Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of
health; everything absolute belongs to pathology. 98
The Jews---a people "born for slavery," as Tacitus and the whole
ancient world say of them; "the chosen people among the nations," as
they themselves say and believe--the Jews performed the miracle of the
inversion of valuations, by means of which life on earth obtained a
new and dangerous charm for a couple of millenniums. Their prophets
fused into one the expressions "rich," "godless," "wicked," "violent,"
"sensual," and for the first time coined the word "world" as a term of
reproach. In this inversion of valuations (in which is also included
the use of the word "poor" as synonymous with "saint" and "friend") the
significance of the Jewish people is to be found; it is with _them_
that the _slave-insurrection in morals_ commences. 117
The beast of prey and the man of prey (for instance, Cæsar Borgia) are
fundamentally misunderstood, "nature" is misunderstood, so long as one
seeks a "morbidness" in the constitution of these healthiest of all
tropical monsters and growths.... 118
All the systems of morals which address themselves to individuals
with a view to their "happiness," as it is called--what else are they
but suggestions for behaviour adapted to the degree of _danger_ from
themselves in which the individuals live; recipes for their passions,
their good and bad propensities in so far as such have the Will to
Power and would like to play the master; small and great expediencies
and elaborations, permeated with the musty odour of old family
medicines and old-wife wisdom; all of them grotesque and absurd in
their form--because they address themselves to "all," because they
generalise where generalisation is not authorised; all of them speaking
unconditionally, and taking themselves unconditionally; all of them
flavoured not merely with one grain of salt, but rather endurable only,
and sometimes even seductive, when they are over-spiced and begin to
smell dangerously, especially of "the other world." 118-119
In view ... of the fact that obedience has been most practised and
fostered among mankind hitherto, one may reasonably suppose that,
generally speaking, the need thereof is now innate in every one, as a
kind of _formal conscience._... 120
The history of the influence of Napoleon is almost the history of
the higher happiness to which the entire century has attained in its
worthiest individuals and periods. 121
As long as the utility which determines moral estimates is only
gregarious utility, as long as the preservation of the community is
only kept in view, and the immoral is sought precisely and exclusively
in what seems dangerous to the maintenance of the community, there can
be no "morality of love to one's neighbour." 123
"Love of our neighbour," is always a secondary matter, partly
conventional and arbitrarily manifested in relation to our _fear of our
neighbour._ 123
Everything that elevates the individual above the herd, and is a
source of fear to the neighbour, is henceforth called _evil;_ the
tolerant, unassuming, self-adapting, self-equalising disposition, the
_mediocrity_ of desires, attains to moral distinction and honour. 125
The _democratic_ movement is the inheritance of the Christian movement.
127
We, who regard the democratic movement, not only as a degenerating
form of political organisation, but as equivalent to a degenerating,
a waning type of man, as involving his mediocrising and depreciation:
where have _we_ to fix our hopes? In _new philosophers_--there is no
other alternative: in minds strong and original enough to initiate
opposite estimates of value, to transvalue and invert "eternal
valuations"; in forerunners, in men of the future, who in the present
shall fix the constraints and fasten the knots which will compel
millenniums to take _new_ paths. To teach men the future of humanity
as his _will,_ as depending on human will, and to make preparation
for vast hazardous enterprises and collective attempts in rearing and
educating, in order thereby to put an end to the frightful rule of
folly and chance which has hitherto gone by the name of "history" (the
folly of the "greatest number" is only its last form)--for that purpose
a new type of philosophers and commanders will some time or other be
needed, at the very idea of which everything that has existed in the
way of occult, terrible, and benevolent beings might look pale and
dwarfed. 128-129
The _universal degeneracy of mankind_ to the level of the "man of the
future"--as idealised by the socialistic fools and shallow-pates--this
degeneracy and dwarfing of man to an absolutely gregarious animal (or
as they call it, to a man of "free society"), this brutalising of man
into a pigmy with equal rights and claims, is undoubtedly _possible!_
He who has thought out this possibility to its ultimate conclusion
knows _another_ loathing unknown to the rest of mankind--and perhaps
also a new _mission!_ 130-131
Supposing ... that in the picture of the philosophers of the future,
some trait suggests the question whether they must not perhaps be
sceptics in the last-mentioned sense, something in them would only
be designated thereby--and _not_ they themselves. With equal right
they might call themselves critics; and assuredly they will be men of
experiments.... They will be _sterner_ (and perhaps not always towards
themselves only) ... they will not deal with the "truth" in order that
it may "please" them, or "elevate" and "inspire" them--they will rather
have little faith in _"truth"_ bringing with it such revels for the
feelings. They will smile, those rigorous spirits, when any one says in
their presence: "that thought elevates me, why should it not be true?"
