The stability of
forces and their equilibrium is a possible alternative: but it has not
been reached; consequently the number of possibilities is greater than
the number of real states. The fact that nothing similar recurs could
not be explained by appealing to accident, but only by supposing that a
certain intention, that no similar things should recur, were actually
inherent in the essence of energy: for, if we grant that the number of
cases is enormous, the occurrence of like cases is more probable than
absolute disparity.


15

Let us think backwards a moment If the world had a goal, this goal
must have been reached: if a certain (unintentional) final state
existed for the world, this state also would have been reached. If
it were in any way capable of a stationary or stable condition, and
if in the whole course of its existence only one second of Being, in
the strict sense of the word, had been possible, then there could
no longer be such a process as evolution, and therefore no thinking
and no observing of such a process. If on the other hand the world
were something which continually renovated itself, it would then be
understood to be something miraculous and free to create itself—in
fact something divine. Eternal renovation presupposes that energy
voluntarily increases itself, that it not only has the intention, but
also the power, to avoid repeating itself or to avoid returning into a
previous form, and that every instant it adjusts itself in every one of
its movements to prevent such a contingency,—or that it was incapable
of returning to a state it had already passed through. That would
mean that the whole sum of energy was not constant, any more than its
attributes were But a sum of energy which would be inconstant and which
would fluctuate is quite unthinkable Let us not indulge our fancy
any longer with unthinkable things in order to fall once more before
the concept of a Creator (multiplication out of nothing, reduction
out of nothing, absolute arbitrariness and freedom in growth and in
qualities):—


16

He who does not believe in the circular process of the universe must
pin his faith to an arbitrary God—thus my doctrine becomes necessary
as opposed to all that has been said hitherto in matters of Theism.


17

The hypothesis which I would oppose to that of the eternal circular
process:—Would it be just as possible to explain the laws of the
mechanical world as exceptions and seemingly as accidents among the
things of the universe, as one possibility only among an incalculable
number of possibilities? Would it be possible to regard ourselves
as accidentally thrust into this corner of the mechanical universal
arrangement?—That all chemical philosophy is likewise an exception
and an accident in the world’s economy, and finally that organic life
is a mere exception and accident in the chemical world? Should we have
to assume as the most general form of existence a world which was
not yet mechanical, which was outside all mechanical laws (although
accessible to them)?—and that as a matter of fact this world would
be the most general now and for evermore, so that the origin of the
mechanical world would be a lawless game which would ultimately acquire
such consistency as the organic laws seem to have now from our point
of view? So that all our mechanical laws would be not eternal, but
evolved, and would have survived innumerable different mechanical
laws, or that they had attained supremacy in isolated corners of the
world and not in others?—It would seem that we need caprice, actual
lawlessness, and only a capacity for law, a primeval state of stupidity
which is not even able to concern itself with mechanics? The origin of
qualities presupposes the existence of quantities, and these, for their
part, might arise from a thousand kinds of mechanical processes.

Is not the existence of some sort of irregularity and incomplete
circular form in the world about us, a sufficient refutation of
the regular circularity of everything that exists? Whence comes
this variety within the circular process? Is not everything far too
complicated to have been the outcome of unity? And are not the many
chemical laws and likewise the organic species and forms inexplicable
as the result of homogeneity? or of duality?—Supposing there were
such a thing as a regular contracting energy in all the centres of
force in the universe, the question would be, whence could the most
insignificant difference spring? For then the whole world would have
to be resolved into innumerable completely equal rings and spheres of
existence and we should have an incalculable number of exactly equal
worlds side by side. Is it necessary for me to assume this? Must I
suppose that an eternal sequence of like worlds also involves eternal
juxta-position of like worlds? But the multifariousness and disorder
in the world which we have known hitherto contradicts this; no such
universal similarity has existed in evolution, for in that case even
for our part of the cosmos a regular spherical form must have been
formed. Should the production of qualities not be subject to any strict
laws? Can it be possible that different things have been derived from
“energy”? Arbitrarily? Is the conformity to law which we observe
perhaps only a deception? Is it possible that it is not a primeval law?
Is it possible that the multifariousness of qualities even in our part
of the world is the result of the absolute occurrence of arbitrary
characteristics? But that these characteristics no longer appear in our
corner of the globe? Or that our corner of existence has adopted a rule
which we call cause and effect when all the while it is no such thing
(an arbitrary phenomenon become a rule, as for instance oxygen and
hydrogen in chemistry)??? Is this rule simply a protracted kind of mood?


