 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer visit LibriVox.org Beyond Good and Evil by Frederick Nietzsche Preface read by Hugh McGuire Supposing that truth is a woman, what then? Is there not ground for suspecting that all philosophers insofar as they have been dogmatist have failed to understand women that the terrible seriousness and clumsy an opportunity with which they have usually paid their addresses to truth have been unskilled and Unseemly methods for winning a woman Certainly she has never allowed herself to be one and at present every kind of dogma stands with a sad and discouraged mean If indeed it stands at all For there are scoffers who maintain that it has fallen that all dogma lies on the ground nay more that it is at its last gasp But to speak seriously There are good grounds for hoping that all dogmatizing in philosophy whatever solemn whatever conclusive and Decided heirs it has assumed may have been only a noble purism and tyrannism and Probably the time is at hand when it will be once and again understood What has actually sufficed for the basis of such imposing and absolute philosophical edifices as the dogmatists have hitherto reared Perhaps some popular superstition of immemorial time such as the soul superstition which in the form of subject and ego superstition has not yet ceased doing mischief Perhaps some play upon words a deception on the part of grammar or an audacious generalization of very restricted very personal Very human all too human fats The philosophy of the dogmatists it is to be hoped Was only a promise for thousands of years afterwards as was astrology in still earlier times In the service of which probably more labor gold Acuteness and patience have been spent than on any actual science hitherto We owe to it and to its superterrestrial potensions in Asia and Egypt the grand style of architecture It seems that in order to inscribe themselves upon the heart of humanity with everlasting claims All great things have first to wander about the earth as enormous and awe-inspiring caricatures Dogmatic philosophy has been a caricature of this kind For instance the Vedanta doctrine in Asia and plagued inism in Europe Let us not be ungrateful to it. Although it must certainly be confessed the worst the most tiresome and the most dangerous of Errors hitherto has been a dogmatist error Namely Plato's invention of pure spirit and the good in itself But now when it has been surmounted when Europe rid of this nightmare can again draw breath freely and At least enjoy a healthier sleep We whose duty is wakefulness itself are the heirs of all the strength which the struggle against this error has fostered It amounted to the very inversion of truth and the denial of the perspective the fundamental condition of Life to speak of spirit and the good as Plato spoke of them Indeed one might ask as a physician How did such a melody attack the finest product of antiquity Plato Had the wicked Socrates really corrupted him was Socrates after all a corrupter of youths and deserved his hemlock But the struggle against Plato or to speak planar and for the people the struggle against the ecclesiastical oppression of millenniums of Christianity For Christianity is Platonism for the people produced in Europe a magnificent tension of soul such as had not existed anywhere previously With such a tensely strained bow one can now aim at the furthest goals As a matter of fact the European feels this tension as a state of distress and twice attempts have been made in grand style to unbend the bow Once by means of jesuitism and the second time by means of democratic enlightenment Which with the aid of liberty of the press and newspaper reading might in fact bring it about the spirit would not so easily find itself in distress The Germans invented gunpowder all credit to them, but they again made things square. They invented printing But we who are neither Jesuits nor Democrats nor even sufficiently Germans we good Europeans and free very free spirits We have it still all the distress of spirit and all the tension of its bow and perhaps also the arrow the duty And who knows the goal to aim at written in sills Maria upper Engadine June 1885 end of preface This is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer Please visit LibriVox.org Beyond Good and Evil by Frederick Nietzsche chapter 1 prejudices of philosophers read by humaguire one The will to truth which is to tempt us to many a hazardous Enterprise the famous truthfulness of which all philosophers have hitherto spoken with respect What questions has this will to truth not laid before us? What strange perplexing questionable questions? It is already a long story Yet it seems as if it were hardly commenced Is it any wonder if we at last grow distrustful lose patience and turn impatiently away? That this sphinx teaches us at last to ask questions ourselves Who is it really that puts questions to us here? What really is this will to truth in us? In fact, we made a long halt at the questions as to the origin of this will Until at last we came to an absolute standstill before a yet more fundamental question We inquired about the value of this will Granted that we want the truth Why not rather untruth and Uncertainty even ignorance The problem of the value of truth presented itself before us Or was it we who presented ourselves before the problem? Which of us is the edifice here which the sphinx It would seem to be a rendezvous of questions and notes of interrogation And could it be believed that it at last seems to us as if the problem had never been propounded before As if we were the first to discern it get a sight of it and risk raising it for there is risk in raising it Perhaps there is no greater risk to How could anything originate out of its opposite? For example truth out of error or the will to truth out of the will to deception Or the generous deed out of selfishness or the pure Sun bright vision of the wise man out of covetousness Such genesis is impossible Whoever dreams of it is a fool may worse than a fool Things of the highest value must have a different origin an origin of their own in this transitory seductive illusory Poultry world in this turmoil of delusion and cupidity. They cannot have their source But rather in the lap of being in the intransitory in the concealed God in the thing in itself There must be their source and nowhere else This mode of reasoning discloses the typical prejudice by which metaphysicians of all times can be recognized This mode of valuation is at the back of all their logical procedure Through this belief of theirs they exert themselves for their knowledge for something that is in the end solemnly christened the truth The fundamental belief of metaphysicians is the belief in antithesis of values It never occurred even to the warriest of them to doubt here on the very threshold where doubt however was most necessary Though they had made a solemn vow the omnibus do be tandem For it may be doubted firstly whether antithesis exists at all and secondly whether the popular valuations and Antithesis of value upon which metaphysicians have set their seal are not perhaps merely superficial estimates merely provisional perspectives Besides being probably made from some corner perhaps from below Frog perspectives as it were to borrow an expression current among painters in spite of all the value Which may belong to the true the positive and the unselfish it might be possible that a higher and more fundamental value for life Generally should be assigned to pretense to the will to delusion to selfishness and Cupidity it might even be possible that what constitutes the value of those good and respected things Consist precisely in their being insidiously related knotted and crotcheted to these evil and apparently opposed things Perhaps even in being essentially identical with them perhaps But who wishes to concern himself with such dangerous perhaps's for that investigation one must await the advent of a new order of Philosophers such as will have other tastes and inclinations the reverse of those hitherto prevalent Philosophers of the dangerous perhaps in every sense of the term and to speak in all seriousness. I see such new philosophers beginning to appear Three having kept a sharp eye on philosophers and having read between their lines long enough I now say to myself that the greater part of conscious thinking must be counted among the instinctive functions and It is so even in the case of philosophical thinking one has here to learn a new As one learned new about heredity and innate this as little as the act of birth comes into consideration in the whole process and procedure of heredity Just as little is being being conscious Opposed to the instinctive in any decisive sense the greater part of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly influenced by his instincts and forced 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 of a definite mode of life For example that the certain is worth more than the uncertain that the illusion is less valuable than the truth Such valuations in spite of their regulative importance for us might not withstanding the only superficial valuations special kinds of Mazery such as may be necessary for the maintenance of beings such as ourselves Supposing in effect that man is not just the measure of things For the falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it It is here perhaps that our new language sounds most strangely The question is how far an opinion is life furthering life Persevering species persevering perhaps species rearing and we are fundamentally inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions Do which the synthetic judgments a priori belong are the most indispensable to us that without a recognition of logical fictions Without a comparison of reality with the purely imagined world of the absolute and immutable Without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers man could not live That the renunciation of false opinions would be a renunciation of life a negation of life to recognize Untruth as a condition of life that is certainly to impunge the traditional ideas of value in a dangerous manner and a philosophy Which ventures to do so has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil five That which causes philosophers to be regarded half distrustfully and half mockingly is not the oft-repeated discovery How innocent they are how often and easily they make mistakes and lose their way in short how childish and childlike they are But that there is not enough honest dealing with them Whereas they all raise a loud and virtuous outcry when the problem of truthfulness is even hinted at in the remotest manner They all pose as though their real opinions have been discovered and attained through the self-evolving of a cold pure Divinely indifferent dialectic in contrast to all sorts of mystics who fairer and foolisher talk of inspiration Whereas in fact a prejudice proposition idea or suggestion which is generally their heart's desire abstract than refined is Defended by them with arguments sought out after the event They are all advocates who do not wish to be regarded as such generally astute defenders also of their prejudices Which they dubbed truths and very far from having the conscience which bravely admits this to itself Very far from having the good taste of the courage which goes so far as to let this be understood Perhaps to warm friend or foe or in cheerful and cheerful confidence and self-reheal The spectacle of the tartufory of old Kant Equally stiff and decent with which he entices us into the dialectic byways that lead more correctly needy mislead To his categorical imperative makes us facidious one's smile We who find no small amusement in spying out the subtle tricks of old moralists and ethical preachers Or still more so the hocus-pocus in mathematical form by means of which Spinoza has as it were clad his philosophy in male and mask In fact the love of his wisdom to translate the term fairly and squarely In order thereby to strike terror at once into the heart of the assailant who should dare to cast a glance on the invincible maiden That palace Athenae how much of personal timidity and vulnerability does this masquerade of a sickly recluse betray? six It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now has consisted of Namely the confession of its originator and a species of involuntary and unconscious autobiography and moreover that the moral or immoral purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true vital germ Out of which the entire plant has always grown Indeed to understand how the obstrucist metaphysical assertions of a philosopher have been arrived at it is always well and wise to first ask oneself What morality do they or does he aim at? Accordingly, I do not believe that an impulse to knowledge is the father of philosophy But that another impulse here is elsewhere Has only made use of knowledge and mistaken knowledge as an instrument But whoever considers the fundamental impulses of man with a view to determining how far they may have here acted as inspiring Jenny or As demons and kobolds We'll find that they have all practiced philosophy at one time or another and that each one of them would have been only too glad to look Upon itself as the ultimate end of existence and the legitimate lord over all other impulses for every impulse is imperious and As such attempts to philosophize To be sure in the case of scholars in the case of really scientific men, it may be otherwise better if you will There there may really be such a thing as an impulse to knowledge some kind of small independent clockwork Which when well wound up works away industriously to that end without the rest of the scholarly impulses taking any material part They're in the actual interests of the scholar. Therefore are generally in quite another direction in The family perhaps or in money-making or in politics It is in fact almost indifferent at what point of research his little machine is placed And whether the hopeful young worker becomes a good philologist a mushroom specialist or a chemist He's not characterized by becoming this or that in the philosopher on the contrary. There is absolutely nothing impersonal and Above all his morality furnishes a decided and decisive testimony as to who he is That is to say in what order the deepest impulses of his nature stand to each other seven How malicious philosophers can be I know of nothing more stinging than the joke Epicureus took the liberty of making on Plato and Platonists He called them Dionysio Colakes in its original sense and on the face of it the word signifies Flatterers of Dionysius consequently tyrants accessories and licks bills Besides this however it is as much to say. They're all actors. There's nothing genuine about them For Dionysio Colax was a popular name for an actor And the latter is really the malignant reproach that Epicureus cast upon Plato He was annoyed by the grandiose manner the mise-en-scène style of which Plato and his scholars were masters of which Epicureus was not a master He the old school teacher of Samus who sat concealed in his little garden at Athens and wrote 300 books Perhaps out of rage and ambitious envy of Plato who knows Greece took a hundred years to find out who the garden God Epicureus really was did she ever find out eight There is a point in every philosophy at which the conviction of the philosopher appears on the scene or to put it in The words of the ancient mystery Nine you desire to live according to nature. Oh You noble stoics what fraud of words Imagine to yourselves indifference as a power. How could you live in accordance with such indifference to live? Is not that just endeavoring to be otherwise than this nature is not living valuing preferring being unjust being limited endeavoring to be different and Granted that you're imperative living according to nature Means actually the same as living according to life. How could you do differently? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are and must be in? Reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you while you pretend to read with rapture the cannon of your law in nature You want something quite contrary you extraordinary stage players and self deluders in your pride You wish to dictate your morals and ideals to nature to nature herself and to incorporate them therein You insist that it shall be nature according to the stoa and Would like everything to be made after your own image as a vast eternal glorification and generalism of stoicism With all your love for truth you have forced yourselves so long so persistently and with such hypnotic rigidity to see nature falsely That is to say stoically that you are no longer able to see it Otherwise and to crown all some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the bellomite hope that because you are able to tyrannize over yourselves Stoicism is self tyranny nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over is not the stoic a part of nature But this is an old and everlasting story What happened in old times with the stoic still happens today as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself It always creates the world in its own image it cannot do otherwise Philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself the most spiritual will to power the will to creation of the world the will to cause a prima 10 The eerness and subtlety I should even say craftiness with which the problem of the real and the apparent world is dealt with a present throughout Europe furnishes food for thought and attention and he who hears only a will to truth in the background and nothing else Cannot certainly boast of the sharpest ears in rare and isolated cases It may really have happened that such a will to truth a certain extravagant and adventurous pluck a metaphysicians Ambition of the forlorn hope has participated therein that which in the end always prefers a handful of certainty to a whole cartload of beautiful possibilities There may even be puritanical fanatics of conscience who prefer to put their last trust in a sure-nothing Rather than in an uncertain something but that is nihilism and the sign of a despairing morally worried soul Not withstanding the courageous bearing such a virtue may display It seems however to be otherwise with stronger and livelier thinkers who are still eager for life In that they side against appearance and speak superciliously of perspective in that they rank the credibility of their own bodies About as low as the credibility of the ocular evidence that the earth stands still and thus apparently Allowing with complacency their securities possession to escape for what does one at present believe in more firmly than in one's body Who knows if they are not really trying to win back something which was formally and even secure possession Something of the old domain of the faith of former times Perhaps the immortal soul perhaps the old God in short ideas by which they could live better That is to say more vigorously and more joyously than by modern ideas There is distrust of these modern ideas in this mode of looking at things A disbelief in all that has been constructed yesterday and today There is perhaps some slight admixture of satiety and scorn which can no longer injure the Brita Brack of ideas of the most varied origin Such as so-called positivism at present throws on the market a discussed at the more refined taste at the village fair Mottliness and patchiness of all these reality philosophy So fasters in whom there is nothing either new or true except this mottliness Therein it seems to me that we should agree with those skeptical anti-realists And knowledge microscopists of the present day their instinct which repels them from modern reality is Unrefuted what do their retrograde? By paths concern us the main thing about them is not that they wish to go back But that they wish to get away there from a little more strength swing courage and artistic power And they would be off and not back 11 It seems to me that there is everywhere an attempt at present to divert attention from the actual influence Which can't exercised on German philosophy and especially to ignore prudently the value which he set upon himself Count was first and foremost proud of his table of categories With it in his hand. He said this is the most difficult thing that could ever be undertaken on behalf of metaphysics Let us only understand this could be he was proud of having discovered a new faculty in man the faculty of synthetic judgment a Priority granting that he deceived himself in this matter the development and rapid flourishing of German philosophy depended nevertheless on his pride and on the eager rivalry of the younger generation to discover if possible something it all events New faculties of which to be still prouder, but let us reflect for a moment. It is high time to do so How our synthetic judgments a priority possible can't ask himself and what is really his answer by means of a means faculty But unfortunately not in five words, but so circumstantially and posing Lee and with such display of German profundity and verbal Flourishes that one all together loses sight of the comical neasery almond Involved in such an answer People were beside themselves with delight over this new faculty and the jubilation reached its climax when cunt further discovered a moral faculty in man For at that time Germans were still moral not yet dabbling in the politics of hard fact Then came the honeymoon of German philosophy all the young theologians of the to begin Institution went immediately into the groves all seeking for faculties And what did they not find in that innocent rich and still youthful period of the German spirit to which romanticism the malicious Fairy piped and sang when one could not yet distinguish between finding and inventing above all a Faculty for the transcendental shelling christened it intellectual intuition and thereby gratified the most earnest longings of the naturally pious inclined Germans One can do no greater wrong to the whole of this exuberant and ecstatic movement Which was really youthfulness not withstanding that it disguised itself so boldly in Horry and senile conceptions that to take it seriously or even treat it with moral indignation Enough however the world grew older and the dream vanished a time came when people rubbed their foreheads And they still rubbed today people had been dreaming and first and foremost old cunt By means of a means faculty he had said or at least meant to say But is that an answer an explanation or is it not rather merely a repetition of the question? How does opium induce sleep by means of a faculty namely the virtuous Dormitiva replies the doctor in Moliere Yeah, it's in yo vitros Dormitiva could just as natura senses as appear But such replies belong to the realm of comedy and it is high time to replace the Kantian question How are synthetic judgments a priori possible by another question? Why is belief in such judgments necessary in affected as high time that we should understand that such judgments must be believed to be true? For the sake of the preservation of creatures like ourselves though They still might naturally be false judgments or more plainly spoken and roughly and readily Synthetic judgments a priority should not be possible at all. We have no right to them in our mouths. They are nothing but false judgments Only of course the belief in their truth is necessary as plausible belief and ocular evidence belonging to the prospective view of life And finally to call to mind the enormous influence which German philosophy I hope you understand its right to inverted commas goose feet has exercised throughout the whole of Europe There is no doubt that a certain Virtuous Dormitiva had a share in it thanks to German philosophy It was a delight to the noble idlers the virtuous the mystics the artiste the three fourths Christians and the political Obscurantists of all nations to find an antidote to the still overwhelming Centralism which overflowed from the last century into into this in short census a superior 12 as regards materialistic atomism it is one of the best refuted theories that have been advanced and in Europe there is now perhaps no one in the learning world So unscholarly as to attach serious Signification to it except for convenient everyday use as an abbreviation of the means of expression Thanks chiefly to the pole Boskovich He and the pole Copernicus have hitherto been the greatest and most successful opponents of ocular evidence For while Copernicus has persuaded us to believe contrary to all the senses that the earth does not stand fast Boskovich has taught us to abjure the belief in the last thing that stood fast of the earth the belief in substance in matter in the earth residem and Particle atom it is the greatest triumph over the senses that has hitherto been gained on earth One must however go still further and also declare war relentless war to the knife Against the atomistic requirements which still lead a dangerous afterlife in places where no one suspects them like the more celebrated metaphysical requirements one must also above all Give the finishing stroke to that other more portentous atomism which Christianity has taught best and longest the soul atomism Let it be permitted to designate by this expression the belief which regards the soul is something indestructible eternal Indivisible as a monad as an atom on this belief ought to be expelled from science between ourselves It is not at all necessary to get rid of the soul thereby and thus renounce one of the oldest and most venerated Hypothesis has happened frequently to the clumsiness of naturalists who can hardly touch on the soul without immediately losing it But the way is open for new acceptations and refinements of the soul hypothesis and such conceptions as mortal soul and soul of subjective multiplicity and soul as social structure of the instincts and passions want henceforth to have legitimate rights and science in that new psychologist is About to put an end to the superstitions which have hitherto flourished with almost tropical luxuriance around the idea of the soul He is really as it were thrusting himself into a new desert and a new distrust It is possible that the older psychologist had a merrier and more comfortable time of it Eventually, however, he finds that precisely thereby He is also condemned to invent and who knows perhaps to discover the new 13 psychologists should be think themselves before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being a Living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength Life itself is will to power Self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results thereof in short here as everywhere else Let us be aware of superfluous teleological principles one of which is the instinct of self-preservation We owe it to Spinoza's inconsistency It is thus in effect that method ordains which must be essentially economy of principles 14 it is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that natural philosophy is only a world exposition and world arrangement According to us if I may say so and not a world explanation But in so far as it is based on belief in 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 fingers of its own it has ocular evidence and palpableness of its own This operates fascinatingly persuasively and convincingly upon an age with fundamentally plebeian tastes In fact, it follows instinctively the canon of truth of eternal popular sensualism What is clear what is explained Only that which can be seen and felt one must peruse every problem thus far Aversely however the charm of the platonic mode of thought which was an aristocratic mode consisted precisely in resistance to obvious sense evidence Perhaps among men who enjoyed even stronger and more fastidious senses than our contemporaries But who knew how to find a higher triumph in remaining masters of them and this By means of pale cold gray conceptual networks, which they threw over the motley world 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 of Plato There was an enjoyment different from that which the physicists of today offer us and likewise the Darwinists and Anti-teleologists among the physiological workers with their principle of the smallest possible effort and the greatest possible blunder Where there is nothing more to see or grasp there is also nothing more for men to do that is certainly an imperative Different from the platonic one, but it may notwithstanding be the right imperative for a hardy laborious race of machinists and bridge builders of the future Who have nothing but rough work to perform? 15 to study Physiology with a clear conscience one must insist on the fact that the sense organs are not phenomena in the sense of the idealistic philosophy as such they certainly could not be causes Sensualism therefore at least as regulative hypothesis if not as heuristic principle what and Others say even that the external world is the work of our organs But then our body as a part of this external world would be the work of our organs But then our organs themselves would be the work of our organs It seems to me that this is a complete reductio ad absurdum If the conception cause a sui is something fundamentally observed Consequently the external world is not the work of our organs 16 there are still harmless self-observers who believe that there are immediate certainties for instance I think or as a superstition of Schopenhauer puts it I will as though cognition here got hold of its object purely and simply as the thing in itself Without any falsification taking place either on the part of the subject or the object I would repeat it however a hundred times that immediate certainty as Well as absolute knowledge and the thing in itself involve a contradictio in ejecto We really ought to free ourselves from the misleading significance of words The people on their part may think that cognition is knowing all about things But the philosopher must say to himself when I analyze the process that is expressed in the sentence I think I find a whole series of daring assertions the argumentative proof of which would be difficult perhaps impossible for instance That it is I Who think that there must necessarily be something that thinks That thinking is an activity and an operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause That there is an ego and finally that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking that I know what thinking is For if I had not already decided within myself what it is by what standard could I determine whether that which is just happening is not Perhaps willing or feeling in short the assertion I think assumes that I compare my state at the present moment with other states of myself Which I know in order to determine what it is on account of this retrospective connection with further knowledge It has at any rate no immediate certainty for me In place of the immediate certainty in which the people may believe in the special case The philosopher thus finds a series of metaphysical questions presented to him Veritable conscience questions of the intellect to which whence did I get this notion of thinking? Why do I believe in cause and effect? What gives me the right to speak of an ego and even of an ego as cause and finally of an ego as cause of thought? He who ventures to answers these metaphysical questions at once by an appeal to a sort of intuitive perception Like the person who says I think and I know that this at least is true actual and certain We'll encounter a smile and two notes of interrogation in a philosopher nowadays Sir the philosopher will perhaps given to understand it is improbable that you are not mistaken But why should it be the truth? 17 with regard to the superstitions of logicians I shall never tire of emphasizing a small terse fact which is unwillingly recognized by these credulous minds Namely that a thought comes when it wishes and not when I wish So that it is a perversion of the facts of the case to say that the subject I is the condition of the predicate think one thinks But that this one is precisely the famous old ego is to put 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 Interpretation of the process and does not belong to the process itself One infers here according to the usual grammatical formula to think is an activity every activity requires an agency that is active consequently It was pretty much the same Lines that the older atomists sought besides the operating power the material particle wherein it resides and out of which it operates the atom More rigorous minds however learned at last to get along without this earth's idium And perhaps someday we shall accustomed ourselves even from the logicians point of view to get along without the little one To which the worthy old ego has refined itself 18 It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable It is precisely thereby that it attracts the more subtle minds It seems that the hundred times refuted theory of the free will owes its persistence to this charm alone Someone is always appearing who feels himself strong enough to refute it 19 Philosophers are accustomed to speak of the will as though it were the best known thing in the world Indeed Schopenhauer has given us to understand that the will alone is really known to us absolutely and completely known Without deduction or addition but it again and again seems to me that in this case Schopenhauer also only did what? Philosophers are in the habit of doing he seems to have adopted a popular prejudice and exaggerated it Willing seems to me to be above all something complicated something that is a unity only in name and It is precisely in a name that popular prejudice lurks Which has got the mastery over the inadequate precautions of philosophers in all ages So let us for once be more cautious. Let us be unphilosophical Let us say that in all willing there is firstly a plurality of sensations namely the sensation of the condition Away from which we go the sensation of the condition towards which we go the sensation of this from and towards itself and then besides an accompanying muscular sensation which even without our putting in motion arms and legs Commences its action by force of habit directly. We will anything therefore just as sensations and indeed many kinds of sensations are to be recognized as Ingredients of the will so in the second place thinking is also to be recognized in Every act of the will there is a ruling thought and let us not imagine it possible To sever this thought from the willing as if the will would then remain over In the third place the will is not only a complex of sensation and thinking but it is above all an emotion and in fact The emotion of the command that which is termed freedom of the will is essentially the emotion of supremacy in respect to him Who must obey I am free he must obey this consciousness is inherent in every will and equally So the straining of the attention the straight look which fits it fixes itself exclusively on one thing the Unconditional judgment that this and nothing else is necessary now the inward certainty that obedience will be rendered and whatever else Pertains to the position of the commander a man who wills commands something within himself Which renders obedience or which he believes renders obedience, but now let us notice What is the strangest thing about the will this affair so extremely complex for which the people have only one name in as much as in the given circumstances we are at the same time the commanding and The obeying parties and as the obeying party We know the sensations of constraint Impulsion pressure resistance and motion which usually commenced immediately after the act of will in as much as on the other hand We are accustomed to disregard this duality and to deceive ourselves about it by means of the synthetic term I a Whole series of erroneous conclusions and consequently of false judgments about the will itself has become attached to the act of willing To such a degree that he who wills believes firmly that willing suffices for action Since in the majority of cases there has only been exercise of will when the effect of the command Consequently obedience and therefore action was to be expected the appearance has translated itself into sentiment as If there were a necessity of effect In a word he who wills believes with a fair amount of certainty that will and action are somehow one He ascribes the success the carrying out of the willing to the will itself and thereby enjoys an increase of the sensation of power Which accompanies all success Freedom of will that is the expression for the complex state of delight of the person exercising volition Who commands and at the same time identifies himself with the executor of the order who as such enjoys also the triumph over obstacles But thinks within himself that it was really his own will that overcame them in this way The person exercising volition adds feelings of delight of his successful executive instruments the useful under wills or under souls indeed Our body is but a social structure composed of many souls to his feelings of delight as commander Le fait c'est moi What happens here is what happens in every well-constructed and happy commonwealth Namely that the governing class identifies itself with the successes of the commonwealth in all willing It is absolutely a question of commanding and obeying on the basis as already said of a social structure composed of many souls On which account a philosopher should claim the right to include willing as such within the sphere of morals Regarded as the doctrine of the relations of supremacy under which the phenomenon of life manifests itself 20 that the separate Philosophical ideas are not anything optional or autonomously evolving but grow up in connection and relationship with each other that However suddenly and arbitrarily they seem to appear in the history of thought They never look the less belong just as much to a system as the collective members of the fauna of a continent Is betrayed in the end by the circumstance how unfailingly the most diverse Philosophers always feel in again a definite fundamental scheme of possible philosophies Under an invisible spell they always revolve once more in the same orbit However independent of each other they may feel themselves with their critical or systematic will Something within them leads them something impels them in definite order The one after the other to wit the innate methodology and relationship of their ideas Their thinking is in fact far less a discovery than a re Recognizing a remembering a return and a homecoming to far off ancient common household of the soul Out of which those ideas formally grew Philosophizing is so far a kind of activism of the highest order the wonderful family resemblance of all Indian Greek and German Philosophizing is easily enough explained in fact where there is affinity of language owing to the common philosophy of grammar I mean owing to the unconscious domination and guidance of similar grammatical functions It cannot but be that everything is prepared at the outset for a similar development and succession of philosophical systems Just as the way seems barred against certain other possibilities of world interpretation It is highly probable that philosophers within the domain of the Ural Altaic languages where the conception of the subject is least developed look otherwise into the world and Will be found on paths of thought different from those of the Indo-Germans and Muslims the spell of certain grammatical functions is ultimately also the spell of physiological valuations and racial conditions So much by way of rejecting Locke's superficiality with regard to the origin of ideas 21 the cause a sui is the best self-contradiction that has yet been conceived It is a sort of logical violation and unnaturalness But the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with this very folly The desire for freedom of will in the superlative Metaphysical sense such as still holds sway Unfortunately in the minds of the half-educated the desire to bear the entire and ultimate Responsibility for one's actions oneself and to absolve God the world ancestors chance and society therefrom involves nothing less than to be precisely this cause a sui and With more than Manchausen daring to pull oneself up into existence by the hair out of the slough of nothingness If anyone should find out in this manner the crass stupidity of the celebrated conception of free will And put it out of his head all together I beg of him to carry his enlightenment a step further and also put out of his head the contrary of this monstrous conception of free will I mean non free will which is tantamount to a misuse of cause and effect One should not wrongly materialize cause and effect as the natural philosophers do and whoever like them naturalize in thinking At present according to the prevailing mechanical Which makes the cause press and push until it affects its end one should use cause and effect only as pure conceptions That is to say as conventional fictions for the purpose of designation and mutual understanding Not for explanation in being in itself. There is nothing of causal connection of necessity or of psychological non-freedom There the effect does not follow the cause their law does not obtain it is we alone who have devised cause sequence reciprocity Relativity constraint number law freedom motive and purpose and when we interpret and Intermix this simple world as being in itself with things we act once more as we have always acted mythologically The non-free will is mythology in real life. It is only a question of strong and weak wills It is almost always a symptom of what is lacking in himself 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 person betrays himself and in general if I have observed correctly the non-freedom of the will is regarded as a problem from two Entirely opposite standpoints, but always in a profoundly personal manner Some will not give up their responsibility their belief in themselves the personal right to their merits At any price the vain races belong to this class Others on the contrary do not wish to be answerable for anything or blamed for anything and Owing to an inward self-contempt seek to get out of the business no matter how The latter when they write books are in the habit at present of taking the side of criminals a sort of Socialistic sympathy is their favorite disguise and as a matter of fact the fatalism the weak willed embellishes itself Surprisingly when it can pose as la religion de la souffrance humaine that is its good taste 22 let me be pardoned as an old philologist who cannot Desist from the mischief of putting his finger on bad modes of interpretation But nature's conformity to law of which you physicists talk so proudly as though why it exists only owing to your Interpretation and bad philology It is no matter of fact no text but rather just naively human humanitarian adjustment and perversion of meeting with which you make Abundant concessions to the democratic instincts of the modern soul Everywhere equality before the law nature is not different in that respect nor better than we a fine instance of secret motive In which the vulgar antagonism to everything privileged and autocratic Likewise a second and more refined atheism in which a vulgar antagonism to everything privileged and autocratic Likewise a second and more refined atheism is once more disguised need you name it That also is what you want and therefore cheers for natural law. Is it not so? But as has been said that is interpretation not text and somebody might come along who with Opposite intentions and modes of interpretation could read out of the same nature and with regard to the same phenomena Just the tyrannically inconsiderate and relentless enforcement of the claims of power An interpreter who should so place the Unexceptionalness and unconditionalness of all will to power before your eyes that almost every word and the word tyranny itself Would eventually seem unsuitable or like a weakening and softening metaphor as being too human And who should nevertheless end by asserting the same about this world as you do namely that it has a necessary and calculable course Not however because laws obtain in it But because they are absolutely lacking and every power affects its ultimate consequences every moment granted that this also Is only interpretation and you will be eager enough to make this objection Well, so much the better 23 All psychology hitherto has run aground on moral prejudices and timidities It