or; "that artist enlarges me, why should he not be great?" Perhaps they
will not only have a smile, but a genuine disgust for all that is thus
rapturous, idealistic, feminine and hermaphroditic; and if any one
could look into their inmost heart, he would not easily find therein
the intention to reconcile "Christian sentiments" with "antique taste,"
or even with "modern parliamentarism" (the kind of reconciliation
necessarily found even amongst philosophers in our very uncertain and
consequently very conciliatory century). Critical discipline, and every
habit that conduces to purity and rigour in intellectual matters,
will not only be demanded from themselves by these philosophers of
the future; they may even make a display thereof as their special
adornment--nevertheless they will not want to be called critics on
that account. It will seem to them no small indignity to philosophy to
have it decreed, as is so welcome nowadays, that "philosophy itself is
criticism and critical science--and nothing else whatever!" 149-151
_The real philosophers ... are commanders and law-givers;_ they say:
"Thus _shall_ it be." They determine first the Whither and the Why of
mankind, and thereby set aside the previous labour of all philosophical
workers, and all subjugators of the past--they grasp at the future with
a creative hand, and whatever is and was, becomes for them thereby a
means, an instrument, and a hammer. Their "knowing" is _creating,_
their creating is a law-giving, their will to truth is--_Will to
Tower._... 52
At present ... when throughout Europe the herding animal alone
attains to honours, and dispenses honours, when "equality of right"
can too readily be transformed into equality in wrong: I mean to say
into general war against everything rare, strange, and privileged,
against the higher man, the higher soul, the higher duty, the higher
responsibility, the creative plenipotence and lordliness--at present
it belongs to the conception of "greatness" to be noble, to wish to be
apart, to be capable of being different, to stand alone, to have to
live by personal initiative; and the philosopher will betray something
of his own ideal when he asserts: "He shall be the greatest who can
be the most solitary, the most concealed, the most divergent, the man
beyond good and evil, the master of his virtues, and of superabundance
of will; precisely this shall be called _greatness:_ as diversified as
can be entire, as ample as can be full." 154-155
Morality as attitude is opposed to our taste nowadays. This is _also_
an advance, as it was an advance in our fathers that religion as an
attitude finally became opposed to their taste.... 161
The practice of judging and condemning morally is the favourite revenge
of the intellectually shallow on those who are less so.... 162
Whoever has really offered sacrifice knows that he wanted and obtained
something for it--perhaps something from himself for something from
himself; that he relinquished here in order to have more there, perhaps
in general to be more, or even feel himself "more." 164
Wherever sympathy (fellow-suffering) is preached nowadays ... let the
psychologist have his ears open: through all the vanity, through all
the noise which is natural to these preachers (as to all preachers), he
will hear a hoarse, groaning, genuine note of _self-contempt._ 65
We are prepared as no other age has ever been for a carnival in the
grand style, for the most spiritual festival-laughter and arrogance,
for the transcendental height of supreme folly and Aristophanic
ridicule of the world. Perhaps we are still discovering the domain
of our _invention_ just here, the domain where even we can still be
original, probably as parodists of the world's history and as God's
Merry-Andrews,--perhaps, though nothing else of the present have a
future, our _laughter_ itself may have a future! 168
The discipline of suffering, of _great_ suffering--know ye not that
it is only _this_ discipline that has produced all the elevations of
humanity hitherto? 171
It is desirable that as few people as possible should reflect upon
morals, and consequently it is _very_ desirable that morals should not
some day become interesting! 174
Not one of those ponderous, conscience-stricken herding-animals (who
undertake to advocate the cause of egoism as conducive to the general
welfare) wants to have any knowledge or inkling of the facts that the
"general welfare" is no ideal, no goal, no notion that can be at all
grasped, but is only a nostrum,--that what is fair to one _may not_
at all be fair to another, that the requirement of one morality for
all is really a detriment to higher men, in short, that there is a
_distinction of rank_ between man and man, and consequently between
morality and morality. 175
That which constitutes the painful delight of tragedy is cruelty; that
which operates agreeably in so-called tragic sympathy, and at the basis
even of everything sublime, up to the highest and most delicate thrills
of metaphysics, obtains its sweetness solely from the intermingled
ingredient of cruelty. 177
Enlightenment hitherto has fortunately been men's affair, men's
gift--we remained therewith "among ourselves"; and in the end,
