enough, is there not, for us psychologists nowadays never getting from
a certain mistrust of out _own selves_? Probably even we ourselves are
still "too good" for our work, probably, whatever contempt we feel
for this popular craze for morality, we ourselves are perhaps none
the less its victims, prey, and slaves; probably it infects even us.
Of what was that diplomat warning us, when he said to his colleagues:
"Let us especially mistrust our first impulses, gentlemen! _they are
almost always good_"? So should nowadays every psychologist talk to
his colleagues. And thus we get back to our problem, which in point
of fact does require from us a certain severity, a certain mistrust
especially against "first impulses." The ascetic ideal in the service
of projected emotional excess:--he who remembers the previous essay
will already partially anticipate the essential meaning compressed
into these above ten words. The thorough unswitching of the human
soul, the plunging of it into terror, frost, ardour, rapture, so as
to free it, as through some lightning shock, from all the smallness
and pettiness of unhappiness, depression, and discomfort: what ways
lead to _this_ goal? And which of these ways does so most safely?...
At bottom all great emotions have this power, provided that they find
a sudden outlet--emotions such as rage, fear, lust, revenge, hope,
triumph, despair, cruelty; and, in sooth, the ascetic priest has had
no scruples in taking into his service the whole pack of hounds that
rage in the human kennel, unleashing now these and now those, with the
same constant object of waking man out of his protracted melancholy,
of chasing away, at any rate for a time, his dull pain, his shrinking
misery, but always under the sanction of a religious interpretation
and justification. This emotional excess has subsequently to be _paid
for_, this is self-evident--it makes the ill more ill--and therefore
this kind of remedy for pain is according to modern standards a
"guilty" kind.
The dictates of fairness, however, require that we should all the
more emphasise the fact that this remedy is applied with _a good
conscience_, that the ascetic priest has prescribed it in the most
implicit belief in its utility and indispensability;--often enough
almost collapsing in the presence of the pain which he created;--that
we should similarly emphasise the fact that the violent physiological
revenges of such excesses, even perhaps the mental disturbances, are
not absolutely inconsistent with the general tenor of this kind of
remedy; this remedy, which, as we have shown previously, is _not_ for
the purpose of healing diseases, but of fighting the unhappiness of
that depression, the alleviation and deadening of which was its object.
The object was consequently achieved. The keynote by which the ascetic
priest was enabled to get every kind of agonising and ecstatic music
to play on the fibres of the human soul--was, as every one knows, the
exploitation of the feeling of "_guilt_." I have already indicated in
the previous essay the origin of this feeling--as a piece of animal
psychology and nothing else: we were thus confronted with the
feeling of "guilt," in its crude state, as it were. It was first in
the hands of the priest, real artist that he was in the feeling of
guilt, that it took shape--oh, what a shape! "Sin"--for that is the
name of the new priestly version of the animal "bad-conscience" (the
inverted cruelty)--has up to the present been the greatest event in the
history of the diseased soul: in "sin" we find the most perilous and
fatal masterpiece of religious interpretation. Imagine man, suffering
from himself, some way or other but at any rate physiologically,
perhaps like an animal shut up in a cage, not clear as to the why and
the wherefore! imagine him in his desire for reasons--reasons bring
relief--in his desire again for remedies, narcotics at last, consulting
one, who knows even the occult--and see, lo and behold, he gets a hint
from his wizard, the ascetic priest, his _first_ hint on the "cause" of
his trouble: he must search for it in _himself_, in his guiltiness, in
a piece of the past, he must understand his very suffering as a _state
of punishment_. He has heard, he has understood, has the unfortunate:
he is now in the plight of a hen round which a line has been drawn. He
never gets out of the circle of lines. The sick man has been turned
into "the sinner"--and now for a few thousand years we never get away
from the sight of this new invalid, of "a sinner"--shall we ever get
away from it?--wherever we just look, everywhere the hypnotic gaze of
the sinner always moving in one direction (in the direction of guilt,
the _only_ cause of suffering); everywhere the evil conscience, this
"_greuliche thier_,"[4] to use Luther's language; everywhere rumination
over the past, a distorted view of action, the gaze of the "green-eyed
