either to become land-animals or to perish, so was the plight of these
half-animals, perfectly adapted as they were to the savage life of war,
prowling, and adventure--suddenly all their instincts were rendered
worthless and "switched off." Henceforward they had to walk on their
feet--"carry themselves," whereas heretofore they had been carried by
the water: a terrible heaviness oppressed them. They found themselves
clumsy in obeying the simplest directions, confronted with this new
and unknown world they had no longer their old guides--the regulative
instincts that had led them unconsciously to safety--they were reduced,
were those unhappy creatures, to thinking, inferring, calculating,
putting together causes and results, reduced to that poorest and most
erratic organ of theirs, their "consciousness." I do not believe
there was ever in the world such a feeling of misery, such a leaden
discomfort--further, those old instincts had not immediately ceased
their demands! Only it was difficult and rarely possible to gratify
them: speaking broadly, they were compelled to satisfy themselves by
new and, as it were, hole-and-corner methods. All instincts which
do not find a vent without, _turn inwards_--this is what I mean by
the growing "internalisation" of man: consequently we have the first
growth in man, of what subsequently was called his soul. The whole
inner world, originally as thin as if it had been stretched between
two layers of skin, burst apart and expanded proportionately, and
obtained depth, breadth, and height, when man's external outlet
became _obstructed_. These terrible bulwarks, with which the social
organisation protected itself against the old instincts of freedom
(punishments belong pre-eminently to these bulwarks), brought it
about that all those instincts of wild, free, prowling man became
turned backwards against man himself. Enmity, cruelty, the delight
in persecution, in surprises, change, destruction--the turning all
these instincts against their own possessors: this is the origin of
the "bad conscience." It was man, who, lacking external enemies and
obstacles, and imprisoned as he was in the oppressive narrowness and
monotony of custom, in his own impatience lacerated, persecuted,
gnawed, frightened, and ill-treated himself; it was this animal in the
hands of the tamer, which beat itself against the bars of its cage; it
was this being who, pining and yearning for that desert home of which
it had been deprived, was compelled to create out of its own self, an
adventure, a torture-chamber, a hazardous and perilous desert--it was
this fool, this homesick and desperate prisoner--who invented the "bad
conscience." But thereby he introduced that most grave and sinister
illness, from which mankind has not yet recovered, the suffering of
man from the disease called man, as the result of a violent breaking
from his animal past, the result, as it were, of a spasmodic plunge
into a new environment and new conditions of existence, the result of
a declaration of war against the old instincts, which up to that time
had been the staple of his power, his joy, his formidableness. Let
us immediately add that this fact of an animal ego turning against
itself, taking part against itself, produced in the world so novel,
profound, unheard-of, problematic, inconsistent, and _pregnant_ a
phenomenon, that the aspect of the world was radically altered thereby.
In sooth, only divine spectators could have appreciated the drama
that then began, and whose end baffles conjecture as yet--a drama too
subtle, too wonderful, too paradoxical to warrant its undergoing a
non-sensical and unheeded performance on some random grotesque planet!
Henceforth man is to be counted as one of the most unexpected and
sensational lucky shots in the game of the "big baby" of Heracleitus,
whether he be called Zeus or Chance--he awakens on his behalf the
interest, excitement, hope, almost the confidence, of his being the
harbinger and forerunner of something, of man being no end, but only a
stage, an interlude, a bridge, a great promise.
17.
It is primarily involved in this hypothesis of the origin of the bad
conscience, that that alteration was no gradual and no voluntary
alteration, and that it did not manifest itself as an organic
adaptation to new conditions, but as a break, a jump, a necessity, an
inevitable fate, against which there was no resistance and never a
spark of resentment. And secondarily, that the fitting of a hitherto
unchecked and amorphous population into a fixed form, starting as
it had done in an act of violence, could only be accomplished by
acts of violence and nothing else--that the oldest "State" appeared
consequently as a ghastly tyranny, a grinding ruthless piece of
machinery, which went on working, till this raw material of a
semi-animal populace was not only thoroughly kneaded and elastic, but
also _moulded_. I used the word "State": my meaning is self-evident,
namely, a herd of blonde beasts of prey, a race of conquerors and
masters, which with all its warlike organisation and all its organising
power pounces with its terrible claws on a population, in numbers
possibly tremendously superior, but as yet formless, as yet nomad.
