understands me, and then _necessarily_ understands. He must be
intellectually upright to the point of hardness, in order even to
endure my seriousness and my passion. He must be used to living on
mountain-tops,—and to feeling the wretched gabble of politics and
national egotism _beneath_ him. He must have become indifferent; he
must never inquire whether truth is profitable or whether it may
prove fatal.... Possessing from strength a predilection for questions
for which no one has enough courage nowadays; the courage for the
_forbidden;_ his predestination must be the labyrinth. The experience
of seven solitudes. New ears for new music. New eyes for the most
remote things. A new conscience for truths which hitherto have
remained dumb. And the will to economy on a large scale: to husband
his strength and his enthusiasm.... He must honour himself, he must
love himself; he must be absolutely free with regard to himself....
Very well then! Such men alone are my readers, my proper readers,
my preordained readers: of what account are the rest?—the rest are
simply—humanity.—One must be superior to humanity in power, in
loftiness of soul,—in contempt.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
1
Let us look each other in the face. We are hyperboreans,—we know
well enough how far outside the crowd we stand. “Thou wilt find the
way to the Hyperboreans neither by land nor by water”: Pindar already
knew this much about us. Beyond the north, the ice, and death—_our
life, our happiness...._ We discovered happiness; we know the way; we
found the way out of thousands of years of labyrinth. Who _else_ would
have found it?—Not the modern man, surely?—“I do not know where I
am or what I am to do; I am everything that knows not where it is or
what to do,”—sighs the modern man. We were made quite ill by _this_
modernity,—with its indolent peace, its cowardly compromise, and the
whole of the virtuous filth of its Yea and Nay. This tolerance and
_largeur de cœur_ which “forgives” everything because it “understands”
everything, is a Sirocco for us. We prefer to live amid ice than to
be breathed upon by modern virtues and other southerly winds!... We
were brave enough; we spared neither ourselves nor others: but we
were very far from knowing whither to direct our bravery. We were
becoming gloomy; people called us fatalists. _Our_ fate—it was the
abundance, the tension and the storing up of power. We thirsted for
thunderbolts and great deeds; we kept at the most respectful distance
from the joy of the weakling, from “resignation.” ... Thunder was in
our air, that part of nature which we are, became overcast—_for we had
no direction._ The formula of our happiness: a Yea, a Nay, a straight
line, a goal.
2
What is good? All that enhances the feeling of power, the Will to
Power, and power itself in man. What is bad?—All that proceeds
from weakness. What is happiness?—The feeling that power is
_increasing,_—that resistance has been overcome.
Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not
virtue, but efficiency[1] (virtue in the Renaissance sense, _virtu,_
free from all moralic acid). The weak and the botched shall perish:
first principle of our humanity. And they ought even to be helped to
perish.
What is more harmful than any vice?—Practical sympathy with all the
botched and the weak—Christianity.
3
The problem I set in this work is not what will replace mankind in the
order of living being! (—Man is an _end_—); but, what type of man
must be _reared,_ must be _willed,_ as having the higher value, as
being the most worthy of life and the surest guarantee of the future.
This more valuable type has appeared often enough already: but as a
happy accident, as an exception, never as _willed._ He has rather been
precisely the most feared; hitherto he has been almost the terrible in
itself;—and from out the very fear he provoked there arose the will
to rear the type which has how been reared, _attained:_ the domestic
animal, the gregarious animal, the sick animal man,—the Christian.
4
Mankind does _not_ represent a development towards a better, stronger
or higher type, in the sense in which this is supposed to occur to-day.
“Progress” is merely a modern idea—that is to say, a false idea.[2]
The modern European is still far below the European of the Renaissance
in value. The process of evolution does not by any means imply
elevation, enhancement and increasing strength.
