The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Will to Power, Book I and II, by Friedrich Nietzsche.

The zenith of intellectuality, according to Schopenhauer, was to arrive at the knowledge that all is to no purpose—in short, to recognise what the good man already does instinctively.... He denies that there can be higher states of intellectuality—he regards his view as a non plus ultra.... Here intellectuality is placed much lower than goodness; its highest value (as art, for instance) would be to lead up to, and to advise the adoption of, morality, the absolute predominance of moral values.

Next to Schopenhauer I will now characterise Kant: there was nothing Greek in Kant; he was quite anti-historical (cf. his attitude in regard to the French Revolution) and a moral fanatic (see Goethe's words concerning the radically evil element in human nature [8]). Saintliness also lurked somewhere in his soul.... I require a criticism of the saintly type.

Herbert Spencer's tea-grocer's philosophy: total absence of an ideal save that of the mediocre man.

Fundamental instinct of all philosophers, historians, and psychologists: everything of value in mankind, art, history, science, religion, and technology must be shown to be morally valuable and morally conditioned, in its aim, means, and result. Everything is seen in the light of this highest value; for instance, Rousseau's question concerning civilisation, "Will it make man grow better?"—a funny question, for the reverse is obvious, and is a fact which speaks in favour of civilisation.

[8] TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.—This is doubtless a reference to a passage in a letter written by Goethe to Herder, on 7th June 1793, from the camp at Marienborn, near Mainz, in which the following words occur:—"Dagegen hat aber auch Kant seinen philosophischen Mantel, nachdem er ein langes Menschenleben gebraucht hat, ihn von mancherlei sudelhaften Vorurteilen zu reinigen, freventlich mit dem Schandfleck des radikalen Bösen beschlabbert, damit doch auch Christen herbeigelockt werden den Saum zu küssen?—("Kant, on the other hand, after he had tried throughout his life to keep his philosophical cloak unsoiled by foul prejudices, wantonly dirtied it in the end with the disreputable stain of the 'radical evil' in human nature, in order that Christians too might be lured into kissing its hem.") From this passage it will be seen how Goethe had anticipated Nietzsche's view of Kant; namely, that he was a Christian in disguise.

Religious morality.—Passion, great desire; the passion for power, love, revenge, and property: the moralists wish to uproot and exterminate all these things, and "purify" the soul by driving them out of it.

The argument is: the passions often lead to disaster—therefore, they are evil and ought to be condemned. Man must wring himself free from them, otherwise he cannot be a good man....

This is of the same nature as: "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out." In this particular case when, with that "bucolic simplicity," the Founder of Christianity recommended a certain practice to His disciples, in the event of sexual excitement, the result would not be only the loss of a particular member, but the actual castration of the whole of the man's character.... And the same applies to the moral mania, which, instead of insisting upon the control of the passions, sues for their extirpation. Its conclusion always is: only the emasculated man is a good man.

Instead of making use of and of economising the great sources of passion, those torrents of the soul which are often so dangerous, overwhelming, and impetuous, morality—this most shortsighted and most corrupted of mental attitudes—would fain make them dry up.

Conquest over the passions?—No, not if this is to mean their enfeeblement and annihilation. They must be enlisted in our service: and to this end it may be necessary to tyrannise them a good deal (not as individuals, but as communities, races, etc.). At length we should trust them enough to restore their freedom to them: they love us like good servants, and willingly go wherever our best interests lie.

Intolerance on the part of morality is a sign of man's weakness: he is frightened of his own "immorality," he must deny his strongest instincts, because he does not yet know how to use them. Thus the most fruitful quarters of the globe remain uncultivated longest: the power is lacking that might become master here....

There are some very simple peoples and men who believe that continuous fine weather would be a desirable thing: they still believe to-day in rebus moralibus, that the "good man" alone and nothing else than the "good man" is to be desired, and that the ultimate end of man's evolution will be that only the good man will remain on earth (and that it is only to that end that all efforts should be directed). This is in the highest degree an uneconomical thought; as we have already suggested, it is the very acme of simplicity, and it is nothing more than the expression of the agreeableness which the "good man" creates (he gives rise to no fear, he permits of relaxation, he gives what one is able to take).

With a more educated eye one learns to desire exactly the reverse—that is to say, an ever greater dominion of evil, man's gradual emancipation from the narrow and aggravating bonds of morality, the growth of power around the greatest forces of Nature, and the ability to enlist the passions in one's service.

The whole idea of the hierarchy of the passions: as if the only right and normal thing were to be led by reason—whereas the passions are abnormal, dangerous, half-animal, and moreover, in so far as their end is concerned, nothing more than desires for pleasure....

Passion is deprived of its dignity (1) as if it only manifested itself in an unseemly way and were not necessary and always the motive force, (2) inasmuch as it is supposed to aim at no high purpose—merely at pleasure....

The misinterpretation of passion and reason, as if the latter were an independent entity, and not a state of relationship between all the various passions and desires; and as though every passion did not possess its quantum of reason....

How it was that, under the pressure of the dominion of an ascetic and self-effacing morality, it was precisely the passions—love, goodness, pity, even justice, generosity, and heroism, which were necessarily misunderstood?

