_ferocity_ of moral stultification, which, as is well known, passes
for morality itself in Germany, hurled itself against my concept
“Beyond Good and Evil.” I could tell you some nice tales about this.
Above all, people tried to make me see the “incontestable superiority”
of our age in regard to moral sentiment, and the _progress_ we had
made in these matters. Compared with us, a Cæsar Borgia was by no
means to be represented as “higher man,” the sort of _Superman,_
which I declared him to be. The editor of the Swiss paper the _Bund_
went so far as not only to express his admiration for the courage
displayed by my enterprise, but also to pretend to “understand” that
the intended purpose of my work was to abolish all decent feeling.
Much obliged!—In reply, I venture to raise the following question:
_have we really become more moral?_ The fact that everybody believes
that we have is already an objection to the belief. We modern men,
so extremely delicate and susceptible, full of consideration one for
the other, actually dare to suppose that the pampering fellow-feeling
which we all display, this unanimity which we have at last acquired
in sparing and helping and trusting one another marks a definite step
forward, and shows us to be far ahead of the man of the Renaissance.
But every age thinks the same, it is _bound_ to think the same. This
at least, is certain, that we should not dare to stand amid the
conditions which prevailed at the Renaissance, we should not even dare
to imagine ourselves in those conditions: our nerves could not endure
that reality, not to speak of our muscles. The inability to do this
however does not denote any progress; but simply the different and
more senile quality of our particular nature, its greater weakness,
delicateness, and susceptibility, out of which a morality _more rich
in consideration_ was bound to arise. If we imagine our delicateness
and senility, our physiological decrepitude as non-existent, our
morality of “humanisation” would immediately lose all value—no
morality has any value _per se_—it would even fill us with scorn. On
the other hand, do not let us doubt that we moderns, wrapped as we are
in the thick cotton wool of our humanitarianism which would shrink
even from grazing a stone, would present a comedy to Cæsar Borgia’s
contemporaries which would literally make them die of laughter. We are
indeed, without knowing it, exceedingly ridiculous with our modern
“virtues.” ... The decline of the instincts of hostility and of
those instincts that arouse suspicion,—for this if anything is what
constitutes our progress—is only one of the results manifested by
the general decline in _vitality_: it requires a hundred times more
trouble and caution to live such a dependent and senile existence.
In such circumstances everybody gives everybody else a helping hand,
and, to a certain extent, everybody is either an invalid or an
invalid’s attendant. This is then called “virtue”: among those men
who knew a different life—that is to say, a fuller, more prodigal,
more superabundant sort of life, it might have been called by another
name,—possibly “cowardice,” or “vileness,” or “old woman’s morality.”
... Our mollification of morals—this is my cry; this it you will is
my _innovation_—is the outcome of our decline; conversely hardness
and terribleness in morals may be the result of a surplus of life.
When the latter state prevails, much is dared, much is challenged,
and much is also _squandered_. That which formerly was simply the
salt of life, would now be our _poison_. To be indifferent—even this
is a form of strength—for that, likewise, we are too senile, too
decrepit: our morality of fellow-feeling, against which I was the
first to raise a finger of warning, that which might be called _moral
impressionism_, is one symptom the more of the excessive physiological
irritability which is peculiar to everything decadent. That movement
which attempted to introduce itself in a scientific manner on the
shoulders of Schopenhauer’s morality of pity—a very sad attempt!—is
in its essence the movement of decadence in morality, and as such
it is intimately related to Christian morality. Strong ages and
noble cultures see something contemptible in pity, in the “love of
one’s neighbour,” and in a lack of egoism and of self-esteem.—Ages
should be measured according to their _positive forces_;—valued
by this standard that prodigal and fateful age of the Renaissance,
appears as the last _great_ age, while we moderns with our anxious
care of ourselves and love of our neighbours, with all our unassuming
virtues of industry, equity, and scientific method—with our lust of
collection, of economy and of mechanism—represent a _weak_ age....