On the other hand isolated and individual cases are continually
succeeding in different places on earth, as the outcome of the most
different cultures, and in these a _higher type_ certainly manifests
itself: something which by the side of mankind in general, represents a
kind of superman. Such lucky strokes of great success have always been
possible and will perhaps always be possible. And even whole races,
tribes and nations may in certain circumstances represent such _lucky
strokes._
5
We must not deck out and adorn Christianity: it has waged a deadly
war upon this _higher_ type of man, it has set a ban upon all the
fundamental instincts of this type, and has distilled evil and the
devil himself out of these instincts:—the strong man as the typical
pariah, the villain. Christianity has sided with everything weak, low,
and botched; it has made an ideal out of _antagonism_ towards all the
self-preservative instincts of strong life: it has corrupted even the
reason of the strongest intellects, by teaching that the highest values
of intellectuality are sinful, misleading and full of temptations.
The most lamentable example of this was the corruption of Pascal, who
believed in the perversion of his reason through original sin, whereas
it had only been perverted by his Christianity.
6
A painful and ghastly spectacle has just risen before my eyes. I tore
down the curtain which concealed mankind’s _corruption._ This word in
my mouth is at least secure from the suspicion that it contains a moral
charge against mankind. It is—I would fain emphasise this again—free
from moralic acid: to such an extent is this so, that I am most
thoroughly conscious of the corruption in question precisely in those
quarters in which hitherto people have aspired with most determination
to “virtue” and to “godliness.” As you have already surmised, I
understand corruption in the sense of _decadence._ What I maintain is
this, that all the values upon which mankind builds its highest hopes
and desires are _decadent_ values.
I call an animal, a species, an individual corrupt, when it loses its
instincts, when it selects and _prefers_ that which is detrimental to
it. A history of the “higher feelings,” of “human ideals”—and it is
not impossible that I shall have to write it—would almost explain why
man is so corrupt. Life itself, to my mind, is nothing more nor less
than the instinct of growth, of permanence, of accumulating forces,
of power: where the will to power is lacking, degeneration sets in.
My contention is that all the highest values of mankind _lack_ this
will,—that the values of decline and of _nihilism_ are exercising the
sovereign power under the cover of the holiest names.
7
Christianity is called the religion of _pity._—Pity is opposed to
the tonic passions which enhance the energy of the feeling of life:
its action is depressing. A man loses power when he pities. By
means of pity the drain on strength which suffering itself already
introduces into the world is multiplied a thousandfold. Through pity,
suffering itself becomes infectious; in certain circumstances it may
lead to a total loss of life and vital energy, which is absurdly
put of proportion to the magnitude of the cause (—the case of the
death of the Nazarene). This is the first standpoint; but there is a
still more important one. Supposing one measures pity according to
the value of the reactions it usually stimulates, its danger to life
appears in a much more telling light On the whole, pity thwarts the
law of development which is the law of selection. It preserves that
which is ripe for death, it fights in favour of the disinherited and
the condemned of life; thanks to the multitude of abortions of all
kinds which it maintains in life, it lends life itself a sombre and
questionable aspect. People have dared to call pity a virtue (—in
every _noble_ culture it is considered as a weakness—); people went
still further, they exalted it to _the_ virtue, the root and origin
of all virtues,—but, of course, what must never be forgotten is the
fact that this was done from the standpoint of a philosophy which
was nihilistic, and on whose shield the device _The Denial of Life_
was inscribed. Schopenhauer was right in this respect: by means of
pity, life is denied and made _more worthy of denial,_—pity is
the _praxis_ of Nihilism. I repeat, this depressing and infectious
instinct thwarts those instincts which aim at the preservation and
enhancement of the value life: by _multiplying_ misery quite as much
as by preserving all that is miserable, it is the principal agent in
promoting decadence,—pity exhorts people to nothing, to _nonentity!_
But they do not say “_nonentity_” they say “Beyond,” or “God,” or “the
true life”; or Nirvana, or Salvation, or Blessedness, instead. This
innocent rhetoric, which belongs to the realm of the religio-moral
idiosyncrasy, immediately appears to be _very much less innocent_ if
one realises what the tendency is which here tries to drape itself in
the mantle of sublime expressions—the tendency of hostility to life.