It is the richness of a personality, the fullness of it, its power to flow over and to bestow, its instinctive feeling of ease, and its affirmative attitude towards itself, that creates great love and great sacrifices: these passions proceed from strong and godlike personalism as surely as do the desire to be master, to obtrude, and the inner certainty that one has a right to everything. The opposite views, according to the most accepted notions, are indeed common views; and if one does not stand firmly and bravely on one's legs, one has nothing to give, and it is perfectly useless to stretch out one's hand either to protect or to support others....

How was it possible to transform these instincts to such an extent that man could feel that to be of value which is directed against himself, so that he could sacrifice himself for another self! O the psychological baseness and falseness which hitherto has laid down the law in the Church and in Church-infected philosophy!

If man is thoroughly sinful, then all he can do is to hate himself. As a matter of fact, he ought not to regard even his fellows otherwise than he does himself; the love of man requires a justification, and it is found in the fact that God commanded it.—From this it follows that all the natural instincts of man (to love, etc.) appear to him to be, in themselves, prohibited; and that he re-acquires a right to them only after having denied them as an obedient worshipper of God. ... Pascal, the admirable logician of Christianity, went as far as this! let any one examine his relations to his sister. "Not to make one's self loved," seemed Christian to him.

Let us consider how dearly a moral canon such as this ("an ideal") makes us pay. (Its enemies are—well? The "egoists.")

The melancholy astuteness of self-abasement in Europe (Pascal, La Rochefoucauld)—inner enfeeblement, discouragement, and self-consumption of the non-gregarious man.

The perpetual process of laying stress upon mediocre qualities as being the most valuable (modesty in rank and file, Nature converted into an instrument).

Pangs of conscience associated with all that is self-glorifying and original: thus follows the unhappiness—the gloominess of the world from the standpoint of stronger and better-constituted men!

Gregarious consciousness and timorousness transferred to philosophy and religion.

Let us leave the psychological impossibility of a purely unselfish action out of consideration!

My ultimate conclusion is, that the real man represents a much higher value than the "desirable" man of any ideal that has ever existed hitherto; that all "desiderata" in regard to mankind have been absurd and dangerous dissipations by means of which a particular kind of man has sought to establish his measures of preservation and of growth as a law for all; that every "desideratum" of this kind which has been made to dominate has reduced man's worth, his strength, and his trust in the future; that the indigence and mediocre intellectuality of man becomes most apparent, even to-day, when he reveals a desire; that man's ability to fix values has hitherto been developed too inadequately to do justice to the actual, not merely to the "desirable," worth of man; that, up to the present, ideals have really been the power which has most slandered man and power, the poisonous fumes which have hung over reality, and which have seduced men to yearn for nonentity....

The standard according to which the value of moral valuations is to be determined.

The fundamental fact that has been overlooked: The contradiction between "becoming more moral" and the elevation and the strengthening of the type man.

Moral values regarded as values of appearance and compared with physiological values.

Reflecting upon generalities is always retrograde: the last of the "desiderata" concerning men, for instance, have never been regarded as problems by philosophers. They always postulate the "improvement" of man, quite guilelessly, as though by means of some intuition they had been helped over the note of interrogation following the question, why necessarily "improve!" To what extent is it desirable that man should be more virtuous, or more intelligent, or happier! Granting that nobody yet knows the "wherefore?" of mankind, all such desiderata have no sense whatever; and if one aspires to one of them—who knows?—perhaps one is frustrating the other. Is an increase of virtue compatible with an increase of intelligence and insight? Dubito: only too often shall I have occasion to show that the reverse is true. Has virtue, as an end, in the strict sense of the word, not always been opposed to happiness hitherto? And again, does it not require misfortune, abstinence, and self-castigation as a necessary means? And if the aim were to arrive at the highest insight, would it not therefore be necessary to renounce all hope of an increase in happiness, and to choose danger, adventure, mistrust, and seduction as a road to enlightenment?... And suppose one will have happiness; maybe one should join the ranks of the "poor in spirit."

We do not believe that one man can be another if he is not that other already—that is to say, if he is not, as often happens, an accretion of personalities or at least of parts of persons. In this case it is possible to draw another set of actions from him into the foreground, and to drive back "the older man." ... The man's aspect is altered, but not his actual nature.... It is but the merest factum brutum that any one should cease from performing certain actions, and the fact allows of the most varied interpretations. Neither does it always follow therefrom that the habit of performing a certain action is entirely arrested, nor that the reasons for that action are dissipated. He whose destiny and abilities make him a criminal never unlearns anything, but is continually adding to his store of knowledge: and long abstinence acts as a sort of tonic on his talent.... Certainly, as far as society is concerned, the only interesting fact is that some one has ceased from performing certain actions; and to this end society will often raise a man out of those circumstances which make him able to perform those actions: this is obviously a wiser course than that of trying to break his destiny and his particular nature. The Church,—which has done nothing except to take the place of, and to appropriate, the philosophic treasures of antiquity,—starting out from another standpoint and wishing to secure a "soul" or the "salvation" of a soul, believes in the expiatory power of punishment, as also in the obliterating power of forgiveness: both of which supposed processes are deceptions due to religious prejudice—punishment expiates nothing, forgiveness obliterates nothing; what is done cannot be undone. Because some one forgets something it by no means proves that something has been wiped out.... An action leads to certain consequences, both among men and away from men, and it matters not whether it has met with punishment, or whether it has been "expiated," "forgiven," or "obliterated," it matters not even if the Church meanwhile canonises the man who performed it. The Church believes in things that do not exist, it believes in "Souls"; it believes in "influences" that do not exist—in divine influences; it believes in states that do not exist, in sin, redemption, and spiritual salvation: in all things it stops at the surface and is satisfied with signs, attitudes, words, to which it lends an arbitrary interpretation. It possesses a method of counterfeit psychology which is thought out quite systematically.