has not dared to launch out into the depths in so far as it is allowable to recognize in that which has hitherto Been written evidence of that which has hitherto been kept silent It seems as if nobody had yet harbored the notion of psychology as the morphology and development doctrine of the will to power As I conceive of it The power of moral prejudices has penetrated deeply into the most intellectual world The world apparently most indifferent and unprejudiced and has obviously Operated in an injurious obstructive blinding And distorting manner a proper Physiopsychology has to contend with unconscious antagonism in the heart of the investigator It has the heart against it even a doctrine of the reciprocal Conditionalness of the good and the bad impulses causes as refined Immorality distress and aversion in a still strong and manly conscience Still more so a doctrine of the derivation of all good impulses from bad ones If however a person should regard even the emotions of hatred envy covetousness and imperiousness as life conditioning emotions As factors which must be present fundamentally and essentially in the general economy of life Which must therefore be further developed if life is to be further developed He will suffer from such a view of things as from seasickness And yet this hypothesis is far from being the strangest and most painful in this immense and almost new domain Of dangerous knowledge and there are in fact A hundred good reasons why everyone should keep away from it who can do so On the other hand if one 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 on the helm We sail away right over morality. We crush out. We destroy perhaps The remains of our own mortality by daring to make our voyage thither But what do we matter never yet did a profound world of insight reveal itself to daring travelers and adventurers And the psychologist who thus makes a sacrifice. It is not the sacrificial del intelecto on the contrary Will at least be entitled to demand in return that psychology shall once more be recognized as the queen of the sciences For whose service and equipment the other sciences exist For psychology is once more the path to the fundamental problems End of chapter one This is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer Please visit LibriVox.org Beyond good and evil by Frederick Wilhelm Nietzsche Chapter two the free spirit 24 Osankta Simplicitatis in one strange simplification and falsification man lives One can never cease wondering when once one has got eyes for beholding this marble How we have made everything around us so clear and free and easy and simple How we have been able to give our senses of passport to everything superficial our thoughts of godlike desire for wanting pranks of wrong inferences How from the beginning we have contrived to retain our ignorance in order to enjoy an almost inconceivable freedom Thoughtlessness imprudence hardiness and gaiety in order to enjoy life And only on the solidified granite-like foundation of ignorance for knowledge rear itself hitherto the will to knowledge And the foundation of a far more powerful will the will to ignorance to the uncertain to the untrue Not as its opposite, but as its refinement It is to be hoped indeed that language here is elsewhere will not get over its awkwardness And that it will continue to talk of opposites where there are only degrees and many refinements of gradiation It is equally be hoped that the incarnated tartufory of morals which now belongs to our unconquerable flesh and blood Will turn the words round in the mouths of us discerning ones here and there we understand it and laugh at the way in which Precisely the best knowledge seeks most to retain us in the simplified thoroughly artificial Suitably imagined and suitably falsified world at the way in which whether it will or not it loves error because it's living itself It loves life 25 after such a cheerful commencement a serious word would fame be heard it appeals to the most serious minds Take care of your philosophers and friends of knowledge and beware of martyrdom of suffering for the truth's sake Even in your own defense it spoils all the innocence and fine neutrality of your conscience It makes you headstrong against objections and red rags It stupefies analizes and brutalizes when in the struggle with danger slander suspicion expulsion and even worse consequence of enmity You have at last to play your last card as protectors of truth upon earth as though the truth were such an innocent and incompetent creature as to require protectors And you of all people the knights of the sorrowful countenance Miser's loafer and cobweb spinners of the spirit Finally he knows efficiently well that it cannot be of any consequence if you just carry your point You know that hitherto no philosopher has carried his point and that there might be a more laudable truthfulness in every little Interrogative mark which you place after your special words and favorite doctrines and occasionally after yourselves Then in all the solemn pantomime and trumping games before accusers and law courts Rather go out of the way flee into concealment and have your masks and your ruses that you may be mistaken for what you are Or somewhat feared and pray don't forget the garden the garden with golden trellis work and have people around you Who are as a garden or his music on the waters at apentide when the day becomes a memory Choose the good solitude the free wanton the lightsome solitude Which also gives you the right still to remain good in any sense whatsoever How poisonous how crafty how bad does every long war make one from which Cannot be waged openly by means of force how personal does a long fear make one a long watching of enemies of possible enemies These pariahs of society these long-perceived badly persecuted ones Also the compulsory recklessness the spinoses and goryanna brunos always become in the end even under the most intellectual masquerade And perhaps without being themselves aware of it refined vengeance sickers and poison brewers just may bear the foundations of spinoses ethics and theology Not to speak of the stupidity of moral indignation Which is the unfailing sign in a philosopher that the sense of philosophical humor has left him the martyrdom of the philosopher His sacrifice for the sake of truth forces into the light whatever of the agitator and actor lurks within him And if one has hitherto contemplated him only with artistic curiosity with regard to many a philosopher It is easy to understand the dangerous desire to see him also in his deterioration deteriorated into a martyr into a stage and tribune brawler Only that it is necessary with such desire to be clear what spectacle one will see in any case merely a satiric play merely an epilogue Fars and merely continued proof that the long real tragedy is at an end Supposing that every philosophy has long been a tragedy in its origin 26 every select man strives instinctively for a citadel and a privacy where he is free from the crowd The many the majority where he may forget men who are the rule as their exception Exclusive only of the case in which he is pushed straight to such men by still stronger instinct as a discerner in the great and exceptional sense Whoever in intercourse with men does not occasionally glisten in all the green and gray colors of distress Only to discuss satiety sympathy gluminess and solitaryness is assuredly not a man of elevated tastes Supposing however that he does not voluntarily take all this burden and discussed upon himself that he persistently avoids it and remains As I said quietly and proudly hidden in his citadel one thing is then certain He was not made he was not predestined for knowledge for as such he would one day have to say to himself The devil take my good taste but the rule is more interesting than the exception than myself the exception And he would go down and above all he would go inside the long and serious study of the average man And consequently much disguise self overcoming familiarity and bad intercourse all intercourse is bad intercourse except with one's equals That constitutes a necessary part of the life history of every philosopher Perhaps the most disagreeable odious and disappointing part If he is fortunate however as a favored child of knowledge should be he will meet with suitable auxiliaries who will shorten and lighten his task I mean so called cynics those who simply recognize the animal the commonplace and the rule in themselves And at the same time have so much spirituality and ticklishness as to make them talk of themselves and their like before witnesses Sometimes they wallow even in books as on their own dung hill Cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach what is called honesty And a higher man must open his ears to all the coarser or finer cynicism And congratulate himself when the clown becomes shameless right before him or the scientific satyr speaks out There are even cases where enchantment mixes with the disgust namely whereby a freak of nature Genius is bound to some indiscreet billy goat in ape as in the case of the abbey giliani The profoundest acutus and perhaps also the filthiest man of his century He was far more profound than Voltaire and consequently also a good deal more silent It happens more frequently as has been hinted that a scientific head is placed on a named body A fine exceptional understanding in a base soul an occurrence by no means rare Especially among doctors and moral physiologists And whenever anyone speaks without bitterness or rather quite innocently of man as a belly with two requirements and a head with one Whenever anyone sees seeks and wants to see only hunger sexual instinct and vanity as the real and only motives of human actions In short when anyone speaks badly and not even ill of man Then ought the lover of knowledge to harken attentively and diligently He ought in general to have an open ear wherever there is talk without indignation For the indignant man and he who perpetually tears and lacerates himself with his own teeth Or in place of himself the world god or society may indeed morally speaking stand higher than the laughing and self-satisfied satyr But in every other sense he is more ordinary more indifferent and less instructive case And no one is such a liar as the indignant man 27 it is difficult to be understood especially when one thinks and lends Ganga street gati footnote like the river kanji's presto Among those who think and live otherwise namely korma gati footnote like the tortoise lento Or at best frog like mondia khagati footnote like the frogs to kato I do everything to be difficultly understood myself And one should be heartily grateful for the goodwill and some refinement of interpretation as regards the good friends However, who are always too easygoing and think that as friends they have a right to ease One does well at the very first to grant them a playground and romping place for misunderstanding One can thus laugh still or get rid of them all together these good friends and laugh then also 28 what is most difficult to render from one language 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 average tempo of the assimilation of its Nutriment there are honestly meant translations which as involuntary vulgarizations are almost falsifications of the original Merely because it's lively and merry tempo which overlaps and obviates all the dangers in word and expression could not also be rendered A german is almost incapacitated for presto in his language Consequently also he may be reasonably inferred for many of the most delightful and daring nuances of free free-spirited thought And just as the buffoon and seder are foreign to him in body and conscience So aristophanies and petronias are untranslatable for him Everything ponderous viscous and pompously clumsy all long winded and weary species of style are developed in profuse variety among germans Part of me for stating the fact that even gothers prose in its mixture of stiffness and elegance is now exception As reflection of the good old time to which it belongs and an expression of german taste at a time when there was still a german taste Which was a rococo taste in moribus at archibus Lessing is an exception owing to his histrionic nature which understood much and was versed in many things He who was not the translator of bail to no purpose who took refuge willingly in the shadow of dittorach and voltair And still more willingly among the roman comedy writers Lessing left also free spiritism in the tempo and flight out of germany But how could the german language even in the prose of lessing imitate the tempo of machiavelli Who in his principa makes us breathe the dry fine air of florence and cannot help presenting the most serious events in a boisterous Allegresimo perhaps not without a malicious artistic sense of the contrast he ventures to present Long heavy difficult dangerous spots and a tempo of the gallop and of the best wantonous humor Finally who could venture on a german translation of petronius who more than any great musician hitherto Was a master of presto in invention ideas and words What mattered in the end about the swamps of the sick evil world or the ancient world when like him One has the feet of the wind the rush the breath the emancipating scorn of a wind which makes everything healthy by making everything run And with regard to aristothonies that transfiguring complementary genius for whose sake one pardons all hellenism for having existed Provided one has understood in its whole profoundity all that there requires pardon and transfiguration There is nothing that has caused me to meditate more on Plato's secrecy and spince like nature Then the happily preserved petty fate that under the pillow of his deathbed There was found no bible nor anything egyptian pathagorean or platonic But a book of aristophanies how could even play to have endured life a greek life which he repudiated without an aristophanies 29 it is the business of the very few to be independent It is a privilege of the strong and whoever attempts it even with the best right But without being obliged to do so proves that he is probably not only strong but also daring beyond measure He enters into a labyrinth He multiplies a thousandfold the dangers which life in itself already brings with it Not the least of which is that no one can see how and where he loses his way Become isolated and is torn piecemeal by some minotaur of conscience Suppose such a one comes to grief it is so far from the comprehension of men that they neither feel it nor sympathize with it And he can no longer go back. He cannot even go back to the sympathy of men 30 our deepest insights must and should appear as follies and under certain circumstances as crimes when they come Unauthorizedly to the ears of those who are not disposed and predestined for them The exoteric and the esoteric as they were formally distinguished by philosophers among the indians as among the greeks persians and muslims In short wherever people believed in gradations of rank not inequality and equal rights Are not so much in contrary distinction to one another in respect to the exoteric class Standing without and viewing estimating measuring and judging from the outside and not from the inside The more essential distinction is that the class in question views things from below upwards While the esoteric class view things from above downwards There are heights of the soul from which tragedy itself no longer appears to operate tragically And if all the woe in the world were taken together Who would dare to decide whether the sight of it would necessarily seduce and constrain to sympathy and thus to a doubling of the Woe That which serves the higher class of men for nourishment or refreshment must also be poisoned to an entirely different and lower Order of human beings the virtues of the common man would perhaps mean vice and weakness in the philosopher It might be possible for a highly developed man supposing him to degenerate and go to ruin To acquire qualities thereby alone for the sake of which he would have been honored as a saint in the lower world In which he had sunk There are books which have an inverse value for the soul and the health according as the inferior soul and the lower vitality Or the higher and more powerful make use of them in the former case They are dangerous disturbing and unsettling books in the latter case There are herald calls which sum the bravest to their bravery Books with a general reader are always ill smelling books the odor of paltry people clings to them Where the populous eat and drink and even where they reverence it is accustomed to stink One should not go into churches if one wishes to breathe pure air 31 in our youthful years We still venerate and despise without the art of nuance which is the best game of life And we have rightly to do hard penance for having fallen upon men and things with yay and nay Everything is so arranged that the worst of all tastes the taste for the unconditional Is cruelly befooled and abused until a man learns to introduce a little art into his sentiments And prefers to try conclusions with the artificial as do the real artists of life The angry and reverent spirit peculiar to youth appears to allow itself no peace until it has suitably falsified men and things To be able to vent its passion upon them youth in itself even is something falsifying and deceptive Later on when the young soul tortured by continual disillusions Finally turns suspiciously against itself still ardent and savage even in its suspicion and remorse of conscience How it upraises itself how impatiently it tears itself how it revenges itself with long self-blinding as though it had been a voluntary blindness In this transition one punishes oneself by distrust of one's sentiments when tortures one's enthusiasm with doubt One feels even the good conscience to be danger and if it were the self-concealment and lassitude of a more refined uprightness And above all one espouses upon the principle the cause against youth a decade later And one comprehends that this was also still youth 32 Throughout the longest period of human history one calls it the prehistoric period The value or non-value of an action was inferred from its consequence The action in itself was not taken into consideration any more than its origin But pretty much as in china at present where the distinction or disgrace of a child redounds to its parents The retro-operating power Of success or failure was what induced men to think well or ill of an action Let us call this period the premoral period of mankind the imperative know thyself was then still unknown In the last 10,000 years on the other hand on certain large portions of the earth One has gradually got so far that one no longer lets the consequences of an action But its origin decide with regards to its worth a great achievement as a whole an important refinement of vision and criterion The unconscious effort of the supremacy of aristocratic values and of the belief in origin the mark Of a period which may be designated in the narrower sense as the moral one the first attempt at self-knowledge is thereby made Instead of the consequence the origin what an inversion of perspective And assuredly an inversion affected only after long struggle and wavering to be sure an ominous new superstition Of peculiar narrowness of interpretation attained supremacy precisely thereby The origin of an action was interpreted in the most definite sense possible as origin out of intention People were agreed in the belief that the value of an action lay in the value of its intention The intention is the sole origin and antecedent history of an action under the influence of this prejudice moral praise And blame have been bestowed and men have judged and even philosophize almost up to the present day Is it not possible however that the necessity may now have arisen of again making up our minds with regards to the reversing And fundamental shifting of values owing to a new self-consciousness and acuteness in man Is it not possible that we may be standing on the threshold 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 decisive value of an action lies precisely In that which is not intentional and that all its intentionalness all that is seen sensible or sensed in it Belongs to its surface or skin which like every skin betrays something but can seal still more In short we believe that 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 itself alone that morality in the sense in which it has been understood hitherto As intention morality has been a prejudice perhaps a prematureness or preliminaryness Probably something of the same rank as astrology and alchemy But in a case something which must be surmounted there's a mounting of morality in a certain sense even the self mounting of morality Let that be the name for the long secret labor which has been reserved for the most refined the most upright And also the most wicked consciences of today as the living touchstones of the soul 33 it cannot be helped the sentiment of surrender of sacrifice for one's neighbor and all self renunciation Morality must be mercilessly called to account and brought to judgment Just as the aesthetics of disinterested contemplation under which the emasculation of art nowadays seeks insidiously enough to create itself Good conscience There is far too much witchery and sugar in the sentiments for others and not for myself For one not needing to be doubly distrustful here and and for one ask you completely Are they now perhaps deceptions they that please him who has them and him who enjoys their fruit And also the mere spectator that is all no argument in their favor but just calls for caution But it's therefore be cautious 34 at whatever standpoint of philosophy one may place oneself nowadays Seen from every position the erroneousness of the world in which we think we live is the surest and most certain thing our eyes can light upon We find proof after proof thereof which would feign allura since surmises concerning a deceptive principle in the nature of things He however who makes thinking itself and consequently the spirit responsible for the falseness of the world an honorable exit Which every conscious or unconscious a vacatious day avails himself of he who regards this world including space time form and movement As falsely deduced would have at least good reason in the end to become distrustful also of all thinking Has it not hitherto been playing upon us the worst of scurvy tricks? And what guarantee would it give that it would not continue to do what it has always been doing? In all seriousness the innocence of thinkers has something touching and respect inspiring about it Which even nowadays permits them to wait upon consciousness with the request that it will give them honest answers For example, whether it be real or not and why it keeps the outer world so resolutely at a distance and other questions of the same description The belief in immediate certainties is a moral naivete which does honor to its philosophers But we have now ceased being merely moral men apart from morality such belief is a folly which does little honor to us If in middle-class life and everybody distrust is regarded as the sign of a bad character and consequently as imprudence Here among us beyond the middle-class world and its yeas and nays What should prevent our being imprudent and saying the philosopher has at length a right to bad character As the being who has hitherto been most befooled on earth He is now under obligation to distrustfulness through the wibbidest squinting out of every abyss of suspicion Forgive me the joke of this gloomy grimace and turn of expression for I myself have long ago learned to think and estimate differently With regard to deceiving and being deceived and I keep at least a couple of pokes on the ribs ready for the blind rage With which philosophers struggle against being deceived. Why not? It is nothing more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than semblance It is in fact the worst proof supposition in the world so much must be conceded There could have been no life at all except on the basis of perspective estimations and semblances And if with the virtuous enthusiasm and stupidity of many philosophers one wish to do away altogether with the seeming world Well granted you could do that at least nothing of your truth would thereby remain Indeed what is it that forces us in general to the supposition that there is an essential opposition of true and false Is it not enough to suppose degrees of seemingness and as it were lighter and darker shades and tones of semblances different values as the painters say Why might not the world which concerns us be a fiction and to anyone who suggested But to a fiction belongs an originator might it not be bluntly replied. Why may this belong also belong to the fiction Why is it not at length permitted to be a little ironical towards the subject just as towards the predicate and object Might not the philosopher elevate himself about faith and grammar all respect to governesses But is it not time that philosophy should renounce governess faith? 35 oh Voltaire. Oh humanity. Oh idiocy. There's something ticklish in the truth and the search for the truth And if man goes about it too humanely I wager he finds nothing 36 supposing that nothing else is given as real but our world of desires and passions that we cannot Sink or rise to any other reality But just that of our impulses for thinking is only a relation of these impulses to one another Are we not permitted to make the attempt and to ask the question whether this which is given does not suffice By means of our counterparts for the understanding of the so-called mechanical or material world I do not mean as an illusion Assemblance a representation in the berkeleyan and schopenhauer sense But as possessing the same degree of reality as our emotions themselves as a more primitive form of the world of emotions In which everything still lies locked in a mighty unity which afterwards branches off and develops itself in organic processes Naturally, also Refines and debilitates as a kind of instinctive life in which all organic functions including self regulation a simulation nutrition secretion and change of matter are still synthetically united with one another as A primary form of life in the end is it not only permitted to make this attempt It is commanded by the conscience of logical method not to assume several kinds of causality So long as the attempt to get along with a single one has not been pushed to its furthest extent to absurdity If I may be allowed to say so that is morality of method Which one may not repudiate nowadays it follows from its definition as mathematician say the question is ultimately Whether we recognize the will as operating whether we believe in the causality of this will if we do so and fundamentally Our belief in this is just our belief in causality itself We must make an attempt to posit hypothetically The causality of the will as the only causality will can naturally only operate on will And not on matter not on nerves for instance in short the hypothesis must be hazarded Whether will does not operate on will wherever effects are recognized and whether all mechanical action in as much as power operates Therein is not the power of will the effect of will Granted finally that we succeeded in explaining our entire instinctive life as the development of ramification Of one fundamental form of will namely the will to power as my thesis puts it Granted that all organic functions could be traced back to this will to power And that the solution of this problem of generation and nutrition It is one problem could also be found therein one would thus have acquired the right to define all active force unequivocally as will to power The world seen from within the world 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 language? God is disproved but not the devil on the contrary on the contrary my friends and who the devil also compels you to speak popularly 38 as happened finally in all the enlightenment of modern times with the french revolution that terrible farce quite superfluous When judged close to hand into which however the noble and visionary spectators of all europe have interpreted from a distance Their own indignation and enthusiasm so long and passionately until the text has disappeared under the interpretation So a noble posterity might once more Misunderstand the whole of the part and perhaps only thereby make its aspect adorable or rather has not this already happened Have we not ourselves been that noble posterity and in so far as we now comprehend this is it not thereby already passed? 39 nobody will very readily regard a doctrine is true merely because it makes the people happy or virtuous Accepting perhaps the amiable idealists who are enthusiastic about the good true and beautiful and let all kinds of motley course and good nature Desirabilities swim about Miscuously in their pond happiness and virtue are no arguments It is willingly forgotten However, even on the part of thoughtful minds that to make unhappy and to make bad are just as little counter arguments A thing could be true although it were the highest degree injurious and dangerous Indeed the fundamental constitution of existence might be such that one's is succumbed by a full knowledge of it So that the strength of a mind might be measured by the amount of truth that could endure or speak more plainly By the extent to which it required truth attenuated veiled sweetened dampened and falsified But there is no doubt for the discovery of certain portions of the truth The wicked and unfortunate are more favorably situated and have greater likelihood of success Not to speak of the wicked who are happy a species about who moralists are silent Perhaps severity and craft are more favorable conditions for the development of strong independent spirits And philosophers than the gentle refined yielding good nature and habit of taking things easily which are prized and rightly prized An alerted man Presupposing always to begin with that the term philosopher be not confined to the philosopher who writes books or even Introduces his philosophy into books Stendhal furnaces a last feature of the portrait of the free-spirited philosopher for which the sake of German taste I will not omit underline for it is opposed to German taste For a very good philosophy says this last great psychologist He thought it very sick clear some solution 40 everything that is profound loves the mass the profoundest things have a hatred even a figure in likeness Should not the contrary only be the right disguise for the shame of a god to go about it A question worth asking it would be strange if some mystic has not already ventured on the same kind of thing There are proceedings of such a delicate nature That is as well to overwhelm them with a coarseness and make them unrecognizable There are actions of love and an extravagant Magnonomy after which nothing to be wiser than to take a stick and thrash the witness soundly when thereby obscures his recollection Many a one is able to obscure and abuse his own memory in order to at least have vengeance on the soul party in the secret Shame is inventive. They are not the worst things of which one is most ashamed There is not only deceit behind a mask. There is so much goodness and craft I could imagine that a man with something costly and fragile to conceal would roll through life clumsily and rotundly Like an old green heavily hooped wine cask the refinement of his shame requiring it to be so A man who has depths in his shame meets his destiny and his delicate decisions upon pass Which few ever reach and with regard to the existence of which his nearest to most intimate friends may be ignorant His mortal danger conceals itself from their eyes and equally so he's regained security such a hidden nature Which instinctively employs speech for silence and concealment and is inexhaustible in an evasion of communication Desires and insists that a mask of himself shall occupy his place in the hearts and heads of his friends And supposing he does not desire it his eyes will someday be open to the fact that there's nevertheless a mask of him There and that it is well to be so every profound spirit needs a mask name more around every profound spirit There's continually grows a mask owing to the constantly false That is to say superficial interpretation of every word he utters every step he takes every sign of life. He manifests 41 one must subject oneself to one's own tests that one is destined for independence and command And do so at the right time one must not avoid one's tests Although they constitute perhaps the most dangerous game one can play and are in the end tests made only before ourselves And before no other judge not to cleave any person But it even the dearest every person is a prison and also a recess Not to cleave to a fatherland be it even the most suffering and necessitous It is even less difficult to detach one's heart from a victorious fatherland Not to cleave to sympathy be it even for higher men in whose particular torture and helplessness chances given us an insight Not to cleave to a science though attempt one with the most valuable discoveries Apparently specially reserved for us not to cleave to one's own liberation to the voluptuous distance and remoteness of the bird Which always flies further aloft in order to seem more under it the danger of the flyer Not to cleave to our own virtues nor become as a whole victim to any of our specialties To our hospitality for instance, which is the danger of dangers for highly developed and wealthy souls Who deal prodigly almost indifferently with themselves and push the virtue of liberality so far that it becomes a vice One must know how to conserve oneself the best test of independence 42 a new order of philosophers is appearing I shall venture to baptize them by name not without danger as far as I understand them as far as they Allow themselves to be understood for it is their nature to wish to remain something of a puzzle These philosophers of the future might rightly perhaps also wrongly claim to be designated as tempters This name itself is after all only an attempt or if it be preferred a temptation 43 will they be new friends of truth these coming philosophers very probably for all philosophers hitherto have loved their truths But assuredly they will not be dogmatists It must be contrary to their pride and also contrary to their taste that their truth should still be truth For everyone that which is hitherto when the secret wish and ultimate purpose of all dogmatic efforts My opinion is my opinion another person has not easily a right to it such a philosopher of the future will say perhaps One must renounce the bad taste of wishing to agree with many people Good is no longer good when one's neighbor takes it into his mouth And how could there be a common good the expression contradicts itself that which can be common is always a small value In the end things must be as they are and always have been the great things remain for the great The business for the profound the delicacies and thrills for the refined and to sum up shortly everything rare for the rare 44 need I say expressly after all this that they will be free very free spirits these philosophers of the future as certainly also they will not 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 at our obligation almost as much to them as to ourselves We free spirits who are their heralds and forerunners to sweep away from ourselves altogether a stupid old prejudice and misunderstanding Which like a fog has too long made the conception of a free spirit obscure in every country of europe and the same in america There is a present something which makes an abuse of this name a very narrow Pre-possessed and chained class of spirits who desire almost the opposite of what our intentions and instincts prompt not to mention that in respect to The new philosophers who are appearing they must still more be closed windows and bolted doors Briefly and regrettably They belong to levelers these wrongly named free spirits as glib tongued and scribe fingered slaves of the democratic taste In its modern ideals all of them men without solitude without personal Solitude blunt honest fellows to whom neither courage nor honorable contact ought to be denied Only they are not free and are ludicrously superficial Especially in their innate partiality for seeing the cause of almost all human misery and failure in the old forms in which society is hitherto existed A notion which happily inverts the truth entirely What they would faint attain with all their strength is the universal green meadowed happiness of the herd Together with security safety comfort and alleviation of life for everyone Their two most frequently chanted songs and doctrines are called equality of rights and sympathy with all sufferers And suffering itself is looked upon by them as something which much to be done away with The opposite ones however who have opened our eye and conscience to the question how and where the plant Man has hitherto grown most vigorously believe that this has always taken place under the opposite conditions That for this end the dangerousness of his situation has to be increased enormously His inventive faculty and dissembling power his spirit had to develop into subtlety and daring under long oppression and compulsion And his will to life had to be increased to the unconditioned will to power We believe that severity violence slavery danger in the street and in the heart secrecy Stoicism tempters art and devilry of every kind that everything wicked terrible tyrannical predatory and serpentine and man Serves as well for the elevation of the human species as its opposite We do not even say enough when we only say this much and in any case we find ourselves here both with our Speech and our silence at the other extreme of all modern ideology and gregarious desirability as their antipodes perhaps What wonder that we free spirits are not The exactly the most communicative spirits that we do not wish to betray in every respect What a spirit can free itself from and where perhaps it will then be driven And as to the import of the dangerous formula beyond good and evil with which we at least avoid confusion We are something else than libre pensions They've been pensatory free thinkers and whatever else these honest advocates of modern ideas like to call themselves Having been at home or at least guests in many realms of the spirit having escaped again and again from the gloomy agreeable nooks In which preferences and prejudices youth origin and accident of men in books or even the weariness of travel seem to confine us Full of malice against the seductions of dependence which he concealed in honors money positions or exaltations of the senses Grateful even for the distress and vicitudes of illness because they always free us from from some rule And it's prejudice grateful to the god devil sheep and worm in us inquisitive to a fault investigators to the point of cruelty With unhesitating fingers for the intangible with teeth and stomachs for the most indigestible ready for any business that requires sagy Acity and acute senses ready for every adventure. I went to an excess of free will With anterior and posterior souls into the ultimate intentions of which it is difficult to pry With foregrounds and backgrounds to the end of which no foot may run hidden ones under the mantles of light Appropriators although we resemble errors and sprinting thrifts arrangers and collectors from morning till night Mises of our wealth and full crammed doors economical and learning and forgetting Inventive in scheming sometimes proud of tables of categories sometimes pendants Sometimes night owls of work even in full day. Yay if necessary even scarecrows and it is necessary nowadays That is to say in as much as we are the born sworn jealous friends of solitude of our own profoundest midnight midday solitude Such kind of men are we we free spirits and perhaps you are also something of the same kind g coming ones Be new philosophers And chapter two beyond good and evil by frederick vilhelm nicci This is a libra vox recording All libra vox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer, please visit libra vox.org Beyond good and evil by frederick nicci translation by helen zimmerman Chapter three the religious mood 45 The human soul and its limits the range of a man's inner experiences Hitherto attained the heights depths and distances of these experiences The entire history of the soul up to the present time and it's still un-exhausted possibilities This is the preordained hunting domain for born psychologist and lover of a big hunt But how often must he say despairingly to himself? A single individual alas only a single individual and this great forest this virgin forest So he would like to have some hundreds of hunting assistants And fine trained hounds that he could send into the history of the human soul to drive his game together In vain again and again. He experiences profoundly and bitterly How difficult it is to find assistance and dogs for all the things that directly excite his curiosity The evil of sending scholars into new and dangerous hunting domains Where courage sagacity and subtlety in every sense are required Is that there are no longer serviceable just when the big hunt and also the great danger commences It is precisely then that they lose their keen eye and nose In order for instance to divine and determine what sort of history the problem of knowledge and conscience Has hitherto had in the souls of hominés relojussi A person would perhaps himself have to possess a profound as bruised as immense an experience As the intellectual conscience of pascal and then he would still require that widespread heaven of clear wicked spirituality Which from above would be able to oversee a range and effectively Formulize this mass of dangerous and painful experiences But who would do me this service and who would have time to wait for such servants? They evidently appear too rarely. They are so improbable at all times Eventually one must do everything one's self in order to know something Which means that one has much to do But a curiosity like mine is once for all the most agreeable of vices Pardon me. I mean to say that the love of truth has its reward in heaven and already upon earth 46 Faith such as early christianity desired and not infrequently achieved in the midst of a skeptical and southernly free spirited world Which had centuries of struggle between philosophical schools behind it and in it Counting besides the education intolerance, which the imperium romanum gave This faith is not that sincere austere slave faith by which perhaps a luther or a cromwell Or some other northern barbarian of the spirit remained attached to his god and christianity It is much rather the faith of pascal which resembles in a terrible manner a continuous suicide of reason A tough long-lived worm-like reason, which is not to be slain at once and with a single blow The christian faith from the beginning is sacrifice the sacrifice of all freedom all pride all self confidence of spirit It is the same time subjection self derision and self mutilation There's cruelty and religious finitionism in this faith Which is adapted to a tender many-sided and very fastidious conscience It takes for granted that the subjection of the spirit is indescribably painful That all the past and all the habits of such a spirit resist the absurdism in the form of which faith comes to it Modern men with their obtuseness as regards all christian nomenclature Have no longer the sense for the terribly superlative conception Which was implied to an antique taste by the paradox of the formula god on the cross Hitherto there had never and nowhere been such boldness in inversion Nor anything at once so dreadful questioning and questionable as this formula It promised a transvaluation of all ancient values It was the orient the profound orient It was the oriental slave who thus took revenge on rome and its noble light-minded toleration On the roman catholicism of non-faith and it was always not the faith But the freedom from the faith the half-stoical and smiling indifference to the seriousness of the faith Which made the slaves indignant at their masters and revolt against them Enlightenment causes revolt for the slave desires the unconditioned He understands nothing but to tyrannous even in morals He loves as he hates without nuance to the very depths to the point of pain to the point of sickness His many hidden