of all the different ranks and social conditions, like a plant
requiring no specific soil: on that account he belongs essentially
and involuntarily to the partisans of democratic thought. But this
origin betrays itself. If one has trained one's glance to some
extent to recognise in a learned book or scientific treatise the
intellectual _idiosyncrasy_ of the learned man--all of them have
such idiosyncrasy,--and if we take it by surprise, we shall almost
always get a glimpse behind it of the "antecedent history" of the
learned man and his family, especially of the nature of their callings
and occupations. Where the feeling finds expression, "That is at
last proved, I am now done with it," it is commonly the ancestor
in the blood and instincts of the learned man that approves of the
"accomplished work" in the nook from which he sees things;--the belief
in the proof is only an indication of what has been looked upon for
ages by a laborious family as "good work." Take an example: the sons
of registrars and office-clerks of every kind, whose main task has
always been to arrange a variety of material, distribute it in drawers,
and systematise it generally, evince, when they become learned men,
an inclination to regard a problem as almost solved when they have
systematised it There are philosophers who are at bottom nothing but
systematising brains--the formal part of the paternal occupation has
become its essence to them. The talent for classifications, for tables
of categories, betrays something; it is not for nothing that a person
is the child of his parents. The son of an advocate will also have to
be an advocate as investigator: he seeks as a first consideration, to
carry the point in his case, as a second consideration, he perhaps
seeks to be in the right. One recognises the sons of Protestant
clergymen and schoolmasters by the naïve assurance with which as
learned men they already assume their case to be proved, when it has
but been presented by them staunchly and warmly: they are thoroughly
accustomed to people _believing_ in them,--it belonged to their
fathers' "trade"! A Jew, contrariwise, in accordance with his business
surroundings and the past of his race, is least of all accustomed--to
people believing him. Observe Jewish scholars with regard to this
matter,--they all lay great stress on logic, that is to say, on
_compelling_ assent by means of reasons; they know that they must
conquer thereby, even when race and class antipathy is against them,
even where people are unwilling to believe them. For in fact, nothing
is more democratic than logic: it knows no respect of persons, and
takes even the crooked nose as straight. (In passing we may remark that
in respect to logical thinking, in respect to _cleaner_ intellectual
habits, Europe is not a little indebted to the Jews; above all the
Germans, as being a lamentably _déraisonnable_ race, who, even at the
present day, must always have their "heads washed"[1] in the first
place. Wherever the Jews have attained to influence, they have taught
to analyse more subtly, to argue more acutely, to write more clearly
and purely: it has always been their problem to bring a people "to
_raison._")
[1] In German the expression _Kopf zu waschen,_ besides the literal
sense, also means "to give a person a sound drubbing."--TR.
349.
_The Origin of the Learned once more._--To seek self-preservation
merely, is the expression of a state of distress, or of limitation of
the true, fundamental instinct of life, which aims at the _extension
of power,_ and with this in view often enough calls in question
self-preservation and sacrifices it. It should be taken as symptomatic
when individual philosophers, as for example, the consumptive Spinoza,
have seen and have been obliged to see the principal feature of life
precisely in the so-called self-preservative instinct:--they have just
been men in states of distress. That our modern natural sciences have
entangled themselves so much with Spinoza's dogma (finally and most
grossly in Darwinism, with its inconceivably one-sided doctrine of the
"struggle for existence"--), is probably owing to the origin of most of
the inquirers into nature: they belong in this respect to the people,
their forefathers have been poor and humble persons, who knew too well
by immediate experience the difficulty of making a living. Over the
whole of English Darwinism there hovers something of the suffocating
air of over-crowded England, something of the odour of humble people
in need and in straits. But as an investigator of nature, a person
ought to emerge from his paltry human nook: and in nature the state of
distress does not _prevail,_ but superfluity, even prodigality to the
extent of folly. The struggle for existence is only an _exception,_ a
temporary restriction of the will to live; the struggle, be it great or
small, turns everywhere on predominance, on increase and expansion, on
power, in conformity to the will to power, which is just the will to
live.
350.
_In Honour of Homines Religiosi._--The struggle against the church is
certainly (among other things--for it has a manifold significance)
the struggle of the more ordinary, cheerful, confiding, superficial
natures against the rule of the graver, profounder, more contemplative
natures, that is to say, the more malign and suspicious men, who with
long continued distrust in the worth of life, brood also over their own
worth:--the ordinary instinct of the people, its sensual gaiety, its
"good heart," revolts against them. The entire Roman Church rests on a
Southern suspicion of the nature of man (always misunderstood in the
North), a suspicion whereby the European South has succeeded, to the
inheritance of the profound Orient--the mysterious, venerable Asia--and
its contemplative spirit. Protestantism was a popular insurrection
in favour of the simple, the respectable, the superficial (the North
has always been more good-natured and more shallow than the South),
but it was the French Revolution that first gave the sceptre wholly
and solemnly into the hands of the "good man" (the sheep, the ass,
the goose, and everything incurably shallow, bawling, and fit for the
Bedlam of "modern ideas").