"Illness makes men better," this famous assumption which is to be met with in all ages, and in the mouth of the wizard quite as often as in the mouth and maw of the people, really makes one ponder. In view of discovering whether there is any truth in it, one might be allowed to ask whether there is not perhaps a fundamental relationship between morality and illness? Regarded as a whole, could not the "improvement of mankind"—that is to say, the unquestionable softening, humanising, and taming which the European has undergone within the last two centuries—be regarded as the result of a long course of secret and ghastly suffering, failure, abstinence, and grief? Has illness made "Europeans" "better"? Or, put into other words, is not our modern soft-hearted European morality, which could be likened to that of the Chinese, perhaps an expression of physiological deterioration?... It cannot be denied, for instance, that wherever history shows us "man" in a state of particular glory and power, his type is always dangerous, impetuous, and boisterous, and cares little for humanity; and perhaps, in those cases in which it seems otherwise, all that was required was the courage or subtlety to see sufficiently below the surface in psychological matters, in order even in them to discover the general proposition: "the more healthy, strong, rich, fruitful, and enterprising a man may feel, the more immoral he will be as well." A terrible thought, to which one should on no account give way. Provided, however, that one take a few steps forward with this thought, how wondrous does the future then appear! What will then be paid for more dearly on earth, than precisely this very thing which we are all trying to promote, by all means in our power—the humanising, the improving, and the increased "civilisation" of man? Nothing would then be more expensive than virtue: for by means of it the world would ultimately be turned into a hospital: and the last conclusion of wisdom would be, "everybody must be everybody else's nurse." Then we should certainly have attained to the "Peace on earth," so long desired! But how little "joy we should find in each other's company"! How little beauty, wanton spirits, daring, and danger! So few "actions" which would make life on earth worth living! Ah! and no longer any "deeds"! But have not all the great things and deeds which have remained fresh in the memory of men, and which have not been destroyed by time, been immoral in the deepest sense of the word?...

The priests—and with them the half-priests or philosophers of all ages—have always called that doctrine true, the educating influence of which was a benevolent one or at least seemed so—that is to say, tended to "improve." In this way they resemble an ingenuous plebeian empiric and miracle-worker who, because he had tried a certain poison as a cure, declared it to be no poison. "By their fruits ye shall know them"—that is to say, "by our truths." This has been the reasoning of priests until this day. They have squandered their sagacity, with results that have been sufficiently fatal, in order to make the "proof of power" (or the proof "by the fruits ") pre-eminent and even supreme arbiter over all other forms of proof. "That which makes good must be good; that which is good cannot lie"—these are their inexorable conclusions—"that which bears good fruit must consequently be true; there is no other criterion of truth." ...

But to the extent to which "improving" acts as an argument, deteriorating must also act as a refutation. The error can be shown to be an error, by examining the lives of those who represent it: a false step, a vice can refute.... This indecent form of opposition, which comes from below and behind—the doglike kind of attack, has not died out either. Priests, as psychologists, never discovered anything more interesting than spying out the secret vices of their adversaries—they prove Christianity by looking about for the world's filth. They apply this principle more particularly to the greatest on earth, to the geniuses: readers will remember how Goethe has been attacked on every conceivable occasion in Germany (Klopstock and Herder were among the first to give a "good example" in this respect—birds of a feather flock together).

One must be very immoral in order to make people moral by deeds. The moralist's means are the most terrible that have ever been used; he who has not the courage to be an immoralist in deeds may be fit for anything else, but not for the duties of a moralist.

Morality is a menagerie; it assumes that iron bars may be more useful than freedom, even for the creatures it imprisons; it also assumes that there are animal-tamers about who do not shrink from terrible means, and who are acquainted with the use of red-hot iron. This terrible species, which enters into a struggle with the wild animal, is called "priests."

Man, incarcerated in an iron cage of errors, has become a caricature of man; he is sick, emaciated, ill-disposed towards himself, filled with a loathing of the impulses of life, filled with a mistrust of all that is beautiful and happy in life—in fact, he is a wandering monument of misery. How shall we ever succeed in vindicating this phenomenon—this artificial, arbitrary, and recent miscarriage—the sinner—which the priests have bred on their territory?

