should _grasp them profoundly_ and understand them profoundly--the
reasons for the impossibility of its being the business of the healthy
to nurse the sick, to make the sick healthy, it follows that you have
grasped this further necessity--the necessity of doctors and nurses
_who themselves are sick_. And now we have and hold with both our hands
the essence of the ascetic priest. The ascetic priest must be accepted
by us as the predestined saviour, herdsman, and champion of the sick
herd: thereby do we first understand his awful historic mission. The
_lordship over sufferers_ is his kingdom, to that points his instinct,
in that he finds his own special art, his master-skill, his kind of
happiness. He must himself be sick, he must be kith and kin to the
sick and the abortions so as to understand them, so as to arrive at an
understanding with them; but he must also be strong, even more master
of himself than of others, impregnable, forsooth, in his will for
power, so as to acquire the trust and the awe of the weak, so that he
can be their hold, bulwark, prop, compulsion, overseer, tyrant, god.
He has to protect them, protect his herds--_against_ whom? Against
the healthy, doubtless also against the envy towards the healthy. He
must be the natural adversary and _scorner_ of every rough, stormy,
reinless, hard, violently-predatory health and power. The priest is
the first form of the more delicate animal that scorns more easily
than it hates. He will not be spared the waging of war with the beasts
of prey, a war of guile (of "spirit") rather than of force, as is
self-evident--he will in certain cases find it necessary to conjure up
out of himself, or at any rate to represent practically a new type of
the beast of prey--a new animal monstrosity in which the polar bear,
the supple, cold, crouching panther, and, not least important, the fox,
are joined together in a trinity as fascinating as it is fearsome.
If necessity exacts it, then will he come on the scene with bearish
seriousness, venerable, wise, cold, full of treacherous superiority, as
the herald and mouthpiece of mysterious powers, sometimes going among
even the other kind of beasts of prey, determined as he is to sow on
their soil, wherever he can, suffering, discord, self-contradiction,
and only too sure of his art, always to be lord of _sufferers_ at all
times. He brings with him, doubtless, salve and balsam; but before he
can play the physician he must first wound; so, while he soothes the
pain which the wound makes, _he at the same time poisons the wound_.
Well versed is he in this above all things, is this wizard and wild
beast tamer, in whose vicinity everything healthy must needs become
ill, and everything ill must needs become tame. He protects, in sooth,
his sick herd well enough, does this strange herdsman; he protects
them also against themselves, against the sparks (even in the centre
of the herd) of wickedness, knavery, malice, and all the other ills
that the plaguey and the sick are heir to; he fights with cunning,
hardness, and stealth against anarchy and against the ever imminent
break-up inside the herd, where _resentment_, that most dangerous
blasting-stuff and explosive, ever accumulates and accumulates. Getting
rid of this blasting-stuff in such a way that it does not blow up the
herd and the herdsman, that is his real feat, his supreme utility;
if you wish to comprise in the shortest formula the value of the
priestly life, it would be correct to say the priest is the _diverter
of the course of resentment_. Every sufferer, in fact, searches
instinctively for a cause of his suffering; to put it more exactly,
a doer,--to put it still more precisely, a sentient _responsible_
doer,--in brief, something living, on which, either actually or in
_effigie_, he can on any pretext vent his emotions. For the venting
of emotions is the sufferer's greatest attempt at alleviation, that
is to say, _stupefaction_, his mechanically desired narcotic against
pain of any kind. It is in this phenomenon alone that is found,
according to my judgment, the real physiological cause of resentment,
revenge, and their family is to be found--that is, in a demand for the
_deadening of pain through emotion_: this cause is generally, but in
my view very erroneously, looked for in the defensive parry of a bare
protective principle of reaction, of a "reflex movement" in the case
of any sudden hurt and danger, after the manner that a decapitated
frog still moves in order to get away from a corrosive acid. But the
difference is fundamental. In one case the object is to prevent being
hurt any more; in the other case the object is to _deaden_ a racking,
insidious, nearly unbearable pain by a more violent emotion of any
kind whatsoever, and at any rate for the time being to drive it out of
the consciousness--for this purpose an emotion is needed, as wild an
emotion as possible, and to excite that emotion some excuse or other
is needed. "It must be somebody's fault that I feel bad"--this kind of
reasoning is peculiar to all invalids, and is but the more pronounced,
the more ignorant they remain of the real cause of their feeling bad,
the physiological cause (the cause may lie in a disease of the _nervus
sympathicus_, or in an excessive secretion of bile, or in a want of
sulphate and phosphate of potash in the blood, or in pressure in the
bowels which stops the circulation of the blood, or in degeneration of
the ovaries, and so forth). Ail sufferers have an awful resourcefulness
and ingenuity in finding excuses for painful emotions; they even
enjoy their jealousy, their broodings over base actions and apparent
injuries, they burrow through the intestines of their past and present
in their search for obscure mysteries, wherein they will be at liberty
to wallow in a torturing suspicion and get drunk on the venom of their
own malice--they tear open the oldest wounds, they make themselves
bleed from the scars which have long been healed, they make evil-doers
out of friends, wife, child, and everything which is nearest to them.