monster" turned on all action; everywhere the wilful misunderstanding
of suffering, its transvaluation into feelings of guilt, fear of
retribution; everywhere the scourge, the hairy shirt, the starving
body, contrition; everywhere the sinner breaking himself on the ghastly
wheel of a restless and morbidly eager conscience; everywhere mute
pain, extreme fear, the agony of a tortured heart, the spasms of an
unknown happiness, the shriek for "redemption." In point of fact,
thanks to this system of procedure, the old depression, dullness,
and fatigue were absolutely conquered, life itself became _very_
interesting again, awake, eternally awake, sleepless, glowing, burnt
away, exhausted and yet not tired--such was the figure cut by man,
"the sinner," who was initiated into these mysteries. This grand old
wizard of an ascetic priest fighting with depression--he had clearly
triumphed, _his_ kingdom had come: men no longer grumbled at pain, men
_panted_ after pain: "_More pain!_ More pain!" So for centuries on end
shrieked the demand of his acolytes and initiates. Every emotional
excess which hurt; everything which broke, overthrew, crushed,
transported, ravished; the mystery of torture-chambers, the ingenuity
of hell itself--all this was now discovered, divined, exploited, all
this was at the service of the wizard, all this served to promote the
triumph of his ideal, the ascetic ideal. "_My kingdom is not of this
world_," quoth he, both at the beginning and at the end: had he still
the right to talk like that?--Goethe has maintained that there are only
thirty-six tragic situations: we would infer from that, did we not know
otherwise, that Goethe was no ascetic priest. He--knows more.
21.
So far as all _this_ kind of priestly medicine-mongering, the "guilty"
kind, is concerned, every word of criticism is superfluous. As for the
suggestion that emotional excess of the type, which in these cases
the ascetic priest is fain to order to his sick patients (under the
most sacred euphemism, as is obvious, and equally impregnated with
the sanctity of his purpose), has ever really been of use to any sick
man, who, forsooth, would feel inclined to maintain a proposition of
that character? At any rate, some understanding should be come to as
to the expression "be of use." If you only wish to express that such a
system of treatment has _reformed_ man, I do not gainsay it: I merely
add that "reformed" conveys to my mind as much as "tamed," "weakened,"
"discouraged," "refined," "daintified," "emasculated" (and thus it
means almost as much as injured). But when you have to deal principally
with sick, depressed, and oppressed creatures, such a system, even
granted that it makes the ill "better," under any circumstances also
makes them more _ill_: ask the mad-doctors the invariable result of a
methodical application of penance-torture, contrition, and salvation
ecstasies. Similarly ask history. In every body politic where the
ascetic priest has established this treatment of the sick, disease has
on every occasion spread with sinister speed throughout its length
and breadth. What was always the "result"? A shattered nervous system,
in addition to the existing malady, and this in the greatest as in the
smallest, in the individuals as in masses. We find, in consequence of
the penance and redemption-training, awful epileptic epidemics, the
greatest known to history, such as the St. Vitus and St. John dances
of the Middle Ages; we find, as another phase of its after-effect,
frightful mutilations and chronic depressions, by means of which the
temperament of a nation or a city (Geneva, Bale) is turned once for
all into its opposite;--this _training_, again, is responsible for
the witch-hysteria, a phenomenon analogous to somnambulism (eight
great epidemic outbursts of this only between 1564 and 1605);--we
find similarly in its train those delirious death-cravings of large
masses, whose awful "shriek," "_evviva la morte!_" was heard over the
whole of Europe, now interrupted by voluptuous variations and anon by
a rage for destruction, just as the same emotional sequence with the
same intermittencies and sudden changes is now universally observed
in every case where the ascetic doctrine of sin scores once more a
great success (religious neurosis _appears_ as a manifestation of the
devil, there is no doubt of it. What is it? _Quæritur_). Speaking
generally, the ascetic ideal and its sublime-moral cult, this most
ingenious, reckless, and perilous systematisation of all methods of
emotional excess, is writ large in a dreadful and unforgettable fashion
on the whole history of man, and unfortunately not only on history.
I was scarcely able to put forward any other element which attacked
the health and race efficiency of Europeans with more destructive
power than did this ideal; it can be dubbed,without exaggeration,
_the real fatality_ in the history of the health of the European man.
