bad has a two-fold historical origin: namely, first, in the spirit of
ruling races and castes. Whoever has power to requite good with good and
evil with evil and actually brings requital, (that is, is grateful and
revengeful) acquires the name of being good; whoever is powerless and
cannot requite is called bad. A man belongs, as a good individual, to
the "good" of a community, who have a feeling in common, because all the
individuals are allied with one another through the requiting sentiment.
A man belongs, as a bad individual, to the "bad," to a mass of
subjugated, powerless men who have no feeling in common. The good are a
caste, the bad are a quantity, like dust. Good and bad is, for a
considerable period, tantamount to noble and servile, master and slave.
On the other hand an enemy is not looked upon as bad: he can requite.
The Trojan and the Greek are in Homer both good. Not he, who does no
harm, but he who is despised, is deemed bad. In the community of the
good individuals [the quality of] good[ness] is inherited; it is
impossible for a bad individual to grow from such a rich soil. If,
notwithstanding, one of the good individuals does something unworthy of
his goodness, recourse is had to exorcism; thus the guilt is ascribed to
a deity, the while it is declared that this deity bewitched the good man
into madness and blindness.--Second, in the spirit of the subjugated,
the powerless. Here every other man is, to the individual, hostile,
inconsiderate, greedy, inhuman, avaricious, be he noble or servile; bad
is the characteristic term for man, for every living being, indeed, that
is recognized at all, even for a god: human, divine, these notions are
tantamount to devilish, bad. Manifestations of goodness, sympathy,
helpfulness, are regarded with anxiety as trickiness, preludes to an
evil end, deception, subtlety, in short, as refined badness. With such a
predisposition in individuals, a feeling in common can scarcely arise at
all, at most only the rudest form of it: so that everywhere that this
conception of good and evil prevails, the destruction of the
individuals, their race and nation, is imminent.--Our existing morality
has developed upon the foundation laid by ruling races and castes.
46
=Sympathy Greater than Suffering.=--There are circumstances in which
sympathy is stronger than the suffering itself. We feel more pain, for
instance, when one of our friends becomes guilty of a reprehensible
action than if we had done the deed ourselves. We once, that is, had
more faith in the purity of his character than he had himself. Hence our
love for him, (apparently because of this very faith) is stronger than
is his own love for himself. If, indeed, his egoism really suffers more,
as a result, than our egoism, inasmuch as he must take the consequences
of his fault to a greater extent than ourselves, nevertheless, the
unegoistic--this word is not to be taken too strictly, but simply as a
modified form of expression--in us is more affected by his guilt than
the unegoistic in him.
47
=Hypochondria.=--There are people who, from sympathy and anxiety for
others become hypochondriacal. The resulting form of compassion is
nothing else than sickness. So, also, is there a Christian hypochondria,
from which those singular, religiously agitated people suffer who place
always before their eyes the suffering and death of Christ.
48
=Economy of Blessings.=--The advantageous and the pleasing, as the
healthiest growths and powers in the intercourse of men, are such
precious treasures that it is much to be wished the use made of these
balsamic means were as economical as possible: but this is impossible.
Economy in the use of blessings is the dream of the craziest of
Utopians.
49
=Well-Wishing.=--Among the small, but infinitely plentiful and therefore
very potent things to which science must pay more attention than to the
great, uncommon things, well-wishing[21] must be reckoned; I mean those
manifestations of friendly disposition in intercourse, that laughter of
the eye, every hand pressure, every courtesy from which, in general,
every human act gets its quality. Every teacher, every functionary adds
this element as a gratuity to whatever he does as a duty; it is the
perpetual well spring of humanity, like the waves of light in which
everything grows; thus, in the narrowest circles, within the family,
life blooms and flowers only through this kind feeling. The
cheerfulness, friendliness and kindness of a heart are unfailing
sources of unegoistic impulse and have made far more for civilization
than those other more noised manifestations of it that are styled
sympathy, benevolence and sacrifice. But it is customary to depreciate
these little tokens of kindly feeling, and, indeed, there is not much of
the unegoistic in them. The sum of these little doses is very great,
nevertheless; their combined strength is of the greatest of
strengths.--Thus, too, much more happiness is to be found in the world
than gloomy eyes discover: that is, if the calculation be just, and all
these pleasing moments in which every day, even the meanest human life,
is rich, be not forgotten.
