55.
Extreme positions are not relieved by more moderate ones, but by
extreme _opposite_ positions. And thus the belief in the utter
immorality of nature, and in the absence of all purpose and sense, are
psychologically necessary attitudes when the belief in God and in an
essentially moral order of things is no longer tenable.
Nihilism now appears, _not_ because the sorrows of existence are
greater than they were formerly, but because, in a general way, people
have grown suspicious of the "meaning" which might be given to evil and
even to existence. One interpretation has been overthrown: but since it
was held to be _the_ interpretation, it seems as though there were no
meaning in existence at all, as though everything were in vain.
***
It yet remains to be shown that this "in vain!" is the character
of present Nihilism. The mistrust of our former valuations has
increased to such an extent that it has led to the question: "are
not all 'values' merely allurements prolonging the duration of the
comedy, without, however, bringing the unravelling any closer?" The
"long period of time" which has culminated in an "in vain," without
either goal or purpose, is the _most paralysing_ of thoughts, more
particularly when one sees that one is duped without, however, being
able to resist being duped.
***
Let us imagine this thought in its worst form: existence, as it is,
without either a purpose or a goal, but inevitably recurring, without
an end in nonentity: "_Eternal Recurrence._"
This is the extremest form of Nihilism: nothing (purposelessness)
eternal!
European form of Buddhism: the energy of knowledge and of strength
drives us to such a belief. It is the most _scientific_ of all
hypotheses. We deny final purposes. If existence had a final purpose it
would have reached it.
***
It should be understood that what is being aimed at, here, is a
contradiction of Pantheism: for "everything perfect, divine, eternal,"
_also_ leads _to the belief in Eternal Recurrence._ Question: has this
pantheistic and affirmative attitude to all things also been made
possible by morality? At bottom only the moral God has been overcome.
Is there any sense in imagining a God "beyond good and evil"? Would
Pantheism in _this_ sense be possible? Do we withdraw the idea of
purpose from the process, and affirm the process notwithstanding?
This were so if, within that process, something were _attained_ every
moment--and always the same thing. Spinoza won an affirmative position
of this sort, in the sense that every moment, according to him, has
a logical necessity: and he triumphed by means of his fundamentally
logical instinct over a like conformation of the world.
***
But his case is exceptional. If every _fundamental trait of character,_
which lies beneath every act, and which finds expression in every
act, were recognised by the individual as _his_ fundamental trait of
character, this individual would be driven to regard every moment of
his existence in general, triumphantly as good. It would simply be
necessary for that fundamental trait of character to be felt in oneself
as something good, valuable, and pleasurable.
***
Now, in the case of those men and classes of men who were treated
with violence and oppressed by their fellows, _morality_ saved life
from despair and from the leap into nonentity:. for impotence in
relation to mankind and _not_ in relation to Nature is what generates
the most desperate bitterness towards existence. Morality treated the
powerful, the violent, and the "masters" in general, as enemies against
whom the common man must be protected--_that is to say, emboldened,
strengthened._ Morality has therefore always taught the most profound
_hatred_ and _contempt_ of the fundamental trait of character of all
rulers--_i.e., their Will to Power._ To suppress, to deny, and to
decompose this morality, would mean to regard this most thoroughly
detested instinct with the reverse of the old feeling and valuation.
If the sufferer and the oppressed man were _to lose his belief_ in his
right to contemn the Will to Power, his position would be desperate.
This would be so if the trait above-mentioned were essential to life,
in which case it would follow that even that will to morality was only
a cloak to this "Will to Power," as are also even that hatred and
contempt. The oppressed man would then perceive that he stands _on
the same platform_ with the oppressor, and that he has no individual
privilege, nor any _higher rank_ than the latter.
***
On the _contrary_! There is nothing on earth which can have any value,
if it have not a modicum of power--granted, of course, that life itself
is the Will to Power. Morality protected the _botched_ and _bungled_
against Nihilism, in that it gave every one of them infinite worth,
metaphysical worth, and classed them altogether in one order which did
not correspond with that of worldly power and order of rank: it taught
submission, humility, etc. _Admitting that the belief in this morality
be destroyed,_ the botched and the bungled would no longer have any
comfort, and would perish.