In order to think fairly of morality, we must put two biological notions in its place: the taming of the wild beasts, and the rearing of a particular species.

The priests of all ages have always pretended that they wished to "improve" ... But we, of another persuasion, would laugh if a lion-tamer ever wished to speak to us of his "improved" animals. As a rule, the taming of a beast is only achieved by deteriorating it: even the moral man is not a better man; he is rather a weaker member of his species. But he is less harmful....

(a) That there is no worse confusion than that which confounds rearing and taming: and these two things have always been confused.... Rearing, as I understand it, is a means of husbanding the enormous powers of humanity in such a way that whole generations may build upon the foundations laid by their progenitors—not only outwardly, but inwardly, organically, developing from the already existing stem and growing stronger....

(b) That there is an exceptional danger in believing that mankind as a whole is developing and growing stronger, if individuals are seen to grow more feeble and more equally mediocre. Humanity—mankind—is an abstract thing: the object of rearing, even in regard to the most individual cases, can only be the strong man (the man who has no breeding is weak, dissipated, and unstable).

These are the things I demand of you—however badly they may sound in your ears: that you subject moral valuations themselves to criticism. That you should put a stop to your instinctive moral impulse—which in this case demands submission and not criticism—with the question: "why precisely submission?" That this yearning for a "why?"—for a criticism of morality should not only be your present form of morality, but the sublimest of all moralities, and an honour to the age you live in. That your honesty, your will, may give an account of itself, and not deceive you: "why not?"—Before what tribunal?

Thus in the history of morality a will to power finds expression, by means of which, either the slaves, the oppressed, the bungled and the botched, those that suffer from themselves, or the mediocre, attempt to make those valuations prevail which favour their existence.

From a biological standpoint, therefore, the phenomenon Morality is of a highly suspicious nature. Up to the present, morality has developed at the cost of: the ruling classes and their specific instincts, the well-constituted and beautiful natures, the independent and privileged classes in all respects.

Morality, then, is a sort of counter-movement opposing Nature's endeavours to arrive at a higher type. Its effects are: mistrust of life in general (in so far as its tendencies are felt to be immoral), —hostility towards the senses (inasmuch as the highest values are felt to be opposed to the higher instincts),—Degeneration and self-destruction of "higher natures," because it is precisely in them that the conflict becomes conscious.

Morality as the leading value in all phases of philosophy (even with the Sceptics). Result: this world is no good, a "true world" must exist somewhere.

What is it that here determines the highest value? What, in sooth, is morality? The instinct of decadence; it is the exhausted and the disinherited who take their revenge in this way and play the masters....

Historical proof: philosophers have always been decadents and always in the pay of Nihilistic religions.

The instinct of decadence appears as the will to power. The introduction of its system of means: its means are absolutely immoral.

General aspect: the values that have been highest hitherto have been a special instance of the will to power; morality itself is a particular instance of immorality.

1. How was this actually possible! Question: why did life and physiological well-constitutedness succumb everywhere? Why was there no affirmative philosophy, no affirmative religion?

2. The strong and the weak: the healthy and the sick; the exception and the rule. There is no doubt as to who is the stronger....

General view of history; Is man an exception in the history of life on this account?—An objection to Darwinism. The means wherewith the weak succeed in ruling have become: instincts, "humanity," "institutions." ...

3. The proof of this rule on the part of the weak is to be found in our political instincts, in our social values, in our arts, and in our science.

The instincts of decadence have become master of the instincts of ascending life.... The will to nonentity has prevailed over the will to life!

Is this true? is there not perhaps a stronger guarantee of life and of the species in this victory of the weak and the mediocre?—is it not perhaps only a means in the collective movement of life, a mere slackening of the pace, a protective measure against something even more dangerous?

Suppose the strong were masters in all respects, even in valuing: let us try and think what their attitude would be towards illness, suffering, and sacrifice! Self-contempt on the part of the weak would be the result: they would do their utmost to disappear and to extirpate their kind. And would this be desirable?—should we really like a world in which the subtlety, the consideration, the intellectuality, the plasticity—in fact, the whole influence of the weak—was lacking?[9] ...

We have seen two "wills to power" at war (in this special case we had a principle: that of agreeing with the one that has hitherto succumbed, and of disagreeing with the one that has hitherto triumphed): we have recognised the "real world" as a "world of lies" and morality as a form of immorality. We do not say "the stronger is wrong."

We have understood what it is that has determined the highest values hitherto, and why the latter should have prevailed over the opposite value: it was numerically the stronger.

If we now purify the opposite value of the infection, the half-heartedness, and the degeneration, with which we identify it, we restore Nature to the throne, free from moralic acid.

[9] TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.—We realise here the great difference between Nietzsche and those who draw premature conclusions from Darwinism. There is no brutal solution of modern problems in Nietzsche's philosophy. He did not advocate anything so ridiculous as the total suppression of the weak and the degenerate. What he wished to resist and to overthrow was their supremacy, their excessive power. He felt that there was a desirable and stronger type which was in need of having its hopes, aspirations, and instincts upheld in defiance of Christian values.

Morality, a useful error; or, more clearly still, a necessary and expedient lie according to the greatest and most impartial of its supporters.