Schopenhauer was hostile to life: that is why he elevated pity to a
virtue.... Aristotle, as you know, recognised in pity a morbid and
dangerous state, of which it was wise to rid one’s self from time to
time by a purgative: he regarded tragedy as a purgative. For the sake
of the instinct of life, it would certainly seem necessary to find some
means of lancing any such morbid and dangerous accumulation of pity, as
that which possessed Schopenhauer (and unfortunately the whole of our
literary and artistic decadence as well, from St Petersburg to Paris,
from Tolstoi to Wagner), if only to make it _burst...._ Nothing is
more unhealthy in the midst of our unhealthy modernity, than Christian
pity. To be doctors _here,_ to be inexorable _here,_ to wield the knife
effectively _here,—_ all this is our business, all this is _our_
kind of love to our fellows, this is what makes _us_ philosophers, us
hyperboreans!—
8
It is necessary to state whom we regard as our antithesis:—the
theologians, and all those who have the blood of theologians in their
veins—the whole of our philosophy.... A man must have had his very
nose upon this fatality, or better still he must have experienced it
in his own soul; he must almost have perished through it, in order
to be unable to treat this matter lightly (—the free-spiritedness
of our friends the naturalists and physiologists is, in my opinion,
a _joke,_—what they lack in these questions is passion, what they
lack is having suffered from these questions—). This poisoning
extends much further than people think: I unearthed the “arrogant”
instinct of the theologian, wherever nowadays people feel themselves
idealists,—wherever, thanks to superior antecedents, they claim the
right to rise above reality and to regard it with suspicion.... Like
the priest the idealist has every grandiloquent concept in his hand
(—and not only in his hand!), he wields them all with kindly contempt
against the “understanding,” the “senses,” “honours,” “decent living,”
“science”; he regards such things as _beneath_ him, as detrimental and
seductive forces, upon the face of which, “the Spirit” moves in pure
absoluteness:—as if humility, chastity, poverty, in a word _holiness,_
had not done incalculably more harm to life hitherto, than any sort of
horror and vice.... Pure spirit is pure falsehood.... As long as the
priest, the _professional_ denier, calumniator and poisoner of life, is
considered as the _highest_ kind of man, there can be no answer to the
question, what _is_ truth? Truth has already been turned topsy-turvy,
when the conscious advocate of nonentity and of denial passes as the
representative of “truth.”
9
It is upon this theological instinct that I wage war. I find traces
of it everywhere. Whoever has the blood of theologians in his veins,
stands from the start in a false and dishonest position to all things.
The pathos which grows out of this state, is called _Faith:_ that is
to say, to shut one’s eyes once and for all, in order not to suffer
at the sight of incurable falsity. People convert this faulty view of
all things into a moral, a virtue, a thing of holiness. They endow
their distorted vision with a good conscience,—they claim that no
_other_ point of view is any longer of value, once theirs has been
made sacrosanct with the names “God,” “Salvation,” “Eternity.” I
unearthed the instinct of the theologian everywhere: it is the most
universal, and actually the most subterranean form of falsity on earth.
That which a theologian considers true, _must_ of necessity be false:
this furnishes almost the criterion of truth. It is his most profound
self-preservative instinct which forbids reality ever to attain to
honour in any way, or even to raise its voice. Whithersoever the
influence of the theologian extends, _valuations_ are topsy-turvy,
and the concepts “true” and “false” have necessarily changed places:
that which is most deleterious to life, is here called “true,” that
which enhances it, elevates it, says Yea to it, justifies it and
renders it triumphant, is called “false.” ... If it should happen that
theologians, _via_ the “conscience” either of princes or of the people,
stretch out their hand for power, let us not be in any doubt as to
what results therefrom each time, namely:—the will to the end, the
_nihilistic_ will to power....