This _perishing_ seems like _self-annihilation,_ like an instinctive
selection of that which must be destroyed. The _symptoms_ of this
self-destruction of the botched and the bungled: self-vivisection,
poisoning, intoxication, romanticism, and, above all, the instinctive
constraint to acts whereby the powerful are made into _mortal
enemies_ (training, so to speak, one's own hangmen), _the will to
destruction_ as the will of a still deeper instinct--of the instinct of
self-destruction, of the Will to Nonentity.
***
Nihilism is a sign that the botched and bungled in order to be
destroyed, that, having been deprived of morality, they no longer have
any reason to "resign themselves," that they take up their stand on the
territory of the opposite principle, and _will also exercise power_
themselves, by compelling the powerful to become their hangmen. This
is the European form of Buddhism, that _active negation,_ after all
existence has lost its meaning.
***
It must not be supposed that "poverty" has grown more acute, on the
contrary! "God, morality, resignation" were remedies in the very
deepest stages of misery: _active_ Nihilism made its appearance in
circumstances which were relatively much more favourable. The fact,
alone, that morality is regarded as overcome, presupposes a certain
degree of intellectual culture; while this very culture, for its part,
bears evidence to a certain relative well-being. A certain intellectual
fatigue, brought on by the long struggle concerning philosophical
opinions, and carried to hopeless scepticism _against_ philosophy,
shows moreover that the level of these Nihilists is by no means a
low one. Only think of the conditions in which Buddha appeared! The
teaching of the eternal recurrence would have learned principles to
go upon (just as Buddha's teaching, for instance, had the notion of
causality, etc.).
***
What do we mean to-day by the words "botched and bungled"? In the
first place, they are used _physiologically_ and not politically. The
unhealthiest kind of man all over Europe (in all classes) is the soil
out of which Nihilism grows: this species of man will regard eternal
recurrence as damnation--once he is bitten by the thought, he can no
longer recoil before any action. He would not extirpate passively,
but would cause everything to be extirpated which is meaningless
and without a goal to this extent; although it is only a spasm, or
sort of blind rage in the presence of the fact that everything has
existed again and again for an eternity--even this period of Nihilism
and destruction. The value of such a _crisis_ is that it _purifies,_
that it unites similar elements, and makes them mutually destructive,
that it assigns common duties to men of opposite persuasions, and
brings the weaker and more uncertain among them to the light, thus
taking the first step towards a new _order of rank_ among forces
from the standpoint of health: recognising commanders as commanders,
subordinates as subordinates. Naturally irrespective of all the present
forms of society.
***
What class of men will prove they are strongest in this new order of
things? The most moderate--they who do not _require_ any extreme forms
of belief, they who not only admit of, but actually like, a certain
modicum of chance and nonsense; they who can think of man with a very
moderate view of his value, without becoming weak and small on that
account; the most rich in health, who are able to withstand a maximum
amount of sorrow, and who are therefore not so very much afraid of
sorrow--men who are _certain of their power,_ and who represent with
conscious pride the state of strength to which man has attained.
***
How could such a man think of Eternal Recurrence?
56.
_The Periods of European Nihilism._
_The Period of Obscurity_: all kinds of groping measures devised to
preserve old institutions and not to arrest the progress of new ones.
_The Period of Light_: men see that old and new are fundamental
contraries; that the old values are born of descending life, and that
the new ones are born of ascending life--_that all old ideals_ are
unfriendly to life (born of decadence and determining it, however
much they may be decked out in the Sunday finery of morality). We
_understand_ the old, but are far from being sufficiently strong for
the new.
_The Periods of the Three Great Passions_: contempt, pity, destruction.
_The Periods of Catastrophes_: the rise of a teaching which will sift
mankind ... which drives the weak to some decision and the strong also.