Our virtues are necessarily determined, and are even stimulated, by our
weakness. “Equality,” a certain definite process of making everybody
uniform, which only finds its expression in the theory of equal rights,
is essentially bound up with a declining culture: the chasm between
man and man, class and class, the multiplicity of types, the will to
be one’s self, and to distinguish one’s self—that, in fact, which I
call the _pathos of distance_ is proper to all _strong_ ages. The force
of tension,—nay, the tension itself, between extremes grows slighter
every day,—the extremes themselves are tending to become obliterated
to the point of becoming identical. All our political theories and
state constitutions, not by any means excepting “The German Empire,”
are the logical consequences, the necessary consequences of decline;
the unconscious effect of _decadence_ has begun to dominate even the
ideals of the various sciences. My objection to the whole of English
and French sociology still continues to be this, that it knows only
the _decadent form_ of society from experience, and with perfectly
childlike innocence takes the instincts of decline as the norm, the
standard, of sociological valuations. _Descending_ life, the decay
of all organising power—that is to say, of all that power which
separates, cleaves gulfs, and establishes rank above and below,
formulated itself in modern sociology as _the_ ideal. Our socialists
are decadents: but Herbert Spencer was also a _decadent,_—he saw
something to be desired in the triumph of altruism!...
38
_My Concept of Freedom._—Sometimes the value of a thing does not lie
in that which it helps us to achieve, but in the amount we have to
pay for it,—what it _costs_ us. For instance, liberal institutions
straightway cease from being liberal, the moment they are soundly
established: once this is attained no more grievous and more thorough
enemies of freedom exist than liberal institutions! One knows, of
course, what they bring about: they undermine the Will to Power,
they are the levelling of mountain and valley exalted to a morality,
they make people small, cowardly and pleasure-loving,—by means of
them the gregarious animal invariably triumphs. Liberalism, or, in
plain English, the _transformation of mankind into cattle._ The
same institutions, so long as they are fought for, produce quite
other results; then indeed they promote the cause of freedom quite
powerfully. Regarded more closely, it is war which produces these
results, war in favour of liberal institutions, which, as war, allows
the illiberal instincts to subsist. For war trains men to be free.
What in sooth is freedom? Freedom is the will to be responsible
for ourselves. It is to preserve the distance which separates us
from other men. To grow more indifferent to hardship, to severity,
to privation, and even to life itself. To be ready to sacrifice
men for one’s cause, one’s self included. Freedom denotes that the
virile instincts which rejoice in war and in victory, prevail over
other instincts; for instance, over the instincts of “happiness.”
The man who has won his freedom, and how much more so, therefore,
the spirit that has won its freedom, tramples ruthlessly upon that
contemptible kind of comfort which tea-grocers, Christians, cows,
women, Englishmen and other democrats worship in their dreams. The
free man is a _warrior._—How is freedom measured in individuals
as well as in nations? According to the resistance which has to be
overcome, according to the pains which it costs to remain _uppermost._
The highest type of free man would have to be sought where the
greatest resistance has continually to be overcome: five paces away
from tyranny, on the very threshold of the danger of thraldom. This
is psychologically true if, by the word “Tyrants” we mean inexorable
and terrible instincts which challenge the _maximum_ amount of
authority and discipline to oppose them—the finest example of this
is Julius Cæsar; it is also true politically: just examine the course
of history. The nations which were worth anything, which _got to
be_ worth anything, never attained to that condition under liberal
institutions: _great danger_ made out of them something which deserves
reverence, that danger which alone can make us aware of our resources,
our virtues, our means of defence, our weapons, our _genius,_—which
_compels_ us to be strong. _First_ principle: a man must need to be
strong, otherwise he will never attain it.—Those great forcing-houses
of the strong, of the strongest kind of men that have ever existed on
earth, the aristocratic communities like those of Rome and Venice,
understood freedom precisely as I understand the word: as something
that one has and that one has _not,_ as something that one _will_ have
and that one _seizes by force._
39
_A Criticism of Modernity._—Our institutions are no longer any good;
on this point we are all agreed. But the fault does not lie with
them; but with _us._ Now that we have lost all the instincts out
of which institutions grow, the latter on their part are beginning
to disappear from our midst because we are no longer fit for them.