10
Among Germans I am immediately understood when I say, that philosophy
is ruined by the blood of theologians. The Protestant minister is
the grand-father of German philosophy, Protestantism itself is the
latter’s _peccatum originale._ Definition of Protestantism: the
partial paralysis of Christianity—and of reason.... One needs only to
pronounce the words “Tübingen Seminary,” in order to understand what
German philosophy really is at bottom, theology _in disguise_.... The
Swabians are the best liars in Germany, they lie innocently.... Whence
came all the rejoicing with which the appearance of Kant was greeted
by the scholastic world of Germany, three-quarters of which consist of
clergymen’s and schoolmasters’ sons? Whence came the German conviction,
which finds an echo even now, that Kant inaugurated a change for the
_better?_ The theologian’s instinct in the German scholar divined what
had once again been made possible.... A back-staircase leading into
the old ideal was discovered, the concept “true world,” the concept
morality as the _essence_ of the world (—those two most vicious errors
that have ever existed!), were, thanks to a subtle and wily scepticism,
once again, if not demonstrable, at least no longer _refutable...._
Reason, the _prerogative_ of reason, does not extend so far.... Out of
reality they had made “appearance”; and an absolutely false world—that
of being—had been declared to be reality. Kant’s success is merely a
theologian’s success. Like Luther, and like Leibniz, Kant was one brake
the more upon the already squeaky wheel of German uprightness.
11
One word more against Kant as a _moralist._ A virtue _must_ be _our_
invention, our most personal defence and need: in every other sense it
is merely a danger. That which does not constitute a condition of our
life, is merely harmful to it: to possess a virtue merely because one
happens to respect the concept “virtue,” as Kant would have us do, is
pernicious. “Virtue,” “Duty,” “Goodness in itself,” goodness stamped
with the character of impersonality and universal validity—these
things are mere mental hallucinations, in which decline the final
devitalisation of life and Königsbergian Chinadom find expression. The
most fundamental laws of preservation and growth, demand precisely the
reverse, namely:—that each should discover _his_ own virtue, his own
Categorical Imperative. A nation goes to the dogs when it confounds
its concept of duty with the general concept of duty. Nothing is more
profoundly, more thoroughly pernicious, than every impersonal feeling
of duty, than every sacrifice to the Moloch of abstraction.—Fancy no
one’s having thought Kant’s Categorical Imperative _dangerous to life!_
... The instinct of the theologist alone took it under its wing!—An
action stimulated by the instinct of life, is proved to be a proper
action by the happiness that accompanies it: and that nihilist with the
bowels of a Christian dogmatist regarded happiness as an _objection
..._. What is there that destroys a man more speedily than to work,
think, feel, as an automaton of “duty,” without internal promptings,
without a profound personal predilection, without joy? This is the
recipe _par excellence_ of decadence and even of idiocy.... Kant became
an idiot—And he was the contemporary of Goethe! This fatal spider was
regarded as _the_ German philosopher,—is still regarded as such!... I
refrain from saying what I think of the Germans.... Did Kant not see in
the French Revolution the transition of the State from the inorganic to
the _organic_ form? Did he not ask himself whether there was a single
event on record which could be explained otherwise than as a moral
faculty of mankind; so that by means of it, “mankind’s tendency towards
good,” might be _proved_ once and for all? Kant’s reply: “that is the
Revolution.” Instinct at fault in anything and everything, hostility to
nature as an instinct, German decadence made into philosophy_—that is
Kant!_
12
Except for a few sceptics, the respectable type in the history of
philosophy, the rest do not know the very first pre-requisite of
intellectual uprightness. They all behave like females, do these great
enthusiasts and animal prodigies,—they regard “beautiful feelings”
themselves as arguments, the “heaving breast” as the bellows of
divinity, and conviction as the _criterion_ of truth. In the end,
even Kant, with “Teutonic” innocence, tried to dress this lack of
intellectual conscience up in a scientific garb by means of the concept
“practical reason.” He deliberately invented a kind of reason which
at times would allow one to dispense with reason, that is to say when
“morality,” when the sublime command “thou shalt,” makes itself heard.
