Beyond Good andEvil

Nietzsche

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CHAPTER I. PREJUDICES OF PHILOSO-PHERS

1. The Will to Truth, which is to tempt us tomany a hazardous enterprise, the famousTruthfulness of which all philosophers havehitherto spoken with respect, what questionshas this Will to Truth not laid before us! Whatstrange, perplexing, questionable questions! Itis already a long story; yet it seems as if it werehardly commenced. Is it any wonder if we atlast grow distrustful, lose patience, and turnimpatiently away? That this Sphinx teaches usat last to ask questions ourselves? WHO is itreally that puts questions to us here? WHATreally is this "Will to Truth" in us? In fact wemade a long halt at the question as to the originof this Will—until at last we came to an abso-lute standstill before a yet more fundamentalquestion. We inquired about the VALUE of thisWill. Granted that we want the truth: WHY

NOT RATHER untruth? And uncertainty?Even ignorance? The problem of the value oftruth presented itself before us—or was it wewho presented ourselves before the problem?Which of us is the Oedipus here? Which theSphinx? It would seem to be a rendezvous ofquestions and notes of interrogation. Andcould it be believed that it at last seems to us asif the problem had never been propoundedbefore, as if we were the first to discern it, get asight of it, and RISK RAISING it? For there isrisk in raising it, perhaps there is no greaterrisk.

2. "HOW COULD anything originate out of itsopposite? For example, truth out of error? orthe Will to Truth out of the will to deception?or the generous deed out of selfishness? or thepure sun-bright vision of the wise man out ofcovetousness? Such genesis is impossible; who-ever dreams of it is a fool, nay, worse than afool; things of the highest value must have a

different origin, an origin of THEIR own—inthis transitory, seductive, illusory, paltry world,in this turmoil of delusion and cupidity, theycannot have their source. But rather in the lapof Being, in the intransitory, in the concealedGod, in the 'Thing-in-itself—THERE must betheir source, and nowhere else!"—This mode ofreasoning discloses the typical prejudice bywhich metaphysicians of all times can be rec-ognized, this mode of valuation is at the back ofall their logical procedure; through this "belief"of theirs, they exert themselves for their"knowledge," for something that is in the endsolemnly christened "the Truth." The funda-mental belief of metaphysicians is THE BELIEFIN ANTITHESES OF VALUES. It never oc-curred even to the wariest of them to doubthere on the very threshold (where doubt, how-ever, was most necessary); though they hadmade a solemn vow, "DE OMNIBUS DUBI-TANDUM." For it may be doubted, firstly,whether antitheses exist at all; and secondly,

whether the popular valuations and antithesesof value upon which metaphysicians have settheir seal, are not perhaps merely superficialestimates, merely provisional perspectives, be-sides being probably made from some corner,perhaps from below—"frog perspectives," as itwere, to borrow an expression current amongpainters. In spite of all the value which maybelong to the true, the positive, and the unsel-fish, it might be possible that a higher and morefundamental value for life generally should beassigned to pretence, to the will to delusion, toselfishness, and cupidity. It might even be pos-sible that WHAT constitutes the value of thosegood and respected things, consists precisely intheir being insidiously related, knotted, andcrocheted to these evil and apparently opposedthings—perhaps even in being essentially iden-tical with them. Perhaps! But who wishes toconcern himself with such dangerous "Per-hapses"! For that investigation one must awaitthe advent of a new order of philosophers, such

as will have other tastes and inclinations, thereverse of those hitherto prevalent—philosophers of the dangerous "Perhaps" inevery sense of the term. And to speak in allseriousness, I see such new philosophers be-ginning to appear.

3. Having kept a sharp eye on philosophers,and having read between their lines longenough, I now say to myself that the greaterpart of conscious thinking must be countedamong the instinctive functions, and it is soeven in the case of philosophical thinking; onehas here to learn anew, as one learned anewabout heredity and "innateness." As little as theact of birth comes into consideration in thewhole process and procedure of heredity, justas little is "being-conscious" OPPOSED to theinstinctive in any decisive sense; the greaterpart of the conscious thinking of a philosopheris secretly influenced by his instincts, andforced into definite channels. And behind all

logic and its seeming sovereignty of movement,there are valuations, or to speak more plainly,physiological demands, for the maintenance ofa definite mode of life For example, that thecertain is worth more than the uncertain, thatillusion is less valuable than "truth" such valua-tions, in spite of their regulative importance forUS, might notwithstanding be only superficialvaluations, special kinds of niaiserie, such asmay be necessary for the maintenance of beingssuch as ourselves. Supposing, in effect, thatman is not just the "measure of things."

4. The falseness of an opinion is not for us anyobjection to it: it is here, perhaps, that our newlanguage sounds most strangely. The questionis, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps spe-cies-rearing, and we are fundamentally inclinedto maintain that the falsest opinions (to whichthe synthetic judgments a priori belong), arethe most indispensable to us, that without a

recognition of logical fictions, without a com-parison of reality with the purely IMAGINEDworld of the absolute and immutable, without aconstant counterfeiting of the world by meansof numbers, man could not live—that the re-nunciation of false opinions would be a renun-ciation of life, a negation of life. TO RECOG-NISE UNTRUTH AS A CONDITION OF LIFE;that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideasof value in a dangerous manner, and a philoso-phy which ventures to do so, has thereby aloneplaced itself beyond good and evil.

5. That which causes philosophers to be re-garded half-distrustfully and half-mockingly, isnot the oft-repeated discovery how innocentthey are—how often and easily they make mis-takes and lose their way, in short, how childishand childlike they are,—but that there is notenough honest dealing with them, whereasthey all raise a loud and virtuous outcry whenthe problem of truthfulness is even hinted at in

the remotest manner. They all pose as thoughtheir real opinions had been discovered andattained through the self-evolving of a cold,pure, divinely indifferent dialectic (in contrastto all sorts of mystics, who, fairer and foolisher,talk of "inspiration"), whereas, in fact, a preju-diced proposition, idea, or "suggestion," whichis generally their heart's desire abstracted andrefined, is defended by them with argumentssought out after the event. They are all advo-cates who do not wish to be regarded as such,generally astute defenders, also, of their preju-dices, which they dub "truths,"—and VERY farfrom having the conscience which bravely ad-mits this to itself, very far from having the goodtaste of the courage which goes so far as to letthis be understood, perhaps to warn friend orfoe, or in cheerful confidence and self-ridicule.The spectacle of the Tartuffery of old Kant,equally stiff and decent, with which he enticesus into the dialectic by-ways that lead (morecorrectly mislead) to his "categorical impera-

tive"—makes us fastidious ones smile, we whofind no small amusement in spying out the sub-tle tricks of old moralists and ethical preachers.Or, still more so, the hocus-pocus in mathe-matical form, by means of which Spinoza has,as it were, clad his philosophy in mail andmask—in fact, the "love of HIS wisdom," totranslate the term fairly and squarely—in orderthereby to strike terror at once into the heart ofthe assailant who should dare to cast a glanceon that invincible maiden, that Pallas Athene:—how much of personal timidity and vulnerabil-ity does this masquerade of a sickly reclusebetray!

6. It has gradually become clear to me whatevery great philosophy up till now has con-sisted of—namely, the confession of its origina-tor, and a species of involuntary and uncon-scious auto-biography; and moreover that themoral (or immoral) purpose in every philoso-phy has constituted the true vital germ out of

which the entire plant has always grown. In-deed, to understand how the abstrusest meta-physical assertions of a philosopher have beenarrived at, it is always well (and wise) to firstask oneself: "What morality do they (or doeshe) aim at?" Accordingly, I do not believe thatan "impulse to knowledge" is the father of phi-losophy; but that another impulse, here aselsewhere, has only made use of knowledge(and mistaken knowledge!) as an instrument.But whoever considers the fundamental im-pulses of man with a view to determining howfar they may have here acted as INSPIRINGGENII (or as demons and cobolds), will findthat they have all practiced philosophy at onetime or another, and that each one of themwould have been only too glad to look uponitself as the ultimate end of existence and thelegitimate LORD over all the other impulses.For every impulse is imperious, and as SUCH,attempts to philosophize. To be sure, in the caseof scholars, in the case of really scientific men,

it may be otherwise—"better," if you will; therethere may really be such a thing as an "impulseto knowledge," some kind of small, independ-ent clock-work, which, when well wound up,works away industriously to that end, WITH-OUT the rest of the scholarly impulses takingany material part therein. The actual "interests"of the scholar, therefore, are generally in quiteanother direction—in the family, perhaps, or inmoney-making, or in politics; it is, in fact, al-most indifferent at what point of research hislittle machine is placed, and whether the hope-ful young worker becomes a good philologist, amushroom specialist, or a chemist; he is notCHARACTERISED by becoming this or that. Inthe philosopher, on the contrary, there is abso-lutely nothing impersonal; and above all, hismorality furnishes a decided and decisive tes-timony as to WHO HE IS,—that is to say, inwhat order the deepest impulses of his naturestand to each other.

7. How malicious philosophers can be! I knowof nothing more stinging than the joke Epicurustook the liberty of making on Plato and the Pla-tonists; he called them Dionysiokolakes. In itsoriginal sense, and on the face of it, the wordsignifies "Flatterers of Dionysius"—consequently, tyrants' accessories and lick-spittles; besides this, however, it is as much asto say, "They are all ACTORS, there is nothinggenuine about them" (for Dionysiokolax was apopular name for an actor). And the latter isreally the malignant reproach that Epicuruscast upon Plato: he was annoyed by the gran-diose manner, the mise en scene style of whichPlato and his scholars were masters—of whichEpicurus was not a master! He, the old school-teacher of Samos, who sat concealed in his littlegarden at Athens, and wrote three hundredbooks, perhaps out of rage and ambitious envyof Plato, who knows! Greece took a hundredyears to find out who the garden-god Epicurusreally was. Did she ever find out?

8. There is a point in every philosophy at whichthe "conviction" of the philosopher appears onthe scene; or, to put it in the words of an an-cient mystery:

Adventavit asinus, Pulcher et fortissimus.

9. You desire to LIVE "according to Nature"?Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words!Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature,boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indiffer-ent, without purpose or consideration, withoutpity or justice, at once fruitful and barren anduncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFER-ENCE as a power—how COULD you live inaccordance with such indifference? To live—isnot that just endeavouring to be otherwise thanthis Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring,being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to bedifferent? And granted that your imperative,"living according to Nature," means actuallythe same as "living according to life"—howcould you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you

make a principle out of what you yourselvesare, and must be? In reality, however, it is quiteotherwise with you: while you pretend to readwith rapture the canon of your law in Nature,you want something quite the contrary, youextraordinary stage-players and self-deluders!In your pride you wish to dictate your moralsand ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and toincorporate them therein; you insist that it shallbe Nature "according to the Stoa," and wouldlike everything to be made after your own im-age, as a vast, eternal glorification and general-ism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth,you have forced yourselves so long, so persis-tently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to seeNature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically, thatyou are no longer able to see it otherwise—andto crown all, some unfathomable supercilious-ness gives you the Bedlamite hope that BE-CAUSE you are able to tyrannize over your-selves—Stoicism is self-tyranny—Nature willalso allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not

the Stoic a PART of Nature?... But this is an oldand everlasting story: what happened in oldtimes with the Stoics still happens today, assoon as ever a philosophy begins to believe initself. It always creates the world in its ownimage; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy isthis tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritualWill to Power, the will to "creation of theworld," the will to the causa prima.

10. The eagerness and subtlety, I should evensay craftiness, with which the problem of "thereal and the apparent world" is dealt with atpresent throughout Europe, furnishes food forthought and attention; and he who hears only a"Will to Truth" in the background, and nothingelse, cannot certainly boast of the sharpest ears.In rare and isolated cases, it may really havehappened that such a Will to Truth—a certainextravagant and adventurous pluck, a meta-physician's ambition of the forlorn hope—hasparticipated therein: that which in the end al-

ways prefers a handful of "certainty" to a wholecartload of beautiful possibilities; there mayeven be puritanical fanatics of conscience, whoprefer to put their last trust in a sure nothing,rather than in an uncertain something. But thatis Nihilism, and the sign of a despairing, mor-tally wearied soul, notwithstanding the coura-geous bearing such a virtue may display. Itseems, however, to be otherwise with strongerand livelier thinkers who are still eager for life.In that they side AGAINST appearance, andspeak superciliously of "perspective," in thatthey rank the credibility of their own bodiesabout as low as the credibility of the ocularevidence that "the earth stands still," and thus,apparently, allowing with complacency theirsecurest possession to escape (for what doesone at present believe in more firmly than inone's body?),—who knows if they are not reallytrying to win back something which was for-merly an even securer possession, something ofthe old domain of the faith of former times,

perhaps the "immortal soul," perhaps "the oldGod," in short, ideas by which they could livebetter, that is to say, more vigorously and morejoyously, than by "modern ideas"? There isDISTRUST of these modern ideas in this modeof looking at things, a disbelief in all that hasbeen constructed yesterday and today; there isperhaps some slight admixture of satiety andscorn, which can no longer endure the BRIC-A-BRAC of ideas of the most varied origin, suchas so-called Positivism at present throws on themarket; a disgust of the more refined taste atthe village-fair motleyness and patchiness of allthese reality-philosophasters, in whom there isnothing either new or true, except this motley-ness. Therein it seems to me that we shouldagree with those skeptical anti-realists andknowledge-microscopists of the present day;their instinct, which repels them from MOD-ERN reality, is unrefuted... what do their retro-grade by-paths concern us! The main thingabout them is NOT that they wish to go "back,"

but that they wish to get AWAY therefrom. Alittle MORE strength, swing, courage, and artis-tic power, and they would be OFF—and notback!

11. It seems to me that there is everywhere anattempt at present to divert attention from theactual influence which Kant exercised on Ger-man philosophy, and especially to ignore pru-dently the value which he set upon himself.Kant was first and foremost proud of his Tableof Categories; with it in his hand he said: "Thisis the most difficult thing that could ever beundertaken on behalf of metaphysics." Let usonly understand this "could be"! He was proudof having DISCOVERED a new faculty in man,the faculty of synthetic judgment a priori.Granting that he deceived himself in this mat-ter; the development and rapid flourishing ofGerman philosophy depended nevertheless onhis pride, and on the eager rivalry of theyounger generation to discover if possible

something—at all events "new faculties"—ofwhich to be still prouder!—But let us reflect fora moment—it is high time to do so. "How aresynthetic judgments a priori POSSIBLE?" Kantasks himself—and what is really his answer?"BY MEANS OF A MEANS (faculty)"—but un-fortunately not in five words, but so circum-stantially, imposingly, and with such display ofGerman profundity and verbal flourishes, thatone altogether loses sight of the comical niais-erie allemande involved in such an answer.People were beside themselves with delightover this new faculty, and the jubilationreached its climax when Kant further discov-ered a moral faculty in man—for at that timeGermans were still moral, not yet dabbling inthe "Politics of hard fact." Then came the hon-eymoon of German philosophy. All the youngtheologians of the Tubingen institution wentimmediately into the groves—all seeking for"faculties." And what did they not find—in thatinnocent, rich, and still youthful period of the

German spirit, to which Romanticism, the mali-cious fairy, piped and sang, when one couldnot yet distinguish between "finding" and "in-venting"! Above all a faculty for the "transcen-dental"; Schelling christened it, intellectual in-tuition, and thereby gratified the most earnestlongings of the naturally pious-inclined Ger-mans. One can do no greater wrong to thewhole of this exuberant and eccentric move-ment (which was really youthfulness, notwith-standing that it disguised itself so boldly, inhoary and senile conceptions), than to take itseriously, or even treat it with moral indigna-tion. Enough, however—the world grew older,and the dream vanished. A time came whenpeople rubbed their foreheads, and they stillrub them today. People had been dreaming,and first and foremost—old Kant. "By means ofa means (faculty)"—he had said, or at leastmeant to say. But, is that—an answer? An ex-planation? Or is it not rather merely a repeti-tion of the question? How does opium induce

sleep? "By means of a means (faculty)," namelythe virtus dormitiva, replies the doctor inMoliere,

Quia est in eo virtus dormitiva, Cujus est natura sensus assoupire.

But such replies belong to the realm of comedy,and it is high time to replace the Kantian ques-tion, "How are synthetic judgments a PRIORIpossible?" by another question, "Why is beliefin such judgments necessary?"—in effect, it ishigh time that we should understand that suchjudgments must be believed to be true, for thesake of the preservation of creatures like our-selves; though they still might naturally be falsejudgments! Or, more plainly spoken, androughly and readily—synthetic judgments apriori should not "be possible" at all; we haveno right to them; in our mouths they are noth-ing but false judgments. Only, of course, thebelief in their truth is necessary, as plausiblebelief and ocular evidence belonging to the

perspective view of life. And finally, to call tomind the enormous influence which "Germanphilosophy"—I hope you understand its rightto inverted commas (goosefeet)?—has exercisedthroughout the whole of Europe, there is nodoubt that a certain VIRTUS DORMITIVA hada share in it; thanks to German philosophy, itwas a delight to the noble idlers, the virtuous,the mystics, the artiste, the three-fourths Chris-tians, and the political obscurantists of all na-tions, to find an antidote to the still overwhelm-ing sensualism which overflowed from the lastcentury into this, in short—"sensus as-soupire."...

12. As regards materialistic atomism, it is one ofthe best-refuted theories that have been ad-vanced, and in Europe there is now perhaps noone in the learned world so unscholarly as toattach serious signification to it, except for con-venient everyday use (as an abbreviation of themeans of expression)—thanks chiefly to the

Pole Boscovich: he and the Pole Copernicushave hitherto been the greatest and most suc-cessful opponents of ocular evidence. For whileCopernicus has persuaded us to believe, con-trary to all the senses, that the earth does NOTstand fast, Boscovich has taught us to abjure thebelief in the last thing that "stood fast" of theearth—the belief in "substance," in "matter," inthe earth-residuum, and particle-atom: it is thegreatest triumph over the senses that has hith-erto been gained on earth. One must, however,go still further, and also declare war, relentlesswar to the knife, against the "atomistic re-quirements" which still lead a dangerous after-life in places where no one suspects them, likethe more celebrated "metaphysical require-ments": one must also above all give the finish-ing stroke to that other and more portentousatomism which Christianity has taught bestand longest, the SOUL-ATOMISM. Let it bepermitted to designate by this expression thebelief which regards the soul as something in-

destructible, eternal, indivisible, as a monad, asan atomon: this belief ought to be expelled fromscience! Between ourselves, it is not at all nec-essary to get rid of "the soul" thereby, and thusrenounce one of the oldest and most veneratedhypotheses—as happens frequently to theclumsiness of naturalists, who can hardly touchon the soul without immediately losing it. Butthe way is open for new acceptations and re-finements of the soul-hypothesis; and such con-ceptions as "mortal soul," and "soul of subjec-tive multiplicity," and "soul as social structureof the instincts and passions," want henceforthto have legitimate rights in science. In that theNEW psychologist is about to put an end to thesuperstitions which have hitherto flourishedwith almost tropical luxuriance around the ideaof the soul, he is really, as it were, thrustinghimself into a new desert and a new distrust—it is possible that the older psychologists had amerrier and more comfortable time of it; even-tually, however, he finds that precisely thereby

he is also condemned to INVENT—and, whoknows? perhaps to DISCOVER the new.

13. Psychologists should bethink themselvesbefore putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an or-ganic being. A living thing seeks above all toDISCHARGE its strength—life itself is WILLTO POWER; self-preservation is only one of theindirect and most frequent RESULTS thereof.In short, here, as everywhere else, let us bewareof SUPERFLUOUS teleological principles!—oneof which is the instinct of self-preservation (weowe it to Spinoza's inconsistency). It is thus, ineffect, that method ordains, which must be es-sentially economy of principles.

14. It is perhaps just dawning on five or sixminds that natural philosophy is only a world-exposition and world-arrangement (accordingto us, if I may say so!) and NOT a world-explanation; but in so far as it is based on beliefin the senses, it is regarded as more, and for a

long time to come must be regarded as more—namely, as an explanation. It has eyes and fin-gers of its own, it has ocular evidence and pal-pableness of its own: this operates fascinat-ingly, persuasively, and CONVINCINGLYupon an age with fundamentally plebeiantastes—in fact, it follows instinctively the canonof truth of eternal popular sensualism. What isclear, what is "explained"? Only that which canbe seen and felt—one must pursue every prob-lem thus far. Obversely, however, the charm ofthe Platonic mode of thought, which was anARISTOCRATIC mode, consisted precisely inRESISTANCE to obvious sense-evidence—perhaps among men who enjoyed evenstronger and more fastidious senses than ourcontemporaries, but who knew how to find ahigher triumph in remaining masters of them:and this by means of pale, cold, grey concep-tional networks which they threw over the mot-ley whirl of the senses—the mob of the senses,as Plato said. In this overcoming of the world,

and interpreting of the world in the manner ofPlato, there was an ENJOYMENT differentfrom that which the physicists of today offerus—and likewise the Darwinists and anti-teleologists among the physiological workers,with their principle of the "smallest possibleeffort," and the greatest possible blunder."Where there is nothing more to see or to grasp,there is also nothing more for men to do"—thatis certainly an imperative different from thePlatonic one, but it may notwithstanding be theright imperative for a hardy, laborious race ofmachinists and bridge-builders of the future,who have nothing but ROUGH work to per-form.

15. To study physiology with a clear con-science, one must insist on the fact that thesense-organs are not phenomena in the sense ofthe idealistic philosophy; as such they certainlycould not be causes! Sensualism, therefore, atleast as regulative hypothesis, if not as heuristic

principle. What? And others say even that theexternal world is the work of our organs? Butthen our body, as a part of this external world,would be the work of our organs! But then ourorgans themselves would be the work of ourorgans! It seems to me that this is a completeREDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM, if the conceptionCAUSA SUI is something fundamentally ab-surd. Consequently, the external world is NOTthe work of our organs—?

16. There are still harmless self-observers whobelieve that there are "immediate certainties";for instance, "I think," or as the superstition ofSchopenhauer puts it, "I will"; as though cogni-tion here got hold of its object purely and sim-ply as "the thing in itself," without any falsifica-tion taking place either on the part of the sub-ject or the object. I would repeat it, however, ahundred times, that "immediate certainty," aswell as "absolute knowledge" and the "thing initself," involve a CONTRADICTIO IN AD-

JECTO; we really ought to free ourselves fromthe misleading significance of words! The peo-ple on their part may think that cognition isknowing all about things, but the philosophermust say to himself: "When I analyze the proc-ess that is expressed in the sentence, 'I think,' Ifind a whole series of daring assertions, theargumentative proof of which would be diffi-cult, perhaps impossible: for instance, that it is Iwho think, that there must necessarily be some-thing that thinks, that thinking is an activityand operation on the part of a being who isthought of as a cause, that there is an 'ego,' andfinally, that it is already determined what is tobe designated by thinking—that I KNOW whatthinking is. For if I had not already decidedwithin myself what it is, by what standardcould I determine whether that which is justhappening is not perhaps 'willing' or 'feeling'?In short, the assertion 'I think,' assumes that ICOMPARE my state at the present momentwith other states of myself which I know, in

order to determine what it is; on account of thisretrospective connection with further 'knowl-edge,' it has, at any rate, no immediate certaintyfor me."—In place of the "immediate certainty"in which the people may believe in the specialcase, the philosopher thus finds a series ofmetaphysical questions presented to him, veri-table conscience questions of the intellect, towit: "Whence did I get the notion of 'thinking'?Why do I believe in cause and effect? Whatgives me the right to speak of an 'ego,' and evenof an 'ego' as cause, and finally of an 'ego' ascause of thought?" He who ventures to answerthese metaphysical questions at once by an ap-peal to a sort of INTUITIVE perception, like theperson who says, "I think, and know that this,at least, is true, actual, and certain"—will en-counter a smile and two notes of interrogationin a philosopher nowadays. "Sir," the philoso-pher will perhaps give him to understand, "it isimprobable that you are not mistaken, but whyshould it be the truth?"

17. With regard to the superstitions of logicians,I shall never tire of emphasizing a small, tersefact, which is unwillingly recognized by thesecredulous minds—namely, that a thoughtcomes when "it" wishes, and not when "I" wish;so that it is a PERVERSION of the facts of thecase to say that the subject "I" is the condition ofthe predicate "think." ONE thinks; but that this"one" is precisely the famous old "ego," is, toput it mildly, only a supposition, an assertion,and assuredly not an "immediate certainty."After all, one has even gone too far with this"one thinks"—even the "one" contains an IN-TERPRETATION of the process, and does notbelong to the process itself. One infers hereaccording to the usual grammatical formula—"To think is an activity; every activity requiresan agency that is active; consequently"... It waspretty much on the same lines that the olderatomism sought, besides the operating "power,"the material particle wherein it resides and outof which it operates—the atom. More rigorous

minds, however, learnt at last to get along wit-hout this "earth-residuum," and perhaps someday we shall accustom ourselves, even from thelogician's point of view, to get along withoutthe little "one" (to which the worthy old "ego"has refined itself).

18. It is certainly not the least charm of a theorythat it is refutable; it is precisely thereby that itattracts the more subtle minds. It seems that thehundred-times-refuted theory of the "free will"owes its persistence to this charm alone; someone is always appearing who feels himselfstrong enough to refute it.

19. Philosophers are accustomed to speak of thewill as though it were the best-known thing inthe world; indeed, Schopenhauer has given usto understand that the will alone is reallyknown to us, absolutely and completelyknown, without deduction or addition. But itagain and again seems to me that in this caseSchopenhauer also only did what philosophers

are in the habit of doing—he seems to haveadopted a POPULAR PREJUDICE and exag-gerated it. Willing seems to me to be above allsomething COMPLICATED, something that isa unity only in name—and it is precisely in aname that popular prejudice lurks, which hasgot the mastery over the inadequate precau-tions of philosophers in all ages. So let us foronce be more cautious, let us be "unphilosophi-cal": let us say that in all willing there is firstly aplurality of sensations, namely, the sensation ofthe condition "AWAY FROM WHICH we go,"the sensation of the condition "TOWARDSWHICH we go," the sensation of this "FROM"and "TOWARDS" itself, and then besides, anaccompanying muscular sensation, which, evenwithout our putting in motion "arms and legs,"commences its action by force of habit, directlywe "will" anything. Therefore, just as sensations(and indeed many kinds of sensations) are to berecognized as ingredients of the will, so, in thesecond place, thinking is also to be recognized;

in every act of the will there is a rulingthought;—and let us not imagine it possible tosever this thought from the "willing," as if thewill would then remain over! In the third place,the will is not only a complex of sensation andthinking, but it is above all an EMOTION, andin fact the emotion of the command. Thatwhich is termed "freedom of the will" is essen-tially the emotion of supremacy in respect tohim who must obey: "I am free, 'he' mustobey"—this consciousness is inherent in everywill; and equally so the straining of the atten-tion, the straight look which fixes itself exclu-sively on one thing, the unconditional judg-ment that "this and nothing else is necessarynow," the inward certainty that obedience willbe rendered—and whatever else pertains to theposition of the commander. A man who WILLScommands something within himself whichrenders obedience, or which he believes ren-ders obedience. But now let us notice what isthe strangest thing about the will,—this affair

so extremely complex, for which the peoplehave only one name. Inasmuch as in the givencircumstances we are at the same time thecommanding AND the obeying parties, and asthe obeying party we know the sensations ofconstraint, impulsion, pressure, resistance, andmotion, which usually commence immediatelyafter the act of will; inasmuch as, on the otherhand, we are accustomed to disregard this du-ality, and to deceive ourselves about it bymeans of the synthetic term "I": a whole seriesof erroneous conclusions, and consequently offalse judgments about the will itself, has be-come attached to the act of willing—to such adegree that he who wills believes firmly thatwilling SUFFICES for action. Since in the major-ity of cases there has only been exercise of willwhen the effect of the command—consequentlyobedience, and therefore action—was to beEXPECTED, the APPEARANCE has translateditself into the sentiment, as if there were a NE-CESSITY OF EFFECT; in a word, he who wills

believes with a fair amount of certainty thatwill and action are somehow one; he ascribesthe success, the carrying out of the willing, tothe will itself, and thereby enjoys an increase ofthe sensation of power which accompanies allsuccess. "Freedom of Will"—that is the expres-sion for the complex state of delight of the per-son exercising volition, who commands and atthe same time identifies himself with the execu-tor of the order—who, as such, enjoys also thetriumph over obstacles, but thinks within him-self that it was really his own will that over-came them. In this way the person exercisingvolition adds the feelings of delight of his suc-cessful executive instruments, the useful "un-derwills" or under-souls—indeed, our body isbut a social structure composed of manysouls—to his feelings of delight as commander.L'EFFET C'EST MOI. what happens here iswhat happens in every well-constructed andhappy commonwealth, namely, that the gov-erning class identifies itself with the successes

of the commonwealth. In all willing it is abso-lutely a question of commanding and obeying,on the basis, as already said, of a social struc-ture composed of many "souls", on which ac-count a philosopher should claim the right toinclude willing-as-such within the sphere ofmorals—regarded as the doctrine of the rela-tions of supremacy under which the phenome-non of "life" manifests itself.

20. That the separate philosophical ideas arenot anything optional or autonomously evolv-ing, but grow up in connection and relationshipwith each other, that, however suddenly andarbitrarily they seem to appear in the history ofthought, they nevertheless belong just as muchto a system as the collective members of thefauna of a Continent—is betrayed in the end bythe circumstance: how unfailingly the mostdiverse philosophers always fill in again a defi-nite fundamental scheme of POSSIBLE phi-losophies. Under an invisible spell, they always

revolve once more in the same orbit, howeverindependent of each other they may feel them-selves with their critical or systematic wills,something within them leads them, somethingimpels them in definite order the one after theother—to wit, the innate methodology and rela-tionship of their ideas. Their thinking is, in fact,far less a discovery than a re-recognizing, aremembering, a return and a home-coming to afar-off, ancient common-household of the soul,out of which those ideas formerly grew: phi-losophizing is so far a kind of atavism of thehighest order. The wonderful family resem-blance of all Indian, Greek, and German phi-losophizing is easily enough explained. In fact,where there is affinity of language, owing tothe common philosophy of grammar—I meanowing to the unconscious domination andguidance of similar grammatical functions—itcannot but be that everything is prepared at theoutset for a similar development and succes-sion of philosophical systems, just as the way

seems barred against certain other possibilitiesof world-interpretation. It is highly probablethat philosophers within the domain of theUral-Altaic languages (where the conception ofthe subject is least developed) look otherwise"into the world," and will be found on paths ofthought different from those of the Indo-Germans and Mussulmans, the spell of certaingrammatical functions is ultimately also thespell of PHYSIOLOGICAL valuations and ra-cial conditions.—So much by way of rejectingLocke's superficiality with regard to the originof ideas.

21. The CAUSA SUI is the best self-contradiction that has yet been conceived, it is asort of logical violation and unnaturalness; butthe extravagant pride of man has managed toentangle itself profoundly and frightfully withthis very folly. The desire for "freedom of will"in the superlative, metaphysical sense, such asstill holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of

the half-educated, the desire to bear the entireand ultimate responsibility for one's actionsoneself, and to absolve God, the world, ances-tors, chance, and society therefrom, involvesnothing less than to be precisely this CAUSASUI, and, with more than Munchausen daring,to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, outof the slough of nothingness. If any one shouldfind out in this manner the crass stupidity ofthe celebrated conception of "free will" and putit out of his head altogether, I beg of him tocarry his "enlightenment" a step further, andalso put out of his head the contrary of thismonstrous conception of "free will": I mean"non-free will," which is tantamount to a mis-use of cause and effect. One should notwrongly MATERIALISE "cause" and "effect," asthe natural philosophers do (and whoever likethem naturalize in thinking at present), accord-ing to the prevailing mechanical doltishnesswhich makes the cause press and push until it"effects" its end; one should use "cause" and

"effect" only as pure CONCEPTIONS, that is tosay, as conventional fictions for the purpose ofdesignation and mutual understanding,—NOTfor explanation. In "being-in-itself" there isnothing of "casual-connection," of "necessity,"or of "psychological non-freedom"; there theeffect does NOT follow the cause, there "law"does not obtain. It is WE alone who have de-vised cause, sequence, reciprocity, relativity,constraint, number, law, freedom, motive, andpurpose; and when we interpret and intermixthis symbol-world, as "being-in-itself," withthings, we act once more as we have alwaysacted—MYTHOLOGICALLY. The "non-freewill" is mythology; in real life it is only a ques-tion of STRONG and WEAK wills.—It is almostalways a symptom of what is lacking in him-self, when a thinker, in every "causal-connection" and "psychological necessity,"manifests something of compulsion, indigence,obsequiousness, oppression, and non-freedom;it is suspicious to have such feelings—the per-

son betrays himself. And in general, if I haveobserved correctly, the "non-freedom of thewill" is regarded as a problem from two en-tirely opposite standpoints, but always in aprofoundly PERSONAL manner: some will notgive up their "responsibility," their belief inTHEMSELVES, the personal right to THEIRmerits, at any price (the vain races belong tothis class); others on the contrary, do not wishto be answerable for anything, or blamed foranything, and owing to an inward self-contempt, seek to GET OUT OF THE BUSI-NESS, no matter how. The latter, when theywrite books, are in the habit at present of takingthe side of criminals; a sort of socialistic sympa-thy is their favourite disguise. And as a matterof fact, the fatalism of the weak-willed embel-lishes itself surprisingly when it can pose as "lareligion de la souffrance humaine"; that is ITS"good taste."

22. Let me be pardoned, as an old philologistwho cannot desist from the mischief of puttinghis finger on bad modes of interpretation, but"Nature's conformity to law," of which youphysicists talk so proudly, as though—why, itexists only owing to your interpretation andbad "philology." It is no matter of fact, no "text,"but rather just a naively humanitarian adjust-ment and perversion of meaning, with whichyou make abundant concessions to the democ-ratic instincts of the modern soul! "Everywhereequality before the law—Nature is not differentin that respect, nor better than we": a fine in-stance of secret motive, in which the vulgarantagonism to everything privileged and auto-cratic—likewise a second and more refinedatheism—is once more disguised. "Ni dieu, nimaitre"—that, also, is what you want; andtherefore "Cheers for natural law!"—is it not so?But, as has been said, that is interpretation, nottext; and somebody might come along, who,with opposite intentions and modes of interpre-

tation, could read out of the same "Nature," andwith regard to the same phenomena, just thetyrannically inconsiderate and relentless en-forcement of the claims of power—an inter-preter who should so place the unexceptional-ness and unconditionalness of all "Will toPower" before your eyes, that almost everyword, and the word "tyranny" itself, wouldeventually seem unsuitable, or like a weaken-ing and softening metaphor—as being too hu-man; and who should, nevertheless, end byasserting the same about this world as you do,namely, that it has a "necessary" and "calcula-ble" course, NOT, however, because laws ob-tain in it, but because they are absolutelyLACKING, and every power effects its ultimateconsequences every moment. Granted that thisalso is only interpretation—and you will beeager enough to make this objection?—well, somuch the better.

23. All psychology hitherto has run aground onmoral prejudices and timidities, it has notdared to launch out into the depths. In so far asit is allowable to recognize in that which hashitherto been written, evidence of that whichhas hitherto been kept silent, it seems as if no-body had yet harboured the notion of psychol-ogy as the Morphology and DEVELOPMENT-DOCTRINE OF THE WILL TO POWER, as Iconceive of it. The power of moral prejudiceshas penetrated deeply into the most intellectualworld, the world apparently most indifferentand unprejudiced, and has obviously operatedin an injurious, obstructive, blinding, and dis-torting manner. A proper physio-psychologyhas to contend with unconscious antagonism inthe heart of the investigator, it has "the heart"against it even a doctrine of the reciprocal con-ditionalness of the "good" and the "bad" im-pulses, causes (as refined immorality) distressand aversion in a still strong and manly con-science—still more so, a doctrine of the deriva-

tion of all good impulses from bad ones. If,however, a person should regard even the emo-tions of hatred, envy, covetousness, and im-periousness as life-conditioning emotions, asfactors which must be present, fundamentallyand essentially, in the general economy of life(which must, therefore, be further developed iflife is to be further developed), he will sufferfrom such a view of things as from sea-sickness. And yet this hypothesis is far frombeing the strangest and most painful in thisimmense and almost new domain of dangerousknowledge, and there are in fact a hundredgood reasons why every one should keep awayfrom it who CAN do so! On the other hand, ifone has once drifted hither with one's bark,well! very good! now let us set our teeth firmly!let us open our eyes and keep our hand fast onthe helm! We sail away right OVER morality,we crush out, we destroy perhaps the remainsof our own morality by daring to make ourvoyage thither—but what do WE matter. Never

yet did a PROFOUNDER world of insight re-veal itself to daring travelers and adventurers,and the psychologist who thus "makes a sacri-fice"—it is not the sacrifizio dell' intelletto, onthe contrary!—will at least be entitled to de-mand in return that psychology shall oncemore be recognized as the queen of the sci-ences, for whose service and equipment theother sciences exist. For psychology is oncemore the path to the fundamental problems.

CHAPTER II. THE FREE SPIRIT

24. O sancta simplicitiatas! In what strangesimplification and falsification man lives! Onecan never cease wondering when once one hasgot eyes for beholding this marvel! How wehave made everything around us clear and free

and easy and simple! how we have been able togive our senses a passport to everything super-ficial, our thoughts a godlike desire for wantonpranks and wrong inferences!—how from thebeginning, we have contrived to retain our ig-norance in order to enjoy an almost inconceiv-able freedom, thoughtlessness, imprudence,heartiness, and gaiety—in order to enjoy life!And only on this solidified, granite-like foun-dation of ignorance could knowledge rear itselfhitherto, the will to knowledge on the founda-tion of a far more powerful will, the will to ig-norance, to the uncertain, to the untrue! Not asits opposite, but—as its refinement! It is to behoped, indeed, that LANGUAGE, here as else-where, will not get over its awkwardness, andthat it will continue to talk of opposites wherethere are only degrees and many refinements ofgradation; it is equally to be hoped that theincarnated Tartuffery of morals, which nowbelongs to our unconquerable "flesh andblood," will turn the words round in the

mouths of us discerning ones. Here and therewe understand it, and laugh at the way inwhich precisely the best knowledge seeks mostto retain us in this SIMPLIFIED, thoroughlyartificial, suitably imagined, and suitably falsi-fied world: at the way in which, whether it willor not, it loves error, because, as living itself, itloves life!

