1
I know my destiny. There will come a day when my name will recall
the memory of something formidable--a crisis the like of which has
never been known on earth, the memory of the most profound clash
of consciences, and the passing of a sentence upon all that which
theretofore had been believed, exacted, and hallowed. I am not a
man, I am dynamite. And with it all there is nought of the founder
of a religion in me. Religions are matters for the mob; after coming
in contact with a religious man, I always feel that I must wash my
hands.... I require no "believers," it is my opinion that I am too
full of malice to believe even in myself; I never address myself to
masses. I am horribly frightened that one day I shall be pronounced
"holy." You will understand why I publish this book beforehand--it is
to prevent people from wronging me. I refuse to be a saint; I would
rather be a clown. Maybe I am a clown. And I am notwithstanding, or
rather not _not_withstanding, the mouthpiece of truth; for nothing
more blown-out with falsehood has ever existed, than a saint. But
my truth is terrible: for hitherto _lies_ have been called truth.
_The Transvaluation of all Values,_ this is my formula for mankind's
greatest step towards coming to its senses--a step which in me became
flesh and genius. My destiny ordained that I should be the first decent
human being, and that I should feel myself opposed to the falsehood
of millenniums. I was the first to discover truth, and for the simple
reason that I was the first who became conscious of falsehood as
falsehood--that is to say, I smelt it as such. My genius resides in
my nostrils. I contradict as no one has contradicted hitherto, and am
nevertheless the reverse of a negative spirit. I am the harbinger of
joy, the like of which has never existed before; I have discovered
tasks of such lofty greatness that, until my time, no one had any idea
of such things. Mankind can begin to have fresh hopes, only now that I
have lived. Thus, I am necessarily a man of Fate. For when Truth enters
the lists against the falsehood of ages, shocks are bound to ensue,
and a spell of earthquakes, followed by the transposition of hills and
valleys, such as the world has never yet imagined even in its dreams.
The concept "politics" then becomes elevated entirely to the sphere
of spiritual warfare. All the mighty realms of the ancient order of
society are blown into space--for they are all based on falsehood:
there will be wars, the like of which have never been seen on earth
before. Only from my time and after me will politics on a large scale
exist on earth.
2
If you should require a formula for a destiny of this kind that has
taken human form, you will find it in my _Zarathustra_.
"And he who would be a creator in good and evil--verily, he must first
be a destroyer, and break values into pieces.
"Thus the greatest evil belongeth unto the greatest good: but this is
the creative good."
I am by far the most terrible man that has ever existed; but this does
not alter the fact that I shall become the most beneficent. I know the
joy of _annihilation_ to a degree which is commensurate with my power
to annihilate. In both cases I obey my Dionysian nature, which knows
not how to separate the negative deed from the saying of yea. I am the
first immoralist, and in this sense I am essentially the annihilator.
3
People have never asked me as they should have done, what the name
of Zarathustra precisely meant in my mouth, in the mouth of the
first immoralist; for that which distinguishes this Persian from all
others in the past is the very fact that he was the exact reverse
of an immoralist. Zarathustra was the first to see in the struggle
between good and evil the essential wheel in the working of things.
The translation of morality into the realm of metaphysics, as force,
cause, end-in-itself, is his work. But the very question suggests
its own answer. Zarathustra created this most portentous of all
errors,--morality; therefore he must be the first to expose it. Not
only because he has had longer and greater experience of the subject
than any other thinker,--all history is indeed the experimental
refutation of the theory of the so-called moral order of things,--but
because of the more important fact that Zarathustra was the most
truthful of thinkers. In his teaching alone is truthfulness upheld as
the highest virtue--that is to say, as the reverse of the cowardice
of the "idealist" who takes to his heels at the sight of reality.
Zarathustra has more pluck in his body than all other thinkers put
together. To tell the truth and to aim straight: that is the first
Persian virtue. Have I made myself clear? ... The overcoming of
morality by itself, through truthfulness, the moralist's overcoming of
himself in his opposite--in me--that is what the name Zarathustra means
in my mouth.
4
In reality two negations are involved in my title Immoralist. I first
of all deny the type of man that has hitherto been regarded as the
highest--the _good,_ the _kind,_ and the _charitable_; and I also
deny that kind of morality which has become recognised and paramount
as morality-in-itself--I speak of the morality of decadence, or, to
use a still cruder term, Christian morality. I would agree to the
second of the two negations being regarded as the more decisive, for,
reckoned as a whole, the overestimation of goodness and kindness seems
to me already a consequence of decadence, a symptom of weakness, and
incompatible with any ascending and yea-saying life. Negation and
annihilation are inseparable from a yea-saying attitude towards life.