18

If the universe had been able to become an organism it would have
become one already. _As_ a whole we must try and regard it in the
light of a thing _as_ remote _as possible_ from the organic. I believe
that even our chemical affinity and coherence may be perhaps recently
evolved and that these appearances only occur in certain corners of
the universe at certain epochs. Let us believe in absolute necessity
in the universe but let us guard against postulating any sort of law,
even if it be a primitive and mechanical one of our own experience,
as ruling over the whole and constituting one of its eternal
characteristics.—All chemical qualities might have been evolved and
might disappear and return. Innumerable characteristics might have been
developed which for us,—from our limited point of view in time and
space, defy observation. The transformation of a chemical quality may
perhaps now be taking place, but so slowly that it escapes our most
delicate calculations.


19

Inorganic matter, even though in most cases it may once have
been organic, can have stored up no experience,—it is always
without a pastl If the reverse were the case a repetition would be
impossible—for then matter would for ever be producing new qualities
with new pasts.


20

We must guard against ascribing any aspiration or any goal to this
circular process: Likewise we must not, from the point of view of our
own needs, regard it as either monotonous or foolish, &c. We may grant
that the greatest possible irrationality, as also its reverse, may be
an essential feature of it: but we must not value it according to this
hypothesis. Rationality or irrationality cannot stand as attributes of
the universe.—We must not think of the law of this circular process as
a thing evolved, by drawing false analogies with the circular motions
occurring _within_ the circle. There was no primitive chaos followed
gradually by a more harmonious and finally definite circular motion of
all forces: On the contrary everything is eternal and unevolved. If
there ever was a chaos of forces, then that chaos itself was eternal
and was repeated at its particular moment of time in the turn of the
world wheel. The circular process is not the outcome of evolution, it
is a primitive principle like the quantum of energy, and allows of no
exception or violation. All Becoming takes place within the circular
process and the quantum of energy which constitutes it: therefore we
must not apply ephemeral processes like those for instance of heavenly
bodies, of the ebb and flow of tides, of day and night, of the seasons,
to the drawing of analogies for characterising the eternal circular
process.


21

The “chaos of the universe,” inasmuch as it excludes any aspiration to
a goal, does not oppose the thought of the circular process: the latter
is simply an irrational necessity, absolutely free from any formal
ethical or æsthetical significance. Arbitrariness in small things as in
great is completely lacking here.


22

Let us guard against believing that the universe has a tendency to
attain to certain forms, or that it aims at becoming more beautiful,
more perfect, more complicated! All that is anthropomorphism! Anarchy,
ugliness, form—are unrelated concepts. There is no such thing as
imperfection in the realm of mechanics.

Everything has returned: Sirius, and the spider, and thy thoughts at
this moment, and this last thought of thine that all these things will
return.


23

Our whole world consists of the ashes of an incalculable number of
living creatures: and even if living matter is ever so little compared
with the whole, everything has already been transformed into life once
before and thus the process goes on. If we grant eternal time we must
assume the eternal change of matter.


24

Whoever thou mayest be, beloved stranger, whom I meet here for the
first time, avail thyself of this happy hour and of the stillness
around us, and above us, and let me tell thee something of the thought
which has suddenly risen before me like a star which would fain shed
down its rays upon thee and every one, as befits the nature of light—


25

The world of energy suffers no diminution: otherwise with eternal
time it would have grown weak and finally have perished altogether.
The world of energy suffers no stationary state, otherwise this would
already have been reached, and the clock of the universe would be at
a standstill. The world of energy does not therefore reach a state of
equilibrium; for no instant in its career has it had rest; its energy
and its movement have been the same for all time. Whatever state this
world could have reached must ere now have been attained, and not
only once but an incalculable number of times. This applies to this
very moment It has already been here once before, and several times,
and will recur in the same way, with all forces distributed as they
are to-day: and the same holds good of the moment of time which bore
the present and of that which shall be the child of the present.
Fellow-man! Your whole life, like a sandglass, will always be reversed
and will ever run out again,—a long minute of time will elapse until
all those conditions out of which you were evolved return in the wheel
of the cosmic process. And then you will find every pain and every
pleasure, every friend and every enemy, every hope and every error,
every blade of grass and every ray of sunshine once more, and the whole
fabric of things that makes up your life. This ring in which you are
but a grain will glitter afresh for ever. And in every one of these
cycles of human life there will be one hour where for the first time
one man, and then many, will perceive the mighty thought of the eternal
recurrence of all things:—and for mankind this is always the hour of
Noon.




2. THE EFFECTS OF THE DOCTRINE UPON MANKIND


26

How can we give weight to our inner life without making it evil and
fanatical towards people who think otherwise. Religious belief is
declining and man is beginning to regard himself as ephemeral and
unessential, a point of view which is making him weak; he does not
exercise so much effort in striving or enduring. What he wants is
momentary enjoyment He would make things light for himself,—and a good
deal of his spirit gets squandered in this endeavour.