At the most you can merely draw a comparison with the specifically
German influence: I mean the alcohol poisoning of Europe, which up
to the present has kept pace exactly with the political and racial
pre–dominance of the Germans (where they inoculated their blood,
there too did they inoculate their vice). Third in the series comes
syphilis--_magno sed proximo intervallo_.
22.
The ascetic priest has, wherever he has obtained the mastery, corrupted
the health of the soul, he has consequently also corrupted _taste in
artibus et litteris_--he corrupts it still. "Consequently?" I hope I
shall be granted this "consequently "; at any rate, I am not going to
prove it first. One solitary indication, it concerns the arch-book of
Christian literature, their real model, their "book-in-itself." In the
very midst of the Græco-Roman splendour, which was also a splendour
of books, face to face with an ancient world of writings which had
not yet fallen into decay and ruin, at a time when certain books were
still to be read, to possess which we would give nowadays half our
literature in exchange, at that time the simplicity and vanity of
Christian agitators (they are generally called Fathers of the Church)
dared to declare: "We too have our classical literature, we _do not
need that of the Greeks_"--and meanwhile they proudly pointed to their
books of legends, their letters of apostles, and their apologetic
tractlets, just in the same way that to-day the English "Salvation
Army" wages its fight against Shakespeare and other "heathens" with
an analogous literature. You already guess it, I do not like the "New
Testament"; it almost upsets me that I stand so isolated in my taste
so far as concerns this valued, this over-valued Scripture; the taste
of two thousand years is _against_ me; but what boots it! "Here I
stand! I cannot help myself"[5]--I have the courage of my bad taste.
The Old Testament--yes, that is something quite different, all honour
to the Old Testament! I find therein great men, an heroic landscape,
and one of the rarest phenomena in the world, the incomparable naïveté
_of the strong heart_; further still, I find a people. In the New, on
the contrary, just a hostel of petty sects, pure rococo of the soul,
twisting angles and fancy touches, nothing but conventicle air, not to
forget an occasional whiff of bucolic sweetness which appertains to the
epoch (_and_ the Roman province) and is less Jewish than Hellenistic.
Meekness and braggadocio cheek by jowl; an emotional garrulousness
that almost deafens; passionate hysteria, but no passion; painful
pantomime; here manifestly every one lacked good breeding. How dare any
one make so much fuss about their little failings as do these pious
little fellows! No one cares a straw about it--let alone God. Finally
they actually wish to have "the crown of eternal life," do all these
little provincials! In return for what, in sooth? For what end? It is
impossible to carry insolence any further. An immortal Peter! who could
stand _him_! They have an ambition which makes one laugh: the _thing_
dishes up cut and dried his most personal life, his melancholies, and
common-or-garden troubles, as though the Universe itself were under
an obligation to bother itself about them, for it never gets tired of
wrapping up God Himself in the petty misery in which its troubles are
involved. And how about the atrocious form of this chronic hobnobbing
with God? This Jewish, and not merely Jewish, slobbering and clawing
importunacy towards God!--There exist little despised "heathen nations"
in East Asia, from whom these first Christians could have learnt
something worth learning, a little tact in worshiping; these nations
do not allow themselves to say aloud the name of their God. This seems
to me delicate enough, it is certain that it is _too_ delicate, and
not only for primitive Christians; to take a contrast, just recollect
Luther, the most "eloquent" and insolent peasant whom Germany has had,
think of the Lutherian tone, in which he felt quite the most in his
element during his _tête-à-têtes_ with God. Luther's opposition to the
mediæval saints of the Church (in particular, against "that devil's
hog, the Pope"), was, there is no doubt, at bottom the opposition of
a boor, who was offended at the _good etiquette_ of the Church, that
worship-etiquette of the sacerdotal code, which only admits to the
holy of holies the initiated and the silent, and shuts the door against
the boors. These definitely were not to be allowed a hearing in this
planet--but Luther the peasant simply wished it otherwise; as it was,
it was not German enough for him. He personally wished himself to talk
direct, to talk personally, to talk "straight from the shoulder" with
his God. Well, he's done it. The ascetic ideal, you will guess, was at
no time and in no place, a school of good taste, still less of good
manners--at the best it was a school for sacerdotal manners: that is,
it contains in itself something which was a deadly enemy to all good
manners. Lack of measure, opposition to measure, it is itself a "_non
plus ultra_."
23.