25. After such a cheerful commencement, a se-rious word would fain be heard; it appeals tothe most serious minds. Take care, ye philoso-phers and friends of knowledge, and beware ofmartyrdom! Of suffering "for the truth's sake"!even in your own defense! It spoils all the inno-cence and fine neutrality of your conscience; itmakes you headstrong against objections andred rags; it stupefies, animalizes, and brutal-izes, when in the struggle with danger, slander,suspicion, expulsion, and even worse conse-quences of enmity, ye have at last to play yourlast card as protectors of truth upon earth—as

though "the Truth" were such an innocent andincompetent creature as to require protectors!and you of all people, ye knights of the sorrow-ful countenance, Messrs Loafers and Cobweb-spinners of the spirit! Finally, ye know suffi-ciently well that it cannot be of any conse-quence if YE just carry your point; ye know thathitherto no philosopher has carried his point,and that there might be a more laudable truth-fulness in every little interrogative mark whichyou place after your special words and favour-ite doctrines (and occasionally after yourselves)than in all the solemn pantomime and trump-ing games before accusers and law-courts!Rather go out of the way! Flee into conceal-ment! And have your masks and your ruses,that ye may be mistaken for what you are, orsomewhat feared! And pray, don't forget thegarden, the garden with golden trellis-work!And have people around you who are as a gar-den—or as music on the waters at eventide,when already the day becomes a memory.

Choose the GOOD solitude, the free, wanton,lightsome solitude, which also gives you theright still to remain good in any sense whatso-ever! How poisonous, how crafty, how bad,does every long war make one, which cannotbe waged openly by means of force! How PER-SONAL does a long fear make one, a long wat-ching of enemies, of possible enemies! Thesepariahs of society, these long-pursued, badly-persecuted ones—also the compulsory recluses,the Spinozas or Giordano Brunos—always be-come in the end, even under the most intellec-tual masquerade, and perhaps without beingthemselves aware of it, refined vengeance-seekers and poison-Brewers (just lay bare thefoundation of Spinoza's ethics and theology!),not to speak of the stupidity of moral indigna-tion, which is the unfailing sign in a philoso-pher that the sense of philosophical humourhas left him. The martyrdom of the philoso-pher, his "sacrifice for the sake of truth," forcesinto the light whatever of the agitator and actor

lurks in him; and if one has hitherto contem-plated him only with artistic curiosity, withregard to many a philosopher it is easy to un-derstand the dangerous desire to see him alsoin his deterioration (deteriorated into a "mar-tyr," into a stage-and-tribune-bawler). Only,that it is necessary with such a desire to be clearWHAT spectacle one will see in any case—merely a satyric play, merely an epilogue farce,merely the continued proof that the long, realtragedy IS AT AN END, supposing that everyphilosophy has been a long tragedy in its ori-gin.

26. Every select man strives instinctively for acitadel and a privacy, where he is FREE fromthe crowd, the many, the majority—where hemay forget "men who are the rule," as their ex-ception;—exclusive only of the case in which heis pushed straight to such men by a stillstronger instinct, as a discerner in the great andexceptional sense. Whoever, in intercourse with

men, does not occasionally glisten in all thegreen and grey colours of distress, owing todisgust, satiety, sympathy, gloominess, andsolitariness, is assuredly not a man of elevatedtastes; supposing, however, that he does notvoluntarily take all this burden and disgustupon himself, that he persistently avoids it, andremains, as I said, quietly and proudly hiddenin his citadel, one thing is then certain: he wasnot made, he was not predestined for knowl-edge. For as such, he would one day have tosay to himself: "The devil take my good taste!but 'the rule' is more interesting than the excep-tion—than myself, the exception!" And hewould go DOWN, and above all, he would go"inside." The long and serious study of the AV-ERAGE man—and consequently much dis-guise, self-overcoming, familiarity, and badintercourse (all intercourse is bad intercourseexcept with one's equals):—that constitutes anecessary part of the life-history of every phi-losopher; perhaps the most disagreeable, odi-

ous, and disappointing part. If he is fortunate,however, as a favourite child of knowledgeshould be, he will meet with suitable auxiliarieswho will shorten and lighten his task; I meanso-called cynics, those who simply recognizethe animal, the commonplace and "the rule" inthemselves, and at the same time have so muchspirituality and ticklishness as to make themtalk of themselves and their like BEFOREWITNESSES—sometimes they wallow, even inbooks, as on their own dung-hill. Cynicism isthe only form in which base souls approachwhat is called honesty; and the higher manmust open his ears to all the coarser or finercynicism, and congratulate himself when theclown becomes shameless right before him, orthe scientific satyr speaks out. There are evencases where enchantment mixes with the dis-gust—namely, where by a freak of nature, gen-ius is bound to some such indiscreet billy-goatand ape, as in the case of the Abbe Galiani, theprofoundest, acutest, and perhaps also filthiest

man of his century—he was far profounderthan Voltaire, and consequently also, a gooddeal more silent. It happens more frequently, ashas been hinted, that a scientific head is placedon an ape's body, a fine exceptional under-standing in a base soul, an occurrence by nomeans rare, especially among doctors andmoral physiologists. And whenever anyonespeaks without bitterness, or rather quite inno-cently, of man as a belly with two require-ments, and a head with one; whenever any onesees, seeks, and WANTS to see only hunger,sexual instinct, and vanity as the real and onlymotives of human actions; in short, when anyone speaks "badly"—and not even "ill"—ofman, then ought the lover of knowledge tohearken attentively and diligently; he ought, ingeneral, to have an open ear wherever there istalk without indignation. For the indignantman, and he who perpetually tears and lacer-ates himself with his own teeth (or, in place ofhimself, the world, God, or society), may in-

deed, morally speaking, stand higher than thelaughing and self-satisfied satyr, but in everyother sense he is the more ordinary, more indif-ferent, and less instructive case. And no one issuch a LIAR as the indignant man.

27. It is difficult to be understood, especiallywhen one thinks and lives gangasrotogati[Footnote: Like the river Ganges: presto.]among those only who think and live other-wise—namely, kurmagati [Footnote: Like thetortoise: lento.], or at best "froglike," mandeika-gati [Footnote: Like the frog: staccato.] (I doeverything to be "difficultly understood" my-self!)—and one should be heartily grateful forthe good will to some refinement of interpreta-tion. As regards "the good friends," however,who are always too easy-going, and think thatas friends they have a right to ease, one doeswell at the very first to grant them a play-ground and romping-place for misunderstand-ing—one can thus laugh still; or get rid of them

altogether, these good friends—and laugh thenalso!

28. What is most difficult to render from onelanguage into another is the TEMPO of its style,which has its basis in the character of the race,or to speak more physiologically, in the averageTEMPO of the assimilation of its nutriment.There are honestly meant translations, which,as involuntary vulgarizations, are almost falsi-fications of the original, merely because its live-ly and merry TEMPO (which overleaps andobviates all dangers in word and expression)could not also be rendered. A German is almostincapacitated for PRESTO in his language; con-sequently also, as may be reasonably inferred,for many of the most delightful and daringNUANCES of free, free-spirited thought. Andjust as the buffoon and satyr are foreign to himin body and conscience, so Aristophanes andPetronius are untranslatable for him. Every-thing ponderous, viscous, and pompously

clumsy, all long-winded and wearying speciesof style, are developed in profuse varietyamong Germans—pardon me for stating thefact that even Goethe's prose, in its mixture ofstiffness and elegance, is no exception, as a re-flection of the "good old time" to which it be-longs, and as an expression of German taste ata time when there was still a "German taste,"which was a rococo-taste in moribus et artibus.Lessing is an exception, owing to his histrionicnature, which understood much, and was ver-sed in many things; he who was not the transla-tor of Bayle to no purpose, who took refugewillingly in the shadow of Diderot and Vol-taire, and still more willingly among the Ro-man comedy-writers—Lessing loved also free-spiritism in the TEMPO, and flight out of Ger-many. But how could the German language,even in the prose of Lessing, imitate the TEM-PO of Machiavelli, who in his "Principe" makesus breathe the dry, fine air of Florence, andcannot help presenting the most serious events

in a boisterous allegrissimo, perhaps not with-out a malicious artistic sense of the contrast heventures to present—long, heavy, difficult,dangerous thoughts, and a TEMPO of the gal-lop, and of the best, wantonest humour? Fi-nally, who would venture on a German transla-tion of Petronius, who, more than any greatmusician hitherto, was a master of PRESTO ininvention, ideas, and words? What matter inthe end about the swamps of the sick, evilworld, or of the "ancient world," when like him,one has the feet of a wind, the rush, the breath,the emancipating scorn of a wind, which makeseverything healthy, by making everythingRUN! And with regard to Aristophanes—thattransfiguring, complementary genius, for who-se sake one PARDONS all Hellenism for havingexisted, provided one has understood in its fullprofundity ALL that there requires pardon andtransfiguration; there is nothing that has causedme to meditate more on PLATO'S secrecy andsphinx-like nature, than the happily preserved

petit fait that under the pillow of his death-bedthere was found no "Bible," nor anything Egyp-tian, Pythagorean, or Platonic—but a book ofAristophanes. How could even Plato have en-dured life—a Greek life which he repudiated—without an Aristophanes!

29. It is the business of the very few to be inde-pendent; it is a privilege of the strong. Andwhoever attempts it, even with the best right,but without being OBLIGED to do so, provesthat he is probably not only strong, but alsodaring beyond measure. He enters into a laby-rinth, he multiplies a thousandfold the dangerswhich life in itself already brings with it; notthe least of which is that no one can see howand where he loses his way, becomes isolated,and is torn piecemeal by some minotaur of con-science. Supposing such a one comes to grief, itis so far from the comprehension of men thatthey neither feel it, nor sympathize with it. And

he cannot any longer go back! He cannot evengo back again to the sympathy of men!

30. Our deepest insights must—and should—appear as follies, and under certain circum-stances as crimes, when they come unauthor-izedly to the ears of those who are not disposedand predestined for them. The exoteric and theesoteric, as they were formerly distinguishedby philosophers—among the Indians, as amongthe Greeks, Persians, and Mussulmans, inshort, wherever people believed in gradationsof rank and NOT in equality and equal rights—are not so much in contradistinction to one an-other in respect to the exoteric class, standingwithout, and viewing, estimating, measuring,and judging from the outside, and not from theinside; the more essential distinction is that theclass in question views things from below up-wards—while the esoteric class views thingsFROM ABOVE DOWNWARDS. There areheights of the soul from which tragedy itself no

longer appears to operate tragically; and if allthe woe in the world were taken together, whowould dare to decide whether the sight of itwould NECESSARILY seduce and constrain tosympathy, and thus to a doubling of the woe?...That which serves the higher class of men fornourishment or refreshment, must be almostpoison to an entirely different and lower orderof human beings. The virtues of the commonman would perhaps mean vice and weaknessin a philosopher; it might be possible for ahighly developed man, supposing him to de-generate and go to ruin, to acquire qualitiesthereby alone, for the sake of which he wouldhave to be honoured as a saint in the lowerworld into which he had sunk. There are bookswhich have an inverse value for the soul andthe health according as the inferior soul and thelower vitality, or the higher and more power-ful, make use of them. In the former case theyare dangerous, disturbing, unsettling books, inthe latter case they are herald-calls which

summon the bravest to THEIR bravery. Booksfor the general reader are always ill-smellingbooks, the odour of paltry people clings tothem. Where the populace eat and drink, andeven where they reverence, it is accustomed tostink. One should not go into churches if onewishes to breathe PURE air.

31. In our youthful years we still venerate anddespise without the art of NUANCE, which isthe best gain of life, and we have rightly to dohard penance for having fallen upon men andthings with Yea and Nay. Everything is so ar-ranged that the worst of all tastes, THE TASTEFOR THE UNCONDITIONAL, is cruelly be-fooled and abused, until a man learns to intro-duce a little art into his sentiments, and prefersto try conclusions with the artificial, as do thereal artists of life. The angry and reverent spiritpeculiar to youth appears to allow itself nopeace, until it has suitably falsified men andthings, to be able to vent its passion upon them:

youth in itself even, is something falsifying anddeceptive. Later on, when the young soul, tor-tured by continual disillusions, finally turnssuspiciously against itself—still ardent andsavage even in its suspicion and remorse ofconscience: how it upbraids itself, how impa-tiently it tears itself, how it revenges itself forits long self-blinding, as though it had been avoluntary blindness! In this transition one pun-ishes oneself by distrust of one's sentiments;one tortures one's enthusiasm with doubt, onefeels even the good conscience to be a danger,as if it were the self-concealment and lassitudeof a more refined uprightness; and above all,one espouses upon principle the causeAGAINST "youth."—A decade later, and onecomprehends that all this was also still—youth!

32. Throughout the longest period of humanhistory—one calls it the prehistoric period—thevalue or non-value of an action was inferredfrom its CONSEQUENCES; the action in itself

was not taken into consideration, any morethan its origin; but pretty much as in China atpresent, where the distinction or disgrace of achild redounds to its parents, the retro-operating power of success or failure was whatinduced men to think well or ill of an action.Let us call this period the PRE-MORAL periodof mankind; the imperative, "Know thyself!"was then still unknown.—In the last ten thou-sand years, on the other hand, on certain largeportions of the earth, one has gradually got sofar, that one no longer lets the consequences ofan action, but its origin, decide with regard toits worth: a great achievement as a whole, animportant refinement of vision and of criterion,the unconscious effect of the supremacy of aris-tocratic values and of the belief in "origin," themark of a period which may be designated inthe narrower sense as the MORAL one: the firstattempt at self-knowledge is thereby made.Instead of the consequences, the origin—whatan inversion of perspective! And assuredly an

inversion effected only after long struggle andwavering! To be sure, an ominous new super-stition, a peculiar narrowness of interpretation,attained supremacy precisely thereby: the ori-gin of an action was interpreted in the mostdefinite sense possible, as origin out of an IN-TENTION; people were agreed in the beliefthat the value of an action lay in the value of itsintention. The intention as the sole origin andantecedent history of an action: under the in-fluence of this prejudice moral praise and bla-me have been bestowed, and men have judgedand even philosophized almost up to the pre-sent day.—Is it not possible, however, that thenecessity may now have arisen of again makingup our minds with regard to the reversing andfundamental shifting of values, owing to a newself-consciousness and acuteness in man—is itnot possible that we may be standing on thethreshold of a period which to begin with,would be distinguished negatively as ULTRA-MORAL: nowadays when, at least among us

immoralists, the suspicion arises that the deci-sive value of an action lies precisely in thatwhich is NOT INTENTIONAL, and that all itsintentionalness, all that is seen, sensible, or"sensed" in it, belongs to its surface or skin—which, like every skin, betrays something, butCONCEALS still more? In short, we believethat the intention is only a sign or symptom,which first requires an explanation—a sign,moreover, which has too many interpretations,and consequently hardly any meaning in itselfalone: that morality, in the sense in which it hasbeen understood hitherto, as intention-morality, has been a prejudice, perhaps a pre-matureness or preliminariness, probably some-thing of the same rank as astrology and al-chemy, but in any case something which mustbe surmounted. The surmounting of morality,in a certain sense even the self-mounting ofmorality—let that be the name for the long-secret labour which has been reserved for themost refined, the most upright, and also the

most wicked consciences of today, as the livingtouchstones of the soul.

33. It cannot be helped: the sentiment of sur-render, of sacrifice for one's neighbour, and allself-renunciation-morality, must be mercilesslycalled to account, and brought to judgment; justas the aesthetics of "disinterested contempla-tion," under which the emasculation of art no-wadays seeks insidiously enough to create itselfa good conscience. There is far too much witch-ery and sugar in the sentiments "for others" and"NOT for myself," for one not needing to bedoubly distrustful here, and for one askingpromptly: "Are they not perhaps—DECEPTIONS?"—That they PLEASE—himwho has them, and him who enjoys their fruit,and also the mere spectator—that is still noargument in their FAVOUR, but just calls forcaution. Let us therefore be cautious!

34. At whatever standpoint of philosophy onemay place oneself nowadays, seen from every

position, the ERRONEOUSNESS of the worldin which we think we live is the surest andmost certain thing our eyes can light upon: wefind proof after proof thereof, which would fainallure us into surmises concerning a deceptiveprinciple in the "nature of things." He, how-ever, who makes thinking itself, and conse-quently "the spirit," responsible for the false-ness of the world—an honourable exit, whichevery conscious or unconscious advocatus deiavails himself of—he who regards this world,including space, time, form, and movement, asfalsely DEDUCED, would have at least goodreason in the end to become distrustful also ofall thinking; has it not hitherto been playingupon us the worst of scurvy tricks? and whatguarantee would it give that it would not con-tinue to do what it has always been doing? Inall seriousness, the innocence of thinkers hassomething touching and respect-inspiring in it,which even nowadays permits them to waitupon consciousness with the request that it will

give them HONEST answers: for example,whether it be "real" or not, and why it keeps theouter world so resolutely at a distance, andother questions of the same description. Thebelief in "immediate certainties" is a MORALNAIVETE which does honour to us philoso-phers; but—we have now to cease being"MERELY moral" men! Apart from morality,such belief is a folly which does little honour tous! If in middle-class life an ever-ready distrustis regarded as the sign of a "bad character," andconsequently as an imprudence, here amongus, beyond the middle-class world and its Yeasand Nays, what should prevent our being im-prudent and saying: the philosopher has atlength a RIGHT to "bad character," as the beingwho has hitherto been most befooled onearth—he is now under OBLIGATION to dis-trustfulness, to the wickedest squinting out ofevery abyss of suspicion.—Forgive me the jokeof this gloomy grimace and turn of expression;for I myself have long ago learned to think and

estimate differently with regard to deceivingand being deceived, and I keep at least a coupleof pokes in the ribs ready for the blind ragewith which philosophers struggle against beingdeceived. Why NOT? It is nothing more than amoral prejudice that truth is worth more thansemblance; it is, in fact, the worst proved sup-position in the world. So much must be con-ceded: there could have been no life at all ex-cept upon the basis of perspective estimatesand semblances; and if, with the virtuous en-thusiasm and stupidity of many philosophers,one wished to do away altogether with the"seeming world"—well, granted that YOUcould do that,—at least nothing of your "truth"would thereby remain! Indeed, what is it thatforces us in general to the supposition thatthere is an essential opposition of "true" and"false"? Is it not enough to suppose degrees ofseemingness, and as it were lighter and darkershades and tones of semblance—differentvaleurs, as the painters say? Why might not the

world WHICH CONCERNS US—be a fiction?And to any one who suggested: "But to a fictionbelongs an originator?"—might it not bebluntly replied: WHY? May not this "belong"also belong to the fiction? Is it not at lengthpermitted to be a little ironical towards the sub-ject, just as towards the predicate and object?Might not the philosopher elevate himselfabove faith in grammar? All respect to gover-nesses, but is it not time that philosophy shouldrenounce governess-faith?

35. O Voltaire! O humanity! O idiocy! There issomething ticklish in "the truth," and in theSEARCH for the truth; and if man goes about ittoo humanely—"il ne cherche le vrai que pourfaire le bien"—I wager he finds nothing!

36. Supposing that nothing else is "given" asreal but our world of desires and passions, thatwe cannot sink or rise to any other "reality" butjust that of our impulses—for thinking is only arelation of these impulses to one another:—are

we not permitted to make the attempt and toask the question whether this which is "given"does not SUFFICE, by means of our counter-parts, for the understanding even of the so-called mechanical (or "material") world? I donot mean as an illusion, a "semblance," a "rep-resentation" (in the Berkeleyan and Schopen-hauerian sense), but as possessing the samedegree of reality as our emotions themselves—as a more primitive form of the world of emo-tions, in which everything still lies locked in amighty unity, which afterwards branches offand develops itself in organic processes (natu-rally also, refines and debilitates)—as a kind ofinstinctive life in which all organic functions,including self-regulation, assimilation, nutri-tion, secretion, and change of matter, are stillsynthetically united with one another—as aPRIMARY FORM of life?—In the end, it is notonly permitted to make this attempt, it is com-manded by the conscience of LOGICAL MET-HOD. Not to assume several kinds of causality,

so long as the attempt to get along with a singleone has not been pushed to its furthest extent(to absurdity, if I may be allowed to say so):that is a morality of method which one may notrepudiate nowadays—it follows "from its defi-nition," as mathematicians say. The question isultimately whether we really recognize the willas OPERATING, whether we believe in thecausality of the will; if we do so—and funda-mentally our belief IN THIS is just our belief incausality itself—we MUST make the attempt toposit hypothetically the causality of the will asthe only causality. "Will" can naturally onlyoperate on "will"—and not on "matter" (not on"nerves," for instance): in short, the hypothesismust be hazarded, whether will does not oper-ate on will wherever "effects" are recognized—and whether all mechanical action, inasmuch asa power operates therein, is not just the powerof will, the effect of will. Granted, finally, thatwe succeeded in explaining our entire instinc-tive life as the development and ramification of

one fundamental form of will—namely, theWill to Power, as my thesis puts it; granted thatall organic functions could be traced back tothis Will to Power, and that the solution of theproblem of generation and nutrition—it is oneproblem—could also be found therein: onewould thus have acquired the right to defineALL active force unequivocally as WILL TOPOWER. The world seen from within, theworld defined and designated according to its"intelligible character"—it would simply be"Will to Power," and nothing else.

37. "What? Does not that mean in popular lan-guage: God is disproved, but not the devil?"—On the contrary! On the contrary, my friends!And who the devil also compels you to speakpopularly!

38. As happened finally in all the enlighten-ment of modern times with the French Revolu-tion (that terrible farce, quite superfluous whenjudged close at hand, into which, however, the

noble and visionary spectators of all Europehave interpreted from a distance their own in-dignation and enthusiasm so long and passion-ately, UNTIL THE TEXT HAS DISAPPEAREDUNDER THE INTERPRETATION), so a nobleposterity might once more misunderstand thewhole of the past, and perhaps only therebymake ITS aspect endurable.—Or rather, has notthis already happened? Have not we ourselvesbeen—that "noble posterity"? And, in so far aswe now comprehend this, is it not—therebyalready past?

39. Nobody will very readily regard a doctrineas true merely because it makes people happyor virtuous—excepting, perhaps, the amiable"Idealists," who are enthusiastic about thegood, true, and beautiful, and let all kinds ofmotley, coarse, and good-natured desirabilitiesswim about promiscuously in their pond. Hap-piness and virtue are no arguments. It is will-ingly forgotten, however, even on the part of

thoughtful minds, that to make unhappy and tomake bad are just as little counter-arguments.A thing could be TRUE, although it were in thehighest degree injurious and dangerous; in-deed, the fundamental constitution of existencemight be such that one succumbed by a fullknowledge of it—so that the strength of a mindmight be measured by the amount of "truth" itcould endure—or to speak more plainly, by theextent to which it REQUIRED truth attenuated,veiled, sweetened, damped, and falsified. Butthere is no doubt that for the discovery of cer-tain PORTIONS of truth the wicked and unfor-tunate are more favourably situated and have agreater likelihood of success; not to speak of thewicked who are happy—a species about whommoralists are silent. Perhaps severity and craftare more favourable conditions for the devel-opment of strong, independent spirits and phi-losophers than the gentle, refined, yieldinggood-nature, and habit of taking things easily,which are prized, and rightly prized in a lear-

ned man. Presupposing always, to begin with,that the term "philosopher" be not confined tothe philosopher who writes books, or even in-troduces HIS philosophy into books!—Stendhalfurnishes a last feature of the portrait of thefree-spirited philosopher, which for the sake ofGerman taste I will not omit to underline—forit is OPPOSED to German taste. "Pour etre bonphilosophe," says this last great psychologist, "ilfaut etre sec, clair, sans illusion. Un banquier,qui a fait fortune, a une partie du caractere re-quis pour faire des decouvertes en philosophie,c'est-a-dire pour voir clair dans ce qui est."

40. Everything that is profound loves the mask:the profoundest things have a hatred even offigure and likeness. Should not the CON-TRARY only be the right disguise for the shameof a God to go about in? A question worth ask-ing!—it would be strange if some mystic hasnot already ventured on the same kind of thing.There are proceedings of such a delicate nature

that it is well to overwhelm them with coarse-ness and make them unrecognizable; there areactions of love and of an extravagant magna-nimity after which nothing can be wiser than totake a stick and thrash the witness soundly: onethereby obscures his recollection. Many a one isable to obscure and abuse his own memory, inorder at least to have vengeance on this soleparty in the secret: shame is inventive. They arenot the worst things of which one is most as-hamed: there is not only deceit behind amask—there is so much goodness in craft. Icould imagine that a man with something cos-tly and fragile to conceal, would roll throughlife clumsily and rotundly like an old, green,heavily-hooped wine-cask: the refinement ofhis shame requiring it to be so. A man who hasdepths in his shame meets his destiny and hisdelicate decisions upon paths which few everreach, and with regard to the existence ofwhich his nearest and most intimate friendsmay be ignorant; his mortal danger conceals

itself from their eyes, and equally so his re-gained security. Such a hidden nature, whichinstinctively employs speech for silence andconcealment, and is inexhaustible in evasion ofcommunication, DESIRES and insists that amask of himself shall occupy his place in thehearts and heads of his friends; and supposinghe does not desire it, his eyes will some day beopened to the fact that there is nevertheless amask of him there—and that it is well to be so.Every profound spirit needs a mask; nay, more,around every profound spirit there continuallygrows a mask, owing to the constantly false,that is to say, SUPERFICIAL interpretation ofevery word he utters, every step he takes, everysign of life he manifests.

41. One must subject oneself to one's own teststhat one is destined for independence and com-mand, and do so at the right time. One mustnot avoid one's tests, although they constituteperhaps the most dangerous game one can

play, and are in the end tests made only beforeourselves and before no other judge. Not tocleave to any person, be it even the dearest—every person is a prison and also a recess. Notto cleave to a fatherland, be it even the mostsuffering and necessitous—it is even less diffi-cult to detach one's heart from a victorious fa-therland. Not to cleave to a sympathy, be iteven for higher men, into whose peculiar tor-ture and helplessness chance has given us aninsight. Not to cleave to a science, though ittempt one with the most valuable discoveries,apparently specially reserved for us. Not tocleave to one's own liberation, to the voluptu-ous distance and remoteness of the bird, whichalways flies further aloft in order always to seemore under it—the danger of the flier. Not tocleave to our own virtues, nor become as awhole a victim to any of our specialties, to our"hospitality" for instance, which is the dangerof dangers for highly developed and wealthysouls, who deal prodigally, almost indifferently

with themselves, and push the virtue of liberal-ity so far that it becomes a vice. One must knowhow TO CONSERVE ONESELF—the best testof independence.

42. A new order of philosophers is appearing; Ishall venture to baptize them by a name notwithout danger. As far as I understand them, asfar as they allow themselves to be under-stood—for it is their nature to WISH to remainsomething of a puzzle—these philosophers ofthe future might rightly, perhaps also wrongly,claim to be designated as "tempters." This nameitself is after all only an attempt, or, if it be pre-ferred, a temptation.

43. Will they be new friends of "truth," thesecoming philosophers? Very probably, for allphilosophers hitherto have loved their truths.But assuredly they will not be dogmatists. Itmust be contrary to their pride, and also con-trary to their taste, that their truth should stillbe truth for every one—that which has hitherto

been the secret wish and ultimate purpose of alldogmatic efforts. "My opinion is MY opinion:another person has not easily a right to it"—such a philosopher of the future will say, per-haps. One must renounce the bad taste of wish-ing to agree with many people. "Good" is nolonger good when one's neighbour takes it intohis mouth. And how could there be a "commongood"! The expression contradicts itself; thatwhich can be common is always of small value.In the end things must be as they are and havealways been—the great things remain for thegreat, the abysses for the profound, the delica-cies and thrills for the refined, and, to sum upshortly, everything rare for the rare.

44. Need I say expressly after all this that theywill be free, VERY free spirits, these philoso-phers of the future—as certainly also they willnot be merely free spirits, but something more,higher, greater, and fundamentally different,which does not wish to be misunderstood and

mistaken? But while I say this, I feel under OB-LIGATION almost as much to them as to our-selves (we free spirits who are their heralds andforerunners), to sweep away from ourselvesaltogether a stupid old prejudice and misun-derstanding, which, like a fog, has too longmade the conception of "free spirit" obscure. Inevery country of Europe, and the same in Ame-rica, there is at present something which makesan abuse of this name a very narrow, prepos-sessed, enchained class of spirits, who desirealmost the opposite of what our intentions andinstincts prompt—not to mention that in re-spect to the NEW philosophers who are ap-pearing, they must still more be closed win-dows and bolted doors. Briefly and regrettably,they belong to the LEVELLERS, these wronglynamed "free spirits"—as glib-tongued andscribe-fingered slaves of the democratic tasteand its "modern ideas" all of them men withoutsolitude, without personal solitude, blunt hon-est fellows to whom neither courage nor hon-

ourable conduct ought to be denied, only, theyare not free, and are ludicrously superficial,especially in their innate partiality for seeingthe cause of almost ALL human misery andfailure in the old forms in which society hashitherto existed—a notion which happily in-verts the truth entirely! What they would fainattain with all their strength, is the universal,green-meadow happiness of the herd, togetherwith security, safety, comfort, and alleviation oflife for every one, their two most frequentlychanted songs and doctrines are called "Equal-ity of Rights" and "Sympathy with All Suffer-ers"—and suffering itself is looked upon bythem as something which must be DONEAWAY WITH. We opposite ones, however,who have opened our eye and conscience to thequestion how and where the plant "man" hashitherto grown most vigorously, believe thatthis has always taken place under the oppositeconditions, that for this end the dangerousnessof his situation had to be increased enormously,

his inventive faculty and dissembling power(his "spirit") had to develop into subtlety anddaring under long oppression and compulsion,and his Will to Life had to be increased to theunconditioned Will to Power—we believe thatseverity, violence, slavery, danger in the streetand in the heart, secrecy, stoicism, tempter's artand devilry of every kind,—that everythingwicked, terrible, tyrannical, predatory, and ser-pentine in man, serves as well for the elevationof the human species as its opposite—we donot even say enough when we only say THISMUCH, and in any case we find ourselves here,both with our speech and our silence, at theOTHER extreme of all modern ideology andgregarious desirability, as their antipodes per-haps? What wonder that we "free spirits" arenot exactly the most communicative spirits?that we do not wish to betray in every respectWHAT a spirit can free itself from, and WHE-RE perhaps it will then be driven? And as tothe import of the dangerous formula, "Beyond

Good and Evil," with which we at least avoidconfusion, we ARE something else than "libres-penseurs," "liben pensatori" "free-thinkers," andwhatever these honest advocates of "modernideas" like to call themselves. Having been athome, or at least guests, in many realms of thespirit, having escaped again and again from thegloomy, agreeable nooks in which preferencesand prejudices, youth, origin, the accident ofmen and books, or even the weariness of travelseemed to confine us, full of malice against theseductions of dependency which he concealedin honours, money, positions, or exaltation ofthe senses, grateful even for distress and thevicissitudes of illness, because they always freeus from some rule, and its "prejudice," gratefulto the God, devil, sheep, and worm in us, in-quisitive to a fault, investigators to the point ofcruelty, with unhesitating fingers for the intan-gible, with teeth and stomachs for the mostindigestible, ready for any business that re-quires sagacity and acute senses, ready for

every adventure, owing to an excess of "freewill", with anterior and posterior souls, into theultimate intentions of which it is difficult topry, with foregrounds and backgrounds to theend of which no foot may run, hidden onesunder the mantles of light, appropriators, al-though we resemble heirs and spendthrifts,arrangers and collectors from morning tillnight, misers of our wealth and our full-crammed drawers, economical in learning andforgetting, inventive in scheming, sometimesproud of tables of categories, sometimes ped-ants, sometimes night-owls of work even in fullday, yea, if necessary, even scarecrows—and itis necessary nowadays, that is to say, inasmuchas we are the born, sworn, jealous friends ofSOLITUDE, of our own profoundest midnightand midday solitude—such kind of men arewe, we free spirits! And perhaps ye are alsosomething of the same kind, ye coming ones?ye NEW philosophers?

CHAPTER III. THE RELIGIOUS MOOD

45. The human soul and its limits, the range ofman's inner experiences hitherto attained, theheights, depths, and distances of these experi-ences, the entire history of the soul UP TO THEPRESENT TIME, and its still unexhausted pos-sibilities: this is the preordained hunting-domain for a born psychologist and lover of a"big hunt". But how often must he say despair-ingly to himself: "A single individual! alas, onlya single individual! and this great forest, thisvirgin forest!" So he would like to have somehundreds of hunting assistants, and finetrained hounds, that he could send into thehistory of the human soul, to drive HIS gametogether. In vain: again and again he experi-

ences, profoundly and bitterly, how difficult itis to find assistants and dogs for all the thingsthat directly excite his curiosity. The evil ofsending scholars into new and dangerous hunt-ing-domains, where courage, sagacity, and sub-tlety in every sense are required, is that they areno longer serviceable just when the "BIG hunt,"and also the great danger commences,—it isprecisely then that they lose their keen eye andnose. In order, for instance, to divine and de-termine what sort of history the problem ofKNOWLEDGE AND CONSCIENCE has hith-erto had in the souls of homines religiosi, a per-son would perhaps himself have to possess asprofound, as bruised, as immense an experi-ence as the intellectual conscience of Pascal;and then he would still require that wide-spread heaven of clear, wicked spirituality,which, from above, would be able to oversee,arrange, and effectively formulize this mass ofdangerous and painful experiences.—But whocould do me this service! And who would have

time to wait for such servants!—they evidentlyappear too rarely, they are so improbable at alltimes! Eventually one must do everythingONESELF in order to know something; whichmeans that one has MUCH to do!—But a curi-osity like mine is once for all the most agreeableof vices—pardon me! I mean to say that thelove of truth has its reward in heaven, and al-ready upon earth.

46. Faith, such as early Christianity desired,and not infrequently achieved in the midst of askeptical and southernly free-spirited world,which had centuries of struggle between phi-losophical schools behind it and in it, countingbesides the education in tolerance which theImperium Romanum gave—this faith is NOTthat sincere, austere slave-faith by which per-haps a Luther or a Cromwell, or some othernorthern barbarian of the spirit remained at-tached to his God and Christianity, it is muchrather the faith of Pascal, which resembles in a

terrible manner a continuous suicide of rea-son—a tough, long-lived, worm-like reason,which is not to be slain at once and with a sin-gle blow. The Christian faith from the begin-ning, is sacrifice the sacrifice of all freedom, allpride, all self-confidence of spirit, it is at thesame time subjection, self-derision, and self-mutilation. There is cruelty and religious Phoe-nicianism in this faith, which is adapted to atender, many-sided, and very fastidious con-science, it takes for granted that the subjectionof the spirit is indescribably PAINFUL, that allthe past and all the habits of such a spirit resistthe absurdissimum, in the form of which "faith"comes to it. Modern men, with their obtusenessas regards all Christian nomenclature, have nolonger the sense for the terribly superlativeconception which was implied to an antiquetaste by the paradox of the formula, "God onthe Cross". Hitherto there had never and no-where been such boldness in inversion, noranything at once so dreadful, questioning, and

questionable as this formula: it promised atransvaluation of all ancient values—It was theOrient, the PROFOUND Orient, it was the Ori-ental slave who thus took revenge on Romeand its noble, light-minded toleration, on theRoman "Catholicism" of non-faith, and it wasalways not the faith, but the freedom from thefaith, the half-stoical and smiling indifferenceto the seriousness of the faith, which made theslaves indignant at their masters and revoltagainst them. "Enlightenment" causes revolt,for the slave desires the unconditioned, he un-derstands nothing but the tyrannous, even inmorals, he loves as he hates, without NU-ANCE, to the very depths, to the point of pain,to the point of sickness—his many HIDDENsufferings make him revolt against the nobletaste which seems to DENY suffering. Theskepticism with regard to suffering, fundamen-tally only an attitude of aristocratic morality,was not the least of the causes, also, of the last

great slave-insurrection which began with theFrench Revolution.

47. Wherever the religious neurosis has ap-peared on the earth so far, we find it connectedwith three dangerous prescriptions as to regi-men: solitude, fasting, and sexual abstinence—but without its being possible to determinewith certainty which is cause and which is ef-fect, or IF any relation at all of cause and effectexists there. This latter doubt is justified by thefact that one of the most regular symptomsamong savage as well as among civilized peo-ples is the most sudden and excessive sensual-ity, which then with equal suddenness trans-forms into penitential paroxysms, world-renunciation, and will-renunciation, bothsymptoms perhaps explainable as disguisedepilepsy? But nowhere is it MORE obligatory toput aside explanations around no other typehas there grown such a mass of absurdity andsuperstition, no other type seems to have been

more interesting to men and even to philoso-phers—perhaps it is time to become just a littleindifferent here, to learn caution, or, better still,to look AWAY, TO GO AWAY—Yet in thebackground of the most recent philosophy, thatof Schopenhauer, we find almost as the prob-lem in itself, this terrible note of interrogationof the religious crisis and awakening. How isthe negation of will POSSIBLE? how is the saintpossible?—that seems to have been the veryquestion with which Schopenhauer made astart and became a philosopher. And thus itwas a genuine Schopenhauerian consequence,that his most convinced adherent (perhaps alsohis last, as far as Germany is concerned), name-ly, Richard Wagner, should bring his own life-work to an end just here, and should finally putthat terrible and eternal type upon the stage asKundry, type vecu, and as it loved and lived, atthe very time that the mad-doctors in almost allEuropean countries had an opportunity to stu-dy the type close at hand, wherever the reli-

gious neurosis—or as I call it, "the religiousmood"—made its latest epidemical outbreakand display as the "Salvation Army"—If it be aquestion, however, as to what has been so ex-tremely interesting to men of all sorts in allages, and even to philosophers, in the wholephenomenon of the saint, it is undoubtedly theappearance of the miraculous therein—namely,the immediate SUCCESSION OF OPPOSITES,of states of the soul regarded as morally anti-thetical: it was believed here to be self-evidentthat a "bad man" was all at once turned into a"saint," a good man. The hitherto existing psy-chology was wrecked at this point, is it not pos-sible it may have happened principally becausepsychology had placed itself under the domin-ion of morals, because it BELIEVED in opposi-tions of moral values, and saw, read, and IN-TERPRETED these oppositions into the textand facts of the case? What? "Miracle" only anerror of interpretation? A lack of philology?

48. It seems that the Latin races are far moredeeply attached to their Catholicism than weNortherners are to Christianity generally, andthat consequently unbelief in Catholic countriesmeans something quite different from what itdoes among Protestants—namely, a sort of re-volt against the spirit of the race, while with usit is rather a return to the spirit (or non-spirit)of the race.