351.
_In Honour of Priestly Natures._--I think that philosophers have always
felt themselves very remote from that which the people (in all classes
of society nowadays) take for wisdom: the prudent, bovine placidity,
piety, and country-parson meekness, which lies in the meadow and
_gazes at_ life seriously and ruminatingly:--this is probably because
philosophers have not had sufficiently the taste of the "people," or
of the country-parson, for that kind of wisdom. Philosophers will
also perhaps be the last to acknowledge that the people _should_
understand something of that which lies furthest from them, something
of the great _passion_ of the thinker, who lives and must live
continually in the storm-cloud of the highest problems and the heaviest
responsibilities (consequently, not gazing at all, to say nothing of
doing so indifferently, securely, objectively). The people venerate an
entirely different type of men when on their part they form the ideal
of a "sage," and they are a thousand times justified in rendering
homage with the highest eulogies and honours to precisely that type
of men--namely, the gentle, serious, simple, chaste, priestly natures
and those related to them,--it is to them that the praise falls due
in the popular veneration of wisdom. And to whom should the multitude
have more reason to be grateful than to these men who pertain to its
class and rise from its ranks, but are persons consecrated, chosen,
and _sacrificed_ for its good--they themselves believe themselves
sacrificed to God,--before whom every one can pour forth his heart with
impunity, by whom he can _get rid_ of his secrets, cares, and worse
things (for the man who "communicates himself" gets rid of himself,
and he who has "confessed" forgets). Here there exists a great need:
for sewers and pure cleansing waters are required also for spiritual
filth, and rapid currents of love are needed, and strong, lowly, pure
hearts, who qualify and sacrifice themselves for such service of the
non-public health-department--for it _is_ a sacrificing, the priest
is, and continues to be, a human sacrifice.... The people regard
such sacrificed, silent, serious men of "faith" as "_wise,"_ that is
to say, as men who have become sages, as "reliable" in relation to
their own unreliability. Who would desire to deprive the people of
that expression and that veneration?--But as is fair on the other
side, among philosophers the priest also is still held to belong to
the "people," and is _not_ regarded as a sage, because, above all,
they themselves do not believe in "sages," and they already scent "the
people" in this very belief and superstition. It was _modesty_ which
invented in Greece the word "philosopher," and left to the play-actors
of the spirit the superb arrogance of assuming the name "wise"--the
modesty of such monsters of pride and self-glorification as Pythagoras
and Plato.--
352.
_Why we can hardly Dispense with Morality.--_The naked man is
generally an ignominious spectacle--I speak of us European males
(and by no means of European females!). If the most joyous company
at table suddenly found themselves stripped and divested of their
garments through the trick of an enchanter, I believe that not only
would the joyousness be gone and the strongest appetite lost;--it
seems that we Europeans cannot at all dispense with the masquerade
that is called clothing. But should not the disguise of "moral men,"
the screening under moral formulæ and notions of decency, the whole
kindly concealment of our conduct under conceptions of duty, virtue,
public sentiment, honourableness, and disinterestedness, have just
as good reasons in support of it? Not that I mean hereby that human
wickedness and baseness, in short, the evil wild beast in us, should
be disguised; on the contrary, my idea is that it is precisely as
_tame animals_ that we are an ignominious spectacle and require moral
disguising,--that the "inner man" in Europe is far from having enough
of intrinsic evil "to let himself be seen" with it (to be _beautiful_
with it). The European disguises himself _in morality_ because he has
become a sick, sickly, crippled animal, who has good reasons for being
"tame," because he is almost an abortion, an imperfect, weak and clumsy
thing.... It is not the fierceness of the beast of prey that finds
moral disguise necessary, but the gregarious animal, with its profound
mediocrity, anxiety and ennui. _Morality dresses up the European_--let
us acknowledge it!--in more distinguished, more important, more
conspicuous guise--in "divine" guise--
353.