sufferings make him revolt against the noble taste which seems to deny suffering The skepticism with regard to suffering fundamentally only an attitude of aristocratic morality Was not the least of the causes also the last great slave insurrection which began with the french revolution 47 Whenever the religious neurosis has appeared on the earth so far We find it connected with three dangerous prescriptions as to regimen solitude fasting and sexual abstinence But without it's being possible to determine with certainty which is cause and which is effect Or if any relation at all of cause and effect exists there This latter doubt is justified by the fact that one of the most regular symptoms among savage as well as among civilized peoples Is the most sudden and excessive sensuality Which then with equal suddenness transforms into Penitential paroxysms world renunciation and will renunciation Both symptoms perhaps explainable as disguised epilepsy But nowhere is it more obligatory to put aside explanations around no other type has there grown such a massive absurdity and superstition No other type seems to have been more interesting to men and even to philosophers Perhaps it is time to become just a little indifferent here to learn caution or better still to look away to go away Yet in the background of the most recent philosophy that of schopenhauer We find most as the problem in itself this terrible note of interrogation of the religious crisis and awakening How is the negation of will possible? How is the saint possible? That seems to have been the very question with which schopenhauer made a start and became a philosopher And thus it was genuine schopenhauerium consequence that his most convinced adherent Perhaps also his last as far as germany is concerned Namely, richard wagner should bring his own life work to an end just here And should finally put that terrible and eternal type upon the stages country type veku And it is loved and lived at the very time that the mad doctors in almost all european countries Had an opportunity to study the type close at hand Wherever the religious neurosis or as I call it the religious mood made its latest Epidemic outbreak and display as the salvation army If it be in question however as to what has been so extremely interesting to men of all sorts In all ages and even to philosophers in the whole phenomenon of the saint It is undoubtedly the appearance of the miraculous therein Namely the immediate succession of opposites of states of the soul regarded as morally antithetical It was believed here to be self-evident that the bad man was all at once turned into a saint a good man The hitherto existing psychology was wrecked at this point Is it not possible it may have happened principally because psychology had placed itself under the dominion of morals Because it believed in oppositions of moral values and saw red and interpreted these oppositions into the text and facts of the case What miracle only an error of interpretation? A lack of philology 48 It seems that the latin races are far more deeply attached to their catholicism than we northerners are to christianity generally And that consequently unbelief in catholic countries means something quite different from what it does among protestants Namely a sort of revolt against the spirit of the race While with us it is rather a return to the spirit or non-spirit of the race We northerners undoubtedly derive our origin from barbarous races Even as regards our talents for religion. We have poor talents for it One may make an exception in a case of the Celts who have thereto for furnished also the best soil for christian infection in the north The christian ideal blossomed forth in france as much as ever the pale sun of the north would allow it How strangely pious for our taste are still these later french skeptics Wherever there is any Celtic blood in their origin How catholic how un-german does august day comps Sociology seemed to us with the roman logic of its instincts How jesuitical that amiable and shrewd ciceroan of port royal St. Bove in spite of all his hostility to jesuits And even urnus renon how inaccessible to us northerners does the language of such a renon appear In whom every instant the merest touch of religious thrill throws his refined Voluptuous and comfortable couching soul off its balance. Let us repeat after him these fine sentences And what wickedness and haughtiness is immediately aroused by way of answer in our probably less beautiful but harder souls That is to say in our more german souls The souls don't carry me Que la religion est un purdut de l'homme normal Quelle homme est le plus dans le bras quant il est Le plus religiux est le plus assue d'un testi ifini C'est quand il est bon que il vivute Que la vertu corresponde à un ordet eternal C'est quand il contemple les choses d'une manière Testi resti Que l'amour rêve l'autre est absurde These sentences are so extremely antipodal to my ears and habits of thought That in my first impulse of rage on finding them I wrote on the margin Until in my later rage I even took a fancy to them these sentences with their truth absolutely inverted It is so nice and such a distinction to have one's own antipodes 49 That which is so astonishing in the religious life of the ancient greeks Is the irrestrainable stream of gratitude which it pours forth It is a very superior kind of man who takes such an attitude towards nature and life Later on when the populace got the upper hand in greece Fear became so rampant also in religion and christianity was preparing itself 50 The passion for god there are churlish honest hearted and importune kinds of it Like that of luther the whole of protestantism lacks the southern delicatesa There is an oriental exaltation of the mind in it like that of an undeservedly favored or elevated slave As in the case of st augustine for incidents Who lacks in an offensive manner all nobility in bearing and desires There is a feminine tenderness and sensuality in it Which modestly and unconsciously longs for an unio mystica et fisica as in the case of madame deguin In many cases it appears curiously enough as the disguise of a girl's or a youth's puberty Here and there even in the hysteria of an old maid Also as her last ambition the church has frequently canonized the woman in such a case 51 The mightiest men have hitherto always bowed reverently before the saint As the ignigma of self-subjugation and utter voluntary privation Why did they thus bow They divined in him and as it were behind the questionableness of his frail and wretched appearance The superior force which wished to test itself by such a subjugation The strength of will in which they recognized their own strength and love of power and knew how to honor it They honored something in themselves when they honored the saint In addition to this the contemplation of the saint suggested to them a suspicion Such an enormity of self-negation and antinaturalness will not have been coveted for nothing They have said inquireingly There is perhaps a reason for it Some very great danger about which the ecstatic might wish to be more accurately informed through his secret into locutors and visitors In a word the mighty ones of the world learned to have a new fear before him They divined a new power a strange still unconquered enemy It was the will to power which obliged them to hope before the saint They had to question him 52 In the jewish old testament the book of divine justice There are men Things and sayings on such an immense scale that greek and indian literature has nothing to compare with it One stands with fear and reverence Before those stupendous remains of what man was formerly And one has sad thoughts about old asia and its little outpushed peninsula europe Which would like by all means to figure before asia as the progress of mankind To be sure he who himself only a slender tame house animal and knows only the wants of a house animal Like our cultured people of today including the christians of cultured christianity Need neither be amazed nor even sad amid those ruins The taste for the old testament is a touchstone With respect to great and small Perhaps he will find that the new testament the book of grace still appeals more to his heart There's much of the odor of the genuine tender stupid beadsman and petty soul in it To have bound up this new testament a kind of rococo of taste and ever respect Along with the old testament into one book as the bible As the book in itself is perhaps the greatest audacity and sin against the spirit Which literary europe has upon its conscience 53 Why atheism nowadays The father and god is thoroughly refuted equally so the judge the rewarder Also his free will he does not hear and even if he did he would not know how to help The worst is that he seems incapable of communicating himself clearly Is he uncertain? This is what I have made out by questioning and listening at a variety of conversations To be the cause of the decline of european theism It appears to me that though the religious instinct is in vigorous growth It rejects the theistic satisfaction with profound distrust 54 What does all modern philosophy do? Since Descartes and indeed more in defiance of him than on the basis of his procedure An attentat has been made on the part of all philosophers on the old conception of the soul Under the guise of a criticism of the subject and predicate conception that it is to say An attentat on the fundamental presupposition of christian doctrine Modern philosophy as an epistemological skepticism is secretly or openly anti-christian Although for keener years be it said by no means anti-religious Formerly in effect one believed in the soul as one believed in grammar and the grammatical subject One said I is the condition Think is the predicate and is conditioned to think is an activity for which one must suppose a subject as cause The attempt was then made with marvelous tenacity and subtlety To see if one could not get out of this net To see if the opposite was not perhaps true Think the condition and I the conditioned I therefore only a synthesis which has been made by thinking itself Can't really wish to prove that starting from the subject The subject could not be proved nor the object either The possibility of an apparent existence of the subject and therefore of the soul May not always have been strange to him The thought that once an immense power on earth as the vendetta philosophy 55 There is a great ladder of religious cruelty with many rounds, but three of these are the most important Once on a time men sacrificed human beings to their god and perhaps just those they love the best To this category belong the first link sacrifices of all primitive religions And also the sacrifice of the emperor tiberius in the mythra grotto on the island of capri That most terrible of all roman anachronisms Then during the immoral epoch of mankind they sacrificed their god the strongest instincts they possessed Their nature this festival joy shines in the cruel glances of ascetics and anti-natural fanatics Finally what still remained to be sacrificed Was it not necessary in the end for men to sacrifice everything? comforting holy healing all hope all faith in hidden harmonies in future blessedness and justice Was it not necessary to sacrifice god himself? And out of cruelty to themselves to worship stone stupidity gravity fate nothingness To sacrifice god for nothingness This paradoxical mystery of the ultimate cruelty has been reserved for the rising generation We all know something therefore ready 56 Whoever like myself prompted by some enigmatic desire has long endeavored to go to the bottom of the question of pessimism And free it from the half christian half german narrowness and stupidity in which it has finally presented itself to this century Namely in the form of schopenhauer's philosophy Whoever with an asiatic and super asiatic eye has actually looked inside and into the most world renouncing of all possible modes of thought Beyond good and evil and no longer like buddha and schopenhauer under the dominion and delusion of morality Whoever has done this has perhaps just thereby without really desiring it Opened his eyes to behold the opposite ideal The ideal of the most world-approving Exuberant and vivacious man who has not only learned to compromise and arrange with that which was and is But wishes to have it again as it was and is for all eternally Insatiably calling out de capo not only to himself But to the whole peace and play and not only the play but actually to him who requires the play and makes it necessary Because he always requires himself anew and makes himself necessary. What? And this would not be circulus vicius deus 57 The distance and as it were the space around man grows with the strength of his intellectual vision and insight His world become profounder new stars new igno thomas and notions are ever coming into view Perhaps everything on which the intellectual eye has exercised his acuteness and profundity Has just been an occasion for its exercise Something of a game something for children and childish minds Perhaps the most solemn conceptions have caused the most fighting and suffering The conceptions god and sin will one day seem to us of no more importance than a child's plaything Or a child's pain seems to an old man And perhaps another plaything and another pain will be then necessary once more for the old man Always childish enough an eternal child d8 Has it been observed to what extent outward idleness or semi idleness is necessary to a religious life A like for its favorite microscopic labor of self examination and for its soft placidity called prayer The state of perpetual readiness for the coming of god I mean the idleness with a good conscience the idleness of olden times and of blood to which the aristocratic sentiment that work is Dishonoring that it vulgarizes the body and soul. Is it not quite unfamiliar? And that consequently the modern noisy time and grossing conceded foolishly proud laboriousness Educates and prepares for unbelief more than anything else Among these for instance who are at present living apart from a religion in germany I find free thinkers of diversified species in origin But above all a majority of those in whom laboriousness from generation to generation was dissolved the religious instincts So that they no longer know what purpose religions serve and only note their existence in the world with a kind of dull astonishment They feel themselves already fully occupied These good people be it by their business or by their pleasures not to mention the fatherland And the newspapers and their family duties It seems that they have no time whatever left for religion And above all it is not obvious to them whether it is a question of a new business or a new pleasure For it is impossible They say to themselves that people should go to church merely to spoil their tempers They are by no means enemies of religious customs should certain circumstances state affairs perhaps require their participation in such customs They do what is required as so many things are done With a patient an unassuming seriousness and without much curiosity or discomfort They live too much apart and outside to feel even the necessity for a for or against in such matters Among those in different persons may be reckoned nowadays the majority of german Protestants of the middle classes Especially in the great laborious centers of trade and commerce Also the majority of laborious scholars and the entire university personnel With the exception of the theologians whose existence and possibility there always gives psychologists new and more subtle puzzles to solve On the part of pious or merely churchgoing people There seldom any idea of how much goodwill one might say arbitrary will is now necessary for a german scholar to take the problem of religion seriously His whole profession and as I have said his whole workman-like laboriousness to which he is compelled by his modern conscience Inclines him to a lofty and almost charitable serenity as regards to religion With which is occasionally mingled a slight disdain for the uncleanliness of spirit Which he takes for granted wherever anyone still professes to belong to the church It is only with the help of history not through his own personal experience Therefore that the scholar succeeds in bringing himself to a respectful seriousness and to a certain timid difference in presence of religions But even when his sentiments have reached the stage of gratitude towards them He has not personally advanced one step nearer to that which still maintains itself as church or as piety Perhaps even the contrary the practical indifference to religious matters in the midst of which he has been born and brought up Usually supplements itself in his case into circumspension and cleanliness Which shuns contact with religious men and things And it may just be the depth of his tolerance and humanity which prompts him to avoid the delicate trouble which tolerance itself brings with it Every age has its own divine type of naivete For the discovery of which other ages may envy it And how much naivete, adorable, childlike and boundlessly foolish naivete is involved in this belief of the scholar in his superiority In the good conscience of his tolerance in the unsuspecting simple certainty With which his instinct treats the religious man as a lower and less valuable type Beyond before and above which he himself has developed He the little arrogant dwarf and mob man the sedulously alert head and hand drudge of ideas of modern ideas 59 Whoever has seen deeply into the world has doubtless Divined what wisdom there is in the fact that men are superficial It is their preservative instinct that teaches them to be flighty lightsome and false Here and there one finds a passionate and exaggerated adoration of pure forms in philosophers as well as in artists It is not to be doubted that whoever has need of the cult of the superficial To that extent has at one time or another made an unlucky dive beneath it Perhaps there is even an order of rank with respect to those birth children The born artists who find the enjoyment of life only in trying to falsify its image As if taking wear some revenge on it One might guess to what degree life has disgusted them by the extent to which they wish to see its image falsified attenuated ultrafied and deified One might reckon that hominus relogicy among the artists as their highest rank It is the profound suspicious fear of an incurable pessimism which compels whole centuries to fasten their teeth into a religious interpretation of existence The fear of the instinct Which divines a truth might be attained too soon Before man has become strong enough hard enough artists enough Piety the life in god regarded in this light would appear as the most elaborate and ultimate product of the fear of truth As artists adoration and artist intoxication in presence of the most logical of all falsifications As the will to the inversion of truth to untruth at any price Perhaps there has hitherto been no more effective means of beautifying man than piety By means of it man can become so artful So superficial so iridescent and so good that his appearance no longer offends paragraph 60 To love mankind for god's sake This has so far been the noblest and remotest sentiment to which mankind has attained That love to mankind without any redeeming intention to the background is only an additional folly and brutishness That the inclination to this love has first to get its proportion Its delicacy its gram of salt and sprinkling of averages from an higher inclination Whoever first perceived and experienced this However, his tongue may have stammered as it attempted to express such a delicate matter Let him for all time be wholly and respected as the man who has so far flown highest and gone astray in the finest fashion paragraph 61 The philosopher as we free spirits understand him as the man of the greatest responsibility Who has the conscience for the general development of mankind Will use religion for his disciplining and educating work Just as he will use the contemporary political and economic conditions The selecting and disciplining influence Destructive as well as creative and fashioning which can be exercised by means of religion is manifold and varied According to the sort of people placed under its spell and protection For those who are strong and independent Destined and trained to command in whom the judgment and skill of a ruling race is incorporated Religion is an additional means for overcoming resistance in the exercise of authority As a bond which binds rulers and subjects in common Betraying and surrendering to the former the conscience of the latter Their innermost heart which would feign escape obedience And in the case of the unique natures of noble origin if by virtue of superior spirituality They should incline to a more retired and contemplative life Reserving to themselves only the more refined forms of government overtosen disciples or members of an order Religion itself may be used as a means for obtaining peace from the noise and trouble of managing grosser affairs And for securing immunity from the unavoidable filth of all political agitation The brahmins for instance understood this fact with the help of a religious organization They secured to themselves the power of nominating kings for the people While their sentiments prompted them to keep apart and outside as men with a higher and super regal mission At the same time religion gives inducement and opportunity to some of the subjects to qualify themselves for future ruling And commanding the slowly ascending ranks and classes In which through fortunate marriage customs Volitional power and delight in self-control are on the increase To them religion offers sufficient incentives and temptations to aspire to higher intellectuality And to experience the sentiments of authoritative self-control Of silence and of solitude Asceticism and puritanism are almost indispensable means of educating and ennobling a race Which seeks to rise above its heredity baseness and work itself upwards to future supremacy And finally to ordinary men to the majority of the people who exist for service and general utility And are only so far entitled to exist Religion gives invaluable contentedness with their lot and condition piece of heart ennoblement of obedience Additional social happiness and sympathy with something of transfiguration and embellishment Something of justification of all common-placeness All the meanness all the semi-annual poverty of their souls Religion together with the religious significance of life Sheds sunshine over such perpetually harassed men and makes even their own aspect and durable to them It operates upon them as the epicurean philosophy usually operates upon sufferers of a higher order In a refreshing and refining manner almost turning suffering to account and in the end even hollowing and vindicating it There is perhaps nothing so admirable in christianity and buddhism as their art of teaching even the lowest to elevate themselves by piety to seemingly higher order of things And thereby to retain their satisfaction with the actual world in which they find it difficult enough to live This very difficult being necessary paragraph 62 To be sure to make also the bad counter reckoning against such religions and to bring to light their secret dangers The cost is always excessive and terrible when religions do not operate as an educational and disciplinary medium in the hands of the philosopher But rule voluntarily and paramountly when they wish to be the final end And not a means along with other means Among men as among all other animals there is a surplus of defective diseased Generating infirm and necessarily suffering individuals The successful cases among men also are always the exception And in view of the fact that man is the animal not yet properly adapted to his environment the rare exception But worse still the higher the type of man represents the greater is the improbability that he will succeed The accidental the law of irrationality in the general constitution of mankind Manifest itself most terribly in its destructive effect on the higher orders of men The conditions of whose lives are delicate diverse and difficult to determine What then is the attitude of the two greatest religions above mentioned to the surplus of failures in life? They endeavor to preserve and keep alive whatever can be preserved In fact as the religions for sufferers they take the part of these upon principle They're always in favor of those who suffer from life as from a disease And they would feign treat every other experience of life as false and impossible However highly we may esteem this indulgent and preservative care In as much as in applying to others it has supplied and applies also to the highest and usually the most suffering type of man The hitherto paramount religions to give a general appreciation of them are among the principal causes Which have kept the type of man upon a lower level. They have preserved too much that which should have perished One has to thank them for invaluable services and who is sufficiently rich in gratitude not to feel poor at the contemplation of all that The spiritual men of Christianity have done for Europe hither, too But when they had given comfort to the sufferers courage to be oppressed and despairing a staff and support to the helpless And when they had allured from society into covenants and spiritual penitentiaries that broken hearted and distracted What else had they to do in order to work systematically in that fashion and with a good conscience for the preservation of all the sick and suffering Which means indeed in truth to work for the deterioration of the european race To reverse all estimates of value That is what they had to do And to shatter the strong to spoil great hopes to cast suspicion on the delight in beauty To break down everything autonomous manly conquering and imperious All instincts which are natural to the highest and most successful type of man Into uncertainty distressive conscience and self destruction Forsooth to invert all love of the earth 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 to its standard of value On worldliness unsensuousness and higher man fused into one sentiment If one could observe the strangely painful equally coarse and refined comedy of european christianity With the derisive and impartial eye of an epicurean god I should think one would never cease marveling and laughing Does it not actually seem that some single will has ruled over europe for 18 centuries in order to make a sublime abortion of man He however who with opposite requirements no longer epicurean and with some divine hammer in his hand Could approach this almost voluntary degeneration And stunting of mankind as exemplified in the european christian pascal for instance Would he not have to cry aloud with rage pity and horror Oh you bunglers presumptuous pitiful bunglers. What have you done? Was that a work for your hands? How you have hacked and botched my finest stone What have you presumed to do? I should say that christianity has here thereto been the most portentious of presumptions Men not great enough nor hard enough to be entitled as artists to take part in fashioning man Men not sufficiently strong and farsighted to allow With sublime self-constraint the obvious law of the thousand fold failures and parachings to prevail Men not sufficiently knowable to see the radically different grades of rank and intervals of rank that separate man from man Such men with their quality before god have hitherto swayed the destiny of europe Until at last a dwarfed almost ludicrous species has been produced a gregarious animal Something obligantly sickly mediocre that european of the present day end of chapter three This is a liver vox recording all liver vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer Please visit liver vox.org Beyond good and evil by fridrich micha translated by helen zimmern chapter four apathems and interludes 63 he who was a thorough teacher takes things seriously and even himself only in relation to his pupils 64 knowledge for its own sake that is the last snare laid by morality. We are thereby completely entangled in morals once more 65 the charm of knowledge would be small where it not so much shame has to be overcome on the way to it 65 a we are most dishonorable towards our god. He is not permitted to sin 66 the tendency of a person to allow himself to be degraded robbed deceived and exploited might be the diffidence of a god among men 67 love to one only is a barbarity for it is exercised at the expense of all others love to god also 68 I did that says my memory. I could not have done that says my pride and remains inexorable Eventually the memory yields 69 one has regarded life carelessly if one has failed to see the hand that kills with leniency 70 if a man has character he has also his typical experience which always recurs 71 the sage as astronomer so long as thou feelest the stars as an above thee thou lackest the eye of the discerning one 72 it is not the strength but the duration of great sentiments that makes great men 73 he who attains his ideal precisely thereby surpasses it 73 a Many a peacock hides his tail from every eye and calls it his pride 74 a man of genius is unbearable unless he possesses at least two things besides gratitude and purity 75 the degree in nature of a man's sensuality extends to the highest altitudes of his spirit 76 under peaceful conditions the militant man attacks himself 77 with his principles a man seeks either to dominate or justify or honor or reproach or conceal his habits Two men with the same principles probably seek fundamentally different ends therewith 78 he who despises himself nevertheless esteems himself thereby as a despiser 79 a soul which knows that it is loved but does not itself love Betrays its sediment its drapes come up 80 a thing that is explained ceases to concern us What did the god mean who gave the advice know thyself? Did it perhaps imply cease to be concerned about thyself become objective and socrates and the scientific man? 81 it is terrible to die of thirst at sea Is it necessary that you should so salt your truth that it will no longer quench thirst? 82 sympathy for all would be harshness and tyranny for thee my good neighbor 83 instinct when the house is on fire one forgets even the dinner yes but one recovers it from among the ashes 84 woman learns how to hate in proportion as she forgets how to charm 85 the same emotions are in man and woman but in different tempo on that account man and woman never cease to misunderstand each other 86 in the background of all their personal vanity women themselves have still their impersonal scorn for woman 87 fettered heart free spirit when one firmly fetters one's heart and keeps it prisoner One can allow one's spirit many liberties I said this once before but people do not believe it when I say so unless they know it already 88 one begins to distrust very clever persons when they become embarrassed 89 dreadful experiences raise the question whether he who experiences them is not something dreadful also 90 heavy melancholy men turn lighter and come temporarily to their surface precisely by that which makes others heavy by hatred and love 91 so cold so icy that one burns one's finger at the touch of him every hand that lays hold of him shrinks back and for that very reason many think him red hot 92 who has not at one time or another sacrificed himself for the sake of his good name 93 in affability there is no hatred of men but precisely on that account a great deal too much contempt of men 94 the maturity of man that means to have reacquired the seriousness that one had as a child at play 95 to be ashamed of one's immorality is a step on the ladder at the end of which one is ashamed also of one's morality 96 one should part from life as Ulysses parted from Nausica blessing it rather than in love with it 97 what a great man I always see merely the play actor of his own ideal 98 when one trains one's conscience it kisses one while it bites 99 the disappointed one speaks I listened for the echo and I heard only praise 100 we all feign to ourselves that we are simpler than we are we thus relax ourselves away from our fellows 101 a discerning one might easily regard himself at present as the animalization of God 102 discovering reciprocal love should really disenchant the lover with regard to the beloved what she is modest enough to love even you or stupid enough or or 103 the danger and happiness everything now turns out best for me I now love every fate who would like to be my fate 104 not their love of humanity but the impotence of their love prevents the Christians of today burning us 105 the piafraus is still more repugnant to the taste the piety of the free spirit the pious man of knowledge than the impiafraus hence the profound lack of judgment in comparison with the church characteristic of the type free spirit as it's non-freedom 106 by means of music the very passions enjoy themselves 107 a sign of strong character when once the resolution has been taken to shut the ear even to the best counter arguments occasionally therefore a will to stupidity 108 there is no such thing as moral phenomena but only a moral interpretation of phenomena 109 the criminal is often enough not equal to his deed he extenuates and maligns it 110 the advocates of a criminal are seldom artists enough to turn the beautiful terribleness of the deed to the advantage of the doer 111 our vanity is most difficult to wound just when our pride has been wounded 112 to him who feels himself preordained to contemplation and not to believe all believers are too noisy and obtrusive he guards against them 113 you want to pre-possess him in your favor then you must be embarrassed before him 114 the immense expectation with regard to sexual love and the coiness in this expectation spoils all the perspectives of women at the outset 115 where there is neither love nor hatred in the game woman's play is mediocre 116 the great apokes of our life are at the points when we gain courage to re-baptize our badness as the best in us 117 the will to overcome an emotion is ultimately only the will of another or of several other emotions 118 there is an innocence of admiration it is possessed by him to whom it has not yet occurred that he himself may be admired someday 119 our loathing of dirt may be so great as to prevent our cleaning ourselves justifying ourselves 120 sensuality often forces the growth of love too much so that its root remains weak and is easily torn up 121 it is a curious thing that god learned greek when he wished to turn author and that he did not learn it better 122 to rejoice on account of praise is in many cases merely politeness of heart and the very opposite of vanity of spirit 123 even concubine edge has been corrupted by marriage 124 he who exalts at the stake does not triumph over pain but because of the fact that he does not feel pain where he expected it a parable 125 when we have to change an opinion about anyone we charge heavily to his account the inconvenience he thereby causes us 126 a nation is a detour of nature to arrive at six or seven great men yes and then to get around them 127 in the eyes of all true women science is hostile to the sense of shame they feel as if one wished to peep under their skin with it or worse still under their dress and finery 128 the more abstract the truth you wish to teach the more must you allure the senses to it 129 the devil has the most extensive perspectives for god on that account he keeps so far away from him the devil in effect as the oldest friend of knowledge 130 what a person is begins to betray itself when his talent decreases when he ceases to show what he can do talent is also an adornment and adornment is also a concealment 131 the sexes deceive themselves about each other the reason is that in reality they honor and love only themselves or their own ideal to express it more agreeably thus man wishes woman to be peaceable but in fact woman is essentially unpeaceable like the cat however well she may have assumed the peaceable demeanor 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 the man without an ideal 134 from the senses originate all trustworthiness all good conscience all evidence of truth 135 Phariseeism is not a deterioration of the good man a considerable part of it is rather an essential condition of being good 136 the one seeks an accouture for his thoughts the other seeks someone whom he can assist a good conversation thus originates 137 in intercourse with scholars and artists one readily makes mistakes of opposite kinds in a remarkable scholar one not infrequently finds a mediocre man and often even in a mediocre artist one finds a very remarkable man 138 we do the same when awake as when dreaming we only invent and imagine him with whom we have intercourse and forget it immediately 139 in revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man 140 advice as a riddle if the band is not to break fight it first secure to me 141 the belly is the reason why man does not so readily take himself for a god 142 the chastest utterance I have ever heard 143 our vanity would like what we do best to pass precisely for what is most difficult to us concerning the origin of many systems of morals 144 when a woman has scholarly inclinations there is generally something wrong with her sexual nature barrenness itself conduces to a certain virility of taste man indeed if I may say so is the barren animal 145 comparing man and woman generally one may say that woman would not have the genius for adornment if she had not the instinct for the secondary role 146 he who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster and if thou gays long into an abyss the abyss will also gaze into thee 147 from old florentine novels moreover from life 148 to seduce their neighbor to a favorable opinion and afterwards to believe implicitly in this opinion of their neighbor who can do this conjuring trick so well as women 149 that which an age considers evil is usually an unseasonable echo of what was formerly considered good the adivism of an old ideal 150 around the hero everything becomes a tragedy around the demigod everything becomes a satire play and around god everything becomes what perhaps a world 151 it is not enough to possess a talent one must also have your permission to possess it hey my friends 152 where there is the tree of knowledge there is always paradise so say the most ancient and most modern serpents 153 what is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil 154 objection evasion joyous distrust and love of irony or signs of health everything absolute belongs to pathology 155 the sense of the tragic increases and declines with sensuousness 156 insanity in individuals is something rare but in groups parties nations and apokes it is the rule 157 the thought of suicide is a great consolation by means of it one gets successfully through many a bad night 158 not only our reason but also our conscience trickles to our strongest impulse the tyrant in us 159 one must repay good and ill but why just to the person who did us good or ill 160 one no longer loves one's knowledge sufficiently after one has communicated it 161 poets act shamelessly towards their experiences they exploit them 162 our fellow creature is not our neighbor but our neighbor's neighbor so thanks every nation 163 love brings to light the noble and hidden qualities of a lover his rare and exceptional traits it is thus liable to be deceptive as to his normal character 164 Jesus said to his Jews the law was for servants love God as I loved him as his son what have we sons of God to do with morals 165 in sight of every party a shepherd has always need of a bell weather or he has himself to be a weather occasionally 166 one may indeed lie with the mouth but with the accompanying grimace one nevertheless tells the truth 167 to vigorous men intimacy is a matter of shame and something precious 168 Christianity gave eros poison to drink he did not die of it certainly but degenerated to vice 169 to talk much about oneself may also be a means of concealing oneself 170 in praise there is more obtrusiveness than in flame 171 pity has an almost ludicrous effect on a man of knowledge like tender hands on a cyclops 172 one occasionally embraces someone or other out of love to mankind because one cannot embrace all but this is what one must never confess to the individual 173 one does not hate as long as one just esteems but only when one esteems equal or superior 174 utilitarians e2 love the util only as a vehicle for your inclinations e2 really find the noise of its wheels insupportable 175 one loves ultimately one's desires not the thing desired 176 the vanity of others is only counter to our taste when it is counter to our vanity 177 with regard to what truthfulness is perhaps nobody has ever been sufficiently truthful 178 one does not believe in the follies of clever man what a forfeiture of the rites of man 179 the consequences of our actions sees us by the forelaw very indifferent to the fact that we have meanwhile reformed 180 there is an innocence in lying which is the sign of good faith and a cause 181 it is inhuman to bless when one is being cursed 182 the familiarity of superiors and bitters one because it may not be returned 183 I am affected not because you have deceived me but because I can no longer believe in you 184 there is a haughtiness of kindness which has the appearance of wickedness 185 I dislike him why I am not a match for him did anyone ever answer so end of chapter four this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information and to find out how you can volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Rainer Obgenheim beyond good and evil by Friedrich Nietzsche chapter five the natural history of morals 186 the moral sentiment in europe at present is perhaps as subtle belated diverse sensitive and refined as the science of morals belonging there too is recent initial awkward and coast fingered an interesting contrast which sometimes becomes incarnate and obvious in the very person of a moralist indeed the expression science of morals is in respect to what is designated thereby far from presumptuous encounter to good taste which is always a foretaste of more modest expressions one ought to evolve with the utmost fairness what is still necessary here for a long time what is alone proper for the present namely the collection of material the comprehensive survey and classification of an immense domain of delicate sentiments of verse and distinction of verse which live grow propagate and perish and perhaps attempt to give a clear idea of the recurring and more common forms of these living crystallizations as preparation for a theory of types of morality to be sure people have not had a row been so modest all the philosophers was a pedantic and ridiculous seriousness demanded of themselves something very much higher more pretentious and ceremonious when they're concerned to themselves morality as a science they wanted to give a basic to morality and every philosopher here the row has believed that he has given it a basis morality itself however has been regarded as something given how far from their awkward pride was a seemingly insignificant problem left in dust and decay of a description of forms of morality notwithstanding that the finest hands and senses could hardly be fine enough for it it was precisely owing to moral philosophers knowing the moral facts imperfectly in an arbitrary abit home or accidental abridgement perhaps as a morality of their environment their position their church their zeitgeist their climate and so on it was precisely because they were badly instructed with regard to nations eras and past ages and were by no means eager to know about these matters as they did not even come inside of the real problem of morals problems which only disclose themselves by a comparison of many kinds of morality and every science of morals has a row strange as it may sound the problem of morality itself has been omitted there has been no suspicion that there was anything problematic there that this philosopher's called giving a basis to morality an endeavor to realize has when seen in a right light proved merely a learned form of good faith and prevailing morality a new means of its expression consequently just a matter of fact within the sphere of a definite morality yeah it's ultimate motive a sort of denial that it is lawful for this morality to be called in question and in any case the reverse of the