[21] Wohl-wollen, kind feeling. It stands here for benevolence but not
benevolence in the restricted sense of the word now prevailing.
50
=The Desire to Inspire Compassion.=--La Rochefoucauld, in the most
notable part of his self portraiture (first printed 1658) reaches the
vital spot of truth when he warns all those endowed with reason to be on
their guard against compassion, when he advises that this sentiment be
left to men of the masses who stand in need of the promptings of the
emotions (since they are not guided by reason) to induce them to give
aid to the suffering and to be of service in misfortune: whereas
compassion, in his (and Plato's) view, deprives the heart of strength.
To be sure, sympathy should be manifested but men should take care not
to feel it; for the unfortunate are rendered so dull that the
manifestation of sympathy affords them the greatest happiness in the
world.--Perhaps a more effectual warning against this compassion can be
given if this need of the unfortunate be considered not simply as
stupidity and intellectual weakness, not as a sort of distraction of the
spirit entailed by misfortune itself (and thus, indeed, does La
Rochefoucauld seem to view it) but as something quite different and more
momentous. Let note be taken of children who cry and scream in order to
be compassionated and who, therefore, await the moment when their
condition will be observed; come into contact with the sick and the
oppressed in spirit and try to ascertain if the wailing and sighing, the
posturing and posing of misfortune do not have as end and aim the
causing of pain to the beholder: the sympathy which each beholder
manifests is a consolation to the weak and suffering only in as much as
they are made to perceive that at least they have the power,
notwithstanding all their weakness, to inflict pain. The unfortunate
experiences a species of joy in the sense of superiority which the
manifestation of sympathy entails; his imagination is exalted; he is
always strong enough, then, to cause the world pain. Thus is the thirst
for sympathy a thirst for self enjoyment and at the expense of one's
fellow creatures: it shows man in the whole ruthlessness of his own dear
self: not in his mere "dullness" as La Rochefoucauld thinks.--In social
conversation three fourths of all the questions are asked, and three
fourths of all the replies are made in order to inflict some little
pain; that is why so many people crave social intercourse: it gives them
a sense of their power. In these countless but very small doses in which
the quality of badness is administered it proves a potent stimulant of
life: to the same extent that well wishing--(Wohl-wollen) distributed
through the world in like manner, is one of the ever ready
restoratives.--But will many honorable people be found to admit that
there is any pleasure in administering pain? that entertainment--and
rare entertainment--is not seldom found in causing others, at least in
thought, some pain, and in raking them with the small shot of
wickedness? The majority are too ignoble and a few are too good to know
anything of this pudendum: the latter may, consequently, be prompt to
deny that Prosper Merimee is right when he says: "Know, also, that
nothing is more common than to do wrong for the pleasure of doing it."
51
=How Appearance Becomes Reality.=--The actor cannot, at last, refrain,
even in moments of the deepest pain, from thinking of the effect
produced by his deportment and by his surroundings--for example, even at
the funeral of his own child: he will weep at his own sorrow and its
manifestations as though he were his own audience. The hypocrite who
always plays one and the same part, finally ceases to be a hypocrite; as
in the case of priests who, when young men, are always, either
consciously or unconsciously, hypocrites, and finally become naturally
and then really, without affectation, mere priests: or if the father
does not carry it to this extent, the son, who inherits his father's
calling and gets the advantage of the paternal progress, does. When
anyone, during a long period, and persistently, wishes to appear
something, it will at last prove difficult for him to be anything else.
The calling of almost every man, even of the artist, begins with
hypocrisy, with an imitation of deportment, with a copying of the
effective in manner. He who always wears the mask of a friendly man must
at last gain a power over friendliness of disposition, without which the
expression itself of friendliness is not to be gained--and finally
friendliness of disposition gains the ascendancy over him--he _is_
benevolent.
