living still enforces even in the present day (in our transition period
when so much ceases to enforce) a definite _rôle_ on almost all male
Europeans, their so-called callings; some have the liberty, an apparent
liberty, to choose this rôle themselves, but most have it chosen for
them. The result is strange enough. Almost all Europeans confound
themselves with their rôle when they advance in age; they themselves are
the victims of their "good acting," they have forgotten how much chance,
whim and arbitrariness swayed them when their "calling" was decided—and
how many other rôles they _could_ perhaps have played: for it is now too
late! Looked at more closely, we see that their characters have actually
_evolved_ out of their rôle, nature out of art. There were ages in which
people believed with unshaken confidence, yea, with piety, in their
predestination for this very business, for that very mode of livelihood,
and would not at all acknowledge chance, or the fortuitous rôle, or
arbitrariness therein. Ranks, guilds, and hereditary trade privileges
succeeded, with the help of this belief, in rearing those extraordinary
broad towers of society which distinguished the Middle Ages, and of
which at all events one thing remains to their credit: capacity for
duration (and duration is a value of the first rank on earth!). But
there are ages entirely the reverse, the properly democratic ages, in
which people tend to become more and more oblivious of this conviction,
and a sort of impudent conviction and quite contrary mode of viewing
things comes to the front, the Athenian conviction which is first
observed in the epoch of Pericles, the American conviction of the
present day, which wants also more and more to become an European
conviction, whereby the individual is convinced that he can do almost
anything, that he _can play almost any rôle_, whereby everyone makes
experiments with himself, improvises, tries anew, tries with delight,
whereby all nature ceases and becomes art.... The Greeks, having adopted
this _rôle-creed_—an artist creed, if you will—underwent step by step,
as is well known, a curious transformation, not in every respect worthy
of imitation: _they became actual stage-players_; and as such they
enchanted, they conquered all the world, and at last even the conqueror
of the world, (for the _Graeculus histrio_ conquered Rome, and _not_
Greek culture, as the naïve are accustomed to say....) What I fear,
however, and what is at present obvious, if we desire to perceive it, is
that we modern men are quite on the same road already; and whenever man
begins to discover in what respect he plays a rôle, and to what extent
he _can_ be a stage-player, he _becomes_ a stage-player.... A new flora
and fauna of men thereupon springs up, which cannot grow in more stable,
more restricted eras—or is left "at the bottom," under the ban and
suspicion of infamy—, thereupon the most interesting and insane periods
of history always make their appearance, in which "stage-players," _all_
kinds of stage-players, are the real masters. Precisely thereby another
species of man is always more and more injured, and in the end made
impossible: above all the great "architects"; the building power is now
being paralysed; the courage that makes plans for the distant future is
disheartened; there begins to be a lack of organising geniuses. Who is
there who would now venture to undertake works for the completion of
which millenniums would have to be _reckoned_ upon? The fundamental
belief is dying out, on the basis of which one could calculate, promise
and anticipate the future in one's plan, and offer it as a sacrifice
thereto, that in fact man has only value and significance in so far as
he is _a stone in a great building_; for which purpose he has first of
all to be _solid_, he has to be a "stone."... Above all, not
a—stage-player! In short—alas! this fact will be hushed up for some
considerable time to come!—that which from henceforth will no longer be
built, and _can_ no longer be built, is—a society in the old sense of
the term; to build this structure everything is lacking, above all, the
material. _None of us are any longer material for a society_: that is a
truth which is seasonable at present! It seems to me a matter of
indifference that meanwhile the most short-sighted, perhaps the most
honest, and at any rate the noisiest species of men of the present day,
our friends the Socialists, believe, hope, dream, and above all scream
and scribble almost the opposite; in fact one already reads their
watchword of the future: "free society," on all tables and walls. Free
society? Indeed! Indeed! But you know, gentlemen, sure enough whereof
one builds it? Out of wooden iron! Out of the famous wooden iron! And
not even out of wooden....
357.