Such is the origin of the "State." That fantastic theory that makes it
begin with a contract is, I think, disposed of. He who can command,
he who is a master by "nature," he who comes on the scene forceful
in deed and gesture--what has he to do with contracts? Such beings
defy calculation, they come like fate, without cause, reason, notice,
excuse, they are there like the lightning is there, too terrible, too
sudden, too convincing, too "different," to be personally even hated.
Their work is an instinctive creating and impressing of forms, they
are the most involuntary, unconscious artists that there are:--their
appearance produces instantaneously a scheme of sovereignty which is
live, in which the functions are partitioned and apportioned, in which
above all no part is received or finds a place, until pregnant with
a "meaning" in regard to the whole. They are ignorant of the meaning
of guilt, responsibility, consideration, are these born organisers;
in them predominates that terrible artist-egoism, that gleams like
brass, and that knows itself justified to all eternity, in its work,
even as a mother in her child. It is not in _them_ that there grew
the bad conscience, that is elementary--but it would not have grown
_without_ them, repulsive growth as it was, it would be missing, had
not a tremendous quantity of freedom been expelled from the world by
the stress of their hammer-strokes, their artist violence, or been at
any rate made invisible and, as it were, _latent_. This _instinct of
freedom_ forced into being latent--it is already clear--this instinct
of freedom forced back, trodden back, imprisoned within itself, and
finally only able to find vent and relief in itself; this, only this,
is the beginning of the "bad conscience."
18.
Beware of thinking lightly of this phenomenon, by reason of its initial
painful ugliness. At bottom it is the same active force which is at
work on a more grandiose scale in those potent artists and organisers,
and builds states, which here, internally, on a smaller and pettier
scale and with a retrogressive tendency, makes itself a bad science in
the "labyrinth of the breast," to use Goethe's phrase, and which builds
negative ideals; it is, I repeat, that identical _instinct of freedom_
(to use my own language, the will to power): only the material, on
which this force with all its constructive and tyrannous nature is
let loose, is here man himself, his whole old animal self--and not as
in the case of that more grandiose and sensational phenomenon, the
_other_ man, _other_ men. This secret self-tyranny, this cruelty of
the artist, this delight in giving a form to one's self as a piece of
difficult, refractory, and suffering material, in burning in a will, a
critique, a contradiction, a contempt, a negation; this sinister and
ghastly labour of love on the part of a soul, whose will is cloven
in two within itself, which makes itself suffer from delight in the
infliction of suffering; this wholly _active_ bad conscience has
finally (as one already anticipates)--true fountainhead as it is of
idealism and imagination--produced an abundance of novel and amazing
beauty and affirmation, and perhaps has really been the first to
give birth to beauty at all. What would beauty be, forsooth, if its
contradiction had not first been presented to consciousness, if the
ugly had not first said to itself, "I am ugly"? At any rate, after this
hint the problem of how far idealism and beauty can be traced in such
opposite ideas as "_selflessness_," _self-denial_, _self-sacrifice_,
becomes less problematical; and indubitably in future we shall
certainly know the real and original character of the _delight_
experienced by the self-less, the self-denying, the self-sacrificing:
this delight is a phase of cruelty.--So much provisionally for the
origin of "altruism" as a _moral_ value, and the marking out the ground
from which this value has grown: it is only the bad conscience, only
the will for self-abuse, that provides the necessary conditions for the
existence of altruism as a _value_.
19.