testing analyzing doubting and the rejecting of this very faith here for instance what was innocent almost worthy of honor Schopenhauer represents his own task and draw your conclusions concerning the scientificness of a science whose latest master still talks on the strain of children and old wives the principle he says page 136 of the Grundprobleme der Ethik the axiom about the purpose of which all moralists are practically agreed nemen im Läde im omnis quantum potis juva is really the proposition which all moral teachers strive to establish the real basis of ethics which has been thought like the philosopher stone for centuries the difficulty of establishing the proposition referred to may indeed be great it is well known that Schopenhauer also was unsuccessful in his efforts and whoever has thoroughly realized how absurdly false and sentimental this proposition is in a world whose essence is will to power may be reminded that Schopenhauer also a pessimist actually played the flute daily after dinner one may read about the matter in his biography a question by the way a pessimist a repudiator of god and of the world who makes a hall at morality who ascends to morality and plays the flute to Läde nemen im morals what is that really a pessimist 187 apart from the value of such a surgeon as there is a categorical imperative in us one can always ask what does such an assertion indicate about him who makes it there are system of morals which are meant to justify their also in the eyes of other people other system of morals are meant to tranquilize him and make himself satisfied with other systems he wants to crucify and humble himself with others he wishes to take revenge with others to conceal himself with others to glorify himself and gave superiority and distinction this system of morals helps its author to forget that system makes him or something of him forgotten many a moralist would like to exercise power and creative arbitrariness over mankind many and other perhaps can't especially gives us to understand by his morals that what is estimable in me is that i know how to obey and with you it shall not be otherwise than with me in short systems of morals are only a sign language of the emotions 188 in contrast to a lesser alley every system of morals is a sort of tyranny against nature and also against reason that is however no objection unless one should again decree by some system of morals that all kinds of tyranny and unreasonableness are unlawful what is essential and invaluable in every system of morals is that it is a long constraint in order to understand stoicism or portrayal or pluralism one should remember the constraint under which every language has attained to stretch and freedom symmetrical constraint the tyranny of rhyme and rhythm how much trouble have the poets and orators of every nation given themselves not accepting some of the prose rights of today and whose ear dwells in exorbitant consciousness not accepting some of the prose rights of today and whose ear dwells and exorbitant consciousness for the sake of a folly a utilitarian bungler say and thereby deems themselves wise from submission to arbitrary law as anarchists say and thereby fancy themselves free even free spirited the singular fact remains however that everything of the nature of freedom elegance boldness dance and masterly certainty which exists or has existed whether it be in thought itself or an admiration or in speaking and persuading in an art as in conduct has only developed by means of the tyranny of such arbitrary law and in all seriousness it is not at all improbable that precisely this is nature and natural and not less early every artist knows how different from the state of letting himself go is his most natural condition the free arranging locating disposing and constructing in the moments of inspiration and how strictly and delicately he then obeys a thousand laws which by the very rigidness and precision defy all formulation by means of ideas even the most stable idea has in comparison there with something floating manifold and ambitious in it the essential thing in heaven and in earth is apparently to repeat it once more that there should belong obedience in the same direction there thereby results and has always resulted in the long run something which has made the life worth living for instance third year art music dancing reason spirituality anything whatever that is transfiguring refined foolish or divine the long bondage of the spirit the distrustful constraint in the communicability of ideas the discipline which the thinker imposed on himself to think in accordance with the rules of a church or a court or comfortable to earth totalian premises the persistent spiritual will to interpret everything that happened according to a christian scheme and then every occurrence to rediscover and justify the christian god all this violence arbitrariness severity dreadfulness and unreasonableness has proved itself as disciplinary means whereby the european spirit has attained its trench its remorseless curiosity and subtle mobility granted also that much irrecoverable strange and spirit has to be stifled suffocated and spoiled in the process for here as everywhere nature shows herself as she is in all the extravagant and indifferent magnificent which is shocking but nevertheless noble that for centuries thinkers only thought in order to prove something nowadays on the contrary we are suspicious of every thinker who wishes to prove something that it was always said beforehand what was to be the result of the strictest thinking as it was perhaps in the asiatic astrology of former times or as it is still at the present day in the innocent christian moral explanation of the immediate personal events for the glory of god or for the good of the soul this tyranny this arbitrariness this severe and magnificent stupidity as educated the spirit slavery both in the course and the final sense is apparently an indispensable means even of spiritual education discipline one may look at every system of morals in this light it is nature therein which teaches to hate the less early the two great freedom and implants the need for limited horizons for immediate duties it teaches a narrowing of perspectives and thus in a certain sense the stupidity is a condition of life and development you must obey someone and for a long time otherwise you will come to grief and lose all respect for yourself this seems to me the moral imperative of nature which is certainly neither categorical as old can't wished consequently the otherwise nor does it address itself to the individual what does nature care for 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 to be idle it was a master stroke of english instinct to hello and be gloom sunday to such an extent that the englishman unconsciously hankers for his week and work day again as a kind of cleverly devised cleverly intercalated fast such as is also frequently found in the ancient world although as is appropriate in southern nations not precisely with respect to work many kinds of fasts are necessary and wherever powerful influences and habits prevail legislators have to see that intercalary days are appointed on which such impulses are fettered and learn to hunger anew few from a higher standpoint hold generations in epochs when they show themselves infected with any moral fanatism seem like those intercalated periods of restraint and fasting during which an impulse learns to humble and submit itself at the same time also to purify and sharpen itself certain philosophical sects likewise admit of similar interpretation for instance the stowa in the midst of alienic culture with the atmosphere rank and overcharges effort the vehicle odors here also is a hint for the explanation of the paradox why it was precisely in the most christian period of european history and in general only under the pressure of christian sentiments that the sexual impulse supplemented into love amor passion 190 there's something in the morality of plato which does not really belong to plato but which only appears in his philosophy one might say in spite of him namely so criticism for which he himself was too noble no one desires to injure himself hence all evil is done unwittingly the evil man inflicts injury on himself he would not do so however if he knew that evil is evil the evil man therefore is only evil through error and when freeing from error one will necessarily make him good this mode of reasoning the savers of the populace who perceive only the unpleasant consequences of evil doing and practically judge said it is stupid to do wrong while they accept good as identical with useful and pleasant without further thought as regards every system of utilitarianism one might once assume that it has the same origin and follows a scent one will seldom hear plato it only could to interpret something refined and noble into the tenets of his teacher and above all to interpret himself into them he the most daring of all interpreters who lifted the entire socrates out of the street as a popular theme and song to exhibit him in endless and impossible modifications namely in all his own disguises and multiplicities in yes a numeric language as well what is the platonic socrates if not proste platon obitaine de platon tesse tegemeira 191 the old theological problem of faith and knowledge or more plainly of instinct and reason the question rather in respect to the valuation of things instinct deserves more authority than rationality which wants to appreciate and act according to motives according to a why that is to say in conformity to purpose and utility it is always the old moral problem that first appeared in the personal socrates and had divided man's minds long before christianity socrates himself following of course the taste of his talent that of the surpassing direction took at first the sight of reason and in fact what did he do all his life but love at the awkward incapacity of the noble atenians who were men of instinct like all noble men and could never give satisfactory answers concerning the motives of directions in the end however so silently and secretly he loved also at himself with his final conscience and introspection he found in himself the same difficulty and incapacity but why he said to himself should one on that account separate oneself from the instincts one must set them right and the reason also one must follow the instinct but the same time persuade the reason to support them with good arguments this was the real falseness of that great and mysterious ironist he brought his conscience up to the point that he was satisfied with the kind of self-outwitting in fact he perceived the irrationality in the moral judgment plaito more innocent in such matters and without the craftiness of the plebeian wished to prove to himself that the expenditure of all the strange the greatest change a philosopher had ever expanded the reason and instinct leads spontaneously to the one goal to the good to god and since plaito all theologians and philosophers have followed the same path which means that in matters of morality instinct or as christian call it face or as i call it she heard a scissors triumphed unless one should make an exception the case of the card the father of rationalism and consequently grandfather of the revolution recognized only the authority of reason but reasons only a tool and the card was superficial 192 whoever has followed the history of the single science finds in its development a clue to the understanding of the oldest and commonest processes of all knowledge and cognizance there as here the premature hypothesis the fiction the good stupid will to believe and the lack of distrust and patience are first developed our senses learn late and never learn completely to be subtle reliable and cautious organs of knowledge our eyes find it easier on a given occasion to produce a picture already often produced than to seize upon the divergence and novelty of an impression the letter requires more force more morality it is difficult and painful for the ear to listen to anything new we hear strange music badly when we hear another language spoken we involuntarily attempt to form the sounds into words with which we are more familiar and conversant it was last for example that the germans modified the spoken word arcubalista into armbos that means crossbow our senses are also hostile and averse to the new and generally even in the simplest procession 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 single words not to speak of syllabus of a page he rather takes about five out of every 20 words and random and guesses the probably appropriate sense to them just as little do we see a tree correctly and completely in respect to its leaves branches color and shape we find it so much easier to fancy the chance of a tree even the midst of the most remarkable experiences we still do just the same we fabricate the greater part of the experience and can hardly be made to contemplate any event except as inventors thereof all this goes to proof that from our fundamental nature and from remote ages we have been accustomed to lying or to express it more politely and hypocritically in short more pleasantly one is much more of an artist than one is aware of in an animated conversion i often see the face of the person with who i am speaking so clearly and sharply defined before me according to the thought he expresses or which i believe to be evoked in his mind that the degree of distinctness far exceeds the strength of my visual faculty the delicacy of the play of the muscles and of the expression of the eyes must therefore be imagined by me probably the person put on quite a different expression or none at all 193 quit could lose the food to neighbors argued but also contrary wise what we experience in dreams provided we experience it often pertains at last just as much of the general belongings of our soul as anything actually experienced by virtuoso we are richer or poorer we have a requirement more or less and finally in broad daylight and even the brightest moments of our waking life we are ruled to some extent by the nature of our dreams supposing that someone has often flown in his dreams and then at last as soon as he dreams he is conscious of the power and art of lying as his privilege and his peculiarly enviable happiness such a person who believes that on the slightest impulse he can actually all sorts of curves and angels who knows the sensation of a certain divine levity and upwards without effort or constraint and downwards without ascending or lowering without trouble how could the man with such dream experiences and dream habits fail to find happiness differently colored and defined even in his waking hours how could he fail to long differently for happiness flight such as his scribe approach must when compared to his own flying be far too earthly muscular violent far too troublesome for him 194 the difference among men does not manifest itself only in the difference of their list of desirable things in the regarding different good things as worth striving for and being disagreed as to the greater or less value the order of rank of the commonly recognized desirable things it manifests itself much more in what they regard as actually having and possessing a desirable thing as regards to a woman for instance the control of her body and her sexual gratification serves as an implies efficient sign of ownership and possession to the more modest man and other with the most auspicious and ambitious thirst for possession sees the questionableness the mere apparentness of such ownership and wishes to have finer tests in order to know especially whether the woman not only gives herself to him but also goes up for the sake but she has or would not like to have only then does he look upon her as possessed a third however has not even here got to the limit of his distrust and his desire for possession he asks himself whether the woman when she gives up everything for him does not perhaps do so far for a phantom of him he wishes first to be thoroughly indeed profoundly well known in order to be loved at all he ventures to let himself be found out only then as he feels the beloved one fully in his possession when she no longer deceives herself about him when she loves him just as much for the sake of his devoury and concealed insurability as for his goodness patience and spirituality one man would like to possess a nation and defines all the higher arts of cagliosto and catalina suitable for his purpose another with a more refined source of possession sighs to himself one may not deceive where one desires to possess he's irritated and impatient at the ideas that a mask of him should rule in the heart of the people i must therefore make myself known and first of all learn to know myself among helpful and charitable people one almost always finds the awkward craftiness which first gets absutable him who has to be helped as though for instance he should merit help seek just their help and would show himself deeply grateful attached and subservient to them for all help with these conceits they take control of the needy as a property just as in general they are charitable and helpful out of a desire for property one finds them jealous when they are crossed or for stalled in their charity parents invariably make something like themselves out of the children they call that education no mother doubts the bottom of her heart that the child she has born is thereby her property no father hesitates about his right to his own ideas and notions of birth indeed in former times fathers seem to try to use that description concerning the life or death of the newly born as among the ancient germans and like the father they also do the teacher the class the priest and the prince they'll see in every new individual an unobjectionable opportunity for new possession the consequence is 195 the jews a people born for slavery as tazitos in the whole ancient world say of them the chosen people among the nations and they themselves say in belief the jews performed miracle of the inversion of valuations by means of which the life on earth obtained a new and dangerous charm for a couple of millenniums their prophets fused into one the expressions rich godless wicked violent sensual and for the first time coined the word world as a term of reproach and this inversion of valuations in which is also included the use of the word pure as synonym the saint and friend the significance of the jews people is to be found it is with them that the slave insurrection and morals commences 196 it is to be inferred that there are countless dark bodies near the sun such as we shall never see among ourselves this is an allegory and the psychologists of morals read the whole star writing merely as an allegorical and symbolic language in which much may be unexpressed 197 the beast of prey and the man of prey for instance says a borgia are fundamentally misunderstood nature is misunderstood so long as one seeks a morbidness and the constitution of these healthiest of all tropical monsters and grills or even an innate hell in them as almost all moralists have done with a row does it seem that there is a hatred of the virgin forest and of the tropics among moralists and that the tropical man must be discredited at all costs whether as a disease and deterioration of mankind or as his own hell and self-torture and why in favor of the temperate zones in favor of the temperate men the moral the mediocre this for the chapter morals as timidity 198 all the systems of morals which address themselves with a few of their happiness as it is called what else are they but suggestions for behavior adapted to the degree of danger from themselves in which the individuals live recipes for their passions their good and bad propensities and so far as such have the world to power and would like to play the master small and great expediencies and elaborations permeated with the mustier odor of old family medicines and old life wisdom all of them protect and absurd in their form because they address themselves to all because they generalize whether generalization is not authorized all of them speaking unconditionally and taking themselves unconditionally all of them flavored not merely with some grain of salt but rather and durable only and sometimes even seductive when they are overspiced and begin to smell dangerously especially of the other world that is all of little value when estimated intellectually and as far from being science much less wisdom but repeated once more and three times repeated it is expediency expediency expediency mixes stupidity stupidity stupidity whether it be indifference and stature as coldness towards the heated folly of the emotions which the stoics advised and fostered or the no more laughing and no more weeping of spinosa the destruction of the emotions by their analysis and vivisection which he recommended so naively or the lowering of the emotions to an innocent mean at which they all may be satisfied the aristotelianism of morals or even morality as the enjoyment of the emotions in a voluntary attenuation and spiritualization but in symbolism of art perps as music or as love of god and of mankind for god's sake for in religion the passions are once more enfranchised provided that or finally even the complacent and wanton surrender of the emotions as have been taught by hafiz and gütte the bold letting go of the range the spiritual and corporeal licensia morum in the exceptional cases of wise cold codges and drunkards with whom it no longer has much danger this also for the chapter moral estimility 199 in as much as in all ages as long as mankind has existed there have also been human hurts family alliances communities tribes peoples states churches and always a great number of who obey in proportion to the small number who command in view therefore of the fact that obedience has been most practiced and fostered among mankind to the row one may reasonably suppose that generally speaking the need thereof is now innate in everyone as a kind of formal conscience which gives the command you shall unconditionally do something unconditionally refrain from something in short you shall this need tries to satisfy itself and to fill its form with the content according to its trench impatience and eagerness it in one ceases as an omnivorous appetite with little diselection and accepts whatever is shouted to into its ear by all sorts of commanders parents teachers laws class prejudice or public opinion the extraordinary limitation of human development the hesitation protractedness frequent retrogression and turning thereof is attributable to the fact that the hurt instinct of obedience is transmitted best and at the cost of the art of command and one imagines this instinct increasing to its greatest extent commanders and independent individuals will finally be lacking altogether or they will suffer inwardly from a bad conscience and will have to impose a deception of themselves in the first place in order to be able to command just as if they also were only obeying this conditional things actually exists in Europe at present I called the moral hypocrisy of the commanding class they know no other way of protecting themselves from their bad conscience that by playing the role of executors of older and higher orders of predecessors of the constitution of justice of the law or of God himself or they even justify themselves by maxims from the current opinions of the herd as first servants of their people or instruments of the public will on the other hand the gregarious european man nowadays assumes an air as if he were the only kind of man that is allowable he glorifies his qualities such as public spirit kindness deference industry temperance modesty indulgence sympathy by virtue of which he's gentle and durable and useful to the herd as a peculiarly human virtues in cases however there is belief that the leader and bellwether cannot be dispensed with attempt after attempt is made nowadays to replace commanders by the summing together of clever gregarious men all representative constitutions for example are of this origin in spite of all what a blessing what a deliverance from a weight becoming unendurable is the appearance of an absolute ruler for these gregarious europeans of this fact the effect of the appearance of napoleon was the last great proof the history of the influence of napoleon is almost the three of the higher happiness to which the entire century has attained his individuals and periods 200 the man of an age of dissolution which mixes the races is one another who has an inheritance of a diversified descent in his body that is to say contrary and often not only contrary instincts and standards of value which struggle with one another and assault them at peace such a man of late culture and broken lives will on an average be a weak man his fundamental desire is that the war which is in him should come to an end happiness appears to him in the character of a suzing medicine and mode of thought for instant epicurean or christian it is above all things the happiness of repose of undisturbedness of repression of final unity it is the sabbat of sabbats to use the expression of the holy retorician saint augustin who was himself such a man should however the contrary and conflict in such natures operate as an additional incentive and stimulus to life and if on the other hand in addition to their powerful and irreconcilable instinct they have also inherited and indoctrinated into them a proper mastery and subtlety for caring on the conflict which themselves that is to say the faculty of self control and self deception there then arise those marvellously incomprehensible and inexplicable beings those enigmatic man predestined for conquering and circumventing others the finest examples of which are elizabethus and cesar which whom i should like to associate the first of europeans accounting to my taste the hon staufand redirect the second and among artists perhaps leonard davinci they appear precisely in the same periods when that weaker type which is longing for repose comes to the front the two types are complementary to each other and spring from the same causes 201 as long as the utility which determines moral estimates is only gregarious utility as long as the preservation of the community is only kept in view and their immoral assault precisely and exclusively in what seems dangerous to the maintenance of the community there can be no morality of love to one's neighbor granted even that there is already a little constant exercise of consideration sympathy fairness gentleness and mutual assistance granted that even in this condition of society all those instincts are already active which are laterally distinguished by honorable names as a virtue and eventually almost coincide with the conception morality in that period they do not as yet belong to the domain of moral valuations they are still ultra moral a sympathetic action for instance is neither called good nor bad moral or immoral in the best periods of the romance and truly praised a sort of resentful disdain is compatible with this praise even at the best directly the sympathetic action is compared with one which contributes to the welfare of the whole to the race publica after all love to our neighbor is always a secondary matter partly conventional and arbitrarily manifested in relation to our fear of our neighbor after the fabric of society seems on the whole established and secured against external dangers it is the fear of our neighbor which again creates new perspectives of moral valuation certain strong and dangerous instincts such as the love of enterprise full-heartedness revengefulness astuteness rapacity and love of power which up to then has not only be honored from the point of view of general utility under other names of course that those here given but had to be fostered and cultivated because they were perpetually required in the common danger against the common enemies are now felt in the dangerousness to be doubly strong when the outlets for them are lacking and are gradually branded as immoral and given over column name the contrary instincts and inclinations now attain a tomorrow honor the gregarious instinct gradually draws its conclusions how much or how little dangerousness to the community or to equality is contained in an opinion a condition an emotion and his position or an endowment that is now the moral perspective here again fear is the mother of morals it is by the loftiest and strongest instinct when they break out passionately and carry the individual far above and beyond the average and the low level of the gregarious conscience that the self-reliance of the community is destroyed its belief in itself its backbone as it were breaks consequently these very instincts will be most branded and defamed lofty independent spirituality they will stand alone and even the cogent reason are felt to be dangerous everything that elevates the individual above the herd and is a source of fear to the neighbor as hence were called evil the tolerant unassuming self-adapting self equalizing disposition the mediocrity of desires attains the moral distinction and honor finally under very peaceful circumstances there's always less opportunity and necessity for training the feelings to severity and rigor and now every form of severity even injustice begins to stir up the conscience a lofty and rigorous nobleness and self-responsibility almost offense and awakens distrust the lamp and still more the sheep wins respect there's a point of disease malonez and a feminacy in the history of society at which society itself takes a part of him who injures it the part of the criminal and does so in fact seriously and honestly to punish appears to be somehow unfair it is certain that the idea of punishment and the obligation to punish and then painful and alarming to people is it not sufficient and the criminal be rendered homeless why should we still punish punishment itself is terrible with these questions gregarious morality the morality of fear draws its ultimate conclusion if one could all do away with danger the cause of fear one would have done away with this morality at the same time it would no longer be necessary it would not consider itself any longer necessary whoever examines the conscience of the present day european will always elicit the same imperative from its thousand moral faults and hidden recesses the imperative of the timidity of the herd we wish that sometime or other there may be nothing more to fear sometime or other the will and the way there too is nowadays called progress all over europe 202 let us at once say again what we have already said a hundred times for people's ears nowadays are unwilling to hear such truth our truth we know well enough how offensive it sounds when anyone plainly and without metaphor counts men among the animals but it will be accounted to us almost a crime that it is precisely in respect to men of modern ideas that we have constantly applied the terms herd herd instincts and such like expressions what avail is it we cannot do otherwise for it is precisely here that our new insight is we have found that in all the principal moral judgments europe has become unanimous including likewise the countries where european influence prevails in europe people evidently know what socrates thought he did not know and what the famous serpent of old once promised to teach they know today what is good and evil it must then sound hard and be distasteful to the ear when we always insist that that which here thinks it knows that which here glorifies itself with praise and blame and calls itself good is the instinct of the herding human animal the instinct which has come and is ever coming more and more to the front to preponderance and supremacy over other instincts according to the increasing physiological approximation and resemblance of which is the symptom morality in europe at present is herding animal morality and therefore as we understand the matter only one kind of human morality besides which before which and after which many other moralities and above all higher moralities are or should be possible against such a possibility against such a should be however this morality defends itself it's all it's drench it says obstinately and inexorably i am morality itself and nothing else is morality indeed with the help of a religion which has humored and flattered the sublime's desires of the herding animal things have reached such a point that we always find a more visible expression of this morality even in political and social arrangements the democratic movement is the inheritance of the christian movement that its tempo however is much too slow and sleep before the more impatient ones for those who are sick and distracted by the herding instinct is indicated by the increasingly furious howling and always less disguised teased gnashing of the anarchist dogs who are now roving through the highways of european culture apparently in opposition to the peacefully industrious democrats and revolution ideologies and still more so to the awkward philipsofastas and fraternity visionaries who call themselves socialists and want a free society those are really at one with them and all their sorrow and instinctive hostility to every form of society other than the autonomous herd to the extent even of repudiating the notions master and servant nydionimetre says a socialist formula at one in the tenacious opposition to every special claim every special right and privilege this means ultimately opposition to every right for when we all equal no one needs the rights any longer at one in their distrust of punitive justice a third where a violation of the weak unfair to the necessary consequences of all former society but equally at one in the religion of sympathy in their compassion for all that feels lives and suffers down to the very animals up even to god the extravagance of the sympathy for god belongs to a democratic age altogether at one in the cry and impatience of the sympathy and the deadly hatred of suffering generality and they're almost feminine in capacity for witnessing it or allowing it at one in their involuntarily be glooming and heart softening under the spell of which europe seems to be threatened with a new buddhism at one in their belief in the morality of mutual sympathy as though it were morality in itself the climax the attained climax of mankind the sole hope of the future the consolation of the present the greatest charge from all the obligations of the past all together at one in their belief in the community as a deliverer in the herd and therefore themselves 203 we who hold a different belief we who regard the democratic movement not only as a degenerating form of political organization but as equivalent to a generating a waning type of man as involving his medial crying and deprecation where have we to fix our hopes in new philosophers there is no other alternative in minds strong and original enough to initiate opposite estimates of values to transvalue and invert eternal valuations and foreigners in man of the futures who in the present shall fix the constraints and fast the knots which will compel millennia to take new path to teach man the future of humanity as his will as depending on human will and to make preparation for vast hazardous enterprises and collective attempts in rearing and educating in order thereby to put an end to the frightful rule of folly and chance which has through the drug gone by the name of history the folly of the greatest number is only its last form for that purpose a new type of philosopher and commander will sometime or other be needed at the very idea of which everything that has existed in the way of occult terrible and benevolent beings might look pale and warped the image of such leaders hovers before our eyes is it lawful for me to say it aloud we free spirits the conditions which one would partly have to create and partly utilize for their genesis the presumptive methods and tests by virtue of which a soul should grow up to such an evaluation and power as to feel a constraint to these tasks a transvaluation of values under the new pressure and hammer of which a conscience should be steeled and a heart transformed into brass so as to be on the weight of such responsibility and on the other hand the necessity for our such leaders and on the other hand the necessity for such leaders the dreadful danger that they might be lacking or miscarry and degenerate these are our real anxieties and glooms we know it well we free spirits these are the heavy distant thoughts and storms which sweep across the heaven of our life there are few pains so grievous as to have seen divine or experienced how an exceptional man has missed display and deteriorated but he who has a rare eye for the universal danger of man himself deteriorating he who like us has recognized the extraordinary fortitudeness which has has played its game in respect of the future of mankind a game in which neither the hand nor even a finger of god has participated he who divides the fate that is hidden under the idiotic unvaryness and blind confidence of modern ideas and still more under the whole of crystal european morality suffers from an anguish with which no other is to be compared he sees at a glance all that could still be made out of man through a favorable accumulation and augmentation of human powers and arrangements he knows with all the knowledge of his conviction how unexhausted man still is for the greatest possibilities and how often in the past the type man has stood in presence of mysterious decisions and new path he knows still better from his painfulest recollections on what red obstacles promising developments of the highest rank hathithero usually gone to pieces broken down sunk and become contentable the universal degeneracy of mankind to the level of the man of the future as idealized by the socialist fools and shallow pates this degeneracy and warfing of man to an absolutely gregarious animal or as they call it to a man of free society this brutalizing of man to a pygmy with equal rights and claims is undoubtedly possible he who thought out this possibility to his ultimate conclusion knows and other lousy unknown to the rest of mankind and perhaps also a new mission end of chapter five this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libra vox dot org this reading by carah schellenberg www dot k-ray dot org beyond good and evil by friedrich nichy chapter six we scholars 204 at the risk that moralizing may also reveal itself here as that which it has always been namely resolutely montreras says plays according to balzac i would venture to protest against an improper and injurious alteration of rank which quite unnoticed and as if with the best conscience threatens nowadays to establish itself in the relations of science and philosophy i mean to say that one must have the right out of one's own experience experience as it seems to me always implies unfortunate experience to treat of such an important question of rank so as not to speak of color like the blind or against science like women and artists ah this dreadful science sigh their instinct and their shame it always finds things out the declaration of independence of the scientific man his emancipation from philosophy is one of the subtler after-effects of democratic organization and disorganization the self-glorification and self-conceitedness of the learned man is now everywhere in full bloom and in its best springtime which does not mean to imply that in this case self praise smells sweet here also the instinct of the populace cries freedom from all masters and after science has with the happiest results resisted theology whose handmade it had been too long it now proposes in its wantonness and indiscretion to lay down laws for philosophy and in its turn to play the master what am i saying to play the philosopher on its own account my memory the memory of a scientific man if you please teams with the naivete of insolence which i have heard about philosophy and philosophers from young naturalists and old physicians not to mention the most cultured and most conceited of all learned men the philologists and school masters who are both the one and the other by profession on one occasion it was the specialist and the jack horner who instinctively stood on the defensive against all synthetic tasks and capabilities at another time it was the industrious worker who had got a scent of otium and refined luxuriousness in the internal economy of the philosopher and felt himself aggrieved and belittled thereby on another occasion it was the colorblindness of the utilitarian who sees nothing in philosophy but a series of refuted systems and an extravagant expenditure which does nobody 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 philosophers which had involuntarily extended to disregard of philosophy generally in fine i found most frequently behind the proud disdain of philosophy in young scholars the evil after effect of some particular philosopher to whom on the whole obedience had been foresworn without however the spell of his scornful estimates of other philosophers having been got rid of the result of being a general ill will to all philosophy such seems to me for instance the after effect of schopenhauer on the most modern germany by his unintelligent rage against hegel he has succeeded in severing the whole of the last generation of germans from its connection with german culture which culture all things considered has been an elevation and a divining refinement of the historical sense but precisely at this point schopenhauer himself was poor irreceptive and ungerman to the extent of ingeniousness on the whole speaking generally it may just have been the humanness all too humanness of the modern philosophers themselves in short their contemptableness which has injured most radically the reverence for philosophy and opened the doors to the instinct of the populace let it but be acknowledged to what an extent our modern world diverges from the whole style of the world of heraclitus platoe empedacles and whatever else all the royal and magnificent anchorites of the spirit were called and with what justice an honest man of science may feel himself of a better family and origin in view of such representatives of philosophy who owing to the fashion of the present day are just as much aloft as they are down below in germany for instance the two lions of berlin the anarchist eugen doring and the amalgamist edward von hartman it is especially the site of those hodgepodge philosophers who call themselves realists or positivists which is calculated to implant a dangerous distrust in the soul of a young and ambitious scholar those philosophers at the best are themselves but scholars and specialists that is very evident all of them are persons who have been vanquished and brought back again under the dominion of science who at one time or another claimed more from themselves without having a right to the more and its responsibility and who now creditably rancorously and vindictively represent in word and deed disbelief in the master task and supremacy of philosophy after all how could it be otherwise science flourishes nowadays and has the good conscience clearly visible on its countenance while that to which the entire modern philosophy has gradually sunk the remnant of philosophy of the present day excites distrust and displeasure if not scorn and pity philosophy reduced to a theory of knowledge no more in fact than a diffident science of epochs and doctrine of forbearance a philosophy that never even gets beyond the threshold and rigorously denies itself the right to enter that is philosophy in its last throes and end and agony something that awakens pity how could such a philosophy rule 205 the dangers that beset the evolution of the philosopher are in fact so manifold nowadays that one might doubt whether this fruit could still come to maturity the extent and towering structure of the sciences have increased enormously and therewith also the probability that the philosopher will grow tired even as a learner or will attach himself somewhere and specialize so that he will no longer attain to his elevation that is to say to his superspection his circumspection and his despection or he gets aloft too late when the best of his maturity and strength is passed or when he is impaired coarsened and deteriorated so that his view his general estimate of things is no longer of much importance it is perhaps just the refinement of his intellectual conscience that makes him hesitate and linger on the way