27

The political mania at which I smile just as merrily as my
contemporaries smile at the religious mania of former times is above
all Materialism, a belief in the world, and in the repudiation of a
“Beyond,” of a “back-world.” The object of those who believe in the
latter is the well-being of the ephemeral individual: that is why
Socialism is its fruit; for with Socialism ephemeral individuals wish
to secure their happiness by means of socialisation. They have no
reason to wait, as those men had who believed in eternal souls, in
eternal development and eternal amelioration. My doctrine is: Live
so that thou mayest desire to live again,—that is thy duty,—for in
any case thou wilt live again He unto whom striving is the greatest
happiness, let him strive; he unto whom peace is the greatest
happiness, let him rest; he unto whom subordination, following,
obedience, is the greatest happiness, let him obey. All that is
necessary is that he should know what it is that gives him the highest
happiness, and to fight shy of no means! Eternity is at stake!


28

“But if everything is necessary, what control have I over my actions?”
Thought and faith are a form of ballast which burden thee in addition
to other burdens thou mayest have, and which are even more weighty than
the latter. Sayest thou that nutrition, the land of thy birth, air, and
society change thee and determine thee? Well, thy opinions do this to
a much greater degree, for they even prescribe thy nourishment, thy
land of adoption, thy atmosphere, and thy society for thee.—If thou
ever assimilatest the thought of thoughts it will also alter thee. The
question which thou wilt have to answer before every deed that thou
doest: “is this such a deed as I am prepared to perform an incalculable
number of times?” is the best ballast.


29

The mightiest of all thoughts absorbs a good deal of energy which
formerly stood at the disposal of other aspirations, and in this way
it exercises a modifying influence; it creates new laws of motion in
energy, though no new energy. But it is precisely in this respect that
there lies some possibility of determining new emotions and new desires
in men.


30

Let us try and discover how the thought that something gets repeated
has affected mankind hitherto (the year, for instance, or periodical
illnesses, waking and sleeping, &c). Even supposing the recurrence of
the cycle is only a probability or a possibility, even a thought, even
a possibility, can shatter us and transform us. It is not only feelings
and definite expectations that do this! See what effect the thought of
eternal damnation has had!


31

From the moment when this thought begins to prevail all colours will
change their hue and a new history will begin.


32

The history of the future: this thought will tend to triumph ever more
and more, and those who disbelieve in it will be forced, according to
their nature, ultimately to die out.

He, alone, who will regard his existence as capable of eternal
recurrence will remain over: but among such as these a state will be
possible of which the imagination of no utopist has ever dreamt!


33

Ye fancy that ye will have a long rest ere your second birth takes
place,—but do not deceive yourselves! ’Twixt your last moment of
consciousness and the first ray of the dawn of your new life no time
will elapse,—as a flash of lightning will the space go by, even though
living creatures think it is billions of years, and are not even able
to reckon it. Timelessness and immediate re-birth are compatible, once
intellect is eliminated!


34

Thou feelest that thou must soon take thy leave perhaps—and the sunset
glow of this feeling pierces through thy happiness. Give heed to this
sign: it means that thou lovest life and thyself, and life as it has
hitherto affected thee and moulded thee,—and that thou cravest for its
eternity—_Non alia sed hac vita sempiterna!_

Know also, that transiency singeth its short song for ever afresh and
that at the sound of the first verse thou wilt almost die of longing
when thou thinkest that it might be for the last time.


35

Let us stamp the impress of eternity upon our lives! This thought
contains more than all the religions which taught us to contemn this
life as a thing ephemeral, which bade us squint upwards to another and
indefinite existence.—


36

We must not strive after distant and unknown states of bliss and
blessings and acts of grace, but we must live so that we would fain
live again and live for ever so, to all eternity!—Our duty is present
with us every instant.


37

The leading tendencies: (1) We must implant the love of life, the
love of every man’s own life in every conceivable way! However each
individual may understand this love of self his neighbour will
acquiesce, and will have to learn great tolerance towards it: however
much it may often run counter to his taste,—provided the individual in
question really helps to increase his joy in his own life!

(2) We must all be one in our hostility towards everything and
everybody who tends to cast a slur upon the value of life: towards
all gloomy, dissatisfied and brooding natures. We must prevent these
from procreating! But our hostility itself must be a means to our joy!
Thus we shall laugh; we shall mock and we shall exterminate without
bitterness I Let this be our mortal combat

This life is thy eternal life!


38

What was the cause of the downfall of the Alexandrian culture? With all
its useful discoveries and its desire to investigate the nature of this
world, it did not know how to lend this life its ultimate importance,
the thought of a Beyond was more important to it! To teach anew in
this regard is still the most important thing of all:—perhaps if
metaphysics are applied to this life in the most emphatic way,—as in
the case of my doctrine!


39

This doctrine is lenient towards those who do not believe in it It
speaks of no hells and it contains no threats. He who does not believe
in it has but a fleeting life in his consciousness.