Undoubtedly the bad conscience is an illness, but an illness like
pregnancy is an illness. If we search out the conditions under which
this illness reaches its most terrible and sublime zenith, we shall see
what really first brought about its entry into the world. But to do
this we must take a long breath, and we must first of all go back once
again to an earlier point of view. The relation at civil law of the
ower to his creditor (which has already been discussed in detail), has
been interpreted once again (and indeed in a manner which historically
is exceedingly remarkable and suspicious) into a relationship, which
is perhaps more incomprehensible to us moderns than to any other era;
that is, into the relationship of the _existing_ generation to its
_ancestors_. Within the original tribal association--we are talking of
primitive times--each living generation recognises a legal obligation
towards the earlier generation, and particularly towards the earliest,
which founded the family (and this is something much more than a mere
sentimental obligation, the existence of which, during the longest
period of man's history, is by no means indisputable). There prevails
in them the conviction that it is only thanks to sacrifices and efforts
of their ancestors, that the race _persists_ at all--and that this
has to be _paid back_ to them by sacrifices and services. Thus is
recognised the _owing_ of a debt, which accumulates continually by
reason of these ancestors never ceasing in their subsequent life as
potent spirits to secure by their power new privileges and advantages
to the race. Gratis, perchance? But there is no gratis for that raw
and "mean-souled" age. What return can be made?--Sacrifice (at first,
nourishment, in its crudest sense), festivals, temples, tributes of
veneration, above all, obedience--since all customs are, _quâ_ works of
the ancestors, equally their precepts and commands--are the ancestors
ever given enough? This suspicion remains and grows: from time to time
it extorts a great wholesale ransom, something monstrous in the way of
repayment of the creditor (the notorious sacrifice of the first-born,
for example, blood, human blood in any case). The _fear_ of ancestors
and their power, the consciousness of owing debts to them, necessarily
increases, according to this kind of logic, in the exact proportion
that the race itself increases, that the race itself becomes more
victorious, more independent, more honoured, more feared. This, and not
the contrary, is the fact. Each step towards race decay, all disastrous
events, all symptoms of degeneration, of approaching disintegration,
always _diminish_ the fear of the founders' spirit, and whittle away
the idea of his sagacity, providence, and potent presence. Conceive
this crude kind of logic carried to its climax: it follows that the
ancestors of the _most powerful_ races must, through the growing fear
that they exercise on the imaginations, grow themselves into monstrous
dimensions, and become relegated to the gloom of a divine mystery that
transcends imagination--the ancestor becomes at last necessarily
transfigured into a _god_. Perhaps this is the very origin of the gods,
that is, an origin from _fear_! And those who feel bound to add, "but
from piety also," will have difficulty in maintaining this theory,
with regard to the primeval and longest period of the human race. And
of course this is even more the case as regards the _middle_ period,
the formative period of the aristocratic races--the aristocratic
races which have given back with interest to their founders, the
ancestors (heroes, gods), all those qualities which in the meanwhile
have appeared in themselves, that is, the aristocratic qualities. We
will later on glance again at the ennobling and promotion of the gods
(which of course is totally distinct from their "sanctification"): let
us now provisionally follow to its end the course of the whole of this
development of the consciousness of "owing."
20.
According to the teaching of history, the consciousness of owing
debts to the deity by no means came to an end with the decay of the
clan organisation of society; just as mankind has inherited the
ideas of "good" and "bad" from the race-nobility (together with its
fundamental tendency towards establishing social distinctions), so
with the heritage of the racial and tribal gods it has also inherited
the incubus of debts as yet unpaid and the desire to discharge them.
The transition is effected by those large populations of slaves and
bondsmen, who, whether through compulsion or through submission and
"_mimicry,_" have accommodated themselves to the religion of their
masters; through this channel these inherited tendencies inundate
the world. The feeling of owing a debt to the deity has grown
continuously for several centuries, always in the same proportion in
which the idea of God and the consciousness of God have grown and
become exalted among mankind. (The whole history of ethnic fights,
victories, reconciliations, amalgamations, everything, in fact, which
precedes the eventual classing of all the social elements in each great
race-synthesis, are mirrored in the hotch-potch genealogy of their
gods, in the legends of their fights, victories, and reconciliations.