he dreads the temptation to become a dilettante a millipede a milla antenna he knows too well that as a discerner one who has lost his self-respect no longer commands no longer leads unless he should aspire to become a great play actor a philosophical cogliostro and spiritual rat catcher in short a misleader this is in the last instance a question of taste if it has not really been a question of conscience to double once more the philosopher's difficulties there is also the fact that he demands from himself a verdict a yay or nay not concerning science but concerning life and the worth of life he learns unwillingly to believe that it is his right and even his duty to obtain this verdict and he has to seek his way to the right and the belief only through the most extensive perhaps disturbing and destroying experiences often hesitating doubting and dumbfounded in fact the philosopher has long been mistaken and confused by the multitude either with the scientific man and ideal scholar or with the religiously elevated decentralized desecularized visionary and god intoxicated man and even yet when one hears anybody praised because he lives wisely or as a philosopher it hardly means anything more than prudently and apart wisdom that seems to the populace to be a kind of flight a means and artifice for withdrawing successfully from a bad game but the genuine philosopher does it not seem so to us my friends lives un philosophically and unwisely above all imprudently and feels the obligation and burden of a hundred attempts and temptations of life he risks himself constantly he plays this bad game 206 in relation to the genius that is to say a being who either engenders or produces both words understood in their fullest sense the man of learning the scientific average man has always something of the old maid about him for like her he is not conversant with the two principal functions of man to both of course to the scholar and to the old maid one concedes respectability as if by way of indemnification in these cases one emphasizes the respectability and yet in the compulsion of this concession one has the same admixture of vexation let us examine more closely what is the scientific man firstly a commonplace type of man with commonplace virtues that is to say a non-ruling non-authoritative and non-self-sufficient type of man he possesses industry patient adaptableness to rank and file equability and moderation in capacity and requirement he has the instinct for people like himself and for that which they require for instance the portion of independence and green meadow without which there is no rest from labor the claim to honor and consideration which first and foremost presupposes recognition and recognizability the sunshine of a good name the perpetual ratification of his value and usefulness with which the inward distrust which lies at the bottom of the heart of all dependent men and gregarious animals has again and again to be overcome the learned man as is appropriate has also maladies and faults of an ignoble kind he is full of petty envy and has a link's eye for the weak points in those natures to whose elevations he cannot attain he is confiding yet only as one who lets himself go but does not flow and precisely before the man of the great current he stands all the colder and more reserved his eye is then like a smooth and irresponsible lake which is no longer moved by rapture or sympathy the worst and most dangerous thing of which a scholar is capable results from the instinct of mediocrity of his type from the Jesuitism of mediocrity which labors instinctively for the destruction of the exceptional man and endeavors to break or still better to relax every bent bow to relax of course with consideration and naturally with an indulgent hand to relax with confiding sympathy that is the real art of Jesuitism which has always understood how to introduce itself as the religion of sympathy 207 however gratefully one may welcome the objective spirit and who has not been sick to death of all subjectivity and its confounded ipsis immocity in the end however one must learn caution even with regard to one's gratitude and put a stop to the exaggeration with which the unselfing and depersonalizing of the spirit has recently been celebrated as if it were the goal in itself as if it were salvation and glorification as is especially accustomed to happen in the pessimist school which has also in its turn good reasons for paying the highest honors to disinterested knowledge the objective man who no longer curses and scolds like the pessimist the ideal man of learning in whom the scientific instinct blossoms forth fully after a thousand complete and partial failures is assuredly one of the most costly instruments that exist but his place is in the hand of one who is more powerful he is only an instrument we may say he is a mirror he is no purpose in himself the objective man is in truth a mirror accustomed to prostration before everything that wants to be known with such desires only as knowing or reflecting implies he waits until something comes and then expands himself sensitively so that even the light footsteps and gliding past of spiritual beings may not be lost on his surface and film whatever personality he still possesses seems to him accidental arbitrary or still often are disturbing so much has he come to regard himself as the passage and reflection of outside forms and events he calls up the recollection of himself with an effort and not infrequently wrongly he readily confounds himself with other persons he makes mistakes with regard to his own needs and here only is he unrefined and negligent perhaps he is troubled about the health or the pettiness and confined atmosphere of wife and friend or the lack of companions and society indeed he sets himself to reflect on his suffering but in vain his thoughts already drove away to the more general case and tomorrow he knows as little as he knew yesterday how to help himself he does not now take himself seriously and devote time to himself he is serene not from lack of trouble but from lack of capacity for grasping and dealing with his trouble the habitual complacence with respect to all objects and experiences the radiant and impartial hospitality with which he receives everything that comes his way his habit of inconsiderate good nature of dangerous indifference as to yay and nay alas there are enough of cases in which he has to atone for these virtues of his and as man generally he becomes far too easily the cop it more to him of such virtues should one wish love or hatred from him i mean love and hatred as god woman and animal understand them he will do what he can and furnish what he can but one must not be surprised if it should not be much if he should show himself just at this point to be false fragile questionable and deteriorated his love is constrained his hatred is artificial and rather on to a divorce a slight ostentation and exaggeration he is only genuine so far as he can be objective only in his serene totality is he still nature and natural his mirroring and eternally self-polishing soul no longer knows how to affirm no longer how to deny he does not command neither does he destroy jenet me prized press green he says with labnitz let us not overlook nor undervalue the press neither is he a model man he does not go in advance of anyone nor after either he places himself generally too far off to have any reason for espousing the cause of either good or evil if he has been so long confounded with the philosopher with the caesarean trainer and dictator of civilization he has had far too much honor and what is more essential in him has been overlooked he is an instrument something of a slave though certainly the sublimist sort of slave but nothing in himself press green the objective man is an instrument a costly easily injured easily tarnished measuring instrument and mirroring apparatus which is to be taken care of and respected but he is no goal not outgoing nor upgoing no complimentary man in whom the rest of existence justifies itself no termination and still less a commencement an engendering or primary cause nothing hardy powerful self-centered that wants to be master but rather only a soft inflated delicate movable potters form that must wait for some kind of content and frame to shape itself there too for the most part a man without frame and content a selfless man consequently also nothing for women in parentheses 208 when a philosopher nowadays makes it known that he is not a skeptic i hope that has been gathered from the foregoing description of the objective spirit people all hear it impatiently they regard him on that account with some apprehension they would like to ask so many many questions indeed among timid hearers of whom there are now so many he is henceforth said to be dangerous with his repudiation of skepticism it seems to them as if they heard some evil threatening sound in the distance as if a new kind of explosive were being tried somewhere a dynamite of the spirit perhaps a newly discovered russian nihiline a pessimism bonai voluntatus that not only denies means denial but dreadful thought practices denial against this kind of goodwill a will to the veritable actual negation of life there is as is generally acknowledged nowadays no better soporific and sedative than skepticism the mild pleasing lulling poppy of skepticism and hamlet himself is now prescribed by the doctors of the day as an antidote to the spirit and its underground noises are not our ears already full of bad sounds say the skeptics as lovers of repose and almost as a kind of safety police this subterranean nay is terrible be still ye pessimistic moles the skeptic in effect that delicate creature is far too easily frightened his conscience is schooled so as to start at every nay and even at that sharp decided yay and feel something like a bite thereby yay and nay they seem to him opposed to morality he loves on the contrary to make a festival to his virtue by a noble aloofness while perhaps he says with montine what do i know or with socrates i know that i know nothing or here i do not trust myself no door is open to me or even if the door were open why should i enter immediately or what is the use of any hasty hypotheses it might quite well be in good taste to make no hypotheses at all are you absolutely obliged to straighten at once what is crooked to stuff every hole with some kind of oakum is there not time enough for that has not the time leisure oh ye demons can you not at all wait the uncertain also has its charms the swings too is a sir say and sir say too was a philosopher thus does a skeptic console himself and in truth he needs some consolation for skepticism is the most spiritual expression of a certain many sided physiological temperament which in ordinary language is called nervous debility and sickness it arises whenever races or classes which have been long separated decisively and suddenly blend with one another in the new generation which has inherited as it were different standards and valuations in its blood everything is disquiet derangement doubt and tentativeness the best powers operate restrictively the very virtues prevent each other growing and becoming strong equilibrium ballast and perpendicular stability are lacking in body and soul that however which is most diseased and degenerated in such nondescripts is the will they are no longer familiar with independence of decision or the courageous feeling of pleasure in willing they are doubtful of the freedom of the will even in their dreams our present day europe the scene of a senseless precipitate attempt at a racial blending of classes and consequently of races is therefore skeptical in all its heights and depths sometimes exhibiting the mobile skepticism which springs impatiently and wantonly from branch to branch sometimes with gloomy aspect like a cloud overcharged with interrogative signs and often sick unto death of its will paralysis of will where do we not find this cripple sitting nowadays and yet how bedecked oftentimes how seductively ornamented there are the finest gala dresses and disguises for this disease and that for instance most of what places itself nowadays in the showcases as objectiveness the scientific spirit l'art pour l'art and pure voluntary knowledge is only decked out skepticism and paralysis of will i am ready to answer for this diagnosis of the european disease the disease of the will is diffused unequally over europe it is worst and most varied where civilization has longest prevailed it decreases according as the barbarian still or again asserts his claims under the loose drapery of western culture it is therefore in the france of today as can be readily disclosed and comprehended that the will is most infirm and france which has always had a masterly aptitude for converting even the portentious crisis of its spirit into something charming and seductive now manifests emphatically its intellectual ascendancy over europe by being the school and exhibition of all the charms of skepticism the power to will and to persist moreover in a resolution is already somewhat stronger in germany and again in the north of germany it is stronger than in central germany it is considerably stronger in england spain and corsica associated with phlegm in the former and with hard skulls in the latter not to mention italy which is too young yet to know what it wants and must first show whether it can exercise will but it is strongest and most surprising of all in that immense middle empire where europe as it were flows back to asia namely in russia there the power to will has been long stored up and accumulated there the will uncertain whether to be negative or affirmative waits threateningly to be discharged to borrow their pet phrase from our physicists perhaps not only indian wars and complications in asia would be necessary to free europe from its greatest danger but also internal subversion the shattering of the empire into small states and above all the introduction of parliamentary imbecility together with the obligation of everyone to read his newspaper at breakfast i do not say this as one who desires it in my heart i should rather prefer the contrary i mean such an increase in the threatening attitude of russia that europe would have to make up its mind to become equally threatening namely to acquire one will by means of a new cast to rule over the continent a persistent dreadful will of its own that can set its aims thousands of years ahead so that the long spun out comedy of its petty statism and its dynastic as well as its democratic many wilderness might finally be brought to a close the time for petty politics is past the next century will bring the struggle for the dominion of the world the compulsion to great politics 209 as to how far the new warlike age on which we europeans have evidently entered may perhaps favor the growth of another and stronger kind of skepticism i should like to express myself preliminarily merely by a parable which the lovers of german history will already understand that unscrupulous enthusiast for big handsome grenadiers who as king of prussia brought into being a military and skeptical genius and therewith in reality the new and now triumphantly emerged type of german the problematic crazy father of frederick the great had on one point the very knack and lucky grasp of the genius he knew what was then lacking in germany the want of which was a hundred times more alarming and serious than any lack of culture and social form his ill will to the young frederick resulted from the anxiety of a profound instinct men were lacking and he suspected to his bitterest regret that his own son was not man enough there however he deceived himself but who would not have deceived himself in his place he saw his son lapsed to atheism to the esprit to the pleasant frivolity of clever frenchman he saw in the background the great bloodsucker the spider skepticism he suspected the incurable wretchedness of a heart no 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 new kind of harder and more dangerous skepticism who knows to what extent it was encouraged just by his father's hatred and the icy melancholy of a will condemned to solitude the skepticism of daring manliness which is closely related to the genius for war and conquest and made its first entrance into germany in the person of the great frederick this skepticism despises and nevertheless grasps it undermines and takes possession it does not believe but it does not thereby lose itself it gives the spirit a dangerous liberty but it keeps strict guard over the heart it is the german form of skepticism which as a continued frederickianism risen to the highest spirituality has kept europe for a considerable time under the dominion of the german spirit and its critical and historical distrust owing to the insuperably strong and tough masculine character of the great german philologists and historical critics who rightly estimated were also all of them artists of destruction and dissolution a new conception of the german spirit gradually established itself in spite of all romanticism in music and philosophy in which the leaning towards masculine skepticism was decidedly prominent whether for instance as fearlessness of gaze as courage and sternness of the dissecting hand or as resolute will to dangerous voyages of discovery to spiritualized north pole expeditions under barren and dangerous skies there may be good grounds for it when warm blooded and superficial humanitarians cross themselves before this spirit se espri fatalist ironic me fistophilic as michelé calls it not without a shutter but if one would realize how characteristic is the sphere of the man in the german spirit which awakened europe out of its dogmatic slumber let us call to mind the former conception which had to be overcome by this new one and that it is not so very long ago that a masculinized woman could dare with unbridled presumption to recommend the germans to the interest of europe as gentle good-hearted weak willed and poetical fools finally let us only understand profoundly enough napoleon's astonishment when he saw girtha it reveals what had been regarded for centuries as the german spirit voila oh no that was as much to say but this is a man and i only expected to see a german 210 supposing then that in the picture of the philosophers of the future some trait suggests the question whether they must not perhaps be skeptics in the last mentioned sense something in them would only be designated thereby and not they themselves with equal right they might call themselves critics and assuredly they will be men of experiments by the name with which i ventured to baptize them i have already expressly emphasized their attempting and their love of attempting is this because as critics in body and soul they will love to make use of experiments in a new and perhaps wider and more dangerous sense in their passion for knowledge will they have to go further in daring and painful attempts than the sensitive and pampered taste of a democratic century can approve of there is no doubt these coming ones will be least able to dispense with the serious and not unscrupulous qualities which distinguish the critic from the skeptic i mean the certainty as to standards of worth the conscious employment of a unity of method the wary courage the standing alone and the capacity for self-responsibility indeed they will avow among themselves a delight in denial and dissection and a certain considerate cruelty which knows how to handle the knife surely and deftly even when the heart bleeds they will be sterner and perhaps not always towards themselves only then humane people may desire they will not deal with the truth in order that it may please them or elevate and inspire them they will rather have little faith in truth bringing with it such revels for the feelings they will smile those rigorous spirits when anyone says in their presence that thought elevates me why should it not be true or that work enchants me why should it not be beautiful or that artist enlarges me why should he not be great perhaps they will not only have a smile but a genuine disgust for all that is thus rapturous idealistic feminine and her mafroditic and if anyone could look into their inmost hearts he would not easily find therein the intention to reconcile christian sentiments with antique taste or even with modern parliamentarism the kind of reconciliation necessarily found even among philosophers in our very uncertain and consequently very conciliatory century critical discipline and every habit that conduces to purity and rigor in intellectual matters will not only be demanded from themselves by these philosophers of the future they may even make a display thereof as their special adornment nevertheless they will not want to be called critics on that account it will seem to them no small indignity to philosophy to have it decreed as is so welcome nowadays that philosophy itself is criticism and critical science and nothing else whatever though this estimate of philosophy may enjoy the approval of all the positivists of france and germany and possibly it even flattered the heart and taste of cunt let us call to mind the titles of his principal works our new philosophers will say notwithstanding that critics are instruments of the philosopher and just on that account as instruments they are far from being philosophers themselves even the great chinamen of konigsberg was only a great critic 211 i insist upon it that people finally cease confounding philosophical workers and in general scientific men with philosophers that precisely here one should strictly give each his own and not give those far too much these far too little it may be necessary for the education of the real philosopher that he himself should have once stood upon all those steps upon which his servants the scientific workers of philosophy remain standing and must remain standing he himself must perhaps have been critic and dogmatist and historian and besides poet and collector and traveler and riddle reader and moralist and seer and free spirit and almost everything in order to traverse the whole range of human values and estimations and that he may be able with a variety of eyes and consciences to look from a height to any distance from a depth up to any height from a nook into any expanse but all these are only preliminary conditions for his task this task itself demands something else it requires him to create values the philosophical workers after the excellent pattern of Kant and Hegel have to fix and formalize some great existing body of valuations that is to say former determinations of value creations of value which have become prevalent and are for a time called truth whether in the domain of the logical the political moral or the artistic it is for these investigators to make whatever has happened and been esteemed hitherto conspicuous conceivable intelligible and manageable to shorten everything long even time itself and to subjugate the entire past an immense and wonderful task in the carrying out of which all refined pride all tenacious will can surely find satisfaction the real philosophers however are commanders and law givers they say thus shall it be they determine first the hither and the why of mankind and thereby set aside the previous labor of all philosophical workers and all subjugators of the past they grasp at the future with a creative hand and whatever is and was becomes for them thereby a means an instrument and a hammer their knowing is creating their creating is a law giving their will to truth is will to power are there at present such philosophers have there ever been such philosophers must there not be such philosophers someday 212 it is always more obvious to me that the philosopher as a man indispensable for the morrow and the day after the morrow has ever found himself and has been obliged to find himself in contradiction to the day in which he lives his enemy has always been the ideal of his day hither to all those extraordinary furtherers of humanity whom one calls philosophers who rarely regarded themselves as lovers of wisdom but rather as disagreeable fools and dangerous interrogators have found their mission their hard involuntary imperative mission in the end however the greatness of their mission in being the bad conscience of their age in putting the vivisector's knife to the breast of the very virtues of their age they have betrayed their own secret it has been for the sake of a new greatness of man a new untrodden path to his aggrandizement they have always disclosed how much hypocrisy indolence self-indulgence and self-neglect how much falsehood was concealed under the most venerated types of contemporary morality how much virtue was outlived they have always said we must remove hence to where you are least at home in the face of a world of modern ideas which would like to confine everyone in a corner in a specialty a philosopher if there could be philosophers nowadays would be compelled to place the greatness of man the conception of greatness precisely in his comprehensiveness and multifariousness in his all-roundness he would even determine worth and rank according to the amount and variety of that which a man could bear and take upon himself according to the extent to which a man could stretch his responsibility nowadays the taste and virtue of the age weaken and attenuate the will nothing is so adapted to the spirit of the age as weakness of will consequently in the ideal of the philosopher strength of will sternness and capacity for prolonged resolution must specially be included in the conception of greatness with as good a right as the opposite doctrine with its ideal of a silly renouncing humble selfless humanity was suited to an opposite age such as the 16th century which suffered from its accumulated energy of will and from the wildest torrents and floods of selfishness in the time of socrates among men only of worn out instincts old conservative athenians who let themselves go for the sake of happiness as they said for the sake of pleasure as their conduct indicated and who had continually on their lips the old pompous words to which they had long forfeited the right by the life they led irony was perhaps necessary for greatness of soul the wicked socratic assurance of the old physician and plebeian who cut ruthlessly into his own flesh as into the flesh and heart of the noble with a look that said plainly enough do not dissemble before me here we are equal at present on the contrary when throughout europe the herding animal alone attains to honors and dispenses honors when equality of right can too readily be transformed into equality and wrong i mean to say into general war against everything rare strange and privileged against the higher man the higher soul the higher duty the higher responsibility the creative plenipotence and lordliness at present it belongs to the conception of greatness to be noble to wish to be apart to be capable of being different to stand alone to have to live by personal initiative and the philosopher will betray something of his own ideal when he asserts he shall be the greatest who can be the most solitary the most concealed the most divergent the man beyond good and evil the master of his virtues and of super abundance of will precisely this shall be called greatness as diversified as can be entire as ample as can be full and to ask once more the question is greatness possible nowadays 213 it is difficult to learn what a philosopher is because it cannot be taught one must know it by experience or one should have the pride not to know it the fact that at present people all talk of things of which they cannot have any experience is true more especially and unfortunately as concerns the philosopher and philosophical matters the very few know them are permitted to know them and all popular ideas about them are false thus for instance the truly philosophical combination of a bold exuberant spirituality which runs at presto pace and a dialectic rigor and necessity which makes no false step is unknown to most thinkers and scholars from their own experience and therefore should anyone speak of it in their presence it is incredible to them they conceive of every necessity as troublesome as a painful compulsory obedience and state of constraint thinking itself is regarded by them as something slow and hesitating almost as a trouble and often enough as worthy of the sweat of the noble but not at all as something easy and divine closely related to dancing and exuberance to think and to take a matter seriously arduously that is one of the same thing to them such only has been their experience artists have here perhaps a finer intuition they who know only too well that precisely when they no longer do anything arbitrarily and everything of necessity their feeling of freedom of subtlety of power of creatively fixing disposing and shaping reaches its climax in short that necessity and freedom of will are then the same thing with them there is in fine a graduation of rank in psychical states to which the graduation of rank in the problems corresponds and the highest problems repel ruthlessly everyone who ventures to near them without being predestined for their solution by the loftiness and power of his spirituality of what uses it for nimble everyday intellects or clumsy honest mechanics and empiricists to press in their plebeian ambition close to such problems and as it were into this holy of holies as so often happens nowadays but course feet must never tread upon such carpets this is provided for in the primary law of things the doors remain closed to those intruders though they may dash and break their heads there on people have always to be born to a high station or more definitely they have to be bred for it a person has only a right to philosophy taking the word in its higher significance in virtue of his descent the ancestors the blood decide here also many generations must have prepared the way for the coming of the philosopher each of his virtues must have been separately acquired nurtured transmitted and embodied not only the bold easy delicate course and current of his thoughts but above all the readiness for great responsibilities the majesty of ruling glance and contending look the feeling of separation from the multitude with their duties and virtues the kindly patronage and defense of whatever is misunderstood and callumniated be it god or devil the delight and practice of supreme justice the art of commanding the amplitude of will the lingering eye which rarely admires rarely looks up rarely loves end of chapter six read by kara schellenberg on january 8 2006 in oceanside california this is a liber fox recording all liber fox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libervox.org this reading by andrew miller toronto may 2006 beyond good and evil by friedrich nicha translated by helen zimmer chapter seven our virtues 214 our virtues it is probable that we too have still our virtues although naturally they are not those sincere and massive virtues on account of which we hold our grandfathers in esteem and also at a little distance from us we europeans of the day after tomorrow we firstlings of the 20th century with all our dangerous curiosity our multifariousness and art of disguising our mellow and seemingly sweetened cruelty and sense and spirit we shall presumably if we must have virtues have those only which have come to agreement with our most secret and heartfelt inclinations with our most ardent requirements well then let us look for them in our labyrinths where as we know so many things lose themselves so many things get quite lost and is there anything finer than to search for one's own virtues is it not almost to believe in one's own virtues but this believing in one's own virtues is it not practically the same as what was formerly called one's good conscience that long respectable pigtail of an idea which our grandfathers used to hang behind their heads and often enough also behind their understandings it seems therefore that however little we may imagine ourselves to be old-fashioned and grandfatherly respectable in other respects in one thing we are nevertheless the worthy grandchildren of our grandfathers we last europeans with good consciences we also still wear the pigtail ah if you only knew how soon so very soon it will be different 215 as in the stellar firmament there are sometimes two sons which determine the path of one planet and in certain cases sons of different colors shine around a single planet now with red light now with green and then simultaneously illumine and flood it with motley colors so we modern men owing to the complicated mechanism of our firmament are determined by different moralities our actions shine alternately in different colors and are seldom unequivocal and there are often cases also in which our actions are motley colored 216 to love one's enemies i think that has been well learned it takes place thousands of times at present on a large and small scale indeed at times the higher and sublimer thing takes place we learn to despise when we love and precisely when we love best all of it however unconsciously without noise without ostentation with the shame and secrecy of goodness which forbids the utterance of the pompous word and the formula of virtue morality as attitude is opposed to our taste nowadays this is also in advance as it was in advance in our fathers that religion as an attitude finally became opposed to their taste including the enmity and voltarian bitterness against religion and all that formerly belonged to free thinker pantomime it is the music in our conscience the dance in our spirit to which puritan litanese moral sermons and goody goodness won't chime 217 let us be careful in dealing with those who attach great importance to be credited with moral tat and subtlety and moral discernment they never forgive us if they have once made a mistake before us or even with regard to us they inevitably become our instinctive calumniators and detractors even when they still remain our friends blessed are the forgetful for they get the better even of their blunders 218 the psychologists of france and where else are there still psychologists nowadays have never yet exhausted their bitter and manifold enjoyment of the petit bourgeois just as though in short they betray something thereby flair for instance the honest citizen of ruble neither saw heard nor tasted anything else in the end it was his mode of self-torment and refined cruelty as this is growing weary some i would now recommend for a change something else for a pleasure namely the unconscious astuteness with which good fat honest mediocrity always behaves towards loftier spirits and the tasks they have to perform the subtle barbed jesuitical astuteness which is a thousand times subtler than the taste and understanding of the middle class and its best moments subtler even than the understanding of its victims a repeated proof that instinct is the most intelligent of all kinds of intelligence which have hitherto been discovered in short you psychologists study the philosophy of the rule in its struggle with the exception there you have a spectacle fit for gods and godlike malignity or in plater words practice vivisection on good people on the homo bonnet voluntatus on yourselves 219 the practice of judging and condemning morally is the favorite revenge of the intellectually shallow on those who are less so it is also a kind of indemnity for there being badly endowed by nature and finally it is an opportunity for acquiring spirit and becoming subtle malice spiritual ease they are glad in their inmost heart that there is a standard according to which those who are over endowed with intellectual goods and privileges are equal to them they contend for the equality of all before god and almost need the belief in god for this purpose it is among them that the most powerful antagonists of atheism are found if anyone were to say to them a lofty spirituality is beyond all comparison with the honesty and respectability of a merely moral man it would make them furious i shall take care not to say so no i would rather flatter them with my theory that lofty spirituality itself exists only as the ultimate product of moral qualities that it is a synthesis of all qualities attributed to the merely moral man after they have been acquired singly through long training and practice perhaps during a whole series of generations that lofty spirituality is precisely the spiritualizing of justice and the beneficent severity which knows that it is authorized to maintain gradations of rank in the world even among things and not only among men 220 now that the praise of the disinterested person is so popular one must probably not without some danger get an idea of what people actually take an interest in and what are the things generally which fundamentally and profoundly concern ordinary men including the cultured even the learned and perhaps philosophers also if appearances do not deceive the fact thereby becomes obvious that the greater part of what interests and charms higher natures and more refined and fastidious tastes seems absolutely uninteresting to the average man if notwithstanding he perceived devotion to these interests he calls it disinterest and wonders how it is possible to act disinterestedly there have been philosophers who could give this popular astonishment a seductive and mystical otherworldly expression perhaps because they did not know the higher nature by experience instead of stating the naked and candidly reasonable truth that disinterested action is very interesting and interested action provided that and love what even an action for love's sake shall be unegoistic but you fools and the praise of the self-sacrificer but whoever has really offered sacrifice knows that he wanted and obtained something for it perhaps something from himself for something from himself that he relinquished here in order to have more there perhaps in general to be more or even feel himself more but this is a realm of questions and answers in which a more fastidious spirit does not like to stay for here truth has to stifle her yawn so much when she is obliged to answer and after all truth is a woman one must not use force with her two hundred and twenty one it sometimes happens set a moralistic patent and trifle retailer that i honor and respect an unselfish man not however because he is unselfish but because i think he is a right to be useful to another man at his own expense in short the question is always who he is and who the other is for instance in a person created and destined for command self-denial and modest retirement instead of being virtues would be the waste of virtues so it seems to me every system of unegoistic morality which takes itself unconditionally and appeals to everyone not only sins against good taste but is also an incentive to sins of omission an additional seduction under the mask of philanthropy and precisely a seduction and injury to the higher rarer and more privileged types of men moral systems must be compelled first of all to bow before the gradations of rank their presumption must be driven home to their conscience until they thoroughly understand at last that it is immoral to say that what is right for one is proper for another so said my moralistic pent and but um did he perhaps deserve to be laughed at when he thus exhorted systems of morals to practice morality but one should not be too much in the right if one wishes to have the laughers on one's own side a grain of wrong pertains even to good taste 222 wherever sympathy fellow suffering is preached nowadays and if i gather rightly no other religion is any longer preached let the psychologist have his ears open through all the vanity through all the noise which is natural to these preachers as to all preachers he will hear a horse groaning genuine note of self contempt it belongs to the overshadowing and uglifying of europe which has been on the increase for a century the first symptoms of which are already specified documentarily in a thoughtful letter of galliani to madame depenet if it is not really the cause thereof the man of modern ideas the conceited ape is excessively dissatisfied with himself this is perfectly certain he suffers and his vanity wants him only to suffer with his fellows 223 the hybrid european a tolerably ugly plebeian taken all in all absolutely requires a costume he needs history as a storeroom of costumes to be sure he notices that none of the costumes fit him properly he changes and changes let us look at the 19th century with respect to these hasty preferences and changes in its masquerades of style and also with respect to its moments of desperation on account of nothing suiting us it is in vain to get ourselves up as romantic or classical or christian or florentine or baroque or national in mortibus at artibus it does not clothe us but the spirit especially the historical spirit profits even by this desperation once and 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 studious age in puncto of costumes i mean as concerns morals articles of belief artistic tastes and religions we are prepared as no other age has ever been for a carnival in the grand style for the most spiritual festival laughter and arrogance for the transcendental height of supreme folly and aristophantic ridicule of the world perhaps we are still discovering the domain of our invention just here the domain where even we can still be original probably as paradists of the world's history and as god's mary andrews perhaps though nothing else of the present have a future our laughter itself may have a future 224 the historical sense or the capacity for dividing quickly the order of rank of the valuations according to which a people a community or an individual has lived the defining instinct for the relationships of these valuations for the relation of the authority of the valuations to the authority of the operating forces this historical sense which we europeans claims our own specialty has come to us in the train of the enchanting and mad semi-barbarity into which europe has been plunged by the democratic mingling of classes and races it is only the 19th century that has recognized this faculty as its sixth sense owing to this mingling the past of every form and mode of life and of cultures which were formerly closely contiguous and superimposed on one another flows forth into us modern souls our instincts now run back in all directions we ourselves are a kind of chaos in the end as we have said the spirit perceives its advantage therein by means of our semi-barbarity and body and in desire we have secret access everywhere such as a noble age never had we have access above all to the labyrinth of imperfect civilizations and to every form of semi-barbarity that has at any time existed on earth and in so far as the most considerable part of human civilization hitherto has just been semi-barbarity the historical sense implies almost the sense and instinct for everything the taste and tongue for everything whereby it immediately proves itself to be an ignoble sense for instance we enjoy Homer once more it is perhaps our happiest acquisition that we know how to appreciate Homer whom men have distinguished culture as the French of the 17th century like Saul Evamon who reproached him for his es reveste and even Voltaire the last echo of the century cannot and could not so easily appropriate whom they scarcely permitted themselves to enjoy the very decided yay and nay of their palette they're promptly ready discussed they're hesitating reluctance with regard to everything strange their horror of the bad taste even of lively curiosity and in general the averseness of every distinguished and self-sufficing culture to avow a new desire a dissatisfaction with its own condition or an admiration of what is strange all this determines and disposes them unfavorably even towards the best things of the world which are not their property or could not become their prey and no faculty is more unintelligible to such men than just this historical sense with its chuckling plebeian curiosity the case is not different with Shakespeare that marvelous Spanish Moorish Saxon synthesis of taste over whom an ancient Athenian of the circle of escalus would have half killed himself with laughter or irritation but we accept precisely this wild motleyness this medley of the most delicate the most coarse and the most artificial with a secret confidence and cordiality we enjoy it as a refinement of art reserved expressly for us and allow ourselves to be as little disturbed by the repulsive