Beyond Good and Evil

Credits and Licensing:

The -publishers will be -pleased to send, upon re- quest, an illustrated catalogue setting forth the purpose and ideals of The Modern Library, and describing in detail each volume in the series, C^Every reader of books will find titles he has been looking for, attractively printed, and at an unusually low price

Original author: Friedrich Nietzsche

Translator: HELEN ZIMMERN

Year of original or translation: 1886 AD

Any source archive/website: https://ia803401.us.archive.org/23/items/beyond-good-and-evil_202105/Beyond%20good%20and%20evil.pdf

This edition was prepared and modified by Spark Visions, Inc. (dba Alexandria), https://seekalexandria.com, in 2025. An AI Summary has been added to the title page by Spark Visions, Inc. Original text from the public domain.

This version is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share and adapt this material for any purpose, even commercially, provided proper credit is given.

License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

CHAPTER PAGE Introduction

Preface

Prejudices of Philosophers

The Free Spirit

The Religious Mood

Apophthegms and Interludes

The Natural History of Morals

We Scholars

Our Virtues

Peoples and Countries

What Is Noble?

No philosopher since Kant has left so undeniable an imprint on modem thought as has Friedrich Nietzsche. EvenSchopenhauer, whose influence colored the greater part ofEurope, made no such widespread impression. Not only inethics and literature do we find the moulding hand ofNietzsche at work, invigorating and solidifying; but inpedagogics £ind in art, in politics and religion, the influenciof his doctrines is to be encountered. The facts relating to Nietzsche's life are few and simple.-He was bom at Rodien, a little village in the Prussian province of Saxony, on October 15, 1844; and it is an interestingparadox that this most terrible and devastating critic ofChristianity and its ideals, was the culmination of two longcollateral lines of theologians. There were two other chil-dren in the Nietzsche household—a girl bom in 1846, andason bom in 1850. The girl was named Therese ElizabethAlexandra, and afterward 5he became the philosopher'sclosest companion and guardian and his most voluminousbiographer. The boy, Joseph, did not survive his first year.When Nietzsche's father died the family moved to Naumburg; and Friedrich, then only six years old, was sent to alocal Municipal Boys' School. Later he was withdrawn andentered in a private institution which prepared the youngerstudents for the Cathedral Grammar School. After a fewyears here Nietzsche successfully passed his examinationsfor the well-known Landes-Schule at Pforta, where he re-mained until 1864, enrolling the following term at the University of Bonn.

It was at Boim that a decided change came over hisreligious views; and it was here also that his great friendshipfor Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl, the philologist, developed.When Ritschl was transferred to the University of Leipzig,Nietzsche followed him. Leipzig was the tuming-point ofhis life. Here he met Wagner; became acquainted with"Erwin Rohde; and discovered Schopenhauer. An interestvii viii INTRODUCTION in politics also developed in him; and the war betweenPrussia and Austria fanned his youthful ardor to an almostextravagant degree. Twice he offered his services to themilitary, but both times was rejected on account of hisshortsightedness. In the autumn of 1867, however, a newarmy regulation resulted in his being called to the colors,and he joined the artillery at Naumburg. But he was thrownfrom his horse in training and received a severe injury tohis chest, which necessitated his permanent withdrawal fromservice. In October, 1868, Nietzsche returned to his work at Leipzig, and shortly after, although but twenty-four, he wasoffered the post of Classical Philology at Bale. Two yearslater came the Franco-Prussian War, and he secured serviceas an ambulance attendant in the Hospital Corps. But hishealth was poor, and the work proved too much for him. Hecontracted diphtheria and severe dysentery, and it was neces-sary for him to discontinue his duties entirely. His sistertells us that this illness greatly undermined his health, andwas the first cause of his subsequent condition. He did notwait until he was well before resuming his duties at theUniversity; and this new strain imposed on his alreadydepleted condition had much to do witii bringing on his finalbreakdown.

In 1872, Nietzsche's first important work appeared ^'The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music"; and in1873 he began a series of famous pamphlets which later wereput into book form under the title of "Thoughts Out ofSeason." His health was steadily declining, and during theholidays he alternated between Switzerland and Italy in anendeavor to recuperate. In the former place he was withWagner, but in 1876 his friendship for the composer beganto cool. He had gone to Bayreuth, and there, after hearing"Der Ring des Nibelungen," he became bitter and disgustedat what he believed to be Wagner's compromise with Christianity. But so strong was his affection for Wagner theman, that it was not until ten years had passed that he couldbring himself to write the now famous attack which he hadlong had in mind.

The year after the appearance of "Human Ail-TooIi

INTRODUCTION ixHuman" ("Mensckliches AUzu Mensckliches") , Nietzsche'sillness compelled him to resign his professorship at Bale;and two more years saw the appearance of 'The DawnofDay" ("Morgemoten"), his first book of constructive thinking. The remainder of his life was spent in a fruitlessendeavor to regain his health. For eight years, during allof which time he was busily engaged in writing, he soughtaclimate that would revive him—visiting in turn Sils-Maria inSwitzerland, Genoa, Monaco, Messina, Grunewald, Tautenburg, Rome, Naumburg, Nice, Venice, Mentone, and theRiviera. But to no avail. He was constantly ill and forthe most part alone, and this perturbed and restless periodof his life resolved itself into a continuous struggle againstmelancholy and physical suffering. During these eightyears Nietzsche had written "Thus Spake Zarathustra"("Also Sprack Zarathustra"), "The Joyful Wisdom" ("LaGaya Scienza"), "Beyond Good and Evil" ("Jenseits Guteund Bose"), "The Genealogy of Morals" ("Zur Genealogieder Moral"), "The Case of Wagner," "The Twilight of theIdols" {"Gdtzenddmmerung"), "The Antichrist" ("DerAntichrist"), "Ecce Homo," "Nietzsche contra Wagner,'*and an enormous number of notes which were to constitutehis final and culminating work, "The Will to Power" ("DieWille zur Macht"). The events during this ptnod. ofNietzsche's career were few. Perhaps the most importantwas his meeting with Lou Salome. But even this episode hadsmall bearing on his life, and has been greatly emphasizedby biographers because of its isolation in an existence out-wardly drab and uneventful. In January, 1889, an apopleptic fit marked the beginningof the end. Nietzsche's manner suddenly became alarming.He exhibited numerous eccentricities, so grave as to meanbut one thing: his mind was seriously affected. There haslong been a theory that his insanity was of gradual growth,that, in fact, he was unbalanced from birth. But there isno evidence to substantiate this theory. The statement thathis books were those of a madman is entirely without foundation. His works were thought out in the most clarifiedmanner; in his intercourse with his friends he was restrainedand normal; and his voluminous correspondence showed no

X INTRODUCTION change toward the end either in sentiment or tone. Hisinsanity was sudden; it came without warning; and it ispuerile to point to his state of mind during the last yearsof his life as a criticism of his philosophy. His books muststand or fall on internal evidence. Judged from that stand-point they are scrupulously sane. The cause of Nietzsche's breakdown was due to a numberof influences—his excessive use of chloral which he took forinsomnia, the tremendous strain to which he put his intellect,his constant disappointments and privations, his mentalsolitude, his prolonged physical suffering. We know little ofhis last days before he went insane. Overbeck, in answerto a mad note, found him in Turin, broken. Nietzsche wasput in a private sanitarium at Jena. Recovering somewhathe returned to Naumburg. Later his sister, Frau Forster-Nietzsche, removed him to a villa at Weimar; and threeyears after, on the twenty-fifth of August, 1900, he died.He was buried at Rocken, his native village.

A double purpose animated Nietzsche in his writing of"Beyond Good and Evil" which was begun in the summerof 1885 and finished the following winter. It is at once anexplanation and an elucidation of "Thus Spake Zarathustra,"and a preparatory book for his greatest and most importantwork, "The Will to Power." In it Nietzsche attempts todefine the relative terms of "good" and "evil," and to drawa line of distinction between immorality and unmorality.He saw the inconsistencies involved in the attempt to har-monize an ancient moral code with the needs of modemlife, and recognized the compromises which were constantlybeing made between moral theory and social practice. Hisobject was to establish a relationship between morality andnecessity and to formulate a workable basis for human conduct. Consequently "Beyond Good and Evil" is one of hisMmost important contributions to a new system of ethics, andftouches on many of the deepest principles of his philosophy.Nietzsche opens "Beyond Good and Evil" with a longchapter headed "Prejudices of Philosophers," in which heoutlines the course to be taken by his dialectic. The expo-,, sition is accomplished by two methods; first, by an analysisI INTRODUCTION xiand a refutation of the systems of thinking made use of byantecedent doctrinaires, and secondly, by defining thehypotheses on which his own philosophy is built. Thischapter is a most important one, setting forth, as it does, therationale of his doctrine of the will to power. It establishesNietzsche's philosophic position and presents a closely knitexplanation of the course pursued in the following chapters.The relativity of all truth—the hypothesis so often assumedin his previous work—Nietzsche here defends by analogyand argument. Using other leading forms of philosophyas a ground for exploration, he questions the absolutism oftruth and shows wherein lies the difficulty of a final definition. Nietzsche, in his analyses and criticisms, is not solelydestructive: he is subterraneously constructing his ownphilosophical system founded on the "will to power." Thisphrase is used many times in the careful research of the firstchapter. As the book proceeds, this doctrine develops. Nietzsche's best definition of what he calls the "freespirit," namely: the thinking man, the intellectual aristocrat,the philosopher and ruler, is contained in the twenty-sixpages of the second chapter of "Beyond Good and Evil."In a series of paragraphs—longer than is Nietzsche's wont—the leading characteristics of this superior man are described. The "free spirit," however, must not be confusedwith the superman. The former is the "bridge" which thepresent-day man must cross in the process of surpassing himself. In the delineation and analysis of him, as presented tous here, we can glimpse his most salient mental features.Heretofore, as in "Thus Spake Zarathustra," he has beenbut partially and provisionally defined. Now his instinctsand desires, his habits and activities are outlined. Further-more, we are given an explanation of his relation to theinferior man and to the organisms of his environment. Thechapter is a most important one, for at many points it is asubtle elucidation of many of Nietzsche's dominant philosophic principles. By inference, the differences of classdistinction are strictly drawn. The slave-morality {sklavtnaral) and the master-morality (herrenmoral) , though asyet undefined, are balanced against each other: and thedeportmental standards of the masters and slaves are defined xli INTRODUCTION by way of distinguishing between these two opposing humanfactions. A keen and far-reaching analysis of the various asjDectsassumed by religious faith constitutes a third section of"Beyond Good and Evil." Though touching upon variousinfluences of Christianity, this section is more general in itsreligious scope than even "The Antichrist," many indicationsof which are to be found here. This chapter has to do withthe numerous inner experiences of man, which are directly orindirectly attributable to religious doctrines. The origin ofthe instinct for faith itself is sought, and the results of thisfaith are balanced against the needs of the individuals andof the race. The relation between religious ecstasy andsensuality; the attempt on the part of religious practitionersto arrive at a negation of the will; the transition fromreligious gratitude to fear; the psychology at the bottom ofsaint-worship; —to problems such as these Nietzsche de-votes his energies in his inquiry of the religious mood.There is an illuminating exposition of the important stagesin religious cruelty and of the motives underlying the variousforms of religious sacrifices. A very important phase of Nietzsche's teaching is contained in this criticism of the religious life. The detractorsof the Nietzschean doctrine base their judgments on theassumption that the universal acceptation of his theorieswould result in social chaos. Nietzsche desired no suchgeneral adoption of his beliefs. In his bitterest diatribesagainst Christianity his object was not to shake the faith ofthe great majority of mankind in their idols. He soughtmerely to free the strong men from the restrictions of areligion which fitted the needs of only the weaker membersof society. He neither hoped nor desired to wean the massof humanity from Christianity or any similar dogmatic comfort. On the contrary, he denounced those superficial atheists who endeavored to weaken the foundations of religion.He saw the positive necessity of such religions as a basis forhis slave-morality, and in the present chapter he exhorts therulers to preserve the religious faith of the serving classes,and to use it as a means of government—as an instrumentin the work of disciplining and educating. His entire system

INTRODUCTION xiiiof ethics is built on the complete disseverance of the dominating class and the serving class; and his doctrine oi"beyond good and evil" should be considered only as it pertains to the superior man. To apply it to all classeswould be to reduce Nietzsche's whole system of ethics toimpracticability, and therefore to an absurdity.

Passing from a consideration of the religious moodNietzsche enters a broader sphere of ethical research, andendeavors to trace the history and development of morals.He accuses the philosophers of having avoided the realproblem of morality, namely: the testing of the faith andmotives which lie beneath moral beliefs. This is the taskhe sets for himself, and in his chapter, "The Natural Historyof Morals," he makes an examination of moral origins—anexamination which is extended into an exhaustive treatisein his next book, "The Genealogy of Morals." However, hisdissection here is carried out on a broader and far more general scale than in his previous books, such as "Human All-Too-Human" and "The Dawn of Day." Heretofore he hadconfined himself to codes and systems, to acts of moralityand immorality, to judgments of conducts. In "BeyondGood and Evil" he treats of moral prejudices as forcesworking hand in hand with human progress. In addition,there is a definite attitude of constructive thinking herewhich is absent from his earlier work. In the chapter, "We Scholars," Nietzsche continues hisdefinition of the philosopher, whom he holds to be thehighest type of man. Besides being a mere description ofthe intellectual traits of this "free spirit," the chapter is also an exposition of the shortcomings of those modem menwho pose as philosophers. Also the man of science and theman of genius are analyzed and weighed as to their relativeimportance in the community. In fact, we have hereNietzsche's most concise and complete definition of the indi-viduals upon whom rests the burden of progress. Thesevaluations of the intellectual leaders are important to thestudent, for by one's understanding them, along with thereasons for such valuations, a comprehension of the ensuingvolumes is facilitated. Important material touching on many of the fundamental xiv INTRODUCTION boints of Nietzsche's philosophy is embodied in the chapterentitled "Our Virtues." The more general inquiries intoconduct, and the research along the broader lines of ethics'are supplanted by inquiries into specific moral attributes.The current virtues are questioned, and their historical sig-nificance is determined. The value of such virtues is testedin their relation to different types of men. Sacrifice, sympathy, brotherly love, service, loyalty, altruism, and similarideals of conduct are examined, and the results of such vir-tues are shown to be incompatible with the demands ofmodem social intercourse. Nietzsche poses against thesevirtues the sterner and more rigid forms of conduct, pointingout wherein they meet with the present requirements ofhuman progress. The chapter is a preparation for his estab-lishment of a new morality and also an explanation of thedual ethical code which is one of the main pillars in hisphilosophical structure. Before presenting his precept of adual morality, Nietzsche endeavors to determine woman'splace in the political and social scheme, and points out thenecessity, not only of individual feminine functioning, butof the preservation of a distinct polarity in sexual relationship. In the final chapter many of Nietzsche's philosophicalideas take definite shape. The doctrine of slave-moralityand master-morality, prepared for and partially defined inpreceding chapters, is here directly set forth, and those vir-tues and attitudes which constitute the "nobility" of themaster class are specifically defined. Nietzsche designatesthe duty of his aristocracy, and segregates the human attri-butes according to the rank of individuals. The Dionysianideal, which underlies all the books that follow "BeyondGood and Evil," receives its first direct exposition and application. The hardier human traits, such as egotism, cruelty,arrogance, retaliation and appropriation, are given ascend-ancy over the softer virtues, such as sympathy, charity, for-giveness, loyalty and humility, and are pronounced necessaryconstituents in the moral code of a natural aristocracy. Atthis point is begun the transvaluation of values which was tohave been completed in "The Will to Power.

WiLLARD Huntington Wright.

Supposing that Truth is a woman—what then? Is therenot ground for suspecting that all philosophers, in so faras they have been dogmatists, have failed to understandwomen—that the terrible seriousness and climisy importunity with which they have usually paid their addressesto Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly methods forwinning a woman? Certainly she has never allowed herselfto be won; and at present every kind of dogma stands withsad and discouraged mien if, indeed, it stands at all! Forthere are scoffers who mmntain that it has fallen, that alldogma lies on the groimd—nay more, that it is at its lastgasp. But to speak seriously, there are good groimds forhoping that all dogmatising in philosophy, whatever solemn,whatever conclusive and decided airs it has assumed, mayhave been only a noble puerilism and tjn-onism ; and probablythe time is at hand when it will be once and again understood what has actually sufficed for the basis of such im-posing and absolute philosophical edifices as the dogmatistshave hitherto reared: perhaps some popular superstition ofimmemorial time (such as the soul-superstition, which, inthe form of subject- and ego-superstition, has not yet ceaseddoing mischief): perhaps some play upon words, a deception on the part of grammar, or an audacious generalisationof very restricted, very personal, very human—all-too-humanfacts. The philosophy of the dogmatists, it is to be hoped,was only a promise for thousands of years aftervi-ards, aa,zv

PREFACE ^as astrology in still earlier times, in the service of whichprobably more labour, gold, acuteness, and patience havebeen spent than on any actual science hitherto: we owetoit, and to its "super-terrestrial" pretensions in Asia andEgypt, the grand style of architecture. It seems that inorder to inscribe themselves upon the heart of humanity witheverlasting claims, all great things have first to wander aboutthe earth as enormous and awe-inspiring caricatures: dogmatic philosophy has been a caricature of this kind—forinstcince, the Vedanta doctrine in Asia, and Platonism inEurope. Let us not be ungrateful to it, although it mustcertainly be confessed that the worst, the most tiresome,and the most dangerous of errors hitherto has been a dogmatist error—^namely, Plato's invention of Pure Spirit andthe Good in Itself. But now when it has been surmounted,when Europe, rid of this nightmare, can again draw breathfreely and at least enjoy a healthier—sleep, we, whose dutyis wakefulness itself, are the heirs of all the strength whichthe struggle against this error has fostered. It amounted tothe very inversion of truth, and the denial of the perspective—the fundamental condition—of life, to speak of Spirit andthe Good as Plato spoke of them; indeed one might ask, asa physician: "How did such a malady attack that finestproduct of antiquity, Plato? Had the wicked Socrates reallycorrupted him? Was Socrates after all a corrupter of youths,and deserved his hemlock?" But the struggle against Plato,or—to speak plainer, and for the "people"—the struggleagainst the ecclesiastical oppression of millenniums of Christianity (for Christianity is Platonism for the "people"), pro-duced in Europe a magnificent tension of soul, such as hadnot existed anywhere previously; with such a tensely-strainedbow one can now aim at the furthest goals. As a matter offact, the European feels this tension as a state of distress, PREFACE and twice attempts have been made in grand style to imbendthe bow: once by means of Jesuitism, and the second time bymeans of democratic enlightenment—which, with the aid ofliberty of the press and newspaper-reading, might, in fact,bring it about that the ^irit would not so easily find itselfin "distress"! (The Germans invented gunpowder—allcredit to them! but they again made things square—they in-vented 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 distressof spirit and all the tension of its bow! And perhaps alsothe arrow, the duty, and, who knows? the god to aimat. . . . Sils Maria Upper Engadine, Jum.

Prejudices of Philosophers

The Will to Truth, which is to tempt us to many a hazard-ous enterprise, the famous Truthfulness of which all philosophers have hitherto spoken with respect, what questions has this Will to Truth not laid before us! Whatstrange, perplexmg, questionable questions! It is already along 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 usat last to ask questions ourselves? Who is it really that putsquestions to us here? What really is this "Will to Truth" in us? In fact we made a long halt at the question as to theorigin of this Will—imtil at last we came to an absolutestandstill before a yet more fundamental question. We in- quired about the value of this Will. Granted that we wantthe truth: why not rather untruth? And uncertainty? Evenignorance? The problem of the value of truth presented it- self before us—or was it we who presented ourselves beforethe problem? Which of us is the CEdipus here? Which theSphinx? It would seem to be a rendezvous of questions andnotes of interrogation. And could it be believed that it at last seems to us as if the problem had never been propoundedft 2 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 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, perhapsthere is no greater risk.

"How could anything originate out of its opposite? Forexample, truth out of error? or the Will to Truth out of thewill to deception? or the generous deed out of selfishness?or the pure sun-bright vision of the wise man out of covet-ousness? Such genesis is impossible; whoever dreams of itis a fool, nay, worse than a fool ; things of the highest valuemust have a different origin, an origin of their own—in thistransitory, seductive, illusory, paltry world, in this turmoilof 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 theirsource, and nowhere else! "—This mode of reasoning disclosesthe typical prejudice by which meta-physicians of all timescan be recognised, this mode of valuation is at the back ofall their logical procedure; through this "belief" of theirs,they exert themselves for their "knowledge," for somethingthat is in the end solemnly christened "the Truth." Thefundamental belief of metaphysicians is the belief in anti-theses of values. It never occurred even to the wariest ofthem to doubt here on the very threshold (where doubt,however, was most necessary) ; though they had madeasolemn vow, *'de omnibus dubitandum." For it may bedoubted, firstly, whether antitheses exist at all ; and secondly,whether the popular valuations and anthitheses of value uponwhich metaphysicians have set their seal, are not perhapsmerely superficial estimates, merely provisional perspectives,besides being probably made from some comer, perhaps froi

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 3below—"frog perspectives," as it were, to borrow an expres- sion current among painters. In spite of all the value whichmay belong to the true, the positive, and the unselfish, it might be possible that a higher and more fimdamental valuefor life generally should be assigned to pretence, to the will to delusion, to selfishness, and cupidity. It might even bepossible that what constitutes the value of those good andrespected things, consists precisely in their being insidiously related, knotted, and crocheted to these evil and apparentlyopposed things—perhaps even in being essentially identical with them. Perhaps! But who wishes to concern himself with such dangerous "Perhapses"! 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.

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 amongstthe instinctive functions, and it is so even m the case of philosophical thinking; one has here to learn anew, as one learned anew about heredity and "innateness." As little as the act of birth comes into consideration in the whole process andprocedure of heredity, just as little is "being-conscious" op- posed to the instinctive in any decisive sense; the greater part of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly in- fluenced 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, physio- 4 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL logical demands, for the maintenance of a definite modeoflife. For example, that the certain is worth more than theimcertain, that illusion is less valuable than "truth": suchvaluations, in spite of their regulative importance for us,might notwithstanding be only superficial valuations, special kinds of niaiserie, such as may be necessary for themaintenance of beings such as ourselves. Supposing, in effect, that man is not just the "measure of things." . . .

The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection toit: it is here, perhaps, that our new language sounds moststrangely. The question is, how far an opinion is life-fur-thering, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps speciesrearing; and we are fundamentally inclined to maintain thatthe falsest opinions (to which the synthetic judgmentsapriori belong), are the most indispensable to us; that withouta recognition of logical fictions, without a comparison ofreality with the purely imagined world of the absolute andimmutable, without a constant covmterfeiting of the workby means of numbers, man could not live—that the renun-jciation of false opinions would be a renunciation of life, negation of life. To recognise untruth as a condition of lifeithat is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of value a dangerous maimer, and a philosophy which ventures to d<]so, has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil.

That which causes philosophers to be regarded half-distrustfully and half-mockingly, is not the oft-repeated disco\ery how innocent they are—^how often and easily they ma

BEYOND GOOD ANfD EVIL 5mistakes and lose their way, in short, how childish andchildlike they are,—but that there is not enough honestdealing with them, whereas they all raise a loud and virtuousoutcry when the problem of truthfulness is even hinted atin the remotest manner. They all pose as though their realopmions had been discovered and attained through the self-evolving of a cold, pure, divinely indifferent dialectic (incontrast to all sorts of mystics, who, fairer and foolisher, talkof "inspiration") ; whereas, in fact, a prejudiced proposition,idea, or "suggestion," which is generzilly their heart's desireabstracted and refined, is defended by them with argumentssought out after the event. They are all advocates who donot wish to be regarded as such, generally astute defenders,also, of their prejudices, which they dub "truths,"—and veryfar from having the conscience which bravely admits this toitself; very far from having the good taste of the couragewhich goes so far as to let this be understood, p)erhaps towarn friend or foe, or in cheerful confidence and self-ridicule.The spectacle of the Tartuffery of old Kant, equally stiff anddecent, with which he entices us into the dialectic by-waysthat lead (more correctly mislead) to his "categorical imperative"—makes us fastidious ones smile, we who find nosmall amusement in spying out the subtle tricks of oldmoralists and ethical preachers. Or, still more so, the hocus-pocus in mathematical form, by means of which Spinozahas, as it were, clad his philosophy in mail and mask—in fact,the "love of his wisdom," to translate the term fairly andsquarely—in order thereby to strike terror at once into theheart of the assailant who should dare to cast a glance onthat mvincible maiden, that Pallas Athene:—how much ofpersonal timidity and vulnerability does this masquerade ofa sickly recluse betray!

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL It has gradually become clear to me what every greatphilosophy up till now has consisted of—namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography; and moreover that the moral (orimmoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted thetrue vital germ out of which the entire plant has alwaysgrown. Indeed, to understand how the abstrusest metaphysical assertions of a philosopher have been arrived at, it isalways well (and wise) to first ask oneself: ''What moralitydo they (or does he) aim at?" Accordingly, I do not believethat an "impulse to knowledge" is the father of philosophy;but that another impulse, here as elsewhere, has only madeuse of knowledge (and mistaken knowledge!) as an instru-ment. But whoever considers the fundamental impulses ofman with a view to determining how far they may have hereacted as inspiring genii (or as demons and cobolds) , will findthat they have all practised philosophy at one time or another, and that each one of them would have been only tooglad to look upon itself as the ultimate end of existence andthe legitimate lord over all the other impulses. For everyimpulse is imperious, and as such, attempts to philosophise.To be sure, in the case of scholars, in the case of reallyscientific men, it may be otherwise—"better," if you will;there there may really be such a thing as an "impulse toI:nowledge," some kind of small, independent clock-work,which, when well wound up, works away industriously to thatend, without the rest of the scholarly impulses taking anymaterial part therein. The actual "interests" of the scholar,therefore, are generally in quite another direction—in thefamily, perhaps, or in money-making, or in politics; it is,I BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 7in fact, almost indifferent at what point of research his little machine is placed, and whether the hopeful yoimg workerbecomes a good philologist, a mushroom specialist, or achemist; he is not characterised by becoming this or that. Inthe philosopher, on the contrary, there is absolutely nothingimpersonal; and above all, his morality furnishes a decidedand decisive testimony as to who he is,—that is to say, inwhat order the deepest impulses of his nature stand to eachother.

How malicious philosophers can be! I know of nothingmore stinging than the joke Epicurus took the liberty ofmaking on Plato and the Platonists; he called them Dionysiokolakes. In its original sense, and on the face of it, theword signifies "Flatterers of Dionysius"—consequently, tyrants' accessories and lick-spittles; besides this, however, it isas much as to say, "They are all actors, there is nothinggenuine about them" (for Dionysiokolax was a popular namefor an actor). And the latter is really the malignant re-proach that Epicurus cast upon Plato: he was annoyed bythe grandiose manner, the mise en scene style of which Platoand his scholars were masters—of which Epicurus was nota master! He, the old school-teacher of Samos, who satconcealed in his little garden at Athens, and wrote threehundred books, perhaps out of rage and ambitious envy ofPlato, who knows! Greece took a hundred years to findout who the garden-god Epicurus really was. Did she everfind out? I BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL

There is a point in every philosophy at which the "conviction" of the philosopher appear^ on the scene; or, to put itin the words of an ancient mystery: Adventavit asinus, Pulcher et fortissimus.

You desire to live "according to Nature"? Oh, you nobleStoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a beinglike Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent,without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, atonce fruitful and barren and imcertam: imagine to yourselves indifference as a power—^how could you live in ac-cordance with such indifference? To live—is not that justendeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is notliving valuing, preferring, being imjust, being limited, en-deavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the sameas "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 quiteotherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapturethe canon of your law in Nature, you want something quitethe contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-de-luders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals andideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate theitherein; you insist that it shall be Nature "according to thiStoa," and would like everything to be made after your oinaIenL,f.

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 9image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoic-ism ! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselvesso long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity tosee Nature falsely, that is to say. Stoically, that you are nolonger able to see it otherwise—and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hopethat because you are able to tyrannise over yourselves

Stoicism is self-tyranny—Nature will also allow herself to bet)n'annised over: is not the Stoic a />cr^ of Nature? , . . Butthis is an old and everlasting story: what happened in oldtimes with the Stoics still happens to-day, £is soon as evera philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always createsthe world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritualWill to Power, the will to "creation of the world," the willto the causa prima.

The eagerness and subtlety, I should even say craftiness,with which the problem of "the real and the apparent world"is dealt with at present throughout Europe, furnishes foodfor thought and attention; and he who hears only a "Willto Truth" in the background, and nothing else, cannot cer-Jainly boast of the sharpest ears. In rare and isolated cases,^may really have happened that such a Will to Truth—lin extravagant and adventurous pluck, a metaphysician'sibition of the forlorn hope—has participated therein: thatich in the end always prefers a handful of "certainty" to[whole cartload of beautiful possibilities; there may evenpuritanical fanatics of conscience, who prefer to put their^t trust in a sure nothing, rather than in an uncertain someig. But that is Nihilism, and the sign of a despairing. 10 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL mortally wearied soul, notwithstanding the courageous bearing such a virtue may display. It seems, however, to beotherwise with stronger and livelier thinkers who are stilleager for life. In that they side against appearance, andspeak superciliously of "perspective," in that they rank thecredibility of their own bodies about as low as the credibilityof the ocular evidence that "the earth stands still," and thus,apparently, allowing with complacency their securest possession to escape (for what does one at present believe inmore firmly than in one's body?),—who knows if they arenot really trying to win back something which was formerlyan even securer possession, something of the old domainofthe faith of former times, perhaps the "immortal soul," per-haps "the old God," in short, ideas by which they could livebetter, that is to say, more vigourously and more joyously,than by "modem ideas"? There is distrust of these modemideas in this mode of looking at things, a disbelief in all thathas been constructed yesterday and to-day; there is per-haps some slight admixture of satiety and scom, which canno longer endure the bric-a-brac of ideas of the most variedorigin, such as so-called Positivism at present throws on themarket; a disgust of the more refined taste at the village-fairmotleyness and patchiness of all these reality-philosophasters,in whom there is nothing either new or true, except thismotlejTiess. Therein it seems to me that we should agreewith those sceptical anti-realists and knowledge-microscopistsof the present day; their instinct, which repels them frommodern reality, is unrefuted . . . what do their retrogradeby-paths concem us! The main thing about them is nolAthat they wish to go "back," but that they wish to get ca^cytherefrom. A little more strength, swing, courage, andartistic power, and they would be o§—and not back!

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL iiI IX It seems to me that there is everywhere an attempt atpresent to divert attention from the actual influence whichKant exercised on German philosophy, and especially to ig-nore prudently the value which he set upon himself. Kantwas first and foremost proud of his Table of Categories;with it in his hand he said: "This is the most difficult thingthat could ever be undertaken on behalf of metaphysics."Let us only understand this "could be"! He was proud ofhaving discovered a new faculty in man, the faculty ofsynthetic judgment a priori. Granting that he deceived himself in this matter; the development and rapid flourishingof German philosophy depended nevertheless on his pride,and on the eager rivalry of the younger generation to dis-cover if possible something—at all events "new faculties" of which to be still prouder! —But let us reflect for amoment—it is high time to do so. "How are synthetic judgments a priori possible?" Kant asks himself—and what isreally his answer? "By means of a means (faculty)"—^butunfortunately not in five words, but so circumstantially, imposingly, and with such display of German profimdity andverbal flourishes, that one altogether loses sight of thecomical niaiserie allemande involved in such an answer. People were beside themselves with delight over this new fac-^ ulty, and the jubilation reached its climeix v/hen Kant furtherdiscovered a moral faculty in man—for at that time Germanswere still moral, not yet dabbling in the "Politics of hardfact." Then came the honeymoon of German philosophy.All the young theologians of the Tiibingen institution wentI mmediately into the groves—all seeking for "faculties."jri .tod what did they not find—in that innocent, rich, and still II 12 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL youthful period of the German spirit, to which Romanticism,the malicious fairy, piped and sang, when one could not yetdistinguish between "finding" and "inventing"! Above alla faculty for the "transcendental"; Schelling christened it,intellectual intuition, and thereby gratified the most earnestlongings of the naturally pious-inclined Germans. One cando no greater wrong to the whole of this exuberant and ec-centric movement (which was really youthfulness, notwithstanding that it disguised itself so boldly in hoary and senileconceptions), than to take it seriously, or even treat it withmoral indignation. Enough, however—the world grew older,and the dream vanished. A time came when people rubbedtheir foreheads, and they still rub them to-day. People hadbeen dreaming, and first and foremost—old Kant. "Bymeans of a means (faculty)"—he had said, or at least meantto say. But, is that—an answer? An explanation? Oris it not rather merely a repetition of the question? Howdoes opium induce sleep? "By means of a means (faculty),"namely the virtus dormitiva, replies the doctor in Moliere,Quia est in eo virtus dormitiva, Cujus est natura sensus assoupire.

But such replies belong to the realm of comedy, and it ishigh time to replace the Kantian question, "How are synthetic judgments a priori possible?" by another question,"Why is belief in such judgments necessary?"—in effect, ithigh time that we should imderstand 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 spokeUjjand roughly and readily—synthetic judgments a priori shoulcnot "be possible" at all; we have no right to them; in oui

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 13mouths they are nothing but false judgments). Only, ofcourse, the belief in their truth is necessary, as plausiblebelief and ocular evidence belonging to the perspective viewof life. And finally, to call to mind the enormous influencewhich "German philosophy"—I hope you understand itsright to inverted commas (gooseteet)?—has exercisedthroughout the whole of Europe, there is no doubt that acertain virtus dormitiva had a share in it; thanks to Germanphilosophy, it was a delight to the noble idlers, the virtuous,the mystics, the artists, the three- fourths Christians, and thepolitical obscurantists of all nations, to find an antidote tothe still overwhelming sensualism which overflowed fromthe last century into this, in short "sensus assoupire." . . . y2

As regards materialistic atomism, it is one of the bestrefuted theories that have been advanced, and in Europethere is now perhaps no one in the learned world so unscholarly as to attach serious signification to it, except forconvenient everyday use (as an abbreviation of the meansof expression) —thanks chiefly to the Pole Boscovich: heand the Pole Copernicus have hitherto been the greatest andmost successful opponents of ocular evidence. For whilstCopernicus has persuaded us to believe, contrary to all thesenses, that the earth does not stand fast, Boscovich hastaught us to abjure the belief in the last thing that "stoodfast" of the earth—the belief in "substance," in "matter,"in the earth-residuum, and particle-atom: it is the greatesttriumph over the senses that has hitherto been gained onearth. One must, however, go still further, and also declarewar, relentless war to the knife, against the "atomistic re-quirements" which still lead a dangerous after-life in places 14 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL where no one suspects them, like the more celebrated "metaphysical requirements": one must also above all give the fin-ishing stroke to that other and more portentous atomismwhich Christianity has taught best and longest, the soul-atomism. Let it be permitted to designate by this expressionthe belief which regards the soul as something indestructible,eternal, indivisible, as a monad, as an atomon: this beliefought to be expelled from science! Between ourselves, it isnot at all necessary to get rid of "the soul" thereby, and thusrenounce one of tlie oldest and most venerated hj^othesesas happens frequently to the clumsiness of naturalists, whocan hardly touch on the soul without immediately losing it.But the way is open for new acceptations and refinementsofthe soul-hypothesis; and such conceptions as "mortal soul,"and "soul of subjective multiplicity," and "soul as socialstructure of the instincts and passions," want henceforthtohave legitimate rights in science. In that the new psychologist is about to put an end to the superstitions which havehitherto flourished with almost tropical luxuriance around theidea of the soul, he is really, as it were, thrusting himself intoa new desert and a new distrust—it is possible that the olderpsychologists had a merrier and more comfortable timeofit; eventually, however, he finds that precisely thereby heis also condemned to invent—and, who knows? perhapstodiscover the new.

Psychologists should bethink themselves before puttingdown the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinctof an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to dis-charge its strength—^life itself is Will to Power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results> BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL i^thereof. In short, here, as everywhere else, let us beware ofsuperfluous teleological principles! —one of which is the in-stinct of self-preservation (we owe it to Spinoza's inconsist-ency) . It is thus, in effect, that method ordains, which mustbe essentially economy of principles.

It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that nat~ural philosophy is only a world-exposition and world-ar-rangement (according to us, if I may say so!) and not aworld-explanation; but in so far as it is based on belief inthe senses, it is regarded as more, and for a long time tocome must be regarded as more—namely, as an explanation.It has eyes and fingers of its own, it has ocular evidenceand palpableness of its own: this operates fascinatingly, persuasively, and convincingly upon an age with fundamentallyplebeian tastes—in fact, it follows instinctively the canonof trutli of eternal popular sensualism. "What is clear, whatis "explained"? Only that which can be seen and felt—onemust pursue every problem thus far. Obversely, however,the charm of the Platonic mode of thought, which was anaristocratic mode, consisted precisely in resistance to obvioussense-evidence—perhaps among men who enjoyed evenstronger and more fastidious senses than our contemporaries,but who knew how to find a higher triumph in remainingmasters of them: and this by means of pale, cold, grey conceptional networks which they threw over the motley whirlof the senses—the mob of the senses, as Plato said. In thisovercoming of the world, and interpreting of the world inthe manner of Plato, there was an enjoyment different fromthat which the physicists of to-day offer us—and likewisethe Darwinists and antiteleologists among the physiological

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL workers, with their principle of the "smallest possible effort,"and the greatest possible blunder. "Where there is nothingmore to see or to grasp, there is also nothing more for mento do"—that is certainly an imperative different from thePlatonic one, but it may notwithstanding be the right imperative for a hardy, labourious race of machinists andbridge-builders of the future, who have nothing but roughwork to perform.

