We do not believe that one man can be another if he is not that
other already--that is to say, if he is not, as often happens, an
accretion of personalities or at least of parts of persons. In this
case it is possible to draw another set of actions from him into the
foreground, and to drive back "the older man." ... The man's aspect
is altered, but _not_ his actual nature.... It is but the merest
_factum brutum_ that any one should cease from performing certain
actions, and the fact allows of the most varied interpretations.
Neither does it always follow therefrom that the habit of performing
a certain action is entirely arrested, nor that the reasons for
that action are dissipated. He whose destiny and abilities make him
a criminal never unlearns anything, but is continually adding to his
store of knowledge: and long abstinence acts as a sort of tonic on
his talent.... Certainly, as far as society is concerned, the only
interesting fact is that some one has ceased from performing certain
actions; and to this end society will often raise a man out of those
circumstances which make him _able_ to perform those actions: this
is obviously a wiser course than that of trying to break his destiny
and his particular nature. The Church,--which has done nothing except
to take the place of, and to appropriate, the philosophic treasures
of antiquity,--starting out from another standpoint and wishing to
secure a "soul" or the "salvation" of a soul, believes in the expiatory
power of punishment, as also in the obliterating power of forgiveness:
both of which supposed processes are deceptions due to religious
prejudice--punishment expiates nothing, forgiveness obliterates
nothing; what is done cannot be undone. Because some one forgets
something it by no means proves that something has been wiped out....
An action leads to certain consequences, both among men and away from
men, and it matters not whether it has met with punishment, or whether
it has been "expiated," "forgiven," or "obliterated," it matters not
even if the Church meanwhile canonises the man who performed it. The
Church believes in things that do not exist, it believes in "Souls"; it
believes in "influences" that do not exist--in divine influences; it
believes in states that do not exist, in sin, redemption, and spiritual
salvation: in all things it stops at the surface and is satisfied with
signs, attitudes, words, to which it lends an arbitrary interpretation.
It possesses a method of counterfeit psychology which is thought out
quite systematically.
395.
"Illness makes men better," this famous assumption which is to be met
with in all ages, and in the mouth of the wizard quite as often as in
the mouth and maw of the people, really makes one ponder. In view of
discovering whether there is any truth in it, one might be allowed to
ask whether there is not perhaps a fundamental relationship between
morality and illness? Regarded as a whole, could not the "improvement
of mankind"--that is to say, the unquestionable softening, humanising,
and taming which the European has undergone within the last two
centuries--be regarded as the result of a long course of secret and
ghastly suffering, failure, abstinence, and grief? Has illness made
"Europeans" "better"? Or, put into other words, is not our modern
soft-hearted European morality, which could be likened to that of the
Chinese, perhaps an expression of physiological _deterioration_?...
It cannot be denied, for instance, that wherever history shows us
"man" in a state of particular glory and power, his type is always
dangerous, impetuous, and boisterous, and cares little for humanity;
and perhaps, in those cases in which _it seems otherwise,_ all that
was required was the courage or subtlety to see sufficiently below the
surface in psychological matters, in order even in them to discover the
general proposition: "the more healthy, strong, rich, fruitful, and
enterprising a man may feel, the more immoral he will be as well." A
terrible thought, to which one should on no account give way. Provided,
however, that one take a few steps forward with this thought, how
wondrous does the future then appear! What will then be paid for more
dearly on earth, than precisely this very thing which we are all trying
to promote, by all means in our power--the humanising, the improving,
and the increased "civilisation" of man? Nothing would then be more
expensive than virtue: for by means of it the world would ultimately
be turned into a hospital: and the last conclusion of wisdom would be,
"everybody must be everybody else's nurse." Then we should certainly
have attained to the "Peace on earth," so long desired! But how little
"joy we should find in each other's company"! How little beauty, wanton
spirits, daring, and danger! So few "actions" which would make life on
earth worth living! Ah! and no longer any "deeds"! But have not all the
_great_ things and deeds which have remained fresh in the memory of
men, and which have not been destroyed by time, been _immoral_ in the
deepest sense of the word?...
396.
The priests--and with them the half-priests or philosophers of all
ages--have always called that doctrine true, the educating influence
of which was a benevolent one or at least seemed so--that is to say,
tended to "improve." In this way they resemble an ingenuous plebeian
empiric and miracle-worker who, because he had tried a certain poison
as a cure, declared it to be no poison. "By their fruits ye shall know
them"--that is to say, "by our truths." This has been the reasoning
of priests until this day. They have squandered their sagacity, with
results that have been sufficiently fatal, in order to make the "proof
of power" (or the proof "by the fruits ") pre-eminent and even supreme
arbiter over all other forms of proof. "That which makes good must
be good; that which is good cannot lie"--these are their inexorable
conclusions--"that which bears good fruit must consequently be true;
there is no other criterion of truth." ...
But to the extent to which "improving" acts as an argument,
deteriorating must also act as a refutation. The error can be shown to
be an error, by examining the lives of those who represent it: a false
step, a vice can refute.... This indecent form of opposition, which
comes from below and behind--the doglike kind of attack, has not died
out either. Priests, as psychologists, never discovered anything more
interesting than spying out the secret vices of their adversaries--they
prove Christianity by looking about for the world's filth. They apply
this principle more particularly to the greatest on earth, to the
geniuses: readers will remember how Goethe has been attacked on every
conceivable occasion in Germany (Klopstock and Herder were among the
first to give a "good example" in this respect--birds of a feather
flock together).
397.
One must be very immoral in order to _make people moral by deeds._ The
moralist's means are the most terrible that have ever been used; he
who has not the courage to be an immoralist in deeds may be fit for
anything else, but not for the duties of a moralist.
Morality is a menagerie; it assumes that iron bars may be more useful
than freedom, even for the creatures it imprisons; it also assumes that
there are animal-tamers about who do not shrink from terrible means,
and who are acquainted with the use of red-hot iron. This terrible
species, which enters into a struggle with the wild animal, is called
"priests."
***
Man, incarcerated in an iron cage of errors, has become a caricature
of man; he is sick, emaciated, ill-disposed towards himself, filled
with a loathing of the impulses of life, filled with a mistrust of
all that is beautiful and happy in life--in fact, he is a wandering
monument of misery. How shall we ever succeed in vindicating this
phenomenon--this artificial, arbitrary, and _recent_ miscarriage--the
sinner--which the priests have bred on their territory?
***
In order to think fairly of morality, we must put two _biological_
notions in its place: the _taming_ of the wild beasts, and the _rearing
of a particular species._
The priests of all ages have always pretended that they wished to
"_improve_" ... But we, of another persuasion, would laugh if a
lion-tamer ever wished to speak to us of his "improved" animals. As a
rule, the taming of a beast is only achieved by deteriorating it: even
the moral man is not a better man; he is rather a weaker member of his
species. But he is less harmful....
398.