Let me halt for a moment at the question of the psychology of the
good man. In order to appraise the value of a certain type of man, the
cost of his maintenance must be calculated,--and the conditions of his
existence must be known. The condition of the existence of the _good_
is falsehood: or, otherwise expressed, the refusal at any price to
see how reality is actually constituted. The refusal to see that this
reality is not so constituted as always to be stimulating beneficent
instincts, and still less, so as to suffer at all moments the intrusion
of ignorant and good-natured hands. To consider distress of all kinds
as an objection, as something which must be done away with, is the
greatest nonsense on earth; generally speaking, it is nonsense of the
most disastrous sort, fatal in its stupidity--almost as mad as the will
to abolish bad weather, out of pity for the poor, so to speak. In the
great economy of the whole universe, the terrors of reality (in the
passions, in the desires, in the will to power) are incalculably more
necessary than that form of petty happiness which is called "goodness";
it is even needful to practise leniency in order so much as to allow
the latter a place at all, seeing that it is based upon a falsification
of the instincts. I shall have an excellent opportunity of showing the
incalculably calamitous consequences to the whole of history, of the
credo of optimism, this monstrous offspring of the _homines optimi._
Zarathustra,[1] the first who recognised that the optimist is just as
degenerate as the pessimist, though perhaps more detrimental, says:
"_Good men never speak the truth. False shores and false harbours
were ye taught by the good. In the lies of the good were ye born and
bred. Through the good everything hath become false and crooked from
the roots._" Fortunately the world is not built merely upon those
instincts which would secure to the good-natured herd animal his paltry
happiness. To desire everybody to become a "good man," "a gregarious
animal," "a blue-eyed, benevolent, beautiful soul," or--as Herbert
Spencer wished--a creature of altruism, would mean robbing existence of
its greatest character, castrating man, and reducing humanity to a sort
of wretched Chinadom. _And this some have tried to do! It is precisely
this that men called morality._ In this sense Zarathustra calls "the
good," now "the last men," and anon "the beginning of the end"; and
above all, he considers them as _the most detrimental kind of men,_
because they secure their existence at the cost of Truth and at the
cost of the Future.
"The good--they cannot create; they are ever the beginning of the end.
"They crucify him who writeth new values on new tables; they sacrifice
_unto themselves_ the future; they crucify the whole future of humanity!
"The good--they are ever the beginning of the end.
"And whatever harm the slanderers of the world may do, _the harm of the
good is the most calamitous of all harm._"
5
Zarathustra, as the first psychologist of the good man, is perforce the
friend of the evil man. When a degenerate kind of man has succeeded
to the highest rank among the human species, his position must have
been gained at the cost of the reverse type--at the cost of the strong
man who is certain of life. When the gregarious animal stands in
the glorious rays of the purest virtue, the exceptional man must be
degraded to the rank of the evil. If falsehood insists at all costs on
claiming the word "truth" for its own particular standpoint, the really
truthful man must be sought out among the despised. Zarathustra allows
of no doubt here; he says that it was precisely the knowledge of the
good, of the "best," which inspired his absolute horror of men. And
it was out of this feeling of repulsion that he grew the wings which
allowed him to soar into remote futures. He does not conceal the fact
that his type of man is one which is relatively superhuman--especially
as opposed to the "good" man, and that the good and the just would
regard his superman as the _devil._
"Ye higher men, on whom my gaze now falls, this is the doubt that ye
wake in my breast, and this is my secret laughter: methinks ye would
call my Superman--the devil! So strange are ye in your souls to all
that is great, that the Superman would be terrible in your eyes for his
goodness."
It is from this passage, and from no other, that you must set out to
understand the goal to which Zarathustra aspires--the kind of man that
he conceives sees reality _as it is;_ he is strong enough for this--he
is not estranged or far removed from it, he is that reality himself, in
his own nature can be found all the terrible and questionable character
of reality: _only thus can man have greatness._
6
But I have chosen the title of Immoralist as a surname and as a badge
of honour in yet another sense; I am very proud to possess this name
which distinguishes me from all the rest of mankind. No one hitherto
has felt Christian morality beneath him; to that end there were needed
height, a remoteness of vision, and an abysmal psychological depth, not
believed to be possible hitherto. Up to the present Christian morality
has been the Circe of all thinkers--they stood at her service. What
man, before my time, had descended into the underground caverns from
out of which the poisonous fumes of this ideal--of this slandering
of the world--burst forth? What man had even dared to suppose that
they were underground caverns? Was a single one of the philosophers
who preceded me a psychologist at all, and not the very reverse of a
psychologist--that is to say, a "superior swindler," an "Idealist"?
Before my time there was no psychology. To be the first in this new
realm may amount to a curse; at all events, it is a fatality: _for one
is also the first to despise._ My danger is the loathing of mankind.
