qualities, neither God, society, his parents, his ancestors, nor
himself (—this nonsensical idea which is at last refuted here, was
taught as “intelligible freedom” by Kant, and perhaps even as early
as Plato himself). No one is responsible for the fact that he exists
at all, that he is constituted as he is, and that he happens to be in
certain circumstances and in a particular environment. The fatality of
his being cannot be divorced from the fatality of all that which has
been and will be. This is not the result of an individual intention,
of a will, of an aim, there is no attempt at attaining to any “ideal
man,” or “ideal happiness” or “ideal morality” with him,—it is absurd
to wish him to be careering towards some sort of purpose. _We_ invented
the concept “purpose”; in reality purpose is altogether lacking. One
is necessary, one is a piece of fate, one belongs to the whole, one is
in the whole,—there is nothing that could judge, measure, compare,
and condemn our existence, for that would mean judging, measuring,
comparing and condemning the whole. _But there is nothing outside the
whole!_ The fact that no one shall any longer be made responsible, that
the nature of existence may not be traced to a _causa prima_, that the
world is an entity neither as a sensorium nor as a spirit—_this alone
is the great deliverance_,—thus alone is the innocence of Becoming
restored.... The concept “God” has been the greatest objection to
existence hitherto.... We deny God, we deny responsibility in God: thus
alone do we save the world.—
THE “IMPROVERS” OF MANKIND
1
You are aware of my demand upon philosophers, that they should take
up a stand Beyond Good and Evil,—that they should have the illusion
of the moral judgment beneath them. This demand is the result of a
point of view which I was the first to formulate: _that there are no
such things as moral facts._ Moral judgment has this in common with
the religious one, that it believes in realities which are not real.
Morality is only an interpretation of certain phenomena: or, more
strictly speaking, a misinterpretation of them. Moral judgment, like
the religious one, belongs to a stage of ignorance in which even the
concept of reality, the distinction between real and imagined things,
is still lacking: so that truth, at such a stage, is applied to a host
of things which to-day we call “imaginary.” That is why the moral
judgment must never be taken quite literally: as such it is sheer
nonsense. As a sign code, however, it is invaluable: to him at least
who knows, it reveals the most valuable facts concerning cultures and
inner conditions, which did not know enough to “understand” themselves.
Morality is merely a sign-language, simply symptomatology: one must
already know what it is all about in order to turn it to any use.
2
Let me give you one example, quite provisionally. In all ages there
have been people who wished to “improve” mankind: this above all
is what was called morality. But the most different tendencies
are concealed beneath the same word. Both the taming of the beast
man, and the rearing of a particular type of man, have been called
“improvement”: these zoological _termini,_ alone, represent real
things—real things of which the typical “improver,” the priest,
naturally knows nothing, and will know nothing. To call the taming
of an animal “improving” it, sounds to our ears almost like a joke.
He who knows what goes on in menageries, doubts very much whether an
animal is improved in such places. It is certainly weakened, it is
made less dangerous, and by means of the depressing influence of fear,
pain, wounds, and hunger, it is converted into a sick animal. And the
same holds good of the tamed man whom the priest has “improved.” In
the early years of the Middle Ages, during which the Church was most
distinctly and above all a menagerie, the most beautiful examples of
the “blond beast” were hunted down in all directions,—the noble
Germans, for instance, were “improved.” But what did this “improved”
German, who had been lured to the monastery look like after the
process? He looked like a caricature of man, like an abortion: he had
become a “sinner,” he was caged up, he had been imprisoned behind a
host of apparling notions. He now lay there, sick, wretched, malevolent
even toward himself: full of hate for the instincts of life, full of
suspicion in regard to all that is still strong and happy. In short a
“Christian.” In physiological terms: in a fight with an animal, the
only way of making it weak may be to make it sick. The Church undersood
this: it ruined man, it made him weak,—but it laid claim to having
“improved” him.