Progress towards universal empires invariably means progress towards
universal deities; despotism, with its subjugation of the independent
nobility, always paves the way for some system or other of monotheism.)
The appearance of the Christian god, as the record god up to this time,
has for that very reason brought equally into the world the record
amount of guilt consciousness. Granted that we have gradually started
on the _reverse_ movement, there is no little probability in the
deduction, based on the continuous decay in the belief in the Christian
god, to the effect that there also already exists a considerable
decay in the human consciousness of owing (ought); in fact, we cannot
shut our eyes to the prospect of the complete and eventual triumph of
atheism freeing mankind from all this feeling of obligation to their
origin, their _causa prima_. Atheism and a kind of second innocence
complement and supplement each other.
21.
So much for my rough and preliminary sketch of the interrelation of
the ideas "ought" (owe) and "duty" with the postulates of religion. I
have intentionally shelved up to the present the actual moralisation
of these ideas (their being pushed back into the conscience, or more
precisely the interweaving of the _bad_ conscience with the idea of
God), and at the end of the last paragraph used language to the effect
that this moralisation did not exist, and that consequently these ideas
had necessarily come to an end, by reason of what had happened to their
hypothesis, the credence in our "creditor," in God. The actual facts
differ terribly from this theory. It is with the moralisation of the
ideas "ought" and "duty," and with their being pushed back into the
_bad_ conscience, that comes the first actual attempt to _reverse_ the
direction of the development we have just described, or at any rate
to arrest its evolution; it is just at this juncture that the very
hope of an eventual redemption _has to_ put itself once for all into
the prison of pessimism, it is at this juncture that the eye _has to_
recoil and rebound in despair from off an adamantine impossibility,
it is at this juncture that the ideas "guilt" and "duty" have to turn
backwards--turn backwards against _whom_? There is no doubt about
it; primarily against the "ower," in whom the bad conscience now
establishes itself, eats, extends, and grows like a polypus throughout
its length and breadth, all with such virulence, that at last, with
the impossibility of paying the debt, there becomes conceived the
idea of the impossibility of paying the penalty, the thought of its
inexpiability (the idea of "eternal punishment")--finally, too, it
turns against the "creditor," whether found in the _causa prima_ of
man, the origin of the human race, its sire, who henceforth becomes
burdened with a curse ("Adam," "original sin," "determination of the
will"), or in Nature from whose womb man springs, and on whom the
responsibility for the principle of evil is now cast ("Diabolisation of
Nature"), or in existence generally, on this logic an absolute _white
elephant_, with which mankind is landed (the Nihilistic flight from
life, the demand for Nothingness, or for the opposite of existence, for
some other existence, Buddhism and the like)--till suddenly we stand
before that paradoxical and awful expedient, through which a tortured
humanity has found a temporary alleviation, that stroke of genius
called Christianity:--God personally immolating himself for the debt of
man, God paying himself personally out of a pound of his own flesh, God
as the one being who can deliver man from what man had become unable to
deliver himself--the creditor playing scapegoat for his debtor, from
_love_ (can you believe it?), from love of his debtor!...
22.
