--- type: article status: Published slug: "genealogy-of-morals" title: "On the Genealogy of Morals" author: "Friedrich Nietzsche" tradition: "european" language: "de" genre: "moral philosophy" period: "1887" source_url: "https://archive.org/details/zurgenealogieder00niet" certainty: observed source: "https://archive.org/details/zurgenealogieder00niet" --- # On the Genealogy of Morals ## Original ### Preface Zur **Genealogie der Moral.** Eine Streitschrift von **Friedrich Nietzsche.** Dem letztveröffentlichten „*Jenseits von Gut und Böse*“ zur Ergänzung und Verdeutlichung beigegeben. VORREDE. [1] Wir sind uns unbekannt, wir Erkennenden, wir selbst uns selbst: das hat seinen guten Grund. Wir haben nie nach uns gesucht, — wie sollte es geschehn, dass wir eines Tags uns *fänden*? Mit Recht hat man gesagt: „wo euer Schatz ist, da ist auch euer Herz“; *unser* Schatz ist, wo die Bienenkörbe unsrer Erkenntniss stehn. Wir sind immer dazu unterwegs, als geborne Flügelthiere und Honigsammler des Geistes, wir kümmern uns von Herzen eigentlich nur um Eins — Etwas „heimzubringen“. Was das Leben sonst, die sogenannten „Erlebnisse“ angeht, — wer von uns hat dafür auch nur Ernst genug? Oder Zeit genug? Bei solchen Sachen waren wir, fürchte ich, nie recht „bei der Sache“: wir haben eben unser Herz nicht dort — und nicht einmal unser Ohr! Vielmehr wie ein Göttlich-Zerstreuter und In-sich-Versenkter, dem die Glocke eben mit aller Macht ihre zwölf Schläge des Mittags in’s Ohr gedröhnt hat, mit einem Male aufwacht und sich fragt „was hat es da eigentlich geschlagen?“ so reiben auch wir uns mitunter *hinterdrein* die Ohren und fragen, ganz erstaunt, ganz betreten „was haben wir da eigentlich erlebt? mehr noch: wer sind wir eigentlich?“ und zählen nach, hinterdrein, wie gesagt, alle die zitternden zwölf Glockenschläge unsres Erlebnisses, unsres Lebens, unsres Seins — ach! und verzählen uns dabei... Wir bleiben uns eben nothwendig fremd, wir verstehn uns nicht, wir *müssen* uns verwechseln, für uns heisst der Satz in alle Ewigkeit „Jeder ist sich selbst der Fernste“, — für uns sind wir keine „Erkennenden“... [2] — Meine Gedanken über die *Herkunft* unserer moralischen Vorurtheile — denn um sie handelt es sich in dieser Streitschrift — haben ihren ersten, sparsamen und vorläufigen Ausdruck in jener Aphorismen-Sammlung erhalten, die den Titel trägt „Menschliches, Allzumenschliches. Ein Buch für freie Geister“, und deren Niederschrift in Sorrent begonnen wurde, während eines Winters, welcher es mir erlaubte, Halt zu machen wie ein Wandrer Halt macht und das weite und gefährliche Land zu überschauen, durch das mein Geist bis dahin gewandert war. Dies geschah im Winter 1876—77; die Gedanken selbst sind älter. Es waren in der Hauptsache schon die gleichen Gedanken, die ich in den vorliegenden Abhandlungen wieder aufnehme: — hoffen wir, dass die lange Zwischenzeit ihnen gut gethan hat, dass sie reifer, heller, stärker, vollkommner geworden sind! Dass ich aber heute noch an ihnen festhalte, dass sie sich selber inzwischen immer fester an einander gehalten haben, ja in einander gewachsen und verwachsen sind, das stärkt in mir die frohe Zuversichtlichkeit, sie möchten von Anfang an in mir nicht einzeln, nicht beliebig, nicht sporadisch entstanden sein, sondern aus einer gemeinsamen Wurzel heraus, aus einem in der Tiefe gebietenden, immer bestimmter redenden, immer Bestimmteres verlangenden *Grundwillen* der Erkenntniss. So allein nämlich geziemt es sich bei einem Philosophen. Wir haben kein Recht darauf, irgend worin *einzeln* zu sein: wir dürfen weder einzeln irren, noch einzeln die Wahrheit treffen. Vielmehr mit der Nothwendigkeit, mit der ein Baum seine Früchte trägt, wachsen aus uns unsre Gedanken, unsre Werthe, unsre Ja’s und Nein’s und Wenn’s und Ob’s — verwandt und bezüglich allesammt unter einander und Zeugnisse Eines Willens, Einer Gesundheit, Eines Erdreichs, Einer Sonne. — Ob sie *euch* schmecken, diese unsre Früchte? — Aber was geht das die Bäume an! Was geht das *uns* an, uns Philosophen!... [3] Bei einer mir eignen Bedenklichkeit, die ich ungern eingestehe — sie bezieht sich nämlich auf die *Moral*, auf Alles, was bisher auf Erden als Moral gefeiert worden ist —, einer Bedenklichkeit, welche in meinem Leben so früh, so unaufgefordert, so unaufhaltsam, so in Widerspruch gegen Umgebung, Alter, Beispiel, Herkunft auftrat, dass ich beinahe das Recht hätte, sie mein „A priori“ zu nennen, — musste meine Neugierde ebenso wie mein Verdacht bei Zeiten an der Frage halt machen, *welchen Ursprung* eigentlich unser Gut und Böse habe. In der That gieng mir bereits als dreizehnjährigem Knaben das Problem vom Ursprung des Bösen nach: ihm widmete ich, in einem Alter, wo man „halb Kinderspiele, halb Gott im Herzen“ hat, mein erstes litterarisches Kinderspiel, meine erste philosophische Schreibübung — und was meine damalige „Lösung“ des Problems anbetrifft, nun, so gab ich, wie es billig ist, Gott die Ehre und machte ihn zum *Vater* des Bösen. Wollte es gerade so mein „A priori“ von mir? jenes neue, unmoralische, mindestens immoralistische „A priori“ und der aus ihm redende ach! so anti-Kantische, so räthselhafte „kategorische Imperativ“, dem ich inzwischen immer mehr Gehör und nicht nur Gehör geschenkt habe?... Glücklicher Weise lernte ich bei Zeiten das theologische Vorurtheil von dem moralischen abscheiden und suchte nicht mehr den Ursprung des Bösen *hinter* der Welt. Etwas historische und philologische Schulung, eingerechnet ein angeborner wählerischer Sinn in Hinsicht auf psychologische Fragen überhaupt, verwandelte in Kürze mein Problem in das andre: unter welchen Bedingungen erfand sich der Mensch jene Werthurtheile gut und böse? *und welchen Werth haben sie selbst?* Hemmten oder förderten sie bisher das menschliche Gedeihen? Sind sie ein Zeichen von Nothstand, von Verarmung von Entartung des Lebens? Oder umgekehrt, verräth sich in ihnen die Fülle, die Kraft, der Wille des Lebens, sein Muth, seine Zuversicht, seine Zukunft? — Darauf fand und wagte ich bei mir mancherlei Antworten, ich unterschied Zeiten, Völker, Ranggrade der Individuen, ich specialisirte mein Problem, aus den Antworten wurden neue Fragen, Forschungen, Vermuthungen, Wahrscheinlichkeiten: bis ich endlich ein eignes Land, einen eignen Boden hatte, eine ganze verschwiegene wachsende blühende Welt, heimliche Gärten gleichsam, von denen Niemand Etwas ahnen durfte... Oh wie wir *glücklich* sind, wir Erkennenden, vorausgesetzt, dass wir nur lange genug zu schweigen wissen!... [4] Den ersten Anstoss, von meinen Hypothesen über den Ursprung der Moral Etwas zu verlautbaren, gab mir ein klares, sauberes und kluges, auch altkluges Büchlein, in welchem mir eine umgekehrte und perverse Art von genealogischen Hypothesen, ihre eigentlich *englische* Art, zum ersten Male deutlich entgegentrat, und das mich anzog — mit jener Anziehungskraft, die alles Entgegengesetzte, alles Antipodische hat. Der Titel des Büchleins war „der Ursprung der moralischen Empfindungen“; sein Verfasser Dr. Paul Rée; das Jahr seines Erscheinens 1877. Vielleicht habe ich niemals Etwas gelesen, zu dem ich dermaassen, Satz für Satz, Schluss für Schluss, bei mir Nein gesagt hätte wie zu diesem Buche: doch ganz ohne Verdruss und Ungeduld. In dem vorher bezeichneten Werke, an dem ich damals arbeitete, nahm ich gelegentlich und ungelegentlich auf die Sätze jenes Buchs Bezug, nicht indem ich sie widerlegte — was habe ich mit Widerlegungen zu schaffen! — sondern, wie es einem positiven Geiste zukommt, an Stelle des Unwahrscheinlichen das Wahrscheinlichere setzend, unter Umständen an Stelle eines Irrthums einen andern. Damals brachte ich, wie gesagt, zum ersten Male jene Herkunfts-Hypothesen an’s Tageslicht, denen diese Abhandlungen gewidmet sind, mit Ungeschick, wie ich mir selbst am letzten verbergen möchte, noch unfrei, noch ohne eine eigne Sprache für diese eignen Dinge und mit mancherlei Rückfälligkeit und Schwankung. Im Einzelnen vergleiche man, was ich Menschliches Allzumenschliches S. 51 über die doppelte Vorgeschichte von Gut und Böse sage (nämlich aus der Sphäre der Vornehmen und der der Sklaven); insgleichen S. 119 ff. über Werth und Herkunft der asketischen Moral; insgleichen S. 78. 82. II, 35 über die „Sittlichkeit der Sitte“, jene viel ältere und ursprünglichere Art Moral, welche toto coelo von der altruistischen Werthungsweise abliegt (in der Dr. Rée, gleich allen englischen Moralgenealogen, die moralische Werthungsweise *an sich* sieht); insgleichen S. 74. Wanderer S. 29. Morgenröthe S. 99 über die Herkunft der Gerechtigkeit als eines Ausgleichs zwischen ungefähr Gleich-Mächtigen (Gleichgewicht als Voraussetzung aller Verträge, folglich alles Rechts); insgleichen über die Herkunft der Strafe Wanderer S. 25. 34., für die der terroristische Zweck weder essentiell, noch ursprünglich ist (wie Dr. Rée meint: — er ist ihr vielmehr erst eingelegt, unter bestimmten Umständen, und immer als ein Nebenbei, als etwas Hinzukommendes). [5] Im Grunde lag mir gerade damals etwas viel Wichtigeres am Herzen als eignes oder fremdes Hypothesenwesen über den Ursprung der Moral (oder, genauer: letzteres allein um eines Zweckes willen, zu dem es eins unter vielen Mitteln ist). Es handelte sich für mich um den *Werth* der Moral, — und darüber hatte ich mich fast allein mit meinem grossen Lehrer Schopenhauer auseinanderzusetzen, an den wie an einen Gegenwärtigen jenes Buch, die Leidenschaft und der geheime Widerspruch jenes Buchs sich wendet (— denn auch jenes Buch war eine „Streitschrift“). Es handelte sich in Sonderheit um den Werth des „Unegoistischen“, der Mitleids-, Selbstverleugnungs-, Selbstopferungs-Instinkte, welche gerade Schopenhauer so lange vergoldet, vergöttlicht und verjenseitigt hatte, bis sie ihm schliesslich als die „Werthe an sich“ übrig blieben, auf Grund deren er zum Leben, auch zu sich selbst, Nein *sagte*. Aber gerade gegen *diese* Instinkte redete aus mir ein immer grundsätzlicherer Argwohn, eine immer tiefer grabende Skepsis! Gerade hier sah ich die *grosse Gefahr* der Menschheit, ihre sublimste Lockung und Verführung — wohin doch? in’s Nichts? — gerade hier sah ich den Anfang vom Ende, das Stehenbleiben, die zurückblickende Müdigkeit, den Willen *gegen* das Leben sich wendend, die letzte Krankheit sich zärtlich und schwermüthig ankündigend: ich verstand die immer mehr um sich greifende Mitleids-Moral, welche selbst die Philosophen ergriff und krank machte, als das unheimlichste Symptom unsrer unheimlich gewordnen europäischen Cultur, als ihren Umweg zu einem neuen Buddhismus? zu einem Europäer-Buddhismus? zum — Nihilismus?... Diese moderne Philosophen-Bevorzugung und Überschätzung des Mitleidens ist nämlich etwas Neues: gerade über den *Unwerth* des Mitleidens waren bisher die Philosophen übereingekommen. Ich nenne nur Plato, Spinoza, La Rochefoucauld und Kant, vier Geister so verschieden von einander als möglich, aber in Einem Eins: in der Geringschätzung des Mitleidens. — [6] Dies Problem vom *Werthe* des Mitleids und der Mitleids-Moral (— ich bin ein Gegner der schändlichen modernen Gefühlsverweichlichung —) scheint zunächst nur etwas Vereinzeltes, ein Fragezeichen für sich; wer aber einmal hier hängen bleibt, hier fragen *lernt*, dem wird es gehn, wie es mir ergangen ist: — eine ungeheure neue Aussicht thut sich ihm auf, eine Möglichkeit fasst ihn wie ein Schwindel, jede Art Misstrauen, Argwohn, Furcht springt hervor, der Glaube an die Moral, an alle Moral wankt, — endlich wird eine neue Forderung laut. Sprechen wir sie aus, diese *neue Forderung*: wir haben eine *Kritik* der moralischen Werthe nöthig, *der Werth dieser Werthe ist selbst erst einmal in Frage zu stellen* — und dazu thut eine Kenntniss der Bedingungen und Umstände noth, aus denen sie gewachsen, unter denen sie sich entwickelt und verschoben haben (Moral als Folge, als Symptom, als Maske, als Tartüfferie, als Krankheit, als Missverständniss; aber auch Moral als Ursache, als Heilmittel, als Stimulanz, als Hemmung, als Gift), wie eine solche Kenntniss weder bis jetzt da war, noch auch nur begehrt worden ist. Man nahm den Werth dieser „Werthe“ als gegeben, als thatsächlich, als jenseits aller In-Frage-Stellung; man hat bisher auch nicht im Entferntesten daran gezweifelt und geschwankt, „den Guten“ für höherwerthig als „den Bösen“ anzusetzen, höherwerthig im Sinne der Förderung, Nützlichkeit, Gedeihlichkeit in Hinsicht auf *den* Menschen überhaupt (die Zukunft des Menschen eingerechnet). Wie? wenn das Umgekehrte die Wahrheit wäre? Wie? wenn im „Guten“ auch ein Rückgangssymptom läge, insgleichen eine Gefahr, eine Verführung, ein Gift, ein Narcoticum, durch das etwa die Gegenwart *auf Kosten der Zukunft* lebte? Vielleicht behaglicher, ungefährlicher, aber auch in kleinerem Stile, niedriger?... So dass gerade die Moral daran Schuld wäre, wenn eine an sich mögliche *höchste Mächtigkeit und Pracht* des Typus Mensch niemals erreicht würde? So dass gerade die Moral die Gefahr der Gefahren wäre?... [7] Genug, dass ich selbst, seitdem mir dieser Ausblick sich öffnete, Gründe hatte, mich nach gelehrten, kühnen und arbeitsamen Genossen umzusehn (ich thue es heute noch). Es gilt, das ungeheure, ferne und so versteckte Land der Moral — der wirklich dagewesenen, wirklich gelebten Moral — mit lauter neuen Fragen und gleichsam mit neuen Augen zu bereisen: und heisst dies nicht beinahe so viel als dieses Land erst *entdecken*?... Wenn ich dabei, unter Anderen, auch an den genannten Dr. Rée dachte, so geschah es, weil ich gar nicht zweifelte, dass er von der Natur seiner Fragen selbst auf eine richtigere Methodik, um zu Antworten zu gelangen, gedrängt werden würde. Habe ich mich darin betrogen? Mein Wunsch war es jedenfalls, einem so scharfen und unbetheiligten Auge eine bessere Richtung, die Richtung zur wirklichen *Historie der Moral* zu geben und ihn vor solchem englischen Hypothesenwesen *in’s Blaue* noch zur rechten Zeit zu warnen. Es liegt ja auf der Hand, welche Farbe für einen Moral-Genealogen hundert Mal wichtiger sein muss als gerade das Blaue: nämlich *das Graue*, will sagen das Urkundliche, das Wirklich-Feststellbare, das Wirklich-Dagewesene, kurz die ganze lange, schwer zu entziffernde Hieroglyphenschrift der menschlichen Moral-Vergangenheit! — *Diese* war dem Dr. Rée unbekannt; aber er hatte Darwin gelesen: — und so reichen sich in seinen Hypothesen auf eine Weise, die zum Mindesten unterhaltend ist, die Darwin’sche Bestie und der allermodernste bescheidene Moral-Zärtling, der „nicht mehr beisst“, artig die Hand, letzterer mit dem Ausdruck einer gewissen gutmüthigen und feinen Indolenz im Gesicht, in die selbst ein Gran von Pessimismus, von Ermüdung eingemischt ist: als ob es sich eigentlich gar nicht lohne, alle diese Dinge — die Probleme der Moral — so ernst zu nehmen. Mir nun scheint es umgekehrt gar keine Dinge zu geben, die es mehr *lohnten*, dass man sie ernst nimmt; zu welchem Lohne es zum Beispiel gehört, dass man eines Tags vielleicht die Erlaubniss erhält, sie *heiter* zu nehmen. Die Heiterkeit nämlich oder, um es in meiner Sprache zu sagen, *die fröhliche Wissenschaft* — ist ein Lohn: ein Lohn für einen langen, tapferen, arbeitsamen und unterirdischen Ernst, der freilich nicht Jedermanns Sache ist. An dem Tage aber, wo wir aus vollem Herzen sagen: „vorwärts! auch unsre alte Moral gehört in *die Komödie*!“ haben wir für das dinoysische Drama vom „Schicksal der Seele“ eine neue Verwicklung und Möglichkeit entdeckt —: und er wird sie sich schon zu Nutze machen, darauf darf man wetten, er, der grosse alte ewige Komödiendichter unsres Daseins!... [8] — Wenn diese Schrift irgend Jemandem unverständlich ist und schlecht zu Ohren geht, so liegt die Schuld, wie mich dünkt, nicht nothwendig an mir. Sie ist deutlich genug, vorausgesetzt, was ich voraussetzte, dass man zuerst meine früheren Schriften gelesen und einige Mühe dabei nicht gespart hat: diese sind in der That nicht leicht zugänglich. Was zum Beispiel meinen „Zarathustra“ anbetrifft, so lasse ich Niemanden als dessen Kenner gelten, den nicht jedes seiner Worte irgendwann einmal tief verwundet und irgendwann einmal tief entzückt hat: erst dann nämlich darf er des Vorrechts geniessen, an dem halkyonischen Element, aus dem jenes Werk geboren ist, an seiner sonnigen Helle, Ferne, Weite und Gewissheit ehrfürchtig Antheil zu haben. In andern Fällen macht die aphoristische Form Schwierigkeit: sie liegt darin, dass man diese Form heute *nicht schwer genug* nimmt. Ein Aphorismus, rechtschaffen geprägt und ausgegossen, ist damit, dass er abgelesen ist, noch nicht „entziffert“; vielmehr hat nun erst dessen *Auslegung* zu beginnen, zu der es einer Kunst der Auslegung bedarf. Ich habe in der dritten Abhandlung dieses Buchs ein Muster von dem dargeboten, was ich in einem solchen Falle „Auslegung“ nenne: — dieser Abhandlung ist ein Aphorismus vorangestellt, sie selbst ist dessen Commentar. Freilich thut, um dergestalt das Lesen als *Kunst* zu üben, Eins vor Allem noth, was heutzutage gerade am Besten verlernt worden ist — und darum hat es noch Zeit bis zur „Lesbarkeit“ meiner Schriften —, zu dem man beinahe Kuh und jedenfalls *nicht* „moderner Mensch“ sein muss: das *Wiederkäuen*... *Sils-Maria*, Oberengadin, im Juli 1887. ### Essay I Erste Abhandlung: Gut und Böse, Gut und Schlecht. [1] — Diese englischen Psychologen, denen man bisher auch die einzigen Versuche zu danken hat, es zu einer Entstehungsgeschichte der Moral zu bringen, — sie geben uns mit sich selbst kein kleines Räthsel auf; sie haben sogar, dass ich es gestehe, eben damit, als leibhaftige Räthsel, etwas Wesentliches vor ihren Büchern voraus — *sie selbst sind interessant!* Diese englischen Psychologen — was wollen sie eigentlich? Man findet sie, sei es nun freiwillig oder unfreiwillig, immer am gleichen Werke, nämlich die partie honteuse unsrer inneren Welt in den Vordergrund zu drängen und gerade dort das eigentlich Wirksame, Leitende, für die Entwicklung Entscheidende zu suchen, wo der intellektuelle Stolz des Menschen es am letzten zu finden *wünschte* (zum Beispiel in der vis inertiae der Gewohnheit oder in der Vergesslichkeit oder in einer blinden und zufälligen Ideen-Verhäkelung und -Mechanik oder in irgend etwas Rein-Passivem, Automatischem, Reflexmässigem, Molekularem und Gründlich-Stupidem) — was treibt diese Psychologen eigentlich immer gerade in *diese* Richtung? Ist es ein heimlicher, hämischer, gemeiner, seiner selbst vielleicht uneingeständlicher Instinkt der Verkleinerung des Menschen? Oder etwa ein pessimistischer Argwohn, das Misstrauen von enttäuschten, verdüsterten, giftig und grün gewordenen Idealisten? Oder eine kleine unterirdische Feindschaft und Rancune gegen das Christenthum (und Plato), die vielleicht nicht einmal über die Schwelle des Bewusstseins gelangt ist? Oder gar ein lüsterner Geschmack am Befremdlichen, am Schmerzhaft-Paradoxen, am Fragwürdigen und Unsinnigen des Daseins? Oder endlich — von Allem Etwas, ein wenig Gemeinheit, ein wenig Verdüsterung, ein wenig Antichristlichkeit, ein wenig Kitzel und Bedürfniss nach Pfeffer?... Aber man sagt mir, dass es einfach alte, kalte, langweilige Frösche seien, die am Menschen herum, in den Menschen hinein kriechen und hüpfen, wie als ob sie da so recht in ihrem Elemente wären, nämlich in einem *Sumpfe*. Ich höre das mit Widerstand, mehr noch, ich glaube nicht daran; und wenn man wünschen darf, wo man nicht wissen kann, so wünsche ich von Herzen, dass es umgekehrt mit ihnen stehen möge, — dass diese Forscher und Mikroskopiker der Seele im Grunde tapfere, grossmüthige und stolze Thiere seien, welche ihr Herz wie ihren Schmerz im Zaum zu halten wissen und sich dazu erzogen haben, der Wahrheit alle Wünschbarkeit zu opfern, *jeder* Wahrheit, sogar der schlichten, herben, hässlichen, widrigen, unchristlichen, unmoralischen Wahrheit... Denn es giebt solche Wahrheiten. — [2] Alle Achtung also vor den guten Geistern, die in diesen Historikern der Moral walten mögen! Aber gewiss ist leider, dass ihnen der *historische Geist* selber abgeht, dass sie gerade von allen guten Geistern der Historie selbst in Stich gelassen worden sind! Sie denken allesammt, wie es nun einmal alter Philosophen-Brauch ist, *wesentlich* unhistorisch; daran ist kein Zweifel. Die Stümperei ihrer Moral-Genealogie kommt gleich am Anfang zu Tage, da, wo es sich darum handelt, die Herkunft des Begriffs und Urtheils „gut“ zu ermitteln. „Man hat ursprünglich — so dekretieren sie — unegoistische Handlungen von Seiten Derer gelobt und gut genannt, denen sie erwiesen wurden, also denen sie *nützlich* waren; später hat man diesen Ursprung des Lobes *vergessen* und die unegoistischen Handlungen einfach, weil sie *gewohnheitsmässig* immer als gut gelobt wurden, auch als gut empfunden — wie als ob sie an sich etwas Gutes wären.“ Man sieht sofort: diese erste Ableitung enthält bereits alle typischen Züge der englischen Psychologen-Idiosynkrasie, — wir haben „die Nützlichkeit“, „das Vergessen“, „die Gewohnheit“ und am Schluss „den Irrthum“, Alles als Unterlage einer Werthschätzung, auf welche der höhere Mensch bisher wie auf eine Art Vorrecht des Menschen überhaupt stolz gewesen ist. Dieser Stolz *soll* gedemüthigt, diese Werthschätzung entwerthet werden: ist das erreicht?... Nun liegt für mich erstens auf der Hand, dass von dieser Theorie der eigentliche Entstehungsheerd des Begriffs „gut“ an falscher Stelle gesucht und angesetzt wird: das Urtheil „gut“ rührt *nicht* von Denen her, welchen „Güte“ erwiesen wird! Vielmehr sind es „die Guten“ selber gewesen, das heisst die Vornehmen, Mächtigen, Höhergestellten und Hochgesinnten, welche sich selbst und ihr Thun als gut, nämlich als ersten Ranges empfanden und ansetzten, im Gegensatz zu allem Niedrigen, Niedrig-Gesinnten, Gemeinen und Pöbelhaften. Aus diesem *Pathos der Distanz* heraus haben sie sich das Recht, Werthe zu schaffen, Namen der Werthe auszuprägen, erst genommen: was gieng sie die Nützlichkeit an! Der Gesichtspunkt der Nützlichkeit ist gerade in Bezug auf ein solches heisses Herausquellen oberster rangordnender, rang-abhebender Werthurtheile so fremd und unangemessen wie möglich: hier ist eben das Gefühl bei einem Gegensatze jenes niedrigen Wärmegrades angelangt, den jede berechnende Klugheit, jeder Nützlichkeits-Calcul voraussetzt, — und nicht für einmal, nicht für eine Stunde der Ausnahme, sondern für die Dauer. Das Pathos der Vornehmheit und Distanz, wie gesagt, das dauernde und dominirende Gesammt- und Grundgefühl einer höheren herrschenden Art im Verhältniss zu einer niederen Art, zu einem „Unten“ — *das* ist der Ursprung des Gegensatzes „gut“ und „schlecht“. (Das Herrenrecht, Namen zu geben, geht so weit, dass man sich erlauben sollte, den Ursprung der Sprache selbst als Machtäusserung der Herrschenden zu fassen: sie sagen „das *ist* das und das“, sie siegeln jegliches Ding und Geschehen mit einem Laute ab und nehmen es dadurch gleichsam in Besitz.) Es liegt an diesem Ursprünge, dass das Wort „gut“ sich von vornherein durchaus *nicht* nothwendig an „unegoistische“ Handlungen anknüpft: wie es der Aberglaube jener Moralgenealogen ist. Vielmehr geschieht es erst bei einem *Niedergange* aristokratischer Werthurtheile, dass sich dieser ganze Gegensatz „egoistisch“ „unegoistisch“ dem menschlichen Gewissen mehr und mehr aufdrängt, — es ist, um mich meiner Sprache zu bedienen, der *Heerdeninstinkt*, der mit ihm endlich zu Worte (auch zu Worten) kommt. Und auch dann dauert es noch lange, bis dieser Instinkt in dem Maasse Herr wird, dass die moralische Werthschätzung bei jenem Gegensatze geradezu hängen und stecken bleibt (wie dies zum Beispiel im gegenwärtigen Europa der Fall ist: heute herrscht das Vorurtheil, welches „moralisch“, „unegoistisch“, „désinteressé“ als gleichwerthige Begriffe nimmt, bereits mit der Gewalt einer „fixen Idee“ und Kopfkrankheit). [3] Zweitens aber: ganz abgesehen von der historischen Unhaltbarkeit jener Hypothese über die Herkunft des Werthurtheils „gut“, krankt sie an einem psychologischen Widersinn in sich selbst. Die Nützlichkeit der unegoistischen Handlung soll der Ursprung ihres Lobes sein, und dieser Ursprung soll *vergessen* worden sein: — wie ist dies Vergessen auch nur *möglich*? Hat vielleicht die Nützlichkeit solcher Handlungen irgend wann einmal aufgehört? Das Gegentheil ist der Fall: diese Nützlichkeit ist vielmehr die Alltagserfahrung zu allen Zeiten gewesen, Etwas also, das fortwährend immer neu unterstrichen wurde; folglich, statt aus dem Bewusstsein zu verschwinden, statt vergessbar zu werden, sich dem Bewusstsein mit immer grösserer Deutlichkeit eindrücken musste. Um wie viel vernünftiger ist jene entgegengesetzte Theorie (sie ist deshalb nicht wahrer —), welche zum Beispiel von Herbert Spencer vertreten wird: der den Begriff „gut“ als wesensgleich mit dem Begriff „nützlich“, „zweckmässig“ ansetzt, so dass in den Urtheilen „gut“ und „schlecht“ die Menschheit gerade ihre *unvergessnen und unvergessbaren* Erfahrungen über nützlich-zweckmässig, über schädlich-unzweckmässig aufsummirt und sanktionirt habe. Gut ist, nach dieser Theorie, was sich von jeher als nützlich bewiesen hat: damit darf es als „werthvoll im höchsten Grade“, als „werthvoll an sich“ Geltung behaupten. Auch dieser Weg der Erklärung ist, wie gesagt, falsch, aber wenigstens ist die Erklärung selbst in sich vernünftig und psychologisch haltbar. [4] — Den Fingerzeig zum *rechten* Wege gab mir die Frage, was eigentlich die von den verschiedenen Sprachen ausgeprägten Bezeichnungen des „Guten“ in etymologischer Hinsicht zu bedeuten haben: da fand ich, dass sie allesammt auf die *gleiche Begriffs-Verwandlung* zurückleiten, — dass überall „vornehm“, „edel“ im ständischen Sinne der Grundbegriff ist, aus dem sich „gut“ im Sinne von „seelisch-vornehm“, „edel“ von „seelisch-hochgeartet“, „seelisch-privilegirt“ mit Nothwendigkeit heraus entwickelt: eine Entwicklung, die immer parallel mit jener anderen läuft, welche „gemein“, „pöbelhaft“, „niedrig“ schliesslich in den Begriff „schlecht“ übergehen macht. Das beredteste Beispiel für das Letztere ist das deutsche Wort „schlecht“ selber: als welches mit „schlicht“ identisch ist — vergleiche „schlechtweg“, „schlechterdings“ — und ursprünglich den schlichten, den gemeinen Mann noch ohne einen verdächtigenden Seitenblick, einfach im Gegensatz zum Vornehmen bezeichnete. Um die Zeit des dreissigjährigen Kriegs ungefähr, also spät genug, verschiebt sich dieser Sinn in den jetzt gebräuchlichen. — Dies scheint mir in Betreff der Moral-Genealogie eine *wesentliche* Einsicht; dass sie so spät erst gefunden wird, liegt an dem hemmenden Einfluss, den das demokratische Vorurtheil innerhalb der modernen Welt in Hinsicht auf alle Fragen der Herkunft ausübt. Und dies bis in das anscheinend objektivste Gebiet der Naturwissenschaft und Physiologie hinein, wie hier nur angedeutet werden soll. Welchen Unfug aber dieses Vorurtheil, einmal bis zum Hass entzügelt, in Sonderheit für Moral und Historie anrichten kann, zeigt der berüchtigte Fall Buckle's; der *Plebejismus* des modernen Geistes, der englischer Abkunft ist, brach da einmal wieder auf seinem heimischen Boden heraus, heftig wie ein schlammichter Vulkan und mit jener versalzten, überlauten, gemeinen Beredtsamkeit, mit der bisher alle Vulkane geredet haben. — [5] In Hinsicht auf *unser* Problem, das aus guten Gründen ein *stilles* Problem genannt werden kann und sich wählerisch nur an wenige Ohren wendet, ist es von keinem kleinen Interesse, festzustellen, dass vielfach noch in jenen Worten und Wurzeln, die „gut“ bezeichnen, die Hauptnuance durchschimmert, auf welche hin die Vornehmen sich eben als Menschen höheren Ranges fühlten. Zwar benennen sie sich vielleicht in den häufigsten Fällen einfach nach ihrer Überlegenheit an Macht (als „die Mächtigen“, „die Herren“, „die Gebietenden“) oder nach dem sichtbarsten Abzeichen dieser Überlegenheit, zum Beispiel als „die Reichen“, „die Besitzenden“ (das ist der Sinn von arya; und entsprechend im Eranischen und Slavischen). Aber auch nach einem *typischen Charakterzuge*: und dies ist der Fall, der uns hier angeht. Sie heissen sich zum Beispiel „die Wahrhaftigen“: voran der griechische Adel, dessen Mundstück der Megarische Dichter Theognis ist. Das dafür ausgeprägte Wort *ἐσθλός* bedeutet der Wurzel nach Einen, der ist, der Realität hat, der wirklich ist, der wahr ist; dann, mit einer subjektiven Wendung, den Wahren als den Wahrhaftigen: in dieser Phase der Begriffs-Verwandlung wird es zum Schlag- und Stichwort des Adels und geht ganz und gar in den Sinn „adelig“ über, zur Abgrenzung vom *lügenhaften* gemeinen Mann, so wie Theognis ihn nimmt und schildert, — bis endlich das Wort, nach dem Niedergange des Adels, zur Bezeichnung der seelischen noblesse übrig bleibt und gleichsam reif und süss wird. Im Worte *κακός* wie in *δειλός* (der Plebejer im Gegensatz zum *ἀγαθός*) ist die Feigheit unterstrichen: dies giebt vielleicht einen Wink, in welcher Richtung man die etymologische Herkunft des mehrfach deutbaren *ἀγαθός* zu suchen hat. Im lateinischen malus (dem ich *μέλας* zur Seite stelle) könnte der gemeine Mann als der Dunkelfarbige, vor allem als der Schwarzhaarige („hic niger est“) gekennzeichnet sein, als der vorarische Insasse des italischen Bodens, der sich von der herrschend gewordenen blonden, nämlich arischen Eroberer-Rasse durch die Farbe am deutlichsten abhob; wenigstens bot mir das Gälische den genau entsprechenden Fall, — fin (zum Beispiel im Namen Fin-Gal), das abzeichnende Wort des Adels, zuletzt der Gute, Edle, Reine, ursprünglich der Blondkopf, im Gegensatz zu den dunklen, schwarzhaarigen Ureinwohnern. Die Kelten, beiläufig gesagt, waren durchaus eine blonde Rasse; man thut Unrecht, wenn man jene Streifen einer wesentlich dunkelhaarigen Bevölkerung, die sich auf sorgfältigeren ethnographischen Karten Deutschlands bemerkbar machen, mit irgend welcher keltischen Herkunft und Blutmischung in Zusammenhang bringt, wie dies noch Virchow thut: vielmehr schlägt an diesen Stellen die *vorarische* Bevölkerung Deutschlands vor. (Das Gleiche gilt beinahe für ganz Europa: im Wesentlichen hat die unterworfene Rasse schliesslich daselbst wieder die Oberhand bekommen, in Farbe, Kürze des Schädels, vielleicht sogar in den intellektuellen und socialen Instinkten: wer steht uns dafür, ob nicht die moderne Demokratie, der noch modernere Anarchismus und namentlich jener Hang zur „Commune“, zur primitivsten Gesellschafts-Form, der allen Socialisten Europa's jetzt gemeinsam ist, in der Hauptsache einen ungeheuren *Nachschlag* zu bedeuten hat — und dass die Eroberer- und Herren-Rasse, die der Arier, auch physiologisch im Unterliegen ist?...) Das lateinische bonus glaube ich als „den Krieger“ auslegen zu dürfen: vorausgesetzt, dass ich mit Recht bonus auf ein älteres duonus zurückführe (vergleiche bellum = duellum = duen-lum, worin mir jenes duonus erhalten scheint). Bonus somit als Mann des Zwistes, der Entzweiung (duo), als Kriegsmann: man sieht, was im alten Rom an einem Manne seine „Güte“ ausmachte. Unser deutsches „Gut“ selbst: sollte es nicht „den Göttlichen“, den Mann „göttlichen Geschlechts“ bedeuten? Und mit dem Volks- (ursprünglich Adels-) Namen der Gothen identisch sein? Die Gründe zu dieser Vermuthung gehören nicht hierher. — [6] Von dieser Regel, dass der politische Vorrangs-Begriff sich immer in einen seelischen Vorrangs-Begriff auslöst, macht es zunächst noch keine Ausnahme (obgleich es Anlass zu Ausnahmen giebt), wenn die höchste Kaste zugleich die *priesterliche* Kaste ist und folglich zu ihrer Gesammt-Bezeichnung ein Prädikat bevorzugt, das an ihre priesterliche Funktion erinnert. Da tritt zum Beispiel „rein“ und „unrein“ sich zum ersten Male als Ständeabzeichen gegenüber; und auch hier kommt später ein „gut“ und ein „schlecht“ in einem nicht mehr ständischen Sinne zur Entwicklung. Im Übrigen sei man davor gewarnt, diese Begriffe „rein“ und „unrein“ nicht von vornherein zu schwer, zu weit oder gar symbolisch zu nehmen: alle Begriffe der älteren Menschheit sind vielmehr anfänglich in einem uns kaum ausdenkbaren Maasse grob, plump, äusserlich, eng, geradezu und insbesondere *unsymbolisch* verstanden worden. Der „Reine“ ist von Anfang an bloss ein Mensch, der sich wäscht, der sich gewisse Speisen verbietet, die Hautkrankheiten nach sich ziehen, der nicht mit den schmutzigen Weibern des niederen Volkes schläft, der einen Abscheu vor Blut hat, — nicht mehr, nicht viel mehr! Andrerseits erhellt es freilich aus der ganzen Art einer wesentlich priesterlichen Aristokratie, warum hier gerade frühzeitig sich die Werthungs-Gegensätze auf eine gefährliche Weise verinnerlichen und verschärfen konnten; und in der That sind durch sie schliesslich Klüfte zwischen Mensch und Mensch aufgerissen worden, über die selbst ein Achill der Freigeisterei nicht ohne Schauder hinwegsetzen wird. Es ist von Anfang an etwas *Ungesundes* in solchen priesterlichen Aristokratien und in den daselbst herrschenden, dem Handeln abgewendeten, theils brütenden, theils gefühls-explosiven Gewohnheiten, als deren Folge jene den Priestern aller Zeiten fast unvermeidlich anhaftende intestinale Krankhaftigkeit und Neurasthenie erscheint; was aber von ihnen selbst gegen diese ihre Krankhaftigkeit als Heilmittel erfunden worden ist, — muss man nicht sagen, dass es sich zuletzt in seinen Nachwirkungen noch hundert Mal gefährlicher erwiesen hat, als die Krankheit, von der es erlösen sollte? Die Menschheit selbst krankt noch an den Nachwirkungen dieser priesterlichen Kur-Naivetäten! Denken wir zum Beispiel an gewisse Diätformen (Vermeidung des Fleisches), an das Fasten, an die geschlechtliche Enthaltsamkeit, an die Flucht „in die Wüste“ (Weir Mitchell'sche Isolirung, freilich ohne die darauf folgende Mastkur und Überernährung, in der das wirksamste Gegenmittel gegen alle Hysterie des asketischen Ideals besteht): hinzugerechnet die ganze sinnenfeindliche, faul- und raffinirtmachende Metaphysik der Priester, ihre Selbst-Hypnotisirung nach Art des Fakirs und Brahmanen — Brahman als gläserner Knopf und fixe Idee benutzt — und das schliessliche, nur zu begreifliche allgemeine Satthaben mit seiner Radikalkur, dem *Nichts* (oder Gott: — das Verlangen nach einer unio mystica mit Gott ist das Verlangen des Buddhisten in's Nichts, Nirwâna — und nicht mehr!) Bei den Priestern wird eben *Alles* gefährlicher, nicht nur Kurmittel und Heilkünste, sondern auch Hochmuth, Rache, Scharfsinn, Ausschweifung, Liebe, Herrschsucht, Tugend, Krankheit; — mit einiger Billigkeit liesse sich allerdings auch hinzufügen, dass erst auf dem Boden dieser *wesentlich gefährlichen* Daseinsform des Menschen, der priesterlichen, der Mensch überhaupt *ein interessantes Thier* geworden ist, dass erst hier die menschliche Seele in einem höheren Sinne *Tiefe* bekommen hat und *böse* geworden ist — und das sind ja die beiden Grundformen der bisherigen Überlegenheit des Menschen über sonstiges Gethier!... [7] — Man wird bereits errathen haben, wie leicht sich die priesterliche Werthungs-Weise von der ritterlich-aristokratischen abzweigen und dann zu deren Gegensatze fortentwickeln kann; wozu es in Sonderheit jedes Mal einen Anstoss giebt, wenn die Priesterkaste und die Kriegerkaste einander eifersüchtig entgegentreten und über den Preis mit einander nicht einig werden wollen. Die ritterlich-aristokratischen Werthurtheile haben zu ihrer Voraussetzung eine mächtige Leiblichkeit, eine blühende, reiche, selbst überschäumende Gesundheit, sammt dem, was deren Erhaltung bedingt, Krieg, Abenteuer, Jagd, Tanz, Kampfspiele und Alles überhaupt, was starkes, freies, frohgemuthes Handeln in sich schliesst. Die priesterlich-vornehme Werthungs-Weise hat — wir sahen es — andere Voraussetzungen: schlimm genug für sie, wenn es sich um Krieg handelt! Die Priester sind, wie bekannt, die *bösesten Feinde* — weshalb doch? Weil sie die ohnmächtigsten sind. Aus der Ohnmacht wächst bei ihnen der Hass in's Ungeheure und Unheimliche, in's Geistigste und Giftigste. Die ganz grossen Hasser in der Weltgeschichte sind immer Priester gewesen, auch die geistreichsten Hasser: — gegen den Geist der priesterlichen Rache kommt überhaupt aller übrige Geist kaum in Betracht. Die menschliche Geschichte wäre eine gar zu dumme Sache ohne den Geist, der von den Ohnmächtigen her in sie gekommen ist: — nehmen wir sofort das grösste Beispiel. Alles, was auf Erden gegen „die Vornehmen“, „die Gewaltigen“, „die Herren“, „die Machthaber“ gethan worden ist, ist nicht der Rede werth im Vergleich mit dem, was *die Juden* gegen sie gethan haben: die Juden, jenes priesterliche Volk, das sich an seinen Feinden und Überwältigern zuletzt nur durch eine radikale Umwerthung von deren Werthen, also durch einen Akt der *geistigsten Rache* Genugthuung zu schaffen wusste. So allein war es eben einem priesterlichen Volke gemäss, dem Volke der zurückgetretensten priesterlichen Rachsucht. Die Juden sind es gewesen, die gegen die aristokratische Werthgleichung (gut = vornehm = mächtig = schön = glücklich = gottgeliebt) mit einer furchteinflössenden Folgerichtigkeit die Umkehrung gewagt und mit den Zähnen des abgründlichsten Hasses (des Hasses der Ohnmacht) festgehalten haben, nämlich „die Elenden sind allein die Guten, die Armen, Ohnmächtigen, Niedrigen sind allein die Guten, die Leidenden, Entbehrenden, Kranken, Hässlichen sind auch die einzig Frommen, die einzig Gottseligen, für sie allein giebt es Seligkeit, — dagegen ihr, ihr Vornehmen und Gewaltigen, ihr seid in alle Ewigkeit die Bösen, die Grausamen, die Lüsternen, die Unersättlichen, die Gottlosen, ihr werdet auch ewig die Unseligen, Verfluchten und Verdammten sein!“... Man weiss, *wer* die Erbschaft dieser jüdischen Umwerthung gemacht hat... Ich erinnere in Betreff der ungeheuren und über alle Maassen verhängnissvollen Initiative, welche die Juden mit dieser grundsätzlichsten aller Kriegserklärungen gegeben haben, an den Satz, auf den ich bei einer anderen Gelegenheit gekommen bin („Jenseits von Gut und Böse“ p. 118) — dass nämlich mit den Juden *der Sklavenaufstand in der Moral* beginnt: jener Aufstand, welcher eine zweitausendjährige Geschichte hinter sich hat und der uns heute nur deshalb aus den Augen gerückt ist, weil er — siegreich gewesen ist... [8] — Aber ihr versteht das nicht? Ihr habt keine Augen für Etwas, das zwei Jahrtausende gebraucht hat, um zum Siege zu kommen?... Daran ist Nichts zum Verwundern: alle *langen* Dinge sind schwer zu sehn, zu übersehn. *Das* aber ist das Ereigniss: aus dem Stamme jenes Baums der Rache und des Hasses, des jüdischen Hasses — des tiefsten und sublimsten, nämlich Ideale schaffenden, Werthe umschaffenden Hasses, dessen Gleichen nie auf Erden dagewesen ist — wuchs etwas ebenso Unvergleichliches heraus, eine *neue Liebe*, die tiefste und sublimste aller Arten Liebe: — und aus welchem andern Stamme hätte sie auch wachsen können?... Dass man aber ja nicht vermeine, sie sei etwa als die eigentliche Verneinung jenes Durstes nach Rache, als der Gegensatz des jüdischen Hasses emporgewachsen! Nein, das Umgekehrte ist die Wahrheit! Diese Liebe wuchs aus ihm heraus, als seine Krone, als die triumphirende, in der reinsten Helle und Sonnenfülle sich breit und breiter entfaltende Krone, welche mit demselben Drange gleichsam im Reiche des Lichts und der Höhe auf die Ziele jenes Hasses, auf Sieg, auf Beute, auf Verführung aus war, mit dem die Wurzeln jenes Hasses sich immer gründlicher und begehrlicher in Alles, was Tiefe hatte und böse war, hinunter senkten. Dieser Jesus von Nazareth, als das leibhafte Evangelium der Liebe, dieser den Armen, den Kranken, den Sündern die Seligkeit und den Sieg bringende „Erlöser“ — war er nicht gerade die Verführung in ihrer unheimlichsten und unwiderstehlichsten Form, die Verführung und der Umweg zu eben jenen *jüdischen* Werthen und Neuerungen des Ideals? Hat Israel nicht gerade auf dem Umwege dieses „Erlösers“, dieses scheinbaren Widersachers und Auflösers Israel's, das letzte Ziel seiner sublimen Rachsucht erreicht? Gehört es nicht in die geheime schwarze Kunst einer wahrhaft *grossen* Politik der Rache, einer weitsichtigen, unterirdischen, langsam-greifenden und vorausrechnenden Rache, dass Israel selber das eigentliche Werkzeug seiner Rache vor aller Welt wie etwas Todfeindliches verleugnen und an's Kreuz schlagen musste, damit „alle Welt“, nämlich alle Gegner Israel's unbedenklich gerade an diesem Köder anbeissen konnten? Und wüsste man sich andrerseits, aus allem Raffinement des Geistes heraus, überhaupt noch einen *gefährlicheren* Köder auszudenken? Etwas, das an verlockender, berauschender, betäubender, verderbender Kraft jenem Symbol des „heiligen Kreuzes“ gleichkäme, jener schauerlichen Paradoxie eines „Gottes am Kreuze“, jenem Mysterium einer unausdenkbaren letzten äussersten Grausamkeit und Selbstkreuzigung Gottes *zum Heile des Menschen*?... Gewiss ist wenigstens, dass sub hoc signo Israel mit seiner Rache und Umwerthung aller Werthe bisher über alle anderen Ideale, über alle *vornehmeren* Ideale immer wieder triumphirt hat. — — [9] — „Aber was reden Sie noch von *vornehmeren* Idealen! Fügen wir uns in die Thatsachen: das Volk hat gesiegt — oder „die Sklaven“, oder „der Pöbel“, oder „die Heerde“, oder wie Sie es zu nennen belieben — wenn dies durch die Juden geschehen ist, wohlan! so hatte nie ein Volk eine welthistorischere Mission. „Die Herren“ sind abgethan; die Moral des gemeinen Mannes hat gesiegt. Man mag diesen Sieg zugleich als eine Blutvergiftung nehmen (er hat die Rassen durch einander gemengt) — ich widerspreche nicht; unzweifelhaft ist aber diese Intoxikation *gelungen*. Die „Erlösung“ des Menschengeschlechtes (nämlich von „den Herren“) ist auf dem besten Wege; Alles verjüdelt oder verchristlicht oder verpöbelt sich zusehends (was liegt an Worten!). Der Gang dieser Vergiftung, durch den ganzen Leib der Menschheit hindurch, scheint unaufhaltsam, ihr tempo und Schritt darf sogar von nun an immer langsamer, feiner, unhörbarer, besonnener sein — man hat ja Zeit... Kommt der Kirche in dieser Absicht heute noch eine *nothwendige* Aufgabe, überhaupt noch ein Recht auf Dasein zu? Oder könnte man ihrer entrathen? Quaeritur. Es scheint, dass sie jenen Gang eher hemmt und zurückhält, statt ihn zu beschleunigen? Nun, eben das könnte ihre Nützlichkeit sein... Sicherlich ist sie nachgerade etwas Gröbliches und Bäurisches, das einer zarteren Intelligenz, einem eigentlich modernen Geschmacke widersteht. Sollte sie sich zum Mindesten nicht etwas raffinieren?... Sie entfremdet heute mehr, als dass sie verführte... Wer von uns würde wohl Freigeist sein, wenn es nicht die Kirche gäbe? Die Kirche widersteht uns, *nicht* ihr Gift... Von der Kirche abgesehn lieben auch wir das Gift...“ — Dies der Epilog eines „Freigeistes“ zu meiner Rede, eines ehrlichen Thiers, wie er reichlich verrathen hat, überdies eines Demokraten; er hatte mir bis dahin zugehört und hielt es nicht aus, mich schweigen zu hören. Für mich nämlich giebt es an dieser Stelle viel zu schweigen. — [10] Der Sklavenaufstand in der Moral beginnt damit, dass das *Ressentiment* selbst schöpferisch wird und Werthe gebiert: das Ressentiment solcher Wesen, denen die eigentliche Reaktion, die der That versagt ist, die sich nur durch eine imaginäre Rache schadlos halten. Während alle vornehme Moral aus einem triumphirenden Ja-sagen zu sich selber herauswächst, sagt die Sklaven-Moral von vornherein Nein zu einem „Ausserhalb“, zu einem „Anders“, zu einem „Nicht-selbst“: und *dies* Nein ist ihre schöpferische That. Diese Umkehrung des werthe-setzenden Blicks — diese *nothwendige* Richtung nach Aussen statt zurück auf sich selber — gehört eben zum Ressentiment: die Sklaven-Moral bedarf, um zu entstehn, immer zuerst einer Gegen- und Aussenwelt, sie bedarf, physiologisch gesprochen, äusserer Reize, um überhaupt zu agiren, — ihre Aktion ist von Grund aus Reaktion. Das Umgekehrte ist bei der vornehmen Werthungsweise der Fall: sie agirt und wächst spontan, sie sucht ihren Gegensatz nur auf, um zu sich selber noch dankbarer, noch frohlockender Ja zu sagen, — ihr negativer Begriff „niedrig“ „gemein“ „schlecht“ ist nur ein nachgebornes blasses Contrastbild im Verhältniss zu ihrem positiven, durch und durch mit Leben und Leidenschaft durchtränkten Grundbegriff „wir Vornehmen, wir Guten, wir Schönen, wir Glücklichen!“ Wenn die vornehme Werthungsweise sich vergreift und an der Realität versündigt, so geschieht dies in Bezug auf die Sphäre, welche ihr *nicht* genügend bekannt ist, ja gegen deren wirkliches Kennen sie sich spröde zur Wehre setzt: sie verkennt unter Umständen die von ihr verachtete Sphäre, die des gemeinen Mannes, des niedren Volks; andrerseits erwäge man, dass jedenfalls der Affekt der Verachtung, des Herabblickens, des Überlegen-Blickens, gesetzt, dass er das Bild des Verachteten *fälscht*, bei weitem hinter der Fälschung zurückbleiben wird, mit der der zurückgetretene Hass, die Rache des Ohnmächtigen sich an seinem Gegner — in effigie natürlich — vergreifen wird. In der That ist in der Verachtung zu viel Nachlässigkeit, zu viel Leicht-Nehmen, zu viel Wegblicken und Ungeduld mit eingemischt, selbst zu viel eignes Frohgefühl, als dass sie im Stande wäre, ihr Objekt zum eigentlichen Zerrbild und Scheusal umzuwandeln. Man überhöre doch die beinahe wohlwollenden nuances nicht, welche zum Beispiel der griechische Adel in alle Worte legt, mit denen er das niedere Volk von sich abhebt; wie sich fortwährend eine Art Bedauern, Rücksicht, Nachsicht einmischt und anzuckert, bis zu dem Ende, dass fast alle Worte, die dem gemeinen Manne zukommen, schliesslich als Ausdrücke für „unglücklich“ „bedauernswürdig“ übrig geblieben sind (vergleiche *δειλός, δείλαιος, πονηρός, μοχθηρός*, letztere zwei eigentlich den gemeinen Mann als Arbeitssklaven und Lastthier kennzeichnend) — und wie andrerseits „schlecht“ „niedrig“ „unglücklich“ nie wieder aufgehört haben, für das griechische Ohr in Einen Ton auszuklingen, mit einer Klangfarbe, in der „unglücklich“ überwiegt: dies als Erbstück der alten edleren aristokratischen Werthungsweise, die sich auch im Verachten nicht verleugnet (— Philologen seien daran erinnert, in welchem Sinne *οἰζυρός, ἄνολβος, τλήμων, δυστυχεῖν, ξυμφορά* gebraucht werden). Die „Wohlgeborenen“ *fühlten* sich eben als die „Glücklichen“; sie hatten ihr Glück nicht erst durch einen Blick auf ihre Feinde künstlich zu construiren, unter Umständen einzureden, *einzulügen* (wie es alle Menschen des Ressentiment zu thun pflegen); und ebenfalls wussten sie, als volle, mit Kraft überladene, folglich *nothwendig* aktive Menschen, von dem Glück das Handeln nicht abzutrennen, — das Thätigsein wird bei ihnen mit Nothwendigkeit in's Glück hineingerechnet (woher *εὖ πράττειν* seine Herkunft nimmt) — Alles sehr im Gegensatz zu dem „Glück“ auf der Stufe der Ohnmächtigen, Gedrückten, an giftigen und feindseligen Gefühlen Schwärenden, bei denen es wesentlich als Narcose, Betäubung, Ruhe, Frieden, „Sabbat“, Gemüths-Ausspannung und Gliederstrecken, kurz *passivisch* auftritt. Während der vornehme Mensch vor sich selbst mit Vertrauen und Offenheit lebt (*γενναῖος* „edelbürtig“ unterstreicht die nuance „aufrichtig“ und auch wohl „naiv“), so ist der Mensch des Ressentiment weder aufrichtig, noch naiv, noch mit sich selber ehrlich und geradezu. Seine Seele *schielt*; sein Geist liebt Schlupfwinkel, Schleichwege und Hinterthüren, alles Versteckte muthet ihn an als *seine* Welt, *seine* Sicherheit, *sein* Labsal; er versteht sich auf das Schweigen, das Nicht-Vergessen, das Warten, das vorläufige Sich-verkleinern, Sich-demüthigen. Eine Rasse solcher Menschen des Ressentiment wird nothwendig endlich *klüger* sein als irgend eine vornehme Rasse, sie wird die Klugheit auch in ganz andrem Maasse ehren: nämlich als eine Existenzbedingung ersten Ranges, während die Klugheit bei vornehmen Menschen leicht einen feinen Beigeschmack von Luxus und Raffinement an sich hat: — sie ist eben hier lange nicht so wesentlich, als die vollkommne Funktions-Sicherheit der regulirenden *unbewussten* Instinkte oder selbst eine gewisse Unklugheit, etwa das tapfre Drauflosgehn, sei es auf die Gefahr, sei es auf den Feind, oder jene schwärmerische Plötzlichkeit von Zorn, Liebe, Ehrfurcht, Dankbarkeit und Rache, an der sich zu allen Zeiten die vornehmen Seelen wiedererkannt haben. Das Ressentiment des vornehmen Menschen selbst, wenn es an ihm auftritt, vollzieht und erschöpft sich nämlich in einer sofortigen Reaktion, es *vergiftet* darum nicht: andrerseits tritt es in unzähligen Fällen gar nicht auf, wo es bei allen Schwachen und Ohnmächtigen unvermeidlich ist. Seine Feinde, seine Unfälle, seine *Unthaten* selbst nicht lange ernst nehmen können — das ist das Zeichen starker voller Naturen, in denen ein Überschuss plastischer, nachbildender, ausheilender, auch vergessen machender Kraft ist (ein gutes Beispiel dafür aus der modernen Welt ist Mirabeau, welcher kein Gedächtniss für Insulte und Niederträchtigkeiten hatte, die man an ihm begieng, und der nur deshalb nicht vergeben konnte, weil er — vergass). Ein solcher Mensch schüttelt eben viel Gewürm mit Einem Ruck von sich, das sich bei Anderen eingräbt; hier allein ist auch das möglich, gesetzt, dass es überhaupt auf Erden möglich ist — die eigentliche „*Liebe* zu seinen Feinden“. Wie viel Ehrfurcht vor seinen Feinden hat schon ein vornehmer Mensch! — und eine solche Ehrfurcht ist schon eine Brücke zur Liebe … Er verlangt ja seinen Feind für sich, als seine Auszeichnung, er hält ja keinen andren Feind aus, als einen solchen, an dem Nichts zu verachten und *sehr Viel* zu ehren ist! Dagegen stelle man sich „den Feind“ vor, wie ihn der Mensch des Ressentiment concipirt — und hier gerade ist seine That, seine Schöpfung: er hat „den bösen Feind“ concipirt, „*den Bösen*“, und zwar als Grundbegriff, von dem aus er sich als Nachbild und Gegenstück nun auch noch einen „Guten“ ausdenkt — sich selbst! … [11] Gerade umgekehrt also wie bei dem Vornehmen, der den Grundbegriff „gut“ voraus und spontan, nämlich von sich aus concipirt und von da aus erst eine Vorstellung von „schlecht“ sich schafft! Dies „schlecht“ vornehmen Ursprungs und jenes „böse“ aus dem Braukessel des ungesättigten Hasses — das erste eine Nachschöpfung, ein Nebenher, eine Complementärfarbe, das zweite dagegen das Original, der Anfang, die eigentliche *That* in der Conception einer Sklaven-Moral — wie verschieden stehen die beiden scheinbar demselben Begriff „gut“ entgegengestellten Worte „schlecht“ und „böse“ da! Aber es ist *nicht* derselbe Begriff „gut“: vielmehr frage man sich doch, wer eigentlich „böse“ ist, im Sinne der Moral des Ressentiment. In aller Strenge geantwortet: *eben* der „Gute“ der andren Moral, eben der Vornehme, der Mächtige, der Herrschende, nur umgefärbt, nur umgedeutet, nur umgesehn durch das Giftauge des Ressentiment. Hier wollen wir Eins am wenigsten leugnen: wer jene „Guten“ nur als Feinde kennen lernte, lernte auch nichts als *böse Feinde* kennen, und dieselben Menschen, welche so streng durch Sitte, Verehrung, Brauch, Dankbarkeit, noch mehr durch gegenseitige Bewachung, durch Eifersucht inter pares in Schranken gehalten sind, die andrerseits im Verhalten zu einander so erfinderisch in Rücksicht, Selbstbeherrschung, Zartsinn, Treue, Stolz und Freundschaft sich beweisen, — sie sind nach Aussen hin, dort wo das Fremde, die Fremde beginnt, nicht viel besser als losgelassne Raubthiere. Sie geniessen da die Freiheit von allem socialen Zwang, sie halten sich in der Wildniss schadlos für die Spannung, welche eine lange Einschliessung und Einfriedigung in den Frieden der Gemeinschaft giebt, sie treten in die Unschuld des Raubthier-Gewissens *zurück*, als frohlockende Ungeheuer, welche vielleicht von einer scheusslichen Abfolge von Mord, Niederbrennung, Schändung, Folterung mit einem Übermuthe und seelischen Gleichgewichte davongehen, wie als ob nur ein Studentenstreich vollbracht sei, überzeugt davon, dass die Dichter für lange nun wieder Etwas zu singen und zu rühmen haben. Auf dem Grunde aller dieser vornehmen Rassen ist das Raubthier, die prachtvolle nach Beute und Sieg lüstern schweifende *blonde Bestie* nicht zu verkennen; es bedarf für diesen verborgenen Grund von Zeit zu Zeit der Entladung, das Thier muss wieder heraus, muss wieder in die Wildniss zurück: — römischer, arabischer, germanischer, japanesischer Adel, homerische Helden, skandinavische Wikinger — in diesem Bedürfniss sind sie sich alle gleich. Die vornehmen Rassen sind es, welche den Begriff „Barbar“ auf all den Spuren hinterlassen haben, wo sie gegangen sind; noch aus ihrer höchsten Cultur heraus verräth sich ein Bewusstsein davon und ein Stolz selbst darauf (zum Beispiel wenn Perikles seinen Athenern sagt, in jener berühmten Leichenrede, „zu allem Land und Meer hat unsre Kühnheit sich den Weg gebrochen, unvergängliche Denkmale sich überall im Guten *und Schlimmen* aufrichtend“). Diese „Kühnheit“ vornehmer Rassen, toll, absurd, plötzlich, wie sie sich äussert, das Unberechenbare, das Unwahrscheinliche selbst ihrer Unternehmungen — Perikles hebt die *ῥαθυμία* der Athener mit Auszeichnung hervor — ihre Gleichgültigkeit und Verachtung gegen Sicherheit, Leib, Leben, Behagen, ihre entsetzliche Heiterkeit und Tiefe der Lust in allem Zerstören, in allen Wollüsten des Siegs und der Grausamkeit — Alles fasste sich für Die, welche daran litten, in das Bild des „Barbaren“, des „bösen Feindes“, etwa des „Gothen“, des „Vandalen“ zusammen. Das tiefe, eisige Misstrauen, das der Deutsche erregt, sobald er zur Macht kommt, auch jetzt wieder — ist immer noch ein Nachschlag jenes unauslöschlichen Entsetzens, mit dem Jahrhunderte lang Europa dem Wüthen der blonden germanischen Bestie zugesehn hat (obwohl zwischen alten Germanen und uns Deutschen kaum eine Begriffs-, geschweige eine Blutverwandtschaft besteht). Ich habe einmal auf die Verlegenheit Hesiod's aufmerksam gemacht, als er die Abfolge der Cultur-Zeitalter aussann und sie in Gold, Silber, Erz auszudrücken suchte: er wusste mit dem Widerspruch, den ihm die herrliche, aber ebenfalls so schauerliche, so gewaltthätige Welt Homer's bot, nicht anders fertig zu werden, als indem er aus Einem Zeitalter zwei machte, die er nunmehr hinter einander stellte — einmal das Zeitalter der Helden und Halbgötter von Troja und Theben, so wie jene Welt im Gedächtniss der vornehmen Geschlechter zurückgeblieben war, die in ihr die eignen Ahnherrn hatten; sodann das eherne Zeitalter, sowie jene gleiche Welt den Nachkommen der Niedergetretenen, Beraubten, Misshandelten, Weggeschleppten, Verkauften erschien: als ein Zeitalter von Erz, wie gesagt, hart, kalt, grausam, gefühl- und gewissenlos, Alles zermalmend und mit Blut übertünchend. Gesetzt, dass es wahr wäre, was jetzt jedenfalls als „Wahrheit“ geglaubt wird, dass es eben der *Sinn aller Cultur* sei, aus dem Raubthiere „Mensch“ ein zahmes und civilisirtes Thier, ein *Hausthier* herauszuzüchten, so müsste man unzweifelhaft alle jene Reaktions- und Ressentiments-Instinkte, mit deren Hülfe die vornehmen Geschlechter sammt ihren Idealen schliesslich zu Schanden gemacht und überwältigt worden sind, als die eigentlichen *Werkzeuge der Cultur* betrachten; womit allerdings noch nicht gesagt wäre, dass deren *Träger* zugleich auch selber die Cultur darstellten. Vielmehr wäre das Gegentheil nicht nur wahrscheinlich — nein! es ist heute *augenscheinlich*! Diese Träger der niederdrückenden und vergeltungslüsternen Instinkte, die Nachkommen alles europäischen und nicht europäischen Sklaventhums, aller vorarischen Bevölkerung in Sonderheit — sie stellen den *Rückgang* der Menschheit dar! Diese „Werkzeuge der Cultur“ sind eine Schande des Menschen, und eher ein Verdacht, ein Gegenargument gegen „Cultur“ überhaupt! Man mag im besten Rechte sein, wenn man vor der blonden Bestie auf dem Grunde aller vornehmen Rassen die Furcht nicht los wird und auf der Hut ist: aber wer möchte nicht hundertmal lieber sich fürchten, wenn er zugleich bewundern darf, als sich *nicht* fürchten, aber dabei den ekelhaften Anblick des Missrathenen, Verkleinerten, Verkümmerten, Vergifteten nicht mehr los werden können? Und ist dass nicht *unser* Verhängniss? Was macht heute *unsern* Widerwillen gegen „den Menschen“? — denn wir leiden am Menschen, es ist kein Zweifel. — Nicht die Furcht; eher, dass wir Nichts mehr am Menschen zu fürchten haben; dass das Gewürm „Mensch“ im Vordergrunde ist und wimmelt; dass der „zahme Mensch“, der Heillos-Mittelmässige und Unerquickliche bereits sich als Ziel und Spitze, als Sinn der Geschichte, als „höheren Menschen“ zu fühlen gelernt hat; — ja dass er ein gewisses Recht darauf hat, sich so zu fühlen, insofern er sich im Abstände von der Überfülle des Missrathenen, Kränklichen, Müden, Verlebten fühlt, nach dem heute Europa zu stinken beginnt, somit als etwas wenigstens relativ Gerathenes, wenigstens noch Lebensfähiges, wenigstens zum Leben Ja-sagendes … [12] — Ich unterdrücke an dieser Stelle einen Seufzer und eine letzte Zuversicht nicht. Was ist das gerade mir ganz Unerträgliche? Das, womit ich allein nicht fertig werde, was mich ersticken und verschmachten macht? Schlechte Luft! Schlechte Luft! Das etwas Missrathenes in meine Nähe kommt; dass ich die Eingeweide einer missrathenen Seele riechen muss! … Was hält man sonst nicht aus von Noth, Entbehrung, bösem Wetter, Siechthum, Mühsal, Vereinsamung? Im Grunde wird man mit allem Übrigen fertig, geboren wie man ist zu einem unterirdischen und kämpfenden Dasein; man kommt immer wieder einmal an's Licht, man erlebt immer wieder seine goldene Stunde des Siegs, — und dann steht man da, wie man geboren ist, unzerbrechbar, gespannt, zu Neuem, zu noch Schwererem, Fernerem bereit, wie ein Bogen, den alle Noth immer nur noch straffer anzieht. — Aber von Zeit zu Zeit gönnt mir — gesetzt, dass es himmlische Gönnerinnen giebt, jenseits von Gut und Böse — einen Blick, gönnt mir Einen Blick nur auf etwas Vollkommenes, zu-Ende-Gerathenes, Glückliches, Mächtiges, Triumphirendes, an dem es noch Etwas zu fürchten giebt! Auf einen Menschen, der *den* Menschen rechtfertigt, auf einen complementären und erlösenden Glücksfall des Menschen, um desswillen man *den Glauben an den Menschen* festhalten darf! … Denn so steht es: die Verkleinerung und Ausgleichung des europäischen Menschen birgt *unsre* grösste Gefahr, denn dieser Anblick macht müde … Wir sehen heute Nichts, das grösser werden will, wir ahnen, dass es immer noch abwärts, abwärts geht, in's Dünnere, Gutmüthigere, Klügere, Behaglichere, Mittelmässigere, Gleichgültigere, Chinesischere, Christlichere — der Mensch, es ist kein Zweifel, wird immer „besser“ … Hier eben liegt das Verhängniss Europa's — mit der Furcht vor dem Menschen haben wir auch die Liebe zu ihm, die Ehrfurcht vor ihm, die Hoffnung auf ihn, ja den Willen zu ihm eingebüsst. Der Anblick des Menschen macht nunmehr müde — was ist heute Nihilismus, wenn er nicht *das* ist? … Wir sind *des Menschen* müde … [13] — Doch kommen wir zurück: das Problem vom *andren* Ursprung des „Guten“, vom Guten, wie ihn der Mensch des Ressentiment sich ausgedacht hat, verlangt nach seinem Abschluss. — Dass die Lämmer den grossen Raubvögeln gram sind, das befremdet nicht: nur liegt darin kein Grund, es den grossen Raubvögeln zu verargen, dass sie sich kleine Lämmer holen. Und wenn die Lämmer unter sich sagen „diese Raubvögel sind böse; und wer so wenig als möglich ein Raubvogel ist, vielmehr deren Gegenstück, ein Lamm, — sollte der nicht gut sein?“ so ist an dieser Aufrichtung eines Ideals Nichts auszusetzen, sei es auch, dass die Raubvögel dazu ein wenig spöttisch blicken werden und vielleicht sich sagen: „wir sind ihnen gar nicht gram, diesen guten Lämmern, wir lieben sie sogar: nichts ist schmackhafter als ein zartes Lamm.“ — Von der Stärke verlangen, dass sie sich *nicht* als Stärke äussere, dass sie *nicht* ein Überwältigen-Wollen, ein Niederwerfen-Wollen, ein Herrwerden-Wollen, ein Durst nach Feinden und Widerständen und Triumphen sei, ist gerade so widersinnig als von der Schwäche verlangen, dass sie sich als Stärke äussere. Ein Quantum Kraft ist ein eben solches Quantum Trieb, Wille, Wirken — vielmehr, es ist gar nichts anderes als eben dieses Treiben, Wollen, Wirken selbst, und nur unter der Verführung der Sprache (und der in ihr versteinerten Grundirrthümer der Vernunft), welche alles Wirken als bedingt durch ein Wirkendes, durch ein „Subjekt“ versteht und missversteht, kann es anders erscheinen. Ebenso nämlich, wie das Volk den Blitz von seinem Leuchten trennt und letzteres als Thun, als Wirkung eines Subjekts nimmt, das Blitz heisst, so trennt die Volks-Moral auch die Stärke von den Äusserungen der Stärke ab, wie als ob es hinter dem Starken ein indifferentes Substrat gäbe, dem es *freistünde*, Stärke zu äussern oder auch nicht. Aber es giebt kein solches Substrat; es giebt kein „Sein“ hinter dem Thun, Wirken, Werden: „der Thäter“ ist zum Thun bloss hinzugedichtet, — das Thun ist Alles. Das Volk verdoppelt im Grunde das Thun, wenn es den Blitz leuchten lässt, das ist ein Thun-Thun: es setzt dasselbe Geschehen einmal als Ursache und dann noch einmal als deren Wirkung. Die Naturforscher machen es nicht besser, wenn sie sagen „die Kraft bewegt, die Kraft verursacht“ und dergleichen, — unsre ganze Wissenschaft steht noch, trotz aller ihrer Kühle, ihrer Freiheit vom Affekt, unter der Verführung der Sprache und ist die untergeschobenen Wechselbälge, die „Subjekte“ nicht losgeworden (das Atom ist zum Beispiel ein solcher Wechselbalg, insgleichen das Kantische „Ding an sich“): was Wunder, wenn die zurückgetretenen, versteckt glimmenden Affekte Rache und Hass diesen Glauben für sich ausnützen und im Grunde sogar keinen Glauben inbrünstiger aufrecht erhalten als den, es *stehe dem Starken frei*, schwach, und dem Raubvogel, Lamm zu sein: — damit gewinnen sie ja bei sich das Recht, dem Raubvogel es *zuzurechnen*, Raubvogel zu sein … Wenn die Unterdrückten, Niedergetretenen, Vergewaltigten aus der rachsüchtigen List der Ohnmacht heraus sich zureden: „lasst uns anders sein als die Bösen, nämlich gut! Und gut ist Jeder, der nicht vergewaltigt, der Niemanden verletzt, der nicht angreift, der nicht vergilt, der die Rache Gott übergiebt, der sich wie wir im Verborgenen hält, der allem Bösen aus dem Wege geht und wenig überhaupt vom Leben verlangt, gleich uns den Geduldigen, Demüthigen, Gerechten“ — so heisst das, kalt und ohne Voreingenommenheit angehört, eigentlich nichts weiter als: „wir Schwachen sind nun einmal schwach; es ist gut, wenn wir nichts thun, *wozu wir nicht stark genug sind*“ — aber dieser herbe Thatbestand, diese Klugheit niedrigsten Ranges, welche selbst Insekten haben, (die sich wohl todt stellen, um nicht „zu viel“ zu thun, bei grosser Gefahr), hat sich Dank jener Falschmünzerei und Selbstverlogenheit der Ohnmacht in den Prunk der entsagenden stillen abwartenden Tugend gekleidet, gleich als ob die Schwäche des Schwachen selbst — das heisst doch sein Wesen, sein Wirken, seine ganze einzige unvermeidliche, unablösbare Wirklichkeit — eine freiwillige Leistung, etwas Gewolltes, Gewähltes, eine *That*, ein *Verdienst* sei. Diese Art Mensch hat den Glauben an das indifferente wahlfreie „Subjekt“ *nöthig* aus einem Instinkte der Selbsterhaltung, Selbstbejahung heraus, in dem jede Lüge sich zu heiligen pflegt. Das Subjekt (oder, dass wir populärer reden, die *Seele*) ist vielleicht deshalb bis jetzt auf Erden der beste Glaubenssatz gewesen, weil er der Überzahl der Sterblichen, den Schwachen und Niedergedrückten jeder Art, jene sublime Selbstbetrügerei ermöglichte, die Schwäche selbst als Freiheit, ihr So- und So-sein als *Verdienst* auszulegen. [14] — Will Jemand ein wenig in das Geheimniss hinab und hinunter sehn, wie man auf Erden *Ideale fabrizirt*? Wer hat den Muth dazu? … Wohlan! Hier ist der Blick offen in diese dunkle Werkstätte. Warten Sie noch einen Augenblick, mein Herr Vorwitz und Wagehals: Ihr Auge muss sich erst an dieses falsche schillernde Licht gewöhnen … So! Genug! Reden Sie jetzt! Was geht da unten vor? Sprechen Sie aus, was Sie sehen, Mann der gefährlichsten Neugierde — jetzt bin *ich* der, welcher zuhört. — — „Ich sehe Nichts, ich höre um so mehr. Es ist ein vorsichtiges tückisches leises Munkeln und Zusammenflüstern aus allen Ecken und Winkeln. Es scheint mir, dass man lügt; eine zuckrige Milde klebt an jedem Klange. Die Schwäche soll zum *Verdienste* umgelogen werden, es ist kein Zweifel — es steht damit so, wie Sie es sagten.“ — — Weiter! — „und die Ohnmacht, die nicht vergilt, zur „Güte“; die ängstliche Niedrigkeit zur „Demuth“; die Unterwerfung vor Denen, die man hasst, zum „Gehorsam“ (nämlich gegen Einen, von dem sie sagen, er befehle diese Unterwerfung, — sie heissen ihn Gott). Das Unoffensive des Schwachen, die Feigheit selbst, an der er reich ist, sein An-der-Thür-stehn, sein unvermeidliches Warten-müssen kommt hier zu guten Namen, als „Geduld,“ es heisst auch wohl die Tugend; das Sich-nicht-rächen-Können heisst Sich-nicht-rächen-Wollen, vielleicht selbst Verzeihung („denn *sie* wissen nicht, was sie thun — wir allein wissen es, was *sie* thun!“). Auch redet man von der „Liebe zu seinen Feinden“ — und schwitzt dabei.“ — Weiter! — „Sie sind elend, es ist kein Zweifel, alle diese Munkler und Winkel-Falschmünzer, ob sie schon warm bei einander hocken — aber sie sagen mir, ihr Elend sei eine Auswahl und Auszeichnung Gottes, man prügele die Hunde, die man am liebsten habe; vielleicht sei dies Elend auch eine Vorbereitung, eine Prüfung, eine Schulung, vielleicht sei es noch mehr — Etwas, das einst ausgeglichen und mit ungeheuren Zinsen in Gold, nein! in Glück ausgezahlt werde. Dass heissen sie „die Seligkeit.“ — Weiter! — „Jetzt geben sie mir zu verstehen, dass sie nicht nur besser seien als die Mächtigen, die Herrn der Erde, deren Speichel sie lecken müssen (*nicht* aus Furcht, ganz und gar nicht aus Furcht! sondern weil es Gott gebietet, alle Obrigkeit zu ehren) — dass sie nicht nur besser seien, sondern es auch „besser hätten“, jedenfalls einmal besser haben würden. Aber genug! genug! Ich halte es nicht mehr aus. Schlechte Luft! Schlechte Luft! Diese Werkstätte, wo man *Ideale fabrizirt* — mich dünkt, sie stinkt vor lauter Lügen.“ — Nein! Noch einen Augenblick! Sie sagten noch nichts von dem Meisterstücke dieser Schwarzkünstler, welche Weiss, Milch und Unschuld aus jedem Schwarz herstellen: — haben Sie nicht bemerkt, was ihre Vollendung im Raffinement ist, ihr kühnster, feinster, geistreichster, lügenreichster Artisten-Griff? Geben Sie Acht! Diese Kellerthiere voll Rache und Hass — was machen sie doch gerade aus Rache und Hass? Hörten Sie je diese Worte? Würden Sie ahnen, wenn Sie nur ihren Worten trauten, dass Sie unter lauter Menschen des Ressentiment sind? … — „Ich verstehe, ich mache nochmals die Ohren auf (ach! ach! ach! und die Nase zu). Jetzt höre ich erst, was sie so oft schon sagten: „Wir Guten — wir *sind die Gerechten*“ — was sie verlangen, das heissen sie nicht Vergeltung, sondern „den Triumph der *Gerechtigkeit*“; was sie hassen, das ist nicht ihr Feind, nein! sie hassen das „*Unrecht*“, die „Gottlosigkeit“; was sie glauben und hoffen, ist nicht die Hoffnung auf Rache, die Trunkenheit der süssen Rache (— „süsser als Honig“ nannte sie schon Homer), sondern der Sieg Gottes, des *gerechten* Gottes über die Gottlosen; was ihnen zu lieben auf Erden übrig bleibt, sind nicht ihre Brüder im Hasse, sondern ihre „Brüder in der Liebe“, wie sie sagen, alle Guten und Gerechten auf der Erde.“ — Und wie nennen sie das, was ihnen als Trost wider alle Leiden des Lebens dient — ihre Phantasmagorie der vorweggenommenen zukünftigen Seligkeit? — „Wie? Höre ich recht? Sie heissen das „das jüngste Gericht“, das Kommen *ihres* Reichs, des „Reichs Gottes“ — *einstweilen* aber leben sie „im Glauben“, „in der Liebe“, „in der Hoffnung.“ — Genug! Genug! [15] Im Glauben woran? In der Liebe wozu? In der Hoffnung worauf? — Diese Schwachen — irgendwann einmal nämlich wollen auch *sie* die Starken sein, es ist kein Zweifel, irgendwann soll auch *ihr* „Reich“ kommen — „das Reich Gottes“ heisst es schlechtweg bei ihnen, wie gesagt: man ist ja in Allem so demüthig! Schon um *das* zu erleben, hat man nöthig, lange zu leben, über den Tod hinaus, — ja man hat das ewige Leben nöthig, damit man sich auch ewig im „Reiche Gottes“ schadlos halten kann für jenes Erden-Leben „im Glauben, in der Liebe, in der Hoffnung.“ Schadlos wofür? Schadlos wodurch? … Dante hat sich, wie mich dünkt, gröblich vergriffen, als er, mit einer schreckeneinflössenden Ingenuität, jene Inschrift über das Thor zu seiner Hölle setzte „auch mich schuf die ewige Liebe“: — über dem Thore des christlichen Paradieses und seiner „ewigen Seligkeit“ würde jedenfalls mit besserem Rechte die Inschrift stehen dürfen „auch mich schuf der ewige *Hass*“ — gesetzt, dass eine Wahrheit über dem Thor zu einer Lüge stehen dürfte! Denn was ist die Seligkeit jenes Paradieses? … Wir würden es vielleicht schon errathen; aber besser ist es, dass es uns eine in solchen Dingen nicht zu unterschätzende Autorität ausdrücklich bezeugt, Thomas von Aquino, der grosse Lehrer und Heilige. „Beati in regno coelesti“, sagt er sanft wie ein Lamm, „videbunt poenas damnatorum, ut *beatitudo illis magis complaceat*.“ Oder will man es in einer stärkeren Tonart hören, etwa aus dem Munde eines triumphirenden Kirchenvaters, der seinen Christen die grausamen Wollüste der öffentlichen Schauspiele widerrieth — warum doch? „Der Glaube bietet uns ja viel mehr, — sagt er, de spectac. c. 29 ss. — *viel Stärkeres*; Dank der Erlösung stehen uns ja ganz andere Freuden zu Gebote; an Stelle der Athleten haben wir unsre Märtyrer; wollen wir Blut, nun, so haben wir das Blut Christi … Aber was erwartet uns erst am Tage seiner Wiederkunft, seines Triumphes!“ — und nun fährt er fort, der entzückte Visionär: „At enim supersunt alia spectacula, ille ultimus et perpetuus judicii dies, ille nationibus insperatus, ille derisus, cum tanta saeculi vetustas et tot ejus nativitates uno igne haurientur. Quae tunc spectaculi latitudo! *Quid admirer! Quid rideam! Ubi gaudeam! Ubi exultem*, spectans tot et tantos *reges*, qui in coelum recepti nuntiabantur, cum ipso Jove et ipsis suis testibus in imis tenebris congemescentes! Item praesides (die Provinzialstatthalter) persecutores dominici nominis saevioribus quam ipsi flammis saevierunt insultantibus contra Christianos liquescentes! Quos praeterea sapientes illos philosophos coram discipulis suis una conflagrantibus erubescentes, quibus nihil ad deum pertinere suadebant, quibus animas aut nullas aut non in pristina corpora redituras affirmabant! Etiam poëtas non ad Rhadamanti nec ad Minois, sed ad inopinati Christi tribunal palpitantes! Tunc magis tragoedi audiendi, magis scilicet vocales (besser bei Stimme, noch ärgere Schreier) in sua propria calamitate; tunc histriones cognoscendi, solutiores multo per ignem; tunc spectandus auriga in flammea rota totus rubens, tunc xystici contemplandi non in gymnasiis, sed in igne jaculati, nisi quod ne tunc quidem illos velim vivos, ut qui malim ad eos potius conspectum *insatiabilem* conferre, qui in dominum desaevierunt. „Hic est ille, dicam, fabri aut quaestuariae filius (wie alles Folgende und insbesondere auch diese aus dem Talmud bekannte Bezeichnung der Mutter Jesu zeigt, meint Tertullian von hier ab die Juden), sabbati destructor, Samarites et daemonium habens. Hic est, quem a Juda redemistis, hic est ille arundine et colaphis diverberatus, sputamentis dedecoratus, felle et aceto potatus. Hic est, quem clam discentes subripuerunt, ut resurrexisse dicatur vel hortulanus detraxit, ne lactucae suae frequentia commeantium laederentur.“ Ut talia spectes, *ut talibus exultes*, quis tibi praetor aut consul aut quaestor aut sacerdos de sua liberalitate praestabit? Et tamen haec jam habemus quodammodo *per fidem* spiritu imaginante repraesentata. Ceterum qualia illa sunt, quae nec oculus vidit nec auris audivit nec in cor hominis ascenderunt? (1. Cor. 2, 9.) Credo circo et utraque cavea (erster und vierter Rang oder, nach Anderen, komische und tragische Bühne) et omni stadio gratiora.“ — *Per fidem*: so steht's geschrieben. [16] Kommen wir zum Schluss. Die beiden *entgegengesetzten* Werthe „gut und schlecht“, „gut und böse“ haben einen furchtbaren, Jahrtausende langen Kampf auf Erden gekämpft; und so gewiss auch der zweite Werth seit langem im Übergewichte ist, so fehlt es doch auch jetzt noch nicht an Stellen, wo der Kampf unentschieden fortgekämpft wird. Man könnte selbst sagen, dass er inzwischen immer höher hinauf getragen und eben damit immer tiefer, immer geistiger geworden sei: so dass es heute vielleicht kein entscheidenderes Abzeichen der „*höheren Natur*“, der geistigeren Natur giebt, als zwiespältig in jenem Sinne und wirklich noch ein Kampfplatz für jene Gegensätze zu sein. Das Symbol dieses Kampfes, in einer Schrift geschrieben, die über alle Menschengeschichte hinweg bisher lesbar blieb, heisst „Rom gegen Judäa, Judäa gegen Rom“: — es gab bisher kein grösseres Ereigniss als *diesen* Kampf, *diese* Fragestellung, *diesen* todfeindlichen Widerspruch. Rom empfand im Juden Etwas wie die Widernatur selbst, gleichsam sein antipodisches Monstrum; in Rom galt der Jude „des Hasses gegen das ganze Menschengeschlecht *überführt*“: mit Recht, sofern man ein Recht hat, das Heil und die Zukunft des Menschengeschlechts an die unbedingte Herrschaft der aristokratischen Werthe, der römischen Werthe anzuknüpfen. Was dagegen die Juden gegen Rom empfunden haben? Man erräth es aus tausend Anzeichen; aber es genügt, sich einmal wieder die Johanneische Apokalypse zu Gemüthe zu führen, jenen wüstesten aller geschriebenen Ausbrüche, welche die Rache auf dem Gewissen hat. (Unterschätze man übrigens die tiefe Folgerichtigkeit des christlichen Instinktes nicht, als er gerade dieses Buch des Hasses mit dem Namen des Jüngers der Liebe überschrieb, desselben, dem er jenes verliebt-schwärmerische Evangelium zu eigen gab —: darin steckt ein Stück Wahrheit, wie viel litterarische Falschmünzerei auch zu diesem Zwecke nöthig gewesen sein mag.) Die Römer waren ja die Starken und Vornehmen, wie sie stärker und vornehmer bisher auf Erden nie dagewesen, selbst niemals geträumt worden sind; jeder Überrest von ihnen, jede Inschrift entzückt, gesetzt, dass man erräth, *was* da schreibt. Die Juden umgekehrt waren jenes priesterliche Volk des Ressentiment par excellence, dem eine volksthümlich-moralische Genialität sonder Gleichen innewohnte: man vergleiche nur die verwandt-begabten Völker, etwa die Chinesen oder die Deutschen, mit den Juden, um nachzufühlen, was ersten und was fünften Ranges ist. Wer von ihnen einstweilen *gesiegt* hat, Rom oder Judäa? Aber es ist ja gar kein Zweifel: man erwäge doch, vor wem man sich heute in Rom selber als vor dem Inbegriff aller höchsten Werthe beugt — und nicht nur in Rom, sondern fast auf der halben Erde, überall wo nur der Mensch zahm geworden ist oder zahm werden will, — vor *drei Juden*, wie man weiss, und *Einer Jüdin* (vor Jesus von Nazareth, dem Fischer Petrus, dem Teppichwirker Paulus und der Mutter des anfangs genannten Jesus, genannt Maria). Dies ist sehr merkwürdig: Rom ist ohne allen Zweifel unterlegen. Allerdings gab es in der Renaissance ein glanzvoll-unheimliches Wiederaufwachen des klassischen Ideals, der vornehmen Werthungsweise aller Dinge: Rom selber bewegte sich wie ein aufgeweckter Scheintodter unter dem Druck des neuen, darüber gebauten judaisirten Rom, das den Aspekt einer ökumenischen Synagoge darbot und „Kirche“ hiess: aber sofort triumphirte wieder Judäa, Dank jener gründlich pöbelhaften (deutschen und englischen) Ressentiments-Bewegung, welche man die Reformation nennt, hinzugerechnet, was aus ihr folgen musste, die Wiederherstellung der Kirche, — die Wiederherstellung auch der alten Grabesruhe des klassischen Rom. In einem sogar entscheidenderen und tieferen Sinne als damals kam Judäa noch einmal mit der französischen Revolution zum Siege über das klassische Ideal: die letzte politische Vornehmheit, die es in Europa gab, die des siebzehnten und achtzehnten *französischen* Jahrhunderts brach unter den volksthümlichen Ressentiments-Instinkten zusammen, — es wurde niemals auf Erden ein grösserer Jubel, eine lärmendere Begeisterung gehört! Zwar geschah mitten darin das Ungeheuerste, das Unerwartetste: das antike Ideal selbst trat *leibhaft* und mit unerhörter Pracht vor Auge und Gewissen der Menschheit, — und noch einmal, stärker, einfacher, eindringlicher als je, erscholl, gegenüber der alten Lügen-Losung des Ressentiment vom *Vorrecht der Meisten*, gegenüber dem Willen zur Niederung, zur Erniedrigung, zur Ausgleichung, zum Abwärts und Abendwärts des Menschen die furchtbare und entzückende Gegenlosung vom *Vorrecht der Wenigsten*! Wie ein letzter Fingerzeig zum *andren* Wege erschien Napoleon, jener einzelnste und spätestgeborne Mensch, den es jemals gab, und in ihm das fleischgewordne Problem des *vornehmen Ideals an sich* — man überlege wohl, was es für ein Problem ist: Napoleon, diese Synthesis von *Unmensch* und *Übermensch* … [17] — War es damit vorbei? Wurde jener grösste aller Ideal-Gegensätze damit für alle Zeiten ad acta gelegt? Oder nur vertagt, auf lange vertagt? … Sollte es nicht irgendwann einmal ein noch viel furchtbareres, viel länger vorbereitetes Auflodern des alten Brandes geben müssen? Mehr noch: wäre nicht gerade das aus allen Kräften zu wünschen? selbst zu wollen? selbst zu fördern? … Wer an dieser Stelle anfängt, gleich meinen Lesern, nachzudenken, weiter zu denken, der wird schwerlich bald damit zu Ende kommen, — Grund genug für mich, selbst zu Ende zu kommen, vorausgesetzt, dass es längst zur Genüge klar geworden ist, was ich *will*, was ich gerade mit jener gefährlichen Losung will, welche meinem letzten Buche auf den Leib geschrieben ist: „*Jenseits von Gut und Böse*“ … Dies heisst zum Mindesten *nicht* „Jenseits von Gut und Schlecht.“ — — *Anmerkung.* Ich nehme die Gelegenheit wahr, welche diese Abhandlung mir giebt, um einen Wunsch öffentlich und förmlich auszudrücken, der von mir bisher nur in gelegentlichem Gespräche mit Gelehrten geäussert worden ist: dass nämlich irgend eine philosophische Fakultät sich durch eine Reihe akademischer Preisausschreiben um die Förderung *moralhistorischer* Studien verdient machen möge: — vielleicht dient dies Buch dazu, einen kräftigen Anstoss gerade in solcher Richtung zu geben. In Hinsicht auf eine Möglichkeit dieser Art sei die nachstehende Frage in Vorschlag gebracht: sie verdient ebenso sehr die Aufmerksamkeit der Philologen und Historiker als die der eigentlichen Philosophie-Gelehrten von Beruf. „*Welche Fingerzeige giebt die Sprachwissenschaft, insbesondere die etymologische Forschung, für die Entwicklungsgeschichte der moralischen Begriffe ab?*“ — Andrerseits ist es freilich ebenso nöthig, die Theilnahme der Physiologen und Mediciner für diese Probleme (vom *Werthe* der bisherigen Werthschätzungen) zu gewinnen: wobei es den Fach-Philosophen überlassen sein mag, auch in diesem einzelnen Falle die Fürsprecher und Vermittler zu machen, nachdem es ihnen im Ganzen gelungen ist, das ursprünglich so spröde, so misstrauische Verhältniss zwischen Philosophie, Physiologie und Medicin in den freundschaftlichsten und fruchtbringendsten Austausch umzugestalten. In der That bedürfen alle Gütertafeln, alle „du sollst“, von denen die Geschichte oder die ethnologische Forschung weiss, zunächst der *physiologischen* Beleuchtung und Ausdeutung, eher jedenfalls noch als der psychologischen; alle insgleichen warten auf eine Kritik von seiten der medicinischen Wissenschaft. Die Frage: was ist diese oder jene Gütertafel und „Moral“ *werth?* will unter die verschiedensten Perspektiven gestellt sein; man kann namentlich das „werth *wozu?*“ nicht fein genug aus einander legen. Etwas zum Beispiel, das ersichtlich Werth hätte in Hinsicht auf möglichste Dauerfähigkeit einer Rasse (oder auf Steigerung ihrer Anpassungskräfte an ein bestimmtes Klima oder auf Erhaltung der grössten Zahl) hätte durchaus nicht den gleichen Werth, wenn es sich etwa darum handelte, einen stärkeren Typus herauszubilden. Das Wohl der Meisten und das Wohl der Wenigsten sind entgegengesetzte Werth-Gesichtspunkte: *an sich* schon den ersteren für den höherwerthigen zu halten wollen wir der Naivetät englischer Biologen überlassen … *Alle* Wissenschaften haben nunmehr der Zukunfts-Aufgabe des Philosophen vorzuarbeiten: diese Aufgabe dahin verstanden, dass der Philosoph das *Problem vom Werthe* zu lösen hat, dass er die *Rangordnung der Werthe* zu bestimmen hat. — ### Essay II Zweite Abhandlung: *Schuld, schlechtes Gewissen* und Verwandtes. [1] Ein Thier heranzüchten, das *versprechen darf* — ist das nicht gerade jene paradoxe Aufgabe selbst, welche sich die Natur in Hinsicht auf den Menschen gestellt hat? ist es nicht das eigentliche Problem vom Menschen?... Dass dies Problem bis zu einem hohen Grad gelöst ist, muss Dem um so erstaunlicher erscheinen, der die entgegen wirkende Kraft, die der *Vergesslichkeit*, vollauf zu würdigen weiss. Vergesslichkeit ist keine blosse vis inertiae, wie die Oberflächlichen glauben, sie ist vielmehr ein aktives, im strengsten Sinne positives Hemmungsvermögen, dem es zuzuschreiben ist, dass was nur von uns erlebt, erfahren, in uns hineingenommen wird, uns im Zustande der Verdauung (man dürfte ihn „Einverseelung“ nennen) ebenso wenig in's Bewusstsein tritt, als der ganze tausendfältige Prozess, mit dem sich unsre leibliche Ernährung, die sogenannte „Einverleibung“ abspielt. Die Thüren und Fenster des Bewusstseins zeitweilig schliessen; von dem Lärm und Kampf, mit dem unsre Unterwelt von dienstbaren Organen für und gegen einander arbeitet, unbehelligt bleiben; ein wenig Stille, ein wenig tabula rasa des Bewusstseins, damit wieder Platz wird für Neues, vor Allem für die vornehmeren Funktionen und Funktionäre, für Regieren, Voraussehn, Vorausbestimmen (denn unser Organismus ist oligarchisch eingerichtet) — das ist der Nutzen der, wie gesagt, aktiven Vergesslichkeit, einer Thürwärterin gleichsam, einer Aufrechterhalterin der seelischen Ordnung, der Ruhe, der Etiquette: womit sofort abzusehn ist, inwiefern es kein Glück, keine Heiterkeit, keine Hoffnung, keinen Stolz, keine *Gegenwart* geben könnte ohne Vergesslichkeit. Der Mensch, in dem dieser Hemmungsapparat beschädigt wird und aussetzt, ist einem Dyspeptiker zu vergleichen (und nicht nur zu vergleichen — ) er wird mit Nichts „fertig“... Eben dieses nothwendig vergessliche Thier, an dem das Vergessen eine Kraft, eine Form der *starken* Gesundheit darstellt, hat sich nun ein Gegenvermögen angezüchtet, ein Gedächtniss, mit Hülfe dessen für gewisse Fälle die Vergesslichkeit ausgehängt wird, — für die Fälle nämlich, dass versprochen werden soll: somit keineswegs bloss ein passivisches Nicht-wieder-los-werden-können des einmal eingeritzten Eindrucks, nicht bloss die Indigestion an einem ein Mal verpfändeten Wort, mit dem man nicht wieder fertig wird, sondern ein aktives Nicht-wieder-los-werden-wollen, ein Fort- und Fortwollen des ein Mal Gewollten, ein eigentliches *Gedächtniss des Willens*: so dass zwischen das ursprüngliche „ich will“ „ich werde thun“ und die eigentliche Entladung des Willens, seinen *Akt*, unbedenklich eine Welt von neuen fremden Dingen, Umständen, selbst Willensakten dazwischengelegt werden darf, ohne dass diese lange Kette des Willens springt. Was setzt das aber Alles voraus! Wie muss der Mensch, um dermaassen über die Zukunft voraus zu verfügen, erst gelernt haben das nothwendige vom zufälligen Geschehen scheiden, causal denken, das Ferne wie gegenwärtig sehn und vorwegnehmen, was Zweck ist, was Mittel dazu ist, mit Sicherheit ansetzen, überhaupt rechnen, berechnen können, — wie muss dazu der Mensch selbst vorerst *berechenbar, regelmässig, nothwendig* geworden sein, auch sich selbst für seine eigne Vorstellung, um endlich dergestalt, wie es ein Versprechender thut, für sich als *Zukunft* gut sagen zu können! [2] Eben das ist die lange Geschichte von der Herkunft der *Verantwortlichkeit*. Jene Aufgabe, ein Thier heranzuzüchten, das versprechen darf, schliesst, wie wir bereits begriffen haben, als Bedingung und Vorbereitung die nähere Aufgabe in sich, den Menschen zuerst bis zu einem gewissen Grade nothwendig, einförmig, gleich unter Gleichen, regelmässig und folglich berechenbar zu *machen*. Die ungeheure Arbeit dessen, was von mir „Sittlichkeit der Sitte“ genannt worden ist (vergl. Morgenröthe S. 7. 13. 16) — die eigentliche Arbeit des Menschen an sich selber in der längsten Zeitdauer des Menschengeschlechts, seine ganze *vorhistorische* Arbeit hat hierin ihren Sinn, ihre grosse Rechtfertigung, wie viel ihr auch von Härte, Tyrannei, Stumpfsinn und Idiotismus innewohnt: der Mensch wurde mit Hülfe der Sittlichkeit der Sitte und der socialen Zwangsjacke wirklich berechenbar *gemacht*. Stellen wir uns dagegen an's Ende des ungeheuren Prozesses, dorthin, wo der Baum endlich seine Früchte zeitigt, wo die Societät und ihre Sittlichkeit der Sitte endlich zu Tage bringt, *wozu* sie nur das Mittel war: so finden wir als reifste Frucht an ihrem Baum das *souveraine Individuum*, das nur sich selbst gleiche, das von der Sittlichkeit der Sitte wieder losgekommene, das autonome übersittliche Individuum (denn „autonom“ und „sittlich“ schliesst sich aus), kurz den Menschen des eignen unabhängigen langen Willens, der *versprechen darf* — und in ihm ein stolzes, in allen Muskeln zuckendes Bewusstsein davon, was da endlich errungen und in ihm leibhaft geworden ist, ein eigentliches Macht- und Freiheits-Bewusstsein, ein Vollendungs-Gefühl des Menschen überhaupt. Dieser Freigewordne, der wirklich versprechen *darf*, dieser Herr des *freien* Willens, dieser Souverain — wie sollte er es nicht wissen, welche Überlegenheit er damit vor Allem voraus hat, was nicht versprechen und für sich selbst gut sagen darf, wie viel Vertrauen, wie viel Furcht, wie viel Ehrfurcht er erweckt — er „*verdient*“ alles Dreies — und wie ihm, mit dieser Herrschaft über sich, auch die Herrschaft über die Umstände, über die Natur und alle willenskürzeren und unzuverlässigeren Creaturen nothwendig in die Hand gegeben ist? Der „freie“ Mensch, der Inhaber eines langen unzerbrechlichen Willens, hat in diesem Besitz auch sein *Werthmaass*: von sich aus nach den Andern hinblickend, ehrt er oder verachtet er; und eben so nothwendig als er die ihm Gleichen, die Starken und Zuverlässigen (die welche versprechen *dürfen*) ehrt, — also Jedermann, der wie ein Souverain verspricht, schwer, selten, langsam, der mit seinem Vertrauen geizt, der *auszeichnet*, wenn er vertraut, der sein Wort giebt als Etwas, auf das Verlass ist, weil er sich stark genug weiss, es selbst gegen Unfälle, selbst „gegen das Schicksal“ aufrecht zu halten —: eben so nothwendig wird er seinen Fusstritt für die schmächtigen Windhunde bereit halten, welche versprechen, ohne es zu dürfen, und seine Zuchtruthe für den Lügner, der sein Wort bricht, im Augenblick schon, wo er es im Munde hat. Das stolze Wissen um das ausserordentliche Privilegium der *Verantwortlichkeit*, das Bewusstsein dieser seltenen Freiheit, dieser Macht über sich und das Geschick hat sich bei ihm bis in seine unterste Tiefe hinabgesenkt und ist zum Instinkt geworden, zum dominirenden Instinkt: — wie wird er ihn heissen, diesen dominirenden Instinkt, gesetzt, dass er ein Wort dafür bei sich nöthig hat? Aber es ist kein Zweifel: dieser souveraine Mensch heisst ihn sein *Gewissen*... [3] Sein Gewissen?... Es lässt sich voraus errathen, dass der Begriff „Gewissen“, dem wir hier in seiner höchsten, fast befremdlichen Ausgestaltung begegnen, bereits eine lange Geschichte und Form-Verwandlung hinter sich hat. Für sich gut sagen dürfen und mit Stolz, also auch zu sich *Ja sagen dürfen* — das ist, wie gesagt, eine reife Frucht, aber auch eine *späte* Frucht: — wie lange musste diese Frucht herb und sauer am Baume hängen! Und eine noch viel längere Zeit war von einer solchen Frucht gar nichts zu sehn, — Niemand hätte sie versprechen dürfen, so gewiss auch Alles am Baume vorbereitet und gerade auf sie hin im Wachsen war! — „Wie macht man dem Menschen-Thiere ein Gedächtniss? Wie prägt man diesem theils stumpfen, theils faseligen Augenblicks-Verstände, dieser leibhaften Vergesslichkeit Etwas so ein, dass es gegenwärtig bleibt?“... Dies uralte Problem ist, wie man denken kann, nicht gerade mit zarten Antworten und Mitteln gelöst worden; vielleicht ist sogar nichts furchtbarer und unheimlicher an der ganzen Vorgeschichte des Menschen, als seine *Mnemotechnik*. „Man brennt Etwas ein, damit es im Gedächtniss bleibt: nur was nicht aufhört, *weh zu thun*, bleibt im Gedächtniss“ — das ist ein Hauptsatz aus der allerältesten (leider auch allerlängsten) Psychologie auf Erden. Man möchte selbst sagen, dass es überall, wo es jetzt noch auf Erden Feierlichkeit, Ernst, Geheimniss, düstere Farben im Leben von Mensch und Volk giebt, Etwas von der Schrecklichkeit *nachwirkt*, mit der ehemals überall auf Erden versprochen, verpfändet, gelobt worden ist: die Vergangenheit, die längste tiefste härteste Vergangenheit, haucht uns an und quillt in uns herauf, wenn wir „ernst“ werden. Es gieng niemals ohne Blut, Martern, Opfer ab, wenn der Mensch es nöthig hielt, sich ein Gedächtniss zu machen; die schauerlichsten Opfer und Pfänder (wohin die Erstlingsopfer gehören), die widerlichsten Verstümmelungen (zum Beispiel die Castrationen), die grausamsten Ritualformen aller religiösen Culte (und alle Religionen sind auf dem untersten Grunde Systeme von Grausamkeiten) — alles Das hat in jenem Instinkte seinen Ursprung, welcher im Schmerz das mächtigste Hülfsmittel der Mnemonik errieth. In einem gewissen Sinne gehört die ganze Asketik hierher: ein paar Ideen sollen unauslöschlich, allgegenwärtig, unvergessbar, „fix“ gemacht werden, zum Zweck der Hypnotisirung des ganzen nervösen und intellektuellen Systems durch diese „fixen Ideen“ — und die asketischen Prozeduren und Lebensformen sind Mittel dazu, um jene Ideen aus der Concurrenz mit allen übrigen Ideen zu lösen, um sie „unvergesslich“ zu machen. Je schlechter die Menschheit „bei Gedächtniss“ war, um so furchtbarer ist immer der Aspekt ihrer Bräuche; die Härte der Strafgesetze giebt in Sonderheit einen Maassstab dafür ab, wie viel Mühe sie hatte, gegen die Vergesslichkeit zum Sieg zu kommen und ein paar primitive Erfordernisse des socialen Zusammenlebens diesen Augenblicks-Sklaven des Affekts und der Begierde *gegenwärtig* zu erhalten. Wir Deutschen betrachten uns gewiss nicht als ein besonders grausames und hartherziges Volk, noch weniger als besonders leichtfertig und in-den-Tag-hineinleberisch; aber man sehe nur unsere alten Strafordnungen an, um dahinter zu kommen, was es auf Erden für Mühe hat, ein „Volk von Denkern“ heranzuzüchten (will sagen: das Volk Europa's, unter dem auch heute noch das Maximum von Zutrauen, Ernst, Geschmacklosigkeit und Sachlichkeit zu finden ist und das mit diesen Eigenschaften ein Anrecht darauf hat, alle Art von Mandarinen Europa's heran zu züchten). Diese Deutschen haben sich mit furchtbaren Mitteln ein Gedächtniss gemacht, um über ihre pöbelhaften Grund-Instinkte und deren brutale Plumpheit Herr zu werden: man denke an die alten deutschen Strafen, zum Beispiel an das Steinigen ( — schon die Sage lässt den Mühlstein auf das Haupt des Schuldigen fallen), das Rädern (die eigenste Erfindung und Spezialität des deutschen Genius im Reich der Strafe!), das Werfen mit dem Pfahle, das Zerreissen- oder Zertretenlassen durch Pferde (das „Viertheilen“), das Sieden des Verbrechers in Öl oder Wein (noch im vierzehnten und fünfzehnten Jahrhundert), das beliebte Schinden („Riemenschneiden“), das Herausschneiden des Fleisches aus der Brust; auch wohl dass man den Übelthäter mit Honig bestrich und bei brennender Sonne den Fliegen überliess. Mit Hülfe solcher Bilder und Vorgänge behält man endlich fünf, sechs „ich will nicht“ im Gedächtnisse, in Bezug auf welche man sein *Versprechen* gegeben hat, um unter den Vortheilen der Societät zu leben, — und wirklich! mit Hülfe dieser Art von Gedächtniss kam man endlich „zur Vernunft“! — Ah, die Vernunft, der Ernst, die Herrschaft über die Affekte, diese ganze düstere Sache, welche Nachdenken heisst, alle diese Vorrechte und Prunkstücke des Menschen: wie theuer haben sie sich bezahlt gemacht! wie viel Blut und Grausen ist auf dem Grunde aller „guten Dinge“!... [4] Aber wie ist denn jene andre „düstre Sache“, das Bewusstsein der Schuld, das ganze „schlechte Gewissen“ auf die Welt gekommen? — Und hiermit kehren wir zu unsern Genealogen der Moral zurück. Nochmals gesagt — oder habe ichs noch gar nicht gesagt? — sie taugen nichts. Eine fünf Spannen lange eigne, bloss „moderne“ Erfahrung; kein Wissen, kein Wille zum Wissen des Vergangenen; noch weniger ein historischer Instinkt, ein hier gerade nöthiges „zweites Gesicht“ — und dennoch Geschichte der Moral treiben: das muss billigerweise mit Ergebnissen enden, die zur Wahrheit in einem nicht bloss spröden Verhältnisse stehn. Haben sich diese bisherigen Genealogen der Moral auch nur von Ferne Etwas davon träumen lassen, dass zum Beispiel jener moralische Hauptbegriff „Schuld“ seine Herkunft aus dem sehr materiellen Begriff „Schulden“ genommen hat? Oder dass die Strafe als eine *Vergeltung* sich vollkommen abseits von jeder Voraussetzung über Freiheit oder Unfreiheit des Willens entwickelt hat? — und dies bis zu dem Grade, dass es vielmehr immer erst einer *hohen* Stufe der Vermenschlichung bedarf, damit das Thier „Mensch“ anfängt, jene viel primitiveren Unterscheidungen „absichtlich“ „fahrlässig“ „zufällig“ „zurechnungsfähig“ und deren Gegensätze zu machen und bei der Zumessung der Strafe in Anschlag zu bringen. Jener jetzt so wohlfeile und scheinbar so natürliche, so unvermeidliche Gedanke, der wohl gar zur Erklärung, wie überhaupt das Gerechtigkeitsgefühl auf Erden zu Stande gekommen ist, hat herhalten müssen, „der Verbrecher verdient Strafe, *weil* er hätte anders handeln können“ ist thatsächlich eine überaus spät erreichte, ja raffinirte Form des menschlichen Urtheilens und Schliessens; wer sie in die Anfänge verlegt, vergreift sich mit groben Fingern an der Psychologie der älteren Menschheit. Es ist die längste Zeit der menschlichen Geschichte hindurch durchaus *nicht* gestraft worden, *weil* man den Übelanstifter für seine That verantwortlich machte, also *nicht* unter der Voraussetzung, dass nur der Schuldige zu strafen sei: — vielmehr, so wie jetzt noch Eltern ihre Kinder strafen, aus Zorn über einen erlittenen Schaden, der sich am Schädiger auslässt, — dieser Zorn aber in Schranken gehalten und modifizirt durch die Idee, dass jeder Schaden irgend worin sein *Äquivalent* habe und wirklich abgezahlt werden könne, sei es selbst durch einen *Schmerz* des Schädigers. Woher diese uralte, tiefgewurzelte, vielleicht jetzt nicht mehr ausrottbare Idee ihre Macht genommen hat, die Idee einer Äquivalenz von Schaden und Schmerz? Ich habe es bereits verrathen: in dem Vertragsverhältniss zwischen *Gläubiger* und *Schuldner*, das so alt ist als es überhaupt „Rechtssubjekte“ giebt und seinerseits wieder auf die Grundformen von Kauf, Verkauf, Tausch, Handel und Wandel zurückweist. [5] Die Vergegenwärtigung dieser Vertragsverhältnisse weckt allerdings, wie es nach dem Voraus-Bemerkten von vornherein zu erwarten steht, gegen die ältere Menschheit, die sie schuf oder gestattete, mancherlei Verdacht und Widerstand. Hier gerade wird *versprochen*; hier gerade handelt es sich darum, Dem, der verspricht, ein Gedächtniss zu *machen*; hier gerade, so darf man argwöhnen, wird eine Fundstätte für Hartes, Grausames, Peinliches sein. Der Schuldner, um Vertrauen für sein Versprechen der Zurückbezahlung einzuflössen, um eine Bürgschaft für den Ernst und die Heiligkeit seines Versprechens zu geben, um bei sich selbst die Zurückbezahlung als Pflicht, Verpflichtung seinem Gewissen einzuschärfen, verpfändet Kraft eines Vertrags dem Gläubiger für den Fall, dass er nicht zahlt, Etwas, das er sonst noch „besitzt“, über das er sonst noch Gewalt hat, zum Beispiel seinen Leib oder sein Weib oder seine Freiheit oder auch sein Leben (oder, unter bestimmten religiösen Voraussetzungen, selbst seine Seligkeit, sein Seelen-Heil, zuletzt gar den Frieden im Grabe: so in Ägypten, wo der Leichnam des Schuldners auch im Grabe vor dem Gläubiger keine Ruhe fand, — es hatte allerdings gerade bei den Ägyptern auch etwas auf sich mit dieser Ruhe). Namentlich aber konnte der Gläubiger dem Leibe des Schuldners alle Arten Schmach und Folter anthun, zum Beispiel so viel davon herunterschneiden als der Grösse der Schuld angemessen schien: — und es gab frühzeitig und überall von diesem Gesichtspunkte aus genaue, zum Theil entsetzlich in's Kleine und Kleinste gehende Abschätzungen, zu *Recht* bestehende Abschätzungen der einzelnen Glieder und Körperstellen. Ich nehme es bereits als Fortschritt, als Beweis freierer, grösser rechnender, *römischerer* Rechtsauffassung, wenn die Zwölftafel-Gesetzgebung Rom's dekretierte, es sei gleichgültig, wie viel oder wie wenig die Gläubiger in einem solchen Falle herunterschnitten „si plus minusve secuerunt, se fraude esto“. Machen wir uns die Logik dieser ganzen Ausgleichungsform klar: sie ist fremdartig genug. Die Äquivalenz ist damit gegeben, dass an Stelle eines gegen den Schaden direkt aufkommenden Vortheils (also an Stelle eines Ausgleichs in Geld, Land, Besitz irgend welcher Art) dem Gläubiger eine Art *Wohlgefühl* als Rückzahlung und Ausgleich zugestanden wird, — das Wohlgefühl, seine Macht an einem Machtlosen unbedenklich auslassen zu dürfen, die Wollust „de fair le mal pour le plaisir de le faire“, der Genuss in der Vergewaltigung: als welcher Genuss um so höher geschätzt wird, je tiefer und niedriger der Gläubiger in der Ordnung der Gesellschaft steht und leicht ihm als köstlichster Bissen, ja als Vorgeschmack eines höheren Rangs erscheinen kann. Vermittelst der „Strafe“ am Schuldner nimmt der Gläubiger an einem *Herren-Rechte* theil: endlich kommt auch er ein Mal zu dem erhebenden Gefühle, ein Wesen als ein „Untersich“ verachten und misshandeln zu dürfen — oder wenigstens, im Falle die eigentliche Strafgewalt, den Strafvollzug schon an die „Obrigkeit“ übergegangen ist, es verachtet und misshandelt zu *sehen*. Der Ausgleich besteht also in einem Anweis und Anrecht auf Grausamkeit. — [6] In *dieser* Sphäre, im Obligationen-Rechte also, hat die moralische Begriffswelt „Schuld“, „Gewissen“, „Pflicht“, „Heiligkeit der Pflicht“ ihren Entstehungsheerd, — ihr Anfang ist, wie der Anfang alles Grossen auf Erden, gründlich und lange mit Blut begossen worden. Und dürfte man nicht hinzufügen, dass jene Welt im Grunde einen gewissen Geruch von Blut und Folter niemals wieder ganz eingebüsst habe? (selbst beim alten Kant nicht: der kategorische Imperativ riecht nach Grausamkeit...) Hier ebenfalls ist jene unheimliche und vielleicht unlösbar gewordne Ideen-Verhäkelung „Schuld und Leid“ zuerst eingehäkelt worden. Nochmals gefragt: inwiefern kann Leiden eine Ausgleichung von „Schulden“ sein? Insofern Leiden-*machen* im höchsten Grade wohl that, insofern der Geschädigte für den Nachtheil, hinzugerechnet die Unlust über den Nachtheil, einen ausserordentlichen Gegen-Genuss eintauschte: das Leiden-*machen*, — ein eigentliches *Fest*, Etwas, das, wie gesagt, um so höher im Preise stand, je mehr es dem Range und der gesellschaftlichen Stellung des Gläubigers widersprach. Dies vermuthungsweise gesprochen: denn solchen unterirdischen Dingen ist schwer auf den Grund zu sehn, abgesehn davon, dass es peinlich ist; und wer hier den Begriff der „Rache“ plump dazwischen wirft, hat sich den Einblick eher noch verdeckt und verdunkelt, als leichter gemacht ( — Rache selbst führt ja eben auf das gleiche Problem zurück: „wie kann Leiden-machen eine Genugthuung sein?“) Es widersteht, wie mir scheint, der Delikatesse, noch mehr der Tartüfferie zahmer Hausthiere (will sagen moderner Menschen, will sagen uns), es sich in aller Kraft vorstellig zu machen, bis zu welchem Grade die *Grausamkeit* die grosse Festfreude der älteren Menschheit ausmacht, ja als Ingredienz fast jeder ihrer Freuden zugemischt ist; wie naiv andrerseits, wie unschuldig ihr Bedürfniss nach Grausamkeit auftritt, wie grundsätzlich gerade die „uninteressirte Bosheit“ (oder, mit Spinoza zu reden, die sympathia malevolens) von ihr als *normale* Eigenschaft des Menschen angesetzt wird —: somit als Etwas, zu dem das Gewissen herzhaft *Ja* sagt! Für ein tieferes Auge wäre vielleicht auch jetzt noch genug von dieser ältesten und gründlichsten Festfreude des Menschen wahrzunehmen; in „Jenseits von Gut und Böse“ S. 117 ff. (früher schon in der „Morgenröthe“ S. 17. 68. 102) habe ich mit vorsichtigem Finger auf die immer wachsende Vergeistigung und „Vergöttlichung“ der Grausamkeit hingezeigt, welche sich durch die ganze Geschichte der höheren Cultur hindurchzieht (und, in einem bedeutenden Sinne genommen, sie sogar ausmacht). Jedenfalls ist es noch nicht zu lange her, dass man sich fürstliche Hochzeiten und Volksfeste grössten Stils ohne Hinrichtungen, Folterungen oder etwa ein Autodafé nicht zu denken wusste, insgleichen keinen vornehmen Haushalt ohne Wesen, an denen man unbedenklich seine Bosheit und grausame Neckerei auslassen konnte ( — man erinnere sich etwa Don Quixote's am Hofe der Herzogin: wir lesen heute den ganzen Don Quixote mit einem bittren Geschmack auf der Zunge, fast mit einer Tortur und würden damit seinem Urheber und dessen Zeitgenossen sehr fremd, sehr dunkel sein, — sie lasen ihn mit allerbestem Gewissen als das heiterste der Bücher, sie lachten sich an ihm fast zu Tod). Leiden-sehn thut wohl, Leiden-machen noch wohler — das ist ein harter Satz, aber ein alter mächtiger menschlich-allzumenschlicher Hauptsatz, den übrigens vielleicht auch schon die Affen unterschreiben würden: denn man erzählt, dass sie im Ausdenken von bizarren Grausamkeiten den Menschen bereits reichlich ankündigen und gleichsam „vorspielen“. Ohne Grausamkeit kein Fest: so lehrt es die älteste, längste Geschichte des Menschen — und auch an der Strafe ist so viel *Festliches*! — [7] — Mit diesen Gedanken, nebenbei gesagt, bin ich durchaus nicht Willens, unsren Pessimisten zu neuem Wasser auf ihre misstönigen und knarrenden Mühlen des Lebensüberdrusses zu verhelfen; im Gegentheil soll ausdrücklich bezeugt sein, dass damals, als die Menschheit sich ihrer Grausamkeit noch nicht schämte, das Leben heiterer auf Erden war als jetzt, wo es Pessimisten giebt. Die Verdüsterung des Himmels über dem Menschen hat immer im Verhältniss dazu überhand genommen, als die Scham des Menschen *vor dem Menschen* gewachsen ist. Der müde pessimistische Blick, das Misstrauen zum Räthsel des Lebens, das eisige Nein des Ekels am Leben — das sind nicht die Abzeichen der *bösesten* Zeitalter des Menschengeschlechts: sie treten vielmehr erst an das Tageslicht, als die Sumpfpflanzen, die sie sind, wenn der Sumpf da ist, zu dem sie gehören, — ich meine die krankhafte Verzärtlichung und Vermoralisirung, vermöge deren das Gethier „Mensch“ sich schliesslich aller seiner Instinkte schämen lernt. Auf dem Wege zum „Engel“ (um hier nicht ein härteres Wort zu gebrauchen) hat sich der Mensch jenen verdorbenen Magen und jene belegte Zunge angezüchtet, durch die ihm nicht nur die Freude und Unschuld des Thiers widerlich, sondern das Leben selbst unschmackhaft geworden ist: — so dass er mitunter vor sich selbst mit zugehaltener Nase dasteht und mit Papst Innocenz dem Dritten missbilligend den Katalog seiner Widerwärtigkeiten macht („unreine Erzeugung, ekelhafte Ernährung im Mutterleibe, Schlechtigkeit des Stoffs, aus dem der Mensch sich entwickelt, scheusslicher Gestank, Absonderung von Speichel, Urin und Koth“). Jetzt, wo das Leiden immer als erstes unter den Argumenten *gegen* das Dasein aufmarschieren muss, als dessen schlimmstes Fragezeichen, thut man gut, sich der Zeiten zu erinnern, wo man umgekehrt urtheilte, weil man das Leiden-*machen* nicht entbehren mochte und in ihm einen Zauber ersten Rangs, einen eigentlichen Verführungs-Köder *zum* Leben sah. Vielleicht that damals — den Zärtlingen zum Trost gesagt — der Schmerz noch nicht so weh wie heute; wenigstens wird ein Arzt so schliessen dürfen, der Neger (diese als Repräsentanten des vorgeschichtlichen Menschen genommen — ) bei schweren inneren Entzündungsfällen behandelt hat, welche auch den bestorganisirten Europäer fast zur Verzweiflung bringen; — bei Negern thun sie dies *nicht*. (Die Curve der menschlichen Schmerzfähigkeit scheint in der That ausserordentlich und fast plötzlich zu sinken, sobald man erst die oberen Zehn-Tausend oder Zehn-Millionen der Übercultur hinter sich hat; und ich für meine Person zweifle nicht, dass, gegen Eine schmerzhafte Nacht eines einzigen hysterischen Bildungs-Weibchens gehalten, die Leiden aller Thiere insgesammt, welche bis jetzt zum Zweck wissenschaftlicher Antworten mit dem Messer befragt worden sind, einfach nicht in Betracht kommen.) Vielleicht ist es sogar erlaubt, die Möglichkeit zuzulassen, dass auch jene Lust an der Grausamkeit eigentlich nicht ausgestorben zu sein brauchte: nur bedürfte sie, im Verhältniss dazu, wie heute der Schmerz mehr weh thut, einer gewissen Sublimirung und Subtilisirung, sie müsste namentlich in's Imaginative und Seelische übersetzt auftreten und geschmückt mit lauter so unbedenklichen Namen, dass von ihnen her auch dem zartesten hypokritischen Gewissen kein Verdacht kommt (das „tragische Mitleiden“ ist ein solcher Name; ein andrer ist „les nostalgies de la croix“). Was eigentlich gegen das Leiden empört, ist nicht das Leiden an sich, sondern das Sinnlose des Leidens: aber weder für den Christen, der in das Leiden eine ganze geheime Heils-Maschinerie hineininterpretirt hat, noch für den naiven Menschen älterer Zeiten, der alles Leiden sich in Hinsicht auf Zuschauer oder auf Leiden-Macher auszulegen verstand, gab es überhaupt ein solches *sinnloses* Leiden. Damit das verborgne, unentdeckte, zeugenlose Leiden aus der Welt geschafft und ehrlich negirt werden konnte, war man damals beinahe dazu genöthigt, Götter zu erfinden und Zwischenwesen aller Höhe und Tiefe, kurz Etwas, das auch im Verborgnen schweift, das auch im Dunklen sieht und das sich nicht leicht ein interessantes schmerzhaftes Schauspiel entgehen lässt. Mit Hülfe solcher Erfindungen nämlich verstand sich damals das Leben auf das Kunststück, auf das es sich immer verstanden hat, sich selbst zu rechtfertigen, sein „Übel“ zu rechtfertigen; jetzt bedürfte es vielleicht dazu andrer Hülfs-Erfindungen (zum Beispiel Leben als Räthsel, Leben als Erkenntnissproblem). „Jedes Übel ist gerechtfertigt, an dessen Anblick ein Gott sich erbaut“: so klang die vorzeitliche Logik des Gefühls — und wirklich, war es nur die vorzeitliche? Die Götter als Freunde *grausamer* Schauspiele gedacht — oh wie weit ragt diese uralte Vorstellung selbst noch in unsre europäische Vermenschlichung hinein! man mag hierüber etwa mit Calvin und Luther zu Rathe gehn. Gewiss ist jedenfalls, dass noch die *Griechen* ihren Göttern keine angenehmere Zukost zu ihrem Glücke zu bieten wussten, als die Freuden der Grausamkeit. Mit welchen Augen glaubt ihr denn, dass Homer seine Götter auf die Schicksale der Menschen niederblicken liess? Welchen letzten Sinn hatten im Grunde trojanische Kriege und ähnliche tragische Furchtbarkeiten? Man kann gar nicht daran zweifeln: sie waren als *Festspiele* für die Götter gemeint: und, insofern der Dichter darin mehr als die übrigen Menschen „göttlich“ geartet ist, wohl auch als Festspiele für die Dichter... Nicht anders dachten sich später die Moral-Philosophen Griechenlands die Augen Gottes noch auf das moralische Ringen, auf den Heroismus und die Selbstquälerei des Tugendhaften herabblicken: der „Herakles der Pflicht“ war auf einer Bühne, er wusste sich auch darauf; die Tugend ohne Zeugen war für dies Schauspieler-Volk etwas ganz Undenkbares. Sollte nicht jene so verwegene, so verhängnissvolle Philosophen-Erfindung, welche damals zuerst für Europa gemacht wurde, die vom „freien Willen“, von der absoluten Spontaneität des Menschen im Guten und im Bösen, nicht vor Allem gemacht sein, um sich ein Recht zu der Vorstellung zu schaffen, dass das Interesse der Götter am Menschen, an der menschlichen Tugend *sich nie erschöpfen könne*? Auf dieser Erden-Bühne sollte es niemals an wirklich Neuem, an wirklich unerhörten Spannungen, Verwicklungen, Katastrophen gebrechen: eine vollkommen deterministisch gedachte Welt würde für Götter errathbar und folglich in Kürze auch ermüdend gewesen sein, — Grund genug für diese *Freunde der Götter*, die Philosophen, ihren Göttern eine solche deterministische Welt nicht zuzumuthen! Die ganze antike Menschheit ist voll von zarten Rücksichten auf „den Zuschauer“, als eine wesentlich öffentliche, wesentlich augenfällige Welt, die sich das Glück nicht ohne Schauspiele und Feste zu denken wusste. — Und, wie schon gesagt, auch an der grossen *Strafe* ist so viel Festliches!... [8] Das Gefühl der Schuld, der persönlichen Verpflichtung, um den Gang unsrer Untersuchung wieder aufzunehmen, hat, wie wir sahen, seinen Ursprung in dem ältesten und ursprünglichsten Personen-Verhältniss, das es giebt, gehabt, in dem Verhältniss zwischen Käufer und Verkäufer, Gläubiger und Schuldner: hier trat zuerst Person gegen Person, hier *maass sich* zuerst Person an Person. Man hat keinen noch so niedren Grad von Civilisation aufgefunden, in dem nicht schon Etwas von diesem Verhältnisse bemerkbar würde. Preise machen, Werthe abmessen, Äquivalente ausdenken, tauschen — das hat in einem solchen Maasse das allererste Denken des Menschen präoccupirt, das es in einem gewissen Sinne *das* Denken ist: hier ist die älteste Art Scharfsinn herangezüchtet worden, hier möchte ebenfalls der erste Ansatz des menschlichen Stolzes, seines Vorrangs-Gefühls in Hinsicht auf anderes Gethier zu vermuthen sein. Vielleicht drückt noch unser Wort „Mensch“ (manas) gerade etwas von *diesem* Selbstgefühl aus: der Mensch bezeichnete sich als das Wesen, welches Werthe misst, werthet und misst, als das „abschätzende Thier an sich“. Kauf und Verkauf sammt ihrem psychologischen Zubehör, sind älter als selbst die Anfänge irgend welcher gesellschaftlichen Organisationsformen und Verbände: aus der rudimentärsten Form des Personen-Rechts hat sich vielmehr das keimende Gefühl von Tausch, Vertrag, Schuld, Recht, Verpflichtung, Ausgleich erst auf die gröbsten und anfänglichsten Gemeinschafts-Complexe (in deren Verhältniss zu ähnlichen Complexen) *übertragen*, zugleich mit der Gewohnheit, Macht an Macht zu vergleichen, zu messen, zu berechnen. Das Auge war nun einmal für diese Perspektive eingestellt: und mit jener plumpen Consequenz, die dem schwerbeweglichen, aber dann unerbittlich in gleicher Richtung weitergehenden Denken der älteren Menschheit eigenthümlich ist, langte man alsbald bei der grossen Verallgemeinerung an „jedes Ding hat seinen Preis; Alles kann abgezahlt werden“ — dem ältesten und naivsten Moral-Kanon der *Gerechtigkeit*, dem Anfange aller „Gutmüthigkeit“, aller „Billigkeit“, alles „guten Willens“, aller „Objektivität“ auf Erden. Gerechtigkeit auf dieser ersten Stufe ist der gute Wille unter ungefähr Gleichmächtigen, sich mit einander abzufinden, sich durch einen Ausgleich wieder zu „verständigen“ — und, in Bezug auf weniger Mächtige, diese unter sich zu einem Ausgleich zu *zwingen*. — [9] Immer mit dem Maasse der Vorzeit gemessen (welche Vorzeit übrigens zu allen Zeiten da ist oder wieder möglich ist): so steht auch das Gemeinwesen zu seinen Gliedern in jenem wichtigen Grundverhältnisse, dem des Gläubigers zu seinen Schuldnern. Man lebt in einem Gemeinwesen, man geniesst die Vortheile eines Gemeinwesens (oh was für Vortheile! wir unterschätzen es heute mitunter), man wohnt geschützt, geschont, im Frieden und Vertrauen, sorglos in Hinsicht auf gewisse Schädigungen und Feindseligkeiten, denen der Mensch *ausserhalb*, der „Friedlose“, ausgesetzt ist — ein Deutscher versteht, was „Elend“, êlend ursprüngich besagen will —, wie man sich gerade in Hinsicht auf diese Schädigungen und Feindseligkeiten der Gemeinde verpfändet und verpflichtet hat. Was wird im *andren Fall* geschehn? Die Gemeinschaft, der getäuschte Gläubiger, wird sich bezahlt machen, so gut er kann, darauf darf man rechnen. Es handelt sich hier am wenigsten um den unmittelbaren Schaden, den der Schädiger angestiftet hat: von ihm noch abgesehn, ist der Verbrecher vor allem ein „Brecher“, ein Vertrags- und Wortbrüchiger *gegen das Ganze*, in Bezug auf alle Güter und Annehmlichkeiten des Gemeinlebens, an denen er bis dahin Antheil gehabt hat. Der Verbrecher ist ein Schuldner, der die ihm erwiesenen Vortheile und Vorschüsse nicht nur nicht zurückzahlt, sondern sich sogar an seinem Gläubiger vergreift: daher geht er von nun an, wie billig, nicht nur aller dieser Güter und Vortheile verlustig, — er wird vielmehr jetzt daran erinnert, *was es mit diesen Gütern auf sich hat*. Der Zorn des geschädigten Gläubigers, des Gemeinwesens giebt ihn dem wilden und vogelfreien Zustande wieder zurück, vor dem er bisher behütet war: es stösst ihn von sich, — und nun darf sich jede Art Feindseligkeit an ihm auslassen. Die „Strafe“ ist auf dieser Stufe der Gesittung einfach das Abbild, der *Mimus* des normalen Verhaltens gegen den gehassten, wehrlos gemachten, niedergeworfnen Feind, der nicht nur jedes Rechtes und Schutzes, sondern auch jeder Gnade verlustig gegangen ist; also das Kriegsrecht und Siegesfest des vae victis! in aller Schonungslosigkeit und Grausamkeit: — woraus es sich erklärt, dass der Krieg selbst (eingerechnet der kriegerische Opferkult) alle die *Formen* hergegeben hat, unter denen die Strafe in der Geschichte auftritt. [10] Mit erstarkender Macht nimmt ein Gemeinwesen die Vergehungen des Einzelnen nicht mehr so wichtig, weil sie ihm nicht mehr in gleichem Maasse wie früher für das Bestehn des Ganzen als gefährlich und umstürzend gelten dürfen: der Übelthäter wird nicht mehr „friedlos gelegt“ und ausgestossen, der allgemeine Zorn darf sich nicht mehr wie früher dermaassen zügellos an ihm auslassen, — vielmehr wird von nun an der Übelthäter gegen diesen Zorn, sonderlich den der unmittelbar Geschädigten, vorsichtig von Seiten des Ganzen vertheidigt und in Schutz genommen. Der Compromiss mit dem Zorn der zunächst durch die Übelthat Betroffenen; ein Bemühen darum, den Fall zu lokalisiren und einer weiteren oder gar allgemeinen Betheiligung und Beunruhigung vorzubeugen; Versuche, Äquivalente zu finden und den ganzen Handel beizulegen (die compositio); vor allem der immer bestimmter auftretende Wille, jedes Vergehn als in irgend einem Sinne *abzahlbar* zu nehmen, also, wenigstens bis zu einem gewissen Maasse, den Verbrecher und seine That von einander zu *isoliren* — das sind die Züge, die der ferneren Entwicklung des Strafrechts immer deutlicher aufgeprägt sind. Wächst die Macht und das Selbstbewusstsein eines Gemeinwesens, so mildert sich immer auch das Strafrecht; jede Schwächung und tiefere Gefährdung von jenem bringt dessen härtere Formen wieder an's Licht. Der „Gläubiger“ ist immer in dem Grade menschlicher geworden, als er reicher geworden ist; zuletzt ist es selbst das *Maass* seines Reichthums, wie viel Beeinträchtigung er aushalten kann, ohne daran zu leiden. Es wäre ein *Machtbewusstsein* der Gesellschaft nicht undenkbar, bei dem sie sich den vornehmsten Luxus gönnen dürfte, den es für sie giebt, — ihren Schädiger *straflos* zu lassen. „Was gehen mich eigentlich meine Schmarotzer an? dürfte sie dann sprechen. Mögen sie leben und gedeihen: dazu bin ich noch stark genug!