40

It would be terrible if we still believed in sin, but whatever we may
do, however often we may repeat it, it is all innocent. If the thought
of the eternal recurrence of all things does not overwhelm thee, then
it is not thy fault: and if it does overwhelm thee, this does not stand
to thy merit either.—We think more leniently of our forebears than
they themselves thought of themselves; we mourn over the errors which
were to them constitutional; but we do not mourn over their evil.


41

Let us guard against teaching such a doctrine as if it were a suddenly
discovered religion! It must percolate through slowly, and whole
generations must build on it and become fruitful through it,—in order
that it may grow into a large tree which will shelter all posterity.
What are the two thousand years in which Christianity has maintained
its sway? For the mightiest thought of all many millenniums will be
necessary,—long, long, long will it have to remain puny and weak!


42

For this thought we do not require thirty years of glory with drums
and fifes, and thirty years of grave-digging followed by an eternity
of macaberesque stillness, as is the case with so many other famous
thoughts.

Simple and well-nigh arid as it is, this thought must not even require
eloquence to uphold it.


43

Are ye now prepared? Ye must have experienced every form of
scepticism and ye must have wallowed with voluptuousness in ice-cold
baths,—otherwise ye have no right to this thought; I wish to protect
myself against those who are over-ready to believe, likewise against
those who gush over anything! I would defend my doctrine in advance.
It must be the religion of the freest, most cheerful and most sublime
souls, a delightful pastureland somewhere between golden ice and a pure
heaven!




EXPLANATORY NOTES TO “THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA”


1

All goals have been annihilated: valuations are turning against each
other:

People call him good who hearkens to the dictates of his own heart, but
they also call him good who merely does his duty;

People call the mild and conciliating man good, but they also call him
good who is brave, inflexible and severe;

People call him good who does not do violence to himself, but they also
call the heroes of self-mastery good;

People call the absolute friend of truth good-, but they also call him
good who is pious and a transfigurer of things;

People call him good who can obey his own voice, but they also call the
devout man good;

People call the noble and the haughty man good, but also him who does
not despise and who does not assume condescending airs.

People call him good who is kindhearted and who steps out of the way of
broils, but he who thirsts for fight and triumph is also called good;

People call him good who always wishes to be first, but they also call
him good who does not wish to be ahead of anybody in anything.


2

We possess a powerful store of moral _feelings,_ but we have no goal
for them all. They mutually contradict each other: they have their
origin in different tables of values.

There is a wonderful amount of moral power, but there is no longer any
goal towards which all this power can be directed.


3

All goals have been annihilated, mankind must give themselves a fresh
goal. It is an error to suppose that they had one: they gave themselves
all the goals they ever had. But the prerequisites of all previous
goals have been annihilated.

Science traces the course of things but points to no goal: what it does
give consists of the fundamental facts upon which the new goal must be
based.


4

The profound sterility of the nineteenth century. I have not
encountered a single man who really had a new ideal to bring
forward. The character of German music kept me hoping longest, but
in vain. A stronger type in which all our powers are synthetically
correlated—this constitutes my faith.

Apparently everything is decadence. We should so direct this movement
of decline that it may provide the strongest with a new form of
existence.


5

The dissolution of morality, in its practical consequences, leads
to the atomistic individual, and further to the subdivision of the
individual into a quantity of parts—absolute liquefaction.

That is why a goal is now more than ever necessary; and love, but a new
love.


6

I say: “As long as your morality hung over me I breathed like one
asphyxiated. That is why I throttled this snake. I wished to live,
consequently it had to die.”


7

As long as people are still _forced to_ act, that is to say as long as
commands are given, synthesis (the suppression of the moral man) will
not be realised To be unable to be otherwise: instincts and commanding
reason extending beyond any immediate object: the ability to enjoy
one’s own nature in action.


8

None of them wish to bear the burden of the commander; but they will
perform the most strenuous task if only thou commandest them.


9

We must overcome the past in ourselves: we must combine the instincts
afresh and direct the whole together to one goal:—an extremely
difficult undertaking! It is not only the evil instincts which have to
be overcome,—the so-called good instincts must be conquered also and
consecrated anew!


10

No leaps must be made in virtue! But everyone must be given a different
path! Not leading to the highest development of each! Yet everyone may
be a bridge and an example for others.


11

To help, to pity, to submit and to renounce personal attacks with a
good will,—these things may make even insignificant and superficial
men tolerable to the eye: such men must not be contradicted in their
belief that this good will is “virtue in itself.”


12

Man makes a deed valuable: but how might a deed make man valuable?


13

Morality is the concern of those who cannot free themselves from
it: for such people morality therefore belongs to the conditions of
existence. It is impossible to refute conditions of existence: the only
thing one can do is not to have them.