We Northerners undoubtedly derive our originfrom barbarous races, even as regards our tal-ents for religion—we have POOR talents for it.One may make an exception in the case of theCelts, who have theretofore furnished also thebest soil for Christian infection in the North: theChristian ideal blossomed forth in France asmuch as ever the pale sun of the north wouldallow it. How strangely pious for our taste arestill these later French skeptics, whenever thereis any Celtic blood in their origin! How Catho-lic, how un-German does Auguste Comte's

Sociology seem to us, with the Roman logic ofits instincts! How Jesuitical, that amiable andshrewd cicerone of Port Royal, Sainte-Beuve, inspite of all his hostility to Jesuits! And evenErnest Renan: how inaccessible to us Northern-ers does the language of such a Renan appear,in whom every instant the merest touch of reli-gious thrill throws his refined voluptuous andcomfortably couching soul off its balance! Letus repeat after him these fine sentences—andwhat wickedness and haughtiness is immedi-ately aroused by way of answer in our proba-bly less beautiful but harder souls, that is tosay, in our more German souls!—"DISONSDONC HARDIMENT QUE LA RELIGION ESTUN PRODUIT DE L'HOMME NORMAL, QUEL'HOMME EST LE PLUS DANS LE VRAIQUANT IL EST LE PLUS RELIGIEUX ET LEPLUS ASSURE D'UNE DESTINEE INFINIE....C'EST QUAND IL EST BON QU'IL VEUT QUELA VIRTU CORRESPONDE A UN ORDERETERNAL, C'EST QUAND IL CONTEMPLE

LES CHOSES D'UNE MANIERE DESINTE-RESSEE QU'IL TROUVE LA MORT REVOL-TANTE ET ABSURDE. COMMENT NE PASSUPPOSER QUE C'EST DANS CES MO-MENTS-LA, QUE L'HOMME VOIT LEMIEUX?"... These sentences are so extremelyANTIPODAL to my ears and habits of thought,that in my first impulse of rage on findingthem, I wrote on the margin, "LA NIAISERIERELIGIEUSE PAR EXCELLENCE!"—until inmy later rage I even took a fancy to them, thesesentences with their truth absolutely inverted!It is so nice and such a distinction to have one'sown antipodes!

49. That which is so astonishing in the religiouslife of the ancient Greeks is the irrestrainablestream of GRATITUDE which it pours forth—itis a very superior kind of man who takes SUCHan attitude towards nature and life.—Later on,when the populace got the upper hand in Gree-

ce, FEAR became rampant also in religion; andChristianity was preparing itself.

50. The passion for God: there are churlish,honest-hearted, and importunate kinds of it,like that of Luther—the whole of Protestantismlacks the southern DELICATEZZA. There is anOriental exaltation of the mind in it, like that ofan undeservedly favoured or elevated slave, asin the case of St. Augustine, for instance, wholacks in an offensive manner, all nobility inbearing and desires. There is a feminine ten-derness and sensuality in it, which modestlyand unconsciously longs for a UNIO MYSTICAET PHYSICA, as in the case of Madame de Gu-yon. In many cases it appears, curiouslyenough, as the disguise of a girl's or youth'spuberty; here and there even as the hysteria ofan old maid, also as her last ambition. TheChurch has frequently canonized the woman insuch a case.

51. The mightiest men have hitherto alwaysbowed reverently before the saint, as the enig-ma of self-subjugation and utter voluntary pri-vation—why did they thus bow? They divinedin him—and as it were behind the question-ableness of his frail and wretched appearance—the superior force which wished to test itself bysuch a subjugation; the strength of will, inwhich they recognized their own strength andlove of power, and knew how to honour it: theyhonoured something in themselves when theyhonoured the saint. In addition to this, the con-templation of the saint suggested to them asuspicion: such an enormity of self-negationand anti-naturalness will not have been covetedfor nothing—they have said, inquiringly. Thereis perhaps a reason for it, some very great dan-ger, about which the ascetic might wish to bemore accurately informed through his secretinterlocutors and visitors? In a word, the migh-ty ones of the world learned to have a new fearbefore him, they divined a new power, a stran-

ge, still unconquered enemy:—it was the "Willto Power" which obliged them to halt before thesaint. They had to question him.

52. In the Jewish "Old Testament," the book ofdivine justice, there are men, things, and say-ings on such an immense scale, that Greek andIndian literature has nothing to compare withit. One stands with fear and reverence beforethose stupendous remains of what man wasformerly, and one has sad thoughts about oldAsia and its little out-pushed peninsula Europe,which would like, by all means, to figure beforeAsia as the "Progress of Mankind." To be sure,he who is himself only a slender, tame house-animal, and knows only the wants of a house-animal (like our cultured people of today, in-cluding the Christians of "cultured" Christian-ity), need neither be amazed nor even sad amidthose ruins—the taste for the Old Testament isa touchstone with respect to "great" and"small": perhaps he will find that the New Tes-

tament, the book of grace, still appeals more tohis heart (there is much of the odour of the ge-nuine, tender, stupid beadsman and petty soulin it). To have bound up this New Testament (akind of ROCOCO of taste in every respect)along with the Old Testament into one book, asthe "Bible," as "The Book in Itself," is perhapsthe greatest audacity and "sin against the Spirit"which literary Europe has upon its conscience.

53. Why Atheism nowadays? "The father" inGod is thoroughly refuted; equally so "the jud-ge," "the rewarder." Also his "free will": he doesnot hear—and even if he did, he would notknow how to help. The worst is that he seemsincapable of communicating himself clearly; ishe uncertain?—This is what I have made out(by questioning and listening at a variety ofconversations) to be the cause of the decline ofEuropean theism; it appears to me that thoughthe religious instinct is in vigorous growth,—it

rejects the theistic satisfaction with profounddistrust.

54. What does all modern philosophy mainlydo? Since Descartes—and indeed more in defi-ance of him than on the basis of his proce-dure—an ATTENTAT has been made on thepart of all philosophers on the old conceptionof the soul, under the guise of a criticism of thesubject and predicate conception—that is tosay, an ATTENTAT on the fundamental pre-supposition of Christian doctrine. Modern phi-losophy, as epistemological skepticism, is se-cretly or openly ANTI-CHRISTIAN, although(for keener ears, be it said) by no means anti-religious. Formerly, in effect, one believed in"the soul" as one believed in grammar and thegrammatical subject: one said, "I" is the condi-tion, "think" is the predicate and is condi-tioned—to think is an activity for which oneMUST suppose a subject as cause. The attemptwas then made, with marvelous tenacity and

subtlety, to see if one could not get out of thisnet,—to see if the opposite was not perhapstrue: "think" the condition, and "I" the condi-tioned; "I," therefore, only a synthesis whichhas been MADE by thinking itself. KANTreally wished to prove that, starting from thesubject, the subject could not be proved—northe object either: the possibility of an APPAR-ENT EXISTENCE of the subject, and thereforeof "the soul," may not always have been strangeto him,—the thought which once had an im-mense power on earth as the Vedanta philoso-phy.

55. There is a great ladder of religious cruelty,with many rounds; but three of these are themost important. Once on a time men sacrificedhuman beings to their God, and perhaps justthose they loved the best—to this category be-long the firstling sacrifices of all primitive relig-ions, and also the sacrifice of the Emperor Ti-berius in the Mithra-Grotto on the Island of

Capri, that most terrible of all Roman anachro-nisms. Then, during the moral epoch of man-kind, they sacrificed to their God the strongestinstincts they possessed, their "nature"; THISfestal joy shines in the cruel glances of asceticsand "anti-natural" fanatics. Finally, what stillremained to be sacrificed? Was it not necessaryin the end for men to sacrifice everything com-forting, holy, healing, all hope, all faith in hid-den harmonies, in future blessedness and jus-tice? Was it not necessary to sacrifice God him-self, and out of cruelty to themselves to wor-ship stone, stupidity, gravity, fate, nothingness?To sacrifice God for nothingness—this para-doxical mystery of the ultimate cruelty hasbeen reserved for the rising generation; we allknow something thereof already.

56. Whoever, like myself, prompted by someenigmatical desire, has long endeavoured to goto the bottom of the question of pessimism andfree it from the half-Christian, half-German

narrowness and stupidity in which it has fi-nally presented itself to this century, namely, inthe form of Schopenhauer's philosophy; who-ever, with an Asiatic and super-Asiatic eye, hasactually looked inside, and into the mostworld-renouncing of all possible modes ofthought—beyond good and evil, and no longerlike Buddha and Schopenhauer, under the do-minion and delusion of morality,—whoeverhas done this, has perhaps just thereby, withoutreally desiring it, opened his eyes to behold theopposite ideal: the ideal of the most world-approving, exuberant, and vivacious man, whohas not only learnt to compromise and arrangewith that which was and is, but wishes to haveit again AS IT WAS AND IS, for all eternity,insatiably calling out da capo, not only to him-self, but to the whole piece and play; and notonly the play, but actually to him who requiresthe play—and makes it necessary; because healways requires himself anew—and makes

himself necessary.—What? And this would notbe—circulus vitiosus deus?

57. The distance, and as it were the spacearound man, grows with the strength of hisintellectual vision and insight: his world be-comes profounder; new stars, new enigmas,and notions are ever coming into view. Perhapseverything on which the intellectual eye hasexercised its acuteness and profundity has justbeen an occasion for its exercise, something of agame, something for children and childishminds. Perhaps the most solemn conceptionsthat have caused the most fighting and suffer-ing, the conceptions "God" and "sin," will oneday seem to us of no more importance than achild's plaything or a child's pain seems to anold man;—and perhaps another plaything andanother pain will then be necessary once morefor "the old man"—always childish enough, aneternal child!

58. Has it been observed to what extent out-ward idleness, or semi-idleness, is necessary toa real religious life (alike for its favourite mi-croscopic labour of self-examination, and for itssoft placidity called "prayer," the state of per-petual readiness for the "coming of God"), Imean the idleness with a good conscience, theidleness of olden times and of blood, to whichthe aristocratic sentiment that work is DIS-HONOURING—that it vulgarizes body andsoul—is not quite unfamiliar? And that conse-quently the modern, noisy, time-engrossing,conceited, foolishly proud laboriousness edu-cates and prepares for "unbelief" more thananything else? Among these, for instance, whoare at present living apart from religion in Ger-many, I find "free-thinkers" of diversified spe-cies and origin, but above all a majority of thosein whom laboriousness from generation to gen-eration has dissolved the religious instincts; sothat they no longer know what purpose relig-ions serve, and only note their existence in the

world with a kind of dull astonishment. Theyfeel themselves already fully occupied, thesegood people, be it by their business or by theirpleasures, not to mention the "Fatherland," andthe newspapers, and their "family duties"; itseems that they have no time whatever left forreligion; and above all, it is not obvious to themwhether it is a question of a new business or anew pleasure—for it is impossible, they say tothemselves, that people should go to churchmerely to spoil their tempers. They are by nomeans enemies of religious customs; shouldcertain circumstances, State affairs perhaps,require their participation in such customs,they do what is required, as so many things aredone—with a patient and unassuming serious-ness, and without much curiosity or discom-fort;—they live too much apart and outside tofeel even the necessity for a FOR or AGAINSTin such matters. Among those indifferent per-sons may be reckoned nowadays the majorityof German Protestants of the middle classes,

especially in the great laborious centres of tradeand commerce; also the majority of laboriousscholars, and the entire University personnel(with the exception of the theologians, whoseexistence and possibility there always givespsychologists new and more subtle puzzles tosolve). On the part of pious, or merely church-going people, there is seldom any idea of HOWMUCH good-will, one might say arbitrary will,is now necessary for a German scholar to takethe problem of religion seriously; his wholeprofession (and as I have said, his wholeworkmanlike laboriousness, to which he iscompelled by his modern conscience) inclineshim to a lofty and almost charitable serenity asregards religion, with which is occasionallymingled a slight disdain for the "uncleanliness"of spirit which he takes for granted whereverany one still professes to belong to the Church.It is only with the help of history (NOT throughhis own personal experience, therefore) that thescholar succeeds in bringing himself to a re-

spectful seriousness, and to a certain timid def-erence in presence of religions; but even whenhis sentiments have reached the stage of grati-tude towards them, he has not personally ad-vanced one step nearer to that which still main-tains itself as Church or as piety; perhaps eventhe contrary. The practical indifference to reli-gious matters in the midst of which he has beenborn and brought up, usually sublimates itselfin his case into circumspection and cleanliness,which shuns contact with religious men andthings; and it may be just the depth of his toler-ance and humanity which prompts him toavoid the delicate trouble which tolerance itselfbrings with it.—Every age has its own divinetype of naivete, for the discovery of which ot-her ages may envy it: and how much naivete—adorable, childlike, and boundlessly foolishnaivete is involved in this belief of the scholarin his superiority, in the good conscience of histolerance, in the unsuspecting, simple certaintywith which his instinct treats the religious man

as a lower and less valuable type, beyond, be-fore, and ABOVE which he himself has devel-oped—he, the little arrogant dwarf and mob-man, the sedulously alert, head-and-handdrudge of "ideas," of "modern ideas"!

59. Whoever has seen deeply into the world hasdoubtless divined what wisdom there is in thefact that men are superficial. It is their preserva-tive instinct which teaches them to be flighty,lightsome, and false. Here and there one finds apassionate and exaggerated adoration of "pureforms" in philosophers as well as in artists: it isnot to be doubted that whoever has NEED ofthe cult of the superficial to that extent, has atone time or another made an unlucky dive BE-NEATH it. Perhaps there is even an order ofrank with respect to those burnt children, theborn artists who find the enjoyment of life onlyin trying to FALSIFY its image (as if takingwearisome revenge on it), one might guess towhat degree life has disgusted them, by the

extent to which they wish to see its image falsi-fied, attenuated, ultrified, and deified,—onemight reckon the homines religiosi among theartists, as their HIGHEST rank. It is the pro-found, suspicious fear of an incurable pessi-mism which compels whole centuries to fastentheir teeth into a religious interpretation of exis-tence: the fear of the instinct which divines thattruth might be attained TOO soon, before manhas become strong enough, hard enough, artistenough.... Piety, the "Life in God," regarded inthis light, would appear as the most elaborateand ultimate product of the FEAR of truth, asartist-adoration and artist-intoxication in pres-ence of the most logical of all falsifications, asthe will to the inversion of truth, to untruth atany price. Perhaps there has hitherto been nomore effective means of beautifying man thanpiety, by means of it man can become so artful,so superficial, so iridescent, and so good, thathis appearance no longer offends.

60. To love mankind FOR GOD'S SAKE—thishas so far been the noblest and remotest senti-ment to which mankind has attained. That loveto mankind, without any redeeming intentionin the background, is only an ADDITIONALfolly and brutishness, that the inclination to thislove has first to get its proportion, its delicacy,its gram of salt and sprinkling of ambergrisfrom a higher inclination—whoever first per-ceived and "experienced" this, however histongue may have stammered as it attempted toexpress such a delicate matter, let him for alltime be holy and respected, as the man who hasso far flown highest and gone astray in the fin-est fashion!

61. The philosopher, as WE free spirits under-stand him—as the man of the greatest respon-sibility, who has the conscience for the generaldevelopment of mankind,—will use religion forhis disciplining and educating work, just as hewill use the contemporary political and eco-

nomic conditions. The selecting and disciplin-ing influence—destructive, as well as creativeand fashioning—which can be exercised bymeans of religion is manifold and varied, ac-cording to the sort of people placed under itsspell and protection. For those who are strongand independent, destined and trained tocommand, in whom the judgment and skill of aruling race is incorporated, religion is an addi-tional means for overcoming resistance in theexercise of authority—as a bond which bindsrulers and subjects in common, betraying andsurrendering to the former the conscience ofthe latter, their inmost heart, which would fainescape obedience. And in the case of the uniquenatures of noble origin, if by virtue of superiorspirituality they should incline to a more re-tired and contemplative life, reserving to them-selves only the more refined forms of govern-ment (over chosen disciples or members of anorder), religion itself may be used as a meansfor obtaining peace from the noise and trouble

of managing GROSSER affairs, and for securingimmunity from the UNAVOIDABLE filth of allpolitical agitation. The Brahmins, for instance,understood this fact. With the help of a reli-gious organization, they secured to themselvesthe power of nominating kings for the people,while their sentiments prompted them to keepapart and outside, as men with a higher andsuper-regal mission. At the same time religiongives inducement and opportunity to some ofthe subjects to qualify themselves for futureruling and commanding the slowly ascendingranks and classes, in which, through fortunatemarriage customs, volitional power and delightin self-control are on the increase. To them re-ligion offers sufficient incentives and tempta-tions to aspire to higher intellectuality, and toexperience the sentiments of authoritative self-control, of silence, and of solitude. Asceticismand Puritanism are almost indispensable meansof educating and ennobling a race which seeksto rise above its hereditary baseness and work

itself upwards to future supremacy. And fi-nally, to ordinary men, to the majority of thepeople, who exist for service and general util-ity, and are only so far entitled to exist, religiongives invaluable contentedness with their lotand condition, peace of heart, ennoblement ofobedience, additional social happiness andsympathy, with something of transfigurationand embellishment, something of justificationof all the commonplaceness, all the meanness,all the semi-animal poverty of their souls. Re-ligion, together with the religious significanceof life, sheds sunshine over such perpetuallyharassed men, and makes even their own as-pect endurable to them, it operates upon themas the Epicurean philosophy usually operatesupon sufferers of a higher order, in a refreshingand refining manner, almost TURNING suffer-ing TO ACCOUNT, and in the end even hal-lowing and vindicating it. There is perhapsnothing so admirable in Christianity and Bud-dhism as their art of teaching even the lowest to

elevate themselves by piety to a seeminglyhigher order of things, and thereby to retaintheir satisfaction with the actual world in whichthey find it difficult enough to live—this verydifficulty being necessary.

62. To be sure—to make also the bad counter-reckoning against such religions, and to bringto light their secret dangers—the cost is alwaysexcessive and terrible when religions do NOToperate as an educational and disciplinary me-dium in the hands of the philosopher, but rulevoluntarily and PARAMOUNTLY, when theywish to be the final end, and not a means alongwith other means. Among men, as among allother animals, there is a surplus of defective,diseased, degenerating, infirm, and necessarilysuffering individuals; the successful cases,among men also, are always the exception; andin view of the fact that man is THE ANIMALNOT YET PROPERLY ADAPTED TO HIS EN-VIRONMENT, the rare exception. But worse

still. The higher the type a man represents, thegreater is the improbability that he will SUC-CEED; the accidental, the law of irrationality inthe general constitution of mankind, manifestsitself most terribly in its destructive effect onthe higher orders of men, the conditions ofwhose lives are delicate, diverse, and difficultto determine. What, then, is the attitude of thetwo greatest religions above-mentioned to theSURPLUS of failures in life? They endeavour topreserve and keep alive whatever can be pre-served; in fact, as the religions FOR SUFFER-ERS, they take the part of these upon principle;they are always in favour of those who sufferfrom life as from a disease, and they would faintreat every other experience of life as false andimpossible. However highly we may esteemthis indulgent and preservative care (inasmuchas in applying to others, it has applied, andapplies also to the highest and usually the mostsuffering type of man), the hitherto PARA-MOUNT religions—to give a general apprecia-

tion of them—are among the principal causeswhich have kept the type of "man" upon alower level—they have preserved too muchTHAT WHICH SHOULD HAVE PERISHED.One has to thank them for invaluable services;and who is sufficiently rich in gratitude not tofeel poor at the contemplation of all that the"spiritual men" of Christianity have done forEurope hitherto! But when they had given com-fort to the sufferers, courage to the oppressedand despairing, a staff and support to the help-less, and when they had allured from societyinto convents and spiritual penitentiaries thebroken-hearted and distracted: what else hadthey to do in order to work systematically inthat fashion, and with a good conscience, forthe preservation of all the sick and suffering,which means, in deed and in truth, to work forthe DETERIORATION OF THE EUROPEANRACE? To REVERSE all estimates of value—THAT is what they had to do! And to shatterthe strong, to spoil great hopes, to cast suspi-

cion on the delight in beauty, to break downeverything autonomous, manly, conquering,and imperious—all instincts which are naturalto the highest and most successful type of"man"—into uncertainty, distress of conscience,and self-destruction; forsooth, to invert all loveof the earthly and of supremacy over the earth,into hatred of the earth and earthly things—THAT is the task the Church imposed on itself,and was obliged to impose, until, according toits standard of value, "unworldliness," "unsen-suousness," and "higher man" fused into onesentiment. If one could observe the strangelypainful, equally coarse and refined comedy ofEuropean Christianity with the derisive andimpartial eye of an Epicurean god, I shouldthink one would never cease marvelling andlaughing; does it not actually seem that somesingle will has ruled over Europe for eighteencenturies in order to make a SUBLIME ABOR-TION of man? He, however, who, with oppo-site requirements (no longer Epicurean) and

with some divine hammer in his hand, couldapproach this almost voluntary degenerationand stunting of mankind, as exemplified in theEuropean Christian (Pascal, for instance),would he not have to cry aloud with rage, pity,and horror: "Oh, you bunglers, presumptuouspitiful bunglers, what have you done! Was thata work for your hands? How you have hackedand botched my finest stone! What have youpresumed to do!"—I should say that Christian-ity has hitherto been the most portentous ofpresumptions. Men, not great enough, nor hardenough, to be entitled as artists to take part infashioning MAN; men, not sufficiently strongand far-sighted to ALLOW, with sublime self-constraint, the obvious law of the thousandfoldfailures and perishings to prevail; men, notsufficiently noble to see the radically differentgrades of rank and intervals of rank that sepa-rate man from man:—SUCH men, with their"equality before God," have hitherto swayedthe destiny of Europe; until at last a dwarfed,

almost ludicrous species has been produced, agregarious animal, something obliging, sickly,mediocre, the European of the present day.

CHAPTER IV. APOPHTHEGMS ANDINTERLUDES

63. He who is a thorough teacher takes thingsseriously—and even himself—only in relationto his pupils.

64. "Knowledge for its own sake"—that is thelast snare laid by morality: we are thereby com-pletely entangled in morals once more.

65. The charm of knowledge would be small,were it not so much shame has to be overcomeon the way to it.

65A. We are most dishonourable towards ourGod: he is not PERMITTED to sin.

66. The tendency of a person to allow himself tobe degraded, robbed, deceived, and exploitedmight be the diffidence of a God among men.

67. Love to one only is a barbarity, for it is exer-cised at the expense of all others. Love to Godalso!

68. "I did that," says my memory. "I could nothave done that," says my pride, and remainsinexorable. Eventually—the memory yields.

69. One has regarded life carelessly, if one hasfailed to see the hand that—kills with leniency.

70. If a man has character, he has also his typi-cal experience, which always recurs.

71. THE SAGE AS ASTRONOMER.—So longas thou feelest the stars as an "above thee," thoulackest the eye of the discerning one.

72. It is not the strength, but the duration ofgreat sentiments that makes great men.

73. He who attains his ideal, precisely therebysurpasses it.

73A. Many a peacock hides his tail from everyeye—and calls it his pride.

74. A man of genius is unbearable, unless hepossess at least two things besides: gratitudeand purity.

75. The degree and nature of a man's sensualityextends to the highest altitudes of his spirit.

76. Under peaceful conditions the militant manattacks himself.

77. With his principles a man seeks either todominate, or justify, or honour, or reproach, orconceal his habits: two men with the same prin-ciples probably seek fundamentally differentends therewith.

78. He who despises himself, nevertheless es-teems himself thereby, as a despiser.

79. A soul which knows that it is loved, butdoes not itself love, betrays its sediment: itsdregs come up.

80. A thing that is explained ceases to concernus—What did the God mean who gave the ad-vice, "Know thyself!" Did it perhaps imply"Cease to be concerned about thyself! becomeobjective!"—And Socrates?—And the "scientificman"?

81. It is terrible to die of thirst at sea. Is it neces-sary that you should so salt your truth that itwill no longer—quench thirst?

82. "Sympathy for all"—would be harshnessand tyranny for THEE, my good neighbour.

83. INSTINCT—When the house is on fire oneforgets even the dinner—Yes, but one recoversit from among the ashes.

84. Woman learns how to hate in proportion asshe—forgets how to charm.

85. The same emotions are in man and woman,but in different TEMPO, on that account manand woman never cease to misunderstand eachother.

86. In the background of all their personal van-ity, women themselves have still their imper-sonal scorn—for "woman".

87. FETTERED HEART, FREE SPIRIT—Whenone firmly fetters one's heart and keeps it pris-oner, one can allow one's spirit many liberties: Isaid this once before But people do not believeit when I say so, unless they know it already.

88. One begins to distrust very clever personswhen they become embarrassed.

89. Dreadful experiences raise the questionwhether he who experiences them is not some-thing dreadful also.

90. Heavy, melancholy men turn lighter, andcome temporarily to their surface, precisely bythat which makes others heavy—by hatred andlove.

91. So cold, so icy, that one burns one's finger atthe touch of him! Every hand that lays hold ofhim shrinks back!—And for that very reasonmany think him red-hot.

92. Who has not, at one time or another—sacrificed himself for the sake of his good na-me?

93. In affability there is no hatred of men, butprecisely on that account a great deal too muchcontempt of men.

94. The maturity of man—that means, to havereacquired the seriousness that one had as achild at play.

95. To be ashamed of one's immorality is a stepon the ladder at the end of which one is as-hamed also of one's morality.

96. One should part from life as Ulysses partedfrom Nausicaa—blessing it rather than in lovewith it.

97. What? A great man? I always see merely theplay-actor of his own ideal.

98. When one trains one's conscience, it kissesone while it bites.

99. THE DISAPPOINTED ONE SPEAKS—"Ilistened for the echo and I heard only praise."

100. We all feign to ourselves that we are sim-pler than we are, we thus relax ourselves awayfrom our fellows.

101. A discerning one might easily regard him-self at present as the animalization of God.

102. Discovering reciprocal love should reallydisenchant the lover with regard to the be-loved. "What! She is modest enough to loveeven you? Or stupid enough? Or—or—-"

103. THE DANGER IN HAPPINESS.—"Everything now turns out best for me, I nowlove every fate:—who would like to be my fa-te?"

104. Not their love of humanity, but the impo-tence of their love, prevents the Christians oftoday—burning us.

105. The pia fraus is still more repugnant to thetaste (the "piety") of the free spirit (the "pious

man of knowledge") than the impia fraus. Hen-ce the profound lack of judgment, in compari-son with the Church, characteristic of the type"free spirit"—as ITS non-freedom.

106. By means of music the very passions enjoythemselves.

107. A sign of strong character, when once theresolution has been taken, to shut the ear evento the best counter-arguments. Occasionally,therefore, a will to stupidity.

108. There is no such thing as moral phenom-ena, but only a moral interpretation of phenom-ena.

109. The criminal is often enough not equal tohis deed: he extenuates and maligns it.

110. The advocates of a criminal are seldomartists enough to turn the beautiful terriblenessof the deed to the advantage of the doer.

111. Our vanity is most difficult to wound justwhen our pride has been wounded.

112. To him who feels himself preordained tocontemplation and not to belief, all believersare too noisy and obtrusive; he guards againstthem.

113. "You want to prepossess him in your fa-vour? Then you must be embarrassed beforehim."

114. The immense expectation with regard tosexual love, and the coyness in this expectation,spoils all the perspectives of women at the out-set.

115. Where there is neither love nor hatred inthe game, woman's play is mediocre.

116. The great epochs of our life are at thepoints when we gain courage to rebaptize ourbadness as the best in us.

117. The will to overcome an emotion, is ulti-mately only the will of another, or of severalother, emotions.

118. There is an innocence of admiration: it ispossessed by him to whom it has not yet oc-curred that he himself may be admired someday.119. Our loathing of dirt may be so great as toprevent our cleaning ourselves—"justifying"ourselves.

120. Sensuality often forces the growth of lovetoo much, so that its root remains weak, and iseasily torn up.

121. It is a curious thing that God learned Greekwhen he wished to turn author—and that hedid not learn it better.

122. To rejoice on account of praise is in manycases merely politeness of heart—and the veryopposite of vanity of spirit.

123. Even concubinage has been corrupted—bymarriage.

124. He who exults at the stake, does not tri-umph over pain, but because of the fact that hedoes not feel pain where he expected it. A par-able.

125. When we have to change an opinion aboutany one, we charge heavily to his account theinconvenience he thereby causes us.

126. A nation is a detour of nature to arrive atsix or seven great men.—Yes, and then to getround them.

127. In the eyes of all true women science ishostile to the sense of shame. They feel as if onewished to peep under their skin with it—orworse still! under their dress and finery.

128. The more abstract the truth you wish toteach, the more must you allure the senses to it.

129. The devil has the most extensive perspec-tives for God; on that account he keeps so faraway from him:—the devil, in effect, as theoldest friend of knowledge.

130. What a person IS begins to betray itselfwhen his talent decreases,—when he ceases toshow what he CAN do. Talent is also anadornment; an adornment is also a conceal-ment.

131. The sexes deceive themselves about eachother: the reason is that in reality they honourand love only themselves (or their own ideal, toexpress it more agreeably). Thus man wisheswoman to be peaceable: but in fact woman isESSENTIALLY unpeaceable, like the cat, how-ever well she may have assumed the peaceabledemeanour.

132. One is punished best for one's virtues.

133. He who cannot find the way to HIS ideal,lives more frivolously and shamelessly than theman without an ideal.

134. From the senses originate all trustworthi-ness, all good conscience, all evidence of truth.

135. Pharisaism is not a deterioration of thegood man; a considerable part of it is rather anessential condition of being good.

136. The one seeks an accoucheur for histhoughts, the other seeks some one whom hecan assist: a good conversation thus originates.

137. In intercourse with scholars and artists onereadily makes mistakes of opposite kinds: in aremarkable scholar one not infrequently finds amediocre man; and often, even in a mediocreartist, one finds a very remarkable man.

138. We do the same when awake as whendreaming: we only invent and imagine him

with whom we have intercourse—and forget itimmediately.

139. In revenge and in love woman is morebarbarous than man.

140. ADVICE AS A RIDDLE.—"If the band isnot to break, bite it first—secure to make!"

141. The belly is the reason why man does notso readily take himself for a God.

142. The chastest utterance I ever heard: "Dansle veritable amour c'est l'ame qui enveloppe lecorps."

143. Our vanity would like what we do best topass precisely for what is most difficult to us.—Concerning the origin of many systems of mor-als.

144. When a woman has scholarly inclinationsthere is generally something wrong with hersexual nature. Barrenness itself conduces to a

certain virility of taste; man, indeed, if I maysay so, is "the barren animal."

145. Comparing man and woman generally,one may say that woman would not have thegenius for adornment, if she had not the in-stinct for the SECONDARY role.

146. He who fights with monsters should becareful lest he thereby become a monster. Andif thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss willalso gaze into thee.

147. From old Florentine novels—moreover,from life: Buona femmina e mala femmina vuolbastone.—Sacchetti, Nov. 86.

148. To seduce their neighbour to a favourableopinion, and afterwards to believe implicitly inthis opinion of their neighbour—who can dothis conjuring trick so well as women?

149. That which an age considers evil is usuallyan unseasonable echo of what was formerlyconsidered good—the atavism of an old ideal.

150. Around the hero everything becomes atragedy; around the demigod everything be-comes a satyr-play; and around God everythingbecomes—what? perhaps a "world"?

151. It is not enough to possess a talent: onemust also have your permission to possess it;—eh, my friends?

152. "Where there is the tree of knowledge, the-re is always Paradise": so say the most ancientand the most modern serpents.

153. What is done out of love always takes pla-ce beyond good and evil.

154. Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, andlove of irony are signs of health; everythingabsolute belongs to pathology.

155. The sense of the tragic increases and de-clines with sensuousness.

156. Insanity in individuals is something rare—but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it isthe rule.

157. The thought of suicide is a great consola-tion: by means of it one gets successfullythrough many a bad night.

158. Not only our reason, but also our con-science, truckles to our strongest impulse—thetyrant in us.

159. One MUST repay good and ill; but whyjust to the person who did us good or ill?

160. One no longer loves one's knowledge suf-ficiently after one has communicated it.

161. Poets act shamelessly towards their experi-ences: they exploit them.

162. "Our fellow-creature is not our neighbour,but our neighbour's neighbour":—so thinksevery nation.

163. Love brings to light the noble and hiddenqualities of a lover—his rare and exceptionaltraits: it is thus liable to be deceptive as to hisnormal character.

164. Jesus said to his Jews: "The law was forservants;—love God as I love him, as his Son!What have we Sons of God to do with morals!"

165. IN SIGHT OF EVERY PARTY.—A shep-herd has always need of a bell-wether—or hehas himself to be a wether occasionally.

166. One may indeed lie with the mouth; butwith the accompanying grimace one neverthe-less tells the truth.

167. To vigorous men intimacy is a matter ofshame—and something precious.

168. Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; hedid not die of it, certainly, but degenerated toVice.

169. To talk much about oneself may also be ameans of concealing oneself.

170. In praise there is more obtrusiveness thanin blame.

171. Pity has an almost ludicrous effect on aman of knowledge, like tender hands on a Cy-clops.

172. One occasionally embraces some one orother, out of love to mankind (because one can-not embrace all); but this is what one must ne-ver confess to the individual.

173. One does not hate as long as one dises-teems, but only when one esteems equal or su-perior.

174. Ye Utilitarians—ye, too, love the UTILEonly as a VEHICLE for your inclinations,—ye,too, really find the noise of its wheels insup-portable!

175. One loves ultimately one's desires, not thething desired.

176. The vanity of others is only counter to ourtaste when it is counter to our vanity.

177. With regard to what "truthfulness" is, per-haps nobody has ever been sufficiently truthful.

178. One does not believe in the follies of clevermen: what a forfeiture of the rights of man!

179. The consequences of our actions seize usby the forelock, very indifferent to the fact thatwe have meanwhile "reformed."

180. There is an innocence in lying which is thesign of good faith in a cause.

181. It is inhuman to bless when one is beingcursed.

182. The familiarity of superiors embitters one,because it may not be returned.

183. "I am affected, not because you have de-ceived me, but because I can no longer believein you."

184. There is a haughtiness of kindness whichhas the appearance of wickedness.

185. "I dislike him."—Why?—"I am not a matchfor him."—Did any one ever answer so?

CHAPTER V. THE NATURAL HISTORYOF MORALS

186. The moral sentiment in Europe at presentis perhaps as subtle, belated, diverse, sensitive,and refined, as the "Science of Morals" belong-ing thereto is recent, initial, awkward, andcoarse-fingered:—an interesting contrast, whichsometimes becomes incarnate and obvious inthe very person of a moralist. Indeed, the ex-pression, "Science of Morals" is, in respect towhat is designated thereby, far too presumptu-ous and counter to GOOD taste,—which is al-ways a foretaste of more modest expressions.One ought to avow with the utmost fairnessWHAT is still necessary here for a long time,WHAT is alone proper for the present: namely,the collection of material, the comprehensivesurvey and classification of an immense do-main of delicate sentiments of worth, and dis-tinctions of worth, which live, grow, propagate,

and perish—and perhaps attempts to give aclear idea of the recurring and more commonforms of these living crystallizations—as prepa-ration for a THEORY OF TYPES of morality. Tobe sure, people have not hitherto been so mod-est. All the philosophers, with a pedantic andridiculous seriousness, demanded of them-selves something very much higher, more pre-tentious, and ceremonious, when they con-cerned themselves with morality as a science:they wanted to GIVE A BASIC to morality—and every philosopher hitherto has believedthat he has given it a basis; morality itself,however, has been regarded as something"given." How far from their awkward pridewas the seemingly insignificant problem—leftin dust and decay—of a description of forms ofmorality, notwithstanding that the finest handsand senses could hardly be fine enough for it! Itwas precisely owing to moral philosophers'knowing the moral facts imperfectly, in an arbi-trary epitome, or an accidental abridgement—

perhaps as the morality of their environment,their position, their church, their Zeitgeist, theirclimate and zone—it was precisely becausethey were badly instructed with regard to na-tions, eras, and past ages, and were by nomeans eager to know about these matters, thatthey did not even come in sight of the real pro-blems of morals—problems which only dis-close themselves by a comparison of MANYkinds of morality. In every "Science of Morals"hitherto, strange as it may sound, the problemof morality itself has been OMITTED: there hasbeen no suspicion that there was anythingproblematic there! That which philosopherscalled "giving a basis to morality," and endeav-oured to realize, has, when seen in a right light,proved merely a learned form of good FAITHin prevailing morality, a new means of its EX-PRESSION, consequently just a matter-of-factwithin the sphere of a definite morality, yea, inits ultimate motive, a sort of denial that it isLAWFUL for this morality to be called in ques-

tion—and in any case the reverse of the testing,analyzing, doubting, and vivisecting of thisvery faith. Hear, for instance, with what inno-cence—almost worthy of honour—Schopenhauer represents his own task, anddraw your conclusions concerning the scien-tificness of a "Science" whose latest master stilltalks in the strain of children and old wives:"The principle," he says (page 136 of theGrundprobleme der Ethik), [Footnote: Pages54-55 of Schopenhauer's Basis of Morality,translated by Arthur B. Bullock, M.A. (1903).]"the axiom about the purport of which all mor-alists are PRACTICALLY agreed: neminemlaede, immo omnes quantum potes juva—isREALLY the proposition which all moralteachers strive to establish, ... the REAL basis ofethics which has been sought, like the philoso-pher's stone, for centuries."—The difficulty ofestablishing the proposition referred to mayindeed be great—it is well known thatSchopenhauer also was unsuccessful in his ef-

forts; and whoever has thoroughly realizedhow absurdly false and sentimental this propo-sition is, in a world whose essence is Will toPower, may be reminded that Schopenhauer,although a pessimist, ACTUALLY—played theflute... daily after dinner: one may read aboutthe matter in his biography. A question by theway: a pessimist, a repudiator of God and ofthe world, who MAKES A HALT at morality—who assents to morality, and plays the flute tolaede-neminem morals, what? Is that really—apessimist?

187. Apart from the value of such assertions as"there is a categorical imperative in us," one canalways ask: What does such an assertion indi-cate about him who makes it? There are sys-tems of morals which are meant to justify theirauthor in the eyes of other people; other sys-tems of morals are meant to tranquilize him,and make him self-satisfied; with other systemshe wants to crucify and humble himself, with

others he wishes to take revenge, with others toconceal himself, with others to glorify himselfand gave superiority and distinction,—this sys-tem of morals helps its author to forget, thatsystem makes him, or something of him, for-gotten, many a moralist would like to exercisepower and creative arbitrariness over mankind,many another, perhaps, Kant especially, givesus to understand by his morals that "what isestimable in me, is that I know how to obey—and with you it SHALL not be otherwise thanwith me!" In short, systems of morals are only aSIGN-LANGUAGE OF THE EMOTIONS.