_The Origin of Religions._--The real inventions of founders of
religions are, on the one hand, to establish a definite mode of life
and everyday custom, which operates as _disciplina voluntatis,_ and
at the same time does away with ennui; and on the other hand, to give
to that very mode of life an _interpretation,_ by virtue of which it
appears illumined with the highest value; so that it henceforth becomes
a good for which people struggle, and under certain circumstances lay
down their lives. In truth, the second of these inventions is the
more essential: the first, the mode of life, has usually been there
already, side by side, however, with other modes of life, and still
unconscious of the value which it embodies. The import, the originality
of the founder of a religion, discloses itself usually in the fact that
he _sees_ the mode of life, _selects_ it, and _divines_ for the first
time the purpose for which it can be used, how it can be interpreted.
Jesus (or Paul) for example, found around him the life of the common
people in the Roman province, a modest, virtuous, oppressed life: he
interpreted it, he put the highest significance and value into it--and
thereby the courage to despise every other mode of life, the calm
fanaticism of the Moravians, the secret, subterranean self-confidence
which goes on increasing, and is at last ready "to overcome the world"
(that is to say, Rome, and the upper classes throughout the empire).
Buddha, in like manner, found the same type of man,--he found it in
fact dispersed among all the classes and social ranks of a people who
were good and kind (and above all inoffensive), owing to indolence, and
who likewise owing to indolence, lived abstemiously, almost without
requirements. He understood that such a type of man, with all its
_vis inertiæ,_ had inevitably to glide into a belief which promises
_to avoid_ the return of earthly ill (that is to say, labour and
activity generally),--this "understanding" was his genius. The founder
of a religion possesses psychological infallibility in the knowledge
of a definite, average type of souls, who have not yet _recognised_
themselves as akin. It is he who brings them together: the founding of
a religion, therefore, always becomes a long ceremony of recognition.--
354.
_The "Genius of the Species."_--The problem of consciousness (or
more correctly: of becoming conscious of oneself) meets us only when
we begin to perceive in what measure we could dispense with it: and
it is at the beginning of this perception that we are now placed by
physiology and zoology (which have thus required two centuries to
overtake the hint thrown out in advance by Leibnitz). For we could
in fact think, feel, will, and recollect, we could likewise "act"
in every sense of the term, and nevertheless nothing of it all need
necessarily "come into consciousness" (as one says metaphorically).
The whole of life would be possible without its seeing itself as it
were in a mirror: as in fact even at present the far greater part of
our life still goes on without this mirroring,--and even our thinking,
feeling, volitional life as well, however painful this statement
may sound to an older philosopher. _What_ then is _the purpose_ of
consciousness generally, when it is in the main _superfluous_?--Now it
seems to me, if you will hear my answer and its perhaps extravagant
supposition, that the subtlety and strength of consciousness are always
in proportion to the _capacity for communication_ of a man (or an
animal), the capacity for communication in its turn being in proportion
to the _necessity for communication:_ the latter not to be understood
as if precisely the individual himself who is master in the art of
communicating and making known his necessities would at the same time
have to be most dependent upon others for his necessities. It seems
to me, however, to be so in relation to whole races and successions
of generations: where necessity and need have long compelled men to
communicate with their fellows and understand one another rapidly and
subtly, a surplus of the power and art of communication is at last
acquired as if it were a fortune which had gradually accumulated,
and now waited for an heir to squander it prodigally (the so-called
artists are these heirs, in like manner the orators, preachers, and
authors: all of them men who come at the end of a long succession,
"late-born" always, in the best sense of the word, and as has
been said, _squanderers_ by their very nature). Granted that this
observation is correct, I may proceed further to the conjecture that
_consciousness generally has only been developed under the pressure
of the necessity for communication,_--that from the first it has been
necessary and useful only between man and man (especially between those
commanding and those obeying) and has only developed in proportion
to its utility Consciousness is properly only a connecting network
between man and man,--it is only as such that it has had to develop;
the recluse and wild-beast species of men would not have needed it
The very fact that our actions, thoughts, feelings and motions come
within the range of our consciousness--at least a part of them--is the
result of a terrible, prolonged "must" ruling man's destiny: as the
most endangered animal he _needed_ help and protection; he needed his
fellows, he was obliged to express his distress, he had to know how to
make himself understood--and for all this he needed "consciousness"
first of all: he had to "know" himself what he lacked, to "know" how
he felt, and to "know" what he thought. For, to repeat it once more,
man, like every living creature, thinks unceasingly, but does not know
it; the thinking which is becoming _conscious of itself_ is only the
smallest part thereof, we may say, the most superficial part, the worst
part:--for this conscious thinking alone _is done in words, that is to
say, in the symbols for communication,_ by means of which the origin
of consciousness is revealed. In short, the development of speech and
the development of consciousness (not of reason, but of reason becoming
self-conscious) go hand in hand. Let it be further accepted that it is
not only speech that serves as a bridge between man and man, but also
the looks, the pressure and the gestures; our becoming conscious of our
sense impressions, our power of being able to fix them, and as it were
to locate them outside of ourselves, has increased in proportion as the
necessity has increased for communicating them to _others_ by means of
signs. The sign-inventing man is at the same time the man who is always
more acutely self-conscious; it is only as a social animal that man
has learned to become conscious of himself,--he is doing so still, and
doing so more and more.--As is obvious, my idea is that consciousness
does not properly belong to the individual existence of man, but
rather to the social and gregarious nature in him; that, as follows
therefrom, it is only in relation to communal and gregarious utility
that it is finely developed; and that consequently each of us, in
spite of the best intention of _understanding_ himself as individually
as possible, and of "knowing himself," will always just call into
consciousness the non-individual in him, namely, his "averageness";
--that our thought itself is continuously as it were _outvoted_ by the
character of consciousness--by the imperious "genius of the species"
therein--and is translated back into the perspective of the herd.