14

If it were true that life did not deserve to be welcomed, the moral
man, precisely on account of his self-denial and obligingness, would
then be guilty of misusing his fellow to his own personal advantage.


15

“Love thy neighbour”—this would mean first and foremost: “Let thy
neighbour go his own way”—and it is precisely this kind of virtue that
is the most difficult!


16

The bad man as the parasite. We must not be merely feasters and
gourmets of life: this is ignoble.


17

It is a noble sense which forbids our being only feasters and gourmets
of life—this sense revolts against hedonism—: we want to perform
something in return!—But the fundamental feeling of the masses is that
one must live for nothing,—that is their vulgarity.


18

The converse valuations hold good for the lower among men: in their
case therefore it is necessary to implant virtues. They must be
elevated above their lives, by means of absolute commands and terrible
taskmasters.


19

What is required: the new law must be made practicable—and out of its
fulfilment, the overcoming of this law, and higher law, must evolve
Zarathustra defines the attitude towards law, inasmuch as he suppresses
the law of laws which is morality.

Laws as the backbone They must be worked at and created, by being
fulfilled. The slavish attitude which has reigned hitherto towards law!


20

The self-overcoming of Zarathustra as the prototype of mankind’s
self-overcoming for the benefit of Superman. To this end the overcoming
of morality is necessary.


21

The type of the lawgiver, his development and his suffering. What is
the purpose of giving laws at all?

Zarathustra is the herald who calls forth many lawgivers.


22

_Individual instruments._

1. The Commanders, the mighty—who do not love, unless it be that they
love the images according to which they create. The rich in vitality,
the versatile, the free, who overcome that which is extant

2. The obedient, the “emancipated”—love and reverence constitute their
happiness, they have a sense of what is higher (their deficiencies are
made whole by the sight of the lofty).

3. The slaves, the order of “henchmen”—: they must be made
comfortable, they must cultivate pity for one another.


23

The giver, the creator, the teacher—these are preludes of the ruler.


24

All virtue and all self-mastery has only one purpose: that of preparing
for the rule!


25

Every sacrifice that the ruler makes is rewarded a hundredfold.


26

How much does not the warrior, the prince, the man who is responsible
for himself, sacrifice!—this should be highly honoured.


27

The terrible task of the ruler who educates himself:—the kind of man
and people over which he will rule must be forecast in him: it is in
himself therefore that he must first have become a ruler!


28

The great educator like nature must elevate obstacles in order that
these may be overcome.


29

The new teachers as preparatory stages for the highest Architect (they
must impose their type on things).


30

Institutions may be regarded as the after effects of great individuals
and the means of giving great individuals root and soil—until the
fruit ultimately appears.


31

As a matter of fact mankind is continually trying to be able to
dispense with great individuals by means of corporations, &c But they
are utterly dependent upon such great individuals for their ideal.


32

The eudæmonistic and social ideals lead men backwards,—it may be that
they aim at a very useful working class,—they are creating the ideal
slave of the future, the lower caste which must on no account be
lacking!


33

Equal rights for all!—this is the most extraordinary form of
injustice, for with it the highest men do not get their due.


34

It is not a matter of the rights of the stronger, for strong and weak
are alike in this, that they all extend their power as far as they can.


35

A new form of estimating man: above all the question:

How much power has he got?

How manifold are his instincts?

How great is his capacity for communication and assimilation?

The ruler as the highest type.


36

Zarathustra rejoices that the war of the classes is at last over,
and that now at length the time is ripe for an order of rank among
individuals. His hatred of the democratic system of levelling is only
a blind; as a matter of fact he is very pleased that this has gone so
far. Now he can perform his task.—

Hitherto his doctrines had been directed only at the ruling caste of
the future. These lords of the earth must now take the place of God,
and must create for themselves the profound and absolute confidence
of those they rule. Their new holiness, their renunciation of
happiness and ease, must be their first principle. To the lowest they
grant the heirloom of happiness, not to themselves. They deliver the
physiologically botched by teaching them the doctrine of “swift death.”
They offer religions and philosophical systems to each according to his
rank.


37

“The conflict in the heart of the ruler is the contest between the love
which is in his heart for him who is most remote, and the love which he
feels for his neighbour.”

To be a creator and to be capable of goodness are not at all things
which exclude one another. They are rather one and the same thing; but
the creator is farsighted and the good man nearsighted.


38

The feeling of power. The strife of all egos to discover that thought
which will remain poised above men like a star.—The ego is a _primum
mobile._


39

The struggle for the application of the power which mankind now
represents! Zarathustra calls to the gladiators of this struggle.


40

We must make our ideals prevail:—We must strive for power in such a
way as our ideal commands.


41

The doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence is the turning point of history.


