the different ranks and social conditions, like a plant requiring no
specific soil: on that account he belongs essentially and involuntarily
to the partisans of democratic thought. But this origin betrays itself.
If one has trained one's glance to some extent to recognise in a learned
book or scientific treatise the intellectual _idiosyncrasy_ of the
learned man—all of them have such idiosyncrasy,—and if we take it by
surprise, we shall almost always get a glimpse behind it of the
"antecedent history" of the learned man and his family, especially of
the nature of their callings and occupations. Where the feeling finds
expression, "That is at last proved, I am now done with it," it is
commonly the ancestor in the blood and instincts of the learned man that
approves of the "accomplished work" in the nook from which he sees
things;—the belief in the proof is only an indication of what has been
looked upon for ages by a laborious family as "good work." Take an
example: the sons of registrars and office-clerks of every kind, whose
main task has always been to arrange a variety of material, distribute
it in drawers, and systematise it generally, evince, when they become
learned men, an inclination to regard a problem as almost solved when
they have systematised it. There are philosophers who are at bottom
nothing but systematising brains—the formal part of the paternal
occupation has become its essence to them. The talent for
classifications, for tables of categories, betrays something; it is not
for nothing that a person is the child of his parents. The son of an
advocate will also have to be an advocate as investigator: he seeks as a
first consideration, to carry the point in his case, as a second
consideration, he perhaps seeks to be in the right. One recognises the
sons of Protestant clergymen and schoolmasters by the naïve assurance
with which as learned men they already assume their case to be proved,
when it has but been presented by them staunchly and warmly: they are
thoroughly accustomed to people _believing_ in them,—it belonged to
their fathers' "trade"! A Jew, contrariwise, in accordance with his
business surroundings and the past of his race, is least of all
accustomed—to people believing him. Observe Jewish scholars with regard
to this matter,—they all lay great stress on logic, that is to say, on
_compelling_ assent by means of reasons; they know that they must
conquer thereby, even when race and class antipathy is against them,
even where people are unwilling to believe them. For in fact, nothing is
more democratic than logic: it knows no respect of persons, and takes
even the crooked nose as straight. (In passing we may remark that in
respect to logical thinking, in respect to _cleaner_ intellectual
habits, Europe is not a little indebted to the Jews; above all the
Germans, as being a lamentably _déraisonnable_ race, who, even at the
present day, must always have their "heads washed"[11] in the first
place. Wherever the Jews have attained to influence, they have taught to
analyse more subtly, to argue more acutely, to write more clearly and
purely: it has always been their problem to bring a people "to
_raison_.")
349.
_The Origin of the Learned once more._—To seek self-preservation merely,
is the expression of a state of distress, or of limitation of the true,
fundamental instinct of life, which aims at the _extension of power_,
and with this in view often enough calls in question self-preservation
and sacrifices it. It should be taken as symptomatic when individual
philosophers, as for example, the consumptive Spinoza, have seen and
have been obliged to see the principal feature of life precisely in the
so-called self-preservative instinct:—they have just been men in states
of distress. That our modern natural sciences have entangled themselves
so much with Spinoza's dogma (finally and most grossly in Darwinism,
with its inconceivably one-sided doctrine of the "struggle for
existence"—), is probably owing to the origin of most of the inquirers
into nature: they belong in this respect to the people, their
forefathers have been poor and humble persons, who knew too well by
immediate experience the difficulty of making a living. Over the whole
of English Darwinism there hovers something of the suffocating air of
over-crowded England, something of the odour of humble people in need
and in straits. But as an investigator of nature, a person ought to
emerge from his paltry human nook: and in nature the state of distress
does not _prevail_, but superfluity, even prodigality to the extent of
folly. The struggle for existence is only an _exception_, a temporary
restriction of the will to live; the struggle, be it great or small,
turns everywhere on predominance, on increase and expansion, on power,
in conformity to the will to power, which is just the will to live.
350.
_In Honour of Homines Religiosi._—The struggle against the church is
most certainly (among other things—for it has a manifold significance)
the struggle of the more ordinary, cheerful, confiding, superficial
natures against the rule of the graver, profounder, more contemplative
natures, that is to say, the more malign and suspicious men, who with
long continued distrust in the worth of life, brood also over their own
worth:—the ordinary instinct of the people, its sensual gaiety, its
"good heart," revolts against them. The entire Roman Church rests on a
Southern suspicion of the nature of man (always misunderstood in the
North), a suspicion whereby the European South has succeeded to the
inheritance of the profound Orient—the mysterious, venerable Asia—and
its contemplative spirit. Protestantism was a popular insurrection in
favour of the simple, the respectable, the superficial (the North has
always been more good-natured and more shallow than the South), but it
was the French Revolution that first gave the sceptre wholly and
solemnly into the hands of the "good man" (the sheep, the ass, the
goose, and everything incurably shallow, bawling, and fit for the Bedlam
of "modern ideas").
