the charm and perfection of all its movements, is attained with
pains: like genius it is the final result of the accumulated work
of generations. Great sacrifices must have been made on the altar
ol good taste, for its sake many things must have been done, and
much must have been left undone—the seventeenth century in France
is admirable for both of these things,—in this century there must
have been a principle of selection in respect to company, locality,
clothing, the gratification of the instinct of sex; beauty must have
been preferred to profit, to habit, to opinion and to indolence. The
first rule of all:—nobody must “let himself go,” not even when he is
alone.—Good things are exceedingly costly:; and in all cases the law
obtains that he who possesses them is a different person from him who
is _acquiring_ them. Everything good is an inheritance: that which is
not inherited is imperfect, it is simply a beginning. In Athens at
the time of Cicero—who expresses his surprise at the fact—the men
and youths were by far superior in beauty to the women: but what hard
work and exertions the male sex had for centuries imposed upon itself
in the service of beauty! We must not be mistaken in regard to the
method employed here: the mere discipline of feelings and thoughts
is little better than nil (—it is in this that the great error of
German culture, which is quite illusory, lies): the _body_ must be
persuaded first. The strict maintenance of a distinguished and tasteful
demeanour, the obligation of frequenting only those who do not “let
themselves go,” is amply sufficient to render one distinguished and
tasteful: in two or three generations everything has already _taken
deep root._ The fate of a people and of humanity is decided according
to whether they begin culture at the _right place—not_ at the “soul”
(as the fatal superstition of the priests and half-priests would have
it): the right place is the body, demeanour, diet, physiology—the rest
follows as the night the day.... That is why the Greeks remain the
_first event in culture_—they knew and they _did_ what was needful.
Christianity with its contempt of the body is the greatest mishap that
has ever befallen mankind.
48
_Progress in my sense._—I also speak of a “return to nature,” although
it is not a process of going back but of going up—up into lofty, free
and even terrible nature and naturalness; such a nature as can play
with great tasks and _may_ play with them.... To speak in a _parable._
Napoleon was an example of a “return to nature,” as I understand it
(for instance _in rebus tacticis,_ and still more, as military experts
know, in strategy). But Rousseau—whither did he want to return?
Rousseau this first modern man, idealist and _canaille_ in one person;
who was in need of moral “dignity,” in order even to endure the sight
of his own person,—ill with unbridled vanity and wanton self-contempt;
this abortion, who planted his tent on the threshold of modernity,
also wanted a “return to nature”; but, I ask once more, whither did
he wish to return? I hate Rousseau, even _in_ the Revolution itself:
the latter was the historical expression of this hybrid of idealist
and _canaille._ The bloody farce which this Revolution ultimately
became, its “immorality,” concerns me but slightly; what I loathe
however is its Rousseauesque _morality_—the so-called “truths” of the
Revolution, by means of which it still exercises power and draws all
flat and mediocre things over to its side. The doctrine of equality!
... But there is no more deadly poison than this; for it _seems_ to
proceed from the very lips of justice, whereas in reality it draws
the curtain down on all justice.... “To equals equality, to unequals
inequality”—that would be the real speech of justice and that which
follows from it “Never make unequal things equal.” The fact that so
much horror and blood are associated with this doctrine of equality,
has lent this “modern idea” _par excellence_ such a halo of fire and
glory, that the Revolution as a drama has misled even the most noble
minds.—That after all is no reason for honouring it the more.—I can
see only one who regarded it as it should be regarded—that is to say,
with _loathing;_ I speak of Goethe.