Democracy has always been the death agony of the power of organisation:
already in “Human All-too-Human,” Part I., Aph. 472, I pointed out
that modern democracy, together with its half-measures, of which the
“German Empire” is an example, was a decaying form of the State. For
institutions to be possible there must exist a sort of will, instinct,
imperative, which cannot be otherwise than antiliberal to the point of
wickedness: the will to tradition, to authority, to responsibility
for centuries to come, to _solidarity_ in long family lines forwards
and backwards _in infinitum._ If this will is present, something is
founded which resembles the _imperium Romanum;_ or Russia, the _only_
great nation to-day that has some lasting power and grit in her, that
can bide her time, that can still promise something.—Russia the
opposite of all wretched European petty-statism and neurasthenia,
which the foundation of the German Empire has brought to a crisis. The
whole of the Occident no longer possesses those instincts from which
institutions spring, out of which a _future_ grows: maybe nothing is
more opposed to its “modern spirit” than these things. People live
for the present, the live at top speed,—they certainly live without
any sense of responsibility; and this is precisely what they call
“freedom.” Everything in institutions which makes them institutions,
is scorned, loathed and repudiated: everybody is in mortal fear of a
new slavery, wherever the word “authority” is so much as whispered.
The decadence of the valuing instinct, both in our politicians and in
our political parties, goes so far, that they instinctively prefer
that which acts as a solvent, that which precipitates the final
catastrophe.... As an example of this behold _modern_ marriage. All
reason has obviously been divorced from modern marriage: but this is
no objection to matrimony itself but to modernity. The rational basis
of marriage—it lay in the exclusive legal responsibility of the man:
by this means some ballast was laid in the ship of matrimony, whereas
nowadays it has a list, now on this side, now on that. The rational
basis of marriage—it lay in its absolute indissolubleness: in this way
it was given a gravity which knew how to make its influence felt, in
the face of the accident of sentiment, passion and momentary impulse:
it lay also in the fact that the responsibility of choosing the parties
to the contract, lay with the families. By showing ever more and more
favour to love-marriages, the very foundation of matrimony, that which
alone makes it an institution, has been undermined. No institution
ever has been nor ever will be built upon an idiosyncrasy; as I say,
marriage cannot be based upon “love.” It can be based upon sexual
desire; upon the instinct of property (wife and child as possessions);
upon the instinct of dominion, which constantly organises for itself
the smallest form of dominion,—the family which _requires_ children
and heirs in order to hold fast, also in the physiological sense, to
a certain quantum of acquired power, influence and wealth, so as to
prepare for lasting tasks, and for solidarity in the instincts from
one century to another. Marriage as an institution presupposes the
affirmation of the greatest and most permanent form of organisation; if
society cannot as a whole _stand security_ for itself into the remotest
generations, marriage has no meaning whatsoever.—Modern marriage _has
lost_ its meaning; consequently it is being abolished.
40
_The question of the Working-man._—The mere fact that there is such
a thing as the question of the working-man is due to stupidity, or at
bottom to degenerate instincts which are the cause of all the stupidity
of modern times. Concerning certain things _no questions ought to be
put:_ the first imperative principle of instinct. For the life of me
I cannot see what people want to do with the working-man of Europe,
now that they have made a question of him. He is far too comfortable
to cease from questioning ever more and more, and with ever less
modesty. After all, he has the majority on his side. There is now
not the slightest hope that an unassuming and contented sort of man,
after the style of the Chinaman, will come into being in this quarter:
and this would have been the reasonable course, it was even a dire
necessity. What has been done? Everything has been done with the view
of nipping the very pre-requisite of this accomplishment in the bud,
—with the most frivolous thoughtlessness those selfsame instincts by
means of which a working-class becomes possible, and _tolerable even_
to its members themselves, have been destroyed root and branch. The
working-man has been declared fit for military service; he has been
granted the right of combination, and of voting: can it be wondered at
that he already regards his condition as one of distress (expressed
morally, as an injustice)? But, again I ask, what do people want? If
they desire a certain end, then they should desire the means thereto.
If they will have slaves, then it is madness to educate them to be
masters.
41
“The kind of freedom I do _not_ mean....”[6]—In an age like the
present, it simply adds to one’s perils to be left to one’s instincts.