351.
_In Honour of Priestly Natures._—I think that philosophers have always
felt themselves furthest removed from that which the people (in all
classes of society nowadays) take for wisdom: the prudent, bovine
placidity, piety, and country-parson meekness, which lies in the meadow
and _gazes at_ life seriously and ruminatingly:—this is probably because
philosophers have not had sufficiently the taste of the "people," or of
the country-parson for that kind of wisdom. Philosophers will also
perhaps be the latest to acknowledge that the people _should_ understand
something of that which lies furthest from them, something of the great
_passion_ of the thinker, who lives and must live continually in the
storm-cloud of the highest problems and the heaviest responsibilities
(consequently, not gazing at all, to say nothing of doing so
indifferently, securely, objectively). The people venerate an entirely
different type of man when on their part they form the ideal of a
"sage," and they are a thousand times justified in rendering homage with
the highest eulogies and honours to precisely that type of men—namely,
the gentle, serious, simple, chaste, priestly natures and those related
to them,—it is to them that the praise falls due in the popular
veneration of wisdom. And to whom should the people ever have more
reason to be grateful than to these men who pertain to its class and
rise from its ranks, but are persons consecrated, chosen, and
_sacrificed_ for its good—they themselves believe themselves sacrificed
to God,—before whom the people can pour forth its heart with impunity,
by whom it can _get rid_ of its secrets, cares, and worse things (for
the man who "communicates himself" gets rid of himself, and he who has
"confessed" forgets). Here there exists a great need: for sewers and
pure cleansing waters are required also for spiritual filth, and rapid
currents of love are needed, and strong, lowly, pure hearts, who qualify
and sacrifice themselves for such service of the non-public health
department—for it _is_ a sacrificing, the priest is, and continues to
be, a human sacrifice.... The people regard such sacrificed, silent,
serious men of "faith" as "_wise_," that is to say, as men who have
become sages, as "reliable" in relation to their own unreliability. Who
would desire to deprive the people of that expression and that
veneration?—But as is fair on the other side, among philosophers the
priest also is still held to belong to the "people," and is _not_
regarded as a sage, because, above all, they themselves do not believe
in "sages," and they already scent "the people" in this very belief and
superstition. It was _modesty_ which invented in Greece the word
"philosopher," and left to the play-actors of the spirit the superb
arrogance of assuming the name "wise"—the modesty of such monsters of
pride and self-glorification as Pythagoras and Plato.—
352.
_Why we can hardly Dispense with Morality._—The naked man is generally
an ignominious spectacle—I speak of us European males (and by no means
of European females!). If the most joyous company at table suddenly
found themselves stripped and divested of their garments through the
trick of an enchanter, I believe that not only would the joyousness be
gone and the strongest appetite lost;—it seems that we Europeans cannot
at all dispense with the masquerade that is called clothing. But should
not the disguise of "moral men," the screening under moral formulæ and
notions of decency, the whole kindly concealment of our conduct under
conceptions of duty, virtue, public sentiment, honourableness, and
disinterestedness, have just as good reasons in support of it? Not that
I mean hereby that human wickedness and baseness, in short, the evil
wild beast in us, should be disguised; on the contrary, my idea is that
it is precisely as _tame animals_ that we are an ignominious spectacle
and require moral disguising,—that the "inner man" in Europe is far from
having enough of intrinsic evil "to let himself be seen" with it (to be
_beautiful_ with it). The European disguises himself _in morality_
because he has become a sick, sickly, crippled animal, who has good
reasons for being "tame," because he is almost an abortion, an
imperfect, weak and clumsy thing.... It is not the fierceness of the
beast of prey that finds moral disguise necessary, but the gregarious
animal, with its profound mediocrity, anxiety and ennui. _Morality
dresses up the European_—let us acknowledge it!—in more distinguished,
more important, more conspicuous guise—in "divine" guise—
353.
_The Origin of Religions._—The real inventions of founders of religions
are, on the one hand, to establish a definite mode of life and everyday
custom, which operates as _disciplina voluntatis_, and at the same time
does away with ennui; and on the other hand, to give to that very mode
of life an _interpretation_, by virtue of which it appears illumined
with the highest value; so that it henceforth becomes a good for which
people struggle, and under certain circumstances lay down their lives.