188. In contrast to laisser-aller, every system ofmorals is a sort of tyranny against "nature" andalso against "reason", that is, however, no objec-tion, unless one should again decree by somesystem of morals, that all kinds of tyranny andunreasonableness are unlawful What is essen-tial and invaluable in every system of morals, isthat it is a long constraint. In order to under-

stand Stoicism, or Port Royal, or Puritanism,one should remember the constraint underwhich every language has attained to strengthand freedom—the metrical constraint, the tyr-anny of rhyme and rhythm. How much troublehave the poets and orators of every nationgiven themselves!—not excepting some of theprose writers of today, in whose ear dwells aninexorable conscientiousness—"for the sake of afolly," as utilitarian bunglers say, and therebydeem themselves wise—"from submission toarbitrary laws," as the anarchists say, and the-reby fancy themselves "free," even free-spirited.The singular fact remains, however, that every-thing of the nature of freedom, elegance, bold-ness, dance, and masterly certainty, which ex-ists or has existed, whether it be in thoughtitself, or in administration, or in speaking andpersuading, in art just as in conduct, has onlydeveloped by means of the tyranny of sucharbitrary law, and in all seriousness, it is not atall improbable that precisely this is "nature"

and "natural"—and not laisser-aller! Every art-ist knows how different from the state of lettinghimself go, is his "most natural" condition, thefree arranging, locating, disposing, and con-structing in the moments of "inspiration"—andhow strictly and delicately he then obeys athousand laws, which, by their very rigidnessand precision, defy all formulation by means ofideas (even the most stable idea has, in com-parison therewith, something floating, mani-fold, and ambiguous in it). The essential thing"in heaven and in earth" is, apparently (to re-peat it once more), that there should be longOBEDIENCE in the same direction, therethereby results, and has always resulted in thelong run, something which has made life worthliving; for instance, virtue, art, music, dancing,reason, spirituality—anything whatever that istransfiguring, refined, foolish, or divine. Thelong bondage of the spirit, the distrustful con-straint in the communicability of ideas, the dis-cipline which the thinker imposed on himself to

think in accordance with the rules of a churchor a court, or conformable to Aristotelian prem-ises, the persistent spiritual will to interpreteverything that happened according to a Chris-tian scheme, and in every occurrence to redis-cover and justify the Christian God:—all thisviolence, arbitrariness, severity, dreadfulness,and unreasonableness, has proved itself thedisciplinary means whereby the Europeanspirit has attained its strength, its remorselesscuriosity and subtle mobility; granted also thatmuch irrecoverable strength and spirit had tobe stifled, suffocated, and spoilt in the process(for here, as everywhere, "nature" shows herselfas she is, in all her extravagant and INDIFFER-ENT magnificence, which is shocking, but nev-ertheless noble). That for centuries Europeanthinkers only thought in order to prove some-thing—nowadays, on the contrary, we are sus-picious of every thinker who "wishes to provesomething"—that it was always settled before-hand what WAS TO BE the result of their

strictest thinking, as it was perhaps in the Asi-atic astrology of former times, or as it is still atthe present day in the innocent, Christian-moral explanation of immediate personalevents "for the glory of God," or "for the goodof the soul":—this tyranny, this arbitrariness,this severe and magnificent stupidity, hasEDUCATED the spirit; slavery, both in thecoarser and the finer sense, is apparently anindispensable means even of spiritual educa-tion and discipline. One may look at every sys-tem of morals in this light: it is "nature" thereinwhich teaches to hate the laisser-aller, the toogreat freedom, and implants the need for lim-ited horizons, for immediate duties—it teachesthe NARROWING OF PERSPECTIVES, andthus, in a certain sense, that stupidity is a con-dition of life and development. "Thou mustobey some one, and for a long time; OTHER-WISE thou wilt come to grief, and lose all re-spect for thyself"—this seems to me to be themoral imperative of nature, which is certainly

neither "categorical," as old Kant wished (con-sequently the "otherwise"), nor does it addressitself to the individual (what does nature carefor the individual!), but to nations, races, ages,and ranks; above all, however, to the animal"man" generally, to MANKIND.

189. Industrious races find it a great hardship tobe idle: it was a master stroke of ENGLISH in-stinct to hallow and begloom Sunday to suchan extent that the Englishman unconsciouslyhankers for his week—and work-day again:—as a kind of cleverly devised, cleverly interca-lated FAST, such as is also frequently found inthe ancient world (although, as is appropriatein southern nations, not precisely with respectto work). Many kinds of fasts are necessary;and wherever powerful influences and habitsprevail, legislators have to see that intercalarydays are appointed, on which such impulsesare fettered, and learn to hunger anew. Viewedfrom a higher standpoint, whole generations

and epochs, when they show themselves in-fected with any moral fanaticism, seem likethose intercalated periods of restraint and fast-ing, during which an impulse learns to humbleand submit itself—at the same time also to PU-RIFY and SHARPEN itself; certain philosophi-cal sects likewise admit of a similar interpreta-tion (for instance, the Stoa, in the midst of Hel-lenic culture, with the atmosphere rank andovercharged with Aphrodisiacal odours).—Here also is a hint for the explanation of theparadox, why it was precisely in the mostChristian period of European history, and ingeneral only under the pressure of Christiansentiments, that the sexual impulse sublimatedinto love (amour-passion).

190. There is something in the morality of Platowhich does not really belong to Plato, butwhich only appears in his philosophy, onemight say, in spite of him: namely, Socratism,for which he himself was too noble. "No one

desires to injure himself, hence all evil is doneunwittingly. The evil man inflicts injury onhimself; he would not do so, however, if heknew that evil is evil. The evil man, therefore, isonly evil through error; if one free him fromerror one will necessarily make him—good."—This mode of reasoning savours of the POPU-LACE, who perceive only the unpleasant con-sequences of evil-doing, and practically judgethat "it is STUPID to do wrong"; while theyaccept "good" as identical with "useful andpleasant," without further thought. As regardsevery system of utilitarianism, one may at onceassume that it has the same origin, and followthe scent: one will seldom err.—Plato did all hecould to interpret something refined and nobleinto the tenets of his teacher, and above all tointerpret himself into them—he, the most dar-ing of all interpreters, who lifted the entire Soc-rates out of the street, as a popular theme andsong, to exhibit him in endless and impossiblemodifications—namely, in all his own disguises

and multiplicities. In jest, and in Homeric lan-guage as well, what is the Platonic Socrates, ifnot—[Greek words inserted here.]

191. The old theological problem of "Faith" and"Knowledge," or more plainly, of instinct andreason—the question whether, in respect to thevaluation of things, instinct deserves more au-thority than rationality, which wants to appre-ciate and act according to motives, according toa "Why," that is to say, in conformity to pur-pose and utility—it is always the old moralproblem that first appeared in the person ofSocrates, and had divided men's minds longbefore Christianity. Socrates himself, following,of course, the taste of his talent—that of a sur-passing dialectician—took first the side of rea-son; and, in fact, what did he do all his life butlaugh at the awkward incapacity of the nobleAthenians, who were men of instinct, like allnoble men, and could never give satisfactoryanswers concerning the motives of their ac-

tions? In the end, however, though silently andsecretly, he laughed also at himself: with hisfiner conscience and introspection, he found inhimself the same difficulty and incapacity. "Butwhy"—he said to himself—"should one on thataccount separate oneself from the instincts! Onemust set them right, and the reason ALSO—one must follow the instincts, but at the sametime persuade the reason to support them withgood arguments." This was the real FALSE-NESS of that great and mysterious ironist; hebrought his conscience up to the point that hewas satisfied with a kind of self-outwitting: infact, he perceived the irrationality in the moraljudgment.—Plato, more innocent in such mat-ters, and without the craftiness of the plebeian,wished to prove to himself, at the expenditureof all his strength—the greatest strength a phi-losopher had ever expended—that reason andinstinct lead spontaneously to one goal, to thegood, to "God"; and since Plato, all theologiansand philosophers have followed the same

path—which means that in matters of morality,instinct (or as Christians call it, "Faith," or as Icall it, "the herd") has hitherto triumphed. Un-less one should make an exception in the caseof Descartes, the father of rationalism (and con-sequently the grandfather of the Revolution),who recognized only the authority of reason:but reason is only a tool, and Descartes wassuperficial.

192. Whoever has followed the history of a sin-gle science, finds in its development a clue tothe understanding of the oldest and commonestprocesses of all "knowledge and cognizance":there, as here, the premature hypotheses, thefictions, the good stupid will to "belief," and thelack of distrust and patience are first devel-oped—our senses learn late, and never learncompletely, to be subtle, reliable, and cautiousorgans of knowledge. Our eyes find it easier ona given occasion to produce a picture alreadyoften produced, than to seize upon the diver-

gence and novelty of an impression: the latterrequires more force, more "morality." It is diffi-cult and painful for the ear to listen to anythingnew; we hear strange music badly. When wehear another language spoken, we involuntar-ily attempt to form the sounds into words withwhich we are more familiar and conversant—itwas thus, for example, that the Germans modi-fied the spoken word ARCUBALISTA intoARMBRUST (cross-bow). Our senses are alsohostile and averse to the new; and generally,even in the "simplest" processes of sensation,the emotions DOMINATE—such as fear, love,hatred, and the passive emotion of indolence.—As little as a reader nowadays reads all the sin-gle words (not to speak of syllables) of a page—he rather takes about five out of every twentywords at random, and "guesses" the probablyappropriate sense to them—just as little do wesee a tree correctly and completely in respect toits leaves, branches, colour, and shape; we findit so much easier to fancy the chance of a tree.

Even in the midst of the most remarkable ex-periences, we still do just the same; we fabricatethe greater part of the experience, and canhardly be made to contemplate any event, EX-CEPT as "inventors" thereof. All this goes toprove that from our fundamental nature andfrom remote ages we have been—ACCUSTOMED TO LYING. Or, to express itmore politely and hypocritically, in short, morepleasantly—one is much more of an artist thanone is aware of.—In an animated conversation,I often see the face of the person with whom Iam speaking so clearly and sharply definedbefore me, according to the thought he ex-presses, or which I believe to be evoked in hismind, that the degree of distinctness far ex-ceeds the STRENGTH of my visual faculty—the delicacy of the play of the muscles and ofthe expression of the eyes MUST therefore beimagined by me. Probably the person put onquite a different expression, or none at all.

193. Quidquid luce fuit, tenebris agit: but alsocontrariwise. What we experience in dreams,provided we experience it often, pertains at lastjust as much to the general belongings of oursoul as anything "actually" experienced; by vir-tue thereof we are richer or poorer, we have arequirement more or less, and finally, in broaddaylight, and even in the brightest moments ofour waking life, we are ruled to some extent bythe nature of our dreams. Supposing that so-meone has often flown in his dreams, and thatat last, as soon as he dreams, he is conscious ofthe power and art of flying as his privilege andhis peculiarly enviable happiness; such a per-son, who believes that on the slightest impulse,he can actualize all sorts of curves and angles,who knows the sensation of a certain divinelevity, an "upwards" without effort or con-straint, a "downwards" without descending orlowering—without TROUBLE!—how could theman with such dream-experiences and dream-habits fail to find "happiness" differently col-

oured and defined, even in his waking hours!How could he fail—to long DIFFERENTLY forhappiness? "Flight," such as is described bypoets, must, when compared with his own "fly-ing," be far too earthly, muscular, violent, fartoo "troublesome" for him.

194. The difference among men does not mani-fest itself only in the difference of their lists ofdesirable things—in their regarding differentgood things as worth striving for, and beingdisagreed as to the greater or less value, theorder of rank, of the commonly recognized de-sirable things:—it manifests itself much more inwhat they regard as actually HAVING andPOSSESSING a desirable thing. As regards awoman, for instance, the control over her bodyand her sexual gratification serves as an amplysufficient sign of ownership and possession tothe more modest man; another with a moresuspicious and ambitious thirst for possession,sees the "questionableness," the mere apparent-

ness of such ownership, and wishes to havefiner tests in order to know especially whetherthe woman not only gives herself to him, butalso gives up for his sake what she has orwould like to have—only THEN does he lookupon her as "possessed." A third, however, hasnot even here got to the limit of his distrust andhis desire for possession: he asks himself whet-her the woman, when she gives up everythingfor him, does not perhaps do so for a phantomof him; he wishes first to be thoroughly, in-deed, profoundly well known; in order to beloved at all he ventures to let himself be foundout. Only then does he feel the beloved onefully in his possession, when she no longer de-ceives herself about him, when she loves himjust as much for the sake of his devilry andconcealed insatiability, as for his goodness,patience, and spirituality. One man would liketo possess a nation, and he finds all the higherarts of Cagliostro and Catalina suitable for hispurpose. Another, with a more refined thirst

for possession, says to himself: "One may notdeceive where one desires to possess"—he isirritated and impatient at the idea that a maskof him should rule in the hearts of the people: "Imust, therefore, MAKE myself known, and firstof all learn to know myself!" Among helpfuland charitable people, one almost always findsthe awkward craftiness which first gets up sui-tably him who has to be helped, as though, forinstance, he should "merit" help, seek justTHEIR help, and would show himself deeplygrateful, attached, and subservient to them forall help. With these conceits, they take controlof the needy as a property, just as in generalthey are charitable and helpful out of a desirefor property. One finds them jealous when theyare crossed or forestalled in their charity. Par-ents involuntarily make something like them-selves out of their children—they call that"education"; no mother doubts at the bottom ofher heart that the child she has borne is therebyher property, no father hesitates about his right

to HIS OWN ideas and notions of worth. In-deed, in former times fathers deemed it right touse their discretion concerning the life or deathof the newly born (as among the ancient Ger-mans). And like the father, so also do the tea-cher, the class, the priest, and the prince still seein every new individual an unobjectionableopportunity for a new possession. The conse-quence is...

195. The Jews—a people "born for slavery," asTacitus and the whole ancient world say ofthem; "the chosen people among the nations,"as they themselves say and believe—the Jewsperformed the miracle of the inversion of va-luations, by means of which life on earth ob-tained a new and dangerous charm for a coupleof millenniums. Their prophets fused into onethe expressions "rich," "godless," "wicked," "vio-lent," "sensual," and for the first time coined theword "world" as a term of reproach. In this in-version of valuations (in which is also included

the use of the word "poor" as synonymous with"saint" and "friend") the significance of the Jew-ish people is to be found; it is with THEM thatthe SLAVE-INSURRECTION IN MORALScommences.

196. It is to be INFERRED that there are count-less dark bodies near the sun—such as we shallnever see. Among ourselves, this is an allegory;and the psychologist of morals reads the wholestar-writing merely as an allegorical and sym-bolic language in which much may be unex-pressed.

197. The beast of prey and the man of prey (forinstance, Caesar Borgia) are fundamentallymisunderstood, "nature" is misunderstood, solong as one seeks a "morbidness" in the consti-tution of these healthiest of all tropical mon-sters and growths, or even an innate "hell" inthem—as almost all moralists have done hith-erto. Does it not seem that there is a hatred ofthe virgin forest and of the tropics among mor-

alists? And that the "tropical man" must be dis-credited at all costs, whether as disease anddeterioration of mankind, or as his own helland self-torture? And why? In favour of the"temperate zones"? In favour of the temperatemen? The "moral"? The mediocre?—This for thechapter: "Morals as Timidity."

198. All the systems of morals which addressthemselves with a view to their "happiness," asit is called—what else are they but suggestionsfor behaviour adapted to the degree of DAN-GER from themselves in which the individualslive; recipes for their passions, their good andbad propensities, insofar as such have the Willto Power and would like to play the master;small and great expediencies and elaborations,permeated with the musty odour of old familymedicines and old-wife wisdom; all of themgrotesque and absurd in their form—becausethey address themselves to "all," because theygeneralize where generalization is not author-

ized; all of them speaking unconditionally, andtaking themselves unconditionally; all of themflavoured not merely with one grain of salt, butrather endurable only, and sometimes evenseductive, when they are over-spiced and beginto smell dangerously, especially of "the otherworld." That is all of little value when esti-mated intellectually, and is far from being "sci-ence," much less "wisdom"; but, repeated oncemore, and three times repeated, it is expedi-ency, expediency, expediency, mixed with stu-pidity, stupidity, stupidity—whether it be theindifference and statuesque coldness towardsthe heated folly of the emotions, which the Sto-ics advised and fostered; or the no-more-laughing and no-more-weeping of Spinoza, thedestruction of the emotions by their analysisand vivisection, which he recommended sonaively; or the lowering of the emotions to aninnocent mean at which they may be satisfied,the Aristotelianism of morals; or even moralityas the enjoyment of the emotions in a voluntary

attenuation and spiritualization by the symbol-ism of art, perhaps as music, or as love of God,and of mankind for God's sake—for in religionthe passions are once more enfranchised, pro-vided that...; or, finally, even the complaisantand wanton surrender to the emotions, as hasbeen taught by Hafis and Goethe, the bold let-ting-go of the reins, the spiritual and corporeallicentia morum in the exceptional cases of wiseold codgers and drunkards, with whom it "nolonger has much danger."—This also for thechapter: "Morals as Timidity."

199. Inasmuch as in all ages, as long as man-kind has existed, there have also been humanherds (family alliances, communities, tribes,peoples, states, churches), and always a greatnumber who obey in proportion to the smallnumber who command—in view, therefore, ofthe fact that obedience has been most practicedand fostered among mankind hitherto, one mayreasonably suppose that, generally speaking,

the need thereof is now innate in every one, asa kind of FORMAL CONSCIENCE which givesthe command "Thou shalt unconditionally dosomething, unconditionally refrain from some-thing", in short, "Thou shalt". This need tries tosatisfy itself and to fill its form with a content,according to its strength, impatience, and ea-gerness, it at once seizes as an omnivorous ap-petite with little selection, and accepts what-ever is shouted into its ear by all sorts of com-manders—parents, teachers, laws, class preju-dices, or public opinion. The extraordinary li-mitation of human development, the hesitation,protractedness, frequent retrogression, andturning thereof, is attributable to the fact thatthe herd-instinct of obedience is transmittedbest, and at the cost of the art of command. Ifone imagine this instinct increasing to its great-est extent, commanders and independent indi-viduals will finally be lacking altogether, orthey will suffer inwardly from a bad con-science, and will have to impose a deception on

themselves in the first place in order to be ableto command just as if they also were only obey-ing. This condition of things actually exists inEurope at present—I call it the moral hypocrisyof the commanding class. They know no otherway of protecting themselves from their badconscience than by playing the role of executorsof older and higher orders (of predecessors, ofthe constitution, of justice, of the law, or of Godhimself), or they even justify themselves bymaxims from the current opinions of the herd,as "first servants of their people," or "instru-ments of the public weal". On the other hand,the gregarious European man nowadays as-sumes an air as if he were the only kind of manthat is allowable, he glorifies his qualities, suchas public spirit, kindness, deference, industry,temperance, modesty, indulgence, sympathy,by virtue of which he is gentle, endurable, anduseful to the herd, as the peculiarly human vir-tues. In cases, however, where it is believedthat the leader and bell-wether cannot be dis-

pensed with, attempt after attempt is madenowadays to replace commanders by the sum-ming together of clever gregarious men all rep-resentative constitutions, for example, are ofthis origin. In spite of all, what a blessing, whata deliverance from a weight becoming unen-durable, is the appearance of an absolute rulerfor these gregarious Europeans—of this fact theeffect of the appearance of Napoleon was thelast great proof the history of the influence ofNapoleon is almost the history of the higherhappiness to which the entire century has at-tained in its worthiest individuals and periods.

200. The man of an age of dissolution whichmixes the races with one another, who has theinheritance of a diversified descent in his bo-dy—that is to say, contrary, and often not onlycontrary, instincts and standards of value,which struggle with one another and are sel-dom at peace—such a man of late culture andbroken lights, will, on an average, be a weak

man. His fundamental desire is that the warwhich is IN HIM should come to an end; hap-piness appears to him in the character of asoothing medicine and mode of thought (forinstance, Epicurean or Christian); it is above allthings the happiness of repose, of undisturbed-ness, of repletion, of final unity—it is the "Sab-bath of Sabbaths," to use the expression of theholy rhetorician, St. Augustine, who was him-self such a man.—Should, however, the contra-riety and conflict in such natures operate as anADDITIONAL incentive and stimulus to life—and if, on the other hand, in addition to theirpowerful and irreconcilable instincts, they havealso inherited and indoctrinated into them aproper mastery and subtlety for carrying on theconflict with themselves (that is to say, the fac-ulty of self-control and self-deception), therethen arise those marvelously incomprehensibleand inexplicable beings, those enigmatical men,predestined for conquering and circumventingothers, the finest examples of which are Alci-

biades and Caesar (with whom I should like toassociate the FIRST of Europeans according tomy taste, the Hohenstaufen, Frederick the Sec-ond), and among artists, perhaps Leonardo daVinci. They appear precisely in the same peri-ods when that weaker type, with its longing forrepose, comes to the front; the two types arecomplementary to each other, and spring fromthe same causes.

201. As long as the utility which determinesmoral estimates is only gregarious utility, aslong as the preservation of the community isonly kept in view, and the immoral is soughtprecisely and exclusively in what seems dan-gerous to the maintenance of the community,there can be no "morality of love to one'sneighbour." Granted even that there is alreadya little constant exercise of consideration, sym-pathy, fairness, gentleness, and mutual assis-tance, granted that even in this condition ofsociety all those instincts are already active

which are latterly distinguished by honourablenames as "virtues," and eventually almost coin-cide with the conception "morality": in that pe-riod they do not as yet belong to the domain ofmoral valuations—they are still ULTRA-MORAL. A sympathetic action, for instance, isneither called good nor bad, moral nor im-moral, in the best period of the Romans; andshould it be praised, a sort of resentful disdainis compatible with this praise, even at the best,directly the sympathetic action is comparedwith one which contributes to the welfare of thewhole, to the RES PUBLICA. After all, "love toour neighbour" is always a secondary matter,partly conventional and arbitrarily manifestedin relation to our FEAR OF OUR NEIGHBOUR.After the fabric of society seems on the wholeestablished and secured against external dan-gers, it is this fear of our neighbour whichagain creates new perspectives of moral valua-tion. Certain strong and dangerous instincts,such as the love of enterprise, foolhardiness,

revengefulness, astuteness, rapacity, and loveof power, which up till then had not only to behonoured from the point of view of generalutility—under other names, of course, thanthose here given—but had to be fostered andcultivated (because they were perpetually re-quired in the common danger against thecommon enemies), are now felt in their dan-gerousness to be doubly strong—when the out-lets for them are lacking—and are graduallybranded as immoral and given over to cal-umny. The contrary instincts and inclinationsnow attain to moral honour, the gregariousinstinct gradually draws its conclusions. Howmuch or how little dangerousness to the com-munity or to equality is contained in an opin-ion, a condition, an emotion, a disposition, oran endowment—that is now the moral perspec-tive, here again fear is the mother of morals. Itis by the loftiest and strongest instincts, whenthey break out passionately and carry the indi-vidual far above and beyond the average, and

the low level of the gregarious conscience, thatthe self-reliance of the community is destroyed,its belief in itself, its backbone, as it were,breaks, consequently these very instincts willbe most branded and defamed. The lofty inde-pendent spirituality, the will to stand alone,and even the cogent reason, are felt to be dan-gers, everything that elevates the individualabove the herd, and is a source of fear to theneighbour, is henceforth called EVIL, the toler-ant, unassuming, self-adapting, self-equalizingdisposition, the MEDIOCRITY of desires, at-tains to moral distinction and honour. Finally,under very peaceful circumstances, there isalways less opportunity and necessity for train-ing the feelings to severity and rigour, and nowevery form of severity, even in justice, begins todisturb the conscience, a lofty and rigorousnobleness and self-responsibility almost of-fends, and awakens distrust, "the lamb," andstill more "the sheep," wins respect. There is apoint of diseased mellowness and effeminacy

in the history of society, at which society itselftakes the part of him who injures it, the part ofthe CRIMINAL, and does so, in fact, seriouslyand honestly. To punish, appears to it to besomehow unfair—it is certain that the idea of"punishment" and "the obligation to punish"are then painful and alarming to people. "Is itnot sufficient if the criminal be renderedHARMLESS? Why should we still punish?Punishment itself is terrible!"—with these ques-tions gregarious morality, the morality of fear,draws its ultimate conclusion. If one could at alldo away with danger, the cause of fear, onewould have done away with this morality atthe same time, it would no longer be necessary,it WOULD NOT CONSIDER ITSELF anylonger necessary!—Whoever examines the con-science of the present-day European, will al-ways elicit the same imperative from its thou-sand moral folds and hidden recesses, the im-perative of the timidity of the herd "we wishthat some time or other there may be NOTH-

ING MORE TO FEAR!" Some time or other—the will and the way THERETO is nowadayscalled "progress" all over Europe.

202. Let us at once say again what we have al-ready said a hundred times, for people's earsnowadays are unwilling to hear such truths—OUR truths. We know well enough how offen-sive it sounds when any one plainly, and with-out metaphor, counts man among the animals,but it will be accounted to us almost a CRIME,that it is precisely in respect to men of "modernideas" that we have constantly applied theterms "herd," "herd-instincts," and such likeexpressions. What avail is it? We cannot dootherwise, for it is precisely here that our newinsight is. We have found that in all the princi-pal moral judgments, Europe has become una-nimous, including likewise the countries whereEuropean influence prevails in Europe peopleevidently KNOW what Socrates thought he didnot know, and what the famous serpent of old

once promised to teach—they "know" todaywhat is good and evil. It must then sound hardand be distasteful to the ear, when we alwaysinsist that that which here thinks it knows, thatwhich here glorifies itself with praise and bla-me, and calls itself good, is the instinct of theherding human animal, the instinct which hascome and is ever coming more and more to thefront, to preponderance and supremacy overother instincts, according to the increasing phy-siological approximation and resemblance ofwhich it is the symptom. MORALITY IN EU-ROPE AT PRESENT IS HERDING-ANIMALMORALITY, and therefore, as we understandthe matter, only one kind of human morality,beside which, before which, and after whichmany other moralities, and above all HIGHERmoralities, are or should be possible. Againstsuch a "possibility," against such a "should be,"however, this morality defends itself with all itsstrength, it says obstinately and inexorably "Iam morality itself and nothing else is morality!"

Indeed, with the help of a religion which hashumoured and flattered the sublimest desiresof the herding-animal, things have reachedsuch a point that we always find a more visibleexpression of this morality even in political andsocial arrangements: the DEMOCRATIC mo-vement is the inheritance of the Christian mo-vement. That its TEMPO, however, is much tooslow and sleepy for the more impatient ones,for those who are sick and distracted by theherding-instinct, is indicated by the increas-ingly furious howling, and always less dis-guised teeth-gnashing of the anarchist dogs,who are now roving through the highways ofEuropean culture. Apparently in opposition tothe peacefully industrious democrats andRevolution-ideologues, and still more so to theawkward philosophasters and fraternity-visionaries who call themselves Socialists andwant a "free society," those are really at onewith them all in their thorough and instinctivehostility to every form of society other than that

of the AUTONOMOUS herd (to the extent evenof repudiating the notions "master" and "ser-vant"—ni dieu ni maitre, says a socialist for-mula); at one in their tenacious opposition toevery special claim, every special right andprivilege (this means ultimately opposition toEVERY right, for when all are equal, no oneneeds "rights" any longer); at one in their dis-trust of punitive justice (as though it were aviolation of the weak, unfair to the NECES-SARY consequences of all former society); butequally at one in their religion of sympathy, intheir compassion for all that feels, lives, andsuffers (down to the very animals, up even to"God"—the extravagance of "sympathy forGod" belongs to a democratic age); altogetherat one in the cry and impatience of their sympa-thy, in their deadly hatred of suffering gener-ally, in their almost feminine incapacity forwitnessing it or ALLOWING it; at one in theirinvoluntary beglooming and heart-softening,under the spell of which Europe seems to be

threatened with a new Buddhism; at one intheir belief in the morality of MUTUAL sympa-thy, as though it were morality in itself, theclimax, the ATTAINED climax of mankind, thesole hope of the future, the consolation of thepresent, the great discharge from all the obliga-tions of the past; altogether at one in their beliefin the community as the DELIVERER, in theherd, and therefore in "themselves."

203. We, who hold a different belief—we, whoregard the democratic movement, not only as adegenerating form of political organization, butas equivalent to a degenerating, a waning typeof man, as involving his mediocrising and de-preciation: where have WE to fix our hopes? InNEW PHILOSOPHERS—there is no other al-ternative: in minds strong and original enoughto initiate opposite estimates of value, to trans-value and invert "eternal valuations"; in fore-runners, in men of the future, who in the pre-sent shall fix the constraints and fasten the

knots which will compel millenniums to takeNEW paths. To teach man the future of human-ity as his WILL, as depending on human will,and to make preparation for vast hazardousenterprises and collective attempts in rearingand educating, in order thereby to put an endto the frightful rule of folly and chance whichhas hitherto gone by the name of "history" (thefolly of the "greatest number" is only its lastform)—for that purpose a new type of philoso-pher and commander will some time or otherbe needed, at the very idea of which everythingthat has existed in the way of occult, terrible,and benevolent beings might look pale anddwarfed. The image of such leaders hovers be-fore OUR eyes:—is it lawful for me to say italoud, ye free spirits? The conditions which onewould partly have to create and partly utilizefor their genesis; the presumptive methods andtests by virtue of which a soul should grow upto such an elevation and power as to feel aCONSTRAINT to these tasks; a transvaluation

of values, under the new pressure and hammerof which a conscience should be steeled and aheart transformed into brass, so as to bear theweight of such responsibility; and on the otherhand the necessity for such leaders, the dread-ful danger that they might be lacking, or mis-carry and degenerate:—these are OUR realanxieties and glooms, ye know it well, ye freespirits! these are the heavy distant thoughtsand storms which sweep across the heaven ofOUR life. There are few pains so grievous as tohave seen, divined, or experienced how an ex-ceptional man has missed his way and deterio-rated; but he who has the rare eye for the uni-versal danger of "man" himself DETERIORAT-ING, he who like us has recognized the ex-traordinary fortuitousness which has hithertoplayed its game in respect to the future of man-kind—a game in which neither the hand, noreven a "finger of God" has participated!—hewho divines the fate that is hidden under theidiotic unwariness and blind confidence of

"modern ideas," and still more under the wholeof Christo-European morality—suffers from ananguish with which no other is to be compared.He sees at a glance all that could still BE MADEOUT OF MAN through a favourable accumula-tion and augmentation of human powers andarrangements; he knows with all the knowl-edge of his conviction how unexhausted manstill is for the greatest possibilities, and howoften in the past the type man has stood inpresence of mysterious decisions and newpaths:—he knows still better from his painful-est recollections on what wretched obstaclespromising developments of the highest rankhave hitherto usually gone to pieces, brokendown, sunk, and become contemptible. TheUNIVERSAL DEGENERACY OF MANKINDto the level of the "man of the future"—as ideal-ized by the socialistic fools and shallow-pates—this degeneracy and dwarfing of man to anabsolutely gregarious animal (or as they call it,to a man of "free society"), this brutalizing of

man into a pigmy with equal rights and claims,is undoubtedly POSSIBLE! He who has thoughtout this possibility to its ultimate conclusionknows ANOTHER loathing unknown to therest of mankind—and perhaps also a new MIS-SION!

CHAPTER VI. WE SCHOLARS

204. At the risk that moralizing may also revealitself here as that which it has always been—namely, resolutely MONTRER SES PLAIES,according to Balzac—I would venture to pro-test against an improper and injurious altera-tion of rank, which quite unnoticed, and as ifwith the best conscience, threatens nowadays toestablish itself in the relations of science andphilosophy. I mean to say that one must have

the right out of one's own EXPERIENCE—experience, as it seems to me, always impliesunfortunate experience?—to treat of such animportant question of rank, so as not to speakof colour like the blind, or AGAINST sciencelike women and artists ("Ah! this dreadful sci-ence!" sigh their instinct and their shame, "italways FINDS THINGS OUT!"). The declara-tion of independence of the scientific man, hisemancipation from philosophy, is one of thesubtler after-effects of democratic organizationand disorganization: the self-glorification andself-conceitedness of the learned man is noweverywhere in full bloom, and in its bestspringtime—which does not mean to implythat in this case self-praise smells sweet. Herealso the instinct of the populace cries, "Freedomfrom all masters!" and after science has, withthe happiest results, resisted theology, whose"hand-maid" it had been too long, it now pro-poses in its wantonness and indiscretion to laydown laws for philosophy, and in its turn to

play the "master"—what am I saying! to playthe PHILOSOPHER on its own account. Mymemory—the memory of a scientific man, ifyou please!—teems with the naivetes of inso-lence which I have heard about philosophy andphilosophers from young naturalists and oldphysicians (not to mention the most culturedand most conceited of all learned men, the phi-lologists and schoolmasters, who are both theone and the other by profession). On one occa-sion it was the specialist and the Jack Hornerwho instinctively stood on the defensiveagainst all synthetic tasks and capabilities; atanother time it was the industrious worker whohad got a scent of OTIUM and refined luxuri-ousness in the internal economy of the philoso-pher, and felt himself aggrieved and belittledthereby. On another occasion it was the colour-blindness of the utilitarian, who sees nothing inphilosophy but a series of REFUTED systems,and an extravagant expenditure which "doesnobody any good". At another time the fear of

disguised mysticism and of the boundary-adjustment of knowledge became conspicuous,at another time the disregard of individual phi-losophers, which had involuntarily extended todisregard of philosophy generally. In fine, Ifound most frequently, behind the proud dis-dain of philosophy in young scholars, the evilafter-effect of some particular philosopher, towhom on the whole obedience had been fore-sworn, without, however, the spell of his scorn-ful estimates of other philosophers having beengot rid of—the result being a general ill-will toall philosophy. (Such seems to me, for instance,the after-effect of Schopenhauer on the mostmodern Germany: by his unintelligent rageagainst Hegel, he has succeeded in severing thewhole of the last generation of Germans fromits connection with German culture, which cul-ture, all things considered, has been an eleva-tion and a divining refinement of the HIS-TORICAL SENSE, but precisely at this pointSchopenhauer himself was poor, irreceptive,

and un-German to the extent of ingeniousness.)On the whole, speaking generally, it may justhave been the humanness, all-too-humannessof the modern philosophers themselves, inshort, their contemptibleness, which has in-jured most radically the reverence for philoso-phy and opened the doors to the instinct of thepopulace. Let it but be acknowledged to whatan extent our modern world diverges from thewhole style of the world of Heraclitus, Plato,Empedocles, and whatever else all the royaland magnificent anchorites of the spirit werecalled, and with what justice an honest man ofscience MAY feel himself of a better family andorigin, in view of such representatives of phi-losophy, who, owing to the fashion of the pre-sent day, are just as much aloft as they aredown below—in Germany, for instance, thetwo lions of Berlin, the anarchist EugenDuhring and the amalgamist Eduard vonHartmann. It is especially the sight of thosehotch-potch philosophers, who call themselves

"realists," or "positivists," which is calculated toimplant a dangerous distrust in the soul of ayoung and ambitious scholar those philoso-phers, at the best, are themselves but scholarsand specialists, that is very evident! All of themare persons who have been vanquished andBROUGHT BACK AGAIN under the dominionof science, who at one time or another claimedmore from themselves, without having a rightto the "more" and its responsibility—and whonow, creditably, rancorously, and vindictively,represent in word and deed, DISBELIEF in themaster-task and supremacy of philosophy Afterall, how could it be otherwise? Science flour-ishes nowadays and has the good conscienceclearly visible on its countenance, while that towhich the entire modern philosophy hasgradually sunk, the remnant of philosophy ofthe present day, excites distrust and displeas-ure, if not scorn and pity Philosophy reduced toa "theory of knowledge," no more in fact than adiffident science of epochs and doctrine of for-

bearance a philosophy that never even getsbeyond the threshold, and rigorously DENIESitself the right to enter—that is philosophy inits last throes, an end, an agony, something thatawakens pity. How could such a philosophy—RULE!

205. The dangers that beset the evolution of thephilosopher are, in fact, so manifold nowadays,that one might doubt whether this fruit couldstill come to maturity. The extent and toweringstructure of the sciences have increased enor-mously, and therewith also the probability thatthe philosopher will grow tired even as a lear-ner, or will attach himself somewhere and "spe-cialize" so that he will no longer attain to hiselevation, that is to say, to his superspection,his circumspection, and his DESPECTION. Orhe gets aloft too late, when the best of his ma-turity and strength is past, or when he is im-paired, coarsened, and deteriorated, so that hisview, his general estimate of things, is no lon-

ger of much importance. It is perhaps just therefinement of his intellectual conscience thatmakes him hesitate and linger on the way, hedreads the temptation to become a dilettante, amillepede, a milleantenna, he knows too wellthat as a discerner, one who has lost his self-respect no longer commands, no longerLEADS, unless he should aspire to become agreat play-actor, a philosophical Cagliostro andspiritual rat-catcher—in short, a misleader. Thisis in the last instance a question of taste, if it hasnot really been a question of conscience. Todouble once more the philosopher's difficulties,there is also the fact that he demands fromhimself a verdict, a Yea or Nay, not concerningscience, but concerning life and the worth oflife—he learns unwillingly to believe that it ishis right and even his duty to obtain this ver-dict, and he has to seek his way to the right andthe belief only through the most extensive(perhaps disturbing and destroying) experi-ences, often hesitating, doubting, and dumb-

founded. In fact, the philosopher has long beenmistaken and confused by the multitude, eitherwith the scientific man and ideal scholar, orwith the religiously elevated, desensualized,desecularized visionary and God-intoxicatedman; and even yet when one hears anybodypraised, because he lives "wisely," or "as a phi-losopher," it hardly means anything more than"prudently and apart." Wisdom: that seems tothe populace to be a kind of flight, a means andartifice for withdrawing successfully from abad game; but the GENUINE philosopher—does it not seem so to US, my friends?—lives"unphilosophically" and "unwisely," above all,IMPRUDENTLY, and feels the obligation andburden of a hundred attempts and temptationsof life—he risks HIMSELF constantly, he playsTHIS bad game.

206. In relation to the genius, that is to say, abeing who either ENGENDERS or PRO-DUCES—both words understood in their full-

est sense—the man of learning, the scientificaverage man, has always something of the oldmaid about him; for, like her, he is not conver-sant with the two principal functions of man.To both, of course, to the scholar and to the oldmaid, one concedes respectability, as if by wayof indemnification—in these cases one empha-sizes the respectability—and yet, in the com-pulsion of this concession, one has the sameadmixture of vexation. Let us examine moreclosely: what is the scientific man? Firstly, acommonplace type of man, with commonplacevirtues: that is to say, a non-ruling, non-authoritative, and non-self-sufficient type ofman; he possesses industry, patient adaptable-ness to rank and file, equability and modera-tion in capacity and requirement; he has theinstinct for people like himself, and for thatwhich they require—for instance: the portion ofindependence and green meadow withoutwhich there is no rest from labour, the claim tohonour and consideration (which first and fo-

remost presupposes recognition and recognis-ability), the sunshine of a good name, the per-petual ratification of his value and usefulness,with which the inward DISTRUST which lies atthe bottom of the heart of all dependent menand gregarious animals, has again and again tobe overcome. The learned man, as is appropri-ate, has also maladies and faults of an ignoblekind: he is full of petty envy, and has a lynx-eyefor the weak points in those natures to whoseelevations he cannot attain. He is confiding, yetonly as one who lets himself go, but does notFLOW; and precisely before the man of thegreat current he stands all the colder and morereserved—his eye is then like a smooth andirresponsive lake, which is no longer moved byrapture or sympathy. The worst and most dan-gerous thing of which a scholar is capable re-sults from the instinct of mediocrity of his type,from the Jesuitism of mediocrity, which laboursinstinctively for the destruction of the excep-tional man, and endeavours to break—or still

better, to relax—every bent bow To relax, ofcourse, with consideration, and naturally withan indulgent hand—to RELAX with confidingsympathy that is the real art of Jesuitism, whichhas always understood how to introduce itselfas the religion of sympathy.