42

Suddenly the terrible chamber of truth is opened, an unconscious
self-protectiveness, caution, ambush, defence keeps us from the gravest
knowledge. Thus have I lived heretofore. I suppress something; but the
restless babbling and rolling down of stones has rendered my instinct
over-powerful. Now I am rolling my last stone, the most appalling truth
stands close to my hand.

Truth has been exorcised out of its grave:—we created it, we waked it:
the highest expression of courage and of the feeling of power. Scorn of
all pessimism that has existed hitherto!

We fight with it,—we find out that our only means of enduring it is
to create a creature who is able to endure it:—unless, of course, we
voluntarily dazzle ourselves afresh and blind ourselves in regard to it
But this we are no longer able to do!

We it was who created the gravest thought,—let us now create a being
unto whom it will be not only light but blessed.

In order to be able to create we must allow ourselves greater freedom
than has ever been vouch-safed us before; to this end we must be
emancipated from morality, and we must be relieved by means of feasts
(Premonitions of the future! We must celebrate the future and no longer
the past! We must compose the myth poetry of the future! We must live
in hopes!) Blessed moments I And then we must once again pull down the
curtain and turn our thoughts to the next unswerving purpose.


43

Mankind must set its goal above itself—not in a false world, however,
but in one which would be a continuation of humanity.


44

The half-way house is always present when the will to the future
arises: the greatest event stands immediately before it.


45

Our very essence is to create a being higher than ourselves. We must
create beyond ourselves. That is the instinct of procreation, that is
the instinct of action and of work.—Just as all willing presupposes a
purpose, so does mankind presuppose a creature which is not yet formed
but which provides the aim of life. This is the freedom of all will.
Love, reverence, yearning for perfection, longing, all these things are
inherent in a purpose.


46

My desire: to bring forth creatures which stand sublimely above the
whole species man: and to sacrifice “one’s neighbours” and oneself to
this end.

The morality which has existed hitherto was limited within the confines
of the species: all moralities that have existed hitherto have been
useful in the first place in order to give unconditional stability to
this species: once this has been achieved the aim can be elevated.

One movement is absolute; it is nothing more than the levelling down of
mankind, great ant-organisations, &c.

The other movement, my movement, is conversely the accentuation of all
contrasts and gulfs, and the elimination of equality, together with the
creation of supremely powerful creatures.

The first movement brings forth the last man, my movement brings forth
the Superman. It is by no means the goal to regard the latter as the
master of the first: two races ought to exist side by side,—separated
as far asunder as possible; the one, like the Epicurean gods, not
concerning themselves in the least with the others.


47

The opposite of the Superman is the last man: I created him
simultaneously with the former.


48

The more an individual is free and firm, the more exacting becomes his
love: at last he yearns for Superman, because nothing else is able to
appease his love,


49

Half-way round the course Superman arises.


50

Among men I was frightened: among men I desired a host of things and
nothing satisfied me. It was then that I went into solitude and created
Superman. And when I had created him I draped him in the great veil of
Becoming and let the light of midday shine upon him.


51

“We wish to create a Being,” we all wish to have a hand in it, to love
it. We all want to be pregnant—and to honour and respect ourselves on
that account.

We must have a goal in view of which we may all love each other! All
other goals are only fit for the scrap heap.


52

The strongest in body and soul are the best—Zarathustra’s fundamental
proposition—; from them is generated that higher morality of the
creator. Man must be regenerated after his own image: this is what he
wants, this is his honesty.


53

Genius to Zarathustra seems like the incarnation of his thought.


54

Loneliness for a certain time is necessary in order that a creature
may become completely permeated with his own soul—cured and hard. A
new form of community would be one in which we should assert ourselves
martially. Otherwise the spirit becomes tame. No Epicurean “gardens”
and mere “retirement from the masses.” War (but without powder) between
different thoughts and the hosts who support them I

A new nobility, the result of breeding. Feasts celebrating the
foundation of families.

The day divided up afresh; bodily exercise for all ages. Ἀγών
as a principle.

The love of the sexes as a contest around the principle in becoming and
coming.—Ruling will be taught and practised, its hardness as well as
its mildness. As soon as one faculty is acquired in a masterly manner
another one must be striven after.

We must let ourselves be taught by the evil, and allow them an
opportunity of a contest. We must make use of the degenerate—The right
of punishment will consist in this, that the offender may be used as
an experimental subject (in dietetics): this is the consecration of
punishment, that one man be used for the highest needs of a future
being.

We protect our new community because it is the bridge to our ideal of
the future And for it we work and let others work.


55

The measure and mean must be found in striving to attain to something
beyond mankind: the highest and strongest kind of man must be
discovered! The highest tendency must be represented continually
in small things:—perfection, maturity, rosy-cheeked health, mild
discharges of power. Just as an artist works, must we apply ourselves
to our daily task and bring ourselves to perfection in everything we
do. We must be honest in acknowledging our real motives to ourselves,
as is becoming in the mighty man.