The instincts contradict, disturb, and destroy each other; I have
already defined modernism as physiological self-contradiction. A
reasonable system of education would insist upon at least one of
these instinct-systems being _paralysed_ beneath an iron pressure, in
order to allow others to assert their power, to grow strong, and to
dominate. At present, the only conceivable way of making the individual
possible would be to _prune_ him:—of making him possible—that is to
say, _whole._ The very reverse occurs. Independence, free development,
and _laisser aller_ are clamoured for most violently precisely by
those for whom no restraint _could be too severe_—this is true _in
politics,_ it is true in Art. But this is a symptom of decadence: our
modern notion of “freedom” is one proof the more of the degeneration of
instinct.
42
_Where faith is necessary._—Nothing is more rare among moralists and
saints than uprightness; maybe they say the reverse is true, maybe
they even believe it. For, when faith is more useful, more effective,
more convincing than _conscious_ hypocrisy, by instinct that hypocrisy
forthwith becomes _innocent:_ first principle towards the understanding
of great saints. The same holds good of philosophers, that other order
of saints; their whole business compels them to concede only certain
truths—that is to say, those by means of which their particular trade
receives the _public_ sanction,—to speak “Kantingly”: the truths of
_practical_ reason. They know what they _must_ prove; in this respect
they are practical,—they recognise each other by the fact that
they agree upon “certain truths.”—“Thou shalt not lie”—in plain
English:—_Beware,_ Mr Philosopher, of speaking the truth....
43
_A quiet hint to Conservatives._—That which we did not know
formerly, and know now, or might know if we chose,—is the fact that
a _retrograde formation,_ a reversion in any sense or degree, is
absolutely impossible. We physiologists, at least, are aware of this.
But all priests and moralists have believed in it,—they wished to
drag and screw man back to a former standard of virtue. Morality has
always been a Procrustean bed. Even the politicians have imitated
the preachers of virtue in this matter. There are parties at the
present day whose one aim and dream is to make all things adopt the
_crab-march._ But not everyone can be a crab. It cannot be helped: we
must go forward,—that is to say step by step further and further into
decadence (—this is my definition of modern “progress”). We can hinder
this development, and by so doing dam up and accumulate degeneration
itself and render it more convulsive, more _volcanic:_ we cannot do
more.
44
_My concept of Genius._—Great men, like great ages, are explosive
material, in which a stupendous amount of power is accumulated;
the first conditions of their existence are always historical and
physiological; they are the outcome of the fact that for long ages
energy has been collected, hoarded up, saved up and preserved for their
use, and that no explosion has taken place. When, the tension in the
bulk has become sufficiently excessive, the most fortuitous stimulus
suffices in order to call “genius,” “great deeds,” and momentous
fate into the world. What then is the good of all environment,
historical periods, “_Zeitgeist_” (Spirit of the age) and “public
opinion”?—Take the case of Napoleon. France of the Revolution,
and still more of the period preceding the Revolution, would have
brought forward a type which was the very reverse of Napoleon: it
actually _did_ produce such a type. And because Napoleon was something
different, the heir of a stronger, more lasting and older civilisation
than that which in France was being smashed to atoms he became master
there, he was the only master there. Great men are necessary, the age
in which they appear is a matter of chance; the fact that they almost
invariably master their age is accounted for simply by the fact that
they are stronger, that they are older, and that power has been stored
longer for them. The relation of a genius to his age is that which
exists between strength and weakness and between maturity and youth:
the age is relatively always very much younger, thinner, less mature,
less resolute and more childish. The fact that the general opinion in
France at the present day, is utterly different on this very point (in
Germany too, but that is of no consequence); the fact that in that
country the theory of environment—a regular neuropathic notion—has
become sacrosanct and almost scientific, and finds acceptance even
among the physiologists, is a very bad, and exceedingly depressing
sign. In England too the same belief prevails: but nobody will be
surprised at that. The Englishman knows only two ways of understanding
the genius and the “great man”: either _democratically_ in the style
of Buckle, or religiously after the manner of Carlyle.—The danger
which great men and great ages represent, is simply extraordinary;
every kind of exhaustion and of sterility follows in their wake. The
great man is an end; the great age—the Renaissance for instance,—is
an end. The genius—in work and in deed,—is necessarily a squanderer:
the fact that he spends himself constitutes his greatness. The instinct
of self-preservation is as it were suspended in him; the overpowering
pressure of out-flowing energy in him forbids any such protection and
prudence. People call this “self-sacrifice,” they praise his “heroism,”
his indifference to his own well-being, his utter devotion to an idea,
a great cause, a father-land: All misunderstandings.... He flows out,
he flows over, he consumes himself, he does not spare himself,—and
does all this with fateful necessity, irrevocably, involuntarily, just
as a river involuntarily bursts its dams. But, owing to the fact that
humanity has been much indebted to such explosives, it has endowed them
with many things, for instance, with a kind of _higher morality_....
