The lack of honesty in preparing and schooling oneself for
them (Fromentin);
The Romanticists (their lack of philosophy and science and
their excess in literature);
The novelists (Walter Scott, but also the monsters of the
_Nibelung,_ with their inordinately nervous music);
The lyricists.
"Scientifically."
Virtuosos (Jews).
The popular ideals are overcome, but not yet _in the presence of the
people_:
The saint, the sage, the prophet.
79.
_The want of discipline in the modern spirit_ concealed beneath all
kinds of moral finery.--The show-words are: Toleration (for the
"incapacity of saying yes or no"); _la largeur de sympathie_ (= a
third of indifference, a third of curiosity, and a third of morbid
susceptibility); "objectivity" (the lack of personality and of
will, and the inability to "love"); "freedom" in regard to the rule
(Romanticism); "truth" as opposed to falsehood and lying (Naturalism);
the "scientific spirit" (the "human document": or, in plain English,
the serial story which means "addition"--instead of "composition");
"passion" in the place of disorder and intemperance; "depth" in the
place of confusion and the pell-mell of symbols.
80.
_Concerning the criticism of big words._--I am full of mistrust and
malice towards what is called "ideal": this is my _Pessimism,_ that
I have recognised to what extent "sublime sentiments" are a source of
evil--that is to say, a belittling and depreciating of man.
Every time "progress" is expected to result from an ideal,
disappointment invariably follows; the triumph of an ideal has always
been a _retrograde movement_.
Christianity, revolution, the abolition of slavery, equal rights,
philanthropy, love of peace, justice, truth: all these big words are
only valuable in a struggle, as banners: not as realities, but as
_show-words,_ for something quite different (yea, even quite opposed to
what they mean!).
81.
The kind of man is known who has fallen in love with the sentence
"_tout comprendre à est tout pardonner"_ It is the weak and, above all,
the disillusioned: if there is something to pardon in everything, there
is also something to contemn! It is the philosophy of disappointment,
which here swathes itself so humanly in pity, and gazes out so sweetly.
They are Romanticists, whose faith has gone to pot: now they at least
wish to look on and see how everything vanishes and fades. They call it
_l'art pour l'art,_ "objectivity," etc.
82.
_The main symptoms of Pessimism_:--Dinners at Magny's; Russian
Pessimism (Tolstoy, Dostoiewsky); æsthetic Pessimism, _l'art pour
l'art,_ "description" (the romantic and the anti-romantic Pessimism);
Pessimism in the theory of knowledge (Schopenhauer: phenomenalism);
anarchical Pessimism; the "religion of pity," Buddhistic preparation;
the Pessimism of culture (exoticness, cosmopolitanism); moral
Pessimism, myself.
83.
"_Without the Christian Faith_" said Pascal, "you would yourselves
be like nature and history, _un monstre et un chaos._" We fulfilled
this prophecy: once the weak and optimistic eighteenth century had
_embellished_ and _rationalised_ man.
_Schopenhauer_ and _Pascal._--I none essential point, Schopenhauer is
the first who _takes up Pascal's_ movement again: _un monstre et un
chaos,_ consequently something that must be negatived ... history,
nature, and man himself!
"_Our inability to know the truth_ is the result of our _corruption,_
of our moral _decay_" says Pascal. And Schopenhauer says essentially
the same. "The more profound the corruption of reason is, the
more necessary is the doctrine of salvation"--or, putting it into
Schopenhauerian phraseology, negation.
84.
_Schopenhauer as an epigone_ (state of affairs before the
Revolution):--Pity, sensuality, art, weakness of will, Catholicism
of the most intellectual desires--that is, at bottom, the good old
eighteenth century.
_Schopenhauer's_ fundamental misunderstanding of the _will_ (just
as though passion, instinct, and desire were the essential factors
of will) is typical: the depreciation of the will to the extent of
mistaking it altogether. Likewise the hatred of willing: the attempt at
seeing something superior--yea, even superiority itself, and that which
really matters, in non-willing, in the "subject-being _without_ aim or
intention." Great symptom of _fatigue or of the weakness of will_: for
this, in reality, is what treats the passions as master, and directs
them as to the way and to the measure....
85.
The undignified attempt has been made to regard Wagner and Schopenhauer
as types of the mentally unsound: an infinitely more essential
understanding of the matter would have been gained if the exact
decadent type which each of them represents had been scientifically and
accurately defined.
86.