_The old Problem: "What is German?"_—Let us count up apart the real
acquisitions of philosophical thought for which we have to thank German
intellects: are they in any allowable sense to be counted also to the
credit of the whole race? Can we say that they are at the same time the
work of the "German soul," or at least a symptom of it, in the sense in
which we are accustomed to think, for example, of Plato's ideomania, his
almost religious madness for form, as an event and an evidence of the
"Greek soul"? Or would the reverse perhaps be true? Were they so
individual, so much an exception to the spirit of the race, as was, for
example, Goethe's Paganism with a good conscience? Or as Bismarck's
Macchiavelism was with a good conscience, his so-called "practical
politics" in Germany? Did our philosophers perhaps even go counter to
the _need_ of the "German soul"? In short, were the German philosophers
really philosophical _Germans_?—I call to mind three cases. Firstly,
_Leibnitz's_ incomparable insight—with which he obtained the advantage
not only over Descartes, but over all who had philosophised up to his
time,—that consciousness is only an accident of mental representation,
and _not_ its necessary and essential attribute; that consequently what
we call consciousness only constitutes a state of our spiritual and
psychical world (perhaps a morbid state), and is _far from being that
world itself_:—is there anything German in this thought, the profundity
of which has not as yet been exhausted? Is there reason to think that a
person of the Latin race would not readily have stumbled on this
reversal of the apparent?—for it is a reversal. Let us call to mind
secondly, the immense note of interrogation which _Kant_ wrote after the
notion of causality. Not that he at all doubted its legitimacy, like
Hume: on the contrary, he began cautiously to define the domain within
which this notion has significance generally (we have not even yet got
finished with the marking out of these limits). Let us take thirdly, the
astonishing hit of _Hegel_, who stuck at no logical usage or
fastidiousness when he ventured to teach that the conceptions of kinds
develop _out of one another_: with which theory the thinkers in Europe
were prepared for the last great scientific movement, for Darwinism—for
without Hegel there would have been no Darwin. Is there anything German
in this Hegelian innovation which first introduced the decisive
conception of evolution into science? Yes, without doubt we feel that
there is something of ourselves "discovered" and divined in all three
cases; we are thankful for it, and at the same time surprised; each of
these three principles is a thoughtful piece of German self-confession,
self-understanding, and self-knowledge. We feel with Leibnitz that "our
inner world is far richer, ampler, and more concealed"; as Germans we
are doubtful, like Kant, about the ultimate validity of scientific
knowledge of nature, and in general about whatever _can_ be known
_causaliter_: the _knowable_ as such now appears to us of _less_ worth.
We Germans should still have been Hegelians, even though there had never
been a Hegel, inasmuch as we (in contradistinction to all Latin peoples)
instinctively attribute to becoming, to evolution, a profounder
significance and higher value than to that which "is"—we hardly believe
at all in the validity of the concept "being." This is all the more the
case because we are not inclined to concede to our human logic that it
is logic in itself, that it is the only kind of logic (we should rather
like, on the contrary, to convince ourselves that it is only a special
case, and perhaps one of the strangest and most stupid). A fourth
question would be whether also _Schopenhauer_ with his Pessimism, that
is to say the problem of _the worth of existence_, had to be a German. I
think not. The event _after_ which this problem was to be expected with
certainty, so that an astronomer of the soul could have calculated the
day and the hour for it—namely, the decay of the belief in the Christian
God, the victory of scientific atheism,—is a universal European event,
in which all races are to have their share of service and honour. On the
contrary, it has to be ascribed precisely to the Germans—those with whom
Schopenhauer was contemporary,—that they delayed this victory of atheism
longest, and endangered it most. Hegel especially was its retarder _par
excellence_, in virtue of the grandiose attempt which he made to
persuade us of the divinity of existence, with the help at the very last
of our sixth sense, "the historical sense." As philosopher, Schopenhauer
was the _first_ avowed and inflexible atheist we Germans have had: his
hostility to Hegel had here its background. The non-divinity of
existence was regarded by him as something understood, palpable,