IS To study physiology with a clear conscience, one mustinsist on the fact that the sense-organs are not phenomenainthe sense of the idealistic philosophy; as such they certainlycould not be causes! Sensualism, therefore, at least as regulative hypothesis, if not as heuristic principle. What? Andothers say even that the external world is the work of ourorgans? But then our body, as a part of this external world,would be the work of our organs! But then our organsthemselves would be the work of our organs! It seems tome that this is a complete reductio ad absurdum, if the con-ception causa sui is something fundamentally absurd. Consequently, the external world is not the work of our organs—i6

There are still harmless self-observers who believe thatthere are "immediate certainties"; for instance, "I think,"or as the superstition of Schopenhauer puts it, "I will"; asthough cognition here got hold of its object purely and simplyas "the thing in itself," without any falsification taking placeeither on the part of the subject or the object. I wouldrepeat it, however, a hundred times, that "immediate cer- BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 17tainty," as well as "absolute knowledge" and the "thing initself," involve a contradictio in adjecto; we really ought tofree ourselves from the misleading significance of words!The people on their part may think that cognition is knowingall about things, but the philosopher must say to himself:"When I analyse the process that is expressed in the sentence, 'I think,' I find a whole series of daring assertions, theargumentative proof of which would be difficult, perhapsimpossible: for instance, that it is / who think, that theremust necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking isan activity and operation on the part of a being whoisthought of as a cause, that there is an 'ego,' and finally, thatit is already determined what is to be designated by thinking—that I know what thinking is. For if I had not alreadydecided within myself what it is, by what standard couldIdetermine whether that which is just happening is not perhaps'willing' or 'feeling'? In short, the assertion 'I think,' as-sumes that I compare my state at the present moment withother states of myself which I know, in order to determinewhat it is; on accoimt of this retrospective connection withfurther 'knowledge,' it has, at any rate, no immediate cer-tainty for me."—In place of the "immediate certainty" inwhich the people may believe in the special case, the philosopher thus finds a series of ^netaphysical questions presentedto him, veritable conscience questions of the intellect, to wit:"From whence did I get the notion of 'thinking'? WhydoI believe in cause and effect? What gives me the right tospeak of an 'ego,' and even of an 'ego' as cause, and finallyof an 'ego' as cause of thought?" He who ventures to an-swer these metaphysical questions at once by an appeal toa sort of intuitive perception, like the person who says, "Ithink, and know that this, at least, is true, actual, and cer-tain"—will encounter a smile and two notes of interrogation

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL in a philosopher nowadays. "Sir," the philosopher' will per-haps give him to understand, "it is improbable that you arenot mistaken, but why should it be the truth?"

With regard to the superstitions of logicians, I shall nevertire of emphasising a small, terse fact, which is unwillinglyrecognised by these credulous minds—namely, that a thoughtcomes when "it" wishes, and not when "I" wish; so that itis 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 as-suredly not an "immediate certainty." After all, one haseven gone too far with this "one thinks"—even the "one"contains an interpretation of the process, and does not be-long to the process itself. One infers here according to theusual grammatical formula—"To think is an activity; everyactivity requires an agency that is active; consequently" . . . It was pretty much on the same lines that the older atomismsought, besides the operating "power," the material particlewherein it resides and out of which it operates—the atom.More rigourous minds, however, learnt at last to get alongwithout this "earth-residuum," and perhaps some day weshall accustom ourselves, even from the logician's point ofview, to get along without the little "one" (to which thdjworthy old "ego" has refined itself).

It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it isrefutable; it is precisely thereby that it attracts the more

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL i^subtle minds. It seems that the hundred-times-refuted theoryof the "free will" owes its persistence to this charm alone;some one is always app)earing who feels himself strong enoughto refute it.

Philosophers are accustomed to speak of the will as thoughit were the best-known thing in the world; indeed, Schopenhauer has given us to understand that the will alone is reallyknown to us, absolutely and completely known, without de-duction or addition. But it again and again seems to me thatin this case Schopenhauer also only did what philosophers arein the habit of doing—he seems to have adopted a popularprejudice and exaggerated it. Willing—seems to me to beabove all something complicated, something that is a unityonly in name—and it is precisely in a name that popularprejudice lurks, which has got the mastery over the inade-quate precautions of philosophers in all ages. So let us foronce be more cautious, let us be "unphilosophical": let ussay that in all willing there is firstly a plurality of sensations, namely, the sensation of the condition "away fromwhich we go," the sensation of the condition "towards whichwe 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 *'wiH"anything. Therefore, just as sensations (and indeed manykinds of sensations) are to be recognised as ingredients ofthe will, so, in the second place, thinking is also to be recognised; in every act of the will there is a ruling thought; and let us not imagine it possible to sever this thought fromthe "willing," as if the will would then remain over! In the 20 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL third place, the will is not only a complex of sensation andthinking, but it is above all an emotion, and in fact theemotion of the command. That which is termed "freedomof the will" is essentially the emotion of supremacy in re-spect to him who must obey: "I am free, 'he' must obey" this consciousness is inherent in every will; and equally sothe straining of the attention, the straight look which fixesitself exclusively on one thing, the unconditional judgmentthat "this and nothing else is necessary now," the inwardcertainty that obedience will be rendered—and whatever elsepertains to the position of the commander. A man who willscommands something within himself which renders obedience,or which he believes renders obedience. But now let usnotice what is the strangest thing about the will,—this affairso extremely complex, for which the people have only onename. Inasmuch as in the given circumstances we are at thesame time the commanding and the obeying parties, and asthe obe5dng party we know the sensations of constraint, impulsion, pressure, resistance, and motion, which usually com-mence immediately after the act of will; inasmuch as, on theother hand, we are accustomed to disregard this duality,and to deceive ourselves about it by means of the syntheticterm "I": a whole series of erroneous conclusions, and con-sequently of false judgments about the will itself, has be-come attached to the act of willing—to such a degree thathe who wills believes firmly that willing suffices for action.Since fn the majority of cases there has only been exercise ofwill when the effect of the command—consequently obedience, and therefore action—was to be expected, the appear-ance has translated itself into the sentiment, as if there werea necessity of effect; in a word, he who wills believes witha fair amount of certainty that will and action are somehowone; he ascribes the success, the carrying out of the willing, BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 21to the will itself, and thereby enjoys an increase of the sensation of power which accompanies all success. "FreedomofWill"—that is the expression for the complex state of delight of the person exercising volition, who commands andat the same time identifies himself with the executor of theorder—who, as such, enjoys also the triumph over obstacles,but thinks within himself that it was really his own willthat overcame them. In this way the person exercising volition adds the feelings of delight of his successful executiveinstruments, the useful "underwills" or under-souls—indeed,our body is but a social structure composed of many souls—to his feelings of delight as commander. L'effet c'est mot:what happens here is what happens in every well-constructedand happy commonwealth, namely, that the governing classidentifies itself with the successes of the commonwealth. Inall willing it is absolutely a question of commanding andobeying, on the basis, as already said, of a social structurecomposed of many "souls"; on which account a philosophershould claim the right to include willing-as-such within thesphere of morals—regarded as the doctrine of the relationsof supremacy imder which the phenomenon of "life" manifests itself.

That the separate philosophical ideas are not anythingoptional or autonomously evolving, but grow up in connectionand relationship with each other; that, however suddenlyand arbitrarily they seem to appear in the history of thought,they nevertheless belong just as much to a system as thecollective members of the fauna of a Continent—is betrayedin the end by the circumstance: how unfailingly the mostdiverse philosophers always fill in again a definite funda- 2 2 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL mental scheme of possible philosophies. Under an invisiblespell, they always revolve once more in the same orbit;however independent of each other they may feel themselves with their critical or systematic wills, something withinthem leads them, something impels them in definite order theone after the other—to wit, the innate methodology and re-lationship of their ideas. Their thinking is, in fact, far lessa discovery than a re-recognising, a remembering, a returnand a home-coming to a far-off, ancient common-householdof the soul, out of which those ideas formerly grew: philosophising is so far a kind of atavism of the highest order. Thewonderful family resemblance of all Indian, Greek, andGerman philosophising is easily enough explained. In fact,where there is affinity of language, owing to the commonphilosophy of grammar—I mean owing to the unconsciousdomination and guidance of similar grammatical functions it cannot but be that everything is prepared at the outsetfor a similar development and succession of philosophicalsystems; just as the way seems barred against certain otherpossibilities of world-interpretation. It is highly probablethat philosophers within the domain of the Ural-Altaic lan-guages (where the conception of the subject is least de-veloped) look otherwise "into the world," and will be foundon paths of thought different from those of the Indo Ger-mans and Mussulmans, the spell of certain grammaticalfunctious is ultimately also the spell of physiological valuations and racial conditions.—So much by way of rejectingLocke's superficiality with regard to the origin of ideas.

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 3321

The causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has yetbeen conceived, it is a sort of logical violation and unnaturalness; but the extravagant pride of man has managedtoentangle itself profoundly and frightfully with this veryfolly. 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 theentire and ultimate responsibility for one's actions oneself,and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and societytherefrom, involves nothing less than to be precisely thiscausa sui, and, with more than Munchausen daring, to pulloneself up into existence by the hair, out of the slough ofnothingness. If any one should find out in this manner thecrass stupidity of the celebrated conception of "free will"and put it out of his head altogether, I beg of him to carryhis "enlightenment" a step further, and also put out of hishead the contrary of this monstrous conception of "freewill": I mean "non-free will," which is tantamoimt to amisuse of cause and effect. One should not wrongly materialise "cause" and "effect," as the natural philosophers da(and whoever like them naturalise in thinking at present),according to the prevailing mechanical doltishness whichmakes the cause press and push until it "effects" its end;one should use "cause" and "effect" only as pure conceptions, that is to say, as conventional fictions for the purposeof designation and mutual understanding, not for explanation. In "being-in-itself" there is nothing of "casual-connection," of "necessity," or of "psychological non-freedom;there the effect does not follow the cause, there "law" doesnot obtain. It is we alone who have devised cause, sequence^ 24 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL reciprocity, relativity, constraint, number, law, freedom, motive, and purpose; and when we interpret and intermix this symbol-world, as "being in itself," with things, we act oncemore as we have always acted

mythologically. The "nonfree will" is mythology; in real life it is only a question ofstrong and weak wills.—It is almost always a symptom ofwhat is lacking in himself, when a thinker, in every "casual-connection" and "psychological necessity," manifests something of compulsion, indigence, obsequiousness, oppression,and non-freedom; it is suspicious to have such feelings—theperson betrays himself. And in general, if I have observedcorrectly, the "non-freedom of the will" is regarded as aproblem from two entirely opposite standpoints, but alwaysin a profoundly personal manner: some will not give uptheir "responsibility," their belief in themselves, the personalright to their merits, at any price (the vain races belong tothis class) ; others on the contrary, do not wish to be answerable for anything, or blamed for anything, and owing to aninward self-contempt, seek to get out of the business, nomatter how. The latter, when they write books, are in thehabit at present of taking the side of criminals; a sort ofsocialistic sympathy is their favourite disguise. And as amatter of fact, the fatalism of the weak-willed embellishesitself surprisingly when it can pose as "la religion de la souf-jrance humaine"; that is its "good taste."

Let me be pardoned, as an old philologist who cannotdesist from the mischief of putting his finger on bad modesof interpretation, but "Nature's conformity to law," of whichyou physicists talk so proudly, as though—why, it exists onlyowing to your interpretation and bad "philology." It is no

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 35matter of fact, no "text," but rather just a naively humanitarian adjustment and perversion of meaning, with whichyou make abundant concessions to the democratic instinctsof the modem soul! "Everywhere equality before the lawNature 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 asecond and more refined atheism—is once more disguised."Ni dieu, ni maitre"—that, also, is what you want; andtherefore "Cheers for natural law!"—is it not so? But, ashas been said, that is interpretation, not text; and somebodymight come along, who, with opposite intentions and modesof interpretation, could read out of the same "Nature," andwith regard to the same phenomena, just the tyrannicallyinconsiderate and relentless enforcement of the claims ofpower—an interpreter who should so place the unexceptionalness and unconditionalness of all "Will to Power" beforeyour eyes, that almost every word, and the word "tyranny'*itself, would eventually seem imsuitable, or like a weakeningand softening metaphor—as being too human; and whoshould, nevertheless, end by asserting the same about thisworld as you do, namely, that it has a "necessary" and "cal-culable" course, not, however, because laws obtain in it, butbecause they are absolutely lacking, and every power effectsits ultimate consequences every moment. Granted that thisalso is only interpretation—and you will be eager enoughtomake this objection?—well, so much the better.

All psychology hitherto has run aground on moral pre-judices and timidities, it has not dared to launch out intothe depths. In so far as it is allowable to recognise in that 26 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL which has hitherto been written, evidence of that which hashitherto been kept silent, it seems as if nobody had yefharboured the notion of psychology as the Morphology andDevelopment-doctrine of the Will to Power, as I conceiveof it. The power of moral prejudices has penetrated deeplyfnto the most intellectual world, the world apparently mostindifferent and unprejudiced, and has obviously operatedIn an injiuious, obstructive, blinding, and distorting manner.A proper physio-psychology has to contend with unconsciousantagonism in the heart of the investigator, it has "theheart" against it: even a doctrine of the reciprocal conditionalness of the "good" and the "bad" impulses, causes (asrefined immorality) distress and aversion in a still strongand manly conscience—still more so, a doctrine of the derivation of all good impulses from bad ones. If, however, aperson should regard even the emotions of hatred, envy,covetousness, and imperiousness as life-conditioning emotions, as factors which must be present, fundamentally andessentially, 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 sea-sickness.And yet this hypothesis is far from being the strangest andmost painful in this immense and almost new domain ofdangerous knowledge; and there are in fact a hundred goodreasons why every one should keep away from it who cando so! On the other hand, if one has once drifted hitherwith one's bark, well! very good! now let us set our teethfirmly! let us open our eyes and keep our hand fast on thehelm! We sail away right over morality, we crush out, wedestroy perhaps the remains of our own morality by daringto make our voyage thither—^but what do we matter! Neveryet did a projounder world of insight reveal itself to daringtravellers and adventurers, and the psychologist who thus

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 27"makes a sacrifice"—it is not the sacrifizio dell' intelletto,on the contrary! —will at least be entitled to demand in re-turn that psychology shall once more be recognised as thequeen of the sciences, for whose service and equipment theother sciences exist. For psychology is once more the pathto the fundamental problems.

The Free Spirit

sancta simplicitas! In what strange simplification andfalsification man lives! One can never cease wondering whenonce one has got eyes for beholding this marvel! How wehave made everything around us clear and free and easyand simple! how we have been able to give our senses apassport to everything superficial, our thoughts a god-likedesire for wanton pranks and wrong inferences! —how fromthe beginning, we have contrived to retain our ignorance inorder to enjoy an almost inconceivable freedom, thoughtlessness, imprudence, heartiness, and gaiety—in order toenjoy life! And only on this solidified, granite-like foundation of ignorance could knowledge rear itself hitherto, thewill to knowledge on the foundation of a far more powerfulwill, the will to ignorance, to the uncertain, to the untrue!Not as its opposite, but—as its refinement! It is to behoped, indeed, that language, here as elsewhere, will not getover its awkwardness, and that it will continue to talk ofopposites where there are only degrees and many refinementsof gradation; it is equally to be hoped that the incarnatedTartuffery of morals, which now belongs to our unconquerable "flesh and blood," will turn the words round in the28 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 29mouths of us discerning ones. Here and there we understand it, and laugh at the way in which precisely the bestknowledge seeks most to retain us in this simplified, thor-oughly artificial, suitably imagined and suitably falsifiedworld: at the way in which, whether it will or not, it loveserror, because, as living itself, it loves life!

After such a cheerful commencement, a serious wordwould fain be heard; it appeals to the most serious minds.Take care, ye philosophers and friends of knowledge, andbeware of martyrdom! Of suffering ''for the truth's sake"!even in your own defence! It spoils all the innocence andfine neutrality of your conscience; it makes you headstrongagainst objections and red rags; it stupefies, animalises, andbrutalises, when in the struggle with danger, slander, suspicion, expulsion, and even worse consequences of enmity,ye have at last to play your last card as protectors of truthupon earth—as though "the Truth" were such an innocentand incompetent creature as to require protectors! and youof all people, ye knights of the sorrowful countenance,Messrs Loafers and Cobweb-spinners of the spirit! Finally,ye know sufficiently well that it cannot be of any consequenceif ye just carry your point; ye know that hitherto no philosopher has carried his point, and that there might be a morelaudable truthfulness in every little interrogative mark whichyou place after your special words and favourite doctrines(and occasionally after yourselves) than in all the solemnpantomime and trumping games before accusers and lawcourts! Rather go out of the way! Flee into concealment!And have your masks and your ruses, that ye may be mistaken for what you are, or somewhat feared! And pray, 30 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL don't forget the garden, the garden with golden trellis-work!And have people around you who are as a garden—or asmusic on the waters at eventide, when already the day be-comes a memory. Choose the good solitude, the free, wanton, lightsome solitude, which also gives you the right stillto remain good in any sense whatsoever! How poisonous,how crafty, how bad, does every long war make one, whichcannot be waged openly by means of force! How personaldoes a long fear make one, a long watching of enemies, ofpossible enemies! These pariahs of society, these longpursued, badly-persecuted ones—also the compulsory re-cluses, the Spinozas or Giordano Brunos—always becomein the end, even under the most intellectual masquerade, andperhaps without being themselves aware of it, refined vengeance-seekers and poison-brewers (just lay bare the foundation of Spinoza's ethics and theology!), not to speak of thestupidity of moral indignation, which is the unfailing signin a philosopher that the sense of philosophical humourhas left him. The martyrdom of the philosopher, his "sacrifice for the sake of truth," forces into the light whatever ofthe agitator and actor lurks in him; and if one has hithertocontemplated him only with artistic curiosity, with regardto many a philosopher it is easy to understand the dangerousdesire to see him also in his deterioration (deteriorated into a"martyr," into a stage- and tribune-bawler) . Only, that itis necessary with such a desire to be clear what spectacleone will see in any case—merely a satyric play, merely anepilogue farce, merely the continued proof that the long, realtragedy is at an end, supposing that every philosophy hasbeen a long tragedy in its origin. f 1 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 3126

Every select man strives instinctively for a citadel and aprivacy, where he is free from the crowd, the many, the majority—where he may forget "men who are the rule," astheir exception; —exclusive only of the case in which he is pushed straight to such men by a still stronger instinct, asa discemer in the great and exceptional sense. Whoever, inintercourse with men, does not occasionally glisten in all the green and grey colours of distress, owing to disgust,satiety, sympathy, gloominess and solitariness, is assuredlynot a man of elevated tastes; supposing, however, that hedoes not voluntarily take all this burden and disgust uponhimself, that he persistently avoids it, and remains, as I said,quietly and proudly hidden in his citadel, one thing is thencertain: 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 moreinteresting 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 conse-quently much disguise, self-overcoming, familiarity, and badintercourse (all intercourse is bad intercourse except withone'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 favourite child of knowledge should be, he will meetwith suitable auxiliaries who will shorten and lighten his task;I mean so-called cynics, those who simply recognise the ani-mal, the common-place and "the rule" in themselves, and atthe same time have so much spirituality and ticklishness asto make them talk of themselves and their like before wit- 32 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL nesse^—sometimes they wallow, even in books, as on theirown dung-hill. Cynicism is the only form in which basesouls approach what is called honesty; and the higher manmust open his ears to all the coarser or finer cynicism, andcongratulate himself when the clown becomes shameless rightbefore him, or the scientific satyr speaks out. There areeven cases where enchantment mixes with the disgust namely, where by a freak of nature, genius is bound tosome such indiscreet billy-goat and ape, as in the case ofthe Abbe Galiani, the profoundest, acutest, and perhaps alsofilthiest man of his century—he was far profounder thanVoltaire, and consequently also, a good deal more silent.It happens more frequently, as has been hinted, that a scientific head is placed on an ape's body, a fine exceptionalunderstanding in a base soul, an occurrence by no meansrare, especially amongst doctors and moral physiologists.And whenever anyone speaks without bitterness, or ratherquite innocently of man, as a belly with two requirements,and a head with one; whenever any one sees, seeks and wantsto see only hunger, sexual instinct, and vanity as the realand only motives of human actions; in short, when any onespeaks "badly"—and not even "ill"—of man, then ought thelover of knowledge to hearken attentively and diligently;he ought, in general, to have an open ear wherever there istalk without indignation. For the indignant man, and hewho perpetually tears and lacerates himself with his ownteeth (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 themore ordinary, more indifferent, and less instructive case.And no one is such a liar as the indignant man.

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL ss27

It is difficult to be understood, especially when one thinksand lives gangasrotogati* among those only who think andlive otherwise—namely, kurmagati,^ or at best "froglike,"mandeikagati% (I do everything to be "difficultly understood"myself!) —and one should be heartily grateful for the goodwill to some refinement of interpretation. As regards "thegood friends," however, who are always too easy-going, andthink that as friends they have a right to ease, one doeswell at the very first to grant them a play-ground and romping-place for misunderstanding—one c£m thus laugh still; orget rid of them altogether, these good friends—and laughthen also!

What is most difficult to render from one language intoanother is the tempo of its style, which has its basis in thecharacter of the race, or to speak more physiologically, inthe average tempo of the assimilation of its nutriment. Thereare honestly meant translations, which, as involuntary vulgarisations, are almost falsifications of the original, merely^because its lively and merry tempo (which overleaps and obdates all dangers in word and expression) could not also be'rendered. A German is almost incapacitated for presto in^his language; consequently also, as may be reasonably in-ferred, for many of the most delightful and daring nuances3f free, free-spirited thought. And just as the buffoon andityr are foreign to him in body and conscience, so Aristo-* Like the river Ganges : presto fLike the tortoise: lento. ^Like the frog: staccato. 34 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL phanes and Petronius are untranslatable for him. Everything ponderous, viscous, and pompously clumsy, all longwinded and wearying species of style, are developed in profuse variety among Germans—pardon me for stating the factthat even Goethe's prose, in its mixture of stiffness and ele-gance, is no exception, as a reflection of the "good old time"to which it belongs, and as an expression of German tasteat a time when there was still a "German taste," which wasa rococo-taste in moribus et artibus. 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 Bayle to no purpose, who took refuge willingly inthe shadow of Diderot and Voltaire, and still more willinglyamong the Roman comedy-writers—Lessing loved also free-spiritism in the tempo, and flight out of Germany. But howcould the German language, even in the prose of Lessing,imitate the tempo of Machiavelli, who in his "Principe"makes us breathe the dry, fine air of Florence, and cannothelp presenting the most serious events in a boisterous alle-grissimo, perhaps not without a malicious artistic sense ofthe contrast he ventures to present—long, heavy, difficult,dangerous thoughts, and a tempo of the gallop, and of thebest, wantonest humour? Finally, who would venture on aGerman translation of Petronius, who, more than any greatmusician hitherto, was a master of presto in invention, ideas,and words? What matter in the end about the swamps ofthe sick, evil world, or of the "ancient world," when likehim, one has the feet of a wind, the rush, the breath, theemancipating scorn of a wind, which makes everythinghealthy, by making everything run! And with regard toAristophanes—that transfiguring, complementary genius, forwhose sake one pardons all Hellenism for having existed,provided one has understood in its full profundity all thatd

I BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 35Ihere requires pardon and transfiguration; there is nothingthat has caused me to meditate more on Plato's secrecy andsphinx-like nature, than the happily preserved petit fait thatunder the pillow of his death-bed there was found no "Bible," nor anything Egyptian, Pythagorean, or Platonic—buta book of Aristophanes. How could even Plato have en-dured life—a Greek life which he repudiated—without anAristophanes!

It is the business of the very few to be independent; it is aprivilege of the strong. And whoever attempts it, even withthe best right, but without being obliged to do so, provesthat he is probably not only strong, but also daring beyondmeasure. He enters into a labyrinth, he multiplies a thou-sandfold the dangers which life in itself already brings withit; not the least of which is that no one can see how andwhere he loses his way, becomes isolated, and is torn piecemeal by some minotaur of conscience. Supposing such aone comes to grief, it is so far from the comprehension ofmen that they neither feel it, nor sjonpathise with it. Andhe cannot any longer go back! He cannot even go back[again to the sympathy of men!

Our deepest insights must—and should

appear as fol-[lies, and under certain circumstances as crimes, when theyjme unauthorisedly to the ears of those who are not dis-)sed and predestined for them. The exoteric and the eso-[teric, as they were formerly distinguished by philosophers long the Indians, as among the Greeks, Persians, and Mus- 36 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL sulmans, in short, wherever people believed in gradations ofrank and not in equality and equal rights—are not somuch in contradistinction to one another in respect to theexoteric class, standing without, and viewing, estimating,measuring, and judging from the outside, and not from theinside; the more essential distinction is that the class inquestion views things from below upwards—while the esoteric class views things jrom above downwards. There areheights of the soul from which tragedy itself no longer ap-pears to operate tragically; and if all the woe in the worldwere taken together, who would dare to decide whether thesight of it would necessarily seduce and constrain to sympathy, and thus to a doubling of the woe? . . . That whichserves the higher class of men for nourishment or refresh-ment, must be almost poison to an entirely different andlower order of human beings. The virtues of the commonman would perhaps mean vice and weakness in a philosopher; it might be possible for a highly developed man,supposing him to degenerate and go to ruin, to acquirequalities thereby alone, for the sake of which he would haveto be honoured as a saint in the lower world into which hehad sunk. There are books which have an inverse value forthe soul and the health according as the inferior soul andthe lower vitality, or the higher and more powerful, makeuse of them. In the former case they are dangerous, dis-turbing, unsettling books, in the latter case they are heraldcalls which summon the bravest to their bravery. Booksfor the general reader are always ill-smelling books, theodour of paltry people clings to them. Where the populaceeat and drink, and even where they reverence, it is accus-tomed to stink. One should not go into churches if onewishes to breathe pure air.

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 3731 i In our youthful years we still venerate and despise with-out the art of nuance, which is the best gain of life, and wehave rightly to do hard penance for having fallen upon menand things with Yea and Nay. Everything is so arrangedthat the worst of all tastes, the taste for the unconditional,is cruelly befooled and abused, until a man learns to intro-duce 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 toallow itself no peace, until it has suitably falsified men andthings, to be able to vent its passion upon them: youth initself even, is something falsifying and deceptive. Later on,when the young soul, tortured by continual disillusions,finally turns suspiciously against itself—still ardent and sav-age even in its suspicion and remorse of conscience: howitupbraids itself, how impatiently it tears itself, how it re-venges itself for its long self-blinding, as though it had beena voluntary blindness! In this transition one punishes oneself by distrust of one's sentiments; one tortures one's en-thusiasm with doubt, one feels even the good conscienceto be a danger, as if it were the self-concealment and lassi-tude of a more refined uprightness; and above all, oneespouses upon principle the cause against "youth."—A dec-ade later, and one comprehends that all this was also still--youth!

Throughout the longest period of human history—oneUs it the prehistoric period—the value or none-value of 38 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL an action was inferred from its consequences; the action initself was not taken into consideration, any more than itsorigin; but pretty much as in China at present, where thedistinction or disgrace of a child redounds to its parents, theretro-operating power of success or failure was what inducedmen to think well or ill of an action. Let us call this periodthe pre-moral period of mankind; the imperative, "knowthyself!" was then still unknown.—In the last ten thousandyears, on the other hand, on certain large portions of theearth, one has gradually got so far, that one no longer letsthe consequences of an action, but its origin, decide Vv'ithregard to its worth: a great achievement as a whole, an important refinement of vision and of criterion, the unconscious effect of the supremacy of aristocratic values and ofthe belief in "origin," the mark of a period which maybedesignated in the narrower sense as the moral one: the firstattempt at self-knowledge is thereby made. Instead of theconsequences, the origin—what an inversion of perspective!And assuredly an inversion effected only after long struggleand wavering! To be sure, an ominous new superstition, apeculiar narrowness of interpretation, attained supremacyprecisely thereby: the origin of an action was interpretedin the most definite sense possible, as origin out of anintention; people were agreed in the belief that the value ofan action lay in the value of its intention. The intentionas the sole origin and antecedent history of an action: underthe influence of this prejudice moral praise and blame havebeen bestowed, and men have judged and even philosophised almost up to the present day.—Is it not possible,however, that the necessity may now have arisen of againmaking up our minds with regard to the reversing andfundamental shifting of values, owing to a new self-con-sciousness and acuteness in man—is it not possible that we

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 39may be standing on the threshold of a period which to begin with, would be distinguished negatively as ultra-moral:nowadays when, at least amongst us immoralists, the sus-picion 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 sldn, betrayssomething, but conceals still more? In short, we believethat the intention is only a sign or symptom, which first requires an explanation—a sign, moreover, which has toomany interpretations, and consequently hardly any meaningin itself alone: that morality, in the sense in which it hasbeen understood hitherto, as intention-morality, has been aprejudice, perhaps a prematureness or preliminariness, probably something of the same rank as astrology and alchemy,but in any case something which must be surmounted.The surmounting of morality, in a certain sense even theself-mounting of morality—^let that be the name for thelong secret labour which has been reserved for the most refined, the most upright, and also the most wicked consciences of to-day, as the living touchstones of the soul.

It cannot be helped: the sentiment of surrender, of sacrifice for one's neighbour, 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 insidi-ously enough to create itself a good conscience. There is far too much witchery and sugar in the sentiments "forothers" and "not for myself," for one not needing to bedoubly distrustful here, and for one asking promptly: "Are

40 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL they not perhaps

deceptions?"—That they please—himwho has them, and him who enjoys their fruit, and also themere spectator—that is still no argument in their favour, butjust calls for caution. Let us therefore be cautious! 34 IAt whatever standpoint of philosophy one may place oneself nowadays, seen from every position, the erroneousnessof the world in which we think we live is the surest andmost certain thing our eyes can light upon: we find proofafter proof thereof, which would fain allure us into sur-mises concerning a deceptive principle in the "nature ofthings." He, however, who makes thinking itself, and con-sequently "the spirit," responsible for the falseness of theworld—an honourable exit, which every conscious or unconscious advocatus del avails himself of—he who regardsthis world, including space, time, form, and movement, asfalsely deduced, would have at least good reason in the endto become distrustful also of all thinking; has it not hith-erto been playing upon us the worst of scurvy tricks? andwhat guarantee would it give that it would not continue todo what it has always been doing? In all seriousness, theinnocence of thinkers has something touching and respectinspiring in it, which even nowadays permits them to waitupon consciousness with the request that it will give themhonest 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 honour to us philosophers; but—we have now to cease being"merely moral" men! Apart from morality, such belief isa folly which does little honour to us! If in middle-claJj

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 41te an ever-ready distrust is regarded as the sign of a "badracter," and consequently as an imprudence, herelongst us, beyond the middle-class world and its Yeas andfays, what should prevent our being imprudent and saying:ie philosopher has at length a right to "bad character," asle being who has hitherto been most befooled on earth he is now under obligation to distrustfulness, to the wickedest squinting out of every abyss of suspicion.—Forgive me.the joke of this gloomy grimace and turn of expression; forI myself have long ago learned to think and estimate differ- ently with regard to deceiving and being deceived, and Ikeep at least a couple of pokes in the ribs ready for theblind rage with which philosophers struggle against beingdeceived. Why not? It is nothing more than a moralprejudice that truth is worth more than semblance; it is, infact, the worst proved supposition in the world. So muchmust be conceded: there could have been no life at all ex-cept upon the basis of perspective estimates and semblances;and if, with the virtuous enthusiasm and stupidity of manyphilosophers, one wished to do away altogether with the"seeming world"—well, granted that 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 ofsemblance—different valeurs, as the painters say? Whymight not the world which concerns us—be a fiction? And.to any one who suggested: "But to a fiction belongs anoriginator?"—might it not be bluntly replied: Why? Maynot this "belong" also belong to the fiction? Is it not atlength permitted to be a little ironical towards the subject, just as towards the predicate and object? Might not the 42 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL philosopher elevate himself above faith in grammar? Allrespect to governesses, but is it not time that philosc^hyshould renounce governess-faith?

O Voltaire! O humanity! O idiocy! There is something ticklish in "the truth," and in the search for the truth;and if man goes about it too humanely

"il ne cherche levrai que pour faire le bien"—I wager he finds nothing!

Supposing that nothing else is "given" as real but ourworld of desires and passions, that we cannot sink or riseto any other "reality" but just that of our impulses—forthinking is only a relation of these impulses to one another:—are we not permitted to make the attempt and to ask thequestion whether this which is "given" does not suffice, bymeans of our coimterparts, for the understanding even ofthe so-called mechanical (or "material") world? I do notmean as an illusion, a "semblance," a "representation" (inthe Berkeleyan and Schopenhauerian 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 organicprocesses (naturally also, refines and debilitates) —as a kindof instinctive life in which all organic functions, includingself-regulation, assimilation, nutrition, secretion, and changeof matter, are still synthetically united with one another—as a primary form of life?—^In the end, it is not only permitted to make this attempt, it is commanded by the co:1 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 43science of logical method. Not to assume several kinds ofcausality, so long as the attempt to get along with a singleone has not been pushed to its furtherest extent (to absurdity, if I may be allowed to say so) : that is a morality ofmethod which one may not repudiate nowadays—it follows"from its definition," as mathematicians say. The questionis ultimately whether we really recognise the will as operating, whether we believe in the causality of the will ; if we doso—and fundamentally our belief in this is just our belief incausality itself—we must make the 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, thehypothesis must be hazarded, whether will does not operateon will wherever "effects" are recognised—and whether all mechanical action, inasmuch as a power operates therein, is not just the power of will, the effect of will. Granted,finally, that we succeeded in explaining our entire instinc- tive life as the development and ramification of one fundamental form of will—namely, the Will to Power, as mythesis puts it; granted that all organic functions could betraced back to this Will to Power, and that the solutionof the problem of generation and nutrition—it is one problem—could also be found therein: one would thus have ac-quired the right to define all active force unequivocally asWiU 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. 44 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL

"What? Does not that mean in popular language: Godis disproved, but not the devil"?—On the contrary! Onthe contrary, my friends! And who the devil also compelsyou to speak popularly 1 38 IAs happened finally in all the enlightenment of modemtimes with the French Revolution (that terrible farce, quitesuperfluous when judged close at hand, into which, however,the noble and visionary spectators of all Europe have inter-preted from a distance their own indignation and enthusiasmso long and passionately, until the text has disappeared under the interpretation), so a noble posterity might oncemore misunderstand the whole of the past, and perhaps onlythereby make its aspect endurable.—Or rather, has not thisalready happened? Have not we ourselves been—that"noble posterity"? And, in so far as we now comprehendthis, is it not—thereby already past?

Nobody will very readily regard a doctrine as true merelybecause it makes people happy or virtuous—excepting, per-haps, the amiable "Idealists," who are enthusiastic aboutthe good, true, and beautiful, and let all kinds of motley,coarse, and good-natured desirabilities swim about promiscuously in their pond. Happiness and virtue are no argu-ments. It is willingly forgotten, however, even on the partof thoughtful minds, that to make unhappy £ind to make

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 45bad are just as little counter-arguments. A thing could betrue, although it were in the highest degree injurious anddangerous; indeed, the fundamental constitution of exist- ence might be such that one succumbed by a full knowledgeof it—so that the strength of a mind might be measured bythe amount of "truth" it could endure—or to speak moreplainly, by the extent to which it required truth attenuated,veiled, sweetened, damped, and falsified. But there is nodoubt that for the discovery of certain portions of truth thewicked and unfortunate are more favourably situated andhave a greater likelihood of success; not to spezik of thewicked who are happy—a species about whom moralistsare silent. Perhaps severity and craft are more favourableconditions for the development of strong, independent spirits and philosophers than the gentle, refined, yielding goodnature, and habit of taking things easily, which are prized, and rightly prized in a learned man. Presupposing always,to begin with, that the term "philosopher" be not confinedto the philosopher who writes books, or even introduces his philosophy into books! —Stendhal furnishes a last feature ofthe portrait of the free-spirited philosopher, which for thesake of German taste I will not omit to underline—for it is opposed to German taste. "Pour etre bon philosophe,"says this last great psychologist, "il jaut etre sec, clair, sansillusion. Un banquier, qui a fait fortune, a une partie ducaractere requis pour faire des decouvertes en philosophie, c'est-d-dire pour voir clair dans ce qui est." j^ Everything that is profound loves the mask: the proj foundest things have a hatred even of figure and likeness. Should not the contrary only be the right disguise for the 46 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL shame of a God to go about in? A question worth asking! it would be strange if some mystic has not already venturedon the same kind of thing. There are proceedings of sucha delicate nature that it is well to overwhelm them withcoarseness and make them unrecognisable; there are ac-tions of love and of an extravagant magnanimity afterwhich nothing can be wiser than to take a stick and thrashthe witness soundly: one thereby obscures his recollection.Many a one is able to obscure and abuse his own memory,in order at least to have vengeance on this sole party in thesecret: shame is inventive. They are not the worst thingsof which one is most ashamed: there is not only deceit be-hind a mask—there is so much goodness in craft. I couldimagine that a man with something costly and fragile toconceal, would roll through life clumsily and rotundly likean old, green, heavily-hooped wine-cask: the refinement ofhis shame requiring it to be so. A man who has depthsinhis shame meets his destiny and his delicate decisions uponpaths which few ever reach, and with regard to the exist-ence of which his nearest and most intimate friends maybe ignorant; his mortal danger conceals itself from their eyes,and equally so his regained security. Such a hidden nature,which instinctively employs speech for silence and conceal-ment, and is inexhaustible in evasion of communication, desires and insists that a mask of himself shall occupy hisplace in the hearts and heads of his friends; and supposinghe does not desire it, his eyes will some day be openedtothe fact that there is nevertheless a mask of him there—andthat it is well to be so. Every profound spirit needs a mask;nay, more, around every profound spirit there continuallygrows a mask, owing to the constantly false, that is to say,superficial interpretation of every word he utters, every stephe takes, every sign of life he manifests. II BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 4741

One must subject oneself to one's own tests that one is destined for independence and command, and do so at theright time. One must not avoid one's tests, although theyconstitute perhaps the most dangerous game one can play, and are in the end tests made only before ourselves andbefore no other judge. Not to cleave to any person, be it even the dearest—every person is a prison and also a re- cess. Not to cleave to a fatherland, be it even the mostsuffering and necessitous—it is even less difficult to detachone's heart from a victorious fatherland. Not to cleave to a S5anpathy, be it even for higher men, into whose peculiartorture and helplessness chance has given us an insight.