“... Die Gerechtigkeit, welche damit anhob „Alles ist abzahlbar, Alles muss abgezahlt werden“, endet damit, durch die Finger zu sehn und den Zahlungsunfähigen laufen zu lassen, — sie endet wie jedes gute Ding auf Erden, *sich selbst aufhebend*. Diese Selbstaufhebung der Gerechtigkeit: man weiss, mit welch schönem Namen sie sich nennt — *Gnade*; sie bleibt, wie sich von selbst versteht, das Vorrecht des Mächtigsten, besser noch, sein Jenseits des Rechts. [11] — Hier ein ablehnendes Wort gegen neuerdings hervorgetretene Versuche, den Ursprung der Gerechtigkeit auf einem ganz andren Boden zu suchen, — nämlich auf dem des Ressentiment. Den Psychologen voran in's Ohr gesagt, gesetzt dass sie Lust haben sollten, das Ressentiment selbst einmal aus der Nähe zu studieren: diese Pflanze blüht jetzt am schönsten unter Anarchisten und Antisemiten, übrigens so wie sie immer geblüht hat, im Verborgnen, dem Veilchen gleich, wenn schon mit andrem Duft. Und wie aus Gleichem nothwendig immer Gleiches hervorgehn muss, so wird es nicht überraschen, gerade wieder aus solchen Kreisen Versuche hervorgehen zu sehn, wie sie schon öfter dagewesen sind — vergleiche oben Seite 30 —, die *Rache* unter dem Namen der *Gerechtigkeit* zu heiligen — wie als ob Gerechtigkeit im Grunde nur eine Fortentwicklung vom Gefühle des Verletzt-seins wäre — und mit der Rache die *reaktiven* Affekte überhaupt und allesammt nachträglich zu Ehren zu bringen. An Letzterem selbst würde ich am wenigsten Anstoss nehmen: es schiene mir sogar in Hinsicht auf das ganze biologische Problem (in Bezug auf welches der Werth jener Affekte bisher unterschätzt worden ist) ein *Verdienst*. Worauf ich allein aufmerksam mache, ist der Umstand, dass es der Geist des Ressentiment selbst ist, aus dem diese neue Nuance von wissenschaftlicher Billigkeit (zu Gunsten von Hass, Neid, Missgunst, Argwohn, Rancune, Rache) herauswächst. Diese „wissenschaftliche Billigkeit“ nämlich pausirt sofort und macht Accenten tödtlicher Feindschaft und Voreingenommenheit Platz, sobald es sich um eine andre Gruppe von Affekten handelt, die, wie mich dünkt, von einem noch viel höheren biologischen Werthe sind, als jene reaktiven, und folglich erst recht verdienten, *wissenschaftlich* abgeschätzt und hochgeschätzt zu werden: nämlich die eigentlich *aktiven* Affekte, wie Herrschsucht, Habsucht und dergleichen. (E. Dühring, Werth des Lebens; Cursus der Philosophie; im Grunde überall.) So viel gegen diese Tendenz im Allgemeinen: was aber gar den einzelnen Satz Dühring's angeht, dass die Heimat der Gerechtigkeit auf dem Boden des reaktiven Gefühls zu suchen sei, so muss man ihm, der Wahrheit zu Liebe, mit schroffer Umkehrung diesen andren Satz entgegenstellen: der *letzte* Boden, der vom Geiste der Gerechtigkeit erobert wird, ist der Boden des reaktiven Gefühls! Wenn es wirklich vorkommt, dass der gerechte Mensch gerecht sogar gegen seine Schädiger bleibt (und nicht nur kalt, massvoll, fremd gleichgültig: Gerecht-sein ist immer ein *positives* Verhalten), wenn sich selbst unter dem Ansturz persönlicher Verletzung, Verhöhnung, Verdächtigung die hohe, klare, ebenso tief als mildblickende Objektivität des gerechten, des *richtenden* Auges nicht trübt, nun, so ist das ein Stück Vollendung und höchster Meisterschaft auf Erden, — sogar Etwas, das man hier kluger Weise nicht erwarten, woran man jedenfalls nicht gar zu leicht *glauben* soll. Gewiss ist durchschnittlich, dass selbst bei den rechtschaffendsten Personen schon eine kleine Dosis von Angriff, Bosheit, Insinuation genügt, um ihnen das Blut in die Augen und die Billigkeit *aus* den Augen zu jagen. Der aktive, der angreifende, übergreifende Mensch ist immer noch der Gerechtigkeit hundert Schritte näher gestellt als der reaktive; es ist eben für ihn durchaus nicht nöthig, in der Art, wie es der reaktive Mensch thut, thun muss, sein Objekt falsch und voreingenommen abzuschätzen. Thatsächlich hat deshalb zu allen Zeiten der aggressive Mensch, als der Stärkere, Muthigere, Vornehmere, auch das *freiere* Auge, das *bessere* Gewissen auf seiner Seite gehabt: umgekehrt erräth man schon, wer überhaupt die Erfindung des „schlechten Gewissens“ auf dem Gewissen hat, — der Mensch des Ressentiment! Zuletzt sehe man sich doch in der Geschichte um: in welcher Sphäre ist denn bisher überhaupt die ganze Handhabung des Rechts, auch das eigentliche Bedürfniss nach Recht auf Erden heimisch gewesen? Etwa in der Sphäre der reaktiven Menschen? Ganz und gar nicht: vielmehr in der der Aktiven, Starken, Spontanen, Aggressiven. Historisch betrachtet stellt das Recht auf Erden — zum Verdruss des genannten Agitator's sei es gesagt (der selber einmal über sich das Bekenntniss ablegt: „die Rachelehre hat sich als der rothe Gerechtigkeitsfaden durch alle meine Arbeiten und Anstrengungen hindurchgezogen“) — den Kampf gerade *wider* die reaktiven Gefühle vor, den Krieg mit denselben seitens aktiver und aggressiver Mächte, welche ihre Stärke zum Theil dazu verwendeten, der Ausschweifung des reaktiven Pathos Halt und Maass zu gebieten und einen Vergleich zu erzwingen. Überall, wo Gerechtigkeit geübt, Gerechtigkeit aufrecht erhalten wird, sieht man eine stärkere Macht in Bezug auf ihr unterstehende Schwächere (seien es Gruppen, seien es Einzelne) nach Mitteln suchen, unter diesen dem unsinnigen Wüthen des Ressentiment ein Ende zu machen, indem sie theils das Objekt des Ressentiment aus den Händen der Rache herauszieht, theils an Stelle der Rache ihrerseits den Kampf gegen die Feinde des Friedens und der Ordnung setzt, theils Ausgleiche erfindet, vorschlägt, unter Umständen aufnöthigt, theils gewisse Äquivalente von Schädigungen zur Norm erhebt, an welche von nun an das Ressentiment ein für alle Mal gewiesen ist. Das Entscheidendste aber, was die oberste Gewalt gegen die Übermacht der Gegen- und Nachgefühle thut und durchsetzt — sie thut es immer, sobald sie irgendwie stark genug dazu ist — ist die Aufrichtung des *Gesetzes*, die imperativische Erklärung darüber, was überhaupt unter ihren Augen als erlaubt, als recht, was als verboten, als unrecht zu gelten habe: indem sie nach Aufrichtung des Gesetzes Übergriffe und Willkür-Akte Einzelner oder ganzer Gruppen als Frevel am Gesetz, als Auflehnung gegen die oberste Gewalt selbst behandelt, lenkt sie das Gefühl ihrer Untergebenen von dem nächsten durch solche Frevel angerichteten Schaden ab und erreicht damit auf die Dauer das Umgekehrte von dem, was alle Rache will, welche den Gesichtspunkt des Geschädigten allein sieht, allein gelten lässt —: von nun an wird das Auge für eine immer *unpersönlichere* Abschätzung der That eingeübt, sogar das Auge des Geschädigten selbst (obschon dies am allerletzten, wie voran bemerkt wurde). — Demgemäss giebt es erst von der Aufrichtung des Gesetzes an „Recht“ und „Unrecht“ (und *nicht*, wie Dühring will, von dem Akte der Verletzung an). An *sich* von Recht und Unrecht reden entbehrt alles Sinn's, an *sich* kann natürlich ein Verletzen, Vergewaltigen, Ausbeuten, Vernichten nichts „Unrechtes“ sein, insofern das Leben *essentiell*, nämlich in seinen Grundfunktionen verletzend, vergewaltigend, ausbeutend, vernichtend fungirt und gar nicht gedacht werden kann ohne diesen Charakter. Man muss sich sogar noch etwas Bedenklicheres eingestehn: dass, vom höchsten biologischen Standpunkte aus, Rechtszustände immer nur *Ausnahme-Zustände* sein dürfen, als theilweise Restriktionen des eigentlichen Lebenswillens, der auf Macht aus ist, und sich dessen Gesammtzwecke als Einzelmittel unterordnend: nämlich als Mittel, *grössere* Macht-Einheiten zu schaffen. Eine Rechtsordnung souverain und allgemein gedacht, nicht als Mittel im Kampf von Macht-Complexen, sondern als Mittel *gegen* allen Kampf überhaupt, etwa gemäss der Communisten-Schablone Dühring's, dass jeder Wille jeden Willen als gleich zu nehmen habe, wäre ein *lebensfeindliches* Princip, eine Zerstörerin und Auflöserin des Menschen, ein Attentat auf die Zukunft des Menschen, ein Zeichen von Ermüdung, ein Schleichweg zum Nichts. — [12] Hier noch ein Wort über Ursprung und Zweck der Strafe — zwei Probleme, die auseinander fallen oder fallen sollten: leider wirft man sie gewöhnlich in Eins. Wie treiben es doch die bisherigen Moral-Genealogen in diesem Falle? Naiv, wie sie es immer getrieben haben —: sie machen irgend einen „Zweck“ in der Strafe ausfindig, zum Beispiel Rache oder Abschreckung, setzen dann arglos diesen Zweck an den Anfang, als causa fiendi der Strafe, und — sind fertig. Der „Zweck im Rechte“ ist aber zu allerletzt für die Entstehungsgeschichte des Rechts zu verwenden: vielmehr giebt es für alle Art Historie gar keinen wichtigeren Satz als jenen, der mit solcher Mühe errungen ist, aber auch wirklich errungen *sein sollte*, — dass nämlich die Ursache der Entstehung eines Dings und dessen schliessliche Nützlichkeit, dessen thatsächliche Verwendung und Einordnung in ein System von Zwecken toto coelo auseinander liegen; dass etwas Vorhandenes, irgendwie Zu-Stande-Gekommenes immer wieder von einer ihm überlegenen Macht auf neue Ansichten ausgelegt, neu in Beschlag genommen, zu einem neuen Nutzen umgebildet und umgerichtet wird; dass alles Geschehen in der organischen Welt ein *Überwältigen, Herrwerden* und dass wiederum alles Überwältigen und Herrwerden ein Neu-Interpretieren, ein Zurechtmachen ist, bei dem der bisherige „Sinn“ und „Zweck“ nothwendig verdunkelt oder ganz ausgelöscht werden muss. Wenn man die *Nützlichkeit* von irgend welchem physiologischen Organ (oder auch einer Rechts-Institution, einer gesellschaftlichen Sitte, eines politischen Brauchs, einer Form in den Künsten oder im religiösen Cultus) noch so gut begriffen hat, so hat man damit noch nichts in Betreff seiner Entstehung begriffen: so unbequem und unangenehm dies älteren Ohren klingen mag, — denn von Alters her hatte man in dem nachweisbaren Zwecke, in der Nützlichkeit eines Dings, einer Form, einer Einrichtung auch deren Entstehungsgrund zu begreifen geglaubt, das Auge als gemacht zum Sehen, die Hand als gemacht zum Greifen. So hat man sich auch die Strafe vorgestellt als erfunden zum Strafen. Aber alle Zwecke, alle Nützlichkeiten sind nur *Anzeichen* davon, dass ein Wille zur Macht über etwas weniger Mächtiges Herr geworden ist und ihm von sich aus den Sinn einer Funktion aufgeprägt hat; und die ganze Geschichte eines „Dings“, eines Organs, eines Brauchs kann dergestalt eine fortgesetzte Zeichen-Kette von immer neuen Interpretationen und Zurechtmachungen sein, deren Ursachen selbst unter sich nicht im Zusammenhange zu sein brauchen, vielmehr unter Umständen sich bloss zufällig hinter einander folgen und ablösen. „Entwicklung“ eines Dings, eines Brauchs, eines Organs ist demgemäss nichts weniger als sein progressus auf ein Ziel hin, noch weniger ein logischer und kürzester, mit dem kleinsten Aufwand von Kraft und Kosten erreichter progressus, — sondern die Aufeinanderfolge von mehr oder minder tiefgehenden, mehr oder minder von einander unabhängigen, an ihm sich abspielenden Überwältigungsprozessen, hinzugerechnet die dagegen jedes Mal aufgewendeten Widerstände, die versuchten Form-Verwandlungen zum Zweck der Vertheidigung und Reaktion, auch die Resultate gelungener Gegenaktionen. Die Form ist flüssig, der „Sinn“ ist es aber noch mehr... Selbst innerhalb jedes einzelnen Organismus steht es nicht anders: mit jedem wesentlichen Wachsthum des Ganzen verschiebt sich auch der „Sinn“ der einzelnen Organe, — unter Umständen kann deren theilweises Zu-Grunde-Gehn, deren Zahl-Verminderung (zum Beispiel durch Vernichtung der Mittelglieder) ein Zeichen wachsender Kraft und Vollkommenheit sein. Ich wollte sagen: auch das theilweise *Unnützlichwerden*, das Verkümmern und Entarten, das Verlustiggehn von Sinn und Zweckmässigkeit, kurz der Tod gehört zu den Bedingungen des wirklichen progressus: als welcher immer in Gestalt eines Willens und Wegs zu *grösserer Macht* erscheint und immer auf Unkosten zahlreicher kleinerer Mächte durchgesetzt wird. Die Grösse eines „Fortschritts“ *bemisst* sich sogar nach der Masse dessen, was ihm Alles geopfert werden musste; die Menschheit als Masse dem Gedeihen einer einzelnen *stärkeren* Species Mensch geopfert — das *wäre* ein Fortschritt... — Ich hebe diesen Haupt-Gesichtspunkt der historischen Methodik hervor, um so mehr als er im Grunde dem gerade herrschenden Instinkte und Zeitgeschmack entgegen geht, welcher lieber sich noch mit der absoluten Zufälligkeit, ja mechanistischen Unsinnigkeit alles Geschehens vertragen würde, als mit der Theorie eines in allem Geschehn sich abspielenden *Macht-Willens*. Die demokratische Idiosynkrasie gegen Alles, was herrscht und herrschen will, der moderne *Misarchismus* (um ein schlechtes Wort für eine schlechte Sache zu bilden) hat sich allmählich dermaassen in's Geistige, Geistigste umgesetzt und verkleidet, dass er heute Schritt für Schritt bereits in die strengsten, anscheinend objektivsten Wissenschaften eindringt, eindringen *darf*; ja er scheint mir schon über die ganze Physiologie und Lehre vom Leben Herr geworden zu sein, zu ihrem Schaden, wie sich von selbst versteht, indem er ihr einen Grundbegriff, den der eigentlichen *Aktivität*, eskamotirt hat. Man stellt dagegen unter dem Druck jener Idiosynkrasie die „Anpassung“ in den Vordergrund, das heisst eine Aktivität zweiten Ranges, eine blosse Reaktivität, ja man hat das Leben selbst als eine immer zweckmässigere innere Anspannung an äussere Umstände definirt (Herbert Spencer). Damit ist aber das Wesen des Lebens verkannt, sein *Wille zur Macht*; damit ist der principielle Vorrang übersehn, den die spontanen, angreifenden, übergreifenden, neu-auslegenden, neu-richtenden und gestaltenden Kräfte haben, auf deren Wirkung erst die „Anpassung“ folgt; damit ist im Organismus selbst die herrschaftliche Rolle der höchsten Funktionäre abgeleugnet, in denen der Lebenswille aktiv und formgebend erscheint. Man erinnert sich, was Huxley Spencern zum Vorwurf gemacht hat, — seinen „administrativen Nihilismus“: aber es handelt sich noch um *mehr* als um's „Administriren“... [13] — Man hat also, um zur Sache, nämlich zur *Strafe* zurückzukehren, zweierlei an ihr zu unterscheiden: einmal das relativ *Dauerhafte* an ihr, den Brauch, den Akt, das „Drama“, eine gewisse strenge Abfolge von Prozeduren, andrerseits das flüssige an ihr, den Sinn, den Zweck, die Erwartung, welche sich an die Ausführung solcher Prozeduren knüpft. Hierbei wird ohne Weiteres vorausgesetzt, per analogiam, gemäss dem eben entwickelten Hauptgesichtspunkte der historischen Methodik, dass die Prozedur selbst etwas Älteres, Früheres als ihre Benützung zur Strafe sein wird, dass letztere erst in die (längst vorhandene, aber in einem anderen Sinne übliche) Prozedur *hineingelegt*, hineingedeutet worden ist, kurz, dass es *nicht* so steht, wie unsre naiven Moral- und Rechtsgenealogen bisher annahmen, welche sich allesammt die Prozedur *erfunden* dachten zum Zweck der Strafe, so wie man sich ehemals die Hand erfunden dachte zum Zweck des Greifens. Was nun jenes andre Element an der Strafe betrifft, das flüssige, ihren „Sinn“, so stellt in einem sehr späten Zustande der Cultur (zum Beispiel im heutigen Europa) der Begriff „Strafe“ in der That gar nicht mehr Einen Sinn vor, sondern eine ganze Synthesis von „Sinnen“: die bisherige Geschichte der Strafe überhaupt, die Geschichte ihrer Ausnützung zu den verschiedensten Zwecken, krystallisirt sich zuletzt in eine Art von Einheit, welche schwer löslich, schwer zu analysiren und, was man hervorheben muss, ganz und gar *undefinirbar* ist. (Es ist heute unmöglich bestimmt zu sagen, *warum* eigentlich gestraft wird: alle Begriffe, in denen sich ein ganzer Prozess semiotisch zusammenfasst, entziehen sich der Definition; definirbar ist nur Das, was keine Geschichte hat.) In einem früheren Stadium erscheint dagegen jene Synthesis von „Sinnen“ noch löslicher, auch noch verschiebbarer; man kann noch wahrnehmen, wie für jeden einzelnen Fall die Elemente der Synthesis ihre Werthigkeit verändern und sich demgemäss umordnen, so dass bald dies, bald jenes Element auf Kosten der übrigen hervortritt und dominirt, ja unter Umständen Ein Element (etwa der Zweck der Abschreckung) den ganzen Rest von Elementen aufzuheben scheint. Um wenigstens eine Vorstellung davon zu geben, wie unsicher, wie nachträglich, wie accidentiell „der Sinn“ der Strafe ist und wie ein und dieselbe Prozedur auf grundverschiedene Absichten hin benützt, gedeutet, zurechtgemacht werden kann: so stehe hier das Schema, das sich mir selbst auf Grund eines verhältnissmässig kleinen und zufälligen Materials ergeben hat. Strafe als Unschädlichmachen, als Verhinderung weiteren Schädigens. Strafe als Abzahlung des Schadens an den Geschädigten, in irgend einer Form (auch in der einer Affekt-Compensation). Strafe als Isolirung einer Gleichgewichts-Störung, um ein Weitergreifen der Störung zu verhüten. Strafe als Furchteinflössen vor Denen, welche die Strafe bestimmen und exekutiren. Strafe als eine Art Ausgleich für die Vortheile, welche der Verbrecher bis dahin genossen hat (zum Beispiel wenn er als Bergwerkssklave nutzbar gemacht wird). Strafe als Ausscheidung eines entartenden Elementes (unter Umständen eines ganzen Zweigs, wie nach chinesischem Rechte: somit als Mittel zur Reinerhaltung der Rasse oder zur Festhaltung eines socialen Typus). Strafe als Fest, nämlich als Vergewaltigung und Verhöhnung eines endlich niedergeworfnen Feindes. Strafe als ein Gedächtnissmachen, sei es für Den, der die Strafe erleidet — die sogenannte „Besserung“, sei es für die Zeugen der Exekution. Strafe als Zahlung eines Honorars, ausbedungen Seitens der Macht, welche den Übelthäter vor den Ausschweifungen der Rache schützt. Strafe als Compromiss mit dem Naturzustand der Rache, sofern letzterer durch mächtige Geschlechter noch aufrecht erhalten und als Privilegium in Anspruch genommen wird. Strafe als Kriegserklärung und Kriegsmaassregel gegen einen Feind des Friedens, des Gesetzes, der Ordnung, der Obrigkeit, den man als gefährlich für das Gemeinwesen, als vertragsbrüchig in Hinsicht auf dessen Voraussetzungen, als einen Empörer, Verräther und Friedensbrecher bekämpft, mit Mitteln, wie sie eben der Krieg an die Hand giebt. — [14] Diese Liste ist gewiss nicht vollständig; ersichtlich ist die Strafe mit Nützlichkeiten aller Art überladen. Um so eher darf man von ihr eine *vermeintliche* Nützlichkeit in Abzug bringen, die allerdings im populären Bewusstsein als ihre wesentlichste gilt, — der Glaube an die Strafe, der heute aus mehreren Gründen wackelt, findet gerade an ihr immer noch seine kräftigste Stütze. Die Strafe soll den Werth haben, das *Gefühl der Schuld* im Schuldigen aufzuwecken, man sucht in ihr das eigentliche instrumentum jener seelischen Reaktion, welche „schlechtes Gewissen“, „Gewissensbiss“ genannt wird. Aber damit vergreift man sich selbst für heute noch an der Wirklichkeit und der Psychologie: und wie viel mehr für die längste Geschichte des Menschen, seine Vorgeschichte! Der ächte Gewissensbiss ist gerade unter Verbrechern und Sträflingen etwas äusserst Seltenes, die Gefängnisse, die Zuchthäuser sind *nicht* die Brutstätten, an denen diese Species von Nagewurm mit Vorliebe gedeiht: — darin kommen alle gewissenhaften Beobachter überein, die in vielen Fällen ein derartiges Urtheil ungern genug und wider die eigensten Wünsche abgeben. In's Grosse gerechnet, härtet und kältet die Strafe ab; sie concentrirt; sie verschärft das Gefühl der Entfremdung; sie stärkt die Widerstandskraft. Wenn es vorkommt, dass sie die Energie zerbricht und eine erbärmliche Prostration und Selbsterniedrigung zu Wege bringt, so ist ein solches Ergebniss sicherlich noch weniger erquicklich als die durchschnittliche Wirkung der Strafe: als welche sich durch einen trocknen düsteren Ernst charakterisirt. Denken wir aber gar an jene Jahrtausende *vor* der Geschichte des Menschen, so darf man unbedenklich urtheilen, dass gerade durch die Strafe die Entwicklung des Schuldgefühls am kräftigsten *aufgehalten* worden ist, — wenigstens in Hinsicht auf die Opfer, an denen sich die strafende Gewalt ausliess. Unterschätzen wir nämlich nicht, inwiefern der Verbrecher gerade durch den Anblick der gerichtlichen und vollziehenden Prozeduren selbst verhindert wird, seine That, die Art seiner Handlung, *an sich* als verwerflich zu empfinden: denn er sieht genau die gleiche Art von Handlungen im Dienst der Gerechtigkeit verübt und dann gut geheissen, mit gutem Gewissen verübt: also Spionage, Überlistung, Bestechung, Fallenstellen, die ganze kniffliche und durchtriebene Polizisten- und Anklägerkunst, sodann das grundsätzliche, selbst nicht durch den Affekt entschuldigte Berauben, Überwältigen, Beschimpfen, Gefangennehmen, Foltern, Morden, wie es in den verschiednen Arten der Strafe sich ausprägt, — Alles somit von seinen Richtern keineswegs *an sich* verworfene und verurtheilte Handlungen, sondern nur in einer gewissen Hinsicht und Nutzanwendung. Das „schlechte Gewissen“, diese unheimlichste und interessanteste Pflanze unsrer irdischen Vegetation, ist *nicht* auf diesem Boden gewachsen, — in der That drückte sich im Bewusstsein der Richtenden, der Strafenden selbst die längste Zeit hindurch *Nichts* davon aus, dass man mit einem „Schuldigen“ zu thun habe. Sondern mit einem Schaden-Anstifter, mit einem unverantwortlichen Stück Verhängniss. Und Der selber, über den nachher die Strafe, wiederum wie ein Stück Verhängniss, herfiel, hatte dabei keine andre „innere Pein“, als wie beim plötzlichen Eintreten von etwas Unberechnetem, eines schrecklichen Naturereignisses, eines herabstürzenden, zermalmenden Felsblockes, gegen den es keinen Kampf mehr giebt. [15] Dies kam einmal auf eine verfängliche Weise Spinoza zum Bewusstsein (zum Verdruss seiner Ausleger, welche sich ordentlich darum *bemühen*, ihn an dieser Stelle misszuverstehn, zum Beispiel Kuno Fischer), als er eines Nachmittags, wer weiss, an was für einer Erinnerung sich reibend, der Frage nachhieng, was eigentlich für ihn selbst von dem berühmten *morsus conscientiae* übrig geblieben sei — er, der Gut und Böse unter die menschlichen Einbildungen verwiesen und mit Ingrimm die Ehre seines „freien“ Gottes gegen jene Lästerer vertheidigt hatte, deren Behauptung dahin gieng, Gott wirke Alles sub ratione boni („das aber hiesse Gott dem Schicksale unterwerfen und wäre fürwahr die grösste aller Ungereimtheiten“ — ). Die Welt war für Spinoza wieder in jene Unschuld zurückgetreten, in der sie vor der Erfindung des schlechten Gewissens dalag: was war damit aus dem morsus conscientiae geworden? „Der Gegensatz des gaudium, sagte er sich endlich, — eine Traurigkeit, begleitet von der Vorstellung einer vergangnen Sache, die gegen alles Erwarten ausgefallen ist.“ Eth. III propos. XVIII schol. I. II. *Nicht anders als Spinoza* haben die von der Strafe ereilten Übel-Anstifter Jahrtausende lang in Betreff ihres „Vergehens“ empfunden: „hier ist Etwas unvermuthet schief gegangen“, *nicht*: „das hätte ich nicht thun sollen“ —, sie unterwarfen sich der Strafe, wie man sich einer Krankheit oder einem Unglücke oder dem Tode unterwirft, mit jenem beherzten Fatalismus ohne Revolte, durch den zum Beispiel heute noch die Russen in der Handhabung des Lebens gegen uns Westländer im Vortheil sind. Wenn es damals eine Kritik der That gab, so war es die Klugheit, die an der That Kritik übte: ohne Frage müssen wir die eigentliche Wirkung der Strafe vor Allem in einer Verschärfung der Klugheit suchen, in einer Verlängerung des Gedächtnisses, in einem Willen, fürderhin vorsichtiger, misstrauischer, heimlicher zu Werke zu gehn, in der Einsicht, dass man für Vieles ein-für-alle-Mal zu schwach sei, in einer Art Verbesserung der Selbstbeurtheilung. Das, was durch die Strafe im Grossen erreicht werden kann, bei Mensch und Thier, ist die Vermehrung der Furcht, die Verschärfung der Klugheit, die Bemeisterung der Begierden: damit *zähmt* die Strafe den Menschen, aber sie macht ihn nicht „besser“, — man dürfte mit mehr Recht noch das Gegentheil behaupten. („Schaden macht klug“, sagt das Volk: soweit er klug macht, macht er auch schlecht. Glücklicher Weise macht er oft genug dumm.) [16] An dieser Stelle ist es nun nicht mehr zu umgehn, meiner eignen Hypothese über den Ursprung des „schlechten Gewissens“ zu einem ersten vorläufigen Ausdrucke zu verhelfen: sie ist nicht leicht zu Gehör zu bringen und will lange bedacht, bewacht und beschlafen sein. Ich nehme das schlechte Gewissen als die tiefe Erkrankung, welcher der Mensch unter dem Druck jener gründlichsten aller Veränderungen verfallen musste, die er überhaupt erlebt hat, — jener Veränderung, als er sich endgültig in den Bann der Gesellschaft und des Friedens eingeschlossen fand. Nicht anders als es den Wasserthieren ergangen sein muss als sie gezwungen wurden, entweder Landthiere zu werden oder zu Grunde zu gehn, so gieng es diesen der Wildniss, dem Kriege, dem Herumschweifen, dem Abenteuer glücklich angepassten Halbthieren, — mit Einem Male waren alle ihre Instinkte entwerthet und „ausgehängt“. Sie sollten nunmehr auf den Füssen gehn und „sich selber tragen“, wo sie bisher vom Wasser getragen wurden: eine entsetzliche Schwere lag auf ihnen. Zu den einfachsten Verrichtungen fühlten sie sich ungelenk, sie hatten für diese neue unbekannte Welt ihre alten Führer nicht mehr, die regulirenden unbewusst-sicherführenden Triebe, — sie waren auf Denken, Schliessen, Berechnen, Combiniren von Ursachen und Wirkungen reduzirt, diese Unglücklichen, auf ihr „Bewusstsein“, auf ihr ärmlichstes und fehlgreifendstes Organ! Ich glaube, dass niemals auf Erden ein solches Elends-Gefühl, ein solches bleiernes Missbehagen dagewesen ist, — und dabei hatten jene alten Instinkte nicht mit Einem Male aufgehört, ihre Forderungen zu stellen! Nur war es schwer und selten möglich, ihnen zu Willen zu sein: in der Hauptsache mussten sie sich neue und gleichsam unterirdische Befriedigungen suchen. Alle Instinkte, welche sich nicht nach Aussen entladen, *wenden sich nach Innen* — dies ist das, was ich die *Verinnerlichung* des Menschen nenne: damit wächst erst das an den Menschen heran, was man später seine „Seele“ nennt. Die ganze innere Welt, ursprünglich dünn wie zwischen zwei Häute eingespannt, ist in dem Maasse aus einander- und aufgegangen, hat Tiefe, Breite, Höhe bekommen, als die Entladung des Menschen nach Aussen *gehemmt* worden ist. Jene furchtbaren Bollwerke, mit denen sich die staatliche Organisation gegen die alten Instinkte der Freiheit schützte — die Strafen gehören vor Allem zu diesen Bollwerken — brachten zu Wege, dass alle jene Instinkte des wilden freien schweifenden Menschen sich rückwärts, sich *gegen den Menschen selbst* wandten. Die Feindschaft, die Grausamkeit, die Lust an der Verfolgung, am Überfall, am Wechsel, an der Zerstörung — Alles das gegen die Inhaber solcher Instinkte sich wendend: *das* ist der Ursprung des „schlechten Gewissens“. Der Mensch, der sich, aus Mangel an äusseren Feinden und Widerständen, eingezwängt in eine drückende Enge und Regelmässigkeit der Sitte, ungeduldig selbst zerriss, verfolgte, annagte, aufstörte, misshandelte, dies an den Gitterstangen seines Käfigs sich wund stossende Thier, das man „zähmen“ will, dieser Entbehrende und vom Heimweh der Wüste Verzehrte, der aus sich selbst ein Abenteuer, eine Folterstätte, eine unsichere und gefährliche Wildniss schaffen musste — dieser Narr, dieser sehnsüchtige und verzweifelte Gefangne wurde der Erfinder des „schlechten Gewissens“. Mit ihm aber war die grösste und unheimlichste Erkrankung eingeleitet, von welcher die Menschheit bis heute nicht genesen ist, das Leiden des Menschen *am Menschen, an sich*: als die Folge einer gewaltsamen Abtrennung von der thierischen Vergangenheit, eines Sprunges und Sturzes gleichsam in neue Lagen und Daseins-Bedingungen, einer Kriegserklärung gegen die alten Instinkte, auf denen bis dahin seine Kraft, Lust und Furchtbarkeit beruhte. Fügen wir sofort hinzu, dass andrerseits mit der Thatsache einer gegen sich selbst gekehrten, gegen sich selbst Partei nehmenden Thierseele auf Erden etwas so Neues, Tiefes, Unerhörtes, Räthselhaftes, Widerspruchsvolles *und Zukunftsvolles* gegeben war, dass der Aspekt der Erde sich damit wesentlich veränderte. In der That, es brauchte göttlicher Zuschauer, um das Schauspiel zu würdigen, das damit anfieng und dessen Ende durchaus noch nicht abzusehen ist, — ein Schauspiel zu fein, zu wundervoll, zu paradox, als dass es sich sinnlos-unvermerkt auf irgend einem lächerlichen Gestirn abspielen dürfte! Der Mensch zählt seitdem mit unter den unerwartetsten und aufregendsten Glückswürfen, die das „grosse Kind“ des Heraklit, heisse es Zeus oder Zufall, spielt, — er erweckt für sich ein Interesse, eine Spannung, eine Hoffnung, beinahe eine Gewissheit, als ob mit ihm sich Etwas ankündige, Etwas vorbereite, als ob der Mensch kein Ziel, sondern nur ein Weg, ein Zwischenfall, eine Brücke, ein grosses Versprechen sei... [17] Zur Voraussetzung dieser Hypothese über den Ursprung des schlechten Gewissens gehört erstens, dass jene Veränderung keine allmähliche, keine freiwillige war und sich nicht als ein organisches Hineinwachsen in neue Bedingungen darstellte, sondern als ein Bruch, ein Sprung, ein Zwang, ein unabweisbares Verhängniss, gegen das es keinen Kampf und nicht einmal ein Ressentiment gab. Zweitens aber, dass die Einfügung einer bisher ungehemmten und ungestalteten Bevölkerung in eine feste Form, wie sie mit einem Gewaltakt ihren Anfang nahm, nur mit lauter Gewaltakten zu Ende geführt wurde, — dass der älteste „Staat“ demgemäss als eine furchtbare Tyrannei, als eine zerdrückende und rücksichtslose Maschinerie auftrat und fortarbeitete, bis ein solcher Rohstoff von Volk und Halbthier endlich nicht nur durchgeknetet und gefügig, sondern auch *geformt* war. Ich gebrauchte das Wort „Staat“: es versteht sich von selbst, wer damit gemeint ist — irgend ein Rudel blonder Raubthiere, eine Eroberer- und Herren-Rasse welche, kriegerisch organisirt und mit der Kraft, zu organisiren, unbedenklich ihre furchtbaren Tatzen auf eine der Zahl nach vielleicht ungeheuer überlegene, aber noch gestaltlose, noch schweifende Bevölkerung legt. Dergestalt beginnt ja der „Staat“ auf Erden: ich denke, jene Schwärmerei ist abgethan, welche ihn mit einem „Vertrage“ beginnen liess. Wer befehlen kann, wer von Natur „Herr“ ist, wer gewaltthätig in Werk und Gebärde auftritt — was hat der mit Verträgen zu schaffen! Mit solchen Wesen rechnet man nicht, sie kommen wie das Schicksal, ohne Grund, Vernunft, Rücksicht, Vorwand, sie sind da wie der Blitz da ist, zu furchtbar, zu plötzlich, zu überzeugend, zu „anders“, um selbst auch nur gehasst zu werden. Ihr Werk ist ein instinktives Formen-schaffen, Formen-aufdrücken, es sind die unfreiwilligsten, unbewusstesten Künstler, die es giebt: — in Kürze steht etwas Neues da, wo sie erscheinen, ein Herrschafts-Gebilde, das *lebt*, in dem Theile und Funktionen abgegrenzt und bezüglich gemacht sind, in dem Nichts überhaupt Platz findet, dem nicht erst ein „Sinn“ in Hinsicht auf das Ganze eingelegt ist. Sie wissen nicht, was Schuld, was Verantwortlichkeit, was Rücksicht ist, diese geborenen Organisatoren; in ihnen waltet jener furchtbare Künstler-Egoismus, der wie Erz blickt und sich im „Werke“, wie die Mutter in ihrem Kinde, in alle Ewigkeit voraus gerechtfertigt weiss. Sie sind es nicht, bei denen das „schlechte Gewissen“ gewachsen ist, das versteht sich von vornherein, — aber es würde nicht *ohne sie* gewachsen sein, dieses hässliche Gewächs, es würde fehlen, wenn nicht unter dem Druck ihrer Hammerschläge, ihrer Künstler-Gewaltsamkeit ein ungeheures Quantum Freiheit aus der Welt, mindestens aus der Sichtbarkeit geschafft und gleichsam *latent* gemacht worden wäre. Dieser gewaltsam latent gemachte *Instinkt der Freiheit* — wir begriffen es schon — dieser zurückgedrängte, zurückgetretene, in's Innere eingekerkerte und zuletzt nur an sich selbst noch sich entladende und auslassende Instinkt der Freiheit: das, nur das ist in seinem Anbeginn das *schlechte Gewissen*. [18] Man hüte sich, von diesem ganzen Phänomen deshalb schon gering zu denken, weil es von vornherein hässlich und schmerzhaft ist. Im Grunde ist es ja dieselbe aktive Kraft, die in jenen Gewalt-Künstlern und Organisatoren grossartiger am Werke ist und Staaten baut, welche hier, innerlich, kleiner, kleinlicher, in der Richtung nach rückwärts, im „Labyrinth der Brust“, um mit Goethe zu reden, sich das schlechte Gewissen schafft und negative Ideale baut, eben jener *Instinkt der Freiheit* (in meiner Sprache geredet: der Wille zur Macht): nur dass der Stoff, an dem sich die formbildende und vergewaltigende Natur dieser Kraft auslässt, hier eben der Mensch selbst, sein ganzes thierisches altes Selbst ist — und *nicht*, wie in jenem grösseren und augenfälligeren Phänomen, der *andre* Mensch, die *andren* Menschen. Diese heimliche Selbst-Vergewaltigung, diese Künstler-Grausamkeit, diese Lust, sich selbst als einem schweren widerstrebenden leidenden Stoffe eine Form zu geben, einen Willen, eine Kritik, einen Widerspruch, eine Verachtung, ein Nein einzubrennen, diese unheimliche und entsetzlich-lustvolle Arbeit einer mit sich selbst willig-zwiespältigen Seele, welche sich leiden macht, aus Lust am Leidenmachen, dieses ganze *aktivische* „schlechte Gewissen“ hat zuletzt — man erräth es schon — als der eigentliche Mutterschooss idealer und imaginativer Ereignisse auch eine Fülle von neuer befremdlicher Schönheit und Bejahung an's Licht gebracht und vielleicht überhaupt erst *die* Schönheit... Was wäre denn „schön“, wenn nicht erst der Widerspruch sich selbst zum Bewusstsein gekommen wäre, wenn nicht erst das Hässliche zu sich selbst gesagt hätte: „ich bin hässlich“?... Zum Mindesten wird nach diesem Winke das Räthsel weniger räthselhaft sein, in wiefern in widersprüchlichen Begriffen, wie *Selbstlosigkeit, Selbstverleugnung, Selbstopferung* ein Ideal, eine Schönheit angedeutet sein kann; und Eins weiss man hinfort, ich zweifle nicht daran —, welcher Art nämlich von Anfang an die *Lust* ist, die der Selbstlose, der Sich-selbst-Verleugnende, Sich-selber-Opfernde empfindet: diese Lust gehört zur Grausamkeit. — Soviel vorläufig zur Herkunft des „Unegoistischen“ als eines *moralischen* Werthes und zur Absteckung des Bodens, aus dem dieser Werth gewachsen ist: erst das schlechte Gewissen, erst der Wille zur Selbstmisshandlung giebt die Voraussetzung ab für den *Werth* des Unegoistischen. — [19] Es ist eine Krankheit, das schlechte Gewissen, das unterliegt keinem Zweifel, aber eine Krankheit, wie die Schwangerschaft eine Krankheit ist. Suchen wir die Bedingungen auf, unter denen diese Krankheit auf ihren furchtbarsten und sublimsten Gipfel gekommen ist: — wir werden sehn, was damit eigentlich erst seinen Eintritt in die Welt gemacht hat. Dazu aber bedarf es eines langen Athems, — und zunächst müssen wir noch einmal zu einem früheren Gesichtspunkte zurück. Das privatrechtliche Verhältniss des Schuldners zu seinem Gläubiger, von dem des längeren schon die Rede war, ist noch einmal, und zwar in einer historisch überaus merkwürdigen und bedenklichen Weise in ein Verhältniss hineininterpretirt worden, worin es uns modernen Menschen vielleicht am unverständlichsten ist: nämlich in das Verhältniss der *Gegenwärtigen* zu ihren Vorfahren. Innerhalb der ursprünglichen Geschlechtsgenossenschaft — wir reden von Urzeiten — erkennt jedes Mal die lebende Generation gegen die frühere und in Sonderheit gegen die früheste, geschlechtbegründende eine juristische Verpflichtung an (und keineswegs eine blosse Gefühls-Verbindlichkeit: man dürfte diese letztere sogar nicht ohne Grund für die längste Dauer des menschlichen Geschlechts überhaupt in Abrede stellen). Hier herrscht die Überzeugung, dass das Geschlecht durchaus nur durch die Opfer und Leistungen der Vorfahren *besteht*, — und dass man ihnen diese durch Opfer und Leistungen *zurückzuzahlen* hat: man erkennt somit eine *Schuld* an, die dadurch noch beständig anwächst, dass diese Ahnen in ihrer Fortexistenz als mächtige Geister nicht aufhören, dem Geschlechte neue Vortheile und Vorschüsse seitens ihrer Kraft zu gewähren. Umsonst etwa? Aber es giebt kein „Umsonst“ für jene rohen und „seelenarmen“ Zeitalter. Was kann man ihnen zurückgeben? Opfer (anfänglich zur Nahrung, im gröblichsten Verstände), Feste, Kapellen, Ehrenbezeigungen, vor Allem Gehorsam — denn alle Bräuche sind, als Werke der Vorfahren, auch deren Satzungen und Befehle —: giebt man ihnen je genug? Dieser Verdacht bleibt übrig und wächst: von Zeit zu Zeit erzwingt er eine grosse Ablösung in Bausch und Bogen, irgend etwas Ungeheures von Gegenzahlung an den „Gläubiger“ (das berüchtigte Erstlingsopfer zum Beispiel, Blut, Menschenblut in jedem Falle). Die *Furcht* vor dem Ahnherrn und seiner Macht, das Bewusstsein von Schulden gegen ihn nimmt nach dieser Art von Logik nothwendig genau in dem Maasse zu, in dem die Macht des Geschlechts selbst zunimmt, in dem das Geschlecht selbst immer siegreicher, unabhängiger, geehrter, gefürchteter dasteht. Nicht etwa umgekehrt! Jeder Schritt zur Verkümmerung des Geschlechts, alle elenden Zufälle, alle Anzeichen von Entartung, von heraufkommender Auflösung *vermindern* vielmehr immer auch die Furcht vor dem Geiste seines Begründers und geben eine immer geringere Vorstellung von seiner Klugheit, Vorsorglichkeit und Macht-Gegenwart. Denkt man sich diese rohe Art Logik bis an ihr Ende gelangt: so müssen schliesslich die Ahnherrn der *mächtigsten* Geschlechter durch die Phantasie der wachsenden Furcht selbst in's Ungeheure gewachsen und in das Dunkel einer göttlichen Unheimlichkeit und Unvorstellbarkeit zurückgeschoben worden sein: — der Ahnherr wird zuletzt nothwendig in einen *Gott* transfigurirt. Vielleicht ist hier selbst der Ursprung der Götter, ein Ursprung also aus der *Furcht*!... Und wem es nöthig scheinen sollte hinzuzufügen: „aber auch aus der Pietät!“ dürfte schwerlich damit für jene längste Zeit des Menschengeschlechts Recht behalten, für seine Urzeit. Um so mehr freilich für die *mittlere* Zeit, in der die vornehmen Geschlechter sich herausbilden: — als welche in der That ihren Urhebern, den Ahnherren (Heroen, Göttern) alle die Eigenschaften mit Zins zurückgegeben haben, die inzwischen in ihnen selbst offenbar geworden sind, die *vornehmen* Eigenschaften. Wir werden auf die Veradligung und Veredelung der Götter (die freilich durchaus nicht deren „Heiligung“ ist) später noch einen Blick werfen: führen wir jetzt nur den Gang dieser ganzen Schuldbewusstseins-Entwicklung vorläufig zu Ende. [20] Das Bewusstsein, Schulden gegen die Gottheit zu haben, ist, wie die Geschichte lehrt, auch nach dem Niedergang der blutverwandtschaftlichen Organisationsform der „Gemeinschaft“ keineswegs zum Abschluss gekommen; die Menschheit hat, in gleicher Weise, wie sie die Begriffe „gut und schlecht“ von dem Geschlechts-Adel (sammt dessen psychologischem Grundhange, Rangordnungen anzusetzen) geerbt hat, mit der Erbschaft der Geschlechts- und Stammgottheiten auch die des Drucks von noch unbezahlten Schulden und des Verlangens nach Ablösung derselben hinzubekommen. (Den Übergang machen jene breiten Sklaven- und Hörigen-Bevölkerungen, welche sich an den Götter-Cultus ihrer Herren, sei es durch Zwang, sei es durch Unterwürfigkeit und mimicry, angepasst haben: von ihnen aus fliesst dann diese Erbschaft nach allen Seiten über.) Das Schuldgefühl gegen die Gottheit hat mehrere Jahrtausende nicht aufgehört zu wachsen, und zwar immer fort im gleichen Verhältnisse, wie der Gottesbegriff und das Gottesgefühl auf Erden gewachsen und in die Höhe getragen worden ist. (Die ganze Geschichte des ethnischen Kämpfens, Siegens, Sich-versöhnens, Sich-verschmelzens, Alles was der endgültigen Rangordnung aller Volks-Elemente in jeder grossen Rassen-Synthesis vorangeht, spiegelt sich in dem Genealogien-Wirrwarr ihrer Götter, in den Sagen von deren Kämpfen, Siegen und Versöhnungen ab; der Fortgang zu Universal-Reichen ist immer auch der Fortgang zu Universal-Gottheiten, der Despotismus mit seiner Überwältigung des unabhängigen Adels bahnt immer auch irgend welchem Monotheismus den Weg.) Die Heraufkunft des christlichen Gottes, als des Maximal-Gottes, der bisher erreicht worden ist, hat deshalb auch das Maximum des Schuldgefühls auf Erden zur Erscheinung gebracht. Angenommen, dass wir nachgerade in die *umgekehrte* Bewegung eingetreten sind, so dürfte man mit keiner kleinen Wahrscheinlichkeit aus dem unaufhaltsamen Niedergang des Glaubens an den christlichen Gott ableiten, dass es jetzt bereits auch schon einen erheblichen Niedergang des menschlichen Schuldbewusstseins gäbe; ja die Aussicht ist nicht abzuweisen, dass der vollkommne und endgültige Sieg des Atheismus, die Menschheit von diesem ganzen Gefühl, Schulden gegen ihren Anfang, ihre causa prima zu haben, lösen dürfte. Atheismus und eine Art *zweiter Unschuld* gehören zu einander. — [21] Dies vorläufig im Kurzen und Groben über den Zusammenhang der Begriffe „Schuld“, „Pflicht“ mit religiösen Voraussetzungen: ich habe absichtlich die eigentliche Moralisirung dieser Begriffe (die Zurückschiebung derselben in's Gewissen, noch bestimmter, die Verwicklung des *schlechten* Gewissens mit dem Gottesbegriffe) bisher bei Seite gelassen und am Schluss des vorigen Abschnittes sogar geredet, wie als ob es diese Moralisirung gar nicht gäbe, folglich, wie als ob es mit jenen Begriffen nunmehr nothwendig zu Ende gienge, nachdem deren Voraussetzung gefallen ist, der Glaube an unsern „Gläubiger“, an Gott. Der Thatbestand weicht davon in einer furchtbaren Weise ab. Mit der Moralisirung der Begriffe Schuld und Pflicht, mit ihrer Zurückschiebung in's *schlechte* Gewissen ist ganz eigentlich der Versuch gegeben, die Richtung der eben beschriebenen Entwicklung *umzukehren*, mindestens ihre Bewegung stillzustellen: jetzt *soll* gerade die Aussicht auf eine endgültige Ablösung ein-für-alle-Mal sich pessimistisch zuschliessen, jetzt *soll* der Blick trostlos vor einer ehernen Unmöglichkeit abprallen, zurückprallen, jetzt *sollen* jene Begriffe „Schuld“ und „Pflicht“ sich rückwärts wenden — gegen wen denn? Man kann nicht zweifeln: zunächst gegen den „Schuldner“, in dem nunmehr das schlechte Gewissen sich dermaassen festsetzt, einfrisst, ausbreitet und polypenhaft in jede Breite und Tiefe wächst, bis endlich mit der Unlösbarkeit der Schuld auch die Unlösbarkeit der Busse, der Gedanke ihrer Unabzahlbarkeit (der „*ewigen* Strafe“) concipirt ist —; endlich aber sogar gegen den „Gläubiger“, an die causa prima des Menschen, denke man dabei nun an den Anfang des menschlichen Geschlechts, an seinen Ahnherrn, der nunmehr mit einem Fluche behaftet wird („Adam“, „Erbsünde“, „Unfreiheit des Willens“) oder an die Natur, aus deren Schooss der Mensch entsteht und in die nunmehr das böse Princip hineingelegt wird („Verteufelung der Natur“) oder an das Dasein überhaupt, das als *unwerth an sich* übrig bleibt (nihilistische Abkehr von ihm, Verlangen in's Nichts oder Verlangen in seinen „Gegensatz“, in ein Anderssein, Buddhismus und Verwandtes) — bis wir mit Einem Male vor dem paradoxen und entsetzlichen Auskunftsmittel stehn, an dem die gemarterte Menschheit eine zeitweilige Erleichterung gefunden hat, jenem Geniestreich des *Christenthums*: Gott selbst sich für die Schuld des Menschen opfernd, Gott selbst sich an sich selbst bezahlt machend, Gott als der Einzige, der vom Menschen ablösen kann, was für den Menschen selbst unablösbar geworden ist — der Gläubiger sich für seinen Schuldner opfernd, aus *Liebe* (sollte man's glauben? — ), aus Liebe zu seinem Schuldner!... [22] Man wird bereits errathen haben, was eigentlich mit dem Allen und *unter* dem Allen geschehen ist: jener Wille zur Selbstpeinigung, jene zurückgetretene Grausamkeit des innerlich gemachten, in sich selbst zurückgescheuchten Thiermenschen, des zum Zweck der Zähmung in den „Staat“ Eingesperrten, der das schlechte Gewissen erfunden hat, um sich wehe zu thun, nachdem der *natürlichere* Ausweg dieses Wehe-thunwollens verstopft war, — dieser Mensch des schlechten Gewissens hat sich der religiösen Voraussetzung bemächtigt, um seine Selbstmarterung bis zu ihrer schauerlichsten Härte und Schärfe zu treiben. Eine Schuld gegen *Gott*: dieser Gedanke wird ihm zum Folterwerkzeug. Er ergreift in „Gott“ die letzten Gegensätze, die er zu seinen eigentlichen und unablöslichen Thier-Instinkten zu finden vermag, er deutet diese Thier-Instinkte selbst um als Schuld gegen Gott (als Feindschaft, Auflehnung, Aufruhr gegen den „Herrn“, den „Vater“, den Urahn und Anfang der Welt, er spannt sich in den Widerspruch „Gott“ und „Teufel“, er wirft alles Nein, das er zu sich selbst, zur Natur, Natürlichkeit, Thatsächlichkeit seines Wesens sagt, aus sich heraus als ein Ja, als seiend, leibhaft, wirklich, als Gott, als Heiligkeit Gottes, als Richterthum Gottes, als Henkerthum Gottes, als Jenseits, als Ewigkeit, als Marter ohne Ende, als Hölle, als Unausmessbarkeit von Strafe und von Schuld. Dies ist eine Art Willens-Wahnsinn in der seelischen Grausamkeit, der schlechterdings nicht seines Gleichen hat: der Wille des Menschen, sich schuldig und verwerflich zu finden bis zur Unsühnbarkeit, sein Wille, sich bestraft zu denken, ohne dass die Strafe je der Schuld äquivalent werden könne, sein Wille, den untersten Grund der Dinge mit dem Problem von Strafe und Schuld zu inficiren und giftig zu machen, um sich aus diesem Labyrinth von „fixen Ideen“ ein für alle Mal den Ausweg abzuschneiden, sein Wille, ein Ideal aufzurichten — das des „heiligen Gottes“ —, um Angesichts desselben seiner absoluten Unwürdigkeit handgreiflich gewiss zu sein. Oh über diese wahnsinnige traurige Bestie Mensch! Welche Einfälle kommen ihr, welche Widernatur, welche Paroxysmen des Unsinns, welche *Bestialität der Idee* bricht sofort heraus, wenn sie nur ein wenig verhindert wird, *Bestie der That* zu sein!... Dies Alles ist interessant bis zum Übermaass, aber auch von einer schwarzen düsteren entnervenden Traurigkeit, dass man es sich gewaltsam verbieten muss, zu lange in diese Abgründe zu blicken. Hier ist *Krankheit*, es ist kein Zweifel, die furchtbarste Krankheit, die bis jetzt im Menschen gewüthet hat: — und wer es noch zu hören vermag (aber man hat heute nicht mehr die Ohren dafür! — ) wie in dieser Nacht von Marter und Widersinn der Schrei *Liebe*, der Schrei des sehnsüchtigsten Entzückens, der Erlösung in der *Liebe* geklungen hat, der wendet sich ab, von einem unbesieglichen Grausen erfasst... Im Menschen ist so viel Entsetzliches!... Die Erde war zu lange schon ein Irrenhaus!... [23] Dies genüge ein für alle Mal über die Herkunft des „heiligen Gottes“. — Dass *an sich* die Conception von Göttern nicht nothwendig zu dieser Verschlechterung der Phantasie führen muss, deren Vergegenwärtigung wir uns für einen Augenblick nicht erlassen durften, dass es *vornehmere* Arten giebt, sich der Erdichtung von Göttern zu bedienen, als zu dieser Selbstkreuzigung und Selbstschändung des Menschen, in der die letzten Jahrtausende Europa's ihre Meisterschaft gehabt haben, — das lässt sich zum Glück aus jedem Blick noch abnehmen, den man auf die *griechischen Götter* wirft, diese Wiederspiegelungen vornehmer und selbstherrlicher Menschen, in denen das *Thier* im Menschen sich vergöttlicht fühlte und *nicht* sich selbst zerriss, *nicht* gegen sich selber wüthete! Diese Griechen haben sich die längste Zeit ihrer Götter bedient, gerade um sich das „schlechte Gewissen“ vom Leibe zu halten, um ihrer Freiheit der Seele froh bleiben zu dürfen: also in einem umgekehrten Verstände als das Christenthum Gebrauch von seinem Gotte gemacht hat. Sie giengen darin *sehr weit*, diese prachtvollen und löwenmüthigen Kindsköpfe; und keine geringere Autorität als die des homerischen Zeus selbst giebt es ihnen hier und da zu verstehn, dass sie es sich zu leicht machen. „Wunder! sagt er einmal — es handelt sich um den Fall des Ägisthos, um einen *sehr* schlimmen Fall — „Wunder, wie sehr doch klagen die Sterblichen wider die Götter! „*Nur von uns sei Böses*, vermeinen sie; aber sie selber „Schaffen durch Unverstand, auch gegen Geschick, sich das Elend.“ Doch hört und sieht man hier zugleich, auch dieser olympische Zuschauer und Richter ist ferne davon, ihnen deshalb gram zu sein und böse von ihnen zu denken: „was sie *thöricht* sind!“ so denkt er bei den Unthaten der Sterblichen, — und „Thorheit“, „Unverstand“, ein wenig „Störung im Kopfe“, so viel haben auch die Griechen der stärksten, tapfersten Zeit selbst bei sich *zugelassen* als Grund von vielem Schlimmen und Verhängnissvollen: — Thorheit, *nicht* Sünde! versteht ihr das?... Selbst aber diese Störung im Kopfe war ein Problem — „ja, wie ist sie auch nur möglich? woher mag sie eigentlich gekommen sein, bei Köpfen, wie *wir* sie haben, wir Menschen der edlen Abkunft, des Glücks, der Wohlgerathenheit, der besten Gesellschaft, der Vornehmheit, der Tugend?“ — so fragte sich Jahrhunderte lang der vornehme Grieche Angesichts jedes ihm unverständlichen Greuels und Frevels, mit dem sich Einer von seines Gleichen befleckt hatte. „Es muss ihn wohl ein *Gott* bethört haben“, sagte er sich endlich, den Kopf schüttelnd... Dieser Ausweg ist *typisch* für Griechen... Dergestalt dienten damals die Götter dazu, den Menschen bis zu einem gewissen Grade auch im Schlimmen zu rechtfertigen, sie dienten als Ursachen des Bösen — damals nahmen sie nicht die Strafe auf sich, sondern, wie es *vornehmer* ist, die Schuld... [24] — Ich schliesse mit drei Fragezeichen, man sieht es wohl. „Wird hier eigentlich ein Ideal aufgerichtet oder eines abgebrochen?“ so fragt man mich vielleicht... Aber habt ihr euch selber je genug gefragt, wie theuer sich auf Erden die Aufrichtung *jedes* Ideals bezahlt gemacht hat? Wie viel Wirklichkeit immer dazu verleumdet und verkannt, wie viel Lüge geheiligt, wie viel Gewissen verstört, wie viel „Gott“ jedes Mal geopfert werden musste? Damit ein Heiligthum aufgerichtet werden kann, *muss ein Heiligthum zerbrochen werden*: das ist das Gesetz — man zeige mir den Fall, wo es nicht erfüllt ist!... Wir modernen Menschen, wir sind die Erben der Gewissens-Vivisektion und Selbst-Thierquälerei von Jahrtausenden: darin haben wir unsre längste Übung, unsre Künstlerschaft vielleicht, in jedem Fall unser Raffinement, unsre Geschmacks-Verwöhnung. Der Mensch hat allzulange seine natürlichen Hänge mit „bösem Blick“ betrachtet, so dass sie sich in ihm schliesslich mit dem „schlechten Gewissen“ verschwistert haben. Ein umgekehrter Versuch wäre *an sich* möglich — aber wer ist stark genug dazu? — nämlich die *unnatürlichen* Hänge, alle jene Aspirationen zum Jenseitigen, Sinnenwidrigen, Instinktwidrigen, Naturwidrigen, Thierwidrigen, kurz die bisherigen Ideale, die allesammt lebensfeindliche Ideale, Weltverleumder-Ideale sind, mit dem schlechten Gewissen zu verschwistern. An wen sich heute mit *solchen* Hoffnungen und Ansprüchen wenden?... Gerade die *guten* Menschen hätte man damit gegen sich; dazu, wie billig, die bequemen, die versöhnten, die eitlen, die schwärmerischen, die müden... Was beleidigt tiefer, was trennt so gründlich ab, als etwas von der Strenge und Höhe merken zu lassen, mit der man sich selbst behandelt? Und wiederum — wie entgegenkommend, wie liebreich zeigt sich alle Welt gegen uns, so bald wir es machen wie alle Welt und uns „gehen lassen“ wie alle Welt!... Es bedürfte zu jenem Ziele einer *andren* Art Geister, als gerade in diesem Zeitalter wahrscheinlich sind: Geister, durch Kriege und Siege gekräftigt, denen die Eroberung, das Abenteuer, die Gefahr, der Schmerz sogar zum Bedürfniss geworden ist; es bedürfte dazu der Gewöhnung an scharfe hohe Luft, an winterliche Wanderungen, an Eis und Gebirge in jedem Sinne, es bedürfte dazu einer Art sublimer Bosheit selbst, eines letzten selbstgewissesten Muthwillens der Erkenntniss, welcher zur grossen Gesundheit gehört, es bedürfte, kurz und schlimm genug, eben dieser *grossen Gesundheit*!... Ist diese gerade heute auch nur möglich?... Aber irgendwann, in einer stärkeren Zeit, als diese morsche, selbstzweiflerische Gegenwart ist, muss er uns doch kommen, der *erlösende* Mensch der grossen Liebe und Verachtung, der schöpferische Geist, den seine drängende Kraft aus allem Abseits und Jenseits immer wieder wegtreibt, dessen Einsamkeit vom Volke missverstanden wird, wie als ob sie eine Flucht *vor* der Wirklichkeit sei —: während sie nur seine Versenkung, Vergrabung, Vertiefung in die Wirklichkeit ist, damit er einst aus ihr, wenn er wieder an's Licht kommt, die *Erlösung* dieser Wirklichkeit heimbringe: ihre Erlösung von dem Fluche, den das bisherige Ideal auf sie gelegt hat. Dieser Mensch der Zukunft, der uns ebenso vom bisherigen Ideal erlösen wird, als von dem, *was aus ihm wachsen musste*, vom grossen Ekel, vom Willen zum Nichts, vom Nihilismus, dieser Glockenschlag des Mittags und der grossen Entscheidung, der den Willen wieder frei macht, der der Erde ihr Ziel und dem Menschen seine Hoffnung zurückgiebt, dieser Antichrist und Antinihilist, dieser Besieger Gottes und des Nichts — *er muss einst kommen*... [25] — Aber was rede ich da? Genug! Genug! An dieser Stelle geziemt mir nur Eins, zu schweigen: ich vergriffe mich sonst an dem, was einem Jüngeren allein freisteht, einem „Zukünftigeren“, einem Stärkeren, als ich bin, — was allein *Zarathustra* freisteht, *Zarathustra dem Gottlosen*... ### Essay III Dritte Abhandlung: Was bedeuten asketische Ideale? Unbekümmert, spöttisch, gewaltthätig — so will *uns* die Weisheit: sie ist ein Weib, sie liebt immer nur einen Kriegsmann. *Also sprach Zarathustra.* [1] Was bedeuten asketische Ideale? — Bei Künstlern Nichts oder zu Vielerlei; bei Philosophen und Gelehrten Etwas wie Witterung und Instinkt für die günstigsten Vorbedingungen hoher Geistigkeit; bei Frauen, besten Falls, eine Liebenswürdigkeit der Verführung *mehr*, ein wenig morbidezza auf schönem Fleische, die Engelhaftigkeit eines hübschen fetten Thiers; bei physiologisch Verunglückten und Verstimmten (bei der *Mehrzahl* der Sterblichen) einen Versuch, sich „zu gut“ für diese Welt vorzukommen, eine heilige Form der Ausschweifung, ihr Hauptmittel im Kampf mit dem langsamen Schmerz und der Langenweile; bei Priestern den eigentlichen Priesterglauben, ihr bestes Werkzeug der Macht, auch die „allerhöchste“ Erlaubniss zur Macht; bei Heiligen endlich einen Vorwand zum Winterschlaf, ihre novissima gloriae cupido, ihre Ruhe im Nichts („Gott“), ihre Form des Irrsinns. Dass aber überhaupt das asketische Ideal dem Menschen so viel bedeutet hat, darin drückt sich die Grundthatsache des menschlichen Willens aus, sein horror vacui: *er braucht ein Ziel*, — und eher will er noch *das Nichts* wollen, als *nicht* wollen. — Versteht man mich?... Hat man mich verstanden?... „*Schlechterdings nicht! mein Herr!*“ — Fangen wir also von vorne an. [2] Was bedeuten asketische Ideale? — Oder, dass ich einen einzelnen Fall nehme, in Betreff dessen ich oft genug um Rath gefragt worden bin, was bedeutet es zum Beispiel, wenn ein Künstler wie Richard Wagner in seinen alten Tagen der Keuschheit eine Huldigung darbringt? In einem gewissen Sinne freilich hat er dies immer gethan; aber erst zu allerletzt in einem asketischen Sinne. Was bedeutet diese „Sinnes“-Änderung, dieser radikale Sinnes-Umschlag? — denn ein solcher war es, Wagner sprang damit geradewegs in seinen Gegensatz um. Was bedeutet es, wenn ein Künstler in seinen Gegensatz umspringt?... Hier kommt uns, gesetzt, dass wir bei dieser Frage ein wenig Halt machen wollen, alsbald die Erinnerung an die beste, stärkste, frohmüthigste, *muthigste* Zeit, welche es vielleicht im Leben Wagner’s gegeben hat: das war damals, als ihn innerlich und tief der Gedanke der Hochzeit Luther’s beschäftigte. Wer weiss, an welchen Zufällen es eigentlich gehangen hat, dass wir heute an Stelle dieser Hochzeits-Musik die Meistersinger besitzen? Und wie viel in diesen vielleicht noch von jener fortklingt? Aber keinem Zweifel unterliegt es, dass es sich auch bei dieser „Hochzeit Luther’s“ um ein Lob der Keuschheit gehandelt haben würde. Allerdings auch um ein Lob der Sinnlichkeit: — und gerade so schiene es mir in Ordnung, gerade so wäre es auch „Wagnerisch“ gewesen. Denn zwischen Keuschheit und Sinnlichkeit giebt es keinen nothwendigen Gegensatz; jede gute Ehe, jede eigentliche Herzensliebschaft ist über diesen Gegensatz hinaus. Wagner hätte, wie mir scheint, wohlgethan, diese *angenehme* Thatsächlichkeit seinen Deutschen mit Hülfe einer holden und tapferen Luther-Komödie wieder einmal zu Gemüthe zu führen, denn es giebt und gab unter den Deutschen immer viele Verleumder der Sinnlichkeit; und Luther’s Verdienst ist vielleicht in Nichts grösser als gerade darin, den Muth zu seiner *Sinnlichkeit* gehabt zu haben (— man hiess sie damals, zart genug, die „evangelische Freiheit“...) Selbst aber in jenem Falle, wo es wirklich jenen Gegensatz zwischen Keuschheit und Sinnlichkeit giebt, braucht es glücklicher Weise noch lange kein tragischer Gegensatz zu sein. Dies dürfte wenigstens für alle wohlgeratheneren, wohlgemutheren Sterblichen gelten, welche ferne davon sind, ihr labiles Gleichgewicht zwischen „Thier und Engel“ ohne Weiteres zu den Gegengründen des Daseins zu rechnen, — die Feinsten und Hellsten, gleich Goethen, gleich Hafis, haben darin sogar einen Lebensreiz *mehr* gesehn. Solche „Widersprüche“ gerade verführen zum Dasein... Andrerseits versteht es sich nur zu gut, dass wenn einmal die verunglückten Schweine dazu gebracht werden, die Keuschheit anzubeten — und es giebt solche Schweine! — sie in ihr nur ihren Gegensatz, den Gegensatz zum verunglückten Schweine sehn und anbeten werden — oh mit was für einem tragischen Gegrunz und Eifer! man kann es sich denken — jenen peinlichen und überflüssigen Gegensatz, den Richard Wagner unbestreitbar am Ende seines Lebens noch hat in Musik setzen und auf die Bühne stellen wollen. *Wozu doch?* wie man billig fragen darf. Denn was giengen ihn, was gehen uns die Schweine an? — [3] Dabei ist freilich jene andre Frage nicht zu umgehn, was ihn eigentlich jene männliche (ach, so unmännliche) „Einfalt vom Lande“ angieng, jener arme Teufel und Naturbursch Parsifal, der von ihm mit so verfänglichen Mitteln schliesslich katholisch gemacht wird — wie? war dieser Parsifal überhaupt *ernst* gemeint? Man könnte nämlich versucht sein, das Umgekehrte zu muthmaassen, selbst zu wünschen, — dass der Wagner’sche Parsifal heiter gemeint sei, gleichsam als Schlussstück und Satyrdrama, mit dem der Tragiker Wagner auf eine gerade ihm gebührende und würdige Weise von uns, auch von sich, vor Allem *von der Tragödie* habe Abschied nehmen wollen, nämlich mit einem Excess höchster und muthwilligster Parodie aut das Tragische selbst, auf den ganzen schauerlichen Erden-Ernst und Erden-Jammer von Ehedem, auf die endlich überwundene *gröbste Form* in der Widernatur des asketischen Ideals. So wäre es, wie gesagt, eines grossen Tragikers gerade würdig gewesen: als welcher, wie jeder Künstler, erst dann auf den letzten Gipfel seiner Grösse kommt, wenn er sich und seine Kunst *unter* sich zu sehn weiss, — wenn er über sich zu *lachen* weiss. Ist der „Parsifal“ Wagner’s sein heimliches Überlegenheits-Lachen über sich selbst, der Triumph seiner errungenen letzten höchsten Künstler-Freiheit, Künstler-Jenseitigkeit? Man möchte es, wie gesagt, wünschen: denn was würde der *ernstgemeinte* Parsifal sein? Hat man wirklich nöthig, in ihm (wie man sich gegen mich ausgedrückt hat) „die Ausgeburt eines tollgewordenen Hasses auf Erkenntniss, Geist und Sinnlichkeit“ zu sehn? Einen Fluch auf Sinne und Geist in Einem Hass und Athem? Eine Apostasie und Umkehr zu christlich-krankhaften und obskurantistischen Idealen? Und zuletzt gar ein Sich-selbst-Verneinen, Sich-selbst-Durchstreichen von Seiten eines Künstlers, der bis dahin mit aller Macht seines Willens auf das Umgekehrte, nämlich auf *höchste Vergeistigung und Versinnlichung* seiner Kunst aus gewesen war? Und nicht nur seiner Kunst: auch seines Lebens. Man erinnere sich, wie begeistert seiner Zeit Wagner in den Fusstapfen des Philosophen Feuerbach gegangen ist: Feuerbach’s Wort von der „gesunden Sinnlichkeit“ — das klang in den dreissiger und vierziger Jahren Wagner’n gleich vielen Deutschen (— sie nannten sich die „*jungen* Deutschen“) wie das Wort der Erlösung. Hat er schliesslich darüber *umgelernt*? Da es zum Mindesten scheint, dass er zuletzt den Willen hatte, darüber *umzulehren*... Und nicht nur mit den Parsifal-Posaunen von der Bühne herab: — in der trüben, ebenso unfreien als rathlosen Schriftstellerei seiner letzten Jahre giebt es hundert Stellen, in denen sich ein heimlicher Wunsch und Wille, ein verzagter, unsicherer, uneingeständlicher Wille verräth, ganz eigentlich Umkehr, Bekehrung, Verneinung, Christenthum, Mittelalter zu predigen und seinen Jüngern zu sagen „es ist Nichts! Sucht das Heil wo anders!“ Sogar das „Blut des Erlösers“ wird einmal angerufen... [4] Dass ich in einem solchen Falle, der vieles Peinliche hat, meine Meinung sage — und es ist ein *typischer* Fall —: man thut gewiss am besten, einen Künstler in so weit von seinem Werke zu trennen, dass man ihn selbst nicht gleich ernst nimmt wie sein Werk. Er ist zuletzt nur die Vorausbedingung seines Werks, der Mutterschooss, der Boden, unter Umständen der Dünger und Mist, auf dem, aus dem es wächst, — und somit, in den meisten Fällen, Etwas, das man vergessen muss, wenn man sich des Werks selbst erfreuen will. Die Einsicht in die *Herkunft* eines Werks geht die Physiologen und Vivisektoren des Geistes an: nie und nimmermehr die ästhetischen Menschen, die Artisten! Dem Dichter und Ausgestalter des Parsifal blieb ein tiefes, gründliches, selbst schreckliches Hineinleben und Hinabsteigen in mittelalterliche Seelen-Contraste, ein feindseliges Abseits von aller Höhe, Strenge und Zucht des Geistes, eine Art intellektueller *Perversität* (wenn man mir das Wort nachsehen will) ebensowenig erspart als einem schwangeren Weibe die Widerlichkeiten und Wunderlichkeiten der Schwangerschaft: als welche man, wie gesagt, *vergessen* muss, um sich des Kindes zu erfreuen. Man soll sich vor der Verwechselung hüten, in welche ein Künstler nur zu leicht selbst geräth, aus psychologischer contiguity, mit den Engländern zu reden: wie als ob er selber das *wäre*, was er darstellen, ausdenken, ausdrücken kann. Thatsächlich steht es so, dass, wenn er eben das wäre, er es schlechterdings nicht darstellen, ausdenken, ausdrücken würde; ein Homer hätte keinen Achill, ein Goethe keinen Faust gedichtet, wenn Homer ein Achill und wenn Goethe ein Faust gewesen wäre. Ein vollkommner und ganzer Künstler ist in alle Ewigkeit von dem „Realen“, dem Wirklichen abgetrennt; andrerseits versteht man es, wie er an dieser ewigen „Unrealität“ und Falschheit seines innersten Daseins mitunter bis zur Verzweiflung müde werden kann, — und dass er dann wohl den Versuch macht, einmal in das gerade ihm Verbotenste, in’s Wirkliche überzugreifen, wirklich zu sein. Mit welchem Erfolge? Man wird es errathen... Es ist das die *typische Velleität* des Künstlers: dieselbe Velleität, welcher auch der altgewordne Wagner verfiel und die er so theuer, so verhängnissvoll hat büssen müssen (— er verlor durch sie den werthvollen Theil seiner Freunde). Zuletzt aber, noch ganz abgesehn von dieser Velleität, wer möchte nicht überhaupt wünschen, um Wagner’s selber willen, dass er *anders* von uns und seiner Kunst Abschied genommen hätte, nicht mit einem Parsifal, sondern siegreicher, selbstgewisser, Wagnerischer, — weniger irreführend, weniger zweideutig in Bezug auf sein ganzes Wollen, weniger Schopenhauerisch, weniger nihilistisch?... [5] — Was bedeuten also asketische Ideale? Im Falle eines Künstlers, wir begreifen es nachgerade: *gar Nichts!*... Oder so Vielerlei, dass es so gut ist wie gar Nichts!... Eliminiren wir zunächst die Künstler: dieselben stehen lange nicht unabhängig genug in der Welt und *gegen* die Welt, als dass ihre Werthschätzungen und deren Wandel *an sich* Theilnahme verdiente! Sie waren zu allen Zeiten Kammerdiener einer Moral oder Philosophie oder Religion; ganz abgesehn noch davon, dass sie leider oft genug die allzugeschmeidigen Höflinge ihrer Anhänger und Gönnerschaft und spürnasige Schmeichler vor alten oder eben neu heraufkommenden Gewalten gewesen sind. Zum Mindesten brauchen sie immer eine Schutzwehr, einen Rückhalt, eine bereits begründete Autorität: die Künstler stehen nie für sich, das Alleinstehn geht wider ihre tiefsten Instinkte. So nahm zum Beispiel Richard Wagner den Philosophen Schopenhauer, als „die Zeit gekommen war“, zu seinem Vordermann, zu seiner Schutzwehr: — wer möchte es auch nur für denkbar halten, dass er den *Muth* zu einem asketischen Ideal gehabt hätte, ohne den Rückhalt, den ihm die Philosophie Schopenhauer’s bot, ohne die in den siebziger Jahren in Europa zum *Übergewicht* gelangende Autorität Schopenhauer’s? (dabei noch nicht in Anschlag gebracht, ob im *neuen* Deutschland ein Künstler ohne die Milch frommer, reichsfrommer Denkungsart überhaupt möglich gewesen wäre). — Und damit sind wir bei der ernsthafteren Frage angelangt: was bedeutet es, wenn ein wirklicher *Philosoph* dem asketischen Ideale huldigt, ein wirklich auf sich gestellter Geist wie Schopenhauer, ein Mann und Ritter mit erzenem Blick, der den Muth zu sich selber hat, der allein zu stehn weiss und nicht erst auf Vordermänner und höhere Winke wartet? — Erwägen wir hier sofort die merkwürdige und für manche Art Mensch selbst fascinirende Stellung Schopenhauer’s zur *Kunst*: denn sie ist es ersichtlich gewesen, um derentwillen *zunächst* Richard Wagner zu Schopenhauern übertrat (überredet dazu durch einen Dichter, wie man weiss, durch Herwegh), und dies bis zu dem Maasse, dass sich damit ein vollkommner theoretischer Widerspruch zwischen seinem früheren und seinem späteren ästhetischen Glauben aufriss, — ersterer zum Beispiel in „Oper und Drama“ ausgedrückt, letzterer in den Schriften, die er von 1870 an herausgab. In Sonderheit änderte Wagner, was vielleicht am meisten befremdet, von da an rücksichtslos sein Urtheil über Werth und Stellung der *Musik* selbst: was lag ihm daran, dass er bisher aus ihr ein Mittel, ein Medium, ein „Weib“ gemacht hatte, das schlechterdings eines Zweckes, eines Manns bedürfe um zu gedeihn — nämlich des Drama’s! Er begriff mit Einem Male, dass mit der Schopenhauer’schen Theorie und Neuerung *mehr* zu machen sei in majorem musicae gloriam, — nämlich mit der *Souverainetät* der Musik, so wie sie Schopenhauer begriff: die Musik abseits gestellt gegen alle übrigen Künste, die unabhängige Kunst an sich, *nicht*, wie diese, Abbilder der Phänomenalität bietend, vielmehr die Sprache des Willens selbst redend, unmittelbar aus dem „Abgrunde“ heraus als dessen eigenste, ursprünglichste, unabgeleitetste Offenbarung. Mit dieser ausserordentlichen Werthsteigerung der Musik, wie sie aus der Schopenhauer’schen Philosophie zu erwachsen schien, stieg mit Einem Male auch *der Musiker* selbst unerhört im Preise: er wurde nunmehr ein Orakel, ein Priester, ja mehr als ein Priester, eine Art Mundstück des „An-sich“ der Dinge, ein Telephon des Jenseits, — er redete fürderhin nicht nur Musik, dieser Bauchredner Gottes, — er redete Metaphysik: was Wunder, dass er endlich eines Tags *asketische Ideale* redete?... [6] Schopenhauer hat sich die Kantische Fassung des ästhetischen Problems zu Nutze gemacht, — obwohl er es ganz gewiss nicht mit Kantischen Augen angeschaut hat. Kant gedachte der Kunst eine Ehre zu erweisen, als er unter den Prädikaten des Schönen diejenigen bevorzugte und in den Vordergrund stellte, welche die Ehre der Erkenntniss ausmachen: Unpersönlichkeit und Allgemeingültigkeit. Ob dies nicht in der Hauptsache ein Fehlgriff war, ist hier nicht am Orte zu verhandeln; was ich allein unterstreichen will, ist, dass Kant, gleich allen Philosophen, statt von den Erfahrungen des Künstlers (des Schaffenden) aus das ästhetische Problem zu visiren, allein vom „Zuschauer“ aus über die Kunst und das Schöne nachgedacht und dabei unvermerkt den „Zuschauer“ selber in den Begriff „schön“ hinein bekommen hat. Wäre aber wenigstens nur dieser „Zuschauer“ den Philosophen des Schönen ausreichend bekannt gewesen! — nämlich als eine grosse *persönliche* Thatsache und Erfahrung, als eine Fülle eigenster starker Erlebnisse, Begierden, Überraschungen, Entzückungen auf dem Gebiete des Schönen! Aber das Gegentheil war, wie ich fürchte, immer der Fall: und so bekommen wir denn von ihnen gleich von Anfang an Definitionen, in denen, wie in jener berühmten Definition, die Kant vom Schönen giebt, der Mangel an feinerer Selbst-Erfahrung in Gestalt eines dicken Wurms von Grundirrthum sitzt. „Schön ist, hat Kant gesagt, was *ohne Interesse* gefällt.“ Ohne Interesse! Man vergleiche mit dieser Definition jene andre, die ein wirklicher „Zuschauer“ und Artist gemacht hat — Stendhal, der das Schöne einmal une promesse de bonheur nennt. Hier ist jedenfalls gerade Das *abgelehnt* und ausgestrichen, was Kant allein am ästhetischen Zustande hervorhebt: le désinteressement. Wer hat Recht, Kant oder Stendhal? — Wenn freilich unsre Aesthetiker nicht müde werden, zu Gunsten Kant’s in die Wagschale zu werfen, dass man unter dem Zauber der Schönheit *sogar* gewandlose weibliche Statuen „ohne Interesse“ anschauen könne, so darf man wohl ein wenig auf ihre Unkosten lachen: — die Erfahrungen der *Künstler* sind in Bezug auf diesen heiklen Punkt „interessanter“, und Pygmalion war jedenfalls *nicht* nothwendig ein „unästhetischer Mensch“. Denken wir um so besser von der Unschuld unsrer Aesthetiker, welche sich in solchen Argumenten spiegelt, rechnen wir es zum Beispiel Kanten zu Ehren an, was er über das Eigenthümliche des Tastsinns mit landpfarrermässiger Naivetät zu lehren weiss! — Und hier kommen wir auf Schopenhauer zurück, der in ganz andrem Maasse als Kant den Künsten nahestand und doch nicht aus dem Bann der Kantischen Definition herausgekommen ist: wie kam das? Der Umstand ist wunderlich genug: das Wort „ohne Interesse“ interpretirte er sich in der allerpersönlichsten Weise, aus einer Erfahrung heraus, die bei ihm zu den regelmässigsten gehört haben muss. Über wenig Dinge redet Schopenhauer so sicher wie über die Wirkung der ästhetischen Contemplation: er sagt ihr nach, dass sie gerade der *geschlechtlichen* „Interessirtheit“ entgegenwirke, ähnlich also wie Lupulin und Kampher, er ist nie müde geworden, *dieses* Loskommen vom „Willen“ als den grossen Vorzug und Nutzen des ästhetischen Zustandes zu verherrlichen. Ja man möchte versucht sein zu fragen, ob nicht seine Grundconception von „Willen und Vorstellung“, der Gedanke, dass es eine Erlösung vom „Willen“ einzig durch die „Vorstellung“ geben könne, aus einer Verallgemeinerung jener Sexual-Erfahrung ihren Ursprung genommen habe. (Bei allen Fragen in Betreff der Schopenhauer’schen Philosophie ist, anbei bemerkt, niemals ausser Acht zu lassen, dass sie die Conception eines sechsundzwanzigjährigen Jünglings ist; so dass sie nicht nur an dem Spezifischen Schopenhauer’s, sondern auch an dem Spezifischen jener Jahreszeit des Lebens Antheil hat.) Hören wir zum Beispiel eine der ausdrücklichsten Stellen unter den zahllosen, die er zu Ehren des ästhetischen Zustandes geschrieben hat (Welt als Wille und Vorstellung I 231), hören wir den Ton heraus, das Leiden, das Glück, die Dankbarkeit, mit der solche Worte gesprochen worden sind. „Das ist der schmerzenslose Zustand, den Epikuros als das höchste Gut und als den Zustand der Götter pries; wir sind, für jenen Augenblick, des schnöden Willensdranges entledigt, wir feiern den Sabbat der Zuchthausarbeit des Wollens, das Rad des Ixion steht still“... Welche Vehemenz der Worte! Welche Bilder der Qual und des langen Überdrusses! Welche fast pathologische Zeit-Gegenüberstellung „jenes Augenblicks“ und des sonstigen „Rads des Ixions“, der „Zuchthausarbeit des Wollens“, des „schnöden Willensdrangs“! — Aber gesetzt, dass Schopenhauer hundert Mal für seine Person Recht hätte, was wäre damit für die Einsicht in’s Wesen des Schönen gethan? Schopenhauer hat eine Wirkung des Schönen beschrieben, die willen-calmirende, — ist sie auch nur eine regelmässige? Stendhal, wie gesagt, eine nicht weniger sinnliche, aber glücklicher gerathene Natur als Schopenhauer, hebt eine andre Wirkung des Schönen hervor: „das Schöne *verspricht* Glück“, ihm scheint gerade die *Erregung des Willens* („des Interesses“) durch das Schöne der Thatbestand. Und könnte man nicht zuletzt Schopenhauern selber einwenden, dass er sehr mit Unrecht sich hierin Kantianer dünke, dass er ganz und gar nicht die Kantische Definition des Schönen Kantisch verstanden habe, — dass auch ihm das Schöne aus einem „Interesse“ gefalle, sogar aus dem allerstärksten, allerpersönlichsten Interesse: dem des Torturirten, der von seiner Tortur loskommt?... Und, um auf unsre erste Frage zurückzukommen, „was *bedeutet* es, wenn ein Philosoph dem asketischen Ideale huldigt?“ so bekommen wir hier wenigstens einen ersten Wink: er will *von einer Tortur loskommen*. — [7] Hüten wir uns, bei dem Wort „Tortur“ gleich düstere Gesichter zu machen: es bleibt gerade in diesem Falle genug dagegen zu rechnen, genug abzuziehn, — es bleibt selbst etwas zu lachen. Unterschätzen wir es namentlich nicht, dass Schopenhauer, der die Geschlechtlichkeit in der That als persönlichen Feind behandelt hat (einbegriffen deren Werkzeug, das Weib, dieses „instrumentum diaboli“), Feinde *nöthig* hatte, um guter Dinge zu bleiben; dass er die grimmigen galligen schwarzgrünen Worte liebte; dass er zürnte, um zu zürnen, aus Passion; dass er krank geworden wäre, *Pessimist* geworden wäre (— denn er war es nicht, so sehr er es auch wünschte) ohne seine Feinde, ohne Hegel, das Weib, die Sinnlichkeit und den ganzen Willen zum Dasein, Dableiben. Schopenhauer wäre sonst *nicht* dageblieben, darauf darf man wetten, er wäre davongelaufen: seine Feinde aber hielten ihn fest, seine Feinde verführten ihn immer wieder zum Dasein, sein Zorn war, ganz wie bei den antiken Cynikern, sein Labsal, seine Erholung, sein Entgelt, sein remedium gegen den Ekel, sein *Glück*. So viel in Hinsicht auf das Persönlichste am Fall Schopenhauer’s; andrerseits ist an ihm noch etwas Typisches, — und hier erst kommen wir wieder auf unser Problem. Es besteht unbestreitbar, so lange es Philosophen auf Erden giebt und überall, wo es Philosophen gegeben hat (von Indien bis England, um die entgegengesetzten Pole der Begabung für Philosophie zu nehmen) eine eigentliche Philosophen-Gereiztheit und -Rancune gegen die Sinnlichkeit — Schopenhauer ist nur deren beredtester und, wenn man das Ohr dafür hat, auch hinreissendster und entzückendster Ausbruch —; es besteht insgleichen eine eigentliche Philosophen-Voreingenommenheit und -Herzlichkeit in Bezug auf das ganze asketische Ideal, darüber und dagegen soll man sich nichts vormachen. Beides gehört, wie gesagt, zum Typus; fehlt Beides an einem Philosophen, so ist er — dessen sei man sicher — immer nur ein „sogenannter“. Was *bedeutet* das? Denn man muss diesen Thatbestand erst interpretiren: *an sich* steht er da dumm in alle Ewigkeit, wie jedes „Ding an sich“. Jedes Thier, somit auch la bête philosophe, strebt instinktiv nach einem Optimum von günstigen Bedingungen, unter denen es seine Kraft ganz herauslassen kann und sein Maximum im Machtgefühl erreicht; jedes Thier perhorreszirt ebenso instinktiv und mit einer Feinheit der Witterung, die „höher ist als alle Vernunft“, alle Art Störenfriede und Hindernisse, die sich ihm über diesen Weg zum Optimum legen oder legen könnten (— es ist *nicht* sein Weg zum „Glück“, von dem ich rede, sondern sein Weg zur Macht, zur That, zum mächtigsten Thun, und in den meisten Fällen thatsächlich sein Weg zum Unglück). Dergestalt perhorreszirt der Philosoph die *Ehe* sammt dem, was zu ihr überreden möchte, — die Ehe als Hinderniss und Verhängniss auf seinem Wege zum Optimum. Welcher grosse Philosoph war bisher verheirathet? Heraklit, Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Schopenhauer — sie waren es nicht; mehr noch, man kann sie sich nicht einmal *denken* als verheirathet. Ein verheiratheter Philosoph gehört *in die Komödie*, das ist mein Satz: und jene Ausnahme Sokrates, der boshafte Sokrates hat sich, scheint es, ironice verheirathet, eigens um gerade *diesen* Satz zu demonstriren. Jeder Philosoph würde sprechen, wie einst Buddha sprach, als ihm die Geburt eines Sohnes gemeldet wurde: „Râhula ist mir geboren, eine Fessel ist mir geschmiedet“ (Râhula bedeutet hier „ein kleiner Dämon“); jedem „freien Geiste“ müsste eine nachdenkliche Stunde kommen, gesetzt, dass er vorher eine gedankenlose gehabt hat, wie sie einst demselben Buddha kam — „eng bedrängt, dachte er bei sich, ist das Leben im Hause, eine Stätte der Unreinheit; Freiheit ist ein Verlassen des Hauses“: „dieweil er also dachte, verliess er das Haus“. Es sind im asketischen Ideale so viele Brücken zur *Unabhängigkeit* angezeigt, dass ein Philosoph nicht ohne ein innerliches Frohlocken und Händeklatschen die Geschichte aller jener Entschlossnen zu hören vermag, welche eines Tages Nein sagten zu aller Unfreiheit und in irgend eine Wüste giengen: gesetzt selbst, dass es bloss starke Esel waren und ganz und gar das Gegenstück eines starken Geistes. Was bedeutet demnach das asketische Ideal bei einem Philosophen? Meine Antwort ist — man wird es längst errathen haben: der Philosoph lächelt bei seinem Anblick einem Optimum der Bedingungen höchster und kühnster Geistigkeit zu, — er verneint *nicht* damit „das Dasein“, er bejaht darin vielmehr *sein* Dasein und *nur* sein Dasein, und dies vielleicht bis zu dem Grade, dass ihm der frevelhafte Wunsch nicht fern bleibt: pereat mundus, fiat philosophia, fiat philosophus, *fiam!*... [8] Man sieht, das sind keine unbestochnen Zeugen und Richter über den Werth des asketischen Ideals, diese Philosophen! Sie denken an *sich*, — was geht sie „der Heilige“ an! Sie denken an Das dabei, was *ihnen* gerade das Unentbehrlichste ist: Freiheit von Zwang, Störung, Lärm, von Geschäften, Pflichten, Sorgen; Helligkeit im Kopf; Tanz, Sprung und Flug der Gedanken; eine gute Luft, dünn, klar, frei, trocken, wie die Luft auf Höhen ist, bei der alles animalische Sein geistiger wird und Flügel bekommt; Ruhe in allen Souterrains; alle Hunde hübsch an die Kette gelegt; kein Gebell von Feindschaft und zotteliger Rancune; keine Nagewürmer verletzten Ehrgeizes; bescheidene und unterthänige Eingeweide, fleissig wie Mühlwerke, aber fern; das Herz fremd, jenseits, zukünftig, posthum, — sie denken, Alles in Allem, bei dem asketischen Ideal an den heiteren Asketismus eines vergöttlichten und flügge gewordnen Thiers, das über dem Leben mehr schweift als ruht. Man weiss, was die drei grossen Prunkworte des asketischen Ideals sind: Armuth, Demuth, Keuschheit: und nun sehe man sich einmal das Leben aller grossen fruchtbaren erfinderischen Geister aus der Nähe an, — man wird darin alle drei bis zu einem gewissen Grade immer wiederfinden. Durchaus *nicht*, wie sich von selbst versteht, als ob es etwa deren „Tugenden“ wären — was hat diese Art Mensch mit Tugenden zu schaffen! — sondern als die eigentlichsten und natürlichsten Bedingungen ihres *besten* Daseins, ihrer *schönsten* Fruchtbarkeit. Dabei ist es ganz wohl möglich, dass ihre dominirende Geistigkeit vorerst einem unbändigen und reizbaren Stolze oder einer muthwilligen Sinnlichkeit Zügel anzulegen hatte oder dass sie ihren Willen zur „Wüste“ vielleicht gegen einen Hang zum Luxus und zum Ausgesuchtesten, insgleichen gegen eine verschwenderische Liberalität mit Herz und Hand schwer genug aufrecht erhielt. Aber sie that es, eben als der *dominirende* Instinkt, der seine Forderungen bei allen andren Instinkten durchsetzte — sie thut es noch; thäte sie’s nicht, so dominirte sie eben nicht. Daran ist also nichts von „Tugend“. Die *Wüste* übrigens, von welcher ich eben sprach, in die sich die starken, unabhängig gearteten Geister zurückziehn und vereinsamen — oh wie anders sieht sie aus, als die Gebildeten sich eine Wüste träumen! — unter Umständen sind sie es nämlich selbst, diese Gebildeten. Und gewiss ist es, dass alle Schauspieler des Geistes es schlechterdings nicht in ihr aushielten, — für sie ist sie lange nicht romantisch und syrisch genug, lange nicht Theater-Wüste genug! Es fehlt allerdings auch in ihr nicht an Kameelen: darauf aber beschränkt sich die ganze Ähnlichkeit. Eine willkürliche Obskurität vielleicht; ein Aus-dem-Wege-Gehn vor sich selber; eine Scheu vor Lärm, Verehrung, Zeitung, Einfluss; ein kleines Amt, ein Alltag, Etwas, das mehr verbirgt als an’s Licht stellt; ein Umgang gelegentlich mit harmlosem heitrem Gethier und Geflügel, dessen Anblick erholt, ein Gebirge zur Gesellschaft, aber kein todtes, eins mit *Augen* (das heisst mit Seen); unter Umständen selbst ein Zimmer in einem vollen Allerwelts-Gasthof, wo man sicher ist, verwechselt zu werden, und ungestraft mit Jedermann reden kann, — das ist hier „Wüste“: oh sie ist einsam genug, glaubt es mir! Wenn Heraklit sich in die Freihöfe und Säulengänge des ungeheuren Artemis-Tempels zurückzog, so war diese „Wüste“ würdiger, ich gebe es zu: weshalb *fehlen* uns solche Tempel? (— sie fehlen uns vielleicht *nicht*: eben gedenke ich meines schönsten Studirzimmers der Piazza di San Marco, Frühling vorausgesetzt, insgleichen Vormittag, die Zeit zwischen 10 und 12.) Das aber, dem Heraklit auswich, ist das Gleiche noch, dem *wir* jetzt aus dem Wege gehn: der Lärm und das Demokraten-Geschwätz der Ephesier, ihre Politik, ihre Neuigkeiten vom „Reich“ (Persien, man versteht mich), ihr Markt-Kram von „Heute“, — denn wir Philosophen brauchen zu allererst vor Einem Ruhe: vor allem „Heute“. Wir verehren das Stille, das Kalte, das Vornehme, das Ferne, das Vergangne Jegliches überhaupt, bei dessen Aspekt die Seele sich nicht zu vertheidigen und zuzuschnüren hat, — Etwas, mit dem man reden kann, ohne *laut* zu reden. Man höre doch nur auf den Klang, den ein Geist hat, wenn er redet: jeder Geist hat seinen Klang, liebt seinen Klang. Das dort zum Beispiel muss wohl ein Agitator sein, will sagen ein Hohlkopf, Hohltopf: was auch nur in ihn hineingeht, jeglich Ding kommt dumpf und dick aus ihm zurück, beschwert mit dem Echo der grossen Leere. Jener dort spricht selten anders als heiser: hat er sich vielleicht heiser *gedacht*? Das wäre möglich — man frage die Physiologen —, aber wer *in Worten* denkt, denkt als Redner und nicht als Denker (es verräth, dass er im Grunde nicht Sachen, nicht sachlich denkt, sondern nur in Hinsicht auf Sachen, dass er eigentlich *sich* und seine Zuhörer denkt). Dieser Dritte da redet aufdringlich, er tritt zu nahe uns an den Leib, sein Athem haucht uns an, — unwillkürlich schliessen wir den Mund, obwohl es ein Buch ist, durch das er zu uns spricht: der Klang seines Stils sagt den Grund davon, — dass er keine Zeit hat, dass er schlecht an sich selber glaubt, dass er heute oder niemals mehr zu Worte kommt. Ein Geist aber, der seiner selbst gewiss ist, redet leise; er sucht die Verborgenheit, er lässt auf sich warten. Man erkennt einen Philosophen daran, dass er drei glänzenden und lauten Dingen aus dem Wege geht, dem Ruhme, den Fürsten und den Frauen: womit nicht gesagt ist, dass sie nicht zu ihm kämen. Er scheut allzuhelles Licht: deshalb scheut er seine Zeit und deren „Tag“. Darin ist er wie ein Schatten: je mehr ihm die Sonne sinkt, um so grösser wird er. Was seine „Demuth“ angeht, so verträgt er, wie er das Dunkel verträgt, auch eine gewisse Abhängigkeit und Verdunkelung: mehr noch, er fürchtet sich vor der Störung durch Blitze, er schreckt vor der Ungeschütztheit eines allzu isolirten und preisgegebenen Baums zurück, an dem jedes schlechte Wetter seine Laune, jede Laune ihr schlechtes Wetter auslässt. Sein „mütterlicher“ Instinkt, die geheime Liebe zu dem, was in ihm wächst, weist ihn auf Lagen hin, wo man es ihm abnimmt, *an sich* zu denken; in gleichem Sinne, wie der Instinkt der *Mutter* im Weibe die abhängige Lage des Weibes überhaupt bisher festgehalten hat. Sie verlangen zuletzt wenig genug, diese Philosophen, ihr Wahlspruch ist „wer besitzt, wird besessen“ —: *nicht*, wie ich wieder und wieder sagen muss, aus einer Tugend, aus einem verdienstlichen Willen zur Genügsamkeit und Einfalt, sondern weil es ihr oberster Herr so von ihnen verlangt, klug und unerbittlich verlangt: als welcher nur für Eins Sinn hat und Alles, Zeit, Kraft, Liebe, Interesse nur dafür sammelt, nur dafür aufspart. Diese Art Mensch liebt es nicht, durch Feindschaften gestört zu werden, auch durch Freundschaften nicht: sie vergisst oder verachtet leicht. Es dünkt ihr ein schlechter Geschmack, den Märtyrer zu machen; „für die Wahrheit zu *leiden*“ — das überlässt sie den Ehrgeizigen und Bühnenhelden des Geistes und wer sonst Zeit genug dazu hat (— sie selbst, die Philosophen, haben Etwas für die Wahrheit zu *thun*). Sie machen einen sparsamen Verbrauch von grossen Worten; man sagt, dass ihnen selbst das Wort „Wahrheit“ widerstehe: es klinge grossthuerisch... Was endlich die „Keuschheit“ der Philosophen anbelangt, so hat diese Art Geist ihre Fruchtbarkeit ersichtlich wo anders als in Kindern; vielleicht wo anders auch das Fortleben ihres Namens, ihre kleine Unsterblichkeit (noch unbescheidener drückte man sich im alten Indien unter Philosophen aus „wozu Nachkommenschaft Dem, dessen Seele die Welt ist?“). Darin ist Nichts von Keuschheit aus irgend einem asketischen Skrupel und Sinnenhass, so wenig es Keuschheit ist, wenn ein Athlet oder Jockey sich der Weiber enthält: so will es vielmehr, zum Mindesten für die Zeiten der grossen Schwangerschaft, ihr dominirender Instinkt. Jeder Artist weiss, wie schädlich in Zuständen grosser geistiger Spannung und Vorbereitung der Beischlaf wirkt; für die mächtigsten und Instinktsichersten unter ihnen gehört dazu nicht erst die Erfahrung, die schlimme Erfahrung, — sondern eben ihr „mütterlicher“ Instinkt ist es, der hier zum Vortheil des werdenden Werkes rücksichtslos über alle sonstigen Vorräthe und Zuschüsse von Kraft, von vigor des animalen Lebens verfügt: die grössere Kraft *verbraucht* dann die kleinere. — Man lege sich übrigens den oben besprochenen Fall Schopenhauer’s nach dieser Interpretation zurecht: der Anblick des Schönen wirkte offenbar bei ihm als auslösender Reiz auf die *Hauptkraft* seiner Natur (die Kraft der Besinnung und des vertieften Blicks); so dass diese dann explodirte und mit Einem Male Herr des Bewusstseins wurde. Damit soll durchaus die Möglichkeit nicht ausgeschlossen sein, dass jene eigenthümliche Süssigkeit und Fülle, die dem ästhetischen Zustande eigen ist, gerade von der Ingredienz „Sinnlichkeit“ ihre Herkunft nehmen könnte, (wie aus derselben Quelle jener „Idealismus“ stammt, der mannbaren Mädchen eignet) — dass somit die Sinnlichkeit beim Eintritt des ästhetischen Zustandes nicht aufgehoben ist, wie Schopenhauer glaubte, sondern sich nur transfigurirt und nicht als Geschlechtsreiz mehr in’s Bewusstsein tritt. Auf diesen Gesichtspunkt werde ich ein andres Mal zurückkommen, im Zusammenhang mit noch delikateren Problemen der bisher so unberührten, so unaufgeschlossenen *Physiologie der Ästhetik*.) [9] Ein gewisser Asketismus, wir sahen es, eine harte und heitere Entsagsamkeit besten Willens gehört zu den günstigen Bedingungen höchster Geistigkeit, insgleichen auch zu deren natürlichsten Folgen: so wird es von vornherein nicht Wunder nehmen, wenn das asketische Ideal gerade von den Philosophen nie ohne einige Voreingenommenheit behandelt worden ist. Bei einer ernsthaften historischen Nachrechnung erweist sich sogar das Band zwischen asketischem Ideal und Philosophie als noch viel enger und strenger. Man könnte sagen, dass erst am *Gängelbande* dieses Ideals die Philosophie überhaupt gelernt habe, ihre ersten Schritte und Schrittchen auf Erden zu machen — ach, noch so ungeschickt, ach, mit noch so verdrossnen Mienen, ach, so bereit, umzufallen und auf dem Bauch zu liegen, dieser kleine schüchterne Tapps und Zärtling mit krummen Beinen! Es ist der Philosophie anfangs ergangen wie allen guten Dingen, — sie hatten lange keinen Muth zu sich selber, sie sahen sich immer um, ob ihnen Niemand zu Hülfe kommen wolle, mehr noch, sie fürchteten sich vor Allen, die ihnen zusahn. Man rechne sich die einzelnen Triebe und Tugenden des Philosophen der Reihe nach vor — seinen anzweifelnden Trieb, seinen verneinenden Trieb, seinen abwartenden („ephektischen“) Trieb, seinen analytischen Trieb, seinen forschenden, suchenden, wagenden Trieb, seinen vergleichenden, ausgleichenden Trieb, seinen Willen zu Neutralität und Objektivität, seinen Willen zu jedem „*sine* ira et studio“ —: hat man wohl schon begriffen, dass sie allesammt die längste Zeit den ersten Forderungen der Moral und des Gewissens entgegen giengen? (gar nicht zu reden von der *Vernunft* überhaupt, welche noch Luther Fraw Klüglin die kluge Hur zu nennen liebte). Dass ein Philosoph, falls er sich zum Bewusstsein gekommen *wäre*, sich geradezu als das leibhafte „nitimur in *vetitum*“ hätte fühlen müssen — und sich folglich *hütete*, „sich zu fühlen“, sich zum Bewusstsein zu kommen?... Es steht, wie gesagt, nicht anders mit allen guten Dingen, auf die wir heute stolz sind; selbst noch mit dem Maasse der alten Griechen gemessen, nimmt sich unser ganzes modernes Sein, soweit es nicht Schwäche, sondern Macht und Machtbewusstsein ist, wie lauter Hybris und Gottlosigkeit aus: denn gerade die umgekehrten Dinge, als die sind, welche wir heute verehren, haben die längste Zeit das Gewissen auf ihrer Seite und Gott zu ihrem Wächter gehabt. Hybris ist heute unsre ganze Stellung zur Natur, unsre Natur-Vergewaltigung mit Hülfe der Maschinen und der so unbedenklichen Techniker- und Ingenieur-Erfindsamkeit; Hybris ist unsre Stellung zu Gott, will sagen zu irgend einer angeblichen Zweck- und Sittlichkeits-Spinne hinter dem grossen Fangnetz-Gewebe der Ursächlichkeit — wir dürften wie Karl der Kühne im Kampfe mit Ludwig dem Elften sagen „je combats l’universelle araignée“ —; Hybris ist unsre Stellung zu *uns*, — denn wir experimentiren mit uns, wie wir es uns mit keinem Thiere erlauben würden und schlitzen uns vergnügt und neugierig die Seele bei lebendigem Leibe auf: was liegt uns noch am „Heil“ der Seele! Hinterdrein heilen wir uns selber: Kranksein ist lehrreich, wir zweifeln nicht daran, lehrreicher noch als Gesundsein, — die *Krankmacher* scheinen uns heute nöthiger selbst als irgend welche Medizinmänner und „Heilande“. Wir vergewaltigen uns jetzt selbst, es ist kein Zweifel, wir Nussknacker der Seele, wir Fragenden und Fragwürdigen, wie als ob Leben nichts Anderes sei, als Nüsseknacken; ebendamit müssen wir nothwendig täglich immer noch fragwürdiger, *würdiger* zu fragen werden, ebendamit vielleicht auch würdiger — zu leben?... Alle guten Dinge waren ehemals schlimme Dinge; aus jeder Erbsünde ist eine Erbtugend geworden. Die Ehe zum Beispiel schien lange eine Versündigung am Rechte der Gemeinde; man hat einst Busse dafür gezahlt, so unbescheiden zu sein und sich ein Weib für sich anzumaassen (dahin gehört zum Beispiel das jus primae noctis, heute noch in Cambodja das Vorrecht der Priester, dieser Bewahrer „alter guter Sitten“). Die sanften, wohlwollenden, nachgiebigen, mitleidigen Gefühle — nachgerade so hoch im Werthe, dass sie fast „die Werthe an sich“ sind — hatten die längste Zeit gerade die Selbstverachtung gegen sich: man schämte sich der Milde, wie man sich heute der Härte schämt (vergl. „Jenseits von Gut und Böse“ S. 232). Die Unterwerfung unter das *Recht*: — oh mit was für Gewissens-Widerstande haben die vornehmen Geschlechter überall auf Erden ihrerseits Verzicht auf Vendetta geleistet und dem Recht über sich Gewalt eingeräumt! Das „Recht“ war lange ein vetitum, ein Frevel, eine Neuerung, es trat mit Gewalt auf, als Gewalt, der man sich nur mit Scham vor sich selber fügte. Jeder kleinste Schritt auf der Erde ist ehedem mit geistigen und körperlichen Martern erstritten worden: dieser ganze Gesichtspunkt, „dass nicht nur das Vorwärtsschreiten, nein! das Schreiten, die Bewegung, die Veränderung ihre unzähligen Märtyrer nöthig gehabt hat“, klingt gerade heute uns so fremd, — ich habe ihn in der „Morgenröthe“ S. 17 ff. an’s Licht gestellt. „Nichts ist theurer erkauft, heisst es daselbst S. 19, als das Wenige von menschlicher Vernunft und vom Gefühle der Freiheit, was jetzt unsern Stolz ausmacht. Dieser Stolz aber ist es, dessentwegen es uns jetzt fast unmöglich wird, mit jenen ungeheuren Zeitstrecken der „Sittlichkeit der Sitte“ zu empfinden, welche der „Weltgeschichte“ vorausliegen, als die wirkliche und entscheidende Hauptgeschichte, welche den Charakter der Menschheit festgestellt hat: wo das Leiden als Tugend, die Grausamkeit als Tugend, die Verstellung als Tugend, die Rache als Tugend, die Verleugnung der Vernunft als Tugend, dagegen das Wohlbefinden als Gefahr, die Wissbegierde als Gefahr, der Friede als Gefahr, das Mitleiden als Gefahr, das Bemitleidetwerden als Schimpf, die Arbeit als Schimpf, der Wahnsinn als Göttlichkeit die *Veränderung* als das Unsittliche und Verderbenschwangere an sich überall in Geltung war!“ — [10] In demselben Buche S. 39 ist auseinander gesetzt, in welcher Schätzung, unter welchem Druck von Schätzung das älteste Geschlecht contemplativer Menschen zu leben hatte, — genau so weit verachtet als es nicht gefürchtet wurde! Die Contemplation ist in vermummter Gestalt, in einem zweideutigen Ansehn, mit einem bösen Herzen und oft mit einem geängstigten Kopfe zuerst auf der Erde erschienen: daran ist kein Zweifel. Das Inaktive, Brütende, Unkriegerische in den Instinkten contemplativer Menschen legte lange ein tiefes Misstrauen um sie herum: dagegen gab es kein anderes Mittel als entschieden *Furcht* vor sich erwecken. Und darauf haben sich zum Beispiel die alten Brahmanen verstanden! Die ältesten Philosophen wussten ihrem Dasein und Erscheinen einen Sinn, einen Halt und Hintergrund zu geben, auf den hin man sie fürchten lernte: genauer erwogen, aus einem noch fundamentaleren Bedürfnisse heraus, nämlich um vor sich selbst Furcht und Ehrfurcht zu gewinnen. Denn sie fanden in sich alle Werthurtheile *gegen* sich gekehrt, sie hatten gegen „den Philosophen in sich“ jede Art Verdacht und Widerstand niederzukämpfen. Dies thaten sie, als Menschen furchtbarer Zeitalter, mit furchtbaren Mitteln: die Grausamkeit gegen sich, die erfinderische Selbstkasteiung — das war das Hauptmittel dieser machtdurstigen Einsiedler und Gedanken-Neuerer, welche es nöthig hatten, in sich selbst erst die Götter und das Herkömmliche zu vergewaltigen, um selbst an ihre Neuerung *glauben* zu können. Ich erinnere an die berühmte Geschichte des Königs Viçvamitra, der aus tausendjährigen Selbstmarterungen ein solches Machtgefühl und Zutrauen zu sich gewann, dass er es unternahm, einen *neuen Himmel* zu bauen: das unheimliche Symbol der ältesten und jüngsten Philosophen-Geschichte auf Erden, — Jeder, der irgendwann einmal einen „neuen Himmel“ gebaut hat, fand die Macht dazu erst in der eignen Hölle... Drücken wir den ganzen Thatbestand in kurze Formeln zusammen: der philosophische Geist hat sich zunächst immer in die früher festgestellten Typen des contemplativen Menschen verkleiden und verpuppen müssen, als Priester, Zauberer, Wahrsager, überhaupt als religiöser Mensch, um in irgend einem Maasse auch nur *möglich* zu sein: *das asketische Ideal* hat lange Zeit dem Philosophen als Erscheinungsform, als Existenz-Voraussetzung gedient, — er musste es *darstellen*, um Philosoph sein zu können, er musste an dasselbe *glauben*, um es darstellen zu können. Die eigenthümlich weltverneinende, lebensfeindliche, sinnenungläubige, entsinnlichte Abseits-Haltung der Philosophen, welche bis auf die neueste Zeit festgehalten worden ist und damit beinahe als *Philosophen-Attitüde an sich* Geltung gewonnen hat, — sie ist vor Allem eine Folge des Nothstandes von Bedingungen, unter denen Philosophie überhaupt entstand und bestand: insofern nämlich die längste Zeit Philosophie auf Erden gar nicht möglich gewesen wäre ohne eine asketische Hülle und Einkleidung, ohne ein asketisches Selbst-Missverständniss. Anschaulich und augenscheinlich ausgedrückt: der *asketische Priester* hat bis auf die neueste Zeit die widrige und düstere Raupenform abgegeben, unter der allein die Philosophie leben durfte und herumschlich... Hat sich das wirklich *verändert*? Ist das bunte und gefährliche Flügelthier, jener „Geist“, den diese Raupe in sich barg, wirklich, Dank einer sonnigeren, wärmeren, aufgehellteren Welt, zuletzt doch noch entkuttet und in’s Licht hinausgelassen worden? Ist heute schon genug Stolz, Wagniss, Tapferkeit, Selbstgewissheit, Wille des Geistes, Wille zur Verantwortlichkeit, *Freiheit des Willens* vorhanden, dass wirklich nunmehr auf Erden „der Philosoph“ — *möglich* ist?... [11] Jetzt erst, nachdem wir den *asketischen Priester* in Sicht bekommen haben, rücken wir unsrem Probleme: was bedeutet das asketische Ideal? ernsthaft auf den Leib, — jetzt erst wird es „Ernst“: wir haben nunmehr den eigentlichen *Repräsentanten des Ernstes* überhaupt uns gegenüber. „Was bedeutet aller Ernst?“ — diese noch grundsätzlichere Frage legt sich vielleicht hier schon auf unsre Lippen: eine Frage für Physiologen, wie billig, an der wir aber einstweilen noch vorüberschlüpfen. Der asketische Priester hat in jenem Ideale nicht nur seinen Glauben, sondern auch seinen Willen, seine Macht, sein Interesse. Sein Recht zum Dasein steht und fällt mit jenem Ideale: was Wunder, dass wir hier auf einen furchtbaren Gegner stossen, gesetzt nämlich, das wir die Gegner jenes Ideals wären? eines solchen, der um seine Existenz gegen die Leugner jenes Ideales kämpft?... Andrerseits ist es von vornherein nicht wahrscheinlich, dass eine dergestalt interessirte Stellung zu unsrem Probleme diesem sonderlich zu Nutze kommen wird; der asketische Priester wird schwerlich selbst nur den glücklichsten Vertheidiger seines Ideals abgeben, aus dem gleichen Grunde, aus dem es einem Weibe zu misslingen pflegt, wenn es „das Weib an sich“ vertheidigen will, — geschweige denn den objektivsten Beurtheiler und Richter der hier aufgeregten Controverse. Eher also werden wir ihm noch zu helfen haben — so viel liegt jetzt schon auf der Hand — sich gut gegen uns zu vertheidigen als dass wir zu fürchten hätten, zu gut von ihm widerlegt zu werden... Der Gedanke, um den hier gekämpft wird, ist die Werthung unsres Lebens seitens der asketischen Priester: dasselbe wird (sammt dem, wozu es gehört, „Natur“, „Welt“, die gesammte Sphäre des Werdens und der Vergänglichkeit) von ihnen in Beziehung gesetzt zu einem ganz andersartigen Dasein, zu dem es sich gegensätzlich und ausschliessend verhält, es sei denn, dass es sich etwa gegen sich selber wende, sich selbst verneine: in diesem Falle, dem Falle eines asketischen Lebens, gilt das Leben als eine Brücke für jenes andre Dasein. Der Asket behandelt das Leben wie einen Irrweg, den man endlich rückwärts gehn müsse, bis dorthin, wo er anfängt; oder wie einen Irrthum, den man durch die That widerlege — widerlegen *solle*: denn er *fordert*, dass man mit ihm gehe, er erzwingt, wo er kann, *seine* Werthung des Daseins. Was bedeutet das? Eine solche ungeheuerliche Werthungsweise steht nicht als Ausnahmefall und Curiosum in die Geschichte des Menschen eingeschrieben: sie ist eine der breitesten und längsten Thatsachen, die es giebt. Von einem fernen Gestirn aus gelesen, würde vielleicht die Majuskel-Schrift unsres Erden-Daseins zu dem Schluss verführen, die Erde sei der eigentlich *asketische* Stern, ein Winkel missvergnügter, hochmüthiger und widriger Geschöpfe, die einen tiefen Verdruss an sich, an der Erde, an allem Leben gar nicht loswürden und sich selber so viel Wehe thäten als möglich, aus Vergnügen am Wehethun: — wahrscheinlich ihrem einzigen Vergnügen. Erwägen wir doch, wie regelmässig, wie allgemein, wie fast zu allen Zeiten der asketische Priester in die Erscheinung tritt; er gehört keiner einzelnen Rasse an; er gedeiht überall; er wächst aus allen Ständen heraus. Nicht dass er etwa seine Werthungsweise durch Vererbung züchtete und weiterpflanzte: das Gegentheil ist der Fall, — ein tiefer Instinkt verbietet ihm vielmehr, in’s Grosse gerechnet, die Fortpflanzung. Es muss eine Necessität ersten Rangs sein, welche diese lebensfeindliche Species immer wieder wachsen und gedeihen macht, — es muss wohl ein *Interesse des Lebens selbst* sein, dass ein solcher Typus des Selbstwiderspruchs nicht ausstirbt. Denn ein asketisches Leben ist ein Selbstwiderspruch: hier herrscht ein Ressentiment sonder Gleichen, das eines ungesättigten Instinktes und Machtwillens, der Herr werden möchte, nicht über Etwas am Leben, sondern über das Leben selbst, über dessen tiefste, stärkste, unterste Bedingungen; hier wird ein Versuch gemacht, die Kraft zu gebrauchen, um die Quellen der Kraft zu verstopfen; hier richtet sich der Blick grün und hämisch gegen das physiologische Gedeihen selbst, in Sonderheit gegen deren Ausdruck, die Schönheit, die Freude; während am Missrathen, Verkümmern, am Schmerz, am Unfall, am Hässlichen, an der willkürlichen Einbusse, an der Entselbstung, Selbstgeisselung, Selbstopferung ein Wohlgefallen empfunden und gesucht wird. Dies ist Alles im höchsten Grade paradox: wir stehen hier vor einer Zwiespältigkeit, die sich selbst zwiespältig will, welche sich selbst in diesem Leiden *geniesst* und in dem Maasse sogar immer selbstgewisser und triumphirender wird, als ihre eigne Voraussetzung, die physiologische Lebensfähigkeit, *abnimmt*. „Der Triumph gerade in der letzten Agonie“: unter diesem superlativischen Zeichen kämpfte von jeher das asketische Ideal; in diesem Räthsel von Verführung, in diesem Bilde von Entzücken und Qual erkannte es sein hellstes Licht, sein Heil, seinen endlichen Sieg. Crux, nux, lux — das gehört bei ihm in Eins. — [12] Gesetzt, dass ein solcher leibhafter Wille zur Contradiction und Widernatur dazu gebracht wird, *zu philosophiren*: woran wird er seine innerlichste Willkür auslassen? An dem, was am allersichersten als wahr, als real empfunden wird: er wird *den Irrthum* gerade dort suchen, wo der eigentliche Lebens-Instinkt die Wahrheit am unbedingtesten ansetzt. Er wird zum Beispiel, wie es die Asketen der Vedânta-Philosophie thaten, die Leiblichkeit zur Illusion herabsetzen, den Schmerz insgleichen, die Vielheit, den ganzen Begriffs-Gegensatz „Subjekt“ und „Objekt“ — Irrthümer, Nichts als Irrthümer! Seinem Ich den Glauben versagen, sich selber seine „Realität“ verneinen — welcher Triumph! — schon nicht mehr bloss über die Sinne, über den Augenschein, eine viel höhere Art Triumph, eine Vergewaltigung und Grausamkeit an der Vernunft: als welche Wollust damit auf den Gipfel kommt, dass die asketische Selbstverachtung, Selbstverhöhnung der Vernunft dekretirt: „es giebt ein Reich der Wahrheit und des Seins, aber gerade die Vernunft ist davon *ausgeschlossen*!“... (Anbei gesagt: selbst noch in dem Kantischen Begriff „intelligibler Charakter der Dinge“ ist Etwas von dieser lüsternen Asketen-Zwiespältigkeit rückständig, welche Vernunft gegen Vernunft zu kehren liebt: „intelligibler Charakter“ bedeutet nämlich bei Kant eine Art Beschaffenheit der Dinge, von der der Intellekt gerade soviel begreift, dass sie für den Intellekt — ganz und gar *unbegreiflich* ist.) — Seien wir zuletzt, gerade als Erkennende, nicht undankbar gegen solche resolute Umkehrungen der gewohnten Perspektiven und Werthungen, mit denen der Geist allzulange scheinbar freventlich und nutzlos gegen sich selbst gewüthet hat: dergestalt einmal *anders* sehn, *anders-sehn-wollen* ist keine kleine Zucht und Vorbereitung des Intellekts zu seiner einstmaligen „Objektivität“, — letztere nicht als „interesselose Anschauung“ verstanden (als welche ein Unbegriff und Widersinn ist), sondern als das Vermögen, sein Für und Wider *in der Gewalt zu haben* und aus- und einzuhängen: so dass man sich gerade die *Verschiedenheit* der Perspektiven und der Affekt-Interpretationen für die Erkenntnisse nutzbar zu machen weiss. Hüten wir uns nämlich, meine Herrn Philosophen, von nun an besser vor der gefährlichen alten Begriffs-Fabelei, welche ein „reines, willenloses, schmerzloses, zeitloses Subjekt der Erkenntniss“ angesetzt hat, hüten wir uns vor den Fangarmen solcher contradiktorischen Begriffe wie „reine Vernunft“, „absolute Geistigkeit“, „Erkenntniss an sich“: — hier wird immer ein Auge zu denken verlangt, das gar nicht gedacht werden kann, ein Auge, das durchaus keine Richtung haben soll, bei dem die aktiven und interpretirenden Kräfte unterbunden sein sollen, fehlen sollen, durch die doch Sehen erst ein Etwas-Sehen wird, hier wird also immer ein Widersinn und Unbegriff von Auge verlangt. Es giebt nur ein perspektivisches Sehen, nur ein perspektivisches „Erkennen“; und je *mehr* Affekte wir über eine Sache zu Worte kommen lassen, je *mehr* Augen, verschiedne Augen wir uns für dieselbe Sache einzusetzen wissen, um so vollständiger wird unser „Begriff“ dieser Sache, unsre „Objektivität“ sein. Den Willen aber überhaupt eliminiren, die Affekte sammt und sonders aushängen, gesetzt, dass wir dies vermöchten: wie? hiesse das nicht den Intellekt *castriren*?... [13] Aber kehren wir zurück. Ein solcher Selbstwiderspruch, wie er sich im Asketen darzustellen scheint, „Leben *gegen* Leben“ ist — so viel liegt zunächst auf der Hand — physiologisch und nicht mehr psychologisch nachgerechnet, einfach Unsinn. Er kann nur *scheinbar* sein; er muss eine Art vorläufigen Ausdrucks, eine Auslegung, Formel, Zurechtmachung, ein psychologisches Missverständniss von Etwas sein, dessen eigentliche Natur lange nicht verstanden, lange nicht *an sich* bezeichnet werden konnte, — ein blosses Wort, eingeklemmt in eine alte Lücke der menschlichen Erkenntniss. Und dass ich kurz den Thatbestand dagegen stelle: *das asketische Ideal entspringt dem Schutz- und Heil-Instinkte eines degenerirenden Lebens*, welches sich mit allen Mitteln zu halten sucht und um sein Dasein kämpft; es deutet auf eine partielle physiologische Hemmung und Ermüdung hin, gegen welche die tiefsten, intakt gebliebenen Instinkte des Lebens unausgesetzt mit neuen Mitteln und Erfindungen ankämpfen. Das asketische Ideal ist ein solches Mittel: es steht also gerade umgekehrt als es die Verehrer dieses Ideals meinen, — das Leben ringt in ihm und durch dasselbe mit dem Tode und *gegen* den Tod, das asketische Ideal ist ein Kunstgriff in der *Erhaltung* des Lebens. Dass dasselbe in dem Maasse, wie die Geschichte es lehrt, über den Menschen walten und mächtig werden konnte, in Sonderheit überall dort, wo die Civilisation und Zähmung des Menschen durchgesetzt wurde, darin drückt sich eine grosse Thatsache aus, die *Krankhaftigkeit* im bisherigen Typus des Menschen, zum Mindesten des zahm gemachten Menschen, das physiologische Ringen des Menschen mit dem Tode (genauer: mit dem Überdrusse am Leben, mit der Ermüdung, mit dem Wunsche nach dem „Ende“). Der asketische Priester ist der fleischgewordne Wunsch nach einem Anders-sein, Anderswosein, und zwar der höchste Grad dieses Wunsches, dessen eigentliche Inbrunst und Leidenschaft: aber eben die Macht seines Wünschens ist die Fessel, die ihn hier anbindet, eben damit wird er zum Werkzeug, das daran arbeiten muss, günstigere Bedingungen für das Hiersein und Mensch-sein zu schaffen, — eben mit dieser Macht hält er die ganze Heerde der Missrathnen, Verstimmten, Schlechtweggekommnen, Verunglückten, An-sich-Leidenden jeder Art am Dasein fest, indem er ihnen instinktiv als Hirt vorangeht. Man versteht mich bereits: dieser asketische Priester, dieser anscheinende Feind des Lebens, dieser Verneinende, — er gerade gehört zu den ganz grossen *conservirenden* und *Ja-schaffenden* Gewalten des Lebens... Woran sie hängt, jene Krankhaftigkeit? Denn der Mensch ist kränker, unsicherer, wechselnder, unfestgestellter als irgend ein Thier sonst, daran ist kein Zweifel, — er ist das *kranke* Thier: woher kommt das? Sicherlich hat er auch mehr gewagt, geneuert, getrotzt, das Schicksal herausgefordert als alle übrigen Thiere zusammen genommen: er, der grosse Experimentator mit sich, der Unbefriedigte, Ungesättigte, der um die letzte Herrschaft mit Thier, Natur und Göttern ringt, — er, der immer noch Unbezwungne, der ewig-Zukünftige, der vor seiner eignen drängenden Kraft keine Ruhe mehr findet, so dass ihm seine Zukunft unerbittlich wie ein Sporn im Fleische jeder Gegenwart wühlt: — wie sollte ein solches muthiges und reiches Thier nicht auch das am meisten gefährdete, das am Längsten und Tiefsten kranke unter allen kranken Thieren sein?... Der Mensch hat es satt, oft genug, es giebt ganze Epidemien dieses Satthabens (— so um 1348 herum, zur Zeit des Todtentanzes): aber selbst noch dieser Ekel, diese Müdigkeit, dieser Verdruss an sich selbst — Alles tritt an ihm so mächtig heraus, dass es sofort wieder zu einer neuen Fessel wird. Sein Nein, dass er zum Leben spricht, bringt wie durch einen Zauber eine Fülle zarterer Ja’s an’s Licht; ja wenn er sich *verwundet*, dieser Meister der Zerstörung, Selbstzerstörung, — hinterdrein ist es die Wunde selbst, die ihn zwingt, *zu leben*... [14] Je normaler die Krankhaftigkeit am Menschen ist — und wir können diese Normalität nicht in Abrede stellen —, um so höher sollte man die seltnen Fälle der seelisch-leiblichen Mächtigkeit, die *Glücksfälle* des Menschen in Ehren halten, um so strenger die Wohlgerathnen vor der schlechtesten Luft, der Kranken-Luft behüten. Thut man das?... Die Kranken sind die grösste Gefahr für die Gesunden; *nicht* von den Stärksten kommt das Unheil für die Starken, sondern von den Schwächsten. Weiss man das?... In’s Grosse gerechnet, ist es durchaus nicht die Furcht vor dem Menschen, deren Verminderung man wünschen dürfte: denn diese Furcht zwingt die Starken dazu, stark, unter Umständen furchtbar zu sein, — sie hält den wohlgerathenen Typus Mensch *aufrecht*. Was zu fürchten ist, was verhängnissvoll wirkt wie kein andres Verhängniss, das wäre nicht die grosse Furcht, sondern der grosse *Ekel* vor dem Menschen; insgleichen das grosse *Mitleid* mit dem Menschen. Gesetzt, dass diese beiden eines Tages sich begatteten, so würde unvermeidlich sofort etwas vom Unheimlichsten zur Welt kommen, der „letzte Wille“ des Menschen, sein Wille zum Nichts, der Nihilismus. Und in der That: hierzu ist Viel vorbereitet. Wer nicht nur seine Nase zum Riechen hat, sondern auch seine Augen und Ohren, der spürt fast überall, wohin er heute auch nur tritt, etwas wie Irrenhaus-, wie Krankenhaus-Luft, — ich rede, wie billig, von den Culturgebieten des Menschen, von jeder Art „Europa“, das es nachgerade auf Erden giebt. Die *Krankhaften* sind des Menschen grosse Gefahr: nicht die Bösen, nicht die „Raubthiere“. Die von vorn herein Verunglückten, Niedergeworfnen, Zerbrochnen — sie sind es, die *Schwächsten* sind es, welche am Meisten das Leben unter Menschen unterminiren, welche unser Vertrauen zum Leben, zum Menschen, zu uns am gefährlichsten vergiften und in Frage stellen. Wo entgienge man ihm, jenem verhängten Blick, von dem man eine tiefe Traurigkeit mit fortträgt, jenem zurückgewendeten Blick des Missgebornen von Anbeginn, der es verräth, wie ein solcher Mensch zu sich selber spricht, — jenem Blick, der ein Seufzer ist. „Möchte ich irgend Jemand Anderes sein! so seufzt dieser Blick: aber da ist keine Hoffnung. Ich bin, der ich bin: wie käme ich von mir selber los? Und doch — habe ich mich satt!