The reader will already have conjectured what took place on the stage
and behind the scenes of this drama. That will for self-torture, that
inverted cruelty of the animal man, who, turned subjective and scared
into introspection (encaged as he was in "the State," as part of his
taming process), invented the bad conscience so as to hurt himself,
after the _natural_ outlet for this will to hurt, became blocked--in
other words, this man of the bad conscience exploited the religious
hypothesis so as to carry his martyrdom to the ghastliest pitch of
agonised intensity. Owing something to _God_: this thought becomes his
instrument of torture. He apprehends in God the most extreme antitheses
that he can find to his own characteristic and ineradicable animal
instincts, he himself gives a new interpretation to these animal
instincts as being against what he "owes" to God (as enmity, rebellion,
and revolt against the "Lord," the "Father," the "Sire," the "Beginning
of the world"), he places himself between the horns of the dilemma,
"God" and "Devil." Every negation which he is inclined to utter to
himself, to the nature, naturalness, and reality of his being, he
whips into an ejaculation of "yes," uttering it as something existing,
living, efficient, as being God, as the holiness of God, the judgment
of God, as the hangmanship of God, as transcendence, as eternity, as
unending torment, as hell, as infinity of punishment and guilt. This is
a kind of madness of the will in the sphere of psychological cruelty
which is absolutely unparalleled:--man's _will_ to find himself guilty
and blameworthy to the point of inexpiability, his _will_ to think of
himself as punished, without the punishment ever being able to balance
the guilt, his _will_ to infect and to poison the fundamental basis
of the universe with the problem of punishment and guilt, in order to
cut off once and for all any escape out of this labyrinth of "fixed
ideas," his will for rearing an ideal--that of the "holy God"--face to
face with which he can have tangible proof of his own un-worthiness.
Alas for this mad melancholy beast man! What phantasies invade it,
what paroxysms of perversity, hysterical senselessness, and _mental
bestiality_ break out immediately, at the very slightest check on its
being the beast of action. All this is excessively interesting, but
at the same time tainted with a black, gloomy, enervating melancholy,
so that a forcible veto must be invoked against looking too long into
these abysses. Here is _disease_, undubitably, the most ghastly disease
that has as yet played havoc among men: and he who can still hear (but
man turns now deaf ears to such sounds), how in this night of torment
and nonsense there has rung out the cry of _love_, the cry of the most
passionate ecstasy, of redemption in _love_, he turns away gripped by
an invincible horror--in man there is so much that is ghastly--too long
has the world been a mad-house.
23.
Let this suffice once for all concerning the origin of the "holy God."
The fact that _in itself_ the conception of gods is not bound to
lead necessarily to this degradation of the imagination (a temporary
representation of whose vagaries we felt bound give), the fact that
there exist nobler methods of utilising the invention of gods than in
this self-crucifixion and self-degradation of man, in which the last
two thousand years of Europe have been past masters--these facts can
fortunately be still perceived from every glance that we cast at the
Grecian gods, these mirrors of noble and grandiose men, in which the
_animal_ in man felt itself deified, and did _not_ devour itself in
subjective frenzy. These Greeks long utilised their gods as simple
buffers against the "bad conscience"--so that they could continue
to enjoy their freedom of soul: this, of course, is diametrically
opposed to Christianity's theory of its god. They went _very far_ on
this principle, did these splendid and lion-hearted children; and
there is no lesser authority than that of the Homeric Zeus for making
them realise occasionally that they are taking life too casually.
"Wonderful," says he on one occasion--it has to do with the case of
Ægistheus, a _very_ bad case indeed--
"Wonderful how they grumble, the mortals against the immortals,
_Only from us_, they presume, _comes evil_, but in their folly,
Fashion they, spite of fate, the doom of their own disaster."
Yet the reader will note and observe that this Olympian spectator and
judge is far from being angry with them and thinking evil of them on
this score. "How _foolish_ they are," so thinks he of the misdeeds
of mortals--and "folly," "imprudence," "a little brain disturbance,"
and nothing more, are what the Greeks, even of the strongest, bravest
period, have admitted to be the ground of much that is evil and
fatal.--Folly, _not_ sin, do you understand?... But even this brain
disturbance was a problem--"Come, how is it even possible? How could it
have really got in brains like ours, the brains of men of aristocratic
ancestry, of men of fortune, of men of good natural endowments, of
men of the best society, of men of nobility and virtue?" This was the
question that for century on century the aristocratic Greek put to
himself when confronted with every (to him incomprehensible) outrage
and sacrilege with which one of his peers had polluted himself. "It
must be that a god had infatuated him," he would say at last, nodding
his head.--This solution is _typical_ of the Greeks, ... accordingly
the gods in those times subserved the functions of justifying man to a
certain extent even in evil--in those days they took upon themselves
not the punishment, but, what is more noble, the guilt.
24.