3
Now let us consider the other case which is called morality, the
case of the rearing of a particular race and species. The most
magnificent example of this is offered by Indian morality, and is
sanctioned religiously as the “Law of Manu.” In this book the task
is set of rearing no less than four races at once: a priestly race,
a warrior race, a merchant and agricultural race, and finally a race
of servants—the Sudras. It is quite obvious that we are no longer
in a circus watching tamers of wild animals in this book. To have
conceived even the plan of such a breeding scheme, presupposes the
existence of a man who is a hundred times milder and more reasonable
than the mere lion-tamer. One breathes more freely, after stepping out
of the Christian atmosphere of hospitals and prisons, into this more
salubrious, loftier and more spacious world. What a wretched thing the
New Testament is beside Manu, what an evil odour hangs around it!—But
even this organisation found it necessary to be terrible,—not this
time in a struggle with the animal-man, but with his opposite, the
non-caste man, the hotch-potch man, the Chandala. And once again it
had no other means of making him weak and harmless, than by making
him sick,—it was the struggle with the greatest “number.” Nothing
perhaps is more offensive to our feelings than these measures of
security on the part of Indian morality. The third edict, for instance
(Avadana-Sastra I.), which treats “of impure vegetables,” ordains that
the only nourishment that the Chandala should be allowed must consist
of garlic and onions, as the holy scriptures forbid their being given
corn or grain-bearing fruit, water and fire. The same edict declares
that the water which they need must be drawn neither out of rivers,
wells or ponds, but only out of the ditches leading to swamps and out
of the holes left by the footprints of animals. They are likewise
forbidden to wash either their linen or themselves since the water
which is graciously granted to them must only be used for quenching
their thirst. Finally Sudra women are forbidden to assist Chandala
women at their confinements, while Chandala women are also forbidden to
assist each other at such times. The results of sanitary regulations of
this kind could not fail to make themselves felt; deadly epidemics and
the most ghastly venereal diseases soon appeared, and in consequence
of these again “the Law of the Knife,”—that is to say circumcision,
was prescribed for male children and the removal of the small labia
from the females. Manu himself says: “the Chandala are the fruit of
adultery, incest, and crime (—this is the necessary consequence of the
idea of breeding). Their clothes shall consist only of the rags torn
from corpses, their vessels shall be the fragments of broken pottery,
their ornaments shall be made of old iron, and their religion shall be
the worship of evil spirits; without rest they shall wander from place
to place. They are forbidden to write from left to right or to use
their right hand in writing: the use of the right hand and writing from
left to right are reserved to people of virtue, to people of race.”
4
These regulations are instructive enough: we can see in them the
absolutely pure and primeval humanity of the Aryans,—we learn that
the notion “pure blood,” is the reverse of harmless. On the other hand
it becomes clear among which people the hatred, the Chandala hatred
of this humanity has been immortalised, among which people it has
become religion and genius. From this point of view the gospels are
documents of the highest value; and the Book of Enoch is still more
so. Christianity as sprung from Jewish roots and comprehensible only
as grown upon this soil, represents the counter-movement against that
morality of breeding, of race and of privilege:—it is essentially an
anti-Aryan religion: Christianity is the transvaluation of all Aryan
values, the triumph of Chandala values, the proclaimed gospel of the
poor and of the low, the general insurrection of all the down-trodden,
the wretched, the bungled and the botched, against the “race,”—the
immortal revenge of the Chandala as the _religion of love._
5
The morality of breeding and the morality of taming, in the means which
they adopt in order to prevail, are quite worthy of each other: we may
lay down as a leading principle that in order to create morality a
man must have the absolute will to immorality. This is the great and
strange problem with which I have so long been occupied: the psychology
of the “Improvers” of mankind. A small, and at bottom perfectly
insignificant fact, known as the “_pia fraus_,” first gave me access
to this problem: the _pia fraus_, the heirloom of all philosophers and
priests who “improve” mankind. Neither Manu, nor Plato, nor Confucius,
nor the teachers of Judaism and Christianity, have ever doubted their
right to falsehood. They have never doubted their right to quite a
number of other things To express oneself in a formula, one might
say:—all means which have been used heretofore with the object of
making man moral, were through and through immoral.