Fundamentally our actions are in an incomparable manner altogether
personal, unique and absolutely individual--there is no doubt about
it; but as soon as we translate them into consciousness, they _do
not appear so any longer ..._. This is the proper phenomenalism and
perspectivism as I understand it: the nature of _animal consciousness_
involves the notion that the world of which we can become conscious is
only a superficial and symbolic world, a generalised and vulgarised
world;--that everything which becomes conscious _becomes_ just thereby
shallow, meagre, relatively stupid,--a generalisation, a symbol, a
characteristic of the herd; that with the evolving of consciousness
there is always combined a great, radical perversion, falsification,
superficialisation, and generalisation. Finally, the growing
consciousness is a danger, and whoever lives among the most conscious
Europeans knows even that it is a disease. As may be conjectured,
it is not the antithesis of subject and object with which I am here
concerned: I leave that distinction to the epistemologists who have
remained entangled in the toils of grammar (popular metaphysics).
It is still less the antithesis of "thing in itself" and phenomenon,
for we do not "know" enough to be entitled even _to make such a
distinction._ Indeed, we have not any organ at all for _knowing,_ or
for "truth": we "know" (or believe, or fancy) just as much as may be
_of use_ in the interest of the human herd, the species; and even what
is here called "usefulness" is ultimately only a belief, a fancy, and
perhaps precisely the most fatal stupidity by which we shall one day be
ruined.
355.
_The Origin of our Conception of "Knowledge"_--I take this explanation
from the street. I heard one of the people saying that "he knew me,"
so I asked myself: What do the people really understand by knowledge?
what do they want when they seek "knowledge"? Nothing more than that
what is strange is to be traced back to something _known._ And we
philosophers--have we really understood _anything more_ by knowledge?
The known, that is to say, what we are accustomed to so that we no
longer marvel at it, the commonplace, any kind of rule to which we are
habituated, all and everything in which we know ourselves to be at
home:--what? is our need of knowing not just this need of the known?
the will to discover in everything strange, unusual, or questionable,
something which no longer disquiets us? Is it not possible that it
should be the _instinct of fear_ which enjoins upon us to know? Is it
not possible that the rejoicing of the discerner should be just his
rejoicing in the regained feeling of security?... One philosopher
imagined the world "known" when he had traced it back to the "idea":
alas, was it not because the idea was so known, so familiar to him?
because he had so much less fear of the "idea"--Oh, this moderation
of the discerners! let us but look at their principles, and at their
solutions of the riddle of the world in this connection! When they
again find aught in things, among things, or behind things that is
unfortunately very well known to us, for example, our multiplication
table, or our logic, or our willing and desiring, how happy they
immediately are! For "what is known is understood": they are unanimous
as to that. Even the most circumspect among them think that the
known is at least _more easily understood_ than the strange; that
for example, it is methodically ordered to proceed outward from the
"inner world," from "the facts of consciousness," because it is the
world which is _better known to us!_ Error of errors! The known is
the accustomed, and the accustomed is the most difficult of all to
"understand," that is to say, to perceive as a problem, to perceive
as strange, distant, "outside of us."... The great certainty of the
natural sciences in comparison with psychology and the criticism of the
elements of consciousness--_unnatural_ sciences, as one might almost
be entitled to call them--rests precisely on the fact that they take
_what is strange_ as their object: while it is almost like something
contradictory and absurd _to wish_ to take generally what is not
strange as an object....
356.