52
=The Point of Honor in Deception.=--In all great deceivers one
characteristic is prominent, to which they owe their power. In the very
act of deception, amid all the accompaniments, the agitation in the
voice, the expression, the bearing, in the crisis of the scene, there
comes over them a belief in themselves; this it is that acts so
effectively and irresistibly upon the beholders. Founders of religions
differ from such great deceivers in that they never come out of this
state of self deception, or else they have, very rarely, a few moments
of enlightenment in which they are overcome by doubt; generally,
however, they soothe themselves by ascribing such moments of
enlightenment to the evil adversary. Self deception must exist that both
classes of deceivers may attain far reaching results. For men believe in
the truth of all that is manifestly believed with due implicitness by
others.
53
=Presumed Degrees of Truth.=--One of the most usual errors of deduction
is: because someone truly and openly is against us, therefore he speaks
the truth. Hence the child has faith in the judgments of its elders, the
Christian in the assertions of the founder of the church. So, too, it
will not be admitted that all for which men sacrificed life and
happiness in former centuries was nothing but delusion: perhaps it is
alleged these things were degrees of truth. But what is really meant is
that, if a person sincerely believes a thing and has fought and died for
his faith, it would be too _unjust_ if only delusion had inspired him.
Such a state of affairs seems to contradict eternal justice. For that
reason the heart of a sensitive man pronounces against his head the
judgment: between moral conduct and intellectual insight there must
always exist an inherent connection. It is, unfortunately, otherwise:
for there is no eternal justice.
54
=Falsehood.=--Why do men, as a rule, speak the truth in the ordinary
affairs of life? Certainly not for the reason that a god has forbidden
lying. But because first: it is more convenient, as falsehood entails
invention, make-believe and recollection (wherefore Swift says that
whoever invents a lie seldom realises the heavy burden he takes up: he
must, namely, for every lie that he tells, insert twenty more).
Therefore, because in plain ordinary relations of life it is expedient
to say without circumlocution: I want this, I have done this, and the
like; therefore, because the way of freedom and certainty is surer than
that of ruse.--But if it happens that a child is brought up in sinister
domestic circumstances, it will then indulge in falsehood as matter of
course, and involuntarily say anything its own interests may prompt: an
inclination for truth, an aversion to falsehood, is quite foreign and
uncongenial to it, and hence it lies in all innocence.
55
=Ethic Discredited for Faith's Sake.=--No power can sustain itself when
it is represented by mere humbugs: the Catholic Church may possess ever
so many "worldly" sources of strength, but its true might is comprised
in those still numberless priestly natures who make their lives stern
and strenuous and whose looks and emaciated bodies are eloquent of night
vigils, fasts, ardent prayer, perhaps even of whip lashes: these things
make men tremble and cause them anxiety: what, if it be really
imperative to live thus? This is the dreadful question which their
aspect occasions. As they spread this doubt, they lay anew the prop of
their power: even the free thinkers dare not oppose such
disinterestedness with severe truth and cry: "Thou deceived one,
deceive not!"--Only the difference of standpoint separates them from
him: no difference in goodness or badness. But things we cannot
accomplish ourselves, we are apt to criticise unfairly. Thus we are told
of the cunning and perverted acts of the Jesuits, but we overlook the
self mastery that each Jesuit imposes upon himself and also the fact
that the easy life which the Jesuit manuals advocate is for the benefit,
not of the Jesuits but the laity. Indeed, it may be questioned whether
we enlightened ones would become equally competent workers as the result
of similar tactics and organization, and equally worthy of admiration as
the result of self mastery, indefatigable industry and devotion.