“... Auf solchem Boden der Selbstverachtung, einem eigentlichen Sumpfboden, wächst jedes Unkraut, jedes Giftgewächs, und alles so klein, so versteckt, so unehrlich, so süsslich. Hier wimmeln die Würmer der Rach- und Nachgefühle; hier stinkt die Luft nach Heimlichkeiten und Uneingeständlichkeiten; hier spinnt sich beständig das Netz der bösartigsten Verschwörung, — der Verschwörung der Leidenden gegen die Wohlgerathenen und Siegreichen, hier wird der Aspekt des Siegreichen *gehasst*. Und welche Verlogenheit, um diesen Hass nicht als Hass einzugestehn! Welcher Aufwand an grossen Worten und Attitüden, welche Kunst der „rechtschaffnen“ Verleumdung! Diese Missrathenen: welche edle Beredsamkeit entströmt ihren Lippen! Wie viel zuckrige, schleimige demüthige Ergebung schwimmt in ihren Augen! Was wollen sie eigentlich? Die Gerechtigkeit, die Liebe, die Weisheit, die Überlegenheit wenigstens *darstellen* — das ist der Ehrgeiz dieser „Untersten“, dieser Kranken! Und wie geschickt macht ein solcher Ehrgeiz! Man bewundere namentlich die Falschmünzer-Geschicklichkeit, mit der hier das Gepräge der Tugend, selbst der Klingklang, der Goldklang der Tugend nachgemacht wird. Sie haben die Tugend jetzt ganz und gar für sich in Pacht genommen, diese Schwachen und Heillos-Krankhaften, daran ist kein Zweifel: „wir allein sind die Guten, die Gerechten, so sprechen sie, wir allein sind die homines bonae voluntatis“. Sie wandeln unter uns herum als leibhafte Vorwürfe, als Warnungen an uns, — wie als ob Gesundheit, Wohlgerathenheit, Stärke, Stolz, Machtgefühl an sich schon lasterhafte Dinge seien, für die man einst büssen, bitter büssen müsse: oh wie sie im Grunde dazu selbst bereit sind, büssen zu machen, wie sie darnach dürsten, *Henker* zu sein! Unter ihnen giebt es in Fülle die zu Richtern verkleideten Rachsüchtigen, welche beständig das Wort „Gerechtigkeit“ wie einen giftigen Speichel im Munde tragen, immer gespitzten Mundes, immer bereit, Alles anzuspeien, was nicht unzufrieden blickt und guten Muths seine Strasse zieht. Unter ihnen fehlt auch jene ekelhafteste Species der Eitlen nicht, die verlognen Missgeburten, die darauf aus sind, „schöne Seelen“ darzustellen und etwa ihre verhunzte Sinnlichkeit, in Verse und andere Windeln gewickelt, als „Reinheit des Herzens“ auf den Markt bringen: die Species der moralischen Onanisten und „Selbstbefriediger“. Der Wille der Kranken, irgend eine Form der Überlegenheit darzustellen, ihr Instinkt für Schleichwege, die zu einer Tyrannei über die Gesunden führen, — wo fände er sich nicht, dieser Wille gerade der Schwächsten zur Macht! Das kranke Weib in Sonderheit: Niemand übertrifft es in Raffinements, zu herrschen, zu drücken, zu tyrannisiren. Das kranke Weib schont dazu nichts Lebendiges, nichts Todtes, es gräbt die begrabensten Dinge wieder auf (die Bogos sagen: „das Weib ist eine Hyäne“). Man blicke in die Hintergründe jeder Familie, jeder Körperschaft, jedes Gemeinwesens: überall der Kampf der Kranken gegen die Gesunden, — ein stiller Kampf zumeist mit kleinen Giftpulvern, mit Nadelstichen, mit tückischem Dulder-Mienenspiele, mitunter aber auch mit jenem Kranken-Pharisäismus der lauten Gebärde, der am liebsten „die edle Entrüstung“ spielt. Bis in die geweihten Räume der Wissenschaft hinein möchte es sich hörbar machen, das heisere Entrüstungsgebell der krankhaften Hunde, die bissige Verlogenheit und Wuth solcher „edlen“ Pharisäer ( — ich erinnere Leser, die Ohren haben, nochmals an jenen Berliner Rache-Apostel Eugen Dühring, der im heutigen Deutschland den unanständigsten und widerlichsten Gebrauch vom moralischen Bumbum macht: Dühring, das erste Moral-Grossmaul, das es jetzt giebt, selbst noch unter seines Gleichen, den Antisemiten). Das sind alles Menschen des Ressentiment, diese physiologisch Verunglückten und Wurmstichigen, ein ganzes zitterndes Erdreich unterirdischer Rache, unerschöpflich, unersättlich in Ausbrüchen gegen die Glücklichen und ebenso in Maskeraden der Rache, in Vorwänden zur Rache: wann würden sie eigentlich zu ihrem letzten, feinsten, sublimsten Triumph der Rache kommen? Dann unzweifelhaft, wenn es ihnen gelänge, ihr eignes Elend, alles Elend überhaupt den Glücklichen in’s Gewissen zu schieben: so dass diese sich eines Tags ihres Glücks zu schämen begönnen und vielleicht unter einander sich sagten: „es ist eine Schande, glücklich zu sein! es giebt zu viel Elend!“... Aber es könnte gar kein grösseres und verhängnissvolleres Missverständniss geben, als wenn dergestalt die Glücklichen, die Wohlgerathenen, die Mächtigen an Leib und Seele anfiengen, an ihrem *Recht auf Glück* zu zweifeln. Fort mit dieser „verkehrten Welt“! Fort mit dieser schändlichen Verweichlichung des Gefühls! Dass die Kranken *nicht* die Gesunden krank machen — und dies wäre eine solche Verweichlichung —, das sollte doch der oberste Gesichtspunkt auf Erden sein: — dazu aber gehört vor allen Dingen, dass die Gesunden von den Kranken *abgetrennt* bleiben, behütet selbst vor dem Anblick der Kranken, dass sie sich nicht mit den Kranken verwechseln. Oder wäre es etwa ihre Aufgabe, Krankenwärter oder Ärzte zu sein?... Aber sie könnten ihre Aufgabe gar nicht schlimmer verkennen und verleugnen, — das Höhere soll sich nicht zum Werkzeug des Niedrigen herabwürdigen, das Pathos der Distanz soll in alle Ewigkeit auch die Aufgaben aus einander halten! Ihr Recht, dazusein, das Vorrecht der Glocke mit vollem Klange vor der misstönigen, zersprungenen, ist ja ein tausendfach grösseres: sie allein sind die *Bürgen* der Zukunft, sie allein sind *verpflichtet* für die Menschen-Zukunft. Was sie können, was sie sollen, das dürften niemals Kranke können und sollen: aber damit sie können, was nur sie sollen, wie stünde es ihnen noch frei, den Arzt, den Trostbringer, den „Heiland“ der Kranken zu machen?... Und darum gute Luft! gute Luft! Und weg jedenfalls aus der Nähe von allen Irren- und Krankenhäusern der Cultur! Und darum gute Gesellschaft, unsre Gesellschaft! Oder Einsamkeit, wenn es sein muss! Aber weg jedenfalls von den üblen Dünsten der innewendigen Verderbniss und des heimlichen Kranken-Wurmfrasses!... Damit wir uns selbst nämlich, meine Freunde, wenigstens eine Weile noch gegen die zwei schlimmsten Seuchen vertheidigen, die gerade für uns aufgespart sein mögen, — gegen den *grossen Ekel am Menschen*! gegen das *grosse Mitleid mit dem Menschen*!... [15] Hat man in aller Tiefe begriffen — und ich verlange, dass man hier gerade tief greift, tief begreift — inwiefern es schlechterdings nicht die Aufgabe der Gesunden sein kann, Kranke zu warten, Kranke gesund zu machen, so ist damit auch eine Nothwendigkeit mehr begriffen, — die Nothwendigkeit von Ärzten und Krankenwärtern, die *selber krank sind*: und nunmehr haben und halten wir den Sinn des asketischen Priesters mit beiden Händen. Der asketische Priester muss uns als der vorherbestimmte Heiland, Hirt und Anwalt der kranken Heerde gelten: damit erst verstehen wir seine ungeheure historische Mission. Die *Herrschaft über Leidende* ist sein Reich, auf sie weist ihn sein Instinkt an, in ihr hat er seine eigenste Kunst, seine Meisterschaft, seine Art von Glück. Er muss *selber krank sein*, er muss den kranken und Schlechtweggekommenen von Grund aus verwandt sein, um sie zu verstehen, — um sich mit ihnen zu verstehen; aber er muss auch *stark* sein, mehr Herr noch über sich als über Andere, unversehrt namentlich in seinem Willen zur Macht, damit er das Vertrauen und die Furcht der Kranken hat, damit er ihnen Halt, Widerstand, Stütze, Zwang, Zuchtmeister, Tyrann, Gott sein kann. Er hat sie zu vertheidigen, seine Heerde — gegen wen? Gegen die Gesunden, es ist kein Zweifel, auch gegen den Neid auf die Gesunden; er muss der natürliche Widersacher und Verächter aller rohen, stürmischen, zügellosen, harten, gewaltthätig-raubthierhaften Gesundheit und Mächtigkeit sein. Der Priester ist die erste Form des *delikateren* Thiers, das leichter noch verachtet als hasst. Es wird ihm nicht erspart bleiben, Krieg zu führen mit den Raubthieren, einen Krieg der List (des „Geistes“) mehr als der Gewalt, wie sich von selbst versteht, — er wird es dazu unter Umständen nöthig haben, beinahe einen neuen Raubthier-Typus an sich herauszubilden, mindestens zu *bedeuten*, — eine neue Thier-Furchtbarkeit, in welcher der Eisbär, die geschmeidige kalte abwartende Tigerkatze und nicht am wenigsten der Fuchs zu einer ebenso anziehenden als furchteinflössenden Einheit gebunden scheinen. Gesetzt, dass die Noth ihn zwingt, so tritt er dann wohl bärenhaft-ernst, ehrwürdig, klug, kalt, trügerisch-überlegen, als Herold und Mundstück geheimnissvollerer Gewalten, mitten unter die andere Art Raubthiere selbst, entschlossen, auf diesem Boden Leid, Zwiespalt, Selbstwiderspruch, wo er kann, auszusäen und, seiner Kunst nur zu gewiss, über Leidende jederzeit Herr zu werden. Er bringt Salben und Balsam mit, es ist kein Zweifel; aber erst hat er nöthig, zu verwunden, um Arzt zu sein; indem er dann den Schmerz stillt, den die Wunde macht, *vergiftet er zugleich die Wunde* — darauf vor Allem nämlich versteht er sich, dieser Zauberer und Raubthier-Bändiger, in dessen Umkreis alles Gesunde nothwendig krank und alles Kranke nothwendig zahm wird. Er vertheidigt in der That gut genug seine kranke Heerde, dieser seltsame Hirt, — er vertheidigt sie auch gegen sich, gegen die in der Heerde selbst glimmende Schlechtigkeit, Tücke, Böswilligkeit und was sonst allen Süchtigen und Kranken unter einander zu eigen ist, er kämpft klug, hart und heimlich mit der Anarchie und der jederzeit beginnenden Selbstauflösung innerhalb der Heerde, in welcher jener gefährlichste Spreng- und Explosivstoff, das *Ressentiment*, sich beständig häuft und häuft. Diesen Sprengstoff so zu entladen, dass er nicht die Heerde und nicht den Hirten zersprengt, das ist sein eigentliches Kunststück, auch seine oberste Nützlichkeit; wollte man den Werth der priesterlichen Existenz in die kürzeste Formel fassen, so wäre geradewegs zu sagen: der Priester ist der *Richtungs-Veränderer* des Ressentiment. Jeder Leidende nämlich sucht instinktiv zu seinem Leid eine Ursache; genauer noch, einen Thäter, noch bestimmter, einen für Leid empfänglichen *schuldigen* Thäter, — kurz, irgend etwas Lebendiges, an dem er seine Affekte thätlich, oder in effigie auf irgend einen Vorwand hin entladen kann: denn die Affekt-Entladung ist der grösste Erleichterungs- nämlich *Betäubungs*-Versuch des Leidenden, sein unwillkürlich begehrtes Narcoticum gegen Qual irgend welcher Art. Hierin allein ist, meiner Vermuthung nach, die wirkliche physiologische Ursächlichkeit des Ressentiment, der Rache und ihrer Verwandten, zu finden, in einem Verlangen also nach *Betäubung von Schmerz durch Affekt*: — man sucht dieselbe gemeinhin, sehr irrthümlich, wie mich dünkt, in dem Defensiv-Gegenschlag, einer blossen Schutzmaassregel der Reaktion, einer „Reflexbewegung“ im Falle irgend einer plötzlichen Schädigung und Gefährdung, von der Art, wie sie ein Frosch ohne Kopf noch vollzieht, um eine ätzende Säure loszuwerden. Aber die Verschiedenheit ist fundamental: im Einen Falle will man weiteres Beschädigtwerden hindern, im anderen Falle will man einen quälenden, heimlichen, unerträglich-werdenden Schmerz durch eine heftigere Emotion irgend welcher Art *betäuben* und für den Augenblick wenigstens aus dem Bewusstsein schaffen, — dazu braucht man einen Affekt, einen möglichst wilden Affekt und, zu dessen Erregung, den ersten besten Vorwand. „Irgend Jemand muss schuld daran sein, dass ich mich schlecht befinde“ — diese Art zu schliessen ist allen Krankhaften eigen, und zwar je mehr ihnen die wahre Ursache ihres Sich-Schlecht-Befindens, die physiologische, verborgen bleibt ( — sie kann etwa in einer Erkrankung des nervus sympathicus liegen oder in einer übermässigen Gallen-Absonderung, oder an einer Armuth des Blutes an schwefel- und phosphorsaurem Kali oder in Druckzuständen des Unterleibes, welche den Blutumlauf stauen, oder in Entartung der Eierstöcke und dergleichen). Die Leidenden sind allesammt von einer entsetzlichen Bereitwilligkeit und Erfindsamkeit in Vorwänden zu schmerzhaften Affekten; sie geniessen ihren Argwohn schon, das Grübeln über Schlechtigkeiten und scheinbare Beeinträchtigungen, sie durchwühlen die Eingeweide ihrer Vergangenheit und Gegenwart nach dunklen fragwürdigen Geschichten, wo es ihnen freisteht, in einem quälerischen Verdachte zu schwelgen und am eignen Gifte der Bosheit sich zu berauschen — sie reissen die ältesten Wunden auf, sie verbluten sich an längst ausgeheilten Narben, sie machen Übelthäter aus Freund, Weib, Kind und was sonst ihnen am nächsten steht. „Ich leide: daran muss irgend Jemand schuld sein“ — also denkt jedes krankhafte Schaf. Aber sein Hirt, der asketische Priester, sagt zu ihm: „Recht so, mein Schaf! irgend wer muss daran schuld sein: aber du selbst bist dieser Irgend-Wer, du selbst bist daran allein schuld, — *du selbst bist an dir allein schuld*!“... Das ist kühn genug, falsch genug; aber Eins ist damit wenigstens erreicht, damit ist, wie gesagt, die Richtung des Ressentiment — *verändert*. [16] Man erräth nunmehr, was nach meiner Vorstellung der Heilkünstler-Instinkt des Lebens durch den asketischen Priester zum Mindesten *versucht* hat und wozu ihm eine zeitweilige Tyrannei solcher paradoxer und paralogischer Begriffe wie „Schuld“, „Sünde“, „Sündhaftigkeit“, „Verderbniss“, „Verdammniss“ hat dienen müssen: die Kranken bis zu einem gewissen Grade *unschädlich* zu machen, die Unheilbaren durch sich selbst zu zerstören, den Milder-Erkrankten streng die Richtung auf sich selbst, eine Rückwärtsrichtung ihres Ressentiments zu geben („Eins ist noth“ —) und die schlechten Instinkte aller Leidenden dergestalt zum Zweck der Selbstdisciplinirung, Selbstüberwachung, Selbstüberwindung *auszunützen*. Es kann sich, wie sich von selbst versteht, mit einer „Medikation“ dieser Art, einer blossen Affekt-Medikation, schlechterdings nicht um eine wirkliche Kranken-*Heilung* im physiologischen Verstände handeln; man dürfte selbst nicht einmal behaupten, dass der Instinkt des Lebens hierbei irgendwie die Heilung in Aussicht und Absicht genommen habe. Eine Art Zusammendrängung und Organisation der Kranken auf der einen Seite (— das Wort „Kirche“ ist dafür der populärste Name), eine Art vorläufiger Sicherstellung der Gesünder-Gerathenen, der Voller-Ausgegossenen auf der andern, die Aufreissung einer *Kluft* somit zwischen Gesund und Krank — das war für lange Alles! Und es war Viel! es war sehr Viel!... [Ich gehe in dieser Abhandlung, wie man sieht, von einer Voraussetzung aus, die ich in Hinsicht auf Leser, wie ich sie brauche, nicht erst zu begründen habe: dass „Sündhaftigkeit“ am Menschen kein Thatbestand ist, vielmehr nur die Interpretation eines Thatbestandes, nämlich einer physiologischen Verstimmung, — letztere unter einer moralisch-religiösen Perspektive gesehn, welche für uns nichts Verbindliches mehr hat. — Damit, dass Jemand sich „schuldig“, „sündig“ *fühlt*, ist schlechterdings noch nicht bewiesen, dass er sich mit Recht so fühlt; so wenig Jemand gesund ist, bloss deshalb, weil er sich gesund fühlt. Man erinnere sich doch der berühmten Hexen-Prozesse: damals zweifelten die scharfsichtigsten und menschenfreundlichsten Richter nicht daran, dass hier eine Schuld vorliege; die „Hexen“ *selbst zweifelten nicht daran*, — und dennoch fehlte die Schuld. — Um jene Voraussetzung in erweiterter Form auszudrücken: der „seelische Schmerz“ selbst gilt mir überhaupt nicht als Thatbestand, sondern nur als eine Auslegung (Causal-Auslegung) von bisher nicht exakt zu formulirenden Thatbeständen: somit als Etwas, das vollkommen noch in der Luft schwebt und wissenschaftlich unverbindlich ist, — ein fettes Wort eigentlich nur an Stelle eines sogar spindeldürren Fragezeichens. Wenn Jemand mit einem „seelischen Schmerz“ nicht fertig wird, so liegt das, grob geredet, nicht an seiner „Seele“; wahrscheinlicher noch an seinem Bauche (grob geredet, wie gesagt: womit noch keineswegs der Wunsch ausgedrückt ist, auch grob gehört, grob verstanden zu werden...) Ein starker und wohlgerathener Mensch verdaut seine Erlebnisse (Thaten, Unthaten eingerechnet) wie er seine Mahlzeiten verdaut, selbst wenn er harte Bissen zu verschlucken hat. Wird er mit einem Erlebnisse „nicht fertig“, so ist diese Art Indigestion so gut physiologisch wie jene andere — und vielfach in der That nur eine der Folgen jener anderen. — Mit einer solchen Auffassung kann man, unter uns gesagt, immer noch der strengste Gegner alles Materialismus sein...] [17] Ist er aber eigentlich ein *Arzt*, dieser asketische Priester? — Wir begriffen schon, inwiefern es kaum erlaubt ist, ihn einen Arzt zu nennen, so gern er auch selbst sich als „Heiland“ fühlt, als „Heiland“ verehren lässt. Nur das Leiden selbst, die Unlust des Leidenden wird von ihm bekämpft, *nicht* deren Ursache, *nicht* das eigentliche Kranksein, — das muss unsren grundsätzlichsten Einwand gegen die priesterliche Medikation abgeben. Stellt man sich aber erst einmal in die Perspektive, wie der Priester sie allein kennt und hat, so kommt man nicht leicht zu Ende in der Bewunderung, was er unter ihr Alles gesehn, gesucht und gefunden hat. Die Milderung des Leidens, das „Trösten“ jeder Art, — das erweist sich als sein Genie selbst: wie erfinderisch hat er seine Tröster-Aufgabe verstanden, wie unbedenklich und kühn hat er zu ihr die Mittel gewählt! Das Christenthum in Sonderheit dürfte man eine grosse Schatzkammer geistreichster Trostmittel nennen, so viel Erquickliches, Milderndes, Narkotisirendes ist in ihm gehäuft, so viel Gefährlichstes und Verwegenstes zu diesem Zweck gewagt, so fein, so raffinirt, so südländisch-raffinirt ist von ihm insbesondere errathen worden, mit was für Stimulanz-Affekten die tiefe Depression, die bleierne Ermüdung, die schwarze Traurigkeit der Physiologisch-Gehemmten wenigstens für Zeiten besiegt werden kann. Denn allgemein gesprochen: bei allen grossen Religionen handelte es sich in der Hauptsache um die Bekämpfung einer gewissen, zur Epidemie gewordnen Müdigkeit und Schwere. Man kann es von vornherein als wahrscheinlich ansetzen, dass von Zeit zu Zeit an bestimmten Stellen der Erde fast nothwendig ein *physiologisches Hemmungsgefühl* über breite Massen Herr werden muss, welches aber, aus Mangel an physiologischem Wissen, nicht als solches in’s Bewusstsein tritt, so dass dessen „Ursache“, dessen Remedur auch nur psychologisch-moralisch gesucht und versucht werden kann (— dies nämlich ist meine allgemeinste Formel für Das, was gemeinhin eine „*Religion*“ genannt wird). Ein solches Hemmungsgefühl kann verschiedenster Abkunft sein: etwa als Folge der Kreuzung von zu fremdartigen Rassen (oder von Ständen — Stände drücken immer auch Abkunfts- und Rassen-Differenzen aus: der europäische „Weltschmerz“, der „Pessimismus“ des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts ist wesentlich die Folge einer unsinnig plötzlichen Stände-Mischung); oder bedingt durch eine fehlerhafte Emigration — eine Rasse in ein Klima gerathen, für das ihre Anpassungskraft nicht ausreicht (der Fall der Inder in Indien); oder die Nachwirkung von Alter und Ermüdung der Rasse (Pariser Pessimismus von 1850 an); oder einer falschen Diät (Alkoholismus des Mittelalters; der Unsinn der Vegetarians, welche freilich die Autorität des Junker Christoph bei Shakespeare für sich haben); oder vom Blutverderbniss, Malaria, Syphilis und dergleichen (deutsche Depression nach dem dreissigjährigen Kriege, welcher halb Deutschland mit schlechten Krankheiten durchseuchte und damit den Boden für deutsche Servilität, deutschen Kleinmuth vorbereitete). In einem solchen Falle wird jedes Mal im grössten Stil ein *Kampf mit dem Unlustgefühl* versucht; unterrichten wir uns kurz über dessen wichtigste Praktiken und Formen. (Ich lasse hier, wie billig, den eigentlichen *Philosophen-Kampf* gegen das Unlustgefühl, der immer gleichzeitig zu sein pflegt, ganz bei Seite — er ist interessant genug, aber zu absurd, zu praktisch-gleichgültig, zu spinneweberisch und eckensteherhaft, etwa wenn der Schmerz als ein Irrthum bewiesen werden soll, unter der naiven Voraussetzung, dass der Schmerz schwinden *müsse*, wenn erst der Irrthum in ihm erkannt ist — aber siehe da! er hütete sich, zu schwinden...) Man bekämpft *erstens* jene dominirende Unlust durch Mittel, welche das Lebensgefühl überhaupt auf den niedrigsten Punkt herabsetzen. Womöglich überhaupt kein Wollen, kein Wunsch mehr; Allem, was Affekt macht, was „Blut“ macht, ausweichen (kein Salz essen: Hygiene des Fakirs); nicht lieben; nicht hassen; Gleichmuth; nicht sich rächen; nicht sich bereichern; nicht arbeiten; betteln; womöglich kein Weib, oder so wenig Weib als möglich: in geistiger Hinsicht das Princip Pascal’s „il faut s’abêtir“. Resultat, psychologisch-moralisch ausgedrückt: „Entselbstung“, „Heiligung“, physiologisch ausgedrückt: Hypnotisirung, — der Versuch Etwas für den Menschen annähernd zu erreichen, was der Winterschlaf für einige Thierarten, der *Sommerschlaf* für viele Pflanzen der heissen Klimaten ist, ein Minimum von Stoffverbrauch und Stoffwechsel, bei dem das Leben gerade noch besteht, ohne eigentlich noch in’s Bewusstsein zu treten. Auf dieses Ziel ist eine erstaunliche Menge menschlicher Energie verwandt worden — umsonst etwa?... Dass solche sportsmen der „Heiligkeit“, an denen alle Zeiten, fast alle Völker reich sind, in der That eine wirkliche Erlösung von dem gefunden haben, was sie mit einem so rigorosen training bekämpften, daran darf man durchaus nicht zweifeln, — sie kamen von jener tiefen physiologischen Depression mit Hülfe ihres Systems von Hypnotisirungs-Mitteln in unzähligen Fällen wirklich *los*: weshalb ihre Methodik zu den allgemeinsten ethnologischen Thatsachen zählt. Insgleichen fehlt jede Erlaubniss dazu, um schon an sich eine solche Absicht auf Aushungerung der Leiblichkeit und der Begierde unter die Irrsinns-Symptome zu rechnen (wie es eine täppische Art von Roastbeef fressenden „Freigeistern“ und Junker Christophen zu thun beliebt). Um so sicherer ist es, dass sie den *Weg* zu allerhand geistigen Störungen abgiebt, abgeben kann, zu „inneren Lichtern“ zum Beispiel, wie bei den Hesychasten vom Berge Athos, zu Klang- und Gestalt-Hallucinationen, zu wollüstigen Überströmungen und Ekstasen der Sinnlichkeit (Geschichte der heiligen Therese). Die Auslegung, welche derartigen Zuständen von den mit ihnen Behafteten gegeben wird, ist immer so schwärmerisch-falsch wie möglich gewesen, dies versteht sich von selbst: nur überhöre man den Ton überzeugtester Dankbarkeit nicht, der eben schon im Willen zu einer solchen Interpretations-Art zum Erklingen kommt. Der höchste Zustand, die *Erlösung* selbst, jene endlich erreichte Gesammt-Hypnotisirung und Stille, gilt ihnen immer als das Geheimniss an sich, zu dessen Ausdruck auch die höchsten Symbole nicht ausreichen, als Ein- und Heimkehr in den Grund der Dinge, als Freiwerden von allem Wahne, als „Wissen“, als „Wahrheit“, als „Sein“, als Loskommen von jedem Ziele, jedem Wunsche, jedem Thun, als ein Jenseits auch von Gut und Böse. „Gutes und Böses, sagt der Buddhist, — Beides sind Fesseln: über Beides wurde der Vollendete Herr“; „Gethanes und Ungethanes, sagt der Gläubige des Vedânta, schafft ihm keinen Schmerz; das Gute und das Böse schüttelt er als ein Weiser von sich; sein Reich leidet durch keine That mehr; über Gutes und Böses, über Beides gieng er hinaus“: — eine gesammt-indische Auffassung also, ebenso brahmanistisch als buddhistisch. (Weder in der indischen, noch in der christlichen Denkweise gilt jene „Erlösung“ als *erreichbar* durch Tugend, durch moralische Besserung, so hoch der Hypnotisirungs-Werth der Tugend auch von ihnen angesetzt wird: dies halte man fest, — es entspricht dies übrigens einfach dem Thatbestande. Hierin wahr geblieben zu sein, darf vielleicht als das beste Stück Realismus in den drei grössten, sonst so gründlich vermoralisirten Religionen betrachtet werden. „Für den Wissenden giebt es keine Pflicht“... „Durch *Zulegung* von Tugenden kommt Erlösung nicht zu Stande: denn sie besteht im Einssein mit dem keiner Zulegung von Vollkommenheit fähigen Brahman; und ebensowenig in der *Ablegung* von Fehlern: denn das Brahman, mit dem Eins zu sein Das ist, was Erlösung ausmacht, ist ewig rein“ — diese Stellen aus dem Commentare des Çankara, citirt von dem ersten wirklichen *Kenner* der indischen Philosophie in Europa, meinem Freunde Paul Deussen.) Die „Erlösung“ in den grossen Religionen wollen wir also in Ehren halten; dagegen wird es uns ein wenig schwer, bei der Schätzung, welche schon der *tiefe Schlaf* durch diese selbst für das Träumen zu müd gewordnen Lebensmüden erfährt, ernsthaft zu bleiben, — der tiefe Schlaf nämlich bereits als Eingehen in das Brahman, als erreichte unio mystica mit Gott. „Wenn er dann eingeschlafen ist ganz und gar — heisst es darüber in der ältesten ehrwürdigsten „Schrift“ — und völlig zur Ruhe gekommen, dass er kein Traumbild mehr schaut, alsdann ist er, oh Theurer, vereinigt mit dem Seienden, in sich selbst ist er eingegangen, — von dem erkenntnissartigen Selbste umschlungen hat er kein Bewusstsein mehr von dem, was aussen oder innen ist. Diese Brücke überschreiten nicht Tag und Nacht, nicht das Alter, nicht der Tod, nicht das Leiden, nicht gutes Werk, noch böses Werk.“ „Im tiefen Schlafe, sagen insgleichen die Gläubigen dieser tiefsten der drei grossen Religionen, hebt sich die Seele heraus aus diesem Leibe, geht ein in das höchste Licht und tritt dadurch hervor in eigener Gestalt: da ist sie der höchste Geist selbst, der herumwandelt, indem er scherzt und spielt und sich ergötzt, sei es mit Weibern oder mit Wagen oder mit Freunden, da denkt sie nicht mehr zurück an dieses Anhängsel von Leib, an welches der prâna (der Lebensodem) angespannt ist wie ein Zugthier an den Karren.“ Trotzdem wollen wir auch hier, wie im Falle der „Erlösung“, uns gegenwärtig halten, dass damit im Grunde, wie sehr auch immer in der Pracht orientalischer Übertreibung, nur die gleiche Schätzung ausgedrückt ist, welche die des klaren, kühlen, griechisch-kühlen, aber leidenden Epikur war: das hypnotische Nichts-Gefühl, die Ruhe des tiefsten Schlafes, *Leidlosigkeit* kurzum — das darf Leidenden und Gründlich-Verstimmten schon als höchstes Gut, als Werth der Werthe gelten, das *muss* von ihnen als positiv abgeschätzt, als das Positive selbst empfunden werden. (Nach derselben Logik des Gefühls heisst in allen pessimistischen Religionen das Nichts Gott.) [18] Viel häufiger als eine solche hypnotistische Gesammtdämpfung der Sensibilität, der Schmerzfähigkeit, welche schon seltnere Kräfte, vor Allem Muth, Verachtung der Meinung, „intellektuellen Stoicismus“ voraussetzt, wird gegen Depressions-Zustände ein anderes training versucht, welches jedenfalls leichter ist: *die machinale Thätigkeit*. Dass mit ihr ein leidendes Dasein in einem nicht unbeträchtlichen Grade erleichtert wird, steht ausser allem Zweifel: man nennt heute diese Thatsache, etwas unehrlich, „den Segen der Arbeit“. Die Erleichterung besteht darin, dass das Interesse des Leidenden grundsätzlich, vom Leiden abgelenkt wird, — dass beständig ein Thun und wieder nur ein Thun in’s Bewusstsein tritt und folglich wenig Platz darin für Leiden bleibt: denn sie ist *eng*, diese Kammer des menschlichen Bewusstseins! Die machinale Thätigkeit und was zu ihr gehört — wie die absolute Regularität, der pünktliche besinnungslose Gehorsam, das Ein-für-alle-Mal der Lebensweise, die Ausfüllung der Zeit, eine gewisse Erlaubniss, ja eine Zucht zur „Unpersönlichkeit“, zum Sich-selbst-Vergessen, zur „incuria sui“ —: wie gründlich, wie fein hat der asketische Priester sie im Kampf mit dem Schmerz zu benutzen gewusst! Gerade wenn er mit Leidenden der niederen Stände, mit Arbeitssklaven oder Gefangenen zu thun hatte (oder mit Frauen: die ja meistens Beides zugleich sind, Arbeitssklaven und Gefangene), so bedurfte es wenig mehr als einer kleinen Kunst des Namenwechseln und der Umtaufung, um sie in verhassten Dingen fürderhin eine Wohlthat, ein relatives Glück sehn zu machen: — die Unzufriedenheit des Sklaven mit seinem Loos ist jedenfalls *nicht* von den Priestern erfunden worden. — Ein noch geschätzteres Mittel im Kampf mit der Depression ist die Ordinirung einer *kleinen Freude*, die leicht zugänglich ist und zur Regel gemacht werden kann; man bedient sich dieser Medikation häufig in Verbindung mit der eben besprochnen. Die häufigste Form, in der die Freude dergestalt als Kurmittel ordinirt wird, ist die Freude des Freude-*Machens* (als Wohlthun, Beschenken, Erleichtern, Helfen, Zureden, Trösten, Loben, Auszeichnen); der asketische Priester verordnet damit, dass er „Nächstenliebe“ verordnet, im Grunde eine Erregung des stärksten, lebenbejahendsten Triebes, wenn auch in der vorsichtigsten Dosirung, — des *Willens zur Macht*. Das Glück der „kleinsten Überlegenheit“, wie es alles Wohlthun, Nützen, Helfen, Auszeichnen mit sich bringt, ist das reichlichste Trostmittel, dessen sich die Physiologisch-Gehemmten zu bedienen pflegen, gesetzt dass sie gut berathen sind: im andern Falle thun sie einander weh, natürlich im Gehorsam gegen den gleichen Grundinstinkt. Wenn man nach den Anfängen des Christenthums in der römischen Welt sucht, so findet man Vereine zu gegenseitiger Unterstützung, Armen-, Kranken-, Begräbniss-Vereine, aufgewachsen auf dem untersten Boden der damaligen Gesellschaft, in denen mit Bewusstsein jenes Hauptmittel gegen die Depression, die kleine Freude, die des gegenseitigen Wohlthuns gepflegt wurde, — vielleicht war dies damals etwas Neues, eine eigentliche Entdeckung? In einem dergestalt hervorgerufnen „Willen zur Gegenseitigkeit“, zur Heerdenbildung, zur „Gemeinde“, zum „Cönakel“ muss nun wiederum jener damit, wenn auch im Kleinsten, erregte Wille zur Macht, zu einem neuen und viel volleren Ausbruch kommen: die *Heerdenbildung* ist im Kampf mit der Depression ein wesentlicher Schritt und Sieg. Im Wachsen der Gemeinde erstarkt auch für den Einzelnen ein neues Interesse, das ihn oft genug über das Persönlichste seines Missmuths, seine Abneigung gegen sich (die „despectio sui“ des Geulinx) hinweghebt. Alle Kranken, Krankhaften streben instinktiv, aus einem Verlangen nach Abschüttelung der dumpfen Unlust und des Schwächegefühls, nach einer Heerden-Organisation: der asketische Priester erräth diesen Instinkt und fördert ihn; wo es Heerden giebt, ist es der Schwäche-Instinkt, der die Heerde gewollt hat, und die Priester-Klugheit, die sie organisirt hat. Denn man übersehe dies nicht: die Starken streben ebenso naturnothwendig *aus* einander, als die Schwachen *zu* einander; wenn erstere sich verbinden, so geschieht es nur in der Aussicht auf eine aggresive Gesammt-Aktion und Gesammt-Befriedigung ihres Willens zur Macht, mit vielem Widerstande des Einzel-Gewissens; letztere dagegen ordnen sich zusammen, mit Lust gerade an dieser Zusammenordnung, — ihr Instinkt ist dabei ebenso befriedigt, wie der Instinkt der geborenen „Herren“ (das heisst der solitären Raubthier-Species Mensch) im Grunde durch Organisation gereizt und beunruhigt wird. Unter jeder Oligarchie liegt — die ganze Geschichte lehrt es — immer das *tyrannische* Gelüst versteckt; jede Oligarchie zittert beständig von der Spannung her, welche jeder Einzelne in ihr nöthig hat, Herr über dies Gelüst zu bleiben. (So war es zum Beispiel *griechisch*: Plato bezeugt es an hundert Stellen, Plato, der seines Gleichen kannte — und sich selbst...) [19] Die Mittel des asketischen Priesters, welche wir bisher kennen lernten — die Gesammt-Dämpfung des Lebensgefühls, die machinale Thätigkeit, die kleine Freude, vor Allem die der „Nächstenliebe“, die Heerden-Organisation, die Erweckung des Gemeinde-Machtgefühls, demzufolge der Verdruss des Einzelnen an sich durch seine Lust am Gedeihen der Gemeinde übertäubt wird — das sind, nach modernem Maasse gemessen, seine *unschuldigen* Mittel im Kampfe mit der Unlust: wenden wir uns jetzt zu den interessanteren, den „schuldigen“. Bei ihnen allen handelt es sich um Eins: um irgend eine *Ausschweifung des Gefühls*, — diese gegen die dumpfe lähmende lange Schmerzhaftigkeit als wirksamstes Mittel der Betäubung benutzt; weshalb die priesterliche Erfindsamkeit im Ausdenken dieser Einen Frage geradezu unerschöpflich gewesen ist: „*wodurch* erzielt man eine Ausschweifung des Gefühls?“... Das klingt hart: es liegt auf der Hand, dass es lieblicher klänge und besser vielleicht zu Ohren gienge, wenn ich etwa sagte „der asketische Priester hat sich jederzeit die *Begeisterung* zu Nutze gemacht, die in allen starken Affekten liegt“. Aber wozu die verweichlichten Ohren unsrer modernen Zärtlinge noch streicheln? Wozu *unsrerseits* ihrer Tartüfferie der Worte auch nur einen Schritt breit nachgeben? Für uns Psychologen läge darin bereits eine Tartüfferie der *That*; abgesehen davon, dass es uns Ekel machen würde. Ein Psychologe nämlich hat heute darin, wenn irgend worin, seinen *guten Geschmack* ( — Andre mögen sagen: seine Rechtschaffenheit), dass er der schändlich *vermoralisirten* Sprechweise widerstrebt, mit der nachgerade alles moderne Urtheilen über Mensch und Ding angeschleimt ist. Denn man täusche sich hierüber nicht: was das eigentlichste Merkmal moderner Seelen, moderner Bücher ausmacht, das ist nicht die Lüge, sondern die eingefleischte *Unschuld* in der moralistischen Verlogenheit. Diese „Unschuld“ überall wieder entdecken müssen — das macht vielleicht unser widerlichstes Stück Arbeit aus, an all der an sich nicht unbedenklichen Arbeit, deren sich heute ein Psychologe zu unterziehn hat; es ist ein Stück *unsrer* grossen Gefahr, — es ist ein Weg, der vielleicht gerade *uns* zum grossen Ekel führt... Ich zweifle nicht daran, *wozu* allein moderne Bücher (gesetzt, dass sie Dauer haben, was freilich nicht zu fürchten ist, und ebenfalls gesetzt, dass es einmal eine Nachwelt mit strengerem härteren gesünderen Geschmack giebt) — wozu *alles* Moderne überhaupt dieser Nachwelt dienen würde, dienen könnte: zu Brechmitteln, — und das vermöge seiner moralischen Versüsslichung und Falschheit, seines innerlichsten Femininismus, der sich gern „Idealismus“ nennt und jedenfalls Idealismus glaubt. Unsre Gebildeten von Heute, unsre „Guten“ lügen nicht — das ist wahr; aber es gereicht ihnen *nicht* zur Ehre! Die eigentliche Lüge, die ächte resolute „ehrliche“ Lüge (über deren Werth man Plato hören möge) wäre für sie etwas bei weitem zu Strenges, zu Starkes; es würde verlangen, was man von ihnen nicht verlangen *darf*, dass sie die Augen gegen sich selbst aufmachten, dass sie zwischen „wahr“ und „falsch“ bei sich selber zu unterscheiden wüssten. Ihnen geziemt allein die *unehrliche Lüge*; Alles, was sich heute als „guter Mensch“ fühlt, ist vollkommen unfähig, zu irgend einer Sache anders zu stehn als *unehrlich-verlogen*, abgründlich-verlogen, aber unschuldig-verlogen, treuherzig-verlogen, blauäugig-verlogen, tugendhaft-verlogen. Diese „guten Menschen“, — sie sind allesammt jetzt in Grund und Boden vermoralisirt und in Hinsicht auf Ehrlichkeit zu Schanden gemacht und verhunzt für alle Ewigkeit: wer von ihnen hielte noch eine *Wahrheit* „über den Menschen“ aus!... Oder, greiflicher gefragt: wer von ihnen ertrüge eine *wahre* Biographie!... Ein paar Anzeichen: Lord Byron hat einiges Persönlichste über sich aufgezeichnet, aber Thomas Moore war „zu gut“ dafür: er verbrannte die Papiere seines Freundes. Dasselbe soll Dr. Gwinner gethan haben, der Testaments-Vollstrecker Schopenhauers: denn auch Schopenhauer hatte Einiges über sich und vielleicht auch gegen sich („*εἰς ἑαυτόν*“) aufgezeichnet. Der tüchtige Amerikaner Thayer, der Biograph Beethoven’s, hat mit Einem Male in seiner Arbeit Halt gemacht: an irgend einem Punkte dieses ehrwürdigen und naiven Lebens angelangt, hielt er dasselbe nicht mehr aus... Moral: welcher kluge Mann schriebe heute noch ein ehrliches Wort über sich? — er müsste denn schon zum Orden der heiligen Tollkühnheit gehören. Man verspricht uns eine Selbstbiographie Richard Wagner’s: wer zweifelt daran, dass es eine *kluge* Selbstbiographie sein wird?... Gedenken wir noch des komischen Entsetzens, welches der katholische Priester Janssen mit seinem über alle Begriffe viereckig und harmlos gerathenen Bilde der deutschen Reformations-Bewegung in Deutschland erregt hat; was würde man erst beginnen, wenn uns Jemand diese Bewegung einmal *anders* erzählte, wenn uns einmal ein wirklicher Psycholog einen wirklichen Luther erzählte, nicht mehr mit der moralistischen Einfalt eines Landgeistlichen, nicht mehr mit der süsslichen und rücksichtsvollen Schamhaftigkeit protestantischer Historiker, sondern etwa mit einer *Taine*’schen Unerschrockenheit, aus einer *Stärke der Seele* heraus und nicht aus einer klugen Indulgenz gegen die Stärke?... (Die Deutschen, anbei gesagt, haben den klassischen Typus der letzteren zuletzt noch schön genug herausgebracht, — sie dürfen ihn sich schon zurechnen, zu Gute rechnen: nämlich in ihrem Leopold Ranke, diesem gebornen klassischen advocatus jeder causa fortior, diesem klügsten aller klugen „Thatsächlichen“.) [20] Aber man wird mich schon verstanden haben: — Grund genug, nicht wahr, Alles in Allem, dass wir Psychologen heutzutage einiges Misstrauen *gegen uns selbst* nicht los werden?... Wahrscheinlich sind auch wir noch „zu gut“ für unser Handwerk, wahrscheinlich sind auch wir noch die Opfer, die Beute, die Kranken dieses vermoralisirten Zeitgeschmacks, so sehr wir uns auch als dessen Verächter fühlen, — wahrscheinlich inficirt er auch noch *uns*. Wovor warnte doch jener Diplomat, als er zu seines Gleichen redete? „Misstrauen wir vor Allem, meine Herrn, unsren ersten Regungen! sagte er, *sie sind fast immer gut*“... So sollte auch jeder Psycholog heute zu seines Gleichen reden... Und damit kommen wir zu unserm Problem zurück, das in der That von uns einige Strenge verlangt, einiges Misstrauen in Sonderheit gegen die „ersten Regungen“. *Das asketische Ideal im Dienste einer Absicht auf Gefühls-Ausschweifung*: — wer sich der vorigen Abhandlung erinnert, wird den in diese neun Worte gedrängten Inhalt des nunmehr Darzustellenden im Wesentlichen schon vorwegnehmen. Die menschliche Seele einmal aus allen ihren Fugen zu lösen, sie in Schrecken, Fröste, Gluthen und Entzückungen derartig unterzutauchen, dass sie von allem Kleinen und Kleinlichen der Unlust, der Dumpfheit, der Verstimmung wie durch einen Blitzschlag loskommt: welche Wege führen zu *diesem* Ziele? Und welche von ihnen am sichersten?... Im Grunde haben alle grossen Affekte ein Vermögen dazu, vorausgesetzt, dass sie sich plötzlich entladen, Zorn, Furcht, Wollust, Rache, Hoffnung, Triumph, Verzweiflung, Grausamkeit; und wirklich hat der asketische Priester unbedenklich die *ganze* Meute wilder Hunde im Menschen in seinen Dienst genommen und bald diesen, bald jenen losgelassen, immer zu dem gleichen Zwecke, den Menschen aus der langsamen Traurigkeit aufzuwecken, seinen dumpfen Schmerz, sein zögerndes Elend für Zeiten wenigstens in die Flucht zu jagen, immer auch unter einer religiösen Interpretation und „Rechtfertigung“. Jede derartige Ausschweifung des Gefühls macht sich hinterdrein *bezahlt*, das versteht sich von selbst — sie macht den Kranken kränker —: und deshalb ist diese Art von Remeduren des Schmerzes, nach modernem Maasse gemessen, eine „schuldige“ Art. Man muss jedoch, weil es die Billigkeit verlangt, um so mehr darauf bestehen, dass sie *mit gutem Gewissen* angewendet worden ist, dass der asketische Priester sie im tiefsten Glauben an ihre Nützlichkeit, ja Unentbehrlichkeit verordnet hat, — und oft genug selbst vor dem Jammer, den er schuf, fast zerbrechend; insgleichen, dass die vehementen physiologischen Revanchen solcher Excesse, vielleicht sogar geistige Störungen, im Grunde dem ganzen Sinne dieser Art Medikation nicht eigentlich widersprechen: als welche, wie vorher gezeigt worden ist, *nicht* auf Heilung von Krankheiten, sondern auf Bekämpfung der Depressions-Unlust, auf deren Linderung, deren Betäubung aus war. Dies Ziel wurde auch *so* erreicht. Der Hauptgriff, den sich der asketische Priester erlaubte, um auf der menschlichen Seele jede Art von zerreissender und verzückter Musik zum Erklingen zu bringen, war damit gethan — Jedermann weiss das —, dass er sich das *Schuldgefühl* zu Nutze machte. Dessen Herkunft hat die vorige Abhandlung kurz angedeutet — als ein Stück Thierpsychologie, als nicht mehr: das Schuldgefühl trat uns dort gleichsam in seinem Rohzustande entgegen. Erst unter den Händen des Priesters, dieses eigentlichen Künstlers in Schuldgefühlen, hat es Gestalt gewonnen — oh was für eine Gestalt! Die „Sünde“ — denn so lautet die priesterliche Umdeutung des thierischen „schlechten Gewissens“ (der rückwärts gewendeten Grausamkeit) — ist bisher das grösste Ereigniss in der Geschichte der kranken Seele gewesen: in ihr haben wir das gefährlichste und verhängnissvollste Kunststück der religiösen Interpretation. Der Mensch, an sich selbst leidend, irgendwie, jedenfalls physiologisch, etwa wie ein Thier, das in den Käfig gesperrt ist, unklar, warum, wozu? begehrlich nach Gründen — Gründe erleichtern —, begehrlich auch nach Mitteln und Narkosen, beräth sich endlich mit Einem, der auch das Verborgene weiss — und siehe da! er bekommt einen Wink, er bekommt von seinem Zauberer, dem asketischen Priester, den *ersten* Wink über die „Ursache“ seines Leidens: er soll sie in *sich* suchen, in einer *Schuld*, in einem Stück Vergangenheit, er soll sein Leiden selbst als einen *Strafzustand* verstehn... Er hat gehört, er hat verstanden, der Unglückliche: jetzt geht es ihm wie der Henne, um die ein Strich gezogen ist. Er kommt aus diesem Kreis von Strichen nicht wieder heraus: aus dem Kranken ist „der Sünder“ gemacht... Und nun wird man den Aspekt dieses neuen Kranken, „des Sünders“, für ein paar Jahrtausende nicht los, — wird man ihn je wieder los? — wohin man nur sieht, überall der hypnotische Blick des Sünders, der sich immer in der Einen Richtung bewegt (in der Richtung auf „Schuld“, als der *einzigen* Leidens-Causalität); überall das böse Gewissen, dies „grewliche thier“, mit Luther zu reden; überall die Vergangenheit zurückgekäut, die That verdreht, das „grüne Auge“ für alles Thun; überall das zum Lebensinhalt gemachte Missverstehen-*Wollen* des Leidens, dessen Umdeutung in Schuld-, Furcht- und Strafgefühle; überall die Geissei, das härene Hemd, der verhungernde Leib, die Zerknirschung; überall das sich-selbst-Rädern des Sünders in dem grausamen Räderwerk eines unruhigen, krankhaft-lüsternen Gewissens; überall die stumme Qual, die äusserste Furcht, die Agonie des gemarterten Herzens, die Krämpfe eines unbekannten Glücks, der Schrei nach „Erlösung“. In der That, mit diesem System von Prozeduren war die alte Depression, Schwere und Müdigkeit gründlich *überwunden*, das Leben wurde wieder *sehr* interessant: wach, ewig wach, übernächtig, glühend, verkohlt, erschöpft und doch nicht müde — so nahm sich der Mensch aus, „der Sünder“, der in *diese* Mysterien eingeweiht war. Dieser alte grosse Zauberer im Kampf mit der Unlust, der asketische Priester — er hatte ersichtlich gesiegt, *sein* Reich war gekommen: schon klagte man nicht mehr *gegen* den Schmerz, man *lechzte* nach dem Schmerz; „*mehr* Schmerz! *mehr* Schmerz!“ so schrie das Verlangen seiner Jünger und Eingeweihten Jahrhunderte lang. Jede Ausschweifung des Gefühls, die wehe that, Alles was zerbrach, umwarf, zermalmte, entrückte, verzückte, das Geheimniss der Folterstätten, die Erfindsamkeit der Hölle selbst — Alles war nunmehr entdeckt, errathen, ausgenützt, Alles stand dem Zauberer zu Diensten, Alles diente fürderhin dem Siege seines Ideals, des asketischen Ideals... „Mein Reich ist nicht von *dieser* Welt“ — redete er nach wie vor: hatte er wirklich das Recht noch, so zu reden?... Goethe hat behauptet, es gäbe nur sechs und dreissig tragische Situationen: man erräth daraus, wenn man’s sonst nicht wüsste, dass Goethe kein asketischer Priester war. Der — kennt mehr... [21] In Hinsicht auf diese ganze Art der priesterlichen Medikation, die „schuldige“ Art, ist jedes Wort Kritik zu viel. Dass eine solche Ausschweifung des Gefühls, wie sie in diesem Falle der asketische Priester seinen Kranken zu verordnen pflegt (unter den heiligsten Namen, wie sich von selbst versteht, insgleichen durchdrungen von der Heiligkeit seines Zwecks), irgend einem Kranken wirklich *genützt* habe, wer hätte wohl Lust, eine Behauptung der Art aufrecht zu halten? Zum Mindesten sollte man sich über das Wort „nützen“ verstehn. Will man damit ausdrücken, ein solches System von Behandlung habe den Menschen *verbessert*, so widerspreche ich nicht: nur dass ich hinzufüge, was bei mir „verbessert“ heisst — ebenso viel wie „gezähmt“, „geschwächt“, „entmuthigt“, „raffinirt“, „verzärtlicht“, „entmannt“ (also beinahe so viel als *geschädigt*...) Wenn es sich aber in der Hauptsache um Kranke, Verstimmte, Deprimirte handelt, so macht ein solches System den Kranken, gesetzt selbst, dass es ihn „besser“ machte, unter allen Umständen *kränker*; man frage nur die Irrenärzte, was eine methodische Anwendung von Buss-Quälereien, Zerknirschungen und Erlösungskrämpfen immer mit sich führt. Insgleichen befrage man die Geschichte: überall, wo der asketische Priester diese Krankenbehandlung durchgesetzt hat, ist jedes Mal die Krankhaftigkeit unheimlich schnell in die Tiefe und Breite gewachsen. Was war immer der „Erfolg“? Ein zerrüttetes Nervensystem, hinzu zu dem, was sonst schon krank war; und das im Grössten wie im Kleinsten, bei Einzelnen wie bei Massen. Wir finden im Gefolge des Buss- und Erlösungs-training ungeheure epileptische Epidemien, die grössten, von denen die Geschichte weiss, wie die der St. Veit- und St. Johann-Tänzer des Mittelalters; wir finden als andre Form seines Nachspiels furchtbare Lähmungen und Dauer-Depressionen, mit denen unter Umständen das Temperament eines Volkes oder einer Stadt (Genf, Basel) ein für alle Mal in sein Gegentheil umschlägt; — hierher gehört auch die Hexen-Hysterie, etwas dem Somnambulismus Verwandtes (acht grosse epidemische Ausbrüche derselben allein zwischen 1564 und 1605) —; wir finden in seinem Gefolge insgleichen jene todsüchtigen Massen-Delirien, deren entsetzlicher Schrei „evviva la morte“ über ganz Europa weg gehört wurde, unterbrochen bald von wollüstigen, bald von zerstörungswüthigen Idiosynkrasien: wie der gleiche Affektwechsel, mit den gleichen Intermittenzen und Umsprüngen auch heute noch überall beobachtet wird, in jedem Falle, wo die asketische Sündenlehre es wieder einmal zu einem grossen Erfolge bringt (die religiöse Neurose *erscheint* als eine Form des „bösen Wesens“: daran ist kein Zweifel. Was sie *ist*? Quaeritur). In’s Grosse gerechnet, so hat sich das asketische Ideal und sein sublim-moralischer Cultus, diese geistreichste, unbedenklichste und gefährlichste Systematisirung aller Mittel der Gefühls-Ausschweifung unter dem Schutz heiliger Absichten auf eine furchtbare und unvergessliche Weise in die ganze Geschichte des Menschen eingeschrieben; und leider *nicht nur* in seine Geschichte... Ich wüsste kaum noch etwas Anderes geltend zu machen, was dermaassen zerstörerisch der *Gesundheit* und Rassen-Kräftigkeit, namentlich der Europäer, zugesetzt hat als dies Ideal; man darf es ohne alle Übertreibung *das eigentliche Verhängniss* in der Gesundheitsgeschichte des europäischen Menschen nennen. Höchstens, dass seinem Einflüsse noch der spezifisch-germanische Einfluss gleichzusetzen wäre: ich meine die Alkohol-Vergiftung Europa’s, welche streng mit dem politischen und Rassen-Übergewicht der Germanen bisher Schritt gehalten hat ( — wo sie ihr Blut einimpften, impften sie auch ihr Laster ein). — Zudritt in der Reihe wäre die Syphilis zu nennen, — magno sed proxima intervallo. [22] Der asketische Priester hat die seelische Gesundheit verdorben, wo er auch nur zur Herrschaft gekommen ist, er hat folglich auch den *Geschmack* verdorben in artibus et litteris, — er verdirbt ihn immer noch. „Folglich“? — Ich hoffe, man giebt mir dies Folglich einfach zu; zum Mindesten will ich es nicht erst beweisen. Ein einziger Fingerzeig: er gilt dem Grundbuche der christlichen Litteratur, ihrem eigentlichen Modell, ihrem „Buche an sich“. Noch inmitten der griechisch-römischen Herrlichkeit, welche auch eine Bücher-Herrlichkeit war, Angesichts einer noch nicht verkümmerten und zertrümmerten antiken Schriften-Welt, zu einer Zeit, da man noch einige Bücher lesen konnte, um deren Besitz man jetzt halbe Literaturen eintauschen würde, wagte es bereits die Einfalt und Eitelkeit christlicher Agitatoren — man heisst sie Kirchenväter — zu dekretiren: „auch wir haben unsre klassische Litteratur, *wir brauchen die der Griechen nicht*“, — und dabei wies man stolz auf Legendenbücher, Apostelbriefe und apologetische Traktätlein hin, ungefähr so, wie heute die englische „Heilsarmee“ mit einer verwandten Litteratur ihren Kampf gegen Shakespeare und andre „Heiden“ kämpft. Ich liebe das „neue Testament“ nicht, man erräth es bereits; es beunruhigt mich beinahe, mit meinem Geschmack in Betreff dieses geschätztesten, überschätztesten Schriftwerks dermaassen allein zu stehn (der Geschmack zweier Jahrtausende ist *gegen* mich): aber was hilft es! „Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders“, — ich habe den Muth zu meinem schlechten Geschmack. Das *alte* Testament — ja das ist ganz etwas Anderes: alle Achtung vor dem alten Testament! In ihm finde ich grosse Menschen, eine heroische Landschaft und Etwas vom Allerseltensten auf Erden, die unvergleichliche Naivetät des *starken* Herzens; mehr noch, ich finde ein Volk. Im neuen dagegen lauter kleine Sekten-Wirthschaft, lauter Rokoko der Seele, lauter Verschnörkeltes, Winkliges, Wunderliches, lauter Conventikel-Luft, nicht zu vergessen einen gelegentlichen Hauch bukolischer Süsslichkeit, welcher der Epoche (und der römischen Provinz) angehört und nicht sowohl jüdisch als hellenistisch ist. Demuth und Wichtigthuerei dicht nebeneinander; eine Geschwätzigkeit des Gefühls, die fast betäubt; Leidenschaftlichkeit, keine Leidenschaft; peinliches Gebärdenspiel; hier hat ersichtlich jede gute Erziehung gefehlt. Wie darf man von seinen kleinen Untugenden so viel Wesens machen, wie es diese frommen Männlein thun! Kein Hahn kräht darnach; geschweige denn Gott. Zuletzt wollen sie gar noch „die Krone des ewigen Lebens“ haben, alle diese kleinen Leute der Provinz: wozu doch? wofür doch? man kann die Unbescheidenheit nicht weiter treiben. Ein „unsterblicher“ Petrus: wer hielte *den* aus! Sie haben einen Ehrgeiz, der lachen macht: das käut sein Persönlichstes, seine Dummheiten, Traurigkeiten und Eckensteher-Sorgen vor, als ob das An-sich-der-Dinge verpflichtet sei, sich darum zu kümmern, das wird nicht müde, Gott selber in den kleinsten Jammer hinein zu wickeln, in dem sie drin stecken. Und dieses beständige Auf-du-und-du mit Gott des schlechtesten Geschmacks! Diese jüdische, nicht bloss jüdische Zudringlichkeit gegen Gott mit Maul und Tatze!... Es giebt kleine verachtete „Heidenvölker“ im Osten Asien’s, von denen diese ersten Christen etwas Wesentliches hätten lernen können, etwas *Takt* der Ehrfurcht; jene erlauben sich nicht, wie christliche Missionare bezeugen, den Namen ihres Gottes überhaupt in den Mund zu nehmen. Dies dünkt mich delikat genug; gewiss ist, dass es nicht nur für „erste“ Christen zu delikat ist: man erinnere sich doch etwa, um den Gegensatz zu spüren, an Luther, diesen „beredtesten“ und unbescheidensten Bauer, den Deutschland gehabt hat, und an die Lutherische Tonart, die gerade ihm in seinen Zwiegesprächen mit Gott am besten gefiel. Luther’s Widerstand gegen die Mittler-Heiligen der Kirche (insbesondere gegen „des Teuffels Saw den Bapst“) war, daran ist kein Zweifel, im letzten Grunde der Widerstand eines Rüpels, den die *gute Etiquette* der Kirche verdross, jene Ehrfurchts-Etiquette des hieratischen Geschmacks, welche nur die Geweihteren und Schweigsameren in das Allerheiligste einlässt und es gegen die Rüpel zuschliesst. Diese sollen ein für alle Mal gerade hier nicht das Wort haben, — aber Luther, der Bauer, wollte es schlechterdings anders, so war es ihm nicht *deutsch* genug: er wollte vor Allem direkt reden, selber reden, „ungenirt“ mit seinem Gotte reden... Nun, er hat’s gethan. — Das asketische Ideal, man erräth es wohl, war niemals und nirgendswo eine Schule des guten Geschmacks, noch weniger der guten Manieren, — es war im besten Fall eine Schule der hieratischen Manieren —: das macht, es hat selber Etwas im Leibe, das allen guten Manieren todtfeind ist, — Mangel an Maass, Widerwillen gegen Maass, es ist selbst ein „non plus ultra“. [23] Das asketische Ideal hat nicht nur die Gesundheit und den Geschmack verdorben, es hat noch etwas Drittes, Viertes, Fünftes, Sechstes verdorben — ich werde mich hüten zu sagen *was* Alles (wann käme ich zu Ende!). Nicht was dies Ideal *gewirkt* hat, soll hier von mir an’s Licht gestellt werden; vielmehr ganz allein nur, was es *bedeutet*, worauf es rathen lässt, was hinter ihm, unter ihm, in ihm versteckt liegt, wofür es der vorläufige, undeutliche, mit Fragezeichen und Miss-Verständnissen überladene Ausdruck ist. Und nur in Hinsicht auf *diesen* Zweck durfte ich meinen Lesern einen Blick auf das Ungeheure seiner Wirkungen, auch seiner verhängnissvollen Wirkungen nicht ersparen: um sie nämlich zum letzten und furchtbarsten Aspekt vorzubereiten, den die Frage nach der Bedeutung jenes Ideals für mich hat. Was bedeutet eben die *Macht* jenes Ideals, das *Ungeheure* seiner Macht? Weshalb ist ihm in diesem Maasse Raum gegeben worden? weshalb nicht besser Widerstand geleistet worden? Das asketische Ideal drückt einen Willen aus: wo ist der gegnerische Wille, in dem sich ein *gegnerisches Ideal* ausdrückte? Das asketische Ideal hat ein *Ziel*, — dasselbe ist allgemein genug, dass alle Interessen des menschlichen Daseins sonst, an ihm gemessen, kleinlich und eng erscheinen; es legt sich Zeiten, Völker, Menschen unerbittlich auf dieses Eine Ziel hin aus, es lässt keine andere Auslegung, kein andres Ziel gelten, es verwirft, verneint, bejaht, bestätigt allein im Sinne *seiner* Interpretation ( — und gab es je ein zu Ende gedachteres System von Interpretation?); es unterwirft sich keiner Macht, es glaubt vielmehr an sein Vorrecht vor jeder Macht, an seine unbedingte *Rang-Distanz* in Hinsicht auf jede Macht, — es glaubt daran, dass Nichts auf Erden von Macht da ist, das nicht von ihm aus erst einen Sinn, ein Daseins-Recht, einen Werth zu empfangen habe, als Werkzeug zu *seinem* Werke, als Weg und Mittel zu *seinem* Ziele, zu Einem Ziele... Wo ist das *Gegenstück* zu diesem geschlossenen System von Wille, Ziel und Interpretation? Warum *fehlt* das Gegenstück?... Wo ist das *andre* „Eine Ziel“?... Aber man sagt mir, es fehle *nicht*, es habe nicht nur einen langen glücklichen Kampf mit jenem Ideale gekämpft, es sei vielmehr in allen Hauptsachen bereits über jenes Ideal Herr geworden: unsre ganze moderne *Wissenschaft* sei das Zeugniss dafür, — diese moderne Wissenschaft, welche, als eine eigentliche Wirklichkeits-Philosophie, ersichtlich allein an sich selber glaube, ersichtlich den Muth zu sich, den Willen zu sich besitze und gut genug bisher ohne Gott, Jenseits und verneinende Tugenden ausgekommen sei. Indessen mit solchem Lärm und Agitatoren-Geschwätz richtet man Nichts bei mir aus: diese Wirklichkeits-Trompeter sind schlechte Musikanten, ihre Stimmen kommen hörbar genug *nicht* aus der Tiefe, aus ihnen redet *nicht* der Abgrund des wissenschaftlichen Gewissens — denn heute ist das wissenschaftliche Gewissen ein Abgrund —, das Wort „Wissenschaft“ ist in solchen Trompeter-Mäulern einfach eine Unzucht, ein Missbrauch, eine Schamlosigkeit. Gerade das Gegentheil von dem, was hier behauptet wird, ist die Wahrheit: die Wissenschaft hat heute schlechterdings *keinen* Glauben an sich, geschweige ein Ideal über sich, — und wo sie überhaupt noch Leidenschaft, Liebe, Gluth, *Leiden* ist, da ist sie nicht der Gegensatz jenes asketischen Ideals, vielmehr *dessen jüngste und vornehmste Form* selber. Klingt auch das fremd?... Es giebt ja genug braves und bescheidenes Arbeiter-Volk auch unter den Gelehrten von Heute, dem sein kleiner Winkel gefällt, und das darum, weil es ihm darin gefällt, bisweilen ein wenig unbescheiden mit der Forderung laut wird, man *solle* überhaupt heute zufrieden sein, zumal in der Wissenschaft, — es gäbe da gerade so viel Nützliches zu thun. Ich widerspreche nicht; am wenigsten möchte ich diesen ehrlichen Arbeitern ihre Lust am Handwerk verderben: denn ich freue mich ihrer Arbeit. Aber damit, dass jetzt in der Wissenschaft streng gearbeitet wird und dass es zufriedne Arbeiter giebt, ist schlechterdings *nicht* bewiesen, dass die Wissenschaft als Ganzes heute ein Ziel, einen Willen, ein Ideal, eine Leidenschaft des grossen Glaubens habe. Das Gegentheil, wie gesagt, ist der Fall: wo sie nicht die jüngste Erscheinungsform des asketischen Ideals ist, — es handelt sich da um zu seltne, vornehme, ausgesuchte Fälle, als dass damit das Gesammturtheil umgebogen werden könnte — ist die Wissenschaft heute ein *Versteck* für alle Art Missmuth, Unglauben, Nagewurm, despectio sui, schlechtes Gewissen, — sie ist die *Unruhe* der Ideallosigkeit selbst, das Leiden am *Mangel* der grossen Liebe, das Ungenügen an einer *unfreiwilligen* Genügsamkeit. Oh was verbirgt heute nicht Alles Wissenschaft! wie viel *soll* sie mindestens verbergen! Die Tüchtigkeit unsrer besten Gelehrten, ihr besinnungsloser Fleiss, ihr Tag und Nacht rauchender Kopf, ihre Handwerks-Meisterschaft selbst — wie oft hat das Alles seinen eigentlichen Sinn darin, sich selbst irgend Etwas nicht mehr sichtbar werden zu lassen! Die Wissenschaft als Mittel der Selbst-Betäubung: *kennt ihr das?*... Man verwundet sie — Jeder erfährt es, der mit Gelehrten umgeht — mitunter durch ein harmloses Wort bis auf den Knochen, man erbittert seine gelehrten Freunde gegen sich, im Augenblick, wo man sie zu ehren meint, man bringt sie ausser Rand und Band, bloss weil man zu grob war, um zu errathen, mit wem man es eigentlich zu thun hat, mit *Leidenden*, die es sich selbst nicht eingestehn wollen, was sie sind, mit Betäubten und Besinnungslosen, die nur Eins fürchten: *zum Bewusstsein zu kommen*... [24] — Und nun sehe man sich dagegen jene seltneren Fälle an, von denen ich sprach, die letzten Idealisten, die es heute unter Philosophen und Gelehrten giebt: hat man in ihnen vielleicht die gesuchten *Gegner* des asketischen Ideals, dessen *Gegen-Idealisten*? In der That, sie *glauben* sich als solche, diese „Ungläubigen“ (denn das sind sie allesammt); es scheint gerade Das ihr letztes Stück Glaube, Gegner dieses Ideals zu sein, so ernsthaft sind sie an dieser Stelle, so leidenschaftlich wird da gerade ihr Wort, ihre Gebärde: — brauchte es deshalb schon *wahr* zu sein, was sie glauben?... Wir „Erkennenden“ sind nachgerade misstrauisch gegen alle Art Gläubige; unser Misstrauen hat uns allmählich darauf eingeübt, umgekehrt zu schliessen, als man ehedem schloss: nämlich überall, wo die Stärke eines Glaubens sehr in den Vordergrund tritt, auf eine gewisse Schwäche der Beweisbarkeit, auf *Unwahrscheinlichkeit* selbst des Geglaubten zu schliessen. Auch wir leugnen nicht, dass der Glaube „selig macht“: *eben deshalb* leugnen wir, dass der Glaube Etwas *beweist*, — ein starker Glaube, der selig macht, ist ein Verdacht gegen Das, woran er glaubt, er begründet nicht „Wahrheit“, er begründet eine gewisse Wahrscheinlichkeit — der *Täuschung*. Wie steht es nun in diesem Falle? — Diese Verneinenden und Abseitigen von Heute, diese Unbedingten in Einem, im Anspruch auf intellektuelle Sauberkeit, diese harten, strengen, enthaltsamen, heroischen Geister, welche die Ehre unsrer Zeit ausmachen, alle diese blassen Atheisten, Antichristen, Immoralisten, Nihilisten, diese Skeptiker, Ephektiker, *Hektiker* des Geistes (letzteres sind sie sammt und sonders, in irgend einem Sinne), diese letzten Idealisten der Erkenntniss, in denen allein heute das intellektuelle Gewissen wohnt und leibhaft ward, — sie glauben sich in der That so losgelöst als möglich vom asketischen Ideale, diese „freien, *sehr* freien Geister“: und doch, dass ich ihnen verrathe, was sie selbst nicht sehen können — denn sie stehen sich zu nahe — dies Ideal ist gerade auch *ihr* Ideal, sie selbst stellen es heute dar, und Niemand sonst vielleicht, sie selbst sind seine vergeistigtste Ausgeburt, seine vorgeschobenste Krieger- und Kundschafter-Schaar, seine verfänglichste, zarteste, unfasslichste Verführungsform: — wenn ich irgend worin Räthselrather bin, so will ich es mit *diesem* Satze sein. Das sind noch lange keine *freien Geister*: *denn sie glauben noch an die Wahrheit*... Als die christlichen Kreuzfahrer im Orient auf jenen unbesiegbaren Assassinen-Orden stiessen, jenen Freigeister-Orden par excellence, dessen unterste Grade in einem Gehorsame lebten, wie einen gleichen kein Mönchsorden erreicht hat, da bekamen sie auf irgend welchem Wege auch einen Wink über jenes Symbol und Kerbholz-Wort, das nur den obersten Graden, als deren Secretum, vorbehalten war: „Nichts ist wahr, Alles ist erlaubt“... Wohlan, *das* war *Freiheit* des Geistes, *damit* war der Wahrheit selbst der Glaube *gekündigt*... Hat wohl je schon ein europäischer, ein christlicher Freigeist sich in diesen Satz und seine labyrinthischen *Folgerungen* verirrt? kennt er den Minotauros dieser Höhle *aus Erfahrung*?... Ich zweifle daran, mehr noch, ich weiss es anders: — Nichts ist diesen Unbedingten in Einem, diesen *sogenannten* „freien Geistern“ gerade fremder als Freiheit und Entfesselung in jenem Sinne, in keiner Hinsicht sind sie gerade fester gebunden, im Glauben gerade an die Wahrheit sind sie, wie Niemand anders sonst, fest und unbedingt. Ich kenne dies Alles vielleicht zu sehr aus der Nähe: jene verehrenswürdige Philosophen-Enthaltsamkeit, zu der ein solcher Glaube verpflichtet, jener Stoicismus des Intellekts, der sich das Nein zuletzt eben so streng verbietet wie das Ja, jenes Stehenbleiben-Wollen vor dem Thatsächlichen, dem factum brutum, jener Fatalismus der „petits faits“ (ce petit faitalisme, wie ich ihn nenne), worin die französische Wissenschaft jetzt eine Art moralischen Vorrangs vor der deutschen sucht, jenes Verzichtleisten auf Interpretation überhaupt (auf das Vergewaltigen, Zurechtschieben, Abkürzen, Weglassen, Ausstopfen, Ausdichten, Umfälschen und was sonst zum *Wesen* alles Interpretirens gehört) — das drückt, in’s Grosse gerechnet, ebensogut Asketismus der Tugend aus, wie irgend eine Verneinung der Sinnlichkeit (es ist im Grunde nur ein modus dieser Verneinung). Was aber zu ihm *zwingt*, jener unbedingte Wille zur Wahrheit, das ist der *Glaube an das asketische Ideal selbst*, wenn auch als sein unbewusster Imperativ, man täusche sich hierüber nicht, — das ist der Glaube an einen *metaphysischen* Werth, einen Werth *an sich der Wahrheit*, wie er allein in jenem Ideal verbürgt und verbrieft ist (er steht und fällt mit jenem Ideal). Es giebt, streng geurtheilt, gar keine „voraussetzungslose“ Wissenschaft, der Gedanke einer solchen ist unausdenkbar, paralogisch: eine Philosophie, ein „Glaube“ muss immer erst da sein, damit aus ihm die Wissenschaft eine Richtung, einen Sinn, eine Grenze, eine Methode, ein *Recht* auf Dasein gewinnt. (Wer es umgekehrt versteht, wer zum Beispiel sich anschickt, die Philosophie „auf streng wissenschaftliche Grundlage“ zu stellen, der hat dazu erst nöthig, nicht nur die Philosophie sondern auch die Wahrheit selber *auf den Kopf zu stellen*: die ärgste Anstands-Verletzung, die es in Hinsicht auf zwei so ehrwürdige Frauenzimmer geben kann!) Ja, es ist kein Zweifel — und hiermit lasse ich meine „fröhliche Wissenschaft“ zu Worte kommen, vergl. deren fünftes Buch S. 263 — „der Wahrhaftige, in jenem verwegenen und letzten Sinne, wie ihn der Glaube an die Wissenschaft voraussetzt, *bejaht damit eine andre Welt* als die des Lebens, der Natur und der Geschichte; und insofern er diese „andre Welt“ bejaht, wie? muss er nicht eben damit ihr Gegenstück, diese Welt, unsre Welt — verneinen?... Es ist immer noch ein *metaphysischer Glaube*, auf dem unser Glaube an die Wissenschaft ruht, — auch wir Erkennenden von Heute, wir Gottlosen und Antimetaphysiker, auch wir nehmen *unser* Feuer noch von jenem Brande, den ein Jahrtausende alter Glaube entzündet hat, jener Christen-Glaube, der auch der Glaube Plato’s war, dass Gott die Wahrheit ist, dass die Wahrheit *göttlich* ist... Aber wie, wenn gerade dies immer mehr unglaubwürdig wird, wenn Nichts sich mehr als göttlich erweist, es sei denn der Irrthum, die Blindheit, die Lüge, — wenn Gott selbst sich als unsre *längste Lüge* erweist?“ — — An dieser Stelle thut es Noth, Halt zu machen und sich lange zu besinnen. Die Wissenschaft selber *bedarf* nunmehr einer Rechtfertigung (womit noch nicht einmal gesagt sein soll, dass es eine solche für sie giebt). Man sehe sich auf diese Frage die ältesten und die jüngsten Philosophien an: in ihnen allen fehlt ein Bewusstsein darüber inwiefern der Wille zur Wahrheit selbst erst einer Rechtfertigung bedarf, hier ist eine Lücke in jeder Philosophie — woher kommt das? Weil das asketische Ideal über alle Philosophie bisher *Herr* war, weil Wahrheit als Sein, als Gott, als oberste Instanz selbst gesetzt wurde, weil Wahrheit gar nicht Problem sein *durfte*. Versteht man dies „durfte“? — Von dem Augenblick an, wo der Glaube an den Gott des asketischen Ideals verneint ist, *giebt es auch ein neues Problem*: das vom *Werthe* der Wahrheit. — Der Wille zur Wahrheit bedarf einer Kritik — bestimmen wir hiermit unsre eigene Aufgabe —, der Werth der Wahrheit ist versuchsweise einmal *in Frage zu stellen*... (Wem dies zu kurz gesagt scheint, dem sei empfohlen, jenen Abschnitt der „fröhlichen Wissenschaft“ nachzulesen, welcher den Titel trägt: „Inwiefern auch wir noch fromm sind“ S. 260 ff. am besten das ganze fünfte Buch des genannten Werks, insgleichen die Vorrede zur „Morgenröthe“.) [25] Nein! Man komme mir nicht mit der Wissenschaft, wenn ich nach dem natürlichen Antagonisten des asketischen Ideals suche, wenn ich frage: „wo ist der gegnerische Wille, in dem sich sein *gegnerisches Ideal* ausdrückt?“ Dazu steht die Wissenschaft lange nicht genug auf sich selber, sie bedarf in jedem Betrachte erst eines Werth-Ideals, einer wertheschaffenden Macht, in deren *Dienste* sie an sich selber *glauben darf*, — sie selbst ist niemals wertheschaffend. Ihr Verhältniss zum asketischen Ideal ist an sich durchaus noch nicht antagonistisch; sie stellt in der Hauptsache sogar eher noch die vorwärtstreibende Kraft in dessen innerer Ausgestaltung dar. Ihr Widerspruch und Kampf bezieht sich, feiner geprüft, gar nicht auf das Ideal selbst, sondern nur auf dessen Aussenwerke, Einkleidung, Maskenspiel, auf dessen zeitweilige Verhärtung, Verholzung, Verdogmatisirung — sie macht das Leben in ihm wieder frei, indem sie das Exoterische an ihm verneint. Diese Beiden, Wissenschaft und asketisches Ideal, sie stehen ja auf Einem Boden — ich gab dies schon zu verstehn —: nämlich auf der gleichen Überschätzung der Wahrheit (richtiger: auf dem gleichen Glauben an die *Un*abschätzbarkeit, *Un*kritisirbarkeit der Wahrheit), eben damit sind sie sich *nothwendig* Bundesgenossen, — so dass sie, gesetzt, dass sie bekämpft werden, auch immer nur gemeinsam bekämpft und in Frage gestellt werden können. Eine Werthabschätzung des asketischen Ideals zieht unvermeidlich auch eine Werthabschätzung der Wissenschaft nach sich: dafür mache man sich bei Zeiten die Augen hell, die Ohren spitz! (Die *Kunst*, vorweg gesagt, denn ich komme irgendwann des Längeren darauf zurück, — die Kunst, in der gerade die *Lüge* sich heiligt, der *Wille zur Täuschung* das gute Gewissen zur Seite hat, ist dem asketischen Ideale viel grundsätzlicher entgegengestellt als die Wissenschaft: so empfand es der Instinkt Plato’s, dieses grössten Kunstfeindes, den Europa bisher hervorgebracht hat. Plato *gegen* Homer: das ist der ganze, der ächte Antagonismus — dort der „Jenseitige“ besten Willens, der grosse Verläumder des Lebens, hier dessen unfreiwilliger Vergöttlicher, die *goldene* Natur. Eine Künstler-Dienstbarkeit im Dienste des asketischen Ideals ist deshalb die eigentlichste Künstler-*Corruption*, die es geben kann, leider eine der allergewöhnlichsten: denn Nichts ist corruptibler, als ein Künstler.) Auch physiologisch nachgerechnet, ruht die Wissenschaft auf dem gleichen Boden wie das asketische Ideal: eine gewisse *Verarmung des Lebens* ist hier wie dort die Voraussetzung, — die Affekte kühl geworden, das tempo verlangsamt, die Dialektik an Stelle des Instinktes, der Ernst den Gesichtern und Gebärden aufgedrückt (der Ernst, dieses unmissverständlichste Abzeichen des mühsameren Stoffwechsels, des ringenden, schwerer arbeitenden Lebens). Man sehe sich die Zeiten eines Volkes an, in denen der Gelehrte in den Vordergrund tritt: es sind Zeiten der Ermüdung, oft des Abends, des Niederganges, — die überströmende Kraft, die Lebens-Gewissheit, die *Zukunfts*-Gewissheit sind dahin. Das Übergewicht des Mandarinen bedeutet niemals etwas Gutes: so wenig als die Heraufkunft der Demokratie, der Friedens-Schiedsgerichte an Stelle der Kriege, der Frauen-Gleichberechtigung, der Religion des Mitleids und was es sonst Alles für Symptome des absinkenden Lebens giebt. (Wissenschaft als Problem gefasst; was bedeutet Wissenschaft? — vergl. darüber die Vorrede zur „Geburt der Tragödie“.) — Nein! diese „moderne Wissenschaft“ — macht euch nur dafür die Augen auf! — ist einstweilen die *beste* Bundesgenossin des asketischen Ideals, und gerade deshalb, weil sie die unbewussteste, die unfreiwilligste, die heimlichste und unterirdischste ist! Sie haben bis jetzt Ein Spiel gespielt, die „Armen des Geistes“ und die wissenschaftlichen Widersacher jenes Ideals (man hüte sich, anbei gesagt, zu denken, dass sie deren Gegensatz seien, etwa als die *Reichen* des Geistes: — das sind sie *nicht*, ich nannte sie Hektiker des Geistes). Diese berühmten *Siege* der letzteren: unzweifelhaft, es sind Siege — aber worüber? Das asketische Ideal wurde ganz und gar nicht in ihnen besiegt, es wurde eher damit stärker, nämlich unfasslicher, geistiger, verfänglicher gemacht, dass immer wieder eine Mauer, ein Aussenwerk, das sich an dasselbe angebaut hatte und seinen Aspekt *vergröberte*, seitens der Wissenschaft schonungslos abgelöst, abgebrochen worden ist. Meint man in der That, dass etwa die Niederlage der theologischen Astronomie eine Niederlage jenes Ideals bedeute?... Ist damit vielleicht der Mensch *weniger bedürftig* nach einer Jenseitigkeits-Lösung seines Räthsels von Dasein geworden, dass dieses Dasein sich seitdem noch beliebiger, eckensteherischer, entbehrlicher in der *sichtbaren* Ordnung der Dinge ausnimmt? Ist nicht gerade die Selbstverkleinerung des Menschen, sein Wille zur Selbstverkleinerung seit Kopernikus in einem unaufhaltsamen Fortschritte? Ach, der Glaube an seine Würde, Einzigkeit, Unersetzlichkeit in der Rangabfolge der Wesen ist dahin, — er ist *Thier* geworden, Thier, ohne Gleichniss, Abzug und Vorbehalt, er, der in seinem früheren Glauben beinahe Gort („Kind Gottes“, „Gottmensch“) war... Seit Kopernikus scheint der Mensch auf eine schiefe Ebene gerathen, — er rollt immer schneller nunmehr aus dem Mittelpunkt weg — wohin? in’s Nichts? in’s „*durchbohrende* Gefühl seines Nichts“?... Wohlan! dies eben wäre der gerade Weg — in’s *alte* Ideal?... *Alle* Wissenschaft (und keineswegs nur die Astronomie, über deren demüthigende und herunterbringende Wirkung Kant ein bemerkenswerthes Geständniss gemacht hat, „sie vernichtet meine Wichtigkeit“...) alle Wissenschaft, die natürliche sowohl, wie die *unnatürliche* — so heisse ich die Erkenntniss-Selbstkritik — ist heute darauf aus, dem Menschen seine bisherige Achtung vor sich auszureden, wie als ob dieselbe Nichts als ein bizarrer Eigendünkel gewesen sei; man könnte sogar sagen, sie habe ihren eigenen Stolz, ihre eigene herbe Form von stoischer Ataraxie darin, diese mühsam errungene *Selbstverachtung* des Menschen als dessen letzten, ernstesten Anspruch auf Achtung bei sich selbst aufrecht zu erhalten (mit Recht, in der That: denn der Verachtende ist immer noch Einer, der „das Achten nicht verlernt hat“...) Wird damit dem asketischen Ideale eigentlich *entgegengearbeitet*? Meint man wirklich alles Ernstes noch (wie es die Theologen eine Zeit lang sich einbildeten), dass etwa Kant’s *Sieg* über die theologische Begriffs-Dogmatik („Gott“, „Seele“, „Freiheit“, „Unsterblichkeit“) jenem Ideale Abbruch gethan habe? — wobei es uns einstweilen Nichts angehen soll, ob Kant selber etwas Derartiges überhaupt auch nur in Absicht gehabt hat. Gewiss ist, das alle Art Transcendentalisten seit Kant wieder gewonnenes Spiel haben, — sie sind von den Theologen emancipirt: welches Glück! — er hat ihnen jenen Schleichweg verrathen, auf dem sie nunmehr auf eigne Faust und mit dem besten wissenschaftlichen Anstände den „Wünschen ihres Herzens“ nachgehen dürfen. Insgleichen: wer dürfte es nunmehr den Agnostikern verargen, wenn sie, als die Verehrer des Unbekannten und Geheimnissvollen an sich, das *Fragezeichen selbst* jetzt als Gott anbeten? (Xaver Doudan spricht einmal von den ravages, welche „l’habitude d’*admirer* l’inintelligible au lieu de rester tout simplement dans l’inconnu“ angerichtet habe; er meint, die Alten hätten dessen entrathen.) Gesetzt, dass Alles, was der Mensch „erkennt“, seinen Wünschen nicht genug thut, ihnen vielmehr widerspricht und Schauder macht, welche göttliche Ausflucht, die Schuld davon nicht im „Wünschen“, sondern im „Erkennen“ suchen zu dürfen!... „Es giebt kein Erkennen: *folglich* — giebt es einen Gott“: welche neue elegantia syllogismi! welcher *Triumph* des asketischen Ideals! — [26] — Oder zeigte vielleicht die gesammte moderne Geschichtsschreibung eine lebensgewissere, idealgewissere Haltung? Ihr vornehmster Anspruch geht jetzt dahin, *Spiegel* zu sein; sie lehnt alle Teleologie ab; sie will Nichts mehr „beweisen“; sie verschmäht es, den Richter zu spielen, und hat darin ihren guten Geschmack, — sie bejaht so wenig als sie verneint, sie stellt fest, sie „beschreibt“... Dies Alles ist in einem hohen Grade asketisch; es ist aber zugleich in einem noch höheren Grade *nihilistisch*, darüber täusche man sich nicht! Man sieht einen traurigen, harten, aber entschlossenen Blick, — ein Auge, das *hinausschaut*, wie ein vereinsamter Nordpolfahrer hinausschaut, (vielleicht um nicht hineinzuschauen? um nicht zurückzuschauen?...) Hier ist Schnee, hier ist das Leben verstummt; die letzten Krähen, die hier laut werden, heissen „Wozu?“, „Umsonst!“, „Nada!“ — hier gedeiht und wächst Nichts mehr, höchstens Petersburger Metapolitik und Tolstoi’sches „Mitleid“. Was aber jene andre Art von Historikern betrifft, eine vielleicht noch „modernere“ Art, eine genüssliche, wollüstige, mit dem Leben ebenso sehr als mit dem asketischen Ideal liebäugelnde Art, welche das Wort „Artist“ als Handschuh gebraucht und heute das Lob der Contemplation ganz und gar für sich in Pacht genommen hat: oh welchen Durst erregen diese süssen Geistreichen selbst noch nach Asketen und Winterlandschaften! Nein! dies „beschauliche“ Volk mag sich der Teufel holen! Um wie viel lieber will ich noch mit jenen historischen Nihilisten durch die düstersten grauen kalten Nebel wandern! — ja, es soll mir nicht darauf ankommen, gesetzt, dass ich wählen muss, selbst einem ganz eigentlich Unhistorischen, Widerhistorischen Gehör zu schenken (wie jenem Dühring, an dessen Tönen sich im heutigen Deutschland eine bisher noch schüchterne, noch uneingeständliche Species „schöner Seelen“ berauscht, die Species anarchistica innerhalb des gebildeten Proletariats). Hundert Mal schlimmer sind die „Beschaulichen“ —: ich wüsste Nichts, was so sehr Ekel machte, als solch ein „objektiver“ Lehnstuhl, solch ein duftender Genüssling vor der Historie, halb Pfaff, halb Satyr, Parfüm Renan, der schon mit dem hohen Falsett seines Beifalls verräth, was ihm abgeht, wo es ihm abgeht, wo in diesem Falle die Parze ihre grausame Scheere ach! allzu chirurgisch gehandhabt hat! Das geht mir wider den Geschmack, auch wider die Geduld: behalte bei solchen Aspekten seine Geduld, wer Nichts an ihr zu verlieren hat, — mich ergrimmt solch ein Aspekt, solche „Zuschauer“ erbittern mich gegen das „Schauspiel“, mehr noch als das Schauspiel (die Historie selbst, man versteht mich), unversehens kommen mir dabei anakreontische Launen. Diese Natur, die dem Stier das Horn, dem Löwen das *χάσμ’ ὀδόντων* gab wozu gab mir die Natur den Fuss?... Zum Treten, beim heiligen Anakreon! und nicht nur zum Davonlaufen: zum Zusammentreten der morschen Lehnstühle, der feigen Beschaulichkeit, des lüsternen Eunuchenthums vor der Historie, der Liebäugelei mit asketischen Idealen, der Gerechtigkeits-Tartüfferie der Impotenz! Alle meine Ehrfurcht dem asketischen Ideale, *sofern es ehrlich ist*! so lange es an sich selber glaubt und uns keine Possen vormacht! Aber ich mag alle diese koketten Wanzen nicht, deren Ehrgeiz unersättlich darin ist, nach dem Unendlichen zu riechen, bis zuletzt das Unendliche nach Wanzen riecht; ich mag die übertünchten Gräber nicht, die das Leben schauspielern; ich mag die Müden und Vernutzten nicht, welche sich in Weisheit einwickeln und „objektiv“ blicken; ich mag die zu Helden aufgeputzten Agitatoren nicht, die eine Tarnkappe von Ideal um ihren Strohwisch von Kopf tragen; ich mag die ehrgeizigen Künstler nicht, die den Asketen und Priester bedeuten möchten und im Grunde nur tragische Hanswürste sind; ich mag auch sie nicht, diese neuesten Spekulanten in Idealismus, die Antisemiten, welche heute ihre Augen christlich-arisch-biedermännisch verdrehn und durch einen jede Geduld erschöpfenden Missbrauch des wohlfeilsten Agitationsmittels, der moralischen Attitüde, alle Hornvieh-Elemente des Volkes aufzuregen suchen ( — dass *jede* Art Schwindel-Geisterei im heutigen Deutschland nicht ohne Erfolg bleibt, hängt mit der nachgerade unableugbaren und bereits handgreiflichen *Verödung* des deutschen Geistes zusammen, deren Ursache ich in einer allzu-ausschliesslichen Ernährung mit Zeitungen, Politik, Bier und Wagnerischer Musik suche, hinzugerechnet, was die Voraussetzung für diese Diät abgiebt: einmal die nationale Einklemmung und Eitelkeit, das starke, aber enge Princip „Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles“, sodann aber die Paralysis agitans der „modernen Ideen“). Europa ist heute reich und erfinderisch vor Allem in Erregungsmitteln, es scheint Nichts nöthiger zu haben als Stimulantia und gebrannte Wasser: daher auch die ungeheure Fälscherei in Idealen, diesen gebranntesten Wassern des Geistes, daher auch die widrige, übelriechende, verlogne, pseudo-alkoholische Luft überall. Ich möchte wissen, wie viel Schiffsladungen von nachgemachtem Idealismus, von Helden-Kostümen und Klapperblech grosser Worte, wie viel Tonnen verzuckerten spirituosen Mitgefühls (Firma: la religion de la souffrance), wie viel Stelzbeine „edler Entrüstung“ zur Nachhülfe geistig Plattfüssiger, wie viel *Komödianten* des christlich-moralischen Ideals heute aus Europa exportirt werden müssten, damit seine Luft wieder reinlicher röche... Ersichtlich steht in Hinsicht auf diese Überproduktion eine neue *Handels*-Möglichkeit offen, ersichtlich ist mit kleinen Ideal-Götzen und zugehörigen „Idealisten“ ein neues „Geschäft“ zu machen — man überhöre diesen Zaunspfahl nicht! Wer hat Muth genug dazu? — wir haben es in der *Hand*, die ganze Erde zu „idealisiren“!... Aber was rede ich von Muth: hier thut Eins nur Noth, eben die Hand, eine unbefangne, eine sehr unbefangne Hand... [27] — Genug! Genug! Lassen wir diese Curiositäten und Complexitäten des modernsten Geistes, an denen ebensoviel zum Lachen als zum Verdriessen ist: gerade *unser* Problem kann deren entrathen, das Problem von der *Bedeutung* des asketischen Ideals, — was hat dasselbe mit Gestern und Heute zu thun! Jene Dinge sollen von mir in einem andren Zusammenhange gründlicher und härter angefasst werden (unter dem Titel „Zur Geschichte des europäischen Nihilismus“; ich verweise dafür auf ein Werk, das ich vorbereite: *Der Wille zur Macht*, Versuch einer Umwerthung aller Werthe). Worauf es mir allein ankommt hier hingewiesen zu haben, ist dies: das asketische Ideal hat auch in der geistigsten Sphäre einstweilen immer nur noch Eine Art von wirklichen Feinden und *Schädigern*: das sind die Komödianten dieses Ideals, — denn sie wecken Misstrauen. Überall sonst, wo der Geist heute streng, mächtig und ohne Falschmünzerei am Werke ist, entbehrt er jetzt überhaupt des Ideals — der populäre Ausdruck für diese Abstinenz ist „Atheismus“ —: *abgerechnet seines Willens zur Wahrheit*. Dieser Wille aber, dieser *Rest* von Ideal, ist, wenn man mir glauben will, jenes Ideal selbst in seiner strengsten, geistigsten Formulirung, esoterisch ganz und gar, alles Aussenwerks entkleidet, somit nicht sowohl sein Rest, als sein *Kern*. Der unbedingte redliche Atheismus ( — und *seine* Luft allein athmen wir, wir geistigeren Menschen dieses Zeitalters!) steht demgemäss *nicht* im Gegensatz zu jenem Ideale, wie es den Anschein hat; er ist vielmehr nur eine seiner letzten Entwicklungsphasen, eine seiner Schlussformen und inneren Folgerichtigkeiten, — er ist die Ehrfurcht gebietende *Katastrophe* einer zweitausendjährigen Zucht zur Wahrheit, welche am Schlüsse sich die *Lüge im Glauben an Gott* verbietet. (Derselbe Entwicklungsgang in Indien, in vollkommner Unabhängigkeit, und deshalb Etwas beweisend; dasselbe Ideal zum gleichen Schlüsse zwingend; der entscheidende Punkt fünf Jahrhunderte vor der europäischen Zeitrechnung erreicht, mit Buddha, genauer: schon mit der Sankhyam-Philosophie, diese dann durch Buddha popularisirt und zur Religion gemacht.) Was, in aller Strenge gefragt, hat eigentlich über den christlichen Gott *gesiegt*? Die Antwort steht in meiner „fröhlichen Wissenschaft“ S. 290: „die christliche Moralität selbst, der immer strenger genommene Begriff der Wahrhaftigkeit, die Beichtväter-Feinheit des christlichen Gewissens, übersetzt und sublimirt zum wissenschaftlichen Gewissen, zur intellektuellen Sauberkeit um jeden Preis. Die Natur ansehn, alt ob sie ein Beweis für die Güte und Obhut eines Gottes sei; die Geschichte interpretiren zu Ehren einer göttlichen Vernunft, als beständiges Zeugniss einer sittlichen Weltordnung und sittlicher Schlussabsichten; die eigenen Erlebnisse auslegen, wie sie fromme Menschen lange genug ausgelegt haben, wie als ob Alles Fügung, Alles Wink, Alles dem Heil der Seele zu Liebe ausgedacht und geschickt sei: das ist nunmehr *vorbei*, das hat das Gewissen *gegen* sich, das gilt allen feineren Gewissen als unanständig, unehrlich, als Lügnerei, Femininismus, Schwachheit, Feigkeit, — mit dieser Strenge, wenn irgend womit, sind wir eben *gute Europäer* und Erben von Europa’s längster und tapferster Selbstüberwindung“... Alle grossen Dinge gehen durch sich selbst zu Grunde, durch einen Akt der Selbstaufhebung: so will es das Gesetz des Lebens, das Gesetz der *nothwendigen* „Selbstüberwindung“ im Wesen des Lebens, — immer ergeht zuletzt an den Gesetzgeber selbst der Ruf: „patere legem, quam ipse tulisti.“ Dergestalt gieng das Christenthum *als Dogma* zu Grunde, an seiner eignen Moral; dergestalt muss nun auch das Christenthum *als Moral* noch zu Grunde gehn, wir stehen an der Schwelle dieses Ereignisses. Nachdem die christliche Wahrhaftigkeit einen Schluss nach dem andern gezogen hat, zieht sie am Ende ihren *stärksten Schluss*, ihren Schluss *gegen* sich selbst; dies aber geschieht, wenn sie die Frage stellt „*was bedeutet aller Wille zur Wahrheit?*“... Und hier rühre ich wieder an mein Problem, an unser Problem, meine *unbekannten* Freunde ( — denn noch *weiss* ich von keinem Freunde): welchen Sinn hätte *unser* ganzes Sein, wenn nicht den, dass in uns jener Wille zur Wahrheit sich selbst *als Problem* zum Bewusstsein gekommen wäre?... An diesem Sich-bewusst-werden des Willens zur Wahrheit geht von nun an — daran ist kein Zweifel — die Moral *zu Grunde*: jenes grosse Schauspiel in hundert Akten, das den nächsten zwei Jahrhunderten Europa’s aufgespart bleibt, das furchtbarste, fragwürdigste und vielleicht auch hoffnungsreichste aller Schauspiele... [28] Sieht man vom asketischen Ideale ab: so hatte der Mensch, das *Thier* Mensch bisher keinen Sinn. Sein Dasein auf Erden enthielt kein Ziel; „wozu Mensch überhaupt?“ — war eine Frage ohne Antwort; der *Wille* für Mensch und Erde fehlte; hinter jedem grossen Menschen-Schicksale klang als Refrain ein noch grösseres „Umsonst!“ Das eben bedeutet das asketische Ideal: dass Etwas *fehlte*, dass eine ungeheure *Lücke* den Menschen umstand, — er wusste sich selbst nicht zu rechtfertigen, zu erklären, zu bejahen, er litt am Probleme seines Sinns. Er litt auch sonst, er war in der Hauptsache ein *krankhaftes* Thier: aber *nicht* das Leiden selbst war sein Problem, sondern dass die Antwort fehlte für den Schrei der Frage „*wozu* leiden?“ Der Mensch, das tapferste und leidgewohnteste Thier, verneint an sich *nicht* das Leiden: er *will* es, er sucht es selbst auf, vorausgesetzt, dass man ihm einen *Sinn* dafür aufzeigt, ein *Dazu* des Leidens. Die Sinnlosigkeit des Leidens, *nicht* das Leiden, war der Fluch, der bisher über der Menschheit ausgebreitet lag, — *und das asketische Ideal bot ihr einen Sinn!* Es war bisher der einzige Sinn; irgend ein Sinn ist besser als gar kein Sinn; das asketische Ideal war in jedem Betracht das „*faute de mieux*“ par excellence, das es bisher gab. In ihm war das Leiden *ausgelegt*; die ungeheure Leere schien ausgefüllt; die Thür schloss sich vor allem selbstmörderischen Nihilismus zu. Die Auslegung — es ist kein Zweifel — brachte neues Leiden mit sich, tieferes, innerlicheres, giftigeres, am Leben nagenderes: sie brachte alles Leiden unter die Perspektive der *Schuld*... Aber trotzalledem — der Mensch war damit *gerettet*, er hatte einen Sinn, er war fürderhin nicht mehr wie ein Blatt im Winde, ein Spielball des Unsinns, des „Ohne-Sinns“, er konnte nunmehr Etwas *wollen*, — gleichgültig zunächst, wohin, wozu, womit er wollte: *der Wille selbst war gerettet.* Man kann sich schlechterdings nicht verbergen, was eigentlich jenes ganze Wollen ausdrückt, das vom asketischen Ideale her seine Richtung bekommen hat: dieser Hass gegen das Menschliche, mehr noch gegen das Thierische, mehr noch gegen das Stoffliche, dieser Abscheu vor den Sinnen, vor der Vernunft selbst, diese Furcht vor dem Glück und der Schönheit, dieses Verlangen hinweg aus allem Schein, Wechsel, Werden, Tod, Wunsch, Verlangen selbst — das Alles bedeutet, wagen wir es, dies zu begreifen, einen *Willen zum Nichts*, einen Widerwillen gegen das Leben, eine Auflehnung gegen die grundsätzlichsten Voraussetzungen des Lebens, aber es ist und bleibt ein Wille!... Und, um es noch zum Schluss zu sagen, was ich Anfangs sagte: lieber will noch der Mensch *das Nichts* wollen, als *nicht* wollen... ## Translation — Mouseia > Complete machine-assisted Musean translation of the Preface and all three essays with every numbered section, made directly from the German of the 1892 second edition (C. G. Naumann, Leipzig) as collated against the page images of the Internet Archive scan. Emphasis, the author's own note and the printed citation forms are retained. ### Preface On *the Genealogy of Morals.* A Polemic by *Friedrich Nietzsche.* Offered as a supplement and clarification to the most recently published “*Beyond Good and Evil*.” PREFACE. [1] We are unknown to ourselves, we who know, we ourselves to ourselves: there is good reason for that. We have never looked for ourselves—how could it happen that one day we should *find* ourselves? It has rightly been said: “Where your treasure is, there your heart is also”; *our* treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge stand. We are always on our way there, born winged creatures and honey-gatherers of the spirit; at heart we truly care about only one thing—“bringing something home.” As for the rest of life, the so-called “experiences”—which of us has enough seriousness even for those? Or enough time? In such matters, I fear, we were never quite “there”: our heart simply is not in them—and not even our ear! Rather, just as someone divinely distracted and sunk in himself, into whose ear a bell has just thundered its twelve strokes of noon with all its might, suddenly wakes and asks himself, “What actually struck just now?”—so we too sometimes rub our ears *afterward* and ask, utterly amazed, utterly disconcerted, “What have we actually experienced just now? More than that: who are we, really?” And afterward, as I said, we count back over all twelve trembling bell-strokes of our experience, our life, our being—alas! and get the count wrong… We necessarily remain strangers to ourselves, we do not understand ourselves, we *must* misidentify ourselves; for us the saying holds for all eternity: “Everyone is farthest from himself”—where we ourselves are concerned, we are no “knowers”… [2] —My thoughts on the *origin* of our moral prejudices—for these are the subject of this polemic—first found their expression, spare and provisional, in that collection of aphorisms entitled “Human, All Too Human. A Book for Free Spirits,” which I began writing in Sorrento, during a winter that allowed me to pause as a wanderer pauses and survey the vast and dangerous country through which my spirit had traveled until then. This was in the winter of 1876–77; the thoughts themselves are older. In the main, they were already the same thoughts I take up again in the essays before us: let us hope the long interval has done them good, that they have grown riper, clearer, stronger, more complete! But that I still hold fast to them today, that in the meantime they have held ever faster to one another, indeed have grown into one another and become intertwined—this strengthens my joyful confidence that from the beginning they arose in me not separately, not arbitrarily, not sporadically, but from a common root, from a *fundamental will* to knowledge commanding in the depths, speaking ever more distinctly, demanding ever more definite things. For this alone is fitting in a philosopher. We have no right to be *isolated* in anything: we may neither err in isolation nor hit upon the truth in isolation. Rather, with the necessity with which a tree bears its fruit, our thoughts, our values, our yeses and nos and ifs and whethers grow out of us—all related and bound to one another, witnesses to one will, one health, one soil, one sun.—Whether *you* like the taste of these fruits of ours?—But what does that matter to the trees! What does that matter to *us*, to us philosophers!… [3] With a scrupulous doubt peculiar to me, which I am reluctant to confess—for it concerns *morality*, everything that has been celebrated on earth as morality until now—a doubt that appeared in my life so early, so unbidden, so irresistibly, so at odds with my surroundings, my age, the examples set me, my origins that I would almost be entitled to call it my “a priori,” my curiosity as well as my suspicion was bound to pause early on at the question of *what origin* our good and evil really have. In fact, the problem of the origin of evil was already haunting me as a boy of thirteen: to it, at an age when one has “half children's games, half God in the heart,” I devoted my first literary child's play, my first philosophical writing exercise—and as for my “solution” to the problem at the time, well, I gave God the honor, as was only fitting, and made him the *father* of evil. Was this precisely what my “a priori” wanted of me? That new, unmoral, or at least immoralist “a priori,” and the—alas!—so anti-Kantian, so enigmatic “categorical imperative” speaking out of it, to which I have since lent more and more of my ear, and not only my ear?… Fortunately, I learned early to separate theological prejudice from moral prejudice and no longer sought the origin of evil *behind* the world. Some historical and philological schooling, together with an inborn discriminating sense in psychological questions generally, soon transformed my problem into another: under what conditions did the human being invent those value judgments, good and evil? *And what value do they themselves have?* Have they hindered or furthered human flourishing until now? Are they a sign of distress, of impoverishment, of the degeneration of life? Or, conversely, do life's fullness, strength, and will reveal themselves in them, its courage, its confidence, its future?—To these questions I found and ventured various answers of my own; I distinguished periods, peoples, degrees of rank among individuals; I narrowed my problem into specific questions; the answers became new questions, investigations, conjectures, probabilities: until at last I had a country of my own, a soil of my own, a whole silent, growing, flowering world, secret gardens, as it were, of which no one was to suspect a thing… Oh, how *happy* we are, we who know, provided only that we know how to keep silent long enough!… [4] My first impulse to make some of my hypotheses about the origin of morality public came from a clear, tidy, and clever little book—precociously clever, too—in which I first distinctly encountered an inverted and perverse kind of genealogical hypothesis, its characteristically *English* kind, and which attracted me—with that attraction exerted by everything contrary, everything antipodal. The little book's title was “The Origin of Moral Sensations”; its author, Dr. Paul Rée; the year it appeared, 1877. Perhaps I have never read anything to which, sentence by sentence, inference by inference, I said No within myself to such a degree as I did to this book: yet entirely without annoyance or impatience. In the work mentioned earlier, on which I was then engaged, I referred to the propositions of that book, in season and out of season, not by refuting them—what have I to do with refutations!—but, as befits an affirmative spirit, by putting the more probable in place of the improbable, sometimes one error in place of another. As I said, that was when I first brought into daylight those hypotheses of origin to which these essays are devoted: clumsily, as I would be the last to conceal from myself, still unfree, still without a language of my own for these things of my own, and with many relapses and vacillations. For particulars, compare what I say in “Human, All Too Human,” p. 51 about the twofold prehistory of good and evil (namely, in the sphere of the nobles and in that of the slaves); likewise pp. 119 ff. on the value and origin of ascetic morality; likewise pp. 78, 82, and II, 35 on the “morality of custom,” that much older and more original kind of morality which lies a whole heaven apart from the altruistic mode of valuation (in which Dr. Rée, like all the English genealogists of morality, sees the moral mode of valuation *as such*); likewise p. 74; “The Wanderer,” p. 29; “Daybreak,” p. 99 on the origin of justice as a settlement between parties of approximately equal power (a balance of power as the precondition of all contracts, hence of all law); likewise, on the origin of punishment, “The Wanderer,” pp. 25, 34., for which the purpose of terrorizing is neither essential nor original (as Dr. Rée thinks: rather, it was only introduced into punishment later, under certain circumstances, and always as something incidental, something added). [5] At bottom, precisely then, something far more important lay close to my heart than hypotheses, my own or anyone else's, about the origin of morality (or, more precisely: these concerned me only for the sake of an end for which they are one means among many). What concerned me was the *value* of morality—and on this I had to come to terms almost exclusively with my great teacher Schopenhauer, to whom, as though he were present, that book, the passion and the secret opposition of that book, addresses itself (—for that book too was a “polemic”). What concerned me in particular was the value of the “unegoistic,” of the instincts of pity, self-denial, self-sacrifice, which Schopenhauer in particular had gilded, deified, and transported into the beyond for so long that at last they alone remained for him as “values in themselves,” on the strength of which he *said* No to life, and to himself as well. But it was precisely against *these* instincts that an ever more fundamental suspicion, a skepticism digging ever deeper, spoke out of me! Precisely here I saw humanity's *great danger*, its most sublime lure and seduction—but toward what? Into nothingness?—precisely here I saw the beginning of the end, the standstill, the weariness looking backward, the will turning *against* life, the final sickness announcing itself tenderly and mournfully: I understood the morality of pity, which was spreading ever more widely, seizing and sickening even the philosophers, as the most uncanny symptom of our European culture, now itself grown uncanny, as its detour toward a new Buddhism? A Buddhism for Europeans? Toward—nihilism?… For this predilection for pity, this overvaluation of it among modern philosophers, is something new: until now it was precisely on the *worthlessness* of pity that philosophers had agreed. I name only Plato, Spinoza, La Rochefoucauld, and Kant, four minds as different from one another as possible, but at one in one thing: in their low opinion of pity.— [6] This problem of the *value* of pity and the morality of pity (—I am an opponent of the disgraceful modern softening of feeling—) seems at first to be merely an isolated matter, a question mark on its own; but whoever once gets caught here, whoever *learns* to ask questions here, will fare as I have fared: an immense new vista opens before him, a possibility seizes him like vertigo, every kind of mistrust, suspicion, fear leaps forth, faith in morality, in all morality, begins to sway—at last a new demand makes itself heard. Let us voice it, this *new demand*: we need a *critique* of moral values, *the value of these values must itself first be called into question*—and for that we need a knowledge of the conditions and circumstances from which they grew, under which they developed and shifted (morality as consequence, as symptom, as mask, as Tartuffe-like hypocrisy, as sickness, as misunderstanding; but also morality as cause, as remedy, as stimulant, as inhibition, as poison), a knowledge such as has never existed until now, nor even been desired. The value of these “values” was taken as given, as fact, as beyond all questioning; until now there has not been the faintest doubt or hesitation about assigning “the good man” a higher value than “the evil man,” a higher value in the sense of furthering, benefiting, fostering *the* human being in general (including humanity's future). What? What if the opposite were true? What? What if in “the good man” there also lay a symptom of decline, likewise a danger, a seduction, a poison, a narcotic through which the present might live *at the expense of the future*? More comfortably, perhaps, less dangerously, but also on a smaller scale, at a lower level?… So that morality itself would be to blame if the human type never attained the *utmost power and splendor* that were in principle possible for it? So that morality itself would be the danger of dangers?… [7] Enough to say that ever since this vista opened before me, I myself have had reason to look around for learned, daring, and industrious companions (I am still doing so today). The task is to travel through the vast, remote, and so well-hidden land of morality—morality that really existed, that was really lived—with entirely new questions and, as it were, new eyes: and does this not amount almost to *discovering* that land for the first time?… If, among others, I also had the aforementioned Dr. Rée in mind, it was because I had no doubt at all that the very nature of his questions would drive him toward a sounder method of arriving at answers. Was I mistaken in this? In any event, my wish was to give so sharp and disinterested an eye a better direction, the direction of the actual *history of morality*, and to warn him, while there was still time, against such English *blue-sky* hypothesizing. Surely it is obvious which color must be a hundred times more important to a genealogist of morality than precisely blue: namely, *gray*, by which I mean what is documented, what can actually be established, what actually existed—in short, the whole long, hard-to-decipher hieroglyphic script of humanity's moral past!—*This* was unknown to Dr. Rée; but he had read Darwin: and so, in his hypotheses, in a manner that is entertaining to say the least, Darwin's beast and the most up-to-date, unassuming moral softie, who “no longer bites,” politely shake hands, the latter with a certain good-natured, refined indolence on his face, into which even a grain of pessimism, of weariness, is mixed: as though it were really not worth taking all these things—the problems of morality—so seriously. To me, on the contrary, there seem to be no things more *worth* taking seriously; among the rewards for doing so, for example, is that one day we may be granted permission to take them *cheerfully*. For cheerfulness—or, to put it in my own language, *the joyful science*—is a reward: a reward for a long, brave, industrious, and subterranean seriousness, which is, to be sure, not everyone's affair. But on the day when we say with all our hearts, “Forward! Our old morality, too, belongs in *comedy*!” we have discovered a new complication and possibility for the Dionysian drama of the “fate of the soul”—and he will know how to turn it to his advantage, you may bet on that, he, the great, old, eternal comic playwright of our existence!… [8] —If anyone finds this work unintelligible and grating on the ear, the fault, it seems to me, does not necessarily lie with me. It is clear enough, assuming what I have assumed: that one has first read my earlier writings and has taken some pains over them—for they are indeed not readily accessible. As for my “Zarathustra,” for example, I recognize no one as a connoisseur of it unless every one of its words has at some time wounded him deeply and at some time delighted him deeply: only then may he enjoy the privilege of sharing reverently in the halcyon element out of which that work was born, in its sunlit clarity, distance, spaciousness, and certainty. In other cases the aphoristic form creates difficulties: the reason is that today this form is taken *nowhere near seriously enough*. An aphorism, properly stamped and cast, is not yet “deciphered” merely because it has been read off; rather, only then must its *interpretation* begin, and this requires an art of interpretation. In the third essay of this book I have offered a specimen of what I call “interpretation” in such a case: that essay is prefaced by an aphorism; the essay itself is its commentary. Of course, to practice reading as an *art* in this way, one thing above all is needed, something that nowadays has been unlearned more thoroughly than anything else—and so there is still time to pass before my writings become “readable”—something for which one must be almost a cow and in any event *not* a “modern human being”: *rumination*… *Sils-Maria*, Oberengadin, in July 1887. ### Essay I First Essay: Good and Evil, Good and Bad. [1] —These English psychologists, to whom we also owe the only attempts so far to write a history of morality’s origins, pose no small riddle in their own persons; indeed, I confess that precisely as riddles in the flesh they have one substantial advantage over their books—*they themselves are interesting!* These English psychologists—what do they really want? Willingly or not, we always find them at the same task: pushing the shameful part of our inner world into the foreground and looking for what is truly effective, directive, decisive for development precisely where man’s intellectual pride would least *wish* to find it—for example, in the inertial force of habit, or in forgetfulness, or in some blind and accidental interlocking and machinery of ideas, or in something purely passive, automatic, reflexive, molecular, and thoroughly stupid. What really drives these psychologists always in *this* direction? Is it a secret, malicious, vulgar instinct to belittle humanity, perhaps an instinct they cannot admit even to themselves? Or perhaps a pessimistic suspicion, the mistrust of disappointed idealists who have grown gloomy, poisonous, and green? Or a little underground hostility and rancor toward Christianity—and Plato—that may never even have crossed the threshold of consciousness? Or even a prurient taste for the strange, the painfully paradoxical, the questionable and senseless in existence? Or, finally—a little of everything: a little vulgarity, a little gloom, a little anti-Christianity, a little titillation and a need for spice?… But people tell me they are simply old, cold, boring frogs, crawling and hopping around on people and inside them, as though they were truly in their element there—in a *swamp*. I resist hearing this; more than that, I do not believe it. And if we may wish where we cannot know, then I wish with all my heart that the reverse might be true—that these investigators and microscopists of the soul are fundamentally brave, generous, and proud animals, who know how to rein in both their hearts and their pain, and have trained themselves to sacrifice everything desirable to truth, to *every* truth, even the plain, harsh, ugly, repellent, unchristian, immoral truth… For such truths exist.— [2] All honor, then, to the good spirits that may govern these historians of morality! Unfortunately, what is certain is that they lack the *historical spirit* itself: all the good spirits of history have deserted them! Like philosophers since time immemorial, they all think in an *essentially* unhistorical way; there is no doubt about that. The bungling of their genealogy of morals comes to light at the very beginning, where they set out to discover the origin of the concept and judgment “good.” “Originally”—so they decree—“unegoistic actions were praised and called good by those to whom they were done, and thus by those to whom they were *useful*. Later, people *forgot* where this praise originated, and simply because unegoistic actions had *habitually* always been praised as good, they also came to feel them as good—as though they were good in themselves.” We see at once that this first derivation already contains all the characteristic traits of the English psychologists’ idiosyncrasy: we have “utility,” “forgetting,” “habit,” and finally “error,” all as the foundation of a valuation in which the higher human being has until now taken pride as though it were a kind of privilege belonging to humanity itself. That pride *is to be* humbled, that valuation devalued: has this been achieved?