One ought to be able to acknowledge the truth up to that point where one is sufficiently elevated no longer to require the disciplinary school of moral error.—When one judges life morally, it disgusts one.

Neither should false personalities be invented; one should not say, for instance, "Nature is cruel." It is precisely when one perceives that there is no such central controlling and responsible force that one is relieved!

Morality may be regarded as the illusion of a species, fostered with the view of urging the individual to sacrifice himself to the future, and seemingly granting him such a very great value, that with that self-consciousness he may tyrannise over, and constrain, other sides of his nature, and find it difficult to be pleased with himself.

We ought to be most profoundly thankful for what morality has done hitherto: but now it is no more than a burden which may prove fatal. Morality itself in the form of honesty urges us to deny morality.

To what extent is the self-destruction of morality still a sign of its own strength? We Europeans have within us the blood of those who were ready to die for their faith; we have taken morality frightfully seriously, and there is nothing which we have not, at one time, sacrificed to it. On the other hand, our intellectual subtlety has been reached essentially through the vivisection of our consciences. We do not yet know the "whither" towards which we are urging our steps, now that we have departed from the soil of our forebears. But it was on this very soil that we acquired the strength which is now driving us from our homes in search of adventure, and it is thanks to that strength that we are now in mid-sea, surrounded by untried possibilities and things undiscovered—we can no longer choose, we must be conquerors, now that we have no land in which we feel at home and in which we would fain "survive." A concealed "yea" is driving us forward, and it is stronger than all our "nays." Even our strength no longer bears with us in the old swampy land: we venture out into the open, we attempt the task. The world is still rich and undiscovered, and even to perish were better than to be half-men or poisonous men. Our very strength itself urges us to take to the sea; there where all suns have hitherto sunk we know of a new world....

Let us rid ourselves of a few superstitions which heretofore have been fashionable among philosophers!

Philosophers are prejudiced against appearance, change, pain, death, the things of the body, the senses, fate, bondage, and all that which has no purpose.

In the first place, they believe in: absolute knowledge, (2) in knowledge for its own sake,

(4) in the recognisability of men's acts. They are led by instinctive determinations of values, in which former cultures are reflected (more dangerous cultures too).

What have philosophers lacked! (1) A sense of history, (2) a knowledge of physiology, (3) a goal in the future.—The ability to criticise without irony or moral condemnation.

Philosophers have had (1) from times immemorial a wonderful capacity for the contradictio in adjecto, (2) they have always trusted concepts as unconditionally as they have mistrusted the senses: it never seems to have occurred to them that notions and words are our inheritance of past ages in which thinking was neither very clear nor very exact.

What seems to dawn upon philosophers last of all: that they must no longer allow themselves to be presented with concepts already conceived, nor must they merely purify and polish up those concepts; but they must first make them, create them, themselves, and then present them and get people to accept them. Up to the present, people have trusted their concepts generally, as if they had been a wonderful dowry from some kind of wonderland: but they constitute the inheritance of our most remote, most foolish, and most intelligent forefathers. This piety towards that which already exists in us is perhaps related to the moral element in science. What we needed above all is absolute scepticism towards all traditional concepts (like that which a certain philosopher may already have possessed—and he was Plato, of course: for he taught the reverse).

Profoundly mistrustful towards the dogmas of the theory of knowledge, I liked to look now out of this window, now out of that, though I took good care not to become finally fixed anywhere, indeed I should have thought it dangerous to have done so—though finally: is it within the range of probabilities for an instrument to criticise its own fitness? What I noticed more particularly was, that no scientific scepticism or dogmatism has ever arisen quite free from all arrières pensées—that it has only a secondary value as soon as the motive lying immediately behind it is discovered.

Fundamental aspect: Kant's, Hegel's, Schopenhauer's, the sceptical and epochistical, the historifying and the pessimistic attitudes—all have a moral origin. I have found no one who has dared to criticise the moral valuations, and I soon turned my back upon the meagre attempts that have been made to describe the evolution of these feelings (by English and German Darwinians).

How can Spinoza's position, his denial and repudiation of the moral values, be explained? (It was the result of his Theodicy!)

Morality regarded as the highest form of protection.—Our world is either the work and expression (the modus) of God, in which case it must be in the highest degree perfect (Leibnitz's conclusion ...),—and no one doubted that he knew what perfection must be like,—and then all evil can only be apparent (Spinoza is more radical, he says this of good and evil), or it must be a part of God's high purpose (a consequence of a particularly great mark of favour on God's part, who thus allows man to choose between good and evil: the privilege of being no automaton; "freedom," with the ever-present danger of making a mistake and of choosing wrongly.... See Simplicius, for instance, in the commentary to Epictetus).

Or our world is imperfect; evil and guilt are real, determined, and are absolutely inherent to its being; in that case it cannot be the real world: consequently knowledge can only be a way of denying the world, for the latter is error which may be recognised as such. This is Schopenhauer's opinion, based upon Kantian first principles. Pascal was still more desperate: he thought that even knowledge must be corrupt and false—that revelation is a necessity if only in order to recognise that the world should be denied....