7
Have you understood me? That which defines me, that which makes me
stand apart from the whole of the rest of humanity, is the fact that
I _unmasked_ Christian morality. For this reason I was in need of a
word which conveyed the idea of a challenge to everybody. Not to have
awakened to these discoveries before, struck me as being the sign
of the greatest uncleanliness that mankind has on its conscience,
as self-deception become instinctive, as the fundamental will to
be blind to every phenomenon, all causality and all reality; in
fact, as an almost criminal fraud _in psychologicis._ Blindness in
regard to Christianity is the essence of criminality--for it is the
crime _against_ life. Ages and peoples, the first as well as the
last, philosophers and old women, with the exception of five or six
moments in history (and of myself, the seventh), are all alike in
this. Hitherto the Christian has been _the_ "moral being," a peerless
oddity, and, _as_ "a moral being," he was more absurd, more vain, more
thoughtless, and a greater disadvantage to himself, than the greatest
despiser of humanity could have deemed possible. Christian morality
is the most malignant form of all false too the actual Circe of
humanity: that which has corrupted mankind. It is not error as error
which infuriates me at the sight of this spectacle; it is not the
millenniums of absence of "goodwill," of discipline, of decency, and
of bravery in spiritual things, which betrays itself in the triumph of
Christianity; it is rather the absence of nature, it is the perfectly
ghastly fact that _anti-nature_ itself received the highest honours as
morality and as law, and remained suspended over man as the Categorical
Imperative. Fancy blundering in this way, _not_ as an individual,
_not_ as a people, but as a whole species! as _humanity_! To teach the
contempt of all the principal instincts of life; to posit falsely the
existence of a "soul," of a "spirit," in order to be able to defy the
body; to spread the feeling that there is something impure in the very
first prerequisite of life--in sex; to seek the principle of evil in
the profound need of growth and expansion--that is to say, in severe
self-love (the term itself is slanderous); and conversely to see a
higher moral value--but what am I talking about?--I mean the _moral
value per se,_ in the typical signs of decline, in the antagonism of
the instincts, in "selflessness," in the loss of ballast, in "the
suppression of the personal element," and in "love of one's neighbour"
(neighbouritis!). What! is humanity itself in a state of degeneration?
Has it always been in this state? One thing is certain, that ye are
taught only the values of decadence as the highest values. The morality
of self-renunciation is essentially the morality of degeneration; the
fact, "I am going to the dogs," is translated into the imperative,"
Ye shall all go to the dogs"--and not only into the imperative. This
morality of self-renunciation, which is the only kind of morality that
has been taught hitherto, betrays the will to nonentity--it denies life
to the very roots. There still remains the possibility that it is not
mankind that is in a state of degeneration, but only that parasitical
kind of man--the priest, who, by means of morality and lies, has
climbed up to his position of determinator of values, who divined in
Christian morality his road to power. And, to tell the truth, this
is my opinion. The teachers and I leaders of mankind--including the
theologians--have been, every one of them, decadents: hence their)
transvaluation of all values into a hostility towards; life; hence
morality. _The definition of morality;_ Morality is the idiosyncrasy of
decadents, actuated by a desire _to avenge themselves with success upon
life._ I attach great value to this definition.
8
Have you understood me? I have not uttered a single word which I had
not already said five years ago through my mouthpiece Zarathustra.
The unmasking of Christian morality is an event which unequalled in
history, it is a real catastrophe. The man who throws light upon it
is a _force majeure,_ a fatality; he breaks the history of man into
two. Time is reckoned up before him and after him. The lightning
flash of truth struck precisely that which theretofore had stood
highest: he who understands what was destroyed by that flash should
look to see whether he still holds anything in his hands. Everything
which until then was called truth, has been revealed as the most
detrimental, most spiteful, and most subterranean form of life; the
holy pretext, which was the "improvement" of man, has been recognised
as a ruse for draining life of its energy and of its blood. Morality
conceived as _Vampirism_.... The man who unmasks morality has also
unmasked the worthlessness of the values in which men either believe
or have believed; he no longer sees anything to be revered in the most
venerable man--even in the types of men that have been pronounced
holy; all he can see in them is the most fatal kind of abortions,
fatal, _because they fascinate._ The concept "God" was invented as
the opposite of the concept life--everything detrimental, poisonous,
and slanderous, and all deadly hostility to life, wad bound together
in one horrible unit in Him. The concepts "beyond" and "true world"
were invented in order to depreciate the only world that exists--in
order that no goal or aim, no sense or task, might be left to earthly
reality. The concepts "soul," "spirit," and last of all the concept
"immortal soul," were invented in order to throw contempt on the body,
in order to make it sick and "holy," in order to cultivate an attitude
of appalling levity towards all things in life which deserve to be
treated seriously, _i.e._ the questions of nutrition and habitation,
of intellectual diet, the treatment of the sick, cleanliness, and
weather. Instead of health, we find the "salvation of the soul"--that
is to say, a _folie circulate_ fluctuating between convulsions and
penitence and the hysteria of redemption. The concept "sin," together
with the torture instrument appertaining to it, which is the concept
"free will," was invented in order to confuse and muddle our instincts,
and to render the mistrust of them man's second nature! In the concepts
"disinterestedness" and "self-denial," the actual signs of decadence
are to be found. The allurement of that which is detrimental, the
inability to discover one's own advantage and self-destruction, are
made into absolute qualities, into the "duty," the "holiness," and
the "divinity" of man. Finally--to keep the worst to the last--by the
notion of the _good_ man, all that is favoured which is weak, ill,
botched, and sick-in-itself, which _ought to be wiped out._ The law
of selection is thwarted, an ideal is made out of opposition to the
proud, well-constituted man, to him who says yea to life, to him who
is certain of the future, and who guarantees the future--this man is
henceforth called the _evil_ one. And all this was believed in as
_morality!--Ecrasez l'infâme!_
9