… Now, to me it is first of all obvious that this theory seeks and locates the true birthplace of the concept “good” in the wrong place: the judgment “good” does *not* originate with those to whom “goodness” is shown! Rather, it was “the good” themselves—the noble, powerful, high-ranking, and high-minded—who felt and established themselves and their deeds as good, that is, as first in rank, in contrast to everything low, low-minded, common, and plebeian. Out of this *pathos of distance* they first claimed the right to create values, to coin names for values: what did they care about utility! Nothing could be more foreign and inappropriate than the viewpoint of utility to such a hot outpouring of the highest value judgments, which establish and distinguish ranks. Here feeling has reached the very opposite of that low temperature presupposed by all calculating prudence, by every reckoning of utility—and not just once, not for an exceptional hour, but permanently. The pathos of nobility and distance, as I have said, the enduring, dominant, pervasive, fundamental feeling of a higher, ruling kind in relation to a lower kind, to a “below”—*that* is the origin of the opposition between “good” and “bad.” (The masters’ right to give names extends so far that we should allow ourselves to understand the origin of language itself as an expression of the rulers’ power: they say “this *is* such and such,” stamp every thing and event with a sound, and thereby take possession of it, as it were.) Given this origin, the word “good” is *by no means* necessarily attached from the outset to “unegoistic” actions, as those genealogists of morality superstitiously believe. Rather, only with the *decline* of aristocratic value judgments does this whole opposition between “egoistic” and “unegoistic” press itself more and more upon the human conscience. It is, to use my own language, the *herd instinct* that finally finds its voice—and its words—in this opposition. Even then it takes a long time for this instinct to gain such mastery that moral valuation gets stuck in that opposition and cannot move beyond it—as is the case in Europe today: the prejudice that treats “moral,” “unegoistic,” and “disinterested” as equivalent concepts already rules with the force of an “obsession” and a disease of the brain. [3] But secondly: quite apart from the historical untenability of that hypothesis about the origin of the value judgment “good,” it suffers from an internal psychological absurdity. The utility of the unegoistic action is supposed to be the source of its praise, and this source is supposed to have been *forgotten*—but how is such forgetting even *possible*? Did the utility of such actions perhaps cease at some point? Quite the reverse: this utility has been an everyday experience in every age, something continually underscored anew. Consequently, instead of vanishing from consciousness, instead of becoming forgettable, it must have impressed itself on consciousness with ever greater clarity. How much more reasonable is the opposite theory, held, for example, by Herbert Spencer—though it is no truer for that! He takes the concept “good” to be essentially identical with “useful” or “expedient,” so that in its judgments “good” and “bad” humanity has summed up and sanctioned precisely its *unforgotten and unforgettable* experiences of what is useful and expedient, harmful and inexpedient. According to this theory, good is what has always proved useful: it may therefore claim recognition as “valuable in the highest degree,” as “valuable in itself.” This avenue of explanation is also wrong, as I have said, but at least the explanation is internally reasonable and psychologically tenable. [4] —The question that pointed me toward the *right* path was what the terms coined for “good” in the various languages actually mean etymologically. I found that they all lead back to the *same transformation of concepts*: everywhere, “noble” and “aristocratic” in the social sense are the basic concept from which “good,” meaning “noble in soul,” “aristocratic,” meaning “high-born in soul,” “privileged in soul,” necessarily develops. This development always runs parallel to the other one that finally makes “common,” “plebeian,” and “low” pass into the concept “bad.” The most eloquent example of the latter is the German word “schlecht” itself: it is identical with “schlicht”—compare “schlechtweg” and “schlechterdings”—and originally designated the plain, common man simply in contrast to the noble, without any insinuation of suspicion. Around the time of the Thirty Years’ War—late enough, then—this sense shifted into the one now current.—This seems to me an *essential* insight for the genealogy of morals. That it was discovered so late is due to the inhibiting influence that democratic prejudice exerts in the modern world on all questions of origin. It reaches even into the seemingly most objective domains of natural science and physiology, as I will merely indicate here. But the notorious case of Buckle shows the havoc this prejudice, once unleashed into hatred, can wreak, especially in morality and history. The *plebeianism* of the modern spirit, which is of English descent, once again erupted there on its native soil, violently as a muddy volcano, with the oversalted, over-loud, vulgar eloquence with which all volcanoes have spoken until now.— [5] With regard to *our* problem, which for good reasons may be called a *quiet* problem and addresses itself selectively to only a few ears, it is of no small interest to establish that even in those words and roots that designate “good,” the principal shade of meaning often still glimmers through by which the noble felt themselves to be people of a higher rank. Admittedly, in perhaps the most frequent cases they name themselves simply after their superiority in power—as “the powerful,” “the masters,” “the commanders”—or after the most visible sign of that superiority, for instance as “the rich,” “the possessors” (this is the meaning of arya, and correspondingly in Iranian and Slavic). But they also name themselves after a *characteristic trait*, and this is the case that concerns us here. They call themselves, for example, “the truthful”: above all the Greek nobility, whose spokesman is the Megarian poet Theognis. The word coined for this, *ἐσθλός*, means at its root someone who is, who has reality, who is actual, who is true; then, with a subjective turn, the true man as the truthful man. In this phase of the conceptual transformation it becomes the nobility’s slogan and watchword, and passes wholly into the sense “aristocratic,” distinguishing the noble from the *lying* common man as Theognis understands and portrays him—until finally, after the decline of the nobility, the word remains as a designation of nobility of soul and becomes, as it were, ripe and sweet. In *κακός*, as in *δειλός* (the plebeian in contrast to the *ἀγαθός*), cowardice is emphasized: this may offer a hint as to the direction in which we should seek the etymological origin of the multiply interpretable *ἀγαθός*. In the Latin malus—beside which I set *μέλας*—the common man might be characterized as the dark-colored man, above all the black-haired man (“this man is black”), as the pre-Aryan inhabitant of Italian soil whose color most clearly distinguished him from the blond—namely Aryan—race of conquerors that had become dominant. At least Gaelic offered me the precisely corresponding case: fin (for example in the name Fin-Gal), the distinguishing word for the nobility, ultimately the good, noble, pure man, originally the blond head in contrast to the dark, black-haired indigenous inhabitants. The Celts, incidentally, were decidedly a blond race. It is a mistake to connect those strips of essentially dark-haired population noticeable on the more careful ethnographic maps of Germany with any Celtic origin or mingling of blood, as Virchow still does: rather, the *pre-Aryan* population of Germany resurfaces in those places. (The same holds for almost all of Europe: essentially the subjugated race has finally gained the upper hand there again, in color, shortness of skull, perhaps even in intellectual and social instincts. Who will guarantee that modern democracy, still more modern anarchism, and especially that inclination toward the “Commune,” toward the most primitive form of society, now shared by all the socialists of Europe, do not essentially signify an immense *resurgence*—and that the race of conquerors and masters, the Aryans, is not also being defeated physiologically?…) I believe I may interpret the Latin bonus as “the warrior,” provided I am right in tracing bonus back to an older duonus (compare bellum = duellum = duen-lum, in which that duonus seems to me preserved). Thus bonus as the man of strife, of division (duo), as the man of war: we see what constituted a man’s “goodness” in ancient Rome. Our German “gut” itself: might it not mean “the divine man,” the man “of divine descent”? And be identical with the tribal name—originally the name of the nobility—of the Goths? The grounds for this conjecture do not belong here.— [6] It is not yet an exception to this rule—that the concept of political precedence always resolves itself into a concept of precedence in the soul—when the highest caste is also the *priestly* caste and consequently favors, as its collective designation, a predicate recalling its priestly function, although this does give rise to exceptions. Here, for example, “pure” and “impure” first confront one another as signs of social rank; here too, a “good” and a “bad” later develop in a sense no longer tied to rank. For the rest, let us beware of taking these concepts “pure” and “impure” too heavily, too broadly, or even symbolically from the outset. All the concepts of earlier humanity were initially understood, to a degree we can scarcely imagine, in a coarse, clumsy, external, narrow, straightforward, and especially *unsymbolic* way. Originally, the “pure man” is merely someone who washes, who forbids himself certain foods that cause skin diseases, who does not sleep with the dirty women of the lower orders, who abhors blood—not more, not much more! On the other hand, the whole character of an essentially priestly aristocracy certainly makes clear why it was precisely here that oppositions of value could so early become internalized and sharpened in a dangerous way; indeed, through them chasms between one human being and another were finally torn open that even an Achilles of free-spiritedness will not leap across without shuddering. From the beginning there is something *unhealthy* in such priestly aristocracies and in the habits prevailing there, averted from action, partly brooding and partly explosive with feeling, which seem to result in the intestinal infirmity and neurasthenia that cling almost inevitably to priests of every age. Yet what they themselves invented as a cure for their infirmity—must we not say that in its eventual aftereffects it has proved a hundred times more dangerous than the disease from which it was supposed to deliver them? Humanity itself is still sick from the aftereffects of these naive priestly cures! Consider, for example, certain forms of diet—avoiding meat—fasting, sexual abstinence, flight “into the desert” (isolation in the manner of Weir Mitchell, though without the subsequent fattening treatment and overfeeding in which the most effective antidote to all the hysteria of the ascetic ideal consists). Add to these the priests’ entire metaphysics, hostile to the senses, making people idle and overrefined; their self-hypnosis in the manner of fakirs and Brahmans—Brahman used as a glass button and an obsession—and their final, all too understandable weariness with everything, with its radical cure, *nothingness* (or God: the longing for mystical union with God is the Buddhist’s longing for nothingness, nirvana—and nothing more!). With priests, *everything* becomes more dangerous, not only remedies and healing arts, but also arrogance, revenge, acuity, debauchery, love, lust for power, virtue, sickness. In all fairness, though, we might also add that only on the soil of this *essentially dangerous* form of human existence, the priestly form, did man become *an interesting animal* at all; that only here did the human soul acquire *depth* in a higher sense and become *evil*—and these are, after all, the two fundamental forms of humanity’s superiority over the other animals so far!… [7] —It will already have been guessed how easily the priestly manner of valuation can branch off from the knightly-aristocratic one and then develop into its opposite; a particular impetus is given whenever the priestly caste and the warrior caste confront one another jealously and refuse to agree about the prize. Knightly-aristocratic value judgments presuppose a powerful physique, a flourishing, abundant, even overflowing health, together with what preserves it: war, adventure, hunting, dancing, martial games, and in general everything that involves strong, free, joyful action. The priestly-noble manner of valuation has, as we have seen, different presuppositions: bad enough for it when it comes to war! Priests are, as everyone knows, the *most evil enemies*—but why? Because they are the most powerless. Out of their powerlessness their hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous forms. The greatest haters in world history have always been priests, and the most ingenious haters too: beside the spirit of priestly revenge, all other spirit scarcely counts. Human history would be far too stupid a thing without the spirit introduced into it by the powerless—let us turn at once to the greatest example. Everything done on earth against “the noble,” “the mighty,” “the masters,” “the rulers” is not worth mentioning beside what *the Jews* have done against them: the Jews, that priestly people who finally knew how to gain satisfaction from their enemies and conquerors only through a radical revaluation of their values, thus through an act of the *most spiritual revenge*. That alone was fitting for a priestly people, the people of the most deeply repressed priestly vengefulness. It was the Jews who dared, with terrifying consistency, to reverse the aristocratic equation of values (good = noble = powerful = beautiful = happy = loved by God), and who held fast to that reversal with the teeth of the most abysmal hatred, the hatred of powerlessness: namely, “the wretched alone are the good; the poor, powerless, lowly alone are the good; the suffering, deprived, sick, and ugly are also the only pious ones, the only blessed ones; for them alone is there salvation—whereas you, you noble and mighty ones, are to all eternity the evil, the cruel, the lustful, the insatiable, the godless, and eternally you will also be the unblessed, the accursed, and the damned!”… We know *who* inherited this Jewish revaluation… With regard to the tremendous and immeasurably fateful initiative the Jews took in this most fundamental of all declarations of war, I recall the proposition I arrived at on another occasion (“Beyond Good and Evil,” p. 118): that *the slave revolt in morality* begins with the Jews, that revolt which has a history of two thousand years behind it and which we have lost sight of today only because it—has been victorious… [8] —But you do not understand this? You have no eyes for something that took two millennia to achieve victory?… There is nothing surprising in that: all *long* things are hard to see, hard to take in at a glance. Yet *this* is what happened: out of the trunk of that tree of revenge and hatred, of Jewish hatred—the deepest and most sublime hatred, a hatred that creates ideals and transforms values, the like of which had never existed on earth—something equally incomparable grew: a *new love*, the deepest and most sublime of all kinds of love. And from what other trunk could it have grown?… But let no one suppose that it grew up as the actual negation of that thirst for revenge, as the opposite of Jewish hatred! No, the reverse is the truth! This love grew out of that hatred as its crown, as the triumphant crown spreading wider and wider in the purest brightness and fullness of sunlight. In the realm of light and height, as it were, it pursued the goals of that hatred—victory, plunder, seduction—with the same drive with which the roots of that hatred sank ever more deeply and greedily into everything that had depth and was evil. This Jesus of Nazareth, the gospel of love in the flesh, this “redeemer” bringing salvation and victory to the poor, the sick, the sinners—was he not precisely seduction in its most uncanny and irresistible form, seduction and a roundabout path to those very *Jewish* values and innovations of the ideal? Did Israel not reach the ultimate goal of its sublime vengefulness precisely by the roundabout path of this “redeemer,” this seeming adversary and dissolver of Israel? Is it not part of the secret black art of a truly *great* politics of revenge, a farsighted, subterranean, slowly grasping and calculating revenge, that Israel itself had to disown the very instrument of its revenge before the whole world as something mortally hostile and nail it to the cross, so that “the whole world,” namely all Israel’s enemies, could bite at this particular bait without hesitation? And on the other hand, could anyone, with all the refinements of the mind, devise a more *dangerous* bait? Something equal in its alluring, intoxicating, stupefying, ruinous power to that symbol of the “holy cross,” to that dreadful paradox of a “God on the cross,” to that mystery of an inconceivable, ultimate, utmost cruelty and self-crucifixion of God *for the salvation of humanity*?… At least this much is certain: under this sign, Israel with its revenge and revaluation of all values has so far triumphed again and again over every other ideal, over every *nobler* ideal.— — [9] —“But why do you still speak of *nobler* ideals! Let us submit to the facts: the people have won—or ‘the slaves,’ or ‘the mob,’ or ‘the herd,’ or whatever you choose to call them. If this happened through the Jews, well then! No people ever had a more world-historical mission. ‘The masters’ have been disposed of; the morality of the common man has won. You may regard this victory as a poisoning of the blood as well—it has mingled the races—I do not object; but undoubtedly this intoxication has *succeeded*. The ‘redemption’ of the human race—namely from ‘the masters’—is well on its way; everything is visibly becoming Jewish or Christian or plebeian—what do words matter! The progress of this poisoning through the entire body of humanity seems unstoppable; from now on its tempo and pace may even grow ever slower, subtler, more inaudible, more deliberate—there is time enough… Does the Church still have a *necessary* task in this business today, any right to exist at all? Or could we do without it? That is the question. Does it not seem to obstruct and retard that progress rather than accelerate it? Well, that might be precisely its usefulness… Certainly it has by now become something crude and boorish, repellent to a more delicate intelligence, to a truly modern taste. Should it not at least refine itself a little?… Today it alienates more than it seduces… Which of us would be a free spirit if the Church did not exist? It is the Church that repels us, *not* its poison… Apart from the Church, we too love the poison…”—Such was the epilogue to my speech offered by a “free spirit,” an honest animal, as he had amply revealed, and a democrat besides. Until then he had listened to me and could not bear to hear me fall silent. For at this point there is much for me to be silent about.— [10] The slave revolt in morality begins when *ressentiment* itself becomes creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of beings denied the true reaction, that of deeds, who compensate themselves only through an imaginary revenge. While all noble morality grows out of a triumphant yes to itself, slave morality says no from the outset to an “outside,” an “other,” a “not-self”: and *this* no is its creative deed. This reversal of the value-positing gaze—this *necessary* direction outward instead of back toward itself—is precisely what belongs to ressentiment. In order to arise, slave morality always first needs an opposing, external world; physiologically speaking, it needs external stimuli in order to act at all—its action is fundamentally reaction. The reverse is the case with the noble manner of valuation: it acts and grows spontaneously, seeking out its opposite only to say yes to itself still more gratefully, still more exultantly. Its negative concept “low,” “common,” “bad” is only a pale, belated contrasting image beside its positive fundamental concept, saturated through and through with life and passion: “we noble ones, we good ones, we beautiful ones, we happy ones!” When the noble manner of valuation errs and sins against reality, it does so with regard to the sphere it does *not* know well enough, indeed, the sphere it disdainfully resists knowing at all. In some circumstances it misjudges the sphere it despises, that of the common man, of the lower people. On the other hand, consider that even if the affect of contempt, of looking down, of looking from above, *falsifies* the image of the despised, this falsification will fall far short of the one with which repressed hatred, the revenge of the powerless, assaults its opponent—in effigy, of course. In fact, contempt contains too much carelessness, too much taking lightly, too much looking away and impatience, even too much of its own happiness, to be capable of turning its object into a genuine caricature and monster. Let us not fail to hear the almost benevolent nuances that the Greek nobility, for example, puts into all the words by which it distinguishes the lower people from itself: how a kind of pity, consideration, and indulgence continually mingles with them and sweetens them, until nearly all the words belonging to the common man have finally survived as expressions for “unhappy” and “pitiable” (compare *δειλός, δείλαιος, πονηρός, μοχθηρός*, the last two actually characterizing the common man as a laboring slave and beast of burden). And how, on the other hand, “bad,” “low,” and “unhappy” have never ceased to ring as a single note to the Greek ear, with a timbre in which “unhappy” predominates: this is an inheritance from the old, nobler aristocratic manner of valuation, which does not deny itself even in contempt. (Philologists should recall the sense in which *οἰζυρός, ἄνολβος, τλήμων, δυστυχεῖν, ξυμφορά* are used.) The “wellborn” simply *felt* themselves to be the “happy.” They did not first have to manufacture their happiness by glancing at their enemies, or on occasion persuade themselves into it, *lie themselves into it*, as all people of ressentiment habitually do. And likewise, as full human beings overloaded with strength and therefore *necessarily* active, they knew no way of separating action from happiness—being active necessarily counts as part of happiness for them (hence the origin of *εὖ πράττειν*). All this stands in sharp contrast to “happiness” at the level of the powerless, the oppressed, those festering with poisonous and hostile feelings, for whom it appears essentially as a narcotic, an anesthetic, rest, peace, a “Sabbath,” a relaxation of the mind and a stretching of the limbs—in short, *passively*. While the noble person lives before himself with trust and openness (*γενναῖος*, “nobly born,” emphasizes the nuance “sincere,” and perhaps also “naive”), the person of ressentiment is neither sincere nor naive, nor honest and straightforward with himself. His soul *squints*; his mind loves hiding places, secret paths, and back doors; everything concealed strikes him as *his* world, *his* security, *his* refreshment. He understands silence, not forgetting, waiting, provisionally making himself small and humble. A race of such people of ressentiment will necessarily become *cleverer* in the end than any noble race; it will also honor cleverness in an entirely different measure: as a condition of existence of the first rank, whereas among noble people cleverness readily has a delicate savor of luxury and refinement. Here it is far less essential than the perfect reliability of the governing *unconscious* instincts, or even a certain lack of cleverness: a brave charge headlong into danger or against the enemy, or that rapturous suddenness of anger, love, reverence, gratitude, and revenge by which noble souls have recognized themselves in every age. When ressentiment does appear in the noble person, it fulfills and exhausts itself in an immediate reaction and therefore does not *poison*; on the other hand, it does not appear at all in countless cases where it is unavoidable among all the weak and powerless. To be unable to take one’s enemies, one’s misfortunes, even one’s *misdeeds* seriously for very long—that is the sign of strong, full natures possessing a surplus of formative, restorative, healing power, power that also makes one forget. A good example from the modern world is Mirabeau, who had no memory for insults and acts of baseness committed against him, and who could not forgive simply because he—forgot. Such a person shakes off in a single movement many vermin that burrow into others; here alone is possible—assuming it is possible on earth at all—true “*love* of one’s enemies.” How much reverence a noble person already has for his enemies! And such reverence is already a bridge to love… He desires his enemy for himself, as his distinction; indeed, he can endure no enemy other than one in whom there is nothing to despise and *a great deal* to honor! By contrast, imagine “the enemy” as the person of ressentiment conceives him—and here precisely is his deed, his creation: he has conceived “the evil enemy,” “*the evil one*,” and as his fundamental concept, from which he then also devises, as its afterimage and counterpart, a “good one”—himself!… [11] Exactly the reverse, then, of the noble person, who conceives the fundamental concept “good” first and spontaneously, from himself, and only then creates a conception of “bad”! This “bad” of noble origin and that “evil” from the brewing vat of unsated hatred—the first an after-creation, an incidental thing, a complementary color, the second, by contrast, the original, the beginning, the true *deed* in the conception of a slave morality—how differently these two words “bad” and “evil” stand, though they appear opposed to the same concept “good”! But it is *not* the same concept “good”: rather, let us ask who is actually “evil” in the sense of the morality of ressentiment. Answered with all rigor: *precisely* the “good one” of the other morality, precisely the noble, the powerful, the ruler, only recolored, reinterpreted, seen differently through the poisonous eye of ressentiment. Here we would least of all deny one thing: anyone who came to know those “good ones” only as enemies came to know nothing but *evil enemies*. And those same people who are so strictly held in bounds by custom, reverence, usage, gratitude, still more by mutual surveillance and jealousy among equals, and who in their conduct toward one another show themselves so inventive in consideration, self-control, delicacy, loyalty, pride, and friendship—outwardly, where the foreign, the foreign land begins, they are not much better than beasts of prey let loose. There they enjoy freedom from every social constraint; in the wilderness they compensate themselves for the tension produced by a long confinement and enclosure within the peace of the community. They *return* to the innocence of the predatory conscience, as exultant monsters who perhaps walk away from a hideous succession of murders, burnings, rapes, and tortures with the high spirits and inner equilibrium of students after a prank, convinced that the poets will now once again have something to sing and praise for a long time to come. At the bottom of all these noble races one cannot fail to recognize the beast of prey, the magnificent *blond beast* roaming in its lust for plunder and victory. This hidden foundation needs release from time to time; the animal must get out again, must return to the wilderness—Roman, Arabian, Germanic, Japanese nobility, Homeric heroes, Scandinavian Vikings—in this need they are all alike. It is the noble races that have left the concept “barbarian” on every trail they have traveled; even their highest culture betrays an awareness of this, and a pride in it as well—for example, when Pericles tells his Athenians in that famous funeral oration, “Our daring has forced a path to every land and sea, everywhere raising imperishable monuments to itself in good *and ill*.” This “daring” of noble races, mad, absurd, sudden in its expression, the incalculable, the improbable character of their undertakings—Pericles singles out the Athenians’ *carefree ease* for special praise—their indifference and contempt toward safety, body, life, comfort, their terrible cheerfulness and depth of pleasure in all destruction, in all the voluptuous joys of victory and cruelty: for those who suffered from it, all this came together in the image of the “barbarian,” the “evil enemy,” perhaps the “Goth,” the “Vandal.” The deep, icy mistrust the German arouses as soon as he comes to power, again even now, is still an aftershock of that inextinguishable horror with which Europe watched the raging of the blond Germanic beast for centuries—although there is scarcely a conceptual kinship, let alone a blood relationship, between the ancient Germanic peoples and us Germans. I once drew attention to Hesiod’s perplexity when he devised the succession of cultural ages and tried to express them in gold, silver, and bronze. He knew no other way to resolve the contradiction presented to him by Homer’s splendid but also so dreadful, so violent world than to make two ages out of one and place them in succession: first the age of the heroes and demigods of Troy and Thebes, as that world had remained in the memory of the noble lineages who had their own ancestors in it; then the bronze age, as that same world appeared to the descendants of the trampled, robbed, mistreated, carried away, and sold—a bronze age, as I have said, hard, cold, cruel, without feeling or conscience, crushing everything and coating it with blood. Suppose it were true, as is at any rate now believed to be “true,” that the *meaning of all culture* is to breed from the beast of prey “man” a tame and civilized animal, a *domestic animal*. We would then undoubtedly have to regard all those instincts of reaction and ressentiment, with whose help the noble lineages and their ideals were finally disgraced and overpowered, as the true *instruments of culture*—which would certainly not yet mean that their *bearers* themselves also represented culture. Rather, the opposite would be not merely probable—no! it is *plain to see* today! These bearers of the oppressive instincts thirsting for repayment, the descendants of all European and non-European slavery, of all pre-Aryan populations in particular—they represent the *regression* of humanity! These “instruments of culture” are a disgrace to humanity, and rather a reason for suspicion, an argument against “culture” itself! One may be entirely justified in never losing one’s fear of the blond beast at the bottom of every noble race and in remaining on guard. But who would not a hundred times rather be afraid if he could also admire, than *not* be afraid but remain unable to escape the disgusting sight of the malformed, diminished, stunted, poisoned? And is that not *our* fate? What arouses *our* revulsion toward “man” today?—for we suffer from man, there is no doubt.—Not fear; rather, that we have nothing more to fear from man; that the vermin “man” is in the foreground, swarming; that the “tame man,” the hopelessly mediocre and uninvigorating man, has already learned to feel himself the goal and summit, the meaning of history, the “higher man”—indeed, that he has a certain right to feel this way insofar as he feels himself at a distance from the profusion of the malformed, sickly, tired, worn-out things of which Europe is beginning to stink today, and thus as something at least relatively well-formed, at least still capable of life, at least saying yes to life… [12] —Here I will not suppress a sigh and a final hope. What is it that I, in particular, find quite unbearable? The one thing I cannot cope with, that suffocates me and makes me languish? Bad air! Bad air! That something malformed comes near me; that I must smell the entrails of a malformed soul!… What else will one not endure—distress, privation, bad weather, sickness, toil, solitude? Fundamentally one manages everything else, born as one is to an underground, embattled existence. Again and again one comes back into the light, again and again experiences one’s golden hour of victory—and then one stands there as one was born, unbreakable, taut, ready for something new, something still harder, more distant, like a bow that all hardship only draws tighter.—But from time to time, grant me—assuming there are heavenly patronesses, beyond good and evil—a glimpse; grant me just one glimpse of something perfect, fully realized, happy, powerful, triumphant, in which there is still something to fear! Of a human being who justifies *the human being*, a complementary, redeeming stroke of human good fortune for whose sake we may hold fast to *faith in humanity*!… For this is how things stand: the diminution and leveling of European man conceals *our* greatest danger, for this sight makes us weary… Today we see nothing that wants to grow greater; we sense that things are still going down, down, toward the thinner, more good-natured, cleverer, more comfortable, more mediocre, more indifferent, more Chinese, more Christian—man, there is no doubt, is becoming ever “better”… Here precisely lies Europe’s doom: with our fear of man we have also lost our love for him, our reverence for him, our hope for him, indeed our will for him. The sight of man now makes us weary—what is nihilism today if it is not *that*?… We are weary *of man*… [13] —But let us return: the problem of the *other* origin of the “good,” of the good as the person of ressentiment has devised it, demands to be brought to a close.—That lambs bear a grudge against great birds of prey is no cause for surprise; only, it offers no reason to resent the great birds of prey for taking little lambs. And if the lambs say among themselves, “These birds of prey are evil; and whoever is as little a bird of prey as possible, rather its opposite, a lamb—should he not be good?” there is nothing to object to in this establishment of an ideal, even if the birds of prey will regard it a little mockingly and perhaps say to themselves, “We bear them no grudge at all, these good lambs; we even love them: nothing is tastier than a tender lamb.”—To demand of strength that it *not* express itself as strength, that it *not* be a will to overpower, a will to overthrow, a will to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs, is just as absurd as to demand of weakness that it express itself as strength. A quantum of force is precisely such a quantum of drive, will, activity—rather, it is nothing other than this driving, willing, acting itself, and only through the seduction of language, and the fundamental errors of reason petrified within it, can it appear otherwise. Language understands and misunderstands all activity as conditioned by something that acts, by a “subject.” Just as the people separate lightning from its flash and take the latter to be an action, the effect of a subject called lightning, so popular morality also separates strength from the expressions of strength, as though behind the strong man there were an indifferent substratum that was *free* to express strength or not. But there is no such substratum; there is no “being” behind doing, acting, becoming; “the doer” is merely invented and added to the deed—the deed is everything. At bottom, the people double the deed when they make lightning flash: this is a doing-doing; they posit the same event once as cause and then again as its effect. Natural scientists do no better when they say “force moves, force causes” and the like. For all its coolness, its freedom from affect, our entire science still stands under the seduction of language and has not rid itself of the changelings foisted upon it, the “subjects”—the atom, for example, is such a changeling, as is Kant’s “thing in itself.” Is it any wonder that the repressed, secretly smoldering affects of revenge and hatred exploit this belief for themselves, and fundamentally uphold no belief more fervently than that *the strong man is free* to be weak, and the bird of prey to be a lamb?—for in this way they gain the right, in their own eyes, to *hold the bird of prey accountable* for being a bird of prey… When the oppressed, trampled, violated, out of the vengeful cunning of powerlessness, exhort themselves, “Let us be different from the evil ones, namely good! And good is everyone who does not violate, who harms no one, who does not attack, who does not repay, who leaves revenge to God, who keeps himself hidden as we do, who avoids all evil and asks little of life in general, like us, the patient, humble, just”—heard coldly and without prejudice, this really means no more than: “We weak ones are simply weak; it is good if we do nothing *for which we are not strong enough*.” But this harsh fact, this prudence of the lowest order, possessed even by insects—which play dead in great danger to avoid doing “too much”—has, thanks to that counterfeiting and self-deception of powerlessness, dressed itself in the splendor of renunciatory, quiet, waiting virtue, as though the weakness of the weak—that is, after all, his essence, his activity, his whole sole unavoidable, irremovable reality—were a voluntary achievement, something willed, chosen, a *deed*, a *merit*. This kind of person *needs* belief in the indifferent, freely choosing “subject” out of an instinct for self-preservation and self-affirmation in which every lie habitually sanctifies itself. The subject—or, to speak more popularly, the *soul*—has perhaps been the best article of faith on earth until now because it made possible for the majority of mortals, the weak and oppressed of every kind, that sublime self-deception of interpreting weakness itself as freedom, their being thus and thus as *merit*. [14] —Does anyone want to look down a little into the secret of how *ideals are manufactured* on earth? Who has the courage?… Well then! Here is an open view into that dark workshop. Wait another moment, Mr. Busybody and Daredevil: your eye must first grow used to this false, shimmering light… There! Enough! Now speak! What is happening down there? Tell me what you see, man of the most dangerous curiosity—now *I* am the one listening.— —“I see nothing, but I hear all the more. There is a cautious, treacherous, quiet muttering and whispering together from every nook and corner. It seems to me that they are lying; a sugary mildness clings to every sound. Weakness is to be lied into *merit*, there is no doubt—it is just as you said.”— —Go on! —“And powerlessness that does not repay into ‘goodness’; anxious lowliness into ‘humility’; submission to those one hates into ‘obedience’—namely to someone whom they say commands this submission; they call him God. The weak man’s inoffensiveness, the very cowardice with which he abounds, his standing at the door, his inevitable need to wait, acquire good names here, as ‘patience’; they are also called virtue itself. Inability to take revenge is called unwillingness to take revenge, perhaps even forgiveness—‘for *they* do not know what they are doing—we alone know what *they* are doing!’ They also speak of ‘love of one’s enemies’—and sweat as they do so.” —Go on! —“They are wretched, there is no doubt, all these mutterers and counterfeiters in corners, although they huddle warmly together—but they tell me their wretchedness means God has chosen and distinguished them; one beats the dogs one loves best. Perhaps this wretchedness is also a preparation, a trial, a schooling; perhaps it is still more—something that will one day be compensated and paid out with enormous interest in gold—no! in happiness. They call that ‘blessedness.’” —Go on! —“Now they give me to understand that they are not merely better than the powerful, the masters of the earth whose spittle they must lick—*not* from fear, not at all from fear! but because God commands them to honor all authority—that they are not merely better, but also ‘better off,’ or at any rate will one day be better off. But enough! Enough! I cannot stand it anymore. Bad air! Bad air! This workshop where *ideals are manufactured*—it seems to me it stinks of sheer lies.” —No! One moment more! You have not yet said anything about the masterpiece of these black magicians, who make whiteness, milk, and innocence out of every blackness. Have you not noticed what perfects their refinement, their boldest, subtlest, most ingenious, most mendacious artistic trick? Pay attention! These cellar animals full of revenge and hatred—what is it they make of revenge and hatred? Have you ever heard those words? If you trusted only their words, would you suspect that you were among nothing but people of ressentiment?… —“I understand; I open my ears once more—oh! oh! oh! and hold my nose. Only now do I hear what they have already said so often: ‘We good ones—we *are the just*.’ What they demand they do not call repayment but ‘the triumph of *justice*’; what they hate is not their enemy—no! they hate ‘*injustice*,’ ‘godlessness’; what they believe and hope for is not the hope of revenge, the intoxication of sweet revenge—Homer already called it ‘sweeter than honey’—but the victory of God, the *just* God, over the godless. What remains for them to love on earth is not their brothers in hatred but their ‘brothers in love,’ as they say, all the good and just on earth.” —And what do they call the thing that consoles them against all the sufferings of life—their phantasmagoria of future blessedness anticipated? —“What? Am I hearing correctly? They call it ‘the Last Judgment,’ the coming of *their* kingdom, the ‘kingdom of God’—but *meanwhile* they live ‘in faith,’ ‘in love,’ ‘in hope.’” —Enough! Enough! [15] Faith in what? Love for what? Hope for what?—These weaklings—at some time or other, you see, *they* too want to be the strong, there is no doubt of it; at some time *their* “kingdom” too is to come—“the kingdom of God,” as they call it flatly, as I said: in everything one is so humble! To live to see *that*, one needs to live long, beyond death—indeed one needs eternal life, so that one may also be recompensed eternally in the “kingdom of God” for that earthly life “in faith, in love, in hope.” Recompensed for what? Recompensed by what?… Dante, it seems to me, grossly blundered when, with a terrifying ingenuousness, he set over the gate of his Hell that inscription “Eternal love created me too”:—over the gate of the Christian paradise and its “eternal blessedness” the inscription “Eternal *hatred* created me too” would in any case have had a better right to stand—assuming that a truth may stand over a gate above a lie! For what is the blessedness of that paradise?… We might perhaps already guess it; but it is better that an authority not to be underestimated in such matters expressly testifies to it for us, Thomas Aquinas, the great teacher and saint. “The blessed in the kingdom of heaven,” he says, gentle as a lamb, “will behold the punishments of the damned, so that *their blessedness may please them the more*.” Or would one rather hear it in a stronger key, perhaps from the mouth of a triumphant Church Father who dissuaded his Christians from the cruel voluptuousness of the public shows—why then? “Faith offers us much more,” he says, de spectac. c. 29 ss., “—much *stronger* things; thanks to redemption, quite other joys lie at our command; in place of the athletes we have our martyrs; if we want blood—well, then we have the blood of Christ… But what awaits us first on the day of his return, of his triumph!”—and then he goes on, the enraptured visionary: “For there remain other shows, that last and everlasting day of judgment, that day unforeseen by the nations, that day they laughed at, when so great an antiquity of the world and all its births shall be drunk up in one fire. What a breadth of spectacle then! *What shall I admire! What shall I laugh at! Where shall I rejoice! Where exult*, as I watch so many and such great *kings*, who were announced as received into heaven, groaning together with Jupiter himself and with his own witnesses in the lowest darkness! Likewise the governors” (the provincial governors) “the persecutors of the Lord’s name, melting in flames fiercer than those with which they themselves raged against the Christians! Whom besides, those wise philosophers, blushing before their disciples as they burn together with them, the men who persuaded them that nothing pertained to God, who affirmed that souls were either nothing or would not return into their former bodies! Even the poets, trembling not before Rhadamanthus or Minos but before the tribunal of the Christ they did not expect! Then shall the tragedians be heard the more, the more sonorous of voice, to be sure” (better at voice, still worse bawlers) “in their own calamity; then the actors shall be known, much more agile through the fire; then the charioteer is to be seen on his flaming wheel, all red; then the athletes are to be contemplated, hurled not in the gymnasia but in the fire—except that even then I would not have them alive, since I would rather direct my *insatiable* gaze at those who raged against the Lord. ‘This is he,’ I shall say, ‘the carpenter’s son or the whore’s’” (as everything that follows, and especially this designation of Jesus’s mother, known from the Talmud, shows, Tertullian means the Jews from here on) “‘the destroyer of the sabbath, the Samaritan, the one who has a demon. This is he whom you redeemed from Judas, this is he who was beaten with reeds and with fists, defiled with spittings, given gall and vinegar to drink. This is he whom the disciples secretly stole away, so that he might be said to have risen again, or the gardener took him down, lest his lettuces be damaged by the crowd of visitors.’ To see such things, *to exult at such things*, what praetor or consul or quaestor or priest will grant you out of his liberality? And yet we already have these things in a certain manner *through faith*, represented by the spirit that imagines them. But what are those things which neither eye has seen nor ear heard nor have ascended into the heart of man? (1. Cor. 2, 9.) I believe they are more pleasing than the circus and both caveae” (the first and fourth tier or, according to others, the comic and the tragic stage) “and every stadium.”—*Through faith*: so it stands written. [16] Let us come to the conclusion. The two *opposed* valuations “good and bad,” “good and evil” have fought a fearful, thousand-year-long battle on earth; and however certain it is that the second valuation has long been in the ascendant, even now there is no lack of places where the battle is still fought out undecided. One might even say that in the meantime it has been carried ever higher up and precisely thereby ever deeper, ever more spiritual: so that today there is perhaps no more decisive mark of the “*higher nature*,” of the more spiritual nature, than to be divided in that sense and truly still to be a battlefield for those opposites. The symbol of this battle, written in a script that has remained legible across all human history, is called “Rome against Judaea, Judaea against Rome”:—there has been no greater event so far than *this* battle, *this* way of posing the question, *this* deadly hostility. Rome felt in the Jew something like anti-nature itself, so to speak its antipodal monster; in Rome the Jew was held “*convicted* of hatred against the whole human race”: with right, insofar as one has a right to tie the salvation and the future of the human race to the unconditional rule of aristocratic values, of Roman values. What, by contrast, did the Jews feel against Rome? One guesses it from a thousand signs; but it is enough to bring once more to mind the Johannine Apocalypse, that wildest of all written outbursts that revenge has on its conscience. (One should not, incidentally, underestimate the deep consistency of the Christian instinct when it inscribed precisely this book of hatred with the name of the disciple of love, the same to whom it gave that amorous, rapturous gospel as its own—: there is a piece of truth in this, however much literary counterfeiting may have been necessary for the purpose.) The Romans were indeed the strong and the noble, as they had never been stronger and nobler on earth, had never even been dreamed of; every remnant of them, every inscription delights, provided one guesses *what* it is that writes there. The Jews, on the contrary, were that priestly people of ressentiment par excellence, which was possessed by a popular-moral genius without equal: one need only compare the kindredly gifted peoples, the Chinese or the Germans, say, with the Jews, in order to feel what is first and what fifth rank. Which of them has so far *won*, Rome or Judaea? But there is no doubt at all: consider before whom one bows today in Rome itself as before the epitome of all the highest values—and not only in Rome, but on almost half the earth, everywhere that man has become tame or wants to become tame—before *three Jews*, as is known, and *one Jewess* (before Jesus of Nazareth, the fisherman Peter, the carpet-weaver Paul, and the mother of the first-named Jesus, called Mary). This is very remarkable: Rome has without any doubt been defeated. True, in the Renaissance there was a brilliant and uncanny reawakening of the classical ideal, of the noble way of valuing all things: Rome itself stirred like a wakeful seeming-dead under the pressure of the new Judaising Rome built over it, which presented the aspect of an ecumenical synagogue and was called “church”: but at once Judaea triumphed again, thanks to that thoroughly plebeian (German and English) ressentiment movement called the Reformation, plus what had to follow from it, the re-establishment of the church—the re-establishment too of the old grave-calm of classical Rome. In a sense even more decisive and deeper than then, Judaea came once more, with the French Revolution, to victory over the classical ideal: the last political nobility there was in Europe, that of the seventeenth and eighteenth *French* centuries, collapsed under the popular ressentiment instincts—there was never heard on earth a greater jubilation, a noisier enthusiasm! True, in the midst of it the most monstrous and most unexpected thing happened: the ancient ideal itself stepped *in the flesh* and with unheard-of splendor before the eyes and the conscience of humanity—and once more, stronger, simpler, more insistent than ever, rang out, against the old lying watchword of ressentiment concerning the *prerogative of the many*, against the will to the low, to the debasement, to the leveling, to the downward and eveningward of man, the fearful and delightful counter-watchword of the *prerogative of the few*! As a last signpost to the *other* way appeared Napoleon, the most singular and latest-born human being there has ever been, and in him the problem of the *noble ideal in itself* made flesh—one should well consider what a problem that is: Napoleon, that synthesis of *inhuman* and *superhuman*… [17] —Was it over with that? Was that greatest of all antitheses of ideals thereby laid ad acta for all time? Or only adjourned, adjourned for long?… Should there not, at some time or other, have to come a still much more fearful, much longer-prepared blazing-up of the old fire? More than that: should not precisely that be desirable with all one’s powers? even willed? even promoted?… Whoever begins at this point, like my readers, to think onward, to think further, will hardly come soon to the end of it—reason enough for me to come to the end myself, assuming that it has long since become clear enough what *I want*, what I want precisely with that dangerous watchword which is written on the body of my last book: “*Beyond Good and Evil*”… This means at the very least *not* “beyond good and bad.”— — *Note.* I take the opportunity that this treatise gives me to express publicly and formally a wish that I have so far uttered only in occasional conversation with scholars: namely, that some philosophical faculty might earn merit for the promotion of *moral-historical* studies through a series of academic prize competitions:—perhaps this book may serve to give a vigorous impulse in precisely such a direction. With a view to a possibility of this kind, let the following question be proposed: it deserves the attention of philologists and historians as much as that of the actual professional scholars of philosophy. “*What hints does the science of language, in particular etymological research, give for the history of the development of moral concepts?*” —On the other hand it is, of course, just as necessary to win the participation of physiologists and physicians for these problems (concerning the *value* of the valuations that have prevailed so far): while it may be left to the professional philosophers to act as advocates and mediators in this single case too, after they have on the whole succeeded in transforming the originally so intractable, so mistrustful relation between philosophy, physiology and medicine into the friendliest and most fruitful exchange. Indeed, all tables of goods, every “you shall,” of which history or ethnological research knows, first need *physiological* illumination and interpretation, in any case still before the psychological; all of them likewise await a critique from the side of medical science. The question: what is this or that table of goods and “morality” *worth?* demands to be posed from the most various perspectives; one cannot, in particular, lay out the “value *for what?*” finely enough. Something, for instance, that would manifestly have value with a view to the greatest possible durability of a race (or to the increase of its capacities of adaptation to a particular climate, or to the preservation of the greatest number) would by no means have the same value if it were a matter of breeding up a stronger type. The well-being of the many and the well-being of the few are opposed value perspectives: we leave it to the naivety of English biologists to hold the former for the more valuable *in itself*… *All* sciences have now to do preparatory work for the philosopher’s future task: this task understood as meaning that the philosopher has to solve the *problem of value*, that he has to determine the *order of rank of values*.— ### Essay II Second Essay: *Guilt, Bad Conscience* and Related Matters. [1] To breed an animal that *has the right to promise*—is this not precisely the paradoxical task nature has set itself with regard to the human being? Is it not the real problem of the human being? … That this problem has been solved to a considerable degree must seem all the more astonishing to anyone who fully appreciates the opposing force, the force of *forgetfulness*. Forgetfulness is no mere force of inertia, as superficial people believe; it is, rather, an active faculty of inhibition, positive in the strictest sense. It is thanks to this faculty that whatever we live through, experience, and take into ourselves enters our consciousness as little during its digestion (one might call it “assimilation into the soul”) as does the whole thousandfold process by which our bodily nourishment, our so-called “incorporation,” takes place. To close the doors and windows of consciousness for a time; to remain undisturbed by the noise and struggle with which our underworld of serving organs works for and against itself; a little stillness, a little blank slate of consciousness, to make room again for something new, above all for the nobler functions and functionaries—for governing, foreseeing, determining in advance (for our organism is organized as an oligarchy)—that is the use of this active forgetfulness, as I have called it: a doorkeeper, as it were, a guardian of the soul’s order, peace, and etiquette. We can see at once, then, how there could be no happiness, no cheerfulness, no hope, no pride, no *present* without forgetfulness. The person in whom this apparatus of inhibition is damaged and breaks down can be compared to a dyspeptic (and not merely compared—): he can never “finish with” anything … Yet this necessarily forgetful animal, in whom forgetting represents a force, a form of *robust* health, has bred in itself an opposing faculty, a memory, by means of which forgetfulness is suspended in certain cases—namely, those cases in which a promise is to be made. This is by no means merely a passive inability to shake off an impression once engraved, not merely indigestion over a word once pledged that one cannot finish with, but an active unwillingness to let go again, a continued willing of what was once willed, a true *memory of the will*: so that a whole world of new and unfamiliar things, circumstances, even acts of will may safely be interposed between the original “I will,” “I shall do,” and the actual discharge of the will, its *act*, without this long chain of willing breaking. But how much all this presupposes! To command the future in this way, how much a human being must first have learned: to distinguish necessary from accidental events, to think causally, to see distant things as present and anticipate them, to establish with certainty what is an end and what a means to it, to reckon and calculate at all—and how much the human being himself must first have become *calculable, regular, necessary*, even to himself in his own conception, in order finally to be able to vouch for himself as a *future*, as someone who promises does! [2] That is precisely the long history of the origin of *responsibility*. As we have already understood, the task of breeding an animal that has the right to promise includes, as its condition and preparation, the more immediate task of first *making* the human being to a certain degree necessary, uniform, equal among equals, regular, and consequently calculable. The immense labor of what I have called the “morality of custom” (see “Daybreak,” pp. 7, 13, 16)—humanity’s actual labor upon itself during the longest span of the human race, its entire *prehistoric* labor—finds its meaning, its great justification, here, however much harshness, tyranny, stupidity, and idiocy it contains: with the help of the morality of custom and the social straitjacket, the human being was actually *made* calculable. If, on the other hand, we place ourselves at the end of this immense process, at the point where the tree at last ripens its fruit, where society and its morality of custom finally bring to light *what they were merely the means to*: then we find, as the ripest fruit on its tree, the *sovereign individual*, resembling no one but himself, liberated again from the morality of custom, the autonomous, supramoral individual (for “autonomous” and “moral” exclude each other)—in short, the human being with his own independent, enduring will, who *has the right to promise*. And in him we find a proud awareness, quivering in every muscle, of what has finally been achieved and become flesh in him: a true consciousness of power and freedom, a feeling of the human being’s completion as such. This liberated man, who really *has the right* to promise, this master of *free* will, this sovereign—how could he not know the superiority this gives him over everything that has no right to promise and vouch for itself, how much trust, how much fear, how much reverence he inspires—he “*deserves*” all three—and how this mastery over himself necessarily places in his hands mastery over circumstances, over nature, and over all creatures whose wills are shorter and less reliable? The “free” man, the possessor of an enduring, unbreakable will, possesses in it his *standard of value* as well: looking out at others from himself, he honors or despises them. And just as necessarily as he honors his equals, the strong and dependable (those who *have the right* to promise)—that is, everyone who promises like a sovereign, weightily, seldom, slowly, who is sparing with his trust, who *confers distinction* when he trusts, who gives his word as something that can be relied on because he knows himself strong enough to uphold it even against accidents, even “against fate”—just as necessarily will he keep a kick ready for the puny curs who promise without having the right, and his rod of discipline for the liar who breaks his word even as it passes his lips. The proud knowledge of the extraordinary privilege of *responsibility*, the consciousness of this rare freedom, this power over himself and destiny, has sunk into his deepest depths and become instinct, the dominant instinct—what will he call it, this dominant instinct, supposing he needs a word for it? But there is no doubt: this sovereign man calls it his *conscience* … [3] His conscience? … We can guess already that “conscience,” the concept we encounter here in its highest, almost disconcerting development, has undergone a long history and many changes of shape. To be entitled to answer for oneself, and proudly—to be entitled, then, to *affirm oneself*—is, as I said, a ripe fruit, but a *late* fruit too. How long that fruit had to hang on the tree, tart and sour! And for a far longer time there was no trace of such a fruit—no one could have ventured to promise it, however certainly everything in the tree was preparing for it and growing toward it!—“How does one give the human animal a memory? How does one stamp something into this partly dull, partly rambling intelligence, confined to the moment, this forgetfulness in bodily form, so that it stays present?” … We may imagine that this age-old problem was not solved by particularly gentle answers or methods; perhaps nothing in humanity’s entire prehistory is more frightful and uncanny than its *technique of remembering*. “Something is branded in so that memory will keep it: only what goes on *hurting* is kept in memory”—that is a cardinal principle of the oldest psychology on earth, unfortunately also the longest-lived. We might even say that wherever life among individuals and peoples still has solemnity, gravity, mystery, dark colors, something of the terror *lingers* with which promises, pledges, and vows were once made everywhere on earth: the past, the longest, deepest, harshest past, breathes on us and wells up within us when we grow “serious.” Whenever human beings found it necessary to provide themselves with a memory, blood, torments, and sacrifices were indispensable; the most horrifying sacrifices and pledges—including the sacrifice of firstborn children—the most repulsive mutilations, castration for instance, the cruelest rites of every religious cult—and at their deepest foundation all religions are systems of cruelties—all this originates in the instinct that divined in pain the most powerful aid to memory. In a certain sense the whole of ascetic practice belongs here: a few ideas are to be made indelible, ever-present, unforgettable, “fixed,” in order to hypnotize the entire nervous and intellectual system through these “fixed ideas”; ascetic procedures and ways of life are means of removing these ideas from competition with every other idea, of making them “unforgettable.” The worse humanity’s “memory” was, the more terrifying its customs invariably looked; the severity of penal laws, in particular, measures the trouble it had in overcoming forgetfulness and keeping a few elementary requirements of social life *present* to these creatures enslaved to the immediate impulse of passion and appetite. We Germans certainly do not consider ourselves a particularly cruel or hardhearted people, and still less a particularly frivolous people who live only for the day; but one need only examine our old penal ordinances to discover how much labor it costs on earth to breed a “people of thinkers”—meaning the European people among whom, even now, the greatest measure of trustfulness, seriousness, tastelessness, and matter-of-factness is to be found, qualities that entitle them to breed every sort of mandarin for Europe. These Germans used frightful means to give themselves a memory, so as to master their coarse fundamental instincts and their brutal clumsiness. Think of the old German punishments: stoning, for example—even legend brings the millstone down on the guilty person’s head—breaking on the wheel—the German genius’s very own invention and specialty in the realm of punishment!—hurling onto a stake, having people torn apart or trampled by horses, “quartering,” boiling the criminal in oil or wine, still practiced in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the popular flaying, “cutting into straps,” cutting flesh from the breast; sometimes, too, smearing the offender with honey and abandoning him to the flies under a blazing sun. With the help of such images and procedures one finally keeps five or six “I will nots” in mind, things concerning which one has given one’s *promise* in order to live amid society’s advantages—and indeed, with the help of memory of this kind, one finally came “to reason”!—Ah, reason, seriousness, mastery over the passions, that whole somber business called reflection, all these human privileges and showpieces: what a price was paid for them! How much blood and horror lies at the bottom of all “good things”! … [4] But how did that other “somber business,” the consciousness of guilt, the whole “bad conscience,” come into the world?—With this we return to our genealogists of morality. Let me say it again—or have I not said it at all yet?—they are no good. A little personal experience, five handspans long and merely “modern”; no knowledge of the past, no will to know it; still less a historical instinct, the “second sight” so necessary here—and yet they practice the history of morality. Fair enough: it must end in results whose relationship to truth is more than merely chilly. Have these genealogists of morality up to now had even the remotest inkling, for example, that the fundamental moral concept of “guilt”—Schuld—originated in the very material concept of “debts”—Schulden—? Or that punishment as *requital* developed entirely apart from any presupposition about freedom or unfreedom of the will?—So much so that it actually always takes a *high* degree of humanization before the animal “human” begins to make those far more elementary distinctions, “intentional,” “negligent,” “accidental,” “accountable,” and their opposites, and to allow for them when determining punishment. That thought, now so cheap and seemingly so natural, so inescapable, which has even had to serve as an explanation of how the sense of justice arose on earth at all—“the criminal deserves punishment *because* he could have acted differently”—is in fact an exceedingly late achievement, indeed a sophisticated form of human judgment and inference. Whoever places it at the beginning lays clumsy fingers on the psychology of earlier humanity. Throughout the longest stretch of human history punishment was emphatically *not* imposed *because* the instigator of the harm was held responsible for his deed, and thus *not* on the assumption that only the guilty should be punished. Rather, as parents still punish their children, it arose from anger at an injury suffered, anger that vents itself on the person who caused the injury—but is restrained and modified by the idea that every injury has its *equivalent* somewhere and can actually be paid off, even if only through the injurer’s *pain*. Where did this age-old, deeply rooted, perhaps now ineradicable idea draw its power—the idea of an equivalence between injury and pain? I have already given it away: from the contractual relationship between *creditor* and *debtor*, as old as the very existence of “legal persons,” and itself pointing back to the basic forms of buying, selling, exchanging, trading, and dealing. [5] Bringing these contractual relations before our minds does, as the foregoing remarks would lead us to expect, awaken all manner of suspicion and resistance toward the earlier humanity that created or permitted them. Here, precisely, people *promise*; here, precisely, the task is to *make* a memory for the one who promises; here, precisely, we may suspect a rich deposit of harshness, cruelty, and suffering. To inspire confidence in his promise to repay, to guarantee the seriousness and sanctity of his promise, to impress repayment on his own conscience as a duty, an obligation, the debtor contractually pledges to the creditor, in case he fails to pay, something else that he “possesses,” something else over which he has power: for example, his body, his wife, his freedom, or even his life—or, given certain religious assumptions, even his blessedness, his soul’s salvation, and ultimately his peace in the grave. So it was in Egypt, where even in the grave the debtor’s corpse found no rest from the creditor—though for the Egyptians in particular this rest was a matter of some importance. Above all, however, the creditor could inflict every sort of disgrace and torture on the debtor’s body, for example cutting off as much of it as seemed proportionate to the size of the debt. From this standpoint there arose early and everywhere precise valuations, sometimes worked out in horrifying minuteness down to the tiniest detail, valuations of individual limbs and parts of the body that had the force of *law*. I already count it as progress, as evidence of a freer, more broadly calculating, more *Roman* understanding of law, when Rome’s legislation of the Twelve Tables decreed that it did not matter how much or how little the creditors cut off in such a case: “If they have cut more or less, let that be no offense.” Let us make the logic of this entire form of compensation clear to ourselves: it is strange enough. The equivalence is established by allowing the creditor, as repayment and compensation, a kind of *pleasurable feeling* instead of an advantage that directly offsets the injury—instead, then, of compensation in money, land, or property of any kind. It is the pleasurable feeling of being entitled to discharge his power without scruple upon someone powerless, the voluptuousness of “doing harm for the pleasure of doing it,” the enjoyment of violent domination. This enjoyment is valued all the more highly the lower and humbler the creditor’s place in the social order, and may easily seem to him the most exquisite morsel, indeed a foretaste of higher rank. Through the “punishment” of the debtor, the creditor shares in a *master’s right*: he too at last reaches the elevating feeling of being entitled to despise and mistreat a being as someone “beneath him”—or at least, if the actual power to punish, the execution of punishment, has already passed to the “authorities,” to *see* that being despised and mistreated. The compensation thus consists in an allotment of cruelty and an entitlement to it.— [6] In *this* sphere, then, in the law of obligations, the moral world of concepts—“guilt,” “conscience,” “duty,” “the sanctity of duty”—has its birthplace. Its beginnings, like the beginnings of everything great on earth, were thoroughly and enduringly drenched in blood. And might we not add that this world has never quite lost a certain smell of blood and torture? Not even in old Kant: the categorical imperative smells of cruelty … Here too the uncanny knot of ideas, “guilt and suffering,” which has perhaps become impossible to untie, was first tied. Let us ask again: in what sense can suffering compensate for “debts”? Insofar as *making* someone suffer was intensely pleasurable; insofar as the injured party exchanged his loss, together with his displeasure at the loss, for an extraordinary counter-pleasure: *making* someone suffer—a genuine *festival*, something, as I said, prized all the more highly the more it contradicted the creditor’s rank and social position. This is conjecture: for it is difficult to see to the bottom of such subterranean things, quite apart from the discomfort of doing so. Anyone who crudely throws the concept of “revenge” into the middle of this has obscured and darkened his view rather than made it easier—revenge itself leads straight back to the same problem: “How can making someone suffer afford satisfaction?” It seems to me that the delicacy, and still more the hypocrisy, of tame domestic animals—meaning modern human beings, meaning us—rebels against imagining in its full force the degree to which *cruelty* constituted earlier humanity’s great festive pleasure, indeed was mixed as an ingredient into almost every pleasure it had; and how naïvely, how innocently, on the other hand, its need for cruelty presented itself; how, as a matter of principle, it regarded precisely “disinterested malice”—or, in Spinoza’s words, malevolent fellow-feeling—as a *normal* human quality: something, therefore, to which conscience gives a hearty *Yes*! Perhaps an eye that saw more deeply could still perceive enough of this oldest and most fundamental human festive pleasure. In “Beyond Good and Evil,” pp. 117 ff. (earlier already in “Daybreak,” pp. 17, 68, 102), I pointed a cautious finger toward the ever-increasing spiritualization and “deification” of cruelty that runs through the entire history of higher culture—and, understood in a significant sense, even constitutes that history. In any case, it is not so very long since people could not imagine princely weddings and public festivities on the grandest scale without executions, tortures, or perhaps an auto-da-fé; nor a noble household without beings on whom they could discharge their malice and cruel teasing without scruple. Think, for example, of Don Quixote at the duchess’s court: today we read the whole of Don Quixote with a bitter taste on our tongues, almost in torment, and would seem very strange, very incomprehensible in this to its author and his contemporaries—they read it with the very clearest conscience as the most cheerful of books, laughing themselves almost to death over it. Seeing suffering gives pleasure; causing suffering gives still more—this is a hard proposition, but an old, powerful, human, all-too-human cardinal principle, which the apes too might perhaps endorse: for we are told that in devising bizarre cruelties they already give ample intimation of humanity, a kind of preliminary performance. No festival without cruelty: that is the lesson of humanity’s oldest and longest history—and there is so much of the *festival* in punishment too!— [7] —With these thoughts, incidentally, I have no intention whatever of supplying our pessimists with fresh water for their discordant, creaking mills of weariness with life. On the contrary, let it be expressly attested that in the days when humanity was not yet ashamed of its cruelty, life on earth was more cheerful than it is now, when there are pessimists. The sky above humanity has always darkened in proportion to the growth of human shame *at being human*. The weary pessimistic gaze, mistrust of life’s riddle, the icy No of disgust with life—these are not the distinguishing marks of humanity’s *most evil* ages. Rather, being swamp plants, they only come to light once the swamp to which they belong is there—I mean the morbid overrefinement and moralization through which the beast “human” finally learns to feel ashamed of all its instincts. On the way to becoming an “angel”—to avoid a harsher word here—the human being has bred in himself that upset stomach and coated tongue that make not only the animal’s joy and innocence repulsive to him, but life itself unpalatable. At times he stands before himself holding his nose and, with Pope Innocent III, disapprovingly catalogs his repulsiveness: “unclean conception, disgusting nourishment in the womb, the badness of the matter out of which the human being develops, hideous stench, the secretion of saliva, urine, and excrement.” Now that suffering must always march at the head of the arguments *against* existence, as its worst question mark, we do well to remember the times when people judged the other way around, because they were unwilling to forgo *making* others suffer and saw in it a first-rate enchantment, a true bait enticing them *into* life. Perhaps in those days—let this console the tenderhearted—pain did not hurt as much as it does today. At least a physician might be entitled to conclude as much after treating Black people—taken here as representatives of prehistoric humanity—for severe internal inflammations that drive even the best-constituted European almost to despair; among Black people they do *not* do so. (The curve of human susceptibility to pain does in fact seem to fall extraordinarily and almost abruptly once one has left behind the upper ten thousand or ten million of overcivilization; for my part, I do not doubt that, measured against one painful night in the life of a single hysterical little woman of culture, the combined sufferings of all the animals so far interrogated with the knife for scientific answers simply do not count.) Perhaps we may even admit the possibility that this pleasure in cruelty need not actually have died out either: only, in proportion as pain hurts more today, it would require a certain sublimation and refinement; in particular, it would have to appear translated into the imaginative and psychological realm and adorned with names so thoroughly unexceptionable that even the most tender hypocritical conscience would draw no suspicion from them. “Tragic pity” is one such name; “longings for the cross” is another. What actually makes us rebel against suffering is not suffering itself but its meaninglessness. Yet neither the Christian, who has read a whole hidden machinery of salvation into suffering, nor the naïve human being of earlier times, who understood how to interpret all suffering in relation to spectators or those who caused it, knew any such *meaningless* suffering at all. To remove hidden, undiscovered, unwitnessed suffering from the world and honestly deny its existence, people in those days were almost compelled to invent gods and intermediate beings of every height and depth: in short, something that roams through hidden places too, that sees in the dark too, and will not readily let an interesting, painful spectacle escape it. With the help of such inventions, life then accomplished the feat it has always known how to accomplish: justifying itself, justifying its “evil.” Today it might need other auxiliary inventions for this—for example, life as a riddle, life as a problem of knowledge. “Every evil is justified if a god is edified by the sight of it”: such was the prehistoric logic of feeling—and really, was it only prehistoric? Gods conceived as lovers of *cruel* spectacles—oh, how far this age-old conception still reaches into our European humanization! One might consult Calvin and Luther on the subject. It is certain, at any rate, that even the *Greeks* knew no more pleasing addition to their gods’ happiness than the pleasures of cruelty. With what eyes, do you suppose, did Homer have his gods look down on human destinies? What, at bottom, was the ultimate meaning of Trojan wars and similar tragic horrors? There can be no doubt: they were intended as *festival performances* for the gods—and, insofar as poets have a more “godlike” nature than other people, probably as festival performances for poets too … Later, the moral philosophers of Greece likewise imagined God’s eyes looking down upon moral struggle, upon the virtuous person’s heroism and self-torment: the “Heracles of duty” was on a stage, and knew it; for this nation of actors, virtue without witnesses was utterly inconceivable. Might not that audacious and fateful invention of the philosophers, first made for Europe in those days—the invention of “free will,” of humanity’s absolute spontaneity in good and evil—have been made above all to establish a right to imagine that the gods’ interest in humanity, in human virtue, *could never be exhausted*? On this earthly stage there must never be a shortage of something genuinely new, of truly unheard-of tensions, entanglements, catastrophes. A world conceived in wholly deterministic terms would have been predictable to the gods and thus soon wearisome as well—reason enough for the philosophers, these *friends of the gods*, not to inflict such a deterministic world upon their gods! All of ancient humanity is full of delicate consideration for “the spectator,” being an essentially public, essentially visible world that could not imagine happiness without spectacles and festivals.—And, as I have said, there is so much of the festival in great *punishment* too! … [8] To resume the course of our inquiry: as we saw, the feeling of guilt, of personal obligation, originated in the oldest and most primordial relationship between persons that exists, the relationship between buyer and seller, creditor and debtor. Here a person first confronted another person; here a person first *measured himself* against another. No level of civilization has been discovered, however low, in which something of this relationship is not already discernible. Setting prices, measuring values, devising equivalents, exchanging—these so thoroughly occupied humanity’s very earliest thinking that in a certain sense they *are* thinking. Here the oldest kind of acuteness was bred; here too, we may surmise, lay the first beginnings of human pride, of the feeling of precedence over other animals. Perhaps even our word “Mensch,” human being (manas), still expresses something of *this* sense of self: human beings designated themselves as the beings that measure values, that value and measure, as the “appraising animal as such.” Buying and selling, with their psychological accessories, are older even than the beginnings of any forms of social organization and association. Rather, it was from the most rudimentary form of personal law that the nascent feeling of exchange, contract, debt, right, obligation, and compensation first *transferred itself* to the crudest, earliest communal groupings—in their relations with similar groupings—together with the habit of comparing, measuring, and calculating one power against another. The eye was now set to this perspective; and with that clumsy consistency peculiar to earlier humanity’s thinking, slow to get moving but then relentless in pursuing the same direction, people soon arrived at the great generalization: “Everything has its price; everything can be paid off”—the oldest and most naïve moral canon of *justice*, the beginning of all “good nature,” all “fairness,” all “goodwill,” all “objectivity” on earth. At this first stage, justice is the goodwill among those of roughly equal power to come to terms, to reach an “understanding” again through a settlement—and, with regard to those less powerful, to *compel* a settlement among them.— [9] Still measured by the standard of prehistoric times—which, incidentally, are present in every age or can become possible again—the community too stands toward its members in that important fundamental relationship, that of creditor to debtors. One lives in a community, enjoys the advantages of a community—and what advantages! We sometimes underrate them today—dwells protected, spared, in peace and trust, without concern about certain injuries and hostilities to which the person *outside*, the “outlaw,” is exposed—a German understands what “Elend,” êlend, originally means—inasmuch as one has pledged and obligated oneself to the community precisely with regard to these injuries and hostilities. What will happen in the *opposite case*? The community, the cheated creditor, will exact payment as best it can: that can be counted on. The immediate injury caused by the offender is the least of the matter here. Quite apart from it, the criminal is above all a “breaker,” someone who breaks his contract and his word *toward the whole*, concerning all the benefits and comforts of communal life in which he has hitherto shared. The criminal is a debtor who not only fails to repay the advantages and advances granted him, but even assaults his creditor. Hence, from now on, he quite properly forfeits not only all these benefits and advantages: he is now reminded of *what these benefits are worth*. The anger of the injured creditor, the community, returns him to the savage, outlawed condition from which he had until then been protected: it expels him—and now every kind of hostility may vent itself upon him. At this stage of civilization, “punishment” is simply the image, the *enactment*, of normal conduct toward a hated enemy rendered defenseless and struck down, who has forfeited not only every right and protection but also every mercy: thus the law of war and the victory celebration of “woe to the vanquished!” in all their ruthlessness and cruelty. This explains why war itself—including the warlike cult of sacrifice—has furnished all the *forms* in which punishment appears in history. [10] As its power grows, a community takes the individual’s offenses less seriously, since it can no longer regard them as endangering and overturning the existence of the whole to the same extent as before. The offender is no longer “declared an outlaw” and expelled; the general anger may no longer vent itself upon him as unrestrainedly as it once did. Instead, from now on the whole carefully defends and protects the offender against this anger, especially that of those directly injured. A compromise with the anger of those immediately affected by the misdeed; an effort to localize the case and forestall wider or even general involvement and unrest; attempts to find equivalents and settle the whole affair—the compositio; above all, an increasingly definite will to treat every offense as in some sense *payable*, and thus, at least to a certain extent, to *isolate* the criminal and his deed from each other—these are the features stamped ever more clearly upon the further development of penal law. As a community’s power and self-confidence grow, penal law always grows milder too; every weakening and deeper endangerment of the former brings the latter’s harsher forms back to light. The “creditor” has always become more humane in proportion as he has become richer; ultimately, the amount of damage he can endure without suffering from it is itself the *measure* of his wealth. We could imagine a society’s *consciousness of power* reaching the point at which it could afford the noblest luxury available to it—letting the person who harms it go *unpunished*. “What concern are my parasites to me, really?” it might then say. “Let them live and prosper: I am still strong enough for that!” … Justice, which began with “Everything can be paid off, everything must be paid off,” ends by turning a blind eye and letting the insolvent go free. Like every good thing on earth, it ends by *overcoming itself*. This self-overcoming of justice—we know the beautiful name it gives itself: *mercy*. As goes without saying, it remains the privilege of the most powerful, or better still, his beyond-the-law. [11] —Here a word of rejection concerning recent attempts to seek the origin of justice on quite another soil—namely, that of ressentiment. Let me whisper first of all to the psychologists, should they feel inclined to study ressentiment itself at close quarters: this plant now flowers most luxuriantly among anarchists and antisemites, though, as always, it flowers in concealment, like the violet, if with a different scent. And since like must necessarily always give rise to like, it will not be surprising to see attempts emerge from these very circles, as they have often emerged before—compare page 30 above—to sanctify *revenge* under the name of *justice*, as though justice were at bottom merely a further development of the feeling of having been injured, and, along with revenge, to confer belated honor upon all the *reactive* affects together. I would be least inclined to object to this last undertaking in itself: with regard to the whole biological problem, in relation to which the value of these affects has hitherto been underestimated, it would even seem to me a *merit*. What I draw attention to is solely the circumstance that the spirit of ressentiment itself gives rise to this new shade of scholarly fairness—toward hatred, envy, ill will, suspicion, rancor, revenge. For this “scholarly fairness” immediately pauses and gives way to tones of mortal enmity and prejudice as soon as another group of affects comes into question, affects that seem to me of far higher biological value than those reactive ones and consequently deserve all the more to be assessed and esteemed *scientifically*: namely, the genuinely *active* affects, such as the lust to rule, acquisitiveness, and the like. (E. Dühring, Value of Life; Course of Philosophy; essentially everywhere.) So much against this tendency in general. But as for Dühring’s particular proposition that the home of justice must be sought on the soil of reactive feeling, truth requires that we confront it with this other proposition, its sharp reversal: the soil of reactive feeling is the *last* soil conquered by the spirit of justice! If it really happens that the just person remains just even toward those who injure him—and not merely cold, restrained, detached, indifferent: being just is always a *positive* way of acting—if even under the onslaught of personal injury, derision, suspicion, the lofty, clear objectivity of the just, the *judging* eye, whose gaze is as deep as it is gentle, remains unclouded, then that is a piece of perfection and the highest mastery on earth—even something that we would be wise not to expect here, and at any rate should not too readily *believe* in. What is certain as a rule is that, even among the most upright people, a small dose of attack, malice, or insinuation suffices to drive the blood into their eyes and fairness *out* of them. The active person, who attacks and overreaches, still stands a hundred steps nearer to justice than the reactive person; he has no need at all to appraise his object falsely and prejudicially, as the reactive person does and must do. Hence, in fact, the aggressive person, being stronger, braver, nobler, has in every age also had the *freer* eye and the *better* conscience on his side. Conversely, we can already guess who has the invention of “bad conscience” on his conscience—the person of ressentiment! Finally, just look around in history: in what sphere has the entire administration of law, and even the actual need for law, hitherto been at home on earth? In the sphere of reactive people, perhaps? Not at all: rather among the active, strong, spontaneous, aggressive. Historically considered, law on earth represents precisely the struggle *against* reactive feelings, the war waged upon them by active and aggressive powers, which used their strength in part to halt and restrain the excesses of reactive passion and enforce a settlement. Let this be said to the annoyance of the agitator named above, who once confesses of himself: “The doctrine of revenge has run as the red thread of justice through all my works and efforts.” Wherever justice is practiced and upheld, we see a stronger power seeking means to end the senseless raging of ressentiment among the weaker powers beneath it, whether groups or individuals: sometimes by taking the object of ressentiment out of the hands of revenge; sometimes by substituting, on its own part, the struggle against the enemies of peace and order for revenge; sometimes by devising settlements, proposing them, and in certain circumstances imposing them; sometimes by establishing certain equivalents for injuries as a norm to which ressentiment is henceforth referred once and for all. But the most decisive thing the supreme power does and enforces against the predominance of hostile and lingering feelings—it always does this as soon as it is at all strong enough—is to establish *law*: the imperative declaration of what, in its eyes, is to count as permitted, as right, and what as forbidden, as wrong. Once it has established the law, by treating encroachments and arbitrary acts of individuals or entire groups as offenses against the law, as rebellion against the supreme power itself, it diverts its subjects’ feelings from the immediate injury caused by such offenses. In the long run it thus achieves the opposite of what all revenge wants, for revenge sees and accepts only the injured party’s standpoint: from now on the eye is trained to appraise the deed ever more *impersonally*, even the injured party’s own eye, although, as noted above, this is the very last.—Accordingly, “right” and “wrong” exist only from the establishment of law onward, *not*, as Dühring would have it, from the act of injury onward. To speak of right and wrong *in themselves* makes no sense at all. *In itself*, of course, injuring, overpowering, exploiting, destroying cannot be anything “wrong,” insofar as life acts *essentially*—that is, in its basic functions—by injuring, overpowering, exploiting, destroying, and cannot be conceived at all without this character. We must even admit something more disquieting: from the highest biological standpoint, legal conditions can only ever be *exceptional conditions*, partial restrictions upon the actual will to life, which aims at power, subordinate to its overall purpose as individual means—namely, means of creating *larger* units of power. A legal order conceived as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the struggle between complexes of power but as a means *against* all struggle whatsoever, perhaps according to Dühring’s communist formula that every will must regard every will as equal, would be a principle *hostile to life*, a destroyer and dissolver of humanity, an assault upon humanity’s future, a sign of exhaustion, a furtive path to nothingness.— [12] One more word here about the origin and purpose of punishment—two problems that are separate, or ought to be: unfortunately people usually lump them together. How have the genealogists of morality proceeded in this case? Naïvely, as they always have: they discover some “purpose” in punishment, revenge or deterrence, for example, then innocently place this purpose at the beginning, as the cause of punishment’s coming into being—and they are done. But “purpose in law” is the very last thing to use in explaining how law originated. Rather, for every kind of history there is no more important proposition than this, so laboriously won and one that really *ought to be* won: the cause of a thing’s origin and its eventual usefulness, its actual employment and incorporation into a system of purposes, are worlds apart; something already present, something that has somehow come into being, is repeatedly interpreted with new intentions by a power superior to it, taken over anew, reshaped and redirected to a new use; everything that happens in the organic world is an *overpowering, a gaining of mastery*, and all overpowering and gaining of mastery is in turn a fresh interpretation, a reshaping in which the previous “meaning” and “purpose” must necessarily be obscured or obliterated altogether. However well one has understood the *usefulness* of a physiological organ—or of a legal institution, a social custom, a political practice, a form in art or religious worship—one has thereby understood nothing about its origin, however inconvenient and disagreeable this may sound to older ears. For people have always believed that in a thing’s, a form’s, an institution’s demonstrable purpose and usefulness they had also grasped the reason for its origin: the eye as made for seeing, the hand as made for grasping. They have likewise imagined punishment as invented for punishing. But all purposes, all uses are merely *signs* that a will to power has gained mastery over something less powerful and imposed upon it, on its own authority, the meaning of a function. In this way the entire history of a “thing,” an organ, a custom can be an ongoing chain of signs of ever-new interpretations and reshapings, whose causes need not even be connected with one another, but may in some circumstances merely follow and replace one another by chance. Accordingly, the “development” of a thing, a custom, an organ is anything but its progress toward a goal, still less a logical, shortest possible progress achieved with the least expenditure of force and cost. Rather, it is a succession of more or less profound, more or less mutually independent processes of overpowering that take place upon it, together with the resistance mounted against them each time, the changes of form attempted for defense and reaction, and also the results of successful counteractions. Form is fluid, but “meaning” still more so … Even within each individual organism matters are no different: every substantial growth of the whole also shifts the “meaning” of the individual organs; in some circumstances their partial destruction, their reduction in number—for example through the elimination of intermediate members—can be a sign of growing strength and perfection. What I mean is this: even partly *becoming useless*, withering and degenerating, losing meaning and fitness for a purpose—in short, death—belongs to the conditions of genuine progress, which always appears as a will and a path toward *greater power* and is always enforced at the expense of numerous smaller powers. The magnitude of a “step forward” is even *measured* by the mass of everything that had to be sacrificed to it; humanity as a mass sacrificed to the flourishing of a single *stronger* species of human being—that *would be* a step forward …—I stress this central standpoint of historical method all the more because at bottom it runs counter to the prevailing instinct and taste of the age, which would sooner reconcile itself to the absolute randomness, indeed the mechanistic senselessness, of all events than to the theory of a *will to power* at work in everything that happens. The democratic idiosyncrasy against everything that rules and wants to rule, modern *misarchism*—to coin a bad word for a bad thing—has gradually translated and disguised itself so thoroughly in intellectual, in the most intellectual forms that it is already making its way step by step into the most rigorous, apparently most objective sciences, and is *allowed* to do so. Indeed, it seems to me to have gained mastery already over the whole of physiology and the theory of life, to their detriment, needless to say, by conjuring away one of their fundamental concepts, that of genuine *activity*. Under the pressure of this idiosyncrasy, people put “adaptation” in the foreground instead: that is, a second-order activity, mere reactivity; indeed, life itself has been defined as an increasingly purposive inner adjustment to external circumstances (Herbert Spencer). But this misconstrues the essence of life, its *will to power*; it overlooks the fundamental precedence of the spontaneous, attacking, encroaching, reinterpreting, redirecting, and shaping forces whose effects are followed only afterward by “adaptation”; it denies within the organism itself the ruling role of the highest functionaries, in whom the will to life appears active and form-giving. We remember what Huxley reproached Spencer for—his “administrative nihilism”: but what is at issue here is *more* than “administering” … [13] —To return to the matter at hand, namely *punishment*, we must therefore distinguish two things in it: on the one hand, what is relatively *enduring* in it, the custom, the act, the “drama,” a certain strict sequence of procedures; on the other, what is fluid in it, the meaning, the purpose, the expectation attached to carrying out such procedures. Here it is simply assumed, by analogy, in accordance with the central standpoint of historical method just developed, that the procedure itself is something older, earlier than its employment as punishment; that the latter was only *put into*, interpreted into, a procedure long in existence but customary in a different sense; in short, that matters are *not* as our naïve genealogists of morality and law have so far assumed, all of whom imagined the procedure *invented* for the purpose of punishment, just as people once imagined the hand invented for the purpose of grasping. As for that other element in punishment, the fluid one, its “meaning”: at a very late stage of culture—for example, in Europe today—the concept “punishment” in fact no longer represents one meaning at all, but an entire synthesis of “meanings.” The whole previous history of punishment, the history of its exploitation for the most various purposes, finally crystallizes into a kind of unity that is difficult to dissolve, difficult to analyze, and, it must be emphasized, utterly *indefinable*. (Today it is impossible to say definitely *why* punishment is actually imposed: all concepts in which an entire process is condensed into signs resist definition; only what has no history can be defined.) At an earlier stage, by contrast, this synthesis of “meanings” still appears easier to dissolve and also more open to rearrangement. We can still discern how, in each individual case, the elements of the synthesis change their relative weight and reorder themselves accordingly, so that now this element, now that, comes forward and predominates at the expense of the others; indeed, under certain circumstances one element—the purpose of deterrence, for instance—seems to cancel all the rest. To give at least an idea of how uncertain, how belated, how incidental “the meaning” of punishment is, and how one and the same procedure can be used, interpreted, and refashioned for fundamentally different intentions, here is the outline that emerged for me from comparatively scant and haphazard material. Punishment as rendering harmless, as preventing further harm. Punishment as repayment to the injured party for the injury, in some form or other, including emotional compensation. Punishment as isolating a disturbance of equilibrium to prevent the disturbance from spreading. Punishment as instilling fear of those who determine and execute it. Punishment as a kind of compensation for the advantages the criminal has enjoyed up to that point—for example, when he is put to use as a slave in the mines. Punishment as eliminating a degenerating element—in some circumstances an entire branch of a family, as under Chinese law—and thus as a means of keeping the race pure or preserving a social type. Punishment as a festival, namely as the violent subjugation and derision of an enemy finally struck down. Punishment as making a memory, whether for the person who suffers it—so-called “reform”—or for the witnesses to its execution. Punishment as payment of a fee stipulated by the power that protects the offender from the excesses of revenge. Punishment as a compromise with the natural condition of revenge, insofar as that condition is still maintained by powerful lineages and claimed as their privilege. Punishment as a declaration of war and a wartime measure against an enemy of peace, law, order, authority, whom one combats as a danger to the community, as someone who has broken his contract concerning its presuppositions, as a rebel, traitor, and disturber of the peace, using whatever means war puts at one’s disposal.— [14] This list is certainly not complete; clearly, punishment is overloaded with uses of every kind. All the more readily may we subtract from it one *supposed* use, which nevertheless counts in popular consciousness as its most essential—belief in punishment, tottering today for several reasons, still finds its strongest support precisely here. Punishment is supposed to have the value of awakening the *feeling of guilt* in the guilty person; people seek in it the actual instrument of that psychological reaction called “bad conscience,” the “bite of conscience.” But this misrepresents reality and psychology even today—and how much more throughout the longest history of humanity, its prehistory! Genuine remorse is exceedingly rare precisely among criminals and convicts; prisons and penitentiaries are *not* the breeding grounds in which this species of gnawing worm most likes to flourish. All conscientious observers agree on this, though in many cases they pass such a judgment most unwillingly and against their own deepest wishes. Broadly speaking, punishment hardens and chills; it concentrates; it sharpens the feeling of estrangement; it strengthens the power of resistance. If it happens to break a person’s energy and bring about a wretched collapse and self-abasement, such a result is certainly even less heartening than punishment’s average effect, characterized by a dry, somber seriousness. But if we think back to those millennia *before* human history, we may judge without hesitation that punishment itself most powerfully *held back* the development of the feeling of guilt—at least among the victims on whom the punishing power vented itself. For we must not underestimate how much the criminal is prevented, precisely by the sight of judicial procedures and their execution, from feeling his deed, his kind of action, to be reprehensible *in itself*: he sees exactly the same kind of actions committed in the service of justice and then approved, committed with a good conscience—spying, outwitting, bribing, laying traps, the whole crafty and devious art of policemen and prosecutors; then the systematic robbing, overpowering, insulting, imprisoning, torturing, murdering, not even excused by passion, that finds expression in the various forms of punishment. These are therefore all actions his judges by no means reject and condemn *in themselves*, but only in a certain respect and application. “Bad conscience,” that uncanniest and most interesting plant of our earthly vegetation, did *not* grow on this soil. Indeed, for the longest time the consciousness of the judges and punishers themselves expressed *nothing* of the idea that they were dealing with someone “guilty.” Rather, they were dealing with an instigator of harm, an unaccountable piece of fate. And the person upon whom punishment then descended, again like a piece of fate, suffered no other “inner torment” than at the sudden arrival of something uncalculated, a terrifying natural event, a falling, crushing boulder against which no struggle is possible any longer. [15] This once dawned on Spinoza in an awkwardly revealing way—to the annoyance of his interpreters, who positively *strive* to misunderstand him at this point, Kuno Fischer for instance. One afternoon, chafing against who knows what memory, he pondered the question of what actually remained for him personally of the celebrated *bite of conscience*—he who had relegated good and evil to human imaginings and indignantly defended the honor of his “free” God against those blasphemers who claimed that God did everything with a view to the good: “But that would mean subjecting God to fate and would truly be the greatest of all absurdities.”