49
_Goethe_.—No mere German, but a European event: a magnificent attempt
to overcome the eighteenth century by means of a return to nature, by
means of an ascent to the naturalness of the Renaissance, a kind of
self-overcoming on the part of the century in question.—He bore the
strongest instincts of this century in his breast: its sentimentality,
and idolatry of nature, its anti-historic, idealistic, unreal, and
revolutionary spirit (—the latter is only a form of the unreal). He
enlisted history, natural science, antiquity, as well as Spinoza, and
above all practical activity, in his service. He drew a host of very
definite horizons around him; far from liberating himself from life, he
plunged right into it; he did not give in; he took as much as he could
on his own shoulders, and into his heart. That to which he aspired was
_totality_; he was opposed to the sundering of reason, sensuality,
feeling and will (as preached with most repulsive scholasticism
by Kant, the antipodes of Goethe); he disciplined himself into a
harmonious whole, he _created_ himself. Goethe in the midst of an age
of unreal sentiment, was a convinced realist: he said yea to everything
that was like him in this regard,—there was no greater event in his
life than that _ens realissimum_, surnamed Napoleon. Goethe conceived
a strong, highly-cultured man, skilful in all bodily accomplishments,
able to keep himself in check, having a feeling of reverence for
himself, and so constituted as to be able to risk the full enjoyment
of naturalness in all its rich profusion and be strong enough for this
freedom; a man of tolerance, not out of weakness but out of strength,
because he knows how to turn to his own profit that which would ruin
the mediocre nature; a man unto whom nothing is any longer forbidden,
unless it be weakness either as a vice or as a virtue. Such a spirit,
_become free_, appears in the middle of the universe with a feeling
of cheerful and confident fatalism; he believes that only individual
things are bad, and that as a whole the universe justifies and, affirms
itself—_He no longer denies_.... But such a faith is the highest Of
all faiths: I christened it with the name of Dionysus.
50
It might be said that, in a certain sense, the nineteenth century
also strove after all that Goethe himself aspired to: catholicity in
understanding, in approving; a certain reserve towards everything,
daring realism, and a reverence for every fact. How is it that
the total result of this is not a Goethe, but a state of chaos, a
nihilistic groan, an inability to discover where one is, an instinct
of fatigue which _in praxi_ is persistently driving Europe _to hark
back to the eighteenth century_? (—For instance in the form of maudlin
romanticism, altruism, hyper-sentimentality, pessimism in taste,
and socialism in politics). Is not the nineteenth century, at least
in its closing years, merely an accentuated, brutalised eighteenth
century,—that is to say a century of decadence? And has not Goethe
been—not alone for Germany, but also for the whole of Europe,—merely
an episode, a beautiful “in vain”? But great men are misunderstood when
they are regarded from the wretched standpoint of public utility. The
fact that no advantage can be derived from them—_this in itself may
perhaps be peculiar to greatness._
51
Goethe is the last German whom I respect: he had understood three
things as I understand them. We also agree as to the “cross.”[9] People
often ask me why on earth I write in _German:_ nowhere am I less read
than in the Fatherland. But who knows whether I even _desire_ to be
read at present?—To create things on which time may try its teeth in
vain; to be concerned both in the form and the substance of my writing,
about a certain degree of immortality—never have I been modest enough
to demand less of myself. The aphorism, the sentence, in both of
which I, as the first among Germans, am a master, are the forms of
“eternity”; it is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone
else says in a whole book,—what everyone else does _not_ say in a
whole book.
I have given mankind the deepest book it possesses, my _Zarathustra;_
before long I shall give it the most independent one.
[1] The German word _Rausch_ as used by Nietzsche here, suggests a
blend of our two English words “intoxication” and “elation.”—TR.
[2] An allusion to a verse in Luther’s hymn: “_Lass fahren dahin_ ...
_das Reich muss uns doch bleiben,_” which Nietzsche applies to the
German Empire.—TR.
[3] A disciple of Schopenhauer who blunted the sharpness of his
master’s Pessimism and who watered it down for modern requirements.—TR.
[4] Quotation from the Libretto of Mozart’s “Magic Flute” Act I, Sc.
3.—TR.
[5] This alludes to Parsifal. See my note on p. 96, vol. i., “The Will
to Power.”—TR.
[6] This is a playful adaptation of Max von Schenkendorfs poem
“_Freiheit_” The proper line reads: “_Freiheit die ich meine_” (The
freedom that I do mean).—TR.
[7] See “Memoirs of a House of the Dead,” by Dostoiewsky (translation
by Marie von Thilo: “Buried Alive”).—TR.
[8] Clothilde de Veaux.—TR.
[9] See my note on p. 147 of Vol. I. of the _Will to Power._—TR.