207. However gratefully one may welcome theOBJECTIVE spirit—and who has not been sickto death of all subjectivity and its confoundedIPSISIMOSITY!—in the end, however, onemust learn caution even with regard to one'sgratitude, and put a stop to the exaggerationwith which the unselfing and depersonalizingof the spirit has recently been celebrated, as if itwere the goal in itself, as if it were salvationand glorification—as is especially accustomedto happen in the pessimist school, which hasalso in its turn good reasons for paying thehighest honours to "disinterested knowledge"The objective man, who no longer curses andscolds like the pessimist, the IDEAL man of

learning in whom the scientific instinct blos-soms forth fully after a thousand complete andpartial failures, is assuredly one of the mostcostly instruments that exist, but his place is inthe hand of one who is more powerful He isonly an instrument, we may say, he is a MIR-ROR—he is no "purpose in himself" The objec-tive man is in truth a mirror accustomed toprostration before everything that wants to beknown, with such desires only as knowing or"reflecting" implies—he waits until somethingcomes, and then expands himself sensitively, sothat even the light footsteps and gliding-past ofspiritual beings may not be lost on his surfaceand film Whatever "personality" he still pos-sesses seems to him accidental, arbitrary, or stilloftener, disturbing, so much has he come toregard himself as the passage and reflection ofoutside forms and events He calls up the recol-lection of "himself" with an effort, and not in-frequently wrongly, he readily confounds him-self with other persons, he makes mistakes with

regard to his own needs, and here only is heunrefined and negligent Perhaps he is troubledabout the health, or the pettiness and confinedatmosphere of wife and friend, or the lack ofcompanions and society—indeed, he sets him-self to reflect on his suffering, but in vain! Histhoughts already rove away to the MORE GE-NERAL case, and tomorrow he knows as littleas he knew yesterday how to help himself Hedoes not now take himself seriously and devotetime to himself he is serene, NOT from lack oftrouble, but from lack of capacity for graspingand dealing with HIS trouble The habitualcomplaisance with respect to all objects andexperiences, the radiant and impartial hospital-ity with which he receives everything that co-mes his way, his habit of inconsiderate good-nature, of dangerous indifference as to Yea andNay: alas! there are enough of cases in which hehas to atone for these virtues of his!—and asman generally, he becomes far too easily theCAPUT MORTUUM of such virtues. Should

one wish love or hatred from him—I mean loveand hatred as God, woman, and animal under-stand them—he will do what he can, and fur-nish what he can. But one must not be sur-prised if it should not be much—if he shouldshow himself just at this point to be false, frag-ile, questionable, and deteriorated. His love isconstrained, his hatred is artificial, and ratherUN TOUR DE FORCE, a slight ostentation andexaggeration. He is only genuine so far as hecan be objective; only in his serene totality is hestill "nature" and "natural." His mirroring andeternally self-polishing soul no longer knowshow to affirm, no longer how to deny; he doesnot command; neither does he destroy. "JE NEMEPRISE PRESQUE RIEN"—he says, withLeibniz: let us not overlook nor undervalue thePRESQUE! Neither is he a model man; he doesnot go in advance of any one, nor after, either;he places himself generally too far off to haveany reason for espousing the cause of eithergood or evil. If he has been so long confounded

with the PHILOSOPHER, with the Caesariantrainer and dictator of civilization, he has hadfar too much honour, and what is more essen-tial in him has been overlooked—he is an in-strument, something of a slave, though cer-tainly the sublimest sort of slave, but nothing inhimself—PRESQUE RIEN! The objective man isan instrument, a costly, easily injured, easilytarnished measuring instrument and mirroringapparatus, which is to be taken care of and re-spected; but he is no goal, not outgoing norupgoing, no complementary man in whom theREST of existence justifies itself, no termina-tion—and still less a commencement, an en-gendering, or primary cause, nothing hardy,powerful, self-centred, that wants to be master;but rather only a soft, inflated, delicate, mov-able potter's-form, that must wait for some kindof content and frame to "shape" itself thereto—for the most part a man without frame and con-tent, a "selfless" man. Consequently, also, noth-ing for women, IN PARENTHESI.

208. When a philosopher nowadays makesknown that he is not a skeptic—I hope that hasbeen gathered from the foregoing descriptionof the objective spirit?—people all hear it impa-tiently; they regard him on that account withsome apprehension, they would like to ask somany, many questions... indeed among timidhearers, of whom there are now so many, he ishenceforth said to be dangerous. With his re-pudiation of skepticism, it seems to them as ifthey heard some evil-threatening sound in thedistance, as if a new kind of explosive werebeing tried somewhere, a dynamite of thespirit, perhaps a newly discovered RussianNIHILINE, a pessimism BONAE VOLUNTA-TIS, that not only denies, means denial, but—dreadful thought! PRACTISES denial. Againstthis kind of "good-will"—a will to the veritable,actual negation of life—there is, as is generallyacknowledged nowadays, no better soporificand sedative than skepticism, the mild, pleas-ing, lulling poppy of skepticism; and Hamlet

himself is now prescribed by the doctors of theday as an antidote to the "spirit," and its under-ground noises. "Are not our ears already full ofbad sounds?" say the skeptics, as lovers of re-pose, and almost as a kind of safety police; "thissubterranean Nay is terrible! Be still, ye pessi-mistic moles!" The skeptic, in effect, that deli-cate creature, is far too easily frightened; hisconscience is schooled so as to start at everyNay, and even at that sharp, decided Yea, andfeels something like a bite thereby. Yea! andNay!—they seem to him opposed to morality;he loves, on the contrary, to make a festival tohis virtue by a noble aloofness, while perhapshe says with Montaigne: "What do I know?" Orwith Socrates: "I know that I know nothing."Or: "Here I do not trust myself, no door is opento me." Or: "Even if the door were open, whyshould I enter immediately?" Or: "What is theuse of any hasty hypotheses? It might quitewell be in good taste to make no hypotheses atall. Are you absolutely obliged to straighten at

once what is crooked? to stuff every hole withsome kind of oakum? Is there not time enoughfor that? Has not the time leisure? Oh, ye de-mons, can ye not at all WAIT? The uncertainalso has its charms, the Sphinx, too, is a Circe,and Circe, too, was a philosopher."—Thus doesa skeptic console himself; and in truth he needssome consolation. For skepticism is the mostspiritual expression of a certain many-sidedphysiological temperament, which in ordinarylanguage is called nervous debility and sickli-ness; it arises whenever races or classes whichhave been long separated, decisively and sud-denly blend with one another. In the new gen-eration, which has inherited as it were differentstandards and valuations in its blood, every-thing is disquiet, derangement, doubt, and ten-tativeness; the best powers operate restrictively,the very virtues prevent each other growingand becoming strong, equilibrium, ballast, andperpendicular stability are lacking in body andsoul. That, however, which is most diseased

and degenerated in such nondescripts is theWILL; they are no longer familiar with inde-pendence of decision, or the courageous feelingof pleasure in willing—they are doubtful of the"freedom of the will" even in their dreams Ourpresent-day Europe, the scene of a senseless,precipitate attempt at a radical blending ofclasses, and CONSEQUENTLY of races, is the-refore skeptical in all its heights and depths,sometimes exhibiting the mobile skepticismwhich springs impatiently and wantonly frombranch to branch, sometimes with gloomy as-pect, like a cloud over-charged with interroga-tive signs—and often sick unto death of its will!Paralysis of will, where do we not find thiscripple sitting nowadays! And yet how be-decked oftentimes' How seductively orna-mented! There are the finest gala dresses anddisguises for this disease, and that, for instance,most of what places itself nowadays in theshow-cases as "objectiveness," "the scientificspirit," "L'ART POUR L'ART," and "pure volun-

tary knowledge," is only decked-out skepticismand paralysis of will—I am ready to answer forthis diagnosis of the European disease—Thedisease of the will is diffused unequally overEurope, it is worst and most varied where civi-lization has longest prevailed, it decreases ac-cording as "the barbarian" still—or again—asserts his claims under the loose drapery ofWestern culture It is therefore in the France oftoday, as can be readily disclosed and compre-hended, that the will is most infirm, andFrance, which has always had a masterly apti-tude for converting even the portentous crisesof its spirit into something charming and se-ductive, now manifests emphatically its intel-lectual ascendancy over Europe, by being theschool and exhibition of all the charms of skep-ticism The power to will and to persist, more-over, in a resolution, is already somewhatstronger in Germany, and again in the North ofGermany it is stronger than in Central Ger-many, it is considerably stronger in England,

Spain, and Corsica, associated with phlegm inthe former and with hard skulls in the latter—not to mention Italy, which is too young yet toknow what it wants, and must first showwhether it can exercise will, but it is strongestand most surprising of all in that immensemiddle empire where Europe as it were flowsback to Asia—namely, in Russia There thepower to will has been long stored up and ac-cumulated, there the will—uncertain whetherto be negative or affirmative—waits threaten-ingly to be discharged (to borrow their petphrase from our physicists) Perhaps not onlyIndian wars and complications in Asia wouldbe necessary to free Europe from its greatestdanger, but also internal subversion, the shat-tering of the empire into small states, andabove all the introduction of parliamentaryimbecility, together with the obligation of everyone to read his newspaper at breakfast I do notsay this as one who desires it, in my heart Ishould rather prefer the contrary—I mean such

an increase in the threatening attitude of Rus-sia, that Europe would have to make up itsmind to become equally threatening—namely,TO ACQUIRE ONE WILL, by means of a newcaste to rule over the Continent, a persistent,dreadful will of its own, that can set its aimsthousands of years ahead; so that the longspun-out comedy of its petty-statism, and itsdynastic as well as its democratic many-willed-ness, might finally be brought to a close. Thetime for petty politics is past; the next centurywill bring the struggle for the dominion of theworld—the COMPULSION to great politics.

209. As to how far the new warlike age onwhich we Europeans have evidently enteredmay perhaps favour the growth of another andstronger kind of skepticism, I should like toexpress myself preliminarily merely by a par-able, which the lovers of German history willalready understand. That unscrupulous enthu-siast for big, handsome grenadiers (who, as

King of Prussia, brought into being a militaryand skeptical genius—and therewith, in reality,the new and now triumphantly emerged typeof German), the problematic, crazy father ofFrederick the Great, had on one point the veryknack and lucky grasp of the genius: he knewwhat was then lacking in Germany, the want ofwhich was a hundred times more alarming andserious than any lack of culture and socialform—his ill-will to the young Frederick re-sulted from the anxiety of a profound instinct.MEN WERE LACKING; and he suspected, tohis bitterest regret, that his own son was notman enough. There, however, he deceived him-self; but who would not have deceived himselfin his place? He saw his son lapsed to atheism,to the ESPRIT, to the pleasant frivolity of cleverFrenchmen—he saw in the background thegreat bloodsucker, the spider skepticism; hesuspected the incurable wretchedness of a heartno longer hard enough either for evil or good,and of a broken will that no longer commands,

is no longer ABLE to command. Meanwhile,however, there grew up in his son that newkind of harder and more dangerous skepti-cism—who knows TO WHAT EXTENT it wasencouraged just by his father's hatred and theicy melancholy of a will condemned to soli-tude?—the skepticism of daring manliness,which is closely related to the genius for warand conquest, and made its first entrance intoGermany in the person of the great Frederick.This skepticism despises and neverthelessgrasps; it undermines and takes possession; itdoes not believe, but it does not thereby loseitself; it gives the spirit a dangerous liberty, butit keeps strict guard over the heart. It is theGERMAN form of skepticism, which, as a con-tinued Fredericianism, risen to the highestspirituality, has kept Europe for a considerabletime under the dominion of the German spiritand its critical and historical distrust Owing tothe insuperably strong and tough masculinecharacter of the great German philologists and

historical critics (who, rightly estimated, werealso all of them artists of destruction and disso-lution), a NEW conception of the German spiritgradually established itself—in spite of all Ro-manticism in music and philosophy—in whichthe leaning towards masculine skepticism wasdecidedly prominent whether, for instance, asfearlessness of gaze, as courage and sternnessof the dissecting hand, or as resolute will todangerous voyages of discovery, to spiritual-ized North Pole expeditions under barren anddangerous skies. There may be good groundsfor it when warm-blooded and superficial hu-manitarians cross themselves before this spirit,CET ESPRIT FATALISTE, IRONIQUE, ME-PHISTOPHELIQUE, as Michelet calls it, notwithout a shudder. But if one would realizehow characteristic is this fear of the "man" inthe German spirit which awakened Europe outof its "dogmatic slumber," let us call to mindthe former conception which had to be over-come by this new one—and that it is not so

very long ago that a masculinized womancould dare, with unbridled presumption, torecommend the Germans to the interest ofEurope as gentle, good-hearted, weak-willed,and poetical fools. Finally, let us only under-stand profoundly enough Napoleon's aston-ishment when he saw Goethe it reveals whathad been regarded for centuries as the "Germanspirit" "VOILA UN HOMME!"—that was asmuch as to say "But this is a MAN! And I onlyexpected to see a German!"

210. Supposing, then, that in the picture of thephilosophers of the future, some trait suggeststhe question whether they must not perhaps beskeptics in the last-mentioned sense, somethingin them would only be designated thereby—and not they themselves. With equal right theymight call themselves critics, and assuredlythey will be men of experiments. By the namewith which I ventured to baptize them, I havealready expressly emphasized their attempting

and their love of attempting is this because, ascritics in body and soul, they will love to makeuse of experiments in a new, and perhaps wi-der and more dangerous sense? In their passionfor knowledge, will they have to go further indaring and painful attempts than the sensitiveand pampered taste of a democratic centurycan approve of?—There is no doubt these com-ing ones will be least able to dispense with theserious and not unscrupulous qualities whichdistinguish the critic from the skeptic I meanthe certainty as to standards of worth, the con-scious employment of a unity of method, thewary courage, the standing-alone, and the ca-pacity for self-responsibility, indeed, they willavow among themselves a DELIGHT in denialand dissection, and a certain considerate cru-elty, which knows how to handle the knifesurely and deftly, even when the heart bleedsThey will be STERNER (and perhaps not al-ways towards themselves only) than humanepeople may desire, they will not deal with the

"truth" in order that it may "please" them, or"elevate" and "inspire" them—they will ratherhave little faith in "TRUTH" bringing with itsuch revels for the feelings. They will smile,those rigorous spirits, when any one says intheir presence "That thought elevates me, whyshould it not be true?" or "That work enchantsme, why should it not be beautiful?" or "Thatartist enlarges me, why should he not begreat?" Perhaps they will not only have a smile,but a genuine disgust for all that is thus raptur-ous, idealistic, feminine, and hermaphroditic,and if any one could look into their inmosthearts, he would not easily find therein the in-tention to reconcile "Christian sentiments" with"antique taste," or even with "modern parlia-mentarism" (the kind of reconciliation necessar-ily found even among philosophers in our veryuncertain and consequently very conciliatorycentury). Critical discipline, and every habitthat conduces to purity and rigour in intellec-tual matters, will not only be demanded from

themselves by these philosophers of the future,they may even make a display thereof as theirspecial adornment—nevertheless they will notwant to be called critics on that account. It willseem to them no small indignity to philosophyto have it decreed, as is so welcome nowadays,that "philosophy itself is criticism and criticalscience—and nothing else whatever!" Thoughthis estimate of philosophy may enjoy the ap-proval of all the Positivists of France and Ger-many (and possibly it even flattered the heartand taste of KANT: let us call to mind the titlesof his principal works), our new philosopherswill say, notwithstanding, that critics are in-struments of the philosopher, and just on thataccount, as instruments, they are far from beingphilosophers themselves! Even the great Chi-naman of Konigsberg was only a great critic.

211. I insist upon it that people finally ceaseconfounding philosophical workers, and ingeneral scientific men, with philosophers—that

precisely here one should strictly give "each hisown," and not give those far too much, these fartoo little. It may be necessary for the educationof the real philosopher that he himself shouldhave once stood upon all those steps uponwhich his servants, the scientific workers ofphilosophy, remain standing, and MUST re-main standing he himself must perhaps havebeen critic, and dogmatist, and historian, andbesides, poet, and collector, and traveler, andriddle-reader, and moralist, and seer, and "freespirit," and almost everything, in order to trav-erse the whole range of human values and es-timations, and that he may BE ABLE with avariety of eyes and consciences to look from aheight to any distance, from a depth up to anyheight, from a nook into any expanse. But allthese are only preliminary conditions for histask; this task itself demands something else—itrequires him TO CREATE VALUES. The phi-losophical workers, after the excellent patternof Kant and Hegel, have to fix and formalize

some great existing body of valuations—that isto say, former DETERMINATIONS OFVALUE, creations of value, which have becomeprevalent, and are for a time called "truths"—whether in the domain of the LOGICAL, thePOLITICAL (moral), or the ARTISTIC. It is forthese investigators to make whatever has hap-pened and been esteemed hitherto, conspicu-ous, conceivable, intelligible, and manageable,to shorten everything long, even "time" itself,and to SUBJUGATE the entire past: an im-mense and wonderful task, in the carrying outof which all refined pride, all tenacious will,can surely find satisfaction. THE REAL PHI-LOSOPHERS, HOWEVER, ARE COMMAND-ERS AND LAW-GIVERS; they say: "ThusSHALL it be!" They determine first the Whitherand the Why of mankind, and thereby set asidethe previous labour of all philosophical work-ers, and all subjugators of the past—they graspat the future with a creative hand, and what-ever is and was, becomes for them thereby a

means, an instrument, and a hammer. Their"knowing" is CREATING, their creating is alaw-giving, their will to truth is—WILL TOPOWER.—Are there at present such philoso-phers? Have there ever been such philoso-phers? MUST there not be such philosopherssome day? ...

212. It is always more obvious to me that thephilosopher, as a man INDISPENSABLE for themorrow and the day after the morrow, has everfound himself, and HAS BEEN OBLIGED tofind himself, in contradiction to the day inwhich he lives; his enemy has always been theideal of his day. Hitherto all those extraordi-nary furtherers of humanity whom one callsphilosophers—who rarely regarded themselvesas lovers of wisdom, but rather as disagreeablefools and dangerous interrogators—have foundtheir mission, their hard, involuntary, impera-tive mission (in the end, however, the greatnessof their mission), in being the bad conscience of

their age. In putting the vivisector's knife to thebreast of the very VIRTUES OF THEIR AGE,they have betrayed their own secret; it has beenfor the sake of a NEW greatness of man, a newuntrodden path to his aggrandizement. Theyhave always disclosed how much hypocrisy,indolence, self-indulgence, and self-neglect,how much falsehood was concealed under themost venerated types of contemporary moral-ity, how much virtue was OUTLIVED, theyhave always said "We must remove hence towhere YOU are least at home" In the face of aworld of "modern ideas," which would like toconfine every one in a corner, in a "specialty," aphilosopher, if there could be philosophersnowadays, would be compelled to place thegreatness of man, the conception of "greatness,"precisely in his comprehensiveness and multi-fariousness, in his all-roundness, he wouldeven determine worth and rank according tothe amount and variety of that which a mancould bear and take upon himself, according to

the EXTENT to which a man could stretch hisresponsibility Nowadays the taste and virtue ofthe age weaken and attenuate the will, nothingis so adapted to the spirit of the age as weak-ness of will consequently, in the ideal of thephilosopher, strength of will, sternness, andcapacity for prolonged resolution, must spe-cially be included in the conception of "great-ness", with as good a right as the opposite doc-trine, with its ideal of a silly, renouncing, hum-ble, selfless humanity, was suited to an oppo-site age—such as the sixteenth century, whichsuffered from its accumulated energy of will,and from the wildest torrents and floods ofselfishness In the time of Socrates, among menonly of worn-out instincts, old conservativeAthenians who let themselves go—"for the sakeof happiness," as they said, for the sake ofpleasure, as their conduct indicated—and whohad continually on their lips the old pompouswords to which they had long forfeited theright by the life they led, IRONY was perhaps

necessary for greatness of soul, the wicked So-cratic assurance of the old physician and plebe-ian, who cut ruthlessly into his own flesh, asinto the flesh and heart of the "noble," with alook that said plainly enough "Do not dissem-ble before me! here—we are equal!" At present,on the contrary, when throughout Europe theherding-animal alone attains to honours, anddispenses honours, when "equality of right" cantoo readily be transformed into equality inwrong—I mean to say into general war againsteverything rare, strange, and privileged,against the higher man, the higher soul, thehigher duty, the higher responsibility, the crea-tive plenipotence and lordliness—at present itbelongs to the conception of "greatness" to benoble, to wish to be apart, to be capable of be-ing different, to stand alone, to have to live bypersonal initiative, and the philosopher willbetray something of his own ideal when heasserts "He shall be the greatest who can be themost solitary, the most concealed, the most

divergent, the man beyond good and evil, themaster of his virtues, and of super-abundanceof will; precisely this shall be called GREAT-NESS: as diversified as can be entire, as ampleas can be full." And to ask once more the ques-tion: Is greatness POSSIBLE—nowadays?

213. It is difficult to learn what a philosopher is,because it cannot be taught: one must "know" itby experience—or one should have the prideNOT to know it. The fact that at present peopleall talk of things of which they CANNOT haveany experience, is true more especially and un-fortunately as concerns the philosopher andphilosophical matters:—the very few knowthem, are permitted to know them, and all po-pular ideas about them are false. Thus, for in-stance, the truly philosophical combination of abold, exuberant spirituality which runs at pre-sto pace, and a dialectic rigour and necessitywhich makes no false step, is unknown to mostthinkers and scholars from their own experi-

ence, and therefore, should any one speak of itin their presence, it is incredible to them. Theyconceive of every necessity as troublesome, as apainful compulsory obedience and state of con-straint; thinking itself is regarded by them assomething slow and hesitating, almost as atrouble, and often enough as "worthy of theSWEAT of the noble"—but not at all as some-thing easy and divine, closely related to danc-ing and exuberance! "To think" and to take amatter "seriously," "arduously"—that is one andthe same thing to them; such only has beentheir "experience."—Artists have here perhaps afiner intuition; they who know only too wellthat precisely when they no longer do anything"arbitrarily," and everything of necessity, theirfeeling of freedom, of subtlety, of power, ofcreatively fixing, disposing, and shaping, rea-ches its climax—in short, that necessity and"freedom of will" are then the same thing withthem. There is, in fine, a gradation of rank inpsychical states, to which the gradation of rank

in the problems corresponds; and the highestproblems repel ruthlessly every one who ven-tures too near them, without being predestinedfor their solution by the loftiness and power ofhis spirituality. Of what use is it for nimble,everyday intellects, or clumsy, honest mechan-ics and empiricists to press, in their plebeianambition, close to such problems, and as it wereinto this "holy of holies"—as so often happensnowadays! But coarse feet must never treadupon such carpets: this is provided for in theprimary law of things; the doors remain closedto those intruders, though they may dash andbreak their heads thereon. People have alwaysto be born to a high station, or, more definitely,they have to be BRED for it: a person has only aright to philosophy—taking the word in itshigher significance—in virtue of his descent;the ancestors, the "blood," decide here also.Many generations must have prepared the wayfor the coming of the philosopher; each of hisvirtues must have been separately acquired,

nurtured, transmitted, and embodied; not onlythe bold, easy, delicate course and current ofhis thoughts, but above all the readiness forgreat responsibilities, the majesty of rulingglance and contemning look, the feeling of se-paration from the multitude with their dutiesand virtues, the kindly patronage and defenseof whatever is misunderstood and calumniated,be it God or devil, the delight and practice ofsupreme justice, the art of commanding, theamplitude of will, the lingering eye which rare-ly admires, rarely looks up, rarely loves....

CHAPTER VII. OUR VIRTUES

214. OUR Virtues?—It is probable that we, too,have still our virtues, although naturally theyare not those sincere and massive virtues on

account of which we hold our grandfathers inesteem and also at a little distance from us. WeEuropeans of the day after tomorrow, we first-lings of the twentieth century—with all ourdangerous curiosity, our multifariousness andart of disguising, our mellow and seeminglysweetened cruelty in sense and spirit—we shallpresumably, IF we must have virtues, havethose only which have come to agreement withour most secret and heartfelt inclinations, withour most ardent requirements: well, then, let uslook for them in our labyrinths!—where, as weknow, so many things lose themselves, so manythings get quite lost! And is there anything fi-ner than to SEARCH for one's own virtues? Is itnot almost to BELIEVE in one's own virtues?But this "believing in one's own virtues"—is itnot practically the same as what was formerlycalled one's "good conscience," that long, re-spectable pigtail of an idea, which our grandfa-thers used to hang behind their heads, and of-ten enough also behind their understandings?

It seems, therefore, that however little we mayimagine ourselves to be old-fashioned andgrandfatherly respectable in other respects, inone thing we are nevertheless the worthygrandchildren of our grandfathers, we last Eu-ropeans with good consciences: we also stillwear their pigtail.—Ah! if you only knew howsoon, so very soon—it will be different!

215. As in the stellar firmament there are some-times two suns which determine the path ofone planet, and in certain cases suns of differ-ent colours shine around a single planet, nowwith red light, now with green, and then simul-taneously illumine and flood it with motleycolours: so we modern men, owing to the com-plicated mechanism of our "firmament," aredetermined by DIFFERENT moralities; ouractions shine alternately in different colours,and are seldom unequivocal—and there areoften cases, also, in which our actions are MO-TLEY-COLOURED.

216. To love one's enemies? I think that hasbeen well learnt: it takes place thousands oftimes at present on a large and small scale; in-deed, at times the higher and sublimer thingtakes place:—we learn to DESPISE when welove, and precisely when we love best; all of it,however, unconsciously, without noise, with-out ostentation, with the shame and secrecy ofgoodness, which forbids the utterance of thepompous word and the formula of virtue. Mo-rality as attitude—is opposed to our taste no-wadays. This is ALSO an advance, as it was anadvance in our fathers that religion as an atti-tude finally became opposed to their taste, in-cluding the enmity and Voltairean bitternessagainst religion (and all that formerly belongedto freethinker-pantomime). It is the music inour conscience, the dance in our spirit, to whichPuritan litanies, moral sermons, and goody-goodness won't chime.

217. Let us be careful in dealing with those whoattach great importance to being credited withmoral tact and subtlety in moral discernment!They never forgive us if they have once made amistake BEFORE us (or even with REGARD tous)—they inevitably become our instinctivecalumniators and detractors, even when theystill remain our "friends."—Blessed are the for-getful: for they "get the better" even of theirblunders.

218. The psychologists of France—and whereelse are there still psychologists nowadays?—have never yet exhausted their bitter and mani-fold enjoyment of the betise bourgeoise, just asthough... in short, they betray something there-by. Flaubert, for instance, the honest citizen ofRouen, neither saw, heard, nor tasted anythingelse in the end; it was his mode of self-tormentand refined cruelty. As this is growing weari-some, I would now recommend for a changesomething else for a pleasure—namely, the

unconscious astuteness with which good, fat,honest mediocrity always behaves towardsloftier spirits and the tasks they have to per-form, the subtle, barbed, Jesuitical astuteness,which is a thousand times subtler than the tasteand understanding of the middle-class in itsbest moments—subtler even than the under-standing of its victims:—a repeated proof that"instinct" is the most intelligent of all kinds ofintelligence which have hitherto been discov-ered. In short, you psychologists, study thephilosophy of the "rule" in its struggle with the"exception": there you have a spectacle fit forGods and godlike malignity! Or, in plainerwords, practise vivisection on "good people,"on the "homo bonae voluntatis," ON YOUR-SELVES!

219. The practice of judging and condemningmorally, is the favourite revenge of the intellec-tually shallow on those who are less so, it isalso a kind of indemnity for their being badly

endowed by nature, and finally, it is an oppor-tunity for acquiring spirit and BECOMINGsubtle—malice spiritualises. They are glad intheir inmost heart that there is a standard ac-cording to which those who are over-endowedwith intellectual goods and privileges, areequal to them, they contend for the "equality ofall before God," and almost NEED the belief inGod for this purpose. It is among them that themost powerful antagonists of atheism arefound. If any one were to say to them "A loftyspirituality is beyond all comparison with thehonesty and respectability of a merely moralman"—it would make them furious, I shall takecare not to say so. I would rather flatter themwith my theory that lofty spirituality itself ex-ists only as the ultimate product of moral quali-ties, that it is a synthesis of all qualities attrib-uted to the "merely moral" man, after they havebeen acquired singly through long training andpractice, perhaps during a whole series of gen-erations, that lofty spirituality is precisely the

spiritualising of justice, and the beneficent se-verity which knows that it is authorized tomaintain GRADATIONS OF RANK in theworld, even among things—and not onlyamong men.

220. Now that the praise of the "disinterestedperson" is so popular one must—probably notwithout some danger—get an idea of WHATpeople actually take an interest in, and what arethe things generally which fundamentally andprofoundly concern ordinary men—includingthe cultured, even the learned, and perhapsphilosophers also, if appearances do not de-ceive. The fact thereby becomes obvious thatthe greater part of what interests and charmshigher natures, and more refined and fastidioustastes, seems absolutely "uninteresting" to theaverage man—if, notwithstanding, he perceivedevotion to these interests, he calls it desinter-esse, and wonders how it is possible to act "dis-interestedly." There have been philosophers

who could give this popular astonishment aseductive and mystical, other-worldly expres-sion (perhaps because they did not know thehigher nature by experience?), instead of stat-ing the naked and candidly reasonable truththat "disinterested" action is very interestingand "interested" action, provided that... "Andlove?"—What! Even an action for love's sakeshall be "unegoistic"? But you fools—! "And thepraise of the self-sacrificer?"—But whoever hasreally offered sacrifice knows that he wantedand obtained something for it—perhaps some-thing from himself for something from himself;that he relinquished here in order to have morethere, perhaps in general to be more, or evenfeel himself "more." But this is a realm of ques-tions and answers in which a more fastidiousspirit does not like to stay: for here truth has tostifle her yawns so much when she is obliged toanswer. And after all, truth is a woman; onemust not use force with her.

221. "It sometimes happens," said a moralisticpedant and trifle-retailer, "that I honour andrespect an unselfish man: not, however, be-cause he is unselfish, but because I think he hasa right to be useful to another man at his ownexpense. In short, the question is always whoHE is, and who THE OTHER is. For instance, ina person created and destined for command,self-denial and modest retirement, instead ofbeing virtues, would be the waste of virtues: soit seems to me. Every system of unegoistic mo-rality which takes itself unconditionally andappeals to every one, not only sins againstgood taste, but is also an incentive to sins ofomission, an ADDITIONAL seduction underthe mask of philanthropy—and precisely a se-duction and injury to the higher, rarer, andmore privileged types of men. Moral systemsmust be compelled first of all to bow before theGRADATIONS OF RANK; their presumptionmust be driven home to their conscience—untilthey thoroughly understand at last that it is

IMMORAL to say that 'what is right for one isproper for another.'"—So said my moralisticpedant and bonhomme. Did he perhaps de-serve to be laughed at when he thus exhortedsystems of morals to practise morality? But oneshould not be too much in the right if one wis-hes to have the laughers on ONE'S OWN side;a grain of wrong pertains even to good taste.

222. Wherever sympathy (fellow-suffering) ispreached nowadays—and, if I gather rightly,no other religion is any longer preached—letthe psychologist have his ears open through allthe vanity, through all the noise which is natu-ral to these preachers (as to all preachers), hewill hear a hoarse, groaning, genuine note ofSELF-CONTEMPT. It belongs to the overshad-owing and uglifying of Europe, which has beenon the increase for a century (the first symp-toms of which are already specified documen-tarily in a thoughtful letter of Galiani to Ma-dame d'Epinay)—IF IT IS NOT REALLY THE

CAUSE THEREOF! The man of "modern ideas,"the conceited ape, is excessively dissatisfiedwith himself—this is perfectly certain. He suf-fers, and his vanity wants him only "to sufferwith his fellows."

223. The hybrid European—a tolerably uglyplebeian, taken all in all—absolutely requires acostume: he needs history as a storeroom ofcostumes. To be sure, he notices that none ofthe costumes fit him properly—he changes andchanges. Let us look at the nineteenth centurywith respect to these hasty preferences andchanges in its masquerades of style, and alsowith respect to its moments of desperation onaccount of "nothing suiting" us. It is in vain toget ourselves up as romantic, or classical, orChristian, or Florentine, or barocco, or "na-tional," in moribus et artibus: it does not "clotheus"! But the "spirit," especially the "historicalspirit," profits even by this desperation: onceand again a new sample of the past or of the

foreign is tested, put on, taken off, packed up,and above all studied—we are the first studiousage in puncto of "costumes," I mean as concernsmorals, articles of belief, artistic tastes, and re-ligions; we are prepared as no other age hasever been for a carnival in the grand style, forthe most spiritual festival—laughter and arro-gance, for the transcendental height of supremefolly and Aristophanic ridicule of the world.Perhaps we are still discovering the domain ofour invention just here, the domain where evenwe can still be original, probably as parodists ofthe world's history and as God's Merry-Andrews,—perhaps, though nothing else of thepresent have a future, our laughter itself mayhave a future!

224. The historical sense (or the capacity fordivining quickly the order of rank of the valua-tions according to which a people, a commu-nity, or an individual has lived, the "divininginstinct" for the relationships of these valua-

tions, for the relation of the authority of thevaluations to the authority of the operatingforces),—this historical sense, which we Euro-peans claim as our specialty, has come to us inthe train of the enchanting and mad semi-barbarity into which Europe has been plungedby the democratic mingling of classes and ra-ces—it is only the nineteenth century that hasrecognized this faculty as its sixth sense. Owingto this mingling, the past of every form andmode of life, and of cultures which were for-merly closely contiguous and superimposed onone another, flows forth into us "modern souls";our instincts now run back in all directions, weourselves are a kind of chaos: in the end, as wehave said, the spirit perceives its advantagetherein. By means of our semi-barbarity in bo-dy and in desire, we have secret access every-where, such as a noble age never had; we haveaccess above all to the labyrinth of imperfectcivilizations, and to every form of semi-barbarity that has at any time existed on earth;

and in so far as the most considerable part ofhuman civilization hitherto has just been semi-barbarity, the "historical sense" implies almostthe sense and instinct for everything, the tasteand tongue for everything: whereby it immedi-ately proves itself to be an IGNOBLE sense. Forinstance, we enjoy Homer once more: it is per-haps our happiest acquisition that we knowhow to appreciate Homer, whom men of dis-tinguished culture (as the French of the seven-teenth century, like Saint-Evremond, who re-proached him for his ESPRIT VASTE, and evenVoltaire, the last echo of the century) cannotand could not so easily appropriate—whomthey scarcely permitted themselves to enjoy.The very decided Yea and Nay of their palate,their promptly ready disgust, their hesitatingreluctance with regard to everything strange,their horror of the bad taste even of lively curi-osity, and in general the averseness of everydistinguished and self-sufficing culture toavow a new desire, a dissatisfaction with its

own condition, or an admiration of what isstrange: all this determines and disposes themunfavourably even towards the best things ofthe world which are not their property or couldnot become their prey—and no faculty is moreunintelligible to such men than just this histori-cal sense, with its truckling, plebeian curiosity.The case is not different with Shakespeare, thatmarvelous Spanish-Moorish-Saxon synthesis oftaste, over whom an ancient Athenian of thecircle of AEschylus would have half-killed him-self with laughter or irritation: but we—acceptprecisely this wild motleyness, this medley ofthe most delicate, the most coarse, and the mostartificial, with a secret confidence and cordial-ity; we enjoy it as a refinement of art reservedexpressly for us, and allow ourselves to be aslittle disturbed by the repulsive fumes and theproximity of the English populace in whichShakespeare's art and taste lives, as perhaps onthe Chiaja of Naples, where, with all our sensesawake, we go our way, enchanted and volun-

tarily, in spite of the drain-odour of the lowerquarters of the town. That as men of the "his-torical sense" we have our virtues, is not to bedisputed:—we are unpretentious, unselfish,modest, brave, habituated to self-control andself-renunciation, very grateful, very patient,very complaisant—but with all this we are per-haps not very "tasteful." Let us finally confessit, that what is most difficult for us men of the"historical sense" to grasp, feel, taste, and love,what finds us fundamentally prejudiced andalmost hostile, is precisely the perfection andultimate maturity in every culture and art, theessentially noble in works and men, their mo-ment of smooth sea and halcyon self-sufficiency, the goldenness and coldness whichall things show that have perfected themselves.Perhaps our great virtue of the historical senseis in necessary contrast to GOOD taste, at leastto the very bad taste; and we can only evoke inourselves imperfectly, hesitatingly, and withcompulsion the small, short, and happy god-

sends and glorifications of human life as theyshine here and there: those moments and mar-velous experiences when a great power hasvoluntarily come to a halt before the boundlessand infinite,—when a super-abundance of re-fined delight has been enjoyed by a suddenchecking and petrifying, by standing firmlyand planting oneself fixedly on still tremblingground. PROPORTIONATENESS is strange tous, let us confess it to ourselves; our itching isreally the itching for the infinite, the immeasur-able. Like the rider on his forward pantinghorse, we let the reins fall before the infinite,we modern men, we semi-barbarians—and areonly in OUR highest bliss when we—ARE INMOST DANGER.

225. Whether it be hedonism, pessimism, utili-tarianism, or eudaemonism, all those modes ofthinking which measure the worth of thingsaccording to PLEASURE and PAIN, that is,according to accompanying circumstances and

secondary considerations, are plausible modesof thought and naivetes, which every one con-scious of CREATIVE powers and an artist'sconscience will look down upon with scorn,though not without sympathy. Sympathy foryou!—to be sure, that is not sympathy as youunderstand it: it is not sympathy for social "dis-tress," for "society" with its sick and misfor-tuned, for the hereditarily vicious and defectivewho lie on the ground around us; still less is itsympathy for the grumbling, vexed, revolu-tionary slave-classes who strive after power—they call it "freedom." OUR sympathy is a loft-ier and further-sighted sympathy:—we see howMAN dwarfs himself, how YOU dwarf him!and there are moments when we view YOURsympathy with an indescribable anguish, whenwe resist it,—when we regard your seriousnessas more dangerous than any kind of levity. Youwant, if possible—and there is not a more fool-ish "if possible"—TO DO AWAY WITH SUF-FERING; and we?—it really seems that WE

would rather have it increased and made worsethan it has ever been! Well-being, as you un-derstand it—is certainly not a goal; it seems tous an END; a condition which at once rendersman ludicrous and contemptible—and makeshis destruction DESIRABLE! The discipline ofsuffering, of GREAT suffering—know ye notthat it is only THIS discipline that has producedall the elevations of humanity hitherto? Thetension of soul in misfortune which communi-cates to it its energy, its shuddering in view ofrack and ruin, its inventiveness and bravery inundergoing, enduring, interpreting, and ex-ploiting misfortune, and whatever depth, mys-tery, disguise, spirit, artifice, or greatness hasbeen bestowed upon the soul—has it not beenbestowed through suffering, through the disci-pline of great suffering? In man CREATUREand CREATOR are united: in man there is notonly matter, shred, excess, clay, mire, folly,chaos; but there is also the creator, the sculptor,the hardness of the hammer, the divinity of the

spectator, and the seventh day—do ye under-stand this contrast? And that YOUR sympathyfor the "creature in man" applies to that whichhas to be fashioned, bruised, forged, stretched,roasted, annealed, refined—to that which mustnecessarily SUFFER, and IS MEANT to suffer?And our sympathy—do ye not understandwhat our REVERSE sympathy applies to, whenit resists your sympathy as the worst of allpampering and enervation?—So it is sympathyAGAINST sympathy!—But to repeat it oncemore, there are higher problems than the prob-lems of pleasure and pain and sympathy; andall systems of philosophy which deal only withthese are naivetes.