56
=Victory of Knowledge over Radical Evil.=--It proves a material gain to
him who would attain knowledge to have had during a considerable period
the idea that mankind is a radically bad and perverted thing: it is a
false idea, as is its opposite, but it long held sway and its roots have
reached down even to ourselves and our present world. In order to
understand _ourselves_ we must understand _it_; but in order to attain a
loftier height we must step above it. We then perceive that there is no
such thing as sin in the metaphysical sense: but also, in the same
sense, no such thing as virtue; that this whole domain of ethical
notions is one of constant variation; that there are higher and deeper
conceptions of good and evil, moral and immoral. Whoever desires no more
of things than knowledge of them attains speedily to peace of mind and
will at most err through lack of knowledge, but scarcely through
eagerness for knowledge (or through sin, as the world calls it). He will
not ask that eagerness for knowledge be interdicted and rooted out; but
his single, all powerful ambition to _know_ as thoroughly and as fully
as possible, will soothe him and moderate all that is strenuous in his
circumstances. Moreover, he is now rid of a number of disturbing
notions; he is no longer beguiled by such words as hell-pain,
sinfulness, unworthiness: he sees in them merely the flitting shadow
pictures of false views of life and of the world.
57
=Ethic as Man's Self-Analysis.=--A good author, whose heart is really in
his work, wishes that someone would arise and wholly refute him if only
thereby his subject be wholly clarified and made plain. The maid in love
wishes that she could attest the fidelity of her own passion through
the faithlessness of her beloved. The soldier wishes to sacrifice his
life on the field of his fatherland's victory: for in the victory of his
fatherland his highest end is attained. The mother gives her child what
she deprives herself of--sleep, the best nourishment and, in certain
circumstances, her health, her self.--But are all these acts unegoistic?
Are these moral deeds miracles because they are, in Schopenhauer's
phrase "impossible and yet accomplished"? Is it not evident that in all
four cases man loves one part of himself, (a thought, a longing, an
experience) more than he loves another part of himself? that he thus
analyses his being and sacrifices one part of it to another part? Is
this essentially different from the behavior of the obstinate man who
says "I would rather be shot than go a step out of my way for this
fellow"?--Preference for something (wish, impulse, longing) is present
in all four instances: to yield to it, with all its consequences, is not
"unegoistic."--In the domain of the ethical man conducts himself not as
individuum but as dividuum.
58
=What Can be Promised.=--Actions can be promised, but not feelings, for
these are involuntary. Whoever promises somebody to love him always, or
to hate him always, or to be ever true to him, promises something that
it is out of his power to bestow. But he really can promise such courses
of conduct as are the ordinary accompaniments of love, of hate, of
fidelity, but which may also have their source in motives quite
different: for various ways and motives lead to the same conduct. The
promise to love someone always, means, consequently: as long as I love
you, I will manifest the deportment of love; but if I cease to love you
my deportment, although from some other motive, will be just the same,
so that to the people about us it will seem as if my love remained
unchanged.--Hence it is the continuance of the deportment of love that
is promised in every instance in which eternal love (provided no element
of self deception be involved) is sworn.
59
=Intellect and Ethic.=--One must have a good memory to be able to keep
the promises one makes. One must have a strong imagination in order to
feel sympathy. So closely is ethics connected with intellectual
capacity.
60
=Desire for Vengeance and Vengeance Itself.=--To meditate revenge and
attain it is tantamount to an attack of fever, that passes away: but to
meditate revenge without possessing the strength or courage to attain it
is tantamount to suffering from a chronic malady, or poisoning of body
and soul. Ethics, which takes only the motive into account, rates both
cases alike: people generally estimate the first case as the worst
(because of the consequences which the deed of vengeance may entail).
Both views are short sighted.
61
=Ability to Wait.=--Ability to wait is so hard to acquire that great
poets have not disdained to make inability to wait the central motive of
their poems. So Shakespeare in Othello, Sophocles in Ajax, whose suicide
would not have seemed to him so imperative had he only been able to cool
his ardor for a day, as the oracle foreboded: apparently he would then
have repulsed somewhat the fearful whispers of distracted thought and
have said to himself: Who has not already, in my situation, mistaken a
sheep for a hero? is it so extraordinary a thing? On the contrary it is
something universally human: Ajax should thus have soothed himself.