in view of all that women write about "woman," we may well have
considerable doubt as to whether woman really _desires_ enlightenment
about herself--and _can_ desire it. If woman does not thereby seek a
new _ornament_ for herself--I believe ornamentation belongs to the
eternally feminine?--why, then, she wishes to make herself feared;
perhaps she thereby wishes to get the mastery. But she does not _want_
truth--what does woman care for truth. From the very first nothing is
more foreign, more repugnant, or more hostile to woman than truth--her
great art is falsehood, her chief concern is appearance and beauty. 183
It betrays corruption of the instincts--apart from the fact that it
betrays bad taste--when a woman refers to Madame Roland, or Madame
de Staël, or Monsieur George Sand, as though something were proved
thereby in _favour_ of "woman as she is." Among men, these are the
three _comical_ women as they are--nothing more--and just the best
involuntary _counter-arguments_ against feminine emancipation and
autonomy. 184
Stupidity in the kitchen; woman as cook; the terrible thoughtlessness
with which the feeding of the family and the master of the house is
managed. Woman does not understand what food _means,_ and she insists
on being cook. If woman had been a thinking creature, she should
certainly, as cook for thousands of years, have discovered the most
important physiological facts, and should likewise have got possession
of the healing art. Through bad female cooks--through the entire lack
of reason in the kitchen--the development of mankind has been longest
retarded and most interfered with. 184-185
To be mistaken in the fundamental problem of "man and woman," to deny
here the profoundest antagonism and the necessity for an eternally
hostile tension, to dream here perhaps of equal rights, equal
training, equal claims and obligations: that is a _typical_ sign of
shallow-mindedness; and a thinker who has proved himself shallow at
this dangerous spot--shallow in instinct--may generally be regarded
as suspicious, nay more, as betrayed, as discovered: he will probably
prove too "short" for all fundamental questions of life, future as well
as present, and will be unable to descend into _any_ of the depths. On
the other hand, a man who has depth of spirit as well as of desires,
and has also the depth of benevolence which is capable of severity and
harshness, and easily confounded with them, can only think of woman as
Orientals do: he must conceive of her as a possession, as confinable
property, as a being predestined for service and accomplishing her
mission therein.... 186-187
The weaker sex has in no previous age been treated with so much respect
by men as at present--this belongs to the tendency and fundamental
taste of democracy, in the same way as disrespectfulness to old
age--what wonder is it that abuse should be immediately made of this
respect? They want more, they learn to make claims, the tribute of
respect is at last felt to be well-nigh galling.... 187
Wherever the industrial spirit has triumphed over the military
and aristocratic spirit, woman strives for the economic and legal
independence of a clerk: "woman as clerkess" is inscribed on the portal
of the modern society which is in course of formation. While she
thus appropriates new rights, aspires to be "master," and inscribes
"progress" of woman on her flags and banners, the very opposite
realises itself with terrible obviousness: _woman retrogrades._ Since
the French Revolution the influence of woman in Europe has _declined_
in proportion as she has increased her rights and claims; and the
"emancipation of woman," in so far as it is desired and demanded by
women themselves (and not only by masculine shallow-pates), thus proves
to be a remarkable symptom of the increased weakening and deadening of
the most womanly instincts. There is _stupidity_ in this movement, an
almost masculine stupidity, of which a well-reared woman--who is always
a sensible woman--might be heartily ashamed. 187-188
Every elevation of the type "man," has hitherto been the work of an
aristocratic society--and so will it always be--a society believing in
a long scale of gradations of rank and differences of worth among human
beings, and requiring slavery in some form or other. 223
The essential thing ... in a good and healthy aristocracy is that it
should _not_ regard itself as a function either of the kingship or
the commonwealth, but as the _significance_ and highest justification
thereof--that it should therefore accept with a good conscience the
sacrifice of a legion of individuals, who, _for its sake,_ must be
suppressed and reduced to imperfect men, to slaves and instruments.
Its fundamental belief must be precisely that society is _not_ allowed
to exist for its own sake, but only as a foundation and scaffolding,
by means of which a select class of beings may be able to elevate
themselves to their higher duties, and in general to a higher
_existence._... 225
Life itself is _essentially_ appropriation, injury, conquest of the
strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms,
incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation....