226. WE IMMORALISTS.—This world withwhich WE are concerned, in which we have tofear and love, this almost invisible, inaudibleworld of delicate command and delicate obedi-ence, a world of "almost" in every respect, cap-tious, insidious, sharp, and tender—yes, it is

well protected from clumsy spectators and fa-miliar curiosity! We are woven into a strong netand garment of duties, and CANNOT disen-gage ourselves—precisely here, we are "men ofduty," even we! Occasionally, it is true, we dan-ce in our "chains" and betwixt our "swords"; itis none the less true that more often we gnashour teeth under the circumstances, and are im-patient at the secret hardship of our lot. But dowhat we will, fools and appearances say of us:"These are men WITHOUT duty,"—we havealways fools and appearances against us!

227. Honesty, granting that it is the virtue ofwhich we cannot rid ourselves, we free spir-its—well, we will labour at it with all our per-versity and love, and not tire of "perfecting"ourselves in OUR virtue, which alone remains:may its glance some day overspread like a gil-ded, blue, mocking twilight this aging civiliza-tion with its dull gloomy seriousness! And if,nevertheless, our honesty should one day grow

weary, and sigh, and stretch its limbs, and findus too hard, and would fain have it pleasanter,easier, and gentler, like an agreeable vice, let usremain HARD, we latest Stoics, and let us sendto its help whatever devilry we have in us:—our disgust at the clumsy and undefined, our"NITIMUR IN VETITUM," our love of adven-ture, our sharpened and fastidious curiosity,our most subtle, disguised, intellectual Will toPower and universal conquest, which ramblesand roves avidiously around all the realms ofthe future—let us go with all our "devils" to thehelp of our "God"! It is probable that peoplewill misunderstand and mistake us on that ac-count: what does it matter! They will say:"Their 'honesty'—that is their devilry, and noth-ing else!" What does it matter! And even if theywere right—have not all Gods hitherto beensuch sanctified, re-baptized devils? And afterall, what do we know of ourselves? And whatthe spirit that leads us wants TO BE CALLED?(It is a question of names.) And how many spir-

its we harbour? Our honesty, we free spirits—let us be careful lest it become our vanity, ourornament and ostentation, our limitation, ourstupidity! Every virtue inclines to stupidity,every stupidity to virtue; "stupid to the point ofsanctity," they say in Russia,—let us be carefullest out of pure honesty we eventually becomesaints and bores! Is not life a hundred times tooshort for us—to bore ourselves? One wouldhave to believe in eternal life in order to...

228. I hope to be forgiven for discovering thatall moral philosophy hitherto has been tediousand has belonged to the soporific appliances—and that "virtue," in my opinion, has been MO-RE injured by the TEDIOUSNESS of its advo-cates than by anything else; at the same time,however, I would not wish to overlook theirgeneral usefulness. It is desirable that as fewpeople as possible should reflect upon morals,and consequently it is very desirable that mor-als should not some day become interesting!

But let us not be afraid! Things still remain to-day as they have always been: I see no one inEurope who has (or DISCLOSES) an idea of thefact that philosophizing concerning moralsmight be conducted in a dangerous, captious,and ensnaring manner—that CALAMITYmight be involved therein. Observe, for exam-ple, the indefatigable, inevitable English utili-tarians: how ponderously and respectably theystalk on, stalk along (a Homeric metaphor ex-presses it better) in the footsteps of Bentham,just as he had already stalked in the footsteps ofthe respectable Helvetius! (no, he was not adangerous man, Helvetius, CE SENATEURPOCOCURANTE, to use an expression of Ga-liani). No new thought, nothing of the nature ofa finer turning or better expression of an oldthought, not even a proper history of what hasbeen previously thought on the subject: an IM-POSSIBLE literature, taking it all in all, unlessone knows how to leaven it with some mis-chief. In effect, the old English vice called

CANT, which is MORAL TARTUFFISM, hasinsinuated itself also into these moralists(whom one must certainly read with an eye totheir motives if one MUST read them), con-cealed this time under the new form of the sci-entific spirit; moreover, there is not absent fromthem a secret struggle with the pangs of con-science, from which a race of former Puritansmust naturally suffer, in all their scientific tink-ering with morals. (Is not a moralist the oppo-site of a Puritan? That is to say, as a thinkerwho regards morality as questionable, as wor-thy of interrogation, in short, as a problem? Ismoralizing not-immoral?) In the end, they allwant English morality to be recognized as au-thoritative, inasmuch as mankind, or the "gen-eral utility," or "the happiness of the greatestnumber,"—no! the happiness of ENGLAND,will be best served thereby. They would like, byall means, to convince themselves that the striv-ing after English happiness, I mean after COM-FORT and FASHION (and in the highest in-

stance, a seat in Parliament), is at the same timethe true path of virtue; in fact, that in so far asthere has been virtue in the world hitherto, ithas just consisted in such striving. Not one ofthose ponderous, conscience-stricken herding-animals (who undertake to advocate the causeof egoism as conducive to the general welfare)wants to have any knowledge or inkling of thefacts that the "general welfare" is no ideal, nogoal, no notion that can be at all grasped, but isonly a nostrum,—that what is fair to one MAYNOT at all be fair to another, that the require-ment of one morality for all is really a detri-ment to higher men, in short, that there is aDISTINCTION OF RANK between man andman, and consequently between morality andmorality. They are an unassuming and funda-mentally mediocre species of men, these utili-tarian Englishmen, and, as already remarked,in so far as they are tedious, one cannot thinkhighly enough of their utility. One ought even

to ENCOURAGE them, as has been partiallyattempted in the following rhymes:—

Hail, ye worthies, barrow-wheeling, "Longer—better," aye revealing,

Stiffer aye in head and knee; Unenraptured, never jesting, Mediocre everlasting,

SANS GENIE ET SANS ESPRIT!

229. In these later ages, which may be proud oftheir humanity, there still remains so muchfear, so much SUPERSTITION of the fear, of the"cruel wild beast," the mastering of which con-stitutes the very pride of these humaner ages—that even obvious truths, as if by the agreementof centuries, have long remained unuttered,because they have the appearance of helpingthe finally slain wild beast back to life again. Iperhaps risk something when I allow such atruth to escape; let others capture it again and

give it so much "milk of pious sentiment"[FOOTNOTE: An expression from Schiller'sWilliam Tell, Act IV, Scene 3.] to drink, that itwill lie down quiet and forgotten, in its oldcorner.—One ought to learn anew about cru-elty, and open one's eyes; one ought at last tolearn impatience, in order that such immodestgross errors—as, for instance, have been fos-tered by ancient and modern philosophers withregard to tragedy—may no longer wanderabout virtuously and boldly. Almost every-thing that we call "higher culture" is basedupon the spiritualising and intensifying ofCRUELTY—this is my thesis; the "wild beast"has not been slain at all, it lives, it flourishes, ithas only been—transfigured. That which con-stitutes the painful delight of tragedy is cruelty;that which operates agreeably in so-calledtragic sympathy, and at the basis even of every-thing sublime, up to the highest and most deli-cate thrills of metaphysics, obtains its sweet-ness solely from the intermingled ingredient of

cruelty. What the Roman enjoys in the arena,the Christian in the ecstasies of the cross, theSpaniard at the sight of the faggot and stake, orof the bull-fight, the present-day Japanese whopresses his way to the tragedy, the workman ofthe Parisian suburbs who has a homesicknessfor bloody revolutions, the Wagnerienne who,with unhinged will, "undergoes" the perform-ance of "Tristan and Isolde"—what all theseenjoy, and strive with mysterious ardour todrink in, is the philtre of the great Circe "cru-elty." Here, to be sure, we must put aside en-tirely the blundering psychology of formertimes, which could only teach with regard tocruelty that it originated at the sight of the suf-fering of OTHERS: there is an abundant, super-abundant enjoyment even in one's own suffer-ing, in causing one's own suffering—and wher-ever man has allowed himself to be persuadedto self-denial in the RELIGIOUS sense, or toself-mutilation, as among the Phoenicians andascetics, or in general, to desensualisation, de-

carnalisation, and contrition, to Puritanical re-pentance-spasms, to vivisection of conscienceand to Pascal-like SACRIFIZIA DELL' INTEL-LETO, he is secretly allured and impelled for-wards by his cruelty, by the dangerous thrill ofcruelty TOWARDS HIMSELF.—Finally, let usconsider that even the seeker of knowledgeoperates as an artist and glorifier of cruelty, inthat he compels his spirit to perceive AGAINSTits own inclination, and often enough againstthe wishes of his heart:—he forces it to say Nay,where he would like to affirm, love, and adore;indeed, every instance of taking a thing pro-foundly and fundamentally, is a violation, anintentional injuring of the fundamental will ofthe spirit, which instinctively aims at appear-ance and superficiality,—even in every desirefor knowledge there is a drop of cruelty.

230. Perhaps what I have said here about a"fundamental will of the spirit" may not be un-derstood without further details; I may be al-

lowed a word of explanation.—That imperioussomething which is popularly called "the spi-rit," wishes to be master internally and exter-nally, and to feel itself master; it has the will ofa multiplicity for a simplicity, a binding, tam-ing, imperious, and essentially ruling will. Itsrequirements and capacities here, are the sameas those assigned by physiologists to every-thing that lives, grows, and multiplies. Thepower of the spirit to appropriate foreign ele-ments reveals itself in a strong tendency to as-similate the new to the old, to simplify themanifold, to overlook or repudiate the abso-lutely contradictory; just as it arbitrarily re-underlines, makes prominent, and falsifies foritself certain traits and lines in the foreign ele-ments, in every portion of the "outside world."Its object thereby is the incorporation of new"experiences," the assortment of new things inthe old arrangements—in short, growth; ormore properly, the FEELING of growth, thefeeling of increased power—is its object. This

same will has at its service an apparently op-posed impulse of the spirit, a suddenly adoptedpreference of ignorance, of arbitrary shuttingout, a closing of windows, an inner denial ofthis or that, a prohibition to approach, a sort ofdefensive attitude against much that is know-able, a contentment with obscurity, with theshutting-in horizon, an acceptance and ap-proval of ignorance: as that which is all neces-sary according to the degree of its appropriat-ing power, its "digestive power," to speak figu-ratively (and in fact "the spirit" resembles astomach more than anything else). Here alsobelong an occasional propensity of the spirit tolet itself be deceived (perhaps with a waggishsuspicion that it is NOT so and so, but is onlyallowed to pass as such), a delight in uncer-tainty and ambiguity, an exulting enjoyment ofarbitrary, out-of-the-way narrowness and mys-tery, of the too-near, of the foreground, of themagnified, the diminished, the misshapen, thebeautified—an enjoyment of the arbitrariness of

all these manifestations of power. Finally, inthis connection, there is the not unscrupulousreadiness of the spirit to deceive other spiritsand dissemble before them—the constantpressing and straining of a creating, shaping,changeable power: the spirit enjoys therein itscraftiness and its variety of disguises, it enjoysalso its feeling of security therein—it is pre-cisely by its Protean arts that it is best protectedand concealed!—COUNTER TO this propensityfor appearance, for simplification, for a dis-guise, for a cloak, in short, for an outside—forevery outside is a cloak—there operates thesublime tendency of the man of knowledge,which takes, and INSISTS on taking things pro-foundly, variously, and thoroughly; as a kindof cruelty of the intellectual conscience andtaste, which every courageous thinker will ac-knowledge in himself, provided, as it ought tobe, that he has sharpened and hardened his eyesufficiently long for introspection, and is accus-tomed to severe discipline and even severe

words. He will say: "There is something cruelin the tendency of my spirit": let the virtuousand amiable try to convince him that it is notso! In fact, it would sound nicer, if, instead ofour cruelty, perhaps our "extravagant honesty"were talked about, whispered about, and glori-fied—we free, VERY free spirits—and someday perhaps SUCH will actually be our—posthumous glory! Meanwhile—for there isplenty of time until then—we should be leastinclined to deck ourselves out in such floridand fringed moral verbiage; our whole formerwork has just made us sick of this taste and itssprightly exuberance. They are beautiful, glis-tening, jingling, festive words: honesty, love oftruth, love of wisdom, sacrifice for knowledge,heroism of the truthful—there is something inthem that makes one's heart swell with pride.But we anchorites and marmots have long agopersuaded ourselves in all the secrecy of ananchorite's conscience, that this worthy paradeof verbiage also belongs to the old false adorn-

ment, frippery, and gold-dust of unconscioushuman vanity, and that even under such flat-tering colour and repainting, the terrible origi-nal text HOMO NATURA must again be rec-ognized. In effect, to translate man back againinto nature; to master the many vain and vi-sionary interpretations and subordinate mean-ings which have hitherto been scratched anddaubed over the eternal original text, HOMONATURA; to bring it about that man shallhenceforth stand before man as he now, hard-ened by the discipline of science, stands beforethe OTHER forms of nature, with fearlessOedipus-eyes, and stopped Ulysses-ears, deafto the enticements of old metaphysical bird-catchers, who have piped to him far too long:"Thou art more! thou art higher! thou hast adifferent origin!"—this may be a strange andfoolish task, but that it is a TASK, who candeny! Why did we choose it, this foolish task?Or, to put the question differently: "Why know-ledge at all?" Every one will ask us about this.

And thus pressed, we, who have asked our-selves the question a hundred times, have notfound and cannot find any better answer....

231. Learning alters us, it does what all nour-ishment does that does not merely "conserve"—as the physiologist knows. But at the bottom ofour souls, quite "down below," there is cer-tainly something unteachable, a granite of spiri-tual fate, of predetermined decision and answerto predetermined, chosen questions. In eachcardinal problem there speaks an unchangeable"I am this"; a thinker cannot learn anew aboutman and woman, for instance, but can onlylearn fully—he can only follow to the end whatis "fixed" about them in himself. Occasionallywe find certain solutions of problems whichmake strong beliefs for us; perhaps they arehenceforth called "convictions." Later on—onesees in them only footsteps to self-knowledge,guide-posts to the problem which we ourselvesARE—or more correctly to the great stupidity

which we embody, our spiritual fate, theUNTEACHABLE in us, quite "down below."—In view of this liberal compliment which I havejust paid myself, permission will perhaps bemore readily allowed me to utter some truthsabout "woman as she is," provided that it isknown at the outset how literally they aremerely—MY truths.

232. Woman wishes to be independent, andtherefore she begins to enlighten men about"woman as she is"—THIS is one of the worstdevelopments of the general UGLIFYING ofEurope. For what must these clumsy attemptsof feminine scientificality and self-exposurebring to light! Woman has so much cause forshame; in woman there is so much pedantry,superficiality, schoolmasterliness, petty pre-sumption, unbridledness, and indiscretion con-cealed—study only woman's behaviour to-wards children!—which has really been bestrestrained and dominated hitherto by the FEAR

of man. Alas, if ever the "eternally tedious inwoman"—she has plenty of it!—is allowed toventure forth! if she begins radically and onprinciple to unlearn her wisdom and art-ofcharming, of playing, of frightening away sor-row, of alleviating and taking easily; if she for-gets her delicate aptitude for agreeable desires!Female voices are already raised, which, bySaint Aristophanes! make one afraid:—withmedical explicitness it is stated in a threateningmanner what woman first and last REQUIRESfrom man. Is it not in the very worst taste thatwoman thus sets herself up to be scientific?Enlightenment hitherto has fortunately beenmen's affair, men's gift—we remained there-with "among ourselves"; and in the end, inview of all that women write about "woman,"we may well have considerable doubt as towhether woman really DESIRES enlightenmentabout herself—and CAN desire it. If womandoes not thereby seek a new ORNAMENT forherself—I believe ornamentation belongs to the

eternally feminine?—why, then, she wishes tomake herself feared: perhaps she thereby wis-hes to get the mastery. But she does not wanttruth—what does woman care for truth? Fromthe very first, nothing is more foreign, morerepugnant, or more hostile to woman thantruth—her great art is falsehood, her chief con-cern is appearance and beauty. Let us confessit, we men: we honour and love this very artand this very instinct in woman: we who havethe hard task, and for our recreation gladlyseek the company of beings under whosehands, glances, and delicate follies, our seri-ousness, our gravity, and profundity appearalmost like follies to us. Finally, I ask the ques-tion: Did a woman herself ever acknowledgeprofundity in a woman's mind, or justice in awoman's heart? And is it not true that on thewhole "woman" has hitherto been most de-spised by woman herself, and not at all byus?—We men desire that woman should notcontinue to compromise herself by enlightening

us; just as it was man's care and the considera-tion for woman, when the church decreed:mulier taceat in ecclesia. It was to the benefit ofwoman when Napoleon gave the too eloquentMadame de Stael to understand: mulier taceatin politicis!—and in my opinion, he is a truefriend of woman who calls out to women to-day: mulier taceat de mulierel.

233. It betrays corruption of the instincts—apartfrom the fact that it betrays bad taste—when awoman refers to Madame Roland, or Madamede Stael, or Monsieur George Sand, as thoughsomething were proved thereby in favour of"woman as she is." Among men, these are thethree comical women as they are—nothing mo-re!—and just the best involuntary counter-arguments against feminine emancipation andautonomy.

234. Stupidity in the kitchen; woman as cook;the terrible thoughtlessness with which thefeeding of the family and the master of the

house is managed! Woman does not under-stand what food means, and she insists on be-ing cook! If woman had been a thinking crea-ture, she should certainly, as cook for thou-sands of years, have discovered the most im-portant physiological facts, and should likewisehave got possession of the healing art! Throughbad female cooks—through the entire lack ofreason in the kitchen—the development ofmankind has been longest retarded and mostinterfered with: even today matters are verylittle better. A word to High School girls.

235. There are turns and casts of fancy, thereare sentences, little handfuls of words, in whicha whole culture, a whole society suddenly crys-tallises itself. Among these is the incidentalremark of Madame de Lambert to her son:"MON AMI, NE VOUS PERMETTEZ JAMAISQUE DES FOLIES, QUI VOUS FERONTGRAND PLAISIR"—the motherliest and wisest

remark, by the way, that was ever addressed toa son.

236. I have no doubt that every noble womanwill oppose what Dante and Goethe believedabout woman—the former when he sang,"ELLA GUARDAVA SUSO, ED IO IN LEI," andthe latter when he interpreted it, "the eternallyfeminine draws us ALOFT"; for THIS is justwhat she believes of the eternally masculine.

237.SEVEN APOPHTHEGMS FOR WOMEN

How the longest ennui flees, When a man co-mes to our knees!

Age, alas! and science staid, Furnish even weakvirtue aid.

Sombre garb and silence meet: Dress for everydame—discreet.

Whom I thank when in my bliss? God!—andmy good tailoress!

Young, a flower-decked cavern home; Old, adragon thence doth roam.

Noble title, leg that's fine, Man as well: Oh,were HE mine!

Speech in brief and sense in mass—Slippery forthe jenny-ass!

237A. Woman has hitherto been treated by menlike birds, which, losing their way, have comedown among them from an elevation: as some-thing delicate, fragile, wild, strange, sweet, andanimating—but as something also which mustbe cooped up to prevent it flying away.

238. To be mistaken in the fundamental prob-lem of "man and woman," to deny here the pro-foundest antagonism and the necessity for aneternally hostile tension, to dream here perhaps

of equal rights, equal training, equal claims andobligations: that is a TYPICAL sign of shallow-mindedness; and a thinker who has provedhimself shallow at this dangerous spot—shallow in instinct!—may generally be re-garded as suspicious, nay more, as betrayed, asdiscovered; he will probably prove too "short"for all fundamental questions of life, future aswell as present, and will be unable to descendinto ANY of the depths. On the other hand, aman who has depth of spirit as well as of de-sires, and has also the depth of benevolencewhich is capable of severity and harshness, andeasily confounded with them, can only think ofwoman as ORIENTALS do: he must conceiveof her as a possession, as confinable property,as a being predestined for service and accom-plishing her mission therein—he must take hisstand in this matter upon the immense rational-ity of Asia, upon the superiority of the instinctof Asia, as the Greeks did formerly; those bestheirs and scholars of Asia—who, as is well

known, with their INCREASING culture andamplitude of power, from Homer to the time ofPericles, became gradually STRICTER towardswoman, in short, more Oriental. HOW neces-sary, HOW logical, even HOW humanely de-sirable this was, let us consider for ourselves!

239. The weaker sex has in no previous agebeen treated with so much respect by men as atpresent—this belongs to the tendency and fun-damental taste of democracy, in the same wayas disrespectfulness to old age—what wonderis it that abuse should be immediately made ofthis respect? They want more, they learn tomake claims, the tribute of respect is at last feltto be well-nigh galling; rivalry for rights, in-deed actual strife itself, would be preferred: ina word, woman is losing modesty. And let usimmediately add that she is also losing taste.She is unlearning to FEAR man: but the womanwho "unlearns to fear" sacrifices her most wo-manly instincts. That woman should venture

forward when the fear-inspiring quality inman—or more definitely, the MAN in man—isno longer either desired or fully developed, isreasonable enough and also intelligible enough;what is more difficult to understand is that pre-cisely thereby—woman deteriorates. This iswhat is happening nowadays: let us not de-ceive ourselves about it! Wherever the indus-trial spirit has triumphed over the military andaristocratic spirit, woman strives for the eco-nomic and legal independence of a clerk:"woman as clerkess" is inscribed on the portalof the modern society which is in course offormation. While she thus appropriates newrights, aspires to be "master," and inscribes"progress" of woman on her flags and banners,the very opposite realises itself with terribleobviousness: WOMAN RETROGRADES. Sincethe French Revolution the influence of womanin Europe has DECLINED in proportion as shehas increased her rights and claims; and the"emancipation of woman," insofar as it is de-

sired and demanded by women themselves(and not only by masculine shallow-pates),thus proves to be a remarkable symptom of theincreased weakening and deadening of themost womanly instincts. There is STUPIDITYin this movement, an almost masculine stupid-ity, of which a well-reared woman—who isalways a sensible woman—might be heartilyashamed. To lose the intuition as to the groundupon which she can most surely achieve vic-tory; to neglect exercise in the use of her properweapons; to let-herself-go before man, perhapseven "to the book," where formerly she keptherself in control and in refined, artful humil-ity; to neutralize with her virtuous audacityman's faith in a VEILED, fundamentally differ-ent ideal in woman, something eternally, neces-sarily feminine; to emphatically and loqua-ciously dissuade man from the idea thatwoman must be preserved, cared for, pro-tected, and indulged, like some delicate,strangely wild, and often pleasant domestic

animal; the clumsy and indignant collection ofeverything of the nature of servitude andbondage which the position of woman in thehitherto existing order of society has entailedand still entails (as though slavery were acounter-argument, and not rather a conditionof every higher culture, of every elevation ofculture):—what does all this betoken, if not adisintegration of womanly instincts, a defemi-nising? Certainly, there are enough of idioticfriends and corrupters of woman among thelearned asses of the masculine sex, who advisewoman to defeminize herself in this manner,and to imitate all the stupidities from which"man" in Europe, European "manliness," suf-fers,—who would like to lower woman to "ge-neral culture," indeed even to newspaper read-ing and meddling with politics. Here and therethey wish even to make women into free spiritsand literary workers: as though a woman with-out piety would not be something perfectlyobnoxious or ludicrous to a profound and god-

less man;—almost everywhere her nerves arebeing ruined by the most morbid and danger-ous kind of music (our latest German music),and she is daily being made more hystericaland more incapable of fulfilling her first andlast function, that of bearing robust children.They wish to "cultivate" her in general stillmore, and intend, as they say, to make the"weaker sex" STRONG by culture: as if historydid not teach in the most emphatic manner thatthe "cultivating" of mankind and his weaken-ing—that is to say, the weakening, dissipating,and languishing of his FORCE OF WILL—havealways kept pace with one another, and thatthe most powerful and influential women inthe world (and lastly, the mother of Napoleon)had just to thank their force of will—and nottheir schoolmasters—for their power and as-cendancy over men. That which inspires re-spect in woman, and often enough fear also, isher NATURE, which is more "natural" than thatof man, her genuine, carnivora-like, cunning

flexibility, her tiger-claws beneath the glove,her NAIVETE in egoism, her untrainablenessand innate wildness, the incomprehensibleness,extent, and deviation of her desires and virtues.That which, in spite of fear, excites one's sym-pathy for the dangerous and beautiful cat,"woman," is that she seems more afflicted, morevulnerable, more necessitous of love, and morecondemned to disillusionment than any othercreature. Fear and sympathy it is with thesefeelings that man has hitherto stood in the pre-sence of woman, always with one foot alreadyin tragedy, which rends while it delights—What? And all that is now to be at an end? Andthe DISENCHANTMENT of woman is in pro-gress? The tediousness of woman is slowlyevolving? Oh Europe! Europe! We know thehorned animal which was always most attrac-tive to thee, from which danger is ever againthreatening thee! Thy old fable might once mo-re become "history"—an immense stupiditymight once again overmaster thee and carry

thee away! And no God concealed beneath it—no! only an "idea," a "modern idea"!

CHAPTER VIII. PEOPLES AND COUN-TRIES

240. I HEARD, once again for the first time,Richard Wagner's overture to the Mastersinger:it is a piece of magnificent, gorgeous, heavy,latter-day art, which has the pride to presup-pose two centuries of music as still living, inorder that it may be understood:—it is an hon-our to Germans that such a pride did not mis-calculate! What flavours and forces, what sea-sons and climes do we not find mingled in it! Itimpresses us at one time as ancient, at anothertime as foreign, bitter, and too modern, it is asarbitrary as it is pompously traditional, it is not

infrequently roguish, still oftener rough andcoarse—it has fire and courage, and at the sametime the loose, dun-coloured skin of fruitswhich ripen too late. It flows broad and full:and suddenly there is a moment of inexplicablehesitation, like a gap that opens between causeand effect, an oppression that makes us dream,almost a nightmare; but already it broadensand widens anew, the old stream of delight—the most manifold delight,—of old and newhappiness; including ESPECIALLY the joy ofthe artist in himself, which he refuses to con-ceal, his astonished, happy cognizance of hismastery of the expedients here employed, thenew, newly acquired, imperfectly tested expe-dients of art which he apparently betrays to us.All in all, however, no beauty, no South, noth-ing of the delicate southern clearness of the sky,nothing of grace, no dance, hardly a will tologic; a certain clumsiness even, which is alsoemphasized, as though the artist wished to sayto us: "It is part of my intention"; a cumbersome

drapery, something arbitrarily barbaric andceremonious, a flirring of learned and vener-able conceits and witticisms; something Ger-man in the best and worst sense of the word,something in the German style, manifold, form-less, and inexhaustible; a certain German po-tency and super-plenitude of soul, which is notafraid to hide itself under the RAFFINEMENTSof decadence—which, perhaps, feels itself mostat ease there; a real, genuine token of the Ger-man soul, which is at the same time young andaged, too ripe and yet still too rich in futurity.This kind of music expresses best what I thinkof the Germans: they belong to the day beforeyesterday and the day after tomorrow—THEYHAVE AS YET NO TODAY.

241. We "good Europeans," we also have hourswhen we allow ourselves a warm-hearted pa-triotism, a plunge and relapse into old lovesand narrow views—I have just given an exam-ple of it—hours of national excitement, of pa-

triotic anguish, and all other sorts of old-fashioned floods of sentiment. Duller spiritsmay perhaps only get done with what confinesits operations in us to hours and plays itself outin hours—in a considerable time: some in half ayear, others in half a lifetime, according to thespeed and strength with which they digest and"change their material." Indeed, I could think ofsluggish, hesitating races, which even in ourrapidly moving Europe, would require half acentury ere they could surmount such atavisticattacks of patriotism and soil-attachment, andreturn once more to reason, that is to say, to"good Europeanism." And while digressing onthis possibility, I happen to become an ear-witness of a conversation between two old pa-triots—they were evidently both hard of hear-ing and consequently spoke all the louder. "HEhas as much, and knows as much, philosophyas a peasant or a corps-student," said the one—"he is still innocent. But what does that matternowadays! It is the age of the masses: they lie

on their belly before everything that is massive.And so also in politicis. A statesman who rearsup for them a new Tower of Babel, some mon-strosity of empire and power, they call 'great'—what does it matter that we more prudent andconservative ones do not meanwhile give upthe old belief that it is only the great thoughtthat gives greatness to an action or affair. Sup-posing a statesman were to bring his peopleinto the position of being obliged henceforth topractise 'high politics,' for which they were bynature badly endowed and prepared, so thatthey would have to sacrifice their old and reli-able virtues, out of love to a new and doubtfulmediocrity;—supposing a statesman were tocondemn his people generally to 'practise poli-tics,' when they have hitherto had somethingbetter to do and think about, and when in thedepths of their souls they have been unable tofree themselves from a prudent loathing of therestlessness, emptiness, and noisy wranglingsof the essentially politics-practising nations;—

supposing such a statesman were to stimulatethe slumbering passions and avidities of hispeople, were to make a stigma out of their for-mer diffidence and delight in aloofness, an of-fence out of their exoticism and hidden perma-nency, were to depreciate their most radicalproclivities, subvert their consciences, maketheir minds narrow, and their tastes 'national'—what! a statesman who should do all this,which his people would have to do penance forthroughout their whole future, if they had afuture, such a statesman would be GREAT,would he?"—"Undoubtedly!" replied the otherold patriot vehemently, "otherwise he COULDNOT have done it! It was mad perhaps to wishsuch a thing! But perhaps everything great hasbeen just as mad at its commencement!"—"Misuse of words!" cried his interlocutor, con-tradictorily—"strong! strong! Strong and mad!NOT great!"—The old men had obviously be-come heated as they thus shouted their "truths"in each other's faces, but I, in my happiness and

apartness, considered how soon a stronger onemay become master of the strong, and also thatthere is a compensation for the intellectual su-perficialising of a nation—namely, in the deep-ening of another.

242. Whether we call it "civilization," or "hu-manising," or "progress," which now distin-guishes the European, whether we call it sim-ply, without praise or blame, by the politicalformula the DEMOCRATIC movement inEurope—behind all the moral and politicalforegrounds pointed to by such formulas, animmense PHYSIOLOGICAL PROCESS goes on,which is ever extending the process of the as-similation of Europeans, their increasing de-tachment from the conditions under which,climatically and hereditarily, united racesoriginate, their increasing independence ofevery definite milieu, that for centuries wouldfain inscribe itself with equal demands on souland body,—that is to say, the slow emergence

of an essentially SUPER-NATIONAL and no-madic species of man, who possesses, physio-logically speaking, a maximum of the art andpower of adaptation as his typical distinction.This process of the EVOLVING EUROPEAN,which can be retarded in its TEMPO by greatrelapses, but will perhaps just gain and growthereby in vehemence and depth—the still-raging storm and stress of "national sentiment"pertains to it, and also the anarchism which isappearing at present—this process will proba-bly arrive at results on which its naive propaga-tors and panegyrists, the apostles of "modernideas," would least care to reckon. The samenew conditions under which on an average alevelling and mediocrising of man will takeplace—a useful, industrious, variously service-able, and clever gregarious man—are in thehighest degree suitable to give rise to excep-tional men of the most dangerous and attrac-tive qualities. For, while the capacity for adap-tation, which is every day trying changing con-

ditions, and begins a new work with everygeneration, almost with every decade, makesthe POWERFULNESS of the type impossible;while the collective impression of such futureEuropeans will probably be that of numerous,talkative, weak-willed, and very handy work-men who REQUIRE a master, a commander, asthey require their daily bread; while, therefore,the democratising of Europe will tend to theproduction of a type prepared for SLAVERY inthe most subtle sense of the term: the STRONGman will necessarily in individual and excep-tional cases, become stronger and richer thanhe has perhaps ever been before—owing to theunprejudicedness of his schooling, owing to theimmense variety of practice, art, and disguise. Imeant to say that the democratising of Europeis at the same time an involuntary arrangementfor the rearing of TYRANTS—taking the wordin all its meanings, even in its most spiritualsense.

243. I hear with pleasure that our sun is movingrapidly towards the constellation Hercules: andI hope that the men on this earth will do likethe sun. And we foremost, we good Europeans!

244. There was a time when it was customary tocall Germans "deep" by way of distinction; butnow that the most successful type of new Ger-manism is covetous of quite other honours, andperhaps misses "smartness" in all that hasdepth, it is almost opportune and patriotic todoubt whether we did not formerly deceiveourselves with that commendation: in short,whether German depth is not at bottom some-thing different and worse—and somethingfrom which, thank God, we are on the point ofsuccessfully ridding ourselves. Let us try, then,to relearn with regard to German depth; theonly thing necessary for the purpose is a littlevivisection of the German soul.—The Germansoul is above all manifold, varied in its source,aggregated and super-imposed, rather than

actually built: this is owing to its origin. AGerman who would embolden himself to as-sert: "Two souls, alas, dwell in my breast,"would make a bad guess at the truth, or, morecorrectly, he would come far short of the truthabout the number of souls. As a people madeup of the most extraordinary mixing and min-gling of races, perhaps even with a preponder-ance of the pre-Aryan element as the "people ofthe centre" in every sense of the term, the Ger-mans are more intangible, more ample, morecontradictory, more unknown, more incalcula-ble, more surprising, and even more terrifyingthan other peoples are to themselves:—theyescape DEFINITION, and are thereby alone thedespair of the French. It IS characteristic of theGermans that the question: "What is German?"never dies out among them. Kotzebue certainlyknew his Germans well enough: "We areknown," they cried jubilantly to him—but Sandalso thought he knew them. Jean Paul knewwhat he was doing when he declared himself

incensed at Fichte's lying but patriotic flatteriesand exaggerations,—but it is probable thatGoethe thought differently about Germansfrom Jean Paul, even though he acknowledgedhim to be right with regard to Fichte. It is aquestion what Goethe really thought about theGermans?—But about many things around himhe never spoke explicitly, and all his life heknew how to keep an astute silence—probablyhe had good reason for it. It is certain that itwas not the "Wars of Independence" that madehim look up more joyfully, any more than itwas the French Revolution,—the event on ac-count of which he RECONSTRUCTED his"Faust," and indeed the whole problem of"man," was the appearance of Napoleon. Thereare words of Goethe in which he condemnswith impatient severity, as from a foreign land,that which Germans take a pride in, he oncedefined the famous German turn of mind as"Indulgence towards its own and others' weak-nesses." Was he wrong? it is characteristic of

Germans that one is seldom entirely wrongabout them. The German soul has passages andgalleries in it, there are caves, hiding-places,and dungeons therein, its disorder has much ofthe charm of the mysterious, the German iswell acquainted with the bypaths to chaos. Andas everything loves its symbol, so the Germanloves the clouds and all that is obscure, evolv-ing, crepuscular, damp, and shrouded, it seemsto him that everything uncertain, undeveloped,self-displacing, and growing is "deep". TheGerman himself does not EXIST, he is BECOM-ING, he is "developing himself". "Develop-ment" is therefore the essentially German dis-covery and hit in the great domain of philoso-phical formulas,—a ruling idea, which, to-gether with German beer and German music, islabouring to Germanise all Europe. Foreignersare astonished and attracted by the riddleswhich the conflicting nature at the basis of theGerman soul propounds to them (riddles whichHegel systematised and Richard Wagner has in

the end set to music). "Good-natured and spite-ful"—such a juxtaposition, preposterous in thecase of every other people, is unfortunatelyonly too often justified in Germany one hasonly to live for a while among Swabians toknow this! The clumsiness of the German scho-lar and his social distastefulness agree alarm-ingly well with his physical rope-dancing andnimble boldness, of which all the Gods havelearnt to be afraid. If any one wishes to see the"German soul" demonstrated ad oculos, let himonly look at German taste, at German arts andmanners what boorish indifference to "taste"!How the noblest and the commonest stand the-re in juxtaposition! How disorderly and howrich is the whole constitution of this soul! TheGerman DRAGS at his soul, he drags at every-thing he experiences. He digests his events bad-ly; he never gets "done" with them; and Ger-man depth is often only a difficult, hesitating"digestion." And just as all chronic invalids, alldyspeptics like what is convenient, so the Ger-

man loves "frankness" and "honesty"; it is soCONVENIENT to be frank and honest!—Thisconfidingness, this complaisance, this showing-the-cards of German HONESTY, is probablythe most dangerous and most successful dis-guise which the German is up to nowadays: itis his proper Mephistophelean art; with this hecan "still achieve much"! The German lets him-self go, and thereby gazes with faithful, blue,empty German eyes—and other countries im-mediately confound him with his dressing-gown!—I meant to say that, let "German depth"be what it will—among ourselves alone weperhaps take the liberty to laugh at it—we shalldo well to continue henceforth to honour itsappearance and good name, and not barteraway too cheaply our old reputation as a peo-ple of depth for Prussian "smartness," and Ber-lin wit and sand. It is wise for a people to pose,and LET itself be regarded, as profound, clum-sy, good-natured, honest, and foolish: it mighteven be—profound to do so! Finally, we should

do honour to our name—we are not called the"TIUSCHE VOLK" (deceptive people) for noth-ing....

245. The "good old" time is past, it sang itselfout in Mozart—how happy are WE that hisROCOCO still speaks to us, that his "goodcompany," his tender enthusiasm, his childishdelight in the Chinese and its flourishes, hiscourtesy of heart, his longing for the elegant,the amorous, the tripping, the tearful, and hisbelief in the South, can still appeal to SOME-THING LEFT in us! Ah, some time or other itwill be over with it!—but who can doubt that itwill be over still sooner with the intelligenceand taste for Beethoven! For he was only thelast echo of a break and transition in style, andNOT, like Mozart, the last echo of a great Euro-pean taste which had existed for centuries. Bee-thoven is the intermediate event between anold mellow soul that is constantly breakingdown, and a future over-young soul that is al-

ways COMING; there is spread over his musicthe twilight of eternal loss and eternal extrava-gant hope,—the same light in which Europewas bathed when it dreamed with Rousseau,when it danced round the Tree of Liberty of theRevolution, and finally almost fell down inadoration before Napoleon. But how rapidlydoes THIS very sentiment now pale, how diffi-cult nowadays is even the APPREHENSION ofthis sentiment, how strangely does the lan-guage of Rousseau, Schiller, Shelley, and Byronsound to our ear, in whom COLLECTIVELYthe same fate of Europe was able to SPEAK,which knew how to SING in Beethoven!—Whatever German music came afterwards, be-longs to Romanticism, that is to say, to a mo-vement which, historically considered, was stillshorter, more fleeting, and more superficialthan that great interlude, the transition of Eu-rope from Rousseau to Napoleon, and to therise of democracy. Weber—but what do WEcare nowadays for "Freischutz" and "Oberon"!