"I suffer: it must be somebody's fault"--so thinks every sick sheep.
But his herdsman, the ascetic priest, says to him, "Quite so, my sheep,
it must be the fault of some one; but thou thyself art that some one,
it is all the fault of thyself alone--_it is the fault of thyself alone
against thyself_": that is bold enough, false enough, but one thing is
at least attained; thereby, as I have said, the course of resentment
is--_diverted_.
16.
You can see now what the remedial instinct of life has at least _tried_
to effect, according to my conception, through the ascetic priest,
and the purpose for which he had to employ a temporary tyranny of
such paradoxical and anomalous ideas as "guilt," "sin," "sinfulness,"
"corruption," "damnation." What was done was to make the sick
_harmless_ up to a certain point, to destroy the incurable by means of
themselves, to turn the milder cases severely on to themselves, to give
their resentment a backward direction ("man needs but one thing"), and
to _exploit_ similarly the bad instincts of all sufferers with a view
to self-discipline, self-surveillance, self-mastery. It is obvious that
there can be no question at all in the case of a "medication" of this
kind, a mere emotional medication, of any real _healing_ of the sick in
the physiological sense; it cannot even for a moment be asserted that
in this connection the instinct of life has taken healing as its goal
and purpose. On the one hand, a kind of congestion and organisation of
the sick (the word "Church" is the most popular name for it): on the
other, a kind of provisional safeguarding of the comparatively healthy,
the more perfect specimens, the cleavage of a _rift_ between healthy
and sick--for a long time that was all! and it was much! it was very
much!
I am proceeding, as you see, in this essay, from an hypothesis which,
as far as such readers as I want are concerned, does not require to be
proved; the hypothesis that "sinfulness" in man is not an actual fact,
but rather merely the interpretation of a fact, of a physiological
discomfort,--a discomfort seen through a moral religious perspective
which is no longer binding upon us. The fact, therefore, that any one
feels "guilty," "sinful," is certainly not yet any proof that he is
right in feeling so, any more than any one is healthy simply because
he feels healthy. Remember the celebrated witch-ordeals: in those days
the most acute and humane judges had no doubt but that in these cases
they were confronted with guilt,--the "witches"_ themselves had no
doubt on the point_,--and yet the guilt was lacking. Let me elaborate
this hypothesis: I do not for a minute accept the very "pain in the
soul" as a real fact, but only as an explanation (a casual explanation)
of facts that could not hitherto be precisely formulated; I regard
it therefore as something as yet absolutely in the air and devoid of
scientific cogency--just a nice fat word in the place of a lean note
of interrogation. When any one fails to get rid of his "pain in the
soul," the cause is, speaking crudely, to be found _not_ in his "soul"
but more probably in his stomach (speaking crudely, I repeat, but by
no means wishing thereby that you should listen to me or understand
me in a crude spirit). A strong and well-constituted man digests his
experiences (deeds and misdeeds all included) just as he digests his
meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow. If he fails to
"relieve himself" of an experience, this kind of indigestion is quite
as much physiological as the other indigestion--and indeed, in more
ways than one, simply one of the results of the other. You can adopt
such a theory, and yet _entre nous_ be nevertheless the strongest
opponent of all materialism.