226
People now rave everywhere, even under the guise of science, about
coming conditions of society in which "the exploiting character" is to
be absent:--that sounds to my ears as if they promised to invent a mode
of life which should refrain from all organic functions. "Exploitation"
does not belong to a depraved, or imperfect and primitive society;
it belongs to the _nature_ of the living being as a primary organic
function; it is a consequence of the intrinsic Will to Power, which is
precisely the Will to Life. 226
In a tour through the many finer and coarser moralities which have
hitherto prevailed or still prevail on the earth, I found certain
traits recurring regularly together and connected with one another,
until finally two primary types revealed themselves to me, and a
radical distinction was brought to light. There is _master-morality_
and _slave-morality;_--I would at once add, however, that in all higher
and mixed civilisations, there are also attempts at the reconciliation
of the two moralities; but one finds still oftener the confusion
and mutual misunderstanding of them, indeed, sometimes their close
juxtaposition--even in the same man, within one soul. 227
The noble type of man regards _himself_ as a determiner of values;
he does not require to be approved of; he passes the judgment: "What
is injurious to me is injurious in itself"; he knows that it is he
himself only who confers honour on things; he is a _creator_ of
values. He honours whatever he recognises in himself: such morality
is self-glorification. In the foreground there is the feeling of
plenitude, of power, which seeks to overflow, the happiness of high
tension, the conscientiousness of a wealth which would fain give
and bestow:--the noble man also helps the unfortunate, but not--or
scarcely--out of pity, but rather from an impulse generated by the
superabundance of power. The noble man honours in himself the powerful
one, him also who has power over himself, who knows how to speak and
how to keep silence, who takes pleasure in subjecting himself to
severity and hardness, and has reverence for all that is severe and
hard. 229
A morality of the ruling class ... is ... especially foreign and
irritating to present-day taste in the sternness of its principle
that one has duties only to one's equals; that one may act towards
beings of a lower rank, towards all that is foreign, just as seems
good to one, or "as the heart desires," and in any case "beyond good
and evil": it is here that sympathy and similar sentiments can have a
place. The ability and obligation to exercise prolonged gratitude and
prolonged revenge--both only within the circle of equals,--artfulness
in retaliation, _raffinement_ of the idea in friendship, a certain
necessity to have enemies as outlets for the emotions of envy,
quarrelsomeness, arrogance--in fact, in order to be a good _friend:_
all these are typical characteristics of the noble morality. 229-230
Slave-morality is essentially the morality of utility. Here is the seat
of the origin of the famous antithesis "good" and "_evil":_--power
and dangerousness are assumed to reside in the evil, a certain
dreadfulness, subtlety, and strength, which do not admit of being
despised. According to slave-morality, therefore, the "evil" man
arouses fear; according to master-morality, it is precisely the "good"
man who arouses fear and seeks to arouse it, while the bad man is
regarded as the despicable being. The contrast attains its maximum
when, in accordance with the logical consequences of slave-morality,
a shade of depreciation--it may be slight and well-intentioned--at
last attaches itself even to the "good" man of this morality; because,
according to the servile mode of thought, the good man must in any
case be the _safe_ man: he is good-natured, easily deceived, perhaps a
little stupid, _un bonhomme._ Everywhere that slave-morality gains the
ascendency, language shows a tendency to approximate the significations
of the words "good" and "stupid."--A last fundamental difference: the
desire for _freedom,_ the instinct for happiness and the refinements
of the feeling of liberty belong as necessarily to slave-morals and
morality, as artifice and enthusiasm in reverence and devotion are the
regular symptoms of an aristocratic mode of thinking and estimating.
231
A _species_ originates, and a type becomes established and strong in
the long struggle with essentially constant _unfavourable_ conditions.
On the other hand, it is known by the experience of breeders that
species which receive superabundant nourishment, and in general a
surplus of protection and care, immediately tend in the most marked way
to develop variations, and are fertile in prodigies and monstrosities
(also in monstrous vices). 234
I submit that egoism belongs to the essence of a noble soul, I mean
the unalterable belief that to a being such as "we," other beings must
naturally be in subjection, and have to sacrifice themselves. 240
Woman would like to believe that love can do _everything_--it is the
_superstition_ peculiar to her. Alas, he who knows the heart finds
out how poor, helpless, pretentious, and blundering even the best and
deepest love is--he finds that it rather _destroys_ than saves! 246
Signs of nobility: never to think of lowering our duties to the rank
of duties for everybody; to be unwilling to renounce or to share our
responsibilities; to count our prerogatives, and the exercise of them,
among our _duties._ 249
A man strives after great things, looks upon every one whom he
encounters on his way either as a means of advance, or a delay and
hindrance--or as a temporary resting-place. 249
If one wishes to praise at all, it is a delicate and at the same time a
noble self-control, to praise only where one _does not_ agree.... 254
All society makes one somehow, somewhere, or sometimes--"commonplace."
254-255
_The noble soul has reverence for itself._ 256
A man who can conduct a case, carry out a resolution, remain true to
an opinion, keep hold of a woman, punish and overthrow insolence; a
man who has his indignation and his sword, and to whom the weak, the
suffering, the oppressed, and even the animals willingly submit and
naturally belong; in short, a man who is a _master_ by nature--when
such a man has sympathy, well, _that_ sympathy has value! 259
I would even allow myself to rank philosophers according to the quality
of their laughing--up to those who are capable of _golden_ laughter.
260