Passion will not wait: the tragic element in the lives of great men does
not generally consist in their conflict with time and the inferiority
of their fellowmen but in their inability to put off their work a year
or two: they cannot wait.--In all duels, the friends who advise have but
to ascertain if the principals can wait: if this be not possible, a duel
is rational inasmuch as each of the combatants may say: "either I
continue to live and the other dies instantly, or vice versa." To wait
in such circumstances would be equivalent to the frightful martyrdom of
enduring dishonor in the presence of him responsible for the dishonor:
and this can easily cost more anguish than life is worth.
62
=Glutting Revenge.=--Coarse men, who feel a sense of injury, are in the
habit of rating the extent of their injury as high as possible and of
stating the occasion of it in greatly exaggerated language, in order to
be able to feast themselves on the sentiments of hatred and revenge thus
aroused.
63
=Value of Disparagement.=--Not a few, perhaps the majority of men, find
it necessary, in order to retain their self esteem and a certain
uprightness in conduct, to mentally disparage and belittle all the
people they know. But as the inferior natures are in the majority and as
a great deal depends upon whether they retain or lose this uprightness,
so--
64
=The Man in a Rage.=--We should be on our guard against the man who is
enraged against us, as against one who has attempted our life, for the
fact that we still live consists solely in the inability to kill: were
looks sufficient, it would have been all up with us long since. To
reduce anyone to silence by physical manifestations of savagery or by a
terrorizing process is a relic of under civilization. So, too, that cold
look which great personages cast upon their servitors is a remnant of
the caste distinction between man and man; a specimen of rude antiquity:
women, the conservers of the old, have maintained this survival, too,
more perfectly than men.
65
=Whither Honesty May Lead.=--Someone once had the bad habit of
expressing himself upon occasion, and with perfect honesty, on the
subject of the motives of his conduct, which were as good or as bad as
the motives of all men. He aroused first disfavor, then suspicion,
became gradually of ill repute and was pronounced a person of whom
society should beware, until at last the law took note of such a
perverted being for reasons which usually have no weight with it or to
which it closes its eyes. Lack of taciturnity concerning what is
universally held secret, and an irresponsible predisposition to see what
no one wants to see--oneself--brought him to prison and to early death.
66
=Punishable, not Punished.=--Our crime against criminals consists in the
fact that we treat them as rascals.
67
=Sancta simplicitas of Virtue.=--Every virtue has its privilege: for
example, that of contributing its own little bundle of wood to the
funeral pyre of one condemned.
68
=Morality and Consequence.=--Not alone the beholders of an act generally
estimate the ethical or unethical element in it by the result: no, the
one who performed the act does the same. For the motives and the
intentions are seldom sufficiently apparent, and amid them the memory
itself seems to become clouded by the results of the act, so that a man
often ascribes the wrong motives to his acts or regards the remote
motives as the direct ones. Success often imparts to an action all the
brilliance and honor of good intention, while failure throws the shadow
of conscience over the most estimable deeds. Hence arises the familiar
maxim of the politician: "Give me only success: with it I can win all
the noble souls over to my side--and make myself noble even in my own
eyes."--In like manner will success prove an excellent substitute for a
better argument. To this very day many well educated men think the
triumph of Christianity over Greek philosophy is a proof of the superior
truth of the former--although in this case it was simply the coarser and
more powerful that triumphed over the more delicate and intellectual. As
regards superiority of truth, it is evident that because of it the
reviving sciences have connected themselves, point for point, with the
philosophy of Epicurus, while Christianity has, point for point,
recoiled from it.
69
=Love and Justice.=--Why is love so highly prized at the expense of
justice and why are such beautiful things spoken of the former as if it
were a far higher entity than the latter? Is the former not palpably a
far more stupid thing than the latter?--Certainly, and on that very
account so much the more agreeable to everybody: it is blind and has a
rich horn of plenty out of which it distributes its gifts to everyone,
even when they are unmerited, even when no thanks are returned. It is
impartial like the rain, which according to the bible and experience,
wets not alone the unjust but, in certain circumstances, the just as
well, and to their skins at that.
70