17.
But is he really a _physician_, this ascetic priest? We already
understand why we are scarcely allowed to call him a physician, however
much he likes to feel a "saviour" and let himself be worshipped as a
saviour.[3] It is only the actual suffering, the discomfort of the
sufferer, which he combats, _not_ its cause, not the actual state of
sickness--this needs must constitute our most radical objection to
priestly medication. But just once put yourself into that point of
view, of which the priests have a monopoly, you will find it hard to
exhaust your amazement, at what from that standpoint he has completely
seen, sought, and found. The _mitigation_ of suffering, every kind of
"consoling"--all this manifests itself as his very genius: with what
ingenuity has he interpreted his mission of consoler, with what aplomb
and audacity has he chosen weapons necessary for the part. Christianity
in particular should be dubbed a great treasure-chamber of ingenious
consolations,--such a store of refreshing, soothing, deadening drugs
has it accumulated within itself; so many of the most dangerous and
daring expedients has it hazarded; with such subtlety, refinement,
Oriental refinement, has it divined what emotional stimulants can
conquer, at any rate for a time, the deep depression, the leaden
fatigue, the black melancholy of physiological cripples--for, speaking
generally, all religions are mainly concerned with fighting a certain
fatigue and heaviness that has infected everything. You can regard it
as _prima facie_ probable that in certain places in the world there
was almost bound to prevail from time to time among large masses of
the population a _sense of physiological depression_, which, however,
owing to their lack of physiological knowledge, did not appear to their
consciousness as such, so that consequently its "cause" and its _cure_
can only be sought and essayed in the science of moral psychology
(this, in fact, is my most general formula for what is generally called
a "_religion_"). Such a feeling of depression can have the most diverse
origins; it may be the result of the crossing of too heterogeneous
races (or of classes--genealogical and racial differences are also
brought out in the classes: the European "Weltschmerz," the "Pessimism"
of the nineteenth century, is really the result of an absurd and sudden
class-mixture); it may be brought about by a mistaken emigration--a
race falling into a climate for which its power of adaptation is
insufficient (the case of the Indians in India); it may be the effect
of old age and fatigue (the Parisian pessimism from 1850 onwards); it
may be a wrong diet (the alcoholism of the Middle Ages, the nonsense
of vegetarianism--which, however, have in their favour the authority
of Sir Christopher in Shakespeare); it may be blood-deterioration,
malaria, syphilis, and the like (German depression after the Thirty
Years' War, which infected half Germany with evil diseases, and
thereby paved the way for German servility, for German pusillanimity).
In such a case there is invariably recourse to a _war_ on a grand scale
with the feeling of depression; let us inform ourselves briefly on its
most important practices and phases (I leave on one side, as stands to
reason, the actual _philosophic_ war against the feeling of depression
which is usually simultaneous--it is interesting enough, but too
absurd, too practically negligible, too full of cobwebs, too much of a
hole-and-corner affair, especially when pain is proved to be a mistake,
on the _naïf_ hypothesis that pain must needs _vanish_ when the mistake
underlying it is recognised--but behold! it does anything but vanish
...). That dominant depression is _primarily fought_ by weapons which
reduce the consciousness of life itself to the lowest degree. Wherever
possible, no more wishes, no more wants; shun everything which produces
emotion, which produces "blood" (eating no salt, the fakir hygiene);
no love; no hate; equanimity; no revenge; no getting rich; no work;
begging; as far as possible, no woman, or as little woman as possible;
as far as the intellect is concerned, Pascal's principle, "_il faut
s'abêtir._" To put the result in ethical and psychological language,
"self-annihilation," "sanctification"; to put it in physiological
language, "hypnotism"--the attempt to find some approximate human
equivalent for what _hibernation_ is for certain animals, for what
_æstivation_ is for many tropical plants, a minimum of assimilation
and metabolism in which life just manages to subsist without really
coming into the consciousness. An amazing amount of human energy
has been devoted to this object--perhaps uselessly? There cannot be
the slightest doubt but that such _sportsmen_ of "saintliness," in
whom at times nearly every nation has abounded, have really found a
genuine relief from that which they have combated with such a rigorous
_training_--in countless cases they really escaped by the help of their
system of hypnotism _away_ from deep physiological depression; their
method is consequently counted among the most universal ethnological
facts. Similarly it is improper to consider such a plan for starving
the physical element and the desires, as in itself a symptom of
insanity (as a clumsy species of roast-beef-eating "freethinkers" and
Sir Christophers are fain to do); all the more certain is it that their
method can and does pave the way to all kinds of mental disturbances,
for instance, "inner lights" (as far as the case of the Hesychasts of
Mount Athos), auditory and visual hallucinations, voluptuous ecstasies
and effervescences of sensualism (the history of St. Theresa). The
explanation of such events given by the victims is always the acme of
fanatical falsehood; this is self-evident. Note well, however, the tone
of implicit gratitude that rings in the very _will_ for an explanation
of such a character. The supreme state, salvation itself, that final
goal of universal hypnosis and peace, is always regarded by them as
the mystery of mysteries, which even the most supreme symbols are
inadequate to express; it is regarded as an entry and homecoming to the
essence of things, as a liberation from all illusions, as "knowledge,"
as "truth," as "being" as an escape from every end, every wish, every
action, as something even beyond Good and Evil.