This is indeed the sort of gratitude that humanity is capable of: it
_misunderstands_ its benefactors.
45
_The criminal and his like._—The criminal type is the type of the
strong man amid unfavourable conditions, a strong man made sick. He
lacks the wild and savage state, a form of nature and existence which
is freer and more dangerous, in which everything that constitutes
the shield and the sword in the instinct of the strong man, takes
a place by right. Society puts a ban upon his virtues; the most
spirited instincts inherent in him immediately become involved with
the depressing passions, with suspicion, fear and dishonour. But this
is almost the recipe for physiological degeneration. When a man has
to do that which he is best suited to do, which he is most fond of
doing, not only clandestinely, but also with long suspense, caution and
ruse, he becomes anæmic; and inasmuch as he is always having to pay
for his instincts in the form of danger, persecution and fatalities,
even his feelings begin to turn against these instincts—he begins to
regard them as fatal. It is society, our tame, mediocre, castrated
society, in which an untutored son of nature who comes to us from his
mountains or from his adventures at sea, must necessarily degenerate
into a criminal. Or almost necessarily: for there are cases in which
such a man shows himself to be stronger than society: the Corsican
Napoleon is the most celebrated case of this. Concerning the problem
before us, Dostoiewsky’s testimony is of importance—Dostoiewsky who,
incidentally, was the only psychologist from whom I had anything
to learn: he belongs to the happiest windfalls of my life, happier
even than the discovery of Stendhal. This profound man, who was
right ten times over in esteeming the superficial Germans low, found
the Siberian convicts among whom he lived for many years,—those
thoroughly hopeless criminals for whom no road back to society stood
open—very different from what even he had expected,—that is to say
carved from about the best, hardest and most valuable material that
grows on Russian soil.[7] Let us generalise the case of the criminal;
let us imagine creatures who for some reason or other fail to meet
with public approval, who know that they are regarded neither as
beneficent nor useful,—the feeling of the Chandala, who are aware
that they are not looked upon as equal, but as proscribed, unworthy,
polluted. The thoughts and actions of all such natures are tainted
with a subterranean mouldiness; everything in them is of a paler hue
than in those on whose existence the sun shines. But almost all those
creatures whom, nowadays, we honour and respect, formerly lived in this
semi-sepulchral atmosphere: the man of science, the artist, the genius,
the free spirit, the actor, the business man, and the great explorer.
As long as the _priest_ represented the highest type of man, every
valuable kind of man was depreciated.... The time is coming—this I
guarantee—when he will pass as the _lowest_ type, as our Chandala, as
the falsest and most disreputable kind of man.... I call your attention
to the fact that even now, under the sway of the mildest customs and
usages which have ever ruled on earth or at least in Europe, every
form of standing aside, every kind of prolonged, excessively prolonged
concealment, every unaccustomed and obscure form of existence tends to
approximate to that type which the criminal exemplifies to perfection.
All pioneers of the spirit have, for a while, the grey and fatalistic
mark of the Chandala on their brows: _not_ because they are regarded as
Chandala, but because they themselves feel the terrible chasm which
separates them from all that is traditional and honourable. Almost
every genius knows the “Catilinarian life” as one of the stages in his
development, a feeling of hate, revenge and revolt against everything
that exists, that has ceased to evolve.... Catiline—the early stage of
every Cæsar.
46
_Here the outlook is free._—When a philosopher holds his tongue it may
be the sign of the loftiness of his soul: when he contradicts himself
it may be love; and the very courtesy of a knight of knowledge may
force him to lie. It has been said, and not without subtlety:—_il
est indigne des grands cœurs de répandre le trouble qu’ils
ressentent[8]:_ but it is necessary to add that there may also be
_grandeur de cœur_ in not shrinking _from the most undignified
proceeding._ A woman who loves sacrifices her honour; a knight of
knowledge who “loves,” sacrifices perhaps his humanity; a God who
loved, became a Jew....
47