Owing to our habit of believing in unconditional authorities, we have grown to feel a profound need for them: indeed, this feeling is so strong that, even in an age of criticism such as Kant's was, it showed itself to be superior to the need for criticism, and, in a certain sense, was able to subject the whole work of critical acumen, and to convert it to its own use. It proved its superiority once more in the generation which followed, and which, owing to its historical instincts, naturally felt itself drawn to a relative view of all authority, when it converted even the Hegelian philosophy of evolution (history rechristened and called philosophy) to its own use, and represented history as being the self-revelation and self-surpassing of moral ideas. Since Plato, philosophy has lain under the dominion of morality. Even in Plato's predecessors, moral interpretations play a most important rôle (Anaximander declares that all things are made to perish as a punishment for their departure from pure being; Heraclitus thinks that the regularity of phenomena is a proof of the morally correct character of evolution in general).

The progress of philosophy has been hindered most seriously hitherto through the influence of moral arrières-pensées.

In all ages, "fine feelings" have been regarded as arguments, "heaving breasts" have been the bellows of godliness, convictions have been the "criteria" of truth, and the need of opposition has been the note of interrogation affixed to wisdom. This falseness and fraud permeates the whole history of philosophy. But for a few respected sceptics, no instinct for intellectual Uprightness is to be found anywhere. Finally, Kant guilelessly sought to make this thinker's corruption scientific by means of his concept, "practical reason". He expressly invented a reason which, in certain cases, would allow one not to bother about reason—that is to say, in cases where the heart's desire, morality, or "duty" are the motive power.

Hegel: his popular side, the doctrine of war and of great men. Right is on the side of the victorious: he (the victorious man) stands for the progress of mankind. His is an attempt at proving the dominion of morality by means of history.

Hegel: a demonstrable process of evolution, the actualisation of the kingdom of morality.

We shall not allow ourselves to be deceived either in Kant's or Hegel's way:—We no longer believe, as they did, in morality, and therefore have no philosophies to found with the view of justifying morality. Criticism and history have no charm for us in this respect: what is their charm, then?

The importance of German philosophy (Hegel,) the thinking out of a kind of pantheism which would not reckon evil, error, and suffering as arguments against godliness. This grand initiative was misused by the powers that were (State, etc.) to sanction the rights of the people that happened to be paramount.

Schopenhauer appears as a stubborn opponent of this idea; he is a moral man who, in order to keep in the right concerning his moral valuation, finally becomes a denier of the world. Ultimately he becomes a "mystic."

I myself have sought an æsthetic justification of the ugliness in this world. I regarded the desire for beauty and for the persistence of certain forms as a temporary preservative and recuperative measure: what seemed to me to be fundamentally associated with pain, however, was the eternal lust of creating and the eternal compulsion to destroy.

We call things ugly when we look at them with the desire of attributing some sense, some new sense, to what has become senseless: it is the accumulated power of the creator which compels him to regard what has existed hitherto as no longer acceptable, botched, worthy of being suppressed—ugly!

My first solution of the problem: Dionysian wisdom. The joy in the destruction of the most noble thing, and at the sight of its gradual undoing, regarded as the joy over what is coming and what lies in the future, which triumphs over actual things, however good they may be. Dionysian: temporary identification with the principle of life (voluptuousness of the martyr included).

My innovations. The Development of Pessimism: intellectual pessimism; moral criticism, the dissolution of the last comfort. Knowledge, a sign of decay, veils by means of an illusion all strong action; isolated culture is unfair and therefore strong.

(1) My fight against decay and the increasing weakness of personality. I sought a new centrum.

(3) I therefore travelled farther along the road of dissolution—and along it I found new sources of strength for individuals. We must be destroyers!—I perceived that the state of dissolution is one in which individual beings are able to arrive at a kind of perfection not possible hitherto, it is an image and isolated example of life in general. To the paralysing feeling of general dissolution and imperfection, I opposed the Eternal Recurrence.

People naturally seek the picture of life in that philosophy which makes them most cheerful—that is to say, in that philosophy which gives the highest sense of freedom to their strongest instinct. This is probably the case with me.