—For Spinoza the world had reentered the innocence in which it lay before the invention of bad conscience: what, then, had become of the bite of conscience? “The opposite of joy,” he finally told himself, “a sadness accompanied by the idea of a past thing that turned out contrary to all expectation.” Eth. III propos. XVIII schol. I. II. For thousands of years the wrongdoers overtaken by punishment felt about their “offense” *no differently from Spinoza*: “Something has unexpectedly gone wrong here,” *not*: “I ought not to have done that.” They submitted to punishment as one submits to illness, misfortune, or death, with that stouthearted fatalism without rebellion that gives the Russians, for example, an advantage over us Westerners in handling life even today. If there was any criticism of the deed in those days, it was prudence that criticized it. Beyond doubt, we must seek the actual effect of punishment above all in a sharpening of prudence, a lengthening of memory, a resolve to proceed henceforth more cautiously, more suspiciously, more secretly, an insight that one is once and for all too weak for many things, a kind of improvement in self-appraisal. What punishment can achieve on the whole, in humans and animals, is an increase in fear, a sharpening of prudence, a mastery of appetites. In this way punishment *tames* the human being, but it does not make him “better”—one might with more justice maintain the opposite. (“Harm makes you wise,” people say: insofar as it makes you wise, it makes you bad too. Fortunately, often enough it makes you stupid.) [16] At this point I can no longer avoid giving an initial, provisional expression to my own hypothesis about the origin of “bad conscience.” It is not easily made heard; it asks to be pondered, watched over, and slept on for a long time. I take bad conscience to be the profound illness into which human beings had to fall under the pressure of the most fundamental change they ever experienced—the change that occurred when they found themselves definitively enclosed within the confines of society and peace. What happened to these half-animals, happily adapted to wilderness, war, wandering, and adventure, was no different from what must have happened to aquatic animals forced either to become land animals or perish. All at once their instincts were devalued and “disconnected.” Now they were supposed to walk on their feet and “carry themselves,” where previously the water had carried them: a dreadful heaviness weighed upon them. They felt awkward at the simplest tasks; in this new, unknown world they no longer had their old guides, the drives that regulated them and led them with unconscious certainty. These unfortunates were reduced to thinking, inferring, calculating, combining causes and effects—to their “consciousness,” their poorest and most error-prone organ! I do not believe there has ever been such a feeling of misery on earth, such a leaden malaise—and meanwhile those old instincts had not suddenly stopped making their demands! Only it was difficult and seldom possible to indulge them: for the most part they had to seek new and, as it were, subterranean satisfactions. All instincts that do not discharge themselves outward *turn inward*—this is what I call the *internalization* of the human being: only with this does there grow in the human being what is later called his “soul.” The whole inner world, originally thin, as though stretched between two skins, expanded and opened out, acquired depth, breadth, height, in proportion as human discharge outward was *inhibited*. Those fearful bulwarks with which the organization of the state protected itself against the old instincts of freedom—punishments belong above all among these bulwarks—brought it about that all those instincts of the wild, free, wandering human being turned back, turned *against the human being himself*. Hostility, cruelty, pleasure in pursuit, in ambush, in change, in destruction—all this turning against the possessors of such instincts: *that* is the origin of “bad conscience.” The human being who, lacking external enemies and resistance, squeezed into the oppressive narrowness and regularity of custom, impatiently tore at himself, pursued, gnawed at, disturbed, mistreated himself; this animal that wounds itself against the bars of its cage, this animal they want to “tame”; this deprived creature consumed by homesickness for the wilderness, who had to make of himself an adventure, a torture chamber, an uncertain and dangerous wild—this fool, this yearning and despairing prisoner became the inventor of “bad conscience.” With him, however, began the greatest and uncanniest illness, from which humanity has not recovered to this day: human suffering *from humanity, from oneself*. It followed a forcible severance from the animal past, a leap and fall, as it were, into new situations and conditions of existence, a declaration of war against the old instincts upon which human strength, pleasure, and fearsomeness had rested until then. Let us add at once that, on the other hand, the fact of an animal soul turned against itself, taking sides against itself, introduced onto earth something so new, deep, unheard-of, enigmatic, contradictory, *and full of future* that the earth’s appearance changed fundamentally. Indeed, divine spectators were needed to appreciate the spectacle that then began, whose end is still nowhere in sight—a spectacle too fine, too wondrous, too paradoxical to be allowed to play itself out senselessly and unnoticed on some ridiculous star! Since then the human being has numbered among the most unexpected and exciting lucky throws cast by Heraclitus’s “great child,” whether named Zeus or Chance. He awakens interest, suspense, hope, almost a certainty that something is announcing itself in him, that something is preparing itself—as though the human being were no goal, but only a path, an interlude, a bridge, a great promise … [17] This hypothesis about the origin of bad conscience presupposes, first, that the change was neither gradual nor voluntary, that it was not an organic growing into new conditions but a rupture, a leap, a compulsion, an inescapable fate against which there was no struggle, not even ressentiment. Second, however, it presupposes that fitting a population hitherto unrestrained and unshaped into a fixed form began with an act of violence and was completed through acts of violence alone—that accordingly the earliest “state” appeared as a terrible tyranny, a crushing and ruthless machinery, and kept working until such raw material of people and half-animal was finally not merely kneaded through and made pliable but also *formed*. I used the word “state”: who is meant by it goes without saying—some pack of blond beasts of prey, a race of conquerors and masters, organized for war and possessing the power to organize, that unscrupulously lays its fearful paws upon a population perhaps enormously superior in numbers but still shapeless, still wandering. That is how the “state” begins on earth: I think we have disposed of the fantasy that made it begin with a “contract.” What has someone who can command, who is a “master” by nature, who acts violently in deed and gesture, to do with contracts! One does not reckon with such beings; they come like fate, without cause, reason, consideration, pretext; they are there as lightning is there, too fearful, too sudden, too convincing, too “different” even to be hated. Their work is an instinctive creating of forms, an impressing of forms; they are the most involuntary, most unconscious artists there are. In a short time something new stands where they appear, a structure of dominion that *lives*, in which parts and functions are delimited and brought into relation, in which nothing at all finds a place without first having a “meaning” imparted to it with respect to the whole. These born organizers do not know what guilt, responsibility, consideration are; that fearful artist’s egoism rules within them, its gaze like bronze, knowing itself justified in advance for all eternity in its “work,” as the mother is in her child. It was not among them that “bad conscience” grew—that is evident from the outset—but this ugly growth would not have grown *without them*, would not exist, had not an immense quantity of freedom been removed from the world, at least from visibility, and made, as it were, *latent*, under the pressure of their hammer blows, their artists’ violence. This *instinct of freedom* forcibly made latent—we have already understood it—this instinct of freedom driven back, forced to retreat, imprisoned within, and finally discharging and venting itself only upon itself: that, and only that, is *bad conscience* at its beginning. [18] We must beware of thinking little of this whole phenomenon merely because it is ugly and painful from the outset. At bottom, the same active force that works more grandly in those artists of violence and organizers, building states, here creates bad conscience for itself and builds negative ideals—inwardly, on a smaller, pettier scale, directed backward, in the “labyrinth of the breast,” to speak with Goethe. It is that very *instinct of freedom*—in my language, the will to power—except that the material upon which the form-giving and overpowering nature of this force vents itself is here the human being himself, his entire old animal self, and *not*, as in that larger and more conspicuous phenomenon, the *other* human being, *other* human beings. This secret self-violation, this artist’s cruelty, this pleasure in giving oneself a form as though working a heavy, resistant, suffering material, in branding oneself with a will, a criticism, a contradiction, a contempt, a No; this uncanny and terribly pleasurable labor of a soul willingly divided against itself, making itself suffer out of pleasure in causing suffering—this entire *active* “bad conscience” has finally, as we can already guess, also brought forth an abundance of new, disconcerting beauty and affirmation as the true womb of events in the realms of ideals and imagination, and perhaps only now brought forth beauty *itself* … What would be “beautiful” if contradiction had not first become conscious of itself, if ugliness had not first said to itself: “I am ugly”? … At the very least, after this hint, the riddle of how an ideal, a beauty, can be suggested in contradictory concepts such as *selflessness, self-denial, self-sacrifice* will be less riddling. And henceforth one thing is known—I do not doubt it—namely, what kind of *pleasure* the selfless, self-denying, self-sacrificing person feels from the beginning: this pleasure belongs to cruelty.—So much for now on the origin of the “unegoistic” as a *moral* value, and toward marking out the soil from which this value grew: only bad conscience, only the will to mistreat oneself, supplies the precondition for the *value* of the unegoistic.— [19] Bad conscience is an illness, beyond any doubt—but an illness as pregnancy is an illness. Let us seek the conditions under which this illness reached its most fearful and sublime summit: we shall see what actually made its first entrance into the world through it. But that requires staying power—and first we must return once more to an earlier standpoint. The relationship in private law of debtor to creditor, which we have already discussed at length, was interpreted once again into another relationship, and in a historically most remarkable and troubling way, where it is perhaps least intelligible to us modern people: namely, the relationship of those *now living* to their ancestors. Within the original kinship community—we are speaking of primeval times—the living generation always acknowledges a legal obligation toward the earlier generation, and especially toward the earliest, the one that founded the lineage, by no means a merely sentimental obligation: indeed, not without reason, we might deny that the latter existed at all during the longest span of human existence. Here the conviction prevails that the lineage *exists* solely through the sacrifices and achievements of the ancestors, and that these must be *repaid* to them through sacrifices and achievements. A *debt* is thus acknowledged, a debt that keeps growing because these ancestors, in their continuing existence as powerful spirits, never cease to grant the lineage new advantages and advances from their power. For nothing, perhaps? But there is no “for nothing” in those crude and “poor-souled” ages. What can be given back to them? Sacrifices—originally as food, in the crudest sense—festivals, shrines, tributes of honor, above all obedience—for all customs, as the ancestors’ works, are also their ordinances and commands. Does one ever give them enough? This suspicion remains and grows: from time to time it exacts a great wholesale payment, some monstrous repayment to the “creditor”—the notorious sacrifice of the firstborn, for example; blood, human blood in any case. By this kind of logic, *fear* of the ancestor and his power, the consciousness of debts to him, necessarily increases in exactly the same measure as the lineage’s own power increases, as the lineage itself stands ever more victorious, independent, honored, feared. Not the other way around! Rather, every step toward the lineage’s decline, all miserable accidents, all signs of degeneration, of approaching dissolution, always *diminish* fear of the spirit of its founder too, giving an ever lower estimate of his prudence, foresight, and present power. If we imagine this crude logic carried to its conclusion, the ancestors of the *most powerful* lineages must finally, through the imagination of growing fear, have grown to monstrous proportions themselves and been pushed back into the darkness of divine uncanniness and inconceivability: the ancestor is ultimately and necessarily transfigured into a *god*. Perhaps here lies the very origin of the gods, an origin, then, in *fear*! … Anyone who might think it necessary to add, “But also in piety!” would hardly be right about that longest period of humanity, its primeval time. All the more, admittedly, about the *middle* period in which the noble lineages take shape: for these did indeed repay their originators, their ancestors—heroes, gods—with interest, giving them all the qualities that had meanwhile become manifest in themselves, the *noble* qualities. Later we shall glance at this ennobling and elevation of the gods—which is certainly not their “sanctification.” For now, let us simply follow the course of this whole development of the consciousness of debt provisionally to its end. [20] As history teaches, the consciousness of being indebted to the deity by no means came to an end with the decline of the blood-based form of organization of the “community.” Just as humanity inherited the concepts “good and bad” from the hereditary nobility—along with its fundamental psychological tendency to establish orders of rank—so, with its inheritance of the deities of lineage and tribe, it also acquired the pressure of debts still unpaid and the desire to discharge them. (The transition is effected by those vast populations of slaves and serfs that adapted themselves to their masters’ worship of the gods, whether through coercion or through submissiveness and mimicry: from them this inheritance then overflows in every direction.) For several thousand years the feeling of guilt toward the deity never stopped growing, always in the same proportion as the concept of God and the feeling for God grew on earth and were raised higher. (The entire history of ethnic struggles, victories, reconciliations, mergers—everything preceding the final ranking of all constituent peoples in every great racial synthesis—is reflected in their gods’ genealogical confusion, in the legends of their struggles, victories, and reconciliations. The advance toward universal empires is always also an advance toward universal deities; despotism, with its overpowering of the independent nobility, always paves the way for some kind of monotheism as well.) The advent of the Christian God, the maximum God attained so far, therefore also brought forth the maximum feeling of guilt on earth. Assuming that by now we have entered the *reverse* movement, we might infer, with no small probability, from the unstoppable decline of belief in the Christian God that there is already a considerable decline in humanity’s consciousness of guilt too. Indeed, we cannot dismiss the prospect that the complete and final victory of atheism might release humanity from this whole feeling of being indebted to its beginning, its first cause. Atheism and a kind of *second innocence* belong together.— [21] So much for now, briefly and roughly, on the connection of the concepts “guilt” and “duty” with religious presuppositions. I have deliberately left aside until now the actual moralization of these concepts—their being thrust back into conscience, or more precisely, the entanglement of *bad* conscience with the concept of God—and at the end of the preceding section I even spoke as though this moralization did not exist at all; consequently, as though these concepts must now necessarily come to an end, once their presupposition has fallen, belief in our “creditor,” in God. The facts diverge from this in a terrifying way. The moralization of the concepts guilt and duty, their being thrust back into *bad* conscience, is, in the strictest sense, an attempt to *reverse* the direction of the development just described, or at least to bring its movement to a halt. Now the very prospect of a final discharge *is to* close pessimistically once and for all; now the gaze *is to* strike a bronze impossibility and recoil without consolation; now those concepts “guilt” and “duty” *are to* turn backward—against whom? There can be no doubt: first against the “debtor,” in whom bad conscience now takes such firm hold, eats its way in, spreads, and grows like a polyp into every breadth and depth, until at last, with the impossibility of removing guilt, the impossibility of removing penance is conceived as well, the thought that it can never be paid off—“*eternal* punishment.” But finally they turn even against the “creditor,” against humanity’s first cause: whether we think here of the beginning of the human race, of its ancestor, now burdened with a curse—“Adam,” “original sin,” “unfreedom of the will”—or of nature, from whose womb the human being arises and into which the principle of evil is now inserted, the “demonization of nature”; or of existence itself, which is left as *worthless in itself*—a nihilistic turning away from it, a longing for nothingness or for its “opposite,” for a different mode of being, Buddhism and kindred things. Until, all at once, we stand before the paradoxical and horrifying expedient in which tormented humanity found temporary relief, that stroke of genius of *Christianity*: God himself sacrificing himself for humanity’s guilt, God himself exacting payment from himself, God as the only one who can discharge for humanity what has become impossible for humanity itself to discharge—the creditor sacrificing himself for his debtor, out of *love*—can one believe it?—out of love for his debtor! … [22] We will already have guessed what has really happened in all this, and *beneath* all this: that will to self-torment, that cruelty forced to retreat in the animal-human made inward, driven back into himself, imprisoned in the “state” for the purpose of taming, who invented bad conscience in order to hurt himself once the *more natural* outlet for this wish to hurt had been blocked—this human being of bad conscience seized upon the religious presupposition to drive his self-torture to its most horrifying hardness and intensity. A guilt toward *God*: this thought becomes his instrument of torture. In “God” he grasps the ultimate opposites he can find to his own inseparable animal instincts; he reinterprets these animal instincts themselves as guilt toward God—as hostility, rebellion, insurrection against the “Lord,” the “Father,” the primal ancestor and beginning of the world; he stretches himself across the contradiction “God” and “devil”; he casts out of himself every No he says to himself, to nature, to the naturalness and actuality of his being, as a Yes, as something existent, embodied, real, as God, as God’s holiness, as God’s judgeship, as God’s executionership, as a beyond, as eternity, as torment without end, as hell, as punishment and guilt beyond all measure. This is a kind of madness of the will in psychological cruelty that has absolutely no equal: the human will to find oneself guilty and reprehensible beyond the possibility of atonement; the will to think oneself punished without the punishment ever being able to equal the guilt; the will to infect and poison the deepest ground of things with the problem of punishment and guilt, so as to cut off once and for all one’s own escape from this labyrinth of “fixed ideas”; the will to erect an ideal—that of the “holy God”—in order, confronted with it, to be palpably certain of one’s absolute unworthiness. Oh, this mad, melancholy beast, the human being! What notions occur to it, what unnaturalness, what paroxysms of nonsense, what *bestiality in thought* breaks out at once when it is prevented even a little from being a *beast in action*! … All this is interesting beyond measure, but also filled with such black, somber, enervating sadness that one must forcibly forbid oneself to gaze too long into these abysses. Here is *illness*, beyond any doubt, the most fearful illness that has yet raged in humanity—and whoever can still hear how, in this night of torment and absurdity, the cry of *love* rang out, the cry of the most yearning ecstasy, of redemption in *love*—but today people no longer have ears for it!—turns away, seized by an unconquerable horror … There is so much that is dreadful in the human being! … The earth has been a madhouse for far too long! … [23] Let this suffice once and for all on the origin of the “holy God.”—That the conception of gods *in itself* need not necessarily lead to this deterioration of the imagination, which for a moment we could not spare ourselves from confronting; that there are *nobler* ways of employing the invention of gods than for this self-crucifixion and self-defilement of humanity, in which Europe’s last millennia have displayed their mastery—fortunately, we can still gather this from every glance we cast upon the *Greek gods*, these reflections of noble and self-commanding human beings, in whom the *animal* in humanity felt itself deified and did *not* tear itself apart, did *not* rage against itself! For the longest time these Greeks used their gods precisely to keep “bad conscience” off their backs, to remain free to rejoice in their freedom of soul: thus in the opposite sense to Christianity’s use of its God. They went *very far* in this, these splendid, lionhearted childish souls; and no less an authority than Homer’s Zeus himself occasionally gives them to understand that they are making things too easy for themselves. “A marvel!” he says once—the case concerns Aegisthus, a *very* bad case— “Marvelous, how fiercely mortals complain against the gods! “*Evil comes only from us*, they suppose; yet they themselves “Through folly bring misery upon themselves, even beyond their fate.” Yet at the same time we hear and see that even this Olympian spectator and judge is far from bearing them a grudge or thinking ill of them on that account. “How *foolish* they are!” is what he thinks at the misdeeds of mortals; and “folly,” “lack of sense,” a little “derangement in the head”—even the Greeks of the strongest, bravest age *admitted* this much in themselves as the cause of much that was bad and disastrous: folly, *not* sin! Do you understand? … But even this derangement in the head was a problem: “Yes, how is it even possible? Where can it really have come from, in heads such as *we* have, we people of noble descent, of good fortune, of sound constitution, of the best society, of nobility, of virtue?”—For centuries the noble Greek asked himself this in the face of every incomprehensible horror and outrage with which one of his peers had stained himself. “A *god* must have deluded him,” he finally told himself, shaking his head … This escape route is *typical* of the Greeks … In this way the gods served in those days to justify human beings to a certain degree even in wrongdoing; they served as causes of evil—in those days they took upon themselves not the punishment but, as is *nobler*, the guilt … [24] —I close with three question marks, as one sees well enough. “Is an ideal being set up here, or one being broken down?” I may perhaps be asked… But have you yourselves ever asked enough how dearly the setting-up of *every* ideal has paid for itself on earth? How much reality has each time been slandered and misjudged for it, how much lie sanctified, how much conscience disturbed, how much “God” each time had to be sacrificed? For a sanctuary to be set up, *a sanctuary must be broken*: that is the law—show me the case where it is not fulfilled!… We modern human beings, we are the heirs of millennia of conscience-vivisection and self-torture: in this we have our longest practice, our artistry perhaps, in any case our refinement, our spoiled taste. For far too long man has looked at his natural inclinations with an “evil eye,” so that they finally became sister to the “bad conscience” in him. A reverse attempt would be *in itself* possible—but who is strong enough for it?—namely, to make sister to the bad conscience the *unnatural* inclinations, all those aspirations to the otherworldly, to the contrary of the senses, contrary of instinct, contrary of nature, contrary of the animal—in short, the ideals so far, which are all life-hostile ideals, world-slanderer ideals. To whom today could one turn with *such* hopes and demands?… Precisely the *good* people one would have against oneself with that; besides, as is only proper, the comfortable, the reconciled, the vain, the enthusiastic, the weary… What offends more deeply, what separates so thoroughly, as letting something be noticed of the severity and the height with which one treats oneself? And again—how forthcoming, how loving all the world shows itself toward us as soon as we do as all the world does and “let ourselves go” as all the world does!… For that goal one would need *another* kind of spirit than is probable precisely in this age: spirits strengthened by wars and victories, to whom conquest, adventure, danger, pain even have become a need; one would need for it the habituation to sharp, high air, to wintry wanderings, to ice and mountains in every sense; one would need for it a kind of sublime malice itself, a last and most self-assured mischievousness of knowledge, which belongs to the great health; one would need, in short and badly enough, precisely this *great health*!… Is this even possible today?… But at some time, in a stronger time than this rotten, self-doubting present, he must come to us, the *redeeming* human being of the great love and the great contempt, the creative spirit whom his urgent force drives again and again away from all seclusion and all beyond, whose solitude the people misunderstand, as though it were a flight *from* reality—: while it is only his sinking, burying, deepening into reality, so that one day, when he comes to the light again, he may bring home from it the *redemption* of this reality: its redemption from the curse that the ideal so far has laid upon it. This human being of the future, who will redeem us as much from the ideal so far as from *what had to grow out of it*, from the great nausea, from the will to nothing, from nihilism, this stroke of the noon bell and of the great decision, which makes the will free again, which gives the earth back its goal and man back his hope, this Antichrist and Antinihilist, this conqueror of God and of nothingness—*he must come one day*… [25] —But what am I talking about here? Enough! Enough! In this place only one thing is proper to me: to be silent. Otherwise I should take liberties with what alone is permitted to a younger man, a “more future” one, a stronger one than I am—what alone is permitted to *Zarathustra*, to *Zarathustra the godless*… ### Essay III Third Essay: What Do Ascetic Ideals Mean? Carefree, mocking, violent —that is how wisdom wants *us*: she is a woman, she always loves only a warrior. *Thus Spoke Zarathustra.* [1] What do ascetic ideals mean?—Among artists, nothing or too many different things; among philosophers and scholars, something like a nose and an instinct for the conditions most favorable to a heightened life of the mind; among women, at best, one *more* alluring charm, a little soft languor on beautiful flesh, the angelic quality of a pretty, plump animal; among the physiologically ill-constituted and out of sorts (the *majority* of mortals), an attempt to feel “too good” for this world, a holy form of debauchery, their chief weapon in the struggle with lingering pain and boredom; among priests, the priest’s actual faith, their finest instrument of power, also the “supreme” license for power; among saints, finally, a pretext for hibernation, their last craving for glory, their rest in nothingness (“God”), their form of madness. But that the ascetic ideal has meant so much to humanity at all expresses the fundamental fact of the human will, its horror of the void: *it needs a goal*—and it would rather will *nothingness* than *not* will.—Am I understood?… Have I been understood?… “*Not in the least, sir!*”—Then let us start again. [2] What do ascetic ideals mean?—Or, to take a particular case about which I have often enough been asked for advice: what does it mean, for instance, when an artist like Richard Wagner pays homage to chastity in his old age? In a certain sense, of course, he always did; but only at the very end in an ascetic sense. What does this change of “mind” mean, this radical reversal of mind?—For that is what it was: with it Wagner leaped straight into his opposite. What does it mean when an artist leaps into his opposite?… Here, if we are willing to pause a little over this question, we immediately recall what may have been the finest, strongest, most cheerful, most *courageous* period in Wagner’s life: the time when the thought of Luther’s wedding occupied him inwardly and deeply. Who knows what accidents were really responsible for our having The Mastersingers today instead of that wedding music? And how much of it may still echo in them? But there can be no doubt that this “Luther’s Wedding,” too, would have been a praise of chastity. Certainly a praise of sensuality as well—and that is just how it should have been, it seems to me, just how it would have been “Wagnerian.” For there is no necessary opposition between chastity and sensuality; every good marriage, every genuine love affair of the heart, transcends that opposition. Wagner would have done well, I think, to bring this *agreeable* fact home to his Germans once again through a charming and spirited Luther comedy, for there are and always have been many slanderers of sensuality among the Germans; and perhaps Luther’s merit is nowhere greater than precisely in his having had the courage of his *sensuality* (which was then called, delicately enough, “evangelical freedom”…) But even where that opposition between chastity and sensuality really exists, it fortunately need not be a tragic one. This, at least, should hold for all the better-constituted, better-spirited mortals, who are far from simply counting their precarious balance between “animal and angel” among the arguments against existence—the subtlest and brightest, like Goethe, like Hafiz, have even seen in it one *more* enticement to life. Just such “contradictions” seduce us into existence… On the other hand, it is all too understandable that when ill-constituted swine are once induced to worship chastity—and there are such swine!—they will see and worship in it only their opposite, the opposite of the ill-constituted swine—oh, with what tragic grunting and zeal! One can imagine it—that painful and superfluous opposition which Richard Wagner undeniably still wanted to set to music and put on the stage at the end of his life. *But what for?* one may fairly ask. For what did the swine matter to him, what do they matter to us?— [3] Of course, there is no avoiding the other question: what did he care about that masculine (oh, so unmasculine) “country simpleton,” that poor devil and child of nature, Parsifal, whom he finally makes Catholic by such compromising means—what? Was this Parsifal meant *seriously* at all? One might be tempted to suspect, even to wish, the reverse—that Wagner’s Parsifal was meant in a spirit of gaiety, as a kind of concluding piece and satyr play with which the tragedian Wagner wished to take leave of us, and of himself, above all *of tragedy*, in a manner proper and worthy to him: namely, with an extravagance of the highest and most mischievous parody of the tragic itself, of all the dreadful earthly seriousness and earthly misery of former days, of the finally overcome *crudest form* of the ascetic ideal’s violation of nature. That, as I said, would have been worthy of a great tragedian: for he, like every artist, reaches the final summit of his greatness only when he knows how to see himself and his art *beneath* him—when he knows how to *laugh* at himself. Is Wagner’s “Parsifal” his secret laughter of superiority over himself, the triumph of the ultimate, supreme artistic freedom he has won, his transcendence as an artist? One would like to wish it, as I said: for what would a Parsifal *meant seriously* be? Must we really see in it (as someone put it to me) “the monstrous spawn of a crazed hatred of knowledge, spirit, and sensuality”? A curse on senses and spirit in a single hatred and a single breath? An apostasy and return to Christian, morbid, obscurantist ideals? And finally, even a self-denial, a self-erasure on the part of an artist who until then had bent the entire force of his will toward the opposite, namely, toward the *supreme heightening of both spirit and sensuality* in his art? And not only in his art: in his life as well. Remember how enthusiastically Wagner once followed in the footsteps of the philosopher Feuerbach: Feuerbach’s phrase “healthy sensuality”—in the thirties and forties it sounded to Wagner, as to many Germans (they called themselves the “*Young* Germans”), like the word of redemption. Did he finally *learn the opposite* on this point? Since it seems, at the very least, that he finally had the will to *teach the opposite*… And not only through Parsifal’s trombones from the stage—in the dismal writings of his last years, as unfree as they are bewildered, there are a hundred passages that betray a secret wish and will, a despondent, uncertain will he could not admit to, quite literally to preach reversal, conversion, denial, Christianity, the Middle Ages, and to tell his disciples, “It is nothing! Seek salvation elsewhere!” Even the “blood of the Redeemer” is invoked at one point… [4] Let me give my opinion on such a case, with all its painful aspects—and it is a *typical* case: surely the wisest course is to separate an artist from his work far enough not to take the man himself as seriously as his work. He is, after all, only the precondition of his work, the womb, the soil, sometimes the fertilizer and manure on which, out of which, it grows—and thus, in most cases, something one must forget if one wishes to enjoy the work itself. Insight into the *origins* of a work is the business of the physiologists and vivisectors of the spirit: never, ever that of people of aesthetic sensibility, of artists! The poet and creator of Parsifal was no more spared a deep, thorough, even terrible immersion and descent into medieval oppositions of the soul, a hostile estrangement from all elevation, rigor, and discipline of the spirit, a kind of intellectual *perversity* (if I may be forgiven the word), than a pregnant woman is spared the repulsions and oddities of pregnancy: things which, as I said, one must *forget* in order to enjoy the child. We must beware of the confusion into which an artist himself falls all too easily, through psychological contiguity, to speak with the English: as if he himself *were* what he can portray, conceive, express. The fact is that if he were just that, he simply would not portray, conceive, express it; a Homer would not have written an Achilles, a Goethe a Faust, if Homer had been an Achilles and Goethe a Faust. A complete and consummate artist is forever severed from the “real,” the actual; on the other hand, it is understandable that at times he can grow weary to the point of despair of this eternal “unreality” and falsity of his innermost existence—and that he may then attempt, for once, to reach across into what is most forbidden to him, into actuality, to be actual. With what success? One can guess… This is the artist’s *typical idle wish*: the same idle wish to which the aging Wagner also succumbed, and for which he had to pay so dearly, so fatally (it cost him the valuable part of his circle of friends). But finally, even quite apart from this idle wish, who would not wish, for Wagner’s own sake, that he had taken leave of us and his art *differently*, not with a Parsifal, but more triumphantly, more self-assuredly, more in Wagner’s own way—less misleadingly, less ambiguously with regard to his entire purpose, less in Schopenhauer’s way, less nihilistically?… [5] —What, then, do ascetic ideals mean? In an artist’s case, we are gradually coming to understand: *nothing at all!*… Or so many different things that it amounts to nothing at all!… Let us first eliminate the artists: they are nowhere near independent enough in the world and *against* the world for their valuations and the changes in them to deserve attention *in themselves*! At all times they have been the valets of a morality or philosophy or religion; quite apart from the fact that, unfortunately, they have often enough been the all-too-pliant courtiers of their followers and patrons, and keen-nosed flatterers of powers long established or just now ascending. At the very least, they always need a bulwark, a support, an already established authority: artists never stand on their own; standing alone runs counter to their deepest instincts. Thus Richard Wagner, for example, took the philosopher Schopenhauer, when “the time had come,” as his leader, his bulwark—who could even conceive of his having had the *courage* for an ascetic ideal without the support Schopenhauer’s philosophy offered him, without Schopenhauer’s authority, which attained *predominance* in Europe during the seventies? (Not yet taking into account whether, in the *new* Germany, an artist would have been possible at all without the milk of a pious, Reich-revering way of thinking.)—And with this we have reached the more serious question: what does it mean when a genuine *philosopher* pays homage to the ascetic ideal, a genuinely self-reliant mind like Schopenhauer, a man and knight with a gaze of bronze, who has the courage to be himself, who knows how to stand alone and does not first wait for leaders and cues from above?—Let us consider at once Schopenhauer’s remarkable attitude toward *art*, fascinating even to certain kinds of people: for this was evidently the reason Richard Wagner *initially* went over to Schopenhauer (persuaded, as we know, by a poet, by Herwegh), to such an extent that a complete theoretical contradiction opened up between his earlier and later aesthetic faith—the former expressed, for example, in “Opera and Drama,” the latter in the writings he published from 1870 onward. In particular—and this may be the strangest thing of all—from that point on Wagner ruthlessly changed his judgment of the value and standing of *music* itself: what did it matter to him that until then he had made it a means, a medium, a “woman,” which absolutely needed a purpose, a man, to flourish—namely, drama! He grasped all at once that with Schopenhauer’s theory and innovation *more* could be done for the greater glory of music—namely, with the *sovereignty* of music as Schopenhauer understood it: music set apart from all the other arts, the independent art in itself, *not*, like them, offering images of the phenomenal world, but speaking the language of the will itself, directly out of the “abyss,” as its most intimate, most original, least derivative revelation. With this extraordinary rise in the value of music, which seemed to follow from Schopenhauer’s philosophy, *the musician* himself also rose at a stroke to an unheard-of price: he now became an oracle, a priest, indeed more than a priest, a kind of mouthpiece for the “in-itself” of things, a telephone from the beyond—from then on he spoke not only music, this ventriloquist of God—he spoke metaphysics: what wonder that one day he finally spoke *ascetic ideals*?… [6] Schopenhauer made use of Kant’s formulation of the aesthetic problem—although he certainly did not see it through Kant’s eyes. Kant thought he was doing art an honor when, among the predicates of the beautiful, he favored and brought to the fore those that constitute the honor of knowledge: impersonality and universal validity. Whether this was not, in the main, a mistake is not a question to discuss here; all I wish to stress is that Kant, like all philosophers, instead of approaching the aesthetic problem through the experiences of the artist (the creator), reflected on art and the beautiful solely from the standpoint of the “spectator,” and in doing so unwittingly smuggled the “spectator” himself into the concept “beautiful.” If only, at least, the philosophers of beauty had known this “spectator” well enough!—As a great *personal* fact and experience, that is, as a wealth of intensely individual experiences, desires, surprises, raptures in the realm of beauty! But the reverse, I fear, has always been the case: and so, right from the start, they give us definitions in which, as in that famous definition Kant gives of the beautiful, the lack of a subtler experience of oneself sits like a fat worm of fundamental error. “Beautiful,” Kant said, “is what pleases *without interest*.” Without interest! Compare this definition with another, made by a genuine “spectator” and artist—Stendhal, who once calls the beautiful a promise of happiness. Here, at any rate, precisely what Kant alone emphasizes in the aesthetic state is *rejected* and struck out: disinterestedness. Who is right, Kant or Stendhal?—If, of course, our aestheticians never tire of throwing into the scales on Kant’s side the claim that under beauty’s spell one can *even* look at statues of unclothed women “without interest,” we may surely laugh a little at their expense—the experiences of *artists* on this delicate point are “more interesting,” and Pygmalion was certainly *not* necessarily an “unaesthetic person.” Let us think all the better of our aestheticians’ innocence, reflected in such arguments; let us credit Kant, for instance, with what he can teach about the peculiar character of the sense of touch, with the naïveté of a country parson!—And here we return to Schopenhauer, who stood far closer to the arts than Kant and yet never escaped the spell of Kant’s definition: how did that happen? The fact is curious enough: he interpreted the phrase “without interest” in the most personal way imaginable, out of an experience that must have been among his most habitual. There are few things Schopenhauer speaks of as confidently as the effect of aesthetic contemplation: he claims that it counteracts precisely *sexual* “interestedness,” much as lupulin and camphor do; he never tired of extolling *this* release from the “will” as the great advantage and benefit of the aesthetic state. Indeed, one might be tempted to ask whether his fundamental conception of “will and representation,” the thought that redemption from the “will” could come only through “representation,” originated in a generalization of that sexual experience. (In all questions concerning Schopenhauer’s philosophy, incidentally, we must never lose sight of the fact that it is the conception of a young man of twenty-six; so it partakes not only of what is specific to Schopenhauer but also of what is specific to that season of life.) Let us hear, for example, one of the most explicit among the countless passages he wrote in honor of the aesthetic state (Welt als Wille und Vorstellung I 231); let us listen for the tone, the suffering, the happiness, the gratitude with which such words were spoken. “This is the painless state which Epicurus praised as the highest good and the state of the gods; for that moment we are freed from the vile pressure of the will, we celebrate the Sabbath from the penal servitude of willing, the wheel of Ixion stands still”… What vehemence of language! What images of torment and long disgust! What an almost pathological contrast in time between “that moment” and the usual “wheel of Ixion,” the “penal servitude of willing,” the “vile pressure of the will”!—But suppose Schopenhauer were right a hundred times over about himself: what would that have done for our insight into the essence of the beautiful? Schopenhauer has described one effect of the beautiful, its calming of the will—is it even a regular effect? Stendhal, as I said, a nature no less sensual but more happily constituted than Schopenhauer, emphasizes another effect of the beautiful: “the beautiful *promises* happiness”; for him, the fact of the matter seems to be precisely the *arousal of the will* (“of interest”) by the beautiful. And could one not finally object to Schopenhauer himself that he is quite wrong to think himself a Kantian here, that he has not understood Kant’s definition of the beautiful in Kant’s sense at all—that for him, too, the beautiful pleases out of an “interest,” indeed out of the strongest, most personal interest of all: that of a tortured man being released from his torture?… And to return to our first question, “What does it *mean* when a philosopher pays homage to the ascetic ideal?”—here, at least, we get a first hint: he wants *to escape some torture*.— [7] Let us beware of pulling gloomy faces at the word “torture”: in this very case there is enough to set against it, enough to subtract—even something left to laugh at. Above all, let us not underestimate the fact that Schopenhauer, who did indeed treat sexuality as a personal enemy (including its instrument, woman, that “instrument of the devil”), *needed* enemies to stay in good spirits; that he loved ferocious, bilious, black-green words; that he raged for the sake of raging, out of passion; that he would have fallen ill, would have become a *pessimist* (for he was not one, much as he wished to be), without his enemies, without Hegel, woman, sensuality, and the whole will to exist, to remain in existence. Otherwise Schopenhauer would *not* have remained, one may wager on that; he would have run away: but his enemies held him fast, his enemies seduced him back into existence again and again; his anger, just as with the ancient Cynics, was his refreshment, his recreation, his compensation, his remedy for disgust, his *happiness*. So much for what is most personal in Schopenhauer’s case; on the other hand, there is also something typical in him—and only here do we return to our problem. Undeniably, for as long as there have been philosophers on earth, and wherever there have been philosophers (from India to England, to take the opposite poles of the gift for philosophy), there has been a peculiarly philosophical irritability and rancor toward sensuality—Schopenhauer is merely its most eloquent, and, if one has an ear for it, its most captivating and enchanting eruption; likewise, there is a peculiarly philosophical partiality and warmth toward the whole ascetic ideal: let us not deceive ourselves about this, or pretend otherwise. Both, as I said, belong to the type; if both are absent in a philosopher, then—be sure of it—he is always merely a “so-called” philosopher. What does this *mean*? For this fact must first be interpreted: *in itself* it stands there dumb for all eternity, like every “thing in itself.” Every animal, and thus also the philosophical beast, instinctively strives for an optimum of favorable conditions under which it can let its strength out to the full and reach its maximum feeling of power; every animal just as instinctively, and with a keenness of scent “higher than all reason,” abhors every sort of intruder and obstacle that lies or might lie across its path to that optimum (it is *not* its path to “happiness” I am speaking of, but its path to power, to action, to the mightiest activity, and in most cases, in fact, its path to unhappiness). In this way the philosopher abhors *marriage*, along with everything that might persuade him to it—marriage as an obstacle and a fatality on his path to the optimum. What great philosopher has ever been married? Heraclitus, Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Schopenhauer—they were not; more than that, one cannot even *imagine* them married. A married philosopher belongs *in comedy*: that is my proposition; and that exception, Socrates, the malicious Socrates, seems to have married ironically, expressly to demonstrate precisely *this* proposition. Every philosopher would speak as Buddha once spoke when the birth of a son was announced to him: “Râhula has been born to me, a fetter has been forged for me” (Râhula here means “a little demon”); every “free spirit,” supposing he has previously had a thoughtless hour, must have a thoughtful one, as that same Buddha once did—“Cramped and confined, he thought to himself, is life in the house, a place of impurity; freedom is a leaving of the house”: “thinking thus, he left the house.” The ascetic ideal points out so many bridges to *independence* that a philosopher cannot hear the history of all those resolute people who one day said No to all unfreedom and went into some desert without inward rejoicing and clapping of hands—even supposing they were merely sturdy asses and the very opposite of a strong mind. What, then, does the ascetic ideal mean for a philosopher? My answer is—you will have guessed it long ago: at its sight the philosopher smiles on an optimum of conditions for the highest and boldest life of the mind—he does *not* thereby deny “existence,” but rather affirms *his* existence and *only* his existence, perhaps to the point that he is not far from the sacrilegious wish: let the world perish, let there be philosophy, let there be the philosopher, *let me be!*… [8] You see, these philosophers are hardly impartial witnesses and judges of the ascetic ideal’s value! They are thinking of *themselves*—what is “the saint” to them! They are thinking of what is most indispensable to *them*: freedom from compulsion, disturbance, noise, from business, duties, worries; a clear head; the dance, leap, and flight of thoughts; good air, thin, clear, free, dry, like the air at high altitudes, where all animal being grows more spiritual and sprouts wings; peace in all the basements; all dogs neatly chained up; no barking of hostility and shaggy rancor; no worms of wounded ambition gnawing away; modest and submissive intestines, busy as mills, but far off; the heart estranged, beyond, future, posthumous—all in all, when they think of the ascetic ideal, they think of the cheerful asceticism of an animal become divine and fully fledged, hovering above life rather than resting in it. We know the ascetic ideal’s three great showy words: poverty, humility, chastity. Now take a close look at the lives of all great, fertile, inventive minds—you will always find all three in them again, to a certain degree. Certainly *not*, it goes without saying, as if these were their “virtues”—what has this kind of person to do with virtues!—but as the most proper and natural conditions of their *best* existence, their *finest* fruitfulness. It is quite possible that their dominant intellectual drive first had to rein in an unbridled, touchy pride or a wanton sensuality, or that it had a hard enough struggle to maintain its will to the “desert” against a taste for luxury and the most exquisite things, and likewise against a lavish generosity of heart and hand. But it did so precisely as the *dominant* instinct, which imposed its demands on all the other instincts—it still does; if it did not, it would simply not be dominant. So there is nothing of “virtue” in this. The *desert*, incidentally, of which I have just spoken, into which strong, independently constituted minds withdraw and become solitary—oh, how different it looks from the desert that cultivated people dream of!—For in some circumstances they themselves are the desert, these cultivated people. And certainly all the playactors of the spirit could not possibly endure it—it is nowhere near romantic or Syrian enough for them, nowhere near enough of a stage desert! Admittedly, it is not without camels either: but that is the whole extent of the resemblance. Perhaps a chosen obscurity; keeping out of one’s own way; shrinking from noise, veneration, newspapers, influence; a small office, a daily routine, something that conceals more than it brings to light; occasional company with harmless, cheerful beasts and birds, whose sight refreshes; a mountain range for companionship, but not a dead one, one with *eyes* (that is, with lakes); perhaps even a room in a crowded inn for all comers, where one is sure to be mistaken for someone else and can talk to anyone with impunity—that is “desert” here: oh, it is solitary enough, believe me! When Heraclitus withdrew into the open courts and colonnades of the immense temple of Artemis, that “desert” was more dignified, I admit: why do we *lack* such temples? (Perhaps we do *not* lack them: I am just now thinking of my finest study, the Piazza di San Marco, provided it is spring, and also morning, between 10 and 12.) But what Heraclitus avoided is still the same thing that *we* now keep out of the way of: the noise and democratic chatter of the Ephesians, their politics, their news of the “Reich” (Persia, you understand me), their marketplace junk of “Today”—for we philosophers need peace from one thing before all else: from everything “Today.” We revere the quiet, the cold, the noble, the distant, the past, anything at all at whose sight the soul need not defend itself and lace itself tight—something with which one can speak without speaking *loudly*. Just listen to the sound a mind makes when it speaks: every mind has its sound, loves its sound. That one over there, for instance, must be an agitator, which is to say an empty head, an empty pot: whatever goes into him, everything comes back out dull and thick, weighed down by the echo of the great void. That one over there seldom speaks except hoarsely: has he perhaps *thought* himself hoarse? It would be possible—ask the physiologists—but anyone who thinks *in words* thinks as an orator and not as a thinker (it betrays that fundamentally he is not thinking things, not thinking objectively, but only with reference to things, that he is really thinking of *himself* and his listeners). This third one speaks intrusively, he comes too close to our bodies, his breath blows over us—involuntarily we shut our mouths, although it is through a book that he speaks to us: the sound of his style tells us why—that he has no time, that he has little faith in himself, that he must get a word in today or never again. But a mind certain of itself speaks softly; it seeks concealment, it lets itself be waited for. One recognizes a philosopher by his avoidance of three glittering, noisy things: fame, princes, and women—which is not to say that they do not come to him. He shuns overly bright light: that is why he shuns his age and its “day.” In this he is like a shadow: the lower the sun sinks for him, the greater he becomes. As for his “humility,” he endures a certain dependence and overshadowing just as he endures the dark; more than that, he fears the disturbance of lightning, he recoils from the vulnerability of an all-too-isolated and exposed tree on which every spell of bad weather vents its mood, every mood its bad weather. His “maternal” instinct, the secret love of what is growing within him, directs him toward circumstances in which he is relieved of thinking *of himself*; in the same sense that the instinct of the *mother* in woman has until now maintained woman’s dependent position in general. In the end they ask little enough, these philosophers; their motto is “whoever possesses is possessed”—*not*, as I must say again and again, out of a virtue, a meritorious will to frugality and simplicity, but because their supreme master demands it of them, shrewdly and inexorably demands it: he has a mind for only one thing, and gathers everything, time, strength, love, interest, only for that, saves it only for that. This kind of person does not like to be disturbed by enmities, nor by friendships either: he easily forgets or despises. He thinks it bad taste to play the martyr; “to *suffer* for the truth”—he leaves that to the ambitious and the stage heroes of the spirit, and anyone else who has time enough for it (the philosophers themselves have something to *do* for the truth). They are sparing with grand words; it is said that they recoil even from the word “truth”: it sounds boastful… Finally, as for the philosophers’ “chastity,” this kind of mind plainly has its fruitfulness elsewhere than in children; perhaps also elsewhere the survival of its name, its little immortality (in ancient India philosophers put it still more immodestly: “What need of offspring has he whose soul is the world?”). There is nothing here of chastity out of any ascetic scruple or hatred of the senses, any more than it is chastity when an athlete or jockey abstains from women: rather, their dominant instinct wills it so, at least during times of great pregnancy. Every artist knows how harmful sexual intercourse is in states of great intellectual tension and preparation; the mightiest and most sure of instinct among them do not first need experience, bitter experience, to know it—it is precisely their “maternal” instinct that, for the benefit of the work in the making, ruthlessly disposes of all other stores and supplements of strength, of the vigor of animal life: the greater strength then *uses up* the lesser.—Incidentally, consider Schopenhauer’s case, discussed above, in the light of this interpretation: the sight of the beautiful evidently acted on him as a trigger for the *chief strength* of his nature (the strength of reflection and the deepened gaze), so that it then exploded and at once became master of consciousness. This by no means excludes the possibility that the peculiar sweetness and fullness characteristic of the aesthetic state might derive precisely from the ingredient “sensuality” (just as the “idealism” characteristic of girls of marriageable age comes from the same source)—so that, on entering the aesthetic state, sensuality is not abolished, as Schopenhauer believed, but merely transfigures itself and no longer enters consciousness as sexual stimulus. I shall return to this viewpoint another time, in connection with still more delicate problems of the *physiology of aesthetics*, until now so untouched, so unexplored. [9] A certain asceticism, we have seen, a hard and cheerful renunciation undertaken with the best will, belongs among the conditions favorable to the highest life of the mind, and likewise among its most natural consequences: so it will come as no surprise from the outset that philosophers in particular have never treated the ascetic ideal without a certain partiality. A serious historical reckoning even shows the bond between the ascetic ideal and philosophy to be much closer and tighter still. One might say that it was only on this ideal’s *leading strings* that philosophy learned to take its first steps and little steps on earth—oh, still so clumsy, oh, still with such sullen faces, oh, so ready to fall over and lie on its belly, this timid little bungler and weakling with crooked legs! At first philosophy fared like all good things—for a long time they lacked the courage to be themselves, they kept looking around to see whether anyone would come to their aid; more than that, they feared everyone who watched them. Count off the philosopher’s individual drives and virtues one by one—his doubting drive, his negating drive, his waiting (“suspending judgment”) drive, his analytical drive, his investigating, searching, daring drive, his comparing, balancing drive, his will to neutrality and objectivity, his will to every “*without* anger or partiality”—has it ever really been understood that for the longest time every one of these ran counter to the primary demands of morality and conscience? (Not to speak of *reason* in general, which even Luther still liked to call Lady Clever, the clever whore.) That a philosopher, if he *had* become conscious of himself, would have had to feel himself the very embodiment of “we strive for the *forbidden*”—and consequently *took care* not to “feel himself,” not to become conscious of himself?… As I said, it is no different with all the good things we are proud of today; measured even by the standard of the ancient Greeks, our entire modern existence, insofar as it is not weakness but power and the consciousness of power, looks like sheer hubris and godlessness: for precisely the opposite things to those we revere today had conscience on their side for the longest time, and God as their guardian. Hubris is our whole stance toward nature today, our violation of nature with the aid of machines and the untroubled inventiveness of technicians and engineers; hubris is our stance toward God, which is to say toward some supposed spider of purpose and morality behind the great snare-web of causality—we might say, like Charles the Bold in his struggle with Louis XI, “I fight the universal spider”; hubris is our stance toward *ourselves*—for we experiment on ourselves as we would never permit ourselves to do on any animal, and merrily and curiously cut open our souls while we are still alive: what do we care any longer about the soul’s “salvation”! Afterward we heal ourselves: being ill is instructive, we have no doubt of that, more instructive still than being healthy—those who *make us ill* seem more necessary to us today even than any medicine men and “saviors.” We now violate ourselves, there is no doubt of it, we nutcrackers of the soul, we questioners and questionable ones, as if life were nothing but cracking nuts; in this very way we must necessarily become daily more questionable, more *worthy* of questioning, and in this very way perhaps also worthier—of living?… All good things were once bad things; every original sin has become an inherited virtue. Marriage, for instance, long seemed a sin against the rights of the community; once one paid a penalty for being so presumptuous as to claim a woman for oneself (here belongs, for example, the right of the first night, still today in Cambodia the privilege of the priests, those preservers of “good old customs”). The gentle, benevolent, yielding, compassionate feelings—gradually valued so highly that they are almost “values in themselves”—had self-contempt ranged against them for the longest time: one was ashamed of mildness as one is now ashamed of harshness (cf. “Beyond Good and Evil,” p. 232). Submission to *law*—oh, with what resistance of conscience did the noble lineages everywhere on earth renounce vendetta on their own part and concede to law authority over themselves! “Law” was long a forbidden thing, a sacrilege, an innovation; it appeared with force, as a force to which one yielded only with shame before oneself. Every tiniest step on earth was once won through mental and bodily tortures: this whole perspective, “that not only progress—no!—but stepping, movement, change have needed their countless martyrs,” sounds so foreign to us precisely today—I brought it to light in “Daybreak,” pp. 17 ff. “Nothing has been bought more dearly,” it says there (p. 19), “than the little human reason and feeling of freedom that now make up our pride. But it is this pride that now makes it almost impossible for us to feel our way into those immense stretches of the ‘morality of custom’ that precede ‘world history’ as the real and decisive main history that fixed the character of humanity: when suffering counted everywhere as a virtue, cruelty as a virtue, dissimulation as a virtue, revenge as a virtue, the denial of reason as a virtue, while well-being counted as a danger, the thirst for knowledge as a danger, peace as a danger, compassion as a danger, being pitied as a disgrace, work as a disgrace, madness as divinity, *change* as the immoral and ruin-bearing thing in itself!”— [10] In the same book, p. 39, it is set out under what estimation, under what pressure of estimation the oldest generation of contemplative human beings had to live—despised exactly to the extent that it was not feared! Contemplation first appeared on earth in masked form, with an ambiguous repute, with a wicked heart and often with a frightened head: there is no doubt of it. The inactive, brooding, unwarlike element in the instincts of contemplative human beings long cast a deep mistrust around them: against that there was no other remedy than to awaken a decided *fear* of oneself. And that, for instance, the old Brahmins understood! The oldest philosophers knew how to give their existence and their appearance a meaning, a support and a background, against which one learned to fear them: considered more exactly, out of an even more fundamental need, namely to win fear and reverence before themselves. For they found in themselves all value judgments *turned against* themselves, they had to fight down every kind of suspicion and resistance against “the philosopher in themselves.” This they did, as human beings of fearful ages, with fearful means: cruelty toward oneself, the inventive self-castigation—that was the chief means of these power-thirsty hermits and innovators of thought, who first had to do violence to the gods and the traditional in themselves in order to be able to *believe* in their own innovation. Let me recall the famous story of King Vishvamitra, who from thousand-year self-torments won such a feeling of power and trust in himself that he undertook to build a *new heaven*: the uncanny symbol of the oldest and the newest philosopher-history on earth—everyone who has ever built a “new heaven” found the power for it first in his own hell… Let us compress the whole state of affairs into brief formulas: the philosophical spirit has first always had to disguise and pupate itself in the previously established types of the contemplative human being, as priest, magician, soothsayer, in general as religious human being, in order to be even *possible* to any degree: *the ascetic ideal* long served the philosopher as a form of appearance, as a precondition of existence—he had to *present* it in order to be able to be a philosopher, he had to *believe* in it in order to be able to present it. The peculiarly world-denying, life-hostile, sense-distrusting, de-sensualized aloofness of philosophers, which has been held fast into the most recent times and has thereby gained validity almost as *the* philosophical attitude in itself—it is above all a consequence of the hard necessity of the conditions under which philosophy at all arose and endured: insofar namely as for the longest time philosophy would not have been possible at all on earth without an ascetic wrapping and clothing, without an ascetic misunderstanding of itself. Put vividly and plainly: the *ascetic priest* supplied, into the most recent times, the repulsive and gloomy caterpillar form under which alone philosophy was allowed to live and creep about… Has that really *changed*? Has the colorful and dangerous winged creature, that “spirit” which this caterpillar concealed within itself, really at last been uncowled and let out into the light, thanks to a sunnier, warmer, brighter world? Is there already enough pride, daring, courage, self-certainty, will of the spirit, will to responsibility, *freedom of the will* present that truly now on earth “the philosopher”—*is possible*?… [11] Only now, after we have caught sight of the *ascetic priest*, do we move seriously in upon our problem: what does the ascetic ideal mean?—only now does it become “serious”: we now have the actual *representative of seriousness* in general before us. “What does all seriousness mean?”—this still more fundamental question may perhaps already be forming on our lips: a question for physiologists, as cheaply as anything, but one we shall for the time being slip past. In that ideal the ascetic priest has not only his faith but also his will, his power, his interest. His right to exist stands and falls with that ideal: what wonder that here we strike a fearful opponent—assuming, namely, that we were the opponents of that ideal? of one who fights for his existence against the deniers of that ideal?… On the other hand, it is from the outset not probable that a position so interested in our problem will especially profit it; the ascetic priest will hardly himself make even the happiest defender of his ideal, for the same reason for which it usually fails when a woman wants to defend “woman in herself”—let alone the most objective judge and critic of the controversy stirred up here. We shall rather have to help him defend himself well against us—so much is already obvious—than have to fear being too well refuted by him… The thought that is fought over here is the valuation of our life on the part of the ascetic priests: the same (together with what belongs to it, “nature,” “world,” the whole sphere of becoming and transience) is by them put in relation to a wholly different kind of existence, to which it stands opposed and exclusive—unless it should turn against itself, deny itself: in this case, the case of an ascetic life, life counts as a bridge to that other existence. The ascetic treats life like a wrong road, which one must finally walk back to where it begins; or like an error which one refutes—*ought* to refute—by deed: for he *demands* that one go along with him, he forces, where he can, *his* valuation of existence. What does that mean? Such a monstrous way of valuing is not inscribed in the history of man as an exceptional case and curiosity: it is one of the broadest and longest facts there are. Read from a distant star, the capital letters of our earthly existence might tempt one to the conclusion that the earth is the actual *ascetic* star, a corner of discontented, haughty and repulsive creatures who could never rid themselves of a deep annoyance with themselves, with the earth, with all life, and did themselves as much woe as possible, out of pleasure in doing woe—probably their only pleasure. Let us consider how regularly, how generally, how at almost all times the ascetic priest appears; he belongs to no single race; he thrives everywhere; he grows out of every class. Not that he bred and propagated his way of valuing by inheritance: the opposite is the case—a deep instinct forbids him procreation, on the large scale. It must be a necessity of the first rank that makes this life-hostile species grow and thrive again and again—it must well be an *interest of life itself* that such a type of self-contradiction does not die out. For an ascetic life is a self-contradiction: here rules a ressentiment without equal, that of an insatiable instinct and will to power which wants to become master, not over something in life, but over life itself, over its deepest, strongest, lowest conditions; here an attempt is made to use the force in order to stop up the sources of force; here the gaze turns green and spiteful against physiological thriving itself, especially against its expression, beauty, joy; while a pleasure is felt and sought in the botched, the stunted, in pain, in accident, in the ugly, in arbitrary loss, in self-divestment, self-scourging, self-sacrifice. All this is in the highest degree paradoxical: we stand here before a duality which wills itself dual, which *enjoys itself* in this suffering and thereby becomes all the more self-certain and triumphant the more its own precondition, physiological vitality, *declines*. “The triumph precisely in the last agony”: under this superlative sign the ascetic ideal has fought from of old; in this riddle of seduction, this image of rapture and torment, it recognized its brightest light, its salvation, its final victory. Crux, nux, lux—with it these belong together.— [12] Suppose that such a will to contradiction and against nature, made flesh, is brought to *philosophize*: on what will it vent its innermost arbitrariness? On what is felt most surely as true, as real: it will seek *error* precisely there where the actual life instinct posits truth most unconditionally. It will, for example, as the ascetics of Vedanta philosophy did, degrade corporeality to illusion, likewise pain, multiplicity, the whole conceptual antithesis “subject” and “object”—errors, nothing but errors! To deny one’s I the belief, to deny oneself one’s “reality”—what a triumph!—no longer merely over the senses, over appearances, a much higher kind of triumph, a doing of violence and cruelty to reason: as which voluptuousness reaches its summit when ascetic self-contempt, self-mockery decrees to reason: “there is a realm of truth and of being, but precisely reason is *excluded* from it!”… (By the way: even in the Kantian concept “intelligible character of things” there is a residue of this lascivious ascetic duality, which likes to turn reason against reason: “intelligible character” means in Kant namely a kind of constitution of things of which the intellect grasps precisely so much—that it is for the intellect entirely *incomprehensible*.)—Let us at last, precisely as knowers, not be ungrateful toward such resolute reversals of accustomed perspectives and valuations, with which the spirit has for far too long seemingly wantonly and uselessly raged against itself: to see *otherwise* once, to *will to see otherwise*, is no small discipline and preparation of the intellect for its eventual “objectivity”—the latter not understood as “disinterested contemplation” (as which it is a non-concept and an absurdity), but as the capacity to *have in one’s power* one’s pro and contra and to engage and disengage them: so that one knows how to make precisely the *difference* of perspectives and of affective interpretations useful for knowledge. Let us guard, namely, from now on the better, my gentleman philosophers, against the dangerous old conceptual fable which has posited a “pure, will-less, painless, timeless subject of knowledge,” let us guard against the tentacles of such contradictory concepts as “pure reason,” “absolute spirituality,” “knowledge in itself”:—here an eye is always demanded to think which cannot be thought at all, an eye which is to have absolutely no direction, in which the active and interpreting forces are to be bound, are to be absent, through which seeing first becomes a seeing-something; here, then, an absurdity and a non-concept of an eye is always demanded. There is only a perspectival seeing, only a perspectival “knowing”; and the *more* affects we let speak about a thing, the *more* eyes, different eyes we know how to employ for the same thing, the more complete will our “concept” of this thing, our “objectivity” be. But to eliminate the will altogether, to disengage the affects all together, supposing we were able to do that: how? would that not mean to *castrate* the intellect?… [13] But let us return. Such a self-contradiction as the ascetic seems to present, “life *against* life”—so much is at first obvious—reckoned physiologically and no longer psychologically, is simply nonsense. It can only be *apparent*; it must be a kind of provisional expression, an interpretation, formula, adjustment, a psychological misunderstanding of something whose actual nature was long not understood, long could not be designated *in itself*—a mere word, wedged into an old gap in human knowledge. And to set the state of affairs briefly against it: *the ascetic ideal springs from the protective and healing instinct of a degenerating life*, which seeks to hold itself with all means and fights for its existence; it points to a partial physiological inhibition and fatigue against which the deepest, intact instincts of life struggle unceasingly with new means and inventions. The ascetic ideal is such a means: it stands thus precisely the opposite of what the admirers of this ideal believe—life wrestles in it and through it with death and *against* death, the ascetic ideal is an artifice in the *preservation* of life. That it could, to the extent that history teaches, rule over man and become powerful, especially everywhere where civilization and the taming of man were carried through, expresses a great fact: the *morbidity* in the human type so far, at least of the tamed human being, the physiological wrestling of man with death (more exactly: with the surfeit of life, with fatigue, with the wish for the “end”). The ascetic priest is the wish for a being-different, being-elsewhere made flesh, and indeed the highest degree of this wish, its actual fervor and passion: but precisely the power of his wishing is the fetter that ties him here, precisely thereby he becomes the tool that must work at creating more favorable conditions for being-here and being-human—precisely with this power he holds the whole herd of the botched, the ill-humored, the utterly ruined, the shipwrecked, the sufferers-from-themselves of every kind fast to existence, in that he instinctively goes before them as shepherd. I am already understood: this ascetic priest, this apparent enemy of life, this denier—he precisely belongs among the very great *conserving* and *yes-creating* powers of life… What does that morbidity hang on? For man is sicker, more uncertain, more changeable, more unsettled than any other animal, there is no doubt of it—he is the *sick* animal: where does that come from? Surely he has also dared, innovated, defied, challenged fate more than all the other animals taken together: he, the great experimenter with himself, the unsatisfied, the unappeased, who wrestles for the last mastery with animal, nature and gods—he who is still the unconquered, the eternally future, who finds no more rest before his own urgent force, so that his future burrows inexorably like a spur in the flesh of every present:—how should such a courageous and rich animal not also be the most endangered, the longest and most deeply sick among all sick animals?… Man has had enough of it, often enough, there are whole epidemics of this having-had-enough (—around 1348, at the time of the dance of death): but even this disgust, this weariness, this annoyance with himself—all emerges so powerfully in him that it at once becomes a new fetter. His No, which he speaks to life, brings as though by magic a fullness of more tender Yeses to light; indeed when he *wounds himself*, this master of destruction, self-destruction—afterward it is the wound itself that forces him *to live*… [14] The more normal morbidity is in man—and we cannot deny this normality—the higher one should honor the rare cases of spiritual and bodily powerfulness, the *lucky accidents* of man, the more strictly one should protect the well-formed from the worst air, the sick air. Does one do that?… The sick are the greatest danger for the healthy; *not* from the strongest comes the calamity for the strong, but from the weakest. Does one know that?… On the large scale it is by no means fear of man whose diminution one might wish: for this fear forces the strong to be strong, under circumstances to be fearful—it *upholds* the well-turned type human. What is to be feared, what works disastrously like no other disaster, would not be the great fear, but the great *nausea* at man; likewise the great *pity* with man. Supposing that these two one day mated, then something of the most uncanny would inevitably come into the world at once: the “last will” of man, his will to nothing, nihilism. And indeed: much is prepared for this. Whoever has not only his nose for smelling but also his eyes and ears senses almost everywhere, wherever he steps today, something like madhouse air, like hospital air—I speak, as cheaply as anything, of the cultural areas of man, of every kind of “Europe” that there now is on earth. The *morbid* are man’s great danger: not the evil, not the “beasts of prey.” Those shipwrecked from the outset, the cast down, the broken—they are it, the *weakest* are it, who most undermine life among human beings, who most dangerously poison and put in question our trust in life, in man, in ourselves. Where could one escape that disastrous gaze, from which one carries away a deep sadness, that backward-turned gaze of the misborn from the beginning, which betrays how such a human being speaks to himself—that gaze which is a sigh. “If only I were somebody else!” so sighs this gaze: “but there is no hope. I am who I am: how should I get free of myself? And yet—I am sick of myself!”… On such soil of self-contempt, an actual swamp soil, grows every weed, every poisonous plant, and all so small, so hidden, so dishonest, so sweetishly. Here the worms of vengeful and grudgeful feelings swarm; here the air stinks of secrets and unavowables; here the net of the most malignant conspiracy is constantly spun—the conspiracy of the suffering against the well-turned and the victorious, here the aspect of the victorious is *hated*. And what mendacity, in order not to admit this hatred as hatred! What expenditure of great words and attitudes, what art of “honest” slander! These botched ones: what noble eloquence streams from their lips! How much sugary, slimy, humble submission swims in their eyes! What do they really want? To *represent* justice, love, wisdom, superiority at least—that is the ambition of these “lowest,” these sick! And how cleverly such an ambition works! One should admire especially the counterfeiters’ skill with which the stamp of virtue, even the ring, the gold ring of virtue, is imitated here. They have now taken virtue wholly into their monopoly, these weak and incurably sick, there is no doubt: “we alone are the good, the just,” so they speak, “we alone are the homines bonae voluntatis.” They walk about among us as accusations made flesh, as warnings to us—as though health, well-turnedness, strength, pride, feeling of power were in themselves vicious things for which one must one day atone, bitterly atone: oh how they are at bottom ready for that themselves, how they thirst to make atone, how they thirst to be *executioners*! Among them there is in abundance the vengeful disguised as judges, who constantly carry the word “justice” in their mouths like a poisonous spittle, always with pursed mouth, always ready to spit at everything that does not look discontented and goes its road in good spirits. Among them there is also not lacking that most disgusting species of the vain, the mendacious misbirths who set out to represent “beautiful souls” and to bring their ruined sensuality, wrapped in verses and other swaddling clothes, to market as “purity of heart”: the species of moral onanists and “self-satisfiers.” The will of the sick to represent some form of superiority, their instinct for secret paths that lead to a tyranny over the healthy—where would it not be found, this will precisely of the weakest to power! The sick woman especially: no one surpasses her in refinements of ruling, oppressing, tyrannizing. The sick woman spares nothing living, nothing dead for that, she digs up the most buried things (the Bogos say: “woman is a hyena”). One should look into the backgrounds of every family, every corporation, every commonwealth: everywhere the war of the sick against the healthy—a silent war mostly with little poison powders, with needle pricks, with the malicious sufferer’s play of faces, but sometimes too with that sick Phariseeism of the loud gesture, which most likes to play “noble indignation.” It wants to make itself heard into the consecrated spaces of science itself, the hoarse indignant barking of the morbid dogs, the biting mendacity and rage of such “noble” Pharisees (—I remind readers who have ears once more of that Berlin apostle of revenge Eugen Dühring, who in today’s Germany makes the most indecent and repulsive use of the moral boom-boom: Dühring, the first moral bigmouth there now is, even among his own kind, the antisemites). They are all human beings of ressentiment, these physiologically shipwrecked and worm-eaten ones, a whole trembling subsoil of underground revenge, inexhaustible, insatiable in outbursts against the happy, and equally in masquerades of revenge, in pretexts for revenge: when would they actually come to their last, finest, most sublime triumph of revenge? Without doubt when they succeeded in pushing their own misery, all misery in general, onto the conscience of the happy: so that these one day began to be ashamed of their happiness and perhaps said among themselves: “It is a shame to be happy! there is too much misery!”… But there could be no greater and more disastrous misunderstanding than if the happy, the well-turned, the powerful in body and soul began in this way to doubt their *right to happiness*. Away with this “inverted world”! Away with this shameful softening of feeling! That the sick do *not* make the healthy sick—and this would be such a softening—that should be the supreme point of view on earth:—but for that it is above all necessary that the healthy remain *separated* from the sick, protected even from the sight of the sick, that they do not confuse themselves with the sick. Or would it be their task to be nurses or doctors?… But they could not misjudge and deny their task worse—the higher must not degrade itself to the tool of the lower, the pathos of distance should keep tasks apart for all eternity too! Their right to be there, the prerogative of the bell with full sound before the ill-sounding, cracked one, is a thousandfold greater: they alone are the *guarantors* of the future, they alone are *obligated* for the human future. What they can, what they should, that sick people should never be able and ought never be—: but for them to be able to do what only they ought, how would it still be free to them to make themselves the doctor, the bringer of comfort, the “savior” of the sick?… And therefore good air! good air! And away in any case from the vicinity of all madhouses and hospitals of culture! And therefore good company, our company! Or solitude, if it must be! But away in any case from the bad exhalations of inner corruption and the secret worm-eatenness of the sick!… So that we ourselves, namely, my friends, defend ourselves at least a while longer against the two worst epidemics that might be reserved precisely for us—against the *great nausea at man*! against the *great pity with man*!… [15] Has one grasped in all depth—and I demand that one reach deep here, grasp deep—in what way it simply cannot be the task of the healthy to nurse the sick, to make the sick healthy, then one has thereby grasped one necessity more—the necessity of doctors and nurses who are *themselves sick*: and now we have and hold the meaning of the ascetic priest with both hands. The ascetic priest must count to us as the predestined savior, shepherd and advocate of the sick herd: only thereby do we understand his monstrous historical mission. *Dominion over sufferers* is his kingdom, his instinct points him there, in it he has his most own art, his mastery, his kind of happiness. He must *himself be sick*, he must be related from the ground up to the sick and utterly ruined, in order to understand them, in order to understand himself with them; but he must also be *strong*, more master over himself than over others, uninjured especially in his will to power, so that he has the trust and the fear of the sick, so that he can be to them support, resistance, prop, compulsion, disciplinarian, tyrant, God. He has to defend them, his herd—against whom? Against the healthy, there is no doubt, also against the envy of the healthy; he must be the natural adversary and despiser of all crude, stormy, unrestrained, hard, violently beast-of-prey-like health and powerfulness. The priest is the first form of the *more delicate* animal, which more easily despises than hates. He will not be spared from waging war with the beasts of prey, a war of cunning (of “spirit”) more than of violence, as goes without saying—he will under circumstances need for that to breed out of himself almost a new beast-of-prey type, at least to *mean* it—a new animal-fearfulness in which the polar bear, the supple cold waiting tiger-cat and not least the fox seem bound into a unity as attractive as it is fear-inspiring. Supposing that need compels him, then he steps forth bear-like-serious, venerable, clever, cold, deceptively superior, as herald and mouthpiece of more mysterious powers, right among the other kind of beasts of prey itself, determined to sow suffering, discord, self-contradiction where he can on this soil, and, only too certain of his art, to become master over sufferers at any time. He brings salves and balsam, there is no doubt; but first he needs to wound, in order to be a doctor; while he then stills the pain that the wound makes, he *at the same time poisons the wound*—that is above all what he understands, this magician and beast-tamer, in whose vicinity everything healthy necessarily becomes sick and everything sick necessarily tame. He defends his sick herd well enough in fact, this strange shepherd—he defends it also against itself, against the meanness, malice, ill will glowing in the herd itself, and whatever else is proper to all addicts and sick among one another; he fights cleverly, hard and secretly with the anarchy and the self-dissolution that begins at any time within the herd, in which that most dangerous explosive, *ressentiment*, constantly piles itself up and up. To discharge this explosive in such a way that it does not blow apart the herd and not the shepherd, that is his actual trick, also his supreme usefulness; if one wanted to compress the value of the priestly existence into the shortest formula, one would have to say outright: the priest is the *direction-changer* of ressentiment. Every sufferer namely seeks instinctively a cause for his suffering; more exactly still, a doer; still more precisely, a *guilty* doer susceptible of suffering—in short, some living thing on which he can discharge his affects in deed, or in effigie on some pretext: for the discharge of affect is the greatest relief—namely *anesthetizing*—attempt of the sufferer, his involuntarily desired narcotic against torment of any kind. In this alone, in my conjecture, is the actual physiological causality of ressentiment, of revenge and their kin to be found, in a longing, then, for *anesthetization of pain through affect*:—one commonly seeks the same, very erroneously, as it seems to me, in the defensive counter-blow, a mere protective measure of reaction, a “reflex movement” in the case of some sudden damage and endangerment, of the kind that a frog without a head still performs in order to get rid of a corrosive acid. But the difference is fundamental: in the one case one wants to prevent further being-damaged, in the other one wants to *anesthetize* a tormenting, secret, becoming-unbearable pain through a more violent emotion of some kind and at least for the moment put it out of consciousness—for that one needs an affect, an affect as wild as possible, and, to excite it, the first pretext at hand. “Somebody must be to blame that I feel bad”—this way of concluding is proper to all the morbid, and indeed the more the true cause of their feeling bad, the physiological one, remains hidden from them (it can lie, say, in a disease of the nervus sympathicus or in an excessive secretion of bile, or in a poverty of the blood in sulphuric and phosphoric potash, or in pressure states of the lower abdomen that dam the circulation, or in degeneration of the ovaries and the like). The sufferers are all possessed of a dreadful readiness and inventiveness in pretexts for painful affects; they enjoy their suspicion already, the brooding over iniquities and apparent injuries, they root through the entrails of their past and present for dark questionable stories where it is free to them to wallow in a tormenting suspicion and to intoxicate themselves on the own poison of malice—they tear open the oldest wounds, they bleed to death on long-healed scars, they make malefactors out of friend, wife, child and whatever else is nearest to them. “I suffer: somebody must be to blame for it”—so thinks every morbid sheep. But its shepherd, the ascetic priest, says to it: “Right so, my sheep! somebody must be to blame: but you yourself are this somebody, you yourself alone are to blame for it—*you yourself alone are to blame for yourself*!”… That is bold enough, false enough; but one thing at least is achieved with it, with it, as said, the direction of ressentiment is—*changed*. [16] One now divines what, in my conception, the healing-artist instinct of life has at least *attempted* through the ascetic priest, and what a temporary tyranny of such paradoxical and paralogical concepts as “guilt,” “sin,” “sinfulness,” “corruption,” “damnation” had to serve him for: to make the sick *harmless* to a certain degree, to destroy the incurable through themselves, to give the mildly ill strictly a direction toward themselves, a backward direction of their ressentiment (“one thing is needful”—) and thus to *exploit* the bad instincts of all sufferers for the purpose of self-discipline, self-surveillance, self-overcoming. With a “medication” of this kind, a mere affect-medication, it cannot, as goes without saying, be a matter at all of an actual *healing* of the sick in the physiological sense; one could not even assert that the instinct of life here had healing in view and intention in any way. A kind of crowding together and organization of the sick on the one side (—the word “church” is the most popular name for it), a kind of provisional securing of the more healthily turned out, the more fully poured out, on the other, the tearing open of a *chasm* thus between healthy and sick—that was for long everything! And it was much! it was very much!…[In this treatise, as one sees, I proceed from a presupposition which I need not first establish with regard to readers as I need them: that “sinfulness” in man is not a fact, rather only the interpretation of a fact, namely of a physiological ill-humor—the latter seen under a moral-religious perspective, which has nothing binding for us any more.—By the fact that someone *feels* himself “guilty,” “sinful,” it is not yet proved at all that he feels so with right; just as little as someone is healthy merely because he feels healthy. Let one remember the famous witch trials: the most sharp-sighted and philanthropic judges did not doubt then that a guilt was present; the “witches” *themselves did not doubt it*—and yet the guilt was lacking.—To express that presupposition in expanded form: “mental pain” itself does not count to me as a fact at all, but only as an interpretation (causal interpretation) of facts not yet to be exactly formulated: thus as something that still floats completely in the air and is scientifically uncommitting—a fat word, properly, merely in place of an even spindle-thin question mark. If someone cannot cope with a “mental pain,” that does not, roughly speaking, depend on his “soul”; more probably still on his belly (roughly speaking, as said: with which by no means the wish is expressed to be heard, and understood, roughly too…). A strong and well-turned human being digests his experiences (deeds, misdeeds included) as he digests his meals, even when he has hard bites to swallow. If he cannot “cope” with an experience, this kind of indigestion is as good physiologically as the other—and often in fact only one of the consequences of that other.—With such a view one can, between ourselves, still always be the strictest opponent of all materialism…] [17] But is he actually a *doctor*, this ascetic priest?—We already understood in what way it is hardly permitted to call him a doctor, as gladly as he also feels himself “savior,” lets himself be revered as “savior.” Only the suffering itself, the displeasure of the sufferer, is fought by him, *not* its cause, *not* the actual being-sick—that must provide our most fundamental objection against the priestly medication. But if one first places oneself in the perspective as the priest alone knows and has it, then one does not easily come to an end in admiration for what he has seen, sought and found under it. The alleviation of suffering, the “consoling” of every kind—that proves to be his genius itself: how inventively has he understood his consoler-task, how unscrupulously and boldly has he chosen the means for it! Christianity especially one could call a great treasure chamber of the most ingenious means of consolation, so much refreshing, mitigating, narcotizing is heaped up in it, so much most dangerous and most reckless is dared for this purpose, so finely, so refinedly, so southern-refinedly has it been divined by it in particular with what stimulating affects the deep depression, the leaden fatigue, the black sadness of the physiologically inhibited can be conquered at least for a time. For generally speaking: in all great religions it was mainly a matter of fighting a certain fatigue and heaviness that had become an epidemic. One can set it from the outset as probable that from time to time at certain places on earth a *feeling of physiological inhibition* must almost necessarily become master over broad masses, which however, from lack of physiological knowledge, does not enter consciousness as such, so that its “cause,” its remedy too can only be sought and attempted psychologically-morally (—this namely is my most general formula for what is commonly called a “*religion*”). Such a feeling of inhibition can be of the most various descent: say as a consequence of the crossing of too alien races (or of classes—classes always express differences of descent and race too: the European “world-weariness,” the “pessimism” of the nineteenth century is essentially the consequence of an absurdly sudden class-mixture); or conditioned by a faulty emigration—a race landed in a climate for which its power of adaptation does not suffice (the case of the Indians in India); or the after-effect of age and fatigue of the race (Parisian pessimism from 1850 on); or of a false diet (alcoholism of the Middle Ages; the nonsense of the vegetarians, who indeed have the authority of Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Shakespeare for themselves); or from blood corruption, malaria, syphilis and the like (German depression after the Thirty Years’ War, which infected half of Germany with bad diseases and thereby prepared the soil for German servility, German faint-heartedness). In such a case each time a *struggle with the feeling of displeasure* is attempted on the grandest scale; let us inform ourselves briefly about its most important practices and forms. (I leave aside quite, as cheaply as anything, the actual *philosophers’ struggle* against the feeling of displeasure, which always tends to be simultaneous—it is interesting enough, but too absurd, too practically indifferent, too cobweb-spinning and corner-loafer-ish, as when pain is to be proved an error, under the naive presupposition that pain *must* vanish once the error in it is recognized—but behold! it took care not to vanish…) One fights *first* that dominating displeasure through means which reduce the feeling of life generally to the lowest point. As far as possible no willing at all, no wish any more; avoiding everything that makes affect, that makes “blood” (eat no salt: hygiene of the fakir); not love; not hate; equanimity; not avenge oneself; not enrich oneself; not work; beg; as far as possible no woman, or as little woman as possible: in intellectual respect the principle of Pascal, “il faut s’abêtir.” Result, expressed psychologically-morally: “self-lessness,” “sanctification”; expressed physiologically: hypnotization—the attempt to attain approximately for man what winter sleep is for some animals, *summer sleep* for many plants of hot climates, a minimum of consumption of matter and metabolism, at which life just barely still exists, without actually entering consciousness any more. An astonishing amount of human energy has been spent on this goal—in vain, perhaps?…That such sportsmen of “holiness,” of whom all ages, almost all peoples are rich, have in fact found a real redemption from what they fought with so rigorous a training, of that one may by no means doubt—they really *got rid* of that deep physiological depression with the help of their system of hypnotizing means in countless cases: which is why their methodology counts among the most general ethnological facts. Likewise every permission is lacking to count such an intention of starving out corporeality and desire among the symptoms of insanity in itself (as a clumsy kind of roast-beef-eating “free spirits” and other Sir Andrew Aguecheeks like to do). So much the surer is it that it gives, can give, the *way* to all sorts of mental disorders, to “inner lights” for example, as with the Hesychasts of Mount Athos, to hallucinations of sound and figure, to voluptuous overflowings and ecstasies of sensuality (history of Saint Teresa). The interpretation which is given to such states by those afflicted with them has always been as enthusiast-false as possible, this goes without saying: only one should not overhear the tone of most convinced gratitude which already sounds forth in the will to such a kind of interpretation. The highest state, *redemption* itself, that finally attained total hypnotization and stillness, always counts to them as the mystery in itself, for whose expression even the highest symbols do not suffice, as a going-in and homecoming into the ground of things, as becoming free of all delusion, as “knowledge,” as “truth,” as “being,” as getting loose from every goal, every wish, every doing, as a beyond also of good and evil. “Good and evil,” says the Buddhist, “both are fetters: over both the perfected one became master”; “done and undone,” says the believer of Vedanta, “cause him no pain; the good and the evil he shakes off as a wise man; his kingdom suffers from no deed any more; over good and evil, over both he has gone out”:—a wholly Indian conception, then, as Brahmanist as Buddhist. (Neither in the Indian nor in the Christian way of thinking does that “redemption” count as *attainable* through virtue, through moral improvement, however high the hypnotizing value of virtue is also assessed by them: hold fast to this—it corresponds, besides, simply to the fact. To have remained true here may perhaps be regarded as the best piece of realism in the three greatest, otherwise so thoroughly moralized religions. “For the knowing one there is no duty”… “Through *adding* virtues redemption does not come about: for it consists in being one with Brahman, which is capable of no addition of perfection; and just as little in the *laying off* of faults: for Brahman, being one with which is what constitutes redemption, is eternally pure”—these passages from the commentary of Çankara, cited by the first actual *connoisseur* of Indian philosophy in Europe, my friend Paul Deussen.) We will thus hold “redemption” in the great religions in honor; on the other hand it becomes a little hard for us to remain serious at the estimation which even *deep sleep* receives from these life-weary ones grown too tired even for dreaming—deep sleep namely already as entering into Brahman, as attained unio mystica with God. “When he has then fallen asleep quite and altogether—so it says in the oldest most venerable ‘scripture’—and has come entirely to rest, so that he no longer beholds any dream-image, then he, O dear one, is united with the existent, has entered into himself—embraced by the cognition-like self he has no more consciousness of what is outside or inside. This bridge day and night do not cross, nor age, nor death, nor suffering, nor good work, nor evil work.” “In deep sleep,” say likewise the believers of this deepest of the three great religions, “the soul lifts itself out of this body, goes into the highest light and therewith steps forth in its own form: there it is the highest spirit itself, which walks about, jesting and playing and delighting itself, be it with women or with chariots or with friends, there it no longer thinks back to this appendage of the body, to which the prâna (the breath of life) is harnessed like a draft animal to the cart.” Nevertheless we want also here, as in the case of “redemption,” to keep present to ourselves that thereby at bottom, however much in the splendor of oriental exaggeration, only the same estimation is expressed which was that of the clear, cool, Greek-cool, but suffering Epicurus: the hypnotic feeling of nothing, the rest of the deepest sleep, *painlessness* in short—that may count to sufferers and thoroughly ill-humored ones as the highest good, as value of values, that *must* be assessed by them as positive, be felt as the positive itself. (By the same logic of feeling, in all pessimistic religions nothing is called God.) [18] Much more frequently than such a hypnotic total damping of sensibility, of the capacity for pain, which already presupposes rarer forces, above all courage, contempt for opinion, “intellectual stoicism,” another training is attempted against states of depression, one that is in any case easier: *mechanical activity*. That a suffering existence is eased to no inconsiderable degree by it stands beyond all doubt: today this fact is called, somewhat dishonestly, “the blessing of work.” The easing consists in this, that the interest of the sufferer is fundamentally diverted from the suffering—that constantly a doing and again only a doing enters consciousness and consequently little room remains there for suffering: for it is *narrow*, this chamber of human consciousness! Mechanical activity and what belongs to it—like absolute regularity, punctual thoughtless obedience, the once-and-for-all of the way of life, the filling up of time, a certain permission, indeed a discipline to “impersonality,” to self-forgetting, to “incuria sui”—:how thoroughly, how finely has the ascetic priest known how to use it in the fight with pain! Precisely when he had to do with sufferers of the lower classes, with work-slaves or prisoners (or with women: who indeed are mostly both at once, work-slaves and prisoners), little more was needed than a small art of name-changing and rebaptizing to make them see a benefaction, a relative happiness, in hated things henceforth:—the slave’s discontent with his lot was in any case *not* invented by the priests.—An even more esteemed means in the fight with depression is the ordaining of a *small joy*, which is easily accessible and can be made the rule; one makes use of this medication often in connection with the one just discussed. The most frequent form in which joy is thus ordained as a cure is the joy of joy-*making* (as benefiting, giving, easing, helping, encouraging, consoling, praising, distinguishing); the ascetic priest ordains it in that he ordains “love of neighbor,” at bottom an excitation of the strongest, most life-affirming drive, though in the most cautious dosage—of the *will to power*. The happiness of the “smallest superiority,” as all benefiting, useful, helping, distinguishing brings with it, is the most abundant means of consolation which the physiologically inhibited tend to make use of, supposing that they are well advised: in the other case they hurt one another, naturally in obedience to the same fundamental instinct. If one looks for the beginnings of Christianity in the Roman world, one finds associations for mutual support, poor-, sick-, burial-associations, grown up on the lowest soil of the society of that time, in which with consciousness that chief means against depression, the small joy, that of mutual benefiting, was cultivated—perhaps this was something new then, an actual discovery? In a “will to reciprocity,” to herd-formation, to “community,” to “conventicle” thus evoked, that will to power excited thereby, even if in the smallest, must now again come to a new and much fuller outbreak: *herd-formation* is in the fight with depression an essential step and victory. In the growth of the community a new interest also strengthens for the individual, which often enough lifts him over the most personal element of his ill humor, his aversion to himself (the “despectio sui” of Geulincx). All the sick, the morbid, strive instinctively, from a longing to shake off the dull displeasure and the feeling of weakness, after a herd-organization: the ascetic priest divines this instinct and promotes it; where there are herds, it is the weakness-instinct that has willed the herd, and the priestly cleverness that has organized it. For one should not overlook this: the strong strive just as naturally *apart* from one another as the weak *toward* one another; if the former unite, it happens only in the prospect of an aggressive total action and total satisfaction of their will to power, with much resistance of the individual conscience; the latter on the other hand arrange themselves together, with pleasure precisely in this arrangement together—their instinct is satisfied by it, just as the instinct of the born “masters” (that is, of the solitary beast-of-prey species man) is at bottom irritated and disquieted by organization. Under every oligarchy there lies—all history teaches it—always the *tyrannical* craving hidden; every oligarchy trembles constantly from the tension which every individual in it needs in order to remain master over this craving. (So it was *Greek*, for example: Plato testifies to it in a hundred places, Plato, who knew his own kind—and himself…) [19] The ascetic priest’s remedies we have come to know so far—the general deadening of the feeling of life, mechanical activity, the little pleasure, above all that of “love of one’s neighbor,” the organization of the herd, the awakening of the community’s feeling of power, through which the individual’s discontent with himself is drowned out by his pleasure in the community’s flourishing—these, measured by modern standards, are his *innocent* remedies in the struggle against displeasure: let us turn now to the more interesting, the “guilty” ones. All of them come down to one thing: some *excess of feeling*—used against the dull, paralyzing, protracted ache as the most effective means of anesthesia; which is why the priest’s ingenuity has been positively inexhaustible in pondering this one question: “*How* can an excess of feeling be produced?”… That sounds harsh: plainly, it would sound sweeter and perhaps fall more pleasantly on the ear if I said something like “the ascetic priest has always exploited the *inspiration* inherent in all strong emotions.” But why go on stroking the pampered ears of our modern tenderlings? Why should *we* yield even an inch to their Tartuffe-like hypocrisy in words? For us psychologists, that would already be Tartuffe-like hypocrisy in *deed*, quite apart from the disgust it would cause us. For if a psychologist today shows his *good taste* in anything—others may say: his integrity—it is in resisting the shamefully *moralized* manner of speech whose slime has gradually coated every modern judgment of people and things. Let there be no mistake about this: what most characterizes modern souls, modern books, is not lying but an ingrained *innocence* in moralistic dishonesty. Having to discover this “innocence” everywhere anew—that is perhaps the most repulsive part of all the work, far from harmless in itself, that a psychologist must undertake today; it is part of *our* great danger—it is a path that may lead precisely *us* to the great disgust… I have no doubt about the only *use* modern books would or could have for posterity—assuming they last, which admittedly is nothing to fear, and assuming as well that there is someday a posterity with a stricter, harder, healthier taste—or about the use of *everything* modern for that posterity: as emetics—and this by virtue of its moral sugariness and falseness, its innermost effeminacy, which likes to call itself “idealism” and in any case believes itself to be idealism. Our cultivated people today, our “good people,” do not lie—that is true; but it does *not* do them credit! A real lie, a genuine, resolute, “honest” lie—on whose value one should hear Plato—would be something far too stern, too strong for them; it would demand what one *must not* demand of them: that they open their eyes to themselves, that they know how to distinguish “true” from “false” within themselves. Only the *dishonest lie* befits them; everything that feels itself a “good person” today is utterly incapable of taking any stand on anything except one that is *dishonestly mendacious*, abysmally mendacious, but innocently mendacious, trustingly mendacious, wide-eyedly mendacious, virtuously mendacious. These “good people”—they are now all moralized to the core, and as regards honesty, disgraced and mangled for all eternity: which of them could still bear a *truth* “about humanity”!… Or, to put the question more tangibly: which of them could endure a *truthful* biography!… A few indications: Lord Byron recorded some of the most personal things about himself, but Thomas Moore was “too good” for them: he burned his friend’s papers. Dr. Gwinner, Schopenhauer’s executor, is said to have done the same: for Schopenhauer too had recorded certain things about himself and perhaps also against himself (“*to himself*”). The capable American Thayer, Beethoven’s biographer, suddenly stopped work: having reached some point in this venerable and naive life, he could no longer bear it… Moral: what intelligent man today would still write an honest word about himself?