Not to cleave to a science, though it tempt one with themost valuable discoveries, apparently specially reserved for us. Not to cleave to one's own liberation, to the voluptuousdistance and remoteness of the bird, which always flies fur- ther aloft in order always to see more under it—the dangerof the flier. Not to cleave to our own virtues, nor becomeas a whole a victim to any of our specialties, to our "hospitality" for instance, which is the danger of dangers forhighly developed and wealthy souls, who deal prodigally,almost indifferently with themselves, and push the virtue ofliberality so far that it becomes a vice. One must knowhow to conserve oneself—the best test of independence.

I 4* A new order of philosophers is appearing; I shall ventureto baptize them by a name not without danger. As far as Iunderstand them, as far as they allow themselves to be 48 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL understood—for it is their nature to wish to remain something of a puzzle—these philosophers of the future mightrightly, 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.

Will they be new friends of "truth," these coming philoso*phers? Very probably, for all philosophers hitherto haveloved their truths. But assuredly they will not be dogmatists. It must be contrary to their pride, and also con-Vrary to their taste, that their truth should still be truth forevery one—that which has hitherto been the secret wish andultimate purpose of all dogmatic efforts. "My opinion is myopinion: another person has not easily a right to it"—such\i. philosopher of the future will say, perhaps. One mustYenounce the bad taste of wishing to agree with many people. "Good" is no longer good when one's neighbour takesit into his mouth. And how could there be a "commongood"! The expression contradicts itself; that which canbe common is always of small value. In the end thingsmust be as they are and have always been—the great thingsremain for the great, the abysses for the profound, the deli-cacies and thrills for the refined, and, to sum up shortly,everything rare for the rare.

Need I say expressly after all this that they will be free,very free spirits, these philosophers of the future—as cer-tainly also they will not be merely free spirits, but somethingmore, higher, greater, and fundamentally different, which

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 49does not wish to be misunderstood and mistaken? But whileI say this, I feel under obligation almost as much to themas to ourselves (we free spirits who are their heralds andforerunners), to sweep away from ourselves altogether astupid old prejudice and misunderstanding, which, like afog, has too long made the conception of "free spirit" obscure. In every country of Europe, and the same in America, there is at present something which makes an abuse ofthis name: a very narrow, prepossessed, enchained class ofspirits, who desire almost the opposite of what our intentions and instincts prompt—not to mention that in respectto the new philosophers who are appearing, they must still more be closed windows and bolted doors. Briefly and re-grettably, they belong to the levellers, these wronglynamed "free spirits"—as glib-tongued and scribe-fingered^laves of the democratic taste and its "modem ideas": all moi them men without solitude, without personal solitude, 'blunt honest fellows to whom neither courage nor honourableconduct ought to be denied; only, they are not free, and areludicrously superficial, especially in their innate partialityfor seeing the cause of almost all human misery and failure in the old forms in which society hsis hitherto existed—notion which happily inverts the truth entirely! What theywould fain attain with all their strength, is the universal, green-meadow happiness of the herd, together with security, safety, comfort, and alleviation of life for every one; their two most frequently chanted songs and doctrines are called luality of Rights" and "Sympathy with all Sufferers" |d suffering itself is looked upon by them as somethinglich must be done away with. We opposite ones, how-;r, who have opened our eye and conscience to the ques-how and where the plant "man" has hitherto grownmost vigourously, believe that tliis has always taken place $0 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL under the opposite conditions, that for this end the danger-ousness of his situation had to be increased enormously, hisinventive faculty and dissembling power (his "spirit") hadto develop into subtlety and daring under long oppressionand compulsion, and his Will to Life had to be increased tothe unconditioned Will to Power: —we believe that severity,violence, slavery, danger in the street and in the heart, se-crecy, stoicism, tempter's art and devilry of every kind,that everything wicked, terrible, tyrannical, predatory, andserpentine in man, serves as well for the elevation of thehuman species as its opposite: —we do not even say enoughwhen we only say this much; and in any case we find ourselves here, both with our speech and our silence, at theether extreme of all modem ideology and gregarious desirability, as their antipodes perhaps? What wonder that we^'free spirits" are not exactly the most communicative spir-its? that we do not wish to betray in every respect whataispirit can free itself from, and where perhaps it will then bedriven? 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 "libres-penseurs," "liberipensatori" "free-thinkers," and whatever these honest ad-vocates of "modem ideas" like to call themselves. Havingibeen at home, or at least guests, in many realms of the spirit;having escaped again and again from the gloomy, agreeableinooks in which preferences and prejudices, youth, origin, thciaccident of men and books, or even the weariness of travelseemed to confine us; full of malice against the seductions ofdependency which lie concealed in honours, money, positions,!or exaltation of the senses; grateful even for distress andthe vicissitudes of illness, because they always free us from'some rule, and its "prejudice," grateful to the God, devil,3^6^, and worm in us; inquisitive to a fault, investigat

II w BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 51 to the point of cruelty, with unhesitating fingers for the in- tangible, with teeth and stomachs for the most indigestible, ready for any business that requires sagacity and acutesenses, ready for every adventure, owing to an excess of"free will"; with anterior and posterior souls, into the ulti- mate intentions of which it is difficult to pry, with fore- grounds and backgrounds to the end of which no foot mayrun; hidden ones imder the mantles of light, appropriators,although we resemble heirs and spendthrifts, arrangers andcollectors from morning till night, misers of our wealth andour full-crammed drawers, economical in learning and for- getting, inventive in scheming; sometimes proud of tables ofcategories, sometimes pedants, sometimes night-owls of workeven in full day; yea, if necessary, even scarcecrows—and it is necessary nowadays, that is to say, inasmuch as we are thebom, sworn, jealous friends of solitude, of our own pro-foundest midnight and mid-day solitude: —such kind of menare we, we free spirits! And perhaps ye are also somethingof the same kind, ye coming ones? ye new philosophers?

The Religious Mood

The human soul and its limits, the range of man's inn|experiences hitherto attained, the heights, depths and dis^tances of these experiences, the entire history of the soulup to the present time, and its still unexhausted possibilities: this is the preordained hunting-domain for a bom psychologist and lover of a "big hunt." But how often musthe say despairingly to himself: "A single individual! alas,only a single individual! and this great forest, this virginforest!" So he would like to have some hundreds of hunting assistants, and fine trained hounds, that he could sendinto the history of the human soul, to drive his game to-gether. In vain: again and again he experiences, pro-foundly and bitterly, how difficult it is to find assistants anddogs for all the things that directly excite his curiosity. Theevil of sending scholars into new and dangerous huntingdomains, where courage, sagacity, and subtlety in everysense are required, is that they are no longer serviceablejust when the "big hunt," and also the great danger commences,—it is precisely then that they lose their keen eyeand nose. In order, for instance, to divine and determinewhat sort of history the problem of knowledge and conscien^52 J BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 55has hitherto had in the souls of homines religiosi, a personwould perhaps himself have to possess as profound, as bruised, as immense an experience as the intellectual conscience of Pascal; and then he would still require that wide-spread heaven of clear, wicked spirituality, which, fromabove, would be able to oversee, arrange, and effectively for- mulise this mass of dangerous and painful experiences.—Butwho could do me this service! And who would have timeto wait for such servants! —they evidently appear too rarely, they are so improbable at all times! Eventually one mustdo everything oneself in order to know something; whiclr means that one has much to do! —But a curiosity like mineis 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.

Faith, such as early Christianity desired, and not infre- quently achieved in the midst of a sceptical and southemlyfree-spirited world, which had centuries of struggle betweenphilosophical schools behind it and in it, counting besides the education in tolerance which the imperium Romanumgave—this faith is not that sincere, austere slave-faith bywhich perhaps a Luther or a Cromwell, or some other north- em barbarian of the spirit remained attached to his Godand Christianity; it is much rather the faith of Pascal, whichxesembles in a terrible manner a continuous suicide of rea- —a tough, long-lived, wormlike reason, which is not to 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 at the same time abjection, self-derision, and self-mutilation. There is C 54 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL cruelty and religious Phoenicianism in this faith, which1adapted to a tender, many-sided, and very fastidious conscience; it takes for granted that the subjection of the spiritis indescribably painful, that all the past and all the habitsof such a spirit resist the absurdissimum, in the formofwhich "faith" comes to it. Modem men, with their obtuseness as regards all Christian nomenclature, have nolonger the sense for the terribly superlative conception whichwas implied to an antique taste by the paradox of the for-mula, "God on the Cross." Hitherto there had never andnowhere been such boldness in inversion, nor anythingatonce so dreadful, questioning, and questionable as this for-mula: it promised a transvaluation of all ancient values.—Itwas the Orient, the profound Orient, it was the Orientalslave who thus took revenge on Rome and its noble, lightminded toleration, on the Roman "Catholicism" of nonfaith ; and it was always, not the faith, but the freedom fromthe faith, the half-stoical and smiling indifference to theseriousness of the faith, which mades the slaves indignantat their masters and revolt against them. "Enlightenment"causes revolt: for the slave desires the unconditioned, heunderstands nothing but the tyrannous, even in morals; heloves as he hates, without nuance, to the very depths, to thepoint of pain, to the point of sickness—his many hiddensufferings make him revolt against the noble taste whichseems to deny suffering. The scepticism with regard to suffering, fundamentally only an attitude of aristocratic morality, was not the least of the causes, also, of the last greatslave-insurrection which began with the French Revolution.

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL $547

Wherever the religious neurosis has appeared on the earthso far, we find it connected with three dangerous prescriptions as to regimen: solitude, fasting, and sexual abstinence—but without its being possible to determine with certaintywhich is cause and which is effect, or if any relation at all ofcause and effect exists there. This latter doubt is justified by the fact that one of the most regular symptoms amongsavage as well as among civilised peoples is the most suddenand excessive sensuality; which then with equal suddennesstransforms into penitential paroxysms, world-renunciation,and will-renunciation: both symptoms perhaps explainableas disguised epilepsy? But nowhere is it more obligatoryto put aside explanations: around no other type has theregrown such a mass of absurdity and superstition, no othertype seems to have been more interesting to men and even tophilosophers—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 recentphilosophy, that of Schopenhauer, we find almost as theroblem in itself, this terrible note of interrogation of theteligious crisis and awakening. How is the negation of will^ssible? how is the saint possible?—that seems to have beenle very question with which Schopenhauer made a startand became a philosopher. And thus it was a genuineichopenhauerian consequence, that his most convinced adent (perhaps also his last, as far as Germany is con-ed), namely, Richard Wagner, should bring his ovmwork to an end just here, and should finally put thatible and eternal type upon the stage as Kundry, typeu, and as it loved and lived, at the very time that the 56 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL mad-doctors in almost all European countries had an opportunity to study the type close at hand, wherever the reli-gious neurosis—or as I call it, "the religious mood"—madeits latest epidemical outbreak and display as the "SalvationArmy."—If it be a question, however, as to what has beenso extremely interesting to men of all sorts in all ages, andeven 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 statesof the soul regarded as morally antithetical: it was believedhere to be self-evident that a "bad man" was all at onceturned into a "saint," a good man. The hitherto existingpsychology was wrecked at this point; is it not possible itmay have happened principally because psychology hadplaced itself under the dominion of morals, because it be-lieved in oppositions of moral values, and saw, read, andinterpreted these oppositions into the text and facts of thecase? What? "Miracle" only an error of interpretation?A lack of philology?

It seems that the Latin races are far more deeply attachedto their Catholicism than we Northerners are to Christianitygenerally, and that consequently unbelief in Catholic countries means something quite different from what it doesamong Protestants—namely, a sort of revolt against thespirit of the race, while with us it is rather a return to thespirit (or non-spirit) of the race. We Northerners undoubtedly derive our origin from barbarous races, even as regardsour talents for religion—we have poor talents for it. On^may make an exception in the case of the Celts, who ha\theretofore furnished also the best soil for Christian infe

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 57tion in the north: the Christian ideal blossomed forth inFrance as much as ever the pale sun of the north wouldallow it. How strangely pious for our taste are still theselater French sceptics, whenever there is any Celtic blood intheir origin! How Catholic, how un-German does AugusteComte's Sociology seem to us, with the Roman logic of itsinstincts! How Jesuitical, that amiable and shrewd ciceroneof Port-Royal, Sainte-Beuve, in spite of all his hostility toJesuits! And even Ernest Renan: how inaccessible to u^Northerners does the language of such a Renan appear, inwhom every instant the merest touch of religious thrillthrows his refined voluptuous and comfortably couching souloff its balance! Let us repeat after him these fine sentences—and what wickedness and haughtiness is immediatelyaroused by way of answer m our probably less beautiful butharder souls, that is to say, in our more German souls!

"Disons done hardiment que la religion est un produit deVhomtne normal, que I'homme est le plus dans le vrai quandil est le plus religieux et le plus assure d'une destinee infinie.. . . C'est quand il est bon qu'il veut que la virtu corre-sponde a un order iternal, c'est quand il contemple les chosesd'une manihe desintiressee qu'il trouve la mort revoltante etbsurde. Comment ne pas supposer que c'est dans ces moents-la, que I'homme voit le mieux?" . . . These sentencese so extremely antipodal to my ears and habits of thought,at in my first impulse of rage on finding them, I wrote•n the margin, "la niaiserie religieuse par excellence!"—imtil« in my later rage I even took a fancy to them, these sentencesBnth their truth absolutely inverted! It is so nice andHuch a distinction to have one's own antipodes!

I S8 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 49 iThat which is so astonishing in the religious life of theancient Greeks is the irrestrainable stream of gratitude whichit pours forth—it is a very superior kind of man who takessuch an attitude towards nature and life.—^Later on, whenthe populace got the upper hand in Greece, fear becamerampant also in religion; and Christianity was preparing it-self.

SO The passion for God: there are churlish, honest-hearted,and importunate kinds of it, like that of Luther—the wholeof Protestantism lacks the southern delicatezza. There is anOriental exaltation of the mind in it, like that of an undeservedly favoured or elevated slave, as in the case of St.Augustine, for instance, who lacks in an offensive manner,all nobility in bearing and desires. There is a femininetenderness and sensuality in it, which modestly and unconsciously longs for a unio mystica et physica, as in thecase of Madame de Guyon. In many cases it appears, curi-ously enough, as the disguise of a girl's or youth's puberty;here and there even as the hysteria of an old maid, alsoas her last ambition. The Church has frequently canonisedthe woman in such a case. 51 IThe mightiest men have hitherto always bowed reverentlybefore the saint, as the enigma of self-subjugation and uttervolimtary privation—why did they thus bow? They

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 59divined in him—and as it were behind the questionablenessof his frail and wretched appearance—the superior forcewhich wished to test itself by such a subjugation; thestrength of will, in which they recognised their own strengthand love of power, and knew how to honour it: they honoured something in themselves when they honoured the saint. In addition to this, the contemplation of the saint suggestedto them a suspicion: such an enormity of self-negation andanti-naturalness will not have been coveted for nothing they have said, inquiringly. There is perhaps a reason forit, some very great danger, about which the ascetic mightwish to be more accurately informed through his secretinterlocutors and visitors? In a word, the mighty ones ofthe world learned to have a new fear before him, they di- vined a new power, a strange, still unconquered enemy: it was the "Will to Power" which obliged them to halt beforethe saint. They had to question him.

In the Jewish "Old Testament," the book of divine justice, there are men, things, and sayings on such an immensescale, that Greek and Indian literature has nothing to compare with it. One stands with fear and reverence beforethose stupendous remains of what man was formerly, andone has sad thoughts about old Asia and its little out-pushedpeninsula Europe, which would like, by all means, to figurebefore Asia as the "Progress of Mankind." To be sure, he*ftio is himself only a slender, tame house-animal, and knowsnly the wants of a house-animal (like our cultured peopleof to-day, including the Christians of "cultured" Christianity), need neither be amazed nor even sad amid thoseIS—^the taste for the Old Testament is a touchstone withrs 6o BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL respect to "great" and "small": perhaps he will find thatthe New Testament, the book of grace, still appeals moreto his heart (there is much of the odour of the genuine,tender, stupid beadsman and petty soul in it). To havebound up this New Testament (a kind of rococo of taste inevery respect) along with the Old Testament into one book,as the "Bible," as "The Book in Itself," is perhaps thegreatest audacity and "sin against the Spirit" which literaryEurope has upon its conscience.

Why Atheism nowadays? "The father" in God is thoiIoughly 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 heseems incapable of communicating himself clearly; is heuncertain?—This is what I have made out (by questioningand listening at a variety of conversations) to be the causeof the decline of European theism; it appears to me thatthough the religious instinct is in vigorous growth,—it re-jects the theistic satisfaction with profound distrust.

What does all modem philosophy mainly do? SinceDescartes—and indeed more in defiance of him than on thebasis of his procedure—an attentat has been made on thepart of all philosophers on the old conception of the soul,under the guise of a criticism of the subject and predicateconception—that is to say, an attentat on the fundamentalpresupposition of Christian doctrine. Modern philosophy,as epistemological scepticism, is secretly or openly anti!!

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 6iChristian, although (for keener ears, be it said) by no meansanti-rehgious. Formerly, in effect, one believed in "thesoul" as one believed in grammar and the grammatical subject: one said, "I" is the condition, "think" is the predicateand is conditioned—to think is an activity for which onemust suppose a subject as cause. The attempt was thenmade, with marvellous tenacity and subtlety, to see if onecould not get out of this net,—to see if the opposite was notperhaps true: "think" the condition, and "I" the conditioned; "I," therefore, only a S5nithesis which has been madeby thinking itself. Kant really wished to prove that, start- ing from the subject, the subject could not be proved—northe object either: the possibility of an apparent existenceof the subject, and therefore of "the soul," may not alwayshave been strange to him,—the thought which once had animmense power on earth as the Vedanta philosophy.

There is a great ladder of religious cruelty, with manyroimds; but three of these are the most important. Onceon a time men sacrified human beings to their God, and per-haps just those they loved the best—to this category belongle firstling sacrifices of all primiti\*e religions, and also therifice of the Emperor Tiberius in the Mithra-Grotto onle Island of Capri, that most terrible of all Roman anachinisms. Then, during the moral epoch of mankind, theyrificed to their God the strongest instincts they possessed,leir "nature"; this festal joy shines in the cruel glances ofletics £ind "anti-natural" fanatics. Finally, what still re- ined to be sacrificed? Was it not necessary in the endfor men to sacrifice everything comforting, holy, healing, all tpe, all faith in hidden harmonies, in future blessedness 62 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 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 beenreserved for the rising generation; we all know somethingthereof already.

Whoever, like myself, prompted by some enigmatical desire, has long endeavoured 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 finallypresented itself to this century, namely, in the form ofSchopenhauer's philosophy; whoever, with an Asiatic andsuper-Asiatic eye, has actually looked inside, and into themost world-renouncing of all possible modes of thoughtbeyond good and evil, and no longer like Buddha andSchopenhauer, under the dominion and delusion of morality,—whoever has done this, has perhaps just thereby, withoutreally desiring it, opened his eyes to behold the oppositeideal: the ideal of the most world-approving, exuberant andvivacious man, who has not only learnt to compromise andarrange with that which was and is, but wishes to haveitagain as it was and is, for all eternity, insatiably calling outde capo, not only to himself, but to the whole piece and play;and not only the play, but actually to him who requires theplay—and makes it necessary; because he always requireshimself anew—^and makes himself necessary. What? Andthis would not be

circuius vitiosus deus?

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 6357

The distance, and as it were the space around man,grows with the strength of his intellectual vision and insist:his world becomes profounder; new stars, new enigmas, andnotions are ever coming into view. Perhaps everything onwhich the intellectual eye has exercised its acuteness andprofundity has just been an occasion for its exercise, something of a game, something for children and childish minds.Perhaps the most solemn conceptions that have caused themost fighting and suffering, the conceptions "God" and "sin,"will one day seem to us of no more importance than a child'splaything or a child's pain seems to an old man;—and per-haps another plaything and another pain will then be neces-sary once more for "the old man"—always childish enough,an eternal child!

S8

Has it been observed to what extent outward idleness, orsemi-idleness, is necessary to a real religious life (alike forits favourite microscopic labour of self-examination, and for.its soft placidity called "prayer," the state of perpetualkreadiness for the "coming of God"), I mean the idleness with[a good conscience, the idleness of olden times and of blood,which the aristocratic sentiment that work is dishonouring\—that it vulgarises body and soul—is not quite unfamiliar?id that consequently the modem, noisy, time-engrossing,snceited, foolishly proud laboriousness educates and preires for "unbelief" more than anything else? Amongstlese, for instance, who are at present living apart fromigion in Germany, I find "free-thinkers" of diversified 64 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL specks and origin, but above all a majority of those inwhom laboriousness from generation to generation has dis- solved the religious instincts; so that they no longer knowwhat purpose religions serve, and only note their existencein 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'Tatherland," and the newspapers, and their "family duties"; it seems that they have no time whatever left forreligion; 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 tochurch merely to spwil their tempers. They are by no meansenemies of religious customs; should certain circumstances,State affairs perhaps, require their participation in such cus-toms, they do what is required, as so many things are done with a patient and unassuming seriousness, and without muchcuriosity or discomfort; —they live too much apart and outside to feel even the necessity for a jor or against in suchmatters. Among those indifferent persons may be reckonednowadays the majority of German Protestants of the middleclasses, especially in the great laborious centres of trade andcommerce; also the majority of laborious scholars, and theentire University personnel (with the exception of the theologians, whose existence and possibility there always givesjpsychologists new and more subtle puzzles to solve), the part of pious, or merely church-going people, there is seldom any idea of how much goodwill, one might say arbi-trary will, is now necessary for a German scholar to take thejproblem of religion seriously; his whole profession (and as ijhave said, his whole workmanlike laboriousness, to which heis compelled by his modem conscience) inclines him to lofty and almost charitable serenity as regards religion, wit

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 65which is occasionally mingled a slight disdain for the "uncleanliness" of spirit which he takes for granted whereverany one still professes to belong to the Church. It is onlywith the help of history {not through his own personal experience, therefore) that the scholar succeeds in bringinghimself to a respectful seriousness, and to a certain timid def-erence in presence of religions; but even when his sentimentshave reached the stage of gratitude towards them, he has notpersonally 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 midstof which he has been bom and brought up, usually subli-mates itself in his case into circumspection and cleanliness,which shuns contact with religious men and things; and it may be just the depth of his tolerance and humanity whichprompts him to avoid the delicate trouble which toleranceitself brings with it.—Every age has its own divine type ofnaivete, for the discovery of which other ages may envy it: and how much naivete—adorable, childlike, and boundlesslyfoolish naivete is involved in this belief of the scholar in hissuperiority, in the good conscience of his tolerance, in the unsuspecting, simple certainty with which his instinct treats thereligious man as a lower and less valuable type, beyond,before, and above which he himself has developed—he, thelittle arrogant dwarf and mob-mem, the sedulously alert,head-and-hand drudge of "ideas," of "modem ideas"!

Whoever has seen deeply into the world has doubtlessdivined what wisdom there is in the fact that men are superficial. It is their preservative instinct which teaches them tobe flighty, lightsome, and false. Here and there one finds a 66 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL passionate and exaggerated adoration of "pure forms" inphilosophers as well as in artists: it is not to be doubted thatwhoever 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 thoseburnt children, the bom artists who find the enjo3mient oflife only in trying to falsify its image (as if taking wearisomerevenge on it) ; one might guess to what degree life hasdisgusted them, by the extent to which they wish to see itsimage falsified, attenuated, ultrified, and deified; —one mightreckon the homines religiosi amongst the artists, as theirhighest rank. It is the profound, suspicious fear of an in-curable pessimism which compels whole centuries to fastentheir teeth into a religious interpretation of existence: thefear of the instinct which divines that truth might be at-tained too soon, before man has become strong enough, hardenough, artist enough. . . . Piety, the "Life in God," re-garded in this light, would appear as the most elaborate andultimate product of the fear of truth, as artist-adoration andartist-intoxication in presence of the most logical of all falsi-fications, as the will to the inversion of truth, to imtruth atany price. Perhaps there has hitherto been no more effectivemeans of beautifying man than piety; by means of it mancan become so artful, so superficial, so iridescent, and sogood, that his appearance no longer offends.

To love mankind for God's sake—this has so far been thenoblest and remotest sentiment to which mankind has at-tained. That love to mankind, without any redeeming inHtention in the background, is only an additional folly ancbrutishness, that the inclination to this love has first to ge

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 67its proportion, its delicacy, its grain of salt and sprinklingof ambergris from a higher inclination: —whoever first per-ceived and "experienced" this, however his tongue may havestammered as it attempted to express such a delicate matter,let him for all time be holy and respected, as the man whohas so far flown highest and gone astray in the finestfashion!

The philosopher, as we free spirits understand him—as theman of the greatest responsibility, who has the consciencefor the general development of mankind,—will use religionfor his disciplining and educating work, just as he will usethe contemporary political and economic conditions. Theselecting and disciplining influence—destructive, as well ascreative and fashioning—which can be exercised by means ofreligion is manifold and varied, according to the sort ofpeople placed under its spell and protection. For thosewho are strong and independent, destined and trained tocommand, in whom the judgment and skill of a ruling raceis incorporated, religion is an additional means for overcoming resistance in the exercise of authority—as a bond whichbinds rulers and subjects in common, betraying and sur-rendering to the former the conscience of the latter, their in- most heart, which would fain escape obedience. And in thecase of the unique natures of noble origin, if by virtue ofiperior spirituality they should incline to a more retired and>ntemplative life, reserving to themselves only the moreined forms of government (over chosen disciples or memers of an order), religion itself may be used as a means for)taining peace from the noise and trouble of managingrosser affairs, and for securing immxmity from the unavoid- 68 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL able filth of all political agitation. The Brahmins, for in-stance, understood this fact. With the help of a religiousorganisation, they secured to themselves the power of nominating kings for the people, while their sentiments promptedthem to keep apart and outside, as men with a higher zindsuper-regal mission. At the same time religion gives induce-ment and opportunity to some of the subjects to qualifythemselves for future ruling and commanding: the slowlyascending ranks and classes, in which, through fortimatemarriage customs, volitional power and delight in self-controlare on the increase. To them religion offers sufficient incentives and temptations to aspire to higher intellectuality, andto experience the sentiments of authoritative self-control, ofsilence, and of solitude. Asceticism and Puritanism arealmost indispensable means of educating and ennobling arace which seeks to rise above its hereditary baseness andwork itself upward to future supremacy. And finally, toordinary men, to the majority of the people, who exist forservice and general utility, and are only so far entitled toexist, religion gives invaluable contentedness with their lotand condition, peace of heart, ennoblement of obedience, additional social happiness and sympathy, with something oftransfiguration and embellishment, something of justificationof all the commonplaceness, all the meanness, all the semianimal poverty of their souls. Religion, together with thereligious significance of life, sheds sunshine over such per-,petually harassed men, and makes even their own aspect enjjdurable to them; it operates upon them as the EpicureaiCphilosophy usually operates upon sufferers of a higher order,in a refreshing and refining manner, almost turning sufferingto account, and in the end even halloing and vindicating it There is perhaps nothing so admirable in Christianity an^Buddhism as their art of teaching even the lowest to elevat

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 69themselves by piety to a seemingly higher order of things,and thereby to retain their satisfaction with the actual worldin which they find it difficult enough to live—this very diffi- culty being necessary.

To be sure—to make also the bad counter-reckoningagainst such religions, and to bring to light their secret dangers—the cost is always excessive and terrible when religionsdo not operate as an educational and disciplinary mediumin the hands of the philosopher, but rule voluntarily andparamountly, when they wish to be the final end, and not ameans along with other means. Among men, as among allother animals, there is a surplus of defective, diseased, degenerating, infirm, and necessarily suffering individuals; thesuccessful 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. Butworse still. The higher the type a man represents, thegreater is the improbability that he will succeed; the acci-dental, the law of irrationality in the general constitution ofmcmkind, manifests itself most terribly in its destructive ef-fect on the higher orders of men, the conditions of whoselives 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 endeavour topreserve and keep alive whatever can be preserved; in fact,as the religions for sufferers, they take the part of these uponprinciple; they are always in favour of those who sufferfrom life as from a disease, and they would fain treat everyother experience of life as false and impossible. Howeverfcighly we may esteem this indulgent and preservative care 70 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL (inasmuch as in applying to others, it has applied, and applies also to the highest and usually the most suffering typeof man), the hitherto paramount religions—to give a generalappreciation of them—are among the principal causes whichhave kept the type of *'man" upon a lower level—they havepreserved too much that which should have perished. Onehas to thank them for invaluable services; and who is suffi-ciently rich in gratitude not to feel poor at the contemplationof all that the "spiritual men" of Christianity have done forEurope hitherto! But when they had given comfort to thesufferers, courage to the oppressed and despairing, a staff andsupport to the helpless, and when they had allured from so-ciety into convents and spiritual penitentiaries the brokenhearted and distracted: what else had they to do in orderto work systematically in that fashion, and with a good conscience, for the preservation of all the sick and suffering,which means, in deed and in truth, to work for the deterioration of the European race? To reverse all estimates ofvalue

that is what they had to do! And to shatter thestrong, to spoil great hopes, to cast suspicion on the delightin beauty, to break down everything autonomous, manly,conquering, and imperious—all instincts which are naturalto the highest and most successful type of "man"—into uncertainty, distress of conscience, and self-destruction; for-sooth, to invert all love of the earthly and of supremacyover the earth, into hatred of the earth and earthly things that is the task the Church imposed on itself, and was obligedto impose, until, according, to its standard of value, "unworldliness," "unsensuousness," and "higher man" fused intocMie sentiment. If one could observe the strangely painful,equally coarse and refined comedy of European Christianitywith the derisive £ind impartial eye of an Epicurean god, Ishould think one would never cease marvelling and laughing]1 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 71does it not actually seem that some single will has ruled overEurope for eighteen centuries in order to make a sublimeabortion of man? He, however, who, with opposite requirements (no longer Epicurean) and with some divine hammerin his hand, could approach this almost voluntary degeneration and stunting of mankind, as exemplified in the Euro-pean Christian (Pascal, for instance), would he not have tocry aloud with rage, pity, and horror: "Oh, you bunglers,presumptuous pitiful bunglers, what have you done! Wasthat a work for your hands? How you have hacked andbotched my finest stone! What have you presumed to do!"—I should say that Christianity has hitherto been the mostportentous of presumptions. Men, not great enough, norhard enough, to be entitled as artists to take part in fashion-ing man; men, not sufficiently strong and far-sighted toallow, with sublime self-constraint, the obvious law of thethousandfold failures and perishings to prevail; men, notsufficiently noble to see the radically different grades ofrank and intervals of rank that separate man from man: such men, with their "equality before God," have hithertoswayed the destiny of Europe; until at last a dwarfed, al-most ludicrous species has been produced, a gregarious ani-mal, something obliging, sickly, mediocre, the European ofthe present day.

Apophthegms and Interludes

He who is a thorough teacher takes things seriously—andeven himself—only in relation to his pupils.

"Knowledge for its own sake"—that is the last snare laic by morality: we are thereby completely entangled in moi once more.

The charm of knowledge would be small, were it not much shame has to be overcome on the way to it. 6SA We are most dishonourable towards our God: he is notpermitted to s&i. 72 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 7366

The tendency of a person to allow himself to be degraded,robbed, deceived, and exploited might be the diffidence of aGod amongst men.

Love to one only is a barbarity, for it is exercised at theexpense of all others. Love to God also!

"I did that," says my memory. "I could not have donethat," says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually the memory yields.

One has regarded life carelessly, if one has failed to seethe hand that—kilte with leniency.

If a man has character, he has also his typical experience,which always recurs.

The Sage as Astronomer.—So long as thou feelest the starsan "above thee," thou lackest the eye of the discerningle. 74 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL

It is not the strength, but the duration of great sentimentsthat makes great men.

He who attains his ideal, precisely thereby surpasses it. 73A Many a peacock hides his tail from every eye—and callsit his pride.

A man of genius is unbearable, unless he possess at leasttwo things besides: gratitude and purity.

The degree and nature of a man's sensuality extends tothe highest altitudes of his spirit.

Under peaceful conditions the militant man attacks himself.

With his principles a man seeks either to dominate, BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 75justify, or honour, or reproach, or conceal his habits: twomen with the same principles probably seek fundamentallydifferent ends therewith.

He who despises himself, nevertheless esteems himselfthereby, as a despiser.

A soul which knows that it is loved, but does not itselflove, betrays its sediment: its dregs come up.

A thing that is explained ceases to concern us.—^What didthe God mean who gave the advice, "Know thyself!" Didit perhaps imply: "Cease to be concerned about thyself!become objective!"—And Socrates?—And the "scientificman"? 8x

It is terrible to die of thirst at sea. Is it necessary thattyou should so salt your truth that it will no longer—quenchIthirst?

"Sympathy for all"—would be harshness and t)Tanny forItkee, my good neighbour! j6 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL

Insttnct.—When the house is on fire one forgets even th€dinner.—^Yes, but one recovers it from amongst the ashes.

Woman learns how to hate in proportion as she—forgetnow to charm. 8S The same emotions are in man and woman, but in differenttempo; on that account man and woman never cease to misunderstand each other.

In the background of all their personal vanity, wom€l)t«emselves have still their impersonal scorn—for "woman."87

Fettered Heart, Free Spirit.—^When one firmly fettersbne's heart and keeps it prisoner, one can allow one's spirittnany liberties: I said this once before. But people do notbelieve it when I say so, unless they know it already.

IOne begins to distrust very clever persons when they be-come embarrassed. 1 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 7289

Dreadful experiences raise the question whether he wh«experiences them is not something dreadful also.

Heavy, melancholy men turn lighter, and come temporarily to their surface, precisely by that which makes othersheavy—^by hatred and love.

So cold, so icy, that one bums one's finger at the touchof him! Every hand that lays hold of him shrinks back!

And for that very reason many think him red-hot.

Who has not, at one time or another—sacrificed himselffor the sake of his good name?

In affability there is no hatred of men, but precisely on thatI account a great deal too much contempt of men.

The maturity of man—that means, to have reacquired the[seriousness that one had as a child at play. 78 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL

To be ash£imed of one's immorality is a step on the ladderat the end of which one is ashamed also of one's morality.96

One should part from life as Ulysses parted from Nausicaa-blessing it rather than in love with it.

What? A great man? I always see merely the play-actorof his own ideal.

When one trains one's conscience, it kisses one while itbites.

The Disappointed One Speaks.—"I listened for the echoand I heard only praise."

We all feign to ourselves that we are simpler than we*re; we thus relax ourselves away from our fellows. I BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 79xox A discerning one might easily regard himself at present asthe animalisation of God.

I Discovering reciprocal love should really disenchant thelover with regard to the beloved. "What! She is modestenough to love even you? Or stupid enough? Or—or "103

The Danger in Happiness.—"Everything now turns outbest for me, I now love every fate: —^who would like to beriy fate?

Z04

Not their love of himianity, but the impotence of theirlove, prevents the Christians of to-day—^burning us.

The pia jraus is still more repugnant to the taste {the*'piety") of the free spirit (the "pious man of knowledge")than the impia jraus. Hence the profoimd lack of judgment, in comparison with the church, characteristic of thetype "free spirit"—as its non-freedom. 8o BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL io6

By means of music the very passions enjoy themselves.

A sign of strong character, when once the resolution hasbeen taken, to shut the ear even to the best coimter-argu-ments. Occasionally, therefore, a will to stupidity.

There is no such thing as moral phenomena, but onlyamoral interpretation of phenomena.

The criminal is often enough not equal to his deed: he ex-tenuates and maligns it. no

The advocates of a criminal are seldom artists enoughto turn the beautiful terribleness of the deed to the advantage of the doer.

Ill

Our vanity is most difficult to wound just when our pridehas been wounded. i

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL Sir112

To him who feels himself preordained to contemplationand not to belief, all believers are too noisy and obtrusive;he guards against them.

"3 "You want to prepossess him in your favour? Then youmust be embarrassed before him."