German philosophy, as a whole,—Leibnitz, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, to mention the greatest,—is the most out-and-out form of romanticism and home-sickness that has ever yet existed: it is a yearning for the best that has ever been known on earth. One is at home nowhere; that which is ultimately yearned after is a place where one can somehow feel at home; because one has been at home there before, and that place is the Greek world! But it is precisely in that direction that airbridges are broken down—save, of course, the rainbow of concepts! And the latter lead everywhere, to all the homes and "fatherlands" that ever existed for Greek souls! Certainly, one must be very light and thin in order to cross these bridges! But what happiness lies even in this desire for spirituality, almost for ghostliness! With it, how far one is from the "press and bustle" and the mechanical boorishness of the natural sciences, how far from the vulgar din of "modern ideas"! One wants to get back to the Greeks via the Fathers of the Church, from North to South, from formulæ to forms; the passage out of antiquity—Christianity—is still a source of joy as a means of access to antiquity, as a portion of the old world itself, as a glistening mosaic of ancient concepts and ancient valuations. Arabesques, scroll-work, rococo of scholastic abstractions—always better, that is to say, finer and more slender, than the peasant and plebeian reality of Northern Europe, and still a protest on the part of higher intellectuality against the peasant war and insurrection of the mob which have become master of the intellectual taste of Northern Europe, and which had its leader in a man as great and unintellectual as Luther:—in this respect German philosophy belongs to the Counter-Reformation, it might even be looked upon as related to the Renaissance, or at least to the will to Renaissance, the will to get ahead with the discovery of antiquity, with the excavation of ancient philosophy, and above all of pre-Socratic philosophy—the most thoroughly dilapidated of all Greek temples! Possibly, in à few hundred years, people will be of the opinion that all German philosophy derived its dignity from this fact, that step by step it attempted to reclaim the soil of antiquity, and that therefore all demands for "originality" must appear both petty and foolish when compared with Germany's higher claim to having refastened the bonds which seemed for ever rent—the bonds which bound us to the Greeks, the highest type of "men" ever evolved hitherto. To-day we are once more approaching all the fundamental principles of the cosmogony which the Greek mind in Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Democritus, and Anaxagoras, was responsible for. Day by day we are growing more Greek; at first, as is only natural, the change remains confined to concepts and valuations, and we hover around like Greasing spirits: but it is to be hoped that some day our body will also be involved! Here lies (and has always lain) my hope for the German nation.

I do not wish to convert anybody to philosophy: it is both necessary and perhaps desirable that the philosopher should be a rare plant. Nothing is more repugnant to me than the scholarly praise of philosophy which is to be found in Seneca and Cicero. Philosophy has not much in common with virtue. I trust I may be allowed to say that even the scientific man is a fundamentally different person from the philosopher. What I most desire is, that the genuine notion "philosopher" should not completely perish in Germany. There are so many incomplete creatures in Germany already who would fain conceal their ineptitude beneath such noble names.

I must set up the highest ideal of a philosopher. Learning is not everything! The scholar is the sheep in the kingdom of learning; he studies because he is told to do so, and because others have done so before him.

The superstition concerning philosophers: They are confounded with men of science. As if the value of things were inherent in them and required only to be held on to tightly! To what extent are their researches carried on under the influence of values which already prevail (their hatred of appearance of the body, etc.)? Schopenhauer concerning morality (scorn of Utilitarianism). Ultimately the confusion goes so far that Darwinism is regarded as philosophy, and thus at the present day power has gone over to the men of science. Even Frenchmen like Taine prosecute research, or mean to prosecute research, without being already in possession of a standard of valuation. Prostration before "facts" of a kind of cult. As a matter of fact, they destroy the existing valuations.

The explanation of this misunderstanding. The man who is able to command is a rare phenomenon; he misinterprets himself. What one wants to do, above all, is to disclaim all authority and to attribute it to circumstances. In Germany the critic's estimations belong to the history of awakening manhood. Lessing, etc. (Napoleon concerning Goethe). As a matter of fact, the movement is again made retrograde owing to German romanticism: and the fame of German philosophy relies upon it as if it dissipated the danger of scepticism and could demonstrate faith. Both tendencies culminate in Hegel: at bottom, what he did was to generalise the fact of German criticism and the fact of German romanticism,—a kind of dialectical fatalism, but to the honour of intellectuality, with the actual submission of the philosopher to reality. The critic prepares the way: that is all!

With Schopenhauer the philosopher's mission dawns; it is felt that the object is to determine values; still under the dominion of eudemonism. The ideal of Pessimism.

Theory and practice.—This is a pernicious distinction, as if there were an instinct of knowledge, which, without inquiring into the utility or harmfulness of a thing, blindly charged at the truth; and then that, apart from this instinct, there were the whole world of practical interests.

In contradiction of this, I try to show what instincts are active behind all these pure theorists,—and how the latter, as a whole, under the dominion of their instincts, fatally make for something which to their minds is "truth," to their minds and only to their minds. The struggle between systems, together with the struggle between epistemological scruples, is one which involves very special instincts (forms of vitality, of decline, of classes, of races, etc.).

The so-called thirst for knowledge may be traced to the lust of appropriation and of conquest: in obedience to this lust the senses, memory, and the instincts, etc., were developed. The quickest possible reduction of the phenomena, economy, the accumulation of spoil from the world of knowledge (i.e. that portion of the world which has been appropriated and made manageable)....

Morality is therefore such a curious science, because it is in the highest degree practical: the purely scientific position, scientific uprightness, is thus immediately abandoned, as soon as morality calls for replies to its questions. Morality says: I require certain answers—reasons, arguments; scruples may come afterwards, or they may not come at all.

"How must one act?" If one considers that one is dealing with a supremely evolved type—a type which has been "dealt with" for countless thousands of years, and in which everything has become instinct, expediency, automatism, fatality, the urgency of this moral question seems rather funny.

"How must one act?" Morality has always been a subject of misunderstanding: as a matter of fact, a certain species, which was constituted to act in a certain way, wished to justify itself by making its norm paramount.