—unless, of course, he belonged to the order of holy recklessness. We are promised an autobiography of Richard Wagner: who doubts that it will be a *prudent* autobiography?… Let us also recall the comical horror that the Catholic priest Janssen aroused in Germany with his inconceivably blockish and harmless picture of the German Reformation movement; what would people do if someone were to tell us the story of this movement *differently* for once, if a real psychologist were to tell us about a real Luther, no longer with the moralistic simplemindedness of a country parson, no longer with the sugary and considerate modesty of Protestant historians, but with something like *Taine*’s fearlessness, out of a *strength of soul* rather than a prudent indulgence toward strength?… (The Germans, incidentally, have lately produced a fine enough classical type of the latter—they may certainly claim him to their account, to their credit: namely, their Leopold Ranke, that born and classical advocate of every stronger cause, that most prudent of all prudent “men of fact.”) [20] But I will already have been understood:—reason enough, is there not, all things considered, why we psychologists today cannot shake off a certain mistrust *of ourselves*?… Probably we too are still “too good” for our trade; probably we too are still the victims, the prey, the sick of this moralized taste of the age, however much we feel ourselves to despise it—probably it still infects *us* as well. What was it that diplomat warned against when speaking to his peers? “Let us mistrust above all, gentlemen, our first impulses!” he said. “*They are almost always good*”… That is how every psychologist today should speak to his peers… And this brings us back to our problem, which does indeed require a certain sternness of us, a certain mistrust, especially of “first impulses.” *The ascetic ideal serving the purpose of emotional excess*:—anyone who remembers the preceding essay will already anticipate the essentials of what is now to be presented, whose substance is compressed into those nine words. To wrench the human soul out of all its joints for once, to plunge it into terrors, frosts, fires, and raptures in such a way that, as though struck by lightning, it breaks free of everything small and petty in displeasure, dullness, and dejection: what paths lead to *this* goal? And which of them most surely?… Fundamentally, all the great emotions have the power to do this, provided they discharge themselves suddenly: anger, fear, lust, revenge, hope, triumph, despair, cruelty; and the ascetic priest has in fact enlisted the *whole* pack of wild dogs in the human being without hesitation, unleashing now this one, now that one, always for the same purpose: to rouse people from their slow sadness, to put their dull pain, their lingering misery to flight, for a time at least, and always under a religious interpretation and “justification.” Every such excess of feeling exacts its *payment* afterward, that goes without saying—it makes the sick sicker—and that is why this kind of remedy for pain, measured by modern standards, is a “guilty” one. Fairness requires us, however, to insist all the more that it was employed *with a good conscience*, that the ascetic priest prescribed it with the deepest faith in its usefulness, indeed its indispensability—and often enough almost broke under the misery he created himself; likewise, that the violent physiological reprisals of such excesses, perhaps even mental disturbances, do not, at bottom, really contradict the whole purpose of this kind of medication: which, as was shown earlier, sought *not* to cure diseases but to combat the displeasure of depression, to relieve it, to anesthetize it. This goal was achieved *this way* too. The principal device the ascetic priest permitted himself in order to make every kind of agonizing and ecstatic music resound upon the human soul was accomplished—everyone knows this—by exploiting the *feeling of guilt*. The preceding essay briefly indicated its origin—as a piece of animal psychology, nothing more: there we encountered the feeling of guilt in what might be called its raw state. Only in the hands of the priest, that true artist in feelings of guilt, has it taken shape—oh, what a shape! “Sin”—for that is the priestly reinterpretation of the animal “bad conscience” (cruelty turned back upon itself)—has so far been the greatest event in the history of the sick soul: in it we have the most dangerous and fateful feat of religious interpretation. Suffering from himself in some way, in any case physiologically, perhaps like an animal locked in a cage, unclear why, to what end, hungry for reasons—reasons bring relief—hungry too for remedies and narcotics, the human being at last consults someone who knows even what is hidden—and behold! He receives a hint, he receives from his magician, the ascetic priest, the *first* hint about the “cause” of his suffering: he is to seek it within *himself*, in some *guilt*, in a piece of the past; he is to understand his suffering itself as a *state of punishment*… The unfortunate man has heard, has understood: now he is like a hen with a line drawn around it. He cannot get out of this circle of lines again: the sick man has been made into “the sinner”… And now, for a few millennia, one cannot escape the sight of this new sick man, “the sinner”—will one ever escape it again?—wherever one looks, everywhere the hypnotic gaze of the sinner, always moving in a single direction (toward “guilt” as the *only* cause of suffering); everywhere the evil conscience, that “gruesome beast,” to speak with Luther; everywhere the past chewed over, the deed distorted, the “green eye” for everything done; everywhere the *will* to misunderstand suffering made into the substance of life, its reinterpretation as feelings of guilt, fear, and punishment; everywhere the scourge, the hair shirt, the starving body, contrition; everywhere the sinner breaking himself on the wheel of a restless, morbidly lustful conscience and its cruel machinery; everywhere the mute torment, the utmost fear, the agony of the martyred heart, the convulsions of an unknown happiness, the cry for “redemption.” In fact, with this system of procedures the old depression, heaviness, and weariness had been thoroughly *overcome*, life became *very* interesting again: awake, eternally awake, sleepless, glowing, charred, exhausted and yet not tired—such was the appearance of the human being, “the sinner,” initiated into *these* mysteries. That great old magician in the struggle against displeasure, the ascetic priest—he had plainly triumphed, *his* kingdom had come: people no longer complained *against* pain, they *thirsted* for pain; “*More* pain! *More* pain!”—so the craving of his disciples and initiates cried out for centuries. Every excess of feeling that hurt, everything that broke, overthrew, crushed, transported, enraptured, the secret of the torture chambers, the ingenuity of hell itself—everything had now been discovered, divined, exploited, everything stood at the magician’s service, everything henceforth served the triumph of his ideal, the ascetic ideal… “My kingdom is not of *this* world”—he went on saying as before: did he really still have the right to speak that way?… Goethe claimed there were only thirty-six tragic situations: one can infer from this, if one did not already know it, that Goethe was no ascetic priest. The priest—knows more… [21] As regards this entire kind of priestly medication, the “guilty” kind, every word of criticism is one too many. That such an excess of feeling as the ascetic priest habitually prescribes for his sick in this case—under the holiest names, of course, and likewise imbued with the holiness of his purpose—has ever really *benefited* any sick person: who would care to uphold a claim of that kind? At the very least, we should agree on the word “benefit.” If it is meant to say that such a system of treatment has *improved* the human being, I do not object: except that I add what “improved” means to me—as much as “tamed,” “weakened,” “discouraged,” “refined,” “pampered,” “emasculated” (thus almost as much as *harmed*…). But where the people in question are chiefly sick, dejected, depressed, such a system makes the sick person *sicker* under all circumstances, even supposing it made him “better”; one need only ask psychiatrists what a systematic application of penitential torments, contrition, and convulsions of redemption invariably brings in its wake. Likewise, consult history: wherever the ascetic priest has imposed this treatment of the sick, sickness has spread in depth and breadth with uncanny speed every time. What was always the “result”? A shattered nervous system on top of whatever was already diseased; and this on the largest scale as on the smallest, in individuals as in masses. In the wake of training in penance and redemption we find enormous epileptic epidemics, the greatest known to history, such as those of the dancers of St. Vitus and St. John in the Middle Ages; as another form of its aftermath, we find terrible paralyses and lasting depressions, which can sometimes turn the temperament of a people or a city (Geneva, Basel) into its opposite once and for all;—witchcraft hysteria, something akin to sleepwalking, belongs here too (eight major epidemic outbreaks of it between 1564 and 1605 alone)—; in its wake we likewise find those death-hungry mass deliriums whose terrible cry, “Long live death,” was heard across all Europe, interrupted now by lustful, now by destructively frenzied idiosyncrasies: just as the same alternation of emotions, with the same intervals and abrupt reversals, is still observed everywhere today, whenever the ascetic doctrine of sin once again achieves a great success (religious neurosis *appears* as a form of the “falling sickness”: of that there is no doubt. What it *is*? That remains the question). On the whole, the ascetic ideal and its sublimely moral cult, this most ingenious, most unscrupulous, and most dangerous systematization of all the means of producing excesses of feeling under the protection of holy intentions, has inscribed itself upon the entire history of humanity in a terrible and unforgettable way; and unfortunately *not only* upon its history… I can scarcely name anything else that has done such destructive damage to *health* and racial vigor, particularly among Europeans, as this ideal; without any exaggeration, it may be called *the true calamity* in the history of human health in Europe. At most, the specifically Germanic influence might be placed alongside it: I mean the alcohol poisoning of Europe, which has so far kept strict pace with the political and racial predominance of the Germanic peoples—wherever they inoculated people with their blood, they inoculated them with their vice as well.—Third in the sequence would come syphilis—next, but a great distance behind. [22] The ascetic priest has ruined the health of the soul wherever he has so much as gained dominion; consequently he has also ruined *taste* in the arts and letters—and he is still ruining it. “Consequently”?—I hope I may simply be granted this consequence; at the very least, I do not intend to prove it first. A single indication: it concerns the foundational book of Christian literature, its true model, its “book in itself.” Still in the midst of Greco-Roman splendor, which was also a splendor of books, in the presence of an ancient world of writings not yet stunted and shattered, at a time when people could still read certain books for whose possession we would now trade away half of entire literatures, the simplemindedness and vanity of Christian agitators—they are called Church Fathers—already dared to decree: “We too have our classical literature; *we have no need of the Greeks’*”—and as they did so, they pointed proudly to books of legends, apostolic letters, and little apologetic tracts, much as the English “Salvation Army” today wages its war against Shakespeare and other “heathens” with a kindred literature. I do not love the “New Testament,” as will already have been guessed; it almost unsettles me to stand so alone in my taste regarding this most esteemed, most overesteemed piece of writing (the taste of two millennia is *against* me): but what of it! “Here I stand, I can do no other”—I have the courage of my bad taste. The *Old* Testament—yes, that is something altogether different: all respect to the Old Testament! In it I find great human beings, a heroic landscape, and something among the rarest things on earth, the incomparable naivete of the *strong* heart; more still, I find a people. In the New, by contrast, nothing but petty sectarian doings, nothing but rococo of the soul, nothing but curlicues, odd corners, eccentricities, nothing but the air of the conventicle, not forgetting an occasional breath of bucolic sweetness that belongs to the period (and to the Roman province) and is not so much Jewish as Hellenistic. Humility and self-importance cheek by jowl; a garrulousness of feeling that almost stupefies; impassionedness, no passion; an embarrassing display of gestures; plainly, all good breeding was lacking here. How can anyone make so much of his little failings as these pious little men do! Not a rooster crows over them, let alone God. In the end they even want “the crown of eternal life,” all these little people from the provinces: what for? in return for what? Immodesty cannot go any further. An “immortal” Peter: who could bear *him*! They have an ambition that makes one laugh: they chew over their most personal affairs, their stupidities, sorrows, and street-loafer worries, as though the in-itself of things were obliged to concern itself with them; they never tire of entangling God himself in the smallest misery they happen to be stuck in. And this constant first-name familiarity with God, in the worst of taste! This Jewish, and not merely Jewish, importunity toward God, with snout and paw!… There are small, despised “heathen peoples” in eastern Asia from whom these first Christians could have learned something essential, a little *tact* in reverence; as Christian missionaries attest, they do not permit themselves even to take the name of their god into their mouths. This strikes me as sufficiently delicate; what is certain is that it is too delicate not only for “first” Christians: to feel the contrast, one need only recall Luther, that “most eloquent” and most immodest peasant Germany has ever had, and the Lutheran tone he liked best in his own dialogues with God. Luther’s resistance to the Church’s mediating saints (especially to “the devil’s sow, the pope”) was, there can be no doubt, at bottom the resistance of a boor irritated by the Church’s *good etiquette*, that etiquette of reverence belonging to hieratic taste, which admits only the more consecrated and more silent into the holy of holies and shuts it against boors. Here, of all places, they are once and for all to have no say—but Luther the peasant absolutely wanted it otherwise; this was not *German* enough for him: above all, he wanted to speak directly, to speak himself, to speak “without embarrassment” to his God… Well, he did.—The ascetic ideal, as will readily be guessed, was never and nowhere a school of good taste, still less of good manners—at best it was a school of hieratic manners—: the reason is that it has something in its own body that is the mortal enemy of all good manners—a lack of measure, an aversion to measure; it is itself an “ultimate extreme.” [23] The ascetic ideal has ruined not only health and taste; it has ruined a third, fourth, fifth, sixth thing as well—I shall take care not to say *everything* it has ruined (when would I ever finish!). It is not what this ideal has *done* that I intend to bring to light here, but solely what it *means*, what it allows us to infer, what lies concealed behind it, beneath it, within it, what it provisionally and indistinctly expresses, laden with question marks and misunderstandings. And only with *this* end in view could I not spare my readers a glimpse of the enormity of its effects, its disastrous effects as well: namely, to prepare them for the final and most terrible aspect that the question of this ideal’s meaning has for me. What does the *power* of this ideal mean, the *enormity* of its power? Why has so much room been given to it? Why has it not been resisted more effectively? The ascetic ideal expresses a will: where is the opposing will in which an *opposing ideal* might find expression? The ascetic ideal has a *goal*—one broad enough that all the other interests of human existence seem petty and narrow when measured against it; it relentlessly interprets ages, peoples, human beings in terms of this one goal, permits no other interpretation, no other goal to count, rejects, denies, affirms, confirms only in the sense of *its* interpretation—and has there ever been a more thoroughly thought-out system of interpretation? It submits to no power; rather, it believes in its precedence over every power, in its absolute *distance of rank* from every power—it believes that there is no power on earth that does not first have to receive from it a meaning, a right to exist, a value, as a tool for *its* work, as a path and means to *its* goal, to one goal… Where is the *counterpart* to this closed system of will, goal, and interpretation? Why is the counterpart *missing*?… Where is the *other* “one goal”?… But I am told it is *not* missing, that it has not only waged a long and successful struggle against that ideal but has already mastered it in all essential matters: our whole modern *science* bears witness to this—that modern science which, as a genuine philosophy of reality, plainly believes in itself alone, plainly possesses the courage to be itself, the will to be itself, and has so far managed well enough without God, the beyond, and the virtues of denial. Yet such noise and agitators’ chatter achieve nothing with me: these trumpeters of reality are bad musicians, their voices quite audibly do *not* come from the depths, the abyss of scientific conscience does *not* speak through them—for scientific conscience today is an abyss—the word “science” in such trumpeters’ mouths is simply an obscenity, an abuse, a shamelessness. Precisely the opposite of what is claimed here is the truth: science today has absolutely *no* faith in itself, let alone an ideal above itself—and wherever it is still passion, love, ardor, *suffering* at all, it is not the opposite of that ascetic ideal but rather *its latest and noblest form* itself. Does that sound strange too?… There are, of course, plenty of decent and modest working people among today’s scholars, people who like their little corner and who, because they like it there, occasionally become a little immodest in loudly demanding that people *ought* to be content today, particularly in science—there is just so much useful work to be done there. I do not object; the last thing I would want is to spoil these honest workers’ pleasure in their craft: for I take pleasure in their work. But the fact that rigorous work is being done in science now, and that there are contented workers, *by no means* proves that science as a whole today has a goal, a will, an ideal, a passion born of a great faith. The opposite, as I said, is the case: wherever science is not the latest manifestation of the ascetic ideal—the cases in question are too rare, noble, and select to overturn the general judgment—it is today a *hiding place* for every kind of discontent, unbelief, gnawing worm, self-contempt, bad conscience—it is the very *unrest* of being without ideals, the suffering from a *lack* of great love, the dissatisfaction with an *involuntary* contentment. Oh, what does science not conceal today! How much, at least, is it *supposed* to conceal! The ability of our best scholars, their mindless industry, their heads smoking day and night, their very mastery of their craft—how often does all this have its real meaning in keeping something from becoming visible to themselves any longer! Science as a means of self-anesthesia: *do you know that?*… Anyone who deals with scholars learns this: sometimes a harmless word wounds them to the bone; one embitters one’s scholarly friends against oneself at the very moment one thinks one is honoring them, drives them out of all bounds merely because one was too coarse to guess whom one was really dealing with—with *sufferers* who will not admit to themselves what they are, with anesthetized and stupefied people who fear only one thing: *coming to consciousness*… [24] —And now consider, by contrast, those rarer cases I spoke of, the last idealists to be found among philosophers and scholars today: might we have in them the *opponents* of the ascetic ideal we are looking for, its *counter-idealists*? They do indeed *believe* themselves to be such, these “unbelievers”—for that is what they all are; being opponents of this ideal seems to be their last remaining article of faith, so earnest are they on this point, so passionate do their words and gestures become precisely here:—but need what they believe therefore be *true*?… We “knowers” have gradually grown suspicious of every kind of believer; our suspicion has gradually trained us to draw the opposite inference to the one formerly drawn: namely, wherever the strength of a belief thrusts itself conspicuously into the foreground, to infer a certain weakness in its demonstrability, even the *improbability* of what is believed. Nor do we deny that faith “brings blessedness”: *precisely for that reason* we deny that faith *proves* anything—a strong faith that brings blessedness casts suspicion on what it believes in; it establishes not “truth” but a certain probability—of *deception*. How do things stand in the present case?—These deniers and outsiders of today, these people unconditional in one thing, their demand for intellectual cleanliness, these hard, stern, abstinent, heroic spirits who constitute the honor of our age, all these pale atheists, anti-Christians, immoralists, nihilists, these skeptics, ephectics who withhold judgment, *hectics* of the spirit (consumptives, as they all are in some sense), these last idealists of knowledge in whom alone intellectual conscience dwells and has become flesh today—they do indeed believe themselves as free as possible of the ascetic ideal, these “free, *very* free spirits”: and yet, let me tell them what they cannot see for themselves—for they stand too close to themselves—this ideal is precisely *their* ideal too, they themselves embody it today, and perhaps no one else; they themselves are its most spiritualized offspring, its most advanced troop of warriors and scouts, its most insidious, delicate, elusive form of seduction:—if I am a solver of riddles in anything, let it be in *this* assertion. They are still a long way from being *free spirits*: *for they still believe in truth*… When the Christian Crusaders in the East encountered that invincible order of Assassins, that order of free spirits above all others, whose lowest ranks lived in an obedience no monastic order has ever matched, they somehow also received a hint of that symbol and watchword reserved for the highest ranks alone as their secret: “Nothing is true, everything is permitted”… Well, *that* was *freedom* of spirit; *with that*, belief in truth itself was *renounced*… Has any European, any Christian free spirit ever yet lost his way in this proposition and its labyrinthine *implications*? Does he know the Minotaur of this cavern *from experience*?… I doubt it; more than that, I know otherwise:—nothing is more foreign to these people who are unconditional in one thing, these *so-called* “free spirits,” than freedom and the casting off of fetters in that sense; in no respect are they more firmly bound, precisely in their belief in truth they are firm and unconditional as no one else is. Perhaps I know all this from too close at hand: that venerable philosophical abstinence to which such a faith commits one, that stoicism of the intellect which finally forbids itself to say No as strictly as Yes, that will to stop before the factual, the brute fact, that fatalism of “little facts” (that little factalism, as I call it), in which French science now seeks a kind of moral superiority over German science, that renunciation of interpretation altogether (of violating, adjusting, abbreviating, omitting, padding, inventing, falsifying, and whatever else belongs to the *essence* of all interpretation)—taken as a whole, this expresses an asceticism of virtue every bit as much as any denial of sensuality does (at bottom it is only a mode of that denial). But what *compels* it, that unconditional will to truth, is *faith in the ascetic ideal itself*, even if as its unconscious imperative; let there be no mistake about this—it is faith in a *metaphysical* value, a value *intrinsic to truth*, such as is guaranteed and certified in that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal). Strictly speaking, there is no science “without presuppositions”; the thought of such a thing cannot be thought through, is logically fallacious: a philosophy, a “faith,” must always be there first, so that science may draw from it a direction, a meaning, a limit, a method, a *right* to exist. (Anyone who understands it the other way around, anyone who sets out, for example, to place philosophy “on a strictly scientific foundation,” must first stand not only philosophy but truth itself *on their heads*: the worst breach of propriety imaginable toward two such venerable ladies!) Yes, there is no doubt—and here I let my “Gay Science” speak; see its fifth book, p. 263—“the truthful person, in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by faith in science, *thereby affirms another world* than that of life, nature, and history; and insofar as he affirms this ‘other world,’ what? Must he not thereby deny its counterpart, this world, our world?… It is still a *metaphysical faith* on which our faith in science rests—even we knowers of today, we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians, even we still take *our* fire from the blaze kindled by a faith thousands of years old, that Christian faith which was also Plato’s faith, that God is truth, that truth is *divine*… But what if precisely this becomes more and more unbelievable, if nothing proves to be divine any longer except error, blindness, the lie—if God himself proves to be our *longest lie*?”——At this point we need to stop and reflect at length. Science itself now *needs* a justification—which is not even to say that there is one for it. Consider the oldest and the newest philosophies with this question in mind: in all of them an awareness is missing of how far the will to truth itself first needs a justification; here there is a gap in every philosophy—where does it come from? Because the ascetic ideal has so far been *master* over all philosophy, because truth was posited as being, as God, as the highest authority itself, because truth was not *permitted* to be a problem at all. Is this “permitted” understood?—From the moment faith in the God of the ascetic ideal is denied, *there is also a new problem*: that of the *value* of truth.—The will to truth needs a critique—let us define our own task in these terms—the value of truth must, for once, be experimentally *called into question*… (Anyone who finds this too briefly stated is advised to reread the section of “The Gay Science” titled “To What Extent We Too Are Still Pious,” pp. 260 ff., preferably the entire fifth book of that work, and likewise the preface to “Dawn.”) [25] No! Do not come to me with science when I am looking for the natural antagonist of the ascetic ideal, when I ask: “Where is the opposing will in which its *opposing ideal* finds expression?” Science stands far too little on its own feet for that; in every respect it first needs an ideal of value, a value-creating power, in whose *service* it is *permitted to believe* in itself—it is never itself value-creating. Its relationship to the ascetic ideal is in itself by no means antagonistic; indeed, for the most part it represents rather the driving force in that ideal’s inner development. Examined more closely, its opposition and struggle do not concern the ideal itself at all, but only its outworks, its clothing, its masquerade, its temporary hardening, ossification, dogmatization—it frees the life in it again by denying what is exoteric in it. These two, science and the ascetic ideal, do indeed stand on the same ground—I have already suggested this—namely, on the same overestimation of truth (more precisely: on the same faith that truth *cannot* be valued, *cannot* be criticized); precisely in this they are *necessarily* allies—so that, if they are opposed, they can only ever be opposed and called into question together. An appraisal of the value of the ascetic ideal inevitably brings with it an appraisal of the value of science: sharpen your eyes and prick up your ears for this in good time! (*Art*, to say it in advance, for I shall return to this at length sometime—art, in which precisely the *lie* sanctifies itself, in which the *will to deceive* has a good conscience on its side, is far more fundamentally opposed to the ascetic ideal than science is: so Plato’s instinct felt, the instinct of the greatest enemy of art Europe has yet produced. Plato *against* Homer: that is the whole, the genuine antagonism—on one side the most well-intentioned “man of the beyond,” the great slanderer of life, on the other its involuntary deifier, the *golden* nature. An artist’s servitude in the service of the ascetic ideal is therefore the truest artist’s *corruption* there can be, unfortunately one of the very commonest: for nothing is more corruptible than an artist.) Even reckoned physiologically, science rests on the same ground as the ascetic ideal: a certain *impoverishment of life* is the prerequisite here as there—the emotions grown cool, the tempo slowed, dialectic in place of instinct, seriousness stamped on faces and gestures (seriousness, that most unmistakable sign of a more laborious metabolism, of struggling, harder-working life). Look at the periods in a people’s history when the scholar comes to the fore: they are periods of exhaustion, often of evening, of decline—overflowing strength, certainty of life, certainty of the *future* are gone. The predominance of the mandarin never means anything good: any more than the rise of democracy, of peace tribunals in place of wars, of equal rights for women, of the religion of pity, and whatever other symptoms there are of declining life. (Science conceived as a problem; what does science mean?—on this, see the preface to “The Birth of Tragedy.”)—No! This “modern science”—just open your eyes to it!—is for now the *best* ally of the ascetic ideal, precisely because it is the most unconscious, most involuntary, most concealed and subterranean one! They have so far played the same game, the “poor in spirit” and the scientific adversaries of that ideal (one should take care, incidentally, not to think they are their opposite, perhaps as the *rich* in spirit:—they are *not*; I called them hectics, consumptives of the spirit). These famous *victories* of the latter: unquestionably, they are victories—but over what? The ascetic ideal was by no means defeated in them; rather, it was made stronger, that is, more elusive, more spiritual, more insidious, as science repeatedly and mercilessly stripped away and demolished a wall, an outwork that had been built onto it and *coarsened* its appearance. Does anyone really think, for example, that the defeat of theological astronomy means the defeat of that ideal?… Has the human being perhaps become *less in need* of an otherworldly solution to the riddle of his existence because that existence has since come to look still more arbitrary, more like a street-corner idler, more dispensable in the *visible* order of things? Has not precisely humanity’s self-belittlement, its will to self-belittlement, progressed unstoppably since Copernicus? Alas, the faith in its dignity, uniqueness, irreplaceability in the hierarchy of beings is gone—it has become *animal*, animal without metaphor, qualification, or reservation, humanity, which in its earlier faith was almost God (“child of God,” “God-man”)… Since Copernicus the human being seems to have gotten onto a sloping plane—he now rolls faster and faster away from the center—where to? Into nothingness? Into the “*piercing* feeling of his nothingness”?… Well! Would this not be the straight road—into the *old* ideal?… *All* science (and by no means only astronomy, about whose humiliating and debasing effect Kant made the remarkable admission, “it annihilates my importance”…) all science, natural as well as *unnatural*—that is what I call the self-critique of knowledge—is today bent on talking humanity out of its former respect for itself, as though that respect had been nothing but a bizarre conceit; one might even say that it takes its own pride, its own austere form of stoic imperturbability, in sustaining this laboriously won human *self-contempt* as humanity’s last and most serious claim to self-respect (rightly so, in fact: for the despiser is still someone who “has not unlearned respect”…). Does this really *work against* the ascetic ideal? Does anyone still seriously believe (as the theologians imagined for a time) that Kant’s *victory* over the dogmatism of theological concepts (“God,” “soul,” “freedom,” “immortality”) has harmed that ideal?—for now it need not concern us whether Kant himself ever so much as intended anything of the kind. What is certain is that all kinds of transcendentalists have once again been playing a winning game since Kant—they are emancipated from the theologians: what good fortune!—he revealed to them that secret path along which they may now pursue the “wishes of their hearts” on their own initiative and with the very best scientific decorum. Likewise: who could now hold it against the agnostics if, as worshippers of the unknown and mysterious in itself, they now worship the *question mark itself* as God? (Xaver Doudan speaks somewhere of the havoc wrought by “the habit of *admiring* the unintelligible instead of simply remaining in the unknown”; he thinks the ancients did without it.) Supposing everything humanity “knows” fails to satisfy its wishes, indeed contradicts those wishes and makes humanity shudder: what a divine escape, to be allowed to seek the fault not in “wishing” but in “knowing”!… “There is no knowledge: *consequently*—there is a God”: what a new elegance of syllogism! What a *triumph* of the ascetic ideal!— [26] —Or has the whole of modern historiography perhaps shown a stance more certain of life, more certain of its ideal? Its noblest ambition now is to be a *mirror*; it rejects all teleology; it no longer wants to “prove” anything; it disdains playing the judge, and in this shows its good taste—it affirms as little as it denies, it establishes facts, it “describes”… All this is ascetic to a high degree; but at the same time, to a still higher degree, it is *nihilistic*, let there be no mistake about that! One sees a sad, hard, but resolute gaze—an eye that *looks outward*, as a lonely explorer at the North Pole looks outward (perhaps so as not to look inward? so as not to look back?…). Here there is snow, here life has fallen silent; the last crows to make themselves heard here are called “What for?,” “In vain!,” “Nothing!”—here nothing thrives or grows any longer, at most Petersburg metapolitics and Tolstoyan “pity.” But as for that other kind of historian, a perhaps still more “modern” kind, a savoring, voluptuous kind that makes eyes at life quite as much as at the ascetic ideal, that uses the word “artist” as a glove and has now taken an exclusive lease on the praise of contemplation: oh, what a thirst these sugary wits awaken even for ascetics and winter landscapes! No! Let the devil take these “contemplative” people! How much rather would I wander with those historical nihilists through the darkest gray, cold fogs!—Yes, if I must choose, I would not even mind lending an ear to someone thoroughly unhistorical and anti-historical (like that Dühring, whose tones intoxicate a hitherto timid and still unavowed species of “beautiful souls” in today’s Germany, the anarchistic species within the educated proletariat). The “contemplatives” are a hundred times worse—I know nothing that provokes such disgust as an “objective” armchair of this sort, such a perfumed voluptuary before history, half priest, half satyr, Renan perfume, whose very high falsetto of applause betrays what he lacks, where he lacks it, where in this case the Fate wielded her cruel scissors, alas! all too surgically! This offends my taste, and my patience too: let anyone with nothing to lose by his patience keep it at such sights—I am enraged by such a sight, such “spectators” embitter me against the “spectacle” more than the spectacle itself does (history itself, you understand); unexpectedly, Anacreontic moods come over me. This nature that gave the bull its horn, the lion its *gaping maw of teeth*—what did nature give me a foot for?… For kicking, by holy Anacreon! And not merely for running away: for kicking to pieces the rotten armchairs, the cowardly contemplativeness, the lustful eunuchdom before history, the flirtation with ascetic ideals, impotence’s Tartuffe-like pretense of justice! All my reverence to the ascetic ideal, *insofar as it is honest*! So long as it believes in itself and plays no tricks on us! But I do not like all these coquettish bedbugs, whose ambition to smell of the infinite is insatiable, until at last the infinite smells of bedbugs; I do not like the whitewashed tombs that act out life; I do not like the tired and used-up who wrap themselves in wisdom and look “objective”; I do not like the agitators dressed up as heroes, who wear a cap of invisibility made of ideal around the bundle of straw they have for a head; I do not like the ambitious artists who would like to pass for ascetics and priests and are at bottom only tragic buffoons; nor do I like them, these latest speculators in idealism, the antisemites, who today roll their eyes in Christian-Aryan-respectable fashion and try to rouse all the horned-cattle elements of the people by an abuse, exhausting every patience, of the cheapest means of agitation, the moral attitude—the fact that *every* kind of fraudulent spirit-mongering in today’s Germany meets with some success is connected with the now undeniable and already palpable *desolation* of the German spirit, whose cause I seek in an all-too-exclusive diet of newspapers, politics, beer, and Wagnerian music, together with the prerequisites of this diet: first, national constriction and vanity, the strong but narrow principle “Germany, Germany above everything,” and then the shaking palsy of “modern ideas.” Europe today is rich and inventive above all in stimulants; it seems to need nothing more than stimulants and distilled spirits: hence the enormous counterfeiting of ideals, those most highly distilled spirits of the mind, hence also the repellent, foul-smelling, lying, pseudo-alcoholic air everywhere. I should like to know how many shiploads of imitation idealism, of heroic costumes and the clattering tin of grand words, how many tons of sugared, spirituous sympathy (trading as: the religion of suffering), how many stilts of “noble indignation” to assist the spiritually flat-footed, how many *playactors* of the Christian-moral ideal would have to be exported from Europe today to make its air smell cleaner again… Clearly this overproduction opens up a new *trading* opportunity; clearly a new “business” can be made of little idol-ideals and their attendant “idealists”—do not miss this hint the size of a fence post! Who has courage enough for it?—It is in our *hands* to “idealize” the whole earth!… But why am I speaking of courage: only one thing is needed here, the hand itself, an uninhibited, a very uninhibited hand… [27] —Enough! Enough! Let us leave these curiosities and complexities of the most modern spirit, which offer as much to laugh at as to resent: precisely *our* problem can do without them, the problem of the *meaning* of the ascetic ideal—what has it to do with yesterday and today! I shall deal with those things more thoroughly and more harshly in another context (under the title “Toward a History of European Nihilism”; for this I refer to a work I am preparing: *The Will to Power*, Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values). All I care to have pointed out here is this: even in the most spiritual sphere, the ascetic ideal still has, for now, only one kind of real enemy and *underminer*: the playactors of this ideal—for they arouse mistrust. Everywhere else where the spirit is at work today, rigorously, powerfully, and without counterfeiting, it now dispenses with the ideal altogether—the popular expression for this abstinence is “atheism”—*apart from its will to truth*. But this will, this *remnant* of an ideal, is, if I may be believed, that ideal itself in its strictest, most spiritual formulation, wholly esoteric, stripped of all outworks, and thus not so much its remnant as its *core*. Unconditional, honest atheism—and it is *its* air alone that we breathe, we more spiritual people of this age!—accordingly does *not* stand opposed to that ideal, as it appears to; rather, it is only one of its final phases of development, one of its concluding forms and inner consequences—it is the awe-inspiring *catastrophe* of two thousand years of training in truthfulness, which in the end forbids itself the *lie involved in belief in God*. (The same course of development in India, in complete independence, and therefore proving something; the same ideal compelling the same conclusion; the decisive point reached five centuries before the European era, with Buddha, more precisely: already with Sankhyam philosophy, then popularized by Buddha and made into a religion.) What, asked in all strictness, has actually *triumphed* over the Christian God? The answer is in my “Gay Science,” p. 290: “Christian morality itself, the concept of truthfulness taken ever more strictly, the confessor-like refinement of the Christian conscience, translated and sublimated into scientific conscience, into intellectual cleanliness at any price. To look at nature as though it were proof of a god’s goodness and care; to interpret history in honor of a divine reason, as a continual testimony to a moral world order and ultimate moral purposes; to interpret one’s own experiences as pious people interpreted them long enough, as though everything were providence, everything a sign, everything devised and sent for the sake of the soul’s salvation: that is now *over*, that has conscience *against* it, that all finer consciences regard as improper, dishonest, as lying, effeminacy, weakness, cowardice—with this strictness, if with anything, we are indeed *good Europeans* and heirs to Europe’s longest and bravest self-overcoming”… All great things perish through themselves, through an act of self-abolition: so wills the law of life, the law of *necessary* “self-overcoming” in the essence of life—in the end the call always goes out to the lawgiver himself: “Submit to the law you yourself have enacted.” In this way Christianity *as dogma* perished through its own morality; in this way Christianity *as morality* must now perish too—we stand at the threshold of this event. After Christian truthfulness has drawn one conclusion after another, it finally draws its *strongest conclusion*, its conclusion *against* itself; but this happens when it asks the question “*What does all will to truth mean?*”… And here I touch again on my problem, on our problem, my *unknown* friends—for as yet I *know* of no friend: what meaning would *our* whole being have if not that in us this will to truth had become conscious of itself *as a problem*?… Through this will to truth becoming conscious of itself, morality from now on—there can be no doubt—*perishes*: that great spectacle in a hundred acts reserved for Europe’s next two centuries, the most terrible, most questionable, and perhaps also most hopeful of all spectacles… [28] Apart from the ascetic ideal, the human being, the human *animal*, has had no meaning so far. His existence on earth contained no goal; “What is humanity for at all?” was a question without an answer; the *will* for humanity and earth was lacking; behind every great human destiny a still greater “In vain!” sounded as a refrain. That is precisely what the ascetic ideal means: that something was *missing*, that an immense *gap* surrounded humanity—it did not know how to justify itself, explain itself, affirm itself; it suffered from the problem of its meaning. It suffered in other ways too; it was chiefly a *sickly* animal: but its problem was *not* suffering itself, but the lack of an answer to the cry of the question “*To what end* do we suffer?” The human being, the bravest animal and the most accustomed to suffering, does *not* reject suffering in itself: he *wants* it, he even seeks it out, provided he is shown a *meaning* for it, a *purpose* for suffering. The meaninglessness of suffering, *not* suffering, was the curse that had lain over humanity until now—*and the ascetic ideal offered it a meaning!* So far it was the only meaning; any meaning is better than none at all; in every respect the ascetic ideal was the supreme “*for want of anything better*” there had yet been. In it, suffering was *interpreted*; the immense void seemed filled; the door closed against all suicidal nihilism. The interpretation—there is no doubt—brought new suffering with it, deeper, more inward, more poisonous, more corrosive of life: it brought all suffering under the perspective of *guilt*… But despite it all—the human being was thereby *saved*, he had a meaning, he was henceforth no longer like a leaf in the wind, a plaything of nonsense, of “no-sense”; he could now *will* something—no matter, for the moment, in what direction, to what end, with what he willed: *the will itself was saved.* There is simply no concealing what all that willing which received its direction from the ascetic ideal actually expresses: this hatred of the human, still more of the animal, still more of the material, this horror of the senses, of reason itself, this fear of happiness and beauty, this longing to escape from all appearance, change, becoming, death, wish, longing itself—all this means, let us dare to grasp it, a *will to nothingness*, an aversion to life, a rebellion against life’s most fundamental presuppositions, but it is and remains a will!… And, to say again in conclusion what I said at the beginning: humanity would rather will *nothingness* than *not* will… ## Translation — Mouseia > Complete machine-assisted Plain English translation made independently and directly from the same German text, with the same scope, numbering and emphasis. ### Preface On the *Genealogy of Morals.* A Polemic by *Friedrich Nietzsche.* Added to the most recently published “*Beyond Good and Evil*” to supplement and clarify it. Preface. [1] We who know are unknown to ourselves. We ourselves do not know ourselves, and for good reason. We have never looked for ourselves—how could we ever *find* ourselves one day? Someone rightly said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart is too.” *Our* treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge stand. We are always on our way there, born winged creatures and gatherers of the mind’s honey. At heart we really care about only one thing: “bringing something home.” As for the rest of life, the so-called “experiences”—who among us even takes them seriously enough? Or has enough time for them? In such matters, I’m afraid, we have never really “paid attention.” Our hearts simply aren’t there—and neither are our ears! Think of someone divinely distracted and absorbed in himself. A bell has just thundered its twelve midday strokes into his ear at full force. Suddenly he wakes up and asks, “What hour did it actually strike?” In the same way, we too sometimes rub our ears *afterward*. Completely amazed and embarrassed, we ask, “What did we actually experience just now? More than that: who are we, really?” And afterward, as I said, we count back over all twelve trembling bell strokes of our experience, our life, our being—ah, and we miscount … We necessarily remain strangers to ourselves. We don’t understand ourselves; we *have to* mistake ourselves for something else. For us, the saying holds for all eternity: “Everyone is farthest from themselves.” When it comes to ourselves, we are not “people who know” … [2] —My thoughts about the *origin* of our moral prejudices—for that is what this polemic deals with—first received a brief, tentative expression in the collection of aphorisms called “Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits.” I began writing it in Sorrento, during a winter that let me stop, as a traveler stops, and look over the wide and dangerous country my mind had traveled through up to then. This was in the winter of 1876–77; the thoughts themselves are older. In the main, they were already the same thoughts I take up again in these essays. Let’s hope the long time in between has done them good, that they have become riper, clearer, stronger, more complete! I still hold to them today. Meanwhile, they have held ever more firmly to one another; in fact, they have grown into one another and grown together. This strengthens my happy confidence that they did not arise in me from the start as separate, random, scattered thoughts. Instead, they grew from a common root, from an *underlying will* to know that commands from deep within, speaks ever more clearly, and demands ever more definite things. That alone is fitting for a philosopher. We have no right to be *isolated* in anything. We must not make mistakes in isolation or arrive at the truth in isolation. Instead, our thoughts, our values, our yeses and nos, our ifs and our questions of whether grow out of us as inevitably as a tree bears its fruit. They are all related and connected to one another, and all testify to one will, one state of health, one soil, one sun.—Do *you* like the taste of these fruits of ours? But what do the trees care! What do *we* care, we philosophers! … [3] I have a skeptical streak of my own that I don’t like to admit. It concerns *morality*, everything that has so far been celebrated as morality on earth. It appeared so early in my life, so uninvited, so unstoppable, and so much at odds with my surroundings, age, examples, and background that I would almost have the right to call it my “a priori.” Because of it, both my curiosity and my suspicion had to settle early on the question of *where* our good and evil actually came from. In fact, the problem of the origin of evil was already haunting me as a thirteen-year-old boy. At an age when “your heart is half full of children’s games, half of God,” I devoted my first childish literary game, my first practice piece of philosophical writing, to it. As for my “solution” to the problem back then—well, as was only fair, I gave God the credit and made him the *father* of evil. Was this just what my “a priori” wanted from me? That new, immoral—or at least morality-rejecting—“a priori,” and the mysterious “categorical imperative” speaking through it, oh, so very anti-Kantian! Have I not since listened to it more and more—and done more than listen? … Luckily, I learned early to separate theological prejudice from moral prejudice, and I stopped looking for the origin of evil *behind* the world. Some training in history and the study of language and texts, along with an inborn selectiveness about psychological questions in general, soon turned my problem into a different one. Under what conditions did human beings invent those value judgments, good and evil, for themselves? *And what value do these judgments themselves have?* Have they held back human flourishing so far, or helped it along? Are they a sign of distress, impoverishment, degeneration of life? Or do they instead reveal life’s fullness, strength, and will, its courage, confidence, and future? I found and ventured all sorts of answers for myself. I distinguished between periods, peoples, and ranks among individuals. I broke my problem down into more specific questions. The answers led to new questions, investigations, guesses, probabilities. Finally, I had a country of my own, a ground of my own, a whole silent, growing, flowering world, like secret gardens whose existence no one was allowed to suspect … Oh, how *happy* we who know are, as long as we know how to stay silent long enough! … [4] My first push to make some of my hypotheses about the origin of morality public came from a clear, neat, clever little book, with a precocious air of wisdom too. In it, I first clearly encountered a backward, perverse kind of hypothesis about origins: the specifically *English* kind. It attracted me with the attraction that everything opposite, everything at the other pole, has. The little book’s title was “The Origin of Moral Feelings”; its author was Dr. Paul Rée; it was published in 1877. Perhaps I have never read anything to which I inwardly said no so completely, sentence by sentence, conclusion by conclusion, as I did to this book. Yet I felt no annoyance or impatience at all. In the work mentioned earlier, which I was writing at the time, I referred to that book’s claims both when the occasion called for it and when it didn’t. I did not refute them—what do refutations have to do with me! Instead, as someone with a constructive mind should, I replaced what was unlikely with what was more likely, sometimes replacing one error with another. As I said, that was when I first brought to light the hypotheses about origins to which these essays are devoted. I did so clumsily—I would be the last to hide that from myself—still constrained, still without a language of my own for these things of my own, and with many relapses and waverings. For specifics, compare what I say in “Human, All Too Human,” p. 51 about the twofold prehistory of good and evil, namely in the world of the nobles and in that of the slaves. Likewise, pp. 119 ff. on the value and origin of ascetic morality. Likewise, pp. 78, 82, and II, 35 on the “morality of custom,” that much older and more original kind of morality. It is a whole world apart from the altruistic way of assigning value, which Dr. Rée, like all English genealogists of morality, sees as the moral way of assigning value *as such*. Likewise, p. 74; “The Wanderer,” p. 29; “Daybreak,” p. 99 on the origin of justice as a settlement between people of roughly equal power. A balance of power is the precondition of all agreements and therefore of all law. Likewise, on the origin of punishment, “The Wanderer,” pp. 25, 34. The purpose of terrorizing is neither essential nor original to punishment, contrary to what Dr. Rée thinks. Instead, this purpose was only attached to it later, under certain circumstances, and always as something incidental, something added on. [5] At bottom, even then, something much more important was close to my heart than my own or anyone else’s hypotheses about the origin of morality. More precisely, I cared about those hypotheses only for the sake of a goal for which they are one means among many. What mattered to me was the *value* of morality. On that question, I had to argue almost entirely with my great teacher Schopenhauer. That book addresses him as if he were present; so do its passion and its secret opposition—for that book too was a “polemic.” What mattered in particular was the value of the “unselfish,” of the instincts of pity, self-denial, and self-sacrifice. Schopenhauer in particular had gilded them, made them divine, and placed them in a world beyond this one for so long that they finally remained for him as the “values in themselves.” On their basis, he *said* no to life and to himself as well. But a suspicion that increasingly challenged their very basis, a skepticism that dug ever deeper, spoke out through me against precisely *these* instincts! This was exactly where I saw humanity’s *great danger*, its most sublime temptation and seduction—but to where? Into nothingness? This was exactly where I saw the beginning of the end: coming to a standstill, weariness looking backward, the will turning *against* life, the final illness announcing itself tenderly and sadly. The morality of pity was spreading more and more, even seizing philosophers and making them sick. I understood it as the most disturbing symptom of our European culture, which had become disturbing itself. Was it that culture’s roundabout route to a new Buddhism? To a European Buddhism? To—nihilism? … This preference and overvaluation of pity among modern philosophers is something new. Until now, philosophers had agreed precisely on pity’s *worthlessness*. I’ll name only Plato, Spinoza, La Rochefoucauld, and Kant: four minds as different from one another as possible, but united on one thing—their low opinion of pity.— [6] This problem of the *value* of pity and the morality of pity—I oppose the shameful sentimental softness of modern times—at first seems to be just an isolated issue, a question mark on its own. But once someone gets stuck here and *learns* to ask questions here, they will have the same experience I did. An immense new view opens up. A possibility seizes them like a dizzy spell. Every kind of distrust, suspicion, and fear springs out. Belief in morality, in all morality, shakes. Finally, a new demand makes itself heard. Let’s state this *new demand*: we need a *critique* of moral values; *the value of these values must itself first be called into question*. To do that, we need to know the conditions and circumstances from which they grew, under which they developed and shifted. Morality can be a result, a symptom, a mask, pious hypocrisy, a disease, a misunderstanding. But it can also be a cause, a remedy, a stimulant, a restraint, a poison. This kind of knowledge has never existed before, or even been desired. People took the value of these “values” as given, as a fact, as beyond all questioning. Until now, they have not had the slightest doubt or hesitation about assigning a higher value to “the good person” than to “the evil person.” Higher, that is, in terms of helping, benefiting, and promoting the flourishing of *human beings* in general, including their future. What if the truth were the other way around? What if “the good person” also contained a sign of decline, as well as a danger, a temptation, a poison, a narcotic, through which the present might live *at the expense of the future*? Perhaps more comfortably, less dangerously, but also on a smaller scale, at a lower level? … So that morality itself would be to blame if the human type never achieved the *greatest power and splendor* it was otherwise capable of? So that morality itself would be the danger of dangers? … [7] Enough to say that once this view opened up to me, I had reason to look around for learned, bold, hardworking companions. I still do. We need to travel through the immense, distant, well-hidden country of morality—the morality that actually existed, that people actually lived—with entirely new questions and, so to speak, new eyes. And doesn’t that almost amount to *discovering* this country for the first time? … If, among others, I also thought of the Dr. Rée mentioned above, it was because I had no doubt that the nature of his own questions would push him toward a more correct method of reaching answers. Was I mistaken about that? In any case, I wanted to turn such a sharp, detached eye in a better direction—toward the real *history of morality*—and to warn him in time against that sort of English *blue-sky* speculation. It is obvious what color must matter a hundred times more to a genealogist of morality than blue: *gray*. I mean documented evidence, what can actually be established, what actually existed—in short, the whole long, hard-to-decipher hieroglyphic writing of humanity’s moral past! *This* was unknown to Dr. Rée. But he had read Darwin. And so, in his hypotheses, Darwin’s beast and the most up-to-date, modest moral softie, who “no longer bites,” politely shake hands in a way that is entertaining, at the very least. The latter has a certain good-natured, refined laziness on his face, mixed with even a grain of pessimism and weariness. It is as if taking all these things—the problems of morality—so seriously were really not worth the trouble. To me, on the contrary, nothing seems more *worth* taking seriously. One reward for doing so is that one day we may get permission to take these things *cheerfully*. Cheerfulness—or, to put it in my language, *joyful science*—is a reward. It is a reward for a long, brave, hardworking seriousness, working underground, which admittedly is not for everyone. But on the day when we say with all our hearts, “Forward! Our old morality belongs in *the comedy* too!” we will have discovered a new complication and possibility for the Dionysian drama of the “fate of the soul.” And he will certainly make use of it—you can bet on that—he, the great, old, eternal writer of the comedy of our existence! … [8] —If anyone can’t understand this work and finds that it grates on their ears, I don’t think the fault necessarily lies with me. It is clear enough, provided, as I assumed, that the reader has first read my earlier writings and put some effort into doing so. They really aren’t easy to get into. Take my “Zarathustra,” for example. I will not accept anyone as knowing it unless every one of its words has, at some time, wounded them deeply and, at some time, delighted them deeply. Only then may they enjoy the privilege of sharing, with reverence, in the calm, peaceful element from which that work was born—in its sunny brightness, distance, breadth, and certainty. In other cases, the aphoristic form causes difficulty. The problem is that people today do *not take this form seriously enough*. An aphorism that has been properly stamped and cast has not been “deciphered” just because it has been read. Instead, that is when its *interpretation* must begin, and that requires an art of interpretation. In the third essay of this book, I have given an example of what I call “interpretation” in such a case. An aphorism is placed at the beginning of that essay; the essay itself is its commentary. To practice reading as an *art* in this way, one thing above all is needed. It is precisely what people today have most thoroughly unlearned, which is why it will still be a while before my writings become “readable.” To do it, you almost have to be a cow, and certainly *not* a “modern human being”: *chewing the cud* … *Sils-Maria*, Oberengadin, in July 1887. ### Essay I First Essay: Good and Evil, Good and Bad. [1] These English psychologists, whom we also have to thank for the only attempts so far to write a history of how morality arose, are quite a puzzle themselves. I admit that, as puzzles in the flesh, they even have an important advantage over their books—*they themselves are interesting!* What do these English psychologists really want? Willingly or not, we always find them doing the same work: pushing the shameful side of our inner world into the foreground. They look for what really works, guides us, and determines our development precisely where human intellectual pride would least *want* to find it—for example, in the inertia of habit, in forgetfulness, in a blind and accidental tangling and mechanical linking of ideas, or in something purely passive, automatic, reflexive, molecular, and thoroughly stupid. What keeps driving these psychologists in *this* particular direction? Is it a secret, spiteful, petty instinct to belittle human beings, an instinct they may not admit even to themselves? Or is it a pessimistic suspicion, the distrust of disappointed idealists who have grown gloomy, poisonous, and green with bitterness? Or a small underground hostility and grudge against Christianity (and Plato), which may not even have crossed the threshold of consciousness? Or perhaps a lustful taste for what is strange, painfully paradoxical, questionable, and senseless in existence? Or finally—a bit of everything: a little pettiness, a little gloom, a little hostility to Christianity, a little craving for a tickle and some spice? … But people tell me they are simply old, cold, boring frogs, crawling and hopping around on human beings and into them, as if they were entirely in their element there—in a *swamp*. I resist this description when I hear it; more than that, I don't believe it. And if we may wish where we cannot know, I sincerely wish the opposite were true of them. I wish these researchers and microscopists of the soul were fundamentally brave, generous, proud animals who know how to keep both their hearts and their pain in check. I wish they had trained themselves to sacrifice everything they might wish for to the truth, to *every* truth, even the plain, harsh, ugly, repellent, unchristian, immoral truth … Because such truths exist. [2] So all respect to whatever good spirits may be at work in these historians of morality! Unfortunately, one thing is certain: they lack the *historical spirit* itself. All the good spirits of history have abandoned them! Like philosophers traditionally do, they all think in an *essentially* unhistorical way. There is no doubt about that. Their botched genealogy of morality shows itself right at the start, when they try to establish where the concept and judgment “good” came from. “Originally,” they decree, “unselfish actions were praised and called good by those who received them, those to whom they were *useful*. Later, people *forgot* where this praise came from. Because unselfish actions had *habitually* always been praised as good, people also came to feel that they were good—as if they were good in themselves.” We can see at once that this first explanation already contains all the typical quirks of English psychologists. Here we have “usefulness,” “forgetting,” “habit,” and finally “error,” all serving as the basis for a way of valuing things that higher human beings have so far taken pride in, as a kind of privilege of humanity itself. This pride is *supposed* to be humbled, this valuation devalued. Has that been achieved? … First, it seems obvious to me that this theory looks for and locates the actual birthplace of the concept “good” in the wrong place. The judgment “good” did *not* originate with those to whom “goodness” was shown! Instead, it was “the good” themselves—the noble, powerful, highly placed, and high-minded—who felt and decided that they and their actions were good, meaning first-rate. They set themselves against everything low, low-minded, common, and vulgar. Their *feeling of rank and distance* was what first led them to claim the right to create values and coin names for them. What did they care about usefulness! The viewpoint of usefulness could hardly be more foreign or inappropriate to this hot outpouring of supreme value judgments that establish and distinguish ranks. Here feeling has reached the opposite of that low temperature required by all calculating prudence, all calculations of usefulness—not just once, not for an exceptional hour, but permanently. As I said, the feeling of nobility and distance, the lasting, dominant, basic and overall feeling that a higher ruling kind has toward a lower kind, toward a “below”—*that* is where the contrast between “good” and “bad” comes from. (The rulers' right to give names goes so far that we should allow ourselves to see the origin of language itself as an expression of the rulers' power. They say, “This *is* such and such.” They stamp every thing and event with a sound and in doing so take possession of it, as it were.) Because of this origin, the word “good” is certainly *not* necessarily attached to “unselfish” actions from the start, as those genealogists of morality superstitiously believe. Only when aristocratic value judgments *decline* does the whole contrast between “selfish” and “unselfish” force itself more and more on the human conscience. In my terms, it is the *herd instinct* that finally finds a voice—and words—in this contrast. Even then, it takes a long time before this instinct becomes so dominant that moral valuation gets caught and stuck in that contrast. This is the case in Europe today, for example. The prejudice that treats “moral,” “unselfish,” and “disinterested” as equivalent concepts now rules with the force of an “obsession,” a disease of the mind. [3] But second, quite apart from being historically indefensible, that hypothesis about the origin of the value judgment “good” contains a psychological absurdity. The usefulness of an unselfish action is supposed to be the source of the praise it receives, and that source is supposed to have been *forgotten*. How is such forgetting even *possible*? Did the usefulness of such actions ever stop? Quite the opposite. Their usefulness has been an everyday experience in every age, something constantly being underlined all over again. So instead of disappearing from consciousness, instead of becoming forgettable, it must have impressed itself on consciousness with increasing clarity. How much more reasonable is the opposite theory, upheld by Herbert Spencer, for example—though that doesn't make it any truer. He takes “good” to mean essentially the same thing as “useful” or “fit for a purpose.” On this account, in the judgments “good” and “bad,” humanity has summed up and endorsed its *unforgotten and unforgettable* experiences of what is useful and suited to a purpose, and what is harmful and unsuited to a purpose. According to this theory, what has always proved useful is good. It can therefore claim recognition as “valuable to the highest degree,” as “valuable in itself.” As I said, this explanation is wrong too. But at least the explanation itself is internally reasonable and psychologically defensible. [4] What pointed me toward the *right* path was asking what the names for “good” coined in different languages actually mean in terms of their word origins. I found that they all lead back to the *same change in concepts*. Everywhere, “noble” and “aristocratic” in the social sense are the basic concept from which “good,” meaning “noble in soul,” “aristocratic” in the sense of “having a high-quality soul,” “privileged in soul,” necessarily develops. This development always runs alongside another: “common,” “vulgar,” and “low” finally become the concept “bad.” The clearest example of the latter is the German word “schlecht” itself. It is identical with “schlicht”—compare “schlechtweg” and “schlechterdings”—and originally meant the plain, common man, without any suspicious sidelong glance, simply in contrast to the noble man. Around the time of the Thirty Years' War, quite late, then, this meaning shifted to the one now in use. This seems to me an *essential* insight for the genealogy of morality. It was discovered so late because democratic prejudice has a restraining influence in the modern world on every question of origins. That influence reaches even into the apparently most objective fields of natural science and physiology, as I will only suggest here. But the notorious case of Buckle shows what damage this prejudice can do, especially to morality and history, once it is unleashed as hatred. Here the *plebeian character* of the modern mind, which is English in origin, erupted once again on its native soil, as violently as a muddy volcano, and with the over-seasoned, over-loud, vulgar eloquence with which all volcanoes have spoken so far. [5] For *our* problem, which can be called a *quiet* problem for good reasons and speaks selectively to only a few ears, one finding is of considerable interest. In many of the words and roots that mean “good,” we can still glimpse the main quality that made the nobles feel they were people of higher rank. Perhaps most often they name themselves simply after their greater power—as “the powerful,” “the masters,” “the commanders”—or after its most visible sign, for example as “the rich,” “the owners.” That is the meaning of arya, with corresponding meanings in Iranian and Slavic. But they also name themselves after a *typical character trait*, and that is the case that concerns us here. For example, they call themselves “the truthful.” The Greek nobility leads the way here, with the poet Theognis of Megara as its spokesman. The word coined for this, *ἐσθλός*, at its root means someone who is, who has reality, who is real, who is true. Then, with a turn toward the person, it means the true person as the truthful person. At this stage in the change of concepts it becomes the nobility's slogan and catchword, and takes on the full meaning “aristocratic.” It marks them off from the *lying* common man as Theognis sees and describes him. Finally, after the decline of the nobility, the word remains as a name for nobility of soul, becoming ripe and sweet, so to speak. In *κακός*, as in *δειλός*—the commoner as opposed to the *ἀγαθός*—cowardice is emphasized. This may suggest where to look for the word origin of *ἀγαθός*, which allows several interpretations. In the Latin malus, which I place alongside *μέλας*, the common man might have been identified as the dark-colored man, above all as the black-haired man (“this man is black”), the pre-Aryan inhabitant of Italian soil. His color most clearly distinguished him from the blond—namely Aryan—conquering race that had become the rulers. At least Gaelic gave me an exactly corresponding case: fin, for example in the name Fin-Gal, is the word marking out the nobility. Eventually it meant the good, noble, pure person; originally it meant the blond head, as opposed to the dark, black-haired original inhabitants. The Celts, incidentally, were a thoroughly blond race. It is a mistake to connect those stretches of mostly dark-haired people that stand out on more careful ethnographic maps of Germany with any Celtic origins or mixing of blood, as Virchow still does. Instead, the *pre-Aryan* population of Germany reappears in these places. (The same is true of almost all Europe. Essentially, the conquered race has finally regained the upper hand there—in color, in the shortness of the skull, perhaps even in intellectual and social instincts. Who can guarantee that modern democracy, still more modern anarchism, and especially that leaning toward the “commune,” the most primitive form of society, now shared by all Europe's socialists, do not mainly signify an enormous *throwback*—and that the conquering, ruling race, the Aryans, is not losing out physiologically as well? …) I believe I can interpret the Latin bonus as “the warrior,” assuming I am right to trace bonus back to an older duonus. Compare bellum = duellum = duen-lum, in which that duonus seems to me to have survived. So bonus means a man of conflict, of division (duo), a man of war. We can see what made up a man's “goodness” in ancient Rome. And our German “gut” itself—might it not mean “the divine one,” the man “of divine descent”? And might it not be identical with the name of the Goths as a people—originally as a nobility? The reasons for this guess do not belong here. [6] If the highest caste is also the *priestly* caste, this does not yet break the rule that political superiority always develops into superiority of soul, though it does give rise to exceptions. Such a caste will naturally prefer a name for itself that recalls its priestly function. Here, for example, “pure” and “impure” first stand opposed as signs of social rank. Here too, “good” and “bad” later develop in a sense no longer tied to rank. But we should be warned against giving these concepts “pure” and “impure” too much weight, too wide a scope, or even a symbolic meaning from the start. All the concepts of early humanity were originally understood in ways we can scarcely imagine: crude, clumsy, outward, narrow, direct, and especially *not symbolic*. At first, the “pure” man is simply someone who washes, who forbids himself certain foods that cause skin diseases, who does not sleep with the dirty women of the lower classes, who is disgusted by blood—nothing more, not much more! On the other hand, the whole character of an essentially priestly aristocracy makes it clear why contrasts in valuation could become internal and sharpen dangerously at such an early stage here. In fact, they eventually tore open gulfs between people that even an Achilles of free thinking could not leap across without shuddering. From the beginning there is something *unhealthy* in these priestly aristocracies and in their prevailing habits, which turn away from action and alternate between brooding and emotional explosions. These habits seem to result in the intestinal sickness and nervous exhaustion that almost inevitably cling to priests of every age. But the remedies they themselves invented for their sickness—mustn't we say that their aftereffects have ultimately proved a hundred times more dangerous than the disease they were supposed to cure? Humanity itself still suffers from the aftereffects of these naive priestly cures! Think, for example, of certain diets (avoiding meat), fasting, sexual abstinence, and flight “into the desert”—isolation in the manner of Weir Mitchell, though without the subsequent fattening treatment and overfeeding, which are the most effective remedy for all the hysteria of the ascetic ideal. Add the priests' whole metaphysics, which is hostile to the senses and makes people lazy and over-refined; their self-hypnosis in the manner of fakirs and Brahmins—Brahman used as a glass button to stare at and an obsession—and the eventual, all too understandable disgust with everything, with its radical cure, *nothingness*. Or God: the longing for mystical union with God is the Buddhist's longing for nothingness, Nirvana—and nothing more! With priests, *everything* becomes more dangerous, not just remedies and healing practices, but also pride, revenge, sharp thinking, excess, love, the desire to rule, virtue, and sickness. In fairness, we could also add that only on the ground of this *essentially dangerous* form of human existence, the priestly form, did the human being become *an interesting animal* at all. Only here did the human soul acquire *depth* in a higher sense and become *evil*. And those are the two basic forms of human superiority over other animals so far! … [7] We will already have guessed how easily the priestly way of valuing things can branch off from the knightly-aristocratic way and then develop into its opposite. This gets a particular push whenever the priestly caste and the warrior caste face each other jealously and refuse to agree on the prize. Knightly-aristocratic value judgments rest on a powerful body, a flourishing, rich, even overflowing health, together with what keeps it that way: war, adventure, hunting, dancing, competitive games, and everything else involving strong, free, cheerful action. The priestly-noble way of valuing things rests, as we have seen, on different conditions. So much the worse for it when it comes to war! Priests, as we know, are the *most evil enemies*. But why? Because they are the most powerless. Their powerlessness makes their hatred grow to monstrous and sinister proportions, to its most spiritual and poisonous form. The truly great haters in world history have always been priests, and so have the most brilliant haters. Against the spirit of priestly revenge, all other spirit scarcely counts. Human history would be a thoroughly stupid affair without the spirit that the powerless have brought into it. Let's take the greatest example right away. Everything done on earth against “the nobles,” “the mighty,” “the masters,” “those in power,” is not worth mentioning beside what *the Jews* have done against them. The Jews, that priestly people, ultimately knew how to get satisfaction against their enemies and conquerors only by radically overturning their values, by an act of the *most spiritual revenge*. This was the only way suited to a priestly people, the people of the most deeply repressed priestly thirst for revenge. It was the Jews who dared, with terrifying consistency, to reverse the aristocratic equation of values (good = noble = powerful = beautiful = happy = loved by God). They held on to that reversal with the teeth of the deepest hatred, the hatred of powerlessness: “Only the miserable are good; only the poor, powerless, and lowly are good. The suffering, deprived, sick, and ugly are also the only pious people, the only ones blessed by God. Happiness in heaven belongs to them alone. But you, you nobles and mighty ones, you are forever the evil, the cruel, the lustful, the insatiable, the godless. You will also forever be the unhappy, the cursed, and the damned!” … We know *who* inherited this Jewish overturning of values … In connection with the immense, immeasurably fateful initiative the Jews took with this most fundamental of all declarations of war, I recall a statement I reached on another occasion (“Beyond Good and Evil,” p. 118): with the Jews, *the slave revolt in morality* begins. That revolt has a history of two thousand years behind it. We have lost sight of it today only because it—won … [8] But you don't understand this? You have no eyes for something that took two thousand years to win? … That is no surprise. All *long* things are hard to see, hard to take in at a glance. But *this* is what happened. From the trunk of that tree of revenge and hatred, Jewish hatred—the deepest and most sublime hatred, a hatred that creates ideals and transforms values, the like of which had never existed on earth—something equally unmatched grew: a *new love*, the deepest and most sublime of all kinds of love. And what other trunk could it have grown from? … But don't imagine it grew as the actual denial of that thirst for revenge, as the opposite of Jewish hatred! No, the reverse is true! This love grew out of that hatred as its crown, its triumphant crown, spreading wider and wider in the purest light and fullest sunshine. In the realm of light and height, it was driven toward the goals of that hatred—victory, plunder, seduction—with the same force that drove the roots of that hatred deeper and more greedily into everything deep and evil. This Jesus of Nazareth, the gospel of love in the flesh, this “redeemer” bringing salvation and victory to the poor, the sick, and the sinners—wasn't he precisely seduction in its most sinister and irresistible form? Wasn't he the seductive detour to those very *Jewish* values and new ideals? Didn't Israel reach the final goal of its sublime thirst for revenge by the detour of this “redeemer,” this apparent opponent and dissolver of Israel? Doesn't it belong to the secret black art of a truly *great* politics of revenge—a far-seeing, underground revenge that takes effect slowly and calculates ahead—that Israel itself had to deny the actual instrument of its revenge before the whole world, as if it were a mortal enemy, and nail it to the cross? This allowed “the whole world,” meaning all Israel's opponents, to take that very bait without hesitation. And on the other hand, could the most refined mind possibly devise a more *dangerous* bait? Anything to match the tempting, intoxicating, numbing, corrupting power of that symbol, the “holy cross,” that horrifying paradox of a “God on the cross,” that mystery of a final, ultimate, unimaginable cruelty, of God's self-crucifixion *for the salvation of humanity*? … At least this is certain: under this sign, Israel, with its revenge and overturning of all values, has so far triumphed again and again over all other ideals, over all *more noble* ideals. [9] “But why do you still talk about *more noble* ideals! Let's accept the facts: the people have won—or ‘the slaves,’ or ‘the rabble,’ or ‘the herd,’ or whatever you like to call them. If the Jews brought this about, then good! No people ever had a more world-historical mission. ‘The masters’ have been disposed of; the morality of the common man has won. We may also see this victory as blood poisoning—it has mixed the races together. I don't object. But there is no doubt that this poisoning has *succeeded*. The ‘redemption’ of the human race—from ‘the masters,’ that is—is well under way. Everything is visibly becoming Jewish, Christian, or vulgar—what do words matter! The progress of this poisoning through the whole body of humanity seems unstoppable. From now on its tempo and pace may even become slower, subtler, less audible, more deliberate all the time. There is plenty of time … Does the church still have a *necessary* task to perform toward this end today? Does it still have any right to exist at all? Or could we do without it? That is the question. Doesn't it seem to obstruct and hold back that progress rather than speed it up? Well, that could be exactly what makes it useful … It has certainly become something coarse and peasant-like that offends a more delicate intelligence, a truly modern taste. Shouldn't it at least refine itself a little? … Today it drives more people away than it seduces … Which of us would be a free thinker if the church didn't exist? The church offends us, *not* its poison … Quite apart from the church, we too love the poison …” That was a “free thinker's” epilogue to my speech—an honest animal, as he had amply revealed, and a democrat besides. He had listened to me up to that point and couldn't bear to hear me fall silent. For me, however, there is much to be silent about here. [10] The slave revolt in morality begins when *ressentiment* itself becomes creative and gives birth to values. This is the resentment of beings who are denied the real reaction, the reaction of action, and who make up for it only through imaginary revenge. Every noble morality grows out of a triumphant yes to itself. But slave morality says no from the start to an “outside,” an “other,” a “not itself.” And *this* no is its creative act. This reversal of the gaze that sets values—this *necessary* turn outward instead of back toward itself—is part of ressentiment. To come into being, slave morality always first needs an opposing, external world. In physiological terms, it needs outside stimuli to act at all. Its action is fundamentally reaction. The noble way of valuing things does the opposite. It acts and grows spontaneously. It looks for its opposite only to say yes to itself with still more gratitude and joy. Its negative concept, “low,” “common,” “bad,” is only a pale contrasting image born later, beside its positive basic concept, soaked through with life and passion: “We nobles, we good, beautiful, happy people!” When the noble way of valuing things goes wrong and does violence to reality, it does so in a sphere it does *not* know enough about, indeed one it stubbornly resists really knowing. It may misjudge the sphere it despises, that of the common man, the lower classes. On the other hand, consider this: even if the feeling of contempt, of looking down from above, *distorts* the image of what is despised, that distortion will fall far short of the falsification with which repressed hatred, the revenge of the powerless, attacks its opponent—in a picture, of course. There is too much carelessness, too much taking things lightly, too much looking away and impatience in contempt, even too much of one's own happiness, for it to turn its object into a real caricature and monster. Don't miss the almost benevolent shades of meaning that the Greek nobility, for example, puts into all the words by which it sets the lower classes apart from itself. A kind of regret, consideration, and indulgence constantly mixes in and sweetens them. In the end, almost all the words applied to the common man survive as expressions for “unhappy” and “pitiable.” Compare *δειλός, δείλαιος, πονηρός, μοχθηρός*; the last two actually identify the common man as a working slave and beast of burden. And on the other hand, “bad,” “low,” and “unhappy” have never stopped blending into a single note for the Greek ear, with a tone in which “unhappy” predominates. This is an inheritance from the older, more noble, aristocratic way of valuing things, which stays true to itself even in contempt. (Philologists should recall the sense in which *οἰζυρός, ἄνολβος, τλήμων, δυστυχεῖν, ξυμφορά* are used.) The “well-born” simply *felt* they were the “happy.” They didn't have to construct their happiness artificially by looking at their enemies, or sometimes talk themselves into it, *lie themselves into it*, as all people of ressentiment usually do. As full human beings overflowing with strength, and therefore *necessarily* active, they also knew not to separate happiness from action. Being active necessarily counted as part of their happiness—that is where *εὖ πράττειν* comes from. All this is very different from “happiness” at the level of the powerless, the oppressed, those festering with poisonous and hostile feelings. For them, happiness mainly appears as a narcotic, a numbing, rest, peace, a “Sabbath,” relaxation of the mind and stretching of the limbs—in short, as something *passive*. Noble people live openly and trustingly with themselves: *γενναῖος*, “of noble birth,” emphasizes the shade of meaning “sincere,” and probably also “naive.” But people of ressentiment are neither sincere nor naive, neither honest nor straightforward with themselves. Their souls *look sideways*. Their minds love hiding places, secret paths, and back doors. Everything hidden appeals to them as *their* world, *their* safety, *their* comfort. They know how to keep silent, not forget, wait, make themselves small and humble for the time being. A race of such people of ressentiment will necessarily end up *cleverer* than any noble race. It will also honor cleverness to a completely different degree: as a condition of survival of the first rank. Among noble people, cleverness easily takes on a subtle flavor of luxury and refinement. Here it is nowhere near as essential as the completely reliable functioning of the governing *unconscious* instincts, or even a certain lack of cleverness. Think of boldly charging ahead, whether at danger or at an enemy, or of those sudden, passionate bursts of anger, love, reverence, gratitude, and revenge in which noble souls have always recognized themselves. When ressentiment does arise in noble people, it acts itself out and exhausts itself in an immediate reaction. So it does not *poison* them. In countless cases it never arises at all, when it would be unavoidable in anyone weak and powerless. Not being able to take one's enemies, one's misfortunes, even one's own *misdeeds* seriously for long—that is the sign of strong, full natures. They have a surplus of shaping, restoring, healing power, a power that also makes them forget. A good modern example is Mirabeau, who had no memory for the insults and mean acts committed against him, and who could not forgive only because he—forgot. With a single shake, such a person throws off many pests that burrow into others. Only here is true “*love* of one's enemies” possible—assuming it is possible on earth at all. How much respect noble people already have for their enemies! And that respect is already a bridge to love … They want their enemies for themselves, as a mark of distinction. They cannot stand any enemy except one in whom there is nothing to despise and *very much* to honor! Now contrast this with “the enemy” as people of ressentiment conceive him. This is precisely their act, their creation: they have conceived “the evil enemy,” “*the evil one*,” as the basic concept. Starting from that, they then invent a “good one” as his copy and opposite—themselves! … [11] So this is exactly the opposite of what the noble person does: first, spontaneously, starting from himself, he conceives the basic concept “good,” and only then forms an idea of “bad.” This “bad” of noble origin and that “evil” from the brewing vat of unsatisfied hatred—the first a later creation, an incidental thing, a complementary color; the second the original, the beginning, the actual *act* in the conception of a slave morality—how different the two words “bad” and “evil” are, though both seem to oppose the same concept “good”! But it is *not* the same concept “good.” Ask instead who is actually “evil” in the morality of ressentiment. The strict answer is: *precisely* the “good one” of the other morality, precisely the noble, powerful, ruling person, only recolored, reinterpreted, seen differently through the poisonous eye of ressentiment. Here there is one thing we least want to deny: anyone who knew those “good people” only as enemies knew nothing but *evil enemies*. Those same people are so strictly kept within limits by custom, respect, established practice, gratitude, and still more by watching one another, by jealousy among equals. In dealing with one another, they show such inventiveness in consideration, self-control, sensitivity, loyalty, pride, and friendship. But outside, where foreign people and foreign lands begin, they are not much better than wild beasts let loose. There they enjoy freedom from every social restraint. In the wilderness they make up for the tension of being shut and fenced for so long within the peace of the community. They *return* to the innocent conscience of a beast of prey, as jubilant monsters. They may walk away from a hideous series of murders, burnings, rapes, and tortures in high spirits and with their inner balance intact, as if they had only played a student prank. They are convinced that the poets will now have something to sing about and praise for a long time again. At the bottom of all these noble races, there is no mistaking the beast of prey, the magnificent *blond beast* roaming hungrily for plunder and victory. This hidden foundation needs release from time to time; the animal must come out again, must return to the wilderness. Roman, Arab, Germanic, and Japanese nobility, Homeric heroes, Scandinavian Vikings—they all share this need. Wherever the noble races have gone, they have left behind the concept “barbarian.” Even at the height of their culture they show an awareness of this, and even pride in it. For example, in his famous funeral speech Pericles tells his Athenians, “Our daring has forced its way into every land and sea, setting up lasting monuments everywhere, for good *and ill*.” The “daring” of noble races, mad, absurd, and sudden in its expression; the unpredictable, even improbable character of their undertakings—Pericles singles out the Athenians' *ῥαθυμία* for praise; their indifference and contempt toward safety, body, life, and comfort; their terrible cheerfulness and deep pleasure in every kind of destruction, in all the delights of victory and cruelty—all this came together for those who suffered from it in the image of the “barbarian,” the “evil enemy,” perhaps the “Goth” or the “Vandal.” The deep, icy distrust aroused by the German as soon as he comes to power, again today, is still an aftershock of that unforgettable horror with which Europe watched the raging of the blond Germanic beast for centuries. This is so even though there is scarcely any relationship in concept between the ancient Germanic peoples and us Germans, let alone any relationship in blood. I once pointed out Hesiod's difficulty when he thought up the sequence of cultural ages and tried to express it in gold, silver, and bronze. Homer's world, magnificent but also so horrifying and violent, confronted him with a contradiction. He could deal with it only by making two ages out of one and placing them in sequence. First came the age of the heroes and demigods of Troy and Thebes, as that world had survived in the memory of the noble families who traced their own ancestors to it. Then came the bronze age, as that same world appeared to the descendants of those who had been trampled down, robbed, abused, dragged away, and sold: an age of bronze, as I said, hard, cold, cruel, without feeling or conscience, crushing everything and coating it with blood. Suppose it were true, as people now certainly believe it to be “true,” that the *purpose of all culture* is to breed a tame and civilized animal, a *domestic animal*, from the beast of prey called “human.” Then we would undoubtedly have to regard all those instincts of reaction and ressentiment, with whose help the noble families and their ideals were finally disgraced and overcome, as the actual *tools of culture*. That would not mean, however, that the *bearers* of those instincts also represented culture themselves. The opposite would not merely be likely—no! Today it is *plain to see*! These bearers of oppressive instincts hungry for revenge, the descendants of all European and non-European slavery, of all pre-Aryan populations in particular—they represent humanity's *decline*! These “tools of culture” are a disgrace to humanity, and rather a reason to suspect “culture” in general, an argument against it! We may have every right to remain afraid of the blond beast at the bottom of all noble races and keep on our guard. But who wouldn't a hundred times rather be afraid while also being able to admire than feel *no* fear and yet never escape the disgusting sight of what has failed, been made small, stunted, and poisoned? And isn't that *our* fate? What causes *our* disgust with “humanity” today? For there is no doubt that we suffer from humanity. It isn't fear. Rather, it is that we no longer have anything to fear in people; that the vermin called “human” is swarming in the foreground; that the “tame human being,” hopelessly mediocre and dreary, has already learned to see itself as the goal and peak, the meaning of history, the “higher human being.” Indeed, it has a certain right to see itself this way. It feels removed from the overflowing mass of failures, the sick, tired, worn-out people whose stink is beginning to fill Europe today. So it sees itself as something that has at least turned out relatively well, that is at least still able to live, that at least says yes to life … [12] Here I won't suppress a sigh and one last hope. What is it that I, in particular, find completely unbearable? The one thing I cannot cope with, that makes me choke and waste away? Bad air! Bad air! That something badly formed comes near me; that I have to smell the guts of a badly formed soul! … What else can't we endure—hardship, deprivation, bad weather, chronic sickness, hard work, isolation? At bottom we cope with everything else, born as we are to an underground, struggling existence. We keep coming back up into the light; we keep experiencing our golden hour of victory. And then we stand there, as we were born, unbreakable, taut, ready for something new, something still harder and further away, like a bow that every hardship only draws tighter. But from time to time, if there are heavenly patronesses beyond good and evil, grant me a glimpse, just one glimpse, of something perfect, fully successful, happy, powerful, triumphant—something still to be feared! Of a human being who justifies *humanity*, a lucky human exception who completes and redeems it, for whose sake we may hold on to *faith in humanity*! … This is how things stand: making the European human being smaller and leveling everyone out conceals *our* greatest danger, because the sight makes us tired … Today we see nothing that wants to grow greater. We sense that things are still going down, down, toward what is thinner, more good-natured, cleverer, more comfortable, more mediocre, more indifferent, more Chinese, more Christian. There is no doubt: humanity is becoming “better” all the time … Here lies Europe's fate. With our fear of human beings we have also lost our love for them, our respect for them, our hope for them, indeed our will to have them. The sight of humanity now makes us tired. What is nihilism today if it isn't *that*? … We are tired *of humanity* … [13] But let's return. We need to finish with the problem of the *other* origin of the “good,” of the good as people of ressentiment have imagined it. There is nothing strange about lambs disliking large birds of prey. But that gives us no reason to blame large birds of prey for taking little lambs. And if the lambs say to each other, “These birds of prey are evil, and whoever is as little like a bird of prey as possible—its opposite, a lamb—mustn't that be good?” there is nothing to object to in this setting up of an ideal. The birds of prey may look a little amused by it and perhaps say to themselves, “We don't dislike them at all, these good lambs. We even love them. Nothing tastes better than a tender lamb.” To demand that strength *not* express itself as strength, that it *not* be a desire to overpower, to throw down, to become master, a thirst for enemies, resistance, and triumphs, is just as absurd as demanding that weakness express itself as strength. A quantity of force is the same quantity of drive, will, activity—indeed, it is nothing other than this driving, willing, activity itself. It can seem otherwise only under the spell of language and the basic errors of reason hardened into it. Language understands and misunderstands all activity as depending on an actor, a “subject.” Ordinary people separate lightning from its flash and treat the flash as the act, the effect, of a subject called lightning. In the same way, popular morality separates strength from its expressions, as if behind the strong person there were some neutral underlying thing that was *free* to express strength or not. But there is no such underlying thing. There is no “being” behind doing, acting, becoming. “The doer” is merely invented and added to the deed—the deed is everything. Basically, people double the deed when they make lightning flash: this is a doing-doing. They posit the same event once as cause and then again as its effect. Natural scientists do no better when they say, “Force moves, force causes,” and the like. Despite all its coolness and freedom from emotion, our whole science is still under the spell of language. It has not got rid of these “subjects,” these changelings slipped in under false pretenses. The atom, for example, is one such changeling, as is Kant's “thing in itself.” So is it any wonder that the repressed, secretly smoldering emotions of revenge and hatred exploit this belief? Indeed, at bottom there is no belief they uphold more passionately than the belief that the strong person is *free* to be weak and the bird of prey to be a lamb. This gives them the right, in their own eyes, to *blame* the bird of prey for being a bird of prey … When the oppressed, the downtrodden, those subjected to violence, use the vengeful cunning of powerlessness to tell themselves, “Let's be different from the evil ones: let's be good! And everyone is good who does no violence, who hurts no one, who doesn't attack, doesn't retaliate, leaves revenge to God, stays hidden like us, avoids all evil, and asks little of life in general, like us patient, humble, righteous people”—if we listen coolly and without prejudice, this really means nothing more than: “We weak people are simply weak. It is good if we do nothing *we aren't strong enough to do*.” But this harsh fact, this lowest kind of prudence, which even insects possess—they may play dead in great danger so as not to do “too much”—has dressed itself in the splendor of a virtue that renounces, stays quiet, and waits. It has done so thanks to the counterfeiting and self-deception of powerlessness, as if the weak person's weakness itself—meaning his nature, his activity, his entire, sole, unavoidable, inseparable reality—were a voluntary achievement, something willed and chosen, a *deed*, a *merit*. This kind of person *needs* the belief in a neutral “subject” free to choose. The need comes from an instinct for self-preservation and self-affirmation through which every lie usually makes itself holy. The subject—or, to put it more popularly, the *soul*—may have been the best article of faith on earth so far for this reason: it made possible for most mortals, the weak and oppressed of every kind, that sublime self-deception of interpreting weakness itself as freedom, and their being as they are as a *merit*. [14] Does anyone want to look down a little into the secret of how people *manufacture ideals* on earth? Who has the courage? … All right! Here is an open view into this dark workshop. Wait another moment, Mr. Nosy Daredevil. Your eyes first have to adjust to this false, shimmering light … There! Enough! Now speak! What is going on down there? Tell us what you see, man of the most dangerous curiosity. Now *I* am the one listening. “I see nothing, but I hear all the more. There is a cautious, treacherous, quiet muttering and whispering together from every corner and hiding place. It seems to me that they are lying. A sugary mildness sticks to every sound. There is no doubt that weakness is being lied into a *merit*. It is just as you said.” Go on! “And powerlessness that doesn't retaliate is being turned into ‘goodness’; fearful lowliness into ‘humility’; submission to those one hates into ‘obedience’—obedience to someone they say commands this submission; they call him God. The weak person's harmlessness, the very cowardice he has so much of, his standing at the door, his unavoidable need to wait, acquire good names here, such as ‘patience.’ It may even be called virtue itself. Not being able to take revenge is called not wanting to take revenge, perhaps even forgiveness: ‘For *they* don't know what they are doing—we alone know what *they* are doing!’ They also speak of ‘loving one's enemies’—and sweat as they do.” Go on! “They are miserable, there is no doubt, all these mutterers and back-corner counterfeiters, even though they huddle warmly together. But they tell me their misery is a sign that God has chosen and singled them out. People beat the dogs they love best. Perhaps this misery is also a preparation, a test, a schooling. Perhaps it is even more—something that will one day be compensated for and paid out with enormous interest in gold—no! In happiness. They call that ‘blessedness.’” Go on! “Now they are giving me to understand that they are not just better than the powerful, the masters of the earth whose spit they have to lick—*not* from fear, absolutely not from fear! But because God commands them to honor all authority. They are not just better; they are also ‘better off,’ or at least will be better off one day. But enough! Enough! I can't stand it anymore. Bad air! Bad air! This workshop where they *manufacture ideals*—it seems to me it stinks of nothing but lies.” No! One more moment! You haven't said anything yet about the masterpiece of these black magicians who produce white, milk, and innocence out of everything black. Haven't you noticed the height of their refinement, their boldest, subtlest, most ingenious, most deceitful artistic trick? Pay attention! These cellar animals, full of revenge and hatred—what do they make of that very revenge and hatred? Did you ever hear those words? If you trusted only their words, would you suspect you were among nothing but people of ressentiment? … “I understand. I'm opening my ears again—oh! Oh! Oh!—and holding my nose. Only now do I hear what they have already said so often: ‘We good people—we *are the righteous*.’ What they demand they do not call retaliation, but ‘the triumph of *justice*.’ What they hate is not their enemy—no! They hate ‘*injustice*,’ ‘godlessness.’ What they believe and hope is not the hope of revenge, the intoxication of sweet revenge—Homer already called it ‘sweeter than honey’—but God's victory, the *just* God's victory over the godless. What remains for them to love on earth is not their brothers in hatred but their ‘brothers in love,’ as they say, all the good and righteous people on earth.” “And what do they call the thing that comforts them against all life's suffering—their imagined spectacle of future blessedness enjoyed in advance?” “What? Am I hearing right? They call it ‘the Last Judgment,’ the coming of *their* kingdom, the ‘kingdom of God.’ *Meanwhile*, though, they live ‘in faith,’ ‘in love,’ ‘in hope.’” Enough! Enough! [15] Faith in what? Love for what? Hope for what? These weak people—there is no doubt that someday *they* want to be the strong ones too. Someday *their* “kingdom” is supposed to come too. As I said, they simply call it “the kingdom of God”—they are so humble in everything! Just to live to see *that*, they need a long life, a life extending beyond death. In fact, they need eternal life, so that they can keep compensating themselves forever in the “kingdom of God” for that earthly life “in faith, in love, in hope.” Compensation for what? Compensation by what means? … Dante, I think, made a serious mistake when, with a terrifying innocence, he put this inscription over the gate of his hell: “Eternal love made me too.” The words “Eternal *hatred* made me too” would have a better right to stand over the gate of the Christian paradise and its “eternal blessedness”—assuming a truth could be allowed over the entrance to a lie! For what is the blessedness of that paradise? … We might already guess. But it is better to have explicit testimony from an authority not to be underrated in such matters: Thomas Aquinas, the great teacher and saint. “The blessed in the heavenly kingdom,” he says, gentle as a lamb, “will see the punishments of the damned, so that *their own blessedness will please them more*.” Or would you like to hear it in a more forceful key? Perhaps from the mouth of a triumphant Church Father, who advised his Christians against the cruel pleasures of public shows—why, exactly? “Faith offers us much more,” he says, de spectac. c. 29 ss., “something *much stronger*. Thanks to redemption, quite different joys are available to us. In place of athletes we have our martyrs. If we want blood, well, we have Christ's blood … But what is waiting for us on the day of his return, his triumph!” And now this delighted visionary continues: “But there are still other shows to come: that last, unending day of judgment, that day the nations did not expect, that day they mocked, when the world's immense age and all the generations it has produced will be swallowed by a single fire. What a vast spectacle then! *What will I marvel at! What will I laugh at! Where will I find joy! Where will I celebrate*, as I watch so many *kings*, such great kings, who were reported to have been received into heaven, groaning together in the deepest darkness with Jupiter himself and the very witnesses to their ascent! And the governors (the provincial governors), persecutors of the Lord's name, melting in flames fiercer than those with which they themselves raged and taunted the Christians! What else? Those wise philosophers, blushing before their students as they burn together—the students they persuaded that nothing concerned God, whom they assured that souls either did not exist or would not return to their former bodies! And the poets too, trembling not before the judgment seat of Rhadamanthus or Minos, but before that of the Christ they never expected! Then the tragic actors will be more worth hearing, with more powerful voices, of course (in better voice, screaming still louder), in their own personal catastrophe. Then the actors will be worth a look, moving much more freely because of the fire. Then the chariot driver will be worth watching, all red on his wheel of flame. Then the athletes will be worth looking at, hurled not in gymnasiums but in fire. Except that even then I would not want them alive: I would rather turn my *insatiable* gaze on those who raged against the Lord. ‘This is the one,’ I will say, ‘the son of the carpenter or the prostitute (as everything that follows shows, and especially this description of Jesus' mother, also known from the Talmud, Tertullian means the Jews from this point on), the Sabbath-breaker, the Samaritan with a demon. This is the one you bought from Judas; this is the one beaten with a reed and with fists, disgraced with spit, given gall and vinegar to drink. This is the one his disciples secretly stole away so that he could be said to have risen again—or whom the gardener removed so that the crowds passing through would not damage his lettuces.’ What praetor or consul or quaestor or priest, in all his generosity, will provide you with the chance to watch such things, *to celebrate such things*? And yet, in a way, we already have them *through faith*, brought before us by the mind's imagination. Besides, what must those things be like that no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no human heart has conceived? (1. Cor. 2, 9.) More pleasing, I believe, than the circus, both tiers of seats (the first and fourth tiers, or, according to others, the comic and tragic stages), and any stadium.” *Per fidem*: that is what is written. [16] Let's bring this to a close. The two *opposing* sets of values, “good and bad” and “good and evil,” have fought a terrible battle on earth for thousands of years. The second has certainly had the upper hand for a long time. Even so, there are still places where the battle goes on without a decision. We could even say that in the meantime it has been carried higher and higher, and in that very process has become deeper, more and more a matter of the mind. Perhaps today there is no more decisive sign of a “*higher nature*,” a more spiritual nature, than being divided in this sense and still actually serving as a battlefield for those opposites. The symbol of this battle, written in a script that has stayed readable throughout human history so far, is “Rome against Judea, Judea against Rome.” No event has yet been greater than *this* battle, *this* posing of the question, *this* deadly opposition. In the Jew, Rome sensed something like the unnatural itself, a monster that was its exact opposite. In Rome, the Jew was considered “*convicted* of hatred of the whole human race.” Rightly so, insofar as one has a right to tie the well-being and future of the human race to the absolute rule of aristocratic values, Roman values. What, on the other hand, did the Jews feel toward Rome? A thousand signs let us guess. But it is enough to take another look at John's Apocalypse, that wildest of all written outbursts for which revenge bears the blame. (By the way, don't underestimate the deep consistency of the Christian instinct when it put the name of the disciple of love on precisely this book of hatred—the same disciple to whom it assigned that lovestruck, rapturous Gospel. There is a piece of truth in this, however much literary counterfeiting may have been needed to achieve it.) The Romans were the strong and noble: no one stronger or nobler had ever existed on earth, or even been dreamed of. Every remnant of them, every inscription, delights us, provided we can guess *what* is writing there. The Jews, on the other hand, were the priestly people of ressentiment above all others. They had an unequaled genius for popular morality. Just compare peoples with related gifts, such as the Chinese or the Germans, with the Jews, to get a feeling for what belongs to the first rank and what to the fifth. Which has *won* so far, Rome or Judea? There is really no doubt. Just consider whom people bow before today in Rome itself as the embodiment of all the highest values—and not only in Rome, but over almost half the earth, wherever human beings have become tame or want to become tame. As we know, it is before *three Jews* and *one Jewish woman* (Jesus of Nazareth, Peter the fisherman, Paul the carpet weaver, and the mother of the Jesus named first, called Mary). This is very remarkable: Rome has undoubtedly been defeated. Admittedly, the Renaissance saw a brilliant and unsettling reawakening of the classical ideal, the noble way of valuing all things. Rome itself stirred like someone thought dead who had woken up, under the weight of the new, Judaized Rome built over it, which looked like a worldwide synagogue and was called “the church.” But Judea immediately triumphed again, thanks to that thoroughly vulgar movement of ressentiment, German and English, called the Reformation. Add to this what had to follow from it: the restoration of the church—and the restoration of classical Rome's old silence of the grave. With the French Revolution, Judea once again defeated the classical ideal, in an even more decisive and deeper sense than before. The last political nobility left in Europe, that of the seventeenth and eighteenth *French* centuries, collapsed under the people's instincts of ressentiment. No greater rejoicing, no noisier enthusiasm, had ever been heard on earth! Yet in the middle of it all, something utterly extraordinary, utterly unexpected happened. The ancient ideal itself appeared *in the flesh*, with unheard-of splendor, before humanity's eyes and conscience. And once more, more powerfully, simply, and urgently than ever, the terrible and delightful opposing slogan rang out: *privilege for the very few*! It challenged ressentiment's old lying slogan of *privilege for the majority*. It challenged the will to bring humanity down, to lower it, level it, move it downward and toward its sunset. Napoleon appeared like a last sign pointing toward the *other* road—that most singular, latest-born human being who ever existed. In him appeared the problem of the *noble ideal itself*, made flesh. Think carefully about what a problem that is: Napoleon, this combination of *inhuman monster* and *superhuman* … [17] Was that the end of it? Was that greatest of all clashes between ideals filed away for all time? Or only postponed, postponed for a long time? … Won't the old fire have to flare up again someday, much more terribly, after much longer preparation? More than that: shouldn't we wish for precisely this with all our strength? Even will it? Even work to bring it about? … Anyone who, like my readers, starts thinking at this point, thinking further, will hardly be finished anytime soon. That is reason enough for me to finish, provided it has long since become clear enough what I *want*, what I want with that dangerous slogan written across the body of my last book: “*Beyond Good and Evil*” … At the very least, this does *not* mean “Beyond Good and Bad.” *Author's note.* I am taking the opportunity this essay gives me to state a wish publicly and formally. Until now, I have expressed it only in occasional conversations with scholars. I would like some university philosophy faculty to help advance studies in *the history of morality* by offering a series of academic prize competitions. Perhaps this book can give a strong push in just that direction. With such a possibility in mind, I propose the following question. It deserves the attention of philologists and historians just as much as that of professional scholars of philosophy itself. “*What pointers does linguistics, especially the study of word origins, provide for the history of how moral concepts develop?*” On the other hand, it is just as necessary to interest physiologists and physicians in these problems—the problems of the *value* of our valuations up to now. Professional philosophers can be left to serve as advocates and go-betweens in this particular case too. After all, they have generally succeeded in changing the relationship between philosophy, physiology, and medicine, originally so stiff and distrustful, into the friendliest and most productive exchange. In fact, all lists of what is good, all the “you must” commands known to history or ethnological research, first need to be examined and interpreted in *physiological* terms, even before psychological ones. All of them are also waiting for a critical assessment from medical science. The question “What is this or that list of what is good, this or that ‘morality,’ *worth?*” needs to be looked at from the widest range of perspectives. Above all, we cannot make careful enough distinctions when asking “Worth *for what?*” Something, for example, that clearly had value in making a race last as long as possible—or in increasing its ability to adapt to a particular climate, or in preserving the greatest number—would by no means have the same value if the aim were to develop a stronger type. The well-being of the majority and the well-being of the very few are opposing standards of value. Let's leave it to the naivety of English biologists to regard the first as more valuable *in itself* … From now on, *all* sciences have to do the groundwork for the philosopher's future task. By that task I mean that the philosopher has to solve the *problem of value*, has to determine the *ranking of values*. ### Essay II Second Essay: *Guilt, Bad Conscience* and Related Matters. [1] To breed an animal that *has the right to make promises*—isn't this exactly the paradoxical task that nature has set itself in dealing with human beings? Isn't this the real problem of the human being? … Anyone who fully appreciates the opposing force, the force of *forgetting*, must find it all the more astonishing that this problem has largely been solved. Forgetting is not simply a force of inertia, as superficial people believe. It is an active ability to hold things back, positive in the strictest sense. Thanks to it, what we live through, experience, and take into ourselves enters our consciousness as little while we digest it—we might call this “taking it into the soul”—as does the whole thousandfold process of feeding our bodies, of “taking it into the body.” Temporarily closing the doors and windows of consciousness; remaining undisturbed by the noise and struggle with which our underworld of serving organs works for and against itself; a little quiet, a little blank slate in consciousness, to make room again for something new, especially for the nobler functions and officials, for governing, looking ahead, deciding in advance—for our organism is organized as an oligarchy. This is the use of active forgetting, as I have called it. It acts like a doorkeeper, keeping order, peace, and proper behavior in the soul. We can see at once how there could be no happiness, cheerfulness, hope, pride, or *present moment* without forgetting. A person whose mechanism for holding things back is damaged and stops working is like someone with indigestion—and not merely like one. He can never “finish with” anything … Now this animal, which needs to forget, for which forgetting is a strength, a form of *robust* health, has bred an opposing ability in itself: a memory. With its help, forgetting is suspended in certain cases—namely, when a promise is to be made. This is by no means just a passive inability to get rid of an impression once it has been cut into us. It is not just indigestion over a word once pledged that we cannot finish with. It is an active unwillingness to let go, a continuing to will what was once willed, a real *memory of the will*. A whole world of new, unfamiliar things, circumstances, even acts of will can safely come between the original “I will,” “I will do it,” and the will's actual release, its *act*, without breaking this long chain of will. But think of everything this requires! To have this kind of advance control over the future, a person must first have learned to distinguish necessary events from accidental ones, to think in terms of causes, to see and anticipate distant things as if they were present, to establish with certainty what the aim is and what means will achieve it. He must be able to count and calculate at all. And for this, he himself must first have become *predictable, regular, necessary*, even in his own picture of himself. Only then can he finally guarantee himself *as a future being*, as someone making a promise does! [2] This is precisely the long history of how *responsibility* arose. As we have already understood, the task of breeding an animal entitled to make promises includes a nearer task as its condition and preparation: first *making* human beings to some degree necessary, uniform, equal among equals, regular, and therefore predictable. The enormous work of what I have called the “morality of custom” (see Dawn, pp. 7. 13. 16)—the actual work human beings did on themselves through the longest period of the human race, all their *prehistoric* work—has its meaning and its great justification here, however much harshness, tyranny, dullness, and idiocy it contains. The morality of custom and the social straitjacket really did *make* human beings predictable. Now put ourselves at the end of this enormous process, where the tree finally bears fruit, where society and its morality of custom finally bring out *what* they were only a means to produce. We find the *sovereign individual* as the ripest fruit on their tree. This individual is like no one but himself. He has broken free of the morality of custom again. He is autonomous, above that morality—since “autonomous” and “moral” exclude each other. In short, he is a person with his own independent, lasting will, who *has the right to make promises*. In him we find a proud awareness, stirring in every muscle, of what has at last been achieved and taken bodily form in him. It is a real awareness of power and freedom, a feeling that humanity itself has reached fulfillment. This person who has become free, who really has the *right* to promise, this master of a *free* will, this sovereign—how could he fail to know the advantage this gives him over everything that cannot promise or guarantee itself? How could he fail to know how much trust, fear, and respect he inspires—he “*deserves*” all three—and how this mastery over himself necessarily puts mastery over circumstances, over nature, and over all creatures with shorter wills and less reliability into his hands as well? This “free” person possesses a long, unbreakable will, and in this possession he also has his *standard of value*. Looking at others from his own standpoint, he honors or despises them. He necessarily honors his equals, the strong and reliable, those who have the *right* to promise. That means anyone who promises as a sovereign does: with weight, rarely, slowly; who gives his trust sparingly and *distinguishes* someone by trusting him; who gives his word as something dependable, because he knows he is strong enough to keep it even against accidents, even “against fate.” Just as necessarily, he keeps a kick ready for the scrawny hounds who promise without having the right, and a rod for the liar who breaks his word the moment it leaves his mouth. The proud knowledge of the extraordinary privilege of *responsibility*, the awareness of this rare freedom, this power over himself and his fate, has sunk into his deepest depths and become an instinct, the ruling instinct. What will he call this ruling instinct, assuming he needs a word for it himself? There is no doubt: this sovereign person calls it his *conscience* … [3] His conscience? … We can guess in advance that the concept of “conscience,” which we meet here in its highest, almost puzzling form, has already been through a long history and many changes of form. Having the right to guarantee oneself, and proudly, and so having the right to *say yes to oneself*—as I said, this is a ripe fruit, but also a *late* fruit. How long this fruit had to hang on the tree, tart and sour! And for a much longer time there was no sign of such a fruit at all. No one would have had the right to promise it, however certainly everything in the tree was prepared for it and growing toward it! “How do you give the human animal a memory? How do you stamp something onto this partly dull, partly rambling mind, caught in the moment, this living embodiment of forgetting, so that it stays present?” … This age-old problem was not, as we can imagine, solved with especially gentle answers or means. Perhaps there is nothing more frightening and sinister in the whole prehistory of humanity than its *techniques for training memory*. “You burn something in so that it stays in the memory: only what never stops *hurting* stays in the memory.” This is a main principle of the oldest—and unfortunately also the longest-lasting—psychology on earth. We might even say that wherever life among individuals and peoples on earth still has solemnity, seriousness, mystery, and dark colors, something *lingers* from the terror with which people everywhere once made promises, pledged things, and took vows. The past, the longest, deepest, hardest past, breathes on us and wells up inside us when we grow “serious.” Whenever people thought they needed to give themselves a memory, it never happened without blood, torture, and sacrifices. The most horrifying sacrifices and pledges—including the sacrifice of firstborn children—the most disgusting mutilations, such as castration, the cruelest ritual forms of every religious cult—and at bottom all religions are systems of cruelties—all this began in the instinct that recognized pain as the most powerful aid to memory. In a certain sense all ascetic practice belongs here. A few ideas are to be made indelible, always present, unforgettable, “fixed,” so that these “fixed ideas” hypnotize the whole nervous and intellectual system. Ascetic practices and ways of life are the means of freeing these ideas from competition with all other ideas, of making them “unforgettable.” The worse humanity's “memory” was, the more frightening its customs always looked. The harshness of penal laws in particular measures how hard it was to defeat forgetting and keep a few basic requirements of social life *present* to these momentary slaves of emotion and desire. We Germans certainly do not think of ourselves as an especially cruel and hardhearted people, still less as especially careless people who live only for the day. But just look at our old penal codes to discover how much trouble it takes on earth to breed a “people of thinkers.” I mean the European people among whom the greatest amount of trustfulness, seriousness, bad taste, and matter-of-factness can still be found today, and whose qualities entitle them to breed every kind of European mandarin. These Germans used terrible means to give themselves a memory, so they could master their vulgar basic instincts and their brutal clumsiness. Think of the old German punishments. For example, stoning—even the legend has a millstone fall on the guilty person's head; breaking on the wheel—the most distinctive invention and specialty of German genius in the field of punishment!; throwing a stake at someone; having people torn apart or trampled by horses—“quartering”; boiling criminals in oil or wine, still in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; the popular practice of flaying—“cutting strips of skin”; cutting flesh out of the breast; or even coating the wrongdoer in honey and leaving him to the flies under a blazing sun. With the help of such images and procedures, people finally keep five or six “I will nots” in their memory. They have given their *promise* about these in order to enjoy society's advantages. And sure enough, with this kind of memory they finally came “to their senses”! Ah, reason, seriousness, control over the emotions, this whole grim business called reflection, all these human privileges and showpieces: what a high price was paid for them! How much blood and horror lies at the bottom of all “good things”! … [4] But how did that other “grim business,” the awareness of guilt, the whole “bad conscience,” come into the world? This brings us back to our genealogists of morality. To say it again—or haven't I said it yet?—they are no good. Their own experience is five handbreadths long and merely “modern.” They have no knowledge of the past and no will to know it, still less a historical instinct, the “second sight” needed here in particular. Yet they go ahead and write the history of morality. Naturally, this must end in results whose relationship to truth is more than just strained. Have these previous genealogists of morality had even the faintest dream that, for example, the main moral concept of “guilt”—Schuld—originated in the very material concept of “debts”—Schulden—? Or that punishment as *repayment* developed completely apart from any assumption about freedom or lack of freedom of the will? Indeed, so much so that the animal “human being” always needs a *high* level of humanization before it even begins to make the much more basic distinctions “intentional,” “negligent,” “accidental,” “accountable,” and their opposites, and to take them into account in setting punishment. Nowadays the thought that “the criminal deserves punishment *because* he could have acted differently” comes so cheaply, seems so natural and unavoidable, and has even been pressed into service to explain how the sense of justice arose on earth at all. In fact, it is an extremely late achievement, a refined form of human judgment and inference. Anyone who puts it at the beginning handles the psychology of early humanity with clumsy fingers. Through the longest period of human history, people certainly did *not* punish *because* they held the wrongdoer responsible for his deed, and therefore *not* on the assumption that only the guilty person should be punished. Instead, they punished as parents still punish their children: from anger at harm they had suffered, which they vented on the person who caused it. But this anger was restrained and modified by the idea that every harm has its *equivalent* in something and can actually be paid off, even if only through the *pain* of the person who caused it. Where did this ancient, deep-rooted idea get its power—the idea that harm and pain are equivalent, which perhaps can no longer be rooted out today? I have already given away the answer: from the contractual relationship between *creditor* and *debtor*. This is as old as the existence of “legal persons” at all, and itself points back to the basic forms of buying, selling, exchanging, trading, and commerce. [5] Picturing these contractual relationships does, of course, arouse all kinds of suspicion and resistance toward the early humanity that created or permitted them, just as we would expect from what has already been said. This is exactly where *promises* are made. This is exactly where the point is to *give* the person who promises a memory. This is exactly where, we may suspect, we will find a store of harsh, cruel, painful things. To inspire trust in his promise to repay, to guarantee the seriousness and sacredness of his promise, to impress repayment on his own conscience as a duty and obligation, the debtor makes a contract pledging something else he “owns,” something still under his control, to the creditor if he fails to pay. For example, his body, his wife, his freedom, or even his life. Or, given certain religious assumptions, even his blessedness, his soul's salvation, finally even his peace in the grave. This happened in Egypt, where even in the grave the debtor's corpse found no rest from the creditor—and for the Egyptians in particular, that rest meant a great deal. Above all, however, the creditor could subject the debtor's body to every kind of humiliation and torture. For example, he could cut off as much of it as seemed appropriate to the size of the debt. From this point of view, precise assessments of individual limbs and body parts appeared early and everywhere, sometimes going into horrifyingly minute detail: assessments that had the force of *law*. I already count it as progress, as evidence of a freer, broader, more *Roman* view of law, when Rome's Twelve Tables decreed that it did not matter how much or how little the creditors cut off in such a case: “If they cut off more or less, let it be no offense.” Let's make the logic of this whole form of compensation clear. It is strange enough. The equivalence consists in allowing the creditor a kind of *pleasure* as repayment and compensation instead of an advantage that directly makes up for the harm—that is, instead of payment in money, land, or possessions of any kind. The pleasure is being allowed to vent his power without restraint on someone powerless, the delight of “doing harm for the pleasure of doing it,” the enjoyment of violent abuse. The lower the creditor's rank and position in society, the more highly he values this enjoyment. It can easily seem to him the most delicious mouthful, even a foretaste of a higher rank. Through the “punishment” of the debtor, the creditor shares in a *master's right*. At last he too reaches the uplifting feeling of being allowed to despise and mistreat a being as someone “beneath him.” Or at least, if the actual power to punish, the carrying out of punishment, has already passed to the “authorities,” he can *see* that being despised and mistreated. The compensation therefore consists in a claim and a right to cruelty.— [6] In *this* sphere, then, in the law of obligations, the moral world of concepts—“guilt,” “conscience,” “duty,” “sacredness of duty”—has its birthplace. Its beginnings, like those of everything great on earth, were thoroughly and for a long time drenched in blood. And couldn't we add that this world has basically never entirely lost a certain smell of blood and torture? Not even in old Kant: the categorical imperative smells of cruelty … Here too that sinister, perhaps now inseparable tangle of ideas, “guilt and suffering,” was first tied together. To ask again: how can suffering compensate for “debts”? Because *making* someone suffer gave the highest pleasure; because the injured person received an extraordinary enjoyment in exchange for the harm, plus the distress the harm caused him: the enjoyment of *making* someone suffer. It was a real *celebration*, something valued all the more highly, as I said, the more it contradicted the creditor's rank and social position. I put this forward as a guess. It is hard to see to the bottom of such underground things, quite apart from how distressing it is. Anyone who clumsily throws the concept of “revenge” into the middle of this has blocked and darkened his view rather than made it easier. Revenge itself leads straight back to the same problem: “How can making someone suffer be satisfying?” It seems to me that the delicacy, and still more the hypocrisy, of tame domestic animals—I mean modern people, I mean us—resists fully picturing how much *cruelty* made up the great festive joy of early humanity, and how it was mixed into almost every pleasure as an ingredient. It also resists picturing how naive and innocent humanity's need for cruelty was, and how fundamentally it treated “disinterested malice”—or, in Spinoza's words, malicious sympathy—as a *normal* human quality. That meant something to which the conscience heartily said *yes*! A more penetrating eye might still see enough of this oldest and most basic human festive joy even now. In Beyond Good and Evil, pp. 117 ff. (and earlier in Dawn, pp. 17. 68. 102), I cautiously pointed out cruelty's increasing spiritualization and “deification.” This runs through the whole history of higher culture, and in an important sense even constitutes it. At any rate, it was not so long ago that people could not imagine princely weddings and the grandest public festivals without executions, torture, or perhaps an auto-da-fé. Nor could they imagine a noble household without beings on whom they could freely vent their malice and cruel teasing. Think, for example, of Don Quixote at the duchess's court. Today we read all of Don Quixote with a bitter taste in our mouths, almost in torment. This would make us very strange, very hard to understand, to its author and his contemporaries. They read it with the very best conscience as the most cheerful of books; it almost made them die laughing. Seeing suffering feels good; causing suffering feels even better. This is a harsh principle, but an old, powerful, human, all-too-human basic principle. Perhaps even apes would sign it. People say that in devising bizarre cruelties, apes already give ample warning of human beings, as if “acting them out in advance.” No celebration without cruelty: this is what humanity's oldest, longest history teaches. And punishment too contains so much *celebration*!— [7] —With these thoughts, incidentally, I have no intention of helping our pessimists pour fresh water over their discordant, creaking mills of weariness with life. On the contrary, I want it clearly stated that life on earth was more cheerful back when humanity was not yet ashamed of its cruelty than it is now, when there are pessimists. The sky over humanity has always grown darker in proportion to the growth of human shame *at being human*. The tired, pessimistic look, the distrust of life's riddle, the icy no of disgust with life—these are not the signs of the *most evil* ages of the human race. Rather, like the swamp plants they are, they only emerge into daylight when the swamp they belong to is there. I mean the sickly softening and moralizing through which the animal “human being” finally learns to feel ashamed of all its instincts. On the way to becoming an “angel”—not to use a harsher word here—people have bred in themselves the spoiled stomach and coated tongue that make not only the animal's pleasure and innocence repulsive to them, but life itself tasteless. Sometimes they stand before themselves holding their noses and, with Pope Innocent III, disapprovingly list their disgusting features: “impure conception, disgusting nourishment in the womb, the bad quality of the matter from which human beings develop, hideous stench, secretions of saliva, urine, and feces.” Now that suffering always has to march at the head of the arguments *against* existence, as its worst question mark, we do well to remember the times when people judged the opposite way. They did not want to do without *causing* suffering. They saw in it a first-rate attraction, a real tempting bait *for* life. Perhaps back then—let this comfort the tenderhearted—pain did not hurt as much as it does today. At least a doctor could reach that conclusion after treating Black people—taken here as representatives of prehistoric humanity—for severe internal inflammations that bring even the most physically well-constituted European close to despair. They do *not* do this to Black people. (In fact, the curve of human sensitivity to pain seems to drop extraordinarily, almost suddenly, once we get past the upper ten thousand or ten million of overcivilization. Personally, I have no doubt that, compared with one painful night of a single hysterical, cultivated little woman, the combined sufferings of all animals ever questioned with a knife for scientific answers simply count for nothing.) Perhaps we may even allow the possibility that this pleasure in cruelty need not actually have died out. Only, in proportion to how much more pain hurts today, it would need a certain refinement and subtlety. Above all, it would have to appear translated into imagination and the inner life, adorned with names so entirely harmless that even the most tender hypocritical conscience would find nothing suspicious in them. “Tragic pity” is one such name; “longings for the cross” is another. What really makes people rebel against suffering is not suffering itself but its meaninglessness. Yet neither the Christian, who has read an entire hidden machinery of salvation into suffering, nor the naive person of earlier times, who understood all suffering in terms of spectators or those who caused it, knew any such *meaningless* suffering. To do away with hidden, undiscovered suffering without witnesses, and honestly deny its existence, people back then were almost forced to invent gods and intermediate beings of every height and depth. In short, they invented something that roams in secret too, sees in the dark too, and does not easily let an interesting, painful spectacle escape. Through such inventions, life back then knew how to perform the trick it has always known: justifying itself, justifying its “evil.” Today it might need other helpful inventions for this—for example, life as a riddle, life as a problem of knowledge. “Every evil is justified if a god enjoys watching it”: that is what the prehistoric logic of feeling sounded like. And really, was it only prehistoric? Gods imagined as lovers of *cruel* spectacles—oh, how far this ancient idea still reaches into our European humanization! On this point we might consult Calvin and Luther. At any rate, it is certain that even the *Greeks* knew no more pleasant addition to their gods' happiness than the pleasures of cruelty. How do you think Homer made his gods look down on human destinies? What ultimate meaning did the Trojan wars and similar tragic horrors really have? There can be no doubt: they were intended as *festival entertainments* for the gods. And since poets have a more “divine” nature than other people, presumably they were festival entertainments for poets too … Later the moral philosophers of Greece imagined God's eyes looking down in just the same way on the moral struggle, on the virtuous person's heroism and self-torture. The “Heracles of duty” stood on a stage, and knew it. Virtue without witnesses was completely unthinkable to this nation of actors. Might that bold and fateful philosophical invention, first made for Europe back then—the invention of “free will,” of absolute human spontaneity in good and evil—have been made above all to justify the idea that the gods' interest in humanity, in human virtue, *could never run out*? On this earthly stage there was never to be any shortage of truly new things, truly unheard-of suspense, complications, catastrophes. A world conceived as completely deterministic would have been predictable to gods, and therefore soon boring as well. Reason enough for these *friends of the gods*, the philosophers, not to burden their gods with such a deterministic world! All ancient humanity is full of tender consideration for “the spectator.” Its world was essentially public, essentially visible, unable to imagine happiness without spectacles and festivals. And, as I have already said, great *punishment* too contains so much celebration! … [8] To return to the course of our inquiry, the feeling of guilt, of personal obligation, began, as we saw, in the oldest and most basic relationship between persons that exists: the relationship between buyer and seller, creditor and debtor. Here one person first faced another; here one person first *measured himself* against another. No level of civilization, however low, has been found without some trace of this relationship. Setting prices, measuring values, working out equivalents, exchanging—these occupied the earliest human thinking so thoroughly that in a certain sense they *are* thinking. Here the oldest kind of shrewdness was bred. Here, too, we may suspect the first beginnings of human pride, of the feeling of superiority to other animals. Perhaps even our word “Mensch,” human being (manas), still expresses something of *this* self-esteem. Human beings named themselves as the beings that measure values, that value and measure, as the “assessing animal itself.” Buying and selling, with everything psychological that goes with them, are older than even the beginnings of any forms of social organization and association. Instead, the developing sense of exchange, contract, debt, right, obligation, and compensation was first *transferred* from the most basic form of personal law to the crudest, earliest group structures—in their relationships with similar groups. With it went the habit of comparing, measuring, and calculating one power against another. The eye was now set to this perspective. And with the clumsy consistency characteristic of early humanity's thinking, slow to get moving but then relentlessly continuing in the same direction, people soon arrived at the great generalization: “Everything has its price; everything can be paid off.” This is the oldest, most naive moral rule of *justice*, the beginning of all “good nature,” all “fairness,” all “good will,” all “objectivity” on earth. At this first stage, justice is the good will among roughly equal powers to settle with one another, to reach an “understanding” again through compensation—and, in the case of the less powerful, to *force* them to settle with one another.— [9] Still measuring by the standards of prehistoric times—which, incidentally, are present or possible again at every time—the community too stands toward its members in that important basic relationship of creditor to debtors. You live in a community and enjoy its advantages—oh, what advantages! Today we sometimes underestimate them. You live protected, spared, in peace and trust, without worrying about certain injuries and hostilities to which the person *outside*, the “outlaw,” is exposed. A German understands what “misery,” Elend, êlend, originally means. In return, you have pledged and committed yourself to the community precisely in regard to these injuries and hostilities. What will happen *otherwise*? The community, the cheated creditor, will get its payment as best it can. You can count on that. The immediate harm the wrongdoer has caused is the least of the issues here. Quite apart from that, the criminal is above all a “breaker,” someone who has broken a contract and his word *to the whole community* concerning all the benefits and comforts of communal life he has shared in until then. The criminal is a debtor who not only fails to repay the advantages and advances given him, but even attacks his creditor. From now on, therefore, he rightly loses not just all these benefits and advantages: he is now also reminded *what these benefits are worth*. The anger of the injured creditor, the community, returns him to the wild, outlawed condition from which he was previously protected. It pushes him away, and now every kind of hostility is free to vent itself on him. At this level of civilization, “punishment” is simply the image, the *reenactment*, of normal behavior toward a hated enemy who has been disarmed and defeated, and who has lost not only every right and protection but also every claim to mercy. It is therefore the law of war and the victory celebration of “woe to the conquered!” in all their ruthlessness and cruelty. This explains why war itself, including the warlike sacrificial cult, supplied all the *forms* in which punishment appears in history. [10] As a community's power grows, it takes the individual's offenses less seriously. They can no longer seem as dangerous and threatening to the existence of the whole as before. The wrongdoer is no longer “outlawed” and expelled. The general anger is no longer allowed to vent itself on him as wildly as before. Instead, the community as a whole now carefully defends and protects the wrongdoer against this anger, especially that of the people directly harmed. A compromise with the anger of those most immediately affected by the wrongdoing; an effort to keep the case local and prevent wider or even general involvement and unrest; attempts to find equivalents and settle the whole business—the settlement by compensation; above all, the increasingly definite will to treat every offense as *payable* in some sense, and so, at least to a certain degree, to *separate* the criminal from his deed—these are the traits that become more and more clearly stamped on the further development of penal law. As a community's power and self-confidence grow, its penal law always becomes milder too. Every weakening of that power and every deeper threat to it brings the harsher forms of penal law to light again. The “creditor” has always become more humane in proportion to his growing wealth. Finally, how much harm he can endure without suffering from it becomes the very *measure* of his wealth. We could imagine a society with such an *awareness of its power* that it could afford the noblest luxury available to it: letting the person who harms it go *unpunished*. “What do my parasites really matter to me?” it could then say. “Let them live and prosper. I'm still strong enough for that!” … Justice began with “Everything can be paid off; everything must be paid off.” It ends by looking the other way and letting those unable to pay go free. It ends, like every good thing on earth, by *doing away with itself*. This self-abolition of justice—we know the lovely name it goes by: *mercy*. Naturally, it remains the privilege of the most powerful, or better still, his way of going beyond the law. [11] —Here I want to reject recent attempts to look for the origin of justice on entirely different ground: the ground of ressentiment. First, a word in the psychologists' ears, if they should want to study ressentiment itself up close: this plant now flowers most beautifully among anarchists and antisemites. It also flowers as it always has, in hiding, like the violet, though with a different scent. Like must always produce like. So it will be no surprise to see just such circles again producing attempts that have often appeared before—compare p. 30 above—to sanctify *revenge* under the name of *justice*. As if justice were basically only a further development of the feeling of having been hurt! Along with revenge, these attempts seek to give belated honor to all the *reactive* emotions. I would be least inclined to object to that last point in itself. In fact, I would consider it a *service* in relation to the whole biological problem, in which the value of those emotions has previously been underestimated. All I draw attention to is that this new shade of scientific fairness—in favor of hatred, envy, ill will, suspicion, grudges, revenge—grows out of the spirit of ressentiment itself. For this “scientific fairness” immediately stops and gives way to tones of deadly hostility and prejudice whenever a different group of emotions is involved. These, it seems to me, have a far higher biological value than those reactive emotions, and therefore have an even greater claim to be *scientifically* assessed and highly valued. I mean the truly *active* emotions, such as the desire to rule, the desire to possess, and the like. (E. Dühring, The Value of Life; Course of Philosophy; essentially everywhere.) So much against this tendency in general. As for Dühring's particular claim that justice has its home on the ground of reactive feeling, truth demands that we confront him with the sharply opposite claim: the ground of reactive feeling is the *last* ground conquered by the spirit of justice! If it really happens that the just person remains just even toward those who harm him—and not merely cold, measured, detached, indifferent: being just is always a *positive* attitude—if even the assault of personal injury, mockery, and suspicion does not cloud the lofty, clear objectivity of the just, *judging* eye, which looks as deeply as it does gently, then this is a piece of perfection and supreme mastery on earth. It is even something we would be wise not to expect here, and at any rate should not too easily *believe* in. What is generally certain is that even with the most upright people, a small dose of attack, malice, or insinuation is enough to drive blood into their eyes and fairness *out* of them. The active, attacking, encroaching person still stands a hundred steps closer to justice than the reactive one. He has no need at all to judge his object falsely and with prejudice as the reactive person does and must do. In fact, that is why the aggressive person, as the stronger, braver, nobler one, has always had the *freer* eye and the *better* conscience on his side. Conversely, we can already guess whose conscience bears the invention of “bad conscience”: the person of ressentiment! Finally, just look at history. In what sphere has the whole practice of law, and even the actual need for law, found its home on earth until now? Among reactive people, perhaps? Not at all. Rather, among the active, strong, spontaneous, aggressive. Historically speaking, law on earth represents the struggle precisely *against* reactive feelings, the war waged against them by active, aggressive powers. Let this be said to annoy the agitator mentioned above, who once confessed about himself: “The doctrine of revenge has run through all my works and efforts as the connecting thread of justice.” These powers used part of their strength to set bounds and limits to the excesses of reactive passion and to force a settlement. Wherever justice is practiced and maintained, we see a stronger power looking for ways to put an end to the senseless raging of ressentiment among those weaker groups or individuals subject to it. It does so partly by taking the object of ressentiment out of the hands of revenge, partly by replacing revenge with its own struggle against the enemies of peace and order, partly by inventing, proposing, and sometimes imposing settlements, partly by making certain equivalents for injuries into a standard to which ressentiment is referred once and for all from then on. But the most decisive thing the supreme power does and enforces against the supremacy of hostile and lingering feelings—it always does this as soon as it is strong enough—is to establish *law*: an authoritative declaration of what, in its eyes, is to count as permitted and right, and what as forbidden and wrong. Once it has established the law, it treats encroachments and arbitrary acts by individuals or whole groups as offenses against the law, as rebellion against the supreme power itself. It thereby turns its subjects' feelings away from the immediate harm caused by such offenses. In the long run, this achieves the opposite of what all revenge wants, since revenge sees and recognizes only the injured person's viewpoint. From now on, the eye is trained to assess the deed more and more *impersonally*—even the injured person's own eye, though this happens last of all, as noted earlier. Accordingly, “right” and “wrong” exist only from the establishment of law onward, *not*, as Dühring wants, from the act of injury onward. Talking about right and wrong *in themselves* makes no sense at all. Naturally, injuring, violating, exploiting, destroying cannot be “wrong” *in themselves*, since life *essentially* operates by injuring, violating, exploiting, and destroying in its basic functions, and cannot be imagined without this character. We must admit something even more troubling: from the highest biological standpoint, conditions of law can only be *exceptional conditions*. They partly restrict the actual will to life, which aims at power, and are subordinate to its overall purpose as individual means: means of creating *larger* units of power. Imagine a legal order as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the struggle between power structures but as a means *against* all struggle as such. Suppose, for example, we followed Dühring's communist pattern, that every will must treat every will as equal. This would be a principle *hostile to life*, destroying and dissolving humanity, an attack on humanity's future, a sign of exhaustion, a back way into nothingness.— [12] One more word here about the origin and purpose of punishment. These are two separate problems, or should be. Unfortunately, people usually throw them together. What do the existing genealogists of morality do in this case? They act naively, as they always have. They discover some “purpose” in punishment, such as revenge or deterrence, then innocently put this purpose at the beginning, as the cause that brought punishment into existence—and they are done. But “purpose in law” is the very last thing to use for the history of law's origins. In fact, for every kind of history there is no more important principle than this one, won with so much effort, but which really ought to *have been* won: a thing's cause of origin and its eventual usefulness, its actual use and place in a system of purposes, are worlds apart. Something that exists, that has somehow come into being, is repeatedly interpreted from new points of view by a power superior to it, taken over anew, reshaped and redirected to a new use. Everything that happens in the organic world is an *overpowering, a gaining of mastery*. And all overpowering and gaining of mastery is in turn a reinterpretation, a reshaping, which must obscure or entirely erase the previous “meaning” and “purpose.” However well we understand the *usefulness* of a physiological organ—or of a legal institution, a social custom, a political practice, a form in art or religious worship—we have still understood nothing about its origin. This may sound awkward and unpleasant to older ears. For since ancient times people have believed that, in a thing's demonstrable purpose, in the usefulness of a thing, form, or institution, they also understood the reason it came into being: the eye as made for seeing, the hand as made for grasping. In the same way, people have imagined punishment as invented for punishing. But all purposes, all uses, are only *signs* that a will to power has mastered something less powerful and stamped the meaning of a function onto it. The whole history of a “thing,” an organ, a custom, can therefore be a continuous chain of signs of ever-new interpretations and adjustments. Their causes need not even be connected with one another. Sometimes they merely happen to follow and replace one another by chance. The “development” of a thing, a custom, an organ is therefore anything but its progress toward a goal, still less a logical and shortest progress achieved with the least expenditure of strength and cost. Rather, it is a succession of processes of overpowering that take place in it, more or less deep-reaching, more or less independent of one another. Add to these the resistance put up each time, the changes of form attempted for defense and reaction, and the results of successful counteractions. Form is fluid, but “meaning” is even more so … Things are no different even within each individual organism. Every substantial growth of the whole shifts the “meaning” of the individual organs too. Sometimes their partial destruction or reduction in number—for example, through destruction of intermediate parts—can be a sign of growing strength and perfection. What I meant to say is this: even partial *loss of usefulness*, withering and degeneration, loss of meaning and fitness for a purpose—in short, death—belongs among the conditions of real progress. Such progress always appears as a will and a path to *greater power*, and is always achieved at the expense of numerous smaller powers. Indeed, the greatness of a “step forward” is *measured* by the amount of everything that had to be sacrificed to it. Humanity as a mass sacrificed to the flourishing of a single *stronger* type of human being—that *would* be progress … I emphasize this main standpoint of historical method all the more because, at bottom, it goes against the prevailing instinct and taste of our time. These would rather accept the absolute randomness, even the mechanistic meaninglessness, of all events than the theory of a *will to power* at work in everything that happens. The democratic aversion to everything that rules and wants to rule, modern *misarchism*—to coin a bad word for a bad thing—has gradually been so thoroughly translated and disguised in intellectual, in the most intellectual forms, that today it is already advancing step by step into the strictest and apparently most objective sciences, and is *allowed* to do so. Indeed, it seems to me already to have mastered all physiology and the study of life—to their detriment, of course—by making a basic concept disappear: the concept of genuine *activity*. Under the pressure of this aversion, people instead put “adaptation” in the foreground. This is an activity of the second rank, a mere reactivity. They have even defined life itself as an increasingly suitable inner adaptation to outer circumstances (Herbert Spencer). But this misunderstands the essence of life, its *will to power*. It overlooks the basic priority of the spontaneous, attacking, encroaching, reinterpreting, redirecting, and shaping forces. “Adaptation” follows only after these forces have acted. It denies the ruling role within the organism itself of the highest officials, in whom the will to life appears as active and form-giving. We remember what Huxley criticized in Spencer: his “administrative nihilism.” But this involves *more* than just “administration” … [13] —To come back to the subject, *punishment*, we therefore have to distinguish two things in it. One is what stays relatively *constant*: the custom, the act, the “drama,” a certain strict sequence of procedures. The other is what changes: the meaning, the purpose, the expectation attached to carrying out those procedures. Following the main principle of historical method just developed, we simply assume by analogy that the procedure itself is older than its use as punishment. This use was only later *put into* the procedure, read into it. The procedure had long existed, but was customary in a different sense. In short, things are *not* as our naive genealogists of morality and law have so far assumed. They all imagined that the procedure was *invented* for the purpose of punishment, just as people once imagined that the hand was invented for grasping. As for the other, changing element of punishment, its “meaning,” at a very late stage of culture—for example, in Europe today—the concept of “punishment” no longer represents a single meaning at all. It represents a whole combination of “meanings.” The entire history of punishment so far, the history of its use for the most varied purposes, finally crystallizes into a kind of unity. This is hard to break down, hard to analyze, and, we must stress, completely *impossible to define*. (Today it is impossible to say definitely *why* people actually punish. Any concept in which an entire process is brought together in signs escapes definition. Only something with no history can be defined.) At an earlier stage, by contrast, this combination of “meanings” is still easier to break apart and rearrange. We can still see how, in each individual case, the elements in the combination change their relative weight and rearrange themselves accordingly. Now one element, now another comes forward and dominates at the expense of the rest. Sometimes a single element—for instance, the purpose of deterrence—seems to cancel out all the others. To give at least some idea of how uncertain, how much an afterthought, how incidental “the meaning” of punishment is, and how the very same procedure can be used, interpreted, and adjusted to serve fundamentally different intentions, here is an outline I arrived at myself from a relatively small, chance collection of material. Punishment as making someone harmless, as preventing further harm. Punishment as repayment in some form to the injured party for the harm done, including compensation in the emotions. Punishment as isolating a disturbance of balance to keep it from spreading. Punishment as instilling fear of those who decide on and carry out the punishment. Punishment as a kind of offset for the advantages the criminal has enjoyed up to that point—for example, when he is put to use as a slave in a mine. Punishment as removing a degenerating element, sometimes an entire family branch, as under Chinese law: thus as a means of keeping the race pure or preserving a social type. Punishment as a celebration, that is, as the violent abuse and mockery of an enemy finally brought down. Punishment as creating a memory, either for the person who suffers it—so-called “reform”—or for those who witness its execution. Punishment as payment of a fee demanded by the power that protects the wrongdoer from the excesses of revenge. Punishment as a compromise with revenge in its natural state, where powerful families still maintain it and claim it as their privilege. Punishment as a declaration of war and an act of war against an enemy of peace, law, order, and authority. Such a person is fought as a danger to the community, as someone who has broken the contract on which it rests, as a rebel, a traitor, and a breaker of the peace, using whatever means war provides.— [14] This list is certainly not complete. Clearly, punishment is overloaded with all kinds of uses. All the more reason to subtract one *supposed* use, though public opinion considers it the most essential one. Belief in punishment, shaky today for several reasons, still finds its strongest support here. Punishment is supposed to have the value of awakening the *feeling of guilt* in the guilty person. People look to it as the real tool for producing the inner reaction called “bad conscience” or “the bite of conscience.” But this gets both reality and psychology wrong even today—and how much more so for the longest part of human history, its prehistory! A real bite of conscience is extremely rare precisely among criminals and convicts. Prisons and penitentiaries are *not* the breeding grounds where this species of gnawing worm especially thrives. All careful observers agree on this, though many of them give such a judgment very reluctantly and against their own dearest wishes. Taken as a whole, punishment hardens people and makes them cold. It makes them concentrate. It sharpens their sense of alienation. It strengthens their power to resist. If it does happen to break someone's energy and bring about a miserable collapse and self-abasement, this result is certainly even less cheering than punishment's average effect, which is marked by a dry, gloomy seriousness. But if we think of those thousands of years *before* human history, we can safely judge that punishment itself did more than anything to *hold back* the development of the feeling of guilt—at least in the victims on whom the power to punish was vented. We must not underestimate how much the very sight of judicial proceedings and the carrying out of punishment prevents the criminal from feeling that his deed, his kind of action, is reprehensible *in itself*. He sees precisely the same kind of actions committed in the service of justice and then approved, committed with a good conscience: spying, outwitting, bribery, setting traps, all the cunning, crafty skills of policemen and prosecutors. Then there is the systematic robbing, overpowering, insulting, imprisoning, torturing, and murdering expressed in the various kinds of punishment—not even excused by passion. All these, then, are actions his judges do not reject and condemn *in themselves*, but only in a particular respect and application. “Bad conscience,” this most disturbing and interesting plant among the things that grow on our earth, did *not* grow in this soil. In fact, for the longest time, the awareness of the judges and punishers themselves expressed *nothing* to suggest that they were dealing with a “guilty person.” They were dealing instead with someone who had caused harm, with an unaccountable piece of fate. And when punishment then fell on that person, again like a piece of fate, he felt no other “inner torment” than he would at the sudden arrival of something he had not reckoned with: a terrible natural event, a falling boulder that crushes him, against which no further struggle is possible. [15] Spinoza once became aware of this in an awkwardly revealing way—to the annoyance of his interpreters, who actually *work hard* to misunderstand him at this point, Kuno Fischer, for example. One afternoon, chafing at who knows what memory, he pondered what, for him personally, was actually left of the famous *bite of conscience*. This was the man who had put good and evil among the things human beings imagine. He had angrily defended the honor of his “free” God against those blasphemers who claimed that God brings everything about with the good in view—“but that would mean subjecting God to fate, and would truly be the greatest of all absurdities.” For Spinoza, the world had returned to the innocence in which it lay before bad conscience was invented. What, then, had become of the bite of conscience? “The opposite of joy,” he finally told himself, “a sadness accompanied by the idea of something past that turned out contrary to all expectation.” Eth. III propos. XVIII schol. I. II. *Just like Spinoza*, for thousands of years the people who caused harm and were overtaken by punishment felt this way about their “offense”: “Something has unexpectedly gone wrong here,” *not*: “I shouldn't have done that.” They submitted to punishment as people submit to an illness, a misfortune, or death, with that brave fatalism, free of rebellion, which even today gives Russians, for example, an advantage over us Westerners in handling life. If there was any criticism of the deed back then, it was practical shrewdness that did the criticizing. Without question, we must look for punishment's actual effect above all in a sharpening of shrewdness, a lengthening of memory, a will to go about things more cautiously, suspiciously, and secretly from then on; in the realization that for many things one is simply too weak, once and for all; in a kind of improvement in judging oneself. What punishment can achieve on the whole, in humans and animals, is an increase in fear, a sharpening of shrewdness, and control over desires. Through this, punishment *tames* people, but it does not make them “better.” There would be more reason to claim the opposite. (“Harm makes you wise,” people say. To the extent that it makes you wise, it also makes you bad. Fortunately, it quite often makes you stupid.) [16] At this point I can no longer avoid giving a first, provisional statement of my own hypothesis about the origin of “bad conscience.” It is not easy to make it heard. It needs to be thought over, watched over, and slept on for a long time. I see bad conscience as the deep sickness human beings had to fall into under the pressure of the most thorough change they have ever experienced: the change that came when they finally found themselves confined within the rule of society and peace. These half animals, happily adapted to the wilderness, war, roaming, and adventure, fared just as water animals must have fared when forced either to become land animals or to die out. All at once, all their instincts lost their value and were “disconnected.” Now they were supposed to walk on their feet and “carry themselves,” where previously the water had carried them. A terrible weight lay on them. They felt clumsy at the simplest tasks. In this new, unknown world, they no longer had their old guides: the drives that regulated them and guided them surely without their being aware of it. These unfortunate creatures were reduced to thinking, drawing conclusions, calculating, combining causes and effects—to their “consciousness,” their poorest organ and the one most likely to go wrong! I believe there has never been such a feeling of misery on earth, such a leaden discomfort. And meanwhile those old instincts had not suddenly stopped making their demands! Only now it was difficult, and rarely possible, to give them what they wanted. For the most part, they had to look for new, underground satisfactions, so to speak. All instincts that do not discharge themselves outward *turn inward*. This is what I call the *internalization* of human beings. Only with this does what will later be called their “soul” develop in them. The whole inner world, originally thin, as though stretched between two skins, expanded and opened up. It gained depth, width, and height in proportion to how much the human discharge outward was *held back*. Those terrible defenses by which the organization of the state protected itself against the old instincts of freedom—punishments belong above all among these defenses—made all the instincts of the wild, free, roaming human being turn back, turn *against the human being himself*. Hostility, cruelty, pleasure in pursuit, in attack, in change, in destruction—all of this turning against the people who possess these instincts: *that* is the origin of “bad conscience.” Lacking external enemies and resistance, pressed into the oppressive narrowness and regularity of custom, the human being impatiently tore at himself, pursued, gnawed at, disturbed, and mistreated himself. This animal that people want to “tame,” which wounds itself against the bars of its cage, this deprived creature consumed by homesickness for the desert, had to make an adventure, a torture chamber, an uncertain and dangerous wilderness out of himself. This fool, this longing, desperate prisoner, became the inventor of “bad conscience.” But with him began the greatest and most disturbing sickness, from which humanity has still not recovered: human beings suffering *from human beings, from themselves*. It resulted from a violent separation from the animal past, a leap and fall, as it were, into new situations and conditions of existence, a declaration of war against the old instincts on which human strength, pleasure, and fearsomeness had rested until then. Let us add at once that, on the other hand, an animal soul turned against itself, taking sides against itself, brought something so new, deep, unheard-of, puzzling, contradictory, *and full of a future* into the world that the appearance of the earth changed fundamentally. In fact, it would take divine spectators to appreciate the spectacle that began then, whose end is still entirely out of sight. This spectacle is too subtle, too wonderful, too paradoxical to be allowed to play itself out meaninglessly and unnoticed on some ridiculous star! Since then, the human being has counted among the most unexpected and exciting lucky throws of the dice made by Heraclitus's “great child,” whether we call it Zeus or chance. The human being arouses interest, suspense, hope, almost certainty, as though something were announcing itself, preparing itself through him—as though the human being were not a goal, but only a path, an incident, a bridge, a great promise … [17] This hypothesis about the origin of bad conscience has two assumptions. First, the change was neither gradual nor voluntary. It did not take the form of organic growth into new conditions. It was a break, a leap, a compulsion, an unavoidable fate against which there was no struggle, not even ressentiment. Second, forcing a population that had previously been unrestrained and unshaped into a fixed form began with an act of violence and was completed only through one act of violence after another. Accordingly, the earliest “state” appeared as a terrible tyranny, a crushing, ruthless machine. It kept working until this raw material of people and half animals had finally been not just thoroughly kneaded and made obedient, but also *shaped*. I used the word “state.” It goes without saying who is meant: some pack of blond beasts of prey, a race of conquerors and masters, organized for war and able to organize, which unhesitatingly lays its terrible paws on a population perhaps vastly superior in numbers, but still without shape, still roaming. This is how the “state” begins on earth. I think we are done with the fanciful notion that it began with a “contract.” What does someone who can command, who is a “master” by nature, who acts violently in deed and gesture, have to do with contracts! Such beings cannot be reckoned with. They come like fate, without cause, reason, consideration, or pretext. They are there like a flash of lightning: too terrible, too sudden, too convincing, too “different” even to be hated. Their work is an instinctive creating and imposing of forms. They are the most involuntary, unconscious artists there are. Wherever they appear, something new soon stands there: a structure of rule that *lives*, whose parts and functions have been marked out and put into relation with one another. Nothing at all finds a place in it without first being given a “meaning” in relation to the whole. These born organizers do not know what guilt, responsibility, or consideration is. They are ruled by that terrible artist's selfishness which looks out with a gaze of bronze and knows itself justified in advance for all eternity by its “work,” as a mother does by her child. Obviously, “bad conscience” did not grow in them. But this ugly growth would not have developed *without them*. It would not exist if the pressure of their hammer blows, their violence as artists, had not removed an enormous amount of freedom from the world, or at least from sight, and made it *latent*, so to speak. This *instinct of freedom* made latent by violence—we have already understood this—this instinct of freedom pushed back, forced to retreat, imprisoned inside, and finally discharging and venting itself only on itself: that, and that alone, is *bad conscience* in its beginnings. [18] We should be careful not to think little of this whole phenomenon just because it is ugly and painful from the start. At bottom, it is the very same active force that works on a grander scale in those artists of violence and organizers, building states. Here, inwardly, on a smaller, pettier scale, working backward in the “labyrinth of the heart,” to use Goethe's words, it creates bad conscience for itself and builds negative ideals. It is that same *instinct of freedom*—in my language, the will to power. Only here, the material on which this force vents its shaping, violating nature is the human being himself, his whole old animal self, and *not*, as in that larger and more obvious phenomenon, the *other* person, *other* people. This secret violence against oneself, this artist's cruelty, this pleasure in giving oneself a form as though one were difficult, resistant, suffering material; in burning into oneself a will, a criticism, a contradiction, a contempt, a no; this disturbing and terribly pleasurable work of a soul willingly divided against itself, which makes itself suffer for the pleasure of making suffer—all this *active* “bad conscience” has finally, as we can already guess, also brought to light a wealth of new, strange beauty and affirmation. It has been the real womb of events in the world of ideals and imagination, and perhaps it has brought forth *beauty itself* for the very first time … What would be “beautiful” if contradiction had not first become aware of itself, if ugliness had not first said to itself, “I am ugly”? … At least this hint makes it less puzzling how an ideal, a beauty, can be suggested in contradictory concepts such as *selflessness, self-denial, self-sacrifice*. And from now on we know one thing—I have no doubt about it: what kind of *pleasure* the selfless, self-denying, self-sacrificing person feels from the very beginning. This pleasure belongs to cruelty.—So much for now about the origin of the “unselfish” as a *moral* value, and about marking out the soil from which this value grew. Only bad conscience, only the will to mistreat oneself, provides the condition for the *value* of the unselfish.— [19] Bad conscience is a sickness, beyond any doubt, but a sickness in the way that pregnancy is a sickness. Let us look for the conditions under which this sickness reached its most terrible and sublime height. We will see what really entered the world only with this. But it takes staying power to do so, and first we must return once more to an earlier point of view. The relationship in private law between debtor and creditor, which we have already discussed at length, was interpreted into yet another relationship. Historically, this happened in an extremely remarkable and troubling way, in a relationship where it may be hardest for us modern people to understand: that of *people now living* to their ancestors. Within the original clan community—we are speaking of primeval times—the living generation always recognizes a legal obligation to the earlier generation, and especially to the earliest one, which founded the clan. This is by no means a mere bond of feeling. Indeed, there would be some reason to deny that such a bond existed at all for the longest part of the human race's existence. The ruling conviction here is that the clan *exists* only through the ancestors' sacrifices and achievements, and that these must be *paid back* to them through sacrifices and achievements. People thus acknowledge a *debt*, which keeps growing because these ancestors, continuing to exist as powerful spirits, never stop using their strength to grant the clan new advantages and advances. For free, perhaps? But there is no “for free” in those crude ages so “poor in soul.” What can people give back to them? Sacrifices—originally food in the crudest sense—festivals, chapels, displays of honor, and above all obedience. For all customs, as the ancestors' works, are also their rules and commands. Do people ever give them enough? This suspicion remains and grows. From time to time it forces a great payment to clear the whole debt at once, some monstrous return payment to the “creditor”—the notorious sacrifice of firstborn children, for example; blood, human blood in any case. According to this kind of logic, *fear* of the founding ancestor and his power, the awareness of debts to him, necessarily grows in exact proportion to the power of the clan itself, as the clan becomes ever more victorious, independent, honored, and feared. Not the other way around! Rather, every step toward the clan's decline, every miserable accident, every sign of degeneration or approaching dissolution, always also *reduces* fear of the spirit of its founder. These things give an ever smaller idea of his shrewdness, his care for the future, and the presence of his power. Imagine this crude kind of logic carried through to the end. Through the imagination of growing fear, the founding ancestors of the *most powerful* clans must themselves finally have grown to monstrous size and been pushed back into the darkness of something divinely uncanny and unimaginable. The founding ancestor is finally, necessarily, transformed into a *god*. Perhaps this is even the origin of the gods—an origin, then, in *fear*! … Anyone who feels the need to add, “But also in reverence!” would hardly be right about that longest period of the human race, its primeval age. They would certainly be all the more right about the *middle* period, when noble clans took shape. These clans really did give back to their originators, the founding ancestors—heroes, gods—all the qualities that had meanwhile appeared in themselves, with interest: the *noble* qualities. Later we will take another look at the gods' elevation to noble rank and their refinement, which certainly does not mean making them “holy.” For now, let us simply bring this whole development of the awareness of debt and guilt to a provisional end. [20] History teaches that the awareness of having debts to the deity by no means came to an end when the form of “community” organized around blood relationships declined. Humanity inherited the concepts “good and bad” from the hereditary nobility, along with its basic psychological tendency to establish rankings. In the same way, with its inheritance of the clan and tribal deities, humanity also acquired the burden of still unpaid debts and the desire to clear them. (The transition is made by those large populations of slaves and serfs who adapted themselves to their masters' worship of the gods, whether through force or through submission and mimicry. From them, this inheritance then spreads in all directions.) For several thousand years, the feeling of guilt and debt toward the deity has never stopped growing, always in the same proportion as the concept of God and the feeling for God have grown and been raised higher on earth. (The whole history of ethnic struggles, victories, reconciliations, and mergers—everything that precedes the final ranking of all the component peoples in every great racial combination—is reflected in the tangled genealogies of their gods, in the legends of their struggles, victories, and reconciliations. Progress toward universal empires is always also progress toward universal deities. Despotism, by overpowering the independent nobility, always also clears a path for some kind of monotheism.) The rise of the Christian God, the greatest God reached so far, has therefore also brought about the greatest feeling of guilt on earth. Suppose that we have now entered the *opposite* movement. We could then infer, with considerable probability, from the unstoppable decline of belief in the Christian God that there is already a considerable decline in humanity's awareness of guilt as well. Indeed, we cannot dismiss the prospect that the complete and final victory of atheism might free humanity from this whole feeling of having debts to its beginning, its first cause. Atheism and a kind of *second innocence* belong together.— [21] So much for a brief, rough, provisional account of the connection between the concepts “guilt,” “duty,” and religious assumptions. Until now I have deliberately left aside the actual moralization of these concepts: pushing them back into the conscience, or more precisely, entangling *bad* conscience with the concept of God. At the end of the previous section, I even spoke as though this moralization did not exist at all, and therefore as though those concepts must now come to an end once their underlying assumption has fallen: belief in our “creditor,” in God. The actual situation differs terribly from this. Moralizing the concepts of guilt and duty, pushing them back into *bad* conscience, is quite specifically an attempt to *reverse* the direction of the development just described, or at least to bring its movement to a standstill. Now the prospect of finally clearing the debt *is supposed* to close off, pessimistically, once and for all. Now the gaze *is supposed* to strike a solid wall of impossibility and recoil without comfort. Now those concepts “guilt” and “duty” *are supposed* to turn backward—against whom? There can be no doubt: first against the “debtor.” Bad conscience now takes root in him, eats into him, spreads, and grows like a polyp in every direction and depth, until finally, along with the impossibility of clearing the guilt, comes the idea that the penance too cannot be cleared, can never be paid off—the idea of “*eternal* punishment.” But finally they turn even against the “creditor,” against the first cause of humanity. This may mean the beginning of the human race, its founding ancestor, who is now burdened with a curse—“Adam,” “original sin,” “unfreedom of the will.” Or it may mean nature, from whose womb human beings emerge, and into which the evil principle is now placed—the “demonization of nature.” Or it may mean existence as a whole, which is left standing as *worthless in itself*: a nihilistic turning away from it, a desire for nothingness or a desire for its “opposite,” for a different kind of being, Buddhism and related things. Then, all at once, we stand before the paradoxical and horrifying way out in which tormented humanity found temporary relief, that stroke of genius by *Christianity*: God himself sacrificing himself for humanity's guilt and debt; God himself getting payment from himself; God as the only one who can clear humanity's debt when it has become impossible for human beings themselves to clear it—the creditor sacrificing himself for his debtor, out of *love* (can you believe it?), out of love for his debtor! … [22] By now we will have guessed what has really happened in all this and *underneath* it all. That will to torment oneself, that cruelty driven back into the animal human being who has been turned inward, frightened back into himself, locked in the “state” to be tamed—this human being invented bad conscience to hurt himself after the *more natural* outlet for his wish to hurt had been blocked. This person of bad conscience has seized on the religious assumption in order to drive his self-torture to its most terrifying harshness and intensity. A debt to *God*: this thought becomes his instrument of torture. In “God” he takes hold of the most extreme opposites he can find to his own real, inseparable animal instincts. He reinterprets these animal instincts themselves as guilt before God—as hostility, defiance, rebellion against the “lord,” the “father,” the first ancestor and beginning of the world. He stretches himself between the opposing terms “God” and “devil.” He throws outside himself every no he says to himself, to nature, to the naturalness and factual reality of his being, and turns it into a yes, into something existing, embodied, real: God, God's holiness, God as judge, God as executioner, the afterlife, eternity, torment without end, hell, immeasurable punishment and guilt. This is a kind of madness of the will in psychological cruelty that has absolutely no equal. It is the human will to find oneself guilty and reprehensible beyond any possibility of atonement; the will to imagine oneself punished without the punishment ever being able to equal the guilt; the will to infect and poison the deepest foundation of things with the problem of punishment and guilt, cutting off one's escape from this labyrinth of “fixed ideas” once and for all; the will to set up an ideal—that of the “holy God”—so that, faced with it, one can be plainly certain of one's own absolute unworthiness. Oh, this mad, sad human beast! What notions it gets, what unnaturalness, what fits of nonsense, what *beastliness in thought* breaks out at once if it is prevented even a little from being a *beast in action*! … All this is interesting to excess, but also so full of black, gloomy, unnerving sadness that we must forcibly forbid ourselves to look too long into these abysses. Here is *sickness*, beyond any doubt, the most terrible sickness that has raged in humanity so far. And anyone who can still hear how, in this night of torture and absurdity, the cry of *love*, the cry of the most longing delight, of redemption in *love*, rang out—but people today no longer have the ears for it!—turns away, seized by an unconquerable horror … There is so much that is horrifying in human beings! … The earth has been a madhouse for far too long! … [23] Let that be enough, once and for all, about the origin of the “holy God.”—Fortunately, every look at the *Greek gods* still shows that the conception of gods *in itself* need not lead to this deterioration of the imagination, which we could not spare ourselves from picturing for a moment. There are *nobler* ways of using the invention of gods than for this human self-crucifixion and self-defilement, in which Europe has excelled over the last few thousand years. These Greek gods reflected noble, self-ruling human beings, in whom the *animal* in humanity felt itself made divine and did *not* tear itself apart, did *not* rage against itself! For the longest time, these Greeks used their gods precisely to keep “bad conscience” away from them, so that they could remain happy in their freedom of soul. They used them, then, in the opposite sense from Christianity's use of its God. These splendid, lionhearted overgrown children went *very far* in this. No less an authority than Homer's Zeus himself occasionally lets them know that they make things too easy for themselves. “Amazing!” he says once—the case is that of Aegisthus, a *very* bad case— “Amazing, how much mortals complain against the gods! “*Evil comes only from us*, they think; but they themselves, “Through lack of sense, even beyond their allotted fate, bring misery on themselves.” Yet here we also hear and see that this Olympian spectator and judge is far from resenting them for it or thinking badly of them. “How *foolish* they are!”—that is what he thinks when mortals commit misdeeds. And “foolishness,” “lack of sense,” a little “disturbance in the head”—even the Greeks of the strongest, bravest age *admitted* this much in themselves as the cause of much that was bad and disastrous. Foolishness, *not* sin! Do you understand that? … But even this disturbance in the head was a problem. “How is it even possible? Where could it really have come from, in heads like *ours*, in us people of noble descent, good fortune, good breeding, the best society, nobility, and virtue?” For centuries, this is what the noble Greek asked himself when faced with any incomprehensible atrocity or outrage with which one of his equals had stained himself. “A *god* must have deluded him,” he finally told himself, shaking his head … This way out is *typical* of Greeks … In this way, the gods then served to justify human beings to a certain degree even in what was bad. They served as causes of evil. Back then they took on not the punishment, but, as is *nobler*, the guilt … [24] I end with three question marks, as you can see. Some of you may ask me: “Is this setting up an ideal, or tearing one down?” … But have you ever really asked yourselves how expensive it has been, on this earth, to set up *any* ideal? How much reality was slandered and dismissed every time, how much lying was made holy, how much conscience was thrown into confusion, how much “God” had to be sacrificed each time? To set up a holy place, *a holy place must be broken*: that is the law—show me the case where it is not fulfilled! … We modern people are the heirs of thousands of years of conscience-surgery and self-torture. That is what we have practiced longest, it is our art perhaps, and in any case it is our sophistication and our spoiled taste. For far too long man looked at his natural drives with an “evil eye,” until in the end they paired off inside him with the “bad conscience.” The opposite experiment would be possible *in itself*, but who is strong enough for it? I mean pairing the bad conscience with the *unnatural* drives, with all those longings for the beyond, for what opposes the senses, instinct, nature, the animal, in short, with the ideals so far, all of them hostile to life and all of them slanderers of the world. Who today could you approach with *such* hopes and demands? … You would instantly have the *good* people against you, and, as is only proper, the comfortable, the reconciled, the vain, the enthusiastic, and the tired … Nothing offends more deeply and separates people more completely than letting them notice the severity and the height with which you treat yourself. And at the same time, how forthcoming and how affectionate the whole world becomes toward us the moment we behave like everyone else and “let ourselves go” like everyone else! … To reach that goal, we would need a *different* kind of spirit than this age is likely to produce: spirits made strong by wars and victories, for whom conquest, adventure, danger, and even pain have become needs; we would need the habit of sharp, high air, of winter walks, of ice and mountains in every sense; we would need something like a sublime malice, a last and most self-assured mischief of knowledge, which belongs to great health; in short, and bad enough, we would need precisely this *great health*! … Is such a thing even possible today? … But at some point, in a stronger time than this crumbling, self-doubting present, he must come to us, the *redeeming* man of great love and great contempt, the creative spirit driven again and again by his own urgent strength out of every retreat and every beyond, whose solitude the crowd misunderstands, as though it were an escape *from* reality, when in fact it is only his sinking, burial, and deepening into reality, so that one day, when he comes back into the light, he may bring home the *redemption* of that reality: its redemption from the curse that the ideal so far has laid on it. This man of the future, who will redeem us from the ideal so far and from *what had to grow out of it*, from the great disgust, from the will to nothing, from nihilism, this stroke of the noon bell and of the great decision that sets the will free again, that gives the earth back its goal and man back his hope, this Antichrist and anti-nihilist, this conqueror of God and of nothing: *he must come one day* … [25] But what am I saying here? Enough! Enough! At this point only one thing is proper for me: to keep silent. Otherwise I would take liberties with what is allowed only to a younger man, a man with more future, a stronger man than I am, what is allowed only to *Zarathustra*, to *Zarathustra the godless* … ### Essay III Third Essay: What Do Ascetic Ideals Mean? Carefree, mocking, violent —that is how wisdom wants *us*: she is a woman, she only ever loves a warrior. *Thus Spoke Zarathustra.* [1] What do ascetic ideals mean?—For artists, nothing, or too many different things. For philosophers and scholars, something like a nose and an instinct for the best conditions for highly developed intellectual life. For women, at best, one *more* charm to help them seduce: a little softness on beautiful flesh, the angelic quality of a pretty, plump animal. For people whose bodies have turned out badly and whose moods are disturbed (the *majority* of mortals), an attempt to feel “too good” for this world, a holy form of debauchery, their main weapon against persistent pain and boredom. For priests, the actual priestly faith, their best tool of power, and also the “highest” permission to wield power. Finally, for saints, an excuse to hibernate, their last craving for glory, their rest in nothingness (“God”), their form of madness. But the very fact that the ascetic ideal has meant so much to humanity expresses the basic fact about the human will: its fear of emptiness. *It needs a goal*—and it would rather will *nothingness* than *not* will.—Do you understand me?… Have you understood me?… “*Absolutely not, sir!*”—Then let's start again. [2] What do ascetic ideals mean?—Or let me take a particular case, one I have often enough been asked to advise on. What does it mean, for example, when an artist like Richard Wagner pays tribute to chastity in his old age? In one sense, of course, he had always done this. But only at the very end did he do it in an ascetic sense. What does this change of “sense” mean, this radical reversal of outlook?—For that is what it was: Wagner jumped straight into his own opposite. What does it mean when an artist turns into his opposite?… Suppose we pause over this question for a moment. We immediately remember what may have been the best, strongest, most cheerful, most *courageous* period in Wagner's life. That was when the idea of Luther's wedding occupied him deeply and inwardly. Who knows what accidents left us with the Mastersingers today instead of that wedding music? And how much of the latter may still echo in the former? But there is no doubt that this “Luther's Wedding,” too, would have praised chastity. Admittedly, it would also have praised sensuality—and that seems just right to me. That would also have been “Wagnerian.” For chastity and sensuality are not necessarily opposites. Every good marriage, every true love affair, goes beyond that opposition. Wagner would have done well, I think, to remind his Germans once again of this *pleasant* fact with a charming, bold comedy about Luther. There are, and always have been, many slanderers of sensuality among the Germans. And perhaps Luther's greatest achievement was precisely that he had the courage to own his *sensuality* (—in those days they called it, delicately enough, “evangelical freedom”…). But even where chastity and sensuality really do oppose each other, fortunately their opposition need not be tragic. At least this should hold for all those mortals who have turned out better and are in better spirits. They are far from simply counting their unstable balance between “animal and angel” as an argument against existence. The subtlest and brightest, like Goethe, like Hafiz, have even seen it as one *more* attraction of life. These very “contradictions” tempt us into existence… On the other hand, it is only too understandable that if badly turned-out pigs are persuaded to worship chastity—and there are such pigs!—they will see and worship in it only their own opposite, the opposite of the badly turned-out pig. Oh, with what tragic grunting and zeal! You can imagine it. That painful, unnecessary opposition is what Richard Wagner unquestionably still wanted to set to music and put on stage at the end of his life. *But what for?* We may fairly ask. For what were the pigs to him? What are they to us?— [3] Of course, we cannot avoid the other question here. What did that manly (oh, so unmanly) “country innocent” matter to him? That poor devil and child of nature, Parsifal, whom he finally makes Catholic by such compromising means—what? Was this Parsifal even meant *seriously*? We might be tempted to suspect, even to wish, the opposite. Perhaps Wagner meant Parsifal lightheartedly, as a kind of final piece and satyr play. Through it, Wagner the writer of tragedies might have wished to say goodbye to us, and to himself, and above all *to tragedy*, in a way that suited him and was worthy of him: with an outburst of the most extreme and mischievous parody. A parody of tragedy itself, of all the dreadful earthly seriousness and earthly misery of the past, of the finally overcome *crudest form* of the ascetic ideal's opposition to nature. As I said, this would have been worthy of a great writer of tragedies. Like every artist, he only reaches the final peak of his greatness when he can see himself and his art *beneath* him—when he can *laugh* at himself. Is Wagner's “Parsifal” his secret laugh of superiority at himself? Is it the triumph of the final, highest artistic freedom he has won, of his position beyond his art? As I said, we might wish so. For what would a *seriously intended* Parsifal be? Must we really see it—as someone put it to me—as “the offspring of a hatred of knowledge, intellect, and sensuality that has gone mad”? A curse on the senses and the intellect in a single breath of hatred? A renunciation of his faith and a return to sickly Christian ideals hostile to enlightenment? And finally, even a denial and cancellation of himself by an artist who until then had used all the force of his will to pursue the opposite: to make his art *as intellectual and as sensual as possible*? And not only his art: his life, too. Remember how enthusiastically Wagner once followed in the footsteps of the philosopher Feuerbach. Feuerbach's phrase “healthy sensuality” sounded like a message of salvation to Wagner in the thirties and forties, as it did to many Germans (—they called themselves the “*young* Germans”). Had he finally *learned to think differently* about this? At the very least, he seems to have wanted, in the end, to *teach a different view* of it… And not just from the stage, with Parsifal's trombones. In the murky writing of his last years, as constrained as it is bewildered, there are a hundred passages that reveal a secret wish and will: a discouraged, uncertain will that he could not admit to. It wanted, in quite literal terms, to preach reversal, conversion, denial, Christianity, the Middle Ages, and to tell his disciples: “It is nothing! Look for salvation somewhere else!” Even the “blood of the Redeemer” is invoked once… [4] Let me give my view of a case like this, which has many painful sides—and it is a *typical* case. Surely we do best to separate an artist from his work far enough not to take him as seriously as we take his work. After all, he is only the precondition of his work: the womb, the soil, sometimes the fertilizer and manure on which, and out of which, it grows. So in most cases he is something we have to forget if we want to enjoy the work itself. Understanding a work's *origin* is a matter for the physiologists and vivisectors of the mind: never, ever for people with an aesthetic sense, for artists! The poet who shaped Parsifal could not be spared a deep, thorough, even dreadful immersion and descent into the conflicting states of medieval souls. He could not be spared a hostile withdrawal from all intellectual elevation, rigor, and discipline, a kind of intellectual *perversity* (if you will forgive the word). No more could a pregnant woman be spared the disgusting things and oddities of pregnancy. As I said, these must be *forgotten* if we are to enjoy the child. We must avoid a confusion that an artist himself all too easily falls into through psychological contiguity, to use the English term. He acts as though he himself *were* what he can portray, think up, and express. In fact, if that were what he was, he would certainly not portray it, think it up, or express it. Homer would not have written an Achilles, nor Goethe a Faust, if Homer had been an Achilles and Goethe a Faust. A complete and fully developed artist is forever cut off from the “real,” from actuality. On the other hand, we can understand how he sometimes grows tired, to the point of despair, of the eternal “unreality” and falseness of his innermost existence. Then he may try to reach over into what is most forbidden to him, into actuality, and be real. With what success? You can guess… This is the artist's *typical idle wish*. The aging Wagner, too, fell prey to it, and had to pay so dearly, so disastrously for it (—it cost him the valuable part of his circle of friends). But finally, even quite apart from this idle wish, who would not wish, for Wagner's own sake, that he had said goodbye to us and to his art *differently*? Not with a Parsifal, but more victoriously, more sure of himself, more like Wagner—less misleading, less ambiguous about everything he wanted, less like Schopenhauer, less nihilistic?… [5] —So what do ascetic ideals mean? In an artist's case, we are gradually coming to understand: *nothing at all!*… Or so many different things that they amount to nothing at all!… Let us leave artists out for now. They are nowhere near independent enough in the world and *against* the world for their judgments of value, and changes in those judgments, to deserve attention *in themselves*. At all times they have been valets to some morality or philosophy or religion. This is quite apart from the fact that, sadly, they have often enough been all-too-flexible courtiers to their followers and patrons, and sharp-nosed flatterers of powers that are old or just coming to the top. At the very least, they always need a protective wall, something to fall back on, an already established authority. Artists never stand on their own. Standing alone goes against their deepest instincts. So Richard Wagner, for example, when “the time had come,” took the philosopher Schopenhauer as the man in front of him, as his protective wall. Who could even imagine that he would have had the *courage* for an ascetic ideal without the support Schopenhauer's philosophy offered him? Without Schopenhauer's authority, which gained *the upper hand* in Europe in the seventies? (This does not yet take into account whether an artist in the *new* Germany could have existed at all without the milk of a pious outlook, pious toward the empire.)—And this brings us to the more serious question. What does it mean when a real *philosopher* pays tribute to the ascetic ideal? A truly self-reliant mind like Schopenhauer, a man and knight with a gaze of bronze, who has the courage to be himself, who knows how to stand alone and does not wait for leaders in front of him or signals from above? Let us consider right away Schopenhauer's remarkable attitude toward *art*, an attitude that even fascinates certain kinds of people. Clearly, it was *first* for this that Richard Wagner went over to Schopenhauer (persuaded, as we know, by a poet, Herwegh). He went so far that a complete theoretical contradiction opened up between his earlier and his later beliefs about aesthetics. The former are expressed, for example, in “Opera and Drama”; the latter in the writings he published from 1870 onward. In particular, and perhaps most surprisingly, from that time Wagner changed his judgment about the value and position of *music* itself without a second thought. What did it matter to him that until then he had made music a means, a medium, a “woman” who absolutely needed a purpose, a man, in order to flourish—namely, drama! He suddenly realized that Schopenhauer's theory and innovation could do *more* for the greater glory of music. That is, music's *sovereignty*, as Schopenhauer understood it. Music stood apart from all the other arts, the independent art in itself. It did *not*, like them, provide images of the world of appearances. Instead it spoke the language of the will itself, directly out of the “abyss,” as the will's own most original revelation, derived from nothing else. With this extraordinary rise in music's value, which seemed to follow from Schopenhauer's philosophy, *the musician* himself suddenly rose to an unheard-of price. He now became an oracle, a priest, indeed more than a priest: a kind of mouthpiece for the “in-itself” of things, a telephone from the world beyond. From then on this ventriloquist of God did not just speak music—he spoke metaphysics. Is it any wonder that one day he finally spoke *ascetic ideals*?… [6] Schopenhauer made use of Kant's formulation of the aesthetic problem—though he certainly did not look at it through Kant's eyes. Kant thought he was honoring art when, among the qualities of beauty, he favored and emphasized those that make knowledge honorable: impersonality and universal validity. Whether this was fundamentally a mistake is not something to discuss here. I only want to stress that Kant, like all philosophers, did not approach the aesthetic problem through the artist's experience—the experience of the person creating. He thought about art and beauty only from the “spectator's” point of view. In the process he quietly slipped the “spectator” himself into the concept of “beautiful.” If only the philosophers of beauty had at least known this “spectator” well enough! Known him, that is, as a great *personal* fact and experience, as a wealth of strong experiences of his very own, of desires, surprises, and delights in the field of beauty! But I fear it was always the opposite. So from the very start they give us definitions that harbor a basic error like a fat worm, born of a lack of finer experience of themselves. One is Kant's famous definition of beauty. “Beautiful,” Kant said, “is what pleases *without interest*.” Without interest! Compare this definition with another, made by a real “spectator” and artist: Stendhal, who once called beauty a promise of happiness. At any rate, this explicitly *rejects* and crosses out just what Kant alone emphasizes in the aesthetic state: disinterestedness. Who is right, Kant or Stendhal?—Our theorists of aesthetics never tire of arguing for Kant by saying that, under beauty's spell, we can *even* look at unclothed female statues “without interest.” Surely we may laugh a little at their expense. The experiences of *artists* on this delicate point are “more interesting.” And Pygmalion, at any rate, did *not* necessarily lack an aesthetic sense. Let us think all the better of our aesthetic theorists' innocence, reflected in arguments like these. Let us count it to Kant's credit, for instance, that he can teach us about the special nature of the sense of touch with the innocence of a country parson!—And here we return to Schopenhauer. He was much closer to the arts than Kant, yet he did not escape the spell of Kant's definition. How did that happen? The circumstances are strange enough. He interpreted the words “without interest” in the most personal way possible, on the basis of an experience that must have been among his most regular. Schopenhauer speaks about few things with such certainty as the effect of aesthetic contemplation. He says that it works precisely against *sexual* “interest,” much like lupulin and camphor. He never tired of praising *this* escape from the “will” as the great advantage and benefit of the aesthetic state. Indeed, we might be tempted to ask whether his basic conception of “will and representation” originated in a generalization from that sexual experience: the thought that deliverance from the “will” is possible only through “representation.” (Incidentally, in all questions about Schopenhauer's philosophy, we must never forget that it was conceived by a young man of twenty-six. So it bears not only Schopenhauer's particular stamp, but also the particular stamp of that season of life.) Listen, for example, to one of the most explicit among the countless passages he wrote in honor of the aesthetic state (Welt als Wille und Vorstellung I 231). Listen for the tone, the suffering, the happiness, the gratitude with which these words were spoken. “That is the painless state that Epicurus praised as the highest good and as the state of the gods. For that moment, we are freed from the vile pressure of the will. We celebrate the Sabbath of the penal labor of willing; the wheel of Ixion stands still”… What forceful words! What images of torment and prolonged weariness! What an almost pathological contrast in time between “that moment” and the usual “wheel of Ixion,” the “penal labor of willing,” the “vile pressure of the will”!—But suppose Schopenhauer was right a hundred times over about his own experience. What would that contribute to understanding the nature of beauty? Schopenhauer described one effect of beauty, its calming of the will. Is it even a regular effect? As I said, Stendhal was no less sensual a person, but had a happier disposition than Schopenhauer. He emphasizes another effect of beauty: “Beauty *promises* happiness.” For him, the actual fact seems to be precisely beauty's *arousal of the will* (“of interest”). And finally, could we not object to Schopenhauer himself that he is quite wrong to think himself a Kantian here? That he has not understood Kant's definition of beauty in a Kantian way at all? That for him, too, beauty pleases because of an “interest”—indeed, the strongest, most personal interest of all: that of a tortured man escaping his torture?… And to return to our first question, “What does it *mean* when a philosopher pays tribute to the ascetic ideal?”—here, at least, we get a first hint: he wants *to get away from torture*.— [7] Let us not pull gloomy faces as soon as we hear the word “torture.” In this particular case there is plenty to set against it, plenty to subtract—even something to laugh at. Above all, we should not underestimate this: Schopenhauer, who really did treat sexuality as a personal enemy (including its tool, woman, this “instrument of the devil”), *needed* enemies to stay in good spirits. He loved savage, bitter, black-green words. He raged for the sake of raging, out of passion. Without his enemies, without Hegel, woman, sensuality, and the whole will to exist and go on existing, he would have become sick, would have become a *pessimist* (—for he was not one, however much he wished he were). Otherwise Schopenhauer would *not* have stayed here, you can bet on it. He would have run away. But his enemies held him fast. His enemies tempted him into existence again and again. Just as with the ancient Cynics, his anger was his refreshment, his recreation, his compensation, his remedy for disgust, his *happiness*. So much for the most personal side of Schopenhauer's case. On the other hand, there is also something typical about him—and only here do we come back to our problem. As long as there have been philosophers on earth, and wherever there have been philosophers (from India to England, to take the opposite poles of talent for philosophy), there has undeniably been a distinctively philosophical irritation and grudge against sensuality. Schopenhauer is only its most eloquent outburst—and, if you have an ear for it, also its most captivating and delightful. Likewise, philosophers have a distinctive partiality and affection for the entire ascetic ideal. We should not deceive ourselves about this or try to talk it away. As I said, both belong to the type. If a philosopher lacks both, you can be sure he is only a “so-called” philosopher. What does this *mean*? For we must first interpret this fact. *In itself*, it just stands there stupidly for all eternity, like every “thing in itself.” Every animal, including the philosophical beast, instinctively strives for the best possible set of favorable conditions. Under them, it can fully release its strength and reach its greatest feeling of power. Just as instinctively, and with a keen nose that “surpasses all reason,” every animal recoils in horror from all kinds of troublemakers and obstacles that block, or might block, its path to those best conditions. (I am *not* talking about its path to “happiness,” but its path to power, to action, to the most powerful activity—and in most cases, in fact, its path to unhappiness.) In this way, the philosopher recoils in horror from *marriage* and everything that might persuade him to marry: marriage as an obstacle and a disaster on his path to the best conditions. What great philosopher has ever been married? Heraclitus, Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Schopenhauer—they were not. More than that, we cannot even *imagine* them married. A married philosopher belongs *in a comedy*: that is my claim. And that exception, Socrates, malicious Socrates, seems to have married as an act of irony, precisely to demonstrate *this* claim. Every philosopher would speak as Buddha once did when he was told of the birth of a son: “Râhula has been born to me; a shackle has been forged for me” (Râhula here means “a little demon”). Every “free spirit” would have to have a thoughtful hour, assuming he had previously had a thoughtless one, like the hour that once came to that same Buddha: “Life at home, he thought to himself, is cramped and crowded, a place of impurity. Freedom means leaving home.” “Thinking this, he left home.” The ascetic ideal points to so many bridges to *independence* that a philosopher cannot hear without inward rejoicing and applause the history of all those determined people who one day said No to every kind of unfreedom and went off into some desert. This holds even if they were merely strong donkeys, the very opposite of a strong mind. So what does the ascetic ideal mean for a philosopher? My answer is—you will have guessed it long ago: when the philosopher sees it, he smiles at the best possible conditions for the highest and boldest intellectual life. In doing so, he does *not* deny “existence.” Rather, he affirms *his* existence, and *only* his existence. Perhaps he does so to the point of nearly wishing something outrageous: let the world perish, let philosophy exist, let the philosopher exist, *let me exist!