In my opinion, Henrik Ibsen has become very German. With all his
robust idealism and "Will to Truth," he never dared to ring himself
free from moral-illusionism which says "freedom," and will not admit,
even to itself, what freedom is: the second stage in the metamorphosis
of the "Will to Power" in him who lacks it. In the first stage, one
demands justice at the hands of those who have power. In the second,
one speaks of "freedom," that is to say, one wishes to "shake oneself
free" from those who have power. In the third stage, one speaks of
"equal rights"--that is to say, so long as one is not a predominant
personality one wishes to prevent one's competitors from growing in
power.
87.
The Decline of _Protestantism_: theoretically and historically
understood as a half-measure. Undeniable predominance of Catholicism
to-day: Protestant feeling is so dead that the strongest
_anti-Protestant_ movements (Wagner's _Parsifal,_ for instance) are no
longer regarded as such. The whole of the more elevated intellectuality
in France is _Catholic_ in instinct; Bismarck recognised that there was
no longer any such thing as Protestantism.
88.
Protestantism, that spiritually unclean and tiresome form of decadence,
in which Christianity has known how to survive in the mediocre North,
is something incomplete and complexly valuable for knowledge, in so far
as it was able to bring experiences of different kinds and origins into
the same heads.
89.
What has the German spirit not made out of Christianity! And, to refer
to Protestantism again, how much beer is there not still in Protestant
Christianity! Can a crasser, more indolent, and more lounging form
of Christian belief be imagined, than that of the average German
Protestant?... It is indeed a very humble Christianity. I call it
the Homœopathy of Christianity! I am reminded that, to-day, there
also exists a less humble sort of Protestantism; it is taught by
royal chaplains and anti-Semitic speculators: but nobody has ever
maintained that any "spirit" "hovers" over these waters. It is merely
a less respectable form of Christian faith, not by any means a more
comprehensible one.
90.
_Progress._--Let us be on our guard lest we deceive ourselves! Time
flies forward apace,--we would fain believe that everything flies
forward with it,--that evolution is an advancing development.... That
is the appearance of things which deceives the most circumspect. But
the nineteenth century shows no advance whatever on the sixteenth:
and the German spirit of 1888 is an example of a backward movement
when compared with that of 1788.... Mankind does not advance, it does
not even exist. The aspect of the whole is much more like that of a
huge experimenting workshop where some things in all ages succeed,
while an incalculable number of things fail; where all order, logic,
co-ordination, and responsibility is lacking. How dare we blink the
fact that the rise of Christianity is a decadent movement?--that the
German Reformation was a recrudescence of Christian barbarism?--that
the Revolution destroyed the instinct for an organisation of society
on a large scale?... Man is not an example of progress as compared with
animals: the tender son of culture is an abortion compared with the
Arab or the Corsican; the Chinaman is a more successful type--that is
to say, richer in sustaining power than the European.
_(b)_ THE LAST CENTURIES.
91.
Gloominess and pessimistic influence necessarily follow in the wake of
enlightenment. Towards 1770 a falling-off in cheerfulness was already
noticeable; women, with that very feminine instinct which always
defends virtue, believed that immorality was the cause of it. Galiani
hit the bull's eye: he quotes Voltaire's verse:
"Un monstre gai vaut mieux
Qu'un sentimental ennuyeux."
If now I maintain that I am ahead, by a century or two of
enlightenment, of Voltaire and Galiani--who was much more profound, how
deeply must I have sunk into gloominess! This is also true, and betimes
I somewhat reluctantly manifested some caution in regard to the German
and Christian narrowness and inconsistency of Schopenhauerian or, worse
still, Leopardian Pessimism, and sought the most characteristic form
(Asia). But, in order to endure that extreme Pessimism (which here and
there peeps out of my _Birth of Tragedy),_ to live alone "without God
or morality," I was compelled to invent a counter-prop for myself.
Perhaps I know best why man is the only animal that laughs: he alone
surfers so excruciatingly that he was _compelled_ to invent laughter.
The unhappiest and most melancholy animal is, as might have been
expected, the most cheerful.
92.
In regard to German culture, I have always had a feeling as of
_decline._ The fact that I learned to know a declining form of culture
has often made me _unfair_ towards the whole phenomenon of European
culture. The Germans always follow at some distance behind: they always
go to the root of things, for instance:--
Dependance upon foreigners; _Kant_--Rousseau, the sensualists, Hume,
Swedenborg.
_Schopenhauer_--the Indians and Romanticism, Voltaire.
_Wagner_--the French cult of the ugly and of grand opera, _Paris,_ and
the flight into _primitive barbarism_ (the marriage of brother and
sister).