indisputable; he always lost his philosophical composure and got into a
passion when he saw anyone hesitate and beat about the bush here. It is
at this point that his thorough uprightness of character comes in:
unconditional, honest atheism is precisely the _preliminary condition_
for his raising the problem, as a final and hardwon victory of the
European conscience, as the most prolific act of two thousand years'
discipline to truth, which in the end no longer tolerates the _lie_ of
the belief in a God.... One sees what has really gained the victory over
the Christian God—, Christian morality itself, the conception of
veracity, taken ever more strictly, the confessional subtlety of the
Christian conscience, translated and sublimated to the scientific
conscience, to intellectual purity at any price. To look upon nature as
if it were a proof of the goodness and care of a God; to interpret
history in honour of a divine reason, as a constant testimony to a moral
order in the world and a moral final purpose; to explain personal
experiences as pious men have long enough explained them, as if
everything were a dispensation or intimation of Providence, something
planned and sent on behalf of the salvation of the soul: all that is now
_past_, it has conscience _against_ it, it is regarded by all the more
acute consciences as disreputable and dishonourable, as mendaciousness,
femininism, weakness, and cowardice,—by virtue of this severity, if by
anything, we are _good_ Europeans, the heirs of Europe's longest and
bravest self-conquest. When we thus reject the Christian interpretation,
and condemn its "significance" as a forgery, we are immediately
confronted in a striking manner with the _Schopenhauerian_ question:
_Has existence then a significance at all?_—the question which will
require a couple of centuries even to be completely heard in all its
profundity. Schopenhauer's own answer to this question was—if I may be
forgiven for saying so—a premature, juvenile reply, a mere compromise, a
stoppage and sticking in the very same Christian-ascetic, moral
perspectives, _the belief in which had got notice to quit_ along with
the belief in God.... But he _raised_ the question—as a good European,
as we have said, and _not_ as a German.—Or did the Germans prove at
least by the way in which they seized on the Schopenhauerian question,
their inner connection and relationship to him, their preparation for
his problem, and their _need_ of it? That there has been thinking and
printing even in Germany since Schopenhauer's time on the problem raised
by him,—it was late enough!—does not at all suffice to enable us to
decide in favour of this closer relationship; one could, on the
contrary, lay great stress on the peculiar _awkwardness_ of this
post-Schopenhauerian Pessimism—Germans evidently do not behave
themselves there as in their element. I do not at all allude here to
Eduard von Hartmann; on the contrary, my old suspicion is not vanished
even at present that he is _too clever_ for us; I mean to say that as
arrant rogue from the very first, he did not perhaps make merry solely
over German Pessimism—and that in the end he might probably "bequeathe"
to them the truth as to how far a person could bamboozle the Germans
themselves in the age of bubble companies. But further, are we perhaps
to reckon to the honour of Germans, the old humming-top, Bahnsen, who
all his life spun about with the greatest pleasure around his
realistically dialectic misery and "personal ill-luck,"—was _that_
German? (In passing I recommend his writings for the purpose for which I
myself have used them, as anti-pessimistic fare, especially on account
of his _elegantia psychologica_, which, it seems to me, could alleviate
even the most constipated body and soul). Or would it be proper to count
such dilettanti and old maids as the mawkish apostle of virginity,
Mainländer, among the genuine Germans? After all he was probably a Jew
(all Jews become mawkish when they moralise). Neither Bahnsen, nor
Mainländer, nor even Eduard von Hartmann, give us a reliable grasp of
the question whether the pessimism of Schopenhauer (his frightened
glance into an undeified world, which has become stupid, blind, deranged
and problematic, his _honourable_ fright) was not only an exceptional
case among Germans, but a _German_ event: while everything else which
stands in the foreground, like our valiant politics and our joyful
Jingoism (which decidedly enough regards everything with reference to a
principle sufficiently unphilosophical: "_Deutschland, Deutschland, über
Alles_,"[12] consequently _sub specie speciei_, namely, the German
_species_), testifies very plainly to the contrary. No! The Germans of
to-day are _not_ pessimists! And Schopenhauer was a pessimist, I repeat
it once more, as a good European, and _not_ as a German.
358.