56

No impatience! Superman is our next stage and to this end, to this
limit, moderation and manliness are necessary.

Mankind must surpass itself, as the Greeks did—and no fleshless
fantasies must be indulged. The higher mind which is associated with a
sickly and nervous character must be suppressed. The goal: the higher
culture of the whole body and not only of the brain.


57

“Man is something that must be surpassed”:—it is a matter of tempo:
the Greeks were wonderful, there was no haste about them.—My
predecessors: Heraclitus, Empedocles, Spinoza, Goethe.


58

1. Dissatisfaction with ourselves. An antidote to repentance.
The transformation of temperament (_e.g.,_ by means of inorganic
substances). Good will to this dissatisfaction. We should wait for our
thirst and let it become great in order to discover its source.

2. Death must be transformed into a means of victory and triumph.

3. The attitude towards disease. Freedom where death is concerned.

4. The love of the sexes is a means to an ideal (it is the striving of
a being to perish through his opposite). The love for a suffering deity.

5. Procreation is the holiest of all things. Pregnancy, the creation of
a woman and a man, who wish to enjoy their unity, and erect a monument
to it by means of a child.

6. Pity as a danger. Circumstances must be created which enable
everyone to be able to help himself, and which leave him to choose
whether he would be helped.

7. Education must be directed at making men evil, at developing their
inner devil.

8. Inner war as “development”

9. “The maintenance of the species,” and the thought of eternal
recurrence.


59

Principal doctrine. We must strive to make every stage one of
perfection, and rejoice therein,—we must make no leaps!

In the first place, the promulgation of laws. After the Superman the
doctrine of eternal recurrence will strike us with horror: Now it is
endurable.


60

Life itself created this thought which is the most oppressive for life.
Life wishes to get beyond its greatest obstacle I

We must desire to perish in order to arise afresh,—from one day to
the other. Wander through a hundred souls,—let that be thy life and
thy fate! And then finally: desire to go through the whole process once
more!


61

The highest thing of all would be for us to be able to endure our
immortality.


62

The moment in which I begot recurrence is immortal, for the sake of
that moment alone I will endure recurrence.


63

The teaching of eternal recurrence—it is at first oppressive to the
more noble souls and apparently a means of weeding them out,—then the
inferior and less sensitive natures would remain over! “This doctrine
must be suppressed and Zarathustra killed.”


64

The hesitation of the disciples. “We are already able to bear with this
doctrine, but we should destroy the many by means of it!”

Zarathustra laughs: “Ye shall be the hammer: I laid this hammer in your
hands.”


65

I do not speak to you as I speak to the people. The highest thing for
them would be to despise and to annihilate themselves: the next highest
thing would be for them to despise and annihilate each other.


66

“My will to do good compels me to remain silent. But my will to the
Superman bids me speak and sacrifice even my friends.”

“I would fain form and transform you, how could I endure things
otherwise!”


67

The history of higher man. The rearing of the better man is
incalculably more painful. The ideal of the necessary sacrifice which
it involves, as in the case of Zarathustra, should be demonstrated: A
man should leave his home, his family and his native land. Live under
the scorn of the prevailing morality. The anguish of experiments and
errors. The solution of all the joys offered by the older ideals (they
are now felt to be partly hostile and partly strange).


68

What is it which gives a meaning, a value, an importance to things?
It is the creative heart which yearns and which created out of this
yearning. It created joy and woe. It wanted to sate itself also with
woe. Every kind of pain that man or beast has suffered, we must take
upon ourselves and bless, and have a goal whereby such suffering would
acquire some meaning.


69

Principal doctrine: the transfiguration of pain into a blessing, and of
poison into food, lies in our power. The will to suffering.


70

Concerning heroic greatness as the only state of pioneers. (A yearning
for utter ruin as a means of enduring one’s existence.)

We must not desire one state only; we must rather desire to be
periodical creatures—like existence.

Absolute indifference to other people’s opinions (because we know their
weights and measures), but their opinions of themselves should be the
subject of pity.


71

Disciples must unite three qualities in themselves: they must be
true, they must be able and willing to be communicative, they must
have profound insight into each other.


72

All kinds of higher men and their oppression and blighting (as a case
in point, Duhring, who was ruined by isolation)—on the whole, this
is the fate of higher men to-day, they seem to be a species that is
condemned to die out: this fact seems to come to Zarathustra’s ears
like a great cry for help. All kinds of insane degenerations of higher
natures seem to approach him (nihilism for instance).


73

_Higher Men who come to Zarathustra in Despair._

Temptations to return prematurely to the world—thanks to the
provocation of one’s sympathies.

1. The rolling stone, the homeless one, the wanderer:—he who has
unlearned the love of his people because he has learned to love many
peoples,—the good European.