THINGS I OWE TO THE ANCIENTS
1
In conclusion I will just say a word concerning that world to which I
have sought new means of access, to which I may perhaps have found a
new passage—the ancient world. My taste, which is perhaps the reverse
of tolerant, is very far from saying yea through and through even to
this world: on the whole it is not over eager to say _Yea,_ it would
prefer to say _Nay,_ and better still nothing whatever.... This is true
of whole cultures; it is true of books,—it is also true of places
and of landscapes. Truth to tell, the number of ancient books that
count for something in my life is but small; and the most famous are
not of that number. My sense of style, for the epigram as style, was
awakened almost spontaneously upon my acquaintance with Sallust. I have
not forgotten the astonishment of my respected teacher Corssen, when
he was forced to give his worst Latin pupil the highest marks,—at one
stroke I had learned all there was to learn. Condensed, severe, with as
much substance as possible in the background, and with cold but roguish
hostility towards all “beautiful words” and “beautiful feelings”—in
these things I found my own particular bent. In my writings up to my
“Zarathustra,” there will be found a very earnest ambition to attain
to the _Roman_ style, to the “_ære perennius_” in style.—The same
thing happened on my first acquaintance with Horace. Up to the present
no poet has given me the same artistic raptures as those which from
the first I received from an Horatian ode. In certain languages it
would be absurd even to aspire to what is accomplished by this poet.
This mosaic of words, in which every unit spreads its power to the
left and to the right over the whole, by its sound, by its place in
the sentence, and by its meaning, this _minimum_ in the compass and
number of the signs, and the _maximum_ of energy in the signs which is
thereby achieved—all this is Roman, and, if you will believe me, noble
_par excellence._ By the side of this all the rest of poetry becomes
something popular,—nothing more than senseless sentimental twaddle.
2
I am not indebted to the Greeks for anything like such strong
impressions; and, to speak frankly, they cannot be to us what the
Romans are. One cannot _learn_ from the Greeks—their style is too
strange, it is also too fluid, to be imperative or to have the effect
of a classic. Who would ever have learnt writing from a Greek! Who
would ever have learned it without the Romans!... Do not let anyone
suggest Plato to me. In regard to Plato I am a thorough sceptic, and
have never been able to agree to the admiration of Plato the _artist,_
which is traditional among scholars. And after all, in this matter,
the most refined judges of taste in antiquity are on my side. In my
opinion Plato bundles all the forms of style pell-mell together,
in this respect he is one of the first decadents of style: he has
something similar on his conscience to that which the Cynics had
who invented the _satura Menippea._ For the Platonic dialogue—this
revoltingly self-complacent and childish kind of dialectics—to
exercise any charm over you, you must never have read any good French
authors,—Fontenelle for instance. Plato is boring. In reality my
distrust of Plato is fundamental. I find him so very much astray
from all the deepest instincts of the Hellenes, so steeped in moral
prejudices, so pre-existently Christian—the concept “good” is already
the highest value with him,—that rather than use any other expression
I would prefer to designate the whole phenomenon Plato with the hard
word “superior bunkum,” or, if you would like it better, “idealism.”
Humanity has had to pay dearly for this Athenian having gone to school
among the Egyptians (—or among the Jews in Egypt?...) In the great
fatality of Christianity, Plato is that double-faced fascination
called the “ideal,” which made it possible for the more noble natures
of antiquity to misunderstand themselves and to tread the _bridge_
which led to the “cross.” And what an amount of Plato is still to be
found in the concept “church,” and in the construction, the system
and the practice of the church!—My recreation, my predilection, my
cure, after all Platonism, has always been Thucydides. Thucydides and
perhaps Machiavelli’s _principe_ are most closely related to me owing
to the absolute determination which they show of refusing to deceive
themselves and of seeing reason in _reality,_—not in “rationality,”
and still less in “morality.” There is no more radical cure than
Thucydides for the lamentably rose-coloured idealisation of the
Greeks which the “classically-cultured” stripling bears with him into
life, as a reward for his public school training. His writings must be
carefully studied line by line, and his unuttered thoughts must be read
as distinctly as what he actually says. There are few thinkers so rich
in unuttered thoughts. In him the culture “of the Sophists”—that is to
say, the culture of realism, receives its most perfect expression: this
inestimable movement in the midst of the moral and idealistic knavery
of the Socratic Schools which was then breaking out in all directions.