The immense expectation with regard to sexual love, andthe coyness in this expectation, spoils all the perspectives ofwomen at the outset. "S Where there is neither love nor hatred in the game,woman's play is mediocre.

The great epochs of our life are at the points when wegain courage to rebaptize our badness as the best in us.

The will to overcome an emotion, is ultimately only therill of another, or of several other, emotions.

S2 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL ii8 }There is an innocence of admiration: it is possessed byhim to whom it has not yet occurred that he himself mayhe admired some day.

Our loathing of dirt may be so great as to prevent omcleaning ourselves—"justifying" ourselves.

Sensuality often forces the growth of love too much,sothat its root remains we£ik, and is easily torn up.

It is a curious thing that God learned Greek whenhewished to turn author—and that he did not learn it better.Z22

To rejoice on account of praise is in many cases merelypoliteness of heart—and the very opposite of vanity of spirit.123

Even concubinage has been corrupted—^by marriage.

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 8^"4

He who exults at the stake, does not triumph over pain,but because of the fact that he does not feel pain where heexpected it. A parable.

"5

When we have to change an opinion about any one, wecharge heavily to his account the inconvenience he therebycauses us.

A nation is a detour of nature to arrive at six or sevengreat men.—Yes, and then to get round them.

In the eyes of all true women science is hostile to thesense of shame. They feel as if one wished to peep imdertheir skin with it—or worse still! imder their dress andfinery.

The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the moremust you allure the senses to it.

The devil has the most extensive perspectives for God; 84 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL mon that account he keeps so far away from him: —the devil,,in effect, as the oldest friend of knowledge.

What a person is begins to betray itself when his talc decreases,—when he ceases to show what he can do. Talent"is also an adornment; an adornment is also a concealment.131

The sexes deceive themselves about each other: the rea-son is that in reality they honour and love only themselves(or their own ideal, to express it more agreeably). Thusman wishes woman to be peaceable: but in fact womanisessentially unpeaceable, like the cat, however well she mayhave assumed the peaceable demeanour.

One is punished best for one's virtues.

He who cannot find the way to his ideal, lives morefrivolously zmd shamelessly than the man without an ideal.134

From the senses originate all trustworthiness, all goodconscience, all evidence of truth. ^j1 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 85135

Pharisaism is not a deterioration of the good man; a considerable peirt of it is rather an essential condition of beinggood.

The one seeks an accoucheur for his thoughts, the otherseeks some one whom he can assist: a good conversation thusoriginates.

In intercourse with scholars and artists one readily makesmistakes of opposite kinds: in a remarkable scholar onenot infrequently finds a mediocre man; and often even ina mediocre artist, one finds a very remarkable man.

We do the same when awake as when dreaming: we onlyinvent and imagine him with whom we have intercourse and forget it immediately.

In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous thapman. 86 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL

Advice as a Riddle.—"If the band is not to break, bite itfirst—secure to make!"

The belly is the reason why man does not so readily takehimself for a God.

The chastest utterance I ever heard: "Dans le veritableamour c'est I'dnti qui enveloppe le corps."

Our vanity would like what we do best to pass preciselyfor what is most difficult to us.—Concerning the origin ofmany systems of morals.

When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is generally something wrong with her sexual nature. Barrennessitself conduces to a certain virility of taste; man, indeed,if I may say so, is "the barren animal.

I4S Comparing man and woman generally, one may say thatwoman would not have the genius for adornment, if shehad not the instinct for the secondary role. „,i

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 87146

He who fights with monsters should be careful lest hethereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into anabyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.

From old Florentine novels—moreover, from life: Buonalemmina e mala jemmina vuol bastone.—Sacchetti, Nov. 86.148

To seduce their neighbour to a favourable opinion, andafterwards to believe implicitly in this opinion of theirneighbour—who can do this conjuring trick so well aswomen?

That which an age considers evil is usually an imseasonable echo of what was formerly considered good—the atavismof an old ideal.

Around the hero everything becomes a tragedy; aroimdthe demigod everything becomes a satyr-play; and aroimdGod everything becomes—what? perhaps a "world"? &S BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL It is not enough to possess a talent: one must also haveyour permission to possess it; —eh, my friends?

"Where there is the tree of knowledge, there is alwaysParadise:" so say the most ancient and the most modemserpents.

IS5

What is done out of love always takes place beyond goodand evil. 154

Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony aresigns of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.The sense of the tragic increases and declines with sen-«uousness. 156

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

The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by meansof it one gets successfully through many a bad night. ^1ml

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 89158

Not only our reason, but also our conscience, truckles toour strongest impulse—the tyrant in us.

One must repay good and ill; but why just to the personwho did us good or ill? 160

One no longer loves one's knowledge sufficiently after onehas communicated it. 161

Poets act shamelessly towards their experiences: tney exploit them.

"Our fellow-creature is not our neighbour, but our neigh-bour's neighbour:"—so thinks every nation.

Love brings to light the noble and hidden qualities of alover—his rare and exceptional traits: it is thus liable to bedeceptive as to his normal character.

Jesus said to his Jews: "The law was for servants; —love 90 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL God as I love him, as his Son! What have we Sons of Godto do with morals!" i6S In Sight of Every Party.—^A shepherd has always needof a bell-wether—or he has himself to be a wether occasionally. i66

One may indeed lie with the mouth; but with the accompanying grimace one nevertheless tells the truth.

To vigourous men intimacy is a matter of shame—andsomething precious. z68

Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not dieof it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.

To talk much about oneself may also be a means of concealing oneself.

In praise there is mcH-e obtrusiveness than in blame.

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 91171

Pity has an almost ludicrous effect on a man of knowledge, like tender hands on a Cyclops.

One occasionally embraces some one or other, out of loveto mankind (because one cannot embrace all); but this iswhat one must never confess to the individual.

One does not hate as long as one disesteems, but onlywhen one esteems equal or superior.

Ye Utilitarians—^ye, too, love the utile only as a vehiclefor your inclinations,—ye, too, resilly find the noise of itswheels insupportable!

One loves ultimately one's desires, not the thing desired.176

The vanity of others is only counter to our taste whenit is counter to our vanity. yz BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL

With regard to what "truthfulness" is, perhaps nobody hasiver been sufficiently truthful.

One does not believe in the follies of clever men: what a^forfeiture of the rights of man!

The consequences of our actions seize us by the forelock, very indifferent to the fact that we have meanwhile "re- formed."

There is an innocence in lying which is the sign of good,iaith in a cause. 181

It is inhuman to bless when one is being cursed.

The familiarity of superiors embitters one, because it maynot be returned.

"I am affected, not because you have deceived me, butbecause I can no longer believe in you." i

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 93184

There is a haughtiness of kindness which has the appear-ance of wickedness.

"I dislike him."—Why?—*'I am not a match for him.

Did any one ever answer

The Natural History of Morals

The moral sentiment in Europe at present is perhaps as subtle, belated, diverse, sensitive, and refined, as the "Scienceof Morals" belonging thereto is recent, initial, awkward, andcoarse-fingered: —an interesting contrast, which sometimesbecomes incarnate and obvious in the very person of amoralist. Indeed, the expression, "Science of Morals" is, in respect to what is designated thereby, far too presumptuous and counter to good taste,—^which is always a fore- taste of more modest expressions. One ought to avow withthe utmost fairness what is still necessary here for a longtime, what is alone proper for the present: namely, thecollection of material, the comprehensive survey and classi- fication of an immense domain of delicate sentiments ofworth, and distinctions of worth, which live, grow, propagate,and perish—and perhaps attempts to give a clear idea ofthe recurring and more common forms of these living crystallisations—as preparation for a theory of types of morality.

To be sure, people have not hitherto been so modest. All the philosophers, with a pedantic and ridiculous seriousness, demanded of themselves something very much higher, morepretentious, and ceremonious, when they concerned themy4 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 95selves with morality as a science: they wanted to give a basisto morality—and every philosopher hitherto has believedthat he has given it a basis; morality itself, however, hasbeen regarded as something "given." How far from theirawkward pride was the seemingly insignificant problem left in dust and decay—of a description of forms of morality,notwithstanding that the finest hands and senses could hardlybe fine enough for it! It was precisely owing to moral philosophers knowing the moral facts imperfectly, in an arbi-trary epitome, or an accidental abridgement—perhaps asthe morality of their environment, their position, their church,their Zeitgeist, their climate and zone—it was precisely be-cause they were badly instructed with regard to nations,eras, and past ages, and were by no means eager to knowabout these matters, that they did not even come in sightof the real problems of morals—problems which only disclosethemselves by a comparison of many kinds of morality. Inevery "Science of Morals" hitherto, strange as it may sound,the problem of morality itself has been omitted; there hasbeen no suspicion that there was anything problematic there!That which philosophers called "giving a basis to morality,"and endeavoured to realise, has, when seen in a right light,proved merely a learned form of good faith in prevailingmorality, a new means of its expression, consequently just amatter-of-fact within the sphere of a definite morality, yea,in its ultimate motive, a sort of denial that it is lawful forthis morality to be called in question—and in any case thereverse of the testing, analysing, doubting, and vivisectingof this very faith. Hear, for instance, with what innocence—almost worthy of honour—Schopenhauer represents hisown task, and draw your conclusions concerning the scien-tificness of a "Science" whose latest master still talks inthe strain of children and old wives: "The principle," he 96 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL says (page 136 of the Grundprobleme der Ethik*), "theaxiom about the purport of which all moralists are practicallyagreed: neminem laede, immo omnes quantum potes juva—is really the proposition which all moral teachers strive toestablish, . . . the real basis of ethics which has been sought,like the philosopher's stone, for centuries."—The difficulty ofestablishing the proposition referred to may indeed be great—it is well known that Schopenhauer also was imsuccessfulin his efforts; and whoever has thoroughly realised howabsurdly false and sentimental this proposition is, in a worldwhose essence is Will to Power, may be reminded thatSchopenhauer, although a pessimist, actually—played theflute . . . daily after dinner: one may read about the matterin his biography. A question by the way: a pessimist, arepudiator of God and of the world, who makes a halt atmorality—who assents to morality, and plays the flute tolaede-neminem moraJs, what? Is that really—a pessimint?187

Apart from the value of such assertions as ''there is :. categorical imperative in us," one can always ask: Whatdoes such an assertion indicate about him who makes it?There are systems of morals which are meant to justify theirauthor in the eyes of other people; other systems of moralsare meeint to tranquillise him, and make him self-satisfied;with other systems he wants to crucify and humble himself;with others he wishes to take revenge; with others to concealhimself; with others to glorify himself and gain superiorityand distinction; —this system of morals helps its author tx) forget, that system makes him, or something of him, for-* Pages 54-55 of Schopenhauer's Basis of Morality, translatedby Arthur B. Bullock, M.A. (1903). ^Il

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 97gotten; many a moralist would like to exercise power andcreative arbitrariness over mankind; many another, perhaps,Kant especially, gives us to understand by his morals that"what is estimable in me, is that I know how to obey—andwith you it shall not be otherwise than with me!" In short,systems of morals are only a sign-language of the emotions.x88

In contrast to laisser-aller, every system of morals is asort of tyranny against "nature" and also against "reason";that is, however, no objection, unless one should again de-cree by some system of morals, that all kinds of tyrannyand imreasonableness are unlawful. What is essential andinvaluable in every system of morals, is that it is a longconstraint. In order to understand Stoicism, or Port-Royal,or Puritanism, one should remember the constraint underwhich every language has attained to strength and freedom the metrical constraint, the tyranny of rhyme and rhythm.How much trouble have the poets and orators of every nationgiven themselves! —not excepting some of the prose writersof to-day, in whose ear dwells an inexorable conscientious-ness—"for the sake of a folly," as utilitarian bunglers say,and thereby deem themselves wise—"from submission toarbitrary laws," as the anarchists say, and thereby fancythemselves "free," even free-spirited. The singular fact re-mains, 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 inadministration, or in speaking and persuading, in art justas in conduct, has only developed by means of the tyrannyof such arbitrary law; and in all seriousness, it is not at all improbable that precisely this is "nature" and "natural"

98 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL and not laisser-aller ! Every artist knows how different fromthe state of letting himself go, is his "most natural" condition,the free arranging, locating, disposing, and constructing inthe moments of "inspiration"—and how strictly and deli-cately he then obeys a thousand laws, which, by their veryrigidness and precision, defy all formulation by means ofideas (even the most stable idea has, in comparison there-with, something floating, manifold, and ambiguous in it). The essential thing "in heaven and in earth" is, apparently(to repeat it once more), that there should be long obediencein the same direction; there thereby results, and has alwaysresulted in the long run, something which has made lifeworth living; for instance, virtue, 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 thinkin accordance with the rules of a church or a court, orconformable to Aristotelian premises, the persistent spiritualwill to interpret everything that happened according to aChristian scheme, and in every occurrence to rediscover andjustify the Christian God: —all this violence, arbitrariness,severity, dreadfulness, and unreasonableness, has proved it- self the disciplinary means whereby the European spirit hasattained its strength, its remorseless curiosity and subtlemobility; granted also that much irrecoverable strength andspirit had to be stifled, suffocated, and spoilt in the process](for here, as everywhere, "nature" shows herself as she is,lin all her extravagant and indifferent magnificence, which,is shocking, but nevertheless noble). That for centuries]European thinkers only thought in order to prove somethingj—nowadays, on the contrary, we are suspicious of everyjthinker who "wishes to prove something"—that it was alwa) BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 99settled beforehand what was to be the result of their strictestthinking, as it was perhaps in the Asiatic astrology of formertimes, or as it is still at the present day in the innocent,Christian-moral explanation of immediate personal events"for the glory of God," or "for the good of the soul":—thistyranny, this arbitrariness, this severe and magnificent stupidity, has educated the spirit; slavery, both in the coarser andthe finer sense, is apparently an indispensable means evenof spiritual education and discipline. One may look at everysystem of morals in this light: it is "nature" therein whichteaches to hate the laisser-aller, the too great freedom, andimplants the need for limited horizons, for immediate duties—^it teaches the narrowing of perspectives, and thus, in acertain sense, that stupidity is a condition of life and develop-ment. "Thou must obey some one, and for a long time;otherwise thou wilt come to grief, and lose all respect forthyself"—this seems to me to be the moral imperative of nature, which is certainly neither "categorical," as old Kantwished (consequently the "otherwise"), nor does it addressitself to the individual (what does nature care for the in-dividual!), but to nations, races, ages, and ranks, above all,however, to the animal "man" generally, to mankind.

Industrious races find it a great hardship to be idle: itwas a master stroke of English instinct to hallow and begloomSunday to such an extent that the Englishman unconsciouslyhankers for his week- and work-day again: —as a kind ofcleverly devised, cleverly intercalated fast, such as is alsofrequently found in the ancient world (although, as is appropriate in southern nations, not precisely with respect t(»work). Many kinds of fasts are necessary; and wherever loo BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL powerful influences and habits prevail, legislators have to seethat intercalary days are appointed, on which such impulsesare fettered, and learn to hunger anew. Viewed from ahigher standpoint, whole generations and epochs, when theyshow themselves infected with any moral fanaticism, seemlike those intercalated periods of restraint and fasting, duringwhich an impulse learns to humble and submit itself—atthe same time also to purify and sharpen itself; certain philosophical sects likewise admit of a similar interpretation (forinstance, the Stoa, in the midst of Hellenic culture, with theatmosphere rank and overcharged with Aphrodisiacalodours).—Here also is a hint for the explanation of theparadox, why it was precisely in the most Christian periodof European history, and in general only under the pressure]f)f Christian sentiments, that the sexual impulse sublimatedj into love (amour-passion),

There is 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, Socratism, for which he himself was too noble. "No one desire to injure himself, hence all evil is done unwittingly. Thejevil man inflicts injury on himself; he would not do so, i however, if he knew that evil is evil. The evil man, therefore, is only evil through error; if one free him from error onewill necessarily make him—good."—This mode of reasoningsavours of the populace, who perceive only the unpleasantconsequences of evil-doing, and practically judge that "it isJstupid to do wrong"; while they accept "good" as identical!with "useful and pleasant," vnthout further thought. As|regards every system of utilitarianism, one may at once

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL loiassume that it has the same origin, and follow the scent:one will seldom err.—Plato did all he could to interpretsomething refined and noble into the tenets of his teacher,and above all to interpret himself into them—he, the mostdaring of all interpreters, who lifted the entire Socrates outof the street, as a popular theme and song, to exhibit himin endless and impossible modifications—namely, in all hisown disguises and multiplicities. In jest, and in Homericlanguage as well, what is the Platonic Socrates, if not jtooodc XIXaTGov Smodev re IXXaxcov \ieaar\ re XijiaiQOu

The old theological problem of "Faith" and "Knowledge,"or more plainly, of instinct and reason—the question whether,in respect to the valuation of things, instinct deserves moreauthority than rationality, which wants to appreciate andact according to motives, according to a "VVhy," that is tosay, in conformity to purpose and utility—it is always theold moral problem that first appeared in the person ofSocrates, and had divided men's minds long before Christianity. Socrates himself, following, of course, the taste of histalent—that of a surpassing dialectician—took first the sideof reason; and, in fact, what did he do all his life but laughat the awkward incapacity of the noble Athenians, who weremen of instinct, like all noble men, and could never givesatisfactory answers concerning the motives of their actions?In the end, however, though silently and secretly, he laughedalso at himself: with his finer conscience and introspection.he found in himself the same difficulty and incapacity. "Butwhy"—he said to himself—"should one on that accountseparate oneself from the instincts! One must set them right, 102 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL and the reason also—one must follow the instincts, but atthe same time persuade the reason to support them with goodarguments." This was the real falseness of that great andmysterious ironist; he brought his conscience up to thepoint that he was satisfied with a kind of self-outwitting:in fact, he perceived the irrationality in the moral judgment.•—Plato, more innocent in such matters, and without thecraftiness of the plebeian, wished to prove to himself, at theexpenditure of all his strength—the greatest strength a philosopher had ever expended—that reason and instinct leadspontaneously to one goal, to the good, to ''God"; and sincePlato, all theologians and philosophers have followed thesame path—which means that in matters of morality, in-stinct (or as Christians call it, "Faith," or as I call it, "theherd") has hitherto triumphed. Unless one should makean exception in the case of Descartes, the father of rational-ism (and consequently the grandfather of the Revolution),who recognised only the authority of reason: but reason isonly a tool, and Descartes was superficial.

Whoever has followed the history of a single science, findsin its development a clue to the understanding of the oldestand commonest processes of all "knowledge and cognisance":there, as here, the premature h)7potheses, the fictions, the,good stupid will to "belief," and the lack of distrust ancpatience are first developed—our senses learn late, and nevetlearn completely, to be subtle, reliable, and cautious orga of knowledge. Our eyes find it easier on a given occasion!to produce a picture already often produced, than to seizeiupon the divergence and novelty of an impression: the latterjrequires more force, more "morality." It is difficult ant

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 103painful for the ear to listen to anything new; we hear strangemusic badly. When we hear another language spoken, weinvoluntarily attempt to form the sounds into words withwhich we are more familiar and conversant—it was thus,for example, that the Germans modified the spoken wordarcubalista into armbrust (cross-bow). Our senses are alsohostile and averse to the new; and generally, even in the"simplest" processes of sensation, the emotions dominate—such as fear, love, hatred, and the passive emotion of indolence.—As little as a reader nowadays reads all the singlewords (not to speak of syllables) of a page—^he rather takesabout five out oi every twenty words at random, and"guesses" the probably appropriate sense to them—just aslittle do we see a tree correctly and completely in respect toits leaves, branches, colour, and shape; we find it so mucheasier to fancy the chance of a tree. Even in the midst ofthe most remarkable experiences, we still do just the same;we fabricate the greater part of the experience, and canhardly be made to contemplate any event, except as "in-ventors" thereof. All this goes to prove that from ourfundamental nature and from remote ages we have beenaccustomed to lying. Or, to express it more politely andhypocritically, in short, more pleasantly—one is much moreof an artist than one is aware of.—In an animated conversation, I often see the face of the person with whom I amspeaking so clearly and sharply defined before me, according to the thought he expresses, or which I believe to beevoked in his mind, that the degree of distinctness far ex-ceeds the strength of my visual faculty—the delicacy of theplay of the muscles and of the expression of the eyes musttherefore be imagined by me. Probably the person put onquite a different expression, or none at all. 104 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL

Quidquid luce fuit, tenebris agit: but also contrariwise,jWhat we experience in dreams, provided we experience it often, pertains at last just as much to the general belonging of our soul as anything "actually" experienced; by virtuethereof we are richer or poorer, we have a requirement morior less, and finally, in broad daylight, and even in the bright-^est moments of our waking life, we are ruled to some extentby the nature of our dreams. Supposing that some one hz often flown in his dreams, and that at last, as soon as hedreams, he is conscious of the power and art of flying his privilege and his peculiarly enviable happiness; such person, who believes that on the slightest impulse, he canactualise all sorts of curves and angles, who knows the sen-sation of a certain divine levity, an "upwards" without effortor constraint, a "downwards" without descending or lower-ing—without trouble!—^how could the man with such dreamexperiences and dream-habits fail to find "happiness" dif-ferently coloured and defined, even in his waking hours!How could he fail—to long differently for happiness?"Flight," such as is described by poets, must, when comparedwith his own "flying," be far too earthly, muscular, violent,far too "troublesome" for him.

The difference among men does not manifest itself only \vthe difference of their lists of desirable things—in their re- garding different good things as worth striving for, andbeing disagreed as to the greater or less value, the order o*' rank, of the commonly recognised desirable things: —it mani

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 105fests itself much more in what they regard as actually havingand possessing a desirable thing. As regards a woman, forinstance, the control over her body and her sexual gratification serves as an amply sufficient sign of ownership andpossession to the more modest man; another with a moresuspicious and ambitious thirst for possession, sees the "questionableness," the mere apparentness of such ownership, andwishes to have finer tests in order to know especially whetherthe woman not only gives herself to him, but also gives upfor his sake what she has or would like to have—only thendoes he look upon her as "possessed." A third, however,has not even here got to the limit of his distrust and hisdesire for possession: he asks himself whether the woman,when she gives up everything for him, does not perhaps doso for a phantom of him; he wishes first to be thoroughly,indeed, profoundly well known; in order to be loved at allhe ventures to let himself be found out. Only then does hefeel the beloved one fully in his possession, when she nolonger deceives herself about him, when she loves him justas much for the sake of his devilry and concealed insatiability, as for his goodness, patience, and spirituality. Oneman would like to possess a nation, and he finds all thehigher arts of Cagliostro and Catalina suitable for his purpose. Another, with a more refined thirst for possession, saysto himself: "One may not deceive where one desires to possess"—he is irritated and impatient at the idea that a maskof him should rule in the hearts of the people: "I must,therefore, make myself known, and first of all learn to knowmyself!" Amongst helpful and charitable people, one almostalways finds the awkward craftiness which first .<i;ets up suit-ably him who has to be helped, as though, for instance, heshould "merit" help, seek just their help, and would showhimself deeply grateful, attached, and subservient to tliem io6 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL for all help. With these conceits, they take control of theneedy as a property, just as in general they are charitableand helpful out of a desire for property. One finds themjealous when they are crossed or forestalled in their charity.Parents involuntarily make something like themselves out oftheir children—they call that "education" ; no mother doubtsat the bottom of her heart that the child she has bom is thereby her property, no father hesitates about his right tohis own ideas and notions of worth. Indeed, in former timesfathers deemed it right to use their discretion concerning thelife or death of the newly bom (as amongst the ancient Ger-mans). And like the father, so also do the teacher, the class, the priest, and the prince still see in every new individual anunobjectionable opportunity for a new possession. Theconsequence is. . . .

The Jews—a people "bora for slavery," as Tacitus and thewhole ancient world say of them; "the chosen people amongthe nations," as they themselves say and believe—the Jewsperformed the miracle of the inversion of valuations, bymeans of which life on earth obtained a new and dangerouscharm for a couple of millenniums. Their prophets fusedinto one the expressions "rich," "godless," "wicked," "violent," "sensual," and for the first time coined the word"world" as a term of reproach. In this inversion of valuations (in which is also included the use of the word "poor"as synonymous with "saint" and "friend") the significance of the Jewish people is to be foimd; it is with them that theslave-insurrection in morals commences.

III BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 107196

It is to be inferred that there are countless dark bodiesnear the sun—such as we shall never see. Amongst ourselves, this is an allegory; and the psychologist of moralsreads the whole star-writing merely as an allegorical and S)T1i- bolic language in which much may be unexpressed.

The beast of prey and the man of prey (for instance,Caesar Borgia) are fundamentally misimderstood, "nature" is misunderstood, so long as one seeks a "morbidness" in theconstitution of these healthiest of all tropical monsters andgrowths, or even an innate "hell" in them—as almost all moralists have done hitherto. Does it not seem that thereis a hatred of the virgin forest and of the tropics amongmoralists? And that the "tropical man" must be discreditedat all costs, whether as disease and deterioration of mankind,or as his own hell and self-torture? And why? In favourof the "temperate zones"? In favour of the temperate men?The "moral"? The mediocre?—^This for the chapter: "Morals as Timidity."

All the systems of morals which address themselves witha view to their "happiness," as it is called—what else arethey but suggestions for behaviour adapted to the degree ofdanger from themselves in which the individuals live; recipesfor their passions, their good and bad propensities, in so faras such have the Will to Power zmid would like to play the io8 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL master; small and great expediencies and elaborations, per meated with the musty odour of old family medicines andold-wife wisdom; all of them grotesque and absurd in their form—because they address themselves to "all," because they generalise where generalisation is not authorised; all of themspeaking unconditionally, and taking themselves unconditionally; all of them flavoured not merely with one grain of salt, but rather endurable only, and sometimes even seduc tive, when they are over-spiced and begin to smell dangerously,especially of "the other world." That is all of little valueVt^hen estimated intellectually, and is far from being "science," much less "wisdom"; but, repeated once more, and three times repeated, it is expediency, expediency, expediency, mixed with stupidity, stupidity, stupidity—whether it be thfi indifference and statuesque coldness towards the heated folly of the emotions, which the Stoics advised and fostered; or the no-more-laughing and no-more-weeping of Spinoza, 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 may be satisfied, the Aristotelianism of morals; or even morality as the en joyment of the emotions in a voluntary attenuation andspiritualisation by the symbolism of art, perhaps as music,or as love of God, and of mankind for God's sake—for in religion the passions are once more enfranchised, providedthat . . . ; or, finally, even the complaisant and wantonsurrender to the emotions, as has been taught by Hafis andGoethe, the bold letting-go of the reins, the spiritual andcorporeal licentia morum in the exceptional cases of wise old codgers and drunkards, with whom it "no longer hasmuch danger."—This also for the chapter: "Morals as Timidity."

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 109

Inasmuch as in all ages, as long as mankind has existed, there have also been human herds (family alliances, communities, tribes, peoples, states, churches), and always agreat number who obey in proportion to the small numberwho command—in view, therefore, of the fact that obedience has been most practised and fostered among mankind hitherto, one may reasonably suppose that, generally speaking, the need thereof is now innate in every one, as a kind of formal conscience which gives the command: "Thou shalt unconditionally do something, unconditionally refrain fromsomething"; in short, "Thou shalt." This need tries to satisfy itself and to fill its form with a content; according to its strength, impatience, and eagerness, it at once seizes as an omnivorous appetite with little selection, and accepts whatever is shouted into its ear by all sorts of commanders—parents, teachers, laws, class prejudices, or public opinion. The extraordinary limitation of human development, the hesitation, protractedness, fre- quent retrogression, and turning thereof, is attributable to the fact that the herd-instinct of obedience is transmittedbest, and at the cost of the art of command. If one imaginethis instinct increasing to its greatest extent, commandersand independent individuals will finally be lacking alto- gether; or they will suffer inwardly from a bad conscience, and will have to impose a deception on themselves in thefirst place in order to be able to command: just as if theyalso were only obeying. This condition of things actuallyexists in Europe at present—I call it the moral hypocrisy ofthe commanding class. They know no other way of protecting themselves from their bad conscience than by playing the no BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 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 currentopinions of the herd, as "first servants of their people," or"instruments of the public weal." On the other hand, thegregarious European man nowadays assumes an air as ifhe were the only land of man that is allowable; he glorifieshis qualities, such as public spirit, kindness, deference, in-dustry, temperance, modesty, indulgence, S5mipathy, byvirtue of which he is gentle, endurable, and useful to theherd, as the peculiarly human virtues. In cases, however,where it is believed that the leader and bell-wether cannotbe dispensed with, attempt after attempt is made nowadaysto replace commanders by the summing together of clevergregarious men: all representative constitutions, for example,are of this origin. In spite of all, what a blessing, whatadeliverance from a weight becoming unendurable, is theappearance of an absolute ruler for these gregarious Euro-peans—of this fact the effect of the appearance of Napoleonwas the last great proof: the history of the influence ofNapoleon is almost the history of the higher happiness towhich the entire century has attained in its worthiest indi-viduals and periods.

The man of an age of dissolution which mixes the raceswith one another, who has the inheritance of a diversifieddescent in his body—that is to say, contrary, and often notonly contrary, instincts and standards of value, which struggle with one another and are seldom at peace—such a manof late culture and broken lights, will, on an average, b( a weak man. His fundamental desire is that the war wMi1 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL iiiis in him should come to an end; happiness appears to himin the character of a soothing medicine and mode of thought(for instance, Epicurean or Christian) ; it is above all thingsthe happiness of repx)se, of undisturbedness, of repletion,of final unity—it is the "Sabbath of Sabbaths," to use theexpression of the holy rhetorician, St. Augustine, who washimself such a man.—Should, however, the contrariety andconflict in such natures operate as an additional incentiveand stimulus to life—and if, on the other hand, in additionto their powerful zmd irreconciliable instincts, they have alsoinherited and indoctrinated into them a proper mastery andsubtlety for carrying on the conflict with themselves (thatis to say, the faculty of self-control and self-deception),there then arise those marvellously incomprehensible, andinexplicable beings, those enigmatical men, predestined forconquering and circumventing others, the finest examplesof which are Alcibiades and Caesar (with whom I should liketo associate the first of Europeans according to my taste, theHohenstaufen, Frederick the Second), cmd amongst artists,perhaps Lionardo da Vinci. They appear precisely in thesame periods when that weaker type, with its longing forrepose, comes to the front; the two types are complementaryto each other, and spring from the same causes. 20I As long as the utility which determines moral estimates isonly gregarious utility, as long as the preservation of thecommunity is only kept in view, and the immoral is soughtprecisely and exclusively in what seems dangerous to themaintenance of the community, there can be no "moralityof love to one's neighbour." Granted even that there isalready a little constant exercise of consideration, sympathy, 112 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL fairness, gentleness, and mutual assistance, granted that evenin this condition of society all those instincts are alreadyactive which are latterly distinguished by honourable namesas "virtues," and eventually almost coincide with the con-ception "morality": in that period they do not as yet belongto the domain of moral valuations—they are still ultra-moral.A sympathetic action, for instance, is neither called good norbad, moral nor immoral, in the best period of the Romans;and should it be 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 thewelfare of the whole, to the res publica. After all, "love toour neighbour" is always a secondary matter, partly conventional and arbitrarily manifested in relation to our fearof our neighbour. After the fabric of society seems on thewhole established and secured against external dangers, it isthis fear of our neighbour which again creates new perspectives of moral valuation. Certain strong and dangerousinstincts, such as the love of enterprise, foolhardiness, re-vengefulness, astuteness, rapacity, and love of power, whichup till then had not only to be honoured from the point ofview of general utility—under other names, of course, thanthose here given—but had to be fostered and cultivated (be-cause they were perpetually required in the common dangeragainst the common enemies), are now felt in their danger-ousness to be doubly strong—when the outlets. for them arelacking—and are gradually branded as immoral and givenover to calumny. The contrary instincts and inclinationsnow attain to moral honour; the gregarious instinct gradually draws its conclusions. How much or how little dangerousness to the community or to equality is contained in anopinion, a condition, an emotion, a disposition, or an endowment—that is now the moral perspective; here again fear

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 113is the mother of morals. It is by the loftiest and strongestinstincts, when they break out passionately and carry theindividual far above and beyond the average, and the lowlevel of the gregarious conscience, that the self-reliance ofthe community is destroyed; its belief in itself, its backbone, as it were, breaks; consequently these very instinctswill be most branded and defamed. The lofty independentspirituality, the will to stand alone, and even the cogentreason, are felt to be dangers; everything that elevates theindividual above the herd, and is a source of fear to theneighbour, is henceforth called evil; the tolerant, tmassuming, self-adapting, self-equalising disposition, the mediocrityof desires, attains to moral distinction and honour. Finally^under very peaceful circumstances, there is always less opportunity and necessity for training the feelings to severityand rigour; and now every form of severity, even in justice,begins to disturb the conscience; a lofty and rigourous nobleness and self-responsibility almost offends, and awakensdistrust, "the lamb," and still more "the sheep," wins re-spect. There is a point of diseased mellowness and effemi-nacy in the history of society, at which society itself takesthe part of him who injures it, the part of the criminal, anddoes so, in fact, seriously and honestly. To punish, appearsto it to be somehow imfair—it is certain that the idea of"punishment" £ind "the obligation to punish" are then painful and alarming to people. "Is it not sufficient if thecriminal be rendered harmless? Why should we still punish?Punishment itself is terrible!"—with these questions gre-garious morality, the morality of fear, draws its ultimateconclusion. If one could at all do away with danger, thecause of fear, one would have done away with this moralityat the same time, it would no longer be necessary, it wouldnot consider itself any longer necessary! —Whoever examines 114 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL the .conscience of the present-day European, will alwayselicit the same imperative from its thousand moral folds andhidden recesses, the imperative of the timidity of the herd:"we wish that some time or other there may be nothing moreto fear!" Some time or other—the will and the way theretois nowadays called "progress" all over Europe.

Let us at once say again what we have already said ahundred times, for people's ears nowadays are unwillingto hear such truths

our truths. We know well enoughhow offensively it sounds when any one plainly, and withoutmetaphor, counts man amongst the animals; but it will beaccounted to us almost a crime, that it is precisely in respectto men of "modem ideas" that we have constantly appliedthe terms "herd," "herd-instincts," and such like expressions.What avail is it? We cannot do otherwise, for it is preciselyhere that our new insight is. We have found that in all theprincipal moral judgments Europe has become unanimous,including likewise the countries where European influenceprevails: in Europe people evidently know what Socratesthought he did not know, and what the famous serpent ofold once promised to teach—they "know" to-day what isgood and evil. It must then sound hard and be distasteful tothe ear, when we always insist that that which here thinksit knows, that which here glorifies itself with praise andblame, and calls itself good, is the instinct of the herdinghuman animal: the instinct which has come and is evercoming more and more to the front, to preponderance andsupremacy over other instincts, according to the increasingphysiological approximation and resemblance of which it isthe S5miptom. Morality in Europe at present is herding- BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 115animal morality; and therefore, as we understand the matter,only one kind of human morality, beside which, before which,and after v/hich many other moralities, and above all highermoralities, are or should be possible. Against such a "possibility," against such a "should be," however, this moralitydefends itself with all its strength; it says obstinately andinexorably: "I am morality itself and nothing else is morality!" Indeed, with the help of a religion which hashumoured and flattered the sublimest desires of the herding-animal, things have reached such a point that we alwaysfind a more visible expression of this morality even inpolitical and social arrangements: the democratic move-ment is the inheritance of the Christian movement. Thatits tempo, however, is much too slow and sleepy for themore impatient ones, for those who are sick and distractedby the herding-instinct, is indicated by the increasinglyfurious howling, and always less disguised teeth-gnashingof the anarchist dogs, who are now roving through the highways of European culture. Apparently in opposition to thepeacefully industrious democrats and Revolution-ideologues,and still more so to the awkward philosophasters and frater-nity-visionaries who call themselves Socialists and want a"free society," those are really at one with them all in theirthorough and instinctive hostility to every form of societyother than that of the autonomous herd (to the extent evenof repudiating the notions "master" and "servant" ni dieuni maitre, says a socialist formula) ; at one in their tenaciousopposition to every special claim, every special right andprivilege (this means ultimately opposition to every right,for when all are equal, no one needs "rights" any longer)

at one in their distrust of punitive justice (as though it werea \dolation of the weak, imfair to the necessary consequencesof all former society) ; but equally at one in their religion of /ii6 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL sympathy, in their compassion for all that feels, lives, andsuffers (down to the very animals, up even to "God"—theextravagance of "sympathy for God" belongs to a democraticage) ; altogether at one in the cry and impatience of theirsympathy, in their deadly hatred of suffering generally, intheir almost feminine incapacity for witnessing it or allowingit; at one in their involuntary beglooming and heart-softening, under the spell of which Europe seems to be threatenedwith a new Buddhism; at one in their belief in the moralityof mutual sympathy, as though it were morality in itself, theclimax, the attained climax of mankind, the sole hope of thefuture, the consolation of the present, the great dischargefrom all the obligations of the past; altogether at one intheir belief in the community as the deliverer, in the herd,and therefore in "themselves."