_The Peasant Revolt of the Spirit._—We Europeans find ourselves in view
of an immense world of ruins, where some things still tower aloft, while
other objects stand mouldering and dismal, where most things however
already lie on the ground, picturesque enough—where were there ever
finer ruins?—overgrown with weeds, large and small. It is the Church
which is this city of decay: we see the religious organisation of
Christianity shaken to its deepest foundations. The belief in God is
overthrown, the belief in the Christian ascetic ideal is now fighting
its last fight. Such a long and solidly built work as Christianity—it
was the last construction of the Romans!—could not of course be
demolished all at once; every sort of earthquake had to shake it, every
sort of spirit which perforates, digs, gnaws and moulders had to assist
in the work of destruction. But that which is strangest is that those
who have exerted themselves most to retain and preserve Christianity,
have been precisely those who did most to destroy it,—the Germans. It
seems that the Germans do not understand the essence of a Church. Are
they not spiritual enough, or not distrustful enough to do so? In any
case the structure of the Church rests on a _southern_ freedom and
liberality of spirit, and similarly on a southern suspicion of nature,
man, and spirit,—it rests on a knowledge of man, an experience of man,
entirely different from what the north has had. The Lutheran Reformation
in all its length and breadth was the indignation of the simple against
something "complicated." To speak cautiously, it was a coarse, honest
misunderstanding, in which much is to be forgiven,—people did not
understand the mode of expression of a _victorious_ Church, and only saw
corruption; they misunderstood the noble scepticism, the _luxury_ of
scepticism and toleration which every victorious, self-confident power
permits.... One overlooks the fact readily enough at present that as
regards all cardinal questions concerning power Luther was badly
endowed; he was fatally short-sighted, superficial and imprudent—and
above all, as a man sprung from the people, he lacked all the hereditary
qualities of a ruling caste, and all the instincts for power; so that
his work, his intention to restore the work of the Romans, merely became
involuntarily and unconsciously the commencement of a work of
destruction. He unravelled, he tore asunder with honest rage, where the
old spider had woven longest and most carefully. He gave the sacred
books into the hands of everyone,—they thereby got at last into the
hands of the philologists, that is to say, the annihilators of every
belief based upon books. He demolished the conception of "the Church" in
that he repudiated the belief in the inspiration of the Councils: for
only under the supposition that the inspiring spirit which had founded
the Church still lives in it, still builds it, still goes on building
its house, does the conception of "the Church" retain its power. He gave
back to the priest sexual intercourse: but three-fourths of the
reverence of which the people (and above all the women of the people)
are capable, rests on the belief that an exceptional man in this respect
will also be an exceptional man in other respects. It is precisely here
that the popular belief in something superhuman in man, in a miracle, in
the saving God in man, has its most subtle and insidious advocate. After
Luther had given a wife to the priest, he had _to take from him_
auricular confession; that was psychologically right: but thereby he
practically did away with the Christian priest himself, whose
profoundest utility has ever consisted in his being a sacred ear, a
silent well, and a grave for secrets. "Every man his own priest"—behind
such formulæ and their bucolic slyness, there was concealed in Luther
the profoundest hatred of "higher men" and the rule of "higher men," as
the Church had conceived them. Luther disowned an ideal which he did not
know how to attain, while he seemed to combat and detest the
degeneration thereof. As a matter of fact, he, the impossible monk,
repudiated the _rule_ of the _homines religiosi_; he consequently
brought about precisely the same thing within the ecclesiastical social
order that he combated so impatiently in the civic order,—namely a
"peasant insurrection."—As to all that grew out of his Reformation
afterwards, good and bad, which can at present be almost counted up,—who
would be naïve enough to praise or blame Luther simply on account of
these results? He is innocent of all; he knew not what he did. The art
of making the European spirit shallower, especially in the north, or
more _good-natured_, if people would rather hear it designated by a
moral expression, undoubtedly took a clever step in advance in the
Lutheran Reformation; and similarly there grew out of it the mobility
and disquietude of the spirit, its thirst for independence, its belief
in the right to freedom, and its "naturalness." If people wish to
ascribe to the Reformation in the last instance the merit of having
prepared and favoured that which we at present honour as "modern
science," they must of course add that it is also accessory to bringing
about the degeneration of the modern scholar with his lack of reverence,
of shame and of profundity; and that it is also responsible for all
naïve candour and plain-dealing in matters of knowledge, in short for
the _plebeianism of the spirit_ which is peculiar to the last two
centuries, and from which even pessimism hitherto, has not in any way
delivered us. "Modern ideas" also belong to this peasant insurrection of
the north against the colder, more ambiguous, more suspicious spirit of
the south, which has built itself its greatest monument in the Christian
Church. Let us not forget in the end what a Church is, and especially,
in contrast to every "State": a Church is above all an authoritative
organisation which secures to the _most spiritual_ men the highest rank,
and _believes_ in the power of spirituality so far as to forbid all
grosser appliances of authority. Through this alone the Church is under
all circumstances a _nobler_ institution than the State.—
359.