"Good and Evil," quoth the Buddhists, "both are fetters. The perfect
man is master of them both."
"The done and the undone," quoth the disciple of the Vedanta, "do
him no hurt; the good and the evil he shakes from off him, sage that
he is; his kingdom suffers no more from any act; good and evil, he
goes beyond them both."--An absolutely Indian conception, as much
Brahmanist as Buddhist. Neither in the Indian nor in the Christian
doctrine is this "Redemption" regarded as attainable by means of
virtue and moral improvement, however high they may place the value of
the hypnotic efficiency of virtue: keep clear on this point--indeed
it simply corresponds with the facts. The fact that they remained
_true_ on this point is perhaps to be regarded as the best specimen
of realism in the three great religions, absolutely soaked as they
are with morality, with this one exception. "For those who know,
there is no duty." "Redemption is not attained by the acquisition of
virtues; for redemption consists in being one with Brahman, who is
incapable of acquiring any perfection; and equally little does it
consist in the _giving up of faults_, for the Brahman, unity with whom
is what constitutes redemption, is eternally pure" (these passages
are from the Commentaries of the Cankara, quoted from the first real
European _expert_ of the Indian philosophy, my friend Paul Deussen).
We wish, therefore, to pay honour to the idea of "redemption" in
the great religions, but it is somewhat hard to remain serious in
view of the appreciation meted out to the _deep sleep_ by these
exhausted pessimists who are too tired even to dream--to the deep
sleep considered, that is, as already a fusing into Brahman, as the
attainment of the _unio mystica_ with God. "When he has completely gone
to sleep," says on this point the oldest and most venerable "script,"
"and come to perfect rest, so that he sees no more any vision, then,
oh dear one, is he united with Being, he has entered into his own
self--encircled by the Self with its absolute knowledge, he has no
more any consciousness of that which is without or of that which is
within. Day and night cross not these bridges, nor age, nor death,
nor suffering, nor good deeds, nor evil deeds." "In deep sleep," say
similarly the believers in this deepest of the three great religions,
"does the soul lift itself from out this body of ours, enters the
supreme light and stands out therein in its true shape: therein is it
the supreme spirit itself, which travels about, while it jests and
plays and enjoys itself, whether with women, or chariots, or friends;
there do its thoughts turn no more back to this appanage of a body,
to which the 'prana' (the vital breath) is harnessed like a beast of
burden to the cart." None the less we will take care to realise (as
we did when discussing "redemption") that in spite of all its pomps
of Oriental extravagance this simply expresses the same criticism on
life as did the clear, cold, Greekly cold, but yet suffering Epicurus.
The hypnotic sensation of nothingness, the peace of deepest sleep,
anæsthesia in short––that is what passes with the sufferers and the
absolutely depressed for, forsooth, their supreme good, their value
of values; that is what <b>must</b> be treasured by them as something
positive, be felt by them as the essence of _the_ Positive (according
to the same logic of the feelings, nothingness is in all pessimistic
religions called God).