fumes and the proximity of the English populace in which Shakespeare's art and taste lives as perhaps on the Chiaja of Naples where with all our senses awake we go our way and chant it and voluntarily in spite of the drain odor of the lower quarters of the town that is man of the historical sense we have our virtues is not to be disputed we are unpretentious unselfish modest brave habituated to self control and self renunciation very grateful very patient very complacent but with all this we are perhaps not very tasteful let us finally confess it that what is most difficult for us men of the historical sense to grasp feel taste and love what finds us fundamentally prejudiced and almost hostile is precisely the perfection and ultimate maturity in every culture and art the essentially noble in works and men their moment of smooth sea and halcyon self-sufficiency the goldenness and coldness which all things show that have perfected themselves perhaps our great virtue of the historical sense is in necessary contrast to good taste at least the very bad taste and we can only evoke in ourselves imperfectly hesitatingly and with compulsion the small short and happy god sins and glorifications of human life as they shine here and there those moments and marvelous experiences when a great power has voluntarily come to a halt before the boundless and infinite when a superabundance of refined delight has been enjoyed by sudden checking and petrifying by standing firmly and planting oneself fixedly on still trembling ground proportionateness is strange to us let us confess it to ourselves our itching is really the itching for the infinite the immeasurable like the rider on his forward panting horse we let the reins fall before the infinite we modern men we semi-barbarians and are only in our highest bliss when we are in the most danger 225 whether it be hedonism pessimism utilitarianism or eudaimism all those modes of thinking which measure the worth of things according to pleasure and pain that is according to accompanying circumstances and secondary considerations are plausible modes of thought and naive attes which everyone conscious of creative powers and an artist's conscience will look down upon with scorn though not without sympathy sympathy for you to be sure that is not sympathy as you understand it it is not sympathy for social distress for society with its sick and misfortune for the hereditary vicious and defective who lie in the ground around us still less is its sympathy for the grumbling vexed revolutionary slave classes who strive after power they call it freedom our sympathy is a loftier and further cited sympathy we see how man dwarfs himself how you dwarf him and there are moments when we view your sympathy with an indescribable anguish when we resist it when we regard your seriousness as more dangerous than any kind of levity you want if possible and there is not a more foolish if possible to do away with suffering and we it really seems that we would rather have it increased and made worse than it has ever been well being as you understand it is certainly not a goal it seems to us an end a condition which at once renders man ludicrous and contemptible and makes his destruction desirable the discipline of suffering of great suffering know you not that it is only this discipline that has produced all the elevations of humanity hitherto the tension of soul and misfortune which communicates to it its energy its shuttering in view of rack and ruin its inventiveness and bravery and undergoing enduring interpreting and exploiting misfortune and whatever depth mystery disguise spirit artifice or greatness has been bestowed upon the soul has it not been bestowed through suffering through the discipline of great suffering in man creature and creator are united in man there is not only 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 you understand this contrast and that your sympathy for the creature in man applies to that which has to be fashioned bruised forged stretched roasted annealed refined to that which must necessarily suffer and is meant to suffer and our sympathy do you not understand what our reverse sympathy applies to when it resists your sympathy as the worst of all pampering and innervation so it is sympathy against sympathy but to repeat it once more there are higher problems than the problems of pleasure and pain and sympathy and all systems of philosophy which deal only with these are naivete's 226 we immoralists this world with which we are concerned in which we have to fear and love this almost invisible inaudible world of delicate command and delicate obedience a world of almost in every respect captures insidious sharp and tender yes it is well protected from clumsy spectators and familiar curiosity we are woven into a strong net and garment of duties and cannot disengage ourselves precisely here we are men of duty even we occasionally it is true we dance in our chains and betwixt our swords it is nonetheless true that more often we gnash our teeth under the circumstances and are impatient at the secret hardship of our lot but do what we will fools and appearances say of us these are men without duty we have always fools and appearances against us 227 honesty granting the it is the virtue of which we cannot rid ourselves we free spirits well we will labor at it with all our perversity and love and not tire of perfecting ourselves in our virtue which alone remains may its glance someday overspread like a gilded blue mocking twilight this aging civilization with its dull gloomy seriousness and if nevertheless our honesty should one day grow weary and sigh and stretch its limbs and find us too hard and would faint have it pleasanter easier and gentler like an agreeable vice let us remain hard we latest stoics and let us send to its help whatever devilry we have in us our disgust at the clumsy and undefined our nitimor invetitum our love of adventure our sharpened and festivities curiosity our most subtle disguised intellectual will to power and universal conquest which rambles and roves evidiously around all the realms of the future let us go with all our devils to the help of our god it is probable that people will misunderstand and mistake us on that account what does it matter they will say their honesty that is their devilry and nothing else what does it matter and even if they were right have not all gods hitherto been such sanctified revaptized devils and after all what do we know of ourselves and what the spirit that leads us wants to be called it is a question of names and how many spirits we harbor our honesty we free spirits let us be careful listed become our vanity our ornament and ostentation our limitation our stupidity every virtue inclines to stupidity every stupidity to virtue stupid to the point of sanctity they say in russia let us be careful lest out of pure honesty we eventually become saints and boars is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves one would have to believe in eternal life in order to 228 i hope to be forgiven for discovering that all moral philosophy hitherto has been tedious and has belonged to the so horrific appliances and the virtue in my opinion has been more injured by the tediousness of its advocates than by anything else at the same time however i would not wish to overlook their general usefulness it is desirable that as few people as possible should reflect upon morals and consequently it is very desirable that morals should not someday become interesting but let us not be afraid things still remain today as they have always been i see no one in europe who has or discloses an idea of the fact that philosophizing concerning morals might be conducted in a dangerous, capsious and ensnaring manner that calamity might be involved therein observe for example the indefatigable inevitable english utilitarians how ponderously and respectively they stalk on stalk along a Homeric metaphor expresses it better in the footsteps of bentham just as he had already stalked in the footsteps of the respectable helvetches no he was not a dangerous man helvetches says senator poco current to use an expression of galliani no new thought nothing of the nature of a finer turning or better expression of an old thought not even a proper history of what has been previously thought on the subject and impossible literature taking it all in all unless one knows how to leaven it with some mischief in effect the old english vice called can't which is moral tartufism has insinuated itself also into these moralists whom one must certainly read with an eye to their motives if one must read them concealed this time under the new form of the scientific spirit moreover there is not absent from them a secret struggle with the pangs of conscience from which a race of former puritans must naturally suffer in all their scientific tinkering with morals is not a moralist the opposite of a puritan that is to say as a thinker who regards morality as questionable as worthy of interrogation in short as a problem is moralizing not immoral in the end they all want english morality to be recognized as authoritative in as much as mankind or the general utility or the happiness of the greatest number no the happiness of england will be best served thereby they would like by all means to convince themselves that the striving after english happiness i mean after comfort and fashion and in the highest instance a seat in parliament is at the same time the true path of virtue in fact that insofar as there has been virtue in the world hitherto it has just consisted in such striving not one of those ponderous conscience-stricken hurting animals who undertake to advocate the cause of egoism as conducive to the general welfare wants to have any knowledge or inkling of the facts that the general welfare is no ideal no goal no notion that can be at all grasped but is only a nostrum that what is fair to one may not at all be fair to another that the requirement of one morality for all is really a detriment to higher men in short that there is a distinction of rank between man and man and consequently between morality and morality they are an unassuming and fundamentally mediocre species of men these utilitarian englishmen and as already remarked insofar as they are tedious one cannot think highly enough of their utility one not even to encourage them as has been partially attempted in the following rhymes hail ye worthy's bear a wheeling longer better i revealing stiffer i in head and knee unenraptured never-gesting mediocre everlasting sans génie et sans esprit 229 in these later ages which may be proud of their humanity there still remains so much fear so much superstition of the fear of the cruel wild beast the mastering of which constitutes the very pride of these humaner ages that even obvious truths as if by the agreement of centuries have long remained unuttered because they have the appearance of helping the finally slain wild beast back to life again i perhaps risk something when i allow such a truth to escape let others capture it again and give it so much milk of pious sentiment footnote an expression from shillers william tell act for scene three let others capture it again and give it so much milk of pious sentiment to drink that it will lie down quiet and forgotten in its old corner one ought to learn anew about cruelty and open one's eyes one ought at last to learn impatience in order that such immodest gross errors as for instance have been fostered by ancient and modern philosophers with regard to tragedy may no longer wonder about virtuously and boldly almost everything that we call higher culture is based upon the spiritualizing and intensifying of cruelty this is my thesis the wild beast has not been slain at all it lives it flourishes it has only been transfigured that which constitutes the painful delight of tragedy is cruelty that which operates agreeably in so-called tragic sympathy and at the basis even of everything sublime up to the highest and most delicate thrills of metaphysics obtains its sweetness solely from the intermingled ingredient of cruelty what the roman enjoys in the arena the christian and the ecstasies of the cross the spaniard at the site of the faggot and steak or of the bullfight the present day japanese who presses his way to the tragedy the workman of the peresian suburbs who has a homesickness for bloody revolutions the vagnarion who with unhinged will undergoes the performance of tristan and a soul what all these enjoy and strive with mysterious ardor to drink in is the filter of the great surcy cruelty here to be sure we must put aside entirely the blundering psychology of former times which could only teach with regard to cruelty that originated at the site of the suffering of others there is an abundant super abundant enjoyment even in one's own suffering in causing one's own suffering and wherever man is allowed himself to be persuaded to self-denial in the religious sense or to self-mutilation as among the finitions and aesthetics or in general to desensualization decarnalization and contrition to puritanical repentance spasms to vivisection of conscience and to Pascal like sacrifizia del intoletto he is secretly allured and impelled forwards by his cruelty by the dangerous thrill of cruelty towards himself finally let us consider that even the seeker of knowledge operates as an artist and glorifier of cruelty and that he compels his spirit to perceive against its own inclination and often enough against the 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 profoundly and fundamentally is a violation an intentional injuring of the fundamental will of the spirit which instinctively aims at appearance and superficiality even in every desire for knowledge there is a drop of cruelty 230 perhaps what i have said here about a fundamental will of the spirit may not be understood without further details i may be allowed a word of explanation that imperious something which is popularly called the spirit wishes to be master internally and externally and to feel itself master it has the will of a multiplicity for simplicity a binding taming imperious and essentially ruling will its requirements and capacities here are the same as those assigned by physiologists to everything that lives grows and multiplies the power of the spirit to appropriate foreign elements reveals itself in a strong tendency to assimilate the new to the old to simplify the manifold to overlook or repudiate the absolutely contradictory just as it arbitrarily re underlined makes prominent and falsifies for itself certain traits and lines and the foreign elements in every portion of the outside world its object thereby is the incorporation of new experiences the assortment of new things in the old arrangements in short growth or more properly the feeling of growth the feeling of increased power is its object this same will has at its service and apparently opposed impulse of the spirit a suddenly adopted preference of ignorance of arbitrary shutting out a closing of windows an inner denial of this or that a prohibition to approach a sort of defensive attitude against much that is knowable a contentment with obscurity with the shutting in horizon and acceptance and approval of ignorance as that which is all necessary according to the degree of its appropriating power its digestive power to speak figuratively and in fact the spirit resembles a stomach more than anything else here also belong an occasional propensity of the spirit to let itself be deceived perhaps with a waggish suspicion that it is not so-and-so but is only allowed to pass as such a delight in uncertainty and ambiguity and exalting enjoyment of arbitrary out-of-the-way narrowness and mystery of the two near of the foreground of the magnified the diminished the misshapen the beautified an enjoyment of the arbitrariness of all these manifestations of power finally in this connection there is the not unscrupulous readiness of the spirit to deceive other spirits and dissemble before them the constant pressing and straining of a creating shaping changeable power the spirit enjoys therein its craftiness and its variety of disguises it enjoys also its feeling of security therein it is precisely by its protein arts that it is best protected and concealed counter to this propensity for appearance for simplification for a disguise for a cloak in short for an outside for every outside is a cloak there operates the sublime tendency of the man of knowledge which takes and insists on taking things profoundly variously and thoroughly as a kind of cruelty of intellectual conscience and taste which every courageous thinker will acknowledge in himself provided as it ought to be that he has sharpened and hardened his eye sufficiently long for introspection and is accustomed to severe discipline and even severe words he will say there is something cruel in the tendency of my spirit let the virtuous and amiable try to convince him that it is not so in fact it would sound nicer if instead of our cruelty perhaps our extravagant honesty we're talked about whispered about and glorified we free very free spirits and someday perhaps such will actually be our posthumous glory meanwhile for there's plenty of time until then we should be least inclined to deck ourselves out in such florid and fringed moral verbiage our whole former work has just made a sick of this taste of its brightly exuberance they are beautiful glistening jingling festive words honesty love of truth love of wisdom sacrificed for knowledge heroism of the truthful there is something in them that makes one's hearts well with pride we anchorites and marmots have long ago persuaded ourselves in all the secrecy of an anchorite's conscience that this worthy parade of verbiage also belongs to the old false adornment frippery and gold dust of unconscious human vanity and that even under such flattering color and repainting the terrible original text homo natura must again be recognized in effect to translate man back again into nature to master the many vain and visionary interpretations and subordinate meanings which have hitherto been scratched and dogged over the eternal original text homo natura to bring it about that man shall henceforth stand before man as he now heartened by the discipline of science stands before the other forms of nature with fearless edipus eyes and stopped ulysses ears deaf to the enticements of old metaphysical birdcatchers who have piped to him far too long thou art more thou art higher thou hast a different origin this may be a strange and foolish task but that it is a task who can deny why did we choose it this foolish task or to put the question differently why knowledge at all everyone will ask us about this and thus pressed we who have asked ourselves the question a hundred times have not found and cannot find any better answer 231 learning alters us it does what all nourishment does that does not merely conserve as the physiologist knows but at the bottom of our souls quite down below there is certainly something unteachable a granite of spiritual fate of predetermined decision and answer to predetermined chosen questions in each cardinal problem there speaks an unchangeable I am this a thinker cannot learn anew about man and woman for instance but can only learn fully he can only follow to the end what is fixed about them in himself occasionally we find certain solutions of problems which make strong beliefs for us perhaps they are henceforth called convictions later on one sees in them only footsteps to self-knowledge guide posts to the problem which we ourselves are or more correctly to the great stupidity which we embody our spiritual fate the unteachable in us quite down below in view of this liberal compliment which I have just paid myself permission will perhaps be more readily allowed me to utter some truths about woman as she is provided that it is known to the outset how literally they are merely my truths 232 woman wishes to be independent and therefore she begins to enlighten men about woman as she is this is one of the worst developments of the general udlifying of Europe for what must these clumsy attempts of feminine scientific ality and self-exposure bring to light woman has so much cause for shame in woman there is so much pettentury superficiality school masterliness petty presumption unbridledness and indiscretion concealed study only women's behavior towards children which is really being best restrained and dominated hitherto by the fear of man alas if ever the eternally tedious in woman she has plenty of it is allowed to venture forth if she begins radically and on principle to unlearn her wisdom and art of charming of playing of frightening away sorrow of alleviating and taking easily if she forgets her delicate aptitude for agreeable desires female voices are already raised which by Saint Aristophanes make one afraid with medical explicitness that is stated in a threatening manner what woman first and last requires for a man is it not in the very worst case that woman sets herself up to be scientific enlightenment hitherto has fortunately been men's affair men's gift we remain there with among ourselves and in the end in view of all that woman right about woman we may well have considerable doubt as to whether woman really desires enlightenment about herself and can desire it if woman does not thereby seek a new ornament for herself i believe ornamentation belongs to the eternally feminine why then she wishes to make herself feared perhaps she thereby wishes to get the mastery but she does not want truth what does woman care for truth from the very first nothing is more foreign more repugnant or more hostile to woman than truth her great art is falsehood her chief concern is appearance and beauty let us confess it we men we honor and love this very art and this very instinct in woman we who have the hard task and for our recreation gladly seek the company of beings under whose hands glances and delicate follies our seriousness our gravity and profundity appear almost like follies to us finally i ask the question did a woman herself ever acknowledge profundity in a woman's mind or justice in a woman's heart and is it not true that on the whole woman has hitherto been most despised by woman herself and not at all by us we men desire that woman should not continue to compromise herself by enlightening us just as it was man's care and the consideration for woman when the church decreed malier ta say it in ecclesia it was to the benefit of woman when de polian gave the two eloquent madame distale to understand malier ta say it in politicis and in my opinion he is a true friend of woman who calls it to woman today malier ta say it de malierro 233 it betrays corruption of the instincts apart from the fact that it betrays bad taste when a woman refers to madame rouland or madame distale or monsieur jor sand as though something was proved thereby in favor of woman as she is among men these are the three comical women as they are nothing more and just the best involuntary counter arguments against feminine emancipation and autonomy 234 stupidity in the kitchen woman as cook the terrible thoughtlessness with which the feeding of the family and the master of the house is managed woman does not understand what food means and she insists on being cook if woman had been a thinking creature she should certainly as cook for thousands of years have discovered the most important physiological facts and should likewise have got possession of the healing art through bad female cooks through the entire lack of reason in the kitchen the development of mankind has been longest retarded and most interfered with even today matters are very little better a word to high school girls 235 there are turns and casts of fancy there are sentences little handfuls of words in which a whole culture a whole society suddenly crystallizes itself among these is the incidental remark of madame de lambert to her son mon ami ne vous permettez jamais que de folie que vous feront grand plaisir the motherliest and wisest remark by the way that was ever addressed to a son 236 I have no doubt that every noble woman will oppose with Dante and Gerta believed about woman the former when he sang a la guarda vasuso and yo in line and the latter when he interpreted it the eternally feminine draws us aloft for this is just what she believes of the eternally masculine 237 seven apathems for women how the longest on we flees when a man comes to our knees age alas and science stayed furnish even weak virtue aid somber garb and silence meat dress for every game discreet whom I thank within my bliss god and my good tayloris young a flower decked cavern home old a dragon venced off the room noble title leg that's fine man as well oh were he mine speech and brief and sense and mass slippery for the Jenny ass 237 a woman has hitherto been treated by men like birds which losing their way have come down among them from an elevation as something delicate fragile wild strange sweet and animating but a something also which must be cooped up to prevent it flying away 238 to be mistaken in the fundamental problem of man and woman to deny here the profoundest antagonism and the necessity for an eternally hostile tension to dream here perhaps of equal rights equal training equal claims and obligations that is a typical sign of shallow mindedness and a thinker who has proved himself shallow at this dangerous spot shallow an instinct may generally be regarded as suspicious nay more as betrayed as discovered he will probably prove too short for all fundamental questions of life future as well as present and will be unable to descend into any of the depths on the other hand a man who is depth of spirit as well as of desires and has also the depth of benevolence which is capable of severity and harshness and easily confounded with them can only think of woman as orientals do he must conceive of her as a possession as confinable property as being predestined for service and accomplishing her mission therein he must take his stand in this matter upon the immense rationality of Asia upon the superiority of the instinctive Asia as the Greeks did formerly those best heirs and scholars of Asia who as is well known with their increasing culture and amplitude of power from Homer to the time of Pericles became gradually stricter towards woman in short more oriental how necessary how logical even how humanely desirable this was let us consider for ourselves 239 the weaker sex has in no previous age been treated with so much respect by men as at present this belongs to the tendency and fundamental taste of democracy in the same way as disrespectfulness to old age what wonder is it that abuse should be immediately made of this respect they want more they learn to make claims the tribute of respect is at last felt to be well-nigh galling rivalry for rights indeed actual strife itself would be preferred in a word woman is losing modesty and let us immediately add that she's also losing taste she's unlearning to fear man but the woman who unlearns to fear sacrifices her most womanly instincts that woman should venture forward when the fear-inspiring quality in man or more definitely the man in man is no longer either desired or fully developed is reasonable enough and also intelligible enough what is more difficult to understand is that precisely thereby woman deteriorates this is what is happening nowadays let us not deceive ourselves about it wherever the industrial spirit has triumphed over the military and aristocratic spirit woman strives for the economic and legal independence of a clerk woman as clerk s is inscribed on the portal of the modern society which is in the course of formation while she thus appropriates new rights aspires to be master and inscribes progress of woman on her flags and banners the very opposite realizes itself with terrible obviousness woman retrogrades since the french revolution the influence of woman in europe has declined in proportion as she's increased her rights and claims and the emancipation of woman insofar as it is desired and demanded by women themselves and not only by masculine shallow pates this proves to be a remarkable symptom of the increasing weakening and deadening of the most womanly instincts there is stupidity in this movement and almost masculine stupidity of which a well-reared woman who is always a sensible woman might be heartily ashamed to lose the intuition as to the ground upon which she can most surely achieve victory to neglect exercise in the use of her proper weapons to let herself go before man perhaps even to the book where formerly she kept herself in control and in refined artful humility to neutralize with her virtuous audacity man's faith in a veiled fundamentally different ideal in woman something eternally necessarily feminine to emphatically and loquaciously dissuade man from the idea that woman must be preserved cared for protected and indulged like some delicate strangely wild and often pleasant domestic animal the clumsy and indignant collection of everything of the nature of servitude and bondage which the position of woman in the hitherto existing order of society has entailed and still entails as though slavery were a counter-argument and not rather a condition of every higher culture of every elevation of culture what does all this be token if not a disintegration of womanly instincts a defeminizing certainly there are enough of idiotic friends and corruptors of woman among the learned asses of the masculine sex who advise woman to defeminize herself in this manner and imitate all the stupidities from which mad in europe european madliness suffers who would like to lower woman to general culture indeed even to newspaper reading and meddling with politics here and there they wish even to make women into free spirits and literary workers as though a woman without piety would not be something perfectly obnoxious or ludicrous to a profound and godless man almost everywhere her nerves are being ruined by the most morbid and dangerous kind of music our latest german music and she's daily being made more hysterical and more incapable of fulfilling her first and last function than of bearing robust children they wish to cultivate her in general still more and intend as they say to make the weaker sex strong by culture as if history did not teach in the most emphatic manner that the cultivating of mankind at his weakening that is to say the weakening dissipating and languishing of his force of will have always kept pace with one another and that the most powerful and influential women in the world and lastly the mother of napoleon had just to thank their force of will and not their school masters for their power and ascendancy over men that which inspires respect in woman and often enough fear also is her nature which is more natural than that of man her genuine carnivore like cunning flexibility her tiger claws beneath the glove her naivete and egoism her untrainableness and innate wildness the incomprehensibles extent and deviation of her desires and virtues that which in spite of fear excites one sympathy for the dangerous and beautiful cat woman is that she seems more afflicted more vulnerable more necessitous of love and more condemned to disillusionment than any other creature fear and sympathy it is with these feelings that man has hitherto stood in the presence of woman always with one foot already in tragedy which rends while it delights what and all that is now to be at an end and the disenchantment of woman is in progress the tediousness of woman is slowly evolving oh europe europe we know the hornet animal which is always most attracted to thee from which danger is ever again threatening thee thy old fable might once more become history an immense stupidity might once again over master thee and carry thee away and no god concealed beneath it no only an idea a modern idea end of chapter seven this is a livery vox recording all livery vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit livery vox.org recorded by Gesine beyond good and evil by Friedrich Nietzsche translated by Helen Zimmern chapter 8 peoples and countries 240 i heard once again for the first time Richard Wagner's overture to the master singer it is a piece of magnificent gorgeous heavy latter-day art which has the pride to presuppose two centuries of music as still living in order that it may be understood it is an honor to germans that such a pride did not miscalculate what flavors and forces what seasons and climbs do we not find mingled in it it impresses us at one time as ancient at another time as foreign bitter and too modern it is as arbitrary as it is pompously traditional it is not infrequently roguish still often a rough and coarse it has fire and courage and at the same time the loose done-colored skin of fruits which ripen too late it flows broad and full and suddenly there is a moment of inexplicable hesitation like a gap that opens between cause and effect an oppression that makes us dream almost a nightmare but already it broadens and widens anew the old stream of delight the most manifold delight of old and new happiness including especially the joy of the artist in himself which he refuses to conceal his astonished happy cognizance of his mastery of the expedience here employed the new newly acquired imperfectly tested expedience of art which he apparently betrays to us all in all however no beauty no south nothing of the delicate southern clearness of the sky nothing of grace no dance hardly a will to logic a certain clumsiness even which is also emphasized as though the artist wishes to say to us it is part of my intention a cumbersome drapery something arbitrarily barbaric and ceremonious a flaring of learned and venerable conceits and witticisms something german in the best and worst sense of the word something in the german style manifold formless and inexhaustible a certain german potency and superplenitude of soul which is not afraid to hide itself under the rafin mons of decadence which perhaps feels itself more at ease there a real genuine token of the german soul which is at the same time young and aged too ripe and yet still too rich in futurity this kind of music expresses best what i think of the germans they belong to the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow they have as yet no today 241 we good europeans we also have hours when we allow ourselves a warm-hearted patriotism a plunge and relapse into old loves and narrow views i have just given an example of it hours of national excitement of patriotic anguish and all other sorts of old-fashioned floods of sentiment dallas spirits may perhaps only get done with what confines its operations in us to ours and plays itself out in ours in a considerable time some in half a year others in half a lifetime according to the speed and strength with which they digest and change their material indeed i could think of sluggish hesitating races which even an hour rapidly moving europe would require half a century ere they could surmount such atavistic attacks of patriotism and soil attachment and return once more to reason that is to say to good europeanism and while digressing on this possibility i happen to become an ear witness of a conversation between two old patriots they were evidently both hard of hearing and consequently spoke all the louder he has as much and knows as much philosophy as a peasant or a core student said the one he is still innocent but what does that matter nowadays it is the age of the masses they lie on their belly before everything that is massive and so also in politics the statesman who rears up for them a new tower of babel someone's drossity of empire and power they call great what does it matter that we more prudent and conservative ones do not meanwhile give up the old belief that it is only the great thought that gives greatness to an action or affair supposing a statesman were to bring his people into the position of being obliged henceforth to practice high politics for which they were by nature badly endowed and prepared so that they would have to sacrifice their old and reliable virtues out of love to a new and doubtful mediocrity supposing a statesman were to condemn his people generally to practice politics when they have hitherto had something better to do and think about and when in the depths of their souls they have been unable to free themselves from a prudent lozing of the restlessness emptiness and noisy wranglings of the essentially politics practicing nations supposing such a statesman were to stimulate the slumbering passions and evidities of his people were to make a stigma out of their former diffidence and delight in aloofness and offence out of their exoticism and hidden permanency were to depreciate their most radical proclivities subvert their consciences make their minds narrow and their tastes national what a statesman who should do all this which his people would have to do penance for throughout their whole future if they had a future such a statesman would be great would he undoubtedly replied the other old patriot vehemently otherwise he could not have done it it was mad perhaps to wish such a thing but perhaps everything great has been just as mad as its commencement misuse of words cried his interlocutor contradictoryly strong strong strong and mad not great the old men had obviously become heated as they thus shouted their truths in each other's faces but I in my happiness and a partners considered how soon a stronger one may become master of the strong and also that there is a compensation for the intellectual superficializing of a nation namely in the deepening of another 242 whether we call it civilization or humanizing or progress which now distinguishes the european whether we call it simply without praise or blame by the political formula the democratic movement in europe behind all the moral and political foregrounds pointed to by such formulas an immense physiological process goes on which is ever extending the process of the assimilation of europeans the increasing detachment from the conditions under which climatically and hereditorily united races originate their increasing independence of every definite milieu that for centuries would feign inscribe itself with equal demands on soul and body that is to say the slow emergence of an essentially supernational and nomadic species of man who possesses physiologically speaking a maximum of the art and power of adaptation as his typical distinction this process of the evolving european which can be retarded in its tempo by great relapses but will perhaps just gain and grow thereby in vehemence and depth the still raging storm and stress of national sentiment pertains to it and also the anarchism which is appearing at present this process will probably arrive at results on which it's naive propagators and panagirists the possibles of modern ideas would least care to reckon the same new conditions under which on an average a leveling and mediocrising of man will take place a useful industrious variously serviceable and clever gregarious man are on the highest degree suitable to give rise to exceptional men of the most dangerous and attractive qualities for while the capacity for adaptation which is every day changing conditions and begins a new work with every generation almost with every decade makes the powerfulness of the type impossible while the collective impression of such future europeans will probably be that of numerous talkative weak-willed and very handy workmen who require a master a commander as they require their daily bread while therefore the democratizing of europe will tend to the production of a type prepared for slavery in the most subtle sense of the term this strong man will necessarily in individual and exceptional cases become stronger and richer than he has perhaps ever been before owing to the unprejudicedness of his schooling owing to the immense variety of practice art and disguise i meant to say that the democratizing of europe is at the same time an involuntary arrangement for the rearing of tyrants taking the word in all its meanings even in its most spiritual sense 243 i hear with pleasure that our son is moving rapidly towards the constellation hercules and i hope that the men on this earth will do like the sun and we foremost we good europeans 244 there was a time when it was customary to call germans deep by way of distinction but now that the most successful type of new germanism is covetous of quite other honors and perhaps mrs smartness in all that has depth it is almost opportune and patriotic to doubt whether we did not formally deceive ourselves without commendation in short whether german depth is not at bottom something different and worse and something from which thank god we're on the point of successfully reading ourselves let us try then to relearn with regard to german depth the only thing necessary for the purpose is a little vivisection of the german soul the german soul is above all manifold varied in its source aggregated and superimposed rather than actually built this is owing to its origin a german who would embolden himself to assert two souls alas dwell in my breast would make a bad guess at the truth or more correctly he would come far short of the truth about the number of souls as a people made up of the most extraordinary mixing and mingling of races perhaps even with the preponderance of the pre-arean element as the people of the center in every sense of the term the germans are more intangible more ample more contradictory more unknown more incalculable more surprising and even more terrifying than other people are to themselves they escape definition and are thereby alone the despair of the french it is characteristic of the germans that the question what is german never dies out among them kotsubu certainly knew his germans well enough we are known they cried duplently to him but zand also thought he knew them jon paul knew what he was doing when he declared himself incensed at fichter's lying but patriotic flatteries and exaggerations but it is probable that gutter thought differently about germans from jon paul even though he acknowledged him to be right with regard to fichter it is a question what gutter really thought about the germans but about many things around him he never spoke explicitly and all his life he knew how to keep an astute silence probably he had good reason for it it is certain that it was not the wars of independence that made him look up more joyfully any more than it was the french revolution the event on account of which he reconstructed his fast and indeed the whole problem of man was the appearance of napoleon there are words of gutter in which he condemns with impatient severity as from a foreign land that which germans take pride in he wants to find the famous german turn of mind as indulgence towards its own and others weaknesses was he wrong it is characteristic of germans that bonus seldom entirely wrong about them the german soul has passages and galleries in it there are caves hiding places and dungeons therein its disorder has much of the charm of the mysterious the german is well acquainted with the bypass to chaos and as everything loves its symbol so the german loves the clouds and all that is obscure evolving crepuscular damp and shrouded it seems to him that everything uncertain undeveloped self-displacing and growing is deep the german himself does not exist he is becoming he is developing himself development is therefore the essentially german discovery and hit in the great domain of philosophical formulas a ruling idea which together with german beer and german music is laboring to germanize all europe foreigners are astonished and attracted by the riddles which the conflicting nature at the basis of the german soul propounds to them riddles which he systematized and richard wagner has in the end set music good natured and good natured and spiteful such a juxtaposition preposterous in the case of every other people is unfortunately only too often justified in germany one has only to live for a while among swavians to know this the clumsiness of the german scholar and his social distastefulness agree alarmingly well with his physical rope dancing and nimble boldness of which all the gods have learned to be afraid if anyone wishes to see the german soul demonstrated ad oculos let him only look at german taste at german arts and manners what bulrush indifference to taste how the noblest and the commonest stand there and juxtaposition how disorderly and how rich is the hill constitution of this soul the german drags at his soul he drags at everything he experiences he digests