Or Marschner's "Hans Heiling" and "Vampyre"!Or even Wagner's "Tannhauser"! That is extinct,although not yet forgotten music. This wholemusic of Romanticism, besides, was not nobleenough, was not musical enough, to maintainits position anywhere but in the theatre andbefore the masses; from the beginning it wassecond-rate music, which was little thought ofby genuine musicians. It was different withFelix Mendelssohn, that halcyon master, who,on account of his lighter, purer, happier soul,quickly acquired admiration, and was equallyquickly forgotten: as the beautiful EPISODE ofGerman music. But with regard to RobertSchumann, who took things seriously, and hasbeen taken seriously from the first—he was thelast that founded a school,—do we not nowregard it as a satisfaction, a relief, a deliverance,that this very Romanticism of Schumann's hasbeen surmounted? Schumann, fleeing into the"Saxon Switzerland" of his soul, with a halfWerther-like, half Jean-Paul-like nature (assur-

edly not like Beethoven! assuredly not likeByron!)—his MANFRED music is a mistakeand a misunderstanding to the extent of injus-tice; Schumann, with his taste, which was fun-damentally a PETTY taste (that is to say, a dan-gerous propensity—doubly dangerous amongGermans—for quiet lyricism and intoxicationof the feelings), going constantly apart, timidlywithdrawing and retiring, a noble weaklingwho revelled in nothing but anonymous joyand sorrow, from the beginning a sort of girland NOLI ME TANGERE—this Schumann wasalready merely a GERMAN event in music, andno longer a European event, as Beethoven hadbeen, as in a still greater degree Mozart hadbeen; with Schumann German music wasthreatened with its greatest danger, that of LO-SING THE VOICE FOR THE SOUL OF EURO-PE and sinking into a merely national affair.

246. What a torture are books written in Ger-man to a reader who has a THIRD ear! How

indignantly he stands beside the slowly turningswamp of sounds without tune and rhythmswithout dance, which Germans call a "book"!And even the German who READS books!How lazily, how reluctantly, how badly hereads! How many Germans know, and considerit obligatory to know, that there is ART in everygood sentence—art which must be divined, ifthe sentence is to be understood! If there is amisunderstanding about its TEMPO, for in-stance, the sentence itself is misunderstood!That one must not be doubtful about therhythm-determining syllables, that one shouldfeel the breaking of the too-rigid symmetry asintentional and as a charm, that one shouldlend a fine and patient ear to every STACCATOand every RUBATO, that one should divine thesense in the sequence of the vowels and diph-thongs, and how delicately and richly they canbe tinted and retinted in the order of their ar-rangement—who among book-reading Ger-mans is complaisant enough to recognize such

duties and requirements, and to listen to somuch art and intention in language? After all,one just "has no ear for it"; and so the mostmarked contrasts of style are not heard, and themost delicate artistry is as it were SQUAN-DERED on the deaf.—These were my thoughtswhen I noticed how clumsily and unintuitivelytwo masters in the art of prose-writing havebeen confounded: one, whose words dropdown hesitatingly and coldly, as from the roofof a damp cave—he counts on their dull soundand echo; and another who manipulates hislanguage like a flexible sword, and from hisarm down into his toes feels the dangerousbliss of the quivering, over-sharp blade, whichwishes to bite, hiss, and cut.

247. How little the German style has to do withharmony and with the ear, is shown by the factthat precisely our good musicians themselveswrite badly. The German does not read aloud,he does not read for the ear, but only with his

eyes; he has put his ears away in the drawer forthe time. In antiquity when a man read—whichwas seldom enough—he read something tohimself, and in a loud voice; they were sur-prised when any one read silently, and soughtsecretly the reason of it. In a loud voice: that isto say, with all the swellings, inflections, andvariations of key and changes of TEMPO, inwhich the ancient PUBLIC world took delight.The laws of the written style were then the sa-me as those of the spoken style; and these lawsdepended partly on the surprising develop-ment and refined requirements of the ear andlarynx; partly on the strength, endurance, andpower of the ancient lungs. In the ancient sense,a period is above all a physiological whole,inasmuch as it is comprised in one breath. Suchperiods as occur in Demosthenes and Cicero,swelling twice and sinking twice, and all in onebreath, were pleasures to the men of ANTIQ-UITY, who knew by their own schooling howto appreciate the virtue therein, the rareness

and the difficulty in the deliverance of such aperiod;—WE have really no right to the BIGperiod, we modern men, who are short ofbreath in every sense! Those ancients, indeed,were all of them dilettanti in speaking, conse-quently connoisseurs, consequently critics—they thus brought their orators to the highestpitch; in the same manner as in the last century,when all Italian ladies and gentlemen knewhow to sing, the virtuosoship of song (and withit also the art of melody) reached its elevation.In Germany, however (until quite recentlywhen a kind of platform eloquence began shylyand awkwardly enough to flutter its youngwings), there was properly speaking only onekind of public and APPROXIMATELY artisticaldiscourse—that delivered from the pulpit. Thepreacher was the only one in Germany whoknew the weight of a syllable or a word, inwhat manner a sentence strikes, springs, rus-hes, flows, and comes to a close; he alone had aconscience in his ears, often enough a bad con-

science: for reasons are not lacking why profi-ciency in oratory should be especially seldomattained by a German, or almost always toolate. The masterpiece of German prose is there-fore with good reason the masterpiece of itsgreatest preacher: the BIBLE has hitherto beenthe best German book. Compared with Luther'sBible, almost everything else is merely "litera-ture"—something which has not grown inGermany, and therefore has not taken and doesnot take root in German hearts, as the Bible hasdone.

248. There are two kinds of geniuses: one whichabove all engenders and seeks to engender, andanother which willingly lets itself be fructifiedand brings forth. And similarly, among thegifted nations, there are those on whom thewoman's problem of pregnancy has devolved,and the secret task of forming, maturing, andperfecting—the Greeks, for instance, were anation of this kind, and so are the French; and

others which have to fructify and become thecause of new modes of life—like the Jews, theRomans, and, in all modesty be it asked: likethe Germans?—nations tortured and enrap-tured by unknown fevers and irresistiblyforced out of themselves, amorous and longingfor foreign races (for such as "let themselves befructified"), and withal imperious, like every-thing conscious of being full of generativeforce, and consequently empowered "by thegrace of God." These two kinds of geniusesseek each other like man and woman; but theyalso misunderstand each other—like man andwoman.

249. Every nation has its own "Tartuffery," andcalls that its virtue.—One does not know—cannot know, the best that is in one.

250. What Europe owes to the Jews?—Manythings, good and bad, and above all one thingof the nature both of the best and the worst: thegrand style in morality, the fearfulness and

majesty of infinite demands, of infinite signifi-cations, the whole Romanticism and sublimityof moral questionableness—and consequentlyjust the most attractive, ensnaring, and exqui-site element in those iridescences and allure-ments to life, in the aftersheen of which the skyof our European culture, its evening sky, nowglows—perhaps glows out. For this, we artistsamong the spectators and philosophers, are—grateful to the Jews.

251. It must be taken into the bargain, if variousclouds and disturbances—in short, slight at-tacks of stupidity—pass over the spirit of apeople that suffers and WANTS to suffer fromnational nervous fever and political ambition:for instance, among present-day Germans thereis alternately the anti-French folly, the anti-Semitic folly, the anti-Polish folly, the Chris-tian-romantic folly, the Wagnerian folly, theTeutonic folly, the Prussian folly (just look atthose poor historians, the Sybels and Treitsch-

kes, and their closely bandaged heads), andwhatever else these little obscurations of theGerman spirit and conscience may be called.May it be forgiven me that I, too, when on ashort daring sojourn on very infected ground,did not remain wholly exempt from the dis-ease, but like every one else, began to entertainthoughts about matters which did not concernme—the first symptom of political infection.About the Jews, for instance, listen to the fol-lowing:—I have never yet met a German whowas favourably inclined to the Jews; and how-ever decided the repudiation of actual anti-Semitism may be on the part of all prudent andpolitical men, this prudence and policy is notperhaps directed against the nature of the sen-timent itself, but only against its dangerousexcess, and especially against the distastefuland infamous expression of this excess of sen-timent;—on this point we must not deceiveourselves. That Germany has amply SUFFI-CIENT Jews, that the German stomach, the

German blood, has difficulty (and will longhave difficulty) in disposing only of this quan-tity of "Jew"—as the Italian, the Frenchman,and the Englishman have done by means of astronger digestion:—that is the unmistakabledeclaration and language of a general instinct,to which one must listen and according towhich one must act. "Let no more Jews come in!And shut the doors, especially towards the East(also towards Austria)!"—thus commands theinstinct of a people whose nature is still feebleand uncertain, so that it could be easily wipedout, easily extinguished, by a stronger race. TheJews, however, are beyond all doubt the stron-gest, toughest, and purest race at present livingin Europe, they know how to succeed even un-der the worst conditions (in fact better thanunder favourable ones), by means of virtues ofsome sort, which one would like nowadays tolabel as vices—owing above all to a resolutefaith which does not need to be ashamed before"modern ideas", they alter only, WHEN they do

alter, in the same way that the Russian Empiremakes its conquest—as an empire that hasplenty of time and is not of yesterday—namely,according to the principle, "as slowly as possi-ble"! A thinker who has the future of Europe atheart, will, in all his perspectives concerningthe future, calculate upon the Jews, as he willcalculate upon the Russians, as above all thesurest and likeliest factors in the great play andbattle of forces. That which is at present called a"nation" in Europe, and is really rather a RESFACTA than NATA (indeed, sometimes con-fusingly similar to a RES FICTA ET PICTA), isin every case something evolving, young, easilydisplaced, and not yet a race, much less such arace AERE PERENNUS, as the Jews are such"nations" should most carefully avoid all hot-headed rivalry and hostility! It is certain thatthe Jews, if they desired—or if they were drivento it, as the anti-Semites seem to wish—COULDnow have the ascendancy, nay, literally thesupremacy, over Europe, that they are NOT

working and planning for that end is equallycertain. Meanwhile, they rather wish and de-sire, even somewhat importunely, to be in-sorbed and absorbed by Europe, they long to befinally settled, authorized, and respectedsomewhere, and wish to put an end to the no-madic life, to the "wandering Jew",—and oneshould certainly take account of this impulseand tendency, and MAKE ADVANCES to it (itpossibly betokens a mitigation of the Jewishinstincts) for which purpose it would perhapsbe useful and fair to banish the anti-Semiticbawlers out of the country. One should makeadvances with all prudence, and with selection,pretty much as the English nobility do It standsto reason that the more powerful and stronglymarked types of new Germanism could enterinto relation with the Jews with the least hesita-tion, for instance, the nobleman officer from thePrussian border it would be interesting inmany ways to see whether the genius formoney and patience (and especially some intel-

lect and intellectuality—sadly lacking in theplace referred to) could not in addition be an-nexed and trained to the hereditary art ofcommanding and obeying—for both of whichthe country in question has now a classic repu-tation But here it is expedient to break off myfestal discourse and my sprightly Teutonoma-nia for I have already reached my SERIOUSTOPIC, the "European problem," as I under-stand it, the rearing of a new ruling caste forEurope.

252. They are not a philosophical race—the En-glish: Bacon represents an ATTACK on the phi-losophical spirit generally, Hobbes, Hume, andLocke, an abasement, and a depreciation of theidea of a "philosopher" for more than a century.It was AGAINST Hume that Kant uprose andraised himself; it was Locke of whom SchellingRIGHTLY said, "JE MEPRISE LOCKE"; in thestruggle against the English mechanical stultifi-cation of the world, Hegel and Schopenhauer

(along with Goethe) were of one accord; thetwo hostile brother-geniuses in philosophy,who pushed in different directions towards theopposite poles of German thought, and therebywronged each other as only brothers will do.—What is lacking in England, and has alwaysbeen lacking, that half-actor and rhetoricianknew well enough, the absurd muddle-head,Carlyle, who sought to conceal under passion-ate grimaces what he knew about himself:namely, what was LACKING in Carlyle—realPOWER of intellect, real DEPTH of intellectualperception, in short, philosophy. It is character-istic of such an unphilosophical race to hold onfirmly to Christianity—they NEED its disci-pline for "moralizing" and humanizing. TheEnglishman, more gloomy, sensual, head-strong, and brutal than the German—is for thatvery reason, as the baser of the two, also themost pious: he has all the MORE NEED ofChristianity. To finer nostrils, this EnglishChristianity itself has still a characteristic Eng-

lish taint of spleen and alcoholic excess, forwhich, owing to good reasons, it is used as anantidote—the finer poison to neutralize thecoarser: a finer form of poisoning is in fact astep in advance with coarse-mannered people,a step towards spiritualization. The Englishcoarseness and rustic demureness is still mostsatisfactorily disguised by Christian panto-mime, and by praying and psalm-singing (or,more correctly, it is thereby explained and dif-ferently expressed); and for the herd of drunk-ards and rakes who formerly learned moralgrunting under the influence of Methodism(and more recently as the "Salvation Army"), apenitential fit may really be the relatively high-est manifestation of "humanity" to which theycan be elevated: so much may reasonably beadmitted. That, however, which offends evenin the humanest Englishman is his lack of mu-sic, to speak figuratively (and also literally): hehas neither rhythm nor dance in the move-ments of his soul and body; indeed, not even

the desire for rhythm and dance, for "music."Listen to him speaking; look at the most beauti-ful Englishwoman WALKING—in no countryon earth are there more beautiful doves andswans; finally, listen to them singing! But I asktoo much...

253. There are truths which are best recognizedby mediocre minds, because they are best adap-ted for them, there are truths which only pos-sess charms and seductive power for mediocrespirits:—one is pushed to this probably un-pleasant conclusion, now that the influence ofrespectable but mediocre Englishmen—I maymention Darwin, John Stuart Mill, and HerbertSpencer—begins to gain the ascendancy in themiddle-class region of European taste. Indeed,who could doubt that it is a useful thing forSUCH minds to have the ascendancy for a ti-me? It would be an error to consider the highlydeveloped and independently soaring minds asspecially qualified for determining and collect-

ing many little common facts, and deducingconclusions from them; as exceptions, they arerather from the first in no very favourable posi-tion towards those who are "the rules." Afterall, they have more to do than merely to per-ceive:—in effect, they have to BE somethingnew, they have to SIGNIFY something new,they have to REPRESENT new values! The gulfbetween knowledge and capacity is perhapsgreater, and also more mysterious, than onethinks: the capable man in the grand style, thecreator, will possibly have to be an ignorantperson;—while on the other hand, for scientificdiscoveries like those of Darwin, a certain nar-rowness, aridity, and industrious carefulness(in short, something English) may not be unfa-vourable for arriving at them.—Finally, let itnot be forgotten that the English, with theirprofound mediocrity, brought about once be-fore a general depression of European intelli-gence.

What is called "modern ideas," or "the ideas ofthe eighteenth century," or "French ideas"—that, consequently, against which the GER-MAN mind rose up with profound disgust—isof English origin, there is no doubt about it.The French were only the apes and actors ofthese ideas, their best soldiers, and likewise,alas! their first and profoundest VICTIMS; forowing to the diabolical Anglomania of "modernideas," the AME FRANCAIS has in the endbecome so thin and emaciated, that at presentone recalls its sixteenth and seventeenth centu-ries, its profound, passionate strength, its in-ventive excellency, almost with disbelief. Onemust, however, maintain this verdict of histori-cal justice in a determined manner, and defendit against present prejudices and appearances:the European NOBLESSE—of sentiment, taste,and manners, taking the word in every highsense—is the work and invention of FRANCE;the European ignobleness, the plebeianism of

modern ideas—is ENGLAND'S work and in-vention.

254. Even at present France is still the seat ofthe most intellectual and refined culture of Eu-rope, it is still the high school of taste; but onemust know how to find this "France of taste."He who belongs to it keeps himself well con-cealed:—they may be a small number in whomit lives and is embodied, besides perhaps beingmen who do not stand upon the strongest legs,in part fatalists, hypochondriacs, invalids, inpart persons over-indulged, over-refined, suchas have the AMBITION to conceal themselves.

They have all something in common: they keeptheir ears closed in presence of the deliriousfolly and noisy spouting of the democraticBOURGEOIS. In fact, a besotted and brutalizedFrance at present sprawls in the foreground—itrecently celebrated a veritable orgy of bad taste,and at the same time of self-admiration, at thefuneral of Victor Hugo. There is also something

else common to them: a predilection to resistintellectual Germanizing—and a still greaterinability to do so! In this France of intellect,which is also a France of pessimism, Schopen-hauer has perhaps become more at home, andmore indigenous than he has ever been in Ger-many; not to speak of Heinrich Heine, who haslong ago been re-incarnated in the more refinedand fastidious lyrists of Paris; or of Hegel, whoat present, in the form of Taine—the FIRST ofliving historians—exercises an almost tyranni-cal influence. As regards Richard Wagner,however, the more French music learns toadapt itself to the actual needs of the AMEMODERNE, the more will it "Wagnerite"; onecan safely predict that beforehand,—it is al-ready taking place sufficiently! There are, how-ever, three things which the French can stillboast of with pride as their heritage and pos-session, and as indelible tokens of their ancientintellectual superiority in Europe, in spite of allvoluntary or involuntary Germanizing and

vulgarizing of taste. FIRSTLY, the capacity forartistic emotion, for devotion to "form," forwhich the expression, L'ART POUR L'ART,along with numerous others, has been in-vented:—such capacity has not been lacking inFrance for three centuries; and owing to its rev-erence for the "small number," it has again andagain made a sort of chamber music of litera-ture possible, which is sought for in vain else-where in Europe.—The SECOND thingwhereby the French can lay claim to a superior-ity over Europe is their ancient, many-sided,MORALISTIC culture, owing to which onefinds on an average, even in the petty RO-MANCIERS of the newspapers and chanceBOULEVARDIERS DE PARIS, a psychologicalsensitiveness and curiosity, of which, for ex-ample, one has no conception (to say nothing ofthe thing itself!) in Germany. The Germans lacka couple of centuries of the moralistic workrequisite thereto, which, as we have said, Fran-ce has not grudged: those who call the Ger-

mans "naive" on that account give them com-mendation for a defect. (As the opposite of theGerman inexperience and innocence IN VO-LUPTATE PSYCHOLOGICA, which is not tooremotely associated with the tediousness ofGerman intercourse,—and as the most success-ful expression of genuine French curiosity andinventive talent in this domain of delicatethrills, Henri Beyle may be noted; that remark-able anticipatory and forerunning man, who,with a Napoleonic TEMPO, traversed HIS Eu-rope, in fact, several centuries of the Europeansoul, as a surveyor and discoverer thereof:—ithas required two generations to OVERTAKEhim one way or other, to divine long after-wards some of the riddles that perplexed andenraptured him—this strange Epicurean andman of interrogation, the last great psychologistof France).—There is yet a THIRD claim to su-periority: in the French character there is a suc-cessful half-way synthesis of the North andSouth, which makes them comprehend many

things, and enjoins upon them other things,which an Englishman can never comprehend.Their temperament, turned alternately to andfrom the South, in which from time to time theProvencal and Ligurian blood froths over, pre-serves them from the dreadful, northern grey-in-grey, from sunless conceptual-spectrism andfrom poverty of blood—our GERMAN infir-mity of taste, for the excessive prevalence ofwhich at the present moment, blood and iron,that is to say "high politics," has with great re-solution been prescribed (according to a dan-gerous healing art, which bids me wait andwait, but not yet hope).—There is also still inFrance a pre-understanding and ready wel-come for those rarer and rarely gratified men,who are too comprehensive to find satisfactionin any kind of fatherlandism, and know how tolove the South when in the North and theNorth when in the South—the born Midland-ers, the "good Europeans." For them BIZET hasmade music, this latest genius, who has seen a

new beauty and seduction,—who has discov-ered a piece of the SOUTH IN MUSIC.

255. I hold that many precautions should betaken against German music. Suppose a personloves the South as I love it—as a great school ofrecovery for the most spiritual and the mostsensuous ills, as a boundless solar profusionand effulgence which o'erspreads a sovereignexistence believing in itself—well, such a per-son will learn to be somewhat on his guardagainst German music, because, in injuring histaste anew, it will also injure his health anew.Such a Southerner, a Southerner not by originbut by BELIEF, if he should dream of the futureof music, must also dream of it being freedfrom the influence of the North; and must havein his ears the prelude to a deeper, mightier,and perhaps more perverse and mysteriousmusic, a super-German music, which does notfade, pale, and die away, as all German musicdoes, at the sight of the blue, wanton sea and

the Mediterranean clearness of sky—a super-European music, which holds its own even inpresence of the brown sunsets of the desert,whose soul is akin to the palm-tree, and can beat home and can roam with big, beautiful, lone-ly beasts of prey... I could imagine a music ofwhich the rarest charm would be that it knewnothing more of good and evil; only that hereand there perhaps some sailor's home-sickness,some golden shadows and tender weaknessesmight sweep lightly over it; an art which, fromthe far distance, would see the colours of a sin-king and almost incomprehensible MORALworld fleeing towards it, and would be hospi-table enough and profound enough to receivesuch belated fugitives.

256. Owing to the morbid estrangement whichthe nationality-craze has induced and still in-duces among the nations of Europe, owing alsoto the short-sighted and hasty-handed politi-cians, who with the help of this craze, are at

present in power, and do not suspect to whatextent the disintegrating policy they pursuemust necessarily be only an interlude policy—owing to all this and much else that is alto-gether unmentionable at present, the most un-mistakable signs that EUROPE WISHES TO BEONE, are now overlooked, or arbitrarily andfalsely misinterpreted. With all the more pro-found and large-minded men of this century,the real general tendency of the mysteriouslabour of their souls was to prepare the way forthat new SYNTHESIS, and tentatively to antici-pate the European of the future; only in theirsimulations, or in their weaker moments, in oldage perhaps, did they belong to the "father-lands"—they only rested from themselveswhen they became "patriots." I think of suchmen as Napoleon, Goethe, Beethoven, Stend-hal, Heinrich Heine, Schopenhauer: it must notbe taken amiss if I also count Richard Wagneramong them, about whom one must not letoneself be deceived by his own misunderstand-

ings (geniuses like him have seldom the right tounderstand themselves), still less, of course, bythe unseemly noise with which he is now re-sisted and opposed in France: the fact remains,nevertheless, that Richard Wagner and theLATER FRENCH ROMANTICISM of the for-ties, are most closely and intimately related toone another. They are akin, fundamentallyakin, in all the heights and depths of their re-quirements; it is Europe, the ONE Europe,whose soul presses urgently and longingly,outwards and upwards, in their multifariousand boisterous art—whither? into a new light?towards a new sun? But who would attempt toexpress accurately what all these masters ofnew modes of speech could not express dis-tinctly? It is certain that the same storm andstress tormented them, that they SOUGHT inthe same manner, these last great seekers! All ofthem steeped in literature to their eyes andears—the first artists of universal literary cul-ture—for the most part even themselves writ-

ers, poets, intermediaries and blenders of thearts and the senses (Wagner, as musician isreckoned among painters, as poet among musi-cians, as artist generally among actors); all ofthem fanatics for EXPRESSION "at any cost"—Ispecially mention Delacroix, the nearest relatedto Wagner; all of them great discoverers in therealm of the sublime, also of the loathsome anddreadful, still greater discoverers in effect, indisplay, in the art of the show-shop; all of themtalented far beyond their genius, out and outVIRTUOSI, with mysterious accesses to all thatseduces, allures, constrains, and upsets; bornenemies of logic and of the straight line, han-kering after the strange, the exotic, the mon-strous, the crooked, and the self-contradictory;as men, Tantaluses of the will, plebeian parve-nus, who knew themselves to be incapable of anoble TEMPO or of a LENTO in life and ac-tion—think of Balzac, for instance,—unrestrained workers, almost destroying them-selves by work; antinomians and rebels in

manners, ambitious and insatiable, withoutequilibrium and enjoyment; all of them finallyshattering and sinking down at the Christiancross (and with right and reason, for who ofthem would have been sufficiently profoundand sufficiently original for an ANTI-CHRISTIAN philosophy?);—on the whole, aboldly daring, splendidly overbearing, high-flying, and aloft-up-dragging class of highermen, who had first to teach their century—andit is the century of the MASSES—the concep-tion "higher man."... Let the German friends ofRichard Wagner advise together as to whetherthere is anything purely German in the Wag-nerian art, or whether its distinction does notconsist precisely in coming from SUPER-GERMAN sources and impulses: in which con-nection it may not be underrated how indis-pensable Paris was to the development of histype, which the strength of his instincts madehim long to visit at the most decisive time—andhow the whole style of his proceedings, of his

self-apostolate, could only perfect itself in sightof the French socialistic original. On a moresubtle comparison it will perhaps be found, tothe honour of Richard Wagner's German na-ture, that he has acted in everything with morestrength, daring, severity, and elevation than anineteenth-century Frenchman could have do-ne—owing to the circumstance that we Ger-mans are as yet nearer to barbarism than theFrench;—perhaps even the most remarkablecreation of Richard Wagner is not only at pre-sent, but for ever inaccessible, incomprehensi-ble, and inimitable to the whole latter-day Latinrace: the figure of Siegfried, that VERY FREEman, who is probably far too free, too hard, toocheerful, too healthy, too ANTI-CATHOLIC forthe taste of old and mellow civilized nations.He may even have been a sin against Romanti-cism, this anti-Latin Siegfried: well, Wagneratoned amply for this sin in his old sad days,when—anticipating a taste which has mean-while passed into politics—he began, with the

religious vehemence peculiar to him, to preach,at least, THE WAY TO ROME, if not to walktherein.—That these last words may not be mi-sunderstood, I will call to my aid a few power-ful rhymes, which will even betray to less deli-cate ears what I mean—what I meanCOUNTER TO the "last Wagner" and his Parsi-fal music:—

—Is this our mode?—From German heart camethis vexed ululating? From German body, thisself-lacerating? Is ours this priestly hand-dilation, This incense-fuming exaltation? Isours this faltering, falling, shambling, This qui-te uncertain ding-dong-dangling? This sly nun-ogling, Ave-hour-bell ringing, This wholly falseenraptured heaven-o'erspringing?—Is this ourmode?—Think well!—ye still wait for admis-sion—For what ye hear is ROME—ROME'SFAITH BY INTUITION!

CHAPTER IX. WHAT IS NOBLE?

257. EVERY elevation of the type "man," hashitherto been the work of an aristocratic societyand so it will always be—a society believing ina long scale of gradations of rank and differ-ences of worth among human beings, and re-quiring slavery in some form or other. Withoutthe PATHOS OF DISTANCE, such as growsout of the incarnated difference of classes, outof the constant out-looking and down-lookingof the ruling caste on subordinates and instru-ments, and out of their equally constant prac-tice of obeying and commanding, of keepingdown and keeping at a distance—that othermore mysterious pathos could never havearisen, the longing for an ever new widening of

distance within the soul itself, the formation ofever higher, rarer, further, more extended,more comprehensive states, in short, just theelevation of the type "man," the continued "self-surmounting of man," to use a moral formula ina supermoral sense. To be sure, one must notresign oneself to any humanitarian illusionsabout the history of the origin of an aristocraticsociety (that is to say, of the preliminary condi-tion for the elevation of the type "man"): thetruth is hard. Let us acknowledge unpreju-dicedly how every higher civilization hithertohas ORIGINATED! Men with a still naturalnature, barbarians in every terrible sense of theword, men of prey, still in possession of unbro-ken strength of will and desire for power,threw themselves upon weaker, more moral,more peaceful races (perhaps trading or cattle-rearing communities), or upon old mellow civi-lizations in which the final vital force was flick-ering out in brilliant fireworks of wit and de-pravity. At the commencement, the noble caste

was always the barbarian caste: their superior-ity did not consist first of all in their physical,but in their psychical power—they were moreCOMPLETE men (which at every point alsoimplies the same as "more complete beasts").

258. Corruption—as the indication that anarchythreatens to break out among the instincts, andthat the foundation of the emotions, called "li-fe," is convulsed—is something radically differ-ent according to the organization in which itmanifests itself. When, for instance, an aristoc-racy like that of France at the beginning of theRevolution, flung away its privileges with sub-lime disgust and sacrificed itself to an excess ofits moral sentiments, it was corruption:—it wasreally only the closing act of the corruptionwhich had existed for centuries, by virtue ofwhich that aristocracy had abdicated step bystep its lordly prerogatives and lowered itselfto a FUNCTION of royalty (in the end even toits decoration and parade-dress). The essential

thing, however, in a good and healthy aristoc-racy is that it should not regard itself as a func-tion either of the kingship or the common-wealth, but as the SIGNIFICANCE and highestjustification thereof—that it should thereforeaccept with a good conscience the sacrifice of alegion of individuals, who, FOR ITS SAKE,must be suppressed and reduced to imperfectmen, to slaves and instruments. Its fundamen-tal belief must be precisely that society is NOTallowed to exist for its own sake, but only as afoundation and scaffolding, by means of whicha select class of beings may be able to elevatethemselves to their higher duties, and in gen-eral to a higher EXISTENCE: like those sun-seeking climbing plants in Java—they are ca-lled Sipo Matador,—which encircle an oak solong and so often with their arms, until at last,high above it, but supported by it, they canunfold their tops in the open light, and exhibittheir happiness.

259. To refrain mutually from injury, from vio-lence, from exploitation, and put one's will on apar with that of others: this may result in a cer-tain rough sense in good conduct among indi-viduals when the necessary conditions are gi-ven (namely, the actual similarity of the indi-viduals in amount of force and degree of worth,and their co-relation within one organization).As soon, however, as one wished to take thisprinciple more generally, and if possible evenas the FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF SO-CIETY, it would immediately disclose what itreally is—namely, a Will to the DENIAL of life,a principle of dissolution and decay. Here onemust think profoundly to the very basis andresist all sentimental weakness: life itself is ES-SENTIALLY appropriation, injury, conquest ofthe strange and weak, suppression, severity,obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, andat the least, putting it mildest, exploitation;—but why should one for ever use precisely thesewords on which for ages a disparaging purpose

has been stamped? Even the organization wit-hin which, as was previously supposed, theindividuals treat each other as equal—it takesplace in every healthy aristocracy—must itself,if it be a living and not a dying organization, doall that towards other bodies, which the indi-viduals within it refrain from doing to eachother it will have to be the incarnated Will toPower, it will endeavour to grow, to gainground, attract to itself and acquire ascen-dancy—not owing to any morality or immoral-ity, but because it LIVES, and because life ISprecisely Will to Power. On no point, however,is the ordinary consciousness of Europeansmore unwilling to be corrected than on thismatter, people now rave everywhere, even un-der the guise of science, about coming condi-tions of society in which "the exploiting charac-ter" is to be absent—that sounds to my ears as ifthey promised to invent a mode of life whichshould refrain from all organic functions. "Ex-ploitation" does not belong to a depraved, or

imperfect and primitive society it belongs to thenature of the living being as a primary organicfunction, it is a consequence of the intrinsic Willto Power, which is precisely the Will to Life—Granting that as a theory this is a novelty—as areality it is the FUNDAMENTAL FACT of allhistory let us be so far honest towards our-selves!

260. In a tour through the many finer and coar-ser moralities which have hitherto prevailed orstill prevail on the earth, I found certain traitsrecurring regularly together, and connectedwith one another, until finally two primarytypes revealed themselves to me, and a radicaldistinction was brought to light. There is MAS-TER-MORALITY and SLAVE-MORALITY,—Iwould at once add, however, that in all higherand mixed civilizations, there are also attemptsat the reconciliation of the two moralities, butone finds still oftener the confusion and mutualmisunderstanding of them, indeed sometimes

their close juxtaposition—even in the sameman, within one soul. The distinctions of moralvalues have either originated in a ruling caste,pleasantly conscious of being different from theruled—or among the ruled class, the slaves anddependents of all sorts. In the first case, when itis the rulers who determine the conception"good," it is the exalted, proud dispositionwhich is regarded as the distinguishing feature,and that which determines the order of rank.The noble type of man separates from himselfthe beings in whom the opposite of this exalted,proud disposition displays itself he despisesthem. Let it at once be noted that in this firstkind of morality the antithesis "good" and "bad"means practically the same as "noble" and"despicable",—the antithesis "good" and "EVIL"is of a different origin. The cowardly, the timid,the insignificant, and those thinking merely ofnarrow utility are despised; moreover, also, thedistrustful, with their constrained glances, theself-abasing, the dog-like kind of men who let

themselves be abused, the mendicant flatterers,and above all the liars:—it is a fundamentalbelief of all aristocrats that the common peopleare untruthful. "We truthful ones"—the nobilityin ancient Greece called themselves. It is obvi-ous that everywhere the designations of moralvalue were at first applied to MEN; and wereonly derivatively and at a later period appliedto ACTIONS; it is a gross mistake, therefore,when historians of morals start with questionslike, "Why have sympathetic actions beenpraised?" The noble type of man regards HIM-SELF as a determiner of values; he does notrequire to be approved of; he passes the judg-ment: "What is injurious to me is injurious initself;" he knows that it is he himself only whoconfers honour on things; he is a CREATOR OFVALUES. He honours whatever he recognizesin himself: such morality equals self-glorification. In the foreground there is the feel-ing of plenitude, of power, which seeks to over-flow, the happiness of high tension, the con-

sciousness of a wealth which would fain giveand bestow:—the noble man also helps the un-fortunate, but not—or scarcely—out of pity, butrather from an impulse generated by the super-abundance of power. The noble man honoursin himself the powerful one, him also who haspower over himself, who knows how to speakand how to keep silence, who takes pleasure insubjecting himself to severity and hardness,and has reverence for all that is severe andhard. "Wotan placed a hard heart in my breast,"says an old Scandinavian Saga: it is thus rightlyexpressed from the soul of a proud Viking.Such a type of man is even proud of not beingmade for sympathy; the hero of the Saga there-fore adds warningly: "He who has not a hardheart when young, will never have one." Thenoble and brave who think thus are the furthestremoved from the morality which sees pre-cisely in sympathy, or in acting for the good ofothers, or in DESINTERESSEMENT, the charac-teristic of the moral; faith in oneself, pride in

oneself, a radical enmity and irony towards"selflessness," belong as definitely to noble mo-rality, as do a careless scorn and precaution inpresence of sympathy and the "warm heart."—It is the powerful who KNOW how to honour,it is their art, their domain for invention. Theprofound reverence for age and for tradition—all law rests on this double reverence,—thebelief and prejudice in favour of ancestors andunfavourable to newcomers, is typical in themorality of the powerful; and if, reversely, menof "modern ideas" believe almost instinctivelyin "progress" and the "future," and are moreand more lacking in respect for old age, theignoble origin of these "ideas" has complacentlybetrayed itself thereby. A morality of the rulingclass, however, is more especially foreign andirritating to present-day taste in the sternness ofits principle that one has duties only to one'sequals; that one may act towards beings of alower rank, towards all that is foreign, just asseems good to one, or "as the heart desires,"

and in any case "beyond good and evil": it ishere that sympathy and similar sentiments canhave a place. The ability and obligation to exer-cise prolonged gratitude and prolonged re-venge—both only within the circle of equals,—artfulness in retaliation, RAFFINEMENT of theidea in friendship, a certain necessity to haveenemies (as outlets for the emotions of envy,quarrelsomeness, arrogance—in fact, in orderto be a good FRIEND): all these are typical cha-racteristics of the noble morality, which, as hasbeen pointed out, is not the morality of "mod-ern ideas," and is therefore at present difficultto realize, and also to unearth and disclose.—Itis otherwise with the second type of morality,SLAVE-MORALITY. Supposing that the abu-sed, the oppressed, the suffering, the uneman-cipated, the weary, and those uncertain ofthemselves should moralize, what will be thecommon element in their moral estimates? Pro-bably a pessimistic suspicion with regard to theentire situation of man will find expression,

perhaps a condemnation of man, together withhis situation. The slave has an unfavourable eyefor the virtues of the powerful; he has a skepti-cism and distrust, a REFINEMENT of distrustof everything "good" that is there honoured—he would fain persuade himself that the veryhappiness there is not genuine. On the otherhand, THOSE qualities which serve to alleviatethe existence of sufferers are brought into pro-minence and flooded with light; it is here thatsympathy, the kind, helping hand, the warmheart, patience, diligence, humility, and friend-liness attain to honour; for here these are themost useful qualities, and almost the onlymeans of supporting the burden of existence.Slave-morality is essentially the morality ofutility. Here is the seat of the origin of the fa-mous antithesis "good" and "evil":—power anddangerousness are assumed to reside in theevil, a certain dreadfulness, subtlety, andstrength, which do not admit of being despised.According to slave-morality, therefore, the

"evil" man arouses fear; according to master-morality, it is precisely the "good" man whoarouses fear and seeks to arouse it, while thebad man is regarded as the despicable being.The contrast attains its maximum when, in ac-cordance with the logical consequences of sla-ve-morality, a shade of depreciation—it may beslight and well-intentioned—at last attachesitself to the "good" man of this morality; be-cause, according to the servile mode of thought,the good man must in any case be the SAFEman: he is good-natured, easily deceived, per-haps a little stupid, un bonhomme. Everywherethat slave-morality gains the ascendancy, lan-guage shows a tendency to approximate thesignifications of the words "good" and "stu-pid."—A last fundamental difference: the desirefor FREEDOM, the instinct for happiness andthe refinements of the feeling of liberty belongas necessarily to slave-morals and morality, asartifice and enthusiasm in reverence and devo-tion are the regular symptoms of an aristocratic

mode of thinking and estimating.—Hence wecan understand without further detail why loveAS A PASSION—it is our European specialty—must absolutely be of noble origin; as is wellknown, its invention is due to the Provencalpoet-cavaliers, those brilliant, ingenious men ofthe "gai saber," to whom Europe owes so much,and almost owes itself.

261. Vanity is one of the things which are per-haps most difficult for a noble man to under-stand: he will be tempted to deny it, where an-other kind of man thinks he sees it self-evidently. The problem for him is to representto his mind beings who seek to arouse a goodopinion of themselves which they themselvesdo not possess—and consequently also do not"deserve,"—and who yet BELIEVE in this goodopinion afterwards. This seems to him on theone hand such bad taste and so self-disrespectful, and on the other hand so gro-tesquely unreasonable, that he would like to

consider vanity an exception, and is doubtfulabout it in most cases when it is spoken of. Hewill say, for instance: "I may be mistaken aboutmy value, and on the other hand may neverthe-less demand that my value should be acknowl-edged by others precisely as I rate it:—that,however, is not vanity (but self-conceit, or, inmost cases, that which is called 'humility,' andalso 'modesty')." Or he will even say: "For manyreasons I can delight in the good opinion ofothers, perhaps because I love and honourthem, and rejoice in all their joys, perhaps alsobecause their good opinion endorses andstrengthens my belief in my own good opinion,perhaps because the good opinion of others,even in cases where I do not share it, is usefulto me, or gives promise of usefulness:—all this,however, is not vanity." The man of noble char-acter must first bring it home forcibly to hismind, especially with the aid of history, that,from time immemorial, in all social strata inany way dependent, the ordinary man WAS

only that which he PASSED FOR:—not being atall accustomed to fix values, he did not assigneven to himself any other value than that whichhis master assigned to him (it is the peculiarRIGHT OF MASTERS to create values). It maybe looked upon as the result of an extraordi-nary atavism, that the ordinary man, even atpresent, is still always WAITING for an opinionabout himself, and then instinctively submit-ting himself to it; yet by no means only to a"good" opinion, but also to a bad and unjustone (think, for instance, of the greater part ofthe self-appreciations and self-depreciationswhich believing women learn from their con-fessors, and which in general the believingChristian learns from his Church). In fact, con-formably to the slow rise of the democratic so-cial order (and its cause, the blending of theblood of masters and slaves), the originally no-ble and rare impulse of the masters to assign avalue to themselves and to "think well" ofthemselves, will now be more and more en-

couraged and extended; but it has at all timesan older, ampler, and more radically ingrainedpropensity opposed to it—and in the phe-nomenon of "vanity" this older propensityovermasters the younger. The vain person re-joices over EVERY good opinion which hehears about himself (quite apart from the pointof view of its usefulness, and equally regardlessof its truth or falsehood), just as he suffers fromevery bad opinion: for he subjects himself toboth, he feels himself subjected to both, by thatoldest instinct of subjection which breaks forthin him.—It is "the slave" in the vain man'sblood, the remains of the slave's craftiness—and how much of the "slave" is still left in wo-man, for instance!—which seeks to SEDUCE togood opinions of itself; it is the slave, too, whoimmediately afterwards falls prostrate himselfbefore these opinions, as though he had notcalled them forth.—And to repeat it again: van-ity is an atavism.