We, who hold a different belief—we, who regard thedemocratic movement, not only as a degenerating form ofpolitical organisation, but as equivEilent to a degenerating,a waning type of man, as involving his mediocrising anddepreciation: where have we to fix our hopes? In newphilosophers—there is no other alternative: in minds strongand original enough to initiate opposite estimates of value,to transvalue and invert "eternal valuations"; in forerunners,in men of the future, who in the present shall fix the constraints and fasten the knots which will compel millenniumsto take new paths. To teach man the future of humanityas his will, as depending on human will, and to makepreparation for vast hazardous enterprises and collectiveattempts in rearing and educating, in order thereby to putan end to the frightful rule of folly and chance which has

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 117hitherto gone by the name of "history" (the folly of the"greatest number" is only its last form) —for that purposea new type of philosophers and commanders will some timeor other be needed, at the very idea of which everything thathas existed in the way of occult, terrible, and benevolentbeings might look pale and dwarfed. The image of suchleaders hovers before our eyes: —is it lawful for me to sayit aloud, ye free spirits? The conditions which one wouldpartly have to create and partly utilise for their genesis; thepresumptive methods and tests by virtue of which a soulshould grow up to such an elevation and power as to feel aconstraint to these tasks; a transvaluation of values, underthe new pressure and hammer of which a conscience shouldbe steeled and a heart transformed into brass, so as to bearthe weight of such responsibility; and on the other hand thenecessity for such leaders, the dreadful danger that theymight be lacking, or miscarry and degenerate: —these areour real anxieties and glooms, ye know it well, ye freespirits! these are the heavy distant thoughts and stormswhich sweep across the heaven of our life. There are fewpains so grievous as to have seen, divined, or experiencedhow an exceptional man has missed his way and deteriorated;but he who has the rare eye for the universal danger of"man" himself deteriorating, he who like us has recognisedthe extraordinary fortuitousness which has hitherto playedits game in respect to the future of mankind—a game inwhich neither the hand, nor even a "finger of God" hasparticipated! —^he who divines the fate that is hidden underthe idiotic tmwariness and blind confidence of "modemideas," and still more under the whole of Christo-Europeanmorality—suffers from an anguish with which no other isto be compared. He sees at a glance all that could still bemade out of man through a favourable accumulation and ii8 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL augmentation of human powers and arrangements; he knowswith all the knowledge of his conviction how unexhaustedman still is for the greatest possibilities, and how often inthe past the type man has stood in presence of mysteriousdecisions and new paths: —^he knows still better from hispainfulest recollections on what wretched obstacles promisingdevelopments of the highest rank have hitherto usually goneto pieces, broken down, sunk, and become contemptible.The universal degeneracy of mankind to the level of the"man of the future"—as idealised by the socialistic fools andshallow-pates—this degeneracy and dwarfing of man to anabsolutely gregarious animal (or as they call it, to a manof"free society"), this brutalising of man into a pigmy withequal rights and claims, is undoubtedly possible! He whohas thought out this possibility to its ultimate conclusionknows another loathing unknown to the rest of mankindand perhaps also a new mission

We Scholars

At the risk that moralising may also reveal itself here asthat which it has always been—namely, resolutely montterses plaies, according to Balzac—I would venture to protestagainst an improper and injurious alteration of rank, whichquite unnoticed, and as if with the best conscience, threatensnowadays to establish itself in the relations of science andphilosophy. I mean to say that one must have the rightout of one's own experience—experience, as it seems to me^always implies unfortunate experience?—to treat of suchan important question of rank, so as not to speak of colourlike the blind, or against science like women and artists("Ah! this dreadful science!" sigh their instinct and theirshame, "it always finds things out!") The declaration ofindependence of the scientific man, his emancipation fromphilosophy, is one of the subtler after-effects of democraticorganisation and disorganisation: the self-glorification andself-conceitedness of the learned man is now everywhere infull bloom, and in its best springtime—which does not meanto imply that in this case self-praise smells sweetly. Herealso the instinct of the populace cries, "Freedom from allmasters!" and after science has, with the happiest results,119 .120 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL resisted theology, whose "handmaid" it had been too long,it now proposes in its wantonness and indiscretion to laydown laws for philosophy, and in its turn to play the"master"—what am I saying! to play the philosopher on its own accoimt. My memory—the memory of a scientific man,if you please! —teems with the naivetes of insolence whichI have heard about philosophy and philosophers from youngnaturalists and old physicians (not to mention the mostcultured and most conceited of all learned men, the philologists and schoolmasters, who are both the one and the otherby profession). On one occasion it was the specialist andthe Jack Homer who instinctively stood on the defensiveagainst all synthetic tasks and capabilities; at another timeit was the industrious worker who had got a scent of otiumand refined luxuriousness in the internal economy of thephilosopher, and felt himself aggrieved and belittled thereby.On another occasion it was the colour-blindness of the utili- tarian, who sees nothing in philosophy but a series of refutedsystems, and an extravagant expenditure which "does no-body any good." At another time the fear of disguisedmysticism and of the boundary-adjustment of knowledgebecame conspicuous, at another time the disregard of indi-vidual philosophers, which had involuntarily extended todisregard of philosophy generally. In fine, I found mostfrequently, behind the proud disdain of philosophy in youngscholars, 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 being a generalill-will to all philosophy. (Such seems to me, for instance,the after-effect of Schopenhauer on the most modem Ger-many: by his unintelligent rage against Hegel, he has suc-ceeded in severing the whole of the last generation of Germans i

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 121from its connection with German culture, which culture, allthings considered, has been an elevation and a divining re-finement of the historical sense; but precisely at this pointSchopenhauer himself was poor, irreceptive, and im-Germanto the extent of ingeniousness.) On the whole, speakinggenerally, it may just have been the humanness, all-too-humanness of the modem philosophers themselves, in short,their contemptibleness, which has injured most radically thereverence for philosophy and opened the doors to the in-stinct of the populace. Let it but be acknowledged to whatan extent our modem world diverges from the whole styleof the world of Heraclites, Plato, Empedocles, and whateverelse all the royal and magnificent anchorites of the spirit werecalled; and with what justice an honest man of science mayfeel himself of a better family and origin, in view of suchrepresentatives of philosophy, who, owing to the fashionof the present day, are just as much aloft as they are downbelow—in Germany, for instance, the two lions of Berlin,the anarchist Eugen Diihring and the amalgamist Eduardvon Hartmann. It is especi£illy the sight of those hotch-potch philosophers, who call themselves "realists," or "positivists," which is calculated to implant a dangerous distmstin 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 havebeen vanquished and brought back again under the dominionof science, who at one time or another claimed more fromthemselves, without having a right to the "more" and itsresponsibility—and who now, creditably, rancorously andvindictively, represent in word and deed, disbelief in themaster-task and supremacy of philosophy. After all, hcvcould it be otherwise? Science flourishes nowadays and hasthe good conscience clearly visible on its coimtensince; while 122 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIl that to which the entire modem philosophy has graduallysunk, the remnant of philosophy of the present day, excitesdistrust and displeasure, if not scorn and pity. Philosophyreduced to a "theory of knowledge," no more in fact thana diffident science of epochs and doctrine of forbearance:a philosophy that never even gets beyond the threshold, andrigourously denies itself the right to enter—that is philosophyin its last throes, an end, an agony, something that awakenspity. How could such a philosophy

rule!

The dangers that beset the evolution of the philosopherare, in fact, so manifold nowadays, that one might doubtwhether this fruit could still come to maturity. The extentand towering structure of the sciences have increased enor- mously, and therewith also the probability that the philosopher will grow tired even as a learner, or will attach himselfsomewhere and "specialise": so that he will no longer attain to his elevation, that is to say, to his superspection, his cir- cumspection, and his despection. Or he gets aloft too late, when the best of his maturity and strength is past; or whenhe is impaired, coarsened, and deteriorated, so that his view, his general estimate of things, is no longer of much import-, ance. 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 millepede, a milleantenna; he knows too well that as a discerner, onewho has lost his self-respect no longer commands, no longer leads; unless he should aspire to become a great play-actor a philosophical Cagliostro 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

BE\OND GOOD AND EVIL 123once more the philosopher's difficulties, there is also the factthat he demands from himself a verdict, a Yea or Nay, notconcerning science, but concerning life and the worth oflife—he learns unwillingly to believe that it is hisright and even his duty to obtain this verdict, and he has toseek his way to the right and the belief only through themost extensive (perhaps disturbing and destroying) experiences, often hesitating, doubting, and dumbfounded. Infact, the philosopher has long been mistaken and confusedby the multitude, either with the scientific man and idealscholar, or with the religiously elevated, desensualised, desecularised visionary and God-intoxicated man; and evenyet when one hears anybody praised, because he lives"wisely," or "as a philosopher," it hardly means anythingmore than "prudently and apart." Wisdom: that seems tothe populace to be a kind of flight, a means and artifice forwithdrawing successfully from a bad game; but the genuinephilosopher—does it not seem so to us, my friends?—lives"unphilosophically" and "unwisely," above all, imprudently,and feels the obligation and burden of a hundred attemptsand temptations of life—he risks himself const£intly, he playsthis bad game.

In relation to the genius, that is to say, a being whoeither engenders or produces—^both words understood in theirfullest sense—the man of learning, the scientific average man,"has always something of the old maid about him; for, likeher, he is not conversant with the two principal fimctions ofman. 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 emphasises the respectability—and yet, 124 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL in the compulsion of this concession, one has the same ad-mixture 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, nonauthoritative, and non-self-sufficient type of man; he possesses industry, patient adaptableness to rank and file, equability and moderation in capacity and requirement; he hasthe instinct for people like himself, and for that which theyrequire—for instance: the portion of independence and greenmeadow without which there is no rest from labour, theclaim to honour and consideration (which first and foremostpresupposes recognition and recognisability) , the sunshineof a good name, the perpetual ratification of his value andusefulness, with which -the inward distrust which lies at thebottom of the heart of all dependent men and gregariousanimals, has again and again to be overcome. The learnedman, as is appropriate, has also maladies and faults of anignoble kind: he is full of petty envy, and has a lynx-eyefor the weak points in those natures to whose elevationshe cannot attain. He is confiding, yet only as one who lets himself go, but does not flow; and precisely before the man ofthe great current he stands all the colder and more reserved his eye is then like a smooth and irresponsive lake, whichis no longer moved by rapture or sympathy. The worstand most dangerous thing of which a scholar is capable re- sults from the instinct of mediocrity of his type, from theJesuitism of mediocrity, which labours instinctively for thedestruction of the exceptional man, and endeavours to break—or still better, to relax—every bent bow. To relax, ofcourse, with consideration, and naturally with an indulgenthand—to relax with confiding sympathy: that is the real art of Jesuitism, which has always understood how to intro- duce itself as the religion of sympathy. S BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 125207

However gratefully one may welcome the objective spirit—and who has not been sick to death of all subjectivity andits confounded ipsisitnosity

—in the end, however, one mustlearn caution even with regard to one's gratitude, and puta stop to the exaggeration with which the unselfing anddepersonalising of the spirit has recently been celebrated,as if it were the goal in itself, as if it were salvation andglorification—as is especially accustomed to happen in thepessimist school, which has also in its turn good reasons forpaying the highest honours to "disinterested knowledge."The objective man, who no longer curses and scolds likethe pessimist, the ideal man of learning in whom the scientificinstinct blossoms forth fully after a thousand complete andpartial failures, is assuredly one of the most costly instru-ments that exist, but his place is in the hand of one whoismore powerful. He is only an instrument; we may say, heis a mirror—^he is no ''purpose in himself." The objectiveman is in truth a mirror: accustomed to prostration beforeeverything that wants to be known, with such desires onlyas knowing or "reflecting" imply—^he waits until somethingcomes, and then expands himself sensitively, so that eventhe light footsteps and gliding past of spiritual beings maynot be lost on his surface and film. Whatever "personality"he still possesses seems to him accidental, arbitrary, or stilloftener, disturbing; so much has he come to regard himselfas the passage and reflection of outside forms and events.He calls up the recollection of "himself" with an effort, andnot infrequently wrongly; he readily confounds himself withother persons, he makes mistakes with regard to his ownneeds, and here only is he unrefined and negligent. Perhaps

126 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL he is troubled about the health, or the pettiness and confinedatmosphere of wife and friend, or the lack of companionsand society—indeed, he sets himself to reflect on his suffering, but in vain! His thoughts already rove away to themore general case, and to-morrow he knows as little as heknew yesterday how to help himself. He does not now takehimself seriously and devote time to himself: he is serene,not from lack of trouble, but from lack of capacity forgrasping and dealing with his trouble. The habitual complaisance with respect to all objects and experiences, theradiant and impartial hospitality with which he receiveseverything that comes his way, his habit of inconsiderategood-nature, of dangerous indifference as to Yea and Nay:alas! there are enough of cases in which he has to atone forthese virtues of his! —and as man generally, he becomes fartoo easily the caput mortuum of such virtues. Should onewish love or hatred from him—I mean love and hatred asGod, woman, and animal understand them—he will do whathe can, and furnish what he can. But one must not besurprised if it should not be much—if he should show himself just at this point to be false, fragile, questionable, anddeteriorated. His love is constrained, his hatred is artificial,and rather un tour de force, 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 longerknows how to affirm, no longer how to deny; he does notcommand; neither does he destroy. "Je ne tniprise presquerien"—he says, with Leibnitz: let us not overlook nor undervalue the presque! Neither is he a model man; he doesnot go in advance of any one, nor after either; he placeshimself generally too far off to have any reason for espousingthe cause of either good or evil. If he has been so long

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 127confounded with the philosopher, with the Caesarian trainerand dictator of civilisation, he has had far too much honour,and what is more essential in him has been overlooked—^he is an instrument, something of a slave, though certainly thesublimest sort of slave, but nothing in himself

presque rien!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, no outgoing nor upgoing, no complementary manin whom the rest of existence justifies itself, no termination—and still less a commencement, an engendering, or primary cause, nothing hardy, powerful, self-centred, that wantsto be master; but rather only a soft, inflated, delicate, movable potter's-form, that must wait for some kind of contentand frame to "shape" itself thereto—for the most part aman without frame and content, a "selfless" man. Consequently, also, nothing for womai, in parenthesi.

When a philosopher nowadays makes known that he isnot a sceptic—I hope that has been gathered from the fore-going 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 arenow so many, he is henceforth said to be dangerous. Withhis repudiation of scepticism, it seems to them as if theyheard some evil-threatening sound in the distance, as if anew kind of explosive were being tried somewhere, a d)mamite of the spirit, perhaps a newly discovered Russiannihiline, a pessimism bonae voluntatis, that not only denies,means denial, but—dreadful thought! practises denial. 128 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL Against this kind of "good will"—a will to the veritable,actual negation of life—there is, as is generally acknowledgednowadays, no better soporific and sedative than scepticism,the mild, pleasing, lulling poppy of scepticism; and Hamlethimself is now prescribed by the doctors of the day as anantidote to the "spirit," and its underground noises. "Arenot our ears already full of bad sounds?" say the sceptics, aslovers of repose, and almost as a kind of safety police, "thissubterranean Nay is terrible! Be still, ye pessimistic moles!The sceptic, in effect, that delicate creature, is far too easilyfrightened; his conscience is schooled so as to start at everyNay, and even at that sharp, decided Yea, and feels something like a bite thereby. Yea! and Nay! —they seem tohim opposed to morality; he loves, on the contrary, to makea festival to his virtue by a noble aloofness, while perhapshe says with Montaigne: "What do I know?" Or withSocrates: "I know that I know nothing." Or: "Here I donot trust myself, no door is open to me." Or: "Even if thedoor were open, why should I enter immediately?" Or:"What is the use of any hasty hypotheses? It might quitewell be in good taste to make no hypotheses at all. Are youabsolutely obliged to straighten at once what is crooked? tostuff every hole with some kind of oakum? Is there nottime enough for that? Has not the time leisure? Oh, yedemons, can ye not at all wait? The uncertain also hasits charms, the Sphinx, too, is a Circe, and Circe, too, wasa philosopher."—Thus does a sceptic console himself; andintruth he needs some consolation. For scepticism is the mostspiritual expression of a certain many-sided physiologicaltemperament, which in ordinary language is called nervousdebility and sickliness; it arises whenever races or classeswhich have been long separated, decisively and suddenlyblend with one another. In the new generation, which has

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 129inherited as it were different standards and valuations in its blood, everything is disquiet, derangement, doubt, and tentative; the best powers operate restrictively, the very virtuesprevent each other growing and becoming strong, equilibrium,ballast, and perpendicular stability are lacking in body andsoul. That, however, which is most diseased and degeneratedin such nondescripts is the will; they are no longer familiarwith independence of decision, or the courageous feeling ofpleasure in willing—they are doubtful of the "freedom of thewill" even in their dreams. Our present-day Europe, thescene of a senseless, precipitate attempt at a radical blendingof classes, and consequently of races, is therefore scepticalin all its heights and depths, sometimes exhibiting the mobilescepticism which springs impatiently and wantonly frombranch to branch, sometimes with gloomy aspect, like acloud overcharged with interrogative signs—and often sickxmto death of its will! Paralysis of will; where do we notfind this cripple sitting nowadays! And yet how bedeckedoftentimes! How seductively ornamented! There are thefinest gala dresses and disguises for this disease; and that,for instance, most of what places itself nowadays in theshow-cases as "objectiveness," "the scientific spirit," "I'artpour I'art," and "pure voluntary knowledge," is only decked-out scepticism and paralysis of will—I am ready to answerfor this diagnosis of the European disease.—The disease ofthe will is diffused unequally over Europe; it is worst andmost varied where civilisation 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 to-day, as can be readily dis-closed and comprehended, that the will is most infirm; andFrance, which has always had a masterly aptitude for converting even the portentous crises of its spirit into something 130 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL charming and seductive, now manifests emphatically its in-tellectual ascendency over Europe, by being the school andexhibition of all the charms of scepticism. The power towill and to persist, moreover, in a resolution, is alreadysomewhat stronger in Germany, and again in the North ofGermany it is stronger than in Central Germany; it isconsiderably stronger in England, Spain, and Corsica, asso-ciated with phlegm in the former and with hard skulls in thelatter—not to mention Italy, which is too young yet toknow what it wants, and must first show whether it canexercise will; but it is strongest and most surprising of allin that immense middle empire where Europe as it were flowsback to Asia—namely, in Russia. There the power to willhas been long stored up and accumulated, there the will uncertain whether to be negative or affirmative—waits threat-eningly to be discharged (to borrow their pet phrase fromour physicists). Perhaps not only Indian wars and complications in Asia would be necessary to free Europe from itsgreatest danger, but also internal subversion, the shatteringof the empire into small states, and above all the introductionof parliamentary imbecility, together with the obligation ofevery one to read his newspaper at breakfast. I do notsay this as one who desires it; in my heart I should ratherprefer the contrary—I mean such an increase in the threaten-ing attitude of Russia, that Europe would have to make upits mind to become equally threatening—namely, to acquireone will, by means of a new caste to rule over the Continent,a persistent, dreadful will of its own, that can set its aimsthousands of years ahead ; so that the long spun-out comedyof its petty-stateism, and its dynastic as well as its democratic many-willed-ness, might finally be brought to a close.The time for petty politics is past; the next century bring the struggle for the dominion of the world—the cot PulsiontoGTeatnoh'tirs.wilL.omM, BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 131209

As to how far the new warlike age on which we Europeanshave evidently entered may perhaps favour the growth ofanother and stronger kind of scepticism, I should like to express myself preliminarily merely by a parable, which thelovers of German history will already understand. Thatunscrupulous enthusiast for big, handsome grenadiers (who,as King of Prussia, brought into being a military and sceptical genius—and therewith, in reality, the new and now triumphantly emerged type of German), the problematic, crazyfather of Frederick the Great, had on one point the veryknack and lucky grasp of the genius: he knew what wasthen lacking in Germany, the want of which was a hundredtimes more alarming and serious than any lack of culture andsocial form—his ill-will to the young Frederick resulted fromthe anxiety of a profound instinct. Men were lacking; andhe suspected, to his bitterest regret, that his own son wasnot 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 pleasantfrivolity of clever Frenchmen—^he saw in the backgroundthe great bloodsucker, the spider scepticism; he suspected theincurable wretchedness of a heart no longer hard enougheither for evil or good, and of a broken will that no longercommands, is no longer able to command. Meanwhile,however, there grew up in his son that new kind of harderand more dangerous scepticism—who knows to what extentit was encouraged just by his father's hatred and the icymelancholy of a will condemned to solitude?—the scepticism of daring manliness, which is closely related to the geniusfor war and conquest, and made its first entrance into Ger- 132 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL many in the person of the great Frederick. This scepticismdespises and nevertheless grasps; it undermines and takespossession; it does not beheve, but it does not thereby loseitself; it gives the spirit a dangerous liberty, but it keepsstrict guard over the heart. It is the German form of scepticism, which, as a continued Fredericianism, risen to thehighest spirituality, has kept Europe for a considerable timeunder the dominion of the German spirit and its critical andhistorical distrust. Owing to the insuperably strong andtough masculine character of the great German philologistsand historical critics (who, rightly estimated, were also allof them artists of destruction and dissolution), a new conception of the German spirit gradually established itself—inspite of all Romanticism in music and philosophy—in whichthe leaning towards masculine scepticism was decidedlyprominent: whether, for instance, as fearlessness of gaze,as courage and sternness of the dissecting hand, or as resolutewill to dangerous voyages of discovery, to spiritualisedNorth Pole expeditions under barren and dangerous skies.There may be good groimds for it when warm-blooded andsuperficial humanitarians cross themselves before this spirit,cet esprit jataliste, ironique, mephistophelique, as Micheletcalls it, not without a shudder. But if one would realisehow characteristic is this fear of the "man" in the Germanspirit which awakened Europe out of its "dogmatic slumber,"let us call to mind the former conception which had to beovercome by this new one—and that it is not so very longago that a masculinised woman could dare, with unbridledpresumption, to recommend the Germans to the interest ofEurope as gentle, good-hearted, weak-willed, and poeticalfools. Finally, let us only understand profoundly enoughNapoleon's astonishment when he saw Goethe: it revealswhat had been regarded for centuries as the "German spirit.

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 133"Voila un homme!"—that was as much as to say: "But this is a man! And I only expected to see a German!"

Supposing, then, that in the picture of the philosophers of the future, some trait suggests the question whether theymust not perhaps be sceptics in the last-mentioned sense, something in them would only be designated thereby—andnot they themselves. With equal right they might call themselves critics; and assuredly they will be men of experi- ments. By the name with which I ventured to baptize them,I have already expressly emphasised their attempting andtheir love of attempting: is this because, as critics in bodyand soul, they will love to make use of experiments in anew, and perhaps wider and more dangerous sense? Intheir 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?—Thereis no doubt: these coming ones will be least able to dispensewith the serious and not imscrupulous qualities which dis- tinguish the critic from the sceptic: I mean the certainty as to standards of worth, the conscious employment of aunity of method, the wary courage, the standing-alone, andthe capacity for self-responsibility; indeed, they will avowamong themselves a delight in denial and dissection, anda certain considerate cruelty, which knows how to handlethe knife surely and deftly, even when the heart bleeds. They will be sterner (and perhaps not always towards themselves only) than humane people may desire, they will notdeal with the "truth" in order that it may "please" them,or "elevate" and "inspire" them—they will rather havelittle faith in "truth" bringing with it such revels for the 134 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL feelings. They will smile, those rigourous spirits, when anyone says in their presence: "that thought elevates me, whyshould it not be true?" or: "that work enchants me, whyshould it not be beautiful?" or: "that artist enlarges me,why should he not be great?" Perhaps they will not onlyhave a smile, but a genuine disgust for all that is thus rapturous, idealistic, feminine, and hermaphroditic; and if anyone could look into their inmost hearts, he would not easilyfind therein the intention to reconcile "Christian sentiments"with "antique taste," or even with "modem parliamentarism" (the kind of reconciliation necessarily found evenamongst philosophers in our very uncertain and consequentlyvery conciliatory century). Critical discipline, and everyhabit that conduces to purity and rigour in intellectual matters, will not only be demanded from themselves by thesephilosophers of the future; they may, even make a displaythereof as their special adornment—nevertheless they willnot want to be called critics on that account. It will seemto them no small indignity to philosophy to have it decreed,as is so welcome nowadays, that "philosophy itself is criti-cism and critical science—and nothing else whatever!"Though this estimate of philosophy may enjoy the approvalof all the Positivists of France and Germany (and possibly iteven flattered the heart and taste of Kant: let us call tomind the titles of his principal works) , our new philosopherswill say, notwithstanding, that critics are instruments of thephilosopher, and just on that account, as instruments, theyare far from being philosophers themselves! Even the greatChinaman of Konigsberg was only a great critic

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 135211 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 hisown," £ind not give those far too much, these far too little. It may be necessary for the education of the real philosopherthat he himself should have once stood upon all those stepsupon which his servants, the scientific workers of philosophy,remain standing, and must remain standing: he himselfmust perhaps have been critic, and dogmatist, and historian,and besides, poet, and collector, and traveller, and riddle-^reader^ and moralist, and seer, and "free spirit," and almosteverything, in order to traverse the whole range of humanvalues and estimations, and that he may be able with avariety of eyes and consciences to look from a height to anydistance, from a depth up to any height, from a nook intoany expanse. But all these are only preliminary conditionsfor his task; this task itself demands something else—it re-quires him to create values. The philosophical workers, afterthe excellent pattern of Kant and Hegel, have to fix and for-malise some great existing body of valuations—that is tosay, former determinations of value, creations of value,which have become prevalent, and are for a time called"truths"—whether in the domain of the logical, the political(moral), or the artistic. It is for these investigators to makewhatever has happened and been esteemed hitherto, conspicuous, conceivable, intelligible, and manageable, to shorteneverythmg long, even "time" itself, and to subjugate theentire past: an immense and wonderful task, in the carryingout of which all refined pride, all tenacious will, can surelyfind satisfaction. The real philosophers, however, are com' 136 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL manders and law-givers; they say: "Thus shall it be!"They determine first the Whither and the Why of mankind,and thereby set aside the previous labour of all philosophical workers, and all subjugators of the past—they grasp atthe future with a creative hand, and whatever is and was,becomes for them thereby a means, an instrument, andahammer. Their "knowing" is creating, their creating is alaw-giving, their will to truth is

Will to Power.—Are thereat present such philosophers? Have there ever been suchphilosophers? Must there not be such philosophers someday? . . .

It is always more obvious to me that the philosopher, as aman indispensable for the morrow and the day after themorrow, has ever found himself, and has been obliged to findhimself, in contradiction to the day in which he lives; hisenemy has always been the ideal of his day. Hitherto allthose extraordinary furtherers of humanity whom one callsphilosophers—^who rarely regarded themselves as lovers ofwisdom, but rather as disagreeable fools and dangerous in-terrogators—^have found their mission, their hard, involuntary, imperative mission (in the end however the greatnessof their mission), in being the bad conscience of their age.In putting the vivisector's knife to the breast of the veryvirtues of their age, they have betrayed their own secret; ithas been for the sake of a new greatness of man, a new imtrodden path to his aggrandisement. They have always dis-closed how much hypocrisy, indolence, self-indulgence, andself-neglect, how much falsehood was concealed under themost venerated types of contemporary morality, how muchvirtue was outlived; they have always said: "We must re- BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 137move hence to where you are least at home." In face of aworld of "modem ideas," which would like to confine everyone in a comer, in a "specialty," a philosopher, if therecould be philosophers nowadays, would be compelled toplace the greatness of man, the conception of "greatness,"precisely in his comprehensiveness and multifariousness, inhis all-roundness; he would even determine worth and rankaccording to the amount and variety of that which a mancould bear and take upon himself, according to the extentto which a man could stretch his responsibility. Nowadaysthe taste and virtue of the age weaken and attenuate thewill; nothing is so adapted to the spirit of the age as weakness of will: consequently, in the ideal of the philosopher,strength of will, stemness 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 sixteenth century, which suffered from its accumulated energy of will, and from the wildest torrents and floods of selfishness. Inthe time of Socrates, among men only of wom-out instincts, old conservative Athenians who let themselves go—"for thesake of happiness," as they said; for the sake of pleasure, astheir conduct indicated—and who had continually on theirlips the old pompous words to which they had long forfeitedthe right by the life they led, irony was perhaps necessaryfor greatness of soul, the wicked Socratic assurance of theold physician and plebeian, who cut ruthlessly into his ownflesh, as into the flesh and heart of the "noble," with a lookthat said plainly enou^: "Do not dissemble before me!here—we are equal!" At present, on the contrary, whenthroughout Europe the herding animal alone attains to honours, and dispenses honours, when "equality of right" can 138 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL too readily be transformed into equality in wrong: I meantosay into general war against everything rare, strange, andprivileged, against the higher man, the higher soul, the higherduty, the higher responsibility, the creative plenipotence andlordliness—at present it belongs to the conception of "great-ness" to be noble, to wish to be apart, to be capable ofbeing different, to stand alone, to have to live by personalinitiative; and the philosopher will betray something of hisown ideal when he asserts: "He shall be the greatest whocan be the most solitary, the most concealed, the most di-vergent, the man beyond good and evil, the master of hisvirtues, and of superabundance of will; precisely this shallbe called greatness: as diversified as can be entire, as ampleas can be full." And to ask once more the question: Isgreatness possible—nowadays?

iIt is difficult to learn what a philosopher is, because itcannot be taught: one must "know" it by experience—orone should have the pride not to know it. The fact that atpresent people all talk of things of which they cannot haveany experience, is true more especially and unfortunately cisconcerns the philosopher and philosophical matters: —thevery few know them, are permitted to know them, and allpopular ideas about them are false. Thus, for instance, thetruly philosophical combination of a bold, exuberant spirituality which runs at presto pace, and a dialectic rigour andnecessity which makes no false step, is unknown to mostthinkers and scholars from their own experience, and therefore, should any one speak of it in their presence, it is in-credible to them. They conceive of every necessity as trou-blesome, as a painful compulsory obedience and state of con- BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 139straint; thinking itself is regarded by them as somethingslow and hesitating, almost as a trouble, and often enoughas "worthy of the sweat of the noble"—but not at all assomething easy and divine, closely related to dancing andexuberance! 'To think" and to take a matter "seriously," "arduously"—that is one and the same thing to them; suchonly has been their "experience."—Artists have here per-haps a finer intuition; they who know only too well thatprecisely when they no longer do anything "arbitrarily," and everything of necessity, their feeling of freedom, ofsubtlety, of power, of creatively fixing, disposing and shaping, reaches its climax—in short, that necessity and "free- dom of will" are then the same thing with them. There is, in fine, a gradation of rank in psychical states, to whichthe gradation of rank in the problems corresponds; and thehighest problems repel ruthlessly every one who ventures toonear them, without being predestined for their solution bythe loftiness and power of his spirituality. Of what use is it for nimble, everyday intellects, or clumsy, honest mechanicsand 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 coarse feet must nevertread upon such carpets: this is provided for in the primarylaw of things; the doors remain closed to those intruders, though they may dash and break their heads thereon! People have always to be born to a high station, or, moredefinitely, they have to be bred for it: a person has only ari^t to philosophy—taking the word in its higher signifi- cance—in virtue of his descent; the ancestors, the "blood,"decide here also. Many generations must have preparedthe way for the coming of the philosopher; each of his vir- tues must have been separately acquired, nurtured, trans- mitted, and embodied; not only the bold, easy, delicate 140 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL course and current of his thoughts, but above all the readi-ness for great responsibilities, the majesty of ruling glanceand contemning look, the feeling of separation from themultitude with their duties and virtues, the kindly patronage and defence of whatever is misunderstood and calumniated, be it God or devil, the delight and practice of su-preme justice, the art of commanding, the amplitude of will,the lingering eye which rarely admires, rarely looks up,rarely loves.

Our ViRiUES

Our Virtues?—It is probable that we, too, have still ourvirtues, although naturally they are not those sincere andmassive virtues on account of which we hold our grandfathers in esteem and also at a little distance from us. WeEuropeans of the day after to-morrow, we firstlings of thetwentieth century—with all our dangerous curiosity, ourmultifariousness and art of disguising, our mellow and seemingly sweetened cruelty in sense awd spirit—we shall pre-sumably, if we must have virtues, have those only whichhave come to agreement with our most secret and heartfeltinclinations, 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 mauy things get quitelost! And is there anything finer than to search for one'sown virtues? Is it not almost to beliew in one's own vir-tues? But this "believing in one's own N'irtues"—is it notpractically the same as what was formerly called one's"good conscience," that long, respectable pigfail of an idea,which our grandfathers used to hang behind their heads,and often enough also behind their understibsndings? Itseems, therefore, that however little we may imagine ourselves to be old-fashioned and grandfatherly respectable in141 142 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL other respects, in one thing we are nevertheless the worthygrandchildren of our grandfathers, we last Europeans withgood consciences: we also still wear their pigtail.—Ah! ifyou only knew how soon, so very soon—it will be different!215

As in the stellar firmament there are sometimes two simswhich determine the path of one planet, and in certaincases suns of different colours shine around a single planet,now with red light, now with green, and then simultaneouslyillumine and flood it with motley colours: so we modemmen, owing to the complicated mechanism of our "firma-ment," are determined by different moralities; our actionsshine alternately in different colours, and are seldom unequivocal—and there are often cases, also, in which ouractions are motley-coloured.

To love one's enemies? I think that has been welllearnt: it takes place thousands of times at present onalarge 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 shameand secrecy of goodness, which forbids the utterance of thepompous word and the formula of virtue. Morality as atti-tude—is opposed to our taste nowadays. This is also an%idvance, as it was an advance in our fathers that religionas an attitude finally became opposed to their taste, in-cludKig the enmity and Voltairean bitterness against reli-gion fand all that formerly belonged to freethinker-panto- BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 143mime). It is the music in our conscience, the dance in ourspirit, to which Puritan litanies, moral sermons, and goodygoodness won't chime.

Let us be careful in dealing with those who attach greatimportance to being credited with moral tact and subtletyin moral discernment! They never forgive us if they haveonce 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 oftheir blunders.

The psychologists of France—and where else are therestill psychologists nowadays?—^have never yet exhaustedtheir bitter and manifold enjoyment of the betise bourgeoise, just as though ... in short, they betray somethingthereby. Flaubert, for instance, the honest citizen of Rouen,neither saw, heard, nor tasted anything else in the end; it was his mode of self-torment and refined cruelty. As this is growing wearisome, I would now recommend for a changesomething else for a pleasure—namely, the unconsciousastuteness with which good, fat, honest mediocrity alwaysbehaves 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 understandingof the middle-class in its best moments—subtler even thanthe understanding of its victims: —a repeated proof that"instinct" is the most intelligent of all kinds of intelli- 144 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL gence which have hitherto been discovered. In short, youpsychologists, study the philosophy of the "rule" in itsstruggle with the ''exception": there you have a spectaclefit for Gods and godlike malignity! Or, in plainer words,practise vivisection on "good people," on the "homo bonaevoluntatis," ... on yourselves!

The practice of judging and condemning morally, is thefavourite revenge of the intellectually shallow on those whoare less so; it is also a kind of indemnity for their beingbadly endowed by nature; and finally, it is an opportunityfor acquiring spirit and becoming subtle: —malice spiritualises. They are glad in their inmost heart that there is astandard according to which those who are over-endowedwith intellectual goods and privileges, are equal to them;they contend for the "equality of all before God," andalmost need the belief in God for this purpose It is amongthem that the most powerful antagonists of atheism arefound. If any one were to say to them: "a lofty spiritualityis beyond all comparison with the honesty and respectabilityof a merely moral man"—it would make them furious; Ishall take care not to say so. I would rather flatter themwith my theory that lofty spirituality itself exists only asthe ultimate product of moral qualities; that it is a synthesisof all qualities attributed to the "merely moral" man, afterthey have been acquired singly through long training andpractice, perhaps during a whole series of generations; thatlofty spirituality is precisely the spiritualising of justice, andthe beneficent severity which knows that it is authorised to.maintain gradations of rank in the world, even among thing?—and not only among men. -I BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 145¥

Now that the praise of the "disinterested person" is sopopular one must—probably not without some danger—getan idea of what people actually take an interest in, andwhat are the things generally which fundamentally andprofoundly concern ordinary men—including the cultured,even the learned, and perhaps philosophers also, if appearances do not deceive. The fact thereby becomes obviousthat the greater part of what interests and charms highernatures, and more refined and fastidious tastes, seems absolutely "iminteresting" to the average man: —if, notwithstanding, he perceive devotion to these interests, he callsit desinteresse, and wonders how it is possible to act "disinterestedly." There have been philosophers who could givethis popular astonishment a seductive and mystical, other-world expression (perhaps because they did not know thehigher nature by experience?), instead of stating the nakedand candidly reasonable truth that "disinterested" actionis very interesting and "interested" action, provided that . . . "And love?"—What! Even an action for love's sake shallbe "unegoistic"? But you fools—! "And the praise of theself-sacrificer?"—But whoever has really offered sacrificeknows that he wanted and obtained something for it—per-haps something from himself for something from himself;that he relinquished here in order to have more there, per-haps in general to be more, or even feel himself "more.'"But this is a realm of questions and answers in which amore fastidious spirit does not like to stay: for here truthhas to stifle her yawns so much when she is obliged toanswer. And after all, truth is a woman; one must not us<^force with her. 146 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL

"It sometimes happens," said a moralistic pedant £indtrifle-retailer, "that I honour and respect an unselfish man:not, however, because he is unselfish, but because I think hehas a right to be useful to another man at his own expense.In short, the question is always who he is, and who theother is. For instance, in a person created and destined forcommand, self-denial and modest retirement, instead ofbeing virtues would be the waste of virtues: so it seems tome. Every system of unegoistic morality which takes itselfunconditionally and appeals to every one, not only sinsagainst 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 immoralto say that "what is right for one is proper for another," So said my moralistic pedant and honhomme. Did he per-haps deserve to be laughed at when he thus exhorted sys-tems of morals to practise morality? But one should notbe too much in the right if one wishes to have the laugherson one's own side; a grain of wrong pertains even to goodtaste.