The ascetic ideal has corrupted not only health and taste, there are
also third, fourth, fifth, and sixth things which it has corrupted--I
shall take care not to go through the catalogue (when should I get to
the end?). I have here to expose not what this ideal effected; but
rather only what it _means_, on what it is based, what lies lurking
behind it and under it, that of which it is the provisional expression,
an obscure expression bristling with queries and misunderstandings.
And with _this_ object only in view I presumed "not to spare" my
readers a glance at the awfulness of its results, a glance at its
fatal results; I did this to prepare them for the final and most
awful aspect presented to me by the question of the significance of
that ideal. What is the significance of the _power_ of that ideal,
the monstrousness of its power? Why is it given such an amount of
scope? Why is not a better resistance offered against it? The ascetic
ideal expresses one will: where is the opposition will, in which an
opposition ideal expresses itself? The ascetic ideal has an aim--
this goal is, putting it generally, that all the other interests of
human life should, measured by its standard, appear petty and narrow;
it explains epochs, nations, men, in reference to this one end; it
forbids any other interpretation, any other end; it repudiates, denies,
affirms, confirms, only in the sense of its own interpretation (and was
there ever a more thoroughly elaborated system of interpretation?);
it subjects itself to no power, rather does it believe in its own
precedence over every power--it believes that nothing powerful exists
in the world that has not first got to receive from "it" a meaning,
a right to exist, a value, as being an instrument in its work, a
way and means to its end, to one end. Where is the _counterpart_ of
this complete system of will, end, and interpretation? Why is the
counterpart lacking? Where is the other "one aim"? But I am told it
is not lacking, that not only has it fought a long and fortunate fight
with that ideal, but that further it has already won the mastery over
that ideal in all essentials: let our whole modern _science_ attest
this--that modern science, which, like the genuine reality-philosophy
which it is, manifestly believes in itself alone, manifestly has the
courage to be itself, the will to be itself, and has got on well
enough without God, another world, and negative virtues.
With all their noisy agitator-babble, however, they effect nothing with
me; these trumpeters of reality are bad musicians, their voices do
not come from the deeps with sufficient audibility, they are not the
mouthpiece for the abyss of scientific knowledge--for to-day scientific
knowledge is an abyss--the word "science," in such trumpeter-mouths,
is a prostitution, an abuse, an impertinence. The truth is just the
opposite from what is maintained in the ascetic theory. Science has
to-day absolutely no belief in itself, let alone in an ideal superior
to itself, and wherever science still consists of passion, love,
ardour, suffering, it is not the opposition to that ascetic ideal, but
rather the _incarnation of its latest and noblest form_. Does that ring
strange? There are enough brave and decent working people, even among
the learned men of to-day, who like their little corner, and who, just
because they are pleased so to do, become at times indecently loud with
their demand, that people to-day should be quite content, especially
in science--for in science there is so much useful work to do. I do
not deny it--there is nothing I should like less than to spoil the
delight of these honest workers in their handiwork; for I rejoice in
their work. But the fact of science requiring hard work, the fact of
its having contented workers, is absolutely no proof of science as a
whole having to-day one end, one will, one ideal, one passion for a
great faith; the contrary, as I have said, is the case. When science
is not the latest manifestation of the ascetic ideal--but these are
cases of such rarity, selectness, and exquisiteness, as to preclude the
general judgment being affected thereby--science is a _hiding-place_
for every kind of cowardice, disbelief, remorse, _despectio sui_, bad
conscience--it is the very _anxiety_ that springs from having no ideal,
the suffering from the _lack_ of a great love, the discontent with an
enforced moderation. Oh, what does all science not cover to-day? How
much, at any rate, does it not try to cover? The diligence of our best
scholars, their senseless industry, their burning the candle of their
brain at both ends--their very mastery in their handiwork--how often is
the real meaning of all that to prevent themselves continuing to see a
certain thing? Science as a self-anæsthetic: _do you know that_? You
wound them--every one who consorts with scholars experiences this--you
wound them sometimes to the quick through just a harmless word; when
you think you are paying them a compliment you embitter them beyond all
bounds, simply because you didn't have the _finesse_ to infer the real
kind of customers you had to tackle, the _sufferer_ kind (who won't own
up even to themselves what they really are), the dazed and unconscious
kind who have only one fear--_coming to consciousness_.
24.