_Vengeance on Intellect and other Backgrounds of
Morality._—Morality—where do you think it has its most dangerous and
rancorous advocates?—There, for example, is an ill-constituted man, who
does not possess enough of intellect to be able to take pleasure in it,
and just enough of culture to be aware of the fact; bored, satiated, and
a self-despiser; besides being cheated unfortunately by some hereditary
property out of the last consolation, the "blessing of labour," the
self-forgetfulness in the "day's work"; one who is thoroughly ashamed of
his existence—perhaps also harbouring some vices,—and who on the other
hand (by means of books to which he has no right, or more intellectual
society than he can digest), cannot help vitiating himself more and
more, and making himself vain and irritable: such a thoroughly poisoned
man—for intellect becomes poison, culture becomes poison, possession
becomes poison, solitude becomes poison, to such ill-constituted
beings—gets at last into a habitual state of vengeance and inclination
to vengeance.... What do you think he finds necessary, absolutely
necessary in order to give himself the appearance in his own eyes of
superiority over more intellectual men, so as to give himself the
delight of _perfect revenge_, at least in imagination? It is always
_morality_ that he requires, one may wager on it; always the big moral
words, always the high-sounding words: justice, wisdom, holiness,
virtue; always the stoicism of gestures (how well stoicism hides what
one does _not_ possess!); always the mantle of wise silence, of
affability, of gentleness, and whatever else the idealist-mantle is
called in which the incurable self-despisers and also the incurably
conceited walk about. Let me not be misunderstood: out of such born
_enemies of the spirit_ there arises now and then that rare specimen of
humanity who is honoured by the people under the name of saint or sage:
it is out of such men that there arise those prodigies of morality that
make a noise, that make history,—St Augustine was one of these men. Fear
of the intellect, vengeance on the intellect—Oh! how often have these
powerfully impelling vices become the root of virtues! Yea, virtue
_itself_!—And asking the question among ourselves, even the
philosopher's pretension to wisdom, which has occasionally been made
here and there on the earth, the maddest and most immodest of all
pretensions,—has it not always been, in India as well as in Greece,
_above all a means of concealment_? Sometimes, perhaps, from the point
of view of education which hallows so many lies, it has been a tender
regard for growing and evolving persons, for disciples who have often to
be guarded against themselves by means of the belief in a person (by
means of an error). In most cases, however, it is a means of concealment
for a philosopher, behind which he seeks protection, owing to
exhaustion, age, chilliness, or hardening; as a feeling of the
approaching end, as the sagacity of the instinct which animals have
before their death,—they go apart, remain at rest, choose solitude,
creep into caves, become _wise_.... What? Wisdom a means of concealment
of the philosopher from—intellect?—
360.
_Two Kinds of Causes which are Confounded._—It seems to me one of my
most essential steps and advances that I have learned to distinguish the
cause of the action generally from the cause of action in a particular
manner, say, in this direction, with this aim. The first kind of cause
is a quantum of stored-up force, which waits to be used in some manner,
for some purpose; the second kind of cause, on the contrary, is
something quite unimportant in comparison with the first, an
insignificant hazard for the most part, in conformity with which the
quantum of force in question "discharges" itself in some unique and
definite manner: the lucifer-match in relation to the barrel of
gunpowder. Among those insignificant hazards and lucifer-matches I count
all the so-called "aims," and similarly the still more so-called
"occupations" of people: they are relatively optional, arbitrary, and
almost indifferent in relation to the immense quantum of force which
presses on, as we have said, to be used up in any way whatever. One
generally looks at the matter in a different manner: one is accustomed
to see the _impelling_ force precisely in the aim (object, calling,
&c.), according to a primeval error,—but it is only the _directing_
force; the steersman and the steam have thereby been confounded. And yet
it is not even always the steersman, the directing force.... Is the
"aim," the "purpose," not often enough only an extenuating pretext, an
additional self-blinding of conceit, which does not wish it to be said
that the ship _follows_ the stream into which it has accidentally run?
That it "wishes" to go that way, _because_ it _must_ go that way? That
it has a direction, sure enough, but—not a steersman? We still require a
criticism of the conception of "purpose."
361.