Wherever S5mipathy (fellow-suffering) is preached nowadays—and, if I gather rightly, no other religion is anylonger preached—let the psychologist have his ears open\i

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 147through all the vanity, through all the noise which is naturalto these preachers (as to all preachers), he will hear ahoarse, groaning, genuine note of self-contempt. It belongsto the overshadowing and uglifying of Europe, which hasbeen on the increase for a century (the first symptoms ofwhich are already specified documentarily in a thoughtfulletter of Galiani to Madame d'Epinay)

if it is not really the cause thereof! The man of "modem ideas," the conceited ape, is excessively dissatisfied with himself—this is perfectly certain. He suffers, and his vanity wants himonly *'to suffer with his fellows."

The hybrid European—a tolerably ugly plebeian, takenall in all—absolutely requires a costume: he needs historyas a storeroom of costumes. To be sure, he notices thatnone of the costumes fit him properly—he changes andchanges. Let us look at the nineteenth century with respectto these hasty preferences and changes in its masqueradesof style, and also with respect to its moments of desperation on accoimt of "nothing suiting" us. It is in vain to get ourselves up as romsmtic, or classical, or Christian, orFlorentine, or barocco, or "national," in moribus et artibus: it does not "clothe us"! But the "spirit," especially the"historical spirit," profits even by this desperation: onceand again a new sample of the past or of the foreign is tested, put on, taken off, packed up, and above all studied—we are the first studious age in puncto of "costumes," Imean as concerns morals, articles of belief, artistic tastes, and religions; we are prepared as no other age has everbeen for a carnival in the grand style, for the most spiritual festival-laughter and arrogance, for the transcendental height 148 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL of supreme folly and Aristophanic ridicule of the world.Perhaps we are still discovering the domain of our inventionjust here, the domain where even we can still be original,probably as parodists of the world's history and as God'sMerry-Andrews,—perhaps, though nothing else of the pres-ent have a future, our laughter itself may have a future!

The historical sense (or the capacity for divining quicklythe order of rank of the valuations according to which apeople, a commimity, or an individual has lived, the "divin-ing instinct" for the relationships of these valuations, forthe relation of the authority of the valuations to the authority of the operating forces),—this historical sense, which weEuropeans claim as our specialty, has come to us in thetrain of the enchanting and mad semi-barbarity into whichEurope has been plunged by the democratic mingling ofclasses and races—it is only the nineteenth century that hasrecognised this faculty as its sixth sense. Owing to thismingling, the past of every form and mode of life, and ofcultures which were formerly closely contiguous and super-imposed on one another, flows forth into us "modem souls";our instincts now run back in all directions, we ourselves area kind of chaos: in the end, as we have said, the spirit perceives its advantage therein. By means of our semi-barbarityin body and in desire, we have secret access everywhere,such as a noble age never had; we have access above all tothe labyrinth of imperfect civilisations, and to every formof semi-barbarity that has at any time existed on earth ; andin so far as the most considerable part of human civilisationhitherto has just been semi-barbarity, the "historical sense"implies almost the sense and instinct for everything, th1 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 149taste and tongue for everything: whereby it immediatelyproves itself to be an ignoble sense. For instance, we enjoyHomer once more: it is perhaps our happiest acquisition thatwe know how to appreciate Homer, whom men of distin- guished culture (as the French of the seventeenth century,like Saint-Evremond, who reproached him for his esprit vastCy and even Voltaire, the last echo of the century) cannot andcould not so easily appropriate—whom they scarcely per-mitted themselves to enjoy. The very decided Yea andNay of their palate, their promptly ready disgust, their 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-suffi- cing 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 unfavourably even towards thebest things of the world which are not their property orcould not become their prey—and no faculty is more unintelligible to such men than just this historical sense, withits truckling, plebeian curiosity. The case is not different with Shakespeare, that marvellous Spanish-Moorish-Saxonsynthesis of taste, over whom an ancient Athenian of thecircle of ^schylus 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, andthe 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 repulsivefumes and the proximity of the English populace in whichShakespeare's art and taste lives, as perhaps on the Chiajaof Naples, where, with all our senses awake, we go ourway, enchanted and voluntarily, in spite of the drain-odourof the lower quarters of the town. That as men of the ^50 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL "historical sense" we have our virtues, is not to be dis-puted: —we are unpretentious, unselfish, modest, brave,habituated to self-control and self-renunication, very grateful, very patient, very complaisant—^but with all this we areperhaps not very "tasteful." Let us finally confess it, thatwhat is most difficult for us men of the "historical sense" tograsp, feel, taste, and love, what finds us fundamentallyprejudiced and almost hostile, is precisely the perfection andultimate maturity in every culture and art, the essentiallynoble in works and men, their moment of smooth sea andhalcyon self-sufficiency, the goldenness and coldness whichall things show that have perfected themselves. Perhaps ourgreat virtue of the historical sense is in necessary contrastto good taste, at least to the very bad taste; and we canonly evoke in ourselves imperfectly, hesitatingly, and withJcompulsion the small, short, and happy godsends and glori-fications of human life as they shine here and there: thosemoments and marvellous experiences when a great power hasvoluntarily come to a halt before the boundless and infinite,—when a superabundance of refined delight has been en-joyed by a sudden checking and petrifying, by standingfirmly and planting oneself fixedly on still trembling groimd.Proportionateness is strange to us, let us confess it to ourselves; our itching is really the itching for the infinite, theimmeasurable. Like the rider on his forward panting horse,we let the reins fall before the infinite, we modem men, wesemi-barbarians—and are only in our highest bliss when we—are in most danger.

Whether it be hedonism, pessimism, utilitarianism, or eu^dsemonism, all those modes of thinking which measure th< BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 151worth of things according to pleasure and pain, that is, according to accompanying circumstances and secondaryconsiderations, are plausible modes of thought and naivetes,which every one conscious of creative powers and an artist'sconscience will look down upon with scorn, though notwithout sjmnpathy. Sympathy for you!—to be sure, that is not sympathy as you understand it: it is not sympathy forsocial "distress," for "society" with its sick and misfor-tuned, for the hereditarily vicious and defective who lie onthe ground around us; still less is it S5mipathy for thegrumbling, vexed, revolutionary slave-classes who strive af-ter power—they call it "freedom." Our sympathy is a lof- tier and further-sighted sympathy: —we see how man dwarfshimself, how you dwarf him! and there are moments whenwe view your sympathy with an indescribable anguish, whenwe resist it,—when we regard your seriousness as more dan-gerous than any kind of levity. You want, if possible—and there is not a more foolish "if possible"

to do awaywith suffering; and we?—it really seems that we wouldrather have it increased and made worse than it has everbeen! Well-being, as you understand it—is certainly not pgoal; it seems to us an end; a condition which at once renders man ludicrous and contemptible—and makes his de-struction desirable! The discipline of suffering, of great'suffering—know ye not that it is only this discipline thathas produced all the elevations of humanity hitherto? Thetension of soul in misfortune which communicates to it itsenergy, its shuddering in view of rack and ruin, its inventiveness and bravery in undergoing, enduring, interpreting,and exploiting misfortune, and whatever depth, mystery,disguise, spirit, artifice, or greatness has been bestov/ed uponthe soul—has it not been bestowed through suffering,through the discipline of great suffering? In man creature 1 52 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL and creator are united: in man there is not only matter,shred, excess, clay, mire, folly, chaos; but there is also thecreator, the sculptor, the hardness of the hammer, the divinity of the spectator, and the seventh day—do ye understandthis contrast? And that your sympathy for the "creaturein man" applies to that which has to be fashioned, bruised,forged, stretched, roasted, annealed, refined—to that whichmust necessarily suffer, and is meant to suffer? And oursympathy—do ye not understand what our reverse sympathyapplies to, when it resists your sympathy as the worst ofall pampering and enervation?—So it is sympathy againstsympathy! —But to repeat it once more, there are higherproblems than the problems of pleasure and pain and sympathy; and all systems of philosophy which deal only withthese are naivetes.

We Immoralists.—This world with which we are concerned,in which we have to fear and love, this almost invisible, in-audible world of delicate command and delicate obedience,a world of "almost" in every respect, captious, insidious,sharp, and tender—yes, it is well protected from clumsyspectators and familiar curiosity! We are woven into astrong 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 be-twixt our "swords"; it is none the less true that more oftenwe gnash our teeth under the circumstances, and are impatient at the secret hardship of our lot. But do what wewill, fools and appearances say of us: "these are men withoutduty,"—we have always fools and appearances against us!

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 153227

Honesty, granting that it is the virtue from which wecannot rid ourselves, we free spirits—well, we will labourat it with all our perversity and love, and not tire of "perfecting" ourselves in our virtue, which alone remains': mayits glance some day overspread like a gilded, blue, mockingtwilight this aging civilisation with its dull gloomy serious-ness! And if, nevertheless, our honesty should one day growweary, and sigh, and stretch its limbs, and find us too hard,and would fain have it pleasanter, easier, and gentler, likean agreeable vice, let us remain hard, we latest Stoics, andlet us send to its help whatever devilry we have in us: our disgust at the clumsy and undefined, omx "nitimur invetitum" our love of adventure, our sharpened and fastidi-ous curiosity, our most subtle, disguised, intellectual Willto Power and universal conquest, which rambles and rovesavidiously around all the realms of the future—^let us go withall our "devils" to the help of our "God"! It is probablethat people will misunderstand and mistake us on that ac-count: what does it matter! They will say: "Their 'honesty'—that is their devilry, and nothing else!" What doesitimatter! And even if they were right—^have not all Godshitherto been such sanctified, re-baptized devils? And afterall, what do we know of ourselves? And what the spiritthat leads us wants to be called? (It is a question of names.)And how many spirits we harbour? Our honesty, we freespirits—let us be careful lest it become our vanity, our orna-ment and ostentation, our limitation, our stupidity! Everyvirtue inclines to stupidity, every stupidity to virtue; "stu-pid to the point of sanctity," they say in Russia,—let usbe careful lest out of pure honesty we do not eventually 154 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 1become saints and bores! Is not life a hundred times tooshort for us—to bore ourselves? One would have to believein eternal life in order to. . . .

I hope to be forgiven for discovering that all moral philosophy hitherto has been tedious and has belonged to thesoporific appliances—and that "virtue," in my opinion, hasbeen more injured by the tediousness of its advocates thanby anything else; at the same time, however, I would notwish to overlook their general usefulness. It is desirable thatas few people as possible should reflect upon morals, andconsequently it is very desirable that morals should notsome day become interesting! But let us not be afraid!Things still remain to-day as they have always been: I seeno one in Europe who has (or discloses) an idea of the factthat philosophising concerning morals might be conducted ina dangerous, captious, and ensnaring manner—that calamitymight be involved therein. Observe, for example, the indefatigable, inevitable English utilitarians: how ponderouslyand respectably they stalk on, stalk along (a Homeric meta-phor expresses it better) in the footsteps of Bentham, justas he had already stalked in the footsteps of the respectableHelvetius! (no, he was not a dangerous man, HelvetiusJce senateur Pococurante, to use an expression of Galiani).No new thought, nothing of the nature of a finer turning or]better expression of an old thought, not even a proper his-tory of what has been previously thought on the subject:1 an impossible literature, taking it all in all, unless one knowsjhow to leaven it with some mischief. In effect, the oldjEnglish vice called cant, which is moral Tartuffism, has in- BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL I55sinuated itself eilso into these moralists (whom one mustcertainly read with an eye to their motives if one mustread them), concealed this time under the new form of thescientific spirit; moreover, there is not absent from them a secret struggle with the pangs of conscience, from which arace of former Puritans must naturally suffer, in all theirscientific tinkering with morals. (Is not a moralist the opposite of a Puritan? That is to say, as a thinker who re-gards morality as questionable, as worthy of interrogation,in short, as a problem? Is moralising not—immoral?) Inthe end, they all want English morality to be recognised asauthoritative, inasmuch as mankind, or the "general utility,"or "the happiness of the greatest number,''—no! the happiness of England, will be best served thereby. They wouldlike, by all means, to convince themselves that the strivingafter English happiness, I mean after comfort and fashion(and in the highest instance, a seat in Parliament), is at thesame time the true path of virtue; in fact, that in so far asthere has been virtue in the world hitherto, it has just consisted in such striving. Not one of those ponderous, conscience-stricken herding-animals (who undertake to advocatethe cause of egoism as conducive to the general welfare)wants to have any knowledge or inkling of the facts thatthe "general welfare" is no ideal, no goal, no notion thatcan be at all grasped, but is only a nostrum,—that what isfair to one may not at all be fair to another, that the re-quirement of one morality for all is really a detriment tohigher men, in short, that there is a distinction of rank be-tween man and man, and consequently between moralityand morality. They are an unassuming and fundamentallymediocre species of men, these utilitarian Englishmen, and,as already remarked, in so far as they are tedious, one can-not think highly enough of their utility. One ought even to 156 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL encourage them, as has been partially attempted in the fol-lowing rhymes:

Hail, ye worthies, barrow-wheeling, "Longer—better," aye revealing, Stiffer aye in head and knee; Unenraptured, never jesting, Mediocre everlasting, Sans genie et sans esprit!

In these later ages, which may be proud of their humanity, there still remains so much fear, so much superstitionof the fear, of the "cruel wild beast," the mastering ofwhich 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 ap-pearance of helping the finally slain wild beast back to lifeagain. I perhaps risk something when I allow such a truthto escape; let others capture it again and give it so much"milk of pious sentiment" * to drink, that it will lie downquiet and forgotten, in its old corner.—One ought to learnanew about cruelty, and open one's eyes; one ought at lastto learn impatience, in order that such immodest grosserrors—as, for instance, have been fostered by ancient andmodem philosophers with regard to tragedy—may nolonger wander about virtuously and boldly. Almost every-^thing that we call "higher culture" is based upon the spiritualising and intensifying of cruelty—this is my thesis; thcj"wild beast" has not been slain at all, it lives, it flourishes, An expression from Schiller's William Tell, Act IV, Scene

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 157has only been—transfigured. That which constitutes thepainful delight of tragedy is cruelty; that which operatesagreeably in so-called tragic sympathy, and at the basiseven of everything sublime, up to the highest and mostdelicate thrills of metaphysics, obtains its sweetness solelyfrom the intermingled ingredient of cruelty. What the Ro-man enjoys in the arena, the Christian in the ecstasies of thecross, the Spaniard at the sight of the faggot and stake, orof the bull-fight, the present-day Japanese who presses hisway to the tragedy, the workman of the Parisian suburbswho has a homesickness for bloody revolutions, the Wagnerienne who, with unhinged will, "undergoes" the perform-ance of "Tristan and Isolde"—what all these enjoy, andstrive with mysterious ardour to drink in, is the philtreof the great Circe "cruelty." Here, to be sure, we must putaside entirely the blundering psychology of former times,which could only teach with regard to cruelty that it originated at the sight of the suffering of others: there is anabundant, superabundant enjoyment even in one's own suffering, in causing one's own suffering—and wherever manhas allowed himself to be persuaded to self-denial in thereligious sense, or to self-mutilation, as among the Phoenicians and ascetics, or in general, to desensualisation, decarnalisation, and contrition, to Puritanical repentance-spasms,to vivisection of conscience and to Pascal-like sacrifizia dell'intelleto, he is secretly allured and impelled forwards by hisICTuelty, by the dangerous thrill of cruelty towards himself.[f—Finally, let us consider that even the seeker of knowledgepperates as an artist and glorifier of cruelty, in that hecompels his spirit to perceive against its own inclination, andoften enough against the wishes of his heart: —he forces it to say Nay, where he would like to affirm, love, and adore.;raideed, every instance of taking a thing profoundly and 158 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL fundamentally, is a violation, an intentional injuring of theiundamental will of the spirit, which instinctively aims atappearance and superficiality,—even in every desire forknowledge there is a drop of cruelty.

Perhaps what I have said here about a "fundamental willjf 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 feelitself master; it has the will of a multiplicity for a simplicity, a binding, taming, imperious, and essentially rulingwill. Its requirements and capacities here, are the same asthose 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 toassimilate the new to the old, to simplify the manifold, tooverlook or repudiate the absolutely contradictory; just asit arbitrarily re-underlines, makes prominent, and falsifiesfor itself certain traits and lines in the foreign elements, inevery portion of the "outside world." Its object thereby isi the incorporation of new "experiences," the assortment ofnew thing's in the old arrangements—in short, growth; ormore properly, the feeling of growth, the feeling of increasedpower—is its object. This same will has at its service anapparently opposed impulse of the spirit, a suddenly adoptedpreference of ignorance, of arbitrary shutting out, a closingof windows, an inner denial of this or that, a prohibition toapproach, a sort of defensive attitude against much that is knowable, a contentment with obscurity, with the shutting-inhorizon, an acceptance and approval of ignorance: as thai1 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 159which 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 thananything else). Here also belong an occasional propensityof the spirit to let itself be deceived (perhaps with a waggish suspicion that it is not so and so, but is only allowed topass as such), a delight in uncertainty and ambiguity, anexulting enjojonent of arbitrary, out-of-the-way narrownessand mystery, of the too-near, of the foreground, of themagnified, the diminished, the misshapen, the beautified—anenjoyment of the arbitrariness of all these manifestations ofpower. Finally, in this connection, there is the not unscru-pulous readiness of the spirit to deceive other spirits anddissemble before them—the constant pressing and strainingof a creating, shaping, changeable power: the spirit enjoystherein its craftiness and its variety of disguises, it enjoysalso its feeling of security therein—it is precisely by its Protean arts that it is best protected and concealed!

Counterto this propensity for appearance, for simplification, for adisguise, for a cloak, in short, for an outside—for every outside is a cloak—there operates the sublime tendency of theman of knowledge, which takes, and insists on taking thingsprofoundly, variously, and thoroughly; as a kind of crueltyof the intellectual conscience and taste, which every cour-ageous thinker will acknowledge in himself, provided, as itought to be, that he has sharpened and hardened his eye^sufficiently long for introspection, and is accustomed to se-vere discipline and even severe words. He will say: "Thereis something cruel in the tendency of my spirit": let theidrtuous and amiable try to convince him that it is not so!tn fact, it would sound nicer, if, instead of our cruelty, perlaps our "extravagant honesty" were talked about, whisjred about and glorified—we free, very free spirits—and i6o BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL some day perhaps such will actually be our—posthumousglory! Meanwhile—for there is plenty of time until then we should be least inclined to deck ourselves out in suchflorid and fringed moral verbiage; our whole former workhas just made us sick of this taste and its sprightly exuberance. They are beautiful, glistening, jingling, festive words:honesty, love of truth, love of wisdom, sacrifice for knowledge, heroism of the truthful—there is something in themthat makes one's heart swell with pride. But we anchoritesand marmots have long ago persuaded ourselves in all thesecrecy of an anchorite's conscience, that this worthy paradeof verbiage also belongs to the old false adornment, frip-pery, and gold-dust of unconscious human vanity, and thateven under such flattering colour and repainting, the terribleoriginal text homo natura must again be recognised. In effect, to translate man back again into nature; to masterthe many vain and visionary interpretations and subordinatemeanings which have hitherto been scratched and daubedover the eternal original text, homo natura; to bring itabout that man shall henceforth stand before man as he now,hardened by the discipline of science, stands before the otherforms of nature, with fearless CEdipus-eyes, and stoppedUlysses-ears, deaf to the enticements of old metaphysicalbird-catchers, who have piped to him far too long: "Thouart 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 atall?" Every one will ask us about this. And thus pressed,we, who have asked ourselves the question a hundred times,have not foimd, and cannot find any better answer. I BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL i6i231

Learning alters us, it does what all nourishment does thatdoes not merely "conserve"—as the physiologist knows. Butat the bottom of our souls, quite "down below," there is cer-tainly something unteachable, a granite of spiritual fate, ofpredetermined decision and answer to predetermined, chosenquestions. In each cardinal problem there sp)eaks an imchangeable "I am this"; a thinker cannot learn anew aboutman and woman, for instance, but can only learn fully—^hecan only follow to the end what is "fixed" about them inhimself. Occasionally we find certain solutions of problemswhich make strong beliefs for us; perhaps they are henceforth called "convictions." Later on—one sees in them onlyfootsteps to self-knowledge, guide-posts to the problem whichwe ourselves are—or more correctly to the great stupiditywhich we embody, our spiritual fate, the unteachable in us,quite "down below."—In view of this liberal complimentwhich I have just paid myself, permission will perhaps bemore readily allowed me to utter some truths about "womanas she is," provided that it is known at the outset how liter-ally they are merely

my truths.

Woman wishes to be independent, and therefore she beis to enlighten men about "woman as she is"

this is one)f the worst developments of the general uglifying of Eur-)pe. For what must these clumsy attempts of feminine:ientificality and self-exposure bring to light! Woman hasmuch cause for shame; in woman there is so much pe-mtry, superficiality, schoolmasterliness, petty presumption, 1 62 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL unbridledness, and indiscretion concealed—study only woman's behaviour towards children! —which has really beenbest restrained and dominated hitherto by the fear of man.Alas, if ever the "eternally tedious in woman"—she hasplenty of it! —is allowed to venture forth! if she beginsradically and on principle to unlearn her wisdom and art of charming, of playing, of frightening away sorrow, of alle-viating and taking easily; if she forgets her delicate aptitudefor agreeable desires! Female voices are already raised,which, by Saint Aristophanes! make one afraid: —with medical explicitness it is stated in a threatening manner whatwoman first and last requires from man. Is it not in thevery worst taste that woman thus sets herself up to be scientific? Enlightenment hitherto has fortunately been men'saffair, men's gift—we remained therewith "among ourselves";and in the end, in view of all that women write about"woman," we may well have considerable doubt as to whetherwoman really desires enlightenment about herself—and candesire it. If woman does not thereby seek a new ornamentfor herself—I believe ornamentation belongs to the eternallyfeminine?—why, then, she wishes to make herself feared:perhaps she thereby wishes to get the mastery. But she doesnot want truth—what does woman care for truth? Fromthe very first nothing is more foreign, more repugnant, ormore hostile to woman than truth—her great art is false-hood, her chief concern is appearance and beauty. Let usconfess it, we men: we honour and love this very art andthis very instinct in woman: we who have the hard task,and for our recreation gladly seek the company of beingsunder whose hands, glances, and delicate follies, our seri-ousness, our gravity, and profundity appear almost like follies to us. Finally, I ask the question: Did a woman her?e]f ever acknowledge profundity in a woman's mind, oii

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 163justice in a woman's heart? And is it not true that on thewhole ''woman" has hitherto been most despised by womanherself, and not at all by us?—We men desire that womanshould not continue to compromise herself by enlighteningus; just as it was man's care and the consideration forwoman, when the church decreed: mulier taceat in ecclesia.[t was to the benefit of woman when Napoleon gave the tooeloquent Madame de Stael to understand: mulier taceat inpoliticisf—and in my opinion, he is a true friend of womanwho calls out to women to-day: mulier taceat de muliere!

It betrays corruption of the instincts

apart from thefact that it betrays bad taste—when a woman refers toMadame Roland, or Madame de Stael, or Monsieur GeorgeSand, as though something were proved thereby in favourof "woman as she is." Among men, these are the threecomical women as they are—nothing more! —and just thebest involuntary counter-arguments against feminine eman--cipation and autonomy.

Stupidity in the kitchen; woman as cook; the terribleloughtlessness with which the feeding of the family andle master of the house is managed! Woman does not unierstand what food means, and she insists on being cook![f woman had been a thinking creature, she should cerlinly, as cook for thousands of years, have discovered thelost important physiological facts, and should likewise havejot possession of the healing art ! Through bad female cooks-through the entire lack of reason in the kitchen—the de- 1 64 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL velopment of mankind has been longest retarded and mostinterfered with: even to-day matters are very little better.

A word to High School girls. 23s

There are turns and casts of fancy, there are sentences,little handfuls of words, in which a whole culture, a wholesociety suddenly crystallises itself. Among these is the in-cidental remark of Madame de Lambert to her son: "Monami, ne vous permettez jamais que des folies, qui vous ferontgrand plaisir"—the motherliest and wisest remark, by theway, that was ever addressed to a son.

I have no doubt that every noble woman will oppose whatDante and Goethe believed about woman—the former whenhe sang, "ella guardava suso, ed io in lei," and the latterwhen he interpreted it, "the eternally feminine draws usaloft"; for this is just what she believes of the eternally mas-,culine.

Seven Apophthegms for Women

How the longest ennui flees, When a man comes to our knees! ' Age, alas! and science staid, Furnish even weak virtue aid.

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 165Sombre garb and silence meet: Dress for every dame—discreet. Whom I thank when in my bliss? God! —and my good tailoress!

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

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

Sjjeech in brief and sense in mass

Slippery for the jenny-ass! 23 7A Woman has hitherto been treated by men like birds, which,losing their way, have come down among them from anelevation: as something delicate, fragile, wild, strange, sweet,and animating—but as something also which must be coopedup to prevent it flying away.

To be mistaken in the fundamental problem of "man androman," to deny here the profoundest antagonism and thenecessity for an eternally hostile tension, to dream here perips of equal rights, equal training, equal claims and obligations: that is a typical sign of shallow-mindedness ; and alinker who has proved himself shallow at this dangerous)t—shallow in instinct! —may generally be regarded asispicious, nay more, as betrayed, as discovered; he will 1 66 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL probably prove too "short" for all fundamental questionsof life, future as well as present, and will be unable to de-scend into any of the depths. On the other hand, a manwho has depth of spirit as well as of desires, and has alsothe depth of benevolence which is capable of severity andharshness, and easily confounded with them, can only thinkof woman as Orientals do: he must conceive of her as apossession, as confinable property, as a being predestined forservice and accomplishing her mission therein—^he musttake his stand in this matter upon the immense rationalityof Asia, upon the superiority of the instinct of Asia, as theGreeks 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, becamegradually stricter towards woman, in short, more oriental.How necessary, how logical, even how humanely desirablethis was, let us consider for ourselves!

The weaker sex has in no previous age been treated withso much respect by men as at present—this belongs to thetendency and fundamental taste of democracy, in the sameway as disrespectfulness to old age—what wonder is it thatabuse should be immediately made of this respect? Theywant more, they learn to make claims, the tribute of respectis at last felt to be well-nigh galling; rivalry for rights, in-deed actual strife itself, would be preferred: in a word,woman is losing modesty. And let us immediately add thatshe is also losing taste. She is unlearning to jear man: butthe woman who "unlearns to fear" sacrifices her most womanly instincts. That woman should venture forward whenthe fear-inspiring quality in man—or more definitely, thJi

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 167man 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 aristocraticspirit, woman strives for the economic and legal independence of a clerk: ''woman as clerkess" is inscribed on the portal of the modern society which is in course of formation.While she thus appropriates new rights, aspires to be "master," and inscribes "progress" of woman on her flags andbanners, the very opposite realises itself with terrible obviousness: woman retrogrades. Since the French Revolutionthe influence of woman in Europe has declined in proportionas she has increased her rights and claims; and the "emancipation of woman," in so far as it is desired and demandedby women themselves (and not only by masculine shallowpates), thus proves to be a remarkable symptom of the in-creased weakening and deadening of the most womanly instincts. There is stupidity in this movement, an almost masculine stupidity, of which a well-reared woman—who is al-ways a sensible woman—might be heartily ashamed. Tolose the intuition as to the ground upon which she can mostsurely achieve victory; to neglect exercise in the use of herproper weapons; to let-herself-go before man, perhaps even"to the book," where formerly she kept herself in controland in refined, artful humility; to neutralise with her vir-tuous audacity man's faith in a veiled, fundamentally differit ideal in woman, something eternally, necessarily femiine; to emphatically and loquaciously dissuade man fromle idea that woman must be preserved, cared for, proected, and indulged, like some delicate, strangely wild, andtften pleasant domestic animal; the clumsy and indignant 1 68 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL collection of everything of the nature of servitude and bondage which the position of woman in the hitherto existingorder of society has entailed and still entails (as thoughfslavery were a counter-argument, and not rather a conditionof every higher culture, of every elevation of culture): what does all this betoken, if not a disintegration of womanlyinstincts, a de-feminising? Certainly, there are enough ofidiotic friends and corrupters of woman amongst the learnedasses of the masculine sex, who advise woman to de-feminiseherself in this manner, and to imitate all the stupidities fromwhich "man" in Europe, European "manliness," suffers, who would like to lower woman to "general culture," indeedeven to newspaper reading and meddling with politics. Hereand there they wish even to make women into free spiritsand literary workers: as though a woman without pietywould not be something perfectly obnoxious or ludicrous toa profound and godless man;—almost everywhere her nervesare being ruined by the most morbid and dangerous kind ofmusic (our latest German music), and she is daily beingmade more hysterical and more incapable of fulfilling herfirst and last function, that of bearing robust children. Theywish to "cultivate" her in general still more, and intend, asthey say, to make the "weaker sex" strong by culture: asif history did not teach in the most emphatic manner thatthe "cultivating" of mankind and his weakening—that is tosay, the weakening, dissipating, and languishing of his forceof will—have always kept pace with one another, and thatthe most powerful and influential women in the world (andlastly, the mother of Napoleon) had just to thank theirforce of will—and not their schoolmasters! —for their powerand ascendency over men. That which inspires respect inwoman, and often enough fear also, is her nature, which ismore "natural" than that of man, her genuine, camivora- BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 169like, cunning flexibility, her tiger-claws beneath the glove,her naivete in egoism, her untrainableness and innate wildness, the incomprehensibleness, extent and deviation of herdesires and virtues. . . . That which, in spite of fear, excites one's sympathy for the dangerous and beautiful cat,"woman," is that she seems more afflicted, more vulnerable,more necessitous of love and more condemned to disillusion-ment than any other creature. Fear and sympathy: it iswith these feelings that man has hitherto stood in the pres-ence of woman, always with one foot already in tragedy,which rends while it delights.—What? And all that is nowto be at an end? And the disenchantment of woman is inprogress? The tediousness of woman is slowly evolving?Oh Europe! Europe! We know the homed animal whichwas always most attractive to thee, from which danger is ever again threatening thee! Thy old fable might oncemore become "history"—an immense stupidity might onceagain overmaster thee and carry thee away! And no Godconcealed beneath it—no! only an "idea," a "modemidea"! .

Peoples and Countries

I HEARD, once again for the first time, Richard Wagner'soverture to the Mastersingers: it is a piece of magnificent,gorgeous, heavy, latter-day art, which has the pride to pre-suppose two centuries of music as still living, in order that itmay be understood: —it is an honour to Germans that suchapride did not miscalculate! Wliat flavours and forces, whatseasons and climes do we not find mingled in it! It impresses us at one time as ancient, at another time as foreign,bitter, and too modem, it is as abitrary as it is pompouslytraditional, it is not infrequently roguish, still oftener roughand coarse—it has fire and courage, and at the same timethe loose, dun-coloured skin of fruits which ripen too late.It flows broad and full: and suddenly there is a momentofinexplicable hesitation, like a gap that opens between causeand effect, an oppression that makes us dream, almost anightmare; but already it broadens and widens anew, theold stream of delight—the most manifold delight,—of oldand new happiness; including especially the joy of the artistin himself, which he refuses to conceal, his astonished, happycognisance of his mastery of the expedients here employed,the new, newly acquired, imperfectly tested expedients of170 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 171art which he apparently betrays to us. All in all, however,no beauty, no South, nothing of the delicate southern clear-ness of the sky, nothing of grace, no dance, hardly a willto logic; a certain clumsiness even, which is also emphasised, as though the artist wished to say to us: "It is partof my intention"; a cumbersome drapery, something arbitrarily barbaric and ceremonious, a flirring of learned andvenerable conceits and witticisms; something German inthe best and worst sense of the word, something in the Ger-man style, manifold, formless, and inexhaustible; a certainGerman potency and super-plenitude of soul, which is notafraid to hide itself under the raffinements of decadence which, perhaps, feels itself most at ease there; a real, gen-uine token of the German soul, which is at the same timeyoung and aged, too ripe and yet still too rich in futurity.This kind of music expresses best what I think of the Ger-mans: they belong to the day before yesterday and the dayafter to-morrow

they have as yet no to-day.

We "good Europeans," we also have hours when v/eallow ourselves a warm-hearted patriotism, a plunge andrelapse into old loves and narrow views—I have just givenan example of it—^hours of national excitement, of patrioticanguish, and all other sorts of old-fashioned floods of sentilent. Duller spirits may perhaps only get done with whatjnfines its operations in us to hours and plays itself outhours—in a considerable time: some in half a year, othershalf a lifetime, according to the speed and strength with^hich they digest and "change their material." Indeed, I3uld think of sluggish, hesitating races, which even in our 172 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL rapidly moving Europe, would require half a century erethey could surmount such atavistic attacks of patriotism andsoil-attachment, and return once more to reason, that is tosay, to "good Europeanism." And while digressing on thispossibility, I happen to become an ear-witness of a conversation between two old patriots—they were evidently bothhard of hearing and consequently spoke all the louder. "Hehas as much, and knows as much, philosophy as a peasantor a corps-student," said the one—"he is still innocent. Butwhat does that matter nowadays! It is the age of themasses: they lie on their belly before everything that is massive. And so also in politicis. A statesman who rears up forthem a new Tower of Babel, some monstrosity of empireand power, they call 'great'—what does it matter that wemore prudent and conservative ones do not meanwhile giveup the old belief that it is only the great thought that givesgreatness to an action or affair. Supposing a statesmanwere to bring his people into the position of being obligedhenceforth to practise 'high politics,' for which they were bynature badly endowed and prepared, so that they would haveto sacrifice their old and reliable virtues, out of love to a newand doubtful mediocrity; —supposing a statesman were tocondemn his people generally to 'practise politics,' whenthey have hitherto had something better to do and thinkabout, and when in the depths of their souls they have beenunable to free themselves from a prudent loathing of therestlessness, emptiness, and noisy wranglings of the essentially politics-practising nations; —supposing such a state-man were to stimulate the slumbering passions and aviditiesof his people, were to make a stigma out of their formerdiffidence and delight in aloofness, an offence out of theirexoticism and hidden permanency, were to depreciate theirmost radical proclivities, subvert their consciences, make

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 173their minds narrow, and their tastes 'national'—what! astatesmcin who should do all this, which his people wouldhave to do penance for throughout their whole future, if they had a future, such a statesman would be great, wouldhe?"—"Undoubtedly!" replied the other old patriot vehe-mently; "otherwise he could not have done it! It was madperhaps to wish such a thing! But perhaps everythinggreat has been just as mad at its commencement!"—"Misuse of words!" cried his interlocutor, contradictorily "strong! strong! Strong and mad! Not great!"—The oldmen had obviously become heated as they thus shoutedtheir "truths" in each other's faces; but I, in my happinessand apartness, considered how soon a stronger one maybecome master of the strong; and also that there is a compensation for the intellectual superficialising of a nation namely, in the deepening of another.

Whether we call it "civilisation," or "humanising," or"progress," which now distinguishes the European; whetherwe 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 suchformulas, an immense physiological process goes on, whichis ever extending: the process of the assimilation of Europeans; their increasing detachment from the conditions under which, climatically and hereditarily, united races origitte; their increasing independence of every definite milieu, at for centuries would fain inscribe itself with equal de- mands on soul and body; —that is to say, the slow emergencetan essentially super-national and nomadic species of man,o possesses, physiologically speaking, a maximum of the 174 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL art and power of adaptation as his typical distinction. Thisprocess of tlie evolving European, which can be retarded inits tempo by great relapses, but will perhaps just gain andgrow thereby in vehemence and depth—the still ragingstorm and stress of "national sentiment" pertains to it, andalso the anarchism which is appearing at present—thisprocess will probably arrive at results on which its naivepropagators and panegyrists, the apostles of "modern ideas,"would least care to reckon. The same new conditions underwhich on an average a levelling and mediocrising of manwill take place—a useful, industrious, variously serviceableand clever gregarious man—are in the highest degree suitableto give rise to exceptional men of the most dangerous andattractive qualities. For, while the capacity for adaptation,which is every day trying changing conditions, and beginsanew work with every generation, almost with every decade,makes the powerjulness of the type impossible; while thecollective impression of such future Europeans will probablybe that of numerous, talkative, weak-willed, and very handyworkmen who require a master, a commander, as they re-quire their daily bread; while, therefore, the democratisingof Europe will tend to the production of a type preparedfor slavery in the most subtle sense of the term: the strongman will necessarily in individual and exceptional cases,become stronger and richer than he has perhaps ever beenbefore—o^ving to the unprejudicedness of his schooling, owing to the immense variety of practice, art, and disguise. Imeant to say that the democratising of Europe is at thesame time an involuntary arrangement for the rearing oftyrants—taking the word in all its meanings, even in itsmost spiritual sense. d

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 175243 I hear with pleasure that our sun is moving rapidly to- wards the constellation Hercules: and I hope that the menon this earth will do like the sim. And we foremost, wegood Europeans!