18.
Such a hypnotic deadening of sensibility and susceptibility to pain,
which presupposes somewhat rare powers, especially courage, contempt
of opinion, intellectual stoicism, is less frequent than another
and certainly easier _training_ which is tried against states of
depression. I mean _mechanical activity_. It is indisputable that a
suffering existence can be thereby considerably alleviated. This fact
is called to-day by the somewhat ignoble title of the "Blessing of
work." The alleviation consists in the attention of the sufferer being
absolutely diverted from suffering, in the incessant monopoly of the
consciousness by action, so that consequently there is little room left
for suffering––for _narrow_ is it, this chamber of human consciousness!
Mechanical activity and its corollaries, such as absolute regularity,
punctilious unreasoning obedience, the chronic routine of life, the
complete occupation of time, a certain liberty to be impersonal, nay, a
training in "impersonality," self-forgetfulness, "_incuria sui_"––with
what thoroughness and expert subtlety have all these methods been
exploited by the ascetic priest in his war with pain!
When he has to tackle sufferers of the lower orders, slaves, or
prisoners (or women, who for the most part are a compound of
labour-slave and prisoner), all he has to do is to juggle a little
with the names, and to rechristen, so as to make them see henceforth
a benefit, a comparative happiness, in objects which they hated--the
slave's discontent with his lot was at any rate not invented by the
priests. An even more popular means of fighting depression is the
ordaining of a _little joy_, which is easily accessible and can be made
into a rule; this medication is frequently used in conjunction with
the former ones. The most frequent form in which joy is prescribed
as a cure is the joy in _producing_ joy (such as doing good, giving
presents, alleviating, helping, exhorting, comforting, praising,
treating with distinction); together with the prescription of "love
your neighbour." The ascetic priest prescribes, though in the most
cautious doses, what is practically a stimulation of the strongest
and most life-assertive impulse--the Will for Power. The happiness
involved in the "smallest superiority" which is the concomitant of all
benefiting, helping, extolling, making one's self useful, is the most
ample consolation, of which, if they are well-advised, physiological
distortions avail themselves: in other cases they hurt each other, and
naturally in obedience to the same radical instinct. An investigation
of the origin of Christianity in the Roman world shows that
co-operative unions for poverty, sickness, and burial sprang up in the
lowest stratum of contemporary society, amid which the chief antidote
against depression, the little joy experienced in mutual benefits,
was deliberately fostered. Perchance this was then a novelty, a real
discovery? This conjuring up of the will for co-operation, for family
organisation, for communal life, for "_Cœnacula_" necessarily brought
the Will for Power, which had been already infinitesimally stimulated,
to a new and much fuller manifestation. The herd organisation is a
genuine advance and triumph in the fight with depression. With the
growth of the community there matures even to individuals a new
interest, which often enough takes him out of the more personal
element in his discontent, his aversion to himself, the "_despectus
sui_" of Geulincx. All sick and diseased people strive instinctively
after a herd-organisation, out of a desire to shake off their sense of
oppressive discomfort and weakness; the ascetic priest divines this
instinct and promotes it; wherever a herd exists it is the instinct
of weakness which has wished for the herd, and the cleverness of the
priests which has organised it, for, mark this: by an equally natural
necessity the strong strive as much for _isolation_ as the weak for
_union_: when the former bind themselves it is only with a view to an
aggressive joint action and joint satisfaction of their Will for Power,
much against the wishes of their individual consciences; the latter,
on the contrary, range themselves together with positive _delight_ in
such a muster--their instincts are as much gratified thereby as the
instincts of the "born master" (that is, the solitary beast-of-prey
species of man) are disturbed and wounded to the quick by organisation.
There is always lurking beneath every oligarchy--such is the
universal lesson of history--the desire for tyranny. Every oligarchy
is continually quivering with the tension of the effort required by
each individual to keep mastering this desire. (Such, _e.g._, was
the Greek; Plato shows it in a hundred places, Plato, who knew his
contemporaries--and _himself_.)
19.