The law of the _laggard_ (the provinces go to Paris, Germany goes to
France).
How is it that precisely _Germans discovered the Greek_ (the more an
instinct is developed, the more it is _tempted_ to run for once into
its opposite).
Music is the last breath of every culture.
93.
_Renaissance and Reformation._--What does the Renaissance prove? That
the reign of the "individual" can be only a short one. The output
is too great; there is not even the possibility of husbanding or of
capitalising forces, and exhaustion sets in step by step. These are
times when everything is _squandered,_ when even the strength itself
with which one collects, capitalises, and heaps riches upon riches,
_is squandered._ Even the opponents of such movements are driven to
preposterous extremes in the dissipation of their strength: and they
too are very soon exhausted, used up, and completely sapped.
In the Reformation we are face to face with a wild and plebeian
counterpart of the Italian Renaissance, generated by similar impulses,
except that the former, in the backward and still vulgar North, had to
assume a religious form--there the concept of a higher life had not yet
been divorced from that of a religious one.
Even the Reformation was a movement for individual liberty; "every one
his own priest" is really no more than a formula for _libertinage._
As a matter of fact, the words "Evangelical freedom" would have
sufficed--and all instincts which had reasons for remaining concealed
broke out like wild hounds, the most brutal needs suddenly acquired the
courage to show themselves, everything seemed justified ... men refused
to specify the kind of freedom they had aimed at, they preferred to
shut their eyes. But the fact that their eyes were closed and that
their lips were moistened with gushing orations, did not prevent their
hands from being ready to snatch at whatever there was to snatch at,
that the belly became the god of the "free gospel," and that all lusts
of revenge and of hatred were indulged with insatiable fury.
This lasted for a while: then exhaustion supervened, just as it
had done in Southern Europe; and again here, it was a low form of
exhaustion, a sort of general _ruere in servitium_.... Then the
_disreputable_ century of Germany dawned.
94.
_Chivalry_--the position won by power: its gradual break-up (and
partial transference to broader and more bourgeois spheres). In the
case of Larochefoucauld we find a knowledge of the actual impulses of a
noble temperament--together with the gloomy Christian estimate of these
impulses.
The _protraction of Christianity_ through the _French Revolution._ The
seducer is Rousseau; he once again liberates woman, who thenceforward
is always represented as ever more interesting--_suffering._ Then come
the slaves and Mrs. Beecher-Stowe. Then the poor and the workmen.
Then the vicious and the sick--all this is drawn into the foreground
(even for the purpose of disposing people in favour of the genius,
it has been customary for five hundred years to press him forward as
the great sufferer!). Then comes the cursing of all voluptuousness
(Baudelaire and Schopenhauer), the most decided conviction that the
lust of power is the greatest vice; absolute certainty that morality
and disinterestedness are identical things; that the "happiness of all"
is a goal worth striving after (_i.e.,_ Christ's Kingdom of Heaven).
We are on the best road to it: the Kingdom of Heaven of the poor in
spirit has begun.--Intermediate stages: the bourgeois (as a result of
the _nouveau riche_) and the workman (as a result of the machine).
Greek and French culture of the time of Louis XIV. compared. A decided
belief in oneself. A leisure-class which makes things hard for itself
and exercises a great deal of self-control. The power of form, the will
to form _oneself._ "Happiness" acknowledged as a purpose. Much strength
and energy _behind_ all formality of manners. Pleasure at the sight of
a life that is _seemingly so easy._ The _Greeks_ seemed like _children_
to the French.
95.
_The Three Centuries._
Their different kinds of _sensitiveness_ may perhaps be best expressed
as follows:--
_Aristocracy_: Descartes, the reign of _reason,_ evidence showing the
sovereignty of the _will_.
_Feminism_: Rousseau, the reign of _feeling,_ evidence showing the
sovereignty of the senses; all lies.
_Animalism_: Schopenhauer, the reign of _passion,_ evidence showing the
sovereignty of animality, more honest, but gloomy.
The seventeenth century is _aristocratic,_ all for order, haughty
towards everything animal, severe in regard to the heart, "austere,"
and even free from sentiment, "non-German," averse to all that is
burlesque and natural, generalising and maintaining an attitude of
sovereignty towards the past for it believes in itself. At bottom it
partakes very much of the beast of prey, and practises asceticism in
order to remain master. It is the century of strength of will, as also
that of strong passion.
The eighteenth century is dominated by _woman,_ it is gushing,
spiritual, and flat; but with intellect at the service of aspirations
and of the heart, it is a libertine in the pleasures of intellect,
undermining all authorities; emotionally intoxicated, cheerful, clear,
humane, and sociable, false to itself and at bottom very rascally....