Greek philosophy is the decadence of the Greek instinct: Thucydides is
the great summing up, the final manifestation of that strong, severe
positivism which lay in the instincts of the ancient Hellene. After
all, it is courage in the face of reality that distinguishes such
natures as Thucydides from Plato: Plato is a coward in the face of
reality—consequently he takes refuge in the ideal: Thucydides is
master of himself,—consequently he is able to master life.
3
To rout up cases of “beautiful souls,” “golden means” and other
perfections among the Greeks, to admire, say, their calm grandeur,
their ideal attitude of mind, their exalted simplicity—from this
“exalted simplicity,” which after all is a piece of _niaiserie
allemande,_ I was preserved by the psychologist within me. I saw their
strongest instinct, the Will to Power, I saw them quivering with the
fierce violence of this instinct,—I saw all their institutions grow
out of measures of security calculated to preserve each member of
their society from the inner _explosive material_ that lay in his
neighbour’s breast This enormous internal tension thus discharged
itself in terrible and reckless hostility outside the state: the
various states mutually tore each other to bits, in order that each
individual state could remain at peace with itself. It was then
necessary to be strong; for danger lay close at hand,—it lurked in
ambush everywhere. The superb suppleness of their bodies, the daring
realism and immorality which is peculiar to the Hellenes, was a
necessity not an inherent quality. It was a result, it had not been
there from the beginning. Even their festivals and their arts were but
means in producing a feeling of superiority, and of showing it: they
are measures of self-glorification; and in certain circumstances of
making one’s self terrible.... Fancy judging the Greeks in the German
style, from their philosophers; fancy using the suburban respectability
of the Socratic schools as a key to what is fundamentally Hellenic!...
The philosophers are of course the decadents of Hellas, the
counter-movement directed against the old and noble taste—(against the
agonal instinct, against the _Polls,_ against the value of the race,
against the authority of tradition), Socratic virtues were preached to
the Greeks, _because_ the Greeks had lost virtue: irritable, cowardly,
unsteady, and all turned to play-actors, they had more than sufficient
reason to submit to having morality preached to them. Not that it
helped them in any way; but great words and attitudes are so becoming
to decadents.
4
I was the first who, in order to understand the ancient, still rich and
even superabundant Hellenic instinct, took that marvellous phenomenon,
which bears the name of Dionysus, seriously: it can be explained only
as a manifestation of excessive energy. Whoever had studied the Greeks,
as that most profound of modern connoisseurs of their culture, Jakob
Burckhardt of Bâle, had done, knew at once that something had been
achieved by means of this interpretation. And in his “_Cultur der
Griechen_” Burckhardt inserted a special chapter on the phenomenon
in question. If you would like a glimpse of the other side, you have
only to refer to the almost laughable poverty of instinct among German
philologists when they approach the Dionysian question. The celebrated
Lobeck, especially, who with the venerable assurance of a worm dried up
between books, crawled into this world of mysterious states, succeeded
inconvincing himself that he was scientific, whereas he was simply
revoltingly superficial and childish,—Lobeck, with all the pomp of
profound erudition, gave us to understand that, as a matter of fact,
there was nothing at all in all these curiosities. Truth to tell, the
priests may well have communicated not a few things of value to the
participators in such orgies; for instance, the fact that wine provokes
desire, that man in certain circumstances lives on fruit, that plants
bloom in the spring and fade in the autumn. As regards the astounding
wealth of rites, symbols and myths which take their origin in the orgy,
and with which the world of antiquity is literally smothered, Lobeck
finds that it prompts him to a feat of even greater ingenuity than
the foregoing phenomenon did. “The Greeks,” he says, (_Aglaophamus,_
I. p. 672), “when they had nothing better to do, laughed, sprang and
romped about, or, inasmuch as men also like a change at times, they
would sit down, weep and bewail their lot Others then came up who tried
to discover some reason for this strange behaviour; and thus, as an
explanation of these habits, there arose an incalculable number of
festivals, legends, and myths. On the other hand it was believed that
the _farcical performances_ which then perchance began to take place
on festival days, necessarily formed part of the celebrations, and
they were retained as an indispensable part of the ritual.”—This is
contemptible nonsense, and no one will take a man like Lobeck seriously
for a moment We are very differently affected when we examine the
notion “Hellenic,” as Winckelmann and Goethe conceived it, and find it
incompatible with that element out of which Dionysian art springs—I
speak of orgiasm. In reality I do not doubt that Goethe would have
completely excluded any such thing from the potentialities of the Greek
soul. _Consequently Goethe did not understand the Greeks._ For it is
only in the Dionysian mysteries, in the psychology of the Dionysian
state, that the _fundamental fact_ of the Hellenic instinct—its “will
to life”—is expressed. What did the Hellene secure himself with these
mysteries? _Eternal_ life, the eternal recurrence of life; the future
promised and hallowed in the past; the triumphant Yea to life despite
death and change; real life conceived as the collective prolongation
of life through procreation, through the mysteries of sexuality.