The methods employed by the ascetic priest, which we have already
learnt to know--stifling of all vitality, mechanical energy, the
little joy, and especially the method of "love your neighbour"
herd-organisation, the awaking of the communal consciousness of power,
to such a pitch that the individual's disgust with himself becomes
eclipsed by his delight in the thriving of the community--these are,
according to modern standards, the "innocent" methods employed in
the fight with depression; let us turn now to the more interesting
topic of the "guilty" methods. The guilty methods spell one thing:
to produce _emotional excess_--which is used as the most efficacious
anæsthetic against their depressing state of protracted pain; this
is why priestly ingenuity has proved quite inexhaustible in thinking
out this one question: "_By what means_ can you produce an emotional
excess?" This sounds harsh: it is manifest that it would sound nicer
and would grate on one's ears less, if I were to say, forsooth: "The
ascetic priest made use at all times of the enthusiasm contained in all
strong emotions." But what is the good of still soothing the delicate
ears of our modern effeminates? What is the good _on our side_ of
budging one single inch before their verbal Pecksniffianism. For us
psychologists to do that would be at once _practical Pecksniffianism_,
apart from the fact of its nauseating us. The _good taste_ (others
might say, the righteousness) of a psychologist nowadays consists, if
at all, in combating the shamefully moralised language with which all
modern judgments on men and things are smeared. For, do not deceive
yourself: what constitutes the chief characteristic of modern souls and
of modern books is not the lying, but the _innocence_ which is part
and parcel of their intellectual dishonesty. The inevitable running up
against this "innocence" everywhere constitutes the most distasteful
feature of the somewhat dangerous business which a modern psychologist
has to undertake: it is a part of our great danger--it is a road which
perhaps leads us straight to the great nausea--I know quite well the
purpose which all modern books will and can serve (granted that they
last, which I am not afraid of, and granted equally that there is to
be at some future day a generation with a more rigid, more severe,
and _healthier_ taste)--the _function_ which all modernity generally
will serve with posterity: that of an emetic,--and this by reason of
its moral sugariness and falsity, its ingrained feminism, which it is
pleased to call "Idealism," and at any rate believes to be idealism.
Our cultured men of to-day, our "good" men, do not lie--that is true;
but it does _not_ redound to their honour! The real lie, the genuine,
determined, "honest" lie (on whose value you can listen to Plato) would
prove too tough and strong an article for them by a long way; it would
be asking them to do what people have been forbidden to ask them to do,
to open their eyes to their own selves, and to learn to distinguish
between "true" and "false" in their own selves. The dishonest lie alone
suits them: everything which feels a good man is perfectly incapable of
any other attitude to anything than that of a dishonourable liar, an
absolute liar, but none the less an innocent liar, a blue-eyed liar, a
virtuous liar. These "good men," they are all now tainted with morality
through and through, and as far as honour is concerned they are
disgraced and corrupted for all eternity. Which of them _could stand_ a
further truth "about man"? or, put more tangibly, which of them could
put up with a true biography? One or two instances: Lord Byron composed
a most personal autobiography, but Thomas Moore was "too good" for it;
he burnt his friend's papers. Dr. Gwinner, Schopenhauer's executor, is
said to have done the same; for Schopenhauer as well wrote much about
himself, and perhaps also against himself: (εἰς ἑαντόν). The virtuous
American Thayer, Beethoven's biographer, suddenly stopped his work: he
had come to a certain point in that honourable and simple life, and
could stand it no longer. Moral: What sensible man nowadays writes one
honest word about himself? He must already belong to the Order of Holy
Foolhardiness. We are promised an autobiography of Richard Wagner; who
doubts but that it would be a _clever_ autobiography? Think, forsooth,
of the grotesque horror which the Catholic priest Janssen aroused in
Germany with his inconceivably square and harmless pictures of the
German Reformation; what wouldn't people do if some real psychologist
were to tell us about a genuine Luther, tell us, not with the moralist
simplicity of a country priest or the sweet and cautious modesty of a
Protestant historian, but say with the fearlessness of a Taine, that
springs from force of character and not from a prudent toleration of
force. (The Germans, by the bye, have already produced the classic
specimen of this toleration--they may well be allowed to reckon him as
one of their own, in Leopold Ranke, that born classical advocate of
every _causa fortior_, that cleverest of all the clever opportunists.)
20.