his events badly he never gets done with them and german depths is often only a difficult hesitating digestion and just as all chronic in bullets all the skeptics like what is convenient so the german loves frankness and honesty it is so convenient to be frank and honest this confidingness this complacence this showing the cards of german honesty is perhaps the most dangerous and most successful disguise which the german is up to nowadays it is his proper mephistophelian art with this he can still achieve much the german lets himself go and thereby gazes with faithful blue empty german eyes and other countries immediately confound him with his dressing gown i meant to say that let german depths be what it will among ourselves alone we perhaps take the liberty to laugh at it we shall do well to continue henceforth to honor its appearance and good name at not barter away too cheaply our old reputation as a people for depths for prussian smartness and berlin wit and sand it is wise for a people to pose and let itself be regarded as profound clumsy good-natured honest and foolish it might even be profound to do so finally we should do honor to our name we are not called the tutsche folk deceptive people for nothing 245 the good old time is past it sang itself out in mutsart how happy are we that his rococo still speaks to us that his good company his tender enthusiasm his childish delight in the chinese and its flourishes his courtesy of heart his longing for the elegant the amorous the tripping the tearful and his belief in the south can still appeal to something left in us ah some time or other it will be over with it but who can doubt that it will be over still sooner with the intelligence and taste for beethoven for he was only the last echo of a break and transition in style and not like mutsart the last echo of a great european taste which had existed for centuries beethoven is the intermediate event between an old mellow soul that is constantly breaking down and a future over young soul that is always coming there was spread over his music the twilight of eternal loss and eternal extravagant hope the same light in which europe was based when it dreamed with rousseau when it danced around the tree of liberty of the revolution and finally almost fell down in adoration before napoleon but how rapidly does this very sentiment now pale how difficult nowadays is even the apprehension of this sentiment how strangely does the language of rousseau schiller shelly and byron sound to our ear in whom collectively the same fate of europe was able to speak which knew how to sing in beethoven whatever german music came afterwards belongs to romanticism that is to say to a movement which historically considered was still shorter more fleeting and more superficial than the great interlude the transition of europe from rousseau to napoleon and to the rise of democracy Weber but what do we care nowadays of freischütz and oberon or margenus hans heiling and vampire or even vagnes tanhäuser that is extinct or they're not yet forgotten music this whole music of romanticism besides was not noble enough was not musical enough to maintain its position anywhere but in the theater and before the masses from the beginning it was second rate music which was little thought of by genuine musicians it was different with phelix mendelssohn that healthy and master who on account of his lighter purer happier so quickly acquired admiration and was equally quickly forgotten as the beautiful episode of german music but with regard to robert schumann who took things seriously and has been taken seriously from the first he was the last that founded a school do we not now regard it as a satisfaction a relief a deliverance that this very romanticism of schumann's has been surmounted schumann fleeing into the saxon switzerland of his so with a half verte like half zompaul like nature assuredly not like beethoven assuredly not like baron his manfred music is a mistake and a misunderstanding to the extent of injustice schumann with his taste which was fundamentally a petty taste that is to say a dangerous propensity doubly dangerous among germans for quiet lyricism and intoxication of the feelings going constantly apart timidly withdrawing and retiring a noble weakling who reveled in nothing but anonymous joy and sorrow from the beginning a sort of girl and no lee mitangere this schumann was already merely a german event in music that no longer a european event as beethoven had been as in a still greater degree mortzart had been with schumann german music was threatened with its greatest danger that of losing the voice for the soul of europe and sinking into a merely national affair 246 water torture are books written in german to a reader who has a third ear how indignantly he stands beside the slowly turning swamp of sounds without tune and rhythms without dance which germans call a book and even the german who reads books how lazily how reluctantly how badly he reads how many germans know and consider it obligatory to know that there is art in every good sentence art which must be defined if the sentence is to be understood if there is a misunderstanding about its tempo for instance the sentence itself is misunderstood that one must not be doubtful about the rhythm determining syllables that one should feel the breaking of the two rigid symmetry as intentional and as a charm that one should then define and patient ear to every staccato and every rubato that one should divine the sense in the sequence of the vowels and diphthongs and how delicately and richly they can be tinted and retinted in the order of their arrangement who among book-reading germans is complacent enough to recognize such duties and requirements and to listen to so much art and intention in language after all one just has no ear for it and so the most marked contrasts of style are not heard and the most delicate artistry as it were squandered on the deaf these were my thoughts when i noticed how clumsily and unintuitively two masters in the art of prose writing have been confounded one whose words drop down hesitatingly and coldly as from the roof of a damp cave he counts on their dull sound and echo and another who manipulates his language like a flexible sword and from his arm down to his toes feels the dangerous bliss of the quivering over sharp blade which wishes to bite hiss and cut 247 how little the german style has to deal with harmony and with the ear is shown by the fact that precisely our good musicians themselves write 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 draw for the time in antiquity when the man read which was seldom enough he read something to himself and in a loud voice they were surprised when anyone read silently and sought secretly the reason of it in a loud voice that is to say with other swellings inflections and variations of key and changes of tempo in which the ancient public world took delight the laws of the written style were then the same as those of the spoken style and these laws depended partly on the surprising development and refined requirements of the ear and larynx partly on the strength endurance and power of the ancient lungs in the ancient sense a period is above all a physiological whole in as much as it is comprised in one breath such periods as occur and demostinous incisor swelling twice and sinking twice and all in one breath were pleasures to the men of antiquity who knew by their own schooling how to appreciate the virtue therein the rareness and the difficulty in the deliverance of such a period we have really no right in the big period we modern men who are short of breath in every sense these ancients indeed were all of them dilettante in speaking consequently connoisseurs consequently critics they thus brought their raters to the highest pitch in the same manner as in the last century when all italian ladies and gentlemen knew how to sing the virtuoso ship of song and with it also the art of melody reached its elevation in germany however until quite recently when a kind of platform eloquence began shyly and awkwardly enough to flutter its young wings there was properly speaking only one kind of public and approximately artistical discourse that delivered from the pulpit the preacher was the only one in germany who knew the weight of a syllable or a word in what manner a sentence strikes springs rushes flows and comes to a close he alone had a conscience in his ears often enough about conscience for reasons are not lacking why proficiency and oratory should be especially seldom attained by a german or almost always too late the masterpiece of german prose is therefore with good reason the masterpiece of its greatest preacher the bible has hitherto been the best german book compared with luta's bible almost everything else is merely literature something which has not grown in germany and therefore has not taken and does not take root in german hearts as the bible has done 248 there are two kinds of geniuses one which above all engenders and seeks to engender and another which willingly lets itself be fructified and brings forth and similarly among the gifted nations there are those on whom the woman's problem of pregnancy has devolved and the secret task of forming maturing and perfecting the greeks for instance were a nation of this kind and so are the french and others which have to fructify and become the course of new modes of life like the jews the romans and in all modesty be it asked like the germans nations tortured and enraptured by unknown fevers and irresistibly forced out of themselves amorous and longing for foreign races such as let themselves be fructified and with all imperious like everything conscious of being full of generative force and consequently empowered by the grace of god these two kinds of geniuses seek each other like man and woman but they also misunderstand each other like man and woman 249 every nation has its own tartuferie and calls that its virtue one does not know cannot know the best that is in one 250 what europe owes to the jews many things good and bad and above all one thing of the nature both of the best and the worst the grand style in morality the fearfulness and majesty of infinite demands of infinite significations the whole romanticism and sublimity of moral questionableness and consequently just the most attractive ensnaring and exquisite element in those iridescences and allurements to life in the afternoon of which the sky of our european culture its evening sky now glows perhaps glows out for this we artists among the spectators and philosophers are grateful to the jews 251 it must be taken into the bargain if various clouds and disturbances in short slight attacks of stupidity pass over the spirit of the people that suffers and wants to suffer from national nervous fever and political ambition for instance among present-day germans there is alternately the anti-french folly the anti-semitic folly the anti-polish folly the christian-romantic folly the Wagnerian folly the teutonic folly the prussian folly just look at all those poor historians the zubels and treitschkes and their closely bandaged heads and whatever else these little obscurations of the german spirit and conscience may be called may it be forgiven me that i too went on a short daring sojourn into very infected ground did not remain wholly exempt from the disease but like everyone else began to entertain thoughts about matters which did not concern me the first symptom of political infection about the jews for instance listen to the following i have never yet met a german who was favorably inclined to the jews and however decided the repudiation of actual anti-semitism may be on the part of all prudent and political men this prudence and policy is not perhaps directed against the nature of the sentiment itself but only against its dangerous excess and especially against the distasteful and infamous expression of this excessive sentiment on this point we must not deceive ourselves that germany has amply sufficient jews that the german stomach the german blood has difficulty and will long have difficulty in disposing only of this quantity of jew as the italian the frenchman and englishman have done by means of a stronger digestion that is the unmistakable declaration and language of a general instinct to which one must listen and according to which one must act let no more jews come in and shut the doors especially towards the east also towards austria thus commands the instinct of a people whose nature is still feeble and uncertain so that it could be easily wiped out easily extinguished by a stronger race the jews however are beyond all doubt the strongest toughest and purest race at present living in europe they know how to succeed even under the worst conditions in fact better than under favorable ones by means of virtues of some sort which one would like nowadays to label as vices owing above all to a resolute faith which does not need to be ashamed before modern ideas they alter only when they do alter in the same way that the russian empire makes its conquest as an empire that has plenty of time and is not of yesterday namely according to the principle as slowly as possible a thinker who has the future of europe at heart will in all his perspectives concerning the future calculate upon the jews as you will calculate upon the russians as above all the surest and likeliest factors in the great play and battle of forces that which is at present called a nation in europe and is really rather a race factor than anata perhaps sometimes confusingly similar to a race fictor at picture is in every case something evolving young easily displaced and not yet a race much less such a race erica renas as the jews are such nations should most carefully avoid all hotheaded rivalry and hostility it is certain that the jews if they desired or if they were driven to it as the anti-semites seemed to wish could have the ascendancy nay literally the supremacy over europe that they are not working and planning for that end is equally certain meanwhile they rather wish and desire even somewhat importantly to be absorbed and absorbed by europe they long to be finally settled authorized and respected somewhere and wish to put an end to the nomadic life to the wandering jew and one should certainly take account of this impulse and tendency and make advances to it it possibly be taken as a mitigation of the jewish instincts for which purpose it would perhaps be useful and fair to banish the anti-semitic borders out of the country one should make advances with all prudence and with selection pretty much as the english nobility do it stands to reason that the most powerful and strongly marked types of new germanism could enter into a relation with the jews with the least hesitation for instance the no-women officer from the prussian border it will be interesting in many ways to see whether the genius for money and patience and especially some intellect and intellectuality sadly lacking in the place referred to could not in addition be annexed and trained to the hereditary art of commanding and obeying for both of which the country in question has now a classic reputation but here it is expedient to break off my festal discourse at my sprightly cutonymania for i have already reached my serious topic the european problem as i understand it the rearing of a new ruling caste for europe 252 they are not a philosophical race the english bacon represents an attack on the philosophical spirit generally hobs hum and lock and a basement and a depreciation of the idea of a philosopher for more than a century it was against hum that cunt up rose and raised himself it was lock of whom shelling rightly said je me priez lock in the struggle against the english mechanical stratification of the world hegel and schopenhauer along with gutter were of one accord the two hostile brother geniuses in philosophy who pushed in different directions towards the opposite poles of german thought and thereby wronged each other as only brothers will do what is lacking in england and has always been lacking that half actor and retribution knew well enough the absurd muddlehead carlile who sought to conceal under passionate grimaces what he knew about himself namely what was lacking in carlile real power of intellect real depths of intellectual perception in short philosophy it is characteristic of such an unphilosophical race to hold on firmly to christianity they need its discipline for moralizing and humanizing the englishman more gloomy sensual headstrong and brutal than the german is for that very reason as the baser of the two also the most pious he has all the more need of christianity to find an ostwald's this english christianity itself has still a characteristic english taint of spleen and alcoholic excess for which only to good reasons it is used as an antidote the finer poison to neutralize the coarser a finer form of poisoning is in fact a step in advance with course-mannered people is stepped towards spiritualization the english coarseness and rustic demunus is still most satisfactorily disguised by christian pantomime and by praying and psalm singing or more correctly it is thereby explained and differently expressed and for the herd of drunkards and rakes who formally learned moral grunting under the influence of methodism and more recently as the salvation army a penitential fit may really be the relatively highest manifestation of humanity to which they can be elevated so much may reasonably be admitted that however which offends even in the humanist englishman is his lack of music to speak figuratively and also literally he has neither risen nor dance in the movements of his soul and body indeed not even the desire for dance for music listen to him speaking look at the most beautiful englishwoman walking in no country on earth are there more beautiful doves and swans finally listen to them singing but i asked too much 253 there are truths which are best recognized by mediocre minds because they are best adapted for them there are truths which only possess charms and seductive power for mediocre spirits one is pushed to this probably unpleasant conclusion now that the influence of respectable but mediocre englishman i may mention darwin john stewart mill and herbert spencer begins to gain the ascendancy of the middle class region of european taste indeed who could doubt that it is a useful thing for such minds to have the ascendancy for a time it would be an error to consider the highly developed and independently soaring minds as especially qualified for determining and collecting many little common facts and deducing conclusions from them as exceptions they are rather from the first in no very favorable position towards those who are the rules after all they have more to do than merely to perceive in effect they have to be something new they have to signify something new they have to represent new values the gulf between knowledge and capacity is perhaps greater and also more mysterious than one thinks the capable man in the grand style the creator will possibly have to be an ignorant person while on the other hand for scientific discoveries like those of darwin a certain narrowness aridity and industrious carefulness in short something english may not be unfavorable for arriving at them finally let it not be forgotten that the english with their profound mediocrity brought about once before a general depression of european intelligence what is called modern ideas or the ideas of the 18th century or french ideas that consequently against which the german mind rose up was profound disgust is of english origin there is no doubt about it the french were only the apes and actors of these ideas their best soldiers and likewise alas their first and profoundest victims for owing to the diabolical anglomania of modern ideas the arm francais has in the end become so thin and emaciated that at present one records its 16th and 17th centuries its profound passionate strengths its inventive excellency almost with disbelief one must however maintain this verdict of historical justice in a determined manner and defend against it present prejudices and appearances the european noblesse of sentiment taste and manners taking the word in every high sense is the work and invention of france the european ignoble-ness the plebeianism of modern ideas is england's work and invention 254 even at present france is still the seat of the most intellectual and refined culture of europe it is still the high school of taste but one must know how to find this france of taste he who belongs to it keeps himself well concealed they may be a small number in whom it lives and is embodied besides perhaps being men who do not stand upon the strongest legs in part fatalists hypochondriacs invalids in part persons overindulged over refined such as have the ambition to conceal themselves they have all something in common they keep their ears closed in presence of the delirious folly and noisy spouting of the democratic bourgeois in fact a besotted and brutalized france at present sprawls in the foreground it recently celebrated a veritable orgy of bad taste and at the same time of self-admiration in the funeral of victor igoo there was also something else common to them a pre-election to resist intellectual germanizing and understood greater inability to do so in this france of intellect which is also a france of pessimism schruppenhauer has become more at home and more indigenous than he has ever been in germany not to speak of heimrich heiner who has long ago been reincarnated in the more refined and fastidious lyricists of paris or of hegel who at present in the form of ten the first of living historians exercises an almost tyrannical influence as regards richard wagner however the more french music learns to adapt itself to the actual needs of the arm modern the more will it wagner ride one can safely predict that beforehand it is already taking place sufficiently there are however three things which the french can still boast of with pride as their heritage and possession and as indelible tokens of their ancient intellectual superiority in europe in spite of all voluntary or involuntary germanizing and vulgarizing of taste firstly the capacity for artistic emotion for devotion to form for which the expression lar pour lar along with numerous others has been invented such capacity has not been lacking in france for three centuries and owing to its reverence for the small number it has again and again made a sort of chamber music of literature possible which is sought for in vain elsewhere in europe the second thing whereby the french can lay claim to the superiority over europe is the ancient many-sided moralistic culture owing to which one finds on an average even in the petty romancier of the newspapers and chance boulevardier de paris a psychological sensitiveness and curiosity of which for example one has no conception to say nothing of the thing itself in germany the germans lack a couple of centuries of the moralistic work requisite there too which as we have said france has not grudged those who call the germans naive on that account give them commendation for a defect as the opposite of the german inexperience and innocence in voloptata psychologica which is not too remotely associated with the tediousness of german intercourse and as the most successful expression of genuine french curiosity and inventive talent in this domain of delicate thrills or rebel may be noted that remarkably anticipatory and full-running man who was in a polyonic tempo traversed his europe in fact several centuries of the european soul as a surveyor and discoverer thereof it has required two generations to overtake him one way or other to divine long afterwards some of the riddles that perplexed and enraptured him this strange epicurean and man of interrogation the last great psychologist of france there is yet a third claim to superiority in the french character there is a successful halfway synthesis of the north and south which makes them comprehend many things and enjoins upon them other things which an englishman can never comprehend their temperament turned alternately to and from the south in which from time to time the polymosal and legurian blood froths over preserves them from the dreadful northern gray in gray from some less conceptual spectrum and from poverty of blood our german infirmity of taste for the excessive prevalence of which at the present moment blood and iron that is to say high politics has with great resolution been prescribed according to a dangerous healing art which bids me wait and wait but not yet hope there is still in france a pre-understanding and ready welcome for those rarer and rarely gratified men who are too comprehensive to find satisfaction of any kind to fatherlandism and know how to love the south when in the north and the north when in the south the born midlanders the good europeans for them busy has made music this latest genius who has seen a new beauty and seduction who has discovered a piece of the south in music 255 i hold that many precautions should be taken against german music suppose a person loves the south as i love it as a great school of recovery for the most spiritual and the most sensuous ills as a boundless solar profusion and defulgence which always spreads a sovereign existence believing in itself well such a person will learn to be somewhat on his guard against german music because in injuring his taste in you it will also injure his health in you such a southerner a southerner not by origin but by belief if you should dream of the future of music must also dream of it being freed from the influence of the north that must have in his ears the prelude to a deeper mightier and perhaps more perverse and mysterious music a super german music which does not fade pale and die away as all german music does at the site of the blue wanton sea and the mediterranean clearness of sky a super european music which holds its own even in presence of the brown sunsets of the desert whose soul is akin to the palm tree and can be at home and can roam with big beautiful lonely beasts of prey i could imagine a music of which the rarest charm would be that it knew nothing more of good and evil only that here and there perhaps some sailor's homesickness some golden shadows and tender weaknesses might sweep lightly over it an art which from the far distance would see the colors of a sinking and almost incomprehensible moral world fleeing towards it and would be hospitable enough and profound enough to receive such belated fugitives 256 owing to the morbid estrangement which the nationality craze has induced and still induces among the nations of europe owing also to the shortsighted and hasty handed politicians who with the help of this craze are at present in power and do not suspect to what extent the disintegrating policy they pursue must necessarily be only an interlude policy owing to all this and much else that is altogether unmentionable at present the most unmistakable signs that europe wishes to be one are now overlooked or arbitrarily and falsely misinterpreted with all the more profound and large-minded men of this century the real general tendency of the mysterious labor of their souls was to prepare the way for that new synthesis and tentatively to anticipate the european of the future only in their simulations or in their weaker moments in old age perhaps did they belong to the fatherlands they only rested from themselves when they became patriots i think of such men as napoleon goethe bethoven stendhal heinrich heiner schogenhauer it must not be taken a miss if i also can drichard wagner among them about whom one must not let oneself be deceived by his own misunderstandings geniuses like him have seldom the right to understand themselves still less of course by the unseemly noise with which he is now resisted and opposed in france the fact remains nevertheless that richard wagner and the later french romanticism of the 40s are most closely and intimately related to one another they are akin fundamentally akin in all the heights and depths of their requirements it is europe the one europe whose soul presses urgently and longingly outwards and upwards in the multifarious and boisterous art wither into a new light towards a new sun but who would attempt to express accurately what all these masters of new modes of speech could not express distinctly it is certain that the same storm and stress tormented them for they sought in the same manner these last great seekers all of them steeped in literature to their eyes and ears the first artists of universal literary culture for the most part even themselves writers poets intermediaries and blenders of the art and the senses wagner as musician is reckoned among painters as poet among musicians as artist generally among actors all of them fanatics for expression at any cost i especially mentioned dillacroix the nearest related to wagner all of them great discoverers of the realm of the sublime also of the low summon dreadful yet greater discovers in effect in display in the art of the show shop all of them talented far beyond their genius out and out virtuosi with mysterious accesses to all that seduces allures constraints and upsets born enemies of logic and the straight line hankering after the strange the exotic the monstrous the crooked and the self-contradictory as men tantalizes of the will probe and pavenu who knew themselves to be incapable of a noble tempo or a volento in life and action think of bazaar for instance unrestrained workers almost destroying themselves by work anti-nomians and rebels in manners ambitious and insatiable without equilibrium and enjoyment all of them finally shattering and sinking down at the christian cross and was right and reason for who of them would have been sufficiently profound and sufficiently original for an anti-christian philosophy on the whole a boldly daring splendidly overbearing high flying and aloft up-dragging class of higher men who had first to teach their century and it is the century of the masses the conception higher man let the german friends of rachadragner advised together as to whether there is anything purely german in the vagnirian art whether its distinction does not consist precisely in coming from super german sources and impulses in which connection it may not be underrated how indispensable paris was in the development of his type which the strength of his instincts made him long to visit at the most decisive time and how the whole style of his proceedings of his self-apostolate could only perfect itself in sight of the french socialistic original on a more subtle comparison it will perhaps be found to the honor of rachadragner's german nature that he has acted in everything with more strength daring severity and elevation than a 19th century frenchman could have done having to the circumstance that we germans are as yet nearer to barbarism than the french perhaps even the most remarkable creation of rachadragner is not only at present but forever inaccessible incomprehensible and inimitable to the whole latter-day latin race the figure of seekfried that very free man who was probably far too free too hard too cheerful too healthy too anti-catholic for the taste of old mellow civilized nations he may even have been a sin against romanticism this anti-latin seekfried well bark knight owned amply for this sin in his old sad days when anticipating a taste which has meanwhile passed into politics he began with a religious vehemence peculiar to him to preach at least the way to roam if not walk therein that these last words may not be misunderstood i will call to my aid a few powerful rhymes which will even betray to less delicate ears what i mean what i mean counter to the last Wagner and his pacifal music is this our mode from german heart came this vex eulolating from german body this self lacerating is ours this priestly hand dilation this incense fuming exaltation this ours this faltering falling shambling this quite uncertain ding dong dangling this sly nun ogling ava our bell ringing this holy false in raptured heaven overspringing is this our mode think well you still wait for admission for what you hear is Rome Rome's face by intuition end of chapter eight peoples and countries recorded by gazine and valetta january 2006 this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org librivox.org recording by librivox user president leith pres lethe beyond good and evil by fredrich nitzche translated by helen simon chapter nine what is noble paragraph 257 every elevation of the type man has hitherto been the work of an aristocratic society and so it will always be a society believing in a long scale of gradations of rank and differences of worth among human beings and requiring slavery in some form or other without the pathos of distance such as grows out of the incarnated differences of classes out of the constant outlooking and downlooking of the ruling caste on subordinates and instruments and out of their equally constant practice of obeying and commanding of keeping down and keeping at a distance that other more mysterious pathos could never have arisen the longing for an ever new widening of distance within the soul itself the formation of ever higher rarer further more extended more comprehensive states in short just the elevation of the type man the continued self surmounting of man to use a moral formula in a super moral sense to be sure one must not resign oneself to any humanitarian illusions about the history of the origin of an aristocratic society that is to say of the preliminary condition for the elevation of the type man the truth is hard let us acknowledge unprecedentedly how every higher civilization hitherto has originated men with a still natural nature barbarians in every terrible sense of the word men of prey still in possession of unbroken strength of will and desire for power through themselves upon weaker more moral more peaceful races perhaps trading or cattle rearing communities or upon old mellow civilizations in which the final vital force was flickering out in brilliant fireworks of wit and depravity at the commencement the noble caste was always the barbarian caste their superiority did not consist first of all in their physical but in their psychical power they were more complete men which at every point also implies the same as more complete beasts corruption as the indication that anarchy threatens to break out among the instincts and that the foundation of the emotions called life is convulsed is something radically different according to the organization in which it manifests itself when for instance an aristocracy like that of france at the beginning of the revolution flung away its privileges with sublime disgust and sacrificed itself to an excess of its moral sentiments it was corruption it was really only the closing act of the corruption that had existed for centuries by virtue of which that aristocracy had abdicated step by step its lordly prerogatives and lowered itself to a function of royalty in the end even to its decoration and parade dress the essential thing however in a good and healthy aristocracy is that it should not regard itself as a function either of the kingship or the commonwealth but as the significance and highest justification thereof that it should therefore accept with a good conscience the sacrifice of a legion of individuals who for its sake must be suppressed and reduced to imperfect men to slaves and instruments its fundamental belief must be precisely that society is not allowed to exist for its own sake but only as a foundation and scaffolding by means of which a select class of beings may be able to elevate themselves to their higher duties and in general to a higher existence like those sun-seeking climbing plants in java they are called sipo matador which encircle an oak so long and so often with their arms until at last high above it but supported by it they can unfold their tops in the open light and exhibit their happiness to refrain mutually from injury from violence from exploitation and put one's will on a par with that of others this may result in a certain rough sense in good conduct among individuals when the necessary conditions are given namely the actual similarity of the individuals in amount of force and degree of worth and their co-relation within one organization as soon however is one wished to take this principle more generally and if possible even as the fundamental principle of society it would immediately disclose what it really is namely a will to the denial of life a principle of dissolution and decay here one must think profoundly to the very basis and resist all sentimental weakness life itself is essentially appropriation injury conquest of the strange and weak suppression severity abtrusion of peculiar forms in corporation and at the very least putting it mildest exploitation but why should one forever use precisely these words on which for ages a disparaging purpose has been stamped even the organization within which as was previously supposed the individuals treat each other as equal it takes place in every healthy aristocracy must itself if it be a living and not a dying organization do all that towards other bodies that the individuals within it refrain from doing to each other it will have to be the incarnated will to power it will endeavor to grow to gain ground attract to itself and acquire ascendancy not owing to any morality or immorality but because it lives and because life is precisely will to power on no point however is the ordinary consciousness of europeans more unwilling to be corrected than on this matter people now rave everywhere even under the guise of science about coming conditions of society in which the exploiting character is to be absent that sounds to my ears as if they promised to invent a mode of life that should refrain from all organic functions exploitation does not belong to a depraved or imperfect and primitive society it belongs to the nature of the living being as a primary organic function it is a consequence of the intrinsic will to power which is precisely the will to life granting that as a theory this is a novelty as a reality it is the fundamental fact of all history let us be so far honest towards ourselves in a tour through the many finer and coarser moralities that have hitherto prevailed or still prevail on the earth i found certain traits recurring regularly together and connected with one another until finally two primary types revealed themselves to me and a radical distinction was brought to light there is master morality and slave morality i would at once add however that in all higher and mixed civilizations there are also attempts at the reconciliation of the two moralities but one finds still often are the confusion and mutual misunderstanding of them indeed sometimes they're close juxtaposition even in the same man within one soul the distinctions of moral values have either originated in a ruling caste pleasantly conscious of being different from the ruled or among the ruled class the slaves and dependence of all sorts in the first case when it is the rulers who determine the conception good it is the exalted proud disposition that is regarded as the distinguishing feature and that that determines the order of rank the noble type of man separates from himself the beings in whom the opposite of this exalted proud disposition displays itself he despises them let it at once be noted that in this first kind 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 of narrow utility are despised moreover also the distrustful with their constrained glances the self-abasing the dog-like kind of men who let themselves be abused the mendicant flatterers and above all the liars it is a fundamental belief of all aristocrats that the common people are untruthful we truthful ones the nobility in ancient Greece called themselves it is obvious that everywhere the designations of moral value were at first applied to men and were only derivatively and at a later period applied to actions it is a gross mistake therefore when historians of morals start with questions like why have sympathetic actions been praised the noble type of man regards himself as a determiner of values he does not require to be approved of he passes the judgment what is injurious to me is injurious in itself he knows that it is he himself only who confers honor on things he is a creator of values he honors whatever he recognizes in himself such morality equals self-glorification in the foreground there is the feeling of plenitude of power which seeks to overflow the happiness of high tension the consciousness of a wealth that would feign give and bestow the noble man also helps the unfortunate but not or scarcely out of pity but rather from an impulse generated by the super abundance of power the noble man honors in himself the powerful one him also who has power over himself who knows how to speak and how to keep silence who takes pleasure in subjecting himself to severity and hardness and has reverence for all that is severe and hard worten placed a hard heart in my breast says an old Scandinavian saga it is thus rightly expressed from the soul of a proud Viking such a type of man is even proud of not being made for sympathy the hero of the saga therefore adds warningly he who has not a hard heart when young will never have one the noble and brave who think thus are the furthest removed from the morality that sees precisely in sympathy or enacting for the good of others or in desenterous man the characteristic of the moral faith in oneself pride in oneself a radical enmity and irony towards selflessness belong as definitely to noble morality as do a careless scorn and precaution in presence of sympathy and the warm heart it is the powerful who know how to honor it is their art their domain for invention the profound reverence for age and for tradition all rests on this double reverence the belief and prejudice in favor of ancestors and unfavorable to newcomers is typical in the morality of the powerful and if reversely men of modern ideas believe almost instinctively in progress in the future and are more and more lacking in respect for old age the ignoble origin of these ideas has complacently betrayed itself thereby a morality of the ruling class however is more specifically foreign and irritating to present day taste in the sternness of its principle that one has duties only to one's equals that one may act towards beings of a lower rank towards all that is foreign just as seems good to one or as the heart desires and in any case beyond good and evil it is here that sympathy and similar sentiments can have a place the ability and obligation to exercise prolonged gratitude and prolonged revenge both only within the circle of equals artfulness and retaliation often more the idea in friendship a certain necessity to have enemies as outlets for the emotions of envy quarrelfulness arrogance in fact in order to be a good friend all these are typical characteristics of the noble morality which as has been pointed out is not the morality of modern ideas and is therefore at present difficult to realize and also to unearth and disclose it is otherwise with the second type of morality slave morality supposing that the abused the oppressed the suffering the unemancipated the weary and those uncertain of themselves should moralize what will be the common element in their moral estimates probably a pessimistic suspicion with regard to the entire situation of man will find expression perhaps a condemnation of man together with his situation the slave has an unfavorable eye for the virtues of the powerful he has a skepticism and distrust a refinement of distrust of everything good that is there honored he would feign persuade himself that the very happiness there is not genuine on the other hand those qualities that serve to alleviate the existence of sufferers are brought into prominence and flooded with light it is here that sympathy the kind helping hand the warm heart patience diligence humility and friendliness attained to honor for here these the most useful qualities and almost the only means of supporting the burden of existence slave morality is essentially the morality of utility here is the seat of the origin of the famous antithesis good and evil power and dangerousness are assumed to reside in the evil a certain dreadfulness subtlety and strength 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 who arouses fear and seeks to arouse it while the bad man is regarded as the despicable being the contrast attains its maximum when in