*… [8] You see, these philosophers are not neutral witnesses and judges of the ascetic ideal's value! They are thinking of *themselves*—what does “the saint” matter to them! They are thinking of what is most indispensable *to them* in it. Freedom from pressure, disturbance, noise, business, duties, worries. A clear head. Thoughts that dance, leap, and fly. Good air, thin, clear, free, dry, like mountain air, in which all animal life becomes more intellectual and grows wings. Quiet in all the basements. All the dogs neatly chained up. No barking of hostility and shaggy grudges. No worms of wounded ambition gnawing away. Modest, obedient guts, working busily like mills, but far away. The heart detached, beyond, in the future, posthumous. All in all, when they think of the ascetic ideal, they think of the cheerful asceticism of an animal that has become divine and grown wings, roaming above life more than it rests. We know the ascetic ideal's three great showy words: poverty, humility, chastity. Now look closely at the lives of all the great, productive, inventive minds. You will always find all three there to some extent. Certainly *not*, as goes without saying, as though these were their “virtues”—what does this kind of person have to do with virtues! Rather, they are the most basic and natural conditions for their *best* existence, their *finest* productivity. Their dominant intellectual drive may well have had to rein in an unruly, touchy pride or a reckless sensuality at first. Or it may have had a hard enough time keeping up its will to the “desert” against a liking for luxury and the most exquisite things, and also against lavish generosity of heart and hand. But it did so precisely as the *dominant* instinct, which forced all the other instincts to meet its demands—and it still does. If it did not, it would not be dominant. So there is nothing of “virtue” in this. As for the *desert* I just mentioned, where strong, independently minded spirits withdraw to be alone—oh, how different it looks from the desert educated people dream of! Sometimes, in fact, the desert consists of these educated people themselves. And certainly none of the actors of the intellect could bear it there. It is nowhere near romantic and Syrian enough for them, nowhere near enough of a stage desert! Admittedly, it does not lack camels either. But that is where all resemblance ends. Perhaps a deliberately chosen obscurity; getting out of one's own way; shying away from noise, admiration, newspapers, influence. A small job, an everyday routine, something that conceals more than it brings to light. Occasional company with harmless, cheerful animals and birds, whose sight refreshes us. Mountains for company—but not dead ones: mountains with *eyes* (that is, with lakes). Sometimes even a room in a crowded hotel for all comers, where you can be sure of being mistaken for someone else, and can talk with anyone without being punished for it. That is “desert” here. Oh, it is lonely enough, believe me! When Heraclitus withdrew into the courtyards and colonnades of the enormous temple of Artemis, that “desert” was more dignified, I admit. Why do we *lack* such temples? (—Perhaps we do *not* lack them: I am just thinking of my finest study, the Piazza di San Marco, provided it is spring, and also morning, between 10 and 12.) But what Heraclitus avoided is still the same thing that *we* avoid now: the noise and chatter of the Ephesian democrats, their politics, their news of the “empire” (Persia, you understand me), their market junk of “today.” For we philosophers need peace from one thing above all: from everything “today.” We revere the quiet, the cold, the noble, the distant, the past—anything whose appearance does not force the soul to defend itself and lace itself tight. Something we can talk to without talking *loudly*. Just listen to the sound a mind makes when it speaks: every mind has its own sound, loves its own sound. That one over there, for example, must be an agitator—in other words, an empty head, an empty pot. Whatever goes into him, everything comes back out dull and thick, weighed down by the echo of the great emptiness. That one over there rarely speaks without being hoarse. Perhaps he has *thought* himself hoarse? That would be possible—ask the physiologists—but anyone who thinks *in words* thinks as a speaker, not as a thinker. (It reveals that at bottom he is not thinking about things themselves, not thinking in terms of facts, but only in relation to things; what he is actually thinking about is *himself* and his listeners.) This third one speaks pushily. He comes too close to our bodies, we feel his breath on us. We involuntarily close our mouths, even though it is through a book that he speaks to us. The sound of his style tells us why: he has no time, he has little faith in himself, he must get a word in today or never again. But a mind sure of itself speaks quietly. It seeks concealment, makes people wait for it. You recognize a philosopher by the way he avoids three glittering, noisy things: fame, princes, and women. That does not mean they do not come to him. He shuns overly bright light, and therefore shuns his age and its “day.” In this he is like a shadow: the lower the sun sinks for him, the larger he grows. As for his “humility,” he can tolerate a certain dependence and obscuring of himself, just as he tolerates the dark. More than that, he fears the disturbance of lightning strikes. He shrinks from the exposure of a tree standing too isolated and unprotected, on which every spell of bad weather vents its mood, every mood its bad weather. His “maternal” instinct, his secret love for what is growing inside him, points him toward situations where he is relieved of having to think *about himself*. In the same way, the *mother's* instinct in woman has, until now, kept woman in a dependent position in general. In the end, these philosophers ask for little enough. Their motto is “Whoever owns is owned.” *Not*, as I must say again and again, out of some virtue or some praiseworthy will to be content with little and live simply. It is because their supreme master demands this of them, demands it wisely and relentlessly. This master cares about only one thing, and gathers and saves everything—time, strength, love, interest—for that alone. This kind of person does not like being disturbed by hostilities, or by friendships either: such people easily forget or despise. They think playing the martyr is bad taste. “To *suffer* for the truth”—they leave that to the ambitious and the stage heroes of the intellect, and anyone else with time enough for it (—the philosophers themselves have something to *do* for the truth). They are sparing with big words. People say even the word “truth” goes against their grain: it sounds boastful… Finally, as for the philosophers' “chastity,” this kind of mind clearly bears its fruit somewhere other than in children. Perhaps the survival of its name, its little immortality, lies somewhere else too. (In ancient India, philosophers put this even less modestly: “Why does someone whose soul is the world need descendants?”) There is no chastity here based on some ascetic scruple and hatred of the senses, any more than it is chastity when an athlete or jockey keeps away from women. Rather, this is what their dominant instinct wants, at least during periods of great pregnancy. Every artist knows how harmful sexual intercourse is during states of great intellectual tension and preparation. The most powerful, most sure in their instincts, do not even need experience, bad experience, to know this. Instead, their “maternal” instinct ruthlessly takes charge of all the other stores and extra supplies of strength, of the vigor of animal life, for the benefit of the developing work. Then the greater strength *uses up* the lesser.—Apply this interpretation, by the way, to Schopenhauer's case, which we discussed above. For him, the sight of beauty clearly worked as a trigger for the *main strength* in his nature: the strength of reflection and of the deeply searching gaze. It then exploded and suddenly took control of consciousness. This certainly does not rule out the possibility that the special sweetness and fullness of the aesthetic state might originate precisely in the ingredient “sensuality” (just as the “idealism” of girls of marriageable age comes from the same source). In that case, sensuality is not canceled when the aesthetic state begins, as Schopenhauer believed. It is only transformed, and no longer enters consciousness as sexual arousal. I will return to this point of view another time, in connection with still more delicate problems in the *physiology of aesthetics*, so untouched and unexplored until now. [9] We have seen that a certain asceticism—a tough, cheerful willingness to go without things, undertaken with the best will—belongs among the favorable conditions for the highest intellectual life, and also among its most natural results. So from the outset it is no surprise that philosophers, in particular, have never treated the ascetic ideal without some bias in its favor. A serious historical reckoning even shows that the bond between the ascetic ideal and philosophy is much closer and tighter still. We might say that philosophy only learned to take its first steps and baby steps on earth with this ideal's *walking harness* to hold it up. Oh, still so clumsy, oh, with such sulky faces, oh, so ready to fall over and lie on its belly, this timid little bowlegged clumsy creature, this pampered darling! At first philosophy fared like all good things. For a long time they had no courage to be themselves. They kept looking around to see if anyone would come to their help. More than that, they were afraid of everyone watching them. Consider the philosopher's individual drives and virtues one by one: his drive to doubt, his drive to deny, his drive to wait and suspend judgment (his “ephectic” drive), his drive to analyze; his drive to investigate, search, and take risks; his drive to compare and balance; his will to neutrality and objectivity, his will to every kind of “*without* anger and bias.” Have people really understood that for the longest time every one of these went against the first demands of morality and conscience? (Not to mention *reason* in general, which even Luther still liked to call Lady Clever, the clever whore.) That if a philosopher *had* become conscious of himself, he would have had to feel himself the very embodiment of “we strive for the *forbidden*”—and consequently took *care* not to “feel himself,” not to become conscious of himself?… As I said, it is no different with all the good things we are proud of today. Even measured by the standards of the ancient Greeks, our whole modern existence, wherever it is not weakness but power and awareness of power, looks like nothing but hubris and godlessness. For during the longest stretch of time, it was precisely the opposite of what we honor today that had conscience on its side and God as its guardian. Our whole attitude to nature today is hubris: our violation of nature with machines and the inventive skills of technicians and engineers who have so few scruples. Our attitude to God is hubris: that is, to any supposed spider of purpose and morality behind the great trapping web of causation. Like Charles the Bold fighting Louis the Eleventh, we could say, “I fight the universal spider.” Our attitude to *ourselves* is hubris. For we experiment on ourselves in ways we would never allow ourselves to use on any animal. With pleasure and curiosity we slit our souls open while we are still alive. What do we care any longer about the soul's “salvation”! Afterward we heal ourselves. Being sick is instructive, we do not doubt it—more instructive than being healthy. Today, those who *make us sick* seem more necessary to us even than any medicine men and “saviors.” We now violate ourselves, there is no doubt of that: we nutcrackers of the soul, we who ask questions and are open to question, as though life were nothing but cracking nuts. Precisely through this, every day we must necessarily become still more open to question, more *worthy* of being questioned—and perhaps, through this, also more worthy—of living?… All good things were once bad things. Every original sin has become an inherited virtue. Marriage, for instance, long seemed a sin against the community's rights. People once paid a penalty for being so immodest as to claim a woman for themselves (this includes, for example, the right of the first night, still today in Cambodia the privilege of the priests, those guardians of “good old customs”). Gentle, kindly, yielding, compassionate feelings—now valued so highly that they are almost “values in themselves”—for the longest time had self-contempt working against them. People were ashamed of gentleness, as they are ashamed of harshness today (cf. “Beyond Good and Evil,” p. 232). Submission to the *law*: oh, how their consciences resisted when the noble families, everywhere on earth, gave up vendetta on their own part and allowed the law power over them! For a long time “law” was something forbidden, an outrage, an innovation. It arrived with violence, as a power to which people submitted only with shame before themselves. Every tiniest step on earth was once won through mental and physical tortures. Today this whole way of looking at things sounds so strange to us: “It was not only stepping forward—no! Stepping, movement, change itself needed countless martyrs.” I brought it to light in “Daybreak,” pp. 17 ff. “Nothing,” it says there (p. 19), “has been bought more dearly than the little bit of human reason and feeling of freedom that now makes us proud. Yet this pride is what now makes it almost impossible for us to feel as people did during those immense stretches of time under the ‘morality of custom’ that came before ‘world history’: the real, decisive main history, which fixed humanity's character. Throughout that time, suffering counted as a virtue, cruelty as a virtue, pretending as a virtue, revenge as a virtue, denial of reason as a virtue. Well-being, on the other hand, counted as a danger, the desire for knowledge as a danger, peace as a danger, compassion as a danger; being pitied as a disgrace, work as a disgrace, madness as divinity, and *change* as the very essence of immorality and a thing pregnant with ruin!”— [10] The same book, p. 39, explains how the earliest generation of contemplative people was valued, and what pressure that judgment put them under. They were despised exactly to the extent that they were not feared! Contemplation first appeared on earth in disguise, with a doubtful reputation, a wicked heart, and often a frightened head. There is no doubt about that. For a long time, the inactive, brooding, unwarlike side of contemplative people's instincts surrounded them with deep distrust. There was only one remedy: make people decidedly *afraid* of them. The ancient Brahmins, for example, knew how to do that! The earliest philosophers knew how to give their existence and appearance a meaning, a foundation and background, that taught people to fear them. More precisely, they did this out of an even more basic need: to feel fear and respect for themselves. They found every value judgment within them turned *against* them. They had to fight down every kind of suspicion and resistance to “the philosopher in themselves.” As people of terrible times, they did this by terrible means. Cruelty to themselves, inventive self-torment—these were the chief means used by those power-hungry hermits and innovators in thought. They first needed to violate the gods and accepted traditions within themselves before they could *believe* in their own innovation. Think of the famous story of King Vishvamitra. After tormenting himself for a thousand years, he gained such a sense of power and such confidence in himself that he set out to build a *new heaven*. It is an unsettling symbol of both the earliest and the latest history of philosophy on earth. Everyone who has ever built a “new heaven” first found the power to do it in his own hell … Let us reduce the whole situation to a few short formulas. At first, the philosophical spirit always had to disguise itself and cocoon itself in the already established types of contemplative person: priest, magician, fortune-teller, religious person generally. Only then could it be *possible* at all, even to a degree. For a long time, *the ascetic ideal* provided the philosopher with a form in which to appear and a condition of existence. He had to *embody* it to be a philosopher. He had to *believe* in it to embody it. Philosophers' peculiar stance of standing apart—denying the world, hostile to life, distrusting the senses, stripped of sensuality—has lasted into the most recent times. It has almost come to count as *the philosophical attitude itself*. Above all, it results from the desperate conditions in which philosophy first arose and survived. For most of its history, philosophy could not have existed on earth without an ascetic covering and disguise, without an ascetic misunderstanding of itself. To put it in a clear, visible image: until the most recent times, *the ascetic priest* provided the repulsive, gloomy caterpillar form in which alone philosophy was allowed to live and creep about … Has that really *changed*? Has the colorful, dangerous winged creature, that “spirit” the caterpillar held inside it, finally shed its monk's robe and been let out into the light, thanks to a sunnier, warmer, brighter world? Is there already enough pride, daring, courage, self-confidence, will of the spirit, will to take responsibility, *freedom of the will*, for “the philosopher” really to be *possible* on earth now? … [11] Only now that *the ascetic priest* has come into view are we seriously closing in on our problem: what does the ascetic ideal mean? Only now does it become “serious.” We are now facing the true *representative of seriousness* as such. “What does all seriousness mean?” Perhaps that still more basic question is already coming to our lips. It is a question for physiologists, naturally, but for now we will slip past it. The ascetic priest has not only his faith in that ideal, but also his will, his power, his interest. His right to exist stands or falls with it. No wonder we meet a terrible opponent here—assuming, that is, that we are opponents of the ideal. He is fighting for his existence against those who deny it … On the other hand, an approach with so much at stake is unlikely from the start to help us much with our problem. The ascetic priest will hardly even be the most effective defender of his ideal. The reason is the same as the one that usually makes a woman fail when she tries to defend “woman as such.” Still less will he be the most objective assessor and judge of the controversy raised here. So we are more likely to have to help him defend himself well against us—that much is already clear—than to fear that he will refute us too well … What is being fought over here is the ascetic priests' assessment of our life. They set it, together with everything it belongs to—“nature,” “the world,” the whole realm of becoming and passing away—in relation to an entirely different kind of existence. Our life stands opposed to that existence and excludes it, unless it happens to turn against itself and deny itself. In that case, the case of an ascetic life, life counts as a bridge to that other existence. The ascetic treats life as a wrong turn that we must finally retrace to its starting point. Or he treats it as an error that we refute through action—that we *should* refute. For he *demands* that we go with him. Wherever he can, he forces *his* assessment of existence on others. What does that mean? Such a monstrous way of assigning value is not written into human history as an exception or a curiosity. It is one of the most widespread and longest-lasting facts there are. If the capital letters of our earthly existence were read from a distant star, they might tempt the reader to conclude that earth was the truly *ascetic* star. A corner full of discontented, arrogant, repulsive creatures who could never get rid of their deep disgust with themselves, the earth, and all life, and who hurt themselves as much as possible for the pleasure of causing pain—probably their only pleasure. Just consider how regularly, how universally, at almost all times, the ascetic priest appears. He belongs to no single race. He thrives everywhere. He grows out of every social class. Not that he breeds and passes on his way of assigning value through heredity. The opposite is true. A deep instinct forbids him to reproduce on any large scale. It must be a necessity of the highest order that keeps making this life-hostile species grow and thrive. It must be *in the interest of life itself* that such a type of self-contradiction does not die out. For an ascetic life is a self-contradiction. Here an unparalleled resentment rules: the resentment of an unsatisfied instinct and will to power that wants to master not something in life, but life itself, its deepest, strongest, most basic conditions. Here an attempt is made to use strength to block the sources of strength. Here a green, spiteful gaze turns against physiological flourishing itself, especially against its expressions: beauty and joy. Meanwhile, pleasure is felt and sought in failure, wasting away, pain, misfortune, ugliness, deliberately chosen loss, stripping away the self, self-whipping, self-sacrifice. All this is paradoxical to the highest degree. We face a division that wants itself to be divided, that *enjoys* itself in this very suffering. It becomes still more sure of itself and triumphant as its own necessary condition, physiological ability to live, *declines*. “Triumph precisely in the final agony”: the ascetic ideal has always fought under this most extreme of signs. In this seductive riddle, this picture of delight and torment, it recognized its brightest light, its salvation, its final victory. Cross, nut, light—crux, nux, lux—for it they belong together. — [12] Suppose such an embodied will to contradiction and opposition to nature is made *to philosophize*. On what will it unleash its deepest arbitrary urge? On whatever is felt most certainly to be true and real. It will look for *error* precisely where the basic instinct of life most firmly places truth. For example, like the ascetics of Vedanta philosophy, it will reduce bodily existence to an illusion. The same goes for pain, for multiplicity, for the whole conceptual opposition between “subject” and “object”—errors, nothing but errors! To refuse to believe in one's own self, to deny one's own “reality”—what a triumph! No longer just over the senses, over what plainly appears, but a much higher kind of triumph: a violation of reason, cruelty toward reason. That pleasure reaches its peak when reason's ascetic self-contempt and self-mockery decree: “There is a realm of truth and being, but reason itself is *excluded* from it!” … (In passing: even Kant's concept of the “intelligible character of things” retains something of this lustful ascetic division, which loves to turn reason against reason. For in Kant, “intelligible character” means a kind of constitution of things about which the intellect understands just this much: that it is utterly *incomprehensible* to the intellect.)—In the end, as people seeking knowledge, let us not be ungrateful for such determined reversals of the usual perspectives and value judgments. Through them, for far too long, the spirit has raged against itself in ways that seemed outrageous and useless. Seeing *differently* like this for once, *wanting to see differently*, is no small discipline and preparation of the intellect for its eventual “objectivity.” By that I do not mean “disinterested contemplation,” which is an incoherent and absurd concept. I mean the ability *to control* one's reasons for and against, to disconnect and reconnect them. That allows us to use the *differences* between perspectives and between interpretations driven by emotions for the sake of knowledge. From now on, my fellow philosophers, let us be more on guard against that dangerous old fiction of a “pure, will-less, painless, timeless subject of knowledge.” Let us beware of the grasping arms of such contradictory concepts as “pure reason,” “absolute spirituality,” “knowledge as such.” They always ask us to imagine an eye that cannot possibly be imagined: an eye that is to have no direction at all, in which the active and interpreting forces are to be restrained or absent. Yet only through these forces does seeing become seeing something. So they always ask for an absurd, incoherent concept of an eye. There is only seeing from a perspective, only “knowing” from a perspective. The *more* emotions we allow to speak about a thing, the *more* eyes, different eyes, we know how to bring to bear on the same thing, the more complete our “concept” of that thing, our “objectivity,” will be. But eliminating the will altogether, disconnecting every last emotion—supposing we could do it—what? Wouldn't that mean *castrating* the intellect? … [13] But let us return. A self-contradiction like the one apparently embodied in the ascetic, “life *against* life,” is simply nonsense when considered physiologically rather than psychologically. That much is clear at once. It can only be *apparent*. It must be a provisional expression, an interpretation, a formula, an adjustment, a psychological misunderstanding of something whose real nature could not be understood for a long time, or named *in itself* for a long time. Just a word wedged into an old gap in human knowledge. To put the facts against it briefly: *the ascetic ideal comes from a degenerating life's instinct to protect and heal itself*. That life tries every means to keep itself going and fights for its existence. The ideal points to a partial physiological obstruction and exhaustion. The deepest instincts of life, which have remained intact, constantly fight against these with new means and inventions. The ascetic ideal is one such means. So the situation is exactly the reverse of what its worshippers think. In and through this ideal, life wrestles with death and *against* death. The ascetic ideal is a device for *preserving* life. History shows how much it has been able to rule over humanity and gain power, especially wherever human civilization and domestication have been imposed. This expresses a great fact: the *sickliness* of the human type up to now, at least of domesticated humanity. It expresses the human being's physiological struggle with death—more precisely, with disgust at life, with exhaustion, with the wish for “the end.” The ascetic priest is the wish to be different, to be elsewhere, made flesh. He is this wish at its highest degree, its true intensity and passion. But the very power of his wishing is the chain that binds him here. This very thing makes him a tool that must work to create better conditions for being here and being human. With this same power, he holds the whole herd of failures, the depressed, those who have come off badly, those who have met with disaster, all kinds of people who suffer from themselves, fast to existence. Instinctively, he goes ahead as their shepherd. You already understand me: this ascetic priest, this apparent enemy of life, this denier—he belongs precisely among life's greatest *preserving* and *yes-creating* powers … What is behind that sickliness? For the human being is sicker, more uncertain, more changeable, less settled than any other animal. There is no doubt of that. The human being is the *sick* animal. Where does that come from? Certainly, humans have also dared more, innovated more, defied more, challenged fate more than all the other animals put together. The human being, the great experimenter on himself, the dissatisfied, insatiable one, who struggles for final mastery with animals, nature, and gods. Still unconquered, forever belonging to the future, he finds no more rest from his own driving strength. His future relentlessly digs like a spur in the flesh of every present. How could such a courageous and richly gifted animal not also be the most endangered, the longest and most deeply sick of all sick animals? … Humans often have had enough. There are whole epidemics of this feeling of having had enough—for example around 1348, at the time of the dance of death. But even this disgust, this exhaustion, this discontent with oneself—everything comes out so powerfully in humans that it immediately becomes a new chain. The no that humans say to life brings a wealth of more delicate yeses to light, as if by magic. Indeed, when this master of destruction and self-destruction *wounds* himself, afterward it is the wound itself that forces him *to live* … [14] The more normal sickliness is in humans—and we cannot deny that it is normal—the more highly we should honor the rare cases of strength in body and soul, the *fortunate cases* among humans. The more strictly we should protect those who have turned out well from the worst air, the air of the sick. Do people do that? … The sick are the greatest danger to the healthy. Harm to the strong comes *not* from the strongest, but from the weakest. Do people know that? … On the whole, fear of human beings is certainly not something we should wish to reduce. This fear forces the strong to be strong, sometimes terrible. It keeps the successful human type *upright*. What we should fear, what has a more disastrous effect than any other disaster, is not great fear, but great *disgust* with human beings, and likewise great *pity* for them. Suppose these two mated one day. Something of the most terrible kind would inevitably be born at once: humanity's “last will,” its will to nothingness, nihilism. And in fact, much has been done to prepare for this. Anyone who can smell with not just his nose but his eyes and ears senses something like the air of an insane asylum or a hospital almost everywhere he steps today. I am speaking, of course, of the areas of human culture, of every kind of “Europe” that now exists on earth. The *sickly* are the great danger to humanity, not the evil, not the “beasts of prey.” Those who have been failures, beaten down, broken from the start—they, the *weakest*, do the most to undermine life among humans. They most dangerously poison and call into question our trust in life, in humanity, in ourselves. Where could we escape that doomed look that leaves us with a deep sadness? That backward-turned look of someone malformed from the beginning, which reveals how such a person speaks to himself? That look which is a sigh? “I wish I were someone else!” this look sighs. “But there is no hope. I am who I am. How could I get free of myself? And yet—I have had enough of myself!” … Every weed, every poisonous plant grows in this soil of self-contempt, a truly swampy soil. Everything is so small, so hidden, so dishonest, so sickly sweet. Here the worms of revenge and lingering resentment swarm. Here the air stinks of secrets and things people will not admit. Here the web of the most malicious conspiracy is constantly being spun: the conspiracy of the suffering against those who have turned out well and won. Here the very sight of the victorious is *hated*. And what lying goes on to avoid admitting that this hatred is hatred! What a display of grand words and attitudes, what an art of “honest” slander! These failures—what noble eloquence flows from their lips! How much sugary, slimy, humble submission swims in their eyes! What do they really want? At least to *appear* just, loving, wise, superior—that is the ambition of these “lowest” people, these sick people! And how skilled that ambition makes them! Especially admire their skill as counterfeiters: how they imitate the stamp of virtue, even its ring, its golden ring. These weak and hopelessly sickly people have now taken an exclusive lease on virtue. There is no doubt about that. “We alone are the good, the just,” they say. “We alone are the people of good will.” They walk around among us as reproaches in the flesh, as warnings to us—as though health, turning out well, strength, pride, a feeling of power were already vices in themselves. As though one would someday have to pay, bitterly pay, for them. Oh, how ready they really are to make others pay! How they thirst to be *executioners*! Among them are plenty of revenge-seekers dressed up as judges. They constantly carry the word “justice” in their mouths like poisonous spit, their lips always pursed, always ready to spit at anything that does not look dissatisfied and goes cheerfully on its way. They also include that most disgusting species of the vain: the lying monstrosities who want to appear to be “beautiful souls.” They market their botched sensuality, wrapped in verses and other diapers, as “purity of heart”: the species of moral masturbators and “self-gratifiers.” The sick people's will to appear superior in some form, their instinct for secret paths leading to tyranny over the healthy—where would we not find it, this will to power of the very weakest! The sick woman especially: no one outdoes her in clever ways of ruling, pressing down, tyrannizing. In doing so, the sick woman spares nothing living and nothing dead. She digs up even the most deeply buried things. (The Bogos say: “Woman is a hyena.”) Look behind the scenes of every family, every association, every community. Everywhere there is the struggle of the sick against the healthy. Mostly it is a quiet struggle, using little poisonous powders, pinpricks, treacherous facial expressions of patient suffering. But sometimes it uses the sick person's Pharisee-like show of noisy gestures, which most likes to act out “noble indignation.” Even in the sacred rooms of scholarship, the hoarse, indignant barking of sickly dogs tries to make itself heard: the biting dishonesty and rage of such “noble” Pharisees. (I remind readers who have ears once again of that Berlin apostle of revenge, Eugen Dühring. In today's Germany, he makes the most indecent and repulsive use of moral drumbeating. Dühring is the foremost moral loudmouth alive today, even among his own kind, the antisemites.) All these physiological failures, these worm-eaten people, are people of resentment: a whole trembling terrain of underground revenge. They are inexhaustible and insatiable in outbursts against the happy, and just as much in disguises for revenge and excuses for revenge. When would they actually reach their final, subtlest, most sublime triumph of revenge? Undoubtedly, when they managed to push their own misery, all misery generally, onto the consciences of the happy. Then one day the happy would begin to feel ashamed of their happiness and perhaps say to one another: “It is a disgrace to be happy! There is too much misery!” … But there could be no greater or more disastrous misunderstanding than if the happy, those who have turned out well, the powerful in body and soul, began in this way to doubt their *right to happiness*. Away with this “upside-down world”! Away with this shameful softening of feeling! Making sure the sick do *not* make the healthy sick—and such a softening would do that—should be the highest priority on earth. Above all, this requires the healthy to remain *separated* from the sick, protected even from the sight of them, so that they do not confuse themselves with the sick. Or is it perhaps their task to be nurses or doctors? … But they could not misunderstand and deny their task more badly. What is higher should not lower itself into a tool of what is lower. The feeling of distance should keep their tasks apart for all eternity too! Their right to exist, the privilege a bell with a full sound has over a cracked, discordant one, is a thousand times greater. They alone are the *guarantors* of the future. They alone are *responsible* for humanity's future. The sick must never be able or required to do what they can and should do. But if they are to be able to do what only they should do, how could they still be free to play doctor, comforter, “savior” to the sick? … So, good air! Good air! And in any case, away from the neighborhood of all the insane asylums and hospitals of culture! So, good company, our company! Or solitude, if necessary! But in any case, away from the foul fumes of inward decay and the hidden worm-damage of sickness! … So that we ourselves, my friends, can defend ourselves for at least a little longer against the two worst epidemics that may be reserved just for us: against *great disgust with humanity*! Against *great pity for humanity*! … [15] Once we understand in depth—and here I demand that we reach deep and understand deeply—why it simply cannot be the task of the healthy to nurse the sick or make them healthy, we also understand another necessity. We need doctors and nurses who *are sick themselves*. Now we have the meaning of the ascetic priest firmly in both hands. We must see him as the predestined savior, shepherd, and advocate of the sick herd. Only then do we understand his enormous historical mission. *Rule over the suffering* is his realm. His instinct directs him to it. In it he has his own particular art, his mastery, his kind of happiness. He must *be sick himself*. He must be fundamentally related to the sick and those who have come off badly, so that he can understand them—and come to an understanding with them. But he must also be *strong*, master of himself even more than of others, and especially undamaged in his will to power. Then he can have the trust and fear of the sick and be their anchor, resistance, support, constraint, disciplinarian, tyrant, god. He has to defend his herd—against whom? Against the healthy, there is no doubt, and also against envy of the healthy. He must be the natural opponent and despiser of all rough, stormy, unrestrained, hard health and strength, all health and strength that is violent like a beast of prey. The priest is the first form of the *more delicate* animal, which despises even more readily than it hates. He will not be spared war with the beasts of prey. Naturally, this is a war of cunning (of “spirit”) more than of force. For it, he may sometimes need almost to develop a new type of beast of prey in himself, or at least to *represent* one: a new animal terribleness that seems to combine the polar bear, the supple, cold, waiting tiger-cat, and not least the fox into a unity as attractive as it is frightening. If necessity forces him, he may step right among the other kind of beasts of prey, serious as a bear, worthy of respect, clever, cold, deceptively superior, as the herald and mouthpiece of more mysterious powers. He is determined to sow suffering, division, self-contradiction wherever he can on this ground, and is only too sure of his skill in gaining mastery over sufferers at any time. He brings ointments and balms, no doubt. But first he needs to wound in order to be a doctor. Then, as he soothes the pain the wound causes, *he also poisons the wound*. That, above all, is what this magician and tamer of beasts of prey understands: within his circle, everything healthy necessarily becomes sick and everything sick necessarily becomes tame. This strange shepherd does defend his sick herd well enough. He also defends it against itself: against the badness, treachery, malice, and everything else that smolders within the herd and is shared by all addicts and sick people in their dealings with one another. Cleverly, harshly, secretly, he fights the anarchy and the constant beginnings of self-dissolution within the herd. There, the most dangerous explosive material, *resentment*, keeps accumulating and accumulating. Discharging this explosive without blowing up either the herd or the shepherd is his real trick, and also his greatest usefulness. To put the value of the priest's existence in the shortest formula, we could say directly: the priest *changes the direction* of resentment. For every sufferer instinctively seeks a cause of his suffering. More precisely, he seeks a perpetrator; more precisely still, a *guilty* perpetrator who can suffer. In short, some living thing on which he can discharge his emotions through physical action, or against an image of it, on some pretext. For discharging emotion is the sufferer's greatest attempt at relief—that is, at *numbing* himself. It is the narcotic he wants involuntarily against torment of any kind. I suspect that here alone we can find the real physiological cause of resentment, revenge, and their relatives: in a desire to *numb pain through emotion*. People generally look for it, quite wrongly I think, in a defensive counterblow, a mere protective reaction, a “reflex movement” in response to sudden harm and danger. Like the movement a headless frog still makes to get rid of a burning acid. But the difference is fundamental. In one case, the aim is to prevent further injury. In the other, it is to *numb* a tormenting, hidden, increasingly unbearable pain through a more violent emotion of any kind, and at least for the moment remove it from consciousness. For that, one needs an emotion, the wildest possible emotion, and the first available pretext to arouse it. “Someone must be to blame for my feeling bad”—this way of reasoning is common to all sickly people, all the more when the true cause of their feeling bad, the physiological cause, remains hidden from them. (It may lie in a disease of the sympathetic nerve, excessive secretion of bile, a shortage of potassium sulfate and phosphate in the blood, pressure in the lower abdomen that obstructs blood circulation, degeneration of the ovaries, and the like.) All sufferers are terrifyingly ready and inventive when it comes to pretexts for painful emotions. They already enjoy their suspicion, their brooding over wickedness and apparent wrongs done to them. They rummage through the guts of their past and present for dark, questionable stories that allow them to revel in a tormenting suspicion and intoxicate themselves with their own poison of malice. They tear open the oldest wounds. They bleed to death from scars that healed long ago. They turn friends, wives, children, and everyone else closest to them into wrongdoers. “I am suffering. Someone must be to blame for it”—that is how every sickly sheep thinks. But its shepherd, the ascetic priest, says to it: “Quite right, my sheep! Someone must be to blame for it. But you yourself are that someone. You alone are to blame for it—*you alone are to blame for yourself*!” … That is bold enough, false enough. But at least one thing has been achieved: as I said, the direction of resentment has been *changed*. [16] We can now guess what, in my view, life's instinct as a healer has at least *tried* to do through the ascetic priest. We can see what use it had to make of the temporary tyranny of such paradoxical and falsely reasoned concepts as “guilt,” “sin,” “sinfulness,” “corruption,” “damnation”: to make the sick *harmless* to a degree, to make the incurable destroy themselves, to direct the less seriously sick firmly toward themselves, turning their resentment backward (“One thing is needed”—), and in this way to *use* the bad instincts of all sufferers for self-discipline, self-monitoring, self-overcoming. Of course, a “medication” like this, which works only on emotions, cannot possibly be a real *cure* for the sick in the physiological sense. We could not even claim that life's instinct had in any way envisioned or intended a cure here. On one side, a kind of crowding together and organization of the sick—the most popular name for it is “church.” On the other, a kind of provisional protection for those who have turned out healthier, those more generously cast. Thus the opening of a *gulf* between healthy and sick—that was all, for a long time! And it was much! It was very much! … [As you can see, I start this essay from an assumption that I do not first need to justify to the kind of readers I need: that human “sinfulness” is not a fact, but only an interpretation of a fact, namely a physiological disturbance. It is that disturbance seen from a moral and religious perspective that no longer has any binding force for us.—The fact that someone *feels* “guilty,” “sinful,” in no way proves that he is right to feel that way, any more than someone is healthy simply because he feels healthy. Just recall the famous witch trials. At the time, the most perceptive and humane judges did not doubt that there was guilt here. The “witches” *themselves did not doubt it*. Yet there was no guilt.—To state that assumption more broadly: I do not regard “pain of the soul” itself as a fact at all, but only as an interpretation—a causal interpretation—of facts that still cannot be precisely formulated. So it is something that remains entirely up in the air and has no scientific authority: really just a fat word in place of an actually spindly question mark. If someone cannot get over a “pain of the soul,” that is, crudely put, not because of his “soul.” More likely it is because of his belly. (Crudely put, as I said: this by no means expresses a wish to be heard crudely or understood crudely as well …) A strong person who has turned out well digests his experiences, including deeds and misdeeds, as he digests his meals, even when he has hard mouthfuls to swallow. If he “cannot get over” an experience, this kind of indigestion is just as physiological as the other kind—and is actually often just one of the results of that other kind.—Between ourselves, one can hold this view and still be the strictest opponent of all materialism …] [17] But is this ascetic priest really a *doctor*?—We have already understood why we can hardly allow ourselves to call him one, however much he likes to feel like a “savior” and be honored as one. He fights only the suffering itself, the sufferer's distress, *not* its cause, *not* the actual sickness. That must be our most basic objection to priestly medication. But once we adopt the perspective that is the only one the priest knows and has, there is almost no end to our admiration for everything he has seen, sought, and found within it. Easing suffering, “comforting” of every kind—that turns out to be his genius itself. How inventively he has understood his task of comforting! How boldly and without hesitation he has chosen the means for it! Christianity in particular could be called a great storehouse of the most ingenious means of comfort. So much that refreshes, eases, and numbs has been piled up in it. So much that is supremely dangerous and daring has been attempted for this purpose. In particular, with such subtle, refined, southern refinement, it has guessed what stimulating emotions can overcome, at least for a while, the deep depression, the leaden exhaustion, the black sadness of people whose physiology is inhibited. For in general, all great religions have mainly been concerned with fighting a certain exhaustion and heaviness that has become epidemic. From the start, we can take it as probable that, from time to time in certain places on earth, a *feeling of physiological inhibition* must almost necessarily take hold of broad masses of people. But because physiological knowledge is lacking, people do not become conscious of it as such. Its “cause” and its remedy can therefore only be sought and attempted in psychological and moral terms. (This is my most general formula for what is commonly called a “*religion*.”) Such a feeling of inhibition can have the most varied origins. It may result from the crossing of races that differ too much, or of social classes. Classes always also express differences in ancestry and race: the European “world-weariness,” the “pessimism” of the nineteenth century, is essentially the result of an absurdly sudden mixing of classes. Or it may be caused by a mistaken emigration: a race has ended up in a climate beyond its powers of adaptation, as happened to the Indians in India. Or it may be the aftereffect of a race's age and exhaustion, as with Parisian pessimism from 1850 onward. Or of a wrong diet: the alcoholism of the Middle Ages; the nonsense of the vegetarians, who admittedly have the authority of Shakespeare's Sir Andrew Aguecheek on their side. Or of corruption of the blood, malaria, syphilis, and the like: German depression after the Thirty Years' War, which infected half of Germany with nasty diseases and so prepared the ground for German servility, German faintheartedness. In each such case, an attempt is made on the grandest scale to *fight the feeling of distress*. Let us briefly look into its most important practices and forms. (Naturally, I leave entirely aside here the actual *philosophers' fight* against the feeling of distress, which usually goes on at the same time. It is interesting enough, but too absurd, too irrelevant in practice, too much like spinning cobwebs and hanging around street corners. For instance, when pain is supposed to be proved an error, on the naive assumption that pain *must* disappear once the error in it is recognized—but look! It took care not to disappear …) *First*, this dominant distress is fought by means that reduce the overall feeling of being alive to its lowest point. If possible, no more willing, no more wishing at all. Avoid anything that creates emotion, that stirs the “blood” (eat no salt: the fakir's health rule). Do not love; do not hate; be even-tempered; do not take revenge; do not enrich yourself; do not work; beg. If possible, no woman, or as little woman as possible. Intellectually, Pascal's principle: “One must make oneself stupid.” The result, in psychological and moral terms: “stripping away the self,” “sanctification.” In physiological terms: hypnotizing. An attempt to achieve something for humans approximating what hibernation is for some animal species, what *summer sleep* is for many plants in hot climates: a minimum of consumption and metabolism, at which life only just continues without really entering consciousness anymore. An astonishing amount of human energy has been spent on this goal—was it perhaps in vain? … There can be no doubt at all that such athletes of “holiness,” who abound in every age and almost every people, really did find genuine release from what they fought with such rigorous training. In countless cases they really *did get free* of that deep physiological depression with the help of their system of hypnotizing methods. That is why their method is among the most universal facts of ethnology. Nor do we have any right to count such an intention to starve bodily life and desire as a symptom of insanity in itself, as a clumsy breed of roast-beef-gobbling “free spirits” and other Sir Andrew Aguecheeks like to do. It is all the more certain that this provides, or can provide, the *path* to all kinds of mental disorders. To “inner lights,” for instance, as among the Hesychasts of Mount Athos; to hallucinations of sounds and shapes; to floods of lust and ecstasies of sensuality (the history of Saint Teresa). Naturally, those afflicted by such states have always given them the most extravagantly false interpretation possible. But we should not miss the tone of utterly convinced gratitude that already sounds in the very will to interpret them this way. The highest state, *redemption* itself, that finally achieved complete hypnosis and stillness, always counts for them as the mystery itself, which even the highest symbols cannot adequately express. It is entering and returning home to the ground of things, becoming free of all delusion, “knowledge,” “truth,” “being,” release from every goal, every wish, every action. It is a beyond even of good and evil. “Good and evil,” says the Buddhist, “both are chains. The perfected one has become master over both.” “Things done and undone,” says the believer in Vedanta, “cause him no pain. As a wise man he shakes off good and evil. His realm no longer suffers from any deed. He has gone beyond good and evil, beyond both.” So this is an outlook shared throughout India, as Brahmanist as it is Buddhist. (Neither in Indian nor in Christian thought does that “redemption” count as *achievable* through virtue, through moral improvement, however highly they rate the hypnotizing value of virtue. Keep that firmly in mind. It simply corresponds to the facts, incidentally. Having remained truthful here may count as the best piece of realism in the three greatest religions, which are otherwise so thoroughly moralized. “For the one who knows, there is no duty” … “Redemption does not come about through the *addition* of virtues, for it consists in being one with Brahman, to which no perfection can be added. Nor does it consist in the *removal* of faults, for Brahman, oneness with which constitutes redemption, is eternally pure.” These passages are from Shankara's commentary, quoted by the first real *expert* on Indian philosophy in Europe, my friend Paul Deussen.) So let us honor “redemption” in the great religions. On the other hand, we find it a little hard to stay serious about the value these people, tired of life and too tired even to dream, already place on *deep sleep*. Deep sleep is already entering Brahman, already an achieved mystical union with God. “When he has fallen asleep completely,” says the oldest, most respected “scripture” on this subject, “and has come entirely to rest, so that he no longer sees any dream image, then, dear one, he is united with what is; he has entered into himself. Embraced by the knowing self, he is no longer conscious of what is outside or inside. Neither day nor night crosses this bridge, nor old age, nor death, nor suffering, nor good deed, nor evil deed.” “In deep sleep,” the believers in this deepest of the three great religions likewise say, “the soul rises out of this body, enters the highest light, and thereby comes forth in its own form. There it is the highest spirit itself, which wanders about joking, playing, and enjoying itself, whether with women or with chariots or with friends. There it no longer thinks back to this appendage of a body, to which prana (the breath of life) is harnessed like a draft animal to a cart.” Still, here too, as in the case of “redemption,” let us remember that, however magnificent the oriental exaggeration, what is basically being expressed is only the same assessment made by the clear, cool, Greek-cool, but suffering Epicurus. The hypnotic feeling of nothingness, the peace of the deepest sleep, *freedom from suffering*, in short—sufferers and the profoundly distressed may indeed count that as the highest good, the value of values. They *must* value it positively and feel it to be the positive itself. (By the same logic of feeling, nothingness is called God in all pessimistic religions.) [18] Much more often than such a hypnotic overall reduction of sensitivity, of the ability to feel pain, people try another kind of training against depressed states. That hypnotic reduction already requires rarer strengths, above all courage, contempt for opinion, “intellectual stoicism.” The other training is easier in any case: *mechanical activity*. There is no doubt at all that it considerably eases a suffering existence. Today people call this fact, somewhat dishonestly, “the blessing of work.” The relief consists in systematically diverting the sufferer's interest from his suffering. An action, and then only another action, constantly enters consciousness. As a result, little room remains there for suffering. For this room of human consciousness is *narrow*! Mechanical activity and everything that goes with it: absolute regularity, punctual obedience without thought, a way of life fixed once and for all, filling up time, a certain permission, even a training, to be “impersonal,” to forget oneself, to “neglect oneself.” How thoroughly and subtly the ascetic priest has known how to use these in fighting pain! Especially when he dealt with sufferers from the lower classes, with work slaves or prisoners—or with women, who are usually both at once, work slaves and prisoners—he needed little more than a little skill in renaming and rechristening things. Then they could see a benefit, a relative happiness, in things they had hated. The slave's dissatisfaction with his lot was certainly *not* invented by the priests.—An even more valued means of fighting depression is to prescribe a *small pleasure*, one that is easily accessible and can be made a regular practice. This medication is often used together with the one just discussed. The most common form in which pleasure is prescribed as a remedy in this way is the pleasure of *giving* pleasure: doing good, giving gifts, easing burdens, helping, encouraging, comforting, praising, honoring. By prescribing “love of one's neighbor,” the ascetic priest is basically prescribing stimulation of the strongest, most life-affirming drive, although in the most cautious dose: the *will to power*. The happiness of the “smallest superiority,” which comes with all doing good, being useful, helping, honoring, is the most abundant means of comfort that the physiologically inhibited commonly use, provided they are well advised. Otherwise, they hurt one another, naturally obeying the same basic instinct. When we look for the beginnings of Christianity in the Roman world, we find mutual-support associations, associations for the poor, the sick, and burials, grown up on the lowest ground of the society of that time. In them, that chief means against depression, the small pleasure of doing good to one another, was consciously cultivated. Perhaps this was something new then, a real discovery? Now, in a “will to mutuality” aroused this way, a will to form a herd, a “congregation,” a “small gathering,” that will to power, stimulated even if only in the smallest way, must in turn erupt in a new and much fuller form. *Forming a herd* is an essential step and victory in the fight against depression. As the congregation grows, a new interest also strengthens in the individual. Often enough it lifts him above the most personal part of his discontent, his aversion to himself (Geulincx's “self-contempt”). All the sick and sickly instinctively seek an organization into a herd, out of a desire to shake off dull distress and the feeling of weakness. The ascetic priest guesses this instinct and encourages it. Wherever there are herds, it was the instinct of weakness that wanted the herd, and priestly cleverness that organized it. For we must not overlook this: by the same necessity of nature, the strong seek to move *apart*, while the weak seek to come *together*. When the strong join forces, it is only in the prospect of a shared aggressive action and a shared satisfaction of their will to power, with much resistance from each individual's conscience. The weak, by contrast, arrange themselves together, taking pleasure in this very arrangement. Their instinct is as satisfied by it as the instinct of the born “masters”—that is, the solitary beast-of-prey species of human being—is basically irritated and unsettled by organization. Under every oligarchy—as all history teaches—there is always a hidden *tyrannical* craving. Every oligarchy constantly trembles from the tension each of its members needs to keep this craving under control. (That, for example, was the *Greek* way. Plato testifies to it in a hundred passages: Plato, who knew his own kind—and himself …) [19] The ascetic priest's methods that we have met so far are these: lowering the overall feeling of being alive; mechanical activity; small pleasures, especially the pleasure of “loving your neighbor”; organizing people into a herd; awakening a sense of the community's power, so that the individual's pleasure in the community's success drowns out his unhappiness with himself. By modern standards, these are his *innocent* methods of fighting distress. Let us now turn to the more interesting ones, the “guilty” ones. They all involve one thing: some kind of *emotional excess*, used as the most effective way to numb dull, paralyzing, long-lasting pain. This is why priests have shown almost endless inventiveness in thinking through this one question: “*How* can emotional excess be produced?” … That sounds harsh. It would obviously sound sweeter, and perhaps go down better, if I said something like “the ascetic priest has always made use of the *inspiration* found in all strong emotions.” But why keep stroking the pampered ears of our modern softies? Why should *we* give even an inch to their Tartuffe-style hypocrisy with words? For us psychologists, that would already be Tartuffe-style hypocrisy in *action*, quite apart from the disgust it would cause us. If a psychologist today shows *good taste* in anything—others might say integrity—it is in resisting the shamefully *moralized* way of speaking that has gradually covered all modern judgments about people and things with slime. Let us be clear about this. The most distinctive mark of modern souls and modern books is not lying. It is their deeply ingrained *innocence* in moralistic dishonesty. Having to keep discovering this “innocence” everywhere may be the most disgusting part of all the far from harmless work a psychologist must do today. It is part of *our* great danger. It is a path that may lead precisely *us* to the great disgust … I have no doubt about the only *use* modern books would or could have for later generations—assuming they last, which is admittedly nothing to fear, and assuming there will one day be later generations with stricter, harder, healthier taste. Indeed, this is the use *everything* modern could have for them: as something to make them vomit. That is because of its moral sugarcoating and falseness, its deepest effeminacy, which likes to call itself “idealism” and certainly believes itself to be idealism. Our educated people today, our “good people,” do not lie—that is true. But it is *not* to their credit! The real lie, the genuine, determined, “honest” lie—on whose value one should hear Plato—would be far too hard, too strong for them. It would demand something we *must not* demand of them: that they open their eyes to themselves, that they know how to tell “true” from “false” in themselves. Only the *dishonest lie* suits them. Anyone who considers himself a “good person” today is completely incapable of taking any position on anything except a *dishonestly deceitful* one: profoundly deceitful, but innocently deceitful, sincerely deceitful, wide-eyed and deceitful, virtuously deceitful. These “good people” have all now been moralized through and through. As far as honesty goes, they have been disgraced and ruined for all eternity. Which of them could still stand a *truth* “about human beings”! … Or, to put the question more concretely: which of them could bear a *true* biography! … A few signs: Lord Byron wrote down some intensely personal things about himself. But Thomas Moore was “too good” for them: he burned his friend's papers. Dr. Gwinner, the executor of Schopenhauer's will, is said to have done the same. Schopenhauer too had written some things about himself and perhaps against himself as well (“*to himself*”). The capable American Thayer, Beethoven's biographer, suddenly stopped his work. Once his account reached a certain point in this venerable and naive life, he could no longer stand it … The moral: what clever man today would still write an honest word about himself? Unless, of course, he belonged to the order of holy recklessness. We are promised an autobiography by Richard Wagner. Who doubts that it will be a *clever* autobiography? … Let us also remember the comical horror that the Catholic priest Janssen caused in Germany with his unimaginably blockish and harmless picture of the German Reformation movement. What would people do if someone once told us about this movement *differently*? If a real psychologist once told us about a real Luther? No longer with a country pastor's moralistic simplicity, no longer with Protestant historians' sugary, considerate bashfulness, but with, say, the fearlessness of a *Taine*, from a position of *strength of soul*, rather than clever indulgence toward strength? … (The Germans, incidentally, have recently produced a fine enough example of the classic type of this last quality. They may certainly claim him for themselves, and to their credit: their Leopold Ranke, that born, classic advocate of every stronger cause, that cleverest of all clever “men of facts.”) [20] But I expect I have made myself understood. All in all, there is reason enough, isn't there, for us psychologists today to remain somewhat suspicious *of ourselves*? … Probably we too are still “too good” for our trade. Probably we too are still the victims, the prey, the sick products of this moralized taste of our time, however much we feel we despise it. Probably it still infects *us* as well. What was that diplomat's warning when he spoke to his own kind? “Above all, gentlemen, let us distrust our first impulses!” he said. “*They are almost always good*” … Every psychologist today should speak to his own kind in the same way … And that brings us back to our problem. It really does demand some strictness from us, some distrust, especially of our “first impulses.” *The ascetic ideal serving an aim of emotional excess*: anyone who remembers the previous essay will already anticipate the main substance of what comes next, compressed into those nine words. To wrench the human soul out of all its joints, to plunge it into terror, chills, burning heat, and rapture so completely that it escapes, as if struck by lightning, from everything small and petty in distress, dullness, and low spirits: what paths lead to *this* goal? And which of them are the surest? … Basically, all the great emotions can do it, provided they discharge suddenly: anger, fear, lust, revenge, hope, triumph, despair, cruelty. And the ascetic priest really has enlisted, without a second thought, the *whole* pack of wild dogs in human beings. He has let loose now this one, now that one, always for the same purpose: to wake people from their slow sadness, to drive off their dull pain and lingering misery, at least for a while. He has always done this under a religious interpretation and “justification” as well. Every such emotional excess demands its *payment* afterward, of course: it makes the sick person sicker. By modern standards, that makes this kind of remedy for pain a “guilty” one. Yet fairness requires us to insist all the more that it was used *with a good conscience*. The ascetic priest prescribed it with the deepest belief that it was useful, indeed essential—often enough almost breaking down himself before the misery he created. We must also insist that the violent physical backlash from such excesses, perhaps even mental disorders, does not really conflict with the basic purpose of this kind of treatment. As shown earlier, it was *not* aimed at curing diseases. It aimed to fight the distress of depression, to ease it, to numb it. This goal was reached *this way* too. The main trick the ascetic priest allowed himself, to make the human soul play every kind of agonizing and ecstatic music, was—everyone knows this—to exploit the *feeling of guilt*. The previous essay briefly suggested where it came from, as a piece of animal psychology and nothing more. There we met the feeling of guilt in something like its raw state. Only in the hands of the priest, the true artist in feelings of guilt, did it take shape—and what a shape! “Sin”—the priest's reinterpretation of the animal's “bad conscience,” its cruelty turned backward—has so far been the greatest event in the history of the sick soul. In it we have religious interpretation's most dangerous and disastrous feat of artistry. A person suffers from himself, somehow, at any rate physically, rather like an animal locked in a cage, unsure why or what for. He longs for reasons—reasons bring relief—and also for remedies and narcotics. At last he consults someone who knows even hidden things. And look! He gets a hint. His magician, the ascetic priest, gives him the *first* hint about the “cause” of his suffering. He must look for it in *himself*, in some *guilt*, in a piece of the past. He must understand his suffering itself as a *state of punishment* … The unhappy man has listened and understood. Now he is like a hen with a line drawn around it. He can no longer get out of this circle of lines. The sick person has been turned into “the sinner” … And now, for a few thousand years, we cannot escape the sight of this new sick person, “the sinner”—will we ever escape it again? Wherever we look, we find the sinner's hypnotic gaze, always moving in one direction: toward “guilt” as the *only* cause of suffering. Everywhere the evil conscience, that “horrible beast,” to use Luther's words. Everywhere the past chewed over again, the deed distorted, the “green eye” for every action. Everywhere the *will* to misunderstand suffering made into the substance of life, its reinterpretation as feelings of guilt, fear, and punishment. Everywhere the scourge, the hair shirt, the starving body, remorse. Everywhere the sinner breaking himself on the wheel, in the cruel machinery of a restless, sickly lustful conscience. Everywhere silent torment, extreme fear, the tortured heart's agony, the spasms of an unknown happiness, the cry for “redemption.” This system of procedures really did thoroughly *overcome* the old depression, heaviness, and weariness. Life became *very* interesting again. Awake, eternally awake, sleepless, burning, charred, exhausted and yet not tired—that was how the person looked, “the sinner,” who had been initiated into *these* mysteries. This old, great magician in the fight against distress, the ascetic priest, had clearly won. *His* kingdom had come. People no longer complained *against* pain; they *thirsted* for pain. “*More* pain! *More* pain!” That was the craving cry of his disciples and initiates for centuries. Every emotional excess that hurt, everything that broke, overthrew, crushed, transported, enraptured, the secret of torture chambers, the inventiveness of hell itself—everything had now been discovered, guessed, exploited. Everything was at the magician's command. From then on, everything served the victory of his ideal, the ascetic ideal … “My kingdom is not of *this* world,” he said, as he had before. Did he really still have the right to say that? … Goethe claimed that there were only thirty-six tragic situations. From this we can guess, if we did not already know, that Goethe was no ascetic priest. That priest knows more … [21] For this whole kind of priestly treatment, the “guilty” kind, every word of criticism is one word too many. Would anyone care to maintain that the kind of emotional excess the ascetic priest usually prescribes for his sick people has ever really *helped* any sick person? Of course, he prescribes it under the holiest names, and is himself filled with a sense of his purpose's holiness. At least we should agree on what “help” means. If it means that such a system of treatment has *improved* human beings, I do not object. I only add what “improved” means to me: the same as “tamed,” “weakened,” “discouraged,” “made more refined,” “made soft,” “emasculated”—so almost the same as *harmed* … But when we are dealing mainly with sick, gloomy, depressed people, such a system makes the sick person *sicker* in every case, even assuming it makes him “better.” Just ask psychiatrists what systematically applied torments of penance, remorse, and spasms of redemption always bring with them. Ask history as well. Wherever the ascetic priest has imposed this treatment on the sick, sickness has grown alarmingly fast, both deeper and wider. What was always the “result”? A shattered nervous system, added to whatever was already sick. And this happened on the largest and smallest scales, in individuals and in masses. Following this training in penance and redemption, we find enormous epidemics of epilepsy, the greatest history knows, such as the medieval dancers of St. Vitus and St. John. We find another form of its aftermath in terrible paralysis and lasting depression, which can sometimes turn the character of a people or a city—Geneva, Basel—into its opposite once and for all. Witchcraft hysteria belongs here too, something related to sleepwalking: eight major epidemic outbreaks of it between 1564 and 1605 alone. Following this training, we also find those mass deliriums that longed for death. Their dreadful cry, “Long live death,” could be heard across all Europe, interrupted now by outbreaks of lust, now by frenzies of destruction. The same changes of emotion, with the same pauses and sudden turns, can still be observed everywhere today whenever the ascetic teaching of sin once again achieves a great success. (Religious neurosis *appears* as a form of “epilepsy”: there is no doubt of that. What it *is*? That remains the question.) Taken as a whole, the ascetic ideal and its sublimely moral worship have written themselves into the whole history of humanity in a terrible and unforgettable way—and unfortunately *not only* into its history … This is the cleverest, most unscrupulous, and most dangerous system for organizing all the means of emotional excess under the protection of holy intentions. I can think of hardly anything else that has done such destructive damage to *health* and racial strength, especially among Europeans, as this ideal. Without any exaggeration, we may call it *the real catastrophe* in the history of European health. At most, the specifically Germanic influence might rank alongside it. I mean Europe's poisoning by alcohol, which has so far kept strict pace with the Germanic peoples' political and racial supremacy—wherever they injected their blood, they also injected their vice. Third in line we should name syphilis—next, but a long way behind. [22] Wherever the ascetic priest has gained power, he has damaged mental health. As a result, he has also damaged *taste* in the arts and literature—and he is still damaging it. “As a result”? I hope people will simply grant me that “as a result.” At least, I do not intend to prove it first. Just one pointer: it concerns the foundational book of Christian literature, its real model, its “book in itself.” Even amid the splendor of Greece and Rome, which was also a splendor of books, with the ancient world's writings still before them, not yet stunted and smashed, Christian agitators in their simplicity and vanity already dared to decree: “We too have our classical literature; *we do not need the Greeks' literature*.” We call them Church Fathers. They said this at a time when people could still read certain books we would now trade half of entire literatures to own. And they pointed proudly to books of legends, letters from apostles, and little tracts defending the faith. Much as the English “Salvation Army” today fights its battle against Shakespeare and other “heathens” with a related literature. I do not love the “New Testament,” as you will already have guessed. It almost troubles me to stand so alone in my taste concerning this most valued, most overvalued piece of writing—the taste of two thousand years is *against* me. But what can I do! “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise”—I have the courage to own my bad taste. The *Old* Testament—yes, that is something quite different. All respect to the Old Testament! In it I find great human beings, a heroic landscape, and something extremely rare on earth: the unmatched naivety of the *strong* heart. More than that, I find a people. In the New Testament, by contrast, nothing but petty sectarian goings-on, nothing but rococo ornamentation of the soul, nothing but flourishes, nooks, and oddities, nothing but the atmosphere of little religious gatherings. Nor should we forget an occasional touch of sugary pastoral life. That belongs to the period and to the Roman province, and is Hellenistic rather than Jewish. Humility and self-importance side by side. A chattering of feelings that almost numbs you. Emotional intensity, no passion. Embarrassing gestures. Clearly, all good upbringing was missing here. How can people make as much fuss about their little vices as these pious little men do! Not a rooster crows about them, much less God. In the end, all these little provincial people even want “the crown of eternal life.” What for? In return for what? Presumption cannot go any further. An “immortal” Peter: who could stand *him*! Their ambition is laughable. They chew over their most personal affairs, their stupidities, sorrows, and street-corner idlers' worries, as if reality in itself were obliged to bother with them. They never tire of dragging God himself into the tiniest misery they find themselves in. And this constant first-name familiarity with God, in the worst taste! This Jewish, not only Jewish, pushing themselves on God with mouth and paw! … There are small, despised “heathen peoples” in eastern Asia from whom these first Christians could have learned something essential: some *tact* in showing reverence. As Christian missionaries report, those peoples do not allow themselves even to speak their god's name. That seems refined enough to me. It is certainly too refined not just for the “first” Christians. To feel the contrast, remember Luther, that “most eloquent” and most presumptuous peasant Germany ever had. Remember the Lutheran tone that he himself liked best in his private conversations with God. Luther's resistance to the Church's saints as intermediaries—especially to “the devil's sow, the pope”—was undoubtedly, at bottom, the resistance of a lout annoyed by the Church's *good etiquette*. That etiquette of reverence, born of priestly taste, admits only the more consecrated and quieter people to the holy of holies, and shuts the louts out. Here, of all places, they are never to have a say. But Luther the peasant absolutely wanted things otherwise. This was not *German* enough for him. Above all, he wanted to speak directly, speak for himself, speak “without restraint” with his God … Well, he did it. The ascetic ideal, as you may guess, has never been a school of good taste anywhere, still less of good manners. At best, it was a school of priestly manners. That is because it has something inside it that is the mortal enemy of all good manners: a lack of restraint, a dislike of restraint. It is itself an “absolute extreme.” [23] The ascetic ideal has damaged not only health and taste. It has damaged a third, fourth, fifth, and sixth thing as well. I will take care not to say *everything* it has damaged—when would I ever finish! What I want to bring to light here is not what this ideal has *done*. It is only what it *means*, what it lets us infer, what lies hidden behind it, beneath it, inside it, what it provisionally and unclearly expresses, overloaded with question marks and misunderstandings. Only for *this* purpose could I not spare my readers a look at the enormous scale of its effects, including its disastrous effects: to prepare them for the final and most terrible aspect that the question of this ideal's meaning has for me. What does the *power* of this ideal mean, the *enormous scale* of its power? Why has it been given so much room? Why hasn't it met with better resistance? The ascetic ideal expresses a will. Where is the opposing will that expresses an *opposing ideal*? The ascetic ideal has a *goal*. That goal is broad enough to make all the other interests of human existence seem petty and narrow beside it. It ruthlessly interprets ages, peoples, and individuals in terms of this one goal. It accepts no other interpretation, no other goal. It rejects, denies, affirms, and confirms only in terms of *its* interpretation—and has any system of interpretation ever been thought through more completely? It submits to no power. Instead, it believes it has priority over every power, that it stands unconditionally *apart and above* every power in rank. It believes that no power on earth exists without first having to receive from it a meaning, a right to exist, a value, as a tool for *its* work, as a path and means to *its* goal, to one goal … Where is the *counterpart* to this closed system of will, goal, and interpretation? Why is that counterpart *missing*? … Where is the *other* “one goal”? … But people tell me it is *not* missing. It has not only fought a long and successful battle with that ideal; in all the main points it has already gained mastery over it. Our whole modern *science* is said to prove this. This modern science, a genuine philosophy of reality, clearly believes in itself alone, clearly has the courage to be itself and the will to be itself, and has so far managed perfectly well without God, an afterlife, or virtues of denial. But such noise and agitators' chatter get nowhere with me. These trumpeters of reality are bad musicians. It is easy enough to hear that their voices do *not* come from the depths. The abyss of the scientific conscience does *not* speak through them—for today the scientific conscience is an abyss. The word “science” in such trumpeters' mouths is simply an obscenity, an abuse, a shamelessness. The truth is exactly the opposite of what is claimed here. Science today has absolutely *no* faith in itself, let alone an ideal above itself. And where it is still passion, love, burning heat, *suffering*, it is not the opposite of that ascetic ideal, but *its latest and noblest form* itself. Does that sound strange too? … Certainly, today's scholars also include plenty of decent, modest working people who like their little corner. Because they like it there, they sometimes grow a little immodest in loudly demanding that people in general *ought* to be satisfied today, especially in science: there is so much useful work to do in it. I do not object. Least of all would I want to spoil these honest workers' enjoyment of their craft, for I take pleasure in their work. But the fact that hard work is now being done in science, and that there are satisfied workers, does *not* in any way prove that science as a whole today has a goal, a will, an ideal, a passion born of great faith. As I said, the opposite is true. Where science is not the latest form of the ascetic ideal—the cases in question are too rare, noble, and select to change the overall judgment—it is today a *hiding place* for every kind of discontent, disbelief, gnawing worm, self-contempt, and bad conscience. It is the very *restlessness* of having no ideal, the suffering caused by a *lack* of great love, the dissatisfaction with an *unwilling* contentment. Oh, what doesn't science hide today! How much it is at least *supposed* to hide! The competence of our best scholars, their thoughtlessly intense hard work, their heads smoking day and night, their mastery of their craft itself—how often the real point of all this is to keep themselves from seeing something! Science as a means of numbing oneself: *do you know about that?* … Anyone who deals with scholars discovers that sometimes a harmless word wounds them to the bone. You turn your scholarly friends bitterly against you at the very moment when you think you are honoring them. You drive them completely out of control, simply because you were too insensitive to guess whom you were really dealing with: *sufferers* who refuse to admit to themselves what they are, numbed people without self-awareness, who fear only one thing: *coming to consciousness* … [24] Now look, by contrast, at those rarer cases I mentioned, the last idealists among today's philosophers and scholars. Have we perhaps found in them the *opponents* of the ascetic ideal we were looking for, the holders of its *counterideal*? These “unbelievers”—for that is what they all are—really do *believe* they are its opponents. It seems to be their last piece of faith. They are so serious on this point; it is precisely here that their words and gestures become passionate. But must what they believe therefore be *true*? … We “knowers” have gradually become suspicious of every kind of believer. Our suspicion has gradually trained us to draw the opposite conclusion from the one people used to draw. Wherever the strength of a belief becomes very prominent, we infer a certain weakness in its provability, even the *improbability* of what is believed. We too do not deny that faith “makes people blessed.” *Precisely for that reason*, we deny that faith *proves* anything. A strong faith that makes people blessed casts suspicion on what it believes. It does not establish “truth”; it establishes a certain probability—of *deception*. How do things stand in this case? These people today who say no and stand apart, these people uncompromising on one point, their demand for intellectual cleanliness; these hard, strict, self-denying, heroic minds who do honor to our age; all these pale atheists, anti-Christians, immoralists, nihilists; these skeptics, these minds withholding judgment, these minds *withering with fever*—for in some sense they are all that; these last idealists of knowledge, in whom alone the intellectual conscience lives and has taken flesh today: they really believe they are as free as possible from the ascetic ideal, these “free, *very* free spirits.” And yet, let me tell them what they cannot see for themselves, because they stand too close to themselves: this ideal is precisely *their* ideal too. They themselves embody it today, perhaps nobody else does. They are its most spiritualized offspring, its most advanced troop of warriors and scouts, its most insidious, delicate, elusive form of seduction. If I can claim to solve riddles in anything, let it be in *this* statement. They are far from being *free spirits*, *because they still believe in truth* … When the Christian Crusaders in the East encountered that invincible order of Assassins, that supreme order of free spirits, whose lowest ranks lived in an obedience no monastic order has ever matched, they somehow also received a hint about the symbol and secret password reserved for the highest ranks as their secret: “Nothing is true, everything is permitted” … Well, *that* was *freedom* of spirit. *That* meant *giving up* faith in truth itself … Has any European, any Christian free spirit ever strayed into this statement and its labyrinthine *consequences*? Does he know the Minotaur of this cave *from experience*? … I doubt it. More than that, I know otherwise. Nothing is more foreign to these people who are uncompromising on one point, these *so-called* “free spirits,” than freedom and release from restraints in that sense. In no respect are they more tightly bound. In their very faith in truth they are firm and unconditional as nobody else is. Perhaps I know all this at too close a range: that admirable self-denial of philosophers to which such a faith commits them; that stoicism of the intellect that finally forbids itself to say no just as strictly as it forbids itself to say yes; that wish to stop at the factual, at the brute fact; that fatalism of “little facts”—that little fact-alism, as I call it—in which French science now seeks a kind of moral superiority over German science; that refusal to interpret at all, to do violence, rearrange, shorten, omit, stuff, invent, falsify, and do whatever else belongs to the *essence* of all interpretation. Taken as a whole, this expresses self-denial as a virtue just as much as any rejection of sensuality does. Basically, it is only a form of that denial. But what *compels* it, that unconditional will to truth, is *faith in the ascetic ideal itself*, even if it operates as that ideal's unconscious command. Let us not deceive ourselves about this. It is faith in a *metaphysical* value, a value *of truth in itself*, guaranteed and certified by that ideal alone. It stands and falls with that ideal. Strictly speaking, there is no science “without assumptions” at all. The thought of such a science cannot be thought through; it is logically unsound. A philosophy, a “faith,” must always come first, so that science can gain from it a direction, a meaning, a boundary, a method, a *right* to exist. (Anyone who understands this the other way around, anyone who sets out, for example, to put philosophy “on a strictly scientific foundation,” first needs to turn not just philosophy but truth itself *upside down*: the worst possible breach of decency toward two such venerable ladies!) Yes, there is no doubt—and here I let my “Gay Science” speak; see its fifth book, p. 263—“the truthful person, in that daring and ultimate sense presupposed by faith in science, *thereby affirms a different world* from that of life, nature, and history. And insofar as he affirms this ‘other world,’ what then? Mustn't he thereby deny its counterpart, this world, our world? … It is still a *metaphysical faith* on which our faith in science rests. We too, today's knowers, we godless people and opponents of metaphysics, still take *our* fire from the blaze lit by a faith thousands of years old: that Christian faith, which was also Plato's faith, that God is truth, that truth is *divine* … But what if precisely this grows more and more unbelievable? What if nothing turns out to be divine except error, blindness, the lie? What if God himself turns out to be our *longest lie*?”—Here we need to stop and think for a long time. Science itself now *needs* a justification—which is not even to say that there is one for it. Look at the oldest and the newest philosophies with this question in mind. None of them shows any awareness of how far the will to truth itself first needs a justification. There is a gap here in every philosophy. Why? Because the ascetic ideal has so far been *master* over all philosophy. Because truth was set up as being, as God, as the highest authority itself. Because truth was not *allowed* to be a problem at all. Do you understand this “allowed”? From the moment that faith in the God of the ascetic ideal is denied, *there is also a new problem*: the problem of the *value* of truth. The will to truth needs a critique—let us define our own task this way. We must, as an experiment, once *call into question* the value of truth … (Anyone who finds this too briefly stated should read the section of “The Gay Science” titled “To What Extent We Too Are Still Pious,” pp. 260 ff. Better still, read the whole fifth book of that work, and also the preface to “Daybreak.”) [25] No! Do not offer me science when I am looking for the natural opponent of the ascetic ideal, when I ask: “Where is the opposing will that expresses its *opposing ideal*?” Science cannot stand on its own nearly well enough for that. In every respect, it first needs an ideal of value, a power that creates values, in whose *service* it is *allowed to believe* in itself. It never creates values itself. Its relationship to the ascetic ideal is still by no means inherently hostile. For the most part, it is actually the driving force in that ideal's inner development. Look more closely, and its opposition and struggle do not concern the ideal itself at all. They concern only its outer defenses, its clothing, its play of masks, its temporary hardening, its turning wooden and dogmatic. Science frees up the life within the ideal again by denying its outward, public form. These two, science and the ascetic ideal, stand on the same ground, as I have already suggested. They share the same overvaluation of truth—or, more accurately, the same belief that truth *cannot* be assessed in value, *cannot* be criticized. This makes them *necessarily* allies. So if they are fought, they can only ever be fought and called into question together. An assessment of the ascetic ideal's value inevitably brings with it an assessment of science's value. Get your eyes clear and your ears sharp for this in good time! (*Art*, let me say in advance, since I will come back to this at length sometime, is much more fundamentally opposed to the ascetic ideal than science is. In art, the *lie* itself is sanctified, and the *will to deceive* has a good conscience on its side. Plato's instinct sensed this: he was the greatest enemy of art Europe has yet produced. Plato *against* Homer: that is the whole, the genuine opposition. On one side, the man of the “beyond,” with the best of intentions, the great slanderer of life; on the other, the one who unintentionally makes life divine, the *golden* nature. An artist's servitude to the ascetic ideal is therefore the truest possible *corruption* of an artist, unfortunately one of the most common. For nothing is more corruptible than an artist.) Calculated in physiological terms too, science rests on the same ground as the ascetic ideal. A certain *impoverishment of life* is the prerequisite in both: emotions grown cool, a slower pace, dialectic in place of instinct, seriousness stamped on faces and gestures. Seriousness, that most unmistakable badge of a more laborious metabolism, of life struggling and working harder. Look at the periods in a people's history when the scholar steps to the front. They are periods of fatigue, often of evening, of decline. Overflowing strength, confidence in life, confidence in the *future* are gone. The predominance of mandarins never means anything good. No more than the rise of democracy, of tribunals to arbitrate peace instead of wars, of equal rights for women, of the religion of pity, and all the other symptoms of declining life. (Science understood as a problem: what does science mean? On this, see the preface to “The Birth of Tragedy.”) No! This “modern science”—just open your eyes to it!—is for now the ascetic ideal's *best* ally, precisely because it is the least aware of its role, the least intentional, the most hidden and underground! Until now, they have played the same game, the “poor in spirit” and the scientific opponents of that ideal. (Incidentally, take care not to think of the latter as their opposites, as the *rich* in spirit, say. They are *not*. I called them minds withering with fever.) Those famous *victories* of theirs: undoubtedly they are victories—but over what? The ascetic ideal was not defeated in them at all. Rather, it was made stronger, harder to grasp, more spiritual, more insidious, as science repeatedly and ruthlessly stripped off and tore down a wall, an outer defense that had been built onto it and *coarsened* its appearance. Does anyone really think that the defeat of theological astronomy, for example, means the defeat of that ideal? … Has the human being perhaps grown *less in need* of an otherworldly solution to the riddle of his existence because that existence has since looked still more arbitrary, more like a street-corner idler, more dispensable in the *visible* order of things? Hasn't human self-belittlement, the will to self-belittlement, been progressing unstoppably since Copernicus? Ah, faith in human dignity, uniqueness, irreplaceability in the order of beings is gone. The human being has become an *animal*, an animal without metaphor, qualification, or reservation—he who in his earlier faith was almost God, a “child of God,” a “God-man” … Since Copernicus, humanity seems to have landed on a slope. It now rolls faster and faster away from the center—where to? Into nothingness? Into the “*piercing* feeling of its nothingness”? … Well! Wouldn't that be the straight road—into the *old* ideal? … *All* science—and by no means just astronomy, about whose humbling and degrading effect Kant made a remarkable confession, “it destroys my importance” …—all science today, both natural and *unnatural*, as I call the self-critique of knowledge, is out to talk people out of their former self-respect, as if it had been nothing but a bizarre conceit. One might even say that science finds its own pride, its own harsh form of stoic peace of mind, in maintaining this hard-won human *self-contempt* as humanity's last and most serious claim to self-respect. (Rightly so, in fact: for the person who despises is still someone who “has not forgotten how to respect” …) Does this really *work against* the ascetic ideal? Does anyone still seriously think, as the theologians imagined for a while, that Kant's *victory* over the dogmatic theology of concepts—“God,” “soul,” “freedom,” “immortality”—harmed that ideal? For now, we need not concern ourselves with whether Kant himself ever even intended anything of the sort. What is certain is that, since Kant, transcendentalists of every kind once again hold a winning hand. They are freed from the theologians: what good luck! He showed them the secret path along which they may now pursue the “wishes of their hearts” on their own initiative and with the utmost scientific respectability. Likewise, who could now blame the agnostics if, as worshippers of the unknown and mysterious in itself, they now worship the *question mark itself* as God? (Xaver Doudan once speaks of the ravages caused by “the habit of *admiring* the unintelligible instead of simply remaining in the unknown.” He thinks the ancients managed without it.) Suppose everything that a person “knows” fails to satisfy his wishes, instead contradicting them and making him shudder. What a divine escape, to be allowed to find the fault in “knowing” rather than in “wishing”! … “There is no knowing: *therefore*—there is a God.” What a new elegance of logical inference! What a *triumph* for the ascetic ideal!— [26] Or has the whole of modern history writing perhaps shown more confidence in life and in its ideal? Its noblest ambition now is to be a *mirror*. It rejects every idea of a guiding purpose. It no longer wants to “prove” anything. It refuses to play the judge, and shows good taste in that. It neither affirms nor denies; it establishes facts, it “describes” … All this is highly ascetic. But at the same time, and to an even higher degree, it is *nihilistic*. Let us not deceive ourselves about that! We see a sad, hard, but determined gaze—an eye that *looks outward*, as a solitary explorer at the North Pole looks outward. Perhaps to avoid looking inward? To avoid looking back? … Here there is snow; here life has fallen silent. The last crows to make themselves heard here are called “What for?”, “In vain!”, “Nothing!” Nothing grows or thrives here anymore, except perhaps Petersburg metapolitics and Tolstoyan “pity.” But as for that other kind of historian, a perhaps even more “modern” kind, pleasure-loving, lustful, flirting as much with life as with the ascetic ideal, using the word “artist” as a glove and now claiming an exclusive lease on the praise of contemplation—oh, what a thirst these sweet, clever people awaken even for ascetics and winter landscapes! No! The devil take these “contemplative” people! How much rather I would wander through the darkest gray, cold mists with those historical nihilists! Yes, if I must choose, I would not even object to listening to someone genuinely unhistorical and anti-historical. (Like that Dühring, whose tones intoxicate a still-shy, still-unacknowledged species of “beautiful souls” in today's Germany, the anarchist species within the educated proletariat.) The “contemplative” ones are a hundred times worse. I know nothing so disgusting as such an “objective” armchair, such a perfumed pleasure-seeker before history, half priest, half satyr, Renan perfume. The high falsetto of his applause already betrays what he lacks, where he lacks it, where in this case Fate wielded her cruel scissors, alas, all too surgically! This goes against my taste, and my patience too. Anyone who has nothing to lose by being patient may stay patient at such sights. Such a sight enrages me. Such “spectators” turn me more bitterly against the “spectacle” than the spectacle itself does—history itself, you understand. Without warning, all this puts me in moods like Anacreon's. This nature that gave the bull its horn and the lion its *gaping, tooth-filled jaws*—why did nature give me a foot? … To kick with, by holy Anacreon! And not just to run away with. To kick apart rotten armchairs, cowardly contemplation, the lustful eunuchs before history, flirting with ascetic ideals, impotence's Tartuffe-style hypocritical show of justice! All my respect to the ascetic ideal, *insofar as it is honest*! As long as it believes in itself and does not play tricks on us! But I do not like all these flirtatious bedbugs whose insatiable ambition is to smell of the infinite, until at last the infinite smells of bedbugs. I do not like the whitewashed tombs that act out life. I do not like the tired and worn-out people who wrap themselves in wisdom and look “objective.” I do not like the agitators dressed up as heroes, wearing an ideal as a cap of invisibility around their straw-bundle heads. I do not like the ambitious artists who want to pass for ascetics and priests and are basically only tragic clowns. I do not like them either, these latest speculators in idealism, the anti-Semites, who today roll their eyes in a Christian-Aryan-respectable way. Through a misuse of the cheapest means of agitation, the moral pose, that exhausts all patience, they seek to stir up all the cattle-like elements of the people. (That *every* kind of fraudulent spiritual hocus-pocus in today's Germany has some success is connected with the now undeniable, already tangible *desolation* of the German mind. I look for its cause in an all too exclusive diet of newspapers, politics, beer, and Wagnerian music. Add to this what makes such a diet possible: first, national confinement and vanity, the strong but narrow principle “Germany, Germany above everything”; then the shaking palsy of “modern ideas.”) Europe today is rich and inventive above all in stimulants. It seems to need nothing more than stimulants and distilled spirits. Hence the enormous counterfeiting of ideals, those most highly distilled spirits of the mind. Hence, too, the repulsive, foul-smelling, dishonest, pseudo-alcoholic air everywhere. I would like to know how many shiploads of imitation idealism, of heroes' costumes and the clattering tin of grand words, how many tons of sugared, alcoholic sympathy—trading as “the religion of suffering”—how many stilts of “noble indignation” to help the mentally flat-footed, how many *people pretending to embody* the Christian-moral ideal would have to be exported from Europe today to make its air smell cleaner again … Clearly, this overproduction opens up a new possibility for *trade*. Clearly, there is a new “business” to be done in little idols of ideals and their accompanying “idealists”—do not miss this fence-post-sized hint! Who has enough courage for it? We have it in our *hands* to “idealize” the whole earth! … But why do I speak of courage? Only one thing is needed here: the hand itself, an uninhibited hand, a very uninhibited hand … [27] Enough! Enough! Let us leave these curiosities and complexities of the most modern mind, which give as much cause for laughter as for annoyance. *Our* particular problem can do without them: the problem of the *meaning* of the ascetic ideal. What does it have to do with yesterday and today! I will deal with those things more thoroughly and harshly in another setting, under the title “On the History of European Nihilism.” For that, I refer readers to a work I am preparing: *The Will to Power*, An Attempt to Revalue All Values. The only thing I wanted to point out here is this: even in the most intellectual sphere, the ascetic ideal still has for now only one kind of real enemies and people who *harm it*: those who pretend to embody this ideal, for they awaken distrust. Everywhere else that the mind works strictly, powerfully, and without counterfeiting today, it now has no ideal at all—the popular name for this abstinence is “atheism”—*except for its will to truth*. But this will, this *remnant* of an ideal, is, if you will believe me, that very ideal in its strictest, most intellectual formulation, entirely inward and secret, stripped of all outer defenses. It is therefore not so much its remnant as its *core*. Unconditional, honest atheism—and we, the more intellectual people of this age, breathe only *its* air!—is accordingly *not* opposed to that ideal, as it appears to be. Rather, it is only one of the ideal's last stages of development, one of its final forms and inner logical consequences. It is the awe-inspiring *catastrophe* of a two-thousand-year training in truthfulness, which finally forbids itself *the lie in belief in God*. (The same course of development occurred in India, completely independently, and therefore proving something. The same ideal forced the same conclusion. The decisive point was reached five centuries before the European calendar's starting point, with Buddha—or, more precisely, already with Sankhyam philosophy, which Buddha then popularized and made into a religion.) What, if we ask with complete strictness, has actually *defeated* the Christian God? The answer is in my “Gay Science,” p. 290: “Christian morality itself, the concept of truthfulness taken more and more strictly, the Christian conscience's confessor-like subtlety, translated and raised into the scientific conscience, into intellectual cleanliness at any price. Looking at nature as if it were evidence of a god's goodness and care; interpreting history in honor of a divine reason, as constant evidence of a moral world order and moral ultimate purposes; interpreting one's own experiences as pious people interpreted them for so long, as if everything were providence, everything a sign, everything devised and sent for the soul's salvation: that is now *over*. It has conscience *against* it. Every more sensitive conscience regards it as indecent, dishonest, as lying, effeminacy, weakness, cowardice. Through this strictness, if through anything, we are *good Europeans* and heirs to Europe's longest and bravest self-overcoming” … All great things destroy themselves through an act of self-cancellation. That is what the law of life demands, the law of *necessary* “self-overcoming” in the essence of life. In the end, the lawgiver himself always hears the call: “Submit to the law you yourself have laid down.” In this way, Christianity *as dogma* was destroyed by its own morality. In this way, Christianity *as morality* must now also be destroyed. We stand on the threshold of this event. After Christian truthfulness has drawn one conclusion after another, it finally draws its *strongest conclusion*, its conclusion *against* itself. This happens when it asks: “*What does all will to truth mean?*” … And here I touch again on my problem, on our problem, my *unknown* friends—for as yet I *know* of no friend. What meaning would *our* whole existence have, if not that in us this will to truth had become conscious of itself *as a problem*? … From now on, this coming to consciousness of the will to truth will cause morality to *perish*. There is no doubt of that. That great spectacle in a hundred acts, reserved for Europe's next two centuries, the most terrible, most questionable, and perhaps also the most hopeful of all spectacles … [28] Apart from the ascetic ideal, the human being, the human *animal*, has so far had no meaning. His existence on earth had no goal. “What are human beings for at all?” was a question without an answer. The *will* for humanity and the earth was missing. Behind every great human fate, an even greater “In vain!” sounded as a refrain. That is precisely what the ascetic ideal means: something was *missing*, an enormous *gap* surrounded humanity. Human beings did not know how to justify, explain, or affirm themselves. They suffered from the problem of their own meaning. They suffered in other ways too; for the most part, they were *sickly* animals. But their problem was *not* suffering itself. It was the lack of an answer to the questioning cry, “*What is the point* of suffering?” The human being, the bravest animal and the one most used to suffering, does *not* reject suffering in itself. He *wants* it, even seeks it out, provided he is shown a *meaning* for it, a *purpose* for suffering. The meaninglessness of suffering, *not* suffering itself, was the curse that had so far lain over humanity—*and the ascetic ideal offered it a meaning!* So far, it was the only meaning. Any meaning is better than no meaning at all. In every respect, the ascetic ideal was the supreme case of “*for lack of anything better*” that had so far existed. In it, suffering was *interpreted*. The enormous emptiness seemed filled. The door closed against all suicidal nihilism. The interpretation—there is no doubt—brought new suffering with it: deeper, more inward, more poisonous suffering that gnawed more at life. It placed all suffering under the perspective of *guilt* … But despite everything, human beings were thereby *saved*. They had a meaning. They were no longer like a leaf in the wind, a ball tossed around by nonsense, by “no-sense.” They could now *will* something. At first, it did not matter toward what, for what, or with what they willed: *the will itself was saved.* There is no hiding what all that willing, which took its direction from the ascetic ideal, really expresses. This hatred of the human, still more of the animal, still more of the material; this horror of the senses, of reason itself; this fear of happiness and beauty; this desire to get away from all appearance, change, becoming, death, wish, desire itself—all this means, let us dare to understand it, a *will to nothingness*, an aversion to life, a rebellion against life's most basic conditions. But it is and remains a will! … And, to end by saying what I said at the start: human beings would still rather will *nothingness* than *not* will …