THINGS THE GERMANS LACK
1
Among Germans at the present day it does not suffice to have intellect;
one is actually forced to appropriate it, to lay claim to it.
Maybe I know the Germans, perhaps I may tell them a few home-truths.
Modern Germany represents such an enormous store of inherited and
acquired capacity, that for some time it might spend this accumulated
treasure even with some prodigality. It is no superior culture that has
ultimately become prevalent with this modern tendency, nor is it by any
means delicate taste, or noble beauty of the instincts; but rather a
number of virtues more manly than any that other European countries can
show. An amount of good spirits and self-respect, plenty of firmness
in human relations and in the reciprocity of duties; much industry and
much perseverance—and a certain inherited soberness which is much more
in need of a spur than of a brake. Let me add that in this country
people still obey without feeling that obedience humiliates. And no one
despises his opponent.
You observe that it is my desire to be fair to the Germans: and in this
respect I should not like to be untrue to myself,—I must therefore
also state my objections to them. It costs a good deal to attain to a
position of power; for power _stultifies._ The Germans—they were once
called a people of thinkers: do they really think at all at present?
Nowadays the Germans are bored by intellect, they mistrust intellect;
politics have swallowed up all earnestness for really intellectual
things—“Germany, Germany above all.”[1] I fear this was the death-blow
to German philosophy. “Are there any German philosophers? Are there any
German poets? Are there any good German books?” people ask me abroad. I
blush; but with that pluck which is peculiar to me, even in moments of
desperation, I reply: “Yes, Bismarck!”—Could I have dared to confess
what books _are_ read to-day? Cursed instinct of mediocrity!—
2
What might not German intellect have been!—who has not thought sadly
upon this question! But this nation has deliberately stultified itself
for almost a thousand years: nowhere else have the two great European
narcotics, alcohol and Christianity, been so viciously abused as in
Germany. Recently a third opiate was added to the list, one which in
itself alone would have sufficed to complete the ruin of all subtle
and daring intellectual animation, I speak of music, our costive and
constipating German music. How much peevish ponderousness, paralysis,
dampness, dressing-gown languor, and beer is there not in German
intelligence!
How is it really possible that young men who consecrate their whole
lives to the pursuit of intellectual ends, should not feel within them
the first instinct of intellectuality, the _self-preservative instinct
of the intellect_—and should drink beer? The alcoholism of learned
youths does not incapacitate them for becoming scholars—a man quite
devoid of intellect may be a great scholar,—but it is a problem in
every other respect. Where can that soft degeneracy not be found, which
is produced in the intellect by beer! I once laid my finger upon a case
of this sort, which became almost famous,—the degeneration of our
leading German free-spirit, the _clever_ David Strauss, into the author
of a suburban gospel and New Faith. Not in vain had he sung the praises
of “the dear old brown liquor” in verse—true unto death.
3
I have spoken of German intellect. I have said that it is becoming
coarser and shallower. Is that enough?—In reality something very
different frightens me, and that is the ever steady decline of
German earnestness, German profundity, and German passion in things
intellectual. Not only intellectuality, but also pathos has altered.
From time to time I come in touch with German universities; what
an extraordinary atmosphere prevails among their scholars! what
barrenness! and what self-satisfied and lukewarm intellectuality! For
any one to point to German science as an argument against me would show
that he grossly misunderstood my meaning, while it would also prove
that he had not read a word of my writings. For seventeen years I
have done little else than expose the de-intellectualising influence
of our modern scientific studies. The severe slavery to which every
individual nowadays is condemned by the enormous range covered by the
sciences, is the chief reason why fuller, richer and profounder natures
can find no education or educators that are fit for them. Nothing
is more deleterious to this age than the superfluity of pretentious
loafers and fragmentary human beings; our universities are really
the involuntary forcing houses for this kind of withering-up of the
instincts of intellectuality. And the whole of Europe is beginning
to know this—politics on a large scale deceive no one. Germany is
becoming ever more and more the Flat-land of Europe. I am still in
search of a German with whom I could be serious after my own fashion.