accordance with the logical consequences of slave morality a shade of depreciation it may be slight and well intentioned at last attaches itself to the good man of this morality because according to the servile mode of thought the good man must in any case be the safe man he is good-natured easily deceived perhaps a little stupid but none everywhere that slave morality gains the ascendancy language shows a tendency to approximate the significations of the word good and stupid a last fundamental difference the desire for freedom the instinct for happiness and the refinements of the feeling of liberty belong as necessarily to slave morals and morality as artifice and enthusiasm in reverence and devotion are the regular symptoms of an aristocratic mode of thinking and estimating hence we can understand without further detail why love as a passion it is our european specialty must absolutely be a noble origin as is well known its invention is due to the Provençard poet cavaliers those brilliant ingenious men of the guy saber to whom europe owes so much and almost owes itself vanity is one of the things that are perhaps most difficult for a noble man to understand he will be tempted to deny it where another kind of man thinks he sees itself evidently the problem for him is to represent to his mind beings who seek to arouse a good opinion of themselves that they themselves do not possess and consequently also do not deserve and who yet believe in this good opinion afterwards this seems to him on the one hand such bad taste and so self-disrespectful and on the other hand so grotesquely unreasonable that he would like to consider vanity an exception and is doubtful about it in most cases when it is spoken of he will say for instance i may be mistaken about my value and on the other hand may nevertheless demand that my value should be acknowledged by others precisely as i write it that however is not vanity but self-conceit or in most cases that which is called humility and also modesty or he will even say for many reasons i can delight in the good opinion of others perhaps because i love and honor them and rejoice in all their joys perhaps also because their good opinion endorses and strengthens my belief in my own good opinion perhaps because the good opinion of others even in cases where i do not share it is useful to me or gives promise of usefulness all this however is not vanity the man of noble character must first bring it home forcibly to his mind especially with the aid of history that from time immemorial in all social strata in any way dependent the ordinary man was only that that he passed for not being at all accustomed to fix values he did not assign even to himself any other value than that that his master assigned to him it is the peculiar right of masters to create values it may be looked upon as an extraordinary activism that the ordinary man even at present is still always waiting for an opinion about himself and then instinctively submitting himself to it yet by no means only to a good opinion but also to a bad and unjust one think for instance of the greater part of the self-appreciations and self-depreciations that believing women learn from their confessors and which in general the believing christian learns from his church in fact conformably to the slow rise of the democratic social order and its cause the blending of the blood of masters and slaves the original noble and rare impulse of the masters to assign a value to themselves and to think well of themselves will now be more and more encouraged and extended but it has at all times an older ampler and more radically ingrained propensity opposed to it and in the phenomenon of vanity this older propensity over masters the younger the vain person rejoices over every good opinion that he hears about himself quite apart from the point of view of its usefulness and equally regardless of its truth or falsehood just as he suffers from every bad opinion for he subjects himself to both he feels himself subjected to both by the oldest instinct of subjection that breaks forth in him it is the slave in the vain man's blood the remains of the slaves craftiness and how much of the slave is still left in woman for instance which seeks to seduce the good opinions of itself it is the slave to who immediately afterwards falls prostrate himself before these opinions as though he had not called them forth and to repeat it again vanity is an atavism a species originates and a type becomes established and strong in the long struggle with essentially constant unfavorable conditions on the other hand it is known by the experience of breeders that species that receive super abundant nourishment and in general a surplus of protection and care immediately tend in the most market way to develop variations and are fertile in prodigies and monstrosities also in monstrous vices now look at an aristocratic commonwealth say an ancient greek polis or venice as a voluntary or involuntary contrivance for the purpose of rearing human beings there are there men beside one another thrown upon their own resources who want to make their species prevail chiefly because they must prevail or else run the terrible danger of being exterminated the favor the super abundance the protection are there lacking under which variations are fostered the species needs itself as species as something that precisely by virtue of its hardness its uniformity and simplicity of structure can in general prevail and make itself permanent in constant struggle with its neighbors or with rebellious or rebellion threatening vassals the most varied experience teaches it what are the qualities to which it principally owes the fact that it still exists in spite of all gods and men and has hitherto been victorious these qualities it calls virtues and these virtues alone it develops to maturity it does so with severity indeed it desires severity every aristocratic morality is intolerant in the education of youth in the control of women in the marriage customs in the relations of old and young in the penal laws which have an eye only for the degenerating it counts intolerance itself among the virtues under the name of justice a type with few but very market features a species of severe warlike wisely silent reserved and reticent men and as such with the most delicate sensibility for the charm and nuances of society is thus established unaffected by the vicissitudes of generations the constant struggle with uniform unfavorable conditions is as already remarked the cause of a type's becoming stable and hard finally however a happy state of things results the enormous tension is relaxed there are perhaps no more enemies among the neighboring peoples and the means of life even of the enjoyment of life are present in super abundance with one stroke the bond and constraint of the old discipline severs it is no longer regarded as necessary as a condition of existence if it would continue it can only do so as a form of luxury as an archaic taste variations whether they be deviations into the higher finer and rarer or deteriorations and monstrosities appear suddenly on the scene in the greatest exuberance and splendor the individual dares to be individual and detach himself at this turning point of history they manifest themselves side by side and often mixed and entangled together a magnificent manifold virgin forest like upgrowth and up striving a kind of tropical tempo in the rivalry of growth and an extraordinary decay and self-destruction owing to the savagely opposing and seemingly exploding egoism which strive with one another for sun and light and can no longer assign any limit restraint or forbearance for themselves by means of the hitherto existing morality it is this morality itself that piled up the strength so enormously which bent the bow and so threatening a manner it is now out of date it is getting out of date the dangerous and disquieting point has been reached when the greater more manifold more comprehensive life is lived beyond the old morality the individual stands out and is obliged to have recourse to his own law giving his own arts and artifices for self-preservation self-elevation and self-deliverance nothing but new wise nothing but new house no common formulas any longer misunderstanding and disregard in league with each other decay deterioration and the loftiest desires frightfully entangled the genius of the race overflowing from all the cornucopias of good and bad a fortentious simultaneousness of spring and autumn full of new charms and mysteries peculiar to the fresh still exhausted still unwearyed corruption danger is again present the mother of morality great danger this time shifted into the individual into the neighbor and friend into the street into their own child into their own heart into all the most personal and secret recesses of their desires and volitions what will the moral philosophers who appear at this time have to preach they discover these sharp onlookers and loafers that the end is quickly approaching that everything around them decays and produces decay that nothing will endure until the day after tomorrow except one species of man the incurably mediocre the mediocre alone have a prospect of continuing and propagating themselves they will be the men of the future the sole survivors be like them become mediocre is now the only morality that has still a significance which still obtains a hearing but it is difficult to preach this morality of mediocrity it can never avow what it is and what it desires it has to talk of moderation and dignity and duty and brotherly love it will have difficulty in concealing its irony there is an instinct for rank which more than anything else is already the sign of a high rank there is a delight in the nuances of reverence that leads one to infer noble origin and habits the refinement goodness and loftiness of a soul are put to a perilous test when something passes by that is of the highest rank but is not yet protected by the awe of the authority from obtrusive touches and incivilities something that goes its way like a living touchstone undistinguished undiscovered and tentative perhaps voluntarily veiled and disguised he whose task and practice is to investigate souls will avail himself of many varieties of this very art to determine the the ultimate value of a soul the unalterable innate order of rank to which it belongs he will test it by its instinct for reverence differences and gender and that's French hate there the vulgarity of many a nature spurts up suddenly like dirty water when any holy vessel any jewel from closed shrines any book bearing the marks of great destiny is brought before it while on the other hand there is an involuntary silence a hesitation of the eye a cessation of all gestures by which it is indicated that a soul feels the nearness of what is worthiest of respect the way in which on the whole the reverence for the bible has either to been maintained in europe is perhaps the best example of discipline and refinement of manners that europe owes to christianity books of such profoundness and supreme significance require for their protection and external tyranny of authority in order to acquire the period of thousands of years that is necessary to exhaust and unriddle them much has been achieved when the sentiment has been at last instilled into the masses the shallow pates and the boobies of every kind that they are not allowed to touch everything that there are holy experiences before which they must take off their shoes and keep away the unclean hand it is almost their highest advance towards humanity on the contrary in the so-called cultured classes the believers in modern ideas nothing is perhaps so repulsive as their lack of shame their easy insolence of eye and hand with which they touch taste and finger everything and it is possible that even yet there is more relative nobility of taste and more tact for reverence among the people among the lower classes of the people especially among peasants than among the newspaper reading demimon of intellect the cultured class it cannot be a face from a man's soul what his ancestors have preferably and most constantly done whether they were perhaps diligent economizers attached to a desk and a cash box modest and citizen-like in their desires modest also in their virtues or whether they were accustomed to commanding from morning till night fond of rude pleasures and probably of still-rooter duties and responsibilities or whether finally at one time or another they have sacrificed old privileges of birth and possession in order to live holy for their faith for their god as men of an inexorable and sensitive conscience which blushes at every compromise it is quite possible for a man not to have the qualities and predilections of his parents and ancestors in his constitution whatever appearances may suggest to the contrary this is the problem of race granted that one knows something of the parents it is admissible to draw a conclusion about the child any kind of offensive incontinence any kind of sordid envy or of clumsy self-vaunting the three things that together have constituted the genuine plebeian type in all times such must pass over to the child as surely as bad blood and with the help of the best education and culture one will only succeed in deceiving with regard to such a reddy and what else do education and culture try to do nowadays in our very democratic or rather very plebeian age education and culture must be essentially the art of deceiving deceiving with regard to origin with regard to the inherited plebeianism in body and soul an educator who nowadays preaches truthfulness above everything else and called out constantly to his pupils be true be natural show yourselves as you are even such a virtuous and sincere ass would learn in a short time to have recourse to the furka of horus naturum expelleri with what results plebeianism us quay record footnote horuses epistles one ten twenty four at the risk of displeasing innocent ears i submit that egoism belongs to the essence of a noble soul i mean the unalterable belief that two are beings such as we other beings must naturally be in subjection and have to sacrifice themselves the noble soul accepts the fact of his egoism without question and also without consciousness of harshness constraint or arbitrariness therein but rather is something that may have its basis in the primary law of things if he sought a designation for it he would say it is justice itself he acknowledges under certain circumstances which made him hesitate at first that there are other equally privileged ones as soon as he has settled this question of rank he moves among those equals and equally privileged ones with the same assurance as regards modesty and delicate respect that he enjoys in intercourse with himself in accordance with an innate heavenly mechanism that all the stars understand it is an additional instance of his egoism this artfulness and self-limitation in intercourse with his equals every star is a similar egoist he honors himself in them and in the right that he concedes to them he has no doubt that the exchange of honors and rights as the essence of all intercourse belongs also to the natural condition of things the noble soul gives as he takes prompted by the passionate and sensitive instinct of requital which is at the root of his nature the notion of favor has interparis neither significance nor good repute there may be a sublime way of letting gifts as it were light upon one from above and of drinking them thirstily like dew drops but for those arts and displays the noble soul has no aptitude his egoism hinders him here in general he looks aloft unwillingly he looks either forward horizontally and deliberately or downwards he knows that he is on a height one can only truly esteem him who does not look out for himself gutter to watch losa the chinese have a proverb that mothers even teach their children shall shin make thy heart small this is the essentially fundamental tendency in latter-day civilizations i have no doubt that an ancient greek also would first of all remark the self-dwarfing in us europeans of today in this respect alone should we immediately be distasteful to him what after all is nobleness words are vocal symbols for ideas ideas however are more or less definite mental symbols for frequently returning and concurring sensations for groups of sensations it is not sufficient to use the same words in order to understand one another we must also employ the same words for the same kind of internal experiences we must in the end have experiences in common on this account the people of one nation understand one another better than those belonging to different nations even when they use the same language or rather when people have lived long together under similar conditions of climate soil danger requirement toil there originates there from an entity that understands itself namely a nation in all souls a like number of frequently recurring experiences have gained the upper hand over those occurring more rarely about these matters people understand one another rapidly and always more rapidly the history of languages the history of a process of abbreviation on the basis of this quick comprehension people always unite closer and closer the greater the danger the greater is the need of agreeing quickly and readily about what is necessary not to misunderstand one another in danger that is what cannot at all be dispensed with in intercourse also in all loves and friendships one has the experience that nothing of the kind continues when the discovery has been made that in using the same words one of the two parties has feelings thoughts intuitions wishes or fears different from those of the other the fear of the eternal misunderstanding that is the good genius that so often keeps persons of different sexes from two hasty attachments to which sense and heart prompt them and not some Schopenhauerian genius of the species whichever groups of sensations within a soul awaken most readily begin to speak and give the word of command these decide as to the general order of rank of its values and determine ultimately its list of desirable things a man's estimates of value betray something of the structure of his soul and wherein it sees its conditions of life its intrinsic needs supposing now that necessity has from all time drawn together only such men as could express similar requirements and similar experiences by similar symbols it results on the whole that the easy communicability of need which implies ultimately the undergoing only of average and common experiences must have been the most potent of all the forces that have hitherto operated upon mankind the more similar the more ordinary people have always had and are still having the advantage the more select more refined more unique and difficultly comprehensible are liable to stand alone they succumb to accidents in their isolation and seldom propagate themselves one must appeal to immense opposing forces in order to thwart this natural all too natural progresso sin simile the evolution of man to the similar the ordinary the average the gregarious to the ignoble the intellectual haughtiness and loathing of every man who has suffered deeply it almost determines the order of rank how deeply men can suffer the chilling certainty with which he is thoroughly imbued and colored that by virtue of his suffering he knows more than the shrewdest and wisest can ever know that he has been familiar with and at home in many distant dreadful worlds of which you know nothing this silent intellectual haughtiness of the sufferer this pride of the elective knowledge of the initiated of the almost sacrificed finds all forms of disguise necessary to protect itself from contact with officious and sympathizing hands and in general from all that is not his equal in suffering profound suffering makes noble it separates one of the most refined forms of disguise is epicurism along with a certain ostentatious boldness of taste which takes suffering lightly and puts itself on the defensive against all that is sorrowful and profound they are gay men who make use of gaiety because they are misunderstood on account of it they wish to be misunderstood there are scientific minds who make use of science because it gives a gay appearance and because scientificness leads to the conclusion that a person is superficial they wish to mislead to a false conclusion there are free insolent minds which would feign conceal and deny that they are broken proud incurable hearts the cynicism of hamlet the case of galliani and occasionally folly itself is the mask of an unfortunate over assured knowledge from which it follows that it is the part of a more refined humanity to have reverence for the mask and not to make use of psychology and curiosity in the wrong place that which separates two men most profoundly is a different sense and grade of purity what does it matter about all their honesty and reciprocal usefulness what does it matter about all their mutual goodwill the fact still remains they cannot smell each other the highest instinct for purity places him who is affected with it in the most extraordinary and dangerous isolation as a saint for it is just holiness the highest spiritualization of the instinct in question any kind of cognizance of an indescribable excess in the joy of the bath any kind of ardor or thirst which perpetually impels the soul out of night into the morning and out of gloom out of affliction into clearness brightness depth and refinement just as much as such a tendency distinguishes it is a notable tendency it also separates the pity of the saint is pity for the filth of the human all too human and there are grades and heights where pity itself is regarded by him as impurity as filth signs of nobility never to think of lowering our duties to the rank of duties for everybody to be unwilling to renounce or to share our responsibilities to count our prerogatives and the exercise of them among our duties a man who strives after great things looks upon everyone whom he encounters on his way either as a means of advance or a delay and hindrance or a temporary resting place or as a temporary resting place his peculiar lofty bounty to his fellow men is only possible when he attains his elevation and dominates impatience and the consciousness of being always condemned to comedy up to that time for even strife as a comedy and conceals the end as every means does spoil all intercourse with him this kind of man is acquainted with solitude and what is most poisonous in it the problem of those who wait happy chances are necessary and many incalculable elements in order that a higher man in whom the solution of a problem is dormant may yet take action or break forth as one might say at the right moment on an average it does not happen and in all corners of the earth there are waiting ones sitting who hardly know to what extent they're waiting and still less that they wait in vain occasionally to the waking call comes too late the chance which gives permission to take action when their best youth and strength for action have been used up in sitting still and how many of one just as he sprang up has found with horror that his limbs are benumbed and his spirits are now too heavy it is too late he has said to himself and has become self distrustful and henceforth forever useless in the domain of genius may not the Raphael without hands taking the expression in its widest sense perhaps not be the exception but the rule perhaps genius is by no means so rare but rather the five hundred hands which it requires in order to deonize over the right time in order to take chance by the forelock he who does not wish to see the height of a man looks all the more sharply at what is low in him and in the foreground and thereby betrays himself in all kinds of injury and loss the lower and coarser soul is better off than the nobler soul the dangers of the latter must be greater the probability that it will come to grief and perish is in fact immense considering the multiplicity of the conditions of its existence in a lizard a finger grows again which has been lost not so in man it is too bad always the old story when a man has finished building his house he finds that he has learned unawares something which he ought absolutely to have known before he began to build the eternal fatal too late the melancholia of everything completed wanderer who art thou i see thee follow thy path without scorn without love without unfathomable eyes wet and sad as a plummet which has returned to the light is satiated out of every depth what did it seek down there with a bosom that never sighs with lips that conceal their loading with a head which only slowly grasps who art thou what has thou done resty here this place has hospitality for everyone refresh thyself and whoever thou art what is it that now pleases thee what will serve to refresh thee only name it whatever i have i offer thee to refresh me to refresh me oh thou prying one what sayest thou but give me i pray the what what speak out another mask a second mask men of profound sadness betray themselves when they are happy they have a mode of seizing upon happiness as though they would choke and strangle it out of jealousy ah they know only too well that it will flee from them bad bad what does he not go back yes but you misunderstand him when you complain about it he goes back like everyone who is about to make a big spring will people believe it of me but i insist that they believe it of me i have always thought very unsatisfactorily of myself and about myself only in very rare cases only compulsorily always without delight in the subject ready to digress from myself and always without faith in the result owing to the unconquerable distrust of the possibility of self-knowledge which has led me so far to feel a contradictio in adjecto even in the idea of direct knowledge which theorists allow themselves this matter of fact is almost the most certain thing i know about myself there must be a sort of repugnance in me to believe anything definite about myself is there perhaps some enigma there in probably but fortunately nothing for my own teeth perhaps it betrays the species to which i belong but not to myself as it is sufficiently agreeable to me but what has happened to you i do not know he said hesitatingly perhaps the harpies have flown over my table it sometimes happens nowadays that a gentle sober retiring man becomes suddenly mad breaks the plates upsets the table shrieks raves and shocks everybody and finally withdraws ashamed and raging at himself wither for what purpose to famish a part to suffocate with his memories to him who has the desires of a lofty and dainty soul and only seldom finds his table laid and his food prepared the danger will always be great nowadays however it is extraordinarily so thrown into the midst of a noisy and plebeian age with which he does not like to eat out of the same dish he may readily perish of hunger and thirst or should he nevertheless finally fall to of sudden nausea we have probably all sat at tables to which we did not belong and precisely the most spiritual of us who are most difficult to nourish know the dangerous dyspepsia that originates from a sudden insight in disillusionment about our food and our messmates the after-dinner nausea if one wishes to praise at all it is a delicate and at the same time a noble self-control to praise 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 opportunity and provocation to constant misunderstanding to be able to allow oneself the spirit of luxury of taste and morality one must not live among intellectual imbeciles but rather among men whose misunderstandings and mistakes amuse by their refinement or one will have to pay dearly for it he praises me therefore he acknowledges me to be right this asinine method of inference spoils half of the life of us recluses where it brings the asses into our neighborhood and friendship to live in a vast and proud tranquility always beyond to have or not to have one's emotions one's for and against according to choice to lower oneself to them for hours to seat oneself on them as upon horses and often as upon asses for one must know how to make use of their stupidity as well as of their fire to conserve one's 300 foregrounds also one's black spectacles for there are circumstances when nobody must look into our eyes still less into our motives and to choose for company that roguish and cheerful vice politeness and remain master of one's four virtues courage insight sympathy and solitude for solitude is a virtue with us as a sublime bent and biased to purity which defines that in the contact of man and man in society it must be unavoidably impure all society makes one somehow somewhere or sometime commonplace the greatest events and thoughts the greatest thoughts however are the greatest events are longest in being comprehended the generations which are contemporary with them do not experience such events they live past them something happens there is in the realm of stars the light of the furthest stars is longest in reaching man and before it has arrived man denies that there are stars there how many centuries does mine require to be understood that is also a standard one also makes a gradation of rank and an etiquette therewith such as is necessary for mind and for star here is the prospect free the mind exalted footnote good as a post part two act five the words of dr marianus but there is a reverse kind of man who is also upon a height and has also a free prospect but looks downwards what is noble what does the word noble still mean for us nowadays how does the noble man betray himself how does he recognize it under this heavy overcast sky of the commencing plebianism by which everything is rendered opaque and ledden it is not his actions which establish his claim actions are always ambiguous always inscrutable neither is it his works one finds nowadays among artists and scholars plenty of those who betray by their works that are profound longing for nobleness impels them but this very need of nobleness is radically different from the needs of the noble soul itself and it is in fact the eloquent and dangerous sign of the lack thereof it is not the works but the belief which is here decisive and determines the order of rank and to employ once more an old religious formula with a new and deeper meaning it is some fundamental certainty which a noble soul has about itself something which is not to be sought is not to be found and perhaps also is not to be lost the noble soul has reverence for itself there are men who are unavoidably intellectual let them turn and twist themselves as they will and hold their hands before their treacherous eyes as though the hand were not a betrayer it always comes out at last that they have something which they hide namely intellect one of the subtlest means of deceiving at least as long as possible and of successfully representing oneself to be stupider than one really is which in everyday life is often as desirable as an umbrella is called enthusiasm including what belongs to it for instance virtue for as galliani said vertu est entusiasme in the writings of a recluse when always hears something of the echo of the wilderness something of the murmuring tones and timid vigilance of solitude in his strongest words even in his cry itself there sounds a new and more dangerous kind of silence of concealment he who has sat day and night from year's end to year's end alone with his soul and familiar discord and discourse he who has become a cave bear or a treasure seeker or a treasure guardian and dragon in his cave it may be a labyrinth but can also be a gold mine his ideas themselves eventually acquire a twilight color of their own and an odor as much of the depth as of the mold something uncommunicative and repulsive which blows chili upon every passerby the recluse does not believe that a philosopher supposing that a philosopher has always in the first place been a recluse ever expressed his actual and ultimate opinions in books are not books written precisely to hide what is in us indeed he will doubt whether a philosopher can have ultimate and actual opinions at all whether behind every cave in him there is not and must necessarily be a still deeper cave an ampler stranger richer world beyond the surface an abyss behind every bottom beneath every foundation every philosophy is a foreground philosophy this is a recluse's verdict there is something arbitrary in the fact that the philosopher came to a stand here took a retrospect and looked around that he here laid his spade aside and did not dig any deeper there is also something suspicious in it every philosophy also conceals of philosophy every opinion is also a lurking place every word is also a mask every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood the latter perhaps wounds his vanity but the former wounds his heart his sympathy which always says oh why would you also have as hard a time of it as i have man a complex mendacious artful and inscrutable animal uncanny to the other animals by his artifice and sagacity rather than by his strength has invented the good conscience in order finally to enjoy his soul as something simple and the whole of morality is a long audacious falsification by virtue of which generally employment at the site of the soul becomes impossible from this point of view there is perhaps much more in the conception of art than is generally believed a philosopher that is a man who constantly experiences sees hears suspects hopes and dreams extraordinary things who was struck by his own thoughts as if they came from the outside from above and below as a species of events and lightning flashes peculiar to him who is perhaps himself a storm pregnant with new lightnings a pretentious man around whom there is always rumbling and mumbling and gaping and something uncanny going on a philosopher alas a being who often runs away from himself is often afraid of himself but whose curiosity always makes him come to himself again a man who says i like that i take it for my own and mean to guard and protect it from everyone a man who can conduct a case carry out a resolution remain true to an opinion keep hold of a woman punished and overthrow insolence a man who has his indignation and his sword and whom the weak the suffering the oppressive and even the animals willingly submit and naturally belong in short a man who is a master by nature when such a man has sympathy well that sympathy has value but of what account is the sympathy of those who suffer or of those even who preach sympathy there is nowadays throughout almost the whole of europe a sickly irritability and sensitiveness towards pain and a repulsive irrestrainableness and complaining and effeminizing which with the aid of religion and philosophical nonsense seeks to deck itself out as something superior there is a regular cult of suffering the unmanliness of that which is called sympathy by such groups of visionaries is always i believe the first thing that strikes the eye one must resolutely and radically taboo this latest form of bad taste and finally i wish people to put the good amulet guy saber gay science in ordinary language on heart and neck as a protection against it the olympian vice despite the philosopher who is a genuine englishman tried to bring laughter into bad repute in all thinking minds laughing is a bad infirmity of human nature which every thinking mind will strive to overcome hobs i would even allow myself to rank philosophers according to the quality of their laughing up to those who are capable of golden laughter and supposing that gods also philosophize which i'm strongly inclined to believe owing to many reasons i have no doubt that they also know how to laugh thereby in an overman-like and new fashion and at the expense of all serious things gods are fond of ridicule it seems that they cannot refrain from laughter even in holy matters the genius of the heart is that great mysterious one possesses it the tempter god and born ratcatcher of consciences whose voice can descend into the netherworld of every soul who neither speaks a word nor casts a glance in which there may not be some motive or touch of lurement to whose perfection it pertains that he knows how to appear not as he is but in a guys which acts as an additional constraint on his followers to press ever closer to him to follow him more cordially and thoroughly the genius of the heart which imposes silence and attention on everything loud and self-conceited which smooths rough souls and makes them taste a new longing to lie placid as a mirror that the deep heavens may be reflected in them the genius of the heart and to grasp more delicately which sense the hidden and forgotten treasure the drop of goodness and sweet spirituality under thick dark ice and is a divining rod for every grain of gold long buried and imprisoned in mud and sand the genius of the heart from contact with which everyone goes away richer not favored or surprised not as though gratified and oppressed by the good things of others but richer in himself newer than before broken up blown upon and sounded by a thawing wind more uncertain perhaps more delicate more fragile more bruised but full of hopes which is yet lack names full of a new will and current full of a new ill will and countercurrent but what am i doing my friends of whom am i talking to you have i forgotten myself so far that i have not even told you his name unless it be that you have already defined of your own accord who this questionable god and spirit is that wishes to be praised in such a manner for as it happens to everyone who from childhood onward has always been on his legs and in foreign land i have also encountered on my path many strange and dangerous spirits above all however and again and again the one whom i have just spoken in fact no less a personage than the god Dionysus the great equivocator and tempter to whom as you know i once offered in all secrecy and reverence my first fruits the last as it seems to me who has offered a sacrifice to him for i found no one who could understand what i was then doing in the meantime however i have learned much far too much about the philosophy of this god and as i said from mouth to mouth i the last disciple and initiate of the god Dionysus and perhaps i might at last begin to give you my friends as far as i am allowed a little taste of this philosophy in a hushed voice as is but seemingly for it has to do with much that is secret new strange wonderful and uncanny the very fact that Dionysus is a philosopher and that therefore gods also philosophize seems to me a novelty that is not uninsnaring and might perhaps arouse suspicion precisely among philosophers among you my friends there is less to be said against it except that it comes too late and not at the right time for as it has been disclosed to me you are loath nowadays to believe in god and gods it may happen too that in the frankness of my story i must go further than is agreeable to the strict usages of your ears certainly the god in question went further very much further in such dialogues and was always many paces ahead of me indeed if it were allowed i should have to give him according to human usage fine ceremonious tides of lustre and merit i should have to extol his courage as investigator and discoverer his fearless honesty truthfulness and love of wisdom but such a god does not know what to do with all that respectable trumpery and pump keep that he would say for thyself and those like thee and whoever else required i have no reason to cover my nakedness one suspects that this kind of divinity and philosopher perhaps lacks shame he once said under certain circumstances i love mankind and referred thereby to ariadne who was present in my opinion man is an agreeable brave inventive animal that is not his equal upon earth he makes his way even through all aprons i like man and often think how i can still further advance him and make him stronger more evil and more profound stronger more evil and more profound i asked in horror yes he said again stronger more evil and more profound also more beautiful and thereby the tempter god smiled with his halcyon smile as though he had just paid some charming compliment one here sees it once that it is not only shame that this divinity lacks and in general there are good grounds for supposing that in some things the gods could all of them come to us men for instruction we men are more human alas what are you after all my written and painted thoughts not long ago you were so variegated young and malicious so full of thorns and secret spices that you made me sneeze and laugh and now you have already dovetail novelty and some of you i fear are ready to become truths so immortal do they look so pathetically honest so tedious and was it ever otherwise what then do we write and paint we mandarins with chinese brush we immortalizers of things which lend themselves to writing what are we alone capable of painting alas only that which is just about to fade and begins to lose its odor alas only exhausted and departing storms and belated yellow sentiments alas only birds strayed and fatigued by flight which now let themselves be captured with the hand with our hand we immortalize what cannot live and fly much longer things only which are exhausted and mellow and it is only for your afternoon you my written and painted thoughts for which alone i have colors many colors perhaps many variegated softenings and 50 yellows and browns and greens and reds but nobody will divine thereby how you looked in your morning your sudden sparks and marvels of my solitude you my old beloved evil thoughts from the heights by f v nicha translated by la manus midday of life oh season of delight my summer's park unceaseful joy to look to lurk to hark i peer for friends and ready day and night where linger ye my friends the time is right is not the glaciers gray today for you rose garlanded the brooklet seeks you wind cloud with longing thread and thrust themselves yet higher to the blue to spy for you from farthest eagles view my table was spread out for you on high who dwelleth so star near so near the grizzly pit below my realm what realm hath wider boundary my honey who hath sipped its fragrancy friends you are there woe me yet i am not he whom you seek you stare and stop better your wrath could speak i am not i hand gate face changed and what i am to you my friends now am i not am i another strange am i to me yet from me sprung a wrestler by himself too oft self rung hindering too oft my own self's potency wounded and hampered by self victory i sought where so the winds blow keenest there i learned to dwell where no man dwells on lonesome icelorn fell and unlearned man and god and curse and prayer became a ghost haunting the glaciers bear yes my old friends look you turn pale filled or with love and fear go yet not in wrath you could never live here here in the farthest realm of ice and scar a huntsman must one be like shammy sore an evil huntsman was i see how pot my bow was bent strongest was he by whom such bolt was sent woe now that arrow is with peril fraught perilous is none have you unsafe home you sought you go thou didst endure enough o heart strong was thy hope unto new friends thy portals widely hope let old ones be bid memory depart what's thou young then now better young thou art what linked us once together one hopes tie to now to con those lines now fading love once wrote there on is like a parchment which the hand is shy to touch like crackling leaves all seared all dry oh friends no more they are what name for those friends phantom flight knocking at my heart's window pane at night gazing on me that speaks we were and goes oh withered words once fragrant as the rose pinings of youth that might not understand for which i pined which i deemed changed with me kin of my kind but they grew old and thus were doomed and banned none but new kith are native of my land midday of life my second youth's delight my summer's park unrestful joy to long to lurk to hark i peer for friends and ready day and night for my new friends come come the time is right this song is done the sweet sad cry of rue saying out its end a wizard rotted he the timely friend the midday friend no to not ask me who at midday it was when one became as two we keep our feast of feasts sure of our born our aims self-same the guest of guests friends arathustra came the world now laughs the grizzly veil was torn and light and dark were one that wedding mourn end of frederick niches beyond good and evil recorded by livery vox user presleeth pres lethe much comry alabama united states july 2006