The nineteenth century is more _animal,_ more subterranean, hateful,
realistic, plebeian, and on that very account "better," "more honest,"
more submissive to "reality" of what kind soever, and _truer_; but
weak of will, sad, obscurely exacting and fatalistic. It has no
feeling of timidity or reverence, either in the presence of "reason"
or the "heart"; thoroughly convinced of the dominion of the desires
(Schopenhauer said "Will," but nothing is more characteristic of his
philosophy than that it entirely lacks all actual _willing_). Even
morality is reduced to an instinct ("Pity").
Auguste Comte is _the continuation of the_ eighteenth _century_ (the
dominion of the heart over the head, sensuality in the theory of
knowledge, altruistic exaltation).
The fact that _science_ has become as sovereign as it is to-day, proves
how the nineteenth century has _emancipated itself_ from the dominion
of _ideals._ A certain absence of "needs" and wishes makes our
scientific curiosity and rigour possible--this is our kind of virtue.
Romanticism is the _counterstroke_ of the eighteenth century; a sort of
accumulated longing for its grand style of exaltation (as a matter of
fact, largely mingled with mummery and self-deception: the desire was
to represent _strong nature_ and _strong passion_).
The nineteenth century instinctively goes in search of _theories_
by means of which it may feel its _fatalistic, submission to the
empire of facts_ justified. Hegel's success against sentimentality
and romantic idealism was already a sign of its fatalistic trend of
thought, in its belief that superior reason belongs to the triumphant
side, and in its justification of the actual "state" (in the place of
"humanity," etc.).--Schopenhauer: we are something foolish, and at the
best self-suppressive. The success of determinism, the genealogical
derivation of _obligations_ which were formerly held to be absolute,
the teaching of environment and adaptation, the reduction of will to
a process of reflex movement, the denial of the will as a "working
cause"; finally--a real process of re-christening: so little will
is observed that the word itself becomes _available_ for another
purpose. Further theories: the teaching of _objectivity,_ "will-less"
contemplation, as the only road to truth, _as also_ to _beauty_ (also
the belief in "genius," in order to have _the right to be submissive_);
mechanism, the determinable rigidity of the mechanical process;
so-called "Naturalism," the elimination of the choosing, directing,
interpreting subject, on principle.
Kant, with his "practical reason," with his _moral fanaticism,_ is
quite eighteenth century style; still completely outside the historical
movement, without any notion whatsoever of the reality of his time, for
instance, revolution; he is not affected by Greek philosophy; he is a
phantasist of the notion of duty, a sensualist with a hidden leaning to
dogmatic pampering.
_The return to Kant_ in our century means a _return to the eighteenth
century,_ people desire to create themselves a right to the _old ideas_
and to the old exaltation--hence a theory of knowledge which "describes
limits," that is to say, which admits _of the option of fixing a Beyond
to the domain of reason._
_Hegel's_ way of thinking is not so very far removed from that of
Goethe: see the latter on the subject of Spinoza, for instance.
The will to deify the All and Life, in order to find both _peace_
and _happiness_ in contemplating them: Hegel looks for reason
everywhere--in the presence of reason man may be _submissive_ and
resigned. In Goethe we find a kind of _fatalism_ which is almost
_joyous_ and _confiding,_ which neither revolts nor weakens, which
strives to make a totality out of itself, in the belief that only in
totality does everything seem good and justified, and find itself
resolved.
96.
The period of _rationalism_--followed by a period of _sentimentality._
To what extent does Schopenhauer come under "sentimentality"? (Hegel
under intellectuality?)
97.
The seventeenth century _suffers_ from _humanity_ as from a _host
of contradictions_ ("_l'amas de contradictions_" that we are); it
endeavours to discover man, to _co-ordinate him,_ to excavate him:
whereas the eighteenth century tries to forget what is known of man's
nature, in order to adapt him to its Utopia. "Superficial, soft,
humane"--gushes over "humanity."
The seventeenth century tries to banish all traces of the individual
in order that the artist's work may resemble life as much as possible.
The eighteenth century strives _to create interest in the author_ by
means of the work. The seventeenth century seeks art in art, a piece of
culture; the eighteenth uses art in its propaganda for political and
social reforms.
"Utopia," the "ideal man," the deification of Nature, the vanity of
making one's own personality the centre of interest, subordination to
the propaganda of _social ideas,_ charlatanism--all this we derive from
the eighteenth century.