And how much more am I in search of one with whom I could be cheerful
_—The Twilight of the Idols:_ ah! what man to-day would be capable
of understanding the kind of seriousness from which a philosopher is
recovering in this work! It is our cheerfulness that people understand
least.
4
Let us examine another aspect of the question: it is not only obvious
that German culture is declining, but adequate reasons for this decline
are not lacking. After all, nobody can spend more than he has:—this
is true of individuals, it is also true of nations. If you spend
your strength in acquiring power, or in politics on a large scale,
or in economy, or in universal commerce, or in parliamentarism, or
in military interests—if you dissipate the modicum of reason, of
earnestness, of will, and of self-control that constitutes your nature
in one particular fashion, you cannot dissipate it in another. Culture
and the state—let no one be deceived on this point—are antagonists:
A “culture-state”[2] is merely a modern idea. The one lives upon
the other, the one flourishes at the expense of the other. All great
periods of culture have been periods of political decline; that which
is great from the standpoint of culture, was always unpolitical—even
anti-political. Goethe’s heart opened at the coming of Napoleon—it
closed at the thought of the “Wars of Liberation.” At the very moment
when Germany arose as a great power in the world of politics, France
won new importance as a force in the world of culture. Even at this
moment a large amount of fresh intellectual earnestness and passion
has emigrated to Paris; the question of pessimism, for instance,
and the question of Wagner; in France almost all psychological and
artistic questions are considered with incomparably more subtlety and
thoroughness than they are in Germany,—the Germans are even incapable
of this kind of earnestness. In the history of European culture the
rise of the Empire signifies, above all, a displacement of the centre
of gravity. Everywhere people are already aware of this: in things that
really matter—and these after all constitute culture,—the Germans
are no longer worth considering. I ask you, can you show me one single
man of brains who could be mentioned in the same breath with other
European thinkers, like your Goethe, your Hegel, your Heinrich Heine,
and your Schopenhauer?—The fact that there is no longer a single
German philosopher worth mentioning is an increasing wonder.
5
Everything that matters has been lost sight of by the whole of the
higher educational system of Germany: the end quite as much as the
means to that end. People forget that education, the process of
cultivation itself, is the end—and not “the Empire”—they forget that
the _educator_ is required for this end—and not the public-school
teacher and university scholar. Educators are needed who are themselves
educated, superior and noble intellects, who can prove that they are
thus qualified, that they are ripe and mellow products of culture
at every moment of their lives, in word and in gesture;—not the
learned louts who, like “superior wet-nurses,” are now thrust upon the
youth of the land by public schools and universities. With but rare
exceptions, that which is lacking in Germany is the first prerequisite
of education—that is to say, the educators; hence the decline of
German culture. One of those rarest exceptions is my highly respected
friend Jacob Burckhardt of Bâle: to him above all is Bâle indebted
for its foremost position in human culture What the higher schools
of Germany really do accomplish is this, they brutally train a vast
crowd of young men, in the smallest amount of time possible, to become
useful and exploitable servants of the state. “Higher education”
and a vast crowd—these terms contradict each other from the start.