When one remembers that in almost all nations the philosopher is only a
further development of the priestly type, this heirloom of priesthood,
this _fraud towards one’s self,_ no longer surprises one. When a man
has a holy life-task, as for instance to improve, save, or deliver
mankind, when a man bears God in his breast, and is the mouthpiece of
imperatives from another world,—with such a mission he stands beyond
the pale of all merely reasonable valuations. He is even sanctified by
such a taste, and is already the type of a higher order! What does a
priest care about science! He stands too high for that!—And until now
the priest has _ruled!_—He it was who determined the concept “true
and false.”
13
Do not let us undervalue the fact that we _ourselves,_ we free spirits,
are already a “transvaluation of all values,” an incarnate declaration
of war against all the old concepts “true” and “untrue” and of a
triumph over them. The most valuable standpoints are always the last
to be found: but the most valuable standpoints are the methods. AH the
methods and the first principles of our modern scientific procedure,
had for years to encounter the profoundest contempt: association
with them meant exclusion from the society of decent people—one was
regarded as an “enemy of God,” as a scoffer at truth and as “one
possessed.” With one’s scientific nature, one belonged to the Chandala.
We have had the whole feeling of mankind against us; hitherto their
notion of that which ought to be truth, of that which ought to serve
the purpose of truth: every “thou shalt,” has been directed against
us.... Our objects, our practices, our calm, cautious distrustful
manner—everything about us seemed to them absolutely despicable and
beneath contempt After all, it might be asked with some justice,
whether the thing which kept mankind blindfold so long, were not an
æsthetic taste: what they demanded of truth was a _picturesque_ effect,
and from the man of science what they expected was that he should make
a forcible appeal to their senses. It was our _modesty_ which ran
counter to their taste so long ... And oh! how well they guessed this,
did these divine turkey-cocks!—
14
We have altered our standpoint. In every respect we have become
more modest We no longer derive man from the “spirit,” and from the
“godhead”; we have thrust him back among the beasts. We regard him as
the strongest animal, because he is the craftiest: one of the results
thereof is his intellectuality. On the other hand we guard against the
vain pretension, which even here would fain assert itself: that man is
the great _arrière pensée_ of organic evolution! He is by no means the
crown of creation, beside him, every other creature stands at the same
stage of perfection.... And even in asserting this we go a little too
far; for, relatively speaking, man is the most botched and diseased
of animals, and he has wandered furthest from his instincts. Be all
this as it may, he is certainly the most _interesting!_ As regards
animals, Descartes was the first, with really admirable daring, to
venture the thought that the beast was _machina,_ and the whole of
our physiology is endeavouring to prove this proposition. Moreover,
logically we do not set man apart, as Descartes did: the extent
to which man is understood to-day goes only so far as he has been
understood mechanistically. Formerly man was given “free will,” as his
dowry from a higher sphere; nowadays we have robbed him even of will,
in view of the fact that no such faculty is any longer known. The only
purpose served by the old word “will,” is to designate a result, a
sort of individual reaction which necessarily follows upon a host of
partly discordant and partly harmonious stimuli:—the will no longer
“effects” or “moves” anything.... Formerly people thought that man’s
consciousness, his “spirit,” was a proof of his lofty origin, of his
divinity. With the idea of perfecting man, he was conjured to draw his
senses inside himself, after the manner of the tortoise, to cut off all
relations with terrestrial things, and to divest himself of his mortal
shell. Then the most important thing about him, the “pure spirit,”
would remain over. Even concerning these things we have improved our
standpoint Consciousness, “spirit,” now seems to us rather a symptom of
relative imperfection in the organism, as an experiment, a groping, a
misapprehension, an affliction which absorbs an unnecessary quantity of
nervous energy. We deny that anything can be done perfectly so long as
it is done consciously. “Pure spirit” is a piece of “pure stupidity”:
if we discount the nervous system, the senses and the “mortal shell,”
we have miscalculated—that it is all!...
15