262. A SPECIES originates, and a type becomesestablished and strong in the long struggle withessentially constant UNFAVOURABLE condi-tions. On the other hand, it is known by theexperience of breeders that species which re-ceive super-abundant nourishment, and in ge-neral a surplus of protection and care, immedi-ately tend in the most marked way to developvariations, and are fertile in prodigies andmonstrosities (also in monstrous vices). Nowlook at an aristocratic commonwealth, say anancient Greek polis, or Venice, as a voluntaryor involuntary contrivance for the purpose ofREARING human beings; there are there menbeside one another, thrown upon their ownresources, who want to make their species pre-vail, chiefly because they MUST prevail, or elserun the terrible danger of being exterminated.The favour, the super-abundance, the protec-tion are there lacking under which variationsare fostered; the species needs itself as species,as something which, precisely by virtue of its

hardness, its uniformity, and simplicity ofstructure, can in general prevail and make itselfpermanent in constant struggle with its neigh-bours, or with rebellious or rebellion-threatening vassals. The most varied experienceteaches it what are the qualities to which itprincipally owes the fact that it still exists, inspite of all Gods and men, and has hithertobeen victorious: these qualities it calls virtues,and these virtues alone it develops to maturity.It does so with severity, indeed it desires sever-ity; every aristocratic morality is intolerant inthe education of youth, in the control of wo-men, in the marriage customs, in the relationsof old and young, in the penal laws (whichhave an eye only for the degenerating): itcounts intolerance itself among the virtues,under the name of "justice." A type with few,but very marked features, a species of severe,warlike, wisely silent, reserved, and reticentmen (and as such, with the most delicate sensi-bility for the charm and nuances of society) is

thus established, unaffected by the vicissitudesof generations; the constant struggle with uni-form UNFAVOURABLE conditions is, as al-ready remarked, the cause of a type becomingstable and hard. Finally, however, a happy sta-te of things results, the enormous tension isrelaxed; there are perhaps no more enemiesamong the neighbouring peoples, and themeans of life, even of the enjoyment of life, arepresent in superabundance. With one stroke thebond and constraint of the old discipline severs:it is no longer regarded as necessary, as a con-dition of existence—if it would continue, it canonly do so as a form of LUXURY, as an archaiz-ing TASTE. Variations, whether they be devia-tions (into the higher, finer, and rarer), or dete-riorations and monstrosities, appear suddenlyon the scene in the greatest exuberance andsplendour; the individual dares to be individ-ual and detach himself. At this turning-point ofhistory there manifest themselves, side by side,and often mixed and entangled together, a

magnificent, manifold, virgin-forest-like up-growth and up-striving, a kind of TROPICALTEMPO in the rivalry of growth, and an ex-traordinary decay and self-destruction, owingto the savagely opposing and seemingly ex-ploding egoisms, which strive with one another"for sun and light," and can no longer assignany limit, restraint, or forbearance for them-selves by means of the hitherto existing moral-ity. It was this morality itself which piled upthe strength so enormously, which bent thebow in so threatening a manner:—it is now "outof date," it is getting "out of date." The danger-ous and disquieting point has been reachedwhen the greater, more manifold, more com-prehensive life IS LIVED BEYOND the old mo-rality; the "individual" stands out, and isobliged to have recourse to his own law-giving,his own arts and artifices for self-preservation,self-elevation, and self-deliverance. Nothingbut new "Whys," nothing but new "Hows," nocommon formulas any longer, misunderstand-

ing and disregard in league with each other,decay, deterioration, and the loftiest desiresfrightfully entangled, the genius of the raceoverflowing from all the cornucopias of goodand bad, a portentous simultaneousness ofSpring and Autumn, full of new charms andmysteries peculiar to the fresh, still inex-hausted, still unwearied corruption. Danger isagain present, the mother of morality, greatdanger; this time shifted into the individual,into the neighbour and friend, into the street,into their own child, into their own heart, intoall the most personal and secret recesses oftheir desires and volitions. What will the moralphilosophers who appear at this time have topreach? They discover, these sharp onlookersand loafers, that the end is quickly approach-ing, that everything around them decays andproduces decay, that nothing will endure untilthe day after tomorrow, except one species ofman, the incurably MEDIOCRE. The mediocrealone have a prospect of continuing and propa-

gating themselves—they will be the men of thefuture, the sole survivors; "be like them! be-come mediocre!" is now the only moralitywhich has still a significance, which still obtainsa hearing.—But it is difficult to preach this mo-rality of mediocrity! it can never avow what itis and what it desires! it has to talk of modera-tion and dignity and duty and brotherly love—it will have difficulty IN CONCEALING ITSIRONY!

263. There is an INSTINCT FOR RANK, whichmore than anything else is already the sign of aHIGH rank; there is a DELIGHT in the NU-ANCES of reverence which leads one to infernoble origin and habits. The refinement, good-ness, and loftiness of a soul are put to a peril-ous test when something passes by that is ofthe highest rank, but is not yet protected by theawe of authority from obtrusive touches andincivilities: something that goes its way like aliving touchstone, undistinguished, undiscov-

ered, and tentative, perhaps voluntarily veiledand disguised. He whose task and practice it isto investigate souls, will avail himself of manyvarieties of this very art to determine the ulti-mate value of a soul, the unalterable, innateorder of rank to which it belongs: he will test itby its INSTINCT FOR REVERENCE. DIFFER-ENCE ENGENDRE HAINE: the vulgarity ofmany a nature spurts up suddenly like dirtywater, when any holy vessel, any jewel fromclosed shrines, any book bearing the marks ofgreat destiny, is brought before it; while on theother hand, there is an involuntary silence, ahesitation of the eye, a cessation of all gestures,by which it is indicated that a soul FEELS thenearness of what is worthiest of respect. Theway in which, on the whole, the reverence forthe BIBLE has hitherto been maintained in Eu-rope, is perhaps the best example of disciplineand refinement of manners which Europe owesto Christianity: books of such profoundnessand supreme significance require for their pro-

tection an external tyranny of authority, in or-der to acquire the PERIOD of thousands ofyears which is necessary to exhaust and unrid-dle them. Much has been achieved when thesentiment has been at last instilled into themasses (the shallow-pates and the boobies ofevery kind) that they are not allowed to toucheverything, that there are holy experiences be-fore which they must take off their shoes andkeep away the unclean hand—it is almost theirhighest advance towards humanity. On thecontrary, in the so-called cultured classes, thebelievers in "modern ideas," nothing is perhapsso repulsive as their lack of shame, the easyinsolence of eye and hand with which theytouch, taste, and finger everything; and it ispossible that even yet there is more RELATIVEnobility of taste, and more tact for reverenceamong the people, among the lower classes ofthe people, especially among peasants, thanamong the newspaper-reading DEMIMONDEof intellect, the cultured class.

264. It cannot be effaced from a man's soulwhat his ancestors have preferably and mostconstantly done: whether they were perhapsdiligent economizers attached to a desk and acash-box, modest and citizen-like in their de-sires, modest also in their virtues; or whetherthey were accustomed to commanding frommorning till night, fond of rude pleasures andprobably of still ruder duties and responsibili-ties; or whether, finally, at one time or another,they have sacrificed old privileges of birth andpossession, in order to live wholly for theirfaith—for their "God,"—as men of an inexora-ble and sensitive conscience, which blushes atevery compromise. It is quite impossible for aman NOT to have the qualities and predilec-tions of his parents and ancestors in his consti-tution, whatever appearances may suggest tothe contrary. This is the problem of race. Gran-ted that one knows something of the parents, itis admissible to draw a conclusion about thechild: any kind of offensive incontinence, any

kind of sordid envy, or of clumsy self-vaunting—the three things which togetherhave constituted the genuine plebeian type inall times—such must pass over to the child, assurely as bad blood; and with the help of thebest education and culture one will only suc-ceed in DECEIVING with regard to such hered-ity.—And what else does education and culturetry to do nowadays! In our very democratic, orrather, very plebeian age, "education" and "cul-ture" MUST be essentially the art of deceiv-ing—deceiving with regard to origin, with re-gard to the inherited plebeianism in body andsoul. An educator who nowadays preachedtruthfulness above everything else, and calledout constantly to his pupils: "Be true! Be natu-ral! Show yourselves as you are!"—even such avirtuous and sincere ass would learn in a shorttime to have recourse to the FURCA of Horace,NATURAM EXPELLERE: with what results?"Plebeianism" USQUE RECURRET. [FOOT-NOTE: Horace's "Epistles," I. x. 24.]

265. At the risk of displeasing innocent ears, Isubmit that egoism belongs to the essence of anoble soul, I mean the unalterable belief that toa being such as "we," other beings must natu-rally be in subjection, and have to sacrificethemselves. The noble soul accepts the fact ofhis egoism without question, and also withoutconsciousness of harshness, constraint, or arbi-trariness therein, but rather as something thatmay have its basis in the primary law ofthings:—if he sought a designation for it hewould say: "It is justice itself." He acknowl-edges under certain circumstances, which madehim hesitate at first, that there are other equallyprivileged ones; as soon as he has settled thisquestion of rank, he moves among those equalsand equally privileged ones with the same as-surance, as regards modesty and delicate re-spect, which he enjoys in intercourse with him-self—in accordance with an innate heavenlymechanism which all the stars understand. It isan ADDITIONAL instance of his egoism, this

artfulness and self-limitation in intercoursewith his equals—every star is a similar egoist;he honours HIMSELF in them, and in the rightswhich he concedes to them, he has no doubtthat the exchange of honours and rights, as theESSENCE of all intercourse, belongs also to thenatural condition of things. The noble soul gi-ves as he takes, prompted by the passionateand sensitive instinct of requital, which is at theroot of his nature. The notion of "favour" has,INTER PARES, neither significance nor goodrepute; there may be a sublime way of lettinggifts as it were light upon one from above, andof drinking them thirstily like dew-drops; butfor those arts and displays the noble soul hasno aptitude. His egoism hinders him here: ingeneral, he looks "aloft" unwillingly—he lookseither FORWARD, horizontally and deliber-ately, or downwards—HE KNOWS THAT HEIS ON A HEIGHT.

266. "One can only truly esteem him who doesnot LOOK OUT FOR himself."—Goethe to RathSchlosser.

267. The Chinese have a proverb which moth-ers even teach their children: "SIAO-SIN"("MAKE THY HEART SMALL"). This is theessentially fundamental tendency in latter-daycivilizations. I have no doubt that an ancientGreek, also, would first of all remark the self-dwarfing in us Europeans of today—in thisrespect alone we should immediately be "dis-tasteful" to him.

268. What, after all, is ignobleness?—Words arevocal symbols for ideas; ideas, however, aremore or less definite mental symbols for fre-quently returning and concurring sensations,for groups of sensations. It is not sufficient touse the same words in order to understand oneanother: we must also employ the same wordsfor the same kind of internal experiences, wemust in the end have experiences IN COM-

MON. On this account the people of one nationunderstand one another better than those be-longing to different nations, even when theyuse the same language; or rather, when peoplehave lived long together under similar condi-tions (of climate, soil, danger, requirement, toil)there ORIGINATES therefrom an entity that"understands itself"—namely, a nation. In allsouls a like number of frequently recurringexperiences have gained the upper hand overthose occurring more rarely: about these mat-ters people understand one another rapidlyand always more rapidly—the history of lan-guage is the history of a process of abbrevia-tion; on the basis of this quick comprehensionpeople always unite closer and closer. The grea-ter the danger, the greater is the need of agree-ing quickly and readily about what is neces-sary; not to misunderstand one another in dan-ger—that is what cannot at all be dispensedwith in intercourse. Also in all loves andfriendships one has the experience that nothing

of the kind continues when the discovery hasbeen made that in using the same words, one ofthe two parties has feelings, thoughts, intui-tions, wishes, or fears different from those ofthe other. (The fear of the "eternal misunder-standing": that is the good genius which so of-ten keeps persons of different sexes from toohasty attachments, to which sense and heartprompt them—and NOT some Schopenhau-erian "genius of the species"!) Whichevergroups of sensations within a soul awakenmost readily, begin to speak, and give the wordof command—these decide as to the generalorder of rank of its values, and determine ulti-mately its list of desirable things. A man's esti-mates of value betray something of theSTRUCTURE of his soul, and wherein it sees itsconditions of life, its intrinsic needs. Supposingnow that necessity has from all time drawntogether only such men as could express simi-lar requirements and similar experiences bysimilar symbols, it results on the whole that the

easy COMMUNICABILITY of need, which im-plies ultimately the undergoing only of averageand COMMON experiences, must have beenthe most potent of all the forces which havehitherto operated upon mankind. The moresimilar, the more ordinary people, have alwayshad and are still having the advantage; themore select, more refined, more unique, anddifficultly comprehensible, are liable to standalone; they succumb to accidents in their isola-tion, and seldom propagate themselves. Onemust appeal to immense opposing forces, inorder to thwart this natural, all-too-naturalPROGRESSUS IN SIMILE, the evolution ofman to the similar, the ordinary, the average,the gregarious—to the IGNOBLE—!

269. The more a psychologist—a born, an un-avoidable psychologist and soul-diviner—turnshis attention to the more select cases and indi-viduals, the greater is his danger of being suf-focated by sympathy: he NEEDS sternness and

cheerfulness more than any other man. For thecorruption, the ruination of higher men, of themore unusually constituted souls, is in fact, therule: it is dreadful to have such a rule alwaysbefore one's eyes. The manifold torment of thepsychologist who has discovered this ruination,who discovers once, and then discovers AL-MOST repeatedly throughout all history, thisuniversal inner "desperateness" of higher men,this eternal "too late!" in every sense—mayperhaps one day be the cause of his turningwith bitterness against his own lot, and of hismaking an attempt at self-destruction—of his"going to ruin" himself. One may perceive inalmost every psychologist a tell-tale inclinationfor delightful intercourse with commonplaceand well-ordered men; the fact is thereby dis-closed that he always requires healing, that heneeds a sort of flight and forgetfulness, awayfrom what his insight and incisiveness—fromwhat his "business"—has laid upon his con-science. The fear of his memory is peculiar to

him. He is easily silenced by the judgment ofothers; he hears with unmoved countenancehow people honour, admire, love, and glorify,where he has PERCEIVED—or he even con-ceals his silence by expressly assenting to someplausible opinion. Perhaps the paradox of hissituation becomes so dreadful that, preciselywhere he has learnt GREAT SYMPATHY, to-gether with great CONTEMPT, the multitude,the educated, and the visionaries, have on theirpart learnt great reverence—reverence for"great men" and marvelous animals, for thesake of whom one blesses and honours the fa-therland, the earth, the dignity of mankind, andone's own self, to whom one points the young,and in view of whom one educates them. Andwho knows but in all great instances hithertojust the same happened: that the multitudeworshipped a God, and that the "God" wasonly a poor sacrificial animal! SUCCESS hasalways been the greatest liar—and the "work"itself is a success; the great statesman, the con-

queror, the discoverer, are disguised in theircreations until they are unrecognizable; the"work" of the artist, of the philosopher, onlyinvents him who has created it, is REPUTED tohave created it; the "great men," as they arereverenced, are poor little fictions composedafterwards; in the world of historical valuesspurious coinage PREVAILS. Those great poets,for example, such as Byron, Musset, Poe, Leop-ardi, Kleist, Gogol (I do not venture to mentionmuch greater names, but I have them in mymind), as they now appear, and were perhapsobliged to be: men of the moment, enthusiastic,sensuous, and childish, light-minded and im-pulsive in their trust and distrust; with souls inwhich usually some flaw has to be concealed;often taking revenge with their works for aninternal defilement, often seeking forgetfulnessin their soaring from a too true memory, oftenlost in the mud and almost in love with it, untilthey become like the Will-o'-the-Wisps aroundthe swamps, and PRETEND TO BE stars—the

people then call them idealists,—often strug-gling with protracted disgust, with an ever-reappearing phantom of disbelief, which makesthem cold, and obliges them to languish forGLORIA and devour "faith as it is" out of thehands of intoxicated adulators:—what a TOR-MENT these great artists are and the so-calledhigher men in general, to him who has oncefound them out! It is thus conceivable that it isjust from woman—who is clairvoyant in theworld of suffering, and also unfortunately ea-ger to help and save to an extent far beyond herpowers—that THEY have learnt so readilythose outbreaks of boundless devoted SYMPA-THY, which the multitude, above all the rever-ent multitude, do not understand, and over-whelm with prying and self-gratifying interpre-tations. This sympathizing invariably deceivesitself as to its power; woman would like to be-lieve that love can do EVERYTHING—it is theSUPERSTITION peculiar to her. Alas, he whoknows the heart finds out how poor, helpless,

pretentious, and blundering even the best anddeepest love is—he finds that it rather DE-STROYS than saves!—It is possible that underthe holy fable and travesty of the life of Jesusthere is hidden one of the most painful cases ofthe martyrdom of KNOWLEDGE ABOUTLOVE: the martyrdom of the most innocent andmost craving heart, that never had enough ofany human love, that DEMANDED love, thatdemanded inexorably and frantically to beloved and nothing else, with terrible outburstsagainst those who refused him their love; thestory of a poor soul insatiated and insatiable inlove, that had to invent hell to send thitherthose who WOULD NOT love him—and that atlast, enlightened about human love, had to in-vent a God who is entire love, entire CAPAC-ITY for love—who takes pity on human love,because it is so paltry, so ignorant! He who hassuch sentiments, he who has such KNOWL-EDGE about love—SEEKS for death!—But whyshould one deal with such painful matters?

Provided, of course, that one is not obliged todo so.

270. The intellectual haughtiness and loathingof every man who has suffered deeply—it al-most determines the order of rank HOW dee-ply men can suffer—the chilling certainty, withwhich he is thoroughly imbued and coloured,that by virtue of his suffering he KNOWS MO-RE than the shrewdest and wisest can everknow, that he has been familiar with, and "athome" in, many distant, dreadful worlds ofwhich "YOU know nothing"!—this silent intel-lectual haughtiness of the sufferer, this pride ofthe elect of knowledge, of the "initiated," of thealmost sacrificed, finds all forms of disguisenecessary to protect itself from contact withofficious and sympathizing hands, and in gen-eral from all that is not its equal in suffering.Profound suffering makes noble: it separates.—One of the most refined forms of disguise isEpicurism, along with a certain ostentatious

boldness of taste, which takes suffering lightly,and puts itself on the defensive against all thatis sorrowful and profound. They are "gay men"who make use of gaiety, because they are mis-understood on account of it—they WISH to bemisunderstood. There are "scientific minds"who make use of science, because it gives a gayappearance, and because scientificness leads tothe conclusion that a person is superficial—they WISH to mislead to a false conclusion.There are free insolent minds which would fainconceal and deny that they are broken, proud,incurable hearts (the cynicism of Hamlet—thecase of Galiani); and occasionally folly itself isthe mask of an unfortunate OVER-ASSUREDknowledge.—From which it follows that it isthe part of a more refined humanity to havereverence "for the mask," and not to make useof psychology and curiosity in the wrong place.

271. That which separates two men most pro-foundly is a different sense and grade of purity.

What does it matter about all their honesty andreciprocal usefulness, what does it matter aboutall their mutual good-will: the fact still re-mains—they "cannot smell each other!" Thehighest instinct for purity places him who isaffected with it in the most extraordinary anddangerous isolation, as a saint: for it is just ho-liness—the highest spiritualization of the in-stinct in question. Any kind of cognizance of anindescribable excess in the joy of the bath, anykind of ardour or thirst which perpetually im-pels the soul out of night into the morning, andout of gloom, out of "affliction" into clearness,brightness, depth, and refinement:—just asmuch as such a tendency DISTINGUISHES—itis a noble tendency—it also SEPARATES.—Thepity of the saint is pity for the FILTH of thehuman, all-too-human. And there are gradesand heights where pity itself is regarded byhim as impurity, as filth.

272. Signs of nobility: never to think of lower-ing our duties to the rank of duties for every-body; to be unwilling to renounce or to shareour responsibilities; to count our prerogatives,and the exercise of them, among our DUTIES.

273. A man who strives after great things, looksupon every one whom he encounters on hisway either as a means of advance, or a delayand hindrance—or as a temporary resting-place. His peculiar lofty BOUNTY to his fellow-men is only possible when he attains his eleva-tion and dominates. Impatience, and the con-sciousness of being always condemned to com-edy up to that time—for even strife is a com-edy, and conceals the end, as every meansdoes—spoil all intercourse for him; this kind ofman is acquainted with solitude, and what ismost poisonous in it.

274. THE PROBLEM OF THOSE WHOWAIT.—Happy chances are necessary, andmany incalculable elements, in order that a

higher man in whom the solution of a problemis dormant, may yet take action, or "breakforth," as one might say—at the right moment.On an average it DOES NOT happen; and in allcorners of the earth there are waiting ones sit-ting who hardly know to what extent they arewaiting, and still less that they wait in vain.Occasionally, too, the waking call comes toolate—the chance which gives "permission" totake action—when their best youth, andstrength for action have been used up in sittingstill; and how many a one, just as he "sprangup," has found with horror that his limbs arebenumbed and his spirits are now too heavy!"It is too late," he has said to himself—and hasbecome self-distrustful and henceforth for everuseless.—In the domain of genius, may not the"Raphael without hands" (taking the expressionin its widest sense) perhaps not be the excep-tion, but the rule?—Perhaps genius is by nomeans so rare: but rather the five hundredHANDS which it requires in order to tyrannize

over the [GREEK INSERTED HERE], "the righttime"—in order to take chance by the forelock!

275. He who does not WISH to see the height ofa man, looks all the more sharply at what is lowin him, and in the foreground—and therebybetrays himself.

276. In all kinds of injury and loss the lowerand coarser soul is better off than the noblersoul: the dangers of the latter must be greater,the probability that it will come to grief andperish is in fact immense, considering the mul-tiplicity of the conditions of its existence.—In alizard a finger grows again which has been lost;not so in man.—

277. It is too bad! Always the old story! When aman has finished building his house, he findsthat he has learnt unawares something whichhe OUGHT absolutely to have known beforehe—began to build. The eternal, fatal "Too la-

te!" The melancholia of everything COM-PLETED—!

278.—Wanderer, who art thou? I see thee fol-low thy path without scorn, without love, withunfathomable eyes, wet and sad as a plummetwhich has returned to the light insatiated out ofevery depth—what did it seek down there?—with a bosom that never sighs, with lips thatconceal their loathing, with a hand which onlyslowly grasps: who art thou? what hast thoudone? Rest thee here: this place has hospitalityfor every one—refresh thyself! And whoeverthou art, what is it that now pleases thee? Whatwill serve to refresh thee? Only name it, what-ever I have I offer thee! "To refresh me? To re-fresh me? Oh, thou prying one, what sayestthou! But give me, I pray thee—-" What? what?Speak out! "Another mask! A second mask!"

279. Men of profound sadness betray them-selves when they are happy: they have a modeof seizing upon happiness as though they

would choke and strangle it, out of jealousy—ah, they know only too well that it will fleefrom them!

280. "Bad! Bad! What? Does he not—go back?"Yes! But you misunderstand him when youcomplain about it. He goes back like every onewho is about to make a great spring.

281.—"Will people believe it of me? But I insistthat they believe it of me: I have alwaysthought very unsatisfactorily of myself andabout myself, only in very rare cases, onlycompulsorily, always without delight in 'thesubject,' ready to digress from 'myself,' andalways without faith in the result, owing to anunconquerable distrust of the POSSIBILITY ofself-knowledge, which has led me so far as tofeel a CONTRADICTIO IN ADJECTO even inthe idea of 'direct knowledge' which theoristsallow themselves:—this matter of fact is almostthe most certain thing I know about myself.There must be a sort of repugnance in me to

BELIEVE anything definite about myself.—Isthere perhaps some enigma therein? Probably;but fortunately nothing for my own teeth.—Perhaps it betrays the species to which I be-long?—but not to myself, as is sufficientlyagreeable to me."

282.—"But what has happened to you?"—"I donot know," he said, hesitatingly; "perhaps theHarpies have flown over my table."—It some-times happens nowadays that a gentle, sober,retiring man becomes suddenly mad, breaksthe plates, upsets the table, shrieks, raves, andshocks everybody—and finally withdraws,ashamed, and raging at himself—whither? forwhat purpose? To famish apart? To suffocatewith his memories?—To him who has the de-sires of a lofty and dainty soul, and only sel-dom finds his table laid and his food prepared,the danger will always be great—nowadays,however, it is extraordinarily so. Thrown intothe midst of a noisy and plebeian age, with

which he does not like to eat out of the samedish, he may readily perish of hunger andthirst—or, should he nevertheless finally "fallto," of sudden nausea.—We have probably allsat at tables to which we did not belong; andprecisely the most spiritual of us, who are mostdifficult to nourish, know the dangerous DYS-PEPSIA which originates from a sudden insightand disillusionment about our food and ourmessmates—the AFTER-DINNER NAUSEA.

283. If one wishes to praise at all, it is a delicateand at the same time a noble self-control, topraise only where one DOES NOT agree—otherwise in fact one would praise oneself,which is contrary to good taste:—a self-control,to be sure, which offers excellent opportunityand provocation to constant MISUNDER-STANDING. To be able to allow oneself thisveritable luxury of taste and morality, one mustnot live among intellectual imbeciles, but ratheramong men whose misunderstandings and

mistakes amuse by their refinement—or onewill have to pay dearly for it!—"He praises me,THEREFORE he acknowledges me to beright"—this asinine method of inference spoilshalf of the life of us recluses, for it brings theasses into our neighbourhood and friendship.

284. To live in a vast and proud tranquility;always beyond... To have, or not to have, one'semotions, one's For and Against, according tochoice; to lower oneself to them for hours; toSEAT oneself on them as upon horses, and of-ten as upon asses:—for one must know how tomake use of their stupidity as well as of theirfire. To conserve one's three hundred fore-grounds; also one's black spectacles: for thereare circumstances when nobody must look intoour eyes, still less into our "motives." And tochoose for company that roguish and cheerfulvice, politeness. And to remain master of one'sfour virtues, courage, insight, sympathy, andsolitude. For solitude is a virtue with us, as a

sublime bent and bias to purity, which divinesthat in the contact of man and man—"in soci-ety"—it must be unavoidably impure. All soci-ety makes one somehow, somewhere, or some-time—"commonplace."

285. The greatest events and thoughts—thegreatest thoughts, however, are the greatestevents—are longest in being comprehended:the generations which are contemporary withthem do not EXPERIENCE such events—theylive past them. Something happens there as inthe realm of stars. The light of the furthest starsis longest in reaching man; and before it hasarrived man DENIES—that there are stars the-re. "How many centuries does a mind requireto be understood?"—that is also a standard, onealso makes a gradation of rank and an etiquettetherewith, such as is necessary for mind and forstar.

286. "Here is the prospect free, the mind ex-alted." [FOOTNOTE: Goethe's "Faust," Part II,

Act V. The words of Dr. Marianus.]—But thereis a reverse kind of man, who is also upon aheight, and has also a free prospect—but looksDOWNWARDS.

287. What is noble? What does the word "no-ble" still mean for us nowadays? How does thenoble man betray himself, how is he recognizedunder this heavy overcast sky of the commenc-ing plebeianism, by which everything is ren-dered opaque and leaden?—It is not his actionswhich establish his claim—actions are alwaysambiguous, always inscrutable; neither is it his"works." One finds nowadays among artistsand scholars plenty of those who betray bytheir works that a profound longing for noble-ness impels them; but this very NEED of no-bleness is radically different from the needs ofthe noble soul itself, and is in fact the eloquentand dangerous sign of the lack thereof. It is notthe works, but the BELIEF which is here deci-sive and determines the order of rank—to em-

ploy once more an old religious formula with anew and deeper meaning—it is some funda-mental certainty which a noble soul has aboutitself, something which is not to be sought, isnot to be found, and perhaps, also, is not to belost.—THE NOBLE SOUL HAS REVERENCEFOR ITSELF.—

288. There are men who are unavoidably intel-lectual, let them turn and twist themselves asthey will, and hold their hands before theirtreacherous eyes—as though the hand were nota betrayer; it always comes out at last that theyhave something which they hide—namely, in-tellect. One of the subtlest means of deceiving,at least as long as possible, and of successfullyrepresenting oneself to be stupider than onereally is—which in everyday life is often asdesirable as an umbrella,—is called ENTHUSI-ASM, including what belongs to it, for instance,virtue. For as Galiani said, who was obliged toknow it: VERTU EST ENTHOUSIASME.

289. In the writings of a recluse one alwayshears something of the echo of the wilderness,something of the murmuring tones and timidvigilance of solitude; in his strongest words,even in his cry itself, there sounds a new andmore dangerous kind of silence, of conceal-ment. He who has sat day and night, fromyear's end to year's end, alone with his soul infamiliar discord and discourse, he who has be-come a cave-bear, or a treasure-seeker, or atreasure-guardian and dragon in his cave—itmay be a labyrinth, but can also be a gold-mine—his ideas themselves eventually acquirea twilight-colour of their own, and an odour, asmuch of the depth as of the mould, somethinguncommunicative and repulsive, which blowschilly upon every passer-by. The recluse doesnot believe that a philosopher—supposing thata philosopher has always in the first place beena recluse—ever expressed his actual and ulti-mate opinions in books: are not books writtenprecisely to hide what is in us?—indeed, he will

doubt whether a philosopher CAN have "ulti-mate and actual" opinions at all; whether be-hind every cave in him there is not, and mustnecessarily be, a still deeper cave: an ampler,stranger, richer world beyond the surface, anabyss behind every bottom, beneath every"foundation." Every philosophy is a foregroundphilosophy—this is a recluse's verdict: "There issomething arbitrary in the fact that the PHI-LOSOPHER came to a stand here, took a retro-spect, and looked around; that he HERE laidhis spade aside and did not dig any deeper—there is also something suspicious in it." Everyphilosophy also CONCEALS a philosophy;every opinion is also a LURKING-PLACE,every word is also a MASK.

290. Every deep thinker is more afraid of beingunderstood than of being misunderstood. Thelatter perhaps wounds his vanity; but the for-mer wounds his heart, his sympathy, which

always says: "Ah, why would you also have ashard a time of it as I have?"

291. Man, a COMPLEX, mendacious, artful,and inscrutable animal, uncanny to the otheranimals by his artifice and sagacity, rather thanby his strength, has invented the good con-science in order finally to enjoy his soul assomething SIMPLE; and the whole of moralityis a long, audacious falsification, by virtue ofwhich generally enjoyment at the sight of thesoul becomes possible. From this point of viewthere is perhaps much more in the conceptionof "art" than is generally believed.

292. A philosopher: that is a man who con-stantly experiences, sees, hears, suspects,hopes, and dreams extraordinary things; who isstruck by his own thoughts as if they camefrom the outside, from above and below, as aspecies of events and lightning-flashes PECU-LIAR TO HIM; who is perhaps himself a stormpregnant with new lightnings; a portentous

man, around whom there is always rumblingand mumbling and gaping and something un-canny going on. A philosopher: alas, a beingwho often runs away from himself, is oftenafraid of himself—but whose curiosity alwaysmakes him "come to himself" again.

293. A man who says: "I like that, I take it formy own, and mean to guard and protect it fromevery one"; a man who can conduct a case, ca-rry out a resolution, remain true to an opinion,keep hold of a woman, punish and overthrowinsolence; a man who has his indignation andhis sword, and to whom the weak, the suffer-ing, the oppressed, and even the animals will-ingly submit and naturally belong; in short, aman who is a MASTER by nature—when sucha man has sympathy, well! THAT sympathyhas value! But of what account is the sympathyof those who suffer! Or of those even whopreach sympathy! There is nowadays, through-out almost the whole of Europe, a sickly irrita-

bility and sensitiveness towards pain, and alsoa repulsive irrestrainableness in complaining,an effeminizing, which, with the aid of religionand philosophical nonsense, seeks to deck itselfout as something superior—there is a regularcult of suffering. The UNMANLINESS of thatwhich is called "sympathy" by such groups ofvisionaries, is always, I believe, the first thingthat strikes the eye.—One must resolutely andradically taboo this latest form of bad taste; andfinally I wish people to put the good amulet,"GAI SABER" ("gay science," in ordinary lan-guage), on heart and neck, as a protectionagainst it.

294. THE OLYMPIAN VICE.—Despite the phi-losopher who, as a genuine Englishman, triedto bring laughter into bad repute in all thinkingminds—"Laughing is a bad infirmity of humannature, which every thinking mind will striveto overcome" (Hobbes),—I would even allowmyself to rank philosophers according to the

quality of their laughing—up to those who arecapable of GOLDEN laughter. And supposingthat Gods also philosophize, which I am stron-gly inclined to believe, owing to many rea-sons—I have no doubt that they also know howto laugh thereby in an overman-like and newfashion—and at the expense of all seriousthings! Gods are fond of ridicule: it seems thatthey cannot refrain from laughter even in holymatters.

295. The genius of the heart, as that great mys-terious one possesses it, the tempter-god andborn rat-catcher of consciences, whose voicecan descend into the nether-world of everysoul, who neither speaks a word nor casts aglance in which there may not be some motiveor touch of allurement, to whose perfection itpertains that he knows how to appear,—not ashe is, but in a guise which acts as an ADDI-TIONAL constraint on his followers to pressever closer to him, to follow him more cordially

and thoroughly;—the genius of the heart,which imposes silence and attention on every-thing loud and self-conceited, which smoothesrough souls and makes them taste a new long-ing—to lie placid as a mirror, that the deepheavens may be reflected in them;—the geniusof the heart, which teaches the clumsy and toohasty hand to hesitate, and to grasp more deli-cately; which scents the hidden and forgottentreasure, the drop of goodness and sweet spiri-tuality under thick dark ice, and is a divining-rod for every grain of gold, long buried andimprisoned in mud and sand; the genius of theheart, from contact with which every one goesaway richer; not favoured or surprised, not asthough gratified and oppressed by the goodthings of others; but richer in himself, newerthan before, broken up, blown upon, andsounded by a thawing wind; more uncertain,perhaps, more delicate, more fragile, morebruised, but full of hopes which as yet lacknames, full of a new will and current, full of a

new ill-will and counter-current... but what amI doing, my friends? Of whom am I talking toyou? Have I forgotten myself so far that I havenot even told you his name? Unless it be thatyou have already divined of your own accordwho this questionable God and spirit is, thatwishes to be PRAISED in such a manner? For,as it happens to every one who from childhoodonward has always been on his legs, and inforeign lands, I have also encountered on mypath many strange and dangerous spirits;above all, however, and again and again, theone of whom I have just spoken: in fact, no lessa personage than the God DIONYSUS, thegreat equivocator and tempter, to whom, asyou know, I once offered in all secrecy and rev-erence my first-fruits—the last, as it seems tome, who has offered a SACRIFICE to him, for Ihave found no one who could understand whatI was then doing. In the meantime, however, Ihave learned much, far too much, about thephilosophy of this God, and, as I said, from

mouth to mouth—I, the last disciple and initi-ate of the God Dionysus: and perhaps I mightat last begin to give you, my friends, as far as Iam allowed, a little taste of this philosophy? Ina hushed voice, as is but seemly: for it has to dowith much that is secret, new, strange, wonder-ful, and uncanny. The very fact that Dionysusis a philosopher, and that therefore Gods alsophilosophize, seems to me a novelty which isnot unensnaring, and might perhaps arousesuspicion precisely among philosophers;—among you, my friends, there is less to be saidagainst it, except that it comes too late and notat the right time; for, as it has been disclosed tome, you are loth nowadays to believe in Godand gods. It may happen, too, that in the frank-ness of my story I must go further than isagreeable to the strict usages of your ears? Cer-tainly the God in question went further, verymuch further, in such dialogues, and was al-ways many paces ahead of me... Indeed, if itwere allowed, I should have to give him, ac-

cording to human usage, fine ceremonioustides of lustre and merit, I should have to extolhis courage as investigator and discoverer, hisfearless honesty, truthfulness, and love of wis-dom. But such a God does not know what to dowith all that respectable trumpery and pomp."Keep that," he would say, "for thyself andthose like thee, and whoever else require it! I—have no reason to cover my nakedness!" Onesuspects that this kind of divinity and philoso-pher perhaps lacks shame?—He once said: "Un-der certain circumstances I love mankind"—and referred thereby to Ariadne, who was pre-sent; "in my opinion man is an agreeable, brave,inventive animal, that has not his equal uponearth, he makes his way even through all laby-rinths. I like man, and often think how I canstill further advance him, and make himstronger, more evil, and more profound."—"Stronger, more evil, and more profound?" Iasked in horror. "Yes," he said again, "stronger,more evil, and more profound; also more beau-

tiful"—and thereby the tempter-god smiledwith his halcyon smile, as though he had justpaid some charming compliment. One heresees at once that it is not only shame that thisdivinity lacks;—and in general there are goodgrounds for supposing that in some things theGods could all of them come to us men for in-struction. We men are—more human.—

296. Alas! what are you, after all, my writtenand painted thoughts! Not long ago you wereso variegated, young and malicious, so full ofthorns and secret spices, that you made mesneeze and laugh—and now? You have alreadydoffed your novelty, and some of you, I fear,are ready to become truths, so immortal dothey look, so pathetically honest, so tedious!And was it ever otherwise? What then do wewrite and paint, we mandarins with Chinesebrush, we immortalisers of things which LENDthemselves to writing, what are we alone capa-ble of painting? Alas, only that which is just

about to fade and begins to lose its odour! Alas,only exhausted and departing storms and be-lated yellow sentiments! Alas, only birdsstrayed and fatigued by flight, which now letthemselves be captured with the hand—withOUR hand! We immortalize what cannot liveand fly much longer, things only which areexhausted and mellow! And it is only for yourAFTERNOON, you, my written and paintedthoughts, for which alone I have colours, manycolours, perhaps, many variegated softenings,and fifty yellows and browns and greens andreds;—but nobody will divine thereby how yelooked in your morning, you sudden sparksand marvels of my solitude, you, my old, be-loved—EVIL thoughts!