"How must one act?" this is not a cause, but an effect. Morality follows, the ideal comes first....

On the other hand, the appearance of moral scruples (or in other words, the coming to consciousness of the values which guide action) betray a certain morbidness; strong ages and people do not ponder over their rights, nor over the principles of action, over instinct or over reason. Consciousness is a sign that the real morality—that is to say, the certainty of instinct which leads to a definite course of action—is going to the dogs.... Every time a new world of consciousness is created, the moralists are signs of a lesion, of impoverishment and of disorganisation. Those who are deeply instinctive fear bandying words over duties: among them are found pyrrhonic opponents of dialectics and of knowableness in general.... A virtue is refuted with a "for." ...

Thesis: The appearance of moralists belongs to periods when morality is declining.

Thesis: The moralist is a dissipator of moral instincts, however much he may appear to be their restorer.

Thesis: That which really prompts the action of a moralist is not a moral instinct, but the instincts of decadence, translated into the forms of morality (he regards the growing uncertainty of the instincts as corruption).

Thesis: The instincts of decadence which, thanks to moralists, wish to become master of the instinctive morality of stronger races and ages, are:—

(2) The instincts of the exceptions, of the anchorites, of the unhinged, of the abortions of quality or of the reverse;

(3) The instincts of the habitually suffering, who require a noble interpretation of their condition, and who therefore require to be as poor physiologists as possible.

The humbug of the scientific spirit.—One should not affect the spirit of science, when the time to be scientific is not yet at hand; but even the genuine investigator has to abandon vanity, and has to affect a certain kind of method which is not yet seasonable. Neither should we falsify things and thoughts, which we have arrived at differently, by means of a false arrangement of deduction and dialectics. It is thus that Kant in his "morality" falsifies his inner tendency to psychology; a more modern example of the same thing is Herbert Spencer's Ethics. A man should neither conceal nor misrepresent the facts concerning the way in which he conceived his thoughts. The deepest and most inexhaustible books will certainly always have something of the aphoristic and impetuous character of Pascal's Pensées. The motive forces and valuations have lain long below the surface; that which comes uppermost is their effect.

(1) In respect of the manner of demonstration, if it does not correspond to the genesis of the thoughts;

(2) In respect of the demands for methods which, at a given period in science, may be quite impossible;

(3) In respect of the demand for objectivity for cold impersonal treatment, where, as in the case of all valuations, we describe ourselves and our intimate experiences in a couple of words. There are ludicrous forms of vanity, as, for instance, Sainte-Beuve's. He actually worried himself all his life because he had shown some warmth or passion either "pro" or "con," and he would fein have lied that fact out of his life.

"Objectivity" in the philosopher: moral indifference in regard to one's self, blindness in regard to either favourable or fetal circumstances. Unscrupulousness in the use of dangerous means; perversity and complexity of character considered as an advantage and exploited.

My profound indifference to myself: I refuse to derive any advantage from my knowledge, nor do I wish to escape any disadvantages which it may entail.—I include among these disadvantages that which is called the perversion of character; this prospect is beside the point: I use my character, but I try neither to understand it nor to change it—the personal calculation of virtue has not entered my head once. It strikes me that one closes the doors of knowledge as soon as one becomes interested in one's own personal case—or even in the "Salvation of one's soul"!... One should not take one's morality too seriously, nor should one forfeit a modest right to the opposite of morality....

A sort of heritage of morality is perhaps presupposed here: one feels that one can be lavish with it and fling a great deal of it out of the window without materially reducing one's means. One is never tempted to admire "beautiful souls," one always knows one's self to be their superior. The monsters of virtue should be met with inner scorn; déniaiser la vertu—Oh, the joy of it!

One should revolve round one's self, have no desire to be "better" or "anything else" at all than one is. One should be too interested to omit throwing the tentacles or meshes of every morality out to things.

Concerning the psychology of philosophers. They should be psychologists—this was possible only from the nineteenth century onwards—and no longer little Jack Homers, who see three or four feet in front of them, and are almost satisfied to burrow inside themselves. We psychologists of the future are not very intent on self-contemplation: we regard it almost as a sign of degeneration when an instrument endeavours "to know itself":[10] we are instruments of knowledge and we would fain possess all the precision and ingenuousness of an instrument—consequently we may not analyse or "know" ourselves. The first sign of a great psychologist's self-preservative instinct: he never goes in search of himself, he has no eye, no interest, no inquisitiveness where he himself is concerned.... The great egoism of our dominating will insists on our completely shutting our eyes to ourselves, and on our appearing "impersonal," "disinterested"!—Oh to what a ridiculous degree we are the reverse of this!

We are no Pascals, we are not particularly interested in the "Salvation of the soul," in our own happiness, and in our own virtue.—We have neither enough time nor enough curiosity to be so concerned with ourselves. Regarded more deeply, the case is again different, we thoroughly mistrust all men who thus contemplate their own navels: because introspection seems to us a degenerate form of the psychologist's genius, as a note of interrogation affixed to the psychologist's instinct: just as a painter's eye is degenerate which is actuated by the will to see for the sake of seeing.