All superior education can only concern the exception: a man must be
privileged in order to have a right to such a great privilege. All
great and beautiful things cannot be a common possession: _pulchrum
est paucorum hominum._—What is it that brings about the decline of
German culture? The fact that “higher education” is no longer a special
privilege—the democracy of a process of cultivation that has become
“general,” _common._ Nor must it be forgotten that the privileges of
the military profession by urging many too many to attend the higher
schools, involve the downfall of the latter. In modern Germany nobody
is at liberty to give his children a noble education: in regard to
their teachers, their curricula, and their educational aims, our higher
schools are one and all established upon a fundamentally doubtful
mediocre basis. Everywhere, too, a hastiness which is unbecoming rules
supreme; just as if something would be forfeited if the young man were
not “finished” at the age of twenty-three, or did not know how to
reply to the most essential question, “which calling to choose?”—The
superior kind of man, if you please, does not like “callings,”
precisely because he knows himself to be called. He has time, he takes
time, he cannot possibly think of becoming “finished,”—in the matter
of higher culture, a man of thirty years is a beginner, a child. Our
overcrowded public-schools, our accumulation of foolishly manufactured
public-school masters, are a scandal: maybe there are very serious
_motives_ for defending this state of affairs, as was shown quite
recently by the professors of Heidelberg; but there can be no reasons
for doing so.
6
In order to be true to my nature, which is affirmative and which
concerns itself with contradictions and criticism only indirectly
and with reluctance, let me state at once what the three objects
are for which we need educators. People must learn to see; they
must learn to think, and they must learn to speak and to write: the
object of all three of these pursuits is a noble culture. To learn
to see—to accustom the eye to calmness, to patience, and to allow
things to come up to it; to defer judgment, and to acquire the habit
of approaching and grasping an individual case from all sides. This
is the first preparatory schooling of intellectuality. One must not
respond immediately to a stimulus; one must acquire a command of the
obstructing and isolating instincts. To learn to see, as I understand
this matter, amounts almost to that which in popular language is
called “strength of will”: its essential feature is precisely _not_
to _wish_ to see, to be able to postpone one’s decision. All lack of
intellectuality, all vulgarity, arises out of the inability to resist
a stimulus:—one must respond or react, every impulse is indulged. In
many cases such necessary action is already a sign of morbidity, of
decline, and a symptom of exhaustion. Almost everything that coarse
popular language characterises as vicious, is merely that physiological
inability to refrain from reacting.—As an instance of what it means
to have learnt to see, let me state that a man thus trained will as a
learner have become generally slow, suspicious, and refractory. With
hostile calm he will first allow every kind of strange and _new_ thing
to come right up to him,—he will draw back his hand at its approach.
To stand with all the doors of one’s soul wide open, to lie slavishly
in the dust before every trivial fact, at all times of the day to be
strained ready for the leap, in order to deposit one’s self, to plunge
one’s self, into other souls and other things, in short, the famous
“objectivity” of modern times, is bad taste, it is essentially vulgar
and cheap.
7
As to learning how to think—our schools no longer have any notion
of such a thing. Even at the universities, among the actual scholars
in philosophy, logic as a theory, as a practical pursuit, and as a
business, is beginning to die out. Turn to any German book: you will
not find the remotest trace of a realisation that there is such a
thing as a technique, a plan of study, a will to mastery, in the
matter of thinking,—that thinking insists upon being learnt, just
as dancing insists upon being learnt, and that thinking insists upon
being learnt as a form of dancing. What single German can still say he
knows from experience that delicate shudder which _light footfalls_
in matters intellectual cause to pervade his whole body and limbs!
Stiff awkwardness in intellectual attitudes, and the clumsy fist in
grasping—these things are so essentially German, that outside Germany
they are absolutely confounded with the German spirit. The German
has no fingers for delicate _nuances. _ The fact that the people of
Germany have actually tolerated their philosophers, more particularly
that most deformed cripple of ideas that has ever existed—the great
Kant, gives one no inadequate notion of their native elegance. For,
truth to tell, dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the
curriculum of all noble education: dancing with the feet, with ideas,
with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with
the pen—that one must learn how to write?—But at this stage I should
become utterly enigmatical to German readers.
[1] The German national hymn: “_Deutschland, Deutschland über
alles.—_” TR.
[2] The word _Kultur-Staat_ “culture-state” has become a standard
expression in the German language, and is applied to the leading
European States.—TR.
SKIRMISHES IN A WAR WITH THE AGE
1