In truth, the second of these inventions is the more essential: the
first, the mode of life, has usually been there already, side by side,
however, with other modes of life, and still unconscious of the value
which it embodies. The import, the originality of the founder of a
religion, discloses itself usually in the fact that he _sees_ the mode
of life, _selects_ it, and _divines_ for the first time the purpose for
which it can be used, how it can be interpreted. Jesus (or Paul), for
example, found around him the life of the common people in the Roman
province, a modest, virtuous, oppressed life: he interpreted it, he put
the highest significance and value into it—and thereby the courage to
despise every other mode of life, the calm fanaticism of the Moravians,
the secret, subterranean self-confidence which goes on increasing, and
is at last ready "to overcome the world" (that is to say, Rome, and the
upper classes throughout the empire). Buddha, in like manner, found the
same type of man,—he found it in fact dispersed among all the classes
and social ranks of a people who were good and kind (and above all
inoffensive), owing to indolence, and who likewise owing to indolence,
lived abstemiously, almost without requirements. He understood that such
a type of man, with all its _vis inertiae_, had inevitably to glide into
a belief which promises _to avoid_ the return of earthly ill (that is to
say, labour and activity generally),—this "understanding" was his
genius. The founder of a religion possesses psychological infallibility
in the knowledge of a definite, average type of souls, who have not yet
_recognised_ themselves as akin. It is he who brings them together: the
founding of a religion, therefore, always becomes a long ceremony of
recognition.—
354.
_The "Genius of the Species."_—The problem of consciousness (or more
correctly: of becoming conscious of oneself) meets us only when we begin
to perceive in what measure we could dispense with it: and it is at the
beginning of this perception that we are now placed by physiology and
zoology (which have thus required two centuries to overtake the hint
thrown out in advance by Leibnitz). For we could in fact think, feel,
will, and recollect, we could likewise "act" in every sense of the term,
and nevertheless nothing of it all would require to "come into
consciousness" (as one says metaphorically). The whole of life would be
possible without its seeing itself as it were in a mirror: as in fact
even at present the far greater part of our life still goes on without
this mirroring,—and even our thinking, feeling, volitional life as well,
however painful this statement may sound to an older philosopher. _What_
then is _the purpose_ of consciousness generally, when it is in the main
_superfluous_?—Now it seems to me, if you will hear my answer and its
perhaps extravagant supposition, that the subtlety and strength of
consciousness are always in proportion to the _capacity for
communication_ of a man (or an animal), the capacity for communication
in its turn being in proportion to the _necessity for communication_:
the latter not to be understood as if precisely the individual himself
who is master in the art of communicating and making known his
necessities would at the same time have to be most dependent upon others
for his necessities. It seems to me, however, to be so in relation to
whole races and successions of generations: where necessity and need
have long compelled men to communicate with their fellows and understand
one another rapidly and subtly, a surplus of the power and art of
communication is at last acquired, as if it were a fortune which had
gradually accumulated, and now waited for an heir to squander it
prodigally (the so-called artists are these heirs, in like manner the
orators, preachers, and authors: all of them men who come at the end of
a long succession, "late-born" always, in the best sense of the word,
and as has been said, _squanderers_ by their very nature). Granted that
this observation is correct, I may proceed further to the conjecture
that _consciousness generally has only been developed under the pressure
of the necessity for communication_,—that from the first it has been
necessary and useful only between man and man (especially between those
commanding and those obeying), and has only developed in proportion to
its utility. Consciousness is properly only a connecting network between
man and man,—it is only as such that it has had to develop; the recluse
and wild-beast species of men would not have needed it. The very fact
that our actions, thoughts, feelings and motions come within the range
of our consciousness—at least a part of them—is the result of a
terrible, prolonged "must" ruling man's destiny: as the most endangered
animal he _needed_ help and protection; he needed his fellows, he was
obliged to express his distress, he had to know how to make himself
understood—and for all this he needed "consciousness" first of all,
consequently, to "know" himself what he lacked, to "know" how he felt
and to "know" what he thought. For, to repeat it once more, man, like
every living creature, thinks unceasingly, but does not know it; the
thinking which is becoming _conscious of itself_ is only the smallest
part thereof, we may say, the most superficial part, the worst part:—for
this conscious thinking alone _is done in words, that is to say, in the
symbols for communication_, by means of which the origin of
consciousness is revealed. In short, the development of speech and the
development of consciousness (not of reason, but of reason becoming