2. The gloomy, ambitious son of the people, shy, lonely, and ready for
anything,—who chooses rather to be alone than to be a destroyer,—he
offers himself as an instrument.

3. The ugliest man, who is obliged to adorn himself (historical sense)
and who is always in search of a new garment: he desires to make his
appearance becoming, and finally retires into solitude in order not to
be seen, he is ashamed of himself.

4. He who honours facts (“the brain of a leech”), the most subtle
intellectual conscience, and because he has it in excess, a guilty
conscience,—he wants to get rid of himself.

5. The poet, who at bottom thirsts, for savage freedom,—he chooses
loneliness and the severity of knowledge.

6. The discoverer of new intoxicants,—the musician, the sorcerer, who
finally drops on his knees before a loving heart and says: “Not to me
do I wish to lead you but yonder to him.”

Those who are sober to excess and who have a yearning for intoxication
which they do not gratify. The Supersobersides.

7. Genius (as an attack of insanity), becoming frozen through lack of
love: “I am neither a genius nor a god.” Great tenderness: “people must
show him more love!”

8. The rich man who has given everything away and who asks everybody:
“Have you anything you do not want? give me some of it!” as a beggar.

9. The Kings who renounce dominion: “we seek him who is more worthy
to rule”—against “equality”: the great man is lacking, consequently
reverence is lacking too.

10. The actor of happiness.

11. The pessimistic soothsayer who detects fatigue everywhere.

12. The fool of the big city.

13. The youth from the mount

14. The woman (seeks the man).

15. The envious emaciated toiler and _arriviste.

16. The good,            } and their mad fancy:

17. The pious,           } “For God” that

18. The self-centred and } means “For me.”
        saints,


74

“I gave you the most weighty thought: maybe mankind will perish through
it, perhaps also mankind will be elevated through it inasmuch as by
its means the elements which are hostile to life will be overcome and
eliminated.” “Ye must not chide Life, but yourselves!”—The destiny
of higher man is to be a creator. The organisation of higher men, the
education of the future ruler. “YE must rejoice in your superior power
when ye rule and when ye form anew.” “Not only man but Superman will
recur eternally!”


75

The typical suffering of the reformer and also his consolations. The
seven solitudes.

He lives as though he were beyond all ages: his loftiness allows him to
have intercourse with the anchorites and the misunderstood of every age.

Only his beauty is his defence. He lays his hands on the next thousand
years.

His love increases as he sees the impossibility of avoiding the
affliction of pain with it.


76

Zarathustra’s mood is not one of mad impatience for Superman! It is
peaceful, it can wait: but all action has derived some purpose from
being the road and means thither,—and must be done well and perfectly.

The repose of the great stream! Consecration of the smallest thing.
All unrest, and violent longing, all loathing should be presented in
the third part and be overcome! The gentleness, and mildness, &c, in
the first and second parts are both signs of a power which is not yet
self-reliant!

With the recovery of Zarathustra, Cæsar stands there inexorable
and kind:—the gulf separating creation, goodness, and wisdom is
annihilated.

Clearness, peace, no exaggerated craving, happiness in the moment which
is properly occupied and immortalised!


77

Zarathustra, Part III.: “I myself am happy.”—When he had taken leave
of mankind he returned unto himself. Like a cloud it vanishes from him.
The manner in which Superman must live: like an Epicurean God.

Divine suffering is the substance of the third part of Zarathustra. The
human state of the legislator is only brought forward as an example.

His intense love for his friends seems to him a disease,—once more he
becomes peaceful.

When the invitations come he gently evades them.


78

In the fourth part it is necessary to say precisely why it is that the
time of the great noon has come: It is really a description of the age
given by means of visits, but interpreted by Zarathustra.

In the fourth part it is necessary to say precisely why “a chosen
people” has first to be created:—they are the lucky cases of nature
as opposed to the unlucky (exemplified by the visitors): only to them
—the lucky cases—is Zarathustra able to express himself concerning
ultimate problems, them alone is he able to inspire with activity on
behalf of this theory. They are strong, healthy, hard and above all
noble enough for him to give them the hammer with which to remould the
whole world.


79

The unity in power of the creator, the lover and the knight of
knowledge.


80

Love alone shall judge—(the creative love which forgets itself in its
work).


81

Zarathustra can only dispense happiness once the order of rank is
established. Therefore this doctrine must be taught first.

The order of rank develops into a system of earthly dominion: the lords
of the earth come last, a new ruling caste. Here and there there arises
from them a perfectly Epicurean God, a Superman, a transfigurer of
existence.

The Superhuman’s notion of the world. Dionysus. Returning from these
most strange of all pursuits Zarathustra comes back with love to the
narrowest and smallest things,—he blesses all his experiences and dies
with a blessing on his lips.


82

From people who merely pray we must become people who bless.