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 otherhonours, and perhaps misses "smartness" in all that hasdepth, it is almost opportune and patriotic to doubt whetherwe did not formerly deceive ourselves with that commendation: in short, whether German depth is not at bottom something different and worse—and something from which, thankGod, we are on the point of successfully ridding ourselves. Let us try, then, to releam with regard to German depth;the only thing necessary for the purpose is a little vivi- section 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. AGerman who would embolden himself to assert: "Two souls, alas, dwell in my breast," would make a bad guess at thetruth, or, more correctly, he would come far short of thetruth about the number of souls. As a people made up ofthe most extraordinary mixing and mingling of races, per-haps even with a preponderance of the pre-Aryan element,as the "people of the centre" in every sense of the term,the Germans are more intangible, more ample, more conadictory, more unknown, more incalculable, more sur-I 176 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL prising, and even more terrifying than other peoples aretothemselves: —they escape definition, and are thereby alonethe despair of the French. It is characteristic of the Ger-maas that the question: "What is German?" never diesout among them. Kotzebue certainly knew his Germanswell enough: "we are known," they cried jubilantly to himbut Sand also thought he knew them. Jean Paul knewwhat he was doing when he declared himself incensed atFichte's lying but patriotic flatteries and exaggerations,but it is probable that Goethe thought differently about Ger-mans from Jean Paul, even though he acknowledged himtobe right with regard to Fichte. It is a question what Goethereally thought about the Germans?—But about many thingsaround him he never spoke explicitly, and all his life heknew how to keep an astute silence—probably he had goodreason for it. It is certain that it was not the "Wars of In-dependence" that made him look up more joyfully, anymore than it was the French Revolution,—the event onaccount of which he reconstructed his "Faust," and indeedthe whole problem of "man," was the appearance of Napoleon. There are words of Goethe in which he condemnswith impatient severity, as from a foreign land, that whichGermans take a pride in: he once defined the famous Germanturn of mind as "Indulgence towards its own and others'weaknesses." Was he wrong? it is characteristic of Germansthat one is seldom entirely wrong about them. The Germansoul has passages and galleries in it, there are caves, hidingplaces, and dungeons thereir.; its disorder has much of thecharm of the mysterious; the German is well acquaintedwith the by-paths to chaos. And as everything loves itssymbol, so the German loves the clouds and all that is obscure, evolving, crepuscular, damp, and shrouded: it seemsto him that everything uncertain, undeveloped, self-displac- BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 177 ing, 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 labouring to Germanise all Europe. Foreigners are as- tonished and attracted by the riddles which the conflicting nature at the basis of the German soul propounds to them(riddles which Hegel systematised and Richard Wagner has in the end set to music). "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 Swabians to knowthis! The clumsiness of the German scholar and his soci£il distastefulness agree alarmingly well with his physical rope- dancing and nimble boldness, of which all the Gods have learnt to be afraid. If any one wishes to see the "Germansoul" demonstrated ad oculos, let him only look at Germantaste, at German arts and manners: what boorish indifference to "taste"! How the noblest and the commonest stand there in juxtaposition! How disorderly and how rich is the whole 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 Germandepth is often only a difficult, hesitating "digestion." Andjust as all chronic invalids, all dyspeptics, like what is convenient, so the German loves "fr^ikness" and "honesty"; it is so convenient to be frank and honest! —This confidingness, this complaisance, this showing-the-cards of Germanhonesty, is probably the most dangerous and most successful disguise which the German is up to nowadays: it is his proper Mephistophelean art; with this he can "still achieve much"!riBie German lets himself go, and thereby gazes with faithful, 178 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL blue, empty German eyes—and other coimtries immediatelyconfound him with his dressing-gown! —I meant to saythat, let "German depth" be what it will—among ourselvesalone we perhaps take the liberty to laugh at it—we shall dowell to continue henceforth to honour its appearance andgood name, and not barter away too cheaply our old reputation as a people of depth for Prussian "smartness," andBerlin wit and sand. It is wise for a people to pose, andletitself be regarded, as profound, clumsy, good-natured, honest,and foolish: it might even be—profound to do so! Finally,we should do honour to our name—we are not called the"tiusche Volk" (deceptive people) for nothing. . . .

The "good old" time is past, it sang itself out in Mozart— how happy are we that his rococo still speaks to us, that his"good company," his tender enthusiasm, his childish delightin the Chinese and its flourishes, Ihis courtesy of heart, hislonging for the elegant, the amorous, the tripping, the tearful,and his belief in the South, can still appeal to something leftin us! Ah, some time or other it will be over with it! but who can doubt that it will be over still sooner with theintelligence and taste for Beethoven! For he was only thelast echo of a break and transition in style, and not, likeMozart, the last echo of a great European taste which hadexisted for centuries. Beethoven is the intermediate eventbetween an old mellow soul that is constantly breaking down,and a future over-young soul that is always coming; thereisspread over his music the twilight of eternal loss and eternalextravagant hope,—the same light in which Europe wasbathed when it dreamed with Rousseau, when it dancedround the Tree of Liberty of the Revolution, and finaOfll

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 179almost fell down in adoration before Napoleon. But howrapidly does this very sentiment now pale, how difficult nowadays is even the apprehension of this sentiment, howstrangely does the language of Rousseau, Schiller, Shelley, and Byron sound to our ear, in whom collectively the samefate 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 movementwhich, historically considered, was still shorter, more fleeting, and more superficial than that great interlude, the transition of Europe from Rousseau to Napoleon, and to the rise ofdemocracy. Weber—^but what do we care nowadays for "Freischutz" and "Oberon"! Or Marschner's "Hans Hell- ing" and "Vampyre"! Or even Wagner's "Tarmhauser"

That is extinct, although not yet forgotten music. This wholemusic of Romanticism, besides, was not noble enough, wasnot musical enough, to maintain its position anywhere butin the theatre and before the masses; from the beginning it was second-rate music, which was little thought of by gen- uine musicians. It was different with Felix Mendelssohn,that halcyon master, who, on account of his lighter, purer, happier soul, quickly acquired admiration, and was equally quickly forgotten: as the beautiful episode of German music.

But with regard to Robert Schumann, who took things se- riously, and has been taken seriously from the first— hewas the last that founded a school,—do we not now regard it as a satisfaction, a relief, a deliverance, that this veryRomanticism of Schumann's has been surmounted? Schumann, fleeing into the "Saxon Switzerland" of his soul, witha half Werther-like, half Jean-Paul-like nature (assuredly not like Beethoven! assuredly not like Byron!) —^his Manfred music is a mistake and a misunderstanding to the extent of injustice; Schumann, with his taste, which was funda- i8o BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL maitally a petty taste (that is to say, a dangerous propensity—doubly dangerous among Germans—for quiet lyricism andintoxication of the feelings), going constantly apart, timidlywithdrawing and retiring, a noble weakling who revelled innothing but zmonymous joy and sorrow, from the begirminga sort of girl and noli me tangere—this Schumann wasal-ready merely a German event in music, and no longeraEuropean event, as Beethoven had been, as in a still greaterdegree Mozart had been ; with Schumann German music wasthreatened with its greatest danger, that of losing the voicefor the soul of Europe and sinking into a merely nationalaffair.

What a torture are books written in German to a readerwho has a third ear! How indignantly he stands besidethe slowly turning swamp of sounds without tune andrhythms without dance, which Germans call a "book"! Andeven the German who reads books! How lazily, how reluc-tantly, how badly he reads! How many Germans know,and consider it obligatory to know, that there is art in everygood sentence—art which must be divined, if the sentenceis to be understood! If there is a misunderstanding aboutits tempo, for instance, the sentence itself is misunderstood!That one must not be doubtful about the rhythm-determiningsyllables, that one should feel the breaking of the too-rigidsjonmetry as intentional and as a charm, that one shouldlend a fine and patient ear to every staccato and everyrubato, that one should divine the sense in the sequence ofthe vowels and diphthongs, and how delicately and richly theycan be tinted and retinted in the order of their arrangement—who among book-reading Germans is complaisant enough

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 181 to recognise 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 is as it were squandered on the deaf.—These were my thoughtswhen I noticed how clumsily and unintuitively two mastersin the art of prose-writing have been confounded: one, whose words drop down hesitatingly and coldly, as from theroof of a damp cave—he counts on their dull sound andecho; and another who manipulates his language like a flexible sword, and from his arm down into his toes feels the dangerous bliss of the quivering, over-sharp blade, whichwishes to bite, hiss, and cut.

How little the German style has to do with harmony andwith the ear, is shown by the fact that precisely our goodmusicians themselves write badly. The German does notread aloud, he does not read for the ear, but only with his eyes; he has put his ears away in the drawer for the time. In antiquity when a man read—which was seldom enough he read something to himself, and in a loud voice; they weresurprised when any one read silently, and sought secretly the reason of it. In a loud voice: that is to say, with all the swellings, inflections, and variations of key and changesof tempo, in which the ancient public world took delight.

The laws of the written style were then the same as thoseof the spoken style; and these laws depended partly on thesurprising development and refined requirements of the ear and larynx; partly on the strength, endurance, and powerof the ancient lungs. In the ancient sense, a period is aboveall a physiological whole, inasmuch as it is comprised in one t82 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL breath. Such periods as occur in Demosthenes and Cicero,swelling twice and sinking twice, and all in one breath,were pleasures to the men of antiquity, who knew by theirown schooling how to appreciate the virtue therein, therareness and the difficulty in the deliverance of such a pe-riod ;

we have really no right to the big period, we modemmen, who are short of breath in every sense! Those ancients,indeed, were all of them dilettanti in speaking, consequentlyconnoisseurs, consequently critics—they thus brought theirorators to the highest pitch; in the same maimer as in thelast century, when all Italian ladies and gentlemen knewhow to sing, the virtuosoship of song (and with it also theart of melody) reached its elevation. In Germany, however (until quite recently when a kind of platform eloquencebegan shyly and awkwardly enough to flutter its youngwings), there was properly speaking only one kind of publicand approximately artistical discourse—that delivered fromthe pulpit. The preacher was the only one in Germany whoknew the weight of a syllable or a word, in what mannera sentence strikes, springs, rushes, flows, and comes to aclose; he alone had a conscience in his ears, often enougha bad conscience: for reasons are not lacking why proficiency in oratory should be especially seldom attained bya German, or almost always too late. The masterpiece ofGerman prose is therefore with good reason the masterpieceof its greatest preacher: the Bible has hitherto been thebest German book. Compared with Luther's Bible, almosteverything else is merely "literature"—something which hasnot grown in Germany, and therefore has not taken and doesnot take root in German hearts, as the Bible has done.

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 183248

There are two kinds of geniuses: one which above allengenders and seeks to engender, and another which will-ingly lets itself be fructified and brings forth. And similarly,among the gifted nations, there are those on whom thewoman's problem of pregnancy has devolved, and the secrettask of forming, maturing, and perfecting—the Greeks, forinstance, were a nation of this kind, and so are the French;and others which have to fructify and become the cause ofnew modes of life—like the Jews, the Romans, and, in allmodesty be it asked: like the Germans?—nations torturedand enraptured by unknown fevers and irresistibly forced outof themselves, amorous and longing for foreign races (forsuch as "let themselves be fructified"), and withal imperious,like everything conscious of being full of generative force,and consequently empowered "by the grace of God." Thesetwo kinds of geniuses seek each other like man and woman;but they also misunderstand each other—like man and;woman.

Every nation has its own "Tartuffery," and calls that itsvirtue.—One does not know—cannot know, the best that isin one.

What Europe owes to the Jews?—Many things, good andbad, and above all one thing of the nature both of the bestand the worst: the grand style in morality, the fearfulness i84 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL and majesty of infinite demands, of infinite significations, thewhole Romanticism and sublimity of moral questionableness—and consequently just the most attractive, ensnaring, andexquisite element in those iridescences and allurements tolife, in the aftersheen of which the sky of our European cul-ture, its evening sky, now glows—perhaps glows out. Forthis, we artists among the spectators and philosophers, are grateful to the Jews. 2SI It must be taken into the bargain, if various clouds anddisturbances—in short, slight attacks of stupidity—pass overthe spirit of a people that suffers and wants to suffer fromnational 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, theChristian-romantic folly, the Wagnerian folly, the Teutonicfolly, the Prussian folly (just look at those poor historians,the Sybels and Treitschkes, and their closely bandagedheads), and whatever else these little obscurations of theGerman spirit and conscience may be called. May it be for-given me that I, too, when on a short daring sojourn on veryinfected ground, did not remain wholly exempt from the dis-ease, but like every one else, began to entertain thoughtsabout matters which did not concern me—the first symptomof political infection. About the Jews, for instance, listento the following: —I have never yet met a German who wasfavourably inclined to the Jews; and however decided therepudiation of actual anti-Semitism may be on the part ofall prudent and political men, this prudence and policy is notperhaps directed against the nature of the sentiment itself, but only against its dangerous excess, and especially against

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 185the distasteful and infamous expression of this excess ofsentiment; —on this point we must not deceive ourselves.That Germany has amply sufficient Jews, that the Germanstomach, the German blood, has difficulty (and will longhave difficulty) in disposing only of this quantity of "Jew"—as the Italian, the Frenchman, and the Englishman havedone by means of a stronger digestion: —that is the immistakable declaration and language of a general instinct,to which one must listen and according to which one mustact. "Let no more Jews come in! And shut the doors,especially towards the East (also towards Austria) ! "—thuscommands the instinct of a people whose nature is still feeble and uncertain, so that ii could be easily wiped out,easily extinguished, by a stronger race. The Jews, however,are beyond all doubt the strongest, toughest, and purest raceat present living in Europe; they know how to succeed evenunder the worst conditions (in fact better than under favourable ones), by means of virtues of some sort, which onewould like nowadays to label as vices—owing above all to aresolute faith which does not need to be ashamed before"modem ideas"; they alter only, wken they do alter, in thesame way that the Russian Empire makes its conquest—asan 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, ^vill, in allhis perspectives concerning the future, calculate upon theJews, as he will calculate upon the Russians, as above allthe surest and likeliest factors in the great play and battleof forces. That which is at present called a "nation" inEurope, and is really rather a res facta than nata (indeed,sometimes confusingly similar to a res ficta et picta), is inevery case something evolving, young, easily displaced, andnot yet a race, much less such a race acre perennius, as the 1 85 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL Jews are: such "nations" should most carefully avoid all hot-headed rivalry and hostility! It is certain that the Jews,if they desired—or if they were driven to it, as the anti-Semites seem to wish

could now have the ascendency, 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 importunely, tobe insorbed and absorbed by Europe; they long to be finally settled, authorised, and respected somewhere, and wish toput an end to the nomadic life, to the "wandering Jew"; and one should certainly take account of this impulse andtendency, and make advances to it (it possibly betokens amitigation of the Jewish instincts) : for which purpose it would perhaps be useful and fair to banish the anti-Semiticbawlers out of the country. One should make advanceswith all prudence, and with selection; pretty much as theEnglish nobility do. It stands to reason that the more powerful and strongly marked types of new Germanism couldenter into relation with the Jews with the least hesitation, for instance, the nobleman officer from the Prussian border: it would be interesting in many ways to see whether thegenius 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 heredi- tary 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 and mysprightly Teutonomania: for I have already reached myserious topic, the "European problem," as I understand it, the rearing of a new ruling caste for Europe.

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 187252

They are not a philosophical race—the English : Baconrepresents an attack on the philosophical spirit generally,Hobbes, Hume, and Locke, an abasement, and a depreciationof the idea of a "philosopher" for more than a century. Itwas against Hume that Kant uprose and raised himself;it was Locke of whom Schelling rightly said, "Je mepriseLocke" ; in the struggle against the English mechanical stulti-fication of the world, Hegel and Schopenhauer (along withGoethe) were of one accord; the two hostile brother-geniusesin philosophy, who pushed in different directions towards theopposite poles of German thought, and thereby wronged eachother as only brothers will do.—What is lacking in England,and has always been lacking, that half-actor and rhetoricianknew well enough, the absurd muddle-head, Carlyle, whosought to conceal under passionate grimaces what he knewabout himself: namely, what was lacking in Carlyle—realpower of intellect, real depth of intellectual perception, inshort, philosophy. It is characteristic of such an unphilosophical race to hold on firmly to Christianity—they needits discipline for "moralising" and humanising. The Englishman, more gloomy, sensual, headstrong, and brutal thanthe German—is for that very reason, as the baser of thetwo, also the most pious: he has all the more need ofChristianity. To finer nostrils, this English Christianity itselfhas still a characteristic English taint of spleen and alcoholicexcess, for which, owing to good reasons, it is used as anantidote—the finer poison to neutralise the coarser: a finerform of poisoning is in fact a step in advance with coarse-mannered people, a step towards spiritualisation. TheEnglish coarseness and rustic demureness is still most satis- 1 88 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL factorily disguised by Christian pantomime, and by prayivigand psalm-singing (or, more correctly, it is thereby explainedand differently expressed) ; and for the herd of drunkardsand rakes who formerly learned moral grunting under theinfluence of Methodism (and more recently as the "SalvationArmy"), a penitential fit may really be the relatively highestmanifestation of "humanity" to which they can be elevated:so much may reasonably be admitted. That, however, whichoffends even in the humanest Englishman is his lack of music,to speak figuratively (and also literally): he has neitherrhythm nor dance in the movements of his soul and body;indeed, not even the desire for rhythm and dance, for"music." Listen to him speaking; look at the most beautifulEnglishwoman walking—in no country on earth are theremore beautiful doves and swans; finally, listen to them singing! But I ask too much. . . .

There are truths which are best recognised by mediocreminds, because they are best adapted for them, there aretruths which only possess charms and seductive power formediocre spirits: —one is pushed to this probably unpleasantconclusion, now that the influence of respectable but mediocre Englishmen—I may mention Darwin, John Stuart Mill,and Herbert Spencer—begins to gain the ascendency in themiddle-class region of European taste. Indeed, who coulddoubt that it is a useful thing for such minds to have theascendency for a time? It would be an error to considerthe highly developed and independently soaring minds asspecially qualified for determining and collecting many little common facts, and deducing conclusions from them; as exceptioiis, they are rather from the first in no very favourable

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL i&>position towards those who are "the rules." After all, theyhave more to do than merely to perceive: —in effect, theyhave to be something new, they have to signify somethingnew, they have to represent new values! The gulf betweenknowledge and capacity is perhaps greater, and also moremysterious, than one thinks: the capable man in the grandstyle, the creator, will possibly have to be an ignorant person; —while on the other hand, for scientific discoveries likethose of Darwin, a certain narrowness, aridity, and industrious carefulness (in short something English) may notbe imfavourable for arriving at them.—Finally, let it not beforgotten that the English, with their profound mediocrity,brought about once before a general depression of Europeanintelligence. What is called "modern ideas," or "the ideas ofthe eighteenth century," or "French ideas"—that, conse-quently, against which the German mind rose up withprofovmd disgust—is of English origin, there is no doubtabout it. The French were only the apes and actors of theseideas, their best soldiers, and likewise, alas! their first andprofoundest victims; for owing to the diabolical Anglomaniaof "modem ideas," the dme jranqais has in the end becomeso thin and emaciated, that at present one recalls its sixteenthand seventeenth centuries, its profound, passionate strength,its inventive excellency, almost with disbelief. One must,however, maintain this verdict of historical justice in a de-termined manner, and defend it against present prejudicesand appearances: the European noblesse—of sentiment, taste,and manners, taking the word in every high sense—is thework and invention of France; the European ignobleness,the plebeianism of modem ideas—is England's work and in-vention. 190 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL

Even at present France is still the seat of the most intel-lectual and refined culture of Europe, it is still the highschool of taste; but one must know how to find this "Franceof taste." He who belongs to it keeps himself well concealed: —they may be a small number in whom it lives and isembodied, besides perhaps being men who do not stand uponthe strongest legs, in part fatalists, hypochondriacs, invalids,in part persons over-indulged, over-refined, such as have theambition to conceal themselves. They have all something incommon: they keep their ears closed in presence of thedelirious folly and noisy spouting of the democratic bourgeois. In fact, a besotted and brutalised France at presentsprawls in the foreground—it recently celebrated a veritableorgy of bad taste, and at the same time of self-admiration,at the funeral of Victor Hugo. There is also something elsecommon to them: a predilection to resist intellectual Ger-manising—and a still greater inability to do so! In thisFrance of intellect, which is also a France of pessimism,Schopenhauer has perhaps become more at home, and moreindigenous than he has ever been in Germany; not to speakof Heinrich Heine, who has long ago been re-incarnated inthe more refined and fastidious lyrists of Paris; or of Hegel,who at present, in the form of Taine—the first of living his-torians—exercises an almost tyrannical influence. As re-gards Richard Wagner, however, the more French musiclearns to adapt itself to the actual needs of the dme moderne,the more will it "Wagnerise"; one can safely predict thatbeforehand,—it is already taking place sufficiently! Thereare, however, three things which the French can still boastof with pride as their heritage and possession, and as indelible

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 191tokens of their ancient intellectual superiority in Europe, in spite of all voluntary or involuntary Germanising and vul-, garising of taste. Firstly, the capacity for artistic emotion,for devotion to "form," for which the expression, Vart pourI' art, along with numerous others, has been invented: —suchcapacity has not been lacking in France for three centuries; and owing to its reverence for the "small number," it hasagain and again made a sort of chamber music of literaturepossible, which is sought for in vain elsewhere in Europe.

The second thing whereby the French c£in lay claim to asuperiority over Europe is their ancient, many-sided, moralistic culture, owing to which one finds on an average, evenin the petty romanciers of the newspapers and chance boulevardiers 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 acouple of centuries of the moralistic work requisite thereto, which, as we have said, France has not grudged: those whocall the Germans "naive" on that account give them com^mendation for a defect. (As the opposite of the Germaninexperience and innocence in voluptate psychologica, whichis not too remotely associated with the tediousness of Ger-man intercourse,—and as the most successful expression ofgenuine French curiosity and inventive talent in this domainof delicate thrills, Henri Beyle may be noted; that remarkable anticipatory and forerunning man, who, with a Napoleonic tempo, traversed his Europe, in fact, severalcenturies of the European soul, as a surveyor and discovererthereof: —it has required two generations to overtake himone way or other, to divine long afterwards some of theriddles that perplexed and enraptured him—this strangeEpicurean and man of interrogation, the last great psychologist of France).—There is yet a third claim to superiority: 192 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL '"n the French character there is a successful half-way s)^!-thesis of the North and South, which makes them comprehend many things, and enjoins upon them other things,which an Englishman can never comprehend. Their tem-perament, turned alternately to and from the South, inwhich from time to time the Provencal and Ligurian bloodfroths over, preserves them from the dreadful, northerngray-in-gray, from sunless conceptual-spectrism and frompoverty of blood—our German infirmity of taste, for theexcessive prevalence of which at the present moment, bloodand iron, that is to say "high politics," has with great reso-lution been prescribed (according to a dangerous healing art,which bids me wait and wait, but not yet hope).—There isalso still in France a pre-understanding and ready welcomefor those rarer and rarely gratified men, who are too comprehensive to find satisfaction in any kind of fatherlandism,and know how to love the South when in the North £md theNorth when in the South—the bom Midlanders, the "goodEuropeans." For them Bizet has made music, this latestgenius, who has seen a new beauty and seduction,—who hasdiscovered a piece of the South in music.

I hold that many precautions should be taken againstGerman music. Suppose a person loves the South as I loveit—as a great school of recovery for the most spiritual andthe most sensuous ills, as a boundless solar profusion andeffulgence which o'erspreads a sovereign existence believingin itself—^well, such a person will learn to be somewhat onhis guard against German music, because, in injuring histaste anew, it will also injure his health anew. SuchaSoutherner, a Southerner not by origin but by belief, if he

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 193should dream of the future of music, must also dream of it being freed from the influence of the North; £ind must havein his ears the prelude to a deeper, mightier, and perhapsmore perverse and mysterious music, a super-German music,which does not fade, pale, and die away, as all Germanmusic does, at the sight of the blue, wanton sea and theMediterranean clearness of sky—a super-European music,which holds its own even in presence of the brown sunsetsof the desert, whose soul is akin to the palm-tree, and cjin be at home and can roam with big, beautiful, lonely beastsof prey. ... I could imagine a music of which the rarestcharm would be that it knew nothing more of good and evil' only that here and there perhaps some sailor's home-sickness,some golden shadows and tender weaknesses might sweeplightly over it; an art which, from the far distance, wouldsee the colours of a sinking and almost incomprehensiblemoral world fleeing towards it, and would be hospitableenough 2ind profound enough to receive such belated fugitives.

Owing to the morbid estrangement which the nationality-craze has induced and still induces among the nations ofEurope, owing also to the short-sighted and hasty-handedpoliticians, who with the help of this craze, are at present inpower, and do not suspect to what extent the disintegratingpolicy they pursue must necessarily be only an interludepolicy—owing to all this, and much else that is altogetherunmentionable at present, the most unmistakable signs thatEurope wishes to be one, are now overlooked, or arbitrarilyand falsely misinterpreted. With all the more profound andlarge-minded men of this century, the real general tendency 194 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL of the mysterious labour of their souls was to prqjare theway for that new synthesis, and tentatively to anticipatethe European of the future; only in their simulations, orin their weaker moments, in old age perhaps, did they belongto the "fatherlands"—they only rested from themselveswhen they became "patriots." I think of such men as Napoleon, Goethe, Beethoven, Stendhal, Heinrich Heine,Schopenhauer: it must not be taken amiss if I also countRichard Wagner among them, about whom one must notlet 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 withwhich he is now resisted and opposed in France: the factremains, nevertheless, that Richard Wagner and the laterFrench Romanticism of the forties, are most closely and inti-mately related to one another. They are akin, fundamentallyakin, in all the heights and depths of their requirements; itis Europe, the one Europe, whose soul presses urgently andlongingly, outwards and upwards, in their multifarious andboisterous art—whither? into a new light? towards a newsun? But who would attempt to express accurately what allthese masters of new modes of speech could not express dis-tinctly? It is certain that the same storm and stress tor-mented them, that they sought in the same manner, theselast great seekers! All of them steeped in literature to theireyes and ears—the first artists of universal literary culture for the most part even themselves writers, poets, intermediaries and blenders of the arts and the senses (Wagner, asmusician is reckoned among painters, as poet amongmusicians, as artist generally among actors) ; all of themfanatics for expression "at any cost"—I specially mentionDelacroix, the nearest related to Wagner; all of them greatdiscoverers in the realm of the sublime, also of the loath- BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 195some and dreadful, still greater discoverers in effect, in dis-play, in the art of the show-shop; all of them talented farbeyond their genius, out and out virtuosi, with mysteriousaccesses to all that seduces, allures, constrains, and upsets;bom enemies of logic and of the straight line, hankeringafter the strange, the exotic, the monstrous, the crooked, andthe self-contradictory; as men, Tantaluses of the will, plebeian parvenus, who knew themselves to be incapable of anoble tempo or of a lento in life and action—think of Balzac,for instance,—unrestrained workers, almost destroying themselves by work; antinomians and rebels in manners, ambitious and insatiable, without equilibrium and enjoyment;all of them finally shattering and sinking down at theChristian cross (and with right and reason, for who of themwould have been sufficiently profound and sufficiently origi- nal for an Antichristian philosophy?);—on the whole, aboldly daring, splendidly overbearing, high-flying, and aloft- up-dragging class of higher men, who had first to teach theircentury—and it is the century of the masses—the conception"higher man." . . . Let the German friends of Richard Wagner advise together as to whether there is anything purelyGerman in the Wagnerian art, or whether its distinction deesnot consist precisely in coming from super-German sourcesand impulses: in which connection it may not be underratedhow indispensable Paris was to the development of his type,which the strength of his instincts made him long to visit atthe most decisive time—and how the whole style of his proceedings, of his self-apostolate, could only perfect itself insight of the French socialistic original. On a more subtlecomparison it will perhaps be foimd, to the honour of RichardWagner's German nature, that he has acted in everythingwith more strength, daring, severity, and elevation than anineteenth-century Frenchman could have done—owing to 196 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL the circumstance that we Germans are as yet nearer to bar-'barism than the French; —perhaps even the most remarkablecreation of Richard Wagner is not only at present, but forever inaccessible, incomprehensible, and inimitable to thewhole latter-day Latin race: the figure of Siegfried, that veryfree man, who is probably far too free, too hard, to cheerful, too healthy, too anti-Catholic for the taste of old andmellow civilised nations. He may even have been a sin' against Romanticism, this anti-Latin Siegfried: well, Wagneratoned amply for this sin in his old sad days, when—antici-pating a taste which has meanwhile passed into politics—^hebegan, with the religious vehemence peculiar to him, topreach, at least, the way to Rome, if not to walk therein.

That these last words may not be misunderstood, I will callto my aid a few powerful rhymes, which will even betrayto less delicate ears what I mean—what I mean counter tothe "last Wagner" and his Parsifal music:

—Is this our mode?

From German heart came this vexed ululating?

From German body, this self-lacerating? Is ours this priestly hand-dilation. This incense-fuming exaltation?

Is ours this faltering, falling, shambling.

This quite uncertain ding-dong-dangling?

This sly nun-ogling, Ave-hour-bell ringing, This wholly false enraptured heaven-o'erspringing? —Is this our mode?

Think well! —ye still wait for admission

For what ye hear is Rome—Rome's faith by intuitiot

What Is Noble?

Every elevation of the type "man," has hitherto been thework of an aristocratic society and so it will always be asociety believing in a long scale of gradations of rank anddifferences of worth among human beings, and requiringslavery in some form or other. Without the pathos of dis-tance, such as grows out of the incarnated difference ofclasses, out of the constant outlooking and downlooking ofthe ruling caste on subordinates and instruments, and out oftheir equally constant practice of obeying and commanding,of keeping down and keeping at a distance—that other moremysterious pathos could never have arisen, the longing foran ever new widening of distance within the soul itself, theformation of ever higher, rarer, further, more extended,more comprehensive states, in short, just the elevation ofthe type "man," the continued "self-surmounting of man,"to use a moral formula in a supermoral sense. To be sure,one must not resign oneself to any humanitarian illusionsabout the history of the origin of an aristocratic society (thatis to say, of the preliminary condition for the elevation ofthe tj^e "man"): the truth is hard. Let us acknowledgeimprejudicedly how every higher civilisation hitherto has197 198 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL originated! Men with a still natural nature, barbarians inevery terrible sense of the word, men of prey, still in possession of unbroken strength of will and desire for power,threw themselves upon weaker, more moral, more peacefulraces (perhaps trading or cattle-rearing communities), orupon old mellow civilisations in which the final vital forcewas flickering out in brilliant fireworks of wat and depravity.At the commencement, the noble caste was always the bar-barian caste: their superiority did not consist first of allin their physical, but in their psychical power—they weremore complete men (which at every point also implies thesame as "more complete beasts").

Corruption—as the indication that anarchy threatens tobreak out among the instincts, and that the foundation ofthe emotions, called "life," is convulsed—is something radically different according to the organisation in which it manifests itself. When, for instance, an aristocracy like that ofFrance at the beginning of the Revolution, flung awayitsprivileges with sublime disgust and sacrificed itself to anexcess of its moral sentiments, it was corruption: —it wasreally only the closing act of the corruption which had existedfor centuries, by virtue of which that aristocracy had abdi-cated step by step its lordly prerogatives and lowered itselfto a function of royalty (in the end even to its decorationand parade-dress). The essential thing, however, in a goodand healthy aristocracy is that it should not regard itselfas 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 thesacrifice of a legion of individuals, who, for its sake, must be

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 199suppressed and reduced to imperfect men, to slaves and in-struments. Its fundamental belief must be precisely thatsociety is not allowed to exist for its own sake, but only asa foundation and scaffolding, by means of which a select classof beings may be able to elevate themselves to their higherduties, and in general to a higher existence: like those sunseeking climbing plants in Java—they are called Sipo Matador,—which encircle an oak so long and so often with theirarms, until at last, high above it, but supported by it, theycan imfold their tops in the open light, and exhibit theirhappiness.

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 conductamong individuals when the necessary conditions are given(namely, the actual similarity of the individuals in amountof force and degree of worth, and their co-relation withinone organisation). As soon, however, as one wished to takethis principle more generally, and if possible even as thefundamental principle of society, it would immediately dis-close what it really is—namely, a Will to the denial of life, a principle of dissolution and decay. Here one must thinkprofoundly to the very basis and resist all sentimental weakness: life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, conquestof the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion ofpeculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation; —^but why should one for ever useprecisely these words on which for ages a disparaging purposehas been stamped? Even the organisation within which, aswas previously supposed, the individuals treat each other as 200 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL equal—it takes place in every healthy aristocracy—mustitself, if it be a living and not a dying organisation, do allthat towards other bodies, which the individuals within itrefrain from doing to each other: it will have to be the in-carnated Will to Power, it will endeavour to grow, to gaingroimd, attract to itself and acquire ascendency—not owingto any morality or immorality, but because it lives, andbecause 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 raveeverywhere, even under the guise of science, about comingconditions of society in which "the exploiting character"is to be absent: —that sounds to my ears as if they promisedto invent a mode of life which should refrain from all organicfunctions. "Exploitation" does not belong to a depraved,or imperfect and primitive society: it belongs to the natureof the living being as a primary organic fimction; it is aconsequence of the intrinsic Will to Power, which is precisely the W^ill to Life.—Granting that as a theory this is anovelty—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 moralitieswhich have hitherto prevailed or still prevail on the earth,I found certain traits recurring regularly together, andcormected with one another, until finally two primary typesrevealed themselves to me, and a radical distinction wasbrought to light. There is master-morality and slave-morality;—I would at once add, however, that in all higher anmixed civilisations, there are also attempts at the recottciliation of the two moralities; but one finds still oftener ral-mc^jonfl

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 201confusion and mutual misunderstanding of them, indeed^sometimes their close juxtaposition—even in the same man,within one soul. The distinctions of moral values have eitheroriginated in a ruling caste, pleasantly conscious of beingdifferent from the ruled—or among the ruled class, the slavesand dependents of all sorts. In the first case, when it is therulers who determine the conception "good," it is the exalted, proud disposition which is regarded as the distinguishing feature, and that which determines the order of rank.The noble type of man separates from himself the beings in whom the opposite of this exalted, proud disposition displaysitself: he despises them. Let it at once be noted that inthis 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. Thecowardly, the timid, the insignificant, and those thinkingmerely of narrow utility are despised; moreover, also, thedistrustful, with their constrained glances, the self-abasing,the dog-like kind of men who let themselves be abused, themendicant flatterers, and above all the liars: —it is a fimdamental belief of all aristocrats that the common people areuntruthful. "We truthful ones"—the nobility in ancientGreece called themselves. It is obvious tliat everywhere thedesignations of moral value were at first applied to men,and were only derivatively and at a later period applied toactions; it is a gross mistake, therefore, when historiansof morals start with questions like, "Why have sympatheticactions been praised?" The noble type of man regardshimself as a determiner of values; he does not require to beapproved of; he passes the judgment: "What is injurious tome is injurious in itself"; he knows that it is he himself onlywho confers honour on things; he is a creator of values.He honours whatever he recognises in himself: such morality 202 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL is self-glorification. In the foreground there is the feelingof plenitude, of power, which seeks to overflow, the happiness of high tension, the consciousness of a wealth whichwould fain give and bestow: —the noble man also helps theunfortunate, but not—or scarcely—out of pity, but ratherfrom an impulse generated by the super-abundance of power.The noble man honours in himself the powerful one, him alsowho has power over himself, who knows how to speak andhow to keep silence, who takes pleasure in subjecting himselfto severity and hardness, and has reverence for all that issevere and hard. "Wotan placed a hard heart in my breast,"says an old Scandinavian Saga: it is thus rightly expressedfrom the soul of a proud Viking. Such a type of maniseven proud of not being made for sympathy; the hero ofthe Saga therefore adds warningly: "He who has not ahard heart when young, will never have one." The noble andbrave who think thus are the furthest removed from themorality which sees precisely in sympathy, or in acting forthe good of others, or in disinteressement, the characteristicof the moral; faith in oneself, pride in oneself, a radical en-mity and irony towards "selflessness," belong as definitely tonoble morality, as do a careless scorn and precaution inpresence of sympathy and the "warm heart."—It is the powerful who know how to honour, it is their art, their domainfor invention. The profound reverence for age and fortradition—all law rests on this double reverence,—the beliefand prejudice in favour of ancestors and unfavourable tonewcomers, is typical in the morality of the powerful ; and if, reversely, men of "modem ideas" believe almost instinctivelyin "progress" and the "future," and are more and more lack-ing in respect for old age, the ignoble origin of these "ideas"jhas complacently betrayed itself thereby. A morality of thjruling class, however, is more especially foreign and irritating

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 203to present-day taste in the sternness of its principle that onehas duties only to one's equals; that one may act towardsbeings of a lower rank, towards all that is foreign, just asseems good to one, or "as the heart desires," and in any case"beyond good and evil": it is here that sympathy and similarsentiments can have a place. The ability and obligationto exercise prolonged gratitude and prolonged revenge—bothonly within the circle of equals,—artfulness in retaliation,raffinement of the idea in friendship, a certain necessity tohave enemies (as outlets for the emotions of envy, quarrel-someness, arrogance—in fact, in order to be a good friend)

all these are t5rpical characteristics of the noble morality,which, as has been pointed out, is not the morality of "modem ideas," and is therefore at present difficult to realise,and also to unearth and disclose.—It is otherwise with thesecond type of morality, slave-morality. Supposing that theabused, the oppressed, the suffering, the unemancipated, theweary, and those uncertain of themselves, should moralise,what will be the common element in their moral estimates?Probably a pessimistic suspicion with regard to the entiresituation of man will find expression, perhaps a condemnationof man, together with his situation. The slave has an unfavourable eye for the virtues of the powerful ; he has a scepticism and distrust, a refinement of distrust of everything"good" that is there honoured—he would fain persuade himself that the very happiness there is not genuine. On theother hand, those qualities which serve to alleviate the ex-istence of sufferers are brought into prominence and floodedwith light; it is here that sympathy, the kind, helping hand,the warm heart, patience, diligence, humility, and friendlinessattain to honour; for here these are the most useful qualities,and almost the only means of supporting the burden ofexistence. Slave-morality is essentially the morality of utility. 204 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL Here is the seat of the origin of the famous antithesis "good"and "evil": —power and dangerousness are assumed to residein 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; accordingto master-morality, it is precisely the "good" man who arousesfear and seeks to arouse it, while the bad man is regardedas the despicable being. The contrast attains its maximumwhen, 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 ofthis morality; because, according to the servile mode ofthought, the good man must in any case be the safe man: heis good-natured, easily deceived, perhaps a little stupid, unbonkomme. Everjrwhere that slave-morality gains the as-cendency, language shows a tendency to approximate thesignifications of the words "good" and "stupid."—A lastfundamental difference: the desire for freedom, the instinctfor happiness and the refinements of the feeling of libertybelong as necessarily to slave-morals and morality, as artificeand enthusiasm in reverence and devotion are the regularsymptoms of an aristocratic mode of thinking and estimating.—Hence we can understand without further detail why loveas a passion—it is our European specialty—must absolutelybe of noble origin; as is well known, its invention is due tothe Provengal poet-cavaliers, those brilliant, ingenious menof the "gai saber," to whom Europe owes so much, andalmost owes itself.