self-conscious) go hand in hand. Let it be further accepted that it is
not only speech that serves as a bridge between man and man, but also
the looks, the pressure and the gestures; our becoming conscious of our
sense impressions, our power of being able to fix them, and as it were
to locate them outside of ourselves, has increased in proportion as the
necessity has increased for communicating them to _others_ by means of
signs. The sign-inventing man is at the same time the man who is always
more acutely self-conscious; it is only as a social animal that man has
learned to become conscious of himself,—he is doing so still, and doing
so more and more.—As is obvious, my idea is that consciousness does not
properly belong to the individual existence of man, but rather to the
social and gregarious nature in him; that, as follows therefrom, it is
only in relation to communal and gregarious utility that it is finely
developed; and that consequently each of us, in spite of the best
intention of _understanding_ himself as individually as possible, and of
"knowing himself," will always just call into consciousness the
non-individual in him, namely, his "averageness";—that our thought
itself is continuously as it were _outvoted_ by the character of
consciousness—by the imperious "genius of the species" therein—and is
translated back into the perspective of the herd. Fundamentally our
actions are in an incomparable manner altogether personal, unique and
absolutely individual—there is no doubt about it; but as soon as we
translate them into consciousness, they _do not appear so any
longer_.... This is the proper phenomenalism and perspectivism as I
understand it: the nature of _animal consciousness_ involves the notion
that the world of which we can become conscious is only a superficial
and symbolic world, a generalised and vulgarised world;—that everything
which becomes conscious _becomes_ just thereby shallow, meagre,
relatively stupid,—a generalisation, a symbol, a characteristic of the
herd; that with the evolving of consciousness there is always combined a
great, radical perversion, falsification, superficialisation, and
generalisation. Finally, the growing consciousness is a danger, and
whoever lives among the most conscious Europeans knows even that it is a
disease. As may be conjectured, it is not the antithesis of subject and
object with which I am here concerned: I leave that distinction to the
epistemologists who have remained entangled in the toils of grammar
(popular metaphysics). It is still less the antithesis of "thing in
itself" and phenomenon, for we do not "know" enough to be entitled even
_to make such a distinction_. Indeed, we have not any organ at all for
_knowing_ or for "truth"; we "know" (or believe, or fancy) just as much
as may be _of use_ in the interest of the human herd, the species; and
even what is here called "usefulness" is ultimately only a belief, a
fancy, and perhaps precisely the most fatal stupidity by which we shall
one day be ruined.
355.
_The Origin of our Conception of "Knowledge."_—I take this explanation
from the street. I heard one of the people saying that "he knew me,"
so I asked myself: What do the people really understand by knowledge?
What do they want when they seek "knowledge"? Nothing more than that
what is strange is to be traced back to something _known_. And we
philosophers—have we really understood _anything more_ by knowledge?
The known, that is to say, what we are accustomed to, so that we no
longer marvel at it, the commonplace, any kind of rule to which we are
habituated, all and everything in which we know ourselves to be at
home:—what? is our need of knowing not just this need of the known?
the will to discover in everything strange, unusual, or questionable,
something which no longer disquiets us? Is it not possible that it
should be the _instinct of fear_ which enjoins upon us to know? Is it
not possible that the rejoicing of the discerner should be just his
rejoicing in the regained feeling of security?... One philosopher
imagined the world "known" when he had traced it back to the "idea":
alas, was it not because the idea was so known, so familiar to him?
because he had so much less fear of the "idea"—Oh, this moderation of
the discerners! let us but look at their principles, and at their
solutions of the riddle of the world in this connection! When they
again find aught in things, among things, or behind things, that is
unfortunately very well known to us, for example, our multiplication
table, or our logic, or our willing and desiring, how happy they
immediately are! For "what is known is understood": they are unanimous
as to that. Even the most circumspect among them think that the known
is at least _more easily understood_ than the strange; that for
example, it is methodically ordered to proceed outward from the "inner
world," from "the facts of consciousness," because it is the world
which is _better known to us_! Error of errors! The known is the
accustomed, and the accustomed is the most difficult of all to
"understand," that is to say, to perceive as a problem, to perceive as
strange, distant, "outside of us."... The great certainty of the
natural sciences in comparison with psychology and the criticism of
the elements of consciousness—_unnatural_ sciences as one might almost
be entitled to call them—rests precisely on the fact that they take
_what is strange_ as their object: while it is almost like something
contradictory and absurd _to wish_ to take generally what is not
strange as an object....
356.