To the Greeks, the symbol of sex was the most venerated of symbols,
the really deep significance of all the piety of antiquity. All the
details of the act of procreation, pregnancy and birth gave rise to
the loftiest and most solemn feelings. In the doctrine of mysteries,
_pain_ was pronounced holy: the “pains of childbirth” sanctify pain in
general,—all becoming and all growth, everything that guarantees the
future _involves_ pain.... In order that there may be eternal joy in
creating, in order that the will to life may say Yea to itself in all
eternity, the “pains of childbirth” must also be eternal. All this is
what the word Dionysus signifies: I know of no higher symbolism than
this Greek symbolism, this symbolism of the Dionysian phenomenon. In
it the profoundest instinct of life, the instinct that guarantees the
future of life and life eternal, is understood religiously,—the road
to life itself, procreation, is pronounced _holy,_ ... It was only
Christianity which, with its fundamental resentment against life, made
something impure out of sexuality: it flung _filth_ at the very basis,
the very first condition of our life.
5
The psychology of orgiasm conceived as the feeling of a superabundance
of vitality and strength, within the scope of which even pain _acts
as a stimulus,_ gave me the key to the concept _tragic_ feeling,
which has been misunderstood not only by Aristotle, but also even
more by our pessimists. Tragedy is so far from proving anything in
regard to the pessimism of the Greeks, as Schopenhauer maintains,
that it ought rather to be considered as the categorical repudiation
and _condemnation_ thereof. The saying of Yea to life, including
even its most strange and most terrible problems, the will to life
rejoicing over its own inexhaustibleness in the _sacrifice_ of its
highest types—this is what I called Dionysian, this is what I
divined as the bridge leading to the psychology of the _tragic_ poet.
Not in order to escape from terror and pity, not to purify one’s self
of a dangerous passion by discharging it with vehemence—this is how
Aristotle understood it—but to be far beyond terror and pity and to
be the eternal lust of Becoming itself—that lust which also involves
the _lust of destruction._ And with this I once more come into touch
with the spot from which I once set out—-the “Birth of Tragedy” was
my first transvaluation of all values: with this I again take my stand
upon the soil from out of which my will and my capacity spring—I, the
last disciple of the philosopher Dionysus,—I, the prophet of eternal
recurrence.
THE END.
THE HAMMER SPEAKETH
“Why so hard!”—said the diamond once unto the charcoal; “are we then
not next of kin?”
“Why so soft? O my brethren; this is my question to you. For are ye
not—my brothers?
“Why so soft, so servile and yielding? Why are your hearts so fond of
denial and self-denial? How is it that so little fate looketh out from
your eyes?
“And if ye will not be men of fate and inexorable, how can ye hope one
day to conquer with me?
“And if your hardness will not sparkle, cut and divide, how can ye hope
one day to create with me?
“For all creators are hard. And it must seem to you blessed to stamp
your hand upon millenniums as upon wax,—
—Blessed to write upon the will of millenniums as upon brass,—harder
than brass, nobler than brass.—Hard through and through is only the
noblest.
This new table of values, O my brethren, I set over your heads: Become
hard.”
—“Thus Spake Zarathustra,”
III., 29.
THE ANTICHRIST
An Attempted Criticism of Christianity
PREFACE
This book belongs to the very few. Maybe not one of them is yet alive;
unless he be of those who understand my Zarathustra. How _can_ I
confound myself with those who to-day already find a hearing?—Only the
day after to-morrow belongs to me. Some are born posthumously.