27.
_The causes of Nihilism_: (1) _The higher species is lacking, i.e.,_
the species whose inexhaustible fruitfulness and power would uphold our
belief in Man (think only of what is owed to Napoleon--almost all the
higher hopes of this century).
(2) _The inferior species_ ("herd," "ass," "society") is forgetting
modesty, and inflates its needs into _cosmic_ and _metaphysical_
values. In this way all life is _vulgarised_: for inasmuch as the
_mass_ of mankind rules, it tyrannises over the _exceptions,_ so that
these lose their belief in themselves and become _Nihilists._
All attempts to _conceive of a new species_ come to nothing
("romanticism," the artist, the philosopher; against Carlyle's attempt
to lend them the highest moral values).
The result is that higher types are _resisted_.
_The downfall and insecurity of all higher types._ The struggle against
genius ("popular poetry," etc.). Sympathy with the lowly and the
suffering as a _standard_ for the _elevation of the soul_.
The _philosopher is lacking,_ the interpreter of deeds, and not alone
he who poetises them.
28.
_Imperfect_ Nihilism--its forms: we are now surrounded by them.
All attempts made to escape Nihilism, which do not consist in
transvaluing the values that have prevailed hitherto, only make the
matter worse; they complicate the problem.
29.
_The varieties of self-stupefaction._ In one's heart of hearts, not to
know, whither? Emptiness. The attempt to rise superior to it all by
means of emotional intoxication: emotional intoxication in the form of
music, in the form of cruelty in the tragic joy over the ruin of the
noblest, and in the form of blind, gushing enthusiasm over individual
_men_ or distinct _periods_ (in the form of hatred, etc.). The attempt
to work blindly, like a scientific instrument; to keep an eye on the
many small joys, like an investigator, for instance (modesty towards
oneself); the mysticism of the voluptuous _joy_ of eternal emptiness;
art "for art's sake" ("le fait"), "immaculate investigation," in the
form of narcotics against the disgust of oneself; any kind of incessant
work, _any_ kind of small foolish fanaticism; the medley of all
means, illness as the result of general profligacy (dissipation kills
pleasure).
(1) As a result, feeble will-power.
(2) Excessive pride and the humiliation of petty weakness felt as a
contrast.
30.
The time is coming when we shall have to pay for having been
_Christians_ for two thousand years: we are losing the equilibrium
which enables us to live--for a long while we shall not know in what
direction we are travelling. We are hurling ourselves headlong into the
_opposite_ valuations, with that degree of energy which could only have
been engendered in man by an _overvaluation_ of himself.
Now, everything is false from the root, words and nothing but words,
confused, feeble, or over-strained.
_(a)_ There is a seeking after a sort of earthly solution of the
problem of life, but in the same sense as that of the _final triumph_
of truth, love, justice (socialism: "equality of persons").
_(b)_ There is also an attempt to hold fast to the _moral ideal_ (with
altruism, self-sacrifice, and the denial of the will, in the front
rank).
_(c)_ There is even an attempt to hold fast to a "Beyond": were it
only as an antilogical _x_; but it is forthwith interpreted in such a
way that a kind of metaphysical solace, after the old style, may be
derived from it.
_(d)_ There is an attempt to read the phenomena of life in such a
way as to arrive _at the divine guidance of old,_ with its powers
of rewarding, punishing, educating, and of generally conducing to a
something _better_ in the order of things.
_(e)_ People once more believe in good and evil; so that the victory of
the good and the annihilation of the evil is regarded as a _duty_ (this
is English, and is typical of that blockhead, John Stuart Mill).
(f) The contempt felt for "naturalness," for the desires and for the
ego: the attempt to regard even the highest intellectuality of art as a
result of an impersonal and disinterested attitude.
(g) The Church is still allowed to meddle in all the essential
occurrences and incidents in the life of the individual, with a view to
consecrating it and giving it a _loftier_ meaning: we still have the
"Christian State" and the "Christian marriage."
31.
There have been more thoughtful and more destructively thoughtful[4]
times than ours: times like those in which Buddha appeared, for
instance, in which the people themselves, after centuries of sectarian
quarrels, had sunk so deeply into the abyss of philosophical dogmas,
as, from time to time, European people have done in regard to the fine
points of religious dogma. "Literature" and the press would be the last
things to seduce one to any high opinion of the spirit of our times:
the millions of Spiritists, and a Christianity with gymnastic exercises
of that ghastly ugliness which is characteristic of all English
inventions, throw more light on the subject.
European _Pessimism_ is still in its infancy--a fact which argues
against it: it has not yet attained to that prodigious and yearning
fixity of sight to which it attained in India once upon a time, and
in which nonentity is reflected; there is still too much of the
"ready-made," and not enough of the "evolved" in its constitution, too
much learned and poetic Pessimism; I mean that a good deal of it has
been discovered, invented, and "created," but not caused.
[Footnote 4: _zerdachtere_.]
32.
Criticism of the Pessimism which has prevailed hitherto. The want of
the eudæmonological standpoint, as a last abbreviation of the question:
what is the _purpose_ of it all? The reduction of gloom.
_Our_ Pessimism: the world has not the value which we believed it to
have,--our faith itself has so increased our instinct for research that
we are _compelled_ to say this to-day. In the first place, it seems of
less value: _at first it is felt_ to be of less value,--only in this
sense are we pessimists,--that is to say, with the will to acknowledge
this transvaluation without reserve, and no longer, as heretofore, to
deceive ourselves and chant the old old story.
It is precisely in this way that we find the pathos which urges us to
seek for _new values._ In short: the world might have far more value
than we thought--we must get behind the _naïveté of our ideals,_ for
it is possible that, in our conscious effort to give it the highest
interpretation, we have not bestowed even a moderately just value upon
it.
What has been _deified_? The valuing instinct inside the _community_
(that which enabled it to survive).
What has been _calumniated_? That which has tended to separate higher
men from their inferiors, the instincts which cleave gulfs and build
barriers.
33.