Vanity is one of the things which are perhaps most difficultfor a noble man to understand: he will be tempted to deny

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 205it, where another kind of man thinks he sees it self-evidently.The problem for him is to represent to his mind beingswho seek to arouse a good opinion of themselves which theythemselves do not possess—and consequently also do not"deserve,"—and who yet believe in this good opinion after-wards. This seems to him on the one hand such bad tasteand so self-disrespectful, and on the other hand so grotesquelyunreasonable, that he would like to consider vanity an exception, and is doubtful about it in most cases when it isspoken of. He will say, for instance: "I may be mistakenabout my value, and on the other hand may nevertheless de-mand that my value should be acknowledged by others precisely as I rate 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 rea-sons I can delight in the good opinion of others, perhapsbecause I love and honour them, and rejoice in all theirjoys, perhaps also because their good opinion endorses zmdstrengthens my belief in my own good opinion, perhapsbecause the good opinion of others, even in cases where I donot share it, is useful to me, or gives promise of usefulness: all this, however, is not vemity." The man of noble charactermust first bring it home forcibly to his mind, especially withthe aid of history, that, from time immemorial, in all socialstrata in any way dependent, the ordinary man was onlythat which he passed for:—^not being at all accustomedtofix values, he did not assign even to himself any other valuethan that which his master assigned to him (it is the peculiarright of masters to create values). It may be looked uponas the result of an extraordinary atavism, that the ordinaryman, even at present, is still always waiting for an opinionabout himself, and then instinctively submitting himself toit; yet by no means only to a "good" opinion, but also to 2o6 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL a bad and unjust one (think, for instance, of the greaterpart of the self-appreciations and self-depreciations whichbelieving women learn from their confessors, and which ingeneral the believing Christian learns from his Church).In fact, conformably to the slow rise of the democratic socialorder (and its cause, the blending of the blood of mastersand slaves), the originally noble and rare impulse of themasters to assign a value to themselves and to "think well"of themselves, will now be more and more encouraged andextended; but it has at all times an older, ampler, and moreradically ingrained propensity opposed to it—and in thephenomenon of "vanity" this older propensity overmastersthe younger. The vain person rejoices over every good opinion which he hears about himself (quite apart from the pointof view of its usefulness, and equally regardless of its truthor falsehood), just as he suffers from every bad opinion: forhe subjects himself to both, he ]eeh himself subjected toboth, by that oldest instinct of subjection which breaksforth in him.—It is "the slave" in the vain man's blood, theremains of the slave's craftiness—and how much of the"slave" is still left in woman, for instance! —which seeks toseduce to good opinions of itself; it is the slave, too, whoimmediately afterwards falls prostrate himself before theseopinions, as though he had not called them forth.

Andtorepeat it agziin: vanity is an atavism.

A species originates, and a type becomes established andstrong in the long struggle with essentially constant unfavourable conditions. On the other hand, it is known by the experience of breeders that species which receive superabundantnourishment, and in general a surplus of protection and care.

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 207immediately tend in the most marked 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 polls, or Venice, as a voluntaryor involuntary contrivance for the purpose of rearing humanbeings ; there are there men beside one another, thrown upontheir own resources, who want to make their species prevail, chiefly because they must prevail, or else run the terrible danger of being exterminated. The favour, the superabundance, the protection are there lacking under which variationsare fostered; the species needs itself as species, as somethingwhich, precisely by virtue of its hardness, its uniformity,and simplicity of structure, can in general prevail and makeitself permanent in constant struggle with its neighbours,or with rebellious or rebellion-threatening vassals. The most\'aried experience teaches it what are the qualities to whichit principally owes the fact that it still exists, in spite ofall Gods and men, and has hitherto been victorious: thesequalities it calls virtues, and these virtues alone it developsto maturity. It does so with severity, indeed it desires se- verity; every aristocratic morality is intolerant in theeducation of youth, in the control of women, in the marriage customs, in the relations of old and young, in thepenal laws (which have an eye only for the degenerating)

it counts intolerance itself among the virtues, under thename of "justice." A type with few, but very markedfeatures, a species of severe, warlike, wisely silent, reservedand 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; theconstant struggle with imiform unfavourable conditions is, as already remarked, the cause of a type becoming stableand hard. Finally, however, a happy state of things results. 2o8 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL the enormous tension is relaxed; there are perhaps no mereenemies among the neighbouring peoples, and the means oflife, even of the enjoyment of life, are present in super-abundance. With one stroke the bond and constraint of theold discipline severs: it is no longer regarded as necessary,Us a condition of existence—if it would continue, it can onlydo so as a form of luxury, as an archaising taste. Variations, whether they be deviations (into the higher, finer, andrarer), or deteriorations and monstrosities, appear suddenlyon the scene in the greatest exuberance and splendour; theindividual dares to be individual and detach himself. Atthis turning-point of history there manifest themselves, sideby side, and often mixed and entangled together, a magnificent, manifold, virgin-forest-like up-growth and up-striving,a kind of tropical tempo in the rivalry of growth, and anextraordinary decay and self-destruction, owing to the sav-agely opposing and seemingly exploding egoisms, whichstrive with one another "for sun and light," and can nolonger assign any limit, restraint, or forbearance for themselves by means of the hitherto existing morality. It wasthis morality itself which piled up the strength so enor-mously, which bent the bow in so threatening a manner: it is now "out of date," it is getting "out of date." Thedangerous and disquieting point has been reached when thegreater, more manifold, more comprehensive life is livedbeyond the old morality; the "individual" stands out, andisobliged to have recourse to his own law-giving, his owti artsand artifices for self-preservation, self-elevation, and self-deliverance. Nothing but new "Whys," nothing but new"Hows," no common formulas any longer, misunderstandingand disregard in league with each other, decay, deterioration,and the loftiest desires frightfully entangled, the genius of therace overflowing from all the cornucopias of good and bad, BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 20^a portentous simultaneousness of Spring and Autumn, full of new charms and mysteries peculiar to the fresh, still in- exhausted, still unwearied corruption. Danger is againpresent, the mother of morality, great danger; this timeshifted into the individual, into the neighbour 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 appearat this time have to preach? They discover, these sharponlookers and loafers, that the end is quickly approaching,,that everything around them decays and produces decay^that nothing will endure until the day after to-morrow, exceptone species of man, the incurably mediocre. The mediocrealone 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 moralitywhich 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 talkof 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 anythingelse is already the sign of a high rank; there is a delight in thenuances of reverence which leads one to infer noble originand habits. The refinement, goodness, and loftiness of asoul are put to a perilous test when something passes bythat is of the highest rank, but is not yet protected by theawe of authority from obtrusive touches and incivilities: something that goes its way like a living touchstone, undistinguished, undiscovered, and tentative, perhaps voluntarily 2IO BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL veiled and disguised. He whose task and practice it is toinvestigate souls, will avail himself of many varieties ofthis very art to determine the ultimate value of a soul, theunalterable, innate order of rank to which it belongs: hewill test it by its instinct for reverence. Difference engendrehaine: the vulgarity of many a nature spurts up suddenlylike dirty water, when any holy vessel, any jewel from closedshrines, any book bearing the marks of great destiny, isbrought before it; while on the other hand, there is an invol-untary silence, a hesitation of the eye, a cessation of allgestures, by which it is indicated that a soul jeels the nearnessof what is worthiest of respect. The way in which, on thewhole, the reverence for the Bible has hitherto been maintained in Europe, is perhaps the best example of disciplineand refinement of manners which Europe owes to Christianity: books of such profoundness and supreme significancerequire for their protection an external tyranny of authority,in order to acquire the period of thousands of years which isnecessary to exhaust and unriddle them. Much has beenachieved when the sentiment has been at last instilled intothe masses (the shallow-pates and the boobies of every kind)that they are not allowed to touch everything, that there areholy experiences before which they must take off their shoesand keep away the unclean hand—it is almost their highestadvance towards humanity. On the contrary, in the so-called cultured classes, the believers in "modem ideas,"nothing is perhaps so repulsive as their lack of shame, theeasy insolence of eye and hand with which they touch, taste,and finger everything; and it is possible that even yet thereis more relative nobility of taste, and more tact for reverenceamong the people, among the lower classes of the people,especially among peasants, than among the newspaper-reading demimonde of intellect, the cultured class.

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 211264

It cannot be effaced from a man's soul what his ancestorshave preferably and most constantly done: whether theywere perhaps diligent economisers attached to a desk anda cash-box, modest and citizen-like in their desires, modestalso in their virtues; or whether they were accustomed tocommanding from morning till night, fond of rude pleasuresand probably of still ruder duties and responsibilities; orwhether, finally, at one time or another, they have sacrificedold privileges of birth and possession, in order to live whollyfor their faith—for their "God,"—as men of an inexorableand sensitive conscience, which blushes at every compromise.It is quite impossible for a man not to have the qualitiesand 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 conclusionabout the child: any kind of offensive incontinence, any kindof sordid envy, or of clumsy self-vaunting—the three thingswhich together have constituted the genuine plebeian typein all times—such must pass over to the child, as surely asbad blood; and with the help of the best education and cul-ture one will only succeed in deceiving with regard to suchheredity.—And what else does education and culture try todo nowadays! In our very democratic, or rather, very plebeian age, "education" and "culture" must be essentiallythe art of deceiving—deceiving with regard to origin, withregard to the inherited plebeianism in body and soul. Aneducator who nowadays preached truthfulness above everything else, and called out constantly to his pupils: "Be true!Be natural! Show yourselves as you are!"—even such a 212 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL virtuous and sincere ass would learn in a short time to haverecourse to the furca of Horace, naturam expellere: withwhat results? "Plebeianism" usque recurret* 26s

At the risk of displeasing innocent ears, I submit thategoism belongs to the essence of a noble soul, I mean theunalterable belief that to a being such as "we," other beingsmust naturally be in subjection, and have to sacrifice themselves. The noble soul accepts the fact of his egoism withoutquestion, and also without consciousness of harshness, constraint, or arbitrariness therein, but rather as something thatmay have its basis in the primary law of things: —if he soughta designation for it he would say: "It is justice itself." Heacknowledges under certain circumstances, which made himhesitate at first, that there are other equally privileged ones;as soon as he has settled this question of rank, he movesamong those equals and equally privileged ones with the sameassurance, as regards modesty and delicate respect, whichhe enjoys in intercourse with himself—in accordance withan innate heavenly mechanism which all the stars understand. It is an additional instance of his egoism, this artful-ness and self-limitation in intercourse with his equals—everystar is a similar egoist; he honours himself in them, and inthe rights which he concedes to them, he has no doubt thatthe exchange of honours and rights, as the essence of allintercourse, belongs also to the natural condition of things.The noble soul gives as he takes, prompted by the passionateand sensitive instinct of requital, which is at the root of hisnature. The notion of "favour" has, inter pares, neither sigHorace's "Epistles," I. x. 24.

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 213 nificance 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."—Goethe to Rath Schlosser.

The Chinese have a proverb which mothers even teach their children: "Siao-sin" {"make thy heart small"). Thisis the essentially fimdamental tendency in latter-day civili- sations. I have no doubt that an ancient Greek, also, wouldfirst of all remark the self-dwarfing in us Europeans of to-day—in this respect alone we should immediately be ''distaste' ful" to him.

What, after all, is ignobleness?—^Words are vocal symbolsfor ideas; ideas, however, are more or less definite menta>S5mibols for frequently returning and concurring sensations, for groups of sensations. It is not sufficient to use the samewords 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 214 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL one another better than those belonging to differentnations, even when they use the same language; or rather,when people have lived long together under similar conditions (of climate, soil, danger, requirement, toil) thereoriginates therefrom an entity that "understands itself" namely, a nation. In all souls a like number of frequentlyrecurring experiences have gained the upper hand over thoseoccurring more rarely: about these matters people understandone another rapidly and always more rapidly—the history oflanguage is the history of a process of abbreviation;on the basis of this quick comprehension people al-ways unite closer and closer. The greater the danger, the greater is the need of agreeing quickly andreadily about what is necessary; not to misunderstandone another in danger—that is what cannot at all be dis-pensed with in intercourse. Also in all loves and friendshipsone has the experience that nothing of the kind continueswhen the discovery has been made that in using the samewords, 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 thegood genius which so often keeps persons of different sexesfrom too hasty attachments, to which sense and heartprompt them—and not some Schopenhauerian "genius ofthe species"!) Whichever groups of sensations within asoul awaken most readily, begin to speak, and give theword of command—these decide as to the general order ofrank of its values, and determine ultimately its list of desirable things. A man's estimates of value betray some-^thing of the structure of his soul, and wherein it sees it conditions of life, its intrinsic needs. Supposing now thatnecessity has from all time drawn together only such men'as could express similar requirements and similar experiences

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 215by similar symbols, it results on the whole that the easycoinmunicability of need, which implies ultimately the undergoing only of average and common experiences, musthave been the most potent of all the forces which have hith-erto operated upon mankind. The more similar, the moreordinary people, have always had and are still having theadvantage; the more select, more refined, more unique, anddifficultly comprehensible, are liable to stand alone; theysuccumb to accidents in their isolation, and seldom propagate themselves. One must appeal to immense opposingforces, in order to thwart this natural, all-too-natural progressus in simile, the evolution of man to the similar, theordinary, the average, the gregarious—to the ignoble!—269

The more a psychologist—a bom, an unavoidable psychologist and soul-diviner—turns his attention to the moreselect cases and individuals, the greater is his danger of be-ing suffocated by sympathy: he needs sternness and cheerfulness more than any other man. For the corruption, theruination of higher men, of the more unusually constitutedsouls, is in fact, the rule: it is dreadful to have such a rulealways before one's eyes. The manifold torment of thepsychologist who has discovered this ruination, who discovers once, and then discovers almost repeatedly throughoutall history, this universal inner "desperateness" of highermen, this eternal "too late!" in every sense—may perhapsone day be the cause of his turning with bitterness againsthis own lot, and of his making an attempt at self-destruc-tion—of his "going to ruin" himself. One may perceive inalmost every psychologist a tell-tale inclination for delightful intercourse with commonplace and well-ordered men: 2i6 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL the fact is thereby disclosed that he always requires healing,that hft needs a sort of flight and forgetfulness, away fromwhat his insight and incisiveness—from what his "business"—has laid upon his conscience. The fear of his memoryis peculiar to him. He is easily silenced by the judgmentof others; he hears with unmoved countenance how peoplehonour, admire, love, and glorify, where he has perceived—or he even conceals his silence by expressly assenting tosome plausible opinion. Perhaps the paradox of his situa-tion becomes so dreadful that, precisely where he has learntgreat sympathy, together with great contempt, the multitude,the educated, and the visionaries, have on their part learntgreat reverence—reverence for "great men" and marvellousanimals, for the sake of whom one blesses and honours thefatherland, the earth, the dignity of mankind, and one'sown self, to whom one points the young, and in view ofwhom one educates them. And who knows but in all greatinstances hitherto just the same happened: that the multi-tude worshipped a God, and that the "God" was only apoor sacrificial animal! Success has always been the greatest liar—and the "work" itself is a success; the great states-man, the conqueror, the discoverer, are disguised in theircreations until they are unrecognisable; the "work" of theartist, of the philosopher, only invents him who has createdit, is reputed to have created it; the "great men," as theyare reverenced, are poor little fictions composed afterwards;in the world of historical values spurious coinage prevails.Those great poets, for example, such as Byron, Musset, Poe,Leopardi, Kleist, Gogol (I do not venture to mention muchgreater names, but I have them in my mind), as they nowappear, and were perhaps obliged to be: m.en of the moment,enthusiastic, sensuous, and childish, light-minded and impulsive in their trust and distrust; with souls in which usually

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 217some flaw has to be concealed; often taking revenge withtheir works for an internal defilement, often seeking for-getfulness in their soaring from a too true memory, oftenlost in the mud and almost in love with it, until theybecome like the Will-o '-the-Wisps around the swamps, andpretend to be stars—the people then call them idealists, often struggling with protracted disgust, with an ever-re-appearing phantom of disbelief, which makes them cold,and obliges them to languish for gloria and devour "faithas it is" out of the hands of intoxicated adulators: —whata torment these great artists are and the so-called highermen in general, to him who has once found them out! It isthus conceivable that it is just from woman—who is clair-voyant in the world of suffering, and also unfortunatelyeager to help and save to an extent far beyond her powersthat they have learnt so readily those outbreaks of boundlessdevoted sympathy, which the multitude, above all the rev-erent multitude, do not understand, and overwhelm withprying and self-gratifying interpretations. This sjmipathising invariably deceives itself as to its power; woman wouldlike to believe that love can do everything—it is the superctition peculiar to her. Alas, he who knows the heart findsout how poor, helpless, pretentious, and blundering eventhe best and deepest love is—he finds that it rather destroysthan saves! —It is possible that under the holy fable andtravesty of the life of Jesus there is hidden one of themost painful cases of the martyrdom of knowledge aboutlove: the mart5n-dom of the most innocent and most cravingheart, that never had enough of any human love, that de-manded love, that demanded inexorably and frantically tobe loved and nothing else, with terrible outbursts againstthose who refused him their love; the story of a poor soulinsatiated and insatiable in love, that had to invent hell to 2i8 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL send thither those who would not love him—^and that atlast, enlightened about human love, had to invent a Godwho is entire love, entire capacity for love—who takes pityon human love, because it is so paltry, so ignorant ! Hewho has such sentiments, he who has such knowledgeabout love

seeks for death!—But why should one dealwith such painful matters ? Provided, of course, that oneis not obliged to do so.

The intellectual haughtiness and loathing of every manwho has suffered deeply—it almost determines the orderof rank how deeply men can suffer—the chilling certainty, with which he is thoroughly imbued and coloured,that by virtue of his suffering he knows more than theshrewedest and wisest can ever know, that he has beenfmiliar with, and "at home" in, many distant, dreadfulworlds of which "you know nothing" !—this silent intel-lectual haughtiness of the sufferer, this pride of the electof knowledge, of the "initiated," of the almost sacrificed,finds all forms of disguise necessary to protect itself fromcontact with officious and sympathising hands, and ingeneral from all that is not its equal in suffering. Profoundsuffering makes noble : it separates.—One of the most re-fined forms of disguise is Epicurism, along with a certainostentatious boldness of taste, which takes sufferinglightly, and puts itself on the defensive against all that issorrowful and profound. They are "gay men" who makeuse of gaiety, because they are misunderstood on accountof it—they wish to be misunderstood. There are^'scientific minds" who make use of science, because itgives a gay appearance, and because scientificness leadsto the conclusion that a person is superficial—^they

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 219wish to mislead to a false conclusion. There are free insolent minds which would fain conceal and deny that they arebroken, proud, incurable hearts (the cynicism of Hamletthe case of Galiani) ; and occasionally folly itself is themask of an unfortunate over-assured knowledge.—Fromwhich it follows that it is the part of a more refined humanity to have reverence "for the mask," and not to make useof psychology and curiosity in the wrong place.

That which separates two men most profoundly is a dif-ferent sense and grade of purity. What does it matterabout all their honesty and reciprocal usefulness, what doesit matter about all their mutual good-will: the fact stillremains—they "cannot smell each other!" The highest in-stinct for purity places him who is affected with it in themost extraordinary and dangerous isolation, as a saint: forit is just holiness—the highest spiritualisation of the in-stinct in question. Any kind of cognisance of an indescrib-able excess in the joy of the bath, any kind of ardour orthirst which perpetually impels the soul out of night intothe morning, and out of gloom, out of "affliction" intoclearness, brightness, depth, and refinement: —just as muchas such a tendency distinguishes—it is a noble tendency it also separates.—^The pity of the saint is pity for the filthof the human, all-too-human. And there are grades andheights were pity itself is regarded by him as impurity, asfilth. 272

Signs of nobility: never to think of lowering our dutiesto the rank of duties for everybody; to be unwilling to re- 220 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL nounce 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 encoimters on his way either as a meansofadvance, or a delay and hindrance—or as a temporary rest-ing-place. His peculiar lofty bounty to his fellow-men isonly possible when he attains his elevation and dominates.Impatience, and the consciousness of being always condemnedto comedy up to that time—for even strife is a comedy, andconceals the end, as every means does—spoil all intercoursefor him; this kind of man is acquainted with solitude, andwhat is most poisonous in it.

The Problem of those who Wait.—Happy chances arenecessary, and many incalculable elements, in order that ahigher man in whom the solution of a problem is dormant,may yet take action, or "break forth," as one might say at the right mom.ent. On an average it does not happen;and in all comers of the earth there are waiting ones sittingwho hardly know to what extent they are waiting, and stillless that they wait in vain. Occasionally, too, the wakingcall 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 a one,just as he "sprang up," has found with horror that his limbsare benumbed and his spirits are now too heavy! "It istoo late," he has said to himself—and has become self-distrustful and henceforth for ever useless.—In the domain

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 221of genius, may not the "Raphael without hands" (taking theexpression in its widest sense) perhaps not be the exception,but the rule?—Perhaps genius is by no means so rare: butrather the five hundred hands which it requires in order totyrannise over the naiQog "the right time"—in order totake chance by the forelock! 27s

He who does not wish to see the height of a man, looksall the more sharply at what is low in him, and in the fore-ground—and thereby betrays himself.

In all kinds of injury and loss the lower and coarser soulis better off than the nobler soul: the dangers of the lattermust be greater, the probability that it will come to griefand perish is in fact immense, considering the multiplicityof the conditions of its existence.—In a lizard a fingergrows again which has been lost; not so in man,

It is too bad! Always the old story! When a man hasfinished building his house, he finds that he has learnt un-awares something which he ought absolutely to have knownbefore he—began to build. The eternal, fatal "Too late!"The melancholia of everything completed!— 278 —Wanderer, who art thou? I see thee follow thy path •222 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL without scorn, without love, with unfathomable eyes, wetand sad as a plummet which has returned to the light insa-tiated out of every depth—what did it seek down there? with a bosom that never sighs, with lips that conceal theirloathing, with a hand which only slowly grasps: who artthou? what hast thou done? Rest thee here: this placehas hospitality for every one—refresh thyself! And v/ho-ever thou art, what is it that now pleases thee? What willserve to refresh thee? Only name it, whatever I haveIoffer thee! "To refresh me? To refresh me? Oh, thouprying one, what sayest thou! But give me, I praythee " What? what? Speak out! "Another mask! Asecond mask!"

Men of profound sadness betray themselves when theyare happy: they have a mode of seizing upon happiness asthough 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 every one who is about to make a greatspring. 281 —"Will people believe it of me? But I insist that theybelieve it of me: I have always thought very unsatisfactorily of myself and about myself, only in very rare cases, onlycompulsorily, always without delight in 'the subject,' ready

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 223to digress from 'myself,' and always without faith in theresult, owing to an unconquerable distrust of the possibilityof self-knowledge, which has led me so far as to feel a contradictio in adjecto even in the idea of 'direct knowledge'which theorists allow themselves: —this matter of fact isalmost the most certain thing I know about myself. Theremust be a sort of repugnance in me to believe anythingdefinite about myself.—Is there perhaps some enigma therein? Probably; but forttmately nothing for my own teeth.

Perhaps it betrays the species to which I belong?—^but notto myself, as is sufficiently agreeable to me." 282 —"But what has happened to you?"—"I do not know,"he said, hesitatingly; "perhaps the Harpies have flown overmy 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—andfinally withdraws, ashamed, and raging at himself—whither?for what purpose? To famish apart? To suffocate with hismemories? To him who has the desires of a lofty anddainty soul, and only seldom finds his table laid and hisfood prepared, the danger will always be great—nowadays,however, it is extraordinarily so. Thrown into the midst ofa noisy and plebeian age, with which he does not like to eatout of the same dish, he may readily perish of hunger andthirst—or, should he nevertheless finally "fall to," of suddennausea.—We have probably all sat at tables to which wedid not belong; and precisely the most spiritual of us, whoare most difficult to nourish, know the dangerous dyspepsiawhich originates from a sudden insight and disillusionmentabout our food and our messmates—the after-dinner nausea. 224 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL

If one wishes to praise at all, it is a delicate and at thesame time a noble self-control, to praise only where one doesnot agree—otherwise in fact one would praise oneself, whichis contrary to good taste: —a self-control, to be sure, whichoffers excellent opportunity and provocation to constant misunderstanding. To be able to allow oneself this veritableluxury of taste and morality, one must not live among in-tellectual imbeciles, but rather among men whose misunderstandings and mistakes amuse by their refinement—or onewill have to pay dearly for it! —"He praises me, thereforehe acknowledges me to be right"—this asinine method ofinference spoils half of the life of us recluses, for it bringsthe asses into our neighbourhood and friendship.

To live in a vast and proud tranquillity; always be-yond ... To have, or not to have, one's emotions, one'sFor and Against, according to choice; to lower oneself tothem for hours; to seat oneself on them as upon horses, andoften as upon asses: —for one must know how to make useof their stupidity as well as of their fire. To conserveone's three hundred foregrounds; also one's black spectacles:for there are circumstances when nobody must look intoour eyes, still less into our "motives." And to choose forcompany that roguish and cheerful vice, politeness. Andto remain master of one's four virtues, courage, insight, sympathy, and solitude. For solitude is a virtue with us, as asublime bent and bias to purity, which divines that in thecontact of man and man—"in society"—it must be unavoid- BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 225ably impure. All society makes one somehow, somewhere,or sometime—"commonplace." 28s

The greatest events and thoughts—the greatest thoughts,however, are the greatest events—are longest in being comprehended: the generations which are contemporary withthem do not experience such events—they live past them.Something happens there as in the realm of stars. Thelight of the furthest stars is longest in reaching man; £mdbefore it has arrived man denies—that there are stars there."How many centuries does a mind require to be understood?—that is also a standard, one also makes a gradationof rank and an etiquette therewith, such as is necessary formind and for star. 286 "Here is the prospect free, the mind exalted." *—Butthere is a reverse kind of man, who is also upon a height, andhas also a free prospect—^but looks downwards. 287 —^What is noble? What does the word "noble" still meanfor us nowadays? How does the noble man betray himself,how is he recognised under this heavy overcast sky of thecommencing plebeianism, by which everything is renderedopaque and leaden?—It is not hi? actions which establishhis claim—actions are always ambiguous, always inscrutaGoethe's "Faust," Part II., Act V. The words of Dr. Marianus. 226 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL ble; neither is it his "works." One finds nowadays amongartists and scholars plenty of those who betray by theirworks that a profound longing for nobleness impels them;but this very need of nobleness is radically different fromthe needs of the noble soul itself, and is in fact the eloquentand dangerous sign of the lack thereof. It is not the works,but the belief which is here decisive and determines the orderof rank—to employ once more an old religious formula witha new and deeper meaning,—it is some fundamental cer-tainty which a noble soul has about itself, something whichis not to be sought, is not to be found, and perhaps, also,is not to be lost.

The noble soul has reverence for itself.—288

There are men who are unavoidably intellectual, let themturn and twist themselves as they will, and hold their handsbefore their treacherous eyes—as though the hand were nota betrayer; it always comes out at last that they havesomething which they hide—namely, intellect. One of thesubtlest means of deceiving, at least as long as possible, andof successfully representing oneself to be stupider than onereally is—which in everyday life is often as desirable as anumbrella,—is called enthusiasm, including what belongs toit, for instance, virtue. For as Galiani said, who was obligedto know it: vertu est enthousiasme.

In the writings of a recluse one always hears something ofthe echo of the wilderness, something of the murmuringtones and timid vigilance of solitude; in his strongest words,even in his cry itself, there sounds a new and more danger- BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 227ous kind of silence, of concealment. He who has sat day andnight, from year's end to year's end, alone with his soul infamiliar discord and discourse, he who has become a cavebear, or a treasure-seeker, or a treasure-guardian and dragonin his cave—it may be a labyrinth, but can also be a goldmine—his ideas themselves eventually acquire a twilight-colour of their own, and an odour, as much of the depth asof the mould, something uncommunicative and repulsive,which blows chilly upon every passerby. The recluse doesnot believe that a philosopher—supposing that a philosopherhas always in the first place been a recluse—ever expressedhis actual and ultimate opinions in books: are not bookswritten precisely to hide what is in us?—indeed, he willdoubt whether a philosopher can have "ultimate and actual"opinions at all; whether behind every cave in him there isnot, and must necessarily be, a still deeper cave: an ampler,stranger, richer world beyond the surface, an abyss behindevery 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 philosophercame 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 a philosophy; every opinion is also alurking-place, every word is also a mask.

Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understoodthan of being misunderstood. The latter perhaps woundshis vanity; but the former wounds his heart, his sympathy,which always says: "Ah, why would you also have as harda time of it as I have?" 228 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL

Man, a complex, mendacious, artful, and inscrutable ani-mal, imcanny 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 enjojonent at the sight of thesoul becomes possible. From this point of view there is per-haps 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 extraordinarythings; who is struck by his own thoughts as if they camefrom the outside, from above and below, as a species ofevents and lightning-flashes peculiar to him; who is perhapshimself a storm pregnant with new lightnings; a portentousman, around whom there is always rumbling and mumblingand gaping and something uncanny going on. A philosopher: alas, a being who often runs away from himself, isoften afraid of himself—^but whose curiosity always makeshim "come to himself" again.

A man who says: "I like that, I take it for my own, andmean to guard and protect it from every one"; a man whocan conduct a case, carry out a resolution, remain true to anopinion, keep hold of a woman, punish and overthrow inso- BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 229lencc; a man who has his indignation and his sword, andto whom the weak, the suffering, the oppressed, and eventhe animals willingly submit and naturally belong; in short,a man who is a master by nature—when such a man ha3sympathy, well! that sympathy has value! But of whataccoimt is the S5mipathy of those who suffer! Or of thoseeven who preach s)anpathy! There is nowadays, throughout almost the whole of Europe, a sickly irritability and sensitiveness towards pain, and also a repulsive irrestrainable-ness in complaining, an effeminising, which, with the aid ofreligion and philosophical nonsense, seeks to deck itself outas something superior—there is a regular cult of suffering.The unmanliness of that which is called "sympathy" bysuch groups of visionaries, is always, I believe, the firstthing that strikes the eye.—One must resolutely and radicallytaboo this latest form of bad taste; and finally I wish peopleto put the good amulet, "gai saber" ("gay science," in ordi-nary language), on heart and neck, as a protection againstit.

The Olympian Vice.—^Despite Ae philosopher who, as agenuine Englishman, tried to bring laughter into bad reputein all thinking minds—"Laughing is a bad infirmity of hu-man nature, which every thinking mind will strive to over-come" (Hobbes),—I would even allow myself to rank philosophers according to the quality of their laughing—uptothose who are capable of golden laughter. And supposingthat Gods also philosophise, which I am strongly inclined tobelieve, owing to many reasons—I have no doubt that theyalso know how to laugh thereby in an overmanlike and newfashion—and at the expense of all serious things! Gods

230 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL are fond of ridicule: it seems that they cannot refrain fromlaughter even in holy matters.

The genius of the heart, as that great mysterious onepossesses it, the tempter-god and bom rat-catcher of consciences, whose voice can descend into the nether-world ofevery soul, who neither speaks a word nor casts a glancein which there may not be some motive or touch of allure-ment, to whose perfection it pertains that he knows howto appear,—not as he is, but in a guise which acts as anadditional constraint on his followers to press ever closerto him, to follow him more cordially and thoroughly; —thegenius of the heart, which imposes silence and attention oneverything loud and self-conceited, which smooths roughsouls and makes them taste a new longing—to lie placid as amirror, that the deep heavens may be reflected in them; the genius of the heart, v^/hich teaches the clumsy and toohasty hand to hesitate, and to grasp more delicately; whichscents the hidden and forgotten treasure, the drop of goodness and sweet spirituality imder thick dark ice, and is adivining-rod for every grain of gold, long buried and imprisoned in mud and sand; the genius of the heart, fromcontact with which every one goes away richer; not favouredor surprised, not as though gratified and oppressed by thegood things of others; but richer in himself, newer than before, broken up, blown upon, and sounded by a thawingwind; more uncertain, perhaps, more delicate, more fragile,more bruised, but full of hopes which as yet lack names, fullof a new will and current, full of a new ill-will and counter-current . . . bui what am I doing, my friends? Of whomam I talking to you? Have I for|rotten myself so far that

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 231I have not even told you his name? Unless it be that youhave already divined of your own accord who this questionable God and spirit is, that wishes to be praised in suchamanner? For, as it happens to every one who from child-hood onward has always been on his legs, and in foreignlands, I have also encountered on my path many strangeand dangerous spirits; above all, however, and again andagain, the one of whom I have just spoken: in fact, noless a personage than the God Dionysus, the great equivocator and tempter, to whom, as you know, I once offered inall secrecy and reverence my first-fruits—the last, as itseems to me, who has offered a sacrifice to him, for I havefound no one who could understand what I was then doing.In the meantime, however, I have learned much, far toomuch, about the philosophy of this God, and, as I said, frommouth to mouth—I, the last disciple and initiate of theGod Dionysus: and perhaps I might at last begin to giveyou, my friends, as far as I am allowed, a little taste ofthis philosophy? In a hushed voice, as is but seemly: for ithas to do with much that is secret, new, strange, wonderful,and imcanny. The very fact that Dionysus is a philosopher,and that therefore Gods also philosophise, seems to meanovelty which is not unensnaring, and might perhaps arousesuspicion precisely amongst philosophers; —amongst you,my friends, there is less to be said against it, except that itcomes too late and not at the right time; for, as it has beendisclosed to me, you are loth nowadays to believe in Godand gods. It may happen, too, that in the frankness of mystory I must go further than is agreeable to the strict usagesof your ears? Certainly the God in question went further,very much further, in such dialogues, and was always manypaces ahead of me. . . . Indeed, if it were allowed, I shouldhave to give him, according to human usage, fine ceremoni- 232 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL ous titles of lustre and merit, I should have to extol hiscourage as investigator and discoverer, his fearless honesty,truthfulness, and love of wisdom. But such a God does notknow what to do with all that respectable trumpery andpomp. "Keep that," he would say, "for thyself and thoselike thee, and whoever else require it! I—have no reasontc cover my nakedness!" One suspects that this kind ofdivinity and philosopher perhaps lacks shame?—He oncesaid: "Under certain circumstances I love mankind"—andreferred thereby to Ariadne, who was present; "in my opin-ion man is an agreeable, brave, inventive animal, that hasnot his equal upon earth, he makes his way even throughall labyrinths. I like man, and often think how I can stillfurther advance him, and make him stronger, more evil, andmore profound."—"Stronger, more evil, and more pro-found?" I asked in horror. "Yes," he said again, "stronger,more evil, and more profound; also more beautiful"—andthereby the tempter-god smiled with his halcyon smile, asthough he had just paid some charming compliment. Onehere sees at once that it is not only shame that this divinitylacks; —and in general there are good grounds for supposingthat in some things the Gods could all of them come to usmen for instruction. We men are—more human.—

Alas! what are you, after all, my written and paintedthoughts! Not long ago you were so variegated, young andmalicious, so full of thorns and secret spices, that you mademe sneeze and laugh—and now? You have already doffedyour novelty, and some of you, I fear, are ready to becometruths, so immortal do they look, so pathetically honest, sc>tedious! And was it ever otherwise? What then do w^ BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 233write and paint, we mandarins with Qiinese brush, we immortalisers of things which lend themselves to writing, whatare we alone capable of painting? Alas, only that whichisjust about to fade and begins to lose its odour! Alas, onlyexhausted and departing storms and belated yellow senti-ments! Alas, only birds strayed and fatigued by flight,which now let themselves be captured with the hand—withour hand! We immortalise what cannot live and flymuch longer, things only which are exhausted and mellow!And it is only for your afternoon, you, my written andpainted thoughts, for which alone I have colours, many col-ours, perhaps, many variegated softenings, and fifty yellowsand browns and greens and reds; —^but nobody will divinethereby how ye looked in your morning